When Worlds Collide

The rest of Winter Break passed uneventfully between Draco and I.

Well, it was mostly uneventful. After all, how normal can life be for a Muggle when a wizard walks into her life?

The first occurrence that rocked our world was Draco's discovery of the computer. Being a pureblooded wizard, he had never seen a computer before; and so, I walked into the study one afternoon to find him circling our family computer cautiously, much like a hunter circling a freshly-wounded elephant. He didn't notice my entrance--nor did he notice my attempts at stifling my laughter.

"Draco, it's not going to bite you," I managed to snigger from my position in the doorway.

He looked up, surprised, and the expression on his face was enough to make me break my poker face and send me into paroxysms of laughter. He scowled at my chortling. "What, in the name of Merlin, is this Muggle contraption?" he snarled.

"Surely they have computers in your day and age?" I quipped as I came further into the study.

"What's a come-pew-ter?" he asked, his brow furrowing in consternation.

"Well, look who didn't pay attention in Muggle Studies! Ten points from Slytherin," I laughed. It felt so good to tease Draco like this; it was something like the day-to-day banter I used to exchange with my parents.

"Please, just shut your mouth and tell me," he growled.

"Have patience, my friend, and you shall learn all." And with that, I stepped over to the computer and pushed its power button.

Draco jumped back in fright as the computer began to hum. I switched on the monitor, and he winced at the popping sound that accompanied it. And when the speakers, already set for full volume, blasted the Windows booting melody, the shocked expression on his face was priceless.

For everything else, there's MasterCard, I couldn't help but think.

"A computer," I began in a scholarly tone while trying not to laugh again, "is, in essence, nothing more than a very advanced numbers machine. The people who program these computers use a code of numbers that the computer translates into a function, a process the machine goes through that makes the computer work the way it does."

"And what exactly does this come-pew-ter thing do?"

"Almost anything, really. There are programs for writing, creating pictures, creating visual presentations, playing games--oh, and the best part is the Internet." The desktop was now visible, and I double-clicked the browser icon.

"The what??"

"The Internet. Also known as the World Wide Web or the Interweb. It's a system of mass information transfer that we Muggles use to communicate with everyone else. Almost magical, you might say. . . here, I'll show you." The Mozilla Firefox browser had finished loading, and I proceeded to go to a certain webpage that I knew Draco would find interesting.

As we waited for the page to load, Draco leaned in closer to read the address bar. His musky smell, so close to my father's and yet so different, nearly sent me reeling. He turned to me, a strange look on his face.

"Harry Potter Fanfiction?" he asked. "What the hell is that supposed to be?"

"What does it sound like to you? Ah, here we go." The log-in screen had appeared, and I entered my penname and password.

Draco studied the design on the top of the page while he waited. "Is that supposed to be Hogwarts? Because it's a pretty shabby representation," he sniffed.

"We Muggles have never seen Hogwarts before, remember," I countered. "Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, Harry Potter fanfiction--it's all the stories we come with about your world, separate from the canon version J.K. Rowling published. I only started recently, but I've already made some good author friends on the site."

By this point, my account page was on the screen, and I clicked on the Favorites link. A moment later, a long list of my favorite authors and stories were scrolling down the screen.

"I've noticed that a lot of the authors specialize in certain pairings of characters, while some like to be more diverse about their topics," I said, beginning to point out certain of my favorite authors with my mouse. "Take DarkFaerii, for example--she sticks with Marauder era, mostly, but with a whole variety of characters. Good writer, that one."

"Marauder. . .?"

"The era of Harry's parents. And yours, too, for that matter. It's a long story."

"I'd suspect so," Draco muttered.

"Here's akeyana," I continued. "Very funny writer, she really knows how to make a person laugh. She's done Marauder era, too, but also a post-Hogwarts fic. . ." At the confused look on Draco's face, I added, "You know, after your class has graduated."

"Oh."

"And here's one of my all-time favorites: lupa_mannera." I clicked on her name, and her author's page flashed on the screen. Draco's eyes widened at the sheer length of it: well over a dozen entries. "She absolutely adores Remus Lupin, and all but a few of her many stories are about him. She's an excellent author. . . knows how to work angst and fluff equally well. . . but her stories are mostly angst. Won a competition on the site just recently, she's that talented."

"Did you say--Remus Lupin? As in, the werewolf??" he sputtered.

"The very same," I said solemnly. "And don't you dare say anything bad about him, lest I e-mail dear lupa immediately and have her come smack you into next week for the insult."

