A/N: Welcome to an entire chapter from Draco's POV!
Friday, April 21, 2000
The last two months for Draco had been busy. His mother had needed help recovering from the Black Cat Flu and his university workload was increasing steadily in preparation for summer term exams, to the point where he spent most of his time bouncing between his mother's Parisian residence, labs, and libraries and almost no time in his own flat. He was almost glad that Christina had broken up with him - he didn't have time for a girlfriend right now.
They'd met at a party hosted by one of Draco's football mates back in November. She'd been bold, very sexy, and asked him back to hers that same night. She was a muggle, but Draco was just a man, who was he to turn down the attentions of a beautiful woman? After that, they'd hooked up regularly and fell into a quasi-relationship that neither of them bothered defining.
Apparently though, Christina had expected progression and she began to make more demands for Draco's company. It wasn't that he was averse to exploring a more serious relationship. She was clever (studying physics), feisty (a member of the debating society), and brunette (his favorite), but his sloppily explained absenses on occassions when he needed to return to the wizarding world eroded the trust between them until Christina had finally had enough and called it off. She'd accused him of having another girl on the side and threw a drink in his face... not one of Draco's finer moments. He could never go back to that restaurant.
Lacking an outlet for the fun way of relieving stress, Draco redoubled his committment to his football club, attending every match and practice. He'd never played before joining of course, so he'd chosen the beginners club, but he liked to think he'd improved immensely since his first disasterous attempt (no one had told him you weren't supposed to use your hands).
"Oi, Malfoy!" Draco slowed to a jog then stopped and doubled over, hands on his knees to recover his breath. He turned to his left to see Rhys, his fellow club member and friend, waving to him from behind the fence that lined the track where Draco had been on a cooldown run after practice. "Some lovely ladies are here looking for you!" Rhys shouted with his hands cupped over his mouth as an amplifier.
Rhys was pointing up at the bleachers behind him and Draco squinted against the sun to see.
Shite. Pansy. And she'd brought Granger. The two of them were chatting casually in the stands, having settled in to wait for him to finish his workout.
"One of them a new girlfriend?" Rhys lobbed a fresh towel towards Draco, which he gratefully recieved and promptly used to wipe his brow.
"One of them is an ex," Draco said irritably.
"Ooh, which one?"
"Pansy, the one in black." He gave a subtle nod in her direction.
"Gorgeous, you lucky bastard. Or maybe not so lucky since she ditched you."
"How do you know I didn't leave her?"
"Did you?" Rhys raised a skeptical eyebrow and Draco scowled.
"No," he admitted. Rhys slapped him on the back in sympathy.
"How about the other one then? Is she next?"
"Granger? Absolutely not!" The idea was preposterous. Abhorrent. Borderline deviant.
"So she's fair game then?" Draco watched as Rhys dropped his gaze to Granger's legs, which were generously exposed by the short hemline of her sundress.
"She's got a boyfriend," he grumbled as he tossed the dirty towel in his friend's face and started to march up the bleacher steps. He should go see what the girls wanted.
"Pansy, why are you here?"
"Charming as always, Draco," Pansy rolled her eyes. "It's a public holiday so I thought you might have the day free. Want to get lunch with us?"
Draco's eyes slid over to Granger to gauge whether she secretly wanted him to say no. She seemed...fine. Happy maybe? He was rubbish at reading women, but he supposed they were well beyond hostilities at this point. Now that she and Theo had made up, she was constantly around, and surprisingly he often found himself talking to her the most when the group got together (since she was the only person interested in his studies).
"Lunch! I'm famished. Mind if I tag along?" They were interrupted by Rhys, who had followed Draco. He and Pansy both froze, nonverbally communicating volumes through intense eye contact. It was a bad idea to mix his muggle and magical friends.
Granger didn't seem to share the same fears about inviting a muggle to lunch. "The more the merrier! We're meeting a few other friends at a pub nearby if that suits?" Her easy demeanor made sense when he stopped to think about it. She must be well used to navigating the intersections between muggle and magical life.
"Who else will be there?" Draco whispered to Pansy while Rhys was preoccupied asking Granger questions about herself. Knowing she already had a boyfriend did nothing to discourage his flirtations.
"Daphne, Blaise, Blaise's girlfriend, and Theo..."
