Chapter Text
Draco is awake. He’s awake and he’s alive and that’s literally more than he thought he would be for the longest time, so he’s not mad that it’s four in the morning.
His eyes adjust to the darkness of the room. He can make out the ceiling of the Leaky Cauldron, the rough hewn planks criss-crossed by beams and the outline of a water stain that he’d stared at for ages trying to get to sleep in the first place.
When it becomes clear that Draco isn’t going to be able to fall back asleep, he gets out of bed. Keeping his movements as light and quiet as possible, he changes quickly into shorts and trainers.
These aren’t clothes he would have ever owned before. He thinks wearing them might lend him some anonymity, that no one would expect to see Draco Malfoy kitted out in Muggle running shoes.
Looking in the mirror, he feels some doubt. No one this pointy and pale could be mistaken for anyone but a Malfoy.
The hall and stairs are empty and no one is at the reception desk either. Draco slides on the last piece of his frankly embarrassing disguise, the American Muggle who sold him the trainers called it a “ball cap” (something Draco might have initially thought was meant to be worn uh, elsewhere), and he leaves to run.
Everything is dark and damp outside, muffling his footfalls against the pavement. He exits the Leaky on the Muggle side and runs out along Charing Cross Road, past the National Gallery and Trafalgar Square. When he reaches the Victoria Embankment, his lungs are screaming already. This is the best part, so he doesn’t stop, following the Thames as far as he can go. This time he reaches a place they call the Traitor’s Gate, an appropriate place to lay on a bench and breathe.
The Hogwarts Express will leave in approximately seven hours and Draco will be on it. He has to be. Court-ordered.
The bench is hard beneath the knobs of Draco’s spine. He wishes, not for the first time, that everything was different. That he could have somehow made the opposite choice to every decision ever presented to him, going back to when he was in nappies. That he could be someone else.
The sunrise is still over an hour away. Draco doesn’t have his wand to check the time. He won’t have it until he gets off the train and receives it from Professor McGonagall, and then it’ll have the Trace on it, making certain that he never casts anything remotely Dark.
Just the thought of casting a Dark spell is enough to make Draco nauseous. He’s spent the past year wandless, performing small spells with just the incantation, if only to have a place for his magic to go. And he was never very adept at Dark magic besides.
A taxi drives by slowly, the sound of the tires a swoosh against the pavement. Beyond, the Thames is black and glistening, even on a cloudy night.
He’s breathing easier now.
Each time Draco runs, he takes fewer and fewer breaks, stopping for shorter amounts of time. Soon, he won’t have to stop running any more.
***
On the train, Harry thinks of everything he knows about Hogwarts. He lays his head back on the seat and counts all the staircases he can remember until he reaches a hundred. He pictures the main entryway, west facing, with great sloping hills in front. To the south of the castle, the Great Lake, its shoreline dotted with massive climbing trees. He thinks of the greenhouses and vegetable patches; of Hagrid’s hut.
There are rumours that the castle is still scarred from the final battle. Harry hasn’t been back. It’s been just over a year, and he hasn’t been anywhere near Hogwarts or Scotland even, splitting his time between the Burrow, Grimmauld Place, and a flat that Neville let near Hackney.
The countryside flashes by out the window.
Ron’s fallen asleep on Hermione’s shoulder. It must mean they’re together, although Harry’s finding that he can’t ever really be sure. They still fight all the time, bickering and breaking up occasionally… Harry has given up keeping track.
Winning a war doesn’t mean emerging in some perfect relationship, Harry knows. For Ron and Hermione, but for him as well. He didn’t emerge in any relationship at all. After spending their year on the run imagining a future where Ginny slipped neatly back into his life, he’d slowly realised that she had made her own life instead.
She wasn’t even coming back to Hogwarts.
“I didn’t just spend a year flying my arse off on the Harpies training squad to go back to studying for N.E.W.T.s,” Ginny had said, when the plans were announced to re-open the castle.
Harry had assumed that Molly or Arthur might have had something to say about that, that they would have wanted her back in school, to finish at least, but that never happened.
“She’s very good at Quidditch, you know,” Arthur had said to Harry one night after four glasses of elvin wine. His glasses were slipping down his sweaty nose. “And I think she would never forgive us if we held her back. Or tried to anyway, not that we really would succeed.”
Harry had nodded, his chest tight. He didn’t want to hold Ginny back either. Instead, he had spent his first year of freedom letting things go, his fantasy about Ginny included. They’d still fooled around a little, usually when they’d had too much to drink, stumbling home from parties at Neville’s flat to Grimmauld Place where Harry still slept in a single bed in Sirius’ old room most nights. He knew that she was seeing other people too, people she knew through Quidditch, people Harry hadn’t really met. She never called herself his girlfriend again, and he didn’t think of them that way anyway.
