♥ "The undignified eloquence of Being 1/2" for dgficexchange ♥
Title: The undignified eloquence of Being
Rating: R for imagery
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: A wee bit of angst and some squick-y images.
Author’s Notes: A million thanks to my wonderful beta who has put so much thought and effort in making this story what it currently is (including putting up with much virtual nailbiting and incoherence for the author). Huge thanks to the prompter without which this wonderful plot bunny may never have existed. I apologise if it is not quite what you envisioned when you wrote your prompt, I tried, truly tried but it was the only story that accepted to be written despite many many drafts and other attempts. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it =)
Summary (if fic): When you yourself, are not quite yourself, and do not want, nor have to be yourself, how important are the things which are expressed, versus those that remain unsaid? How much of your life, is as it appears, and how much of it lies clouded in obscurity? What if the only path to clarity is a journey whose ending you cannot comprehend? But the path is not a path, and the journey is not a journey.
The undignified eloquence of Being 1/2
6th June 2010
Just one more step. Just one more. She can do it. Really, she can. Come on Ginny! she tries to tell herself.
A stumble.
And then... she falls.
First to her knees and then the rest of her body follows. Like a domino that has tipped over its balance point. For a brief second, before the impact of the fall deafens her, she feels weightless.
And yet, in the calm quietude of the countryside, it feels less like a bang and more like a whimper.
As she lies there, on the sandy road, with dust caking her sweaty face and clogging her nostrils, she’s simultaneously drowning in interminable exhaustion and rejoicing in the infinite release of her collapse.
She can’t do it. She cannot take another step, if her life depended on it.
The throbbing in her leg is the only anchor to reality that she has left. And how she wishes that it didn’t have to be so!
Nobody will come. The group that they’ve been following has left them behind a long time ago.
It was just the two of them on this road since mid-morning, and now Malfoy too has gotten ahead of her and sprinted across the bend in the road, leaving her to her own devices.
She’s certain that she’s going to die here. On this blasted unpaved road in the Spanish countryside. Alone.
Time oozes around her but she can’t count it. All she can feel is the heat of the afternoon sun beating down on her back, drying out her sweat and setting her head on fire. Maybe she should sleep. At least then, the end would be painless.
A shadow settles over her. The brief respite from the sun’s merciless rays feels like heaven.
“This is why I told you to wear a hat.” She briefly opens her bleary eyes and is assaulted by the soles of walking boots. They fill the entire horizon of her vision. She must be hallucinating. “And this is also why I told you not to drink all your water after lunch.”
Strong, cool, capable hands flip her over on her back, and force a strong knee between her shoulder blades. Something slips between her lips and before she has the ability to protest, water floods into her mouth. She swallows, hungrily like a child, and it’s as if new blood is flowing through her veins.
“Malfoy,” she mutters in a hoarse voice. “I thought you were miles away. Wasn’t one of the conditions of our arrangement that you wouldn’t wait for me if I wasn’t able to keep up with you?”
“Valcarlos is over the next bend. We’ll stop there for the night,” is all he tells her as he picks her up with a fluid motion and carries her in his arms like a child.
* * * *
It began, as most nuisances did in his life, with Potter. To be rather more specific, it began with Potter’s head. In his fireplace. Right now. Demanding his attention.
“Your presence is required by the fireplace, Mr. Malfoy,” Portrait-Snape’s dulcetly sarcastic tones beckoned him from the depths of his favourite armchair. At what point had Snape shown up anyway?
“Malfoy!” Potter barked, and it sounded urgent.
He really should get moving before Potter actually stepped through the fireplace and showed up in his lounge. If only his feet would move and the room would stop spinning...
“Grrrgghh,” he made a noncommittal noise and tried to straighten himself. The glass that was precariously balancing on the armrest fell to the floor with a nearly deafening bang. He considered throwing up from the sheer pain of the noise, when the bottle of twenty-five year old Odgen’s that was lodged in his lap followed the glass and crashed to the floor. He grasped his temples and wished for the throbbing to stop before peering over to examine it curiously as it lay flat on the rug by his feet.
Thankfully, in what had been a more sober moment he had thought to seal the bottle. It would have been a shame, wasting such precious, wonderful ambrosia.
“Malfoy, where in Merlin’s tits are you?” Potter sounded urgently annoyed now.
His head was killing him. Every one of the three steps towards the fireplace was sheer agony. What had possessed him to get so blindingly drunk in the first place?
“Keep yer knickers on Potty. ‘nd stop wif the infernal shoutin’. I’m ‘ere.”
Potter’s head frowned at him. “You’re pissed,” he proclaimed after a moment’s observation.
“Right fuckin’ brilliant ye are. Always knew ye weren’t the knob everyone said ye were,” he tried smirking, but from the quizzical look on Potter’s face he didn’t attain the desired result.
“What were you thinking, not checking in as soon as you got back? Everyone’s ill with worry! We were going to send out the RS to bring you back, you arrogant plonker.” Had Draco been less intoxicated, he would have picked up on the worry in Potter’s voice. However, the Odgen’s made everything fuzzy. And warm. And so blissfully, fabulously, incredibly numb.
Another incomprehensible noise threatened to escape his throat and so he focused sharply on each and every word he wanted to utter. “Weasley got my note then.”
“Clearly, since I’m here now talking to you rather than out in the field looking for your scorched body. You left things a right mess. Kingsley’s furious. Wants you banned from owning or using class A explosives for life. It’s going to take a lot of Obliviators to keep this out of the Muggle media, not to mention the mountains of paperwork and potentially irreversible reputational damage that you’ve caused to Wizarding Britain.”
He could hear Potter’s irritated voice. And some of the words were slowly eroding the barrier of comforting fuzziness that the Odgen’s had provided. He very obviously required more alcohol. And less Potter.
“You’re welcome Pot-head,” he paused, snickering at his own cleverness, and then carried on, “Knew the brass would appreciate my little prezzie. Tell them I send them all hugs and kisses. Now piss off. I’ll speak with you if I survive until tomorrow.”
And with those immortal words of wisdom he severed the connection before Potter’s scandalized retort could disturb him further.
He fumbled about in his robe pockets for his wand, and warded the fireplace to any intrusions by the sheer power of his will - he was incapable of coherent spell casting - before collapsing on the rug.
Silence.
The only noise was the crying squeak of the cork as he cradled the bottle of Odgen’s close and took a couple of swigs.
He sat in the darkness and stared into the fire for a long time. Drinking slowly and savouring the numbness that permeated every particle of his being and ignited a warmth inside him that he had long forgotten.
The shuffling of Portrait-Snape in his frame caught the corner of his eye and drew him out of his musings.
“They were using babies, Snape. Innocent, little, harmless, babies,” he told him, and for some reason his cheeks were wet. When had he started crying? Were these even tears?
His long-time mentor, his friend, his confidante, could only stare at him from his frame. A ragged, palpable and immeasurable sadness pulsated between them.
* * * *
June 7th 2010
She sleeps like the dead until the next day when she’s awakened by the sound of Malfoy relieving himself in the small bathroom of their hostel room. It takes a while for her to appreciate that she is still alive and that all the pieces of her are attached to one another instead of being eaten by various wild animals.
She knows that something is different but can’t pinpoint what until she swings her legs over the edge of the bed and there is no pain. She takes a second to marvel at that fact, before observing that she’s still wearing the same - albeit Scourgify-ed - clothes from yesterday.
She’s too busy pondering what exactly he’s done to make the pain go away to notice when Malfoy stalks out of the bathroom dressed only in his birthday suit. It’s the slamming of the bathroom door that startles her into looking up.
“Holy Merlin’s bollocks, Malfoy! Put that away before I go blind!”
“Fucking hell, Weasley! Talk about giving a bloke a shocker!” he exclaims and conjures up a towel in a blink of an eye. It’s rather impressive considering that she can see his wand halfway across the room, resting by the side of his bed.
Once the towel is wrapped firmly around his waist, he turns to face her with that same devious look that she’s come to associate with when he’s about to produce a truly appalling pearl of Malfoy-wisdom.
“Speaking of bollocks, it’s a miracle you can still recognize them for what they are Weasley,” he arches an insolent eyebrow in her direction.
“I’ve never seen a pair that small but they were located in the same general geographic region so I took a wild guess,” she deadpans.
He chuckles before he flips her off and goes back into the bathroom to get dressed.
* * * *
There was a giant loose in Spinner’s End. How it had made its way out here, among all the Muggles was beyond him. But it was tearing his house apart from the sounds of it. Brick by brick and floorboard by floorboard.
All the while it was muttering in a falsetto singing female voice, “Draaaaccoooooo, Dddddrraaaacccooooo, darling Draaaaccooooo, wakey-wakey!”
