Chaper 10 Bad Blood
It was unsettling how comfortable he had gotten in the pub, the bartender had begun to leave him drinks at regular intervals. Plotting a return to society was difficult when your only hope was a stubborn Ravenclaw who didn't seem to be responding to owl post.
Not that Draco was desperate or anything.
But he did want to find somewhere other than a pub to conduct his day-to-day life. Probably also somewhere other than his parents house. Crashing with friends was also going to rub raw after a while.
But for now the Barrel's Bottom was charming enough, he told himself. The uproarious laughter of that night's customers was starting to grate on his nerves. He ducked his head and tried to solve it with the next pint.
ooo
The group had found the Barrel's Bottom after dinner, Cho and Hermione were both exhausted from their day's research but the boys still needed to blow off steam. Pints of butterbeer and shots of firewhiskey found their way to the table and old friends from Hogwarts stopped by.
It was a nice night for reminiscing and relaxing, George had been in a mood so the group was trying in turns to cheer him out of it.
"It's not like you tried to cover your tracks at all George," Hermione lightly chided as Ron related the story of the firework in the fountain at the Malfoys, "You're lucky they aren't coming after you with anything more substantial."
George grimaced, "That was my point," he smiled sardonically, "Really it was a public service, an inquiry into whether or not Lucius could change from perpetual lemon sucker to actual human expression."
Hermione sighed while Ron laughed. Cho had excused herself to the washroom. Neville and Hannah Abbott had found them and joined the group, their grins and laughs added to the mood.
George already a few pints along continued, "Honestly, there is a lot of research into the subject of whether the Malfoys so called "pure" blood is in fact a five to one dilution of lemon juice and whatever dregs of chicken blood were left in the cauldron."
The easygoing Weasley temperament was masking a darker humor, "It's really a miracle that they managed to reproduce at all given the circumstances."
"The true miracle," snarled an equally sloshed Malfoy from the bar, "Is the spawning of the Weasley brood, it's by sheer numbers that any of you manage to exist today."
It happened in an instant, at one moment George was slouched at their table, in the next he had hauled himself over to the bar and connected his fist with Malfoy's pointed chin. Cho returned to find Malfoy stone cold on the floor and Hermione and Ron pulling George away.
It took her a moment to realize what had happened; she hadn't even seen Malfoy at the bar when they'd come in. Customers had made a wide circle around Malfoy, no one particularly willing to step in. Just looking at him slumped on the sticky bar floor made her tired. She gave Hermione a look of apology and went to check on her newly appointed babysitting charge.
The smell of firewhiskey and other interesting pub aromas wafted off him as she checked his jaw, deeply bruised, probably not broken. Cho waved her wand and performed a quick enervate. It was nearly the extent of her magical healing abilities; she requested a towel and some ice, which Hannah brought to her. Malfoy's eyes slowly blinked open, he registered her and then his surroundings.
He made moves to get to his feet but she muttered, "Stay down." People were still gawking around them and she didn't know how to handle this without him getting a matched set of black eyes. Fortunately Hermione and Ron had managed to calm George down enough to Apparate away.
Neville approached and said gruffly, "We can check him out at Mungos and send him home." He didn't seem particularly overjoyed at the prospect, neither did Malfoy, but it seemed like the mature thing to do. They got Malfoy to his feet, he swayed dangerously away and Cho had to grab him and drape him over their shoulders to get him out. In parting Malfoy fumbled in his robes and dropped a sack of uncounted coin on the pub floor. They had after all provided him with many drinks.
ooo
Angelina found George in his workshop in the small hours of the morning. Hermione and Ron had dragged him up to his flat and cleaned him up but there was very little sleep coming to him. Electric lights that he had magicked to work in wizarding London buzzed around him and the room was furious with activity, his current project was smoking and sparking and emitting strange crooning noises. She slammed a hand on his workbench and startled him out of his focus.
He looked up angry, belligerent even, and then saw that it was her. He looked back down at his tiny creation suddenly unsure of what he was making and also extremely exhausted.
"I wasn't sure if I should come," she said evenly, "and then I thought about it some more and decided you needed a piece of my mind before you blew something up by accident."
His face was unreadable now so she took in the bandaged knuckles and dark circles under his eyes. She slipped her arms around his waist and spoke quietly in his ear. He looked around at the chaos of the room, peered into the eyes that gazed back at him from reflections, and felt something finally give.
ooo
A piercing shriek. Draco rolled over into his pillow. There was clattering at the bedroom window. He pulled the comforter over his head. What was that noise? It sounded like rustling. But why could he hear it through his pillow and his comforter? This was real hippogriff and abraxan down comforter only the sounds of all the owls in Eyelops would have made it through. He pulled the comforter off his head and was hit with a wall of noise. Screeches, squawks, wingbeats and what sounded disturbingly like crackling fire.
