A little something I made earlier
Title: The Draco Fic
Written for a fest and prompt that completely destroys the twists of the story. But once I actually write the twists I'll probably come back and spoil them. (As I'm not sure I have to follow the prompt to the letter anymore, as the prompter probably sin't going to see it.)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The war's dragging on, and no-one's totally sure what side they should be on, at least, no-one Draco respects is sure what side they should be on, and for some reason certain people are risking nearly everything for a book club. Draco, for probably the same reason, is one of them.
Is it painful hearing voices ring
So early in the morning?
Draco sat carefully on the lid of the roofed bin outside the coffee bar. In accordance to his generally not-full-of-literary-technique life, the area around him was neither particularly upbeat, so as to contrast his mood, nor grim or foreboding, so as to warn of future events. Future events, he was starting to realise, which would be even darker and more twisted than he had believed.
‘Even more worse,’ as Jibby, his house elf from age thirteen up, had once said, although she was describing the weather.
The girl who had served him coffee had looked neither bored nor cheerful, not caring for tips - Draco had left one anyway to make up for the fact that in his view hardly anyone in Britain did - nor the absence of stimulation of the mind.
(Draco, as it happened, had recently been reacquainted with the use of the words ‘neither’ and ‘nor’ through a Latin class, and found them particularly useful. The same thing had happened when he discovered the use of the word ‘banal’ age eight. Luckily at the time he was rarely allowed to converse with humans, so he skipped out on the embarrassment and now only used literary technique or new, shiny phrases in his head, until the words became worn and rusty and were only used for their exact purpose.)
The sky was various shades of grey - which might make a good metaphor if not for the deadly certain black (not grey) future ahead of Draco - and the street was covered in small pieces of rubbish which really ought to be in the bin Draco was sitting on.
He sipped the hot chocolate - coffee tasted strange and made him feel strange - and tried to pull up something meaningful to think of at this important moment in his life. Not important in a “next year I’ll get a card or go out for a drink” way, but important none the less.
Meaningful (or poetical might do) things he could have thought about were how the muggles around him had no idea how close they were to danger or how luckily oblivious they were to the world around them. However, Draco had never quite grasped the idea that the people who he passed on the street or sat opposite to in coffee shops were actual people. Without any knowledge of them other than what they looked like they were only really as important as the scenery, no matter how hard he tried to empathise with them. In fact, he had more connection to the bin he was sitting on than the other people who had managed to grab chairs in this crowded death trap of a coffee shop. And it was silly to try and think about how lucky the bin was because it didn’t have all these human problems. How safe it was because it was a bin, not a wizard.
He could also have contemplated transience, and the fragility of life, but that was also something he didn’t quite understand. No-one he could honestly say he loved had ever died (had died so far some voice whispered) and those he had known who had died - mostly his parent’s friends - he hadn’t truly grieved for, or even felt truly upset. His parents hadn’t softened the blow, or even implied it was much of a blow at all. Each time, Draco had found some time alone to contemplate on his feelings and had come to the same conclusion that he didn’t much care. He didn’t feel guilty about this because, well, no-one was going to find out and he had more to be guilty about, but he had wondered if this was a strange reaction. He had never found out, however, because he had never told anyone for fear of guilt being brought on.
After ten minutes or so of trying, Draco gave up on being meaningful and poetic on this the day of his sentence, and started reading a paper over some guy’s shoulders.
It was two hours, three hot chocolate’s, two teas and a cinnamon whirl later that someone Draco knew turned up at the coffee shop.
Padma Patil, so far neutral, rumoured Unspeakable, had come in for a coffee. She spotted Draco, who had finally secured a table, and held his gaze, raising her hand in a greeting. He raised a finger in return, and she took this to mean ‘bring your strange smelling coffee over hear and talk to the evil boy’.
Padma smiled in a way that said she wasn’t happy but was simply greeting Draco.
Draco did something with his eyebrows to constitute a reply.
Padma took a sip from her soup-bowl sized cup and shut her eyes in some carefully measured form of bliss. Draco scrunched up his nose in a dialled down dose of disgust while she wasn’t looking.
“So, how are you?” asked Padma.
Draco thought to himself two things. One, oh, my, I’m actually going to do this with this girl. Padma was a friend of a friend who came to the same events as Draco but whom Draco could easily spend months not saying a word to. And two, I’m fucking terrible, thanks.
