Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Pairing: Dominique Weasley + Scorpius Malfoy
For: Ella (Ellabethhh)
Prompts: lilt, skyline, incandescent, promise, clock

:::

mesmeric, magnetic, & just a bit monstrous

She woke up to banging on the bedroom door. Or she assumed it was a bedroom—she was in a bed, anyway, with a pillow beneath her head and a duvet pulled up over her back—but it didn't smell right. It smelled of old Quidditch gear, and Dominique was not in the habit of keeping Quidditch gear in her bedroom. She opened her eyes to find that she was surrounded by green. Her bedroom was blue. This looked like—

"Albus!" The banging at the door started up again and it suddenly burst open and the tall blond figure of Scorpius Malfoy stood there, talking incessantly. "Albus, I want you to do me a favour tonight and you're not allowed to say no because I covered for you with your parents when you were—oi, you're not Albus."

Dominique pushed her hair away from her cheeks and sat up to face her annoyingly human alarm clock. "Nope." Her voice felt raw.

"What're you doing here, Weasley?" It was amazing how he could make her feel small, even though he was technically three years younger. Scorpius could make a bad morning even worse.

"Not sure, Malfoy." Dominique stretched her arms over head, daring him to comment on how she was in yesterday's clothes. The last thing she remembered clearly was leaving her office at the Ministry pissed because her boss had said something about using her genes to secure them a case. But that didn't explain why she hadn't made her way to her own flat, which was right by the Ministry, and instead had come to Albus and Lily's, on the other side of the city.

"Oh, hey, Score." Lily appeared beside Scorpius and slipped past him. "Albus went out for bread, he'll be home soon." She held out a cup of coffee to Dominique. "How are you?"

"Been better," Dominique replied.

"Yeah, I bet. You seemed pretty out of it when you showed up yesterday."

"Any idea what happened?"

Scorpius snorted, and Dom glared at him while Lily replied, "Well, you came up yesterday afternoon and you mumbled something about bastard bosses and then Albus gave you some tea and you told us that you'd just quit your job and also that you were thinking about shaving your eyebrows and dyeing your hair pink—which is when I gave you a sleeping potion and dragged you into Albus's room because I figured you needed his bed more than he did. There's nothing worse than waking up from a drugged sleep on a sofa."

"You quit your job, Weasley? And you don't remember? What were you, drunk?"

"Unlike some people, Malfoy, I don't spend the majority of my time taking shots and pissing on Muggle fire hydrants." Dominique stuck her legs from beneath the duvet and straightened her skirt as she stood.

"That was just once. Merlin, fucking Albus had to tell you, didn't he?"

"Actually, that was me." Lily dodged the curse that Scorpius sent across the room. "And your memory loss may also be my fault, Dom. I'm working on this dreamless sleeping potion that's a bit easier on the stomach than the generic one, and sometimes it erases a few hours."

Dom rolled her eyes as she flipped Albus's pillow over the covers. She was used to taking Lily's experimental potions. This memory loss was nothing compared to the time she snogged the gargoyle outside the headmaster's office at Hogwarts. But she snapped, "Thanks, Lil," anyway, mostly because it was expected.

"Well, Potter, Weasley, as cheery as this interaction has been, I must go find Albus. We have an agreement to take care of. He went to the corner store?"

"Yes, but you're not going anywhere." Lily twirled her wand in her right hand and Scorpius tensed in the doorway.

"I really don't have time, Potter," he began.

"I really don't care, Malfoy." Lily trained her wand on his heart, but she split her glare between him and Dominique, who shifted nervously by the bed. "Tonight we are having a welcome home party for James, because he has finally realized that he will never be able to speak Icelandic and so has decided to come back to the UK where he can usually speak the language. And Mum and Dad threw him the most bloody boring party of our lives two nights ago and Al and Rose and Hugo and I decided that we needed to do right by him, seeing as how all his dreams have just burnt up, metaphorically."

"Great," Dom said. "But I don't see why you need me and Malfoy."

"I was getting there," although she clearly hadn't been. "See, there's rather a lot to do to get ready for tonight, and Albus and I could really use your help. Both of your help. And by 'really use' I mean: you will help us if you want to keep all of your parts."

"But I have things to do, Potter," Scorpius whined. "Things that are—no offence—infinitely more important than cooking cocktail wieners in honour of James's return."

