PRECEDENT : Draco Malfoy II

21

One thing that I hadn't realized about fifth year was how busy everyone else would be. Ravenclaws, either despite our reputation as the most intelligent and creative students or perhaps because of it, don't usually study all too much. Fifth year is different. The other girls begin cramming around me in the library or finding spots on the Hogwarts grounds to study and quiz each other. I suppose now, fifteen going on sixteen, we are not given the grace of not trying anymore. Even Anthony does some studying, which I hadn't anticipated. Perhaps he does this because he is a prefect though, for appearances.

Another benefit of this studying is that the Ravenclaws aren't in their dorms as much. In there, we don't have desks, and perhaps if they had pens and pencils instead of quills with ink, they might study on their beds. Often, I can find an empty spot in my dorm room.

It is the same with the boys. Michael, when he isn't off snogging Ginny, is in the choir room. Anthony is about with other prefects like Padma, or with Mandy. As always, Cleve is off with Sally-Anne, and Stephen Cornfoot is wherever he goes. As such, Terry and I find ourselves alone in the Ravenclaw towers on occasion. As such, we've found space in his dorm room, rather than in the office of a ghost who might swoop in at any moment.

It's a good distraction since Draco is always somewhere. At least, it feels like it. During the first two weeks, I played a game with myself where I would count how often I would run into him a day. Excluding classes and meals, I saw him an average of three times during the school week, and twice a day on the weekend. In all of last year, I barely remember seeing him that many times. Certainly before the Yule Ball, I can only think of a handful of times we were in the same space that wasn't a classroom. We don't occupy the same spots.

I gave up when the game began interfering with my work on the Sagum. I would deliberately try to move my thoughts elsewhere, but I can't bury my curiosities about Draco's whereabouts easily. About half the time I visit Terry, I can get a solid hour of work in again before my thoughts of Draco interfere and cause the Sagum to go haywire.

On the sixteenth day of September, I take out a book from the library on occlumency. It's near impossible to learn without a legilimens to teach you, but I practice meditating and trying to clear my mind, with less success than I had hoped.

Even now, I'm trying at dinner. It's only been three days, but I feel no improvement. When I'm lucky enough that my thoughts move away from Draco, they find their way to the string I felt, to the thing Professor Trelawney noticed about me in her tower.

I open my eyes, tuning back into the conversation around me. My mouth is open, about to turn to Terry and ask if he remembered anything about the Chinese and the Greek strings of fate, but I shut my mouth when I realized I tuned out Mandy more easily than usual because she is leaning in with a hushed voice.

"- you just can't convince me that he's not lying," she shrugs.

"No one can convince you of much of anything," Anthony smiles.

She blushes. We haven't spoken about her affection for Terry in some time. I knew Anthony would be a better fit, so perhaps she is over it entirely.

"Well, I'm not wrong," Mandy finishes, "I mean, I don't buy that it's for attention like Rita Skeeter is saying. Harry probably was cursed or hit his head, or he is trying to save face because he couldn't save Cedric. I mean, I'd rather tell a father his son was killed by the greatest wizard of all time than say it was some other accident. It would give his father some sense of purpose in the death, I think."

"Ginny believes him," Michael offers, shrugging.

"There was never a body," Terry shrugs. "He vanished. Why are we so sure he's not coming back again?"