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chapter thirty six
lead into gold
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Owl and Dragon Café was my favorite restaurant in Diagon Alley. The Leaky Cauldron was too busy and all of the other cafes were either grimy enough I was afraid I'd get food poisoning or too nice to commandeer an entire table to work on my uni stuff for hours.
It was relatively small, nondescript-looking, with a few circular wooden tables. Most chose to sit outside under the colorful umbrellas, but it was always quiet inside. Also, there was no wind to pick up my papers and scatter them along the cobblestone road.
It had been about thirty minutes since I'd seen Draco. In front of me, I had a half-eaten blueberry muffin, a veggie sandwich I'd hardly touched, and an empty cup. My nerves were making it hard for me to stomach anything, and the several cups of coffee weren't helping.
Something about waiting for Draco to show up—or maybe not—made me feel like I was waiting for a first date.
It was really stupid since I'd only been on one. A boy in my classical mechanics class asked me to dinner at the end of our fourth lecture. I'd said okay. The dinner was awkward but fine. However, he wanted me to hook him up with some of my modafinil which I had told him earlier I took for a sleep disorder (he'd asked). I'd said no. We never spoke again.
Anyway, Dean didn't count. We'd been friends for a while before we started dating.
I supposed some of the anxiety stemmed from wondering whether Draco would actually show up or not. He didn't seem enthusiastic about the suggestion. In fact, he didn't seem enthusiastic about seeing me at all.
It wasn't that I wanted to rekindle our friendship (though, 'friendship' was a debatable label for it), but I also didn't want us to ignore each other forevermore.
Although I supposed if he was going to let me know he wanted nothing to do with me, it was best to know right away rather than have him pretend until the bottled-up resentment shattered its container. We'd probably go back to being enemies.
I was working on going through my latest lectures, sheets of paper and my textbook spread all across the table, when the door opened and I looked up to see Draco smoothing back windblown hair, his eyes scrutinizing the cafe with a sharpness that told me he had not enjoyed his trial. When he saw me, his lips parted but didn't curve, as though he wasn't willing to put effort into a smile—even a fake one.
"Hello, you can sit where—," Eleonora, the grey-haired witch who owned the place, seemed to materialize out of thin air. Only, when she settled her sight on Draco, her sentence faltered for a moment. Hurriedly, she continued, "—ever you want."
