familiar ; draco malfoy

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

The three of them sat apart from one another, Draco and Ramona on opposing couches, and Blaise on an adjacent armchair.

In that dark room, shapes were in monochrome. The daylight could bring out the brilliant fuchsia, richest emerald or deepest scarlet, but bathed in shadows everything appeared to be from a black and white movie. Even the moon, pale in comparison to Draco's skin, was nothing but a milky orb on a pitch-black curtain, and the stars made twisted, warped shapes against the blackness. Silhouettes of the three Slytherins were dissolving into the gathering darkness, each mending with the plush cushions of the couch.

Cigarette smoke curled around Ramona, arcing lazily into the black. Draco peered at her through half-lidded eyes, both his arms spread on the backrest of the couch. One thing that differed her from a statue was the occasional movement of her lips, pulling on the cigarette and exhaling through her nose. She sat there as if she were a very clever doll, one who was perhaps a puppet at one time but had taken control of her own strings. His shirt, wrinkled and half-unbuttoned and smeared with dried blood, was the sole focus of her coal eyes.

„So?" Blaise whispered, drawing Draco's focus away from the stone-faced witch.

The two barely interacted ever since he sat down, which could have been both hours and minutes ago, the newfound awkwardness surely based in both fear and apprehensiveness. An unseen barrier of sorts settled between them; parchment-thin, see-through, but indestructible. The ease with which they'd parted only days ago appeared to be gone, though neither were keen on emotional display before Blaise's eyes anyway.

Ramona wanted to reach out and touch his chest, right where a droplet of blood dried on the pale white; she wanted to erase the pain. Draco wanted to kiss her forehead, right where her skin wrinkled; he wanted to erase the worry.

But they didn't. They just looked at one another, silent, though the flicker of Ramona's gaze towards Draco's in the moment of Blaise's question flooded the white-haired wizard's stomach with comfort.

Had it been just Blaise and him, Draco assumed he'd be under inquisition and scrutiny. And Blaise was certain he would not have let Draco in at all. But with her there, both wizards were on their best behavior.

And with them there, Ramona didn't allow herself to show just how much she wanted to just cry.

"I told you, it's not mine," explained Draco, looking down at his shirt. Ramona had studied the patterns of smeared crimson, now the hue of burnt sienna, as if within them sat the hidden meaning of Draco's misery. It was written all over his face and unseen by Blaise, who's own perception was clad in consternation.

"And I'm not hurt," he added once more, for Ramona's sake, since she didn't entirely believe that confession. She assessed him like a nurse with x-ray vision, eyes flickering like candlelight in the wind, looking for bruises and scratches and torn limbs. But he appeared intact.

From the outside, that was.

The momentary calm that washed over him once his eyes settled on Ramona differed entirely from his demeanor at the door, which could best be compared to a tormented animal escaping its cage; now, that animal was tranquilized, but equally terrified, equally scarred. Blaise wasn't of sound mind as he looked over his housemate time and time again, seeing the spoils of someone he used to know.

Draco looked positively devastated with his stained clothes and frantic eyes, bared teeth and pale as snow. He looked like a snowstorm himself but felt like nothing short of a leaf torn apart by its rage and Blaise had no choice but to let him in; no matter how little he wanted to. Draco wasn't aware of how chilling he looked until he saw it reflected on Blaise's face. And seeing Malfoy clad in a blood-smeared oxford shirt and begging to be let inside brought back a sense of déjà vu. A sense of guilt. A sense of gratitude for what he'd done in Ramona's defense. A sense of worry and fear and, what Draco hated to see in his eyes most of all, pity.