Small Braveries

Did Draco ever think he would grow up to be a necromancer? A billionaire, maybe. A powerful Potion’s Master, perhaps. But a necromancer? No, he couldn’t say he’d had that particular flight of fancy. 

Draco sighed as he doled out some more eye of newt. Sometimes, necromancy really wasn’t that different from potioneering. Though it often included much more runes, arithmancy, and sometimes blood. Unfortunately, the blood was most often his own, as he was the appointed conduit between the land of the living and that of the dead. 

Was it an untapped science? Surely. Was it also illegal? Well…kind of. But only in certain regards. 

Raising the dead, yes, that was absolutely unacceptable. Inferi were terrifying to everyone, Draco included. Thinking of the undead made him shudder, even as he scraped the eye of newt mush into his food processor (when Luna had given it to him as a gift the year before, he’d been incredibly wary—he was, by no stretch of the imagination, an Arthur Weasley type. But it did have redeeming qualities, especially for potions requiring extremely fine and smooth mixtures. Even if it was muggle.). 

As he began chopping cloves, he pondered his job, as he often did. Trying to justify it to himself, perhaps.

It was the ghosts that he spoke to, mostly. The ones that were no longer contented to stay. The ones who had lost so much of themselves that they no longer even spoke the language of the living, but instead whispered the haunting murmurs of spectral beings, of phantoms and shadows and ancient, decrepit things. These were the creatures that were most lost and most in pain, severed as they were from where they truly belonged. 

Draco tried to do what good he could for them. Exterminator and exorcist were not the correct words for him, though he’d been called both—need for his line of work was required by both magical and muggle folk, though naturally he all of the muggles vacate whatever premises his work happened to be on ‘for their own well-being’ as he did his job. 

But he didn’t work with bugs or vermin—the creatures he communicated with, even in their more dilapidated, ignoble states, were worth a much fairer descriptor than that. And he didn’t deal in demons, either: That was one of the Darkest Arts in the world, and he was taking no chances. He had no illusions about his own strength nor that of his bravery—he was more likely to turn tail and run if he ever encountered a demon than try to exorcise one, and even if he did, there was a good chance he himself would end up being possessed for it. 

After the end of the war he’d been plagued by guilt. The dead haunted his nightmares and spooked him through the day. Learning about necromancy hadn’t started out as a career choice—it had begun as a way to settle his own fragile nerves and a way to possibly atone for his wrongdoings. He may not have been able to stop people from dying, and had certainly caused deaths in the attempt to keep his family alive, but he could at least give the small compensation of a peaceful rest, feeble barter though it was. 

He still couldn’t bear to step into Hogwarts castle, knowing the carnage he had helped cause. 

So instead, he did this. The Mark on his arm actually helped more than hindered him—people saw it and knew he had a knack for Dark things, even if he was venturing into the dark, in these instances, to help make something light. Years between the war and now, as well as Potter’s testament during the trials, had also helped his standing. 

His job also offered a certain sort of protection. He’d been a target after the war, down side streets and lesser-known alleys. He’d been bludgeoned once strolling down Vertik Alley years ago, so badly he’d needed stitches through his right eyebrow and realignment surgery for his jaw. They had refused him at St Mungo's, but the Muggles weren't terrible, after he'd taken two Calming Draughts and a Draught of Peace in rapid succession. 

Learning ghost language had helped with that. Now all he had to do was prick the tip of his finger, draw some of the simpler runes in blood on a nearby wall (one of which he often used was the symbol for safety, a simple circle with a line above and below it—most people didn’t know what it meant, and Draco thought it was rather ironic), and, to top off the show, begin murmuring those unnatural words that made the hair on the back of people’s necks stand up like ruffled fur on the back of a dog’s neck, sensing strangeness and threat. Once he did that, they usually ran, forgetting what their intention was in their haste, occasionally tossing a high-pitched yelp of “Freak!” behind them. 

Draco didn’t mind much anymore. Better a freak than disfigured. 

His appearance leant to the image of otherworldliness, as well. His paleness, thinness and height, the strong cheekbones and lightly hooded eyes—when used to his advantage, he did look quite ethereal himself, as though so much communication from one land to the next had leant some intangible otherness to his being. 

