Chapter 9
It's at King's Cross station a month later that Harry finally sees him. He stands under, supposedly, his mother's hands on his shoulders, craning his head every now and then as if impatiently searching for something before reverting to his default bored face, now somewhat tinged with disappointment. He didn't look that way when he'd been with Harry those months ago, smirking, laughing, animatedly talking about everything and nothing. He doesn't look that way when he sees Harry again too, the two of them stunned in place by the sight of each other, Draco's face melting into a joyful shock.
Then he breaks away from his mother and comes running towards Harry, his arms locking around his neck as Harry caught him, happily startled, smiling into Draco's shoulder.
"You're here," Draco says, bright-eyed, pulling back. "I was hoping you'd be."
He remembers Harry.
As they're making their way to Draco's mum, he says, "I never got your last name."
"Potter," Harry says. "Harry Potter."
Draco halts. Harry halts with him.
"No way," Draco whispers. "No way. You're the Harry Potter?"
"I didn't know until today either." He shows him the scar at his temple, pulling his hair back, and feels very shy at the wide-eyed look Draco is giving him.
"That's insane! I found you and didn't even know," Draco says, wondrous. "You didn"t even know. I could have told you! I've grown up hearing all about you." He is grabbing Harry's wrist and dragging him to his mother, forcing Harry to push his trolley harder. Harry is glad not to see Draco's father anywhere. "Mother, that boy I told you I met, do you remember?"
His mother looks amused, a hint of a smile. Harry feels a little small under her gaze, even though it isn't unkind, but he can't help but think she's very pretty. "The fascinating one with the greenest eyes, yes."
Draco inexplicably flushes and throws him a quick glance. "Mother," he hisses, annoyed.
Harry is still sort of stuck on the thought that Draco talked about him to someone at all, let alone that he thought him fascinating.
"Well," Draco says awkwardly, clearing his throat in a way that seems parroted from someone else, a habit picked up, "This is him. It turns out he is Harry Potter."
"Hello," Harry says with a wave.
Her face is intrigued, but moderate with politeness. "Hello. Narcissa Malfoy." She holds her elegant hand out for him to shake. He does. "I'm sure you know by now we've all heard much about you. Who are you with right now?"
"No one. I mean, there was someone but he had to go. I'm alone here." Harry pushes his glasses up with his fingers. They are too big for his face and there's a crack in his line of sight from Uncle Vernon stepping on it.
Narcissa frowns. "Oh, I see. Well, I'll tell you how to get to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Just let this..." She clears her throat, which may be where Draco's picked up the habit from, gesturing vaguely at them. "This family go on first."
"They never seem to finish, do they," Draco mutters. "Bet we'll come back next year and there'll be a new one."
"What does that mean?"
Draco shrugs. "There's about another four of them as far as I know. Keywords: as far as I know."
"Who are they?"
"The Weasleys."
Ahead of them are a family of redheads, a pair of twins and a girl and a boy and a plump, kind-faced lady. Harry is intrigued by them, how homely they all look, the mum fussing over the younger boy, the twins with their mischievous air as they play around with their identities and feign offense to their mother. He's not Fred, I am! Honestly! And you call yourself our mother.
At the end of it, the other twin is saying, we were only joking. I'm Fred! Right before he runs headfirst after his counterpart into the pillar, which is startling. Beside Harry, there is a stifled snort, but when Harry looks at Draco, his face has smoothed over in an instant, watching the rest of the family vanish into the pillar coolly.
"Your glasses are broken," Narcissa points out. "Let me..." She takes her wand out of her sleeve and mutters a spell, Occulus Reparus or something. The crack in Harry's line of vision disappears.
Harry blinks, awed. "Oh wow. Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy."
"Call me Narcissa." She smiles at him. Harry smiles back.
Narcissa explains everything to Harry, and they let Harry run through first to make sure everything will be okay before he is followed by Draco. When they're boarding the train, Narcissa helps Draco pull up his trunk and, unexpected, Harry too, gripping the handle of his trunk tight to heft it up along with Harry. "Off you go, now."
"Thank you," Harry says, again. Narcissa's face softens.
"My mother likes you," Draco says with a grin, when they're in the train and Harry is trying to push his trunk up into the overhead luggage rack, Draco holding his own at his feet as he waits. "She has a weak spot for overly polite and well-mannered boys like yourself."