He opened his eyes abruptly and immediately regretted doing so. There were several things wrong, the first of which was that the curtains were open and the harsh, crisp rays of sunlight were like acid to his hangover.
“Shut the blasted curtains,” he meant to protest, but his throat was so dry that nothing but a raspy nonsensical gurgle managed to find its way out. Meanwhile, his body began to remind him through a rigorous regimen of painful aches why he should not have slept on the rug. He was too old for this sort of rubbish.
“Are you going to lie there and pity yourself all day?” the piercing familiar voice of what he had once thought to be the giant filtered through his hazy conscience. He knew it....
“Yes, indeed, Mister Malfoy. It is nearly two in the afternoon, did you plan on spending the entire day in a drunken stupor?” the mockingly-bored voice of Portrait-Snape chipped in. He sounded almost gleeful. Almost as if he knew exactly how Draco felt at this very moment. Which was impossible, because Draco knew that no one in existence had felt like this and lived.
He willed his eyes into focus, ordered his thoughts and commanded his body into a sitting position before queasiness overtook him and he had to lie back down again. The hardwood floor was cold against the sudden heat of illness that washed through him.
“I wish I was dead,” he mumbled comfortingly into the wood. “And I wish you lot were gone. Myrtle, shut those godawful curtains and call Tinsy.”
After a couple of moments of silence the curtains shut with a determined swish and he was once again bathed in darkness. Cold, comforting darkness. He longed for the sweet embrace of sleep.
“I am not your house elf to boss around, Draco,” the ghost replied, and he shivered as her cool misty incorporeal form passed over him. He hated it when she did that, and she knew it. She was set on annoying him into motion, apparently.
“As my friend, you have two choices. Either call Tinsy for some hangover potion ,or kill me. Either or is preferable over this eternal hell at this moment,” he mumbled pathetically, still a rumpled mass on the floor.
“Master Draco. Tinsy is bringing you your potion, sir,” the squeaky voice of his house elf was like music to his ears.
Blindly Draco thrust out his hand, and the tiny creature guided the uncorked potion into his grasp. He swallowed it without hesitation. The foul taste of the potion was like ambrosia on his lips.
When finally he felt his coherence returning, his headache receding and his nausea leaving him altogether, he opened his eyes and sat upright on the floor, only to be faced with a familiar sight. The ghost and the house elf stood together and watched him with concerned eyes. Portrait-Snape in his frame looked upon him with a half frown half smirk, simultaneously belying deep amusement and disappointment.
“Thank you Tinsy. Thank you Myrtle,” Draco acknowledged quietly and glared at Snape. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t ever been faced with a similar situation.
“Draco, this has to stop.” It was Myrtle that finally put into words that which they had avoided saying for so long. And looking at them, this strange collection of friends he had acquired over the years, he saw the silent agreement that was radiating from them. Even Snape, in his two-dimensional frame was nodding his head.
“I know,” was all he said before he got up and gathered his things.
* * * *
He used the rundown ancient telephone box and took the lift down to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. And then, in an uncharacteristic move for what had to be the MLE’s best kept secret, he waltzed in through the front doors. Nobody noticed him at first, which upon closer examination was downright insulting. Even if most of them did not know of his involvement with the MLE, he was Draco Malfoy, reclusive and eccentric socialite. When he walked into places, people noticed.
It was perhaps testimony to the international pandemonium he had singlehandedly created, that he faded into the humdrum of activity that afternoon. At first glance the department appeared abuzz with the frantic energy characteristic of the immensely stressed. Aurors were running around like bees, either checking case files for facts or answering the torrent of flying memos which had flooded the department. In a corner, all alone under the guise of a silencing charm an unfortunate first year trainee had been given the task of incinerating Howlers before they exploded. From the exhausted look on his face and the burn marks on his robes he was having a hard time. All in all, a good night’s worth of work as far as he was concerned.
He was just about to begin searching through the aisles in search for Potter when a familiar voice stopped him.
“Just what in the blazes do you think you’re doing? Merlin’s tits, Malfoy, you’re a fucking idiot.”
Draco groaned. Caught, like a fly in the spider’s web, or in his case like an unfortunate Muggle who entered the lair of a nesting Chinese Fireball. She was the ‘Bane of his Existence’, otherwise known as the inestimable Ginny Weasley, and she was his Control Officer. His foil in every sense of the word; the administrative and strategic genius that enabled him to be the best agent in the field.
It essentially meant, as she never hesitated to remind him, that she owned him. And judging from the look on her face as she leaned heavily on her cane and headed straight for him, she was angrier than a Nargle in heat.
“Oh mother, it’s so good to see you again!” he faked enthusiastic brightness. “May I inquire as to who shat in your tea this morning? I haven’t seen you this chuffed in years!” There was no two way street with Weasley, as he had painfully found out. He had to seize the upper hand of the conversation while he could.
“Shut your pie-hole and follow me like the good ferret I know you can be,” she hissed as she walked past him, and jabbed him painfully in the shin with her cane to illustrate her point.
Then, before Draco had a chance to move a muscle she pointed her wand directly at him and he felt the familiar tinge of the Disillusionment Charm wash over him. Never let it be said that she was not quick with her wand. He was still smarting from that Bat Bogey hex that she had thrown at him in his fifth year.
He debated disobeying her instructions and going to Potter himself, but from the fragments of yesterday evening that he could recall, Potter would probably make an appearance in Weasley’s office in under five minutes anyway. And Draco really couldn’t resist the opportunity to get under Weasley’s skin again. It had been nearly four years since they had seen each other face to face.
* * * *
7th June 2010
She waits patiently for the taunting to begin. After all, it was her arrogance and unpreparedness that caused her to collapse in the middle of that road and - to her great dismay - be rescued by Malfoy.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, before they leave Valcarlos, Malfoy presents her with a large straw hat. The rims of it cover her shoulders and provide much-needed shade from the heat of the Spanish sun.
“Probably not big enough to fit your oversized ego into but the best that they do in this place,” Malfoy tells her before they start their descent through the Pyrenees.
* * * *
She shut the blinds and cast an Imperturbable on the door before she took the Disillusionment off him and beckoned him into an armchair with a grunt and a glare. Draco pasted a look of nonplussed indifference on his face and took his time settling into his seat.
He sniffed the air with mock indifference before fixing her with his most mischievous look, “Really Weasley, after all this time and you’re still stuck in the same shite office from four years ago. Would have thought that with all my hard work out in the field you could have managed to shag your way to a promotion by now.”
“My mother always taught me to earn my success.... It’s such a shame that yours didn’t do the same...” she fired back quicker than a poisonous snake.
He laughed then. It was so bizarre, sitting here in her office after everything that had happened. After everything that he had seen and done, trading insults with her was just so normal. The fact that she still held onto their rivalry and still plainly detested working with him was comforting in a way that he hadn’t thought possible.
“Oh Weasley, always going straight for a man’s cojones,” he shook his head mockingly. “But on the bright side, my mother did teach me about the dangers of sowing wild oats,” he smirked at her. “Speaking of wild oats, how many spawn has Potter got you at by now? Three, four?”
A shadow crossed over her face at his words and for a moment Draco feared that he had overstepped his bounds. There was uncontained fury in her gaze as it hooked into him and attempted to incinerate him where he sat. But then, just like the wind that suddenly stops blowing on the open sea, the rage was over and she broke his gaze to fiddle with some papers on her desk, squaring them into place on top of one another.
“Of course you don’t know,” he thought he heard her mutter quietly. But when she raised her head to look at him, she loathed him again. “How does it feel to know that you and Harry have shagged the same woman, hmm?” her voice is dripping with poisoned sweetness. “Oh that’s right, you haven’t heard that your darling and precious Astoria is now riding Harry’s Firebolt. Apparently your Nimbus 2001 wasn’t good enough.”
He was about to cut her down with a great riposte when the secret door to her office slammed open and a haggard looking Potter barrelled in.
“Oh goody, he’s here,” he sarcastically told Ginny’s and then fixed Draco with annoyance.
He put on his best innocent face before smiling at Potter, “Ah the man of the hour finally joins us!” And then, just because he never could help himself where Potter was concerned, continued, “Potter you look like you haven’t shaved in three or so days. Just so you know Astoria doesn’t like scruff. She finds it beneath her. And while you’re at it, make sure to shave your balls too or she might find those beneath her as well.”
“You told him. Why did you fucking have to tell him, Gin?” Potter whined in Weasley’s general direction.
“Maybe because you should have been more careful where you stuck your dick behind my back, Harry,” Weasley replied, her sweetest, most poisoned smile pasted firmly on her face.
