Disclaimer: Poor innocent Harry Potter and poor...not-quite-so-innocent...Draco Malfoy just happened to wander into my story-starved clutches; they really belong to J. K. All cower before her. The Dumbledore Dragon concept is mine, unless Jo's holding out on us, but his character basis is still the property of Her Eminence Rowling. Grovel, mortals, grovel and flee like hell.
Warning: Implications of HOMOSEXUAL MALES IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER can be found in this fic. Just once, I wanted to write that in shockingly noticeable capital letters. Kind of like writing SEX on top of an advertisement for our Literary Arts magazine to get people's attention...
A/N: Hmm, after the first two chapters it took me a little while to summon up the will to charge forward with the fic. Hopefully that's something I'll get better at. In this chapter, winter comes to break up our favorite couple, Draco and Harry. Oh, and the dragon gets nostalgic. Caffeine is oh-so-terrible for a serious writer. Good thing I'm not one. Onward, ho!
The Makings of a Damsel
Chapter Two
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire
"I apologize," said Draco coldly, "Could you repeat that one more time?"
The dragon sighed good-naturedly. "Dilly Bobble," he repeated matter-of-factly, earning him a withering stare from the temperamental blonde. Winter was fast approaching, and the dragon was leaving the following day for a vacation in Bali. As such, he was teaching Draco a simple spell to conjure up a fire, since he himself would not be available to do so. Draco, however, had trouble with certain fundamental concepts.
"You're telling me that the magical words for igniting a fire are..." and here he gritted his teeth, "Dilly Bobble?"
A flame caught on the pile of wood beside him.
"Well done," said the dragon, "Excellent force behind that one."
Draco slumped in defeat. "Dilly Bobble, honestly..." he muttered. "Are those even real words?"
"Of course not," the dragon scoffed, spelling the fire out ("poxy snaf!"). "There are only a handful of spell-phrases that are. And with good reason, too. I mean to say, imagine if the incantation for sparking a flame were 'hot.' Every time someone brought up the weather, a house would burn down!"
Draco had to admit that there was some sense in this. Resigned to having to say ludicrous phrases such as "Dilly Bobble" all winter, he sat down beside the freshly spelled fire.
"When will you return?" Draco inquired, putting the appropriate amount of hostility in his voice so that the dragon didn't think he cared too much.
"Well, let's see...I think I'll stay there at least until mid-Spring; it starts to get muggy around that time. Oh, but at the Equinox they have such wonderful festivals. Oh, and the plays..." The dragon sighed wistfully. "I do love Bali. I'm so well-received there. Sometimes I hide in the water and tickle the swimming children, and then they run screaming back to their parents, crying, 'Mummy, Daddy, there's a sea-thing in the water!' and squealing with such delight...we have such fun together; they love me so..."
Draco put his head in his hands, trying not to throw a rock at the lamentably deluded chatterbox dragon. Taking notice, the dragon pushed up from his position on the ground and stretched from snout to tail, saying, "Well, I can see that you're tired from all that conjuring. Take care, my boy; I suppose I won't see you until Spring. Although you might not recognize me when I come back," he added with a wink, "All that time in the sun leaves me so tan, turns my scales the most delightful shade of gold, you know." Draco bravely tried to feign rapt attention, interested attention, partial attention, any attention at all, and was only too relieved when he caught the words, "...Well, I must be on my way, such a lot of preparations to be made..."
Saying his goodbye's to the dragon, he thought a little bitterly of the next few months he would have to spend alone. The dragon had never taken a vacation before this, for the winters had been mild and there had been no random boys to keep Draco silent company. But word of mouth had forecasted a harsher winter than was usually experienced in these parts, bringing even several feet of snow. And there was the boy.
