Chapter Text
For how fast the train was going, the two hours from Nantes to Paris felt very long. Draco did a bit of his assigned reading, though had to put it away when a Muggle woman took the seat next to him while they were stopped in Le Mans. Uncle Marc’s birthday present to Draco the year before—a portable CD player and accompanying headphones—proved of more use. The albums he’d gotten were actually quite good; it certainly wasn’t what Draco was used to, but interesting and catchy in its own way. Draco made a note to check if Nirvana had any other albums out.
The train finally pulled into Gare Montparnasse shortly before noon. It was a bright, clear, beautiful day in Paris, and not nearly as hot as Draco had feared it would be. A few trees were visible swaying through the glass ceiling of the train platform, and just as Draco was reaching for the sunglasses he’d packed away in his bag—
“Draco!”
He recognized Pansy’s voice at once, of course, and the smile rose to his face on reflex, though it tripped and fell right back off when he saw her.
“Pansy,” Draco said, “what on earth are you wearing?”
The only term Draco had to describe the ensemble was absolutely bewildering. Pansy Parkinson, normally so stylish that Draco felt frumpy by comparison, was dressed in a oversized button-up blouse patterned with tropical flowers, white shorts, and flip-flops. The whole outfit was finished by a wide-brimmed hat that fell over her eyes.
“Muggle clothes, of course!” Pansy said, hurrying over from the bench upon which she’d been apparently waiting for him to arrive. “We need to blend in.”
“And you thought this was the way to do it?” Draco asked, trying very, very hard not to laugh.
“That resort Mummy and I stayed at in Crete a few years back was Muggle,” Blaise said, and Draco’s resolve not to laugh very nearly cracked. He was wearing a Margaritaville t-shirt that was two sizes too big and what seemed to be swim trunks in neon pinks and yellows. “All the tourists were wearing these sorts of clothes.”
“Blaise,” Draco said, finally succumbing to his laughter, “that was a Muggle resort on the beach. We’re in the middle of Paris!”
“I thought it was a tourist uniform,” Blaise said doubtfully, watching as a mother passed with her young child, who asked why those people are dressed like that. Fortunately, none of Draco’s present company spoke any French.
“Tourist uniform?” Draco laughed. “God, you two are so pureblood. There’s no such thing as a tourist uniform and you both look ridiculous.”
Pansy looked primed for violence. “Blaise, I’m going to kill you!”
“I’ve seen the pair of you in Muggle clothes before! Skirts and blouses and things…”
“We have things to change into,” Blaise hastened to say.
They had to make a quick stop in the train station bathroom, but were much more presentable for the rest of the journey. Their newly appropriate attire did not, of course, stop Draco from chuckling about it the whole trip north.
“No wonder everyone was giving us weird looks on the ferry,” Pansy mumbled, glaring into the back of Blaise’s head as they descended down the steps into the Métro station just outside the main doors of Gare Montparnasse.
Draco laughed so hard he nearly fell down the bottom half of the stairs. “You took the ferry wearing those get-ups?”
“I really thought Muggle tourists wore a uniform!” Blaise protested.
“It was a bit of a hassle, and it certainly took longer,” Pansy said, “but it was cheaper than arranging a Portkey, in the end. And I did want to do it the Muggle way just to see what it was like, though I admit I’ve come to regret the decision…”
“Well, they’re supposed to be opening up that direct service from London to Paris soon,” Draco said, “a train that goes under the English Channel. Maybe you can take it next summer—I assume in white tie attire.”
Blaise groaned and Pansy sighed, leaving Draco to laugh at his own joke alone, which he did loudly and shamelessly.
The Paris Métro was large and complicated, but even so it didn’t take Draco very long to find the right line to take them north into Montmartre—and he was amused to find that someone had carved a little wand into the glass over the map, right next to the correct station: Lamarck-Caulaincourt.
