Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

Draco had been staring out to sea, completely lost to the outside world, struggling to close the doors of his mind on all of the thoughts that tormented him. He didn't realize that anything was wrong until he heard the shouts of the crew running up from the waist of the ship, where they had been idling. He heard a whistling sound, as if something were falling from above him. He glanced up. He saw a boy hurtling down on him from the sky, his cloak rippling about him, his mouth stretched in a scream of terror, the moonlight reflecting in his panic-stricken eyes. It all happened much too quickly for Draco to think about anything, or to reason out anything. He simply raised his hand in a commanding gesture, and felt the sudden spring of power flow forth from him.

The boy had been falling with incredible speed. If he had landed on Draco, they surely should have both been killed. But the edges of the cloak wafted slowly downwards, as if floating out and spreading themselves onto the surface of the sea. The boy tumbled into Draco's arms with no more force than his own slight weight. Draco staggered back a bit, but held him steady. They stared at each other.

He's the boy I saw earlier, the one who watched me get pelted with fish, Draco realized. I remember him.

"George," Draco said, his voice rusty.

The boy's dark eyes widened, but he said nothing.

"That's your name, isn't it?"

The boy nodded. He got awkwardly to his feet and scrambled backwards, away from Draco. His friend had managed to clamber all the way down the mast and was grabbing his arm, hissing urgently into his ear. There's the one who actually threw the fish, Draco realized. The few members of the crew who'd actually seen what had happened were looking narrowly at Draco and then at the two boys, and whispering to each other.

"Did ye see that?" asked a tall, thin man with a lantern jaw and a face like a hatchet. "Did ye?"

"Aye. 'Twas an unnatural sight, Philip," replied his companion, who was enormously fat, with a sour face and a whistle around his neck on a dirty piece of string. "But I knew I would see something like sooner rather than later from that limb of Satan, George."

"I will tell thee summat, Tuke," said the thin man, eyeing Draco. "In our village at home, we had a witch that could perform all manner of unnatural magics. Once, she stopped a child from falling out of a tree, so she did. And she had eyes like moonlight, and hair like silver threads--"

Draco turned on the two older sailors. "Do the two of you have duties to perform?" he asked in an icy voice.

"Aye, sir," said Philip. "Yet some might say that a Christian man's true duty is to combat the Evil One, wheresoever he may be found," he added under his breath.

"But as I don't believe that's what you're getting paid to do," said Draco, "you had best get back to your work. Or do you wish me to speak to the captain about this?"

Philip and Tuke both looked at him sullenly, but Draco guessed correctly that they would not dare to confront a paying passenger. They edged towards the stairs that led to the orlop deck where the sailors slept, casting malicious glances back at him and muttering to each other.

Draco turned back to the two boys. His head whirled with everything he wanted to say and to ask. Had this thing really happened? George had been falling from a sixty-foot-high mast and been slowed to a crawl in mid-air; how could it not have happened? But it had all been so fast, a matter of a few seconds, no more. He'd done wandless magic without meaning to or even thinking about it, he must have done; there was no other explanation. Had George felt it? Had Robin seen it? But just as Draco opened his mouth to speak, the boy pulled his cloak more closely around him with a thin, dirty hand. Draco blinked. It was as if a mist had suddenly arisen, entwining itself around his brain, drifting subtly between himself and George. He watched the other boy put his arm around George's shoulders and lead him away, talking to him softly, and Draco had no strength to stop them. Somehow, he could not quite remember what he had wanted to say, if he had ever had any clear idea anyway. Then they were gone, and he was left alone on deck.

Exhaustion washed over him in a tremendous wave. Blearily, he trudged towards the stern cabins. He did not want to think any more, or to understand any more. Too much had happened today, and he did not want to even try to sort it all out. He stumbled down the little corridor to his own cabin and dropped into his bed.

Draco wanted nothing so much as to fall into deep, untroubled sleep, without even a hint of dreams. However, his mind still whirled with confusion even as it fell into unconsciousness, which drew him into a very vulnerable state indeed. He had been fighting certain memories with all his strength for over a month, but at this moment there was no strength in him. He was caught in the aftermath of wandless magic, and it washed away all of his carefully constructed defenses. He could feel the memories battering at the floodgates he had so carefully erected. Let them fall, then, he thought, so weary that he could no longer put up any sort of a struggle. I can't stop them anymore. Maybe I will finally understand what it all meant. Maybe it will make some sort of sense at last. So let me remember, if I must. And he did. Draco fell into a dream of what had happened the previous Christmas. And time had not gentled this memory, nor drawn a discreet, blurred veil over the details. He relived it exactly as it had happened.

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December 28^th, 1995

Malfoy Manor

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The first lights of full dawn were stealing through the cracks in the heavy velvet curtains at the window. Draco's eyes snapped open. Without even glancing at the bedside clock, he knew that only an hour or so had passed since he'd fallen into restless sleep. He tilted his head up, staring into the dark whorls of wood on the canopy of the bed. They looked like faces. There was one gnarl that almost seemed to have eyes. This isn't good, he thought. He pictured touching his wand to his temple and drawing out silver strands of thought, depositing them, one by one, into something beside him. Not in a Pensieve, like the one his father had, but a cauldron of flame. He would burn every thought of Ginny Weasley from his head.

At last, he got up and sat in the window seat, pulling his arms around his knees and staring across the misty grounds. It was going to be another dank, damp day. The shadows cast by the pale sun through the clouds scudded across the fields surrounding Malfoy Manor. He watched them move like silent ghosts. He wondered if he had come to some sort of decision on that night, during that long, strange conversation in the clock tower and if some sort of agreement had been made. His father's words drifted through his mind once more.

You're brilliant, Draco. You have what might well be the finest mind I've ever encountered.