Draco groaned. Daphne and Blaise would be fine, and he couldn't speak for Blaise's girlfriend, but Theo was a loose canon. If they made it out of this lunch without gross violations of the Statute of Secrecy, it would be a miracle.
Draco snagged the back of Rhys's jersey to peel him away from crowding Granger and announced that he would be taking a quick shower before they left.
"Sorry, I couldn't help inviting myself when I realized these were your friends from secondary," Rhys gave him a sheepish grin as they redressed in the locker room. "Siobhan is going to be so jealous when I tell her that I got the chance to meet them!"
Draco's muggle friends had been very put out by how private Draco was about his life before university. Siobhan, Rhys's older sister, had made a game of coming up with theories for his closed-lipped behavior ranging from the mundane (he was embarassed about how unpopular he'd been) to the ridiculous (he was secretly a spy working for MI6 on an undercover assignment). The reality though, that Draco was a wizard, was stranger than any fiction she could invent, and for his sake, he hoped that whatever clues Rhys gleaned from interacting with his magical friends wouldn't expose him.
Upon arrival, Draco surmised that the pub, The Queen's Arms, was a Granger-pick given its pedestrian nature. It looked bright and clean though, with rich wood paneling and a crystal chandelier hanging from the cieling that swayed slightly when someone on the upper level walked across the floor. It put him on edge, reminding him of the chandelier in his family drawing room crashing down during Potter, Granger, and Weasley's brush with death at his home.
Distracted as he was by assessing the ambiance, he missed his chance to pick his seat and was left with the only one remaining, which was next to Granger. Heaving a long-suffering sigh, he sat down.
With the size of the group there were several conversations going on at once, so he decided to tune into the one to his right, between Rhys and Theo. This was also the conversation he wanted to most carefully monitor.
"So, you all went to boarding school together? In Uganda?" Rhys inquired, eager to pump Theo for as much information as possible to bring back to Siobhan.
To his credit, Theo resisted what must have been an overpowering urge to spin lies that would make Draco's life more difficult (his favorite hobby). "In Scotland actually. Draco is the only Ugandan among us. The rest of us are of boring old English stock. Except Blaise. We don't know what he is."
"You went to school in Scotland?" Rhys said with surprise. He was quick on the uptake. One question in and he was already starting to see that something wasn't adding up. "Then how come you acted like an alien species when we first met? The lad had never played football!" This fact had offended Rhys to his core on their first meeting. Football was the greatest sport on earth, he'd proclaimed. Draco had thought he'd been exaggerating the sport's popularity given his fanaticism, but quickly discovered that most of the muggle world did indeed enjoy football and his ignorance of the entire activity would be suspicious. It had motivated him to sign up for the club in the first place.
"I'm afraid it was a small, rural school, so Malfoy missed the chance to learn much about the beautiful game," Granger swooped in to explain. She must have noticed that he and Theo were failing to come up with an adequate response.
"From the wilds of Uganda to rural Scotland, you really have been off the grid, mate," Rhys gave a low whistle of pity (likely out of consolation for the lack of football in his formative years).
"Thanks," Draco acknowledged her heroism once Theo had Rhys safely distracted answering questions about his and Siobhan's schooling in Ireland.
"Don't mention it." She smiled and fixed the thin strap of her dress that had slipped down her shoulder. "I wanted to pick your brain today actually."
"Oh?"
Granger waited for the server to drop menus in front of them before she leaned closer and continued in a softer voice. "I need a sponsor for a proposal I want to present to the Wizengamot. Ideally, a Sacred Twenty-Eight member." She ordered a lemonade and he requested a house ale. "I've already exhausted my personal network, though it wasn't extensive. Abbott, Longbottom, and Macmillan all declined." She wrinkled her nose in disapproval. He smothered the rogue thought that it was cute.
"Who else is on the bench these days?" Granger handed him a list. "Don't go anywhere near Travers and Yaxley," he hissed, seeing their names towards the bottom. "Burke too," he added, reading from the top one more time to be sure he hadn't missed any others likely to murder her on sight.
