Author's Note: This was written for the Dramione Remix Round 9 in 2018.
A huge thank you to my beta, eilonwy, for her help. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
Thanks as well to the Remix fest mods for hosting the fest; it's one of my favorites! My couple was Edward Lewis and Vivian Ward from "Pretty Woman" (1990).
Cold, calculating, and accustomed to getting his way, businessman Edward Lewis is caught off-guard when his girlfriend refuses to accompany him on a business trip. Later that night, he meets Vivian Ward and proposes a deal: in return for accompanying him for the week, she will earn $3,000. Vivian, a sex worker struggling to make rent, accepts his offer. They fall in love over cocktail dinners, social functions, and encounters with questionable associates. But is continuing their relationship worth the risk it entails?
Finally, I don't own "Pretty Woman", but I have used some of the movie's lines in this fic. I've referenced them in the chapters as needed. Please don't sue me.
Chapter 1
Draco grimaced as he sipped his martini, the bitter, over-salted olives and herbaceous gin turning his stomach. He would have preferred wine — a nice German white, dry and delicately floral — but Blaise Zabini had shoved the top-heavy glass into his hand before Draco had made it halfway to the bar. Blaise had walked away with a smirk, too, as if the bastard had known exactly what would nauseate him.
In all fairness, he probably had.
The room in which they were gathered was small and crowded. Diplomats and their wives stood shoulder to shoulder with the lower cadre of ministerial climbers, each trying to network his or her way into a position of power. The more naïve ones probably just wanted their legislative proposal to be seen, but that wasn't how it worked. Money, more than charm, wit, or supporting evidence, made ideas move. Change was not a product of inspired people working in concert towards a transformational end. It was transactional. Cause and effect. If the cause had the right number of Galleons attached to it, maybe the desired effect could be achieved.
Draco scanned for a waiter. Liveried in black and white, the serving staff navigated the crowd on predetermined paths, bearing trays of glittering glasses and a selection of hors d'oeuvres. None of their paths intersected with Draco's position, stranded in the room's center like an island beaten by the surf. There were no tables, windowsills, or even potted plants that would facilitate abandoning the drink. And so Draco sipped. Maybe if he drank quickly, inebriation would override his growing malaise.
Or maybe not. Ivo Kühn, Blaise's diplomatic counterpart and one of the men they had been negotiating with over the past several weeks, wove his way through the crowd. He walked with unmistakable intent and arrived before Draco could figure out how to get the marble floor to open beneath him and swallow him whole. He held a near-empty glass of white wine.
"Prost, Herr Malfoy."
Draco raised his glass.
"Cheers, Mr. Kühn."
They smiled, sipped. The German cocked his head.
"The martini is not to your taste tonight, I see."
"Not quite," Draco admitted.
Ivo gestured toward the bar.
"Then let us find you a more palatable beverage."
After a decade in politics, Draco knew that Ivo was not simply playing the role of magnanimous host. He also knew better than to refuse. Deviations from the norm were usually followed by opportunity, and only a fool gave an answer before he knew the question.
"Riesling, zwei," Ivo said to the bartender.
Two glasses of golden wine slid across the bar. Aromatic and acidic, dry with the taste of apple and pear. Ivo smiled.
"I know this week has not been easy, but I do believe our agreement provides greatest benefit for both our countries."
Not easy was an understatement. For almost a decade, the German Ministerium had leveled harsh sanctions on the United Kingdom. Trade of everything from potion ingredients to wand cores had at some point been taxed, tariffed, or terminated. The mere suggestion of finally receiving economic relief had prompted a series of meetings, culminating in this: a week of hammering negotiations that had taken all of Draco's considerable cunning and Blaise's long-cultivated patience to survive without diplomatic incident.
"Surely you agree," Ivo continued, pressing when Draco did no more than shrug. "A measure of free trade has once again been established between our two nations."
"At the cost of our people," Draco countered.
