Author's Note: My personal life's been chaotic, this is my final attempt at actually starting – and finishing! – a fan fiction. If I fail again I'll give up on fan fiction for Harry Potter. If I succeed, I'll keep writing, and take it a day at a time. Let's all cheer me on with this one, eh, lads? Raise a pint for me, kick back, and enjoy.

Chapter One

"Dearest Draco!

I've found myself lodging at one of the most darling places,

with trees everywhere and high stone walls and bountiful gardens –

it's very private out here, your father would be fond of it. The streets

are all named Elm, Willow, Raven, St. John's Wort, and the like,

keeping to a lowbrow, conservative suburban manner.

Ever since your father has decided to move from our mansion,

I've kept my eye out for a good place to relocate, and I think this might

be it. I haven't asked the locals much about who lives here yet, but I

do know quite a few of the finest of Hogwarts has moved here and

settled down, with families.

Which makes me wonder, dear Draco, when will you get a

move on it? You haven't been seeing a girl since sixth year, and

you're almost twenty. Half of Hogwarts is married, even the

Mudbloods have fared better than you in hunting down spouses.

Are you just not interested?

It's wonderful here so far, I'll see if any of your old friends

are here. I forgot to mention, this place is known as Port O'Willow,

for there's a fine beach with all these little ships puttering around

and the bountiful weeping willows. It's gloomy out here, it isn't

too hot in the summer and the winters are said to be frosty but

generally mild.

There aren't very many children yet, but all the young

couples won't be sitting around doing nothing I wager. If there's

too many brats squealing about up and down the street we

might move again, as your father can't concentrate right on his

paperwork. You know what I mean about that.

How has he been, by the way? Alright?

I mustn't write too much of it in case someone else

reads it – as I said, you know what I mean.

Your Mother, Narcissa Malfoy"

Draco read this and promptly tossed the paper into the fireplace, where it was eaten alive until it became a black, glowing worm, then died and became part of the kindle-wood it fell on.

&&&&&&&&&&&

The next morning, he woke and found that his room was just as he left it the night before. This meant the maid has been going more slack than ever, for there were papers strewn across the ground near the fireplace and wastebasket, all fruits of his labor, trying to write telling stories for the Daily Prophet. He had never suspected he'd turn out to be a journalist, associating their kind with rat-like, nosey filth, digging through the sludge left behind by big-names like Harry Potter or Dumbledore, or the sort.

Yet his talent in writing blossomed, especially in the middle of his sixth year, and he had begun to provide articles to the school paper, which was assembled by, once again, a new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher – a mild mannered lady that kept her class writing creative stories and reports more than practicing spells or doing lab work.

Draco disliked the class originally, found himself too snide to write a paper about how he felt the school ought to be improved – if he had truly wrote what he meant, he'd sit through a decent oral spanking from McGonagall – but his writing held clarity and was often darkly humorous, and he became a popular source of material for the school paper.

Miss Clary, as this was her name, saw Draco a few times outside of class and asked him to write additionally for her. She taught him to see stories in small things, and he realized he had a lot to say about a few things. At first most of his writing was bitter commentary, complaining about a particular Hufflepuff's Quidditch team player and his lack of performance, or writing about how Gryffindor had oddly warmer quarters compared to the dungeon-like atmosphere of the Slytherin commons.

Eventually his work evolved, and he began to report on things too, like the way a particular game went – he did tend to bias on the Slytherin side, and would always be too proud to change that – but he had a keen eye and could observe just where the turning point of the game was, and who was most valuable. He could even offer his sworn enemy Harry Potter a half-compliment here or there, naming a particular move of his as "significantly less clumsy than most of the previous performance seen thus far in the game", or a particular catch of the Snitch as "a rare stroke of luck for his wildly flailing hands on his now outdated broom".

