The Mystery Wife

The party on Diagon Alley was, if anything, wilder than it had been when Draco and Sevanna had arrived there. A truly profound amount of alcohol had clearly been added to the mix, early in the day as it still was. A fat, inebriated man stumbled into them, slurred a sort of apology and moved on, and Sevanna took Draco's arm firmly in hers again.

Draven, Draco mentally corrected himself. Get used to it.

He'd endured worse things than a name change in the last two years, and he'd already nearly gotten used to thinking of Snape as Sevanna.

"Is there anything you want to see or do, while we're here?" she murmured in his ear. "It's the last time we're likely to see these streets for quite a while. Years, perhaps. If you're having a craving for Fortescue's chocolate and banana sundaes, this is your chance."

"No," Draven muttered back. His mood had taken a sharp dive, at the reminder of the much less pleasant-- if less embarrassing-- first half of his dream, and the resemblance it bore to the recent history of the waking world. "I'd rather get out of this. It's safer to get out of this. And to put this bluntly, there's just not enough chocolate in the world."

Her eyes narrowed in what might have been genuine empathy, but before she could speak, the high iron doors to Gringotts swung open again, and a man was forcibly thrown out.

"And stay out!" a goblin Teller snarled, as the troll doorman slammed the doors again.

"Unbelievable," the man muttered, climbing to his feet and dusting himself off. The voice, the shock of messy dark hair were unmistakable. Harry Potter.

His back was still to them as he stared at the bank's redoubtable doors.

Draco Malfoy, under better circumstances, would have laughed his head off. Mockingly, gleefully and, above all, in a really attention-getting fashion, so as to maximize Potter's embarrassment. Because oh, that had been sodding beautiful. And long overdue, in his not remotely humble opinion.

Later on, no doubt, he'd take out this memory and cuddle it like a mental teddy bear.

At this particular moment, however, under these particular circumstances, Draven Szarkany's sudden fear of arrest and public humiliation -- if not outright murder at the hands of a suddenly angry, already drunken mob -- did rather cool down that impulse.

He hissed something just at the edge of Sevanna's hearing that would have had his mother attempting to wash his mouth out.

Sevanna tugged at his arm insistently, edging them both back safely into the crowd, but before they could disappear into it, Potter turned around.

And stared.

And blinked.

And stared some more.

"Sirius?" he frowned, looking rather pale. "Or...Regulus?"

"Neither, I'm afraid," Sevanna informed him in the most bubbly, cheerful, Lavender Brown squeak of a voice Draco could have imagined coming from any woman, let alone this one. He turned to stare, himself, only to goggle at the utterly vapid smile on her face.

Sevanna didn't smile. She likely had no more idea how to smile than how to dance. At best, she smirked; it wasn't the same thing at all.

"But never mind us," she gushed. "You're HARRY POTTER!"

Her delighted squeal got the attention of absolutely everyone around them.

"It's Harry Potter!" someone else cried, and another, "The Chosen One!" They began to press in on him, to shake his hand, to clap him on the back, to hug him, while he looked bashful and embarrassed. He swiftly forgot all about them in the crush, and Sevanna started edging them away and out of the thick of it.

It was then, of course, that they spotted Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley.

Weasley looked three sheets to the wind, but Granger was sober, and frowning at them as if their appearances were teasing at the edges of that admittedly phenomenal memory.

"That tears it," Sevanna muttered, winding her arms around Draco. "My apologies, Mr. Szarkany," she whispered swiftly, and she shoved him against the wall of the bank with astonishing strength and kissed him, hiding their faces in the long curtains of their hair.

Draco was too shocked to react for a heartbeat, two, three. Snape was kissing him, Sevanna was kissing him, Merlin and Circe and anyone else who might be listening, Draco Malfoy was actually being mauled by Professor Snape...

It had never been like this, not this exchange of white and blinding fire and everything erupting inside him, not with Pansy, not even in his dreams. It was better, it was real. He opened to it, daring a little more, a fleeting caress of tongue and she tasted of coffee and cigarettes, dark and acid-sweet.

"Are they gone?" she whispered against his mouth, nipping softly at his lower lip in a way that almost made him climb out of his own skin. He dared a glance at the outside world, hazed by the darkness of his own hair. Potter, Weasley and Granger appeared to have skived off, but you never knew, really. They could still be around, somewhere. Better to be safe, wasn't it?

