Silver linings
You hoped his tolerance and patience wasn't running thin.
While yours did, after the bus halted and popped one of its tires, making you lurch forward from your seat. You weren't taking this fate too kindly.
Fate isn't taking you all too kindly as well.
Fair enough.
That's how you ended up exiting the bus, waited for a cab as you kept tagging down. You looked beyond the road, and saw a barrage of vehicles stuck in a traffic.
If you did manage to catch a cab, that's no way to get to the Ministry faster.
The sweltering heat didn't help you at all - it's too stuffy for spring.
So the only option available to you was to walk.
Not in those heels.
You arrived at the Ministry sheen with sticky sweat.
Sweaty as in from the wet heat and moist air lingering around the air. As in afterglow-from-sex kind of wet heat. You felt disgusting all over.
The sight of thick, cascading robes everywhere among the employees made your eyes water and itch. You wanted to tear it off from them because it looked humid - you could practically feel it on your own skin.
But you couldn't bother getting all prissy right now when Mr Malfoy would need your presence at the latest to submit the appeal for Theodore Nott's investigation in custody.
Out of all the days that you could've been late...
When you arrived at the office, you were met with two people in particular.
Mr Draco Malfoy, the Head of International Magical Office of Law (and your higher-up.)
And the other, Mr Harry James Potter, the Head of Magical Law of Enforcement, the Chief Auror.
There was an inexplicable tension between these men seated oppositely. They were in the midst of a conversation - a professional discussion, more or less - but you could see how Mr Malfoy's face is taut in a marginal scowl.
It didn't take two guesses that both of them managed to get a rise out of each other, as if withholding some sort of unresolved grudge.
"Late, are we?"
You snapped back into reality, taking a stuttered intake of breath as you fumbled with your satchel when Mr Malfoy's voice cuts through the ever-silent room.
"The bus broke down," you simply said.
"Very well," Mr Malfoy says, and Mr Potter was now looking at the both of you. "Catch your breath. And you're in an unconventional luck and timing, because I certainly need those papers right now."
Mr Potter then intervenes, "I see, Malfoy, not even a citation? You're tolerating unpunctuality in your line of work."
You were red in the face, either from the exertion from running earlier, or the embarrassment you felt that made your stomach churn.
Or the slight annoyance you feel from the black-haired man with a stick up in his ass.
"I do not tolerate tardiness in general, but I'm willing to extend my lenience for her today," Mr Malfoy retorted with a snarl. "My assistant is very punctual at most, and works dilligently with what she does best. She's under my wing, and you cannot berate her as you see fit. You heard her excuse, Potter."
Mr Potter was speechless; you were dumbstruck, a fumbling, erratic fool as you primly handed the papers you finalized for Mr Malfoy.
Mr Malfoy's words stirred something inside your welling ribcage, spreading pleasantly to your stomach when he defended you to the very Head of Magical Law of Enforcement. You could absolutely die right now in shock, and in elation, and in honor, and in-
"My words still stands thus, Malfoy. I'm the Chief Auror, and I'll be the one to investigate the suspect held in question."
"Your jurisdiction will always be taken into account, Potter." Mr Malfoy whisks back. "And it is of no doubt that you have done a decent job of apprehending Theodore Nott, but I have been reviewing his case for months. Had it not been my call, would you have gotten the credit and glory out of it? I am the reason why your operation happened in the first place."
That's when Mr Potter stands up to square him up. Mr Malfoy didn't, but the smirk he wore was smug as he challenged and goaded Mr Potter into another minutes of heated argument.
As if struck by a realization, Mr Potter deflated when he remembers your presence, which silently observed the both of them, successfully blending in into the room like you disappeared into one of the lamps in the office. Mr Malfoy's nasty smile only broadened into one of sarcastic amusement when Mr Potter paled on the spot, having lost his own reins for a moment.
Mr Malfoy was always a step ahead with his plans. He was as calculated as ever while he's so hell-bent on baiting Mr Potter into his game of testing each other's degree of temperance.
"Ah," Mr Malfoy says tauntingly after the momentary silence, "not as brave and daring as I remember, are we?"
"We'll see," Mr Potter turns around promptly to storm outside the office in his unmistakable contrite, with a dangerous air of hostility about him. It terrified you.
Mr Malfoy was quick on his toes to follow behind him.
Before he left to catch up on Mr Potter, he turned to you, "Get those background evaluation on Theodore Nott by the drawers and prepare them."
You noticed the strain and agitation in his voice that it left you with no choice but to oblige. With a firm, wordless nod, you headed to the drawers filled with investigative archives on various international cases.
"And," he adds, making you look up at him and saw his faint smile, "I have a soothing salve on my desk if you need it."
He exited the room wearing that dashing, patient smile of his, tilting his chin towards your pair of red feet, inflamed due to the fact that you just walked on foot...without your heels.
His concern affected you so much that as soon as he was out of your sight and earshot, you fell to your weakened knees on the carpeted floor, swooning as you rested half of your body battered from the exhaustion into the comfort of the plushy couch.
That was when you feel suddenly grow self-conscious: Did you look too haggard? Too sweaty? How did you look like? Was he even mad at you?