“I’m having strange cravings for cinnamon.” Draco flashed a smile that would have been disarming if he either had more of him mother’s beauty or more sleep and Padma hadn’t been a Ravenclaw.
“How much have you had?”
“I even tried it in tea, but it was disgusting.” One of the lovely things about coming to nice coffee shops was that they trust customers (quite idiotically, Draco believed) with cans of sprinkling chocolate, cinnamon and ginger.
“All in the name of science,” shrugged Padma, with the air of someone from a table notorious, among those who cared, for putting strange things together that ought not to mix on the off chance that they did. This was all because of the victory of Padma and Draco’s second year, when a fifth year Ravenclaw announced that tuna mayonnaise and chocolate-flavoured-puffed-rice sandwiches were the greatest tasting thing in the world.
“Yes, I assume a lot of your friend’s aren’t getting the research grants they want at the moment?” asked Draco, pulling the conversation to familiar territory - looking for weakness.
“Depends. The Ministry can’t pay, that doesn’t mean people don’t want developments.”
“So the idiots aren’t getting grants?” Idiots to Draco were people who did not look for opportunity everywhere.
“The idiots hardly ever got grants.” Idiots to Padma were people who were unintelligent.
“Anyone you know been doing anything interesting?” It had recently become social etiquette to not ask what your conversation partner specifically had been up to. It stopped one feeling obliged to cold bloodedly murder old classmates, when if the question wasn’t asked no-one would ever have to die and everyone could pretend to still be friends and loyal.
“There’s a project for non-magical everything, and one for magical everything. There’s a collection of both pureblood, non-magic wizard and muggle family trees to see if we can find where magic comes from. But there’s something you’d like, Draco.”
Padma paused, obviously at the point in conversation where the point of sitting with Draco was revealed. “The society organising the conservation of knowledge. S.O.C.K, as we’re known.”
Draco cringed on behalf of the Wizarding World and their inability to make anything sound serious.
“The aim?”
“To preserve all the knowledge we can, despite the outcome of the war.”
The aim had actually been obvious, but it was obvious that saying this made Padma feel good, so Draco let her say it.
“We’re completely neutral to anything outside simple advancement of knowledge, and the preservation thereof. We’re compiling libraries and making them unplottable, taking copies of everything we can get our hands on. Nothing should be destroyed in the upcoming disturbances that could lead to development.”
Draco looked up from the third packet of sugar he’d emptied into his drink to find he was expected to reply. “Marvellous.”
“It is rather, isn’t it?” Draco should have known that the only thing that was likely to bring a true smile from Padma was compliments to her achievements. “We were wondering if you’d like to be involved?” She phrased it as a question.
“And you just happened upon me in a coffee shop?” Draco asked suspiciously. He didn’t truly mind if she’d followed him, only that she’d waited nearly three hours to approach him, which was more stalker-ish than in-the-name-of-knowledge-ish.
“Oh, no, I just found you. I have a list.” Padma waved a scroll she’d pulled from her breast pocket and without unrolling it, replaced it.
“I see. And I’m on it because . . .?”
“Because I suspect you are sympathetic to our cause and because you have access to Malfoy Library.” Ravenclaws were weird, they made clear exactly what they wanted you for. Gryffindoors tried to make it seem like they wanted you because they could ‘see the good in you’, Hufflepuffs because they ‘liked’ you, Slytherins manipulated you with compliments and bribery and Ravenclaws never thought to hide their intentions, because they assumed that agreeing with them was the most logical thing you could do. “Mostly the Library.”
Draco nodded. “What would I have to do?”
“Well, you could attempt to copy your library by yourself, and bring us the copies, else you could take boxes of books out, and we’d copy them, or you could let us in and we’d copy them. You can also come to meetings, if you like.” She added as an afterthought.
“You only want me for my dazzling library. I feel used.” He accused her dryly, but rather belatedly.
“You’re not being used if you’re helping.” Another thing about this girl was that she always replied to sarcasm or rhetorical questions as though they were serious.
“I am made suspicious, but intrigued by your vagueness and refusal to let me see the list. When is your meeting?”
“Tonight. Well, you can join tonight’s group. I see no point in actually mixing the knowledge and the people involved until we are in a relative state of peace.”
Draco decided this woman was slightly crazy, but then again, that might fit in with his new slightly crazy lifestyle. He agreed.
