The infamous Malfoy Manor loomed still far in the distance.
Yet akin to the resounding influence of a nuclear-grade electromagnetic pulse, a poisonous heartbeat emanated from the evil hiding within it's walls, permeating across a good three kilometer radius.
Audette fought against waves of icy goosebumps to draw the rotted drapery hanging in the carriage, peering through the dense stygian forest of crooked trees surrounding the grounds.
There it was...below the stars...hundreds of vertical glass windows glinting like the multitudinous eyes of a hellish inky insect.
The Elizabethan architectural style employed by it's now deceased designers dictated sharp perpendicular angles at an unnecessary megalithic scale.
Each quadrangle tower of seven stories in height was pleasantly bequeathed with a lacy wrought-iron balustrade; gifted with such piercing finial spikes it would almost appear that the building intended to impale the heavens from the ground up.
It could have been easily attributed to the contemporary winter season in session, but Audette could not help sensing that the lack of living vegetation had absolutely nothing to do with the current solstice at play.
Rather, the wasted land seemed to have given up on vitality many moons ago, ravaged by the infectious sore festering at the heart of it's rolling hills and thicketed droves, losing a battle with the outspreading sepsis that was Lord Voldemort's unholy presence.
It was pitiful to draw one's gaze across the decay and derelict, as it would not require a great degree of imagination to envision how glorious the region might have been in it's brighter days; orchards for acres, old growth woodlands filled with many a creature both magical and non, brick gazebos and flowering gardens, stables with horses for riding...it was presumably a dream a decade prior.
The carriage slowed to a gradual halt, producing a resistant screech of metal and splitting wooden parts.
Nostrils flaring, the Thestrals puffed out clouds of icy condensation at the base of two monstrous murky wrought-iron gates engraved with a stupendously inscribed 'M' signifying Malfoy.
Wedged in on both sides by a continuous line of wrought-iron barricade of barbarous integrity, Audette widened her eyes in disbelief at how boundlessly the enclosure seemed to stretch into the fog from the gateway, suggesting that perhaps the entire estate was palisaded on all facets against wandering fools.
Gradually the egress began to swing inwards, and Audette's heart leapt up her throat.
This was it; there was no going back beyond this point...
Startled by the lack of communication providing their mysterious access, she adjusted from where she had been plastering one big green eyeball to the glass, to find that Draco was whispering a password under his breath, two fingers held rigidly towards the gate.
He curled them in the direction of his chest carefully, and in matching formula the gates agreed, and soon the carriage was rambling into the depths of the property line.
All view graduated into total obscurity as they were swallowed by a parallel framework of enormous and quite twiggy hedges, causing the cabin to go nearly pitch black in result of the towering shorn shrubberies.
Determined iron-spindle wheels spat white pebbles in arraying madness as the elderly vehicle clambered forward, bolts and screws surely having long ago departed from critical roles supporting it's structural refinement.
Audette was so focused on assessing her surroundings that she almost misplaced the fact that Draco's arm was still around her tummy. When his free hand slid into hers within her lap, she reactively turned to face him, their eyes glistening and wide in the shadows.
She could sense from his wince that he worried his first girlfriend might change her mind on the spot and go running for dear life into the wilderness rather than face his despairing residence.
Moments later, Audette practically soared into the opposing booth due to the velocity at which the mobile arrested in place. Thankfully Draco had her in his grasp or surely her primary visit to his home would have commenced with a broken nose.
They were now squarely at the foot of the misty mansion, which transcended upright far above their heads.
She had been successfully delivered straight from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizarding to the entrance of Hell itself.
Grimacing up the vertical façade of ancient brickwork, Audette was tempted to open the carriage door at her side, which led directly to an abutting alignment of Greek entrance pillars.
As her shivering glove reached for the handle Draco cut her off precipitously, uttering one single word of warning, "Don't."
Audette stood no chance at first facing him to inquire why, as in a rapid whoosh he'd tangled both his arms firmly around her waist, and then the world flipped upside-down in a gyroscopic nightmare of impossible physics she'd yet to experience.
Apparently of fresh legal status to perform apparition, Draco had been waiting to apparate them until they were safely on his property and it was only a matter of a stone's throw to his private wing in the Malfoy Manor.
In doing so he'd effectively skipped Audette the trauma of walking her through several layers of the gruesome abode inhabited by unfathomable monstrosities, albeit with very little preparation.
It was not the departiculation effect that was the worst segment of the expeditious trek, as that occurred in a rather discomforting yet fleeting instance.