"Need help?" Someone says. It's one of the Weasley twins.
"Yeah, please," Harry says, strained, but they're both already taking hold of his trunk and hefting it up into the compartment. They step back and look at Draco, who is a bit uncomfortable and narrow-eyed. They choose to overlook it and go on ahead and heave Draco's trunk up too, and then leave soundlessly after before Harry can thank them.
A while after, the young Weasley boy Harry saw at King's Cross appears, sliding the door open, "Would you mind if I... oh." His eyes are frozen somewhere.
Harry is about to open his mouth to say, yeah, of course —
"Nevermind," the Weasley boy mumbles. He seems uncomfortable and disdainful, the same fraught dynamic he sensed between Draco and the twins earlier. He catches the reproachful sneer Draco shoots at the boy, who rolls his eyes as he disappears out of the window.
"Do you all know each other or something?" Harry asks, bemused, after he leaves.
"Not really. I've only talked to that young one once when we were five and we didn't know anything about anything. It's a generations long feud. Malfoys and Weasleys have never gotten on very well."
"Why is that?"
"Blood ideology differences, I suppose. My godfather tells me not to believe in such things though. But they dislike us too, so it's hard not to dislike them back."
Before Harry can ask further at those vague statements, the compartment dor opens again, and there's a dimpled witch with a cart full of candy.
They spend hours in the train ride as they share candy, leaning their heads together over Chocolate Frogs and giving each other all the weirdly coloured Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and laughing at each other's reactions. Harry asks him things and Draco tells him all he knows about Hogwarts; the professors, one of whom is Draco's godfather, Severus Snape, who has been tutoring him in potions, and the rumours about the cursed DADA position, and the Giant Squid in the lake, the Whomping Willow tree, everything Draco can think of.
At half past twelve, a bushy-haired girl opens their compartment door to ask, "Has anyone here seen a toad?"
"No toads here..." Draco answers slowly. He is looking at her strangely, as if he finds that ridiculous. "Why would there be a toad here?"
"Neville Longbottom's lost one! We've looked everywhere but we can't find it."
"We'll let you know if we see it," Harry says helpfully.
"Thanks." Harry thinks she'd leave, but instead she gives a put-upon sigh and plops down on the seat across from them. "So who are you? I'm Hermione Granger."
"Harry Potter."
"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."
"Malfoy..." Hermione frowns. "That sounds familiar." Draco scowls in displeasure that she doesn't recognise him but she doesn't notice. "And Harry Potter? Are you the Harry Potter?"
"It's getting very weird that everyone keeps saying it like that."
"I've read all about you in three of the books I've ordered for extra reading."
"Three of the books..." Harry says, a bit faintly. He's in books.
"Yes, you're mentioned in Modern Magical History, The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century. Do you two know what houses you will be in? I think I might like to be in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best, but Ravenclaw would be lovely too."
"Slytherin," Draco says immediately. "All my family's been. And I think it's the best."
Hermione hums, very disagreeably. Her heart is already set on Gryffindor. "And you?"
Well, Harry. Harry thinks he would like to go wherever Draco goes.
"I'm not sure," he says, though, because he really isn't. "I don't think I know what I'm good at."
"Don't worry," Draco says. "As long as you're not in Hufflepuff, you'll be alright." Which sort of doesn't help because what if Harry is a Hufflepuff?
Hermione frowns. "There's nothing wrong with being in Hufflepuff. They're hard workers."
"Yeah and what else? Anyone can work hard. That's just where they put anyone who doesn't fit in anywhere else."
"That could be me," Harry points out.
"Oh, definitely not." Draco waves dismissively.
"Even if you were, it's not a bad thing because that's not even true!" Hermione huffs.
And so goes Hermione and Draco's oddly intense debate about the merits and demerits of the Hufflepuff house. Even more odd is that that's how they all become sort of friends.
***
As Harry sits on the stool, he can see Draco in the audience, smiling hesitantly at Harry and so on the edge of his seat. Harry smiles back, breathy and as nervous as him.
When the Sorting Hat touches Harry's head, he pleads:
Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin, let me be in Slytherin...
"Ah, I see you already have a preference. And it's all because of a certain blond boy..."
