FIC: Flights of Fancy (Draco Malfoy/Cho Chang)
Title: Flights of Fancy
Author: namelessamelie
Pairing: Draco/Cho
Prompt number: 164
Word Count: 5,514
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Sometimes you get tired of being with heroes.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, there was absolutely no profit made from the writing of this story. Everything in the Potter-verse is J.K. Rowling’s and not mine.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to agirlnamedtruth for the opportunity to write such a rare (but intriguing!) pair-and also for the great prompt, which I used as my summary. Thank you also to my beta and, last but not least, to the wonderful mods, who have done an amazing job with this fest!
Flights of Fancy
There.
It glinted tantalizingly in the sun-a brilliant flash of light just ahead.
He dove, and the orb whisked past his outstretched fingers as he crashed into the grass on the pitch.
She came to a graceful stop in front of him and alighted from her broom, positively glowing with triumph. Clutching the Snitch in one hand, she beamed down at him.
“Good game,” she said, her smile dazzlingly bright, and he felt his insides curl into a tight coil.
~
It was the absolute last thing in the world that Draco needed: for her to start going out with Harry sodding Potter.
Potter already had everything. And now this? He didn’t deserve this-not that he deserved any of his advantages, really-but he especially didn’t deserve her. Why would the most popular girl in school want to go out with someone as intolerable and unattractive as Potter? It just didn’t make sense. It was unimaginable.
But then again, he had to admit: it wasn’t that unimaginable. Potter was her type, after all-gallant, heroic, the quintessential Golden Boy. The type of bloke that he could never be.
If only he could get her to notice him somehow. He felt fairly certain that, if he could just get her to actually talk to him, she would be so swayed by his charm and razor-sharp wit that she’d forget all about, you know, that whole notorious-Death-Eater-father thing. Which, at the moment, was probably the only thing she knew about him.
That-and the fact that he was the Seeker for the Slytherin team. She had never once acknowledged his existence except to say, in that perennially cheerful, friendly voice of hers, “Good luck!” before their Quidditch matches and “Good game!” once they were over.
Draco, like the Lord of Cool that he was, usually managed a suave gurgle in response.
The worst part was that those games were pretty much the only chance he had to impress her, and yet they inevitably lost whenever they played Ravenclaw. He never stood a chance flying against her: she always wore her long black hair down when she played, and it whipped wildly around in the wind with every turn of her broom. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem to find it distracting-but he certainly did. He could never manage to keep his eyes on the Snitch; and, unfortunately, Cho Chang’s lightning speed didn’t leave much room for mistakes on the field.
He wasn’t alone in his admiration; that much was obvious. Cedric Diggory’s body had scarcely gone cold before the male students at Hogwarts started clamoring to take his place. Draco refused to demean himself by joining the throng of pathetic, love-struck suitors; but that didn’t mean that it was any less aggravating to watch as they shamelessly followed her around the school, feigning compassion while they snuck furtive glances down her shirt.
Still, he could have handled her dating someone-had that someone not been The Boy Who Lived To Be Smug. He’d thought for sure that Cho was going to go out with Roger Davies, who had been mooning rather obviously over her since the start of the year; he’d never imagined that she might go for a younger wizard. He was quickly getting used to this pattern: wanting something desperately, then watching as Harry Potter, upstanding young hero and household name, won it instead.
Draco tried to resign himself to this fate. He tried to settle for watching her from afar, trailing her absent-mindedly around the school from a safe distance while he stared at her unreasonably shiny hair and the shapely legs that were so unjustly hidden by her Hogwarts-issue knee socks. He came to know her schedule by heart, frequenting the places where he knew she’d be.
He fancied himself quite stealthy, and he never dreamed that she might catch on to his stalker-ish behavior. But one weekend, when she was winding through the Hogwarts hallways with Draco several steps behind, she suddenly stopped at the end of a corridor and wheeled around to face him.
“Hi, Draco,” she said kindly, wearing a slightly uncomfortable smile. “Was there… something you needed?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I was just on my way to the, er-the-”
“The Quidditch pitch? That’s where I was headed.”
“What? Um-yeah, that’s right. The Quidditch pitch.”
“Well,” she said good-naturedly, “I should warn you that Ravenclaw’s having a team practice for the next couple of hours. You might want to try again later in the afternoon.”
“R-right,” he sputtered. “Thank you.”
With that, he turned and fled down the hall as fast as he could.
~
Rumors of her fight with Potter spread like wildfire.
Everyone was speculating as to whether he and Cho were still together, but after some close scrutiny on Draco’s part, it seemed obvious to him that they were not. The couple no longer spoke or spent any time together-they barely so much as exchanged glances in the Great Hall at mealtime.
One night, he wandered out for a late-night broom ride and unexpectedly found her sitting contemplatively on her broom, suspended only a few feet over the Quidditch pitch as she stared contemplatively out into the night.
She turned to look at him in surprise before her features relaxed somewhat. “Oh,” she said, in recognition. “You fly at night, too?”
“Sometimes,” he managed to say. Ugh. How smooth.
She nodded. “There’s something rather freeing about being up in the air, isn’t there? It helps me clear my mind when I’ve got too much to think about.”
He never did quite figure out what it was that moved him to speak so candidly, when he had barely said two words to her before-but he was suddenly emboldened by something bottled up deep inside of him: the part of his soul that hated Potter with all the bitterness and spite of someone who had harbored a great deal of badly hidden jealousy for years.
Suddenly feeling unreasonably angry, and mustering courage he did not know he had, he blurted out, “It’s a joke, isn’t it? Everyone only sees Potter as this glorious figure-so good and perfect, the hero of the wizarding world-and they can’t wrap their heads around the idea that there might be anything wrong with him. They can’t imagine that he could ever be the thoughtless, insensitive prick that he really is.”
Her eyes went wide with surprise. “What? Harry isn’t-he’s not thoughtless, exactly-”
“You don’t have to defend him,” he interrupted, cutting her off. “Potter’s not as wonderful as he’d have everyone believe, and you know that better than anyone.” Then, before he’d fully thought it through, he added impulsively, “One hero isn’t a replacement for another.”
She leapt off her broom and onto the ground to face him.
“I wasn’t trying to replace Cedric,” she said defensively.
“Everyone knows you’re not over him,” he said, regretting it instantly. “It’s obvious you only went out with Potter because you thought he might be the same kind of bloke.” Oh, Merlin. He was actually making it worse. Why was he saying these things?
“Excuse me?” she asked sharply, her eyes narrowed in a way he’d never seen before.
“You know what Potter’s problem is?” he went on.