Rather, what was off-putting for Audette as a first timer to apparition was the reintegration of thousands of uniquely functioning cells which required flawless assimilation back into their systemic operations.
The pair reappeared in a sincerely nauseating rotation, stumbling as Draco fought to catch her.
For Audette, it felt like a trillion push-pin needles had been jabbed into each millimeter of her skin, and that her stomach had returned brimming with undigested toadstools.
Quick to react she placed one hand outwards to barely stop herself smashing her face off of ashen Gothic wallpaper, which spiraled into vision in resplendent patterns.
She shut her watery eyes against that wallpaper and inhaled the musty air, unwilling to investigate their new whereabouts until her stomach settled.
His cold hand appeared between her shoulder blades to pinch at her neck in tender comfort, laughing lightly at her infantilism to the guttural form of transport, "Aw. Poor little Wonderland...You're as green as a Nordic goblin."
"Nothing could be more nauseas than that stupid smirk on your stupid smug face. You knew full well I wasn't of the slightest mature to apparition," Audette quipped back in a rattling tone, her eyesight engulfed by nasty positional vertigo which was distorting the wallpaper design into a horrendous depiction of unintelligible skeletal shapes.
When the chaotic stirrings finally subsided enough for her to stand up straight she evaluated where they had landed.
Commencing at the tip of her golden high heels protracted a possibly limitless corridor ahead, as if to masquerade as a horizontal rabbit hole from Lewis Carroll's, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The passage was dominated by a lackluster void of antediluvian décor - from the peeling, archaic wallpaper, stained ebony floorboards, gilded frames of vista oil paintings, and finally the ragged Persian running rug that led the way into uncertainty.
Black. Stark raving black.
No article escaped the designated theme of raven and rancor, save for the little girl in gold who'd accidentally found herself smack dab in the perverse ruin.
And in perfect accord with the weathered appeal, none of the baseboards were even; undulating in tide with the caving and buckling oak wood parquet, which had endured over five-hundred years of pedestrian praxis.
The ceiling slab mirrored this billowing madness, orchestrating through structural heave alone that the building had stood for far too long and was ready for a wrecking ball turnaround.
The walls were not a flat plane by any means either, but this however was by intentional design; instead ornamental, onyx wood planks conveyed incredible technique from the Tudor period, jutting out in swirling patterns long forgotten to the human race as being aristocratic and noble.
This singular artery of minor caliber within the manor detailed such beauty that it left Audette lost for words, clocking her head sideways in artistic reverie.
One would almost expect to duck at any moment in avoidance of a gravitationally unconcerned piano soaring down the corridor to an unbeknownst destination.
To Alice, it had been during the precise moment when she stumbled upon the strange rouge carpet on the forest floor - which waxed and waned around bends of uncertainty - that she realized with dismay that she was being followed by a sweeper dog of far superior speed, who's occupation it was to butcher that passageway to safety with his toothbrush teeth alone.
Audette had already been caught up to by that sweeper dog, and any chance of going home had been lost just as quickly - only the difference was, it had taken her until that very instant to recognize just how deep into Wonderland she'd ventured off the erased path since.
As if to expect such a transcendental canine being, she craned her neck around her slender ankles in weary disposition, to instead surprisingly concede that a quite solid and formidable set of double doors was sealed in the background of where they had just disapparated.
"Oh my, what..." Audette spun to take in the barred access directly at her heels.
Draco stepped before her confused eyes, leaning his face down with an important sort of glare that only a parent would send a child when in a funeral home, or at a very large venue that they might go astray beyond recollection.
He pointed a spindly finger at the prohibited ingress, "Audette, listen to me very carefully. Are you here with me now, or do you need more time to adjust?"
"Where else would I be? Have I gone invisible?" Audette replied thoughtfully, turning to fully face the doors in question with her eyebrows furrowing.
She hugged both her upper arms in a fierce grip of protectivity as her focus cascaded down the thick silver chains knotted around the Golden Age handles. The chains chastened there were so chunky they might be capable of servicing the anchor for a medial tin boat.
It was either Draco intended to lock himself inwards for fear of some fractious misbehavior on his part - or far worse, he intended to lock something of malevolent intentions out of his wing of the Malfoy Manor.
The latter, she decided, was much more sensible given the pretenses.
The passage was lit by an occasional worn candelabra here and there, ergo when Draco looked austerely into her eyes his gaze appeared as a dulcet gray-blue, excellently mirroring a puddle of water on a slightly overcast day.
