Two Sides of the Same Coin(DRARRY)

CHAPTER FIVE

"Yet, love and hate me too / So, these extremes shall neither office do / Love me, that I may die the gentler way / Hate me, because thy love is too great for me." - John Donne

Draco had his own room. As one of only two eighth-year Slytherin boys, he was an odd one out: there was no room for him and Goyle in any existing Slytherin dormitory, yet it was not worth Conjuring a new one just for two people. So he and Goyle were each given their own rooms. They were nothing like the luxury of the Slytherin common room, being two Transfigured broom cupboards, but they were snug and they were private. McGonagall had been apologetic as she'd explained the predicament to them at the start of the term, but Draco hadn't minded a bit. He'd always been a whore for privacy. And they still, of course, had access to the common room whenever they desired it.

It was to his room that Draco retreated after extracting himself from Pansy after dinner, an effort that had been almost more trouble than it was worth. Almost.

"Draco, darling, it's so early still!" She'd pouted. "Come back to the common room, won't you? We never see you anymore, and you know how the little ones adore you."

"I think you're confusing the past and the present, Pansy," Draco had drawled. "My name isn't worth a damn to Slytherins anymore. And the 'little ones' don't adore me; they're scared of me."

"Only because you insist on scowling and prowling around like you do! Honestly, you're starting to remind me of Professor Snape! But much more gorgeous," she added, batting her eyelashes and tilting her face toward Draco's. Draco rolled his eyes. As if he could be won over by a well-placed fluttering of eyelids and a clumsy compliment. Why did girls view such silly things as acceptable mediums of flirtation? Performed correctly, it was a much more subtle art, in Draco's opinion. "Anyway," she went on, "they would adore you if you were ever around, I'm sure!"

Draco sighed. "Pansy, I have a lot of –"

"– work to do," finished Pansy, imitating his bored drawl. "Yeah, I know. You always have work to do. Look, if you don't want to come to the common room, fine. But can you at least let me come see your room? I don't even know where it is, and I'm dying to see it."

"I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why not?"

"It's just ..." Why exactly was Draco opposed to this concept? Pansy proposed it at least once a week and Draco always refused. But what was the problem? The whole school, it seemed, already assumed they were going out. "We could get in a lot of trouble if we got caught."

"Filch hardly ever lurks around the dungeons, you know that. He's more terrified of the Bloody Baron than Peeves is. Come on, Draco! It'd be fun, you know it would," she said, in a voice that was as heavy-handed as a wink. Actually, Draco didn't know anything of the sort. But he wasn't about to admit that.

"Maybe so, but it's best not to risk it," he said smoothly. "I can't afford trouble this year, Pansy."

Pansy, perhaps placated by the exposure of the goody-goody tendencies he hid beneath his cool, devil-may-care exterior, had finally relented then. And he'd made a run for it.

Now Draco walked beyond the bare stretch of stone that concealed the Slytherin dormitories, and continued down the hallway. He turned a corner and there, on the right wall, was a pair of small paintings no bigger than a standard piece of parchment. Draco approached the one on the left and whispered, "Malkin's." The painting of an elegant female aristocrat with an ever haughty, bland expression (though Draco swore her eyes always smirked at him), spread out along the wall until it was about the size of a door. Then it went blank and Draco stepped through the wall.