It's short again, I know, and i'm sorry! Being in highschool i still
live with my parents and i'm grounded from the computer (see, they
arent home right now :) )
Please R&R, and i'd really like to know what everyones favorite
chapter is! I think i enjoyed this one most because i liked writing a
bit from Draco's eyes.
Chapter Seven+
Holiday Decore
Draco +
The boy's elbow was propped up alongside his mostly untouched golden dinner plate, which he had long since given up upon. His hand, with slightly long, slender fingers, cupped his chin, pinky finger running up alongside the corner of his mouth, set not in smile nor frown. His eyes, wreathed in cold silver shroud, were staring almost blankly across the Great Hall at Gryffindor's table.
Thursday had come and gone like any other day, one of dismally boring classes and tedious dealings with his cronies, Crabbe and Goyle. Today, though, was slightly worse. First off, his mind independently ticked on it's nonexistent fingers, was Parkinson. He wondered vaguely if she was so incredibly stupid that his pressingly unhappy, rather disgusted, attitude towards her had rolled off her mind like water on a rain-coat, or if perhaps she perceived him as simply displeased and yearned to make up for it- whatever her poor reasons, he found her increasingly pathetic.
"Draco," she had simpered earlier on, in the morning, "won't you come have breakfast with me?" Her eyes had been a ratty mask of inviting pleasure, but through the tatters of it he saw what was almost desperation, and flicked away her offer in mounting disgust. She was, he had decided, like a bitch abandoned by her master, begging to be welcomed back into the house, to have a self-prided place on the rug by the fire, licking her paws and pathetically wagging her tail.
He dismissed her from his mind quite easily and found what resembled the relieving sensation of a weighted harness being lifted off his shoulders. Pansy was a nagging problem, and, unfortunately, while some mosquitoes could be slapped away and squished, others kept droning back for more, no matter how many times they may have narrowly missed a swatting.
"Oh Draco, look, how disgusting." Pansy was saying, pointing across the Hall to where Draco's gaze had been vacantly resting as he had wallowed in his thoughts. Has she been watching me and seen where my eyes lingered, he wondered vaguely, and flicked his gaze up towards her. Her eyes were shining and he knew from her expression that she thought she was being very pleasing, making conversation he did not desire, following his every move. His eyes, darkened slightly, roved back to the Gryffindor table, following her extended finger.
"What a disgrace to purebloods, aren't they?" she said malevolently, her hand finally lowered, for she had settled for pointing her pert nose in the direction of the Gryffindor's. "Look, there's that mudblood Granger, sitting next to Scar-head. Thank god he's not pureblood, it would be such a disgrace, Saint Halfblood," Pansy exclaimed, obviously thinking she was pleasing Draco. "And can you believe that Weasel and little Weasley are purebloods? Mucking around with filfth like Potty and Weasel."
"Famous saint Potter," Malfoy muttured to himself under his breath, and Pansy shrieked with laughter, though Draco thought he heard a distinct fakeness in her sharp, ringing tones of glee. This all reminded him of a second reason why today was not to be his greatest Thursday, besides the growing annoyance of Pansy Parkinson. This second reason was also a girl, though, just not a greedy Slytherin girl.
Ginny Weasley had looked up from her plate at a certain Slytherin's peals of hilarity and her gaze entwined with Draco's. His eyes were cold as usual, with an almost unexpected hate in them, and already the disturbance was wavering and the all-too-familiar wave of distancy washed across the twin pools, leaving nothing in it's wake.
Draco found a sneer lifting slightly upon his lips, and didn't try at all too hard to surpress it. She didn't need to be staring at him so, and he glared at her, but she only calmly gazed back at him in return. After a moment Ron looked up, and Harry glanced towards Ginny also, and they both followed her eyes, and immediately proceeded to glare back at him. Hermione looked up at Draco too, gave him a moment of her time, as if she had only looked out of curiousity and found him very uninteresting, and then turned back to her conversation with Lavender.
"Git," Ron rumbled, growling under his breath. Harry kept his eyes locked with Draco's, startling green and startling silvery eyes narrowing just slightly, pupils dilating just so. This went on for a moment until Ron, barely audible, muttured "git" again, this time with "slimy" inserted also. Harry's attention wavered, and school enimies broke away from each other's attentions, both pretending to be busy with something else.
