Draco Malfoy has always derived great pleasure from annoying Blair Waldorf, but 3rd year brings a change in his tactics, brought about by the fact Blair seems to have gotten ten times prettier over the summer holidays. He switches from his usual, 'I will insult you every chance I get' technique to the more effective, 'I will flirt shamelessly with you every chance I get' method. Of course, Blair has no idea that he's actually into her, but then, neither does Draco.
After getting off the seemingly horseless carriages, he proceeds to make fun of Harry for fainting on the train, but then gets distracted by the sight of Blair stepping down from her carriage with Serena, Nate and Chuck. He wolf-whistles. "Look at you, Waldorf," he says. "Did you miss me?"
"I missed Weasley here more than I missed you, Malfoy," snaps Blair as she passes him. Ron looks oddly happy to hear this, much to Hermione's displeasure.
"Now you know that's not true, Blair," Draco drawls, jogging to catch up with her. "Come on, give us a kiss."
"I'd rather kiss the Dementors," she replies and quickens her pace while Draco stops in his tracks.
"You're breaking my heart, Waldorf!" Draco calls after her.
"That's the idea, Malfoy," she calls back.
Harry and Ron find the whole exchange highly amusing, especially upon seeing that Draco looks a bit put out by the whole thing. "I think she likes you, Malfoy," Harry says.
"Yeah, when's the wedding?" adds Ron and Draco scowls at them and quickly changes the subject back to how Harry fainted on the train until he's interrupted by the arrival of Professor Lupin.
Unfortunately for Blair, Draco keeps up similar tactics all through the year. It gets to the point where, during Transfiguration once, Professor McGonagall tells them irritably to stop flirting and get on task. Blair turns redder than anyone has ever seen her look before and tries to protest that she's not flirting, but being harassed, but Professor McGonagall turns away right away. Instead, she settles for hitting Draco hard on the hand with her wand.
"Ouch!" he yelps. "That's going to leave a mark, Waldorf!"
"Good!" she snaps and gets to work on transfiguring her teapot. But Granger still manages to finish work on her teapot before Blair does, so during Charms, Blair accidentally-on-purpose aims wrongly and sets fire to the sleeve of Draco's robes.
"These were a present from my mother, Waldorf!" Draco snarls at her, but she only smirks back and thinks that she's won. That is, until sneaks up on her from behind during Potions and causes her to add too much essence of hellebore to her potion.
Blair's Boggart is the image of herself dying alone. She blanches at the sight and is almost unable to get rid of it. Almost. Still, though, Lupin asks her kindly if she's feeling okay and offers to make her a cup of tea after the lesson, an offer which she refuses. She doesn't want anyone thinking a stupid Boggart has got her down.
Draco, of course, is an insensitive twat about the whole thing. At least someone finds it funny. "You don't have to worry about dying alone, Waldorf!" he drawls over lunch. "I'll always be here."
"The only thing worse than dying alone would be living with you," she retorts, eliciting an appreciative laugh from Blaise.
Draco claps his hand to his chest dramatically. "You're breaking my heart."
"I didn't know you had one."
"It's all yours, Waldorf."
"Keep it," she says. "It's not worth much."
When Draco gets his arm slashed by Buckbeak, Blair visits him in the hospital wing with Serena, mostly out of curiosity and boredom. "Ten Galleons says he wasn't even hurt that badly," Blair whispers.
Of course, Draco is moaning and groaning away on the bed, being cooed over by Pansy Parkinson. When Blair reaches his bedside, he grabs her arm. "Are you an angel?" he chokes, but there's a tell-tale smirk tugging the corners of his lips upward.
"Please, Malfoy. As if you would go to heaven."
"You're right," he agrees. "I am in hell. You're torturing me."
She rolls her eyes so hard that it almost hurts. "You're so full of it," Blair says. "Are you even really hurt?"
"I'll have you know, that Hippogriff nearly killed me!"
"I highly doubt it," Blair says. "And if it had, then it would have done us all a favor."
"Come on, Waldorf," Draco says. "You know you'd miss me if I were gone. I bring all the excitement to your life." He sits up. "You know, I'm still in a lot of pain," he says.
"Poor you," Blair says sarcastically.
"You should kiss it and make it better," Draco suggests.
"You're gross!" Blair says, wrinkling her nose. "Come on, Serena, let's go!" she snaps and drags Serena out of the room. It's not that easy because Serena is in a fit of silent laughter so intense that her whole body is shaking.
"You should have kissed him," Serena giggles. "I think he likes you."
The night the Fat Lady disappears from her portrait hole and they all sleep together in sleeping bags in the Great Hall, Serena tells Blair all about how Sirius Black is in the castle and how he slashed the Fat Lady's portrait. That is, until she is interrupted by Draco Malfoy pushing a second-year out of the way so he can put his sleeping bag down next to Blair's.
"Leave," Blair snaps. "You're going to give me nightmares."
Draco smirks at her. "But when else will we be able to spend a night together?"
"Ew!" she says a little too loudly, causing Percy Weasley to look suspiciously in their direction. Blair quickly feigns sleep until he moves on to a bunch of Hufflepuffs a few sleeping bags over. "Clearly I'm already in a nightmare," she whispers.
"More like in your dreams!"
"More like in yours."
