"𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬"
-'The Other Side Of The Door' by Taylor Swift

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HEMERA

"You know what, my knee doesn't hurt anymore. I think it clicked right back into place so no need to make a fuss in there," Draco says, hesitantly putting some weight on his supposedly hurt leg to either test his theory or prove it right. "Talk about miracles."

Holding onto his side to keep him balanced with his arm draped over my shoulders for support, I don't know if I should believe him and thank Merlin for sparing my best friend from something like a broken bone or push him to the floor and drag him into the infirmary by the ankles.

Given how the hospital wing is just around the corner, I think his fear of Madam Pomfrey's healing spells kicking in and forcing him to lie is remarkably more convincing than him getting coincidentally miracle-struck. It's not my fault he has a habit of injuring himself over situations even a two-year-old would get out of intact, like going to the bathroom in the middle of the night without walking himself straight into the bedpost and breaking his big toe.

I clench my jaw so tightly that I'm surprised my molars don't crack under the pressure and huff out a sigh as I shrug Draco's arm off my shoulders. Feet planted on the spot, I turn to face him. Not only did he make me half-carry him from the lake to the hospital wing, but he also proceeded to dodge my question about why he was there in the first place.

I let that slide while helping him up from the ground, but I know better than to leave it to my mind to conjure up an answer when he's now standing in front of me.

"What on earth did you think you were doing?"

Confusion carves creases on his skin, making the corrugation of his forehead look troubled. Draco takes a step back and casually leans against one of the stone walls lining the deserted hallway. When silence's reign is as prominent, even the barely audible flow of an exhale is noticeable.

"See, I'm still a little shaken from my tumble. Maybe you should avoid subtexts and be more forward with whatever it is that you want to know."

I fight for composure against the fact that he finds it fit to play dumb. Crossing my arms over my chest, I fist the sleeves of my sweatshirt and let the knotted wool take the hit.

I refuse to play the part of a mama owl and chew his nourishment for him. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

Nothing shifts in his facade of cluelessness. His eyes search my face and pause when they come across my glare, which I hope is as sharp as its delivery feels. I'm not used to looking at him like I'd take immeasurable pleasure in poking his eye out with a hairpin but I find it hard to host carelessly silly smiles on my lips when Draco made sure my first time hanging out with Lucas turned into this.

Into us standing across from each other in a dim hallway when I could be walking by Lucas' side on our way back to the castle, reveling in the freshly imprinted memory of our afternoon and wishing I owned a time-turner to reassure myself that I could relive it if I ever wished to. Which I certainly would. Probably within the next twenty-one hours; I assume I could use said time to succeed in ridding the surface of my cheeks of its crimson shade before going back for round two.

"I'm afraid I don't." Draco's faux ignorance pokes my patience provokingly and its essence begins to falter in protest, wearily oscillating between indignation and sangfroid like the pendulum in a grandfather clock.

My mind conceives the image of a daisy and I mentally start counting the petals to maintain my patience. This might as well be the only thing that can help Draco's cheeks survive this confrontation without any bright red handprints that I'd love to know burned to the touch.

"What were you doing at the lake?"

I don't know how he finds it in himself to act so surprised but at least the fact that his brows are driven towards his hairline instead of pasted in a frown marks some progress. "Oh, that." He breathes, dismissively, "I just wanted to go for a run."

The countdown of bullshit to the slaps has already started. "You hate running."

His shrug is heavy with the weight of his dishonesty but I admire his nerve to make it seem nonchalant. "Thought I'd start fresh this year."

My eyes drop to his fidgeting hands as they pull his silver ring all the way to the first joint and push it back to the hilt of his slim finger. He takes a hint of my observation and shoves his hands in his pockets instead.

I caught more than just a glimpse of his displayed nervousness; even if I hadn't, I'd still be aware of his deceptive statement. "You're lying."

I see him struggling to prevent his mask of unawareness from slipping from his face and breaking into a thousand pieces upon its unforgiving collision with the floor.

Eventually, the light of honesty shines through the tiny cracks like sunlight pouring through the gaps in the stone wall of a cell. I feel no less like a prisoner myself, cherishing its appearance despite my pent-up irritation.

With his face licked by the fireglow of the candles lining the hallway, he says. "Fine. I just wanted to check up on you."