“Where do you get off talking about other people’s relationships?” she demanded, but Draco was too consumed with hatred and jealousy to stop.
“All he cares about is how other people see him,” he sneered. “He’s so bloody concerned with looking like a hero all the time, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have the energy to be a good boyfriend. That’s his problem-he’s more interested in his own image than anything or anyone around him.”
She was silent for a moment, examining him astutely.
Then she observed, “Aren’t you the same way?”
He was suddenly speechless.
Before he could think of anything to say, she swung a leg over her broom and flew off into the night sky.
~
Draco did everything he could to hold back his tears when he found out that his father had been sent to Azkaban. He bit the inside of his lip and fought to stay strong as, one by one, his friends came up to him to offer their condolences.
“I’ll make Potter pay,” he said through his teeth.
By the time he burst through the door at the top of the Astronomy Tower, his eyes were burning. He rushed to the edge, heaving for breath, and sought solace in the cool wind blowing against his face and drying the tears that he had finally let fall. It couldn’t be true. How could it? His father had always had so much clout with the Ministry. He squeezed his lids shut and gripped the railing with both hands.
Then, suddenly, he had the strange, frightening sense that there was someone else present.
His eyes whipped open as he turned around and saw his worst fears realized. There was someone else there with him.
And it was the last person he wanted to see at that moment.
His breath caught in his throat, and he felt as though he were choking on air. Actually, choking didn’t sound so bad-it was a decent way to go, and death certainly seemed like a better fate than his current situation. The irony was inescapable: he had sought a safe place where no one would see him cry, and instead he had run straight to the one person from whom he most wished to hide his weakness.
He made for the door, but she was quicker than him: a lesson, he thought ruefully, that he had learned more than once on the Quidditch field.
“Wait,” she said, blocking the exit with outstretched arms. “Are you all right?”
Cursing the joke that was his life, he tried to slip past her without a reply, but she reached out and put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Draco, I’m sorry. I heard about your father.”
To his horror, new tears began streaming uncontrollably down his face. Too ashamed to meet her gaze, he stared down at the wooden floor of the tower and willed himself to disappear.
“I come here sometimes when I want to get away, too,” she went on, her voice almost unbearably sympathetic. “I think it’s being so high up that helps, you know? As close as you can get to flying without a broom.”
When he did not respond, she brought her face closer to his so that he would be forced to look at her. “Draco? Do you want to talk about it?”
He was completely and utterly humiliated-and somehow, it seemed that the only thing he could do to save face was to kiss her.
So he did. He closed his eyes and leaned forward; but he had scarcely brushed her lips with his when she jumped back as though she’d been burned.
“I-I’m so sorry,” she stammered, looking alarmed. “I’m… going out with Michael Corner.”
Oh, the shame.
Cho looked as though she were about to say something else, but he turned and fled down the stairs before she could get out the words.
~
He made absolutely sure to acquire a girlfriend before he returned to Hogwarts after the summer. And he made doubly sure to flirt with Pansy every time he thought that Cho might be even so much as glancing in his direction.
Cho, however, seemed not to notice.
He heard through the grapevine that she was no longer dating Corner; but knowing her, he figured that it would only be a matter of weeks before she found yet another boyfriend eager to carry her books around for her. He was afraid, for a short while, that she might give Potter a second chance. But as the year progressed, it appeared that the two of them were no longer even on friendly terms.
Soon, he was too consumed with more pressing matters to think much about Cho anymore.
~
She approached him one day to ask why he no longer played for the Slytherin team.
He brushed her off, saying dismissively that he was too busy for Quidditch; but she persisted, as calm as ever. “You don’t even fly anymore,” she pointed out. “I’ve noticed.”
Had she been watching him?
He put the thought out of his mind. Draco knew why she was worried about him. She had obviously seen how tired he looked these days-how tormented-and she’d assumed incorrectly that it was because he was upset about his imprisoned father. Had she known the real reason for his suffering, he thought bitterly, she would never even have spoken to him again.
“I’ve been busy,” he said curtly.
“Flying’s a great way to get your mind off things,” she said, undiscouraged. “If you have a lot on your mind-”
“No, I’m just-I’m just really busy, all right?!”
She looked at him reprovingly. “It’s a waste of your Quidditch skills not to fly,” she said, before sweeping past him towards her next class.
~
Madam Pomfrey poked her head around the curtain.
“You have a visitor,” she said.
He closed his eyes and stifled a groan, hoping it wasn’t Pansy again. He’d broken up with her several months prior, yet scarcely a day had gone by since then that she hadn’t asked him about the future of their relationship.
But, to his great disbelief, it was Cho that stepped into view.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Madam Pomfrey. “I’m going to clean up for the night, Miss Chang-you can see yourself out, can’t you?”
Cho nodded.
It was just his luck to have her decide to come see him now, while he was in this pathetic state: lying in the hospital incapacitated, looking terrible, having lost a duel-and to Potter, no less.
She said nothing as she took the seat by his bed, her brow furrowed with concern. Ignoring the throbbing pain in his torso, he attempted to sit up in order to look more alive.
“What are you doing here?” he asked hoarsely.
She shook her head. “Harry can be so brash,” she muttered under her breath, her eyes wandering over his figure.
Embarrassed by her pity, he averted his gaze.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and he scoffed.
“Do I look all right?” he grumbled.
And then suddenly she was bending over him and pressing her lips to his, and his mind went cloudy. He reached forward to cup her face, wincing slightly from the strain to his wounds, and pulled her closer. Her hands, which were planted on either side of him, edged slowly towards his arms; and when they finally slipped under the fabric of his hospital gown and he felt her fingers dance lightly across his skin, he found that he no longer felt the pain of his injuries.
He rushed to unfasten the clasp of her robes, his fingers fumbling and clumsy in their haste; and he heatedly kissed the side of her neck as she untied his gown and gently peeled the fabric away from his skin. When his chest and arms were bare, she glanced down for a moment to look at the scars slashed across his body-and suddenly, she froze.
Draco thought for an instant that she’d been scared by his wounds. He had just opened his mouth to reassure her when he noticed that it was not his chest at which she was looking so intently.
It was his left arm.
Shit.
There was a painful moment of silence.
Then, as if jolted awake from a dream, she recoiled with a gasp.
He wanted to die. Had he not been confined to his hospital bed, he would have run, as far away as his legs could carry him. But, as it was, he could do nothing but watch as Cho clasped both hands over her mouth and retreated.
How could he have made this mistake? How could he have forgotten?
“So it’s true,” she breathed, staring down at the telltale ink.
He had not thought it possible-but at her words, his stomach sunk even lower. Were there rumors about him?
