A/N: Sorry about the long wait, you guys. I actually lost the drive with all the stories on it, and had to rewrite them all from scratch...Just wanted to say thank you so much for sticking with me and leaving the comments; they really are like crack:) Enjoy!
After a while we sort of fell into a pattern: I would ignore the sort of obvious signs and details of my enslavement and Harry would do his best to not shove it into my face or down my throat every two minutes or so. And it usually worked; instead of just ordering me to do something or another, we would reach a compromise. It got to the point where if I were to squint my eyes extra hard, I could almost see a real relationship. But every now and again, the cold, hard truth would come clawing its way from the depths that we had pushed it under.
"Dray! Come on out, now; you're going to use up all of the hot water." Harry's impatient voice wafted in under the closed bathroom door where I was standing mindlessly under the spray of our nearly state-of-the-art shower. The water shot out, not only from the usual mounted spigot, but from the side walls at three different levels and the back wall at two. It was truly a gods send whenever stress became a factor in our lives since the hot jets massaged the kinks out of your body far faster than any human hands ever could, muggle trained or magic honed.
"Coming!" I managed call out, narrowly avoiding a stream of water going straight towards my mouth. Blindly reaching for the knob, I shut off the shower and held my hand out for a warm, freshly laundered towel. A gnarled green hand placed it in my upturned palm and I dragged it over my face roughly, getting all of the stinging water off of my silvery eyelashes. "That'll be all Mitzy."
As I carefully stepped onto the shower mat that Harry had had brought in after I'd slipped and hit my head one too many times, I heard the tell-tale crack of creature apparition. I relaxed immediately; I may not actively hate the silly creatures, but I was far from comfortable being nude in front of one, my first day at the Potter Manor aside. Drying my body off with quick no nonsense movement, I avoided glancing into the enchanted mirror mounted on the wall; the main mirrors were the ones that threw my girl reflection back at me. After satisfying my need to be completely dry before putting on clothing, I pulled on a pair of black dressy slacks that clung just a little too much to my hips and ass for me to be completely comfortable and a burgundy turtleneck that was androgynous enough to meet both Harry and my ridiculous gender standards.
"Is there another man in there that I should be worried about?" Harry joked, once again banging at the door like he had no upbringing.
Instead of responding, I turned to the other mounted mirror opposite the door to arrange my hair. Harry knew good and well there were no other men in the house; after the Finnegan Fiasco, he'd locked the wards up tighter than the Weasel's family's coin purse. I ran an emerald encrusted comb through it a couple of times, just to run out the snags, and dipped my hand into the small glass bowl on the main vanity to retrieve a hair bow. After throwing the majority of my waist length hair into a sloppy bun at the top of my head, I finger-brushed my wispy bangs down and to the side. Turning my head this way and that, I smiled, satisfied that, like the turtle neck, it was androgynous enough that both Harry and I would like it. Thoroughly brushing my teeth, I collected my dirty clothes and threw them in a hamper. I put the toothbrush back into its caddy and yawned, ready to exit the balmy room. Like a motherfucking mack, I threw a courtesy glance at Dracorine's reflection and, happy that she too looked rosy faced and gorgeous, I flicked my hand out at the door, wandlessly pushing it open.
"Keep your goddamned panties on, Potter" I drawled, looking around my seemingly empty bedroom "I had to make sure my hair looked alright."
"Your hair always looks alright, baby." His voice filtered in from the open walk-in closet, where I was sure that he was dallying over what fugly tie or another to pick.
"Only 'alright'?" I teased, stepping in to see- what do you know- Harry holding a green and purple striped tie and a tie covered in paisley print. He offered them up for my inspection.
"Neither, Harry." I answered, heaving a much aggrieved sigh before he could ask the question.
"Which would should I wear then, Coco? I don't seem to have very much inside of this freaking room!"
I simply rolled my eyes, and crossed the space to undo the top button of his shirt. The flush that started at his cheeks spread to his neck and upper chest as I exposed an extra inch of that smooth, tanned skin. "You'll just wear another one of the ties that I've picked out for you. They're in a drawer around here somewhere, honey."
"Could you maybe find one for me, please? I'll start breakfast while I'm waiting, I promise!" His big green eyes pleaded with mine, just a hint of shine on them. "I just don't want to be late for work again. You know how Shacklebolt is, especially since he knows about Coco."
I turned away from his adorable expression to rummage through his, admittedly tiny, side of the closet. "Who doesn't know about Coco nowadays? In case you didn't know it, Potter, my arse is fucking fine." I jumped when I felt his large palm smack the left cheek of said arse.
"Oh trust me, I know all about that fabulous arse."
I whipped around to face him, my brows beetled, but the effect was ruined by the silly grin that was plastered to my face. "Weren't you going to start breakfast?"
