Day 15 – 21
It hadn't taken much seducing at all to convince Parvati Patil, one of the prettiest girls in Draco's year, to join him in an unused classroom after lunch. In fact, she had been quite eager to agree. He had been prepared with all his best smoldering looks, pickup lines, and challenges (because he knew Gryffindors loved a challenge and would never back down from one) when he'd cornered her in a corridor, thinking that, as a Gryffindor, she would have been stubborn and put up a fight. But none of these tactics had been needed. It was a bit off-putting how eager she was. Draco wasn't sure he liked it.
He also wasn't sure that he liked her snogging. She was overzealous, even in this area, taking control where Draco liked to be the one in control, her tongue shoved down his throat like it was an ice cream she feared would melt.
No, this hadn't exactly gone to plan.
She pulled her mouth away from his, making quite an endeavor out of it, and looked at him with half-closed eyes. She must have thought she looked sultry, but Draco merely thought she was falling asleep.
“Oh, Draco, I knew, I just knew, that you liked me. I always knew. Professor Trelawney predicted it ages ago. Are we going to do it? Right here? In this classroom?” she said in a husky voice that had to be put on.
“W-what?”
“Because I can clear these desks away, and we can lie on our robes. I'll transfigure these chairs into giant candles! It will be so romantic!” she said, her grip on the front of his robes tightening so that he felt he was being bullied, not propositioned.
He looked around the dusty classroom at all the old desks cluttering the room and tried to envision the giant candles that the chairs would become, but Draco couldn't make any sense of it. He wanted to laugh at the notion of giant candles surrounding them while they did the dirty. And shagging on top of their robes? Um, ew? He thought girls had higher standards than that! He thought Gryffindors had higher standards than that!
He pried her fingers off his robes, restraining her wrists in case she decided to grab him again.
“Look, Patil. It's been lovely,” he lied. “But I've got to go. Other things to do, other girls to see. You know how it goes.” He was straightening his hair and robes as he said this, completely missing the utter look of dejection on Parvati's face.
“You're... what?”
“Leaving,” he replied, but as he reached for the doorknob, he heard her ask, “Are you gay?”
He turned around and stared at her in outrage, utterly speechless and shocked.
“You are, aren't you!” she cried, tears forming in her eyes. “I never knew!”
“I—I'm not gay!” Draco cried.
“You have to be!” she returned. “You wouldn't turn me down if you weren't!”
“You—you have no idea what I would and would not do!” he replied, growing increasingly flustered.
“It's okay, Draco. I won't tell a soul!” She mimed the action of locking her lips and throwing away the key, and Draco was so disgusted, he left the classroom before he lost control and strangled the girl.
Draco stopped short when he saw Weasley in the corridor, walking toward him. This was the first time they had seen each other since she had vowed to leave him alone. He saw her glance at him, but she looked away with determination, and normally Draco would assume that she found it impossible to peel her eyes away from him and comment on that fact. A moment later, Parvati came out of the classroom, and Draco winced at how flustered and ruffled she looked. There was no mistaking what she and he had been doing. He noticed Weasley's eyes widen when she caught sight of her housemate.
“Oh! Ginny!” Parvati cried, running up to Weasley's side and grabbing hold of her arm. Draco could see a reluctance in Weasley's face that spoke of how welcome she found Parvati's presence, but the girl herself was oblivious. “Did you see the newest edition of Witch Weekly? There's this fabulous article about—”
The girls disappeared down the corridor, Parvati's voice growing quieter and quieter as she pulled Weasley along.
Draco felt the oncoming of another headache and made his way to the hospital wing to take care of it.
~*~*~*~*~
By dinnertime, everyone in the castle had heard the rumor that Draco Malfoy was gay. Everyone he passed in the halls ogled him without reserve, whispering to their neighbor behind their hands, pointing at him, laughing at him. It wasn't until he sat down at the Slytherin table that he found out what everyone was talking about. Blaise Zabini was quite gleeful to have heard the rumor and did nothing to hide it.
“So the great Draco Malfoy is a poof, is he?” Zabini asked as soon as Draco sat down.
