"Isn't it too obvious?" … "Hurry up the romance would you" … "They're so cute, when are you going to make it happen?" … "How can she not see it?" … "(Insert other impatient comment here)"

Yes I know. I've heard you guys mention this lots of times and trust me, I know. Draco and Katerina's relationship has always been a little… complicated I guess is the best word for it, but I do have reasons for doing this. It isn't just so I can keep Katerina in the dark; there are actual reasons. If you are curious to see what these reasons are then you should read on.

It has been a while since I've done an "update" sort of chapter and if you didn't guess it already this is going to be another one. I know not all of you care and I am okay with you skipping this chapter, it is completely your decision, but for those of you who do care I feel like I do owe you some answers. So, here we go :3

I will be separating different points into different sections so if you don't care about any details, just why Katerina can't see it when it's so obvious then just read the tittle of the section and it should tell you which one is the one for you.

Okay, for reals this time, here we go :)

1. Background for a character is hard to get into depth in without doing a full bio on them, okay.

In my mind there are events and actions that have not only shaped Katerina into the character she is but will also take part in future events that I probably haven't even foreshadowed yet. I don't want to give away spoilers because I know how much they suck so the only good way I've found to give background to Katerina is to either casually mention it in a chapter or do a flashback… which there's going to be another one soon so… oops **spoiler** Anyway, if I had done a bio (I know I said I was going to do one forever ago but I suck at planning okay…) you would have seen more details about Katerina's life and maybe understood what exactly her relationship to Draco is. Of course they're friends but why isn't it something more? They make such a cute couple after all :3 Well hopefully after reading this "update" you will understand.

2. Katerina's family is probably to blame for this one.

Now you should know that when I talk about family I don't just mean blood relatives but people whom she considers closest to her. For her these people would include Draco, Alla, her parents, and Nikolai. I'm not adding any other Slytherins, Hermione, or the twins in there since we're talking about the past and they weren't there for that. From the list of family you should see why there might be a problem. Draco was not going to tell her why he was acting the way he was acting. Alla probably would have but, no matter how close their bond is, she is still technically her "servant" and doesn't really have the right to tell Katerina something that her parents should. But, speaking of her parents, they didn't do it either. Her parents love her sure but they aren't as involved as they should be and probably didn't even notice her confusion towards the topic. Or if they had I doubt either of them would have taken the time to explain everything to her and might have just left her even more confused because that's just how parents are. Therefore this left everything up to Nikolai. But think about this: would Katerina's overprotective brother have wanted to take the time to explain to his baby sister that her best friend liked her in a "more than friends" sort of way? Of course he wouldn't.

3. Now, where did you learn how to tell if someone liked you?

Your most likely answer to that would either be your family (which we have already established in the section above is a no with Katerina) or, where children learn all the things they probably shouldn't, school. Since there aren't any canon wizarding primary schools that I've heard of it's more than likely that those who weren't willing to take their children to muggle schools (i.e. most purebloods) were left only with homeschooling. This would prevent Katerina from having any helpful people around except her family to explain the situation and… yeah that's basically why she's oblivious to it.

4. And here is how this all relates to Draco.

Truth is, no one ever bothered to explain to her why Draco blushed when she hugged him. If her parents or her brother had told her something like "when a boy blushes from a hug it might mean he likes you" then there wouldn't be a need for this chapter. Katerina would know exactly why Draco did what he did if someone had just told her the truth. Remember he has been acting like this since they were kids. Draco has liked Katerina for a very long time ergo he has been acting this way for a very long time. To her this behavior is normal for him and thus shows no signs of it meaning anything.

5. And here is how this all relates to George.

Basically for the same reasons as with Draco: no one explained it to her. Katerina grew up with a boy who liked her, all of the behavior that boy showed was thought of as normal, so why couldn't other boys also act like this too? If you pay attention to the little moments in chapters you will see that whenever George is showing his feelings for her, Katerina is almost always either confused or she compares it to how Draco sometimes acts. Since she has come to know those actions as part of Draco's personality it would only be fair for her to find other people who also act that way from time to time. In other words, this is why she never notices when anyone likes her in that way.

6. But why didn't Draco just tell her himself?

You want the brutal answer? The honest to goodness truth is Draco is a coward. I love him, not just my version of Draco but the actual canon in both books and movies, but I won't defend him blindly. Draco is a coward. He can be brave and loving for those he cares about, he is also smart and there are a lot of reasons why I love him but at the end of the day do you really think he would tell someone who he has spent years with that he has more than a platonic relationship in mind for them. He might, if he wasn't so afraid of losing that person because of it since he has had this secret for a very long time. With this another question you might have is:

7. Why didn't he tell her sooner then?

I actually have a chapter that explains this in detail planned for the future so I'm just going to be giving some cliff notes on the topic for right now. In the previous chapter you saw how Nikolai was not as benevolent as Katerina thinks him to be, he had a bit of a darker side. Nikolai has always been very protective of his only sister, that much is obvious, so why would he want some bothersome spoiled kid spending more time with his sister than he would already like. Even in the chapter Weddings Nikolai refers to Draco as "that stuck up brat" so do you really think he would be okay with Draco telling her how he felt? No, he would not, and Draco knew that. Although recently Katerina has tried to be nicer the Volkovs (sans her mother) terrify some other wizarding families. Draco was not about to risk something happening with that kind of thing in mind.

