HD The French Connection Chapter 2
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Aesthetically, the French Muggles weren't doing so badly, Draco grudging admitted. The Gare Saint Lazare train station, a vaulting, echoing structure of wrought iron and glass panels, was no hardship on the naked eye.
St. Lazare, however, boasted shiny, bright-yellow, trunk-sized Muggle objects marked 'Compostez votre billet', which apparently required the rectangular parchment scrap Draco clutched. This had been pressed into his hand by the last of a long line of smiling but largely unhelpful Wizards and Witches from the Ministry's Overseas Postings Action Response Team (aka OPART; pronounced 'Op Art'). As Draco had been given to understand in a rapid gabble whilst he and his OPART reps raced through the Ministry's subterranean hallways, one had to feed the yellow machine these strips of paper before the train would allow one egress, or be served a hefty fine in Muggle currency.
Draco had previously concluded correctly that his parchment scrap - or billet - was to be vastly important to his immediate future and, further, that they were to be obtained at the cost of some unknown amount of Muggle money from kiosks populated with generally harried official-types and/or other boxes studded with buttons and glowing telly screens. Luckily, he was equipped for his start, but this information would be invaluable to the next steps in his mission. Likely, he'd be reduced to riding the train like any common Muggle and he very much doubted Muggle trains were anything like the Hogwarts Express.
The difficulty, as Draco perceived it, lay not in procuring the parchment scrap, but in how to entice the machine to willingly accept it, whilst also keeping track of one's belongings. He'd been provided a huge piece of wheeled Muggle luggage, which was actively hindering him, as he'd quite forgotten he wouldn't be allowed to Shrink it and carry it about with him in his robes pocket.
He'd no proper robes pocket available, for that matter. A Mugglewear jacket had been supplied to him, and also trousers, socks, shoes and so forth. These various vestments were hideous and made of several plebian sorts of materials Draco absolutely despised for their poor quality. His shirt, for instance, was a plain white cotton button-down and not too terribly awful, but the trousers - a rough blue-grey fabric and tattered at the cuffs - were too small and clung obscenely, outlining faithfully his arse and bits, and the tan corduroy jacket they were teamed with was confusing, with far too many pockets in all the wrong places and ugly patches of Black Watch plaid sewn on the elbows. Further, the 'jeans' (as the OPART rep confided his trousers were called by fashionable Muggles) were labelled prominently with the word 'Levi's', which Draco was forced to assume was the name of a Muggle tailor of exceeding ill repute, as no self-respecting craftsman would ever purvey to a Wizard such garb.
Oh, but how Draco yearned for his wand, so he could at least cast a resizing spell! His groin was practically sculpted in bas relief by these horrid 'jeans', which left him feeling very much on display. Draco winced inwardly at the ridiculous picture he must make. Salazar save him if he ever came up with an unexpected stiffie - likely he'd be arrested!
Draco's wand was not in evidence, having been checked in at MACARONI HQ, and he had only Muggle money to use as a tool and weapon against the anticipated trials and travails of Muggle travel. He'd always adored France, truly he did; owned several sizeable properties there, but he'd never once attempted to get about without his wand at the ready and a fully-equipped Wizarding vehicle or basic Floo-and-Portkey. It was bound to be horrid, touring Muggle.
And thus far it was, as he was stalled ruminating before the yellow contraption from Hades.
As he stood there, assessing his situation, his shoulder was bumped in a terribly matey manner. Draco froze, appalled by the sheer rudeness of some Muggles. He turned on his heel with a glacial sneer affixed to his patrician features and confronted the felonious scum who dared molest him with the Look. This involved elevating his not-quite-as-pointy-as-it-used-to-be chin a precise degree of loft and staring down his aquiline nose, nostrils flared and brows arched just so, producing an overall effect achieved only by two species: Malfoys and Bactrian camels. It positively emanated sizzling 'Get off me!' waves.
"?"
A curiously well-known face was peering up at him, unaffected. No - leering!
"?"
"What?" an irate Draco demanded - and then lost his page when he realised who it was. He switched instantly to befuddlement instead, sputtering. "Po-? Pot? Potter!"
Not Potter. Demonstrably not Potter.
A mime - a bloody performance artist - returned Draco's slit-eyed glare, an all too familiar 'Z' emblazoned across his whiter-than-white powdered forehead, his tip-tilted grin a brilliant red slash exaggerating his (by nature silent but apparently quite urgent) intent to gain Draco's attention.
Lambent green eyes outlined with smoky kohl blinked very slowly at Draco, their steady regard oddly cat-like in that painted mask of a face. He, too, had angled his chin - nicely firm and charmingly cleft - at an equally high cant, revealing a corded throat as fish-belly pale as his face and the huge ruff of starched black lace that encircled it. The rest of him was all harlequin-clad and scarlet-ribboned at wrist and ankle: black-and-white diamonds two inches square each, knit of some shiny, silky, thin material that clung like a second skin to the svelte, athletic body beneath.
