And if we dream - Draco Malfoy/ OC

Chapter 25- A new person

Summary: Like some magnetic force, like some unbreakable bond she was drawn back to him again and again. And now, staying away was an inconceivable notion. "Always." she murmured, one hand finding his, the other tangling into his platinum hair, "Always."

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I'm on a roll guys! You're reviews are really spurring me on at the moment! Thankyou! Really hope you are enjoying it! Let me know!

I know you guys want more A/D interaction but its getting there, bear with me! it's a slow burner they hated each other for years after all! Aha! Much love poppets!

Also another note- please remember there will be canon divulgence - other wise Avery wouldn't exist!

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"A Scourgify!" Neville cried, uncharacteristically angry as he dropped onto the bench next to Avery in the dinner hall, "The answer was Scourgify!"

"Hi Neville!" Avery grinned around a mouthful of bread, "Where could you possibly have been all this time?"

"Very funny," the boy laughed, a smile tugging at his lips, "How did you work it out so quickly?"

"Yes." Hermione said, perking up, turning away from where she was watching Lavender stroke Ron's arm, "How did you work out the answer so quickly? Your lesson hadn't even finished before you left."

"Because I'm brilliant." she stated. At the blank looks she received in response she sighed, "Good, old fashioned teamwork." she amended.

"With Malfoy?" Harry snorted.

"Yes."

"You. Working with Malfoy? And no one was maimed or cursed?"

"Yes Harry. I worked with Malfoy and no one was hurt." Avery grumbled.

"I would kill the ferret if I had to work with him." Ron joined the conversation, mouth full.

"I'd kill you for working with him Ron!" Harry laughed.

"He's not so bad." Avery blurted. Her eyes widened as her friends gaped at her.

"Are you crazy?" Ron cried "He's terrible!" Avery lowered her eyes as Ron began a loud mouthed tirade on the many evils of Draco Malfoy, probably loud enough for the subject to hear at his own table.

"Ron!" Avery interrupted, "If you let me finish, I was going to say that he's not so bad at Herbology." she lied, "We both just need a push then we can work it out."

"Right." Ron said, placated as Lavender soothed him loudly with disgusting baby noises, Harry nodded and returned to his own food.

Avery sniffed and met the hazel eyes of Ginny who was looking at her with a comforting smile on her face. Avery blinked and shrugged. She cleared her throat, "I have to go to the library tonight. Does anyone else want to come?"

"Can't I'm afraid, I'm seeing Dean." Ginny said.

Ron and Harry both shook their heads, the thought of the library and homework just awful to them.

"I have Head of house duties tonight." Hermione sighed, "You know I would have otherwise."

Avery nodded, "No worries guys. I'm going to head up there now, get a seat." She waved goodbye to her friends and made her way down the hall.

"Hey Greenwood!" She heard Pansy Parkinson's voice call, "You're looking a little pale, where'd the ginger go?"

Avery narrowed her eyes at the girl avoiding Malfoy's tired stare from where he sat beside her. "I just wanted to be more like you Pansy! You're such an inspiration to me."

"Really?" The dumb girl preened.

"No!" Avery threw behind her, as she passed by a group of fourth year Hufflepuffs and stepped into the hall. The library was empty when she arrived and she moved towards the back, seating herself near a window.

"The Elixir to induce Euphoria." Avery mumbled to herself as she removed her Potions text book and parchment and quill from her bag. Avery didn't mind the library, she didn't exactly like the place but found that it was much easier to complete homework in the relative quiet of the place on weekday evenings. Weekends, the library was often packed, and unless you arrived early there were no spaces to work, usually filled by kids who had left their homework to the last minute. Tonight though she was completely alone.

She opened her potions text book to find the ingredients needed for the potion, speaking them aloud as she wrote them down, " Mint Sprigs… Wormwood…

Shrivelfig," she dipped her ink again, "Porcupine Quills…Castor beans-"

"Elixir to induce Euphoria?" A voice asked, causing Avery to jump, narrowly avoiding spilling her ink.

"Bloody hell Malfoy!" she shouted, earning a harsh hushing sound from Madam Pince.

"Didn't mean to scare you." He smirked.

"Yes you did." Avery grumbled in reply.

"Well-" Malfoy conceded.

"What are you doing here?" Avery asked as the Slytherin took the seat opposite.

"Homework."

"And there's nowhere else you could be sitting?" Avery shook her head.

"We've done homework together before Greenwood." Malfoy said, pulling his own Potions work from his bag. Avery noticed he was slouching wrinkling his jacket and shirt, something she had only ever seen him do when they were alone. Malfoy was relaxed around her. He wasn't tense.

"Yes, Herbology, in which we're partners." She said, digesting the news. The blonde ignored her and began reading through his own textbook. She sighed and moved back to her own. They worked for a while in comfortable quiet, only broken by the occasional shuffle of parchment and the scratch of quill, "The Elixir to induce Euphoria is a potion that creates a sense of inexplicable, irrational happiness in the drinker." Avery mumbled gently as she wrote, something she was prone to doing, "If brewed correctly the potion will be-" she put her quill down and shuffled through her text book frowning.

"Yellow." Malfoy said, "It'll be sunshine yellow."

Avery picked up her quill, "I forgot how good you were at potions."

"I'm not top of the class for nothing." he replied.

"We always thought it was because Snape is your house head and Godfather." Avery said. Malfoy shook his head with a sigh.

"What will it smell like?" Avery asked, "Is it like the love potion? Does it change to attract the drinker?"

"It doesn't smell of anything specifically," Malfoy replied, "Just sweet, aromatic, attractive in a general way, nothing specific."

Avery nodded, jotted down the information, "Thanks. Are you going to work with potions when you leave here?" Avery asked, taking advantage of this new sense of camaraderie. "Hogwarts I mean."

