My weekend consisted of studying for exams and meeting Draco in the library.

Somehow it was strange, when I compared our relationship with Hannah and Neville's it was so very different.

The two of them were attached to each other from the beginning, spent every minute together and even now after almost half a year they were hardly separable.

Draco and I, on the other hand, spent just as much time together as before.

We didn't pine for each other or just cling to one another.

Were we doing anything wrong?

Was what we had not a real relationship but just two friends who kissed from time to time?

Draco always seemed so dismissive when I tried to get more physical.

Pushed me away or made me stop. He said all these things about how he couldn't control himself but he didn't show it.

What if he was just saying that because I was so incredibly bad at everything I did?

What if he wasn't even remotely as attracted to me as I was to him?

What if I didn't live up to his idea of me?

All these thoughts haunted my mind every night and I kept getting deeper and deeper into it, so that by Monday, when I sat next to him in class, I was firmly convinced that I was the problem.

"Can we talk in a minute?", I whispered to him while Professor Slughorn explained something at the front of the room.

"Sure. After class in the library?"

I shook my head.

"Can we meet at the lake instead?"

There was confusion on his face for a moment but he quickly regained his composure and nodded.

There was no sign of the gorgeous weather of the last few days today.

It was raining cats and dogs and reflected my inner self quite well.

I had to talk to him, I had to know where I stood with him.

There were too many problems in my life that I could have put my energy into a relationship that was doomed to fail from the start.

"I would have preferred a dry place," he laughed as he stepped towards me.

He leaned down and kissed me.

Damn, I lived for those kisses.

Each time it took my breath away and my capacity to think logically. It was intoxicating and fantastic, the best feeling ever.

I pressed closer to him, wanting to close every inch between us, to feel his were wet body against mine, just to know that he was there and that he would never let me go.

Maybe, maybe now would be the moment I was allowed to get closer to him.

The tip of my tongue touched his lower lip and I licked it gently.

Nothing, he didn't give me the slightest chance to get any closer.

Other plan.

My kisses shifted from his lips to his jaw and neck.

A contented growl from him was just what I wanted to hear and I began to suck lightly on his neck.

Before I even realised the intensity of my action, which was making itself felt in my tingling stomach, Draco had already pushed me off him and was now holding me at an arm's length away.

It was me, I was the problem.

I was soaking wet but it didn't bother me one bit.

I was pissed, angry, sad, disappointed, all of it together and none of it was for Draco, it was for me.

"Flo," he said softly and I couldn't hold on any longer. There was nothing left of the calm I had sworn to myself.

"What Draco!!! What am I doing wrong?"

"What?" he asked, confused as if he didn't know what I meant.

"I want to know what I'm doing wrong. What the problem is kissing me!

Am I too bad at kissing?

Am I not pretty enough for you?

Is it my blood status after all?

What Draco?!

What is your problem with me?!", I shouted at him and I tried hard not to start crying right away.

But he didn't say anything, he just stayed silent and stared at me, which made my anger even bigger.

"Talk to me!", I yelled at him.

"You want to know what I'm thinking?"

I nodded.

"Every time I see you I want to push you against the nearest wall. Kiss you until your lips are red and swollen.

I want to kiss every little part of your body while I tell you how beautiful you are.

I want to hear you moan my name, press you into the mattress and feel your beautiful body under mine.

Your hands clawing into my hair while I spread hickeys on your neck.

I want you more than I have ever wanted anything and every time you kiss me I am on the verge of throwing all my principles overboard and letting my fantasies become reality."

"I don't know how you can even think that I don't desire you.

You haven't kissed me for minutes and yet I'm still painfully aware of my erection.

I don't go any further because I would go too far. Because once I've crossed that hurdle with you, I wouldn't want to get out of bed for the next few days, if not weeks.

And someday I will, I swear to you, but not now.

We've been a couple for less than two weeks and you're far too naive. You would do anything to be loved and I don't want to and can't take advantage of that."

"But please give me the chance not to break this promise to myself.

Give us time, give yourself time to figure out what you want.

What you want from me.

Talk it over with Mrs Morgan or Abbot for all I care, get clear about how you feel.

I love you, Florentine Scamander.

