Beta: the artful scribbler

A/N: Hey! Just want to write a quick note of thanks to the three fanfiction users who have been kind enough to leave me reviews! The Emerald Doe, FullMoonOnTheWater, and last, but certainly not least, Alice Helena. (And now you too, The Artful Beta ;) You guys rock my world when you bestow your sweet praises on my words. It's nice to know someone other than myself is in love with these characters. May the universe return the blessings you give tenfold. Thank you again.

Draco Hearts Jane

3 September, 1998

The Amorentia smelt of a sweet perfume whose origins he couldn't quite pinpoint, but which evoked a faint pocket of warm memory in which he'd sat in his mother's lap as a very small boy and played with her hair; also the lavender soap that was used on the household linens; and another vague, rather musky scent that made him think of Pansy's soft breasts and Agnes's comely hips, slender waist, and bulging bustline; and after he'd finished drinking it Draco felt unclean. He wondered if any wizard in the history of magic had ever been stupid enough to knowingly swallow a glass of Amorentia. The room was suddenly hot and he felt stifled, as though he couldn't breathe. He could feel his cheeks flushing with the heat, and small drops of sweat broke out on his upper lip and his forehead; and he knew it was all in his head. He'd studied the effects of Amorentia as part of his sixth year curriculum, and it took about an hour for the potion to take root in his brain - unlike most potions, whose effects are instantaneous. But Draco was panicking. It was as though a death sentence had been placed on him and weighed heavily above, like a sharp, unstable pendulum was now swinging over his head; precarious and fatal and only a short matter of time before it fell.

The Dark Lord released Jane so she could go to the lavatory and while she was gone, he gave his parents and auntie some additional instructions.

"Draco isn't to receive an antidote under any circumstances. I want all three of you to observe his behavior until the effects wear off, and I expect some detailed notes."

He went on, "If, by some happy circumstance, the philter manages to enchant Jane, give her the antidote, and if that doesn't work then make notes for me on her reactions to it as well.

"Make sure your son doesn't do anything too disruptive towards her. You'll need to keep a close eye on both of them, especially if the Amorentia is working on her. If they have sex, I'll kill him. I have some…tentative plans for Jane involving her virgin's blood, which, as you all know, is a potent magic. If your son spills it prematurely, I doubt all three of you will manage to survive my wrath.

"Have I made my meaning plain enough for you, or should I be writing all of this down?"

"Your meaning is very clear, my lord," Narcissa said roughly. And then, brazenly, frantically she laughed, and looking her master in his bloody eyes, harshly said, "We won't allow our son to have sex with the mudblood."

"We understand, my lord," Lucius said in a voice that was unusually docile, as though he needed to negate his wife's reckless statement. The pain and swelling on his cheek made it hard for him to speak.

"Anything you wish, My Lord," Bellatrix assured Him breathlessly.

His talk of Jane and her 'virgin's blood' was churning and bubbling so noisily inside Bella's head, she hardly knew what she was saying to him. What exactly did these 'tentative plans' entail? If He pricked the child, Bella would kill her; spy or no, come what may. She longed to ask Him, but knew she didn't dare even imply anything so sordid, in case that was furthest thing from his mind. It should be, Bella knew that. Before Jane was brought to serve him, something that abominable would never have occurred to her. But Jane's uncanny ability to spy, along with her perverse immunity to magic appeared to exempt her from all the regular rules that had long existed, governing the conduct of wizards and witches toward Muggles. Jane was changing everything.

However distasteful it might be for him to arrange for a child as juvenile as Jane to have sex with anybody at her unripe age, Narcissa understood perfectly why he was thinking of it. A virgin's blood was very powerful magic, and Narcissa still had her own, kept sealed, preserved, and tucked safely away in her keeping should she ever choose to invoke its power. A witch's wedding-night blood was one of her greatest gifts to herself, the pain of it acting as a small balancing force, which was a measly remuneration, all in all. In countries where women were oppressed - in some places witches weren't allowed to have wands, receive training, and could be put to death if she were caught trying to practice magic - her husband could collect her blood and use it for himself. Many women said that the magnitude of this theft would cause whatever magic he chose to enhance with it to sour and turn on him in the end. Narcissa had no idea whether this was true, or just a random rumor spread by the indignant members of her sex, but she sincerely hoped with all of her heart that this was the case. The Dark Lord had either never heard of these rumors, which wouldn't be surprising as it wasn't something women discussed except among other females, or he didn't believe them.