He ran his bony fingers down the chiseled surface of the door, manicured eyebrows dancing together, "While you are here - until the time comes - you shall never pass beyond these doors Audette, unless I explicitly instruct you to do so. This egress is locked and bound for a reason. You are to remain in my personal western wing of the Manor, and this sector alone. Need I repeat myself?"
Draco dipped his chin even lower to stare meaningfully into her eyes, and Audette blinked rapidly at him, releasing a heavy breath she hadn't even realized she was withholding, "Okay, I understand."
For a moment he allowed her to silently glance between his concerned expression and the incredible set of double doors, watching her inhaling through the terror of what he was implying before he smiled handsomely and pinched her chin, "Alright gorgeous, what do you say - should we get drunk and naked?"
"Oh you racy devil, you," Audette scoffed and pushed him back a few steps, twirling on her high heel to saunter slowly down the corridor, running her glove along the eccentric wall paneling in tease, "I may decide to go nude, only to torture you with abstinence."
She had no idea where she was going, and it was not an easy guess at where his bedroom laid either. The hall was lined left and right with a copious speckling of tall doors leading to hell knows where.
He caught up to her and wrapped his hands around her shoulders, guiding her petticoat off while kissing her neck, "You've tormented me all night with this dress - I hope you don't mean that."
She permitted him to unravel her like a birthday present, rotating as she walked until the last sleeve of her lavish coat had slipped off her wrist and she was stepping backwards flirtatiously, "Well...aren't you going to give me a tour of your unhumble abode first, like a proper gentleman?"
"Apologies if I ever gave you the impression that I'm a gentleman, much less one of propriety," he hung her coat off of the large arm of an unlit candelabra and bit his lower lip.
A mischievous flare in his eyes was the sole warning she had before he lunged at her and lifted her clean off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder like a damsel in distress from a fairy tale.
Audette squealed like a pig to slaughter and gripped onto the back of his jacket for dear life as she was bounced along, gasping when he dug his fingernails into her left butt cheek and bit the other side roughly through her thin dress, "No Draco, you put me down! This isn't entertaining, this is mauling me like a common whore in a brothel."
He laughed and swung open the nearest door, which revealed an opulent bathroom glittering with satin green tiles top to bottom, "You requested a tour, did you not? Be a good fair maiden and pay attention, because it's going to be swift."
Audette's heart ping ponged in her chest as the freezing atmosphere of the Manor whirled up her exposing dress, Draco only fueling the nervous sexual angst by groping her backside savagely.
His private bathroom was swank to say in the least, especially given the ostentatious time capsule that was the Malfoy Manor.
Magical candles of endlessly charmed wick and wax were burning from floor to ceiling, building up mounds of mushy debris at their foundations.
A sensational clawfoot tub stood with elegant poise in the center of the room before a daunting, stained glass bulls-eye window, the golden talons at the base modelled after some scaly demon.
Draco adjusted Audette on his bony shoulder and pointed his free hand at the tub, "Watch out for that thing - it walks around in here freely."
Then they were back out in the hallway, Audette yipping in protest of his wandering hands and outrageous attack, "Well it's good to know that a bathtub possesses the basic human right to independently stroll that I do not."
"Put me down, you unbelievable...untamed...brute," she breathily banged a closed fist off of his spine as he drew her through room after room, the layout of the floor plan evading her permanent memory.
"Not a chance - the view over here is...spectacular," he drawled, squeezing her bum repeatedly.
Across the way they landed in a dusty drawing room filled with paintings in varying personal styles, Draco explaining that painting was an artistic skill commonly noted in his ancestral line.
He also eluded to exactly why the impressive collection was in his wing of the house, and Audette could not help snorting when she was told that Lucius Malfoy had jealously threatened to destroy all of the canvases unless they were promptly removed from his sight.
"He'd be lucky to produce a legible stickman," Draco commented in hilarity, shutting the door with a resounding click.
A brooding library of stellar caliber was next, filled with aging texts.
Circumferencing the higher levels was a classic athenaeum monorail, aligned to provide transport to an impatient reader clinging to a ladder who wished to flip through novelty after novelty without climbing down.
Many of the cobwebbed dictations were shaking and thumping in place on the bountiful shelves, and rotating in mid-air over a crafting table was a beastly five hundred year old copy of the most dangerous wizarding text known to man, Malleus Maleficarum - Hammer of the Witches.
At the sight of these forbidden, possessed dissertations, Audette recalled Minerva McGonagall once cautioning their second year course to tread carefully around such characteristic volumes, as they likely contained unfriendly magical sentience.
