The Girl Who Defied (d.m.)

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The library was rather quiet at such a late hour of the night, though no matter what the time was, the large room always seemed to be eerily hushed. Textbooks upon textbooks were strewn across the large wooden table in the corner by the window. Tracey and I sat across from each other, myself studiously skimming the pages of an old book while she behaved a bit less attentively. Her head slowly bobbed as her eyelids slipped shut and her grip on the book in her hand loosened. Her arm slipped out from under her chin and the loud bang of her head hitting the table reverberated throughout the library. Her eyes popped open and she bolted upright, holding her head in pain.

I briefly glanced up at my roommate from over the top of the book in my hand. I queried, "Did you not sleep last night or something?"

"I just don't want to be doing a project at ten o'clock at night," she complained, resting her forehead against the edge of the table.

"It's due in two hours, Trace. You think I want to be doing this?" I sighed.

She groaned and picked her head up from off the table, lazily training her eyes on the book in front of her once again.

Tracey and I had been assigned a team research project by Professor Sinistra on the constellation 'draco'. Naturally, Daphne teased and made fun of me when the topic was assigned, but I simply rolled my eyes and went on with my life. That being said, I quite literally went on with my life and completely forgot to do anything regarding the project until the last possible minute. It was at this time that I envied the students in Ravenclaw for their brilliant, quick-witted minds.

"It means dragon in Latin," Tracey piped up, breaking the concentrated silence that had settled between us.

I blinked slowly and looked up at her with a flabbergasted expression. "You're joking, right? That's all you've found?" I asked in disbelief. When she nodded, I burst out, "You could've asked Draco for that information! Merlin, we're never going to finish this by midnight!"

After that little outburst, I decided it was time to (seriously) get to work. I flipped through textbooks and textbooks full of information, jotting down minor annotations that I thought seemed important on a sheet of paper. Before I knew it, a half hour had flown by and Tracey was no farther ahead in her research than she had been previously. When I picked my head up to ask her a question, I found her with her head on the desk, her mouth hanging open quite ungracefully, and a quiet snore escaping her lips. I sighed and massaged my temples in an attempt to stop the tension headache I could already feel coming on.

"You look rather stressed out."

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the male voice that spoke up from behind me. I quickly turned around in my seat and spotted Harry standing a few steps away with a small hardcover book in his hand.

"You scared the living daylights out of me, Potter," I laughed softly, putting a hand to my chest, "I'm working on a project for Astronomy. It's due tonight and sleeping beauty over here isn't much of a help." I nodded over to my contentedly snoozing roommate and rolled my eyes.

"I could help you if you'd like," he offered, "I'm not doing anything important right now."

He pulled up a chair from the neighboring table and sat down beside me, taking one of the textbooks in front of Tracey and opening it. Light conversation passed between the two of us as he helped me finish the quite extensive project. The gentle fluttering of pages filled the gaps of awkward silence between us.

I found an interesting piece of information in my book and snatched up my pen to quickly scribble it down onto paper before I lost the page. For a brief second, I glanced up at Harry, only to find that he was watching me with careful green eyes over the pages of the book in his hand. When he noticed my eyes meet his, he quickly averted his gaze back to the pages of the book and cleared his throat awkwardly. Though there were multiple awkward scenarios such as that one, I was too tired to care much at all.