Chapter 8
December 24th, 1990
Privet Drive has frosted roofs and yards white with snow, and fairy lights strung all throughout, the neighbourhood made dim golden in the darkening purple-blue twilight.
The wind sways Harry Potter on the swing.
Children are laughing as they play in the driveway across the street, balling up snow, throwing it at each other. He is fixated on the way people are so effortless; how they flow around each other, speak and be without thought.
It should have been much like every other Christmas he has ever had; boring and lonely, left behind by his relatives so they can celebrate with a family friend or Aunt Marge or Dudley's paternal grandmother, or spending all of Christmas Eve slaving away in preparation for the Dursley's Christmas.
Strange, how it does not turn out to be so. Strange, how he will not know just how his life is about to change, that today will be the start of something new.
All signified by a single boy.
"Excuse me." Hair like snow, eyes quicksilver. Cold and pretty, like winter itself. He has a bored sort of face, seemingly waiting for Harry to look up. He clears his throat. "If you could tell me what place this is."
It's only when he looks closer that he notices the slight, set downturn of his mouth, the quiver of veiled fear in his brows. He is a little boy trying to maintain poise and grace, but it is unbefitting and shaky at the edges, like wearing an adult's oversized clothes.
"Um. Priv—Privet Drive. Are you lost?" Harry winces, sounding far too eager to his own ears.
The boy seems taken aback, and Harry feels the beginnings of embarrassment— "What? No?" he sneers, prickled. "I'm too old to get lost. I'm only curious as to where I may have ended up." He talks funny, very posh and poncey.
"Okay, so," Harry says, bemused and trying to humour him. "So you don't know where you are." So, you know, lost, Harry thinks.
The boy hears the unspoken, and is now more unimpressed than scared. "I'm not lost."
"Okay. Fine. You're not lost."
The boy glares at him. "Whatever." And then walks past.
Harry pretends his heart hasn't sunk.
He tells himself, he seemed a little nutty anyway.
"What are you even doing here?" He has taken the swing next to Harry. There is the clink of the jostling chains as he settles into it. "It's Christmas Eve. Don't you have a family or anything? Don't you have friends? I have many friends, you know. I'm very popular. I tell great stories. I can tell you so many. But first, why are you alone?" He is a little wide-eyed, cheeks rosy, his chest puffed up. It's an odd way he's looking at Harry, closely, keen to impress. Harry thinks it should be a bit annoying but somehow it's not.
Harry doesn't really want to tell him that his relatives didn't want him with them and left him behind. He is afraid of something, but he doesn't know what.
"They're just, um... they're just out shopping."
He narrows his eyes. "Shopping? It's Christmas Eve. Why are they still shopping?"
"Why are you alone here?"
"I was bored," he says, pulling at his red beanie. There is a dusting of snow all over him and his coat seems very thick and warm and Harry sort of wishes he could be inside of it too. His own is so big and worn thin, the chill shivering in through him and slipping into his hands, held tight between his knees. "So I decided I would go on an adventure. It's gone very trite back at home you see; a hundred relatives and family friends at our Christmas party, far too many old people gifting me similar and repetitive things. Too many of them think I still like a gigantic set of Lively Legos."
Whatever are 'lively legos'. It sounds like legos that could move but that's ridiculous.
"Your idea of an adventure is some silly little suburban neighbourhood where nothing ever happens over a party full of presents and a feast?" It comes out before Harry can stop himself, his brow arched, and then regrets it. Uncle Vernon does say he runs his mouth too much. He is usually very quiet with his peers but maybe that's a good thing.
The boy considers Harry for quite a while, long enough that Harry wonders if he should apologise.
He smirks. It's not unkind. Rather, it is something light, lissome as a snowflake. "You'll do."
"I'll do what?"
"For a tour guide. And a companion."
*
Harry listens to him mostly, at first. He loves to talk, but Harry doesn't mind it at all. He said he tells great stories and maybe he wasn't really lying if Harry ends up enjoying them so much, even if there are some things Harry thinks don't make a lot of sense or are untrue.
