When You Turn Your Back [Drarry]

[5] Clementine

2002
×××××

With the exams of his third and final year knocking at the door, Draco barely got the time to pay any attention to anything other than his books. Along with the practicals and assignments, officially the exams were supposed to end around mid July starting from the first of June. In the last week of August, Draco was practically drowned to the rim in a pool of due assignments piled on his study table which refused to go down even after labouring after it for two weeks.

From the eleventh floor of the building, the windows allowed the minimal of muggles world into his room in the forms of horns and ruckus. Finding a Wizard's hostel in a city wasn't very easy, especially nearby to another Wizarding establishment. Hence naturally, all the students had hoarded in the same building, squeezing a couple more than one person in a single bedroom apartment in order to make up for the huge costs of private lodging of hotels or guest houses. Luckily though, he had managed a whole room for himself which reduced the distracting cons of having roommates, regardless of the times people beating down on his door for notes or help.

Through the open window in front of him, a sudden sweep of gentle breeze snuffed out the candle hovering just above the book Draco was reading, breaking his concentration for the moment to click his tongue in frustration and shift attention to the night sky littered with stars and the crescent moon. His hand brushed the wand laying in the table to relight the room in the stream of the yellow light, though his eyes refused to look away from the ball of fluff that flew closer and closer to the window he was sat.

With exactly two swings of its wings, the barn owl perched on the beat of wood for him to untie the letter off its foot, addressed in a neat calligraphic twisted bunch of letters and sealed with a cyan C. Morph - Unofficial. He didn't think she would have an unofficial range of seal stamp, at least, she didn't look like the kind of lady to him, but thinking back to their conversation, he remembered that she had an Investigation Agency somewhere in England which he couldn't quite recollect at the moment.

Upon opening the letter, though, he didn't feel the need to remember the fine details of her life, since in those same cursive letters the news of her arrival in Cardiff was mentioned in a way which Draco's blood ran up to his neck and face. Considering the need to entrust her with the information of his exam schedule, his lips pulled down in a frown of disappointment for she was going to be in the city just a week after and precisely when his exams were supposed to start. Though the good news was, she was going to be in the county for a few months for a case that sought her presence. 

Within a few hours of him writing a reply for the letter he had received, it had dissipated under the pressure of the heavy tomes bunched around the wooden table for his convenience while he filled up the books of parchments with long essays and descriptions of various magical diseases and the several alternative cures. The promise he had made to himself and his mother often weighed heavier than the pressure of the exams, combined with its superiority in his priority list for the upcoming future he had neatly painted in his mind: respected Healer Draco Malfoy with his mother Narcissa Malfoy.

Exams always had brought a lot of pressure with it for him but been very fast to leave at the same time, making him wonder if it really had been a month, had it really been worthy of so much stress if it were so doable all along; also, when the time for the results padded in the vicinity, the same stress fogged up his mind for some reason, in spite of the thorough calculations of possibilities of his result. Narcissa had almost pleaded him not to do that, not to try and guess his result beforehand for it only did so much for his dreams, but always his fingers sneaked around the question papers to verify with the books only to increase his blood pressure.