From there after it was a brief visitation to multiple garish parlors with obtrusive fireplaces, an office with strange magical mechanisms whirring and whizzing all around said naughty 'writing desk' of fine mahogany material, and bizarrely enough an empty room with nothing but dozens of mid-century lamps arranged in a dotted disaster on the wooden flooring; all lit up to create a truly blinding environment.
Audette squinted from the bright insanity, "Are you in some ridiculous feud with the Boogeyman?"
"Something like that," Draco responded cryptically.
With no further explanation he abandoned this final room and concluded the hallway tour to drop Audette before the last door on the right, but she was not entirely satisfied.
There was one last door left which he had blatantly ignored, and as he pressed a skeleton key into his bedroom lock she leaned around him inquisitively, "And what pray tell, is the secrets that lie behind that unacknowledged egress?"
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
He sent a rather frowzy frown over his shoulder at the lonely entryway, "There's nothing of importance beyond there."
Ducking below his strong arm Audette broke free to stride pompously across the corridor, and without hesitation the elongated handle was turned and the door busted in.
It was a nursery.
A very large room indeed for one programmed for an infant, with striped black and white wall paper running vertically like a set straight out of Beetlejuice.
Toy dragons, cauldrons, skeletons and broomsticks were littered around the musty and decaying carpeting.
A pointed purple hat sat atop a very freaky scarecrow in one corner, and a jar of all sorts of interesting fake wands was perched upon the activity table.
Audette almost cried out when she bumped into the glass pane of a spider nest terrarium that was still brimming with active fat Black Widows.
Draco hadn't been kidding that his mother had always given him everything he'd asked for, spoiling him rotten with horrible witchy odds and ends.
Along the far wall where a mullion of glass overlooked the rotting back gardens was situated a spectacular baby crib comprised of ebony wood; carved into swirling, thorny vines that only a profoundly deadly witch would dare to settle her baby to rest in.
Awestruck, Audette wandered into the creepy space with her mouth parted, running her tiny lace glove over a Thestral rocking horse sporting mean red eyes, "My goodness, is this...?"
"It is," Draco confirmed tersely from the frame of the opened access, his hands jammed into his suit pockets with a pout of distaste on his pretty face. He hung his chin up towards the roof which was bewitched with a thunderstorm illusion, "That's quite enough, Audette. Out of here, at once."
"Great Scott, one might assume Dracula was raised in here," she whispered, shivering at the poisonous spiders in rouge bow ties teeming next to her.
Tangling her fingers in the traipsing hem of her dress she met his eyes, smack dab in a circle of his childhood artifacts distributed at her toes, "Would this be where our future children will flourish? Why else have you kept this room despite it's expired intention?"
He raised a veiny hand to cover his mouth in a vulnerable wince, averting his cerulean gaze to the running boards, "Alright, out with you. We're not hosting this discussion tonight."
"So I should anticipate hosting it eventually? So you do dream of children?" Audette turned her face to the side curiously, as a new facet of Draco Malfoy blossomed in her mind.
He shrugged, a masculine sigh vibrating in his chest, "In time."
"So deductively, you dream of them with me," her jaw dropped provocatively.
From his discomforted scrutiny she could see that he was now forced to conceptualize the same futuristic possibilities. They breathed heavily in each other's direction for a few seconds before he's eyebrows began to pinch together, eyes widening over her shoulder.
He'd hardly lifted his finger to point in horror at the far corner before Audette screamed in absolute fright, "What's that behind you! Run Audette, get out of there!"
Oh hell no.
That haunted house attraction was not going to be the end of her.
Sparing no time to glance at whatever ghastly ghoul was chasing her, Audette tore straight past the door and clutched at the back of his jacket for safety.
While it aught to have been terrifically obvious that he was playing on her nerves to get her to exit the nursery, it was only when he began snickering in a high pitch that she realized nothing dangerous had emerged in the shadowy space.
"That was downright cruel," she brushed her glove against her dewy forehead as he closed the door in victorious manipulation.
He smiled at her over his shoulder, drawing the skeleton key from his pocket, "Try downright comical. It's a miracle you didn't soil your indelible lace knickers."
She smacked him multiple times on the side of his bicep, a smile besotting her features, "And look at what we have here; the big, bad Quidditch captain is blushing. Scaring me out of a room because you can't bare the topic of offspring. I can't think of any better means to inform me that you're embarrassed by your own desires aside from admitting them forthright."
Locking the door behind them, he took her hand and guided her back across the sonorous hallway, "Come on, let's go. And mark my words, no more unauthorized snooping."
