Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine.
A/N: For Tat (Tat1312), for her birthday, which was December 13th. Also because she's a wonderful person and a great writer. Happy (late) birthday! I hope you like it.
He had half-expected to find her perched, bird-like, on the dove gray loveseat in the corner of his mother's sitting room, or leaning against the swirled marble that surrounded the fireplace; he hadn't thought that she would be brave enough to cross the room and turn her back to the door, and certainly hadn't expected her to stare in such concentration at the family portrait his mother had had painted before he first left for Hogwarts. So many lifetimes ago, it seemed to him now.
She knew he was there, but she didn't turn around. He twirled his wand – the one Potter had unceremoniously returned to him after he'd used it to defeat that Snaky Git –as he waited for her to acknowledge him. This had been his home, reconstructed after it had been defiled and burned and tainted six years before – it had taken nearly nine months for his parents to feel comfortable moving back in, and Draco still felt incredibly out of place in its wide corridors and nightmare-filled rooms. He felt hunted, like a rat being chased through a maze.
He did not make the first moves in the Manor. The child would need to speak first. But then, she wasn't a child. She had turned seventeen months ago – that's why she was here, he reminded himself. She just looked young, standing still and silent, her feet pointed slightly outward in plum colored ballet flats, her small white hands clasped behind her back, a silver charm bracelet heavy around her left wrist.
He was suddenly jealous of her youth, jealous of the fact that she had mostly escaped the War. That was stupid, of course, an idiotic thought, but it came barreling into his mind anyway. He cleared his throat loudly, hoping to startle her. She didn't move. Was she waiting for him to speak? Well, he knew why she was here. He could hopefully have her out through the Floo in fifteen minutes, and he could be back in his flat seconds later, working on the potion that his mother's owl had interrupted.
"Need your medicine, Delacour?" Her surname bothered Draco, mostly because the French fell smoothly from his tongue, lacking the venom he intended.
She nodded her head shortly, still facing away from him. There couldn't be anything too interesting in the portrait, he thought. The figures in it moved occasionally, but for the most part they sat stiffly, too formal for the jokes that subjects of other paintings might tell one another, too proud to run off and seek more humorous company on other canvases. Not that they would find any. His parents had a rather drab taste in art, Draco thought. Serpents and rocky beach scenes and long-dead Malfoys and Blacks. He much preferred the décor in his flat; abstract designs in bright colors. Of course, they favored shades of green, but then, he was a Slytherin.
"How old were you?" the girl asked, and he blinked. His mother – who always dispensed his medicinal potions to their patients – had told him that the French girl rarely spoke, other than a brief merci when she was handed the month-long supply of potion, which Gabrielle would need to continue taking until her Veela blood stopped trying to overpower her human side. That was actually why Draco was there, instead of his mother. Gabrielle should have been perfectly human by now – after all, she was only one quarter Veela, and he knew that the symptoms of severe headaches and muscle spasms didn't usually last more than two months after a part-Veela turned seventeen, when the Veela gene reached its strongest. The fact that Gabrielle was still suffering these symptoms six months after turning seventeen made him nervous.
"Hmm?" he asked, staring at the blonde hair that feathered down to the nape of her neck and then stopped, chopped off in some feminine pique of fury or maybe just a mistaken fashion choice. He had liked her hair long. The last time he had seen her, it had draped to her waist.
"This portrait." She sounded exasperated, though he couldn't be sure. "How old were you?"
"Oh. I was eleven."
"So serious." And then she turned and he was glad that she had waited, because it had given him time to prepare himself subconsciously for the effect she had on him. Light eyes stared from between dark lashes, a pale smile curved her lips, her short hair highlighted her high cheekbones (even though he still wished it was longer), and he had to steady himself after just looking at her face. Bloody French Veelas. "Did you have any fun at all during your childhood, Draco?"
He ignored the question. It was not one he cared to consider. He was no longer a child, and this question of "fun" was juvenile. He had Veela genes to suppress. If he didn't do that, this beautiful creature might burst in an explosion of black feathers, and that would be unacceptable. "Are you still getting headaches?" he asked her, tipping the bottle that held her potion so that the violet liquid shimmered in the glow of mid-morning light through the windows.