"Not yet," he lied. He pulled her more deeply into the curve of his body. If this was it, if this was all he would ever have of her, he would make it enough. He was a Malfoy. It wasn't in him not to covet those few things he couldn't buy.

He wound his fingers into her shockingly soft hair, traced the edge of her lower lip with his tongue and plunged inside. She gasped into his mouth, and something entirely primal within him exulted at that minute loss of control. He'd learned to do this much very well, and he knew it, even if he was still a virgin at almost eighteen, Merlin fucking help him.

The veela blood in the Malfoy line was Distinctly Not Helping as he deepened the kiss, wanting more, taking more, hunger and a little desperation skittering along the edges of his nerves, wondering when she was going to pull away and hex him senseless.

It was utterly glorious freefall, clutching, grinding, biting, fierce and gentle by turns as they tested each other. It built, it burned, she was actually kissing him, the most shatteringly intense thing he'd ever felt, because he wanted it more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life, and if her lips were chapped and her hands rough and callused with work, if she swore like a Yorkshire fishwife and smoked like a chimney and had a temper like a nundu, it was still brilliant, it was still her, alive and whole and miraculously there with him, kissing him.

The world spun around them, dizzying and out of control, and at the moment, Draco simply couldn't bring himself to care.

Sevanna broke away, finally, with a ragged breath. "I'm...my apologies again, Mr. Szarkany," she said, with an attempt at that melting chocolate purr that went a little awry.

Draco leaned against the nearest surface, which was too soft to be the bank's marble wall, and he opened his eyes to find himself back in Sevanna's horror of a house in Yorkshire. Spinner's End. The livingroom.

She'd Apparated them both out of there, and he hadn't even noticed.

Draco stared blankly around at the ugly room, panting and trying desperately to muffle it.

He refused to ask how she'd managed to Apparate in the middle of that kiss. Every shred of pride he had left rose up and strangled the words before they could escape. Asking that would make it too apparent that he couldn't have done it himself. That he'd been too affected and distracted to do so.

Which he had been.

Draco turned scarlet, clear to the hairline.

"Let's... call it even, for my slip-up this morning, shall we?" he managed to reply with a shaky and rueful smirk, turning an even darker shade. "After all, you got us out of there without our being identified, arrested, or splinched. I'm hardly likely to complain."

A brief silence hung between them, heavy and unstable.

"You would have every right," Sevanna muttered, her fingers twining tightly in the awful floral skirts. "I promised you I would not make any sexual demands of you. And I will not, beyond the necessity this morning presented. I realize the difficulty of your position here, and I will not make it worse than it must be. Nor will I take advantage of the son of my oldest friend."

Black eyes met temporarily brown, carefully expressionless.

Ah. Right, Draco thought dully. The son of his oldest friend. He-- she-- probably saw me the day I was born. Too young. FUCK.

"I'm not upset," he lied, forcing a casual-seeming shrug. "It was necessary. And it's been a bloody awful week. Both of us nearly died-- I hear that does things to you. I suppose we both forgot who the other person was, after a certain point."

Sevanna shook her head. "I did not. However...morally repugnant I must seem to you now, I will at least be honest enough not to claim such an excuse."

She sighed, turned and started a fire in the grate. "Would you like to firecall your parents?" she asked.

At that, Draco abruptly stopped trying to parse the fact that Sev--Sevanna wasn't even going to pretend he'd -- she'd -- thought he was someone else.

Eyes narrowing, he drawled, "I don't mind talking to them, but if you're expecting me to bolt or to tattle...I might be younger than you, but I'm not a bloody five year old. Or do you need reminding that I was kissing you back?"

A sharp reply was visibly on the tip of her tongue, and Draco braced himself for Snape's patented sarcastic commentary, prepared and served with vicious exactitude. What he got was pursed lips and a glare. "They will undoubtedly be worried, as you must be. Call. Reassure them that you're still alive, and vice versa."

Oh. That was different. The proud, defensive anger visibly drained out of him.

"Do you think they'll still be at home?" he asked uncertainly. "They emptied their accounts."

"If Lucius was serious about staying, and for once I believe he was, yes, you'll find them home. Go on; I'll leave you a bit of privacy."

