Chapter 3: Spark
He'd found her. It had taken almost a year, a year of careful research and discreet conversations with people he should have been too smart to speak with, but he'd found her. Then, he'd had to wait an infuriatingly long time, for the right opportunity, the right front to get himself close enough. But he'd found her.
Draco Malfoy sat back in his chair in the darkest corner of the dingy restaurant he'd offered to take over, the legitimate front to a thriving business unit of his family's corporation. After the war ended and many magical substances had suddenly become contraband, his family, despite their public loyalties (their true loyalty? To the power that a great deal of wealth provided), had become the instigators of an extremely lucrative black market economy.
That night, as had become his habit, he was now seated, carefully watching the flow of business through the shabby pub that pretended to be a restaurant. But more often than not, he watched her.
The war had changed everyone, even the ones that emerged victorious. She was so quiet now, and more reserved – similar to how he remembered her from her first year in school. Every move that she made was careful, and every word that she spoke was measured, evidence that she was aware anything she said could be turned around on her, given her surname. She wasn't the reckless, carefree spirit she'd been at Hogwarts – oh, he remembered how feisty and full of spirit she’d been - but given that she'd lost almost all of her family in that terrible fire, and the rest during the war, he could understand her reservation. But there were moments, if he watched carefully enough, when he could see a tentative spark of her defiance, and he knew there was still a chance.
That spark was most obvious whenever Jordan tracked her down and began berating her for one thing or another. He'd noticed the way Jordan was constantly looking for excuses to give the girl a hard time. Anything she did, he was quick to find fault with, and when she remained cool and collected, staring at him with steely eyes and quietly acquiescing to his demands, he just grew angrier with her, desperate to garner some type of response. Typical two year old throwing a tantrum for attention.
After the incident with Murtagh, Draco had cornered one of the other waitresses, the mousey-haired one who seemed to talk to her more often than the others, and managed to wind his way onto the subject of Jordan.
“I need to know if there is a problem that exists between my manager and the staff. There’s a great deal of tension between the Weasley girl and Jordan. Is there anything that I should be concerned about?” he asked. Carol had stared back at him, afraid to say anything that would incriminate her friend, but after a few more carefully worded statements from him, she’d shrugged off her caution and started to talk.
“Jordan is the problem. I’m pretty sure he only ever hired Ginny because he wanted her… you know, wanted her,” Carol said suggestively. Draco nodded for her to continue. “She ignored him, for the most part, with that cool act she does with all the male customers – freezing them out, pretending not to notice when they compliment her. I’m not too sure what happened exactly, because they were in the back room and no one could actually see what happened, but I think Jordan finally tried to make a move on her.”
“What happened?” he asked, his voice tight with the effort to keep from showing his rage at this new information.
“She freaked. She started screaming at the top of her lungs, and was almost hysterical afterwards. Jordan came flying out, his face flaming red, claiming he only touched her shoulder before she started to scream. Anyway, ever since then, he’s been pretty horrible to her. Some men just can’t handle rejection,” Carol said confidingly, as if forgetting for a moment who she was talking to.
Now that it had been pointed out to him, he could see little signs that pointed to what Carol had hinted at. But it wasn’t just Jordan – every time anyone came close to her or reached out to touch her in some way, she’d stiffen up or step aside. He watched her do the same little sequence – a long practiced dance, from the look of it, on four separate occasions: with one of the elderly couples who frequented the restaurant (completely oblivious to the thousands of Galleons’ worth of business being conducted around them), with Carol, who tried to place a friendly arm around her shoulder, with Jordan, whose presence she took pains to avoid at all costs, and with one of the male kitchen staff members.
As he watched her that night, he tried to remember the girl he’d known during his sixth year, but she was just a sun-bleached memory. One that he’d lost so long ago. He may have found her again, but because of him and what he’d done, she wasn’t the same. No one who lived through the war was, but with her… it was his fault. All his fault. Despite that sun-bleached memory, the only glimpse of peace he’d known during that year, he’d traded that vibrant, feisty girl away for his own safety.
