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Chapter Text

“One of the most miraculous things about forests is that they sometimes grow back after they have been destroyed.”

– Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World

*

March 2001

He’s been awake all night, every muscle clenched. The lumpy pallet digs into his back, but he can’t move. If he does, time will shatter and he’ll have to confront the fact that it’s all been a hallucination, that he’s still got years to go. The lamps flicker as a Dementor glides soundlessly past; Draco feels its coldness steal his hope from his hands, tries not to outwardly react to the flickering memories that dance to the front of his head. He’d screamed the first time, cried the second. The only thing it had got him was more attention. Dementors like it when you put up a fuss. He’d learned to be quiet after that, no matter how bad it got.

“Oi,” a voice says, and the bars rattle. There’s the unmistakeable sound of keys in a lock. He digs his nails into his palms, tries to keep his breathing as steady as possible. “5498. Get up.”

He peels himself into a painful sitting position. Two guards are waiting – one of them is smirking, the other is poker-faced. “What?” he rasps.

“He’s forgotten,” Smirking Guard says. “Imagine that.”

“No,” Draco says, his heart lurching forward into panic. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well hurry up then,” Serious Guard snaps. “We haven’t got all day.”

Draco stands, every inch of him an endless groan, and follows them down the flagstoned hall through several puddles of an unidentifiable liquid. He can feel the eyes of his fellow prisoners burning right through him, though no-one would be stupid enough to come close to the bars, not with an outgoing prisoner. It’s not worth it, not when there’s nothing to be gained.

They take him to the mouldy shower block to stand under a freezing stream of water, and then a small room with a spluttering gas light, where his old defence attorney, Ms. Everett, is waiting with the prisoner superintendent and a red-robed Auror.

“Instigation of the process of prisoner release,” the superintendent dictates to a hovering quill. “Prisoner number 5498, Draco Lucius Malfoy, imprisoned for three years for participation in Death Eater activity and aiding and abetting the crimes of Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, deceased. Sentence fulfilled, and parole granted.”

She fixes Draco with a cold stare. “The conditions of your parole are as follows: you will be subject to a tracking spell for the rest of your life, and forbidden from leaving England. You may not carry a wand for the next two years, but if those two years pass without incident, you will be able to apply to your parole officer for permission to purchase one. Your parole officer is Auror Lennox,” she nods to the Auror standing next to her, a nondescript white middle-aged man with brown hair, “and you will meet with him every six months, or if there are any incidents. Apart from those, you are free to go. Do you have any questions?”

“No, ma’am,” Draco says, as quietly as he possible can, lowering his eyes to the edge of the table.

“Fine. Your lawyer has requested to speak to you before you leave. Your possessions are here,” she indicates a box on the side of her desk. “Please dress, and then Auror Lennox will administer the tracker and escort you off the premises.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Malfoy,” she says, and he looks up, sees her stern face with the greying hair and the lines carving crevasses across her face. “This is the only chance you’re getting. Don’t fuck it up.”

With that, she stands and sweeps from the room with the Auror bobbing in her wake. Ms. Everett steps closer, and Draco tries very hard to restrain the flinch. Her brown eyes look about as worried as they ever get, and she pushes a couple of her braids behind her ear. He wants to ask why she’s here, what she wants when, despite her stellar performance in court, she made it very clear she had taken his case as a favour long-owed to his mother, but he can’t bring himself to form the words.

“Right,” she says. “How are you?”

He makes the tiniest shrug he can, looks at her shoes – red, shiny. They’re the brightest thing he’s seen in years that isn’t blood.

“Stupid question, sorry,” she sighs. “You’re wondering why I’m here, aren’t you? Malfoy, look at me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Sorry,” he whispers, forces himself to meet her eyes.

“It’s okay,” she says, even though it’s obviously not. He wonders whether she’s even been here before, if she knows what Azkaban does. “I just came to check in, let you know what’s been happening in the last few years. Didn’t know if my letters were getting through.”

“I never got them.”

“I figured. Right. I’ll put a screen up. Get changed, you look like you’re going to freeze solid.”

She conjures one of those dressing screens, silk printed, just like his mother used to keep in her bedroom. It is so hilariously out of place in this dark, dank office that Draco has no choice to believe this is reality; there’s no way his brain would have conjured this of its own accord. He reaches for the box, finds the robes he wore to his trial. They’re too formal for this, and hang loose and heavy on his brittle shoulders, but the cloak is blessedly warm and he tucks it around himself. Everything feels too soft. Merlin, how did he ever take anything like this for granted?

“So,” Ms. Everett is saying, “they still haven’t caught your father. I thought you should know that. The Manor now belongs to the Ministry, so you won’t be able to live there anymore I’m afraid.”

“That’s fine,” he says, pushing the screen aside. She blinks at him, but is too professional to comment.

“Okay. Since that was the case, I believe that there’s still some money in your family vaults – there were some hefty fines, but you should be able to access them.”

“Thank you.” Then, because he can’t shake the feeling, “why are you here? Not that I don’t appreciate it I…”

“I had time,” Ms. Everett says, “and it was the right thing to do. Your mother would have wanted me to check on you.”

Draco chokes back the sudden lump in his throat at the thought of his mother, at the funeral he wasn’t able to attend.

“Look after yourself,” Ms. Everett raises her chin, and then she’s gone and Auror Lennox is coming back in in all his nondescript glory.

He silently puts the tracker spell on Draco; it’s a brief sting, and then the tiniest tug on his ankle when he tries to move his feet.

“It’ll disable you if you go over a border,” Lennox tells him. “I’m going to take you to London. Does that suit?”

Draco nods, and follows him out, along the front facing corridor to a small glass room over the raging sea. Lennox offers him an arm with studied politeness, and Draco takes it, takes his final breath in Azkaban, and then they’re gone.

*

It’s not that he thought he’d be welcomed back into wizarding society with open arms. It’s more the fact that he expected, upon Lennox leaving him near Trafalgar Square, to get by unnoticed – that after three years, people would have other things to be interested by than gawking at him. Looking back, he wonders at how fucking naïve he was.

The second he pushes open the door to the Leaky Cauldron, it starts to fall silent. He lowers his eyes away from everyone, pushes his loose, prison-long hair back behind his ears, and walks through as quickly as he can. The stares burn, branding, just like they did after the Battle of Hogwarts when the Aurors showed up at his shoulders and told him that no-one would get hurt if he just came quietly. Good choice, one of them had said when he’d handed over his wand without a fuss. Thank god for Slytherin self-preservation, the other had muttered. It hadn’t even been self-preservation at that point, just complete and utter exhaustion. Even if he’d wanted to snarl and shoot hexes and escape to live on a Fijian beach, he would have had no fight left to do it. Nothing in the world could have made him raise his wand against them.

Someone stands in the door of the Leaky Cauldron as he stands and stares at the brick wall, flexes his hand. Fuck. He’d forgotten.

“A little bit stuck are we, Death Eater?” the wizard says, voice ugly. When Draco turns, he doesn’t recognise them. “We don’t want your sort here.”

Draco tries to bring back some of his old self, his posture, his sneer. “I have to go to Gringotts, just like the rest of you.”

“Just like the rest of us, eh?” The wizard has been joined by a second – ruddy cheeks, listing slightly to the left. “You’re nothing like the rest of us, you fucking monster.”

Fear boils in Draco’s throat, and he knows he mustn’t show it, fists his hand in his cloak. He’s got nothing – no wand, barely any strength. If they decide to beat him up he’s just got to take it, like…

“Oi,” a third person says, shoving their way into the courtyard – after a moment, Draco recognises Tom the barman, though he barely knows why – he and his father never spoke to anyone at the Leaky Cauldron when they were forced to pass through instead of using the Floo. “Clear off, you’re going to miss the end of the game. Leave him alone.”

One of them begins to make a protest, but Tom shuts the back door in his face.

“Don’t want no violence in my backyard,” he says, when it’s obvious that Draco isn’t going to say anything. “I’ll let you through. Forgotten your wand?”

Draco closes his eyes for a second. “Not allowed one.”

“Right. Well.” Tom taps the pattern into the bricks, “keep your head down and be quick. I wouldn’t want to be out and about, if I were you.”

“Thank you,” Draco says.

“Don’t thank me, just don’t come back. I don’t want any nastiness in my pub.”

Draco just nods, and forces himself not to cry. He is not going to cry, he refuses. He wishes his cloak had a hood, he wishes that he could just Apparate miles from here and bury himself in a hole in the ground and die. His stomach growls, and he remembers that they hadn’t filled up his food bucket this morning. He hunches down as small as he can and makes his way down the street to Gringotts which towers luminescent in the sunshine. As he passes, he tries to ignores the hisses and whispers, the people scattering into groups, the stares like sharp-edged jinxes as he scurries past. Protego, he thinks to himself, imagines a shield the way he used to in his cell whenever the Dementors were restless, hungry.

Diagon Alley has been rebuilt since he was last here. There’s no sign of the war on the shining shop-fronts, and most of the traders have returned to just the way they were. He pauses very briefly by the window of Flourish and Blotts, wonders if he has the courage to go in. A book on hidden fauna of the British Isles is nestled open against blue velvet – Luna Lovegood waves out of the flyleaf. Famous magizoologist, he reads and wonders when people started taking her seriously.

Something impacts painfully with his shoulder, and he jerks around to see a trio of young witches laughing in his direction, pointing. He hears Death Eater again, sees one of them raise her wand. His old self would have retaliated, he thinks, then, no. His old self wouldn’t have had to. No-one would have dared hex a Malfoy in broad daylight.

He turns and walks away. Like it or not, he knows how this works - rule one, you see, is always get out of range.

Gringotts is more of the same. People stare. He pretends he can’t see them, focuses on the echo of his footsteps and the intricate pattern of protective runes on the tiles that he’d never noticed before. It’s fascinating what you see when you’re forced to look down. As he approaches the bench several of the goblins turn away to have an intense discussion. He wonders if he’s going to get escorted out, if he’s going to have to steal to eat tonight, find a street corner to bed down on. He wonders at how cruel the world has become now he is no longer on top of it.

There’s an abandoned newspaper on the floor. A picture of Theo Nott – his friend, he thinks, hollow – smiling and waving out of it as he hands a purse to someone in official-looking robes.

“Follow me,” one of the older goblins says eventually, gesturing him in the direction of the doors to the vaults. It’s an icily silent cart ride down to the depths of the Malfoy vault. There’s a new dragon dozing on its plinth, cobalt blue and emerald green; its eyes flicker half-open as the cart speeds past. Belatedly, Draco remembers that the old one had escaped when Potter and his sidekicks broke into Aunt Bellatrix’s vault. He shoves that memory quickly away before the remembrance can make him vomit, focuses on the cool air on his hands, the judder of magical machinery beneath his feet.

The goblin still hasn’t said anything as the cart draws to a halt in front of the Malfoy vault. It draws a long, scrawny finger down the metal-banded door which opens smoothly. Draco steps inside, tries not to think of the thousands of tonnes of earth above his head, of the cell he’s only just vacated. Breathe, he tells himself fiercely, looking around at the chests of money. Just breathe. Ms. Everett was right – it’s practically empty compared to how much it used to hold, but it’s enough for now, enough to get away from this sodding place.

He goes over to the folder of papers tucked at the very back of the vault, heart in his throat, and begins to leaf through them. Most are receipts from the seventeenth and eighteenth century spice-trading business, ownership documents for sailing ships long-rotted, but far back enough and…yes. He snags the yellowed piece of parchment and tucks it into the pocket of his robes before filling up a coin purse with galleons. The goblin is still waiting outside and they rattle back to the surface.

As they come out of the door Draco nearly collides with someone, takes a step back. Eunice Selwyn, the woman who’d been close to his mother before the war, who’d been vaguely in the background of his life the way parents’ friends are – indulgent, friendly – works her mouth and spits at his feet.

“Scum,” she says, furious. “Just like your father.”

Draco can only stare as she turns on her heel and stalks off. His eyes burn. He takes a long, shaking breath and makes up his mind. The goblin harrumphs.

“Will that be all, Mister Malfoy?”

“Would you be able to convert all of this into Muggle money?” he asks. The goblin meets his gaze for a moment and then nods curtly, takes the proffered coin purse.

“Wait here.”

Draco does as he’s told, tries to decipher the runes on the floor. He’s out of practise. If only he could go to Flourish and Blotts and find a copy of their textbook, he could…but there’s no point. There is no fucking point, is there?

“Here,” the goblin says, reappearing silently at his shoulder and handing him a folded leather wallet. Inside are crisp pieces of purple and white paper. Draco frowns.

“This is…”

“Muggle money, as you requested sir,” the goblin says. “If you wouldn’t mind leaving the premises sir, we would prefer not to…”

“Be seen serving Death Eaters,” Draco finishes for them, wearily. “Yes I’ve got the picture, thank you.”

The goblin frowns infinitesimally and hurries back to the bench. Draco looks up and everyone who has been staring looks down at their papers or to their companions, only a few of them meeting his eyes with open fear or hatred.

“Bastards,” he mutters under his breath and walks away.

*

He walks and walks until he is nearly faint with hunger, until the world spinning and swooping around him. He’d taken off his cloak and robes a while ago when a group of young East Asian tourists had clustered around him asking for a photograph. He’d not known how to say no, had let them pose with him and tried not to look too dead behind the eyes. After that, he’d just picked a direction and walked, taking in the incredible blue of the late winter sky and trying to avoid bumping into people or being run over by a belligerent crimson bus. He knows that Pansy's family used to have a townhouse somewhere called Chelsea, briefly considers trying to find it, but his stomach clenches at the thought of facing her after all of this. What if she hates him too, now? Better not to know.

Eventually he turns off the main road and into a side street which cuts between tall, ornate, red-brick buildings and wanders along until he reaches a café with cakes and sandwiches piled attractively in the window. A couple of posh-looking white women smoke on the chairs outside, a fluffy white dog yapping furiously around their ankles at a gathering of very bored, unbothered pigeons. It’s like the places his mother used to frequent in Diagon Alley and that’s most of the reason why he steps inside – that and the reality that his knees are about to give out from hunger. The smell of fresh bread hits him like a stunner to the chest and he wobbles.

“Hi,” the girl behind the counter says. “How’s it going?”

“Um,” he says, feeling a flush burn inexorable up the back of his neck. His breath is coming quick and acidic. There’s so much choice, how is he ever going to make a decision, oh Merlin he should have just…

“The roast pepper and prosciutto focaccia is really good,” the girl says after an agonising moment, taking pity on him. “And we do a mean Greek salad.”

“Sounds good,” he manages. “Do you have tea?”

“So many kinds of tea. I’m guessing that’s not helpful right now, you’re looking pretty freaked out. Shall I just pick one for you?”

“Yes, thank you.” Draco scrabbles for the Muggle money in his pocket, nearly drops his cloak. He fishes out one of the pieces of paper and puts it on the counter. “Is this enough?”

“More than enough,” the girl says. “Look, go sit down. I’ll bring your food and change over in a sec, yeah?”

With an attempt at a grateful smile, he escapes back outside. The women are still talking loudly about how Eloise did the most awfully scandalous thing, and he sinks down into an artfully carved chair, pulls his cloak over his knees. The dog loses interest in failing to frighten the pigeons, meanders closer to sniff at his shoe. The waitress brings the food out with a smile and a pile of oddly shaped coins, and then leaves him to it and he’s staring at more food than he’s seen in three whole years, barely knowing where to begin.

He thinks hours might pass. The posh white women and their dog leave, and he sits and carefully makes his way through his lunch, tries not to eat too fast, tries not to get overwhelmed. When he’s done, he just sits back in the bracing air, breathes in the tang of the pollution and watches the Muggles rocket through their daily lives around him, marvelling at how invisible he’s suddenly become. It doesn’t feel real.

 “Are you okay?” the girl who’d served him asks when she comes outside to clear the empty tables. “Need anything else?”

He blinks at her for a second, and then shakes his head. She brings him another tea anyway, and a big piece of cake heavy with the smell of oranges and chocolate.

“You look like you’ve been through the wringer today,” she says, “my boss would have a heart attack if she saw you. It’s on us.”

“Thank you,” he replies, staring at it. It stares back. She goes back inside, and he remembers that he has to pick up the fork if he wants to eat it. It’s only been three years, but Azkaban has a way of making you forget things like that, forget that you’re a person.

The cake is so good he can only manage half of it. The sky darkens in increments, like watercolour paint trickling down onto the rooves of the buildings.

“It’s none of my business,” the waitress says when she comes out again with a box for the rest of his cake and a broom, “but you do have somewhere to go, right? You’ve been here all afternoon.”

“You’re closing.”

“Yeah, soon.”

“Yes,” he says, avoiding her eyes and the naked kindness in her face. “Yes. How do I get to Skipton from here?”

“Skipton? Where’s that?”

“Yorkshire.”

“Well you can get a train to York from King’s Cross, which is twenty minutes on the bus. Get the 205 which says Bow Church on the front from the main road, just up that way. Someone at the station will know about Skipton,” she says, leaning on her broom. After a moment he looks up at her – the tattoo poking out of the neck of her sweater, the gold jewellery glinting in her black-brown ears, the puff of her hair caught up in a glittery scrunchy. She seems a few years older than him but her smile makes her look younger.

“Thank you,” he says.

“No worries,” she replies.

*

He doesn’t actually know how old he was when he found out about the castle. It’s something his father mentioned in passing – the residence of a junior, long-dead branch of the Malfoy family near Skipton. He’d tracked down the original owner in the picture gallery on a stormy summer afternoon when one of his long, lonely holidays was dragging its feet. The portrait had only been able to speak in an irritating mixture of Old French and Old English; Draco had found the right dictionary in the library and spent a frustrating three hours trying to find out more about the castle.

“You live in a manor, boy,” Grandfather Abraxas had told him sternly from the frame he’d taken over to watch Draco’s progress. “Why are you interested in that old pile of junk?”

“Have you been there?”

“So what if I have?”

“Well,” Draco had said, hands on his hips, “how do you know it’s junk?”

“No-one has lived there for three centuries, do you think…” Abraxas had started, but then two of the other portraits had started their regular mid-afternoon slanging match and he’d hurried off to watch the show. Looking around the castle now, Draco maybe thinks his grandfather had a point. It’s squat and sagging, half-eaten by ivy, and the door slumps drunkenly in its frame. At least the ivy is unlikely to be venomous and man-eating. Inside there are cans scattered all over the dirty, cracked flagstones. Cobwebs glisten in the high arches of the ceiling. Draco holds the light he’d purchased at the York station hardware store higher, curses his lack of wand. With a wand, he could get this all cleaned up in no time, but of course that’s the one thing he’s not allowed to have.

He wanders through the echoing, eerie rooms and when he comes back down the steep stone spiral stairs, there are footsteps crunching outside, a swinging beam of light, and a loud male voice:

“Oi! You lot! Get out of there! You know this is private…who the bloody hell are you?”

The man is older, perhaps in his fifties or sixties, white and grizzled. He’s wearing tall rubber boots and holding a contraption that shines hard white light, a different shape from Draco’s.

“I,” Draco says, and then in a remembered echo of former arrogance draws himself up to his full height, fishing in the pocket of his worn robes for the property deed. Once he was basically a prince. This castle is his. “I believe I’m the owner.”

The man takes the piece of parchment and squints at it. “This is in very old English, boy.”

“It’s an old castle. My family haven’t lived up here in centuries.”

“So you’re this…Malfois, then?”

“Malfoy, yes.”

“French?”

“My family was originally, yes.” Then, for some reason, “my first name’s Draco.”

“Ah, a dragon right?” the man says, and Draco inhales sharply – surely Muggles don’t know about the existence of dragons. The man doesn’t seem at all bothered by the thought of them, which is…ridiculous. If one has actually faced off with a rampaging dragon, one would certainly not have that much sang-froid.

“Well, Draco Malfoy,” the man says, “my name’s Ned Walker. It’s a pleasure. I’m right pleased that someone’s finally taken over the place, it’ll stop all the local lads coming to smoke up here and make the place smell.”

“You…believe me?” Draco blurts in a moment of weakness, fists his hand hard in his cloak after a moment. His stomach tightens. If this doesn’t work…

Ned shrugs. “When I was a little lad, about fifty years ago, my father and I were doing some work up here and there was a man poking about. Long white blonde hair and an accent just like yours. Pops liked to talk, so we ended up having a chat with him about the place. Don’t remember his name but you look just like him. It tallies.”

“Grandfather Abraxas, probably,” Draco says after a moment, quietly surprised that his grandfather had deigned to speak to Muggles.

“What weird names you posh blokes have.” Ned laughs, but it’s friendly. Draco doesn’t feel like he’s taking the piss. “Abraxas.”

“It’s from Ancient Egypt, apparently.”

“Ancient Egypt,” Ned shakes his head. “Southerners. Anyway, glad it’s not those rascals causing trouble. If you need any help, Madge and I are down in the dale at Foss Farm and Wombleton Bridge is just a mile east along the lane. Shop, café, gardening centre, library, hairdresser. Everyone’s very friendly.”

“Thank you.”

“Right. Don’t be a stranger, young man. You’re always welcome at ours for a brew.”

Ned lifts his hand in farewell and heads back off into the gloopy dark-blue night. Draco sags against the side of the door, takes a deep breath and tries to stop the shaking in his legs. Above him, the dust clouds of the Milky Way are luminescent and scattered with blue-yellow stars. After a moment he realises giddily his life is unbelievably and completely his own; he’s in charge of all of his own decisions, he calls the shots, and he knows that the only thing he wants to do with all this freedom is make sure he never ends up in Azkaban ever again.

Chapter Text

When he wakes in the morning it takes him five minutes of paralysed terror to realise that he’s not back in his cell. His back aches from sleeping on the flagstones and his toes are about to freeze off, but the smell of mildew, creaking quiet, and softness of the cloak tucked around him eventually convince him that yesterday was real. He takes the luxury of lying there for a while, listening to something drip in the muddy light, and then gets up.

After slowly eating the rest of the cake from the café yesterday, he goes to prop open the back door and sits in the blowy sunshine, watching the greening branches squeak back and forth. In the light, he realises he’s actually got quite a bit of space – the castle itself is more of a tumbledown tower, and he can see vague remains of what once might have been a curtain wall lurking in the shadow of a colonising oak tree. Nature has completely overtaken the courtyard and if he closes his eyes he could imagine it as a kitchen garden full of fruit and vegetables, just like the one at the Manor he used to hide in whenever he could get away. Out front, he thinks, flowers, though he’ll have to research what will survive best up here. That Muggle – Ned, he mentally corrects – mentioned a village, a library. He looks up at the castle and the castle gazes back down at him; something inside him settles.

The lane down into the village is dusty and rutted and steep, nestled between two crumbling stone walls. A flock of sheep peacefully graze over to one side, and the other is empty, full of the beginnings of wildflowers. He can easily see Wombleton Bridge from the top of the hill, but it takes him about half an hour to get down into it. It’s a small timeless kind of place, gold-grey stone like the castle hunkered down around a tiny market square with daffodils in all the verges. A few people are out and about, and some of those Muggle cars are parked between white lines. He eyes them with trepidation for a while before deciding it’s safe enough to cross behind them and go into the shop with clothes in the window.

“Hello,” the silver-haired white woman behind the till greets him, looking up from her newspaper with a smile. He reminds himself not to shiver at how eerie the stillness of the front-page picture is. “How are you, dear?”

He blinks. “Um. Fine. Thank you. You?”

“Oh, good. Can’t wait to get into the sunshine later. You looking for anything in particular?”

“Clothes,” Draco says intelligently, looking around at the piles and racks that jostle together in no particular order. In the corner there’s a box of toys and a broken bookshelf filled with crockery. It’s a far cry from Madam Malkin’s, from being attended to and measured, looking through her style catalogues and listening to his mother interrogate one of the seamstresses about the brand new styles coming out of Paris and Milan.

“Well that is most of what we’ve got,” she says. “Have a sort through. Men’s stuff is over there, and it should be in size order. Are you from out of town?”

Draco moves away to the rack she indicates, starts to riffle through some of the clothes. Merlin but Muggles choose odd things to wear.

“I’ve just moved here,” he tells her, picking out a Slytherin-green jumper with a roll neck in it.

“Oh, you’re the boy who’s taken over Ned Walker’s castle,” she says, clicking her tongue. “How about that.”

“It’s actually my family’s castle.”

“Sorry, love. We’re just so used to calling it Ned’s by this point. Bet you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Yes,” Draco says, mollified, “I really have.”

After a while, he starts to get into the swing of things. The clothing shop was by far the hardest – even with the proprietor’s suggestions there hadn’t been all that much to fit him, but he’d found two pairs of what she’d called “dungarees”, several thick shirts and jumpers, a raincoat, and two pairs of boots. None of them are perfect, but they’re his and they’ll keep him warm. She’d also talked him into some floral crockery and an art-deco teapot, and then directed him next door to the library, which had been a blessed relief. Despite the lack of books willing to bite and scream, it has exactly the same hush and dusty atmosphere of the Hogwarts library. The librarian had helped him sign up for a small hard square called a library card and pick up several books on gardening and home-making, all with the same uncanny knowledge of who he was and where he was living.

He goes to the grocery store and spends far too long trying to decide what to buy, what will be easiest to cook without magic or much knowledge, and then takes up all his bags and tries to start the walk back up the hill. He doesn’t make it very far before his breath is whistling in his lungs and spots are dancing before his eyes. The bag handles are made of some thin and strong material that cuts deep red swathes into his hands. He puts them down for a moment, wipes the sweat off his forehead and takes a deep breath. He can do this. He can. He has to.

There is a loud beep and he swears, tries to shuffle in the direction of the verge. His hands are suddenly sticky, and he can hear his heart beat in his ears. He’s not moving fast enough. It’s going to hit him and he braces himself for the impact, shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t come. The car inches level with him and an older East Asian woman with a salt-and-pepper ponytail leans out of the window.

“Hey, need a hand?”

He glances up at her, at her toothy smile. “No, thank you, I’m ok.”

“Kind of calling bullshit, kid. Do you really want to be carrying those all the way up the hill?”

Draco thinks of his newfound principles, and then looks at the steep curve of the hillside. “Right. Okay.”

“Knew you’d see sense,” the woman says, leaning over and hauling the opposite door open. He lifts his bags into the space and then climbs in, sitting down on the seat. After a second, he remembers to pull the door shut. “I’m Madge. You’ve met my husband, I think. It’s Draco, right?”

“Uh, yes. You’re Ned’s wife?”

“For my sins,” Madge says, shooting him a side glance. The car growls and lurches forward, and then turns off into the muddy lane that leads to the castle. “Glad I was coming this way. You are far too skinny to be hauling all of that crap up here on your own. Don’t they feed their children in the south?”

He can’t tell her about prison, so just shrugs. “I’m not a child.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Hah. I’m sixty-two. You’re practically an infant in comparison.”

Is she usually this bold? he wonders as she swears at a particular vicious rut. The car is choking and spluttering like its about to give out. “This,” she grits out, “is exactly why I only drive the tractor up here.”

“Tractor?”

“Oh man. You’re from a city aren’t you?”

“No, I grew up in the countryside,” Draco feels oddly defensive. “I just…have never seen a tractor.”

“Huh,” Madge says, “it’s a piece of farm machinery. Huge wheels. Brilliant for roads like this, especially after winter. And towing things. It does that too.”

“You really didn’t have to…”

“Yes, I did. Also I’m nosy. Haven’t been up this place in years. Go open the gate, will you?”

Draco fiddles with the handle and accidentally shoves the door open, hopping out and hauling the rusty gate open for Madge to drive through. She curls the car in a perfect circle, and then the growling noise it makes stops and she swings out of the other side.

“Right,” she says, handing him his bags. “Do you need any help?”

“No, thank you,” Draco replies. Madge frowns at him and he curses the fucking panic that instinctively crawls into his throat. He’s in the real world now. A frown doesn’t have to mean that something bad is going to happen.

“I didn’t ask if you wanted help, I asked if you needed it.”

Draco looks up at the crumbling tower, the overgrown front garden, the front door leering off its hinges, thinks of the mossy, insect-infested ex-kitchen he’d slept in last night with the rotting remains of a table and the drip in the corner. It must show on his face because Madge grins.

“Thought that might be the case. Go get changed, and I’ll put some lunch on.”

*

On day four of what Madge dubs “Project Renovation,” they’re clearing the worst of the brambles in the backyard. The first day, she’d helped him unpack his groceries and clean the kitchen – as the evening had rolled in, she’d left with a jaunty ‘see you tomorrow’. He’d stared after her retreating back in shock, but she’d been as good as her word and she’s been here every day since.

“Nice tattoo,” Madge says and he freezes solid. Fuck. He’d been getting so hot that he’d rolled up his sleeves without thinking and of course the fucking thing is on display, Merlin he wishes he could cast an Incendio and scorch the entire thing and its dead tendrils of poisonous magic from his skin. Even the arm could go if it had to. He remembers getting it, alone on his knees in front of the Dar…Voldemort…the sandpaper of screams in his throat, agony like he’d never experienced before, Voldemort’s cruel, mocking red eyes fixed on his face. He’d always liked overt power, making a scene.

“Kid?” Madge has said, coming over. The brush of her gardening-gloved hand on his elbow brings him back to himself and he blinks back the burn of tears.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says as quickly as he can, swallowing hard. “I’m a…I think it’s time for lunch. I’ll go in and get it sorted. Same sandwich as yesterday?”

Madge’s eyes are sharp on his face but when she nods he bolts for the kitchen, now functional if not anything resembling pretty. Merlin. He’s got to get better at this, can’t give anything away. Everyone here is so bloody welcoming, they can’t know he was part of a…of a fucking terrorist group, spent three years in prison. They’ll spit in his face, just like the wizarding world did, and he’ll be left to rot up here all on his own for however many years he’s got left to live. He grips the side of the sink and stares into the dented metal, sipping in little gasps of air and trying to will his heart to slow down. It’s okay. Today was a slip. It’s okay. Tomorrow he’ll do better.

“Look,” Madge says bluntly when he comes out carrying wonky sandwiches and the teapot from the charity shop, two chipped mugs swinging from his little fingers. “Obviously something’s up. You don’t have to talk about it. Actually I’d recommend not talking about it to me, but Ned’s a very good listener if you need someone, alright?”

“Alright,” Draco says, setting the plate down on the curtain wall. “I’m ok.”

She gives him a raised-eyebrow I-call-your-bullshit stare, and then relents when he refuses to meet her eyes.

“What,” he says, “do you think about turning all this into a kitchen garden?”

“I think you’re gonna need someone who is more of an expert than me.”

*

Late on day twelve, he’s curled into his jumper and painting the front door. Yesterday, Madge had dragged him to what she called a hardware store in Skipton to purchase things that nowhere local sells. It was, all in all, a bewildering experience, especially when she’d decided that since they were there they might as well find better furniture, his own sets of gardening tools, and all the seeds to start the garden.

“Since you’re filthy rich,” she’d said, miming an elbow to the ribs, her mouth curled up in a teasing smile. “You can afford it. And in any case lambing starts soon so I won’t be around to help as much.”

“Lambing?” he’d asked, handing over several of those pieces of purple-white paper he’s learned are called twenty pound notes. He’s worked out that the exchange rate is utterly ridiculous too, and that the money still in his Gringotts vault is worth even more in the Muggle world. It’s one weight off his back. He won’t starve.

“Some country boy you are,” Madge had laughed, and helped him pick the big bags up and carry them back out to the car, which he’s learned is called a Jeep. It had been an…interesting…ride home, and he finds himself smiling as he remembers it – Madge yelling along to the pounding music as they’d sped down the main road back into the Dales, the juddering of high-speed air pouring through the half-open windows. It had kind of reminded him of flying.

Suddenly, there’s a loud, unmistakeable crack right next to his ear. “Merlin!”

Hand on his heart, he turns to see their old house-elf standing and staring at him, all huge eyes and drooping ears. She looks old, tired, and the tea-towel tied around her waist is fraying.

“Clovelly,” he says after a silent, breathless moment. “What the hell…why…hello. What are you doing here?”

“Clovelly still works for the Malfoy family, and now Master Draco is free,” Clovelly says, inching closer. “So Clovelly is here.”

“Right,” Draco says faintly, sinking down to her level and sitting back on his heels. In his surprise he’s managed to smear bottle-green paint all along the leg of his dungarees. They stare at each other for a bit. He puts his paintbrush down on the flagstones.

