The owl sat unanswered on Theodore's kitchen table for several days, becoming buried under other mail, bills, and receipts fished crumpled from his pockets. Theodore did not have an official reason not to accept the invitation. He did not even have an unofficial one. Just the hot surge of anger that whooshed through him every time he looked at the table, knowing that the invitation was buried there underneath the clutter.
Nott - Drinks this week? Kappa in Soho, Saturday, 9pm. -DM.
He and Malfoy had spoken not at all for the past year at least, and only sporadically before that. They had never been close, but they generally respected and at times privately admired one another. As a boy Theodore had envied Malfoy's social fluidity, his athletic prowess, his brimming confidence, none of which came easily or much at all to Theodore. As they grew older Theodore became canny enough to realize that much of that was a smokescreen - but what did it matter? Even pretended confidence and charisma were better than none.
He replied Friday morning that he would be there and spent most of Saturday pacing his flat, trying to regain control over the fury that flared up every time he thought about Malfoy. He smoked and took a nap; then smoked again; then had a drink; then wrestled with himself trying to decide whether to cancel altogether. He felt very sharp around the edges and impossibly blurry inside. The door was shut and locked behind him before he could second guess himself again.
Theodore did not recognize the name of the bar to which Draco had invited him, which gave him some trepidation; the sleek, minimal exterior and stark stylistic flourishes confirmed his fears. This evening was going to be far outside his budget for the week, and perhaps the month. He hoped Malfoy might be thoughtful or at least boastful enough to pick up the check, but did not hold his breath.
"You can check your cloak there," the hostess told him, indicating a solitary door standing to her right with a tiny wave of her fingertips. She was the only waitstaff Theodore could spot in the entire establishment; apparently all the service was carried out in the kitchen, as it had been at Hogwarts.
Theodore hung up his cloak on the single gold hook that appeared behind the door. It disappeared into a swirl of purple smoke that formed swiftly into two beautiful koi fish, which swam spirals around each other before they dissipated.
Kappa's all-black interior was packed to the brim with models, socialites, and hangers-on, although it was difficult to see anything in the dim lighting. It was not the sort of place he would have imagined Draco Malfoy selecting for an evening on the town with an old school chum, but supposed he must have had his reasons.
Having decided when he had hung up his cloak that he planned to make this a memorable evening, Theodore selected a cocktail glass from where they hung next to the bar, tapped the glass with the wand, and ordered his uncle Roland's old standby, fairy gin, so named because traces of one of the ingredients turned it purple. At lesser bars he had visited, Theodore expected this ingredient was "wandwork," but could be assured here that the black nightshade juice that coated the bowl before being discarded had provided its own vivid hue.
As Theodore tilted the glass toward him to examine the brilliant violet juice, he glimpsed Draco hanging up his coat.
He spotted Theodore immediately, acknowledging him with a nod and beginning to make his way over, but Theodore noticed Malfoy's eyes were still scanning the room.
"Evening, Nott," Malfoy said crisply. "Haven't you found a table?"
Theodore glanced around at the sea of models, who were looking over with slightly more interest now that Malfoy had joined him, drink in hand.
"I only just arrived," Theodore explained. "It's good to see you."
"You as well." Malfoy was still looking around the room, with increasing impatience.
"How have you been?" Theodore asked him, watching as Malfoy attempted to master his disappointment as he failed to find whoever he was looking for in the crowd.
"Fine - just fine," Draco snapped. Looking over, he seemed to see Theodore for the first time, and laughed.
"No wonder the girl didn't offer you a table," he said, resting his elbow on a nearby high top littered with evenings bags. "You could at least have shaved. You look like you're trying to stir up unrest among the proletariat. Didn't you want to make an impression on some of these pretty young things?"
Theodore refused to rise to Malfoy's goading. "Not terribly," he said. "Is that why you picked this place?"
"Partly, I suppose," Malfoy said, looking around without much interest. "A friend told me about it. She said she might come by tonight, actually." His casual tone was at odds with the fact that he glanced over at the door every few seconds. Theodore felt suddenly, intensely bored with Malfoy; his petty condescensions and artless posturing were from a different era in Theodore's life, and struck him now as strangely anachronistic, as if Malfoy had shown up wearing a doublet.
Theodore ordered a second drink; Malfoy drained his and followed suit. Lacking common interests or any curiosity about one another's present lives, they fell back on abusing their old schoolmates, and passed several enjoyable cocktails in this fashion. Theodore was not ordinarily a gossip, but Malfoy relished it, and his enthusiasm was contagious.
