| Puffskein
Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Canada
Posts: 2,438
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Dinner dragged on as meal after meal was served. We had an entrée, three main meals, some bread and cheese (which brought me back to the memories of my meals at Beauxbatons), and three various desserts where we could all take one piece of each. I took a tiny slice of the chocolate Yule Log, and even that I couldn’t finish half of, I felt so stuffed. Too bad Crabbe was at the far end, I’d pass it off to him and he’d inhale it. Even Goyle was too far to reach to do so for him, who would gladly take another serving of anything, given the chance. He already ate half of Aurelia’s food, right down to dessert, and he still wanted more.
“Are you planning on finishing that?”
My head snapped to Draco, who was looking down at my half-eaten, thin piece of Yule Log cake.
“Maybe,” I responded elusively, picking up my spoon again. He watched my spoon cut a piece of the cake, have that piece fall onto it, and watched it come up to my mouth right until it was in my mouth. He watched as I managed to swallow it and slowly drop my spoon down to the cake again and cut another piece. His eyes followed my hand as I brought this piece to my mouth and took it in.
My stomach grumbled in complaint as I swallowed the piece. I looked at the rest of the cake and felt a wave of nausea come upon me at the thought of one more bite of the excessively sweet piece of the ice cream cake.
“So you’re not?”
“Take the bloody thing,” I snapped, pushing it towards him. He just ate off the plate, not even bothering to move the cake onto his plate. My mum just watched with a big smile on her face. What did think was so great about him eating off of my plate? Was it cute? I thought it was rather piggish, not being able to spend 5 seconds moving your food to your plate before stuffing it in your face.
As soon as Lucius was totally finished and stood up, the adults started to get up and slowly shift into other rooms throughout the house and continue socializing. As the others started to get up, I was the first to actually get moving. As soon as I was up I started to leave the dining room.
“Where’re you going?” I heard Aurelia call after me.
“The loo, wanna join me?” I drawled in response without slowing.
I passed through the rooms with adults until I found the bathroom by the stairs. I slammed the door behind me and let my head drop against the door. Tears that had already began welling the moment I left human company fell from the pain.
Drying them with a spell, I crossed the room and just sat on the toilet, enjoying the silence of my own thoughts for a few moments. I checked my watch and saw I only had 10 more minutes until I’d be able to take this ruddy ring off by choice. So I did just that, waited ten minutes. I zoned out on the bracelet on my other hand, watching the rubies shimmer. The moment the hand of my watch moved to 10pm I tried to pull the ring off; it was still wedged on. Sighing, I waited until 10:01pm. It slid right off. I nearly cried in happiness. Dropping it down the front of my dress, I went to use the loo and went to wash my hands.
“Rosa?” someone called, knocking on the door.
“I’m almost done,” I called back, running the water and washing my hands. After rinsing them with water and soap, I towel-dried them and went to the door and opened it
“I have to go. Well, I did 5 minutes ago, I’ve been stalling my parents so I could say goodbye to everyone.”
I smiled. “See you in January?”
“Seems so.” She pulled me into a hug. When she pulled away a minute later and my hands dropped back to my sides, she looked at them and chucked.
“4 hours?”
“10:01 apparently,” I responded with a smirk. “It’s safely stowed. It’s going back where it should be if my mum makes me bring it back to Hogwarts.”
“You had that at Hogwarts somewhere in the dorms and never showed me?” Aurelia demanded, sounding rather insulted.
“I made sure I forgot about it. Our house is beneath the lake; I wouldn’t have to go far to dispose of it given the opportunity,” I pointed out, shrugging.
“Alright, makes sense,” she sighed.
“IF YOU ARE NOT HERE IN THE NEXT 10 SECONDS WE ARE LEAVING WITHOUT YOU, AURELIA!” a woman yelled suddenly.
Aurelia’s cheeks burned deep red. “G’night.” She then spun on her heel and ran off. I started walking, following her trail. As I passed into the first room this corridor connected to, I ran right into someone and we stumbled backwards.
“Sorry, sorry!” I started to say, brushing myself off and hoping whichever adult it was wouldn’t start snapping at me. I cut myself right off when I saw it was just Draco. “What do you want?” I asked flatly.
“I was going to see if you fell in, then use the washroom myself. What took so long, ‘prepping’?” Draco finished brushing himself off and looked at me. I glared at him.
“My 4 hours was up.” I held my left hand up. He looked at it, and then at me.
“Whatever you decided to do with it, at least don’t lose it.”
“I would never do that.” My hand dropped back to my side.
Draco opened his mouth slightly, ready to respond, but looked surprised and suddenly speechless. I never thought I’d live to see the day Draco Malfoy was rendered speechless; he always had something to say, based on my experience.
“Because my mother would finish me off certainly then. She forced the thing onto my finger and then charmed it for 4 hours to stay in place. Did you really think I wore it by choice?” He’d have to be a complete imbecile to believe that. Even Crabbe wouldn’t believe that.
He was silent a moment. “Of course not; asking of such a simple thing from you, you’d swear you were dying a slow, painful death.”
