Tainted Love

Blush

DRACO

His walk home was warmer in the summer, but Draco had always preferred the cold.

There was no reason for him to be wearing a coat in the placid warmth of June, but the thought of taking it off hadn't crossed his mind. No, his thoughts were elsewhere. And they were nowhere near as tranquil as the weather.

Draco hadn't had to come into work on a Saturday even once since he had started in the Department of Mysteries. He was exacting in his work, finishing his projects with ease and meeting deadlines before they were even set.

Trust Iris to ruin that for him.

He had known she would be a hindrance to him from the day Granger first introduced her, and she had proven as much every day with her slow, pointless work and menagerie of annoying questions.

But this - well, this took the cake.

And the day had started well, too.

His plan had been going off without a hitch. She was blushing at his every word, her body tensing every time his shirt sleeve so much as brushed her robes. It was more apparent to Draco than ever how much the girl fancied him, and, thus, it would be easier than ever to make her quit.

She had even convinced him that she wasn't entirely stupid. Draco hadn't even thought about the practical uses of the potion, and the fact that she had brewed an alternative to Veritaserum without a recipe was nothing short of impressive.

Minister Shacklebolt had been over the moon when Draco told him - and he had told him that it was Iris who figured it out, too. He resented her accusation that he had lied. Draco had been many things over the course of his life, but he liked to think that a liar wasn't one of them.

Anyway, things had been going quite well. His plan, his work life - it was all coming together. He supposed he could ride the high of Iris's achievements even when she quit.

And then she had gone and blown up the Love Chamber.

To be fair, he was distracting her at the time. Talking to her, winding her up when she was supposed to be focusing on brewing. But it was her fault for being so easily distracted. Draco was brewing with his back turned while he was talking to her, and he hadn't managed to fuck anything up.

Yes, it was definitely her fault. Her fault for getting so flustered, her fault for blushing like that.

It was so easy to tell when he was affecting her - almost too easy. Her eyes would flicker down, then back up, as if checking she wasn't making anything up. Her cheeks would pinken, darkening to a shade of red that painted the tip of her nose, too.

Draco had always found people who blush easily to be extremely off-putting. If his cheeks went red at the drop of a hat, he would have found some sort of glamour to cover it up long ago.

But he hoped that Iris didn't. He hoped she was unaware of how she looked at him, unaware of her face reddening and her eyebrows knitting together, her eyes darting around, her hands stilling. He didn't want her to stop doing it.

If only because he enjoyed having an effect on people he disliked. The power of it. The knowledge that he was better than them, in that small way at least.

He resolved to make her look like that more often. It served her right for making him come in on a Saturday.

But the further he got towards his apartment, the fewer thoughts of Iris crossed his mind.

They were replaced, instead, by thoughts of Pansy. She had sent him an owl last night saying she would come over. It had only been a week since the last time he saw her. Usually, he had to wait at least two between visits.