Springfic: "Shattered" for chaoschild92
Title: Shattered
Author/Artist:
Recipient: chaoschild92
Characters: Draco, Blaise
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,650 words
Warnings (highlight to view): none
Summary: After the war, Draco runs into an old friend. At least, he had been one, once.
Author's Notes: Set after rather than during the war, but it does refer back to it rather a lot. :)
Betas: Thanks to lyras for looking over the story and making some helpful suggestions.
Shattered
The worst thing about Diagon Alley nowadays, Draco decided, was the way people looked at him.
Or rather, the way they didn't look up to him.
Absurdly, that still hurt his pride, although not nearly as much as it would have done a few years ago. These days, he was lucky to be able to walk along Diagon Alley at all, but the old respect - let alone the old fear he'd enjoyed for a brief spell before it began to grate - had long gone. When people realised who he was, their first reaction was generally to gape. Depending on the person, this was almost inevitably followed by one of three reactions: disgust from those who had suffered losses in the war, studied but uneasy indifference from those who were trying to pretend they hadn't recognised him, and occasionally an unwelcome scowl or leer from those Draco had been trying to pretend he hadn't recognised.
He couldn't afford to be seen with most of the people he'd once known well, after all. Most of them didn't want to talk to him any more, anyway.
If he was being honest with himself, he didn't particularly want to talk to them either. Reminders of how he'd ended up in this situation were … uncomfortable. That was why he dressed in sober robes of ash-grey when he went out in public in wizarding areas, and covered up his blond hair with a plain black wizard's hat, and tried to look like someone who wasn't a notorious ex-Death Eater and attempted murderer.
At least it was only attempted. They'd never have let him off if he'd been willing and able to go through with it.
Then again, they'd never have let him off if he hadn't been willing and able to tell them everything he knew about the rest of the Death Eaters.
They never had let him off, not really. They still kept an eye on him, just in case he slipped back into his old ways.
A few years ago that would have hurt his pride too. Nowadays it hardly seemed worth caring about. You couldn't expect them to do anything else - they'd won. He'd never liked Potter and his crowd, but that hardly seemed worth caring about any more either. He'd lost, he supposed, but at least this way he survived. He didn't have to like them, and they didn't have to like him.
He missed having people who did, though.
He hesitated outside 'Mikey Macari's Taste Extravaganza', wondering whether to sit down and try whatever weird and wonderful flavour of ice-cream Mikey had come up with today. According to the advertisement in the Prophet, he had offered a new flavour for sale every day since reopening the shop he'd bought from Florian Fortescue's heirs.
Draco turned away. He knew what had happened to Florian Fortescue, and he'd had to tell all of it. It wasn't a pleasant thought.
A tall, well-dressed passer-by caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Draco turned to see who it was, and gaped in an undignified fashion; it was a young man with black skin and almond-shaped eyes, and a studied and almost permanently dignified manner, someone he hadn't seen for over a year now.
"Blaise?" He called the name with pleasure, without thinking, then coloured slightly as it drew attention. He could hear one or two people muttering to each other.
Blaise turned in surprise. Draco knew him well enough to read the expressions that flashed across his face; a brief look of dismay, then one of uncertain wariness, but that was followed almost immediately by a hint of self-reproach and a courteous smile. "Hello, Draco." Blaise didn't seem to know quite what to say. "It's been a long time."
"A year and a half?" hazarded Draco. He didn't know quite what to say either.
"Must be. Of course, I've been abroad."
"Yes. Yes, I heard." The gorgeous and much-married Zara Gabon was always a favourite with the gossip columnists, so when she had moved to France out of the blue it had been headline news. Draco could feel an awkward silence developing, and it suddenly seemed very important to keep the conversation going. He gestured vaguely to the chairs outside the Taste Extravaganza and gave his old friend a tentative smile. "Er, shall we catch up? I'm not sure what the flavour for today is - I wouldn't be surprised if it's something Bertie Bott rejected - but I'll risk it if you will."
Blaise hesitated for a moment or two, but then nodded, sat down, and picked up a menu. Draco was more relieved than he would have thought possible.
"I missed you last year at Hogwarts, Zabini," said Draco diffidently, after rejecting Macari's 'Haddock and Mango' daily special and placing an order for two strawberry sundaes. "You were probably right not to come back, though." He repressed a shiver.
