Waking up, she didn't feel as confident in her word as Hermione took it. What would she say to him? She realized a while ago that putting the entire relationship with Draco on hold was much better than facing him and having to break up.
After eating breakfast with Harry and Ron, they walked to Potions class. All the way, the nerves in Brooke's feet would stop short of heading the opposite way and ditching class. Harry, Ron and Hermione practically surrounded her on her left, right and back so she had nowhere to run anyway.
"Here they come now!" Pansy Parkinson screeched. She and the other Slytherins gathered around behind her, including Draco, who Brooke made no eye contact with.
Before any of them could even question her, Pansy threw a magazine at Hermione.
After scanning for a mere second, her eyes looked up, shocked and angry.
"That evil, immoral woman!" she exclaimed and kept reading.
Ron peered over her shoulder and grimaced. "I knew she'd come up with something."
She and Harry looked at them expectantly before Hermione handed over the article.
Pining After Potter
Our Hogwarts hero, Harry Potter, has found a way to warm up during bitter winter season. He and long time girlfriend, Hermione Granger, have tried to keep their relationship away from prying eyes. But their affections have not gone completely unnoticed by fellow students. Many have always assumed the two to be a couple and admired the pairing.
Their best friend Brooke Miller, however, did not seem to share the same feelings. According to a concerned classmate, Pansy Parkinson has recounted the multiple envious glances Miller has shot their way behind the couple's backs. Not only has Miller been harboring negative feelings, but also acting on them.
Scandalous behavior has been caught without Granger's knowledge. Such actions must have put a terrible strain on the friendship.
"Hermione's devastated, of course. She's been crying her eyes out in the bathroom between classes," says Parkinson. "And her grades have been taking quite a toll. I don't understand what's going on in Harry's head, though. Brooke's not the prettiest girl, nor the nicest, but to steal your best friend's boyfriend? That's just not right."
Apparently, Potter and Miller have mysteriously sneaked off in the middle of the night into a bathroom, only to return hours later. The two were even late to the Second Task, showing up with clothes askew and looking flushed.
"Everyone knew why they were late," commented Draco Malfoy, another classmate of the three. "It's not too surprising though. Brooke has a reputation for reeling in good hearted guys and then ripping their hearts out after she gets what she wants. And it wasn't hard to tell that she definitely got what she wanted before the task."
Potter, being in the running for the Triwizard tournament, has to get his priorities straight if he's to win the cup. Many are concerned with this new distraction of his and we hope that Harry comes to his senses soon.
All across the page, were snapshots of she and Harry holding hands before the second task and to her horror, pictures of them in the prefect's bathroom. They were cleverly taken, catching them when they came up for air and breathless or standing up afterwards in their towels.
Brooke rolled up the magazine with shaking hands and a deep red creeping on her cheeks. A lump in her throat started to form, but she refused to let it get any worse than that.
She desperately wanted to smack all of them hard in their thick heads and stuff the article down Rita Skeeter's throat. At some point while she read, Draco made his way to the front of the Slytherins.
"That's why I haven't seen you around the castle grounds lately, huh Miller?" Draco took a step forward. She knew he was referring to how much she's avoided him.
"No, maybe I'm still waiting for you in Hogsmeade" Brooke stepped in front of him and said so low that only he could hear. The smirk on Draco's face was glued right on, but his cold grey eyes looked at her. Brooke wasn't sure exactly what was running through his mind, but had a good guess it looked a little like her own thoughts.
With one last second, she felt Hermione move her arm to go into Potions. She took out her ingredients for the Wit-Sharpening potion they were making. She laughed at herself, laughed at the small part of her that hoped she and Draco would stop fighting.
"How did she get those pictures?" Harry muttered.
"I have no idea," she put her head in her hands.
"She has no right even be in the castle," said Hermione in disgust. "Let alone be snooping around the bathrooms."
"Do you think she hired someone to stalk Harry?" asked Ron.
"Professor," someone in the front raised their hand, "I can't really hear your instructions over people talking." Malfoy put his hand down and stared right at them and Brooke's wide angry eyes.
Snape glided over to their table so fast, she thought he disapparated and Brooke couldn't stash the magazine anywhere. He put his hand out and she had no choice, but to give it to him. As if it weren't bad enough to have been ratted out by Malfoy, Snape opened the dog eared page to the article and began reading aloud.