He needed to ask her what she’d heard, but he found himself unable to form words as she began slowly backing away in horror.
“I never-I never thought-”
She left her sentence unfinished as she turned and hurried out, the sound of her footsteps growing ever more distant as they resounded through the empty wing.
~
He worried, briefly, that she might tell others about his secret, but his fears proved unfounded. When he finally left the hospital wing fully recuperated, there was no sign to indicate that anything in his life had changed.
Cho no longer spoke to him, and she seemed fiercely determined to avoid any sort of eye contact-but even that did not feel new.
After all, they’d never been friends.
~
He had escaped to the Astronomy Tower to be alone-to revel in the crispness of the cool night air as he puzzled over broken cabinets and Apparation and why Reparo was not always enough.
But as he looked out into the sky, he was distracted by a lone figure flying in the distance, its silhouette darkening the moon with the shadow it cast as it glided past.
He waited for her on the pitch. When she landed at last, it took her some time before she noticed him standing in the shadows and froze.
“Cho,” he started to say, stepping towards her out of the darkness, and she gripped the handle of her broom more tightly.
“Please leave me alone,” she said, her voice strangely tight.
“I just wanted to say that-”
“I don’t want to talk,” she interrupted. “So please leave me alone.”
“Cho, you’ve got to listen to me-”
“I don’t have to do anything. And if you come any closer-”
“For Merlin’s sakes-”
But before he knew what was happening, her wand was out and ready and pointed directly at his throat.
He stopped in his tracks and swallowed hard.
“I told you not to come any closer,” she repeated firmly. Her voice wavered slightly as she spoke, and her eyes darted uncertainly over his face; but her aim was sure and steady.
“Fine,” he snapped, and he was instantly ashamed at how high-pitched his voice sounded. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“Thank you,” she said coolly.
He turned to leave, but something suddenly flared inside him and he whirled back around to face her.
“You know what?” he asked furiously, clenching his fists. “I’m sorry that I’ll never be good enough for you. I’m sorry that I can’t be Potter. I’m sorry that I’ll never be a hero, that I can’t remind you of your precious little Gryffindor ghost-that my life happens to be more complicated than that!” He knew that his volume was rapidly increasing with each word, but it no longer seemed to be under his control. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t born on the right side,” he said, nearly shouting, “so that my recklessness could count as courage like Potter’s always does; I’m sorry that I’m not boyfriend material-”
“SHUT UP!” she screamed. “Shut... up! You don’t-you don’t get to yell at me, Draco! You don’t have the upper ground in the situation!” She gestured wildly with one hand, fiercely jabbing her wand in his direction with the other. “I mean, what are you doing? Is this what you-is this really what you want for yourself? To be a bloody Death Eater?! Is this really what you believe in?” She made a frustrated noise. “I can’t even-I should-I should really tell someone, I-”
“But you didn’t.”
She broke off and stared at him.
“You could have told someone, but you didn’t. Why?”
She was silent for a moment before saying, more softly, “It’s not too late for you to change your mind.”
“I can’t,” he said simply.
She didn’t lower her wand, but she made no move to stop him as he resumed advancing towards her.
“But you don’t-you don’t mean it, do you?” she asked weakly, her voice now barely above a whisper. “You don’t actually want to be a-a-” She seemed unable to finish her sentence. “They must have made you do it… didn’t they?”
He was now so close that he could have reached out and grabbed her wand away from her. “I’m a Death Eater, Cho,” he said quietly, uttering the words that she could not bring herself to say. “It’s what I am. I didn’t have a choice, but… it’s done now. I can’t go back.”
The look in her eyes told him plainly that she was terrified of him, that she had no idea why she had let him approach her unhexed-but when he placed one hand at her waist and leaned down to kiss her, she did not protest.
The kiss was one-sided at first, as though he were alone in pleading for entrance to her tightly pursed lips; but then he tugged her closer with both arms and she reached up to brace herself on his shoulders-and some wall deep inside her crumbled. She fisted his cloak with both hands and sunk into him as he pressed himself against her, and suddenly there was no such thing as Death Eaters or war or even Voldemort.
She pulled back slightly for a moment, her lids half-closed, to tell him urgently that they couldn’t keep doing this, that this would lead nowhere-this can’t be anything, Draco-but he interrupted her before she could finish, breathlessly agreeing before she could even tell him what he was agreeing to.
He would have said anything at that moment, just so long as he got to keep kissing her.
He barely even heard her as he leaned forward once more, sliding one hand up her neck and into that soft, impossibly silky hair. His lips swallowed her words, her doubts, her protests.
~
The next time he spotted her flying alone at night, he didn’t wait for her to come back down to Earth. Instead, he jumped on his broomstick and joined her in the sky.
He silently pulled up alongside her as she zoomed through the frosty air, catching her off guard when she turned to glance over her shoulder.
“Draco,” she said, startled, and before she could stop him, he had aligned their brooms and slung one leg over hers in order to straddle both at once.
“What are you doing?” Cho asked in alarm, sounding extremely unnerved, but he paid her no heed as he scooted closer until her back was pressed firmly against his front. Grasping both of their broomsticks together in one hand, he reached forward and wrapped his other arm tightly around her waist.
“Draco, this doesn’t seem very-”
He cut her off with his lips.
Surprised, she squeaked into his mouth as their pace slowed to a halt. Her head was tilted backwards in an awkward fashion, and she was clutching onto their broomsticks for dear life, but she responded passionately. They floated together through a moonlit cloud, entwined and enraptured; and by the time they finally returned to the ground, Draco knew he would never look at flying the same way again.
~
She told him-repeatedly-that it had been a mistake, that she couldn’t keep seeing him.
But in spite of her protests, she never turned him away when he cornered her, whether in the locker room or in storage sheds or in empty classrooms.
He never used the Room of Requirement. It would have been the easiest option, of course, but he did not want to sully the few moments that they shared with reminders of his doomed fate. The Room of Requirement, for him, was an unhappy place; a place devoid of hope and comfort. His time with her was an escape.
Yet every time she glanced at the stain on his arm-including the one time she brushed it accidentally with her fingers and then drew back with a shudder-she blanched. Sometimes she would pause for an instant, other times she would swallow hard and look away. No matter how many times she saw the damn thing, her reactions made it clear that she would never get used to its existence.
It grew to be too much for Draco. He began to seek out the dark during their encounters: partially to conceal his Dark Mark from her, but mostly to hide it from himself.
~
“I’ve never been kissed like that,” she confessed into the darkness, as they lay on a conjured sofa in a cramped, unlit broom closet.
“What?”
