Theo Nott is in love with Hermione Granger. Everyone knows Hermione is fond of the written word, and Theo wants to woo her the old-fashioned way with written endearments and billets-doux. Problem is, Theo can't write for toffee. His best mate Draco, however, can. Draco loves Hermione, too, but that's a secret. Draco reluctantly helps his friend out, resulting in romantic and comical consequences.
This story is a Potterisation of the play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, minus the big nose and tragic ending. AU (no Voldemort), post-Hogwarts, OOC Draco (initially), Dramione, romantic comedy, contains swearwords and maybe some adult situations later on.
JK Rowling for the characters; me for the plot (with apologies to Monsieur Rostand).
Hi everyone! Turned out inspiration was just around the corner from when I finished While She Was Sleeping. Please enjoy.
Last week of August
A handsome, tortured and starving writer sat huddled over sheaves of papers in his room. No, it wasn't Lord George Byron, the handsome, syphilitic poet that laudanum-loving Lady Caroline Lamb dramatically proclaimed was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know.' This particular starving artist happened to be Draco Lucius Malfoy, a struggling writer living in the gabled rooms above his place of employment, the bookseller Flourish and Blotts. He was only tortured and starving because he had stared in despair at his blank parchment throughout breakfast time and now he couldn't even stop for a gulp of tea because he was late for work.
He clattered down the stairs to the shop's back entrance, bursting through just as Madame Tabitha Carapice, the shop's management, set the shop's anemic lamps alight with her wand and turned the shop window sign from 'Closed' to 'Open.' Already some anxious parents hovered around the door, champing at the bit to spend up large on text books for their little darlings.
"A second later, Mr Malfoy, and I'd have docked your pay," Madame Carapice warned her shop assistant, who was trying to rub an ink splotch off his hands with a rag before remembering he was a wizard and vanishing it the way the gods intended.
"My apologies, Madame," Draco said as he opened up the shop's antiquated cash register to check the float. It had a predilection for fingers if you didn't close the coin tray just so. "As it turns out, I was late for no reason, anyway."
"Still blocked, eh? The best writers of yore had it, you know."
"Did the best writers of yore leave any instructions on how to unblock themselves?"
Madam Carapice was prevented from answering as a shrill mother, already clutching the entire catalogue for First Years to her chest and towing a reluctant daughter behind her plonked herself between shop owner and shop assistant.
"There must be some double-ups on this list, surely?" Shrill Mother expostulated to Draco. "My dear little darling can't be lugging all these enormous books around Hogwarts! She'll collapse under the weight, the poor thing."
The dear little daughter, trying to hide behind her mother, was already taller than Draco. She sighed and said "Ma" –
"And furthermore," Shrill Mother continued over her daughter, "the cost for these books is highly prohibitive! I've got a uniform to pay for, you know! And a wand! And a" –
Draco had turned most of Shrill Mother out, deciding how best to deal with her. Charm or sarcasm? While sarcasm was much more fun, it tended to be lost on the intelligence-challenged, so he went for charm.
Draco took the pile of books from the lady, smiled and kissed her hand. "Draco Malfoy, at your service," her murmured. "With whom do I have the pleasure of meeting?"
Shrill Mother faltered in her ranting. "Oh! Er – Madame Brevilne," she simpered. "And this is my daughter Bluebell."
"It's Blue, ma, how many times?" Blue demanded.
"Madame Brevilne, your dear daughter has nothing to worry about," Draco smarmed. "In her First Year she will be taught to shrink her textbooks so they weigh no more than a feather."
"Really?" exclaimed Blue. "Cool."
"Shrinking?" Madame Brevilne frowned. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that. At my school we were taught things like music and how to throw a banquet in under thirty minutes."
"Ma, that was your finishing school. Hogwarts is one of the finest magical schools around. You'll just have to get to used to me not being home during term-time, that's all."
Madame Brevilne dissolved into sniffles and Draco produced a handkerchief to dry her eyes. He remembered his first Hogwarts year very well, leaping onto the train at King's Cross without a care for his own stoic-but-tearful mother. His father approved, of course, because that was a time when Draco thought his father's goodwill was the most important thing in the world.
Now look at him.
Gently, he steered mother and daughter in Madame Carapice's direction, who looked on with barely-concealed alarm. "Perhaps the shop's owner, the benevolent Madame Carapice, can work out some sort of discount?" Draco suggested.
Madame Carapice was allergic to the word 'benevolent.' And 'discount.' Nonetheless, she cleared her throat of the swearwords she wanted to lob at Draco and addressed the now hopeful-but-still-sniffling Madame Brevilne. "Let me see what can be accommodated," she gritted from behind a wooden smile, leading the pair to the counter.
Draco bowed to the pair, then let himself be accosted by the next enquiring customer.
Some hours later, in the quiet lunchtime lull, Madame Carapice continued her advice to Draco while sending her wand off to tidy up rifled bookshelves. "You need a muse! That'll unblock you, all right. The best of the best had them! Look to the Muggles, young Draco! Think of Dante Alighieri and Beatrice Portinari, Yeats and Maud Gonne, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald - even Shakespeare had the mysterious 'fair youth' of his sonnets."
