A/N: Welcome back peeps! Thank you Guest, Happydragon5, Ditte3, Aveca, Al, GallwayGirl2 and Skyemoor for your reviews!
The weather near me has been almost tolerable (usually it's deathly cold and covered in snow this time of year) but I can't enjoy it because the ski club I'm meant to chaperone has our first trip this Thursday and there isn't a single snowflake in sight. Boo. Come on mama nature, work with me here!
Paths' Crossing
Draco awoke before dawn, his body still thinking he was in England and that is was three hours later into the morning. He adjusted himself on the sofa, glancing blearily around the room; this was the first time in a very long time that he'd slept through the night and awakened not knowing where he was. It took him a moment to remember that this was his house in Brazil—which he'd christened "Dragon's Nest" last night—and that he was alone on the property, explaining his peaceful sleep at last.
"I'm coming here every weekend," he mumbled sleepily, rolling over and settling back in for another hour and a half.
The next time he regained consciousness, he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and disentangling himself from the cocoon of blankets he'd wrapped in last night. He'd tried to sleep in the Great Room on the main floor, but he'd been too hot and too distracted by all the jungle sounds and too weirded out by the three doors surrounding him, even though he knew they were all magically sealed from the inside. He'd wound up levitating the sofa down to the basement, which had reminded him of Slytherin house—cool, dark, and above all, safe from intruders.
"Maybe I'll renovate the basement study into a bedroom, and put the desk and shelves on the top floor," he considered aloud, punctuated by a yawn, as he ascended the stairs, levitating up the trap door that he hadn't noticed on his initial perusal of the house. When closed, it made the house look to the casual observer like it was only two levels; if he added a magically extended rug and a couple of charms, he'd have a pretty secure secret base within his secret base.
Secrecy seemed more and more important when he was away from everyone else, and could really focus on the fact that Voldemort was living in his parents' house and looking for the Empath. Draco was 100% certain that the Dark Lord would not be pleased when He discovered that Draco had hidden from Him.
"Maybe a fidelius charm too," he mused as he opened up the back window and the door to the balcony, letting in the pale dawn light stream in.
He'd repaired the scratches on the walls where he could, and hung simple tapestries where he couldn't, making the space look significantly less disturbing. Mind, it looked like some kind of hippie conjurer lived there, because that was the style that the only shop owner in the local market who spoke English had available, but nonetheless, they were a world of improvement.
Riffling around in his school bag, Draco retrieved one of the Language Pods he'd set to Portuguese, and strung it on the cord around his neck with his pendant. He'd have to go out later and do some shopping, and this time he wouldn't get stuck with chakra-themed hangings due to language barrier. He'd bought three of them, thinking he'd leave them in various places as backups if he forgot, lost or broke one.
Or, you know, just in case his parents ever came to visit. Or came to stay.
He shook his head, trying to dislodge that stupid thought. His mother wouldn't leave his father, and his father wouldn't leave Voldemort—not least of all because it would be tantamount to suicide. Anyway, why would they? They were guaranteed positions of great power and favor once the New World Order was up and running. They wouldn't give up on their own future because their underage son had cold feet about doing his bit; that would be ridiculous.
"What in the hell," he grumbled as his hand brushed across a familiar roll of parchment, and he pulled out his mysteriously missing Defense essay.
"I can't have overlooked it," he whispered in disbelief; he'd quite literally bled over its absence, after all! Frowning, he held it up and sniffed it experimentally, nearly dropping it when he got a strong whiff of cologne. Gryffindor Quidditch Hopeful Cormac McLaggen's cologne, if he wasn't mistaken. (He doubted very much that he was—anyone could smell that bloke coming at ten yards.) He must have vanished the essay from a distance, while Draco was distracted, then returned it later in the day to hide the evidence if Draco had tried to trace the magic of the disembodied particles left in his bag.
Making a mental note to figure out what the burly Gryffindor had against him before it escalated, he unpacked the box the house elves had provided, reaching down the side for the cookbook he'd requested and flipping to one of the bookmarked breakfast recipes that looked easy.
Steak and eggs sounded like a nice, simple dish for a beginner.
It wasn't.
First there was the matter of lighting the stove, and getting used to the burners, which were slightly different from the ones he used for potions. Then, once he had the steak in the pan, there was the matter of the eggs. The instructions called for him to stir "occasionally."
But which direction? How many times? How occasionally? The first batch scorched while he was frantically re-reading the page—and after he'd spent so long picking out the bits of shell he'd dropped in the pan, too!
The meat was starting to smell nice when he started on his second batch of eggs, but as soon as he put the egg pan back over the flame, fire shot out from under it; apparently when he was tossing out the previous attempt, he'd spilled butter under the pan and it had ignited. Magically dousing the fire also put out the burner and ruined the eggs, and they joined their predecessors in the bin.