“The way you kiss me-I’ve never been kissed like that before.”
He turned towards her, despite the fact that he could only barely see her expression. “What do you mean?”
She flushed a little. “I don’t know. With you, it’s… desperate. Like you’re always worried you’ll run out of time.”
He said nothing.
They fell asleep listening to the sound of their own breathing. When Draco woke the next morning, she was already gone.
~
He heard a rumor at breakfast that she’d been spotted flirting with Justin Finch-Fletchley. Finch-Fletchley pursuing Cho was nothing new-he’d been after her since third year-but the speculation about whether they might get together was both novel and entirely unwelcome. He was a Hufflepuff, for Merlin’s sakes. And a Mudblood at that.
As he finished his toast and rose from his seat, he suddenly noticed Finch-Fletchley leaving his house table to swoop down on that of the Ravenclaws.
And just like that, he lost all reason.
That night, a fit of jealous rage drove him to the spiral staircase that led up to the Ravenclaw dormitory. He ascended for what felt like hours-did the Ravenclaws actually climb this thing every time they needed to stop by their room?-until he finally came to the entrance and knocked impatiently.
A dreamy voice called out, “Is magic a power or a state of being?”
Draco groaned. “Are you kidding me?” he asked aloud, but there was no response.
Leave it to the Ravenclaws to devise the swottiest entrance system imaginable.
After a moment’s reflection, he said, slightly annoyed, “Well, it’s both. It’s-it’s not a thing; it can’t be contained or destroyed or taken away-it’s-” He broke off, lost in thought. “It’s everywhere, really. Magic is in everything, if you know where to look. What’s important is how we learn to control it. That’s what differentiates us from the Muggles.”
“Thoughtfully reasoned,” the eagle knocker said, “if a bit wordy.”
The door creaked open into a bright, airy, circular room that looked absolutely nothing like the Slytherin common room. It was empty except for a few second-years playing a game of Exploding Snap, who stared blankly at him as he entered.
“Are you looking for someone?” one of them asked, glancing at his prefect’s badge.
“Where’s Cho Chang?” he demanded, flashing his best sneer.
At just that moment, someone else knocked on the door, and the melodious voice of the enchanted eagle asked whether conjured objects were as real as those found in nature. The voice that replied was distinctly familiar, though Draco could not hear exactly what was being said behind the thick wooden door.
“An elegant answer,” said the knocker, and the door swung open.
“There she is,” the second-year exclaimed, and Cho stopped cold.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding horrified.
“I was looking for you,” he started to say, but she suddenly lunged forward, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him out of the room.
“You can’t be here,” she said hurriedly, pulling him back down the stairs. “You should go.”
“I need to talk to you,” he snapped, wrenching his arm free and glaring at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She glanced around feverishly. “Later,” she said. “Please go.”
“No, we’ll talk now. I have something to say, and-”
“Draco, please! We can’t be seen together!”
His mouth snapped shut.
“You know people will talk, and…” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I don’t know what you want, but please, if it’s not urgent…”
Draco suddenly realized that Finch-Fletchley was the least of his concerns.
“Afraid people will find out you’re consorting with a Death Eater?” he asked coldly.
She winced and looked down at the floor. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“What have you been doing with me all this time, then?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice from breaking. “If you’re so afraid that someone might find out?”
When her eyes rose to meet his, they were full of pain and confusion. “I don’t know,” she cried. “I don’t-Draco, I told you this couldn’t go anywhere.”
“You know why you’re unhappy?” he blurted out, as a sharp pain threatened to overtake his chest. “You choose your friends based on how they look to the outside world-not how much they care about you.”
She stared at him, astounded, and he drew a deep breath. “I hope you and Finch-Fletchley are very happy together.”
“This was a huge mistake,” she whispered, and he felt his insides burn.
“Well, don’t worry,” he said bitterly. “I won’t be bothering you again.”
~
They did not speak again until his last night at school. He ran into her on his way to the Room of Requirement, and she awkwardly averted her gaze as they passed each other in the corridor.
He almost let her go. But then a chill went through him, and he felt suddenly afraid.
“Cho,” he called, and she turned to look back at him.
“Stay in your room tonight.”
“Why?” she asked warily, her brow furrowed.
“Just listen to me. Stay in your room, and don’t leave for any reason-no matter what you hear outside.”
Her eyes widened with fear. “Draco,” she said quietly, her voice filled with dread, “what are you-”
“Just stay in your room, all right?”
“Please, Draco,” she whispered, “please don’t do anything that-”
But he turned away before she could finish, blinking back tears as he marched onward, towards his destiny.
~
The flash of the cameras was blinding as he stepped out of the lift into the lobby of the Ministry.
The two Aurors escorting him attempted to wave away the horde of photographers, but their cries of “Please step aside!” were to no avail.
“Mr. Malfoy, how does it feel to be a free man again?” called a reporter.
“Any comments on your trial?” shouted another.
“How do you feel about the outcome of the war?”
“Over here, Mr. Malfoy!”
He did his best to ignore them as he charged ahead, keeping his eyes down as he made his way through the crowd.
“Mr. Malfoy, how do you respond to allegations that your family bribed their way out of your indictment?”
“Do you think you were unjustly detained at the Ministry in the weeks before your trial?”
“How did you react to the news that your father will remain in Azkaban?”
He pressed onwards, desperate to escape. If he could just make it to the fireplaces, he would be free.
When he finally entered the Atrium, the throng of relentless photographers still hot on his heels, he suddenly noticed someone standing in the center of the room and stopped dead in his tracks.
She was waiting.
For him.
She was holding two broomsticks in one hand, her arms crossed casually as she watched him approach.
Was this real?
He had not seen her in over a year; and she looked older, more mature-and still as breathtaking as ever. A lump formed in his throat, and he marvelled at how the sight of her could still do this to him.
As he walked up to her, he no longer heard the cries of the surrounding reporters, and her expression remained calm even as the photographers clicked away around them.
“Hi,” she said, her lips curved upwards into the smallest of smiles.
She looked so real.
He stared at her, still unable to believe his eyes. “You’re here,” he said incredulously, sounding quite stupid.
Cho held up the broomsticks. “After being cooped up so long, I thought you might fancy a ride,” she said simply. “After all, we’ve never flown together in daylight before.”
Draco suddenly found himself unable to hold back a grin.
“That’s not true,” he replied. “We’ve flown together plenty of times during the day.”
For a moment, she cocked her head to the side in thought. Then she said, “You’re right. But this time, I won’t be kicking your arse in Quidditch.”
The photo of them leaving the Ministry together, hands joined as they stepped into the fireplace, was splattered all over the papers the next day.
