The Allure of Darkness

Rescue

Hogsmeade [February 20th]

"He's going to get suspicious, we've been gone for almost ten minutes," Hermione murmured, adjusting her head so it rested more comfortably against the wall.

Draco rolled his eyes, though it went unseen in the darkness of the broom closet, "He's too busy reading his stupid book on potions, he'll never notice."

"Still, it's been a while," Hermione argued.

Draco groaned, reluctantly stepping away from her with a frown, "Sometimes I think you like arguing with me just for the sake of arguing."

She grinned, "It's definitely an entertaining pastime, if I'm being honest."

Draco ran a hand through his hair, easily fixing the messy platinum strands that she had yanked out of his painstakingly gelled back style.

Her own mussed hair was a different story, however, and no amount of flattening or adjusting could get it back to the carefully arranged style it had been in before Malfoy had yanked her into the broom closet on her way back to the booth. After a couple seconds of fiddling she gave up and put her hands on her hips, fixing him with an irritated glare, "You know what, you were the one who messed up my hair, so you have to fix it."

He scoffed, "There's no fixing that mess."

She gasped in outrage, and before she could lash out at him with the dictionary of insults, he was sure she kept on her person at all times, he quickly hurried to add, "I just meant, I like it better this way."

She squinted at him in the darkness, "You called me a rabid sheep two days ago!"

"That's because you bit me!" He snapped.

"You yanked on my hair!" She defended herself, "I don't just go around biting people!"

"I didn't yank on it," He muttered, "I was just running my hands through it because it looked soft and my hand got stuck."

As the two of them continued to bicker in the Three Broomsticks broom closet, Hadrian sat blissfully unaware in their booth drumming his fingers on his open book in annoyance. His friends had dragged him down to Hogsmeade insisting he needed a break, and then they all proceeded to bloody abandon him within the first thirty minutes.

Neville and Destiny had awkwardly made small talk for about two minutes before they admitted they had reservations at Madam Pudifoots and left rather abruptly. Blaise had hung around for another twenty minutes before realizing he had forgotten he'd finally managed to get Lisa Turpin to agree to go out with him that week. He'd scrambled out of the pub faster than Hermione could rant about treating women with respect.

Speaking of Hermione, she had disappeared off to the loo a while ago and Hadrian frowned as he realized she stillwasn't back yet. Come to think of it, Draco had gone up to go get them something to eat and he was nowhere in sight either. He sighed, getting ready to go look for them when he heard a familiar melodic voice.

Discreetly, he craned his neck to the side and nearly fell out of his seat in surprise. Daphne was sitting in a booth across the room, although she wasn't alone. That Stransky boy was with her, holding her hand brazenly on the table and whispering something to her.

Hadrian seethed quietly as he saw Daphne laugh at something the overgrown Bulgarian had said. His book lay forgotten beside him. He barely suppressed his anger when the boy said something that made her blush.

"Stare any harder and you'll burn a hole in that poor boy's head," Astoria Greengrass commented, sliding into the seat beside him.

"I wasn't staring." He snapped.