Letters I Can't Send

16

Y/n's POV

"So, how dumb are you at charms?" I ask, only sort of intentionally trying to provoke him.

He rolls his eyes. "If call you me dumb again, Ellis, I swear," he takes a threatening step forward. I grin up at him.

"Let's start basic. Can you or can you not preform the lumos charm?" I ask and start pacing in front of him, it feels good to be above him like this. Smarter.

He takes a bit too long to answer so I stop pacing and look at him, a bit baffled. "You don't know how?" I gape at him as I did when I first saw the Room of Requirement. 

"So, I don't know how. You're here to teach me, aren't you Ellis, not to make fun of me," he glares at me.

I wave off his comment. "Yeah, yeah, whatever." I pause and furrow my brows. "Where's your wand—you need a wand to preform spells, Malfoy," I say smartly and his glare gets harder. Merlin, it is fun to make him mad.

"I've got my wand—I'm not stupid and you know that, Ellis, don't test me." he says, becoming a bit angry, as he pulls his wand from a pocket in his robes.

I put my hands up defensively, though I'm grinning. My own wand is twined between my fingers in careless, relaxed way. "Just making sure,"

He scoffs softly and rolls his eyes.

I give him a fake smile and shrug my shoulders playfully, then turn around so that my back is facing him.

I try to explain to him how to produce the lumos charm, but I can tell he truly is struggling and my cocky way of teaching must not be helping.

I sigh softly and put a hand lightly over his wand, gesturing for him to stop his efforts. He stops and looks at me, a hint of curiosity in his eyes of what I'll do next.

"Okay," I say. "Try like this," I demonstrate with my own wand, the hand motion—which is in an almost triangular form of movement.

Draco tries to mimic the motion, but doesn't do as well as me. His arm is rigid, his whole body is rigid. He's putting too much pressure and concentration on one single hand movement.

I stop him, by putting one had on the exposed top of his wand and the other on his wrist. He startles at my sudden touch and turns his head to look at me, a little surprised. I choose not to meet his gaze and instead angle this wand upwards and press his wrist down. "You need to relax. Not be so stiff all the time." I focus on making sure his hand is in perfect position, I barely notice him looking at me, studying me, in fact.

After a minute of shaping his hand at the precise angle, I hold the top and exposed part of his wand to display the hand movement for him—so that he can feel what the motion feels like. I try my best not to look at him. I can feel his eyes on me, blazing a gaping hole into the side of my head. I feel my breath pick up just slightly, and my cheeks heat.

My hand slowly drags away from his wand—I still won't lay my eyes on him. He's probably smirking his arrogant-little-smirk he certainly likes to wear around me.

"Okay," I say again. "If I can find a way to turn the lights out—" suddenly the light in the Room of Requirement diminishes. I gasp and almost jump out of my skin at the immediate darkness. As my eyes adjust, I notice Draco peering at me through the black that has taken the room.

"You were saying?" he urges me on and I'm so glad it's dark because I don't want to see his haughty smile.

"Yeah—right.  You try again to use the lumos charm. It's dark, we can see the effects well now." I clear my throat in an awkward manor, though I'm not quite sure why.