Purely Mudblood (Dramione FanFic)

Dinner

He was going to do it.

He was going to do it.

Draco ran his hands through his hair-- if he didn't break that habit soon, he thought, he'd surely go bald. He tried to will himself to take a step forward, but his bloody feet wouldn't do it. He adjusted the tie around his neck; it felt as if it was strangling him, but he'd already loosened it twice. Move, he mentally commanded himself. But he couldn't. He wouldn't.

The table looked so close and far, all at the same time. So inviting, yet so terrifying. Draco could see Hermione, her head bobbing as she talked with Harry and Ron and Ron's little sister. Draco thought he knew the little redhead's name, but at the moment he was so frightened he could hardly remember his own.

Deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

And he took a step.

The first step required a Herculean effort, but the second came much easier. In fact, by the fourth or fifth step, he suddenly forgot how hard it had been for him to start to move towards that empty spot beside his beautiful girlfriend, dead center of the Gryffindor table.

When Draco reached the group, he felt a hard knot form in his throat. He wanted to say hello, or smile, or do something, but he froze. Finally, Harry looked up. And grinned.

Draco never thought such a thing would happen.

Seeing Harry's movement, the rest of the table lifted their gazes to Draco. Ron smiled a bit uncomfortably, but genuinely. The younger Weasley girl feebly lifted the corners of her mouth into a mixture of a grin and a grimace. One could see that she didn't quite trust Draco yet, which he supposed he deserved. Hermione responded much differently, however. She looked up, and a happy glow lit up in her face. She patted the seat beside her, and Draco sat down.

It felt great.

Halfway through dinner, Draco found himself laughing at some anecdote the Weasley girl had told. Her name was Ginny, and Draco found something about that beautiful. The whole meal was pleasant. There was constant banter between the group, teasing and bickering, all in good spirits. Draco fit in like the final piece of the puzzle. It was the first time in a while that he felt like that. Like he belonged.

A noise cut through one of Ron's snarky comments. A loud crash, the kind that reverberated off the walls of the Great Hall. Draco could feel his face buzz slightly from the vibrations. Then silence. Before he even turned to look at the source of the noise, Draco heard a shriek, probably from a female. He whipped his head around so quickly that his neck ached. And he saw them.