They took the time on the ride through the city to catch up on what they’d missed in one anothers’ lives since the end of last term, though as it had only been a few weeks, there wasn’t much to say, and conversation quickly diverted to:
“The Quidditch World Cup,” Pansy said dreamily, just as the Métro swayed to a stop at Saint Lazare station, whereupon a huge volume of people got off and even more got on. Her eyes were all but aglow with excitement. “From a VIP box, no less!”
“I’m more excited about the afterparty, if I’m honest,” Blaise said. “I have a long list of Quidditch players I’m keen to knock elbows with.”
“Do I remember you saying your mother was friends with one of the players?” Draco asked.
“The sister of one of my former stepfathers plays for Ireland, yes.”
“One of them?”
“Blaise’s mother is…shall we say, rather infamous,” Pansy said. “I’m only just now realizing that you might not have ever heard the rumors about her family, Draco…”
Draco frowned. “What rumors?”
Blaise sniffed imperiously. “My mother is a saint. A veritable angel on earth. She’s never done a single thing wrong in her entire life. And I’m not just saying that because it’s what her lawyer tells me to say.”
“All six of his stepfathers died under mysterious circumstances,” Pansy supplied, expression circumspect.
“Six?” Draco asked, stunned, before realizing what the second half of the sentence had been. “Wait, died?”
Pansy grinned, leaned back in her chair. “Rumor has it she’s the daughter of a powerful consigliere.”
“Spurious rumor,” Blaise answered loftily, “and utter hogwash, of course.”
“Consigliere… Wait, we’re talking about the mafia?”
“What I always heard from my own mother,” Pansy continued, “is that the boss of her clan keeps setting her up with men he wants to honeypot.”
Draco frowned. “Honeypot?”
“You know. Black widow them.”
“My mother is not a spider,” Blaise said, and to Draco’s ear, he was staring to sound genuinely defensive.
Draco scooted closer to him. “So what’s the truth, then?”
Blaise opened his mouth, paused, shut it again, then looked away.
“The truth is that my mother generally keeps me out of her marriages,” he eventually said. “I’ve never even met any of her husbands, nor indeed any of my extended family. For as long as I can recall, it’s only ever been me and her.”
“Which does sound rather like something someone paid to honeypot enemies of the mafia might do with their beloved only child,” Pansy intoned.
“My mother is a saint and an angel, et cetera, et cetera,” Blaise muttered, and turned his attention to the dark window of the Métro car.
Draco was surprised—not just by the news, but by the fact that the news was surprising at all. Blaise had never really talked about his family in any detail, nor said anything substantial about his mother. Draco wondered if it would be a bad idea to ask her directly. She’d always struck Draco as perfectly nice when he’d spoken to her in the past, and she was in theory coming to the Quidditch World Cup with them.
Although if she really was a mafiosa…
“Ah,” Draco said, mercifully distracted when the train squealed to a stop. “This is it. Come on.”
Draco sprang to his feet and made for the door—he and Blaise and Pansy were the only ones who got off.
He checked the instructions he’d jotted down a few days ago, though he needn’t have—he’d read and reread that little slip of paper so many times that he could have repeated the steps with his eyes shut.
12th line across Seine to Lamarck-Caulaincourt… South to steps up to Rue Girardon… Tap balustrade with wand three times…
Draco had only been to Paris once before, a short trip taken during his days in primary school to see the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, experiences that were perhaps mostly wasted on a child of nine. He’d been aware, even back then, of the popular sentiments about the city: the romance, the beauty, the history. But his Uncle Marc, who’d been born and raised in Paris, had given Draco a more practical assessment the day he’d left:
It’s nice enough, but dangerous, he’d said. And there are too many tourists.
And now that he was exploring the city on his own, he found himself thinking that the evaluation rang true. The tourists stuck out like sore thumbs, taking pictures of every little thing and walking too slowly. At least, Draco supposed, they were decently far enough from major attractions as to avoid the larger crowds.
