Chapter 2
The first week after the dark lord was defeated Draco Malfoy got drunk:
“He lived with us,” he told Blaise, who was rubbing his feet in the Zabini family’s summer cottage. “He lived in my house.”
“It’s ok,” Blaise told him, long thumbs making soothing strokes over Draco’s arches. “It’s over.”
“It’s just starting,” Draco said.
And:
“They sent Father to Azkaban,” he told Pansy, who was white-faced under her (devastatingly applied) lipstick and clutching a glass of very expensive elf-made wine. They were in a back room of one of the few wizarding pubs in London that would still allow either of them through the door. Pansy didn’t know how to get the right kind of drunk (only knew indolent and luxurious, not desperate and trashy) but she was trying. “For life,” Draco said. And then he laughed because it was so ridiculous, because he’d never believed it would happen, not until the Wizengamont (Father had owned the Wizengamont) had coldly delivered their verdict and Mother had tightened her grip on Draco’s shoulder like someone was trying to take him away. Like she’d be able to stop them when they did.
“You weren’t really a death eater,” Pansy said. She looked as terrified as she had in the Great Hall that day, standing up and pointing at Potter, pleading with the crowd to turn him in already. “You weren’t any good at it. You were just…”
Draco laughed again. He took another shot of whiskey. It wasn’t even firewhiskey. It was something cheap and dirty and he didn’t care. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.
And:
“Who does Potter think he is?” he asked Greg, who was still wearing his formal robes from Draco’s trial even though they looked as if they were strangling him. They were in the ministry. Draco’s wrists were still cold from the chains. His skin was still sweating out whatever he’d been drinking until the early hours of the morning. He felt awful: weak and clammy. He swayed a little. “I have a case of beer at the apartment,” he said, as if any of those words made sense. As if it was normal for Draco Malfoy to live in a dingy little flat on a muggle street and drink muggle beer warm out of the refrigerator because as far as Draco could see it was just a dark little box that did absolutely nothing. As if it wasn’t more like half a case of beer at this point. “We can celebrate.” As if their lives weren’t over. As if their estates hadn’t been sold and their fathers imprisoned. As if Draco’s wrists weren’t bruised and his wand wasn’t stolen.
“Draco,” Greg said in his slow, stupid voice. “I think you need to get help, mate.”
Draco stared at him. Then he began to laugh.
It was too loud. He knew that immediately. The laugh was like Howler in the hall at breakfast – you could just sit there and watch it happen (usually to this week’s member of the Weasley clan) from a great distance away. Only the Howler was inside Draco’s face. He couldn’t stop it and quite suddenly he couldn’t breathe either. The laugh – high and choking and terrified – was taking up all his air. Draco bent over at the waist and put out one hand, clutched at Greg’s ridiculous robes and laughed.
“Um,” said Greg. Draco had the impression he was trying to extract his robes from Draco’s clutching fingers. Draco held on harder, but Greg was really quite strong. He pulled free. “Um,” he said again, and then Draco heard the heavy, hesitant sounds of his footsteps lumbering away.
That was probably good. Two years ago Greg would never have walked away from Draco. It was good he was growing a backbone, even if it had taken, even if it had taken, even…
But Draco didn’t want to think about the way Greg had looked at him in that burning room as he realized Draco couldn’t save him.
Draco was still making a lot of noise, although he was fairly sure it wasn’t laughter anymore. His face felt wet. People must be looking. There had been a lot of people at his trial, and they had all looked at him.
“Muffliato,” someone said.
“Oh come on,” said another voice, and Draco looked up.
The three of them were standing quite close to Draco, between him and the rest of the room. It had been Granger who had cast the spell. She was arguing now in a low voice with Weasley, who was not keeping his voice down.
“Look,” he was saying, “I’ve stuck my neck out enough for Malfoy in this lifetime. It’s down to us he’s not locked up. Could we please just – ”
“…not about him,” Granger finished calmly. And then they both looked to the third person in the group, who was looking at Draco.
Potter had not lost the intense, determined expression he’d worn all through the trial. Draco had been seeing that same look on his face for nearly eight years now. He’d seen it in the burning room. It had been the polar opposite of Greg’s can’t you save me. It had said, I just have to figure out how to save you.
Draco was still laughing. Potter will save us all, he thought hysterically.
“Stuck my neck out enough for Harry in this lifetime too,” Weasley said, in an entirely different tone, full of warmth and humour. “Fine, fine. Get out of here then. Pluvia Maxima.”
There was a clap of thunder and it began to pour. The rain made a tremendous noise against all the marble. “Sorry!” Weasley said loudly as the crowd of witches and wizards shrieked and ran for cover. “Just trying to jinx Malfoy here. Clumsy.”
“Oh don’t,” Granger said. “They’ll be printing that in the paper tomorrow.”