Draco laughed then. Yule couldn’t have come earlier if it had tried. “Not to interrupt a moment of intense mutual hatred here, but are you telling me that you stuck your sausage in Astoria while Weasley here was still on the payroll?” he rubbed his hands together gleefully. “And here I thought Columbia was where things were hot!”
“Speaking of Columbia, Malf-” Potter began but was completely steamrolled by Weasley who spoke up over him.
“It wasn’t so much as a sausage. It was more like a bun. In her oven. It was fabulous.”
“Wow Potter, you just don’t know when to quit do you? Out of the frying pan and into the fire.” The perplexed look on Potter’s face was absolutely priceless. “All I can tell you is that if you were stupid enough to fall for the bitch, you’re welcome to her. As for you Weasley, don’t you worry, Astoria has had years of practice over you in shagging her way to the top. You may want to take this time to marvel and take notes. The bun in oven trick never fails.”
They were both looking at him as if he was cracked. And maybe he was. Actually, no, he definitely was. It was part of the job description, so Draco continued, “Now that I have both your undivided attention, I’ve actually come here not to be updated on the sordidly incestuous affairs of Wizarding Britain’s crème de la crème, but to inform you that effective immediately you can all bugger each other because I quit.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Actually, no, I take that back. Don’t bugger each other. The gene pool really doesn’t need any more of your moronic offspring.”
He was about to turn on his heel to exit Weasley’s office but the Imperturbable on the door prevented him from leaving.
“Malfoy, sit down!” Weasley addressed him in that low-tone voice that still made him tremble. He turned to face her, but purposefully did not take his seat again.
“What do you mean, you quit?” Potter jumped in. Always the last fool on the bandwagon.
He sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically.“Quit. In this sentence, used as a verb to indicate the cessation of an action. If you check your Oxford dictionary, you will find numerous meanings. In this context, quit is best encapsulated by the definition ‘to give up or resign one’s job or position’ or ‘to depart or leave’. Sentence example: Draco quit his job as undercover agent at the Ministry of Law Enforcement. Does that provide some clarity?”
“As far as I remember it,Malfoy,” Weasley’s tone betrayed her barely contained fury, “the terms of your conviction and subsequent release into the custody of the MLE did not mention your preference in the matter of employment. To be quite frank you are not so much employed as owned by the MLE.”
Potter stepped forward in a more conciliatory stance. “Listen, Malfoy, I know that the last four years haven’t been easy. I’ve seen your progress reports and I can honestly tell you that the work that you’ve done in the field is spectacular. How about we agree to some time off between now and your next assignment? It’ll give us the time to quell the international media and put together another operation in Columbia. Now that the Ortegas are feuding with the Alvarezs’ the entire gameplan has changed.”
He felt the anger well up in him then and it slipped past his lips before he could contain it. “I don’t want any time off. Like I have told you, I’ve quit. You may as well pack me up and send me to Azkaban but I am never again going into the field or doing any work on behalf of the MLE. I am done. Finished. Finito. Cerrado. Fini. Fertig. How many fucking languages would you like me to use to tell you the same bloody thing?”
“Look,” Potter stepped closer and tried again in that completely irritating “understanding” tone of his. “We understand the tremendous stress and pressure that you’ve been under. Please, think this through again. We have a Head Healer at St. Mungos that deals only with our MLE field agents. Why don’t you go and see her for a few sessions and then we can work out the best way to continue our work together?”
“And now you want some bird with half a brain to poke around in my head? Have you truly gone bonkers? No! As I keep on telling you but you do not seem to understand me, we are finished. I will Owl you the memories from the last six months so that you may brief the next innocent fool that you are going to send into the pig’s sty that is Columbia. But as for me, I am done. Officially retired, for life. I’ve given you lot ten of the best and most beautiful years of my life. I’ve done things on the behalf of the MLE that you cannot even begin to imagine! For the past four years I have lived on a constant supply of stress and Polyjuice potion! This is where it ends. The last station. Please take all of your belongings as you exit the train and mind the fucking gap.”
* * * *
5th June 2010
They spend the evening in St. Jean Pied de Port, in a small hostel dedicated to the pilgrims walking St. James’ Way to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Sitting across from Malfoy, at the very corner of a long wooden table where other Muggles are eating dinner and simultaneously chatting in five different languages, Ginny feels like she has fallen through an Oubliette and landed in another life.
It is unfathomable to her that Malfoy would just up and quit the MLE. Especially after all the effort that has been invested for the past four years to infiltrate the Ortega Family cartel in Columbia and bring a stop to the trafficking of Dark Objects.
But he’s done exactly that. Upped and quit. Without a single whit of consideration for those who had to stay behind and clean up the international pandemonium he’s created. Because of course, Malfoy being Malfoy he has used his inexhaustible talent for sparking disaster everywhere he went.
“Just what were you thinking, reopening the blood feud between the Ortegas and the Alvarezs. Do you know how many years it took to agree to the current division of Columbia between them?” she finally breaks the tentative silence which has settled between them since the afternoon.
For a moment she thinks that he’s not heard her over the buzz of conversation floating around them, because he continues to calmly eat his meat and potatoes as if her question has never been uttered.
It’s only when he neatly and deliberately sets aside his tableware and fixes her with angry grey eyes that she realises her question may have struck harder than intended.
“Must you be here? Can’t you go back to your blasted Ministry like I’ve been asking you for hours and leave me alone? What is it about you bureaucrats that cannot understand the meaning of the word no. I am done doing your dirty work. Forever. Juan-Martin died in that awful fire that took the Ortegas and their entire estate with him and that left Columbia’s underground in sheer chaos. Find another damn mole to do your work.”
He slams his silverware on this plate and pushes away from the table, knowing full well that it will take her at least a couple of minutes before she can follow him. And by then he’ll probably be out the door and vanished into the night, and she has no idea about the geography of the town, nor will she be able to perform a locator spell to find him given all the Muggles.
Fury wells up in her like a tornado. She hates being a cripple. Hates every second of limping from place to place, like a human flobberworm. She hates how every stair that she has to climb is a mountainous monstrosity that she has to personally conquer. She hates how even getting out of bed in the morning takes five times longer than it used to. She used to soar over mountains on her broom instead of having to slowly scale them with the claws of her will.
Her appetite now gone, Ginny pushes the plate away from her.
She’s tired, so very and incredibly tired. She rests her head against the wooden table, comforted by its solid reality against her forehead.
And as she screws her eyes shut and attempts to gather her strength to stand up from the table, she is startled by a reality: She can’t remember what it was like to fly on a broom.
* * * *
He slammed the door so thoroughly off its hinges that all the sleeping portraits in the house awakened to the noise as he stepped into his entrance. Tinsy poked her head out of the kitchen with her huge floppy elfin ears glued to the side of her head, her eyes wide with fright.
Myrtle materialized in front of him similarly alarmed, and from the yawn she was trying to stifle, slightly sleepy.
“It went that well, did it?” she asked him.
There wasn’t enough Odgen’s in the world to drown out his emotions. He settled for a glare and a grunt and revisited the feeling he had that first time when he had encountered her in the seventh floor boys bathroom.
“Tinsy, would you mind showing me where you’ve put all the correspondence regarding La Foi Ltd?” he rubbed his temples gently and wished his migraine away.
“Of course Master Draco,” the little creature replied and vanished with a silent pop.
He turned to his ghostly companion who was silently floating beside him, “Say Myrtle, are ghosts affected by Dementors? You may have to visit me in Azkaban when Potter gets all the paperwork filled out.”
“He’s sending you to Azkaban?” she shrieked. “How can he be such a twat?! After everything that you’ve done for him and the MLE! That’s it! I am no longer sharing my toilet with him if he dies prematurely. As a matter of fact, I am going to make sure that some of my ghost friends at the Ministry send him a nasty present!”
He laughed then. She always knew how to make him laugh. “Come on, we’ve got accounts to be looking over. I may be richer than the Queen, in which case we can just vanish without a trace and stick it to Potter.”
* * * *
It was much later when the knocker resounded throughout the house that Draco realised he had fallen asleep overlooking the books, and the tea that Tinsy had brought over earlier had gone cold. He ignored the knocking and ambled over to the kitchen for a new tea. Whoever it was could bugger off. He wasn’t home.
Twenty minutes later the knocking continued, a persistently metered tap-tap-tap resounding throughout the entire house. Not for the first time he cursed his custom-made alarm and ward system. He could feel the slow beginnings of his migraine returning.
“What do you want?!” he flung open the door and was almost punched in the face by a giant conjured fist.
Thankfully he managed to duck before the monstrosity did a number on his face.
“Malfoy, you answer your own doors, how terribly mundane of you. Don’t you have a house elf?” Weasley’s voice echoed from somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.
