Two days later, Draco found himself walking to Potions with the intent to talk to Grey, but no plan as to how to get her alone. Blaise was already beside her, the two a ways ahead of him. Draco grimaced. He knew Grey wouldn't accept an arranged match, but he still didn't like it. She had said no one would force her to marry someone she didn't love, but that didn't mean she couldn't fall in love with someone who intended to match with her. After all, Draco had believed she had had feelings for him…had, in fact, secretly hoped for it.
He ducked into the classroom, still debating on how he could separate them, when an opportunity arose. Grey sat at her seat, the chair on her right empty. Blaise stood off to the side, locked in conversation with Professor Slughorn. Draco made a split-second decision and crossed to the empty chair. She looked up at him in surprise as he dropped his things on the table.
"Draco," she said, as though making a discovery.
"Grey," he muttered unhappily. He glanced over at Blaise, who was eyeing them, then looked back at her. "Disappointed?"
She peered over his shoulder to where Blaise was standing then ducked back behind Draco. For a horrible second, he thought she wouldn't answer. And then she shook her head.
"No," she replied.
Draco's heart thumped at her response. He quickly sat down and, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Blaise was giving him a look. He almost smirked.
Professor Slughorn began class shortly after. Thankfully, he wasn't much of a lecturer and soon had given them the day's assignment to brew. They were working through the various poison antidotes and today it was vinesnap sap solution.
When Grey stood to get the ingredients, Draco held out his hand to stop her. He noticed the last class she and Blaise had sat together, his fellow Slytherin had allowed her to get up and haul the ingredients back to the table herself. Draco had been disgusted. If Blaise was seriously considering courting Grey, he had a thing or two to learn about proper behavior.
Draco got up, collected their ingredients, and returned to the table where Grey was watching him with her big, blue eyes. He didn't like her scrutiny.
"Thank you," she said.
Draco scoffed. "You don't need to thank me." He was not to be thanked for being a gentleman. Instead, he said, "What kind of wizard would I be if I had a weak little witch doing my heavy lifting?"
A shadow flickered across Grey's face and she opened her mouth like she might respond, hesitated, looked away, and took a breath. Then she slid her potions book to the center of the table so they could both see the recipe and began reading it.
"So we start with—"
"What was that?" he interrupted her.
She looked around like she had missed something. "What was what?"
"You started to say something," he said, "then stopped. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing—"
"It wasn't nothing," he snapped, leaning closer. "Explain."
Grey's jaw bobbed wordlessly for a moment before she finally explained, "At first, I took it as an insult…but then I realized you were probably just being nice, and you said something mean to cover it up. So, I decided not to say anything."
Draco blinked at her. "You just assumed I was being nice? Why?"
"It's better than being offended and getting into a fight. I prefer to give others the benefit of doubt."
"What if you're wrong?"
"I usually am," she chuckled, selecting the first ingredient required for the antidote, a vinesnap root. She placed it in a mortar and took up a pestle, but before she began grinding, she stilled. "My mother used to say that if you always assume the worst in someone, you will always receive their worst. So, I do my best to never assume the worst."
Draco frowned as she started grinding the root, thinking back on all of their encounters, scrubbing each memory for the moments when she did this. Their interactions were peppered with them. He thought she was just tongue-tied, but she was actively trying to think better of him.
He clicked his tongue. "Sounds like your setting yourself up for disappointment," he said, lighting a fire under the cauldron before he began cutting the kama beans.
"That's what Ember thinks. She says I shouldn't let people get away with being—um, trolls." She started grinding the root even harder, tension in her tone. "Locke agrees with her, says it's a nice sentiment in theory, but that it doesn't hold up in reality."
He snorted.
"I'm not naïve," she continued before he could comment. "Of course, I exercise caution. I won't put myself in a dangerous situation just to give someone the benefit of the doubt. But getting upset at every rude comment someone makes is unproductive." Her grinding amped up even more. "Take today for example. What if you were having a horrible day and I make it worse by letting your assessment of my physical strength bother me?" She leaned into the pestle. "What if you hide your kindness behind meanness and my barking at you discourages you from being kind to others?"