“Excuse me?” Draco replied, more shocked than angry. These were not words he had ever expected to hear from anyone's mouth, and yet he'd heard them twice in the same day.
“No need to play dumb. It's going all around the school that Parvati Patil wanted to shag you but you turned her down because you're a poof.”
Draco should have known better than to believe Parvati when she said she wouldn't tell anyone. As if she could hold back from spreading a good piece of gossip!
“I'm not a poof! Patil is revolting. That's why I turned her down.”
“Like I said, Malfoy. No need to play dumb. I suspected all along that you might be. You can't hide it now. And, for your information, Patil is one of the least revolting girls in this school. But since you're a poof, of course she's revolting to you.”
One look at Zabini's face told Draco that he was enjoying himself immensely. And Draco, disgusted and humiliated, suddenly couldn't stomach dinner when the majority of the Great Hall's occupants were staring or whispering about him. Without a word, he stood from the table and left, but he didn't want to go back to his dormitory, where any of his housemates could find him.
He found himself taking the stairs all the way up to the seventh floor corridor, and he didn't stop until he was standing in front of the door across from the tapestry of dancing trolls. He tried the doorknob and the room was there—just like he needed it to be—chairs, fireplace, table of food and all.
But the chairs were empty, and he wanted to hex himself for hoping that Weasley would be in one of them.
~*~*~*~*~
After five days, Draco had about all he could take of the Come and Go room. He'd woken up every morning and made his way to the room, and there had been no need for him to leave for the rest of the day, what with the table of food constantly refilling itself for every meal and the bathroom he had discovered after taking a closer look at the walls. Even though the school had forgotten the rumor about Draco's sexuality, as if the rumor had never existed—because it hadn't!—Draco couldn't forget it.
But it wasn't just that.
He could do anything he wanted... but there was nothing he wanted to do. What was the point? It was going to be the same thing, day after day. He was only one person. Just because he behaved differently, that didn't mean that everyone in the school would react to him differently. Even if he went to Transfiguration and sat the class, he would still be partnered with Goyle. Goyle would then manage to shrink Draco's nose to nothingness. Draco could then dash out of the classroom, avoiding the laughter of those who saw him in the corridor, and hide out in a broom closet for all it mattered, until his nose grew back. But what did that change?
He could go up to Weasley's brother and punch the git in the nose. He might even get a detention from McGonagall for it. But when Draco woke up the next day, the punch and the detention would be erased. Weasley would never know he had been punched. McGonagall would never know that Draco should have gone to detention the previous evening. There was no satisfaction in punching a git who wouldn't remember being punched.
Even thinking that, Draco wanted to laugh! This is not the tune he would have sung on Monday. Any excuse to punch Weasley would have been a welcome one, especially if Draco could do it again, as many times as he liked, with Weasley not remembering a single black eye.
But now...
Draco was free as a bird, but he felt caged. Caged by Tuesday, and watched over by Monday and Wednesday sentinels.
He hated to admit it—absolutely loathed to admit it—but he needed Weasley. For his sanity.
On the sixth day, Draco woke up with his usual pounding headache and made a decision he hoped he wouldn't regret.
He didn't go to the Come and Go room. Instead, he went to breakfast, where first-years were throwing food at each other. Rather than waste the time he had left for his meal taking points away and scolding ickle firsties, Draco endured the eggs in his hair and scarfed down his breakfast, keeping his eye out for Weasley to leave her table. As soon as he saw her stand, his fork dropped to his plate with a loud clatter, earning the attention of the housemates sitting around him. But he ignored their stares and followed Weasley out of the Great Hall.
“Hey,” he muttered, his eyes sweeping the entrance hall to see if anyone would catch him talking to a lowly little blood traitor. Whether she hadn't heard him or was simply ignoring him Draco didn't know, but she never stopped. “Hey, Weasley,” he said, a little louder this time. “Oi, Ginevra.”
She stopped at that one and spun around with her fists tightly clenched at her sides and an annoyed scowl on her face. “My name is Ginny!” she cried.
“Right, right,” Draco said, waving his hand in the air as if dismissing her name. “Look, that rumor isn't true.”
