When Lily finished the carnivorous slug repellent, Draco realized that she was an incredible girl, she was very intelligent and determined, and he felt...she was indescribable. As a teacher she was the part best of his day, he now understood Snape when he said that he wished one day to have a student who stood out above the other knuckleheads, someone determined and focused on success. Carnivorous slug repellent was just as difficult to make as felix felicis and a bit rather obscure in its production, which is why most wizards preferred to buy it bottled in the Knockturn alley, if Lily ever changed her mind and decided to pursue potions, he himself would give her a job in one of his factories (yes, he had potions factories, 12 in the UK and yes, that repellent was one of his flagship products).

He congratulated her with a silent nod of approval and a lopsided smile, yet she always invaded his personal space and hugged him, she always hugged him when a potion came out perfect.

Sometimes he didn't know how to feel about that, he knew that the Potters were very affectionate because Scorpius had caught it after Delphi but he felt a strange and special warmth coming from Lily, it was very similar to when Astoria hugged him. He immediately felt sad and ended up returning Lily's hug, staying like that for a couple of minutes.

After Astoria's death there were moments when he felt terribly lonely and cold, and he felt as if the rest of his life was going to be that way but Lily gave him human warmth, and that made him feel better, as if she gave him a little hope that his life would be okay again.

As they cleaned up the potions lab, Lily gave a disgusted snort, which was unusual for her.

"Is everything alright?"

"It's just that the ball is two weeks away and I don't have a dress yet, I haven't found anything that looks good on me in Hogsmeade and Thomas is pressuring me because he wants to know what color he should buy the corsages."

" Ohhh... well why don't you send an owl to your mother and have her find you a dress." He said, not believing that she really can't find something that suits her, she was very young but she had a better body than her mother had after three children, more full and curvy, come on, two Ginny Potter could barely make a decent cup B breast (his wand had more curves honestly) and Lily was okay...she had her thing, it wasn't that he noticed those things, he wasn't one of those who looked at the students, but despite her small size (Lily was terribly short) she had what men called the body of a musical instrument, prominent bust, small waist, wide hips, and a peach butt... Well, maybe his gaze had strayed a little where he shouldn't... But it wasn't on purpose! He wasn't a pervert, he just wasn't blind.

"She is in Peru covering the Latin American quidditch cup and Dad, even if he knew how to choose decent clothes, he can't, he is very busy at work." Draco looked at her a bit.

"Next Saturday I'm taking Scorpius and Albus to my tailor to have a suit made for the ball. Why don't you come with us?"

"Have you managed to get them to attend this year?" She asked with a strange smile, as if she didn't quite believe it.

"I have bribed them." Lily laughed.

"With what?"

" I told them I will give them a Merlin Chocolate frog card, special edition."

"The one with the silver edge or the gold one?"

" Litmus, with authentic mother-of-pearl powder."

"The 1737 edition?"

" AHA." He smiled at her when he saw that she knew the date. She raised her hands to her face to cover her grimace of surprise and envy.

"I can't believe it, it's worth a fortune. 45 gold doubloons per piece. There are only 16 in the world. How come you had two?" She was amazed, each gold doubloon was worth 100 galleons.

" Please, I earn a hundred gold doubloons an hour. Actually, I have the 16 cards, but Scorpius's will stay at home, so I'll still have 15 when I hand his card to Albus. And if they marry, which is likely, the card will return to the family fortune."

" I don't believe you have them all, and no one can earn that much money just by existing." Draco laughed, actually yes, they could.

" But it's true."

"How did you get them anyway?"

" My great-great-grandfather collected them, he was not a very gentle magician so I doubt he would have obtained all of them legally, but all 16 have their certificate of authenticity. And yes, believe it or not, my father as the current head of the family earns 500 gold doubloons an hour, just for breathing and going to golf matches."

" Golf matches? The Muggle sport?"

"Of course, Lily, you really should read the history of the Malfoys, you would know that we Malfoys make more than half of our money from muggle businesses."

She didn't know whether to believe him, but she agreed to go find her dress with her brother and the Malfoys. The professor came over with one of his famous forbidden potion books and sat down next to her so they could look through it together so they could choose the next potion. As they flipped through it, Lily glanced at her teacher. She didn't like to do it because she felt that she would be gawked at, but it was inevitable to do it. Draco Malfoy was very expressive, one could easily tell when he was tense or when he was cheerful. He frowned a lot and his broad forehead had been marked by it, he also had little wrinkles on his cheeks, as if he smiled a lot, like at that moment.

Potions really fascinated him, his bright gray eyes had a sparkle of amusement that she didn't quite believe. She couldn't help but smile out of nowhere, it was impossible not to if he looked so happy and she was happy just because of that, although she also felt tired. She wanted to go, take a bath, and go to bed without having dinner, they had been there since five in the afternoon and it was already 11 at night. Maybe they only saw each other three times a week and although they officially had to be in the lab for 3 hours maximum, they ended up making two different potions or one very complicated potion. The good thing was that Thomas was on the Quidditch team and was killing himself doing homework because otherwise he would always be angry that she paid so much attention to her service.

