Chapter Text
It was 10:42 AM on September 1st, and Draco was sitting up against the window in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express, his cloak pulled tightly around his face, his knees curled up by his chest. The rhythmic chugging of the train and the faint chatter of students drifting down the hallways of the train did little to distract him from the storm brewing inside his mind.
Draco had been dreading this day. It had been a full year since the final battle, since the events that had irrevocably changed not only the course of the war but the course of his life. Professor McGonagall—well, now Headmistress McGonagall—had taken up his Uncle Severus' post after he had passed away last year, and the weight of that change weighed heavily on Draco. His uncle, the last remaining semblance of order and purpose in Draco's fractured world, was gone. And now McGonagall was in charge of Hogwarts, a place he had once felt more at home than anywhere else, yet now felt suffocating.
Due to the "significant disruption to learning" posed by the Battle of Hogwarts, McGonagall had decided that all students would need to return to school in the Autumn for an additional year of study at the course level that they should have taken in the year prior.
His mother had told him that Kingsley Shacklebolt, the new Minister for Magic, had wanted to offer some students the opportunity to skip over their N.E.W.T.s and jump straight into Auror positions—those who had contributed significantly to the war effort. But McGonagall had shot this down. The Headmistress had said that those students, like Harry and Hermione, deserved to experience "an ordinary school year" and receive "proper training under less harsh and traumatic circumstances." Draco had thought it sounded like a heap of Hufflepuff rubbish. But his mother had spoken about McGonagall's decision with an odd degree of gratitude, which meant Draco had to bite his tongue.
Of course, Draco knew he wouldn't have been one of the lucky few granted an exemption by the Minister. There was little love for students like him—ones who had once been loyal to the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters, even if they had renounced their allegiances. Despite Draco throwing Harry his wand during the final battle and his mother lying to Voldemort about Harry's death, there would always be people who couldn't—or wouldn't—see past the past. His role in the war, though small in the grand scheme of things, would forever mark him. The fact that he had done the right thing in the end, that he had aided in bringing down Voldemort, didn't seem to matter much in the eyes of most people.
Draco knew what awaited him when he arrived at school—more whispers behind his back, more stares that seemed to pierce straight through him. And yet, despite the heavy weight of it all, there was something about being alone that Draco had grown used to, perhaps even found comfort in. He had always been a solitary person, one who enjoyed the quiet and the space to think. He didn't mind the solitude; it gave him time to focus, to bury himself in the things that mattered to him—his studies.
Everything would be fine, he told himself as he leaned back into his seat, pulling his knees a little closer. The calmness of the train, the familiar hum of the wheels, was soothing, and he let himself focus on his breathing. His academic pursuits had been his salvation this past year, keeping him sane when everything else had seemed to fall apart. He had thrown himself into his studies—reading and writing voraciously—anything to distract him from the chaos in his personal life.
He had torn his way through several ancient astronomical texts, The Shadowed Path: An Analysis of Dark Magic and its Users , the 8th Edition Potion Master's Manual, Essences and Elixirs: A Scholar's Guide , The Geometry of Magic: Arithmancy and Its Role in Magical Structures , The Arithmantic Code, and even Living Among Muggles: A Wizard's Guide to Non-Magical Customs and Etiquette—although he would hex anybody who found out about that last one.
It was a subject he had once scoffed at, a concept he had never cared to entertain. But now, with his father in Azkaban, Draco found himself questioning everything he had once held dear. His hatred for Muggles, for Muggle-borns, had dulled into a strange, begrudging curiosity. He wasn't sure if it was genuine interest or simply a way to feel like he could escape the shadow of his father's legacy. Either way, it was a distraction—a way to feel like he was moving forward.
The constant strain of academic pressure had its rewards, though. His father's absence had lifted the invisible weight that had always hung over him. No longer was Draco in the shadow of Lucius Malfoy's expectations, and for the first time in years, Draco was allowed to succeed for his own sake. The achievements he made now were his own, not a reflection of his father's ambitions, and that gave him a sense of fulfillment that he had not experienced in a long time.
This year, Draco had chosen to take ten N.E.W.T.-level courses. It was an ambitious load, even for someone with Draco's intellect, but it was nothing he hadn't heard of before. Percy Weasley had managed to take twelve N.E.W.T.s in his final year, after all. The extra workload would give him something to focus on, something to keep him busy. Not that he would have much else to do. His friends, if they could be called that, were mostly gone—sidelined by their own moral choices or, in the case of his old Slytherin cohorts, no longer interested in associating with someone who had been so deeply involved in the downfall of their former leaders. He doubted anyone would try to sit with him on the train ride, and that suited him just fine.
With a sigh, Draco reached into his bag and pulled out a well-worn copy of The Mentalist's Ward: Advanced Techniques in Occlumency and Psychological Penetration by Althea Blackwood. He had read it multiple times already, but the action of flipping through the pages kept his hands occupied, even if his mind was far away. His eyes skimmed the words without much focus as he felt sleep slowly creeping up on him. He had been exhausted—physically, mentally, emotionally—after the long summer filled with Ministry interrogations and the endless trips to St. Mungo's.
As the train chugged along, the hum of its motion seemed to lull him into a light sleep. He closed his eyes, the rhythmic motion of the train soothing him into a state of calm. The stress of the past year, the looming uncertainty of the future, seemed to melt away for a moment. And for the first time in a long while, Draco let himself drift, if only for a few hours, into something resembling peace.
...
"Why is it that neither of you can ever be on time?" Hermione chastised, her voice sharp with frustration as she broke into a near sprint, pushing a trolley full of luggage through the bustling train station. Her usually calm demeanor was now a whirlwind of urgency.
"'Mione, relax," Ron replied, sounding exasperated but with a playful undertone. "It's not like they're gonna leave without us."
Hermione spluttered in disbelief. "Well that's no excuse for making everybody else late! It's called respect , Ronald." She gave him an intense look, trying to make him understand the gravity of the situation.
"Sorry, mum," Ron said, rolling his eyes at her reproach but unable to suppress the playful smile that was slowly creeping onto his lips. Hermione, despite her frustration, softened a little at this. Her hurried pace didn't slow, however, as she continued to charge towards the platform, her heels clicking sharply on the stone floor.
"I mean seriously, you two," Hermione muttered under her breath, more to herself than to them. "I'm Head Girl this year. I'm supposed to be setting a good example for the incoming students, and yet we're somehow making it onto the Hogwarts Express with only two minutes to spare." She speeded up, weaving her way between other students as they poured into the train station.
Ron leaned over and muttered to Harry, "Have you heard that she's Head Girl this year?" He barely contained a laugh as Hermione scowled at him from ahead, her cheeks flushed with a mix of embarrassment and irritation.
"I heard that, Ron!" Hermione yelled back, turning her head to shoot them both an exaggerated glare.
Harry, who had been following closely behind, did all he could to muster up a smile for his friend. He had grown so accustomed to their bickering over the years that it felt almost comforting, though it also reminded him of how much things had changed over the summer. The trio had spent most of it together at the Burrow, working through the strange new normal of life after the war.
The start of the summer had been really difficult for everyone. The loss of Fred had cast a sort of auspicious gloom over the house, even with the inherent sound and chaos of all the siblings minus Bill and Charlie moving back in (plus Harry and Hermione). There was a constant sense that something was just not quite right, that any second the additional person who belonged in the household would come bounding down the stairs to join for dinner, or wizard chess, or whatever that evening's conversation topic was. Even the loud, rambunctious atmosphere of the Burrow couldn't mask the underlying grief that clung to everyone like a cloud.
The Weasleys had welcomed him into their family, offering a semblance of normality amidst the chaos, but it was hard not to feel the absence of Fred in every corner of the house. Harry often caught George staring at empty spaces, a haunted look in his eyes, or Percy retreating into his room, brooding. Molly Weasley did her best to maintain the household's warmth, but Harry could see how much of a struggle it was for her, especially when small moments of grief would hit unexpectedly. It was clear that no one had fully processed the loss.
At times, Harry wondered if the Weasleys saw him as a sort of reminder of the burden they carried. Fred's death, after all, was linked to the battle he had fought, and Harry often wondered if they resented him for it, even if they never said as much. But they didn't need to. The guilt and shame were heavy enough to wear on Harry, making him feel like a constant weight that was hard to shake off.
Hermione was concerned, of course. She was always concerned about him. But there was a certain distance between them now. She would check in on him, sometimes with a worried frown, but Harry could tell that their relationship had shifted. She and Ron had grown closer in a way that made Harry feel like a third wheel at times. Not that he begrudged them their closeness; it was just... different.
"Harry, are you alright?" Hermione's voice broke through his thoughts as she glanced back at him, noticing his pensive expression.
"Yeah, just thinking," Harry said, giving her a small smile that he hoped was reassuring, though he knew it didn't reach his eyes.
"Well, stop thinking and start walking. We're cutting it close!" Hermione huffed, already speeding up again as the three of them rushed to the train platform.
It wasn't long before they found themselves rushing down the narrow aisles of the train, trying to find an empty compartment. The train had already begun to move when they finally started their search, and Hermione sent them both an "I told you so" glance over her shoulder.
It wasn't lost on Harry how many compartment doors opened to them, even compartments that barely had room for one of them, let alone all three. It seemed that everywhere they turned was an excitable pleasantry and an amicable smile. But all Harry wanted was to finally settle into a compartment with his friends where he wouldn't feel so much like an animal on display. He was reminded a bit of the snake that he released from the zoo before his first year at school—sets of eyes seeming to prod him through glass doors at every angle.
"Any idea where Neville and Luna are? Or Dean and Seamus?" Ron asked, his voice tinged with uncertainty as they continued their quest for an empty compartment.
"No idea," Hermione replied distractedly, still scanning the compartments for an available spot. The train was getting more crowded by the minute, and their options were rapidly narrowing.
Just as they were about to give up, they stumbled upon a compartment that seemed to have a lot of open space. However, as they approached, they realized there was only one other person inside. Draco Malfoy was sitting in the far-right corner, curled up against the window, seemingly asleep. He had his cloak pulled tightly around him, his posture tense and defensive even in slumber.
Ron groaned audibly, his face contorting in distaste. "We aren't seriously gonna ride all the way there with Malfoy , are we?" he grumbled, eyeing the compartment with disdain.
"Ron, come on," Hermione started, stepping forward with a soft but firm tone. "I know he can be a bit of a prat, but he and his mother did save Harry's life last year. And it's seemingly the only cabin left on this side of the train."
Harry nodded in agreement, his mind already made up. He was far too exhausted to argue or care about the awkwardness of sitting with Malfoy. "Works for me," he said quietly, his voice tinged with relief. He didn't particularly want to engage in long conversations, especially not with people who might still view him as some kind of celebrity.
Chapter 2
Notes:
TW for canon character death (Dumbledore), torture described in a memory (between Bellatrix and Hermione), and implied child abuse (memories of a child hiding from an abusive parent).
If you're particularly sensitive to any of the topics above, I'd recommend skipping what happens after Draco takes the pill and coming back in after the line break.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
Draco clung tightly to his mother's hand as they weaved their way in and out of the thin aisles of Knockturn Alley. The sun hung low in the sky, casting a golden glow over everything, and the streets were alive with the noise of people chatting, the gentle buzzing of the adults' latent magic, and the distant jingle of storefront bells in the direction of Diagon Alley.
Even at age 7, he was small for his age, his blonde hair carefully placed in straight strands across his forehead. Narcissa Malfoy, just as small and just as blonde, was always close by, her gentle touch guiding him through the crowds.
"Look, Mum," Draco pointed ahead, his eyes lighting up as they approached a familiar shop. It was a small store with cracked black shingles on top and an old-fashioned wooden sign that read Dystyl Phaelanges swinging gently in the breeze. The scent of a light musk and something oddly sweet drifted out every time the door opened. Inside, there were rows upon rows of small animal bones, meticulously arranged in various boxes and vials.
"Bones," Draco whispered, grinning up at her. He had been here many times before, although he never quite understood what it was about the place that made him feel both comforted and a little uneasy.
His mother smiled down at him, her lips curling in a soft, knowing way. "I know, darling. Let's go inside."
They entered the store, the doorbell ringing softly above them. The shopkeeper, an elderly woman with guarded eyes and a reserved smile, nodded curtly as they approached. She had a way of looking at Draco as though she could see something deep inside, even if he didn't quite understand what it was.
"Mrs. Malfoy," the woman greeted, her voice smooth and even.
Draco's eyes widened in awe as he surveyed his surroundings—walls that seemed to stretch to the ceiling were filled with bones ranging in size from toad vertebrates all the way to giant skulls. He could never get enough of this place.
The noise started like a murmur, soft and distant, like the buzz of bees in the Manor garden. But then it grew, louder and louder, until it felt like the whole world was shaking. Draco could hear the bones all clattering on their shelves, his hand still clutching his mother's, and he could feel the ground vibrating under his feet.
It was hard to tell what was happening at first. People were shouting, their voices sharp and frantic, like when you hear someone yell at a Quidditch match. Outside, people were moving in all directions, their faces tight and worried, but no one seemed to know where to go.
He turned to his mom, but she was looking ahead, her brow furrowed. Her fingers tightened around his hand, almost pulling him closer, like she was afraid something would grab him.
"Mum?" he asked quietly, but she didn't answer. Instead, her eyes scanned the crowd, her lips pressing together in a line. He felt his stomach twist. Something wasn't right, but he couldn't understand why. The shouting had gotten louder now, more urgent. A man with a black cloak was waving his arms, trying to make people stop and listen, but everyone just rushed past him.
Draco stood on tiptoe, peering over the crowd. The air felt thick, like when you breathe in right before it rains. In the distance, he saw a group of people running, their faces wide with fear. They were shouting something, but it was too muffled, too jumbled for him to make out.
His mom's hand tightened again, pulling him closer, but Draco felt like he was being pulled into something much bigger than just this moment. He didn't understand what was happening, but he knew one thing—everything felt out of control. His mother quickly got her bearings, her hands warm and gentle on his shoulders, but her face... her face looked different now. Tighter. Tense.
"Stay close," she said, her voice low and steady, but Draco could hear the slight edge of fear in her tone.
He looked up at her, but she was already moving him out of Dystyl Phaelanges and through the crowd, her steps quick and purposeful. Draco's small legs struggled to keep up as people rushed around them, some running, some just walking fast with their heads down.
Draco's breath came in short bursts as he tried to keep up, but his eyes kept darting back to the confusion—people shouting, pointing, some even crying. It was like the air itself was filled with magical energy, crackling and buzzing with unease.
"Sweetheart," his mom spoke softly but urgently, "I need you to climb inside that cabinet."
Draco's eyes widened as he realized that they had entered a new store and he stood in front of an old, oak cabinet. Just about the size to fit a small boy curled up inside of it and nothing else. Realization dawned on him then—this hadn't been the first time that he'd seen his mother in a panic and this hadn't been the first time that he'd been forced to hide in a cabinet, but it was the first time it happened outside the Manor.
He scrambled into the cabinet and turned around to face his mom, who was reaching around for something in the pocket of her cloak.
Narcissa pulled a small, shimmering pill from her purse and held it out in her palm. The pill was translucent, flickering like a tiny star trapped inside glass. Draco hesitated for a moment, glancing up at his mother. Her tight smile was gentle but insistent.
"Take the pill, honey," she murmured, her voice so strained that it was hard to argue. "I'm sorry I can't explain. Everything will be ok. Just...please."
With a mix of curiosity and trust, Draco took the pill from her hand and swallowed it. It was cool and smooth on his tongue, disappearing quickly. His mother gave his hand a reassuring squeeze and whispered, "I love you, Draco," before closing the cabinet door and plunging him into darkness. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen.
And then—suddenly—everything changed.
Draco's vision wavered. The world around him seemed to blur and twist, like the colors in a painting running into one another. He blinked, and the sounds of Knockturn Alley faded away, replaced by a strange, distant hum.
He was no longer curled up in the cabinet.
Suddenly becoming aware that he was no longer 7 years old, Draco looked down, his body feeling foreign for a moment. While admittedly very slender and relatively short for his age, he could now have easily reached the top shelf at Dystyl Phaelanges, which had felt as if it had towered over him only moments ago.
Draco's stomach twisted as he realized where he was. His breath was shallow, the cold night air seeping through his cloak, stinging his skin. The Astronomy Tower seemed to engulf him, casting long shadows across the grounds below, where the vast expanse of Hogwarts was dimly visible in the moonlight. The wind howled, rattling the windows.
Dumbledore stood near the edge of the tower, gazing out at the dark sky, his hands resting calmly on the stone ledge. He seemed so peaceful, so unconcerned. Draco's stomach churned.
Draco's heart hammered in his chest as his eyes darted to the shadows where Severus had silently appeared behind him. The tall figure was just a silhouette, his black robes blending into the night, but Draco didn't need to see his face to know who it was.
Draco opened his mouth to speak, but his voice caught in his throat. This was the moment. The moment he would have to do it, or someone else would.
Dumbledore turned slowly, eyes passing right over Draco and landing on Severus. The old man's expression wasn't one of anger, or fear, or even reproach—it was only calm, as if he had known this would happen all along.
"Severus," Dumbledore spoke softly, "Please."
Before he could say anything more, Snape stepped forward from the shadows, his face cold and unreadable. Draco's pulse quickened. This was it. This was where it would all end.
He turned his head, unable to look at Dumbledore anymore, his eyes locked on Snape. The man's gaze was full of an icy finality, and then—almost too quickly for Draco to process—Snape raised his wand.
"Avada Kedavra."
The words were a hiss, cold and deadly. The green light shot forward, faster than Draco could blink, and Dumbledore's figure jerked once, twice, before being blasted backwards over the ledge of the Astronomy Tower in front of them with a strange, almost graceful finality.
But just as quickly as the scene had appeared, it vanished. The world shifted again, and Draco felt the ground beneath his feet change.
He immediately recognized that he was standing in the parlor of Malfoy Manor and, unfortunately, recognized the scenario as well.
"I want to have a little talk with this one, girl-to-girl ," his Aunt Bellatrix spit out, holding her wand at Hermione's throat and motioning for her two friends to be dragged downstairs to the dungeons. The boys both screamed frantically in protest, but they were wandless and helpless and dragged away nonetheless.
As the echoes of their shouts slowly faded into the corridors of the Manor, Bellatrix had started to question Hermione—something about an object being stolen from her vault at Gringott's. The line of questioning seemed rather futile given that the young brown-haired witch wasn't given time to respond between hexes. Bellatrix cast the Cruciatus Curse, causing Hermione to fall to her knees and a blood curdling shriek to rip from her throat. She did this again, and again, and again, until Hermione was lying completely flat on the floor and shaking like a leaf.
Draco knew what the Cruciatus Curse felt like—he had survived several rounds of it from his father and even once from the Dark Lord himself. It was a much deeper, more terrifying pain than most people imagined. Sure, there was the feeling that your skin was being sliced off with a hot knife along every inch of your body, but there was also a twisting and pulsating agony that would radiate through your chest and make it feel impossible to breathe, or think, or even for your heart to beat.
His aunt had apparently decided that this wasn't enough and had crawled on top of Hermione, looking to be carving something into her forearm with the steel blade of a small knife.
Draco was almost certain that Hermione had attempted to make eye contact with him at one point, but his eyes had all but glazed over and his brain was refusing to comprehend what was happening.
He knew better than to visually respond in situations like this. He had once had to leave the room and empty the contents of his stomach into a houseplant while watching his father and Aunt Bella "interrogate" a Muggle-born witch and the consequences of that reaction had been...unpleasant.
Bellatrix cackled maniacally, seeming as though she had either worked through some rage and started enjoying herself again or just broken through the other side of that violent anger into a manic psychosis. His aunt's laughter sounded like shattering glass to Draco and it was all that he could do to stand perfectly still and try to separate himself from the situation as thoroughly as he could.
Another shift.
The laughter faded, replaced by an eerie silence. He was back in the cabinet now, but it wasn't the same cabinet from the shop he had just been in. This one was dark chestnut and well-maintained, smelling of wood varnish and pressed linen rather than damp plywood. Shit .
He was also aware that he was back into a smaller body, possibly older than before, likely around 10 years old or so. Draco felt a massive lump forming in his throat as he recognized where he was—this was the cabinet from the Manor.
A door squeaked open somewhere not too far away from the cabinet, and he could hear the repetitive beating of leather boots on the polished floors starting to slowly make their way towards him, along with the distinguishable dragging of a long, thin cane scraping across the ground. Hearing the heavy footsteps approaching the cabinet, Draco squeezed his eyes shut and braced himself, doing his best to fly away in his mind to somewhere—anywhere but here.
As the cabinet door was flung open, Draco felt his body jump against his will as his heart leapt into his throat and he took a sharp intake of panicked breath, his eyes flying back open.
...
Taking a moment to assess his surroundings, Draco realized that he was not in fact cowering inside a cabinet and was instead looking into the faces of the Golden Trio. Potter, Granger, and Weasley were all paused at the door of his compartment on the Hogwarts Express.
"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you—" Granger started. "Do you mind?" motioning to the empty seats on the other side of his compartment.
Draco cleared his throat. "Go ahead."
He hoped that he didn't sound as weak and disturbed as he felt.
He also hoped that the group hadn't noticed him nearly jump out of his skin and gasp for air at the sound of a gentle knock and the opening of a door. That thought brought on a fresh wave of embarrassment and he could feel the blood rising in his cheeks a bit, but if the trio had noticed that anything was off, they certainly didn't seem inclined to have a conversation about it.
Draco took a moment to get his bearings, running his fingers through the front of his hair and feeling a bit grateful that he had fallen asleep curled up with a book in his lap for somatic distraction.
Feeling as though he had come back to himself a bit, Draco finally turned to the group that had joined his compartment and did his best to plaster the trademarked pompous sneer on his face. "Were all the other cabins full of pixies?"
"What?" Granger questioned, turning around from levitating their trunks onto the storage platform to look back at Malfoy. Staring directly into her face after the dream he'd just had was more difficult than anticipated.
Nevertheless, he swallowed that down and said, "Come on, Granger, am I meant to believe that you all just jumped at the chance to share a cabin with the disgraced former Death Eater who made your lives hell for several years?"
"Bold of you to assume you had the power to make our lives hell," chortled Weasley.
"Well, to be honest, we may have had more seat options if some people didn't seem to lack the capability to be on time," Granger looked pointedly at her friends, Harry and Ron both wincing a bit at the chastisement, which made Draco exhale a small chuckle despite himself. "But also, we're adults. It shouldn't matter. Especially not after everything we've been through the past few years."
Everything we've been through. Draco let out a small breath that he wasn't aware he was holding.
"Well in that case," he relaxed back into the window a bit. "I had just intended to read silently. You're welcome to sit," he motioned with his book to the empty seat across from him as he realized that all three Gryffindors had continued standing on the other side of the compartment.
Draco rolled his eyes when none of them moved. Typical. We're all adults now, my arse , he thought.
"Or cram yourselves on the other side like a bunch of sardines. Doesn't matter to me. I know how much you all love each other."
He returned to mindlessly flipping through his book and only looked up for a moment as Potter shuffled uncomfortably onto his side of the compartment. He sat at a 45 degree angle from the corner of the cabin and leaned forward to rest his forearms on his thighs. Granger and Weasley also seemed to settle into their seats, Ron's arm going around Hermione's shoulders as she nestled up against him.
The trio made small talk for most of the ride to school, occasionally giggling at things that had occurred over the summer. Harry groaned when Granger and Weasley started flirting a little too aggressively.
For the most part, the group seemed to have completely forgotten that Draco was even there. Which suited him just fine—again, he had a tendency to prefer his solitude. But he couldn't help but admit that even just being surrounded by laughter and normalcy felt kind of nice.
Chapter 3
Notes:
TW for abuse, mentioned very vaguely throughout the chapter. TW for some ED tendencies as well, towards the end.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
The sun was beginning to set by the time that the Hogwarts Express approached the outer bounds of the school, a thin veil of warm orange and pink hues descending from the sky and settling over the horizon. As the train slowly came to a halt and the meticulous, mechanical churning of wheels on tracks abruptly ceased, a calm but heavy silence descended upon the group. It seemed as though, for the first time in several hours, the Golden Trio once again became aware of Draco's existence.
Students could be heard outside of the cabin, immediately shuffling to grab their belongings and head outside while chattering ceaselessly with their friends, contributing to a chaos that felt somehow far away. Draco could feel his face flush a small amount, suddenly feeling as if he were intruding on the friend group that had occupied his compartment rather than the other way around.
He pulled his wand out of the pocket of his robe and cast a quick charm on the copy of The Grimoire of Eternal Recall in his lap to hold his place, closing the book and holding it into his chest.
Granger removed herself from being so entangled under Weasley's arm and cleared her throat. "We should probably wait until some of the younger students clear out—it sounds a bit disorderly out there."
She glanced over to Potter as she said it, seeming to pause and analyze his face although he remained relatively expressionless.
Draco remained silent and otherwise made no movements to leave, shuffling himself a bit farther down into his seat, if anything. When it became clear that the uncomfortable silence was going to persist, he chimed in quietly with an "I'd prefer not to run into anybody either."
Granger and Potter both nodded in acknowledgement while Weasley simply glared at him, as he had been doing periodically for the majority of the train ride.
Draco wondered how much the group had really gathered about his new reality. He had definitely heard plenty about their lives over their several shared hours on the train, as if he desired any updates on the Golden Trio beyond what was incessantly scrawled in the tabloids of the Daily Prophet.
Young savior of the wizarding world spends the summer with cherished friends and family, apart from the ones that were harshly ripped away by any monsters who dared to do whatever they could to protect themselves and their own families from the most powerful dark wizard in recallable history—he felt like he got the gist of it.
Meanwhile, Draco would need to return to the children of some of those monsters in a shorter amount of time than he felt prepared for. Sure, there were plenty of other Slytherin students who were no doubt relieved that their often violent, bigoted parents were put behind bars. But others—Draco's mind drifted to some of his old counterparts, and dare he say friends—would not be quite as forgiving.
Draco felt sick. He focused his eyes on a specific spot on the floor, taking measured breaths and attempting to convince himself that the lurching in his stomach was just a bit of motion sickness from the train.
Eventually, the noise of the havoc occurring outside their doors faded until it was just the gentle, monotonous humming of the train's engine.
"Well," Draco said, slowly standing and placing the book he was reading back into his trunk and levitating it back to the ground, "that's my cue to leave."
Without another word, he grabbed the handle of his trunk and exited the compartment, looking both ways to ensure that there was nobody else occupying the hallway before exiting into the brisk air of dusk.
He did a quick scan of the environment, briefly recognizing that he didn't know anybody in the immediate vicinity. His eyes loitered for a moment upon the majestic, black creatures pulling the Hogwarts carriages. Their leathery skin was pulled taut over sinewy muscle tissue and bones. As Draco passed each of them, they all had a glean in their eye that conveyed some sort of pity (or compassion?) as well as an omniscience that he couldn't quite place.
Thestrals really are so grotesquely beautiful, Draco thought. A voice in the back of his head immediately came up to chastise him for taking an interest in as frivolous a subject as magical creatures, but he shook his head to rattle the chastisement away.
If only he hadn't gotten so hopelessly behind in Care of Magical Creatures, perhaps he could have done his senior project on thestrals.
Thanks a lot, Dad, he mused, but immediately felt a wave of guilt sucker punch him in the gut as he remembered his father. His father, who was likely curled up and cold in a dark cell in Azkaban. Draco wondered if he felt lonely and hopeless and afraid. Some part of him hoped that he did—that he was cowering and suffering and had infinite time to sit with what he had done. Not like the bastard didn't deserve it.
Just as he was starting to feel a bit sorry for himself, another thought occurred to him. How many young students could see the thestrals now because of him? Directly due to his actions?
The thought made Draco's breath hitch a bit in his throat and he felt a modicum of that same lurching feeling from the train in his stomach.
"Well, we've gotta stop meeting like this," came a feminine voice behind him, nearly making Draco leap out of his skin. It was Granger again, grinning slightly and trailed by two boys who were carrying luggage and looking rather forlorn.
Draco, no longer lost in thought, looked ahead of him and realized that there was only one carriage left with a thestral to pull it. Great .
He gave the Granger girl a tight smile, suddenly feeling like a massive arsehole. She, of all people, had every right to hate him. He was an absolute wanker towards her all throughout their school years, spouting off just about every slur he could parrot from his father in her direction. Yet, here she was—constantly extending an olive branch.
"Heh, I guess so," he chuckled rather pathetically, feeling obligated to at least contribute something verbally.
The group clambered into the back of the carriage in the same orientation that they had been in through the train ride, Harry silently taking a place next to Draco. Draco noticed that Harry seemed similarly lost and distracted around the thestrals, his eyes glazing over and his lips almost pressing into a slight smile as he watched the careful movements of the creature's back.
The carriage immediately set in motion towards Hogwarts, jostling the group of them about slightly as the movement started.
"So, Malfoy..." Granger started with a gentle smile. Draco tensed up, completely unprepared to engage in amicable small talk, especially after the total lack of notice that they had displayed towards him on the train. "Will you be in Arithmancy with me this year? I saw a copy of Advanced Arithmancy Studies on the side of your trunk."
Draco let out a small sigh of relief, glad that this was at least a conversation topic that he could somewhat effortlessly contribute to. "Yes, I will be."
"Looking forward to another year of Professor Vector's absolutely brutal problem sets," she said, giving another grin. "I mean, seriously, I easily got an Outstanding on the Arithmancy O.W.L. and some of those Fourier analyses and Lagrangian questions from sixth year made me want to rip my hair out."
Draco chuckled a bit in response—a genuine chuckle, he realized. "I remember most of the Lagrange multiplier stuff pretty well, but God—I've completely moved the Fourier transform methods out of memory. I wanted so badly to get a solid comprehension of the instant power a spell takes in relation to its total potentiation arc but that was right around the time—"
He cut himself off. Merlin, why did everything have to be tainted like this?
Granger leaned forward again, seeming to clock exactly what was going on inside his head although Draco was nearly certain that he hadn't let it escape verbally. "Yeah, same here...I guess we'll just have to help each other work through the gaps there."
Draco gave a quick and embarrassed nod, looking out towards the shape of trees moving past them in the dim light of nightfall. A small lantern had been placed in the center of each carriage, though it did little to illuminate much more than the others' faces as evening faded into night.
He noticed that Potter and Weasley exchanged brief uncomfortable glances as the group fell into another relative silence.
When the carriage began pulling up to the main gates, a cluster of professors were huddled around taking attendance. Professors Sinistra, Vector, Rowle, Babbling, and a couple others who Draco didn't recognize gave the group a small smile as they lifted their trunks from the carriage and began the short walk back to the castle doors.
The transformation that Hogwarts had undergone in the past few months was nothing short of amazing. Draco seemed to remember bits of walls and ceiling collapsed in on themselves, now standing prompt and erect to greet the incoming student body.
These bridges and halls had once completely collapsed, now restored to what he assumed was as close to a replication as possible to their former glory. As they strolled past the section where Care of Magical Creatures classes had taken place, Draco imagined being kicked across the chest by Buckbeak the Hippogriff—and couldn't help but to grin a bit at his own self-righteous idiocy.
They made their way to the place that Neville Longbottom, the quivering mess of a boy that Draco had picked on relentlessly for years, had courageously and single-handed stood against a swarm of Death Eaters (some of whom had been responsible for the torture of his parents into insanity) and used the Sword of Gryffindor to slice the head off of Nagini. Draco shuddered.
Making their way across the old Courtyard, Draco had a rush of memories flooding back—Trelawney, cowering under the tyrannical gaze of Umbridge until Professor McGonagall stepped in to prevent her being removed from the premises—Nymphadora Tonks, a long lost cousin of Draco's whom he had never met but always held a begrudging respect for, fighting tooth and nail against several Death Eaters at once—and finally, himself, reacting in a split second as the formerly lifeless form of Harry Potter leapt from Hagrid's arms to toss him his wand in an act of courage and indignation that he wasn't even aware that he had possessed.
The rest of the older students seemed to be lost in a similar dissociative fugue as they wandered about the grounds to the entrance of the Grand Hall, and Draco was grateful that the idle chit chat had ceased—at least for the moment.
What they saw there wasn't what was expected. The room that had once been decorated with hundreds of floating candles and several floating tapestries in varied bright colors (Scarlet, Emerald, Gold, and Sapphire, of course) was now equanimous in its decoration. Where distinctive corners of the room had once been laid out by color, there was now only cozy and comforting decoration in neutral colors. Where four long tables had once been arranged vertically from the entrance of the Hall, there were now two columns of eight tables arranged horizontally.
Students jostled amongst each other as they attempted to flood into the hall, older students clearly baffled by the sudden re-arrangement and younger students equally as baffled with their lack of know-how.
Before Draco knew it, he had a paper class schedule being shoved into his hands by Professor Sprout and was being told to "just take a seat anywhere" for now. Feeling as though he were walking through molasses, he numbly took a seat next to the other three students he had entered the Hall with.
Potter and Weasley looked equally as perplexed, grabbing the last of the seats near the entrance and looking around in bewilderment. Granger, he noticed, had more of a poised expression on her face—as if she'd been forewarned and was gracefully aware of the alteration in layout.
As students continued to shift around into their seats, they were interrupted by Professor—no, Headmistress—McGonagall clearing her throat.
"Good evening, students and professors," she started in a clear and confident tone, "It is my honor to welcome you back to another year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I hope that you all had a chance to reflect and recharge after the summer months—"
Yeah, bloody right , Draco thought bitterly, reflecting on all of the long hours of having his mind penetrated by Ministry Aurors to collect evidence and having the veins around his Dark Mark poked at by Healers at St. Mungo's.
"It's wonderful to see so many familiar faces and wonderful to see so many new, eager faces as well. Those who know me well may know that I don't typically thrive under circumstances of shying away from difficult subjects—"
A few Gryffindors chuckled.
"I want to start by acknowledging the nearly insurmountable challenges that we all faced last year. And by that I do mean all of us—whether we were being forced into situations that necessitated actions we may deeply regret—"
Was she making eye contact with him? Draco felt like she was making eye contact with him.
"Grappling with realities of combat amongst both allies and supposed enemies, or just navigating personal and collective struggles through systemic change, we've all been tested in many ways. I'm certain that there were moments when you all felt divided, when disagreements and misunderstandings pulled us apart. I want to emphasize that today, we stand at a new starting point."
The Headmistress took a breath and continued, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen over the room.
"This year, I want us to focus on one word: unity. Hogwarts is a community—a community with differences, sure, but those differences do not define us. We are defined by how we lift one another up when we fall down, how we treat each other, and how we come together during times of hardship.
As we move forward into this school year, I ask only that we make a collective commitment: a commitment to keeping an open heart and mind, a commitment to display understanding even when it's difficult, and a commitment to seek compassionate solutions over personal triumph. Let us all remember that the challenges we face, no matter their size, are easier to overcome when we face them together.
For this reason and others, we have decided to do away with the House system entirely this year and to focus on strengthening our community—"
Murmurs broke out amongst the Hall, but were quickly silenced as Headmistress McGonagall continued her speech.
"As you may have noticed, we have discarded the collective House dining situation. We have also done away with collective housing—all students will be alternatively sharing a dorm with the other students in their year.
As a reminder, the strength of our community comes from each and every one of you—and together we are capable of truly extraordinary things. In the coming months, you will all have opportunities to work together on coursework projects, to engage in challenging yet important conversations, and to create experiences that will craft who you are and your place in this world.
I'm confident that with your ideas, your perspective, and your dedication, we will make this year a time of flourishment, connection, and achievement."
The headmistress paused for a moment again, but this time there was no interruption.
"My predecessor once said that help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it. Well, I believe that help will always be given at Hogwarts, whether you ask for it or not. My only hope is that this year, you're all able to discover more about each other this year, as well as discover more about yourselves. Let the feast commence!"
With that, a plethora of food began to spread itself out on the table—goblets filled with butterbeer and pumpkin juice as roasted carrots and buttered peas and roasted chicken and boiled potatoes began to appear on serving trays.
There was a brief moment of prolonged quiet before the new Headmistress sat back down and tables began chatting eagerly amongst themselves.
Do away with the house system—what is she, bloody mad?
Does that mean we won't have House Points anymore?
What does she mean about the dorms?
I dunno, but I sure as hell don't want to be sleeping next to a Slytherin.
"Way to give us a heads up, Hermione," Ron said sarcastically, glaring at the brown-haired witch across from him.
Oh shit. Of course. Draco thought, suddenly remembering that Granger was a Prefect this year. Of course she knew about this ahead of time. No wonder she was so eager to be friendly on the carriage ride over—just trying to score points with her old Head of House for befriending a disgraced former Death Eater, no doubt.
Hermione simply rolled her eyes. "I haven't known for very long. And honestly, I think this is a great thing. There's no need to be divided amongst ourselves at a time when what we really need to do is band together and heal from what we've been through."
Weasley rolled his eyes next. "Whatever. It's not like this will really change anything. Five galleons says all the Gryffindors and Slytherins are still sleeping on opposite sides of whatever the dorm situation looks like tonight."
Unbeknownst to himself, Draco audibly chuckled to himself, unintentionally drawing stares from the other three students near him. He had been recalling what someone in the vicinity had said directly after McGonagall's speech—I sure as hell don't want to be sleeping next to a Slytherin.
"According to McGonagall, I may not be a Slytherin anymore," Draco stated, his voice reminiscent of the drawl that it used to take on in his first years at Hogwarts, "but I don't think anybody wants to sleep next to someone with a Dark Mark burned into their flesh either way."
He was a bit surprised that he said it out loud, and he could tell that the rest of the group was as well. Despite this, Harry and Ron began loading their plates up with meat and potatoes and vegetables of various kinds. Draco, on the other hand, grabbed a meager handful of peas and a single boiled potato and began to push them around his plate, starting to regret saying anything.
The group fell into a somewhat uncomfortable silence until Ron looked down towards Draco's class schedule and said, "Blood hell! You're taking TEN courses this year? That's more than Hermione ."
Draco looked up and chuckled, feeling able to muster his usual sneer into place. "Rumor has it that your brother took twelve, Weasley. You know, the scrawny one who defected to the Ministry—is that true?"
He knew that this was a bit mean, especially given what he had overheard about that particular Weasley brother's sense of shame on the train ride over, but he couldn't help it. It all came out at once, like word vomit.
Draco pushed the scraps of food around his plate once more, wondering if it would feel any better if he were to actually vomit.
The Weasel seemed to shake off his shock rather quickly. "Yeah, it is. He always was a bit of ponce. Liked his pomp and circumstance, I guess." He shrugged. "Was bloody good at school, though, I'll give him that much."
"I haven't any idea how he did that," chimed Ginny Weasley, clearly eavesdropping from a few seats away. "You'd think that his concern for his darling little sister being consumed by the Chamber of Secrets would've taken his thoughts away from his studies, but I guess I know where I stand." She laughed, the sound like tinkling bells, and it seemed to rattle through the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff girls that were surrounding her.
Potter's demeanor markedly changed at her intrusion, his ears flushing red and his eyes suddenly shifting downward towards his lap, his once voracious chewing on a piece of chicken slowing to a determined grind-and-swallow motion.
"That's wonderful!" Hermione exclaimed, beaming at Draco and clearly determined to change the subject. "I'd bet we have a lot of classes together this year. Let's compare."
She thrusted her printed schedule to the front of the table and grabbed Draco's as well to get a side-by-side comparison. She was correct, as usual—they did have a lot of classes together. Transfigurations, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Arithmancy, Herbology, Potions, Astronomy, Charms, and Ancient Runes.
Draco couldn't help the part of his gut that dropped within his insides. He was so used to being punished—sometimes rather violently, for failing to meet the standards set by the muggleborn witch. Having so many classes with the capability of Hermione claiming top grades would have typically sent him into a self-preservatory tailspin, but he found himself now acknowledging a part of him that was glad that she would be there.
They weren't quite friends, he was sure of it, but it was at least a familiar face that would be civil and courteous and likely a damn good study partner.
There were a few classes that Potter and Weasley shared with them as well—Transfigurations, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Potions, and Charms, which made sense given that there were only so many eighth year students and therefore only one class period for their year. Draco felt a quick burst of pain through his chest at that realization. He rubbed at it quickly before returning his attention to the table in front of him.
He knew it was important that he eat something, but it took all that was in him to nibble on the edge of some green beans and gulp down his goblet of pumpkin juice.
At least he didn't need to return to the Slytherin dormitories in the Dungeons tonight, and that was something.
Chapter 4
Notes:
Huge thank you to everyone for all of the kudos, comments, and PMs—I really appreciate the support and the kind words. Hope you continue to enjoy the story!
TW on this chapter for compulsions/OCD tendencies, references to past physical abuse, and graphic descriptions of pain/suffering.
Chapter Text
Draco scaled the 156 steps between the Great Hall and the new eighth year student dormitories, heart thumping more heavily in his chest than his feet thumped against each new step.
Headmistress McGonagall had stood up directly after the feast and announced that the newly appointed prefects would be leading each year of students back to their dormitories. Granger and Longbottom, who Draco induced had been the two students appointed, immediately stood up with cheery smiles on their faces and began to corral all of the unprecedented eighth year students out into the stairwell.
Draco had followed directly after them, hoping to make the trek as quickly as he could manage and finally get settled into his own space for the night. The thought of encountering his old Slytherin classmates for the first time since everything had transpired that summer made his stomach twist into knots, which he quickly channeled into cardiovascular effort on their surprisingly vertical journey.
The inside of the castle looked markedly different from how it had prior to the war, even with the obvious attempts to rebuild it into a facsimile of its former state. Everything just felt a bit off —the stairs seemed to shift positions a bit more slowly, the overhead lights seemed dimmer than they once had, and the scarce few pictures that did still adorn the walls felt markedly devoid of their old activity.
Part of him wanted to look back over his shoulder at the expressions of the incoming first years and see if their faces still shared the dumbfounded glory that his undoubtedly had during his first day at Hogwarts.
Was that just growing up? he wondered. Does everything just continue to darken and fade with repetition until you’re eventually swallowed up by the shadows?
He swallowed the thought and kept his gaze forward towards the chestnut-haired young witch and the war hero who still hadn’t managed to quite shake off his adolescent awkwardness.
Granger and Longbottom seemed nothing but eager to get into the dorms; Draco wondered if they had seen the setup of their accommodations already. The two were talking animatedly about something—Granger more so than Longbottom, frequently making large hand movements and pausing to laugh heartily at something the boy had said while he mostly just grinned sheepishly.
If either of them were feeling apprehensive about returning to a place that was no doubt shadowed for them as well, they did a wonderful job covering it up.
For now, Draco was content to silently and methodically continue up the 156 steps, eavesdropping on the conversation happening between Weasley, Lovegood, and Potter behind him.
“Bloody nice of her to warn us,” Weasley grunted, clearly starting to feel winded already as his voice gained a ragged edge of intook breath.
“About the shared dormitories or the stairs?” Potter quiffed, and Draco realized that it was the first time he had really heard a smile in Potter’s voice since they had joined each other on the train.
“Ouch—hey!” He heard Potter protest as commotion happened behind him that he had assumed was the Weasel playfully punching his friend in the shoulder, but it did nothing to stop Potter’s chuckling.
