April 2002

Draco woke up with a painfully hard prick and a pounding headache. Not the best combination, but at least it meant he had the good dream last night. He rolled to the left and saw his wife's long, straight hair spread out against the pillow. She was dreaming and looked like an angel — he remembered having that thought for the first time after their wedding night six months earlier. Draco knew that he should wake her for a morning shag rather than indulging in a shower and a wank, but it felt like the wrong thing to do because the woman who made him this hard was certainly not his wife.

He dragged himself into the bathroom of his childhood bedroom suite and turned on the water. Draco thought he would be over these dreams by now but, every night, he dreamt of her, through the worst nightmares and the most erotic fantasies. In his mind, he flipped through a quick slideshow of all the times they were together during sixth year.

Draco had completed this routine hundreds of times at this point, but never thought of their last time together; he hadn't known it was the last time, so he hadn't paid proper attention to her. He remembered some meager foreplay and slamming into her from behind — they had both been in a frenzy, and hadn't had a lot of time.

He decided to imagine what their last time would have been like if he had known; it was easy enough for him to do. Over the course of eight months, they'd done basically everything sexual he could think of and wanted to try at age sixteen. Merlin, sixteen was a long time ago now… Five years, half a decade, a bloody war away…

Once he came with a groan, Draco cleaned up and shut off the water. He climbed back into the four-poster bed and curled himself around a pillow. He found himself wishing he had forged a friendship with the little witch; he wanted to know if she was happy in her current life. He had never worked up the courage to approach her and have that conversation. Maybe he would by next month — they'd see each other at the Victory Ball. If he found her without her husband, he'd talk to her. He could steal her away for a few minutes, just to make sure she was happy and that her husband was taking care of her.

After all, there was no way that Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley wouldn't be attending the ball.