Author's Note: Since I want Vivian to be a surprise until the end, I'll throw in some more twisted little things... she could be anyone, she could be impersonating anyone, she could be flat out lying about a lot of things, or even crazy and ready for St. Mungo's. Who knows. I'm mad as a tea cozy to keep going on and on about this... I'm rolling my eyes at myself for throwing all this in, because I can see how twisted it could get, what sort of oddities/characters Vivian could be in the end! I already know but I can't wait.

Chapter Five

After finishing his cigarette, throwing it to the ground, stepping on it, and then clearing his throat, Draco entered the restaurant. He was immediately calmed by seeing that it was a typical restaurant, from the mirrors and paintings on the walls to the booths and tables, with small vases of flowers on each table. Vivian saw his expression and said, " It's not as boring as it looks."

"Great, do ninjas somersault out the kitchen door, or something?" He saw nothing exciting otherwise about the place.

The patrons of the restaurant, scattered across the dining area, were mostly dressed in black, but they weren't dour and mournful as he would suspect. Rather, they were all having lively discussions, dining and laughing.

Vivian led him to a booth and he slid in on one side, and she on the other, across from him. He looked around shyly, trying to make sure that there were no familiar faces in the restaurant.

"You look like a pervert, glancing at people over your shoulder like that," She pointed out to him.

"Maybe I am a pervert," He grumbled, "You didn't even know me and you asked me to dinner."

"You don't know me or if I even write decently, but you asked me to write in your name."

"It's an honor to write as Brom Breeler," Draco said pompously.

"It's an honor to get to eat dinner with me. I have quite a social agenda," but she added, honestly nice again, "You probably don't get out much."

He looked her straight in the eye, wondering if she wanted to take him on as some charity case, being his "only friend", "poor fellow" and all. If so, she was deluding herself for his life was nothing to pity and he didn't want her help. He replied, smoothly, "I choose to keep company with someone I love only."

"Who?"

"Me."

"You're really vain, either for serious or not. Either way you're pretty unfriendly, so no wonder you're always solo."

"How am I not friendly? I say hello and thank you and goodbye."

"That's not friendliness, it's politeness," She looked up at him, for she had been surveying the menu, "Pick something, a waiter will be here any minute now."

Draco opened up the menu and could see why it was Taste of Poetry. Every piece of food had a label underneath it with 2 to 4 words on it. The diner was encouraged to pick a meal and use all the words they collected from all the foods they chose to form a poem. Poetry could be judged by the waiter or waitress, and anything from a free drink to 10 off came as a reward for unique poems.

Draco picked a baked potato, a tomato and onion salad, a dinner roll, roast chicken breast and green tea.

His words were as follows,

Wind

Far

Mountain

Icy

Child

Rosy

Pink

Smell

Turn

Drawn

Doze

Eyes

Desire

He looked up at Vivian, puzzled.

"You can change tenses and add words like and, or, because, in, over, and you don't have to use them all," She smiled, "Have fun."

"What're your words?" DRaco asked.

"I'm not telling," She said slyly. The waiter took their orders as a pair – Draco realized that she'd probably expect him to pay or something – and then disappeared.

"Never heard of this place," Draco said finally.

"It's mostly known among the artistic folk."

"Goths?"

She frowned, "I'm not... that. I do as I wish and I express myself with how I look. And I do wear color," She gestured at her green and yellow striped tights under her black skirt.

"So you try to represent that you're a colorblind mime?"

"No; that I'm creative, messy, artistic, chaotic, free."

"Everyone's free."

"Not like me."

"Everyone's an individual."

She smiled, "Wow, your first positive thought. Let's celebrate," She took her drink, a glass of chocolate milk, off the waiter's tray, startling him for he'd just arrived at that very moment. DRaco took his tea and didn't toast to his thought. Rather, he brooded over his green tea.

"Here's the story, by the way," Vivian pushed a typed, neat two page paper towards him. It was folded in half and it unfurled like a butterfly's wings facing DRaco. He took it and read the title: Knitting Time Away by Brom Breeler.

"It's about those grannies, right?"

"It's precisely that. You're done now."

"Done with what?"

"Me! You have no obligations to me any longer. You can leave at this very moment, I'll pay and doggie-bag your meal," Vivian told him, "I'm opening your cage."

