“Hello Luna love,” Draco said.
Unfortunately, it was not Luna who walked into the darkened living room where Draco was seated, illuminated by three floating candles which appeared to have been pilfered from Hogwarts. A large sack, akin to that lugged by a rotund muggle Father Christmas for those heathens who did not celebrate Yule, was placed on the cushion beside him. The lumps within were illuminated like mountain ranges under the rotating sun.
“Gah!” Neville exclaimed.
Draco’s mouth twisted into a testy moue of disapproval. “You’re not Luna.” His expression brightened, however, when his gleaming eyes caught Neville’s state of dishabille. “You’ll do though if you keep your shirt off. What are those on your pants? Are those nifflers?”
“Stop!” Neville’s hands shot to his crotch and his sternum, as though that would protect him from Draco’s leeringly assessing gaze. “How did you even get in here?”
“Luna let me into the wards,” Draco explained in a manner that he thought very patient. One may have called it pejorative, but that one would not be Draco. “When she brought my mugshot into your apartment and cast ritual magic upon it to get through the Manor’s wards.”
Neville’s bushy dark brows furrowed. “But that was ages ago.”
Draco shrugged cavalierly, leaning back onto the sofa as he waved his wand, swirling the candles around his head. His bright hair caught the light, shining like a strange discordant halo in the darkness of the living room. “You should update your security. You could ask the Chosen Git Who Lived, I haven’t been able to get into my ancestral home at all.”
Neville cocked his head. “Harry lives in your ancestral home?”
Draco nodded sanguinely, with great and terrible seriousness. “The very same. Once I can get into it I plan on seizing the library and drawing the moat around it, Salazar knows Potter doesn’t know how to read. Though he can keep the troll-leg umbrella stands, Great-Aunt Walburga had a ghastly eye for interior design.”
Neville blinked. Clearly, Draco smirked, he was dazzled by the new and exciting occurrence that was Draco’s presence. Merlin but Luna was lucky to sleep next to a man who could make niffler-patterned boxers look good. It was almost enough to overlook the years of buffoonery under the watchful eye of the ever-malevolent Professor Snape and the mess he made of Draco’s third, fifth, and sixth best shoes over the years.
“Why are you on my sofa at—” Neville glanced around for his wand to cast a Tempus, and, finding he had barged into the living room so eagerly to face whatever foe had made the large crack of apparition that he had left it on the nightstand by his upturned sheets and pillow, hedged an accurate –“fuck off in the morning?”
“Ah, yes,” Draco tilted his head, a small smile playing on his lips. He patted the bag beside him, which clinked in a way that should not have been as ominous. “I have…liberated some objects that I require help with.”
Draco had not thought Neville’s brow was capable of reflecting further consternation, but like most of the beliefs he had once held dear in his life, this too was proven wrong. “Liberated them how?”
“Well.” Draco tented his fingers before his nose. “The Manor has been seized by Aurors following Father’s great last stand, ending in complete Ministerial occupation, which, I must say, although it is superior to the Dark Lord’s occupation in almost every other aspect, has the marginally wide downside of barring my entry. And, as we have just discussed, my ancestral home on the Black side is currently suffering the even greater indignity of housing Saint Potter, of all people. Removed from my inheritance on both sides, upon my grateful ejection from the welcoming soul-shaving embrace of Azkaban, I have found myself with limited housing options.”
“Okay…” Neville had never gotten used to Draco’s winding verbosity, even during seventh year when Draco had provided a much-needed realistic accompaniment in lessons regarding Dark Arts to the second coming of Dumbledore’s Army.
“So, naturally, I could illuminate my weakness to none of the resident Slytherins still in-country, as they uniformly hate my guts and will on sight leap upon me to relieve me of such benighted viscera. And I am not so pitiful a Slytherin as to lack wit and wherewithal even in such demanding circumstances. So, I have moved into the dilapidated Lestrange hovel outside of Bath and require Luna to use her international floo to contact Pansy, who is currently residing in Paris and began her studies as a Cursebreaker’s apprentice while I languished in cells dampened by the frigid kiss of the North Sea, apprenticed to the life-crushing despair of Dementor’s companionship.” Draco jostled the bag. Neville thought he could hear the snap of sharp fangs shutting like an iron bear trap from somewhere within. “I think I managed to get the worst of them in here. Would you help me check?”
“Absolutely not,” Neville replied, stumbling back. He shoved a hand in his hair. It quite resembled Potter’s, at fuck-all in the morning.
“Oh, Draco,” Luna’s sleepy, fluttery voice flitted from farther down the hallway. Her small, socked feet hardly made a noise as they slowly padded on the wood floor. Draco had bought them for her himself with money Lucius had squirrelled away in offshore accounts, correctly—for once in his arrogant life—paranoid that the Ministry would come after him for his crimes even a decade prior. He remembered bare, dirty feet on the cold dungeon floor and the note on his mugshot imploring him to remember that she wanted to help him.
It warmed him to see her wearing the pink Pygmy Puff wool monstrosities.
Luna rubbed her enormous blue eyes as she entered the doorway, and Draco immediately waved a candle to illuminate above her head. Neville looked somewhat put-out Draco had not applied the same courtesy to himself. “It’s so good to see you. Neville, would you be a dear and make us tea? The one with extra Ashwaganda for Draco, we’ve almost got his Wrackspurts under control finally.”
Neville looked about to protest, so Draco held up his sack. The snapping thing growled. “Want to go through a bunch of dangerous cursed objects with myself and Pansy?”
Luna smiled.