I woke up to the sound of a slamming door and a thump as another body landed in my bed. I lay there for a second to see if they would try anything, my wand at the ready. When they didn't, I whispered a spell to close my bed-curtains, cast a silencio and a lumos to see the face of the intruder.
This was automatically greeted with a groan from the blond-haired boy, who sat up and asked me what I was doing in his bed.
"Your bed?" I asked quietly, hoping to keep him calm (in my experience, tired boys are generally prone to be angry boys).
"Yes, my bed," he grumbled.
"Hun, you are in the girl's dormitory. I've been here since there were lanterns on to prove that in the next bed over sleeps Pansy Parkinson, snoring blissfully away," I insisted, hoping to wake him up enough to get him to leave.
"Dammit," he mumbled as he rolled back over, facing the curtains, making no move to get out.
"Well, aren't you going to go to your room?" I asked, pushing him lightly towards the edge of the bed.
He sat up abruptly. "Grace, I have been up all day, working very hard on something that will cost my life if I can't complete. I am not interested in walking back upstairs and then down some more stairs to my dormitory. If you want, you can sleep in my bed, but I am not moving." He thumped back down onto the bed.
"Okay," I whispered, then found my voice, hopeful he hadn't noticed the slight waver I hadn't planned on. "But if you're still here when Pansy wakes up you are dealing with her, and if she comes after me for this you will stop her. Deal?"
"Deal," he whispered, laughing lightly and groggily. "Now goodnight, Grace Cooley."
"Goodnight Draco Malfoy." I rolled over to face away from him, pulled the covers up to my neck, and prayed that I would wake up a decent distance away from him.
Unsurprisingly enough, I woke up before His Miserably Tired Highness. Surprisingly, though, I was a foot from him (I still wasn't good enough to guesstimate the metric system), staring at his face.
I sat up slowly, hoping I wouldn't wake him, then realized it was Monday and he needed to wake up for breakfast anyways. I peeked through the curtains to make sure Pansy was already upstairs before waking him up, though.
"Mornin' sunshine!" I giggled as I poked his face.
"What kind of a wake-up is that?" he spat, staring at me, his eyes a cross between animosity and amusement.
"The Grace Cooley kind. Don't like, don't sleep here," I retorted happily (and a few decibels louder to wake him up some more).
"It's a risk I might end up taking. The girls' beds are so much more comfortable than the guys'," he remarked, cracking the first sincere grin I'd seen. "I'd take it up with our head of house, but even he might have a problem with the how-I-know-that aspect of it."
I laughed, surprised at Draco's about-face in temperament, then sobered quickly. "It's time for breakfast, smiley. I'm sure after you get some food in your tired-out self you'll be your usual style of jerk," I said, smiling at him before grabbing his hand and pulling him off of the bed with me.
He narrowed his eyes at me and walked to the door. "Don't forget, little girl, I'm a scary and hostile Slytherin." He tossed the line at me as he closed the door behind him, his laughter undermining his creepy tone.
I stood stunned for a second, replaying all that had happened, before shrugging it off and going to shower, sure everything would be back to normal after breakfast.
Margo and Charlie begged me to tell me everything Draco ever said to me, and I learned that I could indeed keep a secret as I hid the hidden side of him from them every time. I never told them how I watched him covertly every day, or how I noticed what he ate at meals (always something warm), how he ate his meals (never spilling anything, a complete opposite of my own clumsiness), what he wore, and how unhealthy he looked, no matter how much he ate.
They didn't see what I saw; that he always try to hide his pallor, or how he always avoided people in the hallways, or his eyes. Most of the time (especially when he was torturing—or trying to torture—Potter) they were still the dark, bottomless pits they always were, but when he looked at me they shifted slightly, sparking with the hint of life. I watched his eyes constantly, laughing inwardly every time he was affected just by looking at me. Watching him lose even that tiny bit of control became my drug. I was slowly falling in love with his eyes. Not the rest of him—not yet.
"I've kissed guys before; I just haven't felt that THING!" Margo quoted from our most recent favorite Muggle movie (Never Been Kissed) that we'd watched the night before on Margo's bed (the Hufflepuffs being too nervous to kick out both a Ravenclaw and a Slytherin from their dorm). We were pretending to watch a Quidditch game to waste time, and getting more and more ridiculous with each passing moment.
"Well maybe you haven't, but our Grace sure has!" crowed Charlie, giving me a vigorous pat on the back and smirking at my expression.
"I have not."
"Oh don't deny it. Noone can kiss the 'Slytherin Sex God' and not feel that THING." Margo laughed at Charlie's rendition of her high girlish voice.
"Oh big deal. I kissed him, so what? Doesn't mean I want to shag him!"
"Ooh listen to our Grace, spouting out British slang like a pro," Margo chortled at my American expense.
"Margo you forget. Our Grace isn't like most girls. She's American. There's gotta be a shield against sexiness in her DNA," Charlie commented, joining in the rag-on-Grace fun.
"Oh yeah! DNA versus Draco Malfoy, sexy Slytherin. Wonder who'll win?" Margo managed to get out between chuckles.
"You two are insufferable," I squeezed out, laughing uncontrollably at my two crazy friends. They didn't even know the half of it. "Pay attention the game, won't ya?"
