Knots In Our Heartstrings [Dramione]

Absolute Tosser

It was an absurd notion. One that trying to justify to his mother sent him feeling like a petulant child at Christmas begging for a new toy to play with when there was already a pile of perfectly suitable ones to play with laid out already.

Simbly apparating him to work had been a pleasant convenience for the first week. They left the manor ten minutes before he was due to step foot in the office, and arrived home ten minutes after he left.

But he missed the slow steadiness of his morning routine that he savoured so greatly when he first started working at the London office. He missed his morning commute.

On Wednesday, he'd searched up which train line would take him out of Wiltshire and into London and back that fit steadily around his work schedule. Two tubes and one train. One hour and thirty-six minutes from the first station to the last. Twenty-three minutes leeway on either side of his office hours.

It was longer than his previous commute. Much longer. But the almost four hours that he could savour, travelling at a steady lull in and out of London every day sounded glorious.

On Thursday, Simbly agreed to collect him from the Pewsey village train station at seven-thirty.

On Friday, she delivered him there at five-thirty in the morning, and collected him again at seven-thirty in the evening.

"Darling," his Mother started over dinner, "I just do not understand why you wish to waste so much time merely travelling. At the very least why not let Simbly bring you into London? Then you can still commute on the tubes as the muggles do but you won't be running off at such absurd hours in the morning."

"I understand your concern, but I enjoy my time. And I am able to work and have breakfast on the way there, and on the way back I find it relaxing." Draco sighed, shuffling potatoes about his plate. "I also thought, that because it is an early start, and I don't want to trouble Simbly so much, that I could get a bike, or a car—"

"Absolutely not—"

"Mother, I have travelled by car many times before. They are safe. I learned how to drive one. Harry has one that I have driven many times before. He drove it here."

"And what of Harry?" His mother sighed.

He was quiet. Staring down into his plate unable to meet his mother's gaze. His cutlery still hung loosely in his hands, balancing between the tips of his fingers as they hovered over the half-eaten plate of food.

She hadn't asked. Hadn't pried. She'd simply welcome him back into the manor with open arms and a comforting smile as they fell into a gentle routine that he was obliterating with his new travel plans.

"Darling, it's been two weeks. What happened?"

Narcissa reached a hand across the table towards her son, smoothing her fingers over his knuckles as he placed the silver cutlery down gently.

"Draco, darling, what happened?" She was gentle. Just as she always had been with him. The maternal quietness she shared towards her precious child never faltered, even as he sat before her, a grown man. She held his hand, her thumb continuing to smooth gentle circles over his knuckles as she waited.

Draco shifted slightly in his seat, his cheeks flushing gently with the odd sense of embarrassment he felt towards the whole situation. He couldn't avoid the conversation forever, but he felt he'd been caught out. His luck run dry. The peculiar comfort of ignoring the whole fiasco had quickly shattered, and he was faced with the unusual opportunity to either lie to his mother, or tell her how in the matter of a month he went from happily cohabiting with his long-time partner, to abruptly dismissed of a future, to engaged to be married, and finally alone. Alone, from the person he'd spent the last five years of his life with. Alone, from the person he thought he'd spend the rest of his years with. Alone, after he thought he'd found his future.