Written for Cuban Sombrero Gal's Idiom Challenge at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum.
Difficulties of Silver
Silver is one of the colors by which Draco Malfoy had always been identified. So why can't he find it in any of the clouds he inspects?
He certainly doesn't find it in the cloud of publicity, nor the cloud of not being in Azkaban like many of those he spent time with during the war. The clouds of vacations away from Britain, ignoring what others say about him, pretending as if the war never happened: these clouds conceal no silver lining. They only have hard grey bases that painfully remind Draco that he is not succeeding in his attempts to recover some sort of semblance of a normal life.
His mother and father are no help, staying in the manor or going to parties in an attempt to pretend as if life is as normal as ever (Draco doesn't know how many times he's refused to go to any parties no matter how many times his mother asks him to do so), and, like him, they can't find the silver lining, either.
Silver has fled the Slytherins, and now all they can cling to is green.
Something hard, Draco knows, when the wizarding world's hero has famous green eyes.
"You don't search for it," Theo says one afternoon when Draco bumps into him at a small café, stopping to chat for a few minutes. "It's the sort of thing that suddenly turns up."
Draco snorts. "Nothing's handed to you on a silver platter"—he grits his teeth when he realizes the mention of silver in the phrase—"and what I'm searching for definitely isn't one of them." Besides, Draco thinks, Theo knows nothing. He's engaged and doesn't have a tattoo on his arm, and, even if he's not really on good terms with the wizarding world—being a Slytherin in wartime does that—he doesn't have it as bad as Draco.
"I'm not the kind the wizarding world wants to find happiness," Draco mutters, sipping his drink. "That goes to the war heroes and the cripples, the orphans and the ones who lost family."
An unimpressed frown is on Theo's face, like always. "Well, no wonder you're still searching. What kind of attitude is that?" Theo gets up, pushes his chair back, and leaves, the door to the café closing with a quiet swish after him.
Attitude. Always included in those kinds of juvenile chidings. Draco grimaces, throws away his drink, and leaves, also.
Draco was going to find that silver lining, dammit, and he wouldn't stop until he saw it hidden among the grey of the clouds.
(It's his mother, in the end, who forces him to dance with at least one of the women at that ball, and he just happens to pick Daphne's younger sister, whom he trusts not to ask too many of those questions.)
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Really not too pleased with this one, but it was an opportunity to update ATTWWW, and I wanted to try to write Draco Malfoy.