For the Duct Tape Competition: Color – Orange (Write about something energizing) (coffee is energizing I guess okay?)

Night Shift

Draco only has this job because no one else wants to work the night shift, but he doesn't mind watching over an empty café from midnight to six each morning. A Muggle café in a Muggle neighborhood is definitely the absolute last place anyone would expect Draco Malfoy to be working, not to mention that the Muggle owner thought his name was "unusual" but not threatening, and those two facts put together make the job perfect. It doesn't hurt that it pays the bills without his having to dig into the family fortune.

He sits down at an empty booth and removes the concealment charm from his copy of the Daily Prophet – he still keeps a few tangential connections to the wizarding world – and examines it for mentions of his family.

A photo of Harry Potter is plastered in the center of the front page, Potter smiling while receiving some award.

It's been nearly three and a half years since the fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and yet the famed Harry Potter has made himself busy rising through the ranks of the Ministry's Auror Department…

There is a soft chime as someone pushes open the door to the café, rattling the bells that hang from the handle in the process.

Draco rushes behind the counter, shoving the paper into a drawer.

"A croissant and a medium latte, no sugar."

Kay is about thirty-five and usually shows up around two in the morning twice a week, searching for caffeine in advance of her shift as a nurse at the local hospital. Depending on how awake she is, they sometimes exchange niceties. Other times she leaves in silence. She's not a very talkative person.

"Nice tat," she says today while he's turned around to steam the milk for her drink.

He realizes too late that his sleeves are rolled up; it's unseasonably warm for December, but the heat is still on in the café. Part of the appeal of the Muggle world is that the Dark Mark does not instill automatic fear and hatred in whoever sees it.

"Oh," he says, trying to mask the pain in his voice. "Thanks." He doesn't mean it.

When Kay heads out the door, he rolls his sleeves back down.

The bells chime again a few minutes later, and a girl – maybe his age, maybe a few years younger – walks in.

She pauses for a moment before ordering, and he realizes with a start that she's squinting at him and not the menu posted on the wall behind him.

"Can I help you?" he asks, trying not to sound rude, but it comes out that way.

A lot of the things he says do.

The girl shakes her head a little as though to clear it, and Draco notices that her eyes – green – are somewhat familiar. He wonders if he knows her from somewhere. She might be a sister or cousin of one of the Mudbl—Muggleborns he knew back at Hogwarts.

He can't be sure.

"Just a small coffee, please," she says.

"Decaf?" he asks, because it's late (or early, depending on how you look at it) and he's trying to figure out why she looks familiar and maybe if he keeps her talking she'll reveal something about herself.

She shoots him a look like of course I want caffeine in my coffee. "No."

"Just asking," he raises his hands in mock surrender. "For here or to go?"

"To go," she answers, so he reaches for a disposable cup and pours her a cup of coffee.

It had taken him a full month to figure out all the knobs and buttons on the different coffee-making machines. He'd gotten away with his incompetence by using magic when no one was looking, but by now he could probably make a cup of coffee with his eyes closed. Muggles were more interesting than he'd ever given them credit for.

So he passes the cup over to the girl, collects her money, hands her the change (Muggle money had been another hurdle to clear), and watches her leave.

The girl returns the next day, yet again at two in the morning, and Draco, who is using a charm to sweep the floor (he is not one for menial labor, nor has he ever used a broom for anything but Quidditch), hastily shoves his wand into his pocket and grabs the broom-handle.

He balances the mop against the wall and steps behind the counter.

"What'll it be?" he asks, but judging from her appearance (strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a messy bun, sweatshirt several sizes to large, and dark bags under eyes), he guesses that she's going for black coffee again.

He's right.

He reaches for a disposable cup again, but she stops him. "Is it okay if I study here? I mean…" she hesitates, apparently noting that they are alone in the café, "Unless you were…"

"Go ahead," he shrugs, placing the cardboard cup back on the stack and reaching instead for one of the ceramic mugs imprinted with the café's logo. He hands it to her across the counter.

She takes a seat at one of the booths and pulls a textbook out of her bag. Draco doesn't catch the name of it.

He realizes he's just standing there, so he grabs the broom again and proceeds to clean the floor the Muggle way. It's the first time he's ever done so and it takes him a few tries to sweep the dirt into the dustpan. He thinks he sees the girl smirk.