"Bollocks. Trying to convince Georgie to take you back is not more important than cocktail wieners, Malfoy." He mouthed soundlessly and Dom snorted. Lily rolled her eyes, continuing, "Besides, you don't really want Georgie back. You told Al as much last week when you lot went to the Leaky and got sloshed. You just want an easy lay." She lowered her voice to a threatening level, "So shape up, Scorpius. Tonight is about cocktail wieners and my brother—tomorrow you can go out looking for a new girl to shag. Because I have it on good authority that Georgie is through with blond gits."

Scorpius stood still in the doorway, staring at Lily as if she had grown an extra head. "I pay attention," she told him before turning to Dom. "And you, Dominique. You've just quit your job and have no direction in life. I've given you purpose—you should be thanking me."

"For a day," Dom mumbled, leaning down to search under Albus's bed for her shoes. They didn't seem to be there, although it was difficult to tell, as the space was occupied by piles of clothes and what appeared to be an entire year's subscription to PlayWizard. She wrinkled her nose as she resurfaced to find Lily still glaring at her.

"Start with a day, Dom. It'll all turn out okay." The lilt to her cousin's voice did not match the look in her narrowed eyes, and Dominique stuck out her tongue.

"Fine, I'll help. But only because I like James."

"And wieners, I bet," Scorpius muttered as Lily clapped her hands. Dominique didn't respond.

"Brilliant! All right, both of you, out into the living room. Oh, Dom, if you want clean clothes you can wear some of mine. The shirts might fit a bit tight around the boobs—I've always been so jealous of yours, you have no idea—but otherwise they'll be fine. I think everything's by the desk—don't bother looking in the wardrobe." Scorpius made a strangled sound as Lily brushed passed him and kicked the door open to her bedroom. Dom tugged it shut behind her and stood staring at the stacks of clothes on her cousin's desk, praying for something that wouldn't make her look like she belonged in the red light district. She didn't find anything.

Scorpius repeated his strangled noise when she joined him and Lily in the living room, and even Lily paled a little at just how tightly the shorts and pale green top fit her cousin. "Right," Lily muttered, "right. I'll pick up something of yours for tonight, yeah? And you'll just have to stay in today. That's perfect, actually. You and Scorpius can clean this place up and start cooking hors d'oeuvres—we won't do a full meal, obviously, that would be absurd—and Albus and I will go round and let everyone know and get the alcohol and everything."

"What, you haven't told everyone yet?" Scorpius asked, because Dom was glaring at Lily in silence.

"Of course not! If we'd already sent out invitations, you lot wouldn't have been surprised by it. But don't worry. Everyone will come. Our parties are legendary." The sound of a key scraping in the lock interrupted her and she skipped over to the door, opening it just as Albus pressed against it, nearly sending him sprawling across the entranceway.

"Welcome home, Al. Score stopped by, isn't that lovely? And," she lowered her voice, although not enough, "don't say anything about Dom's clothes. She's pretty sensitive this morning."

"Sensitive?" Dom hissed. "Sensitive? I look like a hooker. I have every right to be sensitive."

"Oh, now." Scorpius could barely keep his voice from shaking with suppressed mirth, "You're being a bit harsh. You'd need a little more makeup to pass for a prostitute."

"Fuck off, Malfoy," Dom snarled, and Scorpius held up his hands as Albus dropped his shopping bag on the couch, which was already covered in rubbish, and glanced from Dom to Malfoy without a change in his expression.

"Hey, Score. What're you doing here?"

"Well originally I came by to exact a favour from you. Lily, however, seems to have decided that Weasley and I will be helping you prepare for tonight's party. So I suppose I'm cleaning."

"And cooking," Lily added, from where she stood by the coat rack. "We need to go, Al, if we're going to Apparate everywhere and then pick up the booze."

"Is that what we're doing?" Albus had just been about to toe off his Converse, but he stopped.

"Yes." Lily snagged her purse from the hall table and hurried back to brush light kisses across Dominique's and Scorpius's cheeks. "I promise I'll bring some clothes back for you, Dom."

"And please don't kill each other. Or blow up the flat," Albus added before he followed his sister out the door.

Scorpius and Dom looked around at the stacks of magazines and empty beer cans and takeaway boxes that scattered the living room.

"Well," Dominique finally said.

"Well," Scorpius repeated.

"Think we can finish this in twelve hours?"

Scorpius snorted. "I could Summon one of my house elves. Millie would have it clean in ten minutes."