"So I heard."
"Did you … well, how much did you hear about what happened last year?" There was always a chance that the worst of it hadn't been reported in detail.
"I know what I read in the French newspapers. They're always full of politics and war news. And of course I saw what this -" Blaise gestured vaguely at Diagon Alley "- was like when I came back to visit in the holidays. On the whole, I think my mother made the right decision to move."
"Probably. How did you settle in at Beauxbatons?" he asked, suddenly intensely curious. He'd been too preoccupied to wonder much last year. "I didn't know your French was that good."
Blaise shrugged. "I suppose it's like riding a broom. If you've done it before, it all comes back to you surprisingly quickly." He paused. "One of my … stepfathers was French. We lived there when I was about ten. I didn't speak anything else for a year or so."
"Ah." Draco didn't say any more when Blaise didn't. Even back in first year, it had quickly become obvious that the subject of Blaise's mother and her colourful love life was something her son had become extremely tired of talking about. He seldom mentioned his actual father, and almost never referred to any of his successors, though Draco knew that Blaise's father had been a pure-blood and had heard that some of the latter hadn't.
He'd approved of Blaise's disapproval. Somehow it didn't seem to matter any more.
Well, all right, it did, but not so much that he could raise the energy to worry about it. A lot of things nowadays felt that way. So there were Mudbloods in top positions? Hardly unprecedented, was it? Seeing that was like being hit in the stomach by a Bludger; it wasn't a pleasant experience, but you had to shrug it off and get on with things. His side had lost, after all. It could have been worse for him.
If anything, it could well have been worse for him if his side had won. He'd not made a great success of Death Eating. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Draco flushed. "So how did you do in your exams, then?" he asked, to keep away from that subject. "What are you planning to do now you've left school?"
"I haven't left school." Draco raised his eyebrows. "I thought you knew. They - we - take exams in sixth year at Beauxbatons, then study special projects for a year and take follow-up exams a year later. If you want to, that is. If you don't, then traditionally seventh year is when you have a good time before heading out into the big bad world." Blaise's habitual air of cool disdain briefly cracked into a look of rueful amusement. "The teachers are very strict if they catch you doing something out of line, but, well, the students have had hundreds of years to work out ways to not get caught and pass them on. Seventh year is rather fun, as it happens."
Draco smiled weakly. 'Fun' was about the last word he would have used to describe his own seventh year. "So you're stopping on then?" he asked, in an effort to put off the natural questions about his own situation. "Not going out into the big bad world?"
"I'd like to take the Transfiguration examination - just out of curiosity to see how well I can do, really. It's not as if I actually need it for anything." After a moment, he added, "I haven't really decided what I want to do, although I suppose I'll try to find something eventually. I'm not sure I want to come back here to live, even if my mother does - I can't say the idea of working in the current Ministry fills me with any enthusiasm."
"Nor me," agreed Draco. A Ministry filled with people he didn't like much, and who liked him even less? No thank you.
Although it wasn't as if that was an actual option.
"Would they let you?" Evidently the same thought had occurred to Blaise. "I mean …" Draco turned away; he suddenly found himself unable to face one of Blaise's looks of distaste. "They didn't say much about your family in the papers, but I've heard rumours. And … well, Malfoy, it was rather obvious that you were doing something for him all through sixth year. And struggling to manage it." Draco risked a look and was rather relieved; Blaise's expression wasn't one of distaste, not exactly, although it was far from approving. "I don't, in fact, actually know what that was. No-one I've talked to since I've been back in the country wants to discuss it much."
"I don't particularly want to discuss it myself," muttered Draco. "It wasn't … it wasn't easy, and I couldn't manage it in the end." Under the pressure of Blaise's interrogative gaze, he added, with great reluctance, "If Snape hadn't rescued me that last night you saw me, I'd have blown it completely and the Dark Lord would probably have killed us all. Get the idea now?" he finished acerbically.
"Snape? That was the night he … wait, rescued you?" From his expression, Blaise was clearly engaged in putting two and two together, and fortunately or unfortunately he seemed to be coming up with the correct answer. At least it had cracked the last of his reserve, he actually looked shocked. "No-one wanted to discuss that either at the time, but I saw the piece the Daily Prophet ran last month about what Snape had really been doing. It said he'd been granted a posthumous pardon on Potter's say-so. That - the Dar - Voldemort asked you to do that?"