But by the next hour, they are trekking down the streets and Harry is telling him stories of his own; little things that happened here and there and here in the neighbourhood, the secrets he knew of every house from eavesdropping into his classmates' conversations, the two of them making up stories together about the ones he didn't know of until it eventually evolves into a game for the boy to work out if Harry is making it up or not. Usually they're so bizarre that he knows right away, but it's fun to see him go, lies, not true, about the ones that are, how he gapes in shock when Harry tells him nope, that one's true with a little grin. It's funny to see him huff in shocked anger or stomp his foot in annoyance at taking a wrong guess.
"That one," the boy says, pointing at a house.
That one, Harry falters for.
But the boy is not of here. He will never have to know if he never comes back after today.
"There's a strange boy living there. His family doesn't like him very much." His heart is pounding fast, and he wonders if the boy will think it's funny. "So they make him, um... they make him sleep in a cupboard and do all the housechores."
The boy frowns. "That one's made up for sure."
Harry tugs at his own sleeve and huffs, a bit strained and wishing he hadn't said that. He doesn't know why he did. "Yeah, you've got it right."
"Who's got a family like that? Family's supposed to love you, like my parents do. Sure, my father's scary sometimes when he's really angry and he has to miss my birthdays a lot, but he'd never make me sleep in a cupboard."
*
Harry is surprised by how much there is to tell someone. He is surprised by the way someone seems to like to listen to him too.
He is surprised, also, by the many times the boy laughs at something he says, and every time he does, Harry finds himself internally pleased. Much of their time went away in this; the different ways Harry delights him, the ways he delights him back.
And then nightfall, when the boy is peering out fearfully from behind a tree as Uncle Vernon yells at Harry and shakes him by a fist in his hair for having left the house without permission, for not having finished up cleaning the kitchen, locking Harry out of the house.
Harry thought he let go a long time ago, stopped caring or being affected by this, but he cannot when it's in front of him. His first and only friend. He is shaking and no matter how hard he tries to control himself, that vibrating energy in his body, it comes out anyway. It always does.
The air around him rattles, as if electrified. It shakes the naked trees, snow falling by the boy staring at him wide-eyed.
"Did you do that?" he whispers.
Harry shakes his head, frantic, humiliated by the way his eyes are stinging and his lip is quivering, clumsily and quickly adjusting the beanie hat over the burning pain in his scalp.
It is a heavy, inexplicable feeling that bears down on him. His uncle's screams, so loud they are still ringing in his ears, the door that has locked him out into the cold, his shame of himself and all these strange things that keep happening around him — that he has only ever made one friend, and he will leave now too.
So Harry runs.
He turns and he just runs.
He thought his loneliness would be easier to bear if he didn't have to watch him go, if he left first.
And now he knows, that Harry is the weird boy that sleeps in a cupboard and has a family that doesn't like him and that he has something very, very wrong with him.
*
He finds Harry by the frozen pond near his school.
"You could use a better family," he says as he settles beside him, knees pulled up the way Harry's is. Harry blinks back the burn in his eyes, hard and fast. "Your father seems like a piece of work."
"He's my uncle, not my father," Harry tells him, swiping an arm under his nose quickly, hoping he won't mock him. "I didn't do them. Those strange things."
He knows he is lying and somehow it's his fault but all his teachers and neighbours think he's a liar so what does it matter? Maybe this time he might get to keep something good for it, at least.
"What strange things?" The boy sounds genuinely bemused, like he didn't think anything was out of the ordinary at all. "Magic?"
"Magic doesn't exist."
"It does."
"How would you know?"
"Because I'm magic."
Harry stares at him, and it should make sense, to call it that, but it doesn't. Somehow it doesn't. Wouldn't someone have told him? Wouldn't he have known? He has never understood why these things kept happening around him, and he is tired of being blamed for it, called a freak.
"Wait. Let me show you." He shifts to make himself comfortable, folding his legs. "I know some tricks my mother taught me."
