lomonaaeren | Chapter Two of 'Providence'- What Draco Malfoy Read

Thank you for all the reviews! Just to answer a few questions: I’ve never read or seen Cyrano, so this was inspired by it only indirectly; and it is a comedy, not a tragedy.

Chapter Two—What Draco Malfoy Read

No one, Draco thought, as he nodded and smiled across the table at his latest date, understands how boring it is not to be opposed.

Anne Carter, of course, his date, didn’t notice the boredom behind his smile either. On she chattered, turning her head from side to side and flashing the diamond earrings that Draco had bought as if she thought he’d forgotten spending that much money on her. Of course, it was really for the benefit of the restaurant they were in, and to make other women jealous, and to make them think how much they would want to be sitting in her place, but they couldn’t, because—

Draco clenched his jaw muscles hard, stifling the yawn before it began. He’d got quite good at that.

When he was sure Anne was deep in the middle of a conversation with herself about flirtation and the surprising adventures it involved one in, he leaned back in his chair and stared around the restaurant. As always, he hoped to distract himself by finding one interesting person. Just one was all he needed. If that person got up and left the restaurant in the next minute, Draco could exist on the slender morsel of bread he’d been offered.

As always, there was no one. Oh, Draco knew some of the people in here; there were always those who followed him around hoping for his attention. But if he had found them interesting, he would already have been dating them. There was little Astoria Greengrass, her eyes bright with hope and adoration like a kitten’s for the last person who fed it, and there was Celestia Halcombe, lowering her gaze demurely to the plate when Draco turned in her direction, and there was Brutus Adorno, who stumbled over his feet in interviews with Draco trying to come up with good business propositions. He was powerful enough among the Muggleborns that Draco had spoken with him more than once, but that didn’t mean he wanted to do so again.

“And then she said…”

Draco clenched his jaw muscles against a sigh and picked up his glass. He was doing this, he whispered into the sweet wine, for his family and not himself. His mother needed money to protect her in case something happened to him; she needed good reputation and standing to store up against the time that Draco left England, as he would have to, because everything here was so intolerably boring. And his children, if he had any—a prospect that was becoming increasingly unlikely when he couldn’t find a woman he wanted even to go to bed with, let alone consider as a Malfoy mother—would appreciate what he had done for them.

In the name of his family he had pretended to turn his back on his father’s beliefs; in the name of his family he had spent time rubbing shoulders with people who made his flesh crawl and pasted bright smiles over his face whilst the cameras flashed. At least the sanctuary he had set up for war trauma patients afforded him a certain smug satisfaction. Everyone gushed with praise over his actions in providing whatever therapy they wanted and never noticed the hefty price tags. And being such a good liar that everyone assumed some sort of soul-deep “redemption” instead of a plan to get his family respected again was its own reward.

But there was no one who could share that reward with him. His friends were either in Azkaban, furiously pursuing social redemption schemes of their own, or living abroad. His father would never see the sun again. His mother’s shattered health assured she barely left the house, and though she would exchange smiles with Draco about the success of his schemes, that was not the same as discussing them.

Or opposing them.

Draco had once envisioned having everything his own way in Hogwarts, the teachers bowing down to him just as his tutors did and other students acting like house-elves. Only now did he realize how much that would have suffocated him. It was one thing to dream about life as an endless parade with no enemies to fight, and another to experience it.

He’d experienced it for three years now. He was drowning in ennui.

No one to tell him he was wrong. No one to criticize his arguments; debating the Muggleborns had been fun at first, but ever since he’d pretended to agree with them, as he must if he was to regain the rightful Malfoy position in society, they’d been all smiles. No one to steal a Snitch from him in Quidditch, for God’s sake. Draco would have settled for that if nothing else, but the few times he’d tried to play Quidditch since his “redemption,” there was barely a decent Seeker on the field, and they hesitated in actually defeating him.