Draco had been shocked when he heard that come out of Lucius Malfoy's mouth. For there were other things his father had once said that he would never be able to forget. Do not expect special treatment from your schoolmasters because you are my son, Draco. Although on occasion, I suppose that you may require it, if you do not improve your study habits... I hope my son may amount to more than a common thief... although indeed, if his grades do not pick up, that may be all he is fit for... The memories grated against each other. Impossible to reconcile them. Or was it? For all the rare praise, and all the fascinating stories of their family's past, Draco realized that his father had really explained nothing at all that night.

Father thinks I'm a child. He's still treating me like a child... he didn't really take me into his confidence at all.

His knuckles throbbed. His hand still ached where he had smashed it into a marble fountain only days before, watching Ginny Weasley kiss Colin Creevey at the Yule Ball.

The memory made him want to do it again, to cause himself pain again. He actually lifted his clenched hand to the rough stone surface of the wall that enclosed the window.

He let it drop.

Nothing could have pleased him so much as to smash something to bits with his bare hands. Something or... someone, maybe. Something in him wanted to wallow in the worst he could imagine. An act so hideously nasty and vile, perhaps, that he could not even admit it fully into his consciousness. But whatever it was, it might relieve the unbearable tension in him. Draco groaned.

Damn. I shouldn't have thought of it that way...

Pansy, lying beneath him, her pink silk robe slipping off her thin chest. The memory tortured him now, sudden, complete, horribly real. He hadn't wanted her. He didn't want her. Yet the feelings running through him were so violent that it scarcely made any difference. She'd been a warm female body under his own, submitting to his raw desire, ready to accept him within her. He'd been so close.

So close.

Do you trust me? his father had asked. And again, Do you trust me?

And Draco had said yes.

He rose from the window seat, poured water into the basin by his bedside from a pitcher, and splashed some of it onto his face. It was icy cold.

Draco slept a little, waking with a stiff neck and a fiercely aching head. The house-elves had learned to avoid all the Malfoys when they were in this mood, and they did, except for the unlucky few who were forced to attend him. He snarled at Binky when the healer-elf timidly approached him with an Analgesic potion. He swallowed it quickly, and felt very little relief. Rubbing his temples, he trudged to the dining room.

"We'll be leaving in a few hours," Lucius Malfoy told him after breakfast.

"Leaving?" asked Draco, still walking down the hall towards his bedroom. Where did that stupid Binky go, anyway? I want another headache potion...

"I must return to the South of France on business," said Lucius. "I want you to come with me."

Draco thought that he ought to have been more excited to hear this than he was. He couldn't really see any reason why he would have been brought along on a trip like this one, except that he was finally going to be included in some sort of important plan. But his skull was throbbing too painfully for him to be able to care very much about anything. "All right," he said.

The two of them didn't Apparate; Draco knew that it wasn't always safe to try to do so over bodies of water, and it was a fairly short trip anyway. A wizarding ferry took on passengers at a small lake just outside Wiltshire, and it crossed the sea through magical channels to arrive directly at St. Tropez. Narcissa did not come with them, of course, but then Draco had not expected that his mother would be included. He stood on the railing of the wizarding ferry and stared out at the dark sea, a number of thoughts and emotions churning within him that he could not quite name.

His headache was finally gone, and there was only a ghost of a dull pain left at the base of his skull. Draco still wasn't sure why he couldn't seem to feel truly excited, though. His father had taken him on a journey back to the South of France. On business, all right. Death Eater business. I'd bet my new broomstick on it... He ought to have been tingling with anticipation, but all he could seem to summon up was the same sort of edgy, restless frustration he'd felt the day before.

Draco heard footsteps behind him, muffled by the banks of fog surrounding the little ferry. Without turning, he knew he heard the approach of Lucius Malfoy.

"Father," he said. "Are we nearly there?"

Lucius moved to stand next to his son at the rail. "We are," he said. "I'd best explain a few things to you, I suppose."

Draco turned sharply. "About what I'm to do?" he asked.

"Well... yes. In a way."

"Where are we going?"

"You're going to a house on the coast."

"I'm going--what do you mean? You'll be there, won't you? And whatever it is we're going to do--is it there, or is the house the headquarters we'll be working from, or--"

"The house is the place where you'll be staying while I see to some very urgent business," said Lucius.

Draco gaped at his father. "What the hell do you mean?"

"I don't care for your tone of voice, Draco." His father's own voice had suddenly turned icy, and it was a sound that normally would have shut Draco up instantly. But not now, thought Draco. Not now!

"What was the point of bringing me here if all you're going to do is to stick me in a house on the French coast somewhere?" Draco demanded. Something moved beneath the remnants of that awful headache, and beneath the empty feeling of frustration. It was dark and thick and filled with rage, and he fought to keep it leashed. Then he battled just as hard to show no sign of the conflict within him, not even the smallest ripple on the smooth, impassive surface of his face. I will never stop fighting, and the worst of it is that the war is all within myself, he thought wearily.

"I am not obligated to explain my every action and decision," Lucius said. "Suffice it to say that I have my reasons. If you wish to be brought into the sort of organization you would like to join, Draco, you will begin at the bottom level. And your first duty will be to obey orders, and to ask no questions."

Draco took a very deep breath, struggling to get himself under control. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"I will be very busy over the next weeks," Lucius had continued. "And it suits me that you should stay at this house just now."

"Well, what sort of house is it? Who lives there? Who owns it? Can I know that, at least?"

"You'll be staying with a Tessier relation of yours, an older female cousin by the name of Marie-France. Her great-grandmother, I believe, was Granmere Isabelle's sister. Some such connection. You've already seen her, a few days ago. Do you remember her?"

Long red hair falling around a face like gleaming, pale satin. Bitter-chocolate eyes that weighed, measured, and appraised him. A gaze that had captured him and held him. Yes, he remembered.

"You met her on Christmas, if you recall. You seemed to like her," his father observed.

Draco fought to keep from blushing. Of course Lucius Malfoy had noticed him speaking to Marie-France, or watching her, or marking her movements and missing her when she was not in the room. He saw everything. "Yes, I liked her," he replied through clenched teeth. Talking about Marie-France Tessier was stirring the emotions in him even further towards boiling point, the gods only knew why. "Where's the house, though?"