Narcissa wished for her own sake that the Dark Lord's plans were labeled tentative because he was making them for a very distant future. Even were he to get Jane to consent to it – for surely he could see how counterproductive coercion would be - any time a twelve year girl had sex with someone older, it could only be rape. Of all the torture and all the killings that had now taken place under the roof of Malfoy Manor, adding the rape of a little girl would be a separate sort of odious to Cissa's sensibilities, and she hoped that Jane would either have sex sometime very far away from the present, or somewhere very far away from their family home. In addition to these wishes, Narcissa could only hope that, whatever his plans for Jane and her raping, they would involve neither her husband nor her son.

The Dark Lord left the Brewery, and went to get Jane from the lavatory so he could escort her back to her room.

After he'd gone Bella shortly quitted the room as well, and Draco sunk into a nearby chair. Hunching his back, he buried his face in his hands.

"It's only for a day, Draco," his mother tried to console him as she closed the distance between them.

He didn't answer, just shook his head mutely.

Lucius strode carefully closer to him as well, feeling weak and undone, but wanting to make up for his own shortcomings as a father and a wizard, by offering his son some much-needed comfort. "You know that your mother and I, and even Bella, will never tell anyone about this. No one will ever know, Draco."

"I will," he muttered through his hands.

"I can Obliviate your memory afterward," his mother offered.

They all laughed a bit at her proposal, finding it funny because of her unmistakable sincerity.

But the humorous interlude was brief as Draco's mind returned immediately to the magic that was even now being digested into his bloodstream. "You have to keep me away from her," he beseeched them through gritted teeth.

"We will," Lucius said firmly. "You heard the Dark Lord. He'll kill us if anything untoward happens."

Draco just sat there taking deep breaths, trying not to burst into tears.

"Couldn't you just tie me up and lock me in a closet for the next twenty-four hours?" he asked desperately.

"We would. You know that we would, son," Cissa said, "but he told us that we have to observe you."

"Why is he doing this to me?" Draco cried in a voice aquiver with dread.

Lucius and Narcissa looked at one another over his head, but neither knew what to say. They knew why he was doing this to them. He hated them. But this knowing was too painful and frightening to think, let alone to say out loud, and it wasn't likely to offer Draco comfort.

Narcissa gently rested one of her pale hands across his shoulder. "It won't last forever dear. By this time tomorrow it will all be over, and none of us will ever mention it again."

Draco, still leaning over his lap, thrust his long hands into his silky, silvery hair and rubbed them over his skull a few times, then brought them back down to rub over his face again. He, like Lucius and Narcissa, rarely indulged in these physical expressions of anxiety, especially since it was a dangerous habit to get into these days. But, as it was just his parents to see, he let down his guard and allowed them access to the manifestations of his distress. At least he wasn't blubbering like a baby, which he felt on the threshold of doing at any moment.

He stood up and headed toward the door of the Brewery.

"Where are you going?" Lucius asked.

"I need to feed Vega," he told them on his way out.

"One of us can do it," Lucius called after him. But Draco didn't stop, and when he was gone Narcissa, restraining Lucius who'd made to follow his son, said, "Just let him be, Lucius."

Draco headed to his room under the pretext of taking care of his gorgeous eagle owl, Vega, and he was planning to feed him, but mostly he wanted a moment to himself. He headed up the wide, carpeted staircase and practically sprinted to his room.

Once there, Draco leaned against his bedroom door for a moment and caught his breath.

His room was spacious, yet it was packed so tightly with bric-a-brac as to make it seem quite cramped. He didn't like throwing anything away even after he'd outgrown it, or just lost interest in it. To his left two of the walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. They were thick, sturdy shelves built into the walls and made of a glossy teak. Every available inch was stacked up with scrolls, some antique ornaments that he'd inherited, miniature model broomsticks and action figurines, books (there were novels, old comic book collections, and he also kept all of his old schoolbooks), records for his gramophone, numerous boxes that were filled to the brim with pressed flowers, leaves, and jars of roots all leftover from the years he'd created his botany collections - and plenty of other disparate paraphernalia. He also had two desks, one for his summer studies and one for his extracurricular interests. The latter was littered with small model lunascopes, astronomy charts, and another box of botanical samples. He'd been immersed in these things during his fifteenth summer, before his dad was sent to prison, and since then he hadn't been able to conjure any renewed zeal for them, but neither could he discard them. Somehow disposing of these unused remnants would be tantamount to acknowledging, fully, that his childhood had ended too abruptly. And that wasn't something he was ready to do.

He had a small mahogany breakfast table in one corner beside the window which he seldom used, and in front of his large fireplace were two overstuffed, behemoth armchairs which he sat in almost every day. His four-poster bed was large and each post was carved with intertwined serpents running up and down their lengths. His bed hangings were an insulating brocade of a deep sea blue, embroidered with emerald snakes and broad-leafed vines. Draco had asked his parents if he could change the colors of his walls a couple of years ago and he'd chosen evergreen. Although his windows were large, he liked to keep the curtains drawn at least half-way, if not more, and even on bright summer days his room was cast in heavy shadows; this created the affect of a murky forest, as though a green light filtered down through a heavy canopy of deciduous leaves. He, like his ancestors, preferred this dim ambiance and he never felt as home in bright lights as he did in the dark.