Hogwarts without Ginny would be fine. She had sucked him off the night before at Grimmauld Place. They’d done their best to keep quiet while Ron and Hermione slept in the room next door, everyone gathered together to travel to King’s Cross in the morning.
“As a parting gift,” she’d said with a filthy wink.
“I don’t deserve you,” Harry had said, moaning slightly as she took the head of his prick into her mouth, stroking that spot just underneath with her tongue.
“Mmmm, sure you do,” Ginny had replied, pulling off and grinning at him, before going back to hoovering his soul out through his dick.
And then when it was over, she’d left the room to brush her teeth and slept in the little bed near him but not really with him, a quick Enlargement Charm on the frame and mattress like it was all that easy, which Harry supposed it was.
The train ride is the shortest Harry can ever remember it being. They don’t change into their robes as the castle gets closer. Ron is still asleep, for one, trapping Hermione, his head in her lap. And Harry likes what he’s wearing already, black jeans and a t-shirt that says Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes in faded red ink.
Hermione’s in a sunny yellow jumper that Luna knit for her as a Christmas gift. Harry keeps expecting her to wake Ron and get up to put on her uniform. She never does, resting her head against the glass of the window, reading a book that says Arithmancy and Evil on the spine instead. Harry isn’t going to ask what it’s about.
McGonagall meets the eighth-year students by the train when they arrive at the depot. There aren’t many of them. A handful of Gryffindors that include Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and Dean and Seamus, two Ravenclaws and three Puffs.
Draco Malfoy is the only eighth-year Slytherin.
Harry hadn’t seen Draco on the platform back at King’s Cross. He’d been too busy reassuring Molly that he would be fine going back, that he didn’t need an extra two sandwiches for the ride, that he would try to be careful.
Being careful at Hogwarts. Harry thought it sounded like an oxymoron. He also thought that he was probably too tired to do anything else.
“I still think we should have been given our N.E.W.T.s, no questions asked,” Ron says as McGonagall approaches.
Hermione shushes him, but it’s half-hearted at best.
“It’s like, I love her now, you know,” Ron continues blithely, ignoring Hermione. “Old Minnie. But I still don’t want to do homework.”
This makes Harry smile. He doesn’t want to do homework either. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to do an eighth-year at all, but Hermione wore him down. It’s Hogwarts, Harry. A castle filled with magic. And we can drink this year.
“Welcome eighth-year students,” McGonagall says in her usual stern way. Harry feels a swell of warmth anyway. “I see some of you have forgone your uniforms. You’ll need to change if you wish to attend the feast.”
Draco is the only eighth-year student in his robes. It makes him look like a brownnoser, like a suck up, trying to get on McGonagall’s good side, which is a joke really, after everything. Harry doesn’t laugh.
Draco must have grown over the past year; his ankles are visible beneath the dark material of his robes. Harry squints down at the delicate, pale skin. The hems of Draco’s robes have been let out, but it isn’t enough to make them fit.
Harry’s grown too, but maybe not as much as Draco. Ron is probably the only person in their year taller than Draco now.
McGonagall gives instructions for how to find the eighth-year dormitory. This sets a fair few whispers through the small group of students. No one had been certain what an eighth-year at Hogwarts would be like, if there would be new dorms built in each house or if there would be some other accommodation. Harry can’t find it in himself to be too bothered one way or another.
Three carriages arrive for the eighth-year students. Everyone can probably see the Thestrals this time around, the general reaction to their presence wide eyed and grim.
Harry swings up into the first carriage along with the other Gryffindors. Draco rides with the Hufflepuffs.
“Not surprised Malfoy didn’t want to get on our carriage,” Seamus says to Dean as they all settle in for the short ride.
Dean barks out a laugh and says, “I’m surprised he came back at all.”
Hermione’s mouth is pursed into a small, disapproving frown. Harry doesn’t catch her eye. He agrees with Seamus and Dean for the most part. It’s not likely Hannah Abbott or the other eighth-year Hufflepuffs wanted Draco to ride with them. Then again, none of them had ever punched Draco in the face either, which can’t be said for the Gryffindor set.
Harry remembers the fight on the Quidditch pitch in fifth-year. He pictures Hermione slugging Draco outside Hagrid’s hut, the night Sirius came back in third-year. The time that Draco broke his nose on the train, and then covered him with the invisibility cloak, leaving him defenceless.
Draco didn’t look like he wanted to start anything back on the platform. Instead, he had had the distinct air of someone with something deeply unpleasant set before them, something that they had no choice but to get over with.
The carriages pull up to the north side of the castle. There is a small outbuilding that Harry’s never noticed before. McGonagall called it the Chapel. Inside, it’s nothing like the chapels Harry visited as a child, attending Christmas Eve service once when Petunia was on a religious streak, and then later with his primary school on a rare class trip to Hampton Court. There’s a plush common room with sofas set around a roaring fire. A small doorway leads to a study with two long tables and armchairs at the corners. The ceiling is vaulted and, like the Great Hall, clouds swirl above their heads against an endless sky.
