Colder than Usual
Malfoy curses again, though he catches the rock this time, dropping it to the ground by his feet. He mutters something about decorum and shakes off nonexistent dirt from his robes, his eyes only meeting Harry’s once he’s made a show of it.
There’s no malice in his expression, no sinister smirk on his lips, no— he’s just. Well, he’s glowing, sort of, under the moonlight. His hair is this bright white in the glow, his features all stone and marble as shadow dances across his skin, and Harry isn’t quite sure what the fuck happened to him.
He’s carved, more pointy than usual, all bone and skin, and briefly, Harry wonders what he looks like underneath his dark robes. Would his skin shine under the moonlight?
How appropriate is it to ask the man who saved your life twice what the fuck happened to him? He did, also, sort of, ruin Harry’s life for a good while, but in the end, Malfoy saved it, and he did speak at Malfoy’s trial six years ago so that was where he stood on that. Things between them weren’t things at all.
It comes out of Harry’s mouth before he can help it, and maybe it’s the fire whiskey, or the monster, or the moonlight: “What the fuck happened to you?”
Malfoy raises an aristocratic brow, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his finely made robes, black and sort of shimmery, and searches Harry’s face like he’s looking for something specific. Harry isn’t really sure of what that is, but he lets Malfoy search anyway.
“What?” He asks, unsure of why he cares, his voice hard in the space between them.
Malfoy shakes his head, his hair longer now, a strand falling untucked from behind his ear, and he makes this elegant shrugging motion that surely can’t be a shrug from a pureblood. How uncouth. It makes Harry laugh, a chuckle bursting from him, because, in all of the mess, how is it Malfoy acting so entirely unlike himself that makes Harry feel normal.
There’s hardly any real mirth within his laughter, but it feels good to laugh when he wants to and not out of necessity, and maybe he shouldn’t be laughing at Malfoy nearing midnight, but he is and it's sort of nice to be on the other side of it.
“Are you drunk?” Malfoy’s brow is raised still, most regally, and it makes Harry want to throw another pebble, and so he does. He lobs it at Malfoy, hitting him square in the chest, and Malfoy curses, “Potter, you bloody cunt.”
Harry grins, lobbing another.
Malfoy steps to the side, an attempt to dodge, but Harry has always had good aim. Malfoy’s voice is different, too, raspier, like he’s spent the last years living in a dragon’s lair inhaling smoke, “Stop that!”
Harry shrugs, “It’s not my fault you continue to walk in front of them.”
Different, but his pompous tone is somehow the same, “What, are you five?”
Harry’s hands search the ground for something larger, something that isn’t a pebble, something that might bring the Malfoy from his youth back entirely.
Malfoy shouts, holding out bony hands to block the next throw, voice stern, as though Harry is a child, and Harry finds it fitting, because he feels like a child most days, “Potter, fuck- ow! Enough!”
Harry rolls the next pebble around in his hand for a moment before holding it out to Malfoy from his spot on the cold ground. He should’ve cast a warming charm, he should’ve gotten up minutes ago, and he certainly shouldn’t be throwing rocks at his old school bully, “Try it.”
Blonde, barely there eyebrows pull together on Malfoy’s face. An incredulous expression, his voice full of something like surprise, or maybe disdain, like he thinks Harry actually is a child, “Pardon? You want me to throw a rock at you?”
Harry raises a dark brow of his own, “You don’t want to?’
Malfoy looks at him again, in the searching way, before he steps forward. His fingers are cold, colder than Harry thinks they should be as they brush him in the exchange, even on a night like this, “Give it here.” For a moment, Harry prepares himself for the hit, waiting for the pressure and maybe the pain, but Malfoy throws the rock into the distance, past him, shaking his head, “Where are your keepers?”
The blonde looks around, as though expecting Ron, or maybe Hermione, or both, to come out of the pub, or the shadows, and collect Harry like he is a child. Harry tries hard to find it condescending. He would have, in school, it would have made him angry, and he would’ve glared at the blonde and walked away.