Harry conceded, chuckling as he put both hands in the air nonthreateningly. "I'm going, I'm going! I'll be in the main kitchen when you're done."
I turned back to the ransacked drawer where he had obviously been throwing things about, set on finding a simple black tie. "I'm sure I can find my way down."
"Alright. Thanks, baby." He bent down to brush a kiss to my forehead, before he exited through the open door. "I love you."
"Yep!" I yelled after him.
Turns out the plain ties were buried under all of his novelty junk. I yanked a black bowtie out of the pile, then walked over to my side to pick out shoes. I settled on a pair of black flats and quietly trooped down the two flights of stairs that led to the kitchen. As I approached the doorway, I hugged the wall, intent on scaring the living daylights out of Harry; the last time that I offered to make breakfast, he'd apparated right in front of my nose, making me drop an entire plate of crepes onto the floor. And they had been the best kind: strawberry! Inching my way toward Harry's turned back, I jumped to the side and screamed, snapping an end of his bowtie at the bared skin at his neck.
"Hello, Dray." Harry smiled at me calmly, holding out a mug of my favorite brand of tea chocolate, The Witch's Brew.
"Um, hi, Potter." Confused, I took it from him, carefully peering into it to make sure there were no obvious sign of a retaliatory attack in it.
He pulled my chair out from under the table and set a steaming bowl onto my placemat. Whatever it was smelled delicious, like brown sugar and apples.
"Sit down." He motioned toward the chair as he took his own seat. "I made some of that special oatmeal you make me buy every time I go out."
"Thanks, I guess, Harry." I did as he said and picked up the spoon, eyeing the too stoic man across from me.
"Now," a knowing smile flashed before it disappeared behind his mug, which stated: World's Greatest Savior, "don't you feel foolish? After all, I made your favorite everything and didn't even jump when you tried to 'scare' me."
I shrugged, tucking an errant strand of my yellow bangs behind my ear, "I wouldn't say foolish, per say."
He chuckled, hurriedly bringing the mug down from his face, "What would you call it then?"
I glared at his stupid mocking face, "Do shut your mouth, Harry Potter."
"Okay, I get it; you don't wanna talk about your shortcomings." He threw his hands up again and went back to sipping slowly at the coffee in his cup. Vile stuff, coffee; the habit picked up from a brief stint the two of us spent in America for the Ministry.
Likewise, I finished my breakfast before pushing my dishes toward my tactless partner. "I have no shortcomings." I stood up and impatiently motioned for him to stand too, whipping the tie out of my pocket, where I'd tucked it when Harry had non-reacted. "C'mon, you haven't got all day, Potter."
"Glad you recognize I've got better things to do with my time than look at you all day, Coco."
"You know you're teasing the person you sleep next to at night, right?" I asked, tightening the knot on his bowtie just a little higher than needed.
"I know." He nodded, starting to lean down to plant one on my forehead again.
I shook my head and got a better grip on his tie, yanking him down farther to give him a quick peck on the lips.
"What's got you so happy this morning, mm?" he questioned, sounding unreasonably pleased with himself.
"I dunno, just feeling good today, y'know?" I slid my hand farther up his neck, holding him to my lips, not quite deepening the kiss.
"CoCo, 'm gonna 'e late." he murmured against my lips, before sighing and sliding his hand up my thin cotton turtleneck, kneading the soft flesh of my waist.
I ignored his protests and ran my tongue along the seam of Harry's lips, willing him to open up for me. With a barely suppressed groan that reverberated through me, his lips fell open and my tongue plunged into his mouth, immediately tapping at his soft palette, a place I knew made his fingers spasm. I found myself with both arms thrown around Harry's shoulders while he snatched a hand from my shirt to clear off the kitchen table with a single swipe of his lightly furred arm. I detached my mouth from his with a loud sucking noise and drew back to take a good look at Harry. His lips were a puffy, swollen red and his pupils were so dilated, there was barely a ring of emerald around it. I flexed my hands on his shoulders and pulled him back to me. Instead of leaning right in, he braced himself with his hands on either side of my waist to peer into my face.
"You are so fucking pretty, you know that?" A large hand came up to stroke my cheekbone. "I'm so glad I hav-"
I rolled my eyes at his Gryffindor sentimentality, pushing his mildly sweaty mitt away from the delicate skin of my face.
"Shut up, Potter; you just ruined the mood." I slowly brought my knee up and edged him off of me.
Rolling onto my side, I popped up from the table and stretched, pulling down my turtleneck and looking anywhere else but at Harry.
His paw latched onto my wrist just below the white gold bracelet he had gotten me for Christmas, "Aw, Drake! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-"
Gradually and deliberately glancing down at the joining of our hands, I irritably flicked my eyes back up to his, "Didn't you say that you were going to be late to work?"