Hermione cranes her neck and says, “I think this room is Charmed to mirror the weather outside, same as the Great Hall.”
“A year of cloudy days indoors?” Ron says, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “That will make me want to study so much more.”
“You can look down at your homework then,” Hermione replies, walking over to the tall bookshelves that line the walls, perusing the volumes on offer.
Harry goes to find his room. All of the eighth-year students have their own rooms in the Chapel. Each one is small and narrow, just enough space for a single bed, a desk, and a closet. A lamp on the desk casts a warm glow onto the plaster walls and ceiling, all painted an inoffensive cream colour.
Harry’s trunk has already arrived ahead of him. He opens it and takes out his robes. Skipping the feast to make some kind of comment on the uniform is appealing in a stupid way, but his stomach protests and he changes all the same.
The best part of the Chapel is the door. At the depot, McGonagall had said, “The Chapel door will take you to the Great Hall.” Harry hadn’t understood what she meant, but he’d accepted it in the easy way that Hogwarts was strange and magical and his home.
After everyone has found their room and changed into their uniforms, it’s Seamus who notices the dial next to the exterior door. There are several sections, marked by colour. The four houses are represented in red, yellow, green, and blue, and then there are additional sections, black and silver and violet. Harry can’t be sure what they represent.
“Oi, come over here and have a look at this!” Seamus calls out from the doorway.
He changes the dial from black to violet and opens the door. Instead of leading out to the little path towards the north side of the castle, the Chapel now opens into the foyer, just steps from the Great Hall.
Dean closes the door and spins the dial to red, and opens it again, this time to the portrait of the Fat Lady and the Gryffindor common room.
“That’s very clever,” Hermione says, peering over Dean’s shoulder.
Ron is less impressed, reaching forward and saying, “Let’s spin it back so we can go to the feast.”
“Shocker, Weasley’s hungry. How many inches did you grow this summer?” Seamus says with a snicker.
“Seamus, that’s so rude,” someone says from behind Harry. It’s Hannah. She looks… normal. The same as she did on the train platform. Not like she punched Draco Malfoy on the carriage ride over.
There’s some jockeying for the dial, and then they’re all spilling out into the foyer. There’s an extra, shorter table in the Great Hall, clearly meant for the eighth-year students. Harry takes a seat between Ron and Dean, across from Hannah. It’s not until the Sorting Hat is brought out and the first-years are filing in that Harry realises Malfoy’s nowhere to be found. Not at their table, and not with the Slytherins either. It’s like he never arrived on the train at all.
***
The first weeks back at Hogwarts are somewhat of a blur for Harry. He’s taking a full course load of N.E.W.T.s for no reason other than that it seemed lazy to do otherwise. Sixteen months of a life with no obligations beyond burying the dead and holding the living hasn’t prepared him to return to studying. He sleeps sometimes in classes, nodding off at the back of the room, his head resting against the wall. No one ever wakes him.
The essays and assignments are okay. Harry’s pretty sure that McGonagall is the only professor still grading him on the same curve as the rest of the other students. He’s pretending not to notice. It’s not worth the argument to ask for worse marks.
Hogwarts is different, because of course everything is different. For one thing, Harry isn’t playing Quidditch. It wasn’t fair; he’s so much older than most of the other students who want to try out. And there had been incessant chatter around whether he would captain, who he would choose for the first string, if he would favour his friends – enough that he hadn’t wanted to play at all.
Instead, he’s playing rugby, trying to help Dean put together a team. The rugby isn’t a new thing. They had played occasionally throughout the past year, pickup games with Dean’s brother and his friends, informal things. At Hogwarts, Dean is trying to work with the new Muggle Studies professor, a middle-aged witch named Devereux with the broadest shoulders Harry’s ever seen, to put together a team that can play in a national league against some of the Muggle academies.
“Learning by doing!” Dean says, making his pitch for the team to anyone who will listen.
“We’re going to be doing Muggles?” is usually the clever answer.
“Maybe! How will you find out if you don’t sign up?” Dean asks in return.
Harry didn’t need any persuading. The rest of the team has been more difficult to recruit. Seamus is always good for whatever Dean wants, and Ron is cautiously interested, but beyond that it’s been like pulling teeth, and eventually the date of their first game is only a week away and they’re still without a full squad.
Dean grows more and more nervous by the day, convinced that Devereux will cancel their season if he can’t find another wizard willing to play a game with no flying and plenty of violence. Harry wouldn’t say this to Dean, but it’s nice to worry over something trivial for a change.
“I’ll help you figure it out,” he promises Dean while the other lads run drills.
