Chapter One

Draco strode across the icy courtyard, his shined leather shoes clopping faintly against the stone floor as he headed towards the trail to Hogsmeade. The boy's breath erupted in plumes of smoke before his eyes, snow crunching underfoot. He buried his hands deeper into his pockets, his mouth slackened into a frown as he exited out into stark field of snow, its bare beauty disparaged by student's footprints. In the distance loomed the cobblestone fence that buttressed the Hogsmeade trail, dusted with snow that glittered like grains of sugar on a Parisian pastry. He gathered his gloved hands before his mouth and breathed onto the chilled digits, his attention stolen as he caught sight of several forms emerging ahead. The figures outlines crept forward as Draco plodded through the freshly fallen snow and as he neared, he recognized them.

"Crabbe, Goyle!" Draco called out, watching as the two boys tore pages from a book and let them drift into the snow below. Hermione Granger darted about, snatching the pages up, her face tear streaked and seething with frustration, the sodden pages pressed to her chest as she knelt in the snow, frantically searching for more. "What're you doing?" Crabbe and Goyle looked up at him thickly and dropped the book, their hands shooting into their pockets as they feigned innocence.

"Just having some fun," Goyle offered as Crabbe nodded stupidly in agreement. Hermione glared up at Draco for a moment, her eyebrows drawn together, cheeks slippery as glass in the overcast daylight. Malfoy's skin crawled under that steely stare, his mind suddenly sent off balance as he reluctantly made eye contact with the girl before she returned to her mangled papers.

"I'll speak to the both of you at dinner then," Draco snapped, gesturing towards Hogwarts with a gloved hand. Crabbe and Goyle shared a stunned gape before lumbering off towards the castle together, both glancing over their shoulders at the two, while their muddled voices bleated out words of bewilderment. Without saying a word to the girl Draco hunched forward and picked up what was left of the book, the broken spine sagging and damp as he turned it over and looked at the cover. Hermione seized Cooking the Muggle Way, from Draco's grasp and shoved the salvaged sheets inside. Draco fumbled for a question, an excuse to make her stay a moment longer, to make her see that he meant no harm. He cleared his throat quietly, afraid he might startle her, launch her into flight like a skittish mare.

"Why would you buy that book?" The boy asked carefully, his watch following the girl as she stood and blew on her naked fingers, the slick skin red and stiffened from the icy snow. The girl whipped around towards him like a storm, her calculating eyes narrowed and dangerous.

"Because I live with Muggles?" Hermione shot back angrily, stepping towards Draco, several snowflakes burdening her dark lashes. She knew his slippery ways and she would not accept it. Not again. "What would a mudblood girl need with a book like this, is that it?" The girl met his gaze, her brown eyes slick with watery resentment. And for a moment Draco wanted to reach out to her, comfort her. He was fascinated by the sight of her, even attracted to her. But in the next moment he was burned, reprimanded by the shame that always arrived as an afterthought.

"Look, Granger," Draco muttered, trying to rid his voice of its accustomed sarcastic bite, "I was just trying to be decent to you."

"Piss off, Draco," The words shot from between her lips like leaden bullets, the acidity in her voice surprising the boy, "The book was a Christmas present for Mrs. Weasley." She abruptly turned and hurried through the drifts of snow towards Hogwarts. Hermione's jaw clenched as she wrapped her arms around her ruined present, her chin tucked to her chest as she braced against the gusting wind.

The boy's teeth gritted together, his stare following the girl as she drew further away, brown mane of hair blowing wildly in the breeze. He soaked in the memory of her for a thoughtless moment, the way her hair rolled down her shoulders to the small of her back, her serious, unwavering eyes, the slight blush that crawled from the bow of her neck down past her collar. Draco kicked at one of the forsaken pages as it quivered in the breeze, nothing more than a crumpled lump in the snow. His gut felt knotted, as it were a slab of taffy being wrapped around a wire, stretched to its limits and all because of Hermione. That fucking girl, he thought, why her?

Draco crouched before the fireplace in the Slytherin Commons, his tired eyes begging to close against the late night fatigue, the sockets lined with a delicate purple tint. Twelve thirty, his father had scrawled in his note, but it was nearing one and Draco's patience was drawing thin. The boy sat heavily and pulled his legs to his chest; his blonde head nodding slightly as he gave in at last and allowed his eyelids to sink shut.

"Draco," The ashes hissed, jolting the boy awake as the flames burst to life with a crackle and began to gleam a fierce crimson, "Is that you?"

"Yes, Father," The boy muttered, kneeling before hearth and staring down at the smoking remnants below, his grey eyes still glazed with sleep. The embers soon gave way and undulated like blood tinted waves to form Lucius Malfoy's weary face.

"Are we alone?"

"Yes."

"Good, Draco," The ashes whispered intently, the scarlet pupils scanning the boy with as Lucius drew a rasping inhale, "I haven't much time. Listen carefully; I have extraordinary news for you." Draco remained silent, a strange uncertainty swelling in his gut, his dreading heart thrumming beneath its mantle of bones. "The Dark Lord has finally decided to grant you a Dark Mark," The boy's stomach lurched as if he had received a kick in gut, his face nearly giving him away.

"How soon?" Draco choked out, trying to disguise the tremor in his voice, trying to swallow his encroaching fear.

