A/N's: GoddessEris: -blinks- Wow. You really liked the chapter? Thanks! I hope this one is...well, I hope it's not too much of a waste of your time. ScruffyWes: Lol! You noticed the noodle thing! I wasn't sure anyone would notice that but I was writing and my spell check changed muggle to noodle and I decided that it was something Xander-like. Glad you liked the last chapter! Here's another! Destiny's Dragon: Thanks for the review! Sacred-soul: Lol! Don't scare your poor mom too much! Thanks for the review! Teri: Thanks for the review! And thanks for the compliment!
Also: This title actually refers to the Oliver Lieb vocal remix. Just so you know. :D
One more thing: I have the oddest author's notes. -shakes head- this chapter took me...a while to write because I'm having such a hard time trying to figure out the interactions between Draco and Tara. When they're on their own I find them really simple characters to write but because of the background I added in...there's this tension that should be there but...oi vey. Once again this chapter really isn't one of my favorite 'cos it seems a bit slow and pointless, although it *does* have a point. I promise. Don't worry, though. I'm planning on picking up the pace soon. And -grin- sometime in the next two or three chapters some more Buffy-verse characters'll be making appearances! Anyone want to guess who they are?
--Lost Vagueness--
"Not hard for anyone competent, at least." Draco said to Harry.
He waited for Harry's answer but nothing came. He gave the dark-haired boy a strange look and swiftly went off. He knew where he was going .He had been there two or three times before that with his parents. It had some fancy French name that Narcissa had come up with. Draco never really cared for French and although he had been taught it for four years, it just never seemed to make any sense. Latin, on the other hand, was much more interesting.
The Auberge Savoureuse. Draco almost groaned. Why had he told Lucius that it was a Hogsmeade weekend? He walked through the softly illuminated door and looked around for his Dad.
"Hello, Draco." The boy turned around and faced his father and a girl with long dark blonde hair that was unnervingly familiar. Lucius smiled, "Do you remember Tara?"
Draco let no emotions show through as he studied his sister. He remembered her, but vaguely. A lost vagueness he thought. The boy looked from Tara to his Dad's eerie-looking smile. "Yes."
Tara smiled at that and it seemed that she let out a sigh of relief.
Lucius also seemed to sigh in relief although it went unnoticed. He studied Draco's reaction. He looked at his son and almost frowned at the emotionless look on his sons face. His eyes, however, betrayed the boy's thoughts and feelings. No one could call Draco soft because it simply wasn't true but the older Malfoy saw past what everyone else saw and realized that his son, although always striving to be his father, would never be like him. In the back of his mind, Lucius let out another sigh of relief.
"Good. I have some business to attend to, but Draco, I hope you'll show your sister around?"
Draco nodded. "Of course, Father."
Lucius returned a curt nod. "Also, the Headmaster has kindly proposed that Tara eat dinner at Hogwarts as I will not be done until later this evening." After saying good-bye, he disappeared out of the restaurant leaving Tara and Draco staring at each other.
Draco quickly led the way to a table and waited for his sister to sit down before he did the same. A waiter came by, and after giving them menus and asking what kind of drinks they would like, he too disappeared leaving the two siblings alone.
They were both rather uncomfortable. Draco studied Tara casually while she looked at her glass of water and played with a napkin. The blonde wizard noticed all of the mannerisms and leaned back. They stayed in silence for a couple more minutes before Tara looked up rather shyly.
"So do you actually re-remember me or were you just saying that to Dad?" she asked.
A strong emotion rose in Draco. He couldn't figure out what it was but it had something to do with her calling Lucius "Dad." He wasn't particularly fond of Lucius. Granted, he held a certain amount of respect as any son should for their father but the two disagreed on plenty of things.
"I remember you." Draco assured her.
Tara smiled slightly. "Okay. Good. I figured you'd have forgotten. I mean, we haven't seen each other since-"
"Since I was two years old, yes, I am aware of that." Draco tilted his head slightly. "Don't be surprised. Two-year-olds remember quite a bit."
"I- I don't remember much from when I was two. Maybe I just have a worse memory."
Draco picked up his cup of Strawberry-Lemonade. It was a muggle drink that Narcissa had made a couple of years ago and the boy had grown quite font of it. "Perhaps."
They fell into silence again. A strange feeling passed through Tara as she realized her brother wasn't as transparent as most kids his age were. She could almost sense he was holding something in and she wanted to know what it was. The problem with that lie in the fact that he could also see he didn't trust her one bit. His eyes were shielded and when he spoke there was an undertone of warning in it that was hard to hear, but Tara knew it. After all, she was a Malfoy.
