Wolves without teeth
Your boss deserves the credit of being observant, picking up on the slightest noise and strain of movements around him. How much more if its in an enclosed space such as his office?
Slow days hardly ever comes often in your job, and to occupy yourself, you took the liberty of clearing the disposed parchment papers from wastebaskets.
Draco would take a notice over your little habit, of course, but he makes no word about it - especially in your absent mutterings as you tallied your nth paper crane. Your purpose for reusing the papers? He clearly has no idea, apart from the assumption that you're doing it at the expense of your own amusement to pass time.
But what use do you have for a nine hundred and eighty-sixth paper crane?
He's constantly curious, asks himself more often than not. He knows that you would find the job to be fairly tedious as much as the next person, having been stuck with paperworks and escorting him to Ministry hearings. But you, being his assistant, is it that overtly dull working with him, that it compelled you to fold up your...
"Nine hundred and eighty-ninth,"
"Sir?" you asked before you could blink, halting your own actions of creasing the paper crane neatly.
"You're losing count,"
Him having to take part in your little world always surprised you, but you always surprised him with the little things at most. But he keeps that to himself, you needn't to know...
Maybe it kept him human as much as it did to you - grounded, at most. For you to confide in him and casually relax in his presence despite of his past infamy as you go about in your oddities at a professional setting. Unbeknownst to you - even to him, on many occassions - you drew him in in your little world with such wonder.
To him, you were interesting, like a surrealist riddle. Perhaps, a breath of fresh air, for you to surround and engulf him in the comforting mundanity you bring upon. He knew he intimidated you as your higher-up, but never in the reasoning that he was one of the contemptuous and despicable Death Eaters in his time. But, he hoped, you already considered this thing of the past, so as you'd accept him as he is right now, despite of it all...
He smiles, "It's nine hundred and eighty-ninth. You skipped the count."
"Oh," you dried up wryly, "I kind of hoped it was nine hundred and ninety-first."
"If it were," he starts, "what use do you have for a nine hundred and ninety-first? Much less a nine hundred and eighty-ninth?" he trailed off in the latter, like an afterthought.
"I have been working on this for months,"
"I could tell..."
And there was that stance of yours again, pursing your lips and readjusting your seat like you were about to say an interesting trivia to a child. "Did you know, there's a Japanese belief that goes: When you folded up a thousand paper cranes, a wish of yours could be granted, and luck shall come forth along with it."
It was a trivia indeed.
Draco deadpanned, "In that case, you could have just strung up a djinn instead."
"Ooh, I know this one!" you tittered, "djinns are angry, vengeful spirits. And I'd very much like to have all my limbs intact, thank you very much."
You always had something to say. Sometimes, it made him smile to himself, or contemplate fleetingly as he worked on his desk.
Draco examines your demeanor like he always did. Every crack and pore, and slight movements of your face muscles that would indicate your emotions. "Opportunists would always risk a limb or more to get a hold of their wishes, like...getting a hoard of golden treasures."
"Well, I'm an opportunist too, Mr Malfoy." You chuckled at him, "But I'm not suicidal enough to chase the drive of greed. What use do I have for riches when I'm living my best life?"
Almost everything, you could supply with words of such grandeur.
The challenge of morale and ideas piqued him to counter yours with his own. To test your own capacity of coming up with your reasoning.
"A comfortable life," Draco then takes a sheet of used parchment to fold a paper crane for himself. "Lifelong subsistence and happiness."
"I already have a comfortable life and the means of subsistence by working," you said without breaking your stead of certainty, "I am content with my personal pursuit of happiness and the pain that comes along with it. I'll embrace life as it is."
"Ah," Draco nods at your words stiffly, "what if people had their fill of the pain they feel?"
You stared dead into his eyes, seemingly as though the reality slipped and dissipated at the fleeting moment when you both shared the silence. Draco wished his unsaid words resonated in you, all left in the dark for too long. That you will figure him out as much as you watered down your philosophical judgements.
"It's only too late to try when you're already dead."
Draco's mind drifted back to Astoria in a whiplash, and his sweetest memory when he reached the pinnacle of his happiness when he first saw his son, Scorpius. He was proud, too elated that it made his heart ache and tear up while he held the infant in his arms for the first time.
Maybe that also went through the mind of his late wife before she had gone. The last sliver of happiness she could taste before she left both Draco and Scorpius.
Maybe Astoria hoped that Scorpius would carry and manifest the reminder of her love. Draco recalled the nights when both she and him laid amongst the rumpled sheets after they made love, thoughts running hazy and muddled due to the exhaustion seeping into their body and souls.
She would stare at her sworn husband, with child-like wonder as she carressed his cheek. Like she wasn't dying at all.
Like they would stay in the nirvana in eternity as they savored their love for each other.
Maybe it was the enchanted ceiling of their bedroom, but Draco saw the entire montrosity of the cosmos in her glassy eyes. It was beautiful.
She was beautiful.
Too kind and compassionate for his own sake.
"I want you to be happy," she would say.
"I already am," he would say back.
Her smile - all too knowing - it scared him. He knew what it was, and what it implied.
"Not for long,"
"That will suffice, sir, we reached the thousandth mark."
"Is that right," he says, as though he wasn't thinking long and hard for a while. Your voice reminded him and tethered him back to the reality, "What's your wish?"
She blinks up at him, "A raise."
He laughs, voice as rich and deep, "All of this trouble for many months of paperfolding...for a raise?"
"Alright, how about you make a wish of your own?"
"What?"
"I'd like to share all the months' worth of my trouble with you, fair and square."
Draco knew the belief was ridiculous and unreal, coming from a Muggle whose expertise isn't solely magical as his. He knew it was one of the odd Muggle customs for the sake of ambiguity whether or not it was real.
He knew that this Japanese belief wouldn't bring his wife back to life.
But as far as he was concerned, he wanted to be happy again. To carry out on his own with his son.
You were waiting, hands clasped together, "Well?"
He fiddles with the thousandth paper crane in his fingers, eyeing it.
"I just wish those dragon hide smugglers from Norway would grow some sense."