"She lives just outside of St. Tropez in a house called the Villa Straylight. It's located directly along the coast."

He had nodded curtly, unable to say another word.

They reached the Villa Straylight about an hour later, and Marie-France Tessier was lying in a beach chair on the terrace overlooking a steep cliff; below it lay the Mediterranean. Draco could see why this part of it was called the Cote d'Azur. The waters were an intense blue, a foil for his cousin's gold-brown eyes, glowing in her little cat face. The sunshine flashed across a gold locket she wore at her creamy white neck. She rose a little, languidly, to greet them. His eyes fastened on her like magnets to metal. He was never to learn exactly how old she was-- considerably older than he, of course, but she still seemed young. Her face was both youthful and mature, her body tall and slender. Yet the curves of breast and waist and hip were very defined, and that reminded him of something, or someone. He was still trying to remember what or who when she spoke to him.

"I am glad to 'ave my cousin stay with me," she said in a softly drawling voice, and when she looked up at him through her cinnamon lashes, the wind blowing through her long auburn curls, all of his resentment at being sent here drained away. He was still angry, but not about being here, with this unknown cousin. The sight of her seemed to call up some other memory, or to be a blurred image of something he had seen before, something forbidden, out of reach. Although he had yearned for this thing, whatever it was, until his heart was sick with longing. But Marie-France was flesh and blood, and she was here. He had been looking down at her too long, Draco realized. But she did not look away. Instead, she smiled at him. And something ferocious leaped in him with all the violent suddenness of sixteen, and all the anger and frustration he had been feeling.

His father had left him there. His father had gone. His father was off doing important things, and he, Draco Malfoy, did not merit even the courtesy of a simple explanation of what they were. There was a rage that had been building in him for so long he could no longer remember exactly when or how it started, and he knew that he did not have long before it broke its bonds. Still, he had learned good manners, and the practice of such did not include psychotic episodes at the homes of one's relatives over the Christmas hols. He was surly and sullen, just at first, but that didn't last long.

"I don't like fried eggs," he mumbled at breakfast the first morning after having shuffled down to the table unshaven, wishing that the lapse in hygiene made more of an impression on his just-turned-sixteen-year-old face. His cousin looked at him, one eyebrow raised, until her gaze was a palpable thing, and he had to glance up at it. Not a word was spoken, but it was only necessary to see that look on her face once. The next morning, he wore one of the beautifully tailored linen shirts that had been a birthday present from his mother, and there were croissants. When she handed him the little silver pot of strawberry jam, her hand brushed his. Draco was very glad that he was seated at, and hidden behind, a table at the time. No, when this monstrous thing within him finally broke, as he was sure it would, its manifestations would be sudden, swift, and immediate. He wasn't going to let it out of him in dribs and drabs.

There had been only him and her in the villa; the servants, as was customary in wizarding houses, were near-invisible house elves. In common with most wizarding houses, the inside was bigger than the outside. To Muggles, it simply appeared to be a ruined lighthouse, Marie-France explained to him. Since she was a Squib, many Muggle things surrounded her, and they all had the fascination of novelty to Draco. She played chess with him, leaning over the board in one of her low-cut silk day gowns, the tip of her pink tongue caressing her lips. He prodded the pieces to get them to move, but they never did, and then his eye would inevitably be caught by the tip of her little tongue slipping back into her mouth, its very edge pointing down to the creamy flesh above the bronze silk. He wondered what would happen in he reached out his hand just a little further and touched that smooth warm skin. Would she scream? Would she slap his hand away? Or would she simply laugh in cold little ripples, her eyes icy, like Pansy Parkinson had so often done? He never quite dared to find out. But he held the chess pieces so hard that he broke one once; it had not cried out in pain to warn him, as a wizarding pawn would have done.

"'Ave you ever been to the south of France, Draco?" she asked as they sat on the veranda that afternoon.

Draco shook his head. It was difficult to speak when she was nearby; he was always afraid that his voice was going to crack into a higher register, as it had stopped doing years before, or perhaps begin to speak in tongues, saying unimaginable things. "Only the Basque region, really," he did manage to say. "Only this Christmas. You saw me there." She probably thought he was a complete idiot, he decided.

She sipped at her wine, looking at him over the rim of the glass. The liquid picked up the sun and glittered like a great ruby jewel. "There is much I can show you," she said. "These are your Yule 'olidays, no? I hope I shall be able to amuse you while you are 'ere."

He didn't trust himself to say a single word in reply to that.

I can hold out a bit longer, he told himself. Through the Christmas hols, maybe.

Marie-France sipped at her wine, and a little of it spilled over the edge of the glass and trickled down the corner of her mouth, beading on the ivory skin of her jaw. She did not have a napkin. He pressed his to her face, without thinking. When he drew his hand back, his fingers brushed the warm beating pulse in her neck.

No, I can't, he thought. I won't be able to make it. I wonder how much longer I have, before... before...

Meanwhile, the earth tilted on its axis, and the moon swelled towards the winter solstice, which Muggles believed had already occurred. But it had not, although the knowledge of its true date was rather arcane, and taught only as part of a seventh-year specialization at Hogwarts. Draco Malfoy had read about it once in a wizarding encyclopedia while locked in his room one summer, but his restless mind had forgotten it. This wisdom belonged to the old ways and old gods that had been rather left behind in this modern magical age, so it was a little better remembered at Beauxbatons, so near to the Basque region, and the ancient line of the wizard-kings of France. In any case, the true solstice fell on a different day each year, and varied with the moon's phases. This year, it was unusually late. It would not come until the end of December. Yet without his knowledge or consent, Draco felt its pull. And so the days went by.