-Scissor Sisters, Might Tell You Tonight
Written for a fest and prompt that completely destroys the twists of the story. But once I actually write the twists I'll probably come back and spoil them. (As I'm not sure I have to follow the prompt to the letter anymore, as the prompter probably sin't going to see it.)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The war's dragging on, and no-one's totally sure what side they should be on, at least, no-one Draco respects is sure what side they should be on, and for some reason certain people are risking nearly everything for a book club. Draco, for probably the same reason, is one of them.
Is it painful hearing voices ring
So early in the morning?
Draco sat carefully on the lid of the roofed bin outside the coffee bar. In accordance to his generally not-full-of-literary-technique life, the area around him was neither particularly upbeat, so as to contrast his mood, nor grim or foreboding, so as to warn of future events. Future events, he was starting to realise, which would be even darker and more twisted than he had believed.
‘Even more worse,’ as Jibby, his house elf from age thirteen up, had once said, although she was describing the weather.
The girl who had served him coffee had looked neither bored nor cheerful, not caring for tips - Draco had left one anyway to make up for the fact that in his view hardly anyone in Britain did - nor the absence of stimulation of the mind.
(Draco, as it happened, had recently been reacquainted with the use of the words ‘neither’ and ‘nor’ through a Latin class, and found them particularly useful. The same thing had happened when he discovered the use of the word ‘banal’ age eight. Luckily at the time he was rarely allowed to converse with humans, so he skipped out on the embarrassment and now only used literary technique or new, shiny phrases in his head, until the words became worn and rusty and were only used for their exact purpose.)
The sky was various shades of grey - which might make a good metaphor if not for the deadly certain black (not grey) future ahead of Draco - and the street was covered in small pieces of rubbish which really ought to be in the bin Draco was sitting on.
He sipped the hot chocolate - coffee tasted strange and made him feel strange - and tried to pull up something meaningful to think of at this important moment in his life. Not important in a “next year I’ll get a card or go out for a drink” way, but important none the less.
Meaningful (or poetical might do) things he could have thought about were how the muggles around him had no idea how close they were to danger or how luckily oblivious they were to the world around them. However, Draco had never quite grasped the idea that the people who he passed on the street or sat opposite to in coffee shops were actual people. Without any knowledge of them other than what they looked like they were only really as important as the scenery, no matter how hard he tried to empathise with them. In fact, he had more connection to the bin he was sitting on than the other people who had managed to grab chairs in this crowded death trap of a coffee shop. And it was silly to try and think about how lucky the bin was because it didn’t have all these human problems. How safe it was because it was a bin, not a wizard.
He could also have contemplated transience, and the fragility of life, but that was also something he didn’t quite understand. No-one he could honestly say he loved had ever died (had died so far some voice whispered) and those he had known who had died - mostly his parent’s friends - he hadn’t truly grieved for, or even felt truly upset. His parents hadn’t softened the blow, or even implied it was much of a blow at all. Each time, Draco had found some time alone to contemplate on his feelings and had come to the same conclusion that he didn’t much care. He didn’t feel guilty about this because, well, no-one was going to find out and he had more to be guilty about, but he had wondered if this was a strange reaction. He had never found out, however, because he had never told anyone for fear of guilt being brought on.
After ten minutes or so of trying, Draco gave up on being meaningful and poetic on this the day of his sentence, and started reading a paper over some guy’s shoulders.
It was two hours, three hot chocolate’s, two teas and a cinnamon whirl later that someone Draco knew turned up at the coffee shop.
Padma Patil, so far neutral, rumoured Unspeakable, had come in for a coffee. She spotted Draco, who had finally secured a table, and held his gaze, raising her hand in a greeting. He raised a finger in return, and she took this to mean ‘bring your strange smelling coffee over hear and talk to the evil boy’.
Padma smiled in a way that said she wasn’t happy but was simply greeting Draco.
Draco did something with his eyebrows to constitute a reply.
Padma took a sip from her soup-bowl sized cup and shut her eyes in some carefully measured form of bliss. Draco scrunched up his nose in a dialled down dose of disgust while she wasn’t looking.
“So, how are you?” asked Padma.
Draco thought to himself two things. One, oh, my, I’m actually going to do this with this girl. Padma was a friend of a friend who came to the same events as Draco but whom Draco could easily spend months not saying a word to. And two, I’m fucking terrible, thanks.
