Title: Dance with the Devil
Author Name: Shy Unicorn
Rating:M
Genre: Romance/Friendship
Main Character(s): Astoria Greengrass and Draco Malfoy
Ship(s): Astoria/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa, Narcissa/OC, Lucius/OC
Summary: Four years after Voldemort is vanquished Astoria Greengrass starts working for 'Witch Weekly' magazine as a feature writer. Her very first job is to interview Draco Malfoy who has just made his first million galleons without the aid of his rich parents. What happens when they meet?
Author's Note (A/N):Hi guys, I hate to do this to you but I wasn't happy with the old version of chapter ten. Here's the re-written version. I hope you enjoy. Chapter Eleven will be coming soon.
Dance with the Devil
Chapter Ten: Discarded Shoes
Nott lives in a slowly decaying stately home, the kind with mounted Dragon heads on the wall and half the house out of use and draped with white sheets.
In a room richly decorated in gold and red burly guys cavort with household furnishings, friends clump together in exclusive huddles while drinking from paper cups as music shakes the walls. The scent of rum pervades everything. Draco has his arm around my shoulder as he entertains his friends.
Blaise Zabini, Lucian Bole (whose great-uncle was a famous writer I really respect), Montague and Goyle crowd around us vying for Draco's attention. I would find it kind of cool that Draco's their ringleader if their conversation wasn't so damn boring. It's all empty competitive jockeying and crude boy banter.
Nott's the only one who isn't joining in.
"Are you enjoying the party?" I lean over and ask Nott, when Zabini starts bragging about how he's on the Gringott's Treasure Hauler fast-track list.
Nott seems surprised that I'm interested in him at all.
"I wish people would stop Transfiguring the taxidermy," he says flatly. "I'm sick of finding raccoons with dicks the size of bratwursts propped up against everything."
I glance around and without much effort see a raccoon mounting a bronze bust of Untcuous Osbert. I just about manage not to laugh.
"Do you want to get a drink?" I ask Nott.
I want to give Draco a moment to himself. I don't want to come across as too needy even though I don't really know anyone else at the party.
"Sure," Nott agrees.
His nervous smile is like a twitch.
Together we extract ourselves from the group and head out into another room where the bar is set up.
Nott is painfully shy but there's something familiar about him that appeals to me so I persevere. Over shots of tequila we discover that we've got the same taste in music, comedy and films.
Lucian Bole comes over and joins us. I ask him about his great-uncle and for a long time Nott, Bole and I passionately discuss books. Zabini works his way into our circle and insists we all do a round of tequila slammers. I begin to feel a little hazy headed and decide that I'm the right side of tipsy. I begin to feel like I'm having a good time.
I spot Draco in the crowed by his light hair. He's talking with Goyle. Draco looks so aloof and distant compared to the other revelers. His body language is rigid and I wonder if he's having fun at all. In the half dark of the party his stubble gleams white like wet pebbles. Quartered and halved by shadows his pale face becomes a beautiful trigonometry pattern of flesh and onyx. I feel my attraction for him licking at me like flames.
Now that I'm tipsy and I've made some new friends I surrender to the familiar house party routines: I dance a while, I talk a while, I help Nott return a family of stuffed Guinea Pigs to their rightful anatomical sizes. We head into yet another room and find Goyle and Zabini having this very deep (and very drunken) talk about pre-destination and palmistry.
I realize we've got to that point in the night. The music has reached a crescendo and drunken behavior peeks when a spectacular brawl between two brawny meat-heads breaks out much to the delight of spectators.
Most people are either vomiting into hollow items of furniture, hugging each other and confessing never ending affection or are lamenting the misery of life. Apparently Draco's closest friends are a different breed of drunk to the ones I've usually encountered because they're amusingly philosophical as they squint and compare palms. Draco himself has yet to resurface. I decide to go looking for him.
