In Your Dreams

by JStevens

Summary:

Harry had only returned to Hogwarts for Eighth Year because he was no longer sure he wanted to spend his entire life fighting bad guys—or at least not without a little breather since the last time he’d marched off to his own death to save the world.

But what was he supposed to do if he didn’t sign on as an Auror? Being the Sad Sack Who Survived—moping around Grimmauld Place with no job and no life—wasn’t going to cut it. Not for the press, and not when his best friends were sailing successfully off into adulthood without him. So he’d returned to Hogwarts alone to try to figure out what came next after the war had been won.

He had NOT come back to be stuck with Draco Malfoy for another year. So how the hell had he ended up sharing dreams with the bastard every night?

Notes:

This is really just indulgent escapism, but for some reason, whenever the world goes to shit, I run back to the comforting embrace of fanfic to give me something to look forward to each day. So here we go again! Final chapter count may change a bit, but she's gonna be a novel-lengther, that's for sure.

Chapter 1

Harry had begun doubting his decision to come back to Hogwarts before he’d even gotten on the train. Every subsequent day that passed within those familiar halls, disorienting and exhausting and filled with staring eyes, he regretted the decision a little more.

But it was when the doors to the Great Hall opened on his second Friday back to reveal Filch leading in Draco Malfoy—the same Draco Malfoy who was supposed to be a mere six weeks into a two-year sentence in Azkaban—that Harry knew beyond any doubt:

This had been a huge fucking mistake.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

“It’s Malfoy,” Harry said, his tone dull and closed to any possible disagreement. He took the butterbeer that Ron passed him, sat at Hermione’s round table in the flat she’d rented above Horizont Alley. Harry had been unhappy enough to stalk off the grounds and Apparate straight down to London to vent to his friends. “Of course it’s going to be awful.”

Ron knocked his own bottle against Harry’s in commiseration. “Maybe he’ll get sent packing back to Azkaban before a week’s out? There’ve got to be parents who will protest, and dear ol' Minnie doesn’t have the same sway that Dumbledore did.”

“Had enough sway to get Malfoy pulled out of prison practically the day he’d been put in there,” Harry grumbled, taking a long pull of the sweet brew. It wasn’t enough to wash the bad taste out of his mouth.

Malfoy. He’d be doing Eighth Year with Malfoy.

To be completely fair, his old foe had spent a bit more than a day in prison. Over a month, in fact. Harry hadn't intended to commit to memory the exact date Malfoy had been sent to Azkaban, but the sentencing had been carried out on July 31st. Ron had joked that it was the universe’s birthday gift to Harry: ensuring he wouldn’t have to see the stupid git again for years.

But no, Harry was going to see him in several classes a day, five days a week, because their N.E.W.T. classes were all houses combined, and Headmistress McGonagall had thought Harry’s former nemesis still deserved a shot at a proper education after experimenting in genocide.

Hermione settled on the chair across from Harry, plucking Ron’s butterbeer out of his fingers to steal a healthy swig. A strangled whimper of protest leaked out of him, like air out of a dying balloon, and Hermione plopped the bottle back into his hand with a roll of her eyes.

“Look, Harry, I understand you didn’t expect to be stuck seeing Malfoy day in and day out, but weren’t you also the one who said it was ridiculous for the Wizengamot to lock him up for two whole years, after—and I do believe I quote you on this—’I even bothered to testify for the ungrateful bastard.’”

Harry grumbled into the hard glass of his butterbeer bottle’s neck.

“What was that?” Hermione asked, a hint of steel under her kind tone.

“I just thought Azkaban seemed a bit much!” Harry exclaimed. “I was perfectly fine with them putting him under house arrest till he was 82. Or maybe expelling him from Britain or something. I certainly didn’t expect anyone would bring him back into the school he helped Death Eaters invade.”

And Harry knew he was acting unreasonable. After all that he’d seen over the past two years, he knew as well as anyone how trapped Malfoy must have felt when he’d brought the Death Eaters into Hogwarts that night. He understood that Malfoy hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to make the right choices in life, caught up as an idiot fucking child born into the wrong side of a war. He’d testified to that exact thing at the git’s trial.

But Malfoy had always found a way to sprinkle Harry’s time at Hogwarts with his own special brand of misery, like some knock-off Tom Riddle lite, and Harry was buggered if he was going to sit back and let it happen one more year.

He declared as much aloud. Then he laid his forehead on the table, temple pressed against his sweating bottle, and mumbled, “I’m going to let it happen, aren’t I?”

“Probably, mate.” Ron patted him on the shoulder. “Shoulda just freeballed the exams in August like me and been done with the whole thing.”

Harry could feel Hermione frowning without even lifting his head. Her voice prickled as she countered, “Or, Ronald, he might’ve revised properly, like me, and taken the exams in August to get decent results.”

Harry had done neither. When Hogwarts had reopened for exam students just three weeks after the battle, offering a summer term of intense tutorials for those who still wanted to attempt their O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s in a special August sitting, it had barely even registered to Harry. There’d simply been too much else going on to consider disappearing back into Hogwarts less than a month after Voldemort’s fall. Harry had still been busy giving testimony at trials and sharing Pensieve memories and sitting through a parade of funerals with dry, sandpaper eyes.

Hermione, meanwhile, had spent the summer building up connections, as she and Harry haunted the Ministry’s halls, and she’d been offered an internship in Shacklebolt’s office before June had even ended. She hadn’t been keen to turn it down and miss her shot at helping mold their new government as it was being rebuilt. And, of course, she’d never stopped revising, even during all their months on the run. So she had been fairly comfortable sitting her exams in August without bothering with Eighth Year.

Ron had gone along for the ride, not really caring about getting particularly good results. He'd settled into his new role helping George run the shop, which required no such qualifications. Plus, he’d discovered the joys of both having a serious girlfriend and having a private flat available to the two of them. Of course he hadn't wanted to return for another year at boarding school and more nights spent pouring over old books when he could instead be—well, honestly, the less Harry heard about the details, the better for all three of them.

Most of their old yearmates had similarly sat their exams or decided they didn't need N.E.W.T. qualifications. Only seven had chosen to retake the entire year. The group—mostly Ravenclaws, to the surprise of no one ever—had created a tiny cohort of “Eighth Years” who had returned to Hogwarts that September. Harry and Dean had brought the number up to nine, not that either of them had ever joined Seventh Year the first time around. And now Draco Malfoy brought the total to ten.

A soft hand landed on Harry’s, still loosely curled around his bottle, and he lifted his head to look up at Hermione.

“I know it’s not ideal, but you have survived far worse than classes with Draco Malfoy,” she told him, with that sorrowful smile that only momentarily brought him back to when he’d walked away into the forest alone.

Hermione’s face brightened as she suggested, “Come on, let’s focus on the big picture. Any fresh ideas to explore for post-graduation?”

This line of questioning did not make Harry feel any better, because that was the original disaster that had sent him back to Hogwarts in the first place. He spent most his time avoiding thinking anything about it.

“Not...really?” he admitted. He looked to Ron, correctly guessing that he’d find more sympathy there.

“The shop’s doing terrifyingly well, now that people aren’t afraid to step foot in Diagon Alley,” Ron mused. “And I’m doing my best to keep things running, but George is still—well, it’d be easier with another pair of hands. You know you’re always welcome to come work with us. Number one investor and all that.”

Harry shot him a grateful smile, though he couldn't see himself actually working at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Hanging out with Ron and George in the backroom was fun for a weekend—but he wouldn't want to do it forever. The trouble was he couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything for forever.

“I just don’t know,” he said, for the hundredth time, dropping his head on the table again. “Chasing after bad guys and fighting for what’s right seemed so obvious back when we were 15 or 16, but now...”

Ron clapped him on the shoulder, giving it a little shake. “I reckon you’ve done more than your fair share of fighting for what’s right already, mate. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a break from the bad guys.”

Harry smiled in relief against the wood of the table. At least his real friends got it, no matter what The Daily Prophet or Witch Weekly might have to say about The Chosen One being unable to choose a path.

Then Harry remembered what had driven him to his best friends that night, and he groaned. “But now I’m stuck with one of the bad guys for the next nine months!”

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione sighed. “Steer clear of him if you must, but don’t let him take this final year away from you. It’s yours to enjoy, after all.”

Because that had been the hope. A nice holiday from impending adulthood, a chance at a normal school year for once, and some space and privacy to figure out what he might want to do now that a long life free from mortal prophecy stretched ahead of him.

But even with Voldemort out of the picture, Harry was beginning to think it might be too much to hope that he’d ever make it through any school year at Hogwarts without some disaster befalling him. And this year, well...

Disaster had a name, and it's name was Draco Malfoy.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Dean was already seated at the end of the Gryffindor table, closest to the doors, when Harry stumbled into the Great Hall on Monday morning and dropped down onto the opposite bench, slumping over the table.

Behold, your heroic savior, he thought to himself, cheek pressed to the smooth wood warmed by the morning sun. Honestly, Harry could not for the life of him understand how any of the younger students could persist in seeing him as somehow remarkable.

“Long weekend?” Dean asked, pushing a carafe of coffee his way.

Harry grunted. Then he mumbled, “Went down to London,” while feeling blindly for a cup.

The Eighth Years were allowed to do whatever they wanted on their evenings and weekends, including leaving school, as a part of the whole you’re-adults-and-we’re-going-to-treat-you-like-it stance that McGonagall had taken up. The freedom was nice, but the flipside was being housed in the same wing as the staff quarters, where they couldn’t get all that rowdy without risking the wrath of a professor.

He wouldn't say he'd been running away from Malfoy, exactly, by staying at Ron and George’s flat above the shop till Sunday night. It had just been easier not to have to worry about the possibility of encountering Malfoy. Plus, he’d missed his best friends.

God, he’d missed them. They'd lived completely in each other's pockets for a year—or seven, really—and coming back to Hogwarts without Hermione and Ron had been more unmooring than even Harry had imagined it might be.

“How fare the Golden Trio?” Dean asked, taking pity on Harry and nudging his hand away from the mug he’d been fumbling so that Dean could steady it himself and fill it with coffee for Harry.

“Hardly a trio any longer,” Harry mumbled.

“Ouch,” Dean remarked. “It’s hard watching old friends drift away.”

“They haven’t drifted away.” Harry sat up to fix a resentful look at the other boy, though it was only petulant and not truly angry. “It’s just... They’re both off doing different things with their lives, moving forward, and I’m—I’m back at school. For some reason. Alone.”

“Sitting right here, Harry.” Dean sipped from his own coffee with a serene look, and finally Harry’s gloom cracked enough to allow him to smile.

“The only thing keeping me sane, mate.” He knocked their coffee cups together and propped himself up on an elbow as he asked, “How awful is today for you?”

His friend pulled a face. “Five classes, so not too bad. But Double Potions with the Slytherin Third Years. You?”

“Rough luck,” Harry commiserated. “I’ve got my worst block tomorrow—seven classes in a row, with First Year and Second Year Potions. And no break for lunch. But today I don’t have any of the early years.”

Hogwarts had been facing a conundrum that autumn, with every year behind in their studies, an extra cohort of Eighth Years, and the professors spread far too thin. That was why, when McGonagall had handed the Eighth Years their timetables in a small gathering after the Welcoming Feast, each had found themselves assigned eight extra double classes—for First, Second, Third, and Fourth Year subjects. They were each to serve as teachers’ aides in these classes, allowing the professors more time to do lesson planning and grading, and also helping to reinforce inter-house unity, since they were all assigned to classes from every house.

Harry and Dean squabbled jokingly over who had it worse with their assignments, ignoring the ebb and flow of younger students passing behind them, until they couldn’t avoid their 8:10 N.E.W.T. Transfiguration class any longer.

As Dean stood and slung his bag over one shoulder, Ginny passed behind him with a gaggle of her Seventh Year friends.

“Hurry up, you two,” she teased, slapping Dean on the arm. “You’d better not lose us any house points because you’re useless after the weekend!” Harry got a quick smile and a wink flashed his way as well, and he gave a half-hearted wave as Ginny walked on with her yearmates.

Harry hadn’t only come back to Hogwarts sans his two best friends—he’d also returned sans girlfriend. Back in May, they’d tried to fall back into what they’d had before the war, but between the Weasley family’s grief, Harry being pulled in a dozen different directions by the Ministry, and nearly a year apart, it hadn’t been the same. They hadn’t been the same.

Eventually Ginny had declared, in her typically frank fashion, “Look, we started this because it felt right at the time. If it doesn’t feel right anymore, let’s just give it a break.”

Then she’d given him a hug, perhaps noticing how his face had fallen, and said, “Maybe things’ll feel right again later, after everything has settled down a bit.”

Harry thought they both knew it probably wasn’t going to happen. He’d seen the way Ginny was already flashing sparkling smiles at one of the Ravenclaw beaters since coming back to school. She’d moved on, just like Hermione and Ron. It was only Harry who couldn’t seem to find a path forward now that there wasn’t a Dark Lord to bring down.

Trudging after Dean, Harry entered the Transfiguration classroom to find that most of the Seventh Years had already filled their usual seats in the front rows and the handful of Eighth Years had taken their regular spots lurking in the back. There was only one notable change that morning: the presence of one Draco Malfoy, sitting at a table alone along the opposite wall.

Harry felt his nostrils flare, though Malfoy wasn’t even doing anything.

He was simply there, back dressed in school robes now, his textbook and notes already spread out before him and a quill at the ready as he kept his eyes fixed steadfastly on the blackboard. As if the whole war hadn't happened.

Ignore him, Harry told himself. He doesn’t exist. Pretend he’s just another of the Seventh Years whose names you can’t remember.

Harry and Dean settled together at one of the wide desks, and the last few students trickled in, finding empty places to sit while managing to leave the space beside Malfoy unoccupied. Then McGonagall swept in—the old witch somehow still carrying a full teaching load while serving as Headmistress—and class began.

It was almost normal. Harry probably could have forgotten Malfoy was there if his white-blond hair hadn’t been so utterly unmissable, gleaming in the sunlight as the other boy bowed his head to take notes on his parchment. Harry’s own quill kept pausing so he could watch him—but the Slytherin did absolutely nothing worthy of his interest, other than perhaps struggling with the Transfiguration task they were set. Harry couldn’t see all that much of the result, but he did notice the way Malfoy was clenching his new wand tightly in his left hand and repeating the prescribed motion again and again.

But as soon as the bell rang to mark the end of class, Malfoy was on his feet, sweeping his things into his school bag and hurrying out of the room before most of the other students had even stood.

“What’s his big hurry?” Harry muttered, brows furrowing.

Stuffing his own notes into his bag, he told Dean he had to run back to his room for something, then he took off without even hearing his friend’s reply.

It was only when he had dumped his bag on the ground in his private room and was rummaging through his trunk for the Marauder’s Map that he thought to consider what he was doing.

“Is this mad?” he asked himself, hands pausing. “Hermione would definitely say yes.”

He hadn’t even thought about his intentions in running straight to check the map. It was as if the past two years hadn’t happened, and the old habits of sixteen-year-old Harry had simply taken over once more. Malfoy off skulking around? Better see what he’s up to.

“McGonagall wouldn’t have had him back if she didn’t think it was safe,” Harry tried to tell himself. “The Wizengamot wouldn’t have allowed his release back to the school either.”

But then he tried to imagine working on his Transfiguration reading while the question kept niggling in the back of his mind, and Harry decided: What Hermione didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

He had the map out and unfolded in a flash. “I solemnly swear I am up to no good,” he whispered, touching his wand to the center. Before the lines had even finished spreading across the large sheet of parchment, he had his nose to it to search for the name Draco Malfoy.

There.

Malfoy was...in the old history classroom. Along with Anthony Goldstein, Sue Li, and a half dozen names that Harry vaguely recognized as belonging to Seventh Years, as well as the ghost of Binns.

Harry sat back on his heels, somehow disappointed to realize that Malfoy had merely been hurrying to his next class.

It wasn’t that he really wanted Malfoy to be up to something. But foiling Malfoy would have given Harry something familiar to distract himself with. The completely un-sinister discovery that Malfoy was taking N.E.W.T.-level History of Magic didn’t afford Harry any reason to tail the Slytherin through the halls and catch him in the act of evildoing...and coincidentally avoid thinking about what the hell he himself was supposed to do after graduation.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from stalking Malfoy through the map anyway. For the next three days, Harry found empty classrooms and hidden passages to hurry into every class period that he and Malfoy didn’t share, so he could whip out the piece of parchment and scour it.

He learned that Malfoy had been assigned younger year classes to assist, just like the rest of them, and that he apparently still took Astronomy, as well as History of Magic and the five N.E.W.T. subjects he and Harry shared. In their shared classes, Harry noted that Malfoy always sat the farthest from everyone else he could manage and didn’t interact with any other students unless forced to by a teacher.

But no matter how closely he watched the Slytherin in person or through the Marauder’s Map, Harry didn’t find a whiff of anything actually suspect.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

On Thursday, Harry was following Slughorn from the large Potions lab—where he’d just been assisting First Year Gryffindors learning to brew a cure for boils—when a message came flitting their way, the letter folded into a little butterfly that was winging itself along through the air.

Professor Slughorn caught it in his hand and unfolded it, giving a little sigh of dismay that seemed more affected than genuine.

“Oh dear me, seems Goldstein is in the Hospital Wing. A nasty brush with a Venomous Tentacula in the Herbology class he was assisting.”

Harry felt his stomach drop as he followed the professor into the advanced students’ lab. Anthony Goldstein was his usual partner in Potions, since Dean didn’t take the subject, and Harry knew that there was only one other student who didn’t have a partner currently.

“Well, I suppose we’d better just pair you with Mr. Malfoy today,” Slughorn said, giving Harry a commiserating slap on the back as he blustered on. “It’s time we all let bygones be bygones, after all. No reason to have two students working without partners!”

Harry thought he could probably come up with a good reason or two, but before he had the chance to, Slughorn was nodding him towards the workstation that Malfoy had claimed alone on Monday, and the rest of the class was filing in.

Heaving a sigh, Harry walked to the table and dropped his bag on it, fishing out his Potions text. The only joy he got out of the situation was seeing the comical way that Malfoy froze when he walked into the classroom and saw Harry at his workstation. It was as if he’d been struck with a Full Body-Bind Curse.

Malfoy’s eyes slid to the professor at the front of the room, but Slughorn only gave a jaunty wave towards the table Harry was currently occupying. For a moment, it looked like Malfoy might ignore the motion, but then the flat line of his mouth grew even flatter, and he walked over to stop beside Harry.

They’d had twelve classes together by then, thanks to all the subjects they shared, but this was the closest Harry had actually been to Malfoy in all that time. And Harry realized for the first time how rough the Slytherin looked up close, like he hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly since he'd got out of Azkaban. Or maybe since before he'd gone into it.

Still staring, he didn’t even think to look away when Malfoy lifted his light eyes to meet Harry’s. The other boy’s face twisted for an instant, but then it returned to that flat look he’d been wearing since the previous Friday. He didn’t acknowledge that he’d caught Harry gaping at him, only turned to pulling out his equipment.

“Today, we’ll begin our brewing of Dreamless Sleep, which I’m sure you all did the reading on in advance of class, hmm?” Slughorn chortled to himself as he looked around the room.

“Oh, and if your Memory Potion from Monday was not completed successfully, remember that you have until next Monday to turn in an acceptable sample if you wish to receive any credit!”

“I’ll get the ingredients,” Malfoy offered, his voice muted and restrained, and he was gone before Harry could react beyond blinking in surprise.

He didn't think it was any exaggeration to say that it was the first he could recall Draco Malfoy speaking to him—or anyone really—without his voice brimming with either a boast or an insult. Barring a few times during Voldemort’s reign, when he'd instead sounded terrified for his life.

And offering to do something for Harry?

Maybe he was planning to sabotage Harry's ingredients. That could be it.

He was gone a while to the store cupboard, along with half the class. Other students began to trickle out clutching lavender sprigs and sopophorous beans, and Harry watched Mandy Brocklehurst head back to the table she shared with Morag MacDougal—and finally Malfoy emerged again, the last to do so.

Mouth pressed tight again, he unloaded the ingredients he’d held close to his body, clamped under his forearm. But they weren't separated into two sets, which would seem to make it hard to sabotage Harry without also sabotaging himself.

Then Malfoy pulled his chopping board in front of him and spoke again in that empty voice: “If you could measure out two cups of standard potioning water for each cauldron, I’ll chop the lavender.”

And on it went like that. Malfoy quietly issued directions when necessary, never using more words than were needed and never in anything but a neutral tone, and Harry was too dumbfounded to do anything but follow along. Malfoy had always been better than him in potions anyway.

But Harry found himself more and more distracted by how odd the whole thing was. He’d known that Malfoy was being quiet in classes—he’d seen how the Slytherin sat and worked alone, both in person and on the map—but this was just bizarre. He almost wanted to ask Everything all right there, Malfoy? and hope he'd get an insult in return, because he was beginning to suspect possession.

Perhaps if he had been less distracted, he might have been able to prevent what happened next. But probably not. It wasn’t either of their faults when a Seventh Year Hufflepuff, carrying a cauldron full of uncompleted Memory Potion back from the storage shelves, the top shimmering with the haze of a Stasis Charm, tripped over someone’s bag on the floor.

She sent the whole thing flying with a shriek, and Harry grasped Malfoy’s robes and yanked the other boy back, battle instincts kicking in again with a sharp surge of adrenaline. Malfoy stumbled, grabbing hold of Harry in turn to keep from falling.

Golden-bronze liquid sloshed out in an arc as the cauldron tumbled through the air, then the whole thing crashed onto their workstation, knocking both Harry and Malfoy’s cauldrons over. A wave of deep purple liquid, streaked with sparkling gold, exploded outward and crashed over the two of them.

Harry stood stock still, hot potion dripping down his cheeks and plastering his shirt to his chest. The entire class had frozen in shocked silence. He tasted lavender and something like burnt sugar on his lips and blinked furiously though it did nothing to clear away the splatter obscuring his glasses.

Then he heard Malfoy suck in a choked breath beside him, and a hand grabbed at his robe to drag him even closer. He knocked into Malfoy, knees bashing and his hand landing somewhere around the Slytherin’s shoulder, and he could just make out some fuzzy movement through his dirty glasses before Malfoy bellowed, “Aguamenti!”

Water struck Harry like someone had tipped a giant bucket over his head, only it didn’t stop. He choked and coughed as it kept pouring, soaking through all his clothes and streaming down face, hair plastered over his eyes, while he fought to get away from the deluge.

It probably only lasted four or five seconds, but he was still sputtering and gasping for air when the charm ended. Prying his eyes open, he could make out Malfoy’s right arm raised high in the air through his bleary lenses, that new wand clutched in an awkward fist where the Slytherin had it pointed down at the two of them. Because Malfoy was left-handed, but his left hand was currently still wrapped in Harry’s robe.

“Wha—”

Slughorn bustled out of his office, where he’d been doing god knows what but certainly not supervising the N.E.W.T. class. “My word!” He leveled his wand at Harry and Malfoy, hitting them with some charm that left them closer to damp than dripping, but without the customary blast of hot air that a drying charm produced.

The professor looked over the mess, seeing the three cauldrons tipped on their sides and the Seventh Year girl standing nearby with her hands clasped over her mouth in horror.

Malfoy finally lowered his arm and released Harry.

“Mr. Malfoy,” Slughorn said, looking his student over with those beady, assessing eyes. “That was your Aguamenti?”

Malfoy nodded without speaking.

Slughorn studied him a moment longer, then gave a satisfied little nod. “Very good. Ten points to Slytherin for quick thinking. A brew meant to be consumed orally instead being applied to the skin—let alone a mix of incomplete brews which could interact in unpredictable ways—could have quite disastrous effects. Washing the solution away at once was a very good call.”

He gave another wave of his wand and set their cauldrons upright again, siphoning liquid from the table and sending it streaming over the students’ head to the sinks on the far wall.

“Still, I must insist you both report to the Hospital Wing to have Madame Pomfrey examine you, just to be on the safe side. You can make up your potions tomorrow or this weekend.”

The other students continued shooting curious looks at them as Harry and Malfoy packed away their supplies in silence, before hoisting their sopping bags and squelching out of the room.

It was a fairly long walk to the Hospital Wing, but neither of them said a word the entire way.

When they reached the tall doors that led into the infirmary, Harry finally glanced over to perhaps say something, but the other boy only shoved the doors open to stride inside. And then Madam Pomfrey was exclaiming, her tone exasperated and brisk as ever, and Harry and Malfoy were sat side-by-side on a bed as she ran spells over them, and the chance to perhaps say or ask anything was gone.

After nearly five minutes of diagnostics, Malfoy finally spoke, his voice polite enough, if slightly stiff. “Madam, I’m supposed to be assisting a Charms class next hour. If this will take much longer, could I send a message to Professor Flitwick?”

“Oh!” Madam Pomfrey gave one more little flick of her wand. She tapped it against the palm of her other hand as she looked over them both. “No, I believe you should be safe to go. You don’t seem to be in any immediate risk, but do come to me at once if you notice any rashes, dizziness, or other strange symptoms.”

Malfoy slid off the bed, leaning down to grab his bag from the floor.

“Thank you, Madam Pomfrey,” he muttered, still sounding entirely unlike himself. Harry was so befuddled by it that he almost forgot to say anything himself.

“Malfoy!”

The blond stiffened, then he glanced over his shoulder at Harry.

“Thanks,” Harry muttered, feeling it had to be said.

Malfoy jerked his chin down in what might have been a nod or might have just been him turning away, and then he was off like the ghost of Voldemort himself was behind him.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry had gone back to his room during his free period, stripped off his damp clothes and taken a proper shower in his small ensuite, still thinking about how odd the whole thing had been. By the time he’d tried to dry and salvage what he could from his bag, he’d barely made it in time to his D.A.D.A. class with the Third Year Gryffindors.

It was a long two and a half hours, and when he was done with the double class, Harry couldn’t even be bothered with going to the Great Hall for dinner. He called Kreacher and asked if the old house-elf could drop a sandwich or something in Harry's room. What Harry found waiting in his room, when he arrived there, was half a beef and ale pie, a flagon of pumpkin juice, and a sticky toffee pudding large enough to serve three.

Chuckling wearily to himself, Harry ate as much as he could manage, distractedly shoveling food in as he chipped away at his class readings. Then he flicked a Statis Charm over the leftovers and crawled into bed, ready to give the whole day up as a bad job. It wasn’t even nine, but sleep claimed him within moments of his head hitting the pillow.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The world slowly resolved out of the darkness, geometric snatches of pale moonlight and shadow. As it came into focus, Harry saw white stone columns and great windows and rows of uniform, painted doors.

He realized where he was with a start. It was Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. And there at the sinks, hunched over in just his shirtsleeves and with his Slytherin tie hanging loose about his neck, was Malfoy.

It was just like that night, except this time it was silent. Malfoy wasn’t pouring out his fears, and there was no Myrtle there trying to soothe him. It was only the two of them.

“Malfoy?” Harry asked, uncertain, but not sure what else he was supposed to do. It was obviously a dream, but it felt odd somehow. Sharper than usual. Realer.

The blond whirled on him, drawing his wand just like the last time—only he didn’t throw a curse. When he saw it was Harry, he just snorted, sounding weary and bemused.

“So we’re doing this again, are we?”

Harry blinked behind his glasses, glancing around the bathroom that they seemed to have to themselves. “I hope not?” he offered.

Malfoy lowered his wand, which Harry noticed was the old hawthorn one that was actually still in a drawer in his dresser back at Grimmauld Place. He watched as Malfoy slipped it in his pocket then strode across the bathroom.

“You sure about that, Potter?” he drawled, sounding much more like himself than the real Malfoy had that afternoon. He stopped right in Harry’s space, leaning in to press their faces close. Harry was annoyed to be reminded that Malfoy had a couple inches on him, and he had to lift his chin to meet those grey eyes straight on, darker than usual in the shadows. “You normally seem to enjoy slicing me to ribbons in these dreams.”

The words were like the slap of a wet towel on his skin, cold and uncomfortable. It was true that Harry did sometimes still dream of that night—the chaotic exchange of curses, Malfoy’s sobbing, the blood blossoming across the wet tile floor—but never as something he enjoyed. And never had the nightmares felt as clear and real as this one did.

“It was an accident!” he insisted, even though he shouldn’t have to defend himself against this vision of Malfoy his mind had conjured up. “I didn’t know what that curse did—you think I would’ve used it if I’d known?”

Malfoy’s lip curled, and he didn’t move away. “Maybe not. Or maybe you like the idea of leaving me even more badly scarred than you are. You certainly left your mark that night.”

“What?” Harry breathed, his lungs punched empty by the thought. Snape had said it probably wouldn’t scar, but—but in fact, Harry had never found out what had happened. Hadn’t even once considered if Malfoy might have been left scarred by what he'd done.

The other boy finally pulled back a few inches, but only to tilt his head to the side. Harry wasn’t sure what he was about until Malfoy tugged at his shirt collar with one hand, pulling it down to better reveal the faint line that crawled over his collarbone.

Then his other hand came up and popped his top button through its matching hole. His hands continued down, quickly pulling the two sides of his shirt apart like a magician pulling back a curtain.

Harry gaped, eyes darting between the silvery lines crossing Malfoy’s pale torso.

“I didn’t—”

He didn’t know what he meant to say, but before he could finish, Malfoy shoved him backwards, slamming him up against the side of a wooden stall.

“Sorry, are you?” Malfoy hissed, his forearm pressed against Harry’s throat, nearly choking off his air. “Oh, please. We both know there’re only two reasons you ever show up here. If you aren’t here to fight, then I guess you’re here to fuck.”

Every thought then fled from Harry’s brain as Draco Malfoy slammed his mouth against Harry’s own, grinding up against him in a bruising attack of a kiss that was unlike anything Harry had ever experienced in the real world. Worst of all, it felt good. What the fuck did that mean for his psyche that he was not only imagining his boyhood bully kissing him but even making the bastard seem good at it?

He shoved Malfoy off, chest heaving as he sucked in lungfuls of air like he’d been an hour without oxygen and not mere seconds.

“What, Potter?” Malfoy growled. “Going to run away like you did after you cut me open? What a cowardly little Gryffindor you are.”

And Harry didn’t think about what he was doing, because it was just a mad dream, and it was fucking Malfoy being a prick like always, but Harry still couldn't ever let the bastard win at anything. So he grabbed the blond by the shoulders and swung him around, reversing their positions as he slammed Malfoy’s back against the wooden stall instead. It shook under the impact. Then Harry attacked back just as viciously, all biting teeth and snarling curses and fingers knotting in Malfoy’s pale hair in a way that had to be causing pain.

Malfoy wrapped one hand around the back of Harry’s neck as he held him in the furious kiss, the other fumbling with his flies, and then Malfoy had a hand down his pants. Harry nearly lost it then and there, because it didn't matter that it was Draco Malfoy in this insane dream. It had been months since anyone else had touched him, the sensation was as real as anything, and Harry was about as horny as an untouched 14 year old. And apparently, unlike your average 14 year old, Malfoy had quite a good idea what he was doing with that hand.

“F-fuck,” Harry groaned, as the mouth beneath his disappeared. It took a moment for his brain to catch up to what was happening, because Malfoy had slid to the floor and Harry was looking down at his blond head. Then the other boy yanked Harry’s trousers down around his highs, and without a moment of hesitation, he took Harry in his mouth.

Harry’s hands slammed against the wall of the wooden stall, holding himself upright as his legs nearly gave out. His head hung low, and through the buzzing haze of arousal, he gaped down at Malfoy: on his knees and caged in by Harry as he loomed over the Slytherin.

“Fuck,” he gasped again. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna—”

Malfoy looked up then, eyebrows lifting in a look of challenge, even with his mouth still around Harry’s prick, and the world exploded like a firework as Harry came harder than—

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry flew upright in bed, heart pounding and back damp with sweat.

He’d been dreaming of something—he was sure of it—but—but it was gone. Gasping in a few ragged breaths, he sat curled over his knees in the bed he still wasn’t quite used to, alone in his private room in the south wing.

What was that?

His pulse was thundering through his veins, but try as he might, Harry couldn’t recall even a hint of what the dream, or perhaps nightmare, had been about.

He struggled to slow his breathing. Doesn’t matter, he tried to convince himself. Whatever it was, it was just a dream. We’re safe now. Everything’s over. Harry still had to remind himself sometimes that the war was truly over with, and Voldemort finally gone, but he knew it was true. His dreams couldn’t hurt him any longer. Not if he didn’t let them.

Shaking, Harry settled back on the mattress, tugging his sheets up over his shoulder as he curled on his side.

It was just a dream.

Everything’s fine.

Then he went chasing after sleep once more.

Chapter 2

On Friday, Harry woke up exhausted. He remembered jerking awake once early in the night, though he still didn’t remember what had woken him, and he’d tossed and turned for hours after that.

Squinting at the watch Molly Weasley had given him, he decided it wasn’t worth going to the Great Hall for breakfast if it meant dragging himself upright even a minute earlier than necessary. Instead, he summoned his leftovers from the night before and ate right there in his bed, crumbs be damned, with a textbook levitated before himself.

Finally, around the time a more responsible student would have already been on their way to class, Harry forced himself out of his warm bed and threw on his robes, shooting a tooth cleaning charm at his mouth and raking his fingers through his hair as if it would do any good.

He made it to the main Potions lab just as the bell rang, the Second Year Hufflepuffs all staring as he came running in through the door. Slughorn shot him a tolerant look that seemed to say: Look at you showing up late—aren’t you lucky I’m so fond of you, and also: wouldn’t you like to repay my kindness in the future in some very public way?

Harry grimaced, hoping it could pass for a smile. Then the class began.

After two straight class periods of making sure no Second Years lit themselves on fire, cut off any fingers, or accidentally poisoned each other, Harry couldn’t have been more glad to watch the little menaces file out of the lab. But his reward was no real reward, because the Second Year class was immediately followed by his own N.E.W.T. Potions class next.

Just one more hour , he promised himself, actively tuning out whatever pompous anecdote Slughorn was retelling this time as he followed the old man to the advanced students’ lab. He had two periods free after Potions on Fridays. Plenty of time to not only grab some lunch but even to sneak in a cheeky nap before Transfiguration again at 2:20 that afternoon.

Then it’ll just be D.A.D.A. with the Ravenclaw Fourths, and you know they all know their shit already, so all you have to do is make sure no one dies. After that: the sweet, glorious weekend.

Inside the lab, Harry made a beeline straight for his usual workstation, assuming Goldstein would be recovered enough for class. When Malfoy arrived, he seemed to be thinking the same thing, striding straight to his own workstation, where he could resume working alone.

Slughorn cleared his throat from the front of the room.

“You know, gentlemen, I’ve been thinking that it really isn’t ideal to have anyone working alone in this class. Potioneering is often a lonely endeavor for the master, but at this stage in your studies, you still have much to learn from one another.”

No, Harry thought, though he did manage to keep from blurting the word aloud.

Slughorn was gesturing Malfoy towards Harry’s table, which Anthony Goldstein had also just arrived at, frozen in dismayed confusion as he watched what was unfolding.

“It will be a bit cramped, but why don’t our three Eighth Year boys work together, hm? I’m sure the arrangement will be quite beneficial.”

Goldstein dropped his bag on the table with a loud clunk, not even trying to set it down gently. “Sir, I beg to disagree. There’s hardly enough space for three at one table.”

Harry managed to keep his own face neutral, but he was actually surprised by the sharpness of Goldstein's tone. When Harry had interacted with Goldstein in the D.A., he’d always found the half-blood to be fairly cheery for a Ravenclaw. But then, Goldstein had been at Hogwarts the previous year, when the Death Eaters had been in charge. That year had probably changed a lot of things for everyone.

Malfoy was the one now stuck in place, hands paused over the equipment he’d already unpacked at his own table, as he waited to see if Slughorn was going to insist.

The professor frowned, clearly displeased with the pushback. “Now, Mr. Goldstein. I do say—I find your attitude rather disappointing. You are all here to learn, and as my former students can attest to—why, the wondrous new ideas that Bilton Blimes came up with while discussing potions with his N.E.W.T. classmates!—working together can result in all manner of unexpected gains.”

Looking rather sour, Slughorn gestured Malfoy across the room more sharply. “Now, I’d like to see some fruitful cooperation, or I will consider whether I need to resort to taking house points to discourage any prejudice in my classroom.”

Goldstein looked mutinous, but he didn’t argue any further. He also didn’t give up an inch of space to make room for Malfoy, so Harry ended up trying to shove his own kit into a couple square feet so the Slytherin could set up his gear catercorner to him.

The air at their small table was tense as Slughorn launched into a brief lecture about the Dreamless Sleep potion they were to complete brewing that day, and it was an uncomfortable thing for Harry to realize that he almost felt sorry for Malfoy.

If he’d only been acting like himself, and hissing insults or sneering, then Harry could have glared back at him just as baldly as Goldstein was doing. But instead, Malfoy only looked grim and uncomfortable, balancing his notes on the edge of the table as he scribbled down the points Slughorn was trying to impress upon them. Instead of feeling justified, it felt rather like kicking a man when he was down.

He’d also been...well, frankly inoffensive when they’d been partnered the previous day, even if that in and of itself had been weird as fuck. The git had even tried to look after Harry’s skin as well as his own when they’d taken several cauldron’s worth of brewing to the face.

The whole thing left Harry feeling very awkwardly conscious of his position, sat between Goldstein and Malfoy. A small part of him felt he should tell Anthony to give the glares a rest. But a whole lot of him still instinctively wanted to take the Ravenclaw’s side.

Surely Malfoy was due at least this much revenge for being a complete twat for most of their school years and for all the bad decisions he'd made as a Death Eater. Right?

“I’ll grab your ingredients for you as well, Harry,” Goldstein said, standing up and giving Harry a slap on the shoulder before he headed to the store cupboard. Malfoy stared after the Ravenclaw blankly, then he got up and walked more slowly after Goldstein, since he had been so obviously left out of the offer.

Harry looked down at his open notebook, where he hadn’t written down a single point of whatever Slughorn might have been explaining.

It went on like that for the rest of the class.

Goldstein made it back first, handing over ingredients to Harry and chatting casually—if a bit loudly—with him and not even glancing over when Malfoy returned to their table, again the last to make it back from the store cupboard.

They each began their Dreamless Sleep brews from the first step, far behind the rest of the class, but there was not a single effort made to include Malfoy in splitting up prep tasks. The only way that Anthony Goldstein acknowledged his presence was by dropping frequent digs that were clearly meant to irritate him.

“Honestly, this is more like Sixth Year stuff. We’re so far behind on N.E.W.T.-level work,” the Ravenclaw moaned, laughing. “But what could we do last year, stuck with a bloody Death Eater running the school? At least we finally disposed of all those rats.”

Goldstein shot a look at Malfoy. “Well, almost all of them.”

Malfoy continued dicing his knotgrass, not looking up or visibly reacting. His mouth remained that flat line, pressed tightly closed.

The whole thing left Harry vaguely sick.

He still wasn't sure how he felt about his own relationship with Snape, but Harry was sure the man must have been doing all he thought he could to keep students safe the previous year. He would’ve known better than any how much much more depraved things could become if some other Death Eater were placed in charge of the school.

Yet as they sat there in Snape’s old lab, Harry didn’t quite dare speak up to defend the man he'd watched die, afraid of setting off an ugly confrontation when they still had 30 minutes of class ahead of them.

He hadn’t even been there the previous year, after all. Who was he to say ‘Hey, it could have been worse’?  

So instead he tried to push Goldstein onto a different track altogether by asking, “Do you know what potions were on the exams in August?”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

When Harry fell asleep that night, he opened his eyes into bright sunlight. It appeared to be early morning, shafts of dazzling light pouring through the Great Hall’s windows and the semi-transparent ceiling.

He was sitting on a bench halfway between the doors and the high table—and far closer to the center of the room than he was used to. Looking about, he realized he was sitting faced outwards on one of the Hufflepuff benches.

Malfoy sat opposite to him, perched backwards on the Ravenclaw bench, their knees nearly meeting in the space between the two house tables. The rest of the room appeared to be empty.

“Two nights in a row?” Malfoy leaned back, letting his elbows rest on the table behind him. “This is a bit much, even for me. I must be feeling quite randy after six weeks in prison.” He smirked. “Or maybe it was the two years of utter terror, too miserable to even wank.”

“What?” Harry twisted about on the bench. The Gryffindor table was empty behind him. The hall was oddly peaceful, the bare wood of the long tables gleaming in the wash of warm sunlight.

Why the hell was he dreaming of Malfoy again? Especially after the previous night, when he’d—oh god. Now Harry remembered what had caused him to wake up a sweaty mess.

“And in the Great Hall, even,” the blond said, still blathering on as he waved a lazy hand to gesture at the large room. “This is new. I’ve never been one for exhibitionism, though I’m not surprised to think that you might be.”

That sunk in, and Harry spun back, face flaming hot. “I am not!”

“Oh, really, Potter? Still trying to insist you hate being in the spotlight?” Then Malfoy moved, leaning into Harry’s space and placing both hands on his knees, those pale palms sliding up over the smooth fabric of Harry’s school trousers. “Or is it that you’d rather keep me all to yourself?”

“I’d rather pitch you off the Astronomy Tower!”

The teasing look fell off of Malfoy’s face, leaving him looking sullen and unhappy as he straightened back up. “So it’s to be fighting tonight. Great. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just wake up then.”

“Wake up?” Harry blinked. “What do you mean, you’d rather wake up?”

“What I said, Potter.” Malfoy crossed his arms, wearing a scowl familiar from the first six years they’d been at school together. “Merlin’s beard, if you’re going to be all prickly and uptight, I get enough of that in the real world. No need to be subjected to it when I’m asleep.”

“But I’m asleep!” Harry insisted, before immediately feeling foolish. “I mean, I’m the one dreaming. This is my dream.”

There was a beat of taut silence between them, then Malfoy said just as stupidly, “No, it’s not.”

“Only it is.”

“Fuck off, Potter, this is not your dream.”

“How should you know?”

Malfoy sneered, though Harry could see unease starting to seep into his eyes. “What, this would be your idea of a dream, would it? Being abused by your school bully? That’s what your psyche deems a good time?”

“And being stuck fighting with me is what your psyche is into, is that it, Malfoy? Well, according to last night, I guess fighting or—”

He broke off, but his mind helpfully supplied the rest: Fucking. Because he sucked you off last night. You let Draco Malfoy fall to his knees and get you off. Even if it had only been a dream.

Harry swallowed hard, and he saw Malfoy’s eyes drop, following the motion of his Adam’s apple.

“Oh, fuck.” Malfoy went pale, then an alarming shade of puce, and finally landed somewhere close to grey. “Oh, fucking fuck, there is no fucking way.”

“What?”

“What the fuck do you mean ‘what,’ Potter?!” Malfoy was no longer trying to get closer to Harry. No, he’d jumped to his feet and was backing away, seemingly on the verge of fleeing. “You’re saying you—but you can’t. No, you’re not real. This is just a dream.”

“Yeah, but it’s my dream.”

Malfoy was staring at him in horror, color returning to his face as a flush climbed his neck and cheeks.

“You remember last night?” he croaked. “But—you didn’t— In class today— You would’ve—”

Face starting to burn as red as Malfoy’s, Harry said, “I didn't remember anything then, obviously!”

“Neither did I!” Malfoy was clutching his chest, which was heaving up and down as he sucked in alarmingly large gulps of air.

“But this is just a dream,” Harry insisted. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to reassure himself or Malfoy, but it definitely didn’t seem to help the Slytherin. In fact, Malfoy strode back over to where Harry was sitting on the Hufflepuff bench to deliver a sharp kick to his shin.

“Does this feel like a normal dream to you, you blithering idiot?!”

“Fucking ow, Malfoy!”

Harry clutched at his leg, rubbing the sore spot which definitely hurt like a real injury.

Malfoy stood over him, wide-eyed and staring off unseeing into the distance, his breath still erratic and shallow. “The potion,” he muttered. “That bloody potion accident. That has to be it.”

Then he collapsed onto the bench opposite, dropping his head into his hands. “Salazar’s saggy balls, this can't be my life. There is no way I could get stuck sharing dreams with the actual Harry Potter. In which I went down on him like a horny Hufflepuff—and he remembers it! Put me back in Azkaban and just let me die there this time...”

Resolutely ignoring any reference to past sexual acts, which he had no intention to ever address, Harry offered a weak, “Er, chin up?”

Malfoy lifted his head, eyes crazed. “If I kill you in here, do you think you’ll die in the real world? Because I don’t think anyone could ever pin it on me if you did.”

“Whoa, whoa, all right, let’s just not,” Harry was quick to protest, hands held up as if in surrender. He cleared his throat. “Look, even if—big if here—this is actually real right now. Or is actually happening in both our minds and not just my imagination—it’s...it’s not that big of a problem, is it? We didn’t remember anything when we were awake. So basically, it didn’t happen.” He very much wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Malfoy mouthed that big of a problem, then he screamed a bit into his fist before shrieking, “That’s the biggest problem of all!”

He jumped back up to his feet, pacing in a tight little circle. “If we don’t remember it when we’re awake, then we can’t tell anyone or even research for ourselves how to fix it!” When Harry didn’t seem to get it, Malfoy waved his arms about in the air about as if that would make his point.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it could go on indefinitely!” Now Malfoy was clutching at his head, fingers bunched tight in his hair. He was looking more than a little unhinged. “Do you want to be stuck spending every night together like this for the rest of our lives?!”

That felt like quite the leap to Harry. “It’s been two dreams,” he said doubtfully. “You seem to be sort of, er, panicking here.”

“When have you ever known me to be a pillar of mental fortitude and bravery in the face of disaster, Potter?!” Malfoy screeched.

Harry thought back to all the times he’d watched the other boy run shrieking from some imagined danger growing up and had to admit that at least Malfoy knew himself.

“It is sort of amazing you survived Voldemort so long,” he mused.

Malfoy seemed to be spiraling into a full-on anxiety attack, the name of the psychopath he’d lived with in his home perhaps not helping.

“Hey, Malfoy.” Harry reached a tentative hand out as the blond sucked in air, actually hyperventilating. He looked up at Harry with wide eyes, impossibly pale. “Steady on there.”

Then Malfoy appeared to swoon, sliding bonelessly down to tumble off the bench and—

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry jerked awake.

He was lying on his back in bed, in his private little room. And he had no idea why he was awake.

Scrubbing at his eyes, he frowned up into the darkness in the small windowless room. He was pretty sure he’d been having a very odd sort of dream, but he couldn’t recall any hint of what it might’ve been about.

Maybe he’d been drinking too much coffee lately. His sleep seemed awfully restless the past couple of days.

At least tomorrow’s Saturday, he thought to himself, wriggling down under his covers and closing his eyes. Time for a nice and long-overdue lie-in.

Surely that would fix whatever was ailing him.

Chapter 3

On Saturday, Harry forced himself out of bed and off to the library before eleven, which he thought deserved some kind of award. He could have been far lazier. Yet even without Hermione there to prod him along, he’d still chosen to do the responsible thing and start on his Charms essay with most of the weekend still ahead of him.

See, he told the faceless journos in his imagination. I’m well on my way to responsible adulthood over here. Even if I may not know what I want to do career-wise, I make responsible decisions, steer clear of potion abuse, shower daily, and am perfectly respectable for an 18-year-old boy. So there.

Then he proceeded to mostly stare out the tall windows on the far wall. From time to time, he would catch himself and flip through the books in front of himself to jot down a couple lines—then lose focus and repeat the whole cycle once more.

He didn’t bother with lunch, instead working until nearly three. By then, he’d managed (during those intermittent fits and bursts of work) to build up a fair outline of notes and references from which he thought he could scrape together an essay. Deciding that was a job well-enough done, Harry stood and stretched his arms overhead, scratching absently through his wild hair as he twisted his spine from side to side to loosen up. He would just return the books he’d pulled off the shelves and—

He startled, realizing for the first time that Malfoy had been sat at the table just over his shoulder for who knows how long.

Chewing his lip nervously, Harry tried not to be obvious about watching the blond, under the cover of gathering up the books on his table. But Malfoy didn’t look up or seem to take note either way.

It seemed impossible that Malfoy could have just happened to take a spot diagonal to Harry’s and not noticed him sitting there, but—but Harry supposed it was fine. Right? The Slytherin hadn’t hexed him under the table or thrown wads of parchment at his head or disrupted him in any way. And it was a library. Anyone ought to be able to study in it.

Is this just how it’s going to be then? Harry wondered to himself as he carried an armful of books past Malfoy’s table to put them back where he’d gotten them.

Perhaps a post-Voldemort world was one in which he and Draco Malfoy were nothing more than unwilling acquaintances, who spoke when they had to for class and otherwise didn’t even notice that one another existed.

Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Surely it’s better than being harassed, though, isn’t it?

He nodded, as if conversing with himself.

That’s right. This is surely better than dealing with Malfoy’s elaborate schemes to embarrass you, the constant sneering and insults, the terrible impressions and attempts to get you in trouble.

There were many things in life for which you could claim that “anything was better than nothing”, but surely Malfoy’s attention was not one of them.

Harry slid his Charms books back onto the correct shelves, still carrying on to himself in his mind.

This is the best possible outcome you could hope for, if you’ve got no choice but to spend another year with the git. You should be delighted he is ignoring you. Ecstatic even.

He realized how mad he sounded, even if no one else could hear him, and Harry let his head fall against the library shelves.

And then you should probably get yourself a life and some friends and stop talking to yourself, Harry Potter.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

After swinging by the kitchens to grab a couple of leftover sausage rolls from the lunch rush, Harry was still feeling ahead of the curve in terms of being productive on a Saturday, so he decided to go out flying. There was no telling how much longer they’d have sunny days for, after all. He'd just have to find his broom first.

He still hadn’t truly unpacked, only pulling things out of his trunk when he needed them. Even after three weeks, the open wardrobe in his private room held nothing more than a handful of school robes and uniform pieces. His textbooks and schoolbag were dumped on the desk against one wall, and he knew he could find his razor on the sink’s edge in the small en suite. But when you got right down to it, it was fair to say that the one place in the whole castle that belonged entirely to him looked no more lived in than a hotel room.

He would be here for the next nine months, which was a fairly long time—and yet it also felt so temporary. Should he bother making the room his? He still hadn’t even made the room he'd slept in at Grimmauld Place really ‘his.’

Maybe that was part of the problem, he thought to himself as he pawed through the extension charms on his trunk and his hand landed on his new broom. He pulled it free of the mess. Maybe he just didn’t know how to make anything ‘his.’

Frowning down at the chaotic depths of his trunk, Harry slammed the lid down, tossed the Stormrider over one shoulder, and left his depressing room behind.

The broom had been a gift from the manufacturers, a token of their appreciation after Harry had saved the world and all. He didn’t usually like accepting anything of the sort, but he had been in need of a new broom after losing his Firebolt the summer after Sixth Year. And accepting a gift in the mail had been far easier than facing the crowds of Diagon Alley to go shopping for a new broom himself.

He waited no longer than reaching the castles’ front doors, then Harry jumped astride the broom and kicked off, causing a few startled shrieks from below as he shot off into the air and away from the rest of the school. The air tearing through his hair snatched the breath from his lungs, yet Harry felt like he could breathe properly for the first time in days.

Yes, this at least is mine.

He spiraled up higher into the cold sunshine, watching the grounds shrink beneath him till Hogwarts looked more like a toy castle than a real building full of hundreds of his fellow students.

Maybe he could do this . The Eighth Years hadn’t been allowed on any Quidditch teams, but he’d always loved to play. Maybe he could try out for the professional teams after graduating. Surely he'd enjoy Seeking again.

Though what if he wasn’t good enough to go pro?

Or what if—even worse—he wasn’t good enough yet he still got on a team just for his name, and then he lost game after game?

He could already imagine the writeups in The Daily Prophet. Varying from cloyingly encouraging to brutally critical, depending on public sentiment at the moment. Harry shuddered at the thought.

No, whatever he might do, he didn’t think he’d want it to be something so constantly in the spotlight as being a professional athlete.

Dropping into a lazy loop, Harry hung upside down from his broom, letting the blood rush into his head as if it could help him think more clearly.

Maybe he could try to work for a broom manufacturer or something, but he didn’t really go in for that kind of complicated charmwork. And it felt like he’d probably need a lot more knowledge of aerodynamics and Muggle sciences than he had picked up in primary school.

Did broom designers study Muggle science? Or did they just sort of wing it, no pun intended?

Harry sighed, righting himself on his broom and pointing it back towards the ground. Seven full years he’d lived in the Wizarding world, and yet there were still so many things he didn’t know the first thing about. Perhaps because so much of his time had been spent learning how not to die—or at least not until the time was right.

Maybe that was the answer then. Maybe he just needed to spend a couple years learning how to live, instead of only learning how to survive a megalomaniac.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That evening Harry sat at the desk in his bare little room and transformed his messy notes into a proper essay he could turn in about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of nonverbal casting and the impacts each could have on different classes of charms.

When he’d covered the necessary three feet, he blew on the last lines to be sure the ink was dry then rolled the whole thing up and put it in his bag for N.E.W.T. Charms on Monday afternoon.

He still needed to figure out a topic for his next transfiguration project, he had a D.A.D.A. essay he should start research on, and there were nearly 30 pages of reading due for Herbology. But he’d made good progress for a Saturday.

Harry looked at the Stormrider he’d left leaning in the corner of his room.

Then he got up from his desk, went to his trunk, and started rummaging through it again. He found some flannel pyjamas that ought to help combat the increasingly cold nights in the castle. After yanking them free from the mess, he shoved more of the bric-a-brac aside until he found what he’d really been looking for.

The photo was a little bent and had a few wrinkles stuck in it now, but it was still a good one. It showed him, Hermione, and Ron on a sofa in the Gryffindor common room. They looked a little pained at first, caught by Colin Creevey and being told to smile—but then they looked at one another and dissolved into genuine laughter, over and over again on a loop.

Bending the stiff paper back to try to uncrease some of the lines, Harry smoothed the old photo. Then he sent it flying onto the wall near his room’s door, where he’d see it every time he left, and affixed it to the stone with a nice, solid (and spoken aloud) sticking charm.

“There,” he murmured, smiling at his friends in the photo. “That’s a start.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry was in the library again.

Only this time it was a dream.

And while he was here, within the dream, he could remember the previous two dreams he hadn’t recalled at all during his waking life.

Swearing under his breath, he turned to look about the empty room and came nearly nose to nose with Malfoy, who had been standing right behind him and had also spun around at the noise.

The Slytherin’s face went through a number of quick contortions: alarm, anger, and fear being the most obvious emotions at play.

“You’re not going to panic again, are you?” Harry asked.

“What do you mean ‘again’?” Malfoy asked, snippity as he’d ever been as a boy.

“Well, last night—”

He broke off, since Malfoy’s grey eyes were already stretching wide as platters. “‘Last night’?” the blond repeated, going a bit shrill. “What do you mean ‘last night’?”

“I mean when you had a meltdown in that weird dream of the Great Hall, after realizing that we seem to actually be stuck like this?”

Malfoy staggered back, dropping heavily into a chair at one of the empty study tables. He pitched forward, putting his head between his knees as he sucked in great whooping breaths.

Had he always been this much of a nervous tit?

Honestly, probably yes.

“Only when you panicked last night, I think it sort of—kicked us out of the dream? So maybe try not to?” Harry suggested, as he watched Malfoy fail really badly at following his advice.

He scrunched up his nose, considering the options. “Then again, I guess that being woken up might not be the worst outcome, if you figure that—”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry woke up with a little shiver.

Groaning, he muttered the spell that illuminated the arms on his wristwatch and squinted down at them in the dark. Bloody three a.m. on a Saturday. He mashed his face back into his pillow.

Whatever the hell kept making his sleep so disruptive lately could kindly fuck right off, he decided. Then he screwed his eyes shut and vowed not to wake up again until at least lunch time.

Chapter 4

It wasn’t even 11 a.m. on Sunday, and Harry was not only awake—he was dressed and walking down to Hogsmeade.

He might have usually grumbled about losing his lazy plans for the morning, but when he’d gone to the Great Hall in search of breakfast and copious amounts of coffee, he’d found an owl waiting for him from Hermione, saying she was thinking of him and asking if he wanted to meet up for lunch—and he couldn’t be mad about that.

Swinging his arms briskly, as if it would get him to the village sooner, Harry practically jogged across the grounds so he could get outside the anti-Apparition wards that were keeping him from reaching Hogsmeade in an instant.

He needn’t have worried about missing Hermione on the road somehow, though, as he spotted her familiar figure leaning against one of the stone pillars flagging the open school gates.

“Hermione!” he called, waving an arm.

She looked up from the book she’d been reading and stuffed it into her shoulder bag as she hurried over, throwing her arms around him in a hug.

Harry breathed into that familiar faceful of curly hair and was suddenly very glad he’d bothered waking up at a decent hour.

“Goodness, how has it only been a week!” Hermione exclaimed, laughing as if he was being ridiculous for clinging to her when she’d been the one to hug him first. She pulled back and peered at his face. “How have you been doing since then?”

Shrugging with one shoulder, Harry avoided answering outright, glancing back at the school behind them. Hermione followed his gaze, looking at the castle with a pensive look.

“Did you want to go up, say hi maybe?” Harry asked, noticing the hint of longing in her expression.

But she shook her head, looping her arm through his to pull him toward the village. “No. Better not. You’ll only make me wish I’d come back with you, but the things I’m doing right now—they’re what I need to be doing.”

Harry tried not to wince, though he knew the words weren’t aimed at him. Still, Hermione noticed—she always did—and she hugged his arm tighter as she said, “You’re doing what you need to be doing, too, Harry. We don’t have to need the same things.”

Falling into an easy stroll together, they headed to the village, Harry getting caught up on all the latest outrageous stories from the Ministry that Hermione had been saving up since the previous weekend.

They visited Honeydukes for old time’s sake, and Harry bought a large block of Honeydukes Best Chocolate for Hermione to take back to Ron, as well as a bag of jelly slugs because that old tease would never get old. For himself, he got some treacle fudge, which Hermione offered to carry in her bag, because he hadn’t even put on robes or a jacket in his haste to come meet her.

After an easy half-hour spent strolling through the high street, peering in windows and recounting old stories about past trips to the village, they ended up at The Three Broomsticks for lunch.

“Sure you don’t want to go to Madam Puddifoot’s?” Hermione teased as they reached the pub’s door. “I recall how much you loved it back in Fifth Year.”

Harry pulled a face. “Only if you want to start up the press again with rumors of our scandalous love triangle.”

Hermione shrugged lightly. “If all they write is bunk anyway, we might as well have some fun with it. And Ron is finally mature enough to not go into a tizzy about such ridiculous stories, so if you ever want to distract them with some wild speculation, just say the word.”

They didn’t go to the awful little tea shop, though. Inside the Three Broomsticks, Madam Rosmerta exclaimed in delight to see them both for the first time in so long. She insisted their first drinks were on the house—though she didn’t extend the offer beyond their first drinks. Shrewd business sense still apparently outweighed gratitude for any world saving.

Sitting down at a small table in a secluded nook, Hermione put her bag in front of her and rummaged around in it, her arm disappearing up to the shoulder.

“Ah, here it is!”

Pulling her hand back out, she brandished what was very clearly a book, though it was wrapped in brown paper, probably to keep it from being damaged while knocking about in her capacious bag.

Harry watched her with a bemused smile, sipping from his butterbeer. “Just a bit more light reading for lunch?” he asked, eyeing the package as she set it on the table and began to unwrap it.

“I scoured Flourish & Blotts yesterday, and I found this for you.” Pulling the last of the paper free, she pushed the book over towards Harry, then set about folding the wrapping into a tidy little square that she could tuck back into her bag.

The book’s cover was black leather, worn and dull. The title stamped on its face and spine had mostly flaked away, but Harry could still make it out with a little effort: Diverse Uses for Dragon’s Breath Macroalgae in Potion-Making and Healing.

His eyebrows climbed up his forehead as he looked from the book to Hermione.

“Oh! I put a glamour on it, so as not to draw attention—”

Hermione reached over and flipped the cover open to reveal the title page, which actually read “What Could You Be? The Young Wix’s Ultimate Guide to Discovering a Magical Career.”

Harry choked on his drink. The cartoony font and the cheery illustrations made it look like a book aimed at perhaps a Hogwarts starter. If that. Probably a primary school student.

“Well, you can see why I thought you might appreciate the glamour—but believe me, Harry, I went through every book they had on the topic of career planning, and there is not much out there. But this one, despite the tone, is actually fairly thorough.” She flipped the pages for him, as he held his hands off the book to give her space. “Especially for Muggle-borns like us, it gives a very solid introduction to the kinds of jobs that exist in the Wizarding world, because there is so much more out there than you might think.”

The pages were full of eye-catching ribbons of text, ornate fonts, and animated little figures of witches and wizards acting out various tasks, brandishing twiggy wands and making things around them move.

“Hermione,” he started, unsure how to respond.

She closed the book, hiding its true content once more beneath the horrendously dull-sounding cover, and pushed it closer to him.

“Just take it, Harry. Give it a read and keep an open mind. You might find it sparks some inspiration or gives you some ideas to look into as you think about things this year.”

Nodding uncomfortably, Harry took the book and slid it slightly off to the side of the table.

Hermione watched him with that clever gaze of hers. “How is it going, truly?” she asked. “You haven’t really said, and I do worry about you, Harry, up here all alone.”

“There is Dean,” Harry pointed out, even though he’d said practically the same thing to Dean’s own face just that week.

Hermione’s rueful laugh filled their little alcove. “Of course, and thank goodness for that, but you know what I mean.” Her dark brown eyes went a bit sad. “It was the three of us for so long, and it just doesn’t feel right now to be so far away.”

There was no arguing that, because Harry felt quite the same, but he still didn’t think he could have spent the year in London, knocking about in Grimmauld Place, avoiding the press and public, and haunting Hermione’s flat or the joke shop whenever he felt lonely. Which was most the time.

“It’s not the same, but it’s not terrible,” he said, trying to put a brave face on. “Like I said, Dean’s generally about for meals and things, and the other Eighth Years aren’t bad, though they do tend to be a bit on the serious side. Guess that makes sense, if they all thought they’d rather retake the year than risk being unprepared for their exams.”

He fiddled with his butterbeer bottle, picking at the label. “I guess it’s been interesting, getting to interact with the professors more like fellow adults and being trusted to help with classes and all. And the new D.A.D.A. professor is an all right sort. Reminds me a bit of our old classes with Lupin, though Fossey’s rather less likely to dress in cardigans and offer you chocolate bars.”

Hermione nodded, waiting for him to go on, but he didn’t know what more to say. School was just...school. He showed up to his classes on time, did the piles of work assigned to him, and collapsed into sleep so that he could do it all again the next day.

It all sounded childish and rather dull compared to her stories of buffoonish bureaucrats. Absolutely no ridiculous political posturing nor salacious gossip about interpersonal scandals as they tried to reshape society and write new laws.

“There’s something going on with Malfoy,” he blurted, before he’d really considered fully, and Hermione’s face immediately fell.

“Oh, Harry, no. Not again.”

“I don’t mean like that!” he insisted, flushing. “I’m not saying he’s up to evil! Just that things have been really weird since he came back.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Harry, you haven’t been using the map again, have you?”

“No,” he lied at once, because nothing good could come from admitting it. Besides, he’d mostly only used it the first couple of days. By the end of the week, he'd simply been checking it out of habit, not because he expected to actually catch Malfoy doing anything other than going to class.

Hermione took a long drink from her bottle, then she folded her hands on the table in front of her, as if she were a judge settling in to hear his case. “All right then. Let me hear it. How have things been ‘weird’?”

Harry was glad that they were far off in a back corner, where no one else could overhear or even see them, as he scuffed the toe of his trainer against the worn floorboards.

“He’s like somebody else.” He didn’t know how to put it into words. “You wouldn’t believe it, Hermione. He doesn’t sneer. He isn’t rude. He doesn’t even glare.”

This did get Hermione’s eyebrows to at least curve up, as she’d also spent six years experiencing Malfoy as nothing but persistently unpleasant.

“It’s not that he’s trying to be friendly—that would maybe be even less surprising, because you remember how he used to suck up to people he thought might be influential.” Harry shook his head. “He’s just...really quiet. Doesn’t talk to anyone, doesn’t react to anything.”

Harry tapped his bottle on the table, as if he needed to catch Hermione’s attention, though she was watching him closely. “We had to partner in Potions the other day, and he just did the work and didn’t say a thing that wasn’t about the task. No stray digs at my terrible potioneering. Not even a scornful look!”

Lifting his bottle to his mouth, Harry paused with the glass neck at his lips, frowning. “It’s just so weird. Something has to have happened.”

Hermione hummed to herself. “You know,” she mused, “there is one way you could find out for sure what is going on with him.”

Harry perked up, looking over at his friend.

“You could ask him,” Hermione chided, tapping her foot against his under the table. “Honestly, Harry. We’re technically adults now—perhaps just try a conversation this time, rather than all the stalking and unhealthy obsession?”

“It’s not an unhealthy obsession!” Harry insisted, flushing again in the dim light of the pub. “It is a completely normal level of curiosity about our childhood bully suddenly acting like he’s had a personality transplant!”

When Hermione didn’t look convinced, Harry reminded her, “The boy who called you a—a you-know-what. Who gleefully took part in Umbridge’s little Inquisitorial Squad. Who mocked Ron mercilessly when he made the Quidditch team.”

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “You don’t need to remind me how terrible he was as a boy. I remember perfectly well on my own, Harry.” She took a deep breath, releasing it in a heavy sigh. “But he was also fifteen when he did those things. Perhaps he thought it would be a great idea back then to be an awful bigot and follow in his father’s footsteps—but then again, you also thought being an Auror sounded like your dream future at fifteen, and look at you now.”

She gave a little shrug. “People do change.”

Harry didn’t think it was fair to equate his own hesitance to sign up for who-knew-how-many more years of fighting depravity with Malfoy maybe discovering that it would be better to treat other humans with a bit of respect. They were hardly the same thing.

But while he was still figuring out how to convince Hermione of that, she turned and leaned out of their alcove to look at the chalkboard over the bar that listed the day’s specials.

“Now let’s order some food,” she declared. “I’m starving.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, Harry immediately knew the dream for what it was. It was getting easier to recognize the feeling, the more times it happened, though it was still odd to have all his nighttime memories simply there, which weren’t there during the day.

It wasn’t as if they trickled back in or even came back to him all in a rush. They were simply there, as if there were two Harry’s: the one who lived during the day and had no idea about any of this, and the Harry who woke at night, sharing all his daytime memories but also this additional life that the other had no idea about.

He was surrounded by books, the shelves towering over his head and piles of old tomes stacked all about. He leaned out around a bookshelf and realized where he was: Flourish & Blotts in Diagon Alley.

“Malfoy?” he called, quite sure the Slytherin had to be around somewhere. He wasn’t surprised to hear a muffled curse from the floor above him.

Harry walked out from the rear of the shop and toward the narrow staircase that led to the upper floor. “I’m coming up now,” he called out, “if you could maybe try to contain your panic for a few minutes.”

A distressed moan came from the stacks as Harry mounted the steps, one hand on the railing. He kept his eyes on his feet so he wouldn’t trip over any of the piles of books lining the stairs.

“Maybe we could even start to fix this bloody mess,” he suggested, because he couldn't deny something was going on after four nights in a row. Although the panicking hadn't been helpful, Malfoy had been right about this not only happening in Harry’s head—and about it maybe being a bit of a disaster.

He reached the top of the stairs and came around the corner of one of the towering bookcases to find Malfoy sitting on the floor, his lower back pressed against the shelves while he curled forward with his head in his hands.

“And what brilliant idea do you have for fixing this, Potter?” Malfoy ground out when he heard Harry approach, not lifting his face.

“Might start by staying calm?”

He saw Malfoy’s hands clench, his fingers tightening in the long strands of his white blond hair.

“This can’t be real,” the other boy muttered, sounding less desperate this time and simply despairing. “It just can’t be.”

Harry had to assume—because he was definitely never ever going to ask aloud—that part of the reason Malfoy was taking the whole thing so hard was because he’d accidentally outed himself by, well, sucking Harry off in a dream.

Harry didn’t think being gay was that big of a deal—everyone had known that Ernie McMillan was gay, and certainly all the Gryffindors knew that gender was no barrier to Seamus once he’d had a drink or two in him. But then again, Harry had never heard even a whisper that Draco Malfoy might be gay. And given what a generally uptight and judgmental asshole Lucius Malfoy had been, maybe that had been very much on purpose.

So Harry could imagine how it might be traumatic to have such a personal secret revealed to one's worst enemy. Doubly so for revealing to said enemy that he might’ve featured in your wank bank.

But if Harry had to acknowledge, out loud, what had happened between them in order to tell Malfoy to buck up and move on, then that was something he just didn’t think he was ready to do. Between the options of uttering the words “Look, it’s really fine that you dream of sucking me off in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom” and simply accepting night after night of interrupted sleep...

Surely sleep was overrated.

Harry leaned against the opposite bookcase and slid down in a mirror of Malfoy’s pose, though several feet away from where the blond sat.

“I mean, it’s not,” he agreed, trying to keep his voice reasonable and not set Malfoy off spiraling again. “Real, that is. Obviously we aren’t actually down in London right now.”

There was no response at first, then Malfoy asked, without lifting his head, “London?”

Harry looked around in surprise. “Uh, yeah. It looks like Flourish & Blotts to me. Isn’t that what you see, too?”

Malfoy slowly raised his head, blinking at the books surrounding them. Then he exclaimed, “Potter, you idiot!”

He spun about onto his knees, facing the shelf behind him as he ran his fingers over the books’ spines. “We’re in a bookshop. A bookshop.”

Yeah, as you also would have known if you weren't lying on the floor moaning, Harry thought.

“We might be able to find something here...that...could...”

Malfoy trailed off, his shoulders slumping and hands falling back to his sides. Harry squinted down at some of the books piled near him and realized what the problem likely was. The titles were complete gibberish: random letters and squiggles that only lookedlike letters until you tried to read them.

Harry picked a book up off the top of one of the nearest piles and tipped it open to see what was inside. Blank pages. Hundreds of perfectly blank pages.

“Huh. I guess that makes sense.” He flipped all the way through to the end of the empty book. “And even if they had been full, we probably couldn’t trust anything we might read here anyway, right? It could just be nonsense our imaginations came up with.”

“This place isn’t a product of our imaginations, though,” Malfoy argued, despondent, letting his forehead rest on one of the bookshelves as he kept his back to Harry. “If it was a regular dream, the stuff of imagination, don’t you think there would be more fantastical things happening? But there’s been nothing out of the ordinary.”

Then Malfoy probably remembered the blowjob-shaped elephant in the room. Harry watched as a red flush crawled up his neck and the tips of his ears, but the two of them both did a fantastic job of pretending neither was aware of it.

“I suppose it has been pretty mundane,” Harry agreed, his own face warm as he tried to keep the conversation clear of any sex-adjacent hazards. “No flying monkeys or showing up to your exams in your pants or anything. Just the two of us randomly popping into pretty normal places.”

Malfoy sighed and turned, slumping against his bookcase. His eyes were shut, head tipped back, and his face was still pink as he said, “Not just normal places. Places of memory.”

Harry frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“You must’ve noticed!” Malfoy’s brow was wrinkled in annoyance. But on the plus side, he seemed much less prone to panic as long as he was busy with being annoyed with Harry. “A dream might usually be set anywhere, real or imagined. But...that bathroom. And the Great Hall, the library, even this bloody shop—they’re all places we both have shared memories of, because we’ve been in them together.”

When Harry still didn’t have anything to say in response to that, Malfoy knocked the back of his head against the wooden shelf and groaned, “My god, did I actually overestimate your intelligence, Potter? How could I have forgotten that Granger possessed the sole brain among your filthy little ménage-à-twats?”

Harry snorted, and Malfoy opened his eyes and looked at him in something like surprise. Then his expression turned to smug pleasure, since he'd always been a vain little shit who wanted others to laugh at his jokes. “So you knew it, too,” he purred, sounding more like himself than he had all week.

“That I’d never hold a candle to a genius like Hermione? Yeah, Malfoy. Even I wasn't quite so thick that I could fail to pick up on that.” He rolled his eyes with a little shake of his head.

“Yes, well, unfortunately dumb brawn and a knack for the Disarming Charm are unlikely to get us out of this particular conundrum.” Malfoy looked more at ease than Harry had seen him in ages, getting to dish out such mockery again. “Some Savior you are,” he spat with relish.

Harry gave a little shrug, not particularly bothered. “‘Fraid I only have the one string in my bow,” he said. “If it’s not a noseless psychopath we’re up against, I’m pretty much useless.” See: his inability to figure out a career path.

Malfoy’s smirk went a little strained at the edges at the mention of Voldemort, but he held onto it. “Even against one of those, your track record leaves something to be desired. Took you quite a few tries to make it stick, as I recall.”

“Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with another soon then,” Harry suggested, and Malfoy looked at him a moment before he nodded.

“Indeed.”

They lapsed into a silence that was maybe something like companionable—or at least not the sort of tense anticipation it would have been between them as children, simply waiting for the next volley in their never ending war. This was something...easier.

This dream also seemed to be lasting much longer than the previous ones. Would it stretch on the whole night, if neither of them got too agitated? Though people surely didn’t dream all night. Harry was pretty confident there was something to do with phases of sleep or some such thing.

“So,” he started, clearing his throat. “We’re, er, stuck in places we both remember?”

Malfoy rested his forearms on his knees, fingertips meeting to form a tense little cage. “So far, that seems to be the case. The only way to disprove it would be if we share a dream in a place that one of us has never been to.”

“But why?”

“The potions, presumably.”

Harry cocked an eyebrow, and Malfoy scoffed, “You do recall that we took nearly three full cauldrons of potion to the face the other day, yes? Or did they somehow compound the existing brain damage from that ugly scar of yours?”

“Might’ve done,” Harry said, watching with enjoyment as his mild response seemed to make Malfoy twitch with annoyance. Maybe he shouldn't take so much pleasure from riling Malfoy up for the first time in an age—but he did. He really did.

“Why don’t you explain it to me like I’m in remedial Potions?” he suggested. Malfoy looked both outraged and like he’d been given some sort of unexpected gift.

“Even that might be too much for you,” he said in a withering tone. “But I’ll do my best.”

So Malfoy launched into an animated breakdown of the ingredients they’d been hit with—peppered with all the expected insults to Harry’s Potions knowledge that hadn’t made an appearance in class—as he talked through possible interactions of an incomplete Dreamless Sleep potion laced with unfinished Memory Potion.

Harry didn’t understand half of it, but he settled back against the bookshelf behind him and let Malfoy carry on, lulled by the detailed breakdown of how stewed mandrake could impede the action of the wormwood, especially when it hadn’t been properly steeped in their Dreamless Sleep by the time the accident had occurred.

The words flowed on and on, and before Harry knew it, the bookshop had dissolved around him, and he was gone once again.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night Harry slept through till the morning. When his alarm woke him at 7 a.m. on Monday morning, he felt well-rested for the first time in days.

Whatever had been bothering his sleep lately must have finally passed, he decided in relief, glad to have one less thing to worry about.

Chapter 5

“Did you decide what you’ll do for the next project?” Harry asked Dean as they walked into the Transfiguration classroom.

It was Monday morning, the start of a new week, and Harry was one day closer to needing to have a perfected Transfiguration ready to demonstrate in Wednesday’s class.

“I was thinking to transfigure a drafting table from some branches, if I can manage it.” Dean set his things down at their usual table and pulled out his chair. “I don’t much like the desk that came with my room, and I wouldn't mind replacing it with something bigger to work at.”

“That’s...that's really good,” Harry said as he dropped into his own seat. He hadn't thought of making something for his bleak little room, but then he could get his assignment done and maybe make the space a bit more pleasant. “Maybe I should do something like that, too.”

There had to be some books with examples of household transfiguration in the library. Harry had his free period after this, so he could try to swing through before his D.A.D.A. class at 10:50.

Taking out his notes from the last class and setting out his quill, he spotted Malfoy at the same wall-side seat as the Slytherin had claimed the previous week. The same ring of empty seats surrounded him, as no one chose to sit beside the former Death Eater.

But since Harry did not harbor any unhealthy obsession with Malfoy, that was the last time he even took note of the silent blond being there.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Hurrying down the hillside towards Hagrid’s hut, a hastily shrunken sandwich wrapped in a napkin in one hand, Harry felt for the first time that he might not have made such a terrible decision in coming back to school. In fact, he was rather smashing this Monday, if he did say so himself.

He’d gone to the library after Transfiguration and found just the thing for his project, copying down methods that could be used to transfigure hollow objects like gourds or buckets into stained-glass lamps, and he was already spinning up ideas for patterns he might try for in the glass.

Then he’d hurried from the library to N.E.W.T. D.A.D.A., and that class had been precisely what he’d needed to start the week off right. They’d begun practicing Bombarda Maxima, and getting to disappear into a safe magical space for forty minutes to blow things to smithereens had been the perfect stress relief. Harry might not be sure he wanted to use such spells in real battles, but he did still love the rush of unleashing that kind of great magic just because he could.

Now he was off to ambush Hagrid and see if he could get a couple of pumpkins from the groundskeeper to practice his Transfiguration on. Plus, he hadn’t actually caught up with Hagrid beyond a passing greeting in the castle, so he was probably overdue a visit.

Rapping on the wooden door of the groundskeeper’s hut, Harry called out, “Hagrid? Are you in? It’s Harry.”

The door was flung open so suddenly Harry nearly fell into the room, still expecting to have his fist land on wood.

“Harry!” the half-giant bellowed, grabbing him in a hug and pulling him inside in a single move. “Bin waitin’ to see when yeh’d finally show up!”

Harry grinned up at his friend, not having to look up quite as far as when they’d first met but still barely making it to the other man’s chest.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” Harry said. He watched as Hagrid shoved a bunch of half-greased traps across his table to make space for them to sit.

“Course not! Yeh jus’ make yerself comfortable, sit righ’ there, and I’ll have the two o’ us a cuppa in no time at all.”

As Hagrid bustled about, throwing questions over his shoulder about Harry’s class schedule, Harry set out his sandwich on the table and restored it to its proper size. He caught Hagrid up on his N.E.W.T. subjects and told him a bit about the younger years he was supervising weekly for D.A.D.A. and Potions. Hagrid knew some of the third and fourth years from his own classes and gave Harry some pointers about which ones to watch out for.

“I’ve actually got a project due for Transfiguration on Wednesday,” Harry explained around a mouthful of his sandwich. “I was hoping I could perhaps get some pumpkins to practice on, if you’ve got any you could spare?”

Hagrid bustled out at once to the garden, leaving Harry to drop his sandwich and hurry after him, still chewing. They picked out a half dozen pumpkins together, and Harry shrunk them down to tuck them into his robe pockets for later.

When they settled back down at the table, Hagrid slurped at his tea and remarked, “So yeh came back for your Eighth Year alone. Mus’ admit that I hadn’t been expectin’ that.” When Harry grimaced, Hagrid hastily went on. “Not tha’ there’s anything wrong with it! I jus’ assumed that yeh’d probably moved on from schoolin’, what with all I read yeh were gettin’ up to at the Ministry with our Hermione this summer.”

Harry looked down into the mug of tea he’d wrapped his hands around. “Yeah, I didn’t really expect to come back like this either. They were willing to take me straight into the Auror programme without even sitting my N.E.W.T.s. Still are, last I heard.”

He hoped there hadn’t been any more letters from the D.M.L.E. people. Back in June, he’d invested in a mail service that intercepted all his post and only released letters that had come from a short list of acquaintances he’d specified. Anything else went into great bags he could collect from the agent whenever he so chose.

So far he had not so chosen.

“Somethin’ changed for yeh then? Made yeh decide to come back?” Hagrid asked, his dark eyes kind and curious within the great mane of his wild hair and beard.

“I, er.” He took another sip of his tea then forged on. “I had a bit of a wobble. Back in July.”

That was how Hermione described it. Like it had just been a little stumble and not the complete meltdown it’d actually been, accidental magic popping off as he ranted to his two best friends, nearly hysterical, about how he just didn’t want to spend another day in ‘that place.’ It had been weeks of trials by then, listening to litanies of Death Eater crimes and the horrific and heartbreaking testimony of victims and survivors. And when he wasn’t in a courtroom, he was stuck down in the Department of Mysteries, working with a memory specialist to scour through old visions he’d had of Voldemort’s activities, so he could provide evidence that this person or that might have been working with the mad bastard.

He had been living and breathing nothing but evil and darkness for 10 to 12 hours a day, and it had been like a dozen Horcruxes around his neck again, day in and day out.

Then the D.M.L.E. had come knocking, asking him if he’d like to come along for an arrest, because they thought they’d finally located MacNair hiding out in some abandoned house in Dorset. Harry had barely stammered out some excuse and gotten to the Floo in time to land in Hermione’s flat and have an anxiety attack still on his knees on the hearth of her fireplace. 

“I wasn’t all that sure I wanted to be an Auror any longer. Or at least not right away,” he summed up, skimming over all the shouting and explosions and hurt that only Hermione and Ron had seen. It was the first time he'd even admitted it had happened to anyone besides them. “And I didn’t know anything else I really wanted to do, so I figured finishing school properly would be a good place to start.”

Hagrid patted him on the arm with one massive hand, surprisingly gentle given its size. “Sounds like things’ve been tough fer yeh, Harry. But I’m glad to see yeh back, whatever the reason. Hogwarts’ll always be yer home, jus’ like it is mine.”

