𝑆𝐴𝑉𝐼𝑁𝐺 𝐷𝑅𝐴𝐶𝑂 𝑀𝐴𝐿𝐹𝑂𝑌

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟒𝟏 - 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐫'𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

Draco stank of smoke more than any other time and he seemed to have barely gotten any sleep, but now we were fighting. He was in his element.

"Why did I even bother explaining it for you? I should have just told you it's sort of like a play and everyone would be happy."

"At this point, I do believe you set yourself up for failure, darling."

I flicked my hair in front of my face only to create some distraction from my smile. There was something so sweetly forbidden about Dray calling me 'darling' that the few times he did were equally pleasurable to the rare times he would call me Ophelia with a muttered and longing 'my' slipping before it.

"Shouldn't we have booked tickets to watch this – this... film?"

"It's not exactly like a theatre, Dray... We can purchase tickets outside the theatre."

"Sounds like a cheapened version of one of the most sacred of the seven arts."

"Cinema is known to be one of the seven arts as well."

"You muggles, don't respect anything. Count with me: music, architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, poetry and theatre."

"Not that I'm going to start discussing this with you but nowadays it's more like music, architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, theatre and cinema."

"So you are telling me that the muggle world is willing to abbreviate poetry into literature for the sake of a quasi-art that popped out of nowhere a few decades ago?"

"Can you please just pick something to watch? I can't start another argument that remains open for academics but you think you can answer. Not in the middle of the street anyway."

Because these arguments happened under our elm tree or at least in a dark dorm.

I reached for my bag. I had taken the long way back to the station from my walk to Hyde Park that morning and I had grabbed a few programs from the cinemas I had found on my way. Call it intuition but I'd thought that they would prove themselves useful (or I was still debating whether I should pay homage to old Margotesque traditions).

"Most of the cinemas downtown are playing Christmas movies," I said.

I didn't need to look to be sure that Dray was making a face of reproach. After yesterday's exhaustions, however, I was sure that he liked Christmas a little more.

"There is a really fun American one that is about a kid whose family leaves for the holidays and forgets him in an enormous house. What about that?"

"I can strangely relate to that kid."

"I bet your mother wouldn't forget you home alone..."

"Father definitely would," he scoffed. "One time we had to go to Diagon Alley to get my Quidditch gloves fitted and so Father goes into the fireplace and leaves me alone in the living room. At first, I thought that he wanted me to make the trip alone for the first time but I was too afraid to travel by Floo Powder back then. I figured he would realise after a minute or two, so I just waited for him to come back and help me. It took him half an hour. He had forgotten all about me."

I started making excuses. Maybe the public fireplaces to get Lucius Malfoy back home were too busy that day. Perhaps he met an overly talkative colleague. Somehow I didn't believe any of it.

I had watched Home Alone with Margot when it first came out and we had both agreed that one must be a pretty shitty parent to forget a kid at home.

"Can we skip the Christmas bits? And let's stick with melancholia," he said. He had already made Home Alone a sad film, but I obliged nonetheless.