“I don’t mind the stairs so much.” He immediately recognized the faint, subdued voice of Luna Lovegood. “And I think the shared dormitories will be just swell—don’t you, Harry?”
“At least maybe the Nargles won’t steal my shoes quite so much,” she added thoughtfully.
Draco didn’t need to look back to know that Potter and Weasley were exchanging a glance. He couldn’t help but to roll his eyes a bit at the interaction with Lovegood—oh, to be so softly dissociative and blissfully unaware of how intentionally cruel some of their classmates were.
Granger and Longbottom stopped when they approached a large set of black double-doors and turned around to face their peers.
“Uh—hi, everybody,” Neville began timidly, seeming surprised at his own capability to cause a hush to fall across the several dozen students still making their way up the last flight of stairs.
Longbottom cleared his throat, seeming a bit more reassured at the display of respect that he was just shown by his peers. “In just a moment, we’ll enter the new eighth year common room. The password for entrance is epoximise—”
A few students near the back of the group could be heard snorting in derision, and even Draco had to admit that the administration was laying on the whole “unity” thing a bit thick.
Longbottom looked a bit rattled at the interruption, causing Granger to take over confidently.
“For those of you who may be so juvenile as to take personal offense to something as simple as a door password —” she started, her tone cutting but professional, “you’ll be happy to know that it will rotate out on a fortnightly basis. Obviously, please don’t share the password with your friends in younger years—they’re more than welcome to visit, but will need to be let in and accompanied by one of us.”
“The dorm assignments are posted on each wall of the common space. Please attempt to find your dorm number and locate the room as quickly as possible so as not to create a bottleneck,” Granger finished.
Dorm assignments?
We aren’t choosing our dorms this year?
Well, that’s a load of rubbish.
Draco could hear the protests start in grumbled tones behind him, but Hermione was already turning on her heels and opening the doors to the common room, causing a rush of students to flood in behind her.
The room admittedly had a very cozy atmosphere and was quite decently furnished, Draco noticed. Warm fires raged in multiple hearths, each surrounded by several dark grey couches with black and white pillows and blankets thrown lazily across the backs of them.
The center of the room held multiple rectangular tables made of dark chestnut, each with a collection of chairs scattered around them. The walls were lined by expansive bookshelves and paintings of miscellaneous parts of the castle in black and white covered any open spaces.
There were sets for dragon chess and other games strewn about the room in boxes and it all had a bit of a nostalgic feel to it. Even the scent of the room—mahogany and smoke and subtle vanilla, like someone had been baking—seemed to convey a sense of warmth and comfort.
Draco wondered for a minute if the room had been charmed to smell so inviting—he wouldn’t put it past their new Headmistress, considering everything else that had been going on today.
As everyone seemed to get their bearings in the new space, Draco immediately made his way over to the posting on the wall and scanned for his name.
Malfoy, Draco: Room 8
Eager to avoid any unnecessary social interaction, Draco looked around and saw small engravings numbered 1-10 above the doorframe of each hallway that branched off of the common room, quickly shuffling off towards the hallway marked ‘8’.
Draco discovered that the hallway wasn’t particularly long, opening almost immediately into two sections of four beds apiece—one on his left and one on his right—with a door to what was presumably a shared lavatory in the middle.
A quick cursory inspection revealed that Draco’s trunk and other belongings had been put into the bedroom on the right at the foot of the bed in the back right corner.
The room was fairly spacious with full beds as well as a dresser, a nightstand, and a desk that accompanied each bed. Draco went over to his trunk and unlocked it, immediately starting to offload his textbooks and other small items onto the desk.
Getting organized was a serene, almost religious experience for Draco—he liked to imagine that he was putting things to order in his head as he was meticulously alphabetizing his texts and color-coordinating his closet.
Someone clearing their throat in the doorway broke Draco out of the mental sanctity of his little ritual and he turned to find Michael Corner walking in and settling into the space across from him.
The boy looked differently than Draco remembered—he had cut his formerly shoulder-length dark hair up to his ears and had thinned out a bit in the face while filling out a bit in the shoulders. He was wearing a pale blue-grey button up and a sapphire blue tie under his robes, his former House color.
The two made eye contact and Michael gave Draco a small smile with a quick nod. Draco returned the smile with a quick “hey, Michael” before returning to his things.
He let out a small sigh of relief, but didn’t allow his shoulders to relax entirely. Michael Corner was certainly not the worst person to be dorming across from him—not that Draco knew the former Ravenclaw well at all, but he had always seemed organized and rather reserved, which would likely bode well for amicably staying out of each other’s way.
Draco suddenly regretted not staying at the dormitory posting a few minutes longer just to see who else would be entering this room with him. He was sure that the sight of him was likely not reassuring to anybody and he felt a twist of shame in his stomach at that conclusion.
“Seems like the Golden Trio has a new little parasite this year,” came an obnoxiously booming voice from the hallway. “Seriously, he was on them like a leech all the way from the train platform to the dorms; it’s pathetic.”
Shit . Draco recognized that voice instantly—Vincent Crabbe was one of the last people that Draco was hoping to see, and he felt a modicum of consolation when he heard the larger boy’s monstrous footsteps thudding into the other room in their hallway.
Well—that was a problem, but hopefully a problem for a later time.
As Draco turned towards the door, he saw a tall and slightly lanky young man with a black leather satchel slung over his shoulder and wavy brown hair framing his face. Draco’s breath hitched in his throat once again and he felt himself brace for a reaction.
“Oh, Draco—hey,” he drawled out, the small smirk on his face indicating that his surprise was counterfeit and that he had—unlike Draco—done the intelligent thing and checked who was in his dormitory before heading over.
As far as Draco knew, Theodore Nott had never really been a fan of him as a child, seeming to look down on the immature antics of his posse towards The Golden Trio. They had grown a bit fraternal towards one another during sixth and seventh year, when Draco had nixed the juvenile bullying with Crabbe and Goyle and had taken on much more serious responsibilities with the Dark Lord.
Theo had been plagued by similar burdens to Draco at the time, so the two didn’t exactly have a friendly and congenial relationship, but they had certainly commiserated about restrictive Pureblood familial expectations and the suffocating weight of protecting said family in those terrifying times.
But that was before this summer—the summer when Draco had played a key role in sending Tiberius Nott to Azkaban for life by sharing his memories with the Wizengamot.
Unbeknownst to Theo, Draco had done his best to shield certain interactions that he had witnessed between Theo and his father in the prior few years from making it into his testimony. There was no need to add the humiliation of his acquaintance when he had more than enough supply of the elder Nott committing cruel and illegal acts towards those who weren’t members of his own family.
And Draco understood that—it wasn’t particularly easy allowing the Wizengamot to intrude upon his personal family business in that manner, either.
It was harder to extricate the memories of Lucius, though, since they were so baked into everything. Some of them would just resurface without his consent, like memory vomit.
“Thank Merlin I’m not dorming with bloody Crabbe again,” Theo said, unclear whether the words were intended for Draco or just for himself, although he tried to make eye contact with the blonde. He had hauled his own trunk and his satchel onto the bed next to Draco’s, beginning his own unpacking ritual.
Draco chuckled softly and decided to test the waters a bit. “I doubt he could define the word parasite.”
Theo let out a laugh that was soft, but full—a real laugh—and Draco noted how much lighter he looked. “Yeah, I don’t know where that man keeps his last two brain cells, but it appears that they don’t rub together very often.”
Draco sent a tight, grateful smile in Theo’s direction and it was returned as the two went back to sorting through their belongings.
Well, at least Theo wouldn’t be openly hostile towards him. That never was particularly his style, anyways. And if he wanted to be kind to his face and then say cruel things behind his back—well, then he could go right ahead.
Draco was a bit surprised when Longbottom came into the room to round out their little dormitory quartet. It would be an interesting dynamic—that was for sure—but Draco found himself grateful that he even felt capable of coming back to school while staring his past in the face.
That was the first step. Of 156. Not that he was counting or anything.
…
Harry woke up in a cold sweat, bolting upright and immediately clasping his hands together in the hopes that they would stop shaking so violently. Thank Merlin for silencing charms , he thought, wondering if he had managed to wake himself up before letting out a nocturnal scream.
His nightmare had been the same as it always was—he was in a room alone with the Mirror of Erised, gazing expectantly up at the fabricated image of his smiling parents. He was older now, not the boy he had been when he had first stumbled upon the mirror in his first year.
He’s overcome with a premonitory feeling that if he were to touch the mirror, he’d be taken away from this life and transported somewhere else. As he goes over to the mirror and reaches his hand out, the image ripples like water that’s had a stone thrown in.
Suddenly, his parents’ jovial faces morph into expressions of unspeakable wrath. His father’s hand reaches out to painfully grasp a tuft of his hair and he realizes suddenly that this man in the mirror isn’t his father at all. There’s only one person who had ever grabbed fistfuls of his hair and yanked him about like that—his Uncle Vernon.
He struggles earnestly to break free, but the man who is Uncle Vernon and somehow has his father’s face yanks him backwards through the mirror and down, leaving him to splash into a pool of thick liquid that’s cold and dark.
Looking around, he realizes that he’s in the cavern that he and Dumbledore had entered when hunting for Horcruxes in his sixth year. He’s splashed ashore just off of the center island and immediately starts to feel hands grasp up at him from the depths of the liquid, grotesquely skeletal fingers trapping him with a painfully vice-like grip.
It’s then that he notices the people on the island—Sirius was typically present, often accompanied by one or both of his parents, sometimes Snape, or Lupin, even miscellaneous other Hogwarts students would occasionally make an appearance.
They’d each have a cup of that vile, life-sucking liquid that Dumbledore had drank.
They would start chugging the liquid, almost immediately crumbling to the ground in agony, writhing around in pain and moaning or shrieking or making horrific retching sounds—and Harry knew that they were doing it for him.
“S-stop!” He tried to choke out, attempting to army crawl towards his loved ones, but skeletal hands seem to grip him from all angles and persist in dragging his struggling frame into the dark.
Whoever was on the island would seem to get their bearings and reach for the cup again, continuing to choke down the liquid even as their veins protruded from their necks in effort and their breathing turned to ragged, pained rasps.
“They’ve got me—let them get me, stop hurting yourselves. It’s okay!” He would try to scream, but could feel every angle of his mouth being torn open by the skeletal hands.
The thick, sanguine liquid would force its way down his throat, leaving him choking and gasping and feeling as though every breath that he drew just forced more sludge into his lungs.
It even starts to fill his ears and cover his vision in a sludge of black as he was dragged under, but he could somehow still hear the corporeal terror happening above him. He’d find some comfort in it, as the sound of the phenomenal suffering above meant that everyone is at least still alive.
The strangled noises rang in his ears like a bell, reverberating haphazardly around his skull until it all suddenly stops—and that’s when he always wakes up.
Harry’s hands instinctively scrambled over to his bedside table, feeling around until his fingers clasped around the wire frame of his glasses and he slid them indiscriminately onto his face.
Looking around, he noted that his new dorm-mates were all still sound asleep. He did a quick flick of his wand to check the time—2:47 AM. A rather inconvenient time for it to be, he thought, since he couldn’t very well blame being awake just now on simply being an early riser.
He did a quick survey of the room and noticed that the two Hufflepuffs, Wayne Hopkins and Zacharias Smith, had made light work of making their spaces feel more homey.
Harry absolutely despised unpacking. In past years, he’d simply let the items he needed slowly overflow out of his trunk until the mountain of clothes and parchment and textbooks became so insurmountable that he’d start stuffing it all unceremoniously into his dresser drawers.
Even then, he’d only done it because he’d eventually grow concerned that he was inconveniencing the other people in the room with his disarray.
It was simply a concern that he’d never had at home—he didn’t have enough muggle belongings to make a mess in the cupboard under the stairs, much less Dudley’s second bedroom. So he didn’t think about it much until it got to a point where others might be upset about it.
That was one of the bizarre advantages about traveling during Horcrux hunting—every absolutely necessitous item shoved into a backpack, too concerned with surviving to the next day to really pay any mind to alphabetizing your bloody belongings.
Hermione usually took care of that, anyways, when it became necessary.
Crabbe didn’t seem particularly acclimated to his chunk of the room, either, Harry noticed. He was surely fast asleep—his large frame moved rhythmically up and down to the cadence of his breath and a rumbling, snoring sound could be faintly heard from his corner of the room.
Feeling a bit more connected to his surroundings after taking a few shaky breaths and surveying the space, he brandished his wand and whispered a quick accio for the Marauder’s Map in the direction of his open trunk.
There was no real need to whisper, he knew, as the silencing spell would still be in effect, but that habitual redundancy to keep quiet had died hard.
Silently slinking out of bed with map in hand, he threw on a cloak and some shoes as well as the invisibility cloak. He made his way out of the bedroom and through the entrance to the common room, rotating his head between watching where he was going and checking the map for other signs of life.
There weren’t any, really, as the vast majority of students and faculty seemed to be asleep in their living quarters.
Harry didn’t really know where he was going—just knew that he had some time to waste. It was nearly impossible to fall back asleep after being rattled awake by that dream in particular.
He opted to just perambulate around the castle, not hearing much other than the soft thud of each footstep on the floor and his measured breaths.
The halls were dimly lit at this time of night, torches spaced several feet apart and casting a soft glow up towards the ceiling of each floor.
For some reason, Harry felt himself drawn to the Astronomy Tower. He headed in that direction, checking the map periodically for any straggling students or professors that may be out of bed as well, but he didn’t come across anybody.
When Harry got to the top of the Astronomy Tower, he paused. This was one section of the building that looked nearly exactly as it had before.
Harry made his way over to the balcony and tucked himself behind a wall, checking once more on the map and over his shoulder before removing the invisibility cloak from his head and wrapping it around his slender frame.
The air was brisk and cool, despite it being the end of summer, and there was a breeze that almost nipped at Harry’s face from this high up.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, tracing the balcony’s stone columns with his fingertips.
He recalled Hermione saying that she loved to come up to the Astronomy Tower to think about everything, but Harry honestly felt like he wasn’t thinking anything at all—just that it was nice to feel the open air and that he surely felt better than he would have if he had stayed in his room and had sat there trying to suppress a panic attack.
Eventually, the sun started to peak over the horizon, a dim light that grew into steady streams of white, and Harry figured that it was probably time to head back to the dormitories.
When Harry approached the door to the common room again, it was nearly 5:30 AM—a much more appropriate time to be awake on the first day of school. Upon checking the Marauder’s Map and seeing a couple names starting to stir about the common room, he did another cursory glance around and removed the invisibility cloak before saying the password to get inside.
He didn’t pay much mind to the other students in the common room, seeming to be just a few Ravenclaw and Slytherin students starting to prepare for the day ahead.
Instead, Harry went back into his room with a small lumos spell on the tip of his wand, relieved to find that none of his roommates were among the early risers. He stashed away the map and the cloak before heading over to the bathroom, hoping to wash the sleep (or lack thereof) off of him.
Just as he was about to open the door, it swung open on its own and he nearly ran into a rather startled-looking Draco Malfoy.
He looked a bit disheveled—well, as disheveled as Malfoy could look. His blonde hair, which typically looked as if each strand had been meticulously arranged on his head, was slightly damp and hanging a bit over his steel grey eyes.
He didn’t have a robe on yet, just a charcoal button up that was mostly unbuttoned and rolled up to his elbows tucked into black slacks. He carried a towel as if he had dried himself off manually rather than using a drying charm, his lithe arm muscles flexing around the material.
Harry swallowed slightly, shaking his head to free the thought.
“Oh, Potter—” he started, straightening up and gripping his left arm tightly into his chest. “You’re in the other room, I presume?”
Harry just nodded, grimacing slightly.
Malfoy seemed to eye him up and down. “You’re already dressed for the day?”
“Well…your approximation of dressed, at least,” he added snidely, a small smile tugging at the edges of his lips as he leaned against the door frame.
“I was just out for a walk,” Harry responded matter-of-factly.
“Out for a walk? At five in the morning?” Shit, was that weird?
“Er—you were showering at five in the morning?” Harry bit back lamely, cringing at how juvenile it sounded to still be trying to one-up Malfoy in this way.
The blonde just chuckled a bit, seeming to clock that something about his line of questioning had set Harry on edge. “Fair enough. I’m not judging, just didn’t peg you as an early riser.”
“Figured I should get in while I could,” Malfoy continued, a bit of contempt sneaking into his voice. “If you haven’t noticed, the students in our year aren’t exactly a fan of me at the moment and I don’t particularly fancy being jumped in the shower while my guard is down.”
Harry just stood there unresponsive, still feeling lost somewhere else in his brain.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I was cursed in the lavatory,” he sneered at Harry, but his tone sounded more playful than vitriolic. “Anyways, I’ll get out of your way. See you in Transfigurations.”
Before he could respond, Malfoy had made a beeline back to his room.
Chapter 5
Notes:
TW on this chapter for references to self-harm, past torture, and past abuse. Nothing super detailed or graphic, more reflective.
Heads up: we'll get heavy on angst in the next chapter.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
“Mind if I join you?” came a voice from beside him, and Draco looked around blearily, blinking.
He had been sitting at the corner table of the castle’s smallest library in the Bell Towers working on his Ancient Runes essay for nearly seven hours, poring over his coursebook for helpful excerpts until the words had all begun to swim together.
Looking up and beginning to stretch out his inky hands, his vision finally focused on Hermione Granger. She smiled at him expectantly and looked almost apologetic as she motioned to the seat across from him with a raised eyebrow.
He motioned back, signaling for her to take the seat and began to consolidate his workspace a bit more so that it wouldn’t be in her way.
“So, are you last minute cramming for our final project proposals tomorrow…” Hermione trailed off, examining the smattering of Ancient Runes texts and excerpts and outlines surrounding what seemed to be an entire scroll written out in Draco’s crisp penmanship. “Is that the Ancient Runes essay?”
Draco nodded.
“The one that’s not due until the end of the month?” Granger questioned skeptically, raising an eyebrow.
Draco nodded again, slowly this time, his face reddening slightly.
“You’re one to imply that I’m a swot, Granger,” he added lightly, rolling his eyes.
“No, I wasn’t—I’m not—” she spluttered, clearing her throat. “I think it’s very admirable that you’re so ahead in your coursework.”
“Um—thank you, Granger,” he responded awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck and swallowing a snide remark about her supposed admiration of former Death Eater Draco Malfoy.
“So, I actually came over to ask what resources you were planning to use for the Potions project,” Granger started, continuing to lay the contents of her bag out onto the table and settle into her seat.
“Neville and I are planning to explore the effects of including some lesser-known and lesser-available herbs on commonplace potions for our final project. I figured that tied in well to what’s going on in Potions currently and you might know about that kind of thing. I know you aren’t as interested in Herbology, but as the resident Potions guy of our year…”
“No problem, Granger,” Draco said with a tight smile. “I actually have a list of resources that might help with that in my lab journal.”
He reached around in the satchel on the back of his chair before withdrawing a small, black leatherbound book and flipping through to find a particular page. He handed the book across the table to Granger and as she reached out to take it, he couldn’t help but to notice the tiny word scrawled into a scar across her forearm.
Mudblood.
Draco felt the air momentarily leave his lungs. It was a word that he had used against her more times than he could count. A word that he had been taught to wield like a weapon. A word that he had been present to witness being violently inscribed into her flesh.
He wondered if Granger was incapable of using glamours to cover the word due to some magical properties, like his Dark Mark, or if she simply didn’t care to mask the scar up. It would certainly be very Gryffindor—or maybe just very Granger —of her, to leave it out in the open like that.
Behold me! This is how someone tried reducing my self-worth to a demeaning categorization and this is how I haven’t let them do it. Draco only wished he had the gall.
He relaxed his grip on the journal and let his right hand fall down to his own disfigured forearm underneath the table, casting his gaze downward and hoping that Granger hadn’t noticed his eyes land on that particular spot for too long.
Draco let his right hand trail up to the inside of his left arm within his cloak. He ran his fingertips along the long, thin lines of raised scar tissue that covered his inner bicep and forearm, tracing each one gently and exhaling a bit more with each mark. He never did figure out how to make the glamours extend to be tactile—only visual.
“Feel free to jot those down,” Draco spoke, getting his bearings again as Granger began to pore over his work from the potions lab. “It sounds like Botanical Brews: The Advanced Potion Maker’s Vegetative Compendium would be particularly helpful.”
“Malfoy…” Granger trailed off, looking a bit awestruck as she thumbed through his thoroughly detailed appendices and meticulously specific methodology notes. Draco suddenly felt as if he were being observed—or had done something wrong, the two felt very similar—and he found himself digging his fingers roughly into the damaged skin of his upper arm.
Tearing her eyes away from the journal, Granger broke into a soft smile. “This will be very helpful. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he spoke softly while returning to his work, the physical manifestations of guilt over that fun little reminder of his past still clinging to his stomach and throat.
“So, I take it your final project idea is well underway already?” Granger inquired, transferring a few notes on the intersections of Herbology and Potions from Draco’s journal into her own. “Are you working with Theo—or Zabini?”
“Actually, I've already submitted my proposal and petitioned McGonagall to do the project independently.” Draco was running his quill over the scroll that he had written for Ancient Runes, doing more of a passive proofread since he had already edited the words multiple times. “Theo’s actually planning to work with Michael Corner—I’m surprised Longbottom didn't mention that. They discuss it in our room quite a bit.”
Granger looked like she was suppressing a grin. “I’m glad that your room dynamic has worked out so well. I know that’s not the case for everybody…” She trailed off, looking expectantly at Draco.
Worked out so well might be an overstatement , he thought to himself.
“Me too,” he admitted, surprised to find that he was being partially truthful. “I mean—the first few days were pretty uncomfortable. Michael and I have always gotten on just fine. I was worried about how Theo might react to me after I—well, just after everything. But that’s been alright too. And Longbottom’s like an insect.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow at him questioningly.
“More scared of you than you are of him,” Draco clarified, suddenly concerned that the analogy would offend Granger in some way, but instead the witch threw her head back and let out a genuine laugh towards the ceiling.
“That’s good,” she chuckled, catching her breath again. “Neville’s particular brand of bravery is really interesting to me. It’s social, empathetic bravery—he’s willing to look the fool if it means nobody gets hurt. Or just to do what needs to be done even if he’s trembling and hyperventilating while doing it.”
Draco thought about that for a moment and winced as he realized that he had always been quite the opposite—he’d been willing to hurt people so long as his image remained intact, willing to bear even the most desperate of situations with a stoic visage.
Hermione seemed to notice his shame spiral and quickly changed the subject. “I’m glad that you two are amicable now, is all I meant. The room situation has worked out fairly well for me too. Obviously, being with Luna is great. And Hannah is such a sweetheart. I’m sure that Pansy feels out of her element, but I’m hoping she’ll warm up.”
Pansy. Shit. Had they talked? That would explain why Granger kept approaching him, if Pansy had painted him as a “safe boy” in Granger’s head. He wouldn’t put it past her to go blabbing about their intimate relationship details for social brownie points.
“Pansy, huh?” Draco asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“Yeah, she doesn’t talk much, but I can’t say that’s terribly surprising given the circumstances. Oh—” Granger paused, seeming to just realize something. “You two were good friends, weren’t you?”
“Um, yeah, we actually—we were dating for all of fifth year and a good chunk of sixth. It wasn’t like real dating, though, we mostly just sat next to each other in the Great Hall and bought each other little presents. It got our parents off of our backs, at least.”
Granger nodded. “You two still talk?”
“Not particularly. It didn’t end well. It wasn’t her fault—she was lovely—I just, well I was a bit of a mess back then,” Draco admitted, fiddling with his quill. “She’s not really my type, anyways.”
He looked up to gauge Granger’s reaction to that statement, but there wasn’t anything significant.
“Well, good to know that she’s probably not the type to try to hex me in my sleep,” Granger contemplated, then added, “there have been a few problems with trying to incorporate your former Housemates into the shared dormitories.”
“I can’t say that’s particularly surprising,” Draco mused, leaning back in his chair. Then a thought occurred to him. “How’s Potter been handling it?”
“Well,” Granger started, looking slightly uncomfortable, “You know how Crabbe and Goyle can be.”
“You don’t need to sugarcoat it for me,” Draco asserted. “Vince has been acting like a complete prat towards me too ever since I testified this summer. He’s also a bloody idiot, so I’m sure it’s nothing Potter can’t handle, but I could maybe convince Theo to get him to lay off a bit.”
Hermione looked like a proud Mom for a moment and Draco wasn’t sure if he was feeling his chest swell with pride or his stomach swell with the threat of vomit.
“I only ask because he’s always in and out of the bathroom late at night,” he added. “I quite enjoy my solitude, you see, and he’s always up in some turmoil entering and exiting our shared spaces at all hours. Quite irritating, so if some peace will get him to get some bloody sleep, then I’ll help.”
“Right, of course,” Granger said, a smirk flitting across her lips.
“Speaking of people who should be getting some bloody sleep,” she said, flicking her wand and motioning to the luminescent numbers that appeared reading 12:37 AM.
The young witch stood, handing Draco’s journal back and yawning as she shoved the remainder of her belongings into her own bag. “Thanks again for the book recommendations.”
“No problem,” Draco said, giving her a tight smile. “See you in Potions.”
…
When Harry had gotten a note from the Headmistress asking him to visit her office regarding his project proposal, he had groaned audibly.
This seemed to be a cycle that he was utterly incapable of escaping, even after he had essentially saved the entire Wizarding World—he always seemed to be personally needed somewhere to individually address something and it was, for lack of a better word, completely exhausting.
Harry wondered if this had anything to do with the topic he had chosen for his project. It was something that had bothered him when he had done the Occlumency lessons with Snape all those months ago. He wasn’t used to instinctually struggling with anything magic-related, but protecting his own head seemed to be something that could be called an area of improvement, to say the least.
He contemplated if McGonagall would prevent him from studying mental and memory magic in some way.
We just can’t risk anything happening given what occurred with You-Know-Who infiltrating your head , he imagined her saying.
That was a load of bollocks, and he knew it, but there really wasn’t anything he could do if the new Headmistress decided to make him choose another project topic.
Now, he was sitting in a suede armchair across from his former Head of House’s desk, fingers picking at the bits of faded maroon material that were fraying off of the old furniture.
“Tea, Mr. Potter?” the Headmistress asked, pointing to the empty cup and saucer on the coffee table in front of him.
He shook his head, hoping not to make this conversation longer than it needed to be.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and the Headmistress briefly went to answer it, black cloak trailing gracefully behind her.
Harry looked down at the empty teacup, realizing that a warm drink actually sounded lovely and he should've taken McGonagall up on her offer. Just as the thought occurred to him, the cup began to fill with steaming hot liquid. It left wisps of vapor rising from the cup and the musky, sweet aroma of herbs and sugar wafting in his direction.
Hearing two people return to the Headmistress’ desk, he looked to the right and found that Draco Malfoy had entered the room. McGonagall was smiling calmly as she returned to her desk and motioned for him to take a seat on the armchair next to Harry’s.
Harry instantly got the sense that this conversation may not actually be about his project—he felt a lump of bile leap into his throat at the prospect that he might be in trouble for something. Merlin, why was he always being given individual responsibilities if he constantly mucked them up?
The blonde looked equally—if not more—perplexed. In fact, he looked a bit like he was going to be sick, Harry noted.
“Please, sit,” the Headmistress commanded, motioning again to the seat to Harry’s right. This time, Malfoy complied, sitting at full attention so that his back didn't touch the chair.
“Tea?” she asked Malfoy with a soft smile.
Malfoy shook his head slightly and said, “No, thank you, Headmistress.”
The Headmistress just nodded and began methodically stirring sugar into her own, metal spoon clinking around the cup. She raised it to her lips and took a slow sip while the young men sat in poised silence.
Harry looked down and took a sip of his own tea, deciding that it would be nice to have something for his hands and mouth to be doing, and the liquid instantly warmed him.
“I wanted to discuss your respective senior year projects,” Headmistress McGonagall said, folding her hands on the desk and leaning in to make eye contact with the two young men across from her.
Harry felt some of the tension leave his shoulders as he realized that the conversation truly would be about his project proposal. But would she reject his study topic? And why was Malfoy here?
“As you know, senior projects are typically done in pairs as they're often quite the undertaking—especially because N.E.W.T. coursework is happening in tandem,” she continued, gaze hovering over Malfoy for an extra second. The blonde’s cheeks reddened and he shifted backwards slightly in his seat.
“Now, you two have both petitioned me to work on your final projects independently,” she spoke. “Historically, we have granted some exceptions to partnering on final projects in cases where subject matter necessitated solitude or the individual felt that adding a second student would hinder their study in some way.”
Harry felt himself nodding, but he could tell that the words that his new Headmistress was saying were taking a few minutes to actually be absorbed.
“Occlumency, mental warding, and memory magic are certainly very noble areas of study—and underdeveloped ones at that. Certainly an excellent theme for a dissertation. My concern here is that this may be a difficult topic of independent study due to the volatile nature of the psychological aspects of magic,” she spoke the last part softly, as if a bit of concern were edging into her voice.
Damn, she was shooting down his project idea, Harry realized.
“I didn't want to reject either of your project proposals, especially given how much thought and effort you both appear to have put into them,” she continued in an empathetic tone. “However, since I'm currently charged with your safety and well-being as students, I fear that I must decline your petitions to work on this topic independently.”
The two young men exchanged a glance, but didn't say anything—waiting for further clarification from the older witch before them.
“Given that your project proposals seem surprisingly well suited to function cohesively, I want the two of you to continue your project in this area of study and to work on it collaboratively as partners,” McGonagall finished with an air of authority.
“Headmistress, with all due respect,” Malfoy immediately chimed in, sounding as prim and proper as Harry had ever heard him, “I'm sure that Potter doesn't feel comfortable working so extensively with someone who was formally aligned with the Dark Wizard who took the lives of his parents and momentarily took his life as well.”
McGonagall seemed to pause on that for a moment, her lips pursing as she continued to rattle the small spoon around her teacup. “Mr. Malfoy, the history between you two is part of the reason that I think your academic partnership on this topic will be so beneficial—not just for you both individually, but for the school as a whole.”
There it was. This whole idea was another pull at the bloody inter-House unity thing, Harry thought to himself. He felt a bit of rage bubble up in his stomach and bit back a protest.
Malfoy had a point, he thought—was it not unfair to ask him to work so intimately with someone who tormented him for years and was charged with the murder of the former Headmaster? Why was he always the one who was expected to forgive and move forward? The thought made him tense up again, but he just reached forward and took another sip of tea.
“I wanted to verbally communicate this to you both and to have the opportunity to properly field your questions, comments, or objections,” McGonagall explained. “But please do consider this the formal notice that your petitions to do the project independently have been denied. I trust that you two will work amicably together?”
“I don't know—” Harry started, but McGonagall cut him off with a raised hand and a soft smile.
“My apologies, Mr. Potter. That was my fault. I meant to turn my tone down at the end. I trust that you two will work amicably together.”
Malfoy breathed out a bit heavily through his nose, suppressing a chuckle, and Harry sent a glare in his direction. The blonde cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking away.
There was a small silence before Malfoy stood with his copies of their collective project proposals, nodded to McGonagall, and said a polite, “Thank you for your time, Headmistress.”
Harry watched as his new project partner clutched the parchment to his chest and exited the Headmistress’ office, feeling lost in thought.
“Harry,” McGonagall leaned in, using his first name now that the two were alone once again. “I'm aware that this isn't easy for you. I know that you've been through a lot—you’ll recall that I was there for the vast majority of the summer hearings as student advocate and advisor to the Wizengamot.”
Harry could feel his face flush slightly.
“I do expect that you and the younger Malfoy will be able to help each other in a variety of ways. I promise that I would not have gone through this effort if I didn't anticipate it being beneficial to you.”
Harry just nodded, shoving his own pieces of parchment into his bag and starting towards the door.
“And Harry?” she added, just as he was about to leave, causing him to turn around and face her. “If you need help with anything this year—anything at all, even if you just want to talk—my door is always open.”
She gave him a maternal smile as he mumbled his thanks and headed out into the hallway.
Immediately upon exiting the office, Harry sensed sudden motion next to him and nearly leapt out of his skin.
“Oh, sorry—” he recognized the voice as Draco Malfoy, who would apparently be begrudgingly working with him for the remainder of the year.
“I didn't mean to scare you, I just figured we should talk.” The blonde looked at him expectantly.
“Er—right,” Harry said, face turning a darker shade of red as he shifted his bag further up on his shoulder.
“Eloquent as always,” Malfoy smirked, but seemed to reel himself back in and straighten up his posture when he saw the look on Harry’s face. “We could meet in the Bell Tower library—maybe on Monday, after dinner? Around 7? It's usually pretty quiet there and that will give us the weekend to look over each other’s proposals.”
“Sure, Malfoy, that's fine,” he responded, starting to head back to the eighth year dormitories.
When Malfoy started heading off in another direction, he raised an eyebrow.
“Astronomy Lab,” was all Malfoy answered, starting to walk backwards down the adjacent corridor. “We can talk more on Monday.”
With that, he disappeared around the corner and Harry was left with the walk back across the castle alone to get his nervous system under control.
…
“We're supposed to be meeting in the Bell Towers library after dinner,” Harry finished, telling Ron and Hermione how Malfoy had come to be his partner for the senior project.
“That makes sense, he's there a lot,” Hermione nodded, earning a judgmental look from Ron. “What? It's usually pretty empty there, so we talk sometimes. It's not my fault you hardly ever study!”
“Bloody hell, did you have a hand in this peace-and-love, kumbaya, making Harry work with his sworn enemy from another House nonsense?” the redhead accused.
“No, Ronald,” Hermione rolled her eyes, turning to Harry. “I think it’ll be just fine though, Harry. He seems like he'll be a good study partner, if nothing else. Like I said, I see him in the library all the time.”
Ron returned to his mashed potatoes, grumbling something about how the bloody administration was always going out of their way to torment his best friend .
Harry smiled. It was nice to have dinner like this, surrounded by the chattering of friends who would easily get up in arms on his behalf. To have his only worries be studying for the Potions N.E.W.T. and his newly assigned project partner, rather than trying to do school while also strategizing how to destroy a nearly immortal and practically omnipotent dark wizard who was trying to kill him— again.
He hated to admit it, but he was exhausted . Everything just felt like it took so much energy. And it was hard not to beat himself up for it.
He used to be able to just take things in stride, to return to school after a summer of being screamed at and starved and thrown about and to feel as though none of that even affected him. He would even turn in most of his coursework on time despite the looming and immediate threat to his life that seemed to be unavoidably omnipresent.
It became background noise at a point, and now to have it removed almost felt—wrong? Like he couldn't relax, despite the danger being gone.
What if he was just worse now than he used to be? He could barely take a meeting with the Headmistress without nearly shaking apart from nerves and had basically collapsed into bed for a nap last Thursday after finishing a 20-page reading on billywigs.
Harry sighed and pushed some peas around his plate, feeling confused at how everything could be so normal and so much at the same time.
Chapter 6
Notes:
Thanks for all the comments and kudos! It's completely surprising to me that so many people have taken the time to read my writing, but I appreciate it immensely.
TW: This chapter contains references to past abuse and neglect that are more graphic/detailed than previous chapters. Please take care of yourselves and skip over the legilimency scenes if this is something that severely impacts you.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
Draco tapped his quill expectantly upon the table, feeling his pulse thrumming against his chest with each second as the time-keeping spell he had summoned displayed 7:06 PM.
Nearly three minutes later, he felt the presence of a certain young wizard appear in the doorway of the library, disheveled and nonchalant about the wasted time. Shuffling over to the table that Draco had clearly claimed for their studies with his coursework materials, Harry Potter began to settle in next to him.
“You weren’t in the Great Hall for dinner,” Potter started, already seeming agitated. “I thought we might walk over together.”
“I don’t typically take my meals in the Great Hall,” Draco mused, slightly taken aback by his project partner’s choice of conversation.
“Just a bit uncomfortable given that I’ve turned in the parents of most of my former friends and aligned myself with people who have an intrinsic disdain for who I am as a person,” he added, eyes focused on the project notes he had strewn across the table rather than on the piercing gaze of the wizard across from him.
“You didn’t come to Quidditch tryouts either,” Potter stated, sounding like he had rehearsed the interaction, but it came out like more of a question.
“No, I didn’t,” was all that Draco offered by way of an explanation.
“We aren’t making any cuts this year,” Potter continued. “Since the House system got abolished, we’ll just make as many teams as we can and play each other on a rotating schedule.”
“It might be fun to help some of the younger students,” he pressed when Draco still didn’t respond. “Or just get out and relieve some stress.”
“Quidditch was never stress relieving for me,” Draco snapped, but Potter didn’t seem to notice his change in tone.
“Oh? I just assumed ‘cause you were so into being the Seeker. Didn’t your father literally buy the entire Slytherin team new brooms in our second year?”
Draco paled at the mention of that particular incident. Those hadn’t been I’m-so-proud-of-you brooms or even buying-your-way-onto-the-team brooms, despite what he knew a lot of the other students had assumed. Those had been apology brooms—or maybe even nobody-will-ever-believe-you-just-look-at-all-the-nice-things-I-provide-for-you brooms.
“Yeah,” Draco continued after a long silence, “he did.”
It seemed to finally dawn on Potter why this might be a sensitive subject and he turned back to the beginning of their project notes. “Wow, you’ve really put a lot of effort into this.”
Draco looked at him amused for a moment, lips quirking into a small smile.
“My studies are very important to me, Potter,” he spit out, shuffling the notes around as he rearranged his thoughts.
“I was thinking that we could start with both of our thesis statements and the resources that we had utilized to back them up—and can expand from there. Does that work for you?” Draco asked.
Potter merely nodded in response.
“Excellent,” Draco continued. “So I know that you wanted to focus more on Occlumency as a practice while I was more interested in the interactions between psychological fragmentation and magical memory manipulation, but I think that McGonagall was actually correct that they could work well in tandem. If we focus on the more dissociative properties of memory and how that relates to the concealing practiced in Occlumency—well, we’ve got ourselves a pretty decent thesis, I reckon.”
Potter looked at him in shock for a moment, jaw dropped open as he absorbed everything that Draco had just said.
“Wow, yeah,” was all that Potter had to contribute, surveying the vast landscape of research that Draco had accumulated on the table before him.
Draco sighed heavily, feeling the general reluctance of the wizard seated next to him.
“Look, I know that I’m probably the last person that you want to be saddled with for your senior project,” he started, eyes cast downward. “And I know that I was a complete prat to you during school.”
“You could say that again,” Harry interjected with a grumble.
“I was a complete prat to you during school,” Draco repeated smugly, a small part of him feeling some sense of relief that Potter was at least speaking to him.
When Harry didn’t respond, he rolled his eyes. “That’s called a joke , Potter.”
“Ha ha,” Potter spit out sarcastically, rolling his eyes as well.
“Anyways,” Draco emphasized. “My point is that this clearly isn’t an ideal situation, but I don’t think that the Headmistress would have put us on this project together if she didn’t see us benefiting in some way—particularly you, Mr. Savior of the Wizarding World.”
Potter cringed, and Draco wondered if he had said something that he maybe shouldn’t have.
“I actually wanted to start with one of the texts that you mentioned in your project proposal, Occlumency as a Practice: Mental Warding for the Intermediate Spellcaster ,” Draco said. “I read it over the weekend and it seemed to have some good insights on rudimentary occlumency practice without being overly simplistic.”
Potter seemed surprised at the mention of this text, but Draco continued, “I know it may not be exemplary of the texts that we hope to cite in our final presentation, but it did seem more geared towards partner work, and I thought that some of the exercises suggested at the end of Chapter 2 may be a good place to begin.”
“Malfoy…” the other boy started, and Draco recognized that tone. It was pity. Or rejection. Or both. He braced himself for impact.
“I’m gonna be totally honest, I only did a brief reading of the texts in my project proposal,” Potter admitted sheepishly. “I’ll have to circle back on the, um, reflection exercises for Chapter 2.”
When Draco furrowed an eyebrow in response, he elaborated with “Well, you see, I tried to ask Hermione for advice on textbooks regarding occlumency and other memory warding magics. These were what she recommended—and I trust Hermione implicitly—but I hadn’t quite circled back to a thorough reading on them yet.”
“That’s not a problem,” Draco articulated, sensing the stress in the other boy’s voice and pretending to dutifully flip through pages of notes.
“Word of advice, by the way,” Draco started, looking up to make eye contact with Potter, “If you're struggling with something, you shouldn't seek help from the person who intuitively understood it the first time they looked at it. The person who had to fight through confusion will be much better suited to help you break through yours.”
Potter seemed to drink in what Draco had said and then nodded slowly, looking back towards the other boy as if to search for more crumbs of wisdom.
“Let’s flip to the exercises at the end of Chapter 2 together, yeah?” Draco suggested. Harry nodded.
“I figured these would work well since they're intended to be partner exercises and seem pretty rudimentary. Do you have any experience with Occlumency already?”
“Erm—nothing super significant,” Potter said, but he trailed off and avoided eye contact in a way that suggested he was withholding part of the truth.
“Alright, we’ll pretend that answer wasn't weird,” Draco huffed quietly. “Wanna expand on the not super significant experience you have?”
Potter opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again before speaking. “Dumbledore had Snape try to work with me on it during fifth year, but I wasn't very good.”
Draco lifted an eyebrow in surprise and then nodded. “That makes sense, actually. Severus gave me some pointers on occlumency, too, once upon a time. I had mostly taught myself up until then, but I think he wanted to make sure my head was as secure as possible with the Dark Lord living in my house. That would've started right around fifth year for me, too.”
Potter still looked lost in thought about his own not super significant occlumency experiences, so Draco decided to drop it for the time being.
“Will hopefully make things easier, having a former teacher in common,” was all that he added before turning down to the textbook. “Alright, chapter 1 suggested creating a visual representation of a place that feels neutral and safe. Did you do that exercise with Severus?”
Harry shook his head, looking equal parts disdainful and confused.
“No problem, we can do that right now,” Draco guided. “It's important to have somewhere to mentally retreat to that feels somewhat peaceful and blank. And to know that you can return there at any point if things get overwhelming.”
He used his wand to open Harry's textbook to the page with some guidelines on it and watched his classmate’s eyes focus with concentration on the words.
Choose a Place. This can be a place that you've been to before, a place that you've dreamed about, or even a fictional place that you've made up entirely. The important part is that you don't have any negative emotions tied to the place and that it makes you feel calm and grounded.
Use your Senses. Notice the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells around you. Make note of the way that any fabric textures might feel on your skin. Use these senses to make you feel as if you're really in this place.
Focus on your Body. Make note of how your corporeal body feels outside of your head. Do your best to maintain a soft and open posture, relaxing the muscles in your body as well as your face. If you feel any twinges or pains, notice them without judgment and allow yourself to relax into them.
Name the Place. Give this place a name so that you can more easily return to it whenever the need should arise.
“Do you have a place in mind?” Draco prompted after a few moments.
“Er—not really,” Potter responded, finger still on the page where he had been trailing the words.
“Do you want to see mine? I've done this with Severus before, and we've gotta start somewhere. A calm, neutral space might be best.”
Draco could feel his heart rise into his throat a bit at the offer. The whole thing felt surprisingly intimate.
Potter seemed to contemplate for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, actually, that might help.”