The last time he saw Clovelly they were at war. She’d helped him up the stairs after that night, bathed his wounds, and sat with him on the bed until his mother had managed to extricate herself. He’d reached out and held her hand. She’d let him. He’d never realised all the places you can find wartime allies until the two of them were sneaking food and potions to the prisoners in the cellar, mopping up the worst of Bellatrix’s damage, watching each other’s backs. It’s odd to see her again, to teeter on the edges of their pre-war relationship, the awful servile one that makes him want to shrivel up inside. “Please don’t call me Master.”

“But…” Clovelly hunches her shoulders.

“Please,” Draco says again. “I don’t want to be anyone’s Master.”

“But you are mine. I looks after you ever since yous was little and especially after that naughty Dobby runs away. I looks after you during the war.”

“I know.” Draco wracks his brain, tries to dredge up what little he’d actually learned about the Seelie Court and their strange entanglements with wizards. “But I’m not Lord of the Manor, not anymore. You can be free.”

“Clovelly doesn’t want to be free, and Clovelly doesn’t want to work for Mr Malfoy, because Mr Malfoy is…” she lunges for a largeish stone lying just off the path. Draco grabs her wrist before she gets there.

“No, Clovelly, I forbid you to punish yourself. I forbid it,” he says, hating himself for the way she responds instantly to the command. “And you’re right about my father. I don’t want you to go back to him, either.”

“Well what does we do?” she huffs, sitting down and sounding much more like her wartime self. “Yous obviously can’t looks after yourselfs, not up here all alone.”

“I’m learning,” Draco shrugs. “I’ve got a bit tougher since you last saw me.”

“Yous is going to grow mould in your lungs sleeping here.”

“It is clean. Sort of. And I have a bed now.”

Clovelly narrows her eyes in judgemental silence.

“Look,” Draco says after a moment, “there are Muggles in and out of this place all the time, and we can’t break the International Statute of Secrecy. How about…can you go to Hogwarts, or somewhere, and work there?”

“If you order me to,” Clovelly says, “so I don’t have to respond to Lord Lucius.”

“Do you want to go to Hogwarts?”

She obviously stops herself from giving the rote answer at the last minute. “Yes. There is lots of people to looks after at Hogwarts. My nest-mate is there.”

“Well then,” Draco says, pulling a face at the bitter taste of command. “I order you to go and work for Hogwarts.”

“But I will comes back if yous need me.”

“Only if I call you. Is that a deal?”

Clovelly nods, serious. “I has something for you before I goes.”

 She points her finger at the half-painted door, and it suddenly springs a brass knocker shaped like a dragon, the scales glinting in the pearlescent dusk. Then she snaps her fingers and there’s a screech – an enormous brown shape materialises out of thin air, scolding loudly. Draco ducks on instinct, hands up to shield his head at the rush of wings. The owl circles a few times and then flaps up into the nearest tree.

“That’s Achilles,” he says dumbly, and Clovelly nods, her eyes sparkling in the way that means she’s very pleased with herself.

“I kepts him safe for yous. To carry letters.”

“Do I want to know how? He seems pretty angry.”

Clovelly just gives him a beatific smile and pops out of existence. Draco sits and stares at the space where she was, and then up at the tree where Achilles is still making sharp whooping sounds, ruffling his brown feathers in a very affronted fashion.

“I don’t have any owl treats,” Draco says to him, picking up his paintbrush. “You’re going to have to fend for yourself.”

Achilles turns his large orange eyes on Draco reproachfully, and then flutters up out of sight. Draco heaves a sigh and gets back to work.

*

March picks up its feet and starts to hurry through the days like it’s got more important places to be than in a crumbling castle on top of a Yorkshire hill. Not that Draco minds. Every day he’s in motion from morning until night, scrubbing, painting, clearing the garden and digging vegetable beds, helping Madge with errands in exchange for lifts back up the hill with second-hand furniture and bags of compost. Sometimes Madge drags him inside for dinner when they’ve been working late; he’ll sit and quietly eat whatever’s put in front of him, listening to the easy back-and-forth she and Ned and whichever farmhands are loafing about have. They don’t direct any of it at him but Madge always slants a warm, amused glance his way whenever anyone says something she thinks he’ll find funny. He starts dredging up smiles for her. The first few times he’s sure it’s more of a grimace, but he might be getting used to the feeling.

It’s strange but he never thought of smiles as something that you have to learn.

One early April night he’s fiddling with a sandwich and a hot chocolate in his kitchen and trying not to think when white headlights beam sharp through the windows. He hears Ned’s footsteps down the path and abandons trying to eat, gets up to meet him halfway.

“Everything alright?”

Ned is in stiff, uncomfortably crackling clothes, looks exhausted. “Are you doing anything right now?”

“No. What do you need?”

“One of the hands has called in sick, and it’s set up to be a busy night with the lambing. Would you mind coming down to ours and looking after the orphans in the kitchen?”

“The orphans…”

“Lambs whose mothers have died. It’s easy, all you have to do is keep them indoors and feed them.”

“Sure,” Draco says, “let me get my jumper.”

The drive down the hill is bumpy and quiet, and Ned lets Draco into the warm, tiled kitchen where a few people are clustered drinking tea. He recognises Alfie, one of the farmhands he’d met two weeks ago, but not the small young woman who is very pale against her black waterproofs, her mousy brown hair braided tightly back off her face.

“This is Kath, she’s doing work experience with us,” Madge says, handing Draco a mug. “Kath, our neighbour Draco.”

Kath mumbles a hello and stares into the bottom of her mug as though it’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.

“Right, we’re going to get on,” Ned says, “make yourself comfortable. Draco, you know where everything is, right? Borrow a book or something. The bottles are all made up in the pantry fridge, so just shove them in the microwave before you feed them.”

“Yes,” Draco says, pulling his hands up inside his jumper sleeves. “See you later.”

They all tromp out of the kitchen, and shut the door behind them. He wanders over to the bookshelf at the far end under the stairs. Madge and Ned’s house is so cosy, he thinks, picking a book at random and curling into the rocking chair at the head of the table with it. Sometimes he wonders what it would have been like to grow up here, who he would have been if he’d been Ned and Madge’s son. He’d be happier, for certain -  his world might be smaller but he doesn’t think that it would be a bad thing. Riches and fame don’t count for anything if all they lead to is an endless craving for power.

As the grandfather clock in the hall chimes ten, there are squelching footsteps coming across the yard and Ned shoulders the door open, a small protesting thing wrapped in a towel under his arm. Draco gently closes White Teeth by the very witty Zadie Smith, and stands.

“What do I do?” he says.

“Towel it off and get a bottle going,” Ned responds, places the wriggling, bleating lamb in Draco’s arms. It stinks something horrid – blood and pus overlaid with sharp chemical – and he has to adjust his arms to keep from dropping it. “Little and often, and then just keep it close and warm. You might want to go sit by the Aga.”

The Aga is the oven Draco reminds himself. “Right.”

“You’ll be ok? We’re just in the lambing barn if you need anyone, and I’ll be sending folks on their breaks in a bit as well so you’ll have company.”

“Yes of course,” Draco tells him. “Go. Me and lamb will be fine.”

Ned grins at him and squelches out again, and Draco is left with an armful of wriggling baby animal and marginally hysterical thoughts about what his life has turned into. He finds the bottle and spends an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out the micro-wavey thing with the lamb’s bleating getting ever more panicked.

“Merlin,” he says to it when he finally get the thing heating and starts cleaning the lamb down. “Don’t be so impatient. Dinner is on its way.”

At the sound of his voice, the lamb goes quiet; he takes the bottle when it’s done and sits cross-legged on the floor, holding the lamb in his lap and tipping the bottle in the general direction of its mouth. It takes a few tries to figure out what to do, but eventually latches on and suckles happily and Draco lets his hand rest on its soft wool. After it’s done, it collapses on top of his legs and nestles its head into the crook of his elbow. It’s so small and sweet, he thinks as he rubs his knuckles in circles on its head. What a strange situation that he’d been so detached from things like this, that lamb meant mint sauce and roast potatoes rather than a warm weight in his lap, quiet, high-pitched little bleats and instant trust.

By dawn, when Madge and Kath come in looking exhausted with yellow-stained hands and deep troughs of exhaustion under their eyes, Draco has accumulated five lambs of various colours. Two of them have already figured out how to walk and are stumbling around endearingly, butting into everything within reach including each other – he’s left his book abandoned in favour of watching them. The other three have curled up in a dozy tangle on and around his lap.

“I’d offer to make you tea,” he says as they shuck off their boots, “but I’m afraid I’m a bit stuck.”

Kath actually smiles at him, wiggles her bright-orange-sock clad feet. “You look very comfortable.”

Draco pats lamb number three’s head, finds himself smiling back. “I am. They’re a good blanket. How was it?”

“Bananas,” Madge grimaces, going over to the kettle. “I do just love it when all the ewes decide to give birth at the same time. Kath did really well, though,” then, to Kath, “we’ll make a farm vet of you yet.”

“You’re training to be a vet?” Draco asks after a pause, hoping she’s going to confirm what the hell a vet actually is.

“Yes,” Kath sits down and coaxes lamb number one into her lap. “I’m in my first year at university, in Leeds.”

Draco nods as though he understands any of that, hopes that he isn’t going to be called out.

“What do you do?” she asks. “Are you at uni as well?”

“No,” he shrugs. “I just…live in the castle up the hill. Hey, stop that – here’s your bottle, you silly thing.”

Lamb Five latches on happily, and Madge dumps a cup of tea by his elbow, shoves her hair out of her eyes. “I was not expecting you to be such an animal whisperer, Draco. It’s normally fucking chaos in here.”

“Obviously my magical powers,” Draco says, only half-joking. Lambs are a cakewalk compared to all the magical creatures Hagrid had thrown at them at school – no suckers, no fire-breathing, no complicated rules to follow. It’s all been rather refreshing that all they want is milk and a warm lap.

“Obviously.” Madge’s voice is very dry, and Kath is blushing again a little bit.

“Maybe I should get animals for the castle.”

“You gonna put us out of business?” Madge jokes, slumping into the rocking chair and putting her socked feet on the table. “Don’t tell Ned.”

“How much space have you got?” Kath asks.

“It’s a relatively large garden,” Madge says. “You could fit chickens in there. I know someone in the village that rescues battery hens, I can put the two of you in contact.”

“Battery hens?”

Kath frowns. “Hens that are bred for the meat market. They’re kept in really inhumane conditions, all crammed together in cages that don’t ever see sunlight like they’re not living beings just like us.”

“I hate other farmers sometimes,” Madge agrees.

Draco’s stomach squeezes in fellow-feeling at the thought of creatures trapped without sunlight, just like he was. “Yeah,” he says, “if you could that would be great.”

Chapter Text

“Hello,” Luna Lovegood says from his front step a few days later, a basket full of lavender over one arm, tomatoes in her ears, and those sparkly green-lensed glasses holding back her cloudy blonde hair, “people in the fourteenth century built good castles for Growling Pismires. I hope you’re looking after them.”

He stares at her and mentally rephrases. Luna fucking Lovegood is on his fucking doorstep. Why the fuck is she here?

“What the fucking hell are Growling Pismires?”

“Magical rainbow arthropods.” Luna clicks her tongue and before he knows it she’s slipped past him into the kitchen. “It’s a good thing I came over. Lavender calms them down so they don’t mess with the plumbing.”

Draco turns to watch her hoik herself up, layers of blinding gold and fuchsia petticoats and all, into his windowsill and begin tying little bunches of fresh lavender around the piping he’s still yet to make work properly. Whatever wordless magic she’s doing sparkles silver amongst the petals. He’d seen her briefly at the Battle of Hogwarts, employing erratic but vicious magic against two Death Eaters who’d attempted to take her on. Before that, well…

“A cup of tea would be nice,” she says, after several endless minutes. There’s really no way he can say no, not after everything. He marches over to fill up the kettle and drops it with a clang on the stove, sloshing tea and milk into a mug and leaving it on the side for her. She settles cross-legged into the windowsill and levitates it up to her, crossing her ankles over each other and giving him a wide smile.

“I hope that helps,” she tells him. “And please let me know if you see one. They’re very reclusive, but if you win their affection they are wonderful hearth-guardians.”

Draco levels her a look, which then turns into a staring contest when she won’t break eye contact. He caves first, looks away. It’s fine, he thinks, turning to pour himself a tea when Luna starts humming under her breath. As long as it doesn’t become a thing, it’ll be alright.

*

It becomes a thing.

*

“It’s breeding season for Gulping Plimpies, and there are lots of colonies around the abandoned mines up on the moors.”

“And that’s a reason to be here why?”

*

“I needed a fourteenth-century rock.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

*

“It was a nice day.”

“Come on, Lovegood, that’s weak.”

*

Eventually she stops finding excuses and he stops pretending that he cares. As May draws on she develops an uncanny knack for showing up when Ned and Madge are busy, levitating cross-legged in his garden with her skirts and expedition notes and plans floating around her. Usually there is some kind of vegetable braided into her hair and she sticks her wand in the daisy-speckled grass, charms it to play music from whichever corner of the world takes her fancy that day. The afternoons roll hazy and golden towards evening; he digs and sows and waters, she reads and consults maps and entices his rescued chickens over with little crumbs of bread.

So what? It’s not like he has to speak to her about it all, or admit that having the company of another witch is actually quite nice. He can't bring himself to think about his friends from school, to wonder where their lives took them whilst he was stuck behind bars. There's no point getting in contact. What on earth would they say to each other?

“Have you named them?” she calls over, petting the russet hen who is making the most of her newfound freedom by being as loud and obnoxious as possible.

Draco straightens, leans on his gardening fork. “That’s Beryl. The black speckled one is Edith and the white one is Maud. I haven’t got round to the others yet.”

“Shall I name the rest? I’ll keep with your theme. It’s important to have harmony in nature.”

He eyeballs her and then picks up his fork. One of the other chickens rootles around in the dust at the edge of his flowerbed. “Whatever.”

One memorable afternoon she appears with not only tiny bottles of silver sand looped into a crown around her head but a big, black dog in tow.

“I brought you a friend,” she says, taking the silently-offered tea and following him out to the garden. The dog also follows. Draco picks up his trowel and starts transferring courgette plants from their pots into the designated section of his vegetable patch with more violence than they deserve.

“What makes you think I need or want a friend?”

“Everyone should have friends,” Luna says, settling down in her usual place in the middle of the lawn. “You were a friend to me during the war.”

He nearly drops his trowel at the unexpected mention of the war, feels his breathing pick up unbidden. He digs his nails sharply into the palm of his hand.

“What the,” he snaps. Something angry and bitter that he can’t put a name to curdles in his chest. “It wasn’t friendship.”

Luna is predictably unruffled by his sudden hostility. “Call it what you want, labels don’t matter to me. It’s a practical issue anyway. I need to make sure you’re going to be okay whilst I’m in Iceland.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Draco mutters.

She shrugs. “Dog was happy to help.”

Dog has come over to sit right next to where Draco is kneeling, leans his big black head against Draco’s arm and pants happily. Draco really doesn’t think he’s worthy of such easily given affection, tries to shove the dog’s head away from where it’s drooling on his sleeve but it won’t move. Just like Luna, he thinks sourly, stubborn little shits the both of them.

“I’m not calling you Dog,” he says. The dog barks and flops down at his feet.

At the end of the day, Luna goes around the house and refreshes the magic on the lavender. “I’ll send you a letter,” she says, disappearing all of her papers and shrugging on a bright blue plasticky cape that clashes horribly with her stripy trousers and orange boots. She couldn’t look more bizarre if she tried.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“But I want to,” Luna says. “It’s very peaceful here. I’d like to remind myself that it exists.”

“Is Iceland not peaceful?”

“Oh no, the fire spirits are in constant battle with each other.” She nods sagely. “Between them and the dragons, the volcanoes never get a break. I’ll bring you back some rock magic if I can get my hands on it.”

“Fine,” Draco says, tired and grudging. He follows her to the door with the dog shadowing his steps. Then, because it’s polite and because maybe he is going to miss her quiet presence in the back garden, he says, “Stay safe.”

She grins, all eye-crinkles and trapped sunlight. “Eat food.”

*

Of course, it turns out that the dog refuses to answer to anything other than Dog.

It also transpires that the only thing Dog loves more than Draco is Madge and her food-waste bin.

The affection is very reciprocated.

*

He’s just getting in from the garden, arms full of courgettes and angry chicken when someone starts pounding at the door like it’s the end of the world. He flinches away from the noise, drops the courgettes on the table. Beryl shrieks loudly from under his other arm. Luna is still away, and in any case she just lets herself in. He steels himself and goes over to open the door, hoping that everything is alright down on the farm.

“What the bloody hell is the…”

“Malfoy,” Harry James Potter says from his front step, wand loosely clasped in his hand.

Draco’s voice appears to have evaporated into thin air, so Beryl answers for him with another ear-splitting screech. Fuck. This is not how he thought this meeting would go, this is…for fuck’s sake, he’s in fucking paint-stained dungarees with mud on his face and a fucking chicken that won’t stop screaming…

“Oh do shut up, Beryl,” he manages after a moment, “you would not take kindly to a silencing charm.”

Beryl clucks, irritated, and when Draco looks up, Potter is hastily concealing what could have been a smile. Bastard. Bet he finds all of this highly entertaining; how the tides have changed. Potter in his smart Auror robes looking healthier than he ever did in school, his copper-brown skin glowing in the thick summer sunshine and Draco looking like he’s been dragged through a hedge backwards. He thought prison had squashed all the vanity out of him but evidently this is an exceptional circumstance. He wishes he could sink right through the ground and die a fiery death in the molten core of the earth.

“Are you going to keep me waiting on your front step indefinitely?” Potter asks, when it’s become embarrassingly obvious that all of Draco’s words have deserted him and he has no idea what to say. Draco forces himself to rally. He can’t show Potter how fucking shaken he is, can’t let his guard down any more than he has already.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t particularly want to have this conversation out here.”

“Scared of the Muggles?”

“It’s not for their ears, no.”

“Have you perhaps not noticed that I live down a long lane a good mile away from the nearest village? You can hear people coming. Whatever you need to say, you can say it out here.”

Potter’s brows draw together and Draco swallows at the sudden serious expression on his face, forces down bile.

“There have been some disappearances,” he says.

“And you thought ah, I know who did it,” Draco snaps. “Merlin, Potter, I’ve barely been out of prison six months! Do you really think I’m that desperate to go back?”

There’s a flash of guilt across Potter’s face and Draco is tempted to the slam the door. It would serve the infuriatingly good looking bastard right. How dare he come up here and start throwing around accusations? How dare he assume that Azkaban doesn’t change a person, that it doesn’t claw rents into a soul, that Draco would treat his freedom with anything other than the terrified, hungry care it deserves?

“Actually, that’s not what I came to ask.”

“Yeah right.”

Potter mutters something under his breath – Draco just about catches “stubborn bastard” – and then sighs, heavily. “When was the last time you saw your father?”

“I’d imagine,” Draco drawls, his stomach knotting painfully, “the same time as you. After the Battle of Hogwarts.”

Dog pushes his nose into the back of Draco’s knee. Draco clenches his fists so hard he imagines he can feel his metacarpals crunching with the force of it.

“Right,” Potter says.

Something in his voice makes Draco feel the old ugly anger thick and bilious and bitter on the back of his tongue. His face twists into an out-of-practise sneer. “It must be a terrible surprise that I’m not running a halfway house for wanted criminals.”

“No, you are completely…”

“I think we’re done here. Good talk,” Draco says and shuts the door in Potter’s face, barely making it over to the kitchen sink before he’s violently ill.

*

“How was it?” Ron calls from the kitchen as Harry lets himself into the back door of Ron and Hermione’s cottage after finally dragging himself away from his desk at the last possible second. He flings off his uniform robes and accepts the glass of wine Hermione levitates in his direction without looking up from her book.

“What do you think?” he shouts back, taking a big gulp and feeling the burn of it at the back of his throat.

“I’m not surprised,” Hermione says, dust-dry, flipping a page. Her ability to pay attention to both a book and a conversation has been astounding Harry for the better part of a decade. “Are you really sure they couldn’t have sent someone else?”

Harry slumps down next to her, ticks off on his fingers: “Parkinson has to maintain, I quote, ‘professional distance’, Selwyn hates his guts, and Robards is too busy.”

Hermione pulls a face at the mention of Selwyn. “There are more Aurors than just your team, surely?”

“That’s not how the Auror Office works, ‘Mione. We couldn’t send someone who wasn’t working the case.”

Harry’s not entirely sure why he’s having this disagreement for the second time in a week, but he’s here now so might as well keep plugging away at it. An old hit by the Spice Girls comes on the radio in the kitchen – even wizarding radio isn’t impervious to them, even if it is five years too late – and Ron begins to sing along off-key. Hermione finally looks up from her book, her eyebrows crunched together.

“I thought they would have made an exception for you, considering your history,” Hermione says.

“They don’t do exceptions in the Auror Office,” Harry tells her. “And anyway, he’s been to prison and served his time.”

Hermione makes the soft noise she always does when he brings up this line of argument. He knows why she doesn’t agree, of course, doesn’t blame her for it – Malfoy was always just that bit worse to her than he was to Harry and Ron – and to be honest, it’s not like he likes Malfoy, it’s just…

“I know. This is the fourth time in the past fortnight you’ve said it.”

“Yeah.”

Hermione is giving him one of her patented looks, shoving her glasses further down her nose to stare at him mercilessly over the top of them. Ron swears that she got them just so she could do this to people. Hermione refuses to comment.

The thing is this. In the absolutely chaos after the Battle of Hogwarts, with Wizarding Britain trying to sew itself back together, he’d agreed to speak up in Malfoy’s defence because it felt like the right thing to do. Malfoy had refused to identify them that horrific night at the manor, for one, and without Narcissa Malfoy, Harry would never have lived to kill Voldemort. He’d told the truth. Malfoy had refused to look at him. The Wizengamot had passed judgement, and Harry has been pretty successful in not thinking about the whole thing. The only person who’s brought it up since was Luna, once, at some party in those heady whirlwind days after the war. He’d been hiding in the hallway of someone’s manor, and she’d quietly come to join him. He’d asked her why, why she wasn’t enjoying the wine and the dancing and the giddy joy of it all. If he closes his eyes, he can see her now, adjusting her tall pine crown and one of her many beaded shawls, her eyes steady and serious and very blue.

“I was just thinking about Draco Malfoy,” she’d said, as serenely as if she’d been talking about the weather. “It’s an odd feeling to be enjoying ourselves when someone our age is in prison for crimes society needed a scapegoat for.”

“What do you mean?” Harry had managed after a moment of winded incomprehension.

“I wonder if there’s another universe which is fair, where he didn’t get punished for things that weren’t his fault.”

“He was a Death Eater. Don’t you remember? We were prisoners in their cellar.”

“You should know better than anyone that choice is something only some people get,” Luna had sighed and pressed each of her fingers together. “In any case, the Rotfang conspiracy has spread to France. Newt and I came across it on our travels. I think it’s something the Auror Office should really look into now the war’s over, don’t you?”

Harry had taken her random change of subject gratefully, put away her opinions on Draco Malfoy and Death Eaters in a box in the back of his brain where he wouldn’t have to look at them too closely. It’s been a fine tactic up until Lucius Malfoy started showing up again, until Harry was selected by Robards to join the case, until it became clear that Draco Malfoy is also on the long list of people Eunice Selwyn hates. Harry really doesn't want to admit that maybe Luna is right. Hence: an internal compromise. The Wizengamot isn't exactly the fairest system in the world, but they sentenced Draco Malfoy and he's fulfilled that sentence. Loudly hanging onto that opinion lets Harry ignore the rest of it.

Ron calls them for dinner and they bundle into the kitchen, settling down at the heavy table in front of the fireplace. Harry’s stomach growls and Ron grins at him, pulling the lid off a heavy stew-pot of sweet potato curry.

“So,” Ron starts, wielding his ladle like a formidable weapon, “how is the ferret?”

“Ronald,” Hermione says, but there’s a smile pulling up the corner of her mouth.

“Still a complete prick,” Harry says, taking the plate Ron hands to him. “Nothing’s changed. Well, he has a very angry chicken.”

“Is that a blush I see, Harry James?”

“Yes, Ron, I have a bird fetish. Hadn’t you realised?”

“He’s blushing! ‘Mione, you see it too right?”

Hermione taps Ron’s knuckles with the back of her spoon. “Leave him alone. Luna says that Malfoy’s taken up in his family’s first residence.”

“Is that what it is?”

“Well, yes. The Malfoy family came over with the Norman invasion, and they lived up in Yorkshire to begin with. I assume the Wiltshire manor house happened at some point in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, considering the style of the building. Potentially earlier, after the wizarding nobility started having to go into hiding during the witch hunts.”

Ron gapes at her. “How exactly do you know this much about the ferret’s family history?”

“I stumbled across a record about the castle at the archives a few months ago,” Hermione says, “and the rest is basic British wizarding history, Ron.”

“Professor Binns barely mentioned any of this.”

“Yes, Professor Binns, historically known as the best and most comprehensive teacher at Hogwarts.” Hermione pulls a face. “He didn’t like lecturing about Muggle-wizarding relations, and in any case it was barely on the syllabus. There are some good recent books about it, though, and some of us at the werewolf rights sit-in were talking about getting a group together to suggest some changes for Hogwarts.”

“If you do your radio show on them I’ll listen to it,” Ron says. “Barely have time for books nowadays.”

Hermione rolls her eyes. “You’ve never had time for books.”

“Excuse you, I did that course…”

“A whole year of studying, wow, I’m so impressed.”

“Aww,” Harry tells them both mockingly. “Look at you, the picture of true love.”

“Shut up, Potter.” Ron flicks sauce at him and it splatters on the corner of Harry’s glasses. Harry pulls a ghoulish face at him and changes the conversation firmly away from anything to do with Malfoy.

“How’s the radio show going anyway, Hermione? I caught the episode about Imperial China and dragons in the thirteenth century, it was great.”

“Thanks.” Hermione grins at him. “It’s fine. The only thorn in my side is Ernie MacMillan. His new game is trying to catch me out on air, and then he claims he’s joking when I call him out on it afterwards.”

“It would be my genuine pleasure to sneak in and put him under a silencing charm next week,” Harry offers. “Been far too long since I’ve got up to mischief with that invisibility cloak.”

“I’m tempted, believe me,” Hermione rolls her eyes. “In good news, I had a letter from Tuwalole Hamadi, one of the new scholars at Uagadou – she’s given me permission to go research in their archives, so I’m off to Uganda next week.”

“Nice,” Harry says. She’s been waiting on this opportunity since the start of her PhD, itching to study beyond Europe. “How long will you be gone?”

“Just two weeks this time,” Hermione says. “Figured I’d keep it short and sweet.”

“Whatever am I going to do without her?” Ron says, wiping his plate clean.

“Clean the house until it’s sparkling? Reorganise all my books in alphabetical order so I can’t find them anymore?”

“You’re onto me,” Ron says, floating all the plates over to the sink and rescuing the treacle tart from the oven. “Whoever would have guessed in school that I’d be the child to turn into my mother? Harry, mate, you can come and keep me company. We can scrub all day and play drunk Quidditch by night.”

“What an offer. How could I resist?”

“Do not,” Hermione says. “I seriously don’t want to have put the Obliviators through that again.”

“Their faces were so funny.” Ron’s grinning and Harry fights his own smile at the memory. It was one of his better nights, despite the telling-off he got from Robards the next day.

“They obviously thought three war heroes, two of whom are now fully-fledged Aurors, could manage to be sensible around magic.” Hermione’s eyes are all crinkled at the corners despite her lecturing tone. “Evidently they were very wrong.”

 Harry sits back, breathes in the familiar atmosphere as Ron and Hermione descend into bickering, tries to keep his mind off work, off trying to put their few, precious clues about Lucius Malfoy together into a coherent narrative, off the stunned look on Draco Malfoy’s face before he’d decided to be a total arse.

It doesn’t really work. He doesn’t want to think about what that says.

*

A week later Robards has sent him to try again and he’s back at the end of the drive, staring up at the castle. It’s more of a single tower, really, heavy and grey amongst a grove of trees that are speckled yellow and gold. A paved path winding beneath them between neat beds of purple and white pansies to the green-painted front door. Malfoy’s even put a small dragon knocker in the centre above a tarnished letter-box and Harry raps it carefully, holding his breath. There’s no response. He hovers for a moment, indecisive, until he notices someone climbing the stile by the rusting gate.

“Friend of Draco’s?” a white middle-aged Muggle man in black wellies calls over.

Harry turns to face him, pastes a smile on his face and thanks Merlin he decided it was too bloody hot for official robes today. “Yeah. Do you know where he is?”

“Oh, he’ll be in the back garden, day like today. Come on. He never hears the door.”

Harry follows the man around the side of the castle to another wall. He shoulders open the small door set into it, and gestures Harry through.

“Draco!” he bellows. “Your friend is here!”

There’s a blur of movement and a big black dog is galloping towards them, all staccato barks and ears flopping madly. Harry feels a sudden pang of longing for Sirius; he used to behave just like this when they’d go for walks together – it would drive Lupin up the wall. The dog screeches to a halt in front of Harry, bottom wiggling like mad.

“Potter?” Malfoy’s voice says, aghast. Harry looks up to see Malfoy, also in wellies, standing in the middle of a raised flowerbed, gardening fork in hand. No-one, Harry thinks dizzily for a moment, has the right to look that good in dungarees. It’s not fair. He’d carefully avoided saying to Ron and Hermione that Malfoy looks settled, he looks good – he’s filled out, the sun has taken the edge off his pallor, and his white-blonde hair is much longer, swept up in a messy bun on the top of his head. Harry tries to ignore the weird feeling in his stomach at the sight of him. This is work. They dislike each other. “What are you doing here?”

Harry slants a quick glance at the Muggle, who’s ruffling the dog’s ears. “I was in York on business,” he invents, “thought I’d pop in to say hi, see your new place.”

“Schoolfriends?” the Muggle asks, going over to where Draco is standing. Harry trails behind, dodging a white chicken that staunchly refuses to move.

“Yes,” Draco says, stabbing his fork into the soil rather more violently than it deserves, “we went to school together. Did you bring me those seeds from Madge?”

“And some more bird-feed, and a cake. Marble cake, since you liked the last one so much. I’ll just leave it here, don’t want to get in your way.”

“No, it’s fine Ned. Thank you,” Draco says, and once again Harry finds himself goggling at the easy, friendly way Draco is treating this old Muggle man. There’s not a single drop of prejudice in sight. Maybe prison has actually changed him. “I’ve got some stuff for Madge back here, give me a second.”

He disappears behind a bed of spindly bean plants, and Ned turns a friendly smile on Harry. “Come from far?”

“Just London,” Harry says.

“Ah, a Londoner,” Ned scratches his ear. “I’ve only been to London a handful of times. Too big and noisy for me.”

“You get used to it, I guess. It’s nice up here, though.”

“Yes, it’s showing off for you today – always lovely in the sunshine. What do you do in London?”

“I’m ah…a detective,” Harry settles on, “for the Met.”

“Blimey that’s impressive. Thought you’d still be studying if you’re Draco’s age.”

“Didn’t go to uni,” Harry lies, “and the training only finished last year.” Draco is taking an eternity to get back from whatever he’s doing, “what do you do?”

 “Oh, my wife and I have the farm, just keep it ticking over. Sheep mostly, a few cows, couple of fields of sugar beet. Get veterinary students out for work experience, some of the local school kids too. Help young Draco with his garden.”

Mercifully, Malfoy reappears with a basket full of vegetables and hands it over to Ned before Harry has to find another topic of conversation.

“I’ll come down and see you in a couple of days, help with the painting.”

Ned grins. “You do that, lad. See you soon.”

“Say thanks to Madge for me.”

“I will,” Ned calls, and turns to go. The dog flops across Harry’s feet, and Malfoy turns a glare on him, instantly frosty.

“Why are you here?”

“Much as I don’t want to interrupt your rural idyll, I need your help,” Harry says flatly.

“Merlin’s pants, the great Harry Potter needs my help? Am I fucking hallucinating?”

“If it would make you feel better,” Harry snaps. “Seriously. We’ve exhausted all other options.”

“I’m flattered, Potter.”

