'Tooth and Claw'

Chapter One

The extraordinary thing about people, Draco thought, was the speed with which they could resume their everyday lives as if they had not almost come to an abrupt and ugly end.

Often now, surveying a crowd, he found himself marveling anew at the way the assembled could treat the Dark Lord's resurrection and demise like any other event, fit to be discussed over an idle coffee, perhaps, and then swiftly forgotten. Of course there had been the round of funerals held on both sides by the participants of the Battle of Hogwarts, a few speeches and a brief flurry of memorials, but after a year or so the silent agreement throughout the wizarding world seemed to be that such events were best consigned to history as quickly as decorum would allow.

For Draco, however, forgetting had never come easily; even as a child, his ability to hold a grudge had been legendary among his family, and for a brief time his mother had taken to calling him her little scowler until his father had with a curt word put an end to it. Even now, he could feel the left-over simmer of resentment towards Potter and his little gang, the sense of having been wronged and the desire, however ridiculous it might seem to him today, for revenge. That Draco was now old enough to see the absurdity of such feelings detracted not one bit from the intensity of the emotions, the lingering feeling of having been snubbed, ridiculed, and now, it seemed, abandoned by the rest of the world even at the tender age of twenty, as a living artifact of an era people were struggling mightily to pretend had never occurred.

Well then, let them, he thought with contempt, as he stared out across the ballroom at the assembled Ministry dignitaries; let them treat me as if I were just some figment from a happily concluded, half-remembered dream. The well-fed faces, ruddy over their formal robes, filled him with venom. Cowards, all of them: how few of these great wizards and witches, now stuffing down canapes while they mingled and fawned over the new Minister of Magic, had had the courage to fight on either side of the greatest battle of their time, to commit to much more than public disapproval of the Dark Lord while busily barricading themselves behind their walls and wards. Not for the first time, Draco imagined with a sort of relish the long receiving line there might have been had the Dark Lord triumphed, as each of these hypocrites took their turn prostrating themselves at his pallid feet and avowing how they'd secretly yearned to be Death Eaters all along.

"Draco!" His mother's voice cut easily through the crowd and through his gloomy meditation. In a moment he had smoothed his face of all emotion and replaced it with a small, mocking smile he thought of as one of his most effective expressions, communicating just the right mixture of servility and disdain. "Coming, mother," he replied.

Effortlessly he moved through the milling guests, a tall, thin, striking figure in his velvety ermine robe, his pale face and white hair marking him unmistakably as his father's son. Draco thought he sensed, as he often did, a slight recoiling as these strangers recognized him and moved to let him pass. Even after all this time, under their apparent confidence and public shows of polite good cheer, they feared him — as if the Dark Lord might at any moment spring from under his perfectly tailored robe, emerging to spoil their party once again.

Cowards.

Narcissa Malfoy was busily chatting with a tall, foreign-looking wizard when Draco reached her side. She broke off in mid-sentence when he arrived and placed a hand on the small of his back.

"Ah, there you are, darling! I wanted to introduce you to the Baron Frederick von Mecklenburg … Baron, may I present my son, Draco." A gentle pressure from her hand prompted him to return the Baron's slight bow.

"Ah, young Draco, a pleasure," the wizard said in a high, reedy voice. "I don't know if you knew this, m'boy, but our families share some quite illustrious history. Your great grandmother, Druella Rosier, and my great aunt Hortense were sisters, both of whom were instrumental in the reforms pertaining to the domestication of magical creatures during the close of the Victorian era, a period in which I have some small interest. For example … "

The wizard continued on in a pedantic tone, but Draco had ceased to listen; for just then he'd caught sight of the last person he wanted to run into at this event, and who was now making a beeline for his small group. For a moment he had a crazy urge to disapparate, just leave and deal with his mother's considerable wrath later on that night. But it was too late, Draco knew: he'd been spotted, and now he was trapped.