“Did you—” Harry swallowed. “Did you ever think of going anywhere else? I know they broke your wand and all, but—how did you decide that working here forever was what you wanted to do? Or that it’d be enough?”

It wasn’t the type of conversation they’d ever had when Harry was a child, but he wasn’t a little boy any longer. Hagrid seemed to recognize that as well as he settled back in his chair.

“Can’t deny there’re other things I might’ve once thought o’ doin’. Would’ve loved to be free to do nothin’ but travel the world huntin’ fantastic beasts, followin’ ’em wherever they migh’ take me,” Hagrid admitted. “But I’ve still been able to do far more o’ that than yer average bloke thanks to my position here.”

He stroked his bushy beard, thoughtful and a little melancholy.

“I s’ppose I get along all righ’ being thankful for all I’ve still got. Hogwarts gave me a home every time I needed one. It gave me the chance to do somethin’ back for those who’d helped me. Now I get to help new generations o’ kids, too, an’ make the world better for ‘em, be here for ‘em when they need me. Feels like a darn good life to live when I think o’ it like that.”

Harry was helping out the younger years now, he supposed, but watching 12-year-olds brew basic potions didn’t leave him feeling fulfilled in anything like the way that Hagrid described. Most of the time, he only felt like he’d been assigned an extra chore.

He sighed over his tea, his earlier good mood forgotten. Who cared if he’d got atop of his assignments and figured out a topic for his Transfiguration project? He still had no idea what to do after Hogwarts, and school was only temporary—not real life.

“Yeh don’ have to have it all figured out yet,” Hagrid promised, smiling through his wild beard. “Or even to worry ’bout finding somethin’ ‘worthwhile.’ Yeh saved our whole bloody world, Harry!” He beamed. “If anyone deserves to take a little time, surely yeh’ve earned up a rest.”

“Not sure the papers agree,” Harry mumbled.

“Paw! Forget those dirty great busybodies at the Prophet! Bloody rag. Everyone whose got more ‘an air between their ears knows most their so-called ‘reportin’’ isn’ worth so much as loo roll, believe you me.”

Harry couldn't help smiling, and Hagrid lit up seeing it.

“Don’t you worry about them,” he declared, brandishing his mug and waving it in Harry’s direction. “You jus’ take your time and do whatever feels righ’ to you.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

After another awkward Potions session stuck between an exasperating Goldstein and an unnervingly quiet Malfoy, Harry had stayed after alone to finally finish his Dreamless Sleep brew. By nine, he’d been able to leave the requisite sample on Slughorn’s desk, together with the two feet they’d each had to write about the risks associated with regular use of the potion.

When he dropped into his bed at last, having made his dinner entirely of leftover treacle fudge from Honeyduke’s, Harry had expected to be greeted with his own dreamless sleep. 

But of course he dreamed—even if he wouldn’t remember it during the day.

He found himself tonight in a circular room, dotted with round tables and covered all over with draping fabric, shimmery shawls, and dangling tassels.

He couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter once he realized where they were.

“The Divination classroom?” he exclaimed, catching Malfoy’s eye.

“Hey, I don’t decide these things,” the blond protested, throwing himself down on one of the stiff poufs.

“No, but you did decide to take the bloody class.”

“So did you!”

Harry lifted his eyebrows. “Yeah, but I’m an idiot who was raised by Muggles—what was your excuse for not knowing better?”

Malfoy had a crooked little smile that Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen before. He stared at it, noting how the expression changed the Slytherin’s face into something almost human.

“I could always say that I took it for the same reason that most people take it—the easy grade.” Malfoy smirked, looking back up into Harry’s eyes. “I assume that’s what landed you in Professor Trelawney’s clutches?”

“Y’know, I don’t even remember? I think Ron was signing up for it, so I just followed suit.”

While Malfoy scoffed, Harry took a seat on the opposite side of the table Malfoy had chosen, reaching out to pluck a crystal ball from its stand and roll it across the tabletop under his palm.

“What was the real reason then?” he asked.

“What?

Harry raised his eyebrows at the Slytherin. “You said you could say you only took the class for the easy grade. Makes it sound like that wasn’t the real reason at all.”

Malfoy narrowed his eyes, watching Harry roll the crystal ball back and forth. He flicked those clear grey eyes up to meet Harry’s again.

“I rather liked the idea of Divination as a child,” he said, leaning back against the row behind them in the terraced seating and crossing his hands over his stomach. “Obviously ignorance is your preferred default state, Potter, but I’ve always liked knowing things that other people didn’t. And I suppose I hoped that if I could foresee what might happen, I might be able to somehow control my own future.”

Harry was struck for a moment by what a sad little fact that was. The boy who had dreamed of controlling his own life had ended up having no control at all, once Voldemort had returned.

But even in this weird dream space, Harry didn’t think saying something about it was likely to get him anything but a sneer from Malfoy.

“Too bad Divination is mostly bunk,” he said instead, steering the conversation to shallower waters. “Maybe we might’ve avoided ending up stuck here in dreamland together.”

Malfoy hummed in agreement, grey eyes watching at the crystal ball rolling under Harry’s hand. “If only I’d read my tea leaves that morning. Perhaps ‘avoid speccy gits and flying Potions’ would have been written loud and clear.”

They were both quiet for a few moments, then Harry asked, “You don’t really think this’ll go on forever, though, do you?”

Malfoy sucked in a sharp breath, as if reminded of his previous panics, but he managed to clamp down on whatever he was feeling, his mouth pressed into a flat line. It was rather like how he tended to look in class these days.

“No, Potter. Eventually any potion is broken down by the body—assuming it isn’t a poison that kills the body first.”

“So we just wait it out?”

“Unless you've discovered a way to communicate to our waking selves or any experts in the real world what is happening, I don't see what other choice we have.”

Harry pressed all his fingertips against the smooth surface of the crystal ball, which had warmed under his hand. “Well, all things considered, I s’ppose this is hardly as bad as it could be.”

After a beat, Malfoy asked, “Isn’t it?”

Shrugging, Harry kept looking at the ball instead of at the blond opposite him. “I mean, I’ve been stuck sharing dreams with Voldemort before.” His mouth curled, eyes darting up once as he mockingly told the other boy, “You’re a pain in the ass, but you’re no Voldemort, Malfoy.”

He let his gaze fall back to the ball, catching the light refracting within its depths. “And at least you’ve been acting normal here.”

“...Normal?”

Harry shrugged again, still feeling too awkward to look Malfoy in the face as he explained, “Y’know. Like yourself. You’ve been so weird in class since you got back.”

There was no response, so finally he had to chance another glance up. Malfoy looked... Actually, Harry wasn’t sure what that expression was. Not quite stricken, but something similarly vulnerable. It made Harry’s heart race with some uneasy feeling—the rare glimpse of his rival looking so human reminding him of blood on a tile floor and the heat of Fiendfyre and unexamined regrets.

He immediately tried to shrink away from the whole mess, clearing his throat and summoning a weak smirk. “In here, you’ve been just as much of an obnoxious git as you always were. You know I’ve begun to think you might be possessed during the day?”

Malfoy grabbed the escape rope as well, drawing his offended dignity about him like a cloak and sniffing, “Well, it’s not like you’ll remember any of this anyway, right? No need to act like you’re actually tolerable when I don’t have to.”

“So that’s what you’ve been going for in class? Tolerating?” Harry parried. “I was getting more ‘recently lobotomized.’”

“Lobot-a-what?”

Harry’s grin grew wider. “Exactly.”

Malfoy’s look was withering as he asked, “This is some stupid Muggle thing, isn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Leaning farther back again, the blond crossed his arms with an annoyed huff. “Perhaps prolonged exposure to your idiocy in here is just too much for even my self-control, did you ever consider that?”

But then he looked off to the windows, arms still crossed and a little furrow in his brow. “It does feel like there is less...control here, overall. It’s harder for me to filter myself. Which probably explains why I’m even telling you this.”

Harry sat forward, resting his chin on one hand as the other toyed with his crystal ball. “That’s true,” he agreed, because he did agree, and it was exactly like Malfoy said. Some kind of inhibition or ingrained response would’ve usually had him disagreeing on principle, but those kinds of things just didn’t seem to trigger as readily here. He'd been noticing it for a couple nights now.

“Do you think it’s because this is still sort of a dream? You’re never totally in control in a dream, right. Things just sort of seem to happen, and you roll with it.”

He realized how close he was getting to touching on what had ‘just sort of happened’ in that first dream, and he shifted uncomfortably.

“Like...” He searched for other examples. “Like, in a dream, you’re suddenly a professor or dating Luna Lovegood, and you never even question it while you’re dreaming. It just sweeps you along.”

“I think I’d still question dating Luna Lovegood,” Malfoy remarked dryly.

“Fair,” Harry acknowledged. That made sense, if Malfoy was actually bent. Though Harry wasn't bent, yet he hadn't really questioned kissing Malfoy up against a bathroom stall. That probably wasn't something he wanted to think too hard about.

“So why are you acting so weird now in class?” he asked again.

“Weird,” Malfoy repeated, sounding disgusted. “You’re the one who brought down the Dark Lord and yet came back moping about as if you lost the war. And you’re calling me weird?”

“Yeah, ‘cause you are.”

The blond rolled his eyes so dramatically his whole head moved with the gesture. “Brilliant rejoinder, Potty. You dazzle me with your rhetorical finesse.”

“Try to talk your way out of it with your poncy insults, just like you always do, Malfoy, but the fact still is you’ve been weird since you came back.” When Malfoy scrunched up his nose, Harry sensed weakness and pushed harder. “You’ve even been putting up with Goldstein’s shit. And it has been some seriously annoying shit.”

Finally, Malfoy didn’t seem able to hold back any longer, that flimsy filter failing again in their shared dream, and he spat, “Well, I’ve hardly got any fucking choice, have I?”

His fingers were digging into his own bicep, where his arms were crossed.

“I can’t afford to squabble with Goldstein or make fun of your idiotic blunders in class. I don’t have that luxury.” His voice was a bitter sneer, though it seemed directed at himself as much as anyone. “I am only out of Azkaban by the grace of McGonagall and the flimsiest, most unenthusiastic one-vote majority you can imagine from the Wizengamot. No one wanted a Death Eater back at Hogwarts, believe me, I know. And if I don’t act defeated enough in public, if I dare act like I didn’t learn my lesson, the world will keep on finding more and more unpleasant ways to remind me that I lost.”

His voice dropped low as he muttered under his breath, “As if I could forget.”

Harry didn’t say anything for a few moments, then he groaned. “Damn, Hermione was right.”

Malfoy straightened and looked over at him in question, one pale eyebrow lifted imperiously.

“Yesterday, she told me I ought to just ask you directly if I really wanted to know why you’ve been acting the way you have.”

“You talk to Granger—about me?” Malfoy appeared perplexed by the idea.

Harry realized he probably needed to explain some background. “Ah. Well. You know how I was rather obsessed with you in Sixth Year?”

Malfoy blinked at him, his mouth hanging ajar. “You—what?”

“You must’ve noticed!” Harry insisted, face flushing though he wished it wouldn’t. “I was practically stalking you for months, desperate to prove that you were up to something when no one else would believe me!”

“Oh.” Malfoy slumped back against the wall behind himself. “Yes, that—that certainly happened.”

“Well, even if you’d forgotten about it, my friends sure haven’t, so when I just happened to mention how you’d been acting weird since you showed up at Hogwarts, Hermione acted as if I was, y’know—well, the words ‘unhealthy obsession’ were spoken, but anyway, the point was—”

“She told you to just ask rather than bother her about it?” Malfoy said, cutting off Harry’s rambling.

“Something like that. But of course I can’t possible go up and ask you ‘Hey, what’s going on with the automaton act since you’ve been back?’”

Malfoy raised both eyebrows this time. “I believe you just did, not five minutes ago.”

“In the real world, I mean!”

And Malfoy didn’t try to argue that. Obviously things were different here. And only getting more different with each passing night.

“Well, then I guess you’ll just have to keep struggling against your ‘unhealthy obsession’ with me during the day,” Malfoy said, sounding a little smug about it. Then he commanded, “Now tell me more about how you were stalking me in Sixth Year.”

And since they had to pass the time until either dreamless sleep or dawn found them again, Harry did. While he didn’t reveal the secrets of the Marauder’s map, he finally told Malfoy his side of their cat-and-mouse misadventures during Sixth Year, until the gaudy classroom began to grow fuzzy around them, his words melting like candy floss on his tongue, and the dream drifted apart—for neither of them to remember until the next time they slept.

Chapter 6

It was Tuesday, and Harry was surreptitiously sneaking almonds from his robe pocket as he watched Hannah Abbot and Sue Li face off in N.E.W.T. Defense against the Dark Arts.

It was nearly two in the afternoon, and Tuesday was one of the two days a week he had no lunch break thanks to their mad timetables. Instead of getting to rush to the Great Hall, he’d spent the previous two-hour block watching over the First Year Ravenclaws in Potions, hoping the sound of chopping and bubbling brews would hide the increasing growls from his stomach.

But he had spent his free period earlier that morning practicing for his Transfiguration project, and he was feeling fairly confident it should go well. He’d been able to make a decent lamp, with a nice round shade of something that looked vaguely like stained glass. It wasn’t as detailed as he’d been hoping for—the glass looking more like some impressionistic haze of periwinkle and deep blues than the geometric pattern he’d imagined—but it should get him decent enough marks.

“Very good,” Fossey said, clapping her hands and dismissing the two Eighth Year girls from the center of the loose ring the students had formed around the edge of the room.

“Next up, Weasley and Boddle.”

Crunching on another handful of almonds, Harry watched his ex-girlfriend step up into the center of the ring, flashing a competitive grin at the Ravenclaw boy she was partnered with. The one she was probably dating now—Harry didn’t keep up with the gossip, but he certainly remembered when he’d been on the receiving end of that look in the past. It told him loud and clear that Ginny wanted to knock the Ravenclaw on his ass, then probably climb atop him while he was down so she could snog his brains out.

“Protego Maxima,” Fossey intoned, sweeping her wand down in a slashing gesture, then making a similar wave from left to right as she said, “Fianto Duri.”

The shield charm that separated Ginny and her partner from the rest of the students solidified into a solid barrier that should protect the observers. Then they went right to it, Ginny not waiting to be told to begin before firing off one of her brutal Bat-Bogey Curses.

Harry watched her duel, face alight and quick on her feet, looking alive and beautiful and not at all his.

Things were all right between them. They’d slid back to the sort of friendly acquaintances they’d been before the D.A. years. Easy enough to joke around when they bumped into each other, but not particularly close. No longer someone you sought out to talk to. Harry thought that was what he probably missed the most.

He really hadn’t been heartbroken after their breakup. He didn’t think that was the word for it. It had mostly been shock—like the shock of walking up to your house at the end of a long workday and finding it had burned to the ground while you were gone. Like, where was he supposed to go now?

Ginny had been the goal. The thought of her had been what had kept him going so many times: He was going to defeat Voldemort, because the prophecy demanded it, but then he’d go home and be together with Gin and become an Auror and have the kind of life he never would’ve dreamed of growing up in a cupboard. Full of family and laughter and joy.

He’d thought she was going to be his person, the one who would always be there—whether he needed her for something real or simply to have someone to laugh about his day with.

He missed that. Having someone to talk to at the end of the day. Feeling as if he wasn’t in it alone.

Being back at Hogwarts without Ron and Hermione beside him every day in class and every night in the common room, he missed it more than ever.

He probably ought to try to become closer with Dean or Hannah or the other Eighth Years he’d technically been friends with for years, but he didn’t really know where to start. And this year felt so temporary anyway.

“Finite Incantetum!” Fossey called, letting her shield drop. Ginny stood grinning over Boddle, who had indeed ended up on his back on the dusty classroom floor. She offered her new beau a hand and hauled him upright, and he swayed into her as he found his feet, his free hand catching her waist for a moment.

“Nice dueling, Weasley. Boddle, work on those Shield Charms—or at least dodge, for Salazar’s sake!” The older woman shook her head as she watched the two Seventh Years hurry back to their side of the circle. “All right, Malfoy, you’re with me.”

Then she stepped into the middle of the circle, Malfoy pushing himself off of the far wall where he’d been standing alone to join her.

They had an odd number in class, so Fossey had been partnering with Malfoy whenever something required a pair, rather than insisting that he partner with one of the other students. Harry wasn’t sure if she was trying to spare Malfoy or spare the rest of them from dealing with him, but it was probably a good call either way.

Harry couldn’t help liking Fossey rather a lot. She was a clever, sarcastic woman who had retired from working as a cursebreaker after thirty years, she insisted that no one ever call her ‘Professor,’ and she seemed to have endless entertaining stories to tell from her days in the field. And best of all, she didn’t treat Harry any differently than any other student. That was usually the problem with meeting anyone new these days.

She cast her protective charms once again, then she took her dueling stance against Malfoy.

The class was watching avidly, waiting to see if their grizzled teacher would thrash the former Death Eater or if perhaps Malfoy would demonstrate some nasty Dark curses. But they both stood there unmoving as the seconds ticked by.

Finally, Fossey made the first move. She swung into motion and threw out what looked like a wordless Stunner, from the wand motion and the jet of red light that erupted from her wand, but Malfoy deflected it with a quick jerk of his own.

He’d been getting a better handle on his new wand, Harry had noticed. When Harry just happened to glance the Slytherin’s way in class, that is, and note what he was up to. Out of mild curiosity. No unhealthy obsession here.

The point was, Malfoy had demonstrated a successful Geminio faster than any of the Seventh Years had in Charms that morning, though not faster than most the Eighth Years. It had been a relief to see it, because it meant Harry didn’t have to consider feeling bad about never returning Malfoy’s old wand to him.

With his face in that familiar grim mask, Malfoy continued to block and deflect every curse that Fossey sent his way, still not attacking back.

“Come now, Malfoy. If you don’t show me what you can do, then I can’t give you any marks. You don’t want to fail today’s lesson, do you?”

Fossey capped off her cheerful jab with a Levicorpus sent his way, but Malfoy hopped out of its path, swaying back and gritting his teeth.

Then he attacked back, casting some wordless charm that produced an instant, blinding light even brighter than Lumos Maxima.

Harry suspected it must have been Lumos Solem, because everyone else in the room was screwing up their eyes or throwing their arms up to block out the light—but Harry found it easy to blink away the glare. The anti-sun charms Hermione had once cast on his glasses for him, an old remnant of Quidditch days when light in his eyes could’ve meant a lost Snitch, seemed to still be working just fine.

Before the other students had even lowered their arms, Malfoy had already moved on, aiming a quick Summoning Charm at Fossey’s shoes to jerk her off her feet and then following with Petrificus Totalus the instant she’d started to tip backwards—and, Harry noted, a little flick of his wand that had probably been a Cushioning Charm, since Fossey didn’t crack her head open on the stone floor.

Malfoy waited one, two, three beats—then he released the Body-Bind and stepped back, tucking his wand away.

Fossey chortled as she pushed herself upright, slapping the dust off her hands when she stood. “Very nicely done, Malfoy. An excellent display of how even elementary charms can be devastating when used right.”

The blank expression on Malfoy’s face didn’t change, but he did give a little nod before hurrying back to his lonesome spot against the wall. Harry watched his thin back as he went, eyes tracing those hunched shoulders beneath his school robes.

Then Fossey called another of the Seventh Year pairs up to replace them in the circle, and the class carried on.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

After running from the D.A.D.A. classroom back down to the dungeons for Potions with the Second Year Slytherins, Harry had then needed to dash all the way up from the dungeons and out to the greenhouses for N.E.W.T Herbology, cursing the Anti-Apparition Charms on the castle all the way.

Ought to just drop the bloody subject, he thought to himself as he arrived at the greenhouse sweating and out of breath.

He’d never had any great love for Herbology—he’d only stuck with it originally because he would need five N.E.W.T.s to apply for the Auror programme, and all the other options had seemed worse. But if he wasn’t going to apply to be an Auror, he could probably afford to drop Herbology.

Then again, since he didn’t know what he wanted to do instead of being an Auror, he was also inclined to hedge his bets. What if he did end up wanting to go back and become an Auror after a year’s rest? Or something else that required more N.E.W.T.s? He might not be able to rely on ‘But I’m Harry Potter!’ to work forever.

Besides, Herbology wasn’t all that bad, other than getting out to the greenhouses on time. Compared to his other classes, it was actually quite relaxing.

“You look tired, Harry,” came a dreamy voice from behind a bushy explosion of alihotsy. Luna leaned around her plant to smile at him. “Is something disturbing your sleep lately?”

Harry opened his mouth to say yes, but then remembered he had actually slept through the night the past few days. He gave a weak shrug. “Just that N.E.W.T. workload, I guess,” he responded, tossing his bag onto the workstation he shared with the Seventh Year girl.

It was rare that they really needed to do partner work in Herbology, but the large tables that they worked at were designed for two and so people tended to pair up. Harry had been the odd man out among the Eighth Years at the start of the year, when there’d only been seven of them in Herbology. But luckily Luna was also in the class and perfectly happy to sit with him—and luckier yet, no one had decided to shuffle their spots just because Malfoy had returned to bring the Eighth Years up to an even number. No, he took a table in the corner and worked alone.

Harry nodded over at Hannah and Megan at the table facing theirs, and the two Hufflepuffs called out cheerful greetings.

Sprout gave the class fifteen minutes to settle in and tend to their plants, checking the moisture levels of various soils and applying nutrient potions and the like. Then she summoned them up to the front for a demonstration of how to take cuttings from the delicate and valuable dittany plant, working her way through pot after pot until she had taken enough to give each student a slip for them to try to grow for themselves.

“I’ll get pots and soil,” Harry said, handing his slip over to Luna so she could gently carry it back to their table.

Grabbing up two empty terra cotta pots from the stacks that grew all around the greenhouse like stalagmites, he headed to the great compost bins behind the building and filled both up with dark, loamy soil.

But when he walked back into the greenhouse and turned to his table, he found it empty. Looking about, he spotted the bright splash of Luna’s pale blond hair paired with another platinum head. She had stopped by Malfoy’s lonely corner for some reason.

Harry watched the two of them as he walked slowly back to his own workstation, so he saw Malfoy open his mouth and say something to Luna, though the Slytherin kept his gaze trained on his plants.

Luna came wafting back to Harry’s side and handed him his slip with no explanation.

He only lasted about ten seconds before asking, “What was that about?”

“What was what about, Harry?”

He gnawed on his lip a moment, jerking his chin toward the corner where Malfoy worked. “What were you talking to Malfoy about?”

Luna seemed as unbothered as she ever did, peacefully shaping a little well in her soil for her dittany slip. “Oh, nothing in particular. I just noticed how well his puffapod appeared to be doing and told him he must be doing a fine job tending to it. It’s such a delicate plant, you know.”

Harry waited but she didn’t say anything more, humming to herself as she dipped her slip in a rooting potion before nestling it in her soil.

“And what did he say? I saw him say something to you.”

Luna looked up at him with her wide, pale eyes. “He said ‘thank you,’ Harry.”

That left him with no good response. Malfoy continued to be bizarrely inoffensive, no matter how closely Harry watched for some slip up or hint that he was up to his old ways.

And, okay, yes, he knew he was still watching more carefully than he should be. He was trying to ignore Malfoy’s presence in the five classes they shared—he really was. But his eyes just naturally found the blond, noting what he was up to or how he was performing his schoolwork.

Hermione had suggested he just talk to Malfoy, if he was that bothered by the other boy’s new attitude. But that was ridiculous. He and Malfoy had never approached each other if it wasn’t to poke at some sore spot or start a fight. There was no way he could just walk over to that corner and ask, “What’s going on with you lately, Malfoy? You seem like a changed man this year. But have you really?”

It was embarrassing even imagining it.

“Why would you even speak with him?” Harry asked, jabbing his finger into his soil to make a hole for his slip. “You were held captive in his family’s dungeons. For months.”

Luna blinked at him. “Yes, it was quite an unpleasant time. I imagine Draco might also agree.” She turned back to her pot, holding her wand over it and sprinkling a gentle spray of water onto the soil to dampen it. “But that was all a long time ago now. And I’ve heard that some of the other Ravenclaws have been quite mean to him since he returned, which made me feel rather sorry for him.” Turning back to Harry, she beamed one of her sunny smiles his way. “I thought it might be nice to show him that not all Ravenclaws are like that.”

After all these years, Luna’s cheerful outlook on life shouldn’t be able to keep surprising Harry, and yet he was boggled that she seemed genuinely worried about Draco Malfoy’s feelings.

“The other Ravenclaws are being, er, mean to him?” he asked, thinking about Anthony Goldstein’s constant jabs in Potions class.

She nodded. “So it seems. It’s all a bit sad, isn’t it?”

Or maybe some well-deserved comeuppance he earned through his own years of bullying others, Harry thought, as if he hadn’t also felt uncomfortable sitting by and watching Goldstein be a shit to Malfoy in class. Either way, he didn't say the words aloud because he knew he wouldn't convince Luna—only disappoint her.

Not your problem, he told himself, turning with a sigh back to the plants in front of him. It shouldn’t be anything to him if Malfoy was facing any difficulties at school, as long as the git wasn’t plotting any murders or anything. Harry needed to worry about his own life, not Malfoy’s.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, Harry’s dream smelled of grass.

It was so dark that it took him a moment to realize he really was seeing anything, but then he made out the blocky shadows outlined against the star-studded sky. It was the Quidditch pitch, silent and dark in the night.

He dragged in a deep breath, savoring the smell of cut grass, and he heard Malfoy doing the same beside him.

“Okay, this I don’t mind,” Harry said, the first to break the hush of the nighttime pitch.

“I hate to agree with you on anything—truly, I loathe it, Potter—but...” Malfoy grinned up at the stars overhead. “This one time, I may have to.”

“D’you think we can fly here?”

Malfoy shrugged. “Try it and find out. I’ll enjoy watching you fall on your ass.”

Harry shot him a churlish look, then he pulled his wand out and called, “Accio Firebolt!”

And then a Firebolt—he would even dare say his old Firebolt, though he’d lost it somewhere over London days before he’d turned seventeen—whizzed out of the darkness to whack satisfyingly against his outstretched palm.

Malfoy watched with cocked eyebrows as Harry threw a leg over it and kicked off, shooting up immediately into the sky.

It was brilliant.

His new broom was perfectly fine, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t his Firebolt. This was the broom he’d flown for years, in Quidditch matches and while escaping from dragon fire and during dozens or even hundreds of glorious joyrides when he’d just needed to blow off steam.

Whooping, Harry shot off into the night, making for the stars. He zipped and zagged and threw himself into reckless loops, since this was all just a dream anyway and he’d probably simply wake up if he fell off his broom.

After several minutes on his own up in the cold air, he felt the familiar sting of another broom passing by close enough to graze. Sure enough, there was Malfoy on his old Nimbus 2001, smirking over his shoulder at Harry before throwing himself into his own dive.

Harry chased after him, as he would have done in a match if they were both after the Snitch.

They careened through the air, weaving through the stands edging the pitch and nearly hitting them a few times, since there were no lights illuminating the field. Harry whooped as he just barely cleared a Gryffindor tower, his twigs whipping against the red and yellow cloth decorating it, and Malfoy’s cackling laughter rang out behind him.

They flew as hard as hard as they could until they were both gasping, muscles screaming and sweat dampening their hair. Finally, Harry was the first to pull up, dropping into a gentle drift as he caught his breath.

“Think we could summon a Snitch?” he asked, seeing Malfoy coasting along a few feet to the side.

“A Seeker’s match, Potter? Really?”

The amused mockery in Malfoy’s voice only ignited Harry’s competitive drive further. “Unless you’re too scared, Malfoy. No team to help you cheat here.”

Malfoy shot him a dark look, then he swung his broom towards Harry and ducked into a sudden front flip, his broomtail swinging down to bash Harry’s as he completed his forward roll. Harry yelped, flung upward by his own broom catching him between the legs.

“Never needed any help, Potty,” Malfoy called as he righted himself, smirking.

Harry adjusted his seat, wincing slightly. “Give a man some warning, would you?”

“What would be the point of that?”

Harry glared, then he pulled out his wand—but not to curse the git. “Accio Snitch!” he called, and after a moment, a buzzing speck of gold came darting toward them, dragged this way and that as if it was trying to escape the pull of the spell.

Harry reached out and grabbed it, flashing Malfoy a triumphant look. He waved his wand again, and made more of a wish than knowing the right spell to cast, but it seemed to work. The lights around the pitch winked on, one by one.

“But you have a Firebolt,” Malfoy pointed out sulkily. “This is hardly a fair matchup.”

“Then summon yourself one,” Harry said with a shrug. “This is a dream, right?”

Malfoy pulled out his own wand with a doubtful look. “I don’t think it works that way.” But he gave an experimental swish with his old hawthorn wand. “Accio Firebolt!”

They both waited in the silent night, but nothing seemed to be coming. Harry frowned and lifted his own wand again. “Accio Firebolt!” he cried, and in a few moments, another Firebolt came whizzing out of the night towards them.

“There!” he declared, grabbing the broom when it zoomed up to him. “You see?” He leaned over, holding it out for Malfoy to grab the handle.

As soon as he let go of the wood, however, the broom dissolved, leaving the Slytherin’s fist closing around nothing at all. Harry blinked. “Good thing you didn’t just try to jump on it—but why’d it disappear?”

Malfoy sighed. “Memories, remember?” He crossed his arms, sitting comfortably on his broom without needing to hold onto it. “This is all based on our shared memories, right? We both remember you having a Firebolt, and you remember riding one, so you seem able to sustain the illusion. I don’t have any memories of ever riding a Firebolt. Ergo.” He rolled one hand over as if presenting the evidence of the disappeared broom.

“Well, then...” Harry was stymied. “Just accept that I have a better broom.”

“Or you summon a Nimbus. You had one as well.”

“But I had a Nimbus 2000! You’re flying a 2001!”

Malfoy smirked. “I know.”

They continued to squabble, neither wanting to give up an advantage to the other, until they ended up accepting that there was only one possible solution.

“This is absolutely ridiculous,” Malfoy exclaimed, laughing despite himself as he straddled a ratty old school broom, the kind they both remembered flying in First Year Flying lessons.

Harry snorted, feeling his own ornery old broom vibrate in his hand and jerk slightly to the side every now and then, despite him not directing it to. “Good thing we probably can’t die in here.”

He copied Malfoy’s move and swung up onto the old broom, which wobbled beneath him. It was nothing like the buttery smooth ride of his Firebolt.

“Oh, I fucking hate you for this idea,” he laughed, trying to hold the broom steady when it already wanted to start drifting to the left for no reason whatsoever.

Malfoy was also snickering, his broom shuddering a few inches backwards every now and then despite him trying to keep it in place. “You’re the one who wanted things to be fair, Gryffindor,” he reminded Harry. “I saw no need whatsoever for us to be on matching brooms.”

“You’re the one who said I couldn’t fly my Firebolt!”

“The Nimbuses are at least the same series!” Malfoy countered. “You’re the one who wanted to quibble over a minor upgrade!”

“Fucking hell, we’re going to die in this dream,” Harry said, laughing helplessly as his broom jerked up like a skittish horse.

Malfoy flashed him a savage grin. “As long as you fall first, it’ll be worth it.”

Harry managed to force the broom about till he was facing Malfoy, then he pulled the Snitch out of his robe pocket again.

“Now I want a nice, clean match,” he said, parroting Madam Hooch’s usual warning before games.

Malfoy’s smirk grew wider. “You wish.”

Then Harry released the Snitch, and they both took off, barely able to fly in a straight line through their laughter as the ancient brooms bucked and shook beneath them. They both tried to carry on the same way they were used to flying on professional grade racing brooms, but it was a ridiculous parody, sluggish and unsteady as they bashed into each other and shouted insults.

“Keep a firm grip on that broom shaft, Potter! Otherwise you’ll lose it, just like you lost your girlfriend!”

“I don’t want to hear any advice you’ve got for holding onto a nice, thick shaft, Malfoy—I don’t need to know how many hours you’ve spent on lonely wanking, thanks!”

“So you think I’ve got a nice, thick shaft, do you, Potter?”

Harry threw back his head and laughed, the sheer ridiculousness of the night too infectious to resist. If only life during the day could seem so simple.

Every time Malfoy got close to grabbing the Snitch, it would flit away, as if it could hear Harry thinking No, move! Malfoy can’t win!

And every time Harry got close, the same thing happened.

“D’you think we’re influencing it?” he gasped out, after the third time the Snitch had managed to dart out of his grasp. “It is our dream, after all.”

“Probably,” Malfoy admitted, dragging in deep breaths as they drifted for a moment in rest. “But it’s still been fun watching you miss over and over again.”

Harry reached over to shove him, grinning. “Asshole.”

“Scarhead,” Malfoy threw back, dodging the attack.

“Ponce.”

“Wanker.”

“No, remember, that was you, with all your shaft-gripping advice,” Harry insisted.

“Pretty sure you’re now stuck in the Lonely Hands Club as well,” Malfoy smirked, eyes glittering.

And Harry laughed again, because it was funny. Honestly, when they weren’t prodding at sensitive topics like parents or blood purity, trading insults with Malfoy wasn’t all that different than joking about with Fred and George used to be. He'd missed their constant banter, since Fred’s death. George tried to joke, but his heart didn’t seem in it.

Harry looked up at the night sky stretching above them, sparkling with stars between the paler streaks of clouds. The Snitch darted across the blue field, flying free now that neither of them were chasing it.

That’s it.

Suddenly he had the perfect image of what he wanted the glass shade on his Transfiguration project to look like. He could work with the impressionistic swirl of blues he’d ended up with, but only as a base. Then he’d add glittering stars here and there, to twinkle and catch the light. Maybe even a magical little Golden Snitch, that would dart about the shade in perpetual motion.

That would be his perfect lamp. He was actually excited to wake up and work on it before he’d have to present his project in class the next morning.

But then he remembered: Nothing in the dreams ever survived the night. As soon as he woke up, his perfect idea—this night, all of it—would be gone.

Chapter 7

On Wednesday, Harry managed to pull off his Transfiguration in class, transforming one of Hagrid’s pumpkins into a serviceable lamp under McGonagall’s close watch.

He’d brought it back to his room during his lunch break and set it on his desk, turning it this way and that and unsure why he felt vaguely dissatisfied as he looked at the hazy blue swirls decorating the glass shade.

It’s fine. It’s just a dumb lamp, he thought to himself, not liking the feeling that it could have somehow been better.

It wasn’t until that night, when he dreamed again, that he remembered what he’d really wanted to create.

He and Malfoy were in the Transfiguration classroom, and Harry frowned at the empty rows of seats, even more displeased now that he remembered his idea from the previous night.

“D’you reckon we can walk from here to the pitch?” he asked, pushing himself out of the seat he’d found himself in.

Malfoy shrugged, getting to his feet as well. “Might as well try.”

So that night they discovered that they could move about the castle, quite freely, since they both had memories of all the main corridors and the grounds.

They stopped on the front steps, and Harry summoned his Firebolt again. No reason to walk all the way to the pitch.

Malfoy summoned his Nimbus 2001, and then he flashed Harry a challenging smirk. “You know, there’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

He jumped on his broom and spun back to face the doors they’d just walked through—and set off at full speed into the castle on broomstick.

A moment later, Harry was right behind him.

They rocketed through narrow halls, looped around moving staircases, and brushed their fingers across the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall, laughing and cursing whenever one of them slammed into an invisible barrier because they’d hit some passage only one of them was familiar with. It only happened a few times, though. Clearly they’d both explored the castle to its limits.

Harry had to admit it had been a good idea. They'd never be able to get away with flying in the castle in the waking world—unless he decided to pull a Weasley-twin walkout and fly out of school in a blaze of glory—so doing it here was perfect.

They’d passed out under the belltower and were weaving in and out of the supports of the viaduct when Harry finally thought about his lamp again.

“Hey, Malfoy,” he called. The blond looked back over his shoulder at Harry. “How’d you make those badges in Fourth Year?”

Malfoy looked surprised, then a shark-toothed grin took over his face. “Why? Got someone you need to insult in a visually striking fashion?”

“Not quite.” He flew up to land atop the viaduct’s roof and sit, and Malfoy followed without comment. “I was thinking about my Transfiguration project—you saw the lamp I made today in class?”

Malfoy nodded, though you wouldn’t have thought he’d been paying that much attention in the class itself, considering the way he’d hung back from the group until forced to do his own presentation.

“I’d actually wanted to do more with the shade. I’d had this idea—” He broke off, unsure if Malfoy would just make fun of him, because that was what Malfoy did, after all. Deciding there was nothing to lose really, he explained: “I was thinking of making it more like the night sky, with stars and all. And then maybe adding a Snitch? That would fly about the lamp, just like a real Snitch.”

To his great surprise, Malfoy didn’t laugh or mock him or anything. He narrowed his eyes, looking off at the dark castle thoughtfully.

“That’d require different kinds of charms. Though you could also use a pressure-triggered Transfiguration, like I did, if you wanted the motion to start and stop with a tap.”

He launched into a description of how you could weave a permanent Transfiguration into an object so that it could flip between two states, like he’d done with his Potter Stinks! badges. Though, he admitted, it would degrade eventually.

“It’d probably need reapplying from time to time, unless you’re a real master, but it could last anywhere from months to years, depending on how complicated you made the Transfiguration.”

Harry remembered the old badge he’d found in his trunk, when he’d been packing his things up his last summer at the Dursley’s, and how it had flickered weakly between SUPPORT CEDRIC! and POTTER STINKS.

“But charming an image to move like that, properly animated and not just simple flashing and things like I did back then—you’d need the right spells.” Malfoy smiled wryly to himself. “I could tell you some books you should read, but you won’t remember anyway.”

Harry deflated, brought back to reality. “Yeah,” he sighed. “That’s the trouble.”

They sat atop the viaduct, their brooms balanced on their knees, and Malfoy offered, “Sounds like an interestingly idea, though.”

“Thanks,” Harry muttered, gruff and vaguely uncomfortable.

“Didn’t think you had it in you, what with how you’ve only got two brain cells.”

Harry shoved Malfoy off the roof of the viaduct, the blond cackling madly as he swung his broom back under him before he could go plummeting to his death—or back to the waking world.

On Thursday morning, the lampshade would remain motionless, an unbroken sea of blue, and only when Harry dreamed would he remember and lament what it could have been.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

On Friday, N.E.W.T. Potions was just before lunch, and Harry didn't know if it was hunger making him so angry or if he was simply done with Goldstein’s shit after a whole week of sharing a table with both him and Malfoy. Whatever the reason, he was beginning to worry that he shouldn’t be in charge of chopping ingredients or he might just use his knife on the Ravenclaw beside him.

It was made even more annoying because Malfoy was holding onto his temper better than Harry—assuming he did still have a temper and wasn’t in fact under Imperio or some sort of personality-altering charm. He could have been deaf and mute for how little he reacted to the world around him. Goldstein ran his mouth incessantly, and Malfoy kept his eyes on his work, chopping and stirring and measuring without giving any sign he wasn’t completely alone at the table.

“I imagine the N.E.W.T. examinations are going to be a real shock for some people in this class,” Goldstein was saying as he picked apart Billywig stings for the Wideye Potion they were all brewing that week. “You know the types: the ones who only coasted through for years thanks to Snape playing favorites.”

Malfoy’s face might have been stone as he picked the flower petals from his sprig of Wolfsbane, dropping them one by one into his simmering potion.

“If only Slughorn had already taken over in our O.W.L. year, this class might’ve had quite the different makeup. Maybe even this very table,” Goldstein went on, his eyes flicking continually to Malfoy to judge his reaction.

Harry pointed out, through gritted teeth, “The O.W.L. examiners were all from the Ministry, though. It wasn’t like Snape was the one assigning our grades.”

“No,” Goldstein agreed, “but don’t you reckon he was probably giving his own students extra preparation in advance of their exams? Always playing favorites, he was. Sure, Slughorn is still a Slytherin, but at least he seems able to see the value in students of any house, as long as they show promise.”

Harry couldn’t deny that. Slughorn was perfectly happy to ‘collect’ students from any house at all, as long as he thought the connection might benefit him later.

“We’re lucky we’ve had him for all our N.E.W.T. classes. He’s no idiot. Certainly not stupid enough to sign up as Death Eater.” Goldstein laughed. “Oh, nothing against anyone at this table, of course. I was only speaking about old Snape. Do you think he even realized what a terrible mistake he’d made in believing in You-Know-Who? Or was he just that much of an opportunist coward, scuttling from one master to another, hoping to save his own skin?”

Malfoy had frozen in the middle of stirring his potion, and Harry couldn’t take it any longer.

“Voldemort,” he said in a low, dangerous tone.

Goldstein startled. “What?”

“His name was Voldemort, not You-Know-Who. If you want to talk as if you know what it was like to have to face him, then at least have the guts to use his name,” Harry insisted, tearing his own Wolfsbane sprigs into mangled pieces. “And Professor Snape put his life on the line a thousand times to try to help our side.”

It didn’t matter if Harry himself had called the man Snape for his entire school career or how complicated his own feelings still were for the petty misanthrope who had belittled him at every turn and yet done everything he could to protect Harry—who had hated him for his father but never stopped loving his mother.

What Harry did know was that it had taken tremendous courage to keep walking into Voldemort’s clutches over and over again, all to help Dumbledore and Harry try to bring about the Dark Lord’s downfall. And Snape had died, horribly, still trying to teach Harry what he would need to defeat Voldemort as he choked on his own lifeblood.

Even if Snape had been terrible to Harry for years, he deserved better than being mocked in death by some sheltered Ravenclaw who didn’t know the first thing about what he'd gone through to save them all.

Goldstein faltered, his brows furrowing as he stared at Harry. Malfoy hadn’t looked up, but he was still frozen, his potion likely scalding as he neglected to stir it.

“How about we just finish up our potions?” Harry said, throwing his entire Wolfsbane sprig into his cauldron, knowing the potion was already likely ruined. “And you leave off with the petty fucking jabs for even an hour, if that’s possible?”

Silence fell around their table and several of the nearby tables that had been close enough to hear Harry’s little outburst.

Goldstein didn’t apologize or say a word, turning back to his own work with a dark glower on his face. Malfoy finally jerked back into motion, though his potion had already turned a murky brown that looked like it would require re-brewing.

Stupid gits, the both of them, Harry thought angrily to himself, giving his own potion a wild stir that nearly sent the boiling liquid sloshing over the cauldron's rim.

They probably deserve each other. And why should I have to be the one to speak up? Why doesn’t Malfoy defend the bastard who took an Unbreakable Vow for his sake? The man who killed Dumbledore for him?

He stewed through the rest of the class, until everyone was packing up. Malfoy had Vanished the ruined contents of his cauldron, and the instant the bell rang out, he was gone from their table.

Bloody coward, Harry thought. Even though he knew for a fact that Malfoy had Transfiguration with the Fourth Year Slytherins right after Potions on Fridays, thanks to his stalking through the map. The other boy was probably just hurrying to avoid arriving late in the headmistress’s classroom.

Harry had two free periods, so after stomping over to the kitchens to grab some lunch without any (human) audience, he returned to the advanced Potions lab to redo his Wideye Potion. He didn’t want to have to come back over the weekend. And he managed to complete a decent batch this time, without the distraction of his infuriating tablemates, even if he was still muttering angrily to himself through the entire brew.

A little after two in the afternoon, he headed up to the Transfiguration classroom, watching the Fourth Years file out before he could duck into the room for the N.E.W.T. class to take over next.

Malfoy was still at the front of the classroom, standing next to McGonagall’s desk and listening intently to whatever instruction she was giving him.

As Harry settled into his regular seat and started pulling out his things, he watched with half an eye while Malfoy gave a final nod and then headed for his own preferred desk. The Slytherin didn’t even glance at Harry, though he was walking straight towards him and there was no one else in the room.

Coward, Harry thought again, feeling nearly as angry with Malfoy as he was with Goldstein, even if it wasn’t reasonable.

He shouldn’t be mad that Malfoy was ignoring him and not fighting with other students. He ought to be glad Malfoy was being as little bother to Harry’s school life as was humanly possible. So why was it so god-damned irritating to see Malfoy slink past his desk without even meeting his eye?

He managed to hold himself together for the length of the class, but he was still simmering with irritation when he had to assist with the Fourth Year Ravenclaws’ D.A.D.A. class immediately after. He had to forcibly remind himself that not all Ravenclaws were smarmy little gits—Luna was lovely!

Though Luna had also been bullied by her own housemates for years, so you know what? Maybe fuck Ravenclaw.

“You look like someone pissed in your tea,” Fossey remarked, coming to stand beside him as he watched the 14-year-olds practice casting Impedimenta on one another.

“Aren’t you meant to be using this time to grade or something?” Harry snarked back, because Fossey didn’t seem to mind in the slightest when he did. The woman truly hated being thought of as a proper professor.

“All caught up, thanks to my diligent little helpers.” She crossed her arms and leaned back on the desk that Harry had staked out. “Now I’m observing this class to decide the marks they deserve for today’s practical. This is me, hard at work.”

She gave him a toothy grin, which combined with her short silver hair and her pale eyes, gave the distinct impression of a wolf. He wondered if she might be an Animagus.

“Teaching is a lovely little holiday compared to a couple decades of dealing with the nastiest curses Wizardkind could think up,” Fossey mused. “Maybe consider it as a career, Potter.”

“I think you loved those nasty curses,” he said, since her passion for her old job came through blaring loud in every story she told.

“I sure did,” Fossey said with a heartfelt sigh. “I’ve been thinking of which ones I could recreate for your class to have to tackle, but I’m afraid the parents might get upset if any of you lose a body part or end up needing an extended stay with my good friend Janus Thickey.”

“Well, luckily for you, I haven’t got any parents.”

Fossey lit up. “So you’re saying you could be my test subject?”

Harry snorted. It was hard to stay unhappy for long with Fossey around. It was like having a little bit of Tonks back, with a good helping of Lupin’s Dark Arts knowledge thrown in for balance.

“Maybe,” he said. “Would it get me out of writing any essays?”

Fossey barked out a laugh. Harry was more and more convinced she might be some kind of canine.

“We could discuss that. I wouldn’t mind one less essay to grade myself.” She crossed her feet at the ankles, surveying the Fourth Years. “But why were you looking at my precious students like you might enjoy testing their reflexes with a nice Unforgivable or two?”

Harry jerked upright. “I didn’t look that angry at them, did I?” The poor Fourth Years hadn’t actually done anything to him.

“Maybe not an Unforgivable then,” Fossey allowed. “Just a good hexing.”

Harry sighed. “I was thinking of someone else. Sorry.”

“Because that someone spit in your tea?”

“No. He—”

Has been acting like an obnoxious bully?

Or is it that he won’t stand up for himself?

Harry still wasn’t sure who he was more upset with, Goldstein or Malfoy. Maybe it was just the whole situation. He didn’t want to have won the war so that he could keep watching people find new ways to be petty and cruel to one another.

“It’s nothing, really.” He tried to believe it himself as he gave Fossey a tired smile. “I’m just really glad this week is almost over. I don’t think I could take much more.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They were back in the Potions dungeon. In the advanced lab, just as they’d been that morning.

The setting immediately had Harry on edge again, even here in the dream world, where anger usually drained away as if it were water he was trying to hold in a clenched fist.

“Are we flying again tonight?” Malfoy asked, looking slightly bored sitting atop one of the worktables and kicking his legs idly in the air.

Harry didn’t respond at first, simply looking up at the other boy with a sullen frown.

“What?” Malfoy exclaimed. “You liked it well enough the past three nights. You want to do something else now?”

“So we’re just not going to talk about it at all?”

The Slytherin tensed. “About what?”

“You know what! That garbage with Goldstein today!”

Malfoy jumped off the table and headed for the door, making Harry leap to his feet and hurry after him into the hallway.

“You just sit there in class like a—like a stupid doll, and you let him heap all that rubbish on you, and—why don’t you fight back?”

“I TOLD YOU WHY!” Malfoy bellowed, spinning around to shout in Harry’s face. “You think I like it?! You think it’s easy for me to sit there and act like that insufferable little upstart can’t touch me when the fact is that he makes me think maybe I could finally pull off the Killing Curse, if only to shut him the fuck up?!”

Harry dragged in a shaky breath. “Then say something next time!”

Malfoy gave him a shove in the chest, pushing Harry back from where they’d been right up in each other’s faces. “You say something! You’re the hero.”

Harry pulled at his own hair, letting out his frustration in a wordless growl. “I don’t want to have to be the hero! I don’t want to have to be anything any longer, but you’re just letting him go at you, over and over, without saying a word!”

Harry felt a moment of actual fear when Malfoy grabbed the front of his robes and used them to haul him in close. “That’s what you’d like, huh, Potter? You want me to fight back? Maybe throw around a few curses, so they can send me right back to Azkaban because I’m clearly not safe to have in a school?”

“No!” Harry shouted. Then more softly, “No. I don’t want them to send you back there. I never did.” He yanked the Slytherin’s hands from his robes, forcing him to let go of the fabric. “Why do you think I testified for you in the first place, you stupid prat?”

Malfoy was breathing roughly through his nose, but he didn’t lash out again.

“Would they actually send you back if you got in a fight?”

He watched as Malfoy stumbled back until he hit the wall behind himself and slid down it to sit on the ground.

“If they found out I’d cursed another student, who hadn’t at least tried to murder me first? Quite likely, yes, it would be back to Azkaban. I’m not to step a toe out of line for the remaining 22 months of my sentence. I’m not to use Dark magic or leave the grounds or cause any harm to another sentient being.”

Malfoy sighed.

“If it comes down to a former Death Eater like me versus a nice, innocent half-blood like Goldstein, standing in front of the Wizengamot and both claiming that the other struck first, who do you think they’re going to believe?”

Harry sat as well, his knees up against his chest. The hallway was wide enough that they could each stick to their sides without their feet meeting as long as they didn't both straighten their legs out.

“You can’t even leave the grounds?”

Malfoy snorted. “Yes, Potter. That’s the greatest hardship of this whole thing. An extra two years at Hogwarts is so much worse than a five-foot-wide cell in Azkaban.”

“Wait—two years?”

Malfoy lifted a brow, looking at Harry as if he were being particularly dense. “That was what I was sentenced to, if you’ll recall. Did you think they’d let me sit my N.E.W.T.s next June and then simply write off the remaining 13 months because I’d been a good little boy and studied awfully hard?”

“But—then what’ll you do? I mean, after Eighth Year, what’ll you do at Hogwarts?”

Malfoy looked down at his hands, his fingers laced together on his thighs. “McGonagall says we’ll figure that out if we get that far. Likely assisting in classes still, like we’ve all been doing this year.” He flashed a crooked little smile. “Maybe they’ll give me my own hut, like that oaf of yours, Hagrid.”

“Don’t be a git,” Harry muttered automatically, his mind whirring away. Malfoy couldn’t leave Hogwarts for two whole years?

He looked over at the blond, and Harry found himself genuinely wishing that Snape were still here. Snape would have looked after Malfoy. Found a place for him. Snape would have given him at least one person at Hogwarts who understood him and who he could confide in.

Instead he has you, Harry thought. But only in these dreams. And no one at all during the day.

It was rather the same for Harry himself.

“We are such a pathetic fucking pair,” he said aloud.

“Speak for yourself,” Malfoy retorted at once. “But also: why?”

Harry didn’t explain, merely shaking his head. “I still think you could at least tell Goldstein to lay off.”

Malfoy gave an ugly snort. “Like that would make things anything other than worse. Did you forget what a terrible bully I was our entire childhood? Or that I lived in the same house as the mother of all bullies for years?” He shook his head, almost pitying. “A bully wants to feel in control. If you stand up, if you create any doubt that his power over you is less than absolute, he’ll only feel the need to try even harder to push you down.”

Harry blinked. Then he asked, “When you say you lived with the ‘mother of all bullies’ for years, do you mean Voldemort or do you mean your father?”

“Fucking touché, Potter,” Malfoy admitted. He shook his head with a disbelieving grimace. “I suppose I had quite the array of wonderful role models to demonstrate how to make your entire self worth depend on your ability to command others to your will.”

They sat in the hall, both leaning against opposite walls. Harry decided to stretch his legs out in front of him, which left his feet resting beside Malfoy's.

“We should’ve just gone flying,” Malfoy said, a slight whine in his voice. “Flying is so much better than remembering the crap that goes on during the day.”

Harry laughed, but he didn’t summon his broom or anything. Neither did Malfoy.

“It—” Malfoy started, then he broke off. He cleared his throat. “It was—surprisingly decent of you. To defend Professor Snape.” He flicked his foot to the side, kicking Harry in the ankle. “Being the raging Gryffindor that you are and all.”

Harry sighed, his head falling back against the wall. “I still don't know what I think of him, but—I know I probably owe him my life.”

“Same,” Malfoy agreed wryly.

“At least he liked you.”

“Did he?” Malfoy’s lips quirked. “I’m not so sure he truly liked anyone.”

He liked my mother. They were best friends once.

Harry shrugged and said, “I don't think he would have sworn an Unbreakable Vow for you if he didn't like you at least a bit.” He kicked back, knocking his foot into Malfoy's ankle this time. “Or put up with your ridiculously entitled shit all those years in class.”

“You seem to be getting pretty used to putting up with my ridiculously entitled shit, too,” Malfoy suggested, smirking as he glanced up through his lashes at Harry. “Does that mean you like me at least a bit?”

“Only in your dreams, Malfoy,” Harry tossed back, an answering smirk pulling at his mouth.

He watched as Malfoy’s smile grew wider, something like genuine pleasure lighting up his face, and Harry found that he didn’t actually mind having been the one to put it there.

Chapter 8

On Saturday morning, Harry woke reluctantly, still feeling exhausted from the week. He knew he had plenty of schoolwork to get started on, but his brief surge of motivation from the previous weekend was nowhere to be found.

Flopping onto his back on his narrow bed, he stared up at the stone ceiling overhead and tried to recall the assignments he had waiting for each class.

Three feet on Trans-Species Transfiguration. Twenty-two pages of reading from his Herbology text, and at least one trip down to the greenhouses to check on his Dittany slip. Ten pages of D.A.D.A. reading for Fossey. Revising the past four brews from Potions class, since Slughorn had said he’d require them to write out the instructions for at least one of them from memory in the next week—without saying which brew it would be or when. And of course practicing Protean Charms for Flitwick.

Herbology first, Harry decided, hoping that a morning stroll across the grounds might help him feel more ready to face the rest of it.

He rolled out of bed and jumped into a pair of jeans, dragging on a zippered hoodie and not bothering with robes. With a quick teeth-cleaning charm, he was as ready as he was going to be.

Luckily, his instincts proved true, and the fresh air and morning chill did help him feel a little more alive and ready to buckle down for some serious work. He watered his plants, applied a few drops of nutritive potions to each, and declared his first task of the day a job well done.

With his stomach growling, he decided to swing by the Great Hall for some breakfast and coffee. Then he would sequester himself in the library to work on his Transfiguration essay next.

The moment he walked through the large, open doors to the cavernous room, however, he knew something had happened. All across the room, students were leaning over their house tables, heads close as they peered down at whatever paper they all were staring at. Some glanced up at his entrance, and Harry saw them elbow their fellows and shoot furtive glances his way in a manner he was all too familiar with.

No, he thought. Not again. What have they written this time?

The first couple months after the Final Battle, the papers had reported every little scrap they could find out about him.

Harry Potter appears at the Ministry, seen in the company of interim Minister of Magic!

Harry Potter seen entering Level 2! How might he be aiding the Wizengamot?!

Harry Potter, stoic and solemn at war hero’s funeral

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, meeting with interim Minister—AGAIN!

Harry Potter yet again lunching on sausage rolls from Ministry canteen—guilty indulgence or cry for help?

Harry Potter appears disheveled and weary—is our Saviour in need of saving?

Since he’d come back to Hogwarts, he’d managed to mostly avoid seeing what was in the newspapers, since he only tended to make it to one or two meals in the Great Hall per day, and often it was before or after the main rushes. He was vaguely aware, through Hermione and Dean, that the papers hadn’t given up and that there had been a couple of writeups about his return to school, but this had to be something else.

Freezing in the doorway would only make his arrival more conspicuous, though, so he hurried towards the Gryffindor table.

Dean wasn’t there, which left Harry with little choice but to swerve toward a familiar flash of ginger hair and duck down beside Ginny to ask, “What is it? What’ve they done now?”

Jumping slightly, Ginny turned to give him a pained, commiserating smile. “It’s not that bad,” she said, flipping the paper she’d been reading closed, with its front page facing down on the table. “Certainly not the worst it’s been.”

Harry groaned, his head hanging down. “Just give it to me straight, Gin.”

So she flipped the paper over so he could see the headlines.

The photo wasn’t recent—they hadn’t managed to weasel any shots out of students so far, it seemed—but it was a shot from earlier that summer showing him looking haggard and angry, caught by reporters when he’d just been trying to meet up with Neville at the Leaky.

HARRY POTTER’S CLASSROOM CRACKUP!

Snapping at fellow students to stand up for Death Eaters?

“You’ve got to be fucking—”

He couldn’t even finish, wordless with anger as his eyes scanned the article. It seemed someone from his Potions class—someone who sat either at or rather close to his table, since he’d hardly been shouting or anything—had told reporters about him snapping at Goldstein the previous day.

...frequently seen scowling and stomping about the school...

...cursing at fellow classmates and issuing demands...

...frightening younger students by naming You-Know-Who...

...defending former Death Eater, Severus Snape...

...unresolved trauma and anger from the war...

...likely in need of urgent Mind Healing...

He had to breathe through his nose and close his eyes a moment to not burst out in a shouting rage like he might’ve done when he was fifteen or sixteen. He knew enough by now to understand, with cutting clarity, that it would only make things so much worse.

“It’s just the one stupid article,” Ginny promised, probably trying to sound reassuring. “Most of the time they mention you, it’s still either ridiculous fawning or just...well, concern. But only because they can’t find anything else to write about, since you’re out of the public eye at Hogwarts.”

“Apparently not,” Harry shot back, though quietly. It wasn’t Ginny he was angry at. It was whoever the hell had gone to the press after Potions.

Taking a deep breath, he stood up straight and tried to school his face into calm neutrality. Then he turned and walked up the long aisle between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff benches until he reached the High Table.

He stopped before Professor McGonagall, who has been leaning to the side to speak with Professor Flitwick. Her paper was folded and face down on the table.

“Mr. Potter,” she started, but he spoke first.

“Professor McGonagall, would it be possible to ask for some of your time later today?”

He kept his tone calm and polite, knowing that the students near the High Table had all gone quiet to try to hear what he would say.

The headmistress studied him for a moment, her green eyes flicking back and forth between his. “Of course, Harry. In fact, I find myself nearly done here. Would you like to collect some breakfast for yourself and then join me in my office shortly?”

Harry nodded and thanked the old woman, then he turned on his heel and walked back the way he’d come. He only paused a moment at the very end of the Gryffindor table to grab an apple, then he was out the door and on his way up through the castle to the head’s tower.

McGonagall found him standing there impatiently, foot tapping on the stone floor, and she waved him along with a sigh. “Come, let’s get somewhere private first,” she suggested, seeing the way he was practically vibrating with outrage.

Once they were ensconced in her office, where Harry had sat so many dozens of times on so many different occasions with Dumbledore, Harry could hold back no longer.

“I can’t do this, professor. Not if students are going to go running to the press and feeding them stories about me. I can’t make it through another year like that. I just—”

“Harry, listen—”

“I’ve gone through it so many times before, and—and you said—when I wrote you about coming back, you promised me—”

“Harry.” McGonagall fixed him with a look that brooked no more interruption. “I understand why you would be upset, and I assure that I do not think it appropriate for students to be feeding sensationalist stories to the press. I will be investigating who was responsible and making sure it is clear to all our students that there will be consequences for encouraging this sort of nonsense.”

It was gratifying to hear, but Harry doubted it would really stop anything. “But it’s true, professor—what they said. It was true that I snapped at Goldstein in class. You can hardly tell people that they can’t tell the truth, just because it’s about me.”

The headmistress breathed out a heavy sigh, settling back in her chair and eying him sadly from across her desk.

“Even if it was based on truth,” she admitted, “it was a gross mischaracterization, Potter, and you know it. That is not the kind of conduct I expect from Hogwarts students.” She waved Harry toward the seat opposite her, and he dropped into it reluctantly. “As you say, it would not be productive to tell students that they are forbidden from telling the truth about what goes on at school. However, it is perfectly within the rights of the school to have certain codes of conduct, and that extends to rules about students talking to the media about their classmates.”

Harry gripped his hands together, fingers interlaced tightly where they rested in his lap. He looked up at his long-time Head of House. “Professor... Maybe I made a mistake in coming back. Maybe I should just...leave.”

“Oh, Harry.” She leaned forward on her elbows, her face grim but sympathetic. “No. Hogwarts is your home, as it is home to any of our students. You deserve to be here—and to be safe here. I sincerely hope that you’ll stay on and complete your studies. The choice is yours, of course, but I dare say I think it would be the wrong one to give up now.”

The intensity of her gaze was almost too much, and Harry tried to swallow around the angry, hurt lump that had been stuck in his throat since he’d seen the newspaper.

“At least give it another month or two, and see how things go. We’ve not even made it through September yet.”

He nodded mutely. Then he gave a little cough and agreed, “Right. All right. I’ll at least give it a bit longer before I decide.”

McGonagall smiled again, her gaze softening.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” she told him. “And I promise you, I will be looking into this article and making an announcement to the whole school about the harms of spreading malicious gossip and how the school will punish those who do so.”

Harry nodded again, then he straightened in his seat, hands going to the arms of his chair as he prepared to get up and shuffle out in embarrassment. He didn’t know what more he had to say if he wasn’t going to carry on whinging or shouting or else quit school then and there.

“Ah. But while I do have you here, Harry...”

He lifted his eyes in surprise, unsure what the headmistress’s mild tone might herald.

McGonagall studied him for a moment, then she glanced to the side at the portraits on her wall. Snape and Dumbledore hung side-by-side, whether that was a coincidental result of them being the two most recent headmasters or a choice that McGonagall had made for herself. Both men gazed out impassively, staring into the middle distance as if they had no idea Harry was there.

“I actually had something that I wished to speak to you about as well,” she said, watching his reaction carefully. “You see, you are not, in fact, the only Hogwarts student who has been experiencing negative coverage in the media lately.”

There was an immediate sinking feeling in his stomach. Surely there was only one other student currently at Hogwarts that the press would feel it worthwhile to run constant articles on.

Unless perhaps it was Ginny, being torn down for ‘abandoning’ their Saviour and daring to move on to greener pastures.

“Is it Ginny?” he asked hopefully.

A flicker of amusement crossed McGonagall’s stern face. “No, Ms. Weasley has been mercifully spared from much attention in the papers of late. I certainly hope that continues, even if she should decide to pursue new romances.”

It was sometimes frightening how much the headmasters and headmistresses knew about what went on in their schools, down to the students’ love lives.

“So. Malfoy,” he said, tone flat and defeated.

“Indeed, it was Mr. Malfoy I was speaking of.”

Harry dropped his head into his hands and groaned, uncaring of how immature it might look. “No. Professor, no. I just got lambasted for daring to speak up for one Death Eater. Now you want me to stand up for the only other one within a hundred miles?”

“Former Death Eater,” McGonagall chided. “And I am not asking you to stand up for Mr. Malfoy, though I understand that you already have done so, at his trial before the Wizengamot. I merely wished to discuss his current situation with you.”

“Respectfully, professor–” I don't give a shit. No, probably better not to say that. “I still don't even understand why you fought to get him back here.”

Harry thought he was completely justified in saying it. But he still felt about four inches tall when McGonagall gave him a deeply unimpressed look and explained, “I fought for him to be released to my watch because I believe that Hogwarts is the right place for him to be, just as I believe it is the right place for you to be.”

She sighed when Harry didn't offer any sign of agreeing. 

“Your school years should be a time when you learn to make your own choices about life. You should be able to make mistakes and grow, relatively safe from serious consequences and under the watchful eye of the school’s staff.” She shook her head, mouth a grim line.

“But neither of you two had the chance that most children are given to choose their own path in life. You had certain roles thrust upon you instead. I hope it is not too late for you to decide your own future now, Harry, free from the burden of prophecy and expectation—just as I hope it is not too late for Mr. Malfoy to find a new future for himself, free from his father and the presence of Voldemort.”

It sounded nice enough, though Harry wasn’t sure that Malfoy would’ve made fantastic choices even without Lucius Malfoy or Voldemort about. Perhaps he wouldn’t have got himself branded as a Death Eater, but he’d still been spewing off bigoted bullshit for years before that had happened.

“It wasn’t just Malfoy, though,” Harry countered. “What about Goyle? Or the other Slytherins?”

“Daphne Greengrass, Theodore Nott, and Millicent Bulstrode all took their N.E.W.T.s in August,” McGonagall rattled off easily. “Tracey Davis, as you of course know, chose to return for Eighth Year the same as you. Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini both decided that they did not need to pursue N.E.W.T. qualifications, though I did extend the offer to both—in person—to assure them they would be welcome back at the school.”

Harry swallowed, slightly cowed by the fact that the headmistress apparently had given all the Slytherins a fair shot.

“And Goyle?” he asked.

“I visited with Mr. Goyle and Mr. Malfoy several times last summer, both when they were initially being held before trial and after they had both been sent to Azkaban.” Here at last McGonagall hesitated a moment. “Moreover, I witnessed the behavior each exhibited last year, when encouraged by the Carrows to be as cruel as they might desire.”

She appeared older and weary as she explained, “Both during their Seventh Year and during my private visits, I’m afraid Mr. Goyle did not show any sign of remorse or regret for his actions. I continue to visit with him monthly, hoping to see some change, but it would not have been appropriate to bring him back to a school full of young students.”

Which meant she really had thought it had been appropriate to bring Malfoy back.

“You truly believe Malfoy regrets what he did?” Harry asked. “And not just because the trouble it got him into?”

McGonagall didn’t flinch away, her eyes pinning Harry in place as she said, “I do sincerely believe that Mr. Malfoy got in over his head. That does not excuse his past behavior or the harms he caused, but I do think that, long before the end, he realized that he had ended up far along a path which he did not wish to be on and with no idea how to turn back.”

Harry screwed his eyes shut, tipping his head back against his chair. “Okay, fine! Maybe he realized being in a crazy cult wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but it’s got nothing to do with me!”

“You’re right. It does not.”

McGonagall got up and walked around her desk to come take a seat in the chair right beside Harry’s. He straightened up, alarmed by the move.

“I am not telling you that you must do anything, Harry. I’m not even asking that you do. You have done more than enough already.” She set a hand on his arm, peering at him as she explained, “I only want to remind you that you have a great deal of influence in our world. You saved it, after all. And I want you to consider what sort of world you would like it to be, now that it is saved.”

Harry swallowed, listening uneasily.

“Do you want it to be the kind of world in which a person might learn from their mistakes and be allowed to start over? Or should it remain a world in which we exclude others who seem unlike us, without seeking to understand them?”

Snape’s portrait remained almost motionless on the wall, but Harry thought those coal black eyes might have flickered his way once.

And Harry slumped down in his seat, McGonagall’s hand still warm and inescapable on his arm.

He knew the right answer, even if he wished he didn’t.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry may have been reluctantly convinced that he ought to at least give speaking with Malfoy a go, but that didn’t mean he had to do it at once. He still had a whole heap of schoolwork to get done, after all.

So he had retreated back to the privacy of his room, trying to avoid running into a single other student, and then done his best to focus on his readings and not think about either the article in the Prophet or how he was supposed to try to reach out to Malfoy—and God forbid he ponder what he was ever going to do after Hogwarts.

At nearly five in the evening, he’d finally headed to the library, hoping that the nearing dinner hour and the fact that it was a Saturday would mean that most people had better things to do than research. He spent a couple hours deep in the Transfiguration stacks, putting together several pages of notes and quotes to work into an essay, and by the time he’d headed back to the Great Hall, the dinner crowd was almost entirely gone.

Harry glanced toward the Slytherin table, and like most meals, he saw no sign of Malfoy there.

Oh darn, he thought disingenuously. Guess I can’t do any outreach tonight.

He shovelled down a quick plate of chicken, mash, and peas at the far end of the Gryffindor table, his eyes rarely lifting from the Potions text he was reviewing. And as the stars began to come out in the enchanted ceiling, he disappeared back into the castle halls, glad to declare this day at least done.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, the dream began atop the Astronomy Tower.

The unchanged view, the sight of Malfoy frozen there again in the moonlight and still staring out at the empty space that Dumbledore had disappeared from, hit Harry like a punch to the gut.

They both stood in silence for several moments, lost in their own memories.

“Flying?” Malfoy suggested at last.

“Yes,” Harry agreed at once.

They summoned their brooms and took off down through the tower, making hairpin turns around the spiral staircase and cutting through the castle’s halls rather than taking the obvious path over the edge of the Astronomy Tower. Not when that was the path Dumbledore had taken.

There wasn’t any showing off or ridiculous tricks that night as they passed through the castle like silent shadows, flitting fast but sure towards the front doors.

Then at last they were out from under the stone and skating over the grounds.

Malfoy banked, curving toward the lake, and Harry followed, since he had nothing better in mind. They passed over the water’s surface close enough to be dampened by little licks of waves, the lake beneath them dark as the sky overhead. And finally the freedom of flight allowed the tight muscles of Harry’s neck and shoulders to start loosening up again after the long uncomfortable day.

He tipped into an unhurried roll, letting his hair be wetted by the lake water. If only he could spend all his time like this, in a world with no reporters, no future demands, and no real consequences.

Righting himself, Harry felt the wet tendrils of his hair slap over his face, trailing like snakes along his nose and across his glasses.

Malfoy took one look at him and broke into laughter.

“You look like a drowned rat, you idiot!” he shouted over the lake, the distance of a couple broom lengths between them.

“Better a rat than a ferret!” Harry shot back.

“Don’t you make light of my trauma, Potter!” Malfoy exclaimed, veering to the side so he could bash into Harry the way he might’ve in a Quidditch match. “Can you even imagine, losing all your human faculties and then being flung about, up and down over a height some twenty times your own? The absolute mindless, gibbering terror? That man was a menace!”

Harry shot a sidelong look at Malfoy, flying right beside him now. “Well, he was a Death Eater,” he pointed out.

Malfoy didn’t respond at first, then he agreed, “True. Not the nicest sort, generally speaking.”

Harry snorted at that great understatement.

They drifted onward in the dark night. After a while with no particular goal, Harry said, “This way,” and then he led them east across the lake to where he knew there was an old folly on the far shore.

Malfoy followed him without question—until they apparently reached the limit of his own past explorations, and there was a sudden yelp and a splash, as he struck that invisible barrier and went tumbling into the water.

“Fuck, Malfoy, sorry,” Harry choked out, having a hard time through his laughter as he swung his broom in a tight circle. “You all right down there?” he shouted, pulling out his wand to cast a wordless Lumos.

There was no answer other than the slapping of the disturbed water, churning and catching the light of Harry’s spell.

Would there be mermen and other beasts in the lake in their dreams?

Alarmed that the other boy didn’t seem to be surfacing, Harry pointed his wand at the water and shouted aloud, “Accio Malfoy’s robes!”

He knew you couldn’t summon a living creature as large as a human, but he couldn’t think of a proper spell that would pull someone drowning out of the water. Summoning Malfoy’s clothes and hoping he’d be dragged along would have to do—or they’d both likely be thrown out of the dream.

But his arm was jerked down, like he was trying to reel in some great catch, and then Malfoy came bursting out of the water, coughing and gasping, and flew straight at Harry as if an invisible giant had grabbed him by the front of his robes and lifted him through the air.

“Oof!” Harry grunted, nearly falling off his own broom as the blond slammed into him.

They grappled awkwardly, Malfoy clutching blindly for whatever he could reach, while Harry tried to keep one hand on his broomstick and use the other to haul Malfoy up behind him.

“I’ve got you! Just—stop flailing! It was an accident!”

“You fucking—can’t believe I followed you—stupid goddamn Gryffindor—”

And then Harry was laughing again, because if the other boy was fine enough to be furious at him, then clearly no real harm had been done.

Malfoy had managed to get astride the broom, and he had one hand looped under Harry’s arm and splayed across his chest, while he used the other hand to smack Harry around the head.

“I thought I was g-going to die, you imbecile! Do you know how hard it is to swim in robes?!”

“You would’ve just woken up!” Harry insisted.

“That’s what we think. Excuse me if I d-don’t want to test the theory with my own fucking skin!”

“I pulled you out, didn’t I!”

Malfoy went on grumbling as he struggled to get a shaking hand into the pocket of his wet robes to pull out his own wand. “Accio Nimbus 2001!”

When his broom came shooting from the lake, Malfoy caught it handily and quickly shoved himself off Harry’s back to climb back onto it, nearly knocking Harry into the water as he did. Then he pointed a powerful drying charm at himself, followed up with a rapid warming charm.

Once he was again dry and not at risk of hypothermia, he fixed a glare at Harry that reminded him of nothing so much as Hermione’s cat Crookshanks. Malfoy’s hair was also fluffy and sticking up in every direction, after his barrage of spells, rather like that cat’s fur tended to be.

“I’m taking the lead now,” Malfoy sniffed. “And if you get thrown off your broom, you can be the one to test the theory about dying in a dream.”

Harry wasn't worried, since he’d flown from one end of the lake to another plenty of times. He knew there was no risk of him meeting the same fate. So he followed along after Malfoy, absently casting his own warming charm and pointing his wand over his shoulder to try to dry off his clothes where they’d grown wet thanks to a sopping Malfoy clinging to him.

When they reached the shore south of the castle, Malfoy landed and immediately threw his broom to the side, flinging himself down on the dark grass with a groan.

“Now that’s what the papers ought to be haranguing you about,” he said, opening his eyes to shoot Harry a baleful glare. “Not standing up for Snape, but trying to murder fellow students by drowning them in the depths of the lake in the middle of the night.”

“First off, I wasn’t trying to murder you. And secondly, it’s a dream, Malfoy. The papers can’t see it, and you aren’t going to die either.”

The blond just scoffed again, as Harry flopped down beside him to stare up at the cloud-strewn stars.

“So you read the paper today, I take it?” he asked.

He’d managed to forget how his weekend was going in the real world until that moment. But he’d be waking up and returning to it soon enough.

“Of course I read the paper, Potter. I read it every day.”

“Why?” Harry asked, remembering how McGonagall had hinted that Malfoy was also getting his fair share of bad press coverage. Why didn’t Malfoy just swear off the whole mess then, like Harry himself did?

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “How many times and ways do I have to explain to you that some of us like to be informed about the world? We don’t all revel in wandering about complete ignoramuses.”

“Oh my god, you sound like Hermione,” Harry accused.

“I assume that’s a compliment, coming from her best friend,” Malfoy sniffed, then he shot Harry a goading smirk, daring him to contradict the characterization.

But Harry wasn’t stupid enough to say that Hermione’s inexhaustible thirst for knowledge was a bad thing, even if it was only in a dream that she could never ever find out about. Somehow she would still know.

“You don’t read the papers at all?” Malfoy asked, managing to sound like he really didn’t care if Harry answered or not.

“Not if I can help it.” Harry heaved a weary sigh. “They’ve always been awful about me, but it’s been complete madness since May. I couldn’t even buy lunch in Wizarding London without it getting an article. And now this latest nonsense.”

Malfoy hummed in agreement, not saying anything more about what he thought of the article in that morning’s paper.

“Aren’t they, er, writing rather unflattering things about you as well?” Harry asked. He hadn’t read any of it himself, but he didn’t think McGonagall would have made up something so easily verifiable just to play on his sympathies.

“Oh, terrible,” Malfoy said, flapping one hand in a dismissive wave. “I’m an irredeemable criminal, a horrible influence on impressionable young minds, yet another example of pure-blood wealth buying an escape from justice, and of course certain to AK a student before the month is out.” He grinned. “And that was only the first day’s articles.”

“Does it not bother you at all?”

He was watching closely, so he saw the way that Malfoy’s humor leached away, leaving his face grim and drawn. “I imagine it would be harder to accept it if it were completely unfounded. But—I can hardly claim that, now can I?”

Before Harry had figured out how he might want to respond, Malfoy went on.

“And honestly, after Azkaban...none of it really matters.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

Malfoy blinked a few times, then he swallowed and gave himself a little shake.

“I mean I’m out of there. No matter how bad things are here, it doesn't even begin to compare.”

Harry sucked in a breath. He didn’t dare ask how things had been in Azkaban, but—they must have been awful for Malfoy to say such a thing, right?

He wished he’d remember this when he woke up, so he could ask Hermione more about what was being done at the prison. He knew the Dementors were gone, but it didn’t sound like things were all that much more humane without them.

“You know.” He cleared his throat, seeking to change the subject. “McGonagall spoke to me about you today.”

More of the usual life returned to Malfoy’s face as he looked over at Harry with his brows lifted in question.

“I think she wants me to, I don’t know, try to reach out to you or something. Make an effort.”

Malfoy’s laughter was immediate and welcome, allowing Harry to smile again, too.

“Good fucking luck,” Malfoy wheezed.

“It’s hardly impossible!” Harry reached over and smacked Malfoy in the chest. “We’ve been stuck here for the past two weeks together, and, y’know, we're...doing all right.” He wasn’t ready to admit aloud that it might actually be one of the better parts of his day. All things considered.

“Yes, but when we’re here, we remember.” Malfoy had one of those twisted smiles again, that Harry had begun to recognize as holding some sort of regret. “During the day, I’m still quite certain you wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire.”

“And I’m imagining that having to actually speak to you will be about as pleasant as taking tea with Umbridge,” Harry agreed with another sigh.

“It probably will be,” Malfoy admitted.

Harry turned his head to look at the other boy. “Think you could sorta subconsciously remind yourself not to be a complete ass, if I do ever get around to it?”

“Knowing how oafish you’ll probably be?” Malfoy chuckled. “Not likely.”

“If only we could remember any of this during the day,” Harry mused, looking up at the stars overhead. “Bit of a shame, really.”

And to his surprise, Malfoy didn’t even hesitate when he agreed, “Yes, I suppose it rather is.”

Chapter 9

“Oh, go on, Harry, dear. You’ve surely got space for a second slice,” Mrs. Weasley insisted, beaming at him as she slid another piece of pie onto his plate, despite his desperate attempt to block it with both hands.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Harry had practically been kidnapped to the Burrow by Ron and Hermione for Sunday roast. They’d both obviously thought he might not be dealing well with Saturday’s article in the Prophet.

“Plus, it’s so much easier with you there,” Hermione had whispered in his ear as they’d walked up to the teetering old house several hours prior. “You’ll distract Molly for me. You wouldn’t believe the sheer number of questions I normally get about my knowledge of housekeeping charms or my thoughts on mothers working outside the house. I love the woman, but I really might just murder her one day.”

Harry was feeling a fair bit of sympathy for the sentiment as he stared down at his fifth plate of food.

It was lovely, of course, being surrounded by the family who had adopted him, the noise and cheerful chaos leaving no real space for worries. George was there, as were Bill and Fleur and Percy. Ginny couldn’t leave Hogwarts any old weekend like the Eighth Years could, so at least Harry didn’t have to deal with any awkward looks flicking between the two of them, as had happened on every other visit that summer. But he did still get Molly Weasley sighing over what a terrible shame it was that they’d split and how these things tended to work themselves out and that they’d find their way back to each other in the end.

She’s probably too busy finding her way into some Ravenclaw’s dorm right about now, Harry thought, a forced smile on his face as he picked up his fork and mashed at his pie a bit to make it look like he was eating.

He was afraid he might need Madam Pomfrey when he got back to Hogwarts. Could you actually split your stomach from overeating? The pain in his gut was making him think it was a real possibility.

The fact that he was also suffering in his own way helped Harry excuse the fact that he was maybe once again avoiding mealtime in the Great Hall, where McGonagall could fix a look on him from across the long room, expecting him to go talk to Malfoy or something.

But see! Witness his digestive pain! He wasn’t just running away to have a good time!

Hermione settled back down beside him with a cup of tea, taking a look at his mangled pie. With a sigh, she grabbed up a fork to take a bite of it for him out of sheer pity.

“When will you ever learn to say no to that woman?” she whispered under her breath, not that anyone was likely to hear them with Percy shouting at George about slipping something into his tea which had turned his hair royal blue.

“About the same time that you tell her you intend to put any future babies in a nursery?” Harry shot back.

Hermione slapped his arm, biting her lip to keep from smiling too broadly. “Quiet! She might hear you.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” he promised. Then he snuck out his wand and levitated some of his mashed up pie over onto Percy’s plate while the elder Weasley boys were distracted.

Leaning against Harry, her head resting on his shoulder, Hermione asked in that same undertone, “How was your week? Did you get to read the book I left you?”

Guilt stabbed him with the same ferocity as the stomach pains he was currently feeling.

“Haven’t found the time yet,” he mumbled. “Classes and all are just so busy. But I have been keeping up with all my school work—you’d be proud, Hermione. I’ve probably written 20 feet in the last week alone!”

“That is very impressive, Harry,” she said, patting his arm, and Harry didn’t point out how patronizing she made it sound. “But I hope you aren’t finding too many ready excuses to avoid thinking about the future.”

“I swear, Hermione. I'm drowning in work, and the eight extra Doubles each week to help out the younger years? It feels like there's hardly time to eat or sleep, let alone sit down and ponder my future.” As Ron sauntered over carrying his own third slice of pie, Harry shot his friend a look of awe mixed with horror. Shaking his head, he continued, “Maybe when the holidays roll around, I'll finally have a moment to think of something beyond my next assignment.”

