The first time I saw him, he was coming out of a gentlemen's club.
Even without looking at the very way that he walked to the way he even breathed, I just knew, without a doubt, that he was one of them.
I detested him already, and yet, I needed him.
His finely pressed shirt was stretched neatly over his torso and the fine shine of his loafers spoke volumes about a man who never had to work a day in his life.
In other words, he was exactly the sort of person I was looking for on this dreary night, when all I wanted to do was get home to my three-year-old.
But something stopped me from making my move. I got the distinct feeling that he'd take one look at the scraps of clothing I was dressed in and turn his nose up in distaste at what I did for a living, no matter how cheaply I charged or how pretty I was.
So, I went home and cleaned myself up. I brushed out the tangles in my hair, begged for nice clothes off of some half-blood friends, and stole makeup from Muggle drugstores whenever the cashiers turned the other way.
And I waited for a month, watching him enter his gentlemen's club every single Friday without fail.
On the fourth time I saw him, I made my move.
I approached him casually, as if I didn't know what kind of a person he was. He turned to me with a look of utmost annoyance before it faded into appreciation and ill-disguised lust. I saw him look at my dark brown hair and my well-endowed body, before making his way up to my icy, blue eyes.
Even back in school, I'd always been the prettiest girl in my level. Beautiful eyes, some told me. Flawless hair, other had said. I would have been unstoppable in Wizarding society. The only thing in my way was my blood status.
But he didn't need to know that.
"Say, if you're not busy next week, fancy having dinner with me next Wednesday?" he added on casually, throwing on the smile I'd seen him give countless of other girls before me.
Men on the streets shifted their eyes away from him and prayed at night they wouldn't hear him on their doorsteps.
Women kept their heads bent low and their shoulders hunched, hoping they weren't pretty enough to catch his interest.
Even kids fell silent when they saw him approach and walked the other way.
Me?
I said yes.
And that was how my relationship with Blaise Zabini began.
*
The first time we went out, it was raining and he took me to a Parisian restaurant. I siphoned 10 galleons off of him that night when he stood up to use the restroom, and tucked away the leftovers from dinner into my bag.
The second time, we went to a nightclub. I slipped myself thirty galleons when he drunkenly leered the other way at a pretty girl in a too-short dress, and ordered the bartender to give him another shot.
The third time, he took me back to his manor, where I closed my eyes and allowed him to fuck me into the sheets. I took fifty galleons from him while he slept beneath his silk sheets, and contemplated stabbing him. I desisted and forced myself to settle for the satisfaction of knowing that he'd just unknowingly fucked a Mudblood just because she had a pretty face.
And so it continued. I'd meet up with him at least three times a week, he'd take me out, we'd go back to his place, and I'd sneak away before dawn to see my daughter. After our first month anniversary of dating, he took me to meet his Death Eater friends, and my whole world turned upside down.
*
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" I asked nervously, as Blaise whisked me past the lawn, where albino peacocks were strutting around proudly. When I'd hatched this plan out in mind, I never knew it would include placing myself at the mercies of a group of Death Eaters.
"Quite sure," he said briskly in answer to my question, not bothering to slow his pace even as I tittered along in the tight, red dress and heels he'd insisted I wear. "My friends and I do this every month. They're anxious to meet you."
That was exactly what I was afraid of.
"Don't worry. They'll love you," Blaise told me in a way that didn't make me feel much better. "Just wait until you meet Draco. He takes a delight in collecting beautiful things almost as much as I do."
I almost yanked my hand out of his when I heard that.
The boys I'd dated in school would never have even dared to say something like that in front of a lady, but Blaise Zabini clearly had no qualms talking about them like they were furniture. To him, they probably were.
I felt sick to my stomach and my hatred for him climbed even higher.
He led me through the beautiful halls of Malfoy Manor, where I could barely even begin to imagine the amount of wealth stored away behind closed doors. I had thought that Blaise Zabini's manor was lavish, but I was wrong. Malfoy Manor took everything to a whole new level.
I subconsciously clutched Blaise's arm all the tighter and he crinkled his nose in annoyance as he led me into the billiard room.
There was a fire going already in the fireplace, and in the light, I saw four men congregated around the table, pool sticks in their hands.
"About time you showed up, Blaise! We've already started without you," one of the males called out, clapping Blaise on the back as he led us forward.
"Looks like he's brought a lady friend with him," another remarked, leering to reveal a mouth full of crooked teeth.
