Harry was barely awake and glad of it. Lurking in the shadows, he watched Hermione scurry over the platform with a degree of animated intensity that was painful to witness, much less experience first-hand. She’d insisted on getting here early, at an hour that’d sounded ungodly when she’d proposed it last night. But when he was finally fed up with staring gritty-eyed at the ceiling, he’d shuffled into the kitchen and found her already perched at the table, tea in hand. Insomnia was another thing they had in common these days. Hermione had tried to play it off as first-day-of-school nerves, and he hadn’t called her bluff, but both of them knew better. They’d made it to the station well ahead of schedule.
As she herded and fussed over the sparse crowd of students, he found himself wondering again if this was all a mistake. Hermione was so determined to go back. He understood the impulse, and he wouldn’t leave her to go it alone; she’d stuck by him for years, after all, through much worse than a year of school. But he was afraid she was in for a heartbreak when the reality couldn’t live up to her memories.
The roar of an engine grew louder, and with a final squeal of metal on metal, the Hogwarts Express pulled in. For a brief, shining moment, it washed over Harry again; the wonder, the anticipation he’d always felt. Magic exists, he reminded himself. Magic exists, and you have it. It infected the rest of the crowd as well, a current of excitement that sent everyone into motion.
Then a series of cracks rang out.
There were screams, and the world went blurry for a split second before zooming back into high focus with a dizzying speed. Harry’s wand was in his hand without a thought. A phalanx of aurors had appeared at the farthest end of the platform, and a stomach-churning surge of adrenaline and dread struck him at the sight. Still, he moved closer, fighting against the retreating crowd. No, not aurors, he realized; these were Azkaban guards, and one slight figure was stooped in their center. The white-blonde hair had dulled, and he was dressed in a shapeless grey sack, but Harry would recognize Draco Malfoy anywhere.
One of the guards swept past Malfoy, knocking the boy in the back of the knee and sending him to the ground. The uniformed men saluted as a unit and then disappeared in a second round of percussion. It was dead silent in their wake, and after a stunned moment, Malfoy dragged himself up to a crouch. Scanning the crowd with unblinking eyes, he was breathing so hard that Harry could see his chest working from across the platform. His feet were bare, and Harry wanted to look away almost as much as he needed to stare.
It didn’t take long for the whispers to start. The fear in the crowd soured to disgust, then turned quickly to anger.
“Harry,” Hermione hissed, jerking her chin in Malfoy’s direction. She expected him to intervene, and honestly, he already knew that he would, but he took a moment to imagine staying put and letting it happen. Did he always have to be the one people counted on to come to the rescue? But no, mobs weren’t justice, and there were kids everywhere. He wouldn’t have their first day ruined before it even began. Sighing, he pulled himself from the perimeter, but he was too late. Hermione sailed through the crowd with her head held high and shoulders back, all the considerable authority she possessed radiating outward.
“Ah, Malfoy,” she said once she reached him, like she was expecting him to be here. Like this was just another box to tick off on the schedule. He only stared in response.
“Death Eater,” someone hissed behind them, loud enough that Harry could hear, and Hermione hooked her arm through Malfoy’s and tugged, guiding him toward the train. Resigned, Harry followed. This would only cause trouble for the two of them, but he wouldn’t let the whole catastrophe rest on her shoulders.
“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” Hermione continued, her tone conversational and light as they plunged through the sea of hostile faces. Something flew through the air just as they stepped onto the train, and Malfoy flinched. Pushing her charge safely on through, Hermione turned to give the crowd the full force of her glare, then disappeared after him. Harry paused at the car’s entrance to face the crowd himself. He should say something, put a stop to this somehow. There was a hush, every eye fixed on him, but in the end, all he could do was shake his head and follow Hermione.
A pale hand snaked out as he stepped into the dark interior. If Harry hadn’t known her as well as he did himself, Hermione would’ve gotten herself hexed with that move. She’d hauled Malfoy into the first empty car they came to. Dragging Harry in as well, she slammed the door behind him, casting a spell to shut out the noise of the station. Malfoy just stood there, eyes blank. Hermione led him to a row of seats.
