Tainted Love

The Dark Mark

IRIS

"You act like you've never been in a grocery store before," Iris said, her eyes resting on Draco's profile. He turned his head to meet her eyes, comically bewildered.

"Of course I've been to a grocery store," he muttered. His eyes returned to the aisles, lingering on the fluorescent lights above. "Not a muggle one, though."

Iris didn't think there was much of a difference, but she let him look anyway. He followed the shopping carts with his eyes, squinted at the lettered signs dictating what you could find on each aisle.

The bins at the front of the store seemed to hold his attention for the longest. They were filled with giant bouncy balls and hanging gadgets. They were in a Tesco; they may as well have been in the darkest corner of the Forbidden Forest.

"What the hell's that?" He asked, his face tilted upwards. Iris followed his eyes to the ceiling, where a dozen balloons were corralled between four shallow beams.

"They're balloons," Iris said.

"Do they have a charm on them?" He was still staring.

"No, just helium," Iris said, then, preemptively, "it's a gas."

Draco shook his head in slow disbelief then looked back down.

They hadn't planned on going to the store, but Iris didn't have any food in her apartment and all the market shops in Diagon were closed at this hour. They had spent the day out in muggle London, walking around, browsing through stores, sitting in parks.

Iris liked the laziness of it. Draco usually needed everything to be dictated. He wanted a plan and he liked to stick to it. He was shocked when she told him that she didn't take a list to shop, that she would just walk down all the aisles and grab what she wanted.

It was sort of miraculous when he let his guard down with her, like he was giving her a gift. He trusted her enough to know him, really know him. People could say what they wanted but Iris would always find that a privilege.

Draco walked behind her dutifully while she shopped, inspecting labels with curious eyes. He was dressed too nicely to be in a grocery store and the muggles strolling by them noticed.

Iris felt a secret flicker of pride whenever she caught one of them doing a double take. Draco would draw their eyes even if he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The other people in the store probably looked at Iris and wondered how she had managed to get him.

She wondered the same thing herself, to be fair. She wasn't ugly by any means but nobody could really hope to compare to Draco's particular brand of beauty - nobody except a girl like Pansy or one of the Greengrasses or Victoria Rosier. Iris often thought that the press must have forgiven some of the Slytherins just for being beautiful and elegant.

It is so hard to believe that a beautiful person is cruel, even though the Slytherin type of beauty was hard and cold. Everybody likes looking at beautiful things and nobody wants to feel bad about it.

That had been half the reason Iris had gone back to Draco. Despite everything she couldn't help but want him close to her. You can't separate yourself from a face like that.

He picked up a can of refried beans and read the label with pure confusion. Iris stopped pushing the cart and smiled at him. Lucky girl, watching him like that. He held up the can to her, a question on her lips, and she thought he wants me too, and felt happy.

Theodore's Patronus was waiting for them when Iris opened the door to her apartment. Draco raised his eyebrows when the snake started speaking but kept his own mouth shut.