“What?” Weasley replied. She closed her eyes and shook her head, obviously very confused.
“I know you've heard the rumor that Parvati Patil spread, and it's not true!”
He felt her gaze in a tangible way, and if it was her intention to make him feel like an idiot, then she had succeeded, though he would never tell her that out loud.
“Parvati Patil spreads all kinds of rumors. You will have to be more specific.”
Draco looked around again to measure their audience. The entrance hall was growing more populated as the start of the first class of the day loomed nearer, but no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to them, so he figured he was safe.
“The rumor,” he said in a low voice, leaning in closer to contain the rumor between themselves, “that I am gay.”
“You will have to speak up. I can't hear you.”
He huffed in agitation. “I'm not gay!”
A few people passing them turned to look at Draco, questions in their eyes, and he felt his cheeks grow warm because of it.
“I'm not!” he repeated to the people listening, who all dashed off to avoid his ire.
Weasley rubbed one of her eyebrows as if the conversation were giving her a headache, but Draco thought he saw one corner of her mouth twitching. His eyes narrowed. She had better not be laughing at him!
“Malfoy,”—she paused as if trying to gather the patience to teach a child something simple—“that was several days ago. The rumor is gone. No one here has ever heard it.”
“You have,” Draco replied, and he hated how petulant he sounded. He hoped she hadn't heard the childish tone in his voice.
Her brow creased in anger that Draco didn't understand. What did she have to be angry about?
“What does it matter what I've heard? You were the one who didn't want me around. Who cares what I think if we're on opposite ends of the castle at all times?” She turned and continued walking up the steps, but Draco would not let her end the conversation that way. He hated following after her, like a puppy dog or a lovesick fool, but sometimes things needed to be done even if he found them unpleasant.
“It matters a lot! I can't let you go around thinking I'm a poof!”
“Because my opinion means so much to you!”
Well, she had stumped him there. Her opinion wasn't supposed to mean anything to him at all. She was a Weasley, a Gryffindor, a pauper, a blood traitor. The complete opposite of everything he and his family believed in and stood for. And she wasn't even that pretty because of her speckled face and ugly ginger hair. So what did her opinion matter?
Draco raced up the stairs to catch up to her near the second floor corridor. He grabbed her arm and tugged her around, and then silenced her angry interjection with his equally angry words.
“You're the only one I have. I can't let you think that about me. Everyone else in the school may have forgotten it, but you haven't, and you need to know the truth.”
Because I need you, he didn't say.
He knew he'd won her over when her eyes softened, but what he read in them was pity, and he instantly hated her for pitying him and himself for saying those things to her.
“The truth,” she said, almost sadly. “What do you know about the truth?”
She pulled herself free and continued up the stairs, leaving him on the landing below. Just as Draco was about to go back down to the dungeons, she turned around, stabbing him with her glare.
“Does this mean you don't want me to leave you alone?” she asked.
He paused to think, but memories of the last who knew how many days made his decision for him. He couldn't go through this alone. He would tolerate her because he had to, because his sanity depended on it. Because the loneliness and boredom would eat him up from the inside without her.
“Yes,” he replied, and then straightened himself up, pulled himself together. The arrogant expression that normally lived on his face returned as he said, “I'll allow you to bother me. For now.”
She rolled her eyes at him and continued up the stairs. He descended a few but stopped once again at the sound of her voice.
“Oh, and Malfoy...” She was leaning over the railing, looking down at him with a mischievous grin on her face. “I never believed for a second that you were a poof. But your display right here was truly lovely to behold.”
His cheeks burned as she disappeared through the door to the third floor corridor.
~*~*~*~*~
For the rest of the day, Draco's heart ached and the heat refused to leave his cheeks. He fell into bed wondering how he could have acted like such a stupid little Gryffindor, revealing emotions and telling the truth like the Sorting Hat had placed him in that obnoxious house from the beginning. Weasley had tricked him, that's how! How could he have fallen into her trap?
But he slept soundly, knowing that each Tuesday from here on out would at least be entertaining.
If he ever got over his embarrassment, that is.