“Go ahead and sit down,” she told him.
Malfoy sat. He still had that perfect, pureblood posture, but that was all Harry could recognize of the boy he’d known before. He looked ghastly. Thinner than Harry’d ever seen him, which was saying something, bony limbs escaping from the rags they’d dressed him in. His hair had been roughly shorn, patches of scalp peeking through, and he was streaked with grime. It was obvious here in the closed air of the cabin that hygiene wasn’t a priority in prison.
A bang at the door made it through the silencing spell, and all three jumped. Hermione gasped; Malfoy had turned his head toward the noise, and a streak of blood was visible in his fair hair.
“They’ve hit you,” she said, pulling out her wand. “May I?” After a long pause, he nodded, and she healed the small wound. “There,” she said, with forced cheer. “I wish someone had told me you’d be coming today. I would’ve seen to it that there wasn’t such a spectacle.”
A spectacle was exactly what they were going for, Harry suspected. His eyes caught again on Malfoy’s bare feet, and he felt a wave of emotion that he couldn’t quite grasp. It was like a shadow moving beneath deep water; it was huge, but it couldn’t touch him.
“It’s beyond irresponsible,” Hermione was muttering into his ear. “Who knows what would’ve happened if we hadn’t been there? Any number of people could’ve gotten hurt! And Malfoy was an utter bastard, but it’s despicable to treat him like this.”
“Hermione,” he said. “Breathe.” Her nostrils flared, but she took a deep inhale.
“It’s supposed to be better,” she said. “Why do I always have to be the one who has to step in and rise above? Even now. Why can’t the world just meet me halfway sometimes?” She sighed, then shook her head, becoming Professional Hermione once more. “But enough of that. I’m going to finish loading the train,” she told Harry. “You stay here with Malfoy.”
Malfoy glanced up, a lightning-quick flash of grey that was just long enough for Harry to see a spark of alarm.
“I’ll lock the door behind me,” she assured him, “and Harry will be here the whole time.”
Harry had a feeling that was not the comfort she intended it to be. She stepped outside and then popped her head back in. “Fetch him a change of clothes, would you, Harry?”
“How—“ he started, and her eyes narrowed.
“Is a simple chore too much for you, Chosen One?”
“No,” he sighed, crossing his arms over his chest, and she gave him another glare before slamming the door behind her. Then it swung open again.
“Sorry,” she said to Malfoy, and shut it gently.
Face flaming, for some reason, Harry Accio’d a tee shirt and a pair of joggers, then paused. Should he get some shoes? He didn’t think their feet were the same size. Merlin, should he get him pants? Surely not. After a moment’s consideration, he decided yes on the shoes, because, after all, he was a wizard who could transfigure them to fit, and a pair of socks as well, but a definite no on the pants. The idea of Malfoy bare beneath Harry’s clothes—he grimaced. It was uncomfortable, to put a fine point on the sheer chaos erupting beneath his skin, but handing over his underwear was a good deal worse.
He flung the lot at Malfoy with a spell, and Malfoy flinched horribly, because unexpectedly tossing objects at someone recently traumatized was, upon second thought, a crap idea. He was useless, and it was a relief that his only remaining duty was to continue to exist. He could do that. Probably.
Silence crowded in after Hermione’s departure. Malfoy’s face was expressionless, but his eyes were alert, and Harry searched the cabin for something to say. Then he remembered Malfoy could fuck off, and he could sit back and enjoy the quiet. And stare him down, if he felt like it. The wrongness of it, posh Malfoy in rags, kept drawing his eye, like his brain couldn’t make sense of the conflicting information. And his bloody feet! They were slender and filthy, and Malfoy kept trying to tuck them under the seat and out of sight. Something about it was driving Harry insane.