Hermione gave an unconvinced little hum, then asked, “And Professor McGonagall is going to be doing something about students talking to reporters?”

“So she says.” Harry grimaced down at his plate. “And she wants me to try to do something for Malfoy, as if I didn't have enough on. So if the next terrible article you see is all about me being best mates with a Death Eater, please know I haven't gone off the deep end. No need to stage an intervention.”

“Do something for Malfoy?” Ron exclaimed through a mouthful of half chewed pie. “What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

Harry shrugged, trying not to dislodge Hermione from his shoulder. “I dunno. Reach out, I suppose. Try to be civil, maybe.” 

“Bugger that. But if you'd like to do something to him instead, we've got plenty of great options at the shop.”

“Ronald!” Hermione hissed, leaning forward to scold her boyfriend from around Harry. “That would be quite counter productive and a terrible example for Harry to set as someone that society looks up to.”

“Probably shouldn't, though, should they?” Ron pointed out. “Our Harry's just a regular bloke, and they've got to just learn to accept that.”

Harry's middle was still a bundle of stabbing pain, but there was something warm and fuzzy glowing in there, too. “Thanks, mate,” he said gruffly, giving Ron a friendly jab with his elbow.

“Of course I agree,” Hermione said, settling back against Harry's other side. “But reality is what it is. For now, our world is still obsessed with Harry. So if he can't bring himself to extend an olive branch to Malfoy, it would be best to at least keep a neutral distance. Not encourage others to do more to retaliate against people like him.” She patted Harry on the arm. “Our justice system exists for a reason. We don't want a bunch of vigilantes running about.”

That was probably true enough. Even if Harry did rather enjoy the thought of pulling some wicked pranks against Malfoy just to see if he'd finally react—or if Draco Malfoy truly had lost every scrap of who he used to be.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, they appeared in a location that Harry had only been to once and hadn’t consciously thought of in years. He blinked out at the gargantuan stands towering in front and all around them, blazing lights illuminating the night and the broad empty pitch that stood in the middle of it all.

“Are we...” He glanced around, then craned a look over the guardrail that separated the stairwell they were in from a very precipitous drop. “Is this the World Cup stadium?”

Malfoy joined him at the railing, leaning over to peer down over the hundreds of feet separating them from the velvety pitch below.

“Seems like it,” he agreed, whistling in appreciation over the sight.

Harry laughed. “You know, for someone I wasn't actually friends with in school, we really do share quite a lot of memories.”

Malfoy only smirked, lifting his head to gaze out across the field. “We’ve got to fly it.”

“Of course we fucking do,” Harry agreed at once, already pulling out his wand. “Accio Firebolt!”

And like magic, or like a dream or perhaps like both, his broom whizzed toward him, even though he hadn’t had it with them when they’d Portkeyed to the World Cup that year. Their dream logic didn’t seem to care about those kinds of details, as long as he had enough genuine memory to build from.

Then Harry clambered up onto the guardrail, glancing back at Malfoy one last time with a wild grin, and he flung himself off into space with a ridiculous whoop.

Or he tried to.

In fact, he was cut off mid-whoop as he appeared to bash into an invisible barrier, because of course he hadn’t actually been in any part of the stadium but the section of seats where he’d watched the game with the Weasleys and the corridors and stairs he’d had to navigate to reach it.

Flung backward to land painfully on the metal platform, Harry felt the air whoosh out of his lungs.

As he blinked away the stars in his eyes, Malfoy doubled over, clutching his stomach and absolutely losing it in a fit of hysterical laughter.

“You—you should’ve seen—” Malfoy gasped. “Oh my god, Potter, that’d be my Patronus memory, I swear—” He couldn’t go on, laughing too hard to even string a few words together.

But then he held out a hand, the other still pressed to his side as if he’d given himself a stitch.

Harry reached up and slapped his hand into Malfoy’s, letting the Slytherin haul him to his feet. Once he was up, Malfoy hung onto Harry’s shoulder to keep himself upright, still gasping in gulps of air between giggles. Harry couldn’t help smiling along reluctantly. “All right, all right, that’s surely enough by now. It wasn’t that funny.”

“Oh, it most definitely was.” Malfoy grinned up at him, face open and bright. “It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. That I’ll never know it happened is surely the greatest tragedy of this whole bizarre situation we’ve found ourselves in.”

“Not us forgetting that we could actually get along for half an hour at a time?” Harry asked, mouth quirking up in wry amusement.

“Not even close.” Malfoy swiped across his watering eyes with the heel of his hand. “The things I’ll miss most when this finally wears off would have to be ranked: one, the glorious sight I just witnessed; two, being able to actually say what I want to aloud again; three, the complete lack of consequences; four, the equally delightful lack of Ravenclaw twats; five....a bunch of other garbage I can’t think of right now. Anyway, the point is that getting along with you wouldn’t even make the top ten.”

Harry shoved him in the shoulder. “Whatever. You know you love it. You always wanted to be my friend.”

Malfoy’s mouth fell open in comical offense. “I did not, you slanderous cretin. I wanted you to be one of my lackeys. I wanted you to be in awe of me and do whatever I told you to do and generally fall over yourself to please me.” He scoffed. “Friends. Not hardly.”

“Okay, Malfoy,” Harry said, his tone making it perfectly clear he was not convinced. “Whatever you say.”

“Potter. Potter, no.” Malfoy grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him. “Don’t you dare go thinking I have ever wanted to be friends with you. I refuse to allow this.”

Did want to fuck me, though, Harry thought, and then he choked on his own breath. It was the first time in an age that he’d caught himself thinking back to that first night, and he didn’t know why it had snuck back in now of all times.

He blinked at the other boy, as Malfoy peered at him from across the small distance between their faces, the Slytherin’s hands still gripping him by the shoulders.

Reaching up, Harry slid those hands off of his person, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Well, regardless, it’s a bloody shame that we’re back here, and we can’t even fly in a World Cup stadium.”

He turned and rested his forearms on the railing, gazing out over the stands surrounding them.

“You could always try to go pro,” Malfoy mused, settling beside him and adopting the same pose at the railing. “Might someday get a chance to play in one of these stadiums for real.”

Harry grimaced. “I thought about it,” he admitted. “But then I thought—what if I only got a spot on a team because of—you know.”

“Sheer abject pity for how unskilled you are?” Malfoy suggested.

Harry bashed his shoulder into Malfoy’s, snorting. “No, not that.”

“Ah, you mean the whole ‘he saved us all’ thing.”

“That’s the one.”

Harry looked down over the neat pitch, so far below them. “How humiliating would it be to play for a team, only to constantly make them lose because you aren’t actually good enough to play pro level?”

Malfoy threw himself forward, his head and shoulders hanging over the railing as he groaned loud and long. “Oh lord, you’re trying to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Say what?” Harry asked, genuinely confused.

The other boy turned his head to the side so he could look up at Harry with pale grey eyes narrowed resentfully. “Potter, you miserable fucking numpty, you’re good enough to play pro.” Then he squeezed his eyes shut, his whole face screwed up. “I think I just sicked up a bit in my mouth.”

Harry stared.

And then something bubbled up in his chest, and he gave into it, laughing and clutching onto the railing to keep from falling down onto the platform again.

“God, I hate you,” Malfoy complained, voice pitched loud enough to carry over Harry’s gales of laughter.

“Only you don’t,” Harry insisted, hiccuping and knocking his shoulder into Malfoy’s again, this time not bothering to pull back away. He stayed there, feeling the warmth of Malfoy’s arm against his and filled for the moment with an odd sort of optimism about the future.

“Well,” Malfoy grumped, “if I don’t, then it’s only in here.”

Chapter 10

As soon as the bell rang, marking the end of Monday’s N.E.W.T. Potions class, Malfoy was out the door of the classroom before anyone else had even stood.

Thank fucking god, Harry thought.

It was somewhat ironic, even to him, that now he was the one glad to see Malfoy disappear, after Harry had basically stalked the Slytherin for the better part of two weeks. And a year, once.

But he was sure that trying to actually speak to the git about anything besides necessary paired work for a class would end in disaster. And if he’d ended up trailing mere steps behind Malfoy on the way to dinner, he would’ve felt obliged to maybe call out to the bastard or something. Harry did feel he owed it to McGonagall to at least try. Once.

And upon trying, Malfoy would surely say something suitably dickish in return, then Harry could declare himself free of all further obligations in the realm of Death Eater rehabilitation.

But he had to be able to say he’d at least tried.

Even without McGonagall’s new ‘suggestion’ adding to the pressure Harry was feeling, Potions class had been hellish. Taut silence still reigned at their table, since Goldstein seemed to feel betrayed and hadn't warmed back up to Harry after that one outburst. And Harry had been mistrustfully eyeing both Goldstein and every student within ten feet, trying to guess who had gone to the Prophet the previous week. Malfoy had probably been the only one enjoying the new pall over the table.

Slowly packing up, so that Goldstein could also leave ahead of him, Harry dithered as long as it took for the Ravenclaws to all drift off to dinner.

He wanted to slink back to his private room, maybe summon Kreacher if he really dared. He definitely did not want to go to the Great Hall. But he couldn’t avoid mealtimes forever.

Better to just get the whole thing over with, like ripping off a sticking plaster.

And so Harry ended up petrified in the towering doorway of the Great Hall, staring at that unmistakable blond head and yet making no move to approach the enemy’s home turf.

Malfoy was hunched at the near end of the Slytherin table, eating alone and about as far along on the bench that he could be without falling off the end of it. He seemed to be working his way through his plate as quickly as he could—which was nowhere near as quick as Ron or Harry could, since Malfoy still clung to some idea of manners—and if Harry didn’t move quick, this chance would also slip away.

“Are you feeling lost, Harry?”

He turned in relief at the gentle question.

“Luna, I have to do something mad,” he said, grimacing down at the Seventh Year girl. Though perhaps she might not think it was so mad, since she’d been the one to try to speak to Malfoy in their shared Herbology class. Harry considered her mild expression and asked, “Would you like to join me?”

“Quite probably. What are we doing?”

Luna stepped right up, looping her arm through his, and Harry found it more heartening than he cared to admit.

“I’m going to go try to sit with Draco Malfoy,” he explained.

Luna’s smile grew wide and delighted. “That’s not mad at all, Harry. I think it sounds very sweet. It’s been so odd, the way you two have been so distant this year.”

Harry blinked at her, unsure how she could have got things so completely wrong. “Malfoy and I were never close, Luna,” he told her earnestly. “Unless you mean the times when we sometimes got into physical fights.”

She only tilted her head to the side, studying him as if he was some sort of puzzle she couldn’t decipher.

“Never mind,” Harry sighed. “Let’s just go embrace disaster, shall we?”

Then he pulled her along as he strode towards the Slytherin house table.

Malfoy had been so intensely focused on finishing his meal, probably so he could escape the hall again, that he didn’t notice them until they were basically at the table’s edge. Swallowing hard, Harry swung a leg over the Slytherin bench and sat down opposite his old rival.

The blond’s expression would have been comical in any other situation. He’d frozen with his fork halfway to his mouth, and his eyes were wide enough to nearly show white on all sides. They moved slowly from Harry to Luna, who was settling herself right beside Malfoy on his side of the table, and then back to Harry.

Then Malfoy hurriedly put down his silverware without a clatter, wiping his fingers on his napkin and looking for all purposes like he was about to flee in a very mannerly but determined style.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Harry muttered, extending his feet under the table to cage in one of Malfoy’s, hooking his shoes around the other boy’s ankle and dragging it towards himself so that Malfoy couldn’t get away.

A look of furious outrage flickered across that pale face, telling Harry that Malfoy wasn’t actually devoid of all emotion now, but then it was gone again, squashed into grim blankness.

“Stay and keep us company for dinner, Malfoy,” Harry said. It ended up sounding more like a threat than the polite overture that McGonagall had probably been envisioning.

The blond was trying to shake Harry’s feet loose under the table without being too obvious about it, and he said through gritted teeth, “I’m afraid I’ve already finished my meal. Perhaps another time, Potter.”

“You really should have some dessert,” Luna suggested, not seeming at all bothered by the tense tone the two boys had both taken. She pulled a large platter of chocolate tarte closer to Malfoy. “You don’t seem to be eating enough lately, Draco. You’ve got to keep your strength up.”

Malfoy gave another jerk of his leg, but Harry yanked back with his feet firmly locked around the other boy’s ankle. Malfoy glared at him with something like his old fire, but he still didn’t open his mouth to spew any filth.

“Would you please,” Malfoy said, the stress on the word seeming like it nearly broke him, “release me, Potter? I have Astronomy at ten, and I’d like to at least get the Charms reading done before then.”

Harry had known that Malfoy still took Astronomy because of his stalking through the map, but he wasn’t about to admit that. He pulled a plate of Beef Wellington closer so he could saw a slice off it, saying, “Just sit with us while we eat, Malfoy. It’ll only take ten minutes.”

Only with your manners, Potter, Harry thought to himself in Malfoy’s snootiest tone, fully expecting some kind of mockery over the way he ate.

But there was only silence from the real Malfoy. The Slytherin’s mouth was a tight line of misery, but he remained where he was, one leg still caught by Harry’s.

Luna spotted someone across the room, causing her to smile and wave cheerily over Harry’s shoulder. He turned and saw Dean, who had just arrived in the Great Hall, staring at them in baffled confusion.

Harry shrugged, biting a slice of beef off his fork, and nodded towards the bench beside him.

Looking once towards the Gryffindor table and then squaring his shoulders, Dean strode over to the Slytherin side of the room as well.

“Evening, all,” he murmured, as he settled beside Harry and started filling up a plate. Harry thanked the heavens for his fellow Gryffindor’s unruffled cool in that moment.

Luna beamed around at each of them, leaning forward on her elbows. “Isn’t this wonderful? It’s like a reunion!”

It took Harry a moment to realize what she meant, then he got it. They’d all been at Malfoy Manor together—even if three of them had been on one side of the dungeon’s bars, and Malfoy had been on the other.

Harry dropped his forehead onto the heel of one hand, laughing helplessly, because the only other options would be to get raging mad or possibly cry.

“You’re quite right, Luna. Here’s to the Manor Survivors Club,” Dean offered, raising his goblet. Luna quickly lifted her own to knock them together, and Harry joined in, his head still resting on his other hand.

“That means you, too, Malfoy,” Dean said. He reached across the table to gently knock his goblet against Malfoy’s with a friendly smirk. “You did survive, after all.”

Malfoy’s hand shot out to steady his cup so it wouldn’t tip over, and he kept his fingers wrapped around its stem, knuckles white. His eyes flicked to Dean, uncertain, then he leveled them back at the mostly empty plate before himself.

Luna patted Malfoy gently on the arm, and Harry watched as those grey eyes slid over to her hand, but Malfoy still didn’t open his mouth to speak.

“Is everybody ready for Charms tomorrow?” Harry asked, searching for an easy topic. All four of them were in Flitwick’s N.E.W.T. class, and they were going to be evaluated individually on their Protean charms the next day.

Luna and Dean helped carry the conversation, while Harry worked his way through a heaping plate, his feet hooked around Malfoy’s ankle the entire time. The Slytherin didn’t actually say a single offensive thing the entire length of the meal—if only because he never opened his mouth again while Harry, Luna, and Dean ate and chatted.

Harry wasn’t sure if it counted as a success, but it hadn’t exactly been a failure.

Did that mean he was going to have to do it again?

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night’s dream opened up into a room of dark shadows and glittering chandeliers, and Harry’s breath caught in this throat.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, after their stunt at dinner, but he still hadn’t been ready to appear in the cavernous drawing room of Malfoy Manor where Hermione had once been tortured.

“No,” Malfoy whispered, eyes wild. “Not here.”

He stumbled backwards, fleeing towards an inconspicuous doorway in the corner of the room that Harry hadn't noticed before that moment. Which meant Harry hadn't known it was there and wouldn’t be able to follow.

“Malfoy!” he shouted, dashing after him and grabbing the other boy by the back of the robes. “I can’t go through there, Malfoy. I’ve never been.”

But Harry had been led up to the Manor from the front gates, meaning he had memories of the long lane lined with a neat hedge.

“C’mon. Let’s go outside. Where’s the front door from here?”

Swallowing convulsively and not speaking, Malfoy nodded and led the way through doorways and dim hallways that Harry only hazily remembered from his own visit to the Manor and the dreams he’d shared with Voldemort.

Then they made it to the front doors and hauled them open, pausing atop the broad steps and breathing in the cool, damp air of what appeared to be an overcast morning.

Harry waited for Malfoy to speak first, since this clearly seemed to be affecting him worse than it was Harry. As he waited, he let his eyes roam over the grounds stretched out before them.

He must’ve caught some glimpse of them when he’d been brought here back in April, but he assumed most of the details were coming from Malfoy’s memories, because it had been quite the blur to Harry at the time.

The pristine gravel driveway curved back to the main lane that he remembered, a neat yew hedge running alongside it. From where they stood atop the stairs, Harry could also see a long manicured lawn, dotted here and there with albino peacocks, and a large fountain.

“I haven’t been here since.”

Harry turned his head to look over at Malfoy. He waited mutely for the other boy to say more.

“I’d only come back for the Christmas and Easter holidays that year because my mother had asked me to, and I—I couldn’t stomach the thought of her here alone with—them.”

Harry nodded, looking back out over the smooth lawn.

“But after you lot escaped...” Malfoy swallowed audibly. “He wasn’t very pleased.”

Harry knew, though he’d forgotten. It had all seemed unimportant at the time, in light of Dobby’s sacrifice, but Harry had seen a glimpse of Voldemort’s fury and how he’d taken it out on the Malfoys that day. All of the Malfoys. He just hadn’t cared back then.

“The moment he left again, my mother sent me back to Hogwarts. Not that he couldn’t reach me there, but—she didn’t want me here. She had me Floo directly back to Snape’s office.”

“That was probably for the best,” Harry said, feeling he ought to say something by then.

Malfoy nodded absently. “And then I was at Hogwarts. Until the battle. And after, we were taken straight into custody. From there, Azkaban.” He gave a weak approximation of a laugh. “And now, back to Hogwarts.”

Then he tacked on quietly, “At least for me.”

Harry knew all their sentences. Narcissa Malfoy, who had never been an actual Death Eater, had received six months. Lucius, twenty years. Neither of them had got special deals like Draco had when he'd been allowed to serve it his sentence at Hogwarts, but at least Narcissa would be released again by New Year.

Though, Harry supposed, Malfoy would still be forbidden from leaving Hogwarts, so who knew when he would ever get to see her.

“I don’t actually know what’s happened to the house,” Malfoy admitted. “I know it was seized to be searched for Dark artifacts and evidence, but...” Malfoy looked back at the manor house behind them, craning his neck to stare up at its empty windows. “Do you think they just boarded it up? Would they have taken all our things as evidence?” The blond bit his lip. “Disposed of them maybe?”

“I...I don’t know,” Harry admitted.

He’d never had much that he cared about in the house he'd grown up in, but it definitely hurt to imagine everything in his Hogwarts trunk being thrown away without him getting to at least rescue the handful of things that mattered to him most. He’d not thought about it before, but he hoped they hadn’t just destroyed all of the Malfoys’ things indiscriminately.

Malfoy sat down on the front steps, and Harry lowered himself down beside him.

“You should have seen it as it was before,” Malfoy murmured. “It was truly beautiful once.”

“Mm. I can believe it.”

It was an undeniably impressive estate, whatever Harry's bleak memories of it might be. Harry could hardly imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a place like this: running daily through rose gardens, flying across the huge grounds, splashing about in the great fountain, and exploring the dozens or hundreds of rooms for old secrets—all while being waited upon, hand and foot, by house-elves and doting parents.

Malfoy may have deserved to fall, but even Harry could admit: what a fall it had been.

“What about you?” Malfoy asked, sounding desperate for distraction. “No one knew for sure where you were that whole year. Where did you actually go after Sixth Year?”

“Everywhere,” Harry admitted with a shaky laugh. “We were constantly on the move. I guess I ought to be glad, really, for how much of the UK I got to see. My relatives certainly never took me holidaying around the country.”

Harry spoke for a while about what it had been like. The strain and uncertainty. Ron leaving. The terror of getting caught by Snatchers—and getting his friends caught as well.

He cleared his throat. “I never really said, but...thank you. I know you knew it was me.”

“Of course I did,” Malfoy muttered. “I’m not an idiot.”

Harry leaned his weight into the shoulder next to his, a gentle nudge. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“I also, ah,” Malfoy’s mouth worked, then he gnawed at his lip a moment before he forced out in a rush: “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them. Not couldn’t. Didn’t. When Granger—but I was too much a coward. Bellatrix, she—”

Harry leaned into Malfoy again, this time leaving his weight steady and reassuring. “I know what Bellatrix Lestrange was like,” he said quietly. It wasn’t exactly forgiveness, because it was probably up to Hermione to forgive that particular sin, but it was something.

Malfoy let his weight sag against Harry in return, and they sat there a while in shared silence.

“You should’ve seen your face tonight at dinner, though,” Harry said, when he finally spoke again.

He could hear the crooked smile in Malfoy’s voice as he said back, “Speak for yourself. You looked like you were there to murder me, not to share a meal.”

“I guess I managed to suppress any murderous rages. Well done on not provoking me by being a total twat.”

“Oh, it would have been my fault if you murdered me?” Malfoy scoffed. “That’s how we’re playing this, are we?”

“It takes two, Malfoy.”

Malfoy jerked away in outrage, shoving Harry so that he fell on his back on the broad steps.. “Yeah, the murderer and the murder victim. The name sort of says it all!”

Harry laughed on his back, the fancy stone steps digging in uncomfortably.

“You’re unbelievable,” Malfoy declared, crossing his arms over his chest.

Grinning, Harry watched the blond’s profile as he said, “Okay, I’ll make it up to you. I know just the thing to make you forgive me.”

Malfoy glanced back at him with an imperious brow raised.

“Remember your happy memory, Malfoy,” Harry suggested. He waggled his eyebrows, assuming the Slytherin could easily be reminded of his disastrous move at the World Cup stadium the previous night.

And it worked. Malfoy’s face broke into a shared smile, his head falling back as he laughed up at the cloudy sky.

Chapter 11

Harry didn’t see Malfoy in the Great Hall once in the next two days, which he had a hard time thinking was any coincidence.

This looked to be something more than Malfoy’s usual avoidance of public meals. In his first two weeks back, Harry had rarely spotted Malfoy at more than one meal a day. But no sighting for nearly forty-eight hours was new.

Would Harry be getting another prodding from McGonagall if, instead of helping Malfoy’s situation, he’d instead pushed the boy into starving himself?

Harry shook his head. Surely Malfoy wasn’t starving. He’d seemed fine enough in class, where Harry had been making the absolute minimum effort to keep the act up with a bland nod of greeting or a muttered “Afternoon” when they crossed paths.

And since he’d managed to do one of the responsible things that had been asked of him, and it hadn’t actually been a complete disaster, here he was about to force himself to do another. 

On Wednesday night, after a quick (Malfoy-free) dinner, Harry was back in his room, caught up on his schoolwork, and finally staring down at the careers book that Hermione had given him.

“It’s October 1,” he told himself, staring down at the deceptively dull cover. “You’ve been back at school a whole month now, and there are less than nine more to go. Time to at least give it a thought.”

Then he flipped open the cover to reveal that cheery font, just as awful as he’d remembered, and he let his head fall down onto his desk as he groaned.

“Hermione, please...”

But she wasn’t there to hear him or let him off the hook, so he straightened up and, heaving a great sigh, turned to the first page.

Understanding Yourself: The Five Essentials, read the large header scrolling across the top of the left page like a ribbon. Beside it was the silhouette of a hand, with words written on each digit. The pinky started with “Environment,” and from there it carried on through “Personality,” “Interests,” “Skills,” and finally on the thumb, “Motivation.”

Harry sighed again, but he made himself read on.

Your working years will generally make up the majority of your life, so it’s key that you spend them doing something that you’ll find enjoyable. Otherwise your work will end up feeling like—well, work!

“This was the best you could find? Really?” Harry complained to Hermione, as if she could hear him. Though actually, knowing her, this cheery tone and positive approach toward work might have seemed genuinely appealing.

There are so many paths out there, and it can be easy to simply fall into a job because it was there and available to you. But will it be the right job for you? Understanding these five essential points about yourself will make it much more likely that you end up doing something you’ll love.

Your Interests

What is it you love doing? Do you have hobbies you’re passionate about? Hobbies can sometimes develop directly into jobs, but even when they don’t, understanding what you enjoy about them can help guide you into finding those same feelings in your work.

Your Skills

What is it that you feel you’re good at? What comes most easily to you? But consider also: What do others tell you that you’re good at? We don’t always see ourselves as others see us, and our friends and family members might have insight we’ve missed. 

Your Personality

Consider well your own personality. Do you like meeting new people or prefer what is comfortable and known? Do you enjoy working as part of a team or being able to work alone without interruptions? Do you like it when you’re given direction or do you prefer being in control of decisions? Know thyself!

Your Environment

Even work you love can sometimes stifle if the environment isn’t something you enjoy. Do you want to work in an office? Perhaps out in nature—or even in your own home? Would you thrive with a regular schedule or would it drive you round the bend to not be free to make your own schedule?

Your Motivation

Be honest with yourself and also realistic about what will motivate you to keep working day after day. Do you desire stability above all else? Or is wealth the ultimate driver for you? Or perhaps enjoying yourself or helping others would trump either stability or wealth in your books. Imagine the years stretching ahead of you and what you will value most.

Harry frowned down at the page, his mouth twisting unhappily. “I think I’d value not needing a book like this,” he griped, flipping ahead to see what lay beyond this introduction. It seemed to be broken up into small sections of possible jobs grouped by theme, such as Creatives, Nature Lovers, and The Business-Minded. Each section then covered five to ten jobs with descriptions of what you might be expected to do and relevant skills and training, et cetera.

He leaned back in his chair, staring at the hazy blue shade of the lamp he’d made and never quite loved.

The whole thing seemed ridiculous.

He wasn’t going to figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life by reading some book written for 10-year-olds. Where was the section on “How to find a new purpose after defeating your lifelong nemesis”?

He still didn’t want to read on, but he also hated lying to Hermione. At least not about anything more important than whether he’d been properly flossing, rather than over-relying on teeth-cleaning charms again. So he had to read the whole stupid book.

But that didn’t mean he had to do it all at once.

Turning back to the index, Harry counted the sections. There were twenty, each focusing on a group of jobs. If he read one per night, he’d finish within the month. Surely that was soon enough.

And at least he’d finally started, so he could honestly tell Hermione that the next time she asked.

Deciding that two pages of introduction was fine enough progress for his first night, Harry closed the book and stood from his desk, stumbling toward his little en suite as he scratched his stomach and began imagining how good it was going to feel when his head hit his pillow for a proper night's sleep.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, they appeared in the head’s office, the circular room surely one that they’d both spent time in since returning for Eighth Year.

Harry glanced around, finding himself seated in one of the familiar chairs facing the head’s desk, just as he’d been dozens of times, most recently with McGonagall. The decor here, however, seemed to date back to Dumbledore’s day.

Malfoy slouched in the chair beside him, swinging his feet up to put them on the desk before them.

“Honestly,” Harry grumbled, slapping the blond on the thigh to try to get him to put his shoes back on the ground.

“What? She’ll never know,” Malfoy smirked, keeping his feet crossed atop the ancient desk, right beside the inkpot.

He was an ass, but Harry was frankly relieved to see the Slytherin back in lighter spirits. The night before had been all right enough—nothing as fraught as their talk outside Malfoy Manor on Monday—but still muted as they’d lain in the grass out on the grounds, quietly chatting as the dream sun had set overhead.

“You know, you’re probably going to get me dragged back up here before too long,” Harry complained. “You haven’t shown up to meals in days, and McGonagall’s going to think I went and did something to make you feel ‘threatened.’”

“You threatened me with your presence! I can hardly imagine a worse fate!”

Harry shot the other boy a very unamused look, and Malfoy snickered and said, “All right, fine, fine. But what am I supposed to do about it? You know I can’t just leave a note for daytime-me.”

“Are you even getting food?” Harry asked. “I’ll definitely be blamed if you pass out in class one day.”

“I’m getting enough to eat, thank you, Matron Potter.”

Harry studied him suspiciously, as Malfoy examined his nails. “When?”

Malfoy rolled his eyes, tipping his head back with a great sigh. “I tend to swing by the Great Hall before anyone else bothers showing up, and I pack up enough to get through lunch at least. Usually it carries me through dinner as well, but if it doesn’t, I duck in just before the elves start clearing the tables at eight.”

Harry settled back in this chair again, deciding to let it rest for the moment. After all, there was nothing either of them could do to affect what happened during the day.

Looking over at the portraits of old headmasters, slightly hazy and appearing asleep, he asked, “Why’d you decide to take so many N.E.W.T.s?”

Malfoy looked over at him in surprise over the sudden change in topics.

“I mean, was there something specifically you were thinking you wanted to do with them? You chose all those subjects Sixth Year, but...”

Harry hesitated.

“But I’d already signed up to a glorious future as a madman’s lackey, which required no qualifications?” Malfoy supplied, dark amusement clear in his tone.

“Yeah, that.”

Malfoy shrugged. “Why the sudden interest?”

Harry scrubbed at his eyes, his head falling against the chairback behind him. “Ugh, just this stupid book that Hermione got me. She’s trying to help me with my whole, y’know, career dilemma.”

They’d never talked about it before, but Harry knew that Malfoy read the papers.

“What’s the book?” Malfoy asked, turning towards Harry in his chair, one elbow on the armrest and his chin resting on the heel of his hand.

Not moving, Harry kept his fingers over his eyes as he said, “Some children’s book for the young witch or wizard wondering what they want to be when they grow up?”

To his surprise, there wasn’t immediate raucous laughter from the other chair, so he snuck a peek. Malfoy was smiling, certainly, but with what appeared to be genuine amusement rather than mockery.

“So something around your reading level then?” the blond asked kindly.

“Har-fucking-har.” Smiling to himself, Harry admitted, “It’s not actually that bad. I mean, don’t ask me during the day. Daytime-me is convinced this is all a bunch of rubbish. But I can actually see why Hermione probably thought it could help.”

“Why’s that?”

Harry shrugged, slightly uncomfortable talking openly about the difficulties he’d been having figuring out what was next for him, even after all the other things he and Malfoy had both shared in these dreams.

“It wasn’t just focusing on, like, ‘wouldn’t it be exciting to be a dragon tamer!’ or some shit, but actually sort of prodding you to think about...” He rolled his eyes, unable to say the words without feeling like a knob. “The ‘five essentials’.”

Malfoy twisted further, lowering his feet from McGonagall’s desk so he could put both forearms on his chair’s armrest and fully turn toward Harry. “The five essentials? Now you have to spill,” he ordered.

Harry counted off on his fingers, unable to deny that the silly graphic probably had helped him remember them: “Environment, personality, interests, skills, and motivation.”

“Hmm.” Malfoy watched him closely. “And what’d you come up with?”

“Well, nothing yet! I just read the introduction and scoffed a bit during the day.”

“No time like the present.”

Harry thought about protesting that he wouldn’t remember it, but—but he actually wouldn’t mind talking it through with someone. Even if it only lasted in his dreams.

“Okay, so interests,” he started. “The thing is, I don’t really know what I’m interested in?”

Malfoy looked up at the ceiling. “You don’t say.”

And Harry flushed, thinking that perhaps that hadn’t been the best way to phrase it when speaking to the boy he’d once allowed to suck him off—he, a supposedly straight bloke—in a dream.

“I mean, subjects and things, right? I don’t love Herbology or Potions, that’s for sure. Transfiguration should seem cooler—you literally learn to turn things into other things! But there’s so much theory and...I don’t know. I’ve never really enjoyed it in practice as much as the idea.” He shrugged, sliding lower in his chair. “Charms can be all right, but again, I don’t have any special interest in them. They're just the thing you do to get through each day. Defense was my thing always, but—but I’m maybe feeling a bit tired of always fighting things?”

“I can’t imagine why,” Malfoy mused. “You’ve only spent the past seven years battling various incarnations of the Dark Lord, going up against basilisks and dragons, taking on whatever horrors live in the lake, dueling Death Eaters, and topped it off with facing an entire army this spring. Did I leave anything out?”

“Running from a horde of acromantulas, I guess,” Harry added despondently.

Malfoy threw his hands up in the air.

“So you don’t want to fight things anymore, that’s fair. But you do still enjoy D.A.D.A.?” He waggled his eyebrows. “Or maybe just the Dark Arts part?”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “I don’t generally like hurting other people, unless they've hurt me first. But I do like blowing shit up with a good Bombarda Maxima.”

“Demolition! We’ve found your job.” Malfoy gave a mock little golf clap, then went back to leaning on his elbows. “But in case that doesn’t cut it, what else?”

“Quidditch?” Harry suggested, unsure.

“Yes, I rather imagined. Anything else?”

Harry thought hard. “I don’t know. I guess I like...feeling useful. Or—not just useful. Valuable? Appreciated.”

He didn’t want to touch on his whole upbringing with the Dursleys, but it wasn’t too hard to guess that maybe his penchant for acting the hero and his love for winning Quidditch games to a sea of applause might have something to do with his family never seeming to see him as being worth anything growing up.

Malfoy didn’t comment, but simply moved on.

“All right. And what came after interests?”

“Er, skills?”

There was a flash of a shark-toothed grin. “Well, that’s clearly a bust. What’s next?”

Harry reached over to flick the other boy in the forehead. “Asshole.”

Malfoy grabbed at his arm with one hand while also trying to return the favor, and they grappled across their armrests for a minute, both cursing and laughing.

“Okay, fine, skills!” Malfoy shouted, lifting his arms up in surrender.

“Catching Snitches right under your nose?” Harry suggested.

Three minutes later, Malfoy was still breathing hard as he smoothed his hair down and resumed his seat in his chair, having launched himself at Harry and sent them both tumbling over onto the floor, rolling across the head’s office as Harry laughed helplessly under the Slytherin’s onslaught.

Harry righted his own chair, grinning. Malfoy’s annoyed slaps and jabs hadn’t even hurt, really. Definitely worth it.

“So, picking fights and getting yourself into trouble, is that it?” the blond said, straightening his robes.

“Definitely one of my main skills, yes.”

“What else?”

Harry’s smile slowly dimmed. What else? “I guess D.A.D.A. again? I wouldn’t say the spells come crazy easy, but compared to a lot of other people, I do seem to have some knack for them.” Malfoy scoffed but waited for Harry to go on. But the problem was he couldn’t think of much more. “And Quidditch, but we already covered that.”

He stared off across the office, trying to think of anything else.

Malfoy waited patiently for all of about five seconds before he was filling the silence again. “And? What else?” When Harry just shrugged, Malfoy grit his teeth. “How about the way you organized a little vigilante group when you were just fifteen? The tenacity you showed in not simply giving into the Dark Lord years ago—or in stalking me for a whole year, which I haven't forgotten, Potter. How about your charisma, which makes people actually like you for some unfathomable reason? Or the leadership skills you displayed when coaching your disastrous Quidditch team of complete rookies in Sixth Year?”

Harry’s face flushed hotter and hotter as Malfoy went on. He didn’t know how to react to Malfoy actually seeming to compliment him. And not on something objective, like his demonstrated wins as a Seeker, but something like his...his character .

Malfoy was also a bit pink as he turned away with an airy wave of his hand. “Alas, pleasing a woman apparently isn’t something we can put on that list, given your tragic romantic history.”

“Fair,” Harry croaked, clearing his throat and hoping they could just move on from the compliments. “Guess that's my career as an escort shot. So then, er, environment.”

Personality might have actually been next, but Harry felt a more neutral topic would be safer at the moment.

“What’s that supposed to mean, according to the wonder book?”

Harry licked his upper lip. “Like, would you prefer working in an office or at home? Or maybe outdoors or something.”

“And?”

“I think I’d probably want to stab myself in the eye with my own wand working in some office every day nine to five.”

Malfoy cackled, and things relaxed between them again.

“Too right.”

“But I don’t think I’m that outdoorsy, either,” Harry added. “Going out and traipsing around in the forest like Hagrid, or working on a farm or with animals or something—I can’t really see that for me. I did not love camping for 10 months.”

“Would you want to work at home?” Malfoy asked.

Harry thought about it. “I don’t think so. I spent a fair number of days entirely in my house this past summer, and that was, er, not great.” He picked at his nails. He hadn’t told Malfoy about his wobble yet. “Beside, I—I never really had a home of my own before. I like the idea of it being some place that I go back to at the end of the day and, like, feel that relief that I’m home. I wouldn’t get that if I just stayed there all the time.”

“I mean, you might if you had a proper sized home, like my family did. There are entire wings of the Manor that I could go months without visiting. Maybe years.”

Harry rolled his eyes up towards the ceiling. “You’re right, Malfoy. I’ll just make a note that I need to pick up a country manor the next time I’m out for a shop.”

“I’m sure you would if you could remember it,” Malfoy agreed. “Was that all for the environment thing? What’s next?”

Harry bit the corner of his mouth. “Well, it overlaps a bit, environment and personality. But, you know—stuff like do you like working with others, do you like being in charge or being given direction, do you like the familiar or the new. That sort of stuff.”

“And?”

Right, it was still on him to answer. Harry thought a minute, picking at his trousers, before launching into another ramble.

“I guess I don’t love working alone at something. It can be hard to get myself going. But I’m not a big fan of group work either. I always liked it best when it was just me and Hermione and Ron. Just a close friend or two who I could rely on and trust. I don’t totally care about being in charge, but I—I don’t like feeling like I’m being pushed into doing something I don’t want to do. I’ll follow directions as long as it’s something I’m not all that against, though.”

“Duly noted,” Malfoy murmured, and Harry flushed. Why did he keep reading a suggestive tone into what could be a completely innocent remark?

“What else? Er. Right, new vs. familiar. I suppose I’d get bored doing the exact same sort of thing all the time or even for very long. So some variety would be good. But it’s also nice to feel like you’re good at something, so I guess some regularity as well?”

He groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “I feel like I’m being so vague and indecisive that I might as well be saying nothing!”

Malfoy made a little sound in his throat, leaning back against his seat and resting his pointy chin on the heel of one hand. “Not entirely. You’ve clarified that you don’t want to work full-time in an office nor in your home nor out of doors. Rather, you’d be in some kind of third place where you could feel comfortable but still enjoy returning home at the end of the day. You’d work together with a couple of close colleagues you like and trust, not alone but not with a large or rotating team. There should definitely be some variety in the day-to-day work, to keep things interesting, but also some constant tasks or facets. Of course, you like being physical, and you like a good fight, so something that could challenge you somewhat. And you’re passably able to charm or take charge in the right situation, so you just need to find a way to put those skills into play with your small team, in your comfortable third place, while doing something that feels worthwhile and properly appreciated by others. Since that’s what motivates you best.”

Harry opened his mouth then closed it again. He swallowed, then pointed out, “We hadn’t technically gotten to motivation yet.”

“Oh dear, was I mistaken?” Malfoy drawled, looked down his nose at Harry as he lounged back in his chair. “Are you actually most motivated by fame or gold or some hitherto concealed artistic passion?”

They looked at one another in quiet sunlight in the dream version of McGonagall’s office, and Harry had to admit that Malfoy had pretty much got it in one.

It wasn’t a specific career goal or anything. Yet the picture Malfoy had just painted sounded far better than the terrifying blank Harry had been picturing or the stress with which he’d imagined joining the Aurors.

He didn’t know what he’d be doing in this third place yet, but it sounded cozy and energizing and familiar, like practicing charms with Hermione or coming up with Quidditch plays with Ron—or even chatting in all these places of memory with Malfoy lately. Now he just needed to figure out where that place was and what it was he’d actually do there.

And hope he’d arrive at the same conclusion somehow when he woke up.

Chapter 12

For the remainder of the week, Harry attended his classes, slogged through assignments, ate meals in the Great Hall that Malfoy never showed up to, and begrudgingly read through a section a night of Hermione’s book.

And each night, he met Malfoy in his dreams, and they dissected his career options together.

On Thursday, the theme had been Creatives (Book Designer, Copywriter, Editor, Fashion Designer, Graphic Designer, Novelist, Typesetter). They’d lain in the grass beside the lake under a warm summery sun, and Malfoy had greatly enjoyed lambasting Harry for both his signature lack of style and his bumbling communication skills as they shot down jobs one after another.

On Friday, it had been Educators in the twilit D.A.D.A. classroom. They’d both agreed that Archivist, Journalist, Librarian, Non-fiction Author, and Professor were non-starters. Though Tutor had survived to go on the list, as Harry could admit he had enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment when he saw his friends succeed after he'd taught them something he knew, as he’d done when he was Quidditch captain or in the D.A. days.

On Saturday, after Harry had spent another free day mostly listless in the library, they had found themselves on an empty Hogwarts Express to go over Travelers (Apparition Instructor, Broom Maker, Floo Network Engineer, Knight Bus Operator, Muggle-Magic Mechanic, Portkey Crafter, Tour Guide, Train Conductor). None of these had appealed, but they’d had a good time summoning an imaginary snack trolley and stuffing themselves with dream treats that seemed to taste just as good as they remembered them being.

On Sunday, Harry had finished up his essays and dodged an invite to the Burrow to instead fly aimlessly over the lake. That evening’s section of the book had covered Ministry jobs, which had gotten their own dedicated section since the Ministry was the single largest employer in Wizarding Britain.

As soon as the dream began, Harry spat out a long, heartfelt curse. He recognized the dim, windowless room, all suffocating circles of grim black benches. He'd spent far too much time there during the summer not to know it at once.

Harry was back in the witness stands, to the left of the towering benches where the Wizengamot usually sat. And Malfoy was in the defendant’s chair, arms bound by the chains bolted onto its uncomfortable armrests.

And he wasn’t sitting easy.

The blond was struggling, pulling against the chains, and clearly moments away from a dream-ending panic for the first time in weeks. A desperate sound escaped him as he tried to jerk his arms free, the manacles digging into his flesh in a way that had to be painful.

Harry leapt to his feet, immediately vaulting over the small wall separating the benches from the center of the courtroom.

“Malfoy, it’s all right! It’s not real!”

He ran across the floor separating them, pulling out his wand and waving it in an angry slash. “Alohamora!” he shouted, hoping it would be enough in his own dream, even if he doubted it would work on those manacles in real life.

The chains fell from Malfoy’s wrists, clattering as they knocked against the armrests and the sides of the accused’s chair. The blond boy immediately wrapped his arms around himself in a tight hug, shaking and breathing irregularly.

Harry had reached him by then, and he didn’t hesitate to snake an arm around Malfoy's back, half-scooping and half-dragging him out of the chair and away from it.

“Come on, let’s get out of here...”

“Can’t,” Malfoy muttered under his breath as Harry hurried them both towards the nearly invisible door that led out to the main hallway of Level Ten.

Harry thought Malfoy had meant he couldn’t deal with being back in the place he’d been mercilessly grilled for days and then sent to Azkaban, but no—when Harry pushed open the courtroom door and tried to pull the other boy out into the dark hall with him, he found himself pulling against a familiar, invisible resistance.

“Brought us in from the dungeons,” Malfoy was mumbling, eyes screwed shut. “And right back out to them. Never came through the public entrance.”

And Harry had never been through the Ministry dungeons—though he doubted Malfoy would prefer that option—meaning they were stuck in this room unless they woke up.

Maybe he should have just left Malfoy to panic and hoped that would end things sooner.

“Okay,” Harry said absently, trying to think of what else he could do. He shuffled back with his arm still around Malfoy, steering the blond to the edge of the shadowy room and pulling him down till they both sat with their backs against the wall that curved around the accused’s pit. “Okay, we can just sit here. Or—or you can try to wake up, if you’d rather.”

Malfoy shook his head mutely, knees tucked up against his chest and his face pressed down into the arms he’d folded atop them. He took a deep, shaky breath that lifted the arm Harry still had around his back.

“It’s fine,” he said at last, sounding more like his usual self, though the strain was still evident as he spoke into the sleeves of his robes. “It’s really, ah, not that big a deal. I just hadn’t been prepared—”

He didn’t finish explaining what he hadn’t been prepared for exactly, but the words weren’t necessary. Harry wasn’t particularly fond of the Ministry’s courtrooms either, and he'd never been strapped to a chair in them for hours of interrogation recounting every awful thing he'd ever done in his life, knowing that a lifetime in Azkaban likely awaited him.

“Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Not even a little.”

Harry considered for a moment what he could possibly do to distract Malfoy from the room they were stuck in, then he blurted out, “So, I had a bit of a breakdown this summer.”

Malfoy didn’t lift his head, but Harry felt the way he went extra still so he wouldn’t miss a word.

“Because of this place,” Harry clarified. “Just so you don’t go thinking you’re alone in finding it, well, completely abhorrent.”

“Big word for you, Potter,” Malfoy mumbled. “Did you hurt something?”

Harry took the hand he’d had around the other boy’s back and slapped it down atop that blond head, mussing Malfoy's hair and shaking his whole head about. “Arsehole,” he said, though it sounded rather fond and he left his fingers tangled in those soft strands.

“So anyway. After months of coming here and listening to day after day of people describing the terrible things that had been done to them, as well as reliving my own experiences and dredging up all my memories for the Ministry to use, I pretty much lost the plot.”

He waited for some joke about him never having found any plot in the first place, but Malfoy didn't make one. He just made a tiny curious sound in his throat when Harry paused too long.

“Total breakdown in Hermione's living room, exploded half her windows in a fit of uncontrolled magic—good thing she doesn't live in a Muggle area, there would've been a lot more questions—and basically going on like a tit about how sick I was of all the darkness and evil in the world, and people being terrible, and how I couldn't stomach the thought of a job that meant I’d just have to keep confronting that over and over, every day, for the rest of my life.”

He realized he was absently toying with Malfoy's hair, but the other boy wasn't complaining. And his hair really was ridiculously soft. It reminded Harry of a silk tassel that he'd cut off one of Petunia's curtains in a fit of anger once, secreting it away to his cupboard, where he would run it over his cheek and the back of his hand to enjoy the feeling when he was upset with her.

“We all pretended I’d got sick—I guess I was, sort of, in the head—and I spent the next four days hiding away in my house and avoiding the Ministry or anyone at all. Barely got out of bed. Found myself randomly panicking or crying when I even thought of going back.” He cleared his throat. “That was all a bit before your trial. Yours was the first one I made it back to. But I didn't—I couldn't let them pack you off to Azkaban, as if you were just the same as Dolohov or the Carrows or the rest of them, and not even try to say something.”

He fell silent, fingers still gently strumming Malfoy's hair for the distraction of feeling something tangible in the dark place they'd found themselves.

“Thanks,” Malfoy mumbled into the sleeves of his robes. “For even trying, I mean. Especially knowing all that.”

“Too bad it didn't work,” Harry said. 

Malfoy shrugged, jostling Harry's hand slightly. “It probably did, to be honest. I was the only marked Death Eater to get less than 15 years. And Harry Potter’s assurance that I ‘hadn't really meant it all’ probably had a lot to do with them agreeing to McGonagall’s proposal.”

He turned his face at last so that he could look at Harry, his cheek still resting on the arms he had crossed upon his knees. He kept his eyes fixed on Harry's so he wouldn't catch any glimpse of the room around them.

With only a foot or so between their faces, Harry was far too conscious of his hand curled around the back of Malfoy’s head. Waiting there, as if he meant to use it to pull that face closer.

He drew his hand back, mirroring Malfoy’s pose and pillowing his face on his arms so he could at least keep up the eye contact that the Slytherin seemed to need.

“So, anyway, that's why I came back to Hogwarts. I couldn't handle the thought of being an Auror, and I don't know what else to do instead.”

“Right,” Malfoy started, clearing his throat once. “So, ah, what were today’s jobs?”

Harry smiled wryly. “Ministry jobs,” he said, and he got that crooked smile in return.

“Wonderful. And what, praytell, did the book have to tell you?”

“Well, so, for starters, the Ministry has seven main departments.”

Malfoy’s wry smile grew softer. “Yes, you idiot. We’re going to be here all night at this rate. Let’s start alphabetically, shall we? International Magical Cooperation.”

Harry didn’t let on that he found it sort of impressive Malfoy knew the organization of the Ministry so well that he didn’t even have to pause to think. Harry had certainly never made any conscious effort to learn such a thing in his seven years in the Wizarding world.

“Right, so lots of dealing with the magical communities of other countries, making agreements on law and trading, et cetera.”

“And?” Malfoy’s eyes moved between his, never leaving Harry's face.

“The international bit is maybe attractive,” Harry admitted. “Not because I’ve ever thought much about travel, but just because my limited experience from the Triwizard Cup tells me that magical folk from other countries seem generally immune to the whole, er, Boy Who Lived stuff.”

“The lucky sots,” Malfoy agreed. “So not having to deal with all the hero worship and feeling a bit anonymous would be a plus then.”

“Yeah. But unfortunately, that’s the only one. Can’t say I’m actually interested in negotiating regulations on importing dragon scales or whatever.”

Draco nodded, his fingers drumming against his forearm. “So probably a pass, though with some ideas to explore. Magical Accidents and Catastrophes?”

Harry scrunched his face up. “The name rather says enough, doesn’t it? Who wants to deal with accidents and catastrophes all day? The only thing with any promise there, I guess, would be the...the thing where they make up excuses for Muggle media.”

“The Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee,” Malfoy supplied.

“Yeah, that one. At least I grew up with Muggles so I’ve got a better idea than a lot of wizards of what sounds plausible or like a bunch of bunk.”

“Okay, another tentative one for the list. Though it does involve the dreaded office 9-to-5.”

“Yeah.”

Malfoy moved on. “Magical Games and Sports?”

Harry smiled a bit. “If I had to do anything in the Ministry, I guess that’d probably be the least bad of the bunch, assuming I was working on Quidditch things. But...”

“But?”

“Again. In an office, 9-to-5.” Harry sighed. “And I don’t think regulating Quidditch things would be nearly as fun as playing it is.”

Malfoy didn’t say anything for a few moments, but finally he asked, “Department of Magical Law Enforcement?”

“Pass.”

“It’s not all fighting,” Malfoy pointed out. “The Magical Law Enforcement Squad does much more mundane work than the Aurors do. Or the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office? Again, you know your way around the Muggle world, so it could use some of those skills but much less likely to deal with the depravity of the human soul.”

“Still a pass,” Harry said.

Sitting on the floor in the shadowy courtroom, never looking at anything besides each other, they made it through the Department of Magical Transportation, the Department of Mysteries, and the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. But no more jobs made it onto Harry’s list. Not even as tentative ‘maybe’s.

“So now we’re up to: maybe something like tutoring, maybe something that offers some anonymity such as working with foreign wizards, perhaps something that could use your knowledge of the Muggle world, and whatever other gems the book has yet to reveal.”

Harry grinned, even if it sounded like they’d gotten nowhere at all. Somehow crossing things off the list with Malfoy did feel like progress, and at least in his dreams he felt like he was slowly starting to understand more about what he might or might not like to do with himself.

His grin faded.

“The trouble is I’ve not even got those ideas in the real world. I’ve just been grumpily going through the book and not really considering anything. Worse yet, I was depressed enough with the whole thing tonight that I’ve started wondering if I should just suck it up and be an Auror anyway, because what else am I good for?”

Malfoy frowned, his eyebrows coming down low and stormy. “Well, that would be a terrible idea. You want to go right back to constant misery and panic attacks?”

Harry turned his face down into his arms, rubbing his forehead against the fabric covering them. “Of course not! It’s just that daytime-me is a bit of an idiot. And he doesn’t have his own captive Slytherin to snark at him and tell him to stop being an idiot.”

Malfoy gave a little huff that was probably the closest they were going to get to a proper laugh in this godawful courtroom.

“Well, you’ll probably have a bit more of me tomorrow. Daytime-me, that is,” Malfoy clarified. “McGonagall got me this evening and browbeat me into showing up for meals again, insisting that she only wants to see me succeed in making a new life for myself and that I was ‘purposefully setting myself up for a far more difficult path if I scorned the efforts of other students to help me along that journey’.”

This time Harry’s grin was easy and broad. “So you’re coming to dinner tomorrow?”

“Unless I chicken out. Not impossible, knowing me.”

“That is very true,” Harry said, nodding wisely. “I’m glad I didn’t have to be the one to say it.” Malfoy rolled his eyes.

Then Harry said, “I, er, apologize in advance for daytime-me probably cocking things up and making it seem like I’m there to poison your meal or something.”

Malfoy grinned back. “Then I apologize in advance for daytime-me probably being insufferable and refusing to say a word to you the entire time.”

“Here's to a miserable dinner for us both.”

“Cheers to that,” Malfoy agreed, his crooked smile mirrored on Harry’s face.

And at least for a short while, they both managed to forget the room around them and all the terrible memories it held.

Chapter 13

Harry stomped over to the end of the Slytherin table and dropped into the seat across from Malfoy as heavily as a bag of bricks.

He really didn’t want to be doing this.

All the past week, the git had avoided showing up to meals, so Harry had thought he really might luck out and never have to repeat the weird exercise of acting civil towards Malfoy beyond passing encounters in class. But then, after Potions had ended that evening, Harry had seen that blond head bobbing along ahead of him in the hall the entire path to the Great Hall. Which had meant it was apparently time for Round 2 of the Not-Letting-McGonagall-Down act.

“Malfoy,” he greeted gruffly, pulling a plate towards himself. He thought he got a slight nod back, or maybe that was just the motion of the other boy chewing.

“Got that Skin-Regrowing Potion sorted?” he asked through the mouthful of mash he’d immediately shoved into his gob, determined to force his way through something resembling a conversation while eating as quickly as he could and then fleeing back to his room.

The Slytherin finished chewing his bite, then let his flatware rest against the edges of his plate before he muttered back, “Yes, thank you. And you?”

Then the blond stabbed another piece of fish and placed it neatly in his mouth to begin chewing again.

It was like some kind of fucking parody.

Harry chewed determinedly on his own overly ambitious mouthful of chicken before he responded. “Yeah, got my sample in at least. The color was a bit off, but hopefully it’ll still do the trick.” He swore he saw Malfoy’s hands tighten on his silverware, but the other boy didn’t speak. “Guess I’ll find out next class, when we get our marks.”

He got a noncommittal little sound of agreement, which Harry thought pretty much excused him from having to make the next volley in this farce of a conversation. He’d started them off with a perfectly valid topic, and Malfoy was the one shutting it down.

They both ate in silence for a couple of minutes, then Harry startled when a weight dropped beside him on the bench. He looked over to find that Dean had joined him at the Slytherin table, looking rather cheerfully resigned.

“So we’re doing this again, are we?” Dean asked. “Thrilling.”

The other Gryffindor started loading up a plate as he asked their end of the table at large, “How is N.E.W.T. Potions going?”

Malfoy certainly wasn’t volunteering any answers, so Harry filled the silence, telling Dean about the brews they’d been doing lately.

“Good on you two for keeping the subject,” Dean said, shaking his head. “I’ll be perfectly happy to buy any potions I might need at a shop for the rest of my life.”

“Well, yeah,” Harry grinned ruefully. “I think we all will be. Doubt many people take N.E.W.T. Potions because they expect to be regularly whipping up their own Hangover Cure, let alone Draught of the Living Death. Just doing it for the qualifications.”

“That go for you, too, Malfoy?” Dean asked, trying quite manfully to pretend that what they were engaging in was in fact a three-way conversation.

Malfoy set his silverware down upon his plate again. “Yes, Thomas,” he said. “That’s probably fair to say.” Then he took a long drink from his goblet before returning to his food.

Dean blinked in surprise at Malfoy actually speaking, and he shot Harry a mildly impressed look. Harry just shrugged.

“How was your Potions class with the ickle Third Years today, mate?” he asked, trying to keep Dean talking.

Glancing down the table once to make sure none of the Third Year Slytherins were within listening range, Dean recounted how some of the boys had thought it would be a good laugh to test some of their Confusing Draughts on each other, and pretty soon half the class had been falling over themselves or each other or firing off curses at imaginary foes.

“Honestly, I don’t know how I got stuck assisting Potions when I’m not even taking the subject,” Dean groaned. “Mind you, it was pretty good for a laugh. But only if I don’t get blamed for not managing to control them all.”

“It all sounds quite fun to me. I wish I got to help out the younger years,” Luna said wistfully as she settled on Malfoy’s side of the table, appearing without warning. “Hello, Survivors. I’m so glad we’re doing this again.”

“That makes one of us,” Harry mumbled, but he did manage to pair it with a smile in Luna’s direction as she launched easily into conversation, bringing her particular brand of lighthearted charm to the table.

Even if he didn’t like being where he was—and he really didn’t—he was incredibly grateful for at least having two friends at Hogwarts willing to stick by him.

Even for something so ridiculous as trying to be decent to a miserable prick like Draco Malfoy.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night it was the Quidditch pitch again, though this time the sun was still up. It looked as if it was a late winter afternoon, the light low and long shadows stretching across the field.

“Well, dinner wasn’t too awful,” Harry said, throwing himself down to sprawl on the grass, arms and legs spread wide.

“I think you mean I wasn’t too awful,” Malfoy said, standing over him with arms crossed over and a frown on his face. “You, on the other hand, still come across like a troll being forced to dine at a respectable table.”

“Hey, I initiated conversation! Asked you a question and everything!”

Malfoy scoffed, then he spun and dropped down to sit hard on Harry’s stomach, knocking the breath out of him. Before Harry recovered enough to try to throw him off, Malfoy planted his hands on the ground to either side of Harry’s face and leaned over to suggest, “Maybe next time try more than once before ignoring me the rest of the meal to talk to your friends.”

Harry tried to wrestle the blond onto his back so he could shove handfuls of grass into Malfoy’s mouth as payback for sitting on him. They rolled across the pitch for several minutes with no clear winner, until they both got tired enough to flop down and declare a truce.

“D’you think you’ll keep coming to dinner then?” Harry asked, picking bits of grass from his lips.

“I wouldn’t count on it tomorrow, at least. Daytime-me fled to my room, locked and barred the door with four different spells, and vowed to never leave again.” Malfoy huffed a tired laugh. “Of course I’ll break that vow the moment Charms rolls around in the morning, but I do seem fairly determined not to repeat the inter-house dinner experiment again anytime soon.”

Harry turned his head to look at the Slytherin’s face, upside down beside his. They were lying sprawled in opposite directions, Harry’s legs stretched out towards the west hoops and Malfoy’s pointing towards the east ones.

“Do you really hate it, what we’re doing?”

Malfoy drew in a deep breath through his nose, then let it out in a sigh. “According to daytime-me, yes, it’s absolutely miserable. It makes me feel pitied and pathetic—and yet I know that McGonagall is right about it being good for my image to be seen getting along with Harry Potter. And so I hate it even more, because I don’t want to need it as much as I do.”

The realization was heavy in Harry’s chest. Of course he didn’t like doing it during the day either, but he didn’t want to make Malfoy feel more miserable in their real lives.

“But a part of me, which I won’t ever admit to during the day of course, is also a bit relieved. Deep down beneath all that resentment.” Malfoy looked over at Harry and offered up one of his crooked smiles. “Not one Slytherin has tried to sit by me or speak to me since I returned. It’s been rather bleak, in fact.” He rolled on his side, pillowing his face with an arm folded beneath his head. “So much so that I’m even glad for the company of a couple of mad Gryffindors and the one decent Ravenclaw.”

“Yeah?” Harry asked, some of that heavy feeling melting away at the thought.

“Yeah,” Malfoy agreed.

Looking back up at the sky overhead, Harry smiled a little easier. It wasn’t like either of them could control what they did during the day, or even communicate any of this back to their conscious selves, but at least for the moment it made Harry feel better knowing that daytime-Malfoy had been glad for the company, somewhere deep down.

“So after you shoveled down another record-breaking speed dinner, did you go and read your nightly chapter of the book?” Malfoy asked, cheek resting on his bicep. “Or were you so traumatized by the stop by the Slytherin table that you had to call it an early night?”

“Tonight was Sport Fans,” Harry dutifully responded.

“Ah. Thus the pitch.”

It certainly did seem that strong associations or things on their minds tended to make it more likely that they popped up in one place than another. If it had purely been based on the percentage of time they'd shared in various real world locations, they’d probably never make it out of the handful of classrooms they’d sat in for six years straight, or perhaps the Great Hall.

“Athlete, Coach, Commentator, Ground Staff, Referee, Sports Reporter, Team Manager, Team Owner,” Harry rattled off.

“‘Team Owner’?!” Malfoy repeated, incredulous. “They list that as a job one can simply aspire to? As though, if you only take the right qualifications, you might get handed a team?”

“I think they are sometimes scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit, on some of these categories,” Harry admitted.

“Well, first things first. Athlete?”

Harry looked around the pitch. He did love it. He’d loved playing as a student, when he knew his friends and housemates were in the crowd cheering for him and that the greatest consequences of him losing would be feeling bad as he shuffled through the common room the next few days.

But he still didn’t think he wanted to play professionally, not with everything that would come along with it.

“I don’t think so,” he said. Then he winked over at Malfoy. “Though I do appreciate how desperately you tried to convince me I’m good enough.”

“Fuck off, I did not,” Malfoy growled, reaching up to shove Harry in the face. “One time. One time I admitted you weren’t complete shit, and you have to go blowing it out of proportion.”

Harry straightened his glasses where they’d got knocked askew. “I still love to play, but I don’t think I’d love the press attention and all. Or the pressure. I think I’d rather just keep playing pickup games with mates at the weekend or something.”

“You could consider playing overseas,” Malfoy suggested. “Some of that foreign anonymity, like you said. In a foreign league, you’d just be another player.”

Harry considered it for a few minutes, since the thought hadn’t occurred to daytime-Harry. But in the end, he shook his head. “I don’t think I’d want to live in a foreign country full-time. As much as Wizarding Britain can drive me mad, I wouldn’t want to be so far from my friends and miss out on their lives or have them missing out on mine.”

Even saying it aloud made him feel bad again about the distance between him and Hermione and Ron this year. He ought to do better about meeting up with them at the weekends, but there was just so much schoolwork. And, if he were honest—which he wasn't during the day—probably some mild depression at play.

“All right. Then what was next?”

Coach was a maybe, but it also seemed unlikely without Harry first putting in the years as a pro player to prove he had the chops. A job that depended on his ability to articulate himself on the spot like a commentator sounded like an absolute nightmare. Ground staff seemed like it would lack the sort of challenge that Harry probably needed to thrive.

“And who seriously wants to be a referee?” Harry complained. “Everyone hates referees.”

“I assume ‘sports reporter’ perishes for the same reason as ‘commentator.’ Namely that you can hardly string together five words of coherent thought at a time.”

“And team manager takes even more bona fides than a plain old coach,” Harry said, not bothering to rise to Malfoy’s bait about his communication skills.

Malfoy stretched his arms up into the air above him, lacing his fingers together and then twisting them outward so his palms faced the sky. “Team owner could still be on the table, I suppose. You’ve inherited quite the fortune by now. You could probably buy a team if there was one for sale.”

“Yeah, but where’s the challenge or worthiness in that? All you do is...own a team of other people who do all the playing.”

“Well, not a lot more for the list tonight then,” Malfoy remarked, rolling up to a seated position. “Shall we fly?”

“Yeah, might as well.”

Harry held up a hand, waggling his fingers at Malfoy until the other boy rolled his eyes and slapped his hand into Harry’s to haul him to his feet.

As they both summoned their brooms and kicked off, Harry shouted over the wind, “You know the worst part?”

“That you actually inherited the Black estate that should have been mine by my mother’s claim?”

Harry’s mouth flapped uselessly for a moment. “I mean—what? Does that actually bother you?”

“Ask me after I find out if the Ministry has seized all my family’s assets!” Malfoy said airily, climbing higher into the sky with a lazy roll. “But what did you mean to whinge about?”

Laughing, Harry tagged the blond, lazily drawing a serpentine path through the chilly air. “I meant to say that idiot daytime-me is back to seriously considering going pro as an idea after this chapter. Since the only other idea he’s got is to go back to the DMLE, even though the thought terrifies him.”

It was getting a little too easy to talk about daytime-Harry as if he was a different person altogether. He felt like a different person these days.

“Well, it's not the worst idea. Probably better than the Auror thing.” Malfoy swerved to the side to body check Harry. “Though you can't make me compliment your play again with this tactic, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Not what I was trying to do!” Harry looped up and over Malfoy in an easy 360 roll, before coming back to his other side. “But I really do think the job would make me miserable, when I’m thinking clearly. I’d be second-guessing whether I deserved my place or had taken it from someone more worthy. And dodging reporters and hordes of fans. The paparazzi would be a nightmare, and I'd be seeing myself written up in the paper constantly—probably with some detractors also agreeing that I never should have gotten the spot, just confirming all my worst fears. It’d basically be all my least favorite things turning the sport I love into something I’d resent.”

“But daytime-Potter might do it anyway.”

“Daytime-Potter is an idiot.”

Malfoy grinned over at him. “I love how you say that as if dreamtime-Potter isn’t also an idiot.”

Harry swung up, grabbing the nose of Malfoy’s broom in his hand and pulling on it as he whipped his own Firebolt around in a quick turn, nearly sending the blond slipping sideways off his seat as he was thrown to the side.

“Dreamtime-Potter is also an arsehole!” the Slytherin shouted as he righted himself.

“Takes one to know one!” Harry crowed. It was childish and stupid, and he was enjoying the hell out of getting to act so ridiculous as he took off into the golden sunlight, Malfoy hot on the tail of his broom as they flew on into the sunset.

Chapter 14

On Tuesday night, it was Entertainers, and no matter how much Malfoy begged, threatened, or bargained, Harry flatly refused to demonstrate any singing, dancing, or acting skills for the other boy to evaluate. He might be an idiot, but he knew better than to give his Slytherin even more ammunition.

Then it was Providers (Baker, Barkeep, Brewer, Butcher, Farmer, Restaurant Staff, Shopclerk), followed by Caregivers (Apothecary, Glasses Maker, Healer, Mediwitch, Mind Healer, Nanny).

Those two nights had added to the list ‘hobbyist brewer’ (because Harry didn’t want to do it as a job, but he did fancy trying his hand at brewing his own Firewhisky for fun) and ‘ugly glasses maker’ (because Malfoy made the list and Malfoy was an arse).

It was hardly significant progress. But every night was a chance to imagine strange new futures, trade laughing barbs, get into scuffles, and enjoy himself free from any pressure or expectations.

It was the days that were the problem.

And of course the biggest problem of all was that the days were what was real and remained.

By the time classes ended on Friday afternoon, Harry had made it more than halfway through the stupid book Hermione had given him, and he was absolutely no closer to figuring out the rest of his life.

The entire thing was a fool’s errand. None of the jobs sounded like anything he really wanted to do, so what was the point? What was the point of any of it, really?

He’d started half-arsing more of his school work, as he wondered why he was even bothering with qualifications, and some of his professors had taken notice. They passed back essays marked Acceptable, paired with disappointed looks, and he looked down at the parchment instead of meeting their gazes.

In the evenings, he sat at his desk in his solitary room and glared at the disappointing lamp he’d made and opened textbooks that he didn’t get around to reading, doodling in the margins as his mind filled with a hazy static like white cotton.

And he knew he was overdue on responding to Hermione’s last owl by about three days, but he just didn’t know what to write. Was it time he admitted to her: You and Ron make moving on look so natural that I have no idea what’s wrong with me that I can’t seem to figure it out?

If only they’d all come back to Hogwarts this year. He would have gotten to make faces at the other two being stupidly in love, and they all would have laughed together and studied together and taken late night strolls down to Hogsmeade together. Or bunked down in each other’s rooms with a bottle of Firewhiskey, probably snuck back into the castle in someone’s bag, falling asleep on each other’s shoulders and laps and feeling like they were truly home—as long as they were together.

Why had everyone else had to move on from wanting or needing that but him? Or maybe the problem was that Ron and Hermione still had it—but from each other, without needing him there to complete the picture.

“Don’t look now,” Dean warned, looking past Harry’s shoulder as they sat picking at their dinners in shared silence on Friday evening. “But it looks like your new best mate has decided to make a late appearance at dinner.”

Harry groaned, his shoulders already hunching up. “Did he really?”

“Oh yeah,” Dean confirmed. “Ah, and now Luna’s gone skipping over to the Slytherin table. Should we be joining them?”

“Do we have to?”

Dean’s dark gaze came back to Harry’s face, steady and curious. “I don’t know. Do we? You’re the one who started all this. What were you hoping to achieve?”

“Keeping McGonagall off my back mostly,” Harry muttered. He pushed a couple of peas around on his plate. “She was the one who wanted me to try reaching out or something. Seems he’s been having a hard time in the press and all.”

Harry jabbed at a pea, and it rolled away from his fork’s tines.

“Though it’s not like he’s doing much to help things, just hiding away here at Hogwarts all the time. Maybe he ought to go out and try to rehabilitate his own image. Go volunteer or fund an orphanage with all his family’s money or something. Or go down to London and, I don’t know, shout out apologies to the world from the steps of Gringotts.” Harry tried again at the pea, and this time it shot right off the plate. “Instead he just cowers in the castle, hoping everyone will forget or something? Rubbish.”

“So we’re not going over then?” Dean asked.

Harry threw his fork down and rubbed at his eyes behind his glasses. Then he put his hands on the table and pushed himself up. “No, we’re going. Damn it.”

They slung their bags over their shoulders, picked up their half-eaten plates, and walked the whole width of the Great Hall to move from the Gryffindor side to the Slytherin table.

Malfoy glanced up at their approach, a pained expression flickering across his face for half a second.

What’s he got to look so unhappy about? Harry thought to himself, annoyed. Does he think this is a picnic for the rest of us?

Luna didn’t stop the long one-sided conversation she seemed to be having with Malfoy about some magical species of river otter found in Southeast Asia, only pausing long enough to share a smile and to wave in Harry and Dean’s direction as they settled down at the table.

Since she seemed content to carry on, Harry went right back to clearing his plate of food, allowing the Ravenclaw girl to fill the space between him and Malfoy with fantastical stories about the healing properties of these rare otters’ whiskers (properly and ethically harvested, of course).

Malfoy was neglecting his own food, his pointer fingers resting carefully atop the backs of his knife and fork as he kept them still on the edge of his plate. His eyes were cast low, but his face was angled slightly towards Luna as if to show he was listening to her.

Harry chewed on a dinner roll, staring at the two of them and not getting it.

“Have you ever been to Asia, Harry?” Luna asked, turning her pale eyes on him.

“I’ve never even been off this island,” Harry said, watching in distraction as Malfoy finally lifted his silverware, cutting his meat into small bites with precise movements. He placed one in his mouth, chewing and swallowing before lifting another. “Have you been to Asia, Luna?” Harry asked back. “Or anywhere outside of Great Britain?”

As he’d been hoping, the question led her into another monologue about the places she’d visited with her father over the years and with her mother when she was even younger. As she spoke, her hands folded under her chin and her eyes on Harry, Malfoy went on neatly clearing his plate, his posture upright and his knife never even scraping against the porcelain.

Posh twat, Harry thought uncharitably.

He finished up his own dinner, and even though there was plenty of dessert on the table, Harry set his silverware down and took the first chance he could to slip back in amid Luna’s recounting of the trip to Ireland she and Xenophilius had taken to go hunting for fairy rings.

“I’d love to hear more about it next time, Luna,” he said, which was true as long as it meant she would keep providing all the conversation for these bizarre meals. “But I’ve got to call it a night for now. Revision awaits—you know how it is.”

Dean was still finishing his own food, but apparently he was too polite to shove the remainder into his mouth to escape with Harry. He swallowed down the mouthful he'd been chewing, then wished Harry a good night.

Harry stood from the bench, picking up his bag again. “Yeah, have a good weekend, if I don't see you, mate,” Harry wished, telling himself there was no reason he should have to feel guilty about leaving Dean at the Slytherin table if Dean wasn’t going to take the excuse to escape like he was doing. “Night, Luna.” His gaze slid from the blond girl to the boy beside her and he grunted, “Night, Malfoy.”

“Good night, Potter.”

And like every other thing that Malfoy had done since coming back, it was weirdly inoffensive—and that sat so completely wrong with Harry that he felt his skin crawl.

He tried to shrug the feeling away as he left the other three to it. But as he walked back to his room, he wondered if he wouldn’t honestly be better able to stomach these weird dinners if Malfoy were his usual sneering self, throwing out insults that Harry could at least counter and argue with him over.

He simply didn't know how to be merely okay with Draco Malfoy. This bland distance was antithetical to everything they’d ever been to each other. It was too neutral. Too impersonal.

And on top of that was the uncomfortable fact that Draco Malfoy seemed to be the only other person acting as irrevocably changed by the war as Harry felt. Not just scarred, as plenty of them were—but completely unable to go back to who they’d been before it.

Of course, Malfoy going back to who he’d been before would’ve been a pain in the ass. But it was as if the old Malfoy hadn’t actually survived the war at all. The same way that Harry sometimes felt the old Harry might not have made it back either.

It wasn’t something he liked sharing with Malfoy of all people.

Harry arrived back in the south wing, slipping behind the nondescript door that led to his one private space among the quiet corridors where the Eighth Years all studied and slept.

His room was dark and cold, and he dropped his schoolbag to the floor. With a muttered Lumos, the lamp on his desk lit up, along with the sconces and bedside lamp that had come with the room.

He didn’t want to read Hermione’s ridiculous book. He didn’t want to do homework or revision or whatever excuse he’d made to Luna. But he also didn’t want to be alone in his own head.

And so Harry kicked off his shoes, left his bag on the floor, and snagged the career book from his desk. Then he flopped onto his bed and flipped through it till he reached the next section he was due to read: Home Makers.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry blinked at the large portrait of a serpent over the fireplace, eyes moving down over the mess of slithering bodies that decorated the mantelpiece.

“Oh,” he said, realizing where he was. “Oh.”

Harry looked around the common room he’d only ever been in once, years before.

Malfoy was staring at him wide-eyed from the opposite sofa, all stiff black leather amid the dark wood, pale stone, and heavy tapestries.

“No,” the blond said, shaking his head. “But you’ve never—but then—” He stood up and stumbled over to Harry, leaning over him to lightly slap his cheek repeatedly as if trying to rouse someone who was unconscious. “Are you real? Is this a dream?”

“Hey, stop that!” Harry exclaimed, grabbing the other boy’s hand and pulling it away from his face. “Yes! And yes. Though, really, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“But you’ve never been in the Slytherin common room,” Malfoy insisted, still leaning over with his hand caught in Harry’s and appearing dumbfounded. “No outsider has been allowed in decades. Not since before my father’s time.”

“That's what you think, maybe,” Harry said.

Malfoy shook Harry’s hand off and placed both his own on Harry’s shoulders, pinning him back against the sofa he was sitting on. “Explain.”

“Er, you remember Second Year?” Harry said, face warming without his control as he looked up at the blond leaning over him.

“Yes, Potter, I remember every year. I’ve never suffered massive brain trauma.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Well, you remember the whole Chamber of Secrets thing and how everyone was in a tizzy trying to figure out who was the heir of Slytherin?”

Malfoy nodded slowly, a suspicious look in his eye.

“Well, we were pretty convinced it had to be you. Or, at least I was. Anyway, we brewed up a cauldron of Polyjuice Potion, and me and Ron snuck in here Christmas Day disguised as Crabbe and Goyle. Sat right here on this sofa as you whinged at us about how your dad wouldn’t tell you much about it.”

Malfoy gaped at him, his eyes searching Harry’s face as he probably sorted through his own old memories.

“You brewed a N.E.W.T. level potion when we were twelve, a potion that takes weeks to complete, then illegally disguised yourselves as other people without their permission...all so you could sneak into the Slytherin dorms, because you were convinced that I was the heir of Slytherin?”

A little smile tugged at Malfoy’s lips.

Then he fell back against the opposite sofa, a hand over his eyes as he gave into a gale of helpless laughter.

“Oh lord, if only daytime-me could hear this!” He had both hands over his face as he shook his head side to side. “It wasn’t just the Sixth Year stalking! All those years my friends rolled their eyes at how I obsessed over every little thing you did, but it turns out you were just as bad the entire time!” His head was tipped back on his sofa, fingers still pressing into his eyes. “This little revelation would probably keep me going another couple weeks—if only I knew it!”

Harry chuckled along with the overblown reaction, still feeling a bit warm with embarrassment. Then the warmth drained away as he processed the actual words Malfoy had said.

“Keep you going?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter. “Are things so bad during the day?”

Malfoy didn’t usually talk about his daytime life much, preferring to tease Harry over his career prospects or joke about their history or simply indulge in a bit of banter that he wouldn't allow himself to during the day.

The blond slid his hands down to reveal his face, but he was staring blankly up at the ceiling. He shrugged lightly. “It’s not the worst it’s ever been, as you well know.”

Harry supposed that must be true. As worried as Malfoy might be about his parents in Azkaban or what had happened to his home or what was going to happen to his own future, it probably wasn't as bad as it had been when all those things had been a wand’s wave away from Voldemort's wrath at any moment.

“I remember that Christmas,” Malfoy said, changing the subject. “It was my first away from home, and I made Vince and Greg stay at Hogwarts with me. I wouldn’t admit it, of course, but I was lonely and upset that my father had told me my time would be better spent at school than at home, if I was letting some Mu—Muggle-born girl best me in marks my second year running.”

Harry was certain that “Muggle-born” was not the word Lucius had used, but he appreciated that Malfoy had at least learned to swerve the M-word.

“I thought that whole evening was awfully bizarre, but then you never quite knew with those two. And of course I was more concerned with feeling sorry for myself than dwelling long on their faulty memories that night.”

“They, er, weren't always the brightest,” Harry agreed tentatively, unsure if it would set Malfoy off. They never spoke much about his old friends. 

But instead of anger, he got the crooked smile—only for it to immediately fade into a much sadder expression.

Malfoy shook his head again, then he brightened, even if it looked forced to Harry. “Anyway, what were today's pages, after you rudely abandoned us all at dinner?”

“Oh yeah, how was the rest of that?”

Malfoy waved a hand. “Fine. Thomas politely finished his meal and excused himself, Lovegood stuck around till she'd forced me to eat two slices of pie, then finally let me flee.” He crossed his arms over his chest, looking down his nose at Harry, and demanded, “The book!”

“All right, all right, fine!’

Harry thought back to the pages he'd been reading just before he fell asleep. 

“So today's section was Home Makers. Which was a bit cheeky, really, as I thought that was some old-fashioned way to say someone who stayed at home all day like my aunt did.”

Malfoy smirked. “And instead of your dream of staying at home with the children it was just more boring jobs?”

“Something like that, yes.” Harry tried to recall the whole list. “It was all about actually dealing with magical homes. Architect, Magical Building Medium, Household Charm Repairman—Floo Cleaner! Did you know there's a job just for cleaning out Floos, Malfoy?”

The blond stared at him like he thought Harry was an idiot. “Well, yes, Potter. We had a home with a Floo.”

“Right,” Harry muttered, flushing a dull red.

Then Malfoy lit up. “Wait, are you thinking of becoming a professional chimney sweep, Potter? Oh my god, you wouldn’t even need any equipment, just that mop atop your head!” He leapt up from the other sofa to come sit beside Harry on his, leaning in close with his eyes sparkling. “I would absolutely pay you a salary from my own vaults, if you’d let me levitate you up and down people’s chimney flues to clean out all the soot with this disaster you call hair.” 

He grabbed Harry by the head, wrenching it about as he examined Harry's admittedly mop-like hair from all angles. Harry tried to knock him away as he laughed, “Fuck off, we're not doing that!”

“You might never get another investor like me, Potter! Don't throw away this golden opportunity!”

Harry dragged the other boy’s hands out of his hair and pressed them back into Malfoy's lap. “I think I'm sorted, thanks.”

Malfoy tipped closer, his hands still trapped under Harry’s as he leaned in and promised, low and conspiratorial, “I'm keeping it on the list.”

Pushing him away with a snort, Harry didn’t bother arguing. It was usually easiest to simply let Malfoy think he'd won at times like this. “Fine, Malfoy. Keep it on your list.”

The blond put one elbow on the back of the sofa, leaning his head on it and tucking a foot under himself as he angled his body towards Harry. “And did anything else tickle your fancy tonight?”

Harry blinked, his brain blanking for a moment before it could recall what he'd been saying before. “Right, magical house things. I mean, fixing heating and cooling charms all day didn't sound all that thrilling, but I have always loved discovering the quirks of magical buildings like Hogwarts.”

Malfoy nodded in agreement. “They're very special. Develop whole minds of their own over enough generations.”

“Your house was like that, too?”

Something pensive came into the other boy's expression, but Malfoy still answered. “Oh yes. There was an old nursery room that wouldn't reveal itself to anyone but me when I was a small child. Terrified my mother when she couldn't find me anywhere. It was as if the house had simply eaten me up. And the Manor would always help me sneak about when I needed it, never a floorboard squeaking for me but I could hear others coming a mile away.”

“Jesus, Malfoy, you're saying even your house spoiled you as a child?”

The blond grinned. “It loved me, as did everyone who met me, naturally.” The smile died. “Though the sneaking around was not needed so much when I was young as in the last couple years.”

Oh. Right. When his home has been taken over by bloodthirsty Death Eaters and the likes of Fenrir Greyback.

Harry cleared his throat. “What other weird jobs went on at your sentient old house that I would never have heard of?”

