Written for Siriusly Smart, for the Drabble Request Thread. The prompts were:
Yule Ball and "Water under the bridge".
Only Twelve
Christmas fits Draco perfectly, with its cold edges and hidden hopes. He is tall and beautiful and wintery and completely someone else's. His black dress robes are elegant and severe and almost forbidding, but she thinks she's never seen anything more stunning. She is twelve and full of the knowledge that she will never be old enough, or pretty enough, or good enough.
But she dreams. That night, when the Common Room finally empties of laughing students, and she imagines she can hear the music above in the Great Hall, she lies awake and dreams.
She's never wanted much. She doesn't have ambitions like Daphne, and truthfully she's never believed in love. But Draco makes her heart ache, and she longs for a time when this Yule Ball will be water under the bridge, and Pansy Parkinson will be a faded face in a class photo.
She is only twelve, but she holds tight the dream of Draco who is all cold charm and silvery romance, and hopes that one day, one day, one day, he might be hers.
She doesn't know that Draco noticed her that evening, as she stood wide-eyed and innocent by the fireplace, in awe of the swirling dresses and their owners who suddenly seem so much older. She doesn't know that in the weeks to come he will watch her, silently, softly, curiously. She fascinates him with her delicate beauty and sharp wit. He doesn't think of her like that, but he notices her.
Even if she is only twelve.
And that will be enough.