||Black Scarves and Careless Hearts|| A Dramione Fanfic

40. Cold Hands

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"Today I choose joy."
~Mary Davis
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Draco almost regretted having decided to do what he was doing at the moment. He thought that he would rather be anywhere else rather than here. 

He had to admit that this was not how he had pictured spending the first day of his days off from work.

"How is this? Do you think it makes my eyes look too dark?" 

Draco pressed two fingers into his temples, closed his eyes and groaned, "No, Blaise, it doesn't."

"I think it does, it's a little light, no?"

Draco opened his eyes with a deep scowl creasing his face, "That is the exact same color of black you've been trying for the past two hours. Every bloody suit you tried is the exact bloody color."

Blaise was looking meticulously at his reflection in the long, full-body mirror, and he turned around to observe himself from the back. 

Since Pansy had gone off with Astoria and Millicent, she had asked Draco for a favor. The favor being accompanying Blaise to choose a dress suit for the engagement party. And Draco had agreed, although he still didn't know why he had agreed, so maybe she had briefly Imperiused him.

Draco gave Blaise a dark look when he went off to find another one of those blasted suits. He wanted to thwack him on his head to knock some sense into him, because all those suits looked exactly the same. 

Two hours of having endured Blaise and his fussing had left Draco in a surly mood. As he leaned back against the blue velvet seat with his leg crossed over his knee, he had an inkling of a suspicion that he looked a tad menacing. 

"Are you here to buy?" 

Draco glanced up at the witch who had a shop badge pinned to her chest with her name on it. 

"No," Draco answered shortly. 

"Then I must ask you to leave, we don't encourage dawdling," the woman said in a clipped manner. She looked around his own age. Her large nose had a melted wax look about it and Draco instantly disliked her. 

"I'm waiting for a friend," Draco said, placing his hands behind his head and leaning back again. 

The woman sniffed in an unconvinced way and left him to go attend to someone who had just walked in, bringing in a gust of cold wind through the door along with them. 

"What can I get for you?" Wax Nose asked, and Draco involuntarily wrinkled his nose. 

"I'm here to pick up the robes under Ginny Weasley?" 

Draco's eyes shot open and he was out of his seat and heading towards the voice in an instant. 

"Granger?" 

Sure enough, the bushy head turned to reveal Hermione's permanently frazzled sort of face. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold outside. 

"Hey Malfoy," Hermione said, smiling instantly, "Are you here to buy yourself something?"

Draco took a second to answer, for he had been a little preoccupied with looking at her ungloved hands. Could this woman never think about wearing gloves?

"Blaise is here," Draco said, quickly directing his eyes away, "He's been picking out the same suits for the best part of the past two hours."

"Poor man, why don't you help him?" Hermione asked absentmindedly. Wax Nose came back with a bundle wrapped in sheets of the Daily Prophet, and she threw him a filthy look.