Knots In Our Heartstrings [Dramione]

Tuesday is great!

A box sat on Draco's desk. A box far too big for the contents it carried.

He removed his tie, adding that to the collection of loose pens and sticky notes. Everything still ratted far too loosely in the box. He didn't think it was worth packing at all.

And so he plucked his tie right back out of the box, folded it until it was a neat little bundle of blue fabric, and nestled it into his pocket. He also grabbed his reading glasses from the box, supposed that they were indeed rather necessary. The rest of it, the loose personal possessions from his desk drawer, he tipped out gently into the little waste bin that sat in the corner of his office, and placed the box neatly beside it for recycling.

He'd already returned his laptop to the IT service desk that morning, and his files were all sealed or shredded. All that remained in his little glass office was him, and the bits of him that he had brought in there. And without the whirring of his computer, the office was quiet.

His briefcase was unfamiliarly light without the weight of his laptop, and the leather sagged around the air with nothing to hold its shape.

He pulled the tie and reading glasses out from his pocket, and nestled them instead into the empty gape of his briefcase. They barely dented the air – offered no comfort of weight to the bag.

The carafe held some dying flowers, a cheap bouquet of tulips he'd picked up from the train station in lieu of Hermione's lovely chrysanthemums. For two days they were beautiful. For five they wilted slowly. For another five, the petals' colour dulled and faded as the heads hung limp over the lip of the glass.

He placed the flowers in the bin, gently, as if laying them to rest. A pang of silly guilt still churned at his insides to see them like that, propped up against pens and stick notes and a to-go coffee cup in the little silver waste bin. But the flowers were dead. Had been dead for some time now, and it was time to put away their vase.

Draco walked with the carafe of water and the two glasses that completed the set to the staff kitchen just as he did every day in the office, ready to rinse it out and refill the water. But instead, he dried it, wiping the cool droplets of water off with a green paper towel as he stood by the sink. He placed the two glasses in the dishwasher, nestled neatly on the top rack amidst mugs and a few bowls. They could stay there, and become a part of the unclaimed communal kitchenwares of the fourth floor.

"Never thought I'd see the day you walked out of here with that thing empty," he heard one of his coworkers call from over by the kettle.

He smiled, tossed the damp paper to the bin and said, "Can't go sloshing water about on the underground. What would people think?"

"Probably not much. There have been far worse spectacles on the tube."

Draco smiled, loose and lazy as he walked back to his office, the dried glass held carefully within his grip as he walked through the hallways, strolling past the glass walls and the thin white blinds that hung against them. The light that slipped through them strobed past him as he walked, quick steps carrying him back to his office, his bin, and his briefcase.

The carafe – no, the vase; he'd decided that it was going to be a vase from now on – nestled nicely in the open gape of his briefcase, taking up just enough space to fill out the space nicely. It was still light, far lighter than when he carried his laptop but he supposed that truly, he should be grateful for the lighter load.

He left the blinds open when he left his office. There was no reason to close them. Not really.

His office would become nothing more than another empty window on the fourth floor, and perhaps the open blinds would warm the little strip of corridor that sat before them. He knew that by morning they'd be closed. Closed by the cleaners as they passed their nightly rounds, sweeping away the last remnants of him from those four walls into a black bin bag, drawing the blinds shut and sealing off the office until someone new took up residency within those walls. But for that afternoon, that evening, he wanted to let the sun shine through.