A/N: Descriptions of the choreography etc featured in this chapter are heavily inspired by George Balanchine's The Nutcracker - Waltz of the Flowers. It's on YouTube and it's just absolutely beautiful to watch. Highly recommend! As always, thank you guys so much for the lovely reviews - they really do make my day every time I read them and are highly appreciated.
Rather than leave her at her door after Draco walked Marilyn home from the pub, he ended up going inside with her as they pursued their ritual of watching a film together. Marilyn accepted his coat and slung it over her desk chair with her own as he browsed the shelves that contained her film collection.
There was one shelf that Marilyn never went to when she was picking out something for them to watch. These video tapes looked different. They were in card sleeves rather than plastic boxes, and they didn't have the same extravagant covers emblazoned with photos of actors and actresses along with the title of whatever film was inside. Instead they had handwriting along the spines - Swan Lake '01, Cinderella '02 - and so on in thick black scrawls. Some years had a couple of videos labelled under that category, and the videos took up the full shelf, running in chronological order right up until Nutcracker '02.
"Are these…?"
"My performances- well, recordings of them. We got videos of every one once the season was over. They'd record a couple of the performances throughout the season and choose the best one to archive. Although I do believe I was the only one to get a video of that one," she nodded at the final tape "The rest got one of the ones that...uh, ended better. Sod's law that they happened to be recording the night that my career ended, honestly. I only got a copy because they came to me to let me know they were going to scrub it, and I asked to keep it instead."
"This is the one where you were injured?"
"The last time I ever danced properly," she grimaced "Sarah called me morbid for keeping it, but there's a certain sentimentality to it. Not like I settle down with a bottle of vodka and watch it every night."
"No?"
"Just every Tuesday. Some Thursdays. Saturdays, if I have nothing else on," she said drily.
Draco snorted, his eyes drifting back to the tape.
"It's killing you, isn't it?" She teased, following his gaze.
"No," he protested, but didn't even believe himself "I just…"
"Once," she said "And only once."
It wasn't something he suspected he'd ask to see again anyway. He felt bad for how intrigued he felt, but it wasn't like he'd pushed her into it. If she didn't want to, she didn't have to. She more than knew that.
"You don't have to," he protested a little - more to be polite.
There was some sick, far-too-curious part of him that wanted to see it. Not because it was something he actually wanted to see - something he'd enjoy witnessing, like a Quidditch match - but because it was such a big part of her life. They wouldn't have even met, chances were, if it hadn't happened. And yet he didn't know the details.
"I'm showing you a video, not giving you a kidney," she replied.
The levity in her voice sounded just a little less natural than usual. She hovered in the centre of the room as she found the part of the tape she was looking for. Only once she was finished fast-fowarding did she climb onto the bed and make herself comfortable. Draco followed suit, taking the space that he was quickly coming to view as his.
They'd gotten comfortable just as the music began. As it did, a group of ballerinas pranced onto the stage from either side, in long flowing pink skirts that floated around them with their every movement.
"Waltz of the Flowers," Marilyn sighed over the soft plucking of the harp "It was one of my favourite pieces before this. Sod's law, really."
"Where are you?"
"I come on afterwards - my costume was different, you'll see."
Nodding, Draco watched as the dancers teetered around the stage on the tips of their toes, coming to form a circle, before a figure entered the stage in a sort of graceful half-run, half-prance until she reached the centre of the circle. Marilyn. Her costume was different from the others' - a sparkling bodice in a shade of nude that matched her skin, and a skirt that was more a single piece of thin, translucent fabric than the large flowy things the others wore, revealing impossibly long lean legs. She directed a sunny smile at the audience - one that didn't even look forced at all, as it often could with performers - before raising her hands above her head, moving to stand en pointe, and standing stock still.
