She was reclining in the large leather chair near the window, engrossed in a book. Her long blonde hair was pulled in a messy knot on top of her head. One long leg was crossed over the other, and he could see the pink paint on her toenails, shining in the late morning light. His robe was belted around her waist, just concealing the curves of her body. But he knew they were there. The wide hips and strong shoulders were still entertaining to him, her hourglass figure so different than those of the narrow, waifish girls he had always had his eye on.
"Malin."
She looked up at the sound of her name, smiling at him from across the room. Her face was friendly, kind, with rosy cheeks, dark blue eyes, and a small, pink mouth like a doll's.
"Did I wake you?" she asked, closing the book and sitting up. Her voice was soft, her words accented.
"No. How long have you been up?"
"Not long."
He patted the side of he bed next to him. She got up from the chair and made her way across the shiny hardwood floor, spotless except for a tangle of clothes they had discarded the previous evening, and climbed onto the large bed, which was covered in expensive linens. He looked down at her, curled neatly on the sheet next to him.
They had met at the end of August, while he was on holiday with his family in the Austrian mountains. He had first noticed her one evening early in his stay, as he was returning to his suite with his parents after dinner. She had passed him in the corridor, and had met his eyes and smiled. Surprised, he had returned the smile. The next day, he'd passed her again while on his way to breakfast, and this time she had stopped and introduced herself.
Her name was Malin Brekke, and she was Norwegian. Two years older than he, she had completed her education at a school in the north, called Halvøy Heksekunst Skole, and was now traveling. She told him that she wanted to return to her school as a Herbology professor, and was going to as many countries as she could, hoping to gain hands-on experience with as magical plants as she could. Her father worked for a foreign wizarding bank, her mother designed robes.
For the rest of the week, he had followed her as she crisscrossed the countryside around the resort, watching as she bent over flowers and weeds, sometimes breaking off a leaf or two. Listening to her talk about healing properties and magical compounds was almost interesting. They had hiked steep trails high into the mountains, and had even gone fishing in a frigid, bubbling mountain stream, without much success. On his last day, they had hiked further than any other day, coming to an enormous, sapphire-blue lake settled in a high valley. Far below was a village, so tiny and picturesque that the building resembled toys. He had turned from that sight and watched, with something like wonder, as she stripped off her clothes and ran into the lake.
"Come on!" she had called, floating on the surface and waving to him. He had declined, prefering to just sit and watch as she swam. Finally, she had emerged from the water and sat down on the soft grass next to him, leaning back and drying herself in the warm sun. He stared, fascinated, at her creamy white skin and slim waist and sturdy legs, at the soft curve of her stomach and the large swell of her breasts. Everything about her looked strong and healthy, and the uninhibited way in which she turned a bit this way and that, making sure to that the sun touched her everywhere, was nothing short of amazing to him.
The last girl he had dated was the complete opposite in appearance and character-- petite, very slender, with dark hair cut stylishly short and large dark eyes. She was spoiled, and sullen, and prefered to sit with him in silence over an expensive meal than actually doing something or having a conversation. And she was strictly a sex-in-the-dark kind of girl. He wasn't even entirely sure he had ever seen her naked.
After he had left Austria, Malin had sent him an owl a few days later, which he had promptly returned. Owls had progressed to visits, culminating with this most recent trip for Christmas. She was staying in a small inn in Hogsmeade, with the exception of the previous night, which she had spent next to him in his own bed.
There was a knock at the door, and he turned to Malin. "Quiet. You're not supposed to be here." And he pulled his wand from his nightstand drawer and quickly cast a Disillusionment charm on her. After using his wand to sweep the pile of her clothes on the floor under the bed, and arranging the sheets around him, he called for the person at the door to enter.
"Draco." Narcissa Malfoy stood in the doorway of her son's bedroom, her hand on the ornately-carved doorknob. She looked almost like a ghost, her skin and hair both very pale, wearing a long, silvery-grey traveling cloak.
"What do you want, Mum?"
Her brown eyes looked closely around the room, at the book on the chair by the window, at the place on the floor where Malin's clothes had just lay, at the empty space in the bed next to her son, finally coming to rest on Draco himself. "Who's here with you?" she asked sharply.
"What are you talking about? No one's here with me. And what's with you, where are you going so early?"
"It's nearly noon."
"And? Where are you going?"
She stiffened visibly at his question. "I have a few errands to run before the holiday. Then I am meeting your father for dinner. Would you care to join us?"
"No. I'll just have the house-elves make me something if I get hungry."
She nodded. "Well, I suppose then, that all is in order."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're acting very... odd. Where are you really going?"
Narcissa took a deep breath in through her nose. "If you must know, I am going to visit my sister."
It took Draco a moment to realize that she wasn't referring to his aunt Bellatrix, who had been dead since that night, but that she meant-- "Tonks?!" he said with disbelief. "You're going to go visit that Tonks woman?"
"My sister Andromeda. Yes."
He stared at his mother, unable to form a coherent thought. "Tonks!" he spat, still unable to believe it.
"She has no one left, Draco, except for that baby. The war took everything from her-- her daughter, her son-in-law, her husband."
"But what concern is that of yours?! You haven't talked to her in years!"
Her voice was very quiet. "I see now that was a mistake. We helped to take them from her. Don't you think that it's time now for atonement?"
Was it possible that those were tears in his mother's eyes? Draco was gobsmacked. He stared at his mother, feeling strangely unmoored, as though he was bobbing along the North Sea somewhere in no discernible direction.
When he did not respond, Narcissa simply nodded. Her expression was sad, perhaps diappointed. "Well, good day then." She pulled the door shut behind her and was gone.
In the deafening silence that followed, he looked down at his forearm, visually tracing where the Dark Mark used to be. Half-formed thoughts swirled around his head. The Dark Lord was... This is what I've always... Potter and his friends were actually... Finally, I'm able to...
"Draco?"
He had forgotten that Malin was there. Quickly, he lifted the charm, and she appeared again. She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, an expression of concern on her face.
"Are you all right?" she asked quietly, placing her warm hand over the inside of his arm, where not so long ago he had been marked as belonging to Voldemort.
"I don't want to talk about it!" he said fiercely, yanking his arm away.
Pansy would have cried, or yelled at him that he couldn't talk to her like that. But Malin just sat back and waited. Finally, he got out of bed, pulling a pair of pants from where they lay in a heap on the floor. "Get dressed." he said. "We're going out."
Author's Note: If you've read "Winter", another one of my stories, you may have already seen Malin and knew that Narcissa Malfoy had begun visiting her sister.
Malin is a pure figment of my imagination, she just sort of appeared on Draco's arm one day in Diagon Alley. From there she evolved into some foreign delicacy, someone that Draco really enjoys as a distraction or a past-time. However, I think he might also grow to care for her, if they're together long enough. I doubt they will be, though. Being more mature than he is, I think one day soon she might present him with a question he's not ready to answer, rather like Narcissa's "don't you think that it's time now for atonement" line.
The Malfoys interest me. I've always wondered about them, almost as much as I wondered about Snape. One day I hope to come up with a really bad-ass story about a young Narcissa, give a little bit more insight as to who she is and why she ended up where she did. But right now I'm all over the board with stories. And, as you can see, I have a bit of a problem titling them.
BTW, I'd like to thank the internet for telling me that Halvøy Heksekunst Skole is Norwegian for Peninsula (as in, the Scandanavian Peninsula, where Norway is) Witchcraft SchoolI figure that, if I tried to get fancier than that, Norwegian grammar would have to come into play and totally make me screw up.