C5: An Inability to Cher
Draco couldn’t help but think of Ginny Weasley as he looked around the Muggle club he, Harry, and Ron had just entered. It was hard not to think of her since she was the whole reason they had come here.
Well, no, not the whole reason.
The third time Draco performed the art of saving Weasley’s life, they’d been in a club in the grey area between Diagon and Knockturn Alley. He didn’t frequent such establishments usually. Too many sweaty bodies plastered together. Too many drunken idiots who became a bit too handsy for Draco’s comfort. Too many sounds and lights that reminded him a bit too much of spellfire and battles.
Clubs were chaotic and awful, and Draco had thought Harry shared the same opinion, but it had been his idea for a boys’ night out. Somehow Draco had got dragged along even though he wasn’t allowed to drink. Somehow he’d let Harry and Ron convince him.
Mount Weasley in her dormant state just happened to be at the same club, dancing under the swirling lights with some of her teammates. Draco had watched her from afar, the smile on her face foreign to him, the loose way she moved her body with people she didn’t hate fascinating him. He had saved her life twice and had delighted in her increasing outrage caused by his audacity to do so every time they met at a mutual function. He’d thought provoking a volcanic eruption was the most fun he could have with her, but seeing her uninhibited and enjoying herself made him wish for other things.
Things he didn’t want to name. Things he couldn’t name because they were so alien to his usual desires and so mundane at the same time.
After the song ended, Weasley left the dance floor. Her eyes caught Draco’s as she turned, and she smiled, which sent a surprised thrill through his entire body that felt a little bit like being drunk. Only for a moment though, because it wasn’t Draco she had smiled at. It was Harry and Ron she’d spotted, and as she drew closer and saw who was accompanying them, the smile disappeared, replaced instead with the scowl with which Draco was better acquainted.
She didn’t even get a chance to greet any of them or voice her displeasure with Draco’s presence. Just before she reached them, the drunken horde throwing themselves against each other noticed Harry and swarmed toward him with excited abandon.
Weasley wasn’t just shoved to the ground. She was trampled, her cries unheard amidst the screaming mass of partiers stomping all over her. Draco was the only one who’d seen her go down, and with a wave of his wand and a blast of orange light, he sent the stampede sprawling backwards, probably causing even more injuries.
Draco offered her a hand to help her to her feet. Brown eyes looked up at him, shock, relief evident on her face before she grimaced.
He clenched his hand and pulled it back to his side, stuffing it into the pocket of his robes as humiliation at her rejection burned through him. But then Harry and Ron were fussing over her, lifting her up, and he realized her grimace had been one of pain. During the trampling, someone had stepped on her hand, maybe spraining her wrist or worse.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask if her body parts were insured by the league, but he couldn’t make a joke about something that had the potential to be serious enough to affect her career. Instead, he’d melted into the sidelines, keeping his mouth closed and his hands to himself as her brother and her ex escorted her out of the club to take her to a Healer. And Draco, the last of the party remaining, and also the guilty party as far as the assault on the crowd was concerned, had been kicked out of and banned from the club.
Which led to today and the reason they were in a Muggle club now. Muggles didn’t know who Harry Potter was, so the likelihood of another stampede was extremely low. And from what he had heard, Ginny had not been to another club, magical or Muggle, since the incident.
Draco glanced around with a sneer. He had never been surrounded by this many Muggles before. On the surface they looked just the same as he did, just the same as the revelers in the club in Diagon Alley. The music they danced to was different, artificial-sounding, high-pitched and upbeat. The clothes they wore would have been different if Draco hadn’t been wearing the same fashion.
He hadn’t been able to look at himself in the mirror even though Harry had assured him he looked just like everyone else. That’s what horrified him the most—that people chose to wear these kinds of clothes and thought they looked good in them. A material called denim encased his legs in stiff, tight trousers, and the “tea” shirt Harry had picked out for him was hideously striped and baggy. More denim protected his arms and torso in a jacket. Draco had never worn trainers before, and he hated to admit that they were slightly more comfortable than the dragon-hide boots he favored, though they were equally as hideous as his shirt.
All around the club, Muggle women wore tight metallic dresses and midriff-baring tops over denim trousers while Muggle men wore denim and tea-shirts, like Draco, with extra helpings of denim. The lyrics of the song booming through the club were incomprehensible, but everyone on the dance floor danced to the music in sync, as if they were all familiar with it. They waved their hands parallel to the ground, shook their thumbs over their shoulders, twirled their hands into the air above their heads, and then touched their foreheads while their legs shook in time to the music. They looked possessed of something worse than Tarentallegra. Maybe the Cruciatus.
In other words, they looked ridiculous, and Draco felt ridiculous just standing in the same room as them.
