I'm Not Who You Think I Am.

“Nah, live a little,“ Noora teases. “Have the pizza diavola.“ Eyebrows raise with a mysterious smile.

Noora places her menu on the edge of the table to indicate she made her choice and is ready to order, a frown prominent on her face as she wreathes her fingers together in front of her, studying him. She is probably staring long enough to make him feel uncomfortable but she doesn’t really understand what he means. “So when you say you believe it wasn’t a good thing.. are you talking about your parents or the House you were sorted in?“

As soon as the attention goes from him to her, she literally withdraws, now leaning back in the chair. Eyes drop to her own hands and a shrug of her shoulders betray how she dislikes talking about herself, even if it isn’t personal. Then she smiles. “Normal, compared to yours.” Content with her evasive reply her gaze meets his again. She can’t open up to him yet. She doesn’t know him. The waiter takes their order and Noora sips from her drink. “There’s one more thing I don’t get. Those Houses… why does a child usually follow their parents into the same one? What is the sorting based on then? And why do children go to the same school their parents went to?”

His eyes widen while he tries to determine whether or not she is teasing him and then he concedes defeat, not knowing her well enough yet. “I think I’ll just stick with the first one, if that’s okay?” His eyes dart to hers, letting her know that he appreciates her help, he just wants to try learning to do things himself and this feels good, being able to make simple decisions without worrying about any sort of backlash. He couldn’t even go out for a meal back home without worrying that he would end up being poisoned or worse.

“Both,” He answers after a moment, voice soft and low as he tries to figure it out. He’s never really put it into words before but he tries his best, unconsciously mimicking her as his fingers twist and knot themselves together. “I was raised to behave a certain way, to follow certain traditions and one of those traditions was to get s...chosen to be into the same House that every member of my family had been in. It was never made clear what would happen if I hadn’t of ended up where I did but I confess that I never wanted to find out. I was raised to believe that some people were better than others, that those who didn’t possess certain qualities and traits were lesser beings, were inferior somehow and I’m ashamed to say that it was only very recently that my mind was changed. I’m disgusted with how I behaved as a child and I’m trying now to be a better person that I was.” And, he added silently, to be a better man that his father could ever hope to be. He wanted to be Draco, not a Malfoy.

He notes her obvious reluctance and he wonders if he’s perhaps overshared but then, perhaps a secret or two could be traded for a secret. He knows enough about making friends to know that it can’t be one-sided - that if wants her to trust him, he has to show that he can trust her. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to, Noora,” He smiles sympathetically, lifting one skinny shoulder up in a lazy shrug to show that he really didn’t mind, “And to answer your final questions...I don’t know. It’s just the way things...were? Are? And I know that’s a silly excuse but it’s the only one I have right now...”

Draco huffed out an agitated breath and brushed aside his fringe with dirty fingers, eyes darting up to gaze hopefully at the clock above the door. Time was passing far too slowly today but even as time seemed to come to a stop, Draco was determined to remain busy. If he was seen standing around doing nothing, that might be the final chance blown on his part and while old Mrs Wilkes said she was happy to employ Draco in her unique Potions business, the store was already dangerously close to the entrance to Knockturn Alley without Draco being too much of a presence at the front of the shop and causing any problems. He’d lost the business a few of its regular patrons when he started working there two years ago but at the end of the day, he was lucky to have any job at all in the aftermath of the War.

He sighed again and resumed his sweeping of the wooden floors before moving onto doing a stock inventory of the various potions and elixirs stretching from floor to ceiling and surrounding every wall and available bit of space there once. He scaled up a nearby ladder to check on an obscure label on a bottle, not registering that someone had entered the shop until he’d heard the bell.

A brief sound of laughter escapes her. He seems so clueless it makes her wonder how he managed to have found everything on his own up until now… it is almost as if he doesn’t belong in this world; the way he experiences something as simple as the pizza place baffles her. He must have been very, very shielded from the outside world. “They do,” she says, and offers him the other menu for him to pick from. “Here. Choose whatever you want.”

With a look of plain curiosity in her eyes Noora looks up and studies him for a moment, until she is distracted by the waiter bringing them their drinks. He sees that Draco clearly isn’t ready to order yet and leaves them be. Noora folds her hands around the warm mug of tea and clears her throat, something she always does when she thinks of something to say to avoid any awkwardness, a trait she always had. “So…” she begins, exaggerating the ‘o’ to buy herself some time. “You attended boarding school then?” She remembers him telling her about luxurious dishes at school and begins to wonder about what his childhood must have been like.

Grey eyes narrowed to curiously scan the menu before him and it was clear that more than a few dishes were beyond comprehension to him. He hadn’t explored much in the way of Muggle food when he was younger but he was more than eager to begin now, he simply didn’t know where to start. Glancing through the pizza options, he finally decides on, “Margherita pizza? That’s just tomato and cheese with some herbs, right? It doesn’t sound like I can go too wrong with that!”

“Yeah - it was one up in the Scottish Highlands - beautiful place but a really long journey.” He admits while trying not to give too much away; if she ever tries to find Hogwarts, she wouldn’t have much luck. “The school was set in traditional values, for example, you were organised into Houses and if your parents had been in a specific House, then you would probably end up there too. I thought, as a child, that the was the greatest thing to follow them there, but I’m not so sure now.” He shrugs in a half-hearted way, “I did love the classes though. What about you, Noora? What was your schooling like?”