Draco Malfoy bustles to his usual table at the back of the coffee bar and shucks off his heavy jacket. The evening outside is blustery and cold, and he welcomes the warmth of the small café with a mental prayer to the gods of heating. His order – a steaming mocha with two sugars – is brought to his small table by the sheepish-looking girl in the apron. He mildly wonders why all the waitresses at the café have the same name emblazoned across their shirtfronts – Gloria Jean. He hides a smirk behind the froth of his milk. Perhaps the employees are all inbred. Or the muggle community has very little imagination when it comes to naming their children.
With his pallor and starkly-contrasting dark garments, he looks every inch the emo writer slash isolated antisocialist he strives to portray, with stylish success. He blends into the shadows of the corner and is easily overlooked, all the better to concentrate on his thoughts. He rummages in his shoulder-bag for the notebook, and once his searching fingers find his prize, he extracts it from the bag and places it on the table before him with a soft clack. The sweetness of his coffee does little to repel the bitterness in his mouth that has lingered for so many months. The bitterness that miraculously strengthens when he fixes his gaze upon the red, plastic cover of the cheap notepad. Sipping slowly so as not to burn his tongue, he opens the pad and rakes over the names with his eyes. He counts twenty-six identities, scrawled like black blasphemies against the white, lined nothingness of the paper. Twenty-six names and eighteen months, and still he hasn't tracked down the one person he should.
His pondering grows so long that by the time he lifts the paper cup to his mouth, the chamois-coloured drink is tepid and tastes almost revoltingly sugary. Scowling, he worries the bottom-right corner of the pad with the tip of his pen, and when he deems the angry black swirl big and angry enough, he slams the pad shut. He shrugs on his jacket and slings his bag over his shoulder, leaves his coins on the table and stalks out of the nearly-empty coffeehouse into the frigid night air. The deserted street of muggle London, especially this dreary neighbourhood, seems to bristle and shiver with the cold air of the evening. Under the stark neon of the moon and electric streetlamps, his breath comes out in ethereal ghosts, like the memories of his past, yet disperse into the blackness with eloquent ease. Very unlike his demons, that curled into thick fogs at night and painted streaks of violent red against the black backdrops of his nightmares.
A feather-light whisper of a touch against his arm makes him turn, the hands buried inside his jacket pockets for warmth finding the comforting presence of his wand with a protective instinct. But it is only a girl, barely a woman, with her hand drawing back from his arm that stands before him. Her face is hooded with a shadow from far more than the night should give, and her lank hair, wan complexion and lurid clothes scream the word hooker into his brain like a Sonorous charm. But he recognises the face, and he recognises the signs of another keyed, and a welcome glimmer sparks in the pit of his belly. Her shoulders are hunched in a meagre attempt to ward off the chill, so he besots her with his irresistible smirk and asks if she'd join him for a drink elsewhere. Mute, her eyes clouded, she nods, and follows him to the cheap motel on the corner. He notes that she keeps a few paces behind him, well-obedient and placid.
With very hesitant words, she pours them both a glass of cheap, diluted alcohol and sits beside him on the old bed, her unhealthy paleness even more evident in the artificial light of the room. Draco fingers his glass with superficial nonchalance, and asks her for her name.
"My name is…" she trails off, her waxy eyes staring at him, yet their gaze obviously glassy and transparent. She is lost inside her mind.
"Your name is Brandy. Like the drink." he prompts, hoping that his assumption of her is right. He seldom isn't.
"My name is Brandy. Like the drink." she repeats automatically, almost mournfully in her monotony, and the lie of the sentence and truth of the matter grate his mind. He downs the rest of his drink for fortification as the memories threaten to surge back and drown him. Regret burns in the back of his throat like the stale alcohol, drawing itself in dark swirls mixed with blood and anguished screams and war, threatening to draw out his sorrows and anguish and make them puddle at his feet on the low-cost, moulting carpet of the room. Better to drown in drink than sorrow, he always thought, as he swallowed the brandy and regret and they both burned like bile.