"Every morning at eight thirty, like clockwork." Her eyes followed the movement of the bottle, and he wondered how much her head hurt at that moment. "It is not bad with the medicine, though."
Draco nodded. "What do you mean by 'not bad'?"
"It lasts only thirty minutes."
That was surprising news. Good news, but unexpected. He had thought the potion would only diminish the pain brought on by the warring blood in her veins, not eliminate it entirely. He crossed the room and peered into her eyes, searching them for something – some sign of the conflict that was undoubtedly raging inside her. But her eyes were clear, a blue so light they were nearly gray.
"See something you like?" she asked, and he nearly bit his tongue off at her coy tone of voice. Slippery. Her words were slippery and she was sly and he was not allowed to get trapped by her.
"Gabrielle." She had never made any attempt to be formal with him, so why should he bother with her? "Gabrielle, this Veela thing is taking longer than I thought it would to die down. Have your mother or your sister spoken to you about it at all?"
She blinked, obviously having expected some response to her flirting. But she regained her composure remarkably quickly. "I haven't spoken to Mother of it since I left France. And Fleur, well, she is busy with the children. So no, they've told me nothing."
Draco nodded. Of course, the older part-Veelas wouldn't have noticed the tiny signs that he had, they wouldn't have kept nearly as close track on the amount of potion she had gone through as he did. It was his job after all, to notice these things. His job, and, well, he did like Gabrielle. She would have been in Slytherin.
"Why? Is something very wrong?"
"Not wrong, I don't think." Draco handed her the bottle and she sighed as her fingers closed around the glass, a tightness he hadn't noticed dropping from her shoulders.
"Well? What is it?" Gabrielle tugged the stopper from the potion and Draco watched as she lifted the bottle to her soft lips and poured what look to be the exact dosage down her throat.
"You've got that figured out pretty well." He began pacing slowly. She stood still for a few moments, watching him in silence.
"Do you want me to leave?" she asked finally, and he shook his head sharply.
"No. Well, yes, actually, but I'm coming with you."
"You're what?" He hadn't ever seen the girl so astonished. Her lips were rounded, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes wide. "You cannot just follow me around all day!"
"I need to observe you, to see if there's some reason this is lasting so long. Would you rather I wait until tonight and come watch you while you sleep?"
"Sounds disturbed either way," she muttered, and Draco grinned.
"It's all in the name of medicine."
"Are you certain that's all?" And her eyes were heavy on his; he felt as if she was drawing his soul out through his pores, sucking his emotions straight through his skin, pulling all of him toward her.
"You're not the one who needs the Veela antidote," he muttered, breaking eye contact and turning away, "It's all the rest of us who need to be protected from you."
She laughed, a sharp, quick noise behind him, but he didn't respond. One of his house elves – Daisy, he thought – had appeared at the doorway to the room and was holding the gray wool coat and mittens that he had dropped in the Manor's entrance room when he first arrived. He took the clothes from Daisy and flung them on, turning back to Gabrielle, who was watching him with a slightly bemused expression on her still-gorgeous face.
"Ready? Lead on, Delacour."
"Honestly, Draco. This is not necessary. I am fine." Her eyes scanned his face anxiously, and he suddenly wondered what a recently of-age French girl was doing in the United Kingdom. He had never considered her reasons for being here, but…well, aside from her sister, her whole family and, he assumed, friends, were in France. He knew that she drank her potion twice a day, that she suffered from a headache from eight thirty to nine o'clock every morning, and that every month she returned to the Manor, collected her potion, and said barely a word to his mother. That was all Draco knew of Gabrielle Delacour's life.
"It is necessary. You may be fine, but we can't be sure. I don't want you to have to keep coming back here to get this potion for the rest of your life. I also don't want to risk telling you that you're okay to stop taking the potion, and then have you turn into a freaky bird the first time someone upsets you."