They played tennis on her private courts. They went into St. Tropez in her little red convertible. She taught him to drive, and he picked the skill up very swiftly, motoring along the winding roads on the coast. They knew her at the local art museum, and greeted her with little smiles. There was a special wizarding section, and it held many of Van Gogh's paintings that Muggles had never seen, including the entire rose series. Only two were missing. Draco realized that he had one of them, and wondered where the other one was.

"I 'ave it," Marie-France said the next afternoon, passing by him as he stared and stared at a painting of yellow roses that seemed poised on the edge of explosion from their blue vase.

"Really?" he asked. "Where is it? I've never seen it."

She smiled at him, just a faint flick of the lips. "My rooms. Upstairs, at the very top of the tower."

"Oh." The one syllable was all he could seem to manage. Draco had never yet seen her private rooms. But from that moment on, he pictured them, over and over and over.

She had a television, and he watched it sometimes in the evenings, fascinated by the flickering figures on the little screen. From Draco's magical training, twenty-five frames per second were not too many for his eye to catch, and it took him many days to understand how persistence of vision made sense of the dizzying images. He walked for long hours along the sea by himself, watching the water, and sometimes if he came back unexpectedly he heard her talking on the Muggle telephone to someone, always in a low, confidential voice. "Jane," he heard her say, once, but even his excellent hearing could pick up no more.

One afternoon at the market, there was a stall of ivory and silver-handled knives, each one exquisitely crafted. Draco had owned one once, lost it on the Quidditch pitch during a match that ended in a broken leg, and never replaced it. She bought him one with a handle of silver in an elaborately twisted design. He liked it too much to spend a great deal of time protesting that she oughtn't to spend her money on him, and then he bought earrings for her with the pocket money he'd brought. They cost every knut he had, but they were enchanted to change colors according to the clothing she wore, and when he saw them turn to fiery topaz against the creamy skin of her jaw and the bronze silk of her cloak, he could not stop staring.

"They're beautiful. On you, I mean. I mean, when you wear them, you look so-- but whether you were or not, you'd still--" After a bit more very un-Malfoylike stammering, Draco shut his mouth. She laughed merrily, but it sounded friendly, not mocking.

"They stay warm even in the winter air, as well-- feel--" And she took his hand in her warm one and brought it up to the earrings. Draco touched bare skin, and pulled his fingers back as quickly as he could without seeming rude, aware that he probably hadn't succeeded. But she only smiled at him, enigmatically.

A little later, they bought winter apples in the fruit and vegetable market, located deep in the cobbled back streets. Marie-France found one that was so perfectly round and ripe and red that her eyes closed briefly when she tasted it, and she insisted he have a bite. Draco expected her to hand the fruit to him, but her slender pale fingers held it very still and she beckoned for him to come towards her with her other hand. His jaw trembled as he sank his teeth into the skin of the apple, feeling the sweet tangy juice running over his lips. When he felt himself brushing against the tips of her fingers, Draco jerked back so violently that one of his sharp teeth grazed her skin. A drop of blood welled up and sank slowly into the apple, as if into parched earth. He stammered an apology, or at least he thought it was one, since he was no longer entirely sure what he was saying or not saying, and yanked a linen handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers to tie up her finger. Marie-France allowed him to do it, looking at him gravely. She took a last, long, slow bite from the apple, and threw the core away.

He supposed that he liked what they did-- the trips to market, the walks by the ocean, the art museum, the chess games. He supposed that it was a pleasant vacation. He supposed that he was going to snap soon, and do something unimaginably vicious and violent, because he could not imagine what else could be seething behind the frail barricades he still shored up. He rather hoped that Marie-France would not be around when it finally happened. And still, there was no word from Lucius.

Draco began to take longer and longer walks, both wanting and not wanting to be near Marie-France Tessier. Sometimes he perversely wanted her to see him at his worst, as she certainly would do soon. But he could not stop thinking about his wish that she not be harmed in any way when he finally and irrevocably lost it. He would remember little things about her while he was picking up pink-tinged shells on the beach; her feathery eyebrows above her topaz eyes, the way her bodice tightened across her chest when she moved a pawn across the board, her curiously carved locket swinging on its chain; her trick of speaking very low so that he had to lean in to hear her, and would smell her haunting damask rose scent. Sometimes he thought of her image, and sometimes of Ginny Weasley's, although he tried not to do so. Often the two blurred into each other, until even he was not certain whose face and body his memory held. One late afternoon a few days after his arrival, she found Draco there, walking along the sand dunes near the villa.

It was the thirty-first of December, the closing of the year, and he walked slowly at the edge of the grey ocean and looked up at the leaden sky. He had never felt so fragmented in all his young life, as if his essential self were bursting to split apart, held together only by a fraying effort of his will. Draco had started violently when he felt her fingers on his arm.

"Are you not cold?" Marie-France asked in her softly accented voice.

"Suppose I am." Draco shivered, suddenly feeling the chill winds blowing off the ocean.

"Come inside. 'Ave some chocolate." She held out her long slim hand to him, and, slightly dazed, he took it. Doesn't she know that she shouldn't touch me? he thought numbly, teeth chattering. Doesn't she know that I'm not safe? And I'm not... I'm not. Not safe for myself, not safe for her. I feel that I'm about to break, to shatter into a thousand pieces, each one sharper than a Razor hex...

She took him up the narrow, winding stairs of the original lighthouse to her tower rooms at the very top. Her boudoir was a little anteroom with chairs and couch and armoire, all soft ivory and gleaming gold. A little fire burned in the grate. There was a steaming pot giving off the rich scent of chocolate, and Marie-France poured a delicate china cup full, handing it to Draco, motioning for him to sit. So he sat on a white satin couch, sipping hot cocoa, his movements strangely awkward-- he, Draco Malfoy, the paragon of grace. Wonderful. It isn't enough that I'm about to give in to homicidal mania at last. I'm going to spill cocoa all over the white shag rug when it happens. How gauche. And still, his cousin looked at him. He wanted to warn her. He wanted to tell her that there was still time to get away from him, if she left now. He never wanted her to leave. The peach silk she wore tightened across her bodice when she replaced the chocolate pot, and inwardly, he gave a painful groan at the familiar feeling that seized him at the sight.

