| Puffskein
Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Canada
Posts: 2,438
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Chapter 27
The Lies
He followed me out and shut the door behind us. As we walked down the dimly-lit dungeon corridors, I was fidgeting and walking as loudly as I could, both irritated that he was making me do this and wary of what he could do if I did try to run off.
We made our way up the stairs and across the main hallway. The castle doors to the outside were shut tight.
“So, does your twisted mind have a good lie for as to what happened?” Draco asked tersely.
“I was doing my charms homework when I realized I said the spell wrong. I ducked as it reflected off of...”
“That sounds ridiculous,” he snapped as we turned a corner.
“It’s better than what you could come up with,” I retorted.
“I didn’t come up with anything!” he exclaimed defensively.
“Exactly,” I replied, shrugging. He was so slow sometimes.
I saw him scowl in the dim lighting as we started up another flight of stairs.
“Ok, how about you were practicing some spell for DADA, people were going to bed and Pansy was one of them; she got into the line of fire of your spell gone wrong...”
“No, this all you. Don’t try to pin this me for this.”
“Fine!” I snapped.
“Hey!”
We ignored the prefect’s call and kept walking down the corridor.
“Oi, Malfoy, Black! What’re you doin’?”
We stopped and turned around. Surely enough, it was Ron Weasley; oh joy. This is just what we need to slow us down.
“What in Merlin’s beard are you carrying?”
“Something that should be in hell...” I started to grumble. Draco stomped on my foot. I gasped in pain, curling my leg up into my body and stomping it back down onto the ground.
“A little spell gone wrong,” he responded. “Helping out the girl; she’s unconscious.”
Weasley walked around us. “Isn’t that Parkinson?”
“She’s a little slow sometimes; didn’t react fast enough when she saw my attempt at practicing the DADA spell we’re learning,” I responded. I spun around to face him. “What’s it to you?”
“You’re helping someone else. Malfoy is helping someone else.” He sounded more dumbfounded about Draco being helpful than he was by me. My reputation really was being terribly shot down here at Hogwarts. It was sad.
“Well if we...” he started to reply irritably.
“Hold on.” Weasley bent down and lifted Pansy’s hair. “What’d you do to her?” He looked up at me, his eyes and tone suspicious. “I thought you said you were practicing DADA.”
“I didn’t say I did the spell right,” I snapped back. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Would you just let us go, Weaslebee? Those gross pimple things will get worse if we don’t get her to the hospital wing soon,” Draco sighed impatiently.
“Fine,” he snapped. “If I see you two walking anywhere besides back to your common room after dropping her off I’m not afraid to start taking away points.”
“Keep in mind I am technically a prefect too,” Draco snapped.
I found this hard to believe; if he did actually patrol at night, I never saw him leave. He never mentioned it before, anyways. Mum told me awhile back that he was a prefect in 5th year, but I sort of figured that he dropped the act for whatever he had to do in 6th year.
“If you start being more obstructive I’m more than willing to take away your precious house points, Weasley.”
Weasley scowled. “If I see you two out here within the next 20 minutes you will be in trouble.”
“Right...” Draco drawled. I turned around and followed him down the corridor and around the final corner. I had to push the door open.
“What in heaven’s...?” Madam Pomfrey came out of her office and towards us.
“I don’t know what happened...” Tears began to well in my eyes. “I was just doing some homework, getting a head start, and...” a tear fell down my cheek. “I was doing this spell for DADA, one that douses fiendfyre...” another tear fell. “I said it wrong. One minute people are heading to bed, the next there’s a scream and this.”
“Come along...” the nurse led us to an open bed while I brushed away my tears just enough to keep my face tear-stained but not totally intolerable. Draco dropped Pansy onto it. Madam Pomfrey winced.
“Something really must’ve gone wrong. Well, it’ll be interesting to fix because you don’t know what you did or said, but I can surely help. Thanks for bringing her to me.”
I wiped my eyes with a hand, drying off the rest of my tearstains and the last tear that snuck out. “No, thank you.”
“Now off to bed, you two, it’s late.”
Draco spun me around and pulled me right out of the hospital wing without another word. The moment he shut the door, he stopped us.
“What was that?” he demanded, his grip on my upper arm tightening.
“No one questions you if you cry. Especially as a girl,” I responded.
“That was just ridiculous; crying? About... Parkinson?” He sounded a little too dumbfounded for the situation he was trying to create. “I thought you were a good liar.”
I scowled. “It’s better than explaining what really happened. We’d be in detention for the rest of the school year every weekend, cleaning and reorganizing and...” I shivered.
“We? I’m already in it thanks to you. You would be the one in trouble for this if it comes up – I’d make sure of it.”
“Don’t make me hit you again,” I snarled warning. “And let go of me.” I tried to yank free, but his grip didn’t budge. “Why do you always insist on doing this? First it was at my birthday, and now this? What’s your problem?”
“You know what? You really do annoy me to no end,” he said with a hard tone. “You’re ignorant, arrogant, stubborn, selfish, totally lacking self-awareness...”
