A/N: Taken from the Potter's Place 'Exile Challenge Prompt.'
Disclaimer: It's all JKR's.
VIVAASA
by: carpetfibers
Day 37
It is one month before he manages the words.
Her schedule is easy to learn. University in the mornings and work in the afternoons. He sees no sign of her wand or her magic. Dishes are washed and dried by hand; the floor is swept with a broom. She says nothing of his encampment on her couch, and every day at noon, she returns home long enough to prepare a simple lunch. He eats and feels more of that tightness, that inexplicable twisting in his chest. He tries to remember her as she was years before, an annoyance and impediment. He tries to remember her as she was then, and only then does the tightness relieve itself.
He reads during the long hours of her absence; he reads the books that line her shelves and pile behind the doorway. He reads the discarded newspapers in the rubbish bin and the months-old periodicals that border her hall closet. He learns slowly, unwilling to request assistance despite her numerous offers. She says nothing when she returns home and finds him on her couch still, his brow furrowed and lips pressed. She retreats to change clothing, moves to the kitchen, and leaves the finished dish on the end table beside him. He eats but does not thank; he finishes but does not clean up. He pretends the part of a visiting dignitary, of the esteemed guest.
He takes and uses until the day he finishes the last book, and then, he opens the suitcase that followed him to the blue couch in the small room. The wallet is no longer an item of ciphers and cryptic messages; he understands it now, and the baby step for others is the giant leap for him. He steps beyond the front door for the first time since those two days of misery and flinches in the sunlight.
"Malfoy, you cooked," she observes, hours later, surprise etched across her plain features.
"I made sandwiches," he corrects her, frowning. "And the soup came from a can, but it's hot."
She stares at him, her brown eyes wide in an empathy he cringes against. He cannot hide the disgust he feels having stooped to the mundane act of using a microwave. Science- technology- the Muggles call it; artless and obvious, he renames it.
"It's good," she tells him after a few bites. "Thanks, by the way. It's nice to come home and have something waiting for me."
"Like I said, Granger, it's soup from a can and pre-sliced bread with cheese. Nothing remarkable about it." Before, the meal would have taken three wrist flicks and fourteen seconds of concentration. Ten minutes were missing from his life due to the meal; he wondered at the lack of regret he felt for that lost patch of time.
"Still." She smiles, the gesture unnervingly warming. "Thank you all the same."
He dislikes that she says the words so easily, and in the morning, he finds her note by the hall closet. She made a space for him there, a notch in the wall to claim as his own. He unpacks his suitcase and finds his dress robes, worn during the sentencing. The fabric stretches sinuously against his fingers, and in a fit of pique, he shoves the remainders of his life back into the bag. The empty closet watches him as he returns to his place on the couch, listless and angry.
"Thanks," he tells her that evening, over another meal of soup and sandwiches. "But this isn't my home."
Her lips part, a semblance of unhappiness marring the soft lines, but she nods and does not press. "Okay."
End Day 38