“I don’t know why I didn’t realise it would be so difficult. I know no one ever wanted to play footie here, back in the day. But now we’re supposed to be less prejudiced or whatever.”
“I mean, sure. That doesn’t mean everyone wants to spend their Saturday getting tackled by Muggles in the mud,” Harry says reasonably.
“Call it reparations,” Dean replies with a wry grin, his gaze outward towards the field.
***
The thing about the eighth-year lessons at Hogwarts is that they’re small, and while Hogwarts has always been small, now it’s downright claustrophobic.
Draco was permitted to pick his N.E.W.T. coursework; an unexpected mercy on behalf of his case manager and the court. He wishes that he’d thought harder about which lessons Potter and his friends might not be taking. The only lesson he has without any of them is Potions. Everything else has at least one of the so-called “Golden Trio,” if not all three, sitting together in the back usually, even Granger less interested in answering every question before it’s asked this year.
The one lesson he has with Potter and without Weasley or Granger is Care of Magical Creatures. Of every lesson Draco chose for his N.E.W.T.s, this one makes the least sense. Returning to Hogwarts, facing his classmates… it was all so hypothetical when he was living under confinement with Narcissa, rattling around in that big empty house. The first of September, 1999 had been ages away when Draco had ticked the box labelled Care of Magical Creatures.
The funny thing is, people whisper the same thing about Harry as they do Draco, that he’s picked his lessons for an easy mark. Privately, Draco is of the opinion that most of the coursework Potter has opted for is easy for him, all hands-on casting disciplines: Transfigurations, Charms, Defence. He wasn’t taking Ancient Runes or Arithmancy. Draco knows because he is in those lessons, with Granger and Hannah Abbott and a whole host of seventh-year Ravenclaws he had never even met before.
Of course, they all despise him, and he despises them. No one ever trips him or hexes him or anything. McGonagall wouldn’t have tolerated much of that, but he’s given a wide berth in the hallways and at the meals he does attend. People sit so far away, it’s like he has the plague.
Care of Magical Creatures is nice in that regard, because lessons are held outside. For some reason, being outdoors makes it less painfully obvious that Draco has become a total pariah. The pupils all spread out with their Hinkypunks or their Golden Snidgets, and Draco completes his assignments much more easily on his own, working with wind at his back, under the breadth of cloudy Highland sky.
In the third week of lessons, Hagrid’s out sick, and Professor Grubbly-Plank shows up instead. Draco hasn’t seen or thought of the woman in ages, since fifth-year at least. She doesn’t recognise him either, which he’s grateful for until she pairs him with Potter as if it’s the first day of wizarding primary at some rural school and the Dark Lord had never existed.
“Oh, hi,” Potter says blankly when Draco stands next to him in front of the long wooden table set out on the green. He blinks like he’s forgotten Draco’s there, same as Grubbly-Plank.
It would be rude for Draco to do anything but say “Hi” back, so he considers saying nothing.
Then Narcissa’s training kicks in, and he raises a hand.
“Hi.”
The day’s lesson is Ashwinders. Unlike the previous week, when Hagrid had a bucket full of mature Snidgets to distribute, this time, they’re given an egg.
“Your next assignment will last the rest of the term as you finish the remaining coursework. These Ashwinder eggs have six weeks remaining incubation. Part of your final mark will be dependent on hatching a healthy juvenile Ashwinder.”
Grubbly-Plank continues to talk. Draco isn’t listening. Potter is staring at the egg with a curious expression. He pokes at it and Draco reflexively bats his hand away.
“Honestly, Potter! Don’t you know the shells of Ashwinder eggs are poisonous?”
Harry frowns and says, “How was I meant to know that?”
“The reading for today was three chapters on Ashwinders!”
“Oh, yeah,” Harry says, like that means nothing to him.
“Anything to add, Mr Malfoy?” Grubbly-Plank calls out, interrupting her lecture.
Draco bites back a retort that it was Potter’s fault for being illiterate. His neck is hot and itchy. The rest of the students have turned towards him and Potter, only just noticing that the two of them have been paired up.
“No.”
Grubbly-Plank waits. A few nervous titters rise from the other students. Draco forces himself to stay very still and keep his chin level. He wants so badly to look at Potter but he resists the impulse.
After an eternity, Grubbly-Plank moves on, continuing her lecture. Draco rummages in his bag for a quill and parchment and starts taking notes. Potter doesn’t write anything. He probably knows he doesn’t need to, that he can fail any class and still be offered a place at the Ministry, or in the Auror training camps, or on a professional Quidditch team, or even teaching at Hogwarts. Whatever he wants could be his. He only has to reach out and take it.
The first task with the Ashwinder egg is to build a nest that can be climatised to keep the developing Ashwinder inside alive until their exam. For now, the egg has been frozen, and will stay that way until the end of the week, at which point their nests must be completed.
