Late Night Walks
About 4 hours later, Malfoy and I were still walking through the whole castle, doing our rounds.
It had taken me one hour to finish his stupid essay. Actually it hadn´t been difficult, but I just hadn´t managed to concentrate anymore. And because of that stupid essay I had been late. Again. I just hated being unpunctual.
But anyway, he didn´t seem to care.
That was something I´d never have thought: For a Malfoy he was somebody to get along with quite easily.
I mean… I had always been kind of prejudiced. I knew that his family had been a very important “part” of Voldemort´s fellowship.
But Draco Malfoy and his son are quite different from each other. Dad had always told me that Draco Malfoy had been rich, arrogant, sneaky, cunning and deceitful, and he had always wanted to be in the spotlight.
Okay, the Malfoys are still pretty rich. They must have inherited a fortune by their ancestors. And Scorpius has always been a bit arrogant. This runs in the Malfoy bloodline, as being dreamy runs in the Lovegood one. He was quite popular, given he was Head Boy, but he wasn´t one of those, who desperately needed to be the centre of attention.
Actually, I was surprised when I heard that Scorpius Malfoy had become Head Boy. Yes, of course, he was smart and had excellent grades, but everybody had supposed that Al or David Johnson would become Head Boy.
Well, Al had already been Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and David Johnson was too insecure to be Head Boy. Compared to David, Malfoy was ambitious, confident and he knew what he wanted.
He was definitely a Malfoy, but he had never been sneaky, or cunning, or deceitful, or whatever you want to call it.
Scorpius looked at his watch. “Just half an hour left.” I yawned. He looked at me. “Tired?”
“You can say that again.” “I guess we could go back now if we walked slowly.” That was music in my ears.
It was in some corridor in the north wing of the castle, when he froze. He had stopped so abruptly that I bumped into him.
“What the – “, I snapped, but Malfoy silenced me. What the heck was wrong with him?
I looked at him warily.
“Listen!”, he said.
First I wanted to ask him, if he was going crazy, but then I heard it too. Somebody was laughing.
This was something that happened quite often – a bunch of students, who thought that spending Friday night in the Common Room was far too boring, met in one of the deserted classrooms – after curfew.
We walked over to the classroom where the noise came from. He sighed, pulled out his wand and looked at me. “Shall we?” I nodded. And I had thought that that evening had finally gotten to an end….
Malfoy and me mumbled a quick “Lumos” and opened the door rapidly.
The room got completely quite. A couple of dazzled Fifth-Years were looking at us in shock. I recognized my cousin Lily, her friends Coretta Adams and Alice Green, Danny and …
…. Hugo, my stupid jerk of a brother. He was holding a bottle of Firewhiskey, and suddenly his hand started shaking. “Hey Sis.”
Under normal circumstances I would have been disappointed.
But all I felt was anger. Pure, packed anger.
Seriously, I thought that I was going to kill that little bastard.
“HUGO! What the fuck are you doing here?!” This seemed to be a bit familiar, didn´t it?
“Easy Rosie, try to calm down – “
“Don´t >Easy Rosie< me! And I will not calm down!” How dare he? “Please tell me one good reason why I shouldn´t castrate you right now.”
“Look, Rose… Today´s Alice´s birthday, and we wanted to celebrate a bit. You´re just turning 15 once in your life, you know…”
“I don´t care who´s birthday it is! Are you totally nuts? Do you even know what Filch would have done to you, if he had caught you?! For Merlin´s sake, that´s something you could be expelled for! Please tell me how anyone can be that stupid!”
Hugo looked at me angrily. “Now Rose, could you please come down again? Nothing happened, okay? It´s just you.”
“Jeez, you just don´t get it, do you? What do you want me to do now? God damn it, you lied to me, you ungrateful, little idiot!”
Hugo´s face turned red. I was sure I was looking exact the same. That´s some stupid characteristic we´ve inherited by our parents – turning completely red if we´re completely embarrassed or infuriated.
