Vis-à-Vis-à-Vis: A Drarry Story

Chapter 2

Harry had one routine indulgence. One place he'd never have dared to step foot in as a child. One specific establishment, and a few things he paid for, but more for the experience itself. A place no one knew about, not even Ron and Hermione.

Whole Foods.

In Soho.

Ron saw a mailer once and made a typical dad joke about buying Whole Foods being better than being sold half of the food. Nobody laughed. Hermione had replied that the classist idiots who go there are fine with paying double if it means they don't have to mingle with peasants. Harry bit his tongue and kept his feelings about the Brown Borough sourdough boule to himself. And bought two loaves on the way home.

Today, though, he didn't particularly need anything beyond a mindless shopping trip. He grabbed a pre-made chicken vindaloo with rice out of the cooler and walked toward the bakery. His mobile vibrated in his pocket, and he stopped to check it.

Junk email. A passerby bumped his elbow. He fumbled his mobile, but caught it and turned to scowl at the man. The man continued on, so Harry frowned at the man's sandy hair and tan trench coat.

Quick as a flash, the man looked over his shoulder. Mustache. Scars.

Remus.

Harry blinked, and the man was gone, lost behind a gaggle of middle-aged women in matching pink t-shirts. Harry stood, chicken vindaloo in one hand and mobile in the other, until the aisle's population flowed away, other nameless people meandering in.

It wasn't Remus. It couldn't be. He was just going mad. That was all.

The cider-rich scent of apples pulled him through the produce section, between flawless, flat-topped pyramids of fruit. He stopped to hunt for his reflection in a glossy Honeycrisp.

First Sirius, now Remus. No, first Mrs Pendergrass, then Sirius, now Remus. Maybe he'd finally cracked. If he walked up to Hermione and told her he saw dead people, she'd laugh in his face and tell him to stop watching old Bruce Willis movies.

A little girl, maybe five years old, peeked out from behind a display of pears and smiled at him, a wide grin full of perfect baby teeth. She looked up and over her shoulder, one blond corkscrew pigtail hanging free, and the other falling behind her head. In what felt like slow-motion, she pulled a golden pear from the bottom of the pyramid. Her eyes opened wide in horror as the pyramid began to sheet planes of tumbling pears onto the floor. Dozens of them rolled to a stop around her feet. She watched them, as if waiting for them to spring up and attack her. She smiled and kicked a pear, then looked back up, eyes gleaming, and clutched her far superior pear in her tiny hands.

Harry chuckled to himself and stepped around the detritus. The girl's mother called to her from the deli, and she skipped away.

The bakery called to him with the scent of just-barely burnt flour. Just enough to smell real, and not industrial. It reminded him of something. Something new. Something good. But damned if he could remember what. A new toasted sandwich at Ministry Munchies, probably.

He half-expected to see Remus between the stacks of bread, but the section was nearly empty. The sourdough didn't look fresh, so he took a giant soft pretzel from the stand. His stomach growled. He licked his lips and looked at the pretzel. If he ate part of it now, but paid for it on his way out, it wasn't technically stealing.

An elbow nudged his side.

"You look like you're not going to make it out the door with that pretzel," said a devastatingly fit man in a Harpies t-shirt. "Let alone all the way home."