𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐍 - 𝐡.𝐩.

20 | Has Potter Got A Girlfriend?

Even so, she found it hard to not laugh at some of the jokes Draco would diligently narrate to her.

She remembered a particularly fascinating theory he had come up with when their little group of Slytherins had been idly spending time near the Black Lake the day of her detention, basking in the sun's warmth. Gemini had simply wanted to read in peace, but Blaise had followed her. And then Draco had followed Blaise, so naturally, everyone else had followed him. The theory, based on her own suggestion about Snape poisoning students with love potions for the antidote test, posed that the Potions master really had poisoned the famous Harry Potter with a love potion and the boy had entered the tournament in order to impress him.

Gemini remembered laughing so unexpectedly at the joke that she almost dropped her book into the lake from the branch of the beech tree she had been sitting on. Blaise had taken sly advantage of this and complimented her laugh.

It had brought her to ponder on her latest observation — the increased effort Blaise was putting in to "charm" her. He was more persistent than the previous year. Most overt of all was the increase in physical contact when he was with her. A shrouded sense of innocuousness that used to be present in his eyes had now been replaced with something dangerous. It did not help that his desire to hang around her frequently had not faded with his old passion. Granted this inconvenience, Gemini hardly got any time to herself, which was why the upcoming Hogsmeade trip was a brilliant excuse for her to depart from her fellow Slytherins — particularly Draco, because he was always a stubborn prat about anything that didn't go his way.

So on the chilly, fated morning of the Hogsmeade trip, while the majority of the school headed out to the little village, Gemini alone headed to the cosy library. She hoped she could find some peace in there at last, though even the library was now haunted by the shrill giggling of Victor Krum's fangirls. Gemini half wished she could conjure a snake and throw it at them whenever they caused a nuisance in the middle of her reading. She was sparsely spared the horror of boys constantly asking her out because of the sole fact that she had created a terrifying reputation for herself. Not to mention, the long-bestowed crown of 'evil' that the Slytherins bore had only fuelled that mystic aura she exuded.

Having woken up early per usual, she faced little problems in sneaking her way to the library. But Blaise was no less a lark than her. She was browsing through the endless shelves of the library, thinking no one would try to drag her to the village this time, when a familiar hand caught her by the wrist from behind and spun her around.

"I was hoping to find you here." the dark, handsome boy smirked.

"I was hoping not." she countered, bringing her wrist up when he didn't let go.

He brought their hands down and stepped closer, still holding on. "Not coming to Hogsmeade?"

"Does it matter?" she said plainly.

"You didn't come last time. Or before that. Actually, I've never seen you in Hogsmeade." he said with a tone of suspicion, leaving her wrist and taking her chin between his fingers now.

Gemini chose to ignore his words and resumed her search for an interesting book. 

"Ah, I suppose you wouldn't want this back then?" he spoke right in her ear this time.

Curiously, Gemini looked at him again, finding a triumphant grin on his face and one of her books in his hand.

"'The Picture of Dorian Gray' — is this what tickles your fancy?" he said, casually stepping back as she went to snatch it from him. "Not so quick — what's this book about? It seems interesting..."

Gemini leaned back against a bookshelf as she answered, "An immensely attractive man who corrupts his morals."

Blaise's eyebrows shot up in amusement. He flipped open the book to a random page, fingers elegantly dancing over the printed words before they came to a stop at a paragraph he read out softly with passionate voice modulation.