Thicker Than Blood | Drarry

Fourteen.

New cover! Do you like it?

Special shoutout to my Harry Potter book clubs! I'm in a few, and everyone has been so lovely and it's been really helpful! I highly reccomend going to my profile and checking them out :)

Shorter chapter today, but I hope you all still enjoy!

Happy Monday!

*~*

Draco had so much to do.

Thursday nights, along with Sunday nights, were always the busiest of the week. Why was it that every single professor just had to assign all their essays and projects to be due on the same exact days? It had been like this every year, where everything was either due on a Friday or Monday. Couldn't the professors just work something out? Why was it that McGonagall and Sprout always had their essays due on the same day?

He was sure Snape lined up his assignments on purpose just to torture his students, but why couldn't the rest of them just give them a break?

At least he was almost done. He had finished up his Herbology project earlier in the day and had spent the past several hours working on his Transfiguration essay (a whole 24 inches- Draco wanted to know who the hell pissed off McGonagall that day), and all he had left to do was edit and rewrite his potions essay. He could also study a bit more for his Herbology quiz, but he wasn't too worried about it.

The essay normally wouldn't be so bad, but he rushed to finish his first draft before Quidditch practice at the end of last week, so he really had to scrap it and start all over. He had worked on it since then, but it still just wasn't tight.

He groaned and put his head in his hands, gripping his hair as he tried to think. His head hurt from all the work he had been doing, his eyes were sore from reading his textbooks, and his stomach was growling because he had skipped dinner so that he could get it all done and still manage a good night's sleep.

He never got that good night's sleep.

"Why weren't you at dinner?"

He looked up and his frizzy-haired best friend was looking down at him, arms crossed, a disapproving look on her face.

"There was no way I was going to be able to get all of this done if I had gone to the Great Hall," he argued as Pince shot a glare their way and told them to be quiet.

She sat down next to him, snatching the parchment out of his hands.

"Hey-"

"Busy doing what?" She asked. "I know you've already done everything that is due tomorrow."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I already wrote all my first drafts. I still have to edit them and fix them."

"You said you had already edited them-"

"I am just doing it again, they still weren't great-"

"Twice." She finished.

He sighed, not saying anything, just staring at her as she read through his potions essay. "I haven't even begun marking that one-"

"Good, don't." She said, thrusting the parchment back at him as she closed all the books around him. "It's perfectly fine. Besides, you're Snape's favorite student, it's not like he'll give you a bad grade on anything."

He glared at her. "It's fine, says the one who came for my help on her Potions essay! And I earn my grades in that class-"

"I never said you didn't!" She said, raising her hands defensively as Pince shushed them again. "I'm just saying that he has a soft spot for you."

Draco rolled his eyes again. Snape didn't have a soft spot for anyone. "What do you want?"

She looked surprised. "What? I don't want anything-"

"You know I am not an idiot, Hermione. You are the only one who actually understands me being in the library at every waking hour, so what do you want? Why do you suddenly think I should take a break? You know how important my schoolwork and grades are to me."

She opened her mouth and immediately closed it, like she couldn't find the right words to say. Draco imagined that she was going through every possible excuse she could make up in her mind, realizing that he wasn't going to fall for any of them. "It just feels like you're avoiding something. Or someone."

Him? Avoiding someone? He would never.

"I do not know what you are talking about." He said without looking her in the eyes, opening one of the books she had just closed.

Hermione reached out and slammed the book closed again, almost catching his fingers in between the pages.

"Draco, it's Halloween. You're not locking yourself in the library redoing work you finished on Tuesday because you don't want to socialize."

He had honestly forgotten that tonight was Halloween. He really did, but he wasn't going to tell Hermione that, as he didn't think that she would believe him.

And she was right, he had already rewritten everything on Tuesday. But after taking one glance at his Transfiguration essay, he knew that he had to do it again. He was sure that he would get by just fine on his Potions essay without rewriting it one more time, but he was in a mood where he wanted to lock himself up and throw himself into his own bubble of academia and not have to deal with anything around him.

"You should really go to the party tonight."

Right. The infamous Gryffindor Halloween party, where the fifth, sixth, and seventh years (with the occasional fourth year or two sneaking in) would stay up all night, blasting music, getting themselves embarrassingly drunk whilst all the prefects and professors turned a blind eye.

"Yeah, giving myself alcohol poisoning really sounds like my idea of a great time," he rolled his eyes, lowering his voice, "and should you really be talking about this here?"

"It's not like the teachers care," she said "and you don't have to drink, you know that. Plenty of people don't and just go to hang out with their friends. Does that really sound so bad?"

"Fine. I don't think that getting thrown up on by a drunk teenager sounds like my idea of fun."

"Please," she begged, even tugging on the sleeve of his robe. "Just come for an hour. I won't be drinking, and you can stick to my side all night, I promise I won't abandon you."

"Yeah," he scoffed, "because that doesn't make me sound like a loser at all."

"You would be more of a loser if you didn't show up at all."

She was right. But why did he care? The whole school already thought he was a loser for the past god knows however many years, so why did he have to change that now?

But part of him really didn't want to be up all night doing homework.

"Fine. One hour."