Chapter 1
Draco Malfoy awoke to the sharp antiseptic smell of the hospital wing and let out a sigh. Pansy was going to kill him. As he allowed his eyes to adjust to the dim pink light coming from the windows he realized the sun was going down, and that meant he must have been out for a while as the last thing he could remember was making the long trek up from the dungeons where their first class of the day had been Potions, to their next class which had been Charms. There were dozens of flights of stairs between the two and it hadn't taken long for Draco to start feeling a bit winded, a bit dizzy, and then well he supposed he must have blacked out.
Draco began taking stock of his body, gently flexing each muscle from his head down to his toes, looking for any pain or injuries. So far everything seemed to be in order so Draco reasoned that someone must have managed to catch him and prevent him from falling down the stairs. Draco pulled himself up into a sitting position in the bed, trying his best to ignore the immediate fatigue he felt from such a simple action. But before Draco could really think about it much further, Madame Pomfrey bustled into view, lighting the candles on the walls with a purposeful flick of her wand.
"Mr. Malfoy," she stated, casting a series of spells over him as she immediately got down to business, "Do you remember what brought you here?"
Draco sighed, "I guess I might've passed out on some stairs?" he tried.
Hmmph Madam Pomfry nodded, "You'll be relieved to know that you do not have any signs of spell damage, poisoning, or any injuries. However," and she paused to look at him severely, "You are shockingly malnourished Mr. Malfoy and severely underweight. I am honestly quite surprised that you have not collapsed before now."
Draco hung his head in shame. He already knew all this of course. His mother and his friends had all been telling him the same thing for a while now. Pansy was furious with him for letting it get this bad. But it wasn't like Draco could help it. Contrary to popular belief, Draco wasn't starving himself on purpose, and he didn't have an eating disorder as Pansy called it. Sure Draco cared about his appearance, but he did not desire to be thinner. On the contrary he knew he resembled a skeleton more than a human right now, and he knew it wasn't an attractive look. Draco would love to be a healthy weight again, to have energy again, to stop worrying his mother, and to stop feeling so bloody cold all the time! But he just couldn't eat.
Draco figured that everyone handled the war in different ways. Theo was on anti-depressant potions, Blaise went to therapy, Pansy had doubled down on her harpy tendencies and wouldn't stop mothering them all. Greg had turned to drinking and was struggling to stop. His mother had torn the manor apart, pretty much down to structural supports and was redesigning and rebuilding it from the ground up. His father had had some kind of mental breakdown and was currently in the Janus-Thickey ward. Draco supposed it was better than Azkaban at least.
And Draco, well Draco just couldn't eat. It wasn't that he was physically unable to eat, no his mouth and everything still worked properly. And it wasn't that he wasn't hungry, frankly he was always hungry these days. It was just that every time he sat down and looked at the feast spread across Hogwarts' tables, he became unbearably nauseous. His therapist said it was probably an after effect of watching a giant snake eat people alive on his own dining room table a few too many times, but even though he too had been to therapy and talked it all out, he hadn't yet managed to "fix it". His family had destroyed the sections of their home where the worst atrocities occurred, including the formal dining room. And they'd begun taking all their meals in one of the smaller breakfasts rooms instead, but still Draco's issues with eating had persisted.
He'd managed to learn some tricks to cope with it over the summer while he was still home, avoiding meat was the main one. He pretty much lived off of potatoes, breads, and lots of fruits and vegetables, and as long as he took his meals away from his parents and their meat-filled plates, he'd been fine for the most part. His parents were a little upset that he no longer shared meals with him, but they understood. They even had meatless meals a few times a week so that they could still share meals together. His therapist had called it vegetarianism and given him books about it, which Draco had read and then passed onto the house elves so they could prepare the recipes contained therein.
But then things had gotten a bit trickier. It started with his particularly bad community service assignment. Draco had assumed he'd be spending the summer helping to rebuild Hogwarts, maybe somehow repair some of the damage he had caused. But no, his probation officer thought that would be unfair to those still grieving after the battle. She stated that having him around might make people uncomfortable, (which was stupid because he was required to return to school for the year in the fall anyway, but since when did anyone ever make any sense), and assigned him elsewhere instead.
