A Heavenly Betrayal (Draco Malfoy Love Story)

Night Walk

Maria sat down in front of Luna and helped herself to some pumpkin juice. With a flick of his wand, Professor Flitwick distributed the long-awaited schedules to the buzzing students. A square piece of parchment flew into Maria’s hands and she threw a quick look at it before setting it aside, disinterested.

"Hey Maria, what’s your first class?" Cho asked friendlily from across the breakfast table, a few seats away.

"Oh," the sixth-year uttered a bit pathetically, shaken out of her reverie – she tended to be quite abstracted early in the morning; she hadn’t noticed Cho before, "it’s potions."

"Uggh… I hate that class!"

"I actually like it."

Everybody in hearing range stared at her in disbelief. A bit embarrassed by their reaction, she added:

"I mean, I like the subject; not the teacher."

A collective ‘Oh’ followed, even though they still didn’t look convinced. Blushing, Maria gobbled down the rest of her cereal and left the table to head for the dungeons. On her way she realized Malfoy would be in that class, perhaps she would get a better look and ultimately, some answers. 

She studied him from behind her cauldron the whole period, but still didn’t manage to glimpse even the slightest clue. He looked even worse than on the train and it disconcerted Maria - his skin had a greyish tone to it and he had dark purple bags under his eyes. She secretly hoped it was only the bad lighting of the dungeons that toyed with his complexion and made him look even sicker. It was puzzling; she wanted to know the cause of Malfoy’s dreadfulness so badly, it was actually starting to frighten her. What was wrong with her? Why was she the only one who seemed to have noticed? She was eager to get to her next class, so she could get her mind to focus on something else; anything else.

So the day passed, slowly but steadily, followed by another one…and the next thing she knew, the entire week had gone by. Malfoy was still unsettlingly out of himself, but Maria hadn’t had much time to think about it. She was exhausted; the teachers seemed to all have let loose, bombarding them with work. On top of that, it was Friday night; which meant that, being a prefect, she was to patrol the corridors until midnight. She was pretty sure no one would be up past curfew. Nonetheless, a prefect’s got to do what a prefect’s got to do: so, she reluctantly got out of her comfy couch in the Ravenclaw common room and, determined to get the best of it, picked up the book Professor McGonagall had assigned them to read and left.

She had been walking/reading for about an hour when she heard distant footsteps. She closed her book with a sigh, unhappily disturbed, and made her way towards the footsteps. Turning a corner, she came face to face with…

"What are you doing here?" the blond boy said, putting on a menacing face.

"Um… same as you; I’m a p-r-e-f-e-c-t?" she answered back dumbly. ‘Not that you would’ve noticed all these years…’ she thought to herself, referring to the fact (yes, it was a fact) that she was a ‘normal’, quiet student and that Malfoy had a wondrous sense of observation.

"What?" His face screwed up.

"By the way, is everything okay?" she continued. "You seem preoccupied, for some reason."

That had to be the understatement of the century.

"What?" he repeated, louder this time.

"I just thought th-"

"MIND YOUR OWN BLOODY BUSINESS!" Malfoy roared.

Needless to say she had touched the spot.

"Alright, alright! You’re obviously just fine," she said, curling up one end of her mouth.

she had turned her back to him and was about to walk away when he said, with a most severe expression and grave tone:

"I wouldn’t smile if I were you; this is no joke."

She looked back over shoulder.

"Honestly Malfoy, who takes you seriously?" she answered frankly.

"Haven’t you heard the rumors?" He still had that low, menacing edge to his voice.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"They’re just rumors," she said before walking away.

This time, she went all the way back to her dormitory, quite content, leaving a confused and slightly dazed Malfoy behind. He had wanted to yell something at her, but found himself unable to. Maybe it was because she wasn’t afraid of him. Or, maybe it was because she somehow cared about him.