"I don't get angry." Her eyes were jagged shards of ice, suddenly, coolly pinning him to his spot.
"Clearly." She didn't move, and her expression didn't change. Maybe if she had turned on her Veela charm, he'd have allowed himself to be convinced and placated, turned away. But her way of convincing him was too similar to his mother's regal responses to his childhood fits, and he knew all too well how to hold his ground. "Look, it's not like I'll be following you around for days. It'll just be today, and only for a few hours. I won't even talk to you, if you don't want me to. I'll follow a few meters behind you. If you go into a restaurant, I'll sit two tables over. All that I ask is that you let me close enough to see how you react throughout the day."
She sighed. "Can't you just put a magical tracer on me, or something?"
"I'm not sure how well your body would respond to the few tracing spells I know. I could hand your case over to St. Mungo's, if you'd like. They've got a whole department on part-human magical creatures. But they're more inclined to treat you like a Veela than a person, so I wouldn't recommend it."
She continued glaring at him for a few moments before turning back to face the fireplace. "Fine. You can come. I'm perfectly boring, though."
"All the easier for me to watch out for you, then."
"Right, Malfoy. Whatever. I've got to get back to my flat, first." She stepped into the fire and he heard her call, "Fife's Den" as the flames whipped her away.
He followed seconds later, stumbling out into a tiny, cramped kitchen. Gabrielle was somewhere else in the flat – he could hear noises from down the hall, so he took the opportunity to look around.
Her refrigerator was plastered in moving photographs of Gabrielle and her sister, Gabrielle and her parents, and Gabrielle and a group of six girls – all with dark hair and wide smiles, and in every picture Gabrielle was in the center of their group, her smile subtle compared to theirs, the laughter in her blue-gray eyes subdued. Was she just calmer than her friends, he wondered, or had she been unhappier than them?
He heard her curse and crossed the kitchen, peeking out into the hallway to find that both sides were lined with dark wooden bookshelves, stacked near to overflowing with piles and piles of clothbound texts. The hall was so narrow that he doubted he would be able to get through it without knocking down at least two sets of encyclopedias on his way. She'd have to come looking for him eventually, so he just called, "You all right, Gabrielle?" in the direction her swear had come from.
"Yes," she called back, and he nodded, satisfied, and turned back to examining her kitchen. For evidence, obviously.
The kitchen sink had seven teacups floating in six centimeters of soapy water, each with a red lipstick stain on the rim. The windowsill above the sink was lined with empty glass bottles, which he recognized as the potions bottles he had been giving her for the last six months. The new bottle sat at the end of the row, the only one with liquid in it. He crossed the room and picked up a stack of recipes from the counter by the stove, pushing the olive colored tea kettle off the pile and onto the stovetop with a clatter.
The recipe on top was for croissants, written in French in a spidery script that Draco could barely decipher. A smear of what looked like butter added a sheen to the second line of the recipe, and as Draco set it aside he imagined Gabrielle in her kitchen, her hair pushed back in a headband, an apron tied around her skinny waist, her hands steady as they whisked eggs with flour and sugar and folded dough onto baking sheets.
He inhaled the smell of sweet cinnamon and the lightest scent of vanilla and sugar, and without turning around he knew that Gabrielle had somehow made it down the hall and back into the kitchen without knocking any books to the floor. Of course, she was a foot shorter than him and tiny – she could probably have fit through the door to the house elves' quarters in the manor.
"Find something interesting?" He was beginning to understand her tones of voice. If Gabrielle had been Potter, or Pansy, he would have been on the floor with a wand to his throat at that moment. But she was reserved, not violent. Her anger was different. It was confusing, only because it was very un-Veela-like. And from what he could tell, her blood wanted her to be very Veela-like.
Draco shrugged. "Are you any good at baking?"
"Passable. Are you ready?"
He turned around. She had tugged a gray knit cap over her hair, and wrapped herself in a black wool coat; her hands were covered in red mittens, and a silky black bag dangled from her wrist.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm ready. Are we taking the Floo?"
