FINALLY UPDATED! It took me a life and a half, but this chapter…. c'est fini! Anywho, Hermoine still hasn't joined the party, but she will soon:D Disclaimer is on my homepage and don't forget to review!
It was pissing rain again. It seemed like it always pissed rain in London. Even when it was sunny out, it was still just pissy. I've always loved London for that reason. No matter where you were in the world, you could be certain that it was pissing rain and generally gloomy in London. There was a certainty in the bleak, gray London sky that I had always been drawn to. It could also be noted that I look like sin in this black suit with the London gray as a backdrop, or so I've been told…twice..by the same homeless woman on the underground. I may love the weather, but there were some aspects of muggle London that I would just never understand.
The suit was nice and finely tailored and all that, but I preferred dress robes to this muggle get-up any day of the week. Necessary evils and all that. It was all part of the very slow and painful process of converting the Malfoy fortune from galleons to the muggle currency of 'pounds'. Strange word, pounds. I had been told that after a few scares at Gringotts, my mother decided it was time to have a bit of money stowed away in case the great wizard bank actually did fall through and our fortune was lost. Five years ago, I would've believed that complete and utter bullocks, but I was a man changed(thanks to her) and it only took me three hours of combing through bank records to find the real reason for our sudden need close our Gringotts account.
I found that, what I had thought at the time to be a great show of the mercy of the wizards opposing Voldie towards those who bare the universal tattoo of evil, had actually been a great show of how even the most incorruptible of magic folk could make an exception for money. My father had bribed his way out of a life sentence at Azkaban and had spent more than half my inheritance doing so.
We weren't relocating the money; we were hiding it from my father.
Which brings us, more or less, up to date with me battling the rain and fog of London to make it to the dodgy pawn shop with my pockets filled with galleons. It may have been my idea to exchange the gold to muggle currency with exchange rates being at an all time high, but the whole adventure had put me in a foul mood. These shady back-door dealings went against everything I had been brought up with. We were purebloods; superior in every way. We didn't associate with those beneath our station, simply because we were better than them.
"Everyone has to make a living, Draco. Even your great, great, great grandparents had to do so. You wouldn't have a penny of that fortune if they hadn't put in the hard work just like the rest of us."
I flinched. I didn't mean to, but it happened nonetheless. It had become a horrible trait of my existence to hear her voice in my head whenever I had any semblance of my old self loose in my head. Her voice swept through my thoughts like a fast-acting poison, killing all the Malfoy that was and leaving nothing but the stripped bare and numb Draco in it's wake.
I shook my head vigorously, sending a spray of rain water over my already soaked coat, trying to dispel her voice from my head. I took a spiteful amount of solace in the fact that trading my gold inheritance in for paper inheritance was not the type of "hard work" she had been referring to.
"Insufferable Ferret", her voice whispered back.
I managed a self-depreciating smirk and pushed on through the balmy rain of London. I made it into the cramped, damp, back-alley pawn shop in record time. The balding, elderly gentleman behind the counter gave me his best crooked-tooth grin. His name was Karl. I didn't know much about Karl except that he liked to talk about his wife and that he seemed to like me. I think the treasure of his affection had more to do the fist-fulls of gold I deposited into his care every week than my winning personality.
"Wonderful gloom today, t'isn't it, ?" he asked in his horrible cock-kneed lilt.
"Perfectly wonderful, Karl" I said in my practiced Malfoy drawl. I have no idea why he called me 'silver' and was tempted to ask him, but didn't quite care enough to familiarize myself with the inner workings of Karl's mind. I knew enough about him to call him an acquaintance and that would've been enough to satisfy her sense of my humanity.
I felt the corners of my mouth turn down as I remembered and I made no motion to camouflage it. Karl noticed, but made no comment as I started to remove the gold from my pockets and lay it down for Karl's inspection.
Despite my best intentions to stay out of Karl's head, I found myself asking him anyway. Probably just to fill the silence while he went back to his register and unlocked the bank notes.
"Cuz of yer oora! You may be in the gold trade, but something about yer person jus' reminds me o' silver" he shrugged off his answer as if it should've been obvious to me when I looked in the mirror that I was vaguely reminiscent of silver.
"Interesting" was my one-word reply to his lame observance.
"Ya know, I remember the first time ya walked into my shop, cuz my wife made such a rucuss 'bout how such a silvery soul shouldna be wearing red. She kept pratting 'bout how silvery souls needed dark hues n'such nonsense and best to leave the bright colors to the gold souls. So ever since I'd started calling ya to me wife cuz she said silver needed dark, but that upset her as me words are like to do, an' she said we should be callin' ya . Said ya had more bright silver than dark in ya, she did."
Karl smiled,but it seemed more to himself than to me. I had to strain myself to try and decifer Karl's words, but his story hit so close hime that I almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Instead I managed a weak twitch of my lips to signify my amusement while I stuffed the notes into my pockets.
"Didn't know you talked about me Karl, especially to your wife." I smirled when I said it, hoping the tone would come off as joking, but decidedly not trying too hard to do so.
"Oh, I don't , but it seems you and my wife have a mutual friend. Ya see, my wife's friend used to prattle on 'bout a silver-haired man quite a lot so when my wife saw yer through the stockroom, she knew she was him…"
Karl's story was starting to make me sweat. I could feel chills running up my spine and the fine hair at the base of my neck stand on end. I had the worst feeling about who Karl's wife and my mutual friend was and if he said her name out loud, I'm not sure I would be able to stop myself. I might leap the countertop and wring him for every ounce of information he had about her.
"Yes, Indeed, sir. And my wife just loves having acquaintances with ."
I hate to leave this here, but I really felt this needed to be updated I hope to update soon, but if I don't get reviews then I don't get emails and I forget I have a story to work on so please REVIEW! Smooches!