His mum complained, excessively in his opinion, about the cluttered state of his bedroom, and every time he returned home for a school holiday he expected her to have cleared out all of his "junk" in his absence. But she never had; she respected his space and his wishes.

Draco didn't know why he was still keeping all the balls of strings he used to make cat's cradles and kites from when he was seven and eight years old. He just knew that when he considered chucking them in the rubbish bin, it made him feel really sad, like he'd be throwing out his memories of his wacky aunt. His eccentric Auntie Zipporah had taught him how to weave the threads into complex skeins and it had seemed so magical to him then. He'd loved those bright balls of rough twine and soft cashmere when he was little, and spent hours playing with them. He thought they'd somehow imprinted on his soul and vice versa. All of his possessions seemed as much a part of him as his long face, his white, spindly fingers, and his family pride.

He took a bleak solace from his room and his possessions as he went to Vega's cage and started refilling his food dish. He spoke to him softly when he went to his bathroom and got him some fresh water from the cold tap. Draco fed him some expensive, imported owl treats and gently stroked his soft brindled plumage.

Suddenly, feeling too tired to remain upright, he went to sit on his bed, and for some reason he started thinking about Pansy.

He pictured her puggy face and her cute figure. She'd been in most of his classes their entire time at Hogwarts together. But she hadn't made it into Advanced Potions. Pansy wasn't as dumb as Vince or Greg - she was never as far behind as either of them - but she often needed a few moments to cotton-on. That was when his interest in her had really begun to wane. He couldn't respect anyone who couldn't keep up with him academically. Greg and Vince thought he was foolish for breaking up with her, but they hadn't made it into many of the more sophisticated classes either. Pansy had seemed so ideal to those mongoloids, because she was not only a pure-blood with a nice body, but she also mimicked everything that Draco said, even the nonsensical things he'd said when he was goofing off and being facetious. A lot of the time she couldn't tell when he was serious or joking, so she just repeated everything, to be safe. At first he'd liked it, liked her, but after a while it'd gotten really, really boring.

Draco knew that Jane's deformity and her general ugliness was probably what bothered Mother the most, and that for Father it was probably the fact that she wasn't even a witch. Out of everything that was repugnant about Jane, the vacuity of her abnormally large eyes and abnormally small mind were what bothered Draco most. And forget about dialogue. Vega was more communicative than her. She was just so fucking dumb. And now he was going to spend the rest of the day, and most likely part of tomorrow, obsessed with her.

Love potions were a nasty joke in the Slytherin common room. Many boys talked about them like they were these really slick aphrodisiacs, which could instantly part a pretty girl's legs. Draco couldn't believe he was about to lose his mind over an ugly mudblood.

He went to the lavatory and checked his eyes in the mirror. His pupils were beginning to spread. He started taking deep breaths to try and steady his nerves but wound up so dizzy he had to sit down on the broad ledge of his enormous bath.

Fifteen minutes: that's how long Draco could feel the obsession setting in, yet remained aware enough of himself and his surroundings to realize that none of it was real. The magical illusion transposed his consciousness like a waking nightmare. He felt like there were two discordant notes playing inside of his mind, trying to harmonize with each other and failing miserably. It was excruciating.

And then it was gone. Over. His identity, his parents and his heritage, his aversion to Plain Lame Jane, his distaste of her unhygienic approach to…well everything, her barren, empty eyes; everything that made him Draco Malfoy, and every reason that made her as repulsive to him as pus and phlegm, faded, blurred, and eventually disappeared.

He had to find her! Jane, Jane, Jane Wellington. Jane. Wellington. What a brilliant, unique name she had! But would she understand how much he needed her? He had to let her know somehow, anyhow that he loved her! Merlin's beard but she was desirable!

Where was she? Oh yes, she was with what's-his-name, Voldemort.

Suddenly the words 'virgin's blood' came back to him and Draco felt enraged. He couldn't touch her! Draco would die if Lord Crazyface touched his gorgeous nymphet. She was so above him, above everyone.

Draco pictured her on a pedestal, looking down on him and smiling. It wasn't high enough, so his imagination had to raise her plinth to cloudy heights, and it planted some red, blooming rose bushes around the foundations of her lofty perch.

