"Your home is disgusting. No offence, but it is." Bones stretched in the front hallway before walking forward into the lounge. "It looks like dead people live here."
Draco shrugged out of his coat watching her. "Like dead people live here," he said dryly.
She was right, he thought in some surprise. The apartment looked like a morgue; sterile, clinical and impersonal. Even being in the front entrance was stifling. Strange the things that hadn't occurred to him before; not that they mattered to him now.
Bones turned slowly, assessing the lounge room. There was a languidness to her movements and Draco thought that she was one of those types who could drink an awful lot and not look drunk.
Finishing her assessment she turned back to find him watching her. She smiled at him carelessly, evidently reading the discomfort in the lines of his body. "I'm a mess, I know," she said with a laugh. "I don't know why. I used to be so nice in school as well – I don't know if you noticed, but I was. Everyone says so, so it must be true."
"You were different at school," conceded Draco, reaching out to hook his coat on the rack.
Bones had already twirled away to cross the room and run her finger along the edge of the framed painting on the far wall. "Cho Chang said you had a crush on me at Hogwarts. Pansy Parkinson threatened to use Cruciatus on me if I didn't leave you alone. Did you know?"
That was news to Draco. "Parkinson threatened that, did she?" he asked, unable to keep his tone from dropping to arctic levels.
Bones turned back to look at him, her eyes glinting much as the Avada Kedavra must have glinted right before hitting. "Only once," she said, violence creeping across her words.
There flared the danger in Bones. The first time Draco had encountered it was in fifth year, under Umbridge. Dumbledore's army had just been uncovered and Umbridge had said, "You hop along and see if you can round any more of them up, Draco."
Draco had gone after the Hufflepuffs. There was a short-cut that they couldn't have reached; more chance of getting them than the others, and Draco was nothing if not meticulous.
He'd come up against a witch of medium height, medium weight, medium build and medium looks whose eyes had sparked like the Avada Kedavra and who smiled like a wolf when she saw him. And, gods, he would have been hard-pressed not to smile back. Perhaps he laughed too; and perhaps the laugh was mocking – but not nearly so mocking as usual.
She watched him coldly with those Avada Kedavra green eyes and backed away with that wolf-smile, almost daring him to touch her. He wouldn't have if he could have; but he wanted her to stay a while, so he leant against the corridor wall and grinned his own brand of danger at her.
"Out for a stroll, were we?" he purred, voice taking on notes of supercilious superiority and throwing challenges at her in the hopes that she'd catch one and throw back.
Her laugh was less fire than smoke and, with a toss of her plait, she was gone. But that was Bones; she was the smoke, not the fire. Funny what they said about that; no one ever stares into the fire-place for the smoke, but if you're in a house-fire it's the smoke that kills you, not the flames.
Only later, hours later, did Draco realise that she'd been holding him up to protect the other Hufflepuffs. And he had folded to her plans as meek as a lamb.