He looked down, and indeed, she was sitting across the top of the stairs of his porch, her cane lying across her lap. She was wearing the most indifferently bored expression of anyone he’d ever seen. Draco knew that inwardly she was fuming at having been kept waiting for so long.
“Tinsy has more important things to do, Weasley, if you really must know. Now, can we pretend that we had the conversation where you threaten me into coming back to the MLE, I give you the middle finger salute and you go off in a huff? I really don’t have the patience to go through all the words here...”
She flashed him a furious glare and shakily got herself to her feet. He was ready to turn around and slam the door in her face, but there was something about her choppy movement and the tightness of the strain lines at the corners of her mouth as she very clearly ignored physical discomfort to try to appear as tall and imposing and possible, that stopped him. When was the last time that he had truly looked at Weasley?
She’d always been more of an afterthought; the warden that Potter assigned him after a horde of other wardens failed to keep him in check, and the one person that could be relied on to find new and creative ways to make his life miserable. In time he had learned to respect the devious ways that she used to bully him into doing her bidding.
It didn’t help that at the time she was Potter’s side kick and his staunchest supporter in all things. In her love-filled eyes, Potter could do no wrong. Meanwhile, Draco had always been a second class citizen who had to fight and earn every single inch of professional ground that he stood on. He remembered some of the paint peeling arguments they had when she had first been assigned to work with him six years before. To say that it was like cats and dogs between them would have been an understatement. There were not enough words in the English language to describe their loathing for one another.
She had come to work for the MLE after becoming an unfortunate collateral damage in a scuffle between Rookwood and Potter. What was supposed to be a romantic holiday for two in the south of France ended in irreversible spell damage on her right leg, and the end of her Quiddich career. In some valiant attempt to rescue her from self-pity, Potter had focused her uncanny ability to see through to the essence of a situation by making her Draco’s warden. After all, Weasley needed a new purpose in life and Potter needed to alleviate his guilt. One hand washes the other...
But now, as she stood face to face with him, Draco could see the titanic change in her. After four years of corresponding with her through hastily scribbled missives, meeting her face to face was like meeting a doppelganger. She still sounded like the Weasley he remembered. If anything she sounded more caustic than ever and appeared even more ready to bust his balls if he even so much as breathed the wrong way. But the way she stood before him, she looked nothing like the impossibly optimistic, bubbly-spirited young woman he remembered.
For one, she was thinner. Or maybe he had put on some weight and so his impressions were skewed. Either which way she appeared ready to break at the first gust of wind. And where her face had glowed before, her smile was now empty and mechanic, and worry-wrinkles spread like a web across her skin. But most importantly, there was something so impossibly wrong about the resigned way in which she leaned on her cane, like one would lean on an old friend. It made Draco shiver inwardly with an unpleasant feeling that he couldn’t quite name.
His eyes are green as a fresh pickled toad’s, indeed... Time forgave no one with its passing, not even Gryffindor heroines.
“Err, Malfoy? You all right?” she waved a hand in front of his face and drew him out of his reverie.
“What?” he shook off the feeling of tiny hands crawling all over his skin. “Ah yes, Weasley, as I was saying, leave.”
“Maybe you should see that Head Healer, Malfoy. There is something entirely not right with you. You were standing there with a completely moronic look on your face, gasping for air for minutes. I was afraid you were going to start dribbling from your mouth. I thought I told you to stay away from the drugs when you were on the job.”
He recovered quickly. This kind of conversation, he could handle. “I was just shell-shocked by how pathetic you’ve become. Really Weasley you haven’t been taking care of yourself at all. Now that Potter’s off the market, how do you expect to find yourself a husband? One isn’t going to just fall from the sky and land in your lap,” he snarked at her.
“When are you going to find yourself a woman and stop going on dates with Mrs. Palm and her Five Friends, Malfoy?” she fired as she pushed past him and invaded his home.
“Oy, you vile harpy!” he chased after her. “Get your ministry approved arse out of my house this instant! And stop touching my priceless artefacts! No, Weasley, put down my grandmother right now!”
* * * *
9th June 2010
Just because Malfoy refrains from teasing her about her weakness doesn’t mean that the arguments stop. It’s almost as if they are fashioned to collide in all opinions. Malfoy nitpicks about the slightest details, such as the way she slings her rucksack over her shoulder and leans on her cane.
Ginny too gets frustrated by the way that Malfoy seems to always prance about ahead of her on the road, and how whenever he has a choice he insists that they camp in the great outdoors rather than check into a hostel dedicated to pilgrims walking the Way of St. James.
One thing that they silently agree upon is keeping somewhat apart from all the Muggles. They keep contact with the other groups that they meet along their path to a minimum. After all, they do not want to risk revealing their otherness by being too talkative.
And so they argue all the way down through the Pyrenees and through the remainder of the Spanish countryside. When they’re not arguing, silence stretches in a half-sleepy sort of normalcy between them. After all, what could they possibly have to say to one another?
Ginny instead pays special attention to the physical exertion of putting one foot in front of the other. She’s determined to make it, to succeed and not collapse like she has that first day. The hat, as much as she hates to admit it is a blessing. As is the fact that Malfoy has silently taken it upon himself to carry most of their gear, leaving her to focus on the physical act of putting one foot in front of the other.
It’s hard for her; harder than for most others who share the path of their journey. Most days she is drenched in sweat before they break for mid-morning snacks, and in the evening she usually collapses into exhaustion immediately after dinner. She looks at Malfoy sometimes, when he’s ensconced deep in his thoughts and isn’t prone to notice her staring, and he looks just as haggard as she feels.
It comforts her, more than she is willing to consciously admit, that the walking isn’t easy for him either.
That he seems crippled by a similar heaviness that resides within her. That he carries his burdens around like a stone and that they often seem to trip him just as badly as her cane trips her...
“So Malfoy,” she begins, one dusky evening as they are tiredly walking into the city of Pamplona.
“Yes Weasley, what is it that you want now?” he grinds out, evidently annoyed by the fact that she has disturbed the silence that had fallen between them since lunchtime.
“While I am ever so eminently thrilled by your outdoorsy and nature-loving attitude, which may I add goes against your Malfoyishness, let’s sleep on a real bed tonight, hmm? What do you say?”
He rolls eyes in her direction before remarking dryly. “As my lady princess wishes.” And they walk into the first pilgrim hostel that they see.
Later, when they have both eaten a copious dinner of seafood paella and they are collapsed on adjacent beds, Malfoy whispers into his pillow, “Only 700 more kilometres to go. Merlin, Snape never said it would be so difficult.”
“What?” she exclaims in surprised alarm. “Malfoy, just how long is this damned pilgrimage anyway?”
“Nobody asked you to come, Weasley,” he retorts waspishly.
“Oh that’s outright bollocks, Malfoy, and you know it!” she’s truly scandalized now. “Did you seriously imagine that Harry would have let you traipse around Europe all on your lonesome given all that knowledge you have in your head?”
“I don’t recall asking for his permission to live my life, Weasley. But if you want, next time I decide to take a shit I can most definitely Owl him and ask him for his opinion on the matter.”
“Now you’re just being disgusting,” she proclaims and turns to face the wall closing her eyes in feigned sleep.
“Next time you send Potter your weekly progress report,” he remarks offhandedly and she wonders how exactly he’s seen the Owls that she’s been sending Harry because she had been very discreet,
“You can tell him that I don’t need a babysitter. Then maybe he will order you out of my hair.”
“That’s never going to happen, Malfoy. I’m here to alternatively Obliviate or kill you should you fall into the wrong hands. We cannot leave an asset unprotected and you know this.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being such a goody-two-shoes, Weasley? Because quite frankly, I am sick of your holier-than-thou attitude. Nobody appreciates your ridiculous loyalty to the MLE. Not even Potter. I bet you that he secretly finds you pathetic.”
When she refuses to reply, she can hear Malfoy shifting around in his bunk trying to find the best position for sleep. She tries to tell herself that Malfoy is being a shit-stirrer on purpose. But there is something in the back of her head, a little voice that she has ignored for many years that suddenly pipes up in agreement with him. It’s a long time before Ginny manages to fall into a troubled sleep.
( The undignified eloquence of Being 2/2 )
Original Prompt that we sent you:
Briefly describe what you'd like to receive in your fic: grownup!post-canon!post-Harry!D/G
The tone/mood of the fic: playful banter/sarcasm, sexual tension, intelligent/witty
An element/line of dialogue/object you would specifically like in your fic: "If you lose your temper, you’ve lost the argument."
Preferred rating of the the fic you want: PG13-NC17
Canon or AU? Canon
Deal Breakers (anything you don't want?): I'd prefer them to not be an established pairing.
