Draco Malfoy (apellon) wrote in regulation, @ 2008-04-04 19:20:00 |
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Current music: | tori amos - playboy mommy |
Entry tags: | astoria greengrass, draco malfoy |
don't judge me so harsh little girl
Who: Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass
Where: A Chinese restaurant in London
When: Backdated; 3rd April, lunch hour
What: Lunch, discussion of men, and a proposal.
Rating: PG
Status: Closed; complete.
In theory, Astoria hated Muggle London. It was all she had been brought up to despise: strange, magicless, and foreign within English borders. And yet, it was in many ways better than Wizarding London now as far as Astoria was concerned. It was no more rife with Muggles and their spawn who didn't know their place, and less full of ignorant plebians who looked down their noses at their betters, punishing said betters for crimes they themselves had committed, while loudly proclaiming their virtue and tolerance.
Muggle London was also cheaper, what with the exchange rate. Astoria changed money at Gringott's and ate there when she could. She could even take home leftovers if she could manage to transfigure the container before her mother saw it. Otherwise there was a lecture about proper wizarding conduct, every time. Astoria could almost hear her mother and quote her word for word on the subject.
She wished Draco would show up at the little Chinese restaurant before she drove herself crazy thinking about how much her mother would object to a lunch with an old friend.
A gust of wind whistled into the restaurant as the front door opened time and time again to let customers inside, and it cut through the thick air that was heavy with the scent of orange, spices and fried meat. Draco shut the door behind him quickly and bunched his gloves up in his fists, glancing around the small area of tables before catching sight of that dark head. With a nod to the nearest waiter, he balled his gloves up and stuck them in the left pocket of his grey peacoat before pulling it off and handing it away to be hung up on the hat tree. He moved briskly across the room, his strides as long as his limbs, and pressed a kiss to the crown of Astoria's head before collapsing down onto the chair across from her, crossing one leg over the other in one fluid movement.
"God Christ, I'm sorry I'm late," he drawled, digging into his shirt pocket and tapping out a cigarette before popping it between his lips. He was replied with a delicate cough from his left and he looked up to see the same waiter smiling down at him politely, his dark eyes moving slowly and pointedly over to the sign by the window. Right, Draco thought, slowly pulling the cigarette out and sliding it back into the silver case now resting on the table. The smoking ban...
If it hadn't been for the smoking ban, Astoria would have been ready to bum one off Draco. She pouted slightly as he put it away. "It's quite all right, darling. I'm just glad you could make it. I always worry they've asked you to do something horrid like feed salamanders without gloves." She shuddered delicately. It had nothing to do with the chill air inside the restaurant or the thinness of her sweater.
She gave Draco a fond smile, but her eyes were sparkling in that slightly malicious way he remembered from their schooldays. "Off the record, of course. Speaking of off the record, how are you?" The menu was in front of her and she was nominally looking at it. Draco knew that she always ordered the same thing, so he had her full attention.
"Dreadfully bored," Draco replied, the cigarette case now stashed away neatly in his pocket again. "I'm a paper and quill pusher, now, remember? They actually let me research things and write reports, if you can believe it." He smirked, though the humour from his expression waned. "They just dump all of the crap on me that they find too tedious to work through. Salamanders... crusty old reports... for the love of Merlin's dressing gown, I don't know what's worse." He fingered his own menu thoughtfully, knowing there was not much point in leafing through it when he would just settle with his customary Zhangcha duck. He could practically hear his mother rolling in her grave.
"And you?" he asked, after the waiter had asked for their drink orders. He didn't particularly care that he was ordering alcohol in the middle of the day; in fact, he deemed it quite necessary to get through the rest of the afternoon without wanting to slit his wrists with one of the secretary's many elaborate hair pins.
Astoria was a tea-drinker. Although she wasn't convinced that her mother was a borderline alcoholic, she had her suspicions. Watching her mother's drinking habits and the resulting behaviour was enough to keep Astoria on the straight and narrow. She let Draco's order pass without comment and answered his question instead.