“Right, then.” Draco cleared his throat before turning to face Potter. “Have you ever done any legilimency before?”
Potter shook his head again and then shrugged. “Well, not intentionally.”
Draco raised his eyebrows again, but neither of the boys said anything more.
“Okay, we can talk about that later, I suppose,” Draco drawled after a moment of silence. “It's fairly straightforward if you aren't rooting around for specific memories or something a person doesn't want to show you. Just raise your wand and cast Legilimens while focusing on wanting to see what the person is thinking about. It might take a couple tries and the visualization might feel pretty hazy and vague, particularly at first.”
Harry nodded tersely, and Draco noticed that he was rubbing his palms against his cloak and breathing a bit faster than usual.
Draco suddenly remembered how frightened he had been to do this with his closest uncle for the first time and realized that Harry Potter was here ready to try this with his former sworn enemy . And something had clearly happened between Potter and Severus that was making him even more apprehensive about the whole thing.
Draco leaned in a bit and tried to smile softly in what he had hoped was a comforting way.
“It took me multiple tries to cast it correctly on Severus, even with him actively trying to show me his thoughts. He had to basically throw the visualization on top of me.” Draco smiled a bit despite himself, a tinge of grief mixing with humor.
“Alright, give me a minute to pull the visualization up. On my go-ahead, we can give it a try. And if it doesn't work, well then we’ll just give it another go—no big deal.”
Draco smiled reassuringly and Potter seemed to relax a bit, holding his wand in his lap and taking a deep breath.
Draco leaned back and did his best to relax, pulling up his own visualization. He had needed to change it from the relaxing lakeside scene he had imagined when the Dark Lord had accidentally wound up there. He had somewhat successfully thrown the memories that he was searching for off, but something about a maniacally sadistic and omnipotent dark wizard in your safe space makes it feel not so safe anymore.
But Draco didn't think about that now.
Instead, he focused on the grip of his mother’s arms pressing around him, the smell of cherry wood and smoke emanating from the fire, and the feeling of his small fingers pressed against a new page in his book. His shoulders relaxed and he imagined nestling a bit further under their blanket and into the back of the couch.
“Okay,” Draco said softly as he felt a small smile creep onto his lips, “Go ahead.”
…
Unbeknownst to Malfoy, Harry wasn't feeling so calm and safe himself. Memories of seeing his father taunting and bullying, playing out a vicious role in Snape’s mind, tumbled into the foreground.
Harry did his best to shove those thoughts down, to focus on what was happening in front of him now.
Here was Draco Malfoy , the boy who had constantly harassed him and his friends throughout their school years, showing up to study sessions and doing his best to amicably work together. Not only that—he seemed incredibly prepared for their research and totally willing to be the guinea pig for literal mind invasion.
Harry wondered for a minute if he even wanted to know what was going on in Malfoy’s head—he certainly hadn't wanted to know what was going on in Snape’s or Voldemort’s.
But there was another part of him that was just so curious . He could really only visualize Malfoy in his head as panicked and grief-stricken nowadays, on the verge of tears in front of a bathroom mirror or gasping for panicked breaths while he clung to Harry’s broom for dear life. And he wanted to see where Malfoy felt safe.
Harry’s stomach twisted in knots at the realization. Not out of concern for him, of course, but maybe there was something in there that Harry could use.
Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he focused on that desire to see where Malfoy felt safe and—upon getting the go-ahead from Malfoy—cast Legilimens.
Despite Malfoy’s warning that success was likely to take a few tries, Harry found himself tumbling easily into Malfoy’s head.
He felt his body experiencing the space from what seemed to be the perspective of a younger Malfoy, curled up under the arm of his mother on a grey loveseat. The two were under a fuzzy emerald blanket and a fire raged in the hearth a few feet from where they sat.
Everything was much more vibrant than Harry had expected—he could hear the crackling of small embers shooting off the logs, could smell cherrywood and smoke and hints of new parchment.
Draco ran his fingers through the soft blanket, mind being set to rest and the warmth of the scene spreading up through his stomach—and Harry felt it, too.
As soon as it had begun, Harry felt himself tumbling out of Malfoy’s mind and back into his own body in the library. He leaned backwards with heavy breaths, feeling tired and disoriented.
“That was good,” Malfoy nearly whispered, also leaning back in his chair and looking fatigued. “I should've known that you would take naturally to that bit.”
Harry didn't know what he meant by that, but didn't say anything.
“Was that helpful to see, at least?” Malfoy asked, straightening up and dusting off the front of his robes with his hands.
“I think so,” Harry said, looking back over the guidelines for setting up his own visualized place.
“Good.” Malfoy nodded curtly, seeming to snap his usual pompous visage back into place as though he hadn't essentially just let Harry into his head while he reminisced on cuddling up next to his mom.
Harry couldn't help the pang that ripped through his stomach—that was something that he would never have, time to cuddle up in the warmth and safety of his mom. And it had been nice to even feel it through somebody else, but it had also been surprisingly painful to see what he’d lost. Jealousy flared up in his chest, but he pushed it back down.
He wondered if this was a real memory of Malfoy's, if it was something that happened regularly, or if it was something made up—fabricated, like his own Patronus memory.
He felt like he probably shouldn't ask.
The two sat quietly for a few minutes, Harry working on setting up a pleasantly neutral headspace and Draco making some preparatory notes on the Chapter 2 exercises.
“The book said to name the visualization something?” Harry asked after a few minutes.
Malfoy nodded, putting his quill back in a pot of ink. “It's a good idea. Will help you summon it up more quickly in a pinch if it has a name.”
“What did you name yours?”
Malfoy’s lips broke into a small grin. “Well, I need to keep some things to myself. Otherwise, how will I maintain this sophisticated aura of intrigue and mystique?”
Harry chuckled despite himself, rolling his eyes at the dramatics. “Fair enough.”
“Do you feel comfortable enough with yours?” Malfoy pressed. “I don't need to see it if you don't want me to, but we can move on to the chapter 2 activities if you feel ready.”
“I'm ready,” Harry nodded, trying to sound confident.
“I believe it.”
The two flipped together to the next chapter, now leaning in to read the same book—and Harry couldn't help but notice that their knees had started touching underneath the table. He felt a small hitch of anxiety in his throat, but still leaned in so that they were touching with a bit more pressure.
“Alright, so the first exercise involves attempting to occlude one object from a space,” Malfoy started, leaning in towards the book. “It should be easier than attempting to occlude the entire space from view. This will also give us a chance to see if we can just feel the presence of the other person in our head and get a sense of what that’s like.”
Harry nodded, hoping that he was exuding confidence.
“They suggest doing something very familiar to us, like a childhood bedroom. I was thinking that I could attempt the occlumency first since the legilimency came easily in that orientation last time?” Malfoy suggested.
Harry paled at the mention of starting in their childhood bedrooms.
“Or you could try the occlumency first instead?” Malfoy countered, clearly sensing the energy shift in the room.
“No, that’s fine—let’s give it a shot,” said Harry.
“Ok perfect, I think I have an image in mind and an object to occlude,” Malfoy said, scratching a quick note onto a piece of parchment before leaning back in his chair and facing Harry as he closed his eyes. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Harry took a deep breath and turned to face Malfoy as well, trying to focus on the desire to see what was being visualized in Malfoy’s head like he had done the first time.
“Legilimens,” he whispered, pointing out his wand.
There was a similar lurching in his stomach as he went tumbling into what he assumed to be Malfoy’s childhood bedroom. His senses seemed to be slightly less in tune than they were in the first activity, although he felt as though he could see his surroundings clearly.
In front of him was a four-poster bed with what appeared to be a steel black frame. The sheets were similarly black and as Harry reached down to touch them, he found that he could feel the satin.
The bed had two black nightstands on either side and a large black trunk at the foot of the bed. As he turned around, there was also a walk-in closet to his left and a large mahogany desk with an office chair in front of it.
To his right, there was a small stone hearth that didn’t seem to be lit at that moment and a small black loveseat directly in front of it.
The room was more or less as Harry had expected, with hardwood floors and high ceilings and dark colors. It was very dimly lit, the only light coming from whatever sun had managed to seep through the heavy black curtains covering each window.
He noted that there was a marked lack of decoration and that the space hardly seemed lived-in, save from a few books and stray pieces of parchment on the desk.
Everything seemed to suddenly fade away as Harry and Malfoy were both pulled back into the Bell Towers library.
“Alright, what did you notice?” Malfoy spoke first.
“Er, let’s see—big, four-poster bed with black satin sheets. Fireplace with a black couch, hardwood floors, desk and office chair with a few textbooks and spare bits of parchment on it,” Harry listed.
“Anything on the walls?” Malfoy pressed, leaning back in towards Harry.
Harry thought back for a moment. “No, I actually noticed that, too. No decorations of any kind. Just big windows and black curtains.”
Malfoy smirked at that, looking particularly smug. He reached down towards the bit of parchment laid face-down on the table and showed Harry his neat penmanship: Slytherin banner .
“Good to know I’ve still got it,” Malfoy said softly, looking down and fumbling with the bit of parchment in his hands. It sounded as though it was meant to be a self-congratulatory comment, but the expression on his face was withdrawn.
“Are you ready to try?” Malfoy asked, seeming to snap back into his body.
Harry nodded, but he could tell that he looked about the same as how he felt at the moment—concerned and a bit worried that he might be sick.
“Don’t worry,” Malfoy started, speaking softly and leaning in slightly. “These exercises are typically done in first-year training for researchers, aurors, and mind healers. We’re the same age as a lot of them ought to be anyways—I’m sure they wouldn’t be doing that if it wasn’t relatively safe.”
Malfoy’s cheeks colored slightly, fingers moving back to fiddle with the parchment scrap.
“Plus, your natural legilimency skills are admittedly very strong,” he added. “I had to intentionally block a couple other things that came up as well as the Slytherin banner—could feel you trying to pull me to different memories and feelings. And you have a very strong presence in my head. I’m sure that the occlumency will come quite naturally to you as well when you aren’t so pressed for time and being taught by a professor who despises you.”
Harry’s breath hitched in his throat slightly as he realized that this was likely the kindest that Malfoy had ever spoken to him. He nodded slowly, feeling surprisingly reassured at his former enemy’s words.
“Plus, I’ve been living in the room next to yours all term, so if you’re worried that I’ll see the slovenly state of your room and realize that you’re a disgusting pig person—rest assured, I already know.”
The regular Malfoy seemed to be back, and he looked incredibly pleased with himself for that last jab, but Harry didn’t find any traces of malice in his eyes when he looked up.
Rolling his eyes and letting out a huff, Harry started contemplating what would be best to occlude. He would visualize Dudley’s second bedroom, of course—it wouldn’t exactly feel great for his former rival to see the dingy cupboard that he spent his early childhood years living in.
As Harry thought about his bedroom on Privet Drive—the small, brown desk that typically had Hedwig’s cage sitting atop it, his bedside table with a broken eggshell lamp, the blue walls and stained gray carpet, his twin bed with no comforter that was frequently covered in miscellaneous objects—he found himself being flooded with memories and emotions.
Guilt, maybe? It felt similar—a gnawing ache that crept into his stomach and reminded him how intrinsically worthless he was.
He blinked and gulped, attempting to push the buzzing in his chest and stomach down and out through his feet.
The lamp , he decided on a whim, moving to grab a spare bit of parchment and quill to write that down. That should be easy enough to remove from the scene, he figured, since it had never really functioned as a lamp anyways.
Finishing his scrawling, Harry looked back up and saw Malfoy eyeing him intently. The expression on his face wasn’t readable, but looked almost akin to curiosity.
Malfoy cleared his throat and grabbed his wand, turning to fully face Harry again. “You ready? Why don’t you take a minute to make sure the image is solid in your head and that it doesn’t include the item you’re trying to occlude. I’ll see if I can access it on your go ahead.”
“Uh—sure,” Harry nodded, folding his hands on his lap and closing his eyes. He did his best to imagine the physical details of the room—how Hedwig’s cage would rattle slightly on the uneven desk surface, the contrast of the white door against the blue walls, the feel of his flannel sheets. Everything except for the broken lamp.
“I’m ready,” Harry spoke, hoping that it sounded more like an assertion than a question.
He heard some rustling that he assumed was Malfoy raising his wand and then a soft Legilimens.
Immediately, the experience was nothing like tumbling into Malfoy’s head or like how Snape had invaded his mind in fifth year. The scene started out a bit hazy, even for him, but the feeling of his thick flannel sheets below him allowed him to ground himself into the visualization.
He was sitting on his bed in Dudley’s second bedroom, surrounded by bits of laundry that he wasn’t sure were clean and empty water bottles. The room smelled stale, and he could tell that it was summer just by the dust and the light coming in through the window.
There was a tug at his stomach, much smaller than he had felt when lurching into Draco’s head, but he could tell that his body in this memory was being partially co-piloted.
The sensation was odd, like he was present but his consciousness had been pulled to the back of his head rather than sitting just behind his eyeballs. He felt his body stand up and survey the space, landing on running a hand along the now empty nightstand top and the top of the desk.
Hedwig was there in her cage, grooming her beautiful white feathers and cooing contentedly at Harry’s approach. He felt a surge of emotion in his chest—love, or maybe protection.
This was followed quickly by an overwhelming wave of grief, and he couldn’t tell if Malfoy would be feeling that, too.
It was almost as if Harry had never really had a minute to himself to think about Hedwig and the fact that he would never get to see her again. Here she was right in front of him, looking and feeling and sounding so real and yet, this was really just all in his head.
Something inside of Harry broke at the realization—and he felt the visualization fragment, too.
Suddenly, he was staring at a slightly younger version of Dobby, the house elf’s eyes wide with panic and mischief as he bolted out of Harry’s bedroom and into the living room of Number 4 Privet Drive.
Harry sprinted after the house elf in complete alarm, feeling his heart thrumming wildly in his chest, until he saw the cake that Aunt Petunia had spent all afternoon making splattering all over Mrs. Mason’s head.
He was suddenly encompassed by an overwhelming sense of dread, and the next memories came flooding into the forefront of his mind in rapid succession.
His Uncle Vernon, face gone nearly purple with rage, screaming out insults as he grabbed a fistful of Harry’s hair and slammed his small body repeatedly into the wall by the stairs.
The disdainful look on his Aunt Petunia’s face, like he was a tea stain on her favorite blouse, after Vernon had thrown him about with a little too much force and sent him tumbling to the ground on top of a potted plant.
His lungs constricted with a cough as it rained down dust and mildew in his cupboard underneath the stairs—a surefire sign that Dudley was jumping up and down on the middle steps again.
It was as if he were really trapped in that cupboard again, spending hours lying on his thin bedroll that encompassed the entire floor and staring up at the spider that had made a home in the opposite corner, making no noise and pretending that he didn’t exist.
He felt so weak and so empty that he didn't even have the energy to worry about starving to death—and this time he could tell that Malfoy was there feeling it, too.
His hunger has eclipsed in on itself until his ears were ringing and his chest hurt and he was so violently nauseated that he wasn't even sure he was relieved when the door flap opened to reveal the ends of several loaves of bread and a block of provolone cheese on a paper towel.
Harry tried desperately to throw himself back to his other bedroom, but it was like the mental pipeline he had opened in remembering Hedwig and Dobby had an incredibly fast and strong one-way current.
Harry was in a state of complete and total panic, memories and feelings and sensations seeming to call for his attention from every angle, collapsing into a whirlwind of colors and a buzzing so aggressive that it practically sounded monotonous.
There was another tug—a very hard tug—and Harry felt himself once again looking into the big, bright eyes of Dobby the house elf.
Harry was smaller this time, even thinner than Harry ever remembered being, and it took him a moment to realize that he was back in the childhood bedroom of Draco Malfoy.
It took another moment for him to notice that he was in pain. His entire back was stinging in the way that a paper cut stung when you get hand sanitizer into it. He looked out at his hands, where his knuckles were swollen and red and had blood leaking from several places.
He was lying on his side on the black satin sheets of the four-poster bed and could feel the dry, crusty remnants of tears still sticking to his face, which felt swollen and congested.
“Dobby thinks that the Master didn’t need to do that,” came Dobby’s apprehensive voice, reaching out to survey his hands. The elf looked torn, like everything in his being was telling him to do something that he knew he wasn’t supposed to do.
He snapped his fingers and nearly winced, trembling as he handed a young Malfoy the newly materialized glass of water. “Young Master Draco should take small sips of water and try to breathe.”
Malfoy winced in turn as his raw knuckles bent around the glass, but he took a small sip anyways and then placed it on one of the bedside tables. Laying back down on his side with his arms outstretched in front of him, he sniffled a bit more.
“Thank you, Dobby,” he whispered, so quietly that Harry would’ve missed it if he wasn’t in the head of the person who spoke the words.
The memory very abruptly snapped in on itself, like a door slamming shut, and Harry was catapulted back into his body in the library with such force that he rocked back in his chair.
“What the hell, Potter?” Malfoy snarled, standing up despite the rattling of his limbs.
“I—sorry, I didn't mean to do that. I—I don't know what happened,” Harry stumbled out in confusion.
“What the hell are you playing at, huh?” Malfoy ignored his response, face flushed with rage. “I'm meant to believe that you stumble in here with supposedly no super significant occlumency or legilimency skills and then you proceed to do legilimency wandlessly while my guard is down?”
Malfoy was seething—and still looked rather panicked, his chest heaving up and down with each breath.
“Er—was that what I did? I swear, Malfoy, I didn't even know that was something I could—”
“Oh, come off it,” Malfoy bit out before he had a chance to complete the thought. “If this is some asinine attempt to gather more intel on my father for the Wizengamot, you can tell McGonagall that I’ll happily change my project topic. It was utterly idiotic to have two supposedly untrained nineteen year olds messing around inside each other’s heads anyways and—”
“Malfoy,” Harry cut him off harshly, nearly yelling and standing up so that they were on eye level, their faces just inches apart. Malfoy looked surprised for a moment, startling back.
“Do you really think that I would have just shown you all of that voluntarily if I had any clue what I was doing?” Harry asked, nostrils flaring. “Merlin, you're such a prick sometimes. Not everything is about you!”
“Oh, sorry if I'm making it about me ,” Malfoy started sarcastically, hands raised in mock submission, “that you went poking around in my memories without my consent.”
“Malfoy, it wasn't intentional—okay? I panicked. Let's just pretend neither of us saw anything.”
“I think I'm quite done for the day,” Malfoy said through grit teeth, shoving their work into his bag and knocking Harry on the shoulder with surprising force as he stormed out of the library.
Harry looked around and noticed the only other occupants of the library—a group of incredibly concerned-looking third years—staring at him in bewilderment.
“What an absolute prat ,” he spat, mostly to himself, and the third years turned abashedly back to their work.
Chapter 7
Notes:
TW: starvation and food issues, briefly addressed at the start of the chapter
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
The following Tuesday, Draco awoke to a note folded on his bedside table.
If we're still planning on working together, we can't keep ignoring each other. I’ll be at the Bell Towers library at 7PM if you're open to talking.
He recognized the chicken scratch immediately.
Things had grown increasingly awkward between himself and Potter over the course of the week. Apart from the forced interactions that came with sharing a loo and having several classes together, the two seemed similarly committed in their efforts to completely avoid one another.
This was easy enough for Draco, who spent most of his time holed up in his room or the corner of whichever library was least occupied that day. He hadn't been to the Great Hall in weeks regardless, opting instead to just grab some food from the kitchens whenever his limbs would start to shake.
He could tell that Potter was pointedly circumventing interaction as well. The pair being put together for potions lab on Friday had resulted in over two hours of silent ingredient prep with no eye contact, broken only by Draco instructing Potter to remove the phasmid’s legs before adding it to their cauldron.
Potter hadn't huffed or rolled his eyes at the demand, which was how Draco knew that things weren't close to normal. It seemed that Potter had even started showering at night instead of in the mornings as assurance that he wouldn’t stumble into Draco in the bathroom again.
The only connection they really maintained with each other was Granger, who continued to meet with Draco in the libraries and the common room to work on Ancient Runes essays and Arithmancy problem sets.
Granger didn't seem to know the extent of what occurred between him and Harry, but she could clearly tell that something had gone awry.
She has even tried to gently nudge Draco into talking about it, but he had shut that down completely by returning their attention to the Lyapunov functions from class.
Draco had to admit, the silence was excruciating. It reminded him of his life in the manor, constantly waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop and shatter that terse silence.
There was a point where he even considered provoking Potter to the point that he would punch him in the face or hit him with a hex—anything to break the unbearable tension.
A massive sense of relief had washed over him after reading the note. He knew that they needed to find some way to move forward, but he just couldn't (wouldn't?) make himself do anything about it.
The anxiety rose in him again as he left his Apparition lecture on Tuesday. He had an hour to kill before meeting Potter in the Bell Towers, opting to sit on a bench in one of the dark dungeon corridors and pretend to be reading Fragments of the Mind’s Veil for the fifth time.
He wondered what Potter would do when he got there—was he going to yell? To take a swing at him? To pretend that nothing had happened and start talking about the project again? To try to talk to him about it?
He wasn't sure which of those options was the worst.
When the fluorescent light of his tempus spell read 6:45PM, Draco stood and made himself start the short trek to the Bell Towers library. His legs felt like they were moving through molasses and his breathing grew fast and unstable, but he blamed that on the stairs.
When Draco arrived at the library, he did a quick once-over of the space and his eyes immediately landed on Potter at the same table they had sat at before.
As he approached, he saw that there was a small plate of mixed vegetables, boiled potatoes, and a pumpkin pasty on the table in front of his seat. They were the only foods he ever really did more than pick at in the Great Hall. How Potter knew that, he wasn't sure—coincidence, maybe.
"Peace offering," Potter said blankly as he approached, nudging the plate towards him.
Draco looked at the plate for a moment and wondered if the food had been tampered with in some way. But then he remembered the gnawing, aching hunger from Potter's memory—the kind of hunger that made your temples pound and your body shake—and he felt a sharp pang of guilt in his stomach.
"Maybe you wouldn't be so snippy if you ate actual meals," Potter said snidely, and Draco's guilt immediately dissipated as he raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, last one, couldn't help myself," he chuckled, motioning to the plate again. "Eat and we can talk."
Prat , Draco thought, rolling his eyes, but he sat down in the seat next to him.
He thought about pushing the plate away as some kind of passive resistance, but the growling in his stomach from missing so many meals eventually won out and he took a bite of the boiled potato as he was bid.
“I think I owe you an apology,” Potter started after a few moments, causing Draco to nearly choke on a spoonful of peas and carrots. He coughed slightly, turning to face the other boy.
“What?”
“I didn't tell you about some of my experiences with legilimency and occlumency before we started, and obviously I should have. I really didn't mean to go barrelling into your head—that was an accident—but it did happen when Snape tried to do legilimency on me as well, and you should've been aware of that beforehand.”
Potter took a deep breath, the expression on his face looking a little pained. “So I'm sorry about withholding that information. We should probably talk more before we try any other exercises.”
Draco was a little dumbfounded at what had just occurred—here was Harry Potter, Savior of the Bloody Universe, actually apologizing to him for something.
Part of him wondered if this was more than an apology for just withholding information. His chest collapsed at the thought of compressing seven years of wrongdoing into one apology—mostly on his part.
Sorry for rejecting your friendship.
Sorry for insulting your friends.
Sorry for antagonizing your father.
Sorry for releasing your worst fear onto the Quidditch field.
Sorry for slicing your torso open.
Sorry for letting a fleet of Death Eaters into the castle.
Things that would never be said out loud. He almost laughed at the concept.
“I’m sorry about that, too,” Draco said, surprised at how easily the words came out when contained to this one instance. “Those exercises can cause some emotionally charged memories to flood to the surface. I knew that and didn't say anything based on some assumptions I made about your childhood. That wasn't fair—I should've at least asked, even if you wouldn't have told me.”
Potter nodded and then looked down. If the expression on his face said anything, it was that he definitely would not have shared any of those personal details unless absolutely necessary.
“Maybe we can both start with a list of key background information that the other person should know?” Draco suggested. “Just in terms of prior experiences with legilimency and occlumency?”
Potter nodded, seeming alright with that suggestion.
“Ok, great,” Draco said, starting to take out some parchment and a quill, “I'm just gonna write down some notes so I don't forget anything.”
He felt Potter start to do the same, then sit back and clear his throat after a few minutes. “Ready when you are.”
“I'm ready. I’ll go first?”
“Sure. Oh—” Potter seemed to remember something and abruptly picked up his wand, causing Draco to flinch. Potter paused for a moment at that and looked like he was about to say something, but must’ve decided better of it and turned his attention back to the spell.
“Muffliato,” he murmured the charm as he motioned around their area, then turned to Draco, “for privacy.”
Draco nodded, feeling grateful that one of them had thought of that precaution. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Alright, so, I mentioned last time that I had done some occlumency before. I basically taught myself most of what I know from textbooks, particularly Protection Charm Your Mind and Guide to Advanced Occlumency, ” Draco started.
He took a deep inhale before continuing, taking a quick look at the notes on his parchment. “When the Dark Lord came back at the end of our fourth year, Severus took it upon himself to spend most of the following year training me. It went well, he was a great teacher—”
Potter raised an eyebrow skeptically.
“For me, at least,” Draco continued. “And possibly because I already had a solid baseline. We did a lot of the exercises from the textbook you cited, actually, which is why I thought that might be a good place for us to start.”
He took a deep breath and read the next line on his parchment, realizing that his chest was getting heavy and his fingers were trembling. He placed the parchment on the table and sat on his hands to stop them from shaking, hoping that Potter wasn’t aware of his physical reactions to this conversation.
“The next year, our sixth year—” Draco paled. “Well, you already know what I had been tasked to do. The Dark Lord was worried that Dumbledore would be able to read my mind, and he didn’t know that I had any occlumency skills yet, so he put my Aunt Bellatrix in charge of training me for that.”
Potter’s eyes widened, seeming to imagine himself in that situation.
That made Draco chuckle darkly. “I know that you’re familiar with her, so you can imagine how fun that was. I can only imagine how bad it would’ve been if I hadn’t already worked with Severus. It turns out that it’s really hard not to imagine times you’ve been in pain when you’re scared shitless that you’re going to be in pain.”
A strange look crossed Potter’s face—Understanding? Empathy? Draco couldn’t quite place it.
“Anyways,” Draco continued, swallowing the lump in his throat, “That was pretty awful, and I don’t think it really helped my occlumency skills, either—if anything, it might’ve made them worse just because of how freaked out I was with her having so much information on me.”
Draco removed his shaking hands from underneath his legs and folded up the piece of parchment that he had written notes on. “That about sums it up. Any questions?”
Potter seemed to contemplate for a minute. “Er—yeah, if you don’t mind answering it. You said that you were aware that some memories might flood to the surface, that it happened to you. How long did it take for you to be able to suppress those?”
It was actually a good question, Draco thought.
“Well, as evidenced by the little detour that we took into my head last time—”
Potter winced.
“I still can’t prevent them 100% of the time. I need to be relatively calm and prepared. It will also depend on the strength of the legilimens who’s attempting to penetrate your mind. I’ve been told that my occlumency is much stronger than my legilimency, so you may be able to shut me out rather easily once you get the hang of it. In general, though, I’d say that I was able to hold most of them back after a couple months of practicing with Severus,” Draco finished.
“Ok,” said Potter, nodding. “I’ll go next?”
“The floor is yours,” Draco drawled, reclining and wrapping his hands around his right knee as he brought it up onto the chair.
“Er—right, so…”
Potter mumbled through an explanation of how Dumbledore had been worried about Voldemort’s access to his mind. The two had apparently shared some sort of mental connection at the time, but Potter didn’t elaborate on it and carried on too quickly for Draco to voice questions anyways.
He explained that Dumbledore had enlisted the help of Professor Snape to assist Harry in learning occlumency to shield his mind from both projections and penetrations from the Dark Lord.
As he recalled separate instances in which he had failed to shut Snape out of his mind, he began to fidget nervously with his wand and accelerate his already fast-paced speech.
“It was basically just a lot of my emotionally charged memories flooding to the surface every time Snape would cast legilimens, followed by him reprimanding me for not disciplining my mind enough, followed by more legilimency attempts,” eyes downcast at his wand in between his fingers.
He swallowed visibly and a wave of shame seemed to cross over his face, if only for a moment.
“Merlin, this is so hard to talk about,” Potter grimaced. “I wish I could just show you what it was like.”
Immediately after the words were spoken, Draco felt the now familiar sensation of his stomach lurching and his mind tumbling into Potter’s.
He couldn’t have been much older than fifteen or sixteen now, his shaggy black hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He barely had time to brace himself before Professor Snape cast legilimens and his mind tumbled into a cacophony of emotions.
He’s on a broom, soaring over a gray lake with the wind ruffling through his hair and euphoria rippling through his chest.
He feels Granger throwing her arms around his shoulders and squeezing tightly, almost sobbing with relief at her friend’s return.
A dementor reaches out, ice cold fingers unfurling with menace as all warmth and comfort floods from the room. A woman’s shrill cry echoes in the back of his head, feeling as though it might tear his face in half with grief.
Students talking, then the Dark Lord’s face, then a black door that somehow causes his stomach to twist in guilt and anxiety, then the Dark Lord’s face again—longer this time.
Potter catapults back into his body, panting with effort and sweat continuing to soak the front of his shirt. He’s given no time to recover, only chastised briefly before Snape is forcibly prying his memories back open.
This time, he stands in front of a mirror with his parents. He looks around eleven years old in the memory, probably a first year. Snape manifests himself in the memory directly behind Potter and nearly snarls, “feeling sentimental?”
“That’s private,” young Harry grits out as soon as he’s back in his body, clenching the chair with fingers turned white.
“Not to me,” drawled Snape. “And not to the Dark Lord if you don’t improve.”
Harry panted out a breath, fear and overwhelm completely clouding his thoughts.
In what seemed to be milliseconds, Snape had closed the gap between them. His face was mere inches from Potter’s, so close that he could feel the warmth of his breath.
“Every memory he has access to is a weapon he can use against you,” Snape spoke urgently. “You wouldn’t last two seconds if he invades your mind.”
“You’re just like your father,” Snape barked. “Lazy, arrogant—”
He felt a surge of rage bubbling up in Potter as he stood on unsteady legs and nearly shouted, “Don’t say a word against my father!”
“You’re weak,” spat Snape.
“I’m not weak.”
“Then prove it,” said Snape. “ Control your emotions. Discipline your mind.”
Potter stood this time, chest heaving with rage and fatigue at his labored breaths. His lips had nearly curled into a snarl when Snape raised his wand again and cast legilimens.
The tumbling sensation struck again as a variety of charged memories flashed into Potter’s brain at an even more accelerated pace—a hedge from the Triwizard tournament maze, a giant reaching towards him, a man with long black hair lovingly cupping his face, a phoenix bursting into flames over Dumbledore, Cho Chang leaning in for a kiss, the Dark Lord again, a snake attacking Mr. Weasley, Potter’s parents embracing one another, a poster of Sirius Black screaming, a prophecy from the hall of mysteries, Potter running and embracing Sirius Black with relief.
Then Snape appeared again. “I may vomit,” he drawled, launching Potter back into his body.
“Stop it!” he pleaded, hunched in exhaustion and sounding desperate.
“Is this what you call control?” Snape asked, voice thick with condescension.
“We’ve been at it for hours! If I could just rest—”
Snape turned aggressively and closed the gap between them once again. “The Dark Lord isn’t resting. You and Black are two of a kind—sentimental children forever whining about how bitterly unfair your lives have been. Well, it may have escaped your notice, but life isn’t fair. Your blessed father knew that—in fact, he frequently saw to it.”
“My father was a great man!” Potter protested, the rage bubbling up in him threatening to explode.
“Your father was a swine,” spat Snape, bunching the front of Potter’s shirt in his fist and swinging him around to slam him back into his seat. “Legilimens—”
“Protego!” Potter cast, raising his wand almost instinctively.
The scene changed then, into what was clearly Snape’s mind. He looked to be around the same age as Potter in this memory, straight black hair falling into his face as he solemnly walked the halls of Hogwarts and tried to settle down under a tree.
James Potter and his friends seemed to have other plans, as the group approached him with taunts and jeers. Young Snape began to raise his wand in self-defense, but it was easily dismissed with an expelliarmus.
“Dad?” came Potter’s soft voice, watching the scene unfold with disbelief.
His father continued to advance as the crowd of students cheered him on, casting a spell to hang Snape upside-down precariously by one leg.
“Who’d like to see if we can take off Snivelly’s trousers?” James egged the crowd on, smirking in triumph. The Gryffindors surrounding the scene only continued to cheer.
As Potter came whirling back into Professor Snape’s office, so did Snape.
“Enough,” the professor gritted out, leaning backwards onto his desk. Potter rose as Snape made his way across the room, balling Potter’s shirt in his fists again and somehow leaning in even closer than he had before. For a moment, there were only the steady sounds of their heaving breaths.
“Your lessons…are at…an end,” Snape managed through barely contained anger.
“I—I didn’t—” Potter spluttered.
“Get. out.” Snape said with finality, releasing the front of Potter’s shirt.
As quickly as it had started, Draco found himself returning to his own body in the Bell Towers library. He almost went to yell at Potter again, but the look of him stopped Draco in his tracks.
Potter had gone completely white, almost starting to sweat and shake as he had in the occlumency lesson memory. For a moment, Draco wondered if he might get sick all over their project notes.
“Potter…” he started hesitantly. “Are you alright?”
Potter just closed his eyes and nodded his head, seeming to float elsewhere for a moment.
Draco had an idea then, and started to rummage around in his bag until his fingers landed on a thin bar of dark chocolate that his mother had sent him in the mail last week.
“Here,” he said, extending the sweet to Potter. “Eat a little. It will help.”
Even in his shaken and disheveled state, Draco could’ve sworn that he saw the corner of Potter’s mouth twist into a grin. He took the candy and unwrapped it with shaking hands, breaking off a piece and taking small bites.
The two sat without words for a while, Potter nibbling on chocolate while looking thoroughly disturbed and Draco whisking his dinner plate back to the kitchens with a flick of his wand before assembling their project notes into small piles.
“I’m not judging, and it’s actually kind of impressive,” Draco started softly. “But we really need to get your accidental magic under control.”
Potter looked as if he were going to protest but didn’t have the energy.
“That memory actually makes a lot of sense,” Draco said, eyes lacking focus as he seemed to stare off into the distance.
“How so?” Potter panted out, still breathless from the accidentally revealed memory.
“Well, Severus always sort of acted like you were the one who was bullying me ,” Draco explained. “And I always tried to assure him that I was fine. But given that he saw you as your father’s son and me as mine, it makes more sense how he came to that conclusion.”
Potter’s eyes flared in warning at the mention of his father in a negative light, but the notion seemed to have nowhere near the hold that it had on him at fifteen years old.
“That must’ve been scary as hell,” Draco contemplated. Potter nodded again.
“Oh, I—actually, well, I could see how that was terrible for you too, but I was talking about Severus.”
At Potter’s bewildered expression, he elaborated. “Severus said that any information you knew, anything you saw, any memories you had—they were all possibly available to the Dark Lord.”
“So?” Potter spoke, seeming as though the effort to understand had taken the effort away from his lungs as his breathing evened.
“ So ,” Draco drawled. “You happened upon a memory in which your father was bullying him. Probably because you were primed for it after Snape insulted him. But imagine all of the other memories that Snape had, what could’ve happened if the Dark Lord had access to those too—through you.”
Realization seemed to dawn on Potter then. “Oh.”
“Yeah. And imagine the subject matter you would be dealing with if he had kept the occlumency lessons going, the memories of his that would be dredged up if you had surprise counterspelled him again. It could’ve revealed his entire betrayal to the Dark Lord. That’s probably why he kicked you out; he was probably scared out of his wits.”
Potter nodded slowly, processing, and then handed the remainder of the chocolate bar back to Draco.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Another silence passed.
“I have a question,” Draco eventually said.
“Mhm,” Potter said by way of permission to ask it.
“Why occlumency?”
“What?” Potter countered, looking befuddled.
“Why study occlumency for your final project?” Draco clarified. “I mean it seems like it was something that you really struggled with—and I haven’t really seen you naturally struggle with much of anything, magic-wise.”
“Careful, Malfoy, that almost sounded like a compliment.” Potter smirked, some color returning to his face. “What would’ve been the point of that? So I could bang my head against my desk while I wrote out ten scrolls worth of history and theory on defensive spells I mastered in third year? I’d much rather get to actually experience something new, even if I’m not as naturally inclined to it.”
“I suppose that’s understandable,” Draco spoke slowly, but he didn’t agree with the words. He would have never in a million years chosen the topic he had most struggled with as the one he’d be assessed on. In fact, the thought of any of his Slytherin counterparts making that choice was almost laughable.
It truly was a courageous move on Potter’s part, albeit nauseatingly full of Gryffindor brashness. But Draco would never admit that out loud.
“I think that we should work on some smaller, less activating exercises until we feel more controlled entering each other’s headspaces,” Draco proposed.
“That makes sense,” Potter agreed. “Or just try to go about it in a less invasive way.”
“Well first things first,” Draco started in, voice dripping with sarcasm. “It would help if you put your wand away while we go through these things.”
Potter turned away, looking properly ashamed as his face flushed, but also let out a small chuckle.
“We could also try using a pensieve for some of these memories beforehand instead, at least the ones that might cause either of us to act unpredictably. It would be much more controlled,” Draco suggested. “I don't know where we'd get access to one though.”
“McGonagall has one in her office,” Harry seemed to offer without thinking.
Draco wondered if the new Headmistress would give them permission to utilize said pensieve given the circumstances. She had, after all, saddled the two of them together on what she must have known would be an incredibly vulnerable and extensive project experience.
McGonagall was leagues better than Dumbledore, at least in Draco’s head. Dumbledore would never have testified on his behalf in front of the Wizengamot. Dumbledore wouldn’t have stepped in to advocate for all students, Draco included, against the non-consensual use of legilimency and veritaserum during the post-war trials. Dumbledore would’ve never pulled him into a tearful hug following his father’s sentencing. And he certainly would not have mumbled apologies about failing him while explaining that he only sent the Slytherins to the dungeons during the battle to protect them from needing to choose between their family and their friends.
Actually, Draco couldn’t recall a single time when Dumbledore had appropriately explained anything to the students.
But McGonagall had done those things. She had done those things and then some. So he couldn’t really be angry at the turn of events that had chained his graduation to Harry Potter.
“Wait!” Potter exclaimed, bolting upright in his seat once again. “I have an idea.”
Draco looked at him in shock and mild amusement. “Do share.”
Instead of sharing his idea, Potter had risen from his seat and swept their project notes directly into his open bookbag, disrupting their carefully laid out piles. Draco groaned.
Potter had gotten a couple feet away from the table before he turned back around.
“You coming?” he said, mouth rising into a playful smile. Whatever downtrodden mood the memory had gotten him into seemed to have vanished completely by now.
When Draco didn’t respond, Potter grabbed him by the wrist and started to eagerly pull him out of the library, which made Draco’s ears color to a deep pink.
He did his best to tail Potter closely, silently disappointed when the latter dropped his hand off of Draco as they ascended several flights of stairs. Draco wasn’t exactly sure where they were headed until Potter started to pace right next to a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy’s attempt to teach trolls how to dance ballet.
Potter looked incredibly pleased with himself as he strolled back and forth in front of the tapestry, muttering something about a pensieve and a place to study.
Draco could feel the color drain from his face now. “The Room of Hidden Things?” he speculated.
“The Room of—wait, what?” Potter asked, smugness fading into incredulity.
“This is the Room of Hidden Things, is it not?” Draco asked, rolling his eyes as he motioned to the heavy brown doors materializing in front of them.
“That’s funny,” Potter mused, stepping inside. “I always called it the Room of Requirement.”
Chapter 8
Notes:
TW for reflections on past abuse and bigotry (the wizarding kind).
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
The space expanded in front of their eyes, a silent refuge, the soft light of the hearth casting a warm glow across the hardwood floors. The flames sparked intermittently, sending tendrils of heat into the brisk air. Its amber illumination danced along the walls, decorating the shadows with gold adornment.
A soft alternative song thrummed easily from an unknown source, the steady and monotonous pulse seeming to emphasize the crackling of the hearth, creating an intimate atmosphere that enveloped Harry and Malfoy in an almost unreal cocoon of comfort and warmth.
“Whoa,” Harry heard Malfoy breathe next to him, eyes wide as he took in the room before them.
To the left side of the room, a large black cauldron rested on the floor. The cauldron was heavy and tall, reaching up almost to the boys’ chests. Its surface was well-worn, a few faint scratches and a sheen of age adding character and suggesting years of use. Directly above it was an elaborate, ornate mirror, its expanding frames similar to those of the mirror above Dumbledore’s pensieve.
The mirrors were flanked on either side by dozens of rows of empty glass vials and stoppers, almost seeming to beckon their use.
Harry couldn’t help the satisfied smile that crept onto his face then. He knew that the room would be able to help them—and this way, there was no need to involve the Headmistress. They could finally have some desperately needed privacy, away from the prying mental magic of the Dark Lord and the well-intentioned doting of professors and the ill-intentioned probing of Rita Skeeter.
As much as he despised Malfoy, or at least used to despise Malfoy, Harry knew that they had both been victimized by those intrusions.
Near the fireplace, two chairs were set up side-by-side, a small oak desk placed in front of them. The chairs had tarnished wood and soft cushions that were slightly sunk in from other passengers, inviting silent introspection or heartfelt conversation.
The simple, old desk was littered with several spare bits of parchment and a half-full inkpot with a quill sticking out, almost as though another group of students had just left. The ambiance was one of peaceful neglect, as though the rhythms of war had been routinely paused here and replaced with the gentle thrumming of instrumentals and sparking logs.
“I hate to say this, but…nice work, Potter,” Malfoy relented, running his long fingers along the edge of the pensieve cauldron.
“Er, thanks,” said Harry, heading over to the desk. He reached into his bag and started pulling out books and stacks of parchment, throwing the ones from their project onto the table and shoving the ones for other classes haphazardly back into his bag.
Malfoy stared in bewilderment, mouth agape, as he then watched Harry dump dozens of sheets of loose, unsorted parchment directly from his bag onto the desk.
“You give me heart palpitations,” Malfoy said seriously, joining Harry by the desk.
“Yeah well, join the club,” Harry teased, winking in a rare moment of confidence and mock flirtation.
Malfoy's cheeks reddened noticeably, even as he turned his face back down to their work in an attempt to conceal it. “Not what I meant,” he added quietly.
“How do you even know what heart palpitations are?” Harry questioned. He had assumed that biology was really only a muggle thing.
“Well you see, Potter, there are these wonderful little inventions called books and they're full of all kinds of information—both magical and non-magical—and if you read these books, then you’ll have the information too and—”
Malfoy seemed so enthralled by this little academic tirade of his own design that he didn't notice Harry rolling up a piece of parchment until it gently bonked him on the head, breaking him out of his playfully condescending speech.
“The information doesn't go in that way, though I don't doubt you've tried,” Malfoy continued, still grinning ear-to-ear and clearly pleased with his own cleverness.
“You're a menace.” Harry sighed, but he let out a chuckle with it too.
