Draco

Been sick. Will post when feeling better (and caught up with work, sadly). *snugs*

Draco moves quite quickly down the street. The fury he'd shoved away back in the cafe was seeping through cracks in his Occlumency veils, and he didn't particularly care to wall them off - not now, anyway.

It's probably just as well no one's home.

Tempting as it is to linger ... to break things ... Draco limits himself to slamming the door to his room open and summoning his broom. He does so with such force that the thing nearly breaks his hand when it whips towards him, and Draco swears. A quick sip of a potion deals with any potential swelling and most of the pain. Grabbing the suitcase full of Quidditch balls that he'd picked up when he and ... the one who he'd really prefer not to think about right now, lest he go back and hex his bits off ... had first talked about Quidditch, he slams the door behind him with his magic.

Somehow, doing it that way isn't quite as satisfying.

Once outside, Draco shrinks the suitcase, pockets it, and flies to Charlie's place.

Continued from this thread.

Draco Side-Along Apparates Potter to a clearing surrounded by trees, on the very edge of Margate. You can't hear the sea from here, partially because of burbling of the stream that feeds the pond in front of them. It's peaceful, and Draco feels his tension draining away already. Part of that is because this is where he's spent a fair bit of his time over the past month, and he's grown used to the solitude and the quiet.

Part of that is because Potter's here with him, and there's no one to judge or comment on what happens.

Draco finds it ironic that after a month away, a month of training himself to examine his emotions in minute detail, a month of certainty that the discomfort he felt around Potter was due to their enmity, and not due to any sort of actual feelings - well, after less than a couple of hours back, he'd found himself wound up in even more complicated tangles of emotion where his ex-nemesis was concerned.

The time away has done something good, however. Draco knows himself now. He'd changed a lot in the months after the war - and before, even - and he'd never managed to truly work through what those changes were. He'd been running on instinct and habit; unfortunately, whatever instinct told him, habit contradicted (and vice versa). He'd needed the time away to reconcile his new beliefs with his old, and prune the latter.

So the fact that he's still fascinated with Potter (he can't use the word "attracted" yet, self-knowledge or not) is rather telling.

And now Potter is here with him, in the place where he'd done the most soul-searching. Draco watches Potter warily, concealing it behind a facade of cool consideration.

"Here we are."

It feels almost strange to be out and about in Margate again, after his self-imposed exile. And no, he hadn't been sulking ... well, not much. He'd been thinking.

And re-evaluating himself.

And deciding that maybe this wasn't such a bad place to be, considering. It's not like his life back home had been going all that well, and here - here he had a chance to make a new start. Or rather, to be the person he used to be, with the changes that came from having many of his beliefs torn apart.

If they'd been torn apart, though, Draco finally admitted, then they couldn't have been that strong to begin with. Or that worthy.

Now he's curious to see what's happened while he's been away - and at the back of his mind, though he still would prefer not to acknowledge it, he'd kind of like to see Harry.

And Reno, of course, he hastens to add, even in the privacy of his own mind; and he'll need to talk to Lucius and Rabastan to apologize for his rather abrupt note, and no other communication since. He'd like to talk to Snape too and see if the other would be able to help him set up a Potions lab nearby his own so that he can help brew, and begin to experiment on his own.

Okay, so maybe some things haven't been completely settled, and he's still not entirely comfortable with some of the changes he's seeing in himself. But he's willing to explore where they lead now, and that's a start.

So he goes to the coffee shop, and picks up a coffee, and settles down outside, to watch and think.


OOC: So sorry for the long absence - problems in RL. *snugs everyone* I hope you'll let me jump back in now and not hate me! ♥

It's been a long few days, but Draco now has a place to stay - for as long as he wants it, though the flat is small enough that he's keeping an eye out for other accomodations. Still, there's no hurry, and Draco appreciates the time to settle in and get used to this strange and not-strange place, with people who are as familiar as the back of his hand and yet completely different.

Even the ones he's pretty sure are from his version of reality.

Draco scowls at thinking of Potter yet again, and resolves (not for the first time) to ignore the Gryffindor's idiosyncracies. After all, it's nothing to him if Potter has completely lost his mind.

It's early, and Draco appears to be the only one up in the flat, so he's quiet as he pads about. Despite having had house-elves all his life, there are a few things he can fix ... tea, which he starts now; he can also make a mean omelette. He figures that he ought to take some lessons, since one of the three of them ought to be able to cook something. It's not that he minds going out to eat, but sometimes it's nice to not have to.