This particular area of Montmartre was a mix of business and residential, with the former usually built under several stories of the latter. The streets were patchworks of different kinds of cobblestones, occasionally interrupted by little parks and trees along curbs and towering over stone fences. Draco guided his friends south across a few streets, past coffee shops and banks and one large copper statue before he found what he was looking for.
“That’s it,” Draco said.
“What is?” Pansy answered, squinting eyes following Draco’s gaze.
“That staircase. It goes up to Rue Girardon. It should take us into Place Cachée.”
“And more relevantly,” Blaise intoned eagerly, “to Bonhabille.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to trust your judgment on fashion after your stunt today,” Pansy snipped.
The stairs, tucked between two tall residential buildings lined with Juliet balconies, were wide and made of stone, flanked by several pairs of streetlamps and bisected by an aging metal railing. The steps split at the top, and when Draco subtly drew his wand from his sleeve and tapped the balustrade, that was precisely where the archway appeared.
“Oh, wow,” Pansy said.
Blaise made an unhappy noise. “A phoenix? Are they trying to scare us away?”
“Nothing will scare me away from Bonhabille,” Pansy said, and boldly headed straight up toward it. The arch was indeed topped with a large, golden statue of a phoenix, its wings extended. Draco was pretty sure it was just a coincidence. Place Cachée predated, surely, the events of even the First War?
A few Muggles passed directly through the archway without even noticing it. Draco supposed that only wizardkind could see it. As he started up the steps behind Pansy, the swirling mists under the golden, phoenix-topped archway took shape. And when Draco finally passed through—
“It’s so pretty!” Pansy gushed, just before Draco saw it in all its glory:
The word “pretty” felt inadequate, somehow. In some ways, Place Cachée felt like an extension of the rest of Paris, and yet it could not possibly be mistaken for anything less than magical. It was full of color and sound: witches and wizards in eye-catching clothes going in every direction, and shops whose signs were illuminated by magical light and whose front windows were full of moving displays.
“Le Gobelet Noir,” “Coupe de Quidditch,” “Librairie Magillard”—it was so much bigger than Le Virage, the little corner of Nantes catering to magical kind, and even, Draco thought, bigger than Diagon Alley in London. He felt a rush of excitement. He wanted to see absolutely everything.
But unfortunately, his two friends had only one thing in mind:
“There it is!” Blaise said, and before Draco could even come up with an answer, he was grabbed by the wrist and dragged along down the magical half of Rue Girardon.
“I thought it was called Bonhabille,” Draco said as he was pulled toward a particularly large, crowded shop whose painted sign read “Maison Capenoir.” Two windows on the front of the building showed off mannequins whose outfits magically changed every few seconds and whose poses changed, too, with each new outfit.
“Bonhabille is the designer,” Pansy clarified. “She owns two shops in Place Cachée and, I think, is trying to open up one in London as well.”
“Oh,” Draco said. He’d never been as into fashion as his friends, but had to admit that some of the outfits the mannequins wore were quite nice to look at.
The shop was much more expansive than Madam Malkin’s, the only other magical clothing shop Draco had ever been in, with rows and rows of circular racks that carouseled around themselves and each other and several more mannequin displays. He didn’t quite know where to look, which ended up not being a problem, because Blaise and Pansy very much did.
Draco spent the majority of the next two hours smiling and nodding and enjoying his friends’ enthusiasm, even as he wasn’t able to follow most of what they were saying. He held their bags while they alternated between dressing rooms and mirrors and clothing racks. He gave his opinion when it was asked of him, though he feared comments like That color is pretty and I like the embroidery weren’t quite what they wanted in terms of feedback.
Sometime a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, while Blaise and Pansy discussed the pros and cons of coordinated outfits while wearing a vest and skirt, respectively, of matching fabric, the front doors swung open. His friends didn’t notice, being altogether too engrossed in their conversation, but Draco, whose patience for fashion talk had been dwindling steadily, looked over if only to have something else to think about.
