Happy Birthday, ga-4-ever
. . . . . . . . . .
The annual Ministry Gala.
Draco sighed as he took his nametag and thanked the intern sitting behind the desk. She prattled off her memorized spiel about the silent auction and this year's beneficiary without ever looking at him.
He hated these things so much.
Ten years. Ten bloody years and people's eyes still passed over him as if he weren't there, as if they could erase him by sheer force of will. He sometimes wanted to shove the long sleeves of his dress robes up and shove the faded Mark into people's faces. "There," he'd snarl. "That's why you hate me. Look at it and try to remember I was a child!"
He didn't, of course. That sort of fantasy only played out well in the privacy of your own shower. In the real world he just took a glass of champagne from a passing member of the catering staff with quiet thanks and ambled over to the tables holding the silent auction items. It gave him something to do; it made that he was alone, that no one would talk to him, less obvious.
He dutifully wrote down his name next to an available item with a price high enough to ensure he'd get it. He thought about bidding on "Dinner with the Chosen One" just to enjoy thinking about the way Potter would simmer and glare if he won but common sense won out and he held himself to a vase made by the children of the medical ward this gala would benefit. It was lumpy, badly painted, and hideous.
His mother would love it.
"Go," she insisted every year when this event rolled around. "You're still a Malfoy. You should go an enjoy society."
Still a Malfoy, he thought. And isn't that the problem.
With all the auction items duly examined and dinner not due to start for 30 more minutes he leaned up against a wall in a shadowed part of the room and tried to look relaxed instead of like a pathetic wallflower. He was so focused on not letting anyone see how awkward he felt he didn't even notice when the woman drifted over toward him until it was too late to extricate himself and find another solitary patch of wall to lean against.
"Granger," he said politely.
"Malfoy. Haven't seen you in a while."
He shrugged and didn't look at her, instead keeping his eyes on an empty spot in front of him. "I come every year."
"I try to avoid it," she said. "Ginny made me promise to come this year because she was on some planning committee. Auction items, I think."
"Oh." He supposed that explained the dinner with Potter.
They stood in silence for a moment before she said, "The food's supposed to be bad this year."
"Oh?" he said again, this time injecting a tiny amount of polite curiosity into his voice.
"New caterer," she said, then added in a rush, "If you wanted to get out of here I know a good place we could duck out to. Get something better. 'snot fancy. Just burgers and a pint but…"
Draco finally turned to look at her. She was clutching onto her champagne flute with white knuckled fingers and just as he was about to say something she muttered, "Never mind. You don't want to be seen with me. I get it."
"I'd love to," he said as quickly as he could. "If you don't mind being seen with me."
He couldn't quite control the bitterness in that caveat and she blinked a few times. "I'm the Mudblood," she said at last.
He flinched at the slur he'd once used casually. "I'm the Death Eater," he said in response.
"You didn't have a choice," she said, staring at him.
"Neither did you," he retorted then, with a swallow. "It's a bit late but I'm sorry about, well, everything."
She shrugged as they stood there in the shadows and finally said, "If you pick up dinner and rescue me from this place I'll call it even."
"You want to get out of here that much?" he asked starting, against his better judgment, to smile.
She looked at him and her own mouth twitched up in an answering smile. "I hate this stupid event," she said. "Brings back bad memories."
"I'm not one of them?" he asked as he took her glass from her hand and left it, along with his own, on a table pushed up against the wall he'd been leaning on.
She just shook her head. "We can slip out the back way if we go down that corridor," she said.
He let her lead the way, tearing off his nametag and leaving it lying on the floor as he followed Hermione Granger out through a service entrance, into the clear night, and off to a Muggle pub where the barman eyed their clothes but didn't say anything, just served them up some decent food and a decent pint and left them to talk.
"I can't…" he said, helplessly, hours later, looking at the confusing Muggle prices on the tab.
She flushed. "I'm sorry," she said, pulling sheets of colored paper out of her bag and leaving them. "I didn't think."
"Now how do I make it up to you?" he asked, teasing her but grateful she'd not made fun of him for not knowing how Muggle currency worked. "All those years I was going to buy off with a single meal."
"Tomorrow night?" she suggested.
"I could do that," he said, slowly.
"Or breakfast," she said, looking away and biting her lip.
He began to smile again; he felt like he hadn't really smiled in years and now he'd had a whole evening of actual happiness. "Maybe come back to my place for tea?" he asked, trying to hide how very much he hoped she'd say yes, trying to protect his heart from the rejection he expected. "I have a toothbrush you could borrow?"
She flicked her eyes back to his face looking, he supposed, for mockery even after drinking with him for hours. When she didn't see any she said, "I could do that."
