These days, Draco found himself taking long, meandering walks through the castle in the evenings. That was the cost of having previously filled those evenings with Baxter - now there was a void. Alright, maybe not a void. A vacancy. One that was infuriatingly difficult to fill. Crabbe and Goyle were…well, Crabbe and Goyle. He'd once considered Pansy fairly good company, but she was getting more and more insufferable as the days went on thanks to her obsession with Baxter and her revenge against Baxter. How was he meant to put the girl out of his mind if Pansy was bringing her up at least once per hour?

There were other options, of course. Zabini, Nott, even Flint, and more. But they were always talking to Draco Malfoy - or even just Malfoy outright. Maril- Baxter never seemed to do that. At first it had annoyed him, and then it annoyed him that it stopped annoying him. Now, most of all, he was even more annoyed that he missed it. To speak to somebody and not know what they were going to say before they'd even said it. To have a joke be laughed at because it was funny and not because it was he who'd cracked it. To have a joke made in return that was actually funny and not just tedious or stupid. Merlin, why had he been stricken with the misfortune of brushing shoulders with the one mudblood in the world who could actually carry a decent conversation?

Perhaps he was being laughed at. Or having his loyalties tested by some higher being. Why couldn't she have just been a Pureblood? If she was, this would have had the makings of the best school year yet. Instead he was here, missing her, hating that he missed her, and wrestling with every blasted emotion that came with those two problems. Why hadn't she just laughed? He might've been able to hate her had she laughed. It would have lended credence to his worry that whatever communication they'd established before he'd known the truth had been some sort of underhanded ploy on her part.

Ones like that were the most dangerous, that was what his parents always told him. They tricked idiots into thinking that they were all like that. The same way Granger tricked them into thinking all of them were smart by memorising every fact known to man and beast alike. But it wasn't deliberate, was it? At least not in Baxter's case. The jury was still out on Granger, but she was far too smug and self-satisfied to not mean anything by it.

It was as he finally returned to the dungeons that he paused and hesitated, finding a patch of the corridor lit up by a strip of light from the door to the practise room, left ajar. Ordinarily he would've strode straight past it - or so he told himself - but as he drew nearer he heard it. The sniffling. Frowning, he paused and finally, hesitantly, approached the doorway, moving on the soles of his feet to dull the sound of his shoes on the flagstones as he approached.

"Come on, for fuck's sake- Repairo!"

A sort of muted fizzling sound hissed out in response - the tell-tale sign of a failed spell. A grunt followed, one that morphed into a sob at the end which was quickly followed up by yet another curse.

"Motherfucker. Repairo!"

It fizzled out again, but Draco could see the spell failing for himself now, peering in through the door. Baxter knelt on the floor in front of that absurd broom she'd riddled with paint and glitter over the last few weeks - or rather, what remained of it. Admittedly, there wasn't much, and it looked more like a pile of very glittery sticks than anything else. A magpie nest. Recalling Pansy's earlier words, Draco's heart sank…albeit quite without his say in the matter.

A third attempt at the spell ended just about the same way that the first and second tries had, and it didn't seem that there would be a fourth for she took up one of the bigger pieces and launched it across the room. It smacked into the wall near his head and then clattered uselessly to the floor. When Draco looked from it to her, he found her staring back, wide eyes brimming with tears that she tried to furiously blink away when she diverted her gaze.

"Come to gloat?" she sniffled.

Well, he'd already been caught. There was no use fleeing now. Stepping into the room properly, he straightened his robes and regarded the mess before her impassively.

"It's not my handiwork," he answered.

The fact that he sounded bored and matter-of-fact helped his case more than it would if he'd sounded frantic and worried. Or so he hoped. Not that he cared if she actually believed him or not, of course. Marilyn remained where she sat on the floor, her fists clenched against the floor at her sides until her knuckles turned a stark shade of white.

"You'll break your wand," he commented for lack of much else to say.