Draco, thankfully, refrained from saying more, but merely shook his head instead. "Any others you'd like to tell me about?"

"Well. . ." I went back a page and checked over my list of favorites. "Here's Kyleigh, specializes in the Founders, sometimes with Harry, sometimes without. . . secret_witch, she does a whole variety of stories, all very good. . . or greengecko, she's done some excellent Harry and Snape portrayals--"

"WHAT?!" Draco looked positively horrified. "Please tell me you're joking."

"Not at all. Actually, a caring Snape isn't all too uncommon of a character. . . strangely enough, since the book's always made him out to be a slimy git. But you'd never guess who's written more anti-canon than Snape, even."

"Who?" he asked, curious.

"You."

"Me??"

"Indeed. One of my favorite authors, MajiKat, specializes in Draco/Hermione fics--" At this, he gagged loudly. "What, doesn't sound appealing to you?"

"Me and the Mudblood? Not exactly." Eager to shift topics, he asked, "So, what's your specialty?"

I blanched. Not a particularly comfortable topic, considering the person I was talking to. I hoped my face wasn't as red as it felt. It must have been red enough to get Draco's suspicions up, as he repeated his question, with a little more bite this time.

"Um. . ." I hedged, averting my gaze. "I just started a few months ago, like I said, so I really haven't had much time to specialize--"

"It's me, isn't it?" he interrupted. "You write about me."

My shoulders slumped. Man, was he quick on the uptake. "Yes. From various viewpoints and with different pairings. . . but mostly about you, yes."

"I see." I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head. "Any ulterior motives, then, in asking me to stay?"

My head whipped around at that. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Draco looked betrayed, insulted even. "Oh, I don't know. . . perhaps you're just keeping me around for observation of some sort?" he drawled insinuatingly. "Just going to make note of everything I say, everything I do, and then going to write about it like you came up with it out of your own pretty head?"

I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated. Why'd he have to take it that way? "Draco. . ."

"You know, you really do look like Potter when you do that."

"It's not what you think!" I snapped. We stared at each other for long moments, the tension building between us.

I exhaled loudly, breaking the spell. "Look," I said, trying to calm my voice down. "Your living here has nothing to do with my writing. In case you don't remember, you were half-starved and freezing when you arrived. I felt obliged to let you stay here. Okay?"

"If you were so obliged to have me here, I'd be more than obliged to leave now," Draco said forcefully and began to move away.

Again, I was too fast for him. I grabbed his arm and yanked him back towards me. He faced me momentarily, glowering, before turning his head away. But I didn't care.

"Listen, I--I--you make me feel safer when you're here," I confessed, my voice shaking slightly. I'd never let my composure crack this much in front of anyone else, ever. "I haven't felt this normal since my parents died. Being an only child doesn't help much--there's never anyone your own age you can talk to about things like this. But with you here, and you being someone who's gone through the same things I have, it's been so much easier to cope with the loss."

Draco still looked away. Impulsively, I reached up with my free hand and turned his head so that he was forced to look at me. Our eyes met. His grey eyes had a sullen, injurious look in them, one that I knew I was guilty of causing.

"Please, Draco," I said softly. "Just believe me. I need you here--to help me keep my sanity, at the very least."

Silence rose between us. Finally, he nodded, then pulled his arm away from my grasp and swept out of the den with a huff. I took that to mean his assent.

Without another word, I logged off the Internet and turned off the computer before leaving the study as well. Probably not my best idea, showing him the site; but I soon discovered that other things could throw him into an even worse miff--and with less reaction time to boot.

WWC WWC WWC WWC WWC

The day after New Year's--a holiday neither Draco nor I felt like celebrating with much fanfare--was when the second disturbance in the Bonavideo-Malfoy household occurred.

After the computer incident, a wavering truce had risen between us, one rift with tense silence and averted glances. That evening, we were together in the living room, neither of us saying a word to the other. Draco was on his stomach on the rug before the crackling fireplace, flipping through my copy of "The Sorcerer's Stone." I was sitting on the couch and knitting in a very grandmotherly fashion, an overflowing basket of yarn resting by my feet.

To my surprise, Draco closed the book with a snap! and broke the silence first.

"Are you ready?" he asked me.

I looked up, confused. "Ready for what?"

"Are you ready to learn some magic?" He pulled out his wand with a glimmer in his eyes.

I stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"

"Not at all."

"You feeling okay? No fever or anything?"

"Ha. Very funny." Suddenly, my knitting leaped out of my hands and up into the air, seemingly of its own volition. I jumped up to grab at it, but it kept rising just out of my reach. Of course, it never helps that I've always been on the small side. I looked over to see Draco with his wand aimed at my knitting, a small grin on his face.

