Little specks of brown dust and debris shook from the archaic book stacks and timbrel bricked ceilings above the library at Hogwarts, hanging in suspension in the musty atmosphere. 

The fanfare drums at the Quidditch match were literally shaking the virtually abandoned castle on it's ancient foundations, and Audette blinked away her peaceful nap as a shadowy figure blocked out the candle she'd left precariously burning at her table. 

Professor Flitwick had scaled up the desk which was an impressive feat considering it was twice his miniature height, using a stack of wobbly texts with weak spines as a set of stairs. He was now pressing his bearded face into hers, "Oh! I'm terribly sorry young witch, but I thought it mighty odd that a student was left behind in the library. Are you perhaps sleeping through the match?" 

His tall pointy hat kept sliding off of his bald head and clothing her bleary face, "Oh I do apologize for Arthurium, he has a mind of his own you know. Wanted to be the sorting at one point, but he is terribly misbehaved unfortunately."

Audette sat back in a fright - she most certainly had slept through the beginning of the match, stuck in dreams of the past that had been dredged up from the day's earlier events.

Don't be late.

Well, it was too late not to be late. She'd most likely be getting dragged out by one leg back to the stinky fountain for a midnight bath.

She thanked the Charms teacher, gathered up her parchments and stumbled out of the library into the cavernous halls of the school, yanking on her silver coat and pink butterfly gloves in a flurry. 

Now she would be forced to bring along all of her schoolwork down the treacherous stone pathway that led to the marvelous, outdoor Quidditch arena at the eastern base of the castle, and make the entire descension in a small blush dress that would leave her shaking in her boots.

Even before she'd pushed out of a side door onto the mossy terrain she could hear the shouting, banging of paraphernalia, and diegetic sound effects of goals being scored.

The hostile exertion of her heart rate had her swallowing back the natural desire to hurl in a panic. 

Audette kept her eyes downwards on the slippery embedded landscape stairs which were not at all up to code if she had anything to say about it. Her arms flailed like a rogue sea creature just to retain her balance as she flung herself at maximum velocity towards the pitch she hadn't been to in four straight years. 

And all for a great big bully who'm she'd just been dreaming of - recalling without warrant that there was once a time when they had been very young and on good terms, right before he'd devastatingly insulted her and put an end to their friendship.

Draco was wrong; Audette had been to Quidditch games before. She'd seen him fly with astounding grace and practice; truly a very skilled young Seeker who contended for his position on the Slytherin team without rivalry. 

Naturally, right up until she'd entwined herself with the reticent and book-bound Theodore Nott she'd mindlessly attended games, but Theo had better things to do than "waste his time watching a bunch of egotistical beasts smash into each other in the air." 

Audette had become moonstruck with Theodore very quickly in their fourth year when he'd begun to interact with her in Magical Creatures classes, and there was no limit to his influence on the way she saw the world. 

He tended to send small, delightful magical critters over to her desk with elegantly written notes and glittery trinkets to express how much he thought she was fascinating and upstanding.

By the time the Yule Ball had come around their pairing was guaranteed, but apparently Draco hadn't been paying attention to this at all. 

He'd come into the common room from a potions course six days before the ball with his hair standing on end from the muggy and messy conditions of the dungeon class room with poor ventilation. He plunked next to Audette who had been whispering to Think-Think on the couch like a mental patient. 

"You sound ridiculous, you should contemplate getting another pet that doesn't make you look like a neurotic crack-pot," he'd smirked at her while trying to flatten his hair out uselessly.

Audette chewed on her lip, staring at the cute boy with so much sass, "If I do recall correctly, you did tell me once you'd have your father buy you one. Finally realized that they choose their owners themselves and at random? Not everything rare can be purchased; must have hurt your ego." 

It was true; they simply tended to show up in one's home, or fall from trees onto one's head, and once attached they were always around. Consciaurs were parasitic in this sense. Their mental health was contingent on a symbiotic relationship with their selected owners, constantly weighing in on their life decisions with sleepy exhilaration.