"And what a beautiful lady friend she is," breathed the third one in a tone that made my skin crawl. "Would you just look at her…Seems like Blaise Zabini's been keeping something from us, boys."
Blaise laughed. "Hands off, Pucey. Although," he looked around with a grin, "you may feel free to bet against me. If you win, I might consider letting you have her for a night…"
I almost threw up as I heard bets being issued. What had I gotten myself into?
"What about you, Draco? Surely, your wife could take a break from your libido?" the third one named Pucey asked with a weird laugh in his voice.
"My wife is of no concern to you, Adrian," a lazy drawl spoke up from the shadows of the room. "She does as I say."
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to change it up a bit, Malfoy?" Blaise gave me a little push forward. "We could switch for a night. Who knows? You could end up having a lot more fun with this one."
I heard the floor creak from where the voice had come from and a man stepped out from the shadows. I met a pair of steel grey eyes, as he lifted my chin and turned my face from side to side as if he were examining merchandise. Cruelty was etched into his face and there was an uncharacteristic shrewdness in his eyes. Everything about this man was cold. His strong, sharp nose, firm, unsmiling mouth and cold stance only made me aware of how easy it would be for his hand to crush me. In that moment, I'd never been more frightened in my life than of this man, who was clearly the group's undisputed leader. He gave my face one more inspection with an indifferent eye before releasing me to wipe his hands on the back of his pants.
"She's not my type," he said briskly.
Blaise pulled me back to his side at Draco Malfoy's comment and I noticed a tightening in his eyes.
"Well, we can't all have Ginevra warming our beds at night," the one with brown hair and crooked teeth gave a little shrug.
"Speaking of Ginevra," Adrian Pucey picked up his stick again, eager to finish the game. "How is your wife, Draco? Still spreading her pretty, little legs for you every night?"
"Every time I tell her to," Draco Malfoy smirked arrogantly, sending a ball flying into the pocket with a flick of his stick.
And the men all chuckled at that, as if they were all in on the sick joke.
"You're one lucky bastard, Malfoy," the one named Adrian Pucey whistled. "I thought you were changing sides on us for a while back there, but I knew you had a good reason for marrying a Weasley."
My chest tightened when I heard that. I'd known a Charlie Weasley back in school. We'd shared Astronomy class with the Gryffindors, and he'd always seemed rather nice. I had no idea that he had a little sister.
"Well, maybe when you're tired of her, you'll let me have a go. I hear redheads are wild in bed," the second man grinned lustfully.
"I wouldn't mind hearing her scream my name once in a while," Adrian commented smoothly, and I felt a small turn in my stomach when I heard of him talking about a woman like that.
Only the first one who'd welcomed us had stayed silent this entire time, and the others ignored him as they made all sorts of crude comments.
"That's quite enough," Draco Malfoy said in an icy voice that showed that the topic was no longer the joke it'd been just moments ago; there was a lace of anger and possessiveness in his tone. "She is my wife, and the only one who will be fucking her is me. Don't even try thinking about her in that way again."
His words were met with a silence that was slowly broken with nervous, quiet laugher as all the men assured him one-by-one that they wouldn't dream of touching his wife and that they were just messing with him.
I imagined her then, this girl they called Ginevra. I'd heard of pureblood girls getting carted off to marry Death Eaters in order to get keep the next elite generation pure, girls who got pulled from their families in the middle of the night. From the way her husband talked about her, there was little doubt in my mind that Ginevra Malfoy was one of those girls.
And suddenly, I wanted very much to see her, this woman who'd been taken away and forced into marriage with the formidable Draco Malfoy. Remembering the way his hands had felt on my jaw, I briefly wondered if he'd ever hurt her with those same hands.
I wanted very much to meet her and before the night's end, I got my wish.
*
"Oh!" the one with the crooked teeth called Marcus Flint cheered as he laid down his cards. "That's a flush right there!"
In my chair, I was silent. I had yet to open my mouth once this evening. Beside me sat the first man, who the others called Theodore Nott. He was almost as quiet as me, and I automatically decided that I liked him best.
I was almost pulled into a lull by the warmth of the fire and the darkness of the room when I heard a soft swishing noise like the sound of a dress brushing up against the wall. The sound was so foreign that I whipped my head up, just in time to see the face of the elusive lady of the manor.
