Moments of "Time"

Third Story. Ticket to the Moon.

And the tears I cry might turn into the rain,

That gently falls upon your window,

But you will never know...

- Electric Light Orchestra, "Ticket to the Moon".

Let us make a simple example. You are the sexiest Slytherin alive, and any girl around can prove it to you. Yet, you have this strange feeling that all they want from you is the fact that they would become your girlfriend, or, in some perverted cases you prefer not to remember, even boyfriend.

And then a thing happens. You notice this strange girl that keeps eyeing you as if you were a priceless painting hanging on a museum wall and likes the what she sees... Except that she does not look like your average art-admirer, besides, you are not a priceless painting hanging on a museum wall somewhere...

Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute, her eyes follow you as if you were the point of her life... You'd accept that kind of affection if you weren't a pureblood Slytherin and she wasn't a half-blood Hufflepuff...

Yet, her affection triggers a slight change in you. You start to notice her when she is looking at you and you worry when she's gone, feeling something like joy when you see that she just was stalled in a hallway, and there she is again, sitting next to that Mudblood Finch-Fletchley.

That change grows, you stop caring that Zabini hangs out with a girl now ("Well," you think, "She was always somewhat strange... But she sure was a great shag."), that Finch-Fletchley himself is staring at yet another Mudblood, that Gryffindor know-it-all Granger, and that you can't remember the name of your stalker.

Despite all that, you still keep watch over her presence and absence, as if the affection she has for you was somehow passed into an affection you have to her...

"Wait!" you tell yourself, "That Hufflepuff sure is bloody persistent. Maybe I should ask her, straight and blunt? Even if she looks at you like that because she likes your clothes, nothing else (well, there's enough perverts of all kinds around here lately - take Zabini for instance), you'll still know it and have the emotional impulse necessary to smash that strange change..."

And one day you put your plan into action.

You 'accidentally' turn around when she is following you and bump into her; you both collapse onto the floor. You're on top of the situation now, in both meanings.

"What are you doing, following me like that?" you ask angrily, trying to sneer. You notice that you fail and the question, instead of being inquisitive, becomes simply irritated-sounding.

"So-so-sorry," she stammers and blushes. You suddenly remember her name.

"Right. This calls for a point taking, Abbott," you say triumphantly, remembering suddenly that you're a prefect and this is the perfect way to get her off your tail.

Instead of admitting her fault, excusing herself, or doing something else that others do when cornered like that, she suddenly grabs you by your robes and tugs you into that empty classroom.

Once inside, she closes the door, takes a deep breath and turns to you.

"Listen, Draco, I..."

Draco? Since when does anyone outside Slytherin call you by your first name? The shock of this makes you quite unable to speak as she goes on.

"...I just wanted to tell you that... That..." her voice trails off, but she raises her eyes up anyway, looking straight into yours.

You feel that strange sensation again, like the one you felt when you first noticed she was absent and then saw her just coming in... A sensation much like warmth spreading throughout your body...

"What?" you ask bluntly, making her blush.

Instead of answering, she simply steps up to you and suddenly puts her arms around your neck, her lips locking into yours...

*****

Two weeks later the whole school got wind that Malfoy's current girlfriend is the one to last longest of them all yet to date...

While Malfoy himself was quite silent on this topic, Hannah Abbott, "that lucky girl" as all boyfriendless girls called her now, kept claiming that it was him who made the first move...

But actually, deep inside, they did not care what others thought of them, they had each other and they needed no-one else...

While Justin was still gazing at Hermione every damn morning.