"Pining After Potter," Snape peered over the page, looking at Harry, disgusted and said sarcastically, "…Potter and Miller have mysteriously sneaked off in the middle of the night into a bathroom' …what a scandal. Ten points from Gryffindor."
Trying hard not to create anymore evidence for Rita Skeeter to use against her, Brooke fought not to yell in his face and tell him what a huge git he was.
"Now quit discussing your little dramas and pay attention. Ms. Granger, to the empty seat in the back corner. Ms. Miller, the seat next to Mr. Malfoy. Weasely, stay here and Potter, the table in front of my desk. Go."
She gave a small subtle exasperated look with her eyes to Hermione, who looked sympathetic. Not even wanting to be in the same room, lest the seat next to him, she let the ingredients fly into her bag without care while cursing out Snape in her head. Pansy had a nasty looking smirk on her face. Draco, on the other hand, was looking extremely interested at the inside of one of his bowls.
A while after Snape lectured and let them get to work, Brooke whispered, "What on earth do you think you're doing?"
He paused crushing his beetles, "Oh, so you're actually talking to me?" he continued pounding in the bowl.
"You know certainly well why I didn't want to talk to you," Brooke said quietly, chopping up the ginger root.
"Because you were too busy sneaking off with Potter into the prefect's bath," he spat.
"Nothing happened. And you know that. Instead, you told the entire Wizarding world, which includes my parents and family, that I get around- a lot," said Brooke incredulously. The cut up ginger roots were dumped carelessly into her cauldron with some falling on the table.
"With how you were all over Potter?" he whispered angrily, "I made only a slight exaggeration."
"We're just friends, Draco," she said. "And it's not even close to what you did to me!"
"I didn't do anything! She's the one that kissed me!" he leaned in, so Pansy wouldn't hear him. "You, on the other hand, did a lot more than snogging."
"We didn't!" she said loudly, making other people around her stare. Brooke lowered her voice. "I cannot believe you think that I would."
"The pictures didn't exactly help."
In her mind, Brooke kicked over the table, scoured the grounds to find Rita Skeeter and bit her head off. Unfortunately, she couldn't.
"This is unbelievable. I have to defend myself over an insinuation that Harry and I did things when I was standing in front of you and Parkinson kissing."
"And if you had just come to talk to me, I could've explained everything."
"Well, it doesn't change anything. I'm the school whore now, thanks to you," she muttered, throwing her wormwood stems into the cauldron. The liquid splashed out onto Draco's arm.
"You did that on purpose!" he glared and proceeded to chuck in his roots. The hot contents draped her sleeve the parchment she had taken notes on.
Brooke's mouth dropped open.
She began to hurl the rest of her ingredients, as Draco did the same. Their potions spilled and splattered all over the desk. Running out of ingredients, they simply reached in their cauldrons to send globs of the stuff at each other.
"Miss Miller and Mister Malfoy!" roared Snape. "Such juvenile behavior costs you both fifty points from your houses and a week's worth of detention!"
"Professor-"
"I don't want to hear it, Mister Malfoy," he snapped. "No credit for today's assignment. You're lucky I don't automatically fail you both from the class. Now, clean this mess up."
Both of their heads were dripping wet as they sat, jaws and hands clenched.
Brooke wiped off the potion from her face and obeyed without a word.
They were still cleaning up when the rest of the class had left. Harry, Ron and Hermione attempted to help out, only to come across a dangerous look from Snape. They left with sympathetic expressions.
It only took them a few more minutes to clean up to Snape's standards before he released them. Brooke slung her bag over her shoulder and bumped into Draco as they left the classroom.
Transfiguration. Transfiguration was their next class, she remembered.
"That was all your fault," he muttered, walking fast beside her.
"This all started once you decided to snog Parkinson," she said. Her eyes were set straight in front of her, not even wanting to look at him.
"Yeah and right when you saw that, you decided to go off with Potter."
"I'm sorry, did you see us kissing?"
"No, but I did see you two rather close at the Second Task," he narrowed his eyes.
"Maybe it was because he was scared to death that he had to jump into the lake for an hour," she snapped. "I was trying to make him feel better. That's what friends do."
"Friends don't hold each other's hand or kiss each other's cheek," he said scathingly.
Brooke suddenly stopped and faced him.
"And boyfriends go after their girlfriends when someone else kisses them," she retorted, unable to restrain herself before saying, "And they certainly don't hide them with a secret."