Malfoy rallied, considering the question with pursed lips. “Well, magical gardeners, for one. My mother did some of it herself, but she definitely had a number of experts in over the years, especially with some of the trickier plants or pests. Decorators, who knew how to do things like refinish the floors or convince the house to open up a new doorway without it getting bent out of sorts. Ward specialists who would come help make adjustments, like after my father was irate about Ministry raids.”

He settled in against the couch, relaxing into the topic. “We had portrait painters out a couple times, to do the family. Party planners who would help my mother put together her balls and galas, back when the Malfoy name and money were something you wanted attached to your cause. And of course a small army of tutors that I tore through like tissue paper until I was eleven.”

Harry chuckled. “Of course you did.” He mirrored Malfoy's pose, resting his head on one hand. “You never went to any kind of school before Hogwarts?”

He got a scoff in return.

“Had you seriously imagined that Lucius Malfoy might have packed his only son off to school with the local children of Muggle Wiltshire?” The blond shook his head. “No, it was nothing but the finest of home tutors, who I detested and who surely detested me in return.”

“What did you study?” Harry asked, genuinely curious. 

“The usual,” Malfoy said with a shrug. “Reading, writing, maths. Piano and violin, though I refused to practice and I am terrible at both. Wizarding history and family genealogies. Latin roots. Conversational French. Table manners and rules of etiquette. All the things a fine young pure-blood maiden might need to make a good marriage match.”

He fluttered his eyelashes, making a joke of it all, but Harry still stared at him agog.

“All while I was learning about the water cycle and the houses of parliament and dodging schoolyard bullies at primary school,” he said in wonder. 

“Well, I'm sure you know plenty of Muggle things I don't,” Malfoy said easily.

“Yeah, but then we weren't living in the Muggle world, were we?” Harry shook his head. “You have no idea what it was like, being thrown in the deep end of a whole new world like that. Learning that owls delivered letters and people wore robes on the regular or trying to remember how the bloody money added up. A million things that were just normal to you, and I was constantly the one who had no idea what was going on while everyone around me knew that mermaids were real but not aliens or that it made perfect sense that a tent could be far bigger on the inside, as if it was a bloody Tardis, yet no one even knew who the Doctor was.”

Malfoy blinked at him. “I also have no idea who the doctor is. What are we talking about?”

“I guess I'm talking about how unfair it is—the things you just grow up knowing, that kids like me have to catch up on!” Harry gestured at the fireplace across the room. “Even bloody Floo cleaners! It never stops! I didn't know what a Portkey was till Fourth Year or what an Unbreakable Vow was till Sixth Year or about children's stories like the Deathly Hallows until I was 17!”

He hadn't meant to get so worked up, but as he’d gone on, it was as if he'd remembered for the first time a thousand little instances of Ron or Seamus laughing at him for not knowing something or even Neville seeming shocked by Harry's ignorance. The only reason Hermione had dodged it all was because Hermione had approached the discovery that she was a witch like it was just another subject she could master by reading enough books.

“Perhaps that's something you could do then.”

Harry blinked, eyes focusing on the boy in front of him again. “What?”

“You could find a way to help other Muggle-born children with that. Or even some of the half-bloods who have grown up mostly Muggle.”

“How...how would I do that?”

Malfoy studied him, grey eyes gleaming in the dim common room, the only light coming from the fire in the hearth and the faint glow from the underwater windows.

“Take your pick, really,” he said, offering an easy shrug. “You might write a book that would serve as a guide to everything one needs to know about the Wizarding world—or hire someone else to do so, if you’re not up to writing. You could start a political movement to demand change of the government, saying that they aren’t doing enough to support Muggle-borns and the like. Petition them to start up a more organized effort to support such families.”

He picked a bit of lint off the chest of his robes, pausing only a moment before continuing.

“Or you could go straight to Hogwarts. Work with McGonagall to improve the materials that are sent out to incoming students or have more volunteers from the community go to support new families. Perhaps propose a new course for the early years, which would help students learn more about what it means to be a witch or wizard.” A smile flashed across his face. “Maybe replace History of Magic with something even half applicable to real life.”

Harry watched as Malfoy drummed his fingers against his knees absently, still spinning out ideas: “If you wanted to be a bit less hands on, you could simply try to draw attention to the issue. Mention it in interviews or bring it up at events. Perhaps organize a fundraiser or event of your own, where you might get prominent Muggle-borns like Granger to tell their stories.

“Or go the opposite direction entirely. Not hands off, but rather taking matters into your own hands. Found some kind of organization that would offer support to Muggle-borns. Perhaps a summer programme that children could attend before their first year, to help them acclimate and prepare them for what they should expect from Hogwarts.”

Malfoy shrugged again, his blond head tilted to the side as he rested it on one elbow, lounging there on the couch. “There’s no shortage of ways to go about it. It just depends on your preferences, really.”

When he didn’t say anything more, Harry swallowed hard and said, “You just rattled off about fifty things it would’ve taken me days to come up with. How do you know this sort of thing?”

Malfoy turned his chin aside, looking off at the snake-laden mantelpiece instead of at Harry.

“My father—that was what he did. Influence people. Shape policies. Make sure his own interests were well taken care of.” Malfoy’s face was inscrutable in profile, the firelight catching the straight edge of his nose and those pale eyelashes. “I grew up watching how he made things happen, expecting that I’d have to do the same myself someday.”

“And now?” Harry asked, studying that face he’d known for over seven years as if it belonged to someone he’d never met.

“Hm?” Malfoy asked, sounding distracted.

“What about now? What do you think you’ll do now?”

Those wry lips quirked up, the distant fire getting Malfoy’s crooked smile that night instead of Harry. “I have no idea. I rather hope I won’t go back to prison.”

“You won’t.”

Malfoy closed his eyes, still not looking at Harry. “You’re right. I won’t. No matter what.”

Chapter 15

Harry groaned himself back awake on Saturday morning, stared up at the stone ceiling of his lonely castle room, and just...didn’t.

Didn’t move to get up. Didn’t think about what he was supposed to do that day. Didn’t let a single thought form in his head.

He just stared up at the patterns in the stone, his mind perfectly blank.

And Harry simply didn’t do anything.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Nearly two hours later, he’d finally stumbled up to the Great Hall, dressed in a pair of old Quidditch track bottoms and a worn hoodie, his hands shoved into the front pocket.

It was getting cold, now that they were heading into the middle of October, and mostly Harry just didn’t give a fuck about appearances.

When he passed through the large doors, he glanced about automatically, but it was an odd time—nearly 11 AM, caught between breakfast and lunch—and so there was no one there.

Well. No. Malfoy was there, at the Slytherin table.

But Harry had sat with him last night at dinner. No one could expect him to spend meal after meal doing charity, with no break. So Harry slumped over to the Gryffindor table, sitting at the very end and pulling a toast rack towards himself to snag the last sad piece.

An owl swooped down from the rafter, and Harry recognized the brisk efficiency of a hired post owl. It dropped its letter right in front of him on the table and didn’t even pause for a possible scratch or treat before winging it back out of the hall. Shaking the rolled parchment open with one hand, Harry put his elbow down on top of the letter to keep it from rolling back up and brought his dry piece of toast to his mouth.

Dear Harry,

How was the week at Hogwarts? You must be frightfully busy, and I hope you aren’t pushing yourself too hard. Classes are important, of course—and don’t go around thinking I’ve been imperiused for saying this—but schoolwork isn’t everything, Harry. I hope you’re finding some time to relax and think about other things as well.

Speaking of which, you told me in your last letter you’d started the book I left you. How has it gone? Did anything catch your eye? I’d love to hear whatever you might think. Will you be coming to the Burrow this Sunday? I do hope you will. It’s so much easier when you’re there, and we all miss you all the time. If you have assignments you need to do, just bring your books along. I’d be happy to revise with you–or even just to say that I’m revising with you, as an excuse to absent myself from the chaos for an hour or two, honestly.

Have you continued your meals with Malfoy? Have they become more frequent or ceased altogether? You’ll be glad to know that there hasn’t been a peep about it in the papers. Whatever Professor McGonagall said after that last article, it seems to have done the trick and terrified any other students away from telling tales about you.

Ron is doing well. The store is booming, and George has been starting to talk about some new product ideas, which Ron says hasn’t happened since May. They both came over to mine for dinner on Thursday, and George did seem a bit less pensive overall. It was really very good to see him turning the corner.

The letter went on to share some chatty little updates about Hermione’s work and her projects there, but Harry stopped reading.

So George was moving on, too.

Of course it was good that George was doing better. It didn’t have to mean that Harry was doing even worse just because George was finally doing better.

Yet it felt like he’d been sitting at a bus stop, watching everyone else stand up and leave as their buses arrived, and George had been the last straggler besides himself—and he’d just boarded a bus and left Harry alone, the only one still without a destination.

And he knew he’d be sitting there waiting forever, alone, if he didn’t pick a bus to get on.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

“Nature Lovers,” Harry reported, throwing himself down on the Slytherin common room’s sofa once again.

They hadn’t actually started the dream there, but after blinking into consciousness in the library, they’d both agreed that the common room was more comfortable. At least it had couches and armchairs, unlike every other place they shared memories of in the castle.

“Which entails?” Malfoy prompted, as they launched into yet another dissection of Harry’s job prospects.

“Breeder, Gardener, Herbalist, Magizoologist, Owlet Trainer, and Creature Tamer.”

It didn’t take them long to work their way through the list. ‘Owlet trainer’ was the only option that inspired any discussion at all, as Malfoy pointed out, “I thought you loved owls, though. That snowy owl of yours—”

“Hedwig,” Harry said quietly, throat tight.

Malfoy seemed to hear the grief, and his words were slow and careful as he went on. “Yes. Hedwig. You lost her?”

Harry nodded tightly. “When the Death Eaters tried to catch me leaving my relatives’ house. She took a killing curse that was aimed at me.”

“I’m sorry,” the Slytherin said, his voice soft as snowfall. He didn’t speak for several seconds, but Harry didn’t either, so it was finally Malfoy who broke the silence to ask, “But you wouldn’t want to consider training owlets, knowing how much an owl can mean to a person?”

Harry shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and tucking his face against the back cushion of the sofa, no longer worried that Malfoy might be cruel about him acting so obviously soft.

“It was bad enough losing her. I’d rather not have to send off clutch after clutch of them.”

“You ridiculous sop,” Malfoy said, reaching over to muss Harry’s hair, but there was nothing but gentle affection in the tease.

When they finished that night’s jobs, Malfoy said, “We’ve passed the halfway mark by now, haven’t we?”

Harry nodded, his eyes still closed and Malfoy’s hand still resting atop his head. “Only seven more sections.”

Malfoy’s fingers moved, toying with the loose licks that sprung up in different directions, and Harry kept his face against the smooth velvet of the sofa’s back cushions.

“Well, at least it’s borne some ideas,” Malfoy mused.

Harry considered bringing up the idea they’d been talking about the night before—about somehow doing something to help Muggle-borns fit in—but he felt oddly shy about expressing genuine interest in anything after so long banging on about how he had no clue what he wanted to do with his life.

So instead he lifted his face and asked, “Hey, did you ever play Exploding Snap down here?”

And after Malfoy sat up straight, taking his hand away so he could summon a deck of cards, they sat on their separate ends of the sofa and talked about nothing important at all until one of the explosions sent them both out of the dream and back to waking, with a jolt, in their own beds.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

It wasn’t until the next night, after a long day of dull schoolwork and once again feeling guilty about dodging Sunday roast at the Burrow, that Harry broached the subject.

(That night’s topic had been The Business-Minded. Accountant, Administrator, Contract Specialist, Entrepreneur, Investor, Marketer, Salesperson.)

They were lounging in the Slytherin common room again, a Wizard’s chess board balanced on the cushions between them because Harry couldn’t go any farther into the room than the sofa where he and Ron had once sat. And Harry had already realized that he was going to lose the game, which was probably why Malfoy had insisted on chess tonight instead of another round of Exploding Snap. Malfoy might not be as good as Ron at chess, but he was still better than Harry.

“So, about what you said the other night,” Harry started, tugging at his lip with one hand while the other hovered over his pieces. He and Malfoy were both seated cross-legged on the sofa, their shoes toed off and left on the floor.

“Potter, we literally spend every night together, and a lot of topics come up. I’m going to need you to be more specific.” Malfoy’s grey eyes flicked up to meet Harry’s with a smirk. “I’m also going to need you to make your move.”

“Fuck off, I’m thinking,” Harry insisted, moving his hand again between his knight and his bishop. “And I meant the stuff about helping Muggle-borns and all. Are there really not already any programmes in place for that sort of thing?”

He settled on the knight and moved it forward, then he looked back up at his opponent.

Malfoy was staring at him with an odd expression, pained and faintly disbelieving.

“What?” Harry asked.

“You’re asking me, the boy raised in the most resolutely purist family you know, whether I’m aware of any programmes designed to help make Muggle-borns’ lives easier?”

Harry felt a prickly heat burning in his cheeks and somewhere in his chest.

“It’s not that I’m against the idea,” Malfoy added hastily. “It’s just—by the time I personally came around to thinking that murdering the lot of them might not be the best method to try to keep Wizarding culture intact, I was trapped within a mad cult, mostly trying to survive. And then in prison. I simply haven’t yet had the time to learn much about what else is out there—on the other side, as it were.”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Harry muttered, wishing—like always—that they could remember things when they were awake to research them.

Malfoy picked up his rook and made a decisive move. Then he said, “However, I can make an educated guess that such programmes do not exist—or if they do, they are terrible at what they do—given the lack of support that you seem to have experienced. And your friend Granger, too, no?”

Harry sat up, leaning away from the chessboard to rest his arm atop the sofa back beside him. “That’s true,” he said. “My aunt and uncle may have been one thing, but I think Hermione’s parents would have been keen to get involved more if they could. Yet I’ve almost never seen them, where other parents might come to Quidditch games or do school shopping together or such things.”

Malfoy nodded. “I have to assume that there really isn’t any significant or organized support system. Didn’t you come to Diagon Alley the first time with Hagrid? I remember him coming to collect you from Madam Malkin’s.”

“You...remember that?”

Malfoy scoffed. “He’s a bloody half-giant, Potter! You don’t think a sight like that tends to stick in one’s young memory?!” Then he cleared his throat, eyes downcast as if he was studying the board. “Besides. You were the first new child I'd ever met who wasn’t the son of one of my father’s friends. Of course I remember. Now are you going to make your move or not?”

Harry reached out and moved a piece at random. There was no way he was going to win, but perhaps he could at least baffle Malfoy for a while.

Mostly he was still thinking about the fact that he’d been the first new face Draco had encountered when preparing to come to Hogwarts, just like Draco had been the first of his new classmates that Harry had met as well.

“What the hell kind of move is that?!” Malfoy demanded, frowning at the board. “That made no sense at all, Potter!”

“Oh, you think so?” Harry said archly, just to keep fucking with the Slytherin.

Malfoy was still studying the board, eyes darting about as he considered moves. “My point was,” he said, as his fingers hovered over one piece then another, “that they at least sent a member of the staff to make sure you got your equipment for First Year. But was there much more than that?”

Harry had to admit that there had not been. Hagrid had left him with a train ticket and then disappeared, with not a peep or hint of support between that one shopping trip and the day that Harry had shown up at King’s Cross with no idea how to find Platform 9¾. 

A few more moves were exchanged before Harry asked, “But you said I could maybe try to organize something. Like some summer programme for new witches and wizards.”

Malfoy took another of his pieces, which meant that Harry was now down to just seven on the board.

“You’re Harry bloody Potter,” Malfoy said, watching as his knight knocked the remains of Harry’s pawn off the edge of the board. “You could do whatever the hell you want. You could probably kidnap the children without their parents’ permission and get away with it.”

“No thanks,” Harry said. He made a reckless move that put his last remaining rook right in the path of Malfoy’s queen, but if Malfoy moved to take it, then his queen would be vulnerable to Harry’s knight. It really didn’t benefit him beyond hoping that Malfoy might be distracted enough to fall for it. “But do you think people would go in for something like that?”

The blond was scowling at Harry’s rook, but he didn’t take the bait. Instead he moved one of his knights into a position Harry hadn’t even noticed and declared, “Checkmate, Potter. Were you even trying?”

“Honestly? Not really.”

Sighing, Malfoy levitated the board to the table it had previously been on, the pieces all knitting themselves back together and hopping into line. Then he flopped down to lie across the sofa, kicking his feet up over Harry, who only offered a token protest.

“As to your earlier question, ‘would people go in for something like that’...” Malfoy folded his hands beneath his blond head, his lean body stretched out in one long line. “Would it really matter? It’s not as if you have to worry about staying afloat or making a profit, really. So if you at least help a few people, do you really care how popular it is?”

Harry considered the question. “Well, if it was nothing but a way to bleed money, then no one else would want to carry on after me,” he pointed out. “And I wouldn't want that support to just go away once I'm not there to drive it.” He lifted Malfoy's feet off of his lap and sat them on the cushions so that he could scoot back to adopt a similar pose, his back against the armrest at his end of the sofa. He carefully stretched his legs out in the narrow space between the back cushions and Malfoy’s body, stacking one leg atop the other.

“Eventually, yes, that would be an issue. But the point was that you could keep going for a while and take the time needed to build something up without having to worry about staying afloat financially. That’s an advantage not many have when considering doing something that might benefit society.”

“You have it,” Harry muttered.

Malfoy dropped a heavy heel upon Harry’s thigh in response, which caused him to yelp and roll slightly away so he didn’t accidentally get it in the family jewels.

“Watch it!”

“Do you want my advice or not?” Malfoy asked.

“Well, do I have the choice of anyone else here?” Harry shot back.

Malfoy lifted his leg in threat again, leaving his heel hovering mere inches away from Harry’s groin, and Harry grabbed that black-socked foot, holding it captive.

“No more of that!” he insisted, digging a thumb into the arch of Malfoy's thin foot, which made the other boy jump with a yelp.

Grinning, Harry dug both thumbs in as he held onto his prize, making Malfoy squirm and try to jerk his foot back.

“You’re such a bastard, Potter!” Malfoy shrieked, kicking at Harry with his free foot, while Harry twisted away, keeping his most sensitive bits facing the sofa back so they wouldn’t get hit.

“I learned from the best!” Harry shouted over the cursing and grunting. “You’ve been such an inspiration to me all these years, Malfoy—I never would’ve learned to torture a rival without your example!”

“Fine! Truce, truce, just stop already!”

Harry let up on the pressure so he was no longer intentionally causing pain, but he didn’t let go of Malfoy’s foot. He knew better than to give up his leverage.

Breath slightly ragged, Malfoy settled back down on the sofa, tugging his robes into place and brushing his hair out of his pink face.

“And the public think you’re some kind of hero,” he grumped, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to glare, but it was hard to look intimidating lying on his back with one leg still draped across Harry’s and his narrow foot resting in Harry’s lap.

Harry pinched a toe through the thin dress socks that Malfoy apparently wore under his fancy Oxfords. “I think it’s fair to say that the public don’t know the first thing about me.”

Malfoy let out a huff, but he also looked a little smug, a slight curve hiding in the corner of his mouth, perhaps pleased that he knew more of Harry than most did.

“Now, what were we discussing before you attacked me?”

“You kicked me first—!”

Malfoy spoke right over Harry’s protests, raising his voice. “Ah yes, you implied that I had the resources to pursue noble causes such as helping Muggle-borns, if only I were so inclined.”

Harry gave the foot in his hand a little squeeze in rebuke, but he didn’t bother interrupting again.

“That is somewhat unclear at present,” Malfoy admitted. “I do have my own vault for pocket money, but it’s only ever contained what my parents put into it. Luckily those monthly deposits are processed by Gringotts automatically, so they’ve continued even with my parents being currently ‘indisposed,’ shall we say.”

Harry frowned at the foot in his hands, and Malfoy wiggled his toes in response.

“But your family is obscenely rich, right?” Harry said. “I bet your little ‘deposits’ are more than some people earn in a month.”

“You might be surprised then. Twenty galleons a month will pay for a stupid amount of sweets and butterbeer for a spoiled young twat, but it won’t rent you even a one-room flat.”

The blond uncrossed his arms, resting his hands in his lap instead, fingers loosely interlaced.

“The Malfoy family estate—minus anything that the Ministry might seize, if they consider it to be ill-gotten gains—will remain in my father’s hands until his passing. I imagine my mother may have access to some vaults once she is released from Azkaban, but believe it or not, we’ve not had much opportunity to all sit down together and discuss the family fortune.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “It wasn’t a top priority during the few minutes we were given to say good-bye before my father was to be locked away for the next 20 years.”

So it was possible that Malfoy was actually going to have to work for his living, once he was finally allowed to leave Hogwarts. And it was Harry who might be sitting on a huge inheritance and free to do whatever he wanted—and free to not do anything he didn’t want to.

It was an odd reversal, and Harry wasn’t sure what to say in response. It wasn’t that bad of a fate—most people had to work for their living, so it was only normal, right? But it felt a bit rich of him to say so, when Harry still had two whole vaults full of galleons at his disposal.

“At any rate, I’m not touching any of it beyond school expenses now,” Malfoy said. “And I hadn’t for most of Sixth and Seventh Years, so it’s building up to a decent little nest egg—but perhaps not the millions of Galleons you’d imagined.” He finally met Harry’s eyes again with one of his wry smiles. “I suppose I lucked out really, getting stuck at Hogwarts. Free room and board for two years, and I still had a whole trunk full of robes and clothing abandoned here in May. Everything’s coming up roses.”

They were both silent for a few moments, the flickering light from the fire filling the common room.

“Okay, but if you got 20 galleons a month the entire time we were at school, you must’ve wasted it on some ridiculous shit over the years,” Harry said, trying to divert the conversation. “Tell me about the stupidest things you’ve bought.”

And Malfoy obliged, launching into an animated retelling of once buying and consuming so many Chocolate Cauldrons when he was eleven that he’d ended up vomiting all over the common room, then having to try to explain away—still half drunk—why he reeked of the Firewhiskey filling when Snape had been called in to see to him.

They carried on swapping stories of getting in trouble with their house heads, Harry absently running his thumb along the foot in his hands, until dreamless sleep caught up to them and the night drifted away once again.

Chapter 16

On Monday, October 15th, Malfoy spoke unprompted at dinner for the first time.

To be totally honest, it may have been prompted. Or at least plotted. Harry had a hard time being sure if Luna was intentionally spouting misleading ideas about Wizarding traditions to goad the pure-blood boy or if it was just Luna’s family having their own odd ideas about how the world worked, which was at least as likely.

The point was that Luna had been talking about Samhain celebrations, as they approached the end of the month, and Malfoy finally opened his mouth to speak without anyone asking him a direct question.

“So I was hoping to propose to Professor McGonagall that we might hold a more traditional celebration,” Luna declared, sopping up some gravy from her plate with a piece of bread. “At least for the Eighth Years, since we’re all of age.”

“What is a traditional celebration?” Harry asked, baffled.

Over the years, he’d somehow picked up on the fact that Samhain was another name for Halloween, but nothing more than that. And growing up, he'd certainly experienced Halloween plenty. He’d watched Dudley go out trick-or-treating with friends, the others mostly dressed up in bin bags and cheap plastic masks while Dudley would get some ridiculous bespoke costume that Aunt Petunia had slaved over for weeks. And at Hogwarts, they’d always had the annual feast and lavish decorations. But what traditions existed beyond carved pumpkins and overindulging in sugary treats?

“Well, I’d say you must have a bonfire—ideally two,” Luna explained, using her knife to spread some mint sauce atop her soggy bread. “Everyone who attends brings a fire from their home, and then they all use their fires to light the communal bonfire—”

“What? No, that’s—”

Malfoy broke off mid-exclamation, mouth clamping shut as his three dinnermates all turned to him in surprise. His face grew pink as he looked down at his plate.

Luna smiled peacefully, though, as she leaned in towards the boy beside her. “Yes, Draco? Did I say something wrong? I imagine you would know more about these old traditions than I do.”

The Slytherin’s grey eyes darted to her, as if he suspected that the question might be some sort of trap. “I may have been the one mistaken,” he said stiffly. “Do go on, Lovegood.”

“No, please,” Luna insisted, appearing ready to hang on his every word. “Tell us how you celebrated growing up.”

Malfoy cleared his throat, his eyes down on the table again. But he did speak.

“I’m sure it’s possible that different traditions could exist in different areas,” he began, still unwilling to say that Luna had been wrong. “But in my family, you had to put out all of the home’s fires before you left. You could only carry a small light with you, but even that would be put out before lighting the bonfires. It had to be full dark before the new fire could be lit.”

His eyes flicked up too quick to really connect with anyone else’s. “It was from that fresh fire that everyone took a light to rekindle the home’s fires at the end of the night.” He cleared his throat again, cheeks still pink from the attention. “A fresh start after putting the old year to rest. As it were.”

Harry stared at the blond boy opposite him. He’d never heard of any of this, and he certainly hadn’t expected to be hearing it from Malfoy of all people. Or at least not in a perfectly neutral tone and not dripping with disdain and a Potter, you idiot, how could you not even know this much?

“The old year?” Dean asked, from beside Harry.

“Yes, Samhain used to be considered the end of the year,” Luna explained, smiling broadly up at the candles floating overhead against the dark night sky. “The harvest was all done, the dark half of the year was beginning, and it was the last chance to say farewell to those lost. Samhain offered closure, so you could move forward to what was next.”

The words struck Harry with surprising force.

Closure. He could probably use some of that.

Luna leaned on her elbows, her soggy bread completely forgotten as she peered at Malfoy. “Did your family do dumb suppers? We only did once, the year my mother died.”

“We held one every year,” Malfoy said. “Or at least, we did until I came to Hogwarts.”

“What’s that?” Harry asked, too caught up to be embarrassed about willingly asking Malfoy to explain something to him.

“A special meal to be eaten in silence,” Malfoy said quietly, still not looking up. “Shared with those gone.”

Luna nodded eagerly, her waves of hair falling about her shoulders. “You set places for the dead, and no one is to speak a word the entire time. It was so hard for me to stay quiet when we did it for my mother, but it was also lovely. It really felt as if she was there with us. I’ve thought for a long time about wanting to do it again.”

She continued to ply Malfoy with questions, trying to tease out support for her idea of a traditional celebration at Hogwarts.

Harry only dimly paid attention, turning slightly to mutter to Dean, “Had you ever heard of any of this stuff?”

“Bits and pieces,” Dean said, adopting a similarly low tone so they didn’t interrupt Luna and Malfoy’s ongoing conversation. “I know Seamus mentioned missing the bonfires a few times, and I think he might’ve said something about a special supper.”

“Huh.”

Harry wondered if Ron knew any of this stuff and just hadn’t ever mentioned it. Hermione never would’ve experienced it herself, but it seemed likely that if he asked her, she would know as much or more than Malfoy from reading some dusty old books about Wizarding traditions of yore.

He’d just never known to ask.

Tuning back into Luna’s lilting voice, Harry took a distracted bite of his roast and chewed slowly, wondering what else he might still be missing after all these years in the Wizarding world. And as much as he wasn’t sure about joining in with any old traditions that the Malfoy family had thought good to uphold, the idea of a special night dedicated to seeking closure and starting over did have some appeal.

So you can move forward to what is next.

He thought a lot about those words as he tucked away the last of his dinner.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

“See! This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about!”

Harry threw himself down on their usual sofa, stretching out long and figuring Malfoy would take one of the other seats that Harry himself couldn’t reach in the Slytherin common room. To his surprise, the blond dropped to the floor instead, leaning his back against the same sofa they’d been sharing for days, his shoulder at Harry’s elbow.

“You have indeed proven your point through your own ignorance, Potter,” Malfoy agreed, tipping his head back to offer a smirk over his shoulder. “Congratulations on being such a dunce.”

“Git,” Harry accused, half-heartedly, with a snort of laughter. He folded his hands under his head and stared up at the arched ceilings of the dungeon room.

“But you’re right,” Malfoy said, his tone musing as he left his head leaning on the sofa’s cushions, his pale blond hair catching on the material of Harry’s sweatshirt. “It’s ridiculous that people like you and Thomas haven’t even heard of any of it. It—it’s not about being pure-blood, I swear, or not exactly that, but—it’s our culture. We shouldn't just allow it to be forgotten.” He turned his head again to look at Harry, checking his expression as if he was afraid the words were going to be met with anger.

Harry looked down at Malfoy’s face, trying to see the earnest young man before him now and not the boy who used to sneer at Muggle-borns.

“No, it isn’t wrong to want to keep traditions alive,” Harry agreed. Then he hastily added, “Assuming those traditions aren’t harmful to anyone.” Muggle-baiting might well be considered traditional by some. “But you also can’t expect people to just give up their own cultures either.” He was watching the Slytherin’s expression just as closely now in return as he said, “The cultures that other people bring with them from the places they come from are just as valid as the ones you’ve brought from your family, right? We have to be able to make enough space for both.”

Malfoy didn’t snap back, like he would’ve in all the years they’d known each other in school—or like he might’ve done even weeks ago here in these dreams. He continued to gaze solemnly at Harry for a few moments, then he nodded and looked away at the table between the sofas.

“Yes. I know that.”

But he looked defeated, sitting alone on the floor of the Slytherin common room. Harry felt a twinge of regret for inserting so much reality into a dream that had started with their usual teasing and laughter.

“Tell me about how your family celebrated Samhain,” he said.

And while Malfoy hesitated for a moment, he opened up far more here than the few grudging details he’d shared so reluctantly at dinner.

He described the thrill of putting out all the fires and lights in the Manor, then slipping through his own dark house with only a candle to light the way. How he’d walked with his hand in his mother’s when he was small, her warm grip steady and comforting while the familiar corridors all seemed strange and eerie. Of Lucius leading the way ahead of them, stately and composed, his pale hair catching the candlelight, a shining flag at the head of their little troop as he led them through the darkness.

Harry had no fond memories of Lucius Malfoy, but he had to admit the image captured the imagination.

“No one was to speak from the time we put out the last fire. We would cross the fields in silence, with nothing but our small candles to provide light, until we reached the table.” There was a faint smile in Malfoy’s voice, sweet and sad. “It must have been set out by the house-elves, but I never considered how it came to be there when I was a child. It was just part of the mystery of the night—a full table in the middle of an empty meadow, sparkling crystal and gilt plates in the candlelight, and no one speaking a word. Just a knowing smile and a wink from my mother whenever I looked up at her.” 

Malfoy stared off into the distance, wistful and looking terribly alone. Harry tentatively lowered his arms and let one settle against the back of the other boy’s shoulders, a small reminder that Harry was still there.

He saw Malfoy’s throat work as he swallowed hard, then the Slytherin began speaking again.

“I remember my father’s father being there, when I was very small, before he died of the dragon-pox. And my mother’s parents used to join some years. They were all there when I was five, the year that Great-Aunt Walburga had passed.”

The harridan from the portrait in Grimmauld Place. It was odd to think that she’d been a sister to Malfoy’s grandparents—someone who had been mourned or at least honored in death.

“But many years it was just the three of us. After we’d all finished eating, we blew out the candles we’d brought with us and the candles on the table. Then we would be all alone out there under the huge night sky, in the middle of the fields, in complete dark. It truly did feel like some sort of ending—like you’d pulled a curtain shut or closed a book after reaching its end.”

Harry looked at the fire still burning low in the fireplace across the room from them, imagining it. He’d experienced that kind of dark, flying around over the lake and the pitch with Malfoy in these dreams.

“Then the bonfires. When it was just the three of us, my mother would start one fire while my father would start the other.”

The smile was back in his voice, but warmer now.

“The lighting of the fires meant it was time for talking and life again. My father would tell terrifying ghost stories, making me shriek and hug my mother tight. She would have soul cakes to eat, and the two of us would play silly divination games with hazelnuts in the fire. Finally, we would make sure we'd all walked between the fires to burn away the past year. Then we would take our small flames with us back to the Manor, using them to rekindle the fires in our rooms and bring the house back to life.”

Harry’s arm was still lying on the sofa behind Malfoy’s shoulders, making it a pillow for him as he leaned back, his head heavy on Harry’s forearm and his pale hair spilling over Harry’s red sweatshirt.

Harry cleared his throat, voice rasping slightly when he asked, “Why don’t we do any of that here at Hogwarts?”

“I don't know for sure,” Malfoy said with a shake of his head, the heavy weight rolling over Harry’s arm. A pained smirk played at his lips. “You won’t like hearing it from me, but I have to assume it was a choice that Professor Dumbledore made at some point. They still had bonfires and things when my father was a student.”

It wasn’t inconceivable that Dumbledore might have done away with such things, replacing traditions favored by the old pure-blood families he so disliked with benign sweets and cheery jack-o-lanterns instead.

But that didn’t mean he should have done away with the old completely.

“He did have an unfortunate habit of thinking he knew what was best for other people,” Harry agreed ruefully. “It didn’t always work out as well for the other people.”

Malfoy glanced up at him. “No. I suppose not.”

“But maybe we can still bring back some of it. The way Luna is trying to do with this Samhain idea.” Harry nudged Malfoy's back with the arm that was trapped under that blond head. “You could help teach about these kinds of things, too, if I were to try to help Muggle-borns learn how to be wizards—and if you weren't such a twat.”

Those grey eyes were fixed on the ceiling, the long line of Malfoy's throat exposed as his head rested on Harry’s arm.

“I'm stuck at Hogwarts for the next two years, Potter. Remember?”

“Well, maybe that would be perfect,” Harry countered, feeling emboldened by the fact that Malfoy hadn’t scoffed at the idea. “Maybe I could talk to McGonagall about bringing kids here early, so they could get used to the place and learn what they need to know. Then you could help out from here and continue to teach them things during the school year.”

“That, ah, that sounds rather a lot like you just making me do all your work for you,” Malfoy said, his voice catching in his throat as he tried to make a joke of it, “rather than this being some perfect job that you thought up for yourself.”

“Maybe my perfect job could be one we worked together on,” Harry said. He watched that profile carefully, feeling how still Malfoy was holding himself. “You said I should work with one or two other people that I got along with.”

“We don't get along.”

“We very obviously do.”

“Not out there,” Malfoy whispered.

“Not yet.” Harry nudged the shoulders resting against him. “We've got eight more months till graduation. Plenty of time to come up with a programme and learn to like each other in real life.”

He could imagine it far more easily than he would've expected. Malfoy snootily lecturing new students about Wizarding traditions and norms, self-important and ridiculous. The two of them squabbling and laughing as they fought over how he needed to lighten up. More nights like this, talking and dreaming of next steps beside a comfortable fire.

There was something like longing in the unhappy expression that flickered across Malfoy's face.

“Potter, it’s never going to happen. Not out there.”

“You don’t know that,” Harry insisted.

Malfoy squeezed his eyes shut, brow furrowed and obviously unhappy. “I do.”

Harry nudged him again with that arm. “You’ve been known to be wrong about the things you believed before, Malfoy.”

A pained smile broke across the blond’s face as he kept his eyes shut, his head leaning back on Harry’s forearm.

“You want me to put my faith in you being right?” He gave a weary chuckle. “What a nightmare this is.”

“A dream,” Harry insisted. “And sometimes dreams come true.”

But as confident as he tried to sound, Harry also harbored his own worries that this one never would.

Chapter 17

During the nights, Harry spent the next week slowly drawing Malfoy into his planning, fleshing out ideas of what Muggle-borns needed to know about the Wizarding world, talking about aspects of Wizarding culture that even many half-bloods didn’t learn about, and imagining a future Harry could genuinely see himself looking forward to, if only he could carry it with him back into the real world.

During the day, Harry spent the next week slowly succumbing to Luna's planning, not entirely sure how he felt about her traditional Samhain idea but intrigued despite himself. Classwork continued to drag, he was turning through the last pages of Hermione’s book, and as he counted down the days to the celebration that was supposed to represent a fresh start for them all, he wondered more and more desperately what the hell he was supposed to start in on.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

It was October 21, a Sunday, and Harry had been kidnapped back to the Burrow again for the first time in weeks.

“I’m eating plenty, I swear!” he protested as Molly dropped another large spoonful of mash onto his plate. “There is no shortage of food at Hogwarts!”

“And yet you’re skinnier than ever, Harry. It’s just not right, seeing a boy your age wasting away. They must be doing something wrong up at that castle.”

“I’m hardly wasting away!”

For a moment, though, his mind did flash to Malfoy, thin and pale when he did show up in the Great Hall for a meal. He still looked as unwell as he had when he’d first been released from Azkaban, despite it being more than a month now back among the endless food and relative freedom of Hogwarts.

“I’ll take some more here, Mum,” Ron said, waving his mother over so that she bustled on and left Harry’s plate containing only a hillock of mash and not yet a mountain.

“How are things at old Hoggywarts?” George asked from across the table. “Our Wheezes still providing plenty of chaos? Shall we send you back with a trunkful or two you can peddle direct to the masses?”

Harry chuckled weakly, tucking into his food. “I don’t think I should probably be helping kids to buy more pranks.”

“Aw, what a dull boy you’ve grown up to be, Harrykins!” George flung a pea across the table with his spoon, managing to get Harry right in cheek. “You’re turning into another Hermione here, but if you think that’ll help you win Ron back from her, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. A straighter man I’ve never seen than our Ron. Dreadfully dull of him, but I guess some people just like to limit their choices.”

Harry flushed, Ron’s ears turned red, and Hermione exclaimed, “Oh, honestly, George!” Though she, for one, was actually smiling.

“Perhaps we chose wrong in entrusting you with our most precious Hogwarts relic,” George mused. “I thought you’d turn out to be more interesting, mate.”

“But my dad’s the one who made it!” Harry insisted.

“Made what?” Percy asked, inserting himself into the conversation now that his curiosity had been piqued. Harry’s eyes flicked back to George.

“Oh, just an old map,” George said airily, waving a fork through the air. “It marked some of the secret passages for sneaking around in Hogwarts—and out of it.”

“You had a map like that? And you gave it to Harry, when he was just a child?!” Percy asked, the former Head Boy sounding scandalized.

Harry caught himself genuinely smiling. He hadn’t thought he wanted to come to dinner when he was still sulking around in the castle for another weekend and feeling aimless, but once he was actually surrounded by the Weasleys again, he could admit it felt good to be with family and friends. At least when everyone was joking about the past and not asking what he might do next.

The conversation rolled on, only getting louder and more outraged once Molly got word of the twins teaching Harry how to sneak out of the castle at just thirteen. By the time Arthur had managed to calm things down again, Molly’s hair had frazzled and George was grinning ear to ear.

“Is the castle getting all decorated for Halloween?” Hermione asked wistfully. “It’ll be sad not to have any feast or anything to look forward to this year.”

“Only because you keep turning down my invitation to an adult fancy-dress and frightful-drinks party,” George singsonged from the other side of the table.

“We’re actually, er, putting together something a bit different this year,” Harry said. “I mean, the Great Hall will still be decorated and all, and the regular feast in the evening, but the upper years are trying to put on something...a bit more traditional?”

Hermione lit up immediately. “Oh, a traditional Samhain celebration?”

Harry smiled fondly, amused to see it confirmed that Hermione had indeed learned all this on her own at some point, just like he had suspected she would have. “Yeah, something like that. It was Luna’s idea at first, and we’ve gotten McGonagall to agree that the students who are of age can do the bonfire and all.”

Hermione looked as if it was a physical pain to realize she was missing out on such a chance, which hadn’t come up during their years at Hogwarts.

“That’s such a wonderful idea, Harry. Oh, I’m really very jealous that you’ll all be doing it without us.”

Harry wondered for the first time if maybe they could open it up to the students who hadn’t come back for Eighth Year. It could be a reunion of sorts—but he had no idea how McGonagall would react to the idea, so he vowed to ask the headmistress before possibly getting Hermione's hopes up.

“Did you all do the bonfires and things, growing up?” Harry said instead, looking around at the assembled Weasleys.

“Oh goodness, we certainly used to,” Molly said, looking off at the family clock with a distracted air. “I’m not sure when we stopped exactly.”

“You stopped?” Percy asked in surprise. “We always celebrated when I was young.”

“Naw, it definitely stopped once most of you had gone on to Hogwarts,” Ron said through a mouthful of food. “I remember doing the bonfire, too, but I think by the time the twins left for school, and it was only me and Gin at home, we just sort of stopped. Last time I remember must’ve been when I was 8 or 9 maybe?”

Percy was giving their mother a betrayed look, and she flushed and flapped a hand at him. “Now don’t you give me that look! It’s not like one of you fine grown adults couldn’t help take up some of the burden of planning family holidays! It’s just so easy to forget and let such things fall by the wayside when it’s only me and Arthur at home.”

Ron muttered, “And Gin and I were just chopped liver.”

“Oh, you know what I mean, Ron!”

Hermione let her silverware rest on the plate as she leaned forward and asked with interest, “Did you used to do dumb suppers?”

“With this lot?” Arthur asked with a shout of laughter.

Molly shook her head ruefully. “No, I’m afraid not. We certainly did when I was a girl, but after one or two tries when the children were young, I gave up on any hope that we’d get them all quiet at once.”

Harry could easily imagine how badly it must have gone. It was nice, though, to see this extra glimpse into the Weasleys’ lives before he’d entered the picture. It was nice to know that this was a tradition worth keeping alive, and not just something for families like the Malfoys.

The conversation wound on throughout the meal, full of easy chatter about the old days and what old friends were up to now. After they’d cleared the table and been shooed away from any washing up by Mrs. Weasley, Harry, Ron, and Hermione ended up sitting out by the pond as the sun got low, bundled up in their jackets and scarves.

“So how are things really?” Ron asked, tossing pebbles into the water from the little pile he’d collected on his palm.

“They’re...okay,” Harry said, with much less enthusiasm than he’d feigned when responding to the other Weasleys. “Classes are still brutal, so mostly there’s just not much time to do anything but work, eat, and sleep.”

“How goes the terrible idea of not pranking Malfoy?”

Hermione frowned at Ron’s phrasing, but Harry laughed. “It’s going about as well as you could expect, I guess. Luna and Dean have been saints, going with me to the Slytherin table, and usually Luna will do most the talking.”

“She actually talks to Malfoy?” Ron asked, eyes wide.

“More like at Malfoy,” Harry admitted. “Malfoy barely says a word unless someone asks him a question directly, but he sits there and eats beside us. Hopefully that does something for whatever rehabilitation of his image that McGonagall hoped I’d achieve.”

Throwing his whole palmful of rocks into the pond with a rain of plinks and plonks, Ron shook his head in disbelief. He started picking up more pebbles from the ground as he groused, “Still so weird that you’re eating dinners with Draco Malfoy. And not putting anything in them.”

Harry shrugged, really not knowing what to say either. He was hardly keen to defend the idea, because he didn’t like doing it himself. But it also wasn’t as if Malfoy was actually doing anything rude or objectionable. It continued to be nothing but awkward.

Hermione had begun digging pebbles out of the mud as well, placing them on Ron’s palm as she freed each one. “What did you think of the book, Harry? Did it help at all?”

He’d read the last section the night before, and it had been just as useless as every other one. He began scratching at the ground as well as he mumbled, “Not a ton.” He looked up at Hermione once. “I appreciate the thought and all, but I’m just no closer to figuring anything out. None of the jobs really caught my fancy.”

He got a little rock free and added it to Ron’s palm as well. “I wish I knew what I wanted to do.”

Hermione put another pebble beside his, the small pile tumbling over so that Ron had to put both his two large hands together to keep the little rocks from falling.

“Well, maybe you should just take a break after school then,” Hermione suggested, poking through the grasses for her next pebble. “Remember it’s fairly common for Muggle students to take a gap year. You could travel for a while. Or even consider going back to uni and living in the Muggle world for a bit.”

Traveling alone didn’t sound all that fun to Harry. And uni—

“Even if I could go back to uni, I don’t know anything I really want to study there either. Is there a degree program on just, like, how to be an adult?”

He put another two little rocks on Ron’s hands.

“Well, not exactly. But I think the process of going through higher education is supposed to help you naturally learn a lot of those skills.”

“That’s true. But I don’t know if I could still go back, or even want to, after all these years as a wizard,” Harry said, watching Hermione put her latest rocks in Ron’s hands.

“Okay, seriously, why is everyone piling rocks on me?” Ron asked.

Hermione and Harry looked at each other, then they dissolved into laughter.

“Does this mean something? Am I missing it?” Ron demanded. “Some weird Muggle thing?”

Hermione put her hand under Rons’, tipping some of the rocks back into her own palm and then flinging them at the pond in a scattered spray. “No, dear. Just an us thing, I’m afraid.”

“Well...okay. As long as I’m not missing anything,” Ron said, shrugging and tossing the rest of the pebbles at the pond before stretching out both his hands, ready to receive another load. Chuckling, Harry began to pick at the ground again.

“Have you considered speaking with a Mind Healer, Harry?” Hermione asked, collecting pebbles in one palm to tip them into Ron’s hand again. She peered at Harry’s face, her eyes searching his. “It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with you that needs fixing, you know that. But they are professionals who can help with exactly this sort of thing. Coaching people through difficult times—and helping people better understand what it is they want from their lives and try to help them achieve their goals.”

Harry wrapped both his hands around his ankles, staring out at the little pond before them. “I might end up doing that eventually. If I really can’t figure things out. But you know I don’t like talking to strangers about personal things. I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

Hermione nudged him with a shoulder and said, “You think you don’t like talking to strangers about personal things, but you’ve never actually given a Mind Healer a shot. You might find you actually like it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Harry agreed, just so they could move to another topic.

“What about Quidditch?” Ron asked, his hands still forming a cup that Hermione was slowly filling. “You said a while back that you might still consider trying out.”

“I did say that.”

Ron lifted his eyebrows. “So? That’s at least one idea, right? I’m pretty sure you’d get some offers, whether as a starter or second team. And Gin’s still planning to try out in the spring, too. Maybe join her for some practices, keep your skills sharp.” He gave an awkward little cough, then added, “I mean, if it wouldn’t be too weird or anything.”

Harry smiled, and it was mostly true when he said, “It wouldn’t be too weird. We’re really fine.” Hugging his legs tight, he considered the thought. “Yeah, maybe I should at least talk to her about training. Quidditch is the only real fallback I’ve got, and it would be stupid to miss out on it just because I’m out of shape.”

Snorting, Ron threw his pile of rocks in the pond and declared, “Harry Potter, ladies and gentleman, the only young man in his prime who would dare call professional Quidditch his ‘fallback option’!”

“You know what I mean!” Harry grinned at his best friend. “It’d be brilliant in a lot of ways, I’m sure, but I’m just not too keen on the thought of constantly being talked about—or the pressure to keep winning matches week after week during the season. I’d kind of been looking forward to fading into obscurity, now that I did my bit by getting rid of You-Know-Who.”

“Yeah, obscurity, that’s definitely what’ll be waiting for you after Hogwarts,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “Good luck with that, mate.”

“A man can only dream,” Harry said solemnly.

“But you’ll talk to Gin? Maybe do some practice with her?” Ron asked, sounding a little worried. His freckles stood out on his pale skin, as they sat out in the cold October twilight, and Harry was touched by the concern in his friend’s face.

“Yeah, I’ll talk to her tomorrow morning, before Transfiguration. Find out what her regular schedule is.”

“Good,” Ron said, looking down at the ground with a smile. “That’s good.”

“And there’s still plenty of time before graduation,” Hermione said. “Quidditch gives you one option, but there’s still so much time for you to explore others, if it doesn’t end up feeling right.”

Ron lit up and asked, “Hey, if you got an offer, would you sign with the Cannons? You’d do it for your best mate, wouldn’t you? And get him season tickets?”

Their laughter echoed through the quiet evening, filling the waving grasses and dancing across the surface of the pond. He would have to go back to Hogwarts soon, and the warmth of his best friends would fade quickly, but for the moment he felt buoyed again.

Chapter 18

Harry’s heart thumped in his chest, a curious sense of nervousness making it race faster than usual as he whispered, “Nox.”

Every last magical light in his room went out.

In his left hand, he held one of the chambersticks that they’d crafted in N.E.W.T. Transfiguration that week, McGonagall leading the effort as she’d grown more and more invested in their Samhain celebration. It was an iron dish with a looped handle on one end, a sturdy ring designed to hold a fat candlestick in place, and a glass globe to keep the wind from the tiny flame he’d lit earlier with a controlled ignition spell.

With the lamps all out, the candle in his hand was the only light remaining in the perfectly dark room, which held no windows to the outside. Taking a steadying breath, Harry opened his door and stepped out from the darkness of his room into the equally dense darkness of the hall.

There was another tiny flame a little way down the corridor, and he nearly called out to find out who it was before he remembered that they weren’t supposed to speak from the time they’d put out their lights until midnight had passed. It was just before eleven now.

Hurrying after the little light, Harry managed to catch up to Hannah Abbot and Megan Jones, the two Hufflepuff girls huddled together around a shared candle. They flashed Harry nervy smiles, Hannah holding up a finger to her lips before they continued on through the castle together.

By the time they reached the grand staircase, they’d been joined by several Seventh Years from the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers.

Harry wasn’t particularly close to any of the other students around him, but he had to admit it was still thrilling to be creeping through the halls together—like when he’d made the nighttime castle his own under his dad’s Invisibility cloak as a boy. There was always something clandestine and heart-racing about slipping through dark halls in the middle of the night, no one breathing a word.

He held the front door open so that the others could pass out onto the grounds, and as he did, Harry saw another candle approaching across the dark hall. He stayed where he was, waiting for the straggler to catch up since it seemed rude to let the door swing shut in their face.

Then the small flame drew closer, and Harry saw that it was held aloft by Draco Malfoy, walking alone from the south wing. And with no one else coming after him, it would have been too awkward to continue standing there holding the door forever for no one. So, with a quiet sigh, he let Malfoy get a little headstart out onto the grass before Harry himself stepped away from the door and followed after the blond.

At first there were several feet separating them. But Malfoy slowed his steps until Harry had caught up without even trying. Perhaps it was another of Malfoy's odd ideas of ‘good manners’, like not eating when someone spoke to him, but Harry wished that the prat could just go back to not caring in the least about being polite to any of them—because now he was stuck walking side by side for the next ten minutes with Draco Malfoy without any possible distraction to make it less awkward.

Their candles both burned steadily, barely wavering thanks to the glass bowls protecting them, and there was no sound but the slight swsh of their robe hems dragging over the grass. Harry longed even for the stilted conversations they’d forced themselves to have at dinners. He would’ve positively killed for an insult or two. But instead, they had to walk on together without speaking, leaving the hulking shadow of the castle behind them and following the other lights bobbing ahead of them down to the lake.

At last they made it down the incline and reached the rear of the group, and Harry had an excuse to hurry away so that he could offer silent hugs to Dean, Seamus, and Neville, all of them smiling broadly and slapping each other on the shoulder as they held back from saying how good it was to be all together again.

It turned out McGonagall hadn’t minded at all, when Harry had proposed the idea of inviting back his former class. She’d been delighted, in fact, her eyes shining with proud tears as she promised to owl all those who hadn’t returned for Eighth Year. Looking around the lakeside now, the crowd was at least half made up of Seventh Years, but Harry also saw the Patil sisters clasping the arms of Morag MacDougal and Sue Li from Ravenclaw. And Susan Bones, Earnie MacMillan, and a boy that Harry was pretty sure had been called Wayne were all containing their giggles as they tried to pantomime with Hannah and Megan.

Harry was surprised to realize some of the Slytherins had returned as well. Millicent Bulstrode was standing at the edge of the crowd with her arms crossed, looking as surly and unyielding as ever, and from behind her, the smaller figure of Pansy Parkinson appeared, darting across the grass to reach Malfoy and throw her arms around him.

Malfoy’s own arms came up, clutching Parkinson back just as tight while they clung to one another, his face tucked into her dark hair. His shoulders hunched as he curled himself around the shorter girl.

Harry caught himself staring, unused to seeing Malfoy showing visible affection to—well, to anyone, really.

Then Harry’s view of the Slytherin reunion was cut off by the lanky figure of his own best friend, as Ron swung in front of him with a grin. Hermione was right beside him, her eyes sparkling and hands clasped before her in delight as she looked around the space they’d set out, the silent crowd of old friends and teachers, the candles all flickering gently in the wintry night.

Harry gave each of his friends one-handed hugs, still carrying his chamberstick aloft in his left hand. They made faces and gesticulated as if they were playing an odd game of charades, embarrassed smiles all around, still trying to uphold the promise not to speak.

Luckily, Luna took charge before it could grow too awkward. A clear chiming rang out across the lakeside, and everyone turned to see the Ravenclaw girl standing at the end of one of the long tables that had been set out, holding aloft a glass that she’d struck with one of the silver knives.

Smiling beatifically, she gestured broadly to the two rows of tables set up beside the lake, as long as the house tables that were usually found in the Great Hall. In fact, they might have actually been the house tables, magicked down to the shore for the evening.

The crowd of nearly fifty grown witches and wizards all began to drift to the tables, Seventh Years mostly sticking in their own little clumps and the Eighth Years and returners also congregating by old house divisions. Harry ended up at one end of the nearest table, facing the lake, together with his former yearmates from Gryffindor.

When he pulled back a chair to sit, Ron immediately grabbed the chair beside his, but Hermione stopped her boyfriend with a sharp elbow.

Ron let out a little oof but he managed not to say anything more as he turned a betrayed look upon her. With a heavy sigh, Hermione rolled her eyes and gestured at the tables, motioning at every other plate and then making a face that seemed to say “You see?”

Apparently Ron did, because he moved down to leave the space between himself and Harry empty. Harry watched, amused, easily able to imagine the lectures his friend must have got on historical traditions in preparation for the night’s celebration.

Taking his own seat, Harry looked around at the empty places to either side of himself, a small cocoon of space between him and Ron on one side, Dean on the other.

Those were the seats saved for those they’d lost. Harry glanced around at the empty chairs left between each living figure, as Seamus and Neville settled in on the opposite side of the table, Padma a little farther down and opposite Hermione.

They’d lost plenty of people—but there was enough space here for all of them. Harry could imagine the shades of his parents sitting to either side of him and smiling at him, as food magically appeared on all the plates. Perhaps Remus and Tonks would be flanking Neville across the table. The next table over, between Harry’s table and the lake, had ended up hosting the Slytherin reunion, and Harry pictured Sirius taking the empty seat beside Malfoy and making faces down at his cousin’s son, winking over at Harry while he pretended to hold a knife on Malfoy.

The whole thing brought a smile to Harry’s face.

Halloween had often reminded him in the past of how unfair it was that the night most people associated with parties and frivolous treats was the night that he had to remember why he’d lost his parents and been left to a miserable upbringing with the Dursleys. This was different, though. Nice even. In an odd way, he got to share a meal with his parents instead, and everyone else around him was also taking the length of one dinner at least to remember those they’d all lost, too, not just gorge themselves on sweets.

Maybe some old traditions truly were worth preserving.

The dark night was filled with the gentle clinking of glasses and silverware, the tiny flames they’d each brought with themselves dancing all along the tables. It was hard to see far in the gloom, but the food was as delicious as anything the house-elves ever made at Hogwarts, and Harry found himself tucking a whole plate away even though they’d had the regular dinner feast just four hours before.

As everyone scraped their plates clean and emptied their crystal goblets of wine, Luna stood and knocked her knife to her glass once again, the clear ringing easily carrying across the lakeside.

She then lifted her chamberstick, lifting the glass globe off of it so that the candle was exposed—and she blew the small flame out, the light that had briefly illuminated her disappearing and leaving her face just a pale smudge in the darkness.

Quiet rattling carried on down the table as everyone moved to copy the gesture, extinguishing their own candles so that the night grew darker and darker, until the nearly full moon and stars above were the only remaining illumination.

In that weak light, Harry watched as Professor Slughorn stood and offered his arm to McGonagall, escorting her over to the two huge piles of kindling and logs that had been prepared alongside the shore. The two professors broke apart as they reached the wood, their tall shadows each gliding around the piles until they stopped, bracketing the unlit fires.

“The harvest has been reaped, the land returns to slumber, and while we celebrate what we have gained, we also remember tonight what we have lost,” McGonagall intoned, her clipped Scottish accent ringing through the dark with authority. Her voice was almost shockingly loud after so long without any sound but quiet rustling and clattering.

“As we walk into the dark half of the year, we kindle a new light,” Slughorn said, speaking next and waving his wand in a wordless cast, “to illuminate the path ahead.”

The wood in front of him burst into a towering fire, taller than the man himself, and Slughorn was painted in warm orange light as the night lit up again.

McGonagall swung her own wand down and her bonfire also bloomed to life, a second mountain of roaring flame.

She spoke over the rush of fire, the hissing and crackling of little branches. “May the fire burn away past sorrows and bring shared warmth to our hearths once more.”

Then the two teachers disappeared around the fires, appearing again on their far side and then walking between the two pyres to come striding back towards the dining tables together, just as Luna had told Harry they all ought to do before returning home—or to their rooms, at least—that night.

Seamus let out a whoop, and then cheers and laughter and clapping erupted from all along the tables, as the spell of silence was broken.

The headmistress held up a quelling hand, and the crowd all quieted again, though whispered chattering kept running along the tables now that the students felt free to speak.

“My dear students, I’m so very glad that so many of you could join us this night,” Professor McGonagall called out over the seated crowd. “Samhain is a very old tradition, celebrated historically by both Wizardingkind and even once our Muggle brethren, as we readied ourselves for winter. These long, cold months offer us a time to reflect and to grow and change, in preparation for spring’s coming and the world waking once more.”

She looked across the tables, her eyes pausing on various faces as she spoke.

“It is also a time when we say good-bye to the pains and sorrows of the previous year. We face them one last time, holding them with us in recognition, and then release them, so they might fade into the darkness. This particular year has held great grief, and it is time we all look ahead to what is to come.

“The fires have been lit, and now we renew our bonds as a community and carry the warmth of our fellowship home with us.”

Firelight danced across the old woman as she swirled her wand at the bonfire to her left, a tiny whip of flame curling loose from it and landing on her candle to light it once more. She smiled over her shoulder with a knowing look that would have been a smirk on anyone else.

“I shall retire to the castle now and my bed. I trust you all to comport yourselves responsibly as you enjoy a bit more time together.”

She strode away, calling back behind her, “Do not forget that many of you still have class this morning at 8:10 sharp. Including you, Horace.”

Then she disappeared into the darkness—and the party began.

The young witches and wizards abandoned the tables en masse, gathering around the bonfires to laugh and talk and drink from the flagons of wine that had been left by the house-elves. Old Slughorn congregated with a few of his current favorites, basking in their attention as they filled his glass for him again and again. Harry finally got the chance to speak with his old yearmates and hear what they’d been up to the past few months, laughing as Seamus got handsier with each additional drink, Dean shoving their sloppy friend away while the Irishman smooshed his face against him and slurred in his ear. It was genuinely good fun, for the first time Harry could remember since returning to Hogwarts.

“Goodness, I’m glad to see that graduation really matures a person,” Ginny said, appearing beside Harry and knocking her glass against his as they watched Seamus’s drunken antics. “Well done putting this together with Luna, by the way. It’s really been lovely.”

Harry smiled over at her as Ron shouted a protest, flapping his hand at his little sister and trying to shoo her back to the other bonfire.

“Go back to your fellow students, you ickle little Seventh Year! This is a conversation for real adults!”

“Harry’s still a student!” Ginny protested, her eyes narrowing. “And Dean as well. Are you suggesting there’s something wrong with that?”

Ron’s face flushed ruddy and dark in the firelight, his glassy eyes going to Hermione beside him in an unspoken plea.

“Oh, Ginny, don’t tease your brother so. You know he can barely keep up with you even when he’s sober.” Hermione's eyes sparkled with enjoyment. “He has no chance at all now that he’s three glasses deep.”

“That’s true,” Ron agreed, nodding emphatically. “Completely useless, that’s me.”

Seamus and Dean piled on as well, the group caught up in roasting Ron, and Ginny leaned closer to Harry’s ear to mutter, “Well, as long as he admits it.” She flashed him a cheeky smile, her face just inches away and the light dancing over her freckled skin. “Happy Samhain, Harry.”

“Happy Samhain, Gin,” he replied, his face flushed with the heat and the wine.

The Seventh Year girl broke the eye contact, looking towards the bonfires instead. “It’s been good having you practice with us again, you know,” she said. “Are you planning to keep it up?”

After Ron’s suggestion the previous Sunday, Harry had reached out to Ginny—as the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team—to ask if she’d mind him showing up to practices and running drills together. She’d been more than happy to have him, putting Harry up against the Fourth Year boy they’d picked as Seeker that year, hoping it would give the green player some much needed experience for the season. And Harry thought it had been good for the two of them, too. Things were feeling more like they used to. Maybe they were figuring out how to be actual friends again.

“I expect I'll be there as long as you’ll have me,” Harry promised. “I’m still not sure about attending any trials, but I love to play, even if it’s just that—playing.”

“You’d be a fool not to try out, Harry Potter,” Ginny said, elbowing him in the ribs. “Not that you being a fool would be anything new, of course.”

There was a loud pop and a series of shouts and laughter from the edge of the fire, where some of the Seventh Years were playing at divination with hazelnuts placed beside the flames.

“I just worry about all the attention,” Harry admitted, the same arguments he kept mulling over by himself, when he was flying around absently looking for the Snitch. “If I could just play the game, to win it for my team and the fans, then I’m sure I’d be happy. But you know that it won’t be that simple.”

“Yeah, but it’d be worth it to play ,” Ginny insisted, the fire dancing in her brown eyes. “Anything is worth that.”

Harry just smiled at her, knowing that was one of the big differences between them. Ginny tended to decide what she wanted and then go for it, nothing holding her back. Relentless pursuit in the direction she’d decided on, and if she then decided it was time to change direction, she didn't waffle or waste time. Harry thought perhaps he took longer to commit to things—and then had a harder time changing tracks, once he did.

They were interrupted by someone clearing a throat sharply from Harry’s other side, and he looked down in surprise at Pansy Parkinson.

The former Slytherin only came up to his chin, though Harry wasn’t tremendously tall. Somehow he’d forgotten how small Parkinson actually was, since she tended to be so damn intimidating.

“Potter,” she greeted, her voice strained and the word squeezed through gritted teeth. “Might I have a word?”

Ginny pulled Harry away a step, glaring at the other girl and asking, “What could you possibly need him for, Parkinson? Voldemort’s already gone, so you’re a bit late in trying to hand Harry over for any favors now.”

Pansy dragged a breath in through her nose, her nostrils flaring. She kept her eyes on Harry, though, as she said, waspish and annoyed, “Right. I’m afraid I didn’t get the opportunity sooner to offer my apologies to you, Potter, for that night. Clearly I was mistaken in thinking that one life might be worth hundreds of others in exchange. I suppose maths aren’t my strong suit. That said, could I have that word, if you don't mind?”

Harry blinked, genuinely baffled as to what the girl wanted from him. Not his public forgiveness, by all appearances—not unless she was just that bad at making a genuine apology. But the wine had him feeling loose and agreeable, and he was curious.

“Sure, Parkinson.” He half-turned to Ginny, offering a little shrug. “Give us a minute, Gin?”

His ex-girlfriend wrinkled her nose, eyeing Pansy with dislike as she sniffed, then she left to join Ron, Hermione, and Neville, several feet closer to the fire.

“I thought you two broke up,” Pansy said, watching Ginny go with a sneer marring her face.

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Harry asked in surprise, and Pansy whirled back on him, her dark bob swinging with the motion.

“Of course not . I need you to do what you do best, Potter, and play hero for me.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

Pansy glared up at him, grabbing his robes and pulling him down a couple of inches so she could hiss in his face, “You heard me. I would literally prefer to ask anyone else, but you’re what I’ve got here.”

Harry stared into her dark eyes, trying to make sense of what was going on. He hadn’t had that much to drink, had he? He was only on his second glass of the wine.

Pansy scoffed at the dumb confusion that was probably filling his face and released his robes.

“Look, Draco told us about your weird little crusade to pretend you don’t all hate his guts, and now I need you to actually commit to the act.” When he still showed no sign of understanding, she gestured around the bonfires and hissed, “He went to fetch another flagon for Millie and now he’s gone—don’t you see? And so are a bunch of the Ravenclaws who have been making his life hell here at Hogwarts. Put two to two together, you thick-skulled Gryffndor, and go do some rescuing!”

“You want me...to go try to save Malfoy? Who you think has been kidnapped by Ravenclaws?” Harry asked stupidly. “Why don’t you do it then?”

Pansy actually stomped her foot, which Harry couldn’t recall seeing anyone ever seriously do, except perhaps Umbridge.

“Have you somehow missed how outnumbered I am here? Absolutely brilliant suggestion, Potter—allow me to go ahead and pick a fight with a crowd that hates me. Maybe I can feed the press a great tale about petty Slytherins attacking poor innocent Hogwarts’ students while I'm at it. No thanks.” Pansy glared up at him, arms crossed under her breasts. “I propose that you be the saint everyone thinks you are instead and trot off to do the only thing you’re good for. Now, go find Draco before they throw him into the bloody lake in a Full-Body Bind or who knows what else!” 

Harry gaped.

The audacity of the girl was honestly impressive. He didn’t like Pansy Parkinson, but he could sort of appreciate the advantage of having her as a friend. She was a bit like Hermione at her most fired up, but without any of the hand-wringing and hesitation that came from actually having scruples.

She gave him an annoyed little punch in the ribs and snarled, “Go on then!”

Harry backed away, hands up in the air. “All right, fine, I’ll have a look around for him! Any idea which way he was headed?”

“I said he went to get wine, didn’t I? The tables are that way, you imbecile.”

Harry turned in the direction she was pointing and hurried away, just to escape the little harridan.

The long tables were dark, with distant firelight occasionally catching on glasses or silverware but otherwise abandoned. Harry walked along their length, peering away up the hill that they’d all descended and then across the shore.

Trees started to sprout up farther along the lake, a good twenty or so yards past the tables, but none of them had ventured that far from the celebration. There was no reason to think Malfoy would have either, but—

“Homenum Revelio,” Harry said softly, waving his wand in the direction of the copse. His stomach dropped with an uncomfortable whoosh, and it felt like ice had filled his veins.

There was definitely someone there.

Shaking off the effects of the spell, Harry cast a Disillusionment charm on himself next, then he started loping quietly across the grass, his eyes scanning for any hint of movement among the trees.

When he got close to the first of them, he dropped to a slow walk. He was straining to hear any sound other than the soft lapping of the lakewater over his right shoulder. As he scanned through the trees, he caught a snatch of voices on the wind and followed the noise, trying to avoid any twigs that might snap and give away his presence.

“...celebrating with the rest of us? Give me a break.”

It was Anthony Goldstein’s voice, which Harry couldn’t mistake after so many classes together that year.

Coming around another tree, Harry spotted the group at last. Goldstein had Malfoy up against a trunk, one hand gripping his robes in a fist and the other holding a wand to Malfoy’s neck. Mandy Brocklehurst stood to Goldstein’s right, her wand also trained on Malfoy, and to Anthony’s left was Michael Corner, who had come back to visit that night. He had his arms crossed, his wand not pointing at Malfoy but still in his hand should he need it.

“As if you and your kind aren’t the reason we all had so much to mourn this year, Death Eater,” Goldstein spat, twisting his hand in Malfoy’s robes so that they dug into the other boy’s neck. Malfoy, for his part, kept his stony look intact, managing to hide any hint of possible anger or fear.

Harry didn’t like admitting that Pansy had had a point, but this was fucked up and probably needed stopping. But in trying to get the hell away from Parkinson, Harry had simply run in the opposite direction and hadn’t thought to grab a few of his friends to bring along with him. Which meant that now he alone had to try to take care of a crowd of three angry Ravenclaws without making things worse.

Looking at the ugly sneer on Mandy’s face, Harry wasn’t too sure that calling out a greeting and simply trying to claim that Malfoy was coming with him would go unprotested. And he didn't want to bank on the fact that he was Harry Potter, Chosen One and all that rot, to save him from being outnumbered by a trio of angry swots who probably knew far too many spells.

Brute idiot force it is then, he thought with grim cheer, raising his wand. He fired a wordless Summoning spell at Corner’s shoes, remembering Malfoy pulling the same trick on their D.A.D.A. teacher weeks before. Before the others reacted to their friend falling over backwards when his feet were yanked out from under him, Harry followed it up with a quick Full-Body Bind on Brocklehurst and then a Silencio at Goldstein.

Walking out from around the tree, Harry called, “Evening, all. Or maybe it’s morning now? I don’t really know.” He flicked a Disarming spell at Corner and snatched his wand out of the air, then did the same to Goldstein. Mandy’s wand he merely summoned from where it’d fallen to the ground as she’d toppled into the tree behind her.

“I’m just here for Malfoy, but do carry on without us.” He jerked his chin to the side, gesturing that Malfoy should move away from the tree. The blond’s expression hardly changed, but he ripped himself from Goldstein’s grip, straightening his robes as he weaved between the Ravenclaws towards Harry.

“I’ll leave your wands on the tables, so you can collect them once the two of you carry Brocklehurst back,” Harry promised, beginning to back away. Malfoy had gone on walking right past him, wasting no time waiting for Harry. “Oh, and can I suggest you seriously give it a rest already with this revenge bullshit?”

He didn’t say or else, but he figured it was pretty well implied.

Then Harry turned and hurried after Malfoy, catching up in a few moments and ending up walking beside the boy in silence for the second time that night.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Malfoy ground out, sounding as if he hated every word. It was more anger than he’d shown to the Ravenclaws, and Harry felt perversely proud of that fact.

“Not a problem. But how about maybe you don’t go off alone into the dark like a complete idiot next time, save us all a bit of trouble?”

Malfoy spun towards him, expression lined with outrage as he snapped, “You’re blaming me—!”

He broke off just as suddenly, sucking in a sharp breath through his nose, then he smoothed his face back into blankness. “You’re right, of course. It’s my own fault. I’ll try to make sure not to inconvenience you again.”

Harry didn’t like that as much, an uncomfortable feeling like guilt squirming low in his gut as Malfoy turned away and kept striding towards the empty supper tables. Taking jabs wasn't any fun unless Malfoy fought back.

Tossing the wands he’d seized onto the table among the empty dishes, Harry called out, “If you’re ready to leave soon, let's head back to the castle. It’s probably time we turn in anyway.”

Malfoy didn’t argue, only giving a sharp nod without looking back at Harry.

Then he was back beside the fire, and Pansy was clutching his arms as she looked him over, Malfoy muttering to her in a low tone. Harry went back to his own friends, half an eye still on the Slytherins and his ear attuned to that voice, finding it odd to watch Malfoy talking so willingly to anyone after six weeks of the blond barely opening his mouth.

“I think I’ve got to call it a night,” Harry said, as he sidled up beside Ron and Hermione. “There was some trouble with Malfoy and some of the others, and we’ve got class in the morning anyway.” He shot a grin at his friends. “And I suppose a day of work for the two of you.”

Ron groaned, leaning heavily on his girlfriend. “You’re right. George made me promise to open the shop, so he could get smashed at his fancy-drink and frightful-dress party.”

Harry’s eyes met Hermione’s, and they shared a smile. He asked her, “You’re welcome to stay longer, of course, but—if you are thinking of going?”

She raised her eyebrows at the unfinished question, and Harry looked back over his shoulder at Malfoy, Parkinson, and Bulstrode.

“Could you walk the Slytherin girls past the wards? I may not like them, but I’d rather know they got off all right, if people are feeling a little too jinx-happy after the wine.”

Hermione’s expression softened. She gave him a fond pat on the arm. “Of course, Harry. That’s very decent of you. I’m glad you suggested it.” Looking over at Pansy, she only allowed herself a little sigh as she added, “Except that now I have to walk all the way to the gates with Pansy and Millicent, while also trying to keep Ron from saying anything too offensive.”

“Me? Never!” Ron promised, nearly toppling over as he tried to peer down into his girlfriend’s face with drunken earnestness. “I’d never call the evil cows that to their faces!”

Hermione slapped a hand over his mouth with fond exasperation.

Harry waved to Luna, Neville, and Ginny, calling out a good night to them where they were gathered with some Seventh Years and seemed unlikely to want to pack it in for the night. He didn’t see Dean and Seamus anywhere in sight, which hopefully meant they were enjoying themselves. But it did mean that Harry was on his own playing good Samaritan.

Sighing, Harry called, “Oi! Malfoy!”

When the blond looked over, Harry tipped his head toward the bonfires.

Then he looped his arm around one of Ron’s and helped Hermione pull the taller boy around the fire beside them so they could circle it. Malfoy came around from the far side of the other fire with Pansy and Millicent.

“Ladies first,” Harry offered, waving his free hand ahead. And he would have sworn Malfoy had rolled those pale eyes at him, but the blond turned too quickly for him to be sure, walking between the fires with the two girls on his arms and then pausing to give them each a hug once they'd made it out the other side.

“You know,” Hermione said, as she tugged Ron forward and Harry along with him. “I really do think it’s good, what you’re doing with Malfoy. You’re setting a very good example, Harry. And it’s time we all started moving on.”

They stepped together between the two towering fires, the heat overwhelming for a moment and seeming to sear the breath in Harry’s lungs.

Then they were out on the other side, looking up at the stars once more, hazy smoke smearing across them. Harry took a deep inhale of the cold night air, cool and fresh and full of the sharp tang of life after the stifling heat.

Yeah, Hermione was probably right. Like always.

It was time for a fresh start.

“Pansy, Millicent, why don’t you join me in dragging this lug back to the gates?” Hermione called as she pulled away. “Have you got your candles?”

She bustled on, collecting a reluctant-looking Millicent and Pansy, and Harry summoned his own candle from the dark tables, having nearly forgotten about it. He lifted the glass bulb from around it, then he stopped, unsure how to get it lit without melting the whole damn thing from the heat of the fires.

“Here.”

Harry looked to the side in surprise. Malfoy had stepped up beside him, his own candle in his right hand as he pulled out his wand with his left. He made a gesture like McGonagall had, drawing a little lick of flame from the fire rather like a memory being extracted for a Pensieve. He directed it to come dancing down and curl around the wick of Harry’s candle, settling there to burn.

Malfoy repeated the same move for his own candle, then he turned on his heel and started toward the hill without another word. Harry gave a bemused snort, then followed after the Slytherin to make sure he didn’t get murdered on the way back to the castle.

It had been a strange night, that was for sure. But not a bad one.

They'd said good-bye to the previous year’s pain, and maybe it was the wine talking, but Harry thought he did feel somehow ready now for a change. Samhain was a turning point in the year and maybe it could be a true turning point for Harry as well.

Perhaps now he could finally move forward.

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

That night, Harry fell into his bed just after 2 a.m., and he dreamed of leaping flames and clinking dishes but luckily no blond Slytherins made any appearance.

Which he was perfectly glad for. He'd had more than enough Malfoy for one night.

Chapter 19

When Harry woke up Thursday morning, something felt different.

He stumbled out of bed, scrubbing at his face and scratching in his pants, managing to make his bleary way into his small en suite without bashing into any walls. After a distracted shower to wake up and wash off the smell of smoke still clinging to his hair, he stood in front of the small mirror above the pedestal sink and paused, one hand raised with his razor still against the skin of his jaw.

Studying his own reflection in the mirror, he tried to pinpoint what exactly it was that was bothering him. It was somehow different from the ennui he’d become so familiar with over the past months.

He just felt sort of...empty.

It felt like something was missing—something that used to be there was now gone.

Was this what closure felt like? Was it just his old baggage that was gone, and he wasn’t accustomed to the feeling?

It wasn’t that he felt particularly bad. Just sort of hollow. Light? Maybe he felt light.

Maybe this was what it felt like to be at peace.

Sighing in bemusement, he started dragging the razor down along his skin once more. He had Herbology at 9:30 and little time to waste staring in the mirror if he wanted to grab any sort of food before his next break would come at two in the afternoon. Time to get moving again.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That evening, Harry didn’t bother with any pantomime of civility at the Slytherin table. He’d swung by the Great Hall just long enough to sandwich a slice of roast between two generous cuts of bread, then carried that with him back out of the room so he could head down to the Quidditch pitch.

He had caught a glimpse of Malfoy eating alone at the end of the Slytherin table, but as long as the prat wasn’t getting accosted by mad Ravenclaws, that ought to be fine.

Besides, Harry had had both N.E.W.T. Herbology and Potions with Malfoy that day and surely paid his due already.

He hadn’t actually talked to the Slytherin in either class, but he’d given him nods in greeting in both, and he’d even helped Malfoy pick up his newt eyes when they’d gone rolling off their Potions workstation, sent scattering by someone bumping into their table.

Plus, it had technically been that morning (it had been after midnight!) that Harry had saved Malfoy's skin and escorted him back to his room. No one could expect more of him in a single day.

So Harry was off to the Gryffindor Quidditch team’s practice instead of sticking around for dinner, and that was that. It was hardly like he was going to invite Malfoy to tag along with him to the Gryffindor team’s practice, just to play nice.

He polished off his sandwich on his walk across the grounds in the cool twilight, then went to grab his Stormrider from the broom cupboard, where he’d begun storing it now that he was regularly practicing again. Buckling on arm and leg bracers, Harry went out onto the field in his regular robes, not bothering with any more prep.

The Gryffindor team was on the pitch already, warming up and tossing around a couple Quaffles as they joked and laughed. Harry kicked off and joined them in the air.

Practice lasted an hour and a half, and by the end, Harry was sweating, tired, and feeling alive. Quidditch was good, nearly as good as it’d ever been, even if he didn’t really feel like a part of this team. He was slowly accepting that he probably would just try out in the spring. He didn’t have any better plans, after all—and Quidditch had been one of his first real loves in the Wizarding world. Why not give it a go full time, now that he had defeated the bad guy and done all the things he had to do?

Maybe the press coverage wouldn’t be that bad. He already avoided reading the papers, so he would just carry on doing that. And maybe things hadn't been as bad as he thought he remembered that past summer: reporters lurking around his front step, photographers catching him any time he showed his face in Diagon Alley, and bags of invasive and burdensome fan mail he'd still never collected from his post agent. Eventually it all had to die down as the world moved on.

Besides, it wasn’t like he really cared about going out much anyway. He could just shuffle back and forth from home to his training and his matches. He could spend time with his friends in private, at Hermione’s flat or Ron and George’s place above the shop. He didn’t need to be able to stroll along Diagon Alley.

And if he did want to, well, maybe he’d just get really good at disguise spells. If Muggle stars could get around with baseball caps and sunnies, then surely he could work something out when he had literal magic at his disposal.

It would be worth it. Quidditch was a solid option. Harry was finally getting his life on track.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The moment the dream began, Harry remembered the rest of it.

“Malfoy?” he called, spinning about and peering in the dark night, the great bonfire at his back.

He knew his daytime self had dreamt the night before, but it had been hazy and unreal. And missing Malfoy.

But this felt real. It felt like he was truly out beside the bonfires once more, as if Samhain had never ended. And most importantly, in this dream, he remembered the past six weeks’ worth of nights they'd shared.

“Malfoy!” he shouted, stumbling over his own feet as he edged around the bonfire in front of him, whirling about at the same time to see if the blond might be behind him or to the side. “Malfoy! You here?!”

He made it around the first towering bonfire, not seeing any other figure in the dark night—then, there. Between the two great pyres, he spotted Malfoy passing in the opposite direction, on the far side of the golden path that was illuminated between the fires.

As soon as their eyes met, something in Malfoy's face changed, the tense lines bracketing his mouth easing, and Harry felt that same relief washing through himself.

“Where else would I be?” the blond called, striding towards Harry between the two bonfires, the light from them painting him into something unreal and terrible. He was a biblical angel that might burn down a whole city, his hair and skin gleaming like white gold and flames dancing in his pale eyes. For a moment, Harry was too struck by the sight to even move.

Then his brain started back to life, and Harry plunged forward to meet the Slytherin between the two fires,

“Well, you weren’t here last night!” The heat was tremendous, all around them, and Harry felt sweat prickling along his spine. “I don’t remember any dream after we went back to the castle. Or—I remember regular dreams, I guess—the sort I can’t remember having had in ages. But only that.”

Malfoy’s face was inscrutable, a grim and gleaming mask as the firelight danced over it.

“Do you remember us dreaming together last night?” Harry asked, a hint of pleading in the question. Like maybe he’d just forgotten somehow. The exhaustion and the wine.

The only sound came from the fires crackling and hissing around them, then Malfoy turned and walked away, back towards the tables.

“No,” he said, clear enough that Harry could still catch the word as he hurried after the blond. “I don’t remember anything either. I suppose that means it’s finally wearing off.”

“What? No,” Harry insisted, even though the response didn’t make any sense. The word has just been wrenched out of him without any conscious thought behind it.

Malfoy dropped down onto one of the empty chairs beside the closest table, grabbing a wine flagon and starting to fill a glass. 

“It's been well over a month,” he said, taking a sip of his dream wine as Harry stood over him, hands clenched at his sides. “It’s only natural, really, that it should start to wear off. We talked about this. That the body breaks down any potion in time, as long as it doesn't kill you first.”

Harry dragged out the chair beside Malfoy’s, spinning it sideways so he could sit staring at Malfoy as the other boy calmly drained his glass.

It couldn't be wearing off. Even if that was exactly what Harry would have been hoping for at first, he had become accustomed to the dreams. He'd been frustrated that he couldn't remember things during the day, sure, but it had been ages since he'd wished they would stop .

“But that's crap! I don't want it to wear off!”

Malfoy choked slightly on his last sip of wine, then he lowered the glass to level Harry an odd look. “You want to go on like this, trapped in your memories every night and living a second life you don’t remember?”

