addiction - draco malfoy

eighteen

i frowned, fighting the urge to just smack my head off the desk. potions today was making no sense. i was way too tired, and after falling asleep with draco on saturday i'd forgotten to swipe the leftover cocaine. i was struggling without the midweek pick me up more than i'd like to admit. the potion was way too thick, and no matter what i did it wasn't thinning out. i looked around, seeing if anyone was looking at me. they weren't, so i turned back to the potion, focusing hard on it. i hadn't tried again since i'd heated up the shower, but if nobody was looking at me there was no reason i shouldn't try to use it to my advantage. that was my mental logic anyway. my inner argument over whether it was too risky or not was pointless though, because nothing happened anyway. no tingles, no heat and certainly no thinning of the potion. i think i was just destined to get an f on some assignments.

i caught up with emma and lily outside of class, falling into step with them on the way to the great hall. they were once again, talking about a party i hadn't been to. i'd been with draco, and whole they were still consistently nagging me to confirm who the mystery guy was, they were pretty sure in themselves that it was cedric. i almost wished it was cedric, it would make things a lot less complicated to explain when they eventually found out. they aren't the kind of people to believe that you can be just friends with a boy like that. in their eyes, sleeping with them meant, well, sleeping with them. just to confirm, once again, i am not sleeping with draco malfoy. not in that way anyway.

'you looked annoyed in potions' lily directed at me suddenly and i grimaced 'my potion wasn't exactly going to plan'.
'yeah i know, i was watching you' lily paused thoughtfully for a moment as if she might say more, but turned back to emma instead. 'you guys go ahead, i have to do something' she said quickly, before disappearing down the corridor. emma watched her with a sigh. 'she's avoiding mealtimes again' emma said, as if it wasn't obvious and i gave her what i hoped was a reassuring smile. 'let's not jump to conclusions, she might have actually had something to do' i touched emma's arm, hoping to be comforting, and gently nudging her in the direction of the great hall.

we sat and started to eat but the mood was pretty dead, i wasn't able to get much out of emma no matter what i tried. i felt bad for her, if it wasn't me going off the rails it was lily starving herself. emma felt pretty responsible for us. i'm not sure if it was some kind of coping mechanism for her, a way for her to feel like she had a purpose, but it obviously wasn't working very well with how wrong it was going today. 'i love you ems' i told her and she gave me a weak smile. 'i love you too' she turned back to her potatoes, continuing to push them around her plate in a way that ironically reminded me of lily. i didn't mention this to her though and instead spent the time filling her in on my date with cedric.

it was over a week ago now, but i hadn't had a chance to properly go into the ins and outs of it. she'd met us with dry clothes and walked up the driveway with us, leaving the car behind and making polite small talk, but after that she had excused herself to go study for divinations. i'd hardly seen her since then, and when i had it had always been around big groups of people. it wasn't necessarily that i was ashamed of cedric and wanted to hide that i'd been on a date with him, but i wasn't the kind of person who liked to have my personal life out in the open like that.

plus, high school gossip twisted everything. what was an innocent date would be modified into something scandalous, or overly dramatic. it was just how rumours worked, not too different from a game of chinese whispers. i finished relaying the events of the day, starting to survey the hall while she squealed over what i had told her, her mood considerably brightened by what she considered a success for me. fred and george were sat with the golden trio over on hogwarts table, talking animatedly about something. at the bottom of that table, neville sat with luna lovegood. fair enough, luna want a gryffindor, but that didn't stop her from sitting with them. quite often i'd look over and she'd be with neville or the trio.

i liked luna, but there was no denying sometimes her conversation was hard to follow. neville wasn't even attempting to, staring at something dreamily across the hall. i didn't even have to follow his gaze to know it was blaise, sat at the end of our table with draco and their friends. it seemed they were kicking off about something, but after hanging around with draco every saturday i'd spent a short amount of time with crabbe, goyle and blaise; and knew this wasn't exactly out of character. it sometimes felt like they just enjoyed having something to be annoyed about. i noticed draco wasn't joining in with the complaints, and instead was people watching  around the hall, same as me. i caught his eye and the corner of his lip twitched, fighting the urge to smile. 'who are you looking at?' emma asked and i turned back to her, grinning. 'nobody'.