Wolf and Raven

Chapter One

Draco sat at the Slytherin table at breakfast, sulkily eyeing the Gryffindor table at the other side of the hall. Through a gap in the sea of heads he could see Harry Potter, flashing his winning smile over to the Ravenclaw table, where Cho Chang was sitting. From Draco's angle, he couldn't see if Cho returned the smile, but by Harry's reaction (a small wave), it appeared that she had.

Draco's right hand clenched into a ball, making his knuckles crack. These meals were torture for him, watching Harry flirt with Cho like that. How he wanted to punch that smiling face into little strings of pulp, watch the blood trickle down to a small pool on the floor...

But his face remained still. It had to. Any sign of tension, one nervous little tic in the side of his temple, and half the Slytherin house would be all over him, demanding to know what was wrong. And he couldn't very well tell them; he was, after all, sworn to secrecy. So he had to satisfy his rage by making rude hand gestures under the table, which wasn't very satisfying at all.

"Are you all right, Draco?" Blaise demanded, tossing her fiery-red hair over her shoulder.

Draco realized, with a start, that he had been staring at Harry for well-over three minutes. "I-I'm fine," he muttered distractedly, pouring himself a glass of pumpkin juice.

Blaise surveyed him skeptically. 'If you say so..." she murmured back in an 'I-don't-believe-you' voice.

"I said I was fine!" Draco insisted, then realized that his goblet had long-since overflowed, and juice was spreading across the table with frightening speed, dripping over the edges and onto Draco's lap.

"Mm-hmm..." Blaise muttered through pursed lips, clearly not persuaded. She waved her wand, making the spilt juice go back into the pitcher and drying Draco's pants.

A loud whooshing of hundreds of wings alerted the Hogwarts students of the daily owl post; Draco scanned the magic-made sky for his eagle owl. It soared over his head and dropped a creamy-colored roll of parchment tied with a black satin ribbon onto his plate, making Draco's scrambled eggs go flying.

Gingerly picking up the roll, Draco undid the tie and the parchment unfurled itself and lay flat. Silver eyes perused the letter, which read,

Draco,

I have discussed it with the Dark Lord, and you will meet with him Saturday the 27^th. I will send a carriage for you on the Friday before, which will take you to the Manor. Remember, Draco, this could very well be the most important day of your life.

Your Father,

Lucius Malfoy

Draco groaned softly and rolled the parchment up again, tucking it away into his robes. He really didn't want to have anything to do with the Dark Lord; Draco didn't think of himself as evil, really. Nasty, yes. Malicious, maybe. Immoral, definitely. But evil? Hardly. And now Draco would be coming face-to-face with Voldemort in five days...

"Draco," Blaise piped up, poking him in the side, "You have another letter."

Draco's silver eyes flashed as he noticed the folded piece of parchment propped up against the stem of his goblet, his name written across the front in familiar hand-writing. Unfolding the note eagerly, he read it quickly, hiding his smile.

You- Arth. ST. L? -Me

The note, of course, made perfect sense to Draco. His presence was requested in the Arithmancy classroom at the same time (which happened to be 12:30 am), but to not worry if the note-sender was late.

Draco tucked the note into his robe, smiling slightly.

"Good news?" Blaise asked innocently, who had read the note over Draco's shoulder but hadn't been able to decipher the code.

Draco thought about both letters that were somewhere in his robes, "Yes and no," he answered truthfully.

Draco stopped pacing around the Arithmancy classroom and checked his watch for the umpteenth time. It was a quarter till one, but he wasn't worried. At least, not much. They had said that they might be late...

Footsteps outside the classroom made Draco's skin tingle in anticipation. A figure much shorter then him, with black hair, entered the room.

"Hey, you," Draco said, his voice soft.

"Hey, yourself," Cho replied, walking up to Draco, who automatically enveloped her in a hug.

"Sorry I'm late," she continued, laying her head on his chest, "Harry was being clingy."