"Work is the usual. Round of interviews with various Ministry press people, a smidge of investigative reporting, and just maybe a little time to work on my own projects." She'd never said it in so many words, but once she set her mind to rest about what had happened to Daphne, Astoria meant to write a history of the War, one that told the story from the point of view of someone less interested in licking the boots of the current powers-that-be in the Ministry than in something approaching the truth.
"And Mother is still convinced I should let old MacFusty ask me out. We had another discussion about it last week and I considered asking Chris if I could kip at his place for a couple of days while she was out of sorts about it. But she threw up her hands and said 'you'll do what you'll do, Astoria'--" and Astoria's tone and gesture were remarkably like her mother's "--and I can live with her sulking, so I didn't."
Dating old widowers who were looking to replace their dead sons was not Astoria's idea of a good time, no matter how wealthy they were.
Draco wrinkled his nose. "But he's so... ugly," he said, picking up his glass of Maotai and taking a small sip, his expression still twisted into a look of mild horror. "And I don't know why you still insist on hanging around Warrington," he said lightly. It was an old topic of conversation by now, but not old enough for Draco to leave alone, even after everything that had happened to him. "He's such a boring bastard." He smirked, bouncing his ankle slightly where his legs crossed. His back was straight as he sat up out of slouching position, ready to order the food.
"You know how Mother-" his voice only slightly wavered on the word; he'd grown used to saying it with conviction now that the memories had wilted, "-almost had me betrothed to Pansy. I remember the day she sat us down to dinner. The whole family was there and everyone was looking so fucking pleased. Unhappiest two hours of my life. Almost." He rolled his eyes. "Anyway. What I'm saying is, isn't this whole matchmaking business getting a little too... old world for us?"
The waiter came back with their drinks and took their orders. Astoria had sweet-and-sour pork, as always; it was boring and western and one of the least-expensive things on the menu. Once the server had departed with the menu, Astoria continued, "Look, she thinks that nothing has changed. Or that if I marry MacFusty that'll get us out of our flat and into nice clothes and a comfortable manor even if it is in some backwood of Scotland that makes Hogsmeade look sophisticated. And it's not like she'd have to shag him." Astoria let some of her disgust leak into her voice.
"And it's not as if there's anyone I'm madly in love with for her to feel like she's forcing it down my throat unwilling. Not that she'd care if I did." Insofar as Astoria had ever said to Draco, or anything he'd ever heard from mutual friends, she didn't really date. Occasionally she served as arm candy for suitable men, some of them old friends like Chris Warrington, but there was no hint that any of these attachments were romantic, at least on her end. There was no hint that she was a lesbian, either. Either she was sublimating a great deal or she simply didn't care.
"You and I should get married," he said, his eyes sparkling with good humour. He tapped her leg lightly with his foot underneath the table. "That'd really piss her off, no? We could live in fabulous squalor and have as many men on the side as we like." His grin turned slightly sad and he shrugged a shoulder, picking up his glass of Maotai again, thin fingers wrapped around the cold glass snugly. "You're barely twenty-five, darling," he said, leaning forward a bit and letting his hand rest on her thin wrist for a moment. "It's the new fifteen, apparently. You have more things to worry about - your career, for one. Forget old McFuckface. He'll live, and so will your mother."
Astoria did not say That's too bad about her mother because it was unnecessarily cruel to Draco, and he hardly deserved that. "Good Wizarding ladies don't have careers, Draco," she pointed out, although he knew it as well as she. "It's like the war never happened. I swear, there are times when I think she thinks she can just pick up and go to tea at--Warrington Manor." The stumble from not speaking of Draco's old home was slight. "Sometimes I think she's going to end up on one of the long-term wards at St. Mungo's. In which case," she said, her voice gone soft and teasing, "I shall certainly consider taking you up on your generous offer."
She turned her wrist under his fingers and let her thumb brush along the edge of his hand, smiling. "We'll unite two of the great old names and take over the world with sarcasm and cheap fashion."
Draco snorted and squeezed her hand, a surprisingly warm gesture for someone with such thin fingers and pale skin. "Merlin, my parents would be so proud," he said with a wry smile, his hand finally slipping from hers when the waiter came by to give them their food. The smell of the sauces and meat wafted up between them, creating a thin wall of steam, and Draco blinked a bit, sitting back and picking up the napkin by his elbow.