Author: namelessamelie
Pairing: Draco/Cho
Prompt number: 164
Word Count: 5,514
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Summary: Sometimes you get tired of being with heroes.
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, there was absolutely no profit made from the writing of this story. Everything in the Potter-verse is J.K. Rowling’s and not mine.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to agirlnamedtruth for the opportunity to write such a rare (but intriguing!) pair-and also for the great prompt, which I used as my summary. Thank you also to my beta and, last but not least, to the wonderful mods, who have done an amazing job with this fest!
Flights of Fancy
There.
It glinted tantalizingly in the sun-a brilliant flash of light just ahead.
He dove, and the orb whisked past his outstretched fingers as he crashed into the grass on the pitch.
She came to a graceful stop in front of him and alighted from her broom, positively glowing with triumph. Clutching the Snitch in one hand, she beamed down at him.
“Good game,” she said, her smile dazzlingly bright, and he felt his insides curl into a tight coil.
~
It was the absolute last thing in the world that Draco needed: for her to start going out with Harry sodding Potter.
Potter already had everything. And now this? He didn’t deserve this-not that he deserved any of his advantages, really-but he especially didn’t deserve her. Why would the most popular girl in school want to go out with someone as intolerable and unattractive as Potter? It just didn’t make sense. It was unimaginable.
But then again, he had to admit: it wasn’t that unimaginable. Potter was her type, after all-gallant, heroic, the quintessential Golden Boy. The type of bloke that he could never be.
If only he could get her to notice him somehow. He felt fairly certain that, if he could just get her to actually talk to him, she would be so swayed by his charm and razor-sharp wit that she’d forget all about, you know, that whole notorious-Death-Eater-father thing. Which, at the moment, was probably the only thing she knew about him.
That-and the fact that he was the Seeker for the Slytherin team. She had never once acknowledged his existence except to say, in that perennially cheerful, friendly voice of hers, “Good luck!” before their Quidditch matches and “Good game!” once they were over.
Draco, like the Lord of Cool that he was, usually managed a suave gurgle in response.
The worst part was that those games were pretty much the only chance he had to impress her, and yet they inevitably lost whenever they played Ravenclaw. He never stood a chance flying against her: she always wore her long black hair down when she played, and it whipped wildly around in the wind with every turn of her broom. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem to find it distracting-but he certainly did. He could never manage to keep his eyes on the Snitch; and, unfortunately, Cho Chang’s lightning speed didn’t leave much room for mistakes on the field.
He wasn’t alone in his admiration; that much was obvious. Cedric Diggory’s body had scarcely gone cold before the male students at Hogwarts started clamoring to take his place. Draco refused to demean himself by joining the throng of pathetic, love-struck suitors; but that didn’t mean that it was any less aggravating to watch as they shamelessly followed her around the school, feigning compassion while they snuck furtive glances down her shirt.
Still, he could have handled her dating someone-had that someone not been The Boy Who Lived To Be Smug. He’d thought for sure that Cho was going to go out with Roger Davies, who had been mooning rather obviously over her since the start of the year; he’d never imagined that she might go for a younger wizard. He was quickly getting used to this pattern: wanting something desperately, then watching as Harry Potter, upstanding young hero and household name, won it instead.
Draco tried to resign himself to this fate. He tried to settle for watching her from afar, trailing her absent-mindedly around the school from a safe distance while he stared at her unreasonably shiny hair and the shapely legs that were so unjustly hidden by her Hogwarts-issue knee socks. He came to know her schedule by heart, frequenting the places where he knew she’d be.
He fancied himself quite stealthy, and he never dreamed that she might catch on to his stalker-ish behavior. But one weekend, when she was winding through the Hogwarts hallways with Draco several steps behind, she suddenly stopped at the end of a corridor and wheeled around to face him.
“Hi, Draco,” she said kindly, wearing a slightly uncomfortable smile. “Was there… something you needed?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I was just on my way to the, er-the-”
“The Quidditch pitch? That’s where I was headed.”
“What? Um-yeah, that’s right. The Quidditch pitch.”
“Well,” she said good-naturedly, “I should warn you that Ravenclaw’s having a team practice for the next couple of hours. You might want to try again later in the afternoon.”
“R-right,” he sputtered. “Thank you.”
With that, he turned and fled down the hall as fast as he could.
~
Rumors of her fight with Potter spread like wildfire.
Everyone was speculating as to whether he and Cho were still together, but after some close scrutiny on Draco’s part, it seemed obvious to him that they were not. The couple no longer spoke or spent any time together-they barely so much as exchanged glances in the Great Hall at mealtime.
One night, he wandered out for a late-night broom ride and unexpectedly found her sitting contemplatively on her broom, suspended only a few feet over the Quidditch pitch as she stared contemplatively out into the night.
She turned to look at him in surprise before her features relaxed somewhat. “Oh,” she said, in recognition. “You fly at night, too?”
“Sometimes,” he managed to say. Ugh. How smooth.
She nodded. “There’s something rather freeing about being up in the air, isn’t there? It helps me clear my mind when I’ve got too much to think about.”
He never did quite figure out what it was that moved him to speak so candidly, when he had barely said two words to her before-but he was suddenly emboldened by something bottled up deep inside of him: the part of his soul that hated Potter with all the bitterness and spite of someone who had harbored a great deal of badly hidden jealousy for years.
Suddenly feeling unreasonably angry, and mustering courage he did not know he had, he blurted out, “It’s a joke, isn’t it? Everyone only sees Potter as this glorious figure-so good and perfect, the hero of the wizarding world-and they can’t wrap their heads around the idea that there might be anything wrong with him. They can’t imagine that he could ever be the thoughtless, insensitive prick that he really is.”
Her eyes went wide with surprise. “What? Harry isn’t-he’s not thoughtless, exactly-”
“You don’t have to defend him,” he interrupted, cutting her off. “Potter’s not as wonderful as he’d have everyone believe, and you know that better than anyone.” Then, before he’d fully thought it through, he added impulsively, “One hero isn’t a replacement for another.”
She leapt off her broom and onto the ground to face him.
“I wasn’t trying to replace Cedric,” she said defensively.
“Everyone knows you’re not over him,” he said, regretting it instantly. “It’s obvious you only went out with Potter because you thought he might be the same kind of bloke.” Oh, Merlin. He was actually making it worse. Why was he saying these things?
“Excuse me?” she asked sharply, her eyes narrowed in a way he’d never seen before.
“You know what Potter’s problem is?” he went on.
“Where do you get off talking about other people’s relationships?” she demanded, but Draco was too consumed with hatred and jealousy to stop.