He lifts his hand, whispering something with a tilt of his head. Harry is dubious, still, not expecting anything to happen.
But when he turns his wrist, there they come; slow-growing, golden balls of light, fading into appearance. They are like fireflies. Like the fairylights of Christmas in air. Harry's breaths are held, in reverence and wonder.
"Isn't it so beautiful?" They are dancing in the boy's silver eyes, here in the dark night and the snow falling gently on the two of them, all lit by this.
Is this what has been there in Harry too?
"It is," he whispers. His eyes are still thinly blurred at the edges, but he can't blink even if he wanted to. He doesn't want to look away, ever.
When Harry does manage to, finally, it's to look at him and to find that he has been looking at him all along. He smiles at Harry, and Harry smiles back, and the fireflies begin to die around them. This is about as long as the boy can hold them, it turns out.
They walk back to Harry's house after, in silence this time. The door is still closed and Harry doesn't know if it will be opened or if they will forget about him and go to sleep.
But he stays with him until midnight, sitting by the door next to Harry, and when he sees him shivering, he raises one side of his coat and lets Harry share it with him. Harry is small and scrawny enough that they fit alright in it. He hasn't been this warm all day.
He tells Harry more stories of his life, now no longer seeming to tiptoe around details. His stories make more sense and seem more true with the existence of magic in the equation.
He talks about his parents and his peacocks, hilariously retelling their chasing down his friend, Blaise, to the end of the yard, and the Manor ("It's quite enormous. One room's bigger than this entire house, and I bet you'll never get bored there because there's always something to see. Do you know, I've been living there my whole life and I still sometimes find something new.)
He tells him about the schools of magic, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons and Hogwarts, where he is set to go in the coming year, the four Houses there; Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw and what traits each was sorted for. They discuss which ones they think they'd be best in, even if Harry thinks he won't be there with him. The boy is sure of Slytherin for himself, but he says Harry is much harder to pin down. I hope you'll be in Slytherin too, with me, he says, with a nearly shy dart of a glance at Harry. Harry smiles and says, I'd like to be with you.
It seems a far-fetched dream to get away from this place, too good to be true, but Harry does say the truth.
"I just realised the funniest thing," the boy says with a sudden straightening of his back, turning to look at Harry.
"What?"
"We still don't know each other's names."
They stare at each other, huddled in the same coat with their heads close. Hours have passed and neither of them have thought to ask. Harry's mouth twitches, biting his lower lip, and then the boy's lips quiver too, and then they're both laughing, Harry's forehead having found its way to his shoulder (strange that he doesn't even think of it, where he so often weighs everything he says or does). It's so ridiculous.
"I'm Malfoy," he says after, when they've calmed. "Draco Malfoy. You wouldn't know it but our family name's quite notorious in the wizarding world."
"Harry," he tells him, a breathy laugh, the two of them still caught in the throes of their earlier amusement. "I'm Harry."
"Your full name?"
"Draco!" somebody bellows, so loudly they both jump.
A man is striding furiously towards them; long white hair like Draco's, tall and sharply dressed and ruffled up with frantic anger. He throws Harry a look of abject disgust and hauls Draco up to his feet by the arm, Harry slipping out of his coat quickly. The man drags Draco away by force, hissing vehemently at him as he does.
Draco keeps looking back at him, growing smaller in the distance. He looks afraid and sorry and like he is not yet ready to leave the way Harry isn't ready to let go. He doesn't stop looking at Harry and Harry doesn't break away either until they disappear seemingly into thin air.
The door opens about five minutes after Draco is gone, his Aunt Petunia's face visible in the part of the door, leaving it a crack open before she walks away.
Harry will think of him for months to come, the weeks after when he will think he imagined it all. But he knows it can't have been because now the things that happened around him have a name, and the world is coloured different even if everything is shaped the same, and he thinks a lot about Draco and fireflies in the snow and how there is someone out there who is like him. There is a whole world out there for him.
He hopes he will find it some day, and find Draco there too.