"Obviously, I'm not stupid," she sniped. What an annoying know-it-all. Hadn't she just asked for his help? "What about the wives and widows of Death Eaters? Do you think they all sympathized with their husband's politics? Your mother didn't, right?" Draco's annoyance lessened at this pronouncement. He was profoundly grateful that Granger was able to distinguish between his and his fathers' crimes to see his mother in her own light. Most people didn't bother.
"It's possible... but don't start with Madame Rosier. She's a right cunt no matter her beliefs. Avery and Selwyn are nice enough, but vapid and a bit dim. They might not be interested in anything you have to say if it's not about shopping."
Granger added to the notes she had scribbled into the already cramped margins of her parchment then quickly stuffed it out of view when the server came back with their drinks.
"What is your proposal about anyway?"
"I named it the House-Elf Labor Provisions Act, or HELP Act for short. It's to regulate fair wages and working conditions for house-elves."
"Granger..." he groaned. He was familiar with her crusade to free the elves and thought it was ludicrous. "That's never going to pass."
"I'm not interested in hearing your close-minded opinions on the subject, thank you very much," she sniffed dismissively before ordering the fish and chips when the server came back around.
"Of course, you're one of those skinny bitches," he heard Pansy grouse from across the table. She ordered a salad.
"Fine. Have you tried Slughorn? Professor Slughorn seemed to like you, maybe you could ask him for an introduction to his brother."
"I'm worried it'll get back to my boss, Macnair, if I do." She wrung her hands and double-checked that Rhys still wasn't paying attention. Theo had just gleefully told him that of course he'd share stories about Draco growing up with him, which almost made him turn back around to put a stop to it, but then he processed what Granger had just said. Alarm bells went off in his head. He hadn't known she worked with Macnair. "Slughorn doesn't have very many principles and he's close friends with all the Department Heads at the Ministry. I can't trust that he wouldn't sell me out if he felt like Macnair had something he wanted. He'd turn on me for as little as a tin of crystallized pineapple... oh, Merlin's pants!"
Draco was shocked that Granger would suddenly shout wizard oaths in the middle of a crowd of muggles before he realized that her transgression would hardly register in the pandemonium that had descended upon the pub. No fewer than ten aurors had apparated into the dining room and had their wands drawn.
"False alarm!" Granger leapt up from her chair and waved her arms to catch their attention. "Sorry, I forgot! I said the safeword by accident."
"Safeword?" Blaise questioned, calm despite having the business end of a wand shoved into his jugular. Draco belatedly registered that he wasn't the only one when he felt the tingle of a wand hovering near the back of his own neck.
"Pineapple is my safeword."
"Kinky," Theo snickered, prompting the auror subduing him to shoot warning sparks.
"Miss Granger, you're not supposed to be out in the muggle world without a chaperone."
"Technically, the agreement was that I wouldn't take muggle transportation without a chaperone. We walked here."
"That wasn't the intent--"
"Fergie, it's fine. Lower your wands everyone, these are my friends!" The auror behind Theo, Fergie by Granger's appellation, was the first to comply but the others soon followed, though begrudgingly. Draco rubbed the back of his neck to rid it of the ghostly sensation of an imminent curse.
"I'll discuss this with Tonks?" Fergie the auror seemed unsure of himself and he turned to a more seasoned looking auror with an eyepatch, who nodded at him.
"Protocol Bludger then!" called a different auror. Apparently, Protocol Bludger entailed mass obliviation of the muggle witnesses and hasty disapparition. Obliviation had the nasty side-effect of rendering its victims fairly insensate for several minutes afterwards, so everyone not currently drooling onto the floor looked at Granger for an explanation.
She reseated herself and rested her forehead in her hand as though massaging away a headache.
"I agreed to having a sort of trace put on me so that I wouldn't have to do something more drastic to protect myself. If I say the safeword it allows aurors to pinpoint my exact location and apparate directly to me. Harry invented it. It's quite brilliant actually, there are runes involved to keep the trace confined to me alone. The Celtic rune othila..."
Theo coughed.
"Right." Granger flushed and halted her excited intellectual rant. "Not the time."
"What are you being protected from?" Blaise's girlfriend, Quinn as Draco had learned today, was new to the group and not caught up on all the drama.
"Fenrir Greyback and Antonin Dolohov are still at large and seem to be on a mission to murder me."
"Oh dear! They don't like you? You're lovely!" Quinn was also a few twigs short of a broom. He noticed Daphne give her a side-eyed look from her seat on the other side of Blaise.