Especially the way his eyes flickered a bit from the hostile tension when he saw you entering the office. And most importantly, how his demeanor drastically changed from incensed, into something mellow when he saw you; an entirely different man - like he was somehow relieved from the pressure the whole encounter with Mr Potter had offered.
Had the man with the majestic flaxen hair grown a soft spot for you? For a mere assistant?
After you recovered from the assault of giddiness you felt, you put the current matter at hand.
What was it again?
Oh. Right, Theodore Nott's files.
You twisted your body into an upright position, composing yourself as you yanked one of the drawers back with such a force that something appeared out of it.
In a form of an abomination that made you jolt away in place though you've already been paralyzed from fear.
There was no doubt that Potter was going to take it to the Minister himself and grab the upper hand if he could.
Draco knew Potter already had the advantage, being the Minister's childhood friend and all. He should have anticipated that possibility and consulted the Minister first and showed her the documents.
It was a lost cause, so he retreated and decided to forgo the plan to appeal to the Minister, returning into his office with an irritated scowl on his face.
Which now morphed into a look of panic and worry when he saw you, lying weakly on the floor when you tried your vainest attempts to fight off a rabid, black hound with its maw wide open.
It was the very same dog.
Horrifically identical to the one that attacked you in a compound at a private residence. It attacked you, bit a small chunk of your upper thigh that caused you to bleed profusely when you were a kid. It was that bad that the dog owners were forced to comply to a compensation after you almost died from shock, excessive bleeding, and rabies.
It never failed you to make your breath stutter in panic whenever you happened to see any dogs with black fur. Like the memory and the experience itself came back rushing into you like a bullet train.
You fought for your own breath when you already saw spots forming in your vision, your own consciousness caving in until it wrung every ounce of strength in you, doing your best to push off the dog.
It never relented. It overpowered you then, as it had now.
The manic hound didn't stop its persistent maiming, and its ear-splitting barks and howls, so as to recreate your ugliest memory of the past. Not actually intending to inflict any physical injury on you (you noted acutely amidst your panic attack,) but to trigger your own childhood trauma.
At the hazy forefront of your brain, you heard a loud bellow. To scare the hound away. A voice, so familiar, so warm, you had to desperately swim and navigate your central focus into the surface before you could submerge underwater.
You're not even waterlogged.
But panic attacks felt as though you were drowning in an endless abyss of vacuum.
"Ridikkulus!"
It was, indeed, fucking ridiculous to begin with. How did a dog that big manage to fit into Mr Malfoy's drawers?
It wasn't your mind's intention to create an accidental innuendo while you're on the verge of dying from a panic attack. Oh well, it's not the worst way to go, you supposed.
Oh, how you hoped he would be back very soon.
How could a boggart manage to slip in into his drawers?
Draco wavered back into his own thoughts as the boggart was now decimated from the powerful spell he casted. It brought him to wonder how the dog managed to scare you that much into your unconsciousness.
He tucked away his wand, now gently taking half of your body onto his lap.
Draco smoothed your hair back from your pale face, feeling your cold, clammy forehead in the process. He knew how it felt like, having to deal with panic attacks when he first tasted the terrible sight of death and rot.
Decades ago, when Voldemort urged the contempt of assassinating the late Dumbledore unto Draco, those were the moments when he started questioning the dogma he had to uphold, fettered and frail, as a teenage boy. What made him comply to Voldemort's best wishes was of Draco's own.
He could never stand the sight of his own parents to perish and be humiliated in the hands of the Dark Lord.
He absently caressed the Dark Mark tattoo by the tips of his fingers, covered by the sleeves of his neatly-pressed shirt. He hated how it always reminded him of the past, and how there was no escaping it in any way other than turn a blind eye if he could. His father once had tried to escape his own fate by redeeming himself, after the night the parents of the Boy-who-lived had died, and thought they were good as dead as Voldemort.
And Voldemort is gone, but this time, for good.
"Wake up," he urged gently by soothing your forearms, "the boggart's gone."
You writhed, winced at the soreness of your chest. You fought to open your eyes, sight still as bleary by the tears that resurfaced earlier from your panic attack.
You sighed, "Oh shit."
You vaguely saw a man, with long hair, surrounded with a halo that blinded you, its edges streaked by a spectrum of colors due to the effects of diffraction - the bending of light.
You have just gathered your consciousness together and integrated them, piecing it together into a puzzle in hopes of waking up faster.
If you had died then and Jesus Christ looked this beautiful, you would have gladly gone sooner.
"No, I'm not..." you heard his strangled laughter, "I'm Draco Malfoy."
Oh?
Oh.
Mr Malfoy added, "Though, I do thank you for finding me beautiful."
"It's the Law of Physics," you said with a voice so faint and paper-thin.
"Come again?"
You righted yourself weakly by reaching onto the shoulder pads of his crisp suit with your cold, still trembling hands. And somehow, the scent filled you senses again, reminding you of who you were, where you were, and that Draco Malfoy was your boss.
Especially, with that memory when you first got a whiff of his suit a week ago.
Parchment, ink, peppermint, and tea.
That was it.