His room looked no different than when I had been there last. The only slight giveaway that someone actually lived in here was the small indentation in his pillowcase where I guess the sleep didn't come easy if it was anything like mine. The silence left a burning hole in my head of unanswered questions which had answers I was sure I didn't want to know.

The wind blew through the gaps between the panes of glass sending a whistle to ricochet its way around the room. Draco's focus was solely on the world beyond the windows, his stance was as firm as ever. Not even a slight insight into a weakness that I knew he felt.

"You know you don't have to pretend you're ok when you're around me Draco. What you did today...I don't think there's anyone in the world that would expect you to be ok. Well maybe not everyone but I mean it Draco, you can be 'not ok' when you're with me no matter what front you put out to the world."

"I am ok."

"..Draco"

His body twisted itself round to me and slowly he broke the distance between us.

"No Ivy, I am ok. I have to be ok. I knew what this life was long before I knew you. I knew that whatever I was told to do wasn't an option. It was the life my family chose...it was the life I truly wanted for years..even if maybe now things have changed. I knew what this was." His weight sank into the mattress beneath us.

"But what you did today Draco...that wasn't yours to do. Even if things didn't work out how you thought they would...you went through with it. That wasn't your responsibility. That was mine and thank merlin it didn't work Draco, Katie is an innocent girl who had absolutely no place being in the middle of our mess." I reach out and grazed my thumb along each of his knuckles before grasping his hand in mine. He looked down at our entwining hands for only a moment before they were back on me.

"Ivy, listen. You are pure in ways that I can't even imagine how it feels to be, you don't see how are you. You don't see what I see. You don't see what everyone else sees when we are together, the confusion on their faces and disgust behind their eyes. Like I'm the poison running through your veins." I felt the force of his hand wrap it's way around my chin until I was tilted to look into him. I watched as he trailed his vision along my face.

"I know you think you know what you're doing but you don't. You don't and that's fine because I don't want you to know, I never want you to feel even a pinch of guilt. I never want you to feel pain from something that you did and...I never want you to look at me and know I was the reason you're in that pain and if I can change all those things so that you never have to go through that Ivy I will and I don't care who I have to hurt in the process."

-

Despite trying to keep myself away from the spiralling voices rattling around Hogwarts that could only discuss all the strange events that had happened in the last few weeks, I found myself wrapped in the buzz even when I was alone.

"Ivy..I was just wondering if you were ok, you've not looked yourself-."

"She's fine, now leave." Pansy's quick tongue immediately shut down Astoria before she even had chance to finish her sentence. I watched as her wimpish frame scuttled off into the distance.

"You don't have to be so harsh Pansy."

"No, I do. Are you eating that or not?" I was suddenly back grounded into my sit with a untouched bowl of cereal in front me.

"Oh erm, no..I..I don't feel like it."

"C'mon we have like 5 more hours until Christmas break. Could you at least pretend to be excited! We'll have so much fun!" Her smile stretched from one side of her face to another with the cheesiest grin I think that I have ever seen on her, so much so that I couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped me.

-

I watched the gentle flow of snowflakes sweep the ground as a creak of a floorboard came from behind me. There he was.

"Watching the world go by?"

"Yeah...it feels like that all I do now." I rested by head against the cool bricks holding the window pane.

I listened to the footsteps edging closer to me until his fingers reached the tip of my naked shoulder. "I don't want to be apart from you Ivy. Not even for few days...Come with me." I span my head round to his needing eyes.

"Draco..I- I can't. I can't be there with- with them. I- I just can't" I reached my hand up into his. His head fell slowly towards our grasp.

"I understand."

"Do you? Draco this has nothing to do with you. I wish I could spend every waking second with you but I can't be around your father. It will only remind me constantly of everything that's already happened and everything that's yet to come."

He pulled his hands out from under our clasp, not fast or aggressive but instead more in sorrow and detached. "I understand Ivy. I do...but..but what happened to being there through everything. Are you sure this is even what you want anymore? I feel like I'm trying my best to be the person you need me to be but it's all gone too far now...like there's no coming back from what's already happened. I'm terrified that one day when I look into your eyes that glow of desire will of burnt out and instead it will be one of regret. This..this passion and enthralling love we had seems to have flaked away slowly from us. All I ever want to do is be around you and hold you and trace every part of your body till you know I'm not going anywhere. That this is it and whatever will come will also go but not us. We will stay...through everything.

"Show me then"

And in an instant I fell back into Draco the way I always did. In a way that made the heat rise from every part of me, made each hair on my body stand on end. Each twist my body made only wrapped us further into each other. Like a knife catching my skin, the freezing pane of glass was pressing against my entire back, breaking the fire that was spreading through my body.

His tongue punishing my skin with every teasing move he made, enthralling me further into a vision of lust. In this moment nothing else mattered, just you and me.

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