"Hmm." Dom picked up a book and flipped it open to find that the inside had been cut out and it actually held a box of cigarettes. "I somehow think Lily might kill us if we let a house elf do work in her flat."

"She doesn't need to know." Scorpius kicked at a can and it rolled away from him, hitting something soft as it spiralled beneath the couch.

"Lily always knows," Dominique said in monotone. "We should probably start."

They lifted their wands and began sending the rubbish to the bin in the kitchen. After five minutes it still didn't seem as if they were making any impression on the overall state of the room.

Eventually Scorpius muttered, "This is revolting."

Dominique didn't respond. She found that keeping the beer cans steady as they flew across the room required concentration, and if she didn't pay attention she might end up with stains from leftover week-old (possibly month-old, possibly even older) beer spattered across the living room carpet.

Scorpius stayed silent for a few more minutes, then he sighed and said, "I mean it, Dominique. It's fucking revolting. How do your cousins live like this?"

"Beyond me," Dom ground out, her wand wavering as the can she was directing toward the bin shook slightly.

"I mean, really. Someone should do something."

"Aren't we?" The can tumbled into the bin.

"Well, yes, but this is temporary. Honestly, Lily and Albus could do with an army of house elves."

"If they weren't both against house elf labour. You should stop going on about that."

"What, are you going to curse me for having help at home?"

Dominique refused to respond. Scorpius tried goading her a few more times, but after she met each attack with silence he shut up and returned to banishing rubbish to its proper place.

When they finally found the carpet—a pale grey that Dominique hoped was its natural colour—Scorpius cast a cleaning Charm on it as Dominique attacked the cushions on the sofa. She collapsed back onto the couch and stretched her legs out onto the table.

"Please tell me that didn't take as long as I think it did." She shook her wrist, staring at her watch as if she could will it backwards.

"It did." Scorpius fell down in the armchair across from her, his legs dangling long over the arm. "This sucks."

"I hate Lily. And Albus. But mostly Lily." Dom rubbed her forehead. "And her potion is a bitch. Never go in for one of her experiments, Malfoy. They usually end badly."

"You're telling me." He yawned, his arms stretching back. Dominique's eyes tracked the way his hands twisted together overhead. She'd never noticed his hands before. They were nice—big and nice.

"I am. I've currently got a headache from one of them, so I have every right to tell you. When have you ever taken one of her potions?"

"I've taken a few of them."

"Oh?" Dominique sat up, her interest in his hands mostly forgotten. Or pushed to the back of her messed up mind, at the very least.

"Yeah. That's why Georgie stopped seeing me. Lily gave me one of those potions a few weeks ago, before a party. It was supposed to be a Cheering Solution—I was a bit down about something that happened when I visited my grandparents—but all it did was make the whole world seem sort of...shaky. Like whatever I did wasn't really happening. Which isn't really a good way to be in a normal place, where you can just sit still. But I was making an arse of myself and I embarrassed Georgie and why the fuck am I telling you this?"

Dominique blinked. "Because you don't want to clean the kitchen. And neither do I."

"Not a good enough reason." Scorpius swung himself up out of the chair and turned to the doorway into the next room and Dominique sighed.

"You'll reconsider when you see what's growing on their dishes," she called, but Scorpius didn't reappear, although she did hear cursing over the sound of water running from the faucet.

She joined him in the kitchen a few minutes later, and they worked in silence, throwing a barrage of swear words out into the spell-buzzed air every once in a while.

They collapsed at the table—still coated in papers and magazines—after the dishes had been put away and the rubbish emptied in the dumpsters in the alley outside and Dominique pressed her face against the newspaper, not minding if she got tattooed with newsprint because she was just exhausted.

Scorpius interrupted her coma; in a voice that sounded much more energetic and Dominique felt, he said, "So, I've shared some stuff with you."

"I won't tell anyone," Dominique said to the newspaper.

"I'm not concerned about you telling anyone—Lily's probably already told everyone who matters." Dominique considered this. It was true. "I just mean, it's not fair."

"What isn't?" The paper was actually quite comfortable. She wouldn't have minded staying there for a while.

"That I've shared something personal with you but you haven't shared anything with me."

Dominique wanted to point out that this was not the purpose of social interaction, that being honest with people wasn't a game, wasn't a competition where they could settle the score. But she was too tired so she mumbled, "Fine, ask me something, then."

