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Draco Malfoy's Dirty Little Secret

Chapter32

I woke up content and happy. It was the first time in a long time that I had felt that happy, but that soon went away when I saw that Draco was nowhere in sight. He had left during the night. I was usually a light sleeper, but I had never done what we did so I must’ve been pretty tired. I knew I was sore when I moved. I pulled on my clothes from the day before and ran to the bathroom. On my way to the Gryffindor tower, I learned that the first classes had started. I grabbed my bag off my bed and ran down to potions.

“Where in the name of Merlin’s beard have you been?” Ron whispered at me when I snuck into class hoping that Slughorn didn’t notice. “I’ve been covering for you for twenty minutes now.”

I just shrugged. “Guess I overslept,” was my weak answer. “Now, what are we doing?”

He looked at me for a moment before pointing at the board. We were working on love potions. I sighed. That was just great. He had a huge pot in the middle of the room. Was that were that great smell was coming from? I looked across the room and found Draco smiling at me. I smiled back.

“Earth to Courtney,” Ron said, waving his hand in front of my face. “I know that Draco is mighty interesting for you to stare at, but we have to make a love potion. Go get the ingredients and be bloody useful, all right?”

I nodded and headed straight for the storage cupboard. While I was looking for enchanted rose petals, someone stood beside me and cleared his throat. I smiled once more before turning to face him. His smile that he had just a few moments ago was slightly smaller. I swallowed nervously.

“Hey, where did you disappear to this morning?” I whispered.

He then held up a folded up piece of parchment. “I had every intention of waking you up and we could be back together, but when I was folding your clothes, this fell out of your jean pocket. I think you have some more things to figure out before we even consider us again.”

I took the piece of parchment remembering that it was the letter from Fred. I had completely forgotten about it, but I was expecting to get back with Draco that soon. I nodded and turned back to look for the petals. I could feel him still staring at me. I was trying to hold some tears back because I had been so stupid with everything. I had just been so hurt that I wasn’t thinking everything all the way through. Now I wish that I had.

“Do you love him?” Draco then asked. “He said that he loved you in the letter. Do you love him?”

I looked over at him and our eyes met. “No, I don’t love him,” knowing full well that it wasn’t a lie. I didn’t need to hesitate to answer that. “I love you, Draco.”

He nodded. “We’ll talk about this later. Don’t want to miss a good class, do we?”

I sighed and watched him walk away and then went back to scanning the shelves for the rest of the ingredients. Slughorn was at our desk when I returned with everything in hand. He smiled at me before strutting up to the front of the class room and began to speak.

“Can anyone tell me what is in the cauldron in the middle of the room?” he asked, looking directly at Hermione, whose had had already shot up. “Yes, Miss Granger?”

“Its Amortentia!” she smiled.

“It is indeed. It seems most foolish to ask, but I assume you know what it does?”

“It’s the most powerful love potion in the world!” exclaimed Hermione.

“Quite right! You recognize it, I suppose, by its distinctive mother-of-pearl sheen?” Slughorn asked with a smile on his face.

“And the steam rising in characteristic spirals, and it’s supposed to smell differently to each of us, according to what attracts us, and I can smell freshly mown grass and new parchment and-“ She turned a bright pink and didn’t finish her sentence.

He nodded. “Yes, precisely!” He then turned towards me. “What do you smell my dear?”

Moved a bit closer considering our desk was in the back. “I smell freshness after it has just rained and my mother’s perfume and –“ it was my turn to turn bright pink. My eyes dashed over to Draco, who was smirking at me. I didn’t want to finish the sentence.

Slughorn looked over at Draco, probably because our eye contact and gone on so long, and asked him the same question. He walked up right in front of me, not breaking our eye contact. “All I smell is the scent of the girl I love,” and with that he sat down.

I swallowed hard before turning and walking back to me sight with a huge smile on my face. People were looking between me and Draco, trying to figure out what that had been all about. They all then gave up because we both had gone back to doing our work. At the end of class, I waited outside the door for him. He saw me and nodded for me to follow him. We went up to the Room of Requirement where we had just spent the night together. It made me all giddy while he just turned to me with no smile on his face.