Rating: R for imagery
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: A wee bit of angst and some squick-y images.
Author’s Notes: A million thanks to my wonderful beta who has put so much thought and effort in making this story what it currently is (including putting up with much virtual nailbiting and incoherence for the author). Huge thanks to the prompter without which this wonderful plot bunny may never have existed. I apologise if it is not quite what you envisioned when you wrote your prompt, I tried, truly tried but it was the only story that accepted to be written despite many many drafts and other attempts. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it =)
Summary (if fic): When you yourself, are not quite yourself, and do not want, nor have to be yourself, how important are the things which are expressed, versus those that remain unsaid? How much of your life, is as it appears, and how much of it lies clouded in obscurity? What if the only path to clarity is a journey whose ending you cannot comprehend? But the path is not a path, and the journey is not a journey.
The undignified eloquence of Being 1/2
6th June 2010
Just one more step. Just one more. She can do it. Really, she can. Come on Ginny! she tries to tell herself.
A stumble.
And then... she falls.
First to her knees and then the rest of her body follows. Like a domino that has tipped over its balance point. For a brief second, before the impact of the fall deafens her, she feels weightless.
And yet, in the calm quietude of the countryside, it feels less like a bang and more like a whimper.
As she lies there, on the sandy road, with dust caking her sweaty face and clogging her nostrils, she’s simultaneously drowning in interminable exhaustion and rejoicing in the infinite release of her collapse.
She can’t do it. She cannot take another step, if her life depended on it.
The throbbing in her leg is the only anchor to reality that she has left. And how she wishes that it didn’t have to be so!
Nobody will come. The group that they’ve been following has left them behind a long time ago.
It was just the two of them on this road since mid-morning, and now Malfoy too has gotten ahead of her and sprinted across the bend in the road, leaving her to her own devices.
She’s certain that she’s going to die here. On this blasted unpaved road in the Spanish countryside. Alone.
Time oozes around her but she can’t count it. All she can feel is the heat of the afternoon sun beating down on her back, drying out her sweat and setting her head on fire. Maybe she should sleep. At least then, the end would be painless.
A shadow settles over her. The brief respite from the sun’s merciless rays feels like heaven.
“This is why I told you to wear a hat.” She briefly opens her bleary eyes and is assaulted by the soles of walking boots. They fill the entire horizon of her vision. She must be hallucinating. “And this is also why I told you not to drink all your water after lunch.”
Strong, cool, capable hands flip her over on her back, and force a strong knee between her shoulder blades. Something slips between her lips and before she has the ability to protest, water floods into her mouth. She swallows, hungrily like a child, and it’s as if new blood is flowing through her veins.
“Malfoy,” she mutters in a hoarse voice. “I thought you were miles away. Wasn’t one of the conditions of our arrangement that you wouldn’t wait for me if I wasn’t able to keep up with you?”
“Valcarlos is over the next bend. We’ll stop there for the night,” is all he tells her as he picks her up with a fluid motion and carries her in his arms like a child.
* * * *
It began, as most nuisances did in his life, with Potter. To be rather more specific, it began with Potter’s head. In his fireplace. Right now. Demanding his attention.
“Your presence is required by the fireplace, Mr. Malfoy,” Portrait-Snape’s dulcetly sarcastic tones beckoned him from the depths of his favourite armchair. At what point had Snape shown up anyway?
“Malfoy!” Potter barked, and it sounded urgent.
He really should get moving before Potter actually stepped through the fireplace and showed up in his lounge. If only his feet would move and the room would stop spinning...
“Grrrgghh,” he made a noncommittal noise and tried to straighten himself. The glass that was precariously balancing on the armrest fell to the floor with a nearly deafening bang. He considered throwing up from the sheer pain of the noise, when the bottle of twenty-five year old Odgen’s that was lodged in his lap followed the glass and crashed to the floor. He grasped his temples and wished for the throbbing to stop before peering over to examine it curiously as it lay flat on the rug by his feet.
Thankfully, in what had been a more sober moment he had thought to seal the bottle. It would have been a shame, wasting such precious, wonderful ambrosia.
“Malfoy, where in Merlin’s tits are you?” Potter sounded urgently annoyed now.
His head was killing him. Every one of the three steps towards the fireplace was sheer agony. What had possessed him to get so blindingly drunk in the first place?
“Keep yer knickers on Potty. ‘nd stop wif the infernal shoutin’. I’m ‘ere.”
Potter’s head frowned at him. “You’re pissed,” he proclaimed after a moment’s observation.
“Right fuckin’ brilliant ye are. Always knew ye weren’t the knob everyone said ye were,” he tried smirking, but from the quizzical look on Potter’s face he didn’t attain the desired result.
“What were you thinking, not checking in as soon as you got back? Everyone’s ill with worry! We were going to send out the RS to bring you back, you arrogant plonker.” Had Draco been less intoxicated, he would have picked up on the worry in Potter’s voice. However, the Odgen’s made everything fuzzy. And warm. And so blissfully, fabulously, incredibly numb.
Another incomprehensible noise threatened to escape his throat and so he focused sharply on each and every word he wanted to utter. “Weasley got my note then.”
“Clearly, since I’m here now talking to you rather than out in the field looking for your scorched body. You left things a right mess. Kingsley’s furious. Wants you banned from owning or using class A explosives for life. It’s going to take a lot of Obliviators to keep this out of the Muggle media, not to mention the mountains of paperwork and potentially irreversible reputational damage that you’ve caused to Wizarding Britain.”
He could hear Potter’s irritated voice. And some of the words were slowly eroding the barrier of comforting fuzziness that the Odgen’s had provided. He very obviously required more alcohol. And less Potter.
“You’re welcome Pot-head,” he paused, snickering at his own cleverness, and then carried on, “Knew the brass would appreciate my little prezzie. Tell them I send them all hugs and kisses. Now piss off. I’ll speak with you if I survive until tomorrow.”
And with those immortal words of wisdom he severed the connection before Potter’s scandalized retort could disturb him further.
He fumbled about in his robe pockets for his wand, and warded the fireplace to any intrusions by the sheer power of his will - he was incapable of coherent spell casting - before collapsing on the rug.
Silence.
The only noise was the crying squeak of the cork as he cradled the bottle of Odgen’s close and took a couple of swigs.
He sat in the darkness and stared into the fire for a long time. Drinking slowly and savouring the numbness that permeated every particle of his being and ignited a warmth inside him that he had long forgotten.
The shuffling of Portrait-Snape in his frame caught the corner of his eye and drew him out of his musings.
“They were using babies, Snape. Innocent, little, harmless, babies,” he told him, and for some reason his cheeks were wet. When had he started crying? Were these even tears?
His long-time mentor, his friend, his confidante, could only stare at him from his frame. A ragged, palpable and immeasurable sadness pulsated between them.
* * * *
June 7th 2010
She sleeps like the dead until the next day when she’s awakened by the sound of Malfoy relieving himself in the small bathroom of their hostel room. It takes a while for her to appreciate that she is still alive and that all the pieces of her are attached to one another instead of being eaten by various wild animals.
She knows that something is different but can’t pinpoint what until she swings her legs over the edge of the bed and there is no pain. She takes a second to marvel at that fact, before observing that she’s still wearing the same - albeit Scourgify-ed - clothes from yesterday.
She’s too busy pondering what exactly he’s done to make the pain go away to notice when Malfoy stalks out of the bathroom dressed only in his birthday suit. It’s the slamming of the bathroom door that startles her into looking up.
“Holy Merlin’s bollocks, Malfoy! Put that away before I go blind!”
“Fucking hell, Weasley! Talk about giving a bloke a shocker!” he exclaims and conjures up a towel in a blink of an eye. It’s rather impressive considering that she can see his wand halfway across the room, resting by the side of his bed.
Once the towel is wrapped firmly around his waist, he turns to face her with that same devious look that she’s come to associate with when he’s about to produce a truly appalling pearl of Malfoy-wisdom.
“Speaking of bollocks, it’s a miracle you can still recognize them for what they are Weasley,” he arches an insolent eyebrow in her direction.
“I’ve never seen a pair that small but they were located in the same general geographic region so I took a wild guess,” she deadpans.
He chuckles before he flips her off and goes back into the bathroom to get dressed.
* * * *
There was a giant loose in Spinner’s End. How it had made its way out here, among all the Muggles was beyond him. But it was tearing his house apart from the sounds of it. Brick by brick and floorboard by floorboard.
All the while it was muttering in a falsetto singing female voice, “Draaaaccoooooo, Dddddrraaaacccooooo, darling Draaaaccooooo, wakey-wakey!”