Soon he was being asked to write more, not just by Slytherin students but others as well. He had a very unique way of writing, in which he wrote very grammatically correct and intelligently, and proved a difficult read sometimes, yet was too interesting to put down, despite the language and the tone of the paper. He wrote on a wide range of subjects and in his seventh year he became an apprentice to a journalist for the Prophet, a man who had graduated from Slytherin four years before Draco would. He was a large name in journalism, and one of the "accomplished" Slytherins, with a plaque baring his picture and his name hanging in a Hall of Fame.

He had taken on a pen name – Brom Breeler – that he had begun to use even when meeting people, as that is the name that he was most famous for. Though he was very proud to be a Malfoy, he liked the anonymity that came with a pen name; and very few people knew that it was Draco Malfoy behind the name Brom Breeler. It helped him get interviews from people that would have otherwise not divulged their information to a Malfoy.

Draco liked his job, for the most part, but had run into a horrible writer's block that led to some dull, uninspired pieces for the paper. Caught up between his parent's idea to relocate to a different home out of the blue, and his father's odd illness and senility that came from nowhere, all led to Draco's inability to produce two sentences worth reading.

He had sat himself up in bed and, in doing so, ran a hand through his thick, white-blonde hair. He looked around the room with a critical eye again and saw that his father must have bustled into his room again during the night. His odd ritual of bring a spoon and saucer into every room and setting it upside down, the spoon balanced on the saucer's base, was just one of the strange things he had begun to do.

His father's condition was spoken in code words and half-sentences between himself and his mother. They didn't dare write it out, due to the slightest of chances that someone could intercept their private letters and learn that all was not well with the great Lucius Malfoy.

Having had retired from his job, and living off a very bountiful retirement fund as well as the great Malfoy family's long-time wealth, there needn't be much exposure of Lucius to the public anymore. However, Draco had to deal with him every day while passing him in the halls or during meals.

The maid was no help; she had been with the family for years and had grown to be quite like a fat, lazy cat, having had been with the family too long to dispose of but old enough to be unable to do much more than linger from room to room, mostly enjoying the fireplace and her quarters.

Draco had written for the paper in all sorts of ways, and had once written an editorial about this maid, outlining how much she meant to the family. He cursed under his breath now, "fucking joke, keeping the house in this state", as he threw open his wardrobe to look for some clothing.

He slept nude often, enjoying the tumble of black and red silk sheets, its soft fold and caress against his body. He was used to living quite lavishly. This fine morning he stood in all his lithe, feline glory in front of a few dozen shirts, pants, and suits. He smiled to himself, pulled out one of many black slacks and a crisp black shirt and white tie. He pulled out some underclothes from a bureau beside his bed and then dressed quickly. He was slim and quite tall at about a thumb more than two meters.

His eyes whipped across the room with the keen eye of a reporter and he caught himself in the large, floor-length mirror. He smiled at himself grimly and acknowledged the start of a brand new day.

There was little to amuse himself with in the kitchen, so he snatched a roll from a basket on the table, wolfed it down by the time he reached the sink, and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher by the sink and drank it. That was his breakfast. He ate little, walked a lot, and had started to lose weight lately; before he looked quite healthy but now he was looking paler, with defined cheekbones and a somewhat depressed, thin slouch.

Just as he was leaving the kitchen, Lucius stumbled in. "Draco, where do you think you're going? Dinner's ready."

"Sorry?" Draco looked at his father coolly, used to his inane babbling after he suffered the stroke he had soon after retiring. That, and the senility that comes naturally with aging, had left Lucius completely out of his mind. "Look, Dad, just stay with Rose, I feel like getting coffee."

Rose was their aging maid.

"Rose? She's hanging from the ceiling, yes, yes," Lucius turned around and grasped an apple from the basket. He bit into it, set it down on the table, picked it up and bit into the opposite side, then said sadly to himself, "You're too young to be going out on your own like this."

Draco looked away from his father, both from embarrassment and pain; it was hard to see a man that was once so proud and so put-together broken to pieces like this. He knew that Narcissa would never let Lucius go to a "home", she would prefer to watch him herself until either she or he died. Draco didn't want Lucius to go live in a "home" either, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage with him.