“I’m having strange cravings for cinnamon.” Draco flashed a smile that would have been disarming if he either had more of him mother’s beauty or more sleep and Padma hadn’t been a Ravenclaw.
“How much have you had?”
“I even tried it in tea, but it was disgusting.” One of the lovely things about coming to nice coffee shops was that they trust customers (quite idiotically, Draco believed) with cans of sprinkling chocolate, cinnamon and ginger.
“All in the name of science,” shrugged Padma, with the air of someone from a table notorious, among those who cared, for putting strange things together that ought not to mix on the off chance that they did. This was all because of the victory of Padma and Draco’s second year, when a fifth year Ravenclaw announced that tuna mayonnaise and chocolate-flavoured-puffed-rice sandwiches were the greatest tasting thing in the world.
“Yes, I assume a lot of your friend’s aren’t getting the research grants they want at the moment?” asked Draco, pulling the conversation to familiar territory - looking for weakness.
“Depends. The Ministry can’t pay, that doesn’t mean people don’t want developments.”
“So the idiots aren’t getting grants?” Idiots to Draco were people who did not look for opportunity everywhere.
“The idiots hardly ever got grants.” Idiots to Padma were people who were unintelligent.
“Anyone you know been doing anything interesting?” It had recently become social etiquette to not ask what your conversation partner specifically had been up to. It stopped one feeling obliged to cold bloodedly murder old classmates, when if the question wasn’t asked no-one would ever have to die and everyone could pretend to still be friends and loyal.
“There’s a project for non-magical everything, and one for magical everything. There’s a collection of both pureblood, non-magic wizard and muggle family trees to see if we can find where magic comes from. But there’s something you’d like, Draco.”
Padma paused, obviously at the point in conversation where the point of sitting with Draco was revealed. “The society organising the conservation of knowledge. S.O.C.K, as we’re known.”
Draco cringed on behalf of the Wizarding World and their inability to make anything sound serious.
“The aim?”
“To preserve all the knowledge we can, despite the outcome of the war.”
The aim had actually been obvious, but it was obvious that saying this made Padma feel good, so Draco let her say it.
“We’re completely neutral to anything outside simple advancement of knowledge, and the preservation thereof. We’re compiling libraries and making them unplottable, taking copies of everything we can get our hands on. Nothing should be destroyed in the upcoming disturbances that could lead to development.”
Draco looked up from the third packet of sugar he’d emptied into his drink to find he was expected to reply. “Marvellous.”
“It is rather, isn’t it?” Draco should have known that the only thing that was likely to bring a true smile from Padma was compliments to her achievements. “We were wondering if you’d like to be involved?” She phrased it as a question.
“And you just happened upon me in a coffee shop?” Draco asked suspiciously. He didn’t truly mind if she’d followed him, only that she’d waited nearly three hours to approach him, which was more stalker-ish than in-the-name-of-knowledge-ish.
“Oh, no, I just found you. I have a list.” Padma waved a scroll she’d pulled from her breast pocket and without unrolling it, replaced it.
“I see. And I’m on it because . . .?”
“Because I suspect you are sympathetic to our cause and because you have access to Malfoy Library.” Ravenclaws were weird, they made clear exactly what they wanted you for. Gryffindoors tried to make it seem like they wanted you because they could ‘see the good in you’, Hufflepuffs because they ‘liked’ you, Slytherins manipulated you with compliments and bribery and Ravenclaws never thought to hide their intentions, because they assumed that agreeing with them was the most logical thing you could do. “Mostly the Library.”
Draco nodded. “What would I have to do?”
“Well, you could attempt to copy your library by yourself, and bring us the copies, else you could take boxes of books out, and we’d copy them, or you could let us in and we’d copy them. You can also come to meetings, if you like.” She added as an afterthought.
“You only want me for my dazzling library. I feel used.” He accused her dryly, but rather belatedly.
“You’re not being used if you’re helping.” Another thing about this girl was that she always replied to sarcasm or rhetorical questions as though they were serious.
“I am made suspicious, but intrigued by your vagueness and refusal to let me see the list. When is your meeting?”
“Tonight. Well, you can join tonight’s group. I see no point in actually mixing the knowledge and the people involved until we are in a relative state of peace.”
Draco decided this woman was slightly crazy, but then again, that might fit in with his new slightly crazy lifestyle. He agreed.
-Scissor Sisters, Might Tell You Tonight