"Draco..." she began but trailed off.
He raised an eyebrow elegantly.
"You have something to say."
Draco set down his drink. "Yes, I do. In fact, I have much to say. For one thing, I don't trust you. I remember you as a sister, but now you are nothing as such. I don't know for sure why you chose to come back now. It's been what, twelve? Thirteen years since you were here? I know my father asked you to return a couple of times throughout the years and you declined. Seeing how you seem rather content, you were welcomed back as if it you had been gone on an extended vacation by my father and Narcissa." he had to suddenly stop and look away. "Did you honestly think you could appear and simply be welcomed back after you abandoned-"
He didn't finish, as their ordered meals suddenly appeared in front of them and he took the time to remove his utensils from the cloth napkin. He didn't continue and instead looked out the window at the ever-lowering son.
"After I abandoned..." Tara asked softly as she watched her brother's silence. "...you?"
He looked up after a long while with a frown. "Even a child remembers the important things."
"Draco, I'm sorry. It-"
The boy brushed her off and instead decided to move on to a different topic. "You've changed."
Tara wasn't sure whether to laugh or not. "Yeah, you've also changed. Your hair is...blonde."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Of course it's blonde, what did you expect me to dye it black at some point?"
"No, blondes supposedly have more fun." Tara said absentmindedly staring across the table at Draco. He was also watching her and their eyes met. A shock went through the air and Draco nearly dropped his fork but managed to hang on while Tara quickly lowered her gaze to the plate in front of her in a lost comprehension. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
Draco didn't answer.
Tara stabbed a piece of lettuce on her plate willing herself to remain calm. She knew what the shock had been. The second her eyes bad met with Draco's their magick had combined and magick, Tara knew, contained raw emotion. She herself wanted nothing more than to be the big sister she distantly remembered being. He wanted nothing to do with her. To Draco she knew that she was nothing more than a stranger trying to invade his life. Their magick had collided to find that it no longer had anything in common.
Draco placed his fork gently beside his plate of untouched ceaser salad. He now understood the cliché phrase, "deafening silence." Tara had apologized. She had apologized to him for everything she had ever possibly done against him. What struck Draco hard was that she had meant it with all of her being. He couldn't see her eyes, but as far as a pureblood family's connection went, he had felt her meaning. Now he wasn't quite sure what to do about it.
"Why didn't you come back?" he asked eventually.
"I couldn't," she looked up. "For a long time I believed Dad had abandoned me. Then three years ago when Dad found me, he explained he had been looking for me but there was a sort of charm. I guess it was a misunderstanding. My mom- I mean, Mom was scared that he had gotten into black magick-" a picture of Willow floated up to the surface of Tara's mind, but she shook it off and continued. "-and that's why we left. I stayed away from the magick community, although I had my wand with me always. I *did* end up getting my apparation license last year, though."
"He is. He's a death eater. Dad, I mean."
"I kind of guessed," she looked out the window. "You know, he's going to get caught."
"I kind of guessed."
Tara looked at him sharply. "You're not going to take the Mark, are you?"
Draco shrugged elegantly but ignored the question. "Why didn't I go with you?"
"I...I don't know. I never asked because I always believed we would come back- but it didn't," she dropped her fork into the mostly uneaten salad. "I'm not that hungry. Besides, I think dinner is going to be soon so I guess we really shouldn't eat much anyway. You wanna show me around here?"
They stepped outside a couple of minutes later and headed into town. Draco had no idea where he would take her but assumed that The Three Broomsticks would have to do. His sister seemed happy about the idea of seeing one of the last few entirely wizarding communities.
"So, what's your story? I told you about me."
Draco glanced at Tara. "You told me nothing about yourself except that you got an apparation license at twenty."
"Well that's still more than you've told me about yourself." Tara retorted.
"I told you about father."
"Okay, someone is having an identity crisis. Last time I checked you weren't Dad."
Draco smiled softly. He knew she was simply trying to get them back into the brother-sister thing and, surprisingly enough, he liked it. He secretly wanted life to get back to when he was younger. Well, he wanted that but excluding the factor where he was only two at the time.
"I am not having an identity crisis," he sniffed as if he had taken offense.
Tara laughed as she saw the face he had made. "This only child thing you've had f-for twelve years has made you spoiled."
Draco glared at her. "I am not spoiled. Look at yourself, I *do* know that not two years ago Father set up an account for you at Gringotts."