It hadn't taken much seducing at all to convince Parvati Patil, one of the prettiest girls in Draco's year, to join him in an unused classroom after lunch. In fact, she had been quite eager to agree. He had been prepared with all his best smoldering looks, pickup lines, and challenges (because he knew Gryffindors loved a challenge and would never back down from one) when he'd cornered her in a corridor, thinking that, as a Gryffindor, she would have been stubborn and put up a fight. But none of these tactics had been needed. It was a bit off-putting how eager she was. Draco wasn't sure he liked it.
He also wasn't sure that he liked her snogging. She was overzealous, even in this area, taking control where Draco liked to be the one in control, her tongue shoved down his throat like it was an ice cream she feared would melt.
No, this hadn't exactly gone to plan.
She pulled her mouth away from his, making quite an endeavor out of it, and looked at him with half-closed eyes. She must have thought she looked sultry, but Draco merely thought she was falling asleep.
“Oh, Draco, I knew, I just knew, that you liked me. I always knew. Professor Trelawney predicted it ages ago. Are we going to do it? Right here? In this classroom?” she said in a husky voice that had to be put on.
“W-what?”
“Because I can clear these desks away, and we can lie on our robes. I'll transfigure these chairs into giant candles! It will be so romantic!” she said, her grip on the front of his robes tightening so that he felt he was being bullied, not propositioned.
He looked around the dusty classroom at all the old desks cluttering the room and tried to envision the giant candles that the chairs would become, but Draco couldn't make any sense of it. He wanted to laugh at the notion of giant candles surrounding them while they did the dirty. And shagging on top of their robes? Um, ew? He thought girls had higher standards than that! He thought Gryffindors had higher standards than that!
He pried her fingers off his robes, restraining her wrists in case she decided to grab him again.
“Look, Patil. It's been lovely,” he lied. “But I've got to go. Other things to do, other girls to see. You know how it goes.” He was straightening his hair and robes as he said this, completely missing the utter look of dejection on Parvati's face.
“You're... what?”
“Leaving,” he replied, but as he reached for the doorknob, he heard her ask, “Are you gay?”
He turned around and stared at her in outrage, utterly speechless and shocked.
“You are, aren't you!” she cried, tears forming in her eyes. “I never knew!”
“I—I'm not gay!” Draco cried.
“You have to be!” she returned. “You wouldn't turn me down if you weren't!”
“You—you have no idea what I would and would not do!” he replied, growing increasingly flustered.
“It's okay, Draco. I won't tell a soul!” She mimed the action of locking her lips and throwing away the key, and Draco was so disgusted, he left the classroom before he lost control and strangled the girl.
Draco stopped short when he saw Weasley in the corridor, walking toward him. This was the first time they had seen each other since she had vowed to leave him alone. He saw her glance at him, but she looked away with determination, and normally Draco would assume that she found it impossible to peel her eyes away from him and comment on that fact. A moment later, Parvati came out of the classroom, and Draco winced at how flustered and ruffled she looked. There was no mistaking what she and he had been doing. He noticed Weasley's eyes widen when she caught sight of her housemate.
“Oh! Ginny!” Parvati cried, running up to Weasley's side and grabbing hold of her arm. Draco could see a reluctance in Weasley's face that spoke of how welcome she found Parvati's presence, but the girl herself was oblivious. “Did you see the newest edition of Witch Weekly? There's this fabulous article about—”
The girls disappeared down the corridor, Parvati's voice growing quieter and quieter as she pulled Weasley along.
Draco felt the oncoming of another headache and made his way to the hospital wing to take care of it.
~*~*~*~*~
By dinnertime, everyone in the castle had heard the rumor that Draco Malfoy was gay. Everyone he passed in the halls ogled him without reserve, whispering to their neighbor behind their hands, pointing at him, laughing at him. It wasn't until he sat down at the Slytherin table that he found out what everyone was talking about. Blaise Zabini was quite gleeful to have heard the rumor and did nothing to hide it.
“So the great Draco Malfoy is a poof, is he?” Zabini asked as soon as Draco sat down.