The music stopped for a half a second, and then it resumed - a waltz. A light-hearted and cheerful one, no less. As he watched the performance, Draco almost forgot that disaster would soon strike. She was good. Very good. All right, he wasn't an expert when it came to dancing (much less ballet) but he liked to think he could at least know good when he saw it. For one, he knew how difficult it was, and therefore that she must have some considerable skill for how easy she made it look as she moved around the stage. Her part was a series of solos - weaving onto the stage at certain points to dance in the middle of the others before twirling off again...and Draco would be lying if he said he didn't spend the brief parts between them waiting for her to appear again.
Her dancing was hypnotic - he was sure he'd say the same even if he hadn't grown to find her so charming. She moved weightlessly - Merlin, she could hold her own against any ballerina from the Wizarding world, Levitating Charm or no - each move flowing in a way that looked so effortless and easy that it almost seemed like a spur of the moment thing, rather than something that had been ruthlessly rehearsed and practised over and over. Watching now, he felt he understood her loss just a little more. This hadn't been a random path she'd been shoved down before losing her way, this had been a calling. Something she was meant to do. And now she couldn't. A small quiet part of him, which he refused to acknowledge, wished he could've seen her then - in her element, thriving...and hopelessly enchanting.
It just made what was coming all the more tragic.
The music built up and up, higher and higher, and so did Draco's dread - a sharp contrast to the cheerful, sunny tune. It was building up to some sort of crescendo, he knew it would soon be over and Marilyn was still dancing around the stage, not yet injured. It was going to happen at any moment.
The other dancers split into two lines at either side of the stage, forming a sort of V stretching out towards the audience, and Marilyn danced up the centre in a series of dizzying, weightless spins, a wide grin on her face. Draco glanced towards her - the real her that sat beside him now, but despite the unbothered look she'd plastered across her features, her eyes were fixed on her lap rather than the screen.
It happened quickly after that. She spun once, twice, and at the end of the third she dropped down to the ball of her foot from her toes, and the smile was wiped from her face in an instant. Wobbling for half a second, she crumpled to the floor as if she was a marionette and somebody had cut her strings. Some of the others glanced sideways at her through her sunny grins - waiting for her to get up, he realised. Falls probably happened all the time, they'd have to just dance through them. A seasoned performer, she forced a grin and moved to stand, but no sooner was her foot beneath her than she was on the floor again.
This time Marilyn didn't get up, nor did she try to, and her forced, embarrassed smile was morphing into a horrified grimace, the colour draining from her face even beneath the stage make-up. Her eyes wide and her teeth gritted against the pain, she looked to somebody off-stage and shook her head, looking as though she might cry. The music built into a dramatic flourishing finale, a few notes where the dancers were meant to stop and strike a finishing pose, but few of them did.
The curtain dropped just a moment after the dancers broke rank and converged around her, a speck of glittery white in a sea of pink and lilac. The last thing visible on the stage was a man dressed all in black toting a first-aid kit rushing to Marilyn's prone form.
Beside him, Marilyn stopped the video. A silence stretched over them then, and both of them let it. What was there to be said? Draco needed a moment to absorb what he'd just seen, and Marilyn...well, he didn't know what was going through her mind. He very rarely did, if he was being honest. Only when the quiet stopped feeling quite so deliberate did he glance towards her. He expected her to appear brooding - pissed off, at the very least. Instead, and somewhat worse, she just looked lost. Tired, and worried, and sad. It had him slightly regretting his earlier curiosity...but only slightly. Had he not seen the recording, he wouldn't have known how good she truly was. It gave him a newfound level of respect for her. One didn't become that good at anything without serious work and dedication. She'd have been a force to be reckoned with, back in her prime...Which just made her loss greater, he supposed.
None of this was anything he felt comfortable voicing, though. She probably knew it all already, anyway. It wouldn't help. If there was anything he felt they had in common, it was a lack of time for empty sympathies and placations. His attention shifted to her hand, where it plucked nervously at her tights, just above her injured knee. Remembering how she'd settled him back in the pub, he tentatively reached over and took her hand in his, stopping its fidgeting. It was freezing.
"You're…" he trailed off.
What word to use? Breath-taking would be apt, but it had too many implications. Far too many implications. Good, however, didn't quite cut it.
"...Phenomenal," he said in the end - even if he wasn't quite able to look at her as he said it.
