Alert slate grey eyes scanned the spacious common room with a lazy dislike. "Blaise?" demanded the casually coiffed blonde whilst snuggling further into the depths of a black sofa, unconsciously leaning towards the roaring fire captured behind a solid steel grate in the centre of the Slytherin common room.
Blaise Zambini, a boy with sharp chocolate eyes and a casual stance shrugged nonchalantly in the younger Malfoys direction. "Yes?"
Draco raised emotionless eyes and arched a perfectly shaped silver eyebrow, "Have your family requested your presence for the holidays?"
"No, my family have some pressing engagements to attend to, not requiring my presence, I'll be staying here."
The underline statement being business with the remaining followers of the late Voldemort, ceasing to be at The Boy Who Lived wands tip.
"Why? Need some help with lover boy?" continued a grinning Blaise, swiftly ducking the silk cushion aimed for his head.
Draco sent him an icy glare, then smirked as Blaise ducked the green cushion he had launched at him in response.
Blaise lifted his head up again, gave Draco a pointed look and carefully placed his falcon-feathered quill onto the tabletop. Almost lazily, with the air of one who had been brought up in as much splender as Draco himself, Blaise picked up his wand and murmured the keeping spell onto his inkpot. He rose from his chair, rolled up his History of Magic essay and made his way over to Draco. Gracefully swerving the multiple dark squashy armchairs littering the Slytherin common room he strode over to the only occupied sofa.
Plonking himself down next to the now well-buried form of Draco Malfoy, he narrowly concealed a concerned depth in his warm chocolate eyes. People may believe that the younger Malfoy was cold and vindictive towards everybody to cross his path, and for the most part, he was. There were however, some exceptions to this. Blaise being one of them.
Blaise swivelled his head to look behind the sofa, spotting three lower years crouched around a table flooded with parchment, looking anywhere but at the parchment. He gave an impatient cough and turned a piercing glare onto the three remaining lower years in the room as they looked up, listening with an open interest. Upon seeing the dark haired boy's expression they swiftly proceeded to pack up theri parchements and scuttle from the room.
At the sound Draco too turned to peer over the back of the sofa at the three students. He watched with amusement from under hooded eyes, as a mousy, short, rather plump girl tripped over his earlier ammunition in her haste. A chuckle slipped past his lips and she blushed a crimson so deep, had she not been in the Slytherin common room in the first place he would have mistaken her for a Weasley.
Once all the remaining years had found other, more pressing matters to attend to, Draco turned away from the closed door and silently cursed himself for seeing a Weasley trait in everything. He pointed his ebony wand at the offending cushion, muttered the levitation spell and waved his wand with an aggitated flick.
The deep green silk of the cushion appeared from behind Blaise's previously occupied table. The cushion soared over his rolled up History of Magic essay to land with a soft plop next to his unoccupied side of the sofa. Draco kept his eyes glued to the cushion as if it were an ancient relic he had just discovered.
Blaise tipped his head at an angle and waited patiently with the background knowldege of one who knew the other, for Draco to speak. After several minutes of silence he rasied an eyebrow, turned his face fully towards the silver haired boy and prompted Draco gently, "Well? Is it, uh, well, still there?"
Frowning, Draco graciously pulled his long slender legs up onto the sofa. He wrapped his nimble fingers around his knees and looked up at Blaise, impatiently swatting at platinum strands determined on falling into his sharp face before answering.
"Of course it is. I need to be near him, the pull is grating at my nerves. God damn him!" Draco exploded, leaping up from the sofa with a sudden burst and throwing his hands up into the air above his head with a frustrated shout, "It. Will. Not. Leave."
Blaise surveyed this rather unexpected explosion from his comfortable position on the sofa and calmly waited for the outburst to cease. Shaking his head slightly with a sympathetic look towards the blonde, he nodded to the space beside him.
Draco fell resignedly into the luxurious comfort offered to him. He muttered in his frustration, the words barely audible from his bowed head. "Stupid, adorable, freckled bastard."
Blaise chuckled quietly at his closest companions' ramblings and spoke up in a commanding fashion, "Stop fighting it, you know as well as I do the effects it's having on you. Go talk to Dumbledore."
