When it Rains

When it Rains

I am watching him now - although I am not quite sure why - from about six feet away.

Just watching, sitting and watching, taking the occasional glance at my magazine for good measure. Reading, yes, but the article seems trivial. I am mostly watching him. I'm not sure if I am watching out of amazement, or pity, or perhaps that peculiar breed of grim curiosity one finds only in the magnetic appeal of a terrible accident one does not want to observe but cannot look away from. You see, he tormented me for almost as long as I can remember. And now he is sitting, casually as if he was born on that barstool, sharing his troubles with a bottle of Carthian Red. He is looking as though a friend died doing something he told him not to, leaving his features frozen halfway between a funeral dirge and a sarcastic comment.

But I am uncertain that he ever had friends, so I cannot be sure.

As he turns towards the bartender, presumably for a refill (his voice, whispery rough against the backdrop of bar-chatter, is hard to make out), it occurs to me that I am probably reading too far into this. I do not care. There is a strange sort of triumph in my soul, one I probably should be ashamed of but cannot bring myself to be. Seeing him like this, it feeds it. There are things I ought to be proud of in my life, and things I ought to regret but do not. There are loyalties I should doubt and there is distrust I should reexamine. But, to tell you the truth, I probably never will. I am a creature of habit, you see, ingrained in my old ways, uncomfortable in new ones.

This is not about me, however. This about the blonde man in the shabby robes who has recently received his drink from the bartender, and has now, after a toast to an invisible presence, taken a sip. His hair falls loosely around his face, shading his eyes. He sets it down. I do not know where he looking; I do not know if I want to. I do know how addicting it is to engage in the art of observing people. During school, I did it for years, watching from the back, from the sidelines, from just outside the circle that you'd give your life to enter. It's a dirty little secret, prying into someone's life, reading their soul while they aren't watching.

But I am not entirely sure that he ever had a soul.

I still vividly remember the times he was cruelest; when I was a first-year, so very naïve, so very new to the world. But oh, beyond that. The insults dug deeper every year, finding a niche in the holes in my soul, eating away at me from the inside. They were acid, caustic. I never had very much self-esteem. My depression was written off as bashfulness, and normal. He... he could see through the permanently happy exterior. He took that, and he twisted it, forged all of my weakness into a weapon that got me every time.

Harry. One word about Harry, and my recently cultivated self-image would always dissipate into a billion pieces, shattering. But nobody noticed. Glass doesn't shine in the dark, and I-- was never in the spotlight. That was Harry's place.

But this is not about Harry. It's not about Harry, it's not about Hermione, and it's not about my brother, nor the place where he's buried. And it's not about me. It's about the man who now seems very interested in peeling the bottle label off with his thumbnail, staring off into space as if he's trying to read words scrawled across the air. This is not about why I'm alone on a Saturday night, with nothing better to do than to have a few drinks and watch someone who I never knew. This is about him. I take a sip of my drink. It's half-empty. This isn't about me.

My magazine, it seems, has lost all interest, so I push it across the table.

"Perhaps you ought to take another glance down at the article, Weasley, so I don't notice that you've been staring at me," he drawls, not meeting my eyes, or even looking in my direction. His expression doesn't change. I am forced to wonder how he can make me feel inferior, even now. Things have changed. I am no longer poor; he, in fact, is. My status has grown, inversely proportionate - and largely owing to - the decline in his. He has no high horse to come down off of, no pedestal from which to hurl insults. I know this now.

When I was a first-year, I was naïve and wide-eyed, with no witty replies. Now I am a graduate, a girl who has felt too much to be naive, my eyes are closed, and, aside from my remaining family members and income, wit is all I have left. Even now, it fails me.

"I'm sorry." I hope that I do not sound apologetic; I am not. I owe him nothing, least of all pity. I cannot grudge him a reply, because he would, being Draco, take that for a victory. And I cannot allow him to win. "I was merely surprised to see you here."

