Wow, writing fanfic makes me so organised. When I write original stuff I
just write it but with fanfic I have all these neat little chapter
summaries and everything. I have summaries up to chapter twenty six already
(and weirdly enough I've written half of twenty five already)! This is so
not me; the day I become organised is the day the earth starts rotating
backwards!
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Chapter Three: Welcome to New York
The conveyor belt at baggage reclaim had proved to be too much for Draco. The first time his trunk (that now looked more like a suitcase due to some transfiguring earlier) had come around he had just watched it in amazement, wondering how all this worked without magic. The second time, understanding a little better, he tried to grab it off unsuccessfully. The third time it came around Dawn, who already had her bag and was waiting at the side impatiently, pushed Draco out of the way and expertly swung it off her self.
"Not that hard" she remarked with a smirk on her face. Draco just glared at her which made her smirk more. "The motel is like a ten minute walk from here, you OK carrying your bag or do you think we'll need a taxi?" "I'll manage" he replied, resisting the urge to cost a spell to make the bag any lighter. Under age magic could be traced and Draco intended to leaven any trail back in LA.
---------------
Do you have a credit card?" asked the man at the motel.
"Yeah" said Dawn handing one over. She looked over at Draco who looked confuse again. "I'll take it you don't have one." He said to him.
"No" he replied
"No card, no room" said the man at the desk.
"Put them both on mine" said Dawn. She turned to Draco. "You will pay me back and if you try to sneak away without paying me I will beat the crap out of you, don't think I don't know how"
"OK" said Draco, a little surprised by the sudden violent threat. "Uh thanks?"
"Well Miss Emerson" said the motel owner. "You're in cabins 4 and 5"
---------------
Draco had the sense to wait until they were out of the reception before asking. "Emerson? I thought you said you're second name was Summers"
Dawn checked over her shoulder that they were away from the reception then replied "It is, but the card belongs to a friend"
"Won't the friend mind you taking it?"!
"I doubt it, she's been dead over a year" replied Dawn, not wanting to get into it. She had grieved for Anya and Spike a long time ago and although she still missed them sometimes she liked to think she was over the loss by now"
"Sorry" said Draco.
"It's OK; strangely enough I think Anya may have understood what I'm doing. That or she would have seen the simple solution that I missed. Having said that she never would have given me money, not when she could be buying pretty things for herself" She stopped at the door with the number five on it. "I'll take this one, you can have next door, unless this room is really gross and yours is better in which case we're swapping. Well see ya" She disappeared into her room leaving Draco to go into his.
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Draco looked around his room with distaste. It was dark, dank and had a peculiar smell. The sheets on the bed were a colour that probably used to be white, but was now a more greyish colour. The blanket on top was brown, threadbare and looked itchy.
He knew he should probably unpack his suitcase, but he wasn't quite sure how. In the past all he had to do was drop his clothes on the floor and a house elf would come and do the rest. With a look in the drawers he decided unpacking probably wasn't the best plan. They were all dusty and damp and one had something in it, something mouldy and scary.
After lying on his bed for a while and wondering what the hell that big box with the buttons actually did Draco was interrupted in his thoughts by a knock on the door.
"Hey" said Dawn when he answered. "So I was thinking we're in this whole new city and don't really know anybody else so you wanna go get something to eat?"
"OK" he replied. He picked up his jacket and they started walking towards a diner that Dawn said wasn't far away.
"SO I'm glad you agreed to come with me" said Dawn as they started walking "'cause I can look after myself and everything but young girl alone in a big city is still a total target and I've always been taught that I was too weak to actually look like a target. I can defend myself when I get into the situation and oh my god I'm babbling"
"I noticed"
"Well I need to with you; you're not exactly Mr talkative are you?"
"I talk when I have something to say, I just don't have the mudblood obsession with always talking"
She stopped walking and turned to face him. "Ok I know you just insulted me but what the hell is a mudblood"
'Shit', he said in his head. "It doesn't matter" he said, knowing she wouldn't accept that but giving himself a few more seconds to cover his tracks.
