Unconditional

“I suppose I should have seen it coming. I killed my own father, after all.”

Draco stood thunderstruck. “You—you said he was killed by Muggles!”

Lucius just smirked. “Pick your path, son. Release me or kill me.” Lucius’ words were quiet, almost sugary, as though he was trying to coax him. “Could you do it, I wonder?”

Draco looked at the floor and said nothing.

“Just know that if you let me out of here, I will kill you. So. Kill or be killed, these are your only options.”

It was too much. He couldn’t kill him, his own father. But he couldn’t release him. He believed his father’s words. He would die if he was still here when Lucius was freed. “No.”

“You have to pick one, son. We can’t just stand here forever.”

“No.”

“No what?” Lucius’ voice was losing its sickly sweet quality, becoming hard and sharp as steel. “Why don’t you do something for once?”

Draco looked up. “No.” He turned and walked out of the study, walked out of the house, paying no mind to the curses being shouted ineffectually behind him.
It was too dangerous to go to his usual coffee shop, which was a shame because it was exactly where Draco wanted to go. If his father knew about the tattoo shop, he probably knew about all the Muggle places he frequented. Draco didn’t know what to do. He wandered around London until he was well and truly lost. He found a place called Starbucks Coffee where they gave him a paper cup instead of a mug and there were too many people and no books.

---

He took a chance the next day going into Diagon Alley. It was the only place to exchange Wizard money for Muggle and if being a Malfoy taught him anything it was that you could get nowhere without money, no matter where or what you were. He usually had a few pounds on him, just enough for coffee. He would need more. He nicked a bright blue cloak of the back of a barstool in the Leaky Cauldron and kept the hood pulled up tight despite the warmness of the day. He saw many people he knew, but the cloak hid his face and the shabbiness and the gaudy color hid him even better.

When he left Gringott’s he had almost two hundred pounds. He didn’t quite know what that meant, but it was the equivalent of quite a few galleons. He didn’t dare try to take anything out of the Malfoy vault. It was probably one of the first places his father had contacted.

He left Diagon Alley as quickly as possible and ditched the cloak back on the chair he had found it on. He found a corner with one of those bus signs. He wondered if they were anything like the Knight Bus. He stopped and raised his hand, sans wand, to see if it would come. A yellow car pulled up next to him. Feeling pleased with this easy success, he got in the car and said, “Do you know of any good coffee shops, bus driver?”

---

This coffee shop was almost exactly the same as his last one. Not quite as many books, but the proprietor informed him that that large building across the street was a library. Draco had said he didn’t want to read textbooks. The girl laughed and said they had all kinds of books.

“Yer kinna weird, aren ya?” Amelia said.

There was only a few other people in the shop and they were all engrossed in their own books. The coffee shop girl, Amelia, had been talking to him for the last few hours. Draco supposed he couldn’t deny he was weird to her; he wasn’t a Muggle after all.

“I suppose I am,” he said, and grinned at her. “But so is your accent.”

“Oh, shut it. I talk normal, yer the one who sounds off to me. So, what d’you do for a livin’?”

“Oh, er, well, I go to school,” Draco said vaguely.

“Oh, Uni? Tha’s excitin’. I always wanted to go but I dint have enough money.”

“That must be horrible for you,” Draco said earnestly.

“Not goin’a Uni?” Amelia asked.

“Not having money,” Draco clarified.

She laughed. “Suppose it is, at that. So yer family’s rich, huh?”

“Yes,” Draco said. “Though I suppose it won’t help me anymore.”

“Why no’?”

Draco shrugged. “Sort of got kicked out yesterday.”

“Oh no, why?”

“My tattoo.”

“They kicked you out over a tattoo?” Amelia said. “Tha’s ridiculous!”

“Yeah, it is,” Draco agreed.

“Are you stayin’ with friends?” she asked. Draco was surprised how concerned she seemed for him. After all, they had only just met.

“No.”

“Oh. Other family?”

“No.”

“… Do you have anywhere ta stay?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. “I’m not really supposed to do this, but the coffee shop has a flat above it. My da was tryin’a rent it, but it’s kinna shite and no one ever wants it. You could stay there a bit.”