He chuckles, a sound as cold as his eyes, as sharp as his cheekbones. There is no humor in this laugh, no rancor, no malice. It seethes with purest apathy. "You, of all people, ought to know." There is a long pause. I am sure it is there only for effect, because he appears as composed as if he has the conversation written on index cards. "Your father," he turns now, not directly at me, as though I am so low that he cannot face me but by the merit of gradual degrees, "was, after all, the one who did this to me."

I could argue, but I do not. It is pointless. I do not want to give him the satisfaction of beating me in an argument. It is, after all, true. The inquiry hit the old families hard; although I will not speak against my father's impartiality, he did seem to pursue the Malfoy file with particular vigor. The ill-gained Malfoy blood money was taken into the ministry, distributed among victims. I feel no pity that Draco cannot sleep tight on full coffers. This is not my fault, nor my problem.

"Do not go that route, Malfoy. Your father did far worse to me."

He snorts but does not argue. I can tell that he is about to say something, but he does not. It's well enough; I have at the very least given him something to think about. It is a victory. He does not seem to notice, and his inability to accept what I see as an obvious defeat is almost aggravating. He ought to say something, but he does not. I have won silence from the unruly Malfoy, I have given him a comment upon which he cannot sneer. Hold your applause. It is not quite so fulfilling as I imagined, as I would have written in my diary had I ever felt comfortable writing in a book again. He does not follow my thoughts. He pauses for a few moments more, the length between my reply and his almost tangible.

"It's impolite to speak ill of the dead," he replies simply, finishing his drink, settling the bottle down on the counter. This? This is his brilliant defense?

Now it is my turn to hold my tongue. It is impolite, too, to kill the dreams of little girls.

So I pause for a few moments, regard what's left of my drink with more interest than anyone ought to, trying to mask the fact that I'm attempting to fashion a response. The best defense, of course, is a good offense; I know this full well. Journalists do not get themselves out of tricky situations by backing into a corner and mumbling incoherently.

I open my mouth. No words come out.

"If you've nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all." I listen to his words, and I want to take his smirk and burn it. I want to beat the ashes with a shovel and scatter them over the nastiest piece of earth that I can find. I despise that smirk. I glare.

"And I suppose you're a hearty subscriber to that old adage?"

"Actually," he notes, still accompanied by the smirk, "I've never listened to that one in particular. I tend to like the vengeful ones... blood loyalty, oaths, whatnot. The Latin ones in particular. A grocery list in Latin sounds bloodier than a death threat in English."

"Another adage?"

"No. I made that one up."

"How utterly creative. I'm sure, given a few centuries to ripen, it will be on inspirational posters everywhere." I sip my drink. Ten points, I should think, to the redhead in the sage green sweater.

Yet this comment -which I regard as a personal victory- seems only to amuse him, and, to my chagrin, the idiotic smirk remains. The change in his circumstance has done nothing. He has not changed at all. I'm different now. My friends and the people who used to be friends have changed. My parents have lost four sons and I have lost three brothers. My life has changed, and so has his. But that smirk, that smirk is exactly the same. It tortured me and taunted Harry, and I will never forgive him for making Ron's life a living hell.

I haven't forgiven Harry, either. It gives me some sense of bizarre, halfhearted satisfaction to know that they are filed in similar categories in the recesses of my mind. I can hate Draco freely. I can hate him for the things he said to me, the way he toyed with my insecurities from his secure pedestal of Slytherin underlings, and I can hate him all the more because most of his predictions were right.

"...Weasley?" He drawls, coldly, amusedly. "Are you listening to me?"

"No. I'm not listening to you."

"If you aren't listening to me, how did you know to reply?"

"It seems as though your arrogance is so tangible that I can detect it telepathically."

"Yes. You seem to have a rather impressive record as a character judge."

"Fuck off, Malfoy."

"Why?" His tone is innocently inquisitive, seething with enough sarcasm.

I hold my glass, tightly, with both hands. My wand is far too close.

"Why? Firstly, because you are an arrogant bastard with no business in mine; secondly, because I do not like you; third, and finally, you know nothing. You are nobody to criticize the way that I lived my life. At least I had one worth smiling about."

The change in his tone is immediate, almost violent. "Like this was somehow my fault?"