Draco scoffed, bringing his knee up on the couch to face her directly, "The audacity you have speaking to me like that. You've got it all wrong - I decided I didn't want such a foolish creature for a pet after all." 

Goyle and Crabbe had settled into adjacent chairs after following him in with seriously hollow expressions, and Audette watched with disbelief the blistering confidence that Crabbe displayed while picking his boogers and eating them in a public area. 

Nevertheless Malfoy held out his hand and Audette relinquished T-T into his palm, watching as the corners of his mouth twitched with intrigue from the sensation of the invisible creature against his skin.

"What's it doing?" he asked curiously, cracking his neck sideways as if that would better aid him in visually perceiving the squishy teddy. He delicately ran a finger down the side of the Consciaur's plump face. It unfortunately was giving him a very dull and unimpressed glare with it's two black button eyes pinching into slits.

Audette had just been asked to the ball a day prior by Theodore, and her heart was still pulsing with glee and elation that could not possibly be contained. She almost did not reply at first, day dreaming of the dress she would buy when he'd asked her to wear blue to match him. 

"Oh well no surprise, it's positively repulsed by you holding it," Audette giggled, and Draco furrowed his eyebrows at her. 

"Watch out!" Audette was too late to warn Draco as the Consciaur opened it's mouth horrendously wide and bit down with razor sharp teeth onto his finger. Audette covered her nose with both hands in hilarity.

Draco let it fall into his lap, immediately offended by the attack. He was not like Audette; he hated magical creatures of all sorts. Even his own mean horned owl was seen as pestilent to him when he had to lug it's cage to and from the Hogwarts Express. 

"Ugh! It's got no sense of propriety, what are you feeding it? Take it back before I toss it in the fire," Draco sucked on his bleeding finger with a grouchy glare.

Audette reached across and brought back Think-Think from his thigh, letting it crawl over her shoulder and curl up like a cat in the hood of her robes, "Well that aught to teach you not to be so rude to an animal that understands English." 

Draco muttered something under his breath, his frosty eyes flickering away in resentment.

Audette began to gather up her things as her parents were intending to meet her shortly in Hogsmeade to aid with buying a dress now that she'd gotten the invite she'd been pining after for months. Theodore was well-liked by her parents, and her mother was extremely excited to buy her whatever dress she desired to make the night perfect for Audette.

"So are you going to this stupid ball next weekend?" Draco's snide voice brought her back to the common room, almost as if he could read her mind.

Audette shot Draco a genuinely sweet smile, as it was all she could think about herself, "Yes. Are you?" 

His face had gone somewhere very bizarre; expressionless and analytical. He shrugged, "You know, should be entertaining to watch Potter trip all over his dress robes in front of three schools. Maybe that imbecile will put himself in the infirmary just from his clumsiness on a dance floor alone. I wouldn't be shocked if a ball took him out instead of this tournament."

Audette snickered, "He is strange around girls. I've wondered if he was gay for a long time, but Cosmos isn't convinced of it. He fancies you, you know, Guy."

Draco laughed under his breath but it came out strained, "You know that's irrational and pisses me off. I can say from experience that Cosmos is not excellent at discerning his own kind."

"Hmm," Audette vaguely smiled at him, unsure of why the encounter had suddenly grown awkward, "Anyways I have to get going, Malfoy. I'm meeting my parents in the village." 

She nodded to him dismissively, but Draco's voice pierced in a high pitch before she could fully stand, "Will you go with me? To the ball, that is."

"Will I-" Audette started to repeat the inquisition in amazement. She sat back down with her eyebrows raising at his very headstrong stare, his blue eyes glued to hers with concentrated fortitude.

He was being serious, Audette could even see his chest rising and falling more frequently as the seconds ticked on. He glanced away at the carpet, but it felt like he was still watching her with every other sense he had at his disposal. 

