Chapter Text
“Other cultures, in other parts of the world, use completely different cores for their wands,” Potter says from his four-poster.
The room is dark and quiet, lit only by the soft lumos that hangs over Draco's head while he alternates between scribbling notes on Saturn Fly-Traps and a sketch of the lake's giant squid.
It's pretty late at night, and they ought to be going to sleep soon, but Draco is feeling too relaxed and tranquil to want to end his day- he's actually starting to enjoy these quiet moments with Potter, looks forward to them, somehow. And they've been happening more and more frequently, a new routine that's developing between the pair of them.
“You don't say?” Draco mumbles, humoring his roommate.
The few returning eighth years had been given the luxury of only having a single roommate, but the humiliation of being assigned said roommate, regardless of house designation. For reasons that seemed to fly over Potter's head, but were all too obvious to Draco, they had been assigned together.
Harry huffs at Draco's non-interest and it draws his eyes up to the Golden Boy. His face looks severe in the heightened shadows, his skin especially dark, though his eyes seem to shine at Draco.
“Think about it, Malfoy,” he says, “having the right wand is essential to complementing your magic, but we don't even have all the options in Ollivander's.”
Draco does think about it, while running a hand through his hair even though he knows that messes it up. He's become less concerned with always looking perfectly put together recently- he supposes that replacing Blaise with a roommate like Potter who, ever since the war, has let his wild hair grow out to untamable lengths has lowered his standards. Not to mention he has no real reason to look presentable anymore- he's a Malfoy, after all. He's completely stopped spelling it back, preferring to let it hang naturally since the spells make it hard and a bit sticky.
“Well,” he says finally, after several long moments of silence in which Harry has patiently waited him out. “We have all the common ones at Ollivander's. I think it makes sense that a witch or wizard's ideal core would come from a creature in their region. Our magic and the magic in creatures and locations around us must all be... connected, I would guess.”
Draco frowns a bit, though, never having put much thought into his own magic's connection to the land, or whatever. But as far as late-night theories go, he supposes it makes sense. He looks over at Harry again, dutifully waiting for his response.
It's been surprisingly easy, like this, in these quiet hours of the night to find patience with his former rival, to allow a blank slate between them to just talk.
His musings don't seem to reassure Potter, however, who huffs more dramatically this time.
“That's exactly my point,” Harry says, “I'm not even completely from here. What if a Bodhi wand with a, a, a Gandaberunda feather core is my ideal wand and I won't ever know because I walked into an English wand shop and got this one!”
“Ah,” Draco says quietly. He doesn't have a clue what a Gandaberunda is, but he thinks he can pick out the heart of this conversation. Harry has an intense interest in wands these days, what with the feather connection between his and the Dark Lords', and the legendary properties of the Elder wand. Hell, Draco didn't even get his own wand back from Harry without a twenty minute lecture about how its wood complemented its core and played off his personality.
“Your wand still chose you, Potter,” he says quietly. “All of you.”
Draco didn't understand at first. Sure, the war had been traumatic for everyone. He'd been no more surprised to be woken up by Potter's nightmares as Potter had been when he was woken up by Draco's own- but Potter had won. The good guys, as Draco has always known they were, prevailed and saved the world.
Slowly, though, through their whispered conversations – confessions – in the darkness, Draco has learned. He's learned about the Dark Lord's mutilated soul, about horcruxes and the one that Harry had grown up carrying inside himself. He's heard about Harry's actual, literal death and how he's come to feel, recently, that all along he'd been used just like an animal, no more than a calf raised for slaughter by people who were supposed to care about him.
It was, Draco realized, more than enough to fuck with a young wizard's head. If Draco came out of the war feeling betrayed by his parents, wrong-footed and unsure, he could appreciate now how Potter would feel the same.
“And if it's not the right wand for me?” Harry's voice is small.
Draco closes his notes (and his sketch) and murmurs a quiet nox. The room isn't completely dark, in fact, being as high up in one of the towers as they are the moon can cast quite a strong glow directly into their room when it wants to, though at the moment it's a mere sliver. The light it brings is barely enough to watch Potter burrowing under his covers by.
“Then after school,” Draco says more quietly than before, “you take a trip to India, find a wand shop, pick up a few Bodhi wands and see how you feel.”
Potter doesn't answer with more than a quiet hum, but Draco can read that he's successfully placated his roommate. Draco could never have imagined that calming the bloody Saviour's late-night fears would be a part of his experience upon his court-ordered return to Hogwarts, but here he is. Draco finds it comes rather naturally, in fact. When Potter isn't being a massive arse to Draco on principal, his emotions are fairly easy to read.
“Get some sleep, alright?” Draco says before falling still. He waits with baited breath and a pounding heart...
“Yeah, okay,” he hears at last. “Goodnight, Draco.”
Draco squeezes his eyes shut and savors the moment. Always, for the last seven years, his name has been Malfoy, spat out in various tones of anger, disappointment or unhappiness. But now, after good days when it's late at night, he's Draco to the other wizard.
He isn't sure why he's so affected, but he holds on tight to each 'goodnight, Draco' he gets.