"I was," she murmured "I ended the turn too suddenly. That's what caused the tear. A lifetime of perfectionism and one mistake does that."
She tried to huff a laugh but it just came out as a sigh instead. There was nothing he could say, he knew it well. What was there to say? That she'd find something else to drive her enthusiasm into? He was just as lost as she was in that department, with no room to offer advice or false wisdom.
The silence returned then, their hands still intertwined in her lap.
"The chips and gravy weren't completely terrible," he murmured.
The laugh he got in response to that was a real one, at least.
Marilyn wasn't sure how long they sat there in silence, doing nothing but holding hands. All she knew was that when she caught his attention straying towards the deck of tarot cards on her nightstand, she was relieved for the distraction...even if there was a slight hesitation in how she pulled her hand from his.
It felt like a definite return to normalcy as she sat opposite him on the bed, cross-legged, and began to shuffle the cards. Maybe it was just nice to focus on somebody else's problems. The video tape had left her with a cold, heavy feeling that threatened to grip her fully if she did not find distraction, and so she could not afford to fail at distracting herself.
Draco watched with an interest far keener than she expected as she shuffled. It was the same interest he held every time she got out the cards, and it never failed to surprise her, for the more she got to know him, the more strange it seemed. Had she known him a little better before that first reading, she mightn't have even offered it in the first place - he was definitely the type to write it all off as a combination of coincidence and bullshit. Was she misreading him horribly by being so surprised by how seriously he took it? She didn't think so. It was just one of the many things that she couldn't quite figure out where he was concerned.
At this rate she'd need to start a list just to keep track of them. It might take some explaining if he happened across it, though.
"All right, so you have the two of swords," she laid the card before him.
It depicted a woman wielding two swords (as the name might suggest), one made of wood, another of steel.
"This one suggests you have a decision before you - some sort of dilemma. The two swords on the cart might symbolise that they're two very different choices, and that you're stuck. You have time to make the decision, but the decision does have to be made, even if it's not an easy problem to solve...which it never is with this card, really."
It was strange, the weird sort of zone she fell into when she did readings - even for herself. The words just flowed from her mouth before she even had a chance to form them in her mind or think them through, almost like they weren't coming from her herself.
Drawing two more cards, she laid them face up before him.
"These two cards represent the choices before you - the first is the devil."
"How is this a difficult decision if one of the cards is so obviously bad?"
"Bad can be tempting if it's familiar," she shrugged "That's what this card is all about - temptation. To fall into bad habits, old ways, things you know aren't good for you…things that offer short term refuge but are shitty in the long run."
"And the other?"
"Ace of cups," she said "The aces always represent beginnings, but this is a particularly positive beginning - breakthroughs, spiritual growth, being in the flow and seeing your hopes come to fruition."
...and new relationships. But something had her holding that back. The fact that she didn't want him to view her as some kind of psycho who made up fake fortunes in ham-handed seduction attempts, mainly.
"And the catch?" He quirked a brow "There's always a catch."
"You have to move away from where you're comfortable, from the tried and tested."
Draco grimaced.
"Yeah, that's never fun, is it?" She hummed in agreement "Well, nobody ever said growth was easy."
He was quiet as she gathered the cards up and tidied them away, his eyes distant as he mulled over the reading. Once she'd put them back on her nightstand, she gave him a moment before raising another topic that had been weighing on her mind.
"Christmas is coming up soon. Barely a week away."
Draco's grimace deepened and she laughed openly at that - she hadn't taken him for much of a Christmas-cheer type anyway.
"...I'm guessing you're going back home? To Wiltshire?"
"I suppose I'll have to," he sighed, leaning back against the wall.
"A prospect that clearly thrills you."
"Yes, well," he waved a hand vaguely "Families, you know?"
"I do know," she said ruefully "Does this mean I won't be seeing much of you for the foreseeable future?"