Gabrielle snorted. "Dressed like this? No, my dear, darling, Draco. We are walking."
"Walking," Draco repeated. "Do you mean that I have to get through there?" He nodded toward the doorway to the hall apprehensively. "Because I'm a bit thicker than that hall seems to be."
"Oh, you'll fit." Gabrielle grinned at him. "And only a few of my books bite, so don't worry too much about knocking into them."
"Only a few, brilliant," Draco followed her into the narrow hall, ducking his head and trying to pull his limbs in as close to his body as possible. He'd always considered himself graceful – a manly sort of graceful, of course – and he had never felt so out of control as he did following Gabrielle through the cramped hallway.
"There," Gabrielle said when they came out the other end into an equally crowded living room.
"Have you read all these books?" Draco asked, staring around at the stacks and stacks that took up every flat surface, except a small corner of the couch where a gray tabby cat was curled up with its tail twitching over its nose.
"I'm working my way through them," she replied. "Come on, we've got to get going."
It was snowing out, and Draco felt a bit as if they had gotten caught in a snow globe as he hurried down the sidewalk, a few meters behind Gabrielle. She wasn't difficult to keep sight of; although she was tiny, she radiated power and confidence and the groups of people passing on the sidewalk parted when she passed.
She turned abruptly off the sidewalk and into a dark stone building. Draco pressed a palm against the heavy wood door seconds after it swung shut behind her and swept inside, expecting to be faced with the normal wizarding fare of a normal wizarding pub.
The warm room was crowded. But Draco was struck by how average everyone looked. No hags, here. No vampires. No people dangling wands nonchalantly by their thighs. This was a Muggle restaurant.
What the hell was Delacour doing here?
He moved to sit in the same booth as her, and she shot him a warning glance, directing him with an imperious finger to a table two over from hers. Because he had promised, of course, but he hadn't expected her to prefer eating alone to eating with him.
Apparently he had been wrong.
A waitress came over and introduced herself, but he was so focused on watching Gabrielle that he didn't catch her name. The blonde girl hadn't even opened her menu, one pale hand was spread on its closed green cover, and the other was fluffing her hair out from where it had been flattened by her cap.
"Excuse me," the waitress said, and from the tone of her voice Draco could tell that this was nowhere near the first time she had spoken those words, "Can I get you something to drink? Or did you just come in to watch our neighborhood enigma eat her lunch?"
"Oh. Sorry. I'll just take water." Draco jerked his attention away from Gabrielle for a moment. "Do you know her?"
"Everyone knows of her," the waitress replied, a bitter twist to her shiny lips. "She's been here for months. But no one actually knows her. I'll be right back with your water." But as she turned away, Draco heard her mutter, "Some people think they know her, though."
He turned back to stare at Gabrielle, and saw that a waiter had approached her table. The man stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and he was staring down at her in an absorbed way – as if she was the only person in the room who mattered. Draco bet that he could have set fire to the black apron tied around the Muggle's waist and the bloke would barely have spared it a second glance.
Draco inched his chair a bit nearer, so he could hear their conversation. "Hey, Gabby. How're you today?"
"Fine, Darren. How's it going here?"
"All right." The waiter straightened, drawing his shoulders back, and Draco knew what was coming before he spoke. "A bunch of us are going Christmas caroling tonight, and out for drinks after. Any chance you want to join?"
Draco's fingers curled into a fist as Gabrielle smiled up at the waiter. Honestly, didn't this Muggle know who he was trying to seduce? Gabrielle Delacour wouldn't fall for anyone quite so plain. But still, Draco felt relieved when Gabrielle shook her head. "I wish I could, but I've got plans with an old friend tonight."
"Well, if you change your mind," he slipped her a piece of paper, and her smile didn't falter. Didn't she realize that it was partially her own fault that blokes hounded her? Draco knew that he was not the only man in the pub with his eyes on her – in fact, he completely understood why his waitress had sounded so cynical now. Of course she would be jealous of Gabrielle, jealous of her magnetism. It wasn't fair that one woman should become the focus of every room just by existing. And her existence became twenty times more tangible when she smiled.