"It damn well does matter. If you said it then it must have been important because you only speak when you have something to say"
"Its British slang, it's a swear it basically means anybody not British, but generally specifically Americans. I'm sorry, I'm just irritable 'cause I'm kinda tired" He was apologising to a muggle? What the hell was wrong with him?
She calmed down a bit with his apology and carried on walking, Draco in step beside her "British slang eh? Never hear Spike use that one, and he pretty much used every swear that existed. Insulted Americans a whole lot to, maybe it was too modern for him"
"Who's Spike?" he asked, seeing an opportunity for a topic change.
"Old friend, he died at the same time as Anya" she replied quietly
"I seem to have a habit of bringing up these old friends. See why I don't talk much?" She laughed and he inwardly cringed; now he was making jokes, jokes that made fun of himself rather than other people. What the hell was happening to him? He decided quickly that this had something to do with Dawn being the only person he knew in this city, well actually country. He wanted to stay in her good books.
Dawn wondered why she was even bothering with this guy. He went from being nice one minute to being a total bastard, then back to nice again. It was starting to annoy her but the idea of being totally alone scared her a little and she chose to put up with this guy instead.
---------------
"So we've made small talk for ten minutes how about we try talking properly now?" suggested Dawn. AS they sat in the diner waiting for their food
"Huh?" said Draco.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm hungry?"
"No, I mean in New York, why aren't you back in England drinking tea or something?"
"You really like the stereotype huh?" he replied
"Well Giles is British and he's always drinking tea. He's not so heavy on the tweed anymore but he hasn't lost his tea drinking habits. Spike was from England too, but he never drank tea, he never really drank much except for" she stopped herself, realising what she was about to say. "Water" she finished "He had this weird craze where he only drank water. Spike was very weird. But back to the subject you were telling me why you left England"
"No I wasn't you were asking" he replied smirking
"Same thing, so are you going to enlighten me?"
'What the hell', he thought. "I was at school; I go to a boarding school. Part of me was glad to be there because I got away from my father. He's really strict and expects me to just follow in his footsteps and be a" shit, um "lawyer like him. Even though he's an evil son of bitch who prefers to support mass murderers with power than the good guys. In some ways I agree with him, but I'd still like to make my own mind up, I'm not a follower. Well I suppose I am but I don't want to be. Basically back at school I realised I couldn't change there, if I stayed I'd have to follow the track I had set out that pretty much turned me into my father. So I ran" he quickly added "What about you?" so they didn't have to linger on the topic of him for too long, he had pretty much told the truth but he didn't want to go into details that he couldn't.
"Getting away from my sister. I love her but I'm just tired of being nothing but her sister. Lately she's been really busy recruiting for this new school, and I've been travelling around with her. To everybody we meet I'm just Buffy's sister. Back at the school I really don't fit in. There's nowhere for me to live and go to an ordinary school. I was planning to train to become a teacher at this school, just so I could feel like I fit in, but I don't know if that's what I really want to do. I decided to just leave, to get away and find somewhere where I can be me, where I can work out who me is"
"Kinda sounds similar" replied Draco, then asked what he had to "What kind of a name is Buffy?"
Dawn laughed, "I should probably give her answer here" she put her hands on her hips and gave him a fake glare "My mother gave her that name" she giggled, "Yeah I was the lucky one with the names, but you can't really talk Draco"
He smiled, then realising what he was doing he stopped. Why did he keep smiling and laughing around this girl. That in itself was weird enough, but then there was the fact that he would laugh at jokes making fun of himself. Draco Malfoy did not laugh at himself. Damn, one day in a muggle world and he was already changing.
"So what are your plans for the future?" she asked before taking a bite form the food that had just arrived.
"I don't really know. I guess the essentials, I need to get a job and find a proper place to live. I have no idea how to do either of those things. Who am I kidding I don't know how to unpack a suitcase myself"
"Well if you looked in the drawers at the motel that's probably for the best" she looked at Draco then smirked "You're a Cordelia"
"A what?"
"Cordelia. Spoilt little rich kid suddenly all alone in the world. That's why you don't know how to anything yourself right? You've never had to before"
"That sums it up quite accurately actually. Even at school they had servants who did most of the work"
"Wow, sounds like a cool school. All Sunnydale High ever had was one janitor. I suppose nobody really wants to work at a school where two principals in a row were eaten"
Draco choked on the mouthful of food he had been eaten. After some coughing and a drink of his coke he managed to say "eaten?"
