Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all characters, places et al. are owned by J.K. Rowling. Also Twilight and all characters places et al. are owned by Stephenie Meyer
A/N: OK, so this might be an intermission chapter, to get people moving a bit closer to their positions in the plots. Maybe not my favourite one I guess, but somehow necessary. I hope you're still with me after it ;)
Chapter 10: Departure and Arrival
Jasper was lying on the grass in a little meadow and stared open-eyed at the sky looming above him, thousands of tiny diamonds sparkling in the midnight-black sky. As far as he could hear, see, and smell, there was no human for miles, only animals and a lot of trees. He wasn't sure where exactly, but it must have been somewhere in Canada.
The solitude had helped him a lot, especially the lack of humans and their blood. He had hunted – and feasted on – several elks and smaller game. Fully nourished, he could put the burning longing for one humans particular blood back into a tiny corner of his mind. For now. He felt it banging at the door...
He wasn't sure, but he thought he should stay some days more to bolster his resolve. He still could sometimes feel the smell of Draco in his throat, all his body screaming for that blood. But he got better at subduing it. He was no Edward or Carlisle. They made it look so easy; to resist the allure of human blood, its richness, the raw power... Sometimes he missed it, a lot. The family would forgive him, understand him, but when he imagined the way Alice would look at him... It tortured him.
Alice... Her face was hovering before his eyes, her beautiful eyes burning down on him. He wanted to feel the way he used to when he looked at her. Now, it was something else. Friendship, companionship, but not love. It hurt him. He didn't want to do this to her, but did he have a choice?
The feelings for Draco were burning through his defences, slowly but surely. But he wasn't sure if it was just the desire for his blood, or some weird longing for the person?
He slowly rose to his feet and looked at a distant mountain top.
There, he thought and started running.
A few more days, he decided. Just a few more days before going back home and trying to mend his disintegrating life...
Draco spent the Sunday relaxing around the house. He had had fun Saturday night, he was able to admit that. And Angela had been true to her word and didn't blurt out that he was, well, gay. Itwas still hard for him to admit it, even to himself. But telling it to someone actually felt...liberating – as if the huge anvil over his head had decided to go bother someone else. Not that he would complain, obviously.
What still unsettled him was the feeling that someone had stalked him after the cinema. He hadn't even noticed it until he heard a breaking twig behind him. He hadn't been able to see a face, just a black hooded athletic guy. He had managed to apparate away just in time, but he still wasn't sure if he just had been paranoid or there had been real danger?
Martha was of the opinion that he was, indeed, overly paranoid and he should just relax. But surviving the War had taught him that sometimes paranoia saved lives.
School weeks, Draco learnt, were as horrible in Muggle schools as they were in Hogwarts. Weekends were all the more relaxing and exciting than drab, boring week days.
They got worse as Jasper seemed to still be sick, at least that's what Edward told him. He had hoped to see him again, even to exchange the first words with him.
Edward and Alice both looked slightly stressed, as if something was weighing down on them, hard. It reminded him a bit of Potter, in the last weeks and months before the end of the War. Emmett and Rosalie were, for all he could see, still mostly busy with themselves and their world. At least they didn't have the same signs of stress as Edward or Alice.
What gave the week at least something interesting was the new student, Isabella Swann.
Eric, in his usual over-excited way, had got hold of her the minute she stepped out of her huge, ancient car. She was quite attractive, though she could do with a different style of dress, Draco thought. Not that it stopped a lot of the guys looking in that special way at her. What was funny was that she was completely oblivious to all the looks thrown her way.
He managed to share some small-talk with her before he had to rush to his classes.
When he saw her again later, she seemed to have changed a little. It was as if something had disturbed her inner peace.
"What is wrong, Isabella?" he asked her in the cantina.
She just smiled non-committally, "just a bit shell-shocked from the first day, I guess. Everything's new, you know? Just give me a day. Oh, and call me Bella. Isabella is such a mouthful," she chuckled.
"Well, Is-," he almost slipped back to Isabella, "Bella, I guess I know what you mean. Took me some time, too. At least you have the benefit and being from around...here. The USA, I mean. Coming from somewhere else makes it even worse," and more than that, he chuckled. If they only knew.... "If you need someone to talk to, I'm here. I try to be understanding." He laughed.
"I might come back to that offer," she smiled and dashed off for another class.
But Draco wasn't that sure it was just her first day which had made her change in attitude. He saw her steal slight glances at the Cullens, Edward in particular. And Edward looked back even more strangely – as if he was getting sick to the stomach by just looking at her. And when he did, Alice whinced as if someone had stabbed her skull with a knife. Draco didn't know what to make of it.
Draco grew more frustrated day by day, when Jasper was still missing. Why me? he wailed in his head.
What was strange was that Edward was suddenly sick, too, after Tuesday. The way he had looked that day, he could at least believe that, but still...
He tried to speak to Alice, but she seemed to be completely in another world, her motions becoming erratic, her eyes always out of focus, as if she was in another world and struggling to keep her mind in this one. She looked like she was trying to hold her balance, but it was obvious to Draco that it got more difficult by the hour for her.
And Bella... He wasn't sure what to do with her, either. It was obvious, at least to him, that she missed Edward Cullen. And he had the weird feeling that all this was connected - Alice, Edward, Bella, him; he just didn't have all the pieces together, yet.
Alice was walking through her life almost on autopilot. It wasn't just that Jasper was still away, pondering whatever he needed to in order to get better. No, now Edward was missing, too, running off to Alaska. It was just like with Jasper and Draco, only this time Bella made the inner beast stir. Unfortunately in this case, she could clearly see the future that was before Edward, and those visions had not been pretty when he first smelled her in his biology class. At least with Jasper and Draco, she could barely see the details. What Edward wanted to do with Bella...
She sighed. And then there was her Wolf, as she called him. She still met every night with him, sneaking away from Edward and the others. And still, he refused to show his human form. At least he had come close enough for her to touch him. And every night, she would just talk to him, his huge head lying on her lap, stroking his soft fur. It made her smile, even if it was just a little bit.
Vampire and Werewolf. It was wrong, parts of her knew. They have never been the best of friends. But if a Werewolf made her feel better? And those feelings that were slowly growing in her, filling the aching void Jasper left there, why would she want to stop that?
But she still had to get through another horrible day before she would meet the Wolf again....
The rest of the week was somehow lost in a mixture of sorrow, tension and unquenched desires. Draco got more depressed as time went by, and it didn't help that he saw Alice project her own aura of frustration and Bella doing just the same, though on a smaller scale. It was, Draco mused, as if everyone was missing parts of their souls and only faint ideas how to replace them.
Martha did her best to keep his spirits up, but she only got so far. His appetite was not the strongest and he sulked in his room for most of the week. His weekend he spent walking around, aimlessly, through Forks, the forest, he just didn't care where to, as long as he was busy walking.
On Monday, he got to school, expecting the same soul-wrenching experience as the last one.
His opinion changed when the Cullens came in. It only took him a heartbeat to recognise Jasper among them and his heart started racing just by seeing him. Emmett, Alice, and Rosalie were walking around Edward and Jasper acting much like bodyguards. It was strange, Draco thought.
Jasper looked sad, but still he was beautiful to his eyes. For just a second, their gazes met, and it was as if he was struck by lightning.