Bones ⋆ Draco Malfoy (3)

| THREE: Keeping Up with the Slytherins

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THREE KEEPING UP WITH THE SLYTHERINS

     THE PARKINSON HOUSE IS just like home of the Malfoys: it's big and it's dark and it's the sort of place that probably has a shit-load of ghosts. Livvy dislikes the place. He dislikes all of his friends' houses, if he's being truthful. There's a little clan of them in Slytherin, and most (if not all) of his friends are a part of that weird list of British pureblood families. He isn't sure if his family's on it. Probably not his birth mothers. Definitely not Remus. Maybe Laurel's. Probably Laurel's.

     But, Pansy's house is dark and spacious and haunting to him. It's all ebony and mahogany and oil paintings and silverware displayed in polished display cabinets. It's a little smaller than Draco's, Livvy notes, but it's bigger than Blaise's. His other friend, Daphne, has the nicest house. Apparently her parents decorated the house after falling in love with the interiors of various posh New York hotels. He can't blame them.

     Livvy's house is the opposite. It's the normal size of a normal family home. Five bedrooms, all on the same floor, all with nice light colours and the signs that a family lived there. His friends' houses lack that, he thinks. He feels like his friends' houses look like those old stately homes that are open to the public, just to look around and admire how people lived when Queen Victoria was just a stubborn teenager.

     He guesses his home has the cozy, comforting features because his adopted mum didn't have that growing up. Laurel Crouch was brought up like Draco and Pansy and anyone that was rich and pureblood — but, Laurel had strayed away from the path of agreeing with her parents' distorted views on equality pretty early on during school. His friends were yet to do that.

     They are good people. To him. That's Livvy's issue. Livvy feels like it's an uphill battle to explain to his friends why the whole blood hierarchy makes no sense. It's slowly working. Slowly. One day, he knows that his friends will realise the error of their views. Laurel had that revelation, and now she's married to a fucking werewolf. (She was also disowned at seventeen, but that's another topic for another time.)

     Pansy's invite over had consisted of a letter on leftover parchment from her dad's bureau, politely addressing his parents, and not-so-politely addressing him on another piece of parchment. And by not-so-polite, Livvy means swearing and sex jokes and the sort of stuff his parents mutter anyway.

     But, anyway. Pansy's invited Livvy, and Blaise, and Daphne, and Draco, and possibly Theodore and Crabbe and Goyle. Livvy's not sure about the final three, because Livvy's not sure what Pansy thinks of them. He feels like Crabbe and Goyle are Draco's friends, and not theirs, and he feels like Theodore dislikes them, to an extent.

     Livvy shows up on the doorstep of the Parkinson house, one hand holding a backpack, and the other sitting in his jacket pocket. Pansy answers the door, greets him (almost tackles him over with a hug.) Behind her, there's a small chorus of greetings. Daphne runs over, and pats Livvy on the shoulder. Blaise and Draco are (according to Daphne) in one of the rooms upstairs. He thinks it's called the drawing room, or the quiet room, or some fancy shit name that his house obviously lacks.

     "You know," Daphne says, her voice lowering as Pansy's dad greets Livvy. He then walks into another room. A door clicks shut, and Daphne continues, "I heard about the campsite attacks. Were they really hanging those muggle children upside down?"

     "Yeah, I think so," Livvy responds.

     As soon as he walks into the room — the one next to Pansy's bedroom, the one with the books and the massive windows and the mattresses laid out for them all sleeping over — he's greeted once more by Blaise and Draco. They discard the old-school leather-bound book they had found on one of the bookcases, and the five of them sit around on a couple of the mattresses.