Disclaimer:
Don't own, don't sue, don't ask, don't tell.Pour Kat, ma fleur du mai, ma petite cacahuète.
"Arachis hypogaea"
The din was deafening. But so subtle a din it was, so full of ambient noise, of trains coming and going, of people coming and going, of time just coming and then just going... you never really realize what a terrible, ghastly din it really is until you've finally snapped.
Draco hadn't snapped. Not just yet. But he was getting close.
Travel by these methods, these that actually involve a great lot of time, involve the actual physical movement of one place to another by physically passing over a great lot of physical space... He hated it. It made him irritable. But long-distance Apparation, especially over any large body of water, was highly dangerous. Living in England, a bloody little island, made life just a little more difficult like that.
Kings Cross was bright that day. Garishly so. Another irritation. But the lounge was blessedly dim, with low lights and a constant hazy veil of cigarette smoke. Smoking was not a strictly Muggle nor strictly Wizard thing to do. Bad habits crassly knew no discrimination.
It was the lounge just off the main boarding area of Platform 9 ¾, where people could sit and wait for their trains. And drink. Draco could understand why, travelling like this for any long period of time—the hassle, the tediousness, the waiting—anyone would want to drink.
This was just a place to wait; that's all it was. For most people, it was just the place to wait for your next train after having just gotten off your previous train. A purgatory. A limbo.
Draco felt like he'd been in a waiting lounge all his life.
And Draco was drinking, drinking as he waited for his train. He could hardly remember why he was going to France in the first place. He didn't even know French very well. The only phrase he could remember from his lessons was "Je mange les cacahuètes avec mon vin," which was "I eat peanuts with my wine." And Draco didn't eat peanuts with his wine. More irritation, just by his trains of thought...!
...Heh. Peanuts.
He actually had a packet of peanuts right here. The barman—who probably worked for peanuts, Draco's thoughts automatically added—had given them to him with his pint. He hadn't asked for this plastic packet of peanuts; the barman just gave them to him, as if they were a part of the beer...!
And, honestly, who wants salty nuts with their alcohol? ...Were they really nuts? Or were they legumes? Or were they simply something all their own, simply... peanuts?
Draco found himself looking over the plastic packet out of a lack of anything else to do. It had a foolish-looking cartoon peanut on the label. The fine print boasted that these peanuts were grown right here in England. Ooh, domestic peanuts. Draco didn't recognize the name of the town—a Muggle town, it must be. Oh, yes, Muggles offer something to the world. They offer us peanuts!
...No one really wants peanuts, you know.
Drinking more, Draco considered himself and the peanut. Considered the insignificance of a nut/legume served in pubs alongside a pint, sometimes not even a real pub, but a waiting lounge between trains. Considered that insignificance, magnified to perhaps... one packet of peanuts, or even one peanut in one packet in one pub, on and on... a smallness, perhaps, comparable only to the smallness of one person in all the world.
...Draco was not a peanut. Would not be a peanut.
His train was boarding soon. He left the lounge, left the peanuts, to board a train that was not his first but would not be his last, to find places with wine... and with peanuts.