The Pizzeria 5/10 (R/D, PG-13)
Title: The Pizzeria (a Sordid Tale of Destiny, Evil, and Garlic) 5/10
Author: mad_maudlin
Length: 36,584
Pairing: Ron/Draco (more preslash than slash)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ron bites off more than he can chew when he agrees to help Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini open an Italian restaurant. Can anything make it worth the headaches?
5.
Thankfully for all of them, Fleur was just the first customer, not the last. Blaise tried to categorically ban Malfoy from dealing with the public, but that didn't last long; there was no one else to do the cooking, and Ron wasn't going to stand at the register for hours at a time even if he weren't paranoid about being recognized. "Just try not to insult them, or abuse them, or curse them," Blaise said, feverishly chopping a large slab of pancetta. "You can do that, can't you, Draco?"
"Of course I can. I am a saint," Malfoy said, and stole a nip of cooking sherry.
"Leave off, that's imported," Blaise said severely.
Malfoy shrugged. "What? It's my gold I'm drinking."
Ron snorted at him. "Weren't you the one sniping at us about our expenses yesterday?"
"I was just reminding you to be frugal with the inventory."
"You scolded us for tossing out olive pits."
Malfoy waved him away. "Waste not, want not, isn't that how it goes? You of all people should know that, Weasley." He reached for the sherry again; Blaise slipped him the balsamic vinegar instead.
The number of customers they got each day rose slowly but steadily, and Malfoy badgered Ron into installing a large glass display case in the front counter for showing off the fresh pizzas. Blaise kept experimenting with different dishes, but Ron noticed that he seemed to be cooking with an awful lot of wine. They began to stay later and later in the evening, doing dishes until midnight, wrestling with the temperamental cash register until one o'clock; Ron snacked on odds and ends of pizza and pasta throughout the day, and his mum's careful stockpile of casseroles stayed untouched in the back of the cold cupboard. He was surprised when he stumbled home in the small hours of one morning and found Errol passed out on the front stoop, clutching a letter from his parents with more blurry photographs and a reminder that they'd be back in a couple of weeks. The letter was dated August 14; Ron had to carefully consult a calendar and his memory to determine that the current date was August 17.
Two and a half weeks of working with Malfoy and Blaise, and they hadn't murdered each other yet. Wasn't the whole thing supposed to be a lark?
He meditated on this as he walked to the pizzeria the next day; he'd found that, as long as he didn't shave (no matter what Malfoy said about his beard) most people were fairly slow to recognize him, if they recognized him at all. It allowed him to walk along Diagon Alley in the mornings and enjoy the summer weather, at least as far as the sticky, smoggy summer weather was enjoyable. Two and a half weeks since Malfoy had stuck his foot in the Burrow's doorthey'd said then he'd be free to walk away, just shake a few hands and look heroic. Right. If he tried to walk away now, Malfoy would throw the mother of all temper tantrums, to start with, and then he'd Floo or owl every hour on the hour until Ron either came back to the restaurant or killed him. There were only the three of them, after all, to keep the place running all day, every day, and Ron suspected that without him, Blaise wouldn't even take time to go to the toilet.
The image of Blaise strapping an empty bottle to his leg to avoid bathroom breaks made Ron snicker as he walked in the front entrance of the restaurant. The snicker died in his throat when he saw a spotty teenager standing at the cash register. "Er, hello?" he said.
The kid grinned widely, eyes popping. "WelcometoZabini'showmayIhelpyou?"
"What?"
Malfoy emerged from the back and clapped the boy on the shoulder. "Good work, Dennis, just try to slow down a bit on the delivery, eh? Oh, and you don't have to be nice to Weasley, he works here."
"Really?" Dennis turned to Ron and smiled widely. "Wow! That's brilliant! Hi, Mr. Weasley!"
"Er. Hi." Ron waved weakly at him as he came around the counter. "Malfoy, what's going on?"
Malfoy grinned at him. "Meet our newest employee, Weasley. You probably know of himDennis Creevey, aged sixteen."
Now that Malfoy said it, Ron did recognize Dennis, though the last time they'd seen each other, Ron remembered him being about waist-high, and sort of squeaky. Now he came up to Ron's shoulder and his voice broke on every other syllable. "I failed all my OWLS!" Dennis announced excitedly. "That's why I'm working here! Colin said it was either find myself a wizard job or help Dad with the milk route, and I'm lactose intolerant!"
"That's...nice, Dennis," Ron said. "You keep at it. Malfoy, can we talk in the back?"
"Of course, Weasley. Dennis, you can handle the register by yourself, can't you?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Malfoy!" Dennis said. Behind him, the register growled quietly.
