Jackie: Woohoo! Two chapters in one night!
Agent Blorange: Long ones, too. I'm starting to like the way you think, Draco-muse.
Draco-muse: I told you I was all over it.
Takeru-muse: Hey, remember when I helped her write 3 chapters in one day for CSMH?
Draco-muse: You helped her revise three chapters, not write them.
Jackie: Boys, play nice. Anyways, I don't own Harry Potter. Or Draco. Or Tom Felton. Only in my dreams.
Agent Blorange: Ron fans beware! There is some anti-Ron stuff from now on.
Jackie: I don't hate Ron, I've already said that. I don't hate any of the trio; it's strictly for literary reasons that they get bashed. After all, this is a Draco-centric story.
Draco-muse: So enjoy!
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Chapter 4: Rejection and Acceptance
"Mr. Malfoy, would you please see me after class."
Draco gulped. "Yes, Professor McGonnogall."
The rest of the Transfiguration class began to whisper possible things Draco could be in trouble for. Jackie turned around and gave him a reassuring glance. Draco smiled sheepishly back at her; Even a glance from her can make me feel better.
As the class filed out, leaving their papers on McGonnogall's desk, Jackie leaned over and whispered in Draco's ear very discretely, "I'll wait for you outside." Draco gave a slight nod in acknowledgement and finished signing his name to his report. McGonnogall was waiting behind her desk as he walked up, mustering all the courage he could (and trying to figure out what he did that got him in trouble), and laid his paper on top of the pile.
She immediately picked it up and scanned it. "Mr. Malfoy, last year your work showed a steady decrease in quality, and earlier this year was no different."
Great, she's on about my grades now, too.
"However, the other professors and I have noticed a marked improvement in your schoolwork lately."
Huh? You have? I didn't notice any difference. Of course, I've been distracted…
McGonnogall set his paper down and looked at him over her glasses. "Now tell me, what exactly has motivated such a change in you? I know that I'm not teaching any better. And don't pretend that I don't know about your little incident—it's part of Snape's job as a professor to inform the other teachers of that kind of event."
Great, every bloody teacher in this school knows I tried to blast myself into oblivion. "I'm not sure, Professor…I haven't even noticed a change, myself."
Jackie's face flashed in front of the window in the door, and Draco caught himself glancing in her direction. McGonnogall noticed his distraction and smiled. "Take my advice young man." She said, rising from her desk. "A girl like her will help you do extraordinary things. Treat her well." And with a pat on his shoulder, she walked out the door.
"Good afternoon Miss Ashmore," the professor chirped as she walked down the hall, not even looking at the surprised girl standing outside the door. Draco soon appeared in the doorway, and both exchanged surprised looks, shrugged, and walked off towards the Great Hall.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* "Ron, slow down before you make yourself sick, buddy."
"It's never hurt me before."
Jackie looked strangely at Ron as he indulged in his daily vacuuming of food off his plate. Harry and Hermione had gotten used to it, but to Jackie, it made even Steven, her football-playing, 6'2", 300 pound friend, look like an anorexic (A/N- see Chapter 10, when I write it). "Well, you'll be regretting it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but in 10 years or so when your met slows down and you wonder why you've got a beer belly when you don't drink."
"His met? What's a met?" Hermione asked. Sometimes, the slang Jackie used confused the born-and-bred Britons, and vise versa. They were constantly explaining themselves.
"His metabolism. You know, the thing that makes you hungry or thirsty, how fast you use up the energy in the food you eat?" Jackie smirked, because the confused look on Hermione's face (which she was learning quickly which topics produced such a look) was priceless. "Oh."
There was a moment of silence as the information sunk in, and then the Trio resumed conversation as usual, and Jackie zoned out into her own little world. She was mentally reviewing a test she had taken earlier in Charms, when she felt a pair of eyes staring at her from across the room. She glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes made contact with another pair of pale blue eyes from the other side of the Hall. Draco realized that he had been caught staring, and at first looked away, blushing, but his eyes slowly returned to meet hers, and a smile slid across his face. She smiled back, fighting a giggling fit from seeing him flustered, and mouthed "Play it off" and winked at him. Draco laughed silently and winked back, and put a finger to his lips indicating that their friendship was a secret one. Jackie nodded slightly and turned back around.
"What was that all about?"
Harry, Ron, and Hermione were all staring at her. Crap, they saw. "What was what?" she asked innocently. Harry tilted his head. "You were signaling across the room. Who's your new friend?"
Oh good, they didn't see who I was talking to. "He's in my Advanced Magic Mathematics class. I don't think you know him. But he's cool…he's my buddy." Satisfied, they once again resumed status quo.
It was the truth: Draco was in her math class, the only math class offered at Hogwarts. And they didn't know him…they knew about him, they knew of him, but they didn't know him. And Draco was her "buddy". All of her friends were her "buddies"; it was a word she had picked up from a friend back home. Especially those with whom she wished to be more than "buddies" with.