Shock and disbelief registered in the silvery eyes as they silently mocked Blaise. "That doddering old fool?" exclaimed Draco.
Two dark eyebrows creased in exasperation, causing dark bangs to skim Blaise's eye line. He shook his head in annoyance, both at the ignorant determination within his friend, and in order to dislodge the irritating strands of hair from his eyes. "Yes! Just go and tell him!"
"I have no need to go and converse with that idiot," huffed the younger Malfoy, lifting his head in an arrogant fashion and turning his broad shoulders away from Blaise.
Bowing his head and soothingly circling his temples in clockwise motions Blaise sighed. Rolling his tired eyes to the ceiling he silently prayed to be in one piece the following afternoon, "Petrificus Momentus Totalus!"
With a look of undisguised shock, Draco fell from the sofa head first off the sofa onto the hard stone floor, still in his sitting position.
Blaise bit his lip to stifle a laugh and glanced down at the incredulous expression remaining on his friends face, his body frozen in the sitting position he had previously relaxed into earlier.
"We are going to visit an old doddering fool," Blaise said, immediately grinning at the horror and scarcely hidden embarrassment in the pale boys eyes. "Wingardium Leviosa," enchanted Blaise, marvelling silently at his own daring and the improvement in his magical ability from the first year, from floating a feather, to a Draco Malfoy, in the air.
Draco's eyes widened as he attempted, fruitlessly, to look at his now immobile, floating, body. His silver eyes scanned back down to Blaise's amused face and the steady wand clasped in his hand.
"Hmm. You can't very well float down the corridors, you'll have to be hidden, but neither of us owns an invisibility cloak or anything similar."
Chewing his lip in thought, the tanned boy glanced up at Draco seeing the smug look in his eyes at the hitch in his plan. Sudden light erupted onto Blaise's face as he shot off through the common room to disappear down into what was seemingly a gap in the floor, which was in fact the stairs leading to the seventh year dormitories.
Draco hit the floor with a loud thud as soon as Blaise turned his back. Pale eyes attempted to follow his rash movements, but gave up once the dark boy had moved out of his fixed eye line, only perking his ears up at the sound of feet descending stairs. Confusion and discomfort at being abruptly dropped onto the solid floor as Blaise rushed off reflected in Draco's cold eyes.
Distant banging from his right could be heard followed by hurried footsteps ascending the stairs.
"Oh!" exclaimed Blaise in sarcastic shock, the added humour at the situation clear in his voice at realising in his sudden rush he had left Draco and as a reult the levitation spell had ended, his wand no longer being trailed on the boy. All in an accidental manner, of course. Blaise chuckled.
Soft laughter could be heard to Draco's right and the pale boy, frustrated and drowning in his own hopelessness now attempted to growl.
"Sorry Draco. I remembered a camouflage and diversion charm in our charm textbook," said Blaise, grinning hopelessly at his usually poised friend lying awkwardly on the floor, still enchanted in the body bind, looking so ruffled.
Distant fright could be seen in Draco's eyes, on remembering Blaise's bleak first tries at this spell. In a first effort at camouflaging a plain wooden box to represent the surroundings of the stuffy charms room Blaise had mispronounced the spell. The wooden box had not met a pleasant end, being irreversibly stuck on a charms table, now holding inkpots. Draco Malfoy did not wish to become the next human inkpot. His hair clashed terribly with the tables in the charms room.
Blaise too, it seemed, was recalling his first tries at the certain spell. However his usual optimism won out and he began the spell. "Wingardium Leviosa," he intoned, steadying his wand on Draco's slim form and gradually levitating him into the air once more. Blaise scrunched up his face in concentration as he spoke the second enchantment, "Conmentento Diversificate."
Draco's eyes popped open after hearing Blaise's words and registered amazement at his now reflective appearance showing him the roaring fire and black sofa he had previously been curled up in. His eyes quickly dimmed in defeat as his felt his body being floated towards the common room door.
Chocolate eyes smiled as he floated the platinum prince of Slytherin out of the common room. Blaise held his wand in such a fashion as to not alert others to the fact that he was levitating a supposedly unseen something along the corridor. Draco groaned at his fate.