Hello, i'm getting quite good at frequent updates. i hope that you guys are enjoying it though and they are not just full of rubbish. :)
The whole place seems a lot smaller than the Manor, but still obnoxiously large for a single man – at least I am assuming that he is single because otherwise I am going to have a very angry lady friend on my hands – and as I walk out into the grey carpeted corridor I am a little taken aback. There are black rimmed portraits of his ancestors that eye me as I walk down the corridor – though to their credit, they refrain from commenting on my lack of attire or blood status.
I choose to follow an impulse and head towards the right end of the corridor, my bare feet pad on the carpet runner and as I turn onto a sweeping staircase, I wince. The white marble with grey swirls cutting through the perfection is cold on my toes. I have half a mind to turn back and get a pair of socks but then I remember my flip flops and the fact that I would have to go rummaging through Malfoy's drawers (which I doubt he would appreciate).
I continue down the curved steps and turn to the left. During my walk, I have managed to lose myself within the intricate maze of his home. I pad around, looking for familiar objects to help direct me back to the room, but the truth of the matter is that all the corridors look exactly the same.
I find myself walking along a darker corridor where I encounter a window and something catches my attention. I stare out, the grass stretches so far that it takes my breath away. A hippogriff chews from the ground and I watch as Malfoy walks out towards him. He looks totally at home standing in the garden in his pyjamas; a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a dark grey t-shirt, holding a bucket and striding across his front lawn.
He takes a something from the bucket and bows low before pulling the dead... well, dead something... into his hand and throwing it up into the hippogriffs mouth. I find my way back to a staircase and walk down two more flights of stairs and a couple more corridors, before I find a large, oak front door. "Missies going to be cold." I jump, spin around and find a small house elf standing by the door to my left.
I'm happy to note that she stands there proudly, no bandages any where one her form, in what appears to be a pink sun dress. "That's ok." I tell her, she looks at me and then nods before clicking her fingers. Together, we watch the door swing open and I move to look out, still keeping my feet firmly inside the house.
"Draco!" I call out, causing him to turn. He smiles at me, still feeding the hippogriff at the same time. He tells me to look behind the front door and I find a pair of male wellies. "They are never going to fit." I talk to myself as I pull one on, the size nine swallows my feet and I stand quite ungracefully before waddling to the door and making my way into the fresh air.
The grass is still damp with dew and it makes patterns across my shoes until they are sodden. Glad that I put them on, I can feel goose bumps fly up my legs. I should have gotten dressed, why didn't I? That was bloody stupid, I think as I trudge to meet him in a ridiculously short t-shirt and overlarge wellies.
I bow, low to the ground with my arms outstretched and we both wait for the hippogriff to bow back. "He likes you." Malfoy smiles as I join him beside the hippogriff. With the legs of a horse and the torso of an eagle, this hippogriff is just as intimidating as Buckbeak, but as I stroke his neck and he nudges me with his beak, all the fear is gone. Unlike Buckbeak however, this hippogriff has beautiful red feathers with black hair on his four legs.
I look to Malfoy who is watching me quietly. "What's his name?"
"Rhubarb." Draco laughs at my expression, "I didn't name him." He tells me quickly and I nod, "He was found a few years ago by the Department of Magical Creatures and I decided to let him roam here, I have a licence and everything if you want to check up on me, Granger!" He laughs and I continue to pet Rhubarb gently.
"I remember his case now that you mention it," I smile, "But his name was not Rhubarb, was it Malfoy?" I ask, stealing his smirk as he smiles sheepishly at me.
He turns me around, not answering but instead pulling me face to face with another two beautiful creatures. Two winged horses take slow, quiet steps towards me, bringing their heads to my fingertips and smelling softly. They are magnificent and I stand there in silence as I watch them tuck back their feathered wings. One is a tawny brown while the other is a deep grey, almost black. "These two are Jessica and Titan." He points to the brown and grey one in turn, as they both step forwards like they can understand him. "They are never usually this forward with people." He smiles at me, "And they have definitely never come to the main grounds to meet anyone before."
They move to stand closer as they begin to rip tufts of grass out of the ground. "They are beautiful." I smile, and he turns me to walk closer to the tree that stands about a hundred yards off. There is only one standing in the wide, open grassy space, but there are many more ringing the field. We are definitely not in London anymore. "Where are we?" I ask as we continue to move towards the lonely tree.
