The Malfoy Project

𝟕𝟎 - 𝐒𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐬

     Draco is upside down. 

     He's lying on the sofa, his back flush against the seat and his feet planted firmly against the wall. His head dangles over the edge; his face is buried in the pages of a book, dangerously close to the floor and half-obscured by the low-sitting coffee table. 

     He jumps up in fright when we burst through the door and — THUMP! — hits his head on the hard walnut wood. He gives a shout of pain and scrambles to his feet, holding his head and staring at us, book hanging limply in his other hand. 

     There is a long, excruciating silence. 

      "Gabriella wishes to speak with you now," says Narcissa. 

     "What?" he manages.

     "You're due for an interview," she clarifies flatly, then placing her hand in the middle of my shoulders, gives me a light shove. The door shuts behind us, and I am left alone with Draco in the stifling darkness of the heavily-curtained room. 

     For a moment any form of greeting escapes us. His presence is heavy and dark. I want to dash forward and fling myself into his arms. 

     "Hi," I say. 

     He dares himself to look at me. "Hello," he says. 

     I go to set up the recorder on the table. The air is charged with an energy. It dances down the skin of my arms as he watches me remove Narcissa's reels and fit in new ones. We haven't used it since the garden, and the presence of this cumbersome Muggle device now feels large and unwelcome in the silence that used to be so comfortably ours. 

     But it is just business now. We have become separate: him the heir of a forgotten family empire, and me the journalist to speak with him for her assignment. We are no longer a team. We are strangers.

     I look around for a chair, but there is only the sofa, so I perch myself carefully at one end of it. "Do you want to sit down?" I say.

     He walks around the table to the other side of the sofa and sits, eyeing me cautiously the whole time. And as I look at him and he looks back at me my chest suddenly tightens, and I cannot breathe. The back of my throat narrows as if a ball has grown there; a ball of knives. I cough, once. A wet, throaty cough. The ball disappears. 

     His eyebrows pull together slightly. "Are you alright?" 

     "Yes, I'm fine, thank you," I say, a little more curtly than I intend. The muscles under his eyes tighten, and he draws back quietly. The temperature in the room feels like it had dropped ten degrees.

     "I'm sorry about what happened at the party," he says. 

     The anger comes again. "I'm not here to talk about the party," I snap, suddenly feeling cold and irritable. I don't want his apology, I want Cedric back. My response triggers something in Draco.

     "Well, I'm sure you're not here to sit with me in silence either, so why don't you just get on with it?" he lashes back ferociously. 

     I stab the 'Record' button in retaliation. The tape sputters to life. I summon my quill and parchment out from my satchel and force my tone to mellow. "I would like to examine your relationship with your parents." 

     The whirring fills the air like a thousand clattering bird wings. 

     "Why?"

     "Because I'm writing a book about your family, so it's my job."