But I know you can't say that about me. Not because you don't want to, but because you really can't.

You can't say you love someone, you're not capable of that right now and until you can, that's as far as I'll go.

Let it take weeks, months, even years, I will wait.

As your best friend, as your boyfriend, as whatever you want me to be but I won't be the one whose love you depend on.

Because that's not you and it wouldn't be good for me or for you.

But if I hear one more time that your blood status would be any kind of problem for me, I'm going to be really pissed."

I just stared at him while his words found their way to my mind.

I felt like I couldn't breathe, like something was pressing against my chest.

It was actually exactly what I wanted to hear. Knowing that he wanted me, that he loved me, and yet it didn't feel good.

It was as if he had spoken the innermost truth that I couldn't even admit to myself.

And I had already noticed how dependent I was on him.

Dependence was not something I was taught. Rather the opposite.

Ever since I was little, I was taught that I was strong, that I could solve my problems on my own and that I didn't have to stand in anyone's shadow.

I didn't need to be protected, I could protect.

And yet I was dependent on him, dependent on the feeling he triggered in me.

Defeated, I slumped down and fell to my knees on the muddy ground.

I quickly felt his warm hand on my shoulder and his soothing voice at my back.

"We'll figure it out, I promise," he said quietly, each word giving me goosebumps.

He had promised to stay and at the moment I just wanted to believe him.

He pulled me back to my feet and wrapped me in his arms.

"I need to be more open about things like this," he spoke softly.

"You've been worrying about it far too much and that was my fault. I'll try to do better in the future," he added and all I did was nod against his chest.

"Can we please go back inside," Draco laughed after we had stood there like that for some time.

"Are you water shy Malfoy?", I teased him even though I was the one who wasn't a fan of water.

"I'm just not too keen on my clothes getting wet."

"And that's why you joined me inside the lake last time?", I laughed, finally breaking free of the hug.

"I never planned to go that far in but someone had other plans."

He grabbed my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine and so we walked back towards the castle.

"Are you afraid of the interview tomorrow with Mrs Morgan?", I asked cautiously.

Maybe he felt the same way I did and if so, maybe I could ease his fear a little.

"Not really. I'm more afraid of having a panic attack."

Panic attacks.

I'd seen them before with Draco and it had been scary. The last time was when I was still in the hospital wing.

I wonder if he'd had one after that too. He hadn't said anything and I hadn't noticed anything.

We came close to the stairs up to the castle and I released our hands from each other and looked up at him.

His hair was sticking to his face and water was dripping from the tip of his nose.

His hair, I hadn't really realised yet. He'd been wearing it differently since Wednesday.

He had stopped combing it back and just left it natural.

I liked it much better, he didn't look so serious.

"I like your hair like this," I spoke my thoughts and slid my fingers through his wet hair.

"You like soaking wet hair?"

"Also but I like that you don't comb it back like that anymore," I explained sheepishly.

"Too much work," he said with a shrug and I had to laugh.

That was never, ever the reason.

What had been dance class for the last few weeks was now my appointment with Emilia. I was more or less almost feverishly looking forward to it.

I kept writing little notes in my notebook about things I wanted to talk to her about.

My main topic at the moment was Draco. It was a subject I felt safer talking about, because I didn't feel ready to talk about my grandmother's death.

"I've had a boyfriend for a little while now," I confessed to Emilia relatively early in our session.

"That's wonderful."

"Yes actually it is, but I can't tell him I love him."

"Do you want to tell him?"

Her way of asking questions without saying them was impressive.

Because without saying it, she had asked me if I loved him at all.

And that was exactly the question I had been asking myself for days.

Did I love Draco? I loved him like I loved Neville and Hannah, as a friend, but the love of a boyfriend, a partner, should be something else, shouldn't it?

"I don't know," I confessed. Emilia smiled kindly at me.

"Has he told you he loves you yet?" I nodded.

Yes he had, right after I had read his declaration of love in the form of an essay and on Monday at the lake.

He had said it, no problem, and me? I was sitting here not even sure I loved him.

He was important to me, incredibly important but was that love?

What was the right kind of love for a boyfriend anyway?

Did one love him more or less than, say, family or good friends?

