AN: For Sam again. Looking back on these chapters (25-27) I'm realizing what a long day this must have been for Killious…three chapters of emotional flux's and ever changing dynamic relationships. I'm not sure I could endure that…-Richard S.
Picking and Choosing (Tales of Hogwarts Romance) Chapter 26
Illy walked silently the rest of the way back to the dormitories with Draco. They were both holding out for the other person to explain what had just transpired between the three involved parties.
"A thank you will do." Draco finally said with a mocking sneer, breaking the silence.
"Thank you for what? He's going to be twice as bad later! Damn it Draco he had put me down, I just had to catch my breath. It was done with and over! Now he's going to kill me! You embarrassed him…that can't happen"
"Do you seek out these fucked up relationships or do they come to you?"
"Don't act so self righteous! You made the same mistake last year as I recall. But he's not that bad to me…or at least he wasn't but this is crazy…" Tears were starting to trickle down her cheeks. He felt like they were leaking from the tip of her chin right down into his heart where they fizzed and burned like acid.
"Illy, he had his hands around your throat. He was going to choke you to death over something you weren't even responsible for." He picked her up from where she stood ridged just inside the door of the common room and sat her down on his lap in his favorite chair. Consequently it was her favorite as well, which means that he usually yielded it to her. It was better to sit across the room and imagine the things they did while she was in that chair than it was to have to deal with her unhappy looks.
She refused look him in the eye, something that he found deeply disturbing, though he half expected it. She was having a hell of a time at it though; the temptation to glance away from the uneventful wall and look at him was frustrating. But he would need to give her some kind of apology.
"We have some other things we need to talk about." Close enough. She leaned her head onto his chest. It felt nice to be here again, sitting in the darkest corner of the room in his lap.
"My summer I suppose…"
"Dumbledore and Snape talked. They think that it would be best if we didn't spend too much time apart, with everything that happened last time, we sort of scared the piss out of them."
"I don't want to be anywhere near your father. You can stay with us."
"Your parents are studying the cultures of mer-people this summer. They plan on being underwater for nearly five months, starting in April."
"So, you should be happy, I won't be able to send owl's to anyone, you can have me all to yourself, under water."
"…They don't want you to come."
"I know. They never do."
"So you have to stay with us. But dad is hardly there anyway, and mum is…well she might be a problem with giving us alone time." He exhaled a warm breath into her neck and nuzzled deeper into the space in between her throat and her jaw line.
"Draco…please…" He left a single kiss on the now purple bruise that wrapped nearly all the way around her neck.
"I'm sorry that your summer is ruined."
"It's better in honesty, normally I end up staying with distant relatives for a few days, then my parents for week long intervals, and with Snape for the rest of the time."
"Well, you'll be able to settle down some this summer, my mum is already decorating your room. But we do attend a lot of things, and we vacation a bit. But you're going to be with me for all of it."
"Great, I'll be drug to events I don't want to attend, force fed things I don't want to eat, and best of all I'll be living with my worst nightmare…sounds perfect for me."
"I'm not going to force feed you, I'm just going to feed you period. Harry's compliments scare the shit out of me even if you don't mind them."
"How would you hear his compliments? Are you having Crabbe and Goyle hover over me still?"
"I talk to Fred and George more than you realize. The last time I checked it was still considered a foul thing to encourage anorexia."
"I eat at every meal."
"And I am curiously celibate."
"I do eat! And just because I can't be the oversexed Draco Malfoy of food, which by the way would make me obese, does not mean that I don't eat enough!" Her anger flared with white hot intensity and faded away just as quickly when she realized that she had exhausted the majority of her emotional strength for the day on forgiving a friend for almost choking her to death.
"No, you nibble. That hardly constitutes eating."
"I'm not even that small, I've gained some weight." She mumbled out the words and let her head rest on his chest.
"Illy what dress size are you right now?" Her lids fluttered closed slowly
"That doesn't matter, I've never been a big girl." Her voice was still firm in her throat as she let herself become comfortable on his lap.
"Answer the question." He insisted stoically. Her soft grip in his shirt, as though it was a security blanket, was endearing but he had to focus. If he was going to be able to fix this broken girl in one summer he would have to make himself virtually immune to the normal reactions her touch elicited.
"I'm a double zero alright. But they make the size, so that means that perfectly healthy people have that weight."
"Perfectly healthy people don't consider one fourth of a cup of mash and four baby carrots dinner." He shuddered unnoticeably under her touch as she began to play with the hem of his shirt betwixt her fingers.
"Have you really been tracking my meals?"
"You eat them off my plate."
