Salazar's Angel

XIX

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" Millicent asked.

"Yeah, what could you possibly have to do that's more fun than skinny dipping in the black lake?" Pansy also asked, laying on her stomach and kicking her feet in the air behind her.

"I don't know, I'm just not in the mood tonight is all. Maybe some other time..." Dahlia shrugged, flipping through a spell book trying to figure out how to conjure up an outfit for her dinner plans tonight.

"Oh come on Dahlia. Malfoy won't even be there, he's going home this weekend...WAIT!" Pansy stops midsentence and bolts upright, eyes lasering in on Dahlia.

Dahlia throws her hands up into the air. "What?"

Pansy's eyes narrow. "Seems a little suspicious, don't you think? You both mysteriously have plans this weekend, but they're somehow unrelated?"

"They've had 'unrelated' plans every weekend since we got here Pansy." Tracey rolls her eyes from her bed and uses her fingers to make air quotes around the word unrelated.

Millicent uses her wand to make a pillow fly into each of the backs of their heads. "Leave them alone, let's get going already. If you want me to jump arse naked into the black lake I'm going to need some serious alcohol in my system before hand."

"Okay, fine. But we're onto you, Dahlia." Pansy winks at Dahlia before sauntering out the door behind her other two roommates. 

Mercifully the door finally bangs closed behind them. Dahlia chucks her useless spell book to the floor then leaps from her bed, grabs her wand, and steels herself. If this doesn't work she is royally screwed, she has less than an hour before they have to leave.

Taking a deep breath, Dahlia wills with every last fiber of her being. She screws her eyes shut, and thinks long and hard about everything. Then, when it feels like her bones are practically vibrating with the energy she is calling up, she waves her wand around her body.

She cracks one eye open to glance at the mirror hanging from her closet. "YES!" Dahlia quite literally screams, jumping for joy.

In place of her earlier outfit, a forest green silk cowlneck dress and strappy black heels adorn her body. Something like this, with the open tie back and short length, would never have been placed in her closet. Maybe some problems really do require the use of magic...

By the time Dahlia has finished with her makeup and tied her hair up into a ponytail Draco is knocking at her door. Smearing on the last swipe of red lipstick, she walks over and opens it.

She's not sure exactly what she was expecting, but his slow once over was not quite satisfactory when all she could do was stare at him in his all black suit. She swallows hard and caps her lipstick.

"Are you ready?" He asks.

"Aw thanks, you look nice too!" Dahlia walks over to the bed and stuffs her wand and lipstick into her purse before returning to him.

"We probably should have practiced apparition before this. Most people puke the first time." Draco himself looks like he might throw up at any moment as he says this, his eyes flitting everywhere and landing on everything but her. The chords in his neck are straining and she can practically feel the tension radiating from him. Thankfully she has no reason to hide her mark this evening and therefore conjured up a dress with only thin spaghetti straps or else she knows she would have sweated through anything more already. 

"Great, thanks. Let's get the move one and get this over with." She holds out her hand.

Draco clasps it with his own, icy as always. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him move his wand and then everything all at once spins out into darkness. It feels as if she is being shoved and twisted through a tight tube slide, everything still spinning and squeezing.

With a thud, she mercifully feels the floor solidify back under her feet. Looking to the left, she sees Draco swaying woozily, having let go of her hand. Dahlia, feeling fine, smoothes down her dress and takes a deep breath.

"Get it together," She whispers at him, surveying where they stand. It appears they have landed in the entryway, a great dark door looming behind them and another slightly smaller one in front of them. They are standing on an ornate black and green rug depicting what appears to be a great entanglement of snakes...

"Here goes nothing," She hears Draco whisper from her side as the door in front of them creaks open.

"Dahlia, darling! How are you?" Narcissa Malfoy rushes through the door first and straight to Dahlia, taking her hand in hers.

"I'm good Mrs. Malfoy, thank you for asking." Dahlia finds herself forcing out a smile for a woman who, just last year, they came rather easily for. This feels both exactly like how she imagined meeting a boy's parents for the first time would feel and also nothing like that at all. 

Only a beat behind his wife Lucius Malfoy strolls in, cane in hand. "My, my. Salazar's Angel herself. What a pleasure," He drawls, approaching her as Narcissa steps over towards her son. He takes her hand in his cool, dry one and gently brings it to his lips. It feels wrong, all of it.

"Mr. Malfoy. I have heard quite a lot about you." Dahlia forces herself to maintain eye contact until he drops her hand again.

"DAHLIA!" A great force knocks Lucius to the side and next thing she knows, Bellatrix has picked her up and is spinning with her in a circle.

She thinks she might hear Draco mumble a quiet "What the fuck?" under his breath before Bellatrix finally sets her back on her feet.

"Bell! It's been so long!" Dahlia says, forcing her jaw to stop clenching. 

Bellatrix grins at her, revealing her aggressively pointy teeth. "You look stunning, as always. Drakey, dearest, my sweet nephew, did you tell Dahlia how sinful she looks?"

Draco clears his throat and Dahlia thinks she almost sees some color come into his cheeks.

"You wouldn't even believe it Bell, but he didn't say a word about my appearance this evening!" Dahlia forces herself to recall how she would have talked to Bellatrix this time last year. 

Bellatrix huffs in indignation, then reaches out and slaps Draco across the back of his head. "Moron. Come on Dahlia, we have LOTS to catch up on!"

With that, she clamps her hand down directly over Dahlia's mark and hauls her off in the direction of the door through which she came, leaving Draco behind in the dust. Risking a glance back over her shoulder, she finds his face plastered with a different form of an inscrutable expression as he stands in front of his parents. Distantly, she thinks he looks like a man preparing himself for judgement...