Under the Willow Tree | Draco Malfoy

chapter 46: i'm far too pissed off

Draco Malfoy | 6th Year

Theo was fuming, doing a significantly worse job at hiding his anger than Draco, and he practically kicked the dorm door open after unlocking it.

Blaise was lounging on his bed with a book propped in his lap when the group of three marched in. He jolted and sat up straighter when the dorm room door smacked against the wall. His eyes scanned the room's newest occupants, and his stare caught on Lorelei's form in Draco's arms.

Before he could speak, Theo snapped, "If you're going to be difficult about this, then sod off and find another place to sleep tonight."

Blaise blinked and gaped at Theo's unusual outburst, but the rest of the room's occupants no longer paid him any attention.

Draco laid Lorelei down on his bed, and she took some breaths to breathe in the overwhelming scent of his cologne and the smell that could only describe him. Lorelei tried to be sneaky with this action, but her intentions were written across her face, and this did not go unnoticed by Draco.

He grinned smugly when Lorelei's lips curled into the slightest of grins. He wondered if his bed smelled like him. He hoped that was a good thing if it did.

While Draco was gathering pillows to set behind Lorelei's back and Theo was grabbing some Defense Against the Dark Arts and Counter Curses books, Blaise slowly asked, "What...happened?"

Draco snapped his head to glare at him, but he straightened his face back into a gentle smile when he turned back to Lorelei.

Theo was in much more of a speaking mood than Draco was, so he crossed his arms and swiveled to face their roommate. "Why don't you ask Crabbe and Goyle when they wake up in a few hours? Maybe you can help Goyle clean up all the blood on his face too."

"What in merlin's shorts?" Blaise blurted and sat up straighter. His eyes drifted over the bruises on Lorelei's jawline and the tear stains on her cheeks, and he started to put the pieces together. His eyebrows quirked up in understanding.

"It's my fault, Draco. I provoked them because I was angry," Lorelei said with her bottom lip pushed out in distress. "They hurt Neville Longbottom in third year and never got in trouble for it."

"It is not your fault, princess," Draco said and brushed some stray hairs out of her face. He then crouched and began to run his fingertips over her legs to feel for any obvious signs of problems that could be causing her inability to walk. She shivered.

Theo marched over and dropped an open book into Draco's other arm. He pointed a finger at the curse outlined on the page. Draco stared down at it with a tight expression, and his eyes rapidly scanned the page. Lorelei watched the two boys with her bottom lip stressed between her teeth.

"Sponge-knees curse?" Draco asked, incredulously as he loosely flipped between the pages to find the counter curse information on the reverse side.

"It's worth a shot," Theo sighed after tugging his hand through his messy fluffs of hair.

"Who should be the one to cast it?" Draco asked as he rose to his feet and set the book beside Lorelei. She curiously lifted her eyebrows and tried to read the book, craning her neck to look at it from a better angle. Her eyes widened when she saw the image of the limp-legged person in the page's drawing.

"You should do it. I'm far too pissed off, and you're better at Defense Against the Dark Arts," Theo decided before he started pacing back and forth in the dorm.

Blaise got up and wordlessly left the room, leaving so quietly that Draco and Theo didn't notice his departure. Lorelei was watching everything though, so she had given him a shaky smile. He didn't smile back, but he didn't scowl at her like she expected. He just blinked a few times and then slipped through the door.