The Potions Master's Daughter (Book Five)

Chapter 27

For two more days my father and I hung out. We watched more about the adventures of Dean, Sam, and Cas, as well as spending a lot of time baking the Muggle way. Potion making sometimes had a tendency to give me a headache, and it does dreadful things to your hair, but baking was all the good aspects of potion making, without any of the bad parts. The house was soon filled with cookies, and brownies, and chocolate truffles, and cakes, and souffles, and scones, and muffins. Severus helped me put together a basket to bring over to the Weasley's when I went over. We also prepared a basket to bring to the Malfoys for their Christmas Party which was to be held tonight.

I dreaded the party every year. Severus and I never stayed the whole time, but the people that went just creeped me out. This year, however, I was nervous on top of that. I was sure Blake would have to go to the party, and I wasn't sure how that was going to go. Draco was also going to be at the party, so I could check up on him and make sure he was okay. The way he had looked when I saw him concerned me.

That evening I put on the red dress I had worn to Slughorn's party, the red one, and a pair of strappy black high heels. I pulled my hair up to a mess of curls before applying some makeup and heading downstairs. I grabbed Blake and Draco's presents and stuffed them in a bag before going to join my father downtiars.

Together we flooed to Malfoy Manor. We were let in by Narcissa who took the basket from my arms. As we walked in, I thought of how much darker this party got every year. A quick glance around let me know that Voldemort himself wasn't there. Everywhere I looked were people I knew were Death Eaters, along with their families.

I saw Blake in the back corner, and it seemed like he saw me then ducked into the other room. My shoulders dropped, that's not how I wanted this to go.

A familiar head of platinum hair came up alongside me, "Hello."

I turned to him and had to stop myself from shouting out. He looked positively horrible. The bags under his eyes had deepened, there was a new cut on the side of his face, that must've been magical if he couldn't just cover it up.

"Hey," I greeted, "How's your Christmas holiday been so far?"

He shrugged, "It's been about the same since I talked to you, I mean he hasn't gotten any worse, but it's still bad. It's good having everyone here though. And he has left for a few days, he said he had things to check on, so hopefully I'll be back at Hogwarts before he gets back. My parents are better at dealing with him than me."

I nodded, "For your sake, I do hope so. I'm glad he's not here too, now I can have a little more fun at this party. Do you know where Blake is? I think he's been avoiding me."

"Why?" Draco asked.

I was about to brush him off but instead I told him, "We kissed a few days ago. I'm not sure how he feels about it, or what he thinks I think so I think he's avoiding me."

Draco gasped, "You guys kissed really? Geez Jessica couldn't you guys have done this a year ago when it would be more obvious. Well is he right to worry; do you regret it?"

I shook my head, "No, not at all. I don't know if I want to date him or anything, but I could never regret kissing him. I didn't even get to tell him. I just want the two of us to talk, I don't want to lose my best friend over this."

If there was anyone I could talk to about Blake that would know him almost as well as I did, it would be Draco. I would want to talk to Ginny and Hermione once I got to the Burrow too, because I needed some girl's advice, but Draco was surprisingly easy to talk to.

He nodded in understanding, "I really don't think you're going to lose him, I can't imagine he'd let something like this ruin your whole friendship. If you guys can't talk today, or it doesn't go well, don't worry, I'll talk to him and make him stop being an idiot."