She yawned and without thinking rested her head over his teacher, who at first didn't notice, he was too delighted talking about the golden poinsettia potion, a very powerful hallucinogenic potion that gave terrible visions, it was light gold, but when mixed with food it camouflaged itself and users could feed it to anyone without them noticing. Invented by a 15th-century pureblood witch who sought revenge for the infidelities of her husband.

Before a long moment, Draco realized that there was an extra weight on his right arm and he turned to look at Lily. She was asleep. He looked at his watch and it was past eleven, the girl's brain must have been fried from spending six hours in front of the cauldron.

He thought about moving himself to wake her up but as soon as he decided that he backed away from just seeing her little face.

Everything about her except for her huge green eyes was small, her nose was tiny and her lips were heart-shaped dabs of pink. He scratched his head, not very Malfoy, not very mature.

He had to find a girlfriend, because he had realized that Lily was very pretty, and he could make a long list of reasons why he shouldn't find her pretty, it wasn't normal, not for him, he didn't usually pay attention to the attractiveness of women, not since Astoria. A few years had passed, but he still thought it was soon, maybe nothing serious, if possible with a muggle because in addition to the fact that a witch would never accept him with his past, he could put up that barrier, so he would know where the limit should be, he knew that he could never fall in love with a muggle, his father would kill him, and he himself was repulsed by the idea, and that way he wouldn't have to introduce her to his son either, but it was clear that it was better to find someone to satisfy himself and keep his eyes off of the female students, especially Lily.

He moved his shoulder a little to wake her up but she just rubbed her nose on Draco's robes, as if she was trying to get comfortable with it.

"Lily...Miss Potter." He said loudly with his best teacher voice. She jumped and Draco chuckled a little.

" Miss, you should go to rest, it's late and soon there will be a curfew."

" What? Yes, Yes." She yawned again. "I think I'll leave the bath for tomorrow. I am very tired."

" It shows. Be careful, I'll clean all this up."

"Thank you, Professor."

o-o-o-o-o

Lily lay on the bed after taking a shower, apparently, the walk from the dungeons to Gryffindor Tower had cleared her up quite a bit. She bit her lip as she looked up at the ceiling.

Lily's fascination with her teacher was growing. Her reactions were getting stronger, when they were together her knees were shaking, her hands were sweating and she couldn't stop looking at him, if only he didn't look that beautiful, or had that arrogant, lopsided, and hideous smile. Scorpius might be the spitting image of him but he hadn't inherited the Malfoy smile, patented surely to make women fall at their feet (Scorpius had Albus, maybe that's why he didn't had the smile, he didn't need it).

She told herself, constantly, before and after her classes or her services, things like: He's too old, he could be your father, it would never work, you're too immature, he's been through so much, he loved his wife too much, even his son is older than you, you look like a baby. It's DRACO MALFOY.

But then she saw him and he was kind, so intelligent and had an easy smile as well as a very acid humor, which she loved, it was what she regularly liked about Slytherins. If he wasn't so old, if he wasn't a Malfoy, THAT Malfoy especially, and if she wasn't utterly sure that her professor carried tons of war trauma with him maybe it wouldn't be THAT weird...

It hurt her to see him like this, alone, defenseless and she wanted to protect him and that made her grow fonder of him. There were things so small that almost no one noticed, she even doubted that Scorpius had ever noticed.

During that short period of time that she was walking towards the Great Hall she had found him completely absent near Hagrid's hut, he was looking out into the forbidden forest so much that he didn't realize she was spying on him. Her father, who had told her about the war years ago, told her that this was where Draco and Snape fled with the other Death Eaters after Dumbledore's death.

One afternoon when they had met to collect red-hooded mushrooms that they needed for a potion, he had his gaze lost in one point again, always the same place. When she put her hand on his shoulder he quickly put his wand to her throat, if she hadn't known that Draco Malfoy was incapable of hurting a fly, she might have been scared, but it was no more than a mild shared surprise.

"I'm sorry." He had said. "I did not know it was you.

"No problem." She replied, showing a basket in front of him. "It was my fault for not making noise. Now, it's time to collect ingredients." She took his arm and he followed her with a faint smile. They became more and more intimate everytime.

Her teacher didn't mind being touched by her so Lily took full advantage of her closeness rights.

She got into the habit that whenever a potion worked for her the first time, she hugged him, the first few seconds he became rigid as a stick, but then he softened, and she devoted herself to smelling his strange aroma between wood, apple, and lime. Essences that now gracefully identified with him. She sometimes also smelled of cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and pepper. Delicious. Rigid, sweet, bitter, and sober.

Her cheeks flushed red, her belly turned warm, and she covered her face with the pillow to muffle a cry of excitement.

She was in love.