Chapter eleven

An evening apology and Monday morning

/

About an hour later, Angela walked into the Slytherin common room with a dreamy smile on her face and absentmindedly passed the empty leather armchairs.

"Angela," came a voice behind her unexpectedly.

She turned around a little startled. Draco Malfoy emerged from the dark corner by the fireplace, with a fixed nose already, but with a truly splendid monocle. He slowly approached her with a rueful expression, and Angela's expression turned cold.

"What do you want?" she asked cautiously.

Draco held his hands hidden in pockets and kept glancing sheepishly somewhere behind her. But when he stopped in front of her, he took a breath and finally looked into her eyes.

"I want to apologize to you," he said softly, yet firmly.

Angela watched him, keeping silent.

"I'm sorry I hit you," he continued dejectedly. "I was blinded with anger... I don´t even know how I could do it. It will never happen again… I swear to you."

Angela sighed and nodded: "I accept your apology, Draco. I… I provoked you, so it's partly my fault as well."

Draco was visibly relieved.

"But remember," she added seriously. "I do not forget so easily."

Then she quickly turned and started to walk away from him.

"I don't even want that from you. I get it," Draco said quietly, but Angela heard him anyway and stopped in front of the entrance to the corridor leading to the girls' bedrooms.

She stood indecisive for a moment, and Draco watched her back tensely.

Finally, Angela turned to him again, clutching something in her hand that she took out from her pocket, and threw it at him in an arc: "Catch…!"

Draco snatched the small cup and looked up at Angela surprised.

"Grease your eye with it a little," she explained shortly and only then left the room.

Draco smiled shortly and headed toward a mirror hanging above the fireplace.

/

Both Harry and Angela spent that night peacefully and without any dreams. However, Draco was awake, quietly sitting in the common room. Meanwhile, behind the tightly closed windows of the castle, the storm continued to rage unabated, accompanied by a heavy downpour.

/

When a wonderfully rested Harry set off to breakfast the next morning, he was still in a great mood. However, he had no idea that when he would be heading to Transfiguration lesson about half an hour later, he would feel exactly the opposite…

The moment he strode contentedly into the Great Hall, everyone fell silent for a moment and stared at him curiously. After he walked over to his seat and tried to ignore them, they became even louder than before. Stunned, he sat down across from Ron, who was watching him with perhaps the most curious look of all.

"Why am I attracting so much attention all of a sudden?" Harry hummed questioningly.

"Are you surprised after yesterday?" snorted Ron. "And your eye isn't exactly subtle either."

"Don´t you give me this as well," Harry protested. "I already had to run from Hermione, who was surely going to give some kind of sermon and…"

Harry flinched as he noticed Ron's smug look directed behind him.

"I wasn't going to preach to you," Hermione remarked coolly as she sat down.

"Hey, hello Hermione!" Harry croaked.

"Don't try, Harry. I heard you. I just wanted to ask you why you had that fight with Malfoy yesterday."

"I'm so hungry today," Harry reached for some toast, as if he had not heard the clear questioning tone.

"You're not going to tell us either?" Ron bristled.

"Don´t know what I should," Harry blurted out, smearing marmalade on his toast. "This discord's been brewing between the two of us for a long time anyway," he added, biting into two toasts at once, his eyes fixed on the Slytherin table.

"You know what I've been listening to since the very morning?" Ron continued determined. "All that fuss about the two of you?"

"No," Harry replied with disinterest, but Ron continued.

"That you guys fought because of Malfoy's father, or because of a girl. Or that you both went haywire, although I'm not entirely sure what that means... Another theory is that Malfoy's insults provoked you too much, so you already couldn't hold back, and so on..."

"Well, I heard some talks too," Hermione joined him. "That you fought for at least a quarter of an hour, that you had a dislocated shoulder and that Malfoy has two teeth knocked out. Oh, and Seamus was raving to the hordes of second-year kids that a chunk of the wall had come off where you were fighting."

"Well?" Harry sneered. "What else could have been expected? Hogwarts love rumours."

"I don't think we'll get anything more out of him," Hermione conceded, but it could be seen on Ron, that he wasn't giving up on the prying questions.

