Punctuality
Draco Malfoy is a punctual man. He remembers being six years old and in awe of his cold-hearted father, who looked him in the eye and quoted an equally cold-hearted idol. "Tardiness often robs us opportunity." Niccolo Machiavelli.
Though many of his father's axioms have lost their appeal over the years, this one stuck.
Thus, at twenty, with his father in a grave and his inheritance before him, he rises promptly at seven fifteen, walks through the doors of his mahogany-walled office at eight o'clock, and is reading reports of the status of his holdings by eight ten sharp.
This morning, he is interrupted by his secretary (Estella, with legs a mile long), who reminds him that he has a meeting at Gringotts at noon and is scheduled to observe the Harpies practice at three thirty. He had almost forgotten that he owns the team.
He strides onto the Holyhead practice pitch and is met by a very terse Gwenog Jones, who obviously thinks that she has better things to do than deal with the man behind the money. He doesn't ask many questions, merely observes, until he notices that the Seeker – a darting blur of a redhead – is considerably off her game.
"The Seeker," he says, "Would she be difficult to replace?"
Gwenog looks shocked, then angry. He knows she's wondering who in the hell he thinks he is. "Weasley is the best Seeker the league's seen in years."
"Then why hasn't she spotted the Snitch even once? A mountain troll could have seen it when it hovered between the goal posts five minutes ago. And she's nearly been hit by a Bludger twice since I've been here." He lists off her inadequacies with the cool ease of a man used to criticizing.
"Today," Gwenog admits. "She just ended things with her boyfriend last night, but she won't be distracted tomorrow. I guarantee it."
He nods, but he's not convinced, so after the practice ends, he follows Ginny Weasley around the corner to the pub and slides up next to her at the bar.
"Oh, bloody hell," she swears, when she realizes who he is. "Perfect timing, Malfoy," she adds sarcastically. "I don't have the energy to deal with you right now."
"And, you know what?" she continues, "you have some nerve showing up here after what you said to Gwenog about replacing me."
"My interests lie with the team," he replies coolly, "The Harpies are a considerable investment. And you were performing very, very poorly out there."
"Since when did you become an expert on Quidditch?" she quips.
"Since I began turning a profit on it," he says shortly. "Now, I need to know whether or not your personal problems are going to continue to affect your job."
She tells him, quite predictably, that it's none of his business, and he answers that, on the contrary, it's purely business. She turns on him, glaring, and the conversation becomes increasingly impolite until he, envisioning some of its more choice words emblazoned across the front page of the Prophet, grabs her by the arm and Apparates her back to the Manor.
This only angers her further, and her hand is making a swift arc toward his face when he grasps her wrist and tells her mockingly that she really shouldn't slap her boss.
Her cheeks redden in fury, and just as the thought crosses his mind that he's not surprised Potter couldn't handle her, she thrusts her body flush against his and kisses him harder than he has ever been kissed before.
He is not accustomed to being anyone's rebound, but she is kissing him so demandingly that he presses her down the hall into the bedroom and relinquishes the ability to come up for air.
When he wakes next morning she is already dressed, and though he recognizes their encounter for what it was, he admits to himself that he will miss the sight of her porcelein skin against his black satin sheets. He half expects her to be ashamed – she is, after all, the Gryffindor princess just out of the bed of a Malfoy – but she surprises him by smiling confidently and telling him she had a great time.
"I'm sorry about some of things I said last night," she continues, slipping on her shoes, "but I'll be at The Three Broomsticks at eight tonight if you can find it in your heart to forgive me." She flashes him one last cheeky smile before leaving the room. He hears the pop of her Apparition moments later.
He tries to dismiss her offer, but she has intrigued him. She isn't what he thought she would be. He has always thought of her as Potter's girl, but he suspects now that he has grossly underestimated her. She is independent and brazen and sexy. She is nobody's girl.
At eight o'clock on the dot, he arrives at The Three Broomsticks. She grins widely at him and comes to collect him at the door. "We have got to stop meeting like this," she laughs, guiding him to a booth where she is drinking with friends he recognizes only vaguely from Hogwarts.
They all look stunned to see him, but she acts like there could be nothing more natural in the world.
She acts that way every day for three months, defying the warnings of her closest friends, the anger of her brothers, and even the incredulity of her parents.
He asks her one day, lying in bed under the twinkling starlight of an enchanted ceiling, why she and Potter ended things. She tells him that the boy who grew up fighting couldn't give up the battle. She wanted a relationship, and he gave her Auror missions, worried nights, and a cold bed. He had told her, the night she walked away, that he was going on another mission, probably for months, and she had finally given up on him.
He grasps her hand, surprised at his own relief.
The next day, he takes her on a walk through the Manor gardens. He picks a single pink flower, round and spiked, but striking nonetheless, and hands it to her. "A thistle," he says. "It symbolizes independence. A good flower for a fresh start."
She tucks the flower behind her ear and kisses him. He knows in that moment, with her lips soft on his own and the sunlight warm against his skin, that he has fallen in love with her. When did he become so nauseatingly sentimental?
This is the same question that Parkinson asks him two weeks later as he sits stiffly across from her in her penthouse flat. She Owled him – "We need to talk. Ten p.m. on Sunday, my place. – P."
He knocks on her door just as the clocktower across the street strikes ten, and she answers in a long black dress and heels and leads him down the marble hall to the parlor. "I'm going out," she says by way of explanation, pressing her earrings to her ears and pouring two glasses of red.
"What is this about?" he asks, holding his glass between his long, tapered fingers but not taking a sip.
"Draco, we've been friends for a long time," she begins, and he knows that he was right to be suspicious. "What are you doing with the Weasley girl?
"The one-night stand I understood," she continues. "Even the fling was amusing. But what is it now?"
He reminds her tightly that she's never been in a real relationship, so he's not surprised she doesn't recognize one. She places a hand gently on his arm, the way she used to when they were young and still best friends, and says: "One way or another it's going to end, Draco. You should do it now, before it goes any farther."
He tries to ignore the sinking in his stomach, and he's almost convinced himself that she's wrong when she adds: "Potter's back from his mission. Marcus saw her having tea with him this morning."
He tells her that he's heard enough, and she pats him on the cheek and stands. "Stay and finish your wine," she says lightly, and she sweeps out of the room. He listens to her heels click down the hall, then takes a quill and parchment from her desk and writes a note. He addresses it to Estella, gives it to Parkinson's owl, and stands at the window to watch it disappear into the night.
The next morning, at six a.m. sharp, he is at the Apparition point. By six thirty, he is in Paris.
He doesn't write to her, and when Estella forwards him her messages, he throws them out unopened.
A year later, he reads about her and Potter in the paper. In the photo, they are standing outside somewhere. She is laughing. He realizes, confronted with her face, that he is a coward.
Parkinson, who has connections, grudgingly tells him the location. He arrives before the small house at four, just in time to see a large white tent go up in the yard behind.
He finds her, mercifully alone, in a room upstairs, radiant in her white dress. For a moment, she is unable to speak.
He asks her, with the stilting voice of a man unused to pleading, for a second chance.
She runs a hand along his cheek and tells him she's sorry, but he's too late.
He doesn't stay to watch her marry another man. He can't. Because as she picks up her bouquet – pink thistles – and walks away, he knows, with a certainty that makes his heart ache, that it could have been him.
The next day, Draco Malfoy does not rise until ten. He walks through the doors of his mahogany-walled office at noon. And he does not begin reading reports until two in the afternoon.
Because what is point of being punctual, he muses, if you're too late when it matters.