Healing // d.m.

Bonus Chapter | 1 |

BONUS CHAPTER 1

• Draco & Catherine: 14 Years Old •

  A FEW crumbs of golden pastry were stuck onto his dress pants and Draco brushed them away with his hands. He had snuck a few pieces from the Yule Ball before slipping away from the crowds. He didn't bother about Pansy. Last time he checked she was dancing with nearly half of the men in that room.

  He picked an empty corridor near the exit towards Hagrid's hut. He savoured the breath of fresh air that greeted him and the cold breeze that was swiftly flowing onto his hair. Draco was used to it. Extravagant balls, the drink, the dance, the music. But it didn't mean he had to like it.

  Draco sat on one of the concrete windows and propped his feet up, his back leaning against the cold wall. He looked up at the blanket of stars illuminating the pitch black sky, and the silver crescent moon illuminated the earth below.

  His thoughts travelled back home. To his family, to his father. It has been doing that rather often lately. The constant visit of several family friends that were cloaked with a black mist was surely a bad omen. Draco could feel that something was going on, it was not something good. He could taste that something was going to happen, but he couldn't say.

  His mother told him that it was adult business. That when the time comes, he would be included too. It scared him even more.

  Lucius Malfoy was never a good man. That much he was sure. He was his father and Draco still loved him, but never more than that.

  Finishing the last piece of apple tart, he dusted off the residue from his hands when he heard the soft clicking noises of shoes echoing through the halls. The footsteps are getting closer by the minute. Panicked, Draco looked around for a place to hide. Fucking Salazar, he did not need detention just because he sneaked out of a bloody ball and caught roaming the halls after hours with no supervisor.

  The owner of the light footsteps came to view and he exhaled. Glad that it was not a teacher. But when he saw her face, his heart sped up again just a little bit.

  Pomfrey's lackey was breaking the rules as well. He didn't really notice her at the ball, just a glimpse when she entered with Flick and his girlfriend. Now as he was shielded by the pillar of the window, he took a chance to really look at her.

  She kept looking behind her shoulder as if she was scared that someone might follow. Then she looked left to right, as if to make sure no one was here.

  Draco scoffed. He was not attracted to Catherine Ariendra, he reassured himself. He did not need further complications in his life. Not after her act of defending the bloody bird on the train. But his skin remembered the way she was gentle with his scars that were now completely healed.

  "What do you think of Pomfrey's lackey?" Theo had asked once, out of the blue.

  "Why do you ask?"

  "No reason."

  Draco had to swallow his initial thoughts, before responding, "She's alright."

  Theo and Blaise gawked at him and Draco continued, "I mean she's different from the others."

  "You mean she does not prance around you, begging to get your attention?" Blaise chuckled.

  "I'm just saying I don't despise her. She did help me in the Hospital wing." With that he left his friends to make their own assumptions.