dark side • draco malfoy

32 | The Burrow

The following morning, I awoke to sunlight streaming in through Ginny's bedroom window, and Mrs. Weasley could be heard preparing breakfast downstairs.

Not wanting to get up just yet, I snuggled further into the warm, green blanket that wrapped around me like a cocoon, and tried to enjoy a few moments of the crisp summer morning to myself. Unfortunately, that proved impossible when sharing a room with two other teenage girls.

"Morning, Ivy." I heard Hermione greet from her makeshift bed beside me.

"Morning. Did you sleep well?" I asked, turning to face her and trying not to wake up Ginny. Since Hermione and I were staying with the Weasleys for awhile, she and I had made piles of pillows and blankets to sleep on on Ginny's bedroom floor, while Ginny herself slept on her bed.

"Not really. I couldn't stop thinking about Mad-Eye last night. I've been awake for about two hours now." She sighed. Looking over at her, I saw that she had Hogwarts: A History in her lap. As she followed my gaze, her face slowly flushed pink.

"It's my comfort book. When I feel stressed, it calms me down to read it." She explained, and I nodded. By now, I was used to Hermione's somewhat extreme literary tendencies.

Just then, a rustling behind me caught my attention and I turned to look at Ginny, who was slowly waking up.

"Ugh, don't you two know how to be quiet and let a girl sleep in?" She yawned, rubbing her eyes and attempting to flatten her wild red hair.

"You have six older brothers and two parents, Gin. You should be used to being woken up early by now." I joked, pulling my own hair up into a messy bun.

"Fair enough." She laughed, and the three of us took that as our queue to get up and ready for the day.

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"This looks amazing, Mrs. Weasley." I complimented, eyeing the plates of toast, eggs, bacon, sausages, and orange juice, as well as four different types of jams, in front of us at the table.

"Oh thank you dear, it's really nothing. Now everyone dig in and eat up, we've got a busy day ahead of us!" Mrs. Weasley smiled, and suddenly The Burrow was filled with sounds of cutlery and plates colliding, and a dull chatter filled the house.

On my right hand side sat Ginny (who had purposely sat herself beside Harry despite them not dating anymore), and on my left was Fred (and then George). George still looked quite pale and exhausted from losing his ear in battle the previous night, but it was reassuring to see him awake and eating breakfast with the rest of us.

"So Fleur, when can we expect your family to arrive?" Mr. Weasley asked, before taking a large bite of toast.

"Zhey told me zhat zhey will be arriving later tonight, if zhat is okay." Fleur answered from across the table. I noticed Mrs. Weasley pale a little at the news, before composing herself and speaking up.

"Well we'll all just have to work extra hard to get everything done today, then."

With Bill and Fleur's wedding in just two days, everyone in the Weasley household was going to be working like crazy to get everything prepared for the event. It was safe to say that Mrs. Weasley was a little stressed.

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"So, are you excited to finally turn seventeen?" I asked Harry. The two of us were currently wandering around the Weasleys' property, pruning plants and tidying the yard as per Mrs. Weasley's instructions.

Although she didn't know the exact details, Mrs. Weasley knew that Harry, Ron, and Hermione were planning to leave after the wedding to embark on a dangerous mission, and she had taken to separating the three of them at all times. I supposed that way, she hoped that they would not be able to discuss their plans and thus not put themselves in such grave danger.

"Yeah, I guess. It'll be nice to finally be able to do magic outside of Hogwarts. I just can't believe it's tomorrow... I feel like just yesterday I was receiving my acceptance letter." He shrugged, crouching down to snip off a particularly out-of-place branch.

I smiled, thinking of the first time I met Harry, the Weasleys, and the rest of my friends, "You were such a scrawny little kid, with the messiest hair I had ever seen." I laughed, waving my wand at the rake trailing along the grass beside me.

"Oi! I wouldn't be talking - you were pretty lanky and awkward yourself." Harry teased, trimming down a few more leaves.

"I have to agree with you there." I chuckled, thinking back to my early days at Hogwarts.

Without realizing it, my thoughts drifted to my early encounters with Draco. Truthfully, I had known him before we were enrolled at Hogwarts; both our fathers worked at the Ministry of Magic, and I had crossed paths with him a few times as a child. Smirking to myself, I wondered what my younger self would think if I told her that she would one day be head over heels for the obnoxious blonde boy that always teased her whenever he had the chance. Oh how times had changed.

Thinking of Draco caused my heart to ache worriedly, and I was beginning to believe the old saying that "distance makes the heart grow fonder". Desperate to dispel Draco Malfoy from my thoughts for the time being, I grabbed the charmed rake and decided to rake the rest of the Weasleys' yard by hand; it would serve as a decent distraction. However, as petty as it sounded, a small part of me hoped that wherever he was and whatever he was doing, that he was thinking about me too.