"So then I said 'oh no, honey child,' - and of course this is in the gayest, campiest voice I can manage - which wouldn't sound out of place at a drag queen convention. So I say that, and before I can even finish the sentence, she's halfway out the door and the poor waitstaff's trying to flag her down because she hadn't bothered even asking for the check before running like the hounds of hell were nipping at her heels. And let me tell you, she was not happy about having to come back and actually pay for her meal. I think that the restaurant had to call the cops in the end, but unfortunately by that time I was all done and paid up myself so I’m not sure what went down after I’d left.” Blaise said, bringing his story to an end.
Draco just shook his head with mirth and a slight hint of disbelief over that woman's antics. Sure he'd encountered his fair share of highly judgemental, entitled, easily offended by not getting their way people at his workplace (and sometimes while just out and about), but it there seemed to this kind of limit as to how low or brazen these kinds of people got that had you questioning the validity of a story when one of the people involved in the story crossed that behavioral line in the sand. Still as it has been said, make something idiot proof and nature would breed a more idiotic idiot and truth truely was stranger than fiction. “You know if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that you made the whole story up just for attention.”
“Do you though? Sure we might’ve been something approaching friends Before but here and now we hardly know each other. Who’s to say I didn’t just make the whole story up just to get a reaction out of you.” Blaise pointed out. All of them were different people now than they had been Before; shaped by different circumstances and experiences. Yes, there was a surprising amount of overlap between their lives - Ron and Percy were still two brothers from a large family, Harry was still raised by his maternal aunt and uncle due to his parents’ deaths as a baby, Neville still grew up under his grandmother’s care while his parents languished in state care, and Draco himself still had a bigoted arse of a father who he hero worshiped for too long (which in a way was only natural. Bigoted arse or not, Lucius was still his father and Draco had looked up to the man when he had been younger and hadn’t really known any better; like so many other kids did). But there were also a large number of differences; for example, Draco’s birthday had gone from June fifth to September twelfth.
“You didn’t send me a food freeze dryer for my birthday did you?” Draco asked, slightly suspicious. He’d never managed to figure out who’d sent the damn thing (not that he was complaining about having gotten it because it was still a bit of a novelty to use) and Blaise would’ve Remembered that his birthday would’ve been back in June but not known that his birthday was now in September.
“God no! Do you have any idea about how expensive those things are? I know it might look it because of my quirk and DJ gig, but I’m not actually made of money.” Blaise replied with a bit of a laugh (almost - almost - affronted by the very idea). While they might’ve been friends (or about as close to friends as any two people in their positions could be) Before, they hadn’t been the kind of close that led to dropping massive amounts of money on birthday or Christmas presents (which is not to say that they didn’t pick out pricey presents when the occasions called for them; only that the cost of said presents was merely a few hundred as opposed to a few thousand. After all, they did have an image of wealth and privilege to maintain).
“I was just checking.” Draco muttered with a defensive shrug. He hadn’t honestly thought that Blaise had been the one behind the strange gift; it certainly didn’t seem like the kind of thing he would’ve done. But the question of who’d sent it remained and was actually very slowly driving the five of them crazy. It was not the kind of gift you’d just send a total stranger out of the blue, but anyone he actually knew would’ve sent a card, or a message, or something to let him know who it was from.
“Maybe it was from a secret admirer trying to impress you.” Blaise suggested. It was possible, if a bit on the creepier side of things (because it meant that the theoretical secret admirer knew where Draco lived and not only had the money to spare on an extravagant gift but the willingness to do so - even if they couldn’t quite work up the courage to admit that they existed and had a crush on Draco beyond sending the gift in question).
Draco shrugged again. “Kind of a lousy way to go about it if it is though.”
“Oh?” Blaise asked, cocking his head to the side in interest.
“Isn’t the whole point of doing the whole secret admirer thing letting your crush know that someone likes them - even if you’re too shy to let them know who you are? How does mailing someone something like this without so much as a ‘happy birthday’, ‘merry Christmas’, or ‘I really really really like you’ say anything other than ‘I have more money than I reasonably know what to do with’ and ‘I know where you live’?” Draco elaborated.
