Ivy || Draco Malfoy

18

"Ivy come it's important!" Pansy waved me over once I had returned to the Slytherin common rooms. After my little talk with Granger, I went for a walk around the grounds. I had to get my myself back in the mood to study for my exams. I wanted nothing more now than to sit down with my potions book and go through it front to cover. Potions were soothing to me. They were so rhythmic and took a lot of concentration, so they were an easy way to escape any minor inconvenience. Before all of this, I would go to the potions lab and just practice until I got every potion in my book memorized and perfected. Whatever was so important to Pansy right now was leaving me irritated.

"What's going on?" I asked. I made my way to the couches where my friends all sat. There was some stiffness in their limbs. The way they sat was uncomfortable, yet they tried their best to mask whatever they had been discussing from the Slytherin's around them.

I took a seat next to Pansy and waited for some form of explanation. Pansy's now frail hand found its way to mind and gave it a tight squeeze. Her olive skin was ice cold yet there was somehow warmth in the gesture. I knew better though. She was trying to warn me not give me comfort. Whatever was happening was not good. That was not new though and little could shock me.

"Are you okay?" I whispered in her ear. I was hoping it had nothing to do with Fulcran. If he was being a pest again I was going to get angry. He had tried to contact her a few times since the fail of an engagement party. She never answered, not feeling like she had to. He was insistent though, he wanted her. I don't know why he even cared. It wasn't like he liked her in any way. He just wanted to the status of being able to call her his.

"I'm fine. Draco isn't," she responded with a hushed voice.

My heart sank in my chest. I hadn't noticed the way he sat on the couch alone, frozen. He held a thick piece of parchment in his fingers looking down at it, reading it over and over. His pupils followed the words on the page going back and forth, back and forth. That was the only thing that moved on him.

"We just found him like this. He hasn't said a thing. We were too nervous to take the paper out of his hand to see what was going on." Goyle said not taking his eyes away from Draco's state.

"How long has he been like this?" I questioned getting up from my spot and slowly making my way to him.

"Don't know. Found him like this a few minutes ago." Blaise added.

I dropped to my knees in between his. I placed a hand on his knee encouraging him to look away from the paper. My touch did nothing. I pulled at the paper in his hands delicately trying to take it away from him. Whatever it held was an order and one we had been waiting for for months now. I didn't need to read it to know what it was. The thick greyness of the parchment-like it had been somewhere damp, the smell of death and the ugly scrawl meant only one thing, it was direct orders from Voldemort himself.

"Draco?" I asked my voice like a safety net coaxing him out of his distress.

"You know what it says," he confirmed.

"When?" I questioned giving his thigh a rub of sympathy.

"Tonight." He answered.

There was silence between us all. Draco wasn't traumatized in any way he was very much lucid. He was just taking a second to digest it all. My poor, poor boyfriend. This was it. No amount of time could let you mentally prepare for whatever horrors will happen tonight.

"What's happening tonight?" Crabbe spoke up.

"What do you think?" Theo answered in a clipped tone adding an eye-roll to the sassiness of his response.