I wander around, happening upon couples rubbing up against each other on sofas, more artfully arranged taxidermy orgies and a huge boy with purple eyebrows sleeping curled up like a much smaller person on a window ledge. I push out a little further and find a dark corridor lined with smokers, their cigarette ends floating red embers in the blackness. The air is cool out here and stinks like ash. I realize the walls are lined with shrunken House-Elf heads. Some irreverent person has put cups on their heads like party hats. My ears ring in the relative quiet.
It's then I hear the soft smoky voice of my favorite singer and the grainy scratch of a vinyl record playing. A chink of otherworldly blue light creeps out across the floorboards at the far end of the corridor like spilt potion. Curiously I step closer to investigate further. A slightly ajar door is letting out the light and sound. I ease it open and the scent of chlorine lifts to meet me.
There's something incredibly soothing about the aquamarine glow and the slow, retro sound of the record. The combination lures me down the stairs for a closer look. I feel a bit like an ocean explorer as I close the door behind me and sink into a world of blue.
At the bottom of the blue and gold mosaic tiled stairs I'm confronted by a large rectangular swimming pool. Its surface is a slab of luminescent jade. Whips of light wiggle across the walls and floor in incandescent waves.
On a fluffy Persian rug Draco sits hugging his knees to his chest, listening to the music. His head is tilted to the side and he seems both very young and very sad.
I waver between disturbing him and leaving. Unexpectedly he looks up, somehow sensing my presence. His eyes are wide and moonstone bright as he stares at me uncertainly.
"Hey," I say in a hushed whisper.
Draco breathes out a long sigh and ruffles his hair sheepishly when recognition finally breaks over him.
"We should go night swimming!" I exclaim impulsively, wanting to cheer him up.
I pull my dress up over my head and dive into the pool in my underwear. The water is cool and envelops me lovingly, like a fatherly embrace.
"I love swimming," I tell Draco, bobbing up like a cork. He watches me cautiously from the edge of the pool. "When I was a kid my parents would call me 'little fish' and I was obsessed with merpeople and stories about mermaids. Want to see my party trick?"
"Depends what it is," Draco murmurs impassively but inches a little closer to the edge of the pool.
"I can do ten somersaults in a row without coming up for air," I say proudly. "It used to make all the kids at the pool die with envy."
"Is that so?" he smirks.
"It's best if you see it from in the pool," I say and give him a hopeful look.
He relents, getting to his feet and pulling his robes off in one fluid motion. I shamelessly watch as he kicks off his socks and shoes and strips down to the waist. I guess it's true that real wizards don't wear underwear because Draco doesn't take off his winter breeches before diving head first into the pool.
He looks so exquisitely beautiful in the water. He tugs on my foot, pulling me under, signaling he wants to play. He moves through the water incredibly gracefully. His limbs are long and pale like fresh spring shoots and his hair sways like an anemone.
We circle one another under water, tugging and twirling in a soundless, weightless courtship. We pull faces and blow strings of bubbles like hot spring jets. I show off and prove I can still do ten somersaults without coming up for air both forwards and backwards. It's in these moments when I use him to center me I notice not just the lines of his muscles, the sinewy smoothness of his torso but also his scars.
In the flickering pool lights they gleam like gossamer threads. There's one which almost cleaves him in half! It runs the entire length of his torso stopping just short of his throat. There are two, low on his angular hip bone that look like scratch marks made by some huge wild animal. As he soars beneath me, wide armed, like a manta ray several long strap marks light up silvery-blue across his back. Each scar is a fresh reminder of his Death Eater past.
Eventually we tire and cling like barnacles to the edge of the pool.
"The first time I ever saw people having sex was beside a swimming pool," Draco confides.
I raise an eyebrow quizzically, signaling I'm not sure if he's propositioning me. Draco smiles almost sadly and shakes his head. It makes his silky blond hair sway like long grass in the breeze.
"I was four and on holiday in Italy. Mother put me to sleep in the shade, when I woke up she was swimming in the pool… she was completely naked, the light rippled over her like it was stroking her. I was amazed. I'd never seen her like that before. She was so innocently beautiful in the water, you know?"
He looks at me hard, like he really wants me to understand the gravity of that moment.