"You won't be able to get it," he explained. "Not unless I feel like it."

I gritted my teeth in annoyance. "And I thought you're the one who said Muggles couldn't learn magic."

He shrugged. "Doesn't matter--gives me something to do, at least. I'm not like Granger; I can't stand reading ten hours a day."

"You're not like me either, then. I love reading." Regardless of my griping, I was interested in seeing how magic worked. So I came over and stood next to him.

"That's better." With a flick of his wand, my knitting dropped back onto the couch. Another flick, and one of the sofa cushions flew towards him. He caught the cushion in mid-air and set it on the floor a few feet away from us.

"We'll start with one of the first-year spells, the Hover Charm I was just using. Since I was just reading about it in that book of yours, I'm assuming you know which one I mean?"

"Wingardium Leviosa?" I asked.

"Right." He incanted the charm, and the sofa cushion rose several feet into the air and remained there for several seconds before dropping back to the floor.

He handed the wand to me. "Now, you try it."

"Swish and flick," I responded automatically as I took the wand. When my fingers made contact with the wood, a sharp tingling ran up my arm and stopped at my shoulder. This, and the unnatural warmth of the wand in my hand, surprised me and made me pause for a moment.

Draco must have mistaken my hesitation for insecurity, since he said quickly, "Don't worry, almost no one gets it right on their first try." His expression darkened, and he added, "Well, with the exception of that bloody Granger, of course."

I barely heard him; my mind was so intently focused on the spell I wanted to cast that I had no room for anything else. I felt strange, holding that wand. I felt powerful, all-mighty, and--what scared me the most--whole. It was like a part of me had been missing for the first seventeen years of my life. . . and I had never noticed it until I stumbled across the missing piece. That would have to shatter anyone's self-confidence.

After many moments of silence, I raised Draco's wand and executed what I hoped was a proper swish-and-flick motion. "Wingardium Leviosa!"

I expected nothing to happen, for the cushion to remain unmoved. At best, maybe the cushion would have risen an inch or so off the floor. But what actually happened took my breath away.

The cushion slammed into the nine foot high ceiling of the living room with a loud thump, raining dust and loose plaster everywhere. I let the wand drop from my hand in shock, and the cushion fell down as well, looking rather flattened from its impact with the ceiling.

I couldn't stop myself from grinning broadly. Amazing! I could do magic! Real magic, too, not just some of those cheap parlor tricks that magicians perform. And the rush of energy that accompanied the spell was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. I loved it.

I turned to Draco, still grinning, and found him staring at me with a truly venomous expression. It was enough to make me take a step back, my smile gone. I was terrified of what he might do to me; at that point, he looked ready to commit anything short of murder.

We spent a few moments like this before he turned on his heel and wordlessly stormed out of the living room. I remained standing there, too shocked to move, listening to the kitchen door open and slam shut again. Minutes passed before I could find my voice again.

"Draco?" I called softly. No answer.

"Draco!" A little louder this time, but still nothing.

I tugged at my hair with a frustrated sigh. I had absolutely no idea what had elicited such a reaction from him. I exceeded his (and my) expectations, and he had to blow a fuse. Surely, wouldn't he be happy that I can do magic? So that he wouldn't be alone in a world of Muggles? Why would he be so angry about it?

Mechanically, I picked up Draco's wand from where I had dropped it on the floor and slid it into the pocket of my jeans for safekeeping before walking over to the kitchen. Sure enough, the back screened door was just slightly ajar. Draco must have gone outside--into the freezing Minnesotan night--without a coat.

Quickly, I went to the hall closet and grabbed two coats, mine and an old one of my father's, before stepping out the kitchen door into the bitter night air. The nearly-full moon cast a pale glow from the clear heavens, a perfect night for stargazing. Patches of old snow were scattered on the ground; from them, I could trace Draco's footsteps into the dusky woods surrounding our house as I slipped my parka over my shoulders.

I followed his tracks for a good twenty yards before finding him. He was sitting on a tree stump, completely motionless and staring at the ground, his back towards me. My feet crunched on the mixture of old snow and dead leaves as I came closer, but he made no move to acknowledge my presence. We stayed that way in silence for a while.

Finally, I cleared my throat. "You don't have a coat on, Draco," I said, stating the obvious.

No response.

I tried again. "Aren't you cold?"

Still no answer.

Annoyed now, I circled the tree trunk so that I was now facing him. He continued to ignore me, staring at the ground as if it was infinitely more interesting than my presence.