It was like a distillation of every horribly frustrated moment of the past months around the Hogwarts girls, all rolled into one. All the low giggling and flirtatious looks and curly heads bouncing away from him and pretty, untouchable bodies straining against silk robes gathered themselves together into a fever pitch. Pansy's black-cherry eyes, mocking him as she refused him again, and again, and again. Pansy in the window seat, trying to back away from him. Pansy on the dirt floor of the hypocaust, her dark lashes fluttering against her sallow skin, preparing to yield to him. Or had she? Was it only another trick of hers? No girl would ever touch you for any reason besides your filthy money, Malfoy. Weasley's angry words. And the memory of the brother led to thoughts of the sister. Ginny. His memories of her in a thousand different attitudes over the past five years, the only common thread that she did not know he watched her. Or did she? All, all contained in the enigmatic half-smile of Marie-France Tessier. She looked up at him through her lashes again; it was another trick she had, and it set his blood to boiling hotter than the chocolate. The cup had clattered when he put it back in the saucer. Then he jumped when he felt her hand on the back of his neck.

"What are you doing?" he asked in a voice that was only an agonized whisper.

"Shhh," she said, stroking the pale skin just below his thick soft silver-blond hair.

"Marie--"

"Shhh."

Draco looked down at his own hands. They were trembling. Her face had a sidelong half-smile, almost mocking. Was she laughing at him? He reached up and grabbed her soft, strong hands, pulling them away from him, scarcely able to do so because his fingers were shaking so violently. "Don't do that!"

She cocked an eyebrow at him. "Whyever not?"

"Don't touch me. You mustn't. I'm trying to-- it's for your own-- oh, please don't make me--" His tongue felt so thick in his own mouth, so incapable of saying what he wanted it to say. The dam was breaking. If he could speak, he would have told her to leave before it was too late, before the unspeakable thing broke free.

She tipped her face up to his, and there was a look in it that he didn't understand; he had never seen it on the face of any girl or woman, not turned towards him anyway. Never from Pansy, certainly. It seemed to promise something unimaginable. No. No, it can't be. I'm mad... But he had imagined it, had pictured it, lying in the comfortable bed in the guest bedroom the night before, trying as hard as he could to be quiet as he stroked himself and thought of her, pretending that it was her slim white hand around him rather than his own. A vague figure had swum in his mind then, as he stifled his groans of pleasure. A shimmering length of reddish hair, eyes that glinted gold, a bold and graceful way of moving, of sitting, of standing, and a body that he had often studied, turning the memories over and over in his mind. He had not tried to put a name to this female. He had sworn that he would never allow himself to do so again. But these vague images... they were safe enough. Or as safe as anything could be, by this point. Draco had hoped that these hours would have calmed him a little, tamped down the simmering cauldron of feeling within him, but it had been like trying to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon. Sheer exhaustion finally forced him to stop, but when his nerveless fingers had fallen to the coverlet at last, he had felt no better.

Marie-France leaned towards him a little, and he felt something stroking his ankle, moving up one calf. Looking down, he saw that it was one of her bare feet, and even through his trousers and socks he felt the light touch of her toes like a burning brand. That's it, Draco thought almost calmly. I tried to warn her.

He seized her waist in his hands, pulling her to him roughly, and the gates began to drop, and he opened his mouth and kissed her, kissed her with a fumbling, inexpert hunger that poured from him to her like a vast flood. He wasn't graceful or gentle; his teeth were probably scraping the hell out of her lips, he knew, but he couldn't stop himself, and the little voice shrilly screeching that he should at least try to stop was silenced under the avalanche. She couldn't want this, after all; any moment he would feel those beautiful hands of her going rigid, trying to push him away. He prayed desperately for one last shred of control when this happened. He was sure he no longer had it. Draco had some confused idea of begging her to draw her wand and Stun him and leave him lying on the floor. But she's a Squib. She doesn't have a wand. So I am damned. I am falling into my own damnation but it's too late and I don't care. She should not have touched me. What follows will be your own fault, my beautiful cousin...

Then Draco felt a sensation he could scarcely credit. Her arms were winding around him, travelling up his body, holding him as he held her. They were still for a moment, her fingers moving only a little on his skin.

"Marie," he said hoarsely.

"Shh," she said yet again. And then, all at once, she was touching him everywhere. Well, not quite everywhere, because he didn't think he could have kept his sanity through that and she seemed to realize it, but her hands moved over his chest, his back, and his arms as if testing him, learning him. Most incredibly of all, she was responding to him; what had been unleashed on her did not make her fear or flee him. He could not grasp the thought. It was too immense to take in, so it stood outside and touched his mind with a radiating warmth, even as her hands touched his body. And the feeling was nothing, nothing like the small mean satisfaction when Pansy had touched him the week before; it was like some hungering part of himself being fed at last, the scrap of nourishment only awakening his deepest appetites. And for Draco Malfoy, whose life had been starved of human touch, that was the final straw.

He felt her pulling him to his feet and let her guide him; he probably would have allowed her to lead him off a cliff, if it meant that she kept touching him as she was doing. It wasn't until months later that it occurred to Draco that if he had been himself, he would have wondered if he should be doing this thing; if it was really such a good idea, if it would be better to wait, to try to find out why she was offering what he had wanted for so long. But he was not himself, not then. There seemed nothing left to him but his desires, finally broken free, and the sight of Marie-France, and the slight, crooked smile on her lovely face that promised their fulfillment.

Later, during the vulnerable times when he was unable to banish such memories from his head, Draco thought that the next hour was probably the most graceless of his entire life. There was none of the finesse or poise or polish that would come to him the following year in such situations. When she stretched out her hand to him and led him to her bed in the adjoining room, he stumbled over his own feet and nearly fell. He was awkward. He was clumsy. His fingers could not seem to get the buttons of her dress through their buttonholes and he ended up tearing some of them off; they rolled onto the floor with little clattering sounds.

