Tainted Love

Blaise Zabini

DRACO

Draco usually didn't mind Thursday nights.

They were a buffer - not quite as tedious as most weeknights, but not as fast-paced as a weekend. He only had one more day of work to finish out the week, one more day of having to endure Iris.

She had gotten worse lately. He wasn't sure exactly why, but everything she did seemed to be ten times as annoying as it usually was. Winding her up wasn't half as fun as usual - every time she blushed, he flashed back to the day last weekend when she had walked in on him and Pansy.

For some reason, he couldn't get the image of her wide eyes and reddening cheeks out of his mind. He supposed that part of the reason was because Pansy had made a point of it afterwards.

The other part of the reason, though... he didn't want to even begin to consider.

He shook off his thoughts about last Friday as he flicked his wand over to pour himself a glass of wine.

But there wasn't much more to think about. Saturday night had been a disaster - what had he been playing at, hooking up with other girls the night after Pansy? He usually never even thought about anyone else for at least three days, preferring instead to lie on the couch or lean back in the shower and replay every moment in perfect detail.

Whatever. He had been drunk.

And he couldn't blame himself for being pissed off at seeing Theodore Nott. There were very few people in the world that pissed Draco off as much as Theodore. He had gotten all the luck after the war ended - he had effortlessly blended back into society, befriended the Gryffindors and Potter-lovers that he had once stood against with ease.

Draco, on the other hand, had been trapped in his house with his shadow of a mother for two years. He wasn't exactly expecting his old friends (though he supposed they were more like lackeys) to send him an owl every day, but the absolute lack of contact from the outside world had been jarring.

So when his two years were up and he got his job in the Department of Mysteries, seeing Theodore behave as if he had chosen the winning side all along angered Draco - possibly even more than the public outrage at the Ministry hiring him.

Theodore could hide his Dark Mark behind long sleeves and shallow friends, but Draco would never be able to. To most people, he supposed, it was all he was known for.

Seeing Iris so clearly enamoured with Nott - hanging off his arm and his every word, dancing with him and laughing so brightly at everything he said - was not something Draco particularly enjoyed.

Especially not after she came into work wearing the same clothes she had worn the day before. And he didn't buy her lie about being at Tracey Davis's, either.

If Iris started dating Theodore, Draco would have to walk by them talking, watch them move closer at a club, endure him inevitably waiting at the Love Chamber's door every afternoon.

Which would be terrible. Just because he didn't want to see any more of Theodore.

He took another sip of wine, leaning back onto the couch. Today hadn't been too bad, he recalled. He and Iris only had one conversation, and that was at the beginning of the day. Draco would usually count himself lucky if he only had to talk to her three times, so he supposed that today had been particularly good.

But it didn't feel particularly good.

Something about her was off, almost as if she no longer thought too much about what he said to her. The first few days, she had been skittish, afraid of pissing him off at every turn. She had taken every casual insult to heart.