And where she assigned him was a farm, and not just any farm, it was one of the largest wizarding farms in the UK, that specialized in both dairy and meat production, and was owned by the Smiths. Apparently the family had put in some rather large monetary claims for damages brought about by the war, and the ministry which was loathe to pay out the full amount, offered them partial compensation along with a few years of free labor in the form of probationers like Draco.
The ministry must have thought themselves so clever, avoiding such a large reparation cost while at the same time finding the perfect form of demeaning labor to subject their former criminals too. What could be more degrading then mucking animal feces out of crowded, smelly stalls? And even though the labor was physically exhausting and humiliating, everyone else was relieved for the assignment. After all, anything was better than Azkaban. But it had only taken one week for Draco to decide he might rather have had Azkaban.
For one thing bloody Zacharias, the shittiest excuse for a Hufflepuff Draco had ever met, just absolutely delighted in lording over Draco and the other probationers, (but especially Draco and Greg because he knew them from school). He made sure that Draco and Greg were exclusively on mucking duty every single day, and enjoyed coming to watch them do it and criticize how well it had been done. But more importantly to Draco it was the animals, or rather the treatment of the animals, that made this assignment a special kind of torture. Because that was just it Draco realized. Farming these animals was really akin to torturing them. The first day there, Draco had been horrified to see the crowded, filthy conditions the animals lived in. And day-by-day it had only gotten worse. Draco had watched the various stages that the Smiths put their cattle through.
He'd watched the artificial inseminations of the cattle, hearing the squealing cries of the heifers. Then there was the weaning, seeing just how young the calves still were when they were taken from their mothers was heartbreaking. And then of course there was the milking, the cows in their sad little pens, eating, and milking, and shitting. That was their life. And when they were no longer able to produce the milk anymore, they joined the beef cattle, where they were strung up and slaughtered, stripping them of their meat. Draco had never been more grateful to spend the day mucking shit, at least he hadn't had to help with any of those other tasks.
And although Draco didn't spend anytime in the chicken coops, the Smith's chickens didn't seem to fare much better.
Draco never vomited or feinted at the farm, he'd had far too much practice staring impassively at the horrors committed by Voldemort and Greyback for that, but at home he fell apart and his nightmares worsened. It only made logical sense for him to cut out diary and eggs from his diet after spending a couple of days on the farm. He just couldn't take part in that kind of abuse.
The house elves had taken some convincing to change the way they prepared Draco's food yet again. Gone were the breads Draco had come to count on and all the other baked goods as well. Draco had never really thought about how many things he ate were prepared with milk, butter, or eggs, but once he really set out to eliminate them he suddenly found himself without many options. Draco, who had always been a slightly picky eater, was fast becoming used to some of the veggies he used to turn up his nose at, because he simply didn't have anything else to eat.
But then summer had come to an end. And even though Draco had never been so relieved to be finished with his stay at the farm, returning to Hogwarts proved to bring on a whole new host of challenges.
Because it seemed that, at Hogwarts, every single dish was in some way prepared with animals. Even the vegetables were either prepared with butter or cream or smothered in gravy. Other than the fresh fruit that was laid out at breakfast, Draco simply didn't have anything else to eat.
And he'd tried. He'd swallowed down his bile from eating shared meals in the Great Hall with all the other students who were stuffing their faces full of meat, and found a spell that allowed him to identify if a dish contained any animal proteins. Unfortunately everything on the Slytherin table continued day after day to light up red. He'd also tried turning to nutrition potions, but to his horror he discovered that their main ingredient was milk. And so he ate fruit, every morning at breakfast and stuffed his bag full of more fruit to snack on the rest of the day, and that was it. That was all Draco had to eat. He was simply stuck.
