notch the long days
February saw long days and longer nights.
Harry got a job at the ministry filing dusty paperwork for Kingsley Shacklebolt. Therefore many of his days were spent wildly swinging between the idea of kicking up a fuss and feeling guilty enough to be quiet.
On his fourth week of work, he saw Draco Malfoy and then promptly cried in the men’s loo.
The last time he’d seen him was at Pansy’s wedding.
“Well,” Malfoy had placated. “You are awfully young.”
Pansy, all dressed up in her wedding whites, had not appreciated the comment. “Your parents got married when they were seventeen.”
Malfoy had picked a petal from her veil and flicked his eyes over to Harry’s, then quickly away. “Well that only works when you're in love. Do you love Viktor Krum, Pansy?”
She had, for a while. And then she’d loved Blaise Zabini. And then Luna Lovegood. And then some American with a face tattoo.
The ministry was not what it had once been and neither was Malfoy. His hair was longer, his wrist's wrapped in that Auror Issued golden thread of a condemned Death Eater. It sent a clear message. I am not to be trusted. There weren’t many people with magical restrictions anymore. Most of them had offed themselves.
And yet there Malfoy stood, in his crisp robes and with his white hair, walking through the halls of the ministry as if the entire place were beneath him.
“What are you doing here?” Harry asked when he approached his desk, a tiny wooden thing tucked around the corner from Kingsley's office.
Malfoy’s eyes flicked around the hallway, settling back on Harry for only brief, tiny moments. Harry pictured his hair floating around him as it had in the water; weightless.
“I’m here to see the Minister,” said Malfoy, before he pulled a white folder from his coat.
Mobilier de Paon, it read on its cover.
“Ah,” Kingsley announced as he floated loftily from his office. Heat seemed to emanate from him in incredible, rolling waves, as if his magic were leaking into the atmosphere. “Draco! Just who I wanted to see.”
Harry felt like he was living in an alternate timeline. A timeline where hot, evil blondes were on a first name basis with the Minister of Magic.
Kingsley allowed Draco into his office before turning to him and asking, “Harry, would you grab us some coffee?”
Draco’s sad smile kept him up until the early hours of the next morning.