Don't Embrace the Past

Don't Embrace the Past

Chapter 1: I’m Too Young to Care

It had been six years…

“A shot of Firewhiskey, please,” Draco Malfoy’s voice ordered his usual drink at the pub near his penthouse.

The barman, a short, stocky man in his late sixties filled the shot glass to the rim with the amber liquid.

Draco occupied the stool farthest from the entrance and therefore farthest from all the socializing idiots. He looked around at the regulars: a woman dressed in clothes way too tight for her clear age of 55, pawing at the younger gentlemen to buy her drinks; a true cougar she was, there was also the slumped over drunkard in the corner, summoning the barman with a flick of his forefinger.

Among the regulars were the overexcited newly-turned 17 year olds trying their first drop of hard liquor, along with the 20-somethings looking at the younger crowd with a look of superiority and clear incomparability.

At the tender age of 23, Draco Malfoy found no reason to join in feeling dominant with the other 20-somethings. He had tried living a life of feeling superior and advanced that had led him nowhere. Well, in all reality, it led him to a life of understated humility and a hint of modesty.

Draco sighed as the barman placed the shot glass in front of him. Wrapping his fingers around the warm glass, he lifted it up and tilted the contents quickly into his mouth, reveling in the numbing sensation at the first contact and then the burning sensation as the liquid slinked down his throat.

He placed the empty glass back down on the counter and shook his head when the barman offered to pour another shot. One was enough and Draco never drank to the point of being inebriated. That was beneath him…

Ok, so truthfully, in all reality, he did still have an air of arrogance about him, but old habits did die hard.

“A goblet of pumpkin juice, please,” a soft feminine voice sounded that caught Draco’s attention.

He looked towards his left to the source of the sound and found a young woman sitting two barstools away from him. He had never seen her at the pub before.

She sat with one leg crossed over the other, her back straight and her eyes shifting with scrutiny around the pub.

Draco couldn’t hold back his curiosity any longer. “Pumpkin juice?”

The woman turned to look at the man who had interrupted her survey of the pub.

She was met with the sight of a bored-looking man, possibly around her age, watching her with a pale, flaxen eyebrow raised. His hair had the same shade of pale blond as his perfectly shaped eyebrow. If his eyes had been pink, she would have mistaken him for an albino. But they were not pink. They were grey, no, they were silver, no…they were molten silver. Yep, that was it. Molten silver irises stared at her in inquisition.

“Are you speaking to me?” she asked in the same soft voice she had used earlier.

“Yes. No one else around here seems to have ordered pumpkin juice,” Draco said resting his chin on his fist.

“Is it a crime to order pumpkin juice in a pub?” she asked, removing her eyes from the fair-skinned man a moment to accept the pumpkin juice from the barman.

“No, not a crime, but very odd. I mean, why not just order a warm glass of milk while you’re at it?” Draco asked.

He was having a hard time taking his eyes away from her. He watched as she turned back to look at him.

Unlike him, her eyes were a gulf of the darkest shade of brown. If the light hadn’t shone on her face, he would have sworn they were a shade of onyx.

“Well, I’m not a very big fan of warm milk, so it would be pretty dim-witted of me to order it,” she said, taking a slow swig of her juice. “Do you have any specific motive for patronizing my choice of drink and making me feel juvenile for ordering it?”

Her face held a look of playful teasing, which made her dark brown eyes shine brighter.

“No reason, just a bit curious,” Draco said slowly. Maybe it was the one shot of firewhiskey, but for some reason, this woman had held his attention far longer than any other bird he had ever come across in a pub.

She didn’t have the Englishwoman splendor that he was so accustomed to, but a different type of beauty…a striking, foreign beauty that he had only seen when spending his summers abroad.

“Well, curioustiy killed the dragon, now didn’t it?” she asked, quoting a popular Wizarding proverb.

Draco laughed, despite himself. “How ironic.”

“What’s ironic?” she asked.

“My given name is Latin for dragon,” he said.

“Draco?” she said with a hint of a smile.

“Yes…you know Latin?” he asked.

“I know a bit,” she said simply, leaving the phrase to float in the air around them.