“I’m about to be more of a menace,” Malfoy said, already seated and starting to sort through their project notes. He took out his wand and began muttering incantations onto the bits of parchment, rolling each stack of pieces into a single scroll.
Tapping each scroll with his wind, words started to appear in ink at the top of each page that specified the project topic and at the bottom of each page with any unanswered questions and potential resources discussed.
“Oh, that’s—” Harry started to say, picking up the scroll of notes nearest to him, which now had Considerations on Occlumency and Memory Alteration scrawled neatly across the top in penmanship that closely resembled Malfoy’s.
“I’ve tagged them all in a sort of magical filing system now. You’ll be able to accio individual pieces of parchment directly from your bag so long as you know which course or project it’s affiliated with,” Malfoy explained, still waving his wand above the scrolls on the desk.
Suddenly, a new scroll materialized directly adjacent to each of the existing scrolls. Harry raised an eyebrow at Malfoy in question of this.
“So that we’ll both have a copy and can work independently,” Malfoy elaborated. “Anything I write on each topic will magically translate to your scroll on the same topic and vice-versa.”
With a flick of his wand, half of the scrolls had compressed in volume and were flying into Malfoy’s open bag. When Harry looked back over, Malfoy had extended a hand towards him, palm facing the ceiling.
“Give me your bag,” Malfoy demanded nonchalantly, face blank.
“I—what?” Harry questioned, looking down at the bag that he still had poised in the air from dumping contents onto the desk.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I promise not to go through your personal belongings. I saw that whole display of reaching around and yanking things out and throwing them back in—”
“I have my own system!” Harry protested, pulling his bag back defensively.
“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Malfoy drawled, emphasizing his still-outstretched hand. “Mine will be better.”
“Whatever you say,” Harry relented, handing the bag back over.
Malfoy smiled slightly before dumping the contents back onto the desk, careful to avoid any personal items. As he surveyed the mountain of ink-stained parchment bits, spare quills, and pages ripped from textbooks before them, he turned to Harry with an incredulous look.
Harry felt a flush of shame color his cheeks. “It’s been a busy few weeks…”
Malfoy just hummed, his look of perplexity at the mess being overshadowed by something resembling…excitement? Harry started picking up individual pieces of parchment and grouping them together by subject, mirroring the layout that Malfoy had started to develop.
When he started to explain the variation of epoximise he had used for the parchment binding spell, Harry grabbed his own wand and mimicked the movements, successfully binding together his notes from their first few weeks of Herbology courses.
Watching the properly executed spell, Malfoy nodded and hummed in approval. When the two had finished, they had 5 scrolls in front of them—one for each N.E.W.T.-level course that Harry was taking.
“The title and resources one is a homebrew. Do you want to try it?” Malfoy asked.
“Sure.”
“Alright so just stick your wand out like this—yep, and then tap the top of the parchment and say ‘sumactio’,” Malfoy explained.
Harry did as instructed, tapping the paper and speaking the spell softly as the words Herb Physiology: Basic Concepts and Kinetics appeared at the top of the page.
Malfoy had leaned over, looking at the ink that appeared with a pondering expression on his face. Harry gave him a questioning glance in return, which caused Malfoy to lean back into his own space and start gathering up the scrolls for Harry.
“Forgive me, I was merely curious about something,” Malfoy said.
“The handwriting?” Harry guessed.
Malfoy looked surprised at Harry’s theory, but didn’t question it. “Yes, I’ve noticed that my spell conjures writing similar to my own. Yours looks quite different from how it typically does, though.”
The two looked at the new writing scrawled on the top and bottom of each scroll. The penmanship seemed to be a near-exact middle between Malfoy’s calligraphic, evenly-spaced lettering and Harry’s short, aggressive strokes that made the words themselves look rushed and chaotic.
“Thank Merlin for that, I suppose,” Malfoy mused, that small I’m-only-half-joking grin dancing playfully across his lips.
“Ha ha,” Harry said sarcastically, taking out only their most recent project notes to continue looking over. “How do you know how to do all of this anyways?”
“My father used to help me study,” Malfoy responded instantly, his soft smile disappearing as his eyes fell back on his own project scrolls, “and he was never nearly as kind about it as I’m being right now.”
“This is kind ?” Harry retorted. “I’ve basically been forcefully organized into submission.”
“It’s kind-er.”
A moment passed between them. Harry had almost complimented Malfoy on how steadfast and meticulous he was about school, but then he remembered all of the times when people had complimented him on how well he followed orders or risked his safety or moved about without making any noise—all expectations that had been conditioned in him through particularly unkind means.
And he remembered how much that made him want to punch the person complimenting him in the face.
“I don’t know how much I like the rest of it—I mean, seriously, it’s a bit much—” Harry started, not risking any chance of this compliment actually being directed at Lucius. “But that spell to title and suggest questions or next steps—that’s pretty cool, actually.”
Malfoy beamed at that—a smile that looked genuinely pleased, and not at all like he was only half joking about an insult.
“Do you want to try out the pensieve idea?” Malfoy asked, already bolting over to stand by the large, black cauldron. “Fastest way to test the theory.”
“Er—sure,” Harry said, slowly moving to join him by the bowl. “What memory do we start with?”
“I’d been thinking,” Malfoy started. “Since you already saw my safe place, that we could take a look at yours? That actually might be a good place for us both to start as a general practice. To nix the emotional mind chaos before we test some actual occlumency and mental magic principles.”
“Sure,” Harry said. “Just give me a moment.”
“Of course.”
Harry grabbed one of the vials and thought deeply about his visualization from the other day. It was actually something he had been using in an attempt to clear his head at night, so the details were easily called into focus.
Feeling a solid recall of the space, he brought his wand to his temple and pulled the visualization from his head in a stream of silvery consciousness, letting it land in the vial resolutely. He poured the silvery material into the basin in front of him and watched as the insides filled with an ethereal, shimmering liquid.
He looked over at Malfoy, who seemed completely mesmerized.
“Have you used a pensieve before?” Harry asked.
“Only once,” Malfoy replied, eyes still glued to the swirling liquid. “But I’ve had memories extracted from me lots of times.”
Right, the trials. Harry thought it best not to dwell on that at the moment. “Same time?” he asked.
“Sure,” said Malfoy, dunking his face directly into the liquid. Harry held his breath, almost instinctively, as he followed suit.
The experience was similar to the ones they had in the library, yet completely different. Rather than a tugging in Harry’s stomach, he felt a nauseating disorientation until his mind settled into the scene.
It also differed from the legilimency experience in that he could completely see the shape of Malfoy next to him rather than feeling him as a vague presence behind the eyes. He noticed that Malfoy seemed to be surveying the scene around him thoughtfully before noticing anything else.
The scene had unfolded before them in a much faster and smoother fashion than their previous attempts. It was almost unconscionably bright with very little detail due to the haze that seemed to surround everything.
A bright white light emanated from somewhere in the distance, enveloping the pillars that segregated each part of the space into equal periods. The floors were a dull grey, although a checkered pattern could barely be seen through the monotony.
There were short ledges, almost appearing to be for sitting, that lined the narrow pathway that they stood upon together. The only real defining feature of the space were the pillars that stood greying and blurred at regular intervals.
The space seemed endless and completely neutral, as if it were poised in time—not necessarily in a comforting pause way as the Room of Requirement was, but almost in a way that nothing else existed here. Small, subtle feelings of nostalgia and threat gnawed at Harry’s gut, but he found himself easily able to suppress them here, a skill that had never really been accessible to him elsewhere.
After a few moments in the space, Harry noticed Malfoy’s figure disappear from view, dissipating in an unearthly cloud of surrealty. Mere seconds later, Harry felt himself also being pulled out of the memory of his visualization and back into the Room of Requirement.
He took a moment to get his bearings, closing his eyes as he focused on the melodic thrum of the room’s music and the warmth emanating from the fire by their desk.
Malfoy was the first to speak. "Your safe place is...King's Cross station?" he asked, dumbfounded.
"You said to make it pleasantly neutral," Harry argued, suddenly feeling unjustly observed despite his consent to the scrutiny.
"Yeah, pleasantly neutral," Malfoy reiterated, starting to laugh at the distinction. "Harry, this is the creepiest shite I've ever seen."
Harry . For some reason, his name sounded nice in Malfoy’s mouth, all light and tinkling as if the two of them joked like this all the time—and for some reason, that filled him with a quiet rage.
"Oh, that’s the creepiest shit you’ve ever seen? Didn't you literally live with Fenrir Greyback for over a year?" Harry countered, agitation creeping into his voice.
Malfoy stopped laughing and sighed. "Can you not be intentionally obstinate for like five minutes? Are you capable of that? I just think we can do better than this to help you center yourself."
“Right,” Harry muttered, berating himself silently for ruining anything good that came his way.
Another moment passed quietly between the two students before Malfoy spoke up again.
“Can’t you produce a patronus? Is that true?” Malfoy asked, seemingly genuinely curious.
Harry cringed despite himself, feeling a mental barrage of the times when he had been excessively congratulated for being able to successfully execute such an advanced spell for his age. What a gift, they would say. Such a talented young boy. What a shame.
“You ok?” Malfoy prodded after a minute, seeming to survey him as he had surveyed the space in front of them just moments before.
“I’m fine,” Harry confirmed, looking abashedly off to the floor. “And yes, I can produce a patronus.”
“Well, why don’t you try using whatever memory you use to conjure that charm as your visualization?” Malfoy suggested.
“I—” Harry started, suddenly hit with a feeling of fraudulence that he hadn’t analyzed since their third year when he had first produced the patronus charm with Professor Lupin. The knowledge that his so-called happiest memory wasn’t even real was something that he considered himself lucky to frequently forget. How simple it was to slip into a place where that could have been reality. “Yeah ok, I’ll try doing that.”
“Ok, maybe we can start with that next time,” said Malfoy reassuringly, placing a soothing hand on the middle of Harry’s back.
“You’re different,” Harry said before he could stop himself, his tone more conversational than accusatory.
Malfoy sighed, dropping his hand. “I suppose we’re all different. How could we not be?”
“Yeah, but not like that. You seem…I dunno, sad,” Harry said lamely.
“And when you found me in the bathroom during sixth year shaking and clinging to the counter like a buoy in a storm, that looked—what, like I was having a blast?” Malfoy asked sarcastically.
“I guess I mean different from when we were kids,” Harry tried to clarify.
“We’re still kids.”
“I know, but like—little kids. You looked sad in fifth and sixth year, too, always had that look on your face like you had no hope that things were gonna be alright again. I guess I just assumed that it would stop when things were closer to alright again,” Harry said.
“And what do you know of how alright things are for me now?” Malfoy shot back.
“Er—nothing, I guess. I guess I never really cared to know before,” Harry said, contemplative.
Malfoy chuckled darkly. “You don’t care now, either. At least not really, not about me specifically. And I don’t need you to. I’m not some little project for you and your Gryffindor friends to fix. So you can take that savior complex of yours and keep it the hell away from me.”
“It’s not a complex when you’ve spent your whole life doing it,” Harry said, growing irritated now. “But don’t worry, message received. I just wanted to say that if you need somebody to talk to, we’re sort of chained together now anyways and I’ve been told that I’m a good listener. But if you’d rather just stay making those gloomy little faces and never letting anybody see you struggle—or Merlin forbid, see you happy —then that’s your prerogative.”
“I’m happy plenty, Potter,” Malfoy insisted, breaking into a small smirk this time. “I just have resting Death Eater face. See, say something funny.”
Harry snickered a bit at that. The insurmountable anger he had felt rising in him just moments ago had vanished, leaving only tiredness and a bit of amusement in its place.
“It’s not your fault we keep having issues in each other’s heads. Yours is absolutely full of Nargles,” Harry said, conveying his best impression of Luna.
Malfoy scowled exaggeratedly, causing Harry to let out a full laugh. He wasn’t sure if the look was meant to be truly smoldering, but all he could think was how much he resembled a younger Malfoy when he stuck out his bottom lip and furrowed his brows in mock upset.
Images of slicked-back blonde hair and a pompous sneer flitted to the foreground of Harry’s mind as he reflected briefly on the events of their first few years in school.
“You look just like your father when you do that,” Harry said without thinking, then immediately regretted it.
Malfoy’s face fell, clearly impacted by what he had said.
“I didn’t mean that as—”
“I want to show you something,” Malfoy said, grabbing a vial and pulling out his wand.
Harry just nodded. “Okay.”
Malfoy seemed to strain a bit as he pulled the memory out, wincing as a clump of silver emerged on the tip of his wand and made its way into a vial.
“Get your safe place visualization out of the pensieve first,” Malfoy instructed, and Harry did so, storing it in one of the vials and tucking said vial safely out of sight in the back.
Without a word, he dumped the liquid into the cauldron and almost winced again as the swirling liquid expanded to occupy the space.
“Go ahead, whenever you’re ready,” he said, motioning to the pensieve. “Before I change my mind,” he added softly, seeming to mutter it only to himself.
Harry dipped his face into the spiraling effervescence that occupied the pensieve and was immediately transported into the memories of Draco Malfoy.
This experience was markedly different from the legilimency, with him appearing as a separate entity viewing from the side rather than experiencing the event as a first-hand account.
He saw a very young Malfoy, so young that he seemed to not have started slicking back his hair yet—possibly seven or so. Lucius stood directly in front of young Malfoy, looking quite similar to how he had looked in their first year, straight platinum blonde hair cascading down a set of expensive-looking black robes.
They were talking in what appeared to be the dining room of the Malfoy manor, Lucius looming over Malfoy as he sat in a chair, the feet of his small frame dangling several inches above the floor.
A set of a dozen or so other thin, black chairs were placed perfectly around a long, obsidian table. Two impressive chandeliers hung suspended in the air, likely through magic, with sharp metal bits that extended downwards towards the table.
A hearth burned in the wall on the opposite side of the table from where Malfoy sat, its fire seeming to contribute no light or warmth to the area whatsoever.
The older Malfoy slammed the claws of his cane on the table in front of Draco, causing him to startle back in surprise. Lucius’ face contorted in rage, seeming almost more upset at his son’s reaction than whatever wrongdoing on Malfoy’s part had triggered this interaction.
Lucius snarled down at his son, lips curling upwards in distinguishable distaste. Malfoy swallowed.
A second memory flooded forward, with Malfoy looking around the same age as in the first. He was in Knockturn Alley, reaching up to hold the hand of his mother, who was reading a newspaper rather intently with a concerned expression on her face.
Harry couldn’t make out much of the news article’s title, other than that it was something about a muggle-born wizard and a crime.
“Muggle-borns who don’t respect our laws and contribute to the wizarding world are a huge problem,” Malfoy said, the words sounding oddly misplaced in his young voice as his lips curled into a half-sneer, half-snarl.
“We need to protect our own,” he continued absolutely, seeming as if he were quoting something rather than producing the words himself. He looked up at his mother, disapproval still plastered on his face while his young eyes searched frantically for approval.
“You look just like your father when you do that,” she whispered lovingly, gently sweeping stray locks of blonde hair across his forehead. As an adult, Harry could tell that she subtly disapproved of what was occurring in some way, but Malfoy just looked up at her and beamed at the supposed praise.
A third memory came then, and this time the frustrated snarl was already spreading across Malfoy’s face. He was a bit older now, possibly thirteen or so, with a face that had thinned out considerably since early childhood.
He was standing in the dungeons, likely directly following a potions class, looking up at the expressionless face of Professor Snape. It seemed as though Snape had just asked him a question, as Malfoy’s hands were outstretched by his sides to emphasize a point.
“I don’t see what I’m meant to do,” he huffed. “It’s not my fault the mudblood’s basically a potions master.” He nearly spat the words with vitriol, disgust and anger clearly etched into his face.
“You look just like your father when you do that,” Snape said, his voice equal parts condemning and contemplative despite his neutral demeanor.
A fourth memory faded in, and Malfoy seemed only slightly younger than he was today, the memory likely from within the past year or two. He was in a bathroom that Harry didn’t recognize.
As he walked towards the sink, he caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked shut down and exhausted, heavy dark circles clinging to the bottom of his eyes, which seemed more dull grey than their usual steely blue.
He took a hand to his cheek, bombarded with images of his father’s jaw, then to his eyes—but again, he could only see the piercing gaze of his father’s eyes reflected back at him. He started to scream in frustration, fingernails digging into his forehead and dragging down the sides of his face.
When Malfoy looked back up at his reflection, not only had he broken skin and started bleeding, but he had shattered the mirror’s glass into thousands of little splinters in a fit of accidental magic.
Finally, Harry came back to himself in the Room of Requirement, taking a few breaths as he took in the current Malfoy standing propped against a nearby wall.
Malfoy was taking him in right back, anticipating and assessing for a reaction.
“You really don’t look that much like your father, you know,” said Harry finally.
Malfoy chuckled, “I know that I do. And that’s okay.”
“Is it?” Harry questioned, his brow furrowed.
“Well, what’s the alternative?” Malfoy asked grimly. “Die?”
Another silence passed between them.
“The alternative is that it’s not okay and it sucks and then you keep living,” Harry said slowly.
This seemed to stun Malfoy, who looked down as if he had been properly chastised for his neuroticism. “It figures you would think that way.”
“I mean, I kinda had to, didn’t I?” said Harry. “I was basically groomed to die at the right time. If I had figured that I could never live up to this heroic reputation that everybody painted of my father or live down this villainous bully caricature that Snape had painted for me in his memories and offed myself during fourth year or something, everybody would have died during the Battle of Hogwarts.”
There was a brief pause then in which Malfoy almost looked as though he’d been slapped.
“That wouldn’t have been your fault, though,” he said eventually.
Harry shrugged.
“No,” Malfoy said, growing angry now. “You were entitled to those feelings. Your parents fucking died, for Merlin’s sake, and they died protecting you. Those are incredibly big shoes to fill, even before taking the removing-the-Dark-Lord-from-power thing into consideration. It would’ve been unhealthy if you didn’t feel some sense of pressure to live up to that.”
Harry shrugged again, feeling immensely uncomfortable as he reached a hand to the back of his neck and scratched a phantom itch.
“And I know what it’s like to see your father as a bully. Trust me, I get that bit, and it’s not fun at all,” Malfoy asserted. “There’s no way to really separate yourself from the person you came from—to not feel like a colossal piece of shit about everything you’ve done afterwards. But you’re not your father, and he’s not you.”
“You deserve to know that,” Malfoy said seriously. “Do you know that?”
“I guess,” said Harry sheepishly, still avoiding eye contact.
“It’s getting late,” Harry said abruptly, waving his wand to cast a quick tempus charm that illuminated the wall with a script that read 11:42 PM.
Malfoy nodded slowly, moving with Harry back towards their bags. The two packed up their things without continuing the conversation.
“A group of us are meeting to study for charms and arithmancy in the common room tomorrow. Will you be around?” Harry asked. “I bet everybody would appreciate that ‘unanswered questions and resources’ spell you showed me today.”
Malfoy seemed to think about it, but eventually nodded. “Ok, Potter—I’ll be there.”
“Perfect,” he said, exiting the Room of Requirement. “6 PM, after class.”
Chapter 9
Notes:
TW: This chapter contains a somewhat graphic depiction of self-harm. I recommend skipping the first 1000 words or so if this is something you're sensitive to or otherwise don't want to read. It's not glorified and is relevant to the overall theme, but it may be upsetting for some readers.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
It was the following morning before Draco really noticed how overwhelmed he was with what he had agreed to do. He didn’t particularly want to spend the evening studying in a boisterous crowd of people when he could just as easily spend it alone, or just with Granger, or just with his roommates.
He knew that wasn’t really an option, since Granger would undoubtedly be joining this little after-class study session, and for all he knew, Longbottom would be there too. This was another source of his worries—how had he let himself agree to something when he didn’t even know who was involved?
Agreement had come to him so easily last night, after he had shared that series of memories comparing him to his father. Merlin, why had he done that?
He had intended to do it in anger, he thought, to lump Potter in with all the other people who had decided he was a smug little arsehole before he had the chance to decide otherwise. But he also knew that wasn’t true. And it wouldn’t even be an insult. There were worse people to be lumped in with than his mother and Severus Snape, that much was for certain.
He and Potter had walked back to their dorms yesterday in relative silence so as not to draw attention to themselves so late at night. It had felt a bit hazy, like he was walking through a dense fog with his brain floating above and trailing six feet behind.
Now, awoken from sleep at 5 AM in a cold sweat, Draco realized how apprehensive he was about spending time with people. He really had grown accustomed to doing everything on his own, and he doubted that this would be as easy as letting the Golden Trio ramble on about their own problems and interests on the Hogwarts Express.
He would need to get up sooner or later, he realized, and figured he might as well take a shower before the rest of his dormitory started to rise. Quietly gathering his belongings and clothes for the upcoming day, his gaze lingered on his wand—hawthorn wood and unicorn hair. He wavered, but ultimately took it with him as he crept over to the bathroom.
As expected, it was empty at this hour of the morning, and Draco breathed a small sigh of relief. He went over to one of the two shower stalls and placed his things down, locking the door behind him. Draco threw his black undershirt and boxer briefs on top of the rest of his things, moving slowly into the downpour of warm water and letting his hair fall wetly into his face.
He leaned a hand against the wall for a moment, taking a large inhale and trying to work his breathing back into a rhythm. He remembered his wand laying over by his pile of shower materials, but shook his head violently to clear the thought away.
This resolve did last for longer than usual, until he had successfully washed himself and his hair and shaved his face, but all good things must come to an end. “Bloody hell,” Draco muttered, eventually giving in and grabbing his wand.
Draco held the tip of his wand to his inner bicep and then pulled it away as if disturbed and surprised by the action. He placed it there again, grip tight and breathing shallow, before pulling it away with even more force and placing his forehead up against the wet shower wall. He gripped his hair with his left hand and attempted to get a grip on the rest of his thoughts.
“You bloody idiot,” he mumbled, not loud enough for anyone to hear despite being alone in the bathroom, gently smacking the palm of his hand against his forehead.
He stood like that for a few seconds, feeling properly at war with himself, before the self-destructive urge finally won out. He took his wand and cast an incantation while dragging the tip horizontally across his skin, feeling unjustly pleased when a crimson line bubbled to the surface of his flesh.
The traitorous little blood specs pooled and connected until a heavy droplet formed towards the end of the line and trickled down towards the shower drain at his feet.
Draco’s ragged breath thumped heavily in his ears, and the panic of facing the day ahead mixed with the instant numbing relief of his stinging arm. He held his wand clenched in his fist now, repetitively dragging the pointed tip across his already scarred skin with an almost feverish aggression.
One minute was all he would allow himself—one minute of unsheathed sanguinary violence, an onslaught on his pale flesh—and then he would (mostly) patch himself up, sort his thoughts back into their contained places, and carry on with his day.
As he surveyed the wreckage of his anxieties, seven surprisingly neat gashes running across the length of his upper arm, a wave of nauseating guilt came in to tangle up with the pleasant apathy.
Draco sighed, running his wand back over the wounds in the opposite direction, healing them just enough that he wouldn’t get blood on his robes—but not so much that the arm wouldn’t sting whenever his shirt brushed against it for the next few days.
He stood like that for a few more moments, savoring the sharp pain that burned at his fresh wounds whenever the water hit them at just the right angle—and the lack of morally perfectionistic guilt that would soon be replaced by regret.
When the fleeting euphoria started to fade and he found himself once again worried about classes and socializing and his bloody N.E.W.T. project, Draco cast a quick drying charm on his body, combed through the front of his hair with his fingers, and set a neutral look on his face.
He dressed himself and was pleased to find that the dormitory bathroom was still empty. Most of the eighth years had 8AM Transfigurations on Wednesdays, so students would be up and stirring a bit earlier than usual. Not as early as him, though, apparently.
Just as well, Draco quietly grabbed his bag in the dark, careful not to disturb the sleeping of his roommates. He ducked out of the dormitory and into the mostly empty common room, not pausing to look around before resolutely heading off towards transfigurations class over two hours early.
His Wednesday went by relatively quickly, with pretty much all of the eighth year students attending Transfigurations at 8AM and Defense Against the Dark Arts at 10AM. Then, Draco would branch off and go to Astronomy. That seemed to be one of the least common N.E.W.T. subjects, as there were only about a dozen students in the class and the only person that Draco ever really spoke with was Nott.
As usual, he snuck off to the kitchens after Astronomy and grabbed half a sandwich with a cup of tea, blushing at the kitchen elves’ doting over him to take an apple or a sausage roll as well. He sat on a ledge by the courtyard—one on the side that was a bit less travelled—and sipped at the hot tea with a book charmed to levitate and flip pages as he read. The routine of it was nice, and he allowed himself a moment of peace after the events of the morning.
Once students started to trickle out of the Great Hall and flood the rest of the building, Draco packed up and headed up the usual three flights of stairs to Arithmancy. Professor Vector had prepared a particularly grueling lecture that day, one where even Granger looked confused.
After that was Herbology, where Draco spent most of class sitting with his roommates, listening to Longbottom discuss applications for his N.E.W.T. project while Nott and Corner got sidetracked from picking fluxweed leaves with discussion of their own project.
After that, Draco ran back up the 156 steps to the Eighth Year Common Room and spoke the new password, permitte me intrare —chosen by a snarky former Slytherin, no doubt. He was lucky that he was still so light on his feet from years of Quidditch; getting back from class and settling into his desk before the other students could occupy the common room would be a challenge otherwise.
When he got there, Draco took out some parchment and a quill, starting to write a letter to his mother. That was a concerning topic these days, with her all alone in the Manor. Draco was really the only one who knew what she had been through—not just with the Dark Lord, but with his father before that, and with her own family before that still.
It worried him immensely, having her holed up there with nobody to talk to, but that wasn’t exactly something he could voice out loud. He knew that she must miss him dearly; if he couldn’t tell by how quickly his letters were returned, the frequency with which she sent the family owl off with sweets for him would make it clear.
Draco wasn’t sure how to help, though, other than to abandon any hope he had of supporting their family through the future by dropping out of school and moving back home. He wasn’t sure he could handle it himself, to be honest, existing all day trapped in the Manor. It was a different kind of prison.
“Do you ever, you know, take a break?” came Theo’s voice behind him, throwing his bag down before flopping exhaustedly onto the bed.
Draco exhaled a chortle, but still subtly grimaced, tapping his quill against the inkpot as he struggled with what to say. “This is my break.”
“Mhm,” Nott mused. “You look real relaxed.”
It was then that Draco noticed that his body was tense with worry, shoulders hunched over a bit of parchment and face undoubtedly all knit up with concern. Consciously relaxing his shoulders and loosening his jaw, he turned back to Nott. “They don’t call the tests nastily exhausting for nothing.”
Theo looked over with a bemused smile, eyeing Draco in a way that was much too knowing and analytical for his liking. “Right.”
It was almost a relief when 6 PM rolled around and Draco had an excuse to leave the room.
As he approached the common room, he heard the clattering of a couple dozen people and the unmistakable sound of his surname being ground out in annoyance.
“I can't believe you let Malfoy help you organize your notes when I've been trying to get your study habits in check for years,” Granger protested, her voice tinged with jealousy.
“I didn't exactly let him,” Potter chuckled. “It was kinda forced on me.”
Draco smiled as he rounded the corner into the common room, trying not to look too pleased with himself. “It needed to be done.”
The group—including Potter, Granger, Weasley, Longbottom, Lovegood, Dean Thomas, Hannah Abbott, and Michael Corner—sat splayed out on the couches and around the coffee table by the leftmost hearth.
“Hey, no argument there,” Granger said, smiling and shrugging her small shoulders.
Potter groaned. “What is it, Bully Harry Day?”
“I told you having both of them around would be insufferable,” Weasley grumbled to Potter under his breath, then turned to the rest of the group in exasperated protest. “He has a system!”
Draco chuckled despite himself. Weasley really did seem quite similar to Potter in speech and mannerisms, particularly when filled with defensive pride. Granger rolled her eyes in mock annoyance before leaning over and kissing Weasley on the cheek.
“I’m sure he does,” she said, gently stroking the top of Weasley’s hand with her fingers. “Now,” she added, smirking as she cast Draco a sideways glance.
Draco let out a derisive snort at the comment, only causing Weasley to shoot him a pointed glance. He cleared his throat, settling down on the floor beside the coffee table. “So, where do we want to start? Charms exam and arithmancy problem set, right?”
“Well, we should probably go to dinner first, and then start on charms practice,” Granger said.
Oh crap. Draco hadn’t even thought about that. Had he just been manipulated into joining the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw heroes-of-the-school brigade for dinner? His chest tightened at the notion of needing to spend the next hour weathering stares in the Great Hall and attempting to make small talk with the Golden Trio’s friends.
He sent a particularly accusatory glare in Potter’s direction, but the bloody wizard chose that time to be incredibly wrapped in an apparently very amusing conversation with Weasley. Draco wasn’t fooled, though—he could see that triumphant gleam in his emerald eyes that told Draco that Potter knew exactly what he was doing.
Draco only broke away from glaring at Potter to roll his eyes and let out an indignant huff. What bloody concern was it of Potter’s whether or not he took his meals in the Great Hall? Potter let out a rather obvious giggle at this, trying to disguise the noise with a cough. When he finally did look back in Draco’s direction, he was grinning victoriously. The bastard.
“We can work on the arithmancy problem set late at night, since it’s just you, Neville, Michael, and I in that class.” Granger leaned in with a soft smile. “I have a feeling that us four will be able to outlast everyone else’s study capabilities.”
“Something tells me that’s not particularly difficult to do,” he mused.
When the group rose and started making their way to the Great Hall, Draco would be lying if he said that he didn’t consider feigning ill and turning back to the dorms. As it was, he opted to trail a few paces behind the rest of the group, hands in his pockets as he counted the 156 steps back down towards the Great Hall.
He half expected some of the younger students to hex him as they walked in, but he found that only a couple groups even turned to take notice of his presence as the group made their way to the eighth year table along the right wall.
“People don’t mind,” came Longbottom’s kind voice to his left, as if reading his mind. “Theo eats lunch with us all the time now. Nobody stares.”
“Theo didn’t let a bunch of Death Eaters into the school,” bit Draco. He looked beside him, expecting to see that pitying or awkward gaze that most people gave him, but Longbottom was still wearing a smile and his countenance seemed completely even.
“People can’t forget if you won’t,” he returned, clapping Draco on the back gently and settling into the seat next to him. It took Draco a second to realize that he was smiling, too.
The dinner was much less painful than Draco had imagined. In fact, the group seemed to be making a concerted effort to include him in conversation.
They mostly spoke about everyday things, as if they had simply been students here rather than actively fighting a war just months prior. Grumbles about professors, idle adolescent dating gossip, and plans to stay out late in Hogsmeade on a Saturday night were all main topics of conversation.
As it turns out, Tracey Davis and Wayne Hopkins were rumored to be seeing each other regularly, as were Professor Vector and Professor Hooch. The latter finding was met with several squeals of both excitement and protest across the table.
“It’s true!” Hannah Abbott exclaimed from a few seats down. “I saw them eating lunch alone in the Quidditch stands last week and there was a definite flirty vibe.”
“Well, based on the length of the problem set that Vector assigned today, I’d guess that there’s trouble in paradise,” Draco joked, earning chuckles and nods of understanding from those in her class.
Draco wondered how much he had really missed out on in the past few weeks by exclusively keeping to himself—apparently, it was quite a bit.
Granger and Longbottom seemed antsy about grabbing drinks and about staying in Hogsmeade past curfew, even though those rules technically no longer applied to the students in their year.
“It's about the precedent!” Granger protested. “What if you run into younger students while you're stumbling back to the dorm at 2 AM?”
“Come on, ‘Mione, the younger students have surely seen worse than Harry’s subpar drag rendition of She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes, ” said Weasley. Potter’s face flushed immediately and he gave Weasley a hard shove, which did nothing to stop the other boy’s uproarious laughter.
Even Granger’s perfect prefect persona started to crumble at that. “I don't know if I've seen anything worse than that.” She laughed, and Harry’s blush only deepened.
“Besides,” Weasley continued. “We basically spent last year entirely on our own. What are they gonna do—give us detention? Threaten to call home?”
“Yeah, who are they gonna tell, my parents?” Potter chuckled.
This was met with various reactions around the table—some appreciative chuckles, some exasperated eye rolls, and even some lingering looks of pity. Draco opted to look down, suddenly really interested in his peas, and go for a tight smile while he tried not to think of his own parents.
It wasn’t until Potter offered him another pumpkin pasty that he realized that there had been more food subtly making its way onto his plate. All under the guise of “everybody needing more chips” and him “needing to try the brussels sprouts, they’re really good today” but the intentionality and the stealth of it wasn’t lost on Draco.
And more yet, Draco had allowed himself to get pleasantly full. He had taken down several servings of chips, brussels sprouts, mushy peas, a scone with butter, and a pumpkin pasty—which seemed like nothing compared to the accumulating plates of Weasley and Thomas, but was more than double what he’d typically snag from the kitchens. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually felt comfortable enough to rest and digest in that way, much less surrounded by so many people.
“I think I’ll bust open if I have any more,” he responded, reclining with a hand on his stomach. The satisfactory grin that flitted across Potter’s face wasn’t lost on him either.
Mutters of agreement filled the air as people started packing up to leave. “Skill issue,” Weasley jested, taking the final pasty from Potter’s hand and shoving it into his mouth. Potter and Draco practically snorted and rolled their eyes in unison.
Draco didn’t even hang behind on the walk back to the dorms, opting instead to join the conversation going on between Lovegood and Michael Corner about lesser known flora and fauna.
“I’m glad you came to dinner with us, Draco,” Lovegood said. Draco was taken slightly aback by the use of his first name, but he grinned gently. “Me too.”
“I think Harry was glad, too,” Lovegood said. “He wouldn’t say it, but his metasprum like when you’re around. They scatter from his head and spread around yours instead.”
“His metasprum?” he questioned.
Lovegood just hummed and nodded in response. “Mhm.”
Draco could feel a flush of pride in his chest at the knowledge, even if he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what Lovegood was going on about. He only hoped that his cheeks didn’t look as warm as they felt.
What followed was possibly the most enjoyable study session that Draco had ever had. The nine of them spent the evening curled up on the couches and the floor surrounding one of the common room’s hearths, textbooks and bits of parchment splayed out around them in all directions.
When a charm went awry in some comedic way—like Weasley accidentally producing a flock of little green ducklings that seemed to have imprinted on him as they quacked around and tried to nuzzle into his legs—the group only laughed for a moment before chiming in with all kinds of helpful tips.
For a while, nothing seemed so serious. It made Draco wonder if he had simply brought the war zone with him while everyone else had been somehow able to instantly reframe the space as a place of learning and friendship.
The group dwindled throughout the night until they transitioned to focus on the Arithmancy problem set, and then dwindled again until it was just Granger, Longbottom, and Draco by the fire.
“So, Granger, is this what you’re up to whenever you aren’t holed up with me in some quiet corner of the library?” Draco asked.
“Heh, pretty much,” she answered. “I probably get a bit less done with all the distractions, but sometimes I think it’s important as a sanity check.”
Draco chuckled darkly, looking back down at the half-solved problem in front of him. “Probably why I haven’t felt very sane in a while.”
“Well, you’re welcome to join us whenever you want,” Longbottom said earnestly, dropping his quill for a moment to look at Draco. “Especially if you have more of those note sorting spells.”
Draco chuckled again, meeting Longbottom’s gaze now as he pointed an accusatory quill at him. “Ah, so you want me around for my study tricks.”
“Well, yes, I do,” he conceded, putting his hands up in mock defeat. “But also, I can’t imagine anybody staying sane on the round-the-clock solitary study schedule you seem to be on. And I meant what I said earlier…about forgiving and forgetting. Really, you don’t need to punish yourself forever.”
It took Draco until he was nestled into bed that night to realize that Longbottom had described exactly what had occurred that morning. He hadn’t hacked up his arm to relieve the stress of performing normalcy for people, as much as he would’ve loved to convince himself was the case. What he had done was allowed himself to agree to something that might actually be nice and enjoyable—and he had punished himself for it.
…
“Infinitely better,” Draco praised, shaking off a bit of imaginary water as he removed his head from the pensieve. The liquid didn’t actually dampen your face or hair, of course, but it was still human nature to shake off when exiting a wet place.
Potter beamed at him, looking satisfied with what he had chosen to be the new memory.
Potter’s new visualization was leagues better, Draco thought, than whatever that absolutely disconcerting shite with the liminal space version of King’s Cross had been. The visualization he had shared now was one that was much more pleasant and intimate, of him and his parents.
Potter couldn’t have been much older than a toddler—and, well, he couldn’t have realistically been much older than one or two if his parents were present, which is likely why the visualization was a bit hazy. They didn’t appear to be doing anything, which was good for a visualization, just standing and laughing and cooing at baby Potter as he flashed a radiant grin right back.
“Is the memory with your mum the same one that you use to conjure a patronus?” Potter questioned.
Draco’s ears colored in shame. “Actually, I've never been able to produce one.”
“And that's not even a real memory with my mum; I made it up,” he added, eyes downcast towards the shimmering liquid that still swirled beckoningly in the pensieve. He nonchalantly ran his fingers along the edge again, remembering the many times he had attempted to produce a patronus and found his wand barely coughing out wisps of silvery mist.
“Oh, I didn't—” Potter started. “That wasn't a dig. I just assumed because of your advice on using the patronus memory.”
Draco hummed softly, contemplative. “Mhmm.”
“I could teach you, if you want?” Potter suggested, attempting to sound dispassionate despite the clear ring of excitement creeping into his tone. “I taught quite a few people how during fifth year, and have been teaching the younger students again this year.”
“I've never really had a need for it, to be honest.”
“What do you mean?” Potter was leaning in now, curious.
Draco shrugged. “The dementors don't really affect me that much.”
“The dementors don't…?” Potter sounded incredulous. “The dementors don't affect you that much.” He repeated Draco's words with raised eyebrows, sounding suspicious.
Draco chuckled darkly. “Well the dementors suck all the joy out of your world, make everything feel dark and hopeless and like it's your fault.”
Potter nodded—he knew this already.
“I guess I just sort of felt like that all the time anyways. So they didn't do much.”
He hated the look that crossed Potter’s face—it was pity again, maybe, or just realization.
“Don't go soft on me, Potter,” Draco snarked. “I’ll remind you that I frequently exploited that fact because I knew how upset the dementors made you. I used that to my advantage on more than one occasion.”
Potter shuddered, eyes glazing over as he remembered the Quidditch incident.
“I was jealous, you know,” Draco said, breaking Potter out of his reflective stupor. “I knew that how severely you reacted to the dementors meant that you didn’t feel that way most of the time. I was hurting and that made me jealous and angry and I wanted you to hurt with me.”
Draco wasn’t sure why he was admitting to all of this now. Maybe it was how kindly and instinctively Potter and his friends had accepted him into their group a few days ago. Maybe it was the fact that he was going to be stuck showing Potter intimate details of his life whether he wanted to or not. Or maybe he just simply didn’t care to hide it anymore.
“Did you feel how the dementors affected me when you saw that memory in my head?” Potter asked.
“A bit,” Draco admitted. “But I don’t think I felt the whole thing. I mostly just heard screaming.”
Potter nodded. “Yeah, I hear my mum.”
Draco’s stomach lurched. “Your mum?”
Potter nodded again.
The words took Draco a moment to process, and it felt a little as if he were going to be sick. Here he was, so comforted by the presence of his own mum that it was the only calming façade he could reasonably create, and he had still spent years unintentionally tormenting Potter about auditory hallucinations of his mother screaming as she was murdered.
“You were old enough to remember that?” The question came out almost without his permission.
Potter just shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t remember anything else.”
“I—”
“You don’t need to apologize,” Potter cut him off. “I’ve had enough pity about it to last a lifetime.”
“I do,” Draco asserted, still feeling the guilty rolling sensation in his gut. “I’m sorry for the dementor-related harassment specifically. How about that?”
“It’s ok,” Potter said, easily. “It made me better. Made me accept help. Made me learn how to produce a patronus for the first time—which actually saved my life at the end of third year.”
Draco was unsettled by how smoothly this conversation was going. “How can you even say that?” he protested.
Potter’s brows knitted together in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“How can you forgive me so easily?” Draco asked.
Potter shrugged nonchalantly. “We were kids.”
“But I’m still that person,” Draco argued.
“Are you?”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Draco re-asserted, expression serious.
“Bullshit.”
“Look, I know that you think you know who I am, Potter, but you don't,” Draco declared, feeling righteous self-loathing flare up in his chest in lieu of the gnawing guilt in his stomach. “You know the tip of the iceberg.”
Potter opened his mouth as if to protest, but Draco carried on. “And maybe my mother and I saving your life during the war would be enough to forgive the bullying and the bigotry and the childish scheming but—but that's not…I've done things. Terrible things. I've…I—” Draco struggled for words. He suddenly felt as if there were a choking hex cast his way, and he coughed slightly.
“I know,” Potter asserted.
Merlin, why did he need to do that? To act like he somehow knew all of the vile shit from his past and that it wouldn't change things.
“You don’t.” Draco’s voice sounded harsh, even to himself.
He half expected Potter to wince or back down from the assertion, but if anything, his eyes seemed alight with challenge.
“Show me,” Potter demanded, voice matching the harshness of Draco’s, then softening. “Please.”
Draco could feel himself getting emotional, could feel the choking sensation welling up in his throat again. “You don't wanna see that shit, Potter.”
“I think we’re both gonna see the shit anyways,” he said easily—too easily for Draco’s liking. “Might as well start with the worst shit so it stops butting into our occlumency practice. Or at least we’ll be prepared for it; it won't be anything new.”
Draco winced at the mere idea of Potter seeing the worst things he'd ever done, witnessing the violence and the terrible mistakes as an innocent bystander. You won't want to keep doing the project with me, he wanted to say. You won't even want to be in the same room as me.
But how does one say that?
“I want you to see it from my eyes,” Draco said finally. If he had to stand by the pensieve and wait for Potter to re-emerge and curse him into oblivion, he didn't know what he'd do. Do it himself, maybe. Or run away—he's always been good at that. Like father, like son, he supposed.
Potter’s eyes widened in surprise at the request. “You want to do legilimency again?”
“Just for this. If I’m going to show you, I want it to be on my terms. Please.” His voice came out weak and pleading now, a stark contrast to the firm assertions he had made just minutes earlier.
Potter paused and opened his mouth, fiddling with one of the vials on the side of the pensieve. Draco was sure that he was going to protest, but he didn't.
“Okay,” he said, nodding solemnly. “I’ll do it. On one condition.”
“I don't usually do conditions,” Draco spoke quietly. “What is it?”
“I want you to see it through my eyes, too.”
Draco thought about protesting, but his mouth responded before he could. “Deal.”
The Room of Requirement had created a small, grey couch by the fireplace today instead of a desk—seeming to anticipate their needs before they even realized that they had them. As the two settled in there, Potter’s eyes seemed to bore into Draco’s. The intensity was enough to make Draco wonder if Potter was going to do wandless legilimency on him again.
“Are you ready?” Potter asked, raising his wand.
Draco flinched at the movement before closing his eyes, taking a deep breath, and forcing himself to respond. “Yes.”
“Legilimens.”