Jackie finished her lunch, and walked out of the Great Hall and towards the courtyard where she could do some thinking. She hadn't been out of the Hall too long, when she felt herself being followed. Before she could turn around, two hands were covering her eyes, and she felt a robed figure press up against her from behind.
"Guess who."
"Hmm, I don't know, who could it be?" Of course she knew who it was; Jackie just wanted to annoy him a little. "Could it be Potter?"
The hands were gone and Jackie smirked into the face of an "offended" Draco. "I've never been so insulted in my life! Fine, goodbye then!" He started to walk off, and Jackie called after him. "Wait, I'm sorry, come back!" Draco stopped and turned around, "Just kidding!" Both of them laughed and headed out towards the courtyard together.
Back at the entrance to the hall, three very confused Gryffindor 6th years exchanged surprised glances as they watched the "Odd Couple" walk out together.
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Later that night, Jackie was sitting in the Gryffindor common room, curled up on the floor in the corner with a French textbook and a notebook, copying down vocabulary. She was in the middle of the medical chapter when a shadow fell over her book. She looked up just as Ron was crouching down next to her. "What're you doing?" he asked, looking at her handwriting. He picked up the notebook, spun it around several times, and raised his eyebrows. "Please say this isn't Potions homework."
Jackie laughed. "No, it's Independent Study French. I have a lot of these this year, because this school doesn't offer normal classes."
Ron sat the rest of the way down. "What do you mean?"
Jackie shrugged. "Back in San Antonio, Witchcraft courses were only half of our curriculum. We still had to take math, science, history, foreign language, and all the other classes. At Hiogatoah, if you were a witch or wizard, you were at school 12 hours a day, literally. Later for special projects."
"No wonder early classes don't bother you," Ron tried to joke. Jackie could tell that he was nervous about something. "Jackie, when you were signaling across the room at lunch…you were talking to Malfoy, weren't you?"
Jackie looked down at her notebook. "Yes. No matter what I hear about him, it's really hard for me to believe that someone like him is hated by so many people." Ron scooted closer. "Listen to me, Jackie: He'll change. Right now, he's probably just trying to break you in, but he wants something. That's the only reason he's friends with anyone." Jackie turned away from Ron and stared into the fire.
"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, I'm just telling you what I've seen."
Ron's voice had softened a great deal between the two sentences. Jackie looked back at his face, and noticed that he was looking at her strangely. She also noticed something else.
"Where are Harry and Hermione?"
Ron propped up on one arm. "At the library. I wanted to talk to you alone, though, so I stayed behind." Jackie smirked. "I get the impression that the two of them don't like me much."
It was Ron's turn to look down. "Harry and Mione are very competitive. You're smart, you act differently, you think differently, and you're the center of attention. That was they're job. They look at you as a threat rather than a friend."
Both were silent for a while as Ron stared into the fire and Jackie scribbled a few more notes in her notebook. Finally, Ron broke the silence. "Um, Jackie, I was wondering…"
Oh God. He's going to ask me something I don't want to answer…please don't let it be what I think it's going to be…
"…um, I mean, I like you, I mean, you know, and, well…would you be my girlfriend?"
Damn it. You had to ask.
Jackie winced as she tried to think of the right way to phrase her answer. "Ron, you're my friend, and I like you better than almost anyone else I've met here…but, you know, sometimes it's better to stay friends than to risk ruining it on a relationship."
Ron looked at his feet. He didn't say anything for a while. Jackie felt her heart breaking along with his. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."
"It's alright," Ron said quietly. "At least you were honest with me." He got to his feet and trudged out of the common room, without looking behind him or saying another word.
Jackie put down her textbook and curled up as small as she could make herself, and tried to keep the sadness Ron had radiated from making her cry.
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"Hey Jackie, are you coming or what?"
It had been a week since Ron and Jackie's conversation, and once again they were all leaving Transfigurations. Hermione was looking at Jackie standing outside the classroom, who she thought should have been following them. "Not today, I've got a…previous engagement to honor." Hermione shrugged and walked back to the others.
Draco emerged from the room a few seconds later, and Jackie met up with him and the two headed towards the grounds, where they were going to spend their lunch hour.
"Where did she say she was going?" Ron asked Hermione back in the Great Hall. "She said she had a 'previous engagement', whatever that was." Hermione and Harry glanced at each other, then Ron. He hadn't told them about what went on that night in the common room, but judging by his dampened spirits, they could guess pretty well.
Dean Thomas leaned over to the group. "You mean Jackie? Man, you will not believe what I'm going to tell you."
"What?" all three asked in unison.
"We were coming back from Magical Creatures," said Seamus, "and we saw her walking towards the lake…with Malfoy."
Ron's face turned red. Harry and Hermione exchanged nervous glances. "Did you hear what they were talking about?"