One of the bookcases swung open to admit her. There was a set of stairs behind it, leading up.

"I'm not going to tell them, you know," Draco sent after her in a level tone. "I don't think there's anything I need to tell them. But I'll be glad to talk to them. Thank you."

Sevanna nodded and headed up the stairs, and the bookcase closed behind her. Draco looked around at the other bookshelves, and wondered how many secrets they housed. Rooms? Staircases? Murder holes?

Draco decided to sit on Sevanna, if she so much as tried to burn the house down.

He searched the ginger jars on the mantle for the floo powder, found it and tossed in a pinch. "Malfoy Manor," he said as the flames flared cool and green.

"Draco?" His mother's voice. Still there, still alive, not in Azkaban.

"Yes, it's me," Draco said eagerly, leaning forward. "Honestly. Ignore the way I look -- we had to go to Diagon Alley. Are you and Father still alright?"

"We're fine, love," she smiled, and the smile and the voice were a balm, as they had been since he was small. "No one's been by to bother us, yet. It's been quite pleasant, having the house to ourselves, no unwanted guests. But we miss you, darling. How are you and Severus?"

"We're..." Awkward? Mindblowing? Confused? "...fine. We managed to get to and from Gringotts without getting caught." Barely. "Although Griphook figured it out. He let me know you'd been by. He said that they would hold the Malfoy vaults for us."

"Ah," she said delicately. "Good."

"Is that Draco?" Lucius' voice, in the background.

"Come talk," his wife insisted, and his face appeared beside hers in the flames.

"So, have you broken Severus' will to live, yet?" Lucius smirked.

"Nearly," Draco drawled back, not entirely insincerely, returning the smirk. "But on the other hand, with my being dressed like this, I think it may be mutual."

Lucius took in the terrible 'The Who' t-shirt at a glance. "Indeed," he murmured. "And how did he convince you to wear that?"

"She, darling," Narcissa corrected him, and he accepted it with an insouciant shrug.

"Would you have believed that anyone who willingly appeared in public like this was me?"

Narcissa bit her lip. "My poor boy. Once you get to Paris, please promise your mother you'll burn that shirt."

"I would, but it's not mine," Draco sighed. "Sevanna pulled it out of a drawer. I'm dragging her to a robe shop the minute we arrive; what she's wearing is worse, if you can believe that..." He shrugged and dismissed it as unimportant for the moment. "We're alive, moneyed, and free. And you are, too. Nobody from the Ministry has come banging on the door?"

"Not yet," Lucius said dryly. "Sevanna...presumably Severus' new name? I shall never get used to it. Out of curiosity, have you shagged her yet?"

"Lucius!" Narcissa gasped, scandalized.

"What? I ask merely for the sake of information. She is now quite attractive, she is older and experienced, she would make an excellent teacher, and I never did get to take Draco to Erotic Alley for his sixteenth birthday, in the Malfoy family tradition. I was, if you will recall, in Azkaban at the time."

Draco winced, both at the reminder of his father's incarceration and at the idea of being handed off to someone in a bloody brothel.

"No, I haven't. And I'm not going to," he retorted. "He swore that wasn't part of the deal. And do you have any idea how stroppy he gets about keeping his word?"

"Ah, yes." Lucius considered his perfectly pared nails. "I confess I have never understood it; it is a weakness in an otherwise inveterate plotter. And a distinctly un-Slytherin trait."

"Everyone has a line somewhere," Draco muttered, shrugging stiffly. "Everyone you shouldn't run screaming from, anyway. That just happens to be his."

"Not bedding his own apprentice?" Lucius sniffed. "Ridiculous. But, then, Severus was not raised to know our ways. I must say, he has done very well in spite of such humble beginnings, but in this, he is simply going to have to do the right thing by you. I am not sending you off to Paris with him merely to be celibate for three years."

Draco, raised though he was to obey his father, had seen a truly spectacular example of his bad judgment in recent years. And paid a personal pound of flesh for it, too. He wasn't in any sort of mood to let him make the decision on this one.

"Father," he drawled, "with the greatest respect... I'm of age now. I don't see that this particular issue is your concern. I'll make my own arrangements-- in three years, if necessary. Professor Snape will be giving me education where I really need it. That's the whole point of this. My marks since my OWLs have been less than spectacular, where they aren't actually non-existent. I want my NEWTs. Shagging can bloody wait."