This was before fifth year, when everything had changed, and Draco Malfoy had embarked on his journey to take the trophy for womanizer extraordinaire. His entire personality had then switched gear into something Audette found to be utterly insidious.

He swallowed, trying to backtrack in the wake of her stunned expression. A shy smile of vulnerability preceded a deep sigh, and then a classic case of immature slander, "I just reckoned no one else would ask you, considering how peculiar you are." 

Audette frowned, pointing her finger into his shoulder barbarically, "So you're my knight in shining armor is that it? How poetic. Well I'll save you the humility because I'm going with Theodore. And if I hadn't been, and had you been nice about it, I would have said yes you unbelievable prick." 

Draco stood at the same time that she did, and Audette saw his nose shrivel like an angry lion about to rip a limb off a gazelle. 

Without solicitation so did Crabbe and Goyle stand, but the way that they looked at each other for answers as to why they were standing spoke to the fact that their responses were not thought through. 

Malfoy puffed on air like he'd just been drowning, "Nott? You mean to say...my friend, Theodore Nott asked you? Has he lost his mind, why the fuck would he do something so uncivilized?" 

Audette's mouth dropped open as tears prickled instantly at her eyes, "Uncivilized? Would it be so shocking? Am I that undesirable?"

Several pairs of eyes now turned to the drama from nearby tables and chairs.

"How is my reaction not shocking to you? Are you blind?" Draco hissed back with his fists clenching at his sides, trying to lower his voice so that his words were muffled to the eavesdroppers.

Audette stomped her foot, sensing T-T sinking his nails into her neck to make his way onto her shoulder for guidance. He pipped in her ear, "We should not listen to the cruel boy. We should heed this as mockery, and rethink our friendship with him."

Audette shook her head in agreement, her lips trembling as students in the common room laughed loudly, "Clearly he sees me differently than you do, which is why I'm quite happy to announce that I won't be hanging around the likes of you anymore."

Draco's eyes darkened malignantly, "Oh that's rich. He sees you exactly the way that I do, believe me Bellarose. I've spoken to him many times about this topic."

"You liar!" Audette refused to play into the bullying any longer; Theodore had made it very clear that he found her to be attractive and quite civilized. 

She smashed her shoes into the moldy green carpeting all the way to the girl's stairs, grinding her teeth and growling. T-T had somehow made his way to her other shoulder to advise on the opposite perspective but she wasn't listening.

"What the fuck is going on here? Are you even listening to me, or has that mentally deficient teddy bear plugged your ears with it's fat head?" Draco called out ruthlessly.

When she didn't stop he went in the direction he always did back then, young, defensive and brutish, "Fine! You're nothing but a filthy crone anyways! Hilarious that you would even think I'd truly ask you!" Draco drove in the stake even deeper without needing to, yelling just as obnoxiously through the otherwise silent space. 

She heard him slump back into the couch with such coarse negligence that the leather groaned loudly. "Fuck off, stop staring at me or I'll transfigure you both into tubs of lard and drop you off to the kitchen elves," his dark voice whirled up the stairwell, irritating her ears the entire journey.

She stopped on the jeopardous trail four years later, squeezing her eyes shut at the sensitive memory that had flooded her brain during her peaceful slumber in the library. 

Draco was now hitting on her once again like she was nothing more than a silly little girl with too many hopes and dreams for true love, but this time she was flirting back like a numskull under the pretense of a hazardous dare. 

He'll destroy you...

Audette thought of turning back and just accepting that she would have to do twice as much homework in the next semester rather than subject herself to a similar bout of humiliation. 

The wind picked at her combed and loosened hair causing it to dance along her petticoat. Shouts of the players were now fully audible as they communicated strategies to succeed. Lee Jordan, the grandfathered announcer could be heard proclaiming various actions as they unraveled. 

