Disclaimer: I OWN IT!!! I REALLY DO!!! I OWN– no. I don't. Dammit. The mighty Rowling owns Harry and Draco; all I have is a computer, an obsession, and a cucumber in my mini-fridge. Except it isn't really my mini-fridge. C'es la vie.
Warning: This story contains slash, which, roughly translated, means good ol' same-sex, sweet, passionate boy-luvvvvvvv. Deal with it. Or just read something else.
A/N: So, after all that tedious exposition, the story actually begins. In this chapter, poor hapless Draco delves into the world of women's fashion and is besotted with a certain black-haired boy. He just hasn't realized it yet.
The Makings of a Damsel
Chapter One:
Living Spaces
The years wore on, as they tend to do in order to get to the actual story, and Draco became reluctantly accustomed to his new life. He learned to pick berries and roots when he could find them, and became especially good at annoying the less ferocious animals until they gave him food when he could not find any. He dug a small fire pit outside the hut window, which the dragon would obligingly light when it grew especially cold. When the sun was high and the creatures of the forest seemed less inclined to attacking him than usual, Draco explored the woods within his allowed boundaries, finding it mostly to be the same all around.
Draco did not want for pastimes, for he became well-versed in the art of entertaining himself. Putting the sour feelings of the past behind him, he did lovely things, like picking flowers (which he then viciously tore to pieces), singing songs (with tasteless and offensive lyrics that drove the forest animals to vexation), and practicing his penmanship (by listing all the horrible things he would do to the villagers if he ever escaped the confines of the woods). He also delved into the contents of the shoddy bookshelf, finding a mixture of fanciful fiction and instructional volumes on things that he might have learned from the potions master in the village. While he hopefully searched their chapters for ways to counteract the Imprisonment Potion, he found none, and continued his studies with only a half-hearted interest. As for company, the dragon would stop by his hut every second week or so, and while Draco's friendship with the dragon had a distinct flavor of sulkiness and could only be attributed to his desire to avoid being shredded to bits by gleaming teeth, he began to count on the visits, to stifle the boredom, at least.
Eventually he grew out of the clothes he had been wearing upon his arrival, and with his teeth gritted, he turned to the wooden trunk. Over the years he went through a number of personal favorites. At the age of eleven he was partial to a pretty blue gown that billowed out and showed off his ankles. At thirteen he favored a simple black frock with sleeves to his elbows and a cinch-up front. The following year he went through a bawdy, rebellious stage typical of blossoming adolescence, and sported an evocative crimson peasant dress. The revealing garb had loose, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a low cut front that he sometimes stuffed with leaves when he felt the birds weren't looking. This habit died out, and in the end he settled on an imposing green and silver garment with a high, snug collar and fitted sleeves that tapered off at his wrists. The skirt hung down straight without so much as a bow or a billow, and he felt he rather looked like a mage. In time he grew to pride himself on his appearance, certain that he was the most impressive-looking castaway this woods had ever had the pleasure of seeing. He took to slicking his hair back with a mixture of water and tree sap, and smirking saucily at his reflection in the stream. The only thing that marred his visage was that damned scar on his forehead, which he tried to hide by letting a section of hair fall forward over it. He felt certain that the disfiguring scar would vanish if he could only break the potion's hold on him, but of course if that happened, he would be much too concerned with maiming the populace of his dear homeland to bother with a silly thing like a scar.
Thus, with a somewhat vindictive will to live, Draco carried on his existence in the dark woods, with only the bemusing dragon for company. He would have gone on in this fashion, except that there is a story to be told, and that would make for a remarkably dull story. So let us introduce our catalyst and get on with it.
One sun-dappled afternoon, Draco was scratching his somewhat mangled quill over a yellowing piece of parchment, detailing an extremely nasty potion that he had read about in one of the thicker volumes. With relish, he described the dire, debilitating illness caused by the concoction, and how he would poison the village well with the substance and laugh maniacally as he watched the village inhabitants scream and writhe in anguish. He was listing specific playmates of old that he would get particular glee out of seeing suffer when he heard an irksomely cheerful humming. Nearly blotting the page in his hurry to stand up, he looked frantically outside the window for the offending figure. Just on the edge of the clearing, looking about with amiable curiosity, was a wiry black-haired boy with an easy grin and a pair of mocking green eyes. As the wind tousled the boy's unruly hair, Draco's eyes widened at the sight of a strange, lightning-bolt shaped scar not dissimilar to his own.
