Lazuli - Harry Potter Fan Fiction (Draco Malfoy)

CHAPTER NINE

The next couple of weeks pass in an unrecognisable blur. Lessons merge together, conversations disappear, all of it becoming a strange mess. The worst thing of all though, is that I don't speak to Draco for two weeks. Ever since our kiss, he seems to disappear. I hear the shower running in the next room, or I catch a glimpse of him lounging around in the common room, talking to Blaise, Crabbe and Goyle, and to my disgust occasionally Pansy. The only other times that I see him are during lessons.

Defence Against the Dark Arts doesn't get any better. Umbridge still refuses to let us do real spells and everyone is starting to grow anxious, especially Harry. Every time that Umbridge opens her mouth and gives us information that Harry and Dumbledore would renounce as incorrect, I can see the muscles in his back tighten, him clench his fist. Sometimes, when he's particularly frustrated, he does this strange thing with his neck, it's almost like he's cracking his neck, but it's more like a twitch. I'm not sure if the knows about it, but pointing it out doesn't seem like a good idea.

I've tried to speak to Draco in DADA several times, but mostly he gives one word answers or ignores me. I don't want to start asking him personal questions either, like why he kissed me and then ignored me. Not with Ron sat just in front.

By the time September ends, I and everyone else has had enough. We're not learning anything from Umbridge, she's trying to get control of the other subjects too, and she's starting passing all of these 'Educational Decrees.' Why Dumbledore is letting her get away with it, I have no idea. But I suppose that he's just as powerless as the rest of us, and any attempt to argue with her could be taken as an attack against the Minister of Magic himself and loose Dumbledore his job.

Sophia went on her date with Cormac and apparently they hit it off immediately. Both of them being avid Quidditch fans gave them a common ground to talk about, and since then they've been nearly inseparable. As always, Honey and Ash spend more time snogging each other than anything else, and then I'm just the poor little singleton in the middle.

Honey and Sophia offered to talk to Draco for me, but I politely declined. For them, talking is probably more like trapping him in a corner with Cormac and Ash to back them up, and beating him until he agreed to talk to me. Somehow, that idea didn't seem incredibly preferable to just waiting for him to come forward on his own.

Despite how much I trust Honey and Sophia, them constantly being with their male counterparts has been starting to annoy me. It's for that reason that I make up the excuse that I have to study, which to be fair, I do, and I sneak off to the library on a Friday evening after dinner. Most people have either gone back to their common rooms or are milling around the castle, making the library the perfect spot for some quiet alone time.

Taking out my 'Transfiguration' textbook and some parchment, I manage to borrow a spare quill from a third year Hufflepuff who's sitting on the other end of the long, wooden table. The girl gives me a smile, seemingly chuffed that 'Juliet Weasley, celebrity' had asked to borrow a quill.

I try to do some work, practicing writing an essay answer about how to properly vanish an organism with a vertebrate, for example a rat, using only the spell 'Evanesco.' Usually Transfiguration is one of my stronger subjects, and I don't find Vanishing as hard as many of my peers, but today my mind refuses to focus and keeps drifting towards a certain blonde haired wizard that I desperately want to talk to but I'm too afraid to find him and start a conversation myself.

Hang on, do I really want to talk to Draco? I'd like an explanation as to why he's been ignoring me, but all he's done is show his true colours and make me dislike him. I thought when Ron and Harry said that he was a bad person, it was just them being judgemental. But perhaps they're right, perhaps Draco actually is a horrible person and he was just leading me on, maybe it was even a bet with Pansy! An attempt to embarrass me, to make me look stupid?