The last Van Gogh rose painting hung on the wall, just above the bed. The flowers were almost violently full-blown in this one, their petals beginning to fall, each one lush and ripe and preternaturally peach and red. His hands roamed over her naked flesh almost frantically. He touched her breasts, and they were round and full with nipples like pink raspberries on upside-down bowls of whipped cream, nothing like Pansy's, and... was her breathing quickening, had her eyes fallen half-shut? Was she showing him that she liked what he was doing? A vast shiver went all through him. Draco's hands went down, down, trembling a little, no, more than a little, like leaves in a wind, and he didn't seem to be able to stop them. He had no experience with a woman's body in this way beyond those few fumbling moments with Pansy the week before. But Pansy hadn't been like this. Hadn't reacted like this. Pansy hadn't sighed deep in her throat and pressed closer to him and let her legs drift apart, allowing him easier access, offering herself to his exploring hands.

Later, Draco realized that there was only one reason why he hadn't come then and there before ever getting his trousers off, ending it all before he had the chance to go any further. A sense of utter disbelief overlay the entire experience. Nothing seemed quite real. It couldn't be real. And that bizarre dreamlike sensation inhibited his reactions a little, a very little. He was unable to believe that she was letting him touch her so intimately, although even in his insane desperation he tried to figure out what touches pleased her, and to adjust his clumsy caresses to the tone of her murmuring voice.

He felt a perfect idiot when he realized that he was still wearing as much clothing as he had at the beginning, and that his excitement was too extreme to permit much waiting. It seemed for a panicked second as if the entire adventure might be defeated by virtue of the fact that he still had his trousers on, and they had to come off somehow, although he couldn't seem to remember how it was done, just then. Draco gave a long shuddering sigh of relief when she began to undress him. She took every stitch off him deftly, efficiently, not letting her hands linger. He was silently thankful. If she had touched his bared skin anywhere for more than an instant, this impossible rose-colored dream would have come to a sudden and violent end.

Theory and imagination were not practice, he found, and no number of mental rehearsals could have prepared him for the reality of this act. "Help me," Draco finally blurted when they were both naked in her peach-shaded bed, he half-kneeling, half-lying on top of her. So she reached for him, and, that very first time, she guided him into her, and showed him what to do.

I am not bloody well going to come from having her touch me for the first time, he repeated to himself over and over, gritting his teeth together until a flash of pain went through his jaw. I've been mad, crazed... maybe this is all a dream and I'll wake in St. Mungo's mental ward... oh, I haven't been myself and I'm still not, but I have control. I have it. That is all of myself that matters.

Her hands moved over his hips slowly, and pulled him between her legs slowly, as if precisely fitting together two pieces of a puzzle, and again he was grateful. He remembered that this was what he had so wanted from Pansy, and known he would not get. But Marie-France Tessier was giving him his deepest desire, this gradual, deliberate, sensual engulfment, and there was no room in his mind or body to question why, only a vast roaring need that was about to be filled.

And then he was there, in that consuming tactile place he had so often dreamed of, and had never experienced. And he knew, knew the things that he could never refrain from knowing again, the knowledge sudden, sweet, and terrible. In a flash, he understood that this was what male loss of virginity meant. It wasn't a physical change, and there was certainly no pain involved, as he'd heard there was for girls, but some barrier in one's mind was forever crossed, and some saving ignorance had forever vanished.

So this was what it felt like to push slowly within a woman's body for the first time, or at least as slowly as he could manage; he was desperate to savor and retain every one of these unimaginable new sensations, but it swiftly became more than he could endure to feel himself enveloped, inch by inch. And that was how it felt to sink all the way down to the bottom of her; she gripped him and held him completely, and it was everything he had ever imagined, and it was like nothing he ever could have imagined. He could no more stay still than he could have resisted her in the first place; Draco began to move in her, instinctively, and she pressed her hand into the small of his back, urging him on. And this was how it felt to thrust into her again and again, unsteadily, his pace quickening as he lost the last vestige of his precious control, and oh, oh gods she was pushing her hips up to meet his downward motion and it was too much; he exploded into her, immediately, the unbearable tension leaving him, borne away on the tidal waves of pleasure. And then it was over, so quickly, almost before it had begun.

Draco loosened his fingers from her shoulders; he hadn't realized how tightly he'd been holding her. She'd probably have bruises, come morning. He waited for her to say something. Surely she would? But Marie-France was silent. The aftershocks were still seizing him, and he twitched and shuddered a little against her, burying his face in her neck. That was...that felt... he'd never even thought anything could feel like that; the sensation was a magnitude of difference from pleasuring himself. It was as if he had opened a door to a new world, and once over the threshold he could only think of returning, again and again and again, of learning all about what it meant to dwell here... But she still wasn't saying anything. And now that it was over, now that he was calm for the first time in weeks, months, shame seized him.

I was awful, he thought bitterly. I thought I'd do better than that, or at least last a bit longer than, oh, thirty seconds. If she'd only give me another chance... I can do better, I know I can... But he, Lucius Malfoy's son, knew better than to expect second chances. He had been given one, against all hope and expectation, and he had ruined it.

And still, silence. Draco turned his head to one side to keep his cousin from seeing his face; he was sure, for an awful moment, that he was going to start crying. He'd wondered sometimes what might happen after he finally snapped, but he hadn't known that the reaction would be this. That once the storm of feeling locked up within him had been unleashed, he would only feel stripped and lost and weak. Perhaps he could sleep on the beach after she kicked him out of the villa. Or maybe it was going to be even worse than that; maybe she'd call Lucius Malfoy on that telephone of hers and tell him to come and get his damn impertinent son, who had proved to be such a disappointment. It didn't dawn on him until much later that his father probably didn't have the faintest idea how to use a telephone. She moved a little beneath him, and finally seemed about to speak. He stiffened, and all his pride came rushing back to him. The moment of weakness was over.