Harry and Ron returned to Draco’s table with drinks, the one they pushed in front of him brown, fizzy, and topped with a lemon wedge.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t worry,” Ron said, raising his voice over the latin beat to which the Muggles continued to sway. “It’s alcohol-free. What is it again, Harry?”
“Coca-Cola. Try it. It’s good.”
Draco took a dubious sip and was surprised by the carbonation, which fizzed its way up into his nose. He snorted, but continued sipping once he recovered. The syrupy sweetness was unlike anything he had ever tasted before. If the drink was supposed to have a flavor, he couldn’t identify it, and, somehow, the fizzing added to the taste as well as the experience. Draco loved it, but he pushed the glass aside and sneered. Like he would ever admit to liking something Muggles made.
He stared at the trainwreck of a club while Harry and Ron continued whatever conversation they’d started at the bar. Draco only tuned in when he heard Weasley’s name.
“I don’t know if she’s coming to the party,” Ron was saying as he swirled the ice around his own glass with a plastic straw. “She wasn’t in a talking mood, really.”
“Did she say anything about the match?” Draco couldn’t help but ask. An internal part of him was rolling his eyes at himself. He was fishing to see if she’d mentioned him, which was stupid because he was well aware of her opinion of him and didn’t need her brother to voice it aloud for his ego to begin bruising.
“No, she wouldn’t talk about that. She did say something interesting though.”
“Oh yeah?” Harry said.
“She thinks she owes Malfoy life debts. Multiple. For all those things you’ve done for her.” He directed the last sentence at Draco, whose whole world shrank around him at the revelation.
Harry and Ron continued discussing the possibility of Draco’s actions forging magical life debts, but Draco paid no mind to their chatter. If Weasley thought Draco saving her life magically obligated her to him, no wonder she hated him. No wonder she’d never thanked him.
Draco had been bound to someone once. It wasn’t the same kind of magic as a life debt, or even the same kind of contract, but he understood the feeling of someone holding his life over his own head for personal gain.
For months, he had badgered Weasley about what he had done for her, never letting her or anyone else forget that she was still alive and unharmed because of him. Never letting her forget that she was ungracious of the gift he’d given her five times. The gift of… her own life.
No wonder she erupted every time they were in a room together.
The idea that this was one of the reasons she refused to befriend him even after half her family had accepted him made Draco physically ill. There was a time in his life when he might have exploited such a power over her—over anyone—but that Draco had died in the war when he was manipulated by the Dark Lord into doing his bidding.
The flow of Harry and Ron’s discussion seemed to run parallel to Draco’s thoughts, because he rejoined the conversation when Ron said, “I’ve done my best to convince her, but at this point, I just don’t see Ginny ever being friends with you. Sorry, mate.”
“Don’t be. She doesn’t need to like me if she can’t.”
“It would just be easier at home if we could all get along.”
Easier for Ron. Easier for Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. But not easier for Ginny, not if she was always holding her breath waiting for Draco to call in her debts. She would suffocate like that, and her family wouldn’t even notice.
It had been greedy of Draco to desire her friendship on top of her brothers’ and Harry’s and even Hermione’s. He didn’t need to force a relationship with her if she didn’t want one. He had been blessed enough in the last year with an abundance of good fortune and forgiveness.
Harry was staring at him, though Draco wasn’t sure how he knew it with the streaking lights of the club flashing against the lenses of his glasses, obscuring his eyes from view. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if you’d just let us tell Ginny….”
Draco shook his head and reached for his drink. He was actually disappointed when he drew on the straw only to discover he’d reached the bottom of the glass. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t care that I saved her life five times. Why would she care that I saved both of yours once?”
The very last thing Draco needed was for Weasley to think his friendship with her family and closest friends had been forced on them due to another life debt. It was better if she didn’t know the truth about the beginning of his camaraderie with Harry and Ron.
Just then, the entire club burst into song as every single Muggle screamed in an off-key cacophony over the music:
“DO YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVE? After love, after love, after love!”
“Jesus Christ, I hate clubs,” Draco muttered. Maybe his opinion would have differed if alcohol had been flowing through his body, but enduring these shenanigans while stone-cold sober was a nightmare.
“Me too,” Harry said with a wretched sigh.
“Then why do you keep dragging us to these places?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He smiled widely, the sparkle in his eyes penetrating through the lights reflecting off his lenses. “I just can’t get enough of the music.”
Draco couldn’t help but think of Ginny Weasley as he looked around the Muggle club he, Harry, and Ron had just entered. It was hard not to think of her since she was the whole reason they had come here.
Well, no, not the whole reason.
