A/N - This is my first fanfiction in a while, so I hope it doesn't suck! I just got this idea in my head while sitting in Sociology class and I thought it sounded pretty good. Please read/review! I plan to make it a full length story, but I'm in college so I can't make any guarantees about how long it will take me to post. Also, I don't own the characters.

I think that I'm losing my mind. I've begun imagining things that can't really happen. I've begun losing control of my thought processes and in public no less! It all started last month at the ministry ball. I was there alone, the proper thing for one who is 'mourning' the loss of his wife to do. (The fact that my bed was never empty was something to be kept to myself, especially in public.) [I'm pretty sure that everyone knew the truth about my private life anyway, but as my mother always says, 'Appearance is everything.'] I seem to be getting more and more off topic, once again.

I was having a horrible time keeping up appearances, despite the many women trying to earn their place in-between my sheets when they walked in, the blessed prick Potter and his wife. I felt my usual sneer fall into place (something I had learned quite well to do from my dear uncle Snape), but then my eyes fell on Mrs. Potter. I don't know how it happened, but when I saw her that night she quite literally took my breath away.

I know that this all sounds so cheesy for a Malfoy to be saying; even I didn't know that it was possible for one of my social elevation to think such things. In that moment, however, I couldn't look away. Her midnight blue dress embraced the curves she had earned through the years in the most flattering way. It was as if the dress were thought into existence by the most profound artist, dreamed up on a canvas just for this perfect angel to wear. Her hair hung loose and wild, the soft waves falling down to the middle of her back. She wore no makeup or jewelry other than her wedding band. She was a rare beauty, one even greater than that of my recently deceased wife.

Throughout the night I continued to mingle, pretending to care about the pretentious anecdotes the women around me were sharing. I did what would have to be some of my best acting that night, going from circle to circle, providing meaningful interjections into conversation here and there while observing the angelic beauty from afar. She followed that husband of hers around like a brainless tart, but I had a feeling that it was just an act. A woman who could look that astonishingly beautiful has to have a brain. Her beauty was an accomplished beauty that came with experience and careful thought. I had always harbored a certain sense of disdain for Potter, but seeing the way he treated this beauty, like she didn't even exist, let's just say that my feelings for Potter flourished that night.

I took a deliciously unintelligent twit with dark red hair home with me that night, not the redhead that I truly desired, but I couldn't do anything about that just yet. Despite my less than sparkling reputation, I was not one to ruin a marriage. I would not actively pursue the married beauty of my dreams, but I could take as many unmarried redheads home with me as I dared and actively attempt to act out my lustful desires upon them.

That's what I did too. I bedded so many redheads in the next few months that the society pages of the Daily Prophet (which were really just a glorified version of a Muggle tabloid) started to speculate on whether I had developed a fetish for red hair. There were even a couple of articles hypothesizing that I had some sort of secret flame for the youngest Weasley. Little did they know how close to the truth they really were.

In the recent months I've been attempting to break myself of this deluded fantasy, but it doesn't seem to be working. There's just something about her auburn hair. I see it everywhere. I see it reflected in the deep mahogany hues of my wine every time I have a glass of sherry. The hair that I used to despise has become the focus of my deepest desires.

When I lay in bed at night it's sometimes all that I can think about. I long to run my fingers through her long, silky locks. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly hopeless I think about what it would feel like to run my fingertips across her skin. I wonder if her milky white skin is as soft as it appears. If I were to rake the pads of my fingers down her side, would the skin there really feel like the soft down of a baby bird, the kind of smoothness that fosters a desire to rest my hand there for all of eternity?

At times my mind gets carried away and imagines the gentle ringing of her laughter as my hands grasp her around the ribs, fingers burrowing tenderly into her side. The sweet smell of the wine on her breath from dinner is intoxicating. She is beautifully exposed, laid out before me on my bed. The contrast of her hair against my dark, silky sheets would be a sight to behold.

It is at that moment, the moment when I start to see her silky locks and milky skin splayed out on the bed before me, that I come back to reality. The fallacy of my daydream is too outlandish for my conscious self to accept. Despite my greatest desires I realize that this dream, this delusion could never really happen. She is Potter's wife, and I can't change that.

But oh how I want to.