Author's Note: Gary Skinner, your story idea about Draco being stuck without magic all of a sudden is a great idea and I'll try to craft a story from it after this story... sadly there's very little reviews, but I'm hoping it'll grow in number if I keep adding chapters... sigh

Chapter Four

Draco woke with a dreadful feeling in his stomach on Friday morning. He stood, stretched, dressed, then sat at his desk, thinking of how wrong his evening with Vivian could get. He couldn't fathom the extent of her friendliness and interest in him and apparently all mankind as well. What if she placed her hand on his shoulder, or knee, like friendly people do? Or rest against him? Draco disliked touching too much; when he grew up Narcissa and Lucius rarely showed Draco their love physically, like through hugs and kisses. At Hogwarts, Draco would ridicule students that kissed and hugged in greeting or parting. He certainly found it offensive and infringing on his personal space. Vivian might as well have put her finger in his mouth or ear forcibly; he'd be just as annoyed with the physical contact.

His imagination had taken a strong turn for the worse; he could now picture over five situations that would lead Draco to run from the restaurant, screaming. With much dismay, he noticed he'd slept until almost noon, leaving him with even less time until his appointment with Vivian. He had stayed up late into the night, unable to sleep for no reason at all. He suspected it came from all the chatting, friendliness and emotionality that had happened with Katie. He was exhausted from it, as they hadn't originally been in his evening plan. It began to disappoint him and his opinion of himself; he was growing too soft. He liked to keep his distance, make friends with people he felt were beneath him intelligent-wise so that he could predict them and their behaviors, and so that they never surprised him. Crabbe and Goyle still visited Draco sometimes, and Draco enjoyed seeing that they hadn't changed much. He enjoyed that sort of stability.

The clock in his room now showed half past noon, and Draco was still sitting at his desk, thumbing aimlessly through the papers on his desk, lost in thought.

His thoughts were interrupted as Lucius appeared in the doorway.

"Father?" He said softly.

"Draco, Draco," he said, as he was going through some new psychotic stage that required him to echo part of all of what he said.

Lucius walked into the room and patted his son's head, his fingers sliding across Draco's smooth, sleep hair.

Draco's stomach twisted and turned, not from the touch itself but from the fact it was his father; that somewhere in his delusional mind he still recognized Draco as his son, and that he loved him.

"What is it?" Draco asked him.

Lucius put his hand to Draco's cheek. His hand trembled so badly Draco could feel it against his skin.

Draco turned his head away from the touch, suddenly overcome with how useless, ruined, and completely vulnerable Lucius had become.

"Rose is cooking – is cooking. She took my saucers away. Saucers."

"OH," Draco said. Oh?

Lucius left the room after that, and Draco paced his room, from his bed to bureau, disturbed; finally he grasped the family portrait on his bureau, yanked out the photograph of his family, stared at it – he was in between his mother and father – and threw it into the drawer of his desk that he rarely used.

&&&&&&&&&&

When Draco arrived promptly on time at the café, he noted with some irritationon that Vivian wasn't there. He sat down, ordered his usual coffee, and waited. At 5:10, Vivian walked in and surprised him by speaking from behind, "Hello!"

He turned and stood up, "You're late," he reminded her, and waited vainly for an apology.

"Bah, time", she crooned, and smiled athim, "Ready to go?"

He nodded, "Where to?" He could picture some dirty, smoke-filed room with everyone pale and draped in black, swaying to ridiculous new age music.

"It's a secret, I bet you've never been there," She confirmed his suspicion.

"I haven't been anywhere, really," Draco admitted, though it wasn't true; he would often stroll the neighborhood and stop in at various places, familiarizing himself with his surrounding. He had also been in some awful places, like a tavern about a mile's walk from his home, where he, Crabbe and Goyle celebrated his eighteenth birthday with pint after pint, until he found himself vomiting and scrambling home through neighbor's yards. He fell into someone's artificial pond, he recalled with some distaste. He drank now and then, and got drunk once in a while, but never that bad or that far from home. He could have easily teleported himself, but he was too drunk to remember most of the incantation, and when he finally recalled it his voice was too slurred and he just ended up singing his clothes.

"Come on, let's go," Vivian said, half-criticizing, half-playful.

Draco realized that once again he had to down his entire coffee in a quick few gulps, taking away almost all the satisfaction. He gulped it down anyway and followed Vivian outside.

It was fresh and cool outdoors, the sun still in the sky but ready to begin to set. Vivian looked around herself as she walked, leading the way about two steps ahead of him. She took a few turns, turns that Draco didn't take on his walks, or hadn't taken in a while.