I look down at my own legs, the ethereal glow of the pool whispering over them. I envision a little boy with missing teeth and sun bleached hair as white as tropical sand curled up on a sun lounger. I imagine Narcissa distantly cutting through the water, long and lean like a pale eel.
"When she pulled herself up out of the pool her hair was butterscotch blonde like stretched out toffee. I knew I was intruding on something private, so I pretended to be asleep. She had this intense look in her eyes, like anger or fire, a real damn you glare. She went directly to Alessandro Zabini, who was lying in the sun and climbed on top of him."
Draco nods his head imperceptibly and I know for sure he means Blaise Zabini's dad. For a second it feels like my guts are in free fall.
"He had this short, boot-polish black hair. It seemed exotic to me," Draco says, looking bemused. "She climbed on top of him and fucked him - right there by the pool in the middle of the afternoon!"
He looks dazed and taken aback by her bravado even now. I can't say I blame him.
"Jeez, Draco…"
"Adultery is still pretty standard among my parents' generation. As long as people are decent about it it's not scandalous," he explains evenly. I must look dubious because he adds, "If you're only going to marry other Purebloods looks aren't always high on the agenda. My parents are what's considered a 'good match' and they married for love, which is a rare combination."
"They love each other but they don't mind cheating on each other?" I query uncomfortably, recalling Draco's story about his dad and Tilda Whitehorn.
"They do mind," Draco says, kicking water a little more aggressively. He takes a moment to measure his words. "They've both had their reasons in the past. They're not easy people to love. They both demand to be worshipped, which can be exhausting. It's Father's drinking that my mother really can't stand. He hasn't been able to get a handle on it since the war and she doesn't suffer fools."
No kidding, I think, remembering her imperiousness.
"When Father can stay dry he'll stay at the Big House but it never lasts more than a couple of months. He mostly lives in the London Apartment, which is ironic when you consider how much he really hates Muggles."
Draco shifts his position so he can rub at his hands. He seems to do it unconsciously but I've begun to notice he only does it when he's particularly uncomfortable.
"Why does your mum take him back all the time?" I wonder aloud.
"Because they need each other," Draco says simply. "That's the unglamorous side of being soul mates. They'd go completely crazy without each other. They understand each other in this intense, unspoken way."
He smiles sadly. I return it fleetingly but deep down I feel disappointed in his parents. I feel like they've really let him down in so many ways. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy might understand each other but it looks like neither Draco nor I do.
"I was relived when Father left. Isn't that awful?" he remarks awkwardly. "I don't like drunkenness. It makes me uneasy. I don't like how people change when they're drunk.
I hate that people hide behind drunkenness, like they abdicate all their control after a tiny bit of alcohol. If only it was that easy! I worry it's their true selves that come out, the mask of everyday life comes off and all the unpleasant things they do and say are what they really are in their souls.
I know some people find being drunk fun. That's why I come down here when it gets late. I don't want to stop my friends doing what they like but I don't want to hate them for it either."
"You don't need to be afraid of the people upstairs. They're your friends," I say gently. "They're having this big existential crisis over palmistry and pre-destination. It's pretty funny."
"I know it's illogical. It's just… the worst tortures and Muggle killings I ever saw always happened when there'd been a lot of drinking," Draco confesses.
"Oh."
"Why is it that smells bring back the clearest memories?" Draco remarks seriously. "Sometimes the smell of Firewhiskey takes me right back to a memory – the very worst. Elf-Made wine reminds me of my father: shambling and wandless walking the halls of the Big House wide-awake with insomnia. I hate the smell of Mead the most, the stink of it, yeasty and rancid. To me it smells like death – like bodies ripped open, torn and bleeding like nectarines."
I can't speak. There's nothing I can say to comfort or console him. In fact, I feel a little sick and overwhelmed. The water suddenly feels very cold and I want to get out.
"The murder that I always come back to happened at home. In the Big House."
"Draco…"
I don't know if I want him to remember. I don't know that I want to hear.
"Did you take Muggle Studies at school?"
"No," I say in a small voice.