Her blood red hair fell softly around her face, where it went on endlessly in the shadows. Her facial structure was delicate and she looked into the room with honey brown eyes with flecks of gold in them; the lightest dusting of freckles was splayed across the bridge of her nose and her rosebud mouth was pursed. There was a sort of quiet energy radiating from her that seemed to give her cheeks a flushed look. She was only there for the barest of a minute, but I found myself staring at her vacated spot long after she'd disappeared again.
When I looked up from the doorway, I found myself staring into the unfathomable eyes of Draco Malfoy as he watched me with a calculating look in his eye.
I stood up to escape his gaze, murmuring about needing to use the loo. I figured that I'd be able to wander the house and see if there was anything valuable that would take me to the five hundred galleons mark. It was with that purpose that I ended up seeing the lady of the manor for the second time that evening.
*
This time, I heard her behind me before I even saw her.
"I would put that down if I were you. My husband doesn't tend to take well towards thievery," I heard a voice behind me say and I nearly dropped the diamond-encrusted necklace that I'd been holding delicately in my hand.
"Besides, that necklace was a gift from my mother-in-law and has been in the Malfoy family for generations. He'd have you carted to Azkaban if he saw you with that in your hands," the voice continued and I looked back to see a pair of glittering, honey eyes. In the dim light, I saw that she was donned in heavy, shapeless robes that covered everything, and I wondered momentarily if her husband abused her, leaving her with scars that she'd had to conceal.
"Well?" she demanded when I didn't say anything. "Do you want to explain yourself, or should I just bring you to my husband and let him deal with you?"
A sudden fear assailed me at her words. In my mind, I saw her bringing me before her husband with his cold eyes and large hands, where he would proceed to kill and torture me in front of everybody in the room.
"Please don't do that," the words slipped out before I could stop them. And then, it was coming out in floods, and I couldn't stop them. "I have a three-year-old girl at home, and I have to feed her. I'm just a girl on the streets trying to make enough money so I can go to France and start over. I wasn't even going to take anything, but I need five hundred galleons! I swear to the gods above that I'll never take another thing from you, just please don't send me into that room with your husband. If you do, they'll find out about everything, and Blaise will know I've been stealing off of him too. Please just don't send me back in there!"
I must've looked a fright, standing there and harping on and on about all my secrets with tears in my eyes because she stopped me.
"How much more do you need?" the woman interrupted my tirade.
"What?" I asked through my tears, momentarily confused. What in the world was she going on about? Wasn't she waiting to drag me back to the billiard room to await trial for stealing from a Zabini?
"Your five hundred galleons. How much more do you need to get there?"
"You mean, you're not going to report me?" I breathed, not daring to believe my good luck.
"I wasn't really going to do it, even though it was pure stupidity trying to steal from the master bedroom," she muttered, running a small hand through her red tresses.
I looked around me to take a closer look. True enough, the ornate, four-poster bed and half-open closet full of silk and chiffon garments were there. They should've tipped me off immediately, but I'd been too nervous at the time to pay attention. All I remembered was that I'd ducked into the first open door and headed straight for the vanity table.
"Two hundred and twenty-six. I still need two hundred and twenty-six galleons," I told her quietly.
She nodded. "If I give you the money you need, will you deliver something for me in France?"
I nodded furiously, not daring to believe my stroke of luck. "Anything."
She looked at me in scrutiny for a minute before getting something from her bedside table and handing it to me. It was a gold coin, twice as big as the normal galleon, with a big "W" on both sides. "His name's Bill Weasley and he lives in the South of France in Shell Cottage."
"I'll get it to him," I promised, clutching the coin and tucking it away.
"If you do, and I'll make sure you get your money," she told me, ushering me out of the room.
"And please make sure that nobody sees you with that," she pointed to my coat pocket, and I nodded in response.
Stepping back inside to the confines of her room, she closed the door softly and I made my way back to billiard room alone, where I remained for the rest of the night.
*
It was somewhere around midnight when things finally came to a halt.
"Well, I'm just about ready to turn in for the night? What do you say, sweetheart?" Blaise slung his arm me and nudged.
I really didn't want to go home with him, but I was desperate to leave. "I think that's a splendid idea," I told him loyally, telling myself that if Ginevra Malfoy kept her promise, I'd be out of England by next week.
Draco Malfoy stood up, rolling his neck. "Make sure to close the gates on your way out," he told us.
I watched the boys bid each other good-bye with promises to meet up again next month, and took one more look at the house.