They went into the kitchen, where Blaise was apparently beating a good-sized octopus with a rock. Without asking questions, or in any other way drawing attention to themselves, they retreated to the cellar. "Why'd you hire Dennis?" Ron asked once he was certain he wouldn't interrupt Blaise.
"We need the extra help," Malfoy said casually. "I can't manage the register by myself and do the books and all the other administrative tasks, Blaise is busy cooking, and you hide."
"I do not hide," Ron said.
"There's no need to get defensive, Weasley. You made your reclusive nature perfectly clear when we were discussing the adverts."
"I'm not reclusive!" Ron snapped. "What's wrong with wanting to have some privacy?"
"'A grave's a fine and private place,'" Malfoy said, "'but none, I think, there do embrace.'"
"What?"
"Nothing," he said quickly, "never mind."
"Did you just threaten me?" Ron asked.
"No."
"Did you just flirt with me?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Then what the hell was that about?"
Malfoy opened his mouth, paused, and was rudely interrupted by a screech from upstairs. Ron charged up, leaped over the rubbish bin, and found Dennis standing before the cash register, clutching one hand to his chest. An elderly warlock clutching a paper-wrapped slice of pizza was looking at the register with a deep sense of mistrust, and Blaise was standing over it, poised to beat it with his rock. "What's going on?" Ron asked. "What happened?"
"It bit me," Dennis said, pointing at the register.
Malfoy, from behind Ron, rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."
"It did!"
"I saw it," the warlock said querulously.
"It doesn't have teeth," Malfoy pointed out.
"The drawer," Dennis said, "it tried to close on my fingers."
Malfoy sniffed. "You're delusional."
"I've never trusted that thing," Blaise said, still hefting the rock. "It's got aa look to it."
"Yes," Malfoy said, "despite the fact that it doesn't have a face."
Ron prodded the register with his wand, and it shuddered; Blaise hit it with the rock, and then with the octopus for good measure. "Malfoy, where did you get this thing?"
"Oh, you know, I was just out and about and I don't think I precisely remember and oh, look at the time!" He scuttled back towards the cellar. "Things to do, candidates to review, that sort of thing!"
"Candidates?" Ron called after him. "What d'you mean, candidates?" When Malfoy ignored him, he looked at Blaise. "Is he hiring more people?"
"I don't know," Blaise said ferociously. "I don't know and I don't care." He stalked back into the kitchen, the octopus trailing from one hand.
"What's he doing in the cellar?" Ron shouted, but Blaise ignored him. The sound of vigorous chopping filled the entire shop. Ron turned to Dennis. "Do you know what he's doing in the cellar?"
"I've only been here for three hours, Mr. Weasley," Dennis said.
"Fine," Ron said, sighing. "Okay. Don't let the register push you around, okay?"
"Yessir, Mr. Weasley!"
What Malfoy was doing in the cellar, apparently, was reading resumes; in the mid-afternoon, a warlock with a beard that fell to his feet appeared and wandered around the restaurant for half and hour before Malfoy came upstairs and led him to the register by the arm. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Archie," he said warmly. "He's our new newest employee."
"Nice to meet you, Archie," Ron said, wondering if Archie could even see through the plate-thick glasses he wore.
"Hello, Archie!" Dennis said brightly.
Blaise swore loudly in the kitchen.
Archie waved vaguely at a wall, presumably encompassing all of them, and stumbled forward when Malfoy clapped him on the shoulder. "There you are, Archie. Good man. Dennis, go away, Archie's taking the rest of the night."
While Dennis tried to introduce Archie to the cash register (it definitely rattled at him), Ron followed Malfoy down the cellar stairs. He had covered two crates of tinned olives in a tablecloth and put a nameplate on it, and he sat behind this "desk" while Ron asked, "Malfoy, why the hell did you hire that old codger?"
"Because we need the assistance," he said slowly. "And frankly, he was the best of a bad lot. Also willing to accept our pay scale."
"What are you paying them?" Ron asked suspiciously.
"Why, planning to ask for a raise?"
"You don't pay me anything, Malfoy."
"I let you eat pizza, don't I?" Malfoy snapped open one of his little black bookspossibly the List, possibly notand started making furious notes. "Now, keep an eye on Archie, will you? I'm worried he might forget where he is and what he's selling."
Ron couldn't think of any way to answer that, so he stomped upstairs and made Archie watch him work the till for three hours. Around the end of hour three, he dozed off, and Ron was left with the register and his own thoughts. There was nothing wrong with Malfoy hiring more employeesrandom, sure, but not wrongbut couldn't he find anyone better than Dennis and Archie? They were likely to make more work, not less, and while it would serve Malfoy right to find that out the hard way, the honorable part of Ron that made him keep coming to the restaurant in the first place insisted he couldn't just leave the idiot hanging
He rang up two calzone and a butterbeer for a pinched-looked witch, and the register definitely spit a Knut at him. Even Archie woke up. One more thing Malfoy needs saving from, Ron thought, and then wondered what the hell he meant by that.
