We arrived back at the manor and I took my bags up to my room, Bella going to talk to father. I picked up Bo and my favorite black lace parasol and headed outside to walk around the yard. I walked down around the old pool, grass cracking up through the cement, breaking it into uneven chunks scattered around the yard.

"What's troubling you?" Boa hissed, his head laying on my shoulder.

"Nothing is troubling me," I told him, not looking down at him.

I felt him wind a little tighter on my arm. "Yes there is."

"Oh, how can you tell?" I asked him, finally gracing him with a glance.

"I know you. I know how you move when you're content, and how you move when something has your wand in a knot."

I smiled some, thinking of what all I should tell him, and what I shouldn't. "Does being in love make you weak?" I finally said as I looked down into his face.

He blinked at me. "I'm a snake," he said bluntly.

"You're a snake that wondered what was wrong," I informed him.

"Touche. I would assume it does. But does that really matter, so long as you're happy?"

"Does happiness really exist? Like, true happiness, or is it merely relative to the situation?"

"True happiness lasts forever..." he said softly in my ear.

"Is there such a thing as that though?" I asked him, desperate.

"Yes..." came his soft hiss after a moment.

I sighed as I sat down on the grass with him. "I have been taught my whole life to be strong, to never let your guard down, never show your weaknesses."

"But this is love, Layla. Love is something much different. It falls in an outer realm."

"They say, that in love, you have to vulnerable, you have to trust someone with your whole self, completely."

"Yes. So be vulnerable in love, and strong in everything else."

I looked down at him as I let him curl up on my stomach. "When did you get so smart?"

"I listen a lot," he said, giving me a look much like a grin.

I laughed a little and kissed the top of his little snake head. "Why can't you be like the prince from those muggle stories, a prince disguised as a frog?"

He chuckled some. "I would be too much for you to handle."

"Oh, please..." I laughed again. "Crazy snake..."

He hissed some and crawled off of me, slithering off to warm himself on a patch of concrete. I watched him for a moment before leaning back on my palms in the grass, looking up at the November sky above me. It wasn't sunny at all, it was cloudy, it looked like rain. All it ever did in England was rain.

I closed my eyes as the electrified air of an impending storm blew my dark hair back over my shoulders. I lay back in the grass, my eyes closed, and evidently drifted off to sleep

A few hours later I was awoken by the feeling of cool drops of water on my face and Bo hissing in my ear.

I groaned some, wrinkling my face before sitting up and looking down at him. "It's late," he told me as I picked him up.

"Thank you, I got that."

I picked up my parasol and closed it so the lace didn't get ruined even more than what it already was from my using it constant, and headed inside, just as the rain cut loose.

I headed back up towards my room when I saw Bella coming out of Father's study, messing with her hair.

"Bells," I said, hurrying to catch up with her.

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight of me, but regained composure quickly as she smiled. "Hello, darling."

I smiled back. "Hi. What did father have to say?"

"About...?" She said, a little confused.

I gave her a look. "About preserving some of London?"

"Oh! He just said that he would bring it up, and see what others had to say about it."

I nodded some and yawned. "I was outside with Bo and I fell asleep." I stretched a bit, still wound up my arm like a massive arm bracelet.

She smiled at him, scratching his chin some. "Hello, Bo..."

He hissed in my ear, and I giggled. "He says hello back."

She smiled at me and kissed my head. "Good night you two, I'm off to bed. Get some sleep!"

"Night, Auntie Bells..." I said as she walked away down the hall.

I headed up to the next floor, up to my room and opened my door, sighing with delight at the sight of my bed. I loved my bed.

I went in and shut the door behind me, putting Bo on the post of the four-poster. I quickly bathed and got ready for bed, pulling on a long night gown and crawling up and under the covers, nestling down under my comforter and duvet and sheets.

That night, I fell asleep, thinking about the ball, and about Draco and what he had said to me, then about what Auntie Bells had told me about him.

In the end I concluded that he was a prat. But a very attractive prat, and that I would just have to make him beg if he wanted me so bad.

In the morning I got up and got ready in my normal wear, one of my black victorian-styled dresses that I loved so much, minus a bum roll. They were just obnoxious.

I was just finishing up my hair when there was a knock on my door. I furrowed my eyebrows but fixed my lipstick and went over, pulling it open.

"Hey, Layla."

"Draco..." I said. I had to admit that I was a little surprised to see him at my door, but I was also a little relieved. Then I also remembered that I was going to make him work for this.

"Could we talk?" he said, rubbing the back of his neck some.

I shrugged and pulled my door open the whole way for him. "Sure."

He smiled as he stepped across my threshold and shut the door behind him as I went back over to my mirror, finishing myself for the day.

"Layla, I'm really sorry for the other night, about what happened at the ball."

That caught me off guard. Why was he sorry? Oh that's right, he's a git. But I couldn't let him see how bothered I was by it. "Why are you sorry? You were just being yourself."

"I know, I was. And that's why I'm sorry. I really do fancy you, Layla..." He looked up at me as I turned from my mirror to face him. "A lot."

Don't melt. Don't melt! "Well, thank you for that, but you've lost the chance, if you ever had one to begin with."

