Draco walks in the door, a roll of parchment, a quill, and inkwell in his hands, and immediately regrets it. The room is filled with an assemblage of women much older than his mother, with glasses perched on the tips of their noses as they chat and work on something in their laps. He wants to leave, to go and never come back, but his mother had begged him to go and he told her he would, for her.
He resigns himself to learning whatever these women are doing, putting aside his pride to ease his mother's mind. Maybe he'll take a finished product back to his mother and she'll stop worrying.
He sits down in one of the few available chairs and unrolls his parchment, dips his quill, and writes, "Will you teach me?" as neatly as he can manage. He shows it to a woman next to him; she reminds him a lot of his grandmother, a stern look that softens as she reads his words.
She studies him for a long moment before nodding. He's thankful she doesn't ask about why he doesn't ask aloud. She pulls out her wand and summons three items. She explains each of them—embroidery frame, fabric, a needle, and thread. The woman hands him the assembled fabric in the embroidery frame, and a threaded needle.
Draco aptly pays attention to her as she shows him how to make the stitches. He scribbles, "Again," a few times but by the time the group packs up to leave, he's caught the hang of the stitches she teaches him.
"Are you coming back next week, young man?" she asks.
"Is it the same time?" he writes. When she tells him it's the same time and place every month, Draco nods. "I'll be here."
"Keep practicing," she suggests. "I'll teach you more stitches next month."
He loathes to admit it but embroidery is a bit relaxing.
When he shows up the next month, he freezes in the doorway. There's a redheaded man with a large grin, sitting with the woman who taught him last month. There's absolutely no mistaking who it is; he's a Weasley, but Draco doesn't recognize him.
This was supposed to be good for him. His mother assured him at nobody was going to know him. He's ready to flee when the woman looks up and gives him an encouraging smile. "Have you been practicing?" she calls out.
Weasley doesn't turn to look at him. Draco files that away to examine later, but for now he has no other option; he moves to take a seat on the other side of her. He shows her the prewritten answer of "Yes, I've practiced." It causes her to smile.
It's when he sits down that Weasley finally faces Draco. He's expecting a snide remark or give him some other look of disdain, but he find only curiosity in his blue eyes. It unsettles him; Weasley is up to something, he's sure of it. Maybe to learn about Draco's weakness to report back to his family.
"I didn't know you embroidered, Draco," he says. It's a bit too loud, as if he doesn't know how to use a voice appropriate for indoors; a quick glance around, and Draco observes that none of the others have an issue with his volume.
"He came last month, when you were sick," the woman answers for him, pulling a stitch through. She slips the needle into the fabric expertly, and turns towards Draco. "Now, come on. Let me see what you've done."
Begrudgingly, Draco digs out his embroidery frame from his pocket and casts a non-verbal spell to enlarge it. She takes it to inspect it. He kept to the same fabric to master the stitches. He's worked from left to right, top to bottom almost systematically. It's clear to see his improvement by how each row gets more tidy than the one before.
"You've done well," she tells him.
Weasley glances at it, surprise written on his face. "You taught him to embroider only last month, Winnie?"
Winnie grins and nods. She gives Draco another square of fabric as she talks to Charlie. He struggles through clamping it in between the pieces of the embroidery frame.
When he looks up, Weasley has returned to his own embroidery. Draco can't see what it is, but his embroidery frame is quite large. The redhead is talking loudly with all of the women; he sounds like he's been coming to this group a lot.
By the time the group ends, Draco has successfully embroider fuck you, that's why in green with silver outlining. He plans to make some border around before the next meeting.
He hears a loud laugh over his shoulder and snaps his attention to the source. Weasley grins at him.
"I hope you're not going to give that to your mother," he says.
Draco glares at him. It doesn't seem to faze the redhead.
Weasley shrugs. "Anyways, I guess I'll see you next month."
He stays there for a long moment, wondering just what the other man is up to.
"You never talk," Weasley announces, when the women have left.
Draco's heart skips a beat. He was hoping the redhead wouldn't figure it out. An enemy who know his weakness. He hasn't written anything on the parchment he brings in hopes that Weasley wouldn't find out.
"Look, I'm not going to use it against you," he says. His voice is still too loud for Draco.
He can't resist the urge to write, "But you're a Weasley," on his parchment.
The redhead laughs at that, his head thrown back. "You'll find that people are more than their names," he replies. Then he adds, "Ever since the battle, I can't hear out of my right ear and I've only got a limited hearing in my left."
Suddenly, his loud voice and lack of hearing Draco approach the first time they met makes sense. He searches the redhead's face for a hint of a lie and only finds the truth.
"Why tell me something like that?" he writes.
"To show you I understand what it's like to lose something you never thought you'd lose," he answers, shrugging. "It's difficult to try to live with. I had to quit my job as a Tamer because of it. If you ever want someone to discuss it with, besides worried mothers, I'd read whatever you would write."
Draco vanishes all the words but 'why' of his previous question.
Weasley gives him a sad smile. "Everyone deserves a second chance. I would be lying if I said that I'm not aware of the choices you made or the fact that Ron hates your guts. But if I judged you solely on that, it wouldn't be fair. Good night, Draco. See you next month."
Before the redhead gets a chance to leave, Draco scribbles, "You offer that but not your name," and floats it in front of him.
"It's Charlie," he says.
Draco thinks of the redhead's justification the entire way home. His mother waits for him at the kitchen table, her hand around a tea cup. When she spots him, she says, "Tell me something good."
He sits across from her at the table and write about the group. When Narcissa reads it, she gives him a smile and pats his hand. "I knew getting you out of the Manor would do you good."
He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he misses his voice now more than ever. But there's nothing the Healer can do to fix the spell damage and telling her would only upset her further. He realizes that Weasley was right; there's just somethings he can't tell her about because he doesn't want to upset her.
He works up a smile to give her.
Later—much, much later—Charlie'll hand Draco an embroidery square with a magnificent dragon of a deep purple-black on it. In return, he'll give the redhead a square that would say "I hate you the least."
Charlie'll laugh before kissing him. When they'll part, Draco will be thankful for the group his mother begged him to join. He still won't be able to talk and Charlie still won't be able to hear, but somehow, it'll be okay. They'll be okay because they understand each other.
Meet cute: craft group
Character appreciation: (Object) Glasses
Book Club: Nick Andros - (au) deaf-mute, (trait) intelligent, (emotion) distrust
Library Loves: (floor one)
(AU) disability
(dialogue) "Tell me something good."
Write about trying to change someone's mind
Serpents: Pit viper- (word) tidy
Insane: 362. Word - Assemblage - (A gathering)
365: 351. Word - Justify
Writing month: 1387