No words were marked, naturally...
It was nearly impossible to suppress flippant temptations to pinch at his backside, Audette uncontrollably giggling at how rosy his pale cheeks had gone, "I'm hardly sure how you expect me to label this place my home if everything is chained up and off bounds. I'll require undeterred admittance to the entire wing - redecoration is a top priority before I settle into this dank coffin."
Once inside of his contemporary bedroom Draco permitted Audette to finally roam freely, excusing himself to stand in front of a brass bound Victorian credenza hosting crystal decanters, "Fine, you voracious ankle biter. But you and I will work closely together to redecorate...I won't tolerate frivolous pink and purple nonsense sprouting up all over the place."
We'll just see about that, Audette thought snippily.
It would be her personal pleasure to incorporate rose-colored vases and floral scented soaps wherever he detested.
He raised an empty glass at her and popped one eyebrow interactively, and she nodded at his handsome, manly stare despite being certain that all he had on that table was an abhorrent selection of brown liquors including bourbon, rye, scotch and whiskey.
Nodded like a starstruck nitwit.
As soon as the tangy liquor hit her tongue she instantly regretted it, turning away from him to mask just how disgusting she found the flavor to be.
A small gurgle left her mouth when her gag reflex betrayed her for a moment, followed by Draco snorting judgmentally in the background, "You don't have to drink that to impress me, darling. I'm quite contented by your mere presence here alone."
That was all the invitation she required to dispose of the full glass on a side table.
Taking balletic steps, she noticed that a tiny fluttering of nervous anticipation began to appear in her lower abdomen.
She was alone in Draco Malfoy's bedroom, in his real and very solitary bedroom.
While the interior stone cladding within the expansive bedroom presented in a naturally dull graphite palette, predictably Draco had furnished his quarters with sheer black fabrics; from the floor to ceiling heavy fringed curtains which hung in thick ruched sheets, to the tufted leather sofas, and of course the priceless Ushak rugs binding the design in a uniform theme.
In the center of the room a mounted chandelier gleamed above their heads. It was ridiculously grandiose - glittering with jade stones and analogous green flames within the circle of candles situated around the circumference.
He allowed Audette to lead in portent, fingertips grazing her back as she touched everything passing by, falling behind only to point his wand at the seven foot tall fireplace.
It lit with a viridian flame that immediately emanated a glorious warmth.
"What was that thing driving the carriage tonight, Draco?" she asked passively to divert from her growing lustful angst, recognizing his pine scent everywhere in the extravagant space.
She sucked in her bottom lip when her attention landed on his king-sized bed, stood disguised behind drapes which clung to the rustic poster frame.
This had to be the night.
He'd dropped a plethora of hints that it was...
Tickling her spine gently, he himself coughed from the strong drink for a second, "A jinn. It's been attached to our family for centuries - wise not to ask it for any favors unless you'd like to ditch your soul. We've been holding it hostage by refusing to fulfill the final three of seven wishes which binds it to the Malfoy's."
Charming.
"That's incredible you've made it this long enslaving it. My father tells me that they are perhaps the most dangerous of creatures to meddle with," she mused, tearing off her gloves to place them on top of a seventeenth-century grand piano, complete with a rusty metronome and a mantel clock both ticking at once in different rhythms upon it's shelf.
With the roar of the adjacent flames dancing in her eyes, Audette stopped to crane her neck, inspecting one significant wall in which no furniture nor décor invaded it's surface.
Instead, it was covered by a model mural of the Milky Way, spanning every inch of the ninety-foot long interior façade.
Nearby on the grand piano, Draco had abandoned a well worn easel covered in mild hues of blush, blues and lavender, indicating that he had in fact inherited the Malfoy painting gene where Lucius had unfortunately not.
What was most mesmerizing about the dazzling mural was how he had cast spells to illuminate the larger speckles representing celestial bodies, and Audette noted that this mural was one thousand times more beautiful than her diadem, twinkling with microcosmic, pulsating planets.
Draco slid his arm around her waist and placed his glass down on the chipped piano keys, his eyes crystalline in the vivid setting as he inspected his own brilliant work which must have taken a lifetime, "I find...an escape in the stars. It reminds me that there exists an incomprehensible volume of worlds out there that are nothing like this one, where regrettably so much darkness tends to linger."
It was no wonder that he sought refuge at the Astronomy Tower, and cast illusions of the night sky in his bed canopy - it was a comforting elopement from his daily torment on Earth.