"Thanks, Darren. I will let you know." But Draco noticed that she didn't even glance at the paper before crumpling it and stuffing it in the pocket of her jeans. Darren wouldn't ever hear from her. "So, may I have – "
The waiter cut her off, "Your usual, yeah? I had Steve put it on the minute I saw you come in the door. I'll bring it out as soon as it's ready."
"Wonderful," and there was that smile again, and Draco and every other man in the restaurant was lost, "Thank you."
A glass of water appeared in front of Draco and his waitress cleared her throat loudly. He jumped and turned to look up at her. "Are you going to want anything to eat?"
"What would you recommend?" He forced a smile to his lips and dropped his voice lower. The woman blinked. He wondered how many of her customers completely ignored her when Gabrielle was there.
"To be honest, everything here is near rubbish. I'd stick with the water, if I were you. I could get you an Irish Coffee, to go with that. It's all right."
"Yeah, sure, that sounds fine." Draco stared at her face for a moment, trying to remember her name, but gave up quickly. "Thanks."
She nodded and turned, but then seemed to reconsider. "You know," she said softly, "she's never going to fall for anyone in here. I can tell." And then her voice became even softer, "She's pining after someone."
Draco stared at Gabrielle as the waitress drifted back to the bar. Pining? Was that what made her skin so pale, her eyes so still, her voice so magnetically cool? Maybe the Muggle waitress knew something about pining. But why hadn't his mother said something? Surely his mother could have recognized the emotion as well. Surely she would have told Draco, because emotions like that, emotions like longing, left as much of a mark on a person's health as any abnormalities in the blood.
Gabrielle turned abruptly and found his gaze locked on her. She raised one eyebrow, her eyes simmered, and he jerked his eyes away before remembering that he was here to watch her. It was in her best interest, as well as his, to stare at her throughout her whole meal. So he settled down for a long bout of staring.
But her waiter only brought out two eggs in a basket, which she ate quickly, leaving a few pound notes on the table and hopping from the booth in under fifteen minutes, rushing out of the door before Draco could even scratch together enough Muggle money from the pockets of his coat and follow her out. He could feel the accusing glare of his waitress on his back as he opened the door and stepped out into the cool air. He had left her all of his Muggle money, so he didn't feel at all guilty about falling Gabrielle as she continued down the sidewalk, past several pubs that looked markedly better than the one they had just visited.
She walked quickly now, as if she had some purpose in mind, and she slipped into a flower shop. Draco was so far behind her that she was just leaving the shop when he reached the door. Two red poppies burst from a newspaper cone in her hands, gathering snow on their petals as the two of them left the awning in front of the shop. Draco glanced around before conjuring an umbrella and holding it above her head to protect the flowers from the snow, and she didn't look at him, but she also didn't tell him to go back to following her at a distance.
They walked in silence. Draco had no idea what to say, and he was starting to wonder why he had suggested that he follow her in the first place. After all, aside from the attention she had gained in the restaurant, nothing had happened in the last hour and a half that even pointed to any Veela genes in her DNA, let alone anything that suggested that she was in danger of transforming.
The buildings to their left started to give way to wider alleyways and side streets, and when Draco caught sight of the black metal fence ahead of them he knew that they had arrived at her destination.
"This is a Muggle cemetery," he pointed out.
Gabrielle nodded. "I live in a Muggle town." As if it was necessary to clarify either of these things. From what Draco could tell, Gabrielle lived a Muggle life, too, only using magic to travel to get her potion from the Manor.
She opened the black metal gate to the cemetery and led the way across the snow covered grass. Their footsteps were the only sign that anyone living had visited the cemetery since the snow started falling, and from the way the snow coated most of the names on the granite stones, Draco had the feeling that no one had visited many of these graves in a long time.
They stopped before one of the newer stones, and Gabrielle knelt, clearing a place in the snow with mittened hands. She set the poppies down on the ground, and Draco knelt beside her. He understood sorrow at death, and he wasn't about to let those poppies die the way the ones that Gabrielle removed had. He cast a simple spell on them, a protection charm that would keep them alive until Gabrielle came with new ones.