Draco braces himself for a long term, doing the work for himself and Potter. At least they won’t be partners for anything else. Just the eggs. Draco can do the eggs. He’ll do whatever it will take to get through the year, get his N.E.W.T.s, and get out.
***
Harry is up early. It’s not on purpose. He can’t fall back asleep. For all that everyone was so excited to have their own rooms in the Chapel, his is too empty and too quiet at night. Even in Grimmauld Place all year, when he slept in Sirius’ old room, it was with Ron or Neville or Seamus or someone, anyone who was around, sleeping in the other twin bed. Or he would sleep at the Burrow in Ron’s room, on a camp bed like always, staying over so he could get drunk with Ron and George (and Percy, once, memorably) and then eat Molly’s full fry up in the morning, still tipsy, not even hungover yet.
In the Chapel, Harry’s room is small and cold. He wants to sleep more, but it hasn’t been possible. This is the third morning in a row he’s been up before dawn, and if he has to spend another minute alone in that tiny room, he’ll scream. He’s out on the Quidditch pitch instead.
After three slow loops around the pitch, eyes fixed determinedly on the horizon, Harry lets his gaze wander to the green below. He doesn’t expect to see anyone there.
Draco Malfoy is out, running laps. Harry doesn’t think. He just flies, taking his broom to the edge of the pitch where Draco is sweating in a pair of running shorts and trainers.
“Hi.”
“Fuck,” Draco swears as Harry pulls up next to him, hovering by his left elbow. “You scared the shit out of me.” He stops running.
“Nice of you to admit it,” Harry says.
“Admit what?”
“That I scare you.”
Draco scoffs and looks at the ground.
“Fancy shoes,” Harry says. Draco’s wearing bright blue trainers with neon yellow laces. They are by far the strangest thing Harry‘s ever seen Draco wear, and that’s including the tiny synthetic shorts sticking to his pale thighs with sweat.
“TK Maxx,” Draco says.
“What?”
“TK Maxx. That’s where I got them, if you want a pair for yourself.”
Harry laughs and asks, “Were you always this weird, Draco?”
“Since when do you call me Draco?”
Harry shrugs. “Surely I’ve called you Draco before.”
“Well, don’t expect me to start calling you Harry.”
“I don’t expect you to call me at all,” Harry says.
Draco flushes an inexplicable deep pink. Harry’s feet touch down on the damp grass. He’s not really dressed for walking, wearing his leathers on the bottom for comfort, and a thin t-shirt with a Warming Charm on top.
“What are you doing out here?” Harry asks, swinging a leg over his broom.
“It’s not illegal for me to exercise.”
“Not illegal, but you have to admit it’s a little strange. You, wearing trainers from TK Maxx and running laps. I would have thought that was too Muggle for you.”
Draco surveys his own outfit and then Harry’s, but he doesn’t comment. He must be cold now that they’re walking, sweat-damp clothes drying against his skin in the autumn air. Draco sighs and uses his sleeve to wipe his forehead, his expression resigned.
“Are you going to follow me around all term again this year?”
“Maybe,” Harry says automatically. He doesn’t know why he says it, he doesn’t have plans to interact with Draco any more than he has to with the damn Ashwinder project, but it’s worth the look of surprise and annoyance that comes over Draco, his mouth forming a perfect round o.
“Pathetic, Potter,” Draco says, without any bite to it. He shakes his head.
“What, because you’re so boring these days?” Harry asks
“Maybe if you stalk me it’ll mean you’ll actually do some work on our Care of Magical Creatures project. Next time you can follow me to the greenhouse and do something useful.”
Harry wants to point out that he didn’t follow Draco anywhere this time, that he came out to the pitch because he couldn’t sleep and Draco just happened to be there too. He doesn’t bother. Instead he re-mounts his broom and re-ups his Warming Charm.
“See ya,” Harry says, kicking off the ground to fly back to the Chapel. He twists around, glancing backward. The wind lifts Draco’s fringe off his forehead and he doesn’t say goodbye.
***
Draco doesn’t expect Harry to actually show up at the greenhouse to check on their eggs. He hasn’t done anything for the project at all, leaving Draco to research the proper materials for an Ashwinder nest and the charms that will be necessary to keep the eggs safe and healthy without an adult Ashwinder to incubate them.
He’s crossing the lawn away from the Chapel when Harry falls into step with him, startling him for the second time in one day.
“Hi,” Harry says.
“Agh!” Draco squawks, tripping over his own foot. He scowls. “Potter.”
“I thought you were going to call me Harry.”
Draco’s certain he never said anything to that effect. “What do you want?” he asks, continuing down the hill.
“I’m here to help with the Ashwinder eggs.”
Draco scoffs. “Why start now? You’ve been totally useless all week.”
Harry rubs at this chin. “Well, you sounded like you needed help. Earlier. On the pitch. Complaining about how I haven’t done any work or whatever.”