"How is it you've managed to paint at such an inexecutable scale?" Audette queried intellectually, thinking back to the basic Astronomy courses she'd been privy to at a younger age, "Shouldn't this be nothing but a consolidated white map of oversaturated dots?"
He grinned crookedly down at her, "Impressive discernment, that is - if you're reasoning in a two dimensional perspective. It's inverted at the present moment, otherwise daily habitation would be unbearable."
Removing his wand from his pocket he raised the sleek wood first from the wall then straight over her head. As he rotated elegantly on his heel, the painted dots extruded into a jaw dropping three-dimensional map of the Milky Way, which filled the room like a box of hovering marbles.
Paint peeled and popped off the now blank bricks, orbs floating in a collective haze of what could only be described as holographic wonder from wall to wall.
Audette caught her breath in awe, "You...you really made this?"
He nodded silently, squeezing her waist as she spun in his cool grasp.
She reached out to tap at dried droplets of paint, which responded in magical magnetism, shifting out of position then back again upon withdrawal of the interruption to their fixated gravitation.
Her mind automatically began to synthesize orchestral, ambient music to accompany the otherworldly astonishment, her skin wavering with little oscillations of euphoric enchantment, "It's as if we've perished and have returned to cosmological reincarnation."
"That's not all. There is...something else...I wish to show you," he gently piloted her backwards through the terrestrial madness.
When they arrived before a bulky, enchanted telescope abutting a corner window, he guided her to stand between himself and the lens.
The fluttering butterflies in her stomach transitioned into a weighty boulder - a boulder which could not be explained other than intuition that something monumental was unraveling.
This prescience only heightened when he closed his eyes and pecked at her cheek longingly, his eyelashes caressing her skin in fickle delight. "Here, and here," gripping both of her hands in his, he encouraged her to bear the tube hull and eyepiece.
Then he opened his frosty eyes to stare intimately into hers, "There happens to be one very special star I've been attempting to pioneer for a long while. Yet each time I come within range of catching it, I discover it has again managed to evade my eager clutches."
Moving their conjoined hands, he directed the telescope towards the clear glass of the window pane, "Only you can help me to secure it - all you need do is look."
Audette's eyes bulged in confusion, "I admire your verdant pluck Mr. Malfoy, however I vaguely possess a clue of how to operate this thing, let alone navigate astrophysics. I'm afraid I wouldn't be capable of locating the bloody moon if my life depended on it."
That angst from before ballooned into a full blown hopeful panic in apprehension of what was about to occur, because in no reality was Draco Malfoy actually requesting that Audette pinpoint an unobserved planet amongst zillions, with no prior verse in the phenomenally erudite subject.
Her breasts began to heave as her rib cage jutted unnaturally, meeting his eyes sideways, back and forth between the lens in front of her.
What was this about?
He swallowed repeatedly and kissed her cheek another time, hushing his deep voice in her ear, "I assure you, your skill is inconsequential Ms. Bellarose. Have a look anyways."
"Okay," she hardly managed to breathe out the singular word, feeling as though she might faint on the spot from the shooting nerves travelling her spinal cord like an elevator joyride.
She tilted her head obediently and shut her left eye to focus through the trifocal loupe, which was shimmering across the surface in a prismatic effect.
When the nearest stretches of the limitless universe came into view in high definition, Audette bent her spine incredulously to lean into the occult equipment, which seemed to be adjusting the finderscope all of it's own accord depending on where she desired it to, "Draco...it's..."
"Amaranthine," his warm breath oozed down her bare skin, pulling locks of golden strands to her dexterior shoulder so to invade her uncovered neck like a tantalizing parasite.
Space it turned out, was quite simplistic in it's most forefront presentation; black and white, stretching into a homogenous soup of continuity, every locket of swirling galaxies both similar from a distance, yet vastly distinctive once analyzed in greater detail.
Dizzy and drunk on disbelief, her lips parted as she took in the endless sea of blinking planets embedded in a pure, black void of nothingness; the perfect balance of life and death.
Draco's attraction to the seduction of space grew quite apparent for the minute or so that she stared in hypnotism through that telescope.
Struck with material verisimilitude, all purpose to her unimportant human existence faded from concern, and while one should worry such a contrivance would be depressing - it was quite the opposite, filling her instead with a calming peace.
She concluded that none of it mattered at all; not Voldemort, nor the speed at which the Earth spun, not even any ubiquitous logic dictating good versus evil...
"Let me know when you see it," Draco broke through her immortal philosophizing, speaking in a breathless voice that was notably foreign to the usually audacious boy.