That sneer again. Harry hates it, has always hated the way it reeks of privilege and wealth and…everything Malfoy doesn’t have, anymore. Defence mechanism, mate, Ron might say. Falling back into old habits. Probably scared silly. Ron’s been full of this sage advice ever since he finished the Muggle psychology qualification he’d accidentally begun the year after the war. Harry takes a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose, willing himself to stay calm. He’s got to get Malfoy to agree to help, he can’t let his emotions get the better of him.

“Right. Since you’re being…no. Your father has been on the run from the Ministry since the end of the Second Wizarding War.”

“Yes,” Malfoy drawls, “I was made aware.”

“Anyway,” Harry continues, “they nearly caught up with him a few months later but he got away and no-one has seen hide or hair of him since. We’ve had an alert out for any sightings, but there was nothing until about six months ago when he was seen in Muggle London speaking to an expert in Incan archaeology at University College London. She’s not been seen since. A pair of Muggle commandos also disappeared three weeks ago and the place they were last seen reeks of your father’s magical signature.”

When Harry looks up, Malfoy has lost the little colour he has in his cheeks. The dog has shuffled over to lean against his legs.

“What’s all this got to do with me?” he asks, eventually.

“I need to get into Malfoy Manor.”

“It was confiscated by the Ministry, Potter.”

“I know. But we’ve found some hidden storage rooms that have blood wards on them. My colleague says that we need a member of the family to get into them.”

“And since my father’s on the run and my mother’s dead, I’m your last option,” Malfoy says. His voice is strained and bitter, and he wraps an arm around his waist. “Right.”

“I won’t force you to do anything,” Harry tells him, quietly. “But we would really, really appreciate the help. We want to get him behind bars.”

Malfoy scrubs a hand over his face. “Fine. When are we going?”

“I got a warrant for Monday.”

“Fantastic.” Malfoy’s voice implies the exact opposite. “Well. I’m afraid I have to get on, so I’ll see you then. Can you see yourself out?”

Harry takes one last look at him and nods. “Sure. See you on Monday.”

Chapter Text

Monday dawns cloudy and muggy, typical weather of late June up here. Draco drinks his tea and forces himself to eat something before meeting Potter at the bottom of the lane. He’d spent most of the weekend helping with the sheep shearing – dirty, difficult, tiring work that left no space in his brain for either nightmares or worrying about anything other than wrangling unhappy animals.

“Morning,” Potter says. He’s back in his official Auror robes, dark red and very fitted; Draco rips his eyes away before it becomes obvious that he finds the way Potter’s shoulders look in them humiliatingly interesting.

“Morning,” he mutters. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Can you Apparate?”

“Do I look like I’m in possession of a wand?”

Draco avoids the look on Potter’s face, the pity. In his teenage correspondence with his pen pal from Uagadou, he found out that in most African nations they don’t even need wands most of the time; it’s stupid that European wizards are so pitifully dependent on them. He takes the proffered arm, and closes his eyes against the uncomfortable feeling, only opening them when he feels the breeze on his face. His heart rises painfully into his throat as he sees the squat, imposing façade of the Manor, the dark yew hedges. Somewhere, one of those dratted peacocks screams; Morgana, he’d thought nearly four years of neglect would be enough to do those ridiculous birds in.

“Come on,” Potter says, his face suddenly very impassive. They walk in silence up the driveway. Potter unlocks the door. Draco focuses on his feet, trying to make them move, trying not to bloody think about the last time he was here, the cold high-pitched laughter, the feeling of stone on his back as he’d…

They go up the grand staircase and along the portrait gallery – Draco keeps his eyes averted from the whispers of his ancestors. In a daze, he hears what must be Septimius Malfoy bellowing something about the state of his hair. Septimius is the reason Malfoys pay such astute attention to their personal grooming – Septimius and his insistence on many ways one can wield power by one’s choice of attire. Draco spent several long afternoons being treated to that lecture when his mother felt he was being particularly recalcitrant and teenage, but all he remembers getting out of it was an obsession with hair gel.

“Right, here it is,” Potter says eventually, after climbing the stairs to the furthest-flung set of attics. The paint on the door is flaking. Draco takes a very deep breath.

“Right. Do you have a knife?”

“A knife?”

“Blood wards, Potter,” Malfoy reminds him as disdainfully as he can. For Merlin’s sake, he is not going to break down here, not in front of Potter, not…no. It’s out of the question. What little pride he has left will not let him make such an idiot of himself. He’s got to hold on.

Potter digs around in his robes and proffers one after a moment. It’s small, silver, and thinly sharp – just a touch to Draco’s palm is enough to draw a bright line of red across his translucent skin. He hands the knife back wordlessly, presses his hand to the door. The magic of the house thrums through him with such violent force that he nearly collapses, and the door creaks open. Merlin, it’s been so long.

“Is that everything?”

“I can’t take you back yet, I’ve got to go investigate.” Potter has his wand out. “Is there likely to be anything dangerous in here?”

“No idea. Haven’t been in since I was a child,” Draco says, following him into the room. The air is choked with dust and he breathes in the dead, cold taste of it. Potter’s wand is illuminated; he swings it around, the light throwing up angular, monstrous shadows. “What, exactly, are you looking for?”

“Clues,” Potter says. Draco rolls his eyes. It’s just like Potter, to show up without any idea of what he’s actually supposed to be looking for.

“You’ll be here forever. No-one’s sorted through this place since the end of the nineteenth century.”

“It’s the only lead we’ve got.” Potter’s voice is a taut line.

“Merlin, fine. Have fun with your hopeless cause.”

Draco lets him wander off into the rabbit warren, hovers by the door. He remembers his father bringing him here as a boy, perhaps aged five or six, letting him look at some of the things from their family’s past. What a time it was, back when he was little and knew nothing about the world – about how cruel it could be, about how bloody wrong his father was about everything. He’d stood in this exact spot, asked excited questions, and listened to his father’s indulgent…ah.

“Potter,” he calls.

There’s a crash, and an irritated, “What?”

“I think I may have found something.”

Another crash. Honestly, all these priceless family heirlooms Potter’s probably destroying like a bull in a china shop. Not that they’re much use to the living or the dead – Draco is likely to be the last Malfoy, and there’s no bloody way in hell he wants them anywhere near the clean air and magic-less peace of his castle.

Potter reappears with spiderwebs trailing through his messy hair.

“What is it?” he asks, in tones of deep skepticism.

Draco points at the old dummy, standing by the dust-dim window.

“What about it?”

“It used to have half of a breastplate on it.”

“And…?” Potter sounds disbelieving.

“I remember my father telling me that it was one of two halves. The other half was lost, centuries ago, however family myth has it that united, the breastplate makes one completely invulnerable.”

Potter stares at him for a moment, green eyes hard, and then says, quite clearly, “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Draco says, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“I have to…you know what…is there anything else missing?”

“How the hell would I know? This place is vast.” Draco shrugs. “He knew a lot about the breastplate, though. That I remember.”

“Right,” Potter says, decisive. “Well that’s certainly a lead. Does it have a name?”

“Don’t know.”

“Fine. Ok. That’s it then, I’ll take you back to your lair and go back to…” Potter walks off, still muttering to himself, and Draco finds himself trailing slowly in his wake. He leaves the door to the storage room open, follows Potter back through the house to the entrance hall and that’s when it all gets too much and his feet decide to root themselves to the top of the grand polished wooden staircase. He can see into the front drawing room from here, see the sparkling wreckage of the chandelier that no-one has cleared up. It only takes a second, and suddenly he can’t breathe. Granger’s screams. The deathly silence after the prisoners had escaped, right before the Dar…Voldemort…had appeared. The narrowed red eyes, the feeling of those shards of glass cutting deep into his arms and neck as he’d…

“Merlin, Malfoy, are you alright?” Potter’s appeared in his line of vision again, but it’s all blurry and Draco can feel himself shaking like a leaf in a gale. Dizzy, he becomes aware of Potter swearing and then there’s a firm grip on his arm and he really can’t breathe before he’s stumbling into the fresh air outside the castle, tripping over his feet and putting out a hand to catch himself.

“Fuck,” he says, staring at strange angle of his wrist. His ears are ringing, and then Potter’s got a strong arm around his shoulders, is pulling him to his feet.

“Merlin, everything is going wrong,” he’s saying. His voice fades in and out of Draco’s hearing, echoes around his head. He can hear Dog barking. Draco focuses on putting one foot in front of the other, down the path and into his kitchen. Potter deposits him in a chair and draws his wand. Draco flinches away. “Wrist on the table, Malfoy. Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you.”

A brief tingling sensation later his wrist is no longer broken, and when he comes back to himself Potter has put the kettle on the stove, lit the fire, and is levitating down two battered mugs from the hooks on the ceiling, looking around at everything and tapping his fingers on the rough wooden countertop.

“Tea and sugar are on the windowsill,” Draco rasps after a moment, putting Potter out of his misery, “or there’s a mint plant just outside the back door if you want something herbal.”

He focuses on his breathing for a moment, fists his hands against his mouth until he’s certain he’s not going to scream. Potter dumps a mug in front of him, and he reaches blindly for it, takes a sip.

“Merlin, this is sweet.”

“Molly Weasley says sweet tea is good for shock,” Potter says, almost absent. “And I recall you having an enormous sweet tooth, at school.”

“Yeah,” Draco says. He hadn’t realised that Potter had noticed - perhaps the owls from his mother were a bit of a giveaway, especially as he used to crow about them so much. He feels a shudder of revulsion for the ignorant, arrogant child he used to be. He takes another sip of tea. Potter is leaning on the windowsill looking around at the bunches of herbs drying from the ceiling, the half-open cupboard, the wonky selection of cookpots.

“I assume,” Potter starts after a moment, “that you don’t want to talk about it.”

“You assume correctly,” Draco says violently. “It’s none of your fucking business.”

“I know.”

He traces his finger on the table. Thank Morgana that Potter seems to have developed at least a modicum of tact since school. Perhaps miracles do happen. “You don’t have to stay. I’m sure you have plenty of do-gooding to get on with at the Ministry.”

“Are you going to be alright if I leave you?”

“No, I’m going to sit here until I mummify.”

Potter’s eyebrows have drawn together like scribbly pencil lines, like the cartoons on the calendar Madge has hanging in her front hall. Draco sighs. “Yes, I’ll be fine. Even if I wanted to, Ned would break the door down and force feed me back to life.”

“The Muggle farmer?”

“Save me the comments.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” Potter drains his tea in one go and puts the mug on the sideboard. “Thank you, Malfoy. That will hopefully be helpful.”

“Anytime,” Malfoy says, as dry as he possibly can. Then, “you know I don’t mean that, right?”

“God forbid you offer help in earnest,” Potter replies. “I might have some follow-up questions.”

“Surely that’s what your walking library is for?”

“That is perhaps the most complimentary thing I’ve ever heard you say about Hermione.”

“Potter,” Malfoy says over the lip of his mug, “get out of my kitchen.”

Potter takes the hint and gets out.

*

“A breastplate,” Robards says, leaning forward in his chair. “You’re certain?”

Harry ignores the others’ looks, folds his arms. “As certain as I can be. Malfoy was very clear that his father had an obsession with it. It tracks.”

“And it makes the wearer invulnerable?” Eunice Selwyn raises her eyebrows, voice oozing skepticism. “Has Malfoy Senior never mastered a basic shield charm?”

“There will be more to it than that,” Pansy points out, ever the voice of reason. “Especially as Draco’s only going off what his father told him as a child. And anyway, imagine how deadly you’d be if you didn’t have to worry about doing a shield charm in a battle.”

“Would he give the memory for a Pensieve?” Cho pulls her cardigan closer around her shoulders.

“I don’t know why you’re all looking at me,” Harry grumbles. “Parkinson’s the one who actually knows him.”

“Not unless you’re prepared to stun him and remove it by force,” Pansy says.

“Is that…”

“No,” Harry says, very firmly. Unbidden, an image of Malfoy rooted to the top of that staircase in the Manor, blank-faced and wide-eyed and hyperventilating, steals into his head. Harry doesn’t want to think about what horrific memory could trigger that kind of reaction, doesn’t want to think about what a surprise it was. Pansy flashes him a look.

“It might be vital to the case,” Selwyn snaps. “And anyway, it’s not like he has much power in this situation.”

“That is,” Harry begins hotly, but Cho puts a warning hand on his arm.

“Maybe that shouldn’t be our first resort,” she says, mildly. “Since we’re supposed to be the good guys.”

Selwyn scowls at her, then relents.

Robards nods. “Pensieve or no pensieve it’s more of a lead than anything else we’ve had, so we might as well investigate it. Potter, Parkinson, Chang – you can start getting on.”

“Strategy meeting at three,” Selwyn reminds them before she shuts Robards’ office door in their faces. Pansy sighs, runs a hand over her buzzcut hair. There are deep, dark circles under her eyes, and Harry is entirely sure that he doesn’t look much better.

“That is in three hours,” Cho says, following them back in the direction of their cubicles, and leaning on the divider. Pansy throws herself down in her chair and reaches for the teapot. “I’ll go talk to the archives. It would be useful if you could get anything more out of Draco, or even if you knew anything, Pansy. Just a date would make the search so much easier.”

“He was pretty uncommunicative,” Harry warns.

“Makes sense, I suppose. He’s just got out of prison. I imagine he just wants to lay low, lick his wounds, and not get dragged back into something he’s got nothing to do with.”

“I do not blame him,” Pansy says in tones that imply she’ll hex anyone who contradicts her. “Potter, you can write to him.”

Harry gives her a baleful look. “Really?”

“Can you remember anything, Pansy? You were friends with him at school.”

“Come on, Chang, do you really think we spent our free time discussing family history? We got enough of that shit at home.”

“Worth a shot,” Cho sighs. “Right. Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Pansy says, raising her mug of tea in tribute.

“I’ll walk with you,” Harry says, hooking a piece of parchment and a quill from his desk and following Cho out of the door of the Auror office.

“I need to go get my archive pass from my desk,” Cho says as they make their way through the bustling corridors of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement. “Want to go get us both a coffee?”

“Yeah, it’s my turn to pay isn’t it,” Harry says, veering off in the direction of the Coffee Cauldron, shoving his way through a cluster of Hitwizards. It’s a warren-like mess of a place, all low ceilings, dead ends, constant bustle and the ever present danger of being sideswiped by a lavender memo barrelling along one of the corridors. The thing he loves most of all, though, is how full it is of busy people doing important things. He’s just another Junior Auror to be ordered around, as close to invisible as he could possibly get. If he were allowed he’d upgrade his emergency blanket to a camp-bed, transfigure one of the toilet stalls into a shower, and never leave.

He meets Cho with the coffee at the door and she grins.

“I don’t know why you like it that disgustingly strong,” she says, “I can smell the fumes from here.”

“Didn’t Ravenclaws survive exams on strong coffee and sheer terror?”

“Ravenclaws,” Cho says with a mock stern look, “know about good preparation and the fact that coffee is much better with the addition of milk, sugar, and interesting flavours.”

Harry shakes his head sadly. “You’re missing out. Caffeine jitters are the best.”

“Not when you’re likely to spill your entire ink pot all over your week’s paperwork. Anyway, aren’t caffeine jitters really awful when you’re trying to apprehend someone in the field?”

“Never feel them,” Harry shrugs as they head out into the main second floor corridor and down towards the lift. As always, he feels his stomach tense as people outside the DMLE clock who he is, start to nudge each other and whisper as though he hasn’t been working here for the last three years. Cho doesn’t say anything but shifts a little closer, making him walk next to the wall. It’s a sweet gesture, something she always does when they have to go anywhere together, but relatively ineffective considering that she’s several inches shorter than he is and that everyone seems to recognise him on sight. “Adrenaline.”

“Adrenaline makes me feel sick,” she says, as they cram into a lift with a witch who pretends to ignore them and her younger colleagues, who very much don’t. Harry avoids eye contact.

“Best thing about being an office worker,” Cho continues. “Adrenaline is very much limited to the race to the stationary cupboard for the good quills.”

“Merlin,” Harry laughs. “You live an intense life.”

“You have no idea,” Cho nudges his shoulder as the lift rattles to a stop. “I’m going to the basement. Send me a memo if anything happens between now and three.”

“Will do,” Harry says, ducking out of the lift. Unfortunately, the two young wizards are also for this floor; he can tell they’re about to brush up their courage to ask if he’s really Harry Potter or some disturbing question about either Voldemort or Ginny, so speed-walks away in the direction of the Owlery and wishes, not for the first time, that he wouldn’t get in trouble for using his invisibility cloak around the Ministry.

*

The owl divebombs him just as he’s leaving the castle with a basket of vegetables for Ned. Dog starts barking hysterically and running in circles as the owl swoops low over the trees and drops the letter at Draco’s feet – it shrieks once and then flies off again, a white scribble against the dusty blue sky. Hit and run is a sensible tactic around here; Achilles has adopted the front-yard tree as his own and defends it ruthlessly.

“Subtle,” Draco mutters, bending to pick it up. The paper is thick and good quality, and he opens it to find the stamp of the Auror Office in purple ink at the top of the page. His stomach drops.

“Dog, calm down,” he says, voice sounding distant to his own ears.

Malfoy, it reads, curtly, regarding the breastplate: it would be very useful if you could remember anything more about it, as your family has a lot of records and you understand that time is of the essence. Even just a date range would be received gratefully.

Regards,

H. Potter

He’s instantly tempted to march back into the house and throw it into the fire. He doesn’t owe Potter anything. Dog barks again, scampering in the direction of the stile. The air is still enough that he can hear the church bells chiming four – he’s late. He decides he’ll burn the stupid thing later, crumples it into the back pocket of his dungarees and starts the walk down the hill to the farm.

“Hi kid, hi Dog,” Madge says from the door of the barn. Her ponytail swishes as she turns and leans on the broom. “Want to go and get started? The paint’s in the office at the end of the barn.”

“Sure,” Draco says. “Can I leave this idiot with you, please?”

“Of course you can.” Madge bends down to scratch Dog’s head and Draco pivots in the direction of the correct barn, dropping the basket of veg next to the front door.

It’s not until he gets into the kitchen for dinner that he realises the letter is no longer in his pocket.

“Looking for this?” Madge says, shoving the casserole onto the big serving mat. She pulls the letter out of her jacket pocket, waves it in his direction. “Fancy paper.”

“Can you not,” Draco starts, reaches forward to grab it out of her hand. His heart is thundering and he feels slightly sick. She’s read it. She has to have – Madge is a self-proclaimed busybody, a note on parchment this fancy with the elaborate stamp she won’t recognise…it’s like the promise of gold to a Niffler. It’s not like it contains any kind of sensitive information, not even anything that would break the Statute, but Draco had thought he could trust her, trust them, and if they find out about wizards and what he was a part of and his fucking cowardice… “It’s private.”

“Yes,” Madge says, in the tone of voice one might reserve for a small child, “I figured. Why do you look so worried?”

“You haven’t…”

“Read it? Of course not. As you said, it’s private.”

He pulls himself together, tucks the note back into his pocket and tries to hide the trembling of his fingers. She hasn’t read it. He doesn’t know what to think. No-one before would have given a damn for anything like privacy. His father had read all incoming and outgoing letters to the Manor for as long as Draco can remember, and it was an open secret that even your thoughts weren’t safe when Voldemort was around.

“Are you alright?” Ned puts a tureen of buttered potatoes down on the table, wipes his hands on his apron.

“Yeah,” Draco mumbles as Madge hands him a plate. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Madge says.

“Have a bit more,” Ned nudges. “You’re still too bloody skinny.”

*

“There is something up with him,” Madge says to Ned later, settling onto his lap and taking a long drink of her red wine.

“If you’ve noticed it must be bad.”

“Don’t joke, Edward. I’m not going mad, am I?”

“No,” Ned hums. “I haven’t seen him look this fragile in a while. He never looks like he’s slept, does he?”

“No,” Madge takes another slurp of wine. “And there’s that tattoo.”

“Tattoo?”

“I could’ve sworn I’d told you. It’s a snake coming out of a skull, on the inside of his forearm. He’s always got it covered, nearly had a panic attack when he realised I’d seen it.”

“Maybe he was in a gang or something.”

“A gang? His accent is too posh for that.”

“True. And he’s got all that money.” Ned starts to comb his fingers through her hair. “I’ve no idea, Magpie, honestly.”

“I think he’s got PTSD from something or other.”

Ned’s arm around her waist tightens. “You would know.”

“Yeah.” Madge huffs a sigh, swills the wine around in her glass. “Well. We’ve just got to keep an eye on him, I think. I don’t want him to…”

She doesn’t need to finish the sentence for Ned to press a kiss to her shoulder. “He’s not going to turn out like your father,” he says, quietly sure and steady. “We won’t let him.”

Madge twists round and kisses him properly, cupping his face in her hands.

“Love you,” she says against his mouth.

“Love you too,” he murmurs back.

Chapter Text

There’s a letter waiting on Harry’s desk when he gets in the next morning, though calling it a letter would be generous in the extreme. It bears one sentence in pencil calligraphy.

Portrait of Amaury Malfoy, third on the left at the far end of the picture gallery.

DM.

“What’s that?” Pansy asks, appearing over his shoulder. “Who’s written to you at this dire hour of the morning?”

“Malfoy’s response,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off the looming hangover. Three butterbeers had seemed like a good idea last night – much less so in the harsh fluorescent light of morning. “The warrant is still active. I’m going to Apparate over now. Want to come?”

“Sure,” Pansy is already reaching for her cloak, a black velvet thing that, knowing her, is either a precious heirloom or cost more than their last payslips combined. “The Malfoy portraits are a scream.”

They leave a memo for Selwyn, and then head off through the bleary-eyed early-bird commuters to the Apparition point. The day is edging towards a sticky warmth as they arrive at Malfoy Manor and Harry is somewhat grateful to duck into the coolness of the entrance hall, uncomfortable memories aside. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to dissociate them from the place, even after all the times he’s been here on this investigation; terror is a difficult stain to scrub out. Pansy leads him up the stairs and into the portrait gallery, where most portraits appear to be sleeping.

“Amaury,” she says loudly, snapping to a stop in front of one. “Hello.”

“You must be a Parkinson,” the portrait in question is a tall, fit, middle-aged man with curls of white-gold hair pulled away from his face. He is wearing a dark green quilted tunic and a small white ruff; he stops pretending to doze nearly instantly. His eyes are very grey and very sharp. “I nearly married a Parkinson until she died of the dragon plague.”

“How…”

“Your nose, my dear. Noses never lie. And this…hmm. I don’t recognise your face, young man. What bloodline do you hail from?”

“My grandparents are from India,” Harry says.

“He’s Harry Potter. I’m sure you’re well aware of who that is.”

“Parkinson,” Harry hisses.

“Someone would have told him. Better to rip the plaster off now.”

“In case I’m going to be difficult? Quite the opposite,” Amaury Malfoy so unexpectedly Harry has to forcibly remind himself not to gape. “Thank you for getting rid of that hateful plague-sore polluting the house…”

“He was not a plague-sore, you dim-witted fool!” interrupts another Malfoy hanging opposite, potentially nineteenth century from the top hat and cane he’s waving.

Someone else then screams something in an indecipherable language at him, and the entire portrait gallery explodes into shouting and swearing. Amaury beckons them closer so they can hear him above the din.

“Not all of us are rampant blood-purists,” he confides, as though the racket is perfectly normal, “I blame the Magical Enlightenment and the International Statute – beastly things. Anyway, I assume you came for something in particular?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, “your many-times great grandson told us we could speak to you about a breastplate?”

“My breastplate.” Amaury leans against the corner of his frame, smile like the edge of a sword. “It’s been years since anyone has asked me about that, especially someone so dashing. What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Harry says. “I’ll record it all, if I have your permission.”

“May I know why?”

“We’re trying to find someone who is trying to find it,” Pansy folds her arms. From down the gallery, someone shrieks “he was a Muggle-loving brat and he got what was coming for him! Of course he shouldn’t have a portrait here!” Harry decides he doesn’t want to know.

“Lucius?” Amaury’s smile gets even sharper.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“Far from it, dear girl. I’m glad someone is finally reining him in.” He huffs, self-deprecating. “Well. That breastplate was a rather accidental invention of mine. Useful for a time – exploring can be a very perilous business – but the charm of invulnerability tends to become dangerous. You get an inflated head, an inflated sense of your own skill, if you go too long without having your arse handed to you, forgive the crudity. You forget that you are a person, with necessary limitations. You can become unstable.”

“When did you figure all of that out?” Harry asks.

“My friend, Quyllur. They were the chief magician of Atahualpa. You both look quite blank - has Hogwarts stopped teaching Muggle history?”

“Yes,” Harry says.

“Ridiculous,” Amaury shakes his head. “Atahualpa was the last king of the Incas. Phenomenal man. I got in a spot of trouble with some soldiers of Huascar’s – that’s his brother -  army, the breastplate doesn’t defend against projectile weapons, and Quyllur pulled my balls out of the fire. Anyway, I ended up spending three years with them, and upon leaving Quyllur and I decided that the breastplate was likely too powerful and dangerous for one person to have, so we split it up. They took the back half, I the front, and I journeyed back to England. We kept in contact with each other but then those pesky Spanish invaded and that was that. I never heard what happened – to Quyllur or the breastplate.”

“Wow,” Pansy says. “Where was it when you last had news?”

“Cuzco, I’d imagine, as Atahualpa won the civil war. Is that everything you need to know?”

“It’s a very helpful start,” Harry nods, folding his notebook back into the pocket of his robes.

“I’m glad to be of service,” Amaury Malfoy sketches an elegant bow, long ponytail falling over his shoulder. “In recompense, would you mind answering a question of my own?”

The racket has died down into grumbling, and Harry becomes very aware of the multitude of painted eyes on the back of his neck. “Depends on what it is.”

“Sensible,” Amaury flashes him a wicked grin. “How are my surviving descendents?”

“We can’t share anything about an open investigation,” Harry tells him, “but Draco is alive. He’s living up in Yorkshire.”

“At the castle?”

“Yeah. He’s got chickens, grows vegetables.”

Amaury blinks and then laughs. “The good things in life, I see. Well. If you do ever find out what happened to Quyllur, I would be pleased to know. And when the investigation closes you are always welcome for a gossip. It would be better than hanging here with most of these meatheads and I do love the company of a pretty, quick-witted young man.”

Harry finds his mouth ticking up at the corner, nods distractedly, his mind already skipping ahead to whether Susan will be able to get them entry into Peru without all the usual bureaucratic hassle…

“We will. Have a good day.”

Pansy says goodbye too, and they head out. As they walk down the drive, she digs a vicious elbow into his ribs. “Why is it that everyone flirts with you? I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Amaury was flirting with you,” Pansy says, as though he’s an especially stupid child. “I am so looking forward to telling Hermione. Fucking hysterical.”

“Can you not,” Harry mutters.

“Plenty of people want to date you, Potter. I know Ginger is probably a hard act to follow, please notice how uncharacteristically nice I am being about her, but she’s not the be all and end all of humanity.”

“Parkinson.” Harry stops as they slip out of the gate, tries to stare her down which is immensely difficult when she refuses to even acknowledge his glare of doom.

“It’s coming from a place of love,” Pansy says. “Get laid. Find a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. Stop living in the Ministry. It’s not healthy.”

“I appreciate the fact you care,” Harry starts, but Pansy Apparates away before he can finish the sentence. He stares at the tall green hedge for a second, and then sighs and follows her.

*

Even late at night the fifth-floor offices of the Department for International Magical Co-operation are bustling and full of people pretending that they’re too important to gawk at Harry Potter. He keeps his head down anyway, tells himself that he can’t feel their stares.

“Hi,” Susan says as he knocks on the half-open door of the office she shares with some colleague he is yet to meet. There’s a smear of dark blue ink on one of her pale cheekbones and her hair is pulled back in a neat braid. “Harry. What’s up?”

“Hi,” Harry says, blessing everything about Susan Bones. He’s glad the Ministry is peppered with ex-DA students, with people who were at the frontlines of the war and will never forget it, with a few people who refuse to do the whole hero-worship act. “Do you know anyone in the Peruvian ambassador’s office?”

“Peruvian?”

“Yeah.”

“Not personally,” Susan shrugs. “What do you need them for?”

“We need to do some investigative work in Cuzco, as soon as possible. Figured you’d know a person that could get us around all the red tape.”

“I’ll know a person who knows a person,” Susan agrees. “Can’t promise anything though. Most of Latin America’s wizarding communities are still pretty leery about us.”

“I don’t blame them,” Harry says.

“Likewise.” Susan scribbles a note. “Oh, heads up – my boss will tell yours tomorrow, but the Nigerians and Vietnamese are sending a joint task-force to check up on our reconstruction progress in a few months. You might want to make sure anything you don’t want them to see is sorted by then?”

“Ok, will do.”

Harry doesn’t pay all that much attention to international politics apart from whatever Hermione tells him. He stopped reading that bit of the Daily Prophet years ago when he figured out that the editor doesn’t like the fact that Britain is near the bottom of the wizarding world’s pecking order. With two civil wars in twenty years of each other he's not at all surprised.

“Is there anything else?” Susan asks, already pulling more papers towards her. Harry glances at the clock behind her head – ten pm. He can look at the records Cho’s pulled from the archives for a bit before he goes back to his flat.

“No, not at the moment.”

“Cool. I’ll get those papers sent down by tomorrow lunchtime.”

“And I’ll settle your tab at the Coffee Cauldron.”

“Got yourself a deal, Potter.”

Harry gives her a two-fingered salute and leaves her to it.

*

Cuzco is, Harry decides quickly, the most breath-taking place he’s ever been. It could be that it’s also the furthest place he’s ever been from England, and that anything different from London, Scotland, and Surrey will immediately be fascinating. Still, he likes to think that Cuzco is special. The terracotta rooves of the city nestle into the curve of a valley, mountains rising like dusty bare shoulders to the north – the air is dry and warm. Harry is grateful for the fact he’s been able to change into jeans and a t-shirt. Pansy, climbing the hill up to the Museo Inka next to him, has opted for some floaty, long-sleeved dress with sequins sewn on the bottom and a big floppy hat. It feels strange to be out like a Muggle twenty-one year old, exploring a new city with his friend, but they’d all decided that checking the most obvious places for a sixteenth-century breastplate would be sensible even if it’s unlikely to turn up anything.

The hill is steep, but eventually they reach the museum through narrow, paved streets of white-washed, metal-shuttered buildings. Harry holds the door open for Pansy and follows her in.

“Where should we look first?” he asks, pretending to lean on her shoulder on look at the entry price on the walls.

“Leave it to me,” Pansy replies breezily, extricating herself and drifting over to the man at the front desk, where she immediately begins chatting in perfectly fluent Spanish as she hands over a pile of money. Harry swallows his surprise, follows her over after a minute – he hadn’t seen her do any kind of translation magic, so…

“Darling,” Pansy turns to him in an overexaggerated way for literally no reason at all. “This kind gentleman says that the armour gallery is on the south side of the courtyard, first floor, and that the gallery attendant is an expert and more than happy to answer questions.”

“Sounds great,” Harry nods to the man behind the desk, and tries not to wince when Pansy takes his hand and leads him off. “So, uh…”

“My mother is Venezuelan, Potter,” Pansy shoots him a look, anticipating his question, “I’ve been bilingual since before I could walk.”

“Oh,” Harry says, “cool.” Then, because he and Pansy never talk about the past but she’s indicated that her family no longer live in England, “is she there now?”

“No, New York, living the high life. I'm finally going to visit her when this case ends," Pansy grins but there's nothing pleasant in her expression, "I'm rather looking forward to showing up in my Auror robes with the news that we caught Lucius Malfoy."

“That does sound satisfying,” Harry murmurs. He doesn’t know what he’ll do when this is all over. Sit in his flat for a day or two, go see one of Ginny’s games, beg Robards for another assignment. Perhaps he could travel but he just doesn’t know where he’d begin.

“Come on, cariño, stop dawdling,” Pansy says, letting go of his hand to open the door.

Harry doesn’t need to speak Spanish to know what that means, and he grimaces at her. “Can you not?”

“Why would I pass up an opportunity to make you uncomfortable?” she shoots back. “This is the best fun I’ve had all year.”

“Ghoul,” Harry mutters.

“Grindylow.” She adjusts her hat. “Right. Let’s go see if this damn thing is here. If we’re quick we can go explore the market, get lunch. I want some new earrings.”

They go out into the courtyard, past several craftswomen weaving brightly coloured cloth in the hazy sunshine. Pansy leads him down one of the colonnades and to the far corner, climbing a white-washed set of stairs and coming out into a long room filled with display cases of armour.

“Well,” she says.