She doesn't return over the weekend. But just after two a.m. on Tuesday morning she's back in the cafe.

On her fourth visit (Wednesday morning), he asks for her name.

"Tori," she supplies, hesitates, then, "Yours?"

"Draco."

She quirks an eyebrow, but he's used to this response from Muggles.

"Your parents must have hated you," she says while she scans a page from her textbook.

Years ago he might have snapped at her for such a comment, but now he has the self-restraint to simply roll his eyes.

"So you're in university," he says a few days later.

He doesn't know why he says anything. She's clearly a Muggle, writing with a pen on lined paper, and so he shouldn't feel the need to talk to her.

But he does.

Tori nods. She doesn't supply the name of her university, and he doesn't ask.

"I swear I'm not stalking you," Tori says after two consecutive weeks of studying at the café until five in the morning. "It's just that the library closes at two and my flatmate always has her loud, obnoxious friends over until super-late."

"It's fine," he responds. "I don't mind."

He doesn't, and in fact on weekends when she doesn't have class he finds himself missing her. He doesn't tell her that.

"When do you sleep?" he asks instead.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," she answers. Then, more seriously, "I don't have class until noon. So I can get about six hours in from half-five to half-eleven."

As a child, Draco had never understood how halfbloods even happened; he'd never been able to fathom the idea of a Wizard falling for a Muggle.

Until now.

If his father heard about this, he would likely owl him with threats for his imminent death.

But three and a half years after the war is not a great time to be a Malfoy, so being disowned from the family might not be so terrible.

He shakes his head. He shouldn't even be thinking about this.

It takes three weeks and two days for Astoria Greengrass to work up the nerve to tell Draco Malfoy that she knows exactly who he is. Their parents are acquaintances, but not particularly close, and she doubts he remembers ever seeing Daphne's little sister across the Great Hall at the Ravenclaw table back when they were both at Hogwarts.

She should have told him she was a witch the second she saw him rolling his sleeves down over his Dark Mark through the window all those weeks ago – it was the only reason she'd even entered the café anyway.

It was true what she'd said that the library closed at two, and it was true that her roommate was always hosting parties in their flat, but she could have studied in any 24-hour restaurant in the city.

But she kept coming back to this one, because seeing Draco Malfoy, once a paragon for all pureblood children to aspire to emulate, working a job as plebeian and Muggle as in a café, had piqued her interest.

And so she gathers up her nerve and says, "You know, I'd always pictured you in some cushy job at the Ministry."

Draco, who had been failing miserably at trying to wipe down the counter without magic (not that she would tell him that; she was sure he'd use his wand as soon as she left), jumps at her words.

"Pardon?" Ah, there was the pureblood upbringing. But she can see the realization dawning on his face.

"Astoria Greengrass," she says, "My sister Daphne was in your year."

"But…" Draco falters. He gestures vaguely at the open notebook she's scribbling in.

"I'm studying for a degree in Muggle Studies," she says. "Which involves, you know, going to Muggle Uni."

"Er, right," Draco says. "So you've known I was a wizard this whole time and haven't bothered to mention it because…"

She shrugs and turns back to her work. "It was more interesting watching you try to use a broom the Muggle way."

Tori – Astoria – comes back the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

She knows who Draco Malfoy is, knows that most of the wizarding world would rather have nothing to do with him, and yet she still comes back to the café.

He's taken to getting a cup of coffee for himself and sitting across from her at the table while she explains Muggle history to him.

She's saying something about Oliver Cromwell, but he's focused instead on her hair, the curve of her jaw, her lips…

And then before he knows what he's doing he's leaned forward and rested his hand on top of hers.

He waits for Astoria to pull away, but she doesn't. She shuts up about Oliver Cromwell, though, and their eyes meet – his blue to her green – and she raises an eyebrow, daring him to act.

And so he leans forward and kisses her, and then she's kissing him back, and the table between them is in the way, and somehow Astoria ends up sitting on the table, which puts her at just the right height to meet his lips without him bending down. Her legs wrap around his waist.

When they finally break apart – his shirt unbuttoned, her hair free of the elastic it had been in – she whispers, "Took you long enough."