Sapphire (Lazuli Book #3) - Harry Potter Fan Fiction (Draco Malfoy)

Chapter One

People say that when bad things happen to you, they stay with you forever.

They haunt you like ghosts, they hide in the most obvious of places and when you're least expecting it, they slap you in the face and remind you that no matter how hard you try to forget, and no matter how happy you are for a period of time, they're always there.

You can never forget.

They stalk your every moment, whilst you're going about your day-to-day business. Imagine you're at the kitchen sink, washing up dishes the muggle way, and you suddenly feel as if you're about to collapse. Imagine you just drift off to sleep after spending an incalucuble length of time lying awake, and within seconds the nightmares start, and you find yourself awake again, surrounded by night's cloak, alone.

Perhaps you could liken bad experiences to your shadow. You can't just lose it and then sew it back on again whenever you feel like it, like in that muggle fairy story Peter Pan. It never leaves you, until the day you die.

You could say I've had more bad experiences than most.

Once upon a time, there was a girl called Juliet Weasley. She lived in a house with her loving mother, her doting father, 6 spectacular although very different brothers, and her adoring little sister. Juliet and her family weren't like their neighbours though, they had a wonderful secret that the local villagers could never have imagined - they were wizards.

Juliet was loved by her family, until the day came for Juliet and her twin brother Ron to follow in the footsteps of their 5 older brothers and start their magical journey at the place all young witches and wizards wanted to be - Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You see, of the four houses at Hogwarts, all of the Weasley family had been in Gryffindor - the house where the brave and true dwelled. Ron was no exception, joining a long line of Weasley's to don a red and gold tie.

But Juliet was different. For reasons unknown to her, she was sorted into Slytherin - the house of the cunning and ambitious. The house where all the evil wizards were sorted. This was the first of Juliet's bereavements.

From that moment on, Juliet's family shunned her. For the next 4 years, her parents and siblings ignored her, only her second brother Charlie treating her as if nothing had changed. The most terrible thing of all? Juliet blossomed in Slytherin. With her pure-blood status and exceptional talents, she soon grew to become the most influential of all the Slytherins.

In her fourth year, the Triwizard Tournament came to Hogwarts. Although she begged him not to, Juliet's best friend Cedric Diggory - a sixth year Hufflepuff - put his name into the Goblet of Fire and was chosen as the Hogwarts champion. He perished in the third and final task, at the hand of the Dark Lord. The second bereavement came.

The next year, Juliet returned to a changed Hogwarts. The Ministry of Magic were calling the headmaster Albus Dumbledore and her friend Harry Potter - who had seen Cedric's murder - liars, accusing them of trying to spread fear with false accusations that Lord Voldemort was back. They infiltrated the school, leaving their spies and slowly changing the school for the worst. Juliet went against the rules of the new headmistress and joined the illegally-formed Dumbledore's Army, where taught by Harry she learned the defensive spells denied of them by the Ministry, slowly earning back the trust and respect of her brothers and sister. But the story was hardly as simple as that.

You see, Juliet fell in love.

She fell in love with a wonderful, smart, handsome young wizard named Draco Malfoy, who despite his personal problems and the immense pressure he himself was under, somehow grew to love Juliet too.

Too much in fact, because it was that love that ultimately split them up.

Draco's parents were Death Eaters - followers of a terrible wizard named Lord Voldemort. Though she didn't know why at the time, the Dark Lord wanted Juliet for a special reason, and the Malfoys were willing to go to any lengths to please him. They kidnapped their Draco's beloved Juliet, and it was only with Draco's help that Juliet was able to escape, but not without paying a price.

The Dark Lord came up with her, and permanently branded her skin with his mark. Forever an outcast, forever the enemy.

After the most painful summer of her life, in which Juliet didn't know if Draco was alive or dead, she returned to Hogwarts to find him waiting for her. For a while at least, everything seemed to be back to normal. Except for the fact that now Draco was a Death Eater too, and he was sneaking off for hours a day. He was keeping secrets, secrets that he wouldn't even tell his Juliet.

At some point in the year, Juliet learned that she wasn't really a Weasley at all. She'd been adopted by the Weasleys at birth and brought up as their daughter, but her real parents were a famous Death Eater Regulus Black and his wife Cecelia. Andromeda Black was her real name - and as if finding out that you were adopted wasn't a blow enough, it was now revealed that upon his death fighting against the Dark Lord he had sworn his allegiance to, Regulus had used a deep blood magic to transplant his memories to his unborn daughter, leaving his secrets with her. Secrets that could build peace. Secrets that could destroy a race.

When Juliet needed Draco the most, those terribly horrific few months, he could hardly be found. Finally when the time for secrets to be revealed came, Juliet learned that all the time, Draco had been helping Death Eaters into the castle, and was planning to assassinate Dumbledore, the headmaster of the school and sworn enemy of the Dark Lord. In order to keep Juliet from danger, Draco enchanted her into a magical sleep, in the hope that she would be safe whilst the great evil took place. It was not to be however, for Juliet's brave brothers and best friend dragged her from the magic that bound her, and Juliet set out to stop Draco from going through with the plan he hated.

