Blaire Zabini || Draco Malfoy

32 - Ride with my Best Friend

I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again

He knows where he's taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I'm taking a ride
With my best friend

Never Let Me Down Again - Depeche Mode

******

It happened on June the eighteenth of our fifth year.

I woke up feeling tired and irritable. I should have been in a good mood; it was, after all, the day of my final OWL exam.

Ideally I should have been looking forward to kicking back and relaxing after months of relentless studying. But Draco's new weird hobby of being Umbridge's little bitch put a dampener on things.

Even though we still hung out and played the occasional card game, I couldn't help but feel his growing obsession with the Inquisitorial Squad was taking him away from me.

For one, I didn't much like what they stood for. It was clear by this point in the year that Umbridge was punishing the students in detentions by literally torturing them. And Draco was just happily sending them to her.

"You're turning into your fucking father." I accused him after he'd come swaggering into the common room one evening, bragging about sending a terrified first year Hufflepuff to Umbridge's office for overtaking him in the corridor.

He looked at me, momentarily stung. I felt a flicker of regret. But then his lip curled into a sneer and he said the cruelest thing he could possibly ever say to me.

"Why can't you be more like Pansy?"

I threw my magazine at his head and didn't talk to him for three days.

It wasn't Pansy, however, whom he turned to for comfort when he received some bad news that night of June the eighteenth.

I had barely seen Draco nor the rest of the Inquisitorial Squad all day. It wasn't really unusual; Umbridge liked to keep them busy, patrolling the castle at all hours.

It meant the common room was quiet that evening, so I made the most of it by curling up on the sofa in front of the fire with a magazine, trying not to admit to myself how much I missed my best friend.

I wasn't sure what time it was when angry voices came barging in, interrupting my peace; it was late enough for most of the Slytherins to have gone to bed, anyway.

Pansy entered first; the motley crew following closely behind. I looked up at once, my eyes automatically searching for Draco.

"Where's Drac?" I asked, frowning; wondering why they all looked so furious.

"Still in the hospital wing," Goyle grunted, his eye unmistakably blackened. Crabbe was next to him, looking equally battered.

"What the fuck?" I said, standing up and letting my magazine drop to the floor. "What's happened?"

"Fucking Potter, that's what happened." Pansy snarled. "His stupid little gang jumped on us."

"Is Draco okay?" I asked, not interested in hearing about anything else.

"He's fine, Snape wanted a word about something, that's all."

They came and sat with me, harping on about Umbridge and a weapon or something. I don't know, I wasn't really listening, my concern about Draco growing the later it got.

Eventually, everyone disappeared leaving just myself and Pansy. She didn't say it out loud but I guessed she was waiting for him to return. I certainly wasn't going anywhere until I knew he was alright so I sat and endured her wittering on about how much the Weasley's stank of pigs or some shit.