"What if I was just being a prat," he said, jerking the mortar and pestle out from her grasp before she ground the vine into dust, "and you let me get away with it?"
Grey started to reach for the tool but stopped when their eyes met. Realization struck her and she took a deep breath, exhaling out her tension. When she was calmer, she said, "And what if I get angry with you and carry that anger around with me all day?" She reclaimed the mortar and gently scraped its contents into the cauldron. "In the end, what should it really matter to me if you think I'm weak? Besides, it's true that I'm not as strong as you."
"Now you're justifying it?" Draco balked. "You're letting people walk all over you."
"No, I'm choosing to not let it bother me."
"But it does bother you. It's written all over your face."
She shrugged sheepishly. "I didn't say it was easy… But it was how mom lived, so it's how I try to live." She took the kama bean halves he had cut and began pinching them over the cauldron, letting their juices drip into the churning liquid. After a moment, Grey murmured, "It's paid off, you know."
"What has?" he asked as he took up a spoon and began stirring the mixture.
"Not assuming the worst of you."
Draco cut his eyes to her to find a soft smile on her face. He mentally scrambled to think of what she might be referencing, but he couldn't remember.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"I'm not telling you," she chuckled. "You'll try to ruin it for me."
Draco just gaped at her in disbelief. He couldn't argue with her assessment at all, but he still wanted to know. She smiled at him again and then went back to work on their potion, and he could only shake his head and get back to work as well. But he was unable to take his attention entirely off of her and kept stealing glances.
He watched the way she chewed the inside of her lip when she concentrated, how she pushed herself up onto her tiptoes every time she leaned over to peer into the cauldron, how she held her long hair back with those delicate hands whenever she bent over. He marveled how this young witch in her school uniform was the same person as the woman in a red dress standing in his foyer at Christmas. He wondered how he could find both versions of her so attractive for wildly different reasons.
"This doesn't look right," Grey murmured, pulling him out of his thoughts.
"Because it isn't," he said after one look at their potion. He quickly added another drop of salt peter and a dollop of tipper fat. After seven stirs counter-clockwise, the coloring normalized.
"Nicely done," she said.
"Honestly, how did you get to N.E.W.T.-level Potions?" he sneered, but it lacked the usual bite. He eyed her from under a quirked brow, waiting to see that sour hesitation before she chose to think better of him. She only shrugged.
"I charmed the professor."
Charmed the profess—Snape? Draco let go of the spoon so suddenly that it clanged against the side of the cauldron. She bit back her laughter and quickly snatched it back up.
"Everything all right over here?" Slughorn asked, waddling over.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
"Just adding the trollbark," Draco muttered, taking up the dish of shavings and adding them to the mixture while Grey stirred.
"Good, good," their professor declared. "And looking well, I might add. Nice coloring."
"Thank you, sir," she said, and he wandered away. She looked up at Draco from under long lashes, her lips twisted with amusement. "Sorry…"
Professor Snape and Amaris Grey were like absolute opposites. He was tall with black hair and a buttoned-up personality. She was short with white-blond hair and a smile that could light a room. Imagining Snape being swayed by Grey's charms would have been funny if it wasn't so impossible.
Draco leaned in to whisper, "Did you read that in one of Hayden's romance novels?"
She gasped, face flushing pink. "No, of course not," she whispered back. "It was Ms. Brumley's."
"Who?" Draco asked, turning up the heat on the cauldron.
"My tutor," she answered, much to his surprise. "She doesn't know that I know, but I found her collection over the summer."
Draco tried to imagine that same crusty old witch who slapped Grey and smirked at him sitting in her room reading romance novels like some lovesick teenager, but it was almost as hard to imagine as Snape advancing Grey to N.E.W.T.-level Potions because he thought she was cute.
