Evangeline Blackwood and the Lost Letter - draco malfoy

thirty one.

Draco had started to follow her everywhere.

When she woke up the next day, it was not because she was being called. Usually she was summoned to Sussex in the early hours of the morning but today she woke up early with no darkened Mark. Evangeline was restless within minutes, wanting to exert some energy.

So she went out into the hedges. She saw no one on her way out of the house, not even Draco outside of her door. Topsy must have found him sometime in the night, paralyzed and silenced. Lucius and Narcissa must have been out or maybe hiding in the upstairs rooms or the study.

She slashed her wand repeatedly at the black dummy, sweat pouring from her face. She cut lines in it like a razor, over and over, grunting from the exertion. Her mind was heavy with battle tactics, drills, and the topics that were presented at the meeting the previous day. She needed to train, to exercise. It was simply a space filler before she would be called to Sussex and the real work would begin.

"Your tattoos," said a surprised voice from behind her. Draco was looking at her inked skin in shock, her arm sleeve and shoulder tattoo poking out of her t-shirt. He could even see the top of the dragon between her shoulder blades.

Evan ignored him, slashing the dummy again and again. She glanced over from underneath her brows when he walked to stand in front of her, at a distance, to the side of the dummy. It reminded her too much of the days of her training with him, when he would watch and critique her from that very spot.

"I thought they were gone," Draco said, his eyes raking over her inked skin. Evan threw five stunners in a row at the dummy in a staccato, not even stopping to breathe. She had the urge to attack Draco but it was not as strong as usual since she was sweating and tired and was taking her anger out on the dummy.

His musings about her tattoos seemed mundane. She had just used glamours to hide them, not wanting them to be a recognizable characteristic of The Countess. She had only let the glamours drop today because she hadn't been summoned anywhere yet. She had no need to hide them.

Draco watched, or rather was allowed to watch, while Evan trained hard, pushing her body and her magic to the limits. She ignored him completely, knowing that if she wanted to attack him, she'd then have to look at him, giving him the attention he desired. She was trying a new approach: ignorance.

She walked out from the hedges, leaving him behind. But he followed her into the house, wordlessly. He even followed her up the stairs and down the hall. When she reached her bedroom, she slammed it in his face. This was one place that he could not follow her to.

But the room was suffocating. For the past week, she had constantly been out of it, going to meetings and to executions and to battle. She did not celebrate that she had gotten the morning off from being The Countess. Being preoccupied was a good thing. It meant that she didn't have to look at this room, a room that tried desperately to dredge up old memories. When her mind started to drift to the memories of him in her bed, she shot up as if the comforter had burned her skin. She peeled off her sweaty clothes and put on a fresh black t-shirt and cuffed jeans. She needed to be somewhere else, and if The Dark Lord refused to call her, she would find her own entertainment.

She didn't want to touch the books on the shelves because she knew he had placed them there for her to read. But she did want to go to the library to find her own books, maybe books on battle strategies and advanced dark magic to occupy her mind so that she wouldn't dwell. Dwelling was dangerous.

When she opened the door, Draco was sitting with his back against it. He stood up quickly and she swiftly waved her wand in a semicircle in front of her, effectively clearing her way of tall, brooding blondes. He was shoved backwards by her magic, allowing her to pass freely and untouched to the stairs.