To his surprise, Draco picked out a familiar face:
“I’ll never understand your aversion to publicity,” said Weston Sharpe, the Quidditch scout who’d broken Marcus Flint’s heart last year and tried to offer Draco a sponsorship deal more than once. “It’s only pictures.”
“Only pictures,” scoffed Mr. Sharpe’s companion, who Draco didn’t recognize, but who looked a few years older than Draco. He was tall and pale and thin, apart from the width of his shoulders, with dark hair cropped close to his head and a sharp face that Draco noticed at once. “It’s only pictures till they follow you home, Veston.”
Puzzled, Draco looked past the pair, through the glass doors leading into the shop, and, sure enough, a group of reporters, flashpots bursting, were crowded at the entrance. None crossed the threshold, though, Draco supposed because of some sort of magic keeping them out.
He’d only looked away for half a second when he startled at the sound of his name: “Draco Malfoy, is that you?”
Draco couldn’t quite fight down a nervous, uncomfortable feeling as Weston Sharpe closed the distance between them. In the end, Mr. Sharpe had backed off when Draco asked him to, but the man’s preoccupation with Draco’s fame had left a sour taste in his mouth, and so Draco couldn’t manage anything warmer than awkward neutrality with his answer:
“Er, hello, Mr. Sharpe.”
“I suppose I should have guessed you were native French, based on the accent,” Mr. Sharpe said, and when he offered a hand to shake, Draco had to set down the large pile of “maybe” clothes Blaise and Pansy had asked him to hold onto to take it. “Do you live in Paris?”
“Er, no,” Draco answered. “I was raised in Nantes, actually. I just took the train over for a weekend trip with my friends…”
He looked over his shoulder toward the dressing rooms. Pansy and Blaise had at some point ducked back into the nearby changing room, and were now arguing through the thin wall between them about which color suited Pansy’s palette better.
“They’ll…be out soon.” Or at least he hoped they would. Draco would feel a lot more confident navigating this situation with them backing him up.
“Draco Malfoy?” said Mr. Sharpe’s companion, who’d ambled over more slowly with his hands buried in the pockets of his loose, light crimson robe. “I’m sure I’ve heard that name somevhere before.”
“That was me,” Mr. Sharpe answered. “You’ll be amused, no doubt, to meet the only other person who managed to shake me when I tried to recruit them to the Falcons.”
“Oh,” Draco said, with a sudden spark of memory, “this is the protégé you mentioned.”
“Viktor Krum, meet Draco Malfoy. He’s famous in England for being the Boy Who Lived, but as it happens, he’s also an excellent Chaser.”
Viktor Krum… His name was familiar, too. Draco studied his face intently—the round profile of his nose, dark and oddly soulful eyes, wide-set jaw—only to find it handsome, but unfamiliar.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say I shook you,” Viktor said to Mr. Sharpe with a lopsided smile that Draco thought suited his face very well. “Avoided you for a vhile, perhaps.” He also had quite an unusual accent that Draco couldn’t quite place. “Still, I suppose you’ve had your uses. Draco Malfoy, vas it?”
“Your name is familiar,” Draco said, “but I can’t quite remember why, so if we’ve met before, I really do apologize.”
Viktor’s brow arched in surprise for a moment—and then he laughed loudly, a big, booming sound that did funny things to Draco’s stomach.
“How refreshing!” Viktor eventually said.
“Viktor is the Seeker for the Bulgarian National Team,” Mr. Sharpe said with a grin. “That’s probably where you’ve heard of him.”
“Bulgarian! I was wondering what that accent was,” Draco said.
Viktor’s face settled into a smile. “Born and raised in Varna.”
“Varna… That’s right on the Black Sea, isn’t it?”
“Vater blue enough to break a heart,” Viktor answered, “and it does, every time I have to leave for the frigid climes of Durmstrang.”
