Haunted

16 | indelicately

When had he changed? Or had he not changed; was it she who was different now? Because when she found her eyes drawn to where he sat with Zabini, Malfoy no longer appeared cold and distant. Instead, he drank from a coffee mug and chatted, and though he was too far away for her to discern any words of the conversation, she got the sense that he was being friendly.

So who had changed? Malfoy, or Hazel? Or perhaps both of them? She'd spent hours laying in bed the previous night, unable to sleep, while her mind forced a replay of the dinner and the dancing afterwards. She'd eventually had to get up and take a shower in the depths of night because her brain kept returning to the feeling of his hand on her waist from when they'd swayed together. 

She scrubbed the skin in an effort to tell her mind to quiet, to stop thinking about something that didn't warrant examination, but even when she returned to bed, hair wet and flesh red from the abrasions of the loofah she'd discovered in a closet, she could still feel his hand. Still felt the indentations of where his fingers had been, as if they'd pressed harder into the skin than they actually had. In truth, he'd barely even touched her. Had she not been so acutely aware of her own body and his interactions with it, she might not have noticed the way his touch skated across her like a ghost, almost like he was afraid to get too close. Like she might bite, or perhaps run away. Or maybe even scorch him like fire, turn his fingertips charred and black.

That's how she'd felt when she let her hand rest on his shoulder. He was warm, so much warmer than she'd been expecting. She knew he was no reptile, but all the same, she'd predicted he would be cold-blooded. She would locate ice in his skin the way she often found it in his eyes, chilling and haunting in its frozen intensity. But instead, he was pleasantly warm, like a bubble bath she wanted to slip into.

He'd been wearing a sweatshirt, predictably in a shade of black, but the casual clothing was still a shock. It was even more shocking to discover that he was wearing nothing under it when a little patch of his abdomen peeked out as he lifted his arms in a wide yawn at the end of the meal. She'd made a comment about how flushed drinking made her in order to explain away the blush that she was aware was spreading across her face. Luckily, he didn't seem to notice.

She'd stumbled up to her room in a stupor, both from the wine she'd drank and from the dizzying effect that a civil Malfoy had on her. As she changed into pajamas and climbed into bed—unaware that she would spend hours tossing and turning— she struggled to reconcile the two Malfoys she'd encountered, neither of them being Narcissa. No, they were the same person, but oh so different.

There was Rude Malfoy; the one who snapped at her in the library, who ordered her around, who insulted her during training even when there was nothing to insult. And then there was Not Rude Malfoy, whom she'd only known a night, but who had made an impression on her— possibly just for the reason that she could hardly believe he existed when she'd only ever really interacted with Rude Malfoy. Not Rude Malfoy was, after a fair bit of alcoholic loosening up, charming and clever. He was a mama's boy who blushed under the attention of an affectionate memory, who ballroom-danced to disco music, and who indulged in sweets as if they were going to be taken away from him.

She wouldn't go as far as to say that Not Rude Malfoy was kind or generous or even friendly, but he was civil. He smiled sometimes, an expression she thought she'd only seen once or twice on the face of Rude Malfoy.

And now here she was, sitting at breakfast, and staring at him from across the room and attempting to ascertain whether she was looking at Rude Malfoy or Not Rude Malfoy, or possibly some amalgamation of the two. She was much too far away to hear the conversation he engaged in with Zabini, his ever-present mealtime companion, but as he sipped on his coffee and nodded, she could tell that while he seemed tired, he wasn't on the warpath. So was it Not Rude Malfoy?