CHAPTER 9

When I got there, Dippy was as usual in the kitchen. When she heard the floo, she came out. Upon seeing me, the smile she gave was evident of her pleasure on seeing me. "Good evening Mistress."

"Good evening Dippy." I smiled back. Though I was still feeling a little lonely, it was good to know that someone, even though a house elf, was happy to see me and waited for my arrival every weekend. The last few days I had been feeling so lonely that the small amount of attention felt really good.

"Where's Master Draco?" I asked. I knew as soon as he found I was here, he would find some reason to stay away from here for the rest of the weekend. Not that I had a problem with it, but that would mean I would still be lonely with only a house elf for company. On one hand, I wanted company. That was the reason I was there because I couldn't go to my friends. On the other hand, I didn't want the company of the man who was supposed to spent time with me, who owned the place I was presently standing in.

"He hasn't returned from work. Does Mistress want to eat?" she asked the smile still prominent on her face.

"No thanks, Dippy. I already had my dinner." I put my bag down and immediately it was carried to the room by her. I watched her walking towards the room and smiled. This was exactly what I had always said, a little attention and affection was all they needed. Slowly the whole wizarding world world would realise that and the elves themselves would want to have their own amount of freedom. I sat down on the armchair as Dippy was returning. She went back to the kitchen to finish whatever she had been doing while I sat there watching the flames.

It was the third week that I was here. It was nearing a month and my married life had been as nonexistent as before the marriage except for the fact that now I had to come and live here for the weekends. Whereas Harry and Ron were doing pretty well. Actually it was wrong to consider Harry like that. Ginny and Harry had always liked each other. Harry had not thought about anyone else after finding his affection for the red haired girl. So it was more about Ron. He had hardly known Susan yet they had proceeded into their marriage. They had found their affection for each other. Neville too had said he'd always return on the weekends to be with Luna.

It was like the Yule ball in some ways, when no one had even considered me. If it hadn't been for Viktor, I probably would have sat the night out in the dorm. I sighed. I had never thought my relation with books would hamper my relation with humans like this. I knew Malfoy had only married me because of the law. He had made it very clear that he didn't wish to meddle with the Ministry. But I could still not understand why he didn't choose any pureblood and marry her. If he didn't rely on the Ministry then why wait for it to provide him with a pair.

Moreover, there was this child thing looming over our heads. I closed my eyes and laid back. How the hell were we going to bring a child in a year if we hardly wished to stay in the same room for more than five minutes? The worst part was I knew Malfoy would never think of touching a muggleborn. It was already strange enough that this pureblood family had a muggleborn witch married into the family. Lucius Malfoy would never accept a half blood as his heir. I knew it was strange enough but what was more surprising was the fact that I had actually been thinking about Malfoy and myself and I wasn't feeling as disgusted with it as much as I probably should. So either I was losing it, or my inferiority complex was at an all time low that it would allow me to even accept some kind physical feeling with Malfoy.

I put my head down on my hands. This was going to get worse. This was something that my friends couldn't help me with. I was nineteen, still in school, married and my so called husband was obviously not interested in me. I had always been there for people, whether that be Harry, Ron or Ginny. After the war, I stood by Ron when he was recuperating from Fred's loss. I had always stood with my head held high; never letting people realize the amount of pain it sometimes caused me. I needed someone for myself, someone who would love me, care for me. Someone I could lean and rely on, where sometimes I was the one being pampered and here I was stuck in a loveless marriage.

I checked the watch; it was a few minutes past eleven now. I slowly got up and walked towards the bedroom. "Is Mistress going to bed?" Dippy asked from the kitchen's doorway. I wonder what she did there all the time.

"Yes, good night." I smiled. Then all of a sudden it occurred to me. "Um… Dippy, do you know when will Master Draco be returning?"

Dippy just shook her head. "No, Master Draco does not tell Dippy when he'll be returning. For what Dippy knows Master may not return tonight."

I nodded. "Okay Dippy, you too go to sleep. Okay?" she nodded and I walked into the bedroom. After changing, I got under the covers. I lay there; eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling.

I'm not sure how long I was lying there when I heard the door outside open. There were muffled sounds. I realized that one was Malfoy's. But I couldn't quite place the second one. It was deeper so it definitely wasn't Dippy's. I grabbed my wand from the bedside table and tiptoed to the door. It was clearer and I could now make out the words.

"- will work fine. We just have to make sure we don't run short of the ingredients." Malfoy said.

"Are you absolutely sure this will work. I mean the Zabini's aren't a name that people trust either."

"It isn't as bad as the Malfoy's Blaise. If people come to know I have an investment in there, they won't even turn and look at it for the second time." Blaise… Blaise Zabini. I remembered he was in our batch. They were in the same house at school but Zabini's family was never actively involved in the war.

"Yeah, you are probably right about that." Zabini replied.

