(no subject)
Title: Life Is Lived In the Still Places In Between
Author: ethrosdemon (that would be me)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Spoilers:(if any) Ah, I don't know, it could be Half Blood Prince, or it could not be. It depends on how you negotiate the text, darling.
Pairing: Not slash.
My photo.
Diagon Alley riots with lamps and candles. The weather's turned nasty, but flames throw orange echoes across smiling faces. The contagious ebullience of festival season bounces from shopper to shopper as Draco sips his tea and flaps his paper open. He sits next to the magicked window of Binicker and Blatstove's-- he can see out but anyone trying to return his regard will see paper lanterns and glowing lamps reflected back. He doesn't bother with so-called public establishments unless he has to, only frequents members-only clubs and restaurants with unspoken admittance policies. The front page of the Prophet is the usual offal, today featuring New Hogwarts Dress Code! and Longbottom Nursery Fire Declared Accidental. Draco skims that, Neville Longbottom forgot to put out a Sparking Sneezewort which set a burlap sack ablaze. Typical. Draco flips to the sports page to see their favorite for the Worldcup now-Argentina--and rolls his eyes. Anyone with half a knut's worth of sense knows it's Russia.
Diwali makes Draco melancholy. The leaden grey skys of this time of year combined with all the forced cheer remind him of his mother. He watches people tumble by on the pavement and bites back a sigh. A couple at a table near him strike up a quarrel over whose parents are less tolerable. Draco laughs to himself, schadenfreude replacing self-pity. So far Draco has had two marriages and two children--he knows he's not done with the tally yet because he hasn't bested either enterprise and he's become something of a perfectionist in his adulthood. He has a lot more sympathy for his father these days, seeing Lucius's life from inside out, but in peace time. Draco has the luxury of not having to bother with power hungry lunatics with a taste for torture. Draco's greatest obstacle is himself.
He pulls his watch out of his pocket and pops it open. Draco's solicitor has two summer homes and Draco knows he's about to buy him another with the fees from his most recent divorce. He should have seen to that a couple years ago when it was clear that Verbena was just Pansy all over again, but he didn't want to deal with his parents' sharp eyes and disapproving airs. Not everyone is the sticking it out type. Aside from a lack of political ambition, Draco also failed to inherit his parents' determination to keep up appearances.
“How late am I?” A rush of robes and flurry of limbs flies into the seat across from him. “It's half past already? Would you believe Flourish and Blotts was out of LAMP OIL? How can they be out of lamp oil during Diwali? I ended up just going over to a muggle shop and...what are you smiling at?”
“Now I can't smile?” Draco's eyes drop closed in amusement for a half a second. Hermione huffs to punctuate her general distrust of his good mood. A mood she brought with her, something she still refuses to believe. He suspects this is a relationship he ruined long before he knew there was one to ruin, and he lives with that the same way he does all of his mistakes--with rancor.
Hermione pats her hair, pulled back in a neat chignon, and withdraws a pencil, she whips out a moleskin and starts jotting something down. "You won't believe, no, you will completely believe, how beastly my mother-in-law is being about the holidays!" Draco's sure whatever she's writing has nothing to do with what she's saying. She calls this multitasking, Draco calls it the swift road to a heart condition. "Something I can't adjust to is how everyone" here she means every wizarding one "just pretends nothing ever changes." She looks up. "I'll have you fucking know that everything changes!"
Draco remembers distinctly the crack in his mother's composure when he told her he was getting divorced (the first time). Her mouth dipped on the left side and she said "Could you repeat that for me, darling, because I believe I mistook what you just said." Everything about the scene--the scent of the lemon trees carried in through the open window of the house in Varenna, the emerald hairpins in her hair catching the sunlight and throwing small refractions across his face, the sound of his father barking her name from outside with annoyance. Life is made up of these perfectly remembered moments and all the cotton floss of daily life in between. Most of the remembered moments are things we'd rather forget.
"She's no longer your mother in law, you realize," Draco sighs through his nose and taps his tea cup with a spoon for a refill. Hermione pauses in her constant fluttering and crosses her hands over her notebook.
"I don't mean to hurt your feelings," she says in a soft tone. "Habit."
She's wearing the pearls with the yellow diamond clasp he gave her and dove grey robes over a slightly darker grey suit--her work attire. He knows she'd wouldn't care to hear how proper and like all the exquisitely pure blooded matrons he's known all his life she looks. Hermione has become more pureblooded than the real thing over the years, punctilious and exacting, rule-oriented and perfect in every way--on the surface. Draco tried twice with women who were what Hermione seems to be. The real thing wouldn't stick, so he's breaking the mold and trying with someone whose surface covers everything he's been taught not to want. What she sees in him, he has no idea--aside from the obvious, his money, his looks, his memberships and name. He would after all complete the look she's going for.
The way she looks at him, though. No one's ever been in love with him before, so he's not really sure what that looks like, but he thinks maybe third time might be a charm, to use one of Hermione's muggle expressions.