Draco realized that this was true, but she wasn't exactly itching to split. He couldn't believe how easily she took him away from her kind hands; as quickly as she'd gathered him in, and though he fought the whole way through about it, he wasn't so sure about leaving. He had a relationship with her now, and she wanted his help to get a job still. Therefore he had to be around her some more. If she got the job, he'd see her often as he'd arrive at work, dropping off stories for the paper.

"Damn," she said, seeing his conflict-ridden face, "I broke your mind, didn't I?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're losing yourself, slowly, to the world. You're diffusing, doing things for no reason, making decisions without logic. It starts out slow, but I got your gears going."

"You're playing with my mind, in other words," Draco said.

"You're too harsh. Be optimistic about it. I'm letting you learn how to fly. You've been sitting and collecting dust for so long you don't have fun anymore," she told him.

Their food arrived. She had sweet and sour chicken over white rice and a side of broccoli smothered with artificial looking yellow cheese. She grew silent, reading her list of words that she had jotted down on a napkin.

"Would you describe a mother's arms, her embrace, as glorious?" She asked, suddenly, referring to some line in her poem.

"I don't know," because he didn't.

"What do you think when you hug your Mum?" She asked.

"To pinch myself and wake up," he admitted, "It's not how we are."

"Oh, one of those no-touching-each-other families. Breeler... is that Germanic?"

"A little," Draco dodged it.

"My Mum's pretty huggable," she said, "but it's not like I feel anything amazing when I hug her since she's hugged me so much. I figured a son would hug his Mum less frequently, but..."

"I don't mind it. Everyone raises their children their own way," Draco began to eat, using his knife and fork elegantly.

She picked at her chicken with her fingers, "So I take it you don't have siblings."

"Nope."

"Do you wish you had any?"

The way she jumped from topic to topic was making him reel, answering candidly. "I used to; someone to prank other students with, someone to blame if I screwed up."

"You were a mean little kid, I bet! A bully, if that's what you wanted a sibling for," she teased.

"Ever wanted to be an only child?"

"Sometimes. I'm second youngest, so my parents really doted on me; my Mum cried most when I moved out and got myself a home."

"What side was your family?" Draco asked finally, this time initiating a question.

"Against You-Know-Who," she replied. "You weren't...?"

"I was."

"Gah, you really deal a handful of negative cards, don't you? If I had to paint your heart it would be concrete."

"Close. Marble."

"Some sort of rock anyway," she joked.

"Like the rocks in your head," he said meanly, his childhood self rejoicing within. He laughed.

"Good one," she laughed with him, or at him, or beside him, he couldn't tell which. "So didn't your family fall apart when You-Know-Who was finally conquered? I'm guessing you fought for him."

"My father and I."

"Is he okay?"

Draco bit his lower lip.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, is he... dead?" She placed her hand gently over his. Her fingers were pulsating with warmth.

He pulled his hand away quickly, as if scalded, "He had a really bad stroke after being hit by a spell. I saw him fall. I'm still angry."

"Is he okay?" She asked, again.

"Alive, if that's what you mean. Completely incompetent though."

"That's awful. Still, the good side won. Do you still hate people that aren't pureblood?"

Draco didn't like how horrible he was coming off in the conversation; he gave her a very collected smile and said, "I don't have to tell you everything."

"Soon you'll realize everyone's equeal, just on different steps on the ladder of mankind."

"How philosophical."

Draco arranged his words with his fingertips as he talked:

The wind from a far icy mountain

Made rosy a child's pink cheek

He is drawn to it, eyes closed,

Desiring to feel.

He wrote it down on his napkin.

She crumpled hers, " I didn't like mine," She said.

He pushed his napkin towards her. She read the poem, then read it again, and said, " There's still hope for you, Brom. You can still feel good about life. Does your life feel good to you?"

"It feels normal," he said, as if to assure himself that it did, but he knew it didn't. He was miserable; he didn't want to move from the Malfoy mansion, which had been in the family for centuries, he didn't want his father to be completely deranged; he didn't want to have to dress his father every morning and put on his pajamas at night; he didn't want to write ridiculous cheery stories when his talent was clearly in covering big news and important events.

The waiter came and put down the check, and Vivian said, "Let's split it 50/50."

Draco agreed and together they assembled enough money to pay, plus a nice tip. The waiter took Draco's napkin and said he qualified for a free meal. Draco wasn't sure he'd ever visit Taste of Poetry again, but he thanked the waiter anyway and pushed the coupon into his pocket. He hoped it would dissolve and disappear, so he wouldn't have to look back at these random events taking place in his life; he might miss them, or he might think himself as ridiculous and stupid to go along with Vivian's plans.