Filled with contradiction she marched on, falling onto her backside several times like a drunken train wreck. Making it all the more difficult was a light spritz of September rain that had instated itself in place of the sunlight earlier in the day, resulting in a glistening hillside that felt oily and unstable below her boots.

By the time she was navigating her way through the wooden scaffolding below all of the bannered towers her teeth were chattering and she was unsightly, covered in mud with wild hair. She followed the green arrows that diverted the Slytherin area from the Hufflepuff one, rubbing her arms and sniffling.

Guy had situated himself next to Millicent Bulstrode in the front row, blundering off at the top of his lungs about each player on the Gryffindor team and what he knew of their current secrets. 

She sat next to him, and he nearly had to do a double take before cackling at her messy presentation, "What the devil happened to you? I can't tell if you are an ogre, of if you've just had a run in with one, Audette!"

"Ha-ha," Audette grumbled, her eyes scanning the field for Malfoy who had undoubtedly noticed her absence for the first half of the match. She ran her fingers through her sloppy blond hair that was only getting wetter in the rain. 

"Someone's got to take that tin from Finnigan or I'll rip my ears clean off. Did you see how much rum he had beforehand?" a younger Slytherin boy on Audette's right commented with a disturbed glower at where Seamus Finnigan of Gryffindor was indeed over there knocking a silver spoon back and forth in a goblet he'd coveted from the Great Hall. The unstable dinging had no rhyme or rhythm to it whatsoever, and was impressively managing to echo all around the football sized stadium.

Audette only began to relax when she spotted the bright platinum hair of Malfoy furiously flying parallel with his nemesis Harry Potter, not at all concerned with her attendance. 

They were moving so quickly through the fog and drizzle that only basic globs of whizzing colors gave away their identities. That, and the nasty, signature efforts Draco was making to ensure Harry Potter came to an ugly ending by either crashing him into a barrier or dislodging him from his broomstick. 

After twenty minutes had passed Audette was skulking deep in her seat, predictably bored, her mind vacant and her clothing as wet as a mop. 

The game seemed to have ground to a slow when both Seekers lost their bearing's on the golden snitch, and she forced herself to stare skywards when Draco squinted at her sitting exactly where he'd demanded she do so like a well-trained pet.

It shouldn't have been shocking then when he dipped his head down and gripped both ends of his broomstick tightly, speeding industriously towards their location like an out of control bullet train. Several people gasped and stood, even jabbing each other to escape to safety.

"Oh great mother of pearl!" Guy bellowed quite appropriately, ducking down behind the wooden stand for cover as Draco shot straight towards them at a rate that was surely going to result in utter demolition.

Audette clenched her fists and braced for impact, crossing her arms before her face and expecting nothing less than the entire stand to collapse from the impending strike.

Instead, he spun in place like an astronaut in training and caught the golden snitch right before the wooden barrier, and Audette sat frozen in place with her glove against her chest, "You witless worm, you could've killed us all!"

Draco puffed heavily, sweaty and surreal right in front of her. His white hair was messy, his blue eyes shockingly vivid in the damp weather, and the scent of musky pine permeated from his steamy robes. The green of his Quidditch gear had never looked so lime, almost like an artificially simulated color.

"Oh please, you're practically drooling. Take it, Audette...," he egged her on with a focused stare and breathy wording, holding out his glove as his chest jutted. In front of hundreds of people he was proclaiming his interest. And behind her, Theodore Nott was watching with livid eyes in the upper stands in a rare and invested appearance.

Audette laughed nervously when she saw Theodore stand to leave angrily, raising her fingers to tangle them in Draco's thick Quidditch glove. He pressed the chilly, metal golden snitch into her butterfly mitt, and at the same time yanked her forward sharply so that she was perilously suspended in the air with her hips barely holding her in the stand.

Their lips met for their first shocking kiss, and Audette melted in his hold.