"Wiltshire." He smiles, "The Manor is half a mile in that direction," He points North. "I had this house built when I turned eighteen. Mother and Father still live in the Manor." I think back, remembering how both of his parents received house arrest for four years, as well as the Lord of the Manor receiving four years in Azkaban. Most people believed that they got off too lightly, but Narcissa aided us during the war, and apart from the Mark on Lucius Malfoy's arm, there was very little evidence against him. Either he didn't commit any crime apart from just being a death eater, or he covered his tracks so well that there was no evidence against him. He was aided in his sentence also by the fact that it was obvious that- though bigoted and a bit of an arsehole – he was an arsehole who did what he had to do to protect his family, unlike many of the other death eaters.
"Huh," I smile, the horses and Rhubarb are still following us up towards the tree as we walk, "Don't you get lonely, just like this poor tree must, Malfoy; look at it, all alone in the middle of all this grass." I'm joking obviously and he laughs along with me.
"The tree and I have each other for company, Granger." He tells me and I nod. Thirty metres from the tree, there is a ring of light lining the ground. A small smouldering that Malfoy and I are able to pass, but the horses and the hippogriff stop, watching us as we continue to step forwards. "The ring of fire belongs to Flame." We walk around the tree until we find a hollowed out space, a large carved hole – about a metre squared with a rounded top and a stand. On the stand, a phoenix, Flame, looks to me.
I look to him and grin, he smiles back. "Malfoy, you have a phoenix?" I ask, my hand moves on its own until I am touching Flame's feathers. They are soft like silk and he scares me by hopping onto my wrist. He uses his claws to grip on as he shuffles up to my arm to a place that he finds more secure.
"I adopted all these animals from your division at the Ministry. They were all mistreated and I decided to take care of them." He smiles at me, moving closer to stroke Flame, and then he cocks his head to the side and watches me. "How are you this morning?" He asks, a lump forms in my throat and I swallow it back.
"Better than last night." I tell him, holding onto my tears by the smallest thread, I have to gulp in a lungful of air and look to the sky to make sure that I don't let any fall. "I'm sorry again, for barging in on you like that."
He smiles, moving a hand to grab onto my waist and squeeze it gently, "I told you to forget it," he clicks his tongue and Flame flaps his way back to his perch. "If you want my animals to move to the sanctuary when it opens, I don't mind."
"These are yours." I tell him, "They look happy here and they make you happy, I wouldn't ever dream of taking them from you." We walk back to the house, the horses escort us to the door as soon as we pass through the ring of fire and then keen, pawing at the ground until we turn to watch them. They bow low, one leg out front as their heads reach the close to the ground.
Malfoy watches me silently, the he takes my hand and together we make our way up the steps and in through the front door.
He leads me to the bathroom where we wash our hands and then we walk together to the ground floor dining room where plates of food are already laid out on the table. "I didn't know what you wanted, so I just told them to make everything." He motions to the stacks and towers of food.
"It looks great!" I smile, my stomach growling in thanks and I watch him as we walk to opposite side's f the table. It is a good ten metres in length between the two ends, but in width it is only about a metre and a half wide so we are close enough to chat. We sit on the end closest to a wall of windows. And I smile as I notice the horses grazing.
"They never usually stay," He tells me. I reach over to his side to grab a piece of toast and he grabs my hand. "'Oh, Malfoy you are the best,' you want to eat then you have to say that?"
"Arsehole." I tell him and I stretch my fingers to grab the toast anyway.
Smirking, he says, "Uh uh uh," He takes it from me and bites into it, "'Malfoy, you are the best'. Say it, Granger."
I shake my head adamantly. "I will not." He doesn't look fazed, we sit watching each other for a few seconds until I speak again, "Thank you, Draco." I say instead, all traces of jokiness gone from my voice. "Thank you for helping me when I needed it."
"You're welcome, Hermione." My grin widens as he speaks my given name. I am going to draw attention to it, but then I decide that it is probably best to ignore instead of scaring it away.
"So, what do you want to do today?" He asks between taking bites of the toast he stole from my hand. I twist my gaze away from the stack of blueberry pancakes sitting on the plate in front of me and look up at him instead.