Draco's thoughts turned to the enigmatic, cheerful visitor who had come regularly for the past month. It was true that the boy was interesting, if a bit disturbingly optimistic, but for one thing, Draco couldn't talk to the boy. In all truthfulness, Draco did not allow himself to talk to the boy, having some queer obsession with maintaining some level of secrecy (that level had been steadily dropping as time progressed). For another thing, the boy had been coming less frequently since the cold had set in, and Draco feared he would stop coming altogether once the snow hit. It was hard to blame him, what with his woebegone state of dress that couldn't be proper for winter weather, but Draco did feel a tad betrayed. Harumphing at this train of thought, Draco decided to practice his newly learned spell.
Approaching the fire pit, which still had a reasonable amount of wood in it, Draco lifted his chin aristocratically. With as much dignity as he could muster, he commanded, "Dilly Bobble!"
The firewood mocked him with it's cold, flame-less branches.
Draco stomped and leaned closer. "Dilly Bobble!" It laughed at him still. "Dilly! Bobble! Dilly Bobble!" Fire shot several yards into the air two inches from his face, and Draco let out a horrifically girlish scream. The fire settled merrily in front of him, as if to say, "Oh, aren't I sweet?" Draco had the urge to spit. After a moment of consideration, he did. The fire hissed at him, sending a flying speck of ember his way by means of retort. Clearly live, spell-cast fires of non-dragon-breath origins were a bit touchy, and took things quite personally.
Draco practiced the spell throughout the week, having varying degrees of success and never getting it on the first try. The spell became quite necessary, too, as the cold increased its presence. One day Draco was huddling over the stubborn fire pit shouting exhaustedly, wearing a woolen dresscoat over his usual raiment, when a hum that had gone unheard for weeks penetrated the clearing. Panicking at the thought of being caught in the middle of something so obvious, Draco forgot all about the potion and hid behind his hut. The humming cut off as the not-quite-stranger noticed the crackling fire. A relieved grin spread across the black-haired boy's face, and he plopped down beside it, stretching his hands out to its deliciously hot flames.
Draco noted that, despite the stinging cold, the boy was still sporting the same pathetic attire. He thought of fetching one of the other dresses for him; he could split the plain black one down the front and make it look reasonably like a coat. He was hesitant to do so now, however, because even though the spell covered up tiny things like breathing and grass tread under foot (all part of the 'going unnoticed' part of the contract), an opening door would certainly get the boy's attention. He fought back the cricket-sized voice in his ear that said that maybe getting the boy's attention wasn't so bad a thing, and decided to set it out by the firepit after the boy had gone, so that he could discover it the next time he visited. Draco fervently wished there would be a next time, deciding as an afterthought that his yearning and enthusiasm was due to the dragon's departure and his own resultant lack of company.
Time wore on with the boy sitting next to the fire, hugging his knees. Draco had moved closer to alleviate the cold, but his legs and back had grown tired after standing in the same position for such a long time. Minute followed minute with no distinction, until at one point an ember popped out of the fire and landed on the black-haired boy's knuckle.
"Ow!" the boy cried sharply, frowning at the tiny burn and sucking on his knuckle. Draco felt a confusing desire to stare and move closer as the boy did so, and looked down to see that he was inadvertently running a finger over his own knuckle. He quickly jerked his hands back to his side, and the evening continued uneventfully. The sky deepened, the myriad of sunset colors shrinking, until a faded dark surrounded them. The back-haired boy looked up with a knowing sigh, and rose from the ground. Glancing around one final time in a lazy attempt to uncover the resident of the white hut, the boy faced south. He pulled his ratty cloak tight around him and looked longingly back at the fire, but turned away with a last sigh and left the clearing.
Draco didn't see him after that. He set out the dress-made-coat by the fire as he had resolved to do, but the boy made no more trips to the clearing. Draco wistfully thought that it was just as well, and busied himself by gathering supplies for the impending snow. He worked feverishly, collecting berries and fruits one day and digging up roots the next. His fingers grew stained with dirt, but he had no desire to wash them in the frigid stream, which was moving sluggishly by now.
