Crocodiles
CHAPTER SEVEN.
"Don't you want this, Malfoy? Come on now, isn't this what you've always wanted? Relax boy, I can give it all to you, all you have to do is trust me and everything will be just they way you have always wanted it…"
Draco Malfoy opened his eyes and stared at the rich green canopy above him. He frowned. The sounds of his dormitory seemed normal. He registered the untroubled soft snoring of Crabbe, and Zabini's habitual 'ptzah' type snorts. His eyes felt clear so he could not have been asleep very long. He stuck a hand blindly out of his curtains and groped for the large silver chain watch lying on this bedside table. His hand knocked the side of a water glass, and he continued more carefully until he located the smooth round face and slowly brought it back into the confines of his bed.
"Lumos." Ah maybe it was later than he thought. In fact it was much, much later, it was nearly time to get up. Somehow that made the dream all that more creepy. He could have sworn that the unnaturally high-pitched voice in the dream was still with him. In one movement he leapt out of his bed and pulled the curtains completely open. He stared round the dormitory, looking for anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing but the early grey dawning light glimmering from the enchanted ceiling. He wished, and not for the first time, that they did not have dungeon rooms and could therefore have some windows. He deeply wished to escape right now, and flying out of the window would be very tempting. Crossing the room he shrugged into a black dressing gown, slipping through the arched doorway and up the cold stairs into the relative comfort of the Slytherin common room.
From a wand jabbed in its general direction, the smouldering fireplace burst back into life. Glancing about to reassure himself that he was indeed alone at this early hour, Malfoy curled onto a sage leather sofa and hugged himself, deep in thought. The dream that had terrified and intrigued him was fading fast on the outskirts of his conscious mind. He grasped at it briefly, trying to remember. It had been about Potter; of that he was certain. All of his dreams since the 'incident' had been about him in some shape or form. Not sexual dreams. Just… unsettling. Someone asking him to decide what he wanted. He considered the question. Since realising his sexuality Malfoy had been quieter, introverted. He was not ashamed of himself –not really, anyway- he was well aware that he was not the only person at Hogwarts who was not completely straight. What vexed him was the reaction of his subconscious.
He shifted so that he could lie more comfortably on the sofa, face turned towards the crackling orange blaze which was starting to radiate a little more heat now that it had got going. One couldn't suddenly just decide whether one was gay or not, he thought. Homosexuality had to be something that you were either born with, simmering under the bearer's conscious until they felt more ready to submit to the realisation, or else it grew steadily by degrees, over a period of time, as maturity forced the body and the human psyche to develop and realise its own ideas of desire. Either option surely meant that he had, in effect, been 'gay' for a length of time before he was able to realise the emotions for what they really were.
Painfully, deliberately, Malfoy forced himself to cast his mind back to any previous details, no matter how insignificant they might have seemed at the time. Zambini in the communal showers, chatting to him with that underlying uneasiness that he had always tried to hide as he covertly appraised the dark boy's torso, telling himself that he was comparing their muscle structure… fending off Pansy that night after the Yule Ball, the unfathomable desperation to get away when her touches had become just a slight too personal to ignore… wishing he could punch the open grin off Potter's face, rip his Quidditch robes to shreds, maybe not for all the reasons he had previously thought, after the Gryffindor's thousandth capture of the snitch.
Potter. Malfoy sighed impatiently to himself, rubbing his tired eyes as if the action could bring some further clarity to his thoughts. The irony that it was Potter who had attacked him in such an undeniably sexual manner, yet it was himself to experience the epiphany, was not lost on Malfoy. He forced himself to conjure an image of the other boy, much as his mind tried to object to the exercise. Detestable. The 'incident' had left Potter's place within his own personal world in limbo. He still disliked the boy, that fact could not be debated. The temporary truce the two had toiled under in the parallel universe offered by the hospital wing, had since dissipated once returned to the openly amniotic environment of the school corridors. But nothing could become exactly what it once was. One-on-one, physical fighting no longer appealed due to a certain unfathomable sense of misplaced guilt. The secret of the 'incident', not to mention the certain more personal one they both shared, had warped the situation beyond their control and it was intolerably awkward.
Malfoy shut his eyes and stared at the back of his eyelids, glowing red from the light of the fire. Waking up noises had begun to filter down from the dorms above. He should really go back to bed and 'wake up' himself to avoid suspicion. His roommates were not completely oblivious to that fact that something about him had changed; he should try harder to sort himself out before they got together the balls to ask him about it.
Across the castle, way above him, Ronald Weasley whacked his best friend on the arm, and Harry Potter's eyes snapped open.
I think you guys should review mucho as then I tend to update faster! lol. No seriously, I am sorry -I had a 15 week project which was pretty intensive so please don't kill me! What do you think of this chapter? I know it has no dialogue but I think I needed a joiner.