Chapter 4
And so the two reluctantly fell into a rhythm. In the mornings, Harry, bleary eyes and low, rough voice, would make breakfast for the two of them. Draco observed that he was almost always running late. He enjoyed watching in amusement as Harry sprinted around his flat, bellowing for his keys. He caught Draco mocking him one time and gave him the finger before sprinting out the door.
Draco would sleep most of the morning. Though he would rather die than admit it, his favourite spot was in Harry’s shirt drawer, full of soft cotton and that same bitter orange smell. He woke in time for Harry’s arrival, which was often a cacophony of loud footsteps and loud laughter.
Before he knew it, two weeks had gone by. Granger and Weasley appeared occasionally at Potter’s door to take him out or relay news. Ginevra stopped by briefly and had a loud conversation with Harry in his foyer. Draco couldn’t catch much but he heard snippets that sounded like “Ron”, “party favours” and “dehydration.”
Harry ran a running narrative of all his guests to Draco; introducing him to his friends, his godson, Teddy, whom he babysat on Saturdays, and even the occasional man or woman he would bring home late at night. After the first week, he no longer had to bandage Draco up, but Harry would still read The Great Gatsby to Draco on the couch at night. They moved on to Pride and Prejudice after that, and then finally David Copperfield.
A month into Draco’s strangely domestic incarceration, Harry sat him down at the dinner table. He’d finally convinced him to rest on his shoulders, but Draco only reluctantly resisted his urge to wrap his tail around Harry’s neck a little too tight.
“I’m leaving you,” he said solemnly. Draco would have laughed if he could at the seriousness in which Harry said this.
“It’s just for four nights, so the woman across from my flat said she’d feed you twice a day and check in on you ever so often. You will be alone, I’m afraid. I didn’t want to, but Linda said it was my turn representing the Ministry at the International Convention of Equality for Witches and Wizards.”
It occurred to Draco that Harry was talking about his job, of which he did surprisingly little. Harry talked about everything—the news, the weather, his friends, a new cooking magazine he found at his local bookstore, and, weirdly enough, Draco.
He’d received another letter from Narcissa a day before, which made him smile. Draco didn’t have time to read it before Harry stuffed it in his breast pocket.
“I wonder where he is,” Harry had mused. Draco was still technically missing, to the public’s knowledge.
Pansy must miss me terribly, Draco had thought suddenly. He felt an ache in his chest; though he’d rather walk through a thousand Hexes than admit it, he looked forward to seeing her sharp, black bob and wicked eyes.
“Hopefully not dead,” Harry had said. “He was a prat at Hogwarts, but I never even got to have that tea Narcissa wanted me to have with him.”
“I’ll be back Friday evening,” said Harry, drawing Draco out of his thoughts. “So please be nice to Natalie, no biting please.”
Draco was used to being alone. He’d had a fling with a couple men in his youth, and of course he and Pansy fooled around during school (this they laugh fondly about over wine) but he was most content when he was solitary. It gave him time to think and not be bothered by the busy, shrill attacks of everyone else in his life.
He reminded himself of this the second night of Harry’s departure. That woman, Natalie, had dutifully fed him each morning and night, but besides that, Draco was completely alone. He spent the first night reveling in this freedom that he had lacked for an entire month. He worked out the controls on the tv and finally got to catch up on Love Island, a horrible reality show that had come out just the year before and that Pansy had hooked him on. He gave himself an even more thorough inspection of Harry’s house and ate all the smoked salmon Harry had left in the cupboard and specifically told Draco not to eat.
But it was the third night already and Harry had finished all of Love Island. He desperately wanted to know what happened to Count Vronsky and Anna Karenina—he’d never read any of the Muggle classics as a kid and only through Harry had he started learning about this whole new magical realm of storytelling. By the fourth night, Draco was rewatching The Great British Bake Off for the seventh time and sucking on some kind of mystery jerky he’d found in the back of Harry’s cupboard.
He had to remind himself to revert back to his unenthusiastic demeanor when Harry returned the next morning. He tried to seem bored by his return and vaguely shuffled his tail as a welcome. Inside, however, his treacherous heart started singing as Harry pulled out Anna Karenina and offered Draco a lap of his beer. He didn’t even mind when Harry scolded him for eating all his salmon.
Pansy would say you’re getting soft, remarked a voice inside his head. This voice was an old voice that had been appearing since he’d first met Harry, back in the days when he was Potter and had that dumb smile on his face that was never at Draco. This voice, he’d noticed, had subsided that last month that he’d been staying with Harry. Draco politely told the voice to go to hell.