Turning the Page

Draco’s existence begins to feel more like living. 

He is sleeping better, with less nightmares. He can almost string six hours together in a row without a nightmare.

Work feels like a daily chance to escape reality. He’s read nearly a dozen books over the last two weeks, starting with muggle authors he’d heard of and then taking recommendations from the regular patrons.

He’d read a romance that took place in the Scottish Highlands that made him blush harder than any conversation with his Slytherin friends in school ever had. Trust 94-year-old Mrs. Kinsey to recommend the strong stuff.

When Laura hands him his first paycheck, he doesn’t quite feel like he’s earned it.

Still, he takes the whole thing out in muggle currency and spends all of it in an afternoon. Some of it on groceries, some on a new jumper, and the rest on an appointment with his tattoo artist.

His sleeve, taking up three quarters of his right arm, is nearly complete. It’s finally healed enough for another session. 

He’d chosen to use the ingredients from several of the calming potions he could brew with his eyes closed. Vines, leaves, thorns, and flowers all spun to make a beautiful design in thin black ink. His own kind of healing. 

His other arm, still marred by the Dark Mark, was the reason for his new appointment.

He’d finally settled on what to do about the cursed stain he’d chosen to take on nearly a decade ago.

“And you don’t want me to touch up these lines?” Louis, his tattoo artist asks, running his gloved hand over the faded lines of the mark.

“Just the flowers,” Draco confirms.

“It’s a pretty intense tattoo to have faded so much already. What- did you get it done when you were twelve?” Louis laughs, prepping the ink and everything on a small metal table.

“I was sixteen,” he shrugs.

Of course, Louis doesn’t know that the runes and numbers on his neck are from prison. Just like he doesn’t know that the mark isn’t really a tattoo.

Which is why he’d been confused by Draco’s concept.

Narcissus flowers strung together in a wreath around the mark. The constellation he had etched into his chest was his first tribute to his mother, to remember all she had given him.

Now, her namesake would be laid around the mark as his second.

Narcissa Malfoy had died a year ago today, while Draco was in Azkaban.

“Sixteen? What is it? Some band you were obsessed with?”

Not exactly. 

“Something like that,” he lies vaguely.

“And you’re sure you don’t want any colour?”

“I’m sure,” he nods, thinking of the tattoos that stretch over about thirty percent of his body at this point. It’s all thin black ink, chipping away at the porcelain sheen of his skin.

Black and white. Clean, stark, beautiful.

“How’s the new job?”

Draco had mentioned it on the muggle telephone.

“Fine. I work just around the corner, at a bookstore.”

“I know the one you are talking about. I’ve stopped in a couple times. You work with that smoke show?”

Now, Draco is not the only patron in the shop tonight, but he is the only one who winces without even having the needle touch his skin.

It’s an embarrassing reaction to a question he certainly wasn’t expecting.

He must be talking about Granger.

Laura is in her forties, and while she has an immense amount of kindness, Draco wouldn’t describe her as a smoke show.

Not that he would describe Granger as a smoke show.

Or anyone.

It’s a ridiculous term. Especially to describe a woman.

Though, Granger certainly has blossomed, even from the lovely young witch he’d stared after for a bit too long in sixth year.

She’s just as pale, and her hair is just as wild, but she’s filled out a bit. Not in a bad way.

Kill him now.

“I work alone, usually,” Draco pushes Granger’s soft smile from his mind.

Louis nods and finally sets to work on Draco’s forearm.

It takes him a minute to get used to the sting, but once it settles, he closes his eyes.

Of course, thanks to the twat muggle currently inking him, Granger’s face is there in his mind.

Could he draw it from memory?

He doesn’t spend a long time looking at her. Sure, they spent a few more afternoons translating together, and he tended to watch her compare samples of faerie writings with interest. 

But no- he couldn’t capture the slope of her nose and the angle of her bowed lips.

“Are you doing okay?”

Draco opens his eyes and looks down, grateful for the hand blocking his view of the mark.

“I’m fine,” he nods, wondering what look he’d had on his face that prompted such a question.

Fae language. That’s a better distraction. He’s been studying the language more since Granger had expressed her dismay at the number of holes in academia regarding the social and political interactions among faeries.

Shoving Granger from his mind, he runs through the alphabets of each language he is familiar with and then forms a few hypotheses about communicating amongst lesser species that Granger might be interested in.

Fuck. She’s everywhere.

Though, it isn’t strange. They work together. She’s practically the only person he interacts with.

Perhaps he should reach out to Pansy, or even Blaise. He couldn’t be called a Death Eater. His mummy never would have let him join.

But how is he meant to communicate with someone in another country without any form of magical communication?

And where is Theo? Not that Draco can see him. He’s definitely a known Death Eater. At least in the imbecilic eyes of the ministry.

“I’m just going to wrap it and then you’re all set. Same care instructions as the other arm,” Louis pulls him from his thoughts, wrapping the piece with some sort of clear material. Draco’s been too nervous to ask what it is.

Draco mumbles an agreement, staring at the new form his mark has taken.

It’s perfect.

The flowers are nestled in tight to the thick lines of the snake and the skull seems less menacing beside the full petals of the Narcissus flower.

“It’s perfect,” he informs the man who had just spent nearly two hours tattooing him.

They settle up at the front and Draco makes an appointment for the last segment of his right arm. It needs another month or two to heal before they can get into the shading and the top six inches of his arm.

Slipping on his winter coat, he emerges into the cool night air and heads for his apartment.

When he gets there, he wastes no time in pulling off his jacket and the jumper he’d worn to work and then his appointment.