Harry is so focused on bending the Sorting Hat to his will that he can't even bring himself to be embarrassed. Slytherin, Slytherin, put me in Slytherin...
"You would do so very well in Slytherin, yes... but you're a hard one to pin down, aren't you? You'll fit wonderfully in Gryffindor, bravery and determination like yours... perhaps Hufflepuff for your kindness... not terrible in intellect either..."
I want to be in Slytherin...
"But I suppose it was my first choice to put you in SLYTHERIN!"
The entire Slytherin table jumps to their feet in racous applause, cheering and whooping wildly. Harry grins at Draco, boyishly pumping his fists in the air and shouting, yes! Yes! He hops off the stool to take his seat beside Draco, Draco eagerly pulling him onto the bench next to him and locking his arm with his as they watch the rest of the ceremony.
***
Harry encounters Severus Snape in his first potions class.
"That's my godfather," Draco tells him, proudly, as Professor Snape is giving a spectacular speech about what he can teach in potions, what learning potions can accomplish.
Harry doesn't know what to think of him. He saw Professor Snape across the Great Hall after the sorting, and he was looking at Harry weird then, and looking back at him made Harry's scar hurt suspiciously.
Throughout most of the class, Professor Snape is mostly surly and cold and reserved, direct in his teaching, which is why very few students like him. Draco, however, seems to adore him, at times with the ferocity of a hero-worship.
Hagrid invites Harry over for tea one evening and he goes and tells him about these odd occurrences with Professor Snape, but it feels ridiculous to say it aloud. Hagrid says just as much, or so his reaction feels like. Harry knows he can't tell Draco about it, for sure, but anyway, maybe he is reading too much into it.
In their Flying session, taught by Madam Hooch, Neville loses control of his broom and breaks his arm and has to be taken to the Infirmary. He has dropped his Remembrall, so Harry picks it up for safekeeping.
"What's that, a Remembrall? Pity he didn't fall on it with his fat arse and break it," Pansy says with a cackle.
"Classy, Pans. Real classy," Draco says with a thin smile.
"Ugh, you've always been the most boring out of us." Pansy flips her hair.
"I don't understand how you get along with her," Harry says to Draco a while later, out of earshot, still miffed at her crude comment about Neville.
Draco sighs. "Yeah, me neither. But we sort of grew up together. I suppose that may have something to do with it."
In Madam Hooch's place, Professor Snape comes to observe the training as a substitute.
"Harry, you're a natural!" Hermione says excitedly.
Harry loves it. He thinks it may be the first thing he has ever loved to do. He knows how to move at a visceral level, to maneuver the broom to where he wants it to go. Beside him is Draco, the two of them the only ones managing to remain steadily in the air. An impromptu match takes place between them with Neville's Remembrall, Draco's eyes bright with delight and focused in competition, Harry's veins rushing with a heady exhilaration.
"Potter!" Professor Snape calls sharply.
Harry is sure he is in trouble. Draco's his godson so he'll likely overlook his part. But Harry?
Professor Snape eyes him stiffly for a few seconds. Then, "Do you like Quidditch?"
"Yes sir."
"How would you like to try out for the Seeker's position?"
Later, when they're alone, Harry asks, "Is it alright with you?"
The only thing that makes him hesitate to jump on the opportunity, to give a sure yes for the tryouts, is that he knows Draco has been dreaming of becoming Seeker since he was a child.
Harry saw Draco's eyes, shifting away a little, even though there was a slight smile on his face.
"Of course," is what Draco says. He shrugs. "I'll just take Chaser then, I suppose. It's the next best."
Harry stares at him, trying to gauge his honesty. He thinks it makes Draco just a little sad, to not be chosen.
Draco stares back. He huffs, annoyed at the staring. "Stop looking at me like a kicked pup."
Harry tries to change his face, but the regret is there. He is ready to refuse the opportunity, because Draco matters more.
But Draco curls an arm around his, tugs him into a walk with him.
Quietly, he says, "You're the only one that's allowed to take anything from me."
The rest of the walk takes place in silence.
***
How can I mind it, Draco thinks to himself as he watches Harry fly in the tryouts with a beaming grin whenever his eyes catch Draco's, losing anything to someone so beautiful?