"You're safe as long as you stay away from St. Mungo's," Theo insisted with all the confidence of a Seer. Draco had heard of Theo's most recent prophetic dream, but couldn't help but think that a little extra auror protection wasn't a bad idea. He wouldn't feel that it was truly safe for Granger to be out in the world until all the former Death Eaters (excepting himself, of course) were behind bars, or preferably dead.
"Right, well, tell that to Tonks and Harry, would you? I'm surprised they haven't shoved me into a hamster ball layered with wards."
"They just have your best interests at heart, Granger. We're all worried about you." Pansy reached across the table to squeeze Granger's hand.
"I know, thank you. I'm complying with the aurors rules, I promise."
"Except for the one requiring you to have an auror escort in muggle areas?" Draco hadn't missed that part of her exchange with the aurors and pinned her with a sharp, reproachful look.
"That's not the rule!"
"Typical. Always interpreting the rules to suit your own purposes, aren't you? It was the same at Hogwarts. Granger, Queen of Swots, she knows better than everyone else," he sneered. He was channeling his snottiest first-year version of himself, a person he was now ashamed of, but if it worked to goad her into obeying the aurors it would be worth it.
"Easy, Draco..." Theo urged him to calm down, but he wasn't done.
"It's not just Greyback and Dolohov out there, or did you know that too? Rookwood, Jugson, Rabastan Lestrange. They'd all love to see you dead, and those are just the ones with the Dark Lord's brand on their arm." Granger's eyes flickered to where she knew his Mark was, currently covered by his shirt sleeve. "You're surrounded by Death Eater sympathizers at work, where you shop, where you eat."
"Mate, that's enough," Blaise said firmly. Granger was starting to look very pale.
"Blaise knows!" Draco gestured wildly in his direction. "And Theo, and Pansy. I'm sure they hear the same things I do when we're not in 'mixed company'. Purebloods are angry that they lost the war, and guess who they blame? Some want revenge, while others will use politics to crush you and your kind. Most of the wizarding world wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire!"
"Draco, you need to step outside!" Pansy stood up and quickly yanked Draco to his feet. The muggle patrons of the pub were starting to rouse from their obliviated stupor and he couldn't be shouting about purebloods anymore. She frog marched him from the room. "Deep breaths," she said once they were outside. Draco was shaking.
"She's being deliberately obtuse!" He continued to rant, pacing back and forth in the alley where she'd dragged them. "She's infuriating! This is just like the World Cup... marching around in the forest, bold as a bronze knut, while muggles were being played with like sick toys. Always a completely disproportionate response to danger..."
"Okay, honey, I don't know what you're talking about anymore, but please calm down."
"I'm calm!" He snarled, then kicked a rubbish bin over.
Pansy's lips twitched in amusement. "Yes, I see that."
"Why do you keep bringing her around? She's nothing but trouble."
"I like having Granger around, and I think you do too," Pansy spoke in a more gentle tone than he'd ever heard her use.
"I don't."
"Okay," Pansy humored him, "but consider that maybe you've come to see Granger as a friend and you want her to be safe. It's scary that she's not right now, but you can't bully her into doing what you want. You spent several years trying that and how did it work out for you?"
"I don't want to be her friend," he pouted, sounding like a brat even to his own ears, but he didn't care.
"Are you going to be able to talk to Granger like a mature adult, or do I need to send you home?" Her gentle tone hadn't lasted long. Now she sounded like the formidable witch with a decade of elocution lessons under her belt that she was.
Draco swept a hand through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. "I'm good now. I'll be fine." Pansy stared unblinkingly. "I'll be nice," he conceded.
"Great, let's go back. I'm hungry."
Draco was hungry too. Luckily, in the time that they spent outside, their food had arrived. No one had waited for them to begin and it seemed that Draco's outburst hadn't soured the mood as they had all resumed their dissonant conversations. Theo had taken Draco's seat, however, and looked at him as he rejoined the table, daring him to say something about it.
Draco said nothing and sat down, now at the far end of the table from Granger. Not far enough to prevent him from hearing her chatter with Theo though.
"--no, we still haven't...tomorrow we're taking an overnight trip together so I thought maybe..."
