Chapter Eight

Tara trailed Snape, heading off toward the Hufflepuff commons or wherever else she hid her Draco-loves-me-stash. McGongall decided to let us escort ourselves back to the dungeons, and only the dungeons.

For a few moments I thought we might actually get to walk in silence. In dim-lit corridors leading to the dungeons he stopped and I continued on, ignoring him.

"You...nice job," he said coldly.

I turned to face him, reluctantly. "Excuse me?"

"You had nothing to do with the potion? This wasn't a way to get back at me?" he snapped, completely without his normal cool. "And that noble act you pulled in there, fooled the lot of them."

I rolled my eyes and continued down the corridor. I was so angry I couldn't speak, but he wasn't going to know that. He wasn't going to know just how deep my hate was for him.

"Don't turn your back on me," Malfoy said, his voice shaking.

I stopped but didn't turn back around. "Going to stab me in the back again Malfoy? Why don't I make it easy for you?"

Draco swiftly approached me and before I could react, roughly grabbed my shoulder and whirled me to face him, pushing me back a step. His wand was raised. I raised my eyebrow in return.

"Now who's noble?" I asked.

"You're infuriating," Draco said.

"Coming from the person who attempted to remove any dignity from me here? And then had the gall to believe I would be romantically interested in you?" I asked, laughing. "Me? The girl you tried to destroy. Your ego must have its own continent."

"You - you -" Draco said, fumbling for words.

I shook my head and turned. He grabbed my arm again, not letting go. I took out my wand with my other hand but before I had a good grip on it he grabbed that wrist hard and yanked it to the side, causing it to fly away from my grip.

"Who did this?" he demanded.

"Let go of me," I said.

"Tell me who did this."

"I don't know."

He laughed, shoving me against the wall. Suddenly I realized how vulnerable my position was, felt fear for the first time since third year in Hogwarts hall when there'd been a killer lurking about. But even then, all the danger had been aimed at someone else, not me. Draco's grip on my arms tightened and I wondered if he'd snapped.

He's never looked more like his father, I thought. That sent a shiver down my spine and somehow...saddened me at the same time.

"Stop," I said as forcefully as I could as his grip continued to tighten.

"Why? Why when you haven't told me why you did this or who did?"

"Stop," I said.

"When you tell me who did this," he said, emphasizing his words with a particularly rough shove into the wall.

I blinked hard a few times. "Malfoy, stop. This isn't you."

"How would you know?" he asked harshly.

"You're not your father. We're not our fathers."

Draco's grip loosened and he looked at me, extremely confused. He let go of my arms and backed up a step, closing his eyes. He ran a hand through his now longish blonde hair and any remaining fear left though it was replaced with a certain wariness. He laughed quietly and opened his eyes.

"How could I have ever thought she was you?"

I snorted. "That remains to be seen."

We stood in silence. "I'm...sorry."

"I'm...maybe thinking of accepting that," I said mockingly. "For the bruises anyway."

"You won't -" he said and stopped abruptly, quickly taking my arms by the wrists and inspecting them. He grimaced and released them. "I'm...I really am sorry."

I rolled my eyes. "No worse than your girlfriend did to me while you were slinking into the crowd. If it weren't for Potter I might be a Slytherin stain in the Great Hall."

"She's not - I - bloody hell I can't believe everyone in the Great Hall saw that," Draco said, cursing more under his breath.

"I'm sure you'll have Pansy on PR early in the morning. Nothing you can't recover from."

He snorted. "I doubt we're on the best terms after that."

"Well then that makes no resectable fifth year Slytherin prefects, look at that."

He glared at me again and then sighed. "For someone so infuriating you're hard to stay mad at."

"I've been told the opposite," I drawled, amused.

He shrugged and looked away. Curiosity got the better of me.

"So, you...thought we..."

"Yes," he snapped. "Are we really going to sit and chat about this?"

"Like the best of girlfriends, Draco," I said with mocking sweetness. Seriously, "You think the potion maker would have wanted to aim the potion to mold Tara into a likeness you would have enjoyed more. That seventh year Ravenclaw with the dirty blonde hair, or Pansy, or even Filch's cat before me. It's odd is all."

He made a noncommittal noise.

"Unless...it was molded specifically to resemble me," I said, thinking of Sophia. "That would be a pretty big gamble though."

"You think highly of yourself," Draco said sarcastically.

I waved my hand dismissively. "I'm amazing. But it's not like you knew that and it's you that the spell is targeted for. I have to assume she specifically designed it fool you into thinking she was me. Which is a risk considering the most we've had between us is a fabricated stalker-affair."

"Maybe she didn't know that."

"She did. It was Sophia I'm fairly sure," I said.

Draco glared at me. "How would you know that? Why wouldn't you have said something?"

"I wanted to take care of her, confront her myself. It's only a guess anyway...I caught her sneaking about late at night, and she said something that...in light of recent events..." I said.

Draco looked at me, disbelieving. "If she's the one...you honestly expect me to believe you had nothing to do with it?"

He took a step closer, all personal space was gone. Looming, that was the word. I was suddenly aware my wand was further down the hall.

"I have no friends anymore, Draco. You effectively took care of that with your own scheming. Apparently my friendship isn't worth the reputation hit," I snapped.

He stood there a few moments and backed up again. Hastily I walked down the hall and retrieved my wand. I turned to see he had followed, his eyes fell on my wand quickly.

"I frighten you," he said, a statement, not a question.

I answered it anyway. "Shouldn't you?"

He looked at me a long moment. "I'm not sure."

"Reassuring," I drawled, putting my wand in my pocket all the same.

"Well..."

"Well?"

"We should probably be going back."

"Probably. We are prefects though," I pointed out.

"You wish to linger?" he drawled.

"Not particularly, just stating."

He nodded and we walked the rest of the way in a more comfortable silence. When we got in no one else was back yet and the place was abandoned except a first year sitting asleep in a sofa with a large text over his small chest.

"Slytherins these days," I whispered.

He laughed. "What has gotten into them?"

I looked at him to see he was gazing steadily at me. Probably trying to make me feel uncomfortable. It was working but he didn't need to know that.

"Good night, Malfoy," I said.

"Good night, Harrison," he said and strode out of the room.

I looked down to see my shoelaces tied together. I laughed quietly as I said the counterjinx.