Draco had never heard of Durmstrang before, but based on context: “Is that Bulgaria’s magical school?”
“No, Bulgaria doesn’t have a magical school— Vell, I shouldn’t say that. It does, but not one nearly so prestigious as Durmstrang. Fortunately, I’ll only have to make the miserable trek north one more time.”
“Nearing graduation?” Draco guessed.
“Mercifully,” Viktor answered, which made Draco laugh. “You attend Beauxbatons, I assume?”
“Oh. No, actually. Both of my parents were born in Britain, and when they died, their Will set me up to go to Hogwarts like they did.”
Viktor’s face fell. “Vhen they…?”
“I wasn’t exaggerating about Draco’s fame,” Mr. Sharpe supplied, “though it has very different origins. His parents were killed by the Ashbringer back during the Second War. He survived the attack, though the Ashbringer didn’t—and no one’s quite sure how.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Viktor said.
Draco smiled. It felt like all the organs in his chest were twisting up together, but in a good way. “Thank you, but it’s all right. Honestly, meeting someone who doesn’t know my story is—is rather refreshing,” Draco stammered out, and he felt a flush rising up his neck and onto his face, and he nervously tucked his hair behind his ear, and oh, Draco realized all at once, did he fancy Viktor? Was that what this was? He’d never really fancied anyone before, excepting perhaps Headmaster Riddle, though that really didn’t count.
But those big, dark, soulful eyes were searching him with intensity, and Draco felt like he might melt into the floor. And when that lopsided smile came back, Draco’s heart nearly leapt straight through the front of his ribcage and he had to stop himself from blurting out something stupid, like—
“He’s gay, by the way!”
Draco whirled. Pansy and Blaise were standing in the doorway between the changing rooms and the rest of the shop, though Draco felt an incredibly strong impetus in that moment to knock them both flat on the floor. “Pansy!” he hissed.
“What?” she answered, voice arch and smirk hateful. “You were doing really well!”
Well, at least the butterflies in his stomach were gone, replaced entirely by an intense desire to dig a hole and live in it for the rest of his life.
“I, er, should… We should go. Sorry to, er, keep you.”
Draco grabbed Pansy’s wrist in one hand and the huge stack of “maybe” clothes in the other and dragged both toward the cashier on the other side of the room—
—or he tried to, at least, but before he could, a hand grabbed his elbow and forced him to turn back.
Viktor’s expression looked similarly alarmed and apprehensive as he asked, “Could I…owl you? Sometime?”
Blaise made a sound like a cat coughing up a hairball. If Draco didn’t get out of this building soon, he might burst into flame.
“Sure!” he managed, his voice half an octave higher than he remembered it being an hour ago, and fled across the store.
He and Blaise and Pansy only made it about ten feet away before Pansy burst into high, shrieking cackles and Blaise collapsed onto Draco’s shoulder, shuddering and wheezing.
“Merlin’s sagging balls,” Blaise gasped.
“I hate both of you,” Draco said through his teeth, face burning and heart hammering.
Pansy stopped long enough to ask, “Is it bad that I’m already picking out the color scheme for the wedding?” Then she went right back to shriek-cackling.
“No, but it is absolutely insane,” Draco said, but spared a look over his shoulder.
Viktor was staring back, even as Mr. Sharpe was escorting him toward a side exit on the far side of the shop. And even though it was less than a second of eye contact, it still sent heat radiating through Draco’s entire body. He looked forward sharply.
“Let’s just… Let’s just buy what you want and get out of here,” Draco managed.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Blaise said. “No, we’re getting you something, too.”
Draco stopped walking, but only because Blaise and Pansy did, too, and blocked his path in the process. “Me? I don’t need any new clothes.”
“Apparently you do!” Blaise replied, grinning wolfishly. “Apparently you need something nice to wear for your date with Viktor Krum.”
“That’s not—” Draco began, but couldn’t finish, because he was suddenly being frog-marched back into the racks of clothes.