Draco frowned. "Didn't most of them have torturous affairs with their muses, with inspiration only coming from the agony of their broken hearts and betrayals?"
Madam Carapice shrugged. "You want unblocking or not?"
Just then, the shop door opened and a ray of sunshine breezed through, lighting up the cramped shop's interior. With it came a witch that always caused Draco to feel warm and fuzzy, and that was Hermione Granger. A voracious reader on her lunch break from her job at the Ministry of Magic, she was a frequent presence in the bookshop and one of Madame Carapice's favourite people.
She was also Draco's favourite person, but that was a secret.
Hermione breezed into the shop, her curly hair bouncing hypnotically around her shoulders. "Hello Madame Carapice!" she grinned to the shopkeeper, who smiled and nodded back. "Hi Draco!" Approaching the counter, she said "I was just checking to see if my new book had come in yet? And I also brought you some fruit from our garden, Draco, in case you hadn't eaten lunch yet." She set down a small basket groaning with berries, apples and peaches on the counter.
Draco's stomach roared and tried to claw its way out of his body. "Thank you," he said over the sound of his complaining stomach.
Madame Carapice headed to a nearby cupboard where she kept her new orders. "Just came in this morning, Miss Granger," she said and pulled it out. "Mr Malfoy, you'd better not drip any of those fruits' juices on the stack of Daily Prophets or there will be consequences. Financial ones."
"No, Madame," Draco said, licking the juice off his hand from a gloriously ripe peach he had just taken a giant bite from. "May I have ten minutes upstairs to eat?"
"You have enough time for one peach, one apple and ten raspberries," Madame said. "The afternoon rush is on its way."
"Yes, Madame."
"I'd better head off, too," Hermione said regretfully. "Oh! Draco, there's a leaving do for one of my colleagues at the pub after work today. Want to come along and get some character development practice in?"
"I'd love to!" Draco replied, then images of his very slim wallet shimmered into his mind. "Uh, I just need to check to see if I can," he finished lamely.
"Hope you can make it!" Hermione dimpled, and slipped out the door, taking the sunbeam with her.
Madame Carapice eyeballed Draco, clutching his fruit basket and staring dreamily after Hermione. "You're down to one peach, one apple and five raspberries," she reported. "And don't even think about having Miss Granger as your muse or I'll sack you six ways from Sunday. I'll not put up with tortured broken hearts and betrayals over one of my favourite customers."
"No, Madame," Draco murmured, and bolted out the staff door with his bounty.
After work
The Leaky Cauldron
Draco went to the pub, of course. It sure beat spending another night in his rooms, staring at pieces of parchment with only his doodles filling in the edges. He nursed the one drink his budget allowed for and looked the other way whenever someone called for a shout.
In terms of character development, you couldn't go past the specimen whose resignation from the Ministry of Magic was responsible for this crowded pub party. Bernado Lorello was a well-dressed lothario who reminded Draco, uncomfortably, of one of his former Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, Professor Lockhart. His lizard-like eyes could practically see from the back of his head, locking on to every attractive woman that came near. Including Hermione.
Right now, he was leaning over Hermione, who was slowly shrinking into Draco's side in an effort to get away from his beer breath. "My dear Hermione, you really must visit me and the folks in Milano for Christmas!" he brayed, appreciating the way her pendant necklace headed towards her cleavage. "The way the Christmas trees light up the piazzas – bellissimo!" he kissed his fingers and waggled his eyebrows encouragingly. "I would be honoured to personally escort you to all of Milano's best-kept secret areas."
"That does sound lovely, Bernado, but I should really check with my boyfriend," Hermione said firmly.
"Boyfriend?" Bernado gaped.
"Boyfriend?" Draco gaped.
"He's on his way over now," she said, peering over the party-goers towards the door. "Ah!" There he is!" She waved wildly at the door.
Turning, Draco peered at the door. All he could see was his old school chum Theo Nott, who had just entered and was greeting Ermie MacMillan, who was on his way out. Where's this bloody boyfriend, then? Did she just make him up to get rid of Berrrnaaarrrdo over here?
But as Theo made his way through the crowd to their table, Draco's heart put two and two together; then it sank.
"Everyone," Hermione announced to her Ministry colleagues, "this is Theo. We've just started going out together."
"Hi, everyone!" Theo said cheerfully and kissed Hermione on the cheek. "You look lovely!"
Hermione blushed.
"Oh, hey, Draco! Didn't see you there!" Theo grinned; and Draco really wished he hadn't have drunk that cider on a mostly empty stomach.
A/N: questions, questions…
Why is Draco as poor as a church mouse, toiling in a book shop and living above it?
Is there some sort of tension between Draco and his parents?
Will Draco ignore Madame Carapice and take Hermione as his muse, anyway?
What will Hermione have to say about it?
Where did Draco's arrogance go?
Why is he keeping his feelings for Hermione secret?
All these questions, and more, will be answered in future chapters of Cyrano de Malfoy. Come along for the journey!