@now0nfire | in response to this.
“Are you mental?” The words popped out a little sharp, a little shrill -- but Draco was too shocked to modulate his tone to something more polite. “You want to go home? My home?” He shook his head, feeling numb -- and not from the mediocre alcohol he’d nursed all evening in an attempt to make the situation more palatable. He shouldn’t have come, but he’d thought it would be more of a problem if he didn’t -- but he didn’t belong here, and both Draco and every other person in attendance knew it.
He wasn’t sure why Seamus was even talking to him. Yes, they’d shared a few...moments during that last year of school (Draco’s last year, anyway; he hadn’t dared go back, but he had no idea what Seamus had done with himself after the war; he’d been too busy hiding from the world and gasping with relief at not being in Azkaban to pay any attention to what anyone else was doing) but that had been a matter of being thrown together by circumstance, not choice. There was no way a loud, crass, belligerent Gryffindor like Seamus would have chosen to talk to Draco without some form of coercion...
But maybe he’d just needed to talk to someone and Draco had been there. It wasn’t like anyone else was lining up in a hurry to talk to someone who’d been on the wrong side and had the Mark to prove it -- not aside from that awful conversation Potter had forced on them both when he’d potted Draco’s botched attempt at a discreet arrival and gone over to welcome him. (Draco wasn’t sure what he could have said that wouldn’t have been awkward, but “Well I’ve been here before actually, back when this was my family’s house,” was at least better than “Well if you’d died like you were supposed to, I’d probably have inherited the place and be the one throwing parties here for everyone you hate,” which had been another option.) He’d spent the rest of the night lurking in the corners and wondering how long he had to stay before he could leave without looking like he was running away.
Draco wasn’t sure exactly how he’d ended up on a chaise in front of a faded tapestry of his mother’s family tree with Seamus Finnigan’s arm over his shoulders. The only upside had been that the grumpy old house elf that Draco dimly remembered from childhood visits here was as delighted to fawn over him as ever, which had meant a steady supply of drinks for he and Seamus both -- but perhaps that hadn’t been an upside, not if it led to Seamus spouting of mad ideas like that.
“And what am I supposed to tell my parents?” he asked, figuring that the mere mention of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy would be chilling enough to sober-up anyone in this room, including Seamus. “’Look at my pretty new half-blood, I’m taking it up to bed?’”
