Draco chuckled to himself as he took the stairs to his apartment three at a time. She would be over in an hour with all her stuff, ready make the place theirs.

The three top drawers of his dresser were emptied and waiting for her, as was what she hadn’t already claimed of the right side of the closet and space in the bathroom.

Ours, Draco couldn’t help thinking to himself. She was so very different from Cecelia. There was something fierce burning inside her that made every second they spent together intoxicating. The very air around her was hard to get enough of.

Draco nearly unhinged his front door in excitement, something arguably dangerous swelling in his chest as he tried to crush it back down. It felt unsafe to be so ecstatic.

You don’t have to worry about that. She’s not like Celia, he reminded himself once more. He stepped into the apartment, but stopped suddenly with his hand still on the doorknob.

The place was buzzing with an uncomfortable sort of silence. Gray eyes swept across the entryway, taking in the cleared off table and spotless rug. A month ago, that wouldn’t have been so unusual, but he had grown accustomed to seeing Ginny’s shoes strewn about on the floor and her purse and coat laid across the table. There was something unsettling about their absence.

He closed the door behind him slowly, listening for the sound of Ginny farther into the apartment. But all that filled his ear was the buzzing silence.

He walked lightly down the corridor, almost afraid to venture any further. A thick feeling of dread was seeping into his chest. He pushed his bedroom door open tentatively, looking past with widened eyes.

Everything she owned was gone. His closet looked oddly empty without her clothes in it. The uneven stack of books once found in the corner was gone, along with the photographs she had plastered on the walls of the two of them. A sharp pain shot through Draco’s chest. His vision blurred gray around the edges as he stepped further into the room.

His eyes focused momentarily on the folded sheet of parchment lying on top of his dresser, and his hands, with a mind of their own, reached for and unfolded it.

He took in the shaky handwriting, so different from her normal loopy scrawl, and lowered his tearing eyes to read.

Draco,

I know you cannot possibly understand this, and I would never ask you to. Just know that I cannot stay here with you. I will always remember our time in Paris, but I understand if you choose to forget it. Goodbye, Draco.

Love,

Ginny

The paper was damp as he shredded it between his fingers and let it fall to the floor like the leaves outside. He looked around the room helplessly, as if for something to do, and his eyes landed on the only thing she had left hanging upon the wall.

As he drew closer to it, he could only make out its vague colors through his tears. The flaming red of her hair, painted beside the shaggy blond of his own – the portrait from beside the river. Why would she have left this?

Teeth clenched and eyes burning, Draco lifted his wand. “Incendio!”

But as the flame licked its way up from the corner, Draco cried out and smothered it with his hand. His fingers shined red from the burn, but he couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything at all.

She wasn’t that different from Celia after all.

The pain in his chest was so great that Draco couldn’t find the energy to rise from the bench. He stared blankly out across the park. The trees were bare now, and all the leaves had been swept away. The couples and children that had once laughed and played in the sun were all gone, chased into their homes by the biting cold.

He saw her everywhere he looked, as translucent and fleeting as a ghost or a shadow. His heart ached.

It wasn’t only under the barren trees at the park. He saw her alongside the river, or at the café, or laughing in the back row of the cinema. He would turn, a smile upon his face, to catch another glimpse of her, only to find he was imagining her once more.

Paris was dead to him.

He sighed, reaching into his pocket and removing the letter that he had put back together with tape and tears. It was crumpled and faded now, for he had read it so many times.

He bent forward to let his eyes sweep over the shaky scrawling, choking as he always did when they came across the final two words. Love, Ginny.

Draco rose from the bench, stuffing the letter into his pocket, and began the long amble home. As hard as he tried to make himself walk faster, his feet wouldn’t listen. What did his feet know of his heart’s sufferings? They couldn’t know that every second he spent in the streets of the city was another second of remembering her.

At least once he made it to the apartment he could open a Firewhisky and drown his sorrows at the bottom of the bottle. For the days when even Firewhisky couldn’t make him forget, he downed a potion and collapsed onto the bed, now covered with plain white sheets.

He coughed to push back the traitorous tears welling in this throat. He made sure to keep his eyes on the cobbled paving below his feet, so that he didn’t see the stores where they had shopped together.

He averted his eyes as he passed a couple strolling down the avenue, hand in hand and laughing. Their cheeks and noses were bright red from the cold, but Draco could tell they hadn’t noticed. They were each other’s world.