"Yes," mumbled Draco.
"Merlin's balls." Blaise had dropped his voice in sympathy, for which Draco was profoundly glad. He really didn't want anyone to overhear what they were saying. He had the impression that patrons at a few of the other tables were staring in their direction, although that could just have been paranoia. "So that was why you were such a pain in the arse in sixth year. Is it why you're behaving like this now?"
"Like what?" Draco tried to keep a defensive note from entering his voice, but without success.
"You seem -" Blaise struggled for a moment or two to find a suitable description "- shattered, for want of a better word. As if something broke inside you. It's not how you used to be, Malfoy. All the fight seems to have gone out of you."
"Nothing to fight for now, is there?" said Draco bitterly.
Blaise gave him a sharp look. "You wish there was? You'd prefer to be at war still?"
"No." Draco's vehemence startled him. Even Blaise seemed taken aback. "I want to get away from all that crap. For the first time in two years I finally feel sa - well, not safe exactly, but I don't feel scared."
"Because you don't need to dodge curses from Muggle-lovers any more?" Blaise seemed to be reserving judgement.
"Because I don't need to dodge curses from anyone. Well, not unless some of this lot get wand happy." He nodded darkly at the other customers; there were definitely one or two watching them now. "I … I … I didn't realise what it would be like. What the people on my side were like. I was much more frightened of what they might do than I ever was of Potter's lot. I don't much like the idea of those smug Muggle-lovers and Mudbloods running things, but ... they won. And they didn't throw me to the Dementors. They can't be worse than the Dark Lord."
They didn't torture him for getting things wrong. They didn't ask him to torture other people for getting things wrong.
"He was only a half-blood anyway, so I hear." Blaise's expression was definitely distaste now. "A half-blood, laying down the law about breeding. I always hoped you - and the rest of our people - had enough sense not to get involved with him, but frankly, Malfoy, sense was never your best feature." He ignored Draco's flash of anger. "He terrified you, by the look of it. Maybe that's what shocked some sense into you."
"You never exactly spoke out, did you?" said Draco bitterly. "You'd have been happy enough to see him win!"
"Actually no, I wouldn't." To Draco's surprise, Blaise matched his ire. "I don't like Mudbloods, and I don't want to have to pretend that the Muggles they come from aren't rabble. But I can live with a few of them putting on airs in the Ministry, and pompous blood traitors like Dumbledore giving me sanctimonious lectures on the subject, if the rest of us don't have to kowtow to a sadistic lunatic!" He paused to take a deep breath and reassemble his disdainful expression. "And no, I didn't speak out. I had more sense than to commit myself when I didn't need to. And my mother had enough sense to get us both out before they asked her to be some kind of ambassador for them. You didn't, did you?"
Draco wanted to make a sharp retort, but found his anger leaking away as quickly as it had risen.
"I do now," he said with a helpless shrug. "My mother felt exactly the way you did. She had the most sense of any of us. My father's even more shattered than I am, and they're not going to let him off as easily." He paused for a moment; the words he needed to say were bitter. "I was wrong, okay? I couldn't do it. I couldn't be like that. When it came down to it, I didn't want to. I'd rather have the Muggle-lovers than the Dark Lord."
"Good," said Blaise with emphasis. Draco stared at him. "Since we're actually talking about the subject plainly for the first time ever, let me just say -- I'm glad. I wouldn't like to think all the people I spent my time with at school were Dark wizards." Blaise's supercilious features broke into a smile. "Perhaps both of us got out of it without too much damage. I don't actually know if we'll see each other again any time soon, Malfoy, but in case we do - shall we consider ourselves still friends?"
"Yeah." Draco was smiling in relief himself now. "Yes, let's. Thank you, Zabini."
"Don't mention it." Blaise got up. "Well, I have some shopping to do now this place is back in business. Glad to have met you today."
"Me, too." Draco sat and watched Blaise walk away in the direction of Gringotts; he caught the eye of the man on the next table, who had definitely been following their conversation, and glared at him until he lost interest. Smiling slightly, Draco left a large tip under the plate and set off in the opposite direction, towards the Leaky Cauldron and a Floo journey home.
Nobody paid him any attention.
He didn't care. It didn't seem to matter any more.
The best thing about Diagon Alley nowadays was the way people didn't look at him.