He opened his eyes abruptly and immediately regretted doing so. There were several things wrong, the first of which was that the curtains were open and the harsh, crisp rays of sunlight were like acid to his hangover.
“Shut the blasted curtains,” he meant to protest, but his throat was so dry that nothing but a raspy nonsensical gurgle managed to find its way out. Meanwhile, his body began to remind him through a rigorous regimen of painful aches why he should not have slept on the rug. He was too old for this sort of rubbish.
“Are you going to lie there and pity yourself all day?” the piercing familiar voice of what he had once thought to be the giant filtered through his hazy conscience. He knew it....
“Yes, indeed, Mister Malfoy. It is nearly two in the afternoon, did you plan on spending the entire day in a drunken stupor?” the mockingly-bored voice of Portrait-Snape chipped in. He sounded almost gleeful. Almost as if he knew exactly how Draco felt at this very moment. Which was impossible, because Draco knew that no one in existence had felt like this and lived.
He willed his eyes into focus, ordered his thoughts and commanded his body into a sitting position before queasiness overtook him and he had to lie back down again. The hardwood floor was cold against the sudden heat of illness that washed through him.
“I wish I was dead,” he mumbled comfortingly into the wood. “And I wish you lot were gone. Myrtle, shut those godawful curtains and call Tinsy.”
After a couple of moments of silence the curtains shut with a determined swish and he was once again bathed in darkness. Cold, comforting darkness. He longed for the sweet embrace of sleep.
“I am not your house elf to boss around, Draco,” the ghost replied, and he shivered as her cool misty incorporeal form passed over him. He hated it when she did that, and she knew it. She was set on annoying him into motion, apparently.
“As my friend, you have two choices. Either call Tinsy for some hangover potion ,or kill me. Either or is preferable over this eternal hell at this moment,” he mumbled pathetically, still a rumpled mass on the floor.
“Master Draco. Tinsy is bringing you your potion, sir,” the squeaky voice of his house elf was like music to his ears.
Blindly Draco thrust out his hand, and the tiny creature guided the uncorked potion into his grasp. He swallowed it without hesitation. The foul taste of the potion was like ambrosia on his lips.
When finally he felt his coherence returning, his headache receding and his nausea leaving him altogether, he opened his eyes and sat upright on the floor, only to be faced with a familiar sight. The ghost and the house elf stood together and watched him with concerned eyes. Portrait-Snape in his frame looked upon him with a half frown half smirk, simultaneously belying deep amusement and disappointment.
“Thank you Tinsy. Thank you Myrtle,” Draco acknowledged quietly and glared at Snape. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t ever been faced with a similar situation.
“Draco, this has to stop.” It was Myrtle that finally put into words that which they had avoided saying for so long. And looking at them, this strange collection of friends he had acquired over the years, he saw the silent agreement that was radiating from them. Even Snape, in his two-dimensional frame was nodding his head.
“I know,” was all he said before he got up and gathered his things.
* * * *
He used the rundown ancient telephone box and took the lift down to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. And then, in an uncharacteristic move for what had to be the MLE’s best kept secret, he waltzed in through the front doors. Nobody noticed him at first, which upon closer examination was downright insulting. Even if most of them did not know of his involvement with the MLE, he was Draco Malfoy, reclusive and eccentric socialite. When he walked into places, people noticed.
It was perhaps testimony to the international pandemonium he had singlehandedly created, that he faded into the humdrum of activity that afternoon. At first glance the department appeared abuzz with the frantic energy characteristic of the immensely stressed. Aurors were running around like bees, either checking case files for facts or answering the torrent of flying memos which had flooded the department. In a corner, all alone under the guise of a silencing charm an unfortunate first year trainee had been given the task of incinerating Howlers before they exploded. From the exhausted look on his face and the burn marks on his robes he was having a hard time. All in all, a good night’s worth of work as far as he was concerned.
He was just about to begin searching through the aisles in search for Potter when a familiar voice stopped him.
“Just what in the blazes do you think you’re doing? Merlin’s tits, Malfoy, you’re a fucking idiot.”
Draco groaned. Caught, like a fly in the spider’s web, or in his case like an unfortunate Muggle who entered the lair of a nesting Chinese Fireball. She was the ‘Bane of his Existence’, otherwise known as the inestimable Ginny Weasley, and she was his Control Officer. His foil in every sense of the word; the administrative and strategic genius that enabled him to be the best agent in the field.
It essentially meant, as she never hesitated to remind him, that she owned him. And judging from the look on her face as she leaned heavily on her cane and headed straight for him, she was angrier than a Nargle in heat.
“Oh mother, it’s so good to see you again!” he faked enthusiastic brightness. “May I inquire as to who shat in your tea this morning? I haven’t seen you this chuffed in years!” There was no two way street with Weasley, as he had painfully found out. He had to seize the upper hand of the conversation while he could.
“Shut your pie-hole and follow me like the good ferret I know you can be,” she hissed as she walked past him, and jabbed him painfully in the shin with her cane to illustrate her point.
Then, before Draco had a chance to move a muscle she pointed her wand directly at him and he felt the familiar tinge of the Disillusionment Charm wash over him. Never let it be said that she was not quick with her wand. He was still smarting from that Bat Bogey hex that she had thrown at him in his fifth year.
He debated disobeying her instructions and going to Potter himself, but from the fragments of yesterday evening that he could recall, Potter would probably make an appearance in Weasley’s office in under five minutes anyway. And Draco really couldn’t resist the opportunity to get under Weasley’s skin again. It had been nearly four years since they had seen each other face to face.
* * * *
7th June 2010
She waits patiently for the taunting to begin. After all, it was her arrogance and unpreparedness that caused her to collapse in the middle of that road and - to her great dismay - be rescued by Malfoy.
But it doesn’t.
Instead, before they leave Valcarlos, Malfoy presents her with a large straw hat. The rims of it cover her shoulders and provide much-needed shade from the heat of the Spanish sun.
“Probably not big enough to fit your oversized ego into but the best that they do in this place,” Malfoy tells her before they start their descent through the Pyrenees.
* * * *
She shut the blinds and cast an Imperturbable on the door before she took the Disillusionment off him and beckoned him into an armchair with a grunt and a glare. Draco pasted a look of nonplussed indifference on his face and took his time settling into his seat.
He sniffed the air with mock indifference before fixing her with his most mischievous look, “Really Weasley, after all this time and you’re still stuck in the same shite office from four years ago. Would have thought that with all my hard work out in the field you could have managed to shag your way to a promotion by now.”
“My mother always taught me to earn my success.... It’s such a shame that yours didn’t do the same...” she fired back quicker than a poisonous snake.
He laughed then. It was so bizarre, sitting here in her office after everything that had happened. After everything that he had seen and done, trading insults with her was just so normal. The fact that she still held onto their rivalry and still plainly detested working with him was comforting in a way that he hadn’t thought possible.
“Oh Weasley, always going straight for a man’s cojones,” he shook his head mockingly. “But on the bright side, my mother did teach me about the dangers of sowing wild oats,” he smirked at her. “Speaking of wild oats, how many spawn has Potter got you at by now? Three, four?”
A shadow crossed over her face at his words and for a moment Draco feared that he had overstepped his bounds. There was uncontained fury in her gaze as it hooked into him and attempted to incinerate him where he sat. But then, just like the wind that suddenly stops blowing on the open sea, the rage was over and she broke his gaze to fiddle with some papers on her desk, squaring them into place on top of one another.
“Of course you don’t know,” he thought he heard her mutter quietly. But when she raised her head to look at him, she loathed him again. “How does it feel to know that you and Harry have shagged the same woman, hmm?” her voice is dripping with poisoned sweetness. “Oh that’s right, you haven’t heard that your darling and precious Astoria is now riding Harry’s Firebolt. Apparently your Nimbus 2001 wasn’t good enough.”
He was about to cut her down with a great riposte when the secret door to her office slammed open and a haggard looking Potter barrelled in.
“Oh goody, he’s here,” he sarcastically told Ginny’s and then fixed Draco with annoyance.
He put on his best innocent face before smiling at Potter, “Ah the man of the hour finally joins us!” And then, just because he never could help himself where Potter was concerned, continued, “Potter you look like you haven’t shaved in three or so days. Just so you know Astoria doesn’t like scruff. She finds it beneath her. And while you’re at it, make sure to shave your balls too or she might find those beneath her as well.”
“You told him. Why did you fucking have to tell him, Gin?” Potter whined in Weasley’s general direction.
“Maybe because you should have been more careful where you stuck your dick behind my back, Harry,” Weasley replied, her sweetest, most poisoned smile pasted firmly on her face.