“Well, not if I don’t remember,” Harry agreed. “That’s the problem, though—I don’t want all this to go away without figuring out a way not to forget it!”

Malfoy grabbed the flagon and refilled his glass, saying as the dark liquid flowed out, “It’ll be fine. At least you won't miss it, because you won't even know it happened.”

“Yeah, but—but that means I won't remember all the things we've talked about.” Harry searched the profile of the boy in front of him. “The list—we had all those ideas of what I could do after Hogwarts, and I've never even thought of one of them when I'm awake!”

“You truly want to be an ugly glasses maker?” Malfoy asked, slanting a glance at him, his lips quirking up in a hint of a smirk.

Harry caught the hint and returned it with interest. “A part-time Firewhiskey brewer, maybe.”

“I think you mean full-time drunk,” Malfoy said archly, drinking deeply from his own wine glass and apparently seeing no hypocrisy in the act.

“Maybe,” Harry said, still smiling at the boy in front of him. “But really I...” He took a deep breath. It was time to just be brave enough to say it. “I want to give the Muggle-born thing a go. Seriously. It’s the first thing I’ve been genuinely excited about in ages. And we've spent so many nights talking about what we could teach them and considering what would be needed and...I think we could really pull it off, Malfoy. And it’d be good.”

Malfoy didn't say anything, his wine glass paused unmoving against his lips.

“But that idea doesn't even exist out there,” Harry said. We aren’t even friends out there.

“Daytime-me liked the Samhain celebration, and he thought it was a really nice tradition—but he didn't think once about whether we should have included the younger years or insisted that Muggle-borns should be taught about it. He just enjoyed a bonfire with his old friends, and now the whole thing is over and basically forgotten.”

He watched as Malfoy set his glass on the table, still not speaking.

“I don’t—” Harry swallowed, watching Malfoy’s face as his stomach twisted into knots at the thought of losing everything he'd begun to find in these dreams. “I don’t know if I’ll ever think of it on my own.”

The truth was it wasn’t just the career idea Harry didn’t want to lose. It was all of this. He didn’t want to lose any of it.

He could finally admit that he genuinely enjoyed his nights with Malfoy. If he could remember them, he was sure he would spend every hour looking forward to them, because they were frankly the highlight of his day. And how fucking mad was that.

It turned out that spending time with Draco Malfoy was sort of like combining some of his favorite parts of his two best friends into something new and oddly appealing. He could mess about and talk shit with Malfoy, just like he might with Ron, but he could also talk about real things—things that hurt and things that made him feel small and vulnerable—the way he rarely did with anyone but Hermione.

Somehow he and Malfoy were able to slip back and forth between serious and mocking, like they were moving in some complicated dance he’d learned the steps to without noticing: at times parrying, at other times leaning in; sometimes silent, sometimes shouting, and sometimes daring only to whisper.

Somehow it all fit together. Easy and challenging and oddly—impossibly—comforting during this bizarre Eighth Year. He didn't want it to disappear now.

At last Malfoy looked over at him, his hand wrapped around the stem of his wine glass and moving nothing but his head.

“Do you think we’ll ever be like this in the real world?” Harry asked him.

Malfoy licked his lips. His eyes slid away again so that he didn't have to look at Harry as he said, “Honestly? No.”

That one little word carved something open in Harry’s chest, scooping out his lungs to leave him painfully hollow. “You really think it's impossible?”

“It's probably not impossible,” Malfoy acknowledged. “I just think it would take more time than we have available.”

Malfoy took another gulp of his wine, then he reminded Harry, “During the day, you still see me as nothing more than an annoyance. Another burden you've been asked to bear by yet another Hogwarts’ head. And I still see you as....well, what I have always seen you as.”

He shook his head, eyes downcast on his wine. “Even if we carry on meeting for a few meals a week, we’re not going to get to know one another. You'll talk to your friends, and I will eat in silence, and we'll do that a couple dozen times until the school year ends. Then you all will leave in June, and I’ll remain at Hogwarts. And there will never be a reason for us to try to speak with one another again.” 

It was true. Harry could already see that future, which seemed almost guaranteed. He would graduate and never look back. He would become a surly recluse of a Quidditch player—or maybe a miserable Ministry employee, if going pro didn't work out. But he doubted he would ever think about Draco Malfoy again. Not as anything other than an unpleasant memory.

And he hated it. He fucking hated that that was what was going to happen to them, when he knew that things could have been so different.

He hated knowing that he was running straight into a future he didn’t think he’d truly be happy with.

He hated thinking of Malfoy being left miserable and alone at Hogwarts.

He hated that the two of them would go on as nothing more than reluctant acquaintances, as if they hadn’t shared a hundred smiles and secrets and little truths over these many nights.

“There has to be some way,” Harry insisted. “When we're here, we remember everything. So these memories do exist somewhere. We just have to access them.”

“The problem remains what it always was.” Malfoy dropped his head forward, resting it between his hands as he massaged his temples. “We don't remember during the day that we might want to research some way to access memories of our dreams. So we never will.”

“I hate that,” Harry admitted in a whisper.

Malfoy straightened up, leaning back against his chair and tipping his face up to the starry night, his eyes distant and sad.

“Here’s what I try to think,” he began, “when we’re here, and I remember and I hate knowing it’s all going to end.”

So you hate it, too.

“I tell myself: ‘Well, Malfoy, so you’ll never have this particular thing. You knew you never would. Potter was never going to like you in real life.’”

Harry drew a sharp breath in, wanting to protest, but before he could, Malfoy went on.

“‘But even if you can’t have this, maybe there’s something else waiting for you that you haven’t yet imagined. Because you certainly never imagined this could happen.’”

Those gray eyes slid closed, shutting out the stars overhead.

“‘So, you simply have to go on living your life. Maybe someday, you'll find something else like this. Maybe even something better.’”

And Harry hated that even more. Not only would they never be friends again, but Malfoy would find someone else who he sprawled in the grass with and shared painful memories with and planned improbable futures with.

But there wasn’t any way to stop it. And now they both knew for sure that every day that passed would bring them closer to this ending, once and for all.

Chapter 20

“Hey, Malfoy.”

Harry offered the muttered greeting automatically as he set his bag on their workstation late on Friday morning. He’d just come from two hours of supervising the Second Year Hufflepuffs in the main Potions lab, and he was looking forward to the break he had waiting for him after N.E.W.T. Potions.

As usual, Malfoy gave back nothing more than a distracted nod.

When Goldstein arrived a few moments later, Harry didn’t bother with more than a nod himself. Things had never gone back to normal between them, and Harry had to figure that hexing Goldstein and his friends at the Samhain celebration two nights before wasn’t likely to have improved anything.

The weekend couldn’t come soon enough. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with any of his classmates and their drama for two whole days.

After Slughorn talked for longer than Harry felt was really necessary about the mood-brightening potion they were to start brewing that day, the students all streamed off to the store cupboard for the usual grab at ingredients. Harry joined the bustle, elbowing and squeezing his way through the crowd like everyone else did, so that he could try to get his whole list of ingredients in one go.

Malfoy was hanging back behind the rest of the students, as Harry had gotten used to, and Harry passed him by as he left the cupboard with his own armful of supplies. Fuck any nonsense about being too respectable to join the fray. Malfoy could cling to that prim image if he wanted to, but it made him the last back to their workstation every class. Ridiculous.

Harry dropped his haul on the workstation and began sorting ingredients based on the steps listed in their text, trying to arrange things in the order he’d need to chop or crush or juice them.

He’d already filled his cauldron with standard potioning water and was counting out fresh alihotsy leaves, crumpling each lightly in his hand before dropping it atop the liquid, when Goldstein made it back. A minute or two later, Malfoy shuffled back to his own side of the table, gingerly setting his own ingredients down upon the pitted wood.

The three of them worked in silence, Harry still a few steps ahead of the other two, which was why he was staring absently at Malfoy's hands some ten minutes later, having already moved on to stirring his potion for the necessary seven minutes of smooth circles.

The Slytherin was carefully picking apart the pressed yellow petals he’d brought back from the store cupboard, lining them up in a row on his cutting board as he worked to separate out the 20 that were to be added to the potion.

But Malfoy’s petals looked different than Harry’s had. He glanced over at Goldstein’s work area and saw that Goldstein also had round petals, just like Harry had used: nearly perfect circles as if someone had pressed a finger tip into yellow paint and left dots on the Ravenclaw’s cutting board.

That was what the creeping buttercup petals were supposed to look like—but Malfoy’s petals were different, each elongated into a thinner oval.

Malfoy had finished counting petals, and he brushed his 20 flakes of yellow up with his finger tips, piling them onto his palm so he could sprinkle them across the surface of his potion.

Without thinking, Harry shot out a hand, and he grabbed Malfoy by the wrist to stop him.

Several things happened almost at once. Malfoy sucked in a hissed breath, as if Harry had burned him or something, and he jerked away from the touch, his petals scattering across the table. Harry let go in shock, his own fingers flying open as he flinched back in turn. And Malfoy pulled his arm back to cradle it against his chest, staring at Harry in wide-eyed alarm.

“I just—” Harry fumbled his words, unnerved by the Slytherin’s reaction. “Your petals. Are you sure you got the right ones? They look different.”

Malfoy looked down at the table, still clutching his arm to himself. Then his eyes narrowed, his mouth pressed so tightly shut that his lips went white.

“What is it? What are they?”

“You are correct, Potter. Thank you. You averted a minor disaster.”

Harry watched as Malfoy drew his wand and summoned the petals into a little pile, then Vanished them.

“But...what were they?” Harry asked, still not sure what had just happened.

“Winter aconite, quite likely,” Malfoy said quietly. He slipped his wand away and muttered, “I’ll need to get the correct petals now. If you’ll excuse me.”

Then the blond hurried back to the store cupboard, and Harry watched him go dumbly.

Aconite?

Even Harry knew his potions ingredients well enough to know that aconite was poisonous. And they were each supposed to test their potions by taking a sip of them at the end of class and noting the effects, while Slughorn observed.

Had Malfoy made such a foolish mistake? It seemed unlikely. Not only because Potions had always been one of his best subjects, but because the ingredients were all clearly labeled in the stores—and alphabetized. One wouldn't just accidentally pick up winter aconite when reaching for creeping buttercups.

And what about the way he’d clutched his arm, as if it had hurt when Harry had touched him?

Harry stared after the other boy, who had disappeared into the store cupboard.

Something was definitely odd here.

Leaving his own potion, Harry hurried over to the store cupboard as well and slipped inside, immediately pulling the door shut behind himself.

Malfoy whirled about, his back banging against the shelves behind him. But he didn’t reach for his wand. When he saw it was only Harry, he sagged back as if relieved. It was as though he’d been bracing for an attack—but from someone else.

“Malfoy, did someone swap your petals?” Harry asked, not even sure what his theory was before he spoke. But he could feel the rough edges of it forming even as he watched the blond turn back to the shelves so he could collect the correct petals for his potion.

When the other boy didn’t answer, Harry grabbed the arm that Malfoy had raised to pull down the jar of buttercup petals. Again, Malfoy sucked in a pained breath, dropping the jar as his hand spasmed. Harry’s free hand shot out to catch it out of the air.

Harry set the jar carefully on the nearest empty stretch of shelf, still not letting go of Malfoy’s arm, though he could see how the Slytherin had grit his teeth.

Moving quickly, Harry pushed Malfoy’s robe sleeve up, but his white uniform shirt still covered his arm. Harry popped the cuff button at his wrist, then yanked the fabric up roughly, causing a pained groan to escape from Malfoy.

The skin of his right arm was an ugly landscape, fresh welts glaring red and swollen on his usually pale skin.

‘What the fuck, Malfoy?” Harry whispered.

“It’s nothing.” Malfoy used his other hand to unpeel Harry’s fingers, so that he could take his arm back, tugging his sleeve down even as the move drew a hissed breath through his teeth. “A minor accident with a stray Stinging Jinx. It will pass.”

“If it was a Stinging Jinx, it should have already gotten better,” Harry insisted, knowing very well how long those took to wear off. They’d been working beside each other in class for fifteen minutes—there was no way a jinx should still look that raw and angry.

“A Stinging Hex, then.” Malfoy had popped the top off the buttercup jar and scooped out a palmful of dried petals. He stretched his right arm up to put the jar back, then turned to level his pale gray eyes on Harry. “It’s nothing to do with you, Potter. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to return to my potion before it’s ruined.”

Harry didn’t stop him, following after Malfoy with slower steps as his mind churned.

Unless Malfoy was harming himself—and he was left-handed, so it wasn’t impossible that he could curse his right arm on his own, though Harry couldn’t imagine the bloody coward going down that route—someone was harassing him.

Which was no fucking revelation at all, really.

Harry had been the one to pull Goldstein off him the other night. But he’d been thinking that was just a one-time thing: that maybe tempers were running a bit too high in the dark of night, with free-flowing wine combined with the shock of seeing Malfoy, Parkinson, and Bulstrode back together and celebrating a holiday alongside the rest of them.

But there had been other clues before that. Goldstein’s attitude toward Malfoy had been nasty from the start. Luna had said something about the other Ravenclaws being “mean” to Malfoy. Malfoy was always the last to come back from the Potions store cupboard—minutes after anyone else...anyone except for the odd straggling Ravenclaw. Usually Goldstein or Morag MacDougal.

Harry had distantly noted the pattern, though he hadn’t thought anything of it. Just like he hadn’t thought anything of Malfoy’s newt eyes rolling off their table in their last class or considered why exactly Malfoy always raced off to his next classroom the instant the bell rang and why he’d never fucking pushed back on Goldstein’s goading before Harry had been the one to explode first.

Was Malfoy seriously being bullied? And doing nothing about it?

Harry completed the remaining steps of his potion, his thoughts distracted from the work he was meant to be doing. Malfoy wasn't faring much better, which might have explained why neither of them seemed all that happy even after testing sips of their mood-brightening potions. Goldstein, on the other hand, was beaming around the table, looking incredibly pleased with himself.

And just as had happened in every single other Friday Potions class, Malfoy was out the door as soon as the bell rang. Harry didn’t try to catch him or cause a scene. He knew Malfoy was on his way to oversee one of McGonagall’s Transfiguration classes, and they had N.E.W.T. Transfiguration together right after the Double. He knew where to find Malfoy if he wanted more answers.

If Harry was really going to push the point.

Was he? Did he need to do something about this?

He pulled a face, dragging his feet as he shuffled up to the Great Hall. He really didn’t want to have to start feeling sorry for Malfoy or, Jesus, go around protecting him from other students or something.

But standing by when he knew one student was being physically hurt by another wasn’t on either.

Harry groaned, dragging his hands through his hair. How was it that Draco Malfoy always ended up making his life just that much more difficult, even when—for once in his life!—the git didn’t seem to be purposefully trying to bother Harry?

It was some sort of special gift. One that Harry very much wished he could return.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The dream began in the narrow confines of the store cupboard, which was a first. Perhaps the morning’s confrontation was still on both their waking minds.

As soon as Harry turned and saw the blond beside him, he threw up his hands and exclaimed, “What the hell, Malfoy!”

While he’d mostly been unhappy during the day—annoyed at the thought that he might have to help Malfoy in some way and especially hacked off when the Slytherin had dodged dinner again—he was now furious. They spent every night together, talking about everything under the sun, which meant Malfoy had been purposefully hiding this from him for ages.

The other boy’s face was a grim mask, more like he usually looked during the days, and he shoved past Harry to try to reach the door and escape from the cramped and dimly lit room.

Harry grabbed him before he could, whirling Malfoy back and catching his right arm to shove up that heavy black robe, just as he had during the day. Working the button loose from Malfoy’s cuff, he went on angrily, “Nearly two months, and we’ve talked about all these other things, and you never said! Never even fucking mentioned that the Ravenclaws were going around cursing you!”

He’d got the cuff open and shoved that white fabric up Malfoy’s wiry forearm to reveal flawless creamy skin. There wasn’t even a hint of injury marring it.

“This is a dream, Potter,” Malfoy said wearily. “Why would I want to remember the physical pains of the day when I’m dreaming?”

Harry looked up at him, searching Malfoy’s eyes as he held that forearm between both his hands. “So it still hurts?”

Malfoy fell against the shelves right behind him, letting his head tip back. “‘Something always hurts,” he said with a wry snort. “It’s a rare day that goes by when one of them doesn’t manage to get me across a hall or under a desk—or corner me in the store cupboard.” The one overhead light shone down upon his face, catching the smooth planes and leaving dark shadows in the hollows under his cheekbones.

“Then why didn’t you ever say?”

“What would it have mattered?” Malfoy’s eyes were barely cracked open, not much more than a gleam as he looked down through his lashes at Harry. “Tell me, Potter. What the fuck would it have changed? Even if you'd been outraged to learn what was going on, you wouldn’t have remembered there. So how would both us knowing here, knowing every night and powerless to do anything to change it, have helped in any way?”

Harry gave the arm he held a little shake and insisted, “You still should have told me!”

“Why?”

“Because we’re friends, you asshole!” Harry shouted, letting go of Malfoy’s arm so that he could instead grab him by the shoulders and shake him.

“You stupid, obstinate wanker, you have been a pain in my ass since the moment we first met, and you certainly made some god-awful life choices in the intervening years, but I’ve become used to your particular brand of twatiness, and I’ve even grown to like it, and now we’re friends! So you should have told me something like this, because I’m your fucking friend!”

Malfoy lifted his arms, weakly trying to shove Harry’s hands from his shoulders as he ducked his head to the side, his fair hair falling over his eyes. “We aren’t friends, Potter.”

“We absolutely are,” Harry insisted. He was done pussyfooting around it, now that he’d gone and said it once. “So be honest with me. How bad are things with the Ravenclaws, really?”

Malfoy had one arm up over his face, his eyes hidden behind his forearm as he curled his body to the side as if wrapping himself around some hurt. It put his right shoulder nearly against Harry's chest, and so Harry just rolled with it, gathering Malfoy closer and wrapping both arms around the boy, his chin resting on that bony shoulder.

“How bad it it?” Harry asked again.

Malfoy’s voice sounded thick as he said, “Remember Sixth Year?” He made it sound like a joke, albeit bleak in tone. But Harry did remember Sixth Year. How miserable and withdrawn Malfoy had become. The lows he’d reached, when the ghost of a long-dead girl had been the only comfort he’d been able to find in the whole castle.

“I...” Malfoy cleared his throat, though it took a few tries. Harry ran a palm over his shoulder blades, hoping it felt reassuring and not just creepy. “It’ll be fine. I know that my mother will be released before too long, and she’ll...she’ll need me. So I’m not likely to do anything...irreversible.”

Pins and needles ran over Harry’s skin, his face feeling oddly numb. He pulled back, turning Malfoy with a hand atop his shoulder. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing,” Malfoy mumbled, both hands over his face. “There’s nothing to worry about. I'll keep my head down, I won't make a fuss, and eventually the idiots will graduate.”

“But if your mother wasn’t coming back, if you weren’t thinking you had to be here for her—”

“It’s fine!” Malfoy snapped, scrubbing at his face, though it was still splotchy and his skin shiny with a bit of telltale moisture. “It’s nothing. I'm just being a melodramatic git, but thinking about wanting to off myself is practically a hobby of mine after the past couple years. But I’m a bloody coward, remember? I’d never have the guts to go through with anything, so thinking about it doesn’t count.”

Harry’s blood was like ice water, and his fingers dug into Malfoy’s shoulder. Was Malfoy that depressed during the days, when he thought he was all alone in this? And no one saw it?

“You can’t,” he said, irrationally. Because the thought of it—the thought of Malfoy just disappearing someday—the thought that Harry himself would probably only feel a momentary flutter of guilt about a classmate’s suicide and then move on, never knowing—

It made him sick. It was too horrible to imagine.

“That’s it. We’re doing something.”

Malfoy looked up at him, face flushed. “Doing what?”

Harry looked wildly around the shelves surrounding them, hundreds of jars containing every imaginable ingredient. “A potion got us into this, maybe a potion can get us out.”

“What?”

“Like…” Harry’s thoughts were chasing each other as he considered wild ideas. “Like, what if we brewed a Memory Potion here in our dreams and took it? Could it help us remember things when we woke up?”

Malfoy himself stared back in bewilderment, lashes still wet. “I don’t see how it possibly could. Even if, hypothetically, these dream ingredients could retain their real effects in any way, why would magic done here persist outside a dream? If I transfigure you into a newt right now, I don't expect you’d still be one when you woke up.”

“But that's a physical transformation,” Harry insisted, finally letting go of Malfoy so he could step up to the shelves to find the alihotsy. He was certain the potion had alihotsy in it. “I’m talking about our minds. Our sleeping minds are still linked somehow to our daytime minds. After all, when we’re here, we remember everything that happened to us today—and we remember our past dreams. So…so something persists.”

Malfoy still hadn’t moved, watching Harry with a wrinkled brow. “It’s not going to work,” he insisted.

“How do you know when we haven’t even tried?!” Harry shot back. “Look, you can relish telling me how right you are after we try and it fails, but we have to at least try! So do you remember all the ingredients or not? Because relying on my knowledge of how to brew a Memory Potion might just as likely end up with us both forgetting who we are.”

Sighing, Malfoy took the jar of newt eyes that Harry had in his hand and placed it back on the shelf. “It’s eel eyes, not newt eyes. Fourteen of them.”

Harry turned a smile on the Slytherin as he stepped up beside him to scan the shelves. “So you’ll help?”

Malfoy’s eyes were still a bit red, but he seemed more like his usual self as he elbowed Harry and said, “Help? Let’s be honest here, Potter. You know I’m about to do all the work.”

“Probably for the best,” Harry agreed.

“You are such a useless sot,” Malfoy accused. But he sounded rather fond, and newly determined, as he dropped the jar of eel eyes into Harry’s hands and reached for the next ingredient.

Chapter 21

On Saturday, Harry was eating a late lunch in his room when there was an unexpected knock at his door.

He looked up from his Herbology notes in surprise, a half-eaten ploughman's in one hand. No one ever came knocking at the door to his private room. Especially not on a weekend.

His eyes fell back to the Marauder’s map, which was open on his desk beside his texts. It had been spread out there ever since Harry had come stomping back to his room the previous evening, annoyed that Malfoy had slipped away after Transfiguration and never shown up to dinner.

Harry still hadn't decided what he wanted to do with the knowledge that Malfoy was being harassed by the Ravenclaws, but he'd figured the least he ought to do was watch out for possible trouble on the map. If Malfoy left his room and ended up surrounded by Ravenclaws, then maybe Harry would go to intervene. Or at least try to notify McGonagall. But Malfoy hadn't left his room in all the time Harry had been checking the map.

No, the labeled figure outside Harry's door belonged to Ginny Weasley.

There was another rapping at the door, and Harry jumped up from his chair and hurried over to it, sandwich still in hand.

“Ginny!” he exclaimed as he pulled the door open. “How'd you even known which room was mine?”

She blinked in surprise, then looked past him and spied the map on his desk. She shook her head ruefully. “Not all of us have a secret map of the castle, but a girl has her ways.” She grinned up at him. “In this particular case, Dean told me.”

Then she wrinkled her nose at the sandwich in his hand. “I wondered, when you didn't show up for lunch. Have you squirreled away a whole pantry in here?”

Since he’d already taken another bite, Harry gave back a smirk with bulging cheeks. Then he swallowed and said, “Not a whole pantry, no. But all the Eighth Years tend to stock up a bit, since we often have no lunch breaks during the week. We're all aces at Stasis Charms by now.”

This particular sandwich was at least no more than a few hours old. It had been put together from the haul he'd grabbed at the breakfast table that morning so that he wouldn't have to venture back out until dinner. At least.

“Okay, well, that's both pathetic and mildly alarming, but more importantly: finish it up, because we're going flying!”

Harry choked on the bite of sandwich he'd been mid-swallow on. “Are we?’

“Yes, we are,” Ginny said in a decisive tone that brooked no argument.

Harry glanced back at his desk again, both at the schoolwork he was meant to be revising and the map that he’d been using to keep an eye on Malfoy.

“We’re going,” Ginny insisted, reaching in through the open doorway and grabbing him by the arm to drag him out of the room. And like usual, Ginny got what she wanted.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They ended up passing the Quaffle back and forth for over an hour, chatting lazily about different teams and Ginny’s thoughts about each as a prospective new home after Hogwarts.

When Harry’s shoulder was aching and he finally begged for mercy, Ginny rolled her eyes but placed the Quaffle between her knees and allowed them both to turn their brooms back down to the ground.

“Not that I’m complaining exactly,” Harry said, massaging his tired arm as they drifted down towards the grass, “but why’d you come to get me for this? Don’t you have a current boyfriend who plays Quidditch for Ravenclaw?”

Ginny didn’t answer immediately. They both reached the ground and dismounted before she spoke.

“I think we’re probably over,” she said at last, flipping her broom over her shoulder and carrying the Quaffle under her other arm. She didn’t look at Harry directly as they began walking to the broom cupboard. “He’s been acting all weird about you coming to practice with the team the past couple weeks, and you know I can’t stand the jealous type.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. How were you supposed to respond to your ex telling you that she no longer wanted the guy she’d picked up after dropping you?

Maybe he should’ve been happier hearing it—vindicated in some way that she never should have broken up with him, because they’d had something more worthwhile—but he wasn’t particularly happy about it. He mostly felt awkward, not knowing how the hell he was meant to react.

Ginny slanted a look his way, sly and knowing as if she realized how flummoxed he was. “At least you had that going for you, Potter. I don’t remember you ever acting jealous.”

This Harry could respond to, and he laughed in disbelief. “Are you kidding? I was about half a day away from strangling Dean in his sleep in Sixth Year, back when you were dating him. I think I can get jealous.”

Ginny studied him with her chocolatey brown eyes curious and assessing. “Yeah? Well, I guess you were at least better at keeping it contained then.” She gave him a half-smile. “When we were together, everything just seemed so natural. It was easy to be confident in how we both felt, somehow. Even when we split up, it wasn’t because I doubted how you felt about me—just that I wasn’t sure we were really doing ourselves or each other any favors by being together.”

And that was something Harry wasn’t prepared to respond to at all. They’d never dissected the reasons their relationship had fallen apart, and Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to start now. He didn’t know why Ginny was even bringing it up.

“Well, you’re probably well shot of him, because Ravenclaws are a bit shit,” Harry said, changing the subject away from anything like their history. “Did you know some of them have been harassing Malfoy? Like, not just being rude, but going around hexing him when no one sees?”

They’d reached the broom cupboard, and Ginny stopped at the door to turn and look at him with raised eyebrows. “Yeah?”

“Er, yeah?” Harry said back, a bit backfooted by that being her only response. Sure, Malfoy was a prick, but shouldn’t there be a hint more shock or outrage? “The other night, when Pansy Parkinson came over at the Samhain thing? I found three of them holding him at wandpoint out in the woods. That’s kind of fucked up, isn’t it?”

Ginny tilted her head to the side, still watching him. “I suppose so. But it is Malfoy, so it’s not exactly like it’s undeserved, is it?”

Harry was left momentarily without words while Ginny turned and headed into the cupboard to hang up her broom and put the Quaffle back among the Quidditch gear.

Yes, Malfoy had been an absolute shit for years, but—but that didn’t mean that they should be as bad or worse back, right? Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle had confronted Harry and his friends plenty of times in the halls, but they hadn’t ganged up on him where no one would ever see it. It felt…different somehow, what the Ravenclaws were doing.

And as far as Harry knew, Malfoy hadn’t done anything to deserve such treatment since he’d returned from Azkaban.

Ginny came back to the door and held out her hand for his broom, wiggling her fingers expectantly since he’d made no move to put it away himself.

He handed over the broom and leaned against the open door, asking Ginny as she put up his broom for him, “What was Malfoy like last year?”

She paused for a moment, her arms still raised to place Harry’s broom on the pegs high up on the wall. “Why?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m just curious. I wasn’t here, and I don’t get why Goldstein is so out for blood. I don’t remember Malfoy and his cronies causing the Ravenclaws particular grief when I was at school.”  He tried to make light of the question by adding, “I was pretty sure we Gryffindors had the special honor of being their favorite punching bags.”

Ginny turned back to him, folding her arms as she looked out at him from the shadowy cupboard under the stands.

“Malfoy was just Malfoy. Skulking around. Unpleasant. Certainly never interfering when the Carrows decided a spot of the Cruciatus curse was the way to reinforce a lesson.”

“Did he take part in all that? The cursing of other students and all?”

GInny grimaced and admitted, “Not like those two idiots of his, I suppose. But it wasn’t like he tried to stop any of it. As far as I know, he just kept his head down and let all that awfulness happen, only interested in saving his own skin.” She looked off to the side, her gaze distant and seeing something other than the wooden walls of the cupboard. “I don’t know what to tell you, Harry. I honestly didn’t see that much of him last year.”

Harry gave a distracted nod. It was pretty much what he’d imagined. But was Malfoy being a coward and not stopping the other Death Eaters the only reason that Goldstein hated him so much? Perhaps something had happened that Ginny didn’t know about.

“Why are we even talking about Malfoy?” Ginny asked. “I don’t get it. Or why you’ve been eating dinners with him.”

Harry stepped away from the doorjamb, hoping Ginny would follow so they could head back to the school. “Er, right, that—well, McGonagall was saying some things about how Malfoy was getting it in the press and all, and it seemed like maybe she wanted me to help set a better example or—or something.”

Ginny fell in beside him with a snort of laughter. “You’ve still got such a hard-on for pleasing a Hogwarts head,” she teased, knocking her shoulder into his. Harry felt a spurt of annoyance, because in fact what he still had were some fairly complicated feelings about his mentor basically grooming him into some sacrificial child soldier. Ginny of all people ought to know that.

“So it’s just some weird charity thing?” she asked, when Harry didn’t respond to her teasing.

He shrugged, uncomfortable. “Something like that,” he muttered. Was it charity to want to stop someone from being bullied, even if they’d bullied him once? He didn’t know what to call that. Stupid, probably.

“You’re too good for this world sometimes,” Ginny said, teasing as she bumped their arms together once again.

And Harry didn’t think that was right either. He didn’t feel particularly good at all and wanting to punch Goldstein in the nose hardly felt noble. Maybe Harry simply couldn’t stand bullies, and Malfoy—whatever else he was now—was no longer the one pushing others around.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

When Harry showed up for dinner, he wasn’t surprised to see Malfoy at the Slytherin table, but that was because he’d been checking the map again since returning from the grounds.

Hurrying across the Great Hall, Harry dropped down onto the bench opposite him before the blond might try to decorously drop his silverware and scurry away.

A small sigh escaped the other boy, almost unnoticeable. But Harry noticed. And like usual, he felt a mix of annoyance and petty satisfaction that he still managed to get a reaction out of Malfoy when so little else did.

“Enjoy your Saturday, Malfoy?” he asked, looking around the table. Brilliant, there was beef stew tonight. He grabbed a bowl from the stack beside the big tureen and dished himself out a serving.

“Yes, thank you. I got a great deal of schoolwork done. And yourself?”

Harry had gotten used to the muted polite act and had mostly settled into trying to annoy Malfoy out of it, though he rarely managed to earn more than a twitching muscle in the other boy’s jaw or a perfectly toothless response squeezed through gritted teeth.

“Didn’t get done nearly as much as I should have probably,” Harry admitted. “Went out flying for a bit. Don’t you ever go flying anymore?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

Harry blew on a spoonful of stew, then slurped it down. Delicious. After swallowing, he asked, “So, shall we just ignore the erumpent in the room and carry on with the boring small talk?”

Neither Dean or Luna had shown up yet, since it was still fairly early for a Saturday dinner, but Harry didn’t know how long he would have. And he somehow instinctively knew that making a fuss about the Ravenclaws harassing Malfoy in front of an audience would only make the Slytherin shut down even more completely than he had in that store cupboard.

“That sounds utterly delightful,” Malfoy said, the slightest hint of wry sarcasm in his voice, if you knew its tones well enough. Harry dared say he did.

“Well, too bad. I was never great at small talk anyway, so how about we address why you’re not going to McGonagall or anyone about the shit with the Ravenclaws?” Harry watched Malfoy carefully as he paused over his next sip of stew. “Merlin knows you never failed to go crying to the authorities in the past over any injury, imagined or not.”

“There is nothing worth reporting,” Malfoy insisted.

Harry was about to argue back when a body dropped down beside him on the bench, and he glanced over—then startled.

Instead of any of their usual group of Manor Survivors, Harry and Malfoy had been joined, inexplicably, by Ginny Weasley.

“Hey, Malfoy. Got any new incriminating tattoos lately?” she asked, picking a chip from a nearby basket and dipping it in Harry's stew before taking a bite of it.

Malfoy had gone stiff, his eyes narrowing at the Seventh Year girl, but then he seemed to catch himself and his expression smoothed back into a placid mask. 

“I am afraid not,” he responded. Then he carefully set his knife and fork atop his plate, neatly bisecting all the food he hadn’t eaten, and placed his napkin to the left of the dish. He rose to his feet. “I sincerely hope you both enjoy your dinner. If you’ll excuse me.”

He’d taken the polite act a whole new level, speaking so properly that he could’ve been addressing his good-bye to Voldemort himself. Harry felt his brow furrow as he glanced at the unfinished plate and back.

He reached out and grabbed Malfoy’s arm as the Slytherin passed the end of the table to escape back to the front doors.

“You gonna be okay heading back on your own?”

There was a flash of anger in those pale gray eyes, and Malfoy leaned in to say softly to Harry, “Thank you for your concern, Potter, but I assure you that nothing could be less…” He paused, then finished with: “Necessary.”

He might as well have said “Fuck off and kindly die,” which were the words Harry was pretty sure Malfoy had wanted to say. As it was, he’d barely managed to repress the seething anger in his voice.

He jerked his arm free, and Harry realized that he’d been holding onto Malfoy’s left wrist, fingers probably grazing the old Dark Mark.

“Okay, see you next time,” Harry muttered, mostly to himself, as Malfoy stormed off in a swirl of robes that Snape would’ve been proud of. It was hard to make their school robes really flair like that.

Ginny whistled long and low, and Harry turned back to the table, realizing he’d been staring after Malfoy as the Slytherin disappeared through the Great Hall’s doors.

“Why do you even bother with any of this, seriously?”

Harry let out his breath, too slow and silent to really count as a sigh. He thought about telling her that Malfoy usually wasn’t that prickly anymore, just oddly polite. He thought about pointing out that things had been going pretty all right till she’d shown up. He and Malfoy had settled into a sort of uneasy detente that Harry mostly knew how to work with by now.

But mostly Harry thought that he didn’t feel like trying to explain himself to his ex-girlfriend. Why should he have to?

So instead he only shrugged and said, “Look, I appreciate what you were probably trying to do here, Gin, keeping me company and all. But maybe just…leave Malfoy to me.”

Ginny’s face darkened.

“But I’ll see you on the pitch, all right?”

She studied him, eyes moving between his, then finally stood up from the Slytherin bench.

“Right,” she said. “Sure. See you at practice, Harry.”

Then she walked away, shaking her head.

And it was odd. A year ago, he would’ve wanted nothing more than to have Malfoy piss off while he was left to sit beside Ginny and share a dinner alone together. Even a few months ago, he still would have wanted that. But now he just mostly wished she’d never come over.

Perhaps, when he hadn’t noticed, he had begun moving on, after all.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, after Harry finished his hasty dinner alone at the Slytherin table, he hurried back to his room to check the map. Malfoy was alone in his room, presumably unharmed.

And Harry dreamt of nothing in particular.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

At eleven the next morning, Harry was debating whether to go to the Burrow or not.

He’d responded to Hermione’s owl that morning saying that he’d try to make it. And he did want to. It’d been good the last time, being surrounded by family and getting to talk to Ron and Hermione for hours.

And besides, he was a little afraid of Ginny showing up and dragging him to another day of flying. His arm ached from the day before—plus he still felt awkward about how they’d parted ways in the Great Hall.

So going to the Burrow would be win-win, except perhaps if you considered the essay he was only halfway through for Potions.

And Malfoy.

Harry had been watching the map that morning again as he worked, and Malfoy hadn’t left his room once that Harry had seen, same as the day before.

Was the git seriously at risk of starving?

Maybe he had an in with the house-elves or something. But given how crap he generally looked, pale and hollow-cheeked and with dark smudges under his eyes, Harry was thinking it wasn’t likely Malfoy had an endless supply of food he was dining on in his room.

But Malfoy had survived up until now, apparently being bullied for the better part of two months without Harry being aware of it. One more Sunday was unlikely to make or break things. The Ravenclaws weren’t about to murder the bastard, and if Malfoy didn’t want to report to the professors that he was getting hexed, then maybe the responsibility lay with him for anything that happened.

After all, Malfoy could go tell McGonagall or someone. Nothing was stopping him.

So Harry stood up from his desk, nodding decisively to himself. And then he turned back and grabbed the map, stuffing it in his back pocket just in case, before hurrying out of his room.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Of course it only took about five seconds for Hermione to catch him.

“Harry, why do you have the map here?”

Flinching, he fumbled with the large parchment he’d just pulled out, trying to shove it under his hoodie without completely destroying one of the few pieces of his father he still had.

“What?” he asked, turning around on the couch where he’d retreated for a moment after dinner. “I don’t—it’s just some notes from class. Squeezing in some revision, you know.”

Hermione stood in the doorway of the Weasley's living room holding two cups of tea and looking very unimpressed.

“You think I can’t recognize that thing at a glance after all this time?” she asked, holding a cup out to him, which forced him to pull a hand out from under his sweatshirt to take it. “So spill. Why have you brought it all the way to Sunday dinner?”

Harry threw his head back, squeezing his eyes shut and sighing. “Okay, I swear it’s not what you think, but…I was checking on Malfoy.”

He pried an eye open and found Hermione studying him with a speculative expression on her face. “But it’s not what you think!” he said again.

“Oh, isn’t it?”

“It’s not that I think Malfoy is up to anything this time. It’s more like I’m worried about someone else being up to something, and possibly—I dunno—doing him in, maybe?”

Hermione settled down on the cushion beside him and held out her empty hand, palm up. “Let’s have it out then.”

He pulled the parchment back out from under his shirt and spread it out on the coffee table in front of them. While Hermione took a sip of her tea, he traced his finger over to the South Wing.

“There. That’s Malfoy’s room.”

“Looks like he’s alone in there.”

“Yeah.”

Harry felt a distinct sense of relief. At least he didn’t have to feel guilty about coming to the Burrow now. Malfoy was right where he’d left him.

“Is this related to whatever was going on at Samhain?” Hermione asked.

Harry blinked up at her, having nearly forgotten that his best friends had been there to catch the tail end of that particular encounter. “Yeah, sort of. So that night, Anthony Goldstein and a couple of other Ravenclaws had dragged Malfoy out into the trees to threaten him from what I could gather. But it seems like that’s hardly the sum of it. I found out they’ve been hexing him as well, doing some real physical damage, but he doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it.”

Hermione frowned, taking another measured sip of her tea. “Do you know why?”

Harry shook his head, sitting back on the sofa and lifting his own mug to take a hearty swig. “He just keeps insisting there’s nothing going on, but you should’ve seen his arm, Hermione! It was some real nasty work. A Stinging Hex with some real bite behind it. Looked like he’d been whipped or something.”

“And you aren't reporting this to any authority figures?”

Harry blinked owlishly behind his glasses, and Hermione threw up a hand in the air. Luckily not the one holding her tea.

“Honestly, Harry! Must you take everything into your own hands? The teachers are the ones actually running that school, you know!”

Harry fiddled with the map’s edge. “I may still go to McGonagall about it, but I guess I was just sorta…trying to get a better sense of how bad things are first.”

Hermione bit her lower lip, then released it. “And how bad do you think they are?”

“I really don’t know,” Harry admitted. “I don’t know if it’s because of the Ravenclaws or just wanting to avoid any other students, but I can tell you that Malfoy hardly attends meals, and I’ve only seen him leave his room once this entire weekend. That surely can’t be healthy, right?”

Hermione’s mouth went flat, and she stood from the sofa and held out a hand once more, this time asking for Harry’s hand rather than the map.

“That’s it. Come with me.”

And so it was that Harry somehow ended up standing outside Malfoy’s room a half hour later, one arm cradling several covered dishes that, even shrunken down, were still the approximate size and weight of a Bludger.

Taking one last deep breath, Harry rapped his knuckles on the door in front of him.

There was no response except for a rather convincing silence, but Harry knew for a fact that the map had shown Malfoy in his room just minutes before.

“Malfoy, open up. I know you’re in there.”

Another few seconds trickled by, then the door did finally open a crack, though not much more than the space Malfoy needed to lean his head around it.

“What the—”

He caught himself, though he was still staring at Harry in bewildered confusion as he asked, “May I ask what you are doing here, Potter?”

“I dunno. May I ask what you’re doing, not reporting the Ravenclaws?” Harry asked back, shoving the door a bit farther open so he could shift the dishes into Malfoy’s arms. “There. Those are for you.”

“What…are they?”

Harry pulled his wand, noting the way Malfoy flinched slightly as it ended up pointed at him. But Harry only used it to unshrink the containers, causing them to suddenly grow and completely fill Malfoy’s arms.

“Most a lasagna, green beans, roasted potatoes, half a chicken, a few slices of treacle tart, and an entire untouched banoffee pie.”

“I don't like banoffee pie,” Malfoy responded in a dazed voice, staring down at the pile in his arms. 

“Neither did the rest of the crowd, clearly.”

Malfoy jerked into motion, trying to push the pile of dishes back into Harry's hands. “This is not necessary. Your kindness is duly noted, but I must insist—”

“Oh, no,” Harry said, his hands up so he couldn't take the dishes as he backed away. “They're yours now. And those are Hermione and Mrs. Weasley’s best stasis charms, so they should stick for days, if not weeks.”

He was several meters away already, and as he turned and ran away, he shouted back behind himself, “Just give me back the dishes when you’re finished with them!”

There. That was one good deed done. Now Harry could surely sleep easy.

Chapter 22

Harry was standing outside Malfoy's door again. 

This time he pounded angrily on it, and it only took a moment for Malfoy to yank it open with an exclamation of “What the fuck, Potter!”

“There was no dream again last night!”

Malfoy sagged against his door, one elbow propped up against the jam. “I know.” He scrubbed at his face in exhaustion, even though they were both technically sleeping at that very moment.

Harry let his eyes wander over the other boy for a moment, relieved by the sight of Malfoy acting normal after the weird stiffness of the day. “C’mon,” he insisted, reaching through the doorway and grabbing the blond by the arm to pull him out of his room. “We've gotta try again.”

Malfoy protested the entire walk to the Potions lab. They hadn't made it even halfway through their attempt to brew a Memory Potion before the last dream had fallen apart on Friday, and there was still no guarantee such a potion would work even if they did manage to finish. But Harry wasn't listening to his grumbling. 

Because Harry didn't know what else to do. 

Wednesday night, and now Saturday. Two nights in less than a week that they'd missed dreams. Whatever had started all this was clearly wearing off. And while he wanted to take comfort in the fact that daytime-him was at least making some sort of effort with daytime-Malfoy, they remained miles from trusting or liking one another.

So in their dreams, they tried the potion idea again. And again. That night they made it a little more than halfway through the brewing before the dream slipped away. The next night, they nearly completed a Memory Potion for the first time but lost their grip on the dream just before they were about to ladle out samples.

On Tuesday night, they managed a complete brew for the first time, working by then in a close, coordinated dance, each taking different preparation steps and not missing a beat as they moved around one another to tip in ingredients, stir one way then another, and adjust the flames up and down. They drank the potion down still scalding hot.

But on Wednesday, nothing seemed different. The polite reserve held from daytime-Malfoy, while daytime-Harry continued to watch him closely in classes and on the map. But the interest wasn’t because he’d suddenly remembered their nighttime escapades. It was only because he was still waffling over whether he needed to do something about Goldstein or leave Malfoy to sleep in whatever bed he was making for himself.

And they had no dream that night.

On Thursday night, Harry was even more insistent than ever before. He forced the two of them through another breakneck brewing in their dream, while also grilling Malfoy about other potions they might try.

It still made no difference Friday day.

Finally, on Friday night, Malfoy dug in his heels. When Harry tried to drag him up from the Slytherin table in the Great Hall, where that night’s dream had begun, he refused to get to his feet.

“I’m tired, Potter,” he groaned, his face down against the wood as Harry tugged on his limp arm. “It’s not going to work. We’ve proved that it’s not working. Can we just give it a rest?”

Harry looked down over the slumped figure. He couldn’t deny that Malfoy was looking about as bad in his dreams now as he did during the day. That hadn’t always been the case. Just like Malfoy still had his old hawthorn wand in these dreams, he’d always looked more like the way he probably remembered himself when they dreamt together—or perhaps more like the way Harry remembered him?—rather than the wan shadow he’d become after Azkaban.

But now dream-Malfoy looked worn thin as well.

“Okay,” Harry said, sliding onto the bench beside his friend and folding his own arms on the table, lying his cheek upon them so he could watch the face beside his. “Okay, we can take it easy tonight.”

A relieved smile twitched at the corner of Malfoy’s lips, though his eyes were still shut.

“I just don’t want to forget,” Harry said softly.

“I know,” Malfoy said, weary and equally soft. “I know.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That weekend, there were no dreams on Saturday or Sunday.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

It was Monday when Goldstein made his next move.

The rumors had probably started circling in N.E.W.T. D.A.D.A., just before lunch, but Harry hadn’t given much thought to the furtive glances into Malfoy’s corner during the class itself. Blissfully ignorant, he’d swung to the Great Hall and grabbed some lunch from the Gryffindor table on his own, knowing both Dean and Malfoy had classes to supervise during the Monday lunch blocks.

It wasn’t until N.E.W.T. Herbology rolled around at 2:20, yet Malfoy didn’t show up to class, that Harry realized something might be wrong.

The bells had already rung across the grounds, and minute after minute ticked by as Sprout left them all to their regular checks of their plants, but Malfoy didn’t hurry in late. He didn’t appear at all. After fifteen minutes, Harry made the excuse of needing fresh compost to top up one of his pots, and he hurried out behind the greenhouse to drag the map from his pocket.

“I solemnly swear I’m up to no good,” he whispered, touching his wand to the parchment. As the lines unfurled across it, he searched the area between the greenhouse and the castle, but there was no hint of Malfoy hurrying across it..

Harry looked then to the Great Hall, and finally to the South Wing. That was where he found Malfoy. The Slytherin appeared to be in his room in the Eighth Year’s hall.

Had he gone back to get something he’d forgotten? Or felt ill perhaps?

Harry watched the little labeled dot, and it did move slightly, wavering from one side of the tiny room to the other—so at least it seemed Malfoy was well enough to be up and moving.

Brows furrowed, Harry muttered, “Mischief managed.” Then he folded the map back along its well-worn lines, hands moving automatically as he wondered what would explain Malfoy ditching class. Could the hexing have escalated?

Back inside the greenhouse, Luna looked at him curiously, but when he opened up his mouth to ask her if she had any ideas, Sprout called the students forward for one of her demonstrations. It lasted the next twenty minutes, and it was only as they were released back to their workstations to pack up their things that Harry had another chance to ask privately: “D’you know where Malfoy is?”

Luna looked up at him with wide, luminous eyes. “I do not, Harry. Do you?”

“Well, yes,” he admitted. “Or I think so. It seems like he went back to his room. I guess what I really meant was: do you know why?”

The Seventh Year girl looked over at the table where Mandy and Morag worked, no fondness in her expression as she studied her two upperclassmen.

“I don’t know for certain, Harry, but I imagine it might have to do with the rumors that the Eighth Year Ravenclaws have all been spreading today.”

Once she said it, Harry did recall the extra buzz going about in D.A.D.A., though he hadn’t paid it much attention at the time.

“What rumors?” Harry asked, just as the bells began ringing again.

Luna slipped her arm through Harry’s and drew him with her as they left the greenhouse, hurrying away from any other ears, before she said, “You really haven’t heard? I believe they’ve been trying to spread it to the other houses all day.”

“Spread what?’ Harry asked again as they rushed across the courtyard leading to the castle. Luna kept up a remarkably quick clip as they headed together to N.E.W.T. Charms next.

“Oh, Harry, it seems they’re telling everyone that…” She paused as they reached the castle doors, looking up at Harry from his shoulder. “They’re telling everyone that Draco is gay.”

Harry forgot for a moment to follow her through the door, his feet glued to the steps beneath him.

Malfoy…was gay?

When Luna looked back at him in question, he realized he’d stopped walking, and he quickly fell in beside her once more.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with being gay. There were other gay people at Hogwarts. Hell, Seamus was always trying to get into Dean’s pants when he drank, though Harry had never worked out—or rather quite worked up the nerve to ask—Dean’s feelings on the matter.

It was just that Harry had never considered that Malfoy might be interested in other boys. Hadn’t he been with Pansy Parkinson? She’d always been so handsy with him, petting his hair on the train or hugging him tight at that Samhain party.

Maybe it was just a lie from the Ravenclaws. Or maybe Malfoy was bi. It was possible to like both. Right?

It was just—

Wow.

Had Malfoy kissed other boys, Harry wondered as he blindly followed Luna up the moving staircases. Or done...even more? There was generally a, er, giver and receiver in these sorts of things, right? Would Malfoy—

No, no, he was not imagining what role Malfoy would take during sex.

But even telling himself not to think about it made his imagination helpfully summon a flash of Malfoy face down on a mattress, sharp chin pillowed on his folded arms, all porcelain skin, messy blond hair, and an inscrutable grey eye looking over that bare shoulder in challenge.

Jesus fucking Christ, what was wrong with him?

Well, it had to be morbid curiosity, that was all. One couldn't really help but wonder, when they heard shocking news like this.

That was all.

Harry barely took note of what was going on around him as he wandered into the Charms classroom and found his seat. Malfoy didn’t show up to that class either, and there was no easy way for Harry to check the map without someone seeing it. Hopefully the git was still just hiding out in his room.

Though that sure made it seem like maybe the rumors were true, because why hide if they weren’t?

Harry wanted to ask Dean about the whole mess as they sat side by side in Charms, but the tiered seats were too close for any kind of private conversation, and the bells marking the end of class had rung before he ever found the chance to say anything. In the end, all he could do was give his friend a meaningful look and say, “See you at dinner tonight, yeah?”

“Of course, mate,” Dean said, slapping Harry on the shoulder. “Good luck with Potions.”

Then Harry was trailing Tracey and the Ravenclaws back down to the dungeons for the final class of his day. He thought about saying something, since it was clear that most or all of the small group in front of him were responsible for the gossip that had driven Malfoy into hiding. 

He also thought about ditching the class to track Malfoy down in his room or at least check the map, but what good would either do? It wasn’t like he really wanted to go talk to Malfoy. And surely Malfoy wouldn’t want to see him either.

So instead of doing any of those things, Harry carried on as if it were a normal class, fumbling his way through the day’s brewing and glaring at a cheerful Anthony Goldstein across their shared table  as he thought privately, You’re such a dick.

After that class, Harry headed to the Great Hall, fully expecting that Malfoy wouldn’t show. And he was right. Dean and Luna were already at the end of the Slytherin table, but with no actual Slytherin to justify their presence. Harry went and joined them there anyway.

“He didn’t show to Potions either?” Dean asked, as Harry stared at the food without any real appetite.

“No,” Harry answered, taking a piece of bread and tearing off pieces that he dropped on his plate without eating them. “Hardly expected he would, though. We’re stuck at a damn table together with Goldstein in that class.”

“He can’t miss too many classes, though,” Luna said, looking sadly down into the goblet she held cradled between her two hands. “He needs as many good N.E.W.T.s as he can manage.”

“Well, we’ve all got Charms together tomorrow morning. One of us will collect him before, and stick with him through class,” Dean suggested. “What’s he got after?”

“Fourth Year Transfiguration Double,” Harry replied, not explaining how or why he knew.

“Could you walk him there?” Dean asked, but Harry shook his head.

“I’ve got a Potions Double myself, with the First Years.”

“I can make sure he gets to the Transfiguration classroom,” Luna said, looking up with that solemn look still on her face. “And wherever he needs to go after. I don’t have any other classes until Herbology at five.”

And so it was that they divvied up the day, making sure that one of them would get Malfoy to each of his classes and even partner with him in whatever classes they shared, which meant that now Harry would be the one without a partner in Herbology and D.A.D.A., while Dean would be on his own when Harry would sit with Malfoy in Transfiguration.

“He still has History of Magic, but none of us do,” Harry pointed out, slightly unnerved that neither Luna or Dean were questioning why Harry knew Malfoy’s entire class schedule by heart. Had he been that obvious about stalking the Slytherin?

“I don’t imagine that Professor Binns would notice another student in class,” Luna mused. “I could probably join him there.”

Harry nodded gratefully. He really didn’t want to have to try to stay awake for extra morning classes as boring as Binns’ lectures had always been.

He looked down at his plate of mangled bread. None of them had really eaten more than a few bites. He asked, “So we’re really doing this? For Malfoy?”

Dean looked at him, a wry smile in his eyes. “Clearly we are.”

“But…why?” Harry asked. He wasn’t trying to argue that they shouldn’t be doing it, but he wasn’t sure he understood why Luna and Dean were willing to go to so much trouble to help Malfoy, without even a moment’s hesitation.

“We Survivors have to stick together,” Luna said. She smiled peacefully and patted Harry on the hand, reaching across the table to do so.

Dean nodded, though it was slower and more thoughtful. “I’m not going to claim to love the guy or anything, but he clearly isn’t the same person he was when we were younger. He’s been trying to steer clear of trouble, and this was a really shit thing for Goldstein to do to him.”

Harry wasn’t sure how he would have felt a year or two ago about Malfoy getting outed against his will, assuming it was all true. He had a worrisome hunch that Ron would have found it hilarious when they were 15 or 16—though maybe not now. They’d all done some growing up over the last couple years.

And now, for better or worse, Harry agreed with Dean. Whatever Draco Malfoy might deserve for how he'd behaved when he was younger, this kind of attack—it didn't feel anything like justice.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, Harry dreamt of Malfoy.

He came to in the Slytherin common room, sitting forward with his hands clenched nervously between his knees.

Since he remembered everything, he knew this was a real dream—a shared dream—yet he didn’t immediately spy Malfoy in the dark room, lit only by a few lamps providing small pools of light here and there and the great underwater windows with their stygian glow.

Then there was a hint of movement in one of the armchairs over by the hearth, on the side of the room that Harry couldn’t reach.

“Malfoy,” Harry called, low and uneasy. “Are you all right?”

There was an unsteady laugh. “Well, apparently I’m still alive, at least.”

Harry’s heart lurched in his chest. “Was there any doubt you would be?”

The shadowy figure rose from the armchair, a paler smudge in the gloom as Malfoy weaved over to the sofa where Harry was stuck.

“Not much. I just, ah, may have drunk an entire bottle of Firewhisky I had in my trunk. So there’s that.”

He threw himself down on the end of the sofa, loose-limbed and eyes squeezed shut.

“Shit, Malfoy,” Harry said, twisting toward him and unsure if he should reach out or what. He had a weird urge to press a hand to the other boy’s forehead, like you did to someone who had a fever. Just some physical way to indicate I want to know if you’re all right or not, because I care.

“What if you vomit in your sleep or something? Or get alcohol poisoning? No one would know to go check up on you!” Because Harry wouldn’t remember to, even if he woke up.

A lazy flap of Malfoy’s pale hand dismissed these concerns. “There wasn’t that much left in the bottle. I’ll probably just feel like shit tomorrow morning, that’s all. Well. For even more reasons.”

Harry studied that familiar face in the low light, seeing how tired and miserable Malfoy was, lines around his mouth making him look far older than eighteen.

“So...the rumors—they’re true?”

Malfoy choked on an ugly laugh. “Was that not pretty fucking apparent from that first dream, Potter?”

Harry lifted one shoulder in a weak shrug. “I mean, we never talked about it. Didn't think I should just...assume.” Though the not-talking had been his own choice, really. He’d been trying so desperately to not even think about what they'd done, back in those first weeks.

“I thought,” Malfoy said, enunciating carefully, “that it seemed kinder all around to just move on without addressing the matter.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “Same. But, uh, you are?” 

The aggrieved sigh would have surely been paired with an eye roll if Malfoy was opening his eyes. “Yes. I am.”

“And no one knew?”

Malfoy’s mouth twisted. “Pansy knew. Not that I ever told her or even confirmed it, but I know she knew. I imagine some of the others also suspected and talked about it behind my back. Slytherins do love to gossip.”

“But…you didn’t want the world to know,” Harry said, since that was probably what he should have asked the first time around.

“It would not be the done thing,” Malfoy said, in a way that should have sounded snooty and insufferable but mostly sounded sad. “I’m the only remaining heir to the Malfoy name and bloodline. That would need to be carried on, regardless of my personal feelings on the matter. I imagine my parents both had their suspicions over the years as well, if they knew me at all, but we never addressed the issue, because there would have been no point. I was never going to refuse my duty to my family. I would have ended up marrying whatever witch they felt was appropriate and found a way to do what was needed for the family line to continue.”

Harry shuddered. He couldn’t imagine marrying someone who had been picked out for him. Having to share his life with someone he’d never chosen—having to touch someone he wasn’t even attracted to.

Because Malfoy was attracted to people more like, well, Harry. After all, that first dream—

But that had just been a physical thing. Nothing more than that. He had hated Harry.

Hadn't he?

Heart beating heavy in his chest, Harry watched Malfoy in the dark silence. He wanted to ask.

But there was no need to ask. It was ridiculous to think that Malfoy had ever thought of Harry back then as anything more than someone he might want to hate-fuck. Malfoy had spent years picking on him, starting fistfights, making those godawful badges, trying to Crucio him. Why would you do that to someone you actually liked?

Unless maybe you were so angry at the world, because you could never have that person, never tell them how you felt, and never ever expect them to feel the same way back.

Jesus, could it be true? How long could Malfoy have maybe liked him for?

“So. You, er. Towards me?”

Malfoy threw his hands up in the air, still not opening his eyes or looking at Harry. “Yes, Potter! I ‘er, towards you’! Let that continue to swell your head, if world savior wasn't enough to satisfy your ego!” He was entirely pink in the face.

“Like, since we were kids? When did you first know?”

“Do we really have to talk about this? Maybe we could talk about Azkaban or torture or other more pleasant topics.”

“No, I want to talk about it.”

Because Harry was having a slow sort of revelation as he watched Malfoy grow flustered, flushing and avoiding his eyes.

It was a bit like how he hadn't wanted Malfoy to disappear into a part of the Manor he couldn't follow him into, when the other boy had been falling apart after that first dinner they'd shared in the Great Hall. Or the urgent need he'd felt to leap down from the courtroom benches and save Malfoy from the manacles that had been sending him into a panic under the Ministry.

It was the same feeling that had made Harry himself panic when he thought these dreams might end—and the overwhelming relief he'd felt when he'd seen Malfoy again between the bonfires after Samhain.

For weeks now, he'd wanted to grab onto the other boy and keep hold of him so that Malfoy wouldn't disappear. Because Harry himself felt better when he had a hold on Malfoy. He liked holding onto him, his chin resting on Malfoy's shoulder, reassured by feeling Malfoy's body solid and right there against his.

And fuck it, honestly, he was sure wondering now if that first dream has been a total fluke or if kissing Malfoy really had felt as electrifying as he remembered.

“Malfoy, I want to talk about it,” he repeated.

Malfoy finally looked at him, his expression somewhere between ill and terrified.

“No, you don't.”

Harry was the Gryffindor, though. Time to lion up.

He moved, half rising from his side of the sofa, one hand on the back of it as he shuffled closer to Malfoy's end. “I think I do,” he said as he shifted even closer, his other hand landing on the far arm of the sofa, effectively caging Malfoy in as Harry leaned into him, less than a foot between their faces.

“Potter, you don’t—” Malfoy croaked, his grey eyes darting between Harry's eyes and his lips.

But Harry had always gotten a kick out of contradicting Malfoy. Plus, following his instincts usually worked out better for him than trying to over plan his actions.

So he leaned in and kissed Draco Malfoy for the second time in his life.

Malfoy made a noise halfway between a whine and a whimper, then he grabbed Harry by the front of his jumper and held him in place while arching up into the kiss.

The hold was quite unnecessary, because Harry was already swinging his knee over Malfoy’s legs to pin the blond back against the sofa, dropping his weight down and grinding their lower bodies together to feel the pressure against his cock, which was definitely waking up and taking notice.

And he had his answer. It was every bit as thrilling as he remembered. It was bloody brilliant.

As the kisses went on, open mouthed and urgent, Harry tangled his hands in that soft blond hair, forcing Malfoy's head back so Harry could devour him. Malfoy's hands were already moving under his jumper, a light drag of nails snatching a gasp out of Harry that was caught in Malfoy’s mouth.

There was something solid pressing insistently against Harry's ass as he ground against the body beneath his, and maybe that should have seemed scarier—or maybe it would be scarier the first time he actually saw another man’s prick waiting at attention for him to presumably touch it, but—actually, no. The idea of getting a hand on Malfoy's prick and wanking the snarky bastard into an incoherent mess seemed hot as fuck in that particular moment.

Harry snaked one hand down between the tight press of their bodies, having to scoot back enough to be able to reach that bulge through all the layers of cloth separating them. But he couldn't get any closer.

“What the fuck is with you and the constant robes?” he growled against Malfoy's mouth. “Do you know how much easier it is to get a pair of trousers open than to get three yards of fabric out of the way?”

“Oh, fuck, fuck, Evanesco,” Malfoy groaned, his robes disappearing even without a wand and leaving him in just the button up shirt and slacks he'd had underneath.

“Much better,” Harry said approvingly, and Malfoy’s breath hitched. Then it seemed to stop altogether as Harry shoved a hand past his waistband, popping the button off those fancy tailored trousers in his haste to see Malfoy utterly lose his shit. All because of him.

His fingers brushed past a thatch of wiry hair, then he hit solid warm flesh and his own chest seemed to hollow out, his stomach dropping with some strange thrill as he felt Malfoy in his hand, felt the shudder that ran through the other boy’s body, felt the trembling gasp against his mouth.

He wrapped his hand firmly around that hot column of skin, sliding his grip up and down as Malfoy went to pieces just like he'd imagined he would: cursing, clawing at Harry's back, and gasping into the sloppy kiss that had started it all.

The swearing grew more broken as Malfoy got closer to the edge, straining up against Harry, muscles going taut.

“See. I told you I did,” Harry rasped into Malfoy's ear, just before the other boy cried out and the dream fell apart around them.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry woke up with a start, heart pounding and more than half hard, with the distinct feeling that he'd much rather be in whatever dream had got him in such a state. He was feeling horny and lonely as fuck, and he had no idea why.

Slipping a hand down into his pyjama bottoms, he gave himself a lazy tug, groaning at the immediate sense of relief. It felt good, of course, and yet—even as he pulled himself up to and over that edge alone, a part of him felt like something was missing. It felt almost like grief.

Chapter 23

On Tuesday morning, Harry banged on Malfoy’s room door, knowing that he was still inside thanks to the map.

There was no response even after he’d counted out fifteen seconds, and he called through the wood, “I know you’re in there, Malfoy. And you know that knowing when to give up is one skill I’ve never developed. Hell, I didn’t even die when I was killed!” His voice dropped lower, as he muttered only to himself, “Two times over, in fact.”

The door creaked open just wide enough for Malfoy to peer out like some wild creature, eyes bloodshot and rimmed a raw red, skin pale, and hair a mess.

“What, Potter?” he croaked, apparently too miserable to remember his unfailingly polite act.

“No more ditching class,” was Harry’s only response. “We’re making sure you make it to all your lessons from now on, and today that starts with Charms. So get cleaned up, then we should still have enough time to get some breakfast before we have to be there.”

Malfoy stared at him, uncomprehending. Then he said flatly, “No.” And he began to swing the door shut in Harry’s face.

Luckily, Harry got a foot in the gap before it could close all the way, and he forced the door back open, glad that Malfoy was in too rough of shape to use his full strength in fighting back. If it had come to a physical contest, Harry knew from plenty of past scuffles that they were pretty evenly matched.

“Potter, I swear to fucking Merlin—” Malfoy started, sounding more than a little desperate as he gave up any pretense of politeness.

“Dean’s here too,” Harry pointed out, looking over his shoulder at his fellow Gryffindor, still out of sight to Malfoy since he’d only opened the door mere inches. “Say hi, Dean.”

“Morning, Malfoy,” Dean called, looking faintly amused by the entire scene.

Malfoy’s face blanched, as Harry had expected it might. He didn’t know why Malfoy seemed to act a little less proper in front of him than the others, but it appeared that he’d been correct when he’d figured that having Dean come along was more likely to get them an agreeable response from the Slytherin.

“Good morning, Thomas,” Malfoy whispered, eyes squeezed shut. He looked embarrassed and miserable, and while some parts of Harry still sort of enjoyed that, he knew that wasn’t what they were there for.

“C’mon, Malfoy,” he wheedled, gentler than he’d ever thought he would be in a conversation with this particular git. “Get yourself cleaned up, and let’s go find something to eat. It’s going to be all right.”

Malfoy cracked his eyes back open to glare balefully at Harry, looking as if he very much did not agree. But he didn’t say a word of protest aloud. He merely pushed at Harry’s shoe in his door with his own socked foot and muttered, “If you would allow me ten minutes to get ready?”

Harry drew his foot back and agreed, “Ten minutes. We’ll be waiting.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The day went about as smoothly as it could, with Harry, Dean, and Luna working together to serve as an odd little honor guard around Draco bloody Malfoy. One of them sat with him in each of their N.E.W.T. classes, and Luna walked with him to and from the two Transfiguration classes he helped with on Tuesdays.

They attracted plenty of stares, but at least it was for a slightly different reason than everyone merely wondering if it was true that Lucius Malfoy’s only son took it up the arse.

After Herbology ended at 6:10, Harry stopped by the table that he’d shared with Luna until that very evening, when he’d done a little swap with Malfoy to move all their plants around.

“I’m due at Quidditch practice by 6:30, but you two all right heading to dinner?” he asked, looking between Luna and Malfoy. The latter looked as if he might collapse on his feet, and Harry was honestly a bit worried knowing that Malfoy still had Astronomy at 10 p.m. that night. At least that was another class Luna shared with him, so he wouldn’t be on his own.

“We’ll be fine, Harry,” Luna assured him, while Malfoy didn’t say a thing or even look up from trying to get his Herbology book back in his bulging schoolbag. Harry reached out without thinking to hold the edges open and try to make it easier.

He looked back to Luna, his hands still on Malfoy’s bag, and was embarrassed and confused by the pleased look she was giving him. “What?”

“Nothing at all,” she said, still smiling. “Good luck with Quidditch practice,” she wished, before drawing Malfoy along with her out of the greenhouse.

Harry shook his head but hurried off as well, giving the pair of blonds one last look before he headed in the opposite direction across the grounds.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry was picking up the scattered Quaffles dotting the pitch, wondering how dinner had gone, when Ginny swooped down to join him after giving her team one last set of instructions before their next meetup on Thursday.

“You don’t have to do all that,” she called, hopping off her broom and striding across the grass.

Harry shrugged, bending over to grab another Quaffle. He could have just used magic to summon them all, but sometimes he still preferred doing things the slow way and having something to do with his body.

“Least I can do in exchange for all the free practice,” he called, tossing the Quaffle into the open trunk a few feet away.

Ginny stopped beside the trunk, leaning on her broom and watching him with a bemused smile. “I guess helping people whether they want it or not is sort of your thing these days, huh?” When Harry straightened up and looked at her, she shrugged. “I mean, Malfoy hardly seems to appreciate whatever it is you and Dean and Luna are trying to do for him.”

Harry didn’t say anything, walking over to get the last Quaffle instead.

“What are you doing with him?” Ginny pressed, and Harry still didn’t know how to explain it or why it made him feel so uncomfortable to have to try to.

“I’m just trying to do what’s right, I guess.” He grabbed the Quaffle and turned back to Ginny, staying where he was with several yards separating them. “What the Ravenclaws did was wrong. Outing someone against their wishes—that’s just fucked up, Gin.”

“Yeah?” she asked, speaking in the same odd, measuring way that she’d used when Harry had first told her about the Ravenclaws bullying Malfoy. “So Malfoy is gay then?”

Harry shrugged, spinning the ball in his hands. “I haven’t asked him to confirm it or anything, but I don’t think he would’ve gone and run away from the public like that if there wasn’t some truth to it. No good reason to hide away from a lie when you could just deny it.”

“And what does that mean to you?”

He frowned, not understanding the question. “What does what mean to me?”

“What does it mean to you that Malfoy is into men?”

Harry shrugged, uncomfortable and still not sure what she was getting at. “I’m not some kind of homophobe, if that’s what you mean. Malfoy can be into whatever he wants, as long as it isn’t killing Muggles and Muggle-borns. I still don't like the git, but I’m just not okay with the shit Goldstein’s been pulling.”

Ginny didn’t respond, studying him as she stood there with her broom. He didn’t know what she wanted him to say, though.

“Gin, is everything okay?” he asked at last, just wanting the odd tension between them to go away.

She seemed to wake up, blinking and laughing to herself. “Yeah. It’s fine. Sorry for being so weird. I think I’m just—” She broke off, but didn’t explain. “I’m good. Just feeling a bit out of sorts maybe. I broke things off with Drew today.”

“Oh.” Harry spun the ball in his hands once. “Um, sorry?”

She flashed him a grin then and said, “Don’t be. It was just a dumb fling. I think I was looking for something that, well, I wasn’t ever going to find with Andrew Boddle.”

Harry gave the ball another toss, then he finally walked back over to the chest to drop it in atop the other Quaffles.

“Well, I hope you do find whatever it is you’re looking for,” he said, looking down at his ex.

She tilted her chin up, searching his eyes. “Yeah, so do I. Hopefully I didn’t just miss it while I wasn’t paying enough attention.”

Harry leaned down to close the lid on the chest and hoist it up into his arms. “Doubt you could,” he said, giving her a friendly elbow as he walked past. “Not a great Chaser like you.”

Then he set off for the broom closet, ready to leave the pitch and whatever that weird conversation had been behind him.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, Harry was relieved to open his eyes and know he was dreaming again.

And then he was immediately very, very nervous.

He was standing outside Malfoy’s door, just like he had been that morning when daytime-Harry had ambushed daytime-Malfoy and forced him to class. And it was the first time they’d be face-to-face again since dreamtime-Harry had mauled dreamtime-Malfoy on the Slytherin common room sofa.

Taking a deep breath, he lifted a hand and rapped on the door. There was a moment of silence, then Malfoy opened the door a scant few inches, just like every other time Harry had shown up knocking.

“Hi,” Harry said, suddenly realizing he had no idea what to say. How did you greet the former enemy you’d barely admitted to being friends with, the night after you’d tossed him off because maybe you’d realized you were a bit gay for him?

Shit, he was a bit gay, wasn’t he?

He stared at Malfoy with wide eyes, gaze flicking between the pale blond hair that fell across his brow, the sharp angles of his face, and the familiar bow of his lips. Malfoy was objectively striking in his fair looks, in an unusual way that—if Harry hadn’t grown up his whole life knowing the git—would have probably caught his eye on any street. 

Also, Harry wanted to mess up every neatly pressed line of him and reduce him to a cursing and writhing mess beneath his hands. So yeah, he was probably more than a bit gay.

Oh. Was that what Ginny had been going on about that evening? Had she picked up on it even before he had?

He gave himself a little shake, since Ginny was the last thing he wanted to be thinking about right now. He had Malfoy right here in front of him, and his ex-girlfriend was a lot less interesting than this whole new gay awakening he had to explore.

“You gonna come out here and join me?” he asked, trying for confidence, a little smile tugging at his lips.

But Malfoy stepped back, farther into the room that Harry had still barely glimpsed around that door.

The tentative grin slipped from Harry’s face. “You know I can’t go in your room.”

“I know.”

There was definitely a cold feeling taking root in the pit of Harry’s stomach now. “Are…you mad?” he asked. “About last night?” I thought you wanted that, he thought but didn’t say. You sure as hell looked like you were having a good time. And he was willing to bet saying that wasn’t going to help either.

“No,” Malfoy said quickly. “It’s…whatever. It’s fine. But it was a mistake.” He grimaced, his mouth going flat. “Look, we both got each other off once now. How about we just call it even and done with?”

“What?”

Harry didn’t understand. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Malfoy looked pained. He hung onto the door, his face grim. “We’re not doing this, Potter.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t real!” Malfoy burst out, slamming the flat side of his fist against the edge of the door frame.

Harry stared, his mind blank, and the only coherent thought in his head was: But I really want to kiss you.

He wanted to grab that fist, which was the only part of Malfoy he could probably reach, and drag the other boy out into the hall with him, press him up against a stone wall, and reduce him to begging—and admitting that he also wanted more of whatever they’d started last night.

“It is real,” Harry said, feeling numb. “This is real.”

Then Malfoy was the one to move first, darting out around that cracked door to reach Harry and shove him backwards, pushing him farther across the hallway.

“There is no this! It’s a bloody dream, Potter, which is already fading. And then it’ll be nothing.” Malfoy stood there a moment, shoulders heaving. Then he retreated into his doorway again. “It could never be anything but a dream.”

Harry fell back against the wall behind him, not wanting to have to hold himself up under the weight of whatever this was as he stared at Malfoy. A breakup? They hadn’t even been together, not like that. Rejection, anyway. It was undoubtedly rejection.

“Malfoy—Draco—”

“No, don’t you—”

“Draco!” Harry shouted. “I’m not fucking around here!”

He held his head in his hands, eyes screwed shut and face red as he just let the words spill out because he knew he might not be able to do it if he was looking the other boy in the face.

“I don’t know what we’re doing exactly, but god, Malfoy, I like it. I like spending every night with you, I like talking with you and joking with you and, yeah, also getting my hands on you. I didn’t want to just tell you, because I thought it sounded pathetic, but these dreams have been the best part of my day for weeks now. Why the fuck do you think I’ve been so desperate to find a way to remember them?”

He looked up at the other boy at last, face burning. “It’s not just the career stuff. I don’t want to lose this. You and me. Being friends. Being whatever else we could maybe be.”

Malfoy dropped to the floor inside his room, where Harry couldn’t reach him. He sat with his head bowed forward, like the weight of it was too much for him as well.

“You say that here, but you know it wouldn’t be like that in the real world.” Malfoy shook his head, though Harry could barely catch a glimpse of his face through the hair falling in front of it. “You hate being in the papers. What do you think would happen if people found out you were out befriending former Death Eaters, let alone…”

Let alone fucking one, Harry filled in. Which made it sound meaningless and crude, but that was what the press would paint it as. They wouldn’t want to write about laughing over Exploding Snap or weighing career options or flying for hours around the castle. They would want to make it something scandalous and wrong. Either Malfoy’s corrupting influence or more evidence of Harry’s battle with his ‘unresolved trauma.’

“We’re already both in the papers,” Harry said weakly. “What’s a little more bad press?”

Malfoy shook his head, still not lifting his face. “You said it yourself. Your least favorite thing turning something you…” His breath hitched. “Turning something you enjoy into something you’d only end up resenting.”

Harry remembered the words, though he’d been talking about Quidditch at the time. And he was pretty sure he’d described it as something he “loved,” though Malfoy had chosen to dodge that word.

“It’s not the same thing,” he protested, even though he knew Malfoy had a bit of a point. But—but surely the press would get over it in time, right? “The Quidditch thing—it was more than just the press. It was about all the different downsides not being worth it for something I didn’t really want to be doing anyway.”

And what if I really want this?

But Malfoy still didn’t look up.

“Please. Draco.”

“Don’t call me that,” Malfoy whispered. “You’ve never called me that.”

“But I want to,” Harry said back, soft but insistent.

Yet the other boy only shook his head.

And no matter what Harry tried, no matter what he said, Malfoy refused to budge for the remainder of the dream, until the hall and everything between them melted away into nothingness.

Notes:

Sorry, folks! But it's not the end yet...

Chapter 24

It had been a strange couple of days, but Harry felt oddly good about what they were doing. The Survivors had rallied around Malfoy, continuing to escort him to his classes and never leaving him alone in public, which seemed to be insulating him from any possible commentary from the student body. It felt like they were doing something worthwhile.

Malfoy was still getting looks, that was for sure, but hopefully he was finding it easier to ignore them as he silently walked beside Luna filling the air with more of her crazy creature stories or Dean carrying on mostly one-sided chats about their class assignments or Harry recounting old Quidditch stories from Quidditch Through the Ages.

He still never spoke unless in response to a direct question, but that was probably fine. Better than being a git, anyway.

On Thursday afternoon, they had to face their stickiest moment yet, when Malfoy, Harry, and Goldstein would all be stuck together at a single small Potions workstation for the first time since Monday’s rumors had started blowing up.

Luna brought Malfoy to the advanced Potions lab, and Harry was already waiting at the door, since he’d only had to come the few feet from the lower years’ lab where he’d been helping the First Year Gryffindors.

“C’mon, Malfoy,” he greeted the Slytherin, as the pair stopped in front of him. “Let’s just get this over with, shall we?”

“I would like nothing more,” Malfoy said quietly, the words and tone polite, and the wish behind them probably genuine. One shitty hour, then Harry had a free period, so he’d be escorting Malfoy to his Second Year Charms Double.

They walked into the classroom together and put their things down on the table that Goldstein had already arrived at. Then Harry leaned over close to the Ravenclaw so that no one else around them should overhear him as he whispered, “Do a single thing to make this more unpleasant than it already is, and I’ll make your life a living hell.” He met the other boy’s eyes then, smiling slightly. “Just so we’re clear.”

The warning seemed to do the trick. Goldstein didn’t try to speak to either of them or even look at them for the rest of the class. Harry held Malfoy back until the first rush for ingredients had passed, then escorted him to the store cupboard to get their ingredients together. Malfoy spoke exactly once the entire period, to point out under his breath that Harry was supposed to split his bouncing bulbs, not mash them. Harry supposed that was the most thanks he was going to get for his saviour act.

After the class, they climbed up along the long route to the Charms classroom, Harry still talking about the day’s brew and why his potion had turned out watery instead of syrupy, just to have something to fill the space between them.

They stopped at the door to Flitwick’s classroom, and Harry fiddled with the strap of his bookbag. “I’ve got D.A.D.A. with the Third Years till six, then Quidditch practice after, so Luna will be coming to get you after this Double, yeah?”

“Yes, Potter, though she needn’t worry about it, if you all would rather be free of this hassle.” Malfoy looked away into Charms’ classroom. “While it has been very…considerate of you three, it isn’t necessary.”

Harry wasn’t going to lie and say something that Malfoy would see right through, like “Hey, it’s just what friends do.” He knew they weren’t friends. But maybe it was just something decent humans might do.

He gave an awkward little shrug, his mouth twisting as he tried to think of what to say. “S’no big hassle, really. We have most the same classes anyway.” He stepped away, turning to start back down the stairs. “See you tomorrow, Malfoy. Potions again, bright and early.”

Then he skipped down the stairs and left the lonely Slytherin behind.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

A whistling wind heralded the approach of another flyer, then Ginny pulled up beside Harry, both their breaths visible puffs of white against the dark sky.

“That was a really good practice,” he said, still trying to even out his breathing after the last set of drills they’d run. The rest of Ginny’s team were trickling back down to the ground. “You’ve really got this captain thing figured out.”

“Learned from the best,” she returned with a wink.

Harry gave a pained laugh. He’d hardly been a stellar captain. More than anything, he was glad he’d only taken over the year after Ron’s awful first season, as it had been hard enough to try to stand by his best mate through that disaster when Harry hadn’t personally been responsible for improving his performance.

“I think I’m far better off only being Seeker than I ever was being captain,” Harry said, taking his feet off his stirrups to roll his ankles one by one. “Just leave me on my own to look for that little glint of gold, and I’m happy.”

Ginny’s smile was lopsided, fond but slightly sad. “Simple man you are,” she teased. “Though it’s hardly fair of you to only tell me now what you need to be happy. Are you saying if I'd just lobbed a few Snitches your way last summer, we might’ve never broken up?”

Harry’s heart gave a little lurch, like he’d missed a step on the stairs. He looked over at Ginny, unsure why she was bringing up their breakup once again. “I think what was going on this summer was probably bigger than even a Snitch can fix.”

“But things are better for you now?” Ginny asked, looking out across the illuminated pitch instead of meeting his gaze.

“I…yeah, I guess.” Harry thought about it a moment. “Definitely better than the worst days of the summer. I was feeling pretty lost the first couple months back at Hogwarts, but I think that’s getting better. The Quidditch has helped. It at least gives me something I can focus on, y’know. Some idea of what my future could look like, now that…that everything else is over.”

“Everything like Voldemort? Or everything like you and me?”

Harry opened his mouth, but he didn’t have any response. Ginny looked over at him then, wisps of her bright hair being tugged about in the wind and shining like fresh copper when the lights from the stands caught them.

“I”m sorry, Harry,” she said, her eyes not leaving his. “I think I probably made a terrible mistake this summer, and you got hurt because of it. But it was all just too much at the time—figuring out what you needed when my family was also falling to pieces, and figuring out how you and I worked together after so much time apart. I guess…I just thought that if it didn’t feel easy and natural anymore, then that was some kind of sign that it wasn’t right. That we weren’t right for each other.”

She bit her lip, her eyes bright. “Now I think I was probably just running away because it was easier than figuring out how to fix things.” She turned and looked off across the forest.

“I did my own share of running away this summer,” Harry admitted. “Locked myself up in Grimmauld for four days straight at one point, rather than facing more days at the Ministry.”