The stranger's eyes traveled over to the hut, and Draco frantically ducked down and put his hands over his mouth. He had an inexplicable desire to remain undiscovered, and his eyes darted all over the meager hut for a place to hide. Hearing the swish of footsteps through grass drawing nearer, he crawled across the floor and squeezed himself into the trunk of dresses. The wooden confinement cut off all sound except for Draco's own breathing, which he distractedly hoped wasn't loud enough to attract attention. A knocking at the door paralyzed him entirely, and as the seconds wore on in silence, a random worry that he had not tidied up before company came itched in the back of his brain. He stifled a sigh of relief when he remembered that the door had been barred earlier that morning, but panicked again when he realized that there was nothing preventing the intruder from climbing in through the window. Having no way of telling when or if the boy had left, Draco stayed in the chest until claustrophobia got the better of him, and then cautiously lifted the lid an inch. Seeing no one, he rolled gracelessly out of the box and onto the unforgiving dirt floor. He got up and peered out the window, but the clearing was utterly devoid of mysterious, oddly charming boys.
Letting out a breath of relief (disappointment?), Draco promptly strode the two feet to the bookshelf and pulled out an ominous text with a black-turned-grey cover. He had no idea if the boy planned on returning, but if so, Draco had no intention of being caught unawares. Flipping past page after page of spidery writing, he stopped at a passage titled The Art of Going Unnoticed. Running his finger down the rough paper, he found what he was looking for: a potion that would let the drinker remain unseen for weeks at a time. It was not an invisibility potion per se, rather it caused the drinker to blend with his surroundings so that he would become unworthy of notice, even if a person were actively looking for him. Scanning the script, Draco saw that the only stipulation was that the potion be made by the dark of the moon. The ingredients varied, but none were too difficult to obtain. Draco smirked when he saw dragon's scales listed; he was probably the only person who could deem that particular material "not too difficult to obtain." He would have to bide his time until the dragon's next visit, but after that he had but to wait just a few days for the new moon, and then he could prepare the potion. As long as he was vigilant until then, he would be fine.
The next few days went without incident, and when the boy did come back, Draco was on his guard. Rather than stay in his hut, Draco had spent a great deal of time outdoors, where it would be easier to hide in just such an emergency. He hid now behind an aging cypress, just a few yards from the edge of the clearing, and watched as the blob-like form across the field sat down in the grass, apparently to have lunch. After a few minutes had passed, Draco realized he was holding his breath and let it out. The noises of the woods chattered on as the sun moved through the trees, and after finishing his meal, the black-haired boy got up and left just as silently as he had come.
The following evening the dragon ambled over for a chat. He listened and was delighted at the turn of events, and although he seemed more keen on the idea of Draco making friends with the boy than hiding from him, he genially scratched off a few greyish-green scales for Draco to use, saying, "I have far too many of these. I really should just give up this business of growing them."
Thus, by the dark of the moon, with only a few stars to light his progress, Draco mixed and sprinkled into the heavy clay pot in accordance with the instructions. Stirring in the powdered arrowroot and making sure the potion was the proper color (a pale, translucent blue), he quickly poured the fluid into five separate bottles before it could congeal. He then stoppered each bottle but one. Being careful not to shake the potion, Draco picked up the open bottle and swallowed the contents in one breathless gulp. Looking about him, he waited for something to happen. He held his hand out in front of him to gauge his results, and was watching it intently when the sound around him began to fade. Simultaneously, the world around him blurred and brightened, and then his hearing cut off completely. Desperate for any sort of sound, Draco shook his head and screamed, but it was as if that scream existed in another realm, one that Draco was very much removed from. His vision faded in and out, shifting from grey to darkest red, and back to jarringly electric white again. Draco knew that he was hyperventilating, but the fact that he couldn't hear himself breathing made him feel helpless to control it. Suddenly a quick clenching gripped his chest violently, and then subsided before he could even register the pain, like the sensation of putting out a candle with wet fingers. To his whimpering, astounded relief, his hearing was restored, and as he heard himself collapse onto the wet grass he wiped the tears from his eyes and smiled shakily, feeling childishly grateful. After regaining his breath, he looked around and noticed that it was somehow much harder for him to see where his arm ended and the grass and trees beyond began. Observing that this was true with the rest of his body as well, he assumed that the potion had worked. He placed the other four decanters in the pot and gleefully dragged it back into the hut, elated with his success. With a satisfied smile he rolled into his squishy bed and closed his eyes. As long as he took a bit of potion every few weeks, he could not be seen by the wandering boy or by anything else.
And so Draco walked about freely and fearlessly, and when the black-haired boy arrived in the clearing some days later, Draco simply stood in the middle of the field, almost defiant in his voyeurism. The boy came more frequently after that, sometimes bringing food (bread and cheese seemed to be his primary staple), and sometimes just coming to relax. On one occasion, the boy brought a small, leather-bound book and wrote with his modest quill until the sun went down. Sometimes Draco could tell that the boy had visited while he himself had been off gathering food or some such errand. Birds would be pecking at a spot of crumbs left behind or grass would be short where it had been absently torn from the ground.