“It’s more organised than the Malfoy attics,” Harry tells her as they take a few steps further into the room. The attendant, a young man with skin the same shade of brown as Harry’s and a handsome smile, puts down his book and rises from his stool, greets them in Spanish. Pansy returns it, rapid-fire, and Harry hears his name, smiles on rote.

“This is Fernando,” Pansy says. “He’s studying history at the university. I’m going to stay and talk to him for a while, ok?”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry says, wandering over to the nearest cabinet and peering at the array of swords and spears arranged in a fan-shape, aware of Pansy’s laughter-filled conversation with the attendant echoing behind him. It’s quite nice to drift through the room, considering all the articles of a history long-gone – Amaury’s world, he thinks, swords and long-bows and co-operation between Muggles and wizards. If he ever gets a chance to, he might go back and speak to Amaury about it, to understand how and why this obsession with blood purity came about from a different perspective to the one Hermione’s slowly piecing together. It has been a shock the past few years to realise that there is so much more to wizarding history than they’d been taught at Hogwarts and…

He’s come to a stop in front of a range of dummies, but the glass in front of them is taped together and the one to the left is missing a breastplate. If he squints he can just about see the label on the floor but can’t understand the Spanish.

“What’s this?” Pansy appears at his shoulder, Fernando in tow. He exchanges a speaking glance with her – her eyes have suddenly gone flat, hard.

“Historical armour. We do not have much of it but…”

“Is there supposed to be a breastplate with that one?” Harry asks. He can hear his pulse in his ears.

“Oh,” Fernando says, glancing either way and leaning in. “I’m not supposed to say anything but it was stolen.”

Harry looks at Pansy again, feels the adrenaline stream into his blood. How could it be that easy?

“Oh no,” Pansy says in feigned horror. “When?”

“A couple of weeks ago. It was so strange. I wasn’t on shift, but Roméo, the guard, was locking up and he swears it was a ghost thief.”

The case is getting more and more certain. Harry can’t believe his ears or their luck. “A ghost thief?”

“Indeed. Roméo says it had long white hair and a long black cloak, but there was a flash of bright red light and he doesn’t remember anything else. When he came to, the breastplate was gone.”

Lucius Malfoy and a stunning spell. There can literally be no other explanation – he’s got the breastplate and they’re too damn late. How the hell can Lucius Malfoy always keep one step ahead of them? What’s his end-game? There are so many missing puzzle pieces and Harry can’t figure them out no matter how hard he tries.

“That’s so creepy,” he hears Pansy say. “What would a ghost want with armour?”

“I don’t know,” Fernando says. They all stand and contemplate the missing breastplate for a few moments, and then someone calls Fernando’s name.

He says something in Spanish to Pansy who laughs and sparkles up at him for a second. As he turns and walks away, she twists to face Harry, rolls her eyes.

“Just like Lucius Malfoy to ruin my shopping plans,” she says, with a theatrical sigh. “What a bastard.”

*

They’re sitting outside in the courtyard of the lodging house, halfway into lunch someone brought them from the reception desk. Selwyn had greeted their find with a curt ‘good work’ and immediately sent them out so she and their minder Juanita could liaise with the Peruvian magical law enforcement.

“We’re Junior Aurors,” Pansy says after several angrily-chewed mouthfuls, “not children or dogs.”

“Am I really hearing you complain about space from Selwyn?” Harry replies. His head is still racing, trying to put together a semblance of a timeline. The disappearance of the Incan archaeologist makes sense now, but the Muggle soldiers…he has to be planning an attack, but where, how, why?

“True.”

They sit in silence. The food is amazing, like nothing Harry’s ever really had before, but he’s barely got space in his head to pay attention to it.

“How was Draco?” Pansy asks, eventually, putting aside her plate and pulling her knees up to her chest.

“What do you mean?”

“Merlin save us, Potter, do you really not understand the English language?”

Harry rolls his eyes, pulls a knee up to his chest. He gets why Pansy wants to have this conversation, knows he’s been avoiding the topic as best he can but...but, no. He needs to keep his mind on the case. There’s nothing wrong with that.

“Fine,” he says, curtly. Then, “He wears dungarees now.”

“Merlin. Chickens and dungarees. Things must have gotten dire.”

“You could say that.” Harry tries to drag his mind back to the clues, to the sense he knows is lurking somewhere just out of reach, but he keeps snagging himself on the look on Draco Malfoy’s face as he’d stood at the top of the stairs, the terror, the vulnerability the… “Parkinson?”

“What?”

“There was a…well, I…”

“Spit it out before I hex your mouth shut.”

“Morgana help me.” Harry sighs, tips his head against the warm stone wall. Pansy looks up from her close examination of her perfect pale green manicure. “When Malfoy and I were at the Manor, he had a complete panic attack. It was just…so unexpected? And I don’t want to pry but…”

“No, you want to pry. It’s fine.” Pansy looks back down at her nails. “It’s cute that you think the war only had an impact on your side, you know.”

The anger is sudden and unexpected, roaring to life on the tip of his tongue, but Pansy gets there first.

“Please, Potter. I’m not saying it wasn’t bad for you. Of course it fucking was. But Voldemort lived in Draco’s house for years. You learn to tell when someone’s been repeatedly put under the Cruciatus curse and…Selwyn, what’s the matter?”

Harry is on his feet in an instant – Selwyn’s face is bloodless and drawn, their bags are levitating behind her. “We need to go.”

“What?” Harry asks, nerves set jangling by the expression on her face. Selwyn isn’t nice, but she’s an inscrutable badass and he has never ever seen her look this rattled. “What’s happened?”

“I just had a Patronus from Robards,” she says, and Pansy straights, hat in hand. “There’s been a massacre at Azkaban.”

*

The atmosphere of the place is terrible. All of the surviving prisoners have been corralled in cells away from the scene of the killings, and the prison superintendent is in her office with Robards. As soon as they arrive, Ron is at Harry’s elbow. His freckles stand starkly against his pale face.

“There’s something you need to see,” he murmurs, and Harry glances over to Selwyn who is deep in conversation with another Senior Auror. Pansy is still in that dress, which didn’t seem ridiculous playacting tourists in the Peruvian sunshine but does now in the mouldy light of damp stone walls and echoing footsteps.

“How many dead?” Harry asks as he and Pansy follow Ron and his bright Patronus through the prison. He’s never been here, he realises, never seen the thick bars and the guttering sconces and the decay, the sense that nothing living could ever survive. It hits him after a moment that Sirius was here for over a decade, that Draco Malfoy spent three years here, that Azkaban is a real, terrifying place rather than just a spectre, a word dropped like a stone into a conversation.

“Fourteen. Thirteen were the last surviving Death Eaters. One was Umbridge.”

“Fuck,” Harry hisses between his teeth. There’s a shift at the end of the corridor, a rush of freezing cold – a Dementor – and without a word, Pansy’s silver parrot flaps into life and hovers above Ron’s terrier.

“Have you figured out who did it?” Pansy asks. She’s turned her hat into a sober black cloak, draped it around herself.

“Well,” Ron says, “this is the thing. He wasn’t exactly subtle.”

Harry follows Ron’s pointing finger, and there, daubed on the wall in furious, dripping red above what Harry realises in muted horror is the body of Amycus Carrow are the words Sanctimonia Vincet Semper.

Chapter Text

Draco is just in the village picking up some more pasta when the sky splits open like a bruised fruit and the storm that has been promised all afternoon begins to pummel the hills.

“Damn,” he groans, and Josh the cashier laughs.

“Bad luck, mate. Do you want me to call a ride for you?”

It’s tempting, but Draco shakes his head. “Got my coat, I’ll be alright. Thanks.”

“Rather you than me,” Josh says with a pointed look out of the window where the rain is now sweeping down in a graceful, silvery curtain. Draco picks up his bag, pulls his hood over his head and ducks out into the square. The worst thing about the rain is the lack of visibility; he can barely bloody see if there are any cars coming down the road. Someone looms up ahead of him and Draco sidesteps, assumes they’ll just want to hurry on, but as he passes their hand reaches out and grabs his upper arm, yanking him sideways into the bus shelter. He doesn’t even have time to ask them what the fuck they want as the figure lowers their hood and his father is staring at him.

Draco very nearly whites out, grips the bag like pasta could be any kind of weapon against his father’s wand.

“Hello,” Lucius says, quite calm. There’s a hint of silver at his throat, though most of it is concealed by the long black cloak. His hair is neat and dry and his eyes are fixed intently on Draco’s face as though they could burrow right through his skin and out the other side. “You’re looking well, son, if a little soaked.”

“Don’t call me that,” Draco manages after a moment in a raspy whisper. Lucius’ expression shadows, and he has to keep himself from flinching backwards. His heart is a stampede, his breath burns in his throat. His brain is shrieking at him to run.

“Would you deny the truth?”

Draco cannot find words, stares mutely. Lucius looks back for long, cavernous seconds and then shakes his head. The corners of his mouth draw up into a ghost of an amused smile.

“I don’t mean to interrupt whatever little game you’re playing with your Muggles,” he says, “but I wanted to see you.”

“No.” Draco shakes his head. Why is his father even bothering with the pretence of sentimentality? “You want something from me.”

Lucius’ smile grows wider; the flash of lightning illuminates his white teeth. “I’m glad Azkaban hasn’t robbed you of your wits. I was always pleased to have an intelligent son.”

Draco doesn’t point out that he only went to Azkaban for so long in the first place because they couldn’t land the responsibility where it belongs. He shoves his free hand into his coat pocket so that Lucius can’t see it shaking.

“What do you need me to do?”

“I need potions brewed.”

It makes sense – that’s the thing. He and Granger had always tied top of the year for Potions and he used to have to help Snape brew them for the Death Eaters. It maybe makes too much sense. He can’t tell if he’s being paranoid; Lucius is looking almost too calm, too amused, too earnest. Play along. He’s got to play along and make his father go away. He can’t break down.

“Right. Well you know I’m not allowed a wand, and I can’t exactly go to Diagon Alley to pick up supplies.”

“I’ll have all the necessaries sent when the time is right.”

“When will that be?”

“Whenever I decide it will be.”

Draco takes a deep breath. Play along. “Fine. Make sure it’s a copper cauldron. The other metals aren’t as efficient.”

 “Fine.” Lucius gives Draco one last, long look, and then flips his hood back up. “I’ll be in touch.”

The second he disappears, Draco’s knees give out and he’s crashing awkwardly into the bench, his breath scorching his lungs and spots orbiting the edges of his vision. He can’t breathe, fuck, he can’t breathe, his father was here, his father is making plans, his father is…no. He thinks he managed to not let anything on but he’s got to get down to the Ministry, report the incident to Auror Lennox because if he doesn’t he might get sent back to prison and the thought of that is enough to send a fresh wave of utter terror crashing through every cell in his body. He can’t go back to Azkaban. He can’t.

He gets up as soon as he’s able, and begins to walk up the hill – his feet carry him past the turn-off and down the gravelled driveway of Foss Farm. Vaguely, he becomes aware of someone shouting but he doesn’t register until Ned’s hands are painfully gripping his upper arms.

“Draco? Hey, talk to me,” Ned is saying, but his voice is coming from very far away. “What’s the matter?”

“I have to get to London.”

“What’s happened?”

Ned’s voice is very calm, the press of his hands grounding, and Draco feels his heart slow. The tempo of the rain increases, drumming impatiently all around them.

“I can’t,” Draco says, “I can’t tell you, it’s just really important. Do you mind giving me a lift to Skipton?”

“Of course,” Ned says. “Come inside for a moment, though, get dry. You’ll catch your death travelling to London like that.”

Draco allows himself to be steered into the kitchen. Ned finds him a towel, dry socks and a big woolly jumper, hums as he loads up a plastic box with food and then takes him out to the Jeep. Madge is just coming in from the fields looking like a mud monster – Ned waves her over.

“I’m just taking Draco to Skipton,” Ned says, and Draco huddles down in his seat so he doesn’t have to meet Madge’s diamond-hard eyes. He doesn’t want her to see the state he’s in because if she starts asking questions he’ll cave and he can’t tell them – International Statute of Secrecy aside, there is no way they are finding out about his father, no way they can know about his past. They’ll hate him if they know and he cannot lose them. He can’t. This is something he needs to do alone. “He needs to go to London.”

“Take him to York, why don’t you,” Madge instructs. “It’ll be a quicker train ride. How long will you be away?”

Draco uncurls infinitesimally. “Hopefully not long. Should be back tomorrow.”

“It’s a long trip for just one night.”

“It’s an emergency,” he says.

“Right. I’ll go up to yours and feed your animals, then.”

“Thank you,” Draco says, and then the Jeep is roaring to life and Ned is splashing it through the massive puddle at the end of the yard and back down the lane. When it becomes apparent that Draco isn’t going to talk, Ned puts on some classical music on the radio and starts in on a long monologue about the cows. Draco is unbearably grateful for this, and for the quiet whooshing of the little arms on the window that wipe the rain away, and the rumble of the tires on the main road. Ned drops him just outside York station – a damp gold sandstone building populated by pigeons and drenched tourists – just in time for Draco to run for the 12:10PM to Kings Cross.

The train south is one long haze. At some point, he remembers the box of food Ned had pressed into his hands, and opens it to find leftover pasta salad, an apple, and a foil-wrapped piece of Ned’s chocolate cake which in Draco’s opinion gives the Hogwarts one a run for its money, not that he’d ever say that out loud where any elves might hear him. At Peterborough, a town Draco knows nothing of, a man and his little girl get on and sit opposite. Draco turns and closes his eyes, pretends to be asleep, but he can feel the eyes of the little girl on his face for the hour and a half between Peterborough and Kings Cross.

“Daddy,” he hears her say eventually as the train begins to slow. “Is he a snow prince?”

“I…don’t think so,” her father responds, distractedly. Draco cracks his eyes open to see the little girl leaning across the table towards him, her hair a mass of dirty blonde curls. Her father has the newspaper folded on the table between them. “Why do you say that?”

“His hair is white and only snow princes have white hair,” the girl responds, and Draco finds his mouth curling up into a smile without any permission from his brain. If only magic weren’t a secret, if only he were in possession of a wand, he could make it snow for her. Wouldn’t that be wonderful – to use magic to make someone’s day instead of just to torture and kill?

Her father seems to have noticed that Draco is listening. “Sorry, mate. Hope she didn’t disturb you.”

Draco abandons his pretence of sleeping, straightens up in his seat and fiddles with his cardigan. “Not at all,” then, to the girl who is staring at him unabashedly from behind her glasses, he tries for a smile and hopes it doesn’t seem too forced, “no, I’m not a snow prince, sadly. Would be cool, right?”

“Mmmhm,” she says, and then suddenly shuffles closer to her father, pressing her face into his arm.

“Oh so now you’re getting shy,” her father says, petting the top of her hair. “Silly sausage.”

“Um, do you mind,” Draco asks after a moment as the announcement for Kings Cross sounds and the train slows further, “I need to get to Whitehall and I don’t really know where I’m going.”

He holds his breath, but the guy just nods. His daughter slants Draco another look and hides again. “Northern line to Charing Cross is easiest. Me and Izzy are going that way, we’ll take you with us. First time in London?”

“Yeah,” Draco lies.

Izzy brightens up as they leave the train, skipping alongside her father and telling Draco all about her grandma’s new puppy. The Northern Line turns out to be the famous Muggle Under-Train thing, and Draco is inordinately glad for Izzy’s obsession with snow princes because he would have made a right tosser of himself trying to navigate the maze of identical grey tiled corridors, halls, and stairs. The train is crowded, noisy, and very fast – it takes him barely any time to reach Charing Cross and climb the moving staircases up to street-level. At least these ones are nice and mechanical and don’t have a mind of their own like the ones at Hogwarts. He doesn’t even want to imagine a sentient transport network, let alone one with as bad a sense of humour as Hogwarts.

It takes several tries to find the side-street with the visitor’s entrance to the Ministry, but eventually he stumbles across the one he thinks is correct. He glances both ways to check he’s alone before cramming himself into the falling apart telephone box and dialling what he hopes is the right number. Auror Lennox had given him instructions, but that was months ago and the piece of paper with the right code is back in the castle – Merlin, it would be just his luck to be the complete wrong end of London, to be a nutter all alone in this telephone box with his father plotting, unable to report the meeting, waiting to be found out and flung back into Azkaban.

“Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business.”

He very nearly cries out of sheer relief. “Draco Malfoy. I need to see my parole officer.”

There’s a pause long enough to make him worried, but eventually the welcome witch responds. “Please take the badge and affix it to the front of your robes. You will be required to present yourself at the security desk, hand over your wand, and wait to be escorted to meet your parole officer.”

The badge rattles out of a slot in the machine and he puts it on; the floor of the telephone box drops downwards sharply, and he stumbles, reaching out for the side. The bloody Ministry really like their theatrics he thinks sourly as it jerks to halt with a similar amount of suddenness. He pushes open the door and finds himself in a corner of the Atrium he’d never really noticed before. It’s largely back to how it was before the war – sleek, dark wooden floors and the gilded fireplaces full of green fire, the turquoise and gold ceiling with its shifting patterns of runes. The only thing that’s no longer there is the Fountain of Magical Brethren; instead, right in the middle of the hall, there is a group of figures carved out of dark marble and decorated with gold leaf. After a few squinting seconds the front three resolve themselves into fairly passable resemblances of Potter, Weasley, and Granger. The Potter lookalike has his wand raised, a fierce and totally inaccurate expression on his face. Panic and sheer stubbornness would be more true to life. As Draco walks towards the security desk as quickly and evasively as possible, he sees the sign at the bottom that reads: to the memory of the fallen and the heroes who saved us.

Merlin’s saggy underwear, he thinks with a burst of bright, unexpected fury – are they really going to do this? Haul them all up on pedestals, laud them as heroes? They were just terrified kids doing the best they could with the task they’d been handed – where was the Ministry, where were all the grown wizards when they were needed? How did it happen that a bunch of seventeen year olds were the ones who won the war?

The security wizard looks up from his newspaper with vaguely narrowed eyes in which recognition is dawning. The opinion section of the paper is folded towards Draco, a headline blaring that the Death Eaters were let off too lightly underneath a photo of a smiling, clean-shaven Theo Nott cutting a ribbon somewhere, Merlin he hasn’t missed this. He steels every single nerve he possesses. It’s alright. He’s doing the right thing for once; he is not going to let anyone scare him off from it.

“Wand?” the security wizard asks.

“Don’t have one,” Draco tells him. “I’m here to see my parole officer.”

“I know,” the wizard says, standing up and running a thin golden rod through the air around Draco’s body. “Right. Sit, over there. I’ll send a memo up and someone will come and get you.”

Draco takes the indicated seat, winds his fingers together and focuses on his breathing. Witches and wizards hurry past, hurry home, too focussed on the thought of dinner and soft sofas to pay much attention to him. A few razor glances are thrown his way, but it’s nowhere near as bad as Diagon Alley was all those months ago. His stomach growls, and he wishes for the books he’s been reading out of the library. Josh the cashier had been raving about them a few weeks ago, about elves and dragons and dwarves and something called a hobbit, and Draco had wanted a break from the heavy philosophy the librarian has been shoving in his direction since he first showed interest in Discipline and Punish. JRR Tolkien has certainly explained why Muggles know about dragons, but his ideas are so woefully far from the mark it’s been an unexpectedly hilarious read.

His thoughts are so fully elsewhere that it takes him several seconds to realise that the throat-clearing noise is actually directed at him. He looks up to see Potter standing there in jeans and a t-shirt and a long black cloak with purple shadows like valleys under his eyes.

“Potter,” Draco says intelligently, tries to ignore the way his heart is suddenly trying to break the Quidditch speed record. He was ready to deal with Lennox and his passive-aggressive blandness; this an entirely unfair surprise, a carpet ripped from under his feet. “Auror Lennox…”

“Is otherwise occupied. Come on, we’ll talk upstairs.”

Draco stands, noticing how Potter keeps completely angled away from the horrible statue, the rest of the room, and the sideways glances of the security wizard. They go through the grille and towards an empty lift that – thank Merlin – stays empty as it closes and jangles upwards. Potter rubs his eyes, runs his hand through his hair which just makes it stick out even more. They reach the Department for Magical Law Enforcement which is still bustling. There’s a long line at a grungy looking café; a harrowed wizard shouts out orders at the top of his lungs. Draco keeps his eyes down, follows the hem of Potter’s cloak through the knots of people in the corridor and into a wide open-plan space littered with desks. He expects them to stop but they don’t, they keep going right up to a heavy, polished oak door that Potter knocks twice on then pushes open.

“After you,” he says, and that’s how Draco finds himself standing in front of a tall, golden-haired man and also facing down Eunice Selwyn’s sneer, Cho Chang’s polite smile and…

“Hi,” Pansy says, and then takes three big steps towards him and wraps her arms around his waist. Draco freezes. She still smells like that ridiculously expensive floral perfume she bought in Paris on their Yuletide holiday in fifth year, is still wearing the crane necklace that appeared out of nowhere in seventh year. He doesn’t know how to feel about this, about how he can still see his best friend and former fiancee under the woman now pulling back to look him in the face, about how different she looks with her shaved head, bright red lipstick, toothy grin. How could he have thought she'd hate him now after everything they went through together? She's always been on his side. After the final battle, when the Aurors had shown up, she'd held his hand for as long as she could before he’d had to… “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah,” is all Draco is capable of. She knew he was free and didn’t write, she…apparently reads his mind.

“I’m on the case concerning your father,” she says. “I’ve had to maintain professional distance.”

“Which you are so capably demonstrating now,” the man behind the desk points out dryly. Draco flushes, but Pansy just lets go and winks at him. Some things never change. “Please, Mr Malfoy, take a seat. Actually everyone sit down, it’s been a long day. I’m Gawain Robards, Mr Malfoy, the head of the Auror Office. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Draco inclines his head, takes the chair Selwyn jerks her head at.

“We’re the principle Aurors assigned to the Lucius Malfoy case. I hear you were coming to see Auror Lennox, though your scheduled meeting is not for another month.”

“Yes,” Draco says, looks down at his hands. “I, um. I had to report something, that my…Lucius…came to find me. I didn’t, I don’t…”

“Right,” Robards interrupts, mercifully saving Draco the embarrassment of having to lay bare how scared he is in front of all these people he used to know. “You did the right thing; I can tell you that. Talk us through it – Chang, have you got a quill ready?”

So Draco tells them – about the village, everything his father had said, the silver under his cloak, the hard, battle-worn look in his eyes. He speaks and they listen like what he says is useful, has worth. He’s very aware of Potter’s eyes on his face, of the flush smouldering warm in his cheeks; he keeps his own gaze directed at the edge of Robards’ desk, tries to pronounce his words as clearly and quietly as he can.

“He didn’t seem unstable, at all?” Robards asks after Draco has finished.

“Not outwardly,” Draco says, “but he never was, really.”

Eunice Selwyn snorts. “Really? I think unstable is an understatement.”

Draco’s gut clenches but he makes himself look up at her, at the twist of hatred on her face.

“No,” he says, as firmly as he’s able, “he isn’t unstable. He always knew exactly what he was doing. Don’t mistake hate-filled and power-hungry for insanity. They’re not the same thing.”

Eunice Selwyn is about to respond, but Robards gets there before she can. “We need, then, to decide what to do.”

“Then Mr Malfoy can go and wait outside,” Eunice Selwyn says. “We’re done with him.”

“No,” Potter speaks up. Draco looks over at him, finally – he’s frowning. Pansy is fingering her wand in the way that means she’s pissed. “He should be here. Lucius Malfoy is trying to drag him into something, and that means he’s important. We can’t just make decisions about his life without his input.”

“He gave up his right to have a say when he agreed to take that bloody Mark.” Selwyn’s voice is deceptively calm. Draco can see the way she grips her wand, hunches back instinctively into his chair and internally curses when Potter’s eyes flick to the movement.

“He was a kid!” Potter is up on his feet in a sudden blaze of anger, and all Draco can do is stare. The Saviour of the Wizarding World is jumping to his defence. Will wonders ever cease? “Are you going to blame him forever, Selwyn?”

“Right,” Robards interrupts. “That is quite enough, both of you. Potter, sit down. Mr Malfoy can stay. Selwyn, if you don’t want to be privy to this conversation I’d suggest you go and add what we’ve learned to the file and see if you can draw any more connections.”

“No, ” she says, curtly, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms, “I’ll stay.”

“Right,” Robards sighs, rakes a hand through his hair. “So Lucius Malfoy says he’s going to send Mr Malfoy prohibited materials for potion-making. He didn’t indicate which potions?”

“No,” Draco says. “He didn’t.”

“Well it implies Draco as an asset, right?” Pansy leans forward in her chair. “He could have Imperiused any old potioneer into his service, but he came to Draco. Why?”

“Apart from the fact they’re related?” Selwyn says, voice dripping sarcasm.

“Draco just got out of prison. He’s on parole. Related or not, that’s a trickier situation than putting some academic who never leaves their office under an Imperius curse.”

“Are there any potions you’re particularly good at?” Cho asks.

Draco looks down at his hands, swallows. “Pain potions, sleeping potions.” He sighs. “Polyjuice.”

He can feel Pansy’s eyes on the side of his head, knows that she’s remembering how she and Daphne Greengrass dragged him down to the furthest, half-forgotten-about dungeons one October evening, confronted him with a cauldron and pile of stolen supplies and a pair of implacable expressions.

“What if we get caught?” he’d asked.

“They’re torturing first years. Does that matter?” Pansy had snapped back.

“There are more ways to resist than scrawling graffiti everywhere and hexing people you shouldn’t,” Daphne had added. He’d had no argument, had known they were right.

When he looks up, everyone is looking at him. “Polyjuice,” Selwyn murmurs. “Why the hell would he want Polyjuice now?”

“Would you be comfortable going along with it?” Potter asks after a moment.

Draco stares at him, feels his heart skip into his throat. He wishes he didn’t have to be here. He wishes his father had just left him alone. “Why?”

Potter shrugs, but despite his affected nonchalance, his eyes are clear, focussed, fixed on Draco’s. “We can use you to get to him. Set a trap.”

“That,” Robards blinks, surprised, “is much more forward thinking than I was expecting, Potter.”

Potter’s mouth ticks up in an almost smile. “I’m learning, sir.”

“I don’t want to break my parole,” Draco says in a rush. His head is spinning and he wonders if he’s going to be sick. “I can’t break my parole.”

“We’ll get it arranged with the Wizengamot,” Robards tells him. “Chang, that’s on you.”

“Of course.” Cho scribbles a note at the corner of her parchment.

Robards is looking at him too now, shrewd and calculating, and Draco can see just why this man was made Head of the Auror Office. Then, surprisingly, his face softens a fraction. “Are you comfortable going along with this, Mr Malfoy?”

“I just…I don’t know,” Draco stammers. Get it together. He takes a deep breath, fists his hands hard in his lap, doesn’t look in Potter’s direction. “What if he knows I’ve come here? I’ve got Muggle neighbours; I don’t want them to get hurt.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Selwyn frowning, Pansy’s glower in her direction.

“That’s understandable,” Robards says, “but I’m going to be honest with you, Mr Malfoy. This is the best lead we’ve had for months, and due to external reasons, we’re under increasing pressure to get this case closed by early October at the absolute latest. If you could help us out, we might be able to do something in return for you.”

“Like what?”

“Get you back a wand.”

Everyone is silent again, and Draco exhales slowly. A wand. He hasn’t held a wand in so long, and a tiny part of him screams for access to that world again. But a wand doesn’t mean he’s forgiven, a wand doesn’t mean he can go back. A wand doesn’t mean he wants to.

“I actually think there’s a better way, sir,” Pansy breaks the silence.

“Yes?”

She shrugs, flips her hair over her shoulder. “Be obvious. Draco owls his father to say he’s being guarded because of the break-in…”

“Because the Auror Office has logically concluded that he’s in danger too,” Cho finishes Pansy’s sentence, and they smile briefly at each other. Selwyn is looking between them, eyebrows climbing into her fringe.

“So,” Pansy continues. “He’s still up for whatever nefarious plans Lucius has, but he’s just got to be sneaky about it.”

“The…” Draco starts. All four Aurors and Cho Chang look at each other, and Robards sighs.

“He might as well know. It’s not like he’s going to leak it to the Daily Prophet.”

“Know what?”

“There was a break-in at Azkaban.” Robards’ face is set, and Draco’s stomach lurches. He thinks he might know where this is going. “All the prisoners who were affiliated with Voldemort were murdered and your family’s motto was painted in their blood on the walls of each cell. It was, shall we say, quite the statement.”

“Merlin. You’re serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t. That’s why it’s all very interesting that Lucius showed up at your home barely a day later wanting someone with skill in potion-making.” There’s a pause, and Robards turns to Selwyn. “What do you think?”

Selwyn purses her lips, fiddles with something in her pocket. “It’s a plausible enough reason, if Lucius Malfoy were to fall for it.”

“Is there any reason he wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me, sir.”

“That’s fair,” Robards says. “It’ll do for now. I’d recommend that one of you travel back with Mr Malfoy tonight, then. Is anyone going to volunteer or shall I draw straws?”

“I will,” Potter says, nearly before Robards has finished speaking. This gets a raised eyebrow, and Draco watches Potter shrug. Something flashes across Selwyn’s face but it’s gone before he can figure out what it is. “Well, Parkinson has got to keep professional distance as we’ve already established. Cho’s not an Auror, and Selwyn has much better things to be doing with the case. You want one of the core team, I assume, and that leaves me.”

“Are you sure, Potter? It might be a long haul.”

“I’m sure my pot plants will miss me terribly, sir.” Potter’s voice is very dry. Draco suppresses the sudden and surprising urge to smirk.

“Fine,” Robards says. “You’d better get going, then. Everyone else, take ten, stretch your legs. We’re going to be here a while.”

*

Harry is fighting a gaping, hungry yawn as they all traipse out of Robards’ office – all except Selwyn, thank Merlin. Cho excuses herself after a few seconds to go and get coffee, and he leaves Pansy and Malfoy hissing to each other in the corner to go and grab a few things from his desk. To think that twenty-four hours ago he’d just landed in Cuzco, ready to sneak off and wander a new city with Pansy! To think that the ground can flip up from under his feet just like that! He isn’t angry, per se – this is his first big case, and it’s a big deal. A little bit of tiredness is a small price to pay.

He eventually stops finding excuses to let Malfoy and Pansy have space and wanders back over, giving them plenty of warning of his approach. Parkinson looks up as he draws near.

“Thanks,” she says, “for standing up to Selwyn.”

Harry shrugs, very aware of Draco’s grey eyes trained on his face. “It’s nothing.”

“No,” Pansy insists, “it isn’t. Accept the thanks, idiot.”

“Thanks accepted.” He gives her a pointed eyeroll. “Try not to murder her in my absence.”

“Can’t promise anything, especially if she goes after Granger again.” Pansy gives him a grin that’s ninety-percent venom. “Stay safe, toad. If I have to ride to your rescue, it will be in a ballgown and you will be very embarrassed.”

“I hate you,” he tells her. She doesn’t dignify that with a response, just flips him off, elbows Malfoy in the ribs and disappears down the hall towards the café, the doors swinging in her wake. He and Malfoy are left standing and staring at each other. He wonders if he’s making up the faint glow of Malfoy’s skin in the sputtering fluorescence.

“She likes you,” Malfoy says, eventually breaking the silence.

“Who? Pansy?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Harry shrugs, beginning to walk in the direction of the lifts. Malfoy trails after him. “It had to happen eventually. Also mutual dislike of Selwyn didn’t hurt.”

Malfoy chews this over for a bit as they reach the lifts. Harry picks one at random and Malfoy follows him in. As the grille slides down, he stops fidgeting with the thread bracelets around his unmarked wrist and says, all in a rush, “did you mean it?”

“Mean what?”

“Don’t…the whole thing. About me being a kid, and the whole…”

Harry feels himself flush, prays that it doesn’t show up on his cheeks and tries to meet Malfoy’s eyes as steadily as possible. It had been one of those split-second decisions, rushing out of his mouth before he’d even realised what he was saying, but now, well. He thinks that the knowledge has been there, the evidence piling up, for a long time. He can hear Pansy’s voice echoing in his ears: you learn to tell when someone’s been repeatedly put under the Cruciatus curse.

“Yes. Of course. It’s the truth. Even if it wasn’t, you’ve served your sentence so I don’t see what the point is in blaming you further.”

“Eunice Selwyn was friends with my mother,” Malfoy murmurs.