A moment later, an owl with a Daily Prophet landed in front of Hermione and a grumpy-looking school owl came to Harry. Still with his mouth full, he untied a note from its feet and the owl flew away so that Ron just barely managed to avoid its wings. After Harry opened the note, he scattered crumbs all over the place, causing Hermione to look at him in disgust.

"That bastard!" he bellowed angrily.

"What is it?" asked Ron.

"Foul, slimy creep!" Harry continued just as disconsolately without replying.

"Are you talking so nicely of Snape?" Hermione figured.

"Just read it!" Harry snapped, shoving the note under his friend´s nose first. She ran her eyes over it and handed it across the table to Ron with a sigh.

Tonight at eight o'clock, your five-day punishment from the last week starts in my office. You will be serving your other punishment for yesterday's incident together with Mr. Malfoy from Saturday until next Friday. Arrive on time.

prof. Severus Snape

"I'll go nuts! Two weeks in a row!" Harry groaned in despair.

"I'm really sorry for you," Ron sympathized, handing him the note back. "But try to see a better side of it. Next week, you and Malfoy will have plenty of great opportunities to try and kill each other," he added smugly.

"Very funny, Ronald," smirked Hermione, already hiding herself behind the open Prophet.

"I'm just being a bit optimistic," Ron argued.

/

Angela was already finishing her scrambled eggs when the Great Hall fell noticeably silent for the second time that morning. She looked up at the door, in which, of course, the other participant from yesterday's skirmish appeared. Without the slightest change in his expression, Malfoy dragged himself to sit across from Angela.

The students began to chat excitedly with each other again and Malfoy's female fans glared at her. She was slowly getting used to that and did not care what they thought. They were just naive little girls that had no idea who their Slytherin prince really was.

She slowly finished her meal and finally got to take a good look at Draco. He was oblivious to the hair that fell into his tired face and thanks to the fact that he had one eye without a monocle she could see the dark circles under his eyes.

"You look terrible," she remarked quietly. "What did you do at night?"

Draco just smirked and continued nibbling in his portion of eggs.

"Snape sends word," she said then. "Your punishment doesn't start until Saturday. Along with Potter."

Draco did not even blink.

Based on that Angela understood that Mr. Draco would not be very sociable today and spread the newspapers in front of her. After skimming through all the headlines, she realized that it had been suspiciously quiet for too long.

As far as she could remember, the Death Eaters had last appeared in August, when they had killed an elderly wizarding couple at home, and since then it was as if Voldemort and his followers fell under the ground…

"Hello, Angela," a girl's voice called out to her unexpectedly.

Angela's hands with the Prophet dropped into her lap and she turned around in surprise.

"Daria?"

"Yeah, well I… Do you have a minute?" the blue-eyed, black-haired girl in Gryffindor robes smiled sheepishly.

"Of course. I'm just surprised that you're talking to me," Angela replied slowly, wondering what made her long-time friend to overcome her anger to approach her. The two of them had quite a serious argument during summer and had not talked ever since.

Draco looked up from his plate subtly.

"Please, don't say that," Daria's shoulders slumped. "Come out with me. The bell rings in ten minutes and I have something to tell you."

"Okay," Angela rolled the newspapers and finished her tea. She noticed that Draco was watching Daria rather intently, but she pretended not to notice it.

/

The morning classes were easy to manage. Harry could tell that McGonagall was really angry with him, since she kept ignoring him, but Flitwick was acting as usual. During History of Dark Magic class, he did not want to sleep for the first time ever, thanks to the fact that he and Angela, who was sitting across from him, were constantly sneaking peeks at each other.

Unfortunately, as the evening approached, his mood began to drop to the freezing point. He was sitting with Ron and Hermione by the fireplace and while it was raining constantly outside, they were working on some tasks. Harry was still fixing something on his and did not feel like getting up at all, even though it was getting pretty close to eight o'clock.

Finally, Hermione looked at her watch a little worriedly. It was five minutes to eight.

"Um, Harry," she addressed him cautiously. "You'd better go now. Don't make it worse."

Harry sighed deeply: "Oh yeah, I'm going."

Gathering his belongings into a pile, he stood up, "Ron, take this for me to the bedroom later. Merlin knows how long I'll be stuck there…"

"Sure, and hold on!" his friend gave him both thumbs up.

Harry nodded and quite disgusted walked out through the exit.