Roses were a good start, but what Jane really needed was diamonds. And gold. He had plenty of gold in the family vault. But would it be enough for her? Well, the world's tallest mountain of galleons wouldn't begin to encompass her worth, but the large mound of it in the Malfoys' vault at Gringotts would have to be a start. With the quickness of his immediate purpose, Draco went to his hefty wardrobe and rifled through the drawers at the base of it, until he found an antique jewelry box. From it, he produced his great-great-grandmother's sapphire and diamond studded bracelet. His parents had given it to him on his birthday a couple of months ago, and instructed him to bestow it on his future wife, on their fifth year anniversary. Who could have foreseen then that he would have found the next Mrs. Malfoy in such a short amount of time? Not him. But really, when Draco tried to think about it objectively, this was kismet. The love of his life had been hiding in plain sight all along! And the stars and all the forces of a benevolent universe had conspired to bring him his Aphrodite at an early date, to save him the agony of searching for her!

Draco left his room at a chirpy dash, and covered the distance to Jane's room in a matter of moments. Without knocking, he burst into the room and rapidly, but never fast enough, he closed the distance between himself and his resplendent sweetheart.

He fell to one knee, and offering up the expensive heirloom, he blurted, "Will you marry me, Jane?"

His darling bride crossed her arms, blushed profusely, and didn't end his anguish by accepting his feeble attempt to bribe her with precious gems. She was too good for such earthly materialistic artifices and her refusal of the bracelet only enhanced her appeal to Draco.

The snake burst into cavalier peals of evil-laced glee.

And, in words that would haunt him for weeks afterward, Draco turned to Lord Would-be-Usurper and said, "You can't have her! Jane and I are meant to be together!"

But this simply set the maniac into further patents of dissonant humor.

Draco reached for his wand, completely oblivious in his muddled frame of mind to the fact that he would never be a match for the Dark Lord, even on his own best day, and his master's worst. When he remembered that Potter had stolen his wand, months ago at this point, he balled his fist, pulled his arm back, and made ready to smash the arrogance right off of that disgusting creature, who was threatening, perhaps seducing, his raison d' etre.

Thankfully - and later he would assign this auspicious intervention to some anonymous beneficent deity – Mother and Father appeared in the doorway of Jane's room, and with a millisecond assessment of the situation, Mother used her wand to freeze him mid-swing, and pull him away from the lethal person he'd been on the point of assaulting. She took him to the sitting-room and set him on the sofa. He was indignant about this betrayal, and from his own mother no less! And he issued a steady barrage of profanities at both of his parents, the entire way.

Draco, who was an extrovert by nature, kept up a continuous stream of verbal threats and impassioned pleas for his release. "You'd better pay homage to the deities of our ancestors, that I haven't got a wand at this point Mother. Because if I had one, I'd curse you into your grave this second, for keeping me away from the perfection of my future bride, woman!" he told her savagely. "What if he's having sex with her? What if he's hurting her, Mother? I have to go to her, please!" He struggled against his invisible bonds, desperate to see his little Jane again. "Please! Mother, she needs me! We're going to be so happy her together! You'll let her call you mother, won't you? Father, you too! You two have to make her feel like a part of the family, or I'll never speak to you again. Where is she?" He gave an extra hard wriggle and fell over onto his side. "Let me go, damn you! I need her! Jane! Jane!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

This was what drove Draco to the sadistic heights of cruelty that followed in the next week. If he'd just been able to keep his mouth closed, the disgrace wouldn't have been so glaring, so complete, once the Amorentia had finally cleared his system. But every disgusting thought that came into his jumbled head, spewed from his mouth like some feculent font.

Lucius and Narcissa were trying to maintain their composure. Narcissa almost wanted to laugh, but only to keep herself from crying. Lucius was so angry at the disrespectful way Draco was speaking to his mother that it was all he could do from using Cissa's wand to try and knock some sense into him. He had to keep telling himself, over and over like a mantra, that it was the Amorentia steering, not Draco.

When Mother finally relinquished him from the spells that were binding him, keeping Draco safely away from the all-powerful man they called Master, he was positively livid. She hadn't done this until Jane was done being debriefed by the Dark Lord a little while later, and had rejoined them in the sitting-room. His fury had only lasted about five seconds though; for once his petite goddess was within his sight, all he could focus on was her glorious presence, whereas, moments before, all he could concentrate on was the torment of her absence.

She wanted to go outside for her daily dose of fresh air and 'esersize'. Damn, her mispronunciation of words that were more than two syllables was absolutely endearing! How had he failed to realize, all this time, how precious and superb she was?

As they were taking her outside so she could make the flowers and the clear blue skies weep with jealousy with the exquisiteness of her person, Draco admired the way she took the stairs. In times past, before he'd seen the despicable error of his ways, Draco hadn't understood how absolutely adorable his Jane was, when she clambered and descended the staircases of their immense manor. Because of her quirky and, well, he had to face it, exceptional formation, when Jane needed to go up a stairway, she had to pull her whole left leg up every step, and always bring the ingenious plastic one up behind it. And when she was on her way down, as she was now, she needed to employ an oppositional method for her descent. She lowered the artificial leg first, and only once it was planted firmly on the lower step could she then bring the complete extremity to rest beside it. And so on and so forth. It was like an elegant little dance, he realized. And he told her so.