That was why Draco thought he would have to leave England, in the end. On the Continent, he must be able to find some city where his money and beauty would win him the attention he found indispensable but there weren’t all the complications of reputation.

“Draco, are you listening to me?”

That was bad. Normally Draco’s mask never slipped enough to let anyone else realize he was paying attention to the infinitely more interesting person, himself. He leaned forwards with a sympathetic smile. “And so you rowed with Sarah?”

“Not so much a row as a quarrel,” Anne said, her feelings relieved. “And then she said…”

“Mr. Malfoy? An owl for you.”

Draco turned and looked up in surprise. This particular restaurant, the Hunter’s Delight, had a set of wards up that captured all incoming owls, told the waiters who the letters were for, and let them decide if they wanted to interrupt the diners or not. Draco wasn’t usually interrupted when he ate here; the manager ferociously protected his privacy.

But he could see, at a glance, why this waiter had decided on such an unprecedented course of action. The bird on his arm was an enormous great horned owl with shining dark feathers, talons that looked as if they could puncture human skulls, and a ferocious glare. Owls like that didn’t ordinarily consent to serve masters who were inclined to wait. And none of the waiters at the Hunter’s Delight would want to be responsible for losing Draco Malfoy, social darling, another chance to make a difference.

“Excuse me, Anne,” Draco said, giving her that made her flutter her eyelashes like she was about to faint. He took the letter the owl extended to him with a jerk of its foot and opened it.

Dear Ferret-face.

Draco felt his mouth fall open at the “salutation,” whilst his eyelashes fluttered like Anne’s. The next moment, a rush of adrenaline kicked through him, and he looked for the signature he was sure must be there.

He snorted when he saw the blind. Clever, Granger, but you should have considered that the beginning would give you away.

He read through the letter slowly, anyway, savoring the half-taunting, half-admiring words. The “mystery” would not last long, but that Granger found herself hopelessly in love with him and thought to intrigue him like this was an interesting novelty.

He rose when he was done, tucked the letter away in his pocket, and offered his most charming smile to Anne. “I’m afraid I must leave,” he said. “But please stay here and treat yourself to whatever wine you like. I’ll pay,” he added, with a subtle nod at the waiter. Yes, please stay here. Perhaps enough wine will shut that chattering mouth of yours.

Anne blushed again. She was always doing that. Draco couldn’t stand girls who blushed so much. “Thank you, Draco.”

And there’s a simper. At the very least, if dating Granger was even a remote possibility, I could be certain she wouldn’t do that. Draco turned away with a shudder and stepped towards the doors.

Astoria Greengrass intercepted him.

She had her eyes downcast as usual, and as usual she looked stunning in a sheer silver-white gown that hinted without in the least being transparent or offensive. Draco drew in a sharp annoyed breath. If she had only had the kind of sparking, diamond-like personality that her robes promised, he would have been interested. But no, she was insipid, and so he would be polite, but no more.

“Excuse me, Miss Greengrass,” he murmured, taking the time to construct a proper expression of sorrow. “I can’t stop. I’m on my way as a matter of somewhat urgent business.”

“I understand.” Astoria lifted her head and looked him in the eye for the first time since Draco could remember. “Is it about a new house, perhaps? Or a new pet? Perhaps a ferret?”

Draco gasped, the first time a woman had been able to make him do that since he saw how his mother was wasting away at St. Mungo’s. Astoria flushed, but much less than was her custom; she kept her head up, which Draco would have thought her incapable of if he hadn’t seen it, gazing at him in inexorable challenge.

She’s speaking—she’s speaking as if she’s the one who sent the letter.

Which was impossible, Draco knew. But the writer said that she had particularly good sources of information, and was it more impossible than Granger having decided out of midair that she had a fancy for Draco?

“My dear,” he said softly, “the business is not that. Which I am persuaded you might have an idea of.”