He was hardly going to give her a cuddle and ask if she was alright, was he?

Inhaling sharply, her back straightened like she was preparing to hurl insults at him, before she sighed in annoyance and cast her wand aside, bringing her fists into her lap.

"The spell won't work," she said flatly.

"It has its limits. There has to be something left to actually repair."

"Yeah. Your girlfriend certainly did a great job."

"She's not my girlfriend. I'm sick of telling you so."

"Oh my god. Okay. Great. Thank you for this hellish round of deja vu, it was exactly what I needed to take this day from crap to utterly fucking abysmal, I really do truly appreciate it. Now if you'd be so kind, I really want to be left alone."

"I'm simply stating a fact. Why you have such a strange obsession with that fact is your own problem."

"Why are you here?"

"Why didn't you laugh?" he countered.

"Because I didn't find this little prank particularly funny," she stood up and kicked at the pile to illustrate her point.

"I wasn't talking about that."

"What were you talking about, then?"

"Earlier. Today. Moody's little stunt in the courtyard."

It might've been difficult to look at her, had he not been intent on studying her reaction for any hint of amusement - a smirk, a stifled laugh, anything. But there was nothing. Nothing other than a frown, anyway, followed by the pursing of her lips as she sighed and bowed her head and began to toy with the remains of her broom.

"I know what it's like to be publicly humiliated," she said finally.

"Which is precisely why you should have found it so funny. I'm sure you probably viewed it as something akin to some sort of great cosmic karma."

"Maybe it was," she said "But it still wasn't funny."

"Oh please."

"What? Believe it or not, Draco, I don't ascribe to the whole 'I want everybody to suffer exactly like I've suffered so I can un-bruise my ego'. I'm much more of an 'ouch, I know how much that sucks' type."

"I don't need your pity."

"You don't have it. Or my sympathy, really. Empathy, maybe, but that's about the most I can offer you after everything."

"I don't need that, either."

"Everybody needs empathy, Draco. Without it, we all end up like your lot."

"And who are you to be so high and mighty against my lot?"

"The girl who you're sitting talking to instead of them."

It was a challenge if Draco had ever heard one - a challenge that told him exactly where the door was. If he wanted to prove her wrong so badly, if he wanted to double down on what he'd done thus far, he could rise, depart, and go back to the Slytherin common room. He should have. He would have, too, had the thought of returning there and to all of those who he knew he'd find there wasn't so entirely insufferable. So distasteful. If it didn't fill him with dread. With how things had been going lately, he suspected he'd last five minutes at most before he heaved an annoyed sigh and retired to glare at the emerald green curtains of his four-poster bed. And then he'd only need to face it all at breakfast again anyway.

"I know exactly what it is they're going to say before it even occurs to them to say it," he said finally.

"That's the relationship you've cultivated with them," she replied.

"Half of them couldn't spell cultivated," he muttered.

That earned him a small huff of laughter and she murmured "Well, you're not wrong."

Considering he'd expected her to demand that he leave, her reaction came as a pleasant surprise. Although the look she fixed him with suggested she was very much wondering why he was still here.

Standing, he sat down opposite her on the floor, the former broom between them. Pressing his lips together, he gathered together a couple of the smaller pieces that looked to be part of the handle - perhaps they could repair it in sections, rather than all at once. The upside of all of the ridiculous work she'd done with those stick-on crystals was that it was fairly easy to piece it back together again, like some sort of flamboyant jigsaw.

"Repairo," he said, jabbing his want at the pieces.

It made much the same fizzling sound that Marilyn's had.

"So much for that Pure-blooded superiority, eh?" She sighed.

It would've been the perfect opportunity for him to take a huff, stand, and storm out…had there been any malice in the words. Instead, he was too busy noting that they were surprisingly close to the old sort of joking that there had once been between them.

"It'd take a broom expert to repair at this point," he admitted defeat, leaning back on one hand.