The issue of citizenship had been a sore point throughout their talks: did those who emigrated from Germany to the United Kingdom prior to May 2, 1998, have the right to return to it?
Ivo thought so. His light blue eyes were immovable as glaciers and his tone just as cold as he said, "They were never yours."
The statement lingered just long enough for Draco to feel its weight across his shoulders, to remember how close the Germans had come to walking away from the deal before Blaise had caved. Then, Ivo waved it away.
"Ah, but this question has been settled. There are different matters to discuss tonight. Do tell me, Malfoy, how long have you been in Voldemort's employ?"
Draco had heard the Dark Lord's name spoken by foreigners often enough that it had lost some of its power. The casual nature of the question, however, was cause for alarm. Draco lifted his chin.
"I took the Mark at sixteen. I have been loyal to him ever since."
"Yes, I do remember reading that now. And when did he appoint you Minister of Foreign Trade?"
"Ten years ago."
Ivo nodded and looked toward the ceiling, as if performing the calculation for the first time. It was a convincing act.
"The Mark at 16, Trade Minister at 28. That leaves 22 years of loyalty, yes?"
"Yes."
"But has it always been such?"
Draco's blood ran cold as Ivo stepped closer, his voice dropping low.
"You are a clever negotiator, a fine researcher, and a canny politician. But so am I. I have done my research on you, and do you know what I found? An account of a most interesting episode at Malfoy Manor when you were just 17, involving three prisoners and your inability to identify them."
"I was a child. It means nothing."
Ivo tipped his head.
"Fair enough. But your Muggle-born capture rates may. Those years in the interim — after the failed Battle of Hogwarts, before Voldemort realized that Britain First meant Britain Alone — you and your ilk hunted Muggle-born witches and wizards. You rounded them up. Called them traitors to the race. Sent them to camps."
"I know what I did."
Draco kept his voice even, but couldn't stop his eyes from darting. Left and right, socializing party guests. No one gave him or Ivo a second thought. It probably looked like an intense conversation between adversaries. It was, in a way, though Ivo couldn't have known the danger he was putting them in. His language alone was enough to prompt a stint in Azkaban; Draco had seen people permanently disappeared for less.
"And perhaps what you did not do. If I can find the pattern, surely someone else, someone in your government, can."
"Is that a threat?"
"Far from," Ivo said with a mollifying gesture. "Indeed, it is quite the opposite." He, too, glanced left and right. "Let us get some air. It is a pleasant night, and there is nothing like a German evening at harvest time."
Draco shot a quick glance over his shoulder. He spotted Blaise chatting up a redheaded woman in a low-cut blouse. When Blaise dipped his head toward the woman's neck, Draco knew his colleague would not notice his absence.
He followed Ivo to the building's rear garden, where a broad terrace, paved with stone and bordered by a waist-high rail, overlooked a rolling vineyard and an ample lilac sky. The air carried the faint, sweet smell of soil and fruit, and the evening buzzed and chirped with the sound of insects. Bats darted from the nearby trees, their clumsy, patternless fluttering disguising predatory efficiency. To Draco, it felt like stepping out of time, exiting one life and entering another running parallel. Because how could this idyllic world possibly be the same as the one in which he lived?
"Beautiful, no?"
"Peaceful." It was as close as he could come to the truth.
"It was not always so. Before your time, but not so long before mine, this land was under siege. A man with twisted ideals persuaded a great many people of their own superiority. Do you know what happened to that man and his followers?"
Draco knew admittedly little about Muggle history, but this was one story he had heard. It was difficult to ignore the similarities. He kept his mouth closed and his eyes on the distant vineyard.
"I know from the weeks we have spent together that you are a smart man. I know from your record that you are a survivor. You must see where this is going. How this experiment in dictatorship must end."
He did.
The Dark Lord had never intended a slaughter, and he had enough control over his followers that a Muggle genocide had been avoided. His true goal had always been abject subjugation —Muggles put in their proper place as the lowest caste of human, barely above beasts, and living under the rule of those whom nature had decreed worthy by way of the magic in their blood.