Draco grabbed her arm to keep her from speeding off. She looked down, feeling her eyes getting hot.
"What are you talking about?" he said. The lines of harshness were fading from his face and confusion set in.
Brooke sighed. "Us. You wanted to hide us."
"That's what we agreed on."
"I agreed," she corrected. "But I don't know why. Why did we need to keep it a secret? Who cares about everyone else?"
"We had to," he said, furrowing his eyebrows. "Everything would have just been complicated if the whole school knew about us!"
Brooke closed her eyes and pressed her hands to the sides of her head as if trying to hold herself together.
"I don't want to do this right now," she shook her head. Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes. Draco was right in front of her, close enough to lean into. She badly wanted to rest her throbbing head on his heartbeat and have him hold onto her just in case she fell apart. "This was a bad idea. All of it."
She stepped backwards and fidgeted with the clasp behind her neck.
"Stupidest idea we've ever had," she mumbled, pushing the locket into his palm and taking off before he could say anything, before he could say something to stop the tears from streaking down her face.
They went to Hogsmeade the next day to meet Sirius, along with two dozen chicken legs, two loaves of bread and a flask of pumpkin juice. He wanted to talk to them about what's been happening around Hogwarts, about Crouch.
"But Crouch didn't turn up for the match?"
"No, I think he said he'd been too busy," said Harry.
"Harry, did you check your pockets for your wand after you'd left the Top Box?"
"Erm," Harry thought. "No. I reached into my pockets for it after we were in the forest."
"You're not saying Winky took it in the Top Box, are you?" asked Hermione scathingly.
"Well, I'm sure there were more people in that box. Who else was there?" Sirius paced around the cave.
"A lot of people," said Harry. "Bulgarian ministers…Cornelius Fudge…the Malfoys…"
"The Malfoys!" said Ron suddenly, so loud he echoed in the cave. "I bet it was Lucius Malfoy. All of them are death eaters anyway."
"Not all of them," Brooke snapped, realizing she said it outloud. "I would've noticed a huge black mark on his arm."
"Well I'm sure your sorry ex-boyfriend will be one sometime soon," said Ron.
Sirius stopped in his pacing, looking very surprised.
Brooke wished she had never opened her mouth. "Yeah, I went out with a Malfoy."
He shook his head and put his hands up, "No explanation needed. But I would have to agree with Ron," he continued walking. "As much as I would like to promote peace and kindness to you all, it would be best to not get too friendly with the sort. Things like these often get passed down."
"It's not a disease and he's not like his father at all," Brooke couldn't stop herself from defending him. All the while, she felt she needed to. After all, she was the one who actually took the time to know him.
"I'm sure he's not, but considering what has been going on, I wished to give just a small warning," Sirius said gently.
Not wanting to make much out of her small slip of talking about Draco, she breathed instead of retaliating. It had been less than twenty four hours since she gave back his necklace and told Hermione and Ron what had happened in one altogether sentence and that was it.
They spent quite a while in the cave with Sirius, listening to all the news he's been catching in the Daily Prophets. Every phrase and piece of news made the happenings even more confusing. They said goodbye and left down the mountain back into Hogsmeade, where Sirius in dog form, barked a goodbye and turned around.
"We'll catch up with you later," said Hermione. "I need a new quill."
"Oh, well, we'll come along. It won't take long, anyway," shrugged Ron, but Hermione stopped him, saying that they were just going to be talking about a bunch of girl stuff and would bore them anyway.
"Say no more," said Ron, with a disgusted look on his face and he and Harry waved, walking off.
"Girl stuff?" Brooke smiled. "Like what?"
"Like how you haven't even talked to me about yesterday afternoon," she pulled her into Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop.
"I told you last night," Brooke looked through a shelf of colorful quills and one particular lime green quill that reminded her of Rita Skeeter. She considered buying it for the opportunity of being able to break it in half.
"All you said was that you gave him back the locket and that was it," said Hermione. "Not really much of anything."
Brooke groaned, not wanting to talk that much. She put a quill in front of her face that camouflaged into any background and blending into her face.
She explained how he said that Pansy Parkinson kissed him and how she told him she didn't want to keep the two of them a secret anymore. When she was done, Hermione gave her a sympathetic look, not surprised at all.
"You didn't want to keep it a secret anymore?"
"No. You were right. I just made it harder to trust him, as if it weren't hard enough already. I thought that maybe he would…" Brooke closely examined a seemingly plain and innocent looking quill called Echo Back. "Like me enough to choose me over his friends," she finished.