"It's so cute the way you go up and down the stairs, Jane. I'm sorry that I didn't notice or tell you how elegant and graceful you are before now. I'm sorry for the times I wasn't as sweet to you as I should have been. I said loads of rubbish things to you that I never should have said," he told her, in an indefatigable rush. He needed her to understand how much he loved her, how far he would go to make her his. "I never wanted to say any of that stuff to you, you know. Mother and Father told me to do it. They made me, actually. Mother threatened to curse me if I wasn't rude to you," he improvised swiftly. Narcissa, who was only a few feet away, couldn't prevent herself from huffing in disgust. "You forgive me don't you?" He grabbed at her arm in his desperation and sincerity. But, looking a bit embarrassed, and inexplicably startled, she pulled away from him and turned her superlative eyes to Mother, for some reason. "Please, Jane! You have to forgive me for all that rubbish I said to you before! I didn't understand before how good and perfect you are! Truly! You know that don't you, Jane?"

She wasn't responding properly. He would kill himself if he couldn't make her understand how important and perfect she was to him!

He lithely put himself a few paces down the steps, and planted himself firmly in front of her. She couldn't keep going down these treacherous stairs until he was sure she knew how adamantly he adored and needed her!

Draco made a calculated swipe and managed to grip her wrists in his hands. How complete and validated he felt with her skin next to his. It was the pinnacle of ecstasies and he groaned with the unparalleled pleasure of it. But she was trying to free herself from his grip every second.

"Jane, you and I are meant to be with each other! You see that, don't you? Don't you?!"

Why wasn't she saying anything to him? She just kept getting redder and redder and wouldn't confirm the declarations of his intentions and desires to make her his. She finally managed to get her arms free from his clutch.

If he took a knife, and slit his wrists in front of her, would she then be able to see how much she meant to him? He didn't see this as too dramatic in the least, but rather as a perfect climax to display his feelings for her. She wouldn't be able to help seeing that, in the end.

"If I bleed myself for you Jane, then will you see how ardently I love and admire you? Jane, you're perfect to me. If I were to look up the word 'perfect' in the dictionary, there, I'd find a picture of your dazzling likeness. But no paltry photograph of your effulgent face will ever be sufficient to accurately replicate the precision of your grace and your excellent form."

"Alright, Draco," Father interrupted. "She understands how much you love her. Now let's take her outside for some …'esercize'."

Draco didn't like the mocking way Father imitated Jane's idiosyncratic way of saying 'exercise'. Lucius made it sound like something silly or pathetic when, in fact, it was all a part of her indefinable allure. Jane was so above books and intellect. She understood things, transcendent things, which neither he nor his parents could ever grasp with their flawed, materialistic natures. It was simply a mark of Lucius's flawed human nature that he wasn't capable of seeing this as clearly as Draco could.

There was this saying that people used went they wanted to describe something as false or illusionary: "It's all hinkypunk lights and Amorentia fumes." But Draco felt as though the potion he had drunk earlier that afternoon had clarified him, swept out all the cobwebs from the corners of his mind. The Amorentia was allowing him to see Jane for the succulent seraphim that she truly was; she was his glowing, piquant paramour.

He kept reaching out to try and touch her again, and she kept trying to retreat up the staircase backward. Jane finally tripped and landed on the edge of a step. She gasped. Father and Mother laughed like hyenas. (Later, Draco would realize that their unusually vehement outburst precipitated from everything that was happening to him, over which they were infuriated and horrified by, but couldn't control. They really wanted Jane to suffer, but couldn't cause her to with magic, physical abuse, or any other tangible means, so all they could do was laugh at the injuries she sustained due to her own clumsiness, point out her ignorance and stupidity to her as often as they could, and congratulate themselves on not being as pathetic as her.)

"You two are so mean!" he shouted at them.

And Draco helped her up. "Are you okay, Jane? Are you hurt too badly? Do you need to sit down, love? Would you like me to get you some of your medisinine?"

She gave him a disconcerted look, rubbed her bottom a bit, shook her head, extracted herself from the arm he still had draped around her, and preceded down the stairs.

Once they'd reached the Nook, Mother and Father settled down at the iron table - Lucius to read and Cissa to peel some hupplekink stalks, and Jane sat down beside them. She took one of the oranges from the fruit bowl that Martha placed there for them every afternoon, and she began to remove the tough outer husk.

"Would you like me to do that for you Jane?"