He looked at me, a little stunned, obviously quite used to getting his way. "But...I'm really really sorry! I want to make it up to you."

I fought back the smirk. Oh this would be fun. "How? Dinner? Galavanting around town?" I quipped sarcastically.

"I don't know!" he said, exasperated, and frustrated. "Whatever you tell me to do!"

"Draco, I could tell you to jump off of the London bridge, and it still wouldn't do anything. I've sworn off men. I'm giving up on them, on being in love. I want to focus on my father, and how to be the best possible servant to him."

"What? Oh, come ON!" he nearly shouted. "I really like you! I want to be with you, not just for the hot shagging!"

"I'm sorry, Draco," I told him, my internal smirk growing more at seeing him squirm and fight internally. Oh, that prophecy I'd made for him at the beginning of my stay here was turning out to be more accurate than I'd hoped.

He sighed, looking at me with pleading grey-blue eyes.

"You're not going to change my mind. I'm set on what I want to do.

"Fine!" he snapped, getting up. "Sorry I even bothered!" He was across my room in a matter of a few strides. "See you at the meeting Saturday," he said, cooly, yet defeated, as he walked out of my door, shutting it behind him.

I closed my eyes as I heard the door shut and took a deep breath, smiling some.

Layla: 1 Draco: 0

Saturday, after the meeting had concluded, I excused myself from the meal to take a walk outside in the cool breeze. I had caught Draco looking at me numerous times during the meeting, and I didn't want to deal with that all through dinner as well.

I closed the big French doors behind me as I walked out around the pool again, stepping over puddles from the rain storm that had just passed.

A few seconds later I heard the doors open and close, and the soft pads of footfalls on the wet cement behind me.

"Layla?" Draco said softly from maybe ten feet behind me. I spun towards him, his face hidden by shadows in the dim light outside. "I'm not giving up," he informed me.

"You're wasting your breath, and your energry," I told him, my voice almost sing-song.

"I don't care," he said, his voice forceful, like he really meant it.

"I don't want to get married," I tried, hoping to negate him even further.

"So what? I'm not proposing marriage or anything anyway. Can't we just date and see where it goes from there? You might change your mind," he said, arrogance dripping from his voice, and I could see his famous smirk playing on his lips, even in the dark

I rolled my eyes some. "No, we can't 'just date.' I don't want distractions."

"Merlin, you are difficult!" he yelled, throwing his hands up.

"Me? Me? How the hell am I the difficult one?"

"I'm telling you how I feel, and that I may even love you, and all you're saying is this shit about distractions and marriage!"

I blinked. Love?

I quickly regained my composure and looked at him. "Draco, you had your chance, that night at the ball. You could have told me then that you loved me, and maybe we'd be someplace different. But instead you decided to be a pompous bastard and you led me on and pulled that bull shit with Pansy. I don't trust you, nor do I believe anything that you say to me."

"I was trying to make you jealous! I wanted something real with you weeks before the ball, but you kept saying no! That it was just shagging!"

"You told me all that you wanted was the shagging!" I yelled at him. Now he was pushing my buttons.

"Well, my gut instinct was to try to piss you off!"

"What, and expect me to get in your face, start making out and having hot enemy sex?" I cried, incredulous. "Seriously, who the hell does that?"

He sighed. "Layla, I love you. Give us a chance."

"You love me?"

"Yes!"

"Then you have to prove it to me! I am not one of your little cuddling Hogwarts girls that just fall for you because you flash a smile at them. You have to prove to me that you really do love me, because right now, I don't trust a single thing you say or do."

"Tell me how to prove it to you!"

"I don't know how! You have to figure that one out on your own..."

He groaned some and came closer to me, taking my hand and looking into my eyes as he kissed it.

I wanted to swoon as those beautiful eyes gazed into mine.

I pulled it away from him. "I...I..."

"Yes?" he said softly, closer to me than I had let him in a long time.

"I just...I can't!" I said, turning away from him and running down the path.

"Layla!" he yelled, chasing me down.

I got to the courtyard and sank onto the side of the fountain, my head in my hands. How was I supposed to make him beg if I went weak every time he looked at me?

I heard him jog up beside me and sink down next to me on the fountain edge. "Layla..." he said softly.

The sound of my name on those lips...it did something to me, something that it should not have. It made me want him. It made me want to forgive him and live happily ever after with him.

No. If he wanted me, he would have to prove it. To me, to Father, to the world.

I looked up at him and he pushed a piece of my hair back, but I pulled away. He looked at me for a moment, then dropped his hand.

"Draco, stop this."

"Why?" he said, looking desperate to read my mind, to know what I was really thinking, to know why I was really doing this to him.

"I don't like you!" I said, though it wasn't true.

He looked stunned, like those words for foreign to him, and I knew that he must be so used to having any girl that he pleased. Except for me.

"N-not at all?"

I shook my head. "You lost that...stop trying to sway me."

His face hardened in an instant. "Fine. But if you change your mind, don't come searching for me!" He got up and stormed back towards the house.

I flinched some when I heard the door slam, and I released a sigh.

Playing hard to get with him was proving to be more of a challenge than it should have been.