Dean shrugged. "They weren't speaking English, that's for sure. But Malfoy was carrying a basket of some kind."
Ron was up before anyone could catch him, and Harry and Hermione were hard-pressed to follow him out towards the lake.
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« C'est beau temps aujord'hui, n'est pas? » Jackie asked Draco.
« Oui, il faut chaud et ensoleillé...parfait pour une pique-nique. » Draco responded.
A couple of third years gave them strange looks as they passed. Draco and Jackie just looked at each other, and then burst out laughing once they were out of earshot. French was yet another common bond they had found between them…that and the pleasure they received from speaking it around people who had no clue what they were saying.
They reached the shore of the lake, and Draco spread out the blanket while Jackie removed her shoes and stared out over the surface of the lake, where the giant squid was breeching a tentacle and one of its enormous eyes. As they ate their lunch, Draco and Jackie kept stealing glances at each other, and looking away quickly when they were caught. After they had finished their food, Jackie lay back gently in Draco's lap, and both stared out over the surface of the lake, watching the waves reflect sparkling sunrays into their eyes. Strikingly different from the rest of their time together, there wasn't much said at the moment; both felt that there were no words necessary for this situation.
Finally, Draco broke the silence. "Ron asked you out, didn't he?"
Jackie looked over her shoulder at him. "Yeah, he did."
Draco was quiet for a minute, and slightly tense. "What'd you say?"
Jackie looked down, and saw Draco's hand lying on the blanket. She reached down and gently took it in hers. "I told him that he was my friend. Nothing more."
Draco smiled, hardly believing how right everything was going lately. A month ago, he had been ready to end his life. Now, looking out over the horizon, holding the most wonderful girl he had ever known in his arms, her hand in his, he would have given anything to freeze time for eternity. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and bent close to her ear.
"And if I were to ask you the same question, what would your answer be?"
Jackie smiled softly and closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was soft and silky. "I thought you'd never ask."
Jackie shifted and turned to face Draco, who was smiling half out of ecstasy, and half from shock. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and Draco pulled her in close to him. The air was getting thick between them. Both of them were getting intoxicated by the presence of the other; eyelids were getting heavier, faces getting closer. It was Draco who finally closed the gap between them. He placed a soft, tentative kiss on her lips, moved back, and then went back for a harder, more confident one. Despite the rumors circling about Draco's "experience" with Pansy and other Hogwarts' girls, this was, in fact, Draco's first kiss, and Jackie seemed to sense his hesitation. She took the initiative, and traced Draco's lips with her tongue, and Draco copied the gesture. Soon, the kiss was a deep, passion-filled exchange, with both participants playing their part in the action.
When they finally separated for breath, Draco leaned back and ran his hands through Jackie's hair, feeling the softness of the loose red strands. Jackie laid her head on Draco's shoulder, and gently laid a hand on his chest. They could have stayed like that all day, until the bell rang that signified the end of lunch and the summons back to class. Jackie replaced her shoes and helped Draco fold the blanket, and the two walked back to the building hand in hand.
"Jackie, maybe we should be careful at first. We don't want the whole school to know that we're together just yet."
Jackie nodded in agreement. "I've noticed that inter-house relationships are frowned upon here. We should wait a little while, to give people time to adjust."
Draco leaned over and kissed her quickly on the cheek, and Jackie giggled as he began tickling her in the side.
From a few feet away, a hidden figure was watching them from the bushes. He watched angrily as they walked back to the castle together. His eyes reflected pure hatred and rejection at the same time. He would have his revenge.
"Ron, what are you doing back there?"
He didn't even bother answering Hermione's question as her attention shifted to the new couple silhouetted against the horizon.
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Agent Blorange: Hey, you made it through an entire chapter with no song references!
Jackie: Yeah, I even left out Rent references too. You should be proud of me.
Draco-muse: Golf claps!
Agent Blorange: NO! RENT! YOU JUST RUINED IT!
Takeru-muse: Don't listen to him. I'm on your side: After all, this is Jackie we're talking about.
Draco-muse: Exactly. It wouldn't be a Ken's Dark Angel story without a song reference.
Agent Blorange: I had to be friends with the Broadway nut.
Jackie: Get over it. Anyways, it's 11 o'clock, so don't expect anything else tonight, but watch for more chapters tomorrow. And don't forget to R&R, I love reviews; they let me know that people are reading my stories.
Draco-muse: Stay tuned!
Takeru-muse: That was my line from CSMH!
Draco-muse: Get over CSMH already, it's long gone, no one knows what you're talking about!
Jackie: Ignore them. The testosterone is raging between my muses. I sometimes wonder how they got so much, considering they live in a girl's mind…oh well. A bientôt!
(A/N- Here's the translation of the short French dialogue earlier:
"The weather's beautiful today, isn't it?
"Yes, it's warm and sunny…perfect for a picnic."
Hey, I said I spoke French…I didn't say I spoke a lot!)