“And were you the one that killed your mother?” Harry shoots back, ignoring the way Malfoy tries and fails to hide his flinch.

“No,” he says, after a moment.

“Well then. She shouldn’t blame it on you because you’re a convenient scapegoat. It’s not fair and it’s not professional. Your father is the criminal, not you.”

Malfoy doesn’t respond, but Harry notices the way his shoulders and mouth relax a little, the way he sighs.

“I am sorry to impose all of this on you,” Harry says after a while as the lift jangles past level five. “I know we don’t have the best history and-”

“It’s not an imposition.” Malfoy doesn’t look up. His shoulders are as set like a cliff face, steep and guarded. “You’re protecting me from a homicidal monster.”

“Still, I just…”

“It’s fine, Potter,” Malfoy tells the floor. “I’m grateful.” Then, all in a rush as though the words are hot coals in his mouth, “And I’m sorry. For everything that happened. The war, and then at school, too. I was an arse and a brat.”

“You’re still an arse,” Harry says, and Malfoy lifts his head again, looks Harry straight in the face. The force of it makes Harry’s breath evaporate in his throat; he curses his inappropriate flippancy, wishes he could snatch it back out of the air, say something different.

“Things are different now,” Malfoy insists. “You’re my guest, and I won’t, I…”

“It’s fine,” Harry says. “Sorry. I…ah, apology accepted. It’s fine. It was years ago.”

Malfoy doesn’t respond but he keeps looking at Harry like has no idea what to make of him. Harry peels his eyes away, and the lift keeps moving down.

*

“So,” Draco says. “This is dire.”

“You’re telling me,” Potter grumbles. “Wait here. I’ll just get some things and we can leave.”

He disappears into the door at the back of the apartment, and Draco laces his hands together, looks around. It’s a perfectly neat, perfectly nice apartment in a perfectly nice part of a London district called Chiswick – and about as characterless as a hotel room. Cream walls, wooden floorboards, black leather sofa, small window, dirty dishes in the sink. There’s nothing to suggest that one Harry James Potter, aged twenty-one, one-time saviour of the Wizarding World lives here. The crammed desk Potter had spent an inordinate amount of time faffing over – the blanket folded over the back of the chair, the tub of cereal bars – makes an awful lot more sense.

The man in question re-emerges after a few moments, holding the Firebolt that Draco used to be so jealous of, a small overnight bag, and a canvas bag with a big, unidentifiable square object in it.

“It was convenient, after Ginny and I split,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Draco pulls a face. Right after the war Potter and the Weasley girl had been the celebrity golden couple du jour, despite their age, despite the fact they’d just fought and won a war by the skin of their teeth and the tips of their fingers. He’d spent far too long staring at their loved-up faces blown large on the gossip rags Ms. Everett kept in her reception room. It’s weird to think that they’re not together anymore.

“It’s a fucking abomination.”

“Yes, well. Not all of us have castles at our disposal,” Potter responds without heat. His brows crinkle together and Draco feels the frightening urge to reach over, to smooth them out with the tip of his finger. “Come on.”

When they finally Apparate back to the front of the castle, Draco kicks open the door. Dog bounds over with Beryl the abomination chicken firmly perched on his back.

“I don’t even want to know,” Draco tells him, petting his ears and accepting the excited slobbering. “Beryl, you live outside with the rest of the flock, you’re not special.” Then, to Potter, whose face is doing that irritatingly gorgeous suppressed laughter thing, “I’m sorry, my animals have no manners.”

“They would have fit in well in Gryffindor,” Potter says, far too close for comfort, leaning down to trace a finger across Beryl’s russet feathers. She makes a contented clucking sound.

“Oh great, my devil chicken is going to decide you’re her favourite. Just what I need.”

He nudges Dog and Beryl out of the back door and then takes Potter up the curling spine of the stairs onto the first floor landing.

“Sitting room,” he says briskly, gesturing at a door and ignoring the uncomfortable feeling lodged stubbornly at the base of his sternum, “bathroom, for what it’s worth. I’ve not been able to make the plumbing work properly. Don’t tell Lovegood that if you see her, she’ll not stop pestering me about creatures that live in it. Your room – you’re going to have to transfigure something into a bed because I didn’t buy a second one. My room is upstairs. I’m going to make dinner.”

With that, he leaves Potter standing and flees back to the relative safety of the kitchen and the garden, goes to dig up potatoes and pick beans. Eventually, when he comes back inside and starts chopping the veg, Potter meanders back down the stairs holding a couple of bottles of Butterbeer and Draco has to take several deep breaths at his sudden appearance. Potter’s a guest. They’ve talked. It’s fine. He doesn’t have to like having someone here, but he has to be pleasant.

“Found these at the flat, figured we might as well drink them,” Potter says.

“Thought you were supposed to be on duty.”

“Don’t tell,” he grins. “And I uh…”

Draco feels prickly all of a sudden. “Expecting a house elf?”

“I was just going to ask if you wanted any help, but I’m crap at cooking spells. Keep meaning to ask Ron to teach me.”

“Ah, well.” Draco runs a hand through his hair, “if you can chop carrots without cutting your fingers off, I suppose that would be useful.”

“I did make it through six years of Potions with my fingers intact.”

“Wow what talent. Give the man his second Order of Merlin.”

Potter laughs again, and summons the knife and board over to him. “I am kind of curious, though.”

“What now?”

“You’re not using cooking spells.”

“I’m not allowed a wand for another year and a half. And I really don’t…house elves…it doesn’t sit right. Not anymore. Clovelly tried to come and move in with me, but I asked her to go work at Hogwarts instead.” Then he pauses, blurts out for some undiscernible reason, “You should have seen Madge’s face when I tried to make a roast for the first time. If it hadn’t been so embarrassing I would have laughed myself silly. What?”

Potter is looking at him oddly, and then starts paying rapt attention to the carrots. “Nothing. Must have been weird, though, coming from the Manor and Hogwarts to having to do everything for yourself.”

“After Azkaban,” Draco says, enunciating his words as though they’re glass, likely to shatter at the slightest pressure, “nothing feels weird anymore. Believe me.”

They fall into silence after that. They bump into each other several times, doing awkward dances to reach things. Dog wanders back in without his chicken girlfriend, and huffs down by the fireplace, swishing his tail back and forth. They eat dinner in silence too, and then by silent agreement take the butterbeer up to the sitting room. Potter disappears for a moment and then comes back in with the canvas-bagged object, settles himself cross-legged on the faded green divan. Draco gets his books and notepad off the shelf, folds into an armchair.

“Do you mind?” Potter asks after a moment, and Draco looks up to see that the canvas covered object is actually a sage-green vintage-style wizarding radio, the kind they’d broadcast from in the mid-twentieth century. It’s classy, elegant – so much nicer than he would have imagined Potter owning if he’d put his mind to it.

“It depends on what you listen to,” Draco says, keeping his tone carefully polite.

“I was just going to catch up on the latest Harpies game. I can go to my room if you prefer.”

Draco tilts his head back, affects haughtiness. “Since the Harpies are a halfway decent team I’ll allow it.”

“Halfway decent? Halfway decent? Half of them play for England!”

“And that is an indicator of quality how, exactly?”

“You are such an arse,” Potter says. “Can I?”

“If you must.”

Potter bends his head to the radio, taps it several times with his wand, and out comes the voice of Lee Jordan. Draco knows he’d commentated at school; didn’t realise he’d made the switch into professional. Gryffindors and their obsession with sports – it really shouldn’t be a surprise. Draco props his book onto his knees and tries to pay attention to the dense prose – the librarian just ordered in a load of feminist theory that he apparently has to read – but finds himself distracted by the tapping of Potter’s long, knobbly fingers on the arm of the chair, the crackle of Jordan’s voice announcing that yes, Ginny Weasley has scored yet another goal.

It’s a bit maudlin to be listening to your ex’s Quidditch game, but Potter doesn’t seem to find it at all strange so Draco puts it out of his head. Potter’s emotional state is the last thing he wants to know anything about right now.

After half an hour, he finds himself drifting away from the book again. Potter is now horizontal on the sofa, socked feet in the air, and Dog has followed them up to lounge upside down on the rug with his paws in the air. The grate is a warm glow, rain tip-toes against the window, and Draco tips his head against the back of his chair. He’d dreamed about something like this during the darkest days of the war – company, quiet, comfort – but now it’s here, he feels dissociated from it, as though it was cut for someone else and it wrinkles across his shoulders, refuses to lie flat.

Potter is still tapping his fingers. Dog whines in his sleep. Ginny Weasley scores again. The night leans in close, all cold breath and the promise of nightmares. He tries to breathe away the weight in his chest but it refuses to budge.

Chapter Text

The Whitechapel Road service corridor has sprung a leak since Theo Nott was last here; it drips insistently into the dark, toxic puddle it’s made on the concrete floor. The sound gets lodged in his brain as he passes it, heads down towards the shimmer where the Fidelius begins. Two blank-eyed Muggles in anonymous black uniforms stand just on the other side of it with those machine guns cradled in their arms. Lucius must be getting twitchy.

One of them clocks Theo’s presence, and they cross their guns in perfect unison. He can’t tell if it’s training or the effect of the Imperius that gives them that uncanny sense of timing. “Password?”

“For Merlin’s sake,” Theo snaps, drawing his wand and flicking it in the pattern Lucius has shown him, nonverbally casting the spell. A silver-green smoke snake issues out of the tip of his wand, hissing faintly, and the Muggles drop their guns, turn aside silently to let him through the magical barrier.

On the abandoned platform, more Muggle soldiers are gathered – some lying about, a couple doing press-ups, three bent over some half-constructed device. He gets why Lucius is using them, why the base is here, but not particularly why he has to come to it to check in. Nott Manor is, of course, far too obvious but Theo has plenty of property all over the world, doesn’t see why he has to stoop to crawling around in the Muggle underground system getting stains on his dress robes.

“There he is,” a voice says, and Theo looks up to see Lucius striding towards him, black robes billowing and half-open over the silver breastplate he’s acquired from somewhere and doesn’t want to seem to take off. “How were the invalids? Terribly grateful for their new ward?”

“Not as grateful as the head of St Mungo’s,” Theo replies. “I’m to become a governor of the hospital.”

“Good work.” Lucius nods, and Theo digs in his pocket, hands over the letter he’d liberated from the eagle owl hanging around on the corner of Piccadilly and Knightsbridge. Lucius opens it, reads it, and silently ignites it – Theo watches the flames flicker in Lucius’ cupped hands.

“How was Draco?” he asks after a moment.

Lucius’ expression is just this side of vicious. “Swallowed it, hook line and sinker.”

“He came to London?”

“Of course. Potter’s gone back with him because of our break-in at Azkaban.” Lucius is smiling, but there is nothing pleasant about the expression. “Apparently Potter just volunteered.”

Theo rolls his eyes. He’s been at some of the same parties as Potter, after the war, but hasn’t engaged beyond the pleasantries. Anyway, since Potter joined the Auror Programme and got dumped by the little Weasley Quidditch prodigy, he’s not shown his face. “What an idiot.”

“You were right.”

“You didn’t think I would be?”

 “It has been years.”

“You,” Theo says, “weren’t at school with them, sir.”

“That bad?” Lucius laughs.

“Yes. And completely oblivious.” He’d been one of Draco's inner circle once upon a time, spent too many hours trailing around listening to Draco’s whinging, watching Draco watch Potter, wondering when the penny would finally drop. It never did. Draco has always been as thick as horseshit when it comes to dealing with emotions. “Never thought it would turn out useful.”

“Well,” Lucius says, “it was a good hunch. Come on. We need to decide your next target.”

*

“No, no, do not even think about it,” Madge says, grabbing the back of Harry’s sweater and propelling him with a significant amount of force towards the nearest kitchen chair.

“Are you sure I can’t help?”

“We don’t want to burn down the kitchen and prove Ned right,” she says firmly. Harry hears Malfoy’s snort of suppressed laughter. “We’re supposed to be able to do this on our own.”

“If you’re that desperate to help you could go get some chocolate flowers from the garden for the cake,” Malfoy suggests, the smallest of smiles playing around his mouth.

“Chocolate flowers?”

“Don’t you know?” Malfoy’s voice is all innocence. “I can’t believe I haven’t told you. You can plant the Dairy Milk chocolate, and it grows into these really amazing tasting flowers and…”

“You’re actually serious?”

“Of course. When am I not?”

“Pinocchio, Pinocchio, wherefore art Pinocchio?” Madge is looking far too amused. “Whoosh, there goes his nose.”

“Worth a shot,” Malfoy shrugs.

“It was a good advert,” Madge agrees. “Very pretty.”

“Wanker,” Harry says, slumping further down into the chair. Malfoy goes back to stirring as though he hasn’t heard, but Madge shoots him a grin that Harry returns.

It’s been three weeks since Malfoy had grudgingly dragged him down to the farm, pushed him into Ned and Madge’s kitchen.

“Here’s my emergency, since you’re so bloody curious,” he’d grumbled. “And no, I don’t know how long his enforced leave is so don’t ask.”

It’s been three weeks of trailing around, doing battle with wards that won’t do as they’re told and helping with menial tasks around the garden. Malfoy has recently upgraded him from ‘useless nuisance’ to ‘general dogsbody’ which comes with the great responsibility of being allowed near the rake. Harry has tried to say that he’s not completely incompetent around plants but Malfoy gave him a flat stare and didn’t appear to understand Harry’s incredibly nuanced appreciation for suburban horticulture. Hence: useless nuisance. Sometimes he’s marshalled into lending a hand at the farm but most of the time Malfoy goes alone and Harry only comes in the evenings for the big, raucous dinners that remind him of the ones at the Burrow during the school holidays, of the first time he realised he had people who cared about him. It’s all nice – so much nicer than London – but Harry doesn’t ever think he’s felt like this much of a spare part, not between Aunt Petunia and all the trouble he got into at Hogwarts.

The best days are the ones where the press of dreary metallic clouds ease off to reveal a pale, wind-scoured sky. Malfoy drags him out on mostly-silent walks on days like that, over the dales or down into Wombleton Bridge for groceries. Walking along with the squelch of the ground beneath his feet and a horizon distant enough to be swallowed in is something he’s never appreciated before. The hills don’t care if he killed Voldemort. The hills are too old to even notice.

“You know what would actually be helpful?” Madge says after a second, glaring at the onion she’s bludgeoning to death with her knife.

“What?” Harry asks, cautious.

“Go distract Ned. I swear, if I see his face peering through the window one more time I’m going to hurl this casserole at it.”

“Yes, let’s avoid defenestrating our dinner,” Malfoy says, still smiling privately to himself. He’s smiled more today than he has in the entire last three weeks, and Harry can’t stop catching himself on it, on the giddy shivers of warmth it sparks at the tips of his fingers. Merlin’s sake, he reminds himself fiercely as he stands, tears his eyes from Malfoy. There is a bloody difference between appreciating the way someone looks bending down to harvest French beans and wanting to go over, push them against the oak tree and kiss them senseless.

Ned is indeed lurking outside in his raincoat in the yard with Dog, who has also been banished for trying to steal the beef from the saucepan.

“You too?” Ned asks as Harry sloshes over, pulling his jacket closer.

“Yep. Madge is contemplating murder.”

“Madge is always contemplating murder, it’s a fact of married life. Shall we go find something to do in the barn? I’d rather not see the kitchen go up in flames if I’ve got any choice in the matter.”

“Sure,” Harry shrugs.

He’s quickly set to sweeping the gangway whilst Ned fixes the door of the milking stall.

“Three weeks, huh?” Ned says after a moment, around a mouthful of nails.

“Yeah,” Harry says, “I know. It’s gone quickly, which I…”

“…wasn’t expecting?” Ned fills in. He keeps twisting his screwdriver in careful, mechanical half-circles and Harry pauses sweeping to watch him.

“No,” he says, eventually. “No, I wasn’t. It’s weird.”

“How so?”

Maybe it’s because Ned isn’t looking and the barn is dark and Harry can keep brushing like he’s just talking to himself and the thin, empty air that he keeps talking. He doesn’t know. “Work is…so busy, most of the time, and we’ve had this big, ongoing case that’s getting pretty nasty so if I’m not in the office, I’m asleep.”

“Sounds like you work yourself too hard,” Ned says.

“I, no, it’s like a hazard of the job.” Harry’s response is too quick, too defensive. “And I go out, sometimes.”

Ned turns on his stool, gives him a serious look. Harry feels as though Ned can see he’s not telling the truth, like Ned can just look right through him and out the other side. Dumbledore had this in his arsenal too, this ability to soul-search with a raise of the eyebrows, but it’s uncanny how different the feeling is when it’s someone Harry knows doesn’t have any sort of agenda.

“I’m sure it can be,” Ned says carefully, and somehow he manages not to sound patronising. Harry has to admit that. “But there’s a difference between a few late nights at the end of a big case and how exhausted you looked the first time we met, back in June. You were nearly worse than Draco and that’s saying something.”

“Why do you care?” Harry asks. And then, as he hears himself, “sorry I just…it…”

“Because I’ve seen it happen before,” Ned says calmly. “I met Madge when I pulled her out of a car crash. She used to be a cardiac surgeon, you know, first woman surgeon at Liverpool General, but she worked herself into a pit and fell asleep behind the wheel.”

“Mer…God.”

“It’s fine. It was decades ago. She’s fine. You’re not quite at that level yet, but it’s a slippery slope.”

Ned looks up at Harry again, and Harry looks away quickly, breathes through the hot, tar-like feeling clogging up his lungs and grips the broom hard enough that his hand begins to cramp. He knows he overworks – Pansy points it out to him on a semi-regular basis, and Ron makes flippant jokes about Apparating to the Ministry to bring Harry dinner – but work is the only thing he’s got to distract him from the nightmares and the terrible, gaping, hungry fear that he’ll never be more than the teenager who defeated Voldemort on luck and nerve.

It was easier before, with Ginny dragging him out to parties and Quidditch games, foul-mouthed and blunt and fearless. He could be the Chosen One for the public when he got to go home to their tiny rented house and marathon Muggle action movies, eat takeout, and dissect Quidditch strategies in infinite detail. This last year he’s just been coping. He’s had to. Because if he’s not coping, if he’s not showing up and contributing to meetings and solving this fucking case then what kind of fucking Chosen One is he?

“Sorry,” Ned says as the silence drags its feet. “I’ve made things awkward. I didn’t mean to-”

“No, it’s just…” Harry sighs, explosively. “You’re right, actually. I do. Overwork that is. There’s just some stuff, and I…yeah, I…”

“You don’t have to say anything unless you want to.”

“I don’t really want to, no.”

“That’s fine.” Ned picks up his screwdriver again, tosses it in the air and catches it. Harry’s stomach is an unforgiving knot. “Maybe just focus on the here and now since you’ve got this time off. What do you want to do with it?”

Harry slowly uncurls his fingers one-by-one from around the broom.

“I don’t know,” he says. The honesty is searing in his throat.

“Well, that’s ok.” Ned hums. “We have a kickaround most Saturday afternoons, down on the village green. You should drag Draco.”

“Ok,” Harry says, the tension in his stomach beginning to loosen. “He’ll be so mad.”

“It’s good for him,” Ned shrugs. “Great.”

They finish their respective chores in the quiet, and then Ned glances at his watch.

“One last thing,” he says, “I just wanted to say that I’m glad you’re here. Draco likes the company, and I like to see him happy.”

Harry raises his eyebrows, feels the flush tip-toe up the back of his neck and bites down on any smile that might be getting ideas. “Really?”

“Yeah. He complains, but you can tell.”

Harry doesn’t know what to say to that, but tucks the warmth of it away for safekeeping in his pocket and follows Ned back through the yard to the house. Madge and Malfoy have set the table and taken pity on Dog, who is back inside and wearing a sign that says Happy Birthday Golden Oldie in scrawling block capitals. Harry finds himself grinning, drops to his knees to ruffle Dog’s ears and feels Malfoy’s eyes like magnets on the back of his neck. When he turns to look, Malfoy is intently busy with something at the stove. There are strands of hair tumbling loose from his bun and framing his thin, angular, serious face and his jumper sleeves are folded up very precisely. Harry takes a very deep breath, buries his face into the scruff of Dog’s neck for a moment.

Malfoy is very attractive and Harry wants to kiss him. It’s fine. It’s a thing he can deal with. It’s a thing he can deal with.

*

“A kickaround?” Draco sniffs disdainfully. “Are you genuinely serious?”

“I am genuinely serious,” Potter says, holding open the door like some kind of beautiful evil trickster god. He’s even grinning like one, dear Merlin.

Draco admits he may be being a tad melodramatic but the prospect of any kind of sport that doesn’t involve broomsticks and might involve running is unconscionable. Ned and Potter are ganging up on him. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Ned hadn’t found that decrepit musical instrument in the attic of the farmhouse to give to Potter like he’s a charity case. Potter can now play three chords, has an infuriatingly pleasant singing voice, and has made it his mission to teach Draco about popular Muggle music. They are conspiring against him. Draco hates the universe with every cell in his body.

“There is no way I can get out of this?”

“There is no way you can get out of this.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

By luck of the draw, Draco manages to secure a place on the side-lines – better known as the kerb – with Josh who is much less happy to be on the side-lines, even after being prompted into a long ramble about Middle Earth’s history. Draco half listens to it and half watches the kickaround, which is apparently colloquial slang for a casual game of football. Football involves kicking a ball up and down a pitch, and trying to score using goals made out of piles of jumpers. Players aren’t allowed to use their hands which Draco thinks is utterly stupid. Potter is, of course, still just as athletic as he’d been in school and is obviously having the time of his life getting muddy and tackling people. He’s scored all three goals for Ned’s team. Sadly, the other team has all the younger people and a strategy and they’ve got a two goal lead.

The lady from the clothes shop blows her whistle and someone kicks the ball off in her direction. After a round of back-slapping and cheering, Potter extricates himself and comes striding over; he’s wearing a pair of bright blue Muggle exercise shorts that belong to Madge, a pink sweatband holding back his hair that he’s got from Merlin knows where, and there is mud smeared in a long line up his left leg. He looks ridiculous and so happy and Draco should not have to be battling a smile at the sight of him.

“Couple of the guys have to head off so we need you and Josh to join,” Potter tells them.

“Awesome,” Josh says to no-one in particular and jogs off.

“I know nothing about ‘football’.” Draco folds his arms. His stomach feels like a cauldron about to bubble over.

“It’s easy. Easier than Quidditch.”

Draco raises an eyebrow and tries to level Potter with a death stare, but it’s remarkably hard to death stare someone wearing a neon pink sweatband. “Even if it was easy, why would I join the losing side?”

“You’re such a bloody Slytherin.” Potter rolls his eyes. “To help us win?”

Draco heaves an overdramatic sigh. “Fine. But you all really need to have a talk about strategy before we start back up, because there’s no way you’re going to beat the others if you carry on as you are.”

Potter’s grinning again. Draco walks off so he doesn’t have to see it, is quickly drawn into his new team – a group of sweaty, enthusiastic middle-aged-and-older people, most of whom he vaguely recognises. Ned claps him on the shoulder, and the librarian gives him a quick run down of the rules and assigns him the role of second striker, unfortunately also known as Potter’s right hand man.

“Malfoy’s terms for joining us are that we have a strategy,” Potter announces, joining the circle next to Draco. Their shoulders brush and Draco twitches away.

“We never normally play with a strategy,” the librarian says.

“Maybe that’s why we always lose,” the shop manager counters.

“Well it can’t hurt,” Ned replies, shrugging. “Any ideas?”

Potter begins to try and explain an extremely earthbound version of the Parkin Pass, which is only going to end up with broken shins so Draco feels duty-bound to interrupt him with a better idea, thinking through the different positions in his head. There are four more people than he’s used to reckoning with, but there’s a possibility they could make it work. At the very least, they all seem to understand his instructions. Ned is watching him with a smile.

“There’s a lot less cheating involved than I’d expected,” Potter says as the whistle blows and they cross the pitch to take up their positions.

“Living with a Gryffindor is evidently rubbing off on me,” Malfoy frowns at him. “And anyway, cheating is a strategy. It’s not my fault the captains all used it rather clumsily.”

“Like you were the height of grace,” Potter snorts.

“So says the man who nearly swallowed the Snitch.”

“But I caught it,” Potter says, and he’s smirking and Draco does not want to think about how that expression looks on Potter’s face. Luckily, he doesn’t have to as the whistle squeals and the second half explodes into action. Football is nothing like Quidditch. It feels so strange to be in the thick of things, running around after Potter and blocking the other players from getting near him rather than spiralling overhead looking out for Bludgers and the Snitch. A tiny part of his brain wonders if, when he’s allowed a wand again, whether he’ll be able to buy a broom. Merlin he misses flying.

Potter scores once, and then Draco scores completely by accident, and then the other team get one past their now solid defence line. Draco contemplates and discards several potential cheats; it’s harder on foot than it is with brooms to grab and Bludgers to smack around. The next point starts, and it’s three minutes until the end of the game, it’s a lost cause, but Potter’s got the ball and Draco has to follow, sees the defender coming up to tackle Potter and slides in between them, angling his body so the defender slips on a patch of mud and tumbles over without Draco even touching him.

Josh is coming up fast and Potter isn’t paying any attention so Draco just steps into Josh’s path, twists ninety degrees to the right when Josh doesn’t stop in time and skids over too. Really, there’s some fun to be had with mud that you don’t get mid-air. Thirty seconds left. Potter kicks the ball hard and it goes sailing over the outstretched hands of the goalkeeper and straight into the road behind the goal, bouncing off the bonnet of Ned’s Jeep and disappearing into a flowerbed. The whistle blows, and then all of a sudden Potter’s slung his arm around Draco’s neck, is yelling “Yes!”

He smells something awful, but the warm weight of his arm, the familiar thrill of winning a sports match is sparking like a jinx through Draco’s blood and he finds the corners of his mouth turning up, turns towards Potter who is beaming. There’s mud on his face and on his stupid sweatband and Draco feels his stomach sink right through the floor.

The others come running up and the librarian’s husband, a big, burly man with a blonde beard, hoists Potter up onto his shoulders and they’re all laughing and shouting and it was a stupid casual match but it was fun. It was so much fun. He doesn’t think he’s felt this giddy since he was a child racing Pansy on those ridiculous sailing boats her father brought back from his travels.

Draco doesn’t realise that Ned is at his shoulder until he hears him ask: “So, going to join us again?”

“Perhaps,” he says.

*

It’s a damp day at the end of August. They’re out in the back garden and Draco is fixing the leaking hen-house as Potter rakes leaves when suddenly the air squeezes and Luna is standing next to him, burrowed in a practical-looking yellow waterproof jumpsuit that has pyrite stitched on all the cuffs. She has a relatively large seabird on her arm with bright red feet and a long pale-blue beak. Draco nearly drops his hammer on his foot in surprise.

“What the hell,” he croaks when he’s regained the ability to speak. Potter is still oblivious, singing some song he’d sang in Draco’s direction three whole times last night until Draco had finally caved and admitted that he liked it.

“She was waiting patiently outside your door and your owl was getting very upset so I brought her in,” Luna says. The bird honks and clatters its beak at him, lifting one paddle-like red foot. There’s a letter tied to it.

“That still doesn’t explain why you are here,” Draco says, untying the letter and shoving it into his pocket. The bird shuffles down Luna’s arm to rest its head against her shoulder.

“I came back briefly for Neville and Hannah’s engagement party, and I had time to see you before my Portkey back to Iceland.” Her smile is nothing short of beatific. Draco restrains a comment about Longbottom and marriage.

“Well,” he says, “I suppose we’ll just have to make the best of a bad situation.”

“Indeed,” Luna agrees. “Do you want to make me a cup of tea while I say hello to Harry and see this beautiful bird back on her travels?”

Draco doesn’t really get a chance to answer that because she’s already wandered off, the bird clattering in either excitement or terror at the chickens that flap and squawk to Luna’s feet like the unfaithful groupies they are. He goes inside, pulling the letter out. It’s in a thick cream envelope and he recognises that scrawl, that dark purple ink. After a moment’s deliberation, his heart pounding like something awful is about to happen, he shoves the letter behind the plants in the front windowsill. Whatever his old pen-pal is writing to him about it can’t be good and he does not want to have to deal with it today.

He makes a whole pot of tea and puts the last of Ned’s latest cake on a tray and takes it back into the garden. Luna has settled herself on the ruined curtain wall with her court of animals surrounding her; Potter is leaning on his rake and grinning, gorgeous and unselfconscious, and Draco really doesn’t want to go over and ruin the moment. Unhappily, Luna notices him and waves him over as regal as a queen.

“Tea?” he offers Potter, but Potter shakes his head.

“Nah, thanks. I’ll have one a bit – there’s still a bit of raking to finish.”

He goes off and Draco settles down at a polite distance from Luna, finding his eyes drawn to Potter’s arse in those Muggle jeans. It’s only after an embarrassingly long time he realises that Luna is speaking to him.

“What?” he says, peeling his attention away and turning back to her.

“I was saying,” she says, stroking the bird’s head, “that I didn’t realise that red-footed boobies were so big, but I don’t think you’re actually in a place to discuss avian taxonomies right now.”

“I…”

“It’s ok. I understand that sexual attraction equals staring at the object of your affections. There’s nothing to get flustered about.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Draco splutters.

“Well you are attracted to him, are you not?”

“Don’t be so preposterous.”

“It’s not something I would fully understand, I’m afraid. I’m rather like a strawberry plant when it comes to sex.”

This is a new level, Draco thinks wildly. “You reproduce via runners?”

“No, I’m asexual. But that is an interesting proposition. I wonder what the ethics would be of using magic to…”

“Luna,” Draco says, ignoring the slightly hysterical tinge to his voice. “One of you is quite enough. Please eat your cake and change the subject?”

She shoots him a mischievous sideways glance and takes a large bite of her cake. The booby clatters loudly until she caves and feeds it some. Draco feels entirely justified burying his head in his hands and wondering what the fuck his life is turning into.

*

There’s never any pattern to the nights when Harry can’t sleep. The nightmare had jolted him awake just after midnight, and he’d tried to go back to sleep but his brain wouldn’t stop whispering at him. After about half an hour he’d given it up as a lost cause; he can afford to, here, without all the expectations and the watching eyes. He’d lit the fire in the sitting room, quietly made a cup of tea downstairs, and is now sitting on the floor with Dog half in his lap, trying to make sense of the book Malfoy was reading earlier. The writing is very dense and he swears the author must have made up at least half the words. How Malfoy finds this interesting is beyond him.

Dog huffs and whines, and Harry tilts his head back against the rough stone wall. The warmth of the fire licks at his feet. He can’t believe that it’s early September, that he’s been here for a month and a half now; his life in London feels like a dream, a mirage. Of course, the rest of his team keep him daily up to date with the case and expect reports and hypotheses and Floo calls, but it’s different doing it here, papers spread over the kitchen table and Dog rustling at his feet, Malfoy padding around the kitchen cooking or preserving or mending something, frequent breaks to go help in the garden. Sometimes he wishes he could just up sticks and stay here forever.

Suddenly a scream shatters the silence, echoing from upstairs. Harry scrambles to his feet, nearly knocking over his tea – Dog has already disappeared out of the door and Malfoy is still screaming like it’s the end of the world. Harry flings himself up the stairs. Dog is scratching at Malfoy’s bedroom door and whining. Harry opens it and Dog is gone, bounding up onto Malfoy’s bed and barking.

Malfoy flails upright, a shadow tangled in his blankets, and for a second all Harry can hear is Malfoy’s rattling breaths. He wonders if he should leave, but his feet are moving forward without his permission.

“Lumos,” he says, very softly, and a small ball of light bobs into existence. He sits down on the edge of the bed. Malfoy is sobbing into Dog’s neck fur, shoulders heaving. After a second, Harry reaches out tentatively to touch his back, wishes he knew what to do.

Malfoy flinches hard at the press of Harry’s hand. Harry almost jerks it back but all at once Malfoy is leaning into it, shuffling closer so their thighs are nearly touching. Dog is making soft noises. In the dim light of the lumos, he can see a long, thin scar on the back of Malfoy’s neck, just poking out of the loose neckline of his t-shirt. He strokes his thumb gently back and forth across Malfoy’s shoulder, breathes in the smell of the earl-grey flavoured soap Malfoy keeps in the bathroom.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asks carefully, when Malfoy’s sobs have calmed to quiet hiccups. The words feel clunky and wrong in his mouth, even though he knows it’s probably the right thing to say.