Draco laughed. "Isn't he always?" His laughter wasn't enough to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Cho leaned back so that she could look into Draco's eyes. "You know as well as I do that I have to do this. Harry would die if I broke up with him, and we can't have that, can we?" She smiled apologetically, "I realize it must be hard for you, but you need to understand: I hate this just as much as you do."

Draco felt a little burst of hate deep inside him. Releasing Cho from the embrace, he took a step back, leaning against a desk. "Do you?" he asked almost angrily, "Do you really? 'Cause it doesn't seem like you do. I highly doubt that every time you look at Potter you get this sudden urge to break something, preferably him."

Cho took a step towards Draco, hoping to comfort him, but Draco wasn't done.

"I doubt that every time you look at Potter you want to extend that scar of his all the way down to his sternum," he continued ranting, "And I find it hard to believe that, whenever you look at Potter, you want to take a chainsaw and hack him into bite-size bits." Draco tried to glare at Cho, but found that he couldn't, so instead looked fiercely at the floor.

Cho looked abashed. "Well, okay, maybe you hate this a bit more then I do," (Draco scoffed, still glowering at the ground,) "But you need to realize: I have no feelings for Harry."

Draco peeked up from the floor. "None?"

Cho smiled. "None."

"None at all?"

"Nothing."

"All for me?"

"All my feelings are for you."

"Even the ones intended for your family?"

"Well, no. Not those. That would be a little odd. But the feelings that make me want to fuck like mad bunnies who OD'ed on Viagra, those are all yours."

Draco laughed. "Good."

Draco leaned back against the wall of the astronomy tower, propping himself up on the cool, uneven stones.

Cho sighed contentedly and nestled herself against Draco's chest, trying to protect herself from the biting cold.

"Do you remember how we first got together?" she asked suddenly, causing Draco to tilt his neck at an odd angle so that he could look at her.

"Why do you ask?"

Cho shrugged. "Just curious if you remembered," she paused, and then added, almost hopefully, "If you've forgotten I'll tell you."

Draco smiled faintly. Of course he hadn't forgotten, he remembered that day as if it were yesterday. But he decided to humor her; his troubled mind would welcome the distraction of Cho's soothing voice, and besides, he had never heard their story from Cho's point of view.

"Tell me."

Cho smiled, and cleared her throat. "Well, it all began at the beginning of this year. Harry had contacted me over the summer, saying that he understood my 'emotional distress'," She rolled her eyes, "and asking me to be his girlfriend. I accepted, so we spent the train ride up here together.

"You came by to heckle Potter, he made some comment about slugs, which, by the way, you still won't tell me about-"

"And I never plan on doing so," Draco interjected.

"And while you two were busy making snarky comments between each other, I was busy checking you out. You really are quite hot in Muggle clothing, dear."

Draco snorted, but privately agreed with the statement.

"I guess you felt my eyes on you, because you looked at me...Our eyes met, and I felt this stirring inside me, like, so long as I never looked away from you, the world would be perfect.

"But I didn't know if you felt the same way. So all I could do was enjoy my time with Harry the best I could. Usually I'm able to make the best of a horrible situation, but in this case...let's just say that Harry is a lost cause in the romance department.

"So I continued to be miserable with Harry, while watching you from afar. I was desperate to get to know you better, but I had no clue how. So when Professor Vector said that a sixth year Slytherin needed out-of-class tutoring, of course I volunteered. This way I'd at least be able to get to know someone who personally knew you."

Draco smiled, knowing what was coming next.

"So you can imagine my surprise when I walked into the library and you were there. I could hardly speak, I was so nervous."

"You did marvelously, sweetie," Draco said sincerely.

Cho smiled. "Thank you," She pecked him on the cheek, and continued speaking.

"After a couple tutoring sessions, I got the drift that my feelings for you were mutual, so, after our fourth session, I kissed you."

Draco grinned. "And I kissed you right back."

Cho beamed. "You certainly did. And then one thing to another...and here we are."

Draco nodded. "Here we are."