dragonfly || d.m. [✔]

the guide who i didn't need,

Cherry blossom is so pretty, it's such a pity it falls down and onto the dirty ground -- like love.
—

a r i a  s t u n n i n g s

There are so many things wrong with this world, I would list them if I could, but they vary from person to person. So many things. Things like peace, equality, education. Things like my life. So many things. And sometimes, it feels like this world isn't as fucked up as it is — sometimes, I forget all the bad things.

Those are the best moments.

And I only experienced a few of them, for I lived in the time of war.

Albus Dumbledore summoned me to his office. I went, and stood there aloof and awkwardly.

"Ms Stunnings! Good evening," he smiled pleasantly, his beard sweeping the floor of his office.

"Good evening," I replied although the evening was anything but good.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," he smiled. "I hope you settle down fine and are happy here."

"Okay," I said, and added, "Thank you."

"Hogwarts is your home, you need not worry about not being sorted into any of the four houses. Sorting is simply a matter of classification. Sometimes, people are just not meant to be classified into the four main houses which our founders decided upon because each person is unique and each has different traits of their own. Really, it confuses me at times how people can be sorted into only four houses when each human soul is unique," Dumbledore told me.

I listened intently, but I could only register the fact that every single student in Hogwarts history had been Sorted but me. Chaos, my old friend.

"But," he continued, "What you need is a guide."

I objected immediately, "No, please don't. I'm not very comfortable with a guide."

"But the guide who will be guiding you isn't very comfortable with new people either," Dumbledore argued.

"Please," I tried, "Don't do this to me. I simply cannot have a person following me everywhere like a shadow. Please."

"You must. Hogwarts is a huge school and it is very easy to get lost. Also, please do not go to the seventh floor corridor," Dumbledore said.

This had the effect of wanting to make me go there and as my blue eyes met Dumbledore's from underneath my hood, I sensed a twinkle behind his half-moon spectacles. This was insanity — the entire human race confused me at that moment.

"Your guide will be Draco Malfoy and you may be sure that he will not follow you anywhere unless you force him to. You may have heard stories about him, but give him a chance, will you?" Dumbledore asked me. I nodded silently.

Indeed, I had heard some stories about Draco Malfoy fly around the Hogwarts Express. And from what I could piece together from them, Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater's son, sorted into Ravenclaw. Apparently, most people like him were meant to be sorted into Slytherin. He got silent treatment from all the students because no one trusted him.

"I trust that you have already met him?" Dumbledore asked again, pulling me out of my thoughts.

"I haven't met anyone," I murmur.

"At the Great Hall?" Dumbledore prompted.

So the boy who offered me the bread was Draco Malfoy. He's that nice? I thought he was a Death Eater's son?

But there is nothing called guilty by association, and I of all people should know that.

"Oh," I replied.

"Yes," he said. "I am calling him in."

"Okay," I said.

He called, "Come in, Mr Malfoy."

The door opened and the white-blonde boy walked in. In the candlelit atmosphere of Dumbledore's office, Draco's hair looked like the dying fire on a cold winter's day and his eyes looked like a tornado of fire — grey and red at the same time, almost mystical.

He looked at me with slight interest, the type with which you would look at a black cat with green eyes on the street and think that it was a witch's cat.

"Stunnings," he said, inclining his head slightly.

"Malfoy," I replied, not inclining my head at all.

"You may go now," Dumbledore said and I took one last look at the office with its silver contraptions glowing in the candlelight as I left.

"I would appreciate it if you didn't call me Malfoy," Draco told me.

"Okay," I say as I wonder why. "Okay, Draco."

He seems to relax just a tiny bit. "This way," he says.

"Where's my dorm?" I ask him.

"You'll be shifting in with me," he says.

I tense up, "Who told you that?"

"Dumbledore did," he replies simply, "It was like he knew that you wouldn't have a house even before you came here."

I nod as I wonder if Dumbledore sabotaged the Sorting Hat or something. Or perhaps he was just one of those mind-reading, magical principals one reads about in books. God, that man was confusing.

We stop in front of a blue door. 

"This is the Ravenclaw common room," he introduces. "Be prepared for some glances."

But he didn't mention the stares and looks of disdain which I get as I walk in. It's like it's my fault that I don't have a house. "What is she doing here?" a guy asks. He's a Prefect, judging by his badge. 

"She's staying with me," Draco replies. "It's got nothing to do with you."

"It's bad enough having one Death Eater living here, now we've even got a little rule-breaking outcast living with us," the Prefect said.

"Could you please just stop?" a soft voice interrupts him, "I think she's just unique and different."

"Of course you would, Lovegood, of course you would," the Prefect says, and the entire common room is filled with sniggers.

The little blonde head which had stuck out of her book to help us went right back in. She doesn't say anything.

I feel terrible. It's not even five hours since I arrived, and people are already facing troubles because of me.

Draco taps my arm quietly. He's standing with a black door open for me to enter. I enter the room and Draco removes his hand from my arm. 

"Two beds — thank the gods!" I exclaim.

"Yeah, I didn't want the beds to be as single as you are."

I glare at his stupid, stupid remark and he smirks. He was annoying, but then again - most humans are.

"That's your bed," he points to a bed which is close to the window, "And this is mine."

"Okay," I say. All I want to do right now is to pull out my cigarette and simply smoke my problems away, but I can't. Not now, at least — not when Draco Malfoy is staring into the back of my head with his tornado grey eyes.

"I have pretty eyes!" A blonde haired boy dances around me. "Pretty, pretty eyes!"

"No, you don't!" a girl's voice interrupts.

"You said so," the boy says.

Both the girl and the boy are faceless and the memory is a distant dream of mine, probably a figment of my imagination.

Then why does the name Draco Malfoy sound so familiar?