They all fall down

I can be as humble as the next guy

or

I can blink and make you crumble from the inside.

He had just turned eighteen this morning, and there was an increasing feeling of emptiness that was growing inside of him. Turning eighteen had been supposed to be fun: he was supposed to feel free from everything, he was supposed to only take care of himself the way he wanted...well it seemed that he could not do that now.

Speaking about now, he was currently sitting in Dumbledore's office trying to find her. Yeah, HER. Because you see, he had learnt about an hour ago that his father, yes his freaking father had Veela blood running through his veins. And he, too. They had told him that if he didn't find his mate he would eventually die, great that was great news because for him it meant that he would actually have someone to spend the rest of his life with and that he had all the time he wanted to find her.

Well, for once in his life Draco Malfoy had been wrong.

Normally, Veela were supposed to have found their mate already and he hadn't. So that means that if he didn't find her in the twenty-four hours after turning eighteen, he was dead.

So this brings us to the topic at hand: Draco Malfoy sitting in Dumbledore's office, more than angry, with Snape and the headmaster himself watching him.

"Can you sense her?" asked Snape.

A muscle jerked in the young man's jaw. What a stupid question. He didn't know what he had to do to find her. Hell, no one had ever told him he had Veela blood in the first place! Trying to calm himself he closed his eyes. That's when he realized he could hear conversations; conversations that were taking place inside and outside the castle. He tried to focus on the voices, trying to find its owner and that's when he realized that if he didn't recognize their voice he could still smell them. He focused harder. There was a voice that was attracting him, a smell he found addicting...

"Can you smell her?" asked Snape, breaking Draco's concentration.

That did it.

Furious he rose from the chair, sending it clattering to the stone floor. His temper rose up in him like a snake, and burst.

"How the hell should I know how to find her? Fuck! I didn't know I had Veela blood! How do you expect me to know how to find a mate?" he yelled in his professor's face, his screams echoing.

"Mister Malfoy," Snape said in his cool, condescending tone, unfazed, "You have no choice. You must concentrate to the best of your inept abilities, or you'll just die on the spot." His black eyes flashed dangerously, but an instinct told Draco that he was smothering it on his own behalf. Why, well that was beyond Draco. His mind truly was amateur, unfocused, the conversations babbling inside his head, throwing him for a loop. Well, Draco was better than that. He gathered his wits, and brought focus to his mind. He found a retort.

"The ineptness of your own abilities are failing to comprehend my situation," Draco bit out. "Your blood is not as mine, and you have absolutely no idea what this is like, so if you don't mind," Draco let loose with a blistering snarl. Snape's eyes had an instinctive passiveness that flitted across his corneas. He took a step back. The triumph felt satisfying as it pulsed through his veins.

And then he heard. His blood ran icy for less than a pulse, before it boiled in his veins.

Something was different. He couldn't hear the tone of voices he had heard earlier, nor their smell. All he could hear was one voice. Only one and a smell. There was something soothing about the voice, lulling his feral cravings, like the scent of jasmine and lavender, after a rain, making him much more at peace then he had ever been. He found the smell addicting. He sniffed loudly, craving it, needing it. He could actually hear a heart beating and hear his on one trying to beat at the same rhythm as her heart. He had found her. The conviction left him throbbing, blood rushing to his head. He had found her.

He slowly turned toward the door, wanting to go to her, to make her his. He could tell it was his Veela blood taking control now, totally animal, wanting its mate, wanting what was rightfully his. He was about to open the door when a sentence she said struck him.

"Can't you just leave me alone? I've done nothing to you..."

The way she had say it made his inside scream revenge; for her hesitation and fear. Whomever she was talking to could smell an easy victory, as Draco did now. His heart pulsed faster, enraged. He wanted to see the person's blood on the floor for making her voice spill out of her beautiful, vulnerable throat, (his whole body began to shake), in fear like this.

She had said it fearfully; she had been scared. Scared.

"Shut up Mudblood-lover. You are so dense that even your brothers ignore you!"