"Why'd you want to dye your hair yesterday? Why'd you quit your job?"

She pushed herself up from the table and looked at him. His grey eyes burnt against hers with curiosity, and she wondered what he'd do if she cursed him.

But he had shared some personal stuff with her, and so she answered him. "My boss wanted me to turn the Veela charm on while trying to coerce the jury into letting our guy go free. I told him I wouldn't, that I'd just be the kickass lawyer I am and it would all go all right, and he told me that I should use whatever talents I have. So I told him he should go fuck himself and that I was finished. And then I guess I came here."

Scorpius looked taken aback for a second, and then he smirked. "'Veela charm?' I don't believe you have any charm, Weasley, Veela or otherwise."

Dominique rolled her lips together and thought. She hadn't done this in a while, not since Hogwarts and the few years after, when her social life kept her going, before she found (short-lived) meaning in her job. But that didn't mean that she couldn't still do it. She was part-Veela, after all. There had been a two year stretch when she hadn't bought herself a drink once—susceptible blokes had fought each other to ply her with alcohol.

She straightened her back and met Scorpius's eyes with hers. His widened in surprise and she felt tendrils of something—she'd never tried to name it—burning through her veins, running up her nerve endings, hazing up around her skin. Scorpius's eyes didn't leave her—now they were skimming down her body, taking her all in, and she thought about his hands, because it always worked best if she could be mildly attracted to the bloke, and then her vision was tunnelling, blacking out everything but Malfoy, everything but his hands clenched on the table and his narrow torso and his wide shoulders and the way he was leaning toward her—because she had cast her net on him, him alone, and she was magnetic. He was steel. He was close, close enough for her lips to burn him, close enough for her tongue to claim him, close enough for everything to change.

The crash of the door flying open in the living room shocked her, and Dominique blinked, collapsed back onto the table and severed the spell. Malfoy sighed and then said, "Fuck," and then Lily was there, an electric presence on the edge of the kitchen.

"Hey, guys!" She spoke too loudly. Dom's head ached. "Wow, you did magnificently. But where're the hors d'oeuvres?"

"Merlin, Lil, it's bad enough you made them clean the flat. We can just order in." Albus's voice didn't hurt Dominique as much, and she thought that she had maybe never appreciated him quite as much.

"No, it's fine." Scorpius sounded sort of vague—like he was thinking of something far, far away. "It's fine. I don't mind making the hors d'oeuvres. Cleaning just took a long time." He came back to himself enough to add, "Because you are both despicable, foul human beings and really ought to be locked in an institution until you can learn to clean up after yourselves."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Lily said, dropping her bag on the counter with a noise that sounded like a thousand bottles clattering against each other. "Are you all right, Dom? I brought you something to wear."

Dominique resurrected herself enough from the migraine to take the bag Lily was offering and slip back into her youngest cousin's tornado-struck bedroom. She didn't know why her head felt like hell. Maybe it was a combination of her emotions over the past day and the potion Lily had fed her the night before and the creature magic involved in exuding that much Veela magnetism. She tugged Lily's shirt over her head and unclasped her bra, slipping the shorts over her hips and crossing the room to the bathroom, where she ran hot water and sat in the bathtub as it steamed around and over her, burning her skin red and distracting her from the pain in her head. But not from the possibility that this might not have been a symptom of any of that; it may have been a symptom of the emotions she'd felt crashing over her when she'd thought Scorpius was going to kiss her. Because even in that altered state, she should have wanted to pull away from him. She usually wanted to be above the blokes she captured, too good for them, better than them. But that hadn't happened with Scorpius.

She scrubbed at her skin and rubbed her hands through her hair, lathering it with too much of Lily's kiwi-scented shampoo, letting the suds and the day-old scum whirl down the drain in a waterspout as she wrapped a towel around her hair and reached for the bag Lily had handed her.

She tugged out a horrible dress. Well, actually, the dress itself wasn't horrible. It was deep purple and clung just above her knees, it fit perfectly and she'd only worn it once. But she didn't want to look attractive after what had almost happened. Tonight she wanted to be the Weasley everyone overlooked.

Dominique tore Lily's room apart, but she found nothing that would fit her any better than the clothes she had been wearing earlier, which clearly would not do the trick. She had never mastered any alteration charms, and besides, it was impossible to add fabric out of thin air, and stretching the clothes would have rendered them see-through. After a half-hour of fruitless searching (during which she did discover quite an impressive stock of illegal ingredients and a fascinating pile of letters in messy handwriting) she resigned herself to wearing the dress.