Draco rolls his eyes at this. “You really can’t give it a rest with the whole saviour complex, can you?” Even as the words leave his mouth, Draco knows this is the wrong thing to say.
“What is your problem?” Harry asks, whipping his head around to stare at Draco.
“I–” Draco stammers.
Are you really saying that you wish I hadn’t gone back for you? In the fire?” Harry speaks sharply, eyes flashing intensely, no longer in profile next to Draco.
“No!” Draco says, caught off guard, his voice too loud. He wasn’t thinking about the fire. His whole face is hot and uncomfortable. He wants to unzip his skin and step out of it into the cool autumn air. “No,” he repeats more quietly.
They reach the greenhouse in silence. Harry pulls the door open and holds it for Draco, who steps through and beelines for the nest he’s been working on, his back to Harry when he hears him swear.
“Fuck!”
Draco whirls around, embarrassment still itching at his face, his neck. He should have known it was stupid to be alone with Harry, that he still had that legendary Potter temper just simmering below the surface, waiting to come out and rip Draco to shreds again.
“Look, Potter,” he says dully, eyes fixed on the door jamb above Harry’s head. “I didn’t– you must know that I wasn’t– that I don’t want to be–”
“What?” Harry asks, his voice high and bewildered, cutting off Draco’s abortive attempt at an apology. There’s blood dripping from his left hand onto the floor. “I just cut myself. There’s a broken pane.” He breathes heavily as he gestures to the glass wall.
The cut is deep enough that blood pools in Potter’s palm. Draco goes lightheaded.
“Oh, I thought you were uh, still angry with me…” Draco trails off, realising how ridiculous that sounds. In what universe has Harry Potter ever not been angry with him?
Harry grits his teeth and cradles his wounded left hand in his right.
“How are you with Healing spells?” Harry asks, ignoring whatever internal crisis Draco is having.
“Not amazing,” Draco says, coming forward towards Harry anyway, wand in hand.
Harry lets Draco wave his wand over the cut with a nervous Episkey. The skin knits back together, but it’s still puffy and inflamed. Harry vanishes the blood.
“I was going to–”
“Actually I wanted to–”
They both start to speak at the same time.
“You go first,” Draco says. His heart is pounding. He doesn’t know what Harry could possibly have to say to him that won’t make him feel awful.
“Do you know what rugby is?”
“Pardon?” Draco asks blankly. He must have misheard. Harry stands there, a thoughtful expression on his face, one that Draco doesn’t think Harry has ever directed towards him. Maybe the pane that cut his palm was cursed with something.
“So you don’t know what it is?”
Draco shakes his head. He doesn’t know what rugby is. He also doesn’t know what’s going on. Maybe he should have taken Harry to the hospital wing.
“It’s a game that Muggles play,” Harry says. He pauses, probably waiting for Draco to say something regrettable. Draco keeps his mouth shut. Harry continues, “It’s fun and honestly quite violent, kind of like Quidditch in that way actually.”
“What’s your point?”
“Dean’s put together a team. Dean Thomas–”
“For fuck’s sake, I know who Dean is,” Draco cuts in, agitation colouring his voice. He had brought a meal to Dean once, in the cellars. Dean had spat on his face. “Come on, Potter.”
Harry’s expression darkens, like he’s about to give up on whatever weird thing he’s working up to saying and storm out. Instead, he just licks his lips and keeps talking.
“Yeah, okay whatever. Anyway, Dean’s put together a team and Professor Devereux has organised for us to play against some of the Scottish Muggle academies, as part of a national league. But we’re short a reserve. And now that I’ve seen you running…” Harry says, stopping with a shrug.
Draco sneers. It’s a reflex. Even after a year of no contact with Harry, he struggles to get his lip under control. He wants so badly to say something about Malfoys not being reserves, but he knows better, he knows he’ll only be sick and annoyed later if he does.
Harry stands there, waiting for a response, his face open and neutral, dark hair curling around his ears.
“Have you asked Dean if I can join the team?” Draco says, after a moment. “I don’t think, after everything that happened in the–” Draco has to stop and breathe, nausea rising in the pit of his stomach. “In the war,” he manages. “That he would really want me to be a–”
Harry tilts his head. “No, I think right now Dean is desperate enough that he would have you play fly-half if you wanted,” Harry says, as if Draco is supposed to know what a fly-half is.
Draco nods and says, “Okay.” The queasiness recedes.
Harry’s grin is sharp, all bright green eyes and perfect teeth. “Of course that’s my position and I probably wouldn’t let it go that easy.”
“Who says I want it anyway?” Draco asks. He can’t remember if Harry always had such straight, even teeth, and then he realises he’s staring at Harry’s mouth, which is changing, no longer smiling, his lips closing and flattening into a line.
“What was it you wanted to say to me? Earlier?” Harry says, startling Draco out of his thoughts.