Tea steeping properly, he brings the pot and a cup and saucer (milk already poured) into the living room. The television takes up a fair bit of space on one wall, and, glancing at the remote and recalling Lucius' comments about Rabastan, he picks it up gingerly. It takes a bit of doing to turn it on, and even more to figure out how to turn on the sound. By the time his tea is ready and cooled slighly, however, he figures he's got the hang of it. Really, he can't figure out why Muggles are so fascinated by ...

... then he's distracted by Saturday cartoons, and his tea becomes cold beside him.

When Draco wakes up, it's light outside and his head feels like it's going to explode.

The spell he casts to deal with his hangover only solves part of the problem. He flops back on the bed and sighs. Then, realizing that he doesn't hear any movement from inside the apartment, he gets up quickly and grabs his things together. He listens at the door carefully before opening it a crack; when he still can't hear anything, and the place looks dark, he slips out the door and shuts it behind him. Tiptoeing down the hallway, Draco freezes at every small noise.

He's more relieved than he cares to admit when he makes it out the front door without running into his father or his father's lover.

After all, he'd only promised one night. He'd said nothing about being there in the morning.

Still ... Draco glances at the numbers on the door to remember for later, and then hurries down the stairs and out the front door in his bare feet. Time enough to get properly dressed when he was far enough away that it'd be unlikely for his father to find him.

Or anyone else that might have woken up.

It's been a ... well, a very tiring morning, really. Potter's here, and seems to be normal, and apparently so is his father. Things ... don't seem to be so normal there, and Draco's not quite sure what to do. He doesn't know who this "father" is, and he's certainly not going to approach him yet - not before he does some large amounts of research ... and prepares himself.

Not everyone *glares at Krycek* here has been bad, though. Which is why he finds himself following James (Norrington, not the other, whose name Draco prefers not to think) into the bar. Some days, the only solution seems to be to get entirely and completely smashed.

Draco can feel the bruise forming from where Krycek hit him. It will open up more questions than he cares to answer, so he goes looking for the one person he can trust who might be able to help him.

He finds Snape in the bar.

Although the Malfoys managed to keep their lands and fortune, escaping going to prison for their loyalty to the Dark Lord ... sorry, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named ... because of Narcissa's lies and Draco's unwitting help, life has not been easy for them. Many of their former allies despise them, seeing them as betrayers, and as the reason the Dark Lord's brilliant plan ended in his death. On the other side, even those who fought for their acquittal don't trust them. The Malfoys, it is true, have always been on their own side first and foremost, and it is difficult to trust those whose loyalty is but to themselves.

All this would be fine – or at least, possible to deal with – if it weren't for the wars going on at home. Draco can handle the disdain of others; he's arrogant enough to ignore it, and to use his pardon to bully others on to his side if necessary. The constant fighting and increasing hostility between his parents, however, is both beyond his control and something he cannot simply dismiss. Despite having been quite reluctantly on the Dark Lord's side in the later months of the war, Lucius has convinced himself that he was a devout and passionate follower; Narcissa's betrayal of the Dark Lord when she lied to him about Potter is therefore a betrayal of Lucius and their family. Draco, Lucius treats with contempt: Potter's victory is at least in part due to the fact that Draco was too weak to keep Potter from disarming him. Lucius has no time for such a disgrace to the Malfoy name.

Draco's honestly not sure how he ended up here at Margate. It had been a particularly difficult day, involving screaming fights between his parents, threatening his father when he'd attempted to hex his mother, having Goyle turn his back on him when he abandoned the house, and listening to Pansy tell her mother coolly, "It's no one," as she shut the door in his face. He remembered standing there, knowing that there was no one he could turn to and nowhere else he could go. He remembered his fist clenching around his wand as he closed his eyes and wished, for one desperate moment, that he could just find somewhere he was free, and safe, and away from all this!

And he stumbled, despite not moving, and opened his eyes, and found himself ... here.


Draco's not sure how it happened, but he must have stepped away from Pansy's door somehow, because now he's stumbling through sand, and there's the sound of the ocean in his ears. He's never heard of Apparating without knowing exactly where you wanted to Apparate to, but he's pretty sure that he hadn't planned on finding a beach, somewhere in southern England, from the feel of it.

It isn't until he tries to Apparate back home ... or rather, to a piece of Malfoy property that had been his hideaway of choice, lately ... and can't, that he begins to wonder.

Honestly, though, he's too tired to wonder for long. Instead, he finds a rock, and sits, and feels hollow and fragile. He'll deal, he'll remember he's a Malfoy ... but later. Right now, it's just all too much.