This is me calling you out
For these built up superstitions
They haunt me and then
With just little light down here
Well, I would run
I would cross a thousand seas
And in our perfect world
You would wait at the other side
And I know you,
You follow up with all the answers
Last Chance by Cartel.
Blaise laughed as they spun around to the non-existent music of the chilly, snowy night.
"Sorry I couldn't take you to the dance," Draco whispered in her ear as if there were millions around that could over hear him.
"This was way better," She said, not only with her words but with her smile and her sparkling green eyes; which were significantly less cloudy than when he met her. She held less secrets now.
"So what did happen at the dance with you and Dean?" Draco asked, arms still around her.
Blaise smiled mischievously. "A lady never tells." She laughed and darted away, spinning around in circles, arms outstretched just like a child. From the way she was laughing, Draco guessed she hadn't had much of a childhood. Even now, Blaise was almost always the grown-up.
"Will you two freaking stop it?" Joel yelled at Jesse and Blaise who continued to bat a bludger between the two of them. They responded by laughing.
"Hart, pay attention, damn it!" Joel bellowed. Jamie, who had nearly lost his seating as he dove for one of Graham's quaffles, scowled.
Clearly, Joel was sore about something.
"Everything all right?" Draco asked.
"No, I'm not!" Blaise giggled loudly in response to something Jesse had said.
Joel sighed. "It's nothing."
"Oh, you are real cute." Blaise teased Jesse, once again in response to something Jesse said to her.
"What's wrong, Joel?" Draco asked again, only half heartedly. He wanted to know what Jesse was saying.
"It's Clarissa." Joel said. "Let's talk over here." He said, leading Draco even farther away from Blaise and Jesse. Now he wasn't even facing them. Great.
"She's just been acting so different lately." Joel started.
"Stop, that tickles!" Blaise squealed.
Draco could barely contain himself. He desperately wanted to whip around and see what Jesse was doing. But whatever it was, it didn't cause Joel the PDA Nazi to freak out, so he figured it couldn't be that bad.
"Do you know if she's mad at me?" Joel asked, wringing his hands around the top of his broom.
"Not to my knowledge," Draco honestly answered, although he did know why she was acting weird. But he couldn't mention the globe. The fact that Joel looked so familiar yet so very different. He just couldn't. Because then his red haired girl would be called out into question.
"Okay," Joel said, settling for this answer because he seemed to know that he would not get anything else from Draco.
"Would you two cut it out?" Joel snapped, turning his attention back to the group.
"Is everything okay?" Clarissa asked Draco later as Joel was preoccupied with reprimanding Graham's poor diving stance.
"He thinks something is up with you." Draco replied.
"Did you tell him?" Clarissa asked. "Please tell me you didn't."
"No, I didn't" Draco said. "But you should say something to him."
"I want to understand it better." She said, looking down at her shoes. "Before I say anything. That is not my Joel in that globe."
She looked up and looked at Draco. "Will you help me?"
"Trelawney's got to have a book on it, somewhere in here." Clarissa said, as she opened the door to Trelawney's classroom.
"I don't see it," A voice from around the corner said. Draco and Clarissa froze. Trelawney was supposed to be at dinner.
Whether or not Trelawney was actually at dinner, they didn't find out, because the voice belonged to Caitlin Rogers, a Ravenclaw. Finn Colin, her boyfriend and fellow seventh year, was standing behind her, the two girls and two boys just stood there staring at each other.
Finn instantly flashed a brilliant shade of red, while Caitlin nearly bored a hole in the floor with her concentrated stare. Draco noticed Clarissa eyeing the door, everyone embarrassed that they had been caught in a compromising stance.
"Fine," Caitlin said. Finn and her must have been exchanging glances when Draco wasn't looking.
"We came to find the spell." Finn answered, still fairly red.
"So did we." Clarissa replied.
"It wasn't fair, my crystal ball didn't work." Caitlin justified her breaking and entering.
"I let go and barely saw the picture." Draco replied.
"She had the book on her desk last." Clarissa answered, blatantly ignoring Draco and Caitlin's excuses, pointing at a desk that was covered in mounds and mounds of books and papers and trinkets. Trelawney appeared to collect more gadgets than Mr. Weasley himself.
