Eighth Year (Drarry Fanfic)

Gryffindors and Slytherins

Draco stalked into the Eighth Year Common Room with a coldly impassive face. Looking at him, one wouldn't think that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown --- mind racing and frantic; his encounter with Astoria Greengrass hanging like a heavy cloud over his head.

She had been disappointed that Draco had not received any news from his Mother. But she'd quickly rallied herself and, very sweetly, invited him out to Hogsmeade the following weekend, when the Sixth Years were scheduled for their outing. Draco had let the invitation hang between them, unanswered, as he regarded her with quiet curiosity. She had been flirtatious, resting a delicate hand on his arm, smiling up at him. He had remained politely indifferent throughout the entire exchange.

Astoria was a beautiful girl. Pale with dark hair and eyes like warm chocolate. If Draco wasn't as bent as an acute angle, he might even have taken a liking to her. As it was, it took all of Draco's stringent Patrician upbringing to not recoil at her lingering touches; even the ephemeral, vanilla scent that wafted from her seemed overpowering, cloying.

Usually, Draco didn't mind girls flirting with him. He rather found it amusing. However, Astoria's demeanor had been different. It had sent a jolt of raw panic lancing through him. The confidence and familiarity with which she'd sidled up to him had disconcerted him so much that he'd even failed to react quickly enough when she had reached up to press a tender kiss onto his cheek. He didn't miss the flash of triumph in her eyes when she had rejoined her friends, leaving him standing on the staircase. It suddenly hit Draco that her every action had been proprietary, as though she was showing everyone present that Draco was hers. From the looks of thinly veiled jealousy on her friends' faces, realisation hit Draco like the Hogwarts Express.

Draco knew other Pureblood families still considered him a desirable candidate for their daughters. Despite everything that's happened, he was still a Malfoy, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight and one of the oldest Pureblood Wizarding Bloodlines. The fact that his Mother was a Black, another of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, was just icing on the proverbial Pureblood cake. After everything that he'd been through over the past two years, the pretentiousness of it all sickened Draco.

Lost in the chaos of his wildly tumbling thoughts, Draco wondered why he'd expected anything different. Although his Father was in Azkaban, awaiting his inevitable end, it didn't mean that Draco's responsibilities and duties to the Malfoy name would end along with Lucius. If anything, it now fell to Draco to salvage what he could of his once illustrious family name. The first among those was, of course, to marry another Pureblood and beget an heir.

Nothing has changed.

Draco suddenly, painfully, couldn't breathe. It felt as if his lungs had been locked tight, gripped by an enormous hand, squeezing the very breath from him. He stood frozen on the same spot, sight unseeing. It had been the pang of a Stinging Hex that had jerked him out of his turmoil. He took a deep breath, letting the pain wash over him, grounding him in the present. He didn't even flinch. With a nonverbal Protego, he'd whirled on his heels and loped up the staircase, noting with grim satisfaction that a few more hexes had bounced ineffectually off of his Shielding Charm.

He'd written his Mother two days previous and had received her response the same day, but other than the usual exchange of news and well wishes, there had been nothing else.

He wondered at his Mother's silence regarding the matter. Although Astoria hadn't said it out loud, she hadn't been too subtle either.

He needed to speak with his Mother.

He needed to find Pansy before he lost his mind.

He needed... Harry.

Draco swallowed back the ache that left him feeling raw and too bloody vulnerable.