He pressed the button on the food processor a bit harder, trying not to think too much about his face. He had enough trouble with his image without comparing himself to a spook. He preferred to think that he was quite attractive, if in an unconventional way. At least he’d filled out a bit since his gangly teenage phase.

“Are you ready, Draco?” The question came from the landing above him, door opened to flood daylight into his subterranean potions lab. Most of the things he kept in jars would be destroyed by sunlight—delicate paper-thin bat wings, dried huffelump claws, blanched skin of boomslangs and what have you—though he had to admit with a self-deprecating smirk that it did add to his whole gothic motif. 

Whereas he tended to appear gloomy and dourly sophisticated, his partner in (sort of) crime was not. Their bizarre work relationship had formed out of their relationship with the otherworlds—whereas he could commune with the dead, she could look into the future of the living. Two different sides of the same coin, in a way: past death and future life, impossibility and opportunity. It made sense that she was the cheerier of the two, if less grounded. When they first began working, her airy, vapid nature annoyed him endlessly, but out of both guilt and grudging respect, he’d tolerated her until they formed what could be warily regarded as a tenuous friendship. 

Draco sighed. “Almost,” he called back. “Just get him ready for the reading.”

Their client needed getting ready, that was true. But even more so, Draco needed some extra time. He took it, meticulously scraping the sides of the food processor with his spatula, stirring in the last few measurements of ram’s blood to his cauldron pensively. 

After all, it wasn’t every day that Harry Potter walked into a necromancer’s shop, complaining about being haunted. 

_*_

“Please explain to me once more what’s been happening to you, Mr. Potter.”

“Jesus, Malfoy, can’t you just use my surname?” Harry asked, scratching the back of his head with an uncomfortable grimace. “You sound too much like Snape when you say my name like that, it freaks me out.”

Draco’s left eye twitched in annoyance. It was the one with the scar over it, an annoying habit he’d gained over the years. “For propriety’s sake, I cannot.”

Harry sucked on his teeth and made a reluctant tsking sound, an unfortunate habit that only irked Draco further. “Alright,” he conceded. “Well. It only used to happen every once in a while, especially if I was on homicide cases. If the victim was killed in a particularly unexpected or brutal way, sometimes they’d stick around for a bit—a lot of them were in denial, I think. But nobody would be able to see or hear them except for me.” 

Draco nodded thoughtfully—those were the spectres who weren’t fueled by fear he unknown, as many permanent ghosts were, but were simply so unaccustomed to the thought of dying that they denied the possibility of being dead, stubbornly staying where they were until they cottoned on to the fact that they no longer belonged. However it was usually a necromancer’s task to talk them through their revolutionary state of being, someone with training and knowledge like Draco, and not a simple Auror like the Golden Boy. 

Despite the deepening lines between Draco’s brows, Harry continued. “But now it’s not just that, anymore. Some of them are still there, yeah, but—but there are others, too. Ones who I’ve never had cases with before. It’s not like they do all that much, mostly they’re just a nuisance, really. But they seem to have taken up residence in my house.”

“The spirits left behind, you mean?” Draco tried to keep the disbelief out of his voice, but it was difficult. Usually spirits were attracted to ley lines, and the closest one to London passed through Stonehenge and Bath before continuing into Wales. London had a lot of old mansions with the occasional boggart or spook, but a congregation of such sorts was…notably rare. 

“Yeah. I’ve given a few of them names, since not many of them actually talk to me. It’s beginning to get a bit frustrating. I can’t use one of the upstairs toilets anymore—an odd one I call Dennis has decided to live in the filter.”

“Ah,” Draco said faintly, a bit overwhelmed. “Well, that is a problem.”

“We may have to bring Draco over ourselves,” Luna interjected, bringing tea in from the kitchen. Their office was on the ground floor of the building, but they both lived on the topmost floor, Luna in the flat to the right of the stairs, Draco to the left. He could often hear her rustling about at all hours of the night, though he’d quickly learned not to ask what she was doing—last time he’d knocked on her door at one in the morning, she’d answered wearing spectacles made out of some sort of hollowed-out gourd, and had ushered him inside to cleanse him of the flipwidgets that were evidently wreaking havoc on his aura. She’d even tried to give him specs of his own, an ordeal that had been extremely effective at keeping him out of her flat and on his side of the landing.