"Hey, today's Friday night, isn't she going to be here?" he added after a few seconds in a lower tone.

"I don't think so." Draco replied. "I think she comes here only for the weekends for the sake of keeping the pretense."

"Draco, you know it's not going to work like that. The law clearly states that there has to be a child in the first year itself."

"I know. I have been trying to find a way out of it."

"'A way out of it?' are you crazy? You know it's not possible! Even she wouldn't have found it, because if she did, you wouldn't be married."

"I'll find a way out Blaise. She'll never be happy in this relation and she deserves better than this."

"It will only bring trouble for you and nothing else."

"I'm already neck deep in trouble Blaise, for the past two years. So I don't care about anymore trouble as long as they keep her out of it and I keep out of Azkaban."

"Really Draco? You are ready to mess with the Ministry again just to get her free from this?"

"She'll be happy that ways. You should see her when she's here. She's always tensed, I can feel it. She needs to stay away from this place. It has too many bad memories for her."

"I can't believe it's you talking about her. The last time I checked you wanted her dead."

"The last time I checked I realized how lucky Weasley and Potter actually are, especially Weasley."

"Draco, are you sure of what you are trying because I'm starting to think that you—"

"I know what I want and what exactly I'm trying Blaise." Draco cut across.

"Okay, if you are fine with it so am I. It's your call after all." Blaise said after a few seconds. "Anyway, I should head back home. Bye, good night."

"Yeah, good night."

I stood at the door breathing heavily. I definitely hadn't expected that kind of a conversation. I heard the door shut and it snapped me out of my trance. I quickly ran to the bed and got under the covers and tried to calm my breathing. I may have a thousand questions in my mind right now, but of one thing I was pretty sure and that was that Malfoy would not be happy to know that I had been eavesdropping on his conversation.

Surely after about a minute I heard the door to the room open and I heard the footsteps stop at the threshold. I was concentrating on keeping my breathing normal and kept hoping that he wouldn't hear my frantic heart beats. After some time I heard the footsteps slowly move towards the door to the bathroom. I waited with bated breath. After a few more minutes I heard them slowly retreat towards the door where it stopped again. Then all of a sudden the door closed shut.

Whether he was in the room or out I didn't know. I kept my breathing slow, trying to hear any noise within the room. When a few minutes passed and I didn't hear anything, I slowly opened my eyes and scanned the room. It was empty. I drew a deep breath and sat up straight, a million things running through my mind.

'Malfoy is trying to get out of this relation.' It was my first thought. But then again he had said I deserved better and I shouldn't be living here. He understood that this place held bad memories for me, whether from my reminder or that he himself remembered the incident, I would never know. What had got my attention so strongly was the fact that his voice had not sounded cold as usual, but it had held emotions, something that I realised was not a common thing. That was really nagging. I had never seen Malfoy thinking about anyone apart from himself. Now he was talking about Ron and Harry being lucky. I thought about the conversation again and I remembered the part where he had said he was trying to find a way out of this marriage because I wouldn't be happy. And for that he was ready to face the wrath of the Ministry. I scoffed. 'Wow!' I thought. 'Under normal circumstances I should have been ecstatic that my husband thinks so much about me, but now it...' I thought how exactly I felt right now. 'Confused? Because it led to even more questions in my mind about him. I was already in two minds about everything that was going on and the things that I was feeling. Our situation was strange. Now that i was thinking about it, I realised that this was the first place I thought of coming to when I felt lonely.

I couldn't have gone to the Burrow, it would have raised a lot of questions. More over, I hadn't seen anybody since my wedding. I could have gone to my parents, but I would have to explain things there too. I had wanted company so I came to Malfoy's place but I didn't want him here. I rubbed my forehead. This really was confusing. It was like I didn't know what I wanted.

And on top of it I could feel there was something else that I was feeling, hurt. Why would I feel that? I should be happy to know that he was trying to find a way out of this mess. I had tried to do the same when I got the letter from the Ministry. This was something that we both wanted, so why did it pain? 'Because now you know for sure that even though you both are married, that man doesn't want you.'

True. I felt bad at that. Ron and I had never been able to move further than just kissing. He had first been busy with dealing with Fred's death, and then we were busy repairing the castle, finding my parents and all sorts of things. The little time we got, was spent with our respective families since we had been away from them for so long. We needed that bonding after loosing so many people to the war. We had needed our families, the familiarity. When finally we got time to be together, we realized it wouldn't work. Things had changed. We had changed.

But somewhere deep down, I wanted to share my time with someone. I wanted someone to be special to me. I wanted to be special to someone.

I flopped on the pillow. It seemed everything was going against me. The more I tried to convince myself that I was strong, the worse the situation was getting. After that I couldn't actually hold back the stream of tears that had been threatening to break away for the last few days. So I cried, hoping that the tears that escaped would take my confusion and pain with them and my tear soaked pillow would wake me tomorrow with a clear head and a clear perspective of all things.