Author:
gracerenePairing: Charlie/Draco
Word Count: ~350
Rating: PG this part, NC-17 overall
Warnings: professor/student
Challenge:
hp_may_madness 2016 Day #18: Speech, mushrooms, companyAuthor's Notes: Unbeta'd.
Part 17
Draco ate his food absently. The subtle flavors of his favourite mushroom sauce were completely lost on him as he contemplated the letter he'd be writing when he got back to his room.
It had been a ritual ever since he could remember to write a letter to his mother every Sunday while he was away at Hogwarts. In his earlier years, it had been all that could sustain him in his homesick longing for home, and in his later ones, a nagging chore that dragged him away from more interesting activities. Now, he took comfort in the tradition, in the familiar scratch of his quill across the parchment, the bloom of ink giving breath to his thoughts. He was lucky he and his mother had both survived the war, and he wasn't going to start taking her for granted now.
He'd naturally always censored his letters to an extent—no teenaged boy needs his mother to be made aware of all his activities—but the omissions were weighing on him more and more recently. Of course, he couldn't tell her about the company he'd been keeping, about his private meetings with Charlie and the shy kisses they'd exchanged beneath the canopy of the Forbidden Forest just last night. Even if Charlie hadn't been his professor, Draco still wasn't sure what his mother would think. Charlie was a man, and a Weasley at that—hardly the pure-blood witch she'd imagined him ending up with.
No, Draco couldn't tell his mother about Charlie yet, and he certainly couldn't tell her about him in a letter. It would have to be done in person, with a well-rehearsed speech to counter all of her potential arguments. He wouldn't even bother with his father. Lucius would be far less understanding, but Draco knew he'd do what his mother told him. She was the one he had to convince.
But not yet.
Draco couldn't hide forever, but he needed more time. Needed time to see if Charlie and him would last, to see if they had any kind of future.
He'd wait until after he'd left Hogwarts, and then he'd tell her.
Part 19
