What the Room Requires

Chapter Fourteen

 (the song within is written by Brahms, and the story is by Beedle the Bard, haha)

VVVVVV

DRACO

            “Once upon a time…”

            “Really?!”

            “What?” I sat up and put my hand to my hammering heart—her squeal had scared me to death. Hermione pushed the few barley stalks between us out of the way, then mashed them down and found my eyes.

            “You really start a story with ‘once upon a time’?”

            I gave her a weird look.

            “Yes…?”

            She gazed at me a moment, then smiled, and lay back down on her back. I narrowed my eyes at her.

            “What?”

            “Nothing,” she kept smiling softly up at the clear blue sky. “Muggles just start their stories that way, too.”

            “Ugh. Good to know,” I muttered, turning back to staring up at the puffy clouds and trying to calm my heartbeat. The wind rustled all around us, though only a few stalks stood between me and Hermione as we lay on our backs in the middle of the field. I cleared my throat.

            “Anyway…Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a very rich warlock who had a lot of friends and a lot of parties. He was quite content, until all of his friends began falling in love and becoming completely impossible.”

            “What do you mean, impossible?” Hermione cut in.

            “Impossible. Intolerable, irritating,” I said.

            “Ah,” she said. “Only ‘I’ words.”

            “Exactly. Anyway,” I began again. “He realized that everybody around him who fell in love started acting like an idiot, and making a fool of himself. So the warlock decided he’d outsmart Love, and used dark magic to do so.”