Hedwig sailed into the kitchen of Grimmauld Place with a letter for Brogan. She dropped it off at the table and then settled onto her perch in the corner. Brogan nudged her bowl of oatmeal to the side so she could read her mail immediately. Draco looked around the edge of his newspaper to see how much was left in the bowl and was satisfied enough to return to his article.
Brogan interrupted his reading again seconds later, just as he found his place actually. "Exams are over, Hermione thinks she did well on all of them. She says it felt weird not having you there, I guess I didn't realize you were that big of a nerd Draco." Draco folded up his paper so she could better see his sneer but she was still reading. He felt a pang about missing the exams but recently strange owls had started dropping off homework packets with very familiar cramped handwriting.
"The Express leaves tomorrow and then they're going to spend a couple weeks with their families. They want to come here the week before my birthday and then we'll start, or whatever after the trace goes." Brogan slumped a little; with her bare feet, jeans, t-shirt and all of her hair stuffed behind her ears Brogan felt herself the very picture of androgyny. Draco let her think that.
"She didn't say ‘whatever' of course, she thinks I know what we should do, where we should go..."
Draco patted her hand, "You'll figure it out. You'll get all sorts of brilliant insights and Ron will be all Mr. Reliable (except when he isn't) and Hermione will be all Ms. Research & Knowledge..."
"And what about you Draco? You're coming with us, what are you going to contribute?"
"I'm going to keep you from making yourselves unnecessarily miserable."
"You're anticipating some necessary misery?" asked Brogan wrinkling her nose to tease him.
"It wouldn't be Slytherin to set the bar too high but I'll see what I can do."
"I think we're all going to be glad to have you along."
"Oh, I'll make sure of that." Draco replied, feeling a sweet sense of belonging. He was going off on an adventure (or whatever) soon with the Golden Trio.
He scoffed to himself at the golden part as soon as he thought it, now that he knew them he could see that they weren't that much different from any other kids his age. Harry had put up with more shit than possibly all the other kids in their year put together, sure, but other than that they seemed normal.
And she was definitely going to defeat the Dark Lord, not despite all that other crap but because of it. - That might be the sappiest thing he had ever thought ever, but Merlin's drawers, it was true. Draco looked over at Brogan and caught her smirking at him, bugger, the sappiness must have shown somehow. He kicked her chair, hard, and she just laughed at him.
The sun was shining and there was a sort of tentative plan to go out and see a movie that afternoon, or maybe visit the park and try that frisbee thing again, or both. Bill would probably be by for supper, Kreacher wasn't such a bad little elf anymore and Bill had fallen in love with his puddings.
When they got up to leave the table Brogan tried not to notice Lucius Malfoy's face sneering up from the paper that had slipped open a bit. In her opinion he looked haunted, nothing mattered to Lucius as much as his family. Well, there was all the wealth and power that he felt made his family look good, but they were really just accessories she knew -it was Narcissa and Draco that Lucius prized above all else. And they had both left him. Brogan had spent a lot of time, sometimes she wondered if it was more than Draco but probably not, a good deal of time though running through how different outcomes of this war would impact Draco.
If Brogan was able to defeat Voldemort she would make sure everyone knew that Draco had helped her and he was a hero. If Voldemort finally killed her she hoped that he could somehow use her death to pretend he had been working against her all along and then his dad and possibly her da would take care of him. And if Voldemort just went ape shit and destroyed all of the United Kingdom he could get his ass through the chunnel and go to his mum.
It comforted her greatly to know that there were a few ways Draco could make it through the war in one piece, she couldn't say the same for herself or Ron and Hermione. Brogan was careful to never bring any of her contingency plans up with Draco though, he would shoot them all down and insist he would never leave her and then everyone she cared about would be trapped by this war. It was more important, just now at least, for Brogan to have this little hope for one friend escaping.
Draco would have understood that hope, but he would have bristled at being the one she wanted to save. For now it was just another thing that they didn't look at too closely or discuss out loud. She knew that Draco had at least one topic, likely her own survival, that he refused to discuss. He had a disturbing habit of reading dark texts from the Black family library too, very dark texts, feverishly. In her bones she knew he was researching something specific but the books he looked at were so dark and the set of his shoulders as he went through them was so forlorn; Gryffindor or not she found herself willing to respect his apparent choice not to mention what he was doing.
They each certainly had their reasons to mope around the Grimmauld Place every day, which was kind of why they were manically going out every day. Guarding each other against despair with endless games of frisbee and ridiculous quests for potion ingredients or supplies that might be useful in the future. They fretted, but they fretted together in a productive manner and it helped them to deal with whatever was coming. Because they both knew that 'whatever' was definitely coming, but not today.
Today was for more goofing off and getting outside in the sun and grass with a frisbee or without, but definitely together. And Brogan was definitely going to have to run back upstairs because after last time Draco refused to go anywhere with her unless she had shoes.
-The End-