malice. |harry potter|

3.3

♥

"let's go, i've got detention."

♥

Malice did not appreciate feelings. Especially ones that engulfed her mind, distracted her. Mali hated being distracted.

"Fallon!" Snapped Professor Binns, in a rare show of energy, his ghostly form whipping its head in her direction.

Mali, who was very absorbed with her own problems, looked up at him with an unusual amount of contempt present in her eyes. "Yes, Professor?" drawled the girl, voice dripping with monotonous disinterest.

"Care to explain what's so important you can't even bother to be present in my lesson?"

Lottie, seated next to Mali, viewed as her eyes darkened in annoyance, and tugged on her sleeve lightly, ever the pacifist. "Stand down, Mali."

Mali did not, in fact, stand down. "Yeah, literally everything, you mean? This is arguably the most boring thing I've ever had to endure, and I used to sit with my Mother in Ministry court."

The surprise on Binns' translucent face was perhaps the greatest show of emotion any of the third-years had ever witnessed from him, and was accompanied by a few shocked gasps throughout the room, as well as the poorly-concealed snorts from Draco and Pansy. Mali was generally reliable for a good snarky comment here and there, but never so aggressive as to directly insult a teacher. "Detention, Miss Fallon. You'll have to miss out on the Halloween feast. Pity."

♥

    "Come on, Draco! You're so bloody slow."

     Malice and Draco, on Halloween, had taken it upon themselves to visit just about every single store Hogsmeade had to offer, lingering particularly long in front of Quality Quidditch Supplies, as Draco stared longingly at the Firebolt that stood on display in the window.

      Tomes and Scrolls, though, that was the store that they truly cared about. It was perhaps Mali's favorite thing about Draco, the fact that he loved books almost as much as she. Ron wouldn't read a book ever if he didn't have to, and Harry really only enjoyed basic things, only reading what he had to for school. Cedric read mostly for Mali's sake, but he didn't have that same love that she did.

Draco, though, he understood. Draco Malfoy may have been raised in a place far more cold and sad than Fallon Manor, but their upbringings were just the same in that they both grew up surrounded by knowledge. Both children found their escape in stories, their happiness in the halls of a library, their relief in the pressure to be the best, the brightest, the smartest in the room at any given moment. Draco understood the joy of knowledge.

"So you've got to miss the entire feast?" groaned the youngest Malfoy, dragging the pads of his fingers over the books spines along the south wall. "For detention with Binns?"

Mali shrugged. "S'alright, it's not important. I don't care for the feast either way, makes me feel piggish."

Draco cocked an eyebrow, stilling in his strides "Piggish?" he repeated incredulously. "You? Mali, you're like, a fucking paperweight."

"Shut up."

"No I mean it— aargh!"

Funny coincidence, Malice supposed, that that particular moment was the one in which a large black dog bounded out of nowhere and knocked Draco to the ground, licking his face whilst pressing him to the bricks with his paws.