"I can't afford that," she snorted with a sigh.

"Do up another broom, then."

He wasn't sure why he was offering up solutions. It wasn't like it was his problem.

"I'd need a whole new set of supplies, and even if we had another trip to Hogsmeade between now and the ball, all of the hours and the money…it's just not feasible," she seemed to wonder why she was discussing the problem with him just as he wondered why he was trying to help, sighing and shaking her head, adopting an unbothered look that didn't entirely reach her eyes "I'll have to borrow one of the Hogwarts practise brooms and just make do. It's not the end of the world."

"It wasn't me," he reiterated.

And then he added why he was so intent on making sure she was aware of that to the list of things he didn't know.

"I believe you," she murmured - somewhat sourly.

"Will it cheer you to know that she's been banned from the ball?"

"I already knew. Probably should've expected this."

"Probably. She despises you."

"Both of you do," she said flatly.

Her eyes finally rose to gauge his reaction to that statement, and Draco offered none - although that could have very well been just as damning. If he hated her as much as he wished he did, he'd have said so. If Potter had said that same statement to him, he'd have already agreed a thousand times over.

She was still pretty, he noted dully. Very pretty. Not that he'd expected the whopping few weeks they'd spent avoiding each other to change her, but there was none of that thing. The thing that always happened when a girl inevitably either bored him or found a way to annoy him - usually by being annoyingly boring. After that, they always somehow became plainer. It didn't matter what girl found herself being thrust in the direction of Malfoy Manor for the duration of the summer, or how beautiful she was in the beginning. She'd say something idiotic, or she'd have a stupid laugh, or an insipid habit of fiddling with her hair, and a girl who had previously been quite beautiful would very quickly become plain. Even unsightly.

Marilyn was neither.

"I'm going to the Yule Ball with George," she said.

But, apparently, she was trying to be.

"Of course you are," he scoffed, wrinkling his nose "I saw his white knight act in the hall that day. Bet he jumped at the chance."

"What day was that, again?" She challenged "Remind me, why was I in need of comforting? It's all a big foggy."

Draco stared balefully, sniffing and then plucking at the hem of his trouser leg "So you're together then, now? Is that it? Going to build a hovel and start an orphanage of your own?"

"No. We gave it a shot, but it didn't feel right," the airiness of her tone told him that that the phrase wasn't as innocent as it was meant to sound.

She knew what she was doing in telling him that. Another final addition was made, then, to the list of things he did not know - whether he was annoyed or pleased at that revelation, because evidently something had passed between them…but it hadn't been good enough for it to last. It hadn't, he thought to himself, measured up to their kiss. Of course, there was also the question of why he had any reaction at all. That last part was probably just sheer denial, though, and that denial wasn't even genuine enough for him to be blind to it.


A/N: For those who have been following my homelessness saga over the last ~7 months, I have a slight (final, probably) update. It's not the update I'd hoped for, but after a lot of thinking on it I think it'll be for the best in the long run. The friend I'm staying with is losing her place and will be downsizing when she moves (but even if she wasn't, I've been resting on her goodwill for far too long anyway) so I'm going to have to move cities (and countries, even if it's another one within the UK) to go and live with family because finding a place of my own here just isn't working out. My friends have been as supportive as they can be, but they can only do so much and the official avenues that are supposed to help me just aren't doing so. It's not what I wanted, but I do think a brand new start in a brand new city might be in order, and if I make the most of this I think I can turn it into something very good.

Sooo…a new beginning and a new adventure, I guess! I'm going to be moving there within the next month, and I'm going to do my best to minimise the impact it'll have across my stories. Again, though, thank you guys so much for how amazing you were throughout this whole ridiculous situation, I genuinely credit my ability to get through this largely to working on these stories as a distraction, and how amazingly lovely you guys have been in response, and I'll always be massively grateful for that. You've done wonders for my self-belief and my hopes for getting an actual novel published within the next few years!