And so he needed to be careful, needed to calculate every move, and for now, he needed to keep his distance, no matter how it burned at him to be so near.
* * * *
Sixth year - spring
She became an obsession when he should have been concentrating on the task before him. Ever since that rainy day, thoughts of her had consumed him. He became painfully aware whenever she was around him, and his eyes followed her whenever she was in the same area. He watched her laugh, watched her smile, watched as she played Quidditch, flying so freely in the air.
But he stayed away. Whatever had passed between them in the silence of the owlery that rainy day, it was better left unspoken, unacknowledged. To talk about it out loud would make it real, too real when compared to the hazy memory that was burned into his subconscious. His body knew, though, and it ached to be close to her whenever he sensed her around.
That was how they’d ended up under the willow tree by the lake. He’d spotted her out walking that misty morning, and he wasn’t sure what force it was that compelled him to follow her, but it was drawing him to her in a way that made his skin burn when he tried to take another route. She was standing with her back to him, focused on the choppy grey waters of the lake in front of her, and he crept up behind her so slowly, so quietly, yet she still turned towards him, almost as if she’d been expecting him.
They stared at each other in silence, the span of a few heartbeats, her eyes wide and serious. But it was her mouth he was more concerned with, as she was biting her lip in such an enticing way, a way that reminded him that it had been an eternity since the one time he’d kissed her, which awakened the memory of the way that had felt. Once again enshrouded with the gaping silence of the world around them, they moved towards each other, he lunging hungrily at her mouth as her arms reached around his neck to pull her body against his.
Before either of them was fully aware of it or how it had even happened, he had lowered her to the damp grass, desperate to put as little space between them as possible. He was consumed by a feverish, pulsating need, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t see. All he could do was feel – the blissful friction of his tongue rubbing against hers, the warmth of her gasping breath against his forehead as he trailed his lips down her neck, the softness of her body underneath him as her hands moved against his body.
He struggled clumsily at the hem of her white cotton blouse, tearing his lips away from her skin, as he needed to glance down in order to untangle his hand from the material, before he was able to free it from where it was tucked into her kilt and slide his hand underneath, cold against her warm skin. She gasped as his skin made contact; it was the first noise she’d made. He kissed her again, silencing any further sounds that would ruin the surreal quality of what was happening between them. He didn’t want it to be real, couldn’t know that it was real when he knew how that school year was going to end. Silence gave it a dream-like quality that shrouded them both in safety.
His hand, clumsy with the impatience of adolescence, grasped her breast underneath her shirt and she squirmed beneath him. He nuzzled at the buttons, not wanting to take his hands away from their current occupation in order to remove that barrier, and she arched her body towards him. His heart pounding with indecision, his body, reacting instinctively, moved his other hand to hover near the waistband of her skirt.
His fingers slipped below, and suddenly, the warm pliant girl, whose frenzied breathing was hot against his neck, froze. Noting the change, he glanced up and was surprised at what he saw. She wanted him; he could tell that she did, from the way she was nibbling at her swollen lip indecisively and the cloudy sheen of lust in her eyes. She’d been afflicted by the same feverish desire that had pushed him forward, that screamed at him now for stopping.
But there was also something else, an unspoken truth – reality had set in, and she was terrified by it. Underneath the pounding hormones and haze of desire, her eyes registered a stark, almost primal fear.
He stared down at her, breath still coming in gasps, one hand still underneath her shirt. Without breaking eye contact, he slowly pulled his hand away, lingering for a second against her silky skin. She reached up and placed her small palm against his cheek, holding it there as she stared up at him with an expression of intense longing and regret – and a hint of relief.
Letting out a long, slow groan of frustration, he rolled over onto the grass beside her, staring up at the overcast sky. She sat up, her panting breaths all he could hear as she struggled to straighten out her blouse. She slipped her hand into his, squeezing it once as she lifted it towards her. She brushed the back of his hand with her lips, once and just barely, before she laid it back down to the ground as she slowly got to her feet.
He could hear her as she walked away, her shoes squishing in the damn, muddy grass.
It was only a few days later that he heard that she’d become Harry Potter’s girlfriend.