Draco laughed then. Yule couldn’t have come earlier if it had tried. “Not to interrupt a moment of intense mutual hatred here, but are you telling me that you stuck your sausage in Astoria while Weasley here was still on the payroll?” he rubbed his hands together gleefully. “And here I thought Columbia was where things were hot!”
“Speaking of Columbia, Malf-” Potter began but was completely steamrolled by Weasley who spoke up over him.
“It wasn’t so much as a sausage. It was more like a bun. In her oven. It was fabulous.”
“Wow Potter, you just don’t know when to quit do you? Out of the frying pan and into the fire.” The perplexed look on Potter’s face was absolutely priceless. “All I can tell you is that if you were stupid enough to fall for the bitch, you’re welcome to her. As for you Weasley, don’t you worry, Astoria has had years of practice over you in shagging her way to the top. You may want to take this time to marvel and take notes. The bun in oven trick never fails.”
They were both looking at him as if he was cracked. And maybe he was. Actually, no, he definitely was. It was part of the job description, so Draco continued, “Now that I have both your undivided attention, I’ve actually come here not to be updated on the sordidly incestuous affairs of Wizarding Britain’s crème de la crème, but to inform you that effective immediately you can all bugger each other because I quit.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Actually, no, I take that back. Don’t bugger each other. The gene pool really doesn’t need any more of your moronic offspring.”
He was about to turn on his heel to exit Weasley’s office but the Imperturbable on the door prevented him from leaving.
“Malfoy, sit down!” Weasley addressed him in that low-tone voice that still made him tremble. He turned to face her, but purposefully did not take his seat again.
“What do you mean, you quit?” Potter jumped in. Always the last fool on the bandwagon.
He sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically.“Quit. In this sentence, used as a verb to indicate the cessation of an action. If you check your Oxford dictionary, you will find numerous meanings. In this context, quit is best encapsulated by the definition ‘to give up or resign one’s job or position’ or ‘to depart or leave’. Sentence example: Draco quit his job as undercover agent at the Ministry of Law Enforcement. Does that provide some clarity?”
“As far as I remember it,Malfoy,” Weasley’s tone betrayed her barely contained fury, “the terms of your conviction and subsequent release into the custody of the MLE did not mention your preference in the matter of employment. To be quite frank you are not so much employed as owned by the MLE.”
Potter stepped forward in a more conciliatory stance. “Listen, Malfoy, I know that the last four years haven’t been easy. I’ve seen your progress reports and I can honestly tell you that the work that you’ve done in the field is spectacular. How about we agree to some time off between now and your next assignment? It’ll give us the time to quell the international media and put together another operation in Columbia. Now that the Ortegas are feuding with the Alvarezs’ the entire gameplan has changed.”
He felt the anger well up in him then and it slipped past his lips before he could contain it. “I don’t want any time off. Like I have told you, I’ve quit. You may as well pack me up and send me to Azkaban but I am never again going into the field or doing any work on behalf of the MLE. I am done. Finished. Finito. Cerrado. Fini. Fertig. How many fucking languages would you like me to use to tell you the same bloody thing?”
“Look,” Potter stepped closer and tried again in that completely irritating “understanding” tone of his. “We understand the tremendous stress and pressure that you’ve been under. Please, think this through again. We have a Head Healer at St. Mungos that deals only with our MLE field agents. Why don’t you go and see her for a few sessions and then we can work out the best way to continue our work together?”
“And now you want some bird with half a brain to poke around in my head? Have you truly gone bonkers? No! As I keep on telling you but you do not seem to understand me, we are finished. I will Owl you the memories from the last six months so that you may brief the next innocent fool that you are going to send into the pig’s sty that is Columbia. But as for me, I am done. Officially retired, for life. I’ve given you lot ten of the best and most beautiful years of my life. I’ve done things on the behalf of the MLE that you cannot even begin to imagine! For the past four years I have lived on a constant supply of stress and Polyjuice potion! This is where it ends. The last station. Please take all of your belongings as you exit the train and mind the fucking gap.”
* * * *
5th June 2010
They spend the evening in St. Jean Pied de Port, in a small hostel dedicated to the pilgrims walking St. James’ Way to Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Sitting across from Malfoy, at the very corner of a long wooden table where other Muggles are eating dinner and simultaneously chatting in five different languages, Ginny feels like she has fallen through an Oubliette and landed in another life.
It is unfathomable to her that Malfoy would just up and quit the MLE. Especially after all the effort that has been invested for the past four years to infiltrate the Ortega Family cartel in Columbia and bring a stop to the trafficking of Dark Objects.
But he’s done exactly that. Upped and quit. Without a single whit of consideration for those who had to stay behind and clean up the international pandemonium he’s created. Because of course, Malfoy being Malfoy he has used his inexhaustible talent for sparking disaster everywhere he went.
“Just what were you thinking, reopening the blood feud between the Ortegas and the Alvarezs. Do you know how many years it took to agree to the current division of Columbia between them?” she finally breaks the tentative silence which has settled between them since the afternoon.
For a moment she thinks that he’s not heard her over the buzz of conversation floating around them, because he continues to calmly eat his meat and potatoes as if her question has never been uttered.
It’s only when he neatly and deliberately sets aside his tableware and fixes her with angry grey eyes that she realises her question may have struck harder than intended.
“Must you be here? Can’t you go back to your blasted Ministry like I’ve been asking you for hours and leave me alone? What is it about you bureaucrats that cannot understand the meaning of the word no. I am done doing your dirty work. Forever. Juan-Martin died in that awful fire that took the Ortegas and their entire estate with him and that left Columbia’s underground in sheer chaos. Find another damn mole to do your work.”
He slams his silverware on this plate and pushes away from the table, knowing full well that it will take her at least a couple of minutes before she can follow him. And by then he’ll probably be out the door and vanished into the night, and she has no idea about the geography of the town, nor will she be able to perform a locator spell to find him given all the Muggles.
Fury wells up in her like a tornado. She hates being a cripple. Hates every second of limping from place to place, like a human flobberworm. She hates how every stair that she has to climb is a mountainous monstrosity that she has to personally conquer. She hates how even getting out of bed in the morning takes five times longer than it used to. She used to soar over mountains on her broom instead of having to slowly scale them with the claws of her will.
Her appetite now gone, Ginny pushes the plate away from her.
She’s tired, so very and incredibly tired. She rests her head against the wooden table, comforted by its solid reality against her forehead.
And as she screws her eyes shut and attempts to gather her strength to stand up from the table, she is startled by a reality: She can’t remember what it was like to fly on a broom.
* * * *
He slammed the door so thoroughly off its hinges that all the sleeping portraits in the house awakened to the noise as he stepped into his entrance. Tinsy poked her head out of the kitchen with her huge floppy elfin ears glued to the side of her head, her eyes wide with fright.
Myrtle materialized in front of him similarly alarmed, and from the yawn she was trying to stifle, slightly sleepy.
“It went that well, did it?” she asked him.
There wasn’t enough Odgen’s in the world to drown out his emotions. He settled for a glare and a grunt and revisited the feeling he had that first time when he had encountered her in the seventh floor boys bathroom.
“Tinsy, would you mind showing me where you’ve put all the correspondence regarding La Foi Ltd?” he rubbed his temples gently and wished his migraine away.
“Of course Master Draco,” the little creature replied and vanished with a silent pop.
He turned to his ghostly companion who was silently floating beside him, “Say Myrtle, are ghosts affected by Dementors? You may have to visit me in Azkaban when Potter gets all the paperwork filled out.”
“He’s sending you to Azkaban?” she shrieked. “How can he be such a twat?! After everything that you’ve done for him and the MLE! That’s it! I am no longer sharing my toilet with him if he dies prematurely. As a matter of fact, I am going to make sure that some of my ghost friends at the Ministry send him a nasty present!”
He laughed then. She always knew how to make him laugh. “Come on, we’ve got accounts to be looking over. I may be richer than the Queen, in which case we can just vanish without a trace and stick it to Potter.”
* * * *
It was much later when the knocker resounded throughout the house that Draco realised he had fallen asleep overlooking the books, and the tea that Tinsy had brought over earlier had gone cold. He ignored the knocking and ambled over to the kitchen for a new tea. Whoever it was could bugger off. He wasn’t home.
Twenty minutes later the knocking continued, a persistently metered tap-tap-tap resounding throughout the entire house. Not for the first time he cursed his custom-made alarm and ward system. He could feel the slow beginnings of his migraine returning.
“What do you want?!” he flung open the door and was almost punched in the face by a giant conjured fist.
Thankfully he managed to duck before the monstrosity did a number on his face.
“Malfoy, you answer your own doors, how terribly mundane of you. Don’t you have a house elf?” Weasley’s voice echoed from somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.