Chapter 10
Notes:
Content warning on this chapter for descriptions of torture, references to domestic/gender-related violence, recollections of childhood abuse, and references to self-harm/suicidal ideation. Reader discretion is advised.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
“For those of you who don’t know, we are joined tonight by Miss Charity Burbage, who up until recently has taught at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” drawled Voldemort.
The professor’s body hung suspended as if a levicorpus spell were focused to dangle her by the small of her back. Her head lolled backwards helplessly, eyes red-rimmed from tearful exhaustion and skin pockmarked from days of abuse.
A fire raged in the hearth of the Manor’s dining room, but Malfoy felt no warmth emanating from it. His limbs traitorously threatened to vibrate with his upset, but he sat on his hands to prevent any visible trembling. It was cold, he could argue later. He didn’t care what happened to the muggle lover.
“Her speciality was Muggle Studies, ” Voldemort grinned as he spoke the words, finding the notion incredibly amusing. Professor Burbage’s breath gargled in her throat, escaping her chapped lips as the cross between a moan and a gasp.
The Death Eaters lining the table chuckled politely at Voldemort’s quip. Malfoy attempted to follow suit, but the noise was strangled in his throat and sounded much more akin to the choking of his professor than to the halfhearted chuckles of his family.
“It is Miss Burbage’s belief that Muggles are not so different from us,” Voldemort continued, regarding each of his followers with individual eye contact. “She would, given her way, have us mate with them.”
Bellatrix made an exaggerated vomiting sound at this idea, leading the group into another fit of giggling that seemed completely juxtaposed to the situation before them.
“To her, the mixture of magical and Muggle blood is not an abomination, but something to be encouraged,” Voldemort lectured, rolling his wand between his fingers.
Professor Burbage looked directly at Severus then, mumbling out a final plea for her life. Malfoy felt a bit of bile rise in the back of his throat and almost gave into the impulse to shrink back into his seat lest she turn on him with her cries next. But he knew that would be unacceptable, and instead opted to unfocus his eyes and slowly exhale in an attempt to quell the nausea.
“Avada Kedavra!” came the killing curse, exploding from the tip of Voldemort’s wand in an outburst of crackling green light at what seemed to be the same instant that his former professor’s lifeless corpse hit the table, rigid and motionless.
Malfoy felt the urge to cry—a feeling that hadn’t come to him with such strength in a very long time. He could feel his face tremble slightly and did all he could to scale it back and make it unnoticeable. He fixed his eyes just above the bloody, unblinking eyes of Professor Burbage and imagined himself pushing any of himself down through the floor with a deep inhale.
Eyes up, shove it down, was what he would always say to himself. And he could feel the walls of his own occlumency locking tightly around his emotions.
“Nagini…” Voldemort spoke softly, cradling the snake as if it were a beloved family pet. “Dinner.”
Just as the snake unhinged its jaw and lunged towards the professor’s body, the scene changed perspectives—not to the perspective of Harry or of Malfoy, but of the serpent itself.
Everything was hazy and unfocused, as if in a dream, but the cool ridges of black tile could be felt clearly gliding along the bottom of Nagini’s wriggling form. “Harry,” the snake hissed, sounding like a serpentine variation of the voice of Voldemort himself.
Amidst the cloudy orbs lining black industrial shelves that Harry recognized as the Department of Mysteries, Mr. Weasley stood in an aisle with a faint lumos gracing the tip of his wand. Hearing a noise and turning to investigate, his eyes widened in shock and horror.
Nagini, whose perspective Harry was experiencing in first person, lunged at the Weasley father with open jaws and tore an ugly gash into the side of his neck. The man fell onto his back, holding a hand up against the serpent as if to shield his face.
The perspective was broken up slightly, with Harry gasping and panicking and trying to pull back and Nagini continuing the violent onslaught with a meticulous series of gnashes and lunges at the man’s chest, drawing more blood.
Mr. Weasley was grunting with each bite, hardly able to keep his shaking hands up by his face as the snake continued to gash open his torso. Harry was similarly thrashing and grunting, feeling as though the veins in his neck may explode with the effort to attempt to stop the snake.
He felt completely powerless, witnessing himself attack one of the men most close to a father figure that he had ever known as the gargantuan serpent. Arising from sleep, he panted out a few exaggerated breaths, hit simultaneously with the panicked knowledge that this wasn’t a simple nightmare and the guilt that it was a part of him that had harmed Mr. Weasley.
Harry could swear he felt agitation from Malfoy’s head as a mental whirlwind opened up and sucked him into a new memory. He was in Malfoy’s body again, appearing as a teenager with gangly limbs and the beginnings of blonde stubble on his face—possibly fourth year or so.
There was an altercation of some kind behind Malfoy, and he could feel the boy lock his jaw in an attempt to tamp down his rage. Harry couldn’t quite tell exactly what was happening, the images swirling before him and the audio muffled as if Malfoy were underwater. One sound broke him out into clarity, the sharp ringing of Mrs. Malfoy quietly crying out in pain.
Without thinking, the young Malfoy whipped around and drew his wand, sending his father flying backwards into a wall. His head hit the cobblestone with a sickening crack and his exanimate form slumped to the floor. He looked as though the air had been sucked from his lungs, barely able to take a ragged breath while keeping his shoulders propped up.
His eyes darted around the room surreptitiously before narrowing on the figure of his son towering above him. It became clear in that moment that the only reason Lucius Malfoy had been thrown from his stance and momentarily paralyzed was that he had been caught off guard. Powerful dark magic seemed to radiate off of him, though he remained unable to move.
Malfoy wished that he were truly as brave as the action he had just performed would indicate. He had a brief vision of himself, towering over the crumpled body of his father, spitting out some grandiose line about never so much as looking at his mother the wrong way ever again.
But Malfoy didn’t move to stand before his father. Instead, he trembled and took a shaky breath, helping his mother to her feet while not taking wide eyes off of the paralyzed body.
“Draco…” his mother murmured gently, grabbing him and starting to usher him towards the door. “You should get out of the house.”
“I’ll be fine,” she added, seeing the protest on his face. She patted his arm gently and forced out a tight smile. “Come back tomorrow.”
He had only wanted to help—to distract from his mother and to draw the unwanted attention of Lucius’ wrath onto himself. As usual, he had instead made things worse for her. And now he was running away from his mess. As soon as he breached the bounds of the manor, he vomited bile into a bush.
With every tug of Malfoy’s mind into a new memory from his time as a Death Eater, Harry felt his own mind tugging Malfoy into frame in an equal and opposite measure. He wasn’t quite sure if he was doing it on purpose or if there was just a lot of overlapping guilt causing things to flood in from his subconscious. Either way, the tug-and-pull felt completely uncontrollable.
Propelled into another memory, Harry didn’t have a moment to catch his breath. He had particularly sausage-like fingers wrapped around his throat, preventing any air from coming through.
It was a familiar scene, his Uncle’s rage-red face puffy as he yelled obscenities that caused spit to fly out of the corners of his mouth and into young Harry’s face. His small frame flailed about helplessly, instinctively—desperate for air—but to no avail, his uncle had him effectively pinned to the windowsill by his neck.
“Get—off—me!” he gasped out, his head throbbing in agony with each heartbeat. Realizing that he may pass out soon, a wave of panic coursed through him. His uncle released his vice-like grip with a shout of pain and surprise.
Quick to react, Harry scrambled off the ground and fixed his wand directly on his uncle, still coughing and choking on attempted breaths.
Harry could feel the battle for dominance between his mind and Malfoy’s, eventually relenting as he was sucked into a maelstrom of Malfoy’s recollections presented in rapid succession.
First was hearing the screams of Luna Lovegood. It was in the manor, and it was clear from the memory that she had endured the torture silently for quite some time prior. When a scream finally did break from her lips, it came out as more of a strangled cry. Malfoy felt dizzy, and leaned a hand on the wall outside the room to steady himself.
Next was the wave of shame that hit him as he recalled feeling some sense of relief that Bellatrix had all but claimed Granger in the manor. As inventive as the sadistic witch was, at least the conversation would be, in the words of Bellatrix, girl-to-girl.
He had seen the look in those snatchers’ eyes when they had caught the Golden Trio—the ones that lingered on Granger’s pale flesh. He had heard the things they said about the castle, and he selfishly wasn’t confident that he could stomach something like that.
He recalled Granger’s body splayed out on his parlor floor, eyes red-rimmed and voice hoarse from sobbing, the word mudblood carved viciously into her forearm. It was almost as if he were shoving the image into Harry’s mind, challenging him to dismiss Malfoy’s culpability in what had permanently maimed his dearest friend.
More guilt flooded him, more shame—and then his own use of the cruciatus curse.
Voldemort stood just feet from Malfoy’s shoulder as they looked down on the two men bound before them. “Do it,” Voldemort commanded, his tone icy. And Malfoy realized that he couldn’t simply fix his eyes up and shove himself down for this one.
Instead, he let the guilt and the shame and the self-loathing flood him until it bubbled up as rage. He thought about how badly he wanted—no, needed—to hurt for the things he had done.
These men, Dolohov and Rowle, were basically him. They had sat through everything he had sat through, egging it on enthusiastically even where Malfoy had barely choked the words out.
“Crucio.” The word was off his lips and sending his magic to envelop the men in front of him. It had worked this time, starting them both writhing around as they attempted to stifle their agonied cries. “Crucio,” he repeated, the unbridled rage of self-condemnation nearly ripping his chest open.
“Well done, Draco,” Voldemort murmured beside him, sounding almost impressed. Something surged in Malfoy then, something that could be construed as pride but that he knew to be self-hatred, and the concentration of his magic darkened as the mens’ screams pitched even higher.
For a moment, it was as if Harry’s mind knew that Malfoy’s attempted cruciatus curse on him would come next. And it wasn’t sure if either of them could handle the scene that had followed that event.
Instead, Harry was catapulted into his own memory of a successful torture curse. Amycus Carrow had advanced on Professor McGonagall, who had refused to shy away in some of the most righteous Gryffindor courage that had ever been displayed.
When Carrow leaned over and spat in the older witch’s face, Harry leapt out and cast Crucio. Carrow’s body seemed to levitate and jostle about violently in the air before shattering into a nearby bookshelf, immediately crashing to the ground in a heap of bloodied flesh, splintered wood, and broken glass.
“I see what Bellatrix meant,” Harry mused. “You need to really mean it.”
With that, the two came spiraling back into the present day of the Room of Requirement. For a moment, all that could be heard between them was the rhythmic pattern of their labored breathing. Even the instrumental music and crackling of the fire that seemed omnipresent in the room appeared to have silenced.
“I need a moment,” Malfoy said finally, quickly stacking their notes and sliding them into his bag before turning on his heels and heading towards the door.
“Wait,” Harry pleaded, reaching out to grab Malfoy’s arm. Malfoy flinched away, taking another step backwards towards the door.
“What?” he nearly snarled, ripping his left arm out of Harry’s grasp and cradling it into his torso like a wounded animal.
“Are you gonna be okay?” was all that Harry managed to ask. “That was a lot.”
Malfoy snorted in derision, adjusting the bag on his shoulder. “I think I’ll live.”
“Malfoy…” Harry trailed off, fingers reaching out to rest on that shoulder before he could convince himself to do otherwise.
This time, Malfoy not only flinched, but skirted away as if he were a wild pygmy puff cornered against the outreaching flames of a fiendfyre. His eyes were crazed and distant, similar to the look behind them when he and Harry had actually been surrounded by fiendfyre in this very room.
“Let it rest, Potter,” was all he said, robes a flurry as he bolted out of the room.
Well, letting things rest had never been a particular strong suit of Harry’s, particularly when it came to the whereabouts and actions of Draco Malfoy. But he’d be proud to report that he had held off for a FULL forty five minutes after returning to the dormitories before checking Malfoy’s location on the Marauder’s Map.
When he did, concern immediately etched itself into his features. He tried to shake it off, to remind himself that Malfoy didn’t have the power to have nefarious plans of any kind anymore. But part of him knew that wasn’t the real cause for concern.
Harry tried to remember that Malfoy had rejected his attempts at communication in every way, that the man likely did genuinely want to be left alone. But each time he tried to put his wand away and tuck himself in for sleep, images of mussed up blonde hair and silver eyes wide with alarm wormed their way into his head.
Heaving a disgruntled sigh, Harry draped the invisibility cloak over himself, put on shoes, and began to make his way through the castle.
When he opened the heavy door to the Astronomy Tower’s North lookout, Malfoy nearly jumped out of his skin in alarm. He was positioned sitting upright on the ledge, head now on a swivel and wand raised towards the door with a shaking hand.
“Who’s there?” Malfoy asked to the air, eyes frantically darting around the area surrounding the door.
It wasn’t until this moment when Harry remembered that he was indeed still invisible. Removing the cloak, he held his wand up in open palms and said, “Relax, it’s me.”
Malfoy’s face went through a journey of expressions, from instant relief to utter confusion to disbelieving irritation. He lowered his wand, the momentary terror on his face replaced with a scowl. “What are you doing up here, Potter?”
"Well, I saw you up here and I just wanted to make sure that you—that you didn't do anything stupid..." Harry trailed off, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. If he was trying to mask the concern on his face, he could feel that he wasn't doing a very good job of it.
Malfoy snorted softly, eyes fixed on the reflection of the moon across the lake. "I'm not the stupid one here, Potter," he spat out, but his words didn't have any of their usual bite.
When Malfoy looked back at him, Harry had expected to see the usual snarl still plastered across his face, but instead he just looked tired—exhausted, really. He looked as exhausted as Harry felt, with his cheeks sunken in and heavy bags under his eyes.
"Will you just leave me alone ?" he snapped, swinging his legs back over the side of the ledge to fully face Harry. Harry hesitated for a moment, some part of him wanting to stay and offer Malfoy some semblance of comfort. But Harry had seldom been provided such comfort in his own times of enfeeblement, and didn’t have the creativity to draw words from an empty pool.
"I promise not to pitch myself off the Astronomy Tower," Malfoy rolled his eyes as if to emphasize how ridiculous the notion was, "if you just go back to your little friends and forget that you saw me here. I'll see you in Potions tomorrow."
"Er, right then," said Harry, cheeks blushing pink with embarrassment that he had even come all the way up here.
When Malfoy finally heard the door swing shut behind Harry, he let go of a little tension in his shoulders that he didn't even know was there. He turned back around to swing his legs off the edge of the tower and leaned right to rest his head against the cool stone, trying not to envision the Headmaster he had been charged to kill plummeting towards the ground.
…
Harry fiddled with the vials that lined the shelves above their pensieve, waiting with bated breath for Malfoy to re-emerge and say something. They had agreed to this: that they would dig into memories with strong likelihood of interference during occlumency training, that they’d do it in the pensieve to avoid any further severe legilimency mishaps, and that they wouldn’t speak of it outside of this room.
He had started off with a series of childhood memories that were really rather tame, in Harry’s opinion. But it was still quite vulnerable, and that was scarier than any curse.
It was one thing to hear about the incidents of Number 4 Privet Drive—to have the saga told as a heroic epoch that distanced itself from the reality of being a neglected orphan who was routinely punished for daring to exist.
It was another thing entirely to see them happening in real time—to see his small frame only growing smaller as he nibbled on scraps of his brother’s dinner, to see his Uncle Vernon unceremoniously grab a fistful of his ragged hair and send him spiraling onto the floor, to see him nurse bruised ribs from his brother’s friends as he lay on a paper-thin mat in the dusty cupboard underneath the stairs.
Harry was starting to understand why Malfoy had insisted they see his shameful memories together through legilimency—the waiting was torturous. After what felt like hours but couldn’t have been longer than a couple of minutes, Malfoy resurfaced and took a gasp of air as he would when breaching the surface of the lake.
He turned to look at Harry with an odd expression on his face, one torn between empathy and guilt. “I’m surprised that I never picked up on that.”
“Do you…” Harry nearly choked the words out. “Have any experience with that?”
“Well, I’ve only read The Grimoire of Eternal Recall and parts of Fragments of the Mind’s Veil , so I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert or anything—”
Harry grimaced, lips pressing into a tight line.
“Oh,” Malfoy paused. “You meant do I have any experience with that.”
The boys stared at each other in silence for a moment.
“Yes,” Malfoy admitted rather sheepishly, “I do. I figured you would have gathered as much from what you saw in the library.”
Harry recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “I—no, I didn’t…”
He spoke softly now, voice barely creeping above a whisper. He tried to keep the concern out of his tone and facial expression, but he could tell that it still showed as clear as day. “Your father did that?”
Malfoy chuckled darkly, features snapping back into their usual solemn apathy. “It was for good reason, Potter. You met me as a kid—I was quite the little shit. I’m just glad my father knocked it out of me before the Dark Lord came into the picture.” Malfoy shivered, eyes glazing over at the thought.
Harry’s brow furrowed and he leaned in, trying to search Malfoy’s face for any cracks in the mask that he was clearly putting on. Finding nothing, he leaned back against the wall and shook his head, sighing.
“How long did that go on for?” Harry asked after a pause.
Malfoy’s face flushed and he brought a hand awkwardly up to the back of his neck. It was one of the only times in which Harry could recall Malfoy looking genuinely awkward. “I don’t suppose it ever really stopped.”
Harry’s face must have blanched something awful, because Malfoy went into full defensive protest mode. “What I mean is that it was manageable. Here, I’ll show you,” he said, filling the pensieve with one of his own swirling silvery thoughts.
Harry held his breath instinctively and dunked his face into the glimmering liquid, immediately feeling the scene setting into place around him. A young Draco Malfoy, probably only a couple years younger than they were today, stood at the corner of the Malfoy Manor dining room as Lucius pored over documents on the other side of the dining table.
Malfoy didn't cower before his father like he had when he was a kid. It was clear from his demeanor and expression that there were many places he’d prefer to be than in this room with the present company, but the experience of interacting with Lucius was mostly just an irritating thing to have to deal with day-in and day-out.
"Draco." He could practically hear the condescension dripping from the older Malfoy’s voice. "It's getting to be a bit much with the bruises."
Malfoy looked down, and Harry followed his gaze to the bruises in various stages of healing that decorated his arms. Purple marks in the shape of fingerprints circled around his wrists and a large brown blotch was forming on the outside of his right forearm.
"Sorry," Malfoy mumbled while he turned to exit the room. As expected, he had committed some perceived infraction before he'd been able to leave, and Harry saw a stinging hex hit his back with such force that it nearly knocked the wind out of him.
"And don't mumble," his father grit out. "You know I hate that."
Malfoy took a breath to steady himself before opening his mouth and speaking a bit more clearly, "I'm sorry, sir."
His father gave a curt nod and returned to the documents on the table, giving Malfoy just enough time to slip out of the room.
Harry stood from the pensieve, reflexively shaking any excess liquid from his hair. “So that shite’s complicated, huh?” He had asked the question in a gentle and understanding tone, but he cringed at how ridiculous the words sounded.
There was a moment of silence, and then Malfoy started chuckling. He wasn’t exactly sure what about—just the incredulousness of the situation, possibly. How was anybody meant to respond to that, anyways? It was as normal of a response as could be expected.
Before he knew it, Malfoy was folded over, clutching his stomach and gasping for air because of how hard he was laughing. This eventually turned into heaving and before long, he had started to cry. Horrible, painful sobs wracked out of his body—and he was somehow still laughing.
He looked up at Harry, who was eyeing him cautiously as if he’d gone completely mental, and this just made him laugh and cry even harder.
He nearly choked on the tears and the laughter, just sitting there cackling like a maniac for what felt like minutes—struggling to even find pauses where he could gasp for air.
Eventually, he was able to compose himself enough to talk.
“Sorry,” he apologized, taking a deep breath and wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his cloak. “That just got me for some reason.”
“Er—it’s okay,” Harry said, still eyeing him as if he might fully break down at any moment. “That’s probably enough of the pensieve for today. Why don’t we move back to the couch?”
Malfoy just nodded, his breathing pattern once again gaining some consistency.
“Have you visited him?” asked Harry nonchalantly once they had made their way back over to the couch and sat down in the warmth of the fire.
“No, I can't yet,” Malfoy said, curling a leg into himself and seeming to shrink deeper into the fabric of the cushions. “He's in the high-security wing, with the dementors. He won't be moved for another three years.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I'm sorry,” said Harry, his face serious as he leaned in a bit closer to Malfoy. And he realized that it was authentic—he knew that it was Lucius’ own beliefs and decisions that had landed him in Azkaban, but he also knew that his imprisonment had essentially caused Malfoy to lose a family member. And if there was one thing that Harry had experienced a completely painstaking number of times, it was losing a loved one.
Malfoy shrugged absentmindedly. “It's fine.”
“Do you think you will visit him?” Harry asked, genuinely curious.
Malfoy sighed, sounding tired. “I dunno, Potter. Maybe. A lot can change in three years. I don't know where I’ll be with everything.”
Harry reflected on who in his life he'd willingly go through a pack of dementors for, and realized that the list was quite limited. Yet here was Malfoy, looking like he would seriously consider going through all of that for a man who seemed to have hexed him with a concerning amount of regularity.
“That’s awfully brave of you,” Harry admitted quietly. “I can’t name many people I’d go through a pack of dementors for.”
Malfoy barked out a laugh, nearly snorting. “Oh, please. You say that, but it’s not true. You’re Harry bloody Potter. I’ve seen you staring down the barrel of the cruciatus curse and still only focused on saving the people around you. Honestly, who wouldn’t you go through a pack of dementors for?”
Harry was quiet for a moment, considering, and then noticed Malfoy’s face fall—a subtle, almost imperceptible change, but he picked up on it nonetheless. “Well, except for me,” Malfoy added softly.
“I would face dementors for you,” Harry countered, almost instinctively, then broke into a quietly triumphant smile. “Actually, I already did.”
“What?” Malfoy asked, looking puzzled at the assertion. “When?”
“At the Wizengamot,” Harry said easily. “I gave memories to testify for you and your mother. It was before they had the dementors removed, so I still had to deal with them hovering around whenever we were in a legal space.”
Malfoy’s jaw had dropped open at the admission, but Harry just shuddered at the memory of the purveyors of freezing dread that had loomed over the courtrooms. “Honestly, I had assumed you already knew that, what with you being nicer to me than usual this year and your mother sending me treats by owl every five minutes.”
“My mum’s been sending you treats, has she?” Malfoy chuckled fondly, the sound much lighter than his usual derisive snorting. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she had that information and didn’t share it with me—probably didn’t want to upset me by bringing the trials back up.”
“Actually, I wasn’t aware it was your mother until a little while ago,” Harry recalled. “I kept getting anonymous care packages. And then you offered me chocolate in the library—I had never seen that brand anywhere before, other than in the care packages. I figured it must’ve been pretty rare. And then you said that your mum sent them to you.”
A small smile flitted across Malfoy’s lips. “That sounds like her. She can be very doting.”
“Don’t tell her I know,” Harry protested suddenly. “I don’t think she wants me to know it’s her.”
“No, I’m sure she doesn’t,” Malfoy agreed, still smiling and shaking his head.
“Also,” Harry argued, raising his index finger as if to make an astute observation. “I’m a little scared that she’ll stop sending them if she figures out that I know it’s her. And I really don’t want her to stop sending that chocolate.”
Malfoy laughed at that, a bright and tinkling sound that seemed to send a beam of light through whatever dark had been clouding around him these past few years. Harry vowed then and there to say more things that would cause Draco Malfoy to make that sound.
Chapter 11
Notes:
TW on this chapter for implied/referenced abuse, alcoholism of secondary/tertiary characters, and heavy social drinking.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
The next time they met, Potter appeared more disheveled than usual—if that was even possible. His jet black mop of hair stuck up in a cowlick on the back of his head, shooting out in divergent directions. His emerald eyes were bleary and a little bloodshot, appearing a dull seafoam rather than their usual shining cerulean.
“‘M sorry, overslept,” Potter offered by way of explanation, putting his things down on the desk next to Draco and running a hand through the front of his black waves. It did next to nothing, as the unruly tresses immediately popped back into place upon being flattened.
Draco found his mind fixed on the adorability of the motion until he snapped himself out of it, wiping the smile off of his face and clearing his throat. “Overslept at 7PM on a Wednesday?”
“Admittedly, my sleep schedule has been pretty messed up since the weekend,” Potter explained, laying out their coursework on the desk and dipping his quill into a pot of ink. “And it’s easier to sleep in the dormitories when nobody’s there.”
“Get it while you can, I suppose,” Draco relented, striking through an edit on his parchment. “I take it you had a fun time this weekend?”
“Yeah, it was good.” Potter grinned. “Much more fun now that we’re all legal adults with free reign of the place. Not that we ever fully abided by most of those rules anyways.”
“I saw that you went to Hogsmeade on Saturday, too,” Potter added, pausing the motion of his quill to meet Draco’s gaze as a prompt.
“Keeping tabs on me again, are you, Potter?” Draco smirked smugly, sneaking a look at Potter’s face through the side of his eyes.
Potter blushed slightly. “Er, no, I—”
“Relax. I’m joking,” he said, continuing to annotate a text on the history of memory alteration spells. “If you must know, I went to meet my mum for tea.”
Potter nodded. “Oh. That’s nice. How is your mum?”
Her husband and sister are both serving life sentences in Azkaban and her son has the mark of the century’s most powerful dark wizard permanently burned into his flesh. How do you think she’s doing? Draco wanted to say, but stopped himself.
“She’s okay,” was all that he said, hoping that Potter would change the subject.
Potter frowned. “Was it nice to see her?”
Draco sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and reeling in the impulse to snap at Potter. His brain was torn between “no, seeing the one person who loves me more than life itself was terrible” and “please stop asking personal questions about my mother just because you don’t have one” while his mouth had settled on “Mostly. It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
Draco set his quill down and angled himself back towards Potter, who seemed blissfully unaware of potential intrusion on his end. Sensing that this conversation wasn’t going to end without resolution, Draco elaborated. “I love my mother dearly—you know that—but I worry about her. She’s so sad nowadays and I don’t think she really speaks to anybody save for me and the house elf.”
"You still keep house elves?" Potter’s tone was curious, not condemning, but Draco felt his face flush with shame regardless.
"Well, just Mippy. She technically works for my mum,” Draco elaborated, eyes resolutely focused on the floor.
“We've both gifted her dozens of clothing items over the years,” he added quickly. “So she's not technically our House Elf, per se, but she absolutely refuses to leave—says the Manor is her home."
A look came over Potter’s face, one of quiet curiosity and possibly burgeoning respect, but he didn’t say anything more—just nodded and smiled softly.
"I'm glad my mum has someone to talk to. I quite worry that she would never speak to another soul again if not for me and Mippy,” Draco admitted, feeling the words spill out with ease now that he had gotten himself started. “Plus, Mippy is the best. She was always extraordinarily kind to me. She'd snap in to take care of me whenever—well, whenever my father was in a mood. Which was pretty much all the time."
Potter faltered for a moment, hesitation apparent on his face. “She doesn’t talk to her sister?”
Draco frowned, turning back to his work and starting to copy down a sentence from the textbook. “Bellatrix is in the high-security wing for even longer than Lucius.”
“No, I meant Andromeda,” Potter clarified, speaking the words in a tone more quiet and gentle than Draco had ever assumed possible from him.
“Andromeda?” Draco questioned out loud, suddenly remembering that his mother did have another sister. His frown deepened. “They don’t speak, that I know of. I’d wager that my mum is embarrassed for rejecting and abandoning her with the rest of the family all those years ago. And I'd guess that Andromeda wouldn’t take too kindly to that blast from the past showing up on her doorstep either.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Potter suggested, mouth spreading into a small smile.
“What would you know about that anyways?” Draco’s lip curled in annoyance.
“Well, she is the grandma of my godson,” Potter added casually.
Draco furrowed his brow. “Who?”
Potter looked amused. “Andromeda.”
“What?”
“I swear, Malfoy, I thought you were second in our year. Do try to keep up.” Potter was toying with him now, playful banter causing his lips to quirk. After a while of Draco staring at him, mouth agape as he attempted to piece together the puzzle, Potter must have decided to take mercy on him.
“Andromeda’s daughter, Nymphadora Tonks, was part of the Order of the Phoenix. She was one of the coolest and most confidently individualistic people I’ve ever met. She was a metamorphmagus, too—but that’s all a story for another time. Anyways, she ended up marrying Professor Lupin after our sixth year. They had Teddy shortly after and named me godfather.”
Potter’s eyes went a bit glassy when he spoke about them, drifting towards the opposite wall with a melancholy expression.
“Merlin, how did I not know that you had a godson?” was all that Draco managed to get out.
Potter let out a laugh. “You didn’t really know the first thing about me until a month ago. And it’s not something that would be plastered on the first page of the Prophet.”
“Fair enough.” Draco shrugged. He was starting to wonder just how many things he had never learned about Harry Potter, despite being borderline obsessed with making him miserable for the first five years of their interactions.
“Anyways, I try to do a quick visit with Teddy most weekends.” Potter said, beaming at the memory of his godson. “Andromeda takes care of him right now, so I see her quite a bit too—at their house and in Hogsmeade. So I can say with relative certainty that she would be quite amicable to a reconciliatory owl from her sister.”
Draco smiled and nodded in affirmation. “I’ll mention it next time we speak.”
The two worked in tandem for a few hours, breaking the quiet thrum of the Room of Requirement’s instrumentals only to cross-reference documentation or add to their growing list of occlumency theories. Once their eyes were glazing over from reading and their fingers were aching from writing, Potter broke the silence.
“A bunch of us are grabbing drinks in Hogsmeade again this Saturday,” he mentioned as he started to unceremoniously pack up his belongings. “Do you wanna join?”
“I don’t drink much,” Draco said, recalling the apparently riveting tales of a drunken Potter told at dinner the other night.
“That’s alright. Neville and Theo don’t drink much either. You can have butterbeer or pumpkin juice instead, if you want.”
“Theo, huh?”
Potter chuckled. “Does that surprise you?”
“A bit, if I’m honest.”
“Honestly, Malfoy, everybody’s well forgotten about holding war grudges at this point unless someone is actively being a bigot. We all just want to get through this year as best as we can.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s…” Draco trailed off. He had been to the Nott Manor several times throughout his childhood—it wasn’t unusual for Tiberius Nott to stumble into the parlor at any hour of the day muttering obscenities and reeking of firewhiskey. Theo would pretend not to notice, of course, but Draco could still remember how he would flinch at heavy footsteps and slammed cabinets on those days. “Nevermind.”
“His dad?” Potter guessed, green eyes suddenly piercing right through Draco. “Yeah, he mentioned that once. Didn’t get the details, but it was enough.”
Potter’s eyes widened suddenly as he took a step back, almost as if to survey Draco from a better angle. “Oh. Did your…?”
Draco just made a quizzical expression before he realized what Potter was asking. “Oh! Oh—no, my father didn’t drink much...my mum did—does, but she's not an angry drunk or anything. I don't have problems about it.”
“I'd drink a lot too if I were married to Lucius,” he added, chuckling.
“Right,” Potter said, chuckling softly and stretching his arms awkwardly. “So you’ll come then?”
“I’ll think about it,” said Draco, shrugging noncommittally.
“Merlin, you’re worse than Hermione,” Harry griped, opening the door back to the empty corridor. “Don’t think about it; just say yes.”
Draco rolled his eyes and feigned irritation, but he felt something light up in his chest. “Okay then, yes. Just for an hour or two.”
The smile that beamed across Potter’s face as he turned back was almost enough to make him feel good about his decision. Almost.
…
Draco walked alone through the winding road to Hogsmeade, the October wind whipping at his face and causing him to shiver despite his cloak. It hadn’t been cool enough to snow just yet, but the mornings had started to leave a thin covering of icy frost along the grass.
As he walked, Draco recounted the restorative properties of vervain, which potions contain the herb as an ingredient, and the effects for which it serves as an antidote. He put his hands in his pockets as he walked, fingers instinctually clutching the hawthorn wood wand like his life depended on it. Shoulders tense, he worked his way meticulously through the small crowd of people that had started to populate Hogsmeade in the late morning.
Approaching the familiar building of Remitt’s Tea Room, Draco ran his left hand through the front of his hair before entering the establishment. A small bell rang quietly as the door swung inwards, revealing a cozy shop with walls of old brick and high windows.
A few small groups were scattered among tables that traced the left side of the shop and couches gathered around coffee tables in the back, talking in hushed tones amongst themselves. The lighting was gentle and potted green plants seemed to frame each angle of the shop.
The woman at the counter, whom Draco recognized as Galina Remitt, wore flowing emerald robes and dangling gold earrings with her curly, black hair pulled loosely into a bun. She paused her brewing as Draco entered, eyes flickering his way as she gave a soft smile.
“The usual today, Mr. Malfoy?” she asked as he approached the counter, already grabbing a cup and placing a tea bag inside.
“Yes—thank you, Galina,” he replied, returning her soft smile. “For my mother as well, please. And two scones, if you don’t mind.”
“Absolutely, Mr. Malfoy! That’ll be three sickles. I’ll bring them to your table when they’re ready,” the older witch said, already busying herself with the task.
Draco slid four sickles across the counter, thanked Galina again, and found a seat in one of the small black tables lining the opposite wall. It wasn’t until his mother walked in that Draco felt his shoulders relax entirely.
Narcissa Malfoy stood in robes made entirely of black lace, her hair now dyed back to its natural platinum blonde as it cascaded down her shoulders. Her eyes scanned the tea room until they landed on her son and her shoulders visibly relaxed. Draco stood to greet her, and she smiled as she walked over and embraced him in a short hug.
“Oh, my darling boy, I’m so glad to see you—as always,” she spoke tearfully, grabbing his hands gently. She looked his frame up and down and tutted quietly in disapproval. “My, I do hope they’re feeding you at that school.”
Draco sighed in faux annoyance as he sat back down, but he couldn’t lie to himself—his mother’s fussing was a wonderful thing, and nobody in the world could make you feel as fussed over as Narcissa Malfoy. Draco’s back had hardly touched the seat when said fussing began anew.
“How are you holding up, sweetheart?” Narcissa asked, gloved hands wringing with worry. “Poor thing, you look exhausted. Have you been sleeping any better? Did you try the chamomile tea? It has a touch of calming draught in it.”
“Mum, I’m quite alright,” Draco said, flashing her a reassuring smile. “I’ve just been focusing on my studies. Up late in the library, that's all.”
“That’s excellent, Draco. Just make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, too,” his mother doted, placing a hand on his once again. “I’m so very proud of you—I hope you know that. How are your classes going?”
Before Draco could answer, Galina had returned with their drinks, placing an earl gray tea in front of Draco and a black tea with two sugars in front of Narcissa.
“Narcissa, it’s lovely to see you again. How are the renovations on the Manor coming along?” Galina asked, placing a small plate of scones with jam on the table in front of the pair as well.
“Wonderfully, Galina. Thank you very much for asking,” Narcissa answered fondly. “You know how home renovations are. I suspect it will have to be done one of these days,” she added with a tone of theatrical exasperation, waving her hand for emphasis.
Galina giggled at the remark before bidding mother and son farewell, stating that she would just be over at the counter should they need anything else.
“What a wonderful young woman, that one—so friendly and polite. Beautiful, too. And a business owner!” Narcissa gushed. “Must be a passion project, as well. Her mother was a Prewett, so I’m sure that money is no object.”
“Yes, Galina is incomparably kind,” Draco agreed, taking a sip of his tea.
“She’s not much older than you are, Draco,” Narcissa went on, still smiling as she craned her neck to look at Galina once again. “Only a few years. And I don’t see a ring.”
“Mother…” Draco started, his tone tinged with a warning.
“Alright, alright…I’ll stop,” Narcissa conceded, putting her hands up in mock defeat. “Can’t blame a mother for trying. So, how are your classes going then?”
Draco went on to tell his mother about the Outstanding he had received on his recent Astronomy assignment, the grueling problem set assigned by Professor Vector last week, and his biweekly senior project work sessions with Harry Potter.
His mother’s eyes widened slightly in curiosity at the mention of his senior project—Draco had been incredibly sparing with the details, other than that it had to do with occlumency and he had been stuck working with Potter.
“And how is that going?” his mother prodded, taking a bit of her scone as she motioned for Draco to do the same. Draco almost rolled his eyes slightly but did as he was bid, washing the bite of scone down with another sip of his tea.
Narcissa nodded, pleased. “You seemed a bit exasperated the last time we spoke about it. Are you two still finding it difficult to work together?”
“We’ve come to see eye-to-eye on quite a few things recently. I’m starting to feel very optimistic about the direction our project is going,” Draco said, truthfully. “Dare I say, I’ve actually found him significantly less difficult to engage with than some of my old ‘friends’.”
His mother was smiling a bit again. “That’s excellent, sweetheart. Like I said, it will be important to let bygones be bygones whenever possible in the coming months. There’s no room in the future for our old grudges to persist.”
“Actually, there was something I wanted to mention to you,” Draco started, suddenly feeling slightly apprehensive. “While we were studying, Potter mentioned your sister, Andromeda. She’s apparently the primary caretaker of his godson, the child of Professor Lupin and Andromeda’s daughter. Have you ever thought about reaching out to her?”
His mother’s lips pursed at the mention of her estranged sister. She looked down and began stirring a spoon around the few drops of liquid left in her teacup. “I don’t believe that my sister would benefit at all from my sudden re-emergence in her life,” she nearly whispered. “We’ve ultimately done much more harm to each other than good.”
Draco nodded contemplatively, then added, “I very much could have said the same about Potter.”
A small smirk twinged at the corner of Narcissa’s mouth before she raised her cup to get the last sip of tea. “I’ll think about it,” she promised.
Don’t think about it; just say yes, Draco was tempted to say. The grin that had formed on his lips from that thought stayed present well after he had hugged his mother goodbye.
By the time that tea with his mother was over, it was well into the afternoon. Since Draco had for some reason agreed to meet half of the bloody eighth-year class at The Three Broomsticks around 6PM, he opted to walk around the village for a small while and see how many ionic charges he could list from alchemy class to keep his brain distracted.
Draco was surprised to find a small group already gathered around one of the long tables in the back of the pub. Granger, Weasley, Potter, Lovegood, Michael Corner, and Theo Nott sat scattered around the corner, seeming wrapped in conversation.
As Draco approached, Theo was the first to speak. “Well, would you look at that—Draco Malfoy finally graces us with his presence!”
“Come on, have a seat,” Theo said, patting the part of the bench next to him. “The table got baskets of chips and the craft beer special all around. Fair warning, they’re 12%—Harry mentioned you don’t drink much, so be careful with those.”
“Potter’s been talking about me, has he?” Draco smirked in his direction, causing Potter to roll his eyes and take a long sip of his own drink.
“Oh, Potter gets quite chatty when he has a few brews in him,” Theo laughed.
“That’s an understatement,” Weasley confirmed from beside Potter, snorting a laugh and nudging him with his elbow.
“Can’t wait to see that,” Draco snickered, taking a long sip of his own drink. It was surprisingly good, with notes of amber and honey.
Dean Thomas, Longbottom, and Hannah Abbott all arrived together a bit later, causing another round of welcomes and jesting. As last time, the conversation went by with much more ease than Draco had anticipated—he actually found himself laughing and enjoying himself as he finished off his second drink.
“I’ve gotta say,” Theo began, turning to Draco with a more serious expression on his face, “as chatty as Harry is when drinking, he’ll hardly say anything about how your senior thesis project is panning out. Maybe it’s the Slytherin in me, but not having that information is killing me.”
Draco hummed in consideration and looked over at Potter, who seemed to have tuned into their conversation at just the right time. “It’s nothing fancy,” Draco reassured Theo. “We’re mostly focusing on Occlumency. Stuff I learned from Severus.”
“That’s interesting,” Theo said. “Any idea what you’re trying to do when you graduate? Something related to that?”
Draco sighed. “Honestly, I’ve mostly been trying to just get through the year first. Why? Do you have something planned out?”
“Well actually,” Theo started, looking a bit sheepish. “I was hoping you’d come tonight so that I could talk to you about it in particular.”
“Talk to me about it?” Draco repeated, taken aback. “What is it?”
“Well, Michael and I have been doing some really interesting work on media coverage of magical events throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the nature of the first-person sources cited in that media coverage.” Theo’s cheeks started to color a bit as he spoke more quickly. “And, well—I always wanted to be a journalist or a historian, ever since I was a little kid, but I would’ve been terrified to even bring that topic up with my father. You speaking up this summer, it was incredibly brave and I’m sure that what you went through was horrific but I wanted you to know that things are a lot better for a lot of people because of it. I finally feel okay—hell, I feel hopeful, for the first time in a long time. And I wanted to thank you for that.”
“Theo, I—that is so incredibly cool,” Draco said earnestly. He could feel himself starting to tear up at the words and wondered for a moment if the liquor was somehow attached to his tear ducts. “Seriously. It’s awesome that you were able to rekindle a childhood dream. And you’re welcome, but I didn’t do anything to get you there—that’s all you.”
“Thanks, Draco,” he said, taking a chip from the center of the table. “I’m glad you came out tonight.”
“Me too,” Draco said, also grabbing a chip. “Maybe I’ll have my own big career revelation tonight.”
“Well, what did you wanna be when you were little?” Potter asked from across the table. “No holds barred. Minister of Magic? Auror? Potions Professor?”
Draco paused to think on that for a moment, but couldn’t for the life of him come up with a real answer. “I don’t think that I really wanted to be anything in particular, to be honest…” he trailed off. “I guess I didn’t really think that I would make it long enough to decide on that.”
Draco cringed, not anticipating how completely angsty and depressing that would sound. He took a sip of his drink and looked away, hoping for a change in conversation topic soon.
“That’s so real,” Potter reassured him. And the tension in Draco’s shoulders melted a little.
“Honestly, I don’t even know what I’m meant to be doing now,” Potter admitted. “It’s like my whole life up until this point has been painstakingly planned for me by other people. And I couldn’t diverge from that path, not without everybody dying. But now that I have some time to do what I want to do, I’m realizing that I have no idea what that even is. Or who I even am.”
“Could be kind of fun to not know who you are, I think,” Draco chimed in. “I mean, think about it: You get to fill that space with whatever you want. Certainly better than knowing who you are, hating it, and feeling powerless to change it.”
“Oof. Felt that,” Theo said from the side.
Potter seemed to stew on that as he took another sip of his cider. “I’m gonna run to the loo,” he announced, starting to scoot out of the bench.
“Me too!” Draco declared, scooting out after him. As he stood, the world suddenly felt very dizzy and he realized that he needed to grip the hightop behind them for balance—only it wasn’t the hightop; it was Potter’s shoulders.
“Merlin, he’s a lightweight!” Weasley quipped, causing a few giggles. “Maybe slow down a bit, mate.”
“Right, yeah,” Draco said, not bothering to remove his hands from Potter’s shoulders as they made their way to the lavatory at the back of the pub.
As they entered the loo, Potter turned around and let out a laugh after looking at Draco. He assumed he must look terrible, because he felt so incredibly good and so incredibly dizzy at the same time. “Seriously, you doing okay?” Potter asked. “You look like you might be sick.”
“Did Weasley just call me mate?” Draco asked, brow knitted in confusion.
Potter laughed more at that.
“Sorry,” Draco apologized, unsure for what, still leaning against the wall with one hand.
“Don’t be,” Potter asserted, slurring slightly as he gave a lopsided grin. “We fought in a war. We deserve to let loose.”
