Chapter 5
He was brought back to reality by a knock on his door. He checked the time and saw it was only 9:30, much earlier than he thought. He crossed the room and opened it, the words telling his mother he wished to be left alone before he saw it was Potter stood there.
“Hey, Draco. I often go to the pub on a friday, with Pansy, and sometimes other Slytherins from our year come. I wanted to ask you to come with me. I wasn't sure if you had seen any of your old friends since returning, so I figured I’d extend an invitation.”
Draco just stood in the doorway and stared at him. Harry saw his friends? Drank with them? Was friends with them?
His heart started to pound again. Harry clearly misunderstood his silence.
“It would be really good if you came, Draco. I would like it.”
It was the hope in his voice that made Draco pause. He had disappointed his mother already, he wasn’t sure if he could bear to see that look on Potter’s face, not when Potter seemed to understand what it was inside Draco that even Draco couldn’t give words to. Not when Potter gave him silence.
He nodded. Once. Harry’s face broke out into a smile that reminded Draco of the colour yellow- the yellow of the daffodils that grew by the river in spring. A yellow that reminded him of home.
-
Potter apparated somewhere and returned sans baby, before taking Draco’s arm for a side along.
The pub Potter apparated them to was quaint looking from the outside, and Draco could hardly believe any Slytherins frequented it until he entered, and saw the racks of wine and the plush velvet seats, the vintage lampshades and boars heads on the wall.
“We’re a bit late” Potter leaned in-and up, Draco hadn’t yet realised the height difference between them, but then again Draco was approaching six foot three, Potter was just an average height- and Draco shivered at the intimacy of breath against his ear. He hadn’t really been that close to another person since the end of the war. It felt weird to be reminded of it.
Then Potter was leading him around a corner into a cozy little cubby of the pub that wasn’t visible from the door. Draco froze. There they were. Pansy, and Blaise, and Theo. he hadn’t expected it to be such a shock, but…
But Pansy wore a pixie cut and eyeliner and a leather top and just exuded a relaxed air that was so at odds with the stuck-up bitchiness she had carried around her like an odour at school. Blaise had a fade that suited him almost too well, and was in a black sweater and tight black jeans. He looked… hot. Somehow, Draco hadn’t expected that.
Even Theo. Even Theo looked so grown up, and Draco still felt seventeen on the inside. He wondered how he looked to them. Could they see inside? See how scared he was? See teenage Draco cowering inside his chest cavity, just wishing to run away?
It was a Slytherin specialty after all. Smell out a weakness and twist the verbal knife in the wound until it bled raw. Suddenly, Draco felt fear. Real, crystallised fear, for the first time since he left for France. He stumbled a step, and felt Potter’s broad, warm hand against his back, steadying him.
“Look who I found” Potter said to the group but it wasn't taunting or mocking it was… gentle. That wasn’t a word he had ever associated with the people sitting in front of him. It wasn’t a word he had ever associated with himself, either.
“Breathe. Sit” Potter murmured behind him, sliding into the booth before pulling Draco down to sit on the end, allowing Draco a clear escape route should he need it.
Blaise pushed over a glass bottle half-full of what looked like lemonade, and Theo conjured two glasses.
“You always were good at finding strays, Potty darling” Pansy purred over the table. Potter grinned at her, a somewhat sultry expression that Draco hadn’t really thought this version of Potter- yellow wearing, baby carrying, happy- capable of. It was unnerving. Draco had a sudden vision of what life may have been like if Potter had sorted Slytherin; it was rumoured he came close.
“Is that how I found you Parkinson? Out by the bins?” Potter shot back, surprising Draco with his wit. Blaise laughed, dry and deep. It was a nice laugh. Draco wondered if he had ever heard it before.
“How are the children, Potty?” Blaise asked, and Draco suddenly wondered if Harry had a family. He had seen the children in the house on his second day here, but there was no evidence of them in Potter’s cottage. Was he divorced, perhaps? Sharing custody with the Weasley’s?
“All wonderful, as always, Blaise. Luna has them tonight. They miss you.” Potter responded, before Draco entirely lost track of the conversation around him.
Luna? His cousin? Harry had shacked up with Luna? That didn't sound right only…
Actually, maybe it did. Luna was always the gentlest soul he had ever encountered and after the war god knows Potter would have needed some gentleness, and perhaps Luna’s special brand of craziness to avoid the craziness of the world around him. It was nice, to think of this new, yellow wearing, happy Potter being a little bit crazy with Luna. it was what they deserved. More than.
He slowly zoned into conversation again, entirely lost. He was surprised he hadn’t been interrogated yet. Maybe Potter had told them not to, or maybe, maybe they just didn’t care that much, the same way he had barely spared any of them a thought in the past three years at least. He wasn’t sure if it was good or bad, this particular brand of uncared for.