"You didn't exactly lead the 'hey, let's not kill any innocent bystanders' brigade." I'm listening to my voice, attempting to calm myself. My tone isn't icy anymore; it could melt ice. It's hot, and accusing, and laden with pain and memories and alcohol. I don't want to be this way. I don't want him to know that he's gotten to me. I don't want to lose my temper, because that means that he's won.

Luckily, it doesn't seem like he's all that composed, either.

"Remind me when the hell you've been an objective witness in deciding what's right and what's wrong. You've never seen wrong. You've never had to deal with it. You're the victim. You're the godforsaken martyr."

"My brothers were." I hiss through gritted teeth.

"I lost more than you did."

As if this is some fucking competition. As if he has to beat me, even in this. Whatever pretenses in serenity I had are gone now, accompanied by civility, sanity, and the temper that I've so very recently lost.

"What? Your money? Your fortune? Your place in society? I'm so very sorry for you, Malfoy. I am so very sorry, because you are the sorriest, most pathetic creature I have had the pleasure of knowing."

"Did you see yours die?"

"What?"

"It's pretty straightforward," he hisses, although the previous question had been asked with a sense of deadly calm. It was almost a peaceful question, yet only in the sense of a spent battlefield. The dead are peaceful.

"I... no." Percy was killed by a Death Eater attack on the ministry building, when he was given the choice between giving them access and death. He chose the latter. Bill was killed in a raid half a world away. I remember both vividly, although over five years separate me from the events. And Ron...

"I did." Draco sneers. "So before you go on and on about your losses, I suggest you think about that. Hard. I suggest you think about how you would have dealt with the knowledge that every drinker in this country and several others was lifting up a glass in toast to Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, who finally had the decency to get themselves killed."

"Bartender!" he barks harshly, in the demanding manner of someone who was raised with house-elves. "Get the lady a drink. Please." Yet the politeness of his expression is largely overridden by the degree of his sneer.

"I'm sorry." I'm watching him now, one broken person observing another. He seems to have noticed his explosion, and is now making up for it by looking as utterly distant as is humanly possible. One does not become a journalist if they do not have at least a bit of insight into the human condition. If he had looked pained, I would not have believed him, but the fact that he's looking totally calm lends certain credibility to the possibility that he's not quite so placid as his expression would have me believe.

It occurs to me that I'm probably reading too much into this.

I do not care.

"Don't be." He's saying this too quickly. He's too assured, too calm. "Your side didn't kill them."

I wrack my mind for details... trying to remember. I'm hearing vague memories of my father talking in hushed voices to his aides, huddled around our kitchen table. The auror making the announcement. His words are blurred. It was a few months after Bill's death, and I was not in the mood to listen. If I remember correctly, I was trying not to, but at the same time trying my damnedest to, hear the details. Harry and I were sitting on the sofa. I was looking at the clock on the mantle. I had my head on his shoulder. I think he was stroking my hair, but I'm not sure now. It was so very long ago. And he kept wanting to stand up and join them, instead of calling suggestions from across the room, but I think he felt guilty about leaving me there. It was dusk. There were candles, and they reflected off his glasses...

I remember now. The auror -now nameless, faceless in my memory--deadpanned his report. They'd stumbled across what appeared to be either an execution or sacrifice. Three victims, two dead. There had been no killing curse. Throats were slit. This discrepancy of murder method was the only thing that made it stand out to me. There were massacres everywhere. Two dead death eaters meant nothing to me when faced with two dead brothers. Blood would have blood.

The Malfoy name was mentioned, then. I can't remember my response. Perhaps, four feet away from the third victim, I don't want to. I cannot help but glance up, steal a glimpse of his pale neck, where a small, thin scar remains the only physical reminder of the death four more seconds would have brought.

"Congratulations, Weasley," he snorts into his drink. "After the battle, know that you bravely and nobly went forth and bayoneted the wounded."

"Is that what you are? Wounded?"

The word hangs pregnant in the air, and I can tell that he's thinking about this response. I feel spiteful. Guilty, and spiteful that I feel guilty about something that isn't my fault.

