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Draco only had an hour.
Draco only had an hour, and Harriet--Rigel, she was Rigel, he thought, head spinning, how had he missed it for so long--was nowhere to be found.
He stopped at a juncture of two halls for a moment to breathe, dragging his fingers through his hair.
He had an hour. An hour till the ceremony, which meant he really had more like half an hour to find her--to explain his plan--before someone else discovered her wherever she'd hidden herself and dragged her back down to where her mother was still running frantic over her disappearance like a beheaded chicken. A half hour, to rescue Rigel from becoming a Lestrange, wedded to the man he--she (and Merlin that was still weird, to think of Rigel as a woman) loathed above all others.
Draco glanced back and forth between the two halls, searching them for any difference that might give him a clue which way Harriet had gone, and finding nothing.
He cursed, and drew his wand, nearly fumbling it as it came out of it's holster. There was no use using the point-me charm, he had already discovered, as apparently the entirety of Dartmoor was warded against it, but maybe he was close enough now…
"Accio Harry Potter."
It wouldn't work normally under such heavy wards--or on a person, in any case, but it was a much more powerful charm than point-me, and if you were already close enough…
Draco's wandtip listed ever so slightly to the left, as if there were something tugging on it, and Draco smiled before breaking into a jog.
Four more Accio spells later, and still with more than fifty minutes till the ceremony, Draco came to a stop in front of an anonymous door.
He stood there, just staring at it a few seconds longer than was necessary, wondering if this was really the right decision.
Mother and Father had managed to avoid his getting engaged to a half-blood, as so many of the other high-ranking noble heirs in the S.O.W. party had been for the sake of pushing Lord Riddle's new agenda. And here he was, about to propose to one anyway, because--
It was Rigel.
Because it was Rigel, and he loved her and would do anything to have her back again, even if she was a half-blood, even if she had been the one to disappear on them in the first place, had vanished, without a trace, had been here the whole time and never told him--
Draco took a deep breath. He wanted this. He wanted this, and it was going to be okay, because Harriet was Rigel and not just any half-blood.
(But what if she wasn't? What if he was jumping to conclusions, what if he offered and she said yes and he was wrong and Harriet wasn't Rigel at all, Rigel was still missing--)
Another breath.
She was Rigel. He knew she was Rigel. Whatever she'd done to make people believe she'd spent four years in the Alleys had been convincing, but if you swept that away, it was obvious that she was Rigel. And if there was one thing Draco would never do it was let Rigel be forced into a marriage with Caelum Lestrange when he was right there and perfectly capable of marrying her himself.
He pushed open the door, words of comfort in his lips, and then nearly choked when his eyes started working and he realized that she wasn't alone.
Wasn't alone, because Lestrange was also here, and they were kissing.
It wasn't a particularly deep kiss, or a nice one. Draco's cousin stood stiff as a board, neck taut with obvious tension, and Harriett's hands on his shoulders were awkward and unsure, but the sheer feeling--wonder, desire, determination, hope--radiating off them both as she kissed him was enough to make Draco dizzy, his heart being squeezed like it wanted to fall out of his chest.
The sensation battled violently with the visceral disgust building in his gut.
They were kissing. Their lips were touching and their bodies were way too close and it was Caelum and Rigel kissing, with Harriet as the obvious instigator, on her toes and leaning into his personal space, and it was so, so wrong.
"What," Draco sputtered, trying and failing to scrub the image before him from his mind. "What are you doing?"