Emerald (Lazuli Book #2) Harry Potter Fan Fiction (Draco Malfoy)

Chapter Twenty-Two - Let my Mother meet my Mum

True to his word, Draco was waiting for me when I arrived back at the Leaky Cauldron. He smiled warmly as I tumbled out, his arms waiting to catch me. It was only when he saw the dirt covering my clothes and the cut through my lip that his smile faded, and he realized that something was wrong.

"Love!" he exclaimed, sweeping me up into his arms easily and placing me down in on top of the empty bar. "What happened?!"

Charlie's words of being careful around Draco ran through my head, and as much as I hated to admit it, the circumstances were slightly suspicious. He could have gone to see Narcissa, only briefly to let her know that he was ok, and let it slip that I was visiting my parents. It only took Bellatrix to overhear, or Narcissa to disclose the information of my unprotected whereabouts to her sister. Besides, it seemed as if the Dark Lord wanted me either on his side or dead these days, and Death Eaters were clambering over themselves to be the one to deliver me to him. Dead or alive.

I let Draco tend to my bleeding lip, telling him about the attack as if I trusted him entirely. My heart stabbed with guilt as I lied to him - I loved him after all. But if I'd learned anything in my ordeal over the past year, it was that you can't trust anybody.

"I hate her" he snarled as I told him about his aunt and her threats to kill us both. "But don't worry - I won't let her get anywhere near you."

I reached out to stroke his cheek - slightly rough from a couple of days without a shave. "It's not me I'm worried about. She's living in your house Draco, there are followers of the Dark Lord soiling your property. It'll be easy for her to get to you, and she knows that by hurting you, she's hurting me."

Draco kissed the tip of my nose gingerly. "She can't hurt either of us, as long as we have each other."

Then why did you tell your psychotic murderess aunt where to find me?

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The niggling feeling of doubt in the back of my head starts to grow throughout the rest of the break. Damon returned to the Leaky Cauldron on Boxing Day, which we spent with Cecelia and Perseus. By the day after, the pub was open and running as usual again, and I no longer felt so vulnerable being completely alone with Draco. I spent my time keeping myself busy - working in Fred and George's shop for a bit of money, studying and doing some back to school shopping. I even persuaded Draco to hire a couple of muggle contraptions called bikes and go on a bicycle ride around London with me, cycling along the bank of the river and through the busy bustling streets of the muggle city. It fascinated me - sitting on a bench and watching as these muggles went about their daily lives without a clue of the wizard world's existence. How the few of them that spared glances at the teenage girl wrapped up in a thick jacket and scarf and watching everything they did with a childish curiosity had no idea that she, I, was anything other than ordinary. None of them had the faintest clue that I could fix their flat-tires with a simple spell, that I could borrow Hermione's time-turner and make it so that they were never late for that important meeting at work where they finally got the promotion they'd been dreaming of. I was - to them - a regular girl who didn't have a ransom on her head and an army of dark wizards trying to kidnap and murder me at every turn. And I revelled in it.

Sometimes Draco would come into the city with me, but more often he disappeared for hours at a time just as he did at school. After a while, I stopped asking what he was up to and realized that I'd learn more if I simply kept quiet.

So I watched.

I watched from over my book as he wrote a letter he wouldn't let me read, telling me that it was simply to his mother, letting her know he was ok. "She'll worry" he said, smiling in such a care-free way that if I didn't know him as well as I did, you would have believed him. But I did notice, and I saw that the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. The eyes that I adored, that I could always read and tell exactly what he was feeling. It worried me that within them, I saw misery and self-hatred, dominated by the only too recognizable emotion of fear. Draco was afraid, no, terrified about something. It hurt me that he wouldn't confide in me what exactly he was so petrified of.