"Draco, what--"

"Just get away from me, you filthy little Mudblood!" Draco snarled without looking up.

His words stung me like a blow. But they probably didn't sting as much as the slap across the face I immediately gave him.

That certainly got his attention. His head shot up in a flash, and he shot me an angry glare with one hand pressed protectively on his injured cheek. "How dare you--" he began angrily, but I cut him off.

"No, how dare you!" I retorted, throwing the spare coat over my shoulder and crossing my arms. "After all I've done for you since you came here, without asking for anything in return, the only thanks I get is being called a filthy little Mudblood? I think you're the one who owes an apology here, Mister Pureblood Elitist!"

The staring match between us seemed to last forever before Draco finally gave up. He dropped his eyes to the ground and mumbled some incoherent words that I hoped was something remotely close to an apology.

I sighed and plopped myself down, Indian style, on a patch of dried leaves and branches in front of Draco's stump. "Now, please explain to me why you blew a gasket back there."

"You lied to me," he muttered, so softly I thought I'd misheard him.

"Beg your pardon?"

"I said, you effing lied to me!" His voice rose to a shout, and he pushed himself up from the tree stump to tower over me, glowering. "You said you were a Muggle! How was I to know you'd done magic before? You made me feel like a complete idiot back there--I couldn't even get that spell right until my tenth try!"

"What the--I never lied to anyone!" It was my turn to jump up and start bellowing, the spare coat long forgotten on the forest floor. "I've grown up for the last seventeen years as a Muggle, and I had no idea that magic existed until you came here, much less picked up a wand before! And what the hell does that have to do with you and your overstuffed ego??"

Draco froze, ogling me. "You've never done magic before?" he asked slowly.

"Aren't you quick on the uptake?"

"Not even accidentally? Never done anything when you were really angry or really happy?"

"For the love of God, Draco, what part of 'no' do you not understand? I--am--a Muggle!"

Suddenly, Draco swore loudly and turned away again to give the tree stump a heavy kick. It was a good thing that the shoes he was wearing were thick; otherwise, I was pretty sure he'd have been screaming in pain.

"Watch your language, mister," I snapped at his back.

He turned on me, his expression cold. "Do you realize how much magic you have?" he hissed.

"What?"

"You packed more spell power into that levitation charm than I've ever seen before." He strode over, until our faces were inches away. I was too taken aback by his words to move away. "If you were in my world, at Hogwarts, you'd have been the most powerful witch in Britain by now. And if you say you've never had a case of accidental magic before this. . ." He shook his head. "I'm surprised you haven't spontaneously combusted yet."

"That's--comforting," I said when I found my voice again. "But you still haven't explained why you were so bloody upset a few minutes ago."

Draco studied his feet before answering me. "I think--I was jealous," he finally admitted. "I don't know--it was like watching Granger in class all over again, gloating over how she's so much smarter than everyone else. I really hated that about her, that show-off, know-it-all attitude she had all the time. I--I guess I lost control of myself."

I noticed him start to shiver, which made me remember the reason why I had come out to find him in the first place. I picked up Dad's old coat and tossed it to him; he caught it and immediately threw it over his shoulders like a cloak.

"Thanks," he tried to smile a little. "And. . . I'm sorry."

I smiled back and extended my hand. "Apology accepted." We shook on it, his hold tentative, mine affirmative.

Silence filled the gap between us after that as we, uncomfortable, tried to figure out what came next. I eventually focused my gaze on the bright moon that rested just above the bare branches of the trees. It really was a beautiful night.

Next to me, Draco cleared his throat to get my attention. "You know," he said, "I'd be willing to help you learn some more magic. Although," he added with a sheepish laugh, "you probably don't need much of my help anyway. But what I can tell you is what they teach at Hogwarts up through sixth year."

I thought my heart would gallop straight out of my chest and run free through the woods. "You're serious?" I squeaked. "You'd teach me--to do magic??"

"Of course. . ." His face broke into a sly grin. "Isn't that what we agreed would be my payment for living here?"

"Well, yes, but--if you mind it that much. . ."

"But I don't mind," he said earnestly. "You just surprised me today--but now I know what to expect from you. . . one hell of a lot."

I laughed. I was glad that we were back to friendly relations again. "When should we start?"

"How does first thing tomorrow sound to you?"

My smile was wiped clean away. Tomorrow. . . "Oh. Crap." I swore under my breath as I remembered. Time had flown far too fast for both of us.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Tomorrow. . . Draco, tomorrow is the first day of school. . ."