Eyes are glazing over and the snores of the some junior assistant punctuate the speech at regular intervals. As a Ministry employee determined to rise above his family name and make a place for himself, (he'd been promoted from the one who gets everyone coffee, to secretary of foreign affairs, just this month) he really is trying to pay attention to the proposed new changes in international standard dragon preservation. No one could blame him for failing, though.
Gaze wandering, he spots an unfamiliar red head at the table next to his. The man is smiling slightly, almost as though sharing a joke with himself, and has given up all pretense of listening to the lecturer. Instead, he seems to be fingering some sort of garishly colored pills. Bemused, Draco continues watching. Redhead has now popped one of the pills into his mouth and is rapidly turning green and queasy.
Draco's attention is pulled to the door, where the man is now running, looking like he's about to hurl. Barely realizing what is happening, Draco finds that as well as his eyes, the rest of him seems to have also followed the man out into the hallway.
"Came out to see how I was doing?" the man lightly asks, as he pops half a pill into his mouth. Immeadiately, he begins to regain his regular healthy complexion. "Puking Pastilles. Useful things, aren't they?" the man speaks up again, noting Draco's look at the pill bottle still in his hand. "One side makes you about sick, popping the other will cure you in a second. Supposed to be for school children who don't have enough of an attention span for class, but I'm not above using as escapes from meetings. More interesting then just walking out."
Torn between a desire to smirk at the nonchalant childishness of the stranger, and between answering his first question, Draco remains silent for another minute. "If you must know, I just wanted to make sure you weren't an intruder. Never seen you around here before." Even to his own ears, the excuse falls flat. The truth is that there's something intriguing about the man. The burns on his face, laughter in his eyes, and a dragon tattoo snaking up his arm into the sleeve of his shirt are the exact opposites of Draco in his freshly starched white shirt and slicked back hair. There is something almost attractive about that.
"An intruder, eh? Guess you caught me then. I'm here for the robbery this afternoon." The man begins to laugh infectiously and Draco can't help but snort back. Just then, a particularly loud snore drifts through the doorway and both men begin to laugh harder, hands over their mouths so as not to be heard.
The man grabs Draco and they run, rushing past office doors, giggles escaping through breathless gasps. Draco feels exhilarated, running down the hallway but part of him thinks to be glad glad that no one important is there to see how undignified he looks. Finally, the reach the end of the corridor and they turn towards each other, catching their breaths. "By the way, the name is Charlie. Charlie Weasley," the man (Charlie) says, sticking out his hand.
A moment of shock freezes Draco. Weasley? The war is long over though, Charlie has just saved him (made him laugh, even) from the most boring meeting of his career so far, and Draco finds it hard to be disgusted.
He stretches out his hand in return. "Draco Malfoy."
this may be awful, but i kind of had fun writing it.
for the pairing one hour challenge.
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