The third time Draco performed the art of saving Weasley’s life, they’d been in a club in the grey area between Diagon and Knockturn Alley. He didn’t frequent such establishments usually. Too many sweaty bodies plastered together. Too many drunken idiots who became a bit too handsy for Draco’s comfort. Too many sounds and lights that reminded him a bit too much of spellfire and battles.
Clubs were chaotic and awful, and Draco had thought Harry shared the same opinion, but it had been his idea for a boys’ night out. Somehow Draco had got dragged along even though he wasn’t allowed to drink. Somehow he’d let Harry and Ron convince him.
Mount Weasley in her dormant state just happened to be at the same club, dancing under the swirling lights with some of her teammates. Draco had watched her from afar, the smile on her face foreign to him, the loose way she moved her body with people she didn’t hate fascinating him. He had saved her life twice and had delighted in her increasing outrage caused by his audacity to do so every time they met at a mutual function. He’d thought provoking a volcanic eruption was the most fun he could have with her, but seeing her uninhibited and enjoying herself made him wish for other things.
Things he didn’t want to name. Things he couldn’t name because they were so alien to his usual desires and so mundane at the same time.
After the song ended, Weasley left the dance floor. Her eyes caught Draco’s as she turned, and she smiled, which sent a surprised thrill through his entire body that felt a little bit like being drunk. Only for a moment though, because it wasn’t Draco she had smiled at. It was Harry and Ron she’d spotted, and as she drew closer and saw who was accompanying them, the smile disappeared, replaced instead with the scowl with which Draco was better acquainted.
She didn’t even get a chance to greet any of them or voice her displeasure with Draco’s presence. Just before she reached them, the drunken horde throwing themselves against each other noticed Harry and swarmed toward him with excited abandon.
Weasley wasn’t just shoved to the ground. She was trampled, her cries unheard amidst the screaming mass of partiers stomping all over her. Draco was the only one who’d seen her go down, and with a wave of his wand and a blast of orange light, he sent the stampede sprawling backwards, probably causing even more injuries.
Draco offered her a hand to help her to her feet. Brown eyes looked up at him, shock, relief evident on her face before she grimaced.
He clenched his hand and pulled it back to his side, stuffing it into the pocket of his robes as humiliation at her rejection burned through him. But then Harry and Ron were fussing over her, lifting her up, and he realized her grimace had been one of pain. During the trampling, someone had stepped on her hand, maybe spraining her wrist or worse.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask if her body parts were insured by the league, but he couldn’t make a joke about something that had the potential to be serious enough to affect her career. Instead, he’d melted into the sidelines, keeping his mouth closed and his hands to himself as her brother and her ex escorted her out of the club to take her to a Healer. And Draco, the last of the party remaining, and also the guilty party as far as the assault on the crowd was concerned, had been kicked out of and banned from the club.
Which led to today and the reason they were in a Muggle club now. Muggles didn’t know who Harry Potter was, so the likelihood of another stampede was extremely low. And from what he had heard, Ginny had not been to another club, magical or Muggle, since the incident.
Draco glanced around with a sneer. He had never been surrounded by this many Muggles before. On the surface they looked just the same as he did, just the same as the revelers in the club in Diagon Alley. The music they danced to was different, artificial-sounding, high-pitched and upbeat. The clothes they wore would have been different if Draco hadn’t been wearing the same fashion.
He hadn’t been able to look at himself in the mirror even though Harry had assured him he looked just like everyone else. That’s what horrified him the most—that people chose to wear these kinds of clothes and thought they looked good in them. A material called denim encased his legs in stiff, tight trousers, and the “tea” shirt Harry had picked out for him was hideously striped and baggy. More denim protected his arms and torso in a jacket. Draco had never worn trainers before, and he hated to admit that they were slightly more comfortable than the dragon-hide boots he favored, though they were equally as hideous as his shirt.
All around the club, Muggle women wore tight metallic dresses and midriff-baring tops over denim trousers while Muggle men wore denim and tea-shirts, like Draco, with extra helpings of denim. The lyrics of the song booming through the club were incomprehensible, but everyone on the dance floor danced to the music in sync, as if they were all familiar with it. They waved their hands parallel to the ground, shook their thumbs over their shoulders, twirled their hands into the air above their heads, and then touched their foreheads while their legs shook in time to the music. They looked possessed of something worse than Tarentallegra. Maybe the Cruciatus.
In other words, they looked ridiculous, and Draco felt ridiculous just standing in the same room as them.
Harry and Ron returned to Draco’s table with drinks, the one they pushed in front of him brown, fizzy, and topped with a lemon wedge.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t worry,” Ron said, raising his voice over the latin beat to which the Muggles continued to sway. “It’s alcohol-free. What is it again, Harry?”
“Coca-Cola. Try it. It’s good.”