It had been easy. After the Dark Lord had invaded the minds of the United Kingdom's most influential leaders and outed the existence of magic to the world, it was a simple matter to push the necessary policies. The dehumanization was slow, at first. Subtle. Restriction of the press, mandatory curfews, a social credit system. Each law was couched in the language of protection, of wizards guarding Muggles against vague, looming horrors that would destroy their homes and rip their families apart. Anyone who resisted was killed.
For many years, it had worked.
For the past few years, it had not.
Social unrest was growing amongst the Muggles, and wealth inequality amongst the magical population was at its highest level in centuries. Economic stagnation drove a dwindling population which drove more of the same, a cycle the Dark Lord thought could be broken via negotiation and compromise. Draco knew it was nothing more than a bandage on an infected limb, a stopgap toward amputation or, if nothing meaningful changed, complete demise.
"What of it?" Draco could practically taste his own bitterness. "I'm one of the followers. I know my fate."
Ivo spared him a sideways glance.
"You think your fate is predetermined? That you cannot change it?"
"Change is an illusion."
"Change is an inevitability, like the rising tide. If you know when it is coming, you can swim in it. If you do not, you may drown. Knowledge and preparation — those make the difference."
Something in Draco's chest snapped, like a dry twig cracking underfoot.
"And you're the one teaching me to swim, Kühn? You think you're the first to try?"
"Malfoy —"
"I've made my choice." Saying it aloud carried the weight of a death knell. "I will serve the Dark Lord until he no longer deems me worthy to do so." Draco turned away from both the pastoral scene and the opportunity Ivo presented. He was nearly to the door.
"He will kill you."
Ivo spoke quietly, but the words crashed into Draco with all the force of a Bludger. He stopped to absorb the impact. Ivo was right. He was playing with fire, funneling people out of the country. If anyone suspected, it wouldn't take long for the truth to be discovered. Two months, maybe four to get the full picture of it.
Even if Draco's perfidy were never discovered, there were the Muggles to consider. How long would it take them to realize that wizards were still human? Their anger would eventually override their fear. What would they sacrifice to regain control of their lives?
"Time kills us all," Draco muttered. He forced his feet to move.
An officious looking young man met him at the doorway.
"Herr Malfoy? You have an urgent Firecall. May I show you to the conference room?"
"I know where it is."
He took the stairs two at a time and closed the conference room door. He loathed the sight of it: the scuffed beige paint, decided upon by some design committee to be both unobjectionable and cheap; the scratched table, lacquered once long ago and ignored ever since; the corporate art, abstract, ugly, and strongly reminiscent of the 1980s. After almost sixty hours of confinement over the past five days, Draco felt like he knew this room better than his own flat.
The young man's disembodied voice filled the space.
"Astoria Greengrass on the Firecall."
Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and fought the urge to collapse into a chair. Instead, he leaned against the table and crossed his arms, feigning composure. He took a deep breath.
"Patch her through."
"You're going to Italy?" The Firecall did nothing to mitigate Astoria's biting tone. She was in a mood tonight.
So was he.
"Nice to see you, too."
"Were you going to tell me?"
"Of course. You're coming with me."
She arched a manicured eyebrow, her blue-green eyes shining with challenge.
"Oh?"
"It's a goodwill visit to formally finalize and sign a trade agreement. Italy is a sympathetic ally, but our intelligence officials recommended traveling with a companion for optimal aesthetics."
"Aesthetics," Astoria repeated with a calculated moue. "Is that all I am to you?"
There was reason to tread lightly. As much as petite, blonde, buxom Astoria looked as though her gravest concern was the new season from Paris' trendiest designers, she was as much of a social climber as any of the parasites in the gallery. Worse, she was good at it. Whatever he said would be remembered, shared in a dozen publications, and quickly taken out of context, twisted until it became the most effective weapon: one of his own design. Her question, however, took him off-guard, and the truth came falling out before Draco had the presence of mind to stop it.