He'd pulled a chair up to sit closely beside her and couldn't take his eyes off of her.

"Ent you's gonna ride your broom today?" she asked, pulling back the fruit he was trying to take from her so he could assist her with it.

Sensing an opportunity to have his delectable lover all to himself, he asked, "Why don't you and I go for a ride on it?"

She shook her head, not looking at him.

"Why not?"

"I-I ent like being 'igh like that," she confessed softly.

"I won't go very high. There's this beautiful meadow a couple miles out. You'd love it there, Jane. There are all these gorgeous wildflowers, not that they even compare to you, dear," he said. "Please let me show you."

She shook her head, and then she tilted her head up and met his eyes, just for a moment.

That was when Draco noticed the color of her eyes for the first time. It took his breath away.

"Mother! Father! Look at her eyes! Did you see that?" he exclaimed.

His parents mumbled no and didn't pay him any heed.

"Turn your head this way again," he commanded.

She didn't comply, so he gently took her by the chin and lifted her head up. He saw it again. Jane didn't pull herself from his grasp this time, but kept her eyes on him as he studied them. When he reached out and took off her glasses, she just sat there still as a stone and allowed him to examine her amazing irises.

The high afternoon sun was angling across them, and where the light shone directly on them they were a delicious apple green. But on the side of her eyes that were cast in the shadows from the ridge of her eyebrows, they were teal crescents. The slivers in between the sun and the darkness were a brilliant aquamarine.

Narcissa looked up from her task and noticed the pair of them, her son holding Jane's face, their eyes locked.

"What are you doing to him, Poisson?" she asked furiously.

Lucius, startled by his wife's stern tone, looked up from his book.

"Mother, Father, come here," Draco said. "Look at Jane's eyes."

Narcissa, determined to put an end to the touching, set down the stalks she was in the process of unsheathing and came around the table.

She looked at Jane and meant to admonish her, but when she caught sight of the mudblood's eyes the words she was about to say stuck in her throat.

Narcissa leaned in for a closer look at them. Jane's eyes reminded Cissa of a tropical sea lapping gently over a white-sand beach.

Lucius, curious about what was going on with the cripple's eyes, came to see what the fuss was about. He leaned down as well, and studied her unique irises for a moment. Lucius thought that, framed by her long, thick, inky lashes, her eyes looked like rare priceless jewels.

"Your eyes are amazing, my love," Draco told her.

But his words made her blush again and she sat back from him, snatched her glasses from his hand, and put them back on her face.

"Aren't they beautiful, Mother?"

Narcissa went back to her seat and said, "They're sort of nice. I guess."

Draco snorted at this inadequate praise.

A few more minutes passed without incident, except that Draco kept trying to hold Jane's hand under the pretense of helping her peel her orange. In spite of Draco's 'assistance', she eventually managed to complete the undressing of her snack, and then slowly separated each citrus wedge and ate them, one by one. Draco wished he were her orange. He wanted to be inside of her mouth.

"Mrs. Malfoy," Jane addressed Narcissa respectfully.

Cissa silently looked up from her work.

"Will you's come wif me to the garden? I's be wanna go walk there."

Narcissa understood why Jane was asking her to accompany her on a walk, something she'd never done before. Jane was always allowed unfettered access to the woods surrounding the manor, and she never minded wandering around on her own. But today Jane had a suitor that she didn't wish to be alone with, so she needed Cissa's presence for her daily stroll.

"I'll come with you, Jane," Draco immediately offered. He stood up quickly, dragging the legs of his chair abrasively across the flagstones, so that they screeched stridently. He managed to grab her hand and tried to gently pull her up. But Jane's blue-green eyes were fixed gloomily on his mother.

Narcissa sighed. "Not today, Poisson. I think we should go inside soon. Why don't you use your chalks to draw a picture?"

Jane did as Cissa suggested and Draco followed her to the nearby place where she'd chosen to sketch. She carefully lowered herself to the pavement, with plenty of unsolicited help from Draco, and started selecting the colors she was in the mood to use. Draco stretched out beside her, nestled his head in his hand, and watched her pull each piece of chalk from the box and line them up uniformly, side by side.

Draco couldn't take his eyes off her the entire time she was working on her picture. He kept up a poetic monologue as he watched her. He compared her beauty to that found in nature, the moon, the night skies and the stars – "But none of it compares to your heavenly body" – he contrasted Jane to the portraits of his better looking female ancestors peppered throughout the manor – "They pale beside your transcendent beauty, my sweet Jane", and Lucius had released a derisive noise and quietly mumbled, "Most people are pale beside her" – and Draco kept asking her to marry him. Other than an infrequent blush, she didn't respond to him through the majority of it.

