Lavender

Draco hasn’t slept easy since he was a child, so he was quite used to thinking about Harry Potter late into the night, saviour of the wizarding world and all that. Except the saviour of the wizarding world wants to now live with a death eater. 

Former death eater. 

He considered owling the boy and straight up refusing, he considered faking his death, taking in a good deal of polyjuice and moving to Uzbekistan, he also considered oblivating Rita skeeter, and somehow my man here found himself waking up early the next day and stuffing his scarce belongings into a large gray suitcase. Thinking about it, almost everything he owned was monochrome, shades of gray seemed to take over his room. Quite metaphoric he thought to himself as he paid the innkeeper, the way his life seemed to be painted in gray right now. Draco Malfoy did think of himself as the pinnacle of wit. 

Half past eleven and Draco yet again is knocking on the brown door of a certain ‘Barney Weasley’

“Honestly thought you wouldn't come,” Harry Potter says, opening the door wider for Draco who waves his hand towards his suitcase, which then levitates itself beside the couch. Finally he turns to look at Harry. 

Harry annoyingly hadn’t turned impeccably awful looking in the one day they hadnt seen each other, stupidly tousled hair and warm dark skin and stupid, stupid soft mouth. He points at the room on the other side of the kitchen and says, 

“That’s yours.”

“Cheers.” Draco says through gritted teeth, something a little more than adrenaline spikes in his chest and it's just about all he can do from biting down a comment. 

Harry however clearly doesn’t pick up on this, “Tea then?”

“I’m good.” Draco starts lugging his trunk across the living room. 

“C’mon mate you got to live with me, no use being a obtuse fucking asshole about it.”

“I can literally just walk out if you’re going to be such a bitch about it.”

Harry raised an impeccable eyebrow, then without saying a word walks into his room, kettle still on the stove.

Draco sighs, turning the gas off with a flick of his wand. He walks into the room he was told is his, trunk right behind him. 

Nothing in the room is hexed, thankfully. The walls were a pale lavender, promptly changed to plain white almost immediately. A small bed was pushed below a large window, a large shelf sagging at the weight of books adorned the other wall. Potter, a reader, who’d have thought?

Draco charms his clothes into the wardrobe beside the bed. Bleak February sin light streamed into the room. He gets under the duvet, better grab some sleep while he can. 

Except he couldn’t sleep. It seemed like a way of life for six years almost, sleep, wake, hate Potter with a burning passion, sleep, and now he’s living with him. 

Draco doesnt know why he agreed, nothing about a gay saviour was in the prophet (not that he checked.) And he didn’t have a job right now either, so honestly this was the best thing that could’ve happened in a long time. Except is was Harry motherfucking Potter

Draco rolled over groaning, it was going to be a long day, instead of trying to get some sleep he walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out a book at random. ‘The bell jar - Sylvia Plath.’ the cover says.

The next time Draco talks to Harry is at dinner. He had read for a couple of hours, slept for a couple, he was starving. 

“Potter.” He acknowledged

“Malfoy.”

“What’s for dinner?”

“I can’t cook.”

“Awfully helpful, that.”

Harry scowled, sitting on a chair, legs upon the table. “Chinese take-out.”

“What?”

“Muggle thing.”

“Er…?”

“They’re gon’ deliver food to the door Malfoy, catch up.” he picks up a magazine lying on the table beside his feet and flips through lazily, “you know for someone with as many O.W.Ls as yours you’re awfully slow.”

“Shut the fuck up.” Draco groans sitting down himself. The tiny room is soaked in silence for several minutes before a loud noise from the window startles through. 

A snowy white and a rather large eagle owl were both pecking upon the glass. 

“Ulysses!” Draco says at the same time Harry goes “Hedwig!”

Draco frowned as the other let the owls in. “Didn’t your owl die?” he asked rather snootily. 

Harry looked at him with fresh hatred, “broken wing.” he grunted, untying a letter from Hedwig's leg. Ulysses didn’t have anything for him, Draco ruffled for a treat through his pockets anyway. 

“Sirius and Remus might pop by later.” Harry says, unfurling the parchment. 

“Your place mate, i really don't care.”

And with that Draco goes back into his room, slamming the door a tad louder than necessary. 

Well, the friendship thing was going great, he thought to himself bitterly. 

Sirius Black and Remus Lupin did not infact pop by later, Draco for the first time, had something called chicken fried rice, (“the chicken fried the rice?” “eat, malfoy.”) It wasn’t half as bad as he expected, Harry wasn’t being a total dick for a change and it was all good, Draco could almost see life like this everyday.

On the third day of living together Harry told him they need to go out together. 

“For what?” Draco says almost mournfully, “it's perfectly splendid in here.”

“Innit?” Harry sighs, “Hermione reckons I ought to go out a bit with my boyfriend.”

“She knows then?”

“Oh no, you can’t tell her either.”

“Oh bugger off Potter.” Draco lets his head hit the back of the sofa. 

“You’re a prick.”Harry informs him helpfully.

And that’s why Draco Malfoy is wearing a button up blue shirt, two sizes too big with jeans in Downway a good three inches away from Harry. 

“Hold my hand.” the boy hissed under his breath. 