“All he cares about is how other people see him,” he sneered. “He’s so bloody concerned with looking like a hero all the time, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have the energy to be a good boyfriend. That’s his problem-he’s more interested in his own image than anything or anyone around him.”
She was silent for a moment, examining him astutely.
Then she observed, “Aren’t you the same way?”
He was suddenly speechless.
Before he could think of anything to say, she swung a leg over her broom and flew off into the night sky.
~
Draco did everything he could to hold back his tears when he found out that his father had been sent to Azkaban. He bit the inside of his lip and fought to stay strong as, one by one, his friends came up to him to offer their condolences.
“I’ll make Potter pay,” he said through his teeth.
By the time he burst through the door at the top of the Astronomy Tower, his eyes were burning. He rushed to the edge, heaving for breath, and sought solace in the cool wind blowing against his face and drying the tears that he had finally let fall. It couldn’t be true. How could it? His father had always had so much clout with the Ministry. He squeezed his lids shut and gripped the railing with both hands.
Then, suddenly, he had the strange, frightening sense that there was someone else present.
His eyes whipped open as he turned around and saw his worst fears realized. There was someone else there with him.
And it was the last person he wanted to see at that moment.
His breath caught in his throat, and he felt as though he were choking on air. Actually, choking didn’t sound so bad-it was a decent way to go, and death certainly seemed like a better fate than his current situation. The irony was inescapable: he had sought a safe place where no one would see him cry, and instead he had run straight to the one person from whom he most wished to hide his weakness.
He made for the door, but she was quicker than him: a lesson, he thought ruefully, that he had learned more than once on the Quidditch field.
“Wait,” she said, blocking the exit with outstretched arms. “Are you all right?”
Cursing the joke that was his life, he tried to slip past her without a reply, but she reached out and put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Draco, I’m sorry. I heard about your father.”
To his horror, new tears began streaming uncontrollably down his face. Too ashamed to meet her gaze, he stared down at the wooden floor of the tower and willed himself to disappear.
“I come here sometimes when I want to get away, too,” she went on, her voice almost unbearably sympathetic. “I think it’s being so high up that helps, you know? As close as you can get to flying without a broom.”
When he did not respond, she brought her face closer to his so that he would be forced to look at her. “Draco? Do you want to talk about it?”
He was completely and utterly humiliated-and somehow, it seemed that the only thing he could do to save face was to kiss her.
So he did. He closed his eyes and leaned forward; but he had scarcely brushed her lips with his when she jumped back as though she’d been burned.
“I-I’m so sorry,” she stammered, looking alarmed. “I’m… going out with Michael Corner.”
Oh, the shame.
Cho looked as though she were about to say something else, but he turned and fled down the stairs before she could get out the words.
~
He made absolutely sure to acquire a girlfriend before he returned to Hogwarts after the summer. And he made doubly sure to flirt with Pansy every time he thought that Cho might be even so much as glancing in his direction.
Cho, however, seemed not to notice.
He heard through the grapevine that she was no longer dating Corner; but knowing her, he figured that it would only be a matter of weeks before she found yet another boyfriend eager to carry her books around for her. He was afraid, for a short while, that she might give Potter a second chance. But as the year progressed, it appeared that the two of them were no longer even on friendly terms.
Soon, he was too consumed with more pressing matters to think much about Cho anymore.
~
She approached him one day to ask why he no longer played for the Slytherin team.
He brushed her off, saying dismissively that he was too busy for Quidditch; but she persisted, as calm as ever. “You don’t even fly anymore,” she pointed out. “I’ve noticed.”
Had she been watching him?
He put the thought out of his mind. Draco knew why she was worried about him. She had obviously seen how tired he looked these days-how tormented-and she’d assumed incorrectly that it was because he was upset about his imprisoned father. Had she known the real reason for his suffering, he thought bitterly, she would never even have spoken to him again.
“I’ve been busy,” he said curtly.
“Flying’s a great way to get your mind off things,” she said, undiscouraged. “If you have a lot on your mind-”
“No, I’m just-I’m just really busy, all right?!”
She looked at him reprovingly. “It’s a waste of your Quidditch skills not to fly,” she said, before sweeping past him towards her next class.
~
Madam Pomfrey poked her head around the curtain.
“You have a visitor,” she said.
He closed his eyes and stifled a groan, hoping it wasn’t Pansy again. He’d broken up with her several months prior, yet scarcely a day had gone by since then that she hadn’t asked him about the future of their relationship.
But, to his great disbelief, it was Cho that stepped into view.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” said Madam Pomfrey. “I’m going to clean up for the night, Miss Chang-you can see yourself out, can’t you?”
Cho nodded.
It was just his luck to have her decide to come see him now, while he was in this pathetic state: lying in the hospital incapacitated, looking terrible, having lost a duel-and to Potter, no less.
She said nothing as she took the seat by his bed, her brow furrowed with concern. Ignoring the throbbing pain in his torso, he attempted to sit up in order to look more alive.
“What are you doing here?” he asked hoarsely.
She shook her head. “Harry can be so brash,” she muttered under her breath, her eyes wandering over his figure.
Embarrassed by her pity, he averted his gaze.
“Are you all right?” she asked, and he scoffed.
“Do I look all right?” he grumbled.
And then suddenly she was bending over him and pressing her lips to his, and his mind went cloudy. He reached forward to cup her face, wincing slightly from the strain to his wounds, and pulled her closer. Her hands, which were planted on either side of him, edged slowly towards his arms; and when they finally slipped under the fabric of his hospital gown and he felt her fingers dance lightly across his skin, he found that he no longer felt the pain of his injuries.
He rushed to unfasten the clasp of her robes, his fingers fumbling and clumsy in their haste; and he heatedly kissed the side of her neck as she untied his gown and gently peeled the fabric away from his skin. When his chest and arms were bare, she glanced down for a moment to look at the scars slashed across his body-and suddenly, she froze.
Draco thought for an instant that she’d been scared by his wounds. He had just opened his mouth to reassure her when he noticed that it was not his chest at which she was looking so intently.
It was his left arm.
Shit.
There was a painful moment of silence.
Then, as if jolted awake from a dream, she recoiled with a gasp.
He wanted to die. Had he not been confined to his hospital bed, he would have run, as far away as his legs could carry him. But, as it was, he could do nothing but watch as Cho clasped both hands over her mouth and retreated.
How could he have made this mistake? How could he have forgotten?
“So it’s true,” she breathed, staring down at the telltale ink.
He had not thought it possible-but at her words, his stomach sunk even lower. Were there rumors about him?