“You did?” she said, a wet laugh of surprise bursting out of her. “I never heard about that.”

“Only Hermione and Ron knew.”

Ginny smiled sadly down her hands, gripping her broomstick. “I guess I missed a whole lot.” She looked up at him again. “Do you think it’s too late now to fix things?”

It took Harry a moment to understand what she was asking, then it hit him at last.

“You…you mean, you and me? Like, us getting back together?”

Her cheeks pinked as he gaped at her, and she looked away again, blinking a few times. “Oh, don’t make it sound so unbelievable, Potter! There was a time when you thought we’d be together forever, too.”

He studied her familiar profile, lit up by the bright lights of the Quidditch pitch. She was still lovely. Looking at her still felt in some way like coming home, because she’d been the goal he’d held in his heart that whole awful year they’d been hunting Horcruxes.

But it was like coming back to a home he hadn’t lived in for years—which now felt more like a stranger’s house than his own.

Harry didn’t feel the same now as he had back in Sixth Year. He didn’t look at Ginny and dream of getting to touch her. He didn’t want to punch any other boy who got to be near her. The news that she’d got herself a new boyfriend had mostly pained him because it had felt like another reminder of how badly he himself was doing at getting his life together, not because it had killed him to think of anyone else having her when he didn’t.

She looked over at him, those deep brown eyes searching his as she gave Harry a crooked smile that made something in his chest ache. “I guess maybe I screwed everything up too bad.”

“I…” He wasn’t sure. Maybe he didn’t want her desperately like he once had, but he did still love her. She’d been one of his closest friends for years. Maybe that was enough. If they both went pro next year, it wasn’t like either of them would have the time for a proper relationship, the kind anyone new would expect.

Besides, it...it made sense, didn't it? They’d still be at every family event together forever. She was his best mate’s sister. Was this just the path of least resistance, letting them fall back into something comfortable enough, where they could live in some easy orbit as they both travelled around the country for training and matches?

And at least he’d have someone to talk to again at the end of the night, when he was lonely or just wanted to unload about how his day had gone.

With a gentle pressure from her knees, Ginny directed her broom over till their legs bumped, her hand reaching out to catch his broomstick and hold them together. With a quick searching look, she leaned in and gave him a soft kiss on the lips, lingering just long enough to leave the familiar flavor of her strawberry lip balm, the one she’d always worn to keep her lips from getting chapped by the long hours of flying.

“Just think about it, Harry. Promise me you’ll think about it.”

Then she let go of his broom and turned her own down to the ground, jumping off as soon as she reached the grass and striding off to the broom closet alone.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry was having a pretty hard time not thinking about it, and he was distracted all through his stupid Second Year Potions class on Friday morning, which led to some frankly alarming results from the Swelling Solutions that the Hufflepuffs were meant to be working on.

Slughorn had to step in himself, when Harry had been too lost in thought to notice the shouts from the students as one of them blew their hand up to the size of a troll’s.

“Get your head out of the clouds, Potter!” the professor scolded him as they walked over to the N.E.W.T. lab after the Double class had ended. “That sort of distraction could prove deadly with some of the brews we work on!”

“Sorry, sir. Absolutely, sir,” Harry agreed absently, without really listening.

But he wasn’t much better in his own class. Malfoy had to actually stop him on four separate occasions from doing something so stupid it wouldn’t have only messed up Harry’s own potion but probably caused a minor explosion that would ruin all three cauldrons at their workstation. Each time, Harry apologized in a hurry, but by the third near miss, even Malfoy’s blank mask was cracking and he was eying Harry with something like disbelief.

He didn’t say anything, though, as they walked together in silence to the Transfiguration classroom after N.E.W.T. Potions had ended. Malfoy only gave him one last sharp look at the door, then he ducked inside to help with the Fourth Year Slytherins’ Double class he’d been assigned.

Harry slumped against the wall outside, sitting on the stone floor and staring out without really seeing the students streaming past him on their way to different classes. He had two hours until he had to be back here for his own N.E.W.T. Transfiguration class, so he figured he might as well just…stay.

And think.

That was all he’d been doing since the previous evening, really. And in two hours, he’d be seeing Ginny again for the first time, because she was in N.E.W.T. Transfiguration as well.

It wasn’t like she’d be expecting an answer right away, but he still wished she’d waited until Friday to drop the bombshell on him that she was interested in getting back together.

The thing was—well, there were a lot of things.

But another thing was that it had felt risky enough the first time, getting involved with his best mate’s sister. Getting back with her now, after once navigating a breakup and finding his footing again among the family…that felt like asking for even more trouble.

Of course, the Weasleys would all be delighted. At first. To the rest of them, it’d just seem like everything was going back to the way it was always supposed to be: Harry an official son and a full-fledged member of the family.

But what if they split up again?

He couldn’t put Mrs. Weasley through that a second time. Worst of all, he didn’t want her to think he was just messing about with her only daughter, getting together and splitting up all the time. He didn’t mean to mess about.

So if he really didn’t feel the same way again, then he probably shouldn’t do it, right?

But at the same time, it seemed so...simple. Obvious. It was like the idea of playing Quidditch professionally. It might not feel exactly right, but he had this great opportunity sitting in front of him that anyone would think he was a fool not to seize. Shouldn’t he seize it?

Especially when the alternative was having nothing at all?

Maybe all his struggles since May had just been a nasty detour, and actually he was finally finding his way back to the path he’d always been meant to continue on. He could get back together with Ginny, play a game he loved, and have the sort of life he’d dreamed of during that miserable year on the run. These past six months had been the blip, but now he could put it all behind him.

It made sense, right?

Harry leaned his head back on the wall behind him. Why was this so hard? Why couldn’t he just figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with his life?

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They were in the Great Hall, and Harry stared at Malfoy with wild eyes, realizing it had been three nights since their last dream—and remembering exactly what had been going on during his days in the meantime.

“We have to do something,” he blurted, reaching out and grabbing one of Malfoy’s hands across the house table.

It was another sunny morning in this dream, bright shafts streaming in through the windows as they sat at the end of the Slytherin table, just like they did for most dinners now. The cozy atmosphere was entirely at odds with the panic Harry felt and with the pained look on Malfoy’s face as he tried to pull his hand free from Harry’s grip.

“Potter, I told you already—”

“No, we have to do something, Malfoy. She wants—and I’m such an idiot—but that’s not what I really—”

Malfoy stopped struggling, staring at Harry in confusion. “What are you talking about? You’re making even less sense than you usually do.”

“I… I…” Harry’s mouth flapped like a fish gasping for oxygen, then he finally forced out, “I think I’m going to get back together with Ginny.”

Malfoy went completely still, then something shifted in his posture and he gave Harry a brittle smile. “Of course you are. Congratulations. You’ve been looking quite cozy together since you started joining Quidditch practices again.”

“But I don’t want that!” Harry protested, squeezing the hand he still held. “Even during the day, I don’t really want it! I’m just a fucking idiot thinking that it’ll probably be easier that way, because all the Weasleys will be happy and because I don’t know what the hell else to do with my life!”

“I don’t see what any of that has to do with me,” Malfoy started, but Harry cut him off before he could go on trying to pretend he was unaffected.

“It has to do with you, because you’re the one I actually want!” Harry reached out again, wrapping his other hand around Malfoy’s wrist so that he held onto that thin arm with both his hands, unwilling to let it go. “So we’ve got to try something to remember these dreams.”

Malfoy’s face turned savage, his teeth bared as he snarled, “I’ve told you. There. Is. Nothing.”

“There could be,” Harry said, his eyes searching those pale grey eyes. Then he leaned across the table to steal a quick kiss, not wanting the last one he remembered to be Ginny’s. “Did Snape ever teach you Legilimency?”

The blond recoiled, freezing in the act of wiping his mouth with the back of his free hand. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Not even a little.”

Malfoy fought again to get his hand free, nails grabbling under Harry’s fingers. “You don’t what you’re even asking—you’re going to get me thrown back in fucking Azkaban! You think I could just get away with breaking Harry fucking Potter’s mind with some unpracticed Legilimency, and they’d say ‘Oh, well, I’m sure you meant well!’”

“I trust you,” Harry said, the three little words shutting Malfoy up.

He froze, his fingers still gripping Harry’s in the process of trying to pry them away.

“I trust you, Draco,” Harry repeated, not once looking away from the wide eyes staring into his. “I have to at least try. I don’t want that to be my life. I don’t want my entire life to be something I just settle for, because I don’t know what else to do. Do you?” He held tighter onto the arm in his hands. “Would you seriously rather go back and forget all this ever happened? Watch me go off to be a miserable Quidditch star and probably marry bloody Ginny Weasley, while you’re left at Hogwarts, still bloody in love with me like you have been since we were boys?”

“I am not,” Draco protested, his voice hoarse and wrung out. “I just wanted to fuck you, and even that only for the last several years. I’m not a bloody pervert, Potter.”

Harry grinned for the first time that entire day.

But Malfoy looked almost sick as he whispered, “What if I might rather forget? You think you want to give it a go, but realistically, you’re just going to chuck me over in a few weeks. Then I’ll have to live my whole life knowing that I once had a chance and I blew it.” His eyes searched Harry’s. “I think maybe I’m better off in a world where I never even thought it might be possible.”

Shaking his head, Harry said, “Well, I think maybe I’m not going to chuck you over.”

Malfoy squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to look at Harry.

“Please. At least try.”

He watched as Malfoy took a deep breath, his shoulders lifting once and then slumping as he blew it out.

“I don’t even know what I could do,” he admitted. “I only know the basics of the spell—and it’s for accessing memories, not…implanting them or whatever you’re imagining.”

Harry was sure there had to be something they could do, though. He’d been inside Slughorn’s altered memories and experienced firsthand the way that Voldemort had given him fake visions. Surely it couldn't be impossible to just unlock memories he already had.

Malfoy shook off his hands, and Harry thought for a moment that maybe he’d pushed too hard—but then the other boy was drawing out his old hawthorn wand.

“I still have your wand, you know,” Harry said, his eyes coming up to meet Malfoy’s. “If we succeed, maybe you can remind me to finally give it back to you.”

That got him a shaky laugh, then Malfoy visibly swallowed as he leveled his wand at Harry’s face.

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure.”

And Malfoy whispered, “Legilimens.”

Harry braced himself, trying not to flinch away as he kept his eyes fixed on Malfoy’s—but nothing seemed to happen.

“Did it fail?” he asked after a moment.

Malfoy startled. “What? No. I just haven’t done anything yet.” He chewed on his lip. “I’m still thinking.”

Harry blinked. “But—” Then a faint feeling shivered through him, like the wind ruffling through his hair. He wriggled his shoulders, unsettled. “Was that you?”

“Mm,” Malfoy said, his eyes still searching Harry’s, though he’d lowered his wand to the table. It wasn’t like the battering ram that Snape had used against Harry when “teaching” him Occlumency nor the X-ray feeling he’d often gotten from Dumbledore, even when the old man wasn't using a wand or a spoken spell to pick through his thoughts.

“They both used Legilimency on you?” Malfoy asked in surprise, blinking back into focus and seeming to look at Harry again for the first time, rather than through him.

“More than a little,” Harry said, consciously bringing a memory of Snape’s lessons to the front of his mind.

“Merlin, Potter… You ought to have reported the man.”

“To who?” Harry asked. “Dumbledore? He was the one telling me I had to learn from Snape.”

Malfoy shook his head, as if trying to knock something loose. “Okay, forget that. Think about where we are now. Think about the dinners we have, sitting right here. I want you to imagine what it’s like, when we’re sitting here having dinner.”

“Why?” Harry asked, never looking away, in case it might break the spell.

“Because I’m fucking winging it right now, idiot, and the best thing I can think to try to is to create some kind of connections between things, hoping maybe it’ll trigger a bit of deja vu or something the next time you’re sitting here.”

Harry grinned, then he tried to do as he was told. He thought back to the last several dinners, sitting across from Malfoy and Luna, watching Malfoy delicately carve up his dinner with that expressionless calm, pausing from time to time to turn and listen to Luna or Dean.

“God, is that what I look like during those dinners? You wouldn’t believe the thoughts that are usually running through my head. I’m actually rather impressed that I manage to keep them off my face.”

Harry thought back to a dozen little flashes of Malfoy looking annoyed or angry with him during their dinners and promised, “You do slip at times. Mostly at me.”

The blond snorted. “Figures. You do try my patience.” He licked his lips, then instructed, “Now go back to picturing yourself here at dinner. Then I want you to…think of other times we’ve been here, in our dreams. Here in the Great Hall. Maybe go back and forth between the two.”

“You really are just making this up as you go along, aren’t you?” Harry teased.

That made Malfoy focus on him again for a moment, screwing up his face in annoyance. “Do I look like a fucking expert Legilimens to you, Potter? At least I now know from your own memories that I’m miles better at Occlumency than you are.”

Harry reached out blindly, without breaking eye contact, until he found Malfoy’s hands on the table and he wrapped his own hands around them.

“What’re you doing?” Malfoy asked, distracted.

Harry used those hands to pull the other boy closer across the table, then he stole another quick kiss, eyes wide open this time. “Making new memories,” he replied.

He could see that Malfoy was trying to keep his lips from curving up, but Harry let his own smile burst broadly across his face. He held onto the hands beneath his, and he thought back to the first time they’d met in this sunny Great Hall all alone, and the way Malfoy had thrown a fit, kicking him in the leg, and then panicking himself into a faint.

“Thank you for remembering only my most impressive moments,” the present Malfoy muttered drily. Harry grinned.

He thought back to dinners they’d shared in the daytime, and dreams when they’d flown through the hall and looped through the air to brush the invisible ceiling. He pictured the breakfast they’d had that week, when he and Dean had first dragged Malfoy out of his room on Tuesday, and then the night a week ago when Malfoy had lain with his face on the house table and begged Harry to just let him rest and not try brewing another potion.

He remembered laying his head on the table alongside Malfoy’s, studying that wan face, Draco’s paper-thin eyelids looking bruised with exhaustion, and telling him, “I just don’t want to forget.”

I don’t want to forget, he thought again, trying to somehow cram all the memories together, as if he could force them in tight, back to back, like a folding paper fan.

“I want to remember this,” he said aloud, his fingers tightening, feeling the solid warmth of Draco’s skin under his. “Just like this.”

“Then remember it,” Malfoy commanded, whether it was supposed to be some kind of magic spell or just a wish they hoped could come true.

I will remember this, he told himself, fumbling blindly with Malfoy’s hands until he managed to interlace their fingers and hold on, feeling the gentle ruffling touch of Malfoy’s cautious Legilimency as he replayed his memories over and over again. I won’t forget.

Chapter 25

On Saturday morning, Harry checked the map one last time to make sure the coast was clear, then he hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and slipped out of his private room.

Hurrying down the long hall past several other doors, he stopped in front of one in particular and knocked on it,  quick and quiet. Then he called through the heavy wood, “Psst. Malfoy. It’s me.”

Like every other time that Malfoy had opened the door, he only cracked it wide enough to look around it.

“Yes, good morning, Potter, and to what do I owe the pleasure of being greeted with your face first thing on a Saturday morning?”

Harry smirked and leaned in to whisper, “Careful, Malfoy. You almost sounded a little sarcastic there, when I know you’re always so genuinely pleased to see me.”

The blond’s look turned withering for just a moment, then he schooled his face back into pleasant neutrality. “Indeed I am. Did you need something from me?”

Harry shook his head.

A little muscle twitched at the corner of Malfoy’s mouth, and he asked, “Then why are you here?”

“Just offering my escort services,” Harry said, satisfied now that he knew he’d annoyed Malfoy. “I’m headed up to the library for at least several hours, if you wanted to go with.”

“That is…actually a rather good idea,” Malfoy agreed reluctantly.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean, ‘Why, I would be delighted to take you up on your kind offer, Potter’?”

Malfoy continued to stare at him blankly for a moment, then he sniffed, “I believe that’s exactly what I said,” before turning and shutting the door in Harry’s face.

Cheeky git, Harry thought, though he wasn’t even mad. He still prided himself every time he got Malfoy to let slip a little flash of temper.

As soon as the brief feeling of success faded, though, Harry was left standing alone in the hall, and his thoughts naturally fell back into the same circling pattern they’d been in for the past day. Which started each time with: What the hell was he going to say to Ginny?

If I just agree to get back together, then I won’t have to think about it anymore, he reasoned. Whereas turning her down is likely to make things awkward again whenever we’re together. And I ought to keep up the Quidditch practice, considering that Quidditch is the only other thing I’ve got going for me.

Malfoy opened the door again after little more than a minute, since he’d already been dressed in robes and looking ready for the day. He was carrying his bag now, and he cleared his throat to get Harry to step out of the way and stop blocking his doorway. Then he stepped through and warded the door behind him.

“Paranoid much?” Harry asked, as they began walking down the hall.

“Hmm, yes, I suppose you might be right. It’s not as if there’s anyone left at Hogwarts who hates me any longer.”

Harry snorted, and Malfoy flashed a quick look at his face, though he kept his own expression placid. Harry upgraded his earlier cheeky git to sarcastic little shit.

They made it all the way up to the library and into the anonymity of the stacks, and Harry heaved a sigh of relief as he dropped his bag on a table. Step one was a success. He’d got out of his room and to a location Ginny wasn’t likely to find him, all without being spotted.

He did need to do school work, but mostly he’d come running to the library so he could very maturely and sensibly dodge the hell out of his ex-girlfriend until he knew what he was going to say to her.

But once he and Malfoy had set themselves to work in the history section, which few students bothered to visit, Harry was pleasantly surprised by how much he was able to get done. They each wandered off from time to time to get other books from the stacks, but otherwise they read and took notes and worked in silence on their own assignments, sitting at opposite corners of the small table and perfectly able to ignore each other’s presence.

Harry managed to finish a whole two feet of his Transfiguration essay, and it wasn’t until well into the afternoon that he straightened up and stretched his back, glancing at the blond sharing his table. “I’m thinking to go grab some lunch, then we could come back for another round, if you like.”

Malfoy only nodded, quickly gathering his things and sliding all his own papers into his bag before stacking up the books he’d need to return to their shelves.

It was nearly two by the time they arrived in the Great Hall, and just as Harry had planned, the room was practically empty. There were a scattering of younger students here and there, working on assignments or playing games or just hanging out, but no sign of Ginny and her friends.

Harry dropped down to their usual end of the Slytherin table with a sigh of relief, looking down its length to spy out what food was still left so long after the main lunch rush. Malfoy settled in across from him at his own regular place at the end of the table and asked, “Could you pass me that shepherd’s pie, please?”

Harry reached down to snag the dish with his fingertips, then he dragged it close enough that he could lift it and pass it over to Malfoy.

“Then remember it,” Malfoy commanded, his eyes intense and unwavering.

Harry dropped the dish in shock, the heavy pottery hitting the table with a loud clatter and drawing stares from around the sparsely filled hall.

“Are you all right?” Malfoy asked, picking up the dish and examining it for cracks.

“Remember what?” Harry asked back in bewilderment.

“What?”

Harry blinked. “What did you say just then?”

Now Malfoy looked confused. “I asked if you were all right?”

“No, before that!” Harry shook his head, trying to make the whole bizarre moment make any sense. “When I was handing you the dish, you said ‘remember it’. Remember what?”

Malfoy paused in the action of scooping out some shepherd’s pie for his lunch, staring at Harry in consternation. “I didn’t say a word, Potter. You simply dropped the dish without warning.”

Harry bit his tongue, watching as Malfoy spooned out a pile of mash and filling for himself while still darting alarmed looks in Harry’s direction.

Had he imagined that? Or was Malfoy just fucking with him? Because he would have sworn that he’d heard Malfoy speak as their eyes met.

Though—something had been a bit off. Malfoy hadn’t been in robes, in that brief glimpse. He’d been in just a button up shirt, leaning over the table in a bright wash of sunlight—but Malfoy was wearing his usual winter robes, and the weather was decidedly overcast outside.

So had Harry only imagined it? Or was it some kind of strange deja vu type thing, like maybe he’d just remembered a moment from a dream or something?

“You really didn’t say anything?” Harry asked one last time, and there was no hint of a smirk or anything but confusion on Malfoy’s face as the other boy shook his head.

“I didn’t say a word.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They’d retreated back to the library after lunch, and there were no more weird voices or strange memories, so Harry was ready to shrug whatever had happened at lunch off as a fluke. Overall, the day had definitely been a success. He’d managed the entire Saturday without running into Ginny and he’d gotten a whole heap of work done.

It turned out he spent significantly less time staring off into space when he knew Malfoy was sitting right there and would see him zoning out—and undoubtedly judge him for it, even if he didn't say a word aloud. As a result, Harry was nearly done with all his weekend work by the time he and Malfoy packed up their things for the night, leaving the library behind for good to go staggering down to a late dinner.

There were more stragglers in the hall this time, even at 8 p.m., but still Harry’s luck held and there was no sign of Ginny. He flopped down at the Slytherin table and laid his head upon it, his cheek resting on the lacquered wood.

His eyes felt heavy as he blinked them, then he forced them back open to look over at Malfoy’s tired face, lying there beside his on the table. He whispered, “I just don’t want to forget.”

The other boy gave a little nod, eyes closed while he pillowed his face on his folded arms. There was a sad little quirk to his mouth as he said, “I know, Potter. I know.”

Harry jerked upright on the bench, staring with wild alarm at Malfoy sitting across the table from him. Where he’d been sitting the whole time.

“What—” He looked around, then looked back at Malfoy, who was giving him an alarmed look again. “You—did you see that?”

“See what?” Malfoy set down the serving fork he’d been using to spear a piece of fish. “Potter, seriously… Maybe you need some more sleep?”

Harry knuckled his eyes behind his glasses, then focused on the blond again. “You swear you’re not doing this?”

Malfoy seemed to retreat slightly, his face closing off. “I don’t even know what ‘this’ is, but I swear that I have not done anything to you.” He looked down at the food on the table and muttered, “Perhaps I’d better leave.”

“No, no—it’s—” Harry shook his head. “It’s fine. Let’s just eat, then we can call it a night.”

He reached over to spear himself a piece of the same fish and dropped a slab of the white flesh on his plate.

The air remained tense as neither of them spoke, quickly putting away just enough to count as a meal. The entire time, Harry kept turning over his memories in his head.

Was he just that tired? Or overly stressed?

He eyed Malfoy across the table. The Slytherin’s reaction had seemed genuine, but then again—it was Malfoy. Could he have done something to mess with Harry’s mind?

He knew Malfoy had been very good at Occlumency, just like Snape. Was he equally good at Legilimency? Could he somehow be screwing with Harry’s head?

But why?

Harry was already helping Malfoy out, and Malfoy seemed to resent it as often as not, so what possible good could come of trying to implant weird memories in Harry’s head at this point?

But who else would have?

Harry swallowed down the last of his food without being aware that he’d tasted a bite of it, then he grabbed his bag and stood, slinging it over his shoulder. “You ready to go?

Malfoy put away his last few bites in a hurry. Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he muttered, “Yes, thank you.” He mirrored Harry in picking up his bag and standing.

They walked back to the South Wing in silence, Harry stopping at his own door when it came first. Malfoy ought to be able to make it thirty feet down the hall without getting into any trouble. Still, Harry hesitated a moment with his hand on the ornate handle. Then he shrugged and shoved the door open.

“Good night, Potter,” Malfoy offered from behind him, and Harry glanced back once, just catching a glimpse of worried grey eyes before Malfoy had also turned and strode off down the hall.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

After a good night’s sleep, though, and no more hints of oddness, Harry convinced himself that maybe he had just gone a bit batty after too many long hours in the library.

Still, he wasn’t keen on running into either Ginny or Malfoy on Sunday. And he wasn’t ready to face the Burrow either, feeling like it would be a lie to sit there chatting with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley like normal and not saying a thing when he knew that Ginny wanted them to get back together.

Instead he’d done something truly mad and Apparated back to Grimmauld Place.

It was only a month until the winter holidays, at which point he might be back at his house for just over two weeks, so he thought he might as well check up on the place.

And maybe he’d been looking to remind himself just how bleak and lonely it was, in a way.

See? Do you want to go back to this heap, all alone?

He kept asking himself the question as he wandered the quiet halls, absently clearing out the new cobwebs and sending air wafting through the closed off rooms to try to freshen them up. But none of it did anything to brighten the dark walls and heavy ebony furniture and grim decor, looming and depressing under the weak lighting.

He stopped and looked around the main drawing room, hands on his hips. He hadn’t even started trying to fix the place up over the summer; he’d merely stumbled from the one bedroom he’d claimed to the kitchen table or bathroom when needed, and then right back. But maybe he could try to make it a bit more homely. That could give him something to occupy himself during the holidays.

Maybe he could go to Flourish & Blotts and look for a book on magical household repairs or whatever. At least Hermione’s career book had taught him that there were entire job fields dedicated to such things, so hopefully there had to be some books if he wanted to attempt a bit of DIY himself.

But then he pictured walking into Flourish & Blotts alone, and having to possibly deal with some salesperson falling all over themselves to serve Harry Potter while other patrons stared around the stacks at his first public appearance in months, and the image quickly squashed any desire to go shopping.

Changing tracks, Harry knelt down before the fireplace and lit it with a quick spell, tossing in a handful of Floo powder and calling out Hermione’s address before sticking his head in.

“Hermione? Are you about?”

He heard an exclamation and then running footsteps, as Hermione came bustling out of her little bedroom, still trying to get an earring in her left ear lobe.

“Harry! What are you doing? Where are you?”

“At Grimmauld,” he explained. “Thought I ought to at least check on the place, before the holidays and all.” And while I’m hiding out from everything else.

“Are you coming to Sunday dinner, then? I was just getting ready to leave.”

Oh shit. Of course it was still Sunday morning, and he hadn’t thought this through at all. “Er, actually, no? I’d explain but it may take more time than you’ve got… But could you just keep it between us for now that I was in London?”

Hermione knelt down before her fire, eyes shrewd. “Not Ron?”

Harry sighed. “It has to do with Ginny.”

Eyebrows arching up, Hermione hummed. “Yes, that would do it. Okay, I expect a letter from you soon to explain better, but your secret is safe with me.” She flashed him a puckish smile. “For now anyway.” Then she checked the watch on her wrist and asked, “What were you calling for then?”

“Sorry, I realize this isn’t at all the time to ask, but I wondered if you’d be up to a bit more bookshopping for me at some point. Just whenever you have the time. If you do ever have the time.”

He needn’t have worried, though, as of course Hermione’s face lit up at the thought of scouring a bookshelf to find the best possible tome for any problem. “What are you looking for?”

“Something that would show me how to try to fix up this old pit? I was thinking maybe I should finally stop living in London’s answer to the Shrieking Shack.” He got an appreciative chuckle from Hermione, which made him feel a little easier about his request. “But I don’t know the first thing about magical houses or how to fix them up.” Shrugging, he admitted, “Don’t know much about Muggle houses either, but Vernon did at least used to send me under the sink with a wrench or anywhere else he couldn’t fit.”

That made Hermione frown, but she glanced at her watch once more and promised, “I’ll find a time this week and see if there’s anything in stock or worth ordering in at the shops.” Then she waved a finger at him in warning. “But I’m only handing it over when you explain what is going on that has you hiding out in London in secret!”

“I swear, I will!” Harry promised. “You’re my savior, Hermione. Good luck with the Weasleys.”

Pulling a face, she said, “I wish you’d be there, but I’ll do my best.”

Harry laughed and called a good-bye, then he pulled his head from the green flames.

Okay. That was something. A goal he could focus on during the long two weeks of holidays.

And with it, a fresh new problem, as he also had to figure out what the hell he was going to tell Hermione about Ginny.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

After tearing up about six different drafts, in the end Harry had sent Hermione an owl on Sunday night with only the briefest of facts: Ginny had broken things off with her new boyfriend, told Harry that she regretted the way she’d ended things between them that summer, and asked him if he thought they could still make it work. And Harry was having a hard time deciding how he felt about it, so he didn’t feel like he could face the rest of Ginny’s family while he was waffling. And please don’t tell Ron.

(He didn’t write that he was hiding from Ginny herself as well, but it probably went without needing to be said.)

On Monday, he went back to classes, and luckily he didn’t have to do much more than exchange sheepish smiles with his ex, since the Seventh Years and Eighth Years never tended to mingle in their shared classes—with the odd exception of Luna, who was as unusual in that regard as she was in everything else she did.

But he wasn’t going to ditch Quidditch practice. So on Tuesday evening, he marched down to the pitch after leaving Luna to walk Malfoy back from Herbology once again.

“Harry, hey,” Ginny called, when he came walking across the pitch carrying his broom from the cupboard. She gave him a rueful smile and said, “Wasn’t sure if we’d see you tonight.”

There was a pang of something like guilt in his gut, as though he was stringing her along somehow by not giving her any answer. He tried for what he hoped would be a reassuring but not-over-promising grin as he reminded her, “I told you at Samhain that I’d be sticking around for practice as long as you’d have me.”

Her face softened. “In that case, you know I’d love to have you.”

And, yes, he’d put his foot right into that.

“Gin,” he started, feeling he had to say something to manage expectations. “I…I am thinking about…what you said.” He searched her expression, trying to judge how she was taking the words. “I’m just worried about rushing into anything too quick. Y’know, with your family and Ron and—” Her brow wrinkled briefly, and Harry gave up on that track. “So I just…I just want to be really sure before making any decision. I hope it’s okay that I take some time,” he finished lamely.

She chewed on the corner of her lip, then turned to wave distractedly at the pair of Beaters who had called out a greeting as they walked across the field. Then she summoned a smile and slapped Harry on the arm. “Of course. I understand. Now let’s play some Quidditch, Potter.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, for the first time since Friday, they dreamt.

Four days was the longest they’d gone between dreams now, and Harry came to in the Great Hall and immediately felt swamped with a sick sense of panic, staring at Malfoy’s face across from his.

“It was working—you saw it was—we have to try again!” He’d jumped up even before he finished speaking, grabbing the other boy by the arm to haul him to his feet.

“Potter, Potter, wait—”

“No, we don’t have time!” He dragged Malfoy after him out the door, already raising his wand and calling “Accio Firebolt!”

When his broom whizzed up to him, he caught it with one hand and jumped astride, dragging Malfoy on behind him.

“What’re we even—”

“We have to try other places,” Harry shouted, not turning back as he kicked off and directed the broom down through the halls that would lead to the dungeons. “Places that we both spend a lot of time in together. We have to try to do more, so that I can’t just shrug it off as one day without enough sleep.”

He shook his head, taking a tight turn as the hall grew narrower closer to the Potions classrooms. “It hasn’t happened again since Saturday, when we were in the Great Hall alone together. I don’t know, maybe having other people makes it less likely a memory could break through? Or the connections weaken over time?”

He waved his wand to send the Potion’s lab door slamming open, then landed them awkwardly just inside, nearly dumping Malfoy on the floor since he wasn’t used to flying for two.

Harry grabbed hold of the boy before he fell flat on his ass and steadied him with a firm grip on his forearms. Then he used that hold to yank Malfoy closer and steal a kiss. “Hi.” He grinned into those familiar grey eyes, even as Malfoy rolled them with a put-upon air.

Then Harry was pulling him over to the workstation they shared Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. He pushed Malfoy down onto his normal stool and sat himself at his place.

“C’mon, let’s do this,” he demanded, drumming his fingers impatiently on the stained and scarred worktop.

Draco paused, taking a breath and just looking at Harry. “Potter, are you sure—”

“It’s been four days,” Harry burst out, before possibly letting Draco finish whatever he wanted to say. “Who knows if we’ll have another chance like this or when? I’m sure.”

So, with a little sigh, Draco pulled out his old wand again.

“Legilimens.”

This time Harry didn’t wait for any prompt, diving right into the same sort of thing they’d done the previous week. He stared into Malfoy’s eyes and recalled their last class during the day, trying to capture how it had sounded and smelled and every time he could remember glancing over at Malfoy working next to him. Then he thought back to all the nights they’d spent right here, trying to brew a Memory Potion before their dreams could fall apart. He went back through every memory he could think of, even that fight in the store cupboard, trying to fix them all in his mind as he felt the occasional butterfly kisses of Draco’s tentative Legilimency.

Once he’d summoned up every specific moment he could recall, he blinked and asked, “Okay, how about the pitch next?”

Malfoy shivered and seemed to come back to himself, sounding distracted still as he asked, “What?”

“We’ve got to try as many places as possible, while we have the chance and before this dream ends,” Harry explained, jumping up and summoning his broom back into his hand without even a word. He reached out and grabbed Draco once more. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

Chapter 26

Notes:

Double post today, because you sweeties in the comments were all so keen to find out what would happen and I couldn't bear to leave you hanging too many days in a row!

Wednesday was one of Harry’s longest days, with only a single hour’s break between starting with Fourth Year D.A.D.A. at 8:10 and finally wrapping up his own N.E.W.T. D.A.D.A. class at 6:10 in the evening. All told, he spent over five hours in that single classroom, only dashing out for Transfiguration and Charms for short stints before he had to return to it again, and he was ready to pull his hair out by the end of it.

He was barely paying attention to Fossey’s description of Exsanguinating curses, even though he genuinely liked Fossey and her stories. It probably didn’t help that he was sat alone in the class ever since Dean had volunteered to be Malfoy’s partner. Now there was no one beside Harry to give him a friendly jab when he was obviously a million miles away.

His mind wandered, filled with a hazy daydream of flying through the halls of the castle on a broom, like the Weasley twins had done when they’d left school in that amazing display of defiance. He imagined looping around moving staircases and whooping as he got recklessly close to slamming into the solid stone.

There would be someone there with him. After all, the twins had flown together. He could practically hear laughter over his shoulder as he nearly lost his head when he turned into another staircase swinging back his way.

“Watch it, Potter! You’ll ruin this for me if you knock yourself out like a bloody idiot!”

Harry blinked, coming back to the classroom with a start. That had sounded almost like…Malfoy. The old Malfoy, that is. Nothing like the polite garbage he parroted these days.

Weird. He hadn’t meant to imagine flying around with Malfoy, though maybe it made sense if he was picturing someone laughing at him. He’d spent enough time during old Quidditch matches with Malfoy at his shoulder, hurling insults and taunts as they both hunted the Snitch.

He caught Fossey giving him a look, which probably meant that he hadn’t been all that subtle in his daydreaming, and he offered back a sheepish smile and put his quill back to parchment. Exsanguination curses. Right.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Thursday was when Harry started to seriously worry.

It was N.E.W.T. Potions, and Harry was thinking about the late lunch he could snag during his next free period as he wandered into the store cupboard to get more lacewing flies for their wings. He’d accidentally torn his while trying to pick them apart, and the instructions insisted they had to be whole wings when added into the potion, one at a time, at thirty second intervals. Though Harry couldn’t believe the difference could really matter.

He was running his hand along the shelf past Knarl quills and Kneazle fur when he got another one of those weird flashes.

He was still standing there, arm outstretched, but he was also standing there with his hands on Malfoy’s shoulders, shouting, “You should have told me something like this, because I’m your fucking friend!”

Malfoy tried to shove Harry’s hands away, turning his face away as he insisted, “We aren’t friends, Potter.”

But no, that wasn’t what had happened.

Harry froze, his hand hovering beside the large jar of lacewing flies.

That wasn’t what had happened.

He had fought with Malfoy here once, weeks ago, when the two of them had been alone in this store cupboard. It had been when he’d found out about the Ravenclaws hexing Malfoy, but—but that wasn’t how it had gone. He would never have insisted that they were friends.

What the hell was going on?

For the first time in over a year, Harry scrabbled for the lessons that Snape had once attempted to drill into him, trying to make his mind clear and blank. If this could be some kind of outside attack, or at least manipulation, then Occlumency was the only tool Harry had to use until he could figure out what was going on.

Too bad he’d always been so terrible at it.

Calm. Blank. Still, he told himself, trying to slow his breathing. Why would I be seeing memories that never happened? And why do they all include Malfoy?

He’d put those weird flashes in the Great Hall out of mind after the previous Saturday, but now he couldn’t. Something was wrong. Someone was trying to make him believe that he was friends or something with Malfoy.

Why?

Malfoy had seemed pretty genuinely confused on Saturday—but then again, Malfoy could also put on an act. He’d survived living with Voldemort all that time, after all, even if he hadn’t really believed in the cause. And he’d lied to his family’s face about recognizing Harry at the Manor. Never mind the fact that he was acting every single day with the polite, well-mannered bullshit he’d been maintaining since September.

So was he trying to trick Harry? Make him believe they were actually friends, so Harry would feel bound to him by something stronger than just a flimsy sense of charity?

Or, if Malfoy wasn’t faking it, was someone else doing this? Trying to make Harry look like a fool for the press, when he suddenly started ranting about strange visions or professing his devotion to Death Eaters in public?

Harry lifted down the heavy apothecary jar and slowly drew out the lacewing flies he needed, his mind whirring.

It couldn’t just be him, could it? Stress, maybe? After everything that had gone on since May, and the worry about what he was supposed to do after Hogwarts, and now wondering about Ginny and all—was he just seriously cracking up?

Hermione had told him to go to Mind Healer.

Hermione.

Yes, that was what he needed. Hermione would know. Hermione always knew.

But she was in the middle of her workday, and he still had the rest of Potions class to get through. And a D.A.D.A. class to assist in that afternoon.

After classes end then, he told himself. He could skip Quidditch training for this. Or was that too much? It was already Thursday. Maybe he should just wait for the weekend instead of rushing down to London on a Thursday night.

Harry put the large jar back in its place, and then turned and walked out of the store cupboard. At the door, he looked across the advanced Potions lab, filled with dark-robed students and steaming cauldrons, but no one even glanced his way. Malfoy was bent over his cutting board, carefully slicing his frog liver, and Goldstein was eyeing the blond with dislike, but no one seemed to care at all about Harry.

He walked back to their workstation and gingerly took a seat at his regular stool. Then he opened his fist to look down at the fresh lacewing flies he’d collected. He’d mangled every single one.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry did end up staying through the rest of his classes and for Quidditch practice, though Potions had been a jumpy and awkward time as he kept eyeing Malfoy’s every move with uncertainty.

But Quidditch practice had gone fine. Ginny was still giving him space while also sparing him encouraging smiles and cheerful critique as they ran drills. It felt good, flying and throwing himself into the moment, needing to pay attention to the players around him and watch out for Bludgers whizzing his way. There was no time for worrying about Malfoy.

Or so he believed, until the very thought triggered another flash as his broom dipped under him.

It was practically vibrating, the ancient old school broom jerking slightly to the side as if someone had a leash tied to it and was giving it a tug every few moments.

“This has got to be the worst idea you’ve ever had, Malfoy!” he shouted, looking over at the Slytherin, illuminated by the pitch’s bright lights as he tried to perform a tight turn on his own shitty school broom and was nearly thrown off when it stalled without warning.

“Really, Potter?” The blond pulled up and tried to hold his broom straight long enough to give Harry a sardonic smirk. “Knowing my entire criminal record, you’re going to consider this my worst idea? Good to see where your priorities lie.”

Harry caught himself just as his Stormrider started losing altitude, pulling the broom back up and shaking his head furiously.

Shit, shit, shit, shit. “SHIT!” he finished aloud, gripping his broom tight.

Malfoy wasn’t even here this time, when he’d at least been in the same room on every past occasion.

That was it. He needed to figure this out.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry showed up at Hermione’s front door just before 8 p.m., banging on it rather than Apparating straight into her wards, just in case he walked into something he really didn’t want to see if Ron happened to be over that night. He was troubled enough already.

It only took a few seconds for Hermione to throw the door open, looking alarmed and with her wand held up at the ready.

“Harry!” she exclaimed, lowering the wand and looking past him into the hall. “What in the world—! Is everything all right?”

“I’m honestly not sure,” he said weakly. “Can I come in, please?”

She pulled him inside, giving him a once over in case there might be anything physically wrong with him. “What’s wrong? Did something happen with Ginny?”

“No, no, I told her I was feeling sick and begged off practice,” he explained absently as he dropped down on the small couch in Hermione’s tiny living room. “Then I went to the Great Hall and managed to catch McGonagall, told her I might miss class tomorrow.”

“Miss class? Harry, explain.”

He didn’t know where to start, though. “I… There’s something wrong with my head, Hermione. I keep remembering things that didn’t happen.”

She dropped down beside him, eyes wide with concern, and took his hands in hers. “Tell me what’s been going on.”

So he did, in a terrible, nonsensical way, starting at the end before remembering to go back to Saturday, and eventually managing to get out the whole confusing experience of remembering moments with Malfoy that had never happened.

“I know they haven’t happened. But it’s not just my imagination either. Why would I imagine flying around with Malfoy or—or—”

He hadn’t told Hermione every detail of what he remembered.

I just don’t want to forget, he’d whispered.

I know, Potter. I know, Malfoy had replied.

“Do you think someone’s doing this to me?” he asked, staring at his best friend and hoping she’d have the answers for him once again. “Or am I just losing it?”

Hermione squeezed his hands and promised, “I don’t think you’re losing it. But I do think we should talk to a memory specialist. Didn’t you work with one at the Department of Mysteries this summer? What was her name?”

“Melinda,” he recalled. They’d spent whole days together, harvesting memories from Voldemort’s reign. “Melinda Migglesby.”

“Let’s find out what her schedule looks like for tomorrow, shall we?”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Walking back into the Ministry, let alone on a busy Friday morning when half the world would seem to be streaming into the atrium, sounded like a nightmare to Harry. Which is why it was an absolute godsend that Melinda had agreed to open the Floo in her office, when she’d immediately responded to Hermione’s late night owl with an assurance that she could make time for Harry in her schedule the next day.

He took a deep breath as he stared down at Hermione’s grate with its cheery little fire. The nausea could have been from his usual hatred of traveling by Floo or the thought of returning to Level Nine or a combination of everything really. But he swallowed down the lump in his throat, tossed his handful of glittering green powder into the flames, and called, “Melinda Migglesby, Department of Mysteries.”

Then he stepped into the flames.

When he stumbled out on the other side, he was caught by the sturdy hands of Melinda Migglesby, memory specialist, who righted him with her usual unflappable expression firmly in place.

“Good to see you again, Mr. Potter,” the middle-aged witch said in greeting, turning him and pushing him down into one of the two chairs in front of her desk before dropping into the other. “Now, what’s going on?”

Her pale eyes, a blue so washed out that it almost looked white except for the deeper rings at the edges, studied him with that laser focus that he remembered from their sessions that summer.

“Ah,” she exclaimed, not waiting for his response. “Well, now that is interesting, isn’t it?”

He squirmed slightly, still not comfortable with her casual Legilimency, though at least it felt less invasive than even Dumbledore’s had been.

“And you don’t remember any of it?” she asked, sitting back in her chair and studying him.

“It depends what you mean by ‘it’?”

“The dreams,” Melinda said. Harry blinked.

“What dreams?”

“Interesting,” she said, lighting up and leaning forward to put her square-jawed face right up within inches of his own, her pale eyes searching through his. “I suppose—yes, the potions could have done it—what a case study, if I could find some way to anonymize it thoroughly enough…”

“Melinda, could you please explain what the hell you’re seeing?” Harry beseeched, not feeling particularly bad about cursing when this particular witch had previously seen him weep, hyperventilate, and even throw things when they’d been pulling out all the memories he had of Voldemort.

Her eyebrows shot up high on her lined forehead, and she cleared her throat, looking a bit pink.

“Ah, I think I’d better not.”

Harry’s jaw flapped. “What?! But—but—”

“Oh, no, no worries, I’ll get you those memories. But I think it’s something you’d be better off viewing for yourself. I don’t think me describing to you what I can see is going to be, hm, the most helpful approach.”

So there was something?

At least he wasn’t just cracking up.

“No, no, definitely not losing your marbles,” Melinda assured him, plucking the thought from his head as she grabbed her wand from the desk beside them, “But I will just need a bit of time to untangle the whole long thread, so if you don’t mind: Stupefy.”

And everything went black.

Chapter 27

Harry blinked awake, his neck aching as he lifted his head. He was in a chair. Why was he sleeping in a chair?

Then he shot upright and accused the woman across from him, “You Stunned me!”

“Yes, funny that,” Melinda agreed. “I rather expected you might react faster or try to disarm me, since I thought it was something of a signature move of yours. Apparently not.”

Heaving a heavy sigh, Harry rubbed at the sore muscles of his neck and decided to let the complaint go. He’d gotten plenty of experience with Melinda’s curious outlook that summer, which seemed to view everything she encountered as an interesting bit of data to analyze. She wasn’t likely to see Stunning him without warning as anything she needed to apologize for.

“Did you...find whatever you were looking for?” he asked instead. “Can you explain now why I’m remembering things that never happened?

“Oh, that’s because they did.”

Harry stared at the older witch, as she continued to watch him with that frank curiosity. “No, they didn’t.”

She reached over and tapped the edge of a rather utilitarian stone Pensieve, which had appeared on her desk at some point when he’d been unconscious.

“Well, the memories are all there, so I’d say they did. You just couldn’t remember it.”

Harry couldn’t find appropriate words, his eyes going from the witch to the Pensieve and then back again. But presumably she read his blank disbelief just like she read everything else in his eyes, and she stood up, slapping her sturdy thighs in a brisk move as she did.

“All right, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to go find some lunch and leave you here for an hour. Just don’t break my Pensieve or steal it. I know where to find you, if you do,” she warned with a sharp smile. “The memories are yours to keep and do with what you will. You do know how to extract memories from a Pensieve, yes?”

“Y-yes,” Harry said. He’d pulled memories back out of Dumbledore’s Pensieve on multiple occasions.

“Good. Great.” She reached across her desk, nearly ending up flat on her stomach as she fished blindly around in a drawer rather than simply walking around the bloody thing. Then she righted herself and plonked a large glass phial on the table beside the Pensieve. “If you want to talk when I get back, we definitely can. But if I come back and you’re not here, then I’ll just assume you wanted a bit of time to process. You can always reach out with any questions later.”

She turned and headed to the door of her small office on Level Nine, then paused just before leaving. “One last thing.”

Harry looked up at her again, not sure he was ready for even one more thing.

“Do you know how to leave a Pensieve before the memories you’re watching end?”

“Er, no, not particularly,” Harry admitted. He’d always either watched till the end or been yanked out by Dumbledore or Snape.

“Oh, good.” Melinda pulled her door open. “Don’t try to fight your way out. Even if you think you want to. It will all make more sense if you stick around till the end.”

What?

“Oh, and let me know if I can write this up. I haven’t had anything truly new worth publishing in an age.”

Then she was gone, the door snicking closed and the lock clicking behind her, so that no one else might wander in on him.

Harry stared at the Pensieve with more than a little apprehension.

What?

She’d claimed…that it had happened. What had happened?

Those flashes of memories—they were real?

He couldn’t see how they could be, but he also knew that Melinda was the best of the best at what she did. The Ministry had made sure to pull out all the stops when it came to Harry Potter’s testimony and delivering justice after Voldemort’s fall.

He sucked in a haggard breath, then he leaned forward and pulled the Pensieve closer to the edge of the table so he could look into it. A familiar room wavered in the liquid suspended in the wide basin, the fluted columns and green wooden stalls a sight he’d seen countless times since Second Year.

Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom?

Squeezing his eyes shut, Harry muttered, “Time to lion up.” Then he plunged his face into the memories.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry didn’t understand what he was seeing. Malfoy was there, hanging onto the sink basins that hid the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets, but this wasn’t Sixth Year.

When did this happen? This didn’t happen.

Had Malfoy Obliviated him or something?

Harry watched as his own figure hesitated, then called out to Malfoy. They spoke. They argued, of course. There was none of the careful facade that Malfoy had clung to since September, as the blond snarled in Harry’s face.

Then he pulled open his shirt, and Harry looked around his own shoulder to see the lines criss-crossing that pale chest, and he gasped, just a half a beat off from the Harry in the memory.

This was real? He’d really left Malfoy scarred like this, not just one little lightning bolt but great sweeping slashes tracing over half his body?

And then Malfoy was shoving Harry up against the wooden wall of the toilet stalls and—well, fuck.

Fuck.

Harry watched in disbelief as Malfoy kissed him, and then after another taunt, he watched as he kissed Malfoy, practically mauling the blond.

But he wouldn’t—why would he have—when would he have—

And then Malfoy slid down onto his knees, and Harry understood exactly why Melinda had told him to watch these memories on his own and thought he might not want to face her afterwards.

Face flaming, he looked on in shock, heart racing and eyes unblinking, as Draco Malfoy took Harry in his mouth on some dark night in the second-floor girl’s lavatory.

Then the memory burst apart.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The next memory started in bright sunlight, leaving Harry blinking. He was sitting with Malfoy in the Great Hall. It seemed to be early morning, but they’d never met up like this in the Great Hall. Not alone.

His heart was still racing, throat dry, but as he listened and watched Malfoy slowly realize what had happened and dissolve into panic, the pieces began to fit together.

Potions.

Melinda had said something about potions as well. And Harry had nearly forgotten after two whole months, but that first week that Malfoy had come back to school, they’d had an accident.

Their cauldrons of Dreamless Sleep. A Memory Potion.

The taste of lavender and burnt sugar on his lips and soaking into his skin.

That memory fell apart when Malfoy seemed to faint, and as the next few played, Harry could see how they’d slowly come to understand what was happening together, halting and uncertain how to talk to one another.

They had been sharing dreams every night, and in the dreams, they remembered exactly what was going on—but never during the day.

And Harry still couldn’t remember it. He was only watching it from the outside, just as Melinda must have done, as he and Malfoy kept coming together, night after night, slowly growing accustomed to the fact that they couldn’t stop it and finding ways to help the time pass.

He saw the night they’d flown the school brooms. He saw them talk and tease and saw Malfoy laugh—genuinely laugh in uncontrollable delight—as Harry fell on his ass after trying to launch himself into the World Cup stadium. He saw himself try to be gentle with Malfoy, when the Slytherin panicked at the sight of the Malfoy Manor drawing room.

He saw them talking through that damn book Hermione had given him, which he’d never given any serious thought—but he and Malfoy had discussed every last job described in it, joking and considering options and building up a list of ideas.

He saw them become friends.

But did friends lie tangled up on the sofa together like that, one hand light but possessive on the other’s foot? Did they leave their fingers dipped in each other’s hair, absently playing with it as if they had the right to?

Harry wouldn’t do anything like that with Ron or even Hermione. And watching from the outside, he saw what was happening far more clearly than perhaps the Harry in his memories had. Jesus, he’d practically been begging Malfoy to let him bind their futures together with that Muggle-born program they spent night after night discussing, always so afraid he might lose yet another person he’d come to care about.

Then it started to fall apart. Harry in the memories grew more and more desperate to hold on as they apparently began to experience nights in which they shared no dreams. Malfoy, on the other hand, only seemed to pull back, retreating within his shell and holding himself distant from the possibility of it all inevitably coming to an end.

And when things finally came to a head, Harry wasn’t even surprised to see that he had been the one to go for it again, throwing himself at Malfoy in the Slytherin common room. It had been painted all over his face every time he looked at the blond and in the way he found excuses to lean into him, touch him, keep hold of some part of him.

Was he always this obvious from the outside when he was in—

When he was interested in someone?

Unlike the first encounter, which he’d watched replay in horrified disbelief, Harry looked away this time, cheeks burning, instead of staring at himself taking Malfoy to pieces on that black velvet sofa.

It wasn’t as shocking to Harry as it probably should have been. That he could be interested. He could see the way his own fascination and infatuation had grown over the many nights in these dreams. And there had been those very real thoughts that he did remember having when he’d first found out about the Ravenclaw gossip. Imagining what kind of experience Malfoy might have.

He obviously had the potential to at least be curious in that direction.

He sneaked a peek, seeing Malfoy’s hands clutching at his back, hearing the desperate curses pressed against his own skin. He was kissing the other boy like he wanted to reach inside of him, tilting Malfoy’s head back atop the sofa cushions, his fingers tangled in that white blond hair.

Harry swallowed, his face flushed and his trousers feeling a little tight even though his body wasn’t even real in this bloody memory place.

Okay, so he was at least bi-curious. Good to know.

And he definitely was not going to be talking through this with Melinda face to face.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

When Harry had collected all the memories in the phial, he hesitated and then leaned over the desk.

He tore a sheet from the notepad that Melinda had atop her desk, with a silly header printed on it that read From the Marvelous Mind of Melinda Migglesby, and grabbed up a quill.

Thank you for fitting me in today. It was a great help. I need a bit of time, but I’ll be in touch over the holidays maybe, if you really want to discuss writing something up.

Harry did not want any of this written up for anyone else to read, but he figured he had to at least consider it, as his way to thank the witch who had carved out time for him after a 9 p.m. owl. At least she only saw him as a fascinating case study, not the ticket to a salacious exclusive in The Daily Prophet.

He wasn’t sure if they’d be able to anonymize things enough that anyone who’d been in class that day wouldn’t someday realize the account was his, but as long as they kept the retelling about what had happened to their memories and not about the details of what had happened in those memories, then maybe he could let Melinda have the story.

He stared at the phial in his hand, tipping the cloudy memories this way and that, cheeks warm again.

However, someone else probably needed to know it first.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

It was early afternoon by the time Harry got back to Hogwarts, having returned to Hermione’s flat once to leave her a brief and probably confusingly vague note assuring her that—whatever else might be going on—it appeared that nothing malicious had been intentionally done to him and he probably wasn’t losing his mind, and he was still unpacking a lot and would probably be for a while, but he felt much better knowing that he wasn’t going mad, thank you. And he would catch her up on everything as soon as he could.

All he had to do was figure out what it was he needed to explain.

Which was also what had him gnawing on his lip as he stood outside the Transfiguration classroom, waiting for the N.E.W.T. class to end rather than walking in midway through and having to make excuses about where he’d been all day.

He’d seen the whole mess. And he got it. Intellectually, he got it. He’d watched a different version of himself and Malfoy for what felt like an entire day or more, as if he were watching a film marathon, and it had been impossible not to see how they somehow clicked. He even understood the appeal. He'd enjoyed the banter, like he might enjoy seeing two characters play off each other in a TV show. He had watched them tease and laugh and challenge each other. And he had seen the vulnerability they’d shared with each other.

But it wasn’t that he’d actually remembered those nights himself or what exactly he’d been thinking or feeling.

But. He got it.

There was some weird but very real possibility that he and Malfoy had it in them to be proper friends, and Harry actually saw how it worked.

And he couldn’t deny being curious now about trying to talk to Malfoy like a real person—the Malfoy he’d seen in those dreams and not the polite automaton he acted like in public now.

But most of all, even if Malfoy watched the memories and told him to fuck off, Harry had to at least try to break through that act, because the memories had revealed more than just Harry’s possible interest in snarky blonds and a whole new career path he might want to consider. They’d clued him in to the fact that, underneath that stiff mannerly mask, Draco Malfoy felt so fucking alone and desperate right now that he sometimes dreamed about offing himself so he wouldn't have to face another miserable day.

Even without whatever he might have felt in those dreams, that fact left Harry nauseous.

Malfoy could be a dramatic, irritating, snippity, entitled little shit, but Harry didn’t want him to die. He hadn’t ever wanted him to die. Not even when they’d been poised against one another from opposite sides of the war.

And there Malfoy was, stepping out of the classroom together with Luna, who still happily escorted him between half his classes or more.

“Oh, Harry,” she called out, hurrying across the few feet separating them. “Are you feeling better? You weren’t in Transfiguration.”

“Yeah, loads better,” he reassured her, and he supposed it was true in a way. He at least wasn’t a panicking anxious mess worrying that he was losing his mind or under attack any longer. He was just a slightly sweaty boy wondering if he was about to do something irreversible.

“All right, Malfoy?” he asked. His eyes went to the other boy at last, taking him in like a stranger might. The Slytherin gave a tight nod, eyes narrowed and face held still. And it was so odd, seeing that again after hours of Malfoy scowling and howling with laughter and scrunching up his nose and sharing his crooked smiles in those memories.

Harry remembered being disconcerted when Malfoy had first come back to school, but he’d forgotten, somewhere over these past weeks, how odd it should be to see the other boy so mute and restrained. But Malfoy had never been restrained in his life, until Voldemort. Every sneer, every smirk, every hopeful look to his father and furious disappointment had always been there to read on his face, easy as any textbook.

“Well, I can see you two have something to talk about, so I’ll leave you here, Draco,” Luna said, patting him on the shoulder and getting herself a slightly alarmed look. “See you at dinner, if you’re both available by then.”

Then she was gone, leaving the two of them alone.

“Are you quite well, Potter?” Malfoy asked stiffly, sounding like a gentleman from the sort of period dramas Petunia might have once watched on the telly.

“Quite well,” Harry agreed with a tight little smile. “Here, I need ask McGonagall something.”

Then he grabbed Malfoy by the arm, dragging the Slytherin back into the classroom with him as they walked past the surprised faces of their classmates, several asking where Harry had been all day.

“Just had a rough morning,” he assured the crowd, his eyes catching Ginny’s for a moment, which reminded him that there was a whole other facet of this mess he still had to reckon with. “Much better now, thanks.”

Then they were through the mass and walking down the main aisle of the quickly emptying classroom, Harry hyper aware of the bone and muscle he could feel beneath Malfoy’s robes as he kept hold of that arm. He’d never given his friends’ arms much thought before, but now he wanted to squeeze, wanted to feel the ropy muscle and see it flex when bared.

He hoped his cheeks didn’t look as pink as they felt.

“Potter, if you don’t mind—”

“Shh.” Harry hushed the other boy, knowing he just had to push through this, because it would only feel more awkward if he stopped and thought at all.

They halted in front of McGonagall’s large desk at the end of the room, and she gave Harry a thorough once-over before stating rather tartly, “You look quite hale for a convalescent, Mr. Potter.”

He attempted a sheepish smile. “I promise, if you’d seen me this morning, I was much more of a mess.” He felt his grip on Malfoy tighten once, then he forced himself to relax it again. “I’m feeling much better now, but I hoped to ask a favor. Can I, er, borrow Dumbledore’s Pensieve?”

McGonagall blinked, clearly not having expected that particular request. “The Hogwarts Pensieve, do you mean?”

“Uh, yeah, probably? The one that was always in Dumbledore’s office anyway.”

The headmistress frowned. “The Hogwarts Pensieve is an incredibly old and precious artefact that belongs to the school. It isn’t a plaything.”

“I know, ma’am. I just—I need it. There’s something I have to show Malfoy.”

He felt the other boy startle, the arm under his hand jerking slightly. Harry didn’t look back at him.

“Mr. Potter, I don't know what you—”

“I already have the memories. I just need a Pensieve.” He swallowed. “Please.”

A group of Fifth Years had begun trickling into the room for their class, and McGonagall’s eyes flickered to them once before returning to his face.

“Acta non verba,” she said, and he didn’t understand that it was her password until she sighed and said, “Don’t make me regret this, Potter.”

He grinned, already backing up and pulling Malfoy with him. “I won’t. I’ll explain more later, I promise. Thank you, Professor McGonagall.”

“And while you’re on the way across the castle, perhaps have Mr. Malfoy fill you in on the classes you missed today,” she suggested, waving them off as she stepped up to her blackboard and swirled her wand at it, causing it be wiped clean and then begin filling with a different set of instructions for her incoming O.W.L. class.

They fought their way through the Fifth Years and out into the hall, Harry still not letting go of the arm he held.

He glanced back at Malfoy once, as they made their way through the crowds of students, most of them only coming up to the two Eighth Years’ chests, streaming in every direction as they tried to get to their next classes.

“I know,” he filled in for the silent blond, “‘Must be nice being so privileged that the headmistress just gives you her office password, Potter.’” He shrugged with an embarrassed smirk. “But she was my head of house first. I bet Snape would’ve done the same for you.”

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he only said, “Could I ask why it is you require a Pensieve, Potter?”

“Er.” Harry turned away, feeling his cheeks going pink again. God, this was going to be embarrassing. For both of them, but Harry was the only one who knew it yet. “There’s something I have to show you. You’ll understand once you see it.”

They didn’t speak again until they’d stopped before the gargoyle that guarded the head’s office, and then Malfoy said quietly, “I believe the need has passed for you to drag me about like a recalcitrant child.”

“Oh!” Harry reluctantly let go, flexing his empty hand a moment as his cheeks warmed. Yet again. “Sorry.”

He looked at the gargoyle, and his mind was suddenly blank.

“Do you remember what the words were?” he asked.

“Acta non verba,” Draco recited, and the gargoyle began to grind to life, the revolving staircase appearing to carry them up to McGonagall’s office.

Harry took a deep breath and then gestured to the stair.

“After you.”

Chapter 28

They arrived at the top of the staircase, and Malfoy stepped far enough into the room to let Harry follow him in, then remained standing. He watched warily as Harry went to the large cupboard he’d used dozens of times with Dumbledore, undoing the small latch hidden at the bottom of its doors with familiar ease and folding them back to reveal the ancient Pensieve.

He turned and looked over his shoulder at Malfoy, gesturing him over.

As the blond stepped up beside him, Harry took the large phial from his pocket and held it in one hand.

“Have you used a Pensieve before?” he asked, realizing that some explanation might be in order.

“Not personally,” Malfoy admitted, stiff and looking rather uneasy. “But I am familiar with what they do.”

“Okay, the thing is—” Harry swallowed. “The thing is that something happened that you don’t remember. I didn’t remember either. But now that I know, you deserve to know, too.”

Malfoy blinked several times, and Harry sighed. “Honestly, would you please just say ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Potter?’ like I know you want to? It’d be so much easier to respond to.”

“I assure you I’ve thought nothing of the sort,” Malfoy responded, and Harry hoped most of all that this whole mad experiment would get Malfoy to remove the silver spoon he had got fixed up his ass with this polite act.

“Just—these are memories that a memory specialist at the Department of Mystery took out of my head, all right? When you look in the Pensieve, you’ll sorta…fall inside, and you’ll be able to watch them, but that’s all. You’ll just be along for the ride.” He swallowed hard, knowing his face was going red again as he thought about the very first memory Malfoy would see. “Don’t panic, but just—watch till the end. It’ll feel like a long time in Pensieve, but I promise, it only takes minutes out here.”

Malfoy looked more uncomfortable than ever, looking between the rune-laden Pensieve and Harry’s face. “I’m not sure—”

“Please, Malfoy.” Harry bit his lower lip. “Draco. I swear this is important. I’m not fucking with you.” He felt himself go even more red. He didn’t think he’d ever called Draco Malfoy his first name to his face. “Just watch the damn memories, and after you do, then—then you’ll understand.”

He unstoppered the phial and poured the whole mess into the misty liquid that had filled the basin. It began to glow, dark swirls appearing in the haze, quickly straightening into lines and sketching a top-down view of Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Malfoy gave him one last searching look, then he finally broke enough to mutter, “Merlin, this better not be a trick,” and he plunged his face into the bowl.

Harry had always been the one entering a Pensieve himself, and he’d never watched from the outside. It was a little mad to see it happening, sort of like a Portkey. One second, Malfoy was there beside him, and then in a flash, he was gone.

Left standing alone in front of the Pensieve, Harry turned and dropped into one of the visitor’s chairs to wait. He couldn’t watch the Pensieve itself. It was all he could do to try not to think about what Malfoy was seeing—and what he was thinking about what he was seeing.

How long would it take him to get through all the memories? Melinda had only left Harry alone for an hour, and he’d made it through the entire thing and still had time to spare to leave her a note and disappear before she’d gotten back.

Was Malfoy going to be furious?

Anger did seem like the most likely reaction, whether it was truly directed at Harry or just sorta…in general.

He had tried to tell Harry, in those dreams, that he wasn’t sure he wanted to remember. Harry had basically forced him to try the Legilimency stuff and the Memory Potions before that.

But he deserved to know, right?

Either way, it was too late now. Harry didn’t know how to pull someone out of a Pensieve, and he definitely wasn’t going in to join Malfoy for a second, joint viewing.

Harry sat and sweated and chewed on his thumbnail, until Malfoy reappeared after something like thirty minutes, gasping and hanging onto the edge of the Pensieve.

Sitting up a bit straighter, Harry watched for any sign of how he was going to react.

It seemed like Malfoy was also trying to figure that out for himself.

He stayed bowed over the Pensieve, shoulders heaving under his black robes as he struggled to calm his breathing. After something like ten painful seconds had ticked by, Harry said, “Look, I swear, I’m not trying to mess with you or get you in trouble with anything you say, so if you could just drop the weird act and tell me what you’re actually thinking—”

“What the fuck, Potter!” Malfoy shouted, whirling about with a wild look in his eyes. “What the actual fuck!”

Harry felt a tugging at his lips, something helpless and embarrassed but something that definitely felt like a smile. At least Malfoy had done as he asked and dropped the act.

“What is this?” Malfoy’s fists were clenching and unclenching at his sides, and he looked as if he wanted to either make a break for it or maybe break Harry’s nose. A second time.

“Look, I know it’s a lot—”

“It’s a fucking joke!”

And then Malfoy finally seemed to decide between fight and flight, and he rushed out the door.

“Malfoy—Draco—wait—!”

Harry jumped up, hurrying to the Pensieve first to pull the memories from it. He did not want to share these particular memories with McGonagall or any future heads.

Once he made sure that he’d got everything out and stoppered the phial, he shoved the cabinet back closed and went flying down the stairs after Malfoy, but the blond was long gone.

“Stubborn, dramatic ass,” he muttered, dropping to a walk as he winded his way back down the castle to the South Wing. There wasn’t much need to hurry, because Harry still had another secret that he’d never shared even in those dreams. Malfoy had no idea about the map.

When Harry got back to his room, he spread the map out on his desk under the ugly lamp he’d made—which he paused and looked at.

That was why he’d always vaguely hated it.

Maybe if he could get Malfoy to calm his tits, Harry would finally be able to ask again about those charms to finish enchanting it, the way he’d wanted to.

“I solemnly swear I’m up to no good,” he muttered. “Only trying to find a panicking Slytherin twat that, for some reason, I now apparently like.”

He looked first to Malfoy’s room, wondering if the boy would be so obvious as to corner himself in a room that offered no chance for escape. “You glorious idiot,” Harry laughed, when he saw the small dot labeled Draco Malfoy indeed pacing back and forth in the small space.

Then he folded up the map and headed out his door and down the hall.

Knocking on the door in what he hoped sounded like a conciliatory pattern, he called through the wood, “I know you’re in there. Could we maybe talk about this?”

There was complete and utter stillness from the room, and Harry glanced down at the map again, where he’d folded it so that this wing was on the top portion. Yup, the Malfoy dot had frozen on the spot.

“I mean, I literally know you are in there. Thanks to magic. And you can’t Apparate out—again, thanks to magic. So I can just sit here against your door for ages, but eventually you’ll have to face me.”

The Malfoy dot stayed unmoving, so Harry slid down to sit with his back against the door.

He had to admit that he was sort of enjoying this in a way that he probably shouldn’t. He seriously did get some weird thrill out of riling Malfoy up. Even out of imagining the blond throwing the door open to shout some more. Maybe throwing Harry up against a wall.

That probably wasn’t healthy.

But it was kind of hot.

He hadn’t ever wanted to throw Ginny against a wall, and he’d never thought about being rougher with her than maybe a good squeeze on the ass, but—he could imagine things being very different with Malfoy.

Would it be different with any guy? Feeling a little bit dirty even considering it, Harry thought through the other boys he’d known, but he definitely could not see himself wanting to manhandle (or be manhandled by) Dean or Neville or Seamus. He wasn’t even going to consider Ron. 

Though Bill…

Harry felt himself flush. He’d swear he’d never consciously considered it till that moment, but he’d definitely thought Bill was exceedingly cool from the first time he’d met him, and he was now seeing a certain overlap in what might be his type in men. Tall, thin, a sharp sense of style. A little dangerous. Hair long enough to grip a handful and tug.

Clearing his throat, he called through the door, “Hey, want to see something cool?”

Then he smoothed out the map, holding it between his hands one last time, and he shoved it through the gap under the door.

His heart seemed to go with it, as it slid out of sight, but he’d trusted Malfoy in those dreams. He couldn’t have been that wrong, could he?

He heard the nearly silent footsteps and then a faint rustle of parchment as Malfoy picked up the map from the floor.

Then a disbelieving whisper, just loud enough to catch: “Holy fuck…”

“Unfold it the whole way,” Harry said, though it seemed the encouragement hadn't been necessary. He could already hear the flapping of the parchment being extended out to its max, which would be nearly as wide as Harry could stretch his arms.

There was a slight pressure against the door at his back, and Harry realized that Malfoy had taken a seat against the other side of it, his voice now close enough to be heard even without speaking up.

“What is this, Potter?”

Harry shrugged, though Malfoy couldn’t see it. “My dad made it. With his friends, when they were at school. They called it the Marauder’s map.”

“And he left it to you?”

“No.” Harry laughed. “The only thing my parents actually left me was a vault at Gringotts. Everything else of theirs that I’ve ever got my hands on came from someone else. Fred and George Weasley were the ones who gave me that map. They said they pinched it from Filch’s office. They didn’t actually know it was my dad who’d made it, they were just trying to help me out when I wasn’t allowed to go to Hogsmeade with everyone else in Third Year.”

There was another rustle as Malfoy probably studied the map, where it continued on various flaps and across the back side of the parchment.

“This is astounding charmwork.”

Something in Harry glowed at the words, both because of the praise for his father’s work and because Malfoy sounded genuinely amazed, not furious or falsely polite.

He didn’t push for anything more, just resting against the door and waiting quietly as Malfoy took his time with the map. It was quite the sight, even when you’d seen it hundreds of times, like Harry had.

“What if I just decided to keep this?” Malfoy asked, the question sly and testing.

“Well,” Harry thought for a moment. “Then I guess I’d probably never fuck you.”

There was a choking sound from the other side of the door, and Harry grinned at the wall opposite him. Worth it.

“Potter, you’re sitting in a public bloody hallway—!”

“Then why don’t you let me in, and we could be having this conversation without the risk of anyone overhearing it?”

There was a sullen silence, and then another rustling of fabric, and the door behind Harry was jerked open, leaving him falling backwards into the room to stare up at Malfoy from the floor.

“Hi,” he said. “I bet I can see up your robes.”

“I’m wearing trousers, you imbecile,” Malfoy said, his face going delightfully pink, and Harry was definitely enjoying this more than the  canned politeness.

Tapping one of his fancy shiny Oxfords, Malfoy snapped, “Well? Are you going to just lie there like an idiot?”

Harry held up an arm, his fingers waggling as he tried to get the other boy to pull him up. Then he felt a thrill of success—or some kind of thrill anyway—when Malfoy took his hand and hauled him to his feet.

He finally got to see the rest of Malfoy’s room for the first time, awake or in dreams, and his mouth fell open. “Wait, why is your room so nice? My room doesn’t look like this!”

He started walking around without asking for permission, and Malfoy closed the door behind him with a sigh. They both had a bed and a desk and door that led to a small ensuite, but that was where the similarities between their two rooms ended.

Malfoy’s bed was a large four poster, with heavy drapes ready to be drawn around it. They were a deep, brilliant blue and appeared to sparkle slightly with tiny stars—like the night sky had been woven into them. The blankets neatly spread atop the bed were a similar blue, and there were multiple squashy-looking pillows mounded at the head of the bed. Thick rugs lay to both sides, so Malfoy wouldn’t have to step out onto bare stone in the cold winter mornings, the way that Harry did if he didn’t wear socks. And the walls weren’t bare either. Instead Malfoy had some kind of charmed picture frames that took up at least half the wall space and that appeared to look out upon gardens and fields and a distant forest.

Since their rooms had no real windows, the effect made the room look far more open and bright than Harry’s grim little cell.

“How come you have all this nice stuff?” he demanded.

“Because I made it,” Malfoy replied, rolling his eyes and perching on the edge of his bed, arms and legs both crossed as his posture screamed how not open he was to this conversation.

“You…made all this stuff?”

“It’s called magic, Potter,” he sniffed. “You’d think it would have sunk in after seven years of education, but apparently some people just never learn.”

Harry turned a wide smirk on the blond and said, “Did I mention how much of a relief it is to hear you talk like a normal person again? If you'd asked me a couple years ago, I would've said nothing could be more frustrating than you being a mouthy little shit, but I was wrong. The polite thing is actually worse.”

A flush crept up Malfoy’s cheeks as he avoided Harry’s gaze, instead staring at the door. “It appears there's no point worrying any longer about possibly offending your sensibilities. Not now that you have phial full of a dozen worse memories you could sink me with at any time.”

“D’you think you could drop it in front of Luna and Dean, too? Neither of them have it out for you, I promise. They really are just trying to be nice.”

Malfoy’s hands tightened where he had them crossed over his chest. “I know they are,” he said in an undertone. “Which is why they deserve to be spoken to politely.”

“Unlike me.”

Malfoy’s grey eyes flashed to him. “You asked for this.”

Yeah, I think I did.

Harry leaned against Malfoy’s desk, which was stacked with piles of books, most of which were not their textbooks for class.

“Okay, so maybe don’t call them assholes or idiots like you do me, but you could lighten up a bit. Maybe actually engage in conversation.”

Harry watched the flickers of emotion on Malfoy’s face, glad to see something more than just blank stillness.

“Luna genuinely wants to be your friend. And Dean’s open to it, if you let him in. He’s seen that you aren’t the person you used to be.”

That made Malfoy flinch, though. “Yes, I am, Potter.” He leveled a flat look at Harry, no longer avoiding his eyes. “I hope you didn’t fool yourself into believing otherwise, all because of some ridiculous dreams neither of us remember.”

Harry studied the boy in front of him, considering. “Okay. You are still you. But maybe there are parts of you that we never knew before. And even if you are still an annoying git, well...” Harry smirked. “Some of us kind of go for that.”

Malfoy sucked his lower lip in between his teeth, gnawing on it. His eyes darted across Harry’s face, and Harry did his best to keep looking calm and reassuring, though his heart was rabbiting against the back of his ribs.

“Potter… Seriously, what—”

“I don’t know,” Harry blurted out. “I don’t know. All I know is what we both saw in those memories. I don’t actually remember any of it either. Or nothing but the few little flashes I got this week.”

He saw how Malfoy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“I don’t know what either of us were thinking or feeling exactly, but…but we could be friends. We proved that.” Harry shrugged, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, feeling the need to hide in even a small way as Malfoy kept watching him. “And it sure seemed like I didn’t want to lose that. I was so desperate to try to hold onto those memories.” He felt an odd sort of grief knowing that he’d failed. He’d seen the memories, yes, but they weren’t really his memories anymore. “It seems worth at least giving it a try.”

“Being…friends?”

Harry fought the blush he knew was threatening to light up his whole face. “I mean, I figured that was probably where to start from. But I guess anything’s on the table.”

Malfoy fell back flat upon his mattress, his hands over his face as he muttered a curse into them.

Harry’s eyes moved over the fine lines of those pale hands, the thin fingers and sharp tendons, then followed them down the body he could only get a hint of beneath those thick winter robes.

“Also, as your friend, can I suggest less robes?”

Malfoy’s fingers splayed so that he could peer through the gap at Harry.

“They hide way too much,” Harry pointed out, and Malfoy groaned into his hands, closing his fingers over his face again. But Harry could still see how red his ears were, poking out through his pale hair.

And fuck if that wasn’t sort of adorable.

He’d had about a hundred new revelations about Draco Malfoy that day, but realizing that he could find the other boy adorable had to be the most bonkers of them all.

“This can’t be real,” Malfoy mumbled into his hands. “I’ve finally lost it from the stress. This is going to end in such disaster.”

“Up until that last one, yes, that was basically me this morning,” Harry agreed.

And he was willing to admit that there would almost certainly be a number of disasters along the way, like when he had to tell Ron or Ginny or the rest of the Weasleys. Or when the press got wind of it. Or when he maybe had to be nice to Narcissa Malfoy. Or when they inevitably fought about all the shitty things in their shared past.

But if they didn't want it to end in disaster then maybe they should just make sure that none of those things put an end to whatever this could be.

Chapter 29

Harry convinced Malfoy to get up off the bed and come up to dinner, so they ended up slowly walking from the South Wing together, the air uncertain and slightly tense between them.

When he looked over, he saw that Malfoy had retreated back behind that blank mask, so he nudged the blond with an elbow.

“Why d’you do that?”

A little grimace marred the mask. “It seems I told you once.”

“Still?” Harry asked. “You still worry that, what, people will get upset if you act anything less than perfectly mannered and unfailingly contrite, and they'll get you chucked back in Azkaban?”

He regretted his flippant words when Malfoy’s mouth went thin and unhappy. “I’d do anything to be sure that they don’t.” He stepped a little farther away, putting more distance between the two of them as they walked.

“You think being…friendly with me could land you back there, too?”

Malfoy closed his eyes briefly, then let them pop back open, since they were still walking and there were stairs up ahead.

“Not directly, I should think. But…if you’re asking me whether some people wouldn’t take offense to me getting close to their saviour, after everything, and then find some way to express that offense—some way that could make things even worse for me?” That grim line was back. “I like to consider myself a realist these days, Potter.”

Harry walked on quietly for a few minutes, thinking it over. He wanted to insist that Malfoy was just being paranoid, but then again, he’d already had a bunch of rabid Ravenclaw swots hexing him under tables and trying to poison him with swapped Potions ingredients.

“Why does Goldstein seem to have it out for you?” Harry asked, causing Malfoy’s eyes to fly to his face. “What?”

“That’s, ah, something best not discussed in the hall,” Malfoy muttered. “Perhaps remind me to explain it another time.”

Well, that was interesting. So there was some story there, after all.

“Well, either way,” Harry mused, stepping close so he could knock Malfoy again with an elbow, “since you mostly seem to insult me and yell at me, I bet we’ll be safe for a while from anyone thinking we could actually be friends.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They’d been the first to dinner, settling down by themselves at the end of the Slytherin table and automatically taking their usual seats opposite each other.

Harry grabbed a flagon of pumpkin juice, then looked across the table at Malfoy to offer the other boy some—then he remembered watching them sat here in one of those last memories, Harry grasping Malfoy’s hands and stealing a kiss as he tried not to break their eye contact.

“Don’t even fucking think it,” Malfoy warned, his eyes flicking to and away from Harry’s face as he reached for a dish of roasted chicken breast.

“Think what?” Harry asked, grinning and leaning forward.

“You are so fucking transparent with that face of yours. Please never play cards with a Slytherin. Or anyone with more brains than a troll. Maybe just never go out in public again.”

Harry’s grin grew, which only seemed to make Malfoy grow flustered instead.

“Stop it,” he hissed. “Down, boy. Or whatever command works on idiot lions.”

“Ah, that’s your first mistake, Malfoy,” Harry said, shaking his head. “No command works on idiot lions. We’re too stupid to listen to them.”

He’d barely finished speaking when Dean’s voice came from over his shoulder, mildly agreeing, “He’s right, you know. I spent six years in a dorm room with this one, Weasley, and Seamus, and there’s no stopping any of them once they’ve got a bad idea in their heads.”

The tall boy settled down next to Harry and looked from him to Malfoy with obvious curiosity. “All right there, Malfoy?” he asked.

There was a moment in which the blond froze, his face closed off again, and then he forced his shoulders to relax somewhat and he gave Dean a nod. “Yes, thank you. But I’m afraid that Potter here claims that you all would truly prefer it if I were to act like a twat, instead of trying to demonstrate anything resembling manners, so he is insisting that I ‘loosen up’ during these dinners. Please lodge any complaints you might have about my behavior with him. Maybe he’ll see sense if he hears it from you, because he sure as hell won't listen to me.”

Dean’s eyebrows shot up, since it had probably been the longest run of words Malfoy had said to him in the six weeks they’d all been eating meals together.

Malfoy gave a self-conscious little sniff, then said, “I notice you left yourself and Longbottom out, when describing the thickness of Gryffindor boys.”

Dean nodded, a smile slowly unfurling across his face. “Well, you did specify idiot lions. Not all of us qualify.”

“Point,” Malfoy agreed.

Harry reached out under the table to hook his feet around Malfoy’s ankles, just like he’d done to hold the Slytherin in place that very first meal. It got him a quick disapproving look, and one attempt to shake his feet off, but then Malfoy only huffed a sigh and gave in. Harry kept his feet where they were.

“Okay, now someone has to tell me what all I missed in class today,” he said, reaching for a bowl of boiled potatoes.

So Malfoy went through the points of Slughorn’s latest lecture and the homework he’d set them before the next class, when they’d start in on a series of medical brews beginning with the blood-replenishing potion. Dean expressed once again how glad he was to have dropped the subject, then he gave Harry a very quick recap of Transfiguration and what pages they were supposed to read that weekend.

Luna arrived, and she didn’t even raise a brow at the fact that Malfoy seemed to be talking more normally than he had the entire school year to that point. But Luna would be Luna.

For the first time in all these dinners they’d shared, Harry felt they’d captured a bit of how meals in the Great Hall used to be, all his friends chatting and conversation weaving from one topic to another as they got caught up in the high spirits of a Friday evening and knowing the weekend was ahead. Malfoy might have kept his amusement restricted to a slight twitch of his lips and he'd still spoken far less than anyone else, but it was a start.

Harry smiled, his chin resting on the heel of one hand as they lingered long after their plates were clean that night.

It definitely felt like some kind of start.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They’d parted ways with Luna where she turned off towards the Ravenclaw tower, and then Harry, Dean, and Malfoy slowly walked down the corridors together, all headed to the South Wing.

“So any special plans this weekend?” Dean asked, with another measuring look at the two of them.

“Another thrilling weekend of house arrest for me,” Malfoy returned. “And yourself?”