"Well, I watched… I watched Him kill the Muggle Studies teacher, Professor Burbage," Draco breathes. "I saw the glassy terror in her eyes, heard her plead for her life. I couldn't do anything to stop Him… Dead people are so still. Your mind tries to trick them back into life – you find yourself thinking that maybe you missed them blink or looked away at the exact second they took a breath but they're empty; their bodies are like discarded shoes."
We tread water in silence for a long moment. The sadness of his words has spread over us like ink distilled in water.
"Why did you become a Death Eater in the first place?" I ask.
This has always been the question I come back to before falling asleep. I can't work it out. I can't picture Draco, who likes micro financing small businesses – who essentially helps people start being able to support themselves – and spends time with crazy farmers and Goblins joining an organization that basically hated everyone and everything that wasn't 100% certified-Pureblood-old-ways.
"I had to," Draco says quietly, looking at his feet. "For some people there's a choice, but for me it was Join or see my whole family wiped out and the end of the Malfoy dynasty, which isn't a choice at all."
I absorb this information slowly.
"I was sixteen when it happened."
"Sixteen!?"
"He mostly did it to punish my parents. He knew the thing they valued most was me, so it would hurt them most when I died. I was supposed to die a couple of times."
He says this with a kind of weight that someone of his age shouldn't know yet and a kind of authority and introspection that frightens me. He makes himself sound so disposable.
"What no one realized were the depths and lengths my mother and to some extent my father would go to to keep me alive. You should never underestimate my mother, but somehow people always do." He sounds proud and a little scornful.
"Oh, I won't," I assure him. "She's smart and beautiful and your mum. I'm terrified of her!"
Draco laughs and it's a sweet sound like struck bell.
"You don't need to be scared of her," he says. "She'll like you. You probably won't think she likes you at first but you'll win her over."
"You sound so sure."
I'm a little suspicious of his certainty. Hardly anything is for certain.
"You're ambitious, you're talented, you're smart, you're gorgeous, you're more accepting than anyone I've ever met. That should be enough for her," Draco says, leaving me blushing.
"I'm serious, Astoria," he says, looking at me so directly all I can do is look back. "It's enough for me."
The light from the pool plays over his skin. I'm overcome with affection for him. For a breath I feel our relationship shift like a set of scales balancing out. Now when I look at him I feel like his equal, his confidant, not some far off idyll.
The kiss that comes next should go down in history as one of the defining moments of the 21st century. The blend of tenderness and fierceness in the kiss has me weak and trembling. I wrap my arms and legs around him to stop from sinking like a stone to the bottom of the pool.
A short eternity later we clamber out of the pool, our heads spinning.
Draco niffles out some towels from an ottoman trunk and I set the record back to playing. Now we're back on dry land dripping all over the Persian rug we both become self conscious and shy in our skin. I don't know why Draco's worrying he's sublimely beautiful, so effortlessly lithe and lovely I hope that in my life time I get to kiss every part of him at least once.
I smooth my hand down his forearm, stilling him drying his hair and I slip my arms around his lean waist. His skin is pleasantly warm as I press my cheek to his chest. Draco's arms close in around me like a flower closing it's petals at the end of the day. I close my eyes and press my hands against his back, trying to memorize the shape and solidarity of his body. I can hear his heart beating in his chest and I plant a kiss on his breast bone to mark the moment.
Draco chains his fingers through mine and I press my lips to his knuckles enjoying the soft play of his skin on my mouth like flower petals.
"Do you want to go back to the party?" he asks.
I shake my head and will him to read my thoughts.
I want to stay here with him. I don't care about anyone else or anywhere else, to me there's nothing outside of the tremulous blue dark. My world has narrowed down to him.
Draco's face is all clean sharp angles. His lips are parted and I can see every little fissure in them. In the quiet of the sleeping house I feel possessive of him and free like an owl taking flight.