* * * *
It was often said that history repeated itself. Draco always thought that was a rather strange expression, as if one was accusing history of being a troublesome entity that conspired to enforce the same set of circumstances, mistakes and revelations, over and over again.
He only went back there for a quill. It was his favorite quill, however, and he’d left it in the employees’ change room after lecturing the kitchen staff about their unruly conduct. It was really late, an hour after close, and he didn’t think there were any employees left, so he didn’t think twice before he entered the room.
In the dingy light from the soot-covered lantern burning in the corner, he almost didn’t see her, but the flash of white from her bra caught his eye. She must have been in the middle of changing, because her shirt was hanging in her right hand as she searched in a bag on the bench in front of her with the other. He remembered that day, when she’d barged in on his paradise of quiet solitude, and had acted like a terrified little rabbit when she realized he was there. She’d been shivering from the dampness in the air, and there was something about the vulnerability of it all, the fact that the confident, strong-willed girl had been caught in such a moment of exposure – it pulled at him, a force he never understood. He still didn’t know why he’d slipped his robe over her shoulders and left her standing there, without a word. He still remembered the devastating thrill of brushing his finger down her spine, the way her smooth, ivory skin had shone in the weak light of the owlery, forcing him to reach out and touch it.
This instance of repeating history, however, had a few marked changes that made his breath catch in his throat. Instead of the pale, dewy skin he’d seen before, that should have been iridescent in the dimmed lantern-light, there was a red, blistering scar extending from the nape of her neck down to the waistline of her skirt, covering the right half of her back. The sight hit him, full-force, in the stomach, and he let out a horrified gasp. The weight of the world was crashing mightily onto his shoulders and he could barely maintain his footing. He never imagined the scars that she would carry from the war would be physical.
There was a mirror on the wall in front of her, and at his gasp, she looked up, spotting his reflection behind her. That same stark, irrational fear that had reflected in her eyes the afternoon they’d spent in the grass under the willow tree filled her expression now.
She screamed, a terrible, anguish-filled noise that would shatter the silence between them forever.
* * * *
He'd found her. It had taken almost a year, a year of careful research and discreet conversations with people he should have been too smart to speak with, but he'd found her. Then, he'd had to wait an infuriatingly long time, for the right opportunity, the right front to get himself close enough. But he'd found her.
Draco Malfoy sat back in his chair in the darkest corner of the dingy restaurant he'd offered to take over, the legitimate front to a thriving business unit of his family's corporation. After the war ended and many magical substances had suddenly become contraband, his family, despite their public loyalties (their true loyalty? To the power that a great deal of wealth provided), had become the instigators of an extremely lucrative black market economy.
That night, as had become his habit, he was now seated, carefully watching the flow of business through the shabby pub that pretended to be a restaurant. But more often than not, he watched her.
The war had changed everyone, even the ones that emerged victorious. She was so quiet now, and more reserved – similar to how he remembered her from her first year in school. Every move that she made was careful, and every word that she spoke was measured, evidence that she was aware anything she said could be turned around on her, given her surname. She wasn't the reckless, carefree spirit she'd been at Hogwarts – oh, he remembered how feisty and full of spirit she’d been - but given that she'd lost almost all of her family in that terrible fire, and the rest during the war, he could understand her reservation. But there were moments, if he watched carefully enough, when he could see a tentative spark of her defiance, and he knew there was still a chance.
That spark was most obvious whenever Jordan tracked her down and began berating her for one thing or another. He'd noticed the way Jordan was constantly looking for excuses to give the girl a hard time. Anything she did, he was quick to find fault with, and when she remained cool and collected, staring at him with steely eyes and quietly acquiescing to his demands, he just grew angrier with her, desperate to garner some type of response. Typical two year old throwing a tantrum for attention.
After the incident with Murtagh, Draco had cornered one of the other waitresses, the mousey-haired one who seemed to talk to her more often than the others, and managed to wind his way onto the subject of Jordan.