He looked down, and indeed, she was sitting across the top of the stairs of his porch, her cane lying across her lap. She was wearing the most indifferently bored expression of anyone he’d ever seen. Draco knew that inwardly she was fuming at having been kept waiting for so long.
“Tinsy has more important things to do, Weasley, if you really must know. Now, can we pretend that we had the conversation where you threaten me into coming back to the MLE, I give you the middle finger salute and you go off in a huff? I really don’t have the patience to go through all the words here...”
She flashed him a furious glare and shakily got herself to her feet. He was ready to turn around and slam the door in her face, but there was something about her choppy movement and the tightness of the strain lines at the corners of her mouth as she very clearly ignored physical discomfort to try to appear as tall and imposing and possible, that stopped him. When was the last time that he had truly looked at Weasley?
She’d always been more of an afterthought; the warden that Potter assigned him after a horde of other wardens failed to keep him in check, and the one person that could be relied on to find new and creative ways to make his life miserable. In time he had learned to respect the devious ways that she used to bully him into doing her bidding.
It didn’t help that at the time she was Potter’s side kick and his staunchest supporter in all things. In her love-filled eyes, Potter could do no wrong. Meanwhile, Draco had always been a second class citizen who had to fight and earn every single inch of professional ground that he stood on. He remembered some of the paint peeling arguments they had when she had first been assigned to work with him six years before. To say that it was like cats and dogs between them would have been an understatement. There were not enough words in the English language to describe their loathing for one another.
She had come to work for the MLE after becoming an unfortunate collateral damage in a scuffle between Rookwood and Potter. What was supposed to be a romantic holiday for two in the south of France ended in irreversible spell damage on her right leg, and the end of her Quiddich career. In some valiant attempt to rescue her from self-pity, Potter had focused her uncanny ability to see through to the essence of a situation by making her Draco’s warden. After all, Weasley needed a new purpose in life and Potter needed to alleviate his guilt. One hand washes the other...
But now, as she stood face to face with him, Draco could see the titanic change in her. After four years of corresponding with her through hastily scribbled missives, meeting her face to face was like meeting a doppelganger. She still sounded like the Weasley he remembered. If anything she sounded more caustic than ever and appeared even more ready to bust his balls if he even so much as breathed the wrong way. But the way she stood before him, she looked nothing like the impossibly optimistic, bubbly-spirited young woman he remembered.
For one, she was thinner. Or maybe he had put on some weight and so his impressions were skewed. Either which way she appeared ready to break at the first gust of wind. And where her face had glowed before, her smile was now empty and mechanic, and worry-wrinkles spread like a web across her skin. But most importantly, there was something so impossibly wrong about the resigned way in which she leaned on her cane, like one would lean on an old friend. It made Draco shiver inwardly with an unpleasant feeling that he couldn’t quite name.
His eyes are green as a fresh pickled toad’s, indeed... Time forgave no one with its passing, not even Gryffindor heroines.
“Err, Malfoy? You all right?” she waved a hand in front of his face and drew him out of his reverie.
“What?” he shook off the feeling of tiny hands crawling all over his skin. “Ah yes, Weasley, as I was saying, leave.”
“Maybe you should see that Head Healer, Malfoy. There is something entirely not right with you. You were standing there with a completely moronic look on your face, gasping for air for minutes. I was afraid you were going to start dribbling from your mouth. I thought I told you to stay away from the drugs when you were on the job.”
He recovered quickly. This kind of conversation, he could handle. “I was just shell-shocked by how pathetic you’ve become. Really Weasley you haven’t been taking care of yourself at all. Now that Potter’s off the market, how do you expect to find yourself a husband? One isn’t going to just fall from the sky and land in your lap,” he snarked at her.
“When are you going to find yourself a woman and stop going on dates with Mrs. Palm and her Five Friends, Malfoy?” she fired as she pushed past him and invaded his home.
“Oy, you vile harpy!” he chased after her. “Get your ministry approved arse out of my house this instant! And stop touching my priceless artefacts! No, Weasley, put down my grandmother right now!”
* * * *
9th June 2010
Just because Malfoy refrains from teasing her about her weakness doesn’t mean that the arguments stop. It’s almost as if they are fashioned to collide in all opinions. Malfoy nitpicks about the slightest details, such as the way she slings her rucksack over her shoulder and leans on her cane.
Ginny too gets frustrated by the way that Malfoy seems to always prance about ahead of her on the road, and how whenever he has a choice he insists that they camp in the great outdoors rather than check into a hostel dedicated to pilgrims walking the Way of St. James.
One thing that they silently agree upon is keeping somewhat apart from all the Muggles. They keep contact with the other groups that they meet along their path to a minimum. After all, they do not want to risk revealing their otherness by being too talkative.
And so they argue all the way down through the Pyrenees and through the remainder of the Spanish countryside. When they’re not arguing, silence stretches in a half-sleepy sort of normalcy between them. After all, what could they possibly have to say to one another?
Ginny instead pays special attention to the physical exertion of putting one foot in front of the other. She’s determined to make it, to succeed and not collapse like she has that first day. The hat, as much as she hates to admit it is a blessing. As is the fact that Malfoy has silently taken it upon himself to carry most of their gear, leaving her to focus on the physical act of putting one foot in front of the other.
It’s hard for her; harder than for most others who share the path of their journey. Most days she is drenched in sweat before they break for mid-morning snacks, and in the evening she usually collapses into exhaustion immediately after dinner. She looks at Malfoy sometimes, when he’s ensconced deep in his thoughts and isn’t prone to notice her staring, and he looks just as haggard as she feels.
It comforts her, more than she is willing to consciously admit, that the walking isn’t easy for him either.
That he seems crippled by a similar heaviness that resides within her. That he carries his burdens around like a stone and that they often seem to trip him just as badly as her cane trips her...
“So Malfoy,” she begins, one dusky evening as they are tiredly walking into the city of Pamplona.
“Yes Weasley, what is it that you want now?” he grinds out, evidently annoyed by the fact that she has disturbed the silence that had fallen between them since lunchtime.
“While I am ever so eminently thrilled by your outdoorsy and nature-loving attitude, which may I add goes against your Malfoyishness, let’s sleep on a real bed tonight, hmm? What do you say?”
He rolls eyes in her direction before remarking dryly. “As my lady princess wishes.” And they walk into the first pilgrim hostel that they see.
Later, when they have both eaten a copious dinner of seafood paella and they are collapsed on adjacent beds, Malfoy whispers into his pillow, “Only 700 more kilometres to go. Merlin, Snape never said it would be so difficult.”
“What?” she exclaims in surprised alarm. “Malfoy, just how long is this damned pilgrimage anyway?”
“Nobody asked you to come, Weasley,” he retorts waspishly.
“Oh that’s outright bollocks, Malfoy, and you know it!” she’s truly scandalized now. “Did you seriously imagine that Harry would have let you traipse around Europe all on your lonesome given all that knowledge you have in your head?”
“I don’t recall asking for his permission to live my life, Weasley. But if you want, next time I decide to take a shit I can most definitely Owl him and ask him for his opinion on the matter.”
“Now you’re just being disgusting,” she proclaims and turns to face the wall closing her eyes in feigned sleep.
“Next time you send Potter your weekly progress report,” he remarks offhandedly and she wonders how exactly he’s seen the Owls that she’s been sending Harry because she had been very discreet,
“You can tell him that I don’t need a babysitter. Then maybe he will order you out of my hair.”
“That’s never going to happen, Malfoy. I’m here to alternatively Obliviate or kill you should you fall into the wrong hands. We cannot leave an asset unprotected and you know this.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of being such a goody-two-shoes, Weasley? Because quite frankly, I am sick of your holier-than-thou attitude. Nobody appreciates your ridiculous loyalty to the MLE. Not even Potter. I bet you that he secretly finds you pathetic.”
When she refuses to reply, she can hear Malfoy shifting around in his bunk trying to find the best position for sleep. She tries to tell herself that Malfoy is being a shit-stirrer on purpose. But there is something in the back of her head, a little voice that she has ignored for many years that suddenly pipes up in agreement with him. It’s a long time before Ginny manages to fall into a troubled sleep.
( The undignified eloquence of Being 2/2 )
Original Prompt that we sent you:
Briefly describe what you'd like to receive in your fic: grownup!post-canon!post-Harry!D/G
The tone/mood of the fic: playful banter/sarcasm, sexual tension, intelligent/witty
An element/line of dialogue/object you would specifically like in your fic: "If you lose your temper, you’ve lost the argument."
Preferred rating of the the fic you want: PG13-NC17
Canon or AU? Canon
Deal Breakers (anything you don't want?): I'd prefer them to not be an established pairing.