when: 31 december, 2023 where: malfoy manor who: open
sterling was certain he had never felt as on-edge as he did the moment he stepped into scorpius’s end-of-year party. that feeling had hardly simmered down as he reacquainted himself with the estate. a place he’d been many times before, but never as an outsider. always as a member of pureblood society, his father’s hand clasped on his shoulder until the adults went behind closed doors and the children were allowed to play. but now? he was a runaway, and he couldn’t shake the feeling he had apparated himself into the belly of the beast.
he was so in-his-head about it all that he’d hardly noticed when, in his nervous shuffling, he knocked over a couple abandoned drinks. it was only the shattering of glass that returned him to the land of the living. “oh, f— merlin!” he shouted, barely censoring himself. on instinct, sterling stooped down to clean up the mess, glancing up when he saw a figure approach. “i didn’t — i, uh, just cleaning it up. i’m not the amateur party fouling, i swear.”
The raucous sound of crashing glass drew Piran’s interest like a missile closing in on its target. His head popped up over the back of the couch upon which he’d been lounging, idle, for the past ten minutes or so, pretending to listen to his friends argue about which of the three competing rumours about Bellatrix Lestrange was truest. Probably all of them, if Piran was any judge of character.
Recognition shot through him as he saw the guy bend to begin sweeping frantically. Well, well. Sterling had shown up after all. Piran had been listening to his parents’ declarations of horror and sympathy for the embarrassment the Montagues were being put through by their own son all hols, and as a result he was rather in the mood to stick a spoon into that particular pot and stir it.
Thoughtfully, he hauled himself off the sofa, straightened his expensive suit jacket, and plopped a kiss on the top of the nearest girl’s head.
“Back soon,” he promised blithely, and prowled towards Sterling.
“Alright, Montague?” His tone was even, measured. For good measure, he propped himself up on a doorway, the picture of laconic elegance. “How’s the Leaky treating you?”
