Torn | Draco Malfoy

3: The Library Encounter

IT WAS THEN that Freya realised just how narrow the aisle was, between the two towering bookshelves.  To her right were volumes of old Potions textbooks; to her left, encyclopedias on Herbology; and in front of her, a very irritated, almost visibly fuming, Draco Malfoy.

Freya's throat suddenly felt as if a dragon's fire had left it a parched wasteland, devoid of both water and use. Her mind ran haywire with plans to escape Malfoy's sneer, but to her dismay, she discovered her feet had betrayed her and were rooted to the floor, quite unable to flee in the opposite direction.

Malfoy narrowed his steely eyes at her.  "Move, Anderton."

She gulped -- very visibly, she thought with a pang of fear.  It seemed that the harder the platinum-blond Slytherin glared at her, the more she found herself unable to escape his menacing stare, as if he had cast Petrificus Totalus on her.  Freya half-expected him to just wave his hand at her like a Muggle lord dismissing his servant.

"I said, 'Move,'" repeated Malfoy through an incredibly forced, tight-lipped smile.  "Or are you too thick to understand me?"

"Merlin's pants," Freya whispered in reply, immediately mortified by what had escaped her lips and flushing a deep scarlet.

At this, Malfoy's eyebrows quirked upwards for a split second of amusement. "And here I was, thinking that you were a Ravenclaw in her natural habitat." At this, he gestured vaguely around at the library. "Yet nothing intelligent has ever come out of your mouth."

This remark made Freya narrow her eyes at him in what she hoped was a menacing sort of way, or at the very least, indicative of how annoyed she was by his rude manner. In a matter of seconds, she decided that it was best to avoid potential wrinkles and simply give him a stern look.

"I'll have you know that I don't usually come across snide little rich boys in my habitat," responded Freya rather icily, trying to ignore the fear that twisted her stomach.

Despite her better judgment, she found herself continuing onward like a runaway train overshooting its final destination.

"In fact, I wasn't even aware that you know what books are used for, beyond serving as your father's expensive study decor. Books are actually more than the posh-looking gold lettering on the spine; they're pieces of paper written on in ink and bound in leather. People open them from time to time and make sense of said dried ink to learn new things." Freya paused to catch her breath and clasped her trembling hands together.  "I assume you're familiar with the concept, since your stellar grades are clearly from hours of revising -- not daddy's money."

Malfoy's face had developed from his trademark sneer at the beginning of her speech to a strange, contorted grimace by the end of it.  If Freya hadn't been so afraid of the brute strength of his now-unseen henchmen, she probably would have continued on for hours, but she decided by judging his features that her meaning had gotten across, loud and clear.

Luckily for the increasingly saucy Ravenclaw, Malfoy's anger was so great that it left him practically incoherent.  All he could do was point at her and sputter like a kettle.

"You're lucky I've not got a mind to end your time here at Hogwarts, Anderton," came the reply that Malfoy finally settled on, stutter-free. "I need only write to my father--"

"Oh, we're all so tired of this," she interrupted with a sigh. "You speak of your father so much, it's a wonder you don't hang posters of him in your dormitory.  Or at least, I've heard nothing of the sort yet."

With that, Freya pushed past him and continued down the aisle. She had completely forgotten which tome she originally came for, but it was of little consequence; for the third time, she had left Draco Malfoy speechless. The thought brought a tiny smile of self-satisfaction to her face, a feeling which just barely outweighed the sheer terror gnawing away at her.

Malfoy, on the other hand, couldn't work out just what it was about this girl that drove him so mad that all his cool logic and quickfire snarkiness deserted him. Just weeks ago, she had been nearly invisible to him. He knew her name and parentage (half-blood), of course, and that she was incredibly intelligent, but he had neither cared nor needed to know more about her.

Until now.

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I updated! Finally lol. Apologies for the shortness of this chapter.

Hope you enjoyed! Vote and comment if you did :-)

Today's Question: What's your favourite non-HP book?

I have too many. Maybe All Quiet on the Western Front, or the Eragon series? I'm probably forgetting something obvious.

Hope your August is going well!
-o