Beauty and the Beast [Draco Malfoy]

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Draco's POV:

"Come here," I told Lizzie a few weeks after her meeting with Granger. "I want to show you something." Grabbing her hand, I led her to our sofa in front of the fire and sat her down. As I sat down beside her, I pulled a small stack of parchment from my robes where I had been hiding it, waiting for when I had built the courage to show Liz.

"Oooo what is it?" she asked, reaching for the parchment. I pulled them back before she grasped them.

"Patience," I chuckled. "I don't know if you knew this about me, but I like to draw. It's not something I go around sharing a lot because once people know I can draw, they want to see some of my works, and I hate showing my drawings." I looked down at the parchment and second guessed my choice to show Liz. Sure I loved her, but I without a question despised sharing my drawings. It's like sharing a piece of my soul with someone. It's personal.

"Is that why your fingers are always smudged black?" she asked, gesturing to my hands which were, in fact, smudged with black residue from the charcoal I used to draw.

"Yeah," I replied, wiping my hands on the legs of my robes only smudging the charcoal.

"Oh, I just figured your soul was seeping through your skin," she grinned cheekily, reaching out and picking the stack of parchment up from my lap.

"Maybe it's your soul rubbing off on me," I joked tensely. Seeing someone looking at my drawings, even Liz, made me feel very self-conscious.

The top drawing was of the bookshelves in the library at my home. It was one of my first drawings, so it wasn't all that good, but it was still one of my favorites. I had somehow managed to capture the rays of sunlight striped across the dusty, old spines of the books loading the shelves.

"Merlin's beard, Draco," Lizzie looked up at me in awe. "You're really good!" She lifted the top piece of parchment and placed it on the bottom, revealing the next drawing.

This next one was a more recent one. It was a drawing of Professor McGonagall teaching us to transfigure a hedgehog to a pincushion in fourth year. She had her wand drawn and pointing at a hedgehog that was curled up in front of her on a table. Her face was taut and stern. It was a drawing I had done in the middle of class when Crabbe had been sick.

Lizzie flipped the page once more. Her own face stared up at her from the parchment. It was a drawing I had done of her lying in the hospital wing in the poison induced coma. Her face had been the most relaxed it had ever been and I couldn't help but try and capture it. The charcoal had been the perfect medium to draw her that day. It brought out the shadows that had been created on her face by the patched sunlight shining through the tall hospital wing windows, the crinkles in the blanket that wrapped around her body, and especially her dark hair that surrounded her head in a halo like array.

She looked up at me in confusion. "You drew me?"

"Keep going," I urged her with a nod. She switched the page once more.

The drawing that had come to the top was one of my absolute favorites. It was once again of Lizzie, and I had captured her face on the parchment. Her head was thrown back, laughing. The lines of her smile were prominent and the shine of her aura had been caught as well. Her face seemed to shine with her own light. She was radiant when she laughed like that, which, thankfully, was often. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her eyelashes sticking out like spider legs.

"Why didn't you show me these before?" she whispered. "They're beautiful, Draco. You are so talented." She turned to the last piece of parchment in the pile and drew in a sharp breath of air.