He needed to ask her what she’d heard, but he found himself unable to form words as she began slowly backing away in horror.
“I never-I never thought-”
She left her sentence unfinished as she turned and hurried out, the sound of her footsteps growing ever more distant as they resounded through the empty wing.
~
He worried, briefly, that she might tell others about his secret, but his fears proved unfounded. When he finally left the hospital wing fully recuperated, there was no sign to indicate that anything in his life had changed.
Cho no longer spoke to him, and she seemed fiercely determined to avoid any sort of eye contact-but even that did not feel new.
After all, they’d never been friends.
~
He had escaped to the Astronomy Tower to be alone-to revel in the crispness of the cool night air as he puzzled over broken cabinets and Apparation and why Reparo was not always enough.
But as he looked out into the sky, he was distracted by a lone figure flying in the distance, its silhouette darkening the moon with the shadow it cast as it glided past.
He waited for her on the pitch. When she landed at last, it took her some time before she noticed him standing in the shadows and froze.
“Cho,” he started to say, stepping towards her out of the darkness, and she gripped the handle of her broom more tightly.
“Please leave me alone,” she said, her voice strangely tight.
“I just wanted to say that-”
“I don’t want to talk,” she interrupted. “So please leave me alone.”
“Cho, you’ve got to listen to me-”
“I don’t have to do anything. And if you come any closer-”
“For Merlin’s sakes-”
But before he knew what was happening, her wand was out and ready and pointed directly at his throat.
He stopped in his tracks and swallowed hard.
“I told you not to come any closer,” she repeated firmly. Her voice wavered slightly as she spoke, and her eyes darted uncertainly over his face; but her aim was sure and steady.
“Fine,” he snapped, and he was instantly ashamed at how high-pitched his voice sounded. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“Thank you,” she said coolly.
He turned to leave, but something suddenly flared inside him and he whirled back around to face her.
“You know what?” he asked furiously, clenching his fists. “I’m sorry that I’ll never be good enough for you. I’m sorry that I can’t be Potter. I’m sorry that I’ll never be a hero, that I can’t remind you of your precious little Gryffindor ghost-that my life happens to be more complicated than that!” He knew that his volume was rapidly increasing with each word, but it no longer seemed to be under his control. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t born on the right side,” he said, nearly shouting, “so that my recklessness could count as courage like Potter’s always does; I’m sorry that I’m not boyfriend material-”
“SHUT UP!” she screamed. “Shut... up! You don’t-you don’t get to yell at me, Draco! You don’t have the upper ground in the situation!” She gestured wildly with one hand, fiercely jabbing her wand in his direction with the other. “I mean, what are you doing? Is this what you-is this really what you want for yourself? To be a bloody Death Eater?! Is this really what you believe in?” She made a frustrated noise. “I can’t even-I should-I should really tell someone, I-”
“But you didn’t.”
She broke off and stared at him.
“You could have told someone, but you didn’t. Why?”
She was silent for a moment before saying, more softly, “It’s not too late for you to change your mind.”
“I can’t,” he said simply.
She didn’t lower her wand, but she made no move to stop him as he resumed advancing towards her.
“But you don’t-you don’t mean it, do you?” she asked weakly, her voice now barely above a whisper. “You don’t actually want to be a-a-” She seemed unable to finish her sentence. “They must have made you do it… didn’t they?”
He was now so close that he could have reached out and grabbed her wand away from her. “I’m a Death Eater, Cho,” he said quietly, uttering the words that she could not bring herself to say. “It’s what I am. I didn’t have a choice, but… it’s done now. I can’t go back.”
The look in her eyes told him plainly that she was terrified of him, that she had no idea why she had let him approach her unhexed-but when he placed one hand at her waist and leaned down to kiss her, she did not protest.
The kiss was one-sided at first, as though he were alone in pleading for entrance to her tightly pursed lips; but then he tugged her closer with both arms and she reached up to brace herself on his shoulders-and some wall deep inside her crumbled. She fisted his cloak with both hands and sunk into him as he pressed himself against her, and suddenly there was no such thing as Death Eaters or war or even Voldemort.
She pulled back slightly for a moment, her lids half-closed, to tell him urgently that they couldn’t keep doing this, that this would lead nowhere-this can’t be anything, Draco-but he interrupted her before she could finish, breathlessly agreeing before she could even tell him what he was agreeing to.
He would have said anything at that moment, just so long as he got to keep kissing her.
He barely even heard her as he leaned forward once more, sliding one hand up her neck and into that soft, impossibly silky hair. His lips swallowed her words, her doubts, her protests.
~
The next time he spotted her flying alone at night, he didn’t wait for her to come back down to Earth. Instead, he jumped on his broomstick and joined her in the sky.
He silently pulled up alongside her as she zoomed through the frosty air, catching her off guard when she turned to glance over her shoulder.
“Draco,” she said, startled, and before she could stop him, he had aligned their brooms and slung one leg over hers in order to straddle both at once.
“What are you doing?” Cho asked in alarm, sounding extremely unnerved, but he paid her no heed as he scooted closer until her back was pressed firmly against his front. Grasping both of their broomsticks together in one hand, he reached forward and wrapped his other arm tightly around her waist.
“Draco, this doesn’t seem very-”
He cut her off with his lips.
Surprised, she squeaked into his mouth as their pace slowed to a halt. Her head was tilted backwards in an awkward fashion, and she was clutching onto their broomsticks for dear life, but she responded passionately. They floated together through a moonlit cloud, entwined and enraptured; and by the time they finally returned to the ground, Draco knew he would never look at flying the same way again.
~
She told him-repeatedly-that it had been a mistake, that she couldn’t keep seeing him.
But in spite of her protests, she never turned him away when he cornered her, whether in the locker room or in storage sheds or in empty classrooms.
He never used the Room of Requirement. It would have been the easiest option, of course, but he did not want to sully the few moments that they shared with reminders of his doomed fate. The Room of Requirement, for him, was an unhappy place; a place devoid of hope and comfort. His time with her was an escape.
Yet every time she glanced at the stain on his arm-including the one time she brushed it accidentally with her fingers and then drew back with a shudder-she blanched. Sometimes she would pause for an instant, other times she would swallow hard and look away. No matter how many times she saw the damn thing, her reactions made it clear that she would never get used to its existence.
It grew to be too much for Draco. He began to seek out the dark during their encounters: partially to conceal his Dark Mark from her, but mostly to hide it from himself.
~
“I’ve never been kissed like that,” she confessed into the darkness, as they lay on a conjured sofa in a cramped, unlit broom closet.
“What?”
“The way you kiss me-I’ve never been kissed like that before.”
