Trillium

Chapter Two

By Mell8

I first met Draco Malfoy at a Ministry party. A high up Ministry official was courting my mother at the time and had invited us both to attend. Upon our arrival my mother immediately took to shameless flirting. She had been without a husband for quite a few years, ever since she killed my father, I believe. I was only six at the time and had no knowledge of why my father was gone, just that he was.

I was left to my own devices for most of the night. I sat by myself at a table in the back and out of the way and watched all the women in dresses and men in dress robes dancing together in a whirling riot of colors and laughter. I saw my mother pass by a few times, each time on the arm of a different man, and wondered each time if I meant something to her. I saw other mothers dancing with their young sons but my mother never looked for me.

It was Draco who found me, dressed smartly in black robes that made his skin look like a pallor rather than paleness. He sat down next to me, poured us both a glass of sweet cordial, and stayed there until his father sent someone to fetch him.

We never spoke to each other, we didn't have to; just the others presence was enough.

Throughout the years we continued to meet up at various functions. I know that I always searched for him first and found us an out of the way table and two glasses of cordial so I could be prepared for when he finally escaped from the social niceties society forced on him. There we would sit silently and relax until the evening ended.

It was only quite a few functions later that I felt he needed more time away from his stifling family than just hiding at functions with me. I spoke to him for the first time after a full year of blessed silence about a clearing I knew of in the woods that would afford us privacy where we could meet and talk and be free for just a few more moments. He readily agreed and for the next year we met up there.

Draco was forever under the total control of his father, who merely wanted his son to reflect him like a perfect mirror. My own mother scorned me despite the fact that I had been willingly borne in her efforts to keep her current husband at the time, my father, interested solely in her. Draco's father rarely ever let him think, let alone make a single decision for himself. In essence, I had to order Draco to show up at that clearing the first time, he was so unused to doing things for himself.

Sometimes we would just lay there in that clearing, relaxing from the troubles at home. Sometimes we spoke. With each conversation and with each bit of silence I could feel Draco's mind begin to work. Perhaps what his father said was not always true. Perhaps he could do some things for himself.

I know that these are the thoughts that ran through Draco's mind, not because he told me, but because I know Draco. I grew to love the way one eyebrow would raise in surprise and shock or just to make a point. How his lips would twitch ever so slightly in laughter because he had not yet learned how to laugh without his father's approval just yet.

And then she arrived.

We felt her presence for days before we actually saw her. We could feel the strength in her gaze and the wanting. We could sense the warmth she had always known and the need for something more, something only we could give her.

At first we were reticent. We didn't want some interloper intruding on our time in freedom from our families. So one day we decided to confront her. If she fit, we would invite her to stay. If not, well the consequences would have been dire for her.

We looked up as one. Our thoughts were synchronized by then and we could move our bodies as if we were one person. And we saw her.

She was a tiny little thing crouched amid the roots of a nearby tree. Her red hair was in complete disarray and she was using her sleeve to wipe rainwater out of her eyes. The instant she looked up, we knew. Those brown eyes told us everything about her and it sang to our combined souls. We began to teach her as we had taught each other until she became like us, one being in three parts. Our single soul was split between the three of us.

And then came the sundering.

Ginny, as I learned she was called when I saw her at Hogwarts, tried to fill the empty space we left with her family and friends, all the while knowing that we were the only specific fit to her fractured soul.

I spent my time sequestered in Italy drinking and having sex (or what I had thought was sex in a ten year old's mind). Now that I'm older there are very few days when I am sober and without at least one girl waiting for me in my bed.

I can't speak to Ginny, not like this. I think it would hurt worse for us both if we reconnected what we had, only with one piece missing like a gaping, bloody wound.

After our year long separation I finally met up with Draco on the train to Hogwarts in our first year. I walked up to him, then around him, and continued on my way to find an empty compartment as I tried to ignore the tears that were forming in my eyes.

I still knew Draco's body like my own. Even drinking and drugs could not dull that memory. As I walked up to him I saw nothing in his eyes, in his body language, that spoke of him remembering me. I was gone from his mind as thoroughly as he could never be from mine.

Something had taken both Ginny and I from Draco in that one year of separation and now Draco was that empty mirror his father had always wanted him to become.

Does Draco ache with emptiness in those two spots where parts of his soul are missing like Ginny and I? Does he realize what he has lost or what was taken from him? Does he know what he stands to lose the second his father decides to hand him over to the Dark Lord?

I don't know. I do know that his fiancé, hand picked by his father for being completely tractable to all of Lucius's orders, and his two best friends were all put in place to lead Draco exactly where his father wants him to go.

Can you think for yourself at all, Draco?

III

Blaise held the journal clutched tightly in one hand as he quickly made his way up to the Owlery. He had to catch the train to go home for winter break and it was leaving within the hour. Still, his mission in the Owlery was more important than being on time for the train.

He whistled sharply as he reached the top of the tower and two owls came flying over.

"I want you to catch up with the train after it leaves," he said to the owls as he tied a letter to one and a letter and the journal to the other. "This one," he said to the owl with just the letter, "goes to Ginevra Weasley."

The owl hooted and flew into the air.

"This one," Blaise tapped the journal. "Goes to Draco Malfoy. But!" he added when the owl was about to fly away, "you need to deliver it to him inconspicuously. I don't want anyone else to know he has this journal. Do you understand?"

The owl hooted and took to the air and the trains whistle echoed up from Hogsmeade station. The train was leaving.

Blaise swore and whipped out his wand to call his broom. He had to be home during break because if they got his letters and if Draco decided to read that journal, well, good things would happen.

He flew out of the tower, across the grounds at breakneck speed, and just barely managed to alight on the train before it began to move.

Please Draco, Ginny, he thought. Please.