She offers herself to him, and he accepts without qualms. In so many months on the move, it is rare for him to encounter the warmth of human affection, even if it is superfluous and fuelled by money. He knows that he cannot find respite and forgiveness in the arms of the scarlet lady, scarlet like his past and his nightmares and his regret. Stifled moans make ugly harmonies with the incessant buzzing of the fluorescent light bulb, and his inner monologue mocks his weakness for the raw need of an affectionate touch. Respite, it taunts, never used to drive you to senseless fucking before. Now that the sins of his past had caught up with him, did he truly think that the road to perdition allowed for a pit-stop in the embrace named after a vulgar drink? He croaks the name that has been haunting him for an eternity, that threaded 'what ifs' and 'hopes' into the fabric of his existence, and comes with tears in his eyes and a jeering laugh in his head.
They dressed in silence, because words are neither wanted nor welcomed after a carnal act without emotion, a moment of heat laced with icy coldness of December snowstorms. As she moved to take the money from the edge of the bed, he pushes her down in a swift, practiced motion and hisses the keyword into her ear.
'Voldemort.'
As expected, she stiffened and lay still, as though someone had hit her with a petrificus totalus. Her eyes are open and the pupils dilated with the shock of the spell being tampered. Few of the remaining Death Eaters are even aware of the word that opens the Mind-Lock spell, and those who did are still too cowardly to utter it, even with the wearer of the name long gone. To an ex-Death Eater who was far more comforted in the demise of the Lord he forsook before the Final Battle, the name feels like a well-aimed insult on his tongue.
"Do you remember now?" Demanded, more than asked.
"I do." The reply comes, unblinking.
"Do you remember your name being Marietta Hawwe? Your school, Hogwarts? Your house, Ravenclaw? Your family? Your friends?"
"Yes." The response is automatic, her subconscious still too woven into the spell to be given naturally. Rather like a response given to somebody under Veritaserum, only without the potion.
"Do you remember the War?"
"I do."
Tiny slivers of optimism burn in the back of his throat, raw from the brandy and the loving caress his voice had given his name. Draco swallows heavily and asks, voice tumultuous with emotion and laden with hope as his hand snakes to her shoulder and grips the coarse material of the netted shirtsleeve tightly.
"Do you know where Harry Potter is?"
"No." she replies.
He wants to curse her. He wants to snap her neck in two and let her bleed on the cheap bedding of the motel. How could she sound so disinterested and calm while a torrent of bitterness so strong swept through him inside, threatening to capsize the tiny boat of expectation he'd steadily built up over so many months, and drown him in his sea of sorrow? How dare she? Draco takes his hand away from her shoulder and emits a pained sigh, then buts a stopper on his frustration. He applies a memory charm to the girl, now Marietta again, and breaks the spell at last. He leaves the dingy room to the sound of her hoarse sobs and fights back the urge to vomit his disappointment.
He hops on the underground and takes refuge from the outside world on the seats scrawled black with graffiti. Drawing in a sharp hiss of a breath, he fumbles in his bag and pulls out the red notebook. Opening the pad, he takes the lid off his pen and writes the name Marietta Hawwe underneath the scrawl that reads Dennis Creevey. His pen lingers momentarily on the tail of the e, making a large black inkspot on the page. Capping his pen, he stares at the names again and shuts the book with both hands, returning it to the safe confines of his bag. Another day, another witch or wizard rescued from the aftermath of the War. If he encountered any more useful leads from the next few people he'll meet, then perhaps he can begin his search in earnest. Until then, he had to make sure that he had gotten as much information as possible on the Man Who Lived Again, now a walking ghost on the face of the Earth.
Regret burns like the proverbial sugar in a pool of absinthe, foggy and green like the doubts and worries in his mind. The thought of tomorrow lay heavy in his mind, uncertain and menacing, Slytherin-green and clawing at his image of a better tomorrows, a sunnier tomorrow, and a tomorrow without repentance. Because he was sure than once he found Harry Potter, the one who defeated the Dark Lord and mysteriously disappeared afterwards, his regret at not having done more for the Order would disappear with the sincere smile he bestowed on everyone, and used to give to him in their final days before they were parted.
Twenty-seven lives regained. That had to count for something.