"So I guess you'll leave now. Throw in a good word for me at work, if you could," Vivian said.

"That's right. I'll see what I can do," he stood. It felt very awkward all of a sudden. "I'll be going then," he said, but remained standing by the booth.

"Goodbye," Vivian waved to him.

"You're not leaving?"

"I want to wait until six, they have poetry readings then. I've got a few," she dug around in her pockets and pulled out a few sheets of rumpled paper, "I want to share. Can you leave me yours? I'll read it and say it was written by the Brom Breeler."

"Fine," he gave her his napkin.

"See, another random act of kindness, on both our parts."

"Dream on, I'm not going to get caught up in this new age garbage."

"It's not garbage," she smiled, "and you've already started. Say hi to Katie for me."

Draco felt angry at nothing in particular; somewhere during the evening something she said disturbed him more than anything else but he couldn't pinpoint what point of their conversation this disturbing news came through. He figured that almost everything she said was a little disturbing to him. He moved himself away from their table and out into the street.

He walked down the street, heading home. He decided he'd write to Narcissa the moment he got home.

Ironically, just as he entered their house his owl flew in, carrying a letter from Narcissa. He felt a little ashamed opening it, because he hadn't written back to the last letter and here she was, sending a second one in a row. But as he started reading he realized she was so carried away with finalizing a purchase on a new home that she was oblivious to whether he replied or not. Her letter was written in a hurried scrawl this time, as if she wrote it in between doing important things.

"Draco!

How is everything? Is Lucius doing any better? I found a

street and I found a house, it's a beautiful Victorian mansion,

a tad smaller than the Malfoy manor but it'll suit us well,

especially since you'll be leaving soon and starting a family,

if all goes well.

I'm buying the mansion within the next few days, and I'll

be home before next Wednesday. I've already put the

Malfoy manor on for-sale lists across the country, we'll

sell for sure.

Only one thing I'm curious about in this neighborhood;

They told me someone quite popular is living nearby

but I haven't been able to get scoop as to who it is.

All the families I've met are pureblood, and so I'm

guessing it's someone of stature in the pureblood

community, like Lucius. Well, that's all for now,

Sincerely, Narcissa"

He read the last two words and realized how cold they seemed. Sincerely. When was the last time she had said with love? I love you, son? I love you, mother? He realized quickly that he was having Vivian-like thoughts. "Damn it," he said aloud, tossing the letter onto the table and pulling out a sheet of paper to write a reply while he was still in a good mood. Just thinking of Vivian put him in an unhappy state of mind.

He dipped a feather into an ink well and rested the tip on the top of the paper. He wrote, in his tight script-like handwriting, Dear Mother.

Draco's father rested at the end of the letter r, and slowly a large black spot appeared on the paper. He didn't feel like rewriting, even though he had only written two words. His mind was blank of anything to say to his Mother.

I opened your cage.

"You didn't," he said under his breath, scoffing softly. What a ridiculous thing to say, even. As if she were some sort of zookeeper and he was some sort of bird. She had no business telling him how to think. It was a lucky guess that he was acting a little unlike himself this week, by being nice to Katie, and it was only one occasion. He wasn't changing, he was the same person that he was nearly a decade ago, when he was starting his first year at Hogwarts. He'd matured a bit, and changed a lot physically; before he wasn't very tall, at least half a head shorter than Potter by seventh year. He'd grown like crazy between his eighteenth and nineteenth year. He grew his hair out longer, his voice deepened greatly – he figured it could even be sexy if he employed it during the right situation, but such a situation wasn't going to happen for a while still, so he kept his own possible sexiness to himself. He looked older; when he was a seventh year he still looked about the same as his fourth year from the face; now he'd gotten thinner and he had high cheekbones, and a frail kind of look to him. He looked more washed-out; his hair was bleached further white-blonde from the sun and his skin was fine as porcelain. He wasn't eating well and he was getting thinner at a slow pace; therefore he lacked any sort of blush or pinkness to his face.

