adj. cryo/cardi/ac - pertaining to a cold heart

She had long ceased trying to get to him. Long after the end of the Battle of Hogwarts, but probably sometime before she had realized that a Ministry job would be suitable and would no longer demean her but raise her position in society.

Or, at the very least, she had tried - was trying - so hard to break through that her brain began to believe the action was normal.

But this - this was the last time before she conceded and gave in to defeat. Her inner voice rebelled against her decision but her unresolved feelings only stood to choke her. As she neared the dark, dank building, her steps felt heavy and leaden. Dread hollowed out the pit in her stomach as she attempted to quicken her pace.

She smelled it long before, or perhaps long after, she sighted it. Azkaban. Home of notorious and infamous, the truly vile, criminals. And one Draco Malfoy. The very man she had been assigned to rehabilitate as he got ready for his impending release. The one whose facial features had always delighted her; the man whom she stoically refused to let have the last laugh.

For a second, she paused, breathing in the stench of the air, remembering briefly the regretful acceptance of several fates not too far back. But before she let the memory - the one she always avoided - come closer to her, she shook her head briskly and stepped deftly into the halls of Azkaban.

Her steps echoed down the long corridor until she finally reached the visitor's room, where she saw him in his profile. He looked horrible; gaunt, ten pounds skinnier, paler than the first snowfall, hair tangled and messy and filled with grease that was definitely not from overuse of gel. But he only looked bad from a certain - an outsider's, she thought offhandedly - person's perspective. Yet she was not an outsider. She knew better; she knew him and this was definitely the Draco she li - no. She refused to let her thoughts control her again.

Reprimanding herself firmly, she took a step forward. As she drew closer, she saw that he had been talking in hushed, urgent tones with a guard; he or she had wisps of bushy hair falling around her that were vaguely familiar. But the observation, to her, was trivial.

As she turned to him, she noticed one thing: His eyes. Merlin help her. His eyes were no longer the cold steel she had grown accustomed to all these years she had known him. Instead, they shone like pools of moonlight that looked oddly like melted iron. And when he looked at her…he smiled. He smiled. And something in her pressed her to smile back, as he was all she could see when the guard walked away.

But she faltered in her advance. She was watching so intently that she couldn't miss the rapid flicker of his eyes, for just the briefest of moments, to the door, the lingering that she had never once caught him giving her the pleasure of experiencing.

And she could no longer stay. Not after she realized that she had known all along.

As Draco called questioningly, huskily, "Pansy?" she was already gone.

There was only one person she knew who had that power, had that same bushy hair, those goddamn eyes that made you want to melt, that could ever melt such a cold heart as Draco's.

Granger.