Chapter Text
Barely, Draco saw the cat, out of the corner of his eyes. It had a fluffy grey coat and seemed to be following a frizzy brown-haired girl who he remembered was in the year below him. She walked into the common room and headed straight for one of the armchairs that was seated next to a couple giant windows that stared into the murky water of the lake. She slumped into the chair with a sigh before pulling some books out of her bag, all while the cat situated itself on top of the cushions to stare at the windows. He had seen the girl before, passed her in the halls and bumped into her on the way to breakfast, but it was the first time there had ever been a cat with her.
She seemed to say something to it, and he watched as the small head turned around the room before its gaze came to a stop on him. A mismatched gaze of brown and blue stared him down for a few seconds before moving on to the next person. Finally, it settled back on the window. When he looked up again for the cat, after an hour or so, it was gone.
There were only a couple weeks left in the school year, and for the little time that remained Draco saw a lot of that cat. Most of the Slytherin girls had petted it and grown used to seeing it in the common room or walking the halls. He’d found out the girl's name was Bridget, but had no idea what the cat was called. Two favorite spots were on top of one of the bookshelves, where it was out of reach for grabby first years, and on one of the armchairs staring into the lake. The one thing he did notice was that the cat was only ever around when Bridget was there, and only for a few hours at a time. Always gone before the students started to trickle towards their rooms and leave the common room more or less empty.
Then school was over and all thoughts of the cat disappeared to be replaced by what was expected of him. What he had to do, the secrets he had to keep, these were at the front of his mind. Everything else fell away like paper on a windy day, whisked across the landscape with only a few of them getting stuck on fences along the way.
He had been chosen for this, and he should feel honored that out of everyone they had picked him, yet he was scared. In class there was room for failure, for mistakes, he could always try the spell again, brew the potion once more, or wait for another quidditch match. He only had one shot at this, everything that his family had been working towards, that he, had been working towards was finally here, and he was terrified. His friends didn’t understand, perhaps his parents did a little bit which was a comfort at home, but now he was going back to school for his sixth year, and he might not return for the last.
Days leading up to school went by so quickly he barely had time to count down and feel worried about them, although the anxiety was already building up inside. Snape knew, but that was hardly a means of reassurance when he walked the hallways alone in his thoughts or sat in class listening to things that didn’t matter.
Small comfort came in the common room, when he could lose himself in the bustle of what everyone else was doing, and try to name as many people as he could remember from those around him. Anything to distract himself from the thoughts that swirled up inside. Though they would always come back to him at night, when the rest of the students had gone to bed and left him in the dark.
The cat was back, he’d caught its mismatched stare a few times while looking out towards the windows, it was Bridget who was less common. Draco was sure that the fluffy grey feline belonged to her, but with her more frequent absence he wasn’t so positive anymore. Not that it really mattered, none of it really mattered anymore.
It would be hard for him to care about anything this school year, least of all some cat that had vanished from his mind as quickly as it entered.