So physically he was quite a bit different from his younger self; he could pass as his younger self's brother. Inside, he had matured as well; he didn't find bullying as funny as much as knowing secrets and getting people to open up to him, to help develop his stories. He was still capable of the manipulation that he used to make Crabbe and Goyle his loyal protectors. He easily maneuvered people to do what he wanted them to do; he was usually polite but rarely kind. His eyes were cold, he could see it clearly whenever he glanced in the mirror. He had further become distant and a control-freak when Lucius fell apart before his eyes.

He continued writing,

Father is doing the same as when you left.

Draco dipped the feather into the ink again and added another two hasty lines,

I'm doing well; I wrote a new story for the paper after a bout of writer's block. I hope to get a better assignment next time.

What else was there to his life?

He had a strange feeling of having very little to live for, which was morbid but not suicidal; he didn't mean that he had no future, rather, his life was composed of very few things. Vivian was right about that.

"Fuck her," he said under his breath again, "fuck me," he grumbled again, for his thoughts and how they veered to her again and again. She really got under his skin. He had no desire to talk to his boss about hiring her. He didn't want to see her again. She bothered him; she was manipulative too, but in a way that he could never be; a higher level perhaps. She had to be manipulative. Kindness didn't change things. She was playing with his mind.

He added another line,

The house sounds interesting.

Draco didn't want to move. He knew the only reason Narcissa began to focus so much on moving and leaving the Malfoy manor behind was because every room felt like it was drained of Lucius' imposing presence. The various portraits of the family hanging all around the house were sad reminders of the way things were before. Narcissa also couldn't handle what her husband was going through. It was obvious but unspoken between her and her son that she was putting all her energy into this new home because she would fall apart otherwise. It was control of some part of her life. She desperately needed it.

He was like that too, it was difficult for him to accept someone else making rules and doing things for him. He liked predictability and control a lot. Another sentence formed,

Is it nearby or a long way from the Manor?

Perhaps if it was far enough away from home, he wouldn't have to see Vivian ever again. He added the typical last few lines,

I hope you are doing well, I'm doing just fine. I miss you.

He looked at the last line. It felt strange to admit it. He had never been away from his mother, he realized. She was always there, his whole life, and wherever she went, he went with her; when she vacationed he would join her, with Lucius. They were a family that was close in their own ways, just as any loving family would be. He had never had to tell his mother he missed her before. It dawned on him that not only was Rose nearing her death day – bordering on seventy-two – but so were his parents. One day he would wake up and his mother would be still in her bed. Or – his father!

Draco felt unbelievably depressed now.

Love, Draco

He added this hastily, before he would change his mind. Love. Yes, he loved his mother. He hadn't told her so since he was eight or so, probably that last Mother's Day where he would still kiss her cheek and give her hand-colored cards.

He put the letter in the envelope, handed it to his owl, and watched it fly out the kitchen window, a bit slowly for he had just made a trip to give Draco the letter from Narcissa.

They're all going to die sometime, he reasoned with himself, I can't stop that. The realization that the people around him all had a limit, that they were all undeniably mortal, stung him deeply. This was part of the reason he was colder and more distant to Rose now. He didn't want to miss her anymore than he already did, for all the memories of her in his childhood, walking him by the hand through the park, holding him close at bedtime and reading to him – sometimes she would, sometimes Narcissa would, and infrequently his father, usually reading the newspaper to enrich Draco's life a little.

He didn't like old people in general, he felt uncomfortable around them, seeing the road of their life in the lines on their face, in the age spots on their arms, in the way their skin drooped lifelessly, as if parts of them were already fading into the afterlife.

For the second time that week, he felt like crying. He also felt that he was being childish; he had been perfectly aware of the fact that everyone aged and had to die at some point. He'd suffered about it a little; he remembered an instance where he was sitting in his bedroom, barely six years old, and holding a photograph of his mother and crying because someone in the park told him that his parents would die one day. Some boy whose Mum had died from some disease or another had said it, and Draco was haunted by the idea for a few days, unable to sleep without Narcissa staying by his side until sleep took him.

He snapped out of his thoughts to realize he had tipped over the ink and it had puddled across the newspaper on the table. He began to mop at it hastily with a kitchen rag, blinking away the tears that salted his eyes. Hell, he thought to himself, if I fall apart on my family too, the Malfoys will be done with. I've got to be strong. Mother is losing it as well, slowly. I'm the only one I can rely on to keep this family functioning now.

This was a sobering thought. He was glad this had all happened when it did, when he was an adult already, because he knew the child he was, the bratty, cruel boy he had been, would have failed completely.