Author: ethrosdemon (that would be me)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Spoilers:(if any) Ah, I don't know, it could be Half Blood Prince, or it could not be. It depends on how you negotiate the text, darling.
Pairing: Not slash.
My photo.
Diagon Alley riots with lamps and candles. The weather's turned nasty, but flames throw orange echoes across smiling faces. The contagious ebullience of festival season bounces from shopper to shopper as Draco sips his tea and flaps his paper open. He sits next to the magicked window of Binicker and Blatstove's-- he can see out but anyone trying to return his regard will see paper lanterns and glowing lamps reflected back. He doesn't bother with so-called public establishments unless he has to, only frequents members-only clubs and restaurants with unspoken admittance policies. The front page of the Prophet is the usual offal, today featuring New Hogwarts Dress Code! and Longbottom Nursery Fire Declared Accidental. Draco skims that, Neville Longbottom forgot to put out a Sparking Sneezewort which set a burlap sack ablaze. Typical. Draco flips to the sports page to see their favorite for the Worldcup now-Argentina--and rolls his eyes. Anyone with half a knut's worth of sense knows it's Russia.
Diwali makes Draco melancholy. The leaden grey skys of this time of year combined with all the forced cheer remind him of his mother. He watches people tumble by on the pavement and bites back a sigh. A couple at a table near him strike up a quarrel over whose parents are less tolerable. Draco laughs to himself, schadenfreude replacing self-pity. So far Draco has had two marriages and two children--he knows he's not done with the tally yet because he hasn't bested either enterprise and he's become something of a perfectionist in his adulthood. He has a lot more sympathy for his father these days, seeing Lucius's life from inside out, but in peace time. Draco has the luxury of not having to bother with power hungry lunatics with a taste for torture. Draco's greatest obstacle is himself.
He pulls his watch out of his pocket and pops it open. Draco's solicitor has two summer homes and Draco knows he's about to buy him another with the fees from his most recent divorce. He should have seen to that a couple years ago when it was clear that Verbena was just Pansy all over again, but he didn't want to deal with his parents' sharp eyes and disapproving airs. Not everyone is the sticking it out type. Aside from a lack of political ambition, Draco also failed to inherit his parents' determination to keep up appearances.
“How late am I?” A rush of robes and flurry of limbs flies into the seat across from him. “It's half past already? Would you believe Flourish and Blotts was out of LAMP OIL? How can they be out of lamp oil during Diwali? I ended up just going over to a muggle shop and...what are you smiling at?”
“Now I can't smile?” Draco's eyes drop closed in amusement for a half a second. Hermione huffs to punctuate her general distrust of his good mood. A mood she brought with her, something she still refuses to believe. He suspects this is a relationship he ruined long before he knew there was one to ruin, and he lives with that the same way he does all of his mistakes--with rancor.
Hermione pats her hair, pulled back in a neat chignon, and withdraws a pencil, she whips out a moleskin and starts jotting something down. "You won't believe, no, you will completely believe, how beastly my mother-in-law is being about the holidays!" Draco's sure whatever she's writing has nothing to do with what she's saying. She calls this multitasking, Draco calls it the swift road to a heart condition. "Something I can't adjust to is how everyone" here she means every wizarding one "just pretends nothing ever changes." She looks up. "I'll have you fucking know that everything changes!"
Draco remembers distinctly the crack in his mother's composure when he told her he was getting divorced (the first time). Her mouth dipped on the left side and she said "Could you repeat that for me, darling, because I believe I mistook what you just said." Everything about the scene--the scent of the lemon trees carried in through the open window of the house in Varenna, the emerald hairpins in her hair catching the sunlight and throwing small refractions across his face, the sound of his father barking her name from outside with annoyance. Life is made up of these perfectly remembered moments and all the cotton floss of daily life in between. Most of the remembered moments are things we'd rather forget.
"She's no longer your mother in law, you realize," Draco sighs through his nose and taps his tea cup with a spoon for a refill. Hermione pauses in her constant fluttering and crosses her hands over her notebook.
"I don't mean to hurt your feelings," she says in a soft tone. "Habit."
She's wearing the pearls with the yellow diamond clasp he gave her and dove grey robes over a slightly darker grey suit--her work attire. He knows she'd wouldn't care to hear how proper and like all the exquisitely pure blooded matrons he's known all his life she looks. Hermione has become more pureblooded than the real thing over the years, punctilious and exacting, rule-oriented and perfect in every way--on the surface. Draco tried twice with women who were what Hermione seems to be. The real thing wouldn't stick, so he's breaking the mold and trying with someone whose surface covers everything he's been taught not to want. What she sees in him, he has no idea--aside from the obvious, his money, his looks, his memberships and name. He would after all complete the look she's going for.
The way she looks at him, though. No one's ever been in love with him before, so he's not really sure what that looks like, but he thinks maybe third time might be a charm, to use one of Hermione's muggle expressions.