Knots In Our Heartstrings [Dramione]

Target Practice

Draco's aim was, "Fucking shite," as Pansy cackled loudly.

She slammed her hand down hard into the counter, sending several of the dried rose petals flying from the sheer force of it alone.

Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes as she wailed, her cheeks growing the same rosy flush as her wine which she stifled another round of laughter with. She all but drowned herself in the glass, the wide brim and bowl echoing her laughter back in a chiming lull.

Draco sipped from his own wine, letting his wand clatter loosely down on tho the countertop before him as he stuffed his free hand into his hair.

"You said you wouldn't laugh," he huffed, unable to fully suppress his smile. He tried, truly. Tried so hard to maintain that air of annoyance, but Pansy's drunken giggles were infectious.

"You didn't say it would be so funny."

"It's not funny," he whined.

Pansy scoffed, sending bubbles sputtering into her wine glass before she finally stopped snorting into it. "Oh but Draco, it is. It really is."

He tried to argue with her, but she threw a quick waving hand up to stop him.

"And you know it's funny," Pansy stated firmly, "Otherwise you wouldn't have spread so many petals out. You would've just fucked it like any old squib." She hummed, a comfortable grin adorning her face as she stabbed clumsily at her salad before loosely stuffing the dressed leaves into her mouth, and wiping the stray droplets of vinaigrette from her lips with the pad of her thumb. "It's funny," she smiled softly, "and that's okay."

He placed down his wine, dancing the delicate foot of the glass in a circle around the counter before planting it firmly in place, sure that it wouldn't topple over and cause another surge of embarrassment to flood into him.

"The clutter of it all..." he started to admit slowly. "I mean, I know it's funny," he huffed, "But at least I'm doing something, you know? Even if the aim is a bit off."

"A bit shit," Pansy hummed.

"Fine." Draco snapped. "A bit shit."

She grinned up at him, and continued to eat her salad.

The rain poured down against the windows, hammering against the leaves of the plants that sat out on the balcony. Pansy's flat had even more plants than the shop floor did downstairs. She'd warned him of this when they'd bustled in away from the rain an hour ago, but he hadn't quite believed her – struggled to believe her when he'd seen the inside of the florist shop. The walls were painted a pale shade of pink, though you could barely see the walls beyond the selves of plants that lined the walls, and where the walls were full, more plants hung from the ceiling or towered over tables and stools. The back wall of the shop behind the counter was a mass of petals, bundles of flowers tumbling out of golden troughs just ready to be gathered and arranged into bouquets.

Even the stairs up to her flat were lined with plant pots, and little glass vials hung off of the bannister with cuttings jutting out of the tops of them.

In her flat, the plants littered even the floor. But most peculiar of all, her stove-top had become a proud propagation station.

"I don't really cook," she'd confessed, "And it's valuable surface area."

And so he sat there, surrounded by plants and Pansy's laughter, eating a ready-prepared salad out of plastic tubs from the shop down the road, and drinking chilled rosé.

"So," she mumbled through another mouthful of salad, "How did you figure out it was shit aim as opposed to shit magic?"

Draco snorted back a laugh, choking on a pumpkin seed he inhaled and flushing it away with more chilled wine.