Having looked away from Potter, Malfoy felt the only other place to look was his plate. He certaintly wasn't going to look at Parkinson, he figured it would only unnecassarily get her going again, and he had no desire to stare at or converse with any other Slytherin's, not being friendly with any of them, with the possible exception of Blaise. Idly, he picked up his fork.
Ginny Weasley, he thought derisively. He had to meet with her tonight, at six-o'clock, and as if this extra contact with her just wasn't enough, he had to plan a Christmas Ball's decorations with her, too. Utterly undesirable. He slid his fork across it's prey slowly, and there was a small shrieking noise, like nails on a chalkboard, as the slightly pointed metal teeth of the fork scraped ruthlessly across the exposed plate.
Ginny +
Very much like Malfoy, Ginny was not looking forwards to 6:30, which she knew was in four minutes, since after every three or five minutes Hermione would inform her of how much longer she had to leave. Ron, whether he thought he was funny or not, had begun to, very annoyingly, interrupt Hermione only to say what she was going to say anyways.
"Two-," Hermione began.
"Two minutes to go, Ginny," Ron said quickly. He grinned at a slightly cross looking Hermione, and Ginny shared a small sigh and glance with Harry. Standing up, she glanced casually across the Hall, and saw Malfoy extracting himself from his table also. Not wanting to be near him unless she had to, Ginny quickly told her friends she'd see them in a little while, and slipped as fast as she could, without running, from the dining room. Once the doors shut behind her there was a slight reverberation and then muffled-like silence, the noise of the Great Hall cut off by the thick double doors. She began striding down the corridor and heard the distant noise of the Hall blossom and wilt, and knew that Malfoy must have also left the Hall. Finally reaching the portrait she whispered the password and hopped into the room, quietly closing the door behind her. Unslinging her bookbag from her shoulder, she quickly sat comfortably down on one of the two armchairs positioned on each side of a small rectangular table, rather like a coffee table. She pulled out a strip of parchment, a jet-black bottle of ink, and a quill, setting it on the table and leaning back in her chair, hoping to be the pure picture of utter calm..
The portrait swung open and she heard him coming in, heard the very slight sound of swishing robes, heard the creak and thud as the entrance swayed closed. He came up behind her and Ginny heard him pause, and she fought not to twist in her chair and see what exactly he was doing. After barely a seconds hesitation, he came into view from the corner of her eye and swept to the chair opposite her, sprawling down into it. He looked slightly tired and very bored, splayed in the high-backed, slightly winged armchair, staring at her.
"Right," Ginny said, wondering at the slight jump of her heart as she looked at him. "I guess the decorations are mainly going to be silver, neon green, blue, maybe red and yellow, right?" He stared at her for just another moment beore grunting (somehow in a very arrogant and Malfoy-like way) his assent. "Ok..." Ginny said, and scratched across the top of the parchment Silver, bright neons.
Her breathing was quietly fluctuating, rising and falling slightly irregularly, and she fought to control it, wondering if she was ill. Her body was awry, acting in ways it shouldn't be. She was perfectly still, but at the same time quivering. She was cold and hot, light and heavy. She felt clammy, but the feeling was wrong, as if it shouldn't be there and she had accidentally detected it, a lethal spy in her system.
"Er, and what kind of decorations, do you think? Tinsel of course, but would baubles create too much of a, a Christmas feel, or is that what we want?" She began to talk slightly faster, "I mean, are we going for the theme only, or do we want a definite Christmas touch? Which comes to Christmas trees too, unless we change the colors of them to go with the theme, which could be pretty cool, but..." She trailed off as he raised an eyebrow at her. He sat up slightly and leaned forward to be in better proximity to the table and the parchment. And to her. Ginny's heart twittered slightly against her chest. As he moved she noticed the fluid way his muscles rolled to accomadate the new position he was sitting in, and how as he leaned forward just so, his bangs fell across his eyes. Suddenly, she felt slightly more conscious of how her hair fell, how one of the shoulders of her witches cloak was slipped aside a little and the collar of her light blue tee-shirt poked into view a bit, how she sat in her chair.