Malfoy makes a noise that Harry interprets as a ‘no’ and there is a long, long silence punctuated only by their breathing.

“Just bad memories,” Malfoy says eventually, lifting his head from Dog’s fur and wiping his eyes. He doesn’t move away.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Harry says, too quickly.

“You want to know.”

Harry feels the heat rush to his face, takes a deep breath. “I don’t know your side of the story. I’ve been gathering bits and pieces but-”

“Pansy?”

“Yeah. And Luna.”

Malfoy’s shoulders rise and fall. Harry should really take his hand off Malfoy’s back. “Of course. Lovegood thinks she owes me.”

“For what?”

Dog huffs and shifts position, his tail flopping across Harry’s lap too. “Why do you think she and Ollivander were still alive when you were taken prisoner?” Malfoy asks.

“You-”

“Yeah. Me and Clovelly, as much as we could. Mother helped a little, too.”

“Merlin.” Harry turns this new piece of information over in his head. “That’s a hell of a risk.”

“Not it’s not. Not compared to what you did. Not compared to what I could have done. I was already the favourite scapegoat by then, I didn’t have anything to lose. I could have saved more of them but I was too fucking scared.”

“You were the what?”

There’s a moment of silence. Malfoy is hugging Dog close, staring straight ahead, and then he begins to talk, cold and quiet, every word placed like something precious, something agonising: “After you all escaped that night, Bellatrix told him that I’d helped you. He didn’t really believe her but it didn’t matter. It never mattered.” Malfoy pauses, inhales, leans the fraction of an inch closer. “I don’t even know how long he tortured me for. I’m sure you know how time stops when you’re under Cruciatus. I was late back to school because I couldn’t breathe properly for weeks after. It was the worst it’s ever been.”

“Malfoy…”

“I don’t want your pity, Potter.”

“You don’t have it,” Harry says bluntly. He thinks of Hermione, Sirius, Cedric. The dead. The Muggle-borns whose lives were ripped to shreds. “The war was shit for everyone.”

Malfoy breathes out in a very controlled fashion. “I used to lie awake in my cell in Azkaban, thinking of how I could have changed things, how I would have defected. Maybe I’d have died, but I don’t care.”

Harry breathes in and out several times, tries to banish the sudden mental image of Malfoy being dragged along on their insane quest to destroy Horcruxes. It would have been his younger self’s worst nightmare. Now, he wonders what would have been different.

“It sounds like you did your best,” he says. It doesn’t feel wrong, either. He would have done something different, probably, but he didn’t have Malfoy’s life, he didn’t have Lucius Malfoy for a father.

Malfoy jerks, as though Harry’s words are a hex. “What?”

“It sounds like you did your best,” Harry repeats.

“I didn’t, though, I…Potter…” Malfoy laughs and it’s a horrid thing. “They would torture and murder people at cocktail evenings and I’d hide. I watched our Muggle Studies professor get eaten alive by a snake.”

Harry shudders at the remembrance of Nagini. “There’s no point in torturing yourself with hindsight. It doesn’t get you anywhere, believe me.”

Malfoy moves his leg, curling up into himself and away from Harry. Harry begins to reach out for him without thinking but forcefully puts his hand back in his lap.

“Yeah, well. Hindsight is the only thing I’ve got.”

“No it’s not. You’ve got a home, people who care about you. That’s nothing to turn your nose up at.”

“Do you think they’re going to stick around if they knew the truth about me? If they knew about my father, about Azkaban?”

“It’s in the past.”

“How can you say that? You spent seven years of your life-”

 “And I’m not going to spend the rest of time dwelling on it. You have to let go,” Harry says, surprising himself with his ferocity, surprising himself with how right the words sit in his chest. Dimly, he thinks that maybe this realisation has been coming for a long time.

“You never went to Azkaban!” Malfoy’s voice is rising too, quick and vicious. “The Dementors-”

“I know what Dementors do, Malfoy. Do you think I like seeing my par-”

“It’s not the same. Three years, Potter. I was locked up in there for three years. I don’t doubt your run ins with them were deeply traumatic, but you could eat chocolate and walk away. I had no escape.”

“Malfoy-”

Malfoy is in full flood, jagged, rocky sentences thundering over each other. “There’s nothing to do, no-one to talk to. They feed you just enough to make sure you don’t die, but there were some days I hallucinated from the lack of it, and that’s not even counting the Dementors. I’ve lost count of how often I’ve seen Mother die, how often I’ve heard Hermione Granger screaming. When I die they’ll cut me open and find the Cruciatus curse in my bones. You don’t know how long it takes to remember to smile, to remember what joy feels like, to remember that you are a person and that you are worth something. Some days I don’t think I’ll ever be there.”

The silence is as abrupt and solid as a brick wall. Malfoy looks away and Harry finds himself staring at the thin, silvery tear-tracks on Malfoy’s pale cheeks. He feels winded, off balance, can’t think of one single solitary thing to say. What do you say in the face of this? What do you say when everything you didn’t want to confront is laid out in front of you, plain as day?

“Malfoy…”

“Go. Just go.”

Harry gives him one last look and does as he’s asked.

Chapter Text

It has been five days and it has been terrible. Malfoy has become a ghost. He leaves the castle early and comes back late, doesn’t look at Harry, doesn’t say a single word. Harry’s tried to speak to him – about the weather, about the fact they need to buy more milk – and all he is met with is stinging silence. They haven’t gone hiking. Malfoy refused to come down to the village for the football game, he doesn’t set foot in the living room in the evenings the way they used to, listening to the radio, reading, delivering dry appraisals of Harry’s attempts to play the guitar.

He wishes Malfoy would just be in his presence long enough for him to say something, to say that…what? That he’s sorry for getting it all wrong? That if he’d known, he’d have done what, exactly? That he wants to prove that Malfoy is a human being with worth? That he cares?

He kicks at a rock and sends it thumping down the hillside, climbs the stile into the yard. It’s useless to even think about things like this. Harry’s got enough of his own issues to be dealing with – even with his promise to spend less time at work and his decision to stop looking backwards, there’s still things he probably needs to discuss. He wonders whether he can owl Hermione and ask the name of the therapist her now un-Obliviated parents dragged her to in the wake of everything.

As completely expected, Malfoy is silent through dinner. Harry doesn’t much feel like talking either, so it’s left to Madge and Ned to keep up most of the conversation. After several half-hearted attempts, Ned gives up and starts talking to Madge about rams. Harry tries to eat but just finds himself pushing his food around his plate. He’s got to do something. He can’t just let this rift lie, not when Lucius Malfoy might show up at any point. He can’t leave Malfoy like this.

“Right. Harry it’s your turn to dry,” Madge says when she and Ned have hashed out their ram-buying plans to their satisfaction. She stretches and gets up from her chair. “Come on.”

Harry starts clearing things to the sideboard; Malfoy and Ned disappear into the sitting room behind the stairs. Madge fills the sink, and they begin to work in quick, efficient silence.

“Everything ok?” Madge asks after a second.

Harry jerks out of his thoughts. “What?”

Madge flicks washing up water at him; a clump of bubbles land on his nose. “I said, everything ok? You were both pretty out of it tonight.”

“Hmm. Yeah.”

“Well that was unconvincing.”

Harry shrugs, brushes the bubbles off and watches them float to the floor. Normally he’s a better liar – he’s had to be, throughout his life – but he’s too tired to care. He just wants Malfoy to speak to him, to knock down this wall that’s sprung up between them. “Since you’re unconvinced I guessed.”

“Do you need me to smack any heads together? I can do that. Or I can get Ned in here to stage an intervention.”

“No, I don’t think so. No head-smacking necessary. I just…ah.” Harry looks down at his dishtowel, wishes that he could say something but he doesn’t know how much Madge knows and…well. Since Sirius died, he’s never really talked to an adult, someone older and more experienced than he is, about anything like feelings. He’s just got on with it.

“Draco gets in these moods,” Madge says unexpectedly.

“How did you…” Harry blinks. “Nevermind. Has he-”

“Said anything to us? No, not yet. I hope he will when he’s ready to. Has he said anything to you?”

“Yeah, he has. A few nights ago. I can’t say anything.”

“Of course. I don’t want you to.”

“But I’m just…I’m worried. He was…he seemed like he was getting better and now, I just…”

“Sometimes there is no better,” Madge shrugs. “Not fully. Just equilibrium. But I think he’ll be ok.”

“How do you know?” Harry asks. His voice wobbles a little at the end but he refuses to be embarrassed by it. This is something he knows nothing about, something he desperately wants to make right.

“Because my Daddy shot himself in the head and no-one saw it coming. He never said a damn thing, just…” Madge mimes an explosion. “Pfft.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me too. But that’s the thing. He didn’t talk about his time during the war, he let it fester. Draco’s started talking about whatever the fuck it is. That’s a good sign. He’ll be ok.”

The phone begins to ring and Madge pulls a face at Harry, pads across the kitchen to answer it. Her surety has steadied him, settled his nerves in a way he doesn’t think much else could.

Madge is making quiet humming sounds of agreement, and then she turns to Harry who straightens from where he’s stowing the big pasta pot. “Put the TV on? What’s wrong? Oh…oh…Harry, go put the TV on would you? I’ll be just there…”

Harry frowns at her but does as he’s told. They haven’t used the TV at all since he’s been here – too busy, he guesses – but it sits, square and heavy in the corner of their cosy sitting room opposite the fireplace. Malfoy is curled up in the armchair like a cat pretending to pay attention to a book, and Ned is scribbling something in a journal. Harry pads over to the TV and kneels in front of it, looking for the power button. It’s a sight older than the one in his Chiswick apartment and really, he has no idea why the designers thought hiding the way to turn it on was a good idea.

“What on earth are you doing?”

Harry almost flinches with the surprise of it, turns to see that Malfoy has lowered his book, is watching him and frowning disdainfully. They’re the first words he’s said to Harry in five whole days.

“Hunting for nargles, what does it look like?” Harry says. Malfoy gives him the tiniest breath of a smile. Harry’s heart jumps, a tiny electric shock.

“What are nargles?” Ned asks absently.

“You know they only live in mistletoe,” Malfoy says, and then, to Ned, “Apocryphal boarding school cryptids.”

“Ah,” Ned gives them both an indulgent smile, picks up the remote control when Harry finally finds the on button, buried on the base of the set for no discernable reason. “What are we putting on?”

“The news, I think,” Harry sits back, crosses his legs. The screen flickers. He hears Malfoy’s sharp, pained inhale before he even realises what he’s seeing.

“I don’t know what Pam’s on about, but…” There’s the soft click of a door, and Madge trails off. They sit and stare at the smoking towers on the news in silence, the looped footage of the second plane’s impact. It feels like a sinkhole has opened up between Harry’s ribs as he watches the explosion, the slow-motion collapse. America under attack, the rolling banner at the bottom of the screen reads, hijacked planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  

“Bloody motherfucking hell,” Madge says.

*

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright?” Ned asks for the sixteenth time.

Draco wraps his arms around himself. Potter’s silent and ashen, hovering by the door. The world feels like it’s shifted in ways he can’t even begin to understand, and he pinches his arm hard, tries to keep his balance. “Yeah. I think so.”

“Ok. If you’re sure. You know we’ve got the camp beds, so you can stay here tonight if you want.”

“Ned, love,” Madge says, more gently than Draco has ever heard her say. “They’ll be ok.”

Ned sighs. “Alright. But ring us if you need anything, ok?”

“We will,” Draco tells him. Ned gives him a tight smile and he follows Potter out of the door, into the clear star-salted night.

They cross the yard in silence towards the footpath to the castle, climbing over the stile. Draco is still turning it over in his head; the thick, black smoke pouring from the towers, the people silhouetted against the windows, the hole in the side of that big square building. The view from the ground. He hadn’t realised that Muggles could show moving pictures. He hadn’t realised Muggles did things like this to each other, not on this scale, though perhaps that was naïve of him.

When they reach the castle, Potter disappears up the stairs and Draco puts the teapot on, then, after a moment’s indecision, pulls down the jar of hot chocolate instead and slowly makes two mugs, taking his time. When he finally makes it to the sitting room, Potter’s lit the fire and is hunched over the coffee table with parchment everywhere and his ink-pot far too close to the edge. He’s scribbling note after note, his hand fisted in his hair. Draco puts the mug down, moves the ink-pot away from lurking disaster and pulls the parchment out of Potter’s grip.

Potter makes a noise of complaint.

“It can wait until morning,” Draco says, tucking it into the bookshelf and sitting down on the opposite end of the sofa, pulling his feet up under him. He takes a tiny sip of the hot chocolate but it’s too sweet, puts it down and begins to fiddle with his cuff instead.

“No-one’s answering the Floo.”

“Of course they aren’t, Potter. It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s a fucking...how can anyone be asleep when that just fucking happened?”

“They might not have seen it. Even if they had, they wouldn’t be in the office.”

“Right.” Potter tips his head back against the sofa cushions. They fall into quiet again and Draco hunches closer around himself, counts his breathes. The woman on the box-thing had kept asking the question: is this an act of war? Who are the perpetrators? Is this an act of war? Someone might attack London. There might be another war. The thought of the world ripping itself apart again makes him want to scream. It can’t. This can’t be happening.

“I…um,” Potter says after a long while. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Draco is infinitely glad that Potter is braver than he is, that Potter is able to verbalise what he can’t.

“Ok. Levitate your mattress in here. I’ll go and get some blankets.”

After an exceedingly awkward attempt at getting the furniture re-arranged to fit the mattress without anything being set on fire or dropped on Dog, who is galumphing around and making a complete pest of himself, they settle down on the makeshift bed as far from each other as they can manage. Dog barks and continues jumping.

“Stop it, you bloody animal,” Draco grumbles. “I’ll lock you in the kitchen.”

“No you won’t,” Potter’s sort of smiling, leaning up on his elbow. The world might be ending but Dog doesn’t care.

Draco glowers. “I will if he keeps this up. Dog. Cease and desist. Go to sleep.”

Potter seems to drift off relatively quickly, but Draco is lies and stares restlessly at the ceiling listening to the infinitesimal night-time sounds of the countryside. He must fall asleep eventually because he shudders awake from a nightmare just before dawn, the faint golden-pink promise of daylight peering curiously through the window. His right side is very warm, and his leg is tangled in something. Dog, probably, the over-affectionate idiot. He levers himself up carefully, glances down, and his heart lurches sickeningly. It’s Potter. He’s rolled over somehow so he’s half-pressed against Draco, one arm flung above his head. His hair is even more of a mess and his face is relaxed, soft. Up close, Draco can see the pimple tucked next to his nose, the mark where his glasses sit, the bottom of the lightning-bolt scar. He’s struck by a sudden, totally irrational desire to press his lips to it, to tuck his head against Potter’s neck and tangle their limbs together and hold on until there’s no telling where he begins and Potter ends.

Potter knows more about him than anyone else in the world right now. He knows about the war, about Azkaban, he’s seen Draco at his very worst, and somehow he’s still here, asleep under the same blanket and snoring gently. Somehow he hasn’t given up on this farce of an assignment and fled back to London like anyone else would have when it became obvious that Lucius is playing a long game. Somehow, he seems to think that Draco is worth protecting.

He sighs and lies back down again, carefully tucking his hands across his chest so he’s touching Potter as little as possible. Potter, however, has other ideas, and sleepily shuffles again, tipping so that his head is pressed against Draco’s ribs somewhere in the vicinity of Draco’s armpit. Draco freezes but Potter just makes another dozy noise and is completely still, curled around Draco like the world’s most possessive, inconvenient octopus.

After a second, Draco lets his arm drop to wrap around Potter’s shoulders, closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter. No-one’s watching. Potter will be gone soon and that will be that.

*

When Draco wakes again, Potter is gone and there is a weight on his chest that feels distinctly like a pair of small, three-clawed feet. He cracks one eye open to find a beak and a bright red wattle inches from his face. Beryl regards him with her clever, beady eyes of doom.

“Don’t,” Draco says. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Beryl considers his dire warning for a second and then screeches loud enough to shatter glass. Draco groans and curls into an upright position, grabbing Beryl and holding her carefully.

“I am going to cook you,” he tells her, and she babbles at him. “You will be very delicious.”

“No you’re not,” Potter says from the doorway. He still looks fucking exhausted, but he’s smiling hopefully and holding a tray of toast, jam, and tea. Draco’s heart squeezes painfully, he pushes away the remembered feeling of Potter’s arm across his chest. Merlin, he’s not going to be able to do this. “Breakfast in bed?”

“Why is there a fucking chicken in my sitting room?”

“Dog brought her in whilst I was on the Floo in the kitchen.”

“And you didn’t think to stop him?”

“I was on the Floo.” Potter is grinning. “And I thought you needed a nice surprise.”

“You are a diabolical monster.”

“And you are a drama queen. Toast?”

“Only if you levitate this chicken back to her rightful place in the garden before she shits everywhere.”

“What is my life turning into?”

“You brought it on yourself.”

“Not complaining,” Potter gives Draco an indecipherable look, and then raises his wand. “Wingardium Leviosa.”

Beryl screeches again as she begins to hover. Draco peels himself out of the blankets and goes to open the window, then stands back as Beryl becomes the world’s first floating chicken, screeching every so often in baffled disagreement with her situation. When she’s safely back on the grass with the others, Potter shrinks the mattress and blankets and moves the furniture back into the right place so they can sit and take breakfast like civilised people.

After a while, Potter looks up from where he’s burying a piece of toast in jam. “Ok, so I’ve heard from Hermione and the team. Madge phoned to check on us too and apparently Ned’s been watching the TV since about 5am. Do you want the news?”

Draco ignores the way Potter’s eyes are steady on the side of his face, refuses to look up from a contemplation of his tea. It’s considerate that Potter thought to ask, gave Draco the opportunity to bury his head in the sand if he so desired. “Go on.”

“Right. There haven’t been any other attacks, for now, and the American Muggle intelligence services have announced that the perpetrators were militants from an extremist organisation called Al-Qaeda. Thousands of people have died, but no-one knows any exact numbers yet and the wreckage is still on fire. British news sources are saying about six thousand.”

“Merlin.”

“Yeah. Pansy says her mother's ok."

“At least there’s that.” Draco forces himself to relax his fingers before he breaks his mug. “What about the wizarding community? Isn’t MACUSA in downtown New York?”

“Yeah, Robards said they’ve had to evacuate. The whole area has. As far as they know, about fifteen first responders from MACUSA have died trying to help the Muggles. Robards says that we’ll hear more from the International Confederation at some point, but he doesn’t know when – until we do, it’s business as usual. We’re having a case meeting at four.”

Draco breathes in and out and looks up. “That just feels wrong. Merlin, I…what is the matter with us? We’ve lived through a war, it’s not like this is new…”

“It’s the scale,” Potter says gently. “Hermione pointed it out. The Wizarding War was horrific and dirty and violent, but at no point did six thousand people die on a single day of it.”

“That would be a fifth of our entire population,” Draco murmurs.

“Yeah, I know.” Potter runs a hand through his hair. “So it’s ok to be upset. At least that’s what Ron told Hermione to tell me anyway, so…”

Potter’s right. Draco sighs again. “Maybe we should go down to the farm, see if Ned and Madge have anything to tire us out.”

“I think Ned would like to see us,” Potter agrees. “But I need to ask you something first.”

“That sounds…ominous.”

Potter rolls his eyes and ignores Draco magnificently. “I went to check in on the wards when I woke up, and it’s like they’re…fraying? I’ve got no other way to describe it. Do you know what’s happening?”

“No,” Draco says, and then thinks about it for a second. The portrait he’d spoken to about the castle all those years ago had spent a good half hour banging on about wards. It’s unlikely, but... “It’s a long shot but there might be some old wards here, from the last inhabitants.”

“Really?”

“No, Potter, I’m making up random magical theory in order to torment you.”

“Do you know how to make them co-operate?”

“I’m afraid not. Warding has never been my strong point.”

Potter swallows his toast, gets a shit-eating grin on his face. “Are my ears deceiving me? Did a Malfoy just admit weakness?”

“Git.”

“I don’t know enough about wards to sort this one out. I may have paid less attention in survival class than I should have.”

“Well that’s a dilemma.”

“I may have a solution.”

“Am I going to like it?”

Potter pulls a face. “Probably not.”

Draco raises his eyebrows, and maybe because Potter stayed or maybe because he’s willing to be brave today for some inexplicable reason, he says: “Do your worst.”

“Hermione is very good at wards.”

“Granger is good at everything,” Draco says flatly, his stomach suddenly hollowed. It’s been alright being around Potter, of course, because Potter is Potter. There’s more to their relationship than just poisonous history. Granger is a completely different matter. Granger was tortured in his drawing room and they haven’t spoken since.

“She’s free this weekend, and I’m sure she and Ron would come up if I asked them to.”

“Weasel’s coming too,” Draco says and it’s more of a statement than a question. This is something he didn’t think he’d ever have to face up to. He wraps his fingers around his mug to disguise the fact that they’re shaking.

“He does have a name, you know,” Potter points out with irritating mildness. Draco raises an eyebrow.

“I would bet my left nutsack that he still calls me ‘Ferret,’” he says, and Potter ducks his head, scratches at his ear. “Therefore,” Draco continues, “we shall just have to continue referring to each other as small European mustelidae until one of us decides to act his age.”

“Fine,” Potter says. “That’s fair. Is that ok?”

“There’s no-one from the Ministry?” Draco asks in a last ditch attempt to avoid what is going to be a humiliating encounter with his childhood self’s ignorance, arrogance, and bad decisions.

“Do you really want some Ministry hack you don’t know poking all around here and feeding it all to the Daily Prophet?”

“Touché. I suppose Granger wouldn’t gossip.”

“She’s not prone to it, no.”

“Well.” Draco takes a deep, wobbly breath that, mercifully, Potter ignores. ““If she’s free, I would be grateful for the extra protection.”

Potter’s shoulders relax infinitesimally. “Ok. I’ll Floo her tonight.”

*

As the weekend draws in, Harry begins to notice that when Malfoy isn’t at the farm he’s re-ordering his books by colour or scrubbing the kitchen floor or weeding the garden to within an inch of its life. When Harry happens to catch him grooming the chickens on Saturday morning with a slightly manic expression on his face, he gently extricates a white one – Maud, he thinks – from Malfoy’s hands and confiscates the brush.

“What…” Malfoy starts.

“You do know,” Harry says conversationally, “that despite Ron’s best efforts, Hermione is a complete slob? You don’t have to make everything perfect for them.”

Malfoy’s cheeks turn very pink. “I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.” Harry regards him patiently, “Look, if you really don’t want them here-”

“It’s fine,” Malfoy interrupts, straightening up and running a hand through his loose hair. “It’s important.”

“Ok.” Harry pulls up a smile for him. “Seriously, they’re going to be amazed with the place. They won’t even notice if the chickens are looking a bit scruffy.”

“Excuse you, these chickens wouldn’t know scruffy if it wriggled right in front of their beaks.”

Maud clucks as if in full agreement and then shits explosively everywhere. Harry dumps her and her now-grimy tail feathers unceremoniously onto the ground. “Maud!”

“For Merlin’s sake,” Malfoy agrees, and they both spend a second contemplating Maud like a pair of exasperated parents. Maud, for her part, has happily gone back to pecking a worm out of the ground. After a moment, Malfoy shoves his hands into his pockets. “What shall I make them for lunch?”

Harry shrugs. “Your cooking is great, so I’m sure anything is fine.”

That flush is back again, and they look at each other for a long, electric moment and then Malfoy wipes his hands on his jeans. “We’d better get on.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, mouth suddenly dry.

He gets put onto table-laying duty. As he sorts out the mismatched cutlery and crockery, he can’t help but think of his days at the Dursleys doing the exact same chores, at how different this feels. Everything of theirs had to be pristine, not a millimetre out of place; he’d move as quietly as possible, trying to disguise his footfalls beneath that awful easy listening music Aunt Petunia liked. He’d learned young to avoid attention, doesn’t like to think that this is why he passed stealth class during Auror training with flying colours. Freddie Mercury warbles about bicycles from the radio Harry’s charmed, and he sings along, watching Malfoy sway in time to the music out of the corner of his eye. He’s entirely sure Malfoy hasn’t even realised that he’s doing it; the thought makes him smile. It’s started to rain. The fire crackles raspberry pink – Malfoy’s request – and Harry takes a moment from filling up the water glasses to crouch down and pet Dog, to take every little detail in so he can remember it when he has to leave.

There’s a crack too loud and close to be thunder from just outside the castle.

“I’ll get the door, shall I?” Harry asks. Malfoy has abruptly stopped swaying to the music. He doesn’t look up from the herbs he’s chopping, grunts a relatively affirmative response.

Harry takes the stairs up to the door and goes out, peering through the thudding downpour at the two figures coming down the path.

“Hello!” he calls.

“This really is the middle of fucking nowhere,” Ron shouts back, holding the umbrella charm over Hermione’s head.

“It’s lovely,” Hermione adds.

“Malfoy’s made lunch,” Harry tells them, stepping aside to let them in. “Shoes off. Ah, yes, this is Dog, by the way.”

Dog has wandered after Harry and shoves his nose into Hermione’s knees, looking up at her from under his thick eyebrows.

“You’re adorable,” she says, petting his nose and then looking up at Harry, “All good?”

“Yep. No changes since Tuesday.”

“You’re gonna be here forever at this rate, mate,” Ron says. There’s something wrapped in a tea-towel under his arm. “Where’s the ferret?”

Harry rolls his eyes, resigned to the fact that Ron has just unknowingly proved Malfoy right. “Kitchen. Come on.”

They follow him down the stairs, and Harry goes over to get the array of herbal drinks Malfoy apparently made in springtime from the cupboard. When he turns back around, Hermione and Ron are still hovering by the door and Malfoy has shifted to face them, arms folded over his chest.

“Hello,” he says, much quieter than usual.

“Hi, Ferret,” Ron says after the silence has become slightly awkward, thrusting the towel-covered thing into Malfoy’s face. Malfoy blinks. “Made some bread this morning to go with lunch, if you want it.”

“Oh. Thanks, Weasel.”

Hermione rolls her eyes and just like that, Harry feels his shoulders relax just a little. “Men. Hello Malfoy, you’re looking very well.”

“Likewise,” he responds, cautiously polite. “How was your journey?”

“Oh, fine. It’s really atmospheric here – do you know what decade it was originally built in?”

“And we’ve lost her,” Ron says to Harry, pulling out a chair. Dog comes over to rest his head mournfully on Ron’s lap, and Ron pets his ears. Harry pours out glasses for them both and sits down next to him.

“You love it,” Harry smiles, and Ron grins back, the tips of his ears red.

“Of course. Breaks the tension, doesn’t it? They can be all nerdy at each other without House rivalry and blood supremacy getting in the way, and we can discuss the latest Harpies game in peace.”

“It was such a game.” Harry shakes his head. “Ginny’s last goal was spectacular.”

“And doesn’t she just know it,” Ron grins. “Pretty sure she’s going to get selected for the England team, but she won’t let me say anything outside the family just in case. You don’t count.”

“Hey! That’s fantastic news.”

“Yeah. Everyone’s very proud.”

“When did she say?”

“At the parents last weekend.” Ron pauses. “Mum told me to tell you she’s expecting you at the next one.”

“I might still have to be here,” Harry points out, swallowing the sudden tang of guilt.

Ron takes a gulp of his drink. “Yeah, ok. That’s fair. But after, ok? You can’t keep using work as an excuse. Mum’s been threatening to show up at the Ministry and kidnap you.”

“I know,” Harry sighs, and Ron gives him a startled look. And he does. It’s not as if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing – it’s just that after he and Ginny had split, despite Molly’s assertions that he’d always be part of the family, it had been awkward between them. That had been his first reason to stay away. Then he’d started getting sucked into work more and more, and seeing anyone other than Ron and Hermione was just too much effort, too much energy. Going to the monthly dinners at the Weasleys would mean answering questions about his future, his career, whether he’d found himself a new partner yet. Easier to be in the office working or to sit in the flat and stare out of the window, easier to not have to think about it all.

“Ok. That was easier than I expected.”

Harry shrugs. “I’ve been thinking.”

He expects Ron to have a flippant response, or to ask what about, but all Ron does is knock his glass gently against Harry’s and say: “Good. I’m glad. Knew you’d get there eventually.”

Malfoy starts bringing the food to the table just then, and Hermione flops into the seat opposite Ron.

“Smells great!” she says, a little too enthusiastically. Harry appreciates the effort; appreciates the way it’s making a small smile pull at the corner of Malfoy’s face. It isn’t easy for any of them, but he loves his best friends for trying.

“Thanks,” Malfoy murmurs, sitting down next to Harry. Dog’s head appears above the corner of the table, and he watches mournfully as Malfoy serves soup and Harry passes round Ron’s bread. “Dog, I don’t know what you’re angling for. You don’t eat vegetables.”

“I’m a dustbin, I eat everything,” Harry says on Dog’s behalf, and Malfoy shoots Harry an amused sideways glance. Hermione’s smiling. “How was the outreach day, Hermione?”

Hermione finishes her mouthful, gestures at her bowl. “This is great,” she says to Malfoy. Ron hums in agreement. “Long, but productive. Even Theo Nott was pretending to be interested, but he was with the Head of St Mungo’s so I don’t think he had a choice. We’re going to be invited for a first official consultation next week.”

“What’s this?” Malfoy asks, still cautious but Harry can see him relaxing in increments, his shoulders settling slowly.

“I’m doing a PhD with the wizarding department at Oxford,” Hermione tells him. “It’s on the history of Muggle-wizarding relations, and part of it is trying to get the magical educational establishment in this country to understand how important it is.”

“That’s very interesting. How are they taking it?”

Harry sees Ron’s eyebrows rise, surprised, and he gives Harry a look. Harry just shrugs.

“We’re getting there. At the moment, the goal is to try and get Muggle Studies made compulsory at Hogwarts, and I think the DfME is finally starting to understand that  we can’t keep acting as though we’re completely separate.”

Malfoy is nodding. “Knowing more about the Muggle world would have been very useful.”

Hermione beams briefly at him, and Harry doesn’t think he’s imagining the sudden shock on Malfoy’s face. “I can imagine it would have. And – like we all found out on Monday – our worlds affect each other enormously. Nineteen MACUSA staff died and the Woolworth Building is going to be uninhabitable for weeks even with the magical clean-up going on inside. The world has changed and we have to change with it, despite what the writers at the Daily Prophet seem to think.”

“Not that everyone wants to,” Ron interjects, glances over to Harry. “Selwyn was there.”

Merlin. He’d been worried about this. Harry inhales, sharply. “Did she do anything?”

“No,” Hermione says, “she just stood and glowered. It’s fine. I think she doesn’t want to get in trouble again.”

“Still, you shouldn’t have to put up with her.”

“I know,” Hermione says, “but maybe one day she’ll decide to actually listen.”

Malfoy is looking between all three of them, and Harry knows he’s not going to actually ask anything so elects to fill him in anyway. “There was a demonstration for werewolf rights in Diagon Alley last summer, and several counter-protestors showed up. Selwyn was on the team sent to disperse the crowd, and she just went off on one at Hermione.”

“I was trying to say that we had an absolute right to be there, that we were being peaceful and it was nowhere near the full moon, but…” Hermione shrugs. “Didn’t listen. Just kept going on about how they’re a danger to society and should be thankful they’re not hunted down by wizards, which you know, nothing we’ve not heard before but she’s an Auror. In that kind of situation, she’s supposed to be neutral. And then when I refused to back down, she hexed me.”

“What?”

“She evidently felt so threatened by an unarmed civilian shouting at her that she decided a stinging hex to the face was the way to shut Hermione up,” Ron says.

Malfoy’s mouth twists. “To the face? That’s so…we get taught not to do that in first year.”

“She got disciplined,” Harry says, “but still. She claims she just got carried away and that she thought Hermione was about to start something. The last head of department let her stay, right before he left.”

“Merlin.” Malfoy sighs, glances to Harry as if for reassurance, and then addresses the air just to the left of Hermione’s shoulder. His knuckles are white around his spoon. After a moment, he says: “I don’t know if this…well, her nephew was mauled by Fenrir Greyback. Not that it excuses anything, of course, but…”

“Ah, I didn’t know that.” Hermione purses her lips. “It explains why that protest was such a sore spot for her. But this is the whole issue. Of course it’s horrible what happened to her nephew, and Greyback’s crimes should not be taken lightly, but you can’t systematically discriminate against a whole group of people just because of one evil individual. It shouldn’t work like that.”

