World's Smallest Violin

Chapter 2: Prisoner's Dilemma

Draco shut the book and set it aside. Nymphadora was right; Holden had narrated the entire thing from an insane asylum. It was more interesting, though, that she seemed to think him stupid enough to make it half way through a novel without deducing that its author was a Muggle. Anyway, her selection of books with magical authors was amazingly small; he had read nearly all of them before ever setting foot in the Tonks residence and polished off the rest of them in a few days.

He glanced at the clock on the nightstand of the guest room. 3:47 a.m., no wonder his eyes felt so tired, but Draco felt no desire to go to sleep, or do anything else, for that matter.

Draco turned out the light, reclined in the bed, and stared at the ceiling, contemplating his current level of boredom. At home he would be able to see his friends, ride his broom, boss around the house elves, use magic more or less as he pleased, and, if all that was not enough, he would almost certainly have met his legendary Aunt Bellatrix by now. Who knows, he might have even been given a real part to play in the war.

In the darkness, Draco rolled up his left sleeve and inspected the bare skin of his forearm by the pale green light of the electric clock. One day the Dark Mark would sit there, and one day it would burn, black and hot. And then Draco Malfoy, first among Death Eaters, would rise up and do his master's bidding.

But instead he was stuck in a tiny house that ran on electricity (electricity! And why?), with his wand locked in a box in the closet, and no notion of whether he was a prisoner, a guest, or a resident. That was by far the worst part, not knowing his own rights and privileges, not even sure if he could enter a room where he had not been invited or rummage through the refrigerator when the mood struck him. He had tried to test these boundaries on his second day there, with the vague hope that enough misconduct would get him sent home, and gotten no useful results whatsoever, only a stern talk from Aunt Andromeda wherein she informed him that such behavior was unnecessary.

Draco briefly considered starting in on some of his summer homework, but with the O.W.L.s still fresh in his mind he decided that he was not quite bored enough to do any actual learning yet. Instead, he stood and slipped next door to return The Catcher in the Rye to Nymphadora's bookshelf and select something else to read. He bypassed Morrison and both Brontes, and chose something by Dumas, which he replaced ten pages later, having just discovered the origins of the Muggle phrase the three Musketeers. D'Artagnan reminded him far too much of Harry Potter. In the end he chose a book promisingly titled The Color of Magic and returned to the guest room.

However, after fumbling for an irritating amount of time just to get the light turned back on and settling back on the bed, the only place in the room to sit, Draco decided that the idea of starting another book no longer interested him. After considering and rejecting the notion of simply going to sleep, he went to his school trunk for parchment, quill, ink, and a textbook to use as a writing surface and returned to the bed to think about to whom he should write. Between them, Crabbe and Goyle could nearly match the brainpower of a mountain troll, there was at best a fifty percent chance that Blaise Zabini would actually reply, and Draco could think of nothing to say to Theodore Nott, so he finally settled on writing to Pansy. He composed a few lines of general complaint about being separated from his friends for the summer, mentioned with fondness their time in the Inquisitorial Squad, added a veiled request for new information about the war, signed his name, and finally went to sleep.

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When Draco awoke, it was nearly lunchtime, and light was streaming in through the south facing window, baking his feet under the covers. Draco slipped out of bed, dressed, and emerged. Andromeda was in the sitting room, pointing her wand among the pictures and figures on the mantle, apparently dusting. She seemed to spend all of her time either cleaning or cooking and Draco could not understand why she did not get a house elf.

"There you are," she said, looking up from her work. "You missed breakfast. Would you like me to wake you up if it looks like you're oversleeping?"

Draco did not respond, and he most certainly did not want his Aunt waking him up in the mornings.

"Maybe just if I've made something special for breakfast, then," Andromeda continued, undeterred. Draco's silent treatment was loosing its effect. "Anyway, I was thinking we'd have sandwiches for lunch, there's plenty of food in the refrigerator if you want to make yourself one."

"I'd like to post a letter," Draco said. His voice sounded raspy and disused.

Andromeda looked up, startled, and Draco realized that this was the first sentence he had ever uttered in her presence.

"Of course you can," Andromeda replied, recovering. "Quicksilver likes to sleep in the oak tree in the garden during the day, go ahead. Pick a few carrots while you're out there, will you?"