"Malfoy, we have to go to work." I tell him, looking to the large clock standing against the far wall – a wall painted green. "You gave me a deadline and if I am going to meet it than I really should be working today."
He shakes his head at me, blond hair dipping into his eyes and making him reach up a hand to push it back from his face. "I've already told Pansy that you have the day off, you had a hard time yesterday and I am not going to make you sit alone in an office for six hours," he smirks at me over a large glass of orange juice. "She warned me not to try anything because you have a hot date with Nott, or was that Zabini?"
"What?" I sputter, my fork clatters to my plate and Malfoy sits there laughing. "That is not true." I know exactly why I wanted to make sure that he was aware that everything Pansy had told him about my hot date is a lie. I realised at some point over the last two days that what I assumed was a passing fancy, is not so much passing as... well, staying. Even so, I know that I shouldn't mention my growing affections for him because I have been warned more than once that he will not reciprocate any of these 'not so fleeting' feelings.
"Good, they are both idiots that you should not trust with a galleon let alone anything more important."
"Couldn't I say the same about you?"
I lean back after having devoured quite a few pancakes and am very close to bursting point. Draco opens his mouth to speak. "I don't think you can, Granger." He smiles at me, "Remember who you came to when you needed someone. That takes a lot of trust." With this he stands, holding out a hand and when I take it he pulls me to my feet and drags me out of the room and up the stairs.
The walk back to his bedroom is much shorter than the trek around this castle like home that I went on this morning, and he pushes me into the room in front of him. Suddenly, I am dangerously aware that I am in Draco Malfoy's – womanizer extraordinaire – bedroom and he hasn't tried anything with me. Obviously, I am just that unattractive to him.
He pulls out a pair of what look like muggle football shorts and hands them to me, along with a t-shirt and some socks. "Get dressed." He tells me and I walk into the en-suite bathroom to strip off and change into his baggy clothes. He really bulked up over the years from the tall, skinny boy he used to be back in Hogwarts.
"I look ridiculous." I tell him as I step back out into the main room and find that he is in almost identical attire to me, though my overall judgement is that he looks a hell of a lot sexier than I do. I start rolling up my shorts so they hang higher than to my knees and I take the hoodie he offers me. "I could just go home and get changed."
"Do you think I am stupid?" He asks me, pushing me out of the room in front of himself and twisting me to the left. "You would run straight off to work." He smiles, "This way, I know that you are taking your well deserved break."
I look to him and ask, "What are we going to do today then?" he leads me down another set of corridors until they start changing from the universal grey that is all I have seen so far.
The carpet in this section of the house is a deep blue and I follow him as he pushes open a set of double doors. I step through, gasping in awe as I look around me.
He smiles, grabbing my hand and pulling me inside, "I thought that I could show you the best room in the house." Stacks and stacks of books line the walls; his own personal library.
He pulls me between the stacks, taking me up a winding set of steps and then another set that splits into two at the top. Every level of the library is different. There are four in total and they change as I climb. Malfoy stays on the third floor as I continue up.
As the first floor changed into the second floor, the carpet turned into a rich red and the stacks turned into floor to ceiling shelves piled with books of all colours and sizes. Draco pulls me up the large set of steps that splits off two ways as you make the way to the top, and here the walls are stone, the unfinished looks makes it that much more enticing. Draco stops here. He lets go of my hand and I turn to the left, finding another staircase that continues to move its way up.
As I move my way up a small round set of stairs that wind steeply, I hold onto the rail with one hand. I push open the glass door and the floor on this level is much smaller. I step in, the colours are overwhelming and I move closer to the shelves.
Pulling down book after book I realise that level four is dedicated to his childhood. Books all with the name 'Draco Malfoy' scribbled messily into the front pages. I sit with my back against the corner. I realise that finding myself immersed in the literature of Malfoy's youth is probably not the best right now for my mental stability. I pull the books from a lower shelf towards me and place the stack at my feet.
Flipping through the first one I find a story about a family; a mother and father who care. I have half a mind to rip it up and realise that I should move before I happen to deface the entire room. But, I don't. Repressed tears from the last hour trickle down my cheeks. I flip through the stack until I find a book about a rabbit. I remember someone mentioning it to me at some point. Maybe it was Ron. Or Teddy.