“Oh um. That.” Draco wrings his hands. He hates that he wants to do this so badly. “I was going to apologise.”
Harry doesn’t say anything in response.
Draco shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
“You have to actually say it, you know,” Harry says finally, a little shit to the end.
“Right. Uh, sorry. For everything, but also for what I did to you specifically. It was– I knew that my parents were wrong, that everything they stood for could only sow misery– or at least eventually I did, but you’re so infuriating it was hard not to– And then I couldn’t figure out how to get out without getting killed. Not all of us are brave in the face of certain death,” Draco says in a rush, the last part coming out in an accusatory tone.
He glances at Harry and is compelled to continue. It had been so difficult to speak about this, but now that he’s started, he can’t stop.
“Anyway, I didn’t die because you wouldn’t let me, and now I have to be back here in this place where everyone knows what I am and what I did. Not that I’m asking you to feel sorry for me. I’m not asking that at all, I’m trying to tell you that I feel sorry myself, that I’ll probably feel sorry forever–”
“Draco,” Harry cuts in.
Draco falls silent. Harry doesn’t say anything else.
“That’s what I wanted to say,” Draco says lamely, trying to sum up this whole horrific encounter.
“Okay,” Harry says. Like it’s that simple.
“Okay?!”
Harry shrugs and rolls his eyes. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. All I’m saying is, okay, fine. You’re sorry. That’s good. And you should come play rugby so all of Dean’s dreams aren’t crushed. We practise on the pitch in the evening after dinner.”
Draco hears what Harry is saying, only he can’t quite parse it. Does Harry still hate him? Does he still hate Harry? These are important questions that aren’t being answered. And he still doesn’t know what rugby is.
The materials for the Ashwinder nest are sitting in a neat pile on the workbench next to Draco. He plucks out the harpy feathers and smooths them against his fingers.
“You’re not going to help with the nest, are you?” Draco asks.
Harry laughs, sunny and surprised. “No, now that you mention it, I’ve got to meet Hermione in about ten minutes to go over the homework from Transfiguration. But I’m sure you’ve got it in hand.”
Draco’s not sure that he really believes Harry, if he really has somewhere to be or if he just wants to get away from Draco. He’s definitely not sure that he wants to show up for this rugby practice later.
***
After dinner, Harry makes his way to the pitch with the others. Dean and Seamus walk on ahead with a bunch of sixth-year Hufflepuffs who have turned out to be surprisingly vicious in a scrum. Ron is next to him, muttering about Hermione, the kind of thing Harry has learned to mostly tune out.
Harry hasn’t mentioned inviting Draco yet. For one thing, he doesn’t know if Draco will even show. It’s simply not worth the potential fallout without some kind of guarantee that Draco wants to play with them.
The other thing is that Harry’s not convinced he wants Draco to play. He hadn’t gone to the greenhouses with the intent of inviting Draco; he really was momentarily feeling badly about the Ashwinder project. The invite to rugby had just kind of slipped out because Dean really was desperate and Draco wasn’t half bad at running.
There is probably a good joke in there about Slytherins and running away and Harry is sure that if Draco does show up to practise, someone will make it.
Dean sets them all to warm up, jogging around the makeshift rugby pitch. Harry’s halfway through his first lap when he notices Draco standing awkwardly by the pile of practice balls in his short shorts.
Dean is already making his way over, so Harry breaks into a run, beating him there.
“Good news!” Harry says brightly, trying to catch his breath. “I’ve found our reserve!”
At least seven emotions whip across Dean’s face. Draco bites his lip.
Dean narrows his eyes and asks, “Ever played rugby, Malfoy?”
Draco shakes his head no.
“Know anything about rugby?”
Draco shakes his head again.
“You want to learn about rugby?”
Draco freezes. Then he says, “Yes.”
Harry beams. Dean scoffs.
“I’ve solved your problem Dean,” Harry says. “Now we can play our first match, no issue.”
“And what if we have to actually put him in?” Dean shoots back. “He’ll be useless.”
“Maybe,” Harry agrees. Draco is positively clenched beside him. “But we’ll all be useless if we can’t field a full squad.”
Dean makes a hmph at the back of his throat and crosses his arms. “Fine,” he says after a moment. “But he’s your responsibility. You teach him how the game works and if he still wants to play, he can join the rest of the practice.” He wheels around to point a finger in Draco’s face. “And if there’s any bullshit pure-blood nonsense, any at all….” He brings the finger across his neck in a slicing motion.
Draco is bright red at this point. Somehow, he manages not to say anything stupid.
“Yeah,” Harry says. “Okay. That’s fine. Come on, Draco, let’s go over the basics.” He takes Draco’s upper arm firmly between his thumb and forefinger and steers them towards the far sidelines, behind the goal posts. When they’ve made it a few feet, Harry shouts over his shoulder at Dean, “You can thank me later for saving your season!” and Dean flips him two fingers, jogging back to join the rest of the team.