"Why, Astoria, dear, how nice to see you!" Narcissa greeted the newcomer, a young woman in a long, pea-green gown, with an enthusiasm which barely hid her relief at this interruption of the Baron's soliloquy. "Don't you look lovely! … Tell me, how is your mother? You really must ask her to drop me an owl, it's simply been an age since we've had a chance to sit down and have a decent chat."

On another evening, Draco might have taken a moment's private pleasure in his mother's hypocrisy, knowing, as he did, how much Narcissa had always detested Astoria's entire family, once calling them "the miserable progeny of a house-elf and a drunken Squib." But with Astoria's adoring eyes fixed on him even as she answered his mother's questions, Draco had little time for such luxuries as he desperately tried to plan some sort of escape.

Early that summer, at a lawn party held near the Malfoy's country home in Devonshire, Draco had made what he now regarded as one of the more foolish decisions of his recent life and had, after a number of butterbeers, against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset, snogged Astoria Greengrass for perhaps half an hour behind one of the tents; the same Astoria who now, of course, was regarding him with an expression of ill-concealed greed on her small face. Not that she was a bad sort, really, but her apparently boundless enthusiasm for Draco made him uncomfortable and left him somewhat at a loss. For one thing, she was three years younger than he, still at Hogwarts, where Draco and her older sister Daphne had been housemates at Slytherin. For another, he wasn't particularly interested; not only was Astoria kind of plain-looking, but she had an unfortunate tendency to wrinkle her nose as if she smelled something foul, and was fond of sucking at the ends of her hair.

Ordinarily, then, Draco would simply have brushed her off, making excuse after excuse until she took the hint; but that wasn't possible in this case because of one key factor, which was, in a word, Daphne.

Simply, Daphne Greengrass was no one you wanted to cross if you knew what was good for you — it was said that Zacharias Smith was still prone to large, painful boils from the hex Daphne had placed on him after she'd caught him cheating on her during one Winter Ball — and her temper was legendary even among the volatile Slytherins. So while Draco wasn't afraid of Daphne, per se, he was acutely aware that she would take a dim view of anything he might do to hurt her baby sister's feelings. For all he knew, he might have been Astoria's first real kiss; certainly, the naked adoration the girl showed towards him meant she had clearly fallen, hard. This was one conversation Draco knew had to be handled just right, if he didn't want to find himself explaining it all, at length, to the vindictive and dangerous Daphne.

Because he had yet to figure out how to do this, his plan now, as it had been for the past weeks, was evasion and delay. Even as Astoria tried to slip her hand into his, Draco was craning his neck to discover someone, anyone, he might use as an excuse to escape the girl's side. He had to admit to himself that even the sight of Harry Potter and his noxious little gang would have come as a relief; but in the mass of faces there were only dim Ministry functionaries and their colorless spouses, waiters with serving trays, musicians and caterers, and, on the far side of the room, a young woman in a long blue dress, a woman Draco felt he knew, but couldn't pin down. She stood alone and apparently unconcerned as the crowd flowed around her, her long, white-blonde hair cascading over her shoulders and her eyes moving slowly back and forth until, suddenly, they met his, and he knew her.

Had he been a different sort of person he might have uttered a small sound of relief; but Draco prided himself on his icy self-control, and so he merely made hurried excuses, brushed aside Astoria's small, damp palm as it once again sought his, and wound his way through the crowd to the girl who stood quietly staring at his approach as if she'd been expecting him the entire time.

"Luna Lovegood," he said when he reached her, as if unsure whether he had the right person after all. Draco thought this a fairly dumb way to greet someone and felt himself flush slightly, but Luna only smiled, a smile he now remembered, an expression of gentle curiosity towards the world.

"Draco Malfoy," she said. She gave a small silvery laugh and, with a quick, elegant gesture utterly unlike Astoria's, she reached out and drew him by the hand out of the crowd, out of the room, through wide double doors into the fresh air of the autumn night.