How many times over the last few years had he wanted to see just this? Draco Malfoy, punished and brought low. The sight didn’t bring him the satisfaction that fifth-year Harry would’ve expected. Of course, he’d already sliced Malfoy open; that’d probably more than filled his quota for revenge. In fact, looking at him now was uncomfortably like staring down at him on the bathroom floor all over again. He felt the same mix of horror and shame and his ever-present, much-hated need to fix it.
Malfoy had his eyes fixed on the clothes in his lap, but now he gingerly placed them on the seat next to his, and Harry snorted, relieved to feel all those unnamable emotions boil down to annoyance. Even an Azkaban uniform was better than his things, apparently.
“Thank Merlin,” he muttered when Hermione finally returned, her arms laden from the trolley. She gave them both a smile, then paused midstream in a story about a clumsy second-year to turn to Harry.
“You didn’t find him anything to wear?”
“‘Course I did,” he huffed. “Just nothing good enough for him, apparently.”
Hermione glanced at Malfoy, then gave Harry an unaccountably dark look.
“I know you don’t have your wand back yet,” she said. “Perhaps you’d a cleaning charm?”
Another pause, gaze darting toward Harry and quickly away, and he nodded, looking entirely defenseless as he scrunched his eyes shut at the sight of Hermione once again waving her wand at him.
“Sorry, mine aren’t the best,” she lied, when the first barely scratched the surface of the filth they’d left him to rot in. “Sometimes it takes a few tries to really work. There now. Would you like to get changed?”
Another wide-eyed, Oliver Twist-urchin nod, and Hermione took Harry painfully by the wrist and hauled him outside, casting an angry Muffliato.
“Your clothes weren’t good enough for him?” she hissed, and he shifted on his heels.
“Well, what else was I supposed to think?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Harry, how about anything logical?”
“You’re the logical one,” he muttered, and she huffed.
“That’s true enough.” Her eyes softened. “I know it’s not easy, being back. And then seeing him. But try to think of him as someone else, just some stranger—he’s really not the boy we used to know right now. Probably none of us will be the same.”
He leaned against her, wrapping an arm over her shoulders. “Definitely not. Now we’re legal drinking age.”
She rolled her eyes at his lame attempt at a joke, but she didn’t look as forlorn, either. “Do you think he’s done in there? We should’ve set some kind of signal.”
Harry made a face, an expression he suddenly realized was his thinking-of-Malfoy-naked face, and a sad noise escaped him at the thought.
“What?” Hermione asked.
“It’s just—he might be naked in there.” Now it was Hermione’s turn to make a face, the excessively familiar has-Harry-finally-lost-the-plot frown. “Just saying,” he concluded lamely.
“Yes, you did. Unfortunately.”
Hermione set an alarm for five more minutes, “just in case,” though in case of what, he wasn’t quite sure—Malfoy’d likely never encountered joggers before, that was true, but they were near enough to trousers in practice. She gave a gentle knock, waited another thirty seconds, and then they were back inside. Where Draco Malfoy was, no big deal, wearing his clothes. Harry’d heard himself referred to as “scrawny” more than a few times over the years, but his shirt swallowed Malfoy’s skinny frame, and his apparently much longer legs poked past the hem of Harry’s joggers. At least now he had some fucking shoes on.
Thankfully oblivious to Harry’s existential distress, Hermione transfigured an empty seat into a table and started unpacking her bounty. She floated a cup of ginger tea Malfoy’s way without comment, and he wrapped his fingers around the paper cup, watching steam waft before taking a small sip. He didn’t say anything, but his shoulders loosened a fraction. Shoulders that were clad in Harry’s Weird Sisters tee, which had a hole under the left armpit, Harry now noticed.
“I didn’t have time for breakfast, and I’ve been chasing first-years around the platform all morning,” Hermione said, pretending to explain herself to Harry. “Although I’ve possibly bitten off more than I can chew.”
This time she floated a slice of toast over. Again, Malfoy stared at it, then pounced, taking small, methodical bites until it was gone.
