Adamantine - D.M.

Chapter 8 - Capricious & Calculable

"Don't you think he looks sick?" Romilda asked me a few weeks later at breakfast. "Harry looks fine," I said, not looking up from my cereal. "Not Harry" she said pointedly, "Draco". I hadn't spoken to Draco- in fact, I'd hardly looked at him since the night we had detention together. I turned my head to look at the Slytherin table. Truth be told, he did look like shit. Draco normally looked quite put-together. Partially due to his upbringing I suppose, but I'd never seen him look so disheveled. He looker paler (if that was even possible), and had deep purple semi-circles under his eyes. He sat alone, pushing around a fork full of scrambled eggs that he clearly wasn't eating. Vaguely, I wondered if it had anything to do with me. I doubted it and pushed the thought far from my mind. 

As the weeks wore on, he did seem to be looking worse. Any time I noticed him, he always had the same vacant expression on his face. He was usually alone too, as of late. I found this odd, considering he was usually in the company of his cronies, Crabbe and Goyle. At the very least I expected Pansy Parkinson to be hanging on him, as she usually followed him around like a lost puppy. I wondered if he'd finally managed to piss them off with his sour attitude that they'd ditched him entirely. I couldn't shake the nagging feeling though, that something much more sinister was going on. 

"I swear, that is what he said" Romilda demanded after she sprinted up to me in the Great Hall one crisp autumn morning. "Are you sure?" I questioned, trying to make sense of the eavesdropped conversation Romilda had just recounted to me. "So Harry has some map that shows us wherever we are in the school?-" I thought quickly back to the night when he might have seen Draco's name and mine together in the Prefects bathroom. "-And he keeps seeing Draco disappear off the map?" I questioned Romilda further. She nodded, "That's what he told Ron". I sat for a moment, wondering what that meant. "So Harry thinks Draco is leaving the school?". Romilda shrugged. "Is it at all possible that Harry's map doesn't actually work? I mean, I've never heard of a map that can show where everyone is at once. I also can't imagine that Draco has been managing to escape the school without Dumbledore knowing". Romilda looked exasperated. "That's the thing! They don't think he's leaving" she said. "Well where would he possibly be going then?" I asked incredulously. "Do you remember that club Harry made last year when Umbridge was going all crazy?" Sure. "Well-" she continued, "Harry thinks that Draco is going into that room they used! The one that Ginny told us about. Now what was it called?" She looked up as if the answer might lie in the enchanted ceiling; which at the moment had fluffy white clouds streaked across it. "Room of Requirement" I confirmed, wondering if Harry was actually on to something. "They say the room changes for whatever you need. Like- if you needed a bathroom, that's what it would be, right?" Romilda nodded furiously. "So what would he be needing in that room, to disappear for hours at a time?" I asked. Romilda wasn't sure. It seemed Harry didn't know the answer to this either. I poured a bowl of cereal, wondering what Draco was up to.