I had no idea. All I knew about love was that the more I loved a person the sooner he or she would disappear from my life. See my parents and my grandma.

"Do you feel pressured to tell him?" Emilia asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.

Yes and no. I didn't feel pressured by him, not at all.

The pressure was coming from myself and that was much worse.

"I'm putting pressure on myself. He's a really good friend to me but I'm afraid I'm not good enough for him."

Wow, that was some confession.

I had tried to make Draco understand that I was afraid of not being enough for him, but he had dismissed it as if his feelings weren't even an issue.

But they did for me.

I was so very different from everything he had been taught about what his girlfriend should be.

I was American, from a home nowhere near as wealthy as Draco's had been.

I was nowhere near as pretty as Astoria and I was not a Slytherin but a Hufflepuff.

But the most important thing was that I wasn't a pureblood, not even in the slightest.

He said he didn't care, but I didn't believe him. He had been obsessed with it for so long, putting down everyone who wasn't a pureblood, and now suddenly he was supposed to care so little?

It bothered him, I was sure of it, he was just too polite to say so.

"Why do you think that?" she asked the question I had just answered in my mind.

A legelimentic as a psychologist would be death, I hoped there wasn't one.

"He was brought up very strictly, with very specific values, and I didn't live up to them."

"You're afraid it will end and it will be because of something you can't control or influence."

Briefly, I reflected.

Staying in control was something that was my whole life, not a moment went by that I didn't need to be in full control or it ended up with cat ears at best.

Yes, yes I was afraid that at some point he would fall into his old way of thinking and leave me because of my blood status.

I nodded to answer her question.

"Why is it so important to you to want to be in control of everything?"

I sighed.

There was a confidentiality agreement, wasn't there?

She wouldn't talk to anyone about the things I told her would she?

Who would she tell anyway?

"I was born an animagus. I had to learn to keep control since I was a toddler, otherwise the animagus takes over.

Nothing in my life is more important than control."

For the first time in our two conversations so far, she actually seemed taken aback.

Who could blame her? I had just confessed to her that I was half-animal and thus, next to Harry Potter, probably the biggest sensation at this school.

The only difference was that only a handful of people at this school knew who I was and Emilia was now one of them.

"I didn't know that," she confessed, momentarily not looking quite as cheerful as she usually did.

"I don't tell people. Most people find it scary.

The less I tell the more normal people treat me and being normal is all I want."

"But you're not."

As if I didn't know.

That reminder really didn't have to be there.

"No. And that's exactly why I control exactly who knows the truth and who doesn't, because I know how it goes without that control.

I would be alone, people would avoid me, if not harass me.

With this lie, I get to normal next possible and I'm happy with that decision."

"Why did you tell me?"

Yes, why had I?

"I'm trying to be more open with it. I've learned over the last few months that if I explain and answer questions, it makes it seem less scary to others.

The less speculation there is the more people understand my decision and accept it and accept me."

The rest of our conversation, and that of the next week, was about why control was so important to me and how I could manage to give up or relinquish that control in certain areas and moments.

Together we worked out plans on what to do when things got too much for me and how not to panic despite the lack of control.

And in fact I even managed to talk about my grandma.

That my excessive searching for a cure for her was part of my delusion of control.

"Would you sing me the song you wrote for the memorial service?" Emilia asked towards the end of our third session.

I nodded.

"But I would need a piano."

And out of nowhere she created a grand piano on the table and the singing bowl that sat on top of it.

Nowhere near as imposing as the one in the Slytherin common room, or as associated with memories as the one in the Room of Requirement, but it was a grand piano.

My fingers found their position blindly and this time I didn't even need the letter from my grandma to convey the right emotions.

We had been talking about her for half an hour, so the memory was fresh.

When the last notes sounded and I opened my eyes again I looked into the kind brown eyes of Emilia.

"You really have a very beautiful voice."

"Thank you," I replied sheepishly.

"Why did you write that song exactly like that?"

I told her about the letter and how it had inspired me. How important it had been for me to write my own song.

At the end of our conversation, she advised me that if I didn't know how to express myself or address certain things, to try writing about it in a song, because it obviously helped me.

And it made sense now why it helped me, it was something I could control.