And now, dismissal, he thought. I've performed unsatisfactorily. She chose to amuse herself one dull evening by seducing her boy cousin, and now it's over. Far too soon, but c'est la vie. A failed experiment, to be swiftly forgotten. His face settled into cold, sneering lines; Draco knew that as clearly as if he'd seen himself in a mirror. "Sorry," he murmured ungraciously, and began to rise from the bed, pushing aside the gauzy peach hangings. "Now if you'll excuse me--"

Marie-France placed one slim white hand on his chest. "Cheri," she said, "your experience may not be vast, but surely you know that you should not apologize to a woman for making love to her."

"I don't know anything," he said in a tight voice, moving again to get away from her. But she looked up at him, and he was pinned to the spot by her eyes.

"That was your first time, was it not?"

"Yes." In the gaze of those eyes, lies failed him. His smooth surface had shattered, and he was as vulnerable as a stripped sapling in her hands.

"Ah." Marie-France let out all her breath in a rush, as if she had been waiting since the moment he arrived for this answer. "So you have had no other lovers."

"Er--no. I haven't." Draco looked down at his feet, wishing she would get off this particular subject.

"Good," she said. A smile of satisfaction curved her lips. What on earth for, Draco thought. Certainly not because of anything I did. And I can't believe she was pleased by the fact that I didn't have the faintest idea what I was doing.

"Come," she said. Then she led him to another adjoining room, where a bath had been prepared with scented oils and little magical candles floating in the water, the kind that would stay alight even when submerged. She was still naked, and, Draco realized, so was he. She tested the water with one hand. "Perfect," she said. "Would you like to bathe with me, mon petit dragon?"Marie-France got into the deep-backed tub, her eyes still on him, and at the sight of her firm, large breasts bobbing up to the surface he was suddenly, painfully, ragingly hard once more.

"Ah,"she said, her eyes widening slightly. "Nicknames should be accurate. That one was not, I see. Mon grand dragon, I should say." She arched her back, sinking luxuriously into the coral-colored soap bubbles. "Close your mouth, cousin," she said. "One can never tell what may fly in."

The atmosphere had not changed as he'd thought it would, and incredulously he realized it. Well, this was no time to look a gift horse in the mouth. Not when this beautiful, naked woman smiled at him so invitingly, the steam rising from the bath flushing her face a lovely shade of peach. Something very small and hopeful stirred in him. Something rather larger and quite a bit more hopeful did so, as well. Draco walked forward slowly and rested his elbows on the side of the tub, a lock of hair falling into his face. "Oh, Marie, I might not mind that too much. Depends on what it would be. Something nice?"

"Very nice, perhaps." And she reached down, and her fingers trailed feather-light in an agonizing journey along the part of him that she had awakened. "Oh, non, non. Not yet. Half the pleasure is in the waiting," she said. "Concentrate on something else for a moment, cheri."

"Like this?" he asked, bending down and flicking round one of her pink nipples with the tip of his tongue.

"A little more gently. Now take it in your mouth... suck on it a bit... not so hard... ah, yes, Draco!" A shiver ran through her, and she caressed his head with one of her hands, running her fingers through the silvery fair hair. "Now get into the bath," she said, handing him a large sea sponge. "You may wash my back. But no more."

"No... more?" Draco echoed, his fingers growing numb as he gripped the sponge.

She smiled at him. "Not just yet."

He concentrated on moving the sponge in little circles on the fanlike shape of her lower back. Perspiration broke out on his brow. Entirely from the heat of the bath, he was sure.

"'Ave you ever done this before?" she asked.

"Never," he said hoarsely. "Sorry if I'm doing it wrong. Nobody ever taught me."

She turned her head to look at him, appraisingly. "Then perhaps... perhaps it is time someone did."

But when he reached one hand around, between her legs, her eyes flashed at him in a way that was impossible to mistake. He ran the sponge down the long curve of her spine with trembling hands. Draco washed her, and dried her with a fluffy peach towel, and helped her to dress in a peach robe, feeling all the while as if fire ants were crawling over every inch of his body. He could not decide if it was the most exquisite torture, or the most perfect pleasure, he had ever known.

Afterwards, they ate dinner on the veranda, served by the invisible house-elves. The supply of veal chops seemed endless, which was, Draco thought, a very good thing. He couldn't remember ever being quite so hungry before in all his life. Yet an appetite throbbed in him that food was certainly not going to satisfy.

"Do they not feed you, at 'ome?" asked Marie-France, one delicately arched eyebrow raised.

He smiled at her, one corner of his mouth going up in a shaky, tentative fashion, and began on the apple tart. As if from the outside, Draco saw himself sitting at the dinner table with Marie-France Tessier. The expression on his own face was utterly alien to him. He didn't know if he had ever looked so uncertain about anything. "Maybe I'm just insatiable," he said.

"Are you," she purred at him, her chocolate-brown eyes darkening further.

He took a deep breath. Nothing ventured, nothing gained... "Perhaps... perhaps I'll show you later. If you like."

"You are not... too tired?" Her voice was amused.

Draco looked at her over his jasper-studded goblet of Archambault red wine. He was dimly surprised that the ruby liquid had not begun to smoke and bubble from the intensity of his gaze. "I think I may also be inexhaustible."

"Perhaps we shall simply 'ave to find out," she said.

A bolt of desire sizzled through him, like a stroke of lightning. Did she mean what I thought she meant? Could she? Draco looked at Marie-France. She was licking apple tart from her fingers, looking at him in a way that was almost challenging. It's as if this is a test, and if I don't pass it, she will never allow me anything more... oh Gods, let me do the right thing!

An impulse came to him, and he put a hand on her arm. "Let me do that," he said, and she did let him.

"You 'ave much natural talent, Draco," she said as his tongue ran along her sensitive fingertips. "But a great deal to learn."