He grabs a white t-shirt from his bedroom and sets out to make himself supper.

He’s nearly done pouring off pasta when someone knocks on his door.

“One minute,” he calls out, assuming it is one of his neighbours. 

Now, Draco wasn’t exactly proud of it, but he made for an excellent neighbour. He was quiet, courteous, and he could reach the switch on the electric box when it went haywire.

Putting down the pot and the towel in his hands he crosses to the door and opens it.

“Hello,” Hermione Granger greets him, one hand raised in an awkward hello and the other holding her son’s hand.

Draco steps back out of surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

She looks harried. There is a bag over her shoulder that looks heavy.

“Come in,” he says, not waiting for a response to his very fair question.

Granger nudges Levi in ahead of her and he looks around the space with wide eyes.

“I’m so sorry to just show up like this, but I was at home when Laura floo called and said she accidentally opened the cursed box that Mr. Geoffreys brought in last night and I have to go help her,” Granger rushes out each word like it is directly tied to the one before it.

“How do you know where I live?”

“Laura has it on file. Well, she has it written on a post that she stuck to the wall of the store,” she explains, shifting the bag on her shoulder.

Fantastic. Because Draco desperately wants people to be able to find him here.

“What are you doing here?”

He feels a bit thick at the moment.

Like he’s just a few seconds behind reality.

"Can you please just watch him for an hour, maybe two, three tops?"

Where the fuck is Pansy? Or Potter? Or any other number of people that should be watching Granger's kid before him?

“What?”

“You’re the closest, and I couldn’t reach anyone else. I think Pansy’s on a date. He won’t be any trouble, I swear,” she says emphatically.

Draco turns his head to find that Levi is sitting at the table, quietly playing with a toy that he thinks is shaped like a hippogriff.

Of bloody course.

“I can’t watch your kid, Granger,” he huffs.

“Well I don’t really have another option and Laura could be in peril, so you have to,” she declares.

Laura. Right. He’d feel awful if anything happened to her.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” 

“Pop him in front of the telly, he’ll be quiet as a mouse. Thank you, Draco. Levi, I’ll be back soon. Be good,” she hurries out, stepping into the hall and dashing out of view before Draco can even say-

“But I don’t have a telly.”

She’s gone and she’s left him with her son.

Draco turns around, closing the door and offering a smile to the small child.

“Hello,” he says, crossing back into the kitchen where his pasta has stuck together in a great lump of starch.

“Hello,” Levi parrots back.

Draco tries to think of what to do with the kid, but there is literally nothing to do in his apartment.

“What’s that?” 

Draco turns to figure out what Levi is talking about but the boy is just staring at him.

Unnerving.

“What is what?”

Levi points now, at Draco’s arm.

He panics but then realises Levi is looking at the potions ingredients on his right arm and not the mark on his left.

“One second. Don’t move,” Draco instructs, heading into his room and grabbing his jumper.

Once it is on, he pushes up just his right sleeve and emerges only to be pleased to find Levi just where he left him.

“It’s a tattoo,” he explains, extending his arm to show Levi how it curves around his entire forearm.

Levi looks baffled but when he reaches out and traces the line of a root of asphodel, he smiles.

“Did you draw it?” 

“I did. But someone else drew it on my arm,” he says.

“I can draw,” Levi informs him and Draco smiles.

Perfect. 

“Come on,” he offers a hand to Levi and the young boy takes it, climbing down from his seat.

Draco hasn’t got anything to entertain a child in his apartment, but he knows someone who does.

Just down the hall, Kelly Hawke lives with her two children.

Draco had helped her install a light fixture in her kitchen.

Apparently the overalls lent him a fix-it-type personality to those he shared a building with.

Luckily, she is home and she has a large assortment of colored writing utensils, which Draco had become quite the fan of, even though they have muggle origins.

Who could have guessed the ingeniousness of the pen?

Arms full of drawing utensils and paper, Levi and Draco trek back to his apartment.

Draco only has the one kitchen chair so he settles them on the floor.

Sure, his mother would have found it appalling, but then again, his whole current lifestyle would send her off the deep end.

Levi is exactly as Granger assured. Quiet, polite, and intelligent.

Not only can he draw several magical creatures with frightening accuracy, but he tells Draco more about them than Draco ever knew.

Not all of it is particularly interesting, but with Levi’s adorably tendency to drop his p’s, it’s entertaining.

When a knock sounds at the door again, Draco is a tad bit saddened.

He’d enjoyed not being alone in his apartment for once.

“Come on in,” he shouts from his position lying next to Levi.

Draco had done his own drawing. 

A large dragon with bright red wings and rows and rows of sharp teeth. He shoves it under a stack of paper, not sure if Granger would approve of it as kid friendly.

She looks less panicked but in more disarray. Her hair has grown, much like it used to in potions.

She is staring at the both of them but Levi hops up and runs to hug her.

“Hello love. Did you and Draco have a good time?” Granger asks but she is looking more at Draco for confirmation that nothing awful happened.

“We had an excellent time,” Draco stands up too, hating the strain in his muscles and the tight feeling in his back.

Too long on the floor.

“Thank you for watching him. Laura and I managed to get things under control.”

Draco nods, not sure how to respond to a grateful Granger.

“I better get him to bed. See you at work,” she picks Levi up, looking at the drawing in his hand with wide impressed eyes. “Did you draw this? This is incredible!”

Draco smiles and walks them to the door.

“See you at work,” he says as they leave, neither one paying him any attention.

This time, when he shuts the door and turns back to an empty apartment, a pang shoots through him.