"Ooh, so tomorrow night's the night? Are you nervous?"
"Not as much as I thought I would be. He's already said he loves me so I feel like it's the logical next step."
"Wow, did you say you loved him too?"
"Not yet. It's a little soon right? It's only been a few months."
"Well, you don't have to sleep with him just because he thinks he's in love..."
Wonderful. Draco was inadvertantly eavesdropping on Granger discussing fucking her boyfriend. Maybe if he said 'pineapple' the aurors would come back and obliviate him. He tried to tune them out by focusing on what Quinn was talking about (something to do with a Nigerian prince needing her help), but couldn't quite achieve it.
"I'm nervous that if I keep him waiting any longer he'll get sick of me."
"He's not pressuring you about it is he?"
"No, no, he's very kind. He says the sweetest things, like how he's never met a girl like me and that he feels a special connection between us."
"Hmm... maybe you should bring him by so we can meet him... why don't you invite him next time we all get together?"
"Oh, he's so shy though. I invited him today, but he couldn't muster up the courage. It may take him a bit longer to feel comfortable."
"Have you spent time with his friends then?"
"Not yet. We're both pretty busy with work so when we have time we want to spend it just the two of us."
Draco couldn't take it anymore. He'd promised to be nice (he should stop doing that, it was a terrible thing to promise), so he couldn't say half the things he wanted to after overhearing so much naivete in such rapid succession, but maybe he could get someone else to say it for him.
He turned to his left, and in a complete non sequitur to the conversation Rhys was having with Blaise about wine, he raised his voice and said, "Rhys, blokes will say just about anything to get in a girl's knickers, wouldn't you say?"
Rhys laughed. "Er, yeah mate, of course. Why?"
"Oh, just wondering... what do you think is the most common thing a guy might say?"
Rhys pondered the prompt for a few moments. "Definitely the 'L' word."
"Interesting," Draco checked to make sure that Granger was listening. She was. "Why do you think that is?"
"Well, birds usually need an emotional connection before they feel comfortable getting physical, you know? It's a good shortcut."
"I see." He hoped Granger could see. "And Blaise, you've had a metric fuckton of casual sex with multiple partners," Blaise wasn't even ashamed about it, he just nodded. This didn't seem to be news to his new girlfriend either. "What's the difference between those... liaisons and the relationship you have with Quinn now?"
"I'm still having a metric fuckton of casual sex with multiple partners," Blaise answered with a straight face.
Draco looked up at the cieling. 'Lord give me strength,' he thought. "Good for you. But Quinn is your girlfriend, right? You treat her differently than the others?"
The odd couple looked at each other with identical dopey grins. "We spend more time with each other," Quinn contributed.
"And we've started integrating into each other's friend groups. Hence..." Blaise gestured from Quinn to the rest of the table.
"Perfect. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity."
"You feeling all right, mate?" Rhys privately questioned Draco in an aside. "If you're lonely after losing Christina I can set you up with someone."
"No need," he waved carelessly, more invested in watching Granger process the scene he'd just orchestrated. Then he remembered that he'd been celibate since February and reconsidered. "Maybe after exams."
"I should probably go..." Granger announced, making her way around the table and doling out goodbye hugs. Draco never got one. He wasn't salty about it.
"So soon?" Pansy whined, dodging the hug Granger attempted to foist on her.
"Teddy's birthday party, remember? I need to swing by my flat and pick up the gift I got him before heading over to Andy's."
"I still don't understand what a 2-year-old is going to do with a gift. Very little brain activity at that age."
But Pansy relented and a few final waves later Granger was off. Theo wasted no time before relocating himself back to Draco's end of the table.
"I was handling that," he complained, clearly not happy with Draco's interference with their private conversation.
"You were pussyfooting around. Do you want Granger to get played? She needed to know. Now it's handled."
Draco's stomach gave an almighty rumble. In all the excitement, he hadn't taken a single bite. Ignoring Theo's displeasure, he dug into his steak with gusto. It was overcooked.
A/N: Theo move over, it's Draco's turn to be tortured by the author! I should maybe add a PTSD tag to this fic, because clearly Hermione isn't the only one suffering from it. I can't imagine that not being the case for young people coming out of war. Also, of course Draco would be judgemental of the ambiance and food. He has French blood.