I cry silently for all the lost pages of my childhood while I sit here surrounded by Malfoy's. "Granger?" I hear his voice move closer to me. "Are you ok?"
I swipe away tears, hopping I don't look as pathetic as I feel. "Yeah, I'm fine." I smile at him and as he sits down, he places an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side.
"I forgot, I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to apologize for." I smile at him, resting my head on his chest and shutting my eyes as another few tears dribble out. "You're so spoilt, you know?" I laugh, gesturing around me.
"Hey! What happened to my book?" He picks up the discarded book on families and I smile up at him sheepishly.
"It flew out of my hands; you should have it checked for curses before it damages the whole place." I say and he smiles.
He nods, pulling me up and waving his wand so all the books jump back onto their shelves. "A likely story." he pulls me back downstairs after handing me a tissue from his short pocket and I wipe at my eyes quickly so that all traces of tears are gone.
"I feel like I'm a mess every time I see you." I laugh, "The first time; I had a slight underwear situation–"
He laughs, "I remember that," He says as he cuts me off; continuing quickly, "The whole office could see your bra,"
"Shut it! Anyway, then I have a go at you. Then I fall out of the shower and crack my wrist before I decide that falling out of your fireplace is the best idea for both of our sanities sake."
"Always a mess." He agrees as he takes books from shelves and stacks them into my arms.
I look at the titles, "What are you doing?"
"They are books that I'd like you to read." He says and I hand him back two or three out of the growing stacks after telling him that I had already read them. After we have a sizeable stack between the two of us, he leads me to the back of the second floor where there are three plump sofas covered in shiny black leather.
He waves his wand and two of them move to face each other lengthways, half a metre of space between them. "This should hopefully cheer you up, a day doing all of your favourite things."
"All we are doing is going to be reading,"
He smirks a Malfoy smirk, "That's all you like doing, isn't it? You are bloody boring."
I laugh, waiting as he settles the books in a stack between the two sofas. One stack for each of us. "Thanks, Malfoy." I reply sarcastically. He pushes me to sit, and he lies down on his own sofa, facing me.
"I could've taken you to see more of the gardens, but I thought you would enjoy this more and it is your day after all, isn't it?"
"Why are you being so nice to me?" I ask, suddenly suspicious.
"I like seeing you out of your comfort zone is all." He replies and then grabs a book from the stack closest to him and flips through to the first page.
"You are out of your mind, Granger." The debate flying between us seems to be at a standstill. Moving back and forth for the last half an hour has gotten us nowhere fast.
"No you are!" I spit back, placing a finger between the pages to make sure I don't lose my place and flop my head back onto the cushions staring at him.
He kicks his feat off the sofa arm and sits up. "Vampires should not be allowed into society." He hits his hand onto the cushion next to his body in anger, though I can tell by the fire in his eyes and the frustration marring his features, that he is enjoying having someone to duke this out with.
I shake my head at him; he watches me through narrowed eyes and waits for me to reply. "You are being discriminative!" I tell him, "They should be just as much part of society as wizards, witches, veelas, werewolves and other magical beings."
He stands, pacing in front of me. Throwing his hands out in front of his body in frustration and shaking his head, "They are dangerous, they can't help killing people."
"Veelas can be much more dangerous when their mates are threatened, and at the full moon werewolves are known to bite innocent humans and even kill."
Draco's hands grip the back of the sofa, pale in contrast to the leather. "They are less in control of their lusts and cravings, with the right conditions veelas and werewolves can be much less dangerous – the veelas mate calms them and potions reduce the risk werewolves pose to society at the full moon – there is nothing that can be done to control the blood cravings of a vampire."
I smile, standing up and moving to sit on the couch he claimed for himself, I kneel upon it, placing my hands next to his and stretching up so that we are almost eye level with each other, "You are just angry because they are so much better looking that you'll ever be," I smirk, watching him grip the sofa tighter in response.
I wait for a biting remark, but instead he just says, "You wouldn't want a vampire, Granger."
"And how would you know what I want, Mr. Malfoy?" I smirk; cocking my head to the side and watching the light catch the silver pupils.
So i hope you guys like it? Please review to tell me what you think. oh, and i know that Lucius Malfoy would usually be in Azkaban for life, but i want him in the story, so bare with and i promise there is a reason for his freedom! :)