Harry’s cleaning out the attic when he finds the letter. The cream paper is wrinkled and worn, like it’s been crumpled in a ball and thrown away, only to be rescued at the last minute. He assumes it belongs to one of Sirius’s ancestors. After all, everything he’s found so far has.
The room is chock-full of legal documents and wedding certificates. All hundreds of years old. Nothing Harry cares about. He glances at the letter in his hand and is tempted to chuck it in the throw-away pile to the left without even looking at it, but he stops himself at the last minute. Sighing, he reminds himself that he doesn’t want to accidentally throw away anything important.
He presses the delicate paper flat against his thigh and unfolds it quickly, not wanting to waste time on a silly old letter. He holds it up to the thin light drifting through the dusty window and squints, trying to make out the tightly scrawled cursive. Something catches in his chest, the font looks almost familiar. His eyes skip over the text searching for a signature. When he reaches it, he freezes. His heart turns to stone in his chest. There clear as day scrawled hurriedly on the bottom of the parchment is the name Draco Malfoy.
Harry sits in silence for what feels like several minutes. His breath catches in his chest, it feels almost painful to breathe. Suddenly he’s back three years sitting at Draco’s trial. Watching the way his grey eyes shutter when they sentence him.
Harry shakes himself. Focuses on the hard wooden floor beneath him. Focuses on the way the weak sunlight falls through the window. Focuses on the texture of the parchment beneath his fingers. When he can finally breathe out, calm and steady, he shakes himself. His eyes quickly flick to the heading of the letter. There in the same scrawled ink the letter opens with Dear, Severus Snape.
For a second Harry feels almost let down, because of course Malfoy had communicated with Snape during the war, everyone knew that. He sits still for a second feeling silly.
Then, because he can’t quite help himself he starts to read the contents of the letter. About five sentences in Harry’s heart start to race. This is no normal communication he’s dealing with. Laid out in careful calligraphy are details of intricate battle plans and lists of weaknesses.
Harry leans back on his heels, his whole world tiling on its axis. If he's reading correctly Draco wasn’t on the wrong side of the war. In fact, Draco might be one of the reasons they won.