Harry cursed, almost taking my arm with him as he bolted toward the living area. He scrambled around to find his briefcase, then, in a green flash, flooed to the Ministry. I breathed a sigh of relief and tightened up my bun as I calmly walked up the stairs to grab my bag for the day, which was decidedly not a purse.
"Hello, Mrs. Potter, so nice to see you again!"
How I hated the fake women of the Ministry's Decorating Committee. They were always talking about one another whenever one was absent and I'd heard from Hermione a time or two that the absolute worst gossip was always about me. Evidently, not only had I been carrying on a torrid affair with Seamus for more than a year, but I was also three months pregnant with his lovechild. That was news to me, since Harry had been attempting to knock me up for half a year by then.
"Oh, Tori, it's wonderful to see you!" I opened my arms to the heavily pregnant woman, "And I've told you time and time again to call me Coco, honey."
She buried her head in the joint between my shoulder and neck, inhaling deeply. I simply stood there and allowed it; Mrs. Astoria Nott nee Greengrass had been my betrothed before the end of the war. She didn't know who I really was, of course, but I could tell that she found comfort in being able to sort of absorb the smell of Draco Malfoy from my skin.
When Harry had…acquired me, he hadn't thought about any sort of backstory, so we'd had to create an amalgamation of the truth and an unquestionable falsehood: Dracorine Potter nee Malfoy had been born a pureblood: the daughter of Lucius Malfoy (Father, forgive me!) and a nameless blood traitor. She had been raised quietly in a home near to the Malfoy residence, but away from Narcissa's spiteful and vindictive reach(Mother, I don't mean it!). She was taught the pureblood way, but due to Narcissa's insistence that Draco not know about his illegitimate half-sister, she had been homeschooled in the art of magic. Before the start of the war, Dracorine and her mother had been whisked out of the country to save them from Voldemort, who would have looked down upon her entire nuclear family: Lucius, because he was a rich absentee parent to a child born of a mother that he was ashamed of (sound vaguely familiar anyone?), Carolyn, the mother, because she was a blood traitor, and Dracorine because she had refused to participate in anything to do with the war.
The year after the war ended, Carolyn had been Avada-ed after she had refused to relinquish Dracorine into Auror custody. After proving her innocence, a sobbing Dracorine had been ordered to follow Auror Potter to a temporary home. Harry had taken pity on the newly orphaned girl and allowed the young woman to live in his freshly constructed manor instead of forcing her to reside in the slums the rest of the pureblood children had been led to.
The story was that in the three months prior to the marriage, I had been living in a wing that wasn't visible to Ginny, who was known for her hatred of all purebloods who weren't in her family. While nothing untoward had happened between Harry and Dracorine in the time that he had still been with Ginny, they had fallen in a chaste love. The day that Harry left Ginny had simply pushed Coco and Harry closer together, and the following day, believing that what they had was a pure love, since there had been no real physical contact of the sexual sort between them, they married quietly in a private ceremony with only the wizard in charge and a drunken squib to act as witnesses. So far, the story had stuck with very few people questioning the validity of it. Who would, honestly? I have the classic Malfoy features, just feminized, with a few features that could easily be explained away with the blood traitor mother. It was a truly tidy explanation; it told why I knew all about Draco while he knew nothing of me, also why the "two" of us could have been twins.
The only tripping point, honestly, was the age difference. Draco was/is the same age as Harry Potter, or rather he would have been if the capturing Aurors who had rounded up the pureblooded children hadn't permanently de-aged us. I know what that sounds like: it seems as though they made us like twelve for the rest of our natural born lives, but no. What they did was alter our ages so that we were four years younger. By all rights, when I showed up at the camps, I should have been seventeen years old, instead, I was a barely pubescent child, missing my parents more than anything else. Then, when I was finally at the precipice of adulthood (for the second time, mind you), they had to go a sell me to Potter, who was twenty one, my rightful age.
But, back to the problems that the age thing presents. Everyone knows that Lucius was undoubtedly devoted to me-rather Draco- in his early years, meaning that there was little time for affairs to be had. Thankfully, few people bring that up, so I believe that we're still, after seven years of marriage, safe.
"Come sit, Coco; we haven't been able to start anything without you here." She smiled at me and gestured towards the collection of chairs that held the slightly frowning women of the Decorating Committee.
"She's right, Lady Potter," the wife of the man in charge of the Department of Mysteries chimed in sourly, "everyone's been requesting you."
"Yeah," an obnoxiously high pitched voice whined, "it's like the rest of us aren't even he-ah!"
The body belonging to the voice stood up, tugging down her too-short leopard print skirt. Mrs. Nicole "Kiki" Shacklebolt had been brought over from the states by Kingsley after the America trip that the entire administration staff of the Ministry had taken. An overly tanned and plucked New Jersey native, Kiki liked to buy all of her clothes two sizes too short and two sizes too small. If there was a woman that the Committee hated more than me, it was Kiki. Even I couldn't stand her, and I knew what it was like to be an outcast.