She kept disarranging her skirt and shift to scratch at her thighs, and every time she did Draco was treated to some sumptuous glimpses of her tight knickers. He focused his eyes on the outlined mound of her sex, and fancied he could even see tendrils of her dark, delicate pubic hair. Sacre bleu! He could feel his own sex tightening and longed to press it against hers. Even her dark knobby knees, each overlaid with some mottled sepia scabs, were unbelievably appealing to him. He wanted to kiss each bony protrusion, and then he pictured himself creating salivating trails up the scintillating paths of her inner thighs. He longed to gorge himself on every delectable inch of Jane, sweet Jane. Every piece of her flesh that he rested his eyes on seemed like a veritable feast. Draco was dying to suck on each of her fingers, and clean off the chalky residue until his tongue had memorized the minute stippling of her tiny ten pads.

When the appetizing image of her legs was hindered by her clothing, he focused on her incomparable face. He memorized her mouth. He found himself intrigued by the anomalous arching shape of her full upper lip and noticed for the first time that, because there was no typical downward dip over the top of it, the skin between the bottom of her nose and the top of her lip was deficient of the centric indentation that most people posses. Draco wanted to trace his tongue over the upward curves of the tasty corners; he found the subtle sloping contours intoxicatingly enigmatic. The shape of her lips, combined with the rich, poinsettia coloring, brought to mind a glass of full-bodied, vintage wine. If only he could dip into the swampy well of her parted lips and drink her secret nectar.

"How's your face, love? Does it hurt where that cruel woman hit you?"

She didn't answer.

"Your cheek looks a little puffy." He reached out and softly tried to trace his finger down the smooth, mocha-colored skin of her face. She reached up and pushed his hand away from her.

"Where did you grow up?"

She ignored him.

"How many children would like?"

She swatted at a fly that was buzzing around her ear.

He watched Jane dig around her nose for a minute, remove a big, slimy bogey, examine it for a moment, and put it in her mouth. He sighed contentedly as he gazed at her rapturously, and thought to himself, She is such a lady!

"Do you have a middle name?"

She shook her head that time.

"Would you like to play a game with me when we go back upstairs?"

She looked at him. Nodded slightly.

He smiled at her. She looked away. Didn't return it.

"Do you want to play some noughts and crosses when you're done drawing?"

She shrugged.

"Your picture's very nice. I've always admired the way you draw and paint, sweetheart."

"Do you mind if I call you that?"

She didn't respond.

Wanting to gauge her reaction, Draco leaned up and deposited a trial kiss on her cheek.

THWACK!

Narcissa and Lucius were on their feet in a heartbeat and rushed to where their lovesick son sat next to the object of his undying affection.

"Don't you dare hit him, you filthy little scab!" Lucius yelled at her.

Jane was outraged. So was Draco, on her behalf.

"Don't speak to her that way, Father!" Draco shouted.

Jane had her own opinion to impart. "I's 'itting anybodies be tryin' to kiss on me! Don't care if they's chanted, or bein' not chanted!"

Draco had a perfect outline of Jane's small hand print on his cheek, which was swiftly reddening, and it contrasted sharply against his white skin.

Jane was attempting to scramble to her feet, her disconcertion making her more awkward than usual, and Draco grabbed her at her armpits and hoisted her upward.

"You stupid barbarian!" Narcissa was fuming. "If you lay hands on him again I'll thrash you with a paddling board! I don't care if you do tell the Dark Lord on me!" Her hands were shaking.

"You's better be keepin' 'im 'way from me's!" Jane wailed. She was waving her arms at him frantically and kept trying to push him away from her side. "Stay way from me's!"

"If you do that, then I'll thrash you, Mother! Jane and I were going to wait until supper to tell you this, but she's agreed to marry me," Draco lied, ignoring Jane's slim, impotent arms that were trying to maneuver him away, but which he just kept right on trying to hold onto.

"I's twelve, you arse! I's ent marryinin' no one!"

Martha poked her head out the kitchen door, drawn to the commotion.

Lucius saw the inquisitive maid and drew his wife's attention to their unwelcome audience.

Narcissa raised her wand and cast a Confundus charm at Martha, and thought Our dinner will be ruined now.

Martha, glassy-eyed, went back inside.

"We had better settle down now," Lucius cautioned his wife in a collected tone.

Lucius was so disgusted and confused by Jane. If he and Narcissa had a daughter, or indeed, even a young niece that was close to them, he might have felt more confident when they had to deal with the little girl. But her dirty, prepubescent presence unsettled him so systematically that he would often just retreat to the background and allow his wife to handle all the necessary interactions. Lucius knew how to handle almost anyone, the wealthy and elite, politicians and Ministers for Magic, sadistic Death Eaters and even their master, but he melted into a flaccid puddle of uncertainty in the face of an inarticulate, stinky twelve year old girl.