"Right…but I eat more often than most people."
"You used to. Before I got hurt." She could hear his voice flocculate painfully when he spoke about the incident; he never did get over the guilty feeling that everything that had gone haywire in her system was his fault. "But you never go to the kitchens with Harry and Ron anymore." Draco smiled triumphantly when Illy had no other protests. She sighed and deflated into his chest, as the air was pointless. She had nothing else to say to him.
"My mum wants to know…if you'll come for Christmas."
"No she doesn't. At least don't think that I can't tell when my best friend is lying. And no I won't. I already said I'd stay. Harry asked me to."
"He's been beating me to the punch lately."
"Quite literally." Illy accidentally let the thought blurt out. She immediately put her hands over her mouth to cover it. Draco smiled at her, with an icy glare but a kind smile. His ability to mix emotions with his expression was something that she loved about him. It was as if his eyes said what he was thinking and his mouth said what he wanted to be thinking; or something along those lines, she hadn't figured it all out quite yet.
"At least don't think that I can't tell when my best friend is in trouble." He craned his neck to be closer to her face and kissed her fingers lightly, before prying them from her mouth. He ran his thumb across her cheek lightly and pulled her slightly closer, she shuddered in his arms. Chills ran up and down her spine, begging her to do something she shouldn't. She leaned her head closer to his, bolting her eyes down so that she had the excuse of not seeing what she was doing. Her kiss missed target however, and was instead placed onto the palm of Draco's hand.
"I won't be a backup, or a summer fling, or a plaything to any woman." He quoted the lines back to her.
"I'm still right about that you know."
"No you're not. I'll prove you wrong one day; it would hurt my pride too much to have been mistaken about something so vital to my daily life."
"Now I simply can't let you be right. I've got a chance to hurt you in my grasp."
"If you want to hurt me than go ahead and say I'm right, I'll go get some handcuffs or something." He mischievously grasped her wrists and pulled them high over her head.
"There's something wrong with the fact that this turns you on." She said in the driest, most cynical tone she could muster.
"No there's something right with both of us, because it does the same for you."
"But I black out randomly, see other people's lives in my dreams, and am horribly afraid of your father, though I've only spoken to him three times. It's ok for someone like me to be into sadomasochism."
"In that case, I'm terrified of some little girl from a nightmare I've been having for the past several months, Pansy has been sexually abusing me for years, and I hate my dad too." He put both wrists in one hand and started to pull her shirt up from the bottom.
"Careful, you might hurt your shirt." Her voice was breathy and distracted, but jovial.
"Fuck my shirt." He pulled out his wand and used it to tear the shirt all the way up to her bra. The spell split the shirt seamlessly, like a letter opener on parchment. He pushed a hand between the two flaps of shirt onto her bare stomach.
"See, you like how thin I am any way." She jeered with little focus on the words coming out of her mouth. He froze in place for a second before sharply withdrawing his hand in disgust, and dropping her hands back to her side.
"Don't you dare assume that just because I can hardly keep my hands off you in public, I take pleasure in your sickness." He used his wand to fix the shirt and swiftly got up from the chair, but placed her into it in his place.
"I'm just saying Draco, you couldn't just pick me up and drop me in chairs like you can if I weighed more."
"I'd work out."
"You already do."
"I'll start working out more. You need to understand that I don't see the difference between what you are now and what you would be if you weighed six hundred pounds. All I see is that you are risking your health with your eating habits."
"If I weighed six hundred pounds I'm fairly certain that not only would I have crushed you a moment a go, but I would have taken out this chair with you." She smiled at him. He yielded and put her back in his lap, neither of them was in the mood to fight about anything.
"You're a mess Killy, and I'm going to spend my whole summer holiday trying to get your head strait."
"Killy? I like that, it sounds dangerous."
"Or just stupid, the two things that describe my relationship with you."
"So what are you planning to straiten out in my head?" She absentmindedly played with his long hair, drawing circles on his neck with the strands that were now an inch down from his shoulders.
"At least go shopping with me this break."
"It'll be a pain in the ass for them to let me go, too much work."
"I'll get my parents to take care of it. Besides you're beginning to steal my clothing."
"I'm not stealing them, you can have them back."
"Right now?" He grinned and started for the button on her pants.
"No! Not right now!" She slapped his hand away.
"You stripped for Fred!" He whined.
"That was different. We were covered in food, and he wasn't supposed to react the way he did…even though I understand it. Who could keep their hands off me?"
"I can go get some food if you want. I'm sure I have a container of whipped cream in my room."
"You keep it with the handcuffs I suppose."