He opened the bedroom door and looked out, "Shit." And it was. His apartment was quite literally covered in owl droppings. It seemed that Orion had managed to herd them into a corner, owls of every shape and size had crashed their way into his living room and kitchen. Then he saw the myriad faces in his fireplace and felt unbelievably tired again, "Mr. Malfoy if I could have a word!" one reporter shouted over the pandemonium.
"He's awake!" another witch exclaimed.
"Malfoy."
"Can you answer for your actions last night?"
He hoped the Auror Office was listening to every cursed second of this, dragging him into the Ministry in front of a flock of reporters. He slammed the door to his bedroom and looked down at himself, it was a small mercy he'd fallen asleep in the clothes he'd worn last night, at least no pictures of his pajamas would be littering the morning paper. Draco grimaced and rummaged through his closet pulling out fresh unslept in robes and his broom. It appeared that leaving through his front door was no longer an option. He gritted his teeth a little as he jumped out his bedroom window, only teenagers rode brooms around London.
ooo
Blaise couldn't help but laugh at the sight of his friend being chased by owls into his living room, even Draco's death glare didn't quiet him. "What on earth happened?"
Draco was a little fuzzy on the details. Cho and Neville had brought him to Mungos, apparently his jaw had been broken, a tiny fracture. It had hurt like all hell. Or maybe that was the hangover. Anyway, Neville seemed to have the run of the place because he'd found a mediwizard with a modicum of talent to fix up the jaw.
Cho had spent most of the night glaring at him and he could sense a lecture through the wall of pain. He'd wisely kept up the senseless drunk act.
There had almost been a moment where he'd thanked Longbottom but Neville assured him that he was only helping so that he wouldn't have to read about another grievous insult to the Malfoy family in the morning Prophet. Draco wasn't sure if he'd get his wish.
Blaise helpfully smirked his way through the entire story, "you're screwed you know that?"
Draco practiced a withering look, to little effect.
"All this work trying to rehabilitate blown by one comment about Weasley's mother, plus the trumped up museum thing. You couldn't have made a bigger mess if you had tried."
He knew.
"And now she's in it too. Third time seen with you? Second in some sort of scandal. She's lucky the Prophet doesn't have a gossip section anymore but there's still no way to back out of it now."
Draco knew that too. Which probably meant…
He winced, hopefully the owls wouldn't find her in muggle London.
ooo
They hadn't.
They had found her at the Ministry though.
The mail clerk was none too pleased when the trolley came to her desk and unloaded a hefty mashed together parcel of inquiries, letters, fan (cough) mail and several smoking Howlers. He turned to leave grasping the cart with bandaged fingers, Cho tried to apologize but he was already gone. Her Floo was not publicly accessible but she had been tracked down by Marrietta early that morning and was scheduled for an early lunch to fully clarify the situation. Her stomach churned, just one day, she wished, one day without this insanity that I signed myself up for.
That dream faded quickly when one of the Howlers started to spark. Quickly she uttered a powerful Freezing Charm on the whole lot, repackaged it neatly and sent it to Malfoy's flat.
Another parcel dropped on her desk with a single marking, the Ministry seal. She carefully removed the packaging to reveal a standard logbook. She frowned and opened the book.
Within rested a note:
Keep me updated on the project, Protean Charm, Hermione issued one as well. Yours has an extra parchment in the back to record progress on your alternate assignment. Vanish after reading.
"Evanesco," she waved her wand over the message and the words faded away.
She flipped through the pages of the book, the last page, she brought out a quill and wrote, wizarding media has picked up the story. The ink glimmered wet for moments, and then faded to nothing as it dried. Presumably the words had found a home somewhere in Kingsley's office.
Cho rubbed her temples willing herself to find a solution to the problem she had allowed to turn her life upside down and sideways. She felt betrayed by the recklessness of her New Year's Eve bargain.
Even when Malfoy had gotten himself arrested and was antagonizing Aurors she still felt like she had control of the situation because he hadn't publicly made an ass of himself. But this time? His words must have been a knife straight into the heart of family tragedy. She was lucky Ron hadn't done damage as well.
Sending Howlers to his apartment was not going to fix anything.
But maybe she knew something that would.
ooo
A very terse owl from Cho tracked him down at Blaise's apartment. Tentatively he replied saying that yes he would meet her in Diagon Alley at five. He tumbled through the fireplace and arrived at Flourish and Blotts with ten minutes till. Four of the ten minutes were spent in the bookshops washroom brushing soot off his clothes. The rest of the time he paced a nervous circle across the street from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes. The reality was that his Shield Charm would probably be useless against anything with any malice George deigned to throw at him from the shop.
Somehow the wisdom of blustering about their family like he had in school had paled in the sunny street. He grimaced, it was still galling to hear people talk about his parents in anything other than hushed tones. Apparently old habits died only when roasted in dragon fire and cursed to oblivion.