“People tend to want the world to stay the same when they’re on top of it, and an evil individual is a good excuse to keep the order as it is,” Malfoy says, almost to himself, and then flushes. Hermione has fallen silent. Harry knows it’s because she’s thinking, turning something over in her head, but Malfoy is gripping his spoon even tighter so Harry shifts his knee under the table so it’s gently resting against Malfoy’s. Malfoy starts, looks at him again, and Harry feels his heart swell against his ribs at the uncertainty there.

“It’s ok,” Harry mouths. Malfoy pulls a face back.

Ron swallows his last mouthful of bread, and stretches. “I think the rain is letting off,” he says, and that jerks Hermione out of whatever mental rabbit hole she’s fallen down.

“Great. Could you two make yourselves scarce? I think Malfoy and I will be fine on our own.”

“Too many wizards spoil the potion,” Ron agrees. “It’s cool, we can clean up if you want to get on.”

Malfoy raises his eyebrows at Harry; Harry nods, gives him a thumbs up, and gets an eye roll in return. “I know where everything goes.”

“I’m trusting you, Potter,” he says, and follows Hermione out towards the front door, Dog loping at his heels. After a moment, Ron clears his throat and Harry wrenches his eyes away, back to where Ron is looking at him pensively.

“What?”

“That was a change,” Ron says, levitating the dirty dishes into the sink.

Harry picks up the big bowl of soup, carries it over to the fridge. “You didn’t think it would be?”

“Well I knew you hadn’t murdered him yet.”

“Confidence in my abilities much.”

Ron rolls his eyes. “Confidence in your patience more like.” A pause. “I actually can’t believe how different he is.”

“Yeah.” Harry starts to move about some of the things in the fridge to make room, thinks about what it would be like if Ron and Hermione could come up here for their weekly dinners sometimes, what it might be like to be crashed out with Ron listening to Quidditch, for Hermione and Malfoy to be bent over their ridiculous books. Maybe Pansy could come too, and Luna, Cho, even Ginny, and maybe some of the others he’s fallen out of touch with since school. They could have parties up here, barbeques, and when everyone goes home, Harry and Malfoy could curl up together on the sofa, drunk and sleepy and then they could…

“You going to stay here forever, then?”

Harry jerks out of his daydream, and Ron snickers. “What?”

“Hang up your Auror robes, live the good old country life.”

“Ron,” Harry says, heat flooding to his face. He didn’t realise that he was being so obvious: if Ron’s noticed, perhaps Malfoy has and that’s just…

“I’m serious,” Ron says, throwing Harry a towel. “You just seem so much more relaxed, happy. Maybe it’s something you should consider.”

“It’s not my castle,” Harry points out.

Ron raises his eyebrows again and levels Harry with such a Hermione-esque I call your bullshit look that Harry genuinely wants to crawl into the cupboard under the sink and stay there for the rest of time. “I don’t think he’ll be complaining if you stay.”

“I just…” Harry splutters. “I…Merlin, Ron, I don’t even know if he’s into men. If he’s into anyone. And anyway, this is an assignment and he got out of prison six months ago, it’s…”

Ron’s watching him patiently, and when it becomes obvious Harry is just going to dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole if left to his own devices, throws him a rope. “I’m not going to give you Bill’s lecture on healthy emotional communication, but maybe that’s something you should consider.”

“Bill has a lecture?”

“He’s the oldest child, he takes it upon himself to do the things Mum and Dad might find awkward.” Ron pauses. “He’s had a lot of practise.”

“Did he give you the sex talk as well?” Harry asks before he can think better of it.

“He, uh, corrected Mum’s, yes,” Ron hums, “and thank Merlin for it.”

“I can’t tell whether I’m curious or terrified about what Molly told you.”

“You’re getting off topic.”

“Intentionally.”

“Tosser.”

Harry starts to levitate the dry plates and bowls back into their cupboard. Ron huffs a sigh. “When you want to talk,” he says, “let me know.”

*

Draco trails after Granger outside, huddling into his jumper. The rain has died off to a drizzle that mists like tiny drops of glass into her hair.

“So,” she says, all business. “I’m going to try and visualise all the wards. Is there any chance we’re going to be spotted?”

“Ned and Madge are visiting their niece in Liverpool,” Draco tells her. “They’re basically the only people who come up here.”

“Great.” She flicks her wand, murmuring, and Draco watches as a criss-crossing mesh of silver-gold lines appear around the castle, some of them more tarnished than others. His old self would have been nearly apoplectic that Granger could do such a neat and advanced piece of magic that he couldn’t. He’s infinitely glad that his old self is dead and buried. There’s no point in being jealous of something so mesmerising, especially not when Granger is obviously enjoying explaining it all to him.

“No wonder Harry’s aren’t working,” she says after she’s done talking him through all the different lines and exclaiming how exciting it is to see fourteenth-century wards in real life. “This looks like the remnants of a Fidelius Charm, which being the stronger spell will naturally work to counteract any other spells placed on the dwelling. Do you want a new Fidelius cast?”

Draco shakes his head, takes the wet stick Dog has unearthed from Merlin knows where and chucks it in the direction of the gate. “It would be too complicated. People would start asking questions if the castle disappeared, and I don’t want to…”

“That’s fine,” she says. “To be honest, I think you need an Intruder charm set up properly for all the entrances, and I can put up hex deflection too. I’ll also ward it for wizards and criminals? Muggles with good intentions won’t be affected, but it will know to only let you and Harry in the front door.”

“Add Luna Lovegood too,” Draco says after a moment, and Granger turns to look at him. He shrugs.

“Luna?”

“She’s adopted me,” he tells her, grudging. Granger obviously can’t decide whether to look amused or disapproving so settles for a weird mixture of the two that doesn’t sit right on her face.

“She was a…nevermind.”

“Prisoner in my parents’ house,” Draco finishes for her, taking Dog’s stick again and turning away. “You can say it. I’m not going to explode if you do.”

“Evidently,” Granger sighs, then says almost to herself, “Ron and I promised Harry we weren’t going to bring it all up. Not now.”

“Potter seems to be under the delusion that three years in Azkaban was enough to absolve me of my crimes,” Draco says very softly before he can stop himself. Potter’s voice saying it sounds like you did your best is reverberating in his ears. Dog is sitting in a puddle, looking up at him expectantly. “I don’t blame you if you feel differently.”

Granger sighs again, explosively. “To be quite honest Malfoy, since we’re doing this, I don’t know how I feel. It was one of the most awful nights of the war for me. My scar will never go away. But I’ve had therapy and whilst I will never forgive your family for the role they all played and think that you could have found a way out if you’d tried, I also logically understand that when you’re in the middle of things it’s never that easy. But I trust Harry, and you’re a very different person to the one we knew in school, so for those two reasons I’m willing to move on.”

He hazards a glance up at her, standing under Achilles’ tree in an old plaid shirt, her afro like a crown in the cloudy light. “I am too. And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. For the war and for school.”

“Fine. Thank you,” she says, lifting her hand. “Let’s get back to warding.”

“Right.” Draco throws Dog’s stick, feeling the loose bits of the past finally quieten in his chest, settle down to sleep. “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

“Tell me more of your not-gross family history. Did one of your ancestors really travel to the moon to a win a feud in the early eighteenth century?”

*

“A rom-com,” Ned hears from the doorway to the sitting room as he puts mugs of hot chocolate onto the tray with a big bowl of popcorn. Draco’s pronouncing it like you might pronounce a rare and strange disease, and Ned smiles.

“Yes, a rom-com.” Harry’s voice is full of amusement.

“What the hell is a rom-com?”

“It’s a movie about a couple getting together,” Madge says as Ned picks up his tray and carries it through, puts it down on the table in front of the small sofa where the boys are sitting practically knee to knee.

“Riveting,” Draco says.

“You’ll enjoy it.” Harry pats Draco’s knee, and Ned doesn’t think he’s making up the way Draco’s cheeks turn the tiniest bit pink. “Lots of miscommunication and sarcasm. Just your sort of thing.”

Harry yelps and Ned surmises that Draco has probably pinched him. They’ve both been in much better moods this past week, joking around, knocking into each other, talking about people they both know: Pansy, an old friend of Draco’s and now a colleague of Harry’s; Luna, a friend from school; Hermione and Ron, who usually inhabit the same breath of Harry’s but Ned hasn’t quite placed yet. It’s a gladdening thing to hear about Draco’s life before he showed up at the castle looking and acting like a ghost; it’s wonderful to see someone coming back to life. Harry looks better too – less stressed, less exhausted. A not insignificant part of him hopes that Harry will stick around.

“Sleepless in Seattle, Clueless, When Harry Met Sally,” he reads off the shelf, “or there’s this newish one from the library, Ten Things I Hate About You.”

“That last one actually sounds intelligent,” Draco says haughtily, and Ned turns around in time to see Harry elbow him. “Ow, stop! One Pansy is quite enough, thanks.”

“She does have remarkably pointy elbows,” Harrys says contemplatively. “Do you think she sharpens them?”

“Probably. Pansy is full of dark surprises. She tried to murder me when we were both infants.”

“Oh she told me about that,” Harry’s grinning. “She maintains it was an experiment in lung capacity.”

“What happened?” Madge asks, and Ned picks up the remote, goes to sit down next to her.

“Fell asleep on top of me and nearly smothered me,” Draco says, and Harry rolls his eyes.

“I bet you’ve never let her forget it.”

“Absolutely not.” Draco glances over to Ned. “So how do you…what happens now to watch a rom-com?”

“We press play and we sit and watch it,” Madge says and kicks her feet up into Ned’s lap. Ned gives her a smile, leans forward with the remote. The boys settle down as the credits begin, and after about half an hour, Ned glances over to them, sees that they’ve inched even closer to each other in the dim lamplight. Harry’s knee is leaning against Draco’s, and if Draco’s head moved three inches to the left it would be resting on Harry’s shoulder. He catches Madge’s eye, raises his eyebrows; she smiles back.

*

“So,” Harry says, hefting his rucksack up his back, “I am slightly worried that we’re yet to hear anything more from Lucius. It’s been nearly two months.”

“He won’t rush, not anymore,” Malfoy hums after a moment, using a big stick he’s found to heft an enormous bramble aside for Harry to duck under. They can hear Dog crashing through the undergrowth ahead with all the grace of an intercontinental ballistic missile. “Especially if it’s something delicate, something he’s only got one shot at. Also everything’s on his time now, as far as we know, so there’s no-one forcing him to act like there was during the war.”

“Do you have any idea what it might be?” Harry hasn’t asked this yet, watches Malfoy’s shoulders rise and fall. He hasn’t wanted to make this any more of Malfoy’s problem, but the team in London is getting more desperate as October draws closer, and Malfoy has been opening up about his life before and during the war, little by little. He might know something that would give them an edge.

“Probably taking over Wizarding Britain again,” Malfoy says. “He won’t like that Voldemort failed, that we’re submitting to other countries, that we’re opening positions of power up to anyone other than pureblood wizards. Also, the massacre was revenge of some kind, so it’s likely he’ll want more of that. Otherwise, I don’t know.”

“We’d figured it was something along those lines,” Harry says as they emerge out of the underbrush and onto a thin, muddy path. “Thanks for the confirmation.” Pause. “Where, actually, are we going?”

This morning, Malfoy had insisted on hitching a lift with Madge to a place called Malham. She’d been off to buy a ram, apparently, and Harry had had great fun on the half-hour drive coming up with more and more ridiculous names for the poor animal. After deciding on Randy McShaggerballs to Madge’s delight and Malfoy’s despair, she’d dropped them off at the end of a farm-track; they’ve been walking all morning. Malfoy has already led Harry up the side of a scowling limestone cliff, pointing out the peregrine falcon nest on its sheer ridges, and over something he called a ‘limestone pavement’ – enormous, crackled slabs of rock with maze-like cracks running between.

“The Muggles think it’s just weathering,” Malfoy had told him as they’d paused for homemade flapjack and a drink of water, “I’m pretty certain it was giants.”

Now Malfoy turns to him, his cheeks faintly pink with exertion and smiles – Harry wishes he had a camera, wishes he could capture this moment forever – the vibrant leaves all red and gold in a wash of dusty autumn sunlight, Malfoy an ethereal silvery contrast like a photographic negative. And the smile. He’s smiling more than ever this past week – to himself, at Harry, at one of Madge’s jokes – and Harry is…well, Harry’s a complete goner. He has been ever since he woke up early that morning with his face pressed against Malfoy's chest, Malfoy's arm wrapped tight around his shoulders, his face so young and carefree in sleep. It’s a fucking joke; the one person he wants is the one person he absolutely cannot have.

“Well that would ruin the surprise,” Malfoy says, leaning on his stick.

“I hate you.”

“Hm, so you keep telling me. It’s worth it, I promise.”

They climb for another few minutes and then the path jerks around sharply to the right to come out next to a stream and a waterfall tumbling into a shallow pool. The sunlight turns the water teal, and the leaves shiver quietly above their heads. Dog, naturally, ruins the peace by jumping with all four feet into the pool, splashing and barking loudly.

“Last time I came here,” Malfoy says, “it was tourist season, but if Dog doesn’t scare them off it should be peaceful enough for…”

“For what?” Harry asks, settling himself down on a rock when it’s obvious Malfoy isn’t going to continue. There’s a high-pitched sound rather like a cross between a buzz and a giggle. Even Dog stops rollicking in the mud, cocks his head to one side.

“Look,” Malfoy breathes, and Harry follows his gaze to see several brightly-coloured insects drifting around by the thunder of the water. As they flitter closer, he realises that they’re not insects at all. A faint glitter trails behind one as it darts closer to him; he reaches out a finger and it settles onto it, looking up at him with several sets of shiny bug-like eyes.

“I’ve never seen a fairy outside Hogwarts before,” Harry whispers after a moment. The fairy seems perfectly happy to sit there, giggling and flashing its translucent blue and yellow wings. Its entire body is covered in peach-pink fur and it has a sharp stinger on its back end that it carefully keeps aloft so as not to touch Harry’s skin. “This is incredible.”

“I know, right?” Malfoy says. When Harry looks over, he sees that two have settled in the palm of Malfoy’s hand and a large one on the top of his head is gently combing spindly green fingers through his hair. His smile is broad and utterly delighted and Harry looks away before he asphyxiates from the sudden lack of air in his lungs. “I spotted the eggs when I was last here, thought they might have hatched by now.”

“You are lovely,” Harry tells his fairy. It preens and blows glitter in his direction, before taking flight again to dance across the surface of the pool, dropping more glitter on Dog’s head. “What does the glitter do?”

“It’s not glitter, it’s fairy-dust. In very large concentrations, it makes you fly,” Malfoy tells him. “Didn’t you at all pay attention in class?”

“Did we study fairies?”

“Yes, in fifth year, summer. It was a treat for after our OWLS.”

“I don’t remember it,” Harry says, and Malfoy looks away. He’d missed classes after the fight at the Ministry, stayed in his room, curling around his grief for Sirius. Sunshine and freedom from exams hadn’t meant much in a world without Sirius’ antics and foul-mouthed opinions and unconditional, endless support and love.

After a pause, Harry gets their lunch out of his rucksack, hands out paper-wrapped sandwiches to the enormous interest of both Malfoy’s fairies and Dog.

“Get out of here,” Draco grouses, shoving Dog’s face away from his. “Potter, give him the bone before he robs me.”

Harry appeases Dog with the leftover pork bone Madge had pulled out of her kitchen waste and leans back against his rock, enjoying the surprising warmth of the day. After they’ve eaten, he toes off his shoes and socks, rolls up his trousers, and wades into the pool. It’s shivery cold and the mud squelches between his toes.

“Come on,” he calls to Malfoy.

“No. No way.”

“You’re missing out! It’s really nice!”

“We’ve got a long walk back. I don’t want to get wet.”

“That is the worst excuse ever, we are both wizards and I can do a drying charm.” Harry tries to pull the sad-face that doesn’t work on Hermione and always made Ginny laugh, “Please? For me?”

“Urgh, why do you make me keep doing things?” Malfoy groans, but he’s peeling his socks off. Harry resolutely ignores the warmth in his stomach, focuses on the green fairy that has apparently decided to go to sleep in Malfoy’s hair. The other fairies flitter curiously around their heads as Malfoy splashes over. “Happy now?”

“Very,” Harry says, kicking up an arc of water experimentally. “I never got to come out to the countryside much, not between the Dursleys and Hogwarts and then moving straight to London. All of this is just so new. So cool.”

“We had a stream with fairies at the Manor. I used to run away from my nanny when I was little and go see them.” Malfoy says absently, bending down to examine a particularly shiny rock on the floor of the pool, then freezes as though he’s just realised what he’s said. “I…”

“That’s amazing,” Harry tells him, and Malfoy’s expression softens at the genuine excitement in Harry’s voice. “How old were you?”

“About four, I think. Three or four. It’s one of my earliest memories.” He pauses. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up the Manor, I…”

“Malfoy,” Harry says, as seriously as he can to someone knee deep in water with several fairies on his person, “I don’t mind. I want to know what it was all like, before Voldemort, before everything.”

“If I hadn’t been such a wanker to you and your friends that first day on the train, maybe you would have seen it for yourself,” Malfoy says.

“Perhaps we would have,” Harry grins. “Did you have big gardens? I’ve only ever been inside the main part of the house.”

“Sort of. We had the formal gardens with the maze and those bloody peacocks,” Malfoy starts, slow and uncertain. At Harry’s smile, he rallies, “which were very beautiful and everything, but I always preferred the kitchen garden. I used to try and help the elves when I was a toddler, until my father told me off too much for not remembering my place, taught me that I’d get approval by hitting them.”

They both stand in silent contemplation of Lucius Malfoy’s abominable parenting for a second, before Malfoy continues: “Sorry, that was…yeah. Beyond that we had the orchard, and the stream was at the bottom of that. It’s the only bit of the place I miss.”

“It sounds lovely.”

“It was.” Malfoy smiles, briefly. “Did you have a garden growing up?”

“A medium-sized one,” Harry says, “my aunt and uncle were very proud of their lawn. It wasn’t really a place I spent much time when I wasn’t doing chores, to be honest.” He pauses. “I got chased up a tree in it, once.”

Malfoy’s mouth has fallen open. “By what?”

“My great-aunt’s dog.” Harry grimaces. “I was nine. I was stuck up there for six hours because she wouldn’t call it off.”

“Merlin,” Malfoy hisses, “and no-one stepped in?”

“They all thought it was funny.”

“You were in their care, and they just let you nearly be attacked by an animal?” Malfoy’s voice is rising. After a moment, Harry reflects that Malfoy probably didn’t know – Ron and Hermione knew bits and pieces, but when he arrived at Hogwarts he just…didn’t want any of the Dursleys to come with him. It’s strange, a decade later, to be reminded how different his childhood was from everyone else’s. It’s strange talking about it to Malfoy, who he thinks understands more than anyone else.

Harry shrugs. “I slept in the understairs cupboard until I was eleven. They weren’t exactly a loving family.”

“And I thought my father was bad,” Malfoy says, turns away, brings a hand up to his face.

“Your father was bad. Is bad.” Harry points out. “There are many different ways to be bad. What kind of father teaches his little son to abuse their servants?” he pauses, and when Malfoy doesn’t respond, “anyway. I got my own back for the dog incident.”

“Yeah?” Malfoy still sounds upset, but he looks back at Harry, brushes a piece of hair out of his face. The pink fairy is balancing on his shoulder.

“I accidentally inflated her, summer before second year.”

“You what?”

“Inflated her. It was very satisfying. Didn’t even get in trouble, and I never had to see her again.”

Malfoy looks down at the water. “I’m glad she got her comeuppance.”

“Me too,” Harry says.

They lapse into quiet. Harry’s feet are going numb, so he splashes out of the water and tries to step out onto the steep muddy bank but judges the angle entirely wrong and before he realises it is skidding backwards, his arms flailing in the air.

“Merlin!” he hears Malfoy say and then hands are grabbing his arms but it isn’t enough and Harry’s weight sends them both collapsing into the pool in a tangle of limbs.

“You are a mess,” Malfoy splutters as they both emerge, hair plastered to their heads. The fairy sleeping in Malfoy’s hair wisely took to the air, and is hovering, irritated, above their heads. Harry had never realised giggles could be so scolding. “Next time, I am going to let you fall.”

“Sorry,” Harry says, unrepentant.

“You’re not.”

“Not particularly.”

They are, Harry realises, inches from one another’s faces – he can feel Malfoy’s breath on his cheek, see the thin, silvery line of a scar bisecting his eyebrow. If he leant forward just a little, they’d be kissing. Malfoy’s eyes meet his, and it’s like magnetism, like gravity. Malfoy’s gaze drifts down to Harry’s mouth, and Harry sees him swallow. He tentatively lifts his hand to brace against Harry’s shoulder and they’re still in the freezing water. Harry’s heart is thudding. This is it, he hears himself think, this is what was always meant to happen, this is…

Dog snarls, low between his teeth, and Harry jerks back to his senses, scrambles upright. Malfoy is still lying on his elbows in the pool and Robards’ silver lion Patronus is regarding them from the bank with detached curiosity. Its mouth opens and it says: “There was a Muggle car bomb at Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley’s cottage. Do not come back to London. They are both alive and unhurt. Be prepared, we think it’s starting.”

Chapter Text

The lion dissolves into silvery mist and Draco hauls himself out of the pool. Potter is already in motion, drying himself off and quickly packing up their things. He tosses Draco his wand with a curt, “get warm. We need to head back, now.”

Draco doesn’t know what to do, what to say to this so silently casts the spell, feels the dryness spread over his clothes and hair. The green fairy giggles at him and sprinkles fresh fairydust all over his head. He hands the wand back, and takes a deep breath.

“They’re ok?”

“They’re ok,” Potter confirms, the beautiful laughing boy of two minutes ago replaced by an efficient, poker-faced professional. Draco has no idea where that moment was going, is sure he was about to kiss Potter and get horribly rejected but now, well. The world always catches up with you whether you like it or not. “Ready?”

“No,” Draco mutters, but grabs the scruff of Dog’s neck and takes the proffered arm. They Apparate back to the castle, which stands like an eerie sentinel against the sky. Potter has cast his own Patronus, is speaking to it urgently and sends it off with a flick of his wand.

“I’m going to run a perimeter,” Potter says. “Just to make sure. I’m sure it’ll be ok. Don’t look so worried.”

“I’m not,” Draco lies, and grabs Dog’s collar, dragging him inside before he can bound off after Potter.

He paces the kitchen until Potter gets back, easing the door open and stamping mud off his boots. Draco meets him in the hallway. “Anything?”

“Bootprints, outside the gate, several sets, unknown Muggles,” Potter says. He seems too calm, Draco thinks wildly,  far too calm. “The intruder charm hasn’t been set off, though, so they obviously haven’t come inside.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. The door was still locked and nothing’s moved.”

“So what do we do?”

“We wait.”

“Like sitting ducks? Seriously? Is that the only answer you’ve got?” Draco’s stomach is clenched fist. Bile splashes up his throat.

“For right now, yes. It’s likely that Robards will send someone else up here too.”

“Great,” Draco hears himself snarl, “two Aurors against god-knows how many people my father’s Imperiused into doing his bidding. That makes me feel fantastic.”

“I know you’re frightened…”

“Shut up,” Draco snaps, his voice distant to even his own ears, “I don’t want to…fuck. I’m going upstairs.”

With that, he whirls around and flings himself up the narrow staircase to his room, slamming the door behind him loudly. He stands in the quiet, fraying light from the window, and tries to tell himself to breathe. He knew this was coming, he knew it – there’s absolutely no point panicking and losing his shit. He settles himself cross-legged on the bed, tugging a blanket over his shoulders, and buries his face in his hands, tries to think. Be logical about this. Granger and Weasel were nearly caught in a Muggle car bomb. What does that achieve? What advantage does that offer?

There are footsteps, then, and the sound of a mug on stone. Draco unfurls himself and goes to open the door to find Potter straightening up, two mugs still in his hands.

“Sorry,” he says, “just thought I’d leave this…”

“Come in,” Draco interrupts, stepping aside and pointing at the window-seat. Potter gives him a look, and then does as Draco asks, handing Draco one mug of tea and settling into the window seat with the other.

“Sorry,” Draco says after a silent moment, sitting back down on his bed and drawing his knees to his chest like a shield, “I just panicked.”

“How dare you be upset.” Potter’s voice is dry. “It’s not as if your despicable father is finally putting in motion whatever horrible thing he’s been plotting for the past three years.”

Draco finds a small, insistent smile pressing fingers into the corners of his mouth. “Yeah.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’m still sorry for snapping.”

“Well, apology accepted.” Potter takes an obnoxiously loud slurp of tea as if to prove his point. Draco pulls a blanket around his shoulders, rest his chin on his knees. His hands feel very cold.

“Why them?” he asks after a moment. “Why them, why now, and why a Muggle bomb?”

“Well it’s effective,” Potter points out. He is still far too calm. “And we knew he was using Muggles, so it’s not that much of a surprise. And with those terrorist attacks a few weeks ago, the wizards that died…the Prophet has been spouting all this nonsense about the danger Muggles pose. If people think that Muggles are attacking wizards…”

“Fear and division. He can use it to get into power, if that’s his aim,” Draco murmurs. Granger, Weasel, bomb. Granger, Weasel, bomb. If you kill Granger and Weasel, you…

“Potter,” he says, quietly, “you know Granger and Weasel are part of a three. The three.”

Potter stares at him for a second as though he’s never considered the possibility that someone might still be out for him, as though he’d have to keep looking over his shoulder once Voldemort was dead and burned. Draco wants to wring his father’s neck for that alone.

“That,” Potter starts, but in that instant there is a low boom from down the hill. Draco’s blood turns to ice. The farm. Potter is on is feet, peering out of the window, and then he whips around and heads for the door.

“I’m not going to be able to persuade you to stay here, am I?” he asks over his shoulder as Draco follows him down the stairs, grabs his coat. His heart is a war-drum in his chest.

“You’ll have to stun me first,” Draco says. Madge, Ned. His father had known about them, months ago, and Draco had never even considered…how could he have been so stupid?

Mercifully, Potter doesn’t try to argue the point; he just yanks a knife from the block and hands it over. “Hide it somewhere and only use it if you need to. Aim to incapacitate, not kill. I’ll cover for you if anything happens.”

Draco locks Dog in the kitchen, Potter re-rigs the Intruder Charm, and they’re over the stile and bolting down the footpath to the farm, the wet mud squelching under their feet and sheep hustling, alarmed, out of their way. There is a plume of smoke coming from the end of the middle barn, choking the yard and as they approach there is a loud stuttering noise and the ping of something off metal. Potter grabs his arm and drags him down into the long, damp grass.

“Guns,” Potter mutters. “Right. No sudden moves. I’m going to…”

A woman’s scream echoes over the yard and Draco is moving before he knows it, ducks beneath a responding spray of gunfire and makes it to the shelter of the first barn. Dimly, he sees something flash silver and gallop away and then Potter is rising up out of the grass, his wand sparking red and blue and gold. Draco watches for a second from his new hiding place, hears the thump of at least two bodies hitting the floor and a strangled yelp. This isn’t the scared and exhausted boy who won the war on sheer nerve. This is perhaps who should have been fighting Voldemort – a man calm and sure, who fights as easy as a dance.

He hears Madge scream again and his feet are moving nearly before he gives them permission; he dashes for the next barn, and the third, until he sees them through the smoke. Madge is on the floor by their kitchen door clutching her face, and Ned is being held by a figure in black robes. Their wand hovers in the vicinity of his throat. A second figure with a long metal tube – a gun – is pacing back and forth.

“How long do we have to wait?” they say to their companion, aiming a kick at Madge’s ribs.

Draco wishes more than anything he didn’t have to do this, didn’t have to run headfirst into danger like a bloody Gryffindor. How on earth did Potter manage this for seven years? Plan, he tells himself, think of a plan. Just running in there is going to get all three of them killed, and the Death Eater Revels have made sure that there is no way he wants to use the knife unless he absolutely has to. He quickly reminds himself of the hand motion for the Stunning Spell, shifts sideways with the smoke.

“Go find Malfoy and ask if you’re so impatient,” the first person says, their voice obscured by their hood.

“Where is he?”

“Fucked if I know. Be quick.”

The second person – a Muggle, Draco thinks – ducks into the smoke in the opposite direction from Draco. Now’s his chance. He takes a tiny breath of acrid air and sneaks up behind the first figure – his foot crunches on something and the person whips around but before they can do anything he’s launched himself forward, aiming all of his weight for their wand-arm. They stumble backwards, their grip slackening. Ned hits the floor with a nasty crack.

“Get off me,” the person spits, their hood falling down to reveal a long brown braid, a thick fringe, blue eyes narrowed and cold. Selwyn. Selwyn. The shock is a bucket upended over his head. What the hell is she doing here?

“You,” Draco says. She steps back out of reach. “What the…you hate Death Eaters, you…”

“I still do,” she says, “I compromised.”

“What?”

“Not all of us want the brave new world people like Hermione Granger and Harry Potter are trying to make,” she says, lifting her wand. Draco lunges forward again. Selwyn’s mouth opens on a spell but endless hours of digging and running around after evasive animals has made Draco stronger and faster than he realises, and he snatches the wand out of her hand.

“Help-”

“Stupefy!” Draco says quickly, and a bolt of red light smacks into her shoulder and she sinks to her knees, her mouth drifting open as she slumps sideways. Ned has scrambled backwards on all fours, is staring at him wildly as Draco approaches, kneels. There’s a yell and a clatter from somewhere in the smoke that sounds like all the crates outside the sheep-barn have been knocked over.

“Can you walk?” he asks urgently.

“Draco? You…what?”

“Not now, I’ll explain later. I need to get you both somewhere safe. Can you walk?”

“Yes, I…”

“Right. Help me carry Madge.”

She’s half conscious, tries to get her legs under her as Draco and Ned haul her up and sling an arm over each of their shoulders. There is blood trickling down her face from a cut too clean to be the gravel.

“The house?” Ned asks.

“Barn,” Draco says. “More places to hide.”

They make it to the closest barn without incident, and Draco is about to lift Madge into the safety of the office when he hears the footsteps.

“Take her,” he says, and Ned grunts in response but suddenly they’re both deathly, unnaturally still. Draco whips around to see his father standing in the middle of the aisle, robes half-open to reveal the breastplate from all those years ago. His hair is in a long plait, and he’s spinning his wand idly in his hands. Draco backs up as quickly as he can, trying to draw attention away from Ned and Madge, automatically brings his stolen wand into a defensive position.

“Now,” Lucius says, smooth as silk, “there’s no need for that.”

“You just put body-binds on my neighbours and your soldiers have blown up their farm,” Draco says, the fight or flight rattling against his teeth.

“Exactly.” Lucius is smiling. “Everything is under control.”

“You are deluded,” Draco hisses, regretting the words the second they are out of his mouth.

“You would think that.” Lucius is moving closer, and Draco fights the urge to run, to hide, to curl up in a ball and take whatever is coming, to breathe through it just like he used to during the war when Voldemort would turn on him and Lucius would just stand by and watch…but he can’t. He can’t abandon Ned and Madge, and he won’t – not for the whole world. “Then again, you’ve always been too soft for my liking. Co-operate and they won’t get hurt.”

“They’re already hurt.”

“They’re Muggles. Does it matter?”

“They’re people!” Draco all-but-screams. “Isn’t that enough? Stay back!”

“Are you going to make me?”

“Stupefy!” Draco snaps, trying to get the wand motion right but his hands are shaking and it’s fizzlingly weak and Lucius doesn’t even bother to block it – it evaporates before it can get within a foot of him. The breastplate. It’s the one from the stories, the one that makes its owner invulnerable. Fuck. Draco takes a sip of smoke-choked air. He can do this. Direct spells won’t work. What will?

Lucius raises his wand and sends a stream of white light towards Draco but Draco is already moving, murmuring levitating spells under his breath. The forks and rakes balanced at the back of the barn take flight towards Lucius’ head, and he has to turn to defend himself from them. It’s all time, that’s all he can do – buy time for Potter to deal with the rest, for the Aurors to get here and sort everything out and...

He casts what he hopes is the counter-curse to Body Bind whilst Lucius is distracted and levitates the straw out of one of the stalls, hurls it into the air.