Right as she was prepared to turn round to him in shared appreciation for his scholarly hobby, the lens flared in a blinding array of allotropy.
The freckled stars rashly vanished to be replaced with a total wipeout of chemically structured, triangular planes in flawless coruscation of the most sought after pedigree.
Diamonds.
Blinking once in understanding, Audette held her breath in a vehement whoosh, then slowly lifted her face from the lens.
Blood pooled in her ears as she took in the perpetrating source of invasion to the aperture lens at the far end, where Draco had extended his arm to hold out an engagement ring of palatial and eccentric virtue to block out visibility.
She turned so quickly into his face that their noses brushed - in the same fashion that had occurred that first night in the common room on the couch - only to find that this time he was in no joking mood at all.
Rather, his precious blue eyes were abstracted and fixated on her reaction, with a background glimmer of rare and tender human vulnerability integrated into those mosaic shades of dystopian ultramarine and silver.
It all happened so quickly that she hardly registered tears of joy lawlessly spilling from her eyes as he nervously pressed the telescope offwards, his right hand sliding down her flank as he fell to his knee at her feet.
Suddenly whiter than a snowman - as if such a thing were possible given his mortuary skin tone - he shakily held out the engagement ring, which was characterized by a central kite-shaped diamond embedded amongst a stellar collection of verdant Tsavorite Garnet stones on either side.
The ring continued north to south in a beautiful vine-like spiral provided by a jeweled green serpent, which held the entire design together, expected to range from knuckle to knuckle on the lucky girl's hand.
"Audette Bellarose, you...you are that very special...and singular star...missing in my collection," he managed to whisper.
Wishing she were not so emotionally overwhelmed and blinded by her runny vision, Audette placed her right hand over her heart in absolute gratitude for the manner in which he'd sideblinded her.
Trembling as equally, he delicately drew forward her left hand by her fingertips and kissed the back of her paw, his gaze dripping with hopeful reverie, "I've been infatuated with you since the day I met you...and in love for almost as long. Would you do me...the irrevocable honor...of marrying me?"
Knelt so vulnerably on the carpeting, his passionate, puppy-dog stare consuming her every sense, Audette found herself sniffling and nodding. She spoke with confidence, "Of course, Draco. Of course I will. The honor is reciprocal in every regard."
With her permission lingering in the snowy air he slid the profound ring onto her fourth left finger, and in magical gusto the tail of the serpent coiled around her metacarpal bone to clamp impeccably.
Upon reviewing the ring's impetuous response he shut his eyes in relief, breathing out dramatically, "You have no idea how placated your riposte leaves me."
Before either of them could fall into any further weeping lunacy he glided to his feet and swept Audette clean off the ground in an enthusiastic hug, crushing her in his arms.
She buried her nose in his neck as they clung to one another in bombshell bliss, still buzzing head to toe in atheism of the infinite bond they had just formed.
Before her heels could plant upon level ground a carnal instinct overtook her inclination, maddeningly proceeding to kiss at his face from every direction, "That was so unimaginably marvelous...you've gifted me with an electrifying fairytale."
Surrounded by floating, glowing orbs, they pressed their noses together in his antiquated chambers, both encumbered with angelic grins spreading ear to ear.
Brimming with clear joy he puffed air from his nose, "Now let's get drunk and naked."
"Let's absolutely get smashed," she bounced on the spot, chewing on her lower lip. Her eyes were wild with glee that could not possibly be doused even if the sun truly did explode and they had but seven minutes to make best of their upgraded status.
Bring on the bourbon.
Bring on anything he offered her in a crystal glass.
With a swift wave of his wand, the Milky Way compressed itself once more against the mural wall, then he detached from her loving embrace to return to the spirituous credenza.
As he walked away she spun in girly exhilaration, bringing both clutched fists to her chin in sailing cheer.
Yes.
Yes, ohhhh yes.
She stopped on a single rotation to zealously hold her hand up to the fire light, in shock of how the sui generis diamond on her finger glinted fantastically no matter what angle she cocked it at.
My god, it was a work of art strapped to her dainty hand, weighty with stones forged hundreds of years prior by royal demand.
His buttery voice resonated across the scopious divide between them, several meters away yet potently robust, "It has been passed down by the women in my family for generations. My mother granted it on your behalf yesterday, when you convinced her of your worthiness to posses it."
Draco bent to draw open a lower cupboard of the credenza, revealing a slew of bottles with authentic French muselet caps, and Audette found herself recalling the past few days as if they were a forgotten fantasy at the mention of Narcissa..
Right...