Ginny sat up straighter in her, alarmed. She did not like Draco Malfoy. She was ill, that was all. She'd gone out with Michael Corner and Dean Thomas and plenty more boys, and she'd never felt like this before. Except when she had crushed helplessly on Harry...but her mind completely disregarded this, since it was very unsettling, and certaintly not a pleasant thought. I'm insane, she thought to herself faintly. And ill. Very ill. I should go to the Hospital Wing.
"Weasley," Malfoy said, or drawled, interrupting her almost frantic thoughts. She wondered distantly what she looked like, Calm? Or agitated, perhaps? And why do I care? "You've wasted a good few minutes sitting there. I may as well leave, I have quite a bit of work to attend to, unless you're going to return to this realm, anytime soon." She glared at him, and positioned her grip on the quill.
"Yes, fine. Is there going to be any Christmas feel in these decorations? I think we should have Christmas trees in the Hall, as always, but magicked different colors." Ginny wondered how she had managed to babble all thise without even thinking, and remembered vaguely that she had said something very similar a few minutes ago.
Draco+
He had leaned forward to be comfortable but still seem authoritive, and she had stared at him almost in a startled way. She babbled and stammered, a very, very slight blush dusting her cheeks, and then had vacantly stared at the small table between them. He was perplexed. She voiced something about Christmas trees and he turned it over in his mind, picturing a neon-green tree stood next to a bright yellow one in the Hall, a blurry scene of other decorations, and he shrugged.
"Sure," he said, watching her scratch the tip of her quill underneath "silver, bright neons" and then he leaned back again in his chair. She glanced up at him again and he saw her gaze flick over his shoulders as he rolled them to get comfortable in the tall chair. Not much perplexed anymore, Malfoy was faintly amused.
"Weasley," he said arrogantly, a small smirk playing across his lips, "I know how wonderfully good looking I am, but might I suggest we get back to planning this thing?" To his immense satisfaction, a sort of horrified alarm came rushing forward in her easily readable eyes, and a faint blush crept over her ears to lay light, sinister claim to her cheeks.
Ginny+
Ginny was absolutely mortified with herself, and growingly angry, too. Had I? Did I really look at him like that? Oh God, Malfoy? What must he think? What's wrong with me? He's an evil, disgusting, arrogant, Malfoy-Slytherin, and did I really just check him out?
She knew she must have. The vision of it still lingered in her mind. The shoulder's of his robes had tautened slightly as he leaned back again in the chair, shoulder's rolling and she again marveled at how his muscles just shifted like water to accomadate him. His eyes had closed halfway into half-moons of steely silver but they'd opened again when he had finished leaning back into the soft cushioned back of the armchair, a second later. His hands had slid up the arms of the chair from the inside until they came over the top and almost-long fingers lightly splayed across the armrest. His hair fell across his eyes and all in a smooth instant it had been over. And then, he had mortified her almost to the point of when she had come downstairs to her kitchen, the summer she was going to start her first year at Hogwarts, in her pajamas, to see famous Harry Potter sitting at the table with some others of her family. In fact, it might have even passed that point.
Ginny looked up for the floating clock and quickly spied it hovering near the portrait hole, it's thin, intricate hands detailing 6:40. Ten minutes had passed. Twenty to go, she though miserably. Her wand was sticking tip out from her cloaks pocket. She touched it discretly, and whispreed a charm for movement, one of th clocks hands spinning winding quickly upwards to read two minutes till seven.
"Looks like time's up," she said, standing and stuffing quill, parchment, and corked ink bottle into her bag, slinging the lot over her shoulder. I guess I'll see you tomorrow about the reports, and er, next Thursday." She pushed open the portrait hole, paused slightly,and seemed to muster some dignity. Ginny glanced back at him, and then quietly fled the room, walking up to Gryffindor Tower.
Draco Malfoy watched her leave in high amusement and once she was gone, he stretched up out of his chair and picked up his bag. Then, he looked at a small watch on his wrist, hidden beneath the folds of his cloak, and smiled darkly to himself, and the two small dark red hands that pointed firmly at 6:42 pm.