"So?" Tara raised an eyebrow wondering how he had found out. No one had been told is what Lucius had assured her.
"Spare me," he rolled his eyes. "When a nice round sum of money goes missing from the family vault, there are only so many places it could have gone-"
Tara cut him off. "Like charity."
"More like Lucius' poor wayfaring daughter."
"Hey!" Tara was laughing. "That was mean!"
"But I wasn't lying." Draco pointed out with a smile. He opened the door to the Three Broomsticks and followed Tara in. They grabbed a booth and Draco disappeared with the promise of bringing back drinks. Tara took her jacket off and sat down staring off in the direction her brother had gone in. Although she had immensely enjoyed the banter they had had, Draco was hiding lots of things from her. She wished she had been there for him through the years. Everything had changed so much. Including Lucius' wardrobe she thought silently. He used to have more than just black robes. With the thought of her father's wardrobe she suddenly started laughed just as Draco dropped down across from her and pushed a couple of various bottles into the center of the table giving her a strange look.
"Americans are so strange," he stated before taking a bottle.
Tara calmed down slightly. "No, they're not. Sorry. I just remembered when Dad had this lilac robe. Mom bought it for him and he made a point of wearing it a couple of times before coming home one day and claiming that he had been chased by one of the hell hounds and that it got torn up."
Draco choked on his butterbeer. "When did he have purple robes?!"
"You were like, a month old or something. Oh, it was fabulous. Turns out Mom had been betting with Aunt Zeta how long until he fabricated some sort of reason for the disappearance."
"Who won?" Draco was smirking. His father in lilac robes was too amusing in his mind.
"Zeta, of course. Mom said he would do no such thing." Tara started laughing again. "A month later for his birthday she got him lime green robes. He never wore those, though. I remember Dad turned a vivid shade of red."
Draco was now laughing along with Tara. He could only thank the stars that none of his fellow classmates were around.
Most of the wizarding world had known about the Malfoy daughter, but they assumed that as she had never returned to the Malfoy household after her mother's death, that she had died, too. Draco couldn't quite figure out if her sudden appearance would be that big of a deal, or not.
"I knew I heard something about lime green robes before. Cygnus mentioned it once but I thought he was just trying to get me to believe something stupid. You remember cousin Cygnus, don't you?"
Tara's eyes narrowed. "I dislike him. He locked me in the Malfoy dungeons for a night when I was ten and really scared of dark places. I asked Dad to kill him for me but Mom heard and said absolutely not."
"Last time I asked Dad to kill someone for me he said that I had to do it myself!" Draco muttered, but he was still laughing.
"I'm a girl .Can't expect me to get dirty with someone's blood."
"Especially Cygnus', I suppose. Last I heard, he had been taken to St. Mungo's for treatment from a vampire bite." Draco leaned back in the book. "Honestly, he has to be the first wizard to be almost turned."
"I'm not too surprised. In Sunnydale, there's a Hellmouth there and we always got the strangest demons and vampires."
"Dad said you lived on a Hellmouth. So what kind of demons did you fight?"
Tara also leaned back and took a breath. "Well, there was this one guy who claimed to be my Dad saying he was a demon, but it's a really boring tale to tell you the truth. It was really confusing at the time, for me. Oh, but we battled with the Hell God Glorificus! She kinda made me crazy for a while but Will saved me and-"
"Will?" Draco smirked. "You have a boyfriend?"
Tara blushed furiously. "No...it's Willow. She's...Willow is a very powerful Wicca."
"Okay, so you don't have a boyfriend?" Draco asked and slumped slightly that he no longer had anything he could make fun of her for.
Tara hesitated for a moment but shook her head. "No boyfriend."
"Okay, go on." Draco looked down at his watch and picked up his jacket. "Actually, we should head to the castle for dinner. So you're telling me about this Hell God on the way."
Tara stood up with her jacket too. "It's actually quite a dull story."
"Every story you've mentioned so far has been called dull by you. How about you let *me* judge that?"
"Fine, but I'll have warned you..."
--- --- ---
Erm...-looks away- Yes, really boring. But I needed to establish the relationship. Thanks for hanging in there with my dragging of the chapter. -sighs- hopefully the next one will be more interesting. I actually have an idea. It's...well, I can't promise that it'll be funny but that's the idea 'cos of the couple of Buffy-verse characters that are coming in. -grins evilly- Seriously, take a stab at who you think the people will be. You'll possibly be surprised. Hopefully it'll be a good surprise, too.