Draco sighed and left the kitchen, calling out to Rose as he left, "I'll be back in two hours! Mind my father, would you?"

"Alright," She called back from the cozy room with the fireplace.

Scowling, Draco pulled on a light black blazer and stepped out into the cool September morning. It looked like it would rain any minute.

&&&&&&&&&&&

Draco slipped into the café and sat himself down in the corner. The waitress brought him his usual – a cup of coffee with some whipped cream and white chocolate shavings on the top – and he paid her, both for the coffee and the paper he picked up from the stand when he walked in. She left and he focused on the headline.

His rival at work was Neville Longbottom, who didn't go by pen name but knew Draco's. Though Neville started out writing small editorials and introspective half-page features, his popularity began to escalate when people found themselves identifying with his self-conscious, shy tone and cute joking manner. Neville often covered the milder stories, the ones about witches doing great things like saving someone from a fire, or witches and wizards gathering their money together to form a new orphanage. Draco covered huge sports events, terrible things like murders and rapes, and was often both on-site to these occurrences. He had seen terrible things, and was becoming increasingly tolerant of seeing blood, gore, and mayhem.

Right now he was assigned a different sort of article – a full-page article focusing on something about the community, something family-oriented, or something friendly. There was a new head of the paper, and she was branching out in liberal ways – trying to bring more color and joy to the world by including flowery stories amidst the front-page real headliners. Draco had managed to duck her "happy story" assignments, by either swapping stories with someone who got coverage of something Draco was more suited for or by going out and finding stories first, therefore getting to cover them and not having to write nonsense.

Yet, as fate had it, Draco's name came up in the hat of chance and he had to write something pansy-like and cheerful. He had gone to see Mrs. Kampf (the head) about it, and their conversation went something like this:

"I don't cover stories like this."

"Nonsense, you're our best journalist, uh..."

"Breeler."

"Right, Brom Breeler. Oh hey, you covered that murder-suicide story a few weeks ago, haven't you? That was before I came in, wasn't it? Excellent coverage, nice source work..."

"Yes, you see, those are the kind of stories I like to cover."

"With talent like yours, you could whip up a story that would raise the entire region's morale, Breeler."

"I don't like writing stories like this."

"A good journalist can find a story in anything. Your assignment is to write something about the community, something light-hearted, warm, perhaps even funny. Expand your horizons a little."

"I don't do warm and funny."

"I'm sorry, this is your story."

"Which story did Longbottom get?"

"That awful accident in a potions shop that got a whole block nearly burned down, the one in Broom's County."

"Oh, great, that's fabulous, Longbottom can't write a story like that! He should take my story! I can make a real front-page story out of his!"

"And his will be front-page, and yours will be too, if you do a good job. There's nothing else to say."

Now Draco looked at the second consecutive Sunday edition of the paper, with Neville's story on the most recent event – a foreign country's hurricane that had destroyed homes and taken lives – running as first-headline, front-page material. Draco skimmed the article, noting that he had taken a weak eye witness report as a major source, and hadn't thought of talking to a professional about why the storm was as severe as it was; rather, he took a humane twist and went into more depth about the people that died, their lives, and the mourning of the families, and what people were doing to clean the mess up. Draco thought about how he would have gotten to the raw meat of it, finding what caused it, how weather across the country foreshadowed it (perfect hindsight bias, he smirked to himself), what the damage of the storm was, the monetary loss, the effect on both Muggle and Magical World's stock markets... the story could have been stretched so far, so extensively!

A finger suddenly pressed his paper down from the middle and wiggled like a worm, trying to catch his attention. It took him a second to realize that it came with a voice, and his ears tuned in a bit too late, "- - cuse me... sir?"

He glanced up and saw that just over the finger, which had creased his paper into a V-shape in the middle, and saw a pair of brown eyes, lined excessively with black eye pencil.

Draco ducked his paper down and then brought it up again in front of her finger, smoothened it out, then closed it, folded it meticulously in half, pressed the crease down, and only then looked up and asked, "Yes?"