8. But aside all that, some people are just oblivious.

Now obviously this doesn't apply to Katerina seeing as she's good at reading people and all but it really is not that rare for a person not to realize someone has a crush on them. I've seen a few examples of this first hand. Once I had a friend who was practically in love with another friend of mine for nearly 4 years (no joke, and honestly a bit awkward for me…). And it wasn't the usual "he'll never notice me" situation because they had known each other since about 6th grade (first year of secondary school if you're not from the states). I thought he would never find out and not because she hid it well. It wasn't until after they graduated high school almost seven years later that she told him. I think they're still friends but nothing happened between them.

Another time I saw basically the exact opposite situation. A guy friend of mine really liked this girl but he was never one for being self-conscious so he flirted with her, a lot. Every time he saw her he would smile and try to start a conversation, he would invite her to play card games with us in between classes (even though literally nobody else wanted her there since she doesn't even know how to play Magic and would just waste the entire break with questions). He would even tell her she was beautiful, like the actual word beautiful, not hot or cute, no, she was beautiful to him. And what do you think she did when hearing this? She said thank you and thought nothing of it. It took like 3 months for her to realize he liked her and that's only because a friend of hers told her, and even that took some convincing. It was kind of cute though. The point is people sometimes just can't tell, and that's okay.

9. I know you've been waiting a while but I'm only human, so give me a break.

This being a fanfic people want to read cute romantic moments between two of their favorite characters as much as possible, I understand that. I also know that this being a fanfic that is nearing 100 chapters you would expect something to have happened by now. In my defense Katerina is barely 14 years old, which means that if I had started this out with romance right away she would have barely been 11… I still thought boys had cooties at that age… Not really but you get my point. And to some more conservative people 14 may still be too young an age to start dating. It's been a long wait but that is because this is a long story. It is 7 years, 7 books, all wrapped up into one giant story. So much has happened and Voldemort hasn't even showed up yet! And of course Katerina is going to be very involved when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named makes a comeback… **spoiler** again. Sorry ( . _.) I might have to edit the spoilers out but in reality this is more of a rant than a proper "update" anyway so I probably won't. I literally just got the idea and started with this now I'm up to 1,913 words (according to Word) and counting. It's probably more since I still haven't edited the thing, and I might not even do that aside from spellcheck. Like I said, this is mostly a rant.

10. Conclusion/Why I am even bringing this up in the first place.

I was just going over some of the reviews for this story, including the really old ones back when this story would update like twice a week and only had like 10 followers, and I got that this topic was one that most people were interested in. If you're curious, those weren't exact quotes in the beginning of this chapter but they were paraphrased from reviews. Also I'm not mad at the people who left them; on the contrary I appreciate the fact that they took the time to leave a review. The only reviews that annoy me are those that complain about Katerina being a Mary Sue when only 2 chapters into the story. If you think that after chapter like 11 or something (since they're reasonably short in the beginning I think that's a fair number) then alright you have your opinion and I respect that. But if it's only 1 or 2 chapters in… are you kidding me? Literally there are more Mary Sue claims in the first two chapters than in the rest of the 94 chapters in the story. That's just ridiculous.

Anyway, you wanted answers and hopefully I gave them to you. The Yule Ball will be happening soon and people are already starting to pair up. It's only about 2 more chapters until you find out who Katerina will be going with so that's a thing :) There is only one person besides me on here who knows who it is already but that's because they asked like a year ago in the reviews and I do try to answer those whenever I can. And yeah I've had all this planned since last year. So if you think you're frustrated with not knowing then think of how it feels to know exactly how and when and why everything is happening but not being able to do everything right away because of writer's block and editing and work and school and getting sick and not being able to sleep and when I'm just about to crash getting an idea and having to write it down and ending up not sleeping until 4:30am because that little idea turned into the drafts of two chapters which are probably one if not two years ahead of where the story currently is and I only get 2 hours sleep because school but I couldn't stop because then I would forget forever and it could have been a really awesome chapter that was then lost for all eternity so then I'm left in a bundle of sleep deprived anxiousness who can barely function with a double shoted coffee (which has happened more than once btw)… Wow that was a really long sentence…

Oh and to that person who I told, you know who you are, I appreciate you sticking around for almost a year with this story. I really appreciate all of you who have been here for a long time. I get a notification whenever one of you guys adds my story and know of a few readers who had stuck around for a while only to un-favorite/unfollow the story. I'm guessing that's from lack of romance/excitement but really I don't blame them. If they're not interested then they should find something that does interest them. I'm not even being sarcastic here; there is no reason for you to do something that you don't want to do just so you don't upset someone else (unless we're talking about homicide or something, that's always a no no). It sounds selfish but your happiness should be the most important thing to you. Or you could be a really nice, selfless person who is probably way better than me because you know you put others before yourself then that's cool too; whatever floats your boat.

Alright, have a good day you guys. Or night. Whatever you want it to be, it's that. Love you guys and see you in approx. a week for chapter 96. "Update" rant over \(^.^)/