"It's close now," She told him, "Maybe five or ten more minutes. Don't feel like talking?"

"Not especially," Draco admitted.

"You're a loner," Vivian assessed.

Draco didn't reply. I know sounded too presumptuous about himself, I'm sorry wasn't what he felt, and what's it to you? was far too quarrelsome.

Vivian breathed in the crisp air and sighed it out, "It will feel nice to start talking, really talking, some day."

"What do you mean?" He asked.

She turned and gave him a disgruntled look over her shoulder, "It'll be a relief to get all your problems out, that's what!"

"I don't have any problems," Draco said.

"How long have you been single?"

"I never said I was single."

"You are, I can tell. I can smell the bachelorhood in you," Her smile couldn't have been more devilish, "How long?"

"That's none of your business!" He said, absolutely aghast.

"It's been a while then," Vivian turned back around.

"How about you? Dating anyone?"

"Not for a few weeks now."

"Broke up?" He asked, hoping to strike at her privacy as she hit on his. It didn't bother her at all though, not even a fraction as much as her questions bothered Draco.

"Yeah. I broke it off," She threw a few strands of black hair over her shoulder. He noticed that she had very long hair, almost to her waist, something he hadn't noticed, because she had it cut shorter in front, so that when she put her hair in a bun, choppy pieces of hair to her shoulders hung out from it in the front, creating the illusion of much shorter hair. He paid attention to her sleek black hair, trying to act as if she didn't bother him. Yet her presence alone seemed to irk him.

"I made you uncomfortable," Vivian added, stating the obvious for the pleasure of it, he guessed, "I'm sorry, I'm a pretty open person about things. You can ask anything, I'll reply."

He wondered what would be extremely invasive. Are you a virgin? When did you first get your period? Do you have pubic hair or do you shave? He couldn't imagine asking any of those. Perhaps years ago, making fun of Hermione Granger, he could have spat something like that at her, to humiliate her, but he had grown a little since then; he had enough pride and Malfoy dignity to keep from doing so.

"Nothing to ask?" Vivian said. She paused mid-step until he caught up with her. She watched his face closely, though she was eye-level with his shoulder.

"Curiosity killed the cat," He warned.

"There'd be no cat if a certain momma and father cat weren't too curious," She laughed.

He couldn't help but smile, coolly.

"That's the first time I've seen you smile," Vivian commented, "You've got to be the most melancholy person in the world."

"You're the most cheerful person I've ever met," Draco said, making cheerful sound as if it were a bad thing, for to him it was. It made him suspicious of someone, it made them unpredictable, as he hadn't dealt with such a person for a long time, if not ever.

"Does it bother you that much?"

"It's like having needles pricked into me sometimes," He countered with equal honesty.

"You don't hide it, either," She said, "Must've been born allergic. Or maybe you realized you have a fatal STD."

"What?"

"Life. Get it? A fatal sexually transmitted disease? Ha-ha?"

"Ha-ha," He said, caught off guard again. He wouldn't be surprised if she suddenly threw herself on him and kissed him; she was absolutely ridiculous. What was he doing walking to some unknown place with an almost stranger, who spent her time bantering and picking away at his reserved, guarded self? He wanted to mug her, get that story off of her, and run for his life.

"What's your family like?" She asked finally, "Maybe you're more likely to talk about that."

He narrowed his eyes so that he was looking at her through a fan of long blonde lashes, " My mother and father are both really proud people. We come from a really long line of purebloods, the M... Breelers," He said, sticking to his pen name. She didn't have to know what his name was, he liked the anonymity even more. She would never get the chance to say she'd been out with a Malfoy for dinner – she could possibly be a Mudblood! He hadn't even asked yet! – she could say she did a Malfoy's work, wrote a story for him. A Malfoy wouldn't stand for that. A Breeler would. That is how Draco justified it in his mind.

"I see. I've got a lot of brothers and a sister. My dad's just retired, he tinkers around at home, building stuff, inventing, trying to get a hang of hand-crafting things like Muggles do. My mom's the typical housewife."

"Mmm..."

"You're pureblood, then."

"Yes."

"Me too."

"Okay."

"Just in case you were fretting about talking to a Mudblood," She teased.

"I wasn't," Draco lied.

"You were, I could see the question run across your face the moment you said you were a pureblood!"

Draco felt his ears warm, and he realized he was blushing, "You're - - I can't stand you sometimes, I don't get you."

"Oh, I won't even pretend I am beginning to get you," Vivian retorted.

