The Draco Fic - [2/?]
Chapter 1 here
None of us were angels
The room in which they met was surprisingly luscious. Draco, over the course of his first two years out of Hogwarts, had got used to meeting in run down places - half destroyed or half created - and the small but clean kitchen in Sussex made a surprisingly welcome change.
The company however, did not.
“Why is Creevey here?” asked Draco under his breath as he entered with Padma.
“Colin, we recently discovered, has a large collection of old negatives, which, he tells me, as many copies as necessary can be made from as long as they are intact. And we decided this was a good source of knowledge and are planning to copy them.” Draco was horrified when she said this in a normal voice. Luckily, she continued as though she were simply making introductions. “Remus-” Professor Lupin, Draco’s brain insisted “-has a small but rare collection of books from god knows where, and Hermione is here because of her skills in finding old books referenced in other books, to make sure our search is complete and comprehensive.”
The three people in the room looked over at Draco with what appeared to be a mixture of shock and horror. “Neutral organisation, remember?” He sneered, and pulled the corner of his mouth upwards in an attempt to cover his own shock and horror over the lack of non-Gryffindoors. He took a seat - simple, wooden and painted red - at the kitchen table and waited for someone to get on with it.
Padma pulled out another scroll of parchment and unrolled it down the table.
On it, in alphabetical order, was a three foot long list of books.
“Hermione,” ordered Padma.
Hermione glanced worriedly at Draco and then cast a revealing spell on the parchment.
Coloured lines, footnotes and arrows appeared all over the margins of the list. Draco saw Padma cringe out of the corner of his eye, and after ten seconds of looking at the parchment he could see why. Apart from the appalling mess that had been made of the perfectly written list, the footnotes and arrows didn’t even seem to be colour coded. They were just . . . coloured.
“Right, so,” said Hermione, apparently using nonsensical words to pull herself together. “Over the week I’ve had a chance to read Greater London’s Unicorns and The Life and Times of Helga Winder,” she put a small red dot by the two titles, “and there are references to four books that I don’t think we have,” she pulled out a small piece of lined parchment, “Unicorns of the New Forest, Trihorns and their Rhino Cousins, Foals Fools and Fake Gold and Maurice Winder, his Tale.”
Padma took the larger piece of parchment and muttered extending charms at the points at which she had to write the names in.
“Colin?”
Colin pulled out a hand width string of orange-yellow metallic parchment. Padma smiled indulgently, and brought out a rectangular plastic pot of potion from one of the light-wood cabinets. Draco felt absurdly homesick for the potions classroom, where everything was kept in metal and glass and none of the wood was painted or an absurdly light colour. Of course, the potions classroom also smelt of pickled mandrake and cuckoopint and was therefore disgusting.
Padma removed some black parchment from a drawer, and laid it within the pot.
Colin put the orange parchment in and recited a string of Latin.
Padma put the lid back on the pot and put a turned a timer device that contained neither sand nor metal, but was in the shape of a hen.
They sat in a silence that told Draco that they normally talked through this part of the process. He saw Hermione and Padma exchange questioning and bland looks and Colin studiously avoid his gaze. Lupin just looked at Draco with his sad, unsure but accepting face, until Draco glanced back, at which point he gave a regretful smile and looked away.
The buzzer rang.
Padma took the lid off the pot and levitated the orange parchment out of the potion. Colin cast a drying charm and took it back. Then they removed the previously blank parchment in the same way.
Padma held the images carefully as she moved through them.
There were five images in total, all seeming to be Victorian. There were two family portraits of different families, one image of a man from one and a woman from the other, one image of the same two slightly older - the man had grown a moustache - the woman seated and holding a child in white frilly robes and finally the most moving one; the one of the maid in the kitchen chopping onions and occasionally wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Padma crowed over this one, she and Hermione getting more and more excited - and more and more high pitched - as they talked about family staff and house elves or the absence thereof.
Padma calmed herself down, by talking about how more evidence was needed to constitute historical fact, and what a shame it was that developing potion was so hard to get hold of.
“But I have a double batch coming in next week, so bring extra film.”
Creevey beamed and nodded.
“Remus?”
Lupin pulled two shrunken books from his pocket, and enlarged them again. The books had simple, paper covers with only the title printed on them. They didn’t look like books at all, more like the hundred page monthly ‘magazine’ Draco’s father used to receive when Draco was a child.
Seeing Draco’s expression, Professor Lupin explained, “Reproducing copyrighted work is illegal, technically. And making exact copies takes a lot more magic than copying words and images onto parchment. What we do here is more like advanced note-taking than illegal copying, don’t you think Padma?”
Padma shrugged, “The way we preserve knowledge may be illegal, but the copyrighting office will probably lose all its records in the unrest.”
She paused.
“Do you think we could get copies of all the copyright records?”
The room paused. Then, realising once again that Padma didn’t do rhetorical, Draco said “probably” and Padma gave the job to him.
Padma pulled the list back from where it had been pushed to allow space for the developing potion, then wrote down the two new titles, Where Cats Go that You Don’t Know and A Short Encyclopaedia on Pakistani Fungi.
“The cat one belonged to a friend,” said Lupin in a neutral tone.
Padma passed the list to Hermione mournfully as Hermione took out her coloured quills and added two green dots and a brown arrow. Seeing Padma’s face, Hermione sighed and cast a concealing charm on her handiwork. The list was once again a simple, alphabetical list of titles.
Padma relaxed minutely.
“Right, well, I’ll see you all next week, same time.” Padma smiled and managed to angle her body so that her guests were directed towards the fireplace.
Draco, appalled that he had not been offered any refreshment in the half hour he’d been a part of the meeting, headed back to the coffee shop.
-Imogen Heap, Speeding Cars