A Heavenly Betrayal (Draco Malfoy Love Story)

Draco's Shield

Maria had a hard time sleeping that night. Thoughts of Draco – she shivered pleasantly at his name - kept her awake, her mind racing to keep up. Of course she liked him, she wasn’t trying to deny it; she just couldn’t help but think that she had truly gone looking for trouble. It would be really hard to hide their relationship from the world, especially from a school that taught magic. Nonetheless, it was a necessity to keep it secret; if anyone found out, Draco’s subtle position would be greatly jeopardized, and if it reached the Dark Lord’s ears, he would probably be killed for his betrayal. The odds wouldn’t be in Maria’s favour neither, for who knows what the Dark Lord could to her for meddling with his things. However – apart from imminent danger - something else bothered her too; she liked the way things were between Draco and her, and she didn’t want it to change. She was afraid that because they were now ‘in a relationship’, he would treat her differently. And that was probably one of the last things she wanted... along with being murdered. She finally fell asleep, her heart full of doubt and her head full of worries.

Quidditch practice was extremely relieving. In fact, the only thing that had been painful wasn’t the bludger Maria received on her foot, but listening to Cho Chang’s restless blabber. She kept going on and on about Davies’ innumerable qualities – yes, he had taken Maria’s advice on asking Cho out – and had eyes only for him. Maria tried to act happy for Cho, which she was at first, but very soon became annoyed. She was shutting up about Draco: couldn’t Cho spare them the details? Then again, Maria had to shut up, unless she either wanted to die or be alienated by society for dating, well, him. It seemed to her that no one would ever understand her relationship with the Draco Malfoy; not that she could talk about it... ‘This is just the beginning,’ she thought, exasperated, ‘and I’m already loosing it.’ She couldn’t help but, indeed, feel lost. Now that everything was planned out, there was nothing left to do for her – the rest was all up to Draco. Before, it always had been clear; she had always known what needed to be accomplished, but now that the plan was complete, she had to resign to waiting. She hated the word: it was flat, lifeless, unendurable... Of course, she could help Draco with the preparations, such as the Vanishing cabinets, but that was hard these days since he always evaded the subject. She knew he hated talking about that – or even anything remotely related to that - but it was such a big part of his life that she wondered how he could ignore and postpone it so much. Once again, she became a bit frustrated with his irresponsibility and roughly stuffed her quidditch robes in her bag before storming out of the changing room.

"Someone looks mad."

It was Draco; his eyebrows were furrowed yet he was evidently pleased to see her. His hair was blowing in the wind, messy. Maria gave an unconvincing smile and simply said:

"It’s just -" she looked to the sky for inspiration, "Davies."

‘Here goes my first lie,’ she thought not at all pleased. She had uttered those last two syllables only for lack of anyone else to blame; however, they didn’t seem to have that desired effect on Draco. His face became stern and he looked down. Maria felt very dumb all of sudden: of all the syllables in the world, she had to chose those two! She hated lying…

"And why is that?" is all Draco managed to verbalize, adopting a cold demeanor instantly.

"Gave us a hard time… that’s all," she said adding another one of her very unconvincing smiles.