That night, Ron spent several hours poking, prodding and manhandling the cash register, but it gave up no secrets, and none of the general counter-curses had a noticeable effect. He thought he saw the drawer twitch when he tried a straightforward finite incatatum, but his eyes might've been playing tricks on him from fatigue. He gave it up as a bad job, but promised himself he'd have a look at some of his dad's books in the morning, to see if they gave him any ideas. A possessed cash register was the least of the pizzeria's problems, but it was at least one that he could deal with, as opposed to, say, Malfoy. (Well, he supposed he could deal with Malfoy, but he was sort of opposed to murder.)
When he finished with the register, he looked about and realized exactly how late it had gotten; he also realized that a light was still burning in the rear of the kitchen. Perhaps Blaise had forgotten to shut a light off when he left for the night? Ron stretched his back and headed into the kitchen, just to check, because the very last thing they needed was a fire cause by a stray candle falling to the ground.
As it turned out, he needn't had worried, because Blaise was still there. Blaise was, in fact, sprawled on the floor of the cold cupboard, a bottle of wine in one hand and a head of garlic in the other. He was still wearing his food-splattered apron, but he seemed to have misplaced his trousers. "Blaise?" Ron called, hoping like hell he hadn't died, or been assaulted by an octopus, or something.
Blaise looked up at Ron, or at least pointed his face in the right direction. "Oh, hello, Weasley," he said. "What are you up to?"
"I was about to ask you that, actually," Ron said. He knelt next to Blaise's head and eyed the wine bottle. "Is this the only one you've been into?"
"Erm...no?"
"Bloody hell." Ron tried to get his hands under Blaise's shoulders. "Come on, up with you."
"No no no..." Blaise curled into a ball around his bottle, and almost as an afterthought, he bit into the head of garlic. "Don't want to go."
"You're going to get sick, Zabini."
"I don't care."
"At least get out of the cold cupboard?"
Blaise snorted messily, right in Ron's face, surrounding him with a miasma of garlic and wine. "No, leave me here. Just leave me. It's my tomb."
"What?" Ron looked him over again, but he didn't seem to be injured in any way.
"You'll bury me here," Blaise insisted morosely. "One day. Mark my words, I'm going to die in this kitchen, Weasley, and you lot'll stow my body here and keep making pizza."
Ron blinked at him. "What? Youthat's disgusting, Zabini. And morbid. C'mon, get up."
He tried to lift Blaise by the shoulders again, but Blaise just went limp and heavy and cuddled his garlic. Ron ended up dragging him out by the ankles and depositing him in the middle of the kitchen floor. He wrested the wine bottle away, but didn't feel quite up to fighting for a half-eaten head of garlic. "Thank you, Weasley," Blaise said heavily, and pawed at Ron's shirt. "Weasley. Ron. You're a good person."
"Thanks," Ron said.
"You won't let Draco put in the cupboard when I die, will you?"
"Blaise, you're not going to die in the kitchen," Ron said.
"I am," he moaned. "You don't understand."
"Wanna explain it?" Ron asked. Anything to get him off the floor.
Blaise sighed again, releasing another plume of fumes. "All I do anymore is cook," he said mournfully. "I wake up in the morning, I cook, I go to bed at night. I haven't spoken to anyone but you and Draco in weeks and I smell like garlic and onions all the time."
Ron eyed the head of garlic in Blaise's hand. "Really? That's...weird."
Oblivious, Blaise bit off more garlic. "I had a dream," he said as he chewed, "that I was making love to a beautiful woman."
"I don't think I need to hear"
"Listen to me," Blaise said fiercely, and propped himself up on his elbows. "I was making love to a woman. A soft, warm, beautiful woman with great, big, beautiful breasts. A man could die in those breasts and be contented. And she was mine."
He trailed off for a moment, and as much as Ron would've loved to stop the conversation right there, he didn't think he was going to get Blaise off the floor until he'd work this out of his system. "Was she good?" he made himself mumble.
"Fantastic," Blaise sighed. "Perfect. But do you know what happened?"
"No," Ron said, and thought, please don't tell me.
Blaise told him. "At the moment of completion, the moment of climax, the peakI thought to myself, in the middle of a sex dream, 'More parsley.'"
Ron blinked. "More parsley?"
"More parsley," Blaise said mournfully, and flopped back onto the floor. Almost as an afterthought, he took another bite of the garlic.
Ron rubbed his face for a moment. "Okay," he said, "so maybe you've been working too hard"
"I'm a healthy, attractive, sexually experienced man in my prime," Blaise said, chewing, "and all I can think of is cooking. All I do is cook. And for what? Nothing."