Were they seriously all going to pretend that everything was normal? Hermione was probably dealing with it so well because she wasn’t aware of the pantsless part of the equation. Was there a subtle way to tell her? No, he finally decided, nodding at whatever she was saying. Sweet Salazar, he was practically naked over there! Technically everyone was naked underneath clothes, he knew, he’d just never known it so powerfully before.
Hermione pulled out her book, paying no mind at all as she sent the second half of her sandwich to Malfoy, then an apple and some biscuits, and cup after cup of tea. As if this was something they did every day. God, Harry loved her. She was so purely good sometimes, in a way he could never quite manage to be.
Malfoy leaned back a little in his seat after cleaning their plates, looking considerably more alive but also more tired. Harry watched him sway with the movement of the train, eyes drifting closed and then open again. It’d been so hard for Harry to relax after the forest and the battles, after being on guard for so long. It had to be much the same after Azkaban.
Hermione stood as the train slowed. “Why don't you two stay here while I get the younger ones to Hagrid?” she suggested. While she dispersed any angry mobs, Harry interpreted, and he didn't argue.
Once given the all-clear, she directed Harry to follow behind while she walked with Malfoy, keeping him in both their sights. He knew the moment Malfoy spotted Luna because he froze in place.
She stepped away from the thestral she'd been patting to look Malfoy over. The two blondes watched each other, Luna looking ethereal and curious and Malfoy like a frightened rabbit. Both fair and willowy, they favored even more now, Harry thought, his hollowed-out features lending him the same cartoon-baby-animal eyes.
"Hullo, Draco. Did you have a good trip?" Luna finally asked, as if he were no different from any other student in any other year. His head jerked in what could be assent.
"Mine as well," she said, drifting toward the carriage, and she kept up a stream of chatter through most of the journey. She finished a detailed account of her trip to a Slavic retreat for spiritual rejuvenation and troll hunting (“to document, of course”) before turning to Hermione. "And how about you, Hermione? How was your summer?"
"Oh, fine," Hermione said, skating over the months of funerals and flashbacks. "Are you excited for the feast?"
Luna considered. "I might not be ready for that much of a crowd."
That landed them squarely in the midst of topics Hermione, and Harry too, admittedly, most wanted to avoid, and they sat in silence for the rest of the ride.
“I have to finish up with prefect duties,” Hermione said as Harry helped her out of the carriage. “Could you get Malfoy to the hospital wing?”
“The hospital wing?”
“Yes, Harry, the hospital wing. Where we take emaciated former prisoners with head injuries.”
“Right,” he sighed. Of course, he’d need the hospital wing; he looked a fright, and the stunt on the platform didn't exactly point to humane treatment. Harry hadn't thought about it because he hadn't wanted to. The year was starting out crap already, and feeling sorry for Malfoy would do nothing to improve it.
He didn’t bother to hide his dissatisfaction as they trudged through the empty castle. His homecoming was ruined by proximity to a recently-naked Malfoy, and literally everyone else was at the feast. Now, Harry would be the first to say that he’s no hero (he’d said it multiple times just today, in fact), and the war was won thanks to years of service and sacrifice from countless wix who deserved to be celebrated just as much, if not more; but, let’s face it, he did play a fairly key part in the whole thing. Wasn’t it only fair that he should be celebrating in the Great Hall? But no, service was his middle name, even to bullying, pinch-faced gits.
They’d started out plenty slow, but Harry kept having to stop to accommodate Malfoy’s snail’s pace. Even so, he was struggling, a sheen of sweat on his brow and limbs trembling. Not a lot of physio in Azkaban, apparently. He swayed on the stairs, and Harry thought he might have to rescue the poor bastard again, but Malfoy gripped the banister and leaned, panting. Harry didn’t offer to help. Not out of spite, he told himself, but because Malfoy was proud and condescension would hurt him just as much as splattering his brains on the landing.