Astoria’s color mounted a little higher, but still she didn’t blush in that disgraceful manner that usually caused Draco to discount her. “Do I?” she said, and ducked her head so that he had just enough of a glimpse of eye through her eyelashes and sweeping hair to catch him. She was a beautiful woman; that had never been his problem in relating to her. And now, now he began to think that perhaps a mind to match that beauty burned behind it after all. “I’m so glad.” She paused as though to think, then added, “But surely you should leave now, since you said the business was so urgent?”

“Not so urgent as—other things,” Draco said, and glanced over his shoulder. Anne Carter was staring at them with her mouth half-open. He sighed. He couldn’t pursue the matter with Astoria now, however much he would have liked to, or he would probably gain a reputation for not treating his dates well. The Malfoy reputation was too important to sacrifice even a splinter of it like that. He faced Astoria and held out a hand. “Yes, I had perhaps better proceed to my business. But we will speak again later.”

“Yes,” Astoria said, and a thin smile crossed her lips. “But I am persuaded that I will set the time, Mr. Malfoy. Perhaps within the next fortnight—perhaps not.” She raised her eyebrows in a delicate arch, nodded once, as regal as his mother, and then turned and glided out the door. She hadn’t even given him her hand to kiss, which was an invariable feature of their other encounters. Draco gazed after her in wonder.

Then he turned, blew a kiss to Anne that he felt more deeply than normal, and aimed in a different direction, so no one could say he was following Astoria even though he had left the restaurant. He still thought a visit to Granger important and amusing enough to arrange.

A new thought rustled in his head and demanded his attention, and Draco smiled in a way that would have shocked most of the people who knew him.

Things are changing.

*

Harry grinned and had to keep from flinging off his Invisibility Cloak to do a dance of triumph right there in the restaurant. He’d been sitting in an excellent position to observe Draco’s expression when he read the letter.

He’s intrigued. He’ll pay attention. He’ll flirt and woo and let himself be flirted with and wooed. And did you see the way he looked when Astoria spoke to him about ferrets? He can be suspicious, because that is some damn specific information about his past, but I’ll still have the advantage because he’ll want to listen. And now that Astoria seems to be a good writer as well as a good talker, he’ll become more and more interested in her, until he falls in love with her.

Harry experienced a momentary stab of guilt. After all, the letters were lying to Draco, in a sense. And the sentiments started with him and not Astoria, so it was making Draco think things about Astoria that weren’t true.

But then he shrugged. Of course it wasn’t perfect. But in a perfect world he would have been able to date Draco, and that wasn’t going to happen. At least he could put Draco with someone he knew would make him happy.

He sneaked out the doors and then Apparated to the point—a neglected corner of Diagon Alley with some heavy walls around it—where he’d arranged to meet Astoria. She was pacing back and forth when he got there, and her eyes were alight. She spun around to meet him with her wand drawn.

Harry raised his hands calmingly, raised his eyebrows, and smiled.

“Did you see him?” Astoria burst out, and did an impromptu dance of her own that swung her expensive gown around her. Harry smiled wider. He half-wished Draco could see her like that, with her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed and her mouth slanted in laughter. It did her more good than all the gowns in the world. But this was Draco Malfoy, and at the moment he needed a polished surface, like a mirror, to attract him. Astoria’s real beauty would put him off as much as Harry’s gender would. “Did you see his face when he read the letter?”

Harry laughed and nodded. Yes, he thought Draco’s face in that moment would remain one of his most treasured memories for the rest of his life. His eyes had widened and his nostrils had flared as though someone had dared to pinch him, and his hands had closed on the letter and torn a corner off the top. Then he had begun reading with a kind of attention that Harry had never seen him give, even to debates with Muggleborns where he wanted to win and look respectful at the same time. He had jumped up from his chair as if stung when he was done reading.

He’s not perfect, Harry thought smugly. If he was, this plot would do no good at all, because he wouldn’t need anyone to complete him and he wouldn’t need interference in his life. But he still has that pride of his, and it needs to be humbled a little. Being lied to will be good for him.