Narcissa took a few steps toward Jane, until she was almost in her face, but Jane didn't look in the least bit scared and didn't back away. Draco was squawking in the background, protective and ranting about his love for the disgusting cripple, but Narcissa was so fixed on Jane that she could hardly hear his diatribe.

"I meant what I said, mudblood," she told her calmly.

"So's did I," Jane returned just as softly, having to tilt her head back sharply to maintain eye contact with the sleek, blonde witch, whose own head was looming almost a whole foot above her black, woolly one. Draco's potion-induced invectives were still playing behind them, and Lucius was a few feet away from them. Jane and Narcissa faced one another in a contained bubble of mutual, tangible animosity. "You's better keep 'im way from me. I's ent toleraterd bein' kissed at by's anybody. Don' care 'ow pure 'is blood be. Iffin 'e's trying it again, I'll kick 'is baby-maker. So better keep 'im way from me."

Narcissa's cheeks were flushed with her fury and her hand was twitching uncontrollably as she weighed the satisfaction she would feel by unleashing her rage on the insolent, unflinching child before her, against the consequences she would suffer were she to gratify the impulse. She raked her eyes scornfully up and down Jane's contemptuous personage. "I'll beat you senseless, child. If the Dark Lord finds out that a muddy-blooded speck like you was smacking a noble Malfoy such as Draco he won't care if you have to suffer some consequences. Kick him and you'll be sorry brat," she told her, deciding that she needed to tread carefully. "Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or anytime soon, but rest assured I'll make you sorry."

Jane's eyes changed. They lost their rocky resolve, melted to forlorn pools of contrition and supplication. "Please, Mrs. Malfoy. I's ent wanting no fight wif you. But I's don' wanna be kissed at or touched. Please, makes 'im be stopped it," she pleaded.

A surge of something close to sympathy rose in Narcissa's breast. She rested her hand on Jane's shoulder and said, "Lucius and I can't make him stop, as that would be contrary to the Dark Lord's wishes. However," she added, seeing Jane's lower lip begin to tremble, "we won't let him harm you. You can be sure about that, Poisson. Just make sure, other than when you slip away later this evening, that you don't leave my sight.

"Let's go inside now," Cissa told the mudblood and her family.

Nobody protested. Cissa waved her wand across the stones around their feet and gathered the scattered chalk pieces, and returned them to their box.

Draco couldn't have cared less where they went, as long as he could be with his Jane.

Once they were situated back in the sitting room, Draco, much as it pained him to leave her side for a moment, hurried to his room and retrieved a modest stack of games which with to entice his dark beauty to play with him.

Jane took up the deck of playing cards and shuffled them a few times. She told him that they were going to play a game called "Go fish"; she explained the simple rules to him while she dealt each of them a small stack to hold and then arranged the remainder on the floor between them in a circular pattern: "the pond".

But Draco hadn't paid much attention to the rules. He'd been much too busy mentally admiring her. After a bit, when it was getting more and more obvious to Jane that Draco was much too enamored with her to be an engaged partner, she lost her enthusiasm for the game.

Despite his pleas for her to play with him, she wandered over to one of the smaller sofas and sat down next Narcissa, something she never did normally. If Jane had sat herself beside his mother on any other day, Cissa would have removed herself to another seat. But today she didn't. With her and Jane side-by-side, Draco didn't have room to sit next to Jane. He started to squash himself between them, but they'd both protested, so then he'd tried to perch on the armrest closest to Jane, but his mother had threatened him with her wand. Finally, he'd had to sit on the floor in front of his scrumptious honey.

Jane seemed quite miserable for the rest of the afternoon. At one point, Draco even tried following her to the lavatory, so Narcissa froze him with her wand. She got so fed up with his loud imprecations, and his lovelorn declarations for the wildchild who was hardly housebroken, that she also cast a silencing charm on him until Jane rejoined them ten minutes later.

When Jane adjourned to her room later, she came back in an uncharacteristically short amount of time and told them that she couldn't slip away. As she had looked at Draco while she related this, they were in no doubt that their son's sad condition was directly responsible for it. They could only hope that this unhappy development would prove as transient as the love potion.

That night Draco hadn't been able to sleep. His mother had locked the door after Jane had gone to bed, and she and Lucius decided to sleep with their own door open. However, after his parents had gone to bed, Draco had crept slowly down the hall and knocked softly on her door. He kept jiggling the door handle, hoping that it might unlock itself in deference to his wishes. The imaginary picture of his one true love kept popping up in the forefront of his mind's eye. He was exhausted, and eventually his head began pounding, but he couldn't drag himself off the floor and go to bed. Finally, he lost consciousness. And when he awoke, it was thankfully over.