“No.” Draco replied eloquently. 

Harry grabs Draco’s hand, crushing his fingers. “Loosen up, you look like you caught the bloody plague.”

“Well I’ve been near you for four days, it would be quite a surprise if i didn’t.” He is met with a withering gaze when he turns again to look at Harry.

They walked down to Debenhams, hand in hand while Harry talked his bloody ear off. 

“Mrs. Weasley wanted a washing machine, you know? She said it’d be fun dabbling in muggle shit, and Mr. Weasley was ecstatic-”

“Shut.The. Fuck. Up. Please.”

A half hour later when Harry was satisfied about enough wizards and witches seeing them together around he pulls Draco into an alleyway behind a closed pub, apparating from there to his living room, where they’re met with a smiling Hermoine Granger. 

“Well well well, beauty and the beast.” she says, standing up. 

“Now Granger I wouldn’t quite call Potter a beast.” Draco drawls, shrugging off his cloak. 

“Charming as always, Malfoy.” Hermione grins, extending a hand, which Draco shakes. 

“Where’s Weasley then?” Draco asks, sitting down on the sofa, legs on the coffee table while Harry goes into the kitchen to make Hermione a brew. 

“Oh Ron? At home with Rose.”

“Rose?”

Hermione looks at him as though he were quite daft, “our daughter.” she says finally. 

Draco’s eyes widen, “You have a child-? We’re nineteen - you’re nineteen?!”

“Welcome to adulthood.” Hermione shrugged. Now that he looked closer, she did look very tired, dark circles ringed her eyes and her hair was worse than usual.

Adulthood. 

Unlike what he had been promised, Draco found that adulthood smelled like broken promises, overcooked ramen and anxiety. It was scary almost that he was sitting on Harry Potter’s couch, fags in pocket and Hermione Granger had gone up and made a whole baby. Always the overachiever, he smiled to himself.

“How old is she then?”

“Three months.” Hermione’s face lights up as she talks about the child, all rosy and small, ‘her hands are just so wee it kills me.’ she sighs.

Just then Harry comes in, hovering two cups of coffee and a cup of tea, Draco’s cup levitates in front of him impatiently until he grabs it and looks in, 

“Is there milk in this?” he asks, rather disgusted. 

“Don’t go all British on me now.” Harry says leaning back upon the sofa. Hermione frowns. 

“Oh come on Potter let’s not pretend tea with milk in it is any good at all.”

“Not y’all white people complaining about tea  when you stole it from the asians.”

“Okay but mate, think about this rationally, eh?”

“Shut the fuck up Malfoy, drink.”

And so Hermione and Harry resume a conversation about how Longbottom did something or the other while Draco takes an experimental sip, chin jutted out distastely.

It honestly wasn’t half bad, quite rich too, hints of ginger and all.

“Told you you’d like it.” Harry says smugly. 

“Nuh uh.” 

“Eloquent.” Hermione says, and Draco spares her a smile. He didnt want to get all shirty with her again, Draco wasn’t dense, he didn’t live in denial, he knew when he fucked up and he knew he fucked up big with Hermione Granger all those years in school. He knew he should’ve apologised. 

“Where are you working then?” He asks her instead.

“Oh the ministry.” she tucked her hair behind her ear, “department of law enforcement.”

“Going places then?” He says smiling at her. She returns the smile. Draco sits there for a couple more minutes listening to the careless banter between the other two before excusing himself. He drains his cup and levitates it to the sink and closes the door behind him to his room. 

Now Draco wasn’t a stranger to anxiety, going through a war and having an evil goth Peter Woodward living in your house could do that to you. He knew what to do, rubbing ice on his collarbone when he felt all panicky did help sometimes. 

He picks up an empty bottle beside his bed, “aguamenti,” he mutters and the glass fills with water “glacius,” and the water solidifies. He presses the bottle against his neck, deep breaths, deep breath, deep fucking brea-

And he was underwater, deep breaths, he was yelling, he was screaming and no one was listening, that’s what he felt like, deep breaths, no one ever listened, that was the bloody problem, and he could see it plain as day, Dumbledore’s broken body, Katie Bell crying, shaking, screaming, he could see them, cracked bones, stepping over dead bodies, deep breaths.

“Malfoy!” Someone was shaking him, his father’s dead body, someone was calling him. “Oi git! Fuck, come back.” Someone quite certainly lovely by the sounds of it. 

Deep breaths.

He’s vaguely swimming back to focus, he could see dark green eyes staring into his own, like moss on park benches, he thought. 

“Are you here?” Harry asks still shaking him ever so slightly. 

“Huh?”

“Panic attack by the looks of it.” Harry mutters and invites himself a seat next to Draco on the bed, it was his house after all. 

“Oh.” Draco frowns, “oh ok.”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Harry laughs as though he couldn;t believe the man, “oh ok.” he imitates, “c’mon mate.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?” Draco gets up, grabbing the tissue box from the table beside his bed. 

“I dunno.”

“Well.”

Harry lies down on the bed, legs dangling down, Draco goes and lies beside him like the pathetic fuck he is, and he can’t think of anything to say and neither can Harry by the looks of it, so they just lie there in the warm grace of the quaint bubble of silence they had over here.