"As soon as you are home again."

Draco stared blankly into his father's contorted face, his mind thrashing inside his skull, frantically searching for a way out. This fate had been hibernating for years, dormant and spoken of in whispers, whispers of someday and when you're older. But now that time had come.

Draco's tongue curled in his mouth, heavily laden with a refusal he knew would go unsaid: I don't want this. There was silence between the father and son during which only the noise of the mocking embers remained.

"And that's it? Then I'll be a Death Eater?" Draco hissed the word death eater under his breath, his stomach clenching as it rolled off his tongue like molten lava, the truth of its implications burning in his gut.

"Yes," His father confirmed. The boy tasted sickness in his mouth, his limbs felt as if they were made of lead. I don't want this.

"Someone's coming," Draco lied, his tongue heavy, head swarming with a infestation of doubt as he stood and stamped on the glowing embers that composed his father's face.

Draco sat on the cool marble staircase outside of the Great Hall, his mind deep in thought, his fingers busily turning over his wand in his hands. The boy's long legs stretched out before him, his shoulders rolled forward as he brooded over his sentence, a life he did not desire. But he had little say in the matter. For him, there was no choice. Suddenly, he heard the click of shoes trotting down the steps behind him and he raised his head, welcoming the disturbance as he left his worrying train of thought. Draco tucked his wand into his robes as the footsteps grew closer and then, abruptly stopped. He turned towards the sound just in time to see Hermione hurrying up the stairs, her robes billowing out behind her.

"Wait," Draco called after her halfheartedly, something in his stomach clenching and sending guilty jolts through his core, "Hermione!" He scrambled to his feet and followed the girl, surprised when she stopped at the top of the stairs and waited for him to catch up.

"What do you want?" Hermione breathed impatiently, drawing her books close to her chest and eyeing Draco as he stepped up next to her. Draco parted his lips to respond, but found his mouth impossibly dry, his tongue heavy with words he could not expel. What did he want? Why had he called out to her? He was drowning under her steady watch, floundering about in her shadow, gasping for breath as he tried to hold onto his wits. The boy silently chastised himself as his stare crawled over her downturned mouth, down to the alluring indent at the base of her neck, buttressed by the sweeping curves of her collarbones, like two broken wings.

"I just wanted," He paused; dreadfully wishing he could move closer, to breathe in the slender girl's scent, to see her crooked grin, "To apologize." Hermione's eyes searched his as her mouth pulled tight into a thin line of doubt.

"I'm sure," Hermione responded, turning to speed away again, a faint trace of uneasiness betraying her usual impassive expression. As she made to leave, Draco's will broke and the boy reached out a wide hand and placed it on her arm. Hermione instantly halted and looked down at his touch, reminding Draco immediately of the crudeness of his action with an incredulous stare,

"What are you doing?"

Draco withdrew his hand with such speed it was as if the girl was nothing more than a weaving flame, scalding his flesh at contact and branding him blameworthy. She was impure. Nothing more than a mudblood girl. A stupid girl. The boy's veins seemed to simmer, his mind choked by smoky ash from the girl's blistering watch. He tore his eyes away, despising the part of himself that wished to remain, that pleaded for another glance, just one more to suffice for long, empty night without her. The blonde's jaw tightened fiercely as he forced himself away, his feet blindly dragging him down the stairs, away from her and back to the dungeons.

Mudblood

The boy desperately repeated the word to himself as he charged forward into the dungeon's inked out blackness. He chanted the word under his breath like a prayer. But he wanted so much to find her again. To feel her, breath her in, taste her, salty on his lips.

Mudblood

Anger blistered in his gut, the struggle to control his wandering mind seemed hopeless. She sauntered back into his consciousness time and time again, a strange deviation sent to punish him for his wrongs. Draco entered the Slytherin Commons brimming with confusion, questioning himself under his breath,

"Why her?" The girl, the slant of her hips, a blush hovering at her cheeks. He wondered if that blush dipped lower, trickled like rain down into the valley between her breasts. Crabbe looked up from his seat in front of the crackling fire, the flames twisting before him into different shapes, his wand dancing before them, charming them like fickle cobras.

"Hullo, Draco," He called out thickly, a stray flame lapping at the tip of his wand and singeing the polished wood. Malfoy ignored Crabbe; instead he entered the boys' dormitory and slunk to his bed. His mind still churning along in a tunnel of emotions as he ripped off his shoes and hurled them against the wall. Draco drew the emerald curtains shut around his bed with a flick of his wand and then buried his pinched face in his palms. What would his father think of this corrupt desire? Would he be banished even though he could help himself? Was that still a sin? He sat in silence for some time, the heels of his hands pressed against his grey eyes, his hands raking through his blonde hair as she ran rampant through his thoughts. Hair curling to the small of her naked back, to the spot where two indents were tucked into her flesh like smiling dimples alongside her spine. A tempting smirk. Draco reclined onto the softness of his bed and with eyes shut his hand explored a blooming longing below his belt, lost in the swollen darkness of night. She turned to him, her skin nude and white. White like fresh steam, like seaside fog, like death's betrothed. Draco sat up, his hand darting away from his arousal, now slick with the consummated evidence of his perversion.

Mudblood