At first, she thinks he's much more social than she is. While she likes to snuggle into an armchair with a thick book and waste her day away within its pages, he prefers to flit around the room like a butterfly endlessly looking for a place to rest its tired wings, feeling out what the people in it are like before settling down with one or another of the more interesting conversationalists. The tendency irks her; it's like he's always on the lookout for something better, like he won't ever be content with what he already has. If he can't settle down socially, how will she ever be sure that he will do so romantically?

It takes some time for her to realise that that's not the case. It's not that he's unable to settle and compromise, but rather that his parents ingrained the art of socialising in both of their sons until it's like second nature to them. Slowly, the quintessentially Slytherin trait moves from something that unnerves her to something she's grateful for. When he's doing his rounds of the room, he's charismatic and gracious and utterly masked. It's when he's with her that he drops that façade, feeling free to be sweet and exasperated and all manner of emotions in between. She isn't his for-now; she's his always.


A/N: Prompt: social

First week back at uni, and the exhaustion has already hit me like a sledgehammer. Today has been a lovely reprieve, though. I had the day off, so I had lunch out with my brother before dropping in on my grandmother and then tidying up this drabble. Now it's time to see if I can rope someone into going swimming with me.