I draw him down onto the rug, which is warm and mamalian soft, like riding on the back of some big cat. He lets me lie him out to dry like laundry, leaning over him on hands and knees so my wet hair tickles his shoulders as I bow down and kiss him. He smells like chlorine as I nibble on his lips. Draco chuffs softly and tickles my ribs and waist and hips with light fingered caresses. I feel myself get warm and light headed, like I was a couple of hours ago when I was tipsy.
I sit back and hesitantly smooth my hands up his legs. His thighs feel like warm velvet. Draco's breath hitches and his entire body stiffens. His pupils are deepest black as he looks at me. I'm surprised by my own daring as I peel open his thin trousers. I kiss him, seeking some kind of reassurance that I'm doing this right.
The hot strength of his manhood surprises me the most. His skin there is soft and smooth like the belly of a frog but beneath the softness I can feel the molten heat of his blood. As my hand curls around him he's already unyielding. I experimentally stroke the length of him, noting the ripples and twitches that animate Draco's arms and neck.
"Astoria…"
His voice is husky and he sounds tense, perhaps a little unsure. He caresses my neck in what I take to be gentle encouragement.
I'm fascinated by the effect I'm having on him. When I start stroking him in a slow rhythm Draco's mouth softens and falls open. His eyes have become hooded but glitter feverishly as he looks up at me.
Together we watch my hand working the flushed pole of flesh vaulting upwards from between his legs. I wouldn't say that the male genitalia is particularly pleasant looking but there's something about Draco's dimensions that appeals to me. He groans in a way that makes me tremor with excitement. His hips flex so that I instinctively hold him tighter to maintain my rhythm.
I can smell his arousal in the air, it's humid and pungent, a kind of greenhouse scent that tickles my nostrils in a pleasant way. I moisten my lips because my mouth is suddenly dry as my own desire begins to heighten. There's something unexpectedly sexy about watching him float deliriously in his pleasure.
I wonder what he tastes like? I know all the clichés but I'm intrigued to know how Draco tastes. I dip my head and take the tip of him in my mouth. I experimentally swirling my tongue over the head of his cock before gently sucking on him. There's a tang of sea-like saltiness which I'd expected but something else, almost sweet underneath. It's not all that bad, I think as Draco wrenches my head away.
"No! Astoria, don't!" he yelps, his hand pushing back against my shoulder.
I look at him in surprise. Was it too much? Did I hurt him? There's a deep frown on Draco's face.
"Don't…don't do that," he pants, shaking his head forcefully and stilling my hand.
"Did I do something wrong?" I ask in a small voice. "I haven't – I'm – I'm new to all this."
"It's nothing. I just don't like that," Draco murmurs, avoiding my eyes. Then something, probably my stuttering, makes him ask, "You haven't ever…?"
"Um, no," I admit awkwardly.
"That's not a turn on for me," he says, and when I look disappointed he hastily adds, "but it's not a problem! I'm just not weirdly into virgins."
"It wasn't a conscious thing," I say defensively. "Well, I mean, it was. I just haven't had much luck with boyfriends."
Draco slides his hands over my ribs and urges me to lie down next to him. I curl up on my side and face him.
"I know it sounds childish but I wanted my first time to be special, and with someone I care a lot about. It just never happened for me. Until now."
"Until now?" Draco repeats, turning his head a little and giving me a sly sideways look.
"Yeah," I say, unable to repress a shy smile. "You're special."
Draco glances at me quickly, checking that I'm serious about what I just said. I'm very serious. If things carry on like this then there is no way I'm going to be able to keep a lid on my libido and I wouldn't want to. I just hope he doesn't see it as a ton of pressure or a big deal.
Slowly, a smile spreads out across his face and he looks like the cat that got the cream.
"You like me," he says with accusatory relish.
"Yes," I say patiently, continuing to smile at him.
"You want to jump my bones," he says smugly.
"Shut up," I grin, scooping him up into my arms.
We kiss until our eyes are itchy with sleep and my lips are sore from his stubble.
I find myself wondering how I lived without Draco. In these few short weeks he's become essential to me like my lungs or my wand. I don't know what I'd do without him.
Eventually I fall asleep with my nose pressing against the hollow of his throat, his hand nestled in my hair.