"Yes."
Astoria gaped. Her affront would have been comical had it not meant the end of everything. But there was no way to backpedal, no way to recover from the freefall in which he found himself. To continue the lie would have been a disservice to them both.
"That's all this has ever been." He tried to keep his tone clear of condescension, but her darkening expression indicated limited success. "I made that clear from the beginning. I had no intention of settling down. You said you agreed."
"That was three years ago. I would've said anything to get into your bed. I thought you were changing your mind, that this was going somewhere, and I wasn't just… Just wasting my time."
"I never indicated that my mind could be changed."
"Three years," she repeated. "Waiting on you."
"I never made you stay."
"You owe me."
Draco's temper flared with the fire.
"Then you'll see a reimbursement in your Gringott's vault in the morning," he snapped.
Astoria paused, her brows drawn together.
"What?"
"I believe you'll find the compensation fair."
"That's not what I —"
"I expect you out of the flat in an hour."
One moment. Draco saw one moment of genuine emotion in Astoria, a silver crack in her steel façade from which confusion, self-doubt, and sadness radiated like the last glimpse of sunlight before an eclipse.
Emotion was dangerous. It showed investment, and what could be nurtured could just as easily be destroyed or used as leverage. Emotion implied connection, and connection was weakness. Anyone who still survived in this world understood that, and Draco had not only survived, but thrived. He tried not to think about what that meant, or what he'd lost for what he'd gained.
The moment passed. Silver turned back to steel, and the notion of loss sank back into the depths.
"I never loved you," Astoria said, her eyes narrow and dark with rage. "Not really."
"I never needed you to."
The fire extinguished with a quiet hiss, and Draco sat in darkness until the motion-activated candles flicked to life. The light crystallized a realization: he had made a mistake.
Not in breaking things off with her — that had been inevitable — but in the timing of it. He was expected in Italy in two days and needed a companion for the week. Delaying the argument would have been wise, but wisdom had never been his forte. He knocked back the rest of his wine. What had moments ago reminded him of a crisp autumn day now tasted like vinegar.
Downstairs, the crowd had thinned. Draco found Blaise in a shadowed corner, now engaged with an olive-skinned woman whose sheet of dark hair looked like silk.
"I'm leaving," Draco announced.
Blaise held up a finger, and Draco clenched his fist, weighing the consequences of turning the Minister of Population Control into an invertebrate. Perhaps sensing his impending transformation, Blaise surfaced with a sigh.
"We're scheduled to leave tomorrow," he said, running a long finger down the woman's cheek. "After our congratulatory lie-in and brunch."
"Make my excuses."
Blaise looked over his shoulder, his feline eyes alight, as if Draco had made the first move in an unspoken game of chess.
"And if I don't?"
"Then don't."
Blaise's eyes narrowed.
"What happened?"
"Minor personal setback."
"Personal, or personnel?"
Draco glared, annoyed that the cause of his displeasure could be so obvious. Blaise smirked.
"How does this impact Italy?"
"It doesn't."
A muscle in Blaise's cheek twitched. Though he often traveled at the Dark Lord's behest, Blaise had been intentionally kept from Italy and, by extension, his mother. If Draco couldn't attend the Italy meeting, Blaise was the Dark Lord's next best choice. He hid his disappointment in the cascade of the woman's hair and the comfort of her arms.
"I'll make your excuses. See you in a week."
Ivo caught his eye on the way to the Floo. For a moment, Draco worried he would try to reopen their conversation. Instead, the German lifted his chin. A question: had he been understood? Draco dipped his head in answer: yes. They left it at that.
He tossed a handful of powder into the fire and paused. Astoria would still be gathering her things from his flat. There were plenty of places he could go, but only one that suited his restlessness and need for release.
He had already made one mistake, after all. What could be the harm in another?