Harry had looked up when the Malfoy name was said. His face was expressionless. If you knew Harry at all, you know that his face was never expressionless. It was always joy, or anger, or sorrow, or playfulness, or love. But his was a blank. Not blank as in a canvas, but a very definite sort of blank, very decided, very resolved.

And he wondered aloud if they'd be able to get any information from him.

"Wounded?" Draco's talking to his drink now, as though admitting weakness to another human being is so terribly hard that he has to channel it through random objects. I don't know. Maybe he does. "I don't know. I'm a casualty, I know that much. I'm not dead. So, yes, I suppose that would make me one of the wounded."

Fifty-Three Wounded, Two Dead in Raid. That's what the headline said. Acting Minister of Magic's Son Among Those Killed.

Harry was assigned to London when I found out that Bill had been killed. Ron was supposed to be, but he'd been the one to go identify the body... it was pointless, almost, because by that point the Mediwizards had ingenious ways of identifying even the smallest fragments of a body. It was necessity. There were often so many of them.

If Harry had not been there, I really do not think I would have made it.

"This is like carrying on a conversation with a brick wall," he remarked, "Except I've met some fairly receptive brick walls and you are apparently not one of them." Another statement made directly to his glass.

"So now you're sarcastic and sneering again."

He raises an eyebrow and glances appraisingly up at me. "Remind me of a time when I've been anything else."

"Just now."

"You're gravely mistaken, Weasley. I was perfectly sarcastic and sneering just then."

"Were you."

"Yes."

"Really."

Draco chuckles, and shakes his head, swallowing. This seems to amuse him. "You obviously don't know me very well."

No. I don't know him very well. But I'm beginning to, and the fact that I'm having a civil conversation with him is... bizarre. Then again, perhaps one really ought to love their enemies. I'm certainly in a position to hate my friends, or the people who used to be.

"Perhaps," I note, "I understand you better than you give me credit for."

This irritates him, but seeing that doesn't give me quite so much joy as it had before. I watch him shift in his seat, cast a glance around the room, eventually return his gaze to his drink. I think he's realizing this himself.

"I know what you're going through, Malfoy."

"No. No, you don't."

"How do you know?"

"Why do you care? I have spent my entire life, since school, under the watchful glare of one Weasley or another. Now that the inquiries are over -unless, of course, your father wants to steal my socks, which I do not doubt, as I am fond of them- I want to go somewhere that I can rest, far from the wandering Weasley eye."

I hate it when he is wrong, but, more than that, I hate it when he is right. Draco is a sadist. He's apathetic, he's pessimistic, he's cruel, but he's realistic, and he's right, and to admit that he's right is a blow to what little optimism my sorry soul still bears.

"I..."

"Dammit, Weasley!" He barks, slamming the bottom of his glass against the bar, pushing himself up against the stool. His teeth are clenched, I can tell, by the angular set of his jaw, and those eyes, those ambiguously gray but dangerously determined eyes, flash with an ungovernable anger. I cannot to react to it, only observe it.

It is over as soon as it begins. He breaks eye contact; the patrons return to their conversations. Voices, whispers, giggles continue around us, and I watch him. The tension melts from his shoulders, and he exhales, the hand around his glass falling away. It is on his temple now, fingers splayed across the side of his forehead, and he returns to the present, his eyes still on the glass.

"Get out of here," he says, quietly, and his anger is fragile, rage spread thinly over the memories he would like to forget.

I stand, and I lift my chin, and my voice is two inches tall as I whisper "Fine". I must appear, to him, righteously indignant, although in reality the response is more complicated. I do not want it to be complicated. I want it to be clear-cut. Final. I push these coins against the bar, and I make eye contact with the bartender, who nods. It is a silent ritual, made almost reflexive through habitual repetition. It requires no thought.

But I do not leave.

I stand for several seconds, watching him. My chin is high, my manner resolved, and I lower myself very deliberately onto my barstool. It is a gesture of spite as a token of defiance. I do not owe him anything, not pity, not a friendly ear, and certainly not loyalty.

Now there's another silence. It is not awkward, nor forced. It is a mutual acknowledgement that there is nothing left to be said. I glance down at my drink. I attempt to think of happier things, happier times. The greatest blow I can offer to Malfoy is to be happy, because he is not.