“This is a slow and painful death,” I snarled, my heart starting to pound rather painfully.
He glared coldly at me, finally matching mine. Our eyes challenged each other, neither one of us giving in. He stepped up to me; I put my hands on my hips indignantly, my heart rate increasing.
“You’re too stubborn for your own good,” Draco spat at me.
“I’d rather be stubborn than an arrogant prick.”
His eyebrows rose. “You think you aren’t an arrogant prick?” he crossed his arms across his chest.
Before I knew what I was doing, my hand met with his face and a rather loud slap echoed around the room. His head jerked to the side with my slap and I saw the red start to rise on his pale cheek. He looked at the wall, but then slowly turned his gaze back to me, the rest of his face growing redder, his eyes burning with fury. His arms dropped and his fists clench. I was panting; I’d never felt so strongly against Draco before. My adrenaline rush was still pumping through me as his red face got closer to mine.
“You’ll regret that,” he growled, his voice barely above a whisper.
“What’ll you do? Marry me?” I snapped back scathingly.
In that next moment, Draco’s hands were holding my face and he kissed me with a forceful, angry passion. The adrenaline was obstructing my rational thoughts so I starting kissing him back. It wasn’t until I realized where his tongue was going I pushed him off me. He stumbled backwards from the force.
“What? Potter does better than that?” Draco growled.
I looked at the small table next to me out of the corner of my eye. I picked up the thick book and held it up over my head in a threatening way. He tensed, but didn’t even attempt to surrender.
“Take that back,” I snarled.
“Because it isn’t true?”
I threw the book at him. He merely raised a hand and stopped the book in its path. It dropped to the marble floor with a loud thud. I grabbed the book that sat beneath the original book and held it up, threatening to throw that too.
“Must you throw things?” Draco demanded.
I muttered a spell and threw the book at him. It broke through his shield, but he still managed to hit it down with an arm.
“You may be a chaser, Rose, but you don’t have the strongest arm.”
“BUGGER OFF!” I yelled.
“You don’t need to yell!” he snapped, starting to close the space between us again.
I kept walking backwards, right down to the end of the corridor until I hit an empty space of wall next to the stairs. When he kept getting closer, I pulled my wand from my pocket and holding it out half an arm’s length.
“Stay back,” I growled.
I felt a vicious tug on my wand, yanking it from my hand and starting to fly towards Draco. I summoned it back wordlessly and it started to fly towards me. Draco seemed to find it fit to summon it back, and we were locked in a battle of our power, my wand hovering smack dab in between the space between us. It would occasionally waver and move towards me or Draco, but it never went far. This was nothing more than a sick game of tug o’ war to him. I felt sweat break across my forehead. Draco seemed to remember using a wand is more helpful, so he pulled out his, keeping his other hand open to grab my wand. I felt my weariness increase much quicker and the back and forth movements of my wand further apart and wavering more to Draco’s side each time. Then, out of nowhere, it flew in another direction completely. I dropped to my knees, rather exhausted once the magic broke.
“What in Merlin’s name are you two doing?”
I managed enough strength to turn my head and look up at Draco’s mother.
“He was trying to take my wand from me.” I breathed, letting my body droop more. If I was going to win this, I’d have to do better than start another verbal fight.
“Why?” she turned to her son next, her eyes demanding an answer.
“She was throwing your books.”
“Rosa!” she turned to me, surprised.
“He... forced himself... on me...” I panted and let my head bow down, my festive black hair creating a veil between me and the others.
“Draco,” she gasped, turning back to her son. “That’s no way to treat your fiancée.”
My jaw twitched at the word. At least my face was covered.
“She was overreacting; the only way I could get her to shut up was to occupy her mouth in some other way,” he responded, sounding shocked his mother wasn’t taking his side.
“You pushed me to the limit,” I whispered just loudly enough for them to hear. “You weren’t listening to me. You finally started paying attention when I sent the book flying at you.”
“Both of them?” he scoffed. “I got the message the first time.”
“Then why continue being an arrogant prick?”
I looked up and saw Draco’s face reddening even more, his teeth clenched. His wand raised and a burst of light came from it, but it disappeared into a thin, shimmering wall feet before me. I looked at Mrs. Malfoy and realized it was her doing.
“That’s enough, Draco,” she snapped. “You won’t be owl-ing anyone for the rest of the holidays, nor will you find use of your Christmas gifts until then.”
“Bu...” he started to complain. Now who was the one that looked like a kid on Christmas Day that got disappointed, eh?
“That’s enough, Draco!” she cut in forcefully. “And you are not to leave the manor. Not one step out any door or any window.” She then turned to me and her tone changed. “I apologise on Draco’s behalf. Come along, Rosa, I think your mother was about to find you and leave anyways.”
I struggled to get up and dragged my feet slightly as I walked up to Narcissa. She passed me my wand.
“We’ll talk more about this later,” she warned Draco.
Turning on her heel, she took my hand and let me lag behind slightly as she led me out. I looked over my shoulder at Draco and smirked triumphantly. He shook his head, eyes narrowed on me angrily. The rest of his face set just as infuriated as his eyes were.
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