"Where else?" He was now smiling like a school boy. His cheeks were pale pink shades, not from blushing, but instead from smiling for too long.
"Illy, Harry's looking for you." Jackquinn burst through the door looking somewhat aggravated, though not thoroughly pissed quite yet.
"What's wrong?" Draco asked, moving Illy from his lap to the nearest sofa, where he could sit next to her.
"Are you two dating yet? Or are you going to date Harry? I really am sick of this shit." Jackquinn snapped at the silent Illy.
"Hey, calm down Jacky. What happened?" She moved quickly across the room to give Jacky a hug, and drag him back to the couch with her. He kicked his shoes off and put his head in her lap. Draco smirked at Jacky's posture. He was laying across the couch with curled knees and eyes closed but his face was pointed straight up at Illy.
"Harry's just a bloody douche."
"What did he say?"
"He just told me that you had better wear a scarf tonight, and that I should tell Draco that he'll be extending the same forgiveness to you for embarrassing him as he did Draco."
"That all? Because seeing as most of that was a pathetic attempt by him at coding it didn't really apply to you."
"I figured he gave you a little love nip…and I did get the part about Draco" Jacky opened his eyes and they widened considerably. "Holly bloody fuck! That's no love nip, that's like…what is that?"
"Harry finds sport in choking girls in darkened alley ways."
"So do you, but he used his hands!"
"Ahem!" Illy drew the boys' attention back to the fact that she was still present. "I believe you were finishing your explanation as to why Harry is a douche."
"Oh, yeah…He just decided it would be polite to bring up my family when I told him he should run off with his ginger snap and release some of his sexual tension." Draco was instantly in hysterics as Jacky finished. Illy gaped…and then she gawked.
"You told Ron what?"
"Well it was meant for Harry love, don't get too mad. And besides why should you care? As I recall Ron's best friend plans to beat the living shite out of you the second he gets a chance." Draco put an arm around Illy as he spoke arrogantly.
"Get off me Draco, this is serious. Do you two want me involved in a war?"
"Well, we'd win. You can tell us everything that's coming." Jacky shrugged and curled up closer to Illy.
"It doesn't work like that, and you know it. But that's beside the point; I'm not interested in choosing sides."
"Of course not" Jacky played up the drama of the statement by drawing out each word, "you're who the war is over, you can't choose sides, we'll all fight to the death over you."
"Then I want my own side, I'd kick everyone's arse and she'd be all mine!" Draco became animated at the thought of being able to mortally wound a few choice competitors. Illy put her head in her hands and exhaled loudly.
"There is going to be no fighting or I'll just move back to Benin with Mum and Da and be done with all of your asses. Now back to what you were saying Jacky; I'll get Hermione and Ginny to stay close by tonight so that Harry can't do anything too drastic. And you need to tell me just what he said about your family so that I know what to hit him for."
"Oh, nothing too terrible came from your scar headed boyfriend, he only said that he could just go relieve all of his sexual tension on both of my mothers because they're such whores they don't mind having a cock loving, adopted, nancy boy as a bastard son."
"Wow…that's creative…does he know your gay?" Illy tried her best to envision Harry cursing quite that liberally, but seeing as Jacky was a Slytherin none of his friends would much care would they? That and he had just called Ron a gay ginger snap.
"No, he just put it in there. But that does mean that the whole school now knows that I have a lovely set of lesbians raising me, and you can bet everyone will be craning a neck to see the very French, very non black, couple, at the platform."
"I don't take the train home. My Mum and Dad just come and get me directly from the school most of the time." Draco explained.
"Guess that's the rout I'll be taking to save myself from gawking irritants."
"You are a bloody gawking irritant, damn first years can't stop causing me trouble." Draco shoved Jacky from the couch onto the floor and pulled Illy into his lap once again.
"What was that for? I don't cause you any trouble!" Jacky jumped up from his spot on the floor and stood ready to rip Draco's head off.
"You were getting more attention than me." Draco explained as if this was perfectly rational. "I don't get her often, and you're making a nuisance of yourself, barging in here and lounging around on her like she's furniture." Illy might have been upset if Jackquinn had not accepted the explanation with a shrug and a smile before sitting down in their chair.
"So what? You're the furniture in the relationship."
"Until he feeds me so much that I weigh six hundred pounds and I crush him." Illy muttered.
"She can sit on me on me all she wants." Draco smiled and snaked an arm around her waist.
"So back to the question originally asked, are you dating this little bit of princely slut or are you shagging Harry?"
"Both as far as I know" Draco answered before Illy could open her mouth. Illy tried to elbow him in the stomach, but he only rolled his eyes as she had missed him and hit the couch.