“I wish you had enough self-awareness to realize you’re cutting off circulation...” I kept trying to pull free. He loosened his hold, but only enough to let my blood flow through my arm again.
“And you insist on fighting. Rather destructively at that. Why? Why do you always pick a fight with me? Why do you insist on being as proud as a hippogriff, to the point where you hurt yourself and eventually others because you can’t ask for help?”
“You’re asking me to answer why I am the way I am?” I asked flatly, cocking an eyebrow. To think I thought Harry was the slow one.
“No, I’m asking why you’re so unaware of everything besides yourself.”
I scowled.
“The entire world isn’t against you.”
“That’s right. Only people like you are.”
He pulled on my arm, making me stumble forwards and into him, forcing me to look up at him even more than I already was.
“People like me? What do you imply by that?”
“People that insist on stalking others to learn about them, invade in personal lives, make caddy remarks about everything...” my heart began to race, my adrenaline really starting to pump.
“I’m not the only one who makes caddy remarks,” he cut in. “The letters I sent to your mum were answers to questions she pushed onto me about you like who’re your friends, who do spend time with regularly, what kind of trouble you’re getting into, how the ‘us’ situation is...”
“Us?” I sputtered, momentarily taken off-guard. Regaining my composure moments later, my eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What is there to know about us?”
“Whether we’re still acting like babies or not. Needless to say, there hasn’t been a whole lot to update on for that subject.”
I scowled.
“But you do forget one thing.”
“What would that be?” I asked venomously.
“How is it that, based on your views, I’m such a horrible person that’s out to make your life a living hell while I’ve been nothing but thoughtful?”
I laughed. “Thoughtful? Yes, because hitting me down is thinking for me. It’s definitely something I need.”
I saw his cheeks burning, even though they were slightly obscured by shadows. “You never asked where I got that picture of your friends from.”
My laughter cut off in a second and my lips fell into an angry frown, the rest of my body tensing. He smirked triumphantly, feeling my muscles grow rigid beneath his hand. It was the perfect subject change for him because I felt too awkward and irritated to speak of it.
“I sent a letter to your mum, asking about your French friends. She knew them surprisingly well and told me about each of them. After reading what she told me, I sent a letter to your best French/British friend, someone named Janelle?”
I didn’t respond.
“I told her how ‘homesick’ you’ve been and how Valentine’s Day is coming up. After explaining how I wanted to get a gift you’d appreciate and not just use a few times and throw away, or just plain throw away since it would be coming from me, I asked if she could get a picture. I got it and a week later went to Hogsmeade to find the frame to match. Nothing worked, so I paid double to get the frame worker to make it that day. I got it and, surely enough, instead of just letting me leave it for you out in the open on Valentine’s Day so you could open it alone, you freaked out about how I’m never helpful and whatnot. Next thing I knew it went from my hand to yours.”
“You threw it at me,” I exclaimed, incredulous at his definition of tossing a box at me without warning.
“Exactly, my hand to yours; it might not have been the most ideal form of passing on, but it did.” He shrugged. “You never have been able to get off your high horse enough to say a simple ‘thanks’, have you? First the earrings, now that. You wear that stupid bracelet all the time.”
I looked down at my wrist where the bracelet of the ruby roses rested, and then back up at him.
“I know full well where you got it; say ‘grandma’ all you like, not everyone has wool pulled over their eyes. Why do you wear that constantly if you really don’t care about Potter?”
“You and your assumptions!” I exclaimed. “Just because I’m not entirely truthful it doesn’t mean I don’t care. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you protecting someone is one way of showing you care? Whether they know you’re protecting them or not?”
“What are you protecting him from, eh?”
I just looked back up at him, my jaw tense. He doesn’t even know me; how the heck does he do the read-me-like-a-book act so easily?
“I know you more than you think. Your mum may have left my family out of stories she told you throughout your escapades throughout Europe, but my parents weren’t the same. And to the average person, you’re secretive, protective, selfish, crass... but I’m not your average person. I’ve spent most of my life having to figure people out to survive; you’re just another one of them to me. You pose no more of a challenge than Crabbe.”
I tried to bring up my left arm to awkwardly slap him, but he grabbed my upper arm and pinned it to my body. No matter how much strength I used to fight back and whatever spell I tried, it wasn’t strong enough without my wand... especially because I was trying to cast it silently.
“Fine, you’ve got my pinned. What’ll you do now?” I challenged.
He lowered his head even closer to me, leaving his face inches from mine. My heart began pounding harder.
“Prove to you,” he whispered darkly, his words slow. “I do care.”
And then his lips claimed mine. His hands loosened from my arms and slid around me, pulling me tight into his body. I would’ve been pushing away, disgusted, but something about this kiss was different. It wasn’t angry and forceful, it was... passionate, borderline loving. There was a spark I couldn’t place, something I had never felt before in my life that made me start to kiss him back.
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Last edited by MalfoyzBeloved; 09-28-2010 at 10:24 PM.
Reason: deleting un-story-related comment
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