She slipped it over her head and pulled her hair back in a messy damp ponytail, glanced at herself in the mirror and scowled, easing lines into her forehead and around her mouth, and then escaped the clutter of Lily's bedroom for the now-clean living room, where Albus and Lily were setting up a makeshift bar on the coffee table.

"Ah, darling, you look smashing," Lily said, glancing up from the glistening multi-coloured bottles she was arranging according to height. It was amazing how Lily's aesthetic senses extended to alcohol and fashion, but were lost on anything and everything else.

"Whatever. What time is everyone getting here?"

"Soon," Albus replied, setting a stack of Dixie cups at one end of the table. "Scorpius," he called over his shoulder, "do you need Dom's help with hors d'oeuvres?"

"Nope, all set," Scorpius called back, and Dom let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief. Maybe when her family and their friends crowded the place she could ignore Scorpius.

It didn't happen that way, though. This was Dominique's life, and it had never been charmed. Lily put Dominique and Scorpius on bar duty until midnight, and she spent the early hours of the night not looking at Scorpius, not noticing his hands and the way they looked on the narrow necks of jewel-coloured bottles, not accidentally brushing against him when she reached for a mixer on the other side of the table. She ignored him determinedly.

At midnight, when Teddy and Lysander replaced Dominique and Scorpius, Dominique escaped to Lily and Albus's balcony, looking at the glow of London and holding a dripping glass of rosy pink something that emanated fumes of alcohol and Dom could feel herself getting lightheaded just by breathing. She leaned over the railing and looked down to four storeys below where cars flickered with red brake lights on the motorway and everything looked small and insignificant.

"Hey." Scorpius took up all the empty space on the balcony, his hands close beside hers on the railing and all the energy she'd felt before, when he'd almost kissed her, blurring the lines of where he ended, where his skin was separated from hers.

"Malfoy," she replied. Not with any real inflection, just a neutral recognition of him being there, breathing her air and sharing her view.

"When I said that thing about you not having charm," he wasn't wasting any time, "I didn't need you to prove to me that you do."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I was just joking. You're always charming, Weasley."

She rolled her eyes. How horribly cheesy he sounded. "But never like that," she pointed out.

He was silent, his fingers tightening around the railing. "No. No, never like that." And then he couldn't seem to stop talking, "That was terrifying though. You didn't even seem like you anymore. And I don't mean that as an insult because I've always found you...I've always found you incandescent. Most of all when you're not treating yourself like a magnet." He shook his head. "Like right now. Right now you want me to go away, to take back everything that I've said, and right now is one of those moments where I can barely look at you because you are so beautiful."

She shook her head. He was too open, too honest, too un-Malfoy and un-Slytherin. But she couldn't stop herself as she angled her face and moved closer to him. What was she doing? He was twenty-one to her twenty-four and he had fucked around more than she ever had and he was Albus's best friend and Lily's occasional sidekick and she wasn't even positive he was good in bed.

He caught her lips with his and his hands slid down her dress to her waist. She dropped her drink over the edge of the balcony and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing against him until they were only separated by layers of cloth—no space, no air.

Dominique pushed him back so they were out of view from the windows, with Scorpius up against the brick wall of the building, Dominique up against him, and the city skyline dark behind her but they didn't see that, didn't notice anything but the newness of their mouths.

Judging from this kiss, Dominique thought in one of the very few seconds that she had to think, judging from this kiss, Malfoy would be very good in bed. So she took his hand in hers and led him back through the room, where the party was beginning to descend into something resembling a mosh-pit. She ignored Lily's whistle as she and Scorpius wound their way through the room to Lily's bedroom, and across the mess on her floor to her bathroom, where Dominique dropped her dress and her panties on the floor and let Scorpius have his way with her bra as she worked at his shirt and the zipper on his jeans.

They were in the shower and the water steamed in the air around them. Dominique's voice whispered against his ear, "This doesn't have to mean anything."

"No." His lips were hot, his breath hazy in the humid air. Diamonds of water fell on them and he added, "But it could," as they fell together.

"It could," Dominique agreed.

She thought it might.

A/N: I really hope this wasn't horrible. I feel out of practice.
(As always, I appreciate reviews!)