"Like me enough to choose me over his friends…" the small quill repeated in Brooke's voice. She looked at it with narrow eyes, not liking to hear her own voice, especially saying something like that.
"It's Malfoy, though," said Hermione. "You must of half expected it at least."
"I tried to, but I really thought he'd change," sighed Brooke, well away from the Echo Back quill.
Forgetting about classes on Monday, Brooke was glad Hermione woke her up just in time. After getting into her dress robes, she grabbed at her bed side table, only to knock her fingers into the hard polished wood. The necklace was gone, she remembered.
As if thought had triggered a switch, Brooke curled up in her sheets, wanting to stay there as long as possible.
Brooke left out the door with her bag to meet Harry, Ron and Hermione in the common room. A flurry of owls came rushing down to their table at breakfast. They kept dropping off letters in all sizes on Brooke's lap. When they were all done, she had about twenty envelopes.
She first opened the one that said Little Tiger. Brooke's stomach cringed while reading the letter from her parents about Rita Skeeter's article. Thankfully, they were more worried than angry. Nonetheless, she had a lot of explaining to do when she got back home.
One letter was a Howler and popped open, screaming at her and calling her names for using Harry. It echoed in the Great Hall, making everyone turn to see what was up. Every letter, she found that morning had something rude, vile and threatening things to her. Most came along with a nice parting gift. One letter, burst open into twenty small spiders, making Ron jump up from the table, frantically shaking off his robes.
"As much as I loved how you told Rita Skeeter off," Ron said, sitting back down and careful to make sure there were no more spiders. "You shouldn't have messed with her. All these letters. Popping spiders," he muttered, not touching the rest of his breakfast.
"I wasn't the only one. If I remember correctly, Hermione did all the talking," Brooke tore open another letter.
"Yeah, but you were the one who poured butterbeer on her," he smiled.
Brooke wasn't listening though, since the letter began to leak a thin glowing yellow liquid all over her hands. It started to make her hands feel like a thousand needles shot into them, digging into her skin. "What kind of person puts acid into their letters! Ugh!" she realized her hands were burning.
"You really need to go Madam Pomfrey!" Hermione looked horrified.
Brooke quickly got up from the table, careful not to touch anything and ran off to the hospital wing. Her hands felt raw in the air and she was now, scared that Madam Pomfrey had no quick and easy cure for acid burns.
To Brooke's relief, she gave her a bowl of lukewarm water mixed with a light blue potion and aloe leaves to put her hands into to stop the burning pain. Looking into the bowl, she saw how red her hands were. The top layer had burned off. Rita Skeeter was definitely going to suffer for this, she thought vengefully. Written words and howlers were things she could easily waive away, but purposefully giving someone acid burns because of a story they didn't know the full details about was completely foul. Madam Pomfrey said she would have had a serious burn injury that took weeks to recover by magic if Brooke left it alone for another few minutes. She gave her a special lotion to put on three times a day for the next couple weeks and her burns would heal quicker and make it bearable for her to move her hands.
Draco had managed to avoid her during their classes and Brooke wondered if he would simply not show up to their detentions during the week. The classroom was empty except for Snape, who sat at his desk scribbling down on a piece of parchment.
"Take a seat, Miss Miller," he said without glancing up. "There is a prompt on the board. I expect you to complete a two foot essay to answer it before you leave."
She sighed, grabbing her quill from her bookbag ready to write about that day's lesson. Brooke didn't even remember what Potion they were brewing.
So she sat there for a few minutes, wondering what she could possible write.
It seemed like Snape had read her mind.
"I expect you don't remember the lecture," he said. "Perhaps you should write about how your childish behavior has allowed you to let unimportant social issues affect your learning in this classroom."
Trying not to roll her eyes, Brooke forced her head back down to her empty piece of parchment.
It only took her a half hour to complete and no one else had entered the room. After handing in her paper, Brooke decided to ask.
"Professor, I know it isn't any of my business, but doesn't Draco have the same detention?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"He has requested to serve his detention at a different time," Snape answered uninterestedly. "And be prepared to scrub the class stock of cauldrons for tomorrow's detention."
Brooke nodded, in disbelief that Draco would go to such measures just to avoid her. Good. It was probably better this way, anyway.
A/N: Hope you liked this chapter! I certainly had fun writing it :) Don't forget to review please!
