✓ | RECKLESS AND BRAVE | Draco Malfoy

56 | DEFENESTRATE

She glanced up briefly when Cho and her friend Marietta walked inside the Great Hall to the Ravenclaw table.

     "Oh, I forgot to ask you," Hermione said to Harry, "what happened on your date with Cho? How come you were back so early?"

     "Er . . . well, it was a complete fiasco, now you mention it." Harry spilled to the two everything that had happened in Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop with him and Cho.

     "So that's what Draco and I walked into," Tessa mused quietly, finding the situation a little bit funny on how her brother was completely clueless when it came to girls. He didn't even know how to flirt with them.

     Thank Merlin she got her father's genes.

     Even Hermione sighed and said, "Oh, Harry. Well, I'm sorry, but you were a bit tactless." Tessa choked on her soup.

     "Me, tactless?" Harry repeated in outrage. "One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out, and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid tea shop — how was I supposed to feel about that?"

     "Well, you see," Hermione went on to explain very patiently, "you shouldn't have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date."

     "But, but, but — you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her — ?"

     "You should have told her differently" Tessa offered.

     Hermione nodded. "You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly? And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too."

     "But I don't think you're ugly," Harry protested, still not understanding what was happening.

     Hermione and Tessa laughed as the former said, "Harry, you're worse than Ron . . . Well, no, you're not," she added just as Ron came stomping into the Hall with a scowl. "Look — you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her."

     Tessa prepared a plate for Ron who started to dig into his food at once upon sitting across of her.

     "Is that what she was doing?" Harry said. "Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?" He glanced to Tessa. "Remember how Pansy Parkinson used to cling onto Malfoy before you two dated, did you ask Malfoy that? Whether he liked you better than her back then?"

     Tessa shook her head. "I never asked him that — I didn't have to. Anyone with a pair of working eyes can see how much Draco disliked Pansy."

     Ron said through a mouthful of potatoes, "Tessa doesn't even have to ask Malfoy anything — especially when they have that freaky eye contact thing where they can talk without their mouths. You can cut the tension between them with a knife."

     Tessa rolled her eyes and passed him a glass of juice. "Okay, Ron — whatever you say."

     "Girls don't often ask questions like that," Hermione pointed out.

     "Well, they should!" Harry complained forcefully. "Then I could've just told her I fancy her, and she wouldn't have had to get herself all worked up again about Cedric dying!"