Now he sort of feels like Malfoy might be the only person in the world who doesn’t think Harry is some otherworldly hero. Maybe- to him. Maybe Harry is just some boy from his school days. The thought is kinder than it should be, washing Harry in something the fire whiskey in his system fights to bury. He shrugs, mimicking Malfoy’s earlier, elegant, entirely uncouth shrug.
Malfoy searches his face yet again, but Harry feels like it really is a good night for stargazing, and the question is one he knows the blonde can answer, asking as he gestures to the general area of the sky above them, “Do you know what constellation that is?”
The blonde turns to the sky, and Harry’s gaze drops from it, taking his turn to search. Malfoy’s gaze is soft on the sky, and Harry watches as the blonde seems to bite the inside of his cheek before answering, his voice now guarded, “Draco.”
“Hm.” Harry hums, his eyes tracing the stars like he might actually find a dragon in them.
Malfoy’s gaze remains on the sky, tracing the stars too, gaze almost gentle, though his voice comes out somewhat cold, rivaling the crisp air around them, “Have the merry misfits abandoned you? Not very Golden of them.”
Harry doesn’t bite, merely reaching up to gesture to a different part of the sky, “And that one?”
“Canis Major.” Harry can feel Malfoy’s eyes on him after the words leave his pale lips, and he really is beginning to feel like some sort of creature under the searching gaze, like he’s somehow the one who’s so different and not the blonde who looks like the wind could blow him over. He doesn’t expect it when Malfoy says it, “It- Sirius. There, the- it’s the brightest star in the night sky.”
Since when does Malfoy stammer? Harry looks at him then, noticing the blood dripping from the thin skin over his knuckles where he’d shielded himself from Harry’s throws, “You’re bleeding.”
Malfoy’s lips part, almost incredulously, that fire picking up in his gaze before it swiftly goes out. His voice is more lively than before, if still rivaling the cool temperatures of a beginning winter season, “You chucked rocks at me, Potter, of course I’m bleeding.”
Harry looks at him for a moment, raising a brow, searching Malfoy’s face, expecting a poised neutral expression and not- not frustration. Not that. Since when does Malfoy show how he feels on his face? “Why didn’t you hex me?”
Malfoy glares, “Right, and then you can give the Aurors reason to arrest me and I can rot in Azkaban for the rest of my life.”
“Why are you out here?” It comes out before he can help it, and Harry watches the disdain on Malfoy’s face at the question, the flash of his eyes that reveal so much and nothing at all.
The blonde scoffs, “Shockingly enough, even Death Eaters need fresh air to survive.”
“I meant in Hogsmeade.” Harry watches him, his own hands now in his lap, the cold of the night beginning to bite at him, even with the warm thrum of alcohol running through his veins.
Malfoy’s jaw ticks as he shoves his hands into the pockets of his posh robes, his hard gaze on Harry’s, “Is this twenty questions with the Golden Boy?” He turns then, on his heel nearly, and begins to walk into Hogsmeade instead of away.
Harry doesn’t know exactly why he does it, perhaps the alcohol or the monster, but he follows, pushing himself up from the cold wet ground onto unsteady feet, “Where are you off to?”
The blonde doesn’t bother to look back at him, his voice even now, “Going to burn down a few orphanages. Haven’t yet met my weeks’ quota.”
Harry snorts, pulling his wand from his robes and pointing it at Malfoy in a loose grasp, meant to make the blonde feel like he could reach out and take it all while knowing he could never, “The children have to pay.”
Malfoy looks back at him at the words, not expecting Harry to say such a thing, or maybe it's the sudden amusement in his voice, or maybe it's that he had heard him raise his wand, whatever it was, he sort of enjoys the way Malfoy’s eyes widen marginally before he gets this bored look on his face, as if being held at wand point by the Boy Who Lived is a casual occurrence for him. Maybe it was, a time ago.
“Where are you off to?” Harry repeats, his wand hanging limp in his hand, though steadily in Malfoy’s direction.
Malfoy cocks a brow, “Are you threatening me?”
Harry nods once, sort of amused, “Yes.”
And then the blonde is rolling his eyes and turning back in the direction he was going, continuing to walk in that elegantly uptight way, “Scrivenshaft’s.”
Harry pockets his wand, then his hands in his coat, and follows at Malfoy’s back, “They’re open this late?”
“No.”