She laughed, "Yeah the first principal Flutie was found torn apart or something. They were never sure what type of animal did it, but the new school mascot, a pig suffered the same treatment. The next one was eaten by a wild animal that escaped during my sister's graduation. Actually I think they said it was an organised gang thing because there was a whole load of disruption then the school was blown up"
"It wasn't really a normal school was it?"
"The whole town wasn't normal, a few years later a quake triggered a sink hole thing or something which basically meant the town previously known as Sunnydale was now just a big hole in the ground. We barely got out of there alive, some of us didn't"
"Did I just so it again?" he asked "You know bring up more old friends?"
"Actually same two" she said. "but you do seem to have a talent for that, and I'm sure there was a point to this conversation"
"Future plans" he prompted
"Oh yeah"
"So what do you plan to do?"
"Uh, find a place to live, get a job, live happily ever after? Although I'm not sure about the happily ever after bit, maybe I should just settle for a job and an apartment for now"
"We should say in touch, after we go our separate ways" suggested Draco, any friend, even a muggle had to be better than nothing.
"Or we could not" she replied, an idea forming in her head.
"Oh" he said a little surprised.
She smiled, "I didn't mean not stay in touch, I mean go separate ways. We're both looking for the same thing right? So rather than go off and have two sets of bills to pay and all that we could stick together, it'd be more economical. Plus I'm so used to having a house full of people I get lonely easily and I have the feeling you'd be hopeless on your own" Why had she just said that, she didn't know this guy, he could be anybody, he could be a murderer, or a demon, hell he could just be a guy she'd just met and that should be enough reason not to want to live with but for some reason she wanted to trust him. She felt he could be trusted.
Live with a muggle? The idea seemed preposterous. But she was right, it would be more economical, and he would be hopeless alone. Plus, he thought with slight smirk, his father would object to the idea with all his heart if he ever found out. "OK" he said. "We stick together"
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AN: I don't know why but I don't really like this chapter, I can't work out why though and I've spent the whole day trying to change it having written while lazing in the Egyptian sun last week (and England is so cold in comparison) so I'm posting it.
As always, please review
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Chapter Three: Welcome to New York
The conveyor belt at baggage reclaim had proved to be too much for Draco. The first time his trunk (that now looked more like a suitcase due to some transfiguring earlier) had come around he had just watched it in amazement, wondering how all this worked without magic. The second time, understanding a little better, he tried to grab it off unsuccessfully. The third time it came around Dawn, who already had her bag and was waiting at the side impatiently, pushed Draco out of the way and expertly swung it off her self.
"Not that hard" she remarked with a smirk on her face. Draco just glared at her which made her smirk more. "The motel is like a ten minute walk from here, you OK carrying your bag or do you think we'll need a taxi?" "I'll manage" he replied, resisting the urge to cost a spell to make the bag any lighter. Under age magic could be traced and Draco intended to leaven any trail back in LA.
---------------
Do you have a credit card?" asked the man at the motel.
"Yeah" said Dawn handing one over. She looked over at Draco who looked confuse again. "I'll take it you don't have one." He said to him.
"No" he replied
"No card, no room" said the man at the desk.
"Put them both on mine" said Dawn. She turned to Draco. "You will pay me back and if you try to sneak away without paying me I will beat the crap out of you, don't think I don't know how"
"OK" said Draco, a little surprised by the sudden violent threat. "Uh thanks?"
"Well Miss Emerson" said the motel owner. "You're in cabins 4 and 5"
---------------
Draco had the sense to wait until they were out of the reception before asking. "Emerson? I thought you said you're second name was Summers"
Dawn checked over her shoulder that they were away from the reception then replied "It is, but the card belongs to a friend"
"Won't the friend mind you taking it?"!
"I doubt it, she's been dead over a year" replied Dawn, not wanting to get into it. She had grieved for Anya and Spike a long time ago and although she still missed them sometimes she liked to think she was over the loss by now"
"Sorry" said Draco.
