Salazar's Angel

XVII

Another week goes by and Dahlia hardly catches a glimpse of Draco, aside from when she returns to her room Friday evening to find the same black shirt he made disappear from her hands hanging in her closet. This time is different though. She knows he's in the castle and not at the Manor because she sees him, darting out of class the second it ends or sitting at the opposite end of the Slytherin table in the Great Hall for whatever meals he actually shows up for. Her mind works the entire week trying to figure out exactly what the hell had happened last Friday, but the more she thinks about it the more her arm burns.

Not long after he had attached his mouth to her chest, and worked his hand up to play with the straps of her so called lingerie had he promptly dropped her back to her feet and practically ran away. The look in his eyes had been something undiscernible.

Through her fleeting glimpses she can tell he is continuing to look worse and worse, the circles under his eyes growing and his robes hanging just a little looser off his frame. 

Finally, Friday rolls back around again and she decides she can't take it anymore: the mystery, the fire spreading from her arm through her entire body, all of it. Friday's are beginning to become their thing, Dahlia realizes as she treks across the common room and up the stairs to his room.

Once again, Nott is the one to pull open the door to greet her knocks. His grin is less pronounced this time.

"Hey Dahlia. He's not here." There is now yet another undiscernible look for Dahlia to attempt to untangle. 

"Oh. Do you know where he is?" Dahlia asks. 

Nott presses his tongue into his cheek and looks down at the floor. "You might try the library. But Dahlia?"

She forces her eyes up to meet Nott's, a weird sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Yeah?"

"Take it easy on him. Something is off. And I don't know that you're making it any better..." He trails off, averting his gaze.

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean Theodore?" If he thought he was going to get off the hook that easily, he had the wrong girl.

He huffs out a breath. "He has a lot going on right now. More than you know. And I'm pretty sure all you do is wind him up..."

Before he can get out the rest of his sentence, Dahlia has pulled her wand out of the pocket of her skirt and is stabbing it just above his Adams apple. For all he knows, she might actually have some control over the thing.

"I would think twice before speaking about me again in that context Nott. And for your information, he was the one who left me last." And with that, Dahlia spins on her heel and heads off to find the library, leaving Nott standing in the doorway with an equally amused and admiring expression on his face.

Dahlia has never been to the library before, which of course results in her wandering cluelessly around the castle until it's gone dark outside. Finally, she stumbles upon a half open door and instinct tells her to push inside.

Sure enough, what lies on the other side of the door has to be shelves containing tens of thousands of books. It's dark enough to cause Dahlia to pull out her wand and wrack her brain for what Draco used to get his wand to light up what feels like ages ago when he dragged her into that empty room. 

"Lumos," She whispers, and mercifully her wand lights up. She is fairly certain that none of her teachers under Voldemort ever taught her that spell.

Dahlia walks down the center aisle while sweeping her wand from side to side to check the stacks for any side of Draco, her heeled boots clicking loudly wooden floor.