“I need to know if there is a problem that exists between my manager and the staff. There’s a great deal of tension between the Weasley girl and Jordan. Is there anything that I should be concerned about?” he asked. Carol had stared back at him, afraid to say anything that would incriminate her friend, but after a few more carefully worded statements from him, she’d shrugged off her caution and started to talk.
“Jordan is the problem. I’m pretty sure he only ever hired Ginny because he wanted her… you know, wanted her,” Carol said suggestively. Draco nodded for her to continue. “She ignored him, for the most part, with that cool act she does with all the male customers – freezing them out, pretending not to notice when they compliment her. I’m not too sure what happened exactly, because they were in the back room and no one could actually see what happened, but I think Jordan finally tried to make a move on her.”
“What happened?” he asked, his voice tight with the effort to keep from showing his rage at this new information.
“She freaked. She started screaming at the top of her lungs, and was almost hysterical afterwards. Jordan came flying out, his face flaming red, claiming he only touched her shoulder before she started to scream. Anyway, ever since then, he’s been pretty horrible to her. Some men just can’t handle rejection,” Carol said confidingly, as if forgetting for a moment who she was talking to.
Now that it had been pointed out to him, he could see little signs that pointed to what Carol had hinted at. But it wasn’t just Jordan – every time anyone came close to her or reached out to touch her in some way, she’d stiffen up or step aside. He watched her do the same little sequence – a long practiced dance, from the look of it, on four separate occasions: with one of the elderly couples who frequented the restaurant (completely oblivious to the thousands of Galleons’ worth of business being conducted around them), with Carol, who tried to place a friendly arm around her shoulder, with Jordan, whose presence she took pains to avoid at all costs, and with one of the male kitchen staff members.
As he watched her that night, he tried to remember the girl he’d known during his sixth year, but she was just a sun-bleached memory. One that he’d lost so long ago. He may have found her again, but because of him and what he’d done, she wasn’t the same. No one who lived through the war was, but with her… it was his fault. All his fault. Despite that sun-bleached memory, the only glimpse of peace he’d known during that year, he’d traded that vibrant, feisty girl away for his own safety.
And so he needed to be careful, needed to calculate every move, and for now, he needed to keep his distance, no matter how it burned at him to be so near.
* * * *
Sixth year - spring
She became an obsession when he should have been concentrating on the task before him. Ever since that rainy day, thoughts of her had consumed him. He became painfully aware whenever she was around him, and his eyes followed her whenever she was in the same area. He watched her laugh, watched her smile, watched as she played Quidditch, flying so freely in the air.
But he stayed away. Whatever had passed between them in the silence of the owlery that rainy day, it was better left unspoken, unacknowledged. To talk about it out loud would make it real, too real when compared to the hazy memory that was burned into his subconscious. His body knew, though, and it ached to be close to her whenever he sensed her around.
That was how they’d ended up under the willow tree by the lake. He’d spotted her out walking that misty morning, and he wasn’t sure what force it was that compelled him to follow her, but it was drawing him to her in a way that made his skin burn when he tried to take another route. She was standing with her back to him, focused on the choppy grey waters of the lake in front of her, and he crept up behind her so slowly, so quietly, yet she still turned towards him, almost as if she’d been expecting him.
They stared at each other in silence, the span of a few heartbeats, her eyes wide and serious. But it was her mouth he was more concerned with, as she was biting her lip in such an enticing way, a way that reminded him that it had been an eternity since the one time he’d kissed her, which awakened the memory of the way that had felt. Once again enshrouded with the gaping silence of the world around them, they moved towards each other, he lunging hungrily at her mouth as her arms reached around his neck to pull her body against his.
Before either of them was fully aware of it or how it had even happened, he had lowered her to the damp grass, desperate to put as little space between them as possible. He was consumed by a feverish, pulsating need, and he couldn’t think, couldn’t see. All he could do was feel – the blissful friction of his tongue rubbing against hers, the warmth of her gasping breath against his forehead as he trailed his lips down her neck, the softness of her body underneath him as her hands moved against his body.