She didn't talk but he felt her. He feel her sadness has the words took its toll on her. He knew she thought it was true, he could almost see the tears threatening to fall.

Snarling, he jerked the door open and ran down the stairs.

The teacher and the headmaster only stared at the empty space before them. Minutes pass until the shock of what had happen sink in. Dumbledore abruptly got up.

"Follow him!" He yelled to Snape.

Snape, being younger than the old man, came out of his stupor and ran after Draco, the headmaster not far behind.

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"Look, I...I have to go."

"You aren't going anywhere," said the person, gripping her by the arm so painfully that she let out a cry.

"Let go, you're hurting me!"

She tried to get out of the hold, but she was so little that it did nothing. She bit her lips. Would this be one of these days? The days that she couldn't go to class because she was too scared that someone was going to hurt her again?

"That's the point, idiot," He replied.

Before her human mind could even process the words that fell from his lips, she felt the jerk of his body being ripped away from her; she fell to the ground because he still had a death-hold on her arm.

Draco could only see his hands on her. His human side told him it was nothing, that he should have just grabbed her, but his Veela side told him that it was unacceptable, no one should presume they could put theirs on what was his and of course Draco being a Malfoy, the Malfoy side replied exactly the same way. So let just say the guy was doomed.

Draco struck. It seem as if his hands had plans on their on and didn't listen to what he was trying to tell them. But it wasn't just that. He needed to hit the guy who had touched what was his, he needed to see him in pain, he needed to see him hurt, like he had hurt her. It was like a drug, the more he hit, the more he needed the next punch.

"Mister Malfoy! Let him go!" said Snape, running towards them, the headmaster just after him.

A crowd was forming. No one dare to stop him and everyone was wondering why Dumbledore didn't do something to stop the enraged boy. The headmaster was only staring.

Little did they know that the headmaster head was spiraling with all sorts of plans to make the boy stop, to see what made him do this first until...

"Malfoy stop it! You're killing him!"

He met the face of Virginia Weasley and all the thoughts in his head made connection, he turned toward Snape.

"Severus, take miss Weasley away from here and now" he said.

"What? But headmaster, I've got to..."

"Do it. Take her away at once."

Snape took Ginny's hand gently.

"Come miss Weasley."

Draco, in his black fury only heard: Take her away. They wanted to take her away, they were going to take her from him. He wouldn't allow it. He rose and growled, shifting suddenly into a crouching, protective stance. He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her behind him, sheltering her from view, protecting her from them. He heard her gasp and try to take a step back, afraid. He looked at Snape, promises of death in his eyes if he made one move toward her but the man didn't move.

At the order of Dumbledore, the boy's unconscious body was being dragged away, and the students began to disperse. Dumbledore looked at Draco, a low growl in his throat, defending Ginny like his life depended on her; and by some twist of fate it did.

"Mister Malfoy, you are scaring her. Maybe you should explain to her what is happening here."

Getting no reaction, only a tightening of his grip on her, Dumbledore said something else.

"I won't hurt her, Draco."

Draco blinked slowly, his eyes mistrusting, and slowly pulled Ginny around to his side, crushing her to him and sheltering her with his body. Ginny let out a squeal, and Draco was hit with an overwhelming craving to hide her, make her safe.

Dumbledore tried again. "I think you're hurting her, mister Malfoy."

Draco immediately released some of the pressure his arm was inflicting. He took a deep breath, a tantalizing floral scent filling his lungs, which seemed to seep into his blood, sending an elated feeling from the crown of his head all the way down to the balls of his feet. Getting calmer, he looked at her. He was struck by big brown eyes looking at him, in wonder, and his fevered grey one staring back at her with so much emotion that her own twisted sensations began to calm down.

"Wh--what the hell…" her voice came out small and far away. She swallowed. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she said, sounding scandalized. She squirmed under his arms, trying to get away from him but he only growled and bought her closer to him.

"What are you doing, ferret? Get the bloody hell off of me!"

"Miss Weasley, let him explain the situation." Ginny turned to gape at Dumbledore. His brains were addled. She knew it.