Suddenly, Draco realized that Grey had gone quiet. He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. A serious expression had stolen over her face. It took him all of three seconds to make the connection about summer, that she was probably thinking of their encounter, not her lonely tutor. His insides tensed up, nausea raking through him.
"I'm sorry I showed up so suddenly, that I didn't leave when you told me to," she said quietly. "I said that I was concerned for you, but I was so wrapped up in that concern that I didn't even listen to you. I was selfish. I'm sorry, Draco."
Draco swallowed the lump in his throat and went back to tending their potion. He wanted to tell her that he hadn't wanted to send her away, but that he had to. To protect her. That he went through enormous lengths to hide her from the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. That seeing her had been a sliver of something good that he had allowed to burrow under his skin and quietly fester. But he couldn't say those things. They would raise too many questions about what had happened to him over the summer… He couldn't say them because…because it would be admitting out loud what he was starting to feel for her.
"You're forgiven," was all he could say, and the relieved smile she wore made his insides churn with guilt.
Once class had ended and their potion was declared acceptable, they quickly cleaned up their station and Draco left without so much as a goodbye. As much as he liked being near her, he needed the space to think. As he hurried down the hall, a male voice called out to him. Draco turned to see Blaise jogging to catch up to him. He waited, having completely forgotten about his friend.
"Hey," Blaise said when he stopped in front of him. Draco stuffed one hand into his pockets and nodded at him. "What's going on, Draco? You and Grey seemed awfully close."
"Did we?" he asked in a bored manner.
"You know you did. What was that? I thought you said you weren't competing."
Draco smirked. "Oh, it's not a competition, Blaise," he said smugly.
For a moment, he thought his friend was going to be irritated, but instead he scoffed and shook his head then said, "You really like her, don't you?"
Draco tensed at the unexpected turn the conversation had taken, his smirk vanishing.
Blaise grinned. "Theo was right."
Theo was…what? Draco quickly put the pieces together. "Did Theo tell you to approach Grey?"
Blaise nodded. "He said it wouldn't take long to draw you out." He gave Draco a once over. "He was right."
"Unbelievable." A mixture of fury and relief washed over him—fury that his friends had played him and relief that Blaise wasn't actually seeking a match with Grey. "If that wasn't real, was the Ravenclaw?"
"What Ravenclaw?"
So, that much had been true, at least. He couldn't drop his guard entirely. "Never mind," he muttered, eyeing his friend in disgust. "You're a couple of prats, you know."
"Is that right?" Blaise asked. "Then I guess you don't want to know what she said about you."
Draco's jaw clenched. "What do you mean what she said about me? You talked about me?"
"You are the only thing we have in common."
Draco tried to imagine all of the things Grey might have said about him. They had been fighting at the time, so it couldn't have been nice. But then she just admitted she assumes the good in others, so maybe it wasn't so bad. Over their many holiday gatherings, Draco had learned that Grey was adept at speaking civilly about even the most heinous of individuals. She had probably just said some polite but vapid thing about him and Blaise was using it to taunt him. Still, Blaise was charming and had an easy time coaxing information out of others…
"What did she say?" Draco asked tightly.
Blaise motioned him closer then whispered, "That you're the sexiest wizard alive and she wants to snog you."
Draco snapped away from him, heat crawling into his face even though he knew it was a lie. Blaise started laughing and Draco considered hexing him right where he stood.
"Piss off," he muttered, walking away. Blaise followed.
"I won't tell. If it's any consolation, Theo's the only one who noticed."
It didn't make Draco feel better and he was quite sure that if Theo had noticed, others had, but he kept silent, walking ahead without looking at his friend.
"Don't be mad," Blaise said. "Come on. I'll even tell you what she really said."
"She didn't say anything," Draco snapped.
Blaise laughed again. When he had calmed down, he said, "I understand why you like her."
He glanced at him but Blaise didn't explain further and Draco didn't ask. They walked in silence the rest of the way to the Great Hall.
Author's Note: I completely made this potion up...
