She hummed a little as she laid out the meal on the grass between them. "Vinegar?"
Draco was looking forward to the meal less than ever, but tried not to show it. "Oh. Er . . . yes. Thank you."
She tore open a couple of little packets and sprinkled their contents over the fish, then pushed a portion his way.
To Draco's surprise, the fish was actually quite good. Crispy and light, the fried coating wasn't very oily at all, and the chips were as delicious as any he'd had. Though of course, he didn't eat chips very often.
Diet Coke, on the other hand, was positively horrid. Draco took one swig of the bottle Rhiannon had opened for him and almost gagged. The stuff tasted like one of Severus' concoctions to stop a persistent cough. It even bubbled going down, like potions could sometimes do.
Rhiannon gave him a sympathetic glance. "Sorry. I should have got regular, huh? I didn't think. I just got you what I usually buy."
She actually liked this revolting liquid?
"So, tell me about your magic shows," she said after a moment. "What are your best tricks?"
"Oh, God, I don't know," said Draco, trying to sound as Mugglish as he could. He didn't think it had come out quite right, somehow, but pushed that thought aside as he tried to figure out what kinds of "magic" a Muggle performer might be able to fake. The trouble was, he really didn't have any idea what sorts of tricks stage magicians tended to do. Rhiannon probably knew a lot more about it than he did. He latched onto something she'd said to him before. "Um, making stuff disappear, I guess."
"Not a jet or the Statue of Liberty, though," she said, chuckling.
Draco didn't have the faintest idea what she was talking about, but after a moment he thought he could make sense of the first part. "No, no water," he murmured.
"Water?"
"A jet, you said."
Rhiannon slanted him a glance. "You have an odd sense of humour. But that's all right. I like it. So, what's the biggest thing you can make vanish, eh?"
What would be a reasonable answer, assuming he was only faking magic? "Oh. Er . . . a table, I suppose."
Her expressive blue eyes grew wide. "A whole table? You must be very good."
Shite. He'd guessed too big. "Well, just an occasional table," he added.
Rhiannon laughed. "I don't think I've heard anyone actually use that phrase before. But your trick still sounds impressive." Her voice grew wistful. "I'd really like to see it."
That would be a trick in itself, thought Draco. He'd love to show her some spells and see how she reacted, but he didn't want to get a letter from the Ministry warning him about underage magic. Severus would probably take his wand away. And it wouldn't look good later, would it, to have an infraction on his record. MLE probably didn't want Auror apprentices that had been in trouble, before.
Draco sighed. It was so unfair. He was nearly seventeen, after all. But he was also stuck. "I don't think I have any engagements lined up," he said, shaking his head. Strange how difficult it was to disappoint her. "Otherwise, I'd invite you along to watch me perform."
"Can't you do a trick or two just for me?"
"Uh--"
Rhiannon brushed her hair away from her face. "I know I shouldn't ask." Her smile was a little sad. "It's just . . . oh, it's too silly to even say."
Draco put down the chip he'd been about to eat. "What?"
She looked down at her hands. "I've always adored magic shows. When you showed me that wand the other night, it brought back a lot of memories. You see . . . when I was little, I thought magic was real. I loved watching magicians on the telly. My parents would tell me that it was all done with camera tricks, but I didn't believe them, not until I was . . . oh, pretty old, really."
Draco's breath caught in his throat. "How old?"
"Nine, ten, something like that." She glanced at him, very quickly. "You don't think I'm stupid, do you?"
"No, no, of course not." Draco gave her the warmest, most encouraging smile he could. "Magic's very attractive, right? Wonderful, in all its aspects. Of course you wanted to believe in it."
She stopped looking down so much, then. "It seemed like it ought to really exist! You know, I used to even do occasional magic acts for my parents. Tiny ones, with tricks I'd got from books. That should have been enough to tell me that it was all make-believe, but it wasn't. Deep down, I used to pretend that I really could pull flowers from my sleeve. Well, flowers that hadn't been there the moment before."
It was on the tip of Draco's tongue to tell her that she'd been right about that, about all of it. She was a witch, and this was proof, wasn't it, that deep down in her soul, she'd known as much. Her magic had been struggling to break free, all along.
No surprise, then, that it had found expression in her voice. Magic just couldn't ever be fully leashed, no matter the spells that might have been used, centuries earlier, to repress it in her entire family tree.
"Did you have a wand when you were little?"
Rhiannon laughed as she wiped her hands on a napkin. "Oh, yes. Nothing so grand as yours, which I thought was really beautiful, by the way. Elegant. No, mine was just a formed plastic model, stark black. I got it in a magic set one Christmas. I can't tell you how much I wanted it to really work for me, really do something."
"I understand," Draco murmured.
"So anyway, that's why I was hoping I could see some of your tricks," Rhiannon finished. "Even hearing about them gives me a bit of dÈj‡ vu. You know, it throws me back into that state of mind I used to have, when magic was real, and if I tried hard enough, I could make it work for me."
That's it, Draco thought. That's the solution to everything. It's the way to show her who and what she really is. Her love of magic, of magic shows.
All of a sudden, Draco was possessed of a longing . . . no, a burning need, to put his wand into her hand and see how she reacted to it.
But he couldn't do that out of the blue. He had to build up to it, so it would seem natural, so she'd be relaxed and happy when she took hold of his wand.
So she could hear it sing to her as it echoed the magic buried deep inside her.
"I'll do it," he suddenly said, his mind leaping ahead to ways to defeat the stupid underage magic laws. It was so silly that he was allowed to do as much magic as he pleased out in Devon, but here, where he needed it much more, he was being restrained. Well, there were ways around the law, surely. He could nick Severus' wand, for example.
"You'll show me some tricks?"
Not tricks, no. Spells. Real spells. The Statute of Secrecy really wasn't really an issue here, was it? She was a witch, after all. Not even the Ministry could complain about him demonstrating magic in front of someone who by right ought to be part of the wizarding world to begin with.
Though they would complain about the underage magic. Well, Draco would think of something. And if he couldn't, he'd just wait until his birthday had passed.
Ha, take that, Ministry, Draco thought.
"Oh, I'll put on a whole show for you, if you like," he said, smiling broadly. "And I know an awful lot of sp-- er, tricks. I bet some of them will make you believe that magic truly is real."
"It'd be wonderful to see your act." Rhiannon flashed him a grin, her teeth a startling white. "I'd be delighted, really. That's nice of you to offer."
"Oh, my pleasure," drawled Draco, meaning it from the bottom of his heart.
Rhiannon's voice was all at once more enthused than he'd ever heard it. "Can you pull a rabbit from a hat?"
"A whole herd of rabbits."
"And that rope thing, can you do that?"
"Mmm . . . remind me which rope thing you mean?"
"You know, you chop it up into pieces but make it come out whole again?"