“Yeah, and do you know why? You would have never said you´d help me if I had said that I had wanted to celebrate Alice´s birthday!” What was he thinking? Did he even realize what I had to do and think about the whole day? I had better things to do than doing my brother´s homework so that he could go and amuse himself.
“Of course I would have said no! Mum would explode if she knew about this!”
He screwed up his eyes. “You know what? Even Mum broke plenty of rules – you´re the only one who makes such a fuss over things like this, just because you´re a boring, prude and uptight bitch!”
I was utterly thunderstruck.
We often argued, and we often insulted each other. But I had never raged like this, and he had never ever called me something like that. Even he looked totally shocked, as if he just perceived what he had said.
“Erm, it would be the best if you´d just go back to your dorms. 100 points from Gryffindor – 20 for each one of you.”
Wow, I had totally forgotten about the six other people in the room. I even had forgotten about Lily… I was used to the fact that my brother is constantly up to something stupid, but Lily had never been into something like that. Apparently she was far less mature than I gave her credit for.
Malfoy had been the first who found his tongue. Lily and her friends looked as if they were going to cry. Danny stood motionless, but then seemed to decide that getting lost probably would be the best idea. He dragged Hugo out of the room and just mumbled a quick “´night.” when he passed Malfoy, who was leaning at the doorframe. The girls stormed after them. Lily turned around and shot me an apologetic glance. She seemed as if she wanted to say something, but her one of the girls called after her, and so she left the room.
And then we were alone.
I sat onto one of the chairs. I was on the edge of crying – not because I was sad. I was angry, I was frustrated, and I felt the strange urge to smash something. What was wrong with that little prat? What did he expect me to do when I caught them? Join the party?
Scorpius looked at me. He seemed to feel a bit uncomfortable. That´s something that hasn´t changed over all the years. He had never been good at dealing with people who´re on the verge of crying or at expressing his own feelings. Yeah, it sounds totally like a cliché. But trust me: He really has no clue when it comes to things like that.
Suddenly he started smirking.
“What are you grinning about?”, I snapped.
He chuckled and shook his head slightly. “I just never saw you that upset.”
I just shot him an angry glance.
He sat down in front of me. “Rose… They´re just 15. Don´t take it that seriously.”
“That seriously? Malfoy, what do you want me to do now? What the heck am I going to do with that stupid Firewhiskey?”
He shrugged, longed after the bottle, which was still on the table, and observed it. I continued complaining about my predicament. “What the hell am I going to do now? I can´t just go to Nev… to Longbottom … What should I say, >Sorry, Professor… I caught my stupid brother, my cousin and their friends with a bottle of Firewhiskey… Would it be possible not to mention that to my parents? They´d kill him, and after that, he would kill me for telling you…<”
But Malfoy interrupted my monologue. “Weasley? Where the hell did your brother get this stuff?”
“How the fuck should I know? Do I look like a psychic? I´m not even interested where he got it. I´m the one, who has to get rid of it!”
“No, you don´t understand. That´s one of the finest Firewehiskey in whole Scotland! It costs a fortune.” He looked at me. “It would be a pity just to ´get rid of it´ …”
“So? What do you want to do now? Having a party on your own?”
“For instance…”
“Very funny, I die of laughter.”
“I´m not kidding.”
“Oh please, be serious.”
He was still looking at me expectantly.
“Merlin… You are serious.”
He nodded.
“Are you going nuts?”
“Rose, what are you planning to do? If you bring it to Longbottom he´ll want to know, where you found it.”
“Well, I´m going to lie.”
He looked amused. “Yeah, … of course… you could lie… but still… Trust me, this would be a total waste….”
We looked at each other for a few moments. Then I sighed.
“Okay… you know what? Just take it… without ever wasting any words on it…”
He smirked. “Thanks, Weasley”. Malfoy stood up. Then he looked at me again.
“Do you wanna join me? You really look like you´d need … some distraction.”
I stared at him, but I didn´t say anything. When the silence became awkward, he just said, “Thanks, again… Good night, Rose.”
Malfoy walked over to the door. His hand was already on the doorknob.
“Wait….” He turned around again.
“I´m coming with you.”
