Henrietta Potter And The Slytherin Child - (A 'Henrietta Potter' sequel) || D.M

5 - The Other Woman

For the next four months, every Thursday night, he was mine and I was his.

We no longer bothered meeting up in the pub that had brought us back together, instead he would just Apparate straight to my flat, where I would always make sure I was home in time from the Ministry, never later than seven o'clock.

Often, we would just jump straight to it, hungry for one another after our weeklong separation, tearing off clothes as we devoured one another on the spot. Occasionally we would make it to the bedroom; most times, however, we would not.

And we would talk. We talked about everything other than the fact that he was a married man, and that I was the Other Woman. I guess it made it easier for us to bear the guilt if we simply pretended that Astoria did not exist.

As I predicted, he spoke nothing about leaving her. But I noticed he began to remove his wedding ring, leaving an accusatory white line upon his left finger. I pictured him pausing outside my front door to slip it off, and I wondered what went through his mind as he pocketed it out of sight.

We never went anywhere other than the confines of my little London flat. On the rare occasion when we were too exhausted to fuck, we would curl up on the sofa together and just watch television, a Muggle conception which bemused Draco to no end.

"But we're just watching people on the television watching television," he said, aghast at the programme I was making him watch. "Where's the entertainment value in that?"

"It's mind numbing and that works for me," I muttered dully, nuzzling my head further into the crook of his neck.

I could sense his smirk as he kissed the top of my head, tightening his arms around me. "Another bad day in the office I take it, Potter?"

"Ugh, like you wouldn't believe," I complained, recalling the state I had left my desk in earlier that evening. "You'd think being a Dark Wizard Catcher would be fun, but in fact it's a job full of tedious paperwork."

"You do realise you're an Auror and not a superhero?" Draco said giving a derisive snort. "Although given how you were at Hogwarts, I would never have placed you being tied to a desk job under a mountain of paperwork."

"Yeah, well times were different back then," I shrugged, sighing heavily. "We were kids in the middle of a war."

A silence fell between us, and my mind suddenly filled with faces of all the dead. I closed my eyes as a wave of terror passed over me, the memories never failing to bring back feelings of desolation and despair. To me, it had never felt like we had won the war, not really.

Draco had gone quiet, I glanced up to see him staring intensely down at me; a slight frown creasing his forehead.

"What was it like?" he murmured softly, his eyes searching questioningly into mine, as if he could find the answer in my own. "What was it like to die?"

I tensed. This was the first time he had brought up that night. The night I chose death over us.

Entwining my fingers with his, I thought hard, searching for the right words to use. I owed him that at least.

"It- it was surprisingly calm," I said slowly, closing my eyes as I took myself back to that moment, "and it was fearless, you know... you've reached the ultimate end and it's like, suddenly there is nothing left to be afraid of."

I opened my eyes to see Draco staring down at me with such rapt attention.

"Dumbledore was there," I continued, noticing him briefly flinch at the mention of our old headmaster. "He told me I had a choice, and I chose to come back. And then I knew, I knew I had the strength to kill him."