Author/Artist:
Recipient: chaoschild92
Characters: Draco, Blaise
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,650 words
Warnings (highlight to view): none
Summary: After the war, Draco runs into an old friend. At least, he had been one, once.
Author's Notes: Set after rather than during the war, but it does refer back to it rather a lot. :)
Betas: Thanks to lyras for looking over the story and making some helpful suggestions.
Shattered
The worst thing about Diagon Alley nowadays, Draco decided, was the way people looked at him.
Or rather, the way they didn't look up to him.
Absurdly, that still hurt his pride, although not nearly as much as it would have done a few years ago. These days, he was lucky to be able to walk along Diagon Alley at all, but the old respect - let alone the old fear he'd enjoyed for a brief spell before it began to grate - had long gone. When people realised who he was, their first reaction was generally to gape. Depending on the person, this was almost inevitably followed by one of three reactions: disgust from those who had suffered losses in the war, studied but uneasy indifference from those who were trying to pretend they hadn't recognised him, and occasionally an unwelcome scowl or leer from those Draco had been trying to pretend he hadn't recognised.
He couldn't afford to be seen with most of the people he'd once known well, after all. Most of them didn't want to talk to him any more, anyway.
If he was being honest with himself, he didn't particularly want to talk to them either. Reminders of how he'd ended up in this situation were … uncomfortable. That was why he dressed in sober robes of ash-grey when he went out in public in wizarding areas, and covered up his blond hair with a plain black wizard's hat, and tried to look like someone who wasn't a notorious ex-Death Eater and attempted murderer.
At least it was only attempted. They'd never have let him off if he'd been willing and able to go through with it.
Then again, they'd never have let him off if he hadn't been willing and able to tell them everything he knew about the rest of the Death Eaters.
They never had let him off, not really. They still kept an eye on him, just in case he slipped back into his old ways.
A few years ago that would have hurt his pride too. Nowadays it hardly seemed worth caring about. You couldn't expect them to do anything else - they'd won. He'd never liked Potter and his crowd, but that hardly seemed worth caring about any more either. He'd lost, he supposed, but at least this way he survived. He didn't have to like them, and they didn't have to like him.
He missed having people who did, though.
He hesitated outside 'Mikey Macari's Taste Extravaganza', wondering whether to sit down and try whatever weird and wonderful flavour of ice-cream Mikey had come up with today. According to the advertisement in the Prophet, he had offered a new flavour for sale every day since reopening the shop he'd bought from Florian Fortescue's heirs.
Draco turned away. He knew what had happened to Florian Fortescue, and he'd had to tell all of it. It wasn't a pleasant thought.
A tall, well-dressed passer-by caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. Draco turned to see who it was, and gaped in an undignified fashion; it was a young man with black skin and almond-shaped eyes, and a studied and almost permanently dignified manner, someone he hadn't seen for over a year now.
"Blaise?" He called the name with pleasure, without thinking, then coloured slightly as it drew attention. He could hear one or two people muttering to each other.
Blaise turned in surprise. Draco knew him well enough to read the expressions that flashed across his face; a brief look of dismay, then one of uncertain wariness, but that was followed almost immediately by a hint of self-reproach and a courteous smile. "Hello, Draco." Blaise didn't seem to know quite what to say. "It's been a long time."
"A year and a half?" hazarded Draco. He didn't know quite what to say either.
"Must be. Of course, I've been abroad."
"Yes. Yes, I heard." The gorgeous and much-married Zara Gabon was always a favourite with the gossip columnists, so when she had moved to France out of the blue it had been headline news. Draco could feel an awkward silence developing, and it suddenly seemed very important to keep the conversation going. He gestured vaguely to the chairs outside the Taste Extravaganza and gave his old friend a tentative smile. "Er, shall we catch up? I'm not sure what the flavour for today is - I wouldn't be surprised if it's something Bertie Bott rejected - but I'll risk it if you will."
Blaise hesitated for a moment or two, but then nodded, sat down, and picked up a menu. Draco was more relieved than he would have thought possible.
"I missed you last year at Hogwarts, Zabini," said Draco diffidently, after rejecting Macari's 'Haddock and Mango' daily special and placing an order for two strawberry sundaes. "You were probably right not to come back, though." He repressed a shiver.
"So I heard."