" Can I have the newspaper when you're done?" The voice asked again. He looked over the face, thinking about how he would describe it if he were writing an article – with kohl-lined, candid eyes – but no, he saw her cheeks and her hairdo – a pale face, speckled with the lightest of freckles, and black hair folding around her face like wings – but no, her lips and nose, her expression! – a cheeky, defiant grin riding on a pair of black-colored lips – or maybe he could just get to the point of it, he thought to himself laughingly, - a goth girl.

"Why's that?" Draco asked icily. It was too early in the morning and he had taken only one slurp of his coffee, so his attitude was still more than generous in the friendliness department than usual.

"You've taken the last paper. I always come here every morning and read the paper."

"What if I'd like to take it home with me?"

"Then I'm afraid you'd have to take me with you," She grinned and her black lips cut across her face like to knives, revealing very white teeth. Or perhaps her teeth weren't that white at all, but against her lipstick they looked pristine.

Draco wasn't in the mood for flirting. He was rather annoyed by now. Here was this stranger pestering him for his newspaper, and God damn it if he could ever have a morning to himself without someone breathing down his neck!

"Is it interesting today?" She asked.

"It's tolerable," Draco tapped his fingers at the headline – Twister Tears Homes, Lives Apart – and said, "That was supposed to be my story, you see."

"Oh! You write for the Prophet!" She looked positively delighted.

"Breeler?" Draco said, finally, after giving her a long hard stare. She was far too happy for this time in the morning. She was far too happy for someone dressed like they were going to a mime's funeral.

"Brom Breeler! I always read your stories! You're good at your job," her cheeks were infused now with pink undertones, "It's nice to meet you! I'm a fan! You write some good opinion columns and editorials too." She stuck her hand out to shake his. There was a ring with a skull on it on one hand, and two more rings on the other that were silver and clunky.

"Thank you," Draco said, shaking her hand. Her fingers were warm, his ice-cold. He blamed it on poor circulation: he was tall and thin and his heart just couldn't beat that hot blood to his fingers and toes, so every finger on his body was forever cold.

"So what do you mean about it being your story? Someone else already wrote it, right? So it isn't your story."

"Longbottom can't cover a story like I can," Draco leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, "I've been assigned a really lame piece and I can't get it done. I'm not used to writing those kinds of pieces, Longbottom is. Meanwhile he's getting all the stories that are up my alley, and I can't write a thing. Everyone's on my back about it."

"That sucks," She summarized the entire conversation with those words.

"No, really?" Draco looked at the paper critically.

"No wonder I haven't seen a Breeler story in the paper for a while," She seemed to miss his sarcasm entirely, either choosing to or simply not perceiving it in the first place.

Draco gulped down half his coffee and set the coffee cup aside, placing a few coins beside it. "Here, take it," he moved the newspaper forwards on the table until it was right underneath her fingertips. They were, unsurprisingly, lacquered and black.

"You're done?"

"No, but this conversation is," Draco stood, attempting to get away from her. He wasn't in the mood for talking, nor had he been for the past few days. He couldn't even write back a decent letter to his own mother, because it would come out whiny and accusing: why aren't you back yet?, father's out of hand, he isn't doing well, I can't get any work done, why do we have to move?, it's cold and drafty in every room because Rose forgets to close the windows.

"You're nice," She struck back.

"I'm a journalist. I'm never nice." With that, he walked away, pulling on his blazer. As he walked out of the café and past its floor to ceiling windows, he saw her sitting at his table, reading Neville's article and scowling a little. She had a black skirt on, fishnets, oversized army boots and a black sweatshirt.

Draco never could understand odd people like that. Why draw so much attention to yourself? He walked on, shaking his head, wondering why she chose to pester him about the newspaper. There were other people reading the paper in the café. Then he realized he was wearing all black but his white tie, and he rolled his eyes at his own lack of imagination – she probably thought he was like her.

For a moment he considered never going back to the café again, since she appeared to be a regular, and so was he, and, now being acquainted, he would have to greet her every day. Draco didn't want to greet her. However, nobody made coffee like Starwand's.