Draco choked and gulped, eyebrows dancing as he fought for his dignity. The iconic face in question then swiftly tilted the other direction, parroting Draco's affronted posture as he struggled to assimilate this, the latest intrusion of arbitrary weirdness into his Muggle-afflicted life.
"Er...eh?" Draco croaked. "Excuse me?"
"?" the mime asked, or rather, he acted out the asking. He uttered not a single syllable, that being the way of his kind. "?"
"Of course not Potter," Draco mumbled to himself, frowning, well aware that conversing with oneself was the first sign of going mental. Perhaps the stress of Muggling was affecting him. After all, this morning he'd been a simple Very Junior Attaché, and now he was...he was something else. A diplomatic courier, Draco thought and then snorted. More like an errand boy, but whatever.
"!"
The performer turned a backwards somersault, and Draco was treated to a clear view of an exceptionally fit arse, albeit harlequin and foolish.
"Erm," he said.
Still, it was damnably eerie: a Potter-type here, in Muggle Paris. Not that this was actually Potter; no, not by any means. This was but a common-garden street performer tarted up in all the famous Golden Boy's trademark kit: scar, stupid spectacles, rumpled shock of black hair and so forth. But no, not actual Potter. Not at all. This is a bloody travesty, that's what, Draco concluded, his astonishment rapidly turning to temper.
In fact, he fumed, it was a travesty of a travesty! This was France, yes, and there were known to be mimes in France, just as there were known to be cockroaches scuttling 'round Muggle flats. In fact, Muggle Paris might very well be infested with mimes for all he knew, rather like a particularly virulent form of scabies, and they might all be prancing about aping famous personages. But he'd never before seen a Wizarding mime, much less a Potter one, as this person was so very clearly meant to be, nor even conceived of such a thing. Perhaps Weasley is correct; the Muggles know more than they let on, Draco mused. Damned Muggles!
But there it was - or he was, in all his Pottery glory, this chap: a huge shock of black hair (a wig, naturally, Draco decided instantly, peering); intense green eyes (Muggle contact lenses, Draco knew); and that great 'effing scar (Scarlet lipstick; how demeaning! Draco huffed, his strange sense of ill-usage growing by leaps and bounds) emblazoned all over the rapscallion's mouth and forehead. It was outrageous! Draco ranted, his fists clenching unconsciously. It was disgraceful! It was a bloody affront to all English Wizardom held dear!
And he wanted to punch it, or at least make it go away and stop bothering him. Even Draco, not the most strident of Potter-fanatics by any standard, was miffed on behalf of Wizarding Britain's resident Hero.
"Oi!" he burst out.
"!" the mime waggled his exaggerated eyebrows right back at Draco and performed a small caper. "!"
Draco winced, scowling, and glanced about him, hoping they weren't attracting attention. There was that diamond-covered arse again, flying past. "Oi!" he said again, hissing it - not easy with no 'esses' available.
"!"
"Here, piss off, man," Draco barked gruffly, and loomed, advising the abominably fit street artist in no uncertain terms (via waving his billet about in irritation and waggling his eyebrows) that he'd no time to waste on this...this scourge on his sensibilities! Whatever else was going on here (and he had his own suspicions), Draco was still in process of holding up a growing line of impatient French Muggles gathering momentarily by this yellow metal obstruction, and the resultant brouhaha was effectively preventing him from boarding his own train!
"?" the mime 'replied', and motioned at both the machine and the slip of flimsy paper the Muggle billet issuer had presented Draco in exchange for his Muggle Euros. "?"
"What?" Draco scowled. "No! Be off, won't you?"
"!" the mime responded, whilst acting out some complicated dance, involving both hands and the machine, which may've made perfect sense to a fellow performance artist but hadn't the slightest effect on Draco's cognizance. And then - and then - he'd the ruddy gall to snatch Draco's billet and make off with it!
"Oi! Give it here, you twink!"
Draco, trapped with his unwieldy Gucci luggage, was severely hampered in his efforts to give chase as the dratted mime danced in circles 'round the yellow box. The crowd began to ever so quietly hiss, boo and murmur inchoately behind him and, when he risked a darting glance backwards, he was greeted with nasty glares and some descriptive language that went well beyond the usual 'Merde!' Obviously, the Muggles also had important and pending connections to make. Draco didn't blame them in the slightest, really.
"I say," Draco burst out, utterly checkmated by hideous circumstance, "return that forthwith, you scoundrel, or I'll hex - he... er! Hit you!"
"?...!"