"Blaise," I told him quietly outside at the Apparition point, having just remembered something. "I left my wrap back in the billiard room. I'll just nip back and get it. You go on first without me."
"Are you sure?" he yawned, and I nodded quickly.
I sprinted back to the house as fast I could, trying not to look at how dark the grounds were and how the trees seemed to move in the wind.
I ran all the way up the stairs quietly, though. If it weren't for the thought that the wrap had been quite an expensive present from Blaise, I wouldn't have dared to enter again.
"I forgot something," I told a passing house-elf breathlessly, just so it wouldn't report me to its master.
I treaded quietly the remaining way up the stairs, not knowing where Draco Malfoy or his wife was.
I saw my wrap sitting innocently on the back of my chair and would've made a grab for it if it weren't for the fact that it wasn't the room's sole occupant.
Draco Malfoy was still sitting in his armchair, except he wasn't alone. His wife was standing in front of him, between his legs, and her hands were entwined with his.
"I hate it when you have your friends over," she was mumbling, rocking on her spot slowly. "Especially Blaise Zabini. It's because of him I always have to wear these sweltering, bulky robes until they all leave." She lifted a shoulder to indicate the shapeless thing I'd seen earlier.
"I hate when they come over too, but the robes are for your own good. You should hear the way they talk about you," he told her seriously, reaching up and twirling a strand of her hair between his fingertips. He examined it carefully, letting it fall through his fingers before picking up another strand and repeating the process. "We both know that if I didn't hold these gatherings, they'd start to question my loyalty."
"But you don't have to do this, Draco. You don't have to be loyal. You can still join the Order," she told him softly, running her fingers over his left forearm where he'd been branded with the Dark Mark.
He sighed in a way that indicated this was not the first time the conversation had been brought up. "I'm not good, Gin. I'm just waiting for Potter to hurry up and do his job, so that I can make sure we get through this alive."
She was silent at that and he slowly lifted her big robes and pushed it to the ground, revealing something else that she'd been covering.
"How's he doing today?" he asked softly as he skillfully changed the topic, running his hands gingerly over her rounded belly. There was an uncharacteristic softness in the way he did it that made it slightly disconcerting.
"How are you so sure it's a male, anyway?" she demanded almost petulantly even as she ran her fingers up and down the sides of his face slowly.
"Because," he smirked and leaned slightly into her touch. "Malfoy firstborns are always guaranteed to be males so that they can inherit."
She made a face at that. "If you must know then, your son's been kicking up quite a fuss. My back's been hurting me all day."
"In that case, we better get you to bed then," he said, pulling her to him and kissing her tenderly in a way that was so intimate it had me averting my eyes.
I slowly backed away from the doorway after that, and then ran all the way back out before they could discover me. I almost wished I hadn't seen that. Death Eaters weren't supposed to have feelings. They weren't supposed to kiss their wives like that. They were cold-blooded murderers and rapists, and I hated them.
But somehow, in the dying light, with his sharp features dulled by his wife's soft ones, Draco Malfoy hadn't seemed quite as menacing as he had a few hours ago when he'd examined me roughly and spoken of Ginevra so disrespectfully.
I'd originally thought that he abused his wife, but nothing I'd just seen even gave any sort of indication that Ginevra Malfoy had been forced into this marriage.
I made my way out of Malfoy Manor alone in confusion and never looked back.
*
Two days later, I ran.
I found my promised money on my bare, dinner table with my black wrap on the chair, and I needed no more incentive than that.
So, I grabbed my three-year-old, gathered what little we had, and left. Somehow, customs were surprisingly easy for me to get through, and I had a feeling that she had something to do with it.
Eventually, I was able to start over again in France. I remarried, got a stable job and sent my daughter to Beauxbatons when the time came.
I tried to forget everything that'd happened before France, but she was always on my mind. From there, I developed a sort of interest. An obsession, if you will. My husband still doesn't understand why I collect every single article I can find on her, why I sometimes visit Bill Weasley and his family just to ask and see if she's still okay. In a wooden box underneath some loose floorboards, I have old newspaper articles all the way from the birthing announcement of the Malfoy heir to the most recent one that showed the grand opening of a war memorial Draco Malfoy had bought and named after his wife. She looked happy in the latest one, as she cut the red ribbon to the entrance with her husband by her side. I never saw her again after that night, this woman who gave me a new life, but I'll always have the box hidden in the bedroom.
And in this way, I'll remember her forever.