“Do you really think he means that he’ll kill me?” Draco asks.
“No, of course not,” Harry says. “That would actually ruin his chance at playing in the league.”
Draco nods stiffly.
Harry takes a minute to explain the rules of the game. The jargon sails over Draco’s head, grey eyes glazing over.
“Maybe we should just start with tackling,” Harry says.
Draco immediately becomes more alert. “Tackling?”
“Yeah, you can tackle the person with the ball. At the waist and put your shoulders into it.” Harry walks ten feet from Draco and adopts a widened stance. “Come on, try it. I won’t dodge,” he says, beckoning Draco with his hands.
Draco wrinkles his nose. Harry motions again for Draco to run at him. He wonders briefly if he’s making a mistake.
Draco hesitates again and then runs, catching Harry about the waist and taking them both to the ground with a little grunt.
Neither of them moves for a moment. Draco’s body is warm and surprisingly heavy. Their legs have tangled together in the wet grass.
Draco lifts his head to peer at Harry. His hair has flopped into his eyes. “Was that okay?”
Harry wheezes and says, “Yeah, perfect. You’ve got that bit down.”
Draco’s eyes crinkle at the edges and then he’s scrambling to get up, sliding off Harry and bounding to his feet. Harry stands too.
“I can’t believe that’s part of the game,” Draco says. He looks like he might knock Harry down again, just for the fun of it.
“Most Muggle-borns can’t really wrap their heads around Bludgers and Beaters when they first learn about Quidditch,” Harry says.
“Fair,” Draco says. He wipes his hands on his knees. “What else is there?”
Harry explains the scrum and penalties and conversions and Draco doesn’t complain or say he hates any of it. Eventually, Harry jogs over to get a ball, and goes over basic catching and throwing. Draco’s relatively coordinated and he’s concentrating enough that he’s not really saying anything. Instead of finding it weird to be tossing a ball back and forth with Draco Malfoy, of all people, Harry finds that it doesn’t feel like anything at all.
When they rejoin the rest of the team to run a few plays, Draco stands back and observes. Eventually, Harry forgets that he’s there. After the practice, Dean calls them into a group huddle, even Draco, who walks over like his limbs are locked.
Seamus takes one look at Draco and goes, “No.”
Ron draws in a big breath, presumably to back Seamus up, but Dean holds up a hand and miraculously, that prevents him from continuing.
“Malfoy’s going to be our reserve,” Dean says. “He’s promised not to act like a shit, and in return, we get to have our season.”
Draco’s eyes are fixed on a clump of grass. Harry nods at Dean in what he hopes is an authoritative way.
“And there will be a zero tolerance policy for blood supremacist fuckery,” Dean says. “One slip up, and the whole thing’s over.” He brings them in for a cheer. Draco keeps his mouth shut. And then the huddle breaks.
Harry walks back to the Chapel with Ron.
“How did Malfoy even find out about rugby?” Ron asks. He keeps glancing back to where Draco is plodding along behind them, alone.
“I invited him,” Harry says.
“What?”
“We needed someone. He’s around.”
“So is every other student at Hogwarts,” Ron says with an indignant sweep of his arms.
“Sure, but none of them have signed up, have they?” Harry points out. “And Draco’s always been, you know, athletic.”
“Has he?” Ron asks doubtfully.
“We played Quidditch against him for years!”
“That doesn’t mean he’s going to be any good.”
“He doesn’t need to be good. He literally just needs to be a warm body on the sidelines,” Harry says tiredly.
“I can hear you, you idiot,” Draco says dully, his voice close behind them.
Ron stops and turns so he’s nearly nose to nose with Draco. “Who are you calling an idiot?”
“Potter,” Draco says easily. His eyes slide over to Harry, resting somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. Harry’s neck goes hot.
“Fuck off,” Harry says.
“I thought you needed me to play,” Draco says. His voice tilts up at the end, like a question and also like a taunt.
The familiar sound moves through Harry like a shot. He wants to shove Draco. He wants to tackle him like they were doing earlier, at the waist, straight into the mud.
Next to him, Ron scowls, deep lines of distaste etched across his face. His hand is on his wand. “Dean said no bullshit, Malfoy.”
Draco deflates instantly. Harry feels that too.
“Come on, Ron. I have a Charms essay to work on,” Harry says. He turns his back to Draco and speeds up, back to the Chapel.
Hermione is in the study room when they arrive.
“Good practice?” she asks, not looking up from her notes.
“Weird practice,” Ron says, dropping into the seat next to her.
“Mmm,” she says, reaching out absently to pat his arm.
Harry sits across from them and stares at his Charms essay without working on it. Eventually he gives up and goes to bed in his quiet, empty room.