"No one'll think anything of it, if they even notice," he told her, in case she was worried about alerting the Muggles to part of the source of her uncanny-ness.
But she shrugged, and Draco backed off a few steps, willing to let her mourn in peace. When she stood and turned toward him, her face was calmer than it had been all day. She had cleared the snow from the front of the tombstone, tracing the engraved letters with her fingers, and Draco could make out the name. Colin Creevey, 19 July 1981 – 2 May 1998.
Draco vaguely remembered the boy – he had been a year behind him at Hogwarts, and had been a bit of a Harry Potter fanboy. Maybe he had grown up by the time he died. He must have, if he had been willing to give his life for a cause that Draco himself had been too scared and immature to recognize as right.
But he still didn't know how Fleur Delacour's younger sister even knew the Creevey boy. As far as he knew, she had been in France during the War. And Colin Creevey had been a mu-Muggle born. She had only been eleven when he died.
He tried to disguise the curiosity on his face when she returned to his side, and he didn't speak as they walked back toward the gate and the road, adding another set of footprints to their earlier ones.
"I didn't know him." She began, when Draco held the gate open for her. "I didn't even know him, but I come here every day to put poppies on his grave. It seems absurd. Maybe it is absurd."
Draco shrugged. "There's a lot about the War that was absurd."
"You don't want to know why I do it?"
"Only if you want to tell me." Draco knew that if he really wanted to know – and he did, of course he did – he could find out through another source. Gabrielle wouldn't need to tell him. She could believe that he was content with leaving her a mystery.
"It's not so much that I want to." She stared straight ahead, and Draco had to strain to make out what she was saying. "But I will. Because it's all there, you know, inside of me. And maybe it will help to tell someone. Especially someone who won't give a damn."
He almost interrupted her, then. He almost told her that he did give a damn. That he cared about her, that he cared about her even when she wasn't burning bright with Veela fire and drawing eyes from everywhere with the promise of passion. That somewhere between their first meeting, when he weighed her and measured her and figured out how much a proper dose of the potion would be for her, and this meeting, when he measured her with his eyes and found her lacking happiness, somewhere between that time and this time, he had come to care about her very much. But that interruption might be counterproductive, so he kept his mouth shut and strained his ears to hear every word she said.
"I came to the United Kingdom after the War, because of Fleur, and because I wanted to improve my English. I studied at Hogwarts, and I met Colin's," she jerked her head back at the cemetery, "younger brother Dennis. He was a fifth year, and I was only a second year, but he was suffering, and I was good at making people forget about what was hurting them."
Draco did interrupt then, for a stupid inconsequential question that he regretted the minute it slipped from his mouth. "What house were you in?"
"Ravenclaw," Gabrielle responded. "Although everyone thought I ought to be in Slytherin."
"I thought you would have been, too."
"The difference is, from you, that's a compliment. From everyone else…" She shook her head. "Anyway, Dennis and I stayed friends even after he left Hogwarts. He moved back in with his parents – they lived in this town – to take care of them, he said, although looking back I think it was really him that needed looking after."
She didn't say anything else, and after a few minutes of silence Draco glanced over, and was surprised to see bright tears hovering at the tips of her black lashes. "Hey, Gabrielle." He reached over and dropped a hand on her shoulder, meant to be comforting, although he couldn't know if that was how it felt to her because he never offered physical support. "Hey. It's all right. You don't have to finish, if you don't want to. Let's get you home, and I'll make you some tea."
Gabrielle smiled at him, shakily. "I'll take you up on that tea, but I do want to finish." Her voice was soft, but it didn't break the way his mother's did when she was on the verge of tears, and it didn't burn the way Pansy's did when her eyes looked that way. "Just give me a few minutes."
"All right." They continued on in silence, and a few blocks from Gabrielle's building he heard her inhale.