Draco took a dubious sip and was surprised by the carbonation, which fizzed its way up into his nose. He snorted, but continued sipping once he recovered. The syrupy sweetness was unlike anything he had ever tasted before. If the drink was supposed to have a flavor, he couldn’t identify it, and, somehow, the fizzing added to the taste as well as the experience. Draco loved it, but he pushed the glass aside and sneered. Like he would ever admit to liking something Muggles made.
He stared at the trainwreck of a club while Harry and Ron continued whatever conversation they’d started at the bar. Draco only tuned in when he heard Weasley’s name.
“I don’t know if she’s coming to the party,” Ron was saying as he swirled the ice around his own glass with a plastic straw. “She wasn’t in a talking mood, really.”
“Did she say anything about the match?” Draco couldn’t help but ask. An internal part of him was rolling his eyes at himself. He was fishing to see if she’d mentioned him, which was stupid because he was well aware of her opinion of him and didn’t need her brother to voice it aloud for his ego to begin bruising.
“No, she wouldn’t talk about that. She did say something interesting though.”
“Oh yeah?” Harry said.
“She thinks she owes Malfoy life debts. Multiple. For all those things you’ve done for her.” He directed the last sentence at Draco, whose whole world shrank around him at the revelation.
Harry and Ron continued discussing the possibility of Draco’s actions forging magical life debts, but Draco paid no mind to their chatter. If Weasley thought Draco saving her life magically obligated her to him, no wonder she hated him. No wonder she’d never thanked him.
Draco had been bound to someone once. It wasn’t the same kind of magic as a life debt, or even the same kind of contract, but he understood the feeling of someone holding his life over his own head for personal gain.
For months, he had badgered Weasley about what he had done for her, never letting her or anyone else forget that she was still alive and unharmed because of him. Never letting her forget that she was ungracious of the gift he’d given her five times. The gift of… her own life.
No wonder she erupted every time they were in a room together.
The idea that this was one of the reasons she refused to befriend him even after half her family had accepted him made Draco physically ill. There was a time in his life when he might have exploited such a power over her—over anyone—but that Draco had died in the war when he was manipulated by the Dark Lord into doing his bidding.
The flow of Harry and Ron’s discussion seemed to run parallel to Draco’s thoughts, because he rejoined the conversation when Ron said, “I’ve done my best to convince her, but at this point, I just don’t see Ginny ever being friends with you. Sorry, mate.”
“Don’t be. She doesn’t need to like me if she can’t.”
“It would just be easier at home if we could all get along.”
Easier for Ron. Easier for Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. But not easier for Ginny, not if she was always holding her breath waiting for Draco to call in her debts. She would suffocate like that, and her family wouldn’t even notice.
It had been greedy of Draco to desire her friendship on top of her brothers’ and Harry’s and even Hermione’s. He didn’t need to force a relationship with her if she didn’t want one. He had been blessed enough in the last year with an abundance of good fortune and forgiveness.
Harry was staring at him, though Draco wasn’t sure how he knew it with the streaking lights of the club flashing against the lenses of his glasses, obscuring his eyes from view. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if you’d just let us tell Ginny….”
Draco shook his head and reached for his drink. He was actually disappointed when he drew on the straw only to discover he’d reached the bottom of the glass. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t care that I saved her life five times. Why would she care that I saved both of yours once?”
The very last thing Draco needed was for Weasley to think his friendship with her family and closest friends had been forced on them due to another life debt. It was better if she didn’t know the truth about the beginning of his camaraderie with Harry and Ron.
Just then, the entire club burst into song as every single Muggle screamed in an off-key cacophony over the music:
“DO YOU BELIEVE IN LIFE AFTER LOVE? After love, after love, after love!”
“Jesus Christ, I hate clubs,” Draco muttered. Maybe his opinion would have differed if alcohol had been flowing through his body, but enduring these shenanigans while stone-cold sober was a nightmare.
“Me too,” Harry said with a wretched sigh.
“Then why do you keep dragging us to these places?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He smiled widely, the sparkle in his eyes penetrating through the lights reflecting off his lenses. “I just can’t get enough of the music.”
Author notes:
The song Draco observes the Muggles dancing to in the club is The Ketchup Song by Las Ketchup. :) Did anyone else’s middle school PE teacher make their class dance to that song as a form of exercise??
At the end of the chapter, the Muggles are singing Believe by Cher. I thought the first verse and a few other lines were fitting for Ginny and Draco even if the song as a whole doesn’t describe their relationship. Particularly this part:
No matter how hard I try
You keep pushing me aside and I can’t break through
There’s no talking to you
I love this chapter so much and I hope you do too!! I think it’s my favorite thing I’ve written in ages. So indulgent. All the nostalgia.
(The links in this author's note go to YouTube, btw.)
Leave a Review