Realization accompanies his admission, causing a detail I'd previously overlooked to resurface with the force of a buoy tearing through a turbulent sea. "That's why you wanted to know where I'd be? Just so you could spy on me?"

Draco holds up his hands in a way that makes me feel like a feral animal facing its trainer. Under other circumstances, it could've been translated into the universal 'I'm innocent pose'. "Now that's an opaque accusation."

Anger, thick and molten meets my blood before they intermingle into a boiling essence that scorches my veins from within. "I'm being serious."

Unlike his borderline childish demeanor that could easily make me wish we were standing on the edge of the cliff so I could push him off, sincerity glimmers in his eyes. "So am I." A labored breath, during which my mind actively refuses to acknowledge his remarkably softer tone. He drags his sights away from mine as his eyelids lower, breaking the alignment of our stares. "Look, I just don't trust him."

Of freaking course.

Screw watching him tumble down the jagged length of a simple slope- Mount Everest is a good place to start. "I don't care because I trust him enough to believe that you checking up on me was unnecessary."

So much tension is perched on the firm planes of his shoulders that I can physically see it weighing them down. "I've heard bad things about his friends."

"His friends, not him."

"You know what they say, right? It takes one to know one."

I mentally slap myself for not seeing this coming. "That's not true."

Standing his ground with the steel determination of a vulture defending a carcass, budging is the last thing Draco would ever do. "It most definitely is. Scientifically proven too."

"Does this mean you and I are the same just because we hang out?" I lift a brow, daring him to answer the question, and ignore the tiny sparks of anger eating away at the walls of my stomach like a wave slowly licking the dam of a sandcastle into disintegration.

His eyes analyze me with the observation acuity of a clinical psychologist, an expedience aiming to cover the delay of his reply. The weight of his scrutiny slants like a concrete block on my face. At the end of the day, he knows that my point is not an easily deflected one just as much as he knows that we're not the same—could never be no matter how much we've affected each other while growing up.

"Given how neither of us would say 'two heads feel better than one' to the girl our friend brought over, or to any girl for that matter, I'd say we share some common qualities." He says it like it takes no effort for him to come up with something to back up his opinion. A valid sentence in most cases.
"That's the kind of jokes they throw left and right and consider 'a sense of humor'." He air-quotes. "Like calls to like, Hemera. Similar things are drawn to each other and Koch is friends with them for a reason. I hope their jokes are not a part of the common ground they share."

I roll my eyes, not really understanding his unfaltering prejudice and what drove its roots so deep in the unseen veil of his consciousness. "Whatever, it's not like I'm trying to befriend them myself."

"I'm just warning you."

Something in me snaps and splatters crimson spots on the clarity of my vision. Cold sternness seeps into my voice like water flooding through cracked ice and turns it into a stoic sound that rings unfamiliarly even to my own ears. "Maybe I just don't want to be warned—not about Lucas." My tone cascades into a mumble. "Just let me think I can have him for a while."

Something unreadable crosses his face, a shadow of a foreign feeling that I've only seen cloaking his features a few times before. It leaves as quickly as it appears, letting his expression reflect the disappointment coiling in his stomach.

"Is feeding your delusions that I could ever trust him or his friends around you what it takes for you to consider me supportive? We've heard— you've heard things about him, things that are most likely true. I'd be damned if I ever let you believe that I'm fine with anyone disrespecting you, even in the name of a hideously humorless joke." His words are breathless like they toppled off his tongue before he could suck some oxygen into his lungs.

"And what's your trustworthy source of information? It's not like anyone has confirmed any of these rumors."

"There's no smoke without fire. Every rumor has a flashpoint."

"And people are often misjudged," I state, using the same matter-of-factly tone as him even though I could never sound as confident in my words as Draco. He could be pointing at a white wall and calling it black and people would still do a double-take because his words would appear more reliable than their own eyesight. "Who knows what others could be saying behind our backs."

"That we're dating?" I note how utterly unbothered he sounds. Just like myself, I expected him to be aware of the hearsay usually targeting us as a pair and not as individuals but he seems to lack the urge to roll his eyes. I always get it and to be honest, I hardly ever resist it. "Scared it would mar your reputation beyond repair?"

"Don't make it sound like you don't want to plug the tongue out of the mouth of anyone spreading the word with a pincer."

Platinum hair falling over his forehead, the calmness with which he speaks makes his voice sound like velvet. "What makes you think I wouldn't have already done it?" If it bothered me.