“Pretty sure I know the counterspell,” Weasley shouted over the din. He turned and walked into the crowd waving his wand somewhat randomly in the air as the rain turned to hail.
Potter took hold of Draco’s elbow in a steady and very warm hand. He steered them towards the fireplaces (Draco blanched a little at the sight – he didn’t like travel by floo any longer) and paused on the threshold before saying firmly, “Grimauld Place,” and stepping into the green flames along with him. The sight of them made Draco’s head spin more than it already had been, and he closed his eyes, put his hand up to grip Potter’s wrist. It was thin. He could feel the bones in it. But Potter’s pulse was steady and slow and warm.
They spilled together into a high ceilinged (but still somehow stuffy) room that smelled faintly of mildew. And cinnamon. Draco shook his head. He took a steadying breath. Potter’s hand was on his shoulder now, and that was stupid. It was stupid and condescending but before Draco could shrug it away and sneer Potter had moved it himself and taken a step back, and then Draco’s shoulder was cold. He felt sick.
Potter didn’t say anything. After a moment the green flames behind them flared up again and Granger stepped neatly onto the stained carpet. “I think Ron’s enjoying himself,” she said. She handed Draco a handkerchief so matter-of-factly that he took it. “That whole crowd of reporters got soaked.”
“Good,” Potter said, and he looked so vehement that Draco took a step back.
Granger smiled. “Don’t be so sure,” she said. “I think the witch from the Prophet was whacking him with her camera a second ago.” She swung her dripping hair over one shoulder and made an irritated noise. “Harry, would you mind?”
Potter, who had been cleaning his glasses (or smearing the water around on the lenses, anyway) on the hem of his robes, reached an absent hand into Granger’s curls. It was an easy, intimate gesture. Draco could see his fingers brush against her jaw. And then there was a cloud of steam around those fingers. Draco had never seen anyone cast a warming charm like that – wandlessly and so oddly tactile – but that must have been what it was because a second later Granger was shaking out her dry hair with a little sigh of satisfaction. Potter’s hands hadn’t been that warm. Had they? Draco was too sober for this. Granger’s hair was a cloud of frizz.
“The ministry said I was free to go,” Draco said into the happy, domestic silence which he suddenly wanted to smash into a thousand pieces. “Largely thanks to the little display you put on back there, Potter. I didn’t realize you were speaking at my trial just so you could incarcerate me in your hideous living room.”
Potter, maddeningly, did not rise to the bait. He just looked at Granger and smiled. “It is really ugly,” he said. “Maybe we should redecorate now.”
Granger just rolled her eyes.
“And no,” Potter said to Draco. “Just hang on a sec. I need to grab something for you and then you can go whenever.”
He left the room (heading up the big spiral staircase near the back wall) at a half-jog, as if he was afraid of keeping Draco waiting.
Draco, who was feeling sicker by the minute, found that this made him even angrier. He turned back to Granger meaning to say something caustic, but she had shrugged off her staid robes and was hanging them on a hook by the fireplace. Underneath she was wearing an airy white blouse with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and on her forearm Draco could see…he could see…
She looked at him then. Followed his eyes to the angry, inflamed scar and looked at it with him, calm and detached, and then deliberately pulled down her sleeve to cover it. They regarded one another.
Granger was also too thin. Not like she’d been six months ago, when he’d watched her scream on his living room floor. Not gaunt and desperate. But her hair was a little dull, and her blouse hung on her rather, and if she had died that day. If she’d been murdered on the floor in front of him. If he’d had to watch. Draco couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. He hated her for making him think about it.
To avoid that Draco thought about the trial, about Potter, which was a much more straightforward kind of hating. “What does he keep on interfering for?” Draco asked.
Granger tilted her head to one side like she was trying to look serious and wise and understanding, but her skinny face under all that hair just looked absurd. All sharp cheekbones and big brown eyes. Like a docile version of dear old dead Aunt Bella. “You needed help,” she said.
Draco snorted. “That’s what Greg thinks,” he told her harshly. “But other than Saint Potter, who’s going to help me?”
Granger didn’t laugh. She didn’t give him that gaze full of pitying kindness again either. Instead she just leveled her eyes at him and looked. “Has it ever occurred to you,” she asked, “to wonder who you might be able to help?”
Caught in the sudden intensity of those not-remotely-docile eyes Draco twisted the handkerchief she’d given him and wondered if he dared leap for the floo.
And then her expression shifted. She smiled at Draco, and the smile changed her face completely. It crinkled at the corners. Her cheeks were too thin for dimples but she had them anyway. Granger was looking at Draco like she saw him, like she saw him and knew him and recognized everything that was good in him. Not even like he was forgiven – like he was understood so completely that forgiveness was irrelevant. It was such an easy, likeable smile that Draco, unexpectedly, tentatively, smiled back.
