Pawns | A Draco Malfoy Love Story

Progress

The last few weeks of March faded into April quite quickly and the weather became warmer and more pleasant. The Easter holidays had come and gone without me even noticing them very much. I was studying for my OWLS constantly and still visiting Draco every Friday. Three of our meets had passed since the night where I told him I just need time to figure out what to do with Harry.

Needless to say, I hadn't had the time to figure that out - or the nerve, or even the right circumstances. Honestly, for this to go smoothy, I would've had to been dating someone who wasn't one of my closest friends, who wasn't enemies with Draco, who wasn't the Chosen one, who wasn't best friends with my best friend's brother, and only about a 100 other wasn'ts.

So, instead of dealing with that, I cowardly pretended that there was no issue. I continued sneaking around to see him and continued to steal glances at him from across the Great Hall at every meal.

On the bright side, Harry had been more preoccupied with other events lately and I noticed that he checked his map less frequently. This was an added plus and I felt more comfortable with the idea of leaving the common room earlier tonight, and even hoped to come back later than usual; I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Draco.

The other night, Harry told me that Draco looked sort of ill in potions. It wasn't part of his usual annoying rant of suspicion, but more of a passing moment in an unrelated story.

"I impressed Slughorn today," he had said.

"Oh yea?"

"Yea he let us surprise him so I did something in the Half-Blood Prince's book and he really liked it. I added peppermint and it was a 'stroke of genius' apparently."

"Yea just not your stroke of genius," I had teased him.

"I'm just happy he's pleased with me. Anything is going to help with getting closer to him so that I can finally get this memory and be done with it. It helps that the rest of the students are pretty poor at the subject."

At this, Hermione, who was across the common room somehow developed super hearing and snapped her head in our direction, staring Harry down with a furious frown.

I stifled a laugh, trying to ignore her. "Oh yea? Everyone's bad at potions?"

"Well no one got any complements nearly as good as mine. Malfoy got a "passible" for his hiccuping solution. Lack of praise really doesn't help with his complexion," he had said. "I dunno if you've noticed but the guy's been looking sorta grey and sick lately, even lost his stupid arrogant, smug demeanour. Anyway..."

But I stopped listening after this. It's true, I had noticed that same change in Malfoy's appearance. I wasn't sure what was wrong and I suddenly felt bad for neglecting to ask. I just thought it was the late meets we were having that made him look tired.

Now, it was Friday and I was planning on asking him if he was alright.

I waited for Harry and the others to go up to bed. Since they were always the last group to leave the common room, as soon as they went up to sleep, I was free. Hermione was the first to leave and Ron did too as soon as he noticed. It sort of looked like they were about to hug before going up, but then they were both overcome with a rush of bashfulness and looked away from each other.

They were in this odd stage where they were friends again, but they both wanted to be more yet they didn't talk about it. Even if Ron had broken up with Lavender, they probably still woundn't have talked about it. Instead, they'd let this unspoken thing between them cause weird moments like this. On a brighter note, it was great entertainment for the rest of us.

Ginny said goodnight to Dean with a quick kiss on the lips and waved goodnight to Harry and I. Dean stayed sitting for a second before before realizing he was left with just Harry and I. Thinking he was a third wheel, he nodded to us in a good night before heading upstairs too.