By the time he'd cooked the third round of eggs, the meat still smelled good, but it felt hard when he poked it with a fork; he figured he'd need to cook it a while longer for it to get tender, so he shoveled his eggs onto a plate and started to eat them. They weren't half bad, for all the drama that went into making them.
He was nearly finished eating when he smelled smoke.
Apparently, cooking the steak longer was not the correct method, he discovered from the smoke now pouring up out of the pan. Panicking, he switched off the burner and tried to grab the pan off the stove, only to discover that somehow the handle had grown hot as well; he managed to get it off the burner, but it spilled all across the countertop, still sizzling ominously.
With a sigh, he flung open the kitchen windows to let the smoke out, fanning in front of his face so he could breathe, and sat back down to finish his eggs.
"Okay, middling success, and I'm not hungry anymore," he told himself bracingly, gulping down a glass of milk and listening idly to the sound of something swallowing near him.
Wait, what?
He whipped around to look back at the countertop; most of the smoke had cleared, so he could clearly see the little scaly lump crouched in the burned mess, happily gulping down the spilled bits of meat.
There was a housecat-sized dragon in his kitchen.
Draco blinked.
The dragon licked up the last of the juices and waddled around to look back at him.
Neither of them moved for a long moment.
Then the dragon's snout twitched, and it flapped clumsily over to the opposite counter, where the rest of the ingredients Draco had unpacked were laid out.
"Oi, no," Draco exclaimed, standing up and drawing his wand, "get away from there! That's not for you!" What spells even worked on dragons? He tried to remember the Triwizard Tournament last year… He didn't know how to hypnotize it, and getting on a broom and flying away didn't keep it from eating him out of house and home—literally. That left…
With a wave of his wand, he transfigured a spoon into a little gray mouse, which scurried off, catching the dragon's attention perfectly. While the reptile chased the construct he'd made, Draco quickly re-packed his food, storing the whole basket in the preservation cupboard for safety.
That was when he felt another person approaching.
"Thank Merlin," he muttered, as a quick glance at her mind showed that she was looking for an escaped baby dragon. The dragon in question tripped over its massive foot claws and wined pathetically when the mouse ran to the opposite wall and turned back into a spoon with a metallic "ping."
"Hello," the woman's voice greeted him once she was within sight of the window. He had the Pod on language learning mode, so he heard both the English word and its Portuguese counterpart, both when she spoke and when he replied.
"Morning," he responded, walking towards the window. The baby dragon flapped its wings, bumping into the wall before it was able to ascend to the right height to perch on the windowsill.
"Ah, there he is!" the woman exclaimed. "I expected as much; sorry about him."
"Yours, then?" Draco checked pointlessly as the dragon got airborne again, flying over to drape itself around the back her her neck, her long black hair covering most of its body like a cape.
"Yeah, my husband and I breed Western Nightwings; we live just down the way. I'm Beatriz Santos," she added as an afterthought, offering a strong, tanned hand to shake. Draco held up his own right hand to show the bandages wrapped around it, and she dropped hers understandingly.
"Draco Black," he responded, using his mother's maiden name, same as he had when he bought the house. It wasn't that "secret" of an identity, he supposed, but it wasn't like he was going deep underground in hiding—he just wanted a little privacy. Plus, since his parents were both purebloods, legally he could use either name; if his purchase contract ever came under scrutiny for any reason, it would hold up in court.
"'Draco,' eh?" she echoed. "You moved to the right neighborhood, didn't you?" Draco laughed, quietly scouring her mind to make sure she didn't somehow recognize him. He was quickly satisfied that she was in fact just a friendly neighbor who thought his name was ironic; she had a frank, open mind, and was far more interested in her growing population of Nightwings and the addition they were building onto their house than in international wizarding politics.
"Again, sorry about the naughty little one," she continued, "did he set anything on fire?" she added, leaning sideways to peer around him, probably noticing the faint residual smell of smoke.
"Er, no," Draco responded, charginned. "I did that actually. It's safe for that type of dragon to eat burnt steak bits, right? 'Cause he ate the whole thing after I ruined it. It didn't really occur to me to stop him."
"Totally safe," Beatriz laughed. "They 'cook' their food with their fire breath when they're this young so they can digest it easier—he must've smelled the burning steak and thought it meant specially catered breakfast."
"Well he saved me the trouble of binning it afterwards," Draco said with a shrug, "so it turned out all right."
"That's good," Beatriz nodded, thinking privately that this poor english kid definitely needed cooking lessons. Draco wasn't even embarrassed—she was absolutely right. "I'll be off then. Sorry, again about your breakfast." Draco waved her off good-naturedly.
"I'll have to go buy a cookbook or something, to go with the house," he laughed, not wanting to admit that he'd had instructions and still completely failed. "Hopefully I won't mess up badly enough to invite dragons into my kitchen again."
