||Black Scarves and Careless Hearts|| A Dramione Fanfic

39. Maria Hardingson

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"If someone tells you that you can't paint, then by all means, paint."
~Vincent van Gogh
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Draco hated acknowledging the fact that his feelings were slowly but surely changing. 

That day when Hermione had gone on her date (whatever. It was barely up to the standards of being an actual date) he had actually felt jealousy. He never felt jealous, because he already had everything he wanted. But that day, he had ended up crushing a vial in his fist without even realising it. 

Yes, this whole friendship he had with Hermione was highly unlikely, and completely unexpected and extremely confusing because who had even thought that it would happen? But it had happened. And it had happened suddenly yet in such an abstruse manner that he hadn't even realised when exactly it had happened. One day they were trying to dumb each other down and the next they were friends. 

Draco was so frustrated with all the confusing things he was feeling that he actually wanted to rip his hair out. 

He couldn't possibly like her. That was preposterous. Impossible. No chance of it happening at all. 

Which was why he was now sitting across Maria Hardingson, an attractive half-blood witch a year younger than him. 

Maria was a friend of Astoria's, and was a Ravenclaw. She wasn't particularly good in academics as far as Draco could tell, but she was street smart so she didn't come off as completely stupid. Her face was graced by a few pale freckles, and her dark eyes provided a contrast to her light chestnut waves.

Hermione had helped Draco get ready, and had helped him choose flowers to give Maria. He really didn't understand Hermione, or what she felt with regard to him. 

"...and so he graded my essay a T, can you believe that?" Maria was saying, and she laughed at the end of her story. Draco laughed along with her just in time so that she wouldn't think he hadn't been listening.

"My friends had gone on about it for weeks," Maria said, looking happy that Draco had found her story funny, "But then they started talking about how Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley had shared a kiss out in the open in the grounds, and they forgot all about my Troll essay."

With a delicate movement of her hand, she flicked her hair over her shoulder. 

"Thank you for the flowers, by the way, they really are pretty," Maria glanced at the small bouquet that Hermione had helped Draco arrange. 

"It's nothing," Draco smiled, trying to come up with things to talk about. 

"Are you going to the Parkinson Zabini engagement party?" Draco found himself asking. 

"Oh, I'm not sure," Maria said, "Mother wants me at home for Christmas, at least in the morning."

The afternoon passed with both of them keeping up small talk, and Draco found himself wishing he had never asked Maria out in the first place. 

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Hermione was studying alone. 

Mr. Blak had gone off somewhere again on Friday evening, and had thus not given Hermione and Draco any assignment for the week. 

Draco was gone on his date. 

He had told her that morning that he had met Maria at Astoria's on Friday night's dinner, and that he had asked her out for lunch. Hermione had laughed about it and had teased him endlessly, because hadn't it been only a few days since he had ruined Hermione's date? Hermione had jokingly said she would turn up at the restaurant too, just to make things even.