“You’d do that?” Draco asked. “But you just met me.”

“I trust ya. Plus I don’t like to see such a cute bloke so down on his luck.” She smiled. “Just one condition.”

“Of course,” Draco said. It hadn’t occurred to him that there might not be any conditions. Everything was conditional.

“You gotta work down here sometimes. It’s not hard. Mostly you just drink coffee ‘n talk to the people. That way, if my da does find out you’re livin’ here, at least I can say yer workin’ for your board.”

“No problem,” Draco said.

---

Draco spent the next two months living in and fixing up the upstairs flat. He didn’t have much money to do it with, and a lot of it went to cans of Raid, but paint wasn’t expensive. And in addition to letting him live there, Amelia also gave him a modest paycheck. It wasn’t the Manor, but he hadn’t seen the Dark Lord in those months. He thought that, overall, he was doing very well for himself.

“Aw, Drake, it looks so nice up here!” Amelia said. It had been a while since she visited the upstairs apartment. Draco had painted the living room a cream color with dark orange accents. A blanket covered the ripped couch and the hardwood floor was shined. A few paintings he had gotten from a local thrift store hung on the walls.

“Come see the rest!” Draco said excitedly. There wasn’t much could be done for the kitchen, as he definitely didn’t have the money for new appliances, but the very light green paint and the special grey lacquer he put on the counters made it look airy and clean. A new kitchen rug covered most of the broken tiles.

The loo was still fairly bad looking. “Bathrooms are expensive,” Draco said defensively when Amelia came out.

The bedroom was Draco’s favorite, though. He felt he had put the most work in on it. The walls were a light blue, with a few dark blue vertical stripes in each corner. All over the walls were posters for bands, movies, and events that Draco had clearly taken off billboards and street lamps. The bed was just a futon cushion on the floor, but he had ripped the carpet out to reveal some amazing hard wood and he had a clean white-and-blue striped comforter.

“Seriously, Drake, my da will be so pleased. He migh’ even give ya some money outta this,” Amelia said.

“I thought you weren’t going to tell him I lived here,” Draco said.

“Well, I hafta now, don’ I? He’ll be wonderin’ how the place got so nice. Oh, but he woan’ care about ya, not now ya done all this work on the place.”
They made some coffee downstairs and brought it up to Draco’s kitchen. Draco had something he wanted to say, but he didn’t quite know how to approach it. He’d never had to ask for anything before, except his father. His father was easy, though. If Draco ever wanted something, his father would tell him what he needed to do to deserve it. A new broom? After you get on the Quidditch team. Your own Potions’ set? After you get an O in all your classes.

He shook his head to clear it. Thinking about his father wouldn’t do any good right now. As if in punishment for his thoughts, his Dark Mark twinged painfully. He pushed it aside. It had been happening the last two weeks, and Draco was only surprised it had taken this long, and that it didn’t hurt more. He planned to ignore it as long as possible.

“Amelia, I was sort of wondering. I know I’m going back to Uni in a few weeks and you and your da will probably want to rent out this flat. But, er, well, I was kind of hoping I’d be able to live here again next summer.” He didn’t realize he was holding his breath.

Amelia looked apologetic. “I’ll try, Drake. I’d love ya ta live here again nex’ summer. It’s kinna up to my da, though, yanno?”

“Yeah, I get it,” Draco said dejectedly.

“I’ll try, though, I will,” Amelia promised. “Jus’ gimme your address at Uni and I’ll let ya know how it is.”

“Ah. Yeah. My address. Well. I don’t exactly know what it is going to be yet, I mean, I dunno what dorm I’ll be living in and, yeah. I’ll write you when I have it.”

---

Draco was so nervous. Irrationally so, he told himself. It was Hogwarts. It was safe. And this was the train to Hogwarts. Much less safe, a nagging voice said. Well, there was nothing for it. He started pulling his trunk towards the train when, surprisingly, Professor McGonagall stopped him.

“Professor, how nice to see—“

“Come with me, Mr. Mmm... Draco. Please come with me.”