"And don't talk such rubbish," he said, snapping back into the conversation when the waiter disappeared. "Of course you can focus on your career, it's the twenty-first-sodding-century. I know most people walk around Diagon like their stuck in some sort of Medieval time-warp, or God forbid, the sixties, but we're moving forward." He laughed shortly. "Well, you are."
"I don't have any choice," Astoria pointed out as she settled her own napkin in her lap. "But I'm not sorry. I mean, Draco, if we'd won I'd be married to somebody quite possibly as horrible as MacFusty right now and popping out little pureblooded babies. I mean, I love Andi--that's Chris' niece--but can you imagine me as a mother? I'd be quite as awful as my own mother. The house-elves would be raising my children to send off to Hogwarts and pass their NEWTs and take important Ministry jobs and marry and have their own children. And my daughter would do the same thing. I'm not sorry it's over, even if my mother can't see it."
Astoria started struggling with her chopsticks, a task made more difficult by the fact that she was more interested in what she was saying to Draco than her lunch.
"I want the Greengrass name to mean something better than that. And I'm good at what I do. There's no reason I should be ashamed of it or have to hide it just because it doesn't fit someone else's ideas of propriety. Besides, somebody has to be in a position to expose all those sanctimonious Ministry thugs for the hyprocrites they are when they finally overstep themselves while wrenching their shoulders from patting themselves on the back."
Draco listened intently to Astoria with a blank expression that only broke when he reached forward to stop a piece of pork from rolling off her plate, grabbing it with his own chopsticks with well-practiced precision and popping it into his own mouth, his expression arch as he chewed. "Jesus Christ, Astoria," he said, his voice muffled. He swallowed, continuing on his own lunch. "Sometimes I think you're an even bigger drama queen than I am." He smiled warmly at her, though, tapping her leg again underneath the table with the toe of his boot.
"Everyone's glad it's over," he said quietly, finally breaking eye-contact and shuffling a few pieces of meat around his plate, though he wasn't sure they were talking about quite the same thing.
Astoria returned the footsie nudge in a way she'd never have dared to when Daphne was alive. "We're all glad it's over. We're mostly even glad about how it turned out." She smiled, and it wasn't bitter so much as wistfully regretful.
"I just wish," she said after a moment, "that the winners had turned out to be who they told us all they were. But it's not like they were lying to us, Draco. They were lying to themselves."
Draco just wished he hadn't put so much faith and effort into a lost cause, a cause that he could barely comprehend now, Merlin knew how he understood it when he was sixteen. He wasn't fighting for anyone but his family. Wherever they went, he was sure to follow. That had nothing to do with Bad Faith. Or Harry Potter.
"Yes, well," he said after a long sigh, fingers itching to hold a cigarette instead of a pair of chopsticks. "That much is obvious now, isn't it? Everyone got their comeuppance." He stabbed a piece of duck with the pointed end of his chopstick a little too hard and the plate made a shrill scraping noise. "I had no idea I'd be repenting my sins over lunch," he muttered, squeezing his fingers together and reaching for his wine with his free hand. "Please, must we talk about this?"
"Of course not." Astoria's expression softened. "I'm sorry, Draco. I just--Mother upsets me so when she gets like that. There's no pleasing her and she won't let it go."
She closed her eyes. "And she insisted I take her to dinner at one of her friends' houses two weeks ago and MacFusty was there and his hands were--" and she visibly shuddered. Instead of finishing the sentence, she opened her eyes again.
"If that's what it's like, well--" and she made a little gesture with the hand holding her chopsticks "--no wonder, Draco. I wouldn't either."
Draco's nose wrinkled exaggeratedly and he chewed slowly, almost as if the waiter had accidentally served him fried toad. "How horrifying," he muttered, unable to let go of his expression though it had waned somewhat on his features. "I was hit on last night," he said, abruptly changing the subject and raising his eyebrows as he gazed down at his plate thoughtfully. It was hardly new information, but at least it was directing the conversation to lighter, more manageable tones. "He looked like Crabbe and kept calling me a woman, it was awful. I'm sure I've seen him around work before. Maybe I have a stalker. He seemed to appear out of thin air."