***
Harry is painfully shy with most of the other Slytherins. They were initially fascinated by Harry and asked him many questions, but there was nothing he remembered or could say about the event he was so well-known for, and the only thing he can answer about is about being chosen as Slytherin's newest seeker. Eventually, to his great relief, the shine of his fame wears off and they begin to treat him normally or leave him alone.
He mostly stays by Draco's side, hidden by him in a corner, and Draco always has his shoulder pressed against his and looks at him a lot when he talks and when the room breaks into laughter, it's Harry he looks to first.
Mostly, Harry spends his time with Draco and Hermione, but his comfort with the Slytherins is slow-growing. Pansy, as Harry noted in he flying session, is a bit of a diva, flipping hair, sharp-tongued and sneers and isn't very polite to say the least, but Blaise Zabini says, don't mind her, she was raised in a cave. She's never been decent to anyone in her entire life, really. Blaise, who Harry remembers as the boy in Draco's story being chased by peacocks, is very calm and easy-going and studious, and Harry likes him a lot.
He gets on well with Daphne Greengrass too, who is the sweetest of them, and Theodore Nott, snarky and keeps to himself a bit but is quite nice to Harry.
And they all get on well with Draco, who fits in with them as perfectly as can be. He becomes a kind of leader of the group. Everyone listens to him. Some want to impress him and others envy him and everything he says goes. The strong and fast hold he has over the Slytherin First Years is fascinating to see.
The shine of Harry's fame hasn't worn off for most people outside of the Slytherin House, however. Not even after two days. So Draco ropes in all the Slytherin First Years to gather around Harry whenever they leave the dorms, to keep him away from all the unwanted, uncomfortable attention, some 'positive', but there's a lot of negativity as well, on account of his being in the 'evil' House. Even Pansy's going along with it. Crabbe and Goyle are intimidatingly tall for their age and just loom over anyone that comes his way with their arms folded, and it always works.
"It'll die down, just you wait and see," Draco promises Harry, and then promptly, sneering at someone afar, "What are you staring at?! He's not some circus clown, get back to whatever you were doing!"
Once, Harry overhears Fred Weasley (he can sort of tell them apart now, George has an inch over Fred and a mole on his cheek), mutter to his brother out of the corner of his mouth amusedly, "It would have been cute if they weren't such bigoted, spoilt menaces."
Harry feels sort of defensive about it because not all of them are like that. There are some bigoted, spoilt menaces, in his year and the older years, but there's also people like Draco, Blaise, Theo and Daphne.
Draco's father and Theo's parents are extremely bigoted bloodpurists, but Draco learned from books and Professor Snape and Theo learned from a secret muggleborn friend he made as a child.
Still, he sees the funny picture they all make; all these tiny people in green shouting aggressively and creating commotions whenever random people gathered around to watch Harry walk back to his dorms. (It's weird.)
It does die down eventually, as Draco promised. By the end of the week, people have moved on, and Harry gets to enjoy magical school a little more like a normal wizard boy.
Once, sitting next to each other on a settee by the fireplace, Draco tells Harry that the closest friend he has back home is his house-elf, Dobby. He seems mildly embarrassed about telling him this.
"I've never told anyone that," he says, his cheeks flushed. "I mean, I suppose I was sort of on my own most of the time. I didn't have any siblings, and there was Pansy, Blaise, Crabbe and Goyle but they came by once a week or two, so I was bored and played a lot with the house-elves, especially Dobby. But really, I do have a lot of friends, I just don't get to see them all the time—"
"I think that's really nice," Harry tells him, genuine, and Draco stops and relaxes visibly. A lull. "I never had a best friend until I had you."
Another lull, this time longer. "Oh." Draco's cheeks have flushed even deeper, and he makes a breathy and nervous sound, almost a laugh. "Well."
Harry goes to bed that night wondering if that wasn't something he should have said, after that strange and awkward reaction. Maybe Draco doesn't really think of him as that much of a friend, not that important. What is Harry, after all, to the many friends Draco has had since forever? What would Harry know about what it means to be someone's best friend? He falls asleep feeling very embarrassed.
Then the next day, Draco wakes him by jumping onto his bed and with his nose to his, grinning and especially bright-eyed this morning. ("Morning! Good morning!" Harry laughed, and felt a little less embarrassed about what he'd said last night). When they are late for breakfast, he grabs Harry's hand and they run together in the empty corridors for the Great Hall. He throws Harry crooked little smiles out of nowhere all day, as if he is happy about something secret between them.