He turned towards her, despite the fact that he could only barely see her expression. “What do you mean?”
She flushed a little. “I don’t know. With you, it’s… desperate. Like you’re always worried you’ll run out of time.”
He said nothing.
They fell asleep listening to the sound of their own breathing. When Draco woke the next morning, she was already gone.
~
He heard a rumor at breakfast that she’d been spotted flirting with Justin Finch-Fletchley. Finch-Fletchley pursuing Cho was nothing new-he’d been after her since third year-but the speculation about whether they might get together was both novel and entirely unwelcome. He was a Hufflepuff, for Merlin’s sakes. And a Mudblood at that.
As he finished his toast and rose from his seat, he suddenly noticed Finch-Fletchley leaving his house table to swoop down on that of the Ravenclaws.
And just like that, he lost all reason.
That night, a fit of jealous rage drove him to the spiral staircase that led up to the Ravenclaw dormitory. He ascended for what felt like hours-did the Ravenclaws actually climb this thing every time they needed to stop by their room?-until he finally came to the entrance and knocked impatiently.
A dreamy voice called out, “Is magic a power or a state of being?”
Draco groaned. “Are you kidding me?” he asked aloud, but there was no response.
Leave it to the Ravenclaws to devise the swottiest entrance system imaginable.
After a moment’s reflection, he said, slightly annoyed, “Well, it’s both. It’s-it’s not a thing; it can’t be contained or destroyed or taken away-it’s-” He broke off, lost in thought. “It’s everywhere, really. Magic is in everything, if you know where to look. What’s important is how we learn to control it. That’s what differentiates us from the Muggles.”
“Thoughtfully reasoned,” the eagle knocker said, “if a bit wordy.”
The door creaked open into a bright, airy, circular room that looked absolutely nothing like the Slytherin common room. It was empty except for a few second-years playing a game of Exploding Snap, who stared blankly at him as he entered.
“Are you looking for someone?” one of them asked, glancing at his prefect’s badge.
“Where’s Cho Chang?” he demanded, flashing his best sneer.
At just that moment, someone else knocked on the door, and the melodious voice of the enchanted eagle asked whether conjured objects were as real as those found in nature. The voice that replied was distinctly familiar, though Draco could not hear exactly what was being said behind the thick wooden door.
“An elegant answer,” said the knocker, and the door swung open.
“There she is,” the second-year exclaimed, and Cho stopped cold.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding horrified.
“I was looking for you,” he started to say, but she suddenly lunged forward, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him out of the room.
“You can’t be here,” she said hurriedly, pulling him back down the stairs. “You should go.”
“I need to talk to you,” he snapped, wrenching his arm free and glaring at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She glanced around feverishly. “Later,” she said. “Please go.”
“No, we’ll talk now. I have something to say, and-”
“Draco, please! We can’t be seen together!”
His mouth snapped shut.
“You know people will talk, and…” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I don’t know what you want, but please, if it’s not urgent…”
Draco suddenly realized that Finch-Fletchley was the least of his concerns.
“Afraid people will find out you’re consorting with a Death Eater?” he asked coldly.
She winced and looked down at the floor. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“What have you been doing with me all this time, then?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice from breaking. “If you’re so afraid that someone might find out?”
When her eyes rose to meet his, they were full of pain and confusion. “I don’t know,” she cried. “I don’t-Draco, I told you this couldn’t go anywhere.”
“You know why you’re unhappy?” he blurted out, as a sharp pain threatened to overtake his chest. “You choose your friends based on how they look to the outside world-not how much they care about you.”
She stared at him, astounded, and he drew a deep breath. “I hope you and Finch-Fletchley are very happy together.”
“This was a huge mistake,” she whispered, and he felt his insides burn.
“Well, don’t worry,” he said bitterly. “I won’t be bothering you again.”
~
They did not speak again until his last night at school. He ran into her on his way to the Room of Requirement, and she awkwardly averted her gaze as they passed each other in the corridor.
He almost let her go. But then a chill went through him, and he felt suddenly afraid.
“Cho,” he called, and she turned to look back at him.
“Stay in your room tonight.”
“Why?” she asked warily, her brow furrowed.
“Just listen to me. Stay in your room, and don’t leave for any reason-no matter what you hear outside.”
Her eyes widened with fear. “Draco,” she said quietly, her voice filled with dread, “what are you-”
“Just stay in your room, all right?”
“Please, Draco,” she whispered, “please don’t do anything that-”
But he turned away before she could finish, blinking back tears as he marched onward, towards his destiny.
~
The flash of the cameras was blinding as he stepped out of the lift into the lobby of the Ministry.
The two Aurors escorting him attempted to wave away the horde of photographers, but their cries of “Please step aside!” were to no avail.
“Mr. Malfoy, how does it feel to be a free man again?” called a reporter.
“Any comments on your trial?” shouted another.
“How do you feel about the outcome of the war?”
“Over here, Mr. Malfoy!”
He did his best to ignore them as he charged ahead, keeping his eyes down as he made his way through the crowd.
“Mr. Malfoy, how do you respond to allegations that your family bribed their way out of your indictment?”
“Do you think you were unjustly detained at the Ministry in the weeks before your trial?”
“How did you react to the news that your father will remain in Azkaban?”
He pressed onwards, desperate to escape. If he could just make it to the fireplaces, he would be free.
When he finally entered the Atrium, the throng of relentless photographers still hot on his heels, he suddenly noticed someone standing in the center of the room and stopped dead in his tracks.
She was waiting.
For him.
She was holding two broomsticks in one hand, her arms crossed casually as she watched him approach.
Was this real?
He had not seen her in over a year; and she looked older, more mature-and still as breathtaking as ever. A lump formed in his throat, and he marvelled at how the sight of her could still do this to him.
As he walked up to her, he no longer heard the cries of the surrounding reporters, and her expression remained calm even as the photographers clicked away around them.
“Hi,” she said, her lips curved upwards into the smallest of smiles.
She looked so real.
He stared at her, still unable to believe his eyes. “You’re here,” he said incredulously, sounding quite stupid.
Cho held up the broomsticks. “After being cooped up so long, I thought you might fancy a ride,” she said simply. “After all, we’ve never flown together in daylight before.”
Draco suddenly found himself unable to hold back a grin.
“That’s not true,” he replied. “We’ve flown together plenty of times during the day.”
For a moment, she cocked her head to the side in thought. Then she said, “You’re right. But this time, I won’t be kicking your arse in Quidditch.”
The photo of them leaving the Ministry together, hands joined as they stepped into the fireplace, was splattered all over the papers the next day.