Before dawn a few mornings later, he woke to find the ground coated lightly in snow, the tips of the longer stalks of grass poking through the crystalline white. He gazed at the moonlit scene for a few minutes, before rubbing his arms and returning to the warmth of his bedcovers. After the first snow he stayed in his hut, going outside only to light the fire. The fire he kept going at all times if he could help it; the heat would often seep into the hut and keep the snow at bay. Eventually, however, the pile of firewood ran out, and he had no choice but to brave the sparkling cold and gather more. He pulled on two extra dresses, both apparently worn by rather robust women, and topped the outfit with the woolen dresscoat. Grabbing a knotty staff to clear the snow ahead of him, and a rock-hewn knife to cut marks into trees so that he wouldn't lose his way, he grabbed the largest dress and tied the sleeves together, letting the rest of it drag on the ground. In this way he could tote more wood around than the meager amount his arms could hold, piling it all on the skirt and pulling the stocked-up dress behind him by the sleeves. He let out a dramatic sigh and stepped out the door, recasting the fire-spell so that the hut would not be too freezing when he got back.
The project proved more arduous than he expected. The staff was not very efficient in plowing the way, and pieces of wood occasionally tumbled off the dress, causing him to swear ill-temperedly and kick trees. These actions usually resulted in mouthfuls of snow from shaken branches, which caused more swearing but no additional kicking.
When the dress refused to carry another branch, Draco turned and began to retrace his path. He had not gone thirty feet when the wind picked up, whistling in his ears, and the snow tore down furiously from the sky. Gigantic flakes swarmed around him like icy white locusts and blinded his path, but Draco could squint and feel along where he had cut marks into the bark of trees he had passed. He was very grateful now for the little rock-chiseled knife and his presence of mind to bring it. Though he hadn't gone a very great distance, it took him hours to get back. Near the end he had had to push the wood-loaded dress in front of him; too much wood was falling off when he lugged it behind. Thus, aching, stiff, and absolutely crazy with cold, he nearly cried when he saw the gleam of his valiant, stalwart spell-fire. It took him another ten minutes to get to it, but when he did he dumped the firewood outside the hut door and stood as close to the blaze as was humanly possible without catching the woolen coat on fire. He briefly considered doing so, weighing the pros and cons of the brilliant momentary heat of clothing burning around you until you had to rip it off or let yourself burn alive. Even the latter part of the thought seemed enticing, until he remembered his vow of revenge on the villagers and decided not to give them the luxury of his suicide. He was determined, if not virtuous.
Staying by the fire a bit longer, his thoughts drifted to his family. He hadn't thought about them in years, but this sort of shock made him want to turn responsibility over to someone bigger than himself as he had so often done as a child. He smiled sadly at the fire upon remembering a time when he had played in the snow with no coat on, happily making snow villages to lord over, and throwing fistful after fistful of snow at the other children when they laughed at him for his solitude. In the end he had favored violence over snow warfare, and had even indulged in a little biting, as he was still around seven years old. The other children had screamed and stomped his houses into the ground before running away. Absolutely livid, seven-year-old Draco had painstakingly recreated them, taking until nightfall to do so. He made six more houses which he pretended were owned by the stupid village children who had laughed at him, and was stomping on them with all his might when his mother's voice pierced the air. He was surprised she had even come outside, until he looked around him and saw how dark it had gotten. She had given him a shrieking, bird-like lecture on his senseless behavior, and he had explained about the snow village and the laughing children and how he just had to make the village again, leaving out the part about the biting. She had carried him off to his warm bed and forbid him to go outside for three days, which he spent dolefully gazing out the window at the exciting snow he wasn't playing with.
Yes, he had loved the snow then. He straightened up, brought back to present circumstances. The snow was not a thing of joy for him now, and he ad the villagers to thank for that. His mood considerably darkened, he stood up and walked to the hut. And when he opened the oak door, there was the back-haired boy, collapsed and frozen blue on the packed-dirt floor.