They sat in an acknowledged silence.

Draco was itching to get the exotic woman to speak again. Her voice was very soft, yet firm, giving her an aura of confidence and femininity.

“So why did you come to a pub to order pumpkin juice? My curiosity has not been sated,” Draco said, breaking the silence between them.

A ghost of a smile played at her dark pink lips. “Where else would I go?”

“Any place that sells food and drink serves pumpkin juice. You could have gone to a café, any restaurant…wherever you buy your groceries.”

“You make a good point,” she said contemplatively. “I guess I enjoy watching people at the pub. Especially when they make complete fools of themselves as they slowly drink their way to liver failure.”

Draco chuckled. “We have potions and spells to prevent liver failure…so that really is not a very good observation.”

“Ah, but those potions and spells can be just as damaging as the alcohol, so in all fairness, I believe I made a very good observation,” she replied, taking another sip of her conversation-starting pumpkin juice.

“So you come to the pub to watch people?”

“Basically.”

“How come I’ve never seen you in this pub before, then?”

“So that would make you a regular?” she asked, placing her own chin on her fist.

“Basically.”

She smiled at him. “Well, I’ve only just moved to this side of town and I’m christening this pub with my presence tonight. So far, all I’ve observed is you interrupting my observations.”

“I just couldn’t sit back and not know why you were sitting in a pub and not ordering alcohol. I mean, that’s the whole point of this place.”

“Alcohol is not very pleasant and I don’t find the need to burn my mouth and throat just to get some sort of buzz. Pumpkin juice and all other types of non-alcoholic drinks taste great and don’t leave me with a violent migraine the following morning.”

“So you don’t drink any alcohol?”

“No, well I did drink wine with dinners when I was younger, but that was under the pretentious stares of my parents. And a few years ago I just stopped finding it appealing. I’d much rather drink water with a meal,” she said uneasily. Her voice held a slight quaver as she spoke.

Draco stared at the young woman. “Well, then that’s good…I think.”

“It is good,” she said with a smile. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t judge anyone who wishes to drink alcohol, I really don’t. I just prefer not to drink it myself.”

Draco nodded. His eyes focused on her hand as it rose towards her hair to pull it away from her face. Her hair fell down to her shoulders in dark brown waves, similar in color to her eyes. He wondered what it would be like to run his fingers through those dark locks. That was definitely the firewhiskey. Usually, he didn’t think that way until the second round of shots.

“You know, I still don’t know your name,” Draco said after awhile.

She looked at him, as if assessing him. “Samira,” she said.

“Samira,” he repeated, savoring each letter as it rolled off his tongue. “Very unique…and exotic.”

“Thank you,” she said with her head bowed modestly.

“If you don’t mind me asking, where exactly are you from? You don’t look like you could be from around here.”

He was in fact being quite honest. Her looks betrayed her English upbringing in the fact that she had a soft caramel complexion and the dark hair and eyes aforementioned. Even while she was sitting, he could tell she was petite and had to be at least a foot shorter than his 6 foot 3 inch frame.

“I was born here in London,” she said, interrupting his ogling. “My father is an English wizard, born in Brighton, just as fair-skinned as you. My mother was a Gypsy from Casablanca.”

“Casablanca? In Morocco?”

“Yes. That would explain my olive skin tone and dark hair. Don’t meet many native English people that look like me,” she said with a smile.

“Have you ever been to Casablanca?” he asked.

“Once, when I was ten years old. It was ridiculously hot there, but it also was very beautiful. I’d love to go back again, but then I just like to travel, period.”

“So you were born and raised in London and you’re a witch, obviously, so did you go to Hogwarts?”

“No, I went to Beauxbatons. You see, my mother wanted me to speak the two native tongues of Morocco, French and Arabic. I never got around to learning Arabic, but she made sure I knew French. So to help me with the French, my parents sent me to Beauxbatons, even though I really wanted to go to Hogwarts,” she said with a hint of sadness.

“So your father was an English wizard, your mother a Gypsy?” he asked a bit surprised at how enthralled he was by her.