"What do you mean? I'm normal, I don't waltz into people's lives and ask strangers to dinner, and pick away at their private life, and, and..." He was wasting his breath, he thought, but he was unraveling, his sentence flowing not from his mind but from his vocal chords and tongue, his very thoughts coming out before he could think about them. Why did she frustrate him so much!

"And?"

"And wear crazy all-black outfits and army boots, and go around smiling like you're God's gift to humanity," Draco fumed, "You're too happy, its unsettling, you're so eager and hyper and honest it makes me sick in the stomach, and I can't predict you, and I hate that. I like predicting people. I like being sure of everything that everyone will do, ahead of time, and plan things out just to be sure things stay in check."

"You're the loony one then," Vivian said, calmly, "You've cut yourself from the world, I can tell you're a hermit, a loner. You've got a lot to say I bet, but your mind's filtering it all so that none of it comes out of your mouth. You're reserving yourself for no reason at all, unless it's some sort of haughtiness, some sort of excessive pride. You can't be nice, you can't break a smile even or you nearly fall apart. You don't care, you don't seem to know how to love, you don't appreciate the world around you. Go out! Taste life! Experience!"

"Hippie," He murmured.

"Hermit," She countered.

"You're rude," He added.

"And you aren't?"

He felt like laughing all of a sudden, and he did, softly. He shook his head and gave her, for once, a rather merry look, "If this is the way we're handling this even before we've arrived at the restaurant, or wherever, I don't want to know how the rest of the evening will go. They'll toss us out into the alley, like brawling drunks."

"Don't worry, I'm not a fighter," She said.

"You're wrong, by the way," Draco said.

"About you?"

"About me not loving, anyway."

"Who do you love?"

"My mother. My father. Rose, a little, our housekeeper."

"That's people you're supposed to love, that doesn't count. How about friends? Any girls? Maybe boys!"

"I'm not gay!" He exclaimed, "I – I've loved."

"Who?"

"You wouldn't know her," Draco said.

"Oh, you old prude, tell me about it," Vivian grinned in delight, "Maybe there's a secret, passionate side to you, and you're not telling me."

"I'm about as passionate as a table leg."

"Come on!"

"It was nothing, it was just a girlfriend, don't worry about it," Draco dodged what would otherwise had been a stream of lies through his lips.

"So ask me some questions then," She offered.

"What makes you so happy?"

"Life. After I left school, I thought, hell, I've only got a certain amount of years before I get so old and unattractive my eyes will be wrinkled shut from laugh lines and I'll be tucking my breasts into my pantyhose. I wanted to live and experience things, to rebel, to be a little wacky. My family doesn't get it, except maybe two of my brothers."

"So it's about tasting life as much as possible before you kick the proverbial bucket?" Draco asked.

"You could say that. There's so much more to it though. Have you ever talked to a really old person that's sitting outside a store about everything and nothing? About them growing up, and how things have changed?"

"Not as far as I remember, no. I wouldn't care to talk to them."

"You're sheltered. You don't know what's out there."

"You're naïve. What's out there is only pretty when it's sleeping with it's teeth turned to the wall. The world is waiting to eat people like you alive, reality will be like a slap in the face."

"We're here," Vivian said, stopping in front of a plain-looking building with a sign reading, Taste of Poetry. "See, I got you talking. I got you thinking. You can't tell me this evening was a total waste as of yet."

"No, but it might have been, I still stand on the same position as before. I think order is nice, not chaos. I like plans, I like being cold and distant because people hurt you, and because life can throw in random cards if you don't learn to duck the possibility of a random card coming up."

"Doesn't matter, at least I got you talking. You don't have to agree with me. You'll probably never agree with me. But at least you've thought about it. It'll keep you up at night, you'll see."

"It won't," Draco said, even though deep conversations have kept him up for hours just this week.

Vivian pushed the door open, "Come in, it's interesting in here."

Draco hesitated.

"Come in or I won't give you your story."

"I will. Hold on a second. He pawed his pants and pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and told her, "Let me smoke something first." He wanted to calm his frayed nerves as quickly as possible. He smoked a pack every two weeks.

"You get agitated so easily. You really are out of practice with randomness in life." Vivian gave him a sympathetic pat on the back.

His back tingled where her hand touched. He didn't like it.

"Smoking's terrible for you. You should know by now," She criticized.

"Everything's bad for you. Everything will kill you, in one way or another. Might as well never leave the house because you could trip over a bloody stone and knock yourself from this world into the next."

She laughed, "See, now we're debating for real. Your viewpoint versus mine. This is fun."

"You're crazy," He said, breathing out a puff of smoke.

"So are you. That's the beauty of life. Craziness layered upon craziness."