"I seem to remember an offer you made in the bath. Of course, I was rather preoccupied at the moment. Something about becoming my teacher, maybe?"

"Then your memory is a good one."

"So-- will you teach me?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

And so she did.

That very first night, she took him back to her room and let her peach-colored lace robe fall to the floor. He snapped to what felt like impossible hardness at the sight, instantly, and his mouth began to water as if he were a starving dog watching a smoking plate of food held just out of reach. He wondered in a panicky way what was happening to him. He'd had her once already. He'd gotten what he'd wanted so desperately for so long. Surely that ought to have calmed him, at least a little? But the calm that he'd felt right afterwards was gone. It was suddenly as if he had never been allowed to touch her at all. The feeling almost frightened him.

"You are not satisfied, are you, mon cheri?" she asked.

Draco shook his head, unable to take his eyes off her breasts.

"And 'ow does that make you feel?"

He thought about it. For some strange reason, he wanted to be honest with her, and felt that she deserved honesty. "A little-- a little frightened," he admitted.

"Eh? And why is that?"

"It feels as if I never can be."

She smiled slightly. "'Ave you never heard the saying that appetite comes from eating?"

He shook his head, watching her dumbly. She had begun to walk around him, flicking at his chest with one of her fingernails.

Tomorrow," she said softly, "I will begin to teach you."

Her words reverberated in his head; yes, she had really said them, and he had really heard them. It was her next statement that nearly brought him to his knees.

"But tonight, we will have no refinements. I want you to satisfy your desires, selfishly, until you are sated. Only after that can we begin. The starving cannot appreciate a fine feast."

If she had not been standing naked in front of him, inches from a bed, Draco thought quite dispassionately that what she'd said might have driven him over the edge of madness at last. But luckily, she was. He pushed her to the bed with one hand, and she fell onto her back. He tore off his clothing as if it were on fire. Marie-France spread her legs for him, and he sank his hips between them. In a few exquisite thrusts, it was over, simply over. "Bloody hell," he groaned.

"What is it, cherie?"

"I don't want to finish so quickly! It can't be any fun for you. Isn't there some way to learn--"

She put a finger over his mouth. "Later," she said.

He was growing hard again within her. The primal animal needs of his body were driving him forward. So Draco closed his eyes and lost himself in her once more, without another word, falling, falling, falling into the mysterious enveloping darkness of a woman's body.

There had to be refinements of lovemaking as she'd implied, he thought vaguely from time to time that night, different positions, varied techniques. But they used none of them. Straight and strong and simple, he thrust between her thighs, over and over and over again, and each time he convulsed in a tide of pleasure. Again, and again, it washed over him so strongly that it eventually washed away every bit of his rage, his anger, his despair, his fury against the world, his sadistic desire to cause it pain as it had pained him. His icy control left him as well. In the deepest part of the night, he wept as he labored over her, his tears spilling over her cheeks. She reached up and wiped them away with her fingertips. Every bit of his protective armor was stripped away, link by link, until she could have crushed him between her two hands. She embraced him, and touched him lightly, and pressed her linked fingers into the small of his back as he thrust, and thrust, and thrust. He kept waiting for her to refuse him. But she never did.

There was nothing elegant or sophisticated about their lovemaking then. Draco had all the finesse of a sixteen-year-old male virgin, which is to say, none at all. Marie-France did not direct him, but simply lay beneath him and let him at her, again and again and again. His thrusts were uneven, and his touch was clumsy, and he never stopped coming too fast. She can't possibly be getting any pleasure out of this, he thought, with a twinge of guilt. I really ought to... or, well, shouldn't I at least try to... But the fierce hunger in his body was not satisfied, not quite yet, and so he plunged into her again, and yet again.

Around three in the morning, he could feel himself finally wearing down. His movements were slowing like a wizarding watch that needed to be wound. Each thrust was slow and long and deliberate, like the movement of the tide coming into the shore. "Ah," he groaned. "Ohhhh, Marie. Marie. Almost. Almost. Just one last time... just one more... ahhhh..." One last long, long orgasm, like the waves washing over the sand, or the sun setting into the sea. Prolonged. Exquisite. Perfect.

"That's all," said Draco, faintly. He slipped out of her and lay by her side. With the last bit of his strength, he put one arm around her. He felt her smoothing back the hair from his sweaty brow. It has all passed out of me, he thought drowsily. I am clean. Then he fell into the most profound sleep he had ever known.

When he opened his eyes again, the pale light of early morning was spilling through the curtains. Draco stretched in a yawn and sat up; he felt sore, and sated, and strangely rested. Marie-France was gone. Her side of the bed was cold. A chilly pang spread through him. I should have known, he thought. It was too good to be true. But she came into the room with a tray of steaming coffee and a little pitcher of milk, a plate of bread and curls of pale butter, sliced fruit, cheese, and his relief almost shattered him. He began to eat and drink, hungrily.

She put a hand on his cheek. "Good morning, my dragon," she said.

"You weren't here when I woke up," he blurted, around enormous bites of bread.

"Oh-- I needed to make a telephone call."

"To whom?" Draco was fascinated by the little gold and white telephone on the kitchen table.

"No-one important. Do you know 'ow long you 'ave slept?"

"No, what time is it?" he asked. The coffee was wonderfully strong.

"Seven o'clock."

"Can't be. Feels like I've slept forever." He slurped orange juice.

She shook her head, amused. "You slept the clock around, Draco. It is seven o'clock of the next day."

He stared at her. "It can't be. That's impossible. I never sleep more than a few hours, at the most." And even then it was only a half-sleep, as if his mind was always afraid to let his body drift into the rest which all of him needed so much.

"I assure you, it is so."

"Mm." Draco sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Then I don't want to waste any more time eating."

"What do you want to do?"

He walked to the big picture window, pulled aside the drapes, and looked out on a clear, cold day of blue skies and endless possibilities. "Everything," he said, turning back to her at last. "Everything."

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