By The Book: A Dramione Fan Fiction

By the Book

The rows of shelves were packed with books, some slid horizontally into crevices. Stacked into piles on the floor, precarious towers atop shelves, and covering the small tables intended to show off newer, popular titles. Each aisle was made more narrow as a result, and reshelving was a feat that he mostly saved for after hours. If even one other person was in the shop it made navigation tricky. He spent most of his day behind the desk, perched on a stool, book in hand. Reading glasses on his nose. He'd needed them since he was a teenager but refused to put them on at school.

It smelled of old parchment and worn leather. Wisteria wafting in whenever the door opened. Freshly brewed coffee, from the pot behind the register. The metallic hint of Muggle money. And dust, too. But Draco rather liked the perfume that resulted. Like his amortentia.

It was slow for a Saturday. Rainy in a way it hadn't rained in weeks. Giving a soothing soundtrack to the day. Draco flipped the page in his book of fairytales. It was one of Bernard's favorites. He'd kept it on the shelf above the till, next to a faded, grainy photo of the bookshop in its first year. Bernard's grandfather Bertram stood beside the door, not moving because it was a Muggle photograph. Clipped from a newspaper. Holding the book in front of his face, he smiled at the lessons Muggle children were meant to absorb from these short stories. They weren't all that different from Beedle the Bard and the illustrations were quite good. Though the drawing of a chimera wasn't accurate.

His coffee had gone lukewarm but he didn't mind. The chipped I'm a Book Dragon, Not a Worm mug never held the heat. Most wizards would cast a stasis charm to keep their drinks hot but Draco wasn't most wizards these days.

Instead of spending his time at the empty Manor, with its pristine white marble library with a cataloguing system and dust-free white shelves with gilded coronets and a painted ceiling, he worked in a used Muggle bookshop. Selling tattered paperbacks to the occasional patron from cramped wooded shelves. Instead of a luxurious four-poster from the 17th century, with French linens and a goose feather mattress, he slept on a flimsy double bed above the shop. Beneath a knit blanket from Merlin knew when and cotton sheets. Instead of seven course dinners with his mother he cooked mediocre meals on an old hob that even magic couldn't fix some days. It was quiet. And it was his.

The bell tinkled and a customer entered, or a passerby stopped in to get out of the rain. Either way Draco kept his book in place. "Welcome," he called over the top, immediately engrossed in his story once more. Whoever it was must have merely smiled and stepped further into the shop. That's what he liked about bookshop customers. They didn't need idle chit chat.

It was an hour before closing, and the chances of another customer were slim, so he leaned back against the shelf behind him and rested his foot on the counter. Placing his forearm on his knee. April was still cold this far north, and he wore a thick green jumper to beat the chill whenever the door opened. But the door hadn't been opening today, so his sleeves were rolled. Exposing a faded tattoo of a skull and snake, covered partly by newer inks. His mother's namesake flowers, scattered around the top of the skull like a crown, petals dripping over the eye sockets. The snake writhing from the mouth had little adornments to its scales reminiscent of his family crest and the tiles along the fireplace of the Slytherin common room. Along the pale skin on the top of his forearm was the dragon constellation he was named for, with its binary stars. Little clouds and stardust around it. Filling in the space.

He hadn't expected to like it — the feeling of the needle on his skin. The buzzing of the machine the Muggle tattoo artist used to mark him. But it was nothing like receiving the Dark Mark. There was no incantation. No burning pain. No pledge of loyalty from his lips. Just an artist, creating something beautiful on his skin. Hiding the ugliness of his past. Not all of it. That had been purposeful. He wanted to still see the skull and snake beneath it all. Beneath the pretty flowers and stars and shading of the sleeve. A reminder that he'd made a choice he could never take back. And he should see it every day for the rest of his life.