The mime, safely on the other side of the yellow box, quirked those huge black eyebrows of his skyward and acted out a rollicking belly laugh of rude proportion. A few of the impatiently waiting French people tittered and chuckled, enjoying the free show. Draco ground his molars, having recalled abruptly that he couldn't hex the recalcitrant git to shreds, even if he wanted to. He'd a Magical Dampener tucked into one of his too-many pockets and no wand up his sleeve for the grasping. In truth, he was helpless, magically. He'd no choice next but to tackle the Potter look-alike to the floor and grapple with him, wresting his billet by force from those evil white-gloved clutches.
"!..!..!" The Pottery prat was still laughing at him-and pointing.
Tensing his knees and giving up on the idea of maintaining his Ministry-issued Muggle couture unblemished, Draco prepared for attack. Needs must, as Mr. Weasley had confided the Muggles often said, when confronted with rough choices.
"Fine!" Draco retorted, his internal fuse having substantially shortened, "you asked for it, prat!"
"!"
The street artist, in the interval, had circled the odd shiny machine twice more, skipping, and was grinning like the barmy moron he was. With a grand flourish, he gestured to a slot on the front of the gaily yellow monstrosity that Draco hadn't noticed previously. The billet was waved impudently under Draco's beak and then shoved into the slot with cotton-gloved fingertips. Simultaneously, the white-faced Pottery-flavoured prick whipped a huge, gaudy, neon-pink tissue paper flower from behind his own ear - where Draco was positive it hadn't been visible previous! - and proceeded to tuck it jauntily into Draco's lapel.
"!" the performer smirked smugly, his painted-on smile a brilliant slash of scarlet. Draco could just make out real lips under the layer of false colour; they were firm and nicely delineated. Manly, even.
"You! You!" Draco, blinking furiously, was left literally gasping at the insult. His all-important piece of Muggle parchment was captive in the machine's mouth and the bloody mime was touching him! Him! He ripped the offensive flower from his jacket and tossed it away, growling.
"!..!..!"
The mime guffawed silently, pointing at Draco's horrified visage with one long finger, reeling back into silent heaves of merriment. The other hand was poised in front of the machine, waiting. Then he shrugged, rolling a smooth shoulder. "?...?"
"See what, Potter?"
Just like magic, the yellow Muggle device spat Draco's billet back out, unbesmirched except for the addition of the date and time. Draco was speechless. Such a simple thing and yet not one of the OPART twits had bothered to mention it!
"Is that all there is to it?" he exclaimed. "Well, I'll be a Blast-Ended Skrewt!"
"!"
"Wait! You've been helping me?"
His grey eyes bugged out in patent disbelief, melting straightaway into actual shock, for the Potter-mime-person had his firm broad hand flat at the small of Draco's flinching back and was literally shoving him past the evil machine, along with his rolling mountain of Muggle luggage. Appeased, the crowd behind Draco murmured their approval and began to swarm past the yellow box after him, some rudely jostling him to one side in their hurry. One after another, they did exactly as the mime had: shoving the paper into the slot, waiting a very brief moment until it reappeared once more, date-stamped, and then pushing on through in triumph.
It wasn't magic; it was mechanics! Muggle mechanics, the very type Arthur Weasley so admired.
"Ah!" Draco exclaimed, having mastered the secret, jumped sharply as he felt the hand - gloved, yes, but still hot-palmed and wide; a man's hand - caressing his bum cheeks. He flushed uncomfortably and felt an unwilling twitch in his groin. "Wait - what? What? Stop that, you perv!"
But the performer was also vanished into the milling crowd, and Draco was left holding his voucher - plus a timetable, with his train number vividly circled in red lipstick, so that there was absolutely no way he could possibly mistake it.
"Oh...er. Brill. Erm...thanks," he called out vaguely to the abruptly emptied immediate vicinity, just in case the mime was yet lurking. Nothing happened, except for a few puzzled glances sent in his direction from other travellers, so he took up the handle of his oversized luggage somewhat dispiritedly.
That had been...odd.
"Grabby little bastard," Draco muttered to himself, a faint feeling of disappointment rising up his throat as he trundled off in what he hoped was the proper direction, following the signage. He'd come to the conclusion he might as well talk to himself, as there was no one else around who'd understand him anywhere near as well he would. It was looking to be a lonely few days. "Still..."
The street performer had been very helpful, really, and he'd wanted to ask it more questions.
"Chatty git, but useful."
Nicely put together, too. Too late now, he thought sadly and then noticed again the departure time printed on his schedule.
"Well..."
Draco glanced at his Muggle Rolex wristwatch and then at the timetable again.
"Oh. Oh, shite!" he cried out, elegantly styled luggage tracking this way and that behind him as he bolted off for the proper platform at a very rapid clip. If he carried on dawdling stupid after some random street mime, he'd bloody well miss his connection to Casino!
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