Ch 3
Agyness followed his lead and took her position on the opposite side of the meadow. “We’ll begin with a duel,” Draco said with a leer on his face, “Do try to be careful… I wouldn’t want to mess up your pretty little face,” he derisively warned. Agyness whipped out her wand, “Same to you…” “Ladies first,” He stated, mockingly making a bow. Making a false curtsey was all Agyness could do rather than making a statement that could cost her the job.

“Levicorpus!” She cried, hoping to catch him off guard with a simple yet effective spell. Draco simply hopped to the side and instead of he, a boulder was flipped upside-down. “Let me guess, practice shot?” He said with a smile, obviously trying to provoke her. Shaking off her irritation, Agyness nodded and gritted her teeth while staring at the ground; she didn’t want his gorgeous yet infuriating face to cause her to go mad.

“Incendio!” She began, flinging her wand into his direction. “Rictusempra!” He shouted back, barely missing the flame that would have caused his suit to set on fire. Hanging onto a tree branch and barely missing the spell, she called out, “Stupefy!” which Draco dismissed with the cry of, “Protego!” and of another spell. The throwing of hexes and curses went back and forth across the field for quite a while, as they circled closer and closer to each other.

As they were merely four feet away from each other, the pair yelled, “Expelliarmus!” in unison. Both of their wands went flying in the opposite directions. Seeing nothing else than their own wands, Draco and Agyness sprinted toward their weapons, hoping to reach their own before the other did. While in a mad dash, they both slammed into each other and fell into a heap onto the green grass. “Ouch,” Agyness spoke, rubbing her head, flat on her back. She looked skyward and saw that Draco was directly on top of her. For a split second, they stared into each other’s eyes, both speechless. Draco then rolled off of her and gracefully stood up, brushing off his suit.

“Nice match,” Draco began professionally, helping her up and trying to ignore what had just happened. “Yes,” Agyness replied, picking up her wand, her head spinning from their close encounter. Without speaking, Draco held out his arm. Agyness immediately grasped it and felt as if she was being pressed, and pressed, and pressed until…

They were now in Draco’s office. The fire still roared in the dimly lit room. In a silver-framed, ancient-looking mirror, Agyness saw that she was a mess. Her hair stood up at odd angles and her dry-cleaned dress was now in wrinkles, while Draco still, impossibly, looked like a god. With the swish of her wand, Agyness was transformed to her earlier appearance, prim and proper. Draco had still not said a word.

“Um… I’ll see you tomorrow?” Agyness dared to speak; unsure of what was going through his mind. Without facing her, Draco simply made the movement of stiffly nodding his head. She was dismissed. Agyness quickly strolled out of his office, quietly shutting the door behind her.

It was close to midnight when Draco had finally stepped out of his office, locking the door with his wand behind him. After he had gone to Harry Potter’s, the Head Auror’s, office to drop off some papers, he apparated home, still absorbed in his thoughts.

Draco had apparated to the front steps of his elegant, seaside mansion. He turned to take a look at the crashing waves, black under the dark, starry sky. A ray of moonlight made a path across the unsteady water. After a minute of gazing at the landscape, Draco turned to unlock his front door. Barely turning the knob, a female house elf with a large nose and a wide wrinkled face appeared at his feet. It’s clothing was not quite in tatters, but also not quite good-as-new. “Anything Mr. Malfoy needs after a long day at work?” the elf squeaked as it stared up at Draco with its wide, gray eyes. “Some brandy please, Binka,” Draco replied, sluggishly making his way toward the large living room.

After falling onto the sleek, leather couch, Binka almost immediately appeared at his side, placing a tray with a wine glass and a full bottle of brandy on top of the glass coffee table. With a wave of Draco’s hand, Binka was gone, being dismissed to her closet in the house. Draco grabbed the wine glass in one hand and the bottle of liquor in the other. After a minute of pondering, Draco set the wine glass back onto the tray and began to drink deeply from the brandy bottle.

“Bloody Granger,” Draco thought, “I can’t even walk past her office without seeing those pictures of my parents and convulsing. I’d bet she’s damn proud that she’s the one that gave them the life sentence in Azkaban. Bet she’s damn proud that they died there, too. The only one that I have is Aunt Bella, who’s serving her life sentence... It doesn’t even matter, she was already mad before she was sent to Azkaban.

“Speaking of being mad, I’m about to be unless I can figure out this Agyness girl. Usually when I train female newbies, I seduce and destroy. What the hell happened today?! When we had that one moment, where we were so close, I... I didn’t know what to do! Part of me wanted to stay there, the other wanted to get the hell away. What–is–wrong–with–me?!”

Draco took another deep swig from the liquor bottle, having already halfway drained it. He had lived a lonely life. A part of him sensed that it would not be that way for much longer.