“ You fought in a war,” Draco clarified, suddenly feeling very solemn. “I spent most of those years cowering under the Dark Lord’s wanding and wishing I were dead.”
“Malfoy, you forget that I’ve seen your memories of the time. You were fighting a war just as much as anybody else—one that was inescapable and in your own home. And you didn’t have any more say in the matter than I did,” Potter spoke, then chuckled. “Actually, you might’ve had even less. I literally started an army; you weren’t even willingly conscripted.”
Potter was incredibly chatty when drunk, Draco was beginning to realize.
“Even with everything you’ve shown me and everything we’ve talked about, I can’t imagine what that was like.” Potter kept talking as he used the loo, as if they were chatting about last week’s Quidditch match rather than the most powerful dark wizard of the last century. “I mean Voldemort was in my head, but the potential for him to be lurking in any corner of your house is a whole different thing.”
“It’s easier to relate on the family stuff,” he continued. “At least the stuff with your dad, I mean. It’s actually been really nice to talk with somebody who gets it. My Uncle Vernon was a massive dickhead. I don’t think we’ll even have time to go through all the memories of him being a violent piece of shit towards me for things I couldn’t control.”
“He did seem like a real arsehole,” Draco said, moving to wash his hands.
“For sure,” Potter agreed, joining Draco at the sink. “He used to lock me in my bloody cupboard bedroom whenever I accidentally did magic—which was super often, cause I was so scared and angry all the time.”
“Yeah, my father used to dig his knee into the center of my back while forcing my shoulders back and say ‘slouching is for mudbloods',” Draco recalled bitterly. “Eventually, I guess that was too much effort and he'd just jab me with his cane instead.”
“At least I have impeccable posture, though,” he added, straightening up in an overly formal way and chuckling to himself.
Potter didn't laugh, pausing as he opened the lavatory door to assess Draco in that way that he does.
“It’s fine, really,” Draco placated, waving a hand dismissively as they made their way back to the table. “No hate like Pureblood love and all that.”
“That's funny,” Potter mused. “The muggles have a very similar saying.”
As the evening went on, Draco realized that he had stayed in The Three Broomsticks well beyond the hour or two that he had promised. Small groups kept branching off to go back to the castle until it was just Draco and the Golden Trio left, each nursing the very last remnants of their drinks and gulping down water simultaneously.
“Well, beautiful,” Weasley garbled out, swinging an arm drunkenly around Granger’s shoulders. “What do you say we head back to my place?”
Potter gagged exaggeratedly. “Get a room,” he jested, rolling his eyes at the romantics.
“Maybe we will,” Granger grinned, only seeming egged on by Potter’s disgusted reactions. “You two will be alright getting back on your own?”
“Yep, we’ll be fine. See you two tomorrow,” Potter said. The two of them nodded and walked out of the pub hand-in-hand, looking like it was taking effort not to shag each other right there on the bartop.
“Here,” Potter said, nudging the remaining basket of chips closer to Draco. “You should eat the last of these—you’ll be less hungover tomorrow.”
“Merlin, you and my mother are in cahoots to be constantly feeding me,” Draco groaned, but the liquor made him realize how empty his stomach really was and he happily put away the last couple chips in the basket.
“Ah, well, we’ve worked well together in the past,” Potter joked, starting to exit the pub. Draco followed, feeling only slightly more stable than he did an hour ago.
“Are you alright to walk back?” Potter asked as Draco stumbled a bit, grabbing his arm.
“Right as rain!” Draco pressed on. “I could apparate us back, if that’s easier?”
Potter nearly giggled. “I don’t think you’re in the right state of mind to be apparating anywhere, Malfoy.”
“I’m taking N.E.W.T.-level apparition; it’ll be fine,” Draco hiccuped. “Can’t go inside the castle, though.”
“You didn’t get ward clearance to apparate inside the castle?” Potter asked, making his own way clumsily back towards the castle with Draco in tow. “How are you practicing for the N.E.W.T.?”
Draco chuckled darkly, stumbling a bit. “You really thought they’d let the Death Eater kid who let several adult Death Eaters into the school have access to apparating on school grounds? I only get to practice when I go off-campus. Otherwise, I just do the written coursework.”
“But that’s…” Harry had stopped walking and was just staring at him now, incredulous. “That’s so unfair! How are you supposed to do well on the practical portion of the test?”
“Well, Potter, you may not have noticed,” Draco’s lips curled into a grin and his chin raised slightly as he spoke. “But sometimes things are unfair. This is one of those things that doesn’t matter very much—I can apparate circles around most of the kids in class anyways.”
He took on a bit of a pompous tone at the end that set something alight in Harry. He hadn’t heard Draco speak like that in ages, the self-important countenance of his younger self having been replaced by the charade of cool indifference. He found himself grinning like a fool and chuckling a bit, sticking his hands into his pockets to warm them.
Draco didn’t realize that Potter had successfully distracted him from attempting drunken apparition until they arrived at the castle gates. He let out a small huff at the epiphany and Potter chuckled in acknowledgement—which would have immensely irritated Draco if instant karma didn’t hit Potter in the form of nearly tripping up the front steps.
“Do you want to go back to the Room of Requirement for a bit?” Potter suggested after he had regained his footing. “There might be a lot of people in the common room and I just don’t feel like dealing with them yet. Plus Crabbe looks like he wants to murder me every time I breathe in his direction."
“The Room of Requirement sounds nice,” Draco said honestly, shaking his head to clear the thought of Crabbe and Goyle from his otherwise temporarily euphoric mental state. The truth was that Vincent Crabbe probably wanted to murder Draco, too—every scar on his face evidence that he had been abandoned in fiendfyre flames. And that was before Draco’s testimony against Crabbe Sr.
When they got into the Room of Requirement, there was an extra long couch by the fireplace and square glass cups on the coffee table. Potter immediately crashed onto the couch, pulling his cloak off and removing his shoes. Draco followed suit, sitting haphazardly next to him and loosening his emerald tie.
“Odd addition from the room with the whiskey glasses,” Draco pointed out, amused. He turned to Potter, who was holding up a flask of firewhiskey with a toothy grin.
Draco laughed at the proud expression on his face. “Of course you have that. Screw it, then, go ahead,” he said, motioning to the glasses.
Potter poured a shot or two into each glass and they gave each other a cheers, sipping the dark auburn liquid. Draco nearly gagged on the burning liquor, so distracted by the bitter taste that he almost didn’t notice the triumphant smirk on Potter’s face.
“I love firewhiskey,” Potter hummed contentedly, reclining more and taking another sip. “This shite slaps harder than my uncle.”
Draco snorted in shock, almost causing his own second sip to come out through his nose as he choked out a laugh. “What is wrong with you?”
“Probably less than should be wrong with me, given the circumstances.” Potter shrugged innocently.
“That’s true. You are remarkably un-fucked-up, all things considered.”
The pair of them laughed until the sound faded away into the thrumming melodies of the Room of Requirement that had become the soundtrack to their conversations together.
“Careful, Malfoy.” Potter took another sip of his drink, grimacing slightly at the burn that accompanied it. “That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“Maybe I meant it as one,” Draco said, looking at Potter tentatively through long lashes.
Draco thought that Potter would look surprised, or start laughing at him, but instead he just smiled and leaned lazily into Draco’s gaze. Draco leaned in too and scooched himself a bit closer to Potter, getting so close that he could barely see the smile on his face and only feel himself lost in the deep green of Potter’s eyes.
So close now that their faces were almost touching, Draco could nearly taste Potter’s breath and could feel his own chest heaving with heavy breaths. Tentatively, he moved a hand to gently rest on Potter’s thigh and started to angle his neck.
“Stop,” Potter said suddenly, pulling away.
Draco recoiled, taken aback by the unanticipated rejection. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I just—I want to. Trust me. Just—not like this. Not while you’re this drunk.”
“I’m not even that drunk,” Draco asserted, rolling his eyes. He leaned forward a bit so that his face was just inches from Potter’s. “I like when you get all righteous Gryffindor on me, though. That’s fine; I can wait. I’m very good at waiting; you’ll see.”
For a moment, Potter licked his lips as his eyes trailed down to Draco’s chest and he almost looked as if he’d go back on his word. He ended up shaking his head in disbelief. “Now I know that you’re drunk,” he chuckled.
“Merlin, you act like we almost fucked each other,” Draco complained. “It was just a silly drunken kiss. Get over yourself, Potter.”
Potter furrowed his brow, seeming more curious than hurt or frustrated. "Why do you do that?" he asked uncertainly.
"Do what?" Draco returned.
"Refer to everyone by their surname in that condescending tone," Potter clarified.
Draco paused and then sighed heavily, leaning back on his palms. "My surname is all anybody will ever think of me as,” he admitted quietly. “Why would I afford them the grace of being an individual when it will never be afforded to me?"
Potter hesitated for a moment, seeming to contemplate that response.
"I'll call you Draco," he said definitively.
"What?"
"You're right,” Potter affirmed, shrugging. “It's not fair that everybody only calls you by your family name. I think a lot of them assumed you wanted that, didn't realize how much it was hurting you. But I do—now. So you can be Draco to me."
Draco swallowed hard and blinked back a bit of wetness that appeared in the corner of his eyes.
"Thank you, Harry."
Chapter 12
Notes:
Content warning on this chapter for abuse, torture, harm/death of animals (spiders), bullying, and homophobia.
Thank you for reading!
Chapter Text
The first thing that Harry noticed upon waking was a dull pain throbbing behind his eyes. He was still incredibly susceptible to migraine headaches, even after Voldemort’s death. He rolled over and dug his knuckles into his sinuses, groaning when a wave of nausea rolled over him as he opened his eyes.
He pulled himself slowly to a seated position and looked around the room. It was slowly coming back to him now: he had fallen asleep drunk in the Room of Requirement, curled up on the long couch by the hearth, which still crackled softly and cast a luminous glow across the room.
The second thing that Harry noticed was that Malfoy—Draco—was gone. The pillow that typically sat on the other side of the couch had been haphazardly thrown to the floor, but there was no other evidence that he had been here at all. That it wasn’t some kind of twisted dream.
Groaning again, Harry saw a glass of water and what he assumed to be a hangover potion laid out on the coffee table. He wondered if Draco had left them there before he had made his early morning escape or if the Room of Requirement itself had simply manifested them.
He grabbed the glass of water and chugged it, grimacing as the cold liquid added a freezing sensation to his already aching head. Forgoing the hangover potion, he curled back up on the couch and stared dejectedly into the flames of the fireplace.
Merlin, how had he even managed to mess this up? Maybe the Dursleys were right, and he really was a freak, and he had just scared off the only man who had ever really taken an interest in him. Harry pulled his knees a little closer to his chest, making himself small, and continued to stare across the dimly lit room until the throbbing in his head started to subside on its own.
Resigned to his fate of lying sideways on the Room of Requirement couch all afternoon, he made no efforts to move—even when the nausea had faded into deep pangs of hunger. It was a familiar ache, one that Harry didn’t get to revel in properly very often, and he couldn’t find it in himself to decide that he needed to eat something.
After a while, Harry stood up, wincing as a fresh course of pain pulsed through his head and made him press his palm into his face. Once he had evened himself back out, Harry found himself wandering unconsciously over to the pensieve.
His fingers rambled clumsily over the vials of swirling liquid until he landed on the one he had shown Draco of his time living with the Dursleys as a kid. He grabbed it and uncorked it, swirling the glittering liquid around in the vial before dumping it into the cauldron below.
The liquid glimmered and expanded to fill the container as it always does, swirling around enticingly—almost seeming to beckon him in. He took a deep breath and stuck his face into the pensieve, the additional tug in his stomach almost making him vomit as it mixed with the nausea of the hangover.
It wasn’t the first time that Harry had revisited a memory like this—he had watched the night that Sirius died over and over and over, until his body felt too dry to produce any more tears about it. But this was the first time when he had gone all the way back to childhood.
He flinched a bit as he watched his Uncle Vernon backhand him onto the floor and cringed as Dudley and his friends repeatedly kicked him in the ribs on one of the only occasions that they had caught him during “Harry Hunting.”
But there were also memories of spending days curled up in his cupboard, one of Uncle Vernon’s old flannel shirts wrapped around him like a blanket as he slowly maneuvered his little toy soldier across the floor, pretending that he was on his way to courageously fight the Spider King (which was a large house spider that lived with Harry in the cupboard). He had later found out that this spider was actually the Spider Queen, as it emerged from out of sight one day with dozens of little baby spiders on its back.
It was only a couple days later when Aunt Petunia had opened his cupboard door to find the Spider Queen, screeching in that shrill tone of hers that made Harry’s ears hurt and whacking the spider babies with a broom until they had all died or been dispersed. Harry knew that she wouldn’t hesitate to turn the broom on him if he drew attention to himself—and so he said nothing.
But that didn’t stop Harry from letting a few tears fall onto his pillow that night, grieving for his first imaginary playmate enemy and his first friend. When he was sure that Aunt Petunia wouldn’t come back, he had scooped up what he could of the spider family’s remains into his little hands and buried them in a pile of pebbles and dirt under his bed.
He felt as though he should say a prayer, but all of the Christian ones felt wrong and he didn’t know what else to say, so he just whispered, “I’m sure that you would have been a great Mom.”
Harry stopped getting attached to the house spiders after that.
He was well aware of how the cupboard looked to his family and friends now, and could easily call to mind the pity on their faces whenever he mentioned it. But it had been his bedroom—the one place that really felt like it belonged to him, even when his body hadn’t.
When his face emerged from the pensieve, the Room of Requirement felt altogether too big by comparison. Harry sank down with his back to the wall by the pensieve and curled his knees into his chest, burying his head into his arms so that he didn’t need to look at the stupidly expansive space.
He often wished that he could still curl up in a cupboard, making no noise and pretending that he didn’t exist. It certainly felt preferable to existing some days.
…
Unsure whether they’d be meeting up in the Room of Requirement as usual on Tuesday evening, Harry checked for Draco on the Marauder’s Map during dinner. Seeing that he was absent from the eight year dormitories and any of his usual library spots, Harry assumed that he had already made his way over to their study room.
“So…what exactly happened between you two?” Hermione asked, eyes darting between Harry and the open Marauder’s Map that he held under the table. “Neville said that he's only seen Malfoy in class since Saturday night, not even in their dormitory to sleep. Were you two together on Sunday?”
“No,” Harry spat out lamely, quickly folding up the map and shoving it back into his robes.
Hermione’s eyes went wide, but she didn't prod further, shifting the conversation instead to the new charms they had gone over in class that morning. Although she didn't bring it up again, Harry could feel her eyes fixed on him concernedly as she watched him push bits of roast chicken around his plate.
Harry sighed and opted instead to sink himself into the conversation that Ron and Seamus were having about the abysmal performance of the Chudley Cannons at this weekend’s Quidditch match. He was slightly relieved when 6:45 rolled around and he excused himself to go study.
When the door appeared that led to the Room of Requirement, Harry paused before opening it. What if Draco didn’t want to see him? What if he was embarrassed about Saturday? What if he was angry with him for flirting before he was ready? Harry shook his head, deciding that was silly, and opened the door.
He was met with the same routine configuration that the room was always in. Draco had already spread out his study materials across the desk and was hunched over, meticulously scrawling notes onto one of his patchwork scrolls of parchment.
“Hi Draco,” Harry said tentatively, setting down his things.
“Good evening,” Draco replied, his tone cool and expression disinterested. Harry noticed the way that Draco’s jaw clenched as he sat down and he felt his own lips press into a tight line, nervous.
“I’ve reworked the summaries on some of our sources for the analysis on occlumency of memories through the lens of the dual representation model. Would you mind reading them over?” Draco asked, moving the scroll towards Harry and not taking his eyes off of his own work.
“Sure, of course,” Harry said, trying to sound casual despite the lump forming in his throat. He grabbed the scroll and began reading, but he found his eyes glazing over just as they had on the couch that Sunday morning.
Harry felt as if he were bursting at the seams to speak with him about it. This cool, detached facade that Draco was putting on about the events of Saturday night was driving him up the wall. But he knew he’d need to choose his words carefully or Draco would recoil like a wounded animal. “So, you make a habit of roaming the castle alone in the middle of the night?”
If Draco knew it was a reference to his early morning escape the other night, his face didn’t give the realization away. He seemed to remain perfectly neutral, flipping a page over in their textbook. “Sometimes I can’t sleep and need to be walking in order to think,” he answered nonchalantly.
“And it's not as if I have friends to worry about where I am,” he added, voice remaining mostly neutral despite a hint of bitterness that threatened to permeate his tone.
“Theo?” Harry countered.
“He just has some misplaced gratitude about his father finally being locked up.” Draco shook his head. “He doesn’t care where I go off to at night.”
“Michael?” Harry offered.
“Michael tolerates me.” Draco winced slightly. “And he’s kind. But I’m under no disillusion that it would take him less than a fortnight to notice if I pitched myself off the Astronomy Tower.”
“Pansy?”
“Well…” Draco trailed off. “She might care, but she’d never say so. And we haven’t spoken in a while. Things are complicated between us—there’s a lot of history there.”
“Blaise?” Harry turned to Draco, frowning.
Draco scowled. “Not a chance.”
“Well, I care about where you go off to at night,” Harry added.
Draco’s fingers tightened around his quill, his knuckles turning a bit more white than the rest of his pale skin. He said nothing.
“So I guess we’re just not gonna talk about it,” Harry bit out, harshly scribbling a note on his parchment.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” said Draco with an air of cool indifference, dipping his quill back into his inkpot and reading over the last sentence he had copied down.
“Merlin, you're infuriating,” huffed Harry as he turned in his chair. “If you're upset with me, just say something. Don't tap dance around it for ten minutes and expect me to read your mind.”
“I’m not upset with you,” Draco asserted with a terse voice, quill nearly ripping through a piece of parchment as he attempted to continue writing through his agitation. Harry flinched slightly, reading the harsh intonation as confirmation of the other man’s anger.
“I’m upset with myself,” he admitted quietly. “This—” Draco said, motioning between them. “I can’t do this. I just can’t, alright?”
“Why not?” Harry asked, genuinely confused.
“Look, Harry, I know you didn’t grow up around Pureblood culture.” Harry tried not to make a disgusted face at the mention of Pureblood culture. “But this wouldn’t fly. Not even for my mother, I don’t think. I may not be expected to marry a distant Pureblood cousin at this point, but I’m sure as shit not supposed to get together with a man—much less Harry bloody Potter.”
“You think that’s just a Pureblood thing?” Harry almost laughed.
“Well…isn’t it?” Draco finally put the quill down and looked up to face Harry, perplexed.
“I want to show you something,” asserted Harry. “We could use the legilimency practice anyways—it’s been a couple weeks.”
Draco sighed, but didn’t protest. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” Harry said, nodding and turning his chair entirely to face Draco.
Draco raised his wand, slowly and hesitantly, as if waiting for Harry to protest at the last minute. When no such objection came, he concentrated on seeing whatever Harry wanted to show him and softly spoke the word Legilimens.
The tumbling sensation had gotten much more controlled as they had gotten used to entering each other’s heads, now a mere moment of disorientation before settling in behind Harry’s eyes.
A group of three boys who looked as though they each had at least two stone on Harry had cornered him against the lavatory wall. Draco recognized the one to the left as Harry’s cousin, who had made an appearance in some of his earlier memories.
“Oh look, he’s wearing his poof shirt today,” the one in the middle jested, grabbing the front of his pink shirt and balling it into a fist. Harry had known that this would happen when Aunt Petunia had sent him to school in their female cousin’s hand-me-downs, but he figured he would rather take it from Dudley’s gang than he would from Uncle Vernon.
The center boy slammed Harry into the wall, nearly lifting him off of the ground. “Well, that’ll make Harry Hunting nice and easy today,” he chuckled. “I bet you like being chased around by a bunch of boys, don’t you, you queer little freak?”
Harry could feel his anger rising, breathing heavily and trying to get his magic under control so that there wouldn’t be any funny business, as his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia called it.
As the door opened, a staff member walked in and the boy let go of the front of Harry’s shirt, giving him a look of disgust before he left the loo.
The setting changed after that, to a similar scene that appeared to take place several years later. Harry’s cousin and his friends were almost full-grown men now, seeming to tower over Harry, who didn’t seem to have grown much at all in either direction. His clothes still hung limply off of his frame and he looked up at his cousin with defiance despite their height difference of at least four inches.
“He’s going to kill me, mum,” Dudley sneered, mocking Harry and earning a round of giggles from his friends. “No, don’t kill Cedric!”
He could feel the reaction that had on Harry—the pounding in his temples, his fingers reflexively tensing around his wand.
“Who’s Cedric?” Dudley asked, speaking directly to Harry now. “Is that your boyfriend?”
The boy’s tone made it clear that this was said in mockery—and this time, it seemed that Harry didn’t have it in him to prevent the funny business. He whipped out his wand and stuck it directly into the beefy throat of his cousin. “Don’t you ever—” he started, and then several memories came flooding in rapid succession.
“Little freak,” Uncle Vernon said as he grabbed a fistful of Harry’s hair and threw him in the general direction of the cupboard under the stairs.
“He’s just so queer…and abnormal…” Harry could hear Aunt Petunia speaking about him on the phone, ear pressed against the cupboard door. “A freak just like his mother.”
“Freak sighting!” yelled one of Dudley’s goons as he shoved Harry into a wall, nearly bashing his face on the edge of a water fountain.
When Harry and Draco mentally returned to the Room of Requirement, both of their chests were heaving slightly. They sat like that for a moment, their labored breaths and the soft thrum of instrumentals providing an auditory backdrop.
“Ok, so not just a Pureblood thing,” Draco said, smiling sadly and finally looking up at Harry.
Harry’s lips pressed into a sad smile too. “Not just a Pureblood thing.”
“Seriously, Draco, if you ever wanna talk about it…with somebody who understands…” Harry leaned in, still making eye contact. “That shit is poisonous to keep inside.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about it,” Draco said, breaking his eyes away from Harry’s to focus his gaze down on the hands wringing in his lap. “But maybe I could show you?”
“You don’t have to just because I did,” Harry asserted.
“And let myself be the coward who can’t face his own shit? Yeah, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?” Draco joked, but his face was serious.
“Only if you want to,” Harry re-asserted.
“I want to,” Draco confirmed, nodding resolutely.
Harry nodded in recognition, raising his wand and trying to ignore the small flinch that flitted across Draco’s sharp features. “Legilimens.”
There was a small tug, and Draco was hunched over on his hands and knees on the floor of a bedroom that Harry didn’t recognize. There was a green shag rug that covered most of the floor and a four-poster bed with brown bedding to his right.
Blaise Zabini was kneeling next to him, silent. He moved to put his hand on the small of Draco’s back, but the blonde lurched away as if he’d be burned by the touch.
“He's going to kill me, Blaise,” Draco whispered into the carpet. “My father is going to kill me.” He made a small retching sound, but no tears escaped his eyes.
Harry felt himself promptly shoved out of Draco’s head, landing in his own body with more force than was typical of their occlumency practice.
“Sorry,” Draco panted out. “That wasn’t what I meant to show you.”
Draco hunched over, gripping his stomach as if he were in physical pain. “I’ve heavily occluded those memories for a long time. I guess they aren’t as easily accessible as I thought.”
“That’s alright,” Harry said, reassuring. “I didn’t know—you and Blaise—I’m sorry for asking.”
“It’s fine,” Draco said, breathing deeply.
“Well, at least he wasn’t able to kill you,” Harry said, mostly to himself.
Draco chuckled darkly, eyes unfocused. “He damn near did.”
Harry made a face halfway between confusion and concern—a prompt to continue, if Draco were willing.
“When he found us, he completely freaked out and started hurting me,” Draco admitted, his voice thick and his eyes still unfocused. He moved his right hand up to the inside of his left arm and dug his nails into the flesh there, swallowing back the tears that threatened to escape. “And not the stinging hex kind of hurting—the curse kind.”
“Your father cursed you for something you couldn't control?” Harry asked, his square jaw starting to set and a thin veil of rage threatening to explode from behind his emerald eyes.
“Stop,” Draco protested immediately, slamming his open palms onto the arms of his chair. For a moment, the air seemed to course with electricity. “You don't get to be angry on my behalf, or look down on me with pity in your eyes, or whatever’s happening here.”
“You don't know what it was like,” he added tersely. “My father did what he thought was best. And he was right, in some ways. The Dark Lord would've killed me—or worse—if he had been the one to find out.”
“So your father wanted to protect you from suffering through Dark Magic…by making you suffer through Dark Magic?” Harry questioned, some semblance of wrath still creeping into his voice.
“It’s not a big deal, Harry,” Draco continued to protest. “Really, it’s not. That happened to most people I know at some point or another and—”
“ Not a big deal ?” Harry was irate now. “How did you possibly get the idea that committing war crimes against your children wasn’t a big deal?”
“Harry—”
“In what world is that okay to do to anybody for something that they can’t control?” Harry continued.
“Harry—”
The glass mirror nearby shattered with the force of Harry’s rage exploding outwards in a fit of uncontrolled magic.
“Harry,” Draco said, softly this time, placing a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “I know, okay? And I know you have your own stuff with that. But this isn’t making me want to show you what happened. In fact, you’re kinda freaking me out.”
It was then that Harry noticed that Draco’s hands were shaking. Despite the facade of a calm demeanor that he had put up, his eyes were crazed and darted anxiously around the room. His breaths were short and panicked, hitching a bit with each inhale.
It was something that most people wouldn’t have noticed.
“I’m sorry,” said Harry.
“I know,” said Draco, taking a deep inhale. “I’m alright. Are you alright? Want to try one more time?”
Harry nodded, taking a deep inhale too. He steeled himself against the flinch he knew would come when he raised his wand and focused intently on wanting to help—to help and to understand—as he cast legilimens.
“Do you have any idea,” came the unmistakable drawl of Lucius Malfoy. “what would happen if the Dark Lord found out?”
Draco was sprawled on the floor of the Manor, looking up at his father’s enraged face and panting heavily. He could feel beads of sweat on the back of his neck and the top of his forehead.
“I…I—” Draco stumbled over his words, then felt an agonizing burning sensation across every inch of his skin. He arched his back, stifling a yelp of pain.
“You…you…” Lucius sneered, mocking, then raised his wand again. “Crucio.”
Draco felt the air leave his lungs, a horrific ripping sensation seeming to suck his organs out and cleave him apart from the inside. He thought he could hear himself cry out, but he couldn't be sure where exactly the noise was coming from.
He had no way of telling how long it lasted—it felt like hours, but could've been minutes. Reprieves from the torture curse were brief, typically so Lucius could chastise or interrogate him more. Eventually, his father must have tired himself out, leaving the room in a flurry of black velvet robes and rage.
Draco didn't say anything, just rolled over and moaned in agony. He could hear the mumbling of his mother above him and was vaguely aware that she was stroking his hair, but everything else was completely drowned out by the pain. He couldn't think. He couldn't move. He couldn’t even breathe.
Like a door being slammed shut, Harry found himself being locked out once more. He shuddered as it took his brain a minute to settle back in behind his eyes.
“So I just can’t, okay?” Draco eventually said, voice still sounding pained.
“That is not on you, Draco. That’s on him. There is no excuse for what I just saw,” Harry said, teeth locking together as he shook his head. “None whatsoever.”
“And I know that—I do—I know that it was fucked up and I should hate him for it and I should want him out of my life. And part of me does,” Draco confessed, fiddling with his wand. “But there’s another part of me, maybe one that’s pretty small or maybe one that’s a little bigger than I’d care to admit, that just thinks ‘that’s my dad’ and I want him to come around. I want him to realize that he did something wrong and to apologize and to love me .”
Draco didn’t know when he’d started crying, but his vision was starting to go blurry and he could feel hot tears starting to trickle down his face.
“You know, the irony is—they’re called Unforgivables,” Draco started, eyes cast down at his lap. His voice dropped until it was barely audible. “But I’d forgive him in an instant.”
Harry felt as if he had been struck. He leaned over and worked his fingers into Draco’s, gently rubbing the top of his right hand with his thumb. For the second time this week, it felt as if he stayed hunched over in the Room of Requirement for a very long time.
“Home base,” Draco suddenly said out of nowhere.
“What?” Harry reeled back, eyes wide.
“That’s what I named my occlumency visualization,” Draco clarified.
“You—what?”
Draco winced, then smiled softly. “Please don’t make me repeat it.”
“No, I wasn’t, I—” Harry faltered. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”
Another moment passed in silence.
“Muggle baseball, huh?”
Draco groaned, rubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hands. “Yes,” he conceded. “Muggle baseball. I suppose I just liked the idea of somewhere that was always safe to return.”
Oh.
Oh.
Harry wagered a guess. “And home wasn’t always safe to return?”
Draco sighed. “You were in the Manor, Harry. And you saw how my father felt about me as a teenager. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant environment towards the end.”
Harry grimaced. “Doesn’t seem like it was a pleasant environment ever.”
“Can you stop presuming to know things about my home life based on a few choice memories?” Draco snipped, rolling his eyes. “Sometimes things were okay. Nice, even. We’d have game night and my mum would read me stories until I fell asleep and my father would teach me new flying tricks in the backyard—”
“You said you didn’t like flying,” Harry interjected.
“I said that Quidditch wasn’t a stress reliever,” Draco clarified. “I love flying.”
“Let’s go flying,” Draco said, standing up with a sudden fervor.
“It’s pouring,” Harry countered.
“I don’t recall that stopping you before.” Draco smirked, already heading towards the door, project notes abandoned on their desk.
The two nearly ran down to the Quidditch pitch, renewed with a sense of childlike purpose despite the harsh realities that the day had brought to light. Harry almost giggled as Draco turned around to face him, hair hanging wetly into his face like a little kid at a waterpark.
When the two of them had gotten their brooms from the broomshed, Draco mounted his and turned to Harry. “Race you across the lake,” he winked, kicking up and taking off before Harry had a chance to react.
“You dickhead!” Harry called out, kicking off and chasing after Draco. “That’s cheating!”
He had nearly caught up when Draco stopped and turned around, facing Harry on his broom in mid-air. “Thank you for this.”
“You don't need to thank me,” said Harry, starting to fly in circles. “Why did you stop playing Quidditch, anyways? It's been boring without you.”
Draco couldn't help but to beam at that opinion, then sighed heavily. “Well, everything with my dad and buying everybody brooms, it just made it hard to, you know, to…”
“Tell anybody?” Harry suggested.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Harry echoed, and then added—softly, “I’m glad you told me.”
“Me too.”
Chapter 13
Notes:
Hi gang! Sorry for the 3-week gap in updates. As a reward, here's 5000+ words of mostly tooth-rotting fluff.
Shouldn't be any real content warnings here, except for maybe references to bigotry/homophobia and family drama.
Welcome to the 'comfort' half of hurt/comfort :)
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Text
“What do you wanna do after graduation?” asked Draco. It was a casual question—it was the casual question this year, it seemed. The one that everybody asked initially when they didn’t know what else to talk about or wanted to segue into something else.
It occurred to Harry that this had probably only been brought up as a distraction. Harry could tell that Draco was nervous—he had spent the entirety of breakfast taking small sips of tea and tiny bites of toast while ripping his cuticles to shreds underneath the table. This “family lunch” plan had been Draco’s idea, originally, but he would’ve been all too happy for Harry to take the credit.
After Draco’s gentle prompting, Narcissa had sent a reconciliatory owl to her sister—the one that wasn’t serving a double life sentence in Azkaban—and the two had gotten together for tea. From what Harry gathered from Andi, it had been a rather tearful reunion and the sisters seemed to be on better footing than they had been since early childhood.
Harry had been surprised when Draco suggested that they get lunch together, the five of them—Andi, Narcissa, Draco, Harry, and Teddy—but he had never been one to scoff at potential community. He figured that it would’ve been Draco who protested, citing some nonsense about only wanting family for his mother and not needing any of his own, but he had seemed the most eager to nail down plans.
Any sense of congregation that Draco had exuded in days prior seemed to have frozen off of him. He looked tense now, concerned, with rigid shoulders and cheeks that could’ve been flushed pink by the cold but were likely actually coloring with the stress of it all.
“I want to be an Auror,” Harry answered the question, almost too quickly. It was the canned response that he gave to everyone—the easy response. Truth be told, it had been suggested to him by multiple former Order members and professors and, well, he figured that they knew him better than he could ever know himself. If they thought it was a good idea, then it probably was.
Draco, on the other hand, looked disbelieving. He shoved his hands into his cloak pockets and shivered slightly in the November chill. “An Auror, huh?”
Harry suppressed a smile at Draco’s thinly veiled judgement on the matter. “What?”
“No, it's fine—if that's what you really want,” Draco backpedaled, taking his hands back out of his pockets and continuing to pick at the scar tissue around his nail beds.
“What do you mean, if that's what I really want?” Harry pressed.
“Just don't seem like the Auror type, is all. So much paperwork.” Draco said casually. Then, after a pause, “What did you want to be when you were little?”
Harry contemplated for a moment, then remembered what he had so often fantasized about during long summer days in his cupboard. “A soldier,” he answered resolutely, grinning tightly as the irony wasn’t lost on him.
“A soldier?” Draco felt bile rising into his throat, remembering the memory of a young Potter coughing in a dusty cupboard as he lay on his stomach and moved a single broken soldier toy across the splintered floorboards. “Is there anything you wanna do that, you know, doesn't revolve around sacrificing your life for others? Maybe something you genuinely enjoy?”
“I don't know what I enjoy,” Harry admitted, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly. Draco pinched the bridge of his nose as if the conversation were giving him a headache.
“You like flying,” he countered, eyes flitting over in the direction of the Quidditch pitch.
Harry rolled his eyes and scoffed. “Oh yeah, let me just try out for the Harpies real quick.”
“You like chocolate,” Draco added, smirking this time.
Harry snorted. “Well, I’m already an investor in Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes.”
Draco gave him a curious look, so he added, “That’s where my Triwizard Tournament winnings went. I figured the least that I could do was use the money to support something in the community that was making people feel better.”
This earned Harry another curious look from Draco, but this time it was matched with a gentle smile. “What about magical creatures?” he pressed. “Aren't you on track for an O in that N.E.W.T.? And a Parseltongue?”
Harry chuckled halfheartedly. “I do find creatures easier than people.”
“We’ll think of something,” Draco promised, nodding his head resolutely.
“If you say so.” Harry shrugged again.
“What do your friends think?” Draco asked.
“Dunno,” Harry responded, truthfully. “I guess they just deferred to what the adults thought, and they all seemed to think that Auror was a good career goal for me.”
Draco frowned, looking out to survey the approaching village of Hogsmeade in the distance. "Do you remember the advice I gave you about seeking help from people who have struggled similarly to you?"
Harry nodded. "Yeah, I ignored it."
Draco rolled his eyes. “Of course you did. Well, maybe this is one of those times. Someone who wanted to be an Auror their whole lives probably isn’t a good person to seek career advice from if you’re confused.”
Harry sighed, suddenly looking tired. “I suppose. It’s not exactly as if I have parents to ask.”
Draco hesitated for a moment, then seemed to voice what was on his mind regardless. “Do you think that you would talk to them about this kind of stuff?”
Harry’s eyebrows knitted together. It was a good question, and one that he hadn’t really considered. “I’m not sure,” he answered in earnest.
Turning to look at his face, Draco didn’t say anything more, leaving the silence open for breaking.
“I mean, you saw Snape’s memory of my dad,” Harry continued, wincing a bit as if speaking ill of his father was causing him a great deal of pain. “I guess most of the time I really wish I got to know my parents, but there are some times when I’m a little bit glad that I didn’t get to. Like they can stay good people in my head that way.”
“I’m sure that your parents were good people,” Draco spoke softly, folding his arms across his chest and looking away. “We’ve certainly done worse to each other than what your dad did to Severus at some points. And it won’t be going into my highlight reel, but you’d hope that it was childish domineering and he probably grew out of it.”
Harry’s lips pressed into a tight line. “No way to know.”
“I don’t think that any of us really know our parents, to be honest” Draco said. “I’ve always thought of my childhood more as my parents’ lives than as mine. They’re the ones who remember it.”
An inquisitive look passed over Harry’s face. “You don’t talk to your parents about this stuff?”
“A bit with my mum, I guess. It’s hard. She has certain…expectations.” Draco’s voice strained on the word expectations, like it was difficult for him to force out. “Father made it pretty clear that I wasn't worthy of his protection or his advice. I was only worthy of his name—and maybe not even that if I didn’t get a ministry job and marry a Parkinson or a Greengrass.”
“Mm.” Harry nodded. “I remember hearing about that. Your supposed betrothal to Pansy or…what was her name, Victoria?”
“Astoria,” Draco corrected. “She mostly went by Tori.”
“What ever happened with that?” Harry asked.
“We hung out a few times. She was nice enough. I don’t think our parents’ politics meshed very well. Her father was very involved in muggle politics as well as wizarding politics, you see. Made a lot of comments about needing a Tory man for his Tori. It rubbed Lucius the wrong way,” Draco explained. “Probably would’ve been disappointing for him, anyways, because I support the Labour Party.”
Harry choked out a laugh in surprise. “The Labour Party, huh?”
“What? Didn’t expect me to be informed about things?” Draco grinned.
“If by things, you mean muggle political parties, to be honest—no, no I didn’t.”
Draco chuckled a bit at Harry’s bewildered expression. “I went on quite the exploration into muggle politics this past summer. It’s pretty interesting. There are lots of parallels.”
Harry gave him another quizzical sideways glance.
“Tell anybody I said that and I’ll hex you into next week.”
Harry just chuckled. “Sure, you will.”
“Anyways, I don’t think that either of those betrothals will actually hold up, especially now that it’s just my mother around. Those arrangements were all for the status of a name anyways, and most of the Pureblood family names have been recently dragged through the mud,” Draco explained. "I think my parents would actually be proud of me ending up with you, if you weren't a boy."
Harry smiled grimly. "I think my family would actually be happy with me ending up with a boy, if it weren't you."
Draco’s expression flickered to hurt for a brief moment, and then turned curious. “And who’s family?”
Harry paused. “Well…Ron and Hermione—all the Weasleys, actually. Sirius. Teddy and Andi now, I suppose…”
“Professor Lupin?” Draco added.
“Sort of…” Harry trailed off, removing his glasses and cleaning them on the sleeve of his cloak. He took a deep breath and seemed to swallow before putting them back on his face. “It’s funny you mention that, actually…when I went through his things after the war, I actually found adoption papers.”
Draco’s eyes widened. “For you?”
Harry nodded, lip trembling ever so slightly. “Yes, for me.”
“But you hesitate to call him family?” Draco inquired.
“Well…he was always Professor Lupin,” Harry clarified. “He wasn’t introduced to me as family, much less as a father figure. Not that he wasn't a brilliant professor and great personal mentor to me.”
Draco bit his lip, drawing blood because of the dry air. “And did you want him to be?”
“Hm?”
“Family, I mean?” Draco pressed. “A father figure?”
Harry’s posture went stiff as he fiddled with the cuff of his robes. “Maybe. I don't really know what I wanted. I guess that I did in some sense. And I guess he did, in some sense, too—otherwise he wouldn't have gone through all the trouble of getting paperwork when I was already sixteen.”
Draco looked intrigued, but his voice remained gentle. “What held you back?”
“Fear, I think, mostly,” Harry said, bowing his head as they approached the bustling streets of Hogsmeade. “I was afraid to tell him what I wanted. He was afraid to tell me what he wanted. So neither of us communicated and it just carried on like that and now it's too late.”
“Fear of what? The other person saying no?” Draco was leaning in now.
“More like the other person saying yes. I don't think Professor Lupin ever really got over the shame of his condition…”
Draco winced.
“It's not your fault,” Harry reassured. “It was everybody. But he often referred to himself as a monster. I think it was hard for him to accept that he could be happy. That he deserved to be happy.”
“And that’s hard for you, too?” Draco guessed. “Overcoming that fear of happiness?”
“I don’t know if I was ever actually brave,” Harry said, his voice starting off strong and then fading until it was nearly a whisper. “Or if I just didn’t particularly care what happened to me.”
Draco stilled. “Other people cared what happened to you. Other people care what happens to you. I care what happens to you. Not that you owe anybody anything…”
“No, we owe everybody everything,” Harry articulated calmly. “How do we get through these things otherwise? If not for what we owe to each other?”
Draco was stunned. Harry had consistently left him confused and awestruck these past few weeks—well, for most of their lives, actually, if he were being honest, but particularly these past few weeks. “I suspect I owe Professor Lupin a great deal,” he added quietly.
“And why is that?” Harry turned to face him once again.
“Do you remember in third year when we all had to learn the Ridikkulus spell on a real boggart in class?” Draco winced slightly at the memory.
Harry nodded.
“My boggart was my father at the time,” Draco admitted with a shaking voice, digging his fingernails into his left arm under his cloak. “Professor Lupin could tell that I was hesitant to face my boggart in front of the class. I still don’t know how he figured that out. But he approached me after the lecture and let me do it alone during his office hours instead. Apparently, his best friend was in a similar situation and had been humiliated in front of the class.”
Harry’s heart dropped into his stomach. Sirius.
“Thank Merlin for that,” Draco continued, voice strained and expression bitter. “If I remember correctly, the boggart spat out quite a few slurs that would’ve outed me to the class. I was absolutely mortified in front of Lupin, but I didn’t say anything about it. Just subtly tormented him for the rest of the year so it would look like we were feuding and he was just spreading gossip if he decided to say anything to anybody.”
“He wouldn’t have said anything to anybody,” Harry chimed in, sounding rather certain. “And he wouldn’t have had a problem with it in the first place.”
Draco gave him a questioning look, and he continued. “It was implied that things weren’t totally platonic between him and my godfather.”
“Oh.” Draco’s eyebrows drew together. “But he was with Andromeda’s daughter?”
“People are bisexual, Draco.” Harry reclined back on a wall near their apparition point, smirking a little.
Draco’s eyes widened, but he recovered quickly. “And by people, you mean…?”
Harry laughed. “Subtle,” he noted. “Yes, I mean me as well.”
Draco’s face flushed slightly, and he thought he muttered out an “oh, cool” before extending his arm out for Harry to side-along on his apparition. Harry looped his arm through the offered elbow and clung in as they both disapparated in a vortex of black, green, and red.
Andromeda Tonks lived in a small cape-style house on the outskirts of Kirkcaldy, near the coast. It was a slate blue-grey with white shutters and an old brick chimney that seemed to be puffing out light smoke near constantly.
Despite the tranquil atmosphere of the waves lapping on the shore and the wind whistling through the tall grass, the inside of the home seemed anything but quiet. As Draco entered, he noticed that the whole house smelled of birch trees, vanilla, and peppermint.
An older witch suddenly appeared from around the corner, curly brown hair an amount of chaos that would have rivaled Hermione Granger’s. Draco was almost jarred by how similar her face was to his mother’s, with dark almond eyes and high cheekbones. She had her hair pulled into a loose bun save for one strand and was wearing a cooking apron over her robes.
“Oh, hello boys!” She smiled wide as she rounded the corner.
“Hi, Mrs. Tonks, it’s lovely to meet—” Draco started, extending a hand, but was quickly pulled into a tight embrace. Despite being taken aback, he found himself relaxing into the hold.
