He saw her for the first time since Hogwarts at a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix.
It was the first meeting he had attended since he realized that joining Dumbledore and Harry Potter and their do-gooders was probably a smart idea, because they were going to win. He liked to think of himself as a opportunist ("Malfoys always win, Draco," his father had been fond of telling him, "I don't care how, but we always win. Take care you remember that."), but part of the back of his mind knew it was because he didn't particularly want to live in a world ruled by men like Crabbe and Goyle who liked to think of themselves as evil and then sought to prove it by kicking puppies and Muggles and snickering. So he'd come to Hogwarts one day and rather classily—he thought—thrown himself on Dumbledore's mercy and offered to "continue where Professor Snape left off, sir." He had done so ever since.
But he hadn't attended any meetings yet. It was decidedly not a good idea for a Death Eater as prominent and noticeable as Draco Malfoy, son of the late Lucius Malfoy, to be seen with any of these people or to be missing from Lord Voldemort's service for too long, and Draco had no intention of compromising his position as Snape had done. Such compromises tended to have rather fatal consequences.
However, he was still a minion of sorts, and Dumbledore had specially requested it in his last letter. "We are planning an attack on the main base soon," he wrote, "and given your familiarity with it, I need you at our next meeting to answer questions and help with strategy." Draco had incinerated the message with a well-placed spell and pouted privately in his accustomed manner, but in the end, he had gone, of course.
He hadn't expected a warm welcome from the few members he knew, and he hadn't received one. When he came in, all conversation stopped, and everyone in the room seemed to avert their eyes. He smiled a bit bitterly, looking around and thinking, "Hypocrites," in an unimpressed corner of his mind. They weren't above taking information from him, but they were above talking to him.
She was there, sitting in the back of the room, a bit away from the others, and when he looked at her, she was the only one not looking away. Instead, she pushed her long, red hair out of her eyes and smiled up at him invitingly, slow but steady. When the meeting started, he took a seat next to her and fought the urge to ask her out to lunch or dinner or anything the entire time.