Elopements and Negotiations

What words our two protagonists exchanged in the darkness you shall never learn, dear reader. What is relevant to our story is not, however, the exact twists and turns their conversation took, but what came out of it; and that the entire wizarding world was soon to become acquainted with.

They fled the ball and its participants in haste, a couple among others; their friends had wished them a good night, and pictured what they might be doing in their shared bed with some wistfulness; their enemies had seized the opportunity to condemn them both, and the fact that they shouldn't be together, and the fact that they weren't even married – incoherence is after all a well-spread human trait. All in all, their departure was perceived as one single event.

After their conversation, however, they were most definitely not an item any more. In fact, their families, and friends, and fellow Aurors would never, never again think of them as one single element.

They had broken up, you see, and broken up in the most definitive way there is, by common consent. Irrational rows can be made up; but the quiet consideration and reasonable assessment of the state of their relationship was not of that order.

Hermione had come to the realisation that she lost her time with him. He was an agreeable companion, and a decent lover; but she would always find him lacking now that she had seen the original. She and Draco both knew that their arrangement was a provisory one, meant to annoy Harry, who was getting too self-centered even for Hermione's tastes; they did enjoy each other's company and body, but that was to end as soon as one of them found another source of interest, as had just happened to Hermione.

And Draco – well, Draco had fallen in love that night, as only young men can. Totally, completely, hopelessly, adverbially in love – head over heels – as close to composing woeful ballads to his mistress' eyebrow as he was to getting a new mistress, and that, believe me, was very close indeed – barely a paragraph.

It had not escaped your attention that Draco and Ginevra had been left alone during the ball. Silent contemplation had lead to banter, which in turn had left place to sexually charged contemplation. They were young; they were more naïve than either of them thought they were; both held a firm interest in the finer specimen of the opposite sex; and they both deserved to be called handsome.

What was to follow inevitably followed. Right after the friendly break-up, Draco went straight to the Burrow, where a charming young woman was waiting for him to climb up her balcony to ease flowery words in her ear. They could sleep Ginny's own bedchamber, in her parents' house – Silencing Charms are there to be made use of, after all – and elopement would follow early the next morning. All was well and fine, they soon agreed on everything, and spend the time they had left gently kissing, as the rating of this story prevents anything worse, or better, depending on your own point of view.

Either way, Draco was soon off to collect his belongings from the Auror barracks, his departure giving the author a good occasion to shift the point of view within the narrative.

The following morning, Lucius woke up feeling happy. Now this was no common occurrence since his divorce – he missed the weigh of another body close to his own on the mattress, the shared warmth under the covers, and the prospect of a bright new day usefully spent spreading evil in the world with a beautiful, evil witch at his side.

But the ball had gone unexpectedly well the day before. The Weasley matriarch had seemed contented with little effort on his part; the younger Weasley had conveniently disappeared early on, and a… delightful young woman had made herself known to him instead.

He was aware that she was nothing but a Mudblood; and a penniless one to boot. But – and this was an important but – she had potential, he could feel it. A great potential. Half a lifetime of serving as the Dark Lord's chief recruiter had taught him to tell which young people would grow into powerful individuals, if nothing else. She would need some guidance, that's to be sure; perhaps the benefit of some experience… And in a matter of decades, years perhaps, she would become a force to be reckoned with, perhaps The Major Force of the wizarding world… Oh, she would do it with forms, that is to be sure; she would get rightfully elected by the Wizengamot, just Avada'ing her opponents would never do. But the result would be there.

Which brought the interesting question of how he would position himself in that new order. The only sensible thing to do was to place himself on her side, in a way that forced her to acknowledge his support – so as to make his claim to the spoils of victory fully justified. Marriage seemed an agreeable course of events… She was too powerful for him to become anything else than the lesser partner in their union, but then he was strong enough, and manipulative enough, to deal with that. His life with Narcissa had taught him some very valuable lessons, after all. Yes, he would start planning a wedding soon…

An owl interrupted this agreeable train of thought.

An owl from his son.

Announcing the boy's elopement.

Not his marriage, mind you – though marrying a Weasley already was something truly horrendous, and made him deserve being disinherited on its own right. No, he had just disappeared with the girl; he had believed she would make an honest man out of him, and followed her.

Words are insufficient to describe his reaction to his son's letter. Let us therefore read said letter ourselves, laconic as it is –

Dear Father,

I have met my True Love at last. She is better than a stable boy, better than pirate captain, better than a mysterious warrior even.

I have left the Auror barracks to live with her.

Don't bother disinheriting me, we'll live out of love and fresh water anyway.

Love,

Draco

This part of the story could well have ended in bloodshed. Draco, had the author followed the example of many a reputed writer, would have faked poisoning himself to garner sympathy from his angry father; Ginevra, upon discovering her lover apparently dead, would have taken her own life, incapable as she was of living without those gorgeous eyebrows. Draco waking up to see the lifeless corpse of his true love, would have followed suit, thus provoking the end of two reputed Pureblood houses.

But of this we shall have none – we are indeed far too skilled a storyteller to resort to such cheap theatrics. Not one drop of blood is therefore to be spilled in the entire fic, apart perhaps from a few tiny droplets, scratched away from a wizard's back by his mistress in the throes of shared passion; but even that we shall not describe, tied up as we are in the uncomfortable position of smutfree writers.

Deaths or no deaths, Lucius was still angry, at his son for choosing such a consort, and at the Weasley girl for not marrying Draco. At the Weasleys', tantrums were held in a similar fashion, by Molly, who refused to try to understand why on earth her daughter could have chosen the penniless son when the wealthy father was to be had, and by Arthur, who could not stand to see his wife upset and who missed his daughter already. In short, the situation seemed hopeless to all those concerned, except perhaps for the two lovebirds, who chose to remain blissfully unaware of the tempest they had provoked in the parental hearts and hearths.

This, my dear reader, is a very uncomfortable point to end a third chapter on, and you will have to concede that the talented storyteller has indeed managed to keep looming suspense to the very conclusion of her tale, however fishy it might otherwise seem.