A bit of uncertainty was caused when the stranger left his short, flimsy cloak behind one morning. Draco hesitated, unable to decide if it were better to leave the cloak there and hope nothing happened to it or keep it safe and return it to the boy in person, exposing himself. He decided to leave it at least for the night, and the event was concluded when the boy came back for it the next day. Draco's barriers were breached further one afternoon in fall, when he came home to find a misshapen loaf of bread on the broad stone that served as his windowsill. Draco was again presented with a choice. If he ate the bread, that action would be a sure confirmation that someone was living in the hut. On the other hand, even a chunk of slightly burnt bread offered a bit of gratifying variety when confronted with an endless barrage of edible forest plantae. Finally convincing himself that the hut had enough signs of recent use anyway to justify throwing caution to the wind, he bit into the bread and concluded that it was a bit brittle for his taste.
Things went pleasantly enough as autumn progressed, with the black-haired boy turning up nearly every day and Draco taking his potion as often as was needed. From time to time, Draco would wonder how the boy had come to explore the woods, where he lived, what sort of family he had, and that sort of thing, but then he would abruptly shake himself out of his reverie and focus on newer, more horrific ways to torture the much-loathed villagers. Despite his resolve, his list of possible revenges had often been neglected as of late, although he continued to tear up wildflowers whenever he came across them and wasn't in the middle of something. The dragon had been visiting less frequently, because he had said he was "a tad shy of strangers," and didn't want to alert the new boy of his presence.
"He might be frightening," said the dragon gravely, "Or he might try to keep me as a pet. You see that sort of thing so often these days." At this Draco snorted in response, and told the dragon that this boy wasn't loony enough to do a thing like that. The dragon peered curiously down his snout at the blond boy, but left it at, "You're right, of course."
Two bread loaves and a shower of falling leaves later, however, Draco had to reconsider his position in this unconventional not-quite-friendship. He was walking back from a trip to the stream and absently letting his mind meander, when he suddenly jolted himself out of his daze and froze. The black-haired boy was leaning up against a tree no more than three feet in front of him, munching on a hunk of milk-white cheese. Draco stood, rigid and terrified, as the boy proceeded to his bread. The potion offered the ability to not be seen, certainly, but it had no guarantees against the dangers of proximity. What if the boy stood up and bumped right into him, what then?! Moving out of the way simply did not occur to Draco's panic-stricken mind. As the black-haired boy wiped the crumbs off his lap, Draco prayed fiercely that he would turn around and walk the other way. However, instead of getting up to leave, the boy rolled up his cloak, placed it under his head, and curled up to take a nap. Draco blinked in surprise and then waited, and the moments stretched on. As the boy's breathing grew slow and heavy, Draco exhaled. This was a brilliant stroke of luck. He could make his escape and the boy would be none the wiser. Now was his chance for the perfect getaway. He vaguely realized he had sat down next to the boy.
Scrutinizing, Draco took in the sleeping figure before him. Up close, he could see that the boy was really no younger than he was himself, that his woeful choice of too-big clothing only made him appear to be small. Perhaps, Draco reflected, there had not actually been much of a "choice" involved. His hair was even more unkempt than it had appeared from far away; he had an errant freckle just below his cheekbone. Dark eyebrows and eyelashes gave his skin a sort of haunting luster that it probably would have lacked otherwise. His scar was visible through his mess of hair, and Draco wondered quietly where he had gotten it. The boy's countenance was soft and peaceful, but something in the set of his eyes, more visible now that they were closed, suggested that he was not unfamiliar with trouble. But there was that smile still, that unconquerable smile, playing on his lips. Draco squirmed as he felt an unexplainable surge of annoyance. Really, what kind of person was so happy all the time? It was ridiculous. Even in the face of threadbare clothing and stale bread and that scar, how could anyone possibly smile like that? It was absolutely impossible. Draco narrowed his eyes at the boy. It was sheer cheek, that was what it was, like that time that he had been humming when Draco first saw him, humming that aggravating, chipper tune without a second thought, humming and swinging his arms and smiling as if things would actually be alright...a spring of hope shot up unbidden from Draco's heart, and he angrily squashed it back down, still staring. How could anyone...
The boy was an idiot, Draco decided.
As the sunlight rippled across the two of them, Draco glared at the sleeper a bit longer than was strictly necessary. Then, with a confused scowl, he got up quickly and stalked back to his hut.
A/N: So that seemed a bit long when I was writing it. Nonetheless, that's probably what the other chapters will be like. This is all very experimental, as I've never done a multi-part fic before. Wanna tell me how I'm doing? To be more precise, wanna tell me how much I suck? Go for it. Feedback is my three-color Mexican fiesta. Arrriba!