Malfoy shrugged, "Maybe."

"You could teach." Avery said, "You know a lot and you're good at it. Or a potions master, healing potions or something?"

Malfoy shrugged again, eyeing her curiously, "What about you?" he asked after a moment.

It was Avery's turn to shrug then, "I don't know." She said, "I've not really got anything I'm particularly good at. Can't fly that well, average a potions and defence and pretty much everything. I really don't know."

She turned back to her work and added some more information, unsure of the word limit she was to stick to, listing excessive singing and nose tweaking as some of the possible side effects of the potion.

"Astronomy." Malfoy blurted.

"What?"

"I heard you talking once, about Astronomy, you were going on about Europa and Ice and environments."

"Europa is covered in ice." Avery amended.

"Just seemed to excite you. And you're always in the tower."

"I have lessons there." Avery laughed.

"Not when I'm there" came the reply.

"You never did tell me why you go up there." Avery frowned, tilting her head curiously. Malfoy shrugged again, seemingly a natural response when he wouldn't or couldn't answer a question. "In third year," Avery changed the subject, "I dropped my telescope over the edge of the tower."

Malfoy barked a surprised laugh, "How?"

Grinning she continued, "They have stands remember? You can adjust the height with the screw?" Malfoy nodded, "Professor Sinastra has always been more inclined to the muggle ways of Astronomy so made us do all of the adjusting without magic, I couldn't get the screw to tighten and took the telescope off of the stand and left it on the side of the tower." Malfoy nodded for her to continue, surprisingly completely enthralled in her story , "I was tightening the screw and stepped back and elbowed it off the edge. The irony is that when I elbowed it it's because I was celebrating having gotten the stand to stay how I wanted it. I couldn't do the rest of the class but Professor Sinastra was so angry at the disruption that she made me stay in the tower whilst the others worked. It didn't matter to her that I had broken my own property!"

"I didn't realise you were so clumsy." Malfoy murmured.

"I'm sure there's a lot we don't know about each other Malfoy." Avery stated, no longer keeping up the pretence of working.

"Is that why you didn't join the Quidditch team?"

"You were there Malfoy, in the first year flying lessons, I almost killed myself when my broom took off towards the school. I didn't really have anyone at home to teach me to fly." She stated, "Besides, I'm too clumsy, I barely have any balance on the ground. Don't get me wrong, I can fly if need be but I will never be able to do it for sports."

"I didn't know you spoke so much either." Malfoy smiled.

"Not to you." she replied, "I'm usually too busy listening to you insult me and my friends."

"You give as good as you get Greenwood." Malfoy snorted, "Like today, Pansy genuinely thought you looked up to her for style ideas. She wasn't happy when she realised."

"Well, I'm sure you managed to comfort your girlfriend Malfoy!"

"She's not my girlfriend!" Malfoy shouted, affronted. "Eugh."

Avery found herself laughing, ignoring Madam Pince's glare from across the room.

The blonde laughed too, quieter than Avery, as if it was something he didn't do often, which considering his family, friends and school house was probably a correct assumption. Avery studied him, clothes rumpled, posture completely slumped, hair messy and rumpled, cheeks warmed from laughter, eyes shining. It was as if she was looking at a completely new person, at a teenage boy not a Malfoy. At a normal student not a Slytherin with a reputation such as his. He still looked tired, had since the start of the year, more so since returning from Christmas, dark circles ringed his eyes as if her weren't sleeping. Considering the amount of times he had joined Avery in the tower she could probably attest to this. This year though, Malfoy had been different, not necessarily in this moment, this was far too surreal that Avery thought she might just be imagining it, but this whole year, still a prat. Always. He'd been quieter, not quite on his game when it came to insulting and harassing Avery and her friends. He had been nice, to Avery at least, returned her property and corrected her essay when she was sure he would have incinerated it just because he could.

Avery didn't know what to think, on one hand he'd been sneaking around, hugging cupboards in dark alleys with his mother and other suspected death eaters and Harry strongly suspected him of something, but on the other hand he'd been kind, funny and helpful. Avery knew she shouldn't trust him, having followed him herself that day in the alley, having seen the suspicious behaviour with her own eyes she knew something was going on. But there was something, call it gut instinct perhaps, that said there was something more to it, that maybe this Draco Malfoy, the one sat opposite her right now was the real Malfoy, the one she had never been able to see past the sneers and insults and general childish behaviour. This Draco Malfoy she could tolerate, this Draco Malfoy she liked.

"See something you like?" Said Malfoy interrupted her thoughts with a smirk.

"What?" she asked, shaking her head to clear it, "No. I was just thinking."

"About apologizing for snapping at me after Herbology?"

She rolled her eyes, "No. I'm not apologising for anything. I asked you to stop touching me."

"You haven't seemed to mind it for the last ten minutes." he indicated the desk, where their hands sat in the middle, his index finger rubbing gently over her pinky. She moved to pull her hand away, but didn't move. "What game are you playing Malfoy?" She asked, "What are you up to?"

"Nothing." He shrugged, finger stilling.

"Then why did you kiss me?"

The blonde smirked, "Because I wanted to."

Right 2.30 am I am sleeeeeeping!

Ciao!

NOTE: The telescope story is true, my friend and I both have telescopes I couldn't get my stand to move whilst the telescope still rested on it and put it on the table, then celebrating having got it right I knocked mine off the table (not quite a tower) luckily it was okay and only fell onto the joint bench, a few scratches is all. My friend was just thankful I hadn't knocked his! Haha!

Potions, ingredients etc from Harry Potter WIKI.

A/N- I have a new fic out! it's a walking dead Daryl/OC fic Check it out if you're a fan! Lots of love! X

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