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[ferretface_git]

His roommate never. left. the bloody. compound. EVER. He was always around, always quiet and staring and infuriatingly impossible to rattle. Even Nagini failed for frighten him off, which Draco was certain was a sure sign he wasn't human. Something nasty and soulless, of course. Or worse: Someone brave and pure of heart or some such nonsense.

But this was a special day. He was blissfully alone, Nagini having slithered out to sun herself in all the terrible heat, and his roommate gone off... to do whatever it is those types do. Draco didn't want to think about it. At the moment, he was propped up on a stack of pillows, and while they didn't compare to the down-filled linens he'd of course had back home, enchanted to always stay fluffed and warm, but it was better than nothing, he supposed. He had a heavy tome propped in his lap. An ancient book of black magic, similar to the copy from his father's library which he'd thumbed through multiple times throughout his childhood.

Today, all it did was make him miserably depressed. Not that anyone could tell the difference.

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[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Lyra nearly banged Draco's door down with a tired fist, all but slumped against the frame.

The knocks were loud and purposeful but not at all quick, and as she adjusted her bag on one shoulder and wiped a stray lock of newly washed hair from her face, Lyra took a long, deep breath and picked a scrap of apple from between her teeth. She didn't need to see a friendly face when a consistent one would do just as well. Pan circled one of her ankles.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

Heaving out a sigh, Draco swung his legs gracefully over the side of the bed, slamming his book shut with a plume of dust and dumping it onto the bedside table as he pushed to his feet.

"Alright, alright," he muttered, swinging open the door with a scowl. "Oh, it's you."

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, me." This, however, wasn't spoken with nearly as much insolent enthusiasm as usual as she brushed by him and continued on into his room, Pan lazing his way across the floor to curl up near the foot of Draco's bed.

Lyra tossed her bag onto his mattress and then slumped across the sheets as if she owned them. "You were reading?"

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"I've been known to do that, from time to time," he drawled, wrinkling his nose at the rodent now infesting his room, and scrunching it up further when Lyra sprawled across his sheets.

He'd just washed those.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

In response, Lyra shrugged where she lay, the tension visible in her shoulders.

"Well, don't just stand there," she stared expectantly at him. "Ask me how I've been. Where are your infamous Malfoy manners?"

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

Rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, Draco sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, brow arched.

"Alright, out with it then. What's the matter?"

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Now, when faced with the task of explaining herself, Lyra found that she couldn't. In her mind it all seemed so very silly, the sort of inconsequential chatter tossed about over rouge, pleated skirts and cherry cigarettes in the girl's loo of her school in Oxford.

And yet, Draco was the least sympathetic person she knew. Perhaps that was exactly what she needed. A good shock of careless disregard. Digging her palms hard enough into her eyes to make them ache against the pressure, Lyra took a sharp hiccup of a breath then sagged. "Will and I aren't speaking to each other," she stiffly exhaled, face remaining half-hidden.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

Draco waited silently. Watching her with a peevishly scrutinizing gaze, his gray eyes narrowed. When she spoke, finally, he felt a little tension in his shoulders unwind. He was starting to fear it was something actually important.

Translation: Something that would effect him.

"Oh, well, isn't that a relief," he decided, and considered it his duty to tell her as much.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Lyra blinked her eyes at him through her spreading fingers, then rolled over to sit up straight and peer reproachfully back at him.

"A relief?" she demanded, not shocked but not terribly receptive to the idea either. "Do you remember what we've been through?" Her voice cracked threateningly then, pitching higher on the question mark. "He's saved my life more times than I can count on one hand and now we're not speaking to each other!"

As a general rule Lyra wasn't much of a crier but Will and her fierce love for him called for exception.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"Relief," he repeated with more conviction, setting his jaw and jerking his chin in a firm nod. "He's clearly a fool."

Dear God, she was going to cry, he realized with not a small amount of horror. Draco didn't particularly like tears, unless he was the cause of them.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Lyra peered back at him through a gathering film of wetness, her brow furrowing and the slightest hint of a bitter smirk briefly curving one corner of her mouth. Even though fairly certain Draco thought Will a fool any day of the week, Lyra was a stubborn enough soul that she delighted in the name-calling.