“No need for all the formalities, dear,” the older witch said, pulling back. “And you can call me Andi.”
She turned on Harry then and wrapped him in what seemed to be an equally firm embrace, only breaking away when the anxious cry of an infant could be heard reverberating from inside the house.
“Oh boy, can’t leave them alone for a second without a fit,” Andi said, turning on her heels and hustling back in towards the sitting room. “Come in, come in!”
The sitting room was very home-y, with a well-worn couch and loveseat of brown fabric and a black leather recliner in the corner. A fire crackled in the hearth, seeping the smell of birch logs into the air. In the center of the room was a brown coffee table on top of a scarlet and gold rug, right next to a light gray bouncer with a young child in it.
The baby had little wisps of bright red hair and their face was scrunched up in displeasure as they let out another shriek of outrage at being momentarily left alone in the bouncer.
Draco made a face at Teddy, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue in their direction. The infant stopped crying out of shock, and then burst into a fit of small giggles. Draco bent down and made the face again and Teddy kept giggling before putting their hands out towards Harry and yelling “Up!”
“Well, you’re welcome back over to babysit any time,” Andromeda jested with Draco, who smiled softly. She went over and picked Teddy up, balancing the now babbling baby on her hip. “Can I get you two anything? There’s tea on the coffee table, and I have snacks, or—”
“No need to fuss over us, Andi, really,” Harry reassured her, taking Teddy from her arms and holding them on his hip. The infant stopped fussing almost immediately, giggling again as they reached up towards Harry’s face with outstretched fingers. “Can we help you with anything?”
“Sorry, I can’t help it! You don't just stop being a mother when…” Andromeda trailed off, turning back towards the kitchen. “Are you boys hungry?”
She disappeared behind a wooden door, leaving Harry coo-ing at his Godson, and emerged with a plate of finger sandwiches. “Please, please—make yourselves at home!” she said, gesturing to the fraying brown couch and loveseat.
The two had just sat down when Narcissa arrived and Andromeda jetted off towards the front door to greet her newest guest. When Narcissa emerged in the sitting room doorway, she seemed to starkly contrast the room itself—all prim and proper in emerald and black against a backdrop of muted earth tones and weathered furnishings.
She instantly greeted Draco with a hug, reaching out to touch Harry’s shoulder with her hand as a greeting and then crouching down next to him. “And this must be Teddy!” she exclaimed as the baby cooed and babbled at her.
As Harry expected, the sisters seemed to have re-established quite the rapport in the two times they had seen each other as adults. The two got settled on the loveseat and seemed to immediately fall back into sibling banter.
“So we’re screaming at each other over the floo,” Andi continued her story, nearly crying from laughter. Narcissa giggled—like, actually giggled—and Draco tried to recall if he had ever seen his mother look so carefree. “Saying the most vile things. We’re both so upset that Cissy can’t figure out how to get the Floo to work.”
“At this point, I think father’s gonna kill me,” Andromeda says through laughter. “Cause not only are we in his study, but I’ve somehow managed to strand my sister in the middle of Australia through the floo network. So then I’m crying, and Cissy’s crying, and eventually she figures out how to use the floo powder to get back to our house.”
Draco and Harry chuckled at the story, neither much relating to the average experience of having siblings, but both drinking up every word. Harry sent Draco a look that he thought must mean either this was a great idea or I told you so.
“So Cissy gets back and just looks up at me with big, brown eyes and goes ‘Andi?’ and I go ‘Cissy?’ and we just hug each other so tightly like we weren’t cursing each other out two minutes before,” Andi finishes, still chuckling and smiling reminiscently.
The afternoon passes with lots of peppermint tea through childhood stories from Andromeda and updates on their last year of school from Harry and the babbling beginnings of “Hawwy” and “Dwado” and “Ambi” from Teddy.
“It’s probably about time to get them down for a nap,” Andi advised when Teddy started to get fussy once again.
“We’ve got it,” Harry said, cradling the crying child against his chest and moving to take them upstairs. Draco followed, watching as Harry tucked the child into a crib and ran a finger along their forehead until they stopped crying.
“I’ll give you a moment with your Godson,” Draco whispered, heading back down to the kitchen and fixing up some more peppermint tea, a silver tray perched on his side as he made his way over to the sitting room.
“You’ve done a good job, Narcissa,” he heard Andromeda saying. “He really is a very sweet boy, all things considered. I don’t think you have anything to fear with old family patterns—I can’t imagine a world where the boy I just met turns into his father.”
There was a brief silence, and then he heard his mother’s quiet voice. “I worry more about the opposite.”
Draco paused, hand hovering over the doorknob, and blinked hard a few times to shove back the tears that were prickling at the corners of his eyes. He took a deep inhale and plastered a soft smile on his lips before going back into the sitting room. “Back with the tea,” he said cheerily, doing his best to ignore the glassy look in his mother’s eyes.
Once Harry had returned from putting Teddy down for his nap, they had all bid their farewells with hugs and promises to meet up again sometime soon. When they made their way outside, Draco silently offered his arm to Harry again for more side-along apparition.
“You’re really great with them,” Draco admitted once they had successfully apparated back to a wooded path near Hogsmeade. “With Teddy.”
Harry chuckled, kicking a small rock into the pavement. “They seem to like you quite a bit.”
“Only moms and babies tend to like me,” Draco joked, smiling tightly as he shoved his hands into his cloak pockets. “Merlin knows why.”
Harry shivered.
“You’re cold,” Draco said.
Harry gave a grimace that turned into a smile. “I’ll get over it.”
“Here,” Draco said, taking his emerald green scarf and wrapping it around Harry.
“Better?” he asked, pulling the material tight and leaving his hands on the scarf by Harry’s neck.
“Better,” Harry agreed, looking up at Draco through the small snowflakes that had started to stick to his eyelashes.
Watching Harry look up at him with eyes of a cerulean green that rivaled the scarf, Draco felt his heart flutter heavily in his chest.
“That color looks really nice on you,” Draco admitted, feeling a bit dazed, and still not removing his hands from around Harry’s neck. He was aware that they were close to each other—very close, so close that he could feel the warmth of Harry’s exhale on his face. It smelled like peppermint tea.
For once in his life, Draco found himself wishing that he had a bit more Gryffindor boldness. “Harry—” he started, but was cut off by hands wrapping around his face and a pair of lips meeting his own.
Draco melted into the kiss, hands grabbing into the black curls on the back of Harry’s head, impossibly willing him to come even closer. They pulled away slowly, gently, and stayed for a moment with their noses pressed against each other.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a very long time,” Harry admitted, letting his hands linger on Draco’s face for a moment before pulling away.
“Yeah, well, who hasn’t? Look at me,” Draco joked, motioning to his face with his hands.
“You’re a dickhead.” Harry chuckled. “I don’t know why I like you.”
“Oh, so you like me, huh?” Draco teased, giving a toothy grin. He looked so goofy and so pure grinning like that, like the sneer that had been plastered on his face for years had melted into something that radiated genuine warmth and happiness.
“Harry Potter likes me!” he yelled to the woods, hearing nothing in return but the chirping of a small bird and the gentle rushing of a stream that hadn’t quite frozen over yet. “Let the record show that Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter like each other. Maybe still hate each other, but like each other, too!”
Harry groaned, rolling his eyes. “Shut up.”
Draco took a stride back towards Harry, effectively closing the gap between them until their faces were mere inches apart once again. “Make me.” He smirked.
And Harry was all too happy to oblige.
…
“Hey, Harry!” Ron greeted with a grin as he entered The Three Broomsticks. “Over here!”
Harry waved and went to take a seat by Ron, Dean, Seamus, and Neville. “No Hermione?” Harry asked as he approached.
“No, all she does is study these days,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “I doubt that we’ll see much of her on weekends until the holidays. And she has poor Neville on a round-the-clock study schedule for their independent project.”
Neville gave a little smile and then nodded his head in acknowledgement. “I knew what I was getting into, I suppose.”
“Oh, that reminds me!” Ron said, reaching around in his cloak pocket and pulling out a glass vial of a thin, clear potion. As Harry leaned in and squinted through his glasses, he was able to make out a label that read Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes present: Tongue-Tie Truth Serum.
“What is that?” asked Harry, wrinkling up his nose.
“It’s like a truth serum,” Ron explained, swirling the liquid around at eye-level in its flask. “But it’s not nearly as powerful and makes your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth if you’re about to tell a lie. George gave it to me and I thought it might be helpful for your project, what with resisting veritaserum being a form of occlumency and all that.”
Harry nodded, chuckling a bit. “Interesting. We could take a swing at it.”
“And I was thinking…” Ron went on. “We haven’t had a good old-fashioned Gryffindor boys truth-or-drink game in a while.”
Seamus and Dean’s eyes lit up at the prospect, but Neville just groaned and put his head in his hands. “Cause that went so well last time?” he grumbled.
Ignoring him, Ron pressed on. “Come on—added stakes! Plus, this way, you’ll get to be better at it than Malfoy since you’ve already practiced.”
Eventually, everyone agreed to take a shot of the Tongue-Tie Truth Serum. One marked difference from veritaserum that Harry noticed almost immediately: the taste was terrible —like the smell of gasoline mixed with spoiled milk. Veritaserum was completely tasteless and odorless, but this caused several of the boys to gag and greedily gulp down their firewhiskey and cokes.
“The Ministry said that truth serum variants were only legal if it were very obvious that a drink had been spiked with it,” Ron choked out, tears in his eyes from the grotesque liquid.
“Could’ve used a heads up,” said Dean, coughing as he took another sip of his drink.
“Okay, okay. My bad…” Ron relented, putting his hands up in mock defense. “As a show of good faith, I’ll go first.”
“I’ve got one,” Dean said almost immediately. “What do you want to do after school?”
There was that damn question again. But Ron didn’t hesitate. “I want to go to Auror training, I think.”
“I have a question,” Neville cut in. “Do you think that you’ll marry Hermione someday?”
“Yes,” Ron answered, grinning sheepishly. “If she’ll have me.” This caused a small round of cheers and whooping across the table. Harry, grinning ear-to-ear, clapped Ron on the back in support.
The rest of the questions were relatively tame, although Harry did learn that Neville had kissed Hannah Abbott in the Herbology lab last week, that Seamus cried over a romance novel, and that Dean had a hundred day streak going on completing the Daily Prophet’s Ancient Runes puzzle in under a minute.
“Alright, Harry, what do you want to do after school?” Dean asked. Harry started to say “I want to be an Auror” and then felt the incredibly odd sensation of his tongue being suction cupped to the roof of his mouth as if with super glue. “I honestly have no idea,” he spit out.
“Well, that’s the most honest answer we’re gonna get out of anybody all night,” Seamus said, chuckling. “I’m sure we all feel that to some extent.”
“How have you and Malfoy been getting along?” Neville asked. Harry felt himself go to say “not too bad” and then immediately felt his tongue plastered to the roof of his mouth once again, causing him to choke slightly.
“I’m pretty sure I have feelings for Draco,” Harry blurted out, face flushing a deep red. He cringed, anticipating his friends turning on him.
Ron snorted out a laugh, then started in on a string of sarcastic applause. “Finally!” he said, still laughing as he clapped Harry on the back. Harry’s face flushed even further and he looked as if he were hoping that a hole would emerge from the ground to swallow him whole. “It only took eight bloody years and a veritaserum knockoff for you to admit it!”
“Y—you knew?” Harry stuttered out, mouth agape.
“Harry, I’m your best mate,” Ron said, still chuckling. “Of course I knew. You weren’t exactly subtle about it. Seriously, you should’ve heard yourself during sixth year. Stupid Malfoy with his perfect blonde hair and his nice robes. Look at Malfoy sitting there eating dinner and looking all suspicious. I should follow Malfoy today, just to be safe. Did you see Malfoy this morning?”
“Maybe I should try to floo call Malfoy Manor,” Dean chimed in, imitating.
“Maybe I should try to floo call Malfoy Manor and then hang up,” Seamus contributed, laughing heartily between words.
“Merlin.” Harry sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “So everybody knew but me. That’s awesome.”
“It’s alright, Harry,” Neville said, patting his arm. “I mean, your choice in men was definitely pretty questionable at the time, but we all love you regardless of who you love.”
“I love you guys too,” Harry said, happy in the confidence that he didn’t need the liquor to say it and that his friends didn’t need the veritaserum knockoff to believe it.
Chapter 14
Notes:
Hi y'all! Sorry that this took so long to update—I really wanted to get this scene right.
Massive content warnings on this chapter for past child abuse, self-harm, blood (sectumsempra) and near-death experiences. Please be mindful when making the decision to read this chapter; it could be potentially triggering for several reasons.
Thank you for reading!
Chapter Text
Harry Potter hadn’t dated when most of the other kids had dated. He didn’t have an elementary school crush that he could have held the hand of or maybe even stolen a chaste kiss from under the slide at playtime while none of the adults were looking—and he was aware that was an incredibly muggle view on the idyllic childhood, but he couldn’t help but to compare his own experiences against those.
He didn’t get to have childish fantasies about sweet girls with freckles and unkempt auburn curls pulling him outside the view of camp counselors for a quick snog. He didn’t get to feel his heartbeat quicken as the hand of a young man with silky platinum hair and too much confidence for his own good lingered for a moment too long on the small of his back at the school dance. He didn’t get to feel the breath of somebody who was convinced they were in love with him warm on his neck, praying that their overbearing but well-intentioned parents didn’t walk in.
Because Harry had been too busy trying to survive.
And survive he would—he was good at that. Great, even. Even when that meant digging through the bin for remnants of leftover Sunday dinner to keep his body going. Even when that meant nursing silent resentment for the woman who made him do yard work until the burnt skin on his back peeled off in clean sheets of white. Even when that meant spending long summer evenings stuffed into a cupboard making no noise and pretending not to exist so as not to draw enough attention to earn himself a few lashings onto his already scorched back. Even when that meant dying first and traversing through the liminal space version of King’s Cross station to get back despite that imagery appearing creepy as shite to some people who know him now.
What a terrifying prospect that was to Harry—being known. Because, well, he couldn’t very well pretend he didn’t exist if people knew him at his core, now could he?
Harry became aware that he was humming as he assembled a plate full of food to bring to the Room of Requirement. This wasn’t something that he knew he did until Luna had pointed it out—she had said that it was nice to have an audible indicator that Harry was nearby and he was doing just fine.
This had become a sort of routine of his. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we would assemble a small plate of whatever he had eaten for dinner and cast a spell to send it to the Room of Requirement. Except for the meat, because Draco never seemed to eat the meat on his plate. Harry suspected that it had something to do with seeing Nagini in the early stages of digesting human flesh one too many times—the kind of insight that really only came from being inside someone’s mind to observe the scene—rather than what he would have assumed was the entitled fussiness of a boy who had never appreciated the value of whatever was put on his plate.
And Harry had never much prided himself on being perceptive like that—hell, he had studied the notes of a man whose handwriting he had seen every week in potions class since first year and not even recognized it—but he was insightful. He would give himself that much. A product of his environment, he supposed, where telling the difference between Aunt Petunia’s footsteps on a good day and on a bad day could mean the difference between being mercifully given an extra meal and being hit with the hot frying pan used to cook said meal.
He may not have had any of the typical childhood and adolescent experiences, but at least he was able to pick up on minute cues in the demeanor of those around him. It was, admittedly, much more helpful for survival. Bully for him, he supposed.
“Meeting up with Draco,” Harry said to his friends, slinging a bag with books over his shoulder and turning to make his exit.
“Use protection!” Ron yelled after him, earning a chuckle and a head shake from Harry and a not-so-gentle nudge in the ribs from Hermione.
The Room of Requirement was a welcome scene—Draco had already settled in by the desk, chewing on a buttered carrot and flipping through what appeared to be a muggle clinical psychology textbook. His face was lit gently by the fire, highlighting the grinding motion of his sharp jawline and the focus in his watercolor eyes.
He smiled warmly as Harry approached the table, looking up at him with what could only be thinly veiled excitement. “Did you know,” he started, raising up the textbook before him like a talisman. “that muggle psychotherapy predates the practice of mind healing by nearly fifty years?”
Harry couldn’t help but to smile at the infectious enthusiasm. “I didn’t,” he said, settling in next to Draco. “But I’m glad that Hermione’s book has been useful.”
“A man named Franz Mesmer thought that you could treat all kinds of psychosomatic and psychological problems with hypnotherapy. All the evidence suggests that he was a muggle with no knowledge of actual magical thought manipulation. And that was as early as the 1700s!” Draco continued to flip through the book and then pointed at another section vigorously. “And then Sigmund Freud—I’m sure you remember him; he’s the Oedipus complex guy—essentially started modern talk therapy in the 19th century. Wixen people didn’t start the practice of mind healing until the 40s!”
Draco’s hands shook slightly as he spoke, either a product of his excitement or the aftermath of early December chill creeping into the air. Without much thought, Harry went to grab the fuzzy, grey throw blanket from the back of the couch and slung it over Draco’s shoulders, nudging his chair a bit closer to cozy up to him.
“That’s actually really interesting,” Harry admitted, grabbing the roll of parchment that Draco had been taking notes on. “It wouldn’t hurt to have more muggle sources in our dissertation. I feel like I wouldn’t even be improving on occlumency without the muggle emotional processing theory stuff.”
When he looked up, Draco seemed to have stopped reading the texts and was staring at him with an expression of tender discernment. He had a hand holding the small throw blanket around his slender shoulders—shoulders that were too slender for Harry’s liking, and he noted that the slice of pie on his plate had gone untouched.
Draco put down his wand and pulled a leg up onto his chair, wrapping the blanket around it. His eyes flitted to his half-eaten dinner plate and then back to Harry. “Are we gonna talk about this?”
Harry straightened out his posture a bit, holding his hands in his lap. “Talk about what?”
“Come on, Harry. Are we gonna talk about why you’re always bringing me food and making sure I’m warm enough?” He motioned again to the blanket wrapped around his frame, eyes flitting back over to the plate of food as his voice dropped. “About the things that I saw in the pensieve?”
Harry looked confused, eyebrows knitting together perplexedly. “What is there to talk about?”
“I mean, nothing—if you really don’t want to.” Draco suddenly felt like his tongue was dry. “I just…I worry…have you talked to anybody about it?”
Harry’s stomach was rising into his throat, all sense of Gryffindor bravery feeling as if it had been sucked from his core. “People know,” he protested weakly. “Ron, Fred, and George came to my house and ripped the bars off my window to get me to school one time.”
Draco’s eyes widened a bit at ripped the bars off my window, but he said nothing.
“I’m sure that Ron and Hermione knew what was going on to some extent.” Harry sighed. “They saw me come back from summer break a stone lighter than when I left. They knew not to expect to hear much from me by owl over the summers. They saw the bruises and the scars. They knew that I wasn’t allowed near my things to do coursework.”
“Okay, so your friends knew to some extent. Did you ever tell an adult about it?” Draco hoped that the question didn’t sound accusatory.
“Somebody must have known,” Harry rationalized. “My Hogwarts letters were addressed to Harry Potter in The Cupboard Under the Stairs.”
Draco’s jaw tightened and Harry swallowed his anxiety to press forward. “Do you remember that line that Dumbledore used to give in speeches about help being given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it?” Harry asked.
Draco nodded.
“Last year, Dumbledore amended that statement.” Harry was fiddling with the cuff of his robes again, looking down as he shrugged in the most nonchalant way he could manage. “He told me that help would always be given at Hogwarts to those who deserve it. And I guess I just figured that I didn’t deserve it.”
Draco repetitively clenched and unclenched his fists, standing in a flurry with the blanket still wrapped around him and beginning to pace in front of the hearth. Harry could swear that he saw a vein that he hadn’t ever seen before bulge out of his neck.
“Well, this is the first time I've genuinely regretted not killing the bastard,” Draco said, voice low and tone sharp enough to cut glass.
“You don't mean that,” Harry said. “It's alright.”
“It’s not alright,” Draco spat, whirling on his heels and causing Harry to flinch. His gaze softened just slightly upon seeing Harry recoil, but his eyes were still narrowed in rage. “And I mean what I say.”
“Come over here,” Harry suggested, moving to settle in on the couch. “Come sit.”
Draco did as he was bid, spine tense and upright as he still seemed to have a quiet rage simmering below the surface. He took a deep inhale, then a deep exhale, and looked back at Harry. “How do you feel about that?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Harry rationalized. “Dumbledore was my idol. I thought he could do no wrong. Hell, the man coached me through my death.”
Draco shot him an incredulous look.
“We can talk about that later.” Harry chuckled dryly, scratching his head. “Honestly, I guess I—I feel like a preteen Harry a lot recently.”
Draco leaned against the couch and towards Harry. “In what ways?”
“Just the things I find myself wanting to do…” Harry recalled his recent inclination towards spending extended periods of time locked away in the vanishing cabinet, making no noise and pretending that he didn’t exist.
“My sleep schedule…” he continued, thinking of the late nights he’d spent either wide awake in bed or fighting off fitful nightmares of everyone he loved going through immense agony and facing certain death amidst the Inferi on his behalf. And making up for that lost sleep in the middle of the afternoon.
“My interests…” he said, mind flitting to the late-night flights on his broomstick and the reckless nosedives that made him feel something.
“My reactions to things,” he finished, reflecting on how he had taken back up the flinching at sudden movements despite that particular reflex of his being all but stamped out over the course of the war.
“Well, preteen Harry is still inside you.” Draco’s eyes flitted to the fire and then back to Harry, all innocent and earnest. “Maybe he's trying to communicate something.”
“You’ve read one too many muggle psychotherapy books.” Harry scoffed. “What in Merlin’s name could preteen Harry have to communicate that adult Harry doesn't know?”
“Well, I'm not sure.” Draco ignored the comment on muggle psychotherapy books, pressing on anyway. “This preteen Harry—what were things like for him?”
Harry’s eyes widened. His lower lip began to quiver and he could feel his throat getting thick. Dammit.
“Sorry, I—” Harry began to say, his voice hitching. “I feel like I’m gonna cry for some reason.”
“Hey, it's alright.” Draco spoke softly, wrapping a delicate arm around Harry’s shoulders and bringing the thick, gray throw blanket with it. “It’s alright.”
A quiet sob broke from Harry's throat, a strangled sound, as a few tears fell down his face and into Draco’s robes. “Nobody’s ever asked me that.”
“I'm sorry that nobody did.” Draco pulled Harry closer into his chest, face pressing into the top of his head. “Somebody should have. You deserve to talk about it.”
The response from Harry was muffled as he allowed his face to be pressed deeper into Draco’s shoulder. “I—he—things were so bad.”
Draco started rubbing gentle circles on Harry’s back. “Do you wanna talk about it?”
“No,” Harry said, sniffling slightly. “I just…”
Draco waited and continued to hold Harry close until he straightened up of his own accord and continued speaking. “I guess sometimes I wonder who I could’ve been.”
Draco hummed in affirmation. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I just…Dumbledore left me with the Dursleys to ensure that I’d be willing to sacrifice myself. But I wonder if I would have anyways. I mean, I know that my dad was no saint as a teenager—I saw the hell that he put Snape through—but my mom was always described as a saint. And I think she would’ve given herself up for people anyways. Well, I know that she would have, because she gave herself up for me.”
Harry’s voice had grown thick again. “I just like to think that I would’ve done it anyways. That I didn’t need to think of my life without value. That I would’ve done it even knowing that my life had value—because I was noble…and—and brave…”
“You’re incredibly brave, Harry,” said Draco, taking his hand. “And so was your mother.”
“My aunt and uncle told me that she died driving drunk.” Harry’s voice should’ve been bitter, but it wasn’t—he just sounded full of grief. “I thought that my parents were drunks who didn’t give a shit about me and that I’d never amount to anything because I was their kid. I was told constantly that I was stupid and lazy and wasn’t worth the food on my plate.”
Harry’s eyes skipped back over to the untouched pie on the desk and Draco’s eyes followed, a stony wrath overtaking them before they landed back on Harry.
"In my house, doing magical homework was wrong,” Harry explained, then chuckled dryly. “Actually, doing muggle homework was also wrong. Because then I might perform better than my dear cousin Dudley and hurt his fragile self-esteem.”
“So basically you weren’t allowed to succeed?” Draco questioned, his tone soft but his angular jaw tighter than usual. “And then they acted like it was a self-fulfilling prophecy when you didn’t?”
“My uncle—well, he just didn’t like me very much.” Harry’s gaze trailed back over to the fire, which had started raging in the nearby hearth. “None of my family did.”
Draco leaned a bit closer, moving his thumb to brush stray strands of black hair off of Harry’s forehead. “Well…” Draco said, mouth tightening into a melancholic smile. “They missed out.”
Harry chuckled again, the action bereft of humor. “Do you know what my cousin said to me before my family moved houses?”
Draco shook his head.
“I don’t think you’re a waste of space,” Harry said solemnly. “It was meant to be a consolation. And I—I took it as one. As an apology. Not I’m sorry for having my friends beat the piss out of you, Harry. Not I’m sorry for the ways that I encouraged my parents to abuse you, Harry. But I don’t think you’re a waste of space. And I cried over that shit.”
"That must've been really hard,” Draco affirmed, tightening his grip on Harry’s hand beneath the blanket. Harry’s eyes started to water again, and a cascade of mumbled apologies for it came tumbling out of his mouth.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Draco said, picking at the sleeve of his robes. “I’m sorry that I didn’t pick up on some of that when we were kids.”
“You were eleven.” Harry objected, his voice strained.
“Yeah, well—you were eleven, too.”
For a moment, all that could be heard was the delicate instrumentals that defined the Room of Requirement study space and the crackling of logs in the hearth.
“Hey Harry,” Draco leaned in and spoke very softly, as if he might break Harry with his voice. “If your loved ones don’t care that you’re suffering, maybe those loved ones don’t actually love you very much.”
“Draco?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for listening.”
“Harry?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for talking.”
Harry looked up at Draco, eyes red-rimmed and tear-stained, and smiled.
…
A line had been crossed. Draco Malfoy had allowed himself to feel comfortable in the company of another person. So comfortable, in fact, that he had barely noticed Harry staring at him—eyeing him cautiously as if he were a potion with too much lady’s mantle added that could explode at any minute.
Draco was perceptive—he would give himself that much. How many stairs were there between the Great Hall and the Eighth Year dormitories? 156. But having any earthly clue what Harry Potter was thinking at any given moment? Well, he figured that his chances of knowing that with any confidence were slim to none.
Draco had multiple open textbooks and bits of parchment splayed around him on the floor. As he leaned forward to flip a page, the fire in the hearth cast a warm glow across his face.
His eyes looked curious, scouring the pages for information, seeming entirely enthralled and borderline enamored rather than overwhelmed by his volume of work.
The thick, oversized dark green sweater that he wore had been rolled up to his elbows and he was sitting with one leg out, leaning on his forearms as he wrote down important bits of information.
He looked serene, Harry thought, body poised atop his mountains of text. Harry realized then that he had never really seen Draco in a relaxed state before. He had always been tensed up, at attention, as if he were waiting for some imaginary alarm to go off.
The thought caused a clench in Harry’s stomach.
“You know…” Harry started, gathering himself to go and sit cross-legged by Draco on the floor. “It was really helpful for me to talk through everything last week.”
“That’s wonderful,” Draco said with a soft smile, taking a moment to peel his attention away from the essay and placing a hand onto Harry’s knee. “I’m happy to talk whenever you need it.”
“I’m happy to talk whenever you need it, too,” Harry said gently, placing his hands on top of Draco’s.
“I know,” said Draco, suddenly stiffening.
“Do you?” questioned Harry.
“What?” asked Draco, terse confusion spreading across his face.
“I just…we talked all about my issues. With food and Dumbledore and my childhood. And it was helpful,” Harry added quickly. “But we haven’t talked very much about what I saw in your head either.”
Draco stiffened further, his posture resembling the poised version of himself he had displayed throughout their earlier school years. "My childhood was fine,” he added brusquely.
"So you'd want other children to have the childhood you had?" Harry pressed, his tone gently prodding.
Draco scoffed, rolling his eyes. "What are you, bloody therapizing me, Potter?"
Harry didn’t blink at the sudden name change. "It's what Luna said."
Now it was Draco’s turn to look at Harry as if he were a potion that might explode. "Do share,” he drawled contemptuously.
" So you'd want other children to have the childhood you had? It's what Luna said to me when I said exactly what you just said. That my childhood was fine."
Draco’s lips pressed into a tight line. "Hardly the same thing."
"Isn't it, though?"
"Harry, I had two parents that loved me.” Draco looked cynical at Harry’s line of questioning. “I know that Lucius sometimes had an interesting way of showing it and that he made some incredibly questionable life decisions. But my parents kept me fed and clothed and I had a bed to sleep in at night. I was fine."
Harry shrugged. "If you say so."
Draco could feel his anger boiling over now. "What the fuck does that even mean?" he spat.
Harry shrugged again, shrinking back a bit at Draco’s irritation.
Draco crossed his arms over his chest, letting out a huff of air exasperatedly. "No, if you have something to say, then out with it."
Harry seemed to struggle with himself, debating whether or not it was worth it to necessitate the conversation. “Look, Draco, I see how you act. And I’ve seen why you act that way. But any time it’s been brought up, it’s all he tried his best and he didn’t know any better and thank Merlin he knocked it out of me before the Dark Lord could. It’s not healthy.”
“Mm.” Draco hummed sarcastically, demeanor tightening defensively. “And you’re just the champion of what’s healthy, are you, sneaking in here at night to rewatch the memory of your Godfather passing over and over again as if you can change the outcome?”
Harry’s eyes widened in shock and then narrowed in anger.
“Oh yeah, don’t think I didn’t notice that fun little habit of yours,” Draco spat. “If you’re so concerned about me, why wait to bring it up now when I was having a perfectly peaceful evening?”
"I was trying not to upset you.” Harry could feel the familiar rage bubbling up in his stomach, but he clenched his jaw and did all he could to make it simmer down. “But maybe things need to get a little upsetting before we can continue. It’s not good for you and it’s not good for the occlumency work.”
“Oh.” Draco’s left eye twitched. “Not good for the occlumency work, huh? Well, Merlin forbid that I not pull my weight on the project—I’m sure that’s all you care about anyways.”
Harry winced slightly at the accusation, softening his gaze ever so slightly. “I—you know that’s not true.”
“I guess that I had thought—hoped—that maybe you weren't just doing all of this out of obligation,” Draco said bitterly. “That maybe you didn't hate me so much anymore. Egg on my face, I guess.”
“Draco,” Harry said softly. “That’s not true. It’s not just out of obligation. I can practically feel you ripping yourself to shreds in your head, waiting for some violent punishment that’s never going to come. And I think if you just talked about it—”
“Fine.” Draco cut him off. “You wanna talk about it—let’s talk about it. You know how you said that doing coursework in your house was wrong?”
Harry nodded, silent.
"Well in my house, doing anything but coursework was wrong. Until Lucius figured out that I liked doing my coursework. Then there really wasn't anything that was safe to be doing. I think he was just miserable and seeing other people doing anything that didn't make them miserable too pissed him off. But acting miserable while doing the thing that was supposed to make you miserable also pissed him off. You were supposed to do things that made you miserable, but act grateful and contrite about it.”
Draco said it with a neutral tone and dull eyes, reciting the instructions as if he were giving an academic lecture. Maybe, in his mind, he was.
“But don’t act like you’re so open with me,” Draco went on. “You’re getting better at the occlumency. And I can feel you tugging me every which way against the pull of the thing that you really don’t want me to see. So what is it, hm? Since you’re all about getting personal today?”
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. "The sectumsempra incident."
The anger looked as if it had suddenly evaporated from Draco. "Why does that get to you so badly?"
"I used dark magic on someone I care about." Harry was back to fiddling with his robes.
Draco blinked. "You care about me?"
"Of course,” Harry admitted, then took a risk. "Why does it get to you so badly?"
Draco looked as if he were about to say something difficult, then just made eye contact with Harry and solemnly shook his head.
"Okay, hey—," Harry said, wrapping an arm around Draco's shoulders. "That's okay."
“No, I…I want to tell you,” Draco whispered through shaky breaths. “But I think it may be one of those things that’s easier to show you, if I can. Is that alright?"
Harry went to say yes, but found that the assertion didn’t sit quite right with him. "No, it's not alright. But we can do it anyway. Do you want to do it now?”
“No time like the present,” Draco quipped primly, dragging himself backwards a bit to prop his back against the couch and shutting his eyes in anticipation.
“Draco?” Harry asked softly.
Draco opened his eyes. “Yes, Harry?”
Harry felt as if he needed to summon all of his Gryffindor courage for this question. More than he had needed to fight a basilisk, or face down a werewolf, or steal a dragon’s egg. “Can I hold your hand?”
Draco’s heart sank, and his expression softened. “Yes, Harry,” he confirmed, gently taking Harry’s left hand in his. “I’m ready.”
Draco heard Harry’s intake of breath as he drew his wand, unsteady and uncertain. And then, with a shaking voice, “Legilimens.”
Harry had been expecting resistance, as there typically would be when he was accessing a memory that had been repressed, but instead found that his brain transitioned smoothly into Draco’s recollection of the Great Hall. Draco was standing towards the entrance, observing the back of Harry’s head as he spoke in hushed tones to Katie Bell.
Harry turned to look at Draco and Draco felt himself pale, hearing his heartbeat ringing in his ears as he turned and nearly sprinted out of the hall. Draco could feel the panic rising in his throat, loosening his tie in a vain attempt at being able to breathe.
Bursting into the sixth-floor boys’ lavatory, which was nearly always empty due to the lack of classrooms on the sixth floor, Draco tore his vest over his head and threw it into the wash basin. He clutched the edge of the basin tightly with his left hand, already positioning his wand up against his left bicep with his right hand.
He tore a deep gash into the skin there with his wand—dress shirt be damned—thinking of the cursed necklace and of poor Katie Bell, who was no doubt traumatized for life at his hands.
He slashed again thinking of his mother, who would be dead soon if he couldn’t succeed—brutally tortured and then hopefully, mercifully killed at the hands of the Dark Lord for his failure. The thought made him grunt in frustration and drag the wand violently and haphazardly in a zigzag pattern, ripping apart full sections of skin as he cut through muscle tissue.
Finally, he thought of his father. If his father had cursed him for falling asleep next to Blaise, what would he do to him now? The thought made his stomach curdle, but it was enough to put his wand down at the near-promise of future agony. He used his right arm to steady himself as the mangled mess of his left arm dripped into the basin, spilled blood incubating the memories as it mingled with the running water and swirled down the drain.
Draco allowed himself to cry—not the pitiful whining he had done for display as a young boy, but truly panicked and agonied sobs that wracked his body and made it difficult to stand. His breath hitched as he whimpered and tried to collect himself, but found that he couldn’t. His vision was swimming and his eyes stung with tears, barely able to recognize the hollowed-out man that the mirror reflected back.
Suddenly, a voice. “I know what you did, Malfoy.” It was Potter, who appeared in his field of vision and raised his wand in accusation. “You hexed her, didn’t you?”
It was true. He had. Not even hexed her—the necklace had been cursed. Sure, she hadn’t been the target, but she had been cursed all the same. Draco’s mind flashed to his father again and he could feel himself gasping for air as he raised his own wand in retaliation, sending a hex flying through the air that narrowly missed Potter as he ducked behind a stall.
The two sent hexes flying back and forth—narrowly missing each other around tile walls and underneath the toilets, sending porcelain shrapnel flying throughout the room. As Draco rounded a corner, he saw Harry standing with his wand raised.
“Sectumsempra!” he yelled.
Draco saw the aftermath before he felt it—a bright flash of white on the tip of Potter’s wand as he was catapulted backwards. The fall knocked the wind out of him and he suddenly felt the familiar sting from his left arm radiating all over his body tenfold.
His breathing instantly became labored as he choked and gasped for air, the slicing pain from his torso seeming to congregate in his neck and chest as the blood constructed his airways. His blood, he realized. Too much of his blood.
That should bother him, he thought, but a part of him felt resigned to it. He didn’t deserve a hero’s fate. He deserved to gag and cough violently on the undoubtedly filthy floor of the loo.
It was curious how everything seemed to move in slow motion. Every rasping gasp felt like a minute, each sanguinous cough an hour. The back of his throat tasted like the time he had shoved a handful of sickles into his mouth as a kid. Thank Merlin his mum had stormed in before he choked to death. Kind of like he was doing now.
Wasn't blood supposed to be warm? Draco felt cold—no, freezing. He would be shivering if he weren't already shaking from the pain. And oh, Merlin, he was so tired— if only he could just rest for a minute.
The thought sounded nice, and he had just finished his last attempt at clearing the bloody mucus from his throat when a familiar whirl of greasy black hair and robes entered his field of vision. He felt relief, and also maybe a bit of disappointment, before he blacked out.
Upon mentally returning to the Room of Requirement, both Draco and Harry collapsed backwards onto the couch in exhaustion.
The two stayed like that for a while, slumped against the grey fabric with Harry’s head on Draco’s shoulder and Draco’s head on Harry’s head.
“I’m so sorry that I did that,” said Harry finally. “I didn’t know what the spell did and I never should have used it. I’ve spent months regretting that day.”
“No worries,” Draco said flatly, voice sounding void of any emotion. “As you can see, I was doing a pretty good job of slicing myself up on my own before you showed up.”
They sat in silence for a moment.
Without warning, a harsh sob ripped from Draco’s throat, sounding as if it had torn through a gate that was meant to hold it back.
“I…you…” Harry trailed off, voice filling with concern. “Why didn't you tell me?”
Draco looked towards the floor, ashamed. “To avoid the look that you're giving me right now.”
“This was good back then.” Draco steeled himself against Harry’s pitying gaze. “It was…adaptive. When I’d cut myself, I’d imagine that all of the little bubbles of blood were a different thought or different feeling. And as they’d merge together, I’d imagine sorting the different parts of my brain into neat little lines. Self-contained stories. And I’d imagine building walls up around them, so that each memory was contained to its place. And I guess that helped me to keep things from him, to keep them in line—literally.”
“When was the last time?” Harry asked softly, keeping his eyes on the fireplace.
Draco debated lying, but decided that Harry knew most of it at this point anyway. “A couple weeks ago. After we went out with your friends.”
Harry winced. That clearly wasn’t the answer he had been expecting—or hoping for. He wrapped his hands around Draco’s forearm and squeezed gently. And then, softly, “Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Draco honestly. “It’s like the only time that I feel allowed to hate myself a little bit less is when I’m suffering.”
“Nobody benefits from your suffering.” It was meant to be an argument, but it sounded more like pleading, even to Harry’s ears.
“Maybe not, but some people want it,” Draco said in earnest, then paused. "And I know what you're gonna say."
Harry shook his head against Draco’s shoulder, then turned to peer up at him. "No, you don't."
“That they’re wrong to want that,” Draco voiced expressionlessly. “That all the death and suffering couldn’t possibly have been the fault of one teenage boy.”
A small smile made its way onto Harry’s face. "Ok, so you did know."
Draco chuckled darkly, then shook his head, wiping at the edges of his eyes with the sleeve of his cloak. “Merlin, what is wrong with me? I just feel so angry all the time…”
Harry nodded in sympathy. “Well, I understand that.”
Draco looked surprised—and hopeful. “You do?”
“Of course.”
Draco’s right hand wandered up to dig into his left upper arm, causing Harry to wince. “Who are you angry at?”
“Well, I’m not so angry anymore,” Harry clarified.
Draco’s brows knit together. “What?”
“I used to be angry pretty much always,” he said, voice trailing off.
“How did you get it to stop?” Draco asked.
“Well, er—I died.” Harry smiled apologetically at the response.
“Oh.” Draco’s voice was dry. “That’s helpful.”
Harry's lips turned up in amusement, then settled back down into a line. “Nothing is wrong with you, ya know. It’s okay that you’re angry.”
“Something is absolutely wrong with me,” Draco claimed. “That’s why I’m so angry.”
“You know.” Harry reached up to grab Draco’s right hand and pulled it away from his harm, gripping it in his lap. “A wise man once told me that the world isn’t made up of good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside of us.”
Draco chuckled darkly, staring down at their now intertwined fingers. “I’d imagine that's more of a consolation to people who aren't literal Death Eaters.”
“You aren't a Death Eater anymore. It's not too late to choose where your story goes.”
“What kind of Hufflepuff rubbish is that?” Draco asked doubtfully.
“It’s true.” Harry looked back up to meet Draco’s gaze. “Nobody’s born bad.”
“Okay, maybe I wasn’t born bad,” Draco relented. “But I’m bad now.”
“Says who?” Harry pressed.
“Says me.”
“Yeah, that guy’s full of shit.”
Draco snorted quietly in amusement.
“I really did enjoy going out with your friends,” he confirmed. “They’re good people.”
“Yeah, I think so, too,” Harry agreed, grinning.
“Weasley still looks like he wants to slit my throat at times,” Draco recalled, suddenly looking serious again. “But Granger and Longbottom have been unnervingly kind to me.”
“You’re really very similar to Hermione in a lot of ways,” Harry said. He chuckled as Draco raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “You even look a bit like her when you do that.”
“I mean that as the highest compliment,” Harry added. "Hermione was the only one who never left my side. Through everything."
Harry rubbed his thumb back and forth over Draco’s left hand.
“I owe Longbottom my life,” Draco admitted softly.
“How so?” Harry questioned.
“If he hadn’t stopped me that day in the courtyard, I don’t think I would’ve had the courage to throw you the wand. I felt like I was screaming for somebody—anybody—to stop me from joining my family. But if he hadn’t grabbed my arm, I would have walked away from the wreckage with my mum and never looked back—make no mistake about that.”
Draco groaned. “Now that I’m recalling this, I think I may have said something to him about that in my drunken state.”
“Yeah, you said a lot of things in your drunken state…” Harry goaded, snickering.
Draco groaned again, burying his face in his hands. “Do I even wanna know?”
“I believe there was something in there about my eyes glimmering like emeralds…”
Draco gasped indignantly. “I did not!”
“You did too!” Harry laughed.
“That doesn’t even make any sense! Your eyes aren’t even emerald. They're more of a sea foam." Draco protested, eyes widening as he realized what he had said. "Tell anybody I said that and I'll—"
"Hex me into next week," Harry finished the sentence, rolling his seafoam green eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure."
“Drunken Draco is quite romantic,” Harry added, laughing. “I would never make a move on you in that state, of course. Luckily, you said that you were very good at being patient.”
“I am very good at being patient,” Draco asserted.
Harry sent a disbelieving look towards Draco.
“What? I am!” Draco crossed his arms and huffed, feeling a sense of juvenile indignation creeping in. “Do you remember in fourth year when Moody transfigured me into a ferret? How I had been posted up in that tree in the courtyard ready to taunt you about the Tournament?”
Draco thought that Harry might laugh at the memory, but instead he grimaced. He looked as if he were about to say something, but decided against it and just nodded his head.
"I waited in that tree for almost 2 hours." The way that Draco said this, with his nose in the air at a point well-proven and a shimmer of something playfully beckoning in his eyes, caused all other thoughts and worries inside Harry to melt.
Harry nearly choked on the laugh that ripped from his lungs. "Why on earth did you do that?"
Draco shrugged nonchalantly. "I wanted to look cool."