When Pansy announced she was leaving, Blaise and Theo stood up to do the same. Draco didn’t even realise his knee was jiggling until he felt Potter’s hand press it down. He was still torn between being relieved no one cared enough to talk to him, and being hurt. He had been gone for seven years, did they really not care enough to ask?
Even with the weight of Potter’s hand, his leg started to shake again. His hands trembled, so he hid them under the table. To his surprise, Potter clasped them both in his. His palm was rough and dry. Shockingly comforting. Draco’s breathing started to return to normal.
“Do come next week won’t you, Draco? Maybe you’ll look less like a deer in headlights and we’ll actually be able to talk to you.” pansy said, stroking a hand down his face as she passed. Oh.
Oh. They were trying to be kind. He had looked as scared as he felt and instead of exploiting that, they had tried to be kind.
Oh.
“Stay, have a drink with me?” Potter asked quietly as the other three put their scarves and coats on. Draco nodded dumbly, and Potter smiled that smile again, the one that made Draco feel like he was back in France.
“This is a real drink, but you can keep on the lemonade, if you want?” Potter placed a glass down in front of Draco after the others had left.
“A real drink?” Draco asked. The liquid in the glass was fizzy, but clear. Did Potter mean it was a wizarding drink?
“I mean it has alcohol in it. it’s a gin and tonic, because you strike me as a gin and tonic kind of person, but I’m happy to drink it.”
Potter had materialised a sweater out of nowhere. It was huge, hanging down his thighs and flopping over his hands. He looked younger. He looked fragile.
“I’ve never had a gin and tonic- why a real drink now?”
“oh.” Potter looked uncomfortable. Draco must have said something wrong. Shit. he wanted that smile back. He felt sweat prickle the back of his neck.
“Pansy, er- after the war Pansy struggled a bit, with alcohol and that. She actually stayed with me for a bit, to get through it, and now we all do an alcohol-free pub night so she still feels normal but stays in recovery. It's nice, but sometimes on a friday night I like a pint. Usually I go to Ron’s for this.”
“Oh.”
Oh.
Draco hadn’t known.
“I didn’t know.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would know. Very few people did. A lot of us went back for eighth year and it was hard, you know? We were all struggling. So we all banded together around it, we all rallied to keep our struggles private. No one knows, outside of our year, about anyone.” Potter was staring into his pint glass morosely, and Draco just wanted that smile back. He didn’t know what to do, now.
He barely talked to anyone in France. He had a handful of friends, they'd do monthly dinners, by-monthly drinks. It was never heavy, not like this.
“Anyone?”
“Yeah I mean like I said, it was hard. Everyone was struggling. There was survivor's guilt, then just normal guilt, we termed it Slytherin guilt, to make it match.” Harry snorted here, but Draco felt like a stone fist was squeezing his stomach.
“Pansy really struggled to reconcile with what she said, at- at the end. It ate her up inside, and she didn’t cope with it very well. Not that she was the only one, mind. None of us really found healthy coping mechanisms back then. I think Neville was high for the whole year. God knows Seamus was.”
Draco was shocked. And… shocked that he was shocked. It shouldn’t be surprising that people found it hard to cope he just…
He thought he would be the least well-adjusted. He thought, purely statistically, that she should be the one coping the worst, and he wasn’t.
He had never been high. He was rarely drunk, he didn’t self-destruct. He had his perfect little life in his little town with his little flat and his little circle. He felt a strange sense of satisfaction at that, but then he saw the pained look in Potter’s eyes and immediately felt guilty for succeeding where others had failed. That wasn’t the person he wanted to be anymore. That wasn’t the person he thought he was.
“Tell me about France.”
The change in conversation was abrupt, but a smile ghosted Potter’s lips and he looked genuinely interested and Draco had finished his gin and tonic and Potter was strangely intoxicating all by himself.
“I live in a small town called Saint- Emillion. I have a little apartment, and I work at a small accounting firm, balancing the books for some of the shops in the town. I get my breakfast everyday from a bakery down the street, and on weekdays I eat lunch with my colleague Delphine. On my way home I drink chocolat chaud at the little cafe near my home.
Once a month my friends and I meet for dinner, and twice a month we meet for drinks.”
Draco’s whole life for the last seven years could be fit into four sentences. He hadn’t realised that before. His life- his perfect, safe life- suddenly felt woefully inadequate.
“I walk by the river, too. It's beautiful. The whole town is- it's beautiful.”
But there was nothing else to say. One more sentence. Five sentences for seven years. A cruelly satisfied voice in the back of his head said ‘at least it isn’t alcoholism’ and Draco flushed with shame. Pansy used to be his friend.
“That sounds lovely.” Potter said. He looked so earnest and it hurt a bit because now he had said it out loud he wasn’t so sure it was lovely. He had no stories, no funny anecdotes. Seven long years- as long as he had spent at Hogwarts- and he had nothing to show for them, other than an indescribably fear whenever he strayed from the box he had built around himself.
He was glad he had taken Potter’s invitation. He was even more glad that Potter had invited him. That Potter deemed him worthy of his time.