She sniffed once and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, her limbs heavy with exhaustion. Lyra'd run two miles and had a shower in the girl's loo before bursting into Draco's room for a lack of a better way to exorcise her frustrations. The exertion was only now catching up to her as she sat slumped on his bed. "You do know I'll kill you, right? If you tell anyone about this."

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"Oh, for hell's sake, who would I tell anyway," he said with a grandly frustrated huff, and it was as close to an admission of weakness as she was ever going to get.

"So, I suppose this is where I ask... what happened?" Not that he cared, of course.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

None of it was premeditated. Initially, she'd gotten it into her head to find him for the sake of getting her mind off things with a round of bickering, but surprisingly Draco's brand of receptiveness only diminished her even more.

And then Lyra lost it for long enough to warrant an intense amount of shame on her part after all was said and done.

She managed to sit there brushing the still-damp hair from her face for a few seconds more before she all but collapsed into a passionate fit of quickly falling, hiccuping tears that made her daemon start to life and leap to her breast. Shoulders heaving, she caught Pan and buried her wet face into his pine marten body, her muffled mouth rambling erratically into his fur. "Oh, it's... oh it's all wrong... I'm... there are things I can do better than anyone else, I can, but I'm awful at... oh, Will's been like this for so long-"

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

No, he thought frantically, all at once his pale gray eyes darting around in search of an escape. One door. She'd be after him in moments, he wouldn't get far.

Damn, damn, damn.

"Right, so you're both fools," he decided, his lips curling in distaste while he watched her sob wetly with her increasingly soggy rodent in her arms, just hoping there weren't too many tears or stray hairs on his nice clean sheets when it was all over.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Lyra looked up at that to glare viciously at him. Distantly, some part of her felt Draco right. Really, why must things be so complicated? At the end of they day they were still just Will and Lyra and they loved each other infinitely. Why was she sitting there wasting their time together on something as silly as a misunderstanding?

Yet, she could not deny that things felt different between them now; the ease with which they used to run around together on the island had faded under the intensity of Will's moods, and before either of them could realize what was happening, the space between them had grown too palpable to ignore. "Don't you call me a fool," she countered, grumpily stroking Pan's wet fur. "All of this, it has a start so it should have an end..." she hiccuped, then angrily wiped her eyes dry. "I wish I could... oh, I know him best here and it's the worst sort of failure to not be able to sort things... he's never looked at me like that before," she choked out, bitter.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"You are a fool, Lyra. You're blubbering on my bed over some harsh words and a look?" he said, disbelieving. In Draco's world, these sorts of things were simple. You told your friends, your girlfriends included, what was appropriate and what wasn't. You told them when they were and weren't angry with you, and if that didn't sit right with them, they could very well piss off.

Draco's definition of friends, as it had been pointed out to him on multiple occasions, left much to be desired. His methods also didn't seem to work quite as well away from his good name and station.

Life was oh so very cruel.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Lyra huffed out a bitter laugh for lack of anything better to do, then snapped, "You don't understand." It didn't occur to her that his failure to understand her was a result of her failure to explain herself properly. Rather, she figured he was just being Draco for the sake of being Draco, which never failed to work her into an irritated frenzy in seconds flat.

Rubbing her eyes raw, she threw out, "I know things change. Everything changes, nothing's constant, we have to make things happen, I know this," she insisted, sounding stuffed up and swollen, but at least her face was dry. "I do, but... I don't know. It all started when we switched bodies," she gulped, rambling hastily now, "He's never been the same since I woke up in his body and he woke up in someone else, but things like that happen here and he's not..." she trailed off, sucking an agitated breath and shaking her head.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"Does it occur to you that I don't understand because it's ridiculous?" Draco asked bluntly, because he was actually making an attempt to translate all her blather, but finding himself unable to make sense of it all.

"If you care so much about him --" Oh God, he felt dirty, "then what are you doing in here crying about it to me when I certainly can't do a bloody thing to fix it?"

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Again, Lyra fixed him with a brilliant glare, hopping up from the bed as if the mattress had suddenly caught fire. Pan scrambled down as quickly as he could, then idled away to give his human the necessary space she sometimes needed. "Oh, you're right, I am being foolish," she accused, almost as if her blubbering actions were his fault entirely.