Draco was surprised but forced him not to show it as he made his way to the back door and stepped outside. He had been so certain that Andromeda would ask to inspect the letter before allowing him to send it that he had not bothered with a seal.

"Quicksilver, huh?" Draco muttered, spotting the barn owl on a branch above his head and using the rolled up letter to poke it awake. "Clever."

Quicksilver opened one eye to inspect him, then obediently glided down to a lower branch and allowed Draco to tie the letter to his leg.

As the owl flapped away, Draco turned his attention to the garden surrounding him. It was clear that Andromeda spent a lot of time and effort here. Neat rows of vegetables stretched off to his right and artfully arranged flowers grew to the left, surrounding a small pond with a fountain. Draco returned inside without gathering the requested carrots, that was servant work and he refused to do it. Anyway, he had no idea what a carrot looked like if it wasn't cut and cooked and on his plate.

Back inside, Draco bypassed the kitchen and sat down at his usual place at the table. Snacks were one thing, but Draco would not prepare his own meals. Instead, he pulled over the Daily Prophet that someone had left there that morning and flipped through it, counting the minutes until Andromeda made his lunch for him. Eleven minutes later she stopped her cleaning, went into the kitchen, looked around for the carrots, muttered, "It was a simple enough request," and strode out the back door. Nineteen minutes after Draco sat down at the table, Andromeda finally set a sandwich and a bowl of salad down in front of him. No house elf would have dared to make him wait that long, nor would he or she dare to make such a foolish mistake as to forget to bring him something to drink.

"Pumpkin juice?" Draco said pointedly.

"On the door of the refrigerator," Andromeda replied. "Cups are in the cupboard to the right of the sink." She took a long drink from her own glass.

So these were deliberate countermeasures. Draco did not try to guess what game Andromeda was playing, he only vowed to beat her at it. He set to his sandwich with nothing to drink and pushed his salad aside when he realized that she had also neglected to give him a fork. Andromeda watched all this without comment.

"What are you planning to do today?" Andromeda asked after a few minutes of silent chewing.

Draco shrugged, truthfully, his mouth dry.

"Well, it's a beautiful day," she continued. "I am going to work in the garden. You can join me if you like."

Draco did not bother with a response. They both knew his answer. He finished his sandwich and stood, leaving Andromeda to deal with his dishes.

"I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish with your attitude here," Andromeda said, her words chasing him from the room.

Draco fetched the book he had chosen from the guest room and settled himself on the sofa in the sitting room, the same as he had done the previous day, and the day before that, and every day since he had been banished.

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Pansy's reply, when it arrived, was long and simpering and he only read as far as My Dearest Draco before tossing it aside, feeling slightly nauseated.

The clock read four a.m. and Draco felt ready to drop with exhaustion, but also irritatingly reluctant to either turn out the light or close his eyes, so instead he paced the room, cursing the name Frankenstein.

After nearly being scared out of his skin for the third time by the nocturnal noises of the animals outside, Draco gave it all up as a bad job and stepped outside the guest room with the vague notion of getting a glass of water, and perhaps a wizarding wireless for some background noise. He came up short when he found a light on and Ted already sitting at the kitchen table.

"Couldn't sleep either, eh?" Ted asked, looking up from a piece of parchment in front of him.

Draco hesitated. Tormenting Granger and the other Mudbloods at Hogwarts about their blood status was one thing, but doing the same to his host seemed to be lacking in propriety in a way that he could not quite define. So far, Draco had neatly dodged the issue by simply avoiding Ted whenever they were in the same room, but this was the first time Ted had asked him a direct question when Andromeda was not nearby to diffuse the situation.

"Me, I always seem to think a nice puzzle will send me straight off," Ted continued, watching Draco clatter around the kitchen. "Somehow I always forget that there's not much I like more than a good puzzle. Anyways, I might as well stay awake for the duration, at this point."

Draco took a long drink of water.

"You're really buying what Voldemort is selling."

Draco coughed and sputtered. Hearing the Mudblood utter the Dark Lord's name was nearly enough to make him forget his resolution not to talk to Ted. Containing his fury with an effort, Draco set the empty glass next to the sink.

"It doesn't have to be this way, you know," Ted called as Draco returned to the guest room, exhausted with both Ted and Andromeda and their attempts to understand him. The entire situation made him want to take a shower.