"Vaisey must be shitting himself now," Malfoy was saying, chuckling. "Pansy's told me Lila is watching him like a hippogriff around her girlfriends, but Vaisey'll stick his dick in anything wet if it stands still long enough - she ought to be more concerned about her houseplants."
Theodore could tell he was drunk because Pansy's name sunk into the pit of his stomach like a stone. Malfoy was now sharing in lurid detail what he would do if Lila Urquhart paid him that much attention, but Theodore barely listened; anyway, he had heard Malfoy a hundred times before, boasting in the common room, basking in the attention of the bigger boys as they laughed at his jokes, while Theodore slouched by, trying to sneak up to their dormitory unnoticed.
"This isn't working," she had said.
Even in his small apartment she was standing an uncomfortable distance away from him. The pockets of her coat shifted as she balled her hands up nervously inside them.
She would not look at him, as she repeated what she had said, but he kept staring at her; not angry or sad or accusing, simply wondering. What had her day been like, up until this moment? Afterward, what would she do, where would she go? What would she wear tomorrow, who would she write to, what would make her laugh? It seemed strange that he would never know these things again, but stranger still that he had ever known them, that she had ever been anything but a stranger.
Now she was a mutual acquaintance; her name would be dropped casually in conversation, without the need for context or explanation, but he would never write to her or meet her for lunch. They might see each other now and again at social gatherings, but as they all grew older and further apart, even this passing contact would cease.
For now, though, Theodore wondered. What was Pansy doing tonight, while Malfoy hinted to Theodore about the many other women he was fucking? He imagined her getting ready for a party, or going out to dinner, maybe drinking wine and drawing a bath. One thing, he felt, was relatively certain - Malfoy was not wondering, and probably never would.
As the sleek silver hands of the clock on the back wall ticked past two, the crowd began to drift out, and Malfoy's mood became increasingly sour.
"Watch it," he snapped at a girl who, tottering a little on monstrous square heels, stumbled into him. Shocked, her friend wrapped an arm around her and pulled her away.
Eyes following the women as they collected their coats one by one from the closet, he said, "I expect she's been held up. My friend. I know she said she was going to stop by."
He tapped his wand to both their glasses.
"Who?" Theodore asked, watching his glass disappear in a swirl of smoke and another appear, fresh and sparkling, in its place. He found the gratuitous, obvious magic tacky, but could not deny the convenience.
Draco shrugged. He did not seem to want to talk about it but was unable to help himself. "This girl I met a couple months ago. Daphne Greengrass' little sister? I don't know if you remember her."
"I remember. She was in the Prophet a few days ago." It had not been a flattering article, in spite of the striking photo of her from some gala event in a long cranberry-colored dress and chandelier earrings that accompanied it. Rita Skeeter had called her a "sentient pair of eyelashes" who "would step on anyone's head to reach the next rung of the ladder."
"Oh, I don't read the Prophet. It's utter trash these days. Whatever journalistic integrity it used to have disappeared up the arse of the new administration. It reads like fascist propaganda, not bothering to report any of the opposition to these so-called progressive ideas among the very people who have run the Ministry for the last thirty-odd years. The media are scared out of their minds, I expect, to say a word against the thugs in power now. Freedom of the press is a sham, one word from Shacklebolt and the whole paper would be shuttered."
Theodore suspected that Draco's problems with the Prophet had little to do with journalistic integrity, and far more to do with the tireless stream of bad publicity he and his family had received in the paper after the war. The Malfoy family had brought so many lawsuits against the Prophet in the last five years that a Wizengamot official had banned the paper from printing their names out of sheer irritation; for the last few years, Lucius Malfoy, until recently on house arrest, had been referred to whimsically as "Cockroach Cloistered."
"Hi," a voice said, to his left.
A smiling girl with small, even white teeth and honey blonde hair was standing next to them, her attention on Malfoy. A few other girls were gathered around her, gossiping among themselves.
Malfoy stared at her, taking her in with his slow, lazy stare. "Hello," he said. "This your stuff?"
"Yes," she said. "Thanks for watching it. We were dancing." She indicated the other room.
"No trouble," Malfoy told her. "I'm Draco, by the way." He leaned forward, fingers brushing her hand, and her smile deepened, revealing perfect dimples. The anger Theodore had felt all this week towered in him, a gathering wave about to crash and break. His wand was in his hand and his hand trembled.
"Corinna's out front," one of the girls' said to her.
"Happy Valentine's Day," the blonde girl called over her shoulder, as they all filed out of the bar.