It is what it says, all Drarry. I decided to pull together several of my short stories into a collection of One Shots (it makes more sense to do it this way) so this was originally 'Dragon Moon Café', but now includes '25', 'Bloody Malfoy', 'In the...
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A/N Nearly a Year Eight story. This 'theme' is one I've attempted to write a number of times and always discarded or failed with because I'm not sure the turnaround could realistically happen. I hope it works or perhaps I'm just being bloody-minded! It's one of my longer one-shots but I felt it had to be because of the theme. FYI: the train journey from Kings Cross to Mallaig (the end of the Scottish trainline with that viaduct [above] used in the HP films) is 11½ hours. A bit of magic reduces it to 7½hrs, meaning that if the train departs Kings Cross Station at 11am, the students should be seated in the Great Hall by 7pm ready for the Sorting Feast to begin. Also, I've used the 'Cultural Studies' N.E.W.T. again that I created in 'Soulmate Marks' as I think it's quite relevant for Draco in this story and included a head-cannon I saw about a little white Dragon (because I thought it was cute).
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Draco stood on the rear footplate at the very end of the Hogwarts Express, leaning on the railing as he watched Kings Cross Station disappear from sight. The suburbs of London began to blur into a haze of red-brick buildings, warehouses, and tower blocks. He sighed. He wasn't looking forward to the next ten months but the Ministry had decreed he must go. So, to Hogwarts he would go. He was finding it hard to be enthusiastic about the whole debacle. He'd prefer to be getting on with something useful.
He sighed again. And decided he'd better go in and find a compartment. It was getting too blustery outside as the train accelerated to an unnatural speed and he couldn't stay out there all the way to Hogsmeade. The draft wind from the train was making it noisy and bitterly cold, despite his thick jumper and wool coat. Or, rather, it was making it colder. The temperatures across the country were unnaturally low for this time of year. He'd heard whispers that snow had already fallen in the Highlands in Scotland.
Plus, his hair was getting mussed up.
Not that he particularly cared about that. It's just it kept whipping into his eyes.
He'd let certain things go since the war. There seemed no point. And with that came a certain freedom. With his father incarcerated in Azkaban for life and his mother inFrance, there was no one to scold him about his appearance. He'd let his hair grow a bit. Not straight and one length and long (no, certainly not like his father's) but short and layered and tousled (like Potter's, not that he'd admit that aloud). And he had a short stubble, like those trendy Muggle actors who wanted to appear different from their signature parts. He wore black jeans too. It was still hard to let go of wearing black but the jeans... they had been a dare he set himself, to see what the fuss was about. He had wondered why Potter wore them all the time. Now, he had ten pairs of black jeans, which was a bit excessive, but they were all slightly different—a different pair for a different occasion. Two pairs were even a daring dark grey. So, these days he only wore jeans too, though sometimes he'd deign to wear a smart jacket with them, if the occasion called for it. Today was the first day he'd worn his ripped jeans and he couldn't help looking at the little slashes of pale skin that appeared between the threads with a small thrill of satisfaction.
