𝒯𝒽ℯ 𝒫𝓇ℴ𝓂𝒾𝓈ℯ𝒹 𝒪𝓃ℯ | 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐟𝐨𝐲 |

#16 The Yule Ball

The days rushed by quick and as soon as I wrapped my mind around everything that happened, the day of the Yule Ball was there. Maribel didn't get ready in our dorm along with Daphne and Pansy. Hermione smuggled her in the Gryffindor common room along with El to get ready together.

I knew, because El told me.

I didn't talk to neither Maribel nor Draco since Pansys' cruel act of exposing in the Great Hall. In my classes, I pretended my best to ignore the gazes from my sister on my side as much as Dracos' eyes lingering on me every now and then across the room. As soon as our professors dismissed us, I hurried to blend with the other students and out of sign before one of them could approach me.

In my free time I didn't go to the astronomy tower, because I knew both of them would search for me there first.

I spent a lot of time with El these days. She acted like Switzerland between us and tried her hardest to negotiate, but I blocked her straight away. Of course, I would love to get things off my chest, to make peace, especially with my sister, but I wasn't able to.

Not now. Not because I didn't want too, but I knew I couldn't find the right words to say. I would just crumble.

So, I sat on an old tree onthe edge of the forbidden forest for the last couple of days most of the time,reading in my books without really remembering only the last sentence my eyestraveled over. I was shielded from the entrance of the castle, so I was alonemost of the time until the sun started to set.

Just for one afternoon where Hagrid found me there and invited me in for a cup of tea. Well, his cup took me a whole hour to empty because it was probably the size of my head. But it felt good talking to someone not involved in my mess right now. Even though the man looked like a big, clumsy oaf, I think I never met someone as warm hearted as the caretaker. I sometimes visited him with Harry and the others in our last years, but sitting in his cabin, letting all the things off my chest with Fangs head in my lap pleading for cuddles, felt good in a way I needed it the most.

For the few hours before curfew, I just wandered around the castle, crossing corridors I never saw before so that once I returned to the dungeons, everyone was already in their dorms and Maribel probably asleep. If not, I laid down, turned to face the window, and pretended to fall asleep in a blink when I was actually laying awake for hours.

I did have nightmares in those nights - worse ones than I had before. The kind of dreams showing you your worst fear. The same green light, the same bloody hands of mine, the same vanishing grey eyes.

In the night before the ball I woke Pansy and Daphne with it too, but they were too busy to ask what I was thinking waking them on 3am when they had such an important night ahead, that they didn't realized I was pacing and struggling to calm down. Maribel did, but she just stayed on her side, looked at me in the most worried way. And I looked back, shortly, but I did.

"It's a shame you're not coming", Pansy said while she covered her eyelashes in another layer of mascara on the mirror next to the entrance of our dorm room. She was wearing a black dress with a layer of transparent green tulle which kinda reflected the light. I couldn't lie, with her hair been neatly pinned up, she looked beautiful. But I wouldn't tell her this, the last thing Pansy Parkinson needed was another push of ego.

"Yeah, you sure you wanna spend this night alone here?", Daphne asked once she straightened the silver silk on her lap.

"Yeah, I'm sure. I'm fine. Have fun", I said and laid my eyes back on the book in my lap with a small smile.

"Well, I feel kinda bad for this dress", Daphne snickered as she stood up in her heels and took her purse from the nightstand.

The girls soon left without another acknowledgeable gaze in my direction, letting me back in the calming, eery silence of the dorm. I could easily hear the exciting chattering from the corridors where everyone was slowly getting down to the hall.