“I couldn’t believe it.” Astoria clapped her hands, then clasped them together and smiled at him. “I was a little uncomfortable at first, because I couldn’t believe he wouldn’t figure it out. But now…”

“I know,” Harry assured her. “I knew he’d immediately suspect my friend Hermione, because not a lot of people know about the time he was Transfigured into a ferret and he couldn’t imagine a man daring to write him a love letter.” He felt a small pang as he said that, but resolutely squeezed that emotion out of his heart. That was just the way the real world was. “But when you start dropping references, it’s easier to think it must be you.”

“I owe you so much,” said Astoria, and her eyes had gone soft and misty.

Harry kissed her cheek. “Just be ready to receive the reply he sends me,” he said, and Apparated home while Astoria was still nodding.

Yes, the next best thing to being able to have Draco for myself is to be able to give him to someone like that.

*

“Granger.”

Five years since the war had not improved Granger’s looks a whit—or so Draco thought, until he got close to her and saw the coldness of her eyes. It appealed to him in a way that Astoria’s young-girl openness (until tonight, anyway) had not. She gave him a short nod. “Malfoy. I was working late, which is the only reason you’ve got an interview at all. What is it? Do you need to know more about house-elf laws?”

Draco sat down in a chair across from Granger’s desk, trying to decide what the best way would be to ask her about the letter. Granger looked back at him impassively. They were in the office she had long since earned in the Ministry. Draco found it easier to think about the office than about her position, the title of which shifted from week to week. Sometimes she was a special Undersecretary to the Minister; sometimes she worked with the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures; sometimes she was part of Law Enforcement. It depended on what her pet crusade was this time.

Draco would say one thing for her. Granger was an expert at winning crusades, not simply proposing them.

And that might be a reason she sent me this letter. Draco had wondered if it was Granger after all since Astoria confronted him, but he had to ask. Now he thought he might have a motive for it, if she had. A woman well-suited to winning crusades might decide she could win the heart of any man she wanted, even one considerably above her. He took the letter from his pocket and handed it to her. “I need to know if you wrote that,” he said quietly.

Granger’s eyes narrowed as she read. She said nothing, and the coldness of her expression didn’t change. Instead, she set the letter down on her desk, drew out a parchment, quill, and ink, dipped the quill, and wrote several quick lines, which she handed over to him.

Draco understood her point when he read the transcription of the first paragraph of the letter. Her handwriting looked nothing like the sample he’d received. And yet. “There are handwriting charms,” he said.

Granger waved her wand, still without uttering a sound. Her words on the paper swirled and changed. Draco compared them with the letter, and they looked nothing alike. Then Granger cast several more common disguise charms, and each time, her handwriting became unrecognizable from her original copy—but still nothing like the letter Draco had received.

Draco looked closely at her and cast a small charm that would tell him if Granger’s heartbeat or breathing changed in the next few moments, which were some of the telltale signs of a lie. “Did you send it with another disguise charm, perhaps?’

Granger finally spoke, and her voice was icy and disdainful enough to make Draco admire her. “That you immediately decided on me as the plausible explanation irritates me beyond belief, Malfoy. For the record, no, I did not write you this letter. Plenty of people saw you transformed into a ferret; it happened in the open, remember? Now, whether all of them remembered that incident, I can’t say. But I know Ron has talked about it in the Ministry before and even enchanted an inkwell to bounce like you. Anyone could have overheard him.”

Draco bowed his head slightly and stood. Astoria looked like the more likely suspect after all. “Thank you, Granger, for granting my request for an interview.”

Granger smiled tightly at him and flicked her wand again. The sample of her handwriting Draco clutched dissolved into ashes. “You’re welcome, Malfoy,” she said, and turned back to her files.

If Granger was a pure-blood, with greater beauty and more money and less of a work ethic so that she could devote herself to me, Draco thought, as he took his leave, I might not mind her being the letter-writer.