Abruptly, she felt quite sick of herself and all her internal moping, though, admittedly it did feel good to just let go for a few minutes. Relief intermingled with a sense of shame washed over her as she worked to calm her racing heart. Eventually, the frenzy she felt seemed to give way to the sort of lightheaded state that often came after a solid cry, and all at once she sank back down onto the bed again beside him, quiet but for the occasional sniff.

Her sinuses felt clogged, her skin too hot, but she did feel loads better.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"Of course I'm right," he said with a heavily exasperated sigh. He'd been trying to tell her that all along, it wasn't his fault she was just too thickheaded to grasp it.

Stiffly, he reached over to grab a tissue from the box on the dresser, holding it out to her with a dark scowl.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Wordlessly, Lyra snatched away the tissue and blew her nose loud and long where she sat slumped over her knees.

After a moment she took an experimental sniffle, then sniffed deeper when she found it much easier to breathe the air. "Thank you," Lyra grudgingly replied as she bawled up the tissue in her fist. She might have been a terror of a girl, but Lyra was known to share her gratitude when appropriate.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"Hm," he grunted noncommittally, sniffing a little anxiously and trying very hard not to fidget. He didn't know how to handle these sorts of shows of emotion. It reminded him too much of his sixth year at Hogwarts. His assignment. His mother wailing at Lucius's feet when she'd found out.

It's an honor, his father had said stiffly, but all Draco could remember now were his mother's tears.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

It wasn't at all difficult, in Lyra's opinion, to tell when Draco was uncomfortable. Only then did she bother looking at him more closely; up until that moment she had been profoundly focused on her own needs, her own tragedies.

After another beat of contemplation, Lyra adopted a fiendishly impressed sort of grin and then threw her arms around Draco's shoulders, hugging him rather fiercely. "You've got it in you, you know," she insisted before he could shove her away in anticipated disgust.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

He didn't shove her away. Not immediately. He was much too shocked for that. Frozen, wild-eyed and downright terrified, his arms clamped to his sides and his spine stiff as a board.

"Have what in me?" he demanded, his voice sharp, not terribly far from a wail.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

"Oh, it'll come to you..." Lyra loftily replied; it was probably obvious that she sounded much more like her usual self in that teasing moment.

If one were to have looked closely at her they might have caught all the telltale signs of a young girl fresh from a good cry, but by the way Lyra carried herself just then - chin lifted, shoulders square, spine straight - a person could have also deduced that it would have been difficult, and possibly disastrous, to remind her of that embarrassing fact.

"Later," she finished.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"Right, of course. Later. When I'm alone and can finally have some bloody peace," he said, sounding very tired and exasperated and maybe, possibly, a little bit amused. He shook her loose then, lifting his arms abruptly to break her hold and taking a moment to straighten his wrinkled clothes.

"Are you finished?" he asked, and from anyone else it might've been an 'are you okay?'.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

"I think so," Lyra bemusedly replied as she eased back and scrubbed a hand across her face. Truthfully, she still felt a bit wonky and the problem wasn't even close to being solved, but she also felt refreshed, refocused, drawn away from the edge of a remarkably self-pitying state.

"My God, I'm starved." Only as she spoke the words did her belly fully understand just how famished she truly was. Lyra'd had nought but a bit of fruit before that horrid run in the sweltering heat, and that emptiness was probably partially to blame for her feeling light enough to be carried away on a slight draft.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

"What, did you cry out the memory of how to get to the kitchen?" he asked, arching a brow at her, knowing just what he was risking in bringing up her recent waterworks.

[alethioliar.livejournal.com]

Lyra sent another glower his way for good measure. Fortunately for Draco she simply didn't have it in her to slap him around a bit just then. Instead, she wrinkled her nose and released a light sigh, almost as if working up to standing again.

"You're not going to change my mind so easily, you know," she said as Pan climbed back up into her lap, his fur a soft comfort along the inside of her wrist. "But I'll leave you to it. I suppose you have earned maybe a few minutes of quiet," drawled as she stood.

[of-badfaith.livejournal.com]

For one insane moment he actually thought of asking to go with her, but he quickly stifled the urge, more than a little disgusted with himself.

"How generous of you," he drawled, leveling her with a blank look, relaxing to see that she'd at least stopped blubbering.