"Even if we find it, I can't read Gaelic." Finn confessed.
"Let's just find it first, okay?" Clarissa snapped, knocking a deck of tarot cards right off the desk and into Caitlin's shin. The deck scattered across the scuffed hardwood floors of the tower.
"I speak some Gaelic." Caitlin answered as she picked up a hermit card. Draco found it a little odd that her boyfriend didn't know this, but he didn't mention it.
"Here it is!" Clarissa said. Caitlin dropped the card and pulled the book from Clarissa's hands. Clarissa opened her mouth as if she wanted to argue, but shut it when she realized that she couldn't because Gaelic was foreign to her.
Caitlin's rather scratchy voice sounded even harsher with the foreign words. Trelawney's voice glided over it much better. Clearly Caitlin had taken this course for an easy 'Outstanding' as well.
Clarissa reached for the crystal ball on Trelawney's desk, but Caitlin snatched it up first, and practically hugged it to her chest to keep Clarissa from seeing what she wanted to see first.
"It didn't work!" Caitlin whined after about a minute. The ball remained black, just as it had two days before.
Draco wondered if it was Caitlin's raspy voice. He wondered if Finn liked the raspy-ness. He couldn't quite decide if he liked it or not.
"Can we go now before we get caught?" Finn asked, taking the crystal globe out of Caitlin's hands. As soon as he touched it, he nearly dropped it, a picture flashed across the face.
"What?" Caitlin said, grabbing at it again. It remained black. "Touch it, Finn!"
Finn, Draco quickly realized, did not wear the pants in this relationship. He picked it back up. The image flashed back on the screen. It was Finn, about five years older. He needed to shave, reddish scruff was on his face that wasn't there now. His shoulders looked a little broader and he had changed his glasses' frames. A semi-familiar girl with honey colored locks wandered into the picture. She was smiling. She wrapped her arms around Finn's neck and kissed him hello on the cheek.
"How was the lab?" he asked, taking her coat.
She smiled. "Pretty good. Kelly thinks we should finish the project by the middle of next week."
"What the hell is this?" Caitlin hissed. "Is that Moira? From your chess club?"
"I don't know!" Finn warbled, looking terrified for his life.
"That is, that is Moira!" Caitlin growled. "Do you guys really play chess or do you stare at her chest?"
"What?!?!" Finn asked. "Caitlin, I love you!"
"You have a funny way of showing it!" She screamed back, waving her manicured hand at the crystal ball.
"I have no control over that!" Finn snapped, finally losing his cool with Caitlin. "This is ridiculous. You performed the freaking spell!"
"Oh, so now you are going to blame your cheating ways on me?" Caitlin hollered, no longer seeming to care if they got caught.
"It's divination! You don't even believe in that load of junk!" Finn retorted.
"Just let them be," Clarissa said, taking the ball from where Finn had left it on the desk.
There he was. The thinner, lankier Joel stared back at them. His hair was curlier, he looked younger than he did now. His brown eyes were the same though. Just as last time.
"Why?" Clarissa asked, shaking the ball. "What's wrong with him?"
"I don't think anything's wrong with him." Draco said slowly, to judge Clarissa's reaction. She didn't argue. She just looked defeated. "He's just different."
"Like Finn said, it's just stupid divination." She snapped, suddenly caring again, as she dropped the ball into Draco's hand.
It went cold instantly. Draco almost didn't want to look. But he did.
She was there again. They were walking in the snow. Draco thought he looked about the same, maybe a little paler. They were heavily bundled up, both of them in layers of black winter clothing. The wolf/dog walked on the other side of the girl. Draco tried to turn and look at her face, but at that moment she turned her attention to something in a nearby tree, so Draco only got a look at the back of her hat. A tuft of red hair peaked out from under it, the only real color in the whole picture.
"Someone's coming!" Clarissa yelped from her watch point at the door. Caitlin stopped blubbering instantly, Finn turned red, and Draco dropped the crystal ball on the desk. The felon foursome took off towards the back door.
"It's locked!" Finn harshly whispered.