She did her utmost to ask it casually - like she was just wondering so that she could pencil everything into her diary. In her mind, Christmas had always heralded the end of this little interlude of theirs. He would go home, and then what would bring him back here again? It always seemed that his business here was temporary, vague as he'd been about what had brought him to York, and she hardly thought they were so close as for her to warrant a swift return once he was settled and readjusted to life at home. However much money he clearly had, it would still be a bit of a needless expense to piss it away on constant trains to York just to make sure she could hobble home in one piece.
"Why would it?" He frowned.
Or...maybe not.
"I mean," he visibly made an effort to appear a tad more casual himself then "There's over a week between now and then, no? We can easily see each other a couple of times in that time...and I only really have to be home for the important bits - the Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day, so on...I wager I could slip away between then and New Year's."
"Unless you find yourself married off in that time," she teased a little, if only to ease the nervous energy that was seeping into the conversation.
"In which case I'll invite you to the wedding," he snorted.
Marilyn snickered, but she caught the way his eyes flickered to the hand he'd been holding not even a half-hour prior. Without entirely meaning to, she splayed the fingers of that hand before running her thumb over her fingertips. Draco's eyes returned to hers.
"Are you going to be leaving? Going to stay with family?" He asked.
"No," she shook her head "I'll be here, no complications on my end."
He frowned a little at that, and she could see that he wanted to press the matter - ask why, ask where her family was, something - but (bless him) he didn't. It seemed he shared in her opinion that there had been quite enough vulnerability between them for one night.
"Ah, well...I see," he nodded slowly.
Marilyn smiled. She couldn't help it. He was strangely adorable at times. The height of suave arrogance at one moment, and the next he was unsure and shy over something as simple as organising when they'd both be free around the holidays. But, smile as she might, she couldn't deny the steady heat she felt rising in her cheeks. It meant something. Whether they acknowledged it or not, they both knew it did. Having a free evening or two a few times a week was one thing, but purposely making time to see one another during the holidays felt...different. It certainly made it harder to deny that there was anything slowly building here.
"Do you have any plans for New Years'?" She asked on a whim.
"My mother usually throws some big party, but I'm not obligated to attend the same way I am with Christmas," he replied "If I make other plans she doesn't put up much of a fight about it. It would probably be preferable this year, really - lest she engineer a situation that has me and her girl of choice standing together as the clock strikes midnight."
"Well I was going to invite you to a party, but how could I stand in the way of the beginning of such an epic romance?"
Draco gave her a deadpan look which summed up how he felt about that particular joke.
"We throw one every year. Nothing formal, nothing serious. Just the housemates, a bunch of all of our friends, too much alcohol, very loud music, the works. We're the only ones with chill neighbours and a space big enough for it, so it's pretty much expected of us by this point. Loads of people usually stay over, too, since they're too shitfaced to navigate the stairs nevermind a journey home, so you'd be welcome to do that."
Draco looked unsure, and Marilyn forced herself to remain silent. If he was uncomfortable with the idea, she didn't want to strong-arm him into accepting just because she wouldn't let the matter lie.
"You can take some time to think about it. Hell, turn up on the night itself if you want - no need to RSVP. I don't know half the fuckers who turn up usually, anyway."
"I'd like to come," he said finally, after spending some time thinking it through "It sounds better than being sold off like a broodmare, anyway."
"...And there goes my plan to set you up with Sarah. But thank you for the ringing endorsement."
That joke he appreciated even less than the last.
The newest tarot reading weighed heavily on Draco's mind when he apparated back to his London townhouse that night. Once again, he chose to focus on the wider implications than the meanings behind the cards themselves. Somehow that was easier to consider. Those considerations, though, were what had him grunting in annoyance before he sat down at his desk and did something he thought he'd never do. There was only one person who might be able to answer his questions - and that person just happened to be one of the very few people he could actually ask.
Picking up a quill, he grabbed a fresh sheet of parchment and wrote.
Granger,
Have you ever heard of Muggles being able to harness magic?
D.M.
A/N: Just to let you guys know, as my plans stand right now the next chapter will be the final one of the month/year so I can take a break and focus on original works for a week or two, but the next one will also have a lot happening and will probably be pretty lengthy! Hopefully that makes up for it!