Harry had this tiny little apartment above Ollivander's. We would always joke about how it did not befit a reigning hero to live in a cardboard box, but he'd never hear any of it... he was always more comfortable living a modest existence than a grand one. He invited me to dinner. But he was a horrible cook, everything burned, and he insisted on dashing -through the rain, mind- to the Leaky Cauldron to get us something to eat. He would have Apparated, but then the wards were still very strict then. He could have gotten around the wards if he tried. If I'm not mistaken, he put up half of them himself. But he insisted on gallantry, which I was secretly a sucker for, even if it did make for rather wet dinner. We laughed about it. That's how we were. We were talking, and, suddenly, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly good debate about Quidditch, he said that he loved me.

He said that he loved me, and I believed him, dammit. It wasn't like he hadn't said it before, but he had this tone, and there was an expression in those wonderful green eyes, and, oh, I believed him. Then he pulled out the ring and opened his mouth. He began to babble about how he had originally wanted to put it in a champagne glass, but that I didn't normally drink champagne (or anything; I didn't drink at all, which makes me wonder how I survived), and he was afraid that I wouldn't marry him because I'd think that he didn't know that I didn't drink champagne. I believe I called him a silly man before kissing him, but in hindsight, I'm not sure. I don't think he cared.

It was long ago, very long ago. And I remember when we told Ron and Hermione. Hermione enveloped us both in the sort of hug she'd become famous for. Ron remained blinking for several moments, and, for months after, the word "honeymoon" was enough to set his cheeks the color of his hair. Ron... he would have protected me if he'd known. I'm almost glad he wasn't around to see it. He didn't have to watch when it all fell into a smoldering pile of ashes, ashes made and scattered along with his...

"Do you like the drink?"

The comment is just so disjoined in the pattern of my thoughts, the heartbreak, and the pattern of our actions, and the fabric of the entire universe that, for a moment, I forget that I'm supposed to be acting righteously indignant and raise an eyebrow.

"Well, if you're going to sit here and pollute my air, we might as well talk. If you have any better topics of conversation..."

I am about to say something very unkind indeed about "his" air when the slight deviation in his smirk hints that he's joking...I think. It's hard to tell with him.

"We could talk about the weather." He continues.

"Let's see." I feign thoughtfulness. "It's gray. And raining. That's pretty much it."

"For a journalist," Malfoy notes, "Your grasp of adjectives is fairly limited."

"How would you describe it, then?"

"It's a... I don't know. Young widow kind of rain."

I blink in surprised recognition, turning to him, my expression perhaps a shade demanding. "What?"

"Hmm?"

"Solomon Verne's 'Sunday in Venice'." He looks confused. I elaborate. "I never exactly pictured you as a poetry kind of guy."

"I hate poetry." Draco snorts.

"People who hate poetry don't often quote it."

"People who were force-fed poetry as part of their "culturing" do."

"Ah..." This is all I can say, really. While I am certainly relieved to note that I do not share a favorite poet in common with this man... part of me wonders if he would like it if he hadn't been forced to read it. And it's dismissed as a silly, rhetorical thought. Poetry touches the soul. He keeps his soul under lock and key, I believe, if he has one at all.

"Yes." He elaborates. "My entire childhood. Force-fed literature. I speak four languages."

"No wonder you were such a prat." I agree reflexively, nodding, then, upon hearing myself, wince. I did not, of course, just say that out loud.

"If I was a prat," he notes, "You were, at one point, an easily impressed, perennially depressed, and perpetually obsessed moody Echo-and-Narcissus type tragic poet, straighter laced than a Ravenclaw and voted most likely to flog yourself later in life."

"But I was an easily depressed, perennially depressed, perpetually obsessed moody Echo-and-Narcissus type tragic poet. Therefore, logically, you were a prat."

Malfoy merely snorts to himself, but it it's not a particularly malevolent sounding snort. He takes a sip from his drink -it's a reflex, I know perfectly well that there's only the smallest bit left at the bottom- and shakes his head. There is the slightest bit of bitter amusement written along the slight curve in his lips, an amusement I can tell he is fighting to wring from his expression. "Of course I was. What did you expect?"