"Not nothing," Ron said quickly. "The shop's doing really well, isn't it?"
"Still not turning a profit," Blaise said heavily. "Malfoy says we aren't even close to breaking even."
Ron hadn't known that, and it made the sudden hiring spree all the more bizarre. Blaise wasn't exactly in a state of mind for an in-depth discussion of the restaurant's finances, though. "It's getting better, though, isn't it?" Ron asked. "I mean, look, you've only been open for a couple of weeks. You can't judge the whole restaurant by a couple of weeks."
"I know," Blaise sighed. (Ron covered his face with his sleeve in self-defense.) "I just...this isn't where I ever thought I'd be, you know?"
Ron tried to force a smile. "We're a bit young to start having crises, aren't we?"
"We're all older than we look," Blaise said. "And I've had my whole future planned out since I was seven."
"Oh?"
"Yes," Blaise said. "By now I planned to be safely entangled with the first in a series of wealthy, elderly widows who would die and leave me their fortunes, or at least allow me to embezzle from them freely."
"...oh."
"It's the family business," he added.
Ron cleared his throat, and found he couldn't look at Blaise in the eye. "Well. I...er...well. It's good to have goals, I guess, but..."
When he couldn't finish the sentence, Blaise prompted him. "But what? What, Weasley? Why aren't I living a life of luxury, fucking an assortment of wealthy widows? Where are the widows, Weasley?"
"Why do there have to be widows?" Ron blurted. "Who said you have to stick with whatever you decided to do when you were seven? I mean, did you even understand how sex worked when you were seven?"
"Of course," Blaise said. "My mother was very progressive."
"The point is," Ron said, because he had a feeling if he let himself get sidetracked now he'd lose whatever it was he was trying to say before he could say it. "The point is, that your goals can change, you know, when your life changes. They have to change, sometimes, and they, they ought to change. 'Cause when you decided to, you know, with the widows, you didn't know there was going to be a war or pizza or any of this stuff. And if you let yourself get hung up on the widows then you'll never even notice what's good about the pizza, right?"
Blaise seemed to think about this for a while. In fact, he seemed to think about it for so long that Ron was afraid he'd passed out. When he finally said, "That was almost profound, you know?" Ron nearly leapt out of his skin.
"Thanks," he said. "I, um, yeah. Thanks."
Blaise, as if with tremendous effort, pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked at the half-eaten head of garlic in his hand as if he'd never noticed it before, then offered it to Ron. Ron took it, and put it on a counter. "Weasley," he said earnestly, "Ron. You're a good person, you know that?"
"Thank you, Blaise."
"If I die in the kitchen, you won't let Draco put me in the cupboard, will you?"
Ron sighed. "No, Blaise. But you're not going to die in the kitchen."
"What about the cellar?"
Ron grabbed Blaise's wrist and managed to coax him to his feet. "I reckon you need to go to bed, mate."
"If I die, Draco will hide me in the cellar," Blaise insisted. "Don't let him."
"If you die, Zabini, I will personally oversee your burial," Ron said. "But right now, you are alive, and you need to go home."
Blaise tried to snort, and instead splattered Ron with garlic-scented spit. "No point," he said. "I'll just dream about widows, and then I'll have to come back here in the morning, and there will still be pizza. Always gonna be pizza." He smothered a very small burp.
Ron had made many foolish decisions in his lifetime, brief though it was. He thought with his heart too often and his head too rarely, and he acted on instinct, in the heat of the moment. He knew all of thisHermione had wailed about it so often he couldn't not know. And yet, unsurprisingly, he kept on doing it. He was a victim of irony like that.
So he said, "Take a day off, why don't you?" And when Blaise twisted his head around to stare, Ron continued, "I mean it. Take tomorrow off. Get some sleep. Find yourself a widow, even. It'll be good for you."
"Malfoy won't let me," Blaise said. "He'll pitch a fit."
"Leave Malfoy to me," Ron said, braver than he felt.
"Who's going to cook?"
Ron lugged Blaise out the back door and around into the street. "We'll work something out," he said. "You need to rest up. Get some perspective." That sounded like something Hermione would say, didn't it?
Blaise didn't answer, except to give directions; he was staying, it seemed, at the Leaky Cauldron. Tom let Ron in and helped him dump Blaise in his room, which was practically bare except for two small pictures of his mum. (Mama Zabini ogled Ron thoroughly while he tucked her son into bed.) He waited around until he was sure Blaise was sound asleep, then slipped downstairs to Floo home.
And it was only when he stood in the Burrow's dark kitchen, looking at the piled of unopened post and unwashed dishes and Errol, who had fallen into the dustbin and fallen asleep thereit was only then that Ron realized exactly what he had committed himself to.
"Oh, bloody hell."