“Excuse me?” Draco replied, more shocked than angry. These were not words he had ever expected to hear from anyone's mouth, and yet he'd heard them twice in the same day.
“No need to play dumb. It's going all around the school that Parvati Patil wanted to shag you but you turned her down because you're a poof.”
Draco should have known better than to believe Parvati when she said she wouldn't tell anyone. As if she could hold back from spreading a good piece of gossip!
“I'm not a poof! Patil is revolting. That's why I turned her down.”
“Like I said, Malfoy. No need to play dumb. I suspected all along that you might be. You can't hide it now. And, for your information, Patil is one of the least revolting girls in this school. But since you're a poof, of course she's revolting to you.”
One look at Zabini's face told Draco that he was enjoying himself immensely. And Draco, disgusted and humiliated, suddenly couldn't stomach dinner when the majority of the Great Hall's occupants were staring or whispering about him. Without a word, he stood from the table and left, but he didn't want to go back to his dormitory, where any of his housemates could find him.
He found himself taking the stairs all the way up to the seventh floor corridor, and he didn't stop until he was standing in front of the door across from the tapestry of dancing trolls. He tried the doorknob and the room was there—just like he needed it to be—chairs, fireplace, table of food and all.
But the chairs were empty, and he wanted to hex himself for hoping that Weasley would be in one of them.
~*~*~*~*~
After five days, Draco had about all he could take of the Come and Go room. He'd woken up every morning and made his way to the room, and there had been no need for him to leave for the rest of the day, what with the table of food constantly refilling itself for every meal and the bathroom he had discovered after taking a closer look at the walls. Even though the school had forgotten the rumor about Draco's sexuality, as if the rumor had never existed—because it hadn't!—Draco couldn't forget it.
But it wasn't just that.
He could do anything he wanted... but there was nothing he wanted to do. What was the point? It was going to be the same thing, day after day. He was only one person. Just because he behaved differently, that didn't mean that everyone in the school would react to him differently. Even if he went to Transfiguration and sat the class, he would still be partnered with Goyle. Goyle would then manage to shrink Draco's nose to nothingness. Draco could then dash out of the classroom, avoiding the laughter of those who saw him in the corridor, and hide out in a broom closet for all it mattered, until his nose grew back. But what did that change?
He could go up to Weasley's brother and punch the git in the nose. He might even get a detention from McGonagall for it. But when Draco woke up the next day, the punch and the detention would be erased. Weasley would never know he had been punched. McGonagall would never know that Draco should have gone to detention the previous evening. There was no satisfaction in punching a git who wouldn't remember being punched.
Even thinking that, Draco wanted to laugh! This is not the tune he would have sung on Monday. Any excuse to punch Weasley would have been a welcome one, especially if Draco could do it again, as many times as he liked, with Weasley not remembering a single black eye.
But now...
Draco was free as a bird, but he felt caged. Caged by Tuesday, and watched over by Monday and Wednesday sentinels.
He hated to admit it—absolutely loathed to admit it—but he needed Weasley. For his sanity.
On the sixth day, Draco woke up with his usual pounding headache and made a decision he hoped he wouldn't regret.
He didn't go to the Come and Go room. Instead, he went to breakfast, where first-years were throwing food at each other. Rather than waste the time he had left for his meal taking points away and scolding ickle firsties, Draco endured the eggs in his hair and scarfed down his breakfast, keeping his eye out for Weasley to leave her table. As soon as he saw her stand, his fork dropped to his plate with a loud clatter, earning the attention of the housemates sitting around him. But he ignored their stares and followed Weasley out of the Great Hall.
“Hey,” he muttered, his eyes sweeping the entrance hall to see if anyone would catch him talking to a lowly little blood traitor. Whether she hadn't heard him or was simply ignoring him Draco didn't know, but she never stopped. “Hey, Weasley,” he said, a little louder this time. “Oi, Ginevra.”
She stopped at that one and spun around with her fists tightly clenched at her sides and an annoyed scowl on her face. “My name is Ginny!” she cried.
“Right, right,” Draco said, waving his hand in the air as if dismissing her name. “Look, that rumor isn't true.”
