Professor Malfoy

45 | day sixteen

Chapter 45
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I had a nightmare. I was surrounded by thousand copies of Draco. Each vein, each wrinkle, each hair on his head - they all looked identically to him. I thought it was just a dream at first, until it quickly turned into a nightmare when none of them would answer me, look at me. Was I invisible, or were they all ignoring me?

I felt helpless, running through them, demanding them to speak, shaking their bodies until I went crazy. They were everywhere and I couldn't escape.

It might've been one of the best dreams I had, though. At least I saw him. His handsome face.
It was pointless to try to fall asleep again, even my stomach thought so - it sent me sounds and signals of hunger. So I got up and went to the common room in the middle of the night to grab some apple.

Just in my pajama and slippers, I ran down the stairs into the green-fire illuminated common
room with sounds of cracking fire and bubbles in the huge aquarium. I didn't need to look around, because from my experience, I never met anyone in here at this late hour.

Except Draco that one time.

I walked straight to the table with silver plates of food and grabbed the last apple of green color that remained here. Funny. I always smelled a hint of green apple in Draco's perfume.

"Midnight snack, huh?"

My body immediately freezes and for a moment, just for a tiny little moment, I hear his voice.

I turn to Zion sitting on a carpet in front of he fireplace, holding a bottle of whisky in his right hand.

I can't say I'm not disappointed.

"Kind of," I mumble and take a few steps closer toward him, "what are you doing here?"

He deeply sighs and takes a raw sip from the bottle, a small grimace appears on his face afterwards.

"Lara left."

I stop my hand with the apple in midway to my mouth. Suddenly, I'm not so hungry. "Oh,"

He glances at me and taps on a free space next to him for me to sit. I obey and do so with a silent grunt of pain. My body is stiff from all the laying.

"She promised she'd tell me," I murmur under my nose.

I knew, I saw that our near-death experience affected her in much worse way than it did me, and I also knew, somewhere deep in myself, even though I didn't want to think about it, that she is really leaving. I just didn't think it'd be so soon. And without a proper goodbye.

"Sometimes I feel like she wasn't even real, she couldn't be," Zion says with a deep sigh and drinks from his bottle, then offers me a sip.

I would take it if I didn't realize my stomach is utterly empty. With a nod of my head, I take a bite from the apple, now warm from my hands.

"You don't deserve this," I shake my head while looking directly to the fire.

"You don't, either," he mumbles, his voice is sober as ever. No evidence of drinking any alcohol.

We sit in silence for a while, I let his words fo through my head. Maybe I do. Maybe I do deserve this pain and misery for all I've done to other people. Nicole, for example, with the get-it-all-out potion. I still don't know what's gotten into me. It was useless, for those few minutes of dancing with Draco, I ruined the whole night for that poor girl.

Or maybe I don't. Maybe she's even worse than me.

If anything, I deserve and explanation, I deserve to know what's going on with him and why can't he talk to me.

After a while, I put my head on Zion's shoulder and release a deep and loud sigh. "Both." I mumble.

I want to say more ad comfort him somehow, but distant voices and female laughter interrupts my thoughts. We hear someone enter the common room through the secret door in a portrait - it makes an annoying squeaking sound every time it opens. I turn my body to see who it is with my brows frowned at this unusualness.

All of sudden, two familiar faces appear in the living room part that's a passage to the boys sector. One of them belongs to Theo, who's blood immediately drains from his body the moment our eyes meet.

He's hand in hand with Mia, his girlfriend, and it looks like she's pulling him to walk faster, until they both stop to look at us, the only people in here. He slightly gasps his mouth, not knowing what to say.

"What are you two doing?" He asks after he opens and closes his mouth for a few times.

I eye him from up to down and remember those arms hugged around me the other night he took care of me. I wonder if his girl knows.

"Night talks," I tell him, trying to come to an eye contact with Mia.

"Is she better?" Theo asks Zion like I'm not even here.

Zion takes a look at me first, eyes me up and down and takes a sip from the whiskey. "She will be."

Before they leave, Theo takes one more glance at me and nods his head, so I nod mine, too. Mutual understanding, we don't even have to say anything. First love knows it all.

I turn to Zion from staring into the flames for a little too long, "so, as I was saying...we're both too-" he interrupts me.

"We're good people. We deserve a happy ending."