"It's OK; strangely enough I think Anya may have understood what I'm doing. That or she would have seen the simple solution that I missed. Having said that she never would have given me money, not when she could be buying pretty things for herself" She stopped at the door with the number five on it. "I'll take this one, you can have next door, unless this room is really gross and yours is better in which case we're swapping. Well see ya" She disappeared into her room leaving Draco to go into his.
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Draco looked around his room with distaste. It was dark, dank and had a peculiar smell. The sheets on the bed were a colour that probably used to be white, but was now a more greyish colour. The blanket on top was brown, threadbare and looked itchy.
He knew he should probably unpack his suitcase, but he wasn't quite sure how. In the past all he had to do was drop his clothes on the floor and a house elf would come and do the rest. With a look in the drawers he decided unpacking probably wasn't the best plan. They were all dusty and damp and one had something in it, something mouldy and scary.
After lying on his bed for a while and wondering what the hell that big box with the buttons actually did Draco was interrupted in his thoughts by a knock on the door.
"Hey" said Dawn when he answered. "So I was thinking we're in this whole new city and don't really know anybody else so you wanna go get something to eat?"
"OK" he replied. He picked up his jacket and they started walking towards a diner that Dawn said wasn't far away.
"SO I'm glad you agreed to come with me" said Dawn as they started walking "'cause I can look after myself and everything but young girl alone in a big city is still a total target and I've always been taught that I was too weak to actually look like a target. I can defend myself when I get into the situation and oh my god I'm babbling"
"I noticed"
"Well I need to with you; you're not exactly Mr talkative are you?"
"I talk when I have something to say, I just don't have the mudblood obsession with always talking"
She stopped walking and turned to face him. "Ok I know you just insulted me but what the hell is a mudblood"
'Shit', he said in his head. "It doesn't matter" he said, knowing she wouldn't accept that but giving himself a few more seconds to cover his tracks.
"It damn well does matter. If you said it then it must have been important because you only speak when you have something to say"
"Its British slang, it's a swear it basically means anybody not British, but generally specifically Americans. I'm sorry, I'm just irritable 'cause I'm kinda tired" He was apologising to a muggle? What the hell was wrong with him?
She calmed down a bit with his apology and carried on walking, Draco in step beside her "British slang eh? Never hear Spike use that one, and he pretty much used every swear that existed. Insulted Americans a whole lot to, maybe it was too modern for him"
"Who's Spike?" he asked, seeing an opportunity for a topic change.
"Old friend, he died at the same time as Anya" she replied quietly
"I seem to have a habit of bringing up these old friends. See why I don't talk much?" She laughed and he inwardly cringed; now he was making jokes, jokes that made fun of himself rather than other people. What the hell was happening to him? He decided quickly that this had something to do with Dawn being the only person he knew in this city, well actually country. He wanted to stay in her good books.
Dawn wondered why she was even bothering with this guy. He went from being nice one minute to being a total bastard, then back to nice again. It was starting to annoy her but the idea of being totally alone scared her a little and she chose to put up with this guy instead.
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"So we've made small talk for ten minutes how about we try talking properly now?" suggested Dawn. AS they sat in the diner waiting for their food
"Huh?" said Draco.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm hungry?"
"No, I mean in New York, why aren't you back in England drinking tea or something?"
"You really like the stereotype huh?" he replied
"Well Giles is British and he's always drinking tea. He's not so heavy on the tweed anymore but he hasn't lost his tea drinking habits. Spike was from England too, but he never drank tea, he never really drank much except for" she stopped herself, realising what she was about to say. "Water" she finished "He had this weird craze where he only drank water. Spike was very weird. But back to the subject you were telling me why you left England"
"No I wasn't you were asking" he replied smirking
"Same thing, so are you going to enlighten me?"
'What the hell', he thought. "I was at school; I go to a boarding school. Part of me was glad to be there because I got away from my father. He's really strict and expects me to just follow in his footsteps and be a" shit, um "lawyer like him. Even though he's an evil son of bitch who prefers to support mass murderers with power than the good guys. In some ways I agree with him, but I'd still like to make my own mind up, I'm not a follower. Well I suppose I am but I don't want to be. Basically back at school I realised I couldn't change there, if I stayed I'd have to follow the track I had set out that pretty much turned me into my father. So I ran" he quickly added "What about you?" so they didn't have to linger on the topic of him for too long, he had pretty much told the truth but he didn't want to go into details that he couldn't.
