✓ WE NEVER SLEEP, draco malfoy

E I G H T

"Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define who we become."
— Alyson Noel 

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"Draco," Rowan whispered as they finished the last of their Potions assignments. "What's your father like?"

He regarded her from his spot on the opposite end of the couch. She had her legs curled underneath her, her hair yet again thrown into a loose ponytail a top her head. He have given her a blanket, noticing the chill she had gotten as the temperature in the room seemed to drop. He always wondered why they didn't have fireplaces in the Prefects rooms, it would've been nicer if they had.

"Why do you want to know?" he responded gruffly, flipping through his Charms book. 

She shrugged, closing her own book. "You never really talk about it, it's always empty threats about 'my father will hear this, my father will hear that,'" she sighed, shrugging again. "But what's he really like?"

He stiffened, tossing his book aside and standing. He didn't want to talk to her, he didn't want to even breath a mention of what was really going on behind closed doors. 

Lucius Malfoy was a manipulative man, Draco knew that. He always knew that he did horrible things to get where he was now, a prominent man not only for You-Know-Who, but for their 'noble' crusade. He wanted to prove himself to his father, to finally be given the respect he deserved. He wanted his father to see in him what his mother does so desperately. 

"He's an important man, does lots of work with the Ministry," he rambled, covering for what his father was truly doing. 

He heard her stand, listening to the shuffle of her feet and almost expected her to touch him but she didn't. She had gone to his dresser, looking at the photographs he had brought with him. 

She ran her fingers over the old oak of the dresser. "I mean, what's he like with you?" 

He sat down on his bed, watching her as she kept her back to him like he had done before to her. Her skirt was short, he had never noticed the length before now, the way her long legs were curbed out underneath it. He fought back the idea of running his hands up her legs, to feel them underneath him and he silently cleared his throat. She was to transfixed on the pictures to notice, as if they would give her the answers she so helplessly needed from him. 

"Why would I want to bloody tell you?" he responded instead, not giving her the satisfaction of knowing anything about him. 

She sighed, her body frozen against the dresser, both hands drumming against its surface. She wouldn't turn to look at him, afraid to see the look on his face when she started to speak, feeling her courage sizzle up and burn her throat. She didn't know why she wanted him to know but her lips were already moving and her voice was failing her with forbearing cracks. "My father was a good man," she murmured and heard the bed creak behind her. "He did some work with the Ministry too, I'm sure they both knew each other. He also did a lot of charity work for-um-well, for Muggles."

He didn't understand why he was telling him this, why was it important? Why was she opening herself up to him when he couldn't have been bothered to do the same?

"He loved my mother," she continued, wondering why there was a kind wetness underneath her eyes. She didn't need to cry, she'd done enough of that the past few days. "He called her 'ma chérie and mon amour,' and I always thought it was so cliché. He is-" she shook her head, hair moving with her like a wave. "-he was obsessed with old French movies. We used to watch them together as a family before, well, before things got complicated."