Draya Malfoy

10 - Did Potter Get Hotter?

I'm not going to lie, Blaise's warning had me shook.

I didn't even enjoy it when Pansy and Daphne ripped the piss out of Harry over his interview with Rita Skeeter in which he'd confessed to still crying at night about his dead parents.

"Want a hanky, Potter, in case you start crying in Transfiguration?" Daphne said, waving a tissue in the air as we passed him in the hallways.

"Stunningly pretty? Her?" Pansy shrieked in Hermione's face, referring to the piece about Harry finding love with a 'stunningly pretty Muggle-born'. "What was she judging against - a chipmunk?"

She and Daphne rolled about laughing, something I would have once joined in on. But, clocking the warning look on Blaise's face, I kept out of it, nervously biting my lip.

Blaise remained frustratingly silent about what he'd said, shutting me down every time I tried to bring it up. Theo wasn't any better - denying any knowledge whatsoever when I confronted him about it.

"Blaise must be on something, Dray," he said, eyes looking shifty as shit. "You know what he's like."

Yes, I do know what he's like and I know he doesn't make stuff up. In fact, he's too honest sometimes.

"Just tell me," I implored to Blaise the evening before the first task, "why are you not warning Pansy and Daphne to keep out of it?"

"Because," he said, barely moving his lips as his eyes slowly roamed the common room for eavesdroppers, "neither of them have direct family members involved."

"Involved in what?!" I implored, feeling utterly frustrated at being kept in the dark.

But he said no more.

I wrote to my father that very night, asking as casually as I could how life was. If there was something going on, then surely he would share it with me, his daughter?

But he replied with the same crap - answering my questions with questions himself. How are your studies? Do you need more funds? Are the filthy Mudbloods keeping their distance?

I resigned myself to not knowing, walking down to the first task with that same tight feeling in my chest.

Whilst everyone cheered and screamed as four angry dragons were brought into the grounds to try to kill off some students for Dumbledore's entertainment, I sat chewing my lip, looking out for any ominous activity.

Harry showed off as usual, waving his broomstick around to distract the dragon and impress the judges. I swear that's cheating, but whatever.

*****

The castle was suddenly awash with hormones as people attempted to ask one another out for this Yule Ball we were to have.

I wondered who Harry was going to take, if the papers were true and he would ask Hermione. Well, good luck to them both, I thought bitterly.

Pansy and Daphne spent literally hours going over plans for the big day, whether it be their hair styles or who they would potentially go with.

"I would simply rather die than go with a Hufflepuff." Pansy drawled when Daphne said she heard rumour that Justin Finch-Fletchley was going to ask her.

"What - even if Diggory asked you?" Daphne asked, pausing in the act of painting her toenails to look up, wide-eyed.

"Well," Pansy smirked coyly into the mirror as she bunched her hair into a high ponytail and then wrinkled her nose disapprovingly at the result, "Champions are, of course, exceptions."