Of Doves and Dragons

Chapter Two: The Books of Wizards

"This dream isn't feeling sweet. We're reeling through the midnight streets, and I've never felt more alone. It feels so scary getting old."

-Lorde, Ribs

"You do realize that you don't have to sit there and stare out the window all day, right?" Draco asked as he strutted back into the room.

What was she to do?

She had no school work because it was the middle of the summer holidays and anyone she knew were possibly thousands of miles away. She had debated exploring the house she now occupied but quickly rejected the thought. She shouldn't be snooping around another's home and, to be quite honest, she was terrified of what she might come across.

Therefore, after their unstimulating tea session turned into an even more uncomfortable lunch of small sandwiches and fresh fruit, she remained sitting at the window of their sitting room staring out the large bay windows that looked out on the courtyard she had walked through that morning.

"Ember?" His voice rattled her back into reality. She blushed slightly, realizing the question had in fact not been rhetorical. After the very few hours she had spent in Draco Malfoy's company one thing that she picked up on easily enough was his overuse of dry sarcasm. She wasn't use to that sense of humor and therefore was a little slow on the uptake with some of his comments.

"Oh, sorry." She spoke softly, blinking out of her dreamy daze.

Mrs. Malfoy walked back into the sitting room, staring at the odd couple of teenagers curiously, her black dress flowing behind her. "Have you two bonded yet?"

"Bonded?" Ember asked appalled. We were supposed to be bonding?

Narcissa had excused herself from lunch before either Ember or Draco had finished. It was painfully obvious that she wanted the two of them to get along, for reasons Ember couldn't explain. Draco clearly had other thoughts on the matter and when he had had his fill of turkey he had left the room without so much as goodbye.

"Yes. Draco, why don't you show Ember your room?" She suggested. She shot her son an unimpressed glare that clearly carried a double meaning between them.

"Fine, mother." He relented with a sigh. He unceremoniously hefted Ember up with a hand on her bicep and pulled her with him. She squirmed in his grasp not being used to being manhandled in the slightest. His long fingers were digging into her flesh uncomfortably and she desperately wanted to demand that he let her go but found that she didn't have the courage.

He dragged her behind him up the staircase. Her feet stumbled over the steps and she practically had to skip to keep up with his long strides as he led her down the opposite way from where Ember's bedroom occupied. She breathed an unconscious sigh of relief in knowing that a house length separated their rooms.

When the pair reached his door, he dropped her arm and slipped inside before closing the door behind him. Her jaw dropped at the rude gesture mildly wondering what the point in lugging her body across that house was. She began to hear clattering and cursing from behind the wooden door and her shoulders relaxed. He's probably just cleaning his room.

Only when he opened the door a minute later and gestured her inside, his room was remarkably tidy; far too tidy for a quick cleansing of the room to have accomplished anything. It was a strange reaction to be sure, but it was exceptionally low on the growing list of strange she had experienced that day thus far.

His room contained nothing special. A rosewood bed with a plain gray duvet sat in the middle of the far wall a door on either side of it. A large matching chest of drawers was pushed the far corner and an antique desk was beside the main door. The deep green of the walls was the only thing that brought the room to life besides a few books and stationary sat upon the furniture.