"Oh Grace, it's only Gryffindor against Hufflepuff. Everyone knows Gryffindor will win," Charlie sassed back at me.
"And besides, it's more fun to take the mickey out of you than watch the game," agreed Margo, unfazed by the slight to her house. "So. Have you, Grace Cooley, felt that thing?"
No, Margo, you have to ask the real question. 'Has Draco Malfoy felt that thing?'" corrected Charlie.
Still giggling, I looked down into the pitch, then at Chalie, then over Charlie. "Ask him yourself," I stated, startled by the discovery of a blond head making its way towards us.
"OhmyGod. I hope us just got here," whispered Margo hurriedly.
"He has—"
"And he's coming this way!" Charlie butted in, also whispering.
He swaggered up to us, smirk firmly in place (almost like a defense mechanism, I noticed, waiting for his façade to crack). I smiled at him to throw him off-balance.
"Hey Draco," I lifted head in that eyebrow-chin-head move that guys use when they want more, fueled by the barely hidden giggles of my friends. Draco's eyes hardened even more (if that was possible), and I wondered if he was mad or trying not to laugh at my attempt at male posturing.
"Grace," he sneered. Definitely mad. Oops. "Have you seen Pansy?"
"Thankfully, no. I've had my fill of irritating-mixed-with-ugly today," I said, narrowing my eyes in confusion.
"Good." He grabbed my arm and dragged me from the stands. Margo looked slightly scared, and Charlie gave me a thumbs-up, waggling her eyebrows. Typical.
He pulled me into the castle, only letting go of me when we stopped, in front of the painting to the kitchens, where he proceeded to tickle the pear and grab my arm again to pull me in.
When he finally let go again I immediately rubbed my arm, surprised that he didn't leave a mark. He turned to face me, and I felt relief rush through me. His eyes held none of the hardness they had had earlier, instead the spark I was beginning to claim as mine was back.
"What are we doing here?" I asked, shaking my head slightly with confusion, smiling automatically at his eyes.
"Hiding from Pansy," he stated grumpily, grabbing a cookie off of the nearest counter and eating it with gusto as he sat down in a chair he had transfigured into something akin to a Lay-Z-Boy.
"And you brought me along for the ride?" I asked, confused as to my role.
"Alibi," he stated. "If Crabbe and Goyle notice both of us are gone, they'll distract Pansy so she won't notice, instead of helping her to look for me."
I sat on the counter with the cookies, taking one and nibbling on it, thinking about what he said and counting each cookie he took. We sat in silence, him content to eat, and me content to watch him like a mother hen.
"What are you staring at me for?" he finally asked.
"Oh, just your amazing good looks," I teased, laughing at the surprised look on his face, and hoping he wouldn't press the subject. I wanted to keep my stalker tendencies as much on the down-low as possible.
He smirked at me, causing me to blush a bit and look down at my swinging legs. I swung off of the counter then, remembering that I had an Arithmancy essay to finish off before the weekend, which I planned to spend gleefully walking around the school grounds stepping on every crunchy leaf I saw.
"Well, see ya, I've got things to do," I said quickly, getting ready to escape back to the world without a confusing—and underfed—boy.
"Grace," he spoke, stopping me before I could take a step. "Thank you in advance for not mentioning this." He looked pointedly at me, daring me to contradict him.
"No problem!" I called, waving to him as I left the house elf domain.
I looked out the first window I came to, surprised to see the sunset, and glad that my parents weren't there to see what a horribly unhealthy supper I'd had.
Remembering my friends, I sighed. I was going to have a lot of explaining away to do, in order to keep my unspoken promise to the boy in the kitchen.
I found myself a window and perched on the ledge, watching the sun go down and thinking of home to keep myself from thinking of Draco Malfoy. I could do that in the dark. My mind wandered in circles, and I slowly realized there were people whispering furiously down the hall from me.
"I'm telling you, he's a Death Eater!" one voice hissed.
"And I'm telling you he might not be. You need to calm down, Harry," a quieter, saner voice responded.
"Of course he's a Death Eater, Hermione! He's a Malfoy, isn't he?" a last voice stated.
The quiet voice sighed, and the trio moved out of hearing range, something I was grateful for.
It hadn't occurred to me that Draco could be a Death Eater. I thought of what I'd read about Voldemort and his followers (not nearly enough, I was realizing), and I found myself pitying the boy.
Grace, I have been up all day, working very hard on something that will cost my life if I can't complete.
I couldn't see that being a Death Eater had helped him all that much. I had no idea what he was like before this year (not much different, if the second-years were to be believed), but I was sure that he'd lost weight since the beginning of the year, and I knew for a fact he was carrying an impossibly heavy burden.
I was scared, not of him, but for him, and that worried me.
I realized that I had yet another secret now, and this one was even less mine than the others.
And I realized, I wanted to kiss him again.
Howdy :) I know, I know, "The staircase to the girl's dormitory turns to a slide when guys try to take it!" One: That's only the Gryffindor dorms. Two: In my offshoot of the Potter world, the dormitories of Slytherin are below the common room. So, it turning into a slide would be counter-productive. Anyway, sorry I took so FRIGGIN LONG to update, but I'm back in the game! :)