She'd been analyzing a Carver Sloth in the Bellarose Biodome, then Mrs. Malfoy had humiliatingly come across Audette as if she were a wild creature featuring in the habitat...then...then it had been a mind-bending trip to Cava...and finally before the ball, their time apart had concluded with Montgomery's foreboding visitation in his office...
Her dowry.
She'd blanked entirely on her responsibilities - the primal romance of the evening resulting in her misplacing the fact that to both of their parents it was unfortunately perceived as a transactional exchange.
"My petticoat..." Audette rapidly batted her eyelashes across the elaborate space, suddenly aware that she'd been neglectful of such an irreplaceable sack of coins that represented her very head on a spike should she fail to remit it.
"In the hall, leave it," Draco approached her with two fragile glasses of fizzing champagne.
He placed one bubbly glass down on a table next to her hip and ran his fingers over her shoulder, but Audette dared not grant a scenario in which he came across the dowry before she was able to offer it on personal behalf of the Bellarose name.
"No, I must collect it," Audette waved him off rudely and briskly made for his doorway, her heart thudding uncomfortably in fraught that she'd been so foolish to misplace such a valuable package in the pocket of her evening wear.
She pressed open his door and with an insensate thud it automatically shut briskly at her heels.
"Why not leave it b-" his silky voice disappeared like a page torn from a text.
The ensuing silence was...prickly.
Without Draco teasing her sideways left and right, the corridor loomed in awful omen; characterized not only by uselessly drab photometrics, but also by the whirling frigid wind that was actively forcing it's way through the window frame at the terminal axis behind her.
Said petticoat hung in drastic white vibrancy near where the forbidden double doors were locked by beefy chains, the pearl cotton striking against the adumbral gloom ahead.
Simple enough.
Walk forward, grab it, and be gone, Audette instructed herself plainly, uncertain of exactly why she felt petrified.
Ignoring her guttural instincts to turn back, she trod hesitantly across the moldy carpet towards where it had been strung like a discarded kitchen cloth upon a candelabra rung.
The moment her fingers tepidly tugged down the coat in triumph was short lived, for when she took it into her hold, the lit candles in the passageway terminated.
If the resulting feeling in her chest could be burned onto a compact disk, it would be the grim ill-harmonic of someone messily pressing down on the darkest keys of a piano.
Darkness enveloped the hallway, whisking away the warmth of paired candles two at a time until Audette was in utter black, leaving her pawing at the petticoat for her long lost wand in the many silky pockets provided.
Breathe...breathe...
As the twilight closed in by some sinister design, Audette's breathing halted entirely at the lilt of a familiar voice, whispering her name in rapid concession from the chained double doors that Draco had explicitly informed her to steer clear of, "Audette...Audette Audette Audette Audette..."
She should have ran immediately.
She should have taken off with the speed of an entire elite Quidditch team, but Theodore's alluring Italian drawl beckoned her to turn her trembling chin.
There in the blackness, the double doors had been pushed open by the meager inches possible until the chains had gone taught in defense, and in the slim parting crack was some depiction of her classy ex-boyfriend.
Only it couldn't be him, because the one malevolent eye the creature had jammed against the crack was blacker than a black hole, and his normally pristine skin tone was green and speckled with decay.
It was a corpse version of Theodore, who's tarry nails appeared to wrap around the door and claw against the wood, "Little rose...you left me to die. You betrayed me."
"No...no, I-I didn't," she gulped in a brittle tone, clutching at her coat as her eyes grew watery under it's baneful glare. The unidentifiable incubus scanned Audette like a laser, it's satanic black orb alone making her feel faintish, "You're not Theo."
"Open the do-oorr, Audette. Opennn it, and I will forgive your fall from grace, or you will go straight to the burning fires of HELL," the prowling thing in the hall beyond growled in a demonic, unnatural sing-song pitch.
It kept adjusting Theodore's face in antagonism, as if pressing it's skull over and over against the breach would provide it any better view of her weakness. A feral grin rippled across it's lips, stretching perversely wide on either side in clownish horror.
"No, this is a trap," she panted wisely, sliding her high heel backwards.
It lost it's patience fantastically quick when she stepped a few times in the opposite direction, "OPEN IT. OPEN THE DOOR, you useless whore!"
Gasping, Audette found the miraculous strength in her tingling body to flee for her life, the obnoxious rattling of metal chains bouncing in place against the buckling double doors, where a long skeletal arm had shoved it's way out to direct razer sharp talons at her back, repeating the menacing wording, "You betrayed me! Little ROSE! You betrayed me!"