Tainted Love

PART FOUR: Together

DRACO

Draco stared at the clock for a minute before it rang, watching its golden hands drift around, counting down the last remaining seconds of his time at the Ministry of Magic. It was Friday. The end of an era.

The clock rang out its familiar sound. Draco had wondered whether he would feel anything when it rang, a pang of sadness or nostalgia or regret. He felt nothing now. He just watched the hands continue their way round. Iris brushed his side.

Once he left the Love Chamber today, he would never be allowed back inside. He would be sworn to secrecy for the rest of his life - unable to describe the columns and the portraits and the artifacts and the fountain to anyone other than the girl beside him.

"We could stay longer," Iris said softly. Her side brushed against his again and he exhaled.

It was finally snowing outside the window. The grass in the field was browned and frosty, the tree branches weighed down by banks of snow. He stared out at it for a second, then looked back at Iris.

"That's alright," he said. "I've seen it five days a week for five years."

She nodded, a little bit of sadness in her eyes. Draco wasn't very nostalgic, but Iris had a tendency to feel emotions for people. She was probably upset on his behalf.

She turned to leave and he followed her, throwing one last glance behind him. Petals melted into sparks above the fountain, vines climbed up the wall. A mother threw her child into the air. A woman covered her face in joy as a man got one one knee below her. A man draped himself over the sheets in his bed, a single tear perpetually running down his cheek.

He would never see them again. But he would remember them. As he turned around, he felt something like a pull from behind him. The room would miss him, he thought, which was ridiculous but true. The Love Chamber remembered things keenly - and Draco had been there for a long time.

When they stepped out into the atrium, Iris turned to him and gave him a tight smile.

"You're worried for me," he said.

"I just... still don't quite understand it."

"I don't need the job anymore." He wasn't sure how else to explain it. That phase of his life was over. He was almost thankful for Astoria suggesting that he quit - otherwise he might have run himself into the ground there.

They got in the lift together and Draco watched Iris in the doors.

"Come to mine," he said to her reflection. She looked up at him, making eye contact with his reflection the same way. Mirror images.

He turned to look at her face instead. "Okay," she said. "I have to sleep at mine, though."

Draco nodded at her side profile. "Alright."

A lot had changed between them in the past week - in the past five days, really. They were together now, really together. A relationship. He had done that. It was his words, his hands, that had convinced her to come back to him.

His actions, too. Giving up Pansy. Draco wasn't sure if that had even hit him yet. He was used to spending time apart from her. He knew that things were forever changed between them, but it didn't quite feel like it.

The biggest change wasn't Pansy anyways. It was Iris.

He could sense her trepidation in the first few days, like she didn't quite trust him yet. She still didn't properly trust him and he knew it, but she was warming to him being around her. She didn't watch him as closely when he came near her.