Draco’s Pov

I was sprinting through a dark forest heart pounding my hand clasping tightly to the brunette running beside me. “If anything happens to me, just keep running,” I told her in between gasps of breath. I couldn’t lose her I just couldn’t it would break me she was the best thing to ever happen to me.

“You’re crazy if you think I’d leave you.”  Her Brown eyes flashed with hurt for a moment before a spell hit a tree above our heads, causing it to explode, knocking us both down. We didn’t have time to recover from the blast before my father cast an unforgivable curse at the only woman I’d truly and wholly loved.  “Avada Kedavra,” My, fathers voice cried out into the blackness around us I flung myself in front of the muggle girl before the spell could reach her. There was a flash of green and someone screaming my name then nothing, just an all-consuming blackness.

I woke with a gasp for, and for a moment I didn’t recognize where I was before I remembered that I was in my muggle home. Forcing myself to calm down and go about my morning routine, I grabbed an apple on my way to get the morning paper. I saw my elderly neighbor; Madeline struggling with a heavy looking box and went to help her. She had been the only one to be kind enough to welcome me to the neighborhood even made me a lasagna. “Here let me get that.” after pacing in said box in the house a task which I would have deemed servant stuff before the second wizarding war. I'd had to mature a lot in the time that had passed. I had started to live contently with the muggles. I'd started to work a job at the café Madeline ran.

“Draco dear you have been eating properly haven’t you.” There was one of the things that endeared me to the older woman so much she treated me as if I was her grandson always doting on me, making sure I’d eaten, hiring me on the spot when she’d found out I was looking for work.

“Yes, ma'am three square meals a day,” I said with a smile. Madeline eyed suspiciously for a moment before letting out a sigh that let me know she was about to call my bluff.

“Well then let me make you breakfast, an apple won’t do you much good.”  There it was again you could not come to her house without her making you eat something.

The fact that she loved feeding people was one of the first things I'd learned about her. The second was that she wasn’t from the U.K originally, she’d grown up in America. She fell in love with her late husband, here when he'd died, she moved back to Europe to remember him. Opening up a café and fulfilling her late husband’s dream of owning their own business.

“I wouldn’t want to be a bother,” I politely informed her.

“Draco I’m Sothern if we don’t offer to feed you that means we don’t like you, besides I want you to meet my granddaughter. She’s coming to stay with me for the summer and is due here any minute.”

(Time skip brought to you by the smell of frying bacon)

I was sipping on a cup of coffee waiting for Madeline’s granddaughter to arrive so we could eat. “Grandma, I’m here.” called a feminine voice from the living room. I wondered over to the kitchen archway to see the voice belonged to and discovered a girl about my age with long brown hair and eyes that resembled the color of hot chocolate. Even I had to admit that there was something warm about her, it was as if her being there was chasing away a chill I hadn’t known had settled into my bones. She eyed me suspiciously much like her grandmother had done earlier.

“Who are you?” her voice was cold and clipped very different than her grandmother’s kind tone.

“I’m Draco Malfoy, work for your grandmother. I also happen to live next door.” She arched an eyebrow as if to ask why I was in her grandmother’s house.

“Oh, calm down, Nora, I invited him to have breakfast with us,” Madeline stated as she packed in a tray full of plates with bacon eggs American biscuits, etc. “Sorry about that Draco she’s been on edge lately.” The older woman offered with a kind smile.

“It’s alright ma’am; she doesn’t know me, it’s understandable.” After that, we all ate breakfast in uncomfortable silence despite Madeline’s best attempt at small talk.