Chapter Text
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Malfoy,” was the response.
Draco looked from his solicitor to the overdressed representative of the Wizengamot – chuckling condescendingly as he took off his glasses to clean them – and back again.
“Can’t you do anything?” he asked the man who was supposed to be getting him out of this situation. This mess.
His solicitor sighed and gave a very slight shrug. “It’s either this or back to Azkaban.”
Was he serious? What the bloody fuck was he paying the man for? Was this truly the best option? The best alternative?
Honestly, Draco wasn’t sure which was worse.
He took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing heart. Trying not to be so negative. Trying to look on the bright side. Trying not to freak the fuck out.
He sat down on the sofa, landing hard. It was about two inches lower than he’d expected. He ran his hands up and down his thighs and took yet another deep breath. “So, tell me again,” he choked out. “What exactly are you expecting me to do?”
He looked up at the bespectacled fucktard who held his fate in his hands and raised his eyebrows, waiting.
The man cleared his throat. “Well,” he started, rubbing his stubby-fingered hands together. “In order to develop a greater understanding for – and appreciation of – muggles, you’ll be joining a team of non-magical university students on an archaeological excavation in North Africa. Tunisia, to be precise.”
Draco thought he’d had time to absorb this information after hearing it for the first time. To work through the shock of this new sentence.
He hadn’t.
It was even worse hearing it a second time.
“Won’t I…I don’t know…stick out?” he asked, hoping to find some kind of loophole, or flaw in their plan. “I don’t think I can pass for a muggle. I definitely can’t pass for an archaeology student. I don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh no, no, no,” the man chuckled again as he paced between the sofa and the heavy oak desk behind him. “ That’s why you’re headed to North Africa. Everyone will feel like a fish out of water. Everyone will be experiencing culture shock, and will struggle to learn and understand the traditions of the locals. Of the language. The cuisine. Even archaeology.” He ran his hands up and down his braces. “The program is open to all students – many of them will have no archaeological experience whatsoever, which makes it perfect. Nobody will notice if you’re a bit lost from time to time.”
Fucking fuck.
Draco ran his hands through his hair, attempting not to look at the fucker from the Wizengamot, or his solicitor for that matter. The man was completely fucking useless.
The man was going to be fired. Of that, there was no doubt in Draco’s mind.
What he was less sure about, however, was this sentence. Was spending a summer on a muggle archaeological dig better or worse than Azkaban?
It was…a tough call.
A really fucking tough call.
Draco reached up and scratched absentmindedly at the runes tattooed on his neck, considering the time he’d already spent in prison. Of the cold. The isolation. The boredom .
Right.
He couldn’t handle the boredom again.
A bunch of muggles, on the other hand? He could handle them, couldn’t he? He’d never actually met one, but they couldn’t be that bad, could they? At the very least, they had to be better than dementors.
At least, they were probably better.
He nodded slowly and looked up. “So how will this work?”
The man smiled.
“Well,” he started. “Obviously, you will be forbidden from using magic—”
“Entirely, or just in front of muggles?” Draco interrupted.
“I believe the idea was entirely, Mr. Malfoy. It’s the only way for you to truly develop an understanding of what life is like for them. How they’ve adapted and used technology to compensate for not having magic.”
Draco sucked his teeth, thinking. “Do I at least get to keep my wand? In case of an emergency?”
The man considered his request. “Providing you allow us to place a tracking charm on it, yes, I think that can be arranged.”
“Okay,” Draco said slowly. “So no magic. Then what?”
“Then you show up at Heathrow airport next week, packed up and ready to go.”
Draco thought he must have misheard. “I’m sorry, what?”
A slow smile crept across the man’s face. “You’ll be living and experiencing the whole trip as a muggle, Mr. Malfoy.”
“You actually expect me to travel in one of those flying tin cans?”
“We do,” the man said with finality.
Draco stared at him in disbelief, unable to shake the feeling that maybe Azkaban would have been the better option.
