Draco's Hufflepuff | Emerging

Seventy-Five: Rumours

**

Monday, 21st April, 1997

For the past three hours, I had been tossing and turning, my eyes wide awake, and it was clear my body had no intention of letting me sleep. Growing more irritated with not being able to sleep, I threw on a jumper and decided to go downstairs.

As I walked down the narrow staircase, I got to thinking of Draco, of course. I hadn't seen him since the revision lesson we had on Boggarts, and the subsequent meltdown I had in front of everyone. I stupidly got my hopes up and thought that maybe that could be catalyst of us getting back together.

Everyone was treating me like I was some sort of lunatic, and I couldn't entirely blame them. They would stop talking as soon as they spotted me enter a room, or when they did speak in front of me, they would use condescending tones, like I was a six-year-old.

What they watched might have frightened them, and maybe they didn't want to upset me anymore. The more probable reason was they all thought I was a pathetic loser who couldn't deal with anything.

I just wanted to know if Draco was okay, but any time I asked one of the Slytherins about him, or whether they knew he was doing alright, they would fob me off with vague answers or just avoid it altogether.

We should have been celebrating the upcoming one-year mark of us and looking back on the ups and downs of the past twelve months. I think instead of counting my years from January – December, I will be counting them from April – May from now on. Because my life really began when he saved me from that black ice on the bridge.

It had been over a month since the break-up, and I thought I would be handling it better now, but I wasn't. Every day was an immense struggle to get through, and the withdrawal symptoms were slowly killing me. The loss of him by my side was slowly killing me.

I stopped still as I saw a boy sitting on one of the sofas. I thought I recognised his hair, but I didn't want to assume anything. I picked at the skin of my finger and walked up towards him.

"Oh, sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone else to be up still," I cleared my throat, not knowing where to really look.

He looked up at me with sad, tired ocean-blue eyes and smiled ever so softly. He threw the copy of the Daily Prophet he was reading onto the coffee table and gestured for me to sit opposite him.

"It's alright, I don't mind, Maddie. Can't sleep?" Patrick watched as I gingerly sank onto the sofa cushion.

I shook my head in response.

"No, me either. I'm finding I can't sleep more and more just lately for some reason," Patrick shrugged his shoulders, "I don't think coffee is the best idea," he added, exhaling a breath of air out of his nose,

"No, it's probably not," I tucked my feet beneath each other and played with a piece of loose string on my jumper sleeve.

I bet Draco was drinking black coffee to stay up late to work on this mysterious task for Snape. I wonder if he was still awake thinking of me too.

"You want a cup of tea?" Patrick offered,

"That would be nice, thank you," I pulled my lips into a tight line.

The heaviness from our falling out still hanging in the air. It was thick and dark, and the tension was palpable. But I had to appreciate that was being nice and was trying. At least he was speaking to me in an ordinary tone of voice.

He placed the china mug in front of me, the perfect shade of milky-brown. It was sweet in a way that he remembered just how I liked it. Strong with just a splash of milk.