"Shh," Clarissa said.
Two sets of footsteps approached the main entrance of the tower.
"Headmaster, you must understand, the signs, the signs!" Professor Trelawney said.
"Sybill, you have been recalling signs for years now." Dumbledore reminded her. He sighed and added, "but if you have any new information…"
"Yes, yes, I do!" She said, playing with a large ruby ring on her middle finger. "Many crystal balls were black!"
"I beg, your pardon?" Dumbledore replied.
"I got it!" Finn said, having picked the lock. He scurried out, Clarissa on his tail. Caitlin didn't budge. She was blocking Draco.
"Black?" Dumbledore repeated.
"Dark! Empty!" She said, throwing her hands in the air for emphasis.
Draco sudden felt a wave a nausea crash down on him. "Go," he said, pushing Caitlin out the door. He knew what Trelawney was going to say, and he didn't think Caitlin needed to hear it.
"I wanted to hear that!" Caitlin growled, rubbing her elbow, and they followed the corridor down to where they assumed Clarissa and Finn would be waiting for them.
"No, you didn't." Draco assured her.
"Don't tell me what I want." Caitlin growled. She reminded him of Hermione in a way. And that was not a good thing.
"Listen, you didn't want to hear that, okay?" Draco said, grabbing her by the arm. Caitlin may have been older, but he had a good four inches on her.
"Okay," she agreed, sensing the seriousness and fear in his eyes.
"And don't blame Finn for anything." He added before letting her arm go. "There's nothing between him and Moira."
"Okay." She said, confused, but accepting. They could see Clarissa and Finn waiting by a statue of Dewey the Noble further down the hall. "Draco?"
"Yeah?"
"Is everything going to be okay? What did you see in your crystal ball? Did you see something important?" Caitlin asked, for once in her life, not bossy.
"Let's just live in the present, not in the future, okay?" He said, wishing that was as easy as it sounded.
"Are you okay?" Blaise said, placing one of her tiny hands on his shoulder.
"I'm fine. Why do you ask?" Draco replied, not really looking at her, but at the book in his lap.
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you jumped about three feet when I touched you?" Blaise said, raised eyebrow and raised suspicion. "I mean I know some guys still think girls have cooties, but I didn't really take you to be one of them."
"Ha, ha, you're funny." He said.
Blaise smiled. "There's my Draco." She said, sitting down on the stone bench next to him. He was acutely aware of how she called him 'her Draco' and he most certainly did not hate it.
"Watcha reading?" She asked after a few silent seconds.
"Nothing." Draco said, stuffing the divination book back in his messenger bag.
"Okay," She said, pulling a little further away from him.
Draco noted this too. "Want to go get dinner?" he asked her, desperate for a change in the focus of the conversation.
"Sure," She said, getting to her feet and offering a hand to help him.
"Thanks."
They started walking across the leaf covered courtyard. "Draco?" She said. "It's cold."
"Yeah, it is." He replied. He looked at her and smiled and then, without thinking, he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer.
"You're warm." She said, leaning her head on his shoulder as they walked. Whatever part of him that had been questioning something between her and Jesse completely disappeared. Whatever part of him wondered where his red haired friend was, was completely ignored. He didn't want to know. He just wanted to enjoy this moment.
And while he was in a good place, he knew it would only be a matter of time before everything came rushing back to him and weighed his thoughts down.
But he would be happy for this moment.
"You know what?" Blaise said, looking up at him slightly, her head still on his shoulder. "Today was a pretty great day."
"Oh yeah?" He replied, with a smile in his eyes to match the smile on his lips. "I wouldn't be able to take credit for any of it, would I?"
Blaise looked away coyly. "Well, I guess it depends on how the rest of the day goes. Its not over yet, you know."
"No, its not." He agreed, with a much more melancholy tone than her, but she didn't seem to notice for once. She was happy and that made him immensely happier than he ever imagined life with the red haired girl could be. "No, its not."
And it was that moment that he was determined to fight the "fate" the crystal ball had handed him. His fiery haired friend would not be there. He would be with Blaise, protect her as long as he could. He had to; he didn't think he'd have the strength to carry on otherwise.