There's Something About Potter

Chapter 26

Draco hasn't spoken to Aria since he stormed out of her room that day.

To keep himself busy (and mostly to stop himself from wallowing in his own misery and bitterness), Draco alternated his time between his remaining schoolwork and his apprenticeship applications. Graduation was just a few more weeks away, after all, and Draco (as well as all of the 7th years and 8th years) were all busy trying to decide on a suitable career to enter after Hogwarts.

A week after the Yule Ball, the teachers handed out the results of the NEWTs, and Draco was satisfied when he learned that he had gotten high marks for nearly all of the exams he had taken, even topping the exam for Arithmancy. Not surprisingly, the top student for DADA was Aria and the top students for Herbology and Charms were Neville and Hermione Granger, respectively.

Given that most of the classes of the graduating students were already wrapping up, Headmistress McGonagall then announced that she was giving the 8th years and 7th years the last week of school off before their graduation ceremony. She reminded everyone that, as much as possible, they should use the free days to attend to their applications and interviews for their chosen career paths.

Coincidentally, Aria was also discharged from the hospital wing that week; so rather than endure an awkward week of avoiding her in the Slytherin Common Room, Draco decided to leave Hogwarts and spend the break in his flat in London instead.

He figured it was probably best for everyone anyway, seeing as he hasn't exactly been in the best of moods for the past few weeks.

It certainly didn't help that everywhere he looked, he saw his friends being annoyingly sweet with their partners (Blaise was spending more and more of his time with Luna Lovegood; Greg and Astoria were practically joined at the hip; and Pansy and Neville acted like an annoying married couple already); and he wasn't eager to spend another week having to watch them.

During the days he stayed in his flat, Draco spent his mornings monitoring the newspapers for articles about Aria.

Luckily, most of the tabloids seemed to have lost interest in printing ridiculous, outlandish stories about her and had moved on to more recent celebrity scandals (apparently the lead guitarist of the Weird Sisters was photographed in a compromising situation with not one but two women). The only reporter who seemed to persist on writing about Aria was Rita Skeeter. It had even gotten to the point where the ferocity of her defamatory articles about Aria (and the veela community in general) had become so ridiculous that even the Daily Prophet had docked her column from the front page of their newspaper.

Draco did learn from the Prophet that Bentley Fisher was still locked up in the Ministry; and that the Aurors in charge of him were still waiting for Aria's statement before they decide on what formal charges will officially be filed against him. Draco also learned that the Department of Veela Affairs would be holding a public press conference to deliver Aria's statement sometime that week, though no specific details as to the time and place of the event was actually given.

And since he couldn't really ask Aria directly about it, Draco resigned himself to the fact that she probably wouldn't want him there anyway.

It was on the fourth day of Draco's break from school when Narcissa suddenly owled him, inviting him to have breakfast with her in a quaint, little café across the street from his flat. Truth be told, Draco wasn't really in the mood to talk to anyone (much less endure his mother's incessant questions about when he was going to start looking for a girlfriend) but he had never really been one to deny his mother anything, so he begrudgingly agreed.

That was how Draco found himself picking at the food on his plate, staring off into empty space as Narcissa sat across the table in front of him, droning on and on about the latest set of draperies she had purchased for one of the sitting rooms in the manor. He wasn't exactly sure how long he'd been sitting there, lost in his own thoughts and deliberately tuning his mother out, but eventually, Draco was broken out of his trance when Narcissa sighed and cleared her throat.