Eyes Open by: orphan_account

XXVII. Left Behind

July 25 th , 2004

She's in his flat.

She's in his fucking flat.

He doesn't understand why she's here, of all people. Why not Pansy? Why not Blaise? Why not Theo? There are a number of people who have known him and his mother longer and better. Instantly, he's berating himself for not warding his door properly. He ignores her, leaning back in his arm chair and clutching his fire whiskey harder. I don't want to hear her bullshit.

She sits down on the sofa to his left and watches him as he takes a long draught and relishes the firestorm that crashes down his throat, along with the slowly growing buzzing sensation wrapping around his brain.

"You haven't been at work," she explains. "And Kingsley asked me to check on you."

Ah, so it's Kingsley. Despite his annoyance at her trespassing, he would have preferred her to say something more along the lines of, "I was worried about you, so I came here to see if you were okay."

"Go back to the office," he tells her, and cringes at how slurred his words are. How much had he drunk? Bottles sit, cross-legged and piqued with their abandonment, around the armchair, but his vision is too blurry for him to count them.

"Are... are you okay, Malfoy?"

"I'm fine." His words tumble, clumsy and heavy, from between his lips. They fall to the floor between them, among the gathering of bottles. She stares at them, and he stares at her.

"You're obviously not fine," she says with a sniff. "This whole place reeks of fire whiskey, and you can barely keep your eyes open, and you look... well, you look like hell."

"Thank you, Granger, for that bloody brilliant assessment. I'm sure these are the sort of observational skills the Ministry is paying you 500 galleons a month for," he replies sarcastically. "You're right, as always—I am in fact drunk, and I probably do look like hell. But I'm quite fine, thank you very much, and I would appreciate it if you would get the fuck out of my flat."

"I saw the article. In The Prophet." The words drift down from her mouth as if by parachute, and they hit the floor with soft, quiet feet. He expects her to tell him that she is sorry for his loss, or that his mother will be sorely missed, or some other complete bullshit that Gryffindors tend to make up, if for no other reason than to make their own damn selves feel better.

But instead, she stands up and walks over to him, her footsteps making not one sound. Her hands fall to his shoulders, soft as snowflakes and edelweiss, and she leans down to press her lips against his forehead. They brush the loose strands that hang over his eyes.

The kiss (it wasn't even on his lips!) has him frozen. He can hardly even breathe. Surprise has seized his limbs, taking them in a bone-crunching, inescapable grip. He closes his eyes.

"I'll tell Kingsley you're taking a bit of a holiday," she says, and her lips are moving against his forehead. He's suddenly self-conscious—does he really smell that badly? Is she regretting coming this close to him?

After the pressure of her hands leaves his shoulders and her mouth, from her forehead, she reaches for the bottle of fire whiskey. He loosens his grip and allows her to take it, and she sets it down on the floor among its comrades.

And then she's gone, and Draco could fool himself into thinking she had never come at all, if not for the trace of cinnamon scent she's left behind.