“Stop this nonsense at once!” he hears from within the swirling cloud of dried grass, and runs past where Lucius is vanishing the straw, out of the big doors and into the yard. “Fight me like a man!”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” Draco yells back, and ducks behind the tractor which is up on its blocks, ready to be fixed. One of the wheels is leaning against the fence, and he’s about to levitate it too but someone calls “Got him!”

Lucius appears from the shadow of the barn, straw in his hair and scattered over his shoulders and he looks furious. Draco stiffens. He can’t…he’s out of sight, he knows that but suddenly there are several cloaked figures hurling someone in a jumper and jeans down into the muck at Lucius’ feet. Draco’s breath turns to acid in his mouth. It’s Potter. They’ve got Potter and he has to do something.

“Wingardium Leviosa!” he shouts, standing straight, and the tractor wheel sails into the air, smacking one of the hooded accomplices on the head and thundering close to Lucius’ before Lucius banishes it with a lazy flick of his wand. Draco feels ropes spring up around his wrists, an invisible force jerk his feet forward and sending him sprawling into the mud next to Potter. His head hits the ground hard enough that he sees stars whirling, silver and white, behind his eyes.

“Well that was easier than expected,” Selwyn remarks, appearing at Lucius’ shoulder. There is a welt on her face, and Draco hears Potter’s furious inhale. “What now?”

Lucius barely spares her a glance, holds out his hand. A hooded soldier puts a smaller gun into it, and Lucius slides his wand back into his sleeve, twists the gun around with practised ease. Draco hears a loud click.

“One last thing to do,” Lucius says, and points the gun straight at Potter’s forehead.

“No!” Draco screams, tries to move but he can’t and Lucius’ hand is tightening on the gun and this is it, this what the end of the world looks like and he’s lying here, helpless, can’t do a single thing to stop it and…

There are several loud cracks and the night explodes into chaos: shouted curses and flashes of brightly coloured light and yells. Draco rocks back and forth and rolls over so he can shield Potter, curling over him. A curse singes close to the top of his head. He can hear Potter’s breathing, hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He’s got to protect Potter, got to keep him alive. That’s the only thing that matters, now, the only thing that counts after all these years, all this time. Merlin, if only he could get out of these ropes! They’re knotted too tightly for anything other than a knife or magic and then it doesn’t matter because a hand is curling into his hair and yanking him painfully upright and dragging him off round the corner of the barn. The hush of robes against metal. Lucius.

“It’s over, Malfoy!” Draco hears someone bellow. “Give it up!”

“If I can’t get Potter I can still get you,” Lucius says somewhere near Draco’s right ear. “Useless, worthless Muggle-lover. I won’t be humiliated by you any longer, do you understand?”

They haul to a stop in the entrance of the barn but there are feet and a shimmering heaviness descends over the entire farm before Lucius can Apparate them away. The world is spinning. Footsteps on gravel. Blonde hair, smoke, and then the rasp of something metallic being drawn, a cold, sharp edge against his throat. He can feel the warmth of Lucius’ body behind his, a sick parody of the father he’d never been. “Come any closer or raise your wands and he gets it!”

There’s a silence, the kind that only comes with stalemate. Draco cracks open his eyes and right in his line of sight is Potter – his jumper torn and bloodied, his body one long, tense, horrified line, looking as though he’s about to take flight. Dizzily, Draco thinks that he’s going to love this man forever.

“Do it,” he rasps, as loud as he can. The hand in his hair tightens. Potter looks utterly stricken. “Get him.”

“No,” Potter is mouthing. The blonde one – Robards – has a hand on Potter’s shoulder. Lucius’ breathing is erratic behind him, the knife presses closer. He barely feels the pain, knows that it’s all over.

“It’s okay,” Draco manages. “I don’t mind.”

Robards bends to say something to Potter and Potter looks as though he’s going to vomit. Draco closes his eyes. There’s a rustle from somewhere behind them, a snap of something into place.

Madge screeches, “Not today, you bastard!”

The gunshot is impossibly loud. Lucius jerks, howls, and the knife clatters to the floor.

Draco’s knees give out and he hunches forward as small as he can, presses his bound hands to his ears and closes his eyes as tightly as he can as though he could bury himself alive. Someone is screaming, and he doesn’t realise it’s him until there are fingers gently wrapping around his wrists, the ropes falling away.

“Hey,” a voice is saying, prying his hands away from his ears. “Hey, it’s over. It’s over.”

Potter. Draco peels his eyes open. Potter is on the floor too, his face very close, and then he’s pulling Draco into his arms and Draco is pressing his face into the curve of Potter’s neck. Potter’s hand is in his hair, and his mouth is warm against Draco’s ear, and he just breathes, and breathes, and breathes.

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” Potter whispers fiercely in his ear.

“Sorry,” Draco mumbles against his skin. Potter laughs, weak and watery, and tightens his arms.

*

The clean-up happens in dribbles. Harry holds Malfoy for as long as he can before Pansy and Ron appear, shoulder to shoulder, silently waiting. He passes Malfoy – in severe shock, as far as he can tell from the glazed expression on Malfoy’s face – over to Ned and Madge, who pull him into a tight, three-way embrace. Merlin that had been a moment for the history books. Lucius Malfoy, invulnerable breastplate and all, taken down by a Muggle woman with a shotgun.

“I’ll get a Field Healer and Obliviator sent over,” Pansy says, smoothing her blue skirts. She looks as if she’s just come from a society party, which, knowing Pansy, she probably has.

“No,” Harry starts, and Madge looks up.

“What’s an Obliviator?”

“They wipe your memories of magic,” Pansy says bluntly. Harry opens his mouth to keep protesting, but Madge beats him to it.

“That’s what this is? Magic?” she looks back at Harry.

“Yes,” Harry says. Madge stares at him, and then she nods as though things are slotting into place in her head, raises her chin.

“And what if I don’t want my memories of it wiped?”

“It’s international wizarding law.” Pansy’s voice is uncompromising. Ron rolls his eyes.

“And it’s above our pay grade, Parkinson. Harry and I’ll go get Robards.” Ron takes hold of Harry’s upper arm and tugs him gently in the direction of the door. “Come on.”

Harry blinks at the lights someone has set hovering in the yard. The Muggle soldiers are being bent over by blue-robed Obliviators, and the middle barn is still smoking, a hole torn in its side. He remembers about the car bomb in one sickening lurch, half turns, “Ron, Merlin, the bomb, the…”

“Hey,” Ron says, slinging an arm over his shoulders. “It’s ok. We’re fine.”

“Should you even be here? Where’s Hermione?”

“At the Ministry. We were there getting a debrief, and some Muggles tried to storm the building with those…machine gun things. We’d just subdued them when your Patronus came through. I left her there.”

“Malfoy?”

“Of course. Theo Nott too, of all people, but he got away,” Ron says, drawing to a stop a few feet from Robards who is hurriedly conversing with the Field Healer. “At least we caught one.”

“Two,” Harry corrects, swallows. “Selwyn is a traitor.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Ron shrugs. “That’s going to be a fun internal investigation.”

“You’re telling me, Weasley,” Robards says, striding over to meet them. There are pits under his eyes and blood in his blonde stubble, but his back is very straight. “Potter. What’s happening?”

“We need you in the barn, sir,” Harry says. Ron claps Harry on the shoulder, leaves him to explain the situation as they walk back over. Robards draws to a halt in front of Madge and Ned, folds his arms. Madge glares at him.

“You don’t consent to Obliviation?” Robards asks.

“I should bloody well think not,” Madge snaps. Robards looks at Ned.

“Don’t know why you’re looking at me, mate,” Ned says, his hand on Madge’s shoulder. “What she does, I do.”

“It puts us in a tight situation. Mu…non-magical people aren’t supposed to know about us,” Robards says. Harry can see the muscle jumping in his jaw, knows that Robards isn’t prone to rash, uncaring decisions, but after this investigation, after this day he wouldn’t bet on anything. Malfoy is watching the exchange with a dazed expression – Pansy has her arm looped around his waist, and after a breath he steps forward.

“There’s the contract,” he says. “For families of Muggleborns.”

“How the hell do you know about that?” Harry hears Pansy mutter.

Malfoy ignores her, ignores everyone. Robards sighs.

“It’s only applicable if they’ve got a wizarding family member to vouch for them.”

“They are my family,” Malfoy lifts his chin, stubborn. Even shaking and cut up and exhausted, even after this shitshow of a day, there’s a new fight in him that Harry’s never seen before. Harry’s heart hurts. “Or as good as.”

“You’re on parole, Mr Malfoy.”

“You owe me.”

“The courts aren’t open to authorise anything tonight.”

They fall into silence, an impasse. There’s no way Harry can stand by and let the Ministry obliviate Madge and Ned without their consent. It’s unthinkable after everything they’ve been through, after everything Malfoy’s been through. They deserve to be able to keep the truth.

“I’ll do it,” Harry says and five pairs of eyes turn to him.

Robards tips his head up to the ceiling as if looking for strength or divine intervention. “Really, Potter?”

“Yes,” Harry says. He can feel Malfoy looking at him, feel the magnetic pull, doesn’t look back.

“Fine. I’ll send an Obliviator in to cast. Potter, come and find me when you’re done.” Robards pauses, and then he looks straight at Madge, and nods. “Good shot. That could have been a lot messier.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Madge says. Robards’ mouth twitches, and then he’s gone.

Harry stands still long enough for the Obliviator to cast the contract, and then he leaves, finally giving in to glance over his shoulder. Madge and Ned both have possessive arms around Malfoy, but Madge is letting Pansy heal her cut, her eyes following every move of Pansy’s wand. When he gets into the yard, Robards sits him down to demand a proper field debrief, and then he gets caught up trying to set the farm vaguely back to rights. He doesn’t need to crowd the three of them, doesn’t need to hover – they’ve just been through a fucking battle, and he knows better than anyone what a gift space and peace is in an aftermath.

It’s the work of an hour to fix most of the damage. Robards begins issuing marching orders and further instructions. Harry brushes the exhaustion from his eyes, tries to pay attention as his colleagues begin to Apparate off. Someone’s hand is hesitantly touching his shoulder and he turns to find Malfoy hovering there. He looks hollow and shattered, but he manages the tiniest attempt at a smile for Harry.

“I suppose you’re all heading off now,” he says.

“Yeah,” Harry says, scuffing his feet. What the hell does he say? He wishes he didn’t have to? Fuck the rest of the investigation, fuck the debrief, he just wants to stay here and cook a ridiculous pot of pasta and bundle in the sitting room with Ned and Madge to watch another ridiculous rom-com and curl around Draco and never ever let go. “Loose ends to tie up. I need to go get my stuff from the castle.”

“Well, you know where the spare key is,” Draco says. Harry looks up to meet his eyes. “I’m staying here tonight.”

“That’s probably for the best.”

“Yeah.” Malfoy looks down, and then up again, scratches the back of his neck as though he doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands. “Thank you. For stepping in. I’m…I’ll never stop owing you.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Harry tells him. “I wanted to. They’re your family, and…and, well. I don’t know what I was expecting, coming up here, but it’s been wonderful. It’s the least I could do for the three of you.”

They stand and look at each other for several paper-thin, aching moments. Everything unsaid drifts between them, ghostly.

“Thank you,” Draco says, abruptly. “Even so.”

“You’re welcome,” Harry says. What else can he say?

Draco exhales. “I…”

“Harry!” Ron yells from across the yard. “Hurry up!”

Harry could have gladly murdered his best friend, settles for shooting a glare over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“Nevermind,” Draco says. “Have a safe journey back. And don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t,” Harry says, and then before he can stop himself, steps forward and pulls Draco into a quick, tight hug, taking a moment to remember the feel of his body, and then he lets go, turning away. He forces himself not to look back.

Chapter Text

“I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you,” Draco says, and then swallows hard. Madge leans against the Aga rail with her arms folded – the scar from the Slicing Hex is livid against her pale-gold skin, perilously close to her eye. The words stick to his tongue like burrs, and he takes a deep breath, looks down into his tea. It shakes in time with his hands. They’ve waited till morning, till after the chores. They’ve waited long enough. He’s got to do this.

“No shit,” Madge says.

“Madge,” Ned chides her. Then, to Draco, “take your time, son. It’s alright.”

“No,” Draco says, and then has to choke back the sudden lump in his throat. “No, it’s not. I…my father…Merlin.”

Ned’s face is so kind, and he reaches out to rest his hand on top of Draco’s, his skin tough and weathered like the old cliff face at Malham. “Breathe.”

“Yes,” Draco manages, watery. “So, um. Wizards exist. That’s the easiest place to start, I guess. We live in secret for reasons that were probably good at the time, and uh, well there’s this whole thing in wizarding society about blood. Um…it’s been taken for granted for centuries that people with pure blood – people who haven’t married non-magical people, Muggles, and wizards who weren’t born to Muggles – are better than others. There are twenty-eight families in Britain that are pureblood all the way back, and uh…mine’s one of them.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Madge murmurs. Draco’s mouth goes bone dry. Ned squeezes his fingers.

“Yeah,” Draco says, hoarse. “My um, my father, the man that you saw last night, he was part of a pureblood supremacy group called the Death Eaters. It was led by this monster who called himself Lord Voldemort,” Draco shivers at the name, still, takes a careful breath, “my father was his right hand man, the second time around. He’s dead now. Potter got him at the end of the war, a couple of years ago, but my father got away. Hence, everything.”

“How did we miss a war?” Ned asks, his eyebrows drawing together.

“You didn’t. The Brockdale Bridge disaster. The freak explosion in Surrey. Most of the disappearances and random accidents between 1996 and 1998 would have been to do with it. It destroyed bits of the Ministry, most of Wizarding London, half of our school in Scotland. Hundreds of witches and wizards died. I don’t know how many Muggles. They, um, we took people and kept them prisoner, killed them. It was fucking horrible from start to finish.”

They lapse into quiet. Draco closes his eyes for a second, waits for the inevitable question. Madge eventually puts him out of his misery.

“You said we.” Her voice is very gruff. “Were you a Death Eater too?”

Very slowly, he pulls his hand from Ned’s, shoves up his sleeve and turns his wrist over so they can see the Dark Mark, the ink fraying around the edges. The snake’s mouth is open, ready to strike.

“This was what Voldemort branded us all with,” he says, as though whispering it will make it unreal somehow. “I was sixteen when I got it. My, um…I…my father, I just wanted to make him proud, but when it happened I realised that actually I had been so stupid…” Draco pushes his fingers into his eyes. He can’t stand to sit there and look at them, look at their pity, their horror. They’re going to turf him out. He’s going to be alone again. Merlin, he can’t do this.

“Where was your mother in all of this?” Ned’s level. Draco doesn’t pull his hands away. Madge mutters something under her breath that he doesn’t catch.

“As trapped as I was. Voldemort would hurt me more than he already did if she stepped out of line. I don’t blame her.” He takes another breath, but it barely reaches his lungs, gets stuck in the back of his throat. “She was killed by my Aunt Bellatrix in the last battle of the war. I spent three years in prison, for aiding and abetting. I’d helped Potter in the end so I got off lightly, and yes, well. I wasn’t welcome back in the wizarding world when I finished my sentence. That’s why I moved up here.”

There’s silence for a second, and then Ned’s rough fingers are curling around Draco’s wrist, tugging. “Hey. Draco. Look at me.”

“I can’t.”

“Draco.”

Draco sets his shoulders, musters every ounce of his flinching, cornered courage, and lets Ned pull his hands away from his face. Madge is there too, has abandoned the Aga to sit down. She’s scowling, and Draco tries not to recoil away from it, tries to meet their judgement bravely. He knew it was going to turn out this way. How could it not?

“Your fucking father is so fucking lucky I only had a shotgun,” Madge says just as Ned opens his mouth. Draco stares at her.

“Madge.”

“Don’t Madge me. I mean it. What a fucking…what sort of parent encourages their sixteen year old son to join up with a hate group and fight a fucking war? Oh great, let’s murder people for some father-son bonding, Jesus Christ.”

“You…” Draco starts.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Ned says. “I am so sorry.”

“You didn’t…you, I didn’t do enough, I…I watched people die, people get horribly tortured and I didn’t…” Draco tries to explain, but he doesn’t get very far at all before he’s interrupted.

“You were sixteen,” Madge snaps. “I don’t fucking care what you did, you were obviously fucking coerced.”

“You aren’t going to be able to make us leave, Draco. We’re family, like you said last night, and that means you’re stuck with us,” Ned tells him, and that is the last straw. Draco chokes on a sob.  

“Oh come here, you complete dipshit,” Madge says, exasperated, and pulls him to his feet, wraps her arms around him. He presses his face into her jumper, breathes in lavender, breathes out the fear, the hurt. They’re not leaving. They are not leaving. After a moment, there’s the scraping of chair legs on the kitchen floor and Ned comes to join the hug.

“What about Harry?” Ned asks, when Draco has found a fragile balance again, no longer feels as though he’s going to rattle apart into pieces on their tiles. Outside, rain mists across the yard, and Ned lets go, turns to flick the kettle on again. “You said he killed this Voldemort, but isn’t he the same age as you?”

Draco steps out of Madge’s arms and goes to get the teabag tin, swiping at his eyes. He doesn’t really want to think about Potter, about the hug, about all the things Draco didn’t say but wishes he had. About the fact that Potter left, after everything. “He’s the Chosen One.”

When he turns back, Madge is frowning at him in a deeply sceptical manner. “The Chosen One? Seriously?”

“It’s what the papers called him when we were still at school.” Draco pauses, “He defeated Voldemort accidentally as a baby, and then when Voldemort got resurrected, Potter was Public Enemy Number One.”

“Where the hell were all the adults during this war?”

“Using us,” Draco says, thinking of Dumbledore, of his father. It feels so strange, admitting this on a rainy autumn morning in a cheerful kitchen to a pair of Muggles who are giving him identical pissed off and disbelieving looks with a fresh mug of tea in his hands. “Or in denial. There were a few who fought from the beginning. But there was a prophecy.”

“A prophecy,” Madge says. “I’m sorry, Draco, but that is fucked up. A prophecy isn’t a fucking excuse.”

“Quite,” Ned agrees. “I guess he’s not a police detective, then.”

“He’s an Auror, now,” Draco shrugs. “It’s the wizarding equivalent.”

“Will he be back?”

“I don’t know.” Draco says, and takes a scorching gulp of tea to avoid having to answer any more questions about Potter. Madge drains her mug in one go and dumps it into the sink.

“Well. Traumatic backstory hour over. I’m going to go check Randy McShaggerballs survived his first night and his first fucking battle. Come on, Draco.”

She kicks his boots across the kitchen at him, and he bends to put them on. When he looks up, Ned is smiling.

“Family,” Ned says again, and Draco feels the weight of it settle like a old, warm blanket around his shoulders. He pulls it closer, shoves on his coat, and follows Madge out into the rain.

*

He finds the letter that he’d stuffed behind the plants three mornings later, stares at it – the purple ink, the shimmer of the translation charm. He should probably stop hiding from it, he thinks ruefully, pads into the kitchen to get a knife. The envelope slits cleanly open, wafting the smell of spices and seawater and he perches on his favourite chair at the kitchen table, leans on his elbows. Tuwalole’s writing has barely changed. It loops giddily across the page in long, descriptive sentences and he presses his cheek into his fist. It’s been such a long time since the enormous letters they used to write each other about their cultures and schools and shared love of potions. It’s been such a long time since that last panicked letter he’d written her, the summer he came home to find Voldemort sitting in his father’s favourite chair. He’d never received the reply; part of him wonders whether, if he were to go back to the Manor, he’d find it in his father’s old desk.

At the end the letter reads:

I know I am yet to have a response from you, but I will keep writing – my grandmother tells me to persist, that one day you might need this letter. Your last letter was terrifying, Draco, and I was so scared for you and for the rest of Wizarding Britain. It has been a dark century for your country. I hope you live, and I hope the new millennium brings you some peace.

In the event that you do receive this, I (and my whole family) formally invite you to spend some time with us in Dar es Salaam when Uagadou closes for the holiday. I could even take you to the Mountains of the Moon to gather potions ingredients like we always talked about in school! Let me know, and I shall start putting arrangements in place – it would be wonderful to finally meet you in person.

Be alive, please. Be safe.

All my love,

Tuwalole Hamadi

By the time he reaches the end, he realises that the words are blurring and his eyes are stinging. He puts aside the letter and tries to calm down but it’s a lost cause. He doesn’t know how long he cries for, in the end. Dog noses the door open at some point and wriggles under the table to rest his head in Draco’s lap and whines a little until Draco reaches down to pet his ears. It’s over, he tells himself as he hiccups towards calm, goes to fill the kettle. It is all over. His father is gone, Voldemort is gone, the Dementors are gone. He’s got Ned, Madge, Luna, Tuwalole. Pansy, when she finally decides to reappear in his life. The years are unspooling out ahead of him like a silvery, moonlit river and they all belong to him. Maybe he can finally start believing it.

He wipes his face and takes a deep, shuddery breath, imagines he can feel the oxygen diffuse red and vital through his veins.

Later, he goes outside into the damp afternoon and perches on the old curtain wall and writes back, writes the whole sorry mess of it out again onto the recycled paper the charity shop sells with the first biro pen he acquired. Afterwards, he feels hollowed out, a cave filled with the brittle bones of speleothems, but also like he’s never been cleaner in his life.

After a moment of staring into space feeling the spit of drizzle on the back of neck, he adds a postscript:

I would like love more than anything to see Dar es Salaam and the Mountains of the Moon. However, the conditions of my parole mean that I’m no longer allowed out of the British Isles. Perhaps you’d like to come and visit instead? There’s plenty of space, peace, and quiet out here – it might be a nice place for you to finish writing that book you were talking about?

Afterwards, he spends a solid hour trying to tempt Achilles down from his tree. When the dratted bird finally allows himself to be convinced onto Draco’s arm, Draco ties the letter to his leg, strokes the soft feathers on the top of his head.

“Fancy going to Uganda?” he asks.

Achilles huffs in a very put-upon way, pecks Draco’s fingers, and takes off – spiralling up and up and up until he’s nothing but a speck against the thick grey clouds.

*

The weeks leaf over like pages in a notebook. The sun comes back out like a watery egg yolk, blinding in the pale late-November sky, and Draco is fine. He’s absolutely fine. He spends the run up to Christmas down at Foss Farm with his family and the farmhands, being fussed over and fed a truly ridiculous amount of mince pies and roast dinners. When the New Year comes, he wraps up warm and builds a swing seat in his oak tree for the sole purpose of spending hours hunched into it with Dog, ostensibly embarking on the part-time university degree the librarian helped him choose but actually wondering what Potter’s up to, why he hasn’t come back.

It’s a stupid question to which Draco knows the answer: Potter hasn’t come back because it was just a job. He was here to catch and lock up Draco’s father, and now that’s done. According to the Daily Prophet Robards sent, Ms Everett wiped the floor with the defence at the trial and the bastard is in the deepest, darkest hole the International Confederation of Wizards could collectively find. Potter doesn’t have to be here anymore, shuffling around like a zombie in the mornings with his electric-shock hair and his long fingers around a big mug of coffee or singing to himself around the garden. He’s not accidentally bumping into Draco or looking at him for those long endless minutes and…

It’s fine. It’s life. Draco has, against all odds, survived. Having Potter here was a nice daydream and now it’s over.

“How’s Harry?” Ned asks one blustery January day when they’re washing the tractor after several hilarious incidents with cows and mud.

“I don’t know,” Draco says, leaning further over to scrub the tractor’s roof. Soap suds run warm down his arm, into the sleeve of his t-shirt. “Haven’t heard from him.”

Ned looks at him for a second, and then turns back to the window. “Madge says you need to get yourself a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, I suppose. Fill up the time a bit.” Then, conspiratorial, “she’s dying to set her niece up with someone, if you’re interested.”

“I appreciate the sentiment but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Suit yourself.”

Luna comes back from Iceland for good this time bearing icicle-thin pillars of rock magic from seven different volcanoes. She helps him line them up on a shelf, and then she spends an afternoon lying in the grass with the chickens wandering all over her and if he feels his throat tighten at the thought that the last time she was here, so was Potter, it’s too bad because he shouldn’t pine for someone who is obviously not interested. Luna doesn’t say a thing. When she leaves, she gives him an enormous hug, pressing her face into his shoulder.

“I’ll bring you some grass from Bolivia,” she says, “It calms chickens with attitude problems.”

He snorts, and hugs her tighter, hopes that it says what he can’t verbalise: you’re the best and what in the actual hell did I do to deserve your friendship. She steps away. “It’ll be alright, you know.”

“Of course it will,” he says, and walks her down the path, watches her Apparate away. He stands there for a while, tipping his face to the sun. She’s right, she always is. He’s got a home, a family, a whole fucking menagerie of ridiculous animals, his freedom – asking for anything more would just be selfish, and he got sick of being selfish a long time ago.

He’s about to turn to go inside when there’s a noise from the lane, a squeaking of bike pedals. Reflexively, he reaches for the pocket knife he’s taken to carrying around with him after one too many nightmares and then tells himself off for being ridiculous – no potential assassin is going to cycle up that hill. He squints in the direction of the oncoming figure, who is swathed in an enormous red jumper with gold patterning and hunched over the handlebars.

“Hello?” he calls, confused. The wind riffles through the leaves above his head like it knows something he doesn’t.

“Merlin’s sake, this sodding bike!” The figure squeals to a stop, slings a leg over and dumps the bike in the dust. “In perfect working condition my arse.”

Draco’s heart is very suddenly in his mouth. He has to be hallucinating. This can’t be real. “Potter?”

Potter’s walking towards him now, skin darker like he’s been somewhere hot and caught the sun, every step purposeful, deliberate. He stops about three feet from Draco as though stopping is an afterthought, meets Draco’s eyes for one second and then looks down and up again like he can’t believe Draco is here. He’s bloody well not the only one.

“Hi,” he says. Draco stares at him, his heart hammering against his ribs. Potter is here and it’s nothing like Draco thought it would be. There’s a new scar on his chin, recently healed, and his hair is an explosion of black against the manganese blue of the sky. Everything Draco’s tried to push away comes thundering back, fills his nose and mouth and lungs, closes over his head.

“What are you doing here?”

“Sorry,” Potter says. He gives Draco a rueful smile. “I really am. I was going to owl but there was literally no time. We got a lead on Theo Nott but then that turned into a four month long wild goose chase down the north-west coast of Africa because Merlin’s balls that man is good at sliding out of tight situations, and then between that and having to give evidence for your father’s trial and just…it’s not an excuse, I know, but I just…and then I splinched myself so Hermione made me take the train up here instead of Apparating and then…oh, and Parkinson’s gone to New York, but she’ll come see you soon. She promises.”

“You…it’s fine, Potter. I figured.” And it really is. Potter looks exhausted again. His jumper hangs that little bit loose and now he’s stopped talking he’s started fidgeting with the cuffs of his jumper as if he’ll keel over if he doesn’t keep moving. Draco very nearly reaches out to him, fights the urge mercilessly. He can’t. It’s been over four months. He can’t just fucking assume; he can’t take that leap. It’s not fair to anyone, least of all himself. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Your question,” Potter says, with a sigh, and then very deliberately takes a step closer, right into Draco’s space. His closeness is like pinpricks against Draco’s skin. Draco knows without looking just how much he’d have to move so that they’d be touching. Something tense and unsaid has left Potter’s face, and he leans in a centimetre closer. “I, um…had some time to do some thinking, in the desert. I fucking loathe the desert, by the way, please remind me of that in future. Anyway. Ron was bored so he gave me the lecture on healthy communication that he’s practising for his kids-”

“Granger’s pregnant?”

“Merlin no,” Potter’s laugh is sudden, quick, “no, no way. Figure of speech. Don’t knock me off topic.”

“Sorry,” Draco murmurs, breathing in the smell of sweat and wool and fresh air. Potter sways closer, centrifugal. Draco’s breath gets stuck in his throat and refuses to dislodge, his hands are clammy.

“Anyway. I was thinking…”

“Shocker.”

“If you keep interrupting me I’ll never get this out. I’m running on three consecutive coffees and less consecutive sleep and this was a fucking stupid idea but I can’t leave it alone.”

“Get what out?” Draco asks. On an unnameable urge, he lifts his hand towards Potter’s face, brushes his fingers within a millimetre of Potter’s cheek. What the fuck is he doing? He’s about to snatch it away, but Potter’s suddenly got his fingers wrapped around Draco’s wrist, holding it there.

“I really like you,” he says into the space between them. “I really like you. I like the way you smile whenever Madge says something rude, and how careful you are with your animals and your garden, and the way your eyebrows furrow right before you say something sarcastic. I like how your brain works and I think you're really attractive, and..." Potter breathes out. Draco cannot look away, cannot believe this is happening, "I know we haven’t had the best history, and I know there’s like, the tiniest chance this whole thing is reciprocated or even if you’re interested in men in that way but I just really like you and I had to say something and…”

Draco leans forward and kisses him. Potter wraps his arms around Draco’s neck and kisses back, and Draco has never felt like this before, effervescent and as though the world could just float away and he wouldn’t notice a single thing. Potter starts laughing against Draco’s mouth because he is a disaster of a human being. Draco pulls away just a little, keeps his hand against Potter’s cheek. “You’re a fucking mess.”

“I’m your mess,” Potter says, his smile brighter than a fucking supernova. His hand is splayed against Draco’s lower back, and he can feel the gravity exerted by every single centimetre of contact. He feels like his brain is dissolving through his ears.

“Unfortunately,” he manages, and pulls Potter close again, focuses on kissing him, on the feeling of his hand in Draco’s hair, on the…

Dog barks and comes running up the path, nearly colliding with them because he is a traitor with no respect for anything resembling a private moment. Harry steps away to pet him, but snags Draco’s hand in his, looks up with Dog half in his lap vibrating with excitement. In the sunshine, he’s the most breath-taking thing Draco has ever seen.

“So,” Harry asks, like he’s the only one in on some massive cosmic joke, “can I stay?”

Draco’s smile is very nearly painful. He squeezes Harry’s hand. “Do you think I’d let you leave?”

*

“Why are you so good at this?” Harry whines, trying to get the latest addition to their pile of lambs to latch on to the bottle he’s holding.

“I’m innately talented at everything I do,” Draco says from his spot against the Aga, gently disengaging another lamb and holding out his hands. “Give it.”

“I can do it.”

“You obviously can’t.”

Harry glares at him for a second and then relents, plopping cross-legged onto the floor opposite Draco and hefting the bleating, confused bundle of wool and legs into Draco’s lap. Another lamb stumbles over and collides with Harry’s side, and he scoops that one up like a baby instead, rocks it back and forth and watches as Draco easily gets the first lamb to stop being confused by the its own aliveness and actually latch onto the bottle. He gives Harry a very smug look from beneath his eyelashes. Harry lets his wriggling charge back out to clatter around and fall over things and slides closer onto Draco’s lap so he can kiss him, the first lamb cradled between them. Somehow Draco is managing to feed it whilst still kissing Harry. Maybe he is innately talented at lamb-handling – not that Harry would ever let him have the satisfaction of knowing it.

Harry barely registers the sound of the door opening until he hears Madge saying, “For fuck’s sake. Why do I keep catching you two snogging in my kitchen? You own a fucking castle to snog in, Draco Malfoy! Why do you do it in my house?”

Harry pulls away but doesn’t get off Draco’s lap, looks up at Madge and Kath, her vet intern who Draco apparently knows from last year.

“I just can’t keep my hands off him,” Harry says very innocently, and Draco snorts.

“You’re a fucking menace.” Madge rolls her eyes. "Make us a brew?"

“A cuppa would be nice,” Draco says, leaning forward to brush his lips against Harry’s nose, and then turning back to his wriggling lamb.

“You're going to keel over from caffeine poisoning if you keep this rate up,” Harry says, but gets up, winds his way through the chaos to get to the kettle. Kath has picked up a lamb with brown ears and joined Draco on the floor. Harry makes tea, takes a mug over to Madge, and they both stand and watch Kath and Draco try to teach their lambs some complicated hoof-tapping game complete with baffled bleating. Kath is explaining something that sounds vaguely biological and Draco is grinning at her. Harry feels his heart swell against his ribs. He’s back at the office on Monday after a couple of weeks of leave, and the first fucking thing he’s going to is turn his desk back into a desk, start acting like everyone else, like he doesn't have something to prove. He can’t wait.

“You are such a fucking sap,” Madge says, and he drags his eyes away, back towards her.

“Huh?”

“I said,” she repeats, “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, taking a sip of his tea. “I am.”