What other reason was there? Why, in the name of bloody-merlin, would Dumbledore allow Malfoy to run, bellowing like a territorial baboon on steroids, into her life, to beat the shit out of her dear friend? The sarcasm was bitterly marring her thoughts. Ginny did owe Draco this one shred of gratitude.

Ginny glanced up again into his eyes, glaring slightly. The last time she gazed unrelentingly into his eyes, she was slightly frightened by what she saw. He was completely unrecognizable. She saw things in the depths of his stormy eyes that she, and nobody else before, had ever seen there. So cautiously, she looked up. Instantaneously, she felt her lungs crumble at how he was looking at her. She had never saw emotion in his eyes and now it full of it and it was for her. Well, at least she told herself so. She saw terrifying, feral anger. The way he held the outer corners of his eyelids showed irritation. In his intense grey irises, she saw unrequited, irrevocable passion. It was frightening, to say the least. And she was captivated.

He glanced away for a moment, taking a sweet breath to think. And swiftly, he spun Ginny up against the wall, flinging his hands up, bracing himself against the grey stone. She could smell his breath, smelling faintly of cinnamon, as he breathed heavily, looking into her eyes. Ginny could have easily ducked under his arms, she felt, if she tried, but his eyes held her captive. And besides, Ginny was overcome with the sensation that he was about to kiss her. Tremors wracked her body.

He began to speak slowly, watching her reactions hungrily. "I am eighteen today. And I've just found…" he trailed off, and Ginny unconsciously tilted her head up, to urge him on. This was the most compelling thing that had ever happened to her before. It was strange and slightly ridiculous, like her dream last night of Flitwick mopping the starry ceiling of the great hall, singing "Oh come, ye Merry Hippogriffs" at the top of his lungs. But this was different. She could feel flickers of electricity pulsing around them as he tried to catch his breath.

"I've just found that I have partially Veela blood. If you know anything about Veela, well…" he glanced upwards, glaring. "We must have a mate. Twenty four hours after the moment we turn eighteen, or we die." Ginny barely heard her own soft intake of breath, but he did.

"I have… instincts. And a great many of them are pointing to you. You are my mate." He said it with frightening conviction.

She bit her full lower lip.

"I...I don't understand. What is a mate?"

The words came out before he knew it, in a rush of impassioned certainty. His Veela blood taking control once again.

"You are light to my darkness. You're the part of that is sweet where I am rough. You're the part of me that is tender while I am enraged. A mate is to be by the other's side for all time. We cannot divorce, because I won't allow it. You're the light to my darkness, you're the other half of my soul."

"Does that mean I have to live with you...like a wife?"

"Yes."

She bit her lip once again. How could her day come down to this? Today had been a good day until recently now she learnt that she was to be bound to her family greatest enemy forever...

"W--what if I don't want to?"

His eyes turned towards her, warning in them.

"You have no choice."

"Of course I have a choice! You always have a choice!" Ginny was mad. Who the hell did he think he was to tell her she was enslaved?

He sighed, pain tracing his perfect features.

"If you walk away from me now, I'll be dead by morning, because I cannot live without you. Is that what you wish?"

"And you, you will live a life always half-empty, because you're missing something, and that would be me."

She searched his eyes for the truth. And it was transparent; transparent in his eyes.

"How do you know that? You said you knew about this just this morning!"

He looked away from her.

"I don't know." But he did. It was his blood; these words had been imprinted in him before he was born, it had been imprinted in his very blood. He tightened his hold on her.

Ginny bit her lips. Isn't this what she actually wanted? For him to die, to never cause her pain again? Her whole family, and his, were against each other from the beginning, to the end. Her best friends had fallen at the very hands that were sheltering her fragile skull. She had not forgotten how she had wished for this very opportunity to be presented to her, when she was lying awake at night, cursing his malevolence, his very name.

Then why was the word refusing to roll off her tongue? All she had to say was "No". Dumbledore was right there; he wouldn't let Draco harm her in his wrath.

She opened her mouth to reply, and his eyes flashed up to meet hers. And the words just tumbled out.

"As you wish."