“Yes…my father was what you would call a womanizer. He was a traveling businessman in his youth and he usually had a woman waiting in every European port for him. He lived this scandalous lifestyle until he was sent to Casablanca for an important sale of flying carpets and magic lamps. He met my mum at a festival to celebrate the importance of Gypsy Magic. Cue the romantic music and here I stand before you 21 years later,” she said, watching Draco take in every word she uttered.

“So you’re half-Gypsy?”

“No, you see, Gypsy is a lifestyle: a practical, natural magic that is how one chooses to live. The Gypsy magic is very different from the magic wizards and witches are used to. It uses the elements of the earth and the universe. My parents decided to raise me as a witch instead of as half a Gypsy, because there is a lot of discrimination against the Gypsy lifestyle in both magical and muggle worlds.”

“How awful…I knew about Gypsy magic, but I never knew that it was something to discriminate against,” Draco said thoughtfully.

“Yes, well…it’s the same thing with the Pureblood, Muggle-born bigotry that existed for so long.”

“So do you consider yourself a pureblood?” Draco asked, unable to resist the question that he had been so accustomed to know.

“Depends on if you see Gypsy magic as true magic, then yes,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

Draco nodded slowly, watching her watch him.

The barman chose that moment to clear his throat, breaking the concentrated stare between the two.

“The pub closes in 15 minutes,” he said gruffly.

Draco and Samira nodded.

She opened her money bag to pay for her drink and as she handed the barman the sickles, he waved the money away, shaking his head.

“The gentleman took care of your bill,” he said, pointing to Draco.

She feigned the look of a determined feminist, but couldn’t hold back a polite smile. “Thank you.”

“Let me take you out to dinner some time,” Draco said, standing up from his barstool and walking towards hers.

“Dinner? As in a date?” she asked, standing up from her own barstool and confirming Draco’s suspicions that she was almost a foot shorter than him.

“Yes, a date. How else am I supposed to get to know you better?”

“And what makes you so certain that I am single?” she asked as they walked towards the door of the pub.

“Single male intuition. We can pick out the single birds from the taken ones,” he said, sticking his hands in the pockets of his robes and walking by her side.

“How absolutely chauvinist of you,” she said with a joking laugh.

“So what say you? Dinner tomorrow night at 7 o’ clock, Café de Monde in Hogsmeade,” he said confidently.

Samira pursed her lips in thought, counting her steps as they walked side-by-side down the cold London street.

“I’m going to ignore my paranoid suspicions of you being some crazed maniac and I’m going to accept your invitation,” she said finally, looking at him with a small smile.

“Crazed maniac? Do I come off as one?” he asked with a bit of indignation.

“No, not at all…it’s just, um, well you know what they say, you should always be careful with a person you’ve never met before,” she said softly.

“Well I hope we can remedy that because I’d love to get to know more about you,” he said.

“Likewise,” she said in a breathy tone and a nervous laugh.

Draco turned his head to look at her.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never gone out with such an intriguing stranger before,” she said with a grin.

Draco nodded and they walked in silence.

Samira stopped in front of a black-stoned building a few blocks away from Draco’s penthouse.

“Well this is me,” she said, walking up the steps to the entrance.

“So I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 6:45?” he asked, memorizing the location of the building.

Samira hesitated but then smiled and nodded. “My flat is on the fifth floor, door number 6.”

Draco nodded and held out his hand.

Samira looked at his outstretched hand and slowly held hers out as well, wrapping her hand around his comparatively larger one and shaking it.

Draco stopped the shake and lifted her hand to his lips, kissing the back of it.

“Until tomorrow,” he said and turned around before she had a chance to blush at his outgoing action.

He apparated away right as she waved goodbye with the newly Draco-baptized hand. A small part in the back of her mind blared a warning siren, alerting her rationale that she didn’t even know the stranger’s last name. But she doubted that that would make any difference…

Until tomorrow indeed…


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.A/N: If you guys like this story I’ll continue it, but if it doesn’t catch your fancy, then I will charitably remove it from the cyberworld.

And don’t let this first chapter fool you…if this continues, you will get to find out about everything and everyone. :)

The title of the story comes from the song “Blackout” by Muse, as does the title of chapter.

Read and review! Please?