Floating there on his broom he nuzzled his pointy nose into hers and supported her over a one-hundred foot vertical drop, sliding his tongue into her mouth brazenly.

His lips were fluffy and soft, and he tasted like spearmint and salty sweat. His other glove ripped her hair painfully as he guided her face aggressively into his, and all around them hooting and hollering erupted from the Slytherin stands. She moaned lightly, squeezing his hand back where they were locked in a hold between their chests.

Oh no.

It was glaringly sensational. Time froze, and so did any notion of her resistance to his charms. He was an amazing kisser, leaving her feeling like she was the only girl left on the planet.

Lee Jordan's irritating voice chirped up right on time, "Well it looks like Draco Malfoy has scored more than just the game winning snitch tonight folks. Audette Bellarose is in serious danger of falling, but I'm not talking about from the stan-" The announcement was sharply cut off by McGonagall tearing the speaker out of Lee's gloves in disapproval. 

At last, Seamus Finnigan had stopped his incessant banging to seat himself with a droopy look.

Draco suddenly broke away from the embrace and they stared into each other's eyes. He popped his eyebrows coyly, "Hopefully that will keep you warm."

His thick leather glove appeared flat against her chest to push her with force back into the stands. She stumbled barely to safety in utter disbelief as Draco soared away, her mind reeling and her lips stinging.

"Well I just left the planet. No correction, the universe," Guy declared as he straightened his knee-length, puffy jacket next to her, where she was left stunned and sucking in air like a vacuum.

He pushed his blue bangs skywards, watching in parallel transience as Draco floated around the outdoor stadium like a god on his sleek broomstick, soaking in the victory of his win arrogantly, "And I'd like to officially go back inside, it's grey and cold up here like my gran's backside."

Audette shut her eyes and swallowed, running her mitt over her forehead. In her other hand the golden snitch had unfurled it's intricate feathers, flapping desperately for it's release back into the atmosphere.

Pansy leaned forward through an entire row of spectators to grab her shoulder, "You're so screwed. He's got you wrapped around his glove already."

Audette smirked darkly, "Quite the opposite. Seemed pretty romantic to me."

Pansy sat back, raising her chin to send angled eyes down at Audette, "It doesn't matter. Malfoy is smart. Everything move he makes is intentional and calculated, and not in the interests of you completing your dare."

"Give that to me. That is...prized...school property," a very dark and sinuous voice ordered all of their attention. The entire Slytherin booth flash froze as if a universal remote had clicked off the world at the sound of Severus Snape's brooding rhetoric.

Audette rotated to look up at the man with greasy black hair, a markedly hooked nose, and soulless black eyes. His pale hand was held flat out, palm to the rainy sky not inches from her face.

He kicked the bench at her feet impatiently, "The snitch, Bellarose. And I'd better not see any more silly stunts like that from you, or it'll be a week's detention wringing out the Flobberworm's for mucous." 

Audette stubbornly gripped onto the squirming snitch while making a retching sound at the sticky threat to go anywhere near the foul, brown slugs, "I really do not comprehend how this could have been orchestrated by myself. Malfoy-"

"Mr. Malfoy...is a stellar academic and competent athlete. Yourself on the other hand...you do not possess as much lenience with me. Consider yourself on my radar," Snape's lip curled up menacingly.

Audette stood, pulling her sopping bag back into place. She stretched her arm out over the edge of the stand and let the aggravated snitch go, "Get your precious teacher's pet to bring it back, then, as he was responsible for depositing it here in the first place."

The stands were clearing out all around, and Audette barged straight past Snape knowing there was going to be consequences but too proud to tolerate the unfair assignment of liability. 

"DEtention! Potions classroom number three...seven in the morning," Snape rasped behind her in a bellowing tone. 

Audette looked back once with heavy, flattened eyelids, only to see that the professor was more than pleased with her insolent reaction. "Very well," she gave him an adamant glance before disappearing into the shuffling crowd.