Chapter One
Chapter Four
Chapter Six
Author: mad_maudlin
Length: 36,584
Pairing: Ron/Draco (more preslash than slash)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Ron bites off more than he can chew when he agrees to help Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini open an Italian restaurant. Can anything make it worth the headaches?
5.
Thankfully for all of them, Fleur was just the first customer, not the last. Blaise tried to categorically ban Malfoy from dealing with the public, but that didn't last long; there was no one else to do the cooking, and Ron wasn't going to stand at the register for hours at a time even if he weren't paranoid about being recognized. "Just try not to insult them, or abuse them, or curse them," Blaise said, feverishly chopping a large slab of pancetta. "You can do that, can't you, Draco?"
"Of course I can. I am a saint," Malfoy said, and stole a nip of cooking sherry.
"Leave off, that's imported," Blaise said severely.
Malfoy shrugged. "What? It's my gold I'm drinking."
Ron snorted at him. "Weren't you the one sniping at us about our expenses yesterday?"
"I was just reminding you to be frugal with the inventory."
"You scolded us for tossing out olive pits."
Malfoy waved him away. "Waste not, want not, isn't that how it goes? You of all people should know that, Weasley." He reached for the sherry again; Blaise slipped him the balsamic vinegar instead.
The number of customers they got each day rose slowly but steadily, and Malfoy badgered Ron into installing a large glass display case in the front counter for showing off the fresh pizzas. Blaise kept experimenting with different dishes, but Ron noticed that he seemed to be cooking with an awful lot of wine. They began to stay later and later in the evening, doing dishes until midnight, wrestling with the temperamental cash register until one o'clock; Ron snacked on odds and ends of pizza and pasta throughout the day, and his mum's careful stockpile of casseroles stayed untouched in the back of the cold cupboard. He was surprised when he stumbled home in the small hours of one morning and found Errol passed out on the front stoop, clutching a letter from his parents with more blurry photographs and a reminder that they'd be back in a couple of weeks. The letter was dated August 14; Ron had to carefully consult a calendar and his memory to determine that the current date was August 17.
Two and a half weeks of working with Malfoy and Blaise, and they hadn't murdered each other yet. Wasn't the whole thing supposed to be a lark?
He meditated on this as he walked to the pizzeria the next day; he'd found that, as long as he didn't shave (no matter what Malfoy said about his beard) most people were fairly slow to recognize him, if they recognized him at all. It allowed him to walk along Diagon Alley in the mornings and enjoy the summer weather, at least as far as the sticky, smoggy summer weather was enjoyable. Two and a half weeks since Malfoy had stuck his foot in the Burrow's doorthey'd said then he'd be free to walk away, just shake a few hands and look heroic. Right. If he tried to walk away now, Malfoy would throw the mother of all temper tantrums, to start with, and then he'd Floo or owl every hour on the hour until Ron either came back to the restaurant or killed him. There were only the three of them, after all, to keep the place running all day, every day, and Ron suspected that without him, Blaise wouldn't even take time to go to the toilet.
The image of Blaise strapping an empty bottle to his leg to avoid bathroom breaks made Ron snicker as he walked in the front entrance of the restaurant. The snicker died in his throat when he saw a spotty teenager standing at the cash register. "Er, hello?" he said.
The kid grinned widely, eyes popping. "WelcometoZabini'showmayIhelpyou?"
"What?"
Malfoy emerged from the back and clapped the boy on the shoulder. "Good work, Dennis, just try to slow down a bit on the delivery, eh? Oh, and you don't have to be nice to Weasley, he works here."
"Really?" Dennis turned to Ron and smiled widely. "Wow! That's brilliant! Hi, Mr. Weasley!"
"Er. Hi." Ron waved weakly at him as he came around the counter. "Malfoy, what's going on?"
Malfoy grinned at him. "Meet our newest employee, Weasley. You probably know of himDennis Creevey, aged sixteen."
Now that Malfoy said it, Ron did recognize Dennis, though the last time they'd seen each other, Ron remembered him being about waist-high, and sort of squeaky. Now he came up to Ron's shoulder and his voice broke on every other syllable. "I failed all my OWLS!" Dennis announced excitedly. "That's why I'm working here! Colin said it was either find myself a wizard job or help Dad with the milk route, and I'm lactose intolerant!"
"That's...nice, Dennis," Ron said. "You keep at it. Malfoy, can we talk in the back?"
"Of course, Weasley. Dennis, you can handle the register by yourself, can't you?"
"Yes, sir, Mr. Malfoy!" Dennis said. Behind him, the register growled quietly.
They went into the kitchen, where Blaise was apparently beating a good-sized octopus with a rock. Without asking questions, or in any other way drawing attention to themselves, they retreated to the cellar. "Why'd you hire Dennis?" Ron asked once he was certain he wouldn't interrupt Blaise.