"And the answer to that was...?"
"Tree," Draco said, motioning with his hands as if it were obvious.
Harry snorted, suddenly feeling the warmth from the fireplace tenfold as he watched Draco defend the ridiculous ploy for his attention. “So have you ever had hinges, or…?”
Hinges? The realization took Draco a second. Oh. Unhinged.
He narrowed his eyes in mock upset, but by then Harry was nearly falling over with glee at how well his clever wordplay had landed. Draco had to cover his mouth with his hand to stop the stupid grin that was spreading over his face at the sight.
“You’re very clever, Harry,” he admitted, taking Harry’s hands back in his own. “I should’ve just told you that before instead of waiting in trees for you to notice me. And I shouldn’t have run off that night we went out with your friends. I'm sorry that I'm such a coward.”
“Hey—” Harry interjected, pulling his hands free to wrap his arms around Draco’s shoulders. “There's no need to apologize for bolting when you're scared. That's probably good self-preservation instincts.”
Draco smirked, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You could probably use some of those.”
Harry chuckled, running his thumb lovingly across Draco’s cheek. “Yeah, I probably could.”
Chapter 15
Notes:
Author's Note: Hey y'all! Sorry that I've been posting much more sporadically—just a lot going on in my personal life. I'm hoping to get back to a regular biweekly cadence sometime soon. In the meantime, I wanted to at least post what I have, even if it's a shorter chapter for me.
Content warning on this chapter for some general references to just about all of the previous content warnings.
Thank you for reading!
Chapter Text
Nothing was the same after that. Nobody had ever known Draco Malfoy’s secrets—not the Dark Lord in all of his attempts to penetrate Draco’s occlumency shields, not his parents, not his friends, not even his Godfather. Generally speaking, he was good at hiding things.
But Harry Potter knew now. Harry Potter knew everything. And he knew everything about Harry Potter. He was surprised by how little that realization bothered him.
They didn’t talk about things much again, but they had a quiet understanding.
Draco would notice when Harry stockpiled away chocolate bars and nonperishable foods, squirreling the cached goods in odd places where he would have easy access to them later. It would shatter Draco’s heart a bit each time that he saw it happen, but he wouldn’t say anything. And Draco would understand why without asking.
Harry would notice when Draco recoiled at sudden wand movements. He became aware that in Defense Against the Dark Arts duels, Crabbe had adjusted his wand grip to mimic that of Lucius and Voldemort—index finger on top like a pencil—which caused Draco to flinch something awful. Harry felt like he could properly cast another cruciatus curse at that—and boy, would he really mean it—but he settled for giving his best impression of Professor Snape’s withering stare and didn’t say anything. And Harry understood why without asking.
Draco would notice when Harry fell into one of his episodes, the ones where he would lie in bed for days at a time missing class and skipping meals until Weasley practically begged him to at least have a shower and eat a sandwich. Also the ones where he would spend hours watching Merlin-knows-what in their pensieve and fall asleep in the Room of Requirement with his back to the wall and his wand gripped tightly against his chest. He’d try to play Weasley in getting him to at least eat and shower, but he wouldn’t say anything. And Draco understood why without asking.
Harry would notice when Draco spent an unusually long amount of time in the showers at an odd hour of the day. He’d note how the nails of Draco’s right hand seemed to dig mindlessly into the flesh of his left bicep when he was stressed out and how the action caused him to wince slightly. He would frequently give Draco a task that involved holding something in both hands to rip the offending fingers away, as if his lingering eyes hadn’t already betrayed his perception. But he wouldn’t say anything. And Harry would understand why without asking.
One day, Harry had clocked Draco’s relentless re-opening of his own wounds and simply grabbed Draco’s right hand in his own, giving it a tight squeeze and sending Draco a soft smile before returning to his coursework.
"I appreciate you not making a big deal out of this,” Draco had said in earnest.
Harry had just smiled again and patted his hand. "It's so hard."
Draco didn’t really know what Harry meant by that, but he smiled too.
The days before the holiday break passed quickly, each bleeding into each other like watercolors on a canvas. It was appalling how similar the passing weeks and months seemed to each other when there wasn’t a dark wizard on the loose threatening their lives.
“Your mother invited me over to the manor on Christmas Day,” Harry mentioned casually as the eighth year students made their way to the Hogwarts Express. Holiday break came early this year, since Christmas was on a Friday. “Andi and Teddy, too,” he added.
“Oh?” Draco cocked an eyebrow. “And you’re coming?”
Harry blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“No, it’s not—I want you to be there. I just wasn’t sure…given the last time you were at the manor…” Draco trailed off.
Harry’s eyes widened slightly in realization and he shook his head slightly. “I’ll be fine.”
“Alright.” Draco sounded hesitant. He fiddled with the hem of his robes and looked up to watch the cloudy grey smoke dissipating from the train’s engine into the cool December air. Glancing around at the last remnants of either year students flooding the station, he added “Where are your friends?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Harry shrugged.
“My guess is that Weasley’s about five minutes out and that Granger is actively chastising him for being five minutes out,” Draco jested.
“That’s probably accurate.” Harry snorted softly, surveying the crowd of students. “You’re welcome to ride home with us, if you want.”
“I told my roommates that I’d ride with them,” Draco said apologetically, motioning over to Neville and Michael waiting by the train platform. He squeezed his hands together anxiously, already envisioning his descent back to the dimly lit halls of a home that felt all too spacious and all too suffocating at the same time. He really didn’t want to stare Hermione Granger in the face while he thought about it.
“Ah, good looks,” Harry said, his tone casual but his gaze discerning. “I’ll see you on Christmas, then.”
“See you on Christmas, Harry,” Draco said. He gave Harry a quick once-over, for a moment looking as if he were going to say or do something more, then quickly decided better of it and turned on his heels to join his roommates on the train in a flurry of black robes and apprehension.
Draco scarcely waited for the Hogwarts Express to pull into the station before bidding a Happy Christmas to his roommates and promptly disapparating away. He landed smoothly onto the front grounds of the manor, careful to place himself just far enough so as not to set the wards off and alert his mother of his presence right away.
He took a moment to bite back the nausea that always gripped him when apparating such a distance, squeezing his hands into fists and taking a deep inhale. The air even smelled different than it had when he was a kid, now more reminiscent of damp driftwood and dead vegetation than the rain on cobblestone and blooming narcissus flowers that he remembered.
The manor was still poised symmetrically, and perhaps forebodingly, at the end of a long walkway made of stone brick. Draco had never been a fan of the meticulous upkeep of the pathways and hedges, making the grounds seem sterile and lifeless, but the overgrown shrubbery and the weeds bursting through each crack in the pavement made everything look a little worse for wear as well.
It looked a bit decrepit, if he were being honest—haunted, even. For a moment, Draco pondered what it really meant for a manor to be haunted. Was it the vaulted ceilings, the black pointed arches, the leaded glass—or was the core of the meaning that it was just a place soaked in misery?
He came to the conclusion that Malfoy Manor was indeed haunted. This place had seen Death—reaked of it, actually—but it had also seen those subtle depravities that often preceded something like Death. And those were at the center of what it meant to haunt something.
Draco didn’t like the idea of his mother living here alone. It crossed his mind for a moment that perhaps his mother was the ghost that haunted the manor, wandering listlessly through the desolate space confronted by relentless memory onslaughts that she felt sick to witness again and powerless to change.
He made a pact with himself to bring up the idea of selling the Manor and moving somewhere less haunted before the end of the holiday.
Inhaling deeply, a nonsensical attack on his senses of damp wood and dry grass, he crossed the boundaries of the wards and made his way on foot towards the black pointed arch of the front door.
…
Mrs. Weasley always made far more sweets than anybody could actually consume. Treacle tarts, plum pudding, jammy dodgers, toffee pudding, and brandy snaps overtook the kitchen counter. Even when the war was in full swing, the only things that felt heavy in the Burrow during Christmas time were the occupants’ stomachs.
On Harry’s first Christmas with the Weasleys, he had made himself sick with the amount of turkey, stuffing, and roasted potatoes that Mrs. Weasley had piled onto his plate. She had just kept offering him more and Harry hadn’t known how to say no. She had been very sweet about it, rubbing calming circles on his back and questioning him about what had caused the sudden flu.
He had been much more careful after that—careful not to take second helpings where he didn’t need them or to take up space where he didn’t need it. He had lived the first eleven years of his life in a cupboard living off of scraps, after all, and was aware that he didn’t need much.
Harry needed this, though—the familiarity and the closeness. Ron would always apologize to him for the lack of space. It was something he had been doing since before second year, apologizing for needing to share a room. In reality, Harry couldn’t imagine anything better than being in such close proximity to somebody he trusted with the mundane and even gruesome details of their lives.
The only thing that had changed this year was the absence of Fred. It was an absence felt by each member in their own individual way—Percy with his relentlessly guilt-ridden contributions to the upkeep of the house, Molly with her sudden fits of sobbing after her eyes landed on Fred’s arm of the family clock (stuck at Hogwarts forever), George with his dissociative episodes staring into the mirror, and Ron with his intrusive insistence on joke shop involvement.
It was enough that Harry had considered not giving them the Christmas gift he had found, but he figured that this wasn’t one of those wounds that people always talked about time healing. No, this was one of those wounds like having a mother who surely swallowed a lot of teeth yet nobody spent the time to talk about.
And he was all too familiar with the sense of curious longing that type of wound left. Which was why he ultimately decided to hand the picture he had found to Ron on Christmas morning. Fred and George lay splayed on the ground, adorning identically overgrown gray beards after attempting to thwart Dumbledore’s age line around the Goblet of Fire.
“Colin Creevey gave it to me at the end of fourth year.” Harry shrugged, attempting to sound more nonchalant than he felt. “I just kept it at the time ‘cause I thought it was funny.”
Ron’s hands had shaken slightly in taking the photograph from Harry’s grasp when he had realized what it was. He pondered on it in silence before passing it around to the rest of the family. “This is the only time I’ll get to see him as an old man,” he whispered.
The family passed the picture around in stunned silence, relishing in the near religious silence that had fallen over the sitting room.
“We would've had a real silver fox on our hands.” George’s eyes were wet, but he laughed as he said it. The rest of the room seemed to let out a collective breath, chuckling and letting a few tears fall.
Harry had felt like an intruder on the intimate moment despite it being his gift that had caused the collective reaction—like he was simply the voyeur who was witnessing the trauma of a family that he didn’t really belong to.
He was almost glad to be escaping to Malfoy Manor later in the day, despite the anxieties that announcement had brought. Harry had to admit that he had half expected the Weasleys to break into uproarious protest at the latter half of his holiday plans.
It had been all too surprising when Mrs. Weasley had wrapped him up in a tight hug and expressed her gratitude that Harry would be able to spend a portion of the holiday around his family. The focus had been on Andi and Teddy, surely, but to have the opposite of an outright rejection of Draco’s obvious presence in the scenario be received with grace was the greatest gift he could’ve asked for.
“I, er—I was a little worried that you’d be upset,” Harry had voiced to Ron in their room at the Burrow later that night. “That your whole family would be.”
Ron had taken a moment to respond in the dark silence, curling the quilt on his bed up closer to his chin. “Don’t get me wrong; I still think he’s a massive git for how he treated Hermione over the years, no matter how much he might regret it…” He trailed off. “But it’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever leave my best friend again over something that stupid. If you’re happy, then I’m happy.”
And that was all that Harry had needed to feel assured in showing up at Malfoy Manor on Friday afternoon with a subtle grin on his face.
“Mrs. Weasley knit this for you,” Harry said immediately upon his apparition arrival, extending a hand with the scarf. “I know it's probably not your thing but she refused to let me leave without something hand-knit for you and your mum.”
“What is this, polyester?” Draco asked, the sheen of his eyes betraying his imperial tone as he clutched the material closer to his chest and ran his thumbs over it.
“Nobody’s ever knitted me anything before,” he added softly, mostly to himself.
Dinner at Malfoy Manor had gone off without a hitch, if not much more formally than brunch at the Burrow had been. Dinner had been served onto carefully arranged silver plates, the Yorkshire pudding and honeyed ham and buttered parsnips all sequestered to separate regions of the platter.
Harry couldn’t help but notice that Draco didn’t touch the honeyed ham and barely picked at the rest of his plate before excusing himself off to the library.
“You mustn’t mind him,” Narcissa told Harry, who had been mixing mashed potatoes with mixed vegetable baby food and spoon-feeding the concoction to his Godson. He didn’t think that many of the nutrients were making their way into his digestive tract, truth be told, but that certainly wouldn’t stop him from trying.
“He’s rather difficult to mind, I’ve noticed,” Harry quipped with a smile, earning a knowing grin from Narcissa as well.
It was that Christmas interaction, Harry believed, that had led Narcissa to join him in the library as they walked through a photo album labeled Draco Malfoy, 1980-1995 after Teddy and Andi had gone to sleep in the Manor’s first-floor guest room.
They had been at it for nearly an hour by the time that Draco found them curled up on the library’s couch. “Oh, Merlin—put those away!” Draco exclaimed as he got closer, attempting to snap the photo album in his mother’s lap shut.
“Harry found this while I was showing him the library,” Narcissa explained, ignoring her son's protests as she turned to a new page. “Oh! Look at this one!” she exclaimed, pointing to an old photograph of Draco—probably aged five or so—staring in wonder with his hand out as an albino peacock approached from outside the frame.
He hadn't started gelling his hair back yet, with thin platinum strands falling onto his forehead. The grin that he wore on his face was wondrous and innocent, clearly amazed by the bird approaching him.
“Of course he did.” Draco pinched the bridge of his nose as if the conversation were giving him a migraine. Harry just smirked up at him, shrugging with a look of mock innocence.
“You just missed a wonderful series of you playing in the bath,” Harry taunted, grinning triumphantly. “Very adorable. Honestly, this isn't how I expected to spend my evening, but it's far more entertaining than I thought.”
Draco groaned in annoyance and rolled his eyes. “Well, budge over then,” he relented, curling up on his mother’s opposite side.
Harry nearly cackled at the next photograph, clearly taken in the seconds following the former. Little Draco was splayed backwards on the ground, nursing a small wound on his hand about the size of a peacock’s beak as he pouted at the offending creature. The bird’s head was tilted at a 45 degree angle as if it were confused that Draco’s fingers weren't actually a midday snack.
Narcissa chuckled at that one too. “That's a good one,” she mused.
“Yes, yes, very kind of you to photograph this moment instead of helping me escape the melee range of a vicious winged animal,” Draco drawled.
Narcissa rolled her eyes good-humoredly—looking very similar to Draco in that moment, Harry noted—and turned to the next page. Her chuckles stopped abruptly as she looked over the image of a young Draco in Diagon Alley, holding a bag of sweets as his father leaned in with an arm wrapped around his son's shoulder.
They both wore bright smiles and matching platinum blonde hair. The two seemed to huddle in even closer to each other as the photograph replayed.
Harry could've sworn that he saw Narcissa’s eyes grow glassy as she cleared her throat and continued flipping through the photo album. Draco had stiffened noticeably by her side, looking far away.
Eventually, they paused on a picture of Draco from right before his second year of Hogwarts. He was flanked by Crabbe and Goyle, who towered over him despite the air of authority he gave off by being at the point of the triangle. His hair was slicked back neatly and he scowled menacingly at the camera as he passed his broomstick from one hand to the other. It was odd to look at him then, all pointed features and slender frame, clearly a child in his first attempts of rugged intimidation.
There weren't many of him smiling beyond that point—it was all scowls of indignation and sneers of falsified confidence at whatever was happening around him.
“I think it's time for bed,” Draco eventually said, giving his mother a quick hug and wishing her a Happy Christmas one more time before swiftly making his exit.
Chapter 16
Notes:
Content warning: This chapter contains some body horror in the form of nightmares right at the beginning. There are also references to self-harm and past abuse throughout.
Hope y'all like this chapter! It's basically all the angst and all the fluff alternating at a whiplash pace.
As always, comments and kudos are welcome and so, so appreciated—if you feel inclined. Either way, thanks for reading!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Draco ran through corridors that didn’t belong to any building he knew. They were narrow, windowless, and shifted in sharp turns. The walls seemed to pulse as if they were breathing in time with his lungs, which struggled to inhale as he pushed his way feverishly through the labyrinth of hallways. The scent of mold and metal and rot permeated the damp air.
Footsteps echoed behind him, seeming to draw closer with every step. But whenever he stopped, the sound stopped too. And there was never anyone there when he turned around.
“Draco.”
The voice came from nowhere and also from everywhere. It was familiar. Harry.
Draco turned one last corner and found him, kneeling on the floor in the middle of an empty room. His head was bowed and his arms tied tightly behind his back with cable wire. His face was streaked with blood and sweat, his lips dry and cracked. He didn’t look up as Draco entered.
“What happened?” Draco croaked, his throat suddenly feeling like sandpaper.
“You left me here.” Harry’s voice was ragged.
“I didn’t—I don’t remember—”
“You did,” Harry said, quietly. “You just don’t want to admit it.”
Draco stepped forward, but the walls around him spun and the room lurched sideways. He backed up instinctively, but the wall behind him had changed. Dozens of handprints seemed to protrude through the wallpaper at once—all small and all reaching towards him. Reaching towards him for help, he realized.
“You knew what they were doing here,” Harry said. “You knew and you didn’t say anything.”
“No, I swear. I didn’t know what—”
Harry looked up at him now, his pupils blown out and his eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion, but his gaze was all vitriol and accusation. “You watched,” he asserted. “You let it happen.”
The lights flickered off and then back on, and suddenly the room was full of others. Everywhere he turned, there were figures seated on the floor in rows—silent and unmoving. Their faces were covered by hooded cloaks, but every one of them was facing Draco. And every one of them was breathing.
He tried to speak—to scream—but his voice came out muffled. He clutched at his throat, but found that his mouth had been stitched shut. Blood was dripping down from his lips and onto his bare chest. He fell roughly to his knees onto the splitting wooden floorboards.
Something was beneath them, waiting. Something he’d hidden there a long time ago.
“You buried it,” Harry said knowingly, calmly, gesturing to the crowd of hooded figures surrounding them. “And they want you to remember.”
Then the lights went out again.
Draco shot awake in bed, drenched in a cold sweat that matted his hair to his forehead. He sat there, heart hammering in his chest and throat raw although he hadn’t screamed. Or at least he didn’t think he had screamed.
His eyes dropped to the floor. Without thinking, he climbed out of bed and knelt beside the worn rug by his bureau. He yanked it aside, exposing the pale wood beneath, already marked with old pry lines. His fingers worked under the edge of a loose plank, pulling it until it popped free with a dry crack.
Beneath it was an old quill, an erkling bone, and an old chocolate bar wrapper—all coated in a heavy layer of dust.
But not what he was looking for. Not what he knew was supposed to be there. Not the glinting piece of steel that called to him as a last resort, an assurance that he’d be able to cope even if his father took his wand away.
He stared into the space for a long time, his chest tightening, then sighed. He shoved the board back into place with a grunt of frustration, not bothering to hammer it back down. Then he was up, stumbling barefoot into the hallway, past the photos on the walls that monitored him in eerie silence as he made his way to the room that Harry was staying in.
He knocked on the door. No answer.
He knocked again, louder. No answer.
Then he opened it.
…
Harry stood at the edge of a suburban neighborhood on a cul-de-sac, grimacing as the wind whipped at his face through his glasses. There was a house at the far end of the street that looked eerily similar to his childhood home on Privet Drive, although this house was slightly different—too wide, too short, its windows covered in parchment like something fragile was being hidden inside.
A soft, rhythmic tapping echoed from within. He tried to turn away, but found his legs obeying some power beyond his control. The old, oak door opened on its own as he approached, groaning inward. The interior of the house was just like Privet Drive but completely hollow—no furniture and no walls.
“Harry Potter,” came a voice from above, smooth as silk. He looked up, curious.
A staircase spiraled up the middle of the space, thin and rickety. Draco stood at the top with his back turned to Harry, starting at the wall. The tapping was coming from him, his nimble fingers twitching against the plaster in a meticulous rhythm.
“Hey,” Harry called out in concern. “What are you doing?”
Draco didn’t answer.
Harry climbed, each step creaking louder than it should have. As he ascended, the tapping became faster—more frantic. At the top, Draco turned around.
His eyes were sealed shut with wax and his mouth hung limply open, but the sound that came out wasn’t a voice. It was parchment tearing.
Draco’s chest rose and fell quickly—inhumanly quickly—as if something caged inside were trying to escape. Then, he crumbled to his knees, still tapping the wall. But the sound didn’t stop when his hand did.
Harry tried to back away, but there was no staircase now. Just white walls made of parchment that rustled without wind. Harry put his hand on a nearby wall to steady himself and felt it shift under his palm. It wasn’t wood, nor was it parchment. It was flesh. Draco’s flesh. And he knew all at once that this had been the tearing sound.
He was woken suddenly by a sharp knock on the door, bolting upright with a quick intake of breath that fought against his tight lungs. The floor creaked beside him, causing him to jump and nearly reach for his wand before his eyes adjusted to the sight.
Draco stood lamely in the doorway, framed by the faint spill of candlelight from the hallway. He looked pale, shaken. His shirt was uncharacteristically wrinkled and his eyes glistened in the dark, wide and distant, like he hadn’t entirely left wherever he’d just come from.
“Draco?” Harry asked, his voice breaking. “Are you alright?”
“I—it's probably stupid. Just with everything that happened here, I thought that you maybe, well…that…” Draco trailed off.
Harry had never heard him sound so unsure of himself, but he took a deep breath and continued. “I just thought that you might not want to sleep alone here on Christmas.”
Harry didn't respond verbally, just lifted the blanket on the side of his bed closest to the door. Draco’s shoulders dropped in relief as he locked the door behind him and climbed into the bed.
Neither of them slept for the remainder of the night.
Harry rubbed his eyes, feeling the heavy weight of too little sleep. He was trying—and failing—to fill the silence between him and Draco, who was lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.
“So, er,” Harry started awkwardly, trying to ignore the fact that his right leg was draped over Draco’s left. “Did you, like, move the furniture around or something?”
Draco glanced sideways, eyebrows furrowing for a moment as if trying to figure out Harry’s motive for asking. “Huh?”
“I dunno…it just feels different in here from that memory you had in the guest bedroom,” Harry continued, waving a hand vaguely at the room. “Like, the chair was over by the window before, right? Now it’s on the other side of the room. And the rug…it’s, er, crooked or something.”
Harry laughed anxiously. “I guess I’m just noticing stuff.”
“Huh.” Draco shrugged, surveying the room. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. It was probably Mippy.”
Harry blinked, taken aback. “Mippy? She just comes in and moves things?”
“Yeah, her and Dobby used to do it all the time when I was a kid.” Draco shifted in the bed, pulling his knees up to his chest. “It’s like they thought if everything was different, it would be easier to forget about things.”
“Forget about what?” Harry’s voice was softer now, attempting to understand.
Draco hesitated, eyes flickering with something Harry couldn’t quite place, even after all of their time spent together in recent months. “I love my mum, but she wasn’t around all that much when I was little. She was busy…with her own stuff. And Lucius—well, it was sometimes better when he wasn’t there anyways. But Mippy always looked out for me. She would show up whenever I’d have nightmares. She always knew what to say. What to do.”
Harry shifted slightly in the bed, grazing a gentle hand over Draco’s shoulder and listening closely. There was something in Draco’s tone now, something heavy and wistful.
“Dobby would bring me tea when I was upset. And when my father…he would sit with me for hours, making sure I wasn’t alone. I don’t think Lucius even noticed he was gone afterwards. He was just pissed at the humiliation of his servant being freed. But I noticed.”
Draco’s voice had a softness to it now, almost like a prayer. He stared at the wall, eyes unfocused. “I don’t know why Dobby started moving all the furniture around, but I think it was his way of protecting me from…things. It was like he wanted to change everything, make it all feel less broken. But some things can’t be made whole again, no matter how much you rearrange them.”
Harry nodded solemnly, pondering the thought. "Do you want to visit his grave?"
Draco turned around so that he was facing Harry, sliding a hand under his pillow. "What?"
"Dobby's grave. It's outside a little seaside cottage where Bill and Fleur used to live. The Order used to use it as a safe house, too, during the war. It stays empty for most of the year now other than old Order members visiting with family."
Draco’s eyes grew glassy as he stared into Harry’s, which shone earnestly from the light filtering in through the tall windows. "I—I didn't even know he had a grave."
"I didn't know he meant anything to you. Otherwise I would've offered sooner."
And that was how Harry and Draco ended up spending the last few days of their winter holiday at Shell Cottage.
“There's probably not any food,” Harry said, haphazardly throwing the remainder of his belongings into his open trunk. Draco sat on his own trunk in the corner, which had been meticulously packed the night before. “We should go grocery shopping before we get there. There's a Tesco nearby.”
Draco knitted his eyebrows together. “What's a Tesco?”
Harry’s eyes widened, a playful condescension dancing across his lips. “Are you being serious?”
“...Yeah?”
Draco’s confusion only seemed to amuse Harry further. He let his arms drop, still holding a classic Mrs. Weasley Christmas jumper, and looked at Draco in disbelief. “Have you never been in a supermarket?”
“Like a muggle supermarket?”
Harry chuckled verbally that time and rolled his eyes as he continued to pack. “Oh, Merlin. Yes, like a muggle supermarket.”
“No…” Draco suddenly looked embarrassed and a bit frightened, hand reaching up to nervously rub at the back of his neck. “I've never actually been around muggles for any extended period of time.”
“Maybe you should go without me,” he added, eyes flitting down to his black trunk. “I don't even have muggle clothes.”
Harry gestured to his own outfit, a simple green jumper over grey jeans. “Whatever you'd typically wear under your robes will do. Or you can borrow some of my clothes.”
Draco looked incredulous at the suggestion. “Harry, I'm like 5 inches taller than you.”
Harry scoffed. “It's like 3 inches at best.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Either way, I don't very well think your pants are going to fit me.”
“What do muggles wear anyways?” Draco inquired, starting to go back and pick through the belongings in his trunk. “Black jeans and a gray button-down? Will that work?”
“That'll do.” Harry nodded.
“Harry, I don't know what to do. What if I mess up? The statute clearly—”
“Draco, breathe,” he interjected, attempting to cut off Draco’s line of thought before his panic spiraled out of control. “You’ll be fine. Just keep your wand stowed and follow my lead. Muggles aren't from Mars, you know. You can act exactly as you would around wizards with the exception of casting any spells.”
Draco’s complexion went white, bordering on a pale green hue. “I think I'm gonna be sick.”
“You are literally the most dramatic person I've ever met,” Harry said exasperatedly, but he smiled warmly as he stuck out his arm for Draco to side-along on his apparition.
They apparated about a kilometer away from the Tesco to avoid being seen by any muggles, which gave Draco just enough time to work himself back up into a bundle of nerves. When they approached the front door, he took a deep breath and looked over at Harry for encouragement. He looked more than a little amused—the bastard.
The store was more clean and bright than Draco had imagined, with a spacious interior and wide aisles that were labeled with things like Canned Goods and Snacks. Piles of baskets and rows of trolleys lined the entryway, and Harry took one to start pushing along.
“We’ll just pick up some basics,” Harry said, pushing the trolley towards the produce section. “Eggs, bread, butter, fruit, cheese, potatoes, frozen vegetables, tea, milk. I’ll maybe grab some meat for myself. Crisps or chocolate to have around. Oh, some liquor would be good, too.”
Draco shoved his hands into his pockets, eyeing his surroundings warily as he followed Harry through the aisles. “Sounds like you've done this before.”
“Yeah, I used to do the grocery shopping for the Dursleys once I was old enough to get to Sainsbury’s by myself.” Harry scanned the produce section, landing on some apples and scooping them into a bag. “And I was already doing the majority of the cooking for a couple years before that. Basically once I was tall enough to reach the stove.”
Draco lowered his voice. “Is that normal for muggle households?”
Harry laughed humorlessly, inspecting a carton of eggs. “Honestly, I have no idea. Probably not.”
Draco perked up a bit. “You should let me cook for you.”
Harry looked at Draco sideways, barely concealing his skepticism. “You can cook?”
“Honestly, I've never really tried.” Draco shrugged. “But I'm getting an O in N.E.W.T.-level Potions. How different can it really be? Chop things into specific sizes, add specific amounts together, heat to a certain temperature. I think I get it.”
“Maybe we can cook together.” Harry conceded. “Don't want you to burn the cottage down.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “I think I'm perfectly capable of not setting fire to the cottage, but fine—we can work together.”
Harry tried not to laugh too hard when Draco stood behind him apprehensively at the register, awkwardly angled off like a little kid left at the till and waiting for their mum to get back. He half worried that they would card the both of them for the liquor due to Draco’s odd behavior, but luckily they only took Harry’s ID and the girl at the counter barely batted an eye at them.
Draco and Harry apparated just outside the bounds of the cottage, the salty air of the sea immediately brushing their faces. The low rumble of waves crashing against the shore could be heard in the distance, mixing with the occasional call of seagulls overhead. Shell Cottage was a small, weathered building nestled at the edge of a quiet coastal village. Its grey stone walls were covered in seashells and the windows looked out toward a patch of rolling hills.
As they unloaded the groceries into the kitchen, Harry gave a satisfied grunt, hoisting a heavy paper bag filled with cocktail materials, potatoes, and various dairy products onto the counter. Draco took charge of the more delicate items, making sure that the eggs and fresh fruit didn’t get squashed.
Once the last of the bags were inside, they both stepped back out, the air now feeling crisp against their skin. Draco leaned against the house, surveying the fields of pansies and violets that bloomed even in the bitter chill of Cornish winter.
“Come on,” Harry mumbled, taking Draco’s hand and leading him out towards an overlook of the coast.
Draco’s breath hitched in his throat as they approached, the grave slowly coming into view. It was a simple memorial: simply an intersection of hardy sticks poking out of the ground and a piece of stone with an engraving that read Here Lies Dobby: A Free Elf.
The pair simply stared at the makeshift grave in reverential silence until Draco spoke up. "Thank you.” He turned to Harry, voice sounding thick. “For freeing him. And for burying him. Dobby deserved so much better than my family."
"Yeah, he did." Harry agreed, wrapping his arms around Draco’s torso and squeezing tightly. "And so did you."
That just made Draco weep harder, because he knew it wasn't true.
…
The kitchen of the cottage was small but cozy, the soft hum of the overhead light making the space feel quite intimate despite the occasional clatter of pots and pans. Harry, the only one with any actual cooking experience, kept stealing nervous glances at Draco.
He was standing at the counter, looking almost too perfect as he carefully sliced mushrooms, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in concentration.
“You’re doing that way too delicately,” Harry said, teasing.
Draco lifted his head, giving him a playful glare. “This is why you’re barely getting an E in Potions. You just throw things around like you’re fighting a war in there.” He gestured to the mess of spilled pasta and the slight splatter of tomato sauce on the counter from Harry’s enthusiastic stirring. “This is precise work.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but grinned. “Right. Yet I’m over here doing all the real work. You’re just over there with your fancy knife skills.”
Draco raised an eyebrow, setting down the mushrooms and walking over to Harry’s side. He peered into the pot, leaning in a little too close, the warmth of their bodies mingling as he sniffed the air.
“It smells good, though,” he admitted softly, his voice tinged with a softness that made Harry’s heart flutter unexpectedly. “Like, really good.”
Harry’s chest warmed at the compliment, and he felt a little proud, despite the mess. His eyes flicked up to Draco’s, their faces inches apart now, and he suddenly realized how close they were—how much he liked having him near. It was a strange, but incredibly pleasant sensation. Cooking beside someone who wasn’t just a friend anymore.
Without thinking, Harry leaned forward and kissed him—quick, sweet, and soft—right in the middle of their shared kitchen chaos. For a brief second, Harry forgot about the pasta, the sauce, even the whole reason they were in the kitchen in the first place. All that mattered was the feeling of Draco’s lips, their warmth, the way everything just fit together.
“Well,” Harry said, his voice just a little breathless as he pulled back. “I guess this is how you cook with me.”
Draco laughed softly, the sound filling the space between them like an invitation. “Yeah, if I’m going to survive in your kitchen, I think I’m gonna need a few more kisses.”
“I can make that happen,” Harry replied easily, already leaning in for another one as they returned to their chaotic yet perfect cooking dance. Every slice of mushroom, every stirring of the pot, felt like something new—something they were creating together, piece by piece.
“Draco…I…I think I love you,” Harry blurted, looking abashedly at the floor as he angled himself towards Draco. “And I know that it’s early to say that—but really, what’s early in the grand scheme of things? We’ve known each other for years. And it’s alright if you don’t feel that way or don’t want to say it yet. I’ve just never been very good at hiding my feelings—Merlin, you know that. We’ve been doing occlumency stuff together all term. I’m just no good at this stuff so I’m just gonna say how I feel, but again, you don’t need to—”
Harry finally ceased his rambling to look up at Draco, who looked pale and shell-shocked at the admission. His posture was rigid, spine fully erect, and Harry wondered for a minute if he might bolt out of sight and apparate away. When he finally did speak, it was so soft that Harry could barely hear it. “No, you don’t.”
“What?” Harry asked, suddenly confused.
“You don’t love me,” Draco whispered. His voice was tense, but in a way that conveyed thinly veiled panic rather than anger. “Don’t say that.”
“I won’t say it again if it makes you uncomfortable,” Harry said. “But it’s how I feel.”
Harry could practically feel Draco’s occlumency shields snapping into place as he spoke. “Honestly, Potter, I think you just have a lot of love for others and don't have anywhere to put it. And you've been trying to put it down on me because you pity me or feel guilty for slicing me up with dark magic or whatever’s happening here—but I'm telling you that isn't going to work, putting it on me. I can't hold it. Not just from you—from anybody, I don't think. I just don't have the shelving for it.”
“You don’t…have the shelving for it?” Harry repeated, eyebrows raised.
“No.” Draco shook his head.
“Ok, hey…” Harry approached with his hands up as if trying not to scare off a cornered animal. “I get it. That was a lot. That was maybe my fault. I just…we don’t have to talk about this right now. But can you just promise me that you won’t run away again?”
“I’ll support you through however you need to deal with this,” Harry asserted, eyes flitting down to Draco’s hand where his fingernails were digging into his arm. There was a question in Draco’s eyes, but Harry knew that he wasn’t going to voice it.
“Yes, even that,” he conceded with a sigh. “Just…don’t leave.”
Draco’s response was quiet. “I won’t.”
The two stood in silent apprehension for a while.
“This is my worst fear, you know,” Draco said, breaking the silence.
Harry looked lost in thought for a moment. “I thought your boggart was your father.”
Draco flinched. “Well, yes and no. My boggart was anybody finding out that I’m gay. I think I just feared his reaction to that discovery more than anybody else's. But Lucius knows now—or at least suspects, because of walking in on Blaise and I together—so it's probably changed.”
Harry seemed to eye Draco up and down in appraisal. “You call him Lucius now?” It wasn’t a question.
Draco shrugged nonchalantly. “I guess somewhere along the line, Dad turned into my father and my father turned into Lucius.”
“Probably right around the time he started cursing you for being gay.” Harry’s lips thinned as he said the words.
“Stop talking about my father like that.”
Harry threw his arms out exasperatedly. “Oh, come on. You said it yourself, he—”
“I know what I said,” Draco snapped. He took a deep inhale and squeezed at the bridge of his nose. “But he’s still my dad. You couldn’t possibly understand.”
An odd look twisted Harry’s features, and Draco couldn’t tell if it was the beginnings of anger or something deeper, a sorrow of sorts. “I had a dad, too, you know.” He nearly whispered it.
“I know, Harry,” he said gently. “And everybody worshipped the ground he walked on. And I’m not claiming to know what that was like for you, living up to that expectation. But you don’t know what it’s like for me either. I’m half him. Not just biologically. He raised me. He read to me at night as a toddler. He went with me to get my first wand. He taught me how to fly. He also had a wicked temper. He put me in danger. But when people talk about him like he’s this sadistic demon…well, you’re the one who’s always preaching about forgiving myself. How can I forgive myself if I’m half-demon?”
Draco hadn’t realized that his temper had been flaring, his cheeks starting to flush a shade of light red. Harry, on the other hand, was staring at him with a look somewhere between pity and understanding. He walked forward slowly, closing the gap between them in a few long strides, and threw his arms around Draco’s shoulders.
“You aren’t half your father,” Harry said gently, squeezing Draco even tighter into their embrace. “You’re Draco. Just Draco.”
Harry felt Draco sniff a bit against his shoulder, but he was composed again when he pulled back out of the hug. “How do you do that?” Draco asked, reaching down to grab Harry’s hands in his own.
“Do what?”
Draco squeezed Harry’s hands before releasing them. “Always say the right thing. Do the right thing.”
Harry snorted in derision. “I hardly think that’s accurate.”
“You quite literally died to save the rest of the world.”
“I didn’t do anything that anybody else in my shoes wouldn’t have done!” Harry protested. “I’m not particularly impressive.”
Draco leaned forward and did his best to maintain eye contact. “Harry, as much as it pains me to say this, you have incredibly strong Dark magic. I can literally feel it radiating off of you—always could. It’s part of the reason that I despised you so much growing up. Or was scared of you—I don’t know.”
He took a deep breath, breaking eye contact to look down at his fingers as they fiddled with the edge of his robe.
“But you could’ve turned into an immensely powerful Dark wizard very easily. And you didn’t. You chose what was good and pure and utilitarian—every time. You chose to sacrifice yourself for the safety of people you never even met—for the safety of people who were borderline cruel to you.”
He looked up at Harry, who didn’t seem to be having much of a physical reaction to his words, so he upped the ante.
“And you did it every time. Without a second thought. Like it was easy. And so I guess I just assumed that it was easy—that you grew up around all of this love and compassion and selflessness that I never knew and that made it easy for you to choose it over vengeance and fear and self-preservation.”
Suddenly, it was Draco who looked very far away. “But knowing what I know now—that you had nothing and nobody and that you still chose goodness and kindness every time. Even when you had the power to easily cause so much damage to the people who hurt you, or turned their backs on you, or raised you up for slaughter, or left you in a place full of abuse and neglect and pain, or acted like that was vital to your story.”
Draco got quieter for a minute, slowing down his rant a tad. “Even though it doesn’t really seem like you fully knew the love and the compassion that you were fighting for. Even then. I can say with relative certainty that’s not what anybody else would have done.”
He looked down and began to wrap his fingers into Harry’s while he made eye contact again. “You’re incredibly impressive, Harry.”
…
That was the day that Draco Malfoy learned not to gas Harry Potter up too much—apparently, it amplified his saviour complex tenfold.
The conversation had somehow devolved into a discussion of how impressive it was to produce a Patronus charm at thirteen, followed by Harry claiming it wasn’t that impressive because he taught half the DA how to produce one two years later, followed by Draco asserting that his accomplishment there was actually infinitely more impressive than learning the charm in the first place.
Despite several assertions from Draco that he had tried to produce a Patronus charm many times before and just wasn’t gonna be able to do it, Harry now seemed determined to make it happen.
“We’ve been at this for hours. It’s not gonna work.” Draco felt incredibly dejected, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead despite the lack of consistent results.
“Well, what memory are you using?” Harry inquired.
“I’ve tried so many. Nothing works!” Draco huffed impatiently, sitting on the settee and shaking his leg restlessly. “That time, I was thinking of the first time I rode a broom.”
A knowing smile crept onto Harry’s face.
“What?” Draco demanded, knocking Harry gently on the shoulder. “Why are you smiling at my struggle, you git?”
Harry rolled his eyes and chuckled. “I actually tried to use that exact same memory when Lupin taught me. It’s probably not strong enough. Have you tried using your ‘home base’ occlumency memory?”
Draco’s shoulders fell as he groaned. “That one works even less.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Harry said, leaning over Draco on the couch and pulling his face into a soft kiss. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
Suddenly, Draco got an idea. He imagined how it felt to kiss Harry for the first time in the woods—how the joy had nearly ripped itself from his chest, how he had felt so full of warmth and happiness that he had audibly exclaimed about it. He let the feeling fill him again, closing his eyes as he focused on the pure and unadulterated cheerfulness pooling in his stomach.
“Expecto patronum!” he declared, more confidently than before, and suddenly a brighter white light burst from the tip of his wand. The light seemed to compress together until it burst out into the figure of a magnificent raven, wings spread as it circled around the room.
“Wonderful, Draco!” Harry encouraged, grinning from ear-to-ear. Draco felt his heart swell as he realized that he had made Harry Potter beam with pride. Even the raven Patronus seemed to glow a little brighter.
“Harry…” Draco dropped his wand and the raven disappeared. “I…I think I love you, too.”
That night, wrapped up with Draco in a blanket on the sofa that faced a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the sea, Harry Potter had never felt so loved.
“I could see myself living somewhere like this someday…” Draco sighed contentedly, nestling his head into the crook of Harry’s shoulder. “Somewhere made of brick and stone in some far-off little town near the coastline.”
“What about the Manor?” Harry spoke into the top of Draco’s head, wrapping an arm around his slender frame.
“I’m trying to convince my mum to sell it.” Draco sighed. “It’s not good for her to be living there all alone like my father will be coming back any day now. I don’t think she can really be happy until she leaves. She isn’t very good at letting herself be happy, though.”
Harry hummed, gazing out at the lowering tide. “Apple didn’t fall too far from the tree on that one, it seems.”
Draco chuckled. “It’s something I’d hope not to pass along. I think I could do that, maybe, if I got to raise up a couple kids in a place like this.”
“You want a couple kids?” Harry smiled brightly.
Draco smirked back, cocking a pale eyebrow. “A bit early for the kids conversation, don’t you think?”
“Oh, er, I—well—”
“Relax, Harry. I’m just taking the piss with you.” Draco laughed as Harry huffed out an indignant sigh. “I don’t know what I want, anyways. Sometimes the idea of just having a normal little house and just packing it to the brim with people who love each other sounds really nice.”
Harry nodded in affirmation, mind flitting to the Burrow with its constant noise and warmth and laughter. It was the only home he knew that seemed to literally burst at the seams with how much love and light overflowed from its occupants.
“I worry that my kids would hate me when they grow up, though,” Draco continued, right thumb rubbing unconsciously against the Dark Mark as if he could wipe the brand off of his skin. “That they wouldn’t understand my decisions.”
“They would understand,” Harry said without hesitation, taking Draco’s hand away. “I understand.”
“You were also forced into situations where the right answer wasn’t clear and you often had to do terrible things to protect the people you cared about.” Draco sighed. “I want nothing more than for my kids to be unable to understand that decision. That’s how I’ll know that I’ve done a good job.”
“Somebody should’ve saved you,” Draco added in a hushed tone, chancing a sideways glance at Harry. “Back when you were a kid. Instead, you had to save everybody else.”
Harry’s head lifted in pride. “It was a privilege to be able to save the people I love.”
“It was an insult that you felt like you had to.”
Notes:
I originally had more plot planned out for this story, but was having a very difficult time continuing on from here. Eventually, I came to the realization that I didn't feel like writing more because this felt like a natural conclusion.
Things are settling and they're in love—and maybe that's enough.
Thank you very much to all of you for reading and commenting along the way. I may change my mind and add more to this story some day, but for now, this is the end.
Appreciate you all 🖤
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