Draco coughed again. There was no life for him here now. There would be no living. He would leave Paris. He would go somewhere else.

The sun was trickling over the rooftops as Draco stared up at the building in wonder. The man standing beside him kept staring at him uncertainly, and then down either side of the sloping street. A harsh wind was picking up, ruffling Draco’s hair, and the man clutched his hat to his head.

“It’s good, no?” the man asked, peering up at Draco.

Draco nodded, still gazing up at the two stories of crumbling whitewashed wall.

“You plan to make it American club?” the man asked, looking expectantly at the wallet in Draco’s hand. “Here in Prague?”

Draco shook his head. “No. An English saloon. British.”

The man nodded, his eyes still fixed on Draco’s pocketbook.

Draco sighed and pulled out the check. “Gringotts is okay?”

The man nodded. “The best.”

Draco spent months pouring every bit of himself into the old building. It had the most perfect layout he could have asked for, but everything else seemed to be falling apart or broken. The barroom didn’t even have solid floors, let alone a bar or the right color. But with the help of a team of wizarding carpenters and decorators, he fixed up and furnished his building. It had a barroom and back parlors for special guests, as well as second story living quarters.

Eight months after his life in Paris had died, he found himself in Prague. He found himself with The Sleeping Dragon.

It was one of the bar’s busier nights. Draco surveyed the chatter and gambling through a haze of cigar smoke, tapping his fingers against the bar. A grim smile tugged at his lips as his highest paying customer stepped inside the door and handed his coat to one of his men.

The place had gathered quite a crowd in the past year and a half. His younger self might have regarded it with something close to pride, but the dull satisfaction in his chest did the trick most days now.

Draco accepted a glass of scotch from his bartender and began his rounds through the gambling tables, eyeing a twitchy Gobstones player suspiciously for a while before moving on to the Muggle card players. After circling through the tables, he made his way back to the bar. He would watch for a while longer before retiring upstairs, bored of the drunken wizards and their escorts, to read a book and drink some Firewhisky.

“Draco!” a woman from across the room screeched. None of the men looked up from their games or drinks, but Draco flicked his eyes in her direction.

She looked beautiful. Her hair was up in curls and her pale skin was flushed a deep red. It took Draco a minute to find her name.

“Katia. What are you doing here?” he asked, guiding her to the side of the room with his free hand.

There were tears in her eyes as she watched him down the rest of his scotch. “You haven’t called for me in a week,” she sniffed, looking up at him. Her breath reeked of alcohol.

“I’ve been busy,” he replied coldly, putting his glass on the bar. She looked very much like Saskia. Or had it been Nadia? They all tended to blur with the Firewhisky.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she whispered, laying a hand on his arm possessively.

He removed her hand. “You need to go home. You’ve had too much to drink.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she snarled in a throaty voice.

“Damir?” Draco called. The dark monster of a man thundered across the floor, his hands behind his back. “Please escort Katia home. Make sure she stays there,” he added sharply.

Sighing, Draco gave the barroom one last sweeping look before beginning the climb upstairs. He unlocked his door and waved his wand at the candles. The soft glow was suddenly cast upon a woman sitting in his chair.

She rose, a pale blue gown fluttering around her ankles, and smiled at him. “You’ve been a while,” she remarked lowly.

He nodded. It didn’t take him very long to place her name. “Things got busy, Collette.”

She smiled again. “But you can never stay away.”

“How did you even get in here?” he said a little too bitingly.

“I borrowed a key,” she replied softly, her full lips curving into a catlike smile once more.

“I’ll have to have a stern word with my staff,” he said gruffly, turning to his desk.

“Come here,” she demanded, shaking out her luminous blonde hair. “I’m not one of your stupid bints. I’m not even one of your whores. I don’t want anything from you. No strings. Isn’t that what you want too?”

He was tempted to tell her no, that wasn’t what he wanted at all. What he wanted had fiery hair and a soul to match, but that was long gone in another country with another man. He was tempted to tell her she may be different in her approach, but Collette was just like every other woman who stayed the night at The Sleeping Dragon. He was tempted to tell her to go home, as he had to Katia.

But he didn’t. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed searing kissing into his neck, and he forced himself to return them. But he couldn’t force himself to wake up for her. His life was a little like sleeping, he sometimes thought grimly. He was the sleeping dragon.

Author notes: Please leave a review.