Limerence; Draco Malfoy

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Innocent

I entered the common room with the stealthiness of a cat, immedietly spotting a shock of platinum hair sitting over by the piano. His head was bent, yet I could see his face clear from where I stood a few meters away: set in its usual tight expression.

Except now, there was a deeper furrow to his brow, and his eyes looked heavier as they stared straight ahead into the fireplace. The music stayed drifting out:

He could play without looking at his hands.

I pretended like I wasn't secretly impressed as I continued observing him from afar. Not admiring. No no no - just... observing.

"Are you going to stand there staring at me all night?"

His bored, unusually soft tone cutting made me jump and flush. How had he even spotted me? A shiver laced down my spine.

I didn't answer. Just clenched and unclenched my fists, slowly forcing my feet to walk up to the piano, until I was stood right next to the stool. He didn't regard me at all.

"Stare at you? No thanks." I tried to match his careless tone, but my nerves exposed me by making my voice tremble. "You flatter yourself too much. I can tell you were spoiled as a child, you don't have an inkling of humility."

A strained silence filled the air. Draco refused to glance up as he stayed sat, perfectly still. I noticed his jaw had clenched slightly.

"Well...?" I swallowed, shifting from one foot the the other. "What do you want to talk about? Not the weather, surely...? Though it's a good job we got back to the school when we did, the storms so bad out there now..."

He didn't answer; I might as well have been talking to a potted plant.

I forced out a sigh.

"Look, I'm tired, Draco. I honestly just want to go to b-"

"-Do you play?" He asked calmly, finally glancing up to fix his darkened eyes on mine.

I blinked into them, feeling slightly unnerved by the sincereity in his random question.

I found myself answering truthfully instead of replying with scorn.

"I-I guess. My mother taught me. I know some basic... songs." I swallowed the wave of grief that had risen up at mentioning her name. I'd not uttered a word about her outloud since...

... Well, I couldn't actually remember.

Draco continued giving me this strange, thoughtfull look. His mouth quirked faintly at one corner, yet his eyes stayed dead.

"You were snooping in my bedroom, weren't you?" He sprung out with yet another out of the blue question. Crimson seeped its way across my cheeks.

"I wasn't!" I defended, and it wasn't exactly a lie.

Draco's eyes, surprisingly, didn't fill with rage. Instead, they drifted back to some spot in the distance; veiled with heavy thoughts again.

"You can snoop all you want. I wouldn't be stupid enough to leave anything lying about that I didn't want anyone else to know about."

"Right." I replied stiffly. "Well, I didn't look through anything. You're not as interesting as you think you are; honestly, Draco, I couldn't care less about what you keep in your sock drawer."

"No?" He tilted his head up, eyes widening a fraction, pretending to look offended. "Well, consider my feelings hurt. My sock drawer is full of thrilling things."

A devillish, arched smirk suddenly crossed his lips. He'd stopped playing his weary tune. I stared down at him expectantly, feeling the heat from his blazing eyes as they scanned over his jumper on me. My self-consciosness spiked through the roof.