InsaneJournal

Her hair was black, which was one of the first things he had seen. Possibly because of the starkness; the unappealing room she was in. Its walls were crisp and white; the bed sheets looked starched and ironed, sharp and stiff enough to cut. Against the icy backdrop, her hair stood right out.

Dyed, of course. He wouldn’t have expected anything else, not from her. It glistened with a fake wetness in the light, reflecting the harsh brightness that shined onto it from above. It reminded him of a raven’s wing, only… different, somehow. Not as vivid, not as alive. Too dark, too lifeless, too black to be anything other than out of a bottle.

It was definitely out of a bottle. Nothing that colour could mean anything else. Magic-dyed hair was much more realistic, must less cold and deceiving. That fact alone about her hair would make her stand out for what she was – a Muggle – but there were other things, too. The stretched appearance of her skin, showing no signs of aging even though he knew she was around his age, around thirty, and would be showing some signs. Her skin was smoother than a teenager’s, smoother than a child’s, smoother than any skin he had ever seen. Tiny scars from surgery gave the skin and the breasts away. You had to be quite close to see them, though. It was amazing what could be done without magic, sometimes.

Her eyes were wrong, too. A strange purple colour, he could just about see the round line, around the edge of her iris, that spoke of contact lenses, that told him that the colour was chosen purposefully, to entice and attract, and was not her real eye colour at all. Not that any eye could naturally be that colour. His own eyes, striking as they were, seemingly unnatural as they were, could not match the reality of real fake eyes.

Even her figure was wrong. Breasts that were too large for her slight frame, too pointed for her age, too rounded and perfect. A waist that was too small, that spoke of hours of being trapped in a corset or some such contraption, squeezing it tight. A rear, clad in silk, which he knew from past experience was too pert, too firm, too cellulite free, even though he couldn’t see it now, with her sitting on the bed as she was.

And her voice… Every word, every tone, was carefully controlled, designed with a purpose in mind. Sometimes he longed to hear her natural voice, without the calculations and the thinking behind it. He wanted to hear her laugh, to see her real smile, to have a real conversation, a real connection, with her that he didn’t have to pay for.

“What’s the matter, Draco?” There was a laugh in the woman’s voice, that spoke of her knowledge of the reason he had come here, the reason he always came here. “Do come in properly, why don’t you.” She put on an air of fake modesty. “People could see me like this, after all!”

He rolled his eyes, but stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. as he walked towards the bed, he allowed his lips to curve into a small smile. He wasn’t really so different from her. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t think about every move he made, every word he said, with the uttermost care. The ironic thing was that the one thing she thought was fake, his name which she mocked every time he visited, which she pestered him about all the time, was real.

In fact, he was all real here, everything about him was real. Here he was Draco, just Draco. She thought that he came here to escape, and that was true, but she didn’t realise how. Probably because of the way she was, of the way that everything about her was a lie, but he knew she thought that he came here to escape from his life, to be someone that he could never be in reality, to just be with her and pretend.

In fact, the exact opposite was true. He came here to escape, but to escape the strain of his life, to escape the thousands upon thousands of façades he had built up over the last thirty years of his life. Here was the one place in the world that he felt he could truly be Draco. Just Draco. Not Draco Malfoy, head of the family now his father had died. Not Dearest Draco, doting son to his grief-stricken, bed ridden, ill mother. Not My Darling Draco to his wife, hardworking and caring and loving, even if he wasn’t very good at showing it. Not Dad to his son, the bestest dad in the whole world. Just Draco.

Maybe it was his strange sense of humour, or maybe everyone would find it amusing that he could only truly be himself with the Muggle prostitute who was more artificial than he was.