His expression morphed into a frown as he trapped a piece of thin meat and leaves between the ends of his chopsticks, squeezing them tight together before popping the food between his lips.
Astoria was more than ready to let the subject of the old man who'd backed her into a corner go by the wayside. She chased an errant bit of her dinner around her plate ineffectually with her chopsticks. "I should hope not. At least not one without sense enough to tell whether you're a man or a woman. Do you want me to investigate him? I'd think if he were hanging about your office, you'd be in a better position to do that, given your job. But if you get a lead on him--I could look in the morgue for more."
"Astoria, I don't think he's a rabid serial killer!" Draco snorted, then frowned again. "At least... I hope he isn't." He looked up toward the far wall of the restaurant and tried to figure out where, exactly, he'd seen the other man before. Perhaps it wasn't in the office - maybe from school? He could've been a Wizard, but he certainly hadn't been in Slytherin. Or Gryffindor, for that matter.
He shrugged. "I don't know, maybe I'm just going crazy."
Astoria gave her chopsticks an annoyed glare, complete with pout, and set them aside in favour of her fork. "Or maybe he looked like someone you know and it was dark. And nobody thinks he's a serial killer, Draco. Just because you're curious doesn't mean you're afraid." She nudged him under the table with her foot. "Maybe you want to know which one of your coworkers needs to be certified blind by your Healer. Preferably before he gropes you. If he looks like Crabbe, I assume he's not your type." The wicked little smile was a sign that she was teasing him.
"Certified blind?" Draco asked, arching one slender eyebrow. "Is that supposed to be an insult? Cheap shot, Greengrass." He nudged her foot back. "And of course he's not my type - Merlin almighty, Crabbe?" He shuddered slightly, leaving a few pieces of meat on his plate as he placed his chopsticks over it and reaching for the napkin by his elbow. "That's... no, that's horrifying, I can't even bear to think about it."
"You were the one who said he mistook you for a girl," Astoria reminded Draco. "Could be worse, though. He could look like Millicent Bulstrode. Of course," she mused artlessly, "there was never that much difference between her and Crabbe, was there?"
Draco grinned wickedly. "Oh, you're evil." He wiped his fingers against the napkin in his hand before scrunching it up and resting it on his plate on top of his chopsticks. "I didn't say he thought I was woman, I said he kept calling me one. Like he thought it was endearing or something ridiculous like that. Talk about insulting."
Astoria took the last bite of her lunch and set down her fork. "Maybe he thought it was a compliment. Like calling you an angel. Although you do seem to be missing the wings for that." She made a show of looking at Draco's shoulders as she set her napkin on the table.
Rolling his eyes, Draco leaned back a bit as the waiter stopped by to clear up their plates. "Calling me an angel and calling me a woman are two completely different things. You should have seen everyone around us, Astoria, it was like a pack of hyenas." He pulled out his wallet before she could reach for her handbag, just as the waiter dropped the bill off beside his empty glass. "Whatever. I just hope I'm wrong and he doesn't work with me. I have enough problems in that place."
Draco always paid and Astoria knew she should make an issue of it. But it was nice to be wanted solely for the pleasure of her company. "Maybe I should start digging up dirt on all your coworkers on general principle then." She started to add something about having a few extra spells up his sleeve, but thought better of it, under the circumstances.
Draco snorted. "You do that, darling." The waiter took his money and he pulled up his shirt sleeve, glaring down at his watch with mild contempt, his nostrils flaring just the slightest bit. "Speaking of coworkers..." He stood slowly and offered Astoria his hand. "I'm going to be late back from lunch. I might expect a few glares and eyerolls." He grinned. "Such menacing people, they are."
Astoria came to her feet with a bit of nominal assistance from Draco. "They're all full of fewmets. Bark worse than bite, I'm sure." She leaned over and gave him a very light kiss on the cheek: not enough to disturb even the most fragile of cosmetic charms. "Thank you for taking me to lunch, darling. It's always a pleasure."