Twinkle

by : epiphanies

I walk the corridors at night. Prefect duties, of course. I'm not breaking school rules - can't do that. Father'd be murderous if he caught wind of my expulsion.

It's ridiculous that older students are still burdened with curfew. I'm only lucky for Pansy, so we can roam (or cease to) together. The benefit, though, is that Potter need not step a toe out of line before I can dock points (but especially on the evening I find him out after the moon is set.)

Pansy's ill today, so I'm by my lonesome - not as if it ails me, of course. I'm a Malfoy - and an only child.

My footsteps echo in the dimly lit ways I walk - each set is assigned a territory. Pansy and I rarely cover ours completely - there's too much compulsion to use the Prefect bathroom, which allows in as many (gender regardless) as one would please. The bubbles are my new trademark scent. They smell expensive and few prefects use it, however available it is.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star..." sings a small voice from the terrace to the right. I freeze and raise my wand.

Stepping stealthily toward the ornate doorway, a stripe of moonlight glided over my mouth, the bridge of my nose, then my forehead and hair. I rather fancy the way I look in the moonlight.

I prepare myself to utter something lethal when I turn the corner, only to see-

"How I wonder what you are..."

A tufty bun of squirrelling red hair, tendrils blowing in the breeze against a milky swan neck.

"Up above the world so high..."

Her back was to me, bed clothes wrapped tightly about her waist and shoulders. Her voice, surprisingly sweet in it's lament,

"Like a diamond in the sky..."

She let out a small hand and released a pile of silvery dust, which was carried away with the wind. She sighed in conclusion,

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are."

"Didn't you take Astronomy for the past five years," I spoke up, earning a gasp and for her to whirl around in horror, "Or are you and your family on the cheaper economy education package?"

She slid off of the table on which she'd sat, walked up to me with a slim pointed finger and her eyes were slits.

"Mind your own business, Malfoy."

I laughed loudly, and her eyes darted nervously - I didn't have a chance of expulsion, after all. She wasn't a prefect.

"My business is to make sure that rogues like you stay tucked in your beddy-byes."

"Perhaps my beddy-bye is hot and uncomfortable," she retorted.

"Only because you made the choice to share it with Potter, and for that you deserve a medal. The Boy Who Snores likely paws at you something awful."

She slapped me and I curtly docked her five points. She turned away, furious.

"You don't understand anything," she seethed, wrapping herself even tighter in her night robes. I followed as she continued to walk with her back to me,

"You don't understand what it's like to be the youngest, the girl, the sister. I'm doted upon because of that. I share freckles, red hair, love, a bedroom and parents with six other wizards and I'm treated like a mundane-minded diamond in the rough because I was born without a few certain parts. To be given attention for something that is mine... I've never felt that. But love from somebody fills in a big part of that. You wouldn't understand. You couldn't."

"Potter's not yours," I narrowed my eyes, "He's your oaf of a brother's, Granger's, Dumbledore's. He belongs to the bloody world. Every witch who miscarried that year inquired about being the boy's guardian when his parents dropped. He belongs to everyone."

"But he doesn't tell them things."

"What does he tell you?"

"None of your damn business!"

I smirked, "To have somebody who was yours, you would require somebody untouched by the rest of your big happy clan. Somebody on the outside."

"Nice line," she commented coldly, and I laughed.

"I don't need lines, Weasley. When I want something, I take it."

"And if it won't have you?"

I shrugged, "Not my problem."

She glared at me, and I reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. She shivered and seized backward.

"You're only out here because you enjoy the breeze and the sun cannot burn you."

She glanced at me, quizzical, and I explained,

"We've both fair skin, right?"

She nodded vaguely, and left soon after. I didn't even think of reporting her absence from bed, I only went back to the dormitory.

I looked out at the moon from my open four-poster and smirked again. The youngest Weasley would be the first ever to speak to a Malfoy without a single jinx or curse uttered.

Father will be delighted - she'll make a splendid captive when spring arrives.

-

end.