Common Ground ⌁ Draco Malfoy [2/4] ✔

25

"I'm so stupid, I shouldn't have said anything!" Emma cried the next day in the courtyard.

Harry and Ron glanced at each other while Hermione awkwardly rubbed Emma's shoulder. Emma did notice that Harry seemed rather cheerier than he was before, and he did not even bother hiding it. It appeared that he was happy that Emma and Draco were having a bit of bad luck with each other. 

"I think it's a good thing you confronted him about it," Hermione said, looking at Harry and Ron for support. "You also probably scared him into not going back there anymore, or at least for a while now."

"Or he should stop being such a pansy and own up -"

"Ron," Hermione narrowed her eyes. 

"Meaning I get more time to try and figure out how to get the room to appear, like it does for Malfoy," Harry said, as though Ron had never even spoke. 

"Harry, you know that won't work," Hermione shook her head. 

"And he avoided me at dinner last night, and in the common room," Emma continued, feeling extremely worried about the road she and Draco were taking. "What if...what if he breaks up with me because I've been too nosy and annoying?"

"Then I'd be thanking him," Harry said confidently, grinning when Hermione gave him a blank look. Ron laughed. 

"Not helping, Harry," Emma said. "What if whatever he's doing in the Room of Requirement isn't even bad at all?"

"Then he wouldn't have run off like that, would he?" Ron said. 

"I know...but...I just like to think that he's doing something reasonable in there. I was thinking about it all last night, but the fear in his eyes when I asked him about it...he just looked so scared, Harry."

Harry's eyes were slightly squinting in the sunlight, but Emma knew he was in thought. She really was worried about the situation she had put herself in, and a year and a half ago she'd have laughed at the thought of Draco avoiding her, running away from her, the fact that most days he'd disappeared. But over the year she had grown extremely attached to him, glad to have him around. If a simple question like the one she had asked was enough to send fear into him, then something was seriously wrong. 

After a while, Harry, Ron and Hermione decided to go back to their common room, while Emma was left to sit alone for a bit, pondering. She shouldn't have been worrying this much, but she was. Her relationship with Draco was suddenly a really big deal, exactly the way she'd never expected it to be. 

Classes resumed as normal, with the difference of Draco sitting on the opposite side of the room to Emma, which irked her a lot and made her feel stupid. Part of her wished she'd never even gone to the seventh floor corridor with Harry, even if seeing his Invisibility cloak for the first time was cool. Daphne talked a lot about how amazing it was to have passed Apparition, saying that she felt like she was refreshed and had a lot of freedom.

"It feels funny at first, to have done it properly," she said in the common room one evening. Emma tried blocking out her voice by reading a book, due to the jealousy she was feeling to have not been able to take the test just yet. "But once you pass, it makes you feel like a whole new person. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," Emma said. "It's like going to purchase money for a new school year, isn't it?"

"Er - I suppose," Daphne furrowed one of her eyebrows. 

Emma closed her book and proceeded to tell Daphne what Draco had been doing, in terms of avoiding her. She left the Room of Requirement out of it, but Daphne still looked very pleased, but not as pleased as what Harry looked when she told him. 

"See," Daphne said in an odd high-pitched tone, quite similar to her sister's. "Told you, didn't I? At the beginning of the term, I told you it wouldn't work out. I knew he'd stuff it up somehow - it is Malfoy after all. You can't seriously be feeling down about it!"

"But I am," Emma murmured, leaning her face into her fist against the arm of the chair. 

Daphne belched. "You two are like a couple of lovesick puppies, arguing all the time and then running back to each other, confessing your undying love and then snogging. It reminds me of a couple of old married people."

Emma laughed slightly, but as she thought about it, Daphne was right. They were like lovesick puppies who argued all the time and then made up quicker than ever. As she thought about the possibility of losing him, as well as the disappearance of her mother put together, she found her eyes watering. 

"Oh no...come on, don't do that," Daphne said. 

"I can't help it," Emma said, rubbing her eyes. "I've been a real crybaby lately, what with my Mum and everything else on top of it...I'm such a crybaby!"

"You can't cry over a boy, it's bad luck!" Daphne exclaimed, leaning forward. 

"Did you just make that up?"

"Maybe," Daphne said. "But it could be true."

Daphne looked over her shoulder when the door opened, and then quickly shot Emma a look. The latter looked up from her lap and saw Draco walking through with Crabbe and Goyle, and when he saw her sitting there, looking at him, he pretended not to have seen her and quickly darted for his dormitory. 

"See what I mean?" Emma mumbled, slumping against her chair. 

"I see what you mean," Daphne nodded, staring where Draco had just disappeared. "He's a real git. Why are you wearing his ring? Throw it away! Throw it away!"

Emma looked down at the mood ring on her thumb, and quickly concealed it with her opposite hand in fear that Daphne would jump up and somehow snatch it away. 

"It's my ring," she said quietly. "Not his, he just gave it to me -"

"- for Christmas, I know, which is exactly why you shouldn't wear it."

Emma slowly slid the ring off her thumb and put it in her pocket. 

"I'd have thrown it in the fire-"

"- Daphne..."