The phantom words present themselves to my notice even if their vocalization doesn't follow along.

"The school's rules perhaps?" I give the only reasonable response my mind can summon.

He doesn't acknowledge my reply and it makes me feel like it fell flatter than a slice of cold pizza. A moment of silence stretches into what I assume has a lifespan of an entire minute. Draco looks skeptical, his forehead wrinkling in a way that wouldn't differentiate him from a man who's trying to translate an ancient letter into something apprehensible.

"Is it really the most offensive thing that can be said about you?" The way he crosses his arms causes his shirt to strain against the bulging muscles of his biceps. The movement draws my eyes to them but before I can give in to the temptation of devoting a concerningly large amount of attention to the sight, the shameful realization of his scrutiny dripping over my face makes me snap out of it.

"What?"

Draco pulls some air into his lungs, his chest puffing up with a sigh. "Would the idea of being with me be the corruption of your name?"

"Why do you want to know? It's not like we'll ever get there to find out."

His fists clench where his arms are crossed over his thoracic cage as a reaction to my sentence. Shoulders lifting in a quick demonstration of ignorance, he mutters through what look like stiff lips. "Just curious."

To be honest, he makes it appear like the syllables are some old gum he can't spit out fast enough.

"Well, curiosity killed the cat." I hear myself say and watch as Draco pushes out a breathy scoff at my metaphor, probably because talking like this is so unlike me. I've always left phrases of a similar nature to him and proceeded to make fun of him when he eventually said them.

But now, for some reason I wouldn't put a finger on, I feel myself drifting away from the normalcy of my idiosyncrasy, my thoughts shaping unfamiliar patterns.

I fail to understand why Draco would initiate a conversation of this kind just as much as I fail to grasp the reason behind his eyes turning into fathomless plains of ice, so thick that I can't peek through and read his mind the way I always do. And Merlin does it make me want to get a bulletin board and a string.

I've known Draco my whole life but right now, it's like I'm trying to sort out the train of thought of a stranger with the number of clues offered being below zero. His face, unsmiling and sedate, comes closer to resembling one of a statue rather than a human.

It's like the entirety of him is made out of granite, carved with the vision of staid beauty.

With eyes as piercing as the blade of an iron knife, cheekbones high and sharp and lips girls would do unspeakable things to feel, I know better than to deem his charm anything but dangerous. Treacherously alluring.

But none of these things make him my best friend any less. And none of these things would save me from the buzz that would doubtlessly follow the announcement of an anything-but-platonic relationship between us.

The audible flow of my breath forces our gazes into an alignment that sparks with tension and electricity. The weight of it makes my spine straighten, my chin tilt up ever so slightly. His dips down in return.

"Let's hope your date today helps to channel the tittle-tattle in your ideal direction." He says, firmly. "I'm sure you'd be jovial to hear that people can see the tension between you and Koch. It might even make it feel a tad more existent."

I bear the blow below the belt he delivers with such a carefully worded sentence, even if has my hand itching to close around my wand and curse him to death. Blood scorching below the surface of my face as it rushes to my cheeks, the temperature rises with the ascending rhythm of my heartbeat.

I look to my left, only for my eyes to be welcomed by nothing but a dim hallway and marble floors. Then to my right and they unsurprisingly face the same fate. I keep my field of vision clear of Draco's frame as much as our proximity allows me to and refuse to let the judgemental part of my brain call me a coward.

Even if I sometimes act like one.

"You know what, I can't do this today." Blue eyes seek reason in mine. Before I give him enough time to realize that there's none, that the only way I can deflect his tells is by making sure no more follow, I take a step back. Dark shadows engulf my body, cascading over my features like silk sheets falling over a mattress. "Find me when your thoughts no longer revolve around Lucas. Trust me when I say that your obsession with him makes you sound jealous—like he has something you don't."

His bitter laugh follows me like a ghost when I begin to talk away. I should at least give myself the grace of tolerating no more illogical conversations and regain my scattered peace of mind.

"Jealous?" He spits the word out like it's nothing but a sip of poison he realized would kill him if he took any longer. "I'd sooner find myself six feet under than be jealous of someone who wears a blue tie and behaves with the maturity of a person whose dick possesses a bigger brain than his bloody cranium."

Even from a distance, I'd be able to distinguish a truthful statement. And this one, although attempting to be convincing, is tinted with the defensive tone of insecurity.

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