Narcissa smiled. "We just want to see you happily settled with a nice girl, darling. Like any parents would. But I think it's sweet that you're willing to wait for three years."

Draco pinned his 'Little Angel' smile on his face, the one he reserved for his mother, and those few idiot teachers that had still been willing to believe it of him. (Umbridge, for instance, had eaten it up with a spoon.) "It's not as if I'm not going to be busy, anyway. I doubt I'll have time to think about it much."

But then he glanced at the bookshelf Sevanna had disappeared behind.

...Not much more than once every five minutes, anyway.

Lucius snorted softly. "The veela blood will tell, I'm afraid. I seriously doubt you'll be able to wait, and Severus, Sevanna, whoever the hell he is these days, had damned well better do his duty by you. I'll talk to him myself, and remind him..."

"Darling," Narcissa chided him, "you're embarrassing the boy."

"Oh, come now, I feel quite responsible for the whole mess, and I am prepared to make it up to him. Had I been there for his sixteenth birthday, he would have been taken to lose his virginity properly, to a discreet and knowledgeable courtesan. As it is, we must now rely on Severus. He wanted the boy, he should take him properly in hand. As it were."

"Lucius," Narcissa said warningly, "stop embarrassing Draco. Honestly, love, look how he's blushing..."

"A sure sign of excessive innocence. Severus should get off the knut and take care of it properly. I'd do as much for Severus, were our positions reversed..."

Draco clutched at his hair, his face a burning beet-red by now, very possibly more embarrassed than he'd ever been in his life. Not to mention horrified by the spate of mental images that last comment of his father's had caused.

"Can we please stop talking about this?" he hissed, desperate for his teacher not to hear him by this point. Or them. Especially not them. "He swore he wasn't going to, and that's the end of it. Leave it alone!"

Lucius blinked. "Have I said something?"

"Come along, darling," Narcissa said wisely, looping her arm through her husband's. "It's time to let Draco get back to whatever he was doing before he called us. Thank you for checking in, love, and we'll talk to you soon. Have a glorious time in Paris, and don't forget to write, and let us know when you're able to get a day off so we can come for a visit. We love you very much, son."

Lucius nodded. He never actually said such things, himself.

"I love you, too," Draco managed without turning too much redder than he already was. "Let me know if anything...you know, happens. I'll write."

"Here," Lucius said, handing something through the flames that turned out to be a heavy white gold ring with an onyx cabochon. "A Portkey to get you to Malfoy Manor if you ever need it. Just say 'Portus,' and it will take you home. And if you need to talk to us in a pinch and can't wait for the floo, turn the jewel halfway around widdershins and speak into it. Far more useful than the Dark Mark."

Draco thought of saying 'And a hell of a lot less likely to get me arrested,' but decided against it. The ring said a lot. His father wanted him to stay in touch, too, and have a way to come home. And he had deserted the Dark Lord and come looking for him, during that final battle at Hogwarts.

"Thank you, Father," he murmured, putting it on. "If you need to send anything to me in Paris, address it to Draven Szarkany."

A frown marred the perfection of Lucius' white brow. "Draven Szarkany? Does it mean anything, particularly?"

Draco shrugged, a tiny smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth that he couldn't entirely suppress. "It's familiar enough that I'll look around when I'm called. And I've decided to stick with the black hair, and since I look rather Eastern European like this... Szarkany is related to the Magyar word for 'dragon'."

He wasn't telling them everything, of course. He'd left out the 'magpie' half of it, because that much was his private joke. He'd tell Sevanna, at the right time. And maybe Richard. Richard would find it appropriately funny, Draco suspected.

Lucius' answering nod was approving. "Remember who you are," he said. "You are a Malfoy. The scion of uncounted generations of the cream of Wizarding society. Do us proud, boy."

"I will," Draco promised, straightening up a little and nodding back. "I promise." He shot his mother a lopsided smile. "I'll even keep an eye out for a nice witch, to bring home from Paris."

"Sounds wonderful, darling," Narcissa smiled. "We'll talk to you soon."

She blew him a fond kiss as she cut the connection, and Draco stared into the flames for a long time afterward.