they were just kids [draco malfoy]

Year 3 - 25

Days turned into weeks. The school year was slowly coming to an end. Christmas was looming right around the corner and Astrid couldn't have been more excited. Plus, it had started snowing. There was nothing in this world the girl loved more than snow.

It was a peaceful Friday evening and Astrid was sitting in the library pre-finishing some of the homework assigned for the week after. It had become a habit for the girl to do so. She hated doing schoolwork on the weekends so she had figured, she'd rather finish as much as she can on Friday, always (without exceptions) leave Saturday as her free day, and catch up on anything else left on Sunday. And thus far it had proved to be working out just fine. Except for maybe that evening in particular. 

Astrid sat mesmerized by one of the larger windows in the library as she watched the snow slowly plummeting to the ground. She wished of going outside, playing in the snow. She'd make a snowman for all it took - Astrid believed she would never be too old for that. Her mind was distracted and her Herbology essay was nowhere near finished. In fact, all she had written was the title. 

But it didn't bother her one bit. For one, she knew she would never be good in Herbology anyway so there was no need to stress about it. And besides that, she much preferred dreamily gazing out the window, imagining herself as a heroine in some film rather than racking her brain on all the stuff their professor had told them. As if she had been listening...

"Hello," she heard someone greet cheerfully, pulling her out of her daydreams.

The girl turned her head to see none other than Mike Hallminster sat by her table across from her. Astrid couldn't help but smile noticing the lad. His blonde hair was a little messed up. The sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. His fingers tapped on the table a little impatiently as his ocean-blue eyes sparkled in the candlelight. Astrid had always been scared of the deep ocean.

"Hi," she replied just as cheerfully.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, just my Herbology essay," she shrugged moving the parchment a wee bit in what she hoped was a casual way. In reality, her heartbeat had sped up. She hoped her voice wasn't shaky.

"I see you've gotten far," he grinned.

Astrid laughed. "Yeah." Then scratched the back of her head. "I hate Herbology."

The lad is mad fit.

"How so?"

She chuckled once more. "Cause I'm shit at it."

"It can't be that bad," he spoke tilting his head and Astrid gave him an are-you-bloody-serious look.

"Not bad? Dude, I once killed a cactus by not watering it enough. A cactus! If that doesn't represent how shit I am with plants, I don't know what does."

He laughed at that and Astrid grinned. She tried to figure out why exactly he was here, though, she couldn't say she had anything against it. It was weird how all the boys seemed to have gotten more attractive that year. It was confusing her.

There was a moment of small silence between the two but just before it managed to get awkward, Mike spoke up.

"Anyway... I notice you don't come to practice on Wednesdays anymore. I was wondering why."

Wednesdays were the days she had her private tutoring sessions with Professor Lupin. She hadn't had much progress with the spell but she tried as hard as she could. The professor had accidentally revealed to her that Potter was taking the lessons too. She was more than glad to hear he wasn't doing much better than her. But either way, Daphne was the only person who knew about said lessons (except for Potter maybe) and Astrid intended to keep it that way.