Wonders of Ohio (draco x reader)

Part 13 - It's like you read my mind!

Y/N's cheeks had never burned so much in her life as Draco stared at her from the doorway. "I didn't for that. I don't know why he did that."

"Did I ask?" Draco's lips had twisted into a sneer.

"Well, um," she stuttered. "I just thought..."

"You just thought what?"

"Christ, Draco, can we not do this right now?" she said, bending down to pick up the bag of decorations off the ground. Her heart was hammering in her chest. "We literally just made up. Can we just be friends again and skip you being weird?"

"We were never–"

"We were friends," she said sternly. An accusatory finger raised and pointed towards him. "I'd go as far as to say that we are friends, even though I don't quite understand why lately you insist on throwing a hissy fit every time we talk. Don't even try to pull that with me."

"I do not throw hissy fits–"

"I rest my case," said Y/N, brushing past him. She wasn't quite sure where this boldness was coming from. She was just so, so sick of Draco constantly slipping through her fingers, even if it meant having to fight him every step of the way. She was just about to ascend the steps to her room when Draco caught her wrist.

"Wait."

She spun. "What is it now?"

He let go. "Do you have a moment? I wanted to talk more about Merlin's box."

"It depends. Are you going to be nice?"

"Are you?"

"I'm hardly the problem here," Y/N retorted.

Draco sniffed. "Fine. I'll be an angel. Happy now?"

They sat down at the table. Y/N looked at the papers strewn over his desk. Only some of them were the recognizable Physics worksheets—the others were notes written up on yellow parchment in his elegant, swooping cursive.

"What's this?" she asked, picking up one and peering. She couldn't recognize most of the words. They were all magical terms.

"Notes on Merlin's Box," answered Draco. He was poking through the pile closer to him, and she tried her best not to notice that he'd cuffed his sleeves, revealing forearms that looked, simply put, very good. "I've been trying to do some research. Some of my friends have been sending me books from their home libraries on the subject."

"What have you found?"

"Not much. I was wondering if you happened to know anything about the owners of the shop. I don't understand how something as powerful as Merlin's Box could just end up in the middle of Muggle Ohio."

Y/N hummed, tapping a pen to her lip. "I'm sorry. I wish I knew. I think they sold it a bit ago. We can try looking online?" She tugged her laptop from across the table and started typing in, "My Grandfather's Attic Cincinnati" into the search bar. A few options came up, but most were dated long before anything was relevant and the most recent was an article on the state of the store after the snowstorm, the event being tied to the rise in crime. "Nothing. Damn."

"Maybe the owners didn't know," mused Draco. "They must have been magic. But the box is one of the most powerful magical objects in the Wizarding World. It's, like, the Elder Wand or the Philosopher's Stone or something equivalent. If they had known, there was no way they would have put it on display, especially without wards."

"I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying."

Draco snapped to attention. "Er, sorry. The Elder Wand and the Philosopher's Stone are special magical objects. The former is the most powerful wand in existence. The latter can bring the dead back to life, or something of the sort. I never bothered to learn much about it."