“I’ll head down to London for at least a day. My younger sister’s got this big dance competition she’s to be in, and she’d like it if I actually made it to see her perform for once.” Malfoy offered a curious noise, then Dean turned and looked at Harry. “How about you, mate?”

Harry knew his friend well enough to notice the slight note of insinuation in his tone, as if Dean realized something was going on. He wondered if Malfoy was right, and his face really was that obvious.

It probably was. He’d thought the same thing watching himself in those memories. He just hadn’t thought there would be much to be obvious about yet, here in the real world. Nothing had even gotten started.

Just a little banter and some new curiosity, that was all.

“I’ll be sticking around here as well,” Harry said, trying to keep his face neutral. “Catching up on that schoolwork and some correspondence.”

“Yeah? Well, enjoy a quiet weekend then,” Dean wished, too mild to actually mean nothing. They’d reached Harry’s door, which was the first of any of theirs. “I’ll make sure Malfoy makes it back all right.”

“Right.” Harry glanced at Malfoy, then smiled ruefully. “Thanks, mate.”

It was just as well. There would be the next day to continue slowly feeling out whatever this was. They’d had a good start—Malfoy had already moved past cursing and running away to being willing to sit and talk with the rest of them.

“Night, all,” Harry wished, his eyes lingering on Malfoy as he put his hand on his door, unlocking it with a silent wish. The tumblers clicked obediently, and since the other two were already carrying on down the hall, Harry disappeared into his own bare little room alone.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Was 8 a.m. too early to go knock on a bloke’s door?

Harry hesitated outside Malfoy’s room, his fist up but not being used. Then he figured he might as well find out. The worst that could happen was Malfoy would get pissed. And Harry, absolute nutter that he was, would kind of be glad even to see that.

A few seconds passed, then Malfoy pulled open the door. Not just a tiny crack this time, but a normal amount, resting one shoulder lightly against the open door as he gave Harry an unimpressed look.

“So, we’re right back to the stalking, are we?”

Harry propped one elbow up along the jamb, settling against it as his eyes roamed up and down the blond, who was dressed only in slim black trousers and a well-fitted button-up shirt. “No robes,” he said approvingly.

Malfoy went a little pink. “No robes yet. You have bombarded me at an indecent hour. This is what happens when you don’t allow people enough time to get dressed for the day.”

“So, I’m hearing that I should come even earlier tomorrow,” Harry grinned. “Increase my odds of seeing you with even less clothes on.”

“Is this how you talk to all your ‘friends’?” Malfoy asked.

“Only Ron.”

Something funny happened to Malfoy’s face, Harry noted with delight.

So he added, “And Hagrid.”

Then Malfoy scowled and muttered, “Git,” realizing it had to be a joke.

Harry watched those changing expressions with a stupid smile, then he reminded himself why he’d come. “Actually, speaking of stalking, I was wondering if I could check the map for something.”

Malfoy’s expression faltered, and he looked over his shoulder. He went over to his desk for a moment and then came back holding the blank parchment and saying defensively, “I didn’t do a thing to it, so I’m assuming this is meant to be normal?”

But Harry could see the nervous way his eyes darted between the blanked map and Harry’s hands as he took the parchment.

He decided to put Malfoy out of his misery this time, while they were still new to this. “Yup. You can turn it off at any time with the right words, in case someone might see, but it does also fade on its own after a few hours, in case you’d somehow lost it or had it confiscated.”

Harry pulled out his wand and touched it to paper, promising, “I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.”

The ink bloomed, eliciting a quiet gasp from Draco, and began to crawl across the folded parchment. Before it got too far, Harry tapped it again and said, “Mischief managed.”

The ink quickly faded, absorbed into the blank parchment as if it had never been there.

Malfoy blinked down at the map and said, “That is not truly the password. Is it?” His grey eyes lifted to Harry’s face, his mouth twitching with a disbelieving little curve. “‘I solemnly swear I am up to no good?’ Gryffindor idiocy really runs in the family, doesn’t it?”

The words would have made Harry furious once, years ago, but now he could accept that they were meant as a tease and not an insult. And it was true.

“It really does,” he admitted. “At least in the male line. My mum seemed clever enough to realize that my dad and his friends were mostly idiots when they were young. She and Snape hated my dad together for years.”

“She and…Snape?”

“They were best friends,” Harry said, as if it was easy and normal to do so and his heart wasn’t racing from revealing this very private part of his history, one of the few glimpses he'd ever had of the mother he'd lost. “When they were young.”

He tried to keep up the eye contact, but it was too embarrassing when he could feel himself flushing under Malfoy’s searching look. Touching his wand to the map, he muttered the phrase to activate it again, then shook it out to unfold it.

“Point is,” he said, clearing his throat awkwardly and feeling warm, “there’s plenty you don’t actually know about me, and probably plenty that I don’t know yet know about you.” He glanced up to meet those eyes again for a moment.

Then he took the chance to look down the rest of the boy, following the slim lines of that white shirt, thinking he’d rather like to drag his hands along them, tracing that flat stomach and feeling the smooth hard chest that was lifting the fabric as Malfoy sucked in a deep breath.

He was definitely more than ‘a bit’ gay, now that he was aware and paying attention.

Fighting to clear his throat, he looked down at the map to try to find Ginny on it, since that was what he’d come here for. She was already in the Great Hall, early riser that she was, so Harry ought to be able to catch her there if he hurried.

“I’ve got to go take care of something, but can I come back later?” he asked, folding the map back up and handing it to Malfoy.

The other boy took it in surprise, then looked up into Harry’s face again. “I, ah, don’t seem very good at preventing you from doing so.”

“Good. Want anything from the Great Hall?”

“If anything’s handy,” Malfoy said faintly, the most agreeable that Harry had ever heard Draco Malfoy be in his life, as if he was too overwhelmed to even think of a demand.

Harry pushed off the door jamb and started to step away. Then he paused and tossed back through the open doorway, “Oh, and please—no robes before I make it back.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Ginny was still at the Gryffindor table with a couple of her yearmates when Harry arrived in the Great Hall. It almost felt odd to be walking over to the far end of the Gryffindor table to reach her, and he tried to recall when he’d last sat at his own house table. Probably not for weeks.

Before he’d reached her side, one of her friends on the opposite side of the table had noticed Harry approaching and nudged Ginny, so she was already turning in her seat.

“Hey, Gin,” Harry said, heart speeding up nervously. It seemed to be becoming a constant thing over the past day. “I don’t mean to interrupt your breakfast, but do you have time to talk this morning?”

She searched his expression for a moment, then her mouth quirked up. “Sure, of course. Want to take a little walk maybe?”

Standing up from the bench, she speared one last piece of sausage and bit it off her fork, then she glanced about the table for a moment. Picking up a couple pieces of orange peel from her plate, she Transfigured them into simple paper cups, handing one to Harry as she filled hers with coffee.

Harry copied her, filling his cup as well and then lifting it in a little salute. “Cheers for this.”

Ginny told her friends good-bye, then they walked out of the Great Hall in a mostly easy silence, each sipping from their coffee cups as they headed for the front doors of the castle.

“So,” Ginny said, once they’d stepped outside into the late November chill. “You wanted to talk?”

‘Wanted to’ was perhaps too strong a word, but he certainly felt he had to.

“Yeah.”

Harry took another steadying sip of his coffee, feeling the cold nipping at his fingers and face. It cut through his hoodie quite easily, and he did have to admit that maybe Malfoy had a point with all his thick winter robes. At least when venturing out of doors.

“So talk,” Ginny prodded, laughing at him when he looked embarrassed.

“I…” He just had to say it. “I don’t think we should get back together, Gin.” He stole a glance at her and saw the moment her face fell, the realization of what kind of conversation this was going to be clearly sinking in.

“You know I love you, and I want us to be friends. I’ll always want us to be friends,” he promised, hoping that he was handling this with more care than she had when she’d just told him with a regretful smile that it wasn’t working that summer. “When we first started dating, it really did feel so easy and right. And thinking about you last year—picturing our future together—it got me through so many miserable days and nights. I’m always going to be grateful for that.”

He sucked in a breath, the cold air stinging in his lungs. “But we aren’t the same people we were back then. I don’t think we’re looking for the same things now.”

She looked straight ahead, blinking a few times. Finally she asked, “Do you know what you’re looking for, then?”

Harry lifted one shoulder and let it drop. “Not for certain, but I’m…considering options. I’m more sure about some of the things I don’t want.” There was a flash of hurt on her face, and Harry hastened to explain, “I’m not saying you, but—but the life you’re headed for—always on the move, traveling all around the country or even the world for Quidditch, putting that and your team first, probably getting whole spreads dedicated to you in the Quidditch magazines and posters of you up on every kid’s bedroom wall—that’s all amazing, but it’s just not for me.”

“You mean you aren’t going to try out either?” she asked in disbelief, seeming almost more shocked by that than the fact that he didn’t want to date again.

Harry had spent several long hours in his bed the night before, staring up at the bare ceiling and mulling over everything he’d learned during the day.

The idea he’d come up with in those dreams—starting some kind of programme to help support Muggle-born children fit into the Wizarding world—it wasn’t anything he’d ever considered before. But rather like things with Malfoy himself, Harry could understand why his dreaming self had found the idea so...attractive.

What if he could go around and help tell kids that they were magic? He could be there to see them realize, with that same wonder that he’d felt at eleven, that they weren’t odd but part of something amazing.

What if he could help families understand and adjust, so there might not be another Petunia Dursley in the world someday, resenting her witch of a sister for leaving her behind to experience a world she never could?

Or even something smaller. What if he could have brought up Dean’s mum and his sisters to see one of his Quidditch matches when he’d played Chaser their Sixth year? Muggle-borns shouldn’t simply disappear into Hogwarts and stop being a part of the families they’d come from.

He didn’t know if it would count as a job, per se. It didn’t sound like any kind of job he was used to hearing about. But it did intrigue him more than dodging photographers as he Apparated between his house and a pitch or enjoying only a fleeting feeling of success when he had a Snitch fluttering between his fingers, while his best friends seemed to be out there every day doing something real with their lives.

“I don’t think professional Quidditch is for me,” Harry said at last. “Maybe some weekend league, or playing the way we always did as a family at the Burrow growing up, but…” He shook his head. “I think I was only hoping to make it fit, because it—it at least gave me something I could do. But it feels like trying to force myself back into some role that doesn’t really feel like me any longer. I’ve known it all along, but I was just afraid to start over again.”

They walked on in silence, breath puffing in the air as they circled the greenhouses, the Whomping Willow waving alarmingly in the distance.

“It’d be bad enough realizing years into a career that I’d made a mistake trying to force something that wasn’t working,” Harry finished. “I don’t want to do that to you and me, too.”

A heavy, shaky breath exploded out of Ginny, and she admitted, “Well, when you make it sound all noble and responsible like that.” She offered him a little smile. “I guess I can’t exactly be mad.”

They came around the far side of the greenhouses and began walking back towards the castle again.

“Is there someone else?” Ginny asked, the question coming out rushed and impulsive.

Harry opened his mouth and closed it. Malfoy was obviously a factor. Harry had already suspected that getting back together Ginny wasn’t the right thing to do before seeing the memories, and he and Malfoy weren’t even officially friends yet, let alone anything more, but...Malfoy was still an undeniable factor.

“I’m not dating anyone else yet, but…I might. Or I hope I might.” He shrugged, knowing he was blushing for the thousandth time in the past 24 hours. “Time will tell, I guess, but please have mercy if I ever have to bring someone new home to the Burrow.”

That someone might really need it, if it was the someone Harry was currently thinking of.

With another heavy sigh, Ginny looped an arm through his and agreed, “Okay, just not too soon, all right? I’d kind of got this stupid idea in my head that we were going to get back together and be going back home together as a couple, and I just need a little time to put you back into the ‘platonic family’ box, lock it tight, and lose the key somewhere.”

Harry squeezed the arm looped through his. “I promise it’ll be a while.” Draco wasn’t allowed to leave Hogwarts for another 18 months at least.

“And if you’d really like to make this crushing disappointment up to me,” Ginny added, a hint of a smile in her voice, “maybe keep coming to practice sometimes anyway? That green Seeker of mine needs all the extra experience he can get if we’re going to have a shot at the House Cup.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry arrived back at Malfoy’s room more than an hour after leaving it, bearing a freshly transfigured cup full of coffee and a napkin piled with sweet rolls that he knew he’d seen the Slytherin eat at the breakfast table over the years.

He kicked at the door instead of knocking, since his hands were full, and that got him a very displeased look when Malfoy swung the door open once more.

“Manners, you absolute cretin,” he snapped, eyeing Harry’s full hands. “One does not kick doors to gain entry.”

“You’ve got your robes on,” Harry replied, disappointed to see all that heavy draping fabric again.

“Yes, well, it’s rather chilly in the middle of fucking winter in a ghastly ancient castle,” Malfoy said, slight spots of pink on his cheeks as he reached out to pluck the coffee and pastries from Harry’s hands. “Thank you for the delivery,” he added tartly.

Harry snorted. “And may I come in?”

“What for?”

“The pleasure of your company?” Harry suggested.

Malfoy took a sip of the black coffee, eyeing Harry over the rim of the cup. “I thought you might’ve had enough company already, what with that nice walk about the grounds you had with Girl Weasley.”

Oh, this was new and weird. Harry was so used to being the one to spy on Malfoy through the map, but he’d never imagined being on the receiving end of that scrutiny. He supposed it was only fairplay now to have his own tricks turned upon him.

He also didn’t mind if it had made Malfoy a bit jealous.

“Yes, well, Ginny’s such a dear old friend,” he said, a smile starting to curve his lips. “And so easy to talk to, the way she never calls me a cretin or breaks my nose on trains.”

Malfoy slammed the door in his face, and Harry burst out laughing, banging on the wood with a fist.

“C’mon, Malfoy! Open up! You know I’m fucking with you!”

The door swung open again, and the blond looked like he was seriously considering throwing the cup of hot coffee in Harry’s face next.

“I just had to talk to her so I could tell her that we won’t be getting back together,” Harry said. “I didn’t want to leave that hanging or unclear in any way.”

“Oh?” Draco sniffed, cradling his coffee up to his mouth before taking another sip.

“Yeah.” Harry sidled up into the open space in the doorway, not stepping over the threshold but certainly standing on it and leaving hardly a foot between him and the other boy. “Not gonna happen.”

“You’re supposed to wait to be invited in,” Draco pointed out.

“I’d be waiting my whole damn life if I played by your rules,” Harry countered, stepping over the threshold and kicking the door shut behind him. “Good thing Gryffindors are about as good at breaking rules as Slytherins are.”

Chapter 30

The next week passed with shocking ease. It shouldn’t have been so effortless to go from mortal enemies—or at least reluctant acquaintances—to…whatever this was that they were trying out. But it was.

Maybe because Harry had never really stopped trying to push Malfoy’s buttons. Now he was simply trying to push even more of them. And instead of getting angry when Malfoy snapped back, he was just letting himself enjoy it, especially after so long disliking the distant, polite act from his long-time rival.

They still hadn’t touched. Harry wasn’t even sure if they were friends exactly. But they were flirting with something between becoming friends and more that made his pulse speed up every time he met those grey eyes.

After delivering breakfast on Saturday, Draco had ended up forcing Harry back to the library, because he said schoolwork must be done. Then he’d come back from one of his trips to the stacks to drop a book in front of Harry about how to enchant artwork and images, rather like they’d talked about for his lamp in their dreams once, and Harry had wanted to yank the Slytherin over by his robes and quite probably kiss him.

He didn’t, though.

On Sunday, he’d invited Draco to his room for the first time, and the Slytherin had declared it ‘more depressing than his cell in Azkaban.’ Then he’d brought back several more books from his room, filled with more household transfigurations like the ones he’d used to create his own fancy bedding and heavy rugs.

“But your room is already so nice. Maybe I should just spend all my time there instead,” Harry had suggested.

“I am not interested in a relationship with some freeloading magical ignoramus,” Draco had sniffed. And Harry had grinned, because it had been the first time that Draco had acknowledged possibly wanting any kind of relationship at all.

When classes had started back up on Monday, they had slipped back into their regular habits, Draco passing between Harry, Luna, and Dean as they all met and parted throughout their day with their different timetables. In classes and at meals, Draco was less stiff with his fellow Manor Survivors, but he still mostly kept from speaking where anyone else might notice or overhear him. He didn’t want to draw attention.

So Harry and Draco kept their distance in public, only exchanging a few words when relevant to class. And in the evening, after dinner, Harry would inevitably show up at Draco’s door, slipping inside to lean against his desk while Draco sat on the bed, and they talked about their classes and their days and anything else they dared to bring up. Draco would unload a whole day’s worth of insults and snarky observations and words, so many words. Harry didn’t know how he’d managed to keep them all contained so long this year.

“You never told me about Goldstein,” Harry said Friday night, when they’d made it through an entire week and somehow were still doing this.

He’d made it from the desk to the bed over the past five days, as he stayed later and later on the nights that Draco didn’t have Astronomy. Now he was lying across Draco’s bed horizontally, staring up at the star-studded canopy, while the blond sat back on the heels of his hands nearby.

“Ah.”

Harry turned to study the other boy. “Ah?” he repeated, curious what the uncomfortable little sound had meant.

“Well. Goldstein somehow knew to tell the world that I was interested in men, didn’t he? You aren’t that stupid, Potter.”

The gears in Harry’s head slowly turned, because maybe he was that stupid. “You don’t mean…you and Goldstein?”

Draco was definitely looking uncomfortable and a little pink, even in the dim cocoon of the bed’s canopy, where only the low light from a bedside lamp reached.

“Not….as such.” He fell back, lying next to Harry but with his hands over his face. “This is utterly humiliating to admit, but I was fifteen, and…fuck if we aren’t all a bit stupid with hormones and horny when we’re fifteen.”

“What did you do?” Harry asked, sitting up on one elbow to stare down at the boy beside him.

A pained noise escaped from under those hands. “Something stupid.”

“When I was fifteen, I kissed Cho Chang right next to a picture of her dead boyfriend, while she cried the entire time,” Harry said. “Now spill.”

Malfoy laughed into his hands, the sound muffled but still a relief to hear.

“Okay, fine. We were both prefects in FIfth Year, if you’ll recall. And there’s a private prefects’ bathroom.”

“Mm-hmm, I’m familiar,” Harry prodded.

“Well, we would sometimes end up crossing paths there. And you…you tend to notice when someone is looking a bit more than they should in the showers.”

The thought of Anthony Goldstein, absolute shit that he had turned out to be, watching Malfoy while he showered—

Harry held himself back, but something hot and possessive made him want to roll over onto the boy beside him and make it very clear that Malfoy was not available for asshats like that to ogle.

“And maybe if we ended up alone in there some nights, just the two of us, I might have, ah, let my hands wander a bit, knowing he was watching me. And he might have…responded in kind.”

“Are you telling me that you and Goldstein wanked off to each other in the prefects’ bathroom?” Harry was aghast and unreasonably jealous and he wanted to go find a Ravenclaw to murder immediately.

“We were fifteen!” Malfoy groaned into his hands. “Remembering it now makes me want to kill myself, or him, or both of us, so that no one would ever have to know it happened. Which means now I’ll have to kill you, too.”

He finally lowered his hands, and that pale complexion was redder than Harry had ever seen it in his life.

“Jesus,” Harry said, staring down at him. “I can’t— I am so fucking jealous right now.”

Draco’s eyes flew to his, and he swallowed hard, Adam’s apple jumping in his throat. Harry wanted to lick a line up that throat and find out how his skin tasted.

“Anyway, we never talked about it. It was all easily deniable, no contact, just...watching. But then Sixth Year happened. And last year…” Draco swallowed again, the flush fading slightly from his pale skin as his expression turned nauseated. “He tried to ask me for help once,” Draco whispered. “He cornered me after one of the classes with the Carrows, said that surely I could talk to them…Death Eater to Death Eater. Asked if I couldn’t at least get them to leave the other Ravenclaws alone. They just wanted to finish school.”

There was nothing warm left in Draco’s face by then, skin blanched and eyes distant. “I just shook him off. Told him to worry about his own skin, then I ran for it. He…he didn’t try again.”

Draco’s throat worked. “So. Yeah, he’s probably got a fair reason to hate me. Even more than most.”

Harry reached out and tentatively put his hand on Draco’s.

“Hey, you’ve done way worse shit than that to me,” he teased gently, squeezing those cool, clammy fingers. “Stop trying to make me jealous of how much other boys get to hate you.”

Malfoy laughed, his voice thick with something wet like tears, but he didn’t pull his hand away.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The next morning, Harry went to the Great Hall bright and early for a coffee and breakfast run so he could ambush Draco for a second Saturday morning in a row and hopefully catch him without any robes on yet.

As he looked about the Slytherin table for the most portable pastries, though, he caught the faint whistle of wings cutting through the air and turned just in time to get a face full of owl.

“Whoa, what the—!”

He caught the struggling bird, getting an arm under her talons so she could perch, flapping her wings for balance.

“Easy there,” he said, trying to sooth the ruffled owl. But she simply thrust a leg out, demanding that her letter be taken.

As soon as Harry had tugged it loose, the owl flung herself up into the air, long wings working powerfully to lift her body higher so she could fly out of the hall.

Harry was still blinking in shock, and he looked down at the letter, immediately recognizing Hermione’s neat handwriting.

“Oh…shit.”

He had never written her. It had been a whole week since he’d shown up at her place, telling her he thought he was either losing it or under attack, then left a vague note and disappeared again.

The letter was dated the previous night.

Grabbing a couple apples to shove in the front pocket of his hoodie, Harry ran out of the hall, shaking out the letter and reading it as he hurried back to the South Wing.

Harry—

I am going to assume that you are quite all right, because I have faith that at least Professor McGonagall would have had the decency to let us know if you were obviously unwell or had been sent to the Janus Thickey Ward. Which only leaves me to wonder what in the world you meant by leaving me that confusing note and then never writing. For an entire week.

I want an explanation, Harry! Write me back at once, or I’m coming to Hogwarts myself.

Or worse, I’ll tell Mrs. Weasley.

“Shit,” Harry muttered under his breath, skidding to a stop outside Draco’s door.

He knocked (with a hand, not a foot) in a quick staccato rhythm, not stopping until the door was pulled away from under his knuckles.

Draco stood there in just a pair of grey trousers and a vest, his narrow feet bare and his hair damp. He still had bits of shaving cream at the corners of his jaw, as if he’d come hurrying out from the en suite mid-shave.

Harry’s eyes roved over him, taking in the sharp angles of those bare shoulders and the exposed arms, ropy with lean muscle under all that milky skin. The faded mark on Draco’s left forearm, bared to the air while he had his arm out to hold the door open. The silver line of scarring that traced over his collarbone, so perilously close to the crucial veins now fluttering in his throat.

Harry didn’t hesitate or think, he just stepped into the doorway and leaned into that thin body, their cheeks brushing as he spoke into Draco’s ear to admit: “You look fucking delicious, and I didn’t get any breakfast. I wish I could devour you.”

Then he pulled one of the two apples from his hoodie’s pocket and pressed it into Draco’s hand as he stepped back, and the other boy reflexively gripped the fruit, still standing frozen in shock.

“But I’ve got to go down to London today, or Hermione is going to murder me, because I haven’t explained a thing to her.”

“You mean you’re planning to tell your friends—” Draco broke off, not seeming to know what to finish with.

“Something, yeah.” Harry grinned. “Nothing too bad. I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”

“Potter—”

Harry flashed a thumbs up, which was stupid, but he was running high on adrenaline. “I’ll be back sometime before tonight. I’ll tell you what happened then!”

Then he turned on his heel and went sprinting down the hall.

“Potter!” Malfoy shouted after him.

But Harry only turned and waved and kept on running.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

It was still barely 9 a.m. by the time he arrived at Hermione’s front door, once again knowing better than to Apparate right into her flat. Boundaries were important.

Taking half a second to run his hands through his hair and try to prepare himself, he knocked on her door and waited.

Footsteps approached, and then paused, and Harry assumed she was looking through the spyhole. He offered a sheepish smile, and she yanked the door open.

“Harry,” she breathed, exasperated and clearly relieved. “Do you have any idea what I was thinking this whole week?”

“I’m sorry.” He impulsively darted forward and gave her a hug, because he loved her and he wanted her to know he cared. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’re all right, though?”

He nodded, and Ron came wandering out of the bedroom, one hand scratching in his pyjama bottoms as he asked through a yawn, “That him?” His carroty orange hair was sticking up in so many directions it was giving Harry’s mop a run for its money.

“Hey, mate,” Harry called, and Ron blinked muzzily at him.

“There you are, Harry. She’s been going spare.”

Hermione pulled him inside and closed the door behind him, insisting, “That’s it. We’re making tea, and sitting down together, and it’s time you explained everything.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

A large pot of tea steamed on the coffee table, there was a plate heaping with toast, and three entire packets of digestives waited in reserve. Ron still hadn’t brushed his hair or his teeth, but he’d thrown his lanky body down on the small sofa beside Hermione, one arm draped on the back of it behind her shoulders.

Harry was sitting on the floor facing his two best friends, the table forming a little island of sustenance and space between them, and a mug of tea already in his hands. He looked up at them both and swallowed.

“So, how much does Ron know?”

“I know everything,” Ron said mysteriously.

“He knows nothing,” Hermione quickly corrected.

“Hey!”

Hermione patted her boyfriend on the knee and said, “You know many wonderful things, love, but not about what’s been going on with Harry.”

Ron screwed up his face, but after a moment, he gave in with a shrug. “Okay, then tell me everything.”

Harry took a sip. Right, this is what he’d come here for.

“I came here last week because something weird started happening. I started getting these little…visions, maybe you’d call them. But more like flashes of memories. Only I was remembering things that hadn’t ever happened.”

Ron sat forward. “Mate, I’d say that sounds mad, but…from you, it does sort of just sound like a Tuesday.” He fished a piece of toast from the pile and started to munch on it, still leaning forward with interest. “So? What happened?”

“Well, after it’d happened a couple times, I figured I was either losing my mind or someone was maybe doing something to me, from the outside. Like—like when Voldemort sent me that vision of the Department of Mysteries. Hermione had the idea that I go see the memory specialist that I’d worked with during the summer.”

“Mimblewort or something, yeah?”

“Migglesby,” Harry corrected. He took another sip. “She’s supposed to be the best, and she—she took a look in my head for me, last Friday.”

Ron grinned around a mouth full of toast and joked, “And she didn’t just find it empty?”

Harry matched him with a wry smile. “Well, sort of?” He looked between Ron and Hermione. “See, something actually happened back in September. I didn’t think it was any big deal, so I never even thought to mention it before.”

“Merlin, Harry, think we’ll get to the end of this story before dinner?”

Hermione elbowed her boyfriend and hissed something about not interrupting.

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled. “Just—there was an accident in Potions class, okay? We were in the middle of brewing Dreamless Sleep, when this Seventh Year girl brought out a cauldron of Memory Potion she needed to finish. Only she tripped, and her cauldron went flying and—long story short, Malfoy and I got bathed in a crazy cocktail of unfinished potions together.”

“Malfoy?” Ron asked in surprise. Apparently Hermione really hadn’t filled him in on many details, such as the rather relevant ones about it being memories of Malfoy that Harry had kept seeing.

“Ah, yeah.” Harry explained, “Malfoy and I had been partnered together that day. And we washed the potions off immediately, then Madam Pomfrey gave us a once over, and it seemed like everything was fine.”

“And that’s why you never mentioned it?” Hermione asked. She’d already drained her tea, but she didn’t refill the empty mug she was holding between both her hands.

“Yeah. I genuinely forgot it had even happened. After a shower and a change of clothes, I thought that was the end of it.”

Hermione gave him a knowing look, and Harry shrugged sheepishly. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

“So it had actually had some sort of effect?” Hermione asked.

“Mm-hmm. It turns out—it turns out that ever since that accident, Malfoy and I had been sharing dreams. Like, every night we were stuck together in our dreams. But we never remembered it during the day.”

Ron’s mouth dropped open.

“Blimey, Harry,” he breathed. “What a nightmare.”

Well, that made things a little awkward when Harry had to tell Ron it’d maybe been the best thing that had happened to him all year.

“That’s, er, the really bonkers thing. It was…fine.”

Hermione’s eyes narrowed slightly as she studied Harry. “What do you mean by ‘fine’?”

“Malfoy and I… I mean, we were stuck together every single night. So I guess we figured out how to make it work. How to…get along.”

Ron’s mouth was hanging open, offering an unwelcome view of his half-chewed toast. “You and Malfoy…figured out how to get along?”

“In these dreams, yeah,” Harry said sheepishly. “We had to do something every night. So we’d go flying or—or just sort of chat and make fun of each other or whatever.” Or talk about what happened at Malfoy Manor or the breakdown I had this summer or what I want to do with my life. He knew his face was going pink as Ron continued to gape. “See, they weren’t like normal dreams, where anything might happen. We were always stuck in places we remembered being, like at Hogwarts or Diagon Alley or even the World Cup stadium once. But it was always just the two of us there, no one else. Like we were just stuck back in these places we knew, but outside of time.”

There were obviously gears turning in Hermione’s head and she tapped two fingers to her lips. “Dreamless Sleep and a Memory Potion, you said?” Harry nodded. “Yes, I suppose… How fascinating.”

She focused back on Harry and asked, “Then the dreams that you never remembered up until that point started leaking through when you were awake somehow? That was what you were seeing last week?”

“Yeah, ‘somehow’…” Harry cleared his throat and took a piece of toast from the plate, nibbling at one edge. Probably no need quite yet to reveal that he’d been begging Malfoy to use unpracticed Legilimency on him so he might remember. “So, Melinda, the memory specialist, she could see all these memories in my head even though I’ve got some kind of block on them. And she was able to extract them, so I could watch them in a Pensieve.”

“And you believed them?” Ron asked, grabbing one of the biscuit packets and tearing it open. “Like, you really think that happened, that you got on with Malfoy for…for entire months, in these mad dreams?”

Harry only nodded.

“Blimey. Are you going to tell Malfoy?” Ron shoved two chocolate digestives in his mouth at once.

Harry looked down at his toast. “Oh. I, er, I already did. I mean, I showed him the memories, too, with the school’s Pensieve. There was… There was stuff he needed to know, too. See, he’s been getting harrassed by some of the Ravenclaws, and I’d found out in the dreams that it was really getting to him, like…like suicidally getting to him. He’d thought he had no one at all at Hogwarts he could turn to.” Harry shrugged. “He deserved to at least know that he hadn’t always been alone dealing with it.”

Ron paused on his way to putting another biscuit in his mouth. “Well, I suppose that was the decent thing to do.”

He popped the biscuit in his mouth and chewed, so Harry took another bite of his toast.

“And how awkward are things now?” Ron asked. “That’s gotta be a mindfuck, facing Malfoy every day after seeing all that.”

Harry looked at Hermione, and he thought she’d probably realized what was coming, given the slightly apprehensive look she shot in Ron’s direction.

Harry forced down his dry toast with another swig of tea. “So, actually, not really at all. We’re kind of, er, giving it a go in the real world as well. Getting along and not hating each other and all that.”

Ron dropped his half-eaten biscuit.

“It’s been going all right so far,” Harry added.

While Ron continued to just stare, Hermione cleared her throat and asked, “So you and Malfoy are…friends now?”

Harry hid behind his tea, face warm. “Something like that.”

“Something like that,” Hermione repeated. Her eyes seemed to pick his expression apart as he squirmed under the scrutiny. “And you’re… just friends?” she asked.

He went even redder. But he supposed it was easier for her to have guessed it on her own than for him to have to break the news.

Coughing slightly, he said in a small voice, “Friends seemed like a good place to start from, anyway.”

Hermione sucked in a deep breath, blinking a few times and taking a moment to adjust to this new reality. Then she nodded and leaned forward to pour herself another cup of tea.

“Probably wise to take things slow, yes,” she agreed, a bit of pink staining her own cheeks as well. “There are, ah, rather a lot of complications to consider.”

Ron still hadn’t moved or picked up the biscuit he’d dropped. “What are we talking about?” he asked faintly.

Hermione ducked down and picked up the biscuit from her floor, pressing it back into Ron’s limp fingers. “I believe, Ron, that we’re talking about the very real possibility that Harry and Malfoy could end up…romantically entangled.”

A weird little shiver went through Harry hearing her describe it like that. Though it wasn’t actually wrong.

“But—but—”

After a few moments of stunned staring, Ron waved his crumbling biscuit accusingly at Harry.

“You said it was just ‘getting on’!” he said, sounding slightly unhinged. “You said it was just a bit of flying and talking!”

“Would you rather I’d said I was getting off with Malfoy in my dreams?!” Harry asked back, panicking slightly.

Ron went so pale every freckle on his face stood out like someone had sprinkled cocoa powder over a bowl of milk. “Oh god.” He dropped his head into his hand, mashing biscuit into his wild orange hair. “Oh god. You and Malfoy.”

Harry rather suspected that Malfoy himself was not going to be very pleased when he heard how Harry had gone about breaking this news to his best friends. Maybe Harry didn’t need to fill him in on exactly how the conversation had gone.

“Oh, Merlin,” Ron moaned, dropping his head onto the back of the sofa. “All that fighting, all those years of obsessing—this has just been seven years of bloody foreplay for you two, hasn’t it?”

“Hey!” Harry jabbed a half-eaten piece of toast at his best mate, even as he flushed red. “I hardly think you can talk! You two were an absolute nightmare to be stuck between from the time we were fourteen until—until about six months ago!”

Ron didn’t lift his head, but Harry could still see that he’d given into a rueful smile. “Okay, that may be fair.” Ron sat back up, looking at Harry again with a flush creeping up his neck. “So, er. Malfoy’s bent then? And…apparently so are you?”

“Oh my god,” Hermione moaned, one hand over her eyes. “Ronald Weasley.”

“What!” Ron looked between her and Harry. “Seriously, what! Am I not supposed to ask? Am I not supposed to wonder about the fact that my best mate, who previously dated my definitely female little sister, is now talking about getting ‘romantically entangled’ with a bloke? And not just any bloke, but the bloke we all grew up hating?”

Hermione looked like she was having a harder time arguing with that, and she looked to Harry beseechingly.

He cleared his throat again, his previous flush still never having faded. The odds of it retreating any time during this entire conversation were looking poorer and poorer.

“No, that’s—that’s fair. So. Yeah? I mean, it’s not exactly public knowledge, but Goldstein did out Malfoy already. If you hadn’t heard about it in the papers, then I’m glad that it seems McGonagall’s rules about talking to the press are still holding up.”

That triggered a whole detour, since Ron and Hermione hadn’t heard the story. Harry caught Ron up on the entire Ravenclaw harassment campaign, and he caught them both up on how Goldstein had most recently outed Malfoy, as well as the way the Survivors had rallied around him, escorting the Slytherin to all his classes and things.

“Blimey,” Ron said again. “And…you? Did you not actually ever like girls?” He looked pained. “I mean, on the one hand, I don’t mind thinking that you never actually touched my little sister, but…”

There was not going to be any avoiding this conversation, if he might ever date a man, so Harry just sighed. “I think it more depends on the person. I really did have my first big crush on Cho, and I did fall hard for Ginny back in Sixth Year. I guess I’m just seeing now that, well, I could…I could probably go for other things, too.”

Ron was pink, but he nodded and reached for another biscuit. Hermione set her tea down on the table and told Harry, “I’m very proud of you for telling us all that, Harry. Thank you for sharing it.”

The compliment made Harry even more embarrassed than he had been merely admitting he might fancy Malfoy.

Hermione sighed and took a biscuit from the pack that Ron was single-handedly working his way through before asking, “So what does all this mean for you and…Draco?”

Harry got that shivery feeling again, like someone had lightly raked their fingernails along his scalp. Ron looked faintly horrified at Hermione’s use of Draco’s first name. But they managed an awkward conversation about his sentence and how he was restricted to Hogwarts until the summer after next. Harry thought about mentioning the Muggle-born idea, but he hadn’t even brought it up to this Malfoy yet.

After a couple hours of catching up, Hermione offered to scrounge up some kind of lunch, but Harry was actually feeling keen to get back to Hogwarts for the first time that entire school year. Now he had something—or someone—waiting for him there.

So they got to their feet, Hermione hugging Harry tight and speaking in his ear to tell him, “We love you, Harry, no matter what,” and Ron slapping him on the shoulder and then sweeping him up in a firm hug, which was more reassuring than any words could have been.

“Oh!” Hermione exclaimed, just before he was about to Apparate back to the Hogwarts gates. “Wait! I’ve got your book!”

She dashed over to the mantle above her fireplace and pulled down a tome, the size of one of the big hardcover cookbooks that Petunia used to have in her kitchen.

When Hermione put it in his hands, Harry saw that it was a book on how to manage and make modifications to magical homes. His breath caught. He’d nearly forgotten, with everything else that had happened in the last two weeks. But today was December 1, and the holidays were only three weeks away.

Was he going to go to Grimmauld Place still?

“Thank you,” he said automatically, staring at the book. “How much do I owe you?” He lifted his eyes to look at Hermione.

She had a familiar glint in her eyes as she patted him on the forearm. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure I’ll think of some way you can repay me later.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

When Harry got back to the castle, he headed straight for the South Wing, and he’d barely arrived at Draco’s door before it was pulled open.

A smile broke across his face at the sight of Draco standing there impatiently, presumably having stalked his return through the map. Which he must have been checking constantly to notice Harry even making it back onto the grounds.

“Hi,” he said. Then he scrunched up his nose as he took in the other boy’s fully-dressed appearance, complete with heavy robes and shiny black shoes. “I liked this morning’s look better.”

Malfoy didn’t react to the comment, instead demanding, “Well? What happened?”

“Should we have this conversation in the hall?” Harry asked. “Or may I come in?”

Then Draco grabbed him by the front of his sweatshirt and dragged him inside, sending the door swinging shut behind him. It was so sudden that Harry stumbled, catching himself by grabbing hold of Draco, his hands clutching the other boy’s arms just above the elbows.

Harry found himself with his face just inches from Draco’s, and he definitely wasn’t thinking about doing more talking. But Draco only swung him around and shoved him down to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Explain.”

Draco stood there over him, arms folded across his chest and—wow, Harry probably needed to examine some of his kinks, because the sight made him really want to drag the blond down on top of him on the bed.

Maybe that was apparent from his face, because Malfoy’s eyes seemed to flash, a pink stain on that pale skin that always gave him away.

“Explain yourself, Potter,” he ordered again.

“What’ll you give me for it, if I do?” Harry asked, his mouth moving without any real input from his brain.

Draco leaned forward over him, one hand landing on Harry’s thigh as he put his face right in Harry’s again, and he said softly, “I’ll give you the chance to not get hexed by me, despite you trying my last fucking nerve.”

And Harry knew it was all bluster, because Draco had told him ages ago about the Wizengamot’s injunction on him using any harmful magic on another living being. More than that, he could see through the threat to the nervousness that had driven the Slytherin to check the map all morning for his return.

Reaching up, Harry took hold of those robes so that Draco couldn’t pull back and said, “It went fine. I told Ron and Hermione about the potions and what had happened, and that we’re…getting along now. It was fine.”

Those grey eyes searched his. “What exactly did you tell them?”

Harry grinned up into that face, thinking about stealing a kiss and wondering if he’d get rewarded or berated. “I told them we’d been sharing dreams for months without remembering, that we’d both seen the memories now, and that we’re starting off as friends.”

A little line appeared between Draco’s eyebrows. “Starting off?”

“Oh yeah. Hermione saw through me in an instant with the ‘friends’ thing.”

“What did you tell them?” Draco breathed in shock, voice faint and eyes still darting back and forth between Harry’s.

“That I’d come to realize I could like boys just as well as girls. One prickly git in particular.”

The fingers on his thigh dug in slightly, and Malfoy asked, “And your friends were…fine with that?”

Harry shrugged lightly. “They’re my best friends. Honestly, they probably saw it coming more than I did, in some ways.” He grinned at the stunned expression on Draco’s face. “I’m more afraid of you telling Parkinson. She’s sort of terrifying.”

“Oh, she’ll be fucking insufferable,” Draco agreed, still looking like he wasn’t sure he believed what was happening. “I’m going to have to throw her in the sea and let the kelpies have her.”

Harry laughed, still hanging onto the fabric that draped down from Draco’s shoulders.

“This is mad.” Draco said. “This is not really happening.”

“At some point, Draco, I think you’re gonna have to accept that it really is.”

Chapter 31

On Saturday night, Harry looked over from the end of the Slytherin table during dinner and said, “I’ve got to talk to McGonagall. Be right back, all right?”

Then before Draco could do more than open his mouth, Harry had jumped up and started down the aisle between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables towards the high table.

The headmistress had an amused but also slightly weary air as she greeted him across the table and asked, “Yes, Mr. Potter? What might you need today?”

“Some more of your time, if you’ve got any to spare,” Harry said with a grin. “I still owe you that explanation, professor. And I wanted to talk with you about something as well. Would tomorrow work for you?”

She studied him. “Yes, I could make some time. Why don’t you join me in my office tomorrow morning—say, 9 a.m.?”

“I’ll be there,” Harry promised, beaming and praying that his latest crazy idea would work out as well as the Pensieve seemed to have.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

After a quick morning run to grab coffee and pastries to drop off with Draco—and get his usual glimpse of the blond before he’d donned heavy robes—Harry dashed off for his Sunday morning appointment, too excited to even mind the early hour.

When he arrived, he checked his watch, waiting impatiently for the last few minutes to creep by. Once his watch's arms had reached 8:59 and there was still no sign of McGonagall striding up to the office from outside, he tried the password from the previous Friday, hoping that he wasn’t making a big mistake in thinking she’d meant him to meet her inside.

The gargoyle immediately began to move.

“Professor McGonagall?” he called as he rode the rotating stairs upward. “It’s Harry.”

Once he’d made the last turn and stepped into the room, he found the headmistress already at her desk, a cup of tea at her elbow.

“Yes, Potter, I rather thought it would be,” she said drily, gesturing towards the seat in front of her. “And in case you are wondering, I will be changing my password after today. I hope you understand you do not have unfettered access to this office. I am here when you need me, but I do expect students to reach out through the regular channels.”

“Of course, professor. Thank you again for letting us use the Pensieve last week,” Harry said.

She continued to look at him, considering, and Harry realized she was probably waiting for the explanation as to why he had wanted it.

“Right. The reason I needed it. See, there was actually a bit of a Potions accident back in September, and the long and the short of it is that it had sort of made both me and Malfoy forget a bunch of memories.” That seemed an easier way to explain it than going into the whole mess with dreams and all. “I visited a memory specialist I knew at the Department of Mysteries when I realized something odd was happening, and she was able to still extract those memories so they could be watched in a Pensieve.”

“Goodness,” the old woman remarked. “So you were able to actually recover the memories you lost?”

“Not exactly,” Harry said. Perhaps if he followed up with Melinda during the holidays, he could ask if she thought she could try anything that might change that. “But we were able to at least watch them, so we knew what we were missing.”

“But how did you get Mr. Malfoy’s memories for him to view? He cannot leave the castle, and I would have been aware if an outsider came onto the grounds without my permission.”

Harry’s smile turned sheepish. “Er, well, the memories we’d lost were all of times the two of us had spent together. So watching my memories was as good as watching his own, basically.”

That earned him a surprised blink, and McGonagall lifted her tea to take a sip before remarking. “I hadn’t been aware the two of you were spending all that much time together.”

“We weren’t, exactly,” Harry agreed. “But still, the time we’d forgotten was pretty key. It helped us see that…that we really can get on quite well.” He drew in a deep breath, then plunged ahead with the real reason he’d come. “And since you just mentioned how Malfoy can’t leave the castle—that’s actually the other thing I wanted to ask about.”

McGonagall put her tea back down on its saucer, looking rather stern.

“Harry, while I very much appreciate the progress it seems you’ve made in resolving your differences with Mr. Malfoy, his confinement to the grounds was an order from the Wizengamot itself. It’s not like missing a permission slip to go to Hogsmeade. Going out for a drink in the village is no reason to—”

“It’s not the village I’m interested in,” Harry interjected. “It’s Grimmauld Place.”

The headmistress actually sat back in her chair, clearly surprised. “Our old headquarters?” she asked.

Harry nodded. “And my house, ever since Sirius left it to me. I stayed there last summer, you know.”

“And you want…Mr. Malfoy to be able to visit your home?”

“Please, professor—just think about it! Grimmauld Place is under just about every protection there is. That’s what everybody said when it was made the Order’s headquarters. No one but my friends can even find it under the Fidelius charm, and Malfoy’s not a Secret Keeper, so he can’t do anything with the knowledge. Don’t you think the Wizengamot could be convinced to make a special exception?”

While she no longer looked as stern, McGonagall did still look rather baffled. “Is there some particular reason why you want Mr. Malfoy to come to your house?”

Harry shrugged, face a little warm. “I mean, the holidays are coming up, and it’s a long time to be stuck in the castle alone. I thought he could come back to Grimmauld with me, help me out with the house. It still needs a million repairs, you know.”

Surely he didn’t need to mention any ‘romantic entanglements.’ Besides, there’d still been nothing more romantic happening than the constant comments and appreciative looks in private. Mostly from Harry’s side. Maybe they were just friends.

Yeah, right.

Even if they hadn’t crossed that line, the way they flirted was clearly not friendly. But Harry wasn’t pressing for more. He wanted more, but he was also enjoying the hell out of what they were doing now: the banter, the cautious conversations, the studying together and lying side by side on Draco’s bed, staring up at the canopy of stars as their talk drifted in the evening.

“Please, professor. We could swear he wouldn’t leave the property, if the Wizengamot would allow him to come. Or whatever else they might ask us to do.”

Hopefully Draco would also feel the same way. Harry hadn’t actually told him about his idea before speaking with McGonagall. As far as the Slytherin knew, Harry was only here in her office to provide that long-overdue explanation about the Pensieve.

But surely he’d prefer two weeks with Harry at Grimmauld Place to two weeks mostly alone and still stuck at Hogwarts? Harry could stay at the castle for the holidays, if he really had to, of course—but the thought of getting Draco all to himself in his home was so much better. They could explore the old house and try out the ideas from Hermione’s book or maybe those spells Draco had used to make his room nicer. They could make eyes at each other and rile each other up and flirt at any hour, without worrying who might see. Maybe do more than flirt.

McGonagall sighed.

“All right, Harry. It is a very kind thing for you to offer, so I will send an owl to the Wizengamot and see if they will consider a special allowance.”

Harry clenched a fist in celebration, down in his lap where she shouldn’t see it over her desk. “Thank you, Professor McGonagall. I really appreciate it.”

She softened for the first time during their entire meeting and said, “No more than I appreciate you making the effort with Mr. Malfoy. I think you’ve done a truly admirable thing, extending an olive branch to a former enemy as you have.”

His smile felt a little forced. Wanting to snog the other boy’s brains out felt a little less noble and generous. But he didn’t think he needed to inform McGonagall about his full intentions just yet. There would be time for that later.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

The first week of December crept by, and it wasn’t until Wednesday that Harry got an update from McGonagall. As their Transfiguration class ended that day and everyone began packing up their things to hurry to lunch—if they weren’t one of the unlucky ones without a lunch break—the teacher gestured Harry up to the front of the room.

“Yes, professor?” he asked, aware of Draco watching from back at the table they now shared, ever since Harry, Luna, and Dean had done their partner shuffle to adopt Draco in all their classes.

“I’ve had an update from the Wizengamot,” McGonagall said, her voice low so that no one else might overhear. “They were not immediately enthusiastic about the idea, but with a little more prodding, they are willing to at least evaluate it, seeing as that the request came from you. They’d like to send someone over to the house to investigate the protections on it now and see if they could add additional tracking wards that would provide a record of anyone entering or leaving the property.”

She looked Harry over, eyes keen. “Are you sure you want to submit yourself to that level of oversight from the Ministry? It is your private home.”

Harry tried to think with his head and not just whatever other parts of him were most interested in taking Draco home with him for the holidays.

“Would it be temporary?” he asked. “Do you think I’d have trouble getting them to remove the wards later or would it be something I could pay a specialist or someone to remove, even if the Ministry were dragging their feet?”

A small smile tugged at McGonagall’s pursed lips, and she seemed pleased that he was thinking the matter through properly.

“I would suggest that you do clarify with the Ministry representative about the timeline and particulars of what they are proposing, but yes—if there were any dispute, you should ultimately be able to work with a ward specialist to rekey any protections to you, as the owner of the house. The magic that binds you to the house cannot easily be overcome.”

“Well, in that case…” Harry glanced back once more at Draco, who was loitering by the door, obviously waiting for him. “I see no reason not to at least meet with them and go over it. When can I?”

Since the Ministry officials would prefer to work during the regular business week, they agreed that Harry could nip down to London during the two hour block he had free on Friday. McGonagall would write back to her contact and find out where Harry should meet the Wizengamot’s representative, since of course they wouldn’t be able to find 12 Grimmauld Place on their own.

“Thank you, Professor McGonagall, really,” Harry insisted, his grin too effusive to be contained. “You’re the best, ma’am.”

Laughing at the way her eyes rolled heavenward, Harry hurried back to Draco at the door and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him out into the hall with him.

“How about taking a walk for lunch today?” Harry said in an undertone, his fingers pressing into the tender bit of skin on the inside of Draco’s elbow.

“Because you’re clearly up to something and you’re finally going to fill me in as to what?” the Slytherin asked, eyes narrowed.

“Exactly.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They ended up wandering their way up to the belltower, Harry refusing to explain anything along the way. It was only when they were leaning on the railings behind the large clock overlooking the courtyard that he shot Malfoy a slightly nervous look and knew it was time.

“Hey, Kreacher, are you about?” Harry called out, his voice raised higher than usually as he turned away so that Malfoy was left standing behind him.

With a creaky cracking noise, like a dry old branch breaking, the ancient house-elf appeared before Harry.

“Yes, Master?”

“Think you could bring us a little something for lunch? Something we can eat standing? Thanks.”

The house-elf bowed and then disappeared with another crack, his head still low.

Harry looked over his shoulder at Draco. “Had you ever met Kreacher? Or visited Grimmauld Place?”

The blond was watching the entire scene with eyes still narrowed, as if he was trying to guess what Harry was up to. “The old Black family townhouse in London?” he asked. “Once or twice, at least, when I was very small. But not since Great-Aunt Walburga passed away.”

Kreacher reappeared with another crack carrying a tray piled with sandwiches, enough to probably feed five or six people.

Harry chuckled ruefully. “Thanks, Kreacher. Absolute overkill as usual, but I appreciate it.” He took the tray and then moved to the side so that the house-elf could easily see Draco standing behind him for the first time. “Do you remember Draco?”

The grizzled creature’s rheumy eyes went wide, and he dipped into a respectful bow. “Young Mister Malfoy, of course. Miss Cissy’s son.”

Harry cleared his throat, darting a look at the boy at his shoulder. “Draco might be coming to visit us at Grimmauld soon.”

“Oh, it would be good to have proper Black blood back in the house, Master. The house would be so pleased,” Kreacher croaked. “My old Mistress, as well.” The elf looked up at Draco with the closest thing to hope that Harry had ever seen on his grumpy face. “You must come, young Mister Malfoy.”

Harry smiled tightly, not yet checking Malfoy’s expression as he said, “Yeah, I’ll let you know what the plans are as soon as they’re settled, Kreacher. Thanks again for lunch.”

Recognizing the dismissal, the house-elf disappeared with another bow, and at last Harry turned, the tray of sandwiches still in his hands, and looked at Draco.

“How exactly might I be coming to visit when I’m forbidden from leaving the Hogwarts grounds?” Draco asked, voice carefully flat and restrained.

“I had McGonagall reach out to the Wizengamot.” Harry swallowed, getting very little clue about what Draco was thinking from the opaque expression he was maintaining. “I’d been planning to head back there for the holidays, before...well, everything happened. So then I thought maybe you could come with me. Maybe you might like a bit of a break from the castle.”

Draco’s face still wasn't giving anything away, which only made Harry ramble on more.

“Of course you could Floo back anytime. Or I could stay around Hogwarts for the holidays as well. But I was just thinking that it, er, could be nice.”

Harry was pretty sure he was sweating under that piercing grey gaze.

“Though of course I should warn you that the house is a disaster. That's why I'd been thinking to spend the holidays there—so I could do some work on fixing up some of the rooms. It’s an absolute pit, really. Dark and dreary and just woefully grim. And maybe that doesn't sound like how you'd want to spend your holidays. Which would be fair—”

“Harry, shut up already,” Draco said, the firm words paired with a hand over Harry's mouth, which he’d stepped closer to apply.

“You called me ‘Harry,’” Harry mumbled against the fingers pressed to his lips.

That made Draco go a bit pink, which Harry could see very clearly from the very short distance between their faces. But Draco only said bluntly, “I’ll go. Stop being an idiot. I'll go.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

So Harry met with the Ministry man on Friday, allowing him in on the secret of 12 Grimmauld Place’s location and allowing the fellow to add to the wards a new set of charms that would record anyone who came in or out, in case the Ministry had any doubts or questions.

He’d also filled Draco in a bit more about the state of the house and why he’d been thinking it was time to finally fix it up properly. He’d mentioned the book he’d gotten from Hermione, and then the Slytherin had basically stolen it, reading it from front to back as the weeks of December slid by.

After classes ended on December 18, Harry and Draco enjoyed one last dinner with Dean and Luna, wishing their friends safe travels in the morning, when they would each be setting out to return to their own family homes.

The two boys walked back to the South Wing alone, Harry confirming one more time: “So, we’ll meet back here at eight tomorrow morning, then swing up to McGonagall’s office to use her Floo. And if we forget anything, we can always send Kreacher back for it, so no big deal.”

“I know, Potter.”

“Harry.”

“That is also your name, yes.”

Harry harrumphed, stopping at his door with his hand on the handle. But he couldn't hold onto his grumpy act. “At eight, then,” he said, grinning back at the blond. It might be the last time they would say good-bye like this for two whole weeks. If he didn’t somehow mess this up.

And on Saturday, December 19, Harry and Draco had indeed met up again in the hall between their rooms, each carrying several days worth of clothes and other essentials, all shrunk down enough to fit in their schoolbags. They walked together up to McGonagall’s office.

Since Draco couldn’t leave the castle grounds to Apparate to London, the headmistress had once again allowed them a temporary password so that they could use her Floo in peace.

Harry lit a fire in the grate in the empty head’s office, then he lifted down the jar of sparkling green powder.

“I hate traveling by Floo, you know,” he confessed as he lifted the lid from the jar and offered it to Draco.

The blond took a handful of the powder, looking fairly nervy himself. “Yes, I prefer to Apparate, given the choice.”

Then Harry leaned in close to whisper into that creamy shell of an ear, “Harry Potter lives at 12 Grimmauld Place.” He could feel the slight shiver that ran through Draco as their cheeks brushed.

“What?”

“Fidelius charm,” Harry explained. “But now you should be able to find the house on the Floo network, otherwise you would’ve been bounced back.”

Grabbing a handful of powder for himself as well, Harry flung it into the flames and called out, “12 Grimmauld Place!” Then he stepped into the green fire and disappeared in a whirl.

Chapter 32

Harry stumbled onto his hearth, as he did nearly every time he traveled anywhere by Floo, but he straightened up and turned just in time to catch Draco’s arms and pull his houseguest out of the fireplace as he emerged from the rush of green flames.

Draco looked around with bated breath, as if he expected an alarm might ring out or that Aurors might come flooding into the room to arrest him for having broken the agreement of his release from Azkaban. Yet there was nothing but silence and the steady tick of the large grandfather clock, as well as the distant sound of cars and pedestrians from out on the Muggle streets.

After a few moments, the blond let out his breath and took a slower look around, eyes lingering on the massive tapestry on the wall, then skimming across the dark walls and the heavy moss-green curtains that fully covered the high windows to their right. The room was dark and gloomy with the curtains pulled tight, only dimly illuminated by the chandelier overhead and old-fashioned gas lamps on the wall above the fireplace, which had both sprung to life the moment Harry had entered the house.

“I know, it’s looking a bit dreary still,” Harry said, fingers tightening unconsciously on the arms he held as if he was afraid Draco might just turn around and Floo back out. “And of course you’re free to go back to Hogwarts if it seems too much, but—what do you think? Seeing it now?”

Draco’s breath caught in his throat, and he looked at Harry, his eyes picking apart Harry’s hopeful, nervous expression with the same scrutiny he’d given the room.

“I think we’ve got our work cut out for us, considering we’ve only got two weeks of holidays,” he said at last. “Let’s see it all then.”

So Harry took Draco by the arm and pulled him through the house to get the half-Black reacquainted with the old Wizarding home he hadn’t visited in well over a decade. They went all the way down to the basement to start at the bottom, then after the kitchen, they came back up to the large dining room on the ground floor. Harry walked Draco through the upper floors and the seven different bedrooms scattered across them, as well as the library on the street side of the second floor.

“You can share with me, of course, on the second floor,” Harry offered, refusing to blush. He had shared the same room with its two single beds with Ron back in Fifth Year. It didn’t have to mean anything. “Or choose any of the other rooms you might prefer to bunk down in.”

“Yours does seem to be the most habitable currently,” Draco agreed, not looking at Harry. “Though ‘habitable’ only in the sense that it doesn’t appear to actively be infested with any Dark creatures or growing mold. Do you have any preference where to start with your improvements?”

“The drawing room, I guess?” Harry said. “It’s what anyone would see if they were to come over.” It was also the room that he, Ron, and Hermione had slept in when they’d hidden out in the house when they were seventeen, terrified and feeling so very alone. He’d be glad to transform it into something unrecognizable.

“Do you have an image in mind?”

“Honestly? No.”

Draco sighed in weary resignation, then he took the bag from his shoulder and tossed it down the stairs to thump onto the next landing, waiting to be retrieved later.

“We need the attics.”

Harry didn’t understand why they needed the attics, but he tossed his bag down to land near Draco’s and shrugged. “I’ve never actually visited them, but I’m pretty sure there are attics above the fourth floor. What are we looking for?”

Allowing Draco to take the lead, Harry followed the blond as he headed up the last set of stairs once more, reaching the hall outside Sirius and Regulus’s childhood bedrooms.

“If you have no idea where to begin, I’d look for anything that speaks to you, something to give you a starting point and then design the room around. But it’d be better to find something that already belongs to the house and the family. A painting, a decoration, a chair you love the look of—it can be anything really.” He tipped his head back, eyes going to an elaborate round relief above them like some sort of fancy manhole in the ceiling.

Pulling out his wand, Draco gave it a wave and then began to explain what he was thinking, as the relief swung down and a set of delicate stairs began to unfold themselves in a spiral, each next level locking into place until they’d reached the carpet the two boys stood on.

“The attics are special in an old house like this, Potter. Imagine how you might keep all your old keepsakes and favorite memories safe in a trunk—an old enough house might do the same for the family’s old belongings. It will tuck them away and even hide them from sight. Sometimes by the will of the family, and sometimes on its own.”

Climbing up the ornate iron steps, Draco paused and looked down at Harry, a hint of his crooked smile at the corner of his mouth.

“I spent entire years of my childhood poking through the Malfoy Manor attics. The trick is assuring the house that you have only good intentions and then waiting to see what it might reveal to you.”

“How do I assure it I have good intentions?” Harry asked, not questioning the idea that he might need to sooth the feelings of his ornery old house. He had a fair bit of experience with Hogwarts acting like it had a will of its own, and he’d also read enough of Hermione’s house book over the past two weeks to understand that magical homes were made up of far more than wood and stone.

12 Grimmauld Place, as it was now, was akin to a proud, skittish creature, rather like Buckbeak had been when Harry had first approached him. And while Sirius had loved that Hippogriff, he’d treated his childhood house with the kind of disdain and neglect that probably would’ve gotten him gored if the house had been one of those ornery creatures. It had grown a bit wild during its decades of neglect and resentment from its owner.

“Just try to keep your thoughts on how you want to help make the house a place people will want to live again, how much you want to live here, and how you’d like to find beloved old pieces that could be seen and loved again.”

Draco lifted his wand overhead as his upper torso disappeared into the hole in the ceiling, and he illuminated the space with a broad Lumos that cast a warm glow all around them for at least ten feet on each side.

Climbing up into the attic, he turned back and gestured Harry up beside him.

I want to live here with you, I really do, Harry thought at the house, trying not to feel silly. This place is the last thing I have left of Sirius, of my family, and I want it to live on. I don’t want the house to be left empty again.

“Just keep thinking about what it is you want, and keep glancing around casually,” Draco instructed him from a few feet away. “Sometimes the house will choose to reveal something in the corner of your eye, something you didn’t see before.”

I think I’d like to live here with him, too, if I can, Harry dared think, since it wasn’t like Draco would hear his thoughts, even if the house might. I don’t want him going back to Hogwarts or stuck there without me. I want him to love this place, too.

Face burning, Harry turned away from Draco, lifting his wand and casting its light about as he glanced at the shadowy shapes in the attic. Jesus, he was such an idiot. They hadn’t even kissed in real life. They had about a million important, difficult conversations they still hadn’t had. He had no idea how things would go with either of their friends or the public.

Stealing a look back at the blond, though, Harry also couldn’t—and didn’t particularly want to—deny that it didn’t change the wish.

Every day, he went between classes looking forward to the next one where he might be able to sit beside or watch Draco. Every evening, he sat impatiently through public dinners for the chance to talk with Draco alone in his room.

I’ve been looking forward to coming here, bringing him here, for weeks, Harry thought, turning slowly and lifting his wand out over the shadowy shapes filling the attic with them. He deserves a space where he can feel peaceful and safe and home again. He needs that.

On his next rotation, Harry spotted a gap between an old sheet-covered mirror and an armoire, which he hadn’t seen before. It seemed mysteriously dark, and he stepped toward it.

Please, help me to make him a place like that.

Squeezing through the dark gap, Harry came out into what seemed to be a whole other room, one which shouldn’t even be possible in its dimensions, given the shape and size of the townhouse.

“Draco,” Harry breathed, half-afraid that speaking louder than a whisper could end this dream. “Draco, in here.”

There was a sharp gasp behind him once Draco shuffled through the gap as well. “Yes. This is more like it.”

The room was about half the size of the Great Hall, and filled with heavy furniture, bookshelves lined with old tomes and knicknacks, fancy vases balanced precariously on spindly little side tables, stacks of chests containing lord-knows-what, and huge wooden crates that were wider than Harry’s arm-span.

Draco wandered past him to one of those big crates and set his wand across the top of a nearby vase, leaving it lit to shine down over the area.

“What’s in there?” Harry asked, coming over next to him.

“Paintings,” Draco responded, already having lifted off the top of the crate and set it to the side.

Inside, Harry could see nearly a dozen paintings slotted in vertically, canvases stretched over wooden frames and each wrapped in a semi-transparent paper. Moving gently, Draco tipped each canvas forward, rifling through them to squint at the hazy images through the glassine paper.

There were several more of the crates nearby, and Harry went to one of his own, lifting off the top like Draco had done.

He lifted the first painting his hand fell on, awkwardly struggling with the huge canvas to get it up and rest it atop the others so he could pull away the glassine paper protecting it. And—

It couldn’t be this easy, could it?

Staring down at the large canvas, stretched over a frame that had to be four feet wide, Harry thought, Yes. Like this.

Perhaps the house had heard his wishes and guided him to the painting, or perhaps it was just dumb luck, but Harry loved it. He’d never seen anything quite like it—it was nothing like the realistic, classical portraits that tended to fill Hogwarts or even the few little landscape prints that Petunia had sprinkled through the rooms at Number 4.

While he’d certainly never heard the word ‘scumbling’ to know how to describe what he was seeing, his eyes moved in awe across the hazy wash of paint that couldn’t seem to decide what color it was. The majority of the field tilted towards pale yellow, like lemon cream, brightening into pure white in places and with hints of peach and blushing rose that gave the impression of a gentle sunrise through streaks of hazy clouds. They blended into a delicate robin’s egg blue towards the top of the canvas. A paler, slightly greener blue curved around the lower left side of the image, like the sea hugging along a shoreline, and there was an impression of a sandy beach, dotted with charcoal grey stones here and there, all of it abstract and soft and peaceful.

He had no idea what former Black could have bought such a painting or perhaps even painted it. But it gave him hope that the family couldn’t all have been as awful as Sirius had made them out to be.

After all, Harry had loved Sirius.

His eyes went to Draco. And he’s half-Black as well.

“Draco,” he called softly. “I found it.”

Thank you, he thought to the house. It’s perfect.

He could hear how the other boy’s breath caught in his throat as he stepped closer and saw the painting.

“It is…quite remarkable,” he agreed. “You think this for the drawing room?”

Harry nodded, feeling somehow shy. “Do you think it’d be good?”

Draco’s eyes went distant as he squinted off at nothing, perhaps already imagining it in his head. “Yes.” He grinned at Harry. “Let’s get it downstairs.”

They carried it carefully between them back to the little manhole that they’d come up, but then Harry was afraid to shrink the painting, in case they damaged it in any way.

“Call your elf then,” Malfoy said with a shrug. “They can move things however they like.”

“Kreacher?” Harry called uncertainly, and the old house-elf appeared with his customary crack.

“Master Harry, young Mister Malfoy,” he croaked, bowing low. “Are you wanting lunch already?”

“No, no, thank you—I was just wondering if you could help us get this down to the drawing room?”

With a snap of those long, bony fingers, the painting disappeared from Harry’s grip, leaving him sucking in a shocked little inhale of alarm.

“Is there anything else I can assist with, Master?”

“N-not just yet,” Harry said, grabbing Draco by the arm and pulling him back to the spiral staircase, feeling an urgent need to rush downstairs and see if the painting really was fine. “Thank you, though! We’ll call you whenever we need you!”

Draco let himself be dragged down the four sets of stairs with a faintly amused air, which bloomed into an indulgent smile when he saw Harry sigh in relief upon finding the painting intact and leaning against the old piano in the drawing room.

“It’s not like a house-elf’s magic would damage it, Potter,” he chided. “Especially not a house-elf as endlessly loyal to his family as that one is.”

“I know. But still…”

Draco flicked his ear as he walked by, making Harry’s shoulders give a little shiver.

“Now where do you want it?”

Draco levitated the painting up, moving it about to give an idea how it would look on different walls, but nothing quite seemed to fit. After a couple spins around the room, the blond finally laughed at Harry’s frowning expression and let the painting back down to rest on the floor.

“I think I know the problem.”

Moving briskly, he walked over to the long moss-green curtains that covered the windows and whipped them back, dragging them across their rods to expose the tall windows that looked out across the Islington street.

The room was instantly filled with bright sunlight that seemed almost blinding, but Draco didn’t stop there. Pulling his wand, he muttered, “Colovaria,” and then drew it along the room as he slowly rotated. In his wake, the dark olive wallpaper seemed to bleach, fading to a pale bone white.

Harry sucked in his breath. He’d never seen the room be anything but dark and claustrophobic, rarely opening the curtains as if he still needed to hide from Death Eaters or Voldemort. It was transformed when filled with bright daylight, reflected back by stark white walls.

“I wouldn’t recommend white, per se, but the dark was just too overwhelming. So to give you a little better idea…” He lifted his wand again, wordlessly casting another levitating charm to send the painting floating upward again.

And now Harry could begin to see it.

“Yes.” He lifted his wand and plucked the painting from Draco’s charm, levitating it away to try different spots. They ended up settling on the wall above the piano for the time being, then looking about the room with their hands on their hips.

“The tapestry needs to go,” Draco said.

“Well, yeah, but we can’t get rid of it.”

“Of course not,” Draco agreed with a smirk. “I’m on it, after all.” Harry wanted to kiss that stupid smirk off his face, that's how relieved he was to see Draco looking so confident and at ease again—and then that thought was rudely interrupted by Draco shouting, “Kreacher!”

The house-elf reappeared with a bow. “Yes, young Mister Malfoy?”

“You must call me Draco, please, Kreacher,” the Slytherin insisted, and the ancient elf looked up at him like he was the second coming of Christ.

“Master Draco,” he breathed, eyes shining. “How can Kreacher be of service?”

“We’ll need to find a new home for the family tree. For the moment, can you carefully roll it up and place it safely on the formal dining table? Potter and I can eat in the kitchen until we sort out its new location.”

Kreacher seemed torn in several directions, hesitant to take down the tapestry or perhaps to accept his ‘Master Draco’ not dining in the formal dining room—but also desperate to please the closest thing to a proper Black he had access to.

“Of course, Master Draco,” Kreacher croaked, his long fingers caressing the air in a fluid move that brought the huge tapestry down from the wall, curling itself up midair before it disappeared from the room with another snap.

“Thank you, Kreacher,” Harry said, and the elf hardly even glanced at him.

“Will there be anything else, Master Draco?” Kreacher asked, looking up at Draco with staring eyes.

“Not at the moment, Kreacher. Thank you.”

The elf disappeared again with a bow, and Harry turned to Draco to jab a finger into his ribs. “‘Master Draco’?” he said. “I’m supposed to be his master, you know. It’s not fair he likes you better when he’s only known you about thirty minutes in total.”

Draco leaned back slightly so he could look down his nose at Harry from the very few inches of height advantage he had, smirking at him with hooded eyes. “Don’t be jealous of a house-elf’s affections, Potter. It’s rather pathetic.”

And god, why did that do it for Harry. He wanted to shove Draco onto the sofa behind him and wipe that smug expression off his face by reducing him to a swearing, shuddering mess, like he had in that one dream.

Perhaps the other boy saw it in his eyes, because he leaned back in, speaking near Harry’s ear as he said softly, “We have ever so much work to do here still. No getting distracted, Potter.”

And fuck, fuck, that only made it worse.

From the pleased look on Malfoy’s face, he was very aware. Then he turned away and looked at the certains to declare, “I’m thinking gauze.”

They spent the next several hours experimenting with Draco’s many charms and the suggestions from Hermione’s book, transfiguring the long velvet drapes into light, airy curtains that were sheer enough to let the sun through but could also be drawn for a bit of privacy. The walls cycled through several shades plucked from the painting, before Harry settled on a Wedgewood blue a little deeper than the blues in the seaside sunrise. The old velvet sofas ended up a rather cheery mustard yellow that contrasted nicely with their dark wood arms and legs, while an armchair in the corner took on the charcoal of the rocks in the painting. Throw pillows were conjured up in Chantilly cream and lighter blues, and a thin, clingy blanket of a deeper blue settled across one of the sofas.

The wainscotting was given a light kiss of color, lightening it from the old ebony to warmer Jacobean brown. The heavy sideboard got the same touch, though the black piano was left unaltered. The ornate Persian rug covering the floor was subjected to a dozen color-altering charms to gradually change its complicated pattern to a palette that matched the new room.

“It won’t last, of course,” Draco reminded Harry as they removed the old knickknacks that Harry didn't like the look of from the sideboard, both stealing occasional bites from the sandwiches that Kreacher had placed atop the piano for them for lunch. “A master could probably make them last years, but I'd guess you'll start to see some fading and reversion within several weeks or months at best, without redoing the spells. But if you decide you like the look, then you could buy new linens and pay a professional to properly reupholster the chairs and repaper the walls physically, instead of making do with charms and Transfigurations.”

“Or maybe I just keep having you around to reapply them,” Harry suggested, adding a creepy old silver box decorated with skulls and snakes to the pile of things he'd happily return to the attics in exchange for less disturbing heirlooms.

Draco sniffed. “I believe I made myself clear before about my attitude towards freeloading degenerates.”

Then if I learn to cast all the spells myself, will you stay?

He didn't ask yet. It was only their first afternoon. 

They delivered two whole boxes of old decor to the attics and hunted again for new finds for the drawing room, bringing back down an old reading lamp that Harry liked the look of and an ottoman that Draco thought would be nice by the armchair, for sitting with your feet up while relaxing. 

Harry was set to trying to siphon dust from the lofty chandelier and the moulding around the ceiling, while Draco fiddled with the ancient gramophone. He managed to get it working again, putting on ridiculous records that were probably older than their grandparents would have been, had any of them been alive.

Harry wheedled and prodded until he got Draco to sit behind the old piano and try to play. The Slytherin hadn't been lying when he'd said he hadn't practiced enough as a child in some long ago dream. He could play, but it was halting and featured many wrong notes, at least until he hollered for Kreacher to bring him some sheet music, pink cheeked and laughing. He did a little better with the music in front of him, which it seemed he did remember how to read. 

Harry remembered Hermione trying to teach Ron how to play when they were all trapped here, while Harry had looked on, feeling left alone on the outside. Sliding onto the piano bench beside Draco to watch him play, he wondered if this was how the two of them had felt then: nervous, alive, and entranced. Utterly smitten.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry hesitated outside the bathroom door a moment, but it had been left open a crack. So he took a deep breath and knocked on the jamb, calling, “Mind if I come in?”

After another trip up to the attics, they’d shared a cozy dinner down in the dark kitchen, just the two of them and the food that Kreacher had laid out, Harry hooking his feet around Draco’s ankle for old time’s sake.

Then Draco had insisted they both needed to shower, after so much labor that day and all the dust and cobwebs in the attic. He’d waved Harry off to the second floor bathroom first, saying that he could occupy himself in the library while he waited his turn.

So Harry had showered and then come out of the steamy little bathroom to call out, “Draco? The bathroom’s yours, if you’re ready.” And then to wait there, looking up the stairs, waiting and wondering at the fact that Draco was somewhere in this house with him, all alone, and that he found it rather fantastic.

And also trying not to think about the coming night.

Draco had come lightly down the shadowy stairs, the weak little gas lights on the wall no brighter than candlelight on his pale complexion, and Harry had had to swallow hard not to say or do anything rash. He’d managed to do no more than reach a few fingers out to brush against Malfoy’s as the other boy passed on his way to the bathroom.

Now Harry was letting himself back into that same bathroom, the room warm and damp still after their showers.

Draco was standing in front of the sink, his blond hair a few shades darker than usual with the water still making it heavy and a funny little terrycloth headband thing holding the strands off his face as he rubbed some kind of lotion into his skin.

It was the cutest fucking thing Harry had ever seen.

Who could have imagined, all those years ago, that Draco Malfoy—who he’d believed to be a heartless, irredeemable villain—wore fluffy headbands to keep his hair out of his face as he did his nightly skin routine?

“Just wanted to grab my toothbrush,” Harry croaked, and Draco stood aside slightly, making room for Harry at the pedestal sink.

Harry took the invitation, staying right beside the other boy while he plucked his toothbrush from the toiletry bag he’d left on the edge of the sink and fished some toothpaste from the medicine cabinet hidden behind the mirror, squinting a bit to be sure he had the right tube. He hadn’t bothered putting his glasses back on when they were going to bed soon and they’d only fog up in the bathroom.

Standing beside Draco, Harry carefully brushed his teeth, doing a better job than he probably had in years since he had an audience. Draco went on with his routine, applying a few drops of some sort of thin, watery potion to his palms and pressing them into his cheeks and forehead. Apparently it took quite a bit of work to maintain that perfect porcelain skin, and Harry watched every step of it in the mirror, their eyes catching there and holding, safe within the reflection.

When he ducked down to spit the foamy toothpaste out of his mouth and rinse it with water from the tap, Draco reached for a small towel hanging from the wall on Harry’s other side, his body brushing momentarily against Harry’s as he leaned around him, one arm stretched out.

Harry turned into that glancing touch, bare inches between them, and—he let his nose brush against Draco's cheek, pressing a fleeting kiss to the edge of the other boy’s jaw, his heart hammering and breath impossible to find.

Shit. He’d done it. It hadn’t been planned or even conscious, really, only his body finally going for it and good sense be damned.

Draco had frozen, his arm still extended to take the towel from its ring, and his eyes searched Harry’s from the inconsequential distance between them. Harry could see the pulse racing at his throat.

Moving slowly, unlike anything in those dreams, Harry leaned in to gently press another chaste kiss to those slack lips, quick and innocent.

Then he wasn’t sure who had moved, but Draco had an arm around his waist and Harry had a hand on the back of Draco’s neck, and their mouths were sealed together—and there was no longer anything chaste about it. Harry groaned, his other hand scrabbling across Draco’s back, pressing their bodies tight together as their mouths fell open, breath mingling as he tasted toothpaste and Draco and fucking finally the kisses he’d been fantasizing about for a month.

“Potter—Merlin—”

Those pale fingers dug into his ribs and his back, clutching and releasing, roving, unable to decide where they wanted to be as Draco kissed his mouth, his jaw, his throat. His head bent low so he could reach Harry's neck, teeth in that open-mouth kiss, and Harry’s own head fell back as all his blood rushed to his cock. And he could feel—god, he could feel Draco hard against him, their thin pyjama pants barely more than a whisper between them as Harry ground himself against the firm body right in front of him, feeling the undeniable answer from the other boy.

He wanted to feel more. He shoved his hands up under Draco’s silky pyjama top, his mouth finding Draco’s again as they fought for control in the wild inferno that was consuming them. Harry didn’t think about the fact that they were in the darkly tiled little bathroom at 12 Grimmauld Place, its fixtures all decorated with snakes and halls empty and grim. Nothing existed but the skin under his hands, the mouth against his, the body grinding against his prick and making him see stars.

He was at serious risk of coming in his pants like some idiot teenager, but fuck it, he was still an idiot teenager and he’d been wanting this for—how long had he been wanting this for? Maybe longer than he’d ever considered.

“You’re so—” Draco groaned, still unable to finish a thought or keep his mouth from Harry’s long enough to bother. He shoved them both past the sink so he could push Harry up against the door, hauling up one of Harry’s legs and holding it up with a hand digging under Harry’s thigh so he could grind their hips together even tighter.

Harry tore at the buttons of Draco’s pyjama top, hearing the little opalescent discs ping off the tile as some came lose, then he had access to that flat stomach, trembling beneath his wondering fingertips, and the scars—god, the scars were real, catching his palms, just a slight ridge, but there, forever there—no matter who ever got to touch Draco in the future, if anyone else ever did, Harry’s mark would still be there on his skin, Harry realized as his thumb brushed blindly across one pebbled nipple. Draco would always have belonged to Harry first, because he was Harry’s—

It hit him like a train, a desperate, choked sound wrenched from him as his balls tightened, and then he was gone, gasping into Draco’s mouth as he shuddered, clutching onto the other boy so he wouldn’t fall, orgasm exploding his vision into darkness and spots of light.

“Did you just—” Draco’s breath hitched, and he buried his face in Harry’s shoulder, shoving a hand roughly into his own pants to palm himself as he groaned, “Harry, fuck, I can’t—”

Harry was still trying to catch his breath, fumbling blindly to touch Draco, wanting to be the one to pull him over the edge after he'd come untouched like a bloody desperate idiot, but he was too clumsy and slow still, his muscles loose and trembling. It only took a few jerky tugs from Draco’s own hand, and then he was also gasping and shuddering against Harry, groaning into the damp skin at his neck.

The blond sagged into him, his weight heavy and solid, pinning Harry to the ancient wood door at his back. His pants were a wet sticky mess, he’d just got off with Draco for the first time in a fucking bathroom—and actually it was the second time for that particular first, really—and he didn’t regret a single fucking thing. That had been brilliant. No wonder he’d looked so damn into it in those dreams.

Now he just wanted to do it again without all the annoying clothes in the way. Smirking into the damp blond hair in his face, Draco’s head still resting on his shoulder and the fluffy headband long ago lost to their frantic hands, he murmured, “Looks like we need another shower to get clean.”

Then he started tugging the shirt down from those sharp shoulders, only moving one arm at a time so he never entirely lost the loose hold he had around Draco’s waist.

He got a bite on his collarbone in return, then Draco finally lifted his head, cupping Harry face for a minute between both his hands to press a surprisingly sweet kiss to his mouth.

“This can’t be real,” Draco whispered, as Harry pushed off the door behind him and started driving them both back across the room toward the clawed bathtub and the showerhead that arched over it.

“Why not?” Harry pulled the last bit of sleeve down Draco’s right arm, leaving the pyjama top on the floor. Then he grabbed the bottom of his own tee-shirt and yanked it up and over his head. “Or are you finally admitting that you’ve dreamed of this for ages, because you’ve been gone on me since we were stupid little Fifth Years?”

“Fourth Year, more like,” Draco admitted, eyes not lifting from Harry’s chest, his hands skimming over Harry’s sides and making him shiver.

“So you do admit it,” Harry grinned

“What’s the point in denying it now? I’m fucked already. You’re going to ruin me.”

And Harry heard the thread of genuine fear in the Slytherin’s wondering tone. His fingers tightened automatically in their hold as he remembered what he’d seen in the dreams: Draco petrified that if they started something, Harry would be sure to throw him aside once he’d scratched his itch.

“No.” That was all he said, as he reached around Draco, stretching over to grab the shower’s handle and twist it back on, praying there was still hot water to spare for a good long while, because he wanted to take his time under the spray.

As the sound of hissing water filled the small, tiled room, he shoved his pyjama bottoms down, pants going with them, and while his face warmed, he didn’t actually feel all that embarrassed. Because how could he be when Draco was staring at him with that blatant hunger? He’d never felt more attractive in his life.

He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of the other boy’s pyjama bottoms, waiting just long enough for Draco to look up at him. The blond swallowed hard, then he gave a jerky little nod, which Harry took as permission. He slipped his hands down, dragging the pyjama bottoms down until they slipped over the curve of Malfoy’s white ass, his prick swinging free, still flushed and swollen.

The silky bottoms fell, pooled around his ankles, and Harry stared at the body on display before him, forgetting about his own nakedness. Mine, he thought, irrational and instinctive.