They made it to the infirmary before Malfoy buckled over, but Harry judged it was a near thing based on the way he collapsed into bed. Pomfrey was in a steely-eyed fit over his condition, and in the one-woman commotion, Harry somehow found himself corralled at Malfoy’s bedside. He cleared his throat, ready to explain that he was an escort and not a visitor, but he withered under the healer’s stare. He’d just wait ’til she was done, then.
“Everyone is at the feast, Mr. Potter, and I’ll need an extra set of hands. Fetch my potions case, please. It’s on the shelf closest to the door in my office.”
Harry fetched as bid, of course, manfully saving his sigh until he was out of Pomfrey’s earshot, and stuck around for all the rest of the grunt work. Malfoy bore the treatment silently, eyes wide and lips shut tight. Harry was desperate to go, but once Pomfrey allowed him to sit, he slumped deeper and deeper into himself, the background noise of the sick ward fading away.
Malfoy’s voice pulled him out.
“What’s that?” he rasped. Pomfrey was trying to hand him a small vial. “You’ve told me what everything else was for. What’s that one?”
“A potion to help you sleep.”
“No,” he said, turning his head away. Both lofty and childish, as only Malfoy could be.
“Come now,” she tutted, “you need your rest. You can’t heal if you don’t sleep.”
“I’ll do just fine on my own, thanks.”
“Mr. Malfoy,” she said, in an only slightly gentler version of her usual brusque manner, “it doesn’t take Healer training to see you’re exhausted, and there’s no shame in needing some extra help to rest after the ordeal you’ve been through.”
“I’ll go to sleep right now. I was only waiting on you to finish up.” He closed his eyes dutifully while Pomfrey stood over him, arms crossed.
“I’m going to check on another patient, and if you’re not sound asleep by the time I’m back, you’re taking the potion.”
He made a sound of acknowledgement, eyes still shut, and Pomfrey strode away, muttering to herself. Harry watched, unaccountably fascinated at what he might do next, but Malfoy’s eyes blinked open. They were looking right into his, and Harry turned away, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“What are you doing here, Potter?” There wasn’t as much of an edge to his voice as Harry remembered, though whether he was less of a wanker or only too tired to express it, Harry didn’t know.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” he countered, since he didn’t have a good answer.
“How could anyone sleep with all the fussing going on?” He kicked at the sheets, shifting uncomfortably.
“No one’s fussing now,” Harry pointed out.
“No, but the saviour of the wizarding world is posted at my bedside.”
“Find me stimulating, do you?”
“A bloody nuisance, more like,” he scoffed.
Silence fell. Harry pretended he wasn’t looking at Malfoy, and Malfoy continued to pretend he wasn’t on the verge of sleep. He moved every time his eyes started to close, Harry noticed, rolling over or rearranging his pillow, and he couldn’t figure out what the git was up to. Did Malfoy actually find him too intimidating? It was an interesting thought, and he settled more comfortably into his chair, determined to find out. Malfoy looked up at the rustling.
“Do you mind?”
“Not at all. Take your nap, Lord Malfoy.”
“How can I, with you breathing down my neck?”
“What are you waiting on, a lullaby?”
“Just some peace and quiet,” he snapped.
Brisk footsteps headed toward them, and Harry saw a glimpse of what looked like actual fear in the other boy’s eyes before he snapped them closed. Pomfrey watched the performance for a few seconds, then cleared her throat. Malfoy’s lids fluttered slowly apart. It was a passable acting job, had he been a cyborg who’d never seen humans sleep before.
“Time’s up,” she told him, holding out the bottle.
“No, you’re right, I’m quite tired already. It’s truly not necessary.”
“If it wasn’t necessary, you would’ve been out with the first dose of painkiller.”
“I think I’m allowed to decide when I sleep or not.” His voice rose and he pulled himself up to sitting.
“Lie back down,” Pomfrey commanded, “and allow me, the professional, to make the calls on your health.”
His breath was coming hard and fast, eyes darting around the large room. He was genuinely frightened, Harry realized. He imagined himself in the same position, ill and vulnerable with only curtains to shield him, knowing he’d be unable to wake.
