Deliverance | Draco Malfoy

Thirty-One

tw: This chapter contains mentions of panic attacks. Read with caution.

"Does it always sound like that when you Disapperate?" The thought had been bugging me for a few days now, and conversation had been sparse today. You can only talk about so many things when you've been stuck in this house with the same 3 people day in and day out.

The portraits don't speak. Only gaze and glare, answering to few people that have blood connections to the Manor I had been staying in. The elves are hidden, invisible to the eye unless directly summoned to make an appearance.

It's just been... too quiet.

Too lonesome without Draco. I had been worried my feelings for him were beginning to grow too deep, and when I saw that flicker in his eyes before he left me I knew I was right:

The two of us were in deep shit.

He's feeling it, too. The tug between us that shouldn't have ever grown there. It's undeniable. This is no longer just a distraction or a fling on the side. It was reaching grounds that were new for both of us.

And it was fucking scaring us both.

"It just depends on the person." Blaise shrugged, laying down a playing card into the middle of the match he and Theo were playing against one another. "Malfoy... I know you don't need any disclaimers about how some of us have had it rough. You've taken more shit than I've ever had to handle in my life, Princess. I could guess that he's slipped up some of his dirty little secrets to you, even if he thinks some of us never caught on to his home life." Blaise flicked his eyes towards me for the briefest second.

"He's different than us and always has been. But like I said, this you already know." Blaise sighed and tilted his head, returning his attention to his playing cards.

"When I leave, it's not much more than a popping noise. Zabini's sounds like a rumble, low, and easy to miss. But Malfoy?" Theo laughed to himself and threw down a card. "Personally, I think it's because he loves the attention." He teased, smirking down at his own hand fanned out between his fingers.

"You know we don't choose how it works, it just happens." Blaise shook his head at Theodore's stupidity. "It's like a wand, Rainy. Like all other magic we use. Each aspect is special to the wizard that uses it. Spells you use have different powers than spells I use depending on how you do them, how your body reacts, etcetera, etcetera. Everyone is going to have a spell they are better than someone else at. Every wizard or witch will have a wand that is personal to them. We have different patronuses if we can conjure them. Different Animagus if we become one. And everyone has different ways of Apparation." He explained thoroughly.

"But the smoke?"

"That's just a perfect indication of who chose to be tainted by Dark Magic, and who didn't," Blaise said softly.

"I've never Apparated," I said flatly. He already knew this, but I felt like I needed to say it out loud. There are a lot of things I've never done, and this was one of them. It felt so silly.

"Well, don't plan on doing it anytime soon anyway." Theo cut in. "Only the Malfoys can do it within the grounds, and I'm praying to whatever is holier than I that you haven't decided you want to leave the protection of this place yet." He gave me a harder look now that showed he was being serious. Warning me. Begging beneath it all that he was wrong.

"No." I shook my head. "I was just saying— I don't know why I said it. I just realized it, I guess." I shrugged one shoulder.

"Hmm." Theo narrowed his eyes at me in an intimidating fashion for a second before he nodded in agreement and I could see the calmness that filled his light eyes.