Salazar's Angel

XV

Dahlia wakes the next morning with a tender neck and swollen lips, alone in her own bed still wearing Malfoy's buttoned up shirt from last night. She sits up and surveys the room, seeing that none of her three roommates have returned. 

Rolling herself out of bed, Dahlia pads over to pick out some clothes for the day. 

She sucks in a sharp breath upon seeing herself in the mirror hanging from the armoire door. "Oh fuck!" Her hand flies up to her neck, skating over the purple bruises littered there. "I'm going to kill him!"

She works her hands up into her rats nest worth of hair and tugs on it, thinking back to last night. She can't pinpoint how much time passed between when he told her not to tell him what to do and when his hands started toying the the buttons of his shirt on her body, but it had obviously been quite a while if it allowed him to do this to her. She had promptly run from the room when his hand found the aforementioned buttons, too flustered to offer an explanation but not flustered enough to let him succeed in getting all of the buttons undone.  

After shuffling through her clothes and coming up with no turtleneck items, she settles on a long sleeve green velvet shirt with a scooping back and a black skirt. There was no makeup provided for her in her closet and what little she brought with her in her purse had not a snowball's chance in hell of covering up this, so she reaches to grab her wand off the night stand.

But it's nowhere to be found. And she does mean nowhere, because she tears the entire room apart searching for it after not finding it laying on her nightstand where she usually puts it. Finally, with an audible groan, she realizes in her haste to leave last night she must have left it in Draco's room.

Tying her hair into two low pigtails in an effort to hide her neck, she busts out of her room praying that Draco's roommates have passed out in the same distant part of the castle as hers. 

She flies into Draco's room with a bang, the door slamming open to bounce off the wall. Mercifully, the three other beds in the room are empty. 

Draco looks up casually from his seated position on his bed, a book open in his lap. "Good morning Dahlia."

"Good morning? Is it a good morning for you? Because it is most certainly NOT a good morning for me, Malfoy!" Dahlia cries, kicking the door closed behind her and storming over to his bed side.

"I like the hair." He nods at her pigtails.

"Oh fucking bite me, Malfoy! Where is my wand?" Dahlia's eyes scan his bed, remembering that was the last place she had it.

"What ever do you need your wand for? I thought you took care of your problems without any magic?" The corner of his mouth quirking up is the only sign of how amused he is at this situation. She thinks there might be a slightly perturbed undertone in his voice, perhaps at the haste with which she left last night.

Dahlia lifts one of her pigtails and stabs a finger in the direction of her neck. "This? This is not MY problem."

"It's on your neck." How is he being so flip?

"Malfoy. Give me back my wand right this instant!" Dahlia can't help but stamp her heeled boot on the ground to punctuate her sentence.

Malfoy reaches under the pillow next to him and then pulls out her wand. She snatches it from his hand immediately. "Go on then." He gestures to her neck, shutting his book and placing it beside him.

Dahlia takes a deep breath and then waves the wand at her neck, silently begging it to work. No such luck of course, she can tell just by watching Malfoy's smirking expression.

"I'd love to help, but I would hate to fix what could be a very muggle problem with magic. Wouldn't want to stamp on your creed." His eyes flicker with a light she isn't used to seeing in them.

"Malfoy. I look like the fucking whore of Babylon. Fix my neck," Dahlia demands, sliding her useless wand into the side of her knee high boot.

"Tell me who the whore of Babylon is and I'll consider it." His eyebrow quirks up to match the side of his mouth.

Dahlia sighs. "She's the mother of all prostitutes. It's in the book of Revelation in the Bible."

"You're Christian?" Draco asks, struggling to contain his laughter.

"I'm Catholic. What's it to you?" Dahlia crosses her arms.

He gives a pointed glance to her neck. "Never would have known if you hadn't said something...though I suppose that explains your mad dash out of here."

"That is the single most ignorant thing...how do you even know about Christianity?" Dahlia has to resist throwing her hands in the air in exasperation.

"Sit down." Draco crosses his legs and pats the bed in front of him.

Dahlia huffs but does as he says, even though she knows he will evade her question about how he learned of so called 'muggle' religions.

Draco produces his wand from his pocket, black wood at the bottom that slowly turns brown as it creeps up the length. He reaches forward and Dahlia finds her breath catching in her throat, only to realize he is just pushing her pigtails back behind her shoulders.

"Hm," He hums, and she can tell there's some sick sort of male satisfaction happening behind his eyes as they scan over the column of her neck.

"Just fix it Malfoy," Dahlia says, softly but firmly.

His eyes leave her neck and flit up to connect with hers. She watches as a smirk transforms his mouth. "No."

"No? What do you mean-. OH YOU-! WHY I-!" Dahlia is so enraged at his use of her own sentiments against her she cannot even work out a full sentence, spluttering away while he just stares at her in vague amusement.

He tucks his wand back into his pocket as Dahlia leaps off the bed, yanking her pigtails back down to cover her neck. "You're more than welcome to stay."

"Oh you wish you complete and total pissant!" Dahlia hisses before slamming the door closed behind her. It's a miracle that thing stays on the hinges with as much as it has been slammed in only the past two days.