“Good, you’re still here,” said Potter from behind his shoulder. Because of course. Of course she wasn’t looking at Draco like that.
Draco turned awkwardly from the warmth and acceptance radiating from fucking Granger’s newly devastating face to look at Potter. He opened his mouth to say something vicious (what, he wasn’t sure, but something vicious was always ready to fall out of his mouth whenever Potter was around) and then shut it again. “What,” he said. He swallowed. He looked at the thing in Potter’s hand. “That’s my wand,” he said.
“I know,” Potter told him. He kept holding it out.
“But you.” Draco’s mouth wasn’t working properly. All the wrong things were dropping out of it. He’d be complimenting Granger’s dimples any moment. “You killed the Dark Lord with it.”
“Voldemort, yeah,” Potter said, because he was still Potter. “Kind of. I guess. Do you want it or not?”
Draco took it. The wood was warm to his touch. He wanted to cry. He swallowed it down, swallowed it all down, and looked at Potter. And then Draco asked the thing he’d been needing to ask someone for months. For years, really. The thing nobody but Father had ever been able to answer, and look how that had gone. Because maybe it was Potter he should have been asking all along, because Potter always, somehow, seemed to know. Because he wasn’t in control of his mouth, maybe. Anyway, he asked it.
“What am I supposed to do?” Draco asked.
There was silence. The fire crackled behind them. Draco cleared his throat. Tried again.
“What am I supposed to do with my life?” he asked. His voice felt thick, but what did it matter? How much more humiliated could he be, really? How much worse could anything get?
Worse, it turned out. Potter, far from springing to his rescue, just looked horrified. “I dunno,” he said, stupid as a troll. He looked at Granger like they were in Potions and she could lean over and whisper the answer in his ear. Draco felt like an idiot. He wanted to be sick. Granger just looked exasperated. But it wasn’t over. Draco was still talking.
“You keep giving it back to me,” he said to Potter. “So what the hell am I supposed to do with it?” His voice was thick. He could hear his voice going high and tight the way it did when he was about to cry. Draco had been a weepy child, but this was beyond the pale. He was a Death Eater for Merlin’s sake. What was he crying over, anyway?
“Oh god,” Potter said. “Look, come here.” Draco felt those warm hands on his shoulders again, let himself be steered over to a sofa that looked as if it had been mauled.
“Did you kill some other Dark Lord on your chesterfield?” he asked thickly. “Was it a struggle? Or have you just got a pet hippogriff?”
Granger let out a little snort at that. She had come to sit on the other end of the sofa. Draco dabbed at his face with her handkerchief. Potter was rummaging in a cabinet by the far wall. He emerged triumphantly a moment later with a bottle of firewhiskey, the sight of which filled Draco with desperate relief.
“Here,” Potter said, shoving a glass into his hand. “Come on, cheers.” He handed a glass to Granger as well (who rolled her eyes but took it) and poured one for himself.
“Harry,” Granger said, “I’m not sure– ”
But Potter was clinking his glass against hers, and then against Draco’s immobile one, with determined good humour. Granger looked at Draco again, and this time she did smile at him. It was a very small smile. There weren’t any dimples. But it did the thing to her face again – the thing where she looked suddenly lovely. She smiled at him and then she rolled her eyes a little, as if they, Draco and Hermione Granger, were sharing a joke about Potter’s social ineptitude. She knocked back the firewhiskey all in one go.
It was then, watching the long line of Granger’s throat as she swallowed, the accidental elegance of it, that Draco put down his drink. He didn’t want to. He wanted to toss it back and demand another, wanted to snatch the bottle from Potter’s hand and march into the fireplace with it, wanted to crawl down the narrow neck and drown in the sweet fumes. His hand shook a little. He looked up into Potter’s stupid, heroic troll face and he nodded.
“I think,” he began, and then the fireplace flared again.
“I tolb you,” Ronald Weasley said thickly as he stepped into the room, bleeding profusely from his nose. “I tolb you I shouldn’t stick my nose out.” Water poured off him onto the horrible, mildewy carpet. He looked very cheerful.
Granger bounded off the sofa to tend to her wounded boyfriend and Potter ambled up behind her, hands in his pockets, looking like a puppy hopeful for attention. Draco wanted to hate them. More honestly, he wanted to be them.
He let himself out.
It was a clear night. Draco’s skin was clammy and his stomach churned and his hands were shaking, but there was a wand in his pocket. He was walking freely down the city street. Potter had given him his life back.
Six months after the dark lord was defeated Draco Malfoy got sober. He went home to his muggle apartment and poured warm beer down the sink until the fumes sent him gasping to the window, where he breathed in the cool, clean air like a drowning man.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” Hermione Granger had asked him, “to wonder who you might be able to help?”
It honestly never had.