“True.” Blaise conceded. And when you really thought about it, it was rather a weird way to go about it. And a bit creepy with a side of stalkery since there was no telling how the person had gotten a hold of Draco’s address - or what stunt they’d pull next when it became clear that Draco was still basically clueless about them (never mind that was because Draco’d never been given any clue as to who they were or why they were doing things like this. Stalkers tended to be a bit divorced from reality and would often ignore things like logic since that would mean that they’d have to accept that their intended target might be just not that into them; and that would simply not do).
The two of them lapsed into an easy uneasy silence, thinking about the Mystery of the Freeze Dryer and perhaps some of the more... unsettling... implications surrounding its delivery. There was a subtle difference between a stalker and a secret admirer, with enough overlap between the two to really muddy the water about when the later crossed some invisible line and became the former. Not that the freeze dryer having been sent by a stalker/secret admirer was the only possible explanation (just that it kind of seemed like the most likely one).
“Maybe it’s part of a scam?” Blaise mused. Draco looked over at him quizzically, not quite sure where Blaise was going with this particular line of thought, “I can’t say that I’ve heard of something like this being done with a freeze dryer - although to be honest, until you told me about it, I hadn’t even known that freeze dryers were a thing - but there are plenty of stories of underhanded companies sending people or other companies things like printer ink, toner, and paper (for companies) or jewelry, stationary, and other trinkets (for individuals) and then billing them for the junk they got despite the fact that all that shit was unsolicited. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, but we both know that just because something’s illegal it doesn’t mean that people won’t try to do it anyway.”
Draco thought that over. It did make some sort of sense, and would explain why he’d been sent the freeze dryer out of the blue like that. But it also didn’t make a lot of sense. At least the other stuff Blaise had mentioned were things that people or businesses regularly bought. Freeze dryers were not something most people knew about unless they were either somehow involved in the food industry or so obsessed with cooking tech that they might as well be. “I don’t know about that. It just seems so...”
“It kind of makes sense if you think about it. You told me how much a pain it was just to move it into the kitchen and unbox it. How many people are going to go through all the trouble - and expense given that they’d likely be on the hook for return shipping - to drag it to the nearest shipping service of their choice or arrange for a pick up and all the hassle involved with that. And sure, there’ll be some people who’ll do just that, but more will probably just keep the thing - or sell it to somebody else if they really just don’t want it. Then it’s just a case of sending off an invoice for the freeze dryer with the typical unspoken threats of what could happen if you don’t pay up for this thing you never ordered and probably don’t want or need (even if in the end you do end up using it because it does sound kinda fun? You could certainly make a game out of it; a ‘will it freeze dry’ thing where the answer is likely yes but the bigger question is does the resulting food taste good enough for you to freeze dry it again. Because while there are plenty of things that would taste good like that, I’m sure that there are a number of things that won’t). Bonus points for a freeze dryer being expensive enough - some of the ones I saw online (and yes, of course I checked. I was curious) go for between two and three thousand pounds; and they’re not even the top of the line models - to make being sued in small claims court a credible threat. Not that they’d be likely to actually win a case like that since it can be easily proven that they were the ones to send you the freeze dryer without you having ordered it, but not everyone can afford to deal a lawsuit or find the idea of being sued - because even if it’s pretty much a slam dunk win for them what if they lost - so they’d just pay up the bogus bill just to make it go away.” Blaise explained.
“I never thought about it like that.” Draco said. In all their theorizing, the idea that it had been part of some elaborate scam on the behalf of some unknown third party (because the freeze dryer worked, and when they looked up the company that both made and shipped the freeze dryer everything came up as them being legit) hadn’t even come close to crossing their minds, “I’ll have to remember to keep an eye out for any potential future bill or invoice then. Not that I’m worried about being sued over it; if they want to threaten me with their solicitors I can just as easily threaten them with mine. I’m sure that’ll get them to back down right quick.”
“Anyway changing the subject, who was the most outrageous client you had to deal with at work?” Blaise said, trying to drag the conversation back to swapping stories about the worst people they’ve encountered in the best tall tale contest tradition (despite the tales being completely true - more or less) because that was a rather fun way to spend the time.