But she was too late. The Death Eaters, including Draco's malicious aunt Bellatrix, had already infiltrated the school, and Dumbledore was dead at the hand of Severus Snape, his most trusted confidante. Suddenly, the greatest wizard of the generation was dead. Draco was gone - swept away to properly join the life of the Death Eater.

Juliet was alone.

Thinking about it like that, it hardly seems like my life. Perhaps that's a good thing - for a while it least, it means that it doesn't hurt. That I don't feel the agony Draco has caused me. That I don't spend hours awake at night, wondering if there was anything I could have done differently. It means that I don't miss Draco with every fibre in my body.

For a while at least.

But you can't pretend forever. Eventually the game ends, and reality slaps you in the face.

The cold hard truth, the stark fact that Draco chose the Death Eater life over me. Dumbledore is dead, and Draco is gone.

I try to tell myself that he didn't have a choice - that he was forced into it to keep me safe. But I know that's just my heart trying to persuade my head, trying to dilute the fact. Of course Draco had a choice, he chose not to kill Dumbledore himself. In the end it accounted to nothing, but he still refused to do the deed himself. But he hadn't chosen to fight against Snape and the others, he'd stood beside them as Dumbledore fell to his death.

Draco chose them.

I've spent the summer flitting between the Burrow, Mother and Perseus' house, and various muggle hotels across the country. Now that I no longer had the Trace, there was nothing to stop me from disapparating whenever I chose, reappearing somewhere completely random and where I'm unlikely to be bothered by my family. They'd done particularly well at giving me my space -after Harry told them about me using the Cruciatus curse on Bellatrix Lestrange, they seemed even more terrified of my unpredictability than before.

Once or twice, I'd done jobs for the Order - helping them transport valuable people to safe keeping and retrieving important objects. On one occasion, I joined Kingsley with protecting the muggle Prime Minister, on another I'd been tasked with retrieving Mundungus Fletcher for Mad-Eye Moody - a slippery little worm who'd been slacking in his duties as a member of the Order. The look on Dung's face when I'd apparated into the middle of the shady bar down Knockturn Alley where he'd been selling his stolen wares was priceless.

I hoped that perhaps it would take my mind off of everything, namely Draco, but it didn't matter whether I was duelling a Death Eater or sitting in the darkness of my bedroom at the Burrow - Draco was always on my mind.

I still wore his locket around my neck, concealed beneath my shirt so that it rested against my skin. I found myself hoping it would grow suddenly warm, that it would become more than just a pretty necklace and would tingle against my skin as it used to, whenever Draco was thinking about me. Once or twice, I thought I felt a sudden flash of heat, but when I reached to clasp the locket between my palms, it was simply the same smooth and harshly cold metal it always was. Clearly Draco wasn't wasting time thinking about me.

I tried to forget about him - believe me. I tried everything I could think of, even considered getting Hermione to perform a memory charm. But nothing could drive Draco from my mind. He was there in everything I did - I could hear his voice in my head, giving me advice when I was conflicted or without an answer. I felt his presence in the shadows as I slept, watching over me as he once had. But I soon came to realise that he wasn't truly there - the shadows were simply the darkness where secrets hid. Not Draco.

Sometimes I thought I heard him screaming my name, the sound of his voice carried by the wind. But it was never him - merely my imagination - and so in the end I simply stopped myself from listening. Draco didn't care. Draco didn't want me. Draco was gone.

Suddenly, there was a tap on the door of my dingy room in a cheap muggle hotel. I frowned, and tossed the edition of the Daily Prophet down onto the bed, before grabbing my wand and standing. This wasn't the sort of place where you'd get room service or housekeeping. I edged over to the door, pulling the hood of my dark hoodie over my head and raising my wand defensively. How had they found me here?

I found that I was no longer afraid of Death Eaters - after the duels and battles of the summer that I'd been involved with, perhaps recklessly, I'd brought down more of them than I could count. If a Death Eater wanted to turn up and have a go at capturing me, let him do it.

I flicked my wand at the lock on the door, and it slid to unlocked. Taking a step back, I watched as the faded brass handle twisted and the key dropped from the keyhole onto the dirty carpet, and then the door threw itself open.

But standing in the corridor was not a Death Eater, nor as I'd secretly been hoping, Draco.

It was Mad-Eye Moody, flexing his fingers around the gnarled wooden staff in his fist and raising the eyebrow above his enchanted eye at me. I lowered my wand, and Mad-Eye grinned.

"So Miss Black, ready for another bout?"

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I'm sorry that this first chapter was terrible and short - I just wanted to get the stuff about what happened with Draco and the events of the summer out of the way before the real story began.

Juliet is definitely going to be a lot edgier and reckless in this installment rather than the previous two, since she's lost Draco, who acted as a sort of buffer against her throwing her life, which she believed to be worthless, away. Now that Draco's gone, there's nothing to stop her from taking dangerous risks and perhaps going a little crazy, and so we're going to be seeing a whole new level of Juliet's rebellious.

But don't fear Draco fans - this isn't the complete end of Draco! I promise that he will make a couple of appearances, but where and when will have to be a surprise!

Furthermore, this final installment isn't going to be as centralised around Juliet's relationship with Draco as the other two books were, it's going to mainly focus on her adventures with Harry, Ron and Hermione, and the great decision she's going to be forced to make.

So please keep reading, thank you for your support, and enjoy!