"Did you … well, how much did you hear about what happened last year?" There was always a chance that the worst of it hadn't been reported in detail.
"I know what I read in the French newspapers. They're always full of politics and war news. And of course I saw what this -" Blaise gestured vaguely at Diagon Alley "- was like when I came back to visit in the holidays. On the whole, I think my mother made the right decision to move."
"Probably. How did you settle in at Beauxbatons?" he asked, suddenly intensely curious. He'd been too preoccupied to wonder much last year. "I didn't know your French was that good."
Blaise shrugged. "I suppose it's like riding a broom. If you've done it before, it all comes back to you surprisingly quickly." He paused. "One of my … stepfathers was French. We lived there when I was about ten. I didn't speak anything else for a year or so."
"Ah." Draco didn't say any more when Blaise didn't. Even back in first year, it had quickly become obvious that the subject of Blaise's mother and her colourful love life was something her son had become extremely tired of talking about. He seldom mentioned his actual father, and almost never referred to any of his successors, though Draco knew that Blaise's father had been a pure-blood and had heard that some of the latter hadn't.
He'd approved of Blaise's disapproval. Somehow it didn't seem to matter any more.
Well, all right, it did, but not so much that he could raise the energy to worry about it. A lot of things nowadays felt that way. So there were Mudbloods in top positions? Hardly unprecedented, was it? Seeing that was like being hit in the stomach by a Bludger; it wasn't a pleasant experience, but you had to shrug it off and get on with things. His side had lost, after all. It could have been worse for him.
If anything, it could well have been worse for him if his side had won. He'd not made a great success of Death Eating. It wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Draco flushed. "So how did you do in your exams, then?" he asked, to keep away from that subject. "What are you planning to do now you've left school?"
"I haven't left school." Draco raised his eyebrows. "I thought you knew. They - we - take exams in sixth year at Beauxbatons, then study special projects for a year and take follow-up exams a year later. If you want to, that is. If you don't, then traditionally seventh year is when you have a good time before heading out into the big bad world." Blaise's habitual air of cool disdain briefly cracked into a look of rueful amusement. "The teachers are very strict if they catch you doing something out of line, but, well, the students have had hundreds of years to work out ways to not get caught and pass them on. Seventh year is rather fun, as it happens."
Draco smiled weakly. 'Fun' was about the last word he would have used to describe his own seventh year. "So you're stopping on then?" he asked, in an effort to put off the natural questions about his own situation. "Not going out into the big bad world?"
"I'd like to take the Transfiguration examination - just out of curiosity to see how well I can do, really. It's not as if I actually need it for anything." After a moment, he added, "I haven't really decided what I want to do, although I suppose I'll try to find something eventually. I'm not sure I want to come back here to live, even if my mother does - I can't say the idea of working in the current Ministry fills me with any enthusiasm."
"Nor me," agreed Draco. A Ministry filled with people he didn't like much, and who liked him even less? No thank you.
Although it wasn't as if that was an actual option.
"Would they let you?" Evidently the same thought had occurred to Blaise. "I mean …" Draco turned away; he suddenly found himself unable to face one of Blaise's looks of distaste. "They didn't say much about your family in the papers, but I've heard rumours. And … well, Malfoy, it was rather obvious that you were doing something for him all through sixth year. And struggling to manage it." Draco risked a look and was rather relieved; Blaise's expression wasn't one of distaste, not exactly, although it was far from approving. "I don't, in fact, actually know what that was. No-one I've talked to since I've been back in the country wants to discuss it much."
"I don't particularly want to discuss it myself," muttered Draco. "It wasn't … it wasn't easy, and I couldn't manage it in the end." Under the pressure of Blaise's interrogative gaze, he added, with great reluctance, "If Snape hadn't rescued me that last night you saw me, I'd have blown it completely and the Dark Lord would probably have killed us all. Get the idea now?" he finished acerbically.
"Snape? That was the night he … wait, rescued you?" From his expression, Blaise was clearly engaged in putting two and two together, and fortunately or unfortunately he seemed to be coming up with the correct answer. At least it had cracked the last of his reserve, he actually looked shocked. "No-one wanted to discuss that either at the time, but I saw the piece the Daily Prophet ran last month about what Snape had really been doing. It said he'd been granted a posthumous pardon on Potter's say-so. That - the Dar - Voldemort asked you to do that?"