"We need the extra help," Malfoy said casually. "I can't manage the register by myself and do the books and all the other administrative tasks, Blaise is busy cooking, and you hide."
"I do not hide," Ron said.
"There's no need to get defensive, Weasley. You made your reclusive nature perfectly clear when we were discussing the adverts."
"I'm not reclusive!" Ron snapped. "What's wrong with wanting to have some privacy?"
"'A grave's a fine and private place,'" Malfoy said, "'but none, I think, there do embrace.'"
"What?"
"Nothing," he said quickly, "never mind."
"Did you just threaten me?" Ron asked.
"No."
"Did you just flirt with me?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Then what the hell was that about?"
Malfoy opened his mouth, paused, and was rudely interrupted by a screech from upstairs. Ron charged up, leaped over the rubbish bin, and found Dennis standing before the cash register, clutching one hand to his chest. An elderly warlock clutching a paper-wrapped slice of pizza was looking at the register with a deep sense of mistrust, and Blaise was standing over it, poised to beat it with his rock. "What's going on?" Ron asked. "What happened?"
"It bit me," Dennis said, pointing at the register.
Malfoy, from behind Ron, rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."
"It did!"
"I saw it," the warlock said querulously.
"It doesn't have teeth," Malfoy pointed out.
"The drawer," Dennis said, "it tried to close on my fingers."
Malfoy sniffed. "You're delusional."
"I've never trusted that thing," Blaise said, still hefting the rock. "It's got aa look to it."
"Yes," Malfoy said, "despite the fact that it doesn't have a face."
Ron prodded the register with his wand, and it shuddered; Blaise hit it with the rock, and then with the octopus for good measure. "Malfoy, where did you get this thing?"
"Oh, you know, I was just out and about and I don't think I precisely remember and oh, look at the time!" He scuttled back towards the cellar. "Things to do, candidates to review, that sort of thing!"
"Candidates?" Ron called after him. "What d'you mean, candidates?" When Malfoy ignored him, he looked at Blaise. "Is he hiring more people?"
"I don't know," Blaise said ferociously. "I don't know and I don't care." He stalked back into the kitchen, the octopus trailing from one hand.
"What's he doing in the cellar?" Ron shouted, but Blaise ignored him. The sound of vigorous chopping filled the entire shop. Ron turned to Dennis. "Do you know what he's doing in the cellar?"
"I've only been here for three hours, Mr. Weasley," Dennis said.
"Fine," Ron said, sighing. "Okay. Don't let the register push you around, okay?"
"Yessir, Mr. Weasley!"
What Malfoy was doing in the cellar, apparently, was reading resumes; in the mid-afternoon, a warlock with a beard that fell to his feet appeared and wandered around the restaurant for half and hour before Malfoy came upstairs and led him to the register by the arm. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Archie," he said warmly. "He's our new newest employee."
"Nice to meet you, Archie," Ron said, wondering if Archie could even see through the plate-thick glasses he wore.
"Hello, Archie!" Dennis said brightly.
Blaise swore loudly in the kitchen.
Archie waved vaguely at a wall, presumably encompassing all of them, and stumbled forward when Malfoy clapped him on the shoulder. "There you are, Archie. Good man. Dennis, go away, Archie's taking the rest of the night."
While Dennis tried to introduce Archie to the cash register (it definitely rattled at him), Ron followed Malfoy down the cellar stairs. He had covered two crates of tinned olives in a tablecloth and put a nameplate on it, and he sat behind this "desk" while Ron asked, "Malfoy, why the hell did you hire that old codger?"
"Because we need the assistance," he said slowly. "And frankly, he was the best of a bad lot. Also willing to accept our pay scale."
"What are you paying them?" Ron asked suspiciously.
"Why, planning to ask for a raise?"
"You don't pay me anything, Malfoy."
"I let you eat pizza, don't I?" Malfoy snapped open one of his little black bookspossibly the List, possibly notand started making furious notes. "Now, keep an eye on Archie, will you? I'm worried he might forget where he is and what he's selling."
Ron couldn't think of any way to answer that, so he stomped upstairs and made Archie watch him work the till for three hours. Around the end of hour three, he dozed off, and Ron was left with the register and his own thoughts. There was nothing wrong with Malfoy hiring more employeesrandom, sure, but not wrongbut couldn't he find anyone better than Dennis and Archie? They were likely to make more work, not less, and while it would serve Malfoy right to find that out the hard way, the honorable part of Ron that made him keep coming to the restaurant in the first place insisted he couldn't just leave the idiot hanging
He rang up two calzone and a butterbeer for a pinched-looked witch, and the register definitely spit a Knut at him. Even Archie woke up. One more thing Malfoy needs saving from, Ron thought, and then wondered what the hell he meant by that.