"Merlin's pants," Blaise whispers from behind Draco. "If you don't shut up, I will hex you all."
There's a long silence, until Draco breaks it. " 'Merlin's pants'?" he whispers incredulously, and they all start giggling so hard that Penelope Clearwater notices and tells them all sternly to get to sleep.
Blair allows Serena to drag her to the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match despite the heavy rain. But she refuses to sit with the Gryffindors, so she ends up sitting in between Blaise and – to her utter displeasure – Draco. Luckily, Draco is far too into the match to pay her much attention.
"This game is so stupid," Blair says to Blaise, having to almost shout to be heard over the rain. "I should have stayed in the common room." But then Gryffindor scores and Blaise starts booing loudly.
It's almost a relief when the Dementors come, except that it really isn't. Blair ends up holding on to Draco as if for dear life and burying her face into his arm. She can feel when they leave but she doesn't move. "Is it over?" she mumbles.
Draco laughs. As if he wasn't just shaking two minutes ago. "They're gone."
She dislodges herself from him and looks resolutely ahead.
"You're so clingy," Draco says.
"Shut up."
He laughs again. "It's okay," he says and tries to pull her to him but Blair ducks away. "You can be as clingy as you – "
"Leave me alone, Malfoy!" Blair steps on his toe as hard as she can, changing his expression from a smirk to a scowl.
"That hurt, Waldorf!" he snaps back. "You're actually crazy,you know that?"
"Likewise," she says, glaring back at him.
They glower at each other all the way to the Slytherin common room, but of course Draco resumes his torture tactics with new vigor the next day.
Blair stays at Hogwarts at Christmas, as her father is very busy with Ministry affairs and her mother is busy with her line of high-end dress robes. Luckily, Blaise stays back too, so she has someone to keep her company.
At Christmas lunch, when they all sit at one table due to the lack of students, Dumbledore asks Blair to pass him a plate of roast potatoes and beams at her when he receives them. "Thank you!" he says, his eyes twinkling. "Cracker?"
Blair gingerly tugs on the Wizard's Cracker Dumbledore holds out to her, which explodes with a loud bang and lets out a cloud of smoke and produces about a dozen red roses. "Merry Christmas!" says Professor Dumbledore, handing her the roses.
Blair thinks that perhaps Draco might have a point when he goes on about how Dumbledore is off his rocker - at the very least, he certainly is extremely eccentric – but she wishes him a Merry Christmas anyway.
The hype for the Quidditch final between Gryffindor and Slytherin is so intense that even Blair gets caught up in it for once. As such, when Slytherin loses rather spectacularly to Gryffindor for the Quidditch final, she is rather incensed. Naturally, she takes out her frustrations at Slytherin having lost out on Draco.
"Why is it that every time you play against Potter he ends up catching the Snitch when it's right on top of you?" she snaps at him.
"Potter plays dirty," Draco insists, glaring at her so hard that his grey eyes look like ice.
"How can you expect me to fall for your antics if you can't even catch the Snitch?" she says without thinking and then immediately regrets it when she sees Draco's eyes start to glitter mischievously.
"Are you saying," he says, "that I'd have a shot if I did?"
Blair stumbles over her words for a second before she replies, "That's not what I said!"
Draco smirks at her, regaining some of his usual swagger. "Of course not."
"It's not!"
"I believe you," he says, but he's still smirking, which infuriates Blair to no end.
"I hate you, Draco Malfoy!" she screeches. "You're such a little prick. I'm going to bed." And she stalks up to her dormitory, gritting her teeth at the sound of his laughter.
Blair avoids Draco like the plague for the next few weeks after this incident, which of course makes him even more eager to annoy her. He blackmails Blaise into sitting next to her in Potions (secretly, Blair finds this rather impressive. She wonders how he managed it) and spends the entire time distracting her horribly. He also somehow manages to make himself her partner for Cheering Charms and gets her in such a good mood that she gives him a hug, which he teases her about mercilessly when the effects of the charm wear off. However, after a while, he suddenly stops. At first, Blair is relieved, but then she starts getting rather nervous.
A few days before the end of term, Serena mentions in passing that Draco asked her on a date and that she of course refused. "It was pretty weird because I always thought he – "
"He did what?" Blair yelps, causing several heads to turn to look at her.
Serena looks confused. "I told you, he – "
"I heard you the first time!" Blair shrieks, gathering her things in a hurry and almost running off.
When she finds Draco Malfoy, he's busy being slapped by Hermione Granger, but Blair doesn't care. "Excuse me," she says politely to Harry and Ron, who are tugging Hermione back. They look rather bewildered, as she has probably never talked so nicely to them.
"Draco Malfoy, you incorrigible git," she screeches. "You asked out Serena?" Her voice goes up about three octaves on the last word.
"Blair," he drawls, apparently unaffected. "It's a pleasure to – " But he's cut off by the sound of her palm hitting his skin, hard enough that his cheek is a little pink after.
Harry and Hermione practically have to drag Ron away; he's laughing so hard. "This is the best day of my life," he chokes out in between giggles.
Blair and Draco don't speak for the rest of term, and no one else really knows why. "That girl really is a hurricane," Ron overhears him saying to Crabbe and Goyle once at breakfast and he sniggers all the way back to the Gryffindor table.