"Yes," mumbled Draco.
"Merlin's balls." Blaise had dropped his voice in sympathy, for which Draco was profoundly glad. He really didn't want anyone to overhear what they were saying. He had the impression that patrons at a few of the other tables were staring in their direction, although that could just have been paranoia. "So that was why you were such a pain in the arse in sixth year. Is it why you're behaving like this now?"
"Like what?" Draco tried to keep a defensive note from entering his voice, but without success.
"You seem -" Blaise struggled for a moment or two to find a suitable description "- shattered, for want of a better word. As if something broke inside you. It's not how you used to be, Malfoy. All the fight seems to have gone out of you."
"Nothing to fight for now, is there?" said Draco bitterly.
Blaise gave him a sharp look. "You wish there was? You'd prefer to be at war still?"
"No." Draco's vehemence startled him. Even Blaise seemed taken aback. "I want to get away from all that crap. For the first time in two years I finally feel sa - well, not safe exactly, but I don't feel scared."
"Because you don't need to dodge curses from Muggle-lovers any more?" Blaise seemed to be reserving judgement.
"Because I don't need to dodge curses from anyone. Well, not unless some of this lot get wand happy." He nodded darkly at the other customers; there were definitely one or two watching them now. "I … I … I didn't realise what it would be like. What the people on my side were like. I was much more frightened of what they might do than I ever was of Potter's lot. I don't much like the idea of those smug Muggle-lovers and Mudbloods running things, but ... they won. And they didn't throw me to the Dementors. They can't be worse than the Dark Lord."
They didn't torture him for getting things wrong. They didn't ask him to torture other people for getting things wrong.
"He was only a half-blood anyway, so I hear." Blaise's expression was definitely distaste now. "A half-blood, laying down the law about breeding. I always hoped you - and the rest of our people - had enough sense not to get involved with him, but frankly, Malfoy, sense was never your best feature." He ignored Draco's flash of anger. "He terrified you, by the look of it. Maybe that's what shocked some sense into you."
"You never exactly spoke out, did you?" said Draco bitterly. "You'd have been happy enough to see him win!"
"Actually no, I wouldn't." To Draco's surprise, Blaise matched his ire. "I don't like Mudbloods, and I don't want to have to pretend that the Muggles they come from aren't rabble. But I can live with a few of them putting on airs in the Ministry, and pompous blood traitors like Dumbledore giving me sanctimonious lectures on the subject, if the rest of us don't have to kowtow to a sadistic lunatic!" He paused to take a deep breath and reassemble his disdainful expression. "And no, I didn't speak out. I had more sense than to commit myself when I didn't need to. And my mother had enough sense to get us both out before they asked her to be some kind of ambassador for them. You didn't, did you?"
Draco wanted to make a sharp retort, but found his anger leaking away as quickly as it had risen.
"I do now," he said with a helpless shrug. "My mother felt exactly the way you did. She had the most sense of any of us. My father's even more shattered than I am, and they're not going to let him off as easily." He paused for a moment; the words he needed to say were bitter. "I was wrong, okay? I couldn't do it. I couldn't be like that. When it came down to it, I didn't want to. I'd rather have the Muggle-lovers than the Dark Lord."
"Good," said Blaise with emphasis. Draco stared at him. "Since we're actually talking about the subject plainly for the first time ever, let me just say -- I'm glad. I wouldn't like to think all the people I spent my time with at school were Dark wizards." Blaise's supercilious features broke into a smile. "Perhaps both of us got out of it without too much damage. I don't actually know if we'll see each other again any time soon, Malfoy, but in case we do - shall we consider ourselves still friends?"
"Yeah." Draco was smiling in relief himself now. "Yes, let's. Thank you, Zabini."
"Don't mention it." Blaise got up. "Well, I have some shopping to do now this place is back in business. Glad to have met you today."
"Me, too." Draco sat and watched Blaise walk away in the direction of Gringotts; he caught the eye of the man on the next table, who had definitely been following their conversation, and glared at him until he lost interest. Smiling slightly, Draco left a large tip under the plate and set off in the opposite direction, towards the Leaky Cauldron and a Floo journey home.
Nobody paid him any attention.
He didn't care. It didn't seem to matter any more.
The best thing about Diagon Alley nowadays was the way people didn't look at him.