“I’ve seen it myself,” she told him, spelling the flying teacups and kettle down onto the table before them, “but I’m really quite out of my depth with this sort of thing. Seeing it will help. Is it alright if Draco has a look-see?”Luna asked, turning to the Savior, who had begun holding his mug in front of him as though it was a shield, or possibly a lifeline. At her question, he took a long sip, obviously preparing his response carefully. 

“Yes, that’s fine.” When he spoke, his voice was only slightly strained. It looked like it took him much effort to drag his eyes back to Draco’s face and ask, “When are you free to set up a house visit?”

Draco chewed his lip. “You do know…some of my methods could be considered rather grey in terms of legality,” he prodded the Auror.

Harry shrugged, making a face. He’d figured as much, and he knew that technicallyas someone in his position he shouldn’t have allowed it. But he also knew that he wanted his house back. “As long as it’s not Dark, I can handle it.”

Draco scrutinized him for a beat. Finally, he took a slow blink and resigned himself to entering the debased den of all things honorable that would be the Savior’s place of residence.

He stuck out his hand to shake.

“Then it’s a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Potter.”

_*_

Harry did not expect to be impressed with Draco. 

He hadn’t really thought about him at all since leaving school, except for the trials and giving him his wand back. He knew that he had a practice with Luna on Dramattik Alley, where they did various Divination-y mumbo jumbo that Harry generally tried to stay away from. Whenever Luna broke out the tarot cards, it was his time to leave—he’d had enough of prophecies to last well into the next lifetime, thank you. 

Even though Luna had spent some quality time in the Malfoy dungeons, she seemed the most eager to forgive Draco for the past. She’d told Neville that, during her uncomfortable stay, Draco risked his own well-being a number of times to bring the prisoners extra food and water, and cast warming spells on them whenever he could. To bring a blanket or more clothes would be too noticeable, but the little that he could do, he tried. 

Harry had been kept aware of Malfoy’s goings-on mostly through Neville via Luna, but he had tried to get over his childlike obsession with him and didn’t smother her with questions. Now that he had a bit more time to think, he could admit that it was an obsession, and it had existed because the idea that there was someone he couldn’t save just absolutely drove him nuts. It had been his ‘saving people thing’ acting up, like Hermione had said all along. Probably had something to do with his childhood, like Ron had noted, too. God, he hated when his friends poked at him so.

So he wasn’t going to save Draco Malfoy. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t admire him. 

Draco had immediately stiffened once Grimmauld Place came into view. Harry had thought it was from the spectres—but no, it had been because “That’s the old Black ancestral home.”

“Yep,” Harry replied blithely, releasing the wards and opening the door with a wave of his wand. “And now it’s my house.”

“How the hell did you get your hands on this place?” Draco asked in astonishment, looking around as they entered the front room. Wryly, he observed, “I see your taste in décor is equally as drab as the previous inhabitants.” 

Harry hadn’t been able to do much with Grimmauld, despite various efforts on his part. The place, though less dusty than before and with a distinct lack of troll-leg umbrella stands and house-elf heads, was as dark and dreary as ever. Harry spent as much time as he could away from it and at the Ministry or with Ron and Hermione, both activities which irritated Kreacher to no end. 

“How do you…you’ve been here before?” Harry asked, confused. Draco had certainly never been part of the Order.

The blonde nodded, his shoulders tense. “My mother was born a Black,” he said, peering cautiously over to the be-draped portrait of the verbose Wallaburga Black, thick curtains stuck closed with Spello-Tape. When he saw that, his stance relaxed dramatically. “My Great-Aunt never held visitors in much regard.”

“Ah,” Harry said ineloquently, a bit taken aback. He hadn’t realized that this property could have very well been Draco’s, had things panned out a bit differently. 

The blonde had a sardonic little smirk on his face when he side-eyed Harry through heavy lids, seemingly reading his mind as he said, “This place suits you.”