"Getting away from my sister. I love her but I'm just tired of being nothing but her sister. Lately she's been really busy recruiting for this new school, and I've been travelling around with her. To everybody we meet I'm just Buffy's sister. Back at the school I really don't fit in. There's nowhere for me to live and go to an ordinary school. I was planning to train to become a teacher at this school, just so I could feel like I fit in, but I don't know if that's what I really want to do. I decided to just leave, to get away and find somewhere where I can be me, where I can work out who me is"
"Kinda sounds similar" replied Draco, then asked what he had to "What kind of a name is Buffy?"
Dawn laughed, "I should probably give her answer here" she put her hands on her hips and gave him a fake glare "My mother gave her that name" she giggled, "Yeah I was the lucky one with the names, but you can't really talk Draco"
He smiled, then realising what he was doing he stopped. Why did he keep smiling and laughing around this girl. That in itself was weird enough, but then there was the fact that he would laugh at jokes making fun of himself. Draco Malfoy did not laugh at himself. Damn, one day in a muggle world and he was already changing.
"So what are your plans for the future?" she asked before taking a bite form the food that had just arrived.
"I don't really know. I guess the essentials, I need to get a job and find a proper place to live. I have no idea how to do either of those things. Who am I kidding I don't know how to unpack a suitcase myself"
"Well if you looked in the drawers at the motel that's probably for the best" she looked at Draco then smirked "You're a Cordelia"
"A what?"
"Cordelia. Spoilt little rich kid suddenly all alone in the world. That's why you don't know how to anything yourself right? You've never had to before"
"That sums it up quite accurately actually. Even at school they had servants who did most of the work"
"Wow, sounds like a cool school. All Sunnydale High ever had was one janitor. I suppose nobody really wants to work at a school where two principals in a row were eaten"
Draco choked on the mouthful of food he had been eaten. After some coughing and a drink of his coke he managed to say "eaten?"
She laughed, "Yeah the first principal Flutie was found torn apart or something. They were never sure what type of animal did it, but the new school mascot, a pig suffered the same treatment. The next one was eaten by a wild animal that escaped during my sister's graduation. Actually I think they said it was an organised gang thing because there was a whole load of disruption then the school was blown up"
"It wasn't really a normal school was it?"
"The whole town wasn't normal, a few years later a quake triggered a sink hole thing or something which basically meant the town previously known as Sunnydale was now just a big hole in the ground. We barely got out of there alive, some of us didn't"
"Did I just so it again?" he asked "You know bring up more old friends?"
"Actually same two" she said. "but you do seem to have a talent for that, and I'm sure there was a point to this conversation"
"Future plans" he prompted
"Oh yeah"
"So what do you plan to do?"
"Uh, find a place to live, get a job, live happily ever after? Although I'm not sure about the happily ever after bit, maybe I should just settle for a job and an apartment for now"
"We should say in touch, after we go our separate ways" suggested Draco, any friend, even a muggle had to be better than nothing.
"Or we could not" she replied, an idea forming in her head.
"Oh" he said a little surprised.
She smiled, "I didn't mean not stay in touch, I mean go separate ways. We're both looking for the same thing right? So rather than go off and have two sets of bills to pay and all that we could stick together, it'd be more economical. Plus I'm so used to having a house full of people I get lonely easily and I have the feeling you'd be hopeless on your own" Why had she just said that, she didn't know this guy, he could be anybody, he could be a murderer, or a demon, hell he could just be a guy she'd just met and that should be enough reason not to want to live with but for some reason she wanted to trust him. She felt he could be trusted.
Live with a muggle? The idea seemed preposterous. But she was right, it would be more economical, and he would be hopeless alone. Plus, he thought with slight smirk, his father would object to the idea with all his heart if he ever found out. "OK" he said. "We stick together"
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AN: I don't know why but I don't really like this chapter, I can't work out why though and I've spent the whole day trying to change it having written while lazing in the Egyptian sun last week (and England is so cold in comparison) so I'm posting it.
As always, please review