"Okay. So, Dennis and I were close, and by my sixth year I believed that we would be together when I left Hogwarts. I thought that it was only a matter of time before he fell for me, the way so many other boys had already done. But in the middle of my seventh year I came to visit him, and he told me that his parents were leaving this town, that they were going to move permanently to their cottage on the coast, and that he had gotten a job offer from a wizarding paper in the States. New York Tempus, or something. He was going to take it, he told me. It was the best opportunity he'd ever get, he told me. I thought he was going to ask me whether I wanted to go with him when I left Hogwarts. I thought he was going to kiss me and propose. I thought that even if I didn't shine bright enough to drown out his sorrow, that even if I didn't smile enough to make up for all the holes in his heart, that I'd still be enough for him."
"Pining," Draco said softly. Gabrielle didn't respond.
"But he didn't say anything of the sort. He didn't even say he'd miss me. He just asked me if I'd look after his brother's grave when they all left. And, because I was a fool, I promised I would." They reached her flat, and she typed in the code to open the main door. He followed her up the short stairs to the second floor, and watched as she slid the key into her lock with a steady hand.
They were in the living room again, and she picked her cat up to make room for Draco as she shoved a pile of texts to the already cluttered floor. "And it's been a year. A whole year since Dennis left, and I've only heard from him once. But here I still am, living in his childhood town, tending to his brother's grave, certain that someday he'll realize what he's missing."
She pulled her cat close to her face and Draco could hear the animal purring as it settled on her lap. "You know what the saddest part of it all is?"
"What?" Draco reached out a hand and let the cat sniff his fingers before he ran one hand over its soft head, and Gabrielle smiled at him, sort of. A tentative smile, but it was the first real one he had seen on her lips all day.
"I don't even think I want him to come back anymore. Every day I think about what I would do if I could leave here, and every day it seems more of a possibility. From what I've heard of Colin, I don't think he'd particularly care whether his grave was decorated with flowers. Anyway, I know Harry and Ginny Potter visit on Colin's birthday. And I don't think that I care about Dennis enough to give up…whatever else I could have."
Draco didn't say anything. He was watching her, looking for the possibility of black rage or hurt in her eyes, for a fierce possessiveness that would belie the words coming from her mouth. But there was nothing there. Her eyes were honest.
"You think I'm being cruel." She dropped the cat to the floor and stood, starting to pace. The animal hopped to Draco's lap with an affronted look at Gabrielle and Draco smoothed his ruffled gray fur. "You think I'm not being fair to Dennis, that I'm not honoring Colin's sacrifice."
"No," Draco said. "No, I think you've sacrificed more than enough for either of them. I think that Dennis was being selfish and that you were being selfless, and that it is past time for you to begin thinking about what you want out of life, rather than what the Creevey boy wants for his brother's death."
"Ah, but that's what makes you a Slytherin." Gabrielle's face was hard when she turned to him. "You'll always prefer selfishness to selflessness."
"No. That's what made me an idiot. Right now, I am feeling neither Slytherin nor idiotic. And I think that it's time for you move on from Dennis and his dead, heroic brother. Do what you want, Delacour. Nothing's stopping you."
She snorted. "Except for two things. One, I might turn into a full-blown Veela at any moment."
"I've got a theory on that." Draco leaned forward, shifting the cat onto the couch beside him, and beckoned Gabrielle forward. "When's the last time you had a muscle spasm?"
She looked at him, shook her head, and asked, "A what?"
"Remember, just after your birthday, when your back would give out or your legs or arms would hurt like hell until you took some potion?"
"Oh, that. Yeah, that was miserable. It hasn't happened in months. It's just the headache, every morning."
"Just the headache." Draco grinned. "The most potent part of the potion that I make for you is a pain suppressant. I don't think you're in any danger of turning into a bird, Gabrielle."
"What do you mean?"
"Headaches, on their own, could come from almost anything. Stress, smells, your cat." He shook his head. "I should have known, when you said that they disappeared completely after you took your potion. You can pick up a headache potion almost anywhere that would work nearly as well. Or I could brew you one that works better."