Luna snorted, seeming to think the opposite. “Harry should see your potions lab, if you think that.”

Deigning not to continue the conversation, Draco swept into the front room, his pointy chin high in the air. “Do you mind if I lay down some runes?” he asked Harry, who shook his head. Honestly, he’d let him set fire to the house, if it meant he got some peace.

Draco set down his shoulder bag by the stairs and began writing a series of runes in charcoal on the floor, which Harry thought might actually improve the overall look of the house—the place was dark and musty anyway, might as well muck it up a bit more. Luna left the room to inspect something she’d found earlier, but Harry decided to hang around and watch Malfoy at work. 

As he wrote, his fingertips stained black with charcoal, a bit of his fringe fell into his eyes. Harry watched him blow it back with impatience, shaking his head—the rest of his hair was neatly pulled into a high French braid, which Harry wondered at. He could hardly tie a tie, let alone braid his own hair. But of course Malfoy was good at things like that. His appearance was always meticulously pristine. He probably spent hours looking at his own reflection, after all. 

Finally, Draco seemed to finish writing, and revealed a small, silver knife from somewhere on his person. Before Harry could say anything, he’d brought it to the pale flesh on the inside of his arm by his elbow and made a shallow cut with a small grunt of pain, sinking his teeth into his lower lip.

Small drops of red fell onto the runes with a slight hiss, as though hot. Draco paced for a few seconds around them, chanting in Latin. Harry felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and magic like electricity crackled in the air. It smelled like a thunderstorm was brewing, right there by the stairs.

And then, the blond knelt back down to where he’d placed his pack, wiped off his knife in a handkerchief, and began dressing his wound.

“Was that all?” Harry asked, rather taken aback.

Draco glanced up. “Well, yes,” he said, still wrapping a bandage around his arm. “Can’t expect them to all get here at once. The dead like to take their time, you know. They have nowhere to rush to anymore.” He hoisted his pack back onto his shoulder and began to head into the kitchen, saying, “You must still have that ancient house elf, I’d guess? What was his name—Kreacher?”

Kreacher appeared at once with a crack. “Master Draco!” he exclaimed, his weathered face lighting up at once, showing broken, yellowed teeth.

Harry tried not to glower at the fact that Draco seemed more at home in his house than he himself did. Kreacher certainly liked him more, but Harry figured that had to be due to his much more favorable relationship with Narcissa and the rest of the Black family line than Sirius.

“He never calls me Master,” Harry muttered somewhat mutinously. Though that was probably for the better—if Hermione ever heard that title, she’d probably pitch a fit.

“Kreacher, put on some tea for us, please,” Draco said, with the air about him of someone who was used to being listened to. Imperious, but not unkind—Harry had to admit that, even if it was grudgingly. Dobby had never had words to say about Narcissa or Draco, thinking back: it was only Lucius he’d been terrified of. 

“Now what?” Harry asked as he watched Draco sit down at his kitchen table, feeling rather maladroit. 

“Now we wait,” Draco replied, motioning for him to sit down, pulling out a chair for him with a spell. “And stop lumbering over me like you’re some sort of watchdog. I’m not going to steal your china.”

“I don’t even think I have china,” Harry said, taking a seat.

“You do,” Draco said. “It’s over there in the dresser in the back corner, but you can’t open it. It’s locked by blood magic.” He smiled mischievously. “I suppose that makes it my china, after all.”

Harry looked at him, his eyes boggling out of his head. “How many times exactly did you visit this place as a child?”

“Every summer until my Great-Aunt kicked it,” Draco said, shuddering. “She was such a mean old crone.”

“Really?” Harry asked, falsely innocent. “I hadn’t noticed. Always seemed to like me.”

Draco snorted. “The only person she ever liked was herself,” he said scathingly. “It’s why she was the one to commission her own portrait and stuck it to the wall three days before she died. So she could harass and harangue us all to death from beyond the grave.” 

Harry rolled his eyes. “She screamed at me for two straight weeks before I put enough Spello-Tape and sticking charms to keep those damn curtains closed. Reminds me of an aunt I used to have.”