And then he shook his mind free of that thought, and free as well of the plan to use his Auror connections to get Weasley sent on a humiliating assignment next week. He had a letter to compose.

*

Harry’s throat tightened when he opened the window to Grimoire, who had flown to Draco’s house for an answer this morning. Even though Grimoire wasn’t a snowy owl, his eyes still looked far too much like Hedwig’s for comfort.

He sighed and accepted the letter, tossing the owl a scrap of his bacon as thanks. It was a long time ago, Harry, and you need to stop thinking about it. Draco would probably say that you’re weak for feeling that emotion.

Yet another reason that Draco and I will never belong together.

Harry shook his head and tore open the envelope. If he should stop thinking about anything, it was what he couldn’t have and had already reconciled himself to not having.

He paused when he got a whiff of the letter. Draco had used scented paper. Harry didn’t think he recognized the smell, but it was musty and woodsy. He sneezed, then raised an eyebrow. There’s probably some symbolic significance there that Astoria would recognize in a moment.

He couldn’t savor the scent, and he had no excuse for putting off the reading, so he looked at the letter.

My writer,

I must call you that as you have given me no name.

You might think the pronoun “my” presumptuous, possessive, paralyzing. But I do not. You are proposing to enter into the most intimate of relationships with me—that of opponent and critic. Many people have aspired to enter that position in the past, but not so many in the last few years. I warn you, my standards have only grown stricter rather than slackening. I want someone who can understand the thoughts that pass through my head, who will use me as a whetstone and allow me to sharpen myself on her.

Harry smiled a little. “Astoria will understand those thoughts,” he said aloud, but his eyes had already skipped down to the next paragraph.

That you have chosen to approach me in mystery adds an intriguing potential to your offer. One can see this as weakness; you do not feel yourself strong enough to speak openly—

Harry snorted and rattled the paper. “Keep dreaming, Malfoy.”

But one can also see it as strength. You fling me a challenge of your own, and dare me to dig under the surface. If I cannot find out who you are and pin the letters to you beyond the shadow of a doubt, then I am as unworthy of you as many others would doubtless say you are unworthy of me.

I could never resist a challenge. And in the last few years I think I have shown myself more than fit to meet one.

The dance is begun, my writer. I will find you. I will make you confess, in the end, that you have written these letters. I will make you soften the mouth that you would use to speak harsh criticisms and open it to admit my tongue.

I am coming.

My writer,
I am your
Draco Malfoy.

Harry swallowed at the end of the letter, and closed his eyes. Part of him didn’t want to show this to Astoria. It seemed so intimate.

And part of him was worried that Draco would keep his word and track the letters to their real source.

Then Harry shook his head. Astoria is their real source, and you’re worrying over nothing. And he thinks he’s writing to a woman, remember? Or he wouldn’t be that open with the flirtation. There’s more than one reason he’ll never figure out that it’s you.

Hermione had told him about Draco’s very strange visit to her. She had, of course, recognized his handwriting on the letter. And she had warned Harry sharply about playing games with Malfoy, but she hadn’t given him away or told him to stop.

And there had never been a sign, she said, that he had considered Ron or Harry as the letter writers.

Men aren’t even on his map as lovers. He thinks the writer must be a woman, and that will have him looking in the wrong direction. And even if he did find out some distant day, by then he’ll be in love and willing to forgive what happened. If he despises me, it’s no more than he already did.

Before he copied the letter and sent the copy to Astoria, Harry did trace two words with one lingering finger.

My writer.

But then he sighed, and went to make the man he loved happy.

Chapter 3.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

qumabh.livejournal.com

Oh boy... This is getting fun. I'm suckered in to yet another of your WIPs... *head downcast* why do I do this to myself. I'll wait patiently for the next chapter. I love the "My Writer" signature. *g*

~Mab

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Chapter Two of 'Providence'- What Draco Malfoy Read

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