That night, Ron spent several hours poking, prodding and manhandling the cash register, but it gave up no secrets, and none of the general counter-curses had a noticeable effect. He thought he saw the drawer twitch when he tried a straightforward finite incatatum, but his eyes might've been playing tricks on him from fatigue. He gave it up as a bad job, but promised himself he'd have a look at some of his dad's books in the morning, to see if they gave him any ideas. A possessed cash register was the least of the pizzeria's problems, but it was at least one that he could deal with, as opposed to, say, Malfoy. (Well, he supposed he could deal with Malfoy, but he was sort of opposed to murder.)
When he finished with the register, he looked about and realized exactly how late it had gotten; he also realized that a light was still burning in the rear of the kitchen. Perhaps Blaise had forgotten to shut a light off when he left for the night? Ron stretched his back and headed into the kitchen, just to check, because the very last thing they needed was a fire cause by a stray candle falling to the ground.
As it turned out, he needn't had worried, because Blaise was still there. Blaise was, in fact, sprawled on the floor of the cold cupboard, a bottle of wine in one hand and a head of garlic in the other. He was still wearing his food-splattered apron, but he seemed to have misplaced his trousers. "Blaise?" Ron called, hoping like hell he hadn't died, or been assaulted by an octopus, or something.
Blaise looked up at Ron, or at least pointed his face in the right direction. "Oh, hello, Weasley," he said. "What are you up to?"
"I was about to ask you that, actually," Ron said. He knelt next to Blaise's head and eyed the wine bottle. "Is this the only one you've been into?"
"Erm...no?"
"Bloody hell." Ron tried to get his hands under Blaise's shoulders. "Come on, up with you."
"No no no..." Blaise curled into a ball around his bottle, and almost as an afterthought, he bit into the head of garlic. "Don't want to go."
"You're going to get sick, Zabini."
"I don't care."
"At least get out of the cold cupboard?"
Blaise snorted messily, right in Ron's face, surrounding him with a miasma of garlic and wine. "No, leave me here. Just leave me. It's my tomb."
"What?" Ron looked him over again, but he didn't seem to be injured in any way.
"You'll bury me here," Blaise insisted morosely. "One day. Mark my words, I'm going to die in this kitchen, Weasley, and you lot'll stow my body here and keep making pizza."
Ron blinked at him. "What? Youthat's disgusting, Zabini. And morbid. C'mon, get up."
He tried to lift Blaise by the shoulders again, but Blaise just went limp and heavy and cuddled his garlic. Ron ended up dragging him out by the ankles and depositing him in the middle of the kitchen floor. He wrested the wine bottle away, but didn't feel quite up to fighting for a half-eaten head of garlic. "Thank you, Weasley," Blaise said heavily, and pawed at Ron's shirt. "Weasley. Ron. You're a good person."
"Thanks," Ron said.
"You won't let Draco put in the cupboard when I die, will you?"
"Blaise, you're not going to die in the kitchen," Ron said.
"I am," he moaned. "You don't understand."
"Wanna explain it?" Ron asked. Anything to get him off the floor.
Blaise sighed again, releasing another plume of fumes. "All I do anymore is cook," he said mournfully. "I wake up in the morning, I cook, I go to bed at night. I haven't spoken to anyone but you and Draco in weeks and I smell like garlic and onions all the time."
Ron eyed the head of garlic in Blaise's hand. "Really? That's...weird."
Oblivious, Blaise bit off more garlic. "I had a dream," he said as he chewed, "that I was making love to a beautiful woman."
"I don't think I need to hear"
"Listen to me," Blaise said fiercely, and propped himself up on his elbows. "I was making love to a woman. A soft, warm, beautiful woman with great, big, beautiful breasts. A man could die in those breasts and be contented. And she was mine."
He trailed off for a moment, and as much as Ron would've loved to stop the conversation right there, he didn't think he was going to get Blaise off the floor until he'd work this out of his system. "Was she good?" he made himself mumble.
"Fantastic," Blaise sighed. "Perfect. But do you know what happened?"
"No," Ron said, and thought, please don't tell me.
Blaise told him. "At the moment of completion, the moment of climax, the peakI thought to myself, in the middle of a sex dream, 'More parsley.'"
Ron blinked. "More parsley?"
"More parsley," Blaise said mournfully, and flopped back onto the floor. Almost as an afterthought, he took another bite of the garlic.
Ron rubbed his face for a moment. "Okay," he said, "so maybe you've been working too hard"
"I'm a healthy, attractive, sexually experienced man in my prime," Blaise said, chewing, "and all I can think of is cooking. All I do is cook. And for what? Nothing."