“I’ll stay,” he heard himself volunteer, like the hopeless nutter he was. Based on the impressive stretch of his eyebrows, Malfoy agreed with the assessment of his mental health.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” he explained, “so you can get some sleep.”
Malfoy continued to stare him down with utter derision, but he also held out an imperious hand for the bottle and took it in one gulp, another flash of panic surfacing after it was done.
“Wonderful,” said Pomfrey. “Sleep well, and you’ll find yourself much improved in the morning.”
She gave Harry a nod of thanks and left him to it.
The potion took hold almost immediately. Malfoy’s frame went liquid, eyelids now fluttering for real, and it took visible effort to peel them open again. His head lolled and then righted, and his limbs moved in a sluggish impression of his earlier restlessness. It almost hurt to watch him fight the sedative.
“I’m not leaving,” Harry said.
Malfoy turned toward him, his eyes searching and desperately sad, and Harry held his gaze, trying to look as trustworthy. He let his eyes close for longer and longer, jolting awake and succumbing again almost immediately. Finally, finally, his eyes stayed shut. The frown eased and he looked like a younger version of himself, albeit a more innocent one than Harry’d ever encountered.
He’d wait a few minutes longer, just to be sure, and then he’d go.
He was awoken sometime later by soft voices. His neck was killing him, bent at a wrong angle to prop against the bloody wall—had he not earned the privilege of a real bed by now? But he didn’t dare move, his need to eavesdrop taking precedence over physical comfort. It was a problem, alright, but it’s not like he hadn’t had plenty of reason to pick up the habit.
“What happened to him?” asked Professor—Headmistress McGonagall, some of the tension in his spine giving way at the sound of her familiar brogue, and Pomfrey clicked her tongue.
“Nothing good, to be sure.”
Now he wished he could close his ears. He didn’t want to know what happened to Malfoy, and he tried to block the words out, but it wasn’t much use. He kept catching snippets of diagnoses anyway. Hermione was right about the malnourishment, of course. A bad break in his wrist needed to be reset. He finally got the idea to start humming in his head, repeating the same few bars of “God Save the Queen,” but Pomfrey carried on for quite a while, which was telling enough.
“Will you file a suit?” the healer asked, once she’d finally concluded.
“How can we prove what happened there and what was Voldemort?”
Harry cringed at the reminder. It wasn’t only the few months since the final battle, which was bad enough; he’d probably been living through years of violence.
“He’s had a rough go of it.”
Now Harry wanted to snort, his sympathy gone. As he should have! As he signed up for! But he truly hadn’t, had he? Merlin’s balls, but he didn’t want to think about any of this.
“I admit, Poppy, after I’d written to the Ministry to propose this release, I’d worried it was a mistake. And then the scene at the station—obviously, it was the right call, but it all seemed quite hopeless. What type of world are we still? Voldemort’s gone, so they take revenge on a boy?” Again, Harry bristled; Malfoy wasn’t some blameless child. “But seeing Harry here—my word. If this pair, two of the stubbornest mules I’ve come across in all my years in education, can put aside their differences, then we might have rather a lot to hope for after all.”
His anger deflated, and now came irritation laced all the more irritatingly with shame. He had to either suck it up and tolerate Malfoy or let down McGonagall’s hopes for the future. One would think he’d provided enough hope for a lifetime, but now this!
The two ladies walked away, still deep in conversation, and Harry stretched out his neck, hearing the bones pop. He looked at Malfoy. It was difficult from here, it was true, to remember he was a git. He looked…peaceful. Almost sweet, with the tension gone from his face and his lashes against his cheeks. He wouldn’t have noticed the lashes except they were quite long for a boy, which was surely on Malfoy and not Harry. He would simply see how it went, he decided. If Malfoy could be halfway decent, Harry would meet him there. But for tonight, he didn’t have to like it. He’d known this wasn’t going to be the peaceful year they’d been longing for.
And to add insult to injury, he never got his fucking shirt back, though he came to be much fonder of seeing Draco in it.