In classes, sometimes they mumble clever jokes and make each other laugh and tell stories until they get scolded back into quick silence, trying to stifle themselves afterward. Other times, they point to ugly things in their books and say, "that's you," or something else equally childish, scribbling silly doodles on each other's parchments. Harry didn't know Draco didn't like anyone doing that until he saw Pansy try to write on his parchment to ask him something in Transfigurations (Professor McGonagall is swift at catching out the students that are talking) and Draco slaps her hand away.
"You heathen!" Pansy hisses in a whisper, gripping the back of her hand. Her face is affronted, scandalised.
"These are my notes," Draco whispers back furiously.
"So? You let him—"
"Pansy Parkinson!" Professor McGonagall says sharply, and she quiets, glowering at Draco.
"I didn't know that bothered you," Harry mutters a while later.
"Not when it's you," Draco mumbles back, his hand up to his jaw and his head bowed down, neither of them looking at each other. He sounds so casual it's almost not casual.
Harry smiles slightly, into his hand holding up his cheek as he copies the diagram on the board.
In the Slytherin First Year dorms, their beds are right next to each other's. So often, they huddle together under a Lumos light, talking or reading a book together.
By the time Harry came to Hogwarts, he did not learn to read very well, because the Dursleys didn't really care to teach him. He had a primary school teacher that began to keep him after class, so she could gently teach him the basics. By the time she had to move, he could read, but very slowly. After that, with all the housechores and how little he was allowed to leave the house or have anything for entertainment (including books), he never got to learn much. He managed to read all his Hogwarts books over the summer, but it was hard, and it was his hunger for learning about magic, about himself and the world he truly belonged to, that propelled him the most.
"That's okay," Draco says to him, when Harry explains it all to him with a fair amount of shame. He's keeping his voice down to instinctually mimic Harry, but it goes fast and rambling the way he sometimes speaks, in his love for it, "That's okay. It's alright, I'll help you. I'm a very good reader, did you know, I read a lot of books and I was already reading higher level stuff when I was seven, and I'm also a very good tutor. Did you know I used to tutor Crabbe and Goyle too?" Harry shakes his head, "Oh! Well, now you do. Anyway, we can read together so you can learn better and then I bet you'll be just as good at it in no time."
And then he shifts closer and puts his head against his, raising the book he was holding high above them.
"We should put our heads together like this so we can both see." At one point, it accidentally drops on their faces and it hurts Harry's face because of his glasses and Draco's nose, and they both have to smother their laughter to not wake Theo and Blaise.
They must have fallen asleep at some point whilst Draco read to Harry and then told him to read the next passage to Draco, taking turns. When they awaken, the book is open and downturned on Draco's shoulder, and his head is still pressed to Harry's. The next night, they end up falling asleep while reading again, and then again while talking, and then again, until they begin to just settle in further into the bed at the end of it and go to sleep.
Blaise and Theo make fun of them at first, cooing teasingly, to their mortification, over how they looked so cute and fluffy, like little bunnies, aww, oh hey look we even took a picture so you can see just how cute and fluffy you look (being called cute and fluffy is probably every eleven year boy's nightmare), and then they eventually grow bored and used to seeing them curled around each other in the mornings and stop caring, and they never tell anyone outside the dorm the four of them shared, so it all turns out fine.
One night, Harry jolts out of sleep abruptly, a hand shaking his shoulder, "Harry."
The vestiges of his nightmare still play vaguely in his mind's eye. He is startled to realise his eyes are wet, blurry. It's nothing new, but it's not something he wants happening in front of someone else. He hopes Draco can't see him in the dark. "What?"
Draco's hand takes his own very gently under the blankets. He whispers, "What did you dream?"
After a long moment, quietly, "I saw the green light again, and my mum, screaming."
Draco says nothing, half his face hidden in the pillow, likely having his drowsy frown. He only lets go of Harry's hand and burrows closer to his side and shifts his cheek to press against his, his arm around his neck and shoulders rounded around Harry in a comforting, loose grip. It's nice, and warm, and the safest Harry has ever felt.
All his life, he has watched other people from the outside, this effortlessness and ease they all have with each other that he's spent a long time wishing and trying for.
He doesn't have to wish for it with Draco, or try.