Draco seemed to think about that a bit more and chuckled to himself. “Well, knowing that is a pretty solid revenge for you inheriting this place instead of me,” he admitted. “I don’t feel nearly as bad about it anymore.”

Kreacher appeared at that moment with tea, milk and sugar in his wake. As he placed them down, he rubbed his knobbly hands together, looking shifty.

“Thank you, Kreacher,” Draco said graciously.

“Mistress’s boy,” Kreacher croaked. “Blood magic, you’ve done. Come to free the house, have you?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Draco said, leaning back in his chair with the tea held close. 

“The house rises,” Kreacher said, perplexingly, and cracked out of existence. 

Harry eyed Draco. “What was that supposed to mean?”

“Places like Grimmauld hold their own magic,” Draco explained, blowing lightly on his cuppa. “Since I’m of the same magical heritage of those who lived here before, I have easier access to the house’s whims. I’ve simply asked it to shepherd the spectres in here.”

“It’s alive?” Harry asked, looking rather queasy. 

“Well,” Draco said, looking a bit befuddled himself. “As much as Hogwarts is alive, I suppose.”

“Ah!” A voice sounded from the doorway. The two turned to find Luna, looking delighted. “Tea, wonderful. Would you know it, I was in the library upstairs—you have quite a large collection of Dark books in there, Harry—”

“I know,” he muttered unhappily. “Can’t figure out how to get rid of them.”

“—and then the floorboards turned into a slide, and here I am! What great fun. It seems I’ve brought some friends to join us as well.” She gestured behind her, a gleam in her eye underlying the tone of her words, and breezed in with her strange mix of lavender and turnip towards the teacup set for her. Harry blamed the turnip earrings, but Draco was not as forgiving.

However, they had bigger fish than Luna’s peculiar perfume. Behind her, a whole crowd of spooks and spectres drifted into the dining room, each looking more reluctant than the last.

“Rupert,” Harry said, nodding at one balding, sallow-faced translucent man who seemed to be in his late fifties. The man made no sign that he noticed him. 

“He lives in the downstairs broom cupboard,” he whispered to Draco, though the lowered volume was unnecessary. Draco doubted many of these particular phantoms had the energy to actually listen to them—just being in the same room as them made him feel fatigued. 

Harry continued his greetings. “Leelah.” He waved at a middle-aged woman in a dowdy muumuu, her hair tied up in curlers. “Dennis, I see you’ve come out of the toilet filter, good man.” Dennis was a portly guy, not a whole lot older than the three living inhabitants of the dining room. “Antoinette! Ah, good. Finally I can get into the pantry again. I’ve been sending Kreacher in there, he always grabs the wrong thing and acts as though he didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Do you call her Antoinette for her looks or for her affinity with cake?” Draco asked, raising an eyebrow as the thin, tired old woman drifted past. 

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know any of their names, but giving them one at least seems nicer than saying ‘Hey, you’ whenever I see them.”

“I really don’t think they’d care much,” Luna observed airily. “They don’t seem like they really want to be here.”

“They’re just stuck,” Draco said. “They didn’t mean to stay. That’s why they’re more spectral than Nearly-Headless Nick back at Hogwarts—they’re expending so much energy trying to cross to the other side that when it doesn’t work, they kind of just…hang out. There’s a block, that’s all.”

“Can you fix it?” Harry asked eagerly. “Nice as it is to have roommates, I’d prefer to have them more…alive. And more mobile. Why the hell do you prefer the toilet, of all places?” he demanded of the floating Dennis, who didn’t seem to notice. 

“Yes, I can fix it,” Draco said. “It’s a mixture of the magic used in Banishment and that of Apparition—it shouldn’t be hard, especially with the potions I’ve packed. I’m going to have to ask the both of you to leave, though,” the blonde explained, glancing up at them as he began rummaging through his things, his arms sunk into his bag to the shoulders. “I don’t want to accidentally Banish you. What a field day the press would have.”

Harry shuddered. “Have on with it,” he said. “Hell, take the whole house. It likes you better anyway.”

Draco’s smile was wolfish. “I just might,” he replied.