That explanation did not seem to be the one Cho wanted to hear. She was heading down the street towards him with determination shining in her eyes. Determination was not the trait he valued most in people who were visibly angry with him.
"From now until the time that you are at least a hair's breadth out of the hole that you have dug for yourself you will follow my instructions to the letter or else we are through," she began.
Malfoy thought it best to nod, eyes locked on hers.
"You know why we're here?"
His look of chagrin was answer enough.
She waited for him to cross the street and followed after. Upon entering the shop he was greeted with a perfectly timed bucket of stinksap.
Cho stopped abruptly before running into Malfoy's back and his fate, "George!"
"Nope that one was me," Ron said from inside the store.
Of all the petty, Cho rolled her eyes and performed a scourgify on Malfoy. The charm worked wonderfully but it couldn't entirely remove the clinging odor and Draco seemed to be slightly frozen in rage.
"If you thought this was going to be easy," she started to whisper, but she saw him pull himself together. They entered to find the two Weasleys sitting calmly at the counter. There was a strange lack of activity in the store. George's bruised knuckles were resting on the counter, Ron was leaning casually on an elbow.
"Thanks for meeting us," she began
"Anything for an old friend," George replied, but his voice was cool. Bringing in Malfoy was going to require serious explanation. After the war there wasn't a lot of distinction made between Houses, there were only survivors and sides. But this, this was a distinction, association with Malfoys was a tacit shift.
Malfoy walked forward and carefully stopped in front of the counter fully aware of the foreign sensation in his limbs, the words that he knew would fix this seemed to be both leaden and hard to remember, hard to allow to cross his lips. "I've said," he croaked, looking down, "I've said things."
Ron and George seemed as though they were carved from marble.
He cursed literally everything in his head clenched his fist and then rested his hand carefully against the counter and continued, this time meeting the brothers' eyes. "There is bad blood between us, it started a long time ago, and I see no reason to continue it," his voice had reached a quiet clarity, "not that it's going to be easy. But I can start with this. My treatment of you and your family according to status and standing, was wrong. And it's not something that I want to continue dragging around with me for the rest of my life."
Ron seemed visibly shocked at these words coming from the boy who had made it a point to rub his nose in his poverty his entire school career.
"I'd like to end it," he stopped, the next part was going to be difficult, "I'm ending it, on my side. And I want other things to take its place." That was as close as he could come, Cho could see that, she had been watching him. She was honestly surprised at how genuine it appeared, she could appreciate the long-lived enmity between the Weasleys and Malfoys, the entirety of Hogwarts could appreciate it even though only one Malfoy had passed through Hogwarts in the last decade.
She realized that George had been watching her more so than Malfoy in the last few moments, she met his eyes and realized that they both had the same questions; questions that neither of them would have trusted Malfoy to answer honestly even if they had been asked. They could both appreciate the effort genuine or not Malfoy was putting into bridging the chasm. Cho gave a slight shrug, she was in no position to push George into anything but she was relieved when he managed to crack the faintest hint of a smile.
"I'm glad to see the stinksap didn't entirely remove your sense of humor," George began with slight amusement, "While we do reserve the right to serve any customer in our own customary fashion here at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, I can appreciate how that might have made it difficult for you to say the things that you did just now." Internally Cho was relieved, amusement might not be the tone of seriousness in any other setting, but for a Weasley, correction, for this Weasley amusement was business. Amusement was a tall order to bring to this meeting just as vulnerability was a struggle for Draco.
Ron was picking up his brother's fraction of give, and he decided that it was important to let this play, "Really Malfoy, are you feeling ok? Wander into a Confundus Charm at all?"
Malfoy was looking between them suspiciously, unsure as to what he was supposed to do with being teased in semi good nature by a Weasley. There was very little protocol for this in the Pureblood Guide to Social Interation.
George saw this and in the spirit of fair play he stuck out a hand. Malfoy almost recoiled but then carefully accepted.
When the earth didn't start to quake ominously or lightning didn't strike them dead George quietly provided a final olive branch, "There were things that I said last night, comments that I've made. We made this mess together, and you're right, it's time to put this to bed."
There was a small pop, only George heard it, the sound of someone Apparating away after listening in from the workroom.
000
Hello to that one reader out there still making their way through this labyrinth
Yes, I still exist, somewhere in the ether.
Considering changing the name of this story to "That one Cho/Draco fic that gets updates when a comet crosses the path of a Libra's unholy union with a Saggitarius."
Actually I know nothing about zodiac signs except the occasional horoscope that I stare at nervously and wonder about what it all means.
But I actually was considering changing the name of the story to "Common Alchemy", "The Alchemy of Suggestion" or "The Price of Alchemy." Titles which only really makes sense in my crazy little head. Unlikely Journey was really only a vague working title. But it might be too confusing to change but slightly too bland to keep the same.
Thoughts? To that one reader ;)