“Courtney, what were you doing during the holidays?” he then rubbed a hand over his face like he was stressed out. “You don’t have to tell me. We weren’t together, but I can’t help but get jealous over that note. Are you two together?”

I sighed. “Draco, you had hurt me so bad. I just wanted to forget about you and move on with my life, but as you can tell, it didn’t work out. I know that our little break hadn’t been that long, but I know that I would have never forgotten about you. I would’ve still hoped for us to get back together. Now that we sort of have, I don’t want to let that go. I don’t want to let you go. I love you so much, Draco. You’re a part of me, always have been and always will. You are the only one for me, and I think I’ve known it my whole life.”

“So I should I take that as a yes?” he asked after a few moments.

I nodded. “Yes, you should. It was only on a trial basis, and we only snogged twice. It’s not like it was going to last anyway. The first time we tried it didn’t last long either. He has always wanted from me what I gave to you last night, and when he couldn’t get it, he went somewhere else, which was probably what he did or is going to do again.”

“I understand why you did it. I now know how badly you must’ve hurt when you heard I was engaged to another woman. It knocked the air out of me when I read that letter,” he then looked away from me. “I shouldn’t have read that letter. I trust you, Courtney. I know that you would never intentionally hurt me like I have hurt you.”

I walked over to him and pulled him into a tight embrace. “I hate that you went through all of this just because of me. I feel sort of guilty now.”

He kissed the top of my head. “You are worth that and more, Courtney. I love you so much words can’t even describe how I feel.”

“You showed me last night how much you loved me. You don’t need those words anyway. I know just by looking in your eyes that you love me more than anything else in this world.”

He nodded. “You are my everything.”

Later on that day, I sat down to write a letter to Fred. We needed to talk and in person. I wrote if we could meet that weekend in Hogsmeade. I needed to tell him to his face that I didn’t love him and that he deserves someone that should. He deserved to be happy, and he wasn’t going to get that from me.

“Hey,” Kam smiled at me as she walked over and took the open spot next to me on the couch. “What are you doing?”

“Writing a letter to Fred.”

“Oh, a love letter? Is he the reason you’ve been all smilely today?”

I shook my head and leaned in close to her. “Draco and I are back together.”

She squealed so loud that people were looking over at us strangely. “You have to tell me everything. When did this happen? Why did it happen? Is his engagement broken off? Are you still hiding it from everyone? Spill!”

I looked around to make sure that no one had paid attention to any of the words that she had spoken rather loudly. “Let’s go up to your room where we can talk in private.”

She nodded and grabbed my hand, pulling me up the stairs so fast that I was tripping the whole way up. She threw open the door and threw me towards the bed. I meekly waved at Hermione, who was sitting on her bed and writing. Well, obviously she had stopped when we had walked into the room. The door slammed loudly and Kam jumped onto her bed.

“Now, spill.”

So, I told them everything that had happened. All the way up from arriving at the Weasley’s until last night. They were so flabbergasted that their mouths were hanging open wide in shock. I, for one, was laughing. Laughing at how positively happy I was.

“So, he broke his engagement off?” Hermione asked slowly.

I sighed. “Well, no, but that’s only because he can’t. It’s an arranged marriage that he doesn’t see any way out of, but I’m going to help him find a way out because he just can’t marry her.”

“I am so happy for you!” Kam pulled me into a bone-crushing hug. “You and me and be happy together. Blaise asked me to the next Hogsmeade outing, which is on Valentine’s day. Maybe he’ll make things official and finally kiss me.”

“He hasn’t kissed you yet?” I asked, looking oddly at her.

She shook her head. “We’ve only gone out properly once. We just write letters back and forth, but with the way he’s been writing lately, I think he’s going to make us official on Valentine’s day!”

I smiled. “I hope he does. Want to walk with me to the owlery? I need to get this letter to Fred as soon as possible.”

Kam nodded and grabbed her coat. “We can on our way down to the Quidditch pitch. You did know that we have practice tonight, right?”

I shook my head. “No, but oh well. I can survive it.”

She looked at me oddly. “Sitting on a broom might be a little painful for you considering that you just got deflowered last night.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her. I loved her so much. “Like I said, I’ll survive it.”