"So you mean…all this worrying, these last few months, that I was at more of a risk than Fleur, all of this fear that something might happen and I'd go crazy in the middle of the market – all of that, it was over nothing?"
"Yes." Draco nodded. "I'm sorry I didn't realize it sooner."
"It's not your fault." And then his arms were full of Gabrielle, and he wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up there or what to do with his hands, but her hands were around his waist and his found their way to hers in a moment and her face was centimeters from his own and he wondered what he'd do if she kissed him.
But she didn't. And he was disappointed when she just grinned at him one last time and said brightly, "I believe you promised me tea?"
And she wasn't on his lap anymore, and he wished she was because then he wouldn't have needed to stand and walk through the crowded hall to the kitchen, where he pretended to make tea the Muggle way while really he just prodded the pot with his wand to make it boil faster and listened halfheartedly to her excited chatter about not needing to worry anymore.
He remembered abruptly what she had been saying before he announced his conclusion regarding her Veela genes, and he interrupted her excited tirade as he poured boiling water into her porcelain teapot. "What was the other thing?"
"What other thing?"
"The second reason you can't go out and live the life you want, or whatever."
"Oh." She handed him two teacups from a nearly empty cupboard above her sink. "Mostly because I don't know what I want. I know what I don't want. I don't want what Fleur has – a husband and kids and a huge family. I don't want that."
"Are you working now?"
She nodded. "I work in a Muggle café four days a week. You just caught me on a day I had off."
"But do you like it?"
"It's fine."
"Gabrielle," Draco poured tea from the pot into the first teacup, and added half a spoonful of sugar before passing it to the girl. "I'm asking you: what do you like?"
"I don't know!" She set the teacup on the crowded table and stared at the floor. "I don't know, Malfoy. If I had known what I wanted, I never would have come here. I never would have fallen so entirely for Dennis." She dropped her head into pale hands, and her fingers gripped onto strands of blonde hair. "I never would have fallen…"
Draco stared at her in silence for a few moments. He had always been shit at dealing with breakdowns. But he had never before felt the urge to try dealing with a woman on the verge of a breakdown. "Gabrielle," he began hesitantly. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you…just…at least you don't need to think about what you'd do if you suddenly turned into a Veela."
She raised her head from her hands and burst out laughing at the look on his face. "Oh, Draco. Merlin. I'm sorry. You're just trying to be helpful, which, judging from what I've heard about you, is unusual."
"Not that unusual." He faked offense, but what she'd said was true.
"You know," Gabrielle lifted her tea to her mouth and took a quick sip, "I do know of one thing that I want."
"And what's that?" Draco glanced at the pile of recipes by the stove. "Croissants? Because I could go for some croissants right now."
But Gabrielle was coming closer, and something in her eyes told Draco that she was not thinking of croissants. He set his teacup down on the counter and held his hands out to her; she took them in a tight grip and leaned forward, her voice whispering against his mouth. "Draco Malfoy, if I tell you I want you, will you have me?"
He kissed her. Hungrily, with the force that had been building up within him for the whole day of watching her. She kissed him back, and he knew that when they pulled apart, some time later, their lips would be bruised and bitten, swollen with the pressure of their passion.
Later that night, they curled against each other beneath the covers of her tiny twin bed, and Draco traced designs across the bare skin of her back. "It's not just the Veela, is it?" she asked him.
He had been expecting that question, had seen it in her expression that whole day, when everyone's eyes were on her. She believed that she drew every man's attention like the earth's magnetic field pulled a compass needle north because of her looks, because of her blood.
So he told her, "No, it is certainly not the Veela. You have a cat. And you're messy. And you read more books than I own. I liked your hair long."
She pulled away from him and stared. "None of those sound exactly positive."
"What I'm trying to say, Gabrielle, is that you, just as you are, in spite of the Veela, you're enough."
"Oh."
"Oh?" He pulled her close again, his lips slipping gently against her collarbone.
"That's good. Being enough. I like that." And then she pulled his face up to hers and kissed him.
A/N: I appreciate reviews!