He ducked down and pressed a kiss to the scar that curved up over Draco’s collarbone, wrapping his arms around the blond and half lifting him as he shuffled them both over the rim of the bathtub and under the falling water, skin meeting and pressing tight.

“Fuck!” Draco yelped, shoving Harry back and trying to scramble out of the cold spray. Harry apparently hadn’t turned the handle far enough; the shower water was as cold as lake water.

Not letting go of the squirming boy in his arms, Harry reached blindly through the chilling water to catch the handle and twist it farther around, laughing against that bare skin as Draco cursed and slapped at him.

“It’s not funny! I’ll shove you under and see how you like it!”

“What if I promise to warm you up?” Harry said, licking a line up the pulse fluttering in Draco’s neck as he felt the water starting to heat behind him. He rubbed his hands along the goosebump-laden skin of Draco’s thin back, then swung them around once he felt the water was hot enough, so that Draco was pushed under that stream.

Everything was hot and slippery, and Draco gave up on being angry quite quickly, while Harry’s hands and mouth wandered.

Mine, he thought, as skin glided over skin. He didn’t know why the feeling was so overwhelming, but Draco had always been his in a way. His rival to best in childish scuffles and schoolyard fights, his challenger to defeat in Quidditch, his enemy to stalk through the halls and exchange furious curses with. And now his to take apart and hold together. His to discover and marvel at.

They were in that second shower for a very long time.

Chapter 33

Waking up happened in warm, confusing stages.

It was bright, for one thing. Harry couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up to sunlight, yet the sun was so bright that he could barely crack his eyes open without squinting, making out the hazy shape of the sheer curtains over the tall windows.

That’s right. After they’d finally run out of hot water, Harry had dragged Draco back to his old room once and forced the boy into some of Harry’s own pyjamas, since their clothes were still a mess on the bathroom floor. And he had absolutely loved the sight of perfect, polished Malfoy looking rumpled and cozy in his own worn-out trackies and a tee-shirt that hung loose from his thin shoulders.

But he hadn’t loved the thought of sleeping in that bleak little room with its two narrow single beds.

“Can we sleep in the drawing room?” he’d asked into Draco’s hair, his arms around his neck. “It’s so much nicer now than this room.”

And while Draco had huffed a laugh, he hadn’t protested, pulling Harry back down to the first floor with one hand and then conjuring up a pile of thick blankets that they’d crawled into like a little nest, atop the Persian carpet they’d painstakingly recolored that afternoon.

“We slept in here for weeks,” Harry had whispered in confession, as they lay in a loose tangle, feet brushing within the heavy blankets. “The three of us. When we first went on the run and were hiding out last summer.”

“Are you trying to make me jealous of your naughty little threesomes with Granger and Weasley?” Draco had growled softly, his hands possessive and bold, making Harry forget those awful days again for a moment.

And this morning, the room was filled with effusive light, just like the hazy glow of the painting he’d found in the attics, and Draco was a warm mass pressed against him under the blankets, and it was hard to believe this was even the same room as the dark, grim cave he and his friends had hidden in 16 months ago.

It looked even better than it had the day before: the windows seeming somehow clearer, the wood gleaming a little brighter, and the sofas’ velvet upholstery looking less threadbare than he remembered.

He rolled over to study the warm body that had been pressed to his side. His glasses were sitting on the sofa cushion nearby, but he didn’t need them to see up close like this. Draco's hair was a mess, more wave and bend to it than Harry usually ever saw, since they had rolled around in their makeshift “bed” before it had dried. He was swimming in Harry's soft tee, pale arms loosely stacked with one hand beneath his cheek and the other still stretched towards Harry. It had fallen from Harry's waist when he had turned over.

“What're you looking at?” Draco mumbled, not opening his eyes. 

“Perfection,” Harry said, and he watched as Draco failed to suppress the smile that made his sleepy mouth curl up.

A grey eye fluttered open, squinting at him in the bright light.

“Not real,” he whispered.

“It's real,” Harry insisted, shuffling closer in the tangled pile of blankets and wrapping himself around that body, burying his face in soft blond hair as he breathed in the scent of them, fresh sweat and musky skin after being pressed together so close all night.

They stayed like that a while, not moving but listening to the street outside waking up: cars rolling by with a sound like waves on the shore, faint conversations from passersby, the occasional chirping call of the local robins.

Then they slowly began to talk about what they should tackle that day, settling on the kitchen as their next target, since it was the next room they were likely to visit daily. When Harry's stomach started growling, he sat up and then jumped to his feet, dragging Draco up as well and squeezing him tight as he pulled the other boy against him.

“Morning,” he grinned.

Draco pressed a close mouthed kiss to his lips then muttered, “Go brush your teeth, you mess.”

The blond pulled away to snag his wand from where it had been left on the nearest sofa and then waved it above their conjured blankets, causing them to fly up and fold themselves to stack neatly atop the piano.

With one last nuzzling kiss pressed to Draco's ear, Harry did as commanded. Shoving on his glasses, he went stumbling up the stairs to the next floor, noticing along the way that the gas lamps seemed to be burning brighter, the hall no longer looking like it was only lit by a few struggling candles. The carpet on the stairs also felt plusher under his bare feet, which weren't as chilled as usual.

Frowning slightly, he made his way up to the second floor bathroom. Then his frown disappeared as he remembered everything that had happened in it the night before. Their soiled pyjamas were gone, probably thanks to Kreacher, and Harry refused to think too closely about that as he brushed his teeth.

Then he remembered something else. The memory sent him swinging by his old bedroom once before he Apparated straight down into the kitchen instead of clattering down three flights of stairs.

Draco startled, nearly spilling the tea he'd been pouring, and gave Harry an unamused look.

But Harry forgot what he'd been about to say because the kitchen was different.

“Did you...get started already?” Harry asked, gaping at the bright room.

“No,” Draco muttered, not quite meeting Harry's eye.

There had always been a few narrow windows high up along the walls of the basement room, barely at street level, but they'd seemed so caked with age and grime that they’d only ever let in a dim glow. Until this morning, that is.

Now, clear light poured in from overhead, illuminating the room warmly. The stone floor looked cleaner, too: less like rough-hewn pavers and more comfortably worn, left smooth by a thousand trips of family feet across them. The fire that had always before looked sickly and small in the huge hearth now burned cheerfully, light dancing over the surface of the table, where an attractive spread of toast and cut fruit and sausage was waiting for them.

“The hall was brighter, too,” Harry said, looking about in awe. “And the carpet and the sofas, they all seemed...less worn out.” He looked at Draco in mute question.

To his surprise, the blond flushed and looked back to the table and the two cups of tea he’d been serving. “A magical house can sometimes respond to its master’s...circumstances,” he said, without looking back up.

“Do you mean,” Harry started, uncertain, “that the house is brighter just because I’m happy?”

Seating himself at the table, Draco gestured for Harry to sit as well, then he began filling a plate. The bright daylight now filling the room made it easy to see the pink staining his cheeks.

“Not exactly.” Draco still didn’t meet Harry’s eyes as he slid slices of tomato onto his plate. “A house isn’t so attuned that it fluctuates with every little mood swing of its master. However, it is tied to its family’s health and well-being, meaning it can be affected by major events. Births or deaths, for example. Especially now, when this particular house’s family has almost dwindled away to nothing.”

“No one has died,” Harry said. And there were no babies about.

Sighing noisily, Draco set down his fork and finally fixed a glare on Harry. “No, but life events that could possibly impact the—the success of the family can impact a house’s magic. A, ah, a new union, for example.”

Harry stared at Draco’s embarrassed face. Then he felt a goofy grin slowly taking over his own. “You’re saying...the house is just really happy that we finally got off together?”

Draco grabbed a sausage and threw it at Harry. “I’m saying the consummation of a new relationship between two magical beings can have impacts on significant magic tied to their blood, and both of us have ties to this house in one way or another, and—for fuck’s sake, stop grinning like that, Potter, I swear to god I will hex that smile off your face.”

Harry had already gotten up from his chair, though, and come around the end of the table, dragging out Draco’s chair so that he could straddle those long legs, wrapping his hands around the blond’s flushed face. His fingers curled around the back of Draco’s neck, tangling in his soft hair, as Harry pressed another kiss to his lips, for the thousandth time since the previous night. He was never going to get tired of this.

And it didn’t even take a second for Draco to lift his arms and clutch Harry back in return, mumbling into the kiss, “You’re the worst.”

“For your self-control, maybe,” Harry countered, 

“This is going to be such a disaster.”

Harry pulled back slightly, searching those gray eyes with a serious expression. “It’s not,” he promised. “Because I’m not going to let it be. Are you?”

The earnest question seemed to leave Draco without words for a moment, then he whispered, “I don’t want to. But I don’t know how not to ruin things.”

“Well, I don't know how not to save things,” Harry replied. “So I think we’ll be able to work something out.”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

They’d finished eating breakfast and were looking around the kitchen to begin the day’s work when Harry remembered his errand in his bedroom.

“Oh!” Shoving a hand into the pocket of his flannelette pyjama pants, he drew out a familiar hawthorn wand. “I think this belongs to you.”

Draco turned slightly, looking down at the wand that Harry was holding out with an expression that looked close to trepidation. One hand came up, hesitant, then he wrapped his fingers around the wand he’d grown up with and used every day until Harry had ripped it from his hand when they were seventeen.

His breath hitched. Taking a proper hold of the wand, he gave it a swish, waving it at the dishes still scattered across the table.

They obediently stacked themselves up, barely even clinking, before dancing through the air over to the deep sink across the room.

“How does it feel?” Harry asked.

There was a little line between Draco’s eyebrows, though, and Harry’s stomach clenched. What if he’d ruined Draco’s wand for him? What if it was still more loyal to Harry than it was its original owner?

“It’s...fine,” Draco muttered. He drew out the vine wand he’d been using since his return to Hogwarts and weighed both in his hands, frowning down at the two wands.

“What is it?”

The blond tilted his head to the side, still considering. “It’s just...” He looked up at Harry, that wrinkle still between his brows. “I don’t know. It still responds fine, still feels easy, but...it just doesn’t feel quite mine any longer.”

Harry’s face fell. “Because I—”

“No,” Draco said at once. “No, it’s not that it feels disloyal or like it won’t answer me. It’s more like...I’m the one who no longer feels quite right.”

Harry took the wand back. He hadn’t used it since May, but he waved it at the sink and set the dishes to washing themselves using one of Molly’s old spells.

The hawthorn wand still responded without protest to him, easy and familiar, but it didn’t feel quite as perfect in his hand as his own wand did. Was that what Draco was feeling as well? Had he changed enough that his old wand no longer fit him as well as his new one did?

“Well, at least we have a spare wand we can both use,” Harry mused. “I suppose that’s never a bad thing to have around the house.”

And so he left the wand that had defeated Voldemort atop the kitchen hearth for either of them to grab whenever theirs weren’t handy, and they got back to work.

The new light streaming into the kitchen made it easier to see how it could be transformed. Still, the majority of the long room was hemmed in by the huge china cabinets looming over the narrow space, and Harry frowned around at them.

“Do you think we can move all this china somewhere?” Harry asked, turning to look at Draco, who had been using a scouring spell to try to blast away the centuries of soot staining the stone of the hearth.

“It’s these cabinets,” Harry explained. “They make the room even narrower and gloomier.”

“The china could be stacked in the lower cupboards instead,” Draco said slowly. “Or even sent to the attics, if you think you won’t use it.”

“I don’t mind using it,” Harry said quickly, not wanting to offend the house. “I just don’t think we need it out on display like this, every single plate set out side-by-side.”

They ended up carefully taking down the plates from the display cabinets, wiping each carefully as they stacked them atop the table temporarily. When they were done, they were left staring at the rows and rows of empty shelves above the long sideboards lining the room.

“Do you think it’d be okay to just...get rid of all the shelves?” Harry asked in a whisper, as if the house or Kreacher might hear and get upset.

With a deep breath, Draco lifted his vine wand decisively and brought it down with a slash, Vanishing the entire top half of the sideboard in front of them.

Grinning, Harry copied him, then swung about to have at the other side of the room as well, revealing old patches of untouched walls, the color a brighter burgundy than all the areas that had been exposed to years of smoke and sunlight.

Using spells from Hermione’s book, they patched the deepest scratches and pitted holes in the plaster, then once it was all whole again, Harry used the color-changing charm he’d gotten so much practice with the day before to change them all to a warm off-white. The room instantly looked larger and more open.

They went wild with scouring spells, polishing the floor and the ancient stove and the tarnished pots. Draco had got the knack of a wood-restoring spell that made the dry, cracking drawers and cupboard doors gleam again as if they’d never missed a day of oiling in their long lives. The china was carefully arranged within the cupboards, which had been siphoned free of any dust and spiders, and then they were left looking around at an empty table and wide, blank walls.

“Do you want to put anything up?” Draco asked, flushed and dusty and still dressed in Harry’s old pyjamas. And caught tight by Harry himself, who was draped over his back, fingers playing along his ribs.

“Hmm,” Harry hummed, his chin on Draco’s shoulder.

“What would fit a kitchen, in your mind?”

Harry considered. When he thought of kitchens, he thought of the Burrow and bustling meals at a crowded table and the warm embrace of family.

Family.

“The tapestry,” he said, decisive.

Draco jerked about to look him in the eye and ask, “Really?”

“The kitchen is the heart of the house. It belongs here.”

Turning back to look at the large expanse of blank wall they’d made, Draco leaned back into Harry’s hold again. He chuckled.

“Kreacher?” he called out, not moving to put any distance between their bodies before the old house-elf appeared.

Kreacher began to drop into his customary bow, but he froze only a few inches into it, then his head swiveled about on his thin, gnarled neck as he gaped at the room around him.

It was still rather rustic—the wood that now gleamed was still pitted and showing its age, the stone pavers cracked in places, and the creamy walls uneven here and there. But it now looked well loved and lived in, rather than abandoned.

“Kreacher, if you’d be so good, we’re thinking that the family tree would be just the touch needed to make the kitchen look a little cozier.”

The house-elf seemed too dazed to respond, still staring down the long room.

“Kreacher?”

The little creature jumped and gave himself a shake. “Yes, Master Draco! At once, Master Draco!”

Then he snapped his fingers, and the large, rolled up tapestry appeared floating above the long kitchen table. With Harry and Draco directing (and only arguing a bit about what looked most balanced), the large and ancient tapestry was finally hung in the open space they’d created by removing all the old shelving.

“I dare say it even looks...homely,” Draco remarked, a wry smile twisting his mouth as he looked over the sour and forbidding expressions of the many old Blacks woven into the piece. “If you just ignore some of the less pleasant faces.”

They brought a vase down from the attics and filled it with conjured flowers, placing it just so to block out the sight of Bellatrix Lestrange.

On the opposite wall, Harry put up pictures of his parents and their friends, and some of Harry’s own friends and his adopted family, blowing them all up larger and placing them in frames they gathered from the attics’ endless reserves.

Someday soon, he promised to himself, he’d find a way to get a photo of him and Draco for that wall as well.

They ate a long, lazy lunch, interrupted by Harry repeatedly wandering up from the table to try to scrub away some stain he'd spotted or move a picture frame or slightly tweak the color on the walls. Draco didn’t complain, spending most of the drawn-out meal flipping through a book of household charms that he’d had Kreacher fetch from his room back at Hogwarts.

The silence, and the murmured little questions and teases that flowed between them, came easily. Harry wondered if it should seem so easy. Maybe it was only because they were in this pretend little moment of time away from the world, secluded in a house that the world couldn’t reach.

Or maybe it actually made sense in a way for this to come so naturally, without thinking. His dealings with Draco Malfoy had always been instinctual, a reaction torn straight from inside him and drawn out into the outside world, hardly ever tempered with thought. Whether it had been his temper flaring, his fists flying, or now his hands wandering and heart wanting, his body had always responded to the other boy with a visceral instinct he’d never been all that good at controlling.

The peaceful hum of their work was only interrupted by the noisy arrival of an owl, flapping up to the high window and rapping at the glass with its beak, which would surely alarm any passing Muggles in the middle of the day.

Harry swung his wand at the window and it sprung open, letting in the post owl so that it could cut through the long room on long wings, flapping once or twice to pull itself up short and land among the leftovers of their lunch with a thump.

No sooner had Harry taken the letter from its leg when a second owl came careening through the open window, this one far less graceful as it crash landed across the table, sending the first owl launching itself back into the air as it gave an alarmed screech.

With a strangled shout of shock, Harry leapt forward to catch the poor old bird before it might go right over the edge of the table and fall to the floor next. Little downy feathers danced through the air, and Harry had only just got Errol back up on his feet when a third owl darted into the kitchen, this time a tiny scops owl that—once it saw Harry’s arms were full—went darting over to Draco to land in the hand he automatically held out to catch the struggling little bird.

Harry steadied Errol on the table, then turned back to the letter he’d crumpled in one hand in all the hubbub. It had Hermione’s familiar handwriting on it, though it looked rather rushed, clearly dashed off in a hurry.

Hermione, what have you done?

Trepidation climbing up his throat, Harry opened the first letter.

Harry, I’m sorry if Mrs. Weasley has already written you, I didn’t mean to set her off. We were at Sunday dinner and the topic of Christmas came up, and I just said without thinking that I didn’t think you were all that likely to come for Christmas day. Then she started on how ridiculous that was and ended up going after Ginny for making you feel unwelcome, and, well, you know how Ginny’s temper is with her mother. The point is, please don’t feel guilty or obliged, whatever she’s said to you. Do write me or swing by—I’ll explain more as soon as I can!

She hadn’t even signed the letter in her haste. Harry let his hands fall, looking between Errol and Pigwidgeon, wondering which letter he dared open first. Sighing, he reached for the letter bound to Errol’s leg, handing Hermione’s letter to Draco for the other boy to read.

He hadn’t even thought about the fact that it was Sunday again, and the Weasleys would all be gathering for the weekly roast.

Dear Harry,

I trust you’re enjoying some well deserved rest, now that school has wrapped up, though we missed you terribly at Sunday dinner today. Are you still at the castle? Hermione thought you might be planning to spend the holidays at Grimmauld Place, but surely you wouldn’t want to spend Christmas at that dreary old pit alone. It was bad enough when we had no choice during the war, but now that everything is safe again, in no small part because of you, of course, dear, you must know that you’re always welcome to join the family for Christmas. I can’t bear the thought of you rattling around in that old house alone or haunting Hogwarts when all the other students have gone home for the holidays. You know you always have a room and a home here at the Burrow, whenever you want it. And no matter what happened between you and Ginny, no matter what might yet happen in the future, you will always be a part of this family. I will not lose another son, especially not to something as foolish as a little romantic hiccup. Any awkward feelings will pass in time. I daresay that Ginny herself has probably realized what a mistake she made last summer. Before you know it, I’m certain everything will be right as rain again between the two of you. So please, Harry, do come join us for Christmas. It simply wouldn’t be the same without you.

With all my love,

Molly Weasley

When he looked up, he found that Draco had presumably finished Hermione’s letter, because it was laid flat on the kitchen table. He’d also lowered Pig onto the wood, where the tiny owl was hooting softly and looking up at the blond in something like awe. Errol had settled down on his feet with his feathers fluffed, and Hermione’s hired owl was waiting with a patient air upon the sink’s edge.

“Trade you?” Harry suggested, holding out Mrs. Weasley’s letter to take the last scrap of parchment, which was still rolled up tight. Draco hadn’t opened it without permission.

They exchanged letters, and Harry finally unrolled the tiny bit of parchment, realizing with a jolt that it was written by Ginny, not Ron.

Harry,

I’m sorry. She’s being just awful. Will you come? I know you might not want to, but she’s going to blame me if you don’t and ruin the holiday for everyone. You can even bring your new love interest, if you really must. I hereby release you from your previous promise not to. Just come and save me from my mother before I possibly commit matricide.

Gin

Ah yes, and here was the real world, still waiting for him.

Chapter 34

“Maybe I could still claim I got ill,” Harry murmured into the warm skin under his cheek, blowing a teasing shot of air at the belly button just beside his mouth.

Draco’s stomach jumped, muscles clenching in response to the tickling breath.

Harry was curled up on his side, head resting on the other boy’s middle, both of them having lost their pyjamas at some point to the tangled nest of blankets. They were still sleeping on the floor of the drawing room, even after a week. The dawn light filtering through the gauzy curtains was faint, the streets outside quiet. It was Christmas morning, after all.

“Like none of your friends or the Weasleys would come flooding the Floo to make sure you were all right or to ply you with soups and salves,” Draco replied wryly. Then the muscles under Harry’s face tensed again, and the other boy asked, “You did lock the Floo, right?”

Harry chuckled, blowing another puff of warm air across Draco’s stomach. “Of course. I do actually love the few people who know where this house is. I don’t mean to blind any of them with the sight of me waking my boyfriend up on Christmas morning with a cheeky knob job.”

Because that was how he’d started the day and also ended up in his current position. He could feel the breath that Draco sucked in, the stomach beneath his head dipping.

“I don’t believe anyone said anything about me being your ‘boyfriend,’” he said, voice distant and uneasy.

Harry brought his arms up to fold them under his chin and turned his head so he could look up at the blond’s face. His easy smile didn’t slip, since he was pretty confident he understood Draco Malfoy by now. At least when it came to his insecurities about this relationship.

“I’m sorry, did I forget to observe the proper ceremonies?” he teased. “Is there a formal courting procedure that I should have had private tutors cover when I was little? Or did you think I’d put just any boy’s dick in my mouth?”

It was too dim in the room to see if Draco was blushing, but his discomfited expression suggested that he probably was.

“Your dick is quite special to me,” Harry said, not relenting. He hauled himself up so he could crawl back up over the body he’d been getting very familiar with over the past five days, feeling a little stir of interest again from his own anatomy as skin brushed over skin. Harry ended up planting both hands above Draco’s shoulders, lowering himself like he was doing press-ups to drop a kiss on the other boy’s forehead. “You’re quite special to me,” he whispered. “Say you’ll be my boyfriend, won’t you?”

Harry could hear the hard swallow from Draco as he continued his way down that pale face, pressing light kisses along the other boy’s temple, cheekbone, jaw.

“Publicly?” Draco croaked.

Harry paused, then brushed a kiss across those lips before pulling back, raising himself up on his arms again.

“Eventually the world will have to know,” Harry pointed out.

Draco’s eyes slanted down and away. “No, it doesn’t have to. That's not certain. But if you go public now, I am certain there’ll be backlash. Is it worth it for something that…that might not even last all that long?”

Harry sighed noisily, lowering himself so he could tuck his face into the crook of Draco’s neck. He blew into the soft hair there.

“Things don’t just magically last or not,” he mumbled into the warm skin and hair against his mouth, feeling Draco shudder slightly. “They last if we put in some effort to make them last. I want to try on this.”

Sneaking his arms around the thin ribs beneath him, wriggling them under the other boy’s back to hold him tight, Harry began to bargain. “How long then? How long would we have to make it last before you’d feel it’s worth going public?”

The question was met with silence, so Harry started throwing out numbers. “A month or two? Six? A year?”

“In a year, I’ll still be stuck at Hogwarts. Still at risk of being sent back to Azkaban.” There was something choked and dark in the Slytherin’s voice when he named the place, and Harry knew that someday they were going to have to talk about what Draco had gone through there.

“You wouldn’t want to go public about us being together until you’re officially a free man?” Harry asked. It would be another 19 months. His twentieth birthday, at least.

He tightened his hold, then nodded against the shoulder beneath his chin and said, “Okay.”

“‘Okay’?” Draco repeated, pushing Harry up so that he could look him in the face.

“I mean, I might end up arguing with you again about it later, but for now…okay.” He let a little smirk curl his lips as he continued, “But with a few conditions.” Draco only lifted his pale brows in question, so Harry went on. “We slowly work on appearing as friends in public, to help get some of the stupid public outcry out of the way in the meantime. And also, we don’t hide from friends and family.”

“It depends on who you count in that category,” Draco argued, eyes narrowing. “You’re a Gryffindor. You probably think half the damn students at Hogwarts are your friends.”

“I’m a Gryffindor, not a Hufflepuff,” Harry said, laughing. “Ron and Hermione, of course, though they already basically know. The Weasleys. Eventually Hagrid and McGonagall probably ought to know and before the public does. But everyone else can maybe just think we’re friends for now.” He thought of something. “Oh, and Luna and Dean obviously. If they don’t already.”

“Pansy,” Draco said at once. “And my mother, when…when we’re able to speak again. And when I finally feel brave or deranged enough to tell her that I am in fact gayer than Gilderoy Lockhart’s lavender robes.”

When he didn’t go on, Harry asked, “No one else?”

The light had grown brighter as the sun began to rise, and Harry could see Draco’s face more clearly now as he shook his head. “No one else is urgent. Blaise…was a good friend once. As was Millie. But neither of them would try to castrate me if they found out after the fact that I’d hidden it from them. Pansy’s the only real danger there.”

“Then we’re definitely telling Pansy, as soon as possible,” Harry assured him. “I’m nearly as fond of your dangly bits as I am my own. We’re not putting them at risk.”

He leaned in to press another lingering kiss to Draco’s mouth, not even bothered about morning breath. My boyfriend. He searched those gray eyes when he drew back. The word somehow felt insufficient for all the things he and Draco were to each other now, after all the different things they’d been to each other for so many years. But it was still one he was happy to claim.

“You’re not telling the Weasleys today, though, are you? Salazar’s sake, Potter, what a way to ruin Christmas that would be.”

Harry laughed at the grimace on the other boy’s face. “No,” he promised, rubbing their noses together. “It’ll probably be a challenging enough day anyway. Maybe I can choose a less important holiday to spoil. New Years perhaps, or maybe Easter.”

They spent another fifteen minutes talking in low voices and stealing lazy kisses, before Harry really did have to get up and start getting dressed if he was going to make it to the Burrow at nine as he’d promised. He’d begged off joining for Christmas Eve, despite Molly’s many letters, but he had at least agreed to join for the morning and Christmas dinner. Though he still felt awfully guilty leaving Draco alone on bloody Christmas.

“You sure you don’t want to go back to Hogwarts for the day or anything?” Harry asked again, once he had hurriedly showered, shaved, and dragged on a Weasley sweater over his undershirt and a pair of jeans.

“I assure you that I’d much rather be alone here than back at the castle for an awkward feast with the unattached professors and a handful of lonely students who are wondering if I’m more likely to try to murder them or bugger them in their sleep,” Draco promised as he stood in front of Harry, smoothing the shoulders of his Weasley sweater and tugging both his undershirt and the sweater down by their hems to fix their lines. He picked a bit of lint from one sleeve, then gave a satisfied little hum.

It was so domestic of the posh twat that Harry wanted to intentionally ruck up the sweater to make him do it again.

“Besides, I may start on the upstairs bath,” the blond said airily. “And this time, I will use gold.”

Harry grinned. They’d made it through the entire ground floor, the rest of the first floor, and the central hall and stairs over the past four days. Draco had even managed to sweet-talk Kreacher into helping them undo the Permanent Sticking Charm on Walburga’s portrait with elf magic, relocating it to the library on the second floor, which was “a much more dignified and worthy home for her, unlike a public hallway.” Or, more truthfully, it was a place where she was much less likely to be roused by the unwary. The portrait remained hidden behind a thick curtain for now, but Draco had been going in to speak with it daily, trying to charm the old woman into maybe not screaming profanities at the living.

And the day before, they’d whirled their way through both the ground-floor and first-floor bathrooms, where Draco had tried to fight for ridiculous gaudy gold fixtures and Harry had resolutely refused in both rooms.

Harry pulled Draco close by the front of his shirt and kissed him firmly. “Good luck with making it stick once I’m back to charm things a different color,” he said, lips brushing against Draco's provocative smirk.

When he pulled back, he looked into those bright eyes, the pale gray shining with pleasure, and he didn’t want to leave, not even for his friends and family.

“Do I have to go?” he asked, plaintive and needing the push that Draco gave him towards the Floo.

“You do. You gave your word. It wouldn’t do to go back on that promise now.”

So Harry let himself be bustled over to the hearth, and he took a handful of green powder from the jar Draco held out. Before throwing it in the fire, he snuck one last kiss and said, “I’ll miss you.”

Then he flung the powder into the flames and called, “The Burrow!”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Ginny was the first to spot him, since she was sitting alone in the living room with a mug of coffee clutched between her hands and still looking half-asleep in her dressing gown.

“Oh, thank god you’re here,” she exclaimed, before getting up and bellowing over her shoulder, “Harry’s here!”

She offered him a quick squeeze of a hug, nearly spilling coffee down his back as she whispered, “I might’ve seriously murdered someone if you hadn’t shown.” Mrs. Weasley bustled into the room and Harry’s eyes met hers over Ginny’s shoulder just as the Seventh Year girl pulled back, holding Harry at arm’s length to ask, “But you’ve come alone? I told you that you didn’t have to worry about me.”

“Is there someone he should have been coming with?” Molly Weasley asked. She had a sharp glint in her eye, as she never liked to find out after the fact that she’d missed some goings on in her children’s lives.

Ginny looked back at her mother and then met Harry’s gaze again with a grimace. “Sorry,” she mouthed, barely louder than a breath. Then aloud she said, “Harry is free to date whoever he wants, Mum. That’s what being single means, you know.”

Then he was pulled into the embrace of Mrs. Weasley and the rest of the family, shouts ringing out up and down the tottering old house as the news of his arrival spread.

Everyone had assembled for the holidays: not just George, Ron, and Percy up from London, but Bill and Fleur and even Charlie back from Romania. It was the first Christmas without Fred, after all, but also the first Christmas since the war. And once he was sucked into the rush and noise and love, Harry was glad he’d come. It would’ve been a poor repayment for all the ways the Weasleys had welcomed him as a part of the family since he was a boy to not be here with them for this major event.

“Harry,” Hermione said in his ear as she hugged him. “Thank goodness you’re here. Save me from kitchen duty.”

Laughing, Harry willingly swapped places with her, keeping Molly and Fleur company in the kitchen and helping out wherever he could, which often boiled down to staying out of their way and not offering any opinions when little spats broke out about the comparative merits of British and French cooking.

Before too long, he was snatched away, recruited by the younger crowd for the annual Quidditch game. The teams ended up with Ron, Ginny, and Harry against George, Bill, and Charlie, as they decided to test whether youth would prevail over experience.

It was great, breathless work, and Harry had a blast, even if he had to play Chaser in their Quaffle-only pickup game. And even if he kept catching himself thinking of how much Draco would’ve enjoyed it. The noise and crowd of the house probably would’ve spooked the Slytherin, sending him reeling back into his stiff-lipped polite act over barely concealed prickly nerves, but the Quidditch—that would’ve got Draco out of his own head. He wouldn’t have been able to resist outrageous plays and shouting insults at Harry.

Less than two years, Harry told himself. Then he’ll be free to travel anywhere he likes. Surely that’ll be enough time for the Weasleys to get used to the idea of me dating a Malfoy.

He didn’t question that they might still be dating two Christmases from now. It was madness, really, only a week after Harry had first kissed Draco and a month after realizing he might want to. But it was also mad that they’d even got to where they were after the history they shared. They might as well stay on brand and keep the madness going.

The Quidditch game was called when the first team reached 150 points, and everyone stomped back inside to warm up after playing so long in the biting air. As Harry trailed into the living room at the rear of the group, he found an unexpected face waiting for him.

“Andromeda!” he exclaimed, startling at the sight of the woman who had Bellatrix Lestrange’s features but none of her cruelty.

The older witch turned fully towards him and dropped a squirming baby in his arms. “And Teddy!” he exclaimed, staring wide-eyed at the child he hadn’t seen in four months.

The few times Harry had met Teddy during that summer, he’d mostly been a sedentary little thing, either sleeping or staring curiously about with a fist shoved in his mouth. Now Harry could barely keep a hold of the baby, who was arching his back and trying to throw himself out of Harry’s awkward grip.

“Dadanananana!” the wild little creature shouted, his hair changing from Andromeda’s soft brown to a harsh black, while his screwed-up face turned red. Though the last was not through magic. Just through sheer upset.

“Oh, you might as well let him down then,” Andromeda said tiredly. “He is all about standing these days. Just give him something steady to hold onto, and he’ll settle—at least until he falls again.”

Doing as he’d been instructed, Harry gently lowered the writhing baby to the floor. Teddy quieted as soon as his feet touched solid ground, tear-filled eyes blinking in surprise, and Harry lifted his chubby arms and set them on the edge of the sofa, giving the little fellow something to hang onto as he happily bounced and babbled.

Then Andromeda swept Harry up in a hug, and he felt a pang of guilt when she pulled back and he noticed the tired bags under her eyes. Here he’d been enjoying his holidays in debauched leisure, while this woman older than his own mother had been caring for a baby—his godson—all on her own. He resolved to ask how he could help more, before the day was over. He’d been far too caught up in his own head for too long.

“How are you, Andromeda?” he asked.

“I get along.” She patted him on the arm, that wry look on her face that he recognized from Sirius—and now Draco as well. He wondered if Narcissa was also capable of it or if Draco had simply arrived at it independently. “How are you, young man? Enjoying your final year at Hogwarts in well-deserved peace?”

“You know, I think I finally am,” Harry said. Not that it had anything to do with the schoolwork itself, but he was finally finding more to enjoy than not at Hogwarts these days.

“Did you only come away for today?”

“Ah, no, actually,” Harry said, scratching the back of his neck. “I’ve been at Grimmauld Place, working on the house.”

Andromeda blinked in surprise, then she gave him a bemused smile. “Have you been? So you’re going to try to claim the decrepit old pile for yourself?”

“Sirius did leave it to me,” Harry said, just a tad defensive in his embarrassment. “I can’t just let it fall apart. And it’s actually been going really good.” Thanks mostly to my assistant, who I shall not name.

“I’ll have to come see it sometime then,” Andromeda mused. “If you manage to transform it into something quite unrecognizable that is. I’d rather not if it's still as grim as I remember it.”

They talked for a bit about Harry’s efforts and each of their plans for the holiday season, while Harry kept trying to offer to take Teddy for at least an afternoon.

Draco may murder me, but Teddy is my godson. And his cousin. Second cousin? Something anyway.

Surely he'll understand.

Or he’d get in a snit and go stomp off to the upper floors to plate an entire bathroom in conjured gold. That was fine, too.

“You need some time to yourself,” Harry insisted. “I know I haven’t been much help, and I can’t do all that much when I’m at school, but I could at least give you a few hours’ reprieve from time to time.”

“Ah, well, there may be one—” Andromeda started, seeming to finally soften, but then she caught herself and shook her head. “No. Perhaps not.”

“What?” Harry asked. “What is it?”

Andromeda pulled a face, though it was only a slight grimace given the stately air she never really let go of. “I’m…actually going to collect my sister upon her release from Azkaban next week, and I’ve been trying to decide if having Teddy with me would make an awkward reunion easier or even harder.” She laughed ruefully at herself. “Though I’m not sure there’s any way for it to be anything but awful.”

Harry felt a nervous tingle along his spin, as the two very separate spheres of his current life suddenly passed in close orbit, nearly crashing.

There was an explosion of laughter and shouts from the kitchen, where most of the other Weasleys had gathered, Harry and Andromeda’s little reunion not being engaging enough to keep the rest of the crowd from the nibblies that Molly had already put out.

“You’re going to meet Narcissa?” he asked, voice a little faint.

Andromeda sighed, dropping down to sit on the edge of the sofa and offer her fingertips to Teddy, who lunged to grasp one and nearly fell over before he managed a jerky step to stand closer to her knee.

“I was contacted as her next of kin,” she explained. “She does have a son, of course—he’s at Hogwarts with you, isn’t he? But he isn’t allowed to leave the castle, so he couldn’t possibly be there to meet her upon her release, in case she needs assistance.”

Harry felt a sick twist in his gut. He’d gone begging to the Wizengamot and managed to get permission for Draco to come hide in Grimmauld Place with him, but not to be there for his own mother’s release from prison. Which was more important, really? 

“Malfoy Manor is still in the Ministry’s possession, as I understand it, so she can’t simply scurry back there to lick her wounds either. I believe the family has some property in France, but…well, I suppose I’ll just have to wait and find out what state she is in when she comes out.” Andromeda shook her head.

Harry took a deep breath. Then he asked, “Andromeda, if I tell you something, can you keep it just between us for now?”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Supper was long, raucous, full of laughter, and sprinkled with a few tears. They’d sat down a little after one in the afternoon, and everyone was still there three hours later, though seats had swapped several times over the course of the long meal. And Teddy had been passed around the entire length of the table at least four times, being spoiled and entertained and coddled as he grew overtired.

Fleur in particular seemed struck hard with baby fever, and Harry watched her melt over the boy in her arms while Bill looked similarly lovestruck as he gazed at Fleur holding a sleepy Teddy.

Good thing I never actually developed that crush on Bill, Harry thought, internally amused as he watched the one Weasley man he’d thought he could ever be attracted to demonstrate how absolutely besotted he was with his beautiful wife. I think I prefer blonds, too, mate.

They were onto the second bottle of Ogden’s Old Firewhiskey out of the crate Harry had sent to the house as a Christmas gift to the family when George dropped down into the seat that had recently opened up beside Harry.

“So, Harrykins, what’s this I hear about you finding new love?”

He asked loud enough for Bill and Charlie to perk up across the table, and for Ginny to bury her face in her arms on Charlie’s other side.

“I…don’t know what you’re talking about?” Harry tried weakly.

“Don’t you?” George asked, and Harry refused to look in Hermione and Ron’s direction, sure he’d give himself away. “Because it seems Mum heard you and Ginny having a little exchange when you first arrived, about how surprising it was you’d shown alone. And of course Mum told Dad, and Dad asked Ron, and I overheard the question…” George gestured expansively around the table, pointing out the guilty parties as he did. “And now I’m here for the gossip.”

“I don’t think—I mean—Ginny’s right there,” Harry hissed, trying to keep his voice low. Even if she had sort of given him her blessing, George didn’t know that.

“Ginny dropped you, mate. And immediately picked up some Ravenclaw lunk. I don’t think she gets to complain.”

That was true, but George didn’t necessarily know that Ginny had regretted those choices and wanted another chance. Quite recently.

“Oh, go on, Harry,” Ginny groaned into her arms. “Just someone pass me that bottle.”

George shoved the Firewhiskey across the table and then plopped his elbow down between the many empty dishes, watching Harry intently.

“So. Spill. Who is the new girlfriend? Do we know her?”

Harry had said he wouldn’t tell the Weasleys today. He looked around at the family, two-thirds of whom were watching unabashedly, while Andromeda, Percy, Molly, and Arthur only tried to pretend they weren’t, down at the far end of the table.

So he wouldn’t tell about Draco. But he might as well try to leap one hurdle while he was feeling brave and tipsy.

“Not a new girlfriend so much as a new…boyfriend?” Harry said, his voice going a bit hesitant at the end, despite his best intentions.

There was a beat of silence. Then George burst out laughing, throwing an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “See, I knew you weren’t boring, Potter!” With his other arm, he reached across the table and took back the bottle he’d pushed to Ginny, topping off Harry’s glass and his own. “A man after my own heart—here’s to being open to all life can offer!”

He smashed their glasses together, then threw his own back, wiping his mouth after and cackling aloud.

Bill muttered at George too quiet to carry far, “Just because you'll sleep with anything that walks, Georgie, doesn't mean Harry will.”

“Doesn't even have to walk,” George returned. “I don't discriminate.”

Harry dared a glance down the table. Ginny’s mouth had fallen open. Ron was looking up at the ceiling as if he was praying. Hermione was hiding a knowing smile behind her glass. The two senior Weasleys looked floored, and Andromeda—Andromeda had a rather shrewd look in her eyes.

When Harry had revealed to her that afternoon that Draco was actually out of Hogwarts and staying at Grimmauld Place with him for the holidays, he hadn’t told the boy’s aunt that they were anything more than friends.

But given her expression, Harry guessed that she might be making some assumptions now which, well, she wouldn’t be all that wrong about.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

It was nearly eight at night when Harry Flooed back home, staggering out of the fireplace full of too much food, Firewhiskey, and family gossip.

The gas lamps sprung up beside the fire, lighting his cozy new drawing room with a steady, warm glow, but that was all that greeted him. The room—and the entire house—was quiet.

“Draco?” he called, squinting around and rubbing at his eyes behind his glasses. But there was no answer.

Frowning to himself, Harry went out into the hall, which was no longer dark and shadowy, but instead inviting, the warmed wood of the stairs ready to draw you into the rest of the house with their plush carpet. The walls had been recolored in a faded brick red, and the gas lights burned steady and bright.

He headed down to the kitchen, thinking perhaps Draco was having his own late dinner, though Harry didn’t even want to think about more food. They’d technically stopped eating hours ago, but it was only after a marathon meal and wave after wave of dessert being plied on them all by Mrs. Weasley.

But the kitchen, while cheerful and bright, was also spotless and empty.

“Kreacher?” Harry called uncertainly, and the old house-elf appeared at once. Harry looked down at him, his brow furrowing. “Where’s Draco? He didn’t go back to Hogwarts, did he?”

“Master Draco is in the bedroom,” Kreacher declared. 

Harry frowned. “Which one? There are about a dozen.”

“The master bedroom,” Kreacher stated, eyeing Harry with a measuring look he didn’t quite understand. Probably the old elf was just wishing again that ‘Master Draco’ was his true master.

“Thanks,” Harry muttered, patting the elf absently on the shoulder as he passed. “Enjoy the rest of your Christmas, Kreacher.”

Then he was jogging back up the stairs, taking them two at a time as he raced for the third floor. He’d made it up two flights before he remembered he was a wizard and could have Apparated, but by then it didn’t seem worth the hassle.

Arriving on the third floor slightly out of breath, he put his hand on the knob to the master bedroom, a room they hadn’t yet tackled and that Harry hadn’t even glanced in more than a handful of times in the three years he’d known the house, What had made Draco hide here?

He pushed open the door, and—

It—

“What?” Harry breathed, barely even a fully-formed word. He stared at the room in front of him, shock and something brighter, burning hot and yet airy and fragile, seeming to hollow out his chest. He couldn’t quite breathe around it.

Gone were the funereal black hangings around the huge king bed, the long bedskirts full of cobwebs and dust and Doxy eggs. Gone was the heavy brocade wallpaper that had drawn intricate patterns of nightshade blooms and snakes and ravens.

The walls were the familiar warm cream of parchment paper, up to the crown moulding that ran around their top. That moulding shone with a muted gold patina, and above it, the ceiling was a deep midnight blue, pricked with brilliant gold stars that caught the light too easily to be just paint, seeming to shine with their own light somehow as they marked the familiar constellations of the northern hemisphere. A hazy river of tiny glittering flecks even ran through them, like the Milky Way.

On one of those creamy walls, above the large fireplace, Draco had mounted an antique racing broom, perhaps salvaged from the attics. Harry’s eyes followed its curves, then fell down to an Exploding Snap deck waiting atop the mantelpiece, next to several books, including an ancient-looking copy of Quidditch Through the Ages . An inactive Snitch rested beside the stack.

A large handsome wardrobe stood against another wall, beside a matching dresser. Atop the dresser was a chess set that—Harry took a dazed step closer to be sure his eyes weren’t fooling him. The gold and silver pieces—the pawns were fairly standard, but the rooks were were little badgers standing at the ready, the knights were lions rampant, the bishops were eagles with their wings held high, and the king and queen were both rearing cobras wearing crowns, their bodies coiled beneath them. Casting a calm glow over the board was his own lamp, the one he had made at Hogwarts with its dreamy blue shade, now finally complete with twinkling silver stars and a tiny Golden Snitch that gently darted around it in hypnotic motion.

Harry spun slowly about, catching his own awed expression in a full length floor mirror that had been artfully draped with a Gryffindor scarf over its top. The scarf wasn’t one of his. It had a sort of retro style he’d never seen before. Where would that have come from in this house, but—Sirius? Had it belonged to his godfather? Harry reached out and fingered the knit wool, wondering.

Then his eyes moved to the bed behind him in his reflection, covered in a creamy white duvet like icing on a cake. Decorative pillows were piled at its head in forest green, rich burgundy, dusky yellow, and just one lone blue one, as if Draco had wanted to slight the Ravenclaw house color but couldn’t exclude it entirely. And dozing there, wand abandoned and an open book beside his limp fingers, was the wizard responsible for the entire wondrous transformation.

Harry went to the bed, climbing atop the mattress and wrapping Draco into a tight hug before the blond had even finished getting his eyes open, roused by the bed dipping beneath him.

“It’s…it’s Hogwarts,” Harry breathed into his ear, not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry. “You made me Hogwarts.”

“Mmm,” Draco agreed sleepily, his arms coming up so his hands could feel their way up Harry’s back. “The master of the house shouldn't sleep on some sad little twin bed,” he mumbled. “Never mind the floor of the drawing room.”

“But I don’t have anything for you.” Harry felt stricken, overwhelmed by the amazing room and the fact that all he’d done in return for it was leave Draco abandoned for the entirety of Christmas day. “And I was gone all day.”

Draco yawned, rubbing his nose against Harry’s cheek. “You’re back now,” he said. “S’fine.” Then his fuzzy voice took on the sharper edge of a smirk as he seemed to wake up. “Wait, what am I saying? No, it isn’t. I expect something truly extravagant and ridiculous very soon to make up for it.”

It was too early to think he was in love. They’d known each other for seven and half years, yes, but they’d spent almost every one of those years hating each other. It’d been barely three months of trying anything other than hating each other. A month of flirting. A week of being unable to keep their hands off each other.

But I think I might love you.

Still, he didn’t say the words aloud. There would be time. Time enough to reassure Draco that it was real, that he wasn’t just saying it, that this could be something real.

So instead he said, close and quiet into Draco’s ear, “Well, now we have a proper bed. And in the master bedroom, no less. If the house liked us fumbling about with hand jobs in a bathroom, how much do you reckon it'd love a proper consummation, right here?”

He could feel the way Draco tensed, just before the blond put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and pushed him away a few inches. His gray eyes searched Harry’s. “Potter. You…you are not offering me sex as a thank-you.”

“Is it ‘not the done thing’?” Harry asked, cheeks warm but undeterred as he looked down at the boy beneath him.

“It's—well, no, you're right in thinking that it’s done far more often than it probably should be,” Draco said, floundering. “But—that's not—I didn’t mean for—for—

“Draco.” Harry pressed a firm kiss to his gasping mouth. “Draco, it isn’t a thank-you. It isn’t that at all.” He was at least as visibly flushed as the other boy now, but he shoved on. “I’m making jokes, because it's—I don't know how else to bring up the fact that I really, really want to do this, and it’s all a bit mortifying.” He licked his lips, noting how Draco’s eyes fell once to catch the motion. “But I want to. If you do. Maybe it’s too fast, but I’m bloody eighteen, and I’ve already died once, and—”

And I think I’m falling for you, faster than a shooting star in one of your constellations.

“I just…I’ve spent so long not sure what I wanted. Now I want to seize the things I really do want, whenever I find one.”

Draco opened his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to find any words.

“And this amazing room you’ve made us seems much more comfortable than the drawing room floor,” Harry said, attempting a crooked smile, as if his heart wasn’t about to burst out of his throat.

“Potter... I…” Draco swallowed, looking faint and almost ill. “I haven't actually ever— I mean, I’d only just turned sixteen when I was Marked, and then—”

“Me, too.” Harry grinned then. “And I didn't even have that good of an excuse. Hell, I had a girlfriend for a bit of that time.”

He watched as it sunk in for Draco that Harry had also never gone all the way, and that only seemed to make him blanch worse.

“You—you shouldn’t— You couldn’t possibly—”

And Harry thought he knew what Draco was likely thinking. That Harry shouldn't throw away something as significant as his first time on Draco, on this mad relationship that he was certain was doomed.

Which was complete bullshit.

This was the boy that Harry had seen the worst and the best of; the boy who had likewise seen the worst and the best of him. He'd inspired Harry to blind rages and bloody knuckles and also to finding pity for a former foe. Draco had dragged down Harry and his friends and had fought for the wrong side—and he’d created this perfect room, that overflowed with love even if Draco might not dare whisper it.

How could they not find the resolve to make this work, when they'd managed all that?

“If you want to wait, we can,” Harry promised. “But do you want to wait?”

Draco didn’t seem able to answer, so Harry sat up, now straddling the boy beneath him on the bed. His fingers found the hem of the old tee-shirt of Harry’s that Draco had been wearing to work in.

“Do you want to wait?” he asked again, starting to slide that shirt up, ducking down to press a kiss to the white stomach it revealed, to nip at the scar he’d once left across it. “Tell me to stop, if you do.”

The cotton kept inching higher up, as Harry traced a thin scar with his lips, whispering against that warm, alive skin, “You have to tell me to stop.”

But Draco’s hands gripped him by the front of his sweater and dragged Harry’s mouth back up to his, and he never told Harry to stop.

Chapter 35

Harry woke up to fingers pattering along his spine with the soft touch of cat paws, and he smiled into the comfortable pillow under his cheek.

Turning with a hum that rumbled through his chest, he buried his face into warm skin, not caring what part of Draco he reached as long as he found him.

The sun was bright, shining through sheer curtains Draco had left over the tall windows that looked out high above the street, while heavier drapes of deep purple were drawn back to their sides. It appeared to be mid-morning at least, which was far later than they usually slept—but then they had certainly worn themselves over the course of the long night. Multiple times, in fact.

“Round four?” Harry asked, a ridiculous smile pressed into Draco’s chest as he nosed at the flesh there, bumping his face against the arm draped over him and offering a playful bite at the bicep he found.

“Save something for tonight, you degenerate,” Draco murmured, though Harry could hear the happiness thrumming beneath the dry admonishment.

Harry hummed again, pleased, his feet rubbing against the back of Draco’s calves, feeling the soft hair that covered them.

“I’ve thought of a new career idea,” he said, shifting closer and enjoying the feel of all that bare skin against his, the stirring of excitement, the answering nudge. “Draco Malfoy’s full-time bed warmer. D’you think that would impress the Prophet?”

There was a snort from above him, since Harry still had his face buried in the other boy’s smooth chest. “How’s that? Think they’ll believe you can defeat evil with the wondrous power of your cock?”

“‘Our selfless saviour, once again sacrificing himself to protect us all from evil!’” Harry declared in a falsely breathless tone. “‘Potter revealed to this reporter that he intends to never again leave the bed of the frightfully attractive bad boy, until he can be sure he’s sucked and fucked the Dark Magic right out of him.’”

The body against him shook with silent laughter before Draco pointed out, “I’m pretty confident the Prophet would not print the phrase ‘sucked and fucked.’ You might need to take that particular tell-all to Witch Weekly.”

“Good advice,” Harry agreed. “Reckon they’re open on Boxing Day?”

They were still teasing and laughing, Draco having resorted to pinching and tickling Harry to get him to stop drafting ridiculous quotes for the papers, when a crack reverberated through the room unexpectedly.

“Master Harry, Master Draco, Kreacher is afraid you have visitors,” croaked a voice from the foot of the bed, and Harry flew upright in the tangled sheets, grabbing his glasses up from the nightstand to shove them on his face and gape at the house-elf.

“K-Kreacher!”

“Yes, Master?”

Harry’s mouth flapped uselessly, since he wasn’t sure what to say when the old elf did not appear at all ruffled by the sight of him and Draco naked in bed.

“Visitors?” he asked at last, voice faint.

“Yes, Master.” Now at last the elf gave them an unimpressed look, eyes dropping from Harry’s face down to the sheet barely covering his bits and Draco sprawled on his back beside him. “It is nearly eleven. And it appears that my good masters forgot to lock the Floo last night in all their…excitement.”

Harry felt himself burning, though a part of him—a differently glowing part of him, somewhere underneath the hot embarrassment of knowing that his house-elf understood exactly how they’d spent their night—reveled in the plurality of ‘my good masters.’

He belongs here with me. The house knows it, Kreacher knows it, and I know it. Now it’s just convincing the nervy git himself that he can believe it, too.

“And do our visitors have a name?” Harry asked, summoning the clothes he had tossed off in distraction the night before.

They’d no sooner landed in his hand than Draco smacked him in the stomach, muttering, “Put on fresh clothes, you cretin. You are not meeting guests in yesterday’s pants.”

The smug look on Kreacher’s face suggested that he agreed.

“It is the young Weasley boy and his Muggle-born witch,” Kreacher said.

“Granger,” Draco corrected, and Harry was bemused to watch the slow flow of progress, as Draco now insisted that the ornery old elf use Hermione’s real name. Even Harry hadn't really pushed it, willing to count it as a win that Kreacher had at least stopped calling her ‘Mudblood.’

“Granger,” Kreacher ground out grudgingly, sketching a brief bow.

“Tell them I’ll be right down,” Harry said.

As soon as the house-elf disappeared again, Harry turned to the blond still sprawled flat on the mattress. For a moment, he wanted to forget about going downstairs to meet his best friends. But then he shook himself and asked, “Okay, if I’m not to wear yesterday’s pants, are my own clothes somewhere to be found in this lovely new bedroom?”

“There’s literally a wardrobe right there,” Draco said, looking down his nose at Harry. He was doing a fair job sneering for someone who simultaneously looked a bit ill with nerves.

Harry took a second to lean down for a little kiss to that twisted mouth, then he jumped out of the bed and hurried to the wardrobe to fling it open. The clothes he’d packed in his schoolbag—and whatever he’d had left in the second-floor bedroom—were neatly hanging inside.

“Hmm. No pants,” he remarked. “Guess I’m freeballing it.”

“The dresser, you useless git. Top left drawer.”

Harry grinned over at the blond, then he quickly threw on fresh pants, jeans, and a worn hoodie, not bothering with socks since he’d learned to enjoy the plush of the rejuvenated carpet under his feet.

“You want some of your own clothes or will mine do?”

He looked back at the bed, then he realized for the first time precisely how nervous Draco was. He’d practically turned green, lying there propped up with his elbows behind him on the bed.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“My clothes?” Harry said, feigning ignorance. “I mean, they’re a bit short in the leg for you, but I don’t think anyone’s going to faint at the sight of a little ankle. We aren’t Victorians.”

“Potter.”

“Harry,” he suggested, and for once, Draco caved without a fight.

“Harry,” the blond repeated, his voice hollow. “How do you think a reunion between me and Weasley and Granger is possibly going to end in anything other than a massive row and bitter feelings?”

Harry shrugged. “How? Because I won’t let it.”

The other boy remained still on the bed, narrow scars tracing across his torso and the muted gray of the unmoving Dark Mark marring his left forearm, as it always would. Harry saw it, saw all of him, and he still believed it.

“And as long as you aren’t a complete twat, I’m sure Hermione will try to keep Ron in check as well,” he said, turning back to the wardrobe and grabbing a pair of his most worn-in jeans, since he knew Draco wasn’t as used to the stiff Muggle material. He tossed them at the bed, followed by a hoodie much like his own.

Draco sat upright, picking up the sweatshirt and gripping it tightly in white-knuckled hands. Harry felt as if he could see straight through to the dark thoughts swirling around in his head, as if he could see wrackspurts or whatever nonsense creatures Luna was always going on about.

So much fear that this was about to be the end of them, right after he’d finally had Harry as his own. So much doubt, from the boy Harry had always thought the proudest in all the world.

He wished he could go back and shake his younger self now for not seeing the truth of who Draco Malfoy had always been. That paralyzing self-doubt had always driven his actions, as he’d wondered if he’d ever be good enough for his father, his family, his name.

After all, why did the bully seek to make others feel weak if not to make himself feel strong?

But after all he’d gone through in the past several years, Draco Malfoy had been forced to confront his own weaknesses. And now, ironically, Harry wanted him to remember how strong he’d also always been.

He dropped back on the bed, taking the old sweatshirt from Draco’s hands and dragging it over that blond head, pushing the hood back once it was on and brushing Draco’s hair straight with his fingers. He tucked the long strands behind those delicate ears.

“We’re going to do this,” he said, one hand still curled around the back of the other boy’s head. “Because I’m not letting go of this thing we’ve got, and that means you and my friends have to learn to get along. If it goes badly, then we try again. And we keep trying, till we work out all the bad blood and start moving forward.”

He looked down at the trousers thrown across the bed’s covers and pointed out, “But you didn’t unpack your own clothes in here, for some stupid reason, so first you have to decide: are you going to wear my pants or is it to be no pants at all?”

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

Harry led the way, thumping down the stairs in a hurry. The noise drew Hermione out to the drawing room’s door before he’d made it all the way to the first floor.

“Harry!” she exclaimed, looking up the stairs in awe. “The house—it looks amazing!”

Then she spotted Draco coming down the stairs behind him, dressed in what were obviously Harry’s clothes and looking rumpled and nervous in a way that she’d probably never imagined she might see the posh pure-blood bastard.

A series of emotions flickered across her face, mostly too quick for Harry to parse, and he realized then that his friends might not have known that Draco was here. After all, he was supposed to be stuck at Hogwarts for the remainder of his sentence, and Harry had failed to actually mention going to the Wizengamot.

“Malfoy,” she greeted the blond, striding across the hall and stepping up the first few steps to stick out her hand before Draco had even made it all the way down the stairs. “Happy Christmas. How wonderful that you were able to come visit.”

She had the same determined tone she’d taken with Grawp when she’d been trying to act like she wasn’t at all shaken by the sight of a towering giant in a dark forest.

And Draco, thank god, hesitated less than a heartbeat before he reached out and took Hermione’s hand, shaking it without any sign that he was reluctant to touch ‘a filthy little Mudblood’.

“Granger. Thank you. And happy Christmas,” he said in return, his voice restrained and tight with nerves.

Hermione turned to Harry, color high in her cheeks but that resolute expression not slipping for a moment. “Harry, I’m sorry for just barging in. But when Molly realized she hadn’t sent you home with any of the leftovers, she forced me to take a whole sack truck’s worth of them to deliver to you. And so here we are.”

Her gaze just barely flickered back to Draco as she said, “Though at least I feel less guilty at forcing them on you now, since I imagine two hungry boys will make short work of them.”

Harry grinned at his best friend, turning her back towards the drawing room with one hand while his other reached behind him blindly to grab Draco and pull him along. “If my other option for an unexpected morning call crashing in on me and Malfoy was Molly, then I am infinitely more glad that it turned out to be you.” They walked back into the drawing room as he said, “I’m trying to ease the Weasleys into the news, if such a thing is possible.”

“What news?” Ron asked, looking up from the dish he’d been poking through with what Harry recognized as one of the house’s own forks. Then Ron saw Draco at Harry’s shoulder, and the fork fell against the glass dish with a clatter. “Oh, bloody hell. I was not ready for this on a Saturday morning.”

“Well, you’re the one who decided to show up uninvited,” Harry said, a cheerful smile plastered on his face. “Feel free to bugger off and send an owl first next time.”

“He’s wearing your clothes, Harry,” Ron said beseechingly. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“Make you pay for the fact that I know you shag my best friend?” Harry suggested, dragging Draco with him to sit down on the sofa opposite Ron's.

“No, no, but we agreed—you aren't allowed to hate me for that because you started it by dating my little sister first!” Ron looked sourly at Draco. “You're honestly making me have to question which is worse: knowing you’ve probably been naked with my sister or knowing you've probably been naked with the Ferret.”

Harry rubbed the side of his foot along Draco's in a tiny gesture of reassurance and told his best mate, “Well, I never was with Gin, at least. If that's any help.”

Hermione took her own seat beside Ron as he screwed up his face with a rather constipated expression. “Nope, you just made it simultaneously better and so much worse.”

Silence settled over the room for a moment as no one knew what to say, and Harry thought he could practically hear Draco thinking at him: See?! What did I say, Potter? Utter disaster, that's what this is!

Then Hermione cleared her throat and said, “Harry, I have to say: it is absolutely amazing what you’ve managed to do with this place. I thought we’d got out at the wrong Floo grate, until I recognized the piano and the shape of things.”

Harry grinned, looking around the room again. He was undeniably proud of what they’d pulled off. “I know, right? Of course I'm just as much to blame for doing nothing this entire summer, but I can't believe Sirius never even tried to make it more livable all those years the Order was using it.”

“I suppose he really didn’t want to accept any part of his inheritance,” Hermione mused, considering the lovely room Harry and Draco had created. “Making it a place he actually wanted to stay might have felt even more unwelcome to him than letting it slowly fall into ruin.”

Harry nodded, then winced when Draco kicked a heel against his shin. He glanced over at the blond, but only got a quite intense look that he didn’t know how to read. “What?” he hissed under his breath.

Draco rolled his eyes, face slightly pink, and called, “Kreacher, would you please offer Potter’s guests some tea?” The old elf appeared in an instant with an entire tea service, as if he’d had it ready and at the waiting, and Draco angled his face towards Harry again to mutter in his ear, “Ill-mannered boor.”

As Kreacher magically shifted the many covered dishes piled on the low table between the two sofas to make space for his tea service, Harry grinned back. “Who needs manners when I’ve got you to do all that boring stuff for me?”

“Keep acting so appallingly, and you may not for long.”

“Oh god, they’re flirting, aren't they?” Ron moaned, reaching for a cup of tea and gulping from it. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you, Hermione. All those years he picked on Harry, and it was all some twisted sort of mating ritual because he wanted in Harry's trousers.”

Draco reached out to pick up a teacup of his own, taking a much more restrained sip as Hermione pointed out, “He also fought with you for years, Ron.” Both Draco and Ron choked on their tea.

Ron had gone as red as his hair as he stuttered, “No. No, you are not possibly telling me—”

“Of course not,” Draco sniffed, equally red in the face. “A ginger? Please.”

“Hey, I dated a ginger!” Harry reminded him.

“And clearly you have appalling taste,” Draco countered, and Ron’s mouth worked, probably struggling between the urge to defend his sister and the urge to agree that Harry did indeed have appalling taste for choosing to date Draco.

“Are all the updates in here just charms and Transfiguration?” Hermione asked, completely ignoring all the other talk. “It’s holding up beautifully, but you’ll have to keep reapplying it, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Draco agreed, turning willingly back to Hermione though his tone had gone more distant and polite again, and Harry could see how tightly he was gripping the arm of his teacup. “I’ve told Potter that he’ll need to call in professionals to make the changes permanent, or constantly reapply them. But at least this way he has some image to present to an expert, to find the right finishes and materials.”

“Well, it really is remarkable. And where did you get in the new things from? I don’t recognize that painting on the wall.”

Harry looked to the hazy painting of an abstract shore, which was clearly too well done to be something either of them could have Transfigured. “Everything here came from the house,” he assured Hermione. “Draco knew to go poking through the attics, and there was plenty to find up there, once the house began to warm up a little.”

Hermione studied the artwork with a shrewd eye, seeming to recognize that Harry wasn't just talking about the physical temperature in Number 12.

“Perhaps you could consider this sort of work,” she said, her gaze cutting back to Harry. “If you’re still looking for career ideas to explore.”

“But Harry’s gonna go pro!” Ron said, jumping back into conversation with a mouth full of food to speak around. He had gone back to stealing bites from Harry's leftovers as the others admired the painting on the wall. “He’s gonna get me season tickets!”

“No, he is not,” Draco snapped in a flat tone. When Hermione's head whipped towards him and Ron’s face closed off in anger, he cleared his throat and said, flushing, “I mean, he can still get you season tickets the regular way, of course, if he’d like to buy them or even accept stupidly generous gifts from his adoring fans. I only meant that he isn’t going to play professional Quidditch.”

“And why not?” Ron asked with narrowed eyes. “Because you say so?”

“No, because he'd be miserable doing it,” Draco said, and Harry was struck slightly breathless. He remembered. Or, even if he hadn't remembered-remembered, he at least remembered seeing the memories of their old conversations and how much Harry had dreaded the idea of being back in the public eye as a pro.

“No, he wouldn’t! Harry loves Quidditch, and he’s brilliant at it!” Ron insisted. “Just because he always beat you—”

But Harry interrupted to say, “No, actually, he’s right.” He didn’t flinch when Ron turned a betrayed look on him. “I’ve thought so for ages, though I kept trying to convince myself that I’d get over a life of dodging reporters and never daring to go out in public. But I really don’t want to. I already told Gin I wasn’t going to try out.”

Ron’s mouth moved but no sound came out for a moment. Then he croaked, “But then what are you going to do instead?”

Harry glanced at Draco. They hadn’t discussed it once since they’d both seen those memories. Harry had kept meaning to during this holiday, but a part of him had remained afraid to. What if this Draco, in the real world, didn't want to help him with his mad idea or wanted to do something else instead? It’d been too easy to avoid bringing it up when they could just talk about the furnishings or wall colors. Or distract themselves in ways that required no talking at all.

The blond lifted his eyebrows with a little Well, go on then expression, looking faintly exasperated that Harry wasn’t volunteering an answer already.

“I actually had another idea,” Harry started, eyes still on Draco, searching for any hint that he’d misread the other boy’s cues. But Draco’s lips only quirked up in an encouraging hint of a smile. Harry looked back to Hermione and Ron. “I was thinking of doing something to help Muggle-borns and other kids who don’t know about the Wizarding world when they come to Hogwarts.”

Both of his best friends looked taken aback for a moment. Then Hermione’s expression melted into something warmer, her brown eyes sparkling, while Ron continued to look baffled.

Harry dared look back to the boy beside him once, then he went on. “Draco had all these ideas of ways things could be improved, but—you know, there are kids like me, who come in not knowing a Knut from a Galleon or what in the world Quidditch is or—or how to travel by Floo.” He knitted his hands together nervously, fingers pressing down into his own flesh. “I was thinking to talk to McGonagall about whether I could help set up some summer programme for incoming students, like bringing them to Hogwarts early so they don’t feel so overwhelmed the first time they see it all.”

Ron’s brow wrinkled. “But—I mean, why? It’s not like it’s all that different being a witch or wizard, right?”

Hermione and Harry both leveled disbelieving looks at him, and he flushed red, leaning back on the sofa. “What? What’d I say?”

“Ron, I hadn’t even known you five minutes before you had to explain to me that chocolate frogs could jump away or that the people in portraits could just up and walk out of them. Believe me, there’s plenty for us Muggle-borns to learn. Or how would you like it if I’d dropped you outside a Muggle phone box with a tenner and told you to figure out how to call yourself a cab when you were eleven years old?”

“Not sure I’d like it now, mate,” Ron admitted. “I only understood half those words.”

“Exactly,” Hermione agreed with fond exasperation. “Never mind if we dared you to try to download a file from the internet or figure out how to operate a word processor.”

“Now you’re just making up words,” Ron insisted. He blanched when both Harry and Hermione shook their heads emphatically and with no one else to turn to, he actually looked to the one other pureblood in the room.

“Don’t look at me,” Draco said mildly. “It is a foreign land, as far as I'm concerned.”

Harry grinned at him. “Exactly. But we could try to make it a bit easier for kids, giving them a sort of crash course in what it means to live in the Wizarding world and introducing them better to what they’ll need to know.”

“Well, I think it sounds like a wonderful idea to pursue,” Hermione said. “You must let me know if there’s any way I can help. Professor Burbage did her best, but still... One afternoon together in Diagon Alley to pick up school supplies was hardly a thorough orientation into a brand new life.”

There was a little clatter as Draco set his tea cup back on its saucer, standing abruptly. “Please, carry on,” he said, when everyone turned to look up at him on his feet. “I just realized we should put some of this food away before it all spoils.”

He looked rather green around the edges, though, as he waved his wand and levitated all the dishes but the one Ron was picking at, hurrying out of the room with the little parade of leftovers trailing behind his shoulder.

“Couldn't Kreacher have just...?” Ron trailed off, blinking in surprise at the sudden removal of all the other food.

Harry frowned after the blond, leaning forward on the sofa cushion as if he might get to his feet and follow.

What had set Draco off? Hermione had only agreed with the idea of providing more support to Muggle-borns, then she’d mentioned her own trip to Diagon Alley with the old Muggle Studies professor—

Oh.

Harry had nearly forgotten, which was terrible, but there were so many awful things he’d seen through Voldemort’s eyes. Watching one of the Hogwarts professors he’d barely known be tortured and fed to a giant snake while Draco had been forced to watch had, unbelievably, rather faded into the noise of so much violence and horror.

“I should maybe—” Harry got to his feet. “He was there, I mean, when Professor Burbage was—”

Hermione jumped up and caught Harry's arm as he was about to bolt after Draco out the door.

“Let me, Harry,” she said, squeezing lightly on his forearm. “I’m the one who brought her up. I'll check on him.”

Then before he could stop her, Hermione hurried from the room, pulling the heavy door shut after her with a quiet click. Harry stared after her, worried for several different reasons now.

“Oh god, they’re not both going to make it back unhexed, are they?” he asked, still looking across the room at the door.

“My money’s on Hermione coming out on top in that fight,” Ron said through a full mouth, apparently not worried enough to stop stealing bites of his mother’s apple crumble.

“Honestly, so is mine,” Harry muttered, backing up and taking a ginger seat on the edge of the sofa, ready to jump up again at the first sign of trouble.

It wasn’t just the fact that the Wizengamot had forbidden Draco from harming any other living creature with magic. Harry had the sneaking suspicion that even without that injunction, Draco wouldn’t have dared lift a wand on Hermione—whether because of his guilt from the war or because he didn’t want to put a wedge between Harry and himself by hurting Harry’s best friend.

At least he could call Kreacher if he thought he was in actual danger from Hermione at any point, right?

And she wouldn’t do anything to actually hurt him. Or not in any lasting way.

“You seem awfully calm about Hermione being off alone with Malfoy,” Harry said, looking over at Ron at last.

“Told you, mate. My money’s on Hermione in that fight. And besides, she wouldn’t take kindly to me busting in there, wand waving, insisting that I need to fight her battles for her.”

Harry blinked. It was…remarkably mature of Ron to realize that. He really had grown up a lot in the last year or so, and for once, Harry didn’t feel bad about himself when he saw it. He just felt happy for his friend.

“You’re also being, er, remarkably okay about Draco being here at all,” Harry said, a little more cautiously. “Sorry for not warning you or anything.” Though it was his house, where he could technically do whatever (or whoever) he wanted.

This time Ron went a little pink, but he still shrugged his lanky shoulders, picking one of Harry’s forks around in some soggy crumble.

“He’s not being as much of a git as he’s sometimes been, I’ll give him that,” Ron grumbled. “Still a git, of course, but—not active-Death-Eater levels of awfulness.”

It was a surprise to hear Ron even mention Draco’s past so casually, and not when shouting in fury or suspicion. “So…you’re good? With the fact that I’m, y’know, dating the former Death Eater who accidentally poisoned you once and also was a shit the entire time we were growing up?”

Ron sighed, rubbing at the tip of his nose in an embarrassed gesture. “Look, I’ve got some idea of my own these days about how easy it is to make one monumentally shitty decision and then find yourself unable to take it back, no matter how much you wish you could. Whether it’s a terrible tattoo that binds you to psychopath or—or Apparating away from your best mate when he most needs you, knowing you’ve got no way to ever find him again.” Ron’s eyes flickered to Harry’s for the briefest moment, before dropping back to the dish in front of him as he smiled ruefully down at it. “So the signing up as a Death Eater stuff—yeah, I guess I’m over that. He was obviously in over his head, and I’m guessing whatever he went through surrounded by those nutters was probably punishment enough for being an idiot at barely sixteen.”

Harry beamed at his best mate, having to blink a few times to keep his eyes from getting watery.

“That’s pretty amazingly big of you, mate,” he said, a bit gruff.

Ron shrugged, his ears burning red at the tips. “Yeah, well, I can be big. I’ve still got half a foot on the Ferret, scrawny little runt that he is.”

“Hey. If you’re calling him a scrawny little runt, then what does that make me?” Harry asked sourly.

“Someone who has terrible taste in men, apparently,” Ron said. “And I do still hold the whole six-years-of-being-a-twat against Malfoy, just so we’re clear. That’s not some one-time mistake he made. He was just a little shit of a child, and he chose to be that little shit over and over and over again.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “He did. But I think he’s trying to make better choices now.”

Ron looked a little uncomfortable to admit, “Yeah. I can see that. So…I’ll try to give it a fair shot.” He looked up at Harry. “For your sake, at least. Keeping my best mate is more important to me than holding a grudge against Draco bloody Malfoy.”

Okay, that was just too much.

“Would it freak you out as being too gay if I wanted to hug you right now?” Harry asked.

Ron looked surprised. “What? Why would it? I know you don’t feel anything like that about me.”

Now Harry was the one surprised. “How?” he asked, baffled.

“Harry. Mate.” Ron shook his head in resigned disbelief. “You are the least subtle person in the world when you’re gone on someone. You’ve got fucking stars in your eyes when you look at that pointy git. You’ve never once looked at me like that, and thank god for that, because it ain’t ever gonna happen.” He set his fork down in the remains of the apple crumble and ordered, “Now get over here and give me that hug, you numpty.”

As Harry followed orders, both of them standing so Ron could fold his long arms around Harry in a spine-cracking hug that lifted him off his feet, Harry reflected on the fact that—despite all Draco’s proclamations about how much of a disaster this was all sure to be, and even Harry’s own fears in that regard—reality always turned out to be something far subtler and complex but also generally forgiving. At least as long as they surrounded themselves with people who loved them.

They would find a way to work it all out somehow.

And if Draco wanted to complain miserably later that day about what torture it had been to walk on eggshells around Harry’s best friends or how it was all still destined to end in flames—well, Harry hadn’t gotten around to telling the idiot that he’d invited Andromeda to bring Narcissa to 12 Grimmauld Place after her release, so that Draco could see his mother again. That ought to buy him a bit of forgiveness.

Of course, he also hadn’t told Draco that they were on babysitting duty on Wednesday, and chances were neither of them were prepared for an entire afternoon trying to keep an eight-month-old baby alive and happy.

Well. Maybe he could invite Pansy over to make up for that.

 

⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒ ✵ ⭒

 

That night, they dreamed, perhaps for the last time.

Harry looked over at the blond beside him in the same bed that he knew they were sleeping side by side in at that very moment.

“Hey, you,” he said, smiling softly, his cheek pressed against the soft pillow under his head.

Draco blinked, sitting up slightly on one elbow. He looked around the room he’d personally redecorated, then flopped back down on the mattress. “Oh, this is weird.”

“It’s been, what? A month nearly?”

Tapping his fingers on Harry’s arm, Draco appeared to count back through the weeks. “More than. It was still November when you brought those memories back with you.”

“D’you think this’ll be it?”

Draco’s eyes searched Harry’s, his face still somehow a little more open and vulnerable here than he’d yet learned to be while they were awake.

“It seems likely,” the blond admitted.

“Then will you at least tell me here what you and Hermione talked about?” Harry teased. “We won’t remember when we’re awake.”

Draco rolled onto his back, hands over his face. Harry rolled closer as well, one arm snaking over the other boy and his chin dropping on that bare chest, after quickly pressing a kiss to one of the scars crossing it.

“You two were gone a rather long time,” he pushed. But all Draco had admitted during the day was that they had both apologized for some things and agreed to try to move forward.

“Granger was very decent,” Draco mumbled into his hands, but he had also admitted that during the day, so Harry kept on waiting for more.

“I told her how sorry I was for—for all the things I had said about her growing up. For being so hateful and willfully ignorant, mostly because of my own incredible jealousy. And I told her how sorry I was for what happened to her in my family’s home, while I had stood by and not stopped it.”

His voice, which had been strained and thin until that point, shifted to something more wondering as he said, “She said she was sorry for what I must have gone through as well. And she complimented me on how much I'd grown.” There was a hint of a smile under those hands. “Then she complimented me on the house, saying that she knew it had to have mostly been my work, ‘no offense to Harry.’”

“She is a very smart witch,” Harry agreed, not offended in the least. He also thought Draco was cleverer than him at charms and things, and that was just fine with him. He got to reap all the benefits without researching a million rare spells himself.

“She...”

Draco’s voice seemed too thick to force out any more words. Harry pressed another kiss to the thin scar beneath his face, which began around Draco’s lowest ribs on his right side before crossing his chest to end over his left collarbone.

“She what?” he asked when there was still nothing more from his new boyfriend.

“She pressed me rather a bit. As she has every right to,” Draco hurriedly added, lifting his hands from his face and glancing at Harry. “She wanted to know if the Muggle-born program was really your idea.”

“What?” Harry sat up slightly. “Why?”

Draco shrugged his bare shoulders, his arms still up and the backs of his hands resting on his forehead. He looked uncomfortable as he admitted, “She’s not wrong to point out that some could wonder. Teaching Muggle-borns to assimilate better could seem like a way to help them or a way to glorify pureblood culture, depending on who is describing it.” He looked up at the star-studded ceiling. “She pointed out that my involvement in any such idea, and my involvement with you, could sully the entire thing.”

Harry felt hot and cold at the same time. A part of him wanted to wake up that instant and Floo to Hermione's to shout a bit, but of course he wouldn't remember to even if he did wake himself with his anger.

“She’s right, of course,” Draco agreed. “I'd considered the same thing. That there will be backlash if my name is ever to be attached in any way. That the papers will paint it as me dragging you into some twisted relationship for my own gains, manipulating Harry Potter into perpetuating a new generation of pureblood supremacy by teaching impressionable children why Wizarding culture is best.”

“But—but doing nothing isn't helping them either!”

Draco nodded, dragging his hands back down over his face to hide behind them and mumble into his own palms, “And I'm still selfish and greedy enough not to want to let this go.” He shook his head beneath those hands, his pale hair spread over the pillowcase. “I’m not some self-sacrificing Gryffindor. I want this, Potter. I don't want to lose it or let it go. I don't—”

Harry shut him up by clambering up and dragging his hands away so he could take that miserable face in his hands and kiss Draco so hard he couldn't say another word.

“Me, too,” he promised against the mouth under his. He pulled back enough to look into those gray eyes. “We're not giving up. We're finding a way to make it work.”

Draco slid his hands around Harry's head, fingers buried in the hair at the base of his skull, holding him in place as they kissed.

When they finally broke apart, he ducked his chin down, pulling Harry with him so their foreheads were pressed tight. “So I'm going to suggest we expand Muggle Studies as well,” he said into the close space between their faces. “As an early-year subject, not just an elective you can choose for O.W.L.s from Third Year.”

Harry sucked in a breath of their shared air.

“I haven't worked up the nerve to tell you yet, but I will. We should propose some kind of comparative studies class at Hogwarts, where purebloods can learn more about Muggle history and modern life and Muggle-borns can get caught up on ours.”

Harry grinned, his eyes shut since their faces were too close to even see anything. He rubbed his nose against Draco's and told him, “Sounds brilliant. I hope you work up that nerve soon.”

“Oh, I will,” Draco promised. “Probably tomorrow or the next day. It was just all a bit too much tonight, and I've still been thinking through some of the finer points. Surely before the end of the holidays.”

Harry was so stupidly proud of the stubborn prickly git that he was still only starting to truly know. Perhaps it wasn't entirely out of the goodness of his heart that Draco was considering such an idea. Perhaps he was partly doing it because it would help provide them cover from backlash and ensure that they wouldn’t split up over negative press—but he was a Slytherin. That was only to be expected.

It didn’t lessen how amazing it was that Draco bloody Malfoy was going to help make sure that Muggle-borns and purebloods learned more about each other or that he’d asked Hermione Granger’s forgiveness. He had grown and changed, even if he didn’t see it himself or dare to recognize it. He was still Draco Malfoy—his old hawthorn wand still recognized him and answered him just fine—but he also had a new wand that felt more at home in his hand now. He had new options now that he hadn’t ever considered before.

“I’m sure I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about the classes soon,” Draco promised, voice soft. “What I may not tell you when we’re awake is…” His breath caught a little, shaking. “How fucking grateful I am that you tried to remember.”

“Draco…” Harry started, something in his chest aching.

“No, just let me—” Draco shook his head, his forehead rolling under Harry’s. “It never would’ve happened if you hadn’t. And I don’t know—I’m still afraid it’s going to end any minute, and then I’m probably going to want to die watching you go off and run back to Weasley’s sister or, even worse, go find some other bloke who isn’t me, but—this has been— This is—”

His breathy voice was shaking so badly by then that Harry was quite certain there would be tears in the other boy’s eyes, if there had been any space between them for Harry to actually see them. His own eyes were burning, just listening to the words.

“Thank you, you stupid fucking lion, for being brave enough for the both of us.”

“You tell me this now,” Harry said, laughing in disbelief, “when I won’t even remember it. Sneaky fucking Slytherin.”

Draco laughed along with him, hands in his hair, both of them clutching each other. “I guess I could try some weird Legilimency again, if you really insist,” he said.

But Harry shook his head, lifting his head enough to drop kisses on both of Draco’s damp cheeks before settling down with their foreheads pressed tight again. “No, it’s fine. Maybe someday you’ll admit it when we’re awake as well. And even if you don’t… Well. It’ll be all right. I think I already sort of know.”

And they didn’t need to dwell in dreams any longer.

Notes:

Oh no, that's it! For now anyway?

I'm playing around with ideas of a sequel to have some fun following what happens with Harry's strange new career idea and all, but I am only a couple chapters in so far and seeing if it could develop into something. But I don't like to start posting a story until I've written a good chunk of it, both for the sake of being able to provide regular updates and because I am really not a planner at all, and I could find myself needing to go back and change earlier bits after something unexpected organically develops. So it could be weeks or months before anything might appear again. (I started writing IYD in March and began posting in June, for example.) But...perhaps there will be more?!

Either way, I have greatly enjoyed this silly tale and greatly enjoyed those of you who joined me for the ride. Wishing you all the best and perhaps see you again soon!