"I don't know." I shrug. There is another long pause, and I hate it. I hate the fact that I can't talk to him, almost as much as I hate the fact that I can. I ought to hate him, but I can't, and I hate that. I hate this bar for being here when I need it, and I hate this drink for soothing my problems, and I hate this private little safety net I have set up for myself. I'm stronger. I shouldn't need it. But I do, and I hate that need more than anything else.

The silence is overpowering, oppressive, choking the words.

He casts a glance to the grandfather clock on one wall. Then he pushes the empty glass forward on the counter. He stands.

"You're leaving?" I ask, with a raised brow.

"It's late." The blonde man shrugs, this simple action relieving his gray eyes of the few strands of hair that seem perpetually intent upon obstructing his view.

"It's ten o'clock, Malfoy."

"Yes, well, I have somewhere to be." His tone challenges me to ask where, to say something -anything- to the contrary. The accent is placed squarely on the "I", as in "I have somewhere to be, whereas you, Virginia Weasley, are going to spend the rest of your evening alone". It's not a confrontational statement. It isn't terribly congenial, either. It's apathy that wears a smirk, even if he does not.

And I want to say something. I want to ask, but I don't want to know. The words ride low in my consciousness, the connotations vague, the connections obscured by unwarranted speculation. Draco Malfoy has somewhere to be. I do not. I have nowhere better to be than here, this tiny space, so packed with total strangers that they cease to be strangers so much as illogically placed scenery. Draco Malfoy has somewhere to be, and yet the depth of my existence is limited to this place, this mindset, these memories that cling to what faith I have left.

I could say that it was nice to see him again, but that would imply that it ever had been nice to see him before, or that it was nice seeing him now. I could say goodbye to him, but goodbye seems formal. I could shorten it to "bye", but that seems familiar. And the fact that I am spending this much energy to ponder a goodbye to someone with whom I share neither formality nor familiarity should be occurring to me, but it does not. It remains as unthought as the words are unspoken, as the deeds are undone, as these godforsaken memories are unforgotten. And the memories, memories of people I thought I could trust but couldn't, memories of people I ought to have trusted but didn't, they remain, innocent and juvenile, like love notes written in delicate strokes on school-grade parchment, the thinly-buried skeletons of things I can't let go.

And I can tell that he's waiting for me to say something. I can read it in the slight hesitation as he stands. It is my job to see things in people. The fact that I can see myself in them, I suppose, is purely my own doing. Instead I look at his glass in lieu of him, and I entertain an undue interest in my left hand, and a swirl of off-black fabric in my peripheral vision is the only way I can know that he's gone.

There are no goodbyes. There are no well-wishes, no parting words. There were no greetings. It is logical, then, that there would be no partings. Logical. I have never operated on logic. I've operated on faith. I was brought up taught to follow my heart. I was brought up a shameless idealist, an optimist, and I stumbled blindly into this sorry excuse for a world. I followed my heart. And there was a choice. You could back down, cut your losses, or you could risk it all. You could take that leap, that final, blissfully illogical leap, trusting that the wind would carry you wherever you needed to be.

But leaps of faith can fall. You twist your halo, you break your wings, and, although time may heal the wounds, you never truly attempt to fly again.

And so he leaves. The drone of rain heralds his departure. I could not have stopped him, even if I had tried, even if I had any reason to try. I feel no different, unchanged. I have lost nothing, and I have gained nothing, neither pride nor closure. The memories lay still in my mind, silent, no closer to resolution. But they are dimmer now, dimmed like the lights, like the sounds, like the emotions. I have to wonder just how strong this drink was, the full effect hitting me only now, and I am thankful. I will pay dearly for this tomorrow, this sweet release, but now, in this place, this is all that I have.

The bartender wordlessly refills my glass, and I nod in thanks. I ponder for a moment, before lifting it.

"And may this be his silver lining."

I toast an invisible presence. I take a sip from the bitter liquid. I pause, and I close my eyes, and I am alone.