"I'm not dating you, and I have never so much as touched my lips to Harry…except for that one peck on the cheek. But that was a while back."
"She's lying. I saw her come back to class late the other day with Harry, looking like a tornado had ripped through her."
"I explained that to you…It was a tornado, just not a very sexually appealing one, even to the likes of me."
"Right…oh, by the way, is that heart still on your ass?" Draco asked the question as though he had only requested the time, but Illy's heart skipped a beat and her temperature went up three or four degrees. Jacky smiled and nodded knowingly,
"It's still there all right."
"I'm leaving." Illy stood up and headed tried to go towards the door, Draco had other plans however as he pulled her back by her waste, spun her around, and pulled her back to his lap. Her face was not even an inch from his. He looked into her eyes intently; the normally cool shale orbs were now a flashing shade of electric blue. He leaned his head in, so that their foreheads were touching,
"You better keep yourself safe Killy, I'd hate to spend my life in Azkaban for a crime so petty as killing Harry Potter." Illy smiled slyly at his sentiment.
"If he saw you right now I think he'd be saying the same thing."
"So would half the school, but they're just as jealous as he is. So take care of yourself." Draco made the statement more a demand than a suggestion.
"I will, I promise. Don't wait up tonight. I won't be back until late."
"It's the last night I'll see you before break though."
"I'll let you retrace your heart in the morning, that way I'll know where your thoughts'll be all break."
"I don't know about that, I do get other ass you know." Draco smiled and caught her lips in a tiny kiss. It was more like their lips brushed just long enough for the thought to register after they separated again. Illy pulled him into a hug and stood to leave again,
"Fine then, my ass will be ink free." She winked and walked out the door.
"You just passed up a chance to write whatever the hell you want on Killious Enquirous' ass. I'm not even straight and I'd do that." Jacky spoke up from his chair.
"You don't get it do you? She's just playing games with me, and I'm not always going to give her whatever she wants."
"You don't want to have her bend over for the sole purpose of giving you a good view, so that you can graffiti her arse?"
"I didn't say that, it's just that she likes to know she's stringing the whole world on, and I won't give her that satisfaction."
"Only because she won't do the same for you."
"Exactly, one of us is going to break down and loose this game, and it won't be me."
"Fine, but when both of you end up dangerously inseparable and still miserable with one another because neither of you has the sand to call the games off, I'm going to remind you that I told you so."
"Shut up Jackquinn, you don't even like your boyfriend and you two actually shag."
"You think I'd let that cheating ponce put his dick near me? Fat chance. He hasn't gotten any thing since the second girl I caught him with."
"Maybe that's why he keeps cheating."
"I don't care either way, he's just there to make Dolan realize that he needs to be honest with himself and Christian."
"Playing mind games I see."
"Shut up Draco, you don't even like your girlfriend and you two nock so loud the whole damn dorm has to hear it."
"Point taken…you're a bitch Jacky."
"We're a mess, and you're a bitch too."
"But the game must go on, we don't even have choice. But I'll play dirty if I must."
"You want to see dirty, try this on: I sneak off to the back of the library almost every day to snogg Dolan, and then I head off to Clause's dorm."
"I think about Illy whenever I'm fucking someone else…I literally convince myself that she's the one lying there."
"In that case, she's in for some surprise when you two actually get down to knocking boots, your imagination has the dorm up until three a.m. twice a week, I don't even want to know how late it will be when you finally have your way with that poor child."
"I have a feeling that she might not be the only loud one. I doubt she's quite as new at this as most of the girls here. You have to think about the fact that she's been all over the world, she's probably got a record like a sailor."
"I have some great stories about her sexcapades…wow, Italy is some place."
"Don't tell me she's a total tramp."
"Nah, she's just got the two Italians, the one Portuguese guy, the one quidditch player, and the auror…oh and Snape."
"You're shitting me…That's disgusting, he's old enough to be her dad, hell he practically is her dad!" Draco's face twisted in disgust.
"Actually I am just fucking with you. Snape has never even crossed her mind as far as I know." Jacky chuckled at Draco's face.
"Still, that's what, five partners?"
"Ask her about it sometime, she's not exactly shy. Almost all of the situations are so bazaar, like someone was just looking for her to get her ass killed."
"So what she fucked her assassins?"
"Just ask…and Draco…"
"Yeah Jackquinn?"
"Thanks for not having problems with my being gay."
"I only have problems with your being a black mudblooded pesky first year with lesbian parents and an adoptive background."
"What a relief."
"But really, you are pesky."
"And nosy."