“What?” Weasley replied. She closed her eyes and shook her head, obviously very confused.
“I know you've heard the rumor that Parvati Patil spread, and it's not true!”
He felt her gaze in a tangible way, and if it was her intention to make him feel like an idiot, then she had succeeded, though he would never tell her that out loud.
“Parvati Patil spreads all kinds of rumors. You will have to be more specific.”
Draco looked around again to measure their audience. The entrance hall was growing more populated as the start of the first class of the day loomed nearer, but no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to them, so he figured he was safe.
“The rumor,” he said in a low voice, leaning in closer to contain the rumor between themselves, “that I am gay.”
“You will have to speak up. I can't hear you.”
He huffed in agitation. “I'm not gay!”
A few people passing them turned to look at Draco, questions in their eyes, and he felt his cheeks grow warm because of it.
“I'm not!” he repeated to the people listening, who all dashed off to avoid his ire.
Weasley rubbed one of her eyebrows as if the conversation were giving her a headache, but Draco thought he saw one corner of her mouth twitching. His eyes narrowed. She had better not be laughing at him!
“Malfoy,”—she paused as if trying to gather the patience to teach a child something simple—“that was several days ago. The rumor is gone. No one here has ever heard it.”
“You have,” Draco replied, and he hated how petulant he sounded. He hoped she hadn't heard the childish tone in his voice.
Her brow creased in anger that Draco didn't understand. What did she have to be angry about?
“What does it matter what I've heard? You were the one who didn't want me around. Who cares what I think if we're on opposite ends of the castle at all times?” She turned and continued walking up the steps, but Draco would not let her end the conversation that way. He hated following after her, like a puppy dog or a lovesick fool, but sometimes things needed to be done even if he found them unpleasant.
“It matters a lot! I can't let you go around thinking I'm a poof!”
“Because my opinion means so much to you!”
Well, she had stumped him there. Her opinion wasn't supposed to mean anything to him at all. She was a Weasley, a Gryffindor, a pauper, a blood traitor. The complete opposite of everything he and his family believed in and stood for. And she wasn't even that pretty because of her speckled face and ugly ginger hair. So what did her opinion matter?
Draco raced up the stairs to catch up to her near the second floor corridor. He grabbed her arm and tugged her around, and then silenced her angry interjection with his equally angry words.
“You're the only one I have. I can't let you think that about me. Everyone else in the school may have forgotten it, but you haven't, and you need to know the truth.”
Because I need you, he didn't say.
He knew he'd won her over when her eyes softened, but what he read in them was pity, and he instantly hated her for pitying him and himself for saying those things to her.
“The truth,” she said, almost sadly. “What do you know about the truth?”
She pulled herself free and continued up the stairs, leaving him on the landing below. Just as Draco was about to go back down to the dungeons, she turned around, stabbing him with her glare.
“Does this mean you don't want me to leave you alone?” she asked.
He paused to think, but memories of the last who knew how many days made his decision for him. He couldn't go through this alone. He would tolerate her because he had to, because his sanity depended on it. Because the loneliness and boredom would eat him up from the inside without her.
“Yes,” he replied, and then straightened himself up, pulled himself together. The arrogant expression that normally lived on his face returned as he said, “I'll allow you to bother me. For now.”
She rolled her eyes at him and continued up the stairs. He descended a few but stopped once again at the sound of her voice.
“Oh, and Malfoy...” She was leaning over the railing, looking down at him with a mischievous grin on her face. “I never believed for a second that you were a poof. But your display right here was truly lovely to behold.”
His cheeks burned as she disappeared through the door to the third floor corridor.
~*~*~*~*~
For the rest of the day, Draco's heart ached and the heat refused to leave his cheeks. He fell into bed wondering how he could have acted like such a stupid little Gryffindor, revealing emotions and telling the truth like the Sorting Hat had placed him in that obnoxious house from the beginning. Weasley had tricked him, that's how! How could he have fallen into her trap?
But he slept soundly, knowing that each Tuesday from here on out would at least be entertaining.
If he ever got over his embarrassment, that is.
Leave a Review