"Not nothing," Ron said quickly. "The shop's doing really well, isn't it?"
"Still not turning a profit," Blaise said heavily. "Malfoy says we aren't even close to breaking even."
Ron hadn't known that, and it made the sudden hiring spree all the more bizarre. Blaise wasn't exactly in a state of mind for an in-depth discussion of the restaurant's finances, though. "It's getting better, though, isn't it?" Ron asked. "I mean, look, you've only been open for a couple of weeks. You can't judge the whole restaurant by a couple of weeks."
"I know," Blaise sighed. (Ron covered his face with his sleeve in self-defense.) "I just...this isn't where I ever thought I'd be, you know?"
Ron tried to force a smile. "We're a bit young to start having crises, aren't we?"
"We're all older than we look," Blaise said. "And I've had my whole future planned out since I was seven."
"Oh?"
"Yes," Blaise said. "By now I planned to be safely entangled with the first in a series of wealthy, elderly widows who would die and leave me their fortunes, or at least allow me to embezzle from them freely."
"...oh."
"It's the family business," he added.
Ron cleared his throat, and found he couldn't look at Blaise in the eye. "Well. I...er...well. It's good to have goals, I guess, but..."
When he couldn't finish the sentence, Blaise prompted him. "But what? What, Weasley? Why aren't I living a life of luxury, fucking an assortment of wealthy widows? Where are the widows, Weasley?"
"Why do there have to be widows?" Ron blurted. "Who said you have to stick with whatever you decided to do when you were seven? I mean, did you even understand how sex worked when you were seven?"
"Of course," Blaise said. "My mother was very progressive."
"The point is," Ron said, because he had a feeling if he let himself get sidetracked now he'd lose whatever it was he was trying to say before he could say it. "The point is, that your goals can change, you know, when your life changes. They have to change, sometimes, and they, they ought to change. 'Cause when you decided to, you know, with the widows, you didn't know there was going to be a war or pizza or any of this stuff. And if you let yourself get hung up on the widows then you'll never even notice what's good about the pizza, right?"
Blaise seemed to think about this for a while. In fact, he seemed to think about it for so long that Ron was afraid he'd passed out. When he finally said, "That was almost profound, you know?" Ron nearly leapt out of his skin.
"Thanks," he said. "I, um, yeah. Thanks."
Blaise, as if with tremendous effort, pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked at the half-eaten head of garlic in his hand as if he'd never noticed it before, then offered it to Ron. Ron took it, and put it on a counter. "Weasley," he said earnestly, "Ron. You're a good person, you know that?"
"Thank you, Blaise."
"If I die in the kitchen, you won't let Draco put me in the cupboard, will you?"
Ron sighed. "No, Blaise. But you're not going to die in the kitchen."
"What about the cellar?"
Ron grabbed Blaise's wrist and managed to coax him to his feet. "I reckon you need to go to bed, mate."
"If I die, Draco will hide me in the cellar," Blaise insisted. "Don't let him."
"If you die, Zabini, I will personally oversee your burial," Ron said. "But right now, you are alive, and you need to go home."
Blaise tried to snort, and instead splattered Ron with garlic-scented spit. "No point," he said. "I'll just dream about widows, and then I'll have to come back here in the morning, and there will still be pizza. Always gonna be pizza." He smothered a very small burp.
Ron had made many foolish decisions in his lifetime, brief though it was. He thought with his heart too often and his head too rarely, and he acted on instinct, in the heat of the moment. He knew all of thisHermione had wailed about it so often he couldn't not know. And yet, unsurprisingly, he kept on doing it. He was a victim of irony like that.
So he said, "Take a day off, why don't you?" And when Blaise twisted his head around to stare, Ron continued, "I mean it. Take tomorrow off. Get some sleep. Find yourself a widow, even. It'll be good for you."
"Malfoy won't let me," Blaise said. "He'll pitch a fit."
"Leave Malfoy to me," Ron said, braver than he felt.
"Who's going to cook?"
Ron lugged Blaise out the back door and around into the street. "We'll work something out," he said. "You need to rest up. Get some perspective." That sounded like something Hermione would say, didn't it?
Blaise didn't answer, except to give directions; he was staying, it seemed, at the Leaky Cauldron. Tom let Ron in and helped him dump Blaise in his room, which was practically bare except for two small pictures of his mum. (Mama Zabini ogled Ron thoroughly while he tucked her son into bed.) He waited around until he was sure Blaise was sound asleep, then slipped downstairs to Floo home.
And it was only when he stood in the Burrow's dark kitchen, looking at the piled of unopened post and unwashed dishes and Errol, who had fallen into the dustbin and fallen asleep thereit was only then that Ron realized exactly what he had committed himself to.
"Oh, bloody hell."
Chapter One
Chapter Four
Chapter Six