"Good plan," Beatriz said, then waved goodbye and turned to leave. "See you around, Draco."
'I am definitely eating out this afternoon,' Draco thought as he watched the baby dragon's tail poke contentedly at its human's shoulder.
-0-
Draco had read up on Cadocimento, the most extensive wizarding library in the world. He'd seen moving pictures of the building, inside and out; knew that there were whole halls of study rooms equipped with beds for people who had fallen so deep into a literary rabbit-hole that they had no hope of climbing out before morning. He knew that there were magical contraptions for patron usage beyond anything Hogwarts could aspire to afford. He had a map of the building in the Ciculta guidebook he'd received from the realtor.
None of these things could have prepared him for actually arriving at the library itself.
Usually, a building of that size might make a visitor feel small, intimidated—and perhaps it did, to other people—but Draco's senses were exploding like fireworks in his mind. Every corner of the library was filled with knowledge, and he could feel it as thousands of people soaked it up. It was so, so different than at school; the Hogwarts library had too strong a flavor of rush and resentment. Too many of the students spent time there because they had to, because they had work they had to do whether they cared about it or not.
Cadocimento, however, was situated at a hub of commerce and innovation, near a school of expert wandlore. Most of the patrons were there simply because there was something they wanted to know; that they were trying to understand.
That immense and beautiful hunger for learning that he'd found so often in Hermione's mind—it was everywhere here, emanating from thousands of passionate people at once.
'Every weekend,' he repeated to himself as he made his way to a whole room on mentalism. 'Coming here every single one.'
The afternoon blurred past, time both racing by and slowing to a standstill, as it did on the very best kinds of days. While Empathy itself was only referenced in basic, Draco found resources on eighteen different kinds of mental warding which seemed like he might be able to use for controlling thought and feeling intake. Instead of taking out books and leaving empty holes on the shelves, Cadocimento patrons pressed the titles on the original books' spines, and a perfect copy would present itself, with a notice on the front that it was library property and would vanish in 30 days. By the time the sun set and Draco was headed back to Dragon's Nest, he'd checked out seven books, which he barely managed to cram into his school bag.
He was just thinking that he'd have to stick with sandwitches tonight, as he was too tired and hungry to try making anything else, when he felt someone approaching his front door. He hadn't installed a doorbell, so after a futile moment of glancing around, the visitor knocked.
"Hello," he greeted the stranger as he pulled the door open. The man had a long brown beard with little gold charms braided into it, and a rune-inscribed ring through his septum—a remarkably wizard-looking head, contrasting sharply with his tye-dye tank top and scruffy cargo shorts.
"Evening," the man greeted jovially, "I'm Pablo Santos—Beatriz's husband," he added unnecessarily. Draco smiled brightly—partly because he wanted to make a good impression on his other new neighbor and partly because a brief scan of the man's mind (and the delectable scent wafting up from the bundle in his arms) indicated that he'd brought him food. Draco's stomach growled audibly, and he decided right that moment that the Santos's were actual angels incarnate.
"Nice to meet you Pablo," he responded, opening the door a little wider to admit the man as if he did not know that he was just there to drop off a package and leave; manners and all.
"My wife said that one of our dragons ate your breakfast, so this," he introduced, handing over the delectable-smelling bundle, "is an apology gift. And this one," he added, holding up a book that he'd been carrying beneath it, "is a housewarming gift." The title was 101 Homestyle Brazilian Meals, and upon briefly flipping through it, Draco saw that they'd bookmarked a couple of recipes with notes like "easy, good for beginners."
"You're a life-saver, Pablo," Draco complimented.
"I'll pass it on to Bea and Bumble," Pablo chuckled, turning to leave. Draco was so mesmerized by the smells coming out of the bundle as he said thanks once more that it took him a moment to catch that "Bumble" was what they'd named the baby dragon who'd gotten loose. It was a fitting name, he decided with a snort.
The food turned out to be a dozen cheese rolls, which he matched in the cookbook to a recipe for Pão de Queijo, and a jar wrapped in a knitted cozy of Feijoada; black bean and pork stew. It didn't taste remotely like anything he'd had before—the spices were completely different—but it was delicious nonetheless. He saved half the stew and most of the rolls for the next day, and spent the evening perusing the cookbook until he fell asleep with it in his hand.
A/N: Draco finally got a bit of a break from all the angst and exhaustion he's dealing with! W00T!
McLaggen's cologne giving him away was inspired by the actual fifteen-year-olds I work with; fellas, instead of bathing in scented crap, how about you just shower regularly? Yeah, there are certain ones that if they turn in their Chromebook for repair, we can tell whose it it by the smell even the next day; pew!
Don't forget to review everyone! Have a great weekend.