"Alright," she started, believing herself to be entitled to a leadership position due to her husband, "so, we've been contacted to do three homes this week. Well, not doing the homes this week- but the people called for us this week. Well, what I mean is-"
"I think we get it, Nicole. Just describe what we have to do." Astoria interjected quietly, hand resting peacefully on her rounded stomach.
She spun around to look at her, long, black hair fanning out behind her. "Okay." She nodded, accidentally showing the lines where her clip-ins had been added. "So, three houses, right? The first is mine and Kingsie's. Our anniversary is three days from now, and I want a big blow out fest, so we should totally start there. Then, it's- surprise! – me and Kingsie's again, but this time our summer home in Italy. My grandparents gave us a little villa and I want it decorated for the beginning of summer, kay?"
Whilst Kiki was involved in talking about herself and her newfound wealth, the rest of the ladies, including myself, were swapping disbelieving looks. The girl was out of her head, or rather had her head so far up her probably orange-
"Then it's Head Auror Potter's house for his and his wife's anniversary. That's a few days after mine. The first one, that is. Anyhow, I met his wife and she was so charming, just gorgeous," she gushed, stupidly unaware that I was in the room. Dumb bitch, "She wasn't so into him, though. I saw her totally making fuck-me eyes at that sexy piece Finnegan. I bet she fucks him in their marriage bed, just like you guys all sai-"
"So your house, Coco? I didn't know you were having a party this year." Tori tactfully began, glaring at the blushing women out of the corner of her eye.
"I didn't either." I frowned at Nicole, who didn't even have the good sense to look abashed. I'd never spoken to the women at a single social gathering. "When did you get the assignment?"
"Oh, this morning. He just popped in and handed it over." She smiled obliviously, tugging at her too large to be natural breasts. Fake dumb bitch.
"Ah. Well, I'll just go talk to him then."
I stood up, brushing any stray wrinkles out of the fabric of my skirt and bustled off toward the designated floo-ing fireplace before anyone could say anything.
"Bye, Coco." Tori called out, her sweetly soft voice the last thing I heard as I travelled back to the manor.
"What? What is it? Are you alright?" Harry burst through the floo as though his wand was on fire.
I tilted my chin up to glare him straight in the eye. "I'm perfectly fine, Mr. Potter."
"Oh, I'm Mr. Potter again." He joked, taking my hand and tugging me down onto his lap on the couch, "What did I do this time?"
I didn't struggle; merely sat heavily, turning my glare up a notch or two "We're having an anniversary party?"
"Yes. I thought you'd be excited about it, darling," he reached to cup my face, rubbing his thumb across my cheekbone, "You love parties."
I cocked an eyebrow at him in disbelief. "Yes, but did you perhaps think that I wouldn't want to celebrate our anniversary?"
Surely Harry wasn't that stupid.
"Why wouldn't you? It was the happiest day of our lives."
Apparently, he was.
"Happiest day of our lives? It wasn't some glorious wedding, Potter!" I spat, wrenching myself out of his grasp, "You bought me. As a slave."
"Why must you always do this when I'm trying to do something nice for you-for us?" he heaved a great sigh as though I were causing him horrific distress.
"Because this is thoughtless. As are most of your plans to 'do something nice' for me. I'm your slave, and I refuse to carry on this charade as a happy marriage at a party. Especially one that I've planned." I stamped my foot in front of him, a little irritated that the sound probably would have been more convincing if I'd have worn the heels from this morning.
"You know, you're right, Draco." His jaw flexed as he ground his teeth together.
"Glad you could see it my way." I began my signature smirk, but stopped as I saw he was going to continue talking.
"You are a slave. And as such you are bound to do as your master commands you." My eyes grew wider as I realized what he was about to do. "And as your master, I command you to…to…to plan and attend this party with absolutely no back talk. I don't want your snide remarks or your angry looks. I want to see you smile and enjoy it. Am I clear?"
Hot tears of anger, betrayal and pain flew to my eyes as I felt the bonds of my servitude encase me, squeezing the air from my lungs and tightening around my throat. I felt my willpower bow to the overwhelming force of Harry's magic as it surrounded me in a cloyingly thick purple haze, bringing me to my knees. I held out as long as possible, until the need to breathe-the need to survive- forced me into submission. Waiting until I caught my breath, I stood, albeit shakily, straightening out my outfit.
Looking my "husband" straight in the eye, I prepared to spew angry, hateful things at him until I had my fill, but the only word to pass my lips was: "Crystal."
A/N: You know how I feel about reading and reviewing. Please do it. It makes me feel good inside. Warm and gooey. Like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Everyone likes those.