He struggled clumsily at the hem of her white cotton blouse, tearing his lips away from her skin, as he needed to glance down in order to untangle his hand from the material, before he was able to free it from where it was tucked into her kilt and slide his hand underneath, cold against her warm skin. She gasped as his skin made contact; it was the first noise she’d made. He kissed her again, silencing any further sounds that would ruin the surreal quality of what was happening between them. He didn’t want it to be real, couldn’t know that it was real when he knew how that school year was going to end. Silence gave it a dream-like quality that shrouded them both in safety.
His hand, clumsy with the impatience of adolescence, grasped her breast underneath her shirt and she squirmed beneath him. He nuzzled at the buttons, not wanting to take his hands away from their current occupation in order to remove that barrier, and she arched her body towards him. His heart pounding with indecision, his body, reacting instinctively, moved his other hand to hover near the waistband of her skirt.
His fingers slipped below, and suddenly, the warm pliant girl, whose frenzied breathing was hot against his neck, froze. Noting the change, he glanced up and was surprised at what he saw. She wanted him; he could tell that she did, from the way she was nibbling at her swollen lip indecisively and the cloudy sheen of lust in her eyes. She’d been afflicted by the same feverish desire that had pushed him forward, that screamed at him now for stopping.
But there was also something else, an unspoken truth – reality had set in, and she was terrified by it. Underneath the pounding hormones and haze of desire, her eyes registered a stark, almost primal fear.
He stared down at her, breath still coming in gasps, one hand still underneath her shirt. Without breaking eye contact, he slowly pulled his hand away, lingering for a second against her silky skin. She reached up and placed her small palm against his cheek, holding it there as she stared up at him with an expression of intense longing and regret – and a hint of relief.
Letting out a long, slow groan of frustration, he rolled over onto the grass beside her, staring up at the overcast sky. She sat up, her panting breaths all he could hear as she struggled to straighten out her blouse. She slipped her hand into his, squeezing it once as she lifted it towards her. She brushed the back of his hand with her lips, once and just barely, before she laid it back down to the ground as she slowly got to her feet.
He could hear her as she walked away, her shoes squishing in the damn, muddy grass.
It was only a few days later that he heard that she’d become Harry Potter’s girlfriend.
* * * *
It was often said that history repeated itself. Draco always thought that was a rather strange expression, as if one was accusing history of being a troublesome entity that conspired to enforce the same set of circumstances, mistakes and revelations, over and over again.
He only went back there for a quill. It was his favorite quill, however, and he’d left it in the employees’ change room after lecturing the kitchen staff about their unruly conduct. It was really late, an hour after close, and he didn’t think there were any employees left, so he didn’t think twice before he entered the room.
In the dingy light from the soot-covered lantern burning in the corner, he almost didn’t see her, but the flash of white from her bra caught his eye. She must have been in the middle of changing, because her shirt was hanging in her right hand as she searched in a bag on the bench in front of her with the other. He remembered that day, when she’d barged in on his paradise of quiet solitude, and had acted like a terrified little rabbit when she realized he was there. She’d been shivering from the dampness in the air, and there was something about the vulnerability of it all, the fact that the confident, strong-willed girl had been caught in such a moment of exposure – it pulled at him, a force he never understood. He still didn’t know why he’d slipped his robe over her shoulders and left her standing there, without a word. He still remembered the devastating thrill of brushing his finger down her spine, the way her smooth, ivory skin had shone in the weak light of the owlery, forcing him to reach out and touch it.
This instance of repeating history, however, had a few marked changes that made his breath catch in his throat. Instead of the pale, dewy skin he’d seen before, that should have been iridescent in the dimmed lantern-light, there was a red, blistering scar extending from the nape of her neck down to the waistline of her skirt, covering the right half of her back. The sight hit him, full-force, in the stomach, and he let out a horrified gasp. The weight of the world was crashing mightily onto his shoulders and he could barely maintain his footing. He never imagined the scars that she would carry from the war would be physical.
There was a mirror on the wall in front of her, and at his gasp, she looked up, spotting his reflection behind her. That same stark, irrational fear that had reflected in her eyes the afternoon they’d spent in the grass under the willow tree filled her expression now.
She screamed, a terrible, anguish-filled noise that would shatter the silence between them forever.
* * * *
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