But when he tried explaining this to Madam Pomfry she had merely shaken her head at him and exclaimed, "Well if you wanted so badly to be a vegan Mr. Malfoy you should have just said! The house elves are more than competent enough to learn to accommodate any kind of dietary restrictions here at Hogwarts, there is simply no excuse to go on starving yourself!"
"What's a vegan?" Malfoy had asked and stared at her perplexed.
"What's a- Oh heavens help us," Madam Pomfrey had murmured shaking her head and turning to walk away.
She had returned about an hour later with a nutrient potion that she insisted was not made with milk. She'd also explained that Draco would need to drink 3 a day for a month along with full-sized meals in order to put back on some weight. And then she had summoned an elf named Winky to escort him down personally to the dungeon kitchens to meet another student who she explained was also a vegan and apparently much smarter about it than Draco, because they had been working with the elves to make healthy vegan meals.
Draco tried not to feel bitter about that. It wasn't like he hadn't tried working with the elves to make safe meals for himself at home. He had just assumed that his pickiness would not be welcome at a school that he had once had a hand in attacking, and he hadn't wanted to call any additional attention to himself.
When Draco entered the kitchens he immediately noticed two things. One, all the dinner foods and things had thankfully already been cleared, and two, Harry Potter was currently standing at a stove stirring a big pot of something.
He turned around once Winky called for his attention and his draw dropped as soon as he saw Draco.
"It's You?!" both Draco and Harry exclaimed at the same time.
"What's me?" Draco replied at the same time that Harry said,
"What's that supposed to mean?"
After they had gotten through the awkward initial discussion that yes Harry was the vegan student working with the elves to make vegan meals, and yes Draco was the student who had collapsed in the hall and according to Madam Pomfrey needed both a crash course in how to actually eat food as a vegan, but also needed to put on a significant amount of weight.
Discussion aside, Draco had to admit that whatever Harry was cooking smelled absolutely divine, and if Madame Pomfrey was to be believed, it was 100% safe and guilt-free to eat. Draco's mouth had started to water in anticipation as he perched on a stool at the table beside Harry and watched in awe as Harry added a pinch of salt here and a few sprigs of herbs there. Before long he was ladling two heaping bowls of what Draco realized was some sort of hearty stew, and also pulling out a thick loaf of bread from the oven and smearing it with a layer of- butter?
"Don't worry," Harry explained, "it's not real butter, it's margarine. It's made from vegetables. And same with the bread, it's made with flax seed and almond milk, absolutely no eggs or dairy."
Draco was a bit skeptical, but then again he had on at least two occasions trusted Harry with his life, so he supposed he could trust him with his food. As he took a bite of the stew he couldn't help but moan in pleasure. It was so rich and warm and tasty and filling, with thick cuts of potato, beans, and veggies. And the bread, the bread was so fluffy and yeasty it practically melted in his mouth even without the addition of the margarine, which Draco decided was tasty as well.
As they ate their fill, Harry cleared his throat.
"So why veganism?" He asked peering curiously at Draco.
Draco grimaced, "Well the short answer is I don't want to hurt anyone or anything anymore even for food. But the long answer is," he swallowed and sat back, "I spent a lot of time last year watching the Dark Lord feed people to his snake on my dining room table and well once you realize we are meat, it kind of ruins meat for you, forever..."
Harry nodded, "and the dairy? Eggs?"
Draco shifted uncomfortably, "Well I spent the summer working on the Smith's farm and- Well, I didn't like what I saw I guess. I didn't want to take part in it."
Harry nodded again. "Makes sense," he said continuing to eat his stew.
"What about you?" Draco asked returning to his own stew.
Harry shrugged, "I spent the summer with the Weasleys," he explained, and I love them I do, but I had decided to help Molly a bit on the farm and, I watched her butcher one of the chickens, and then another day I watched her and Arthur separate one of the heifers from her calf so they could keep her as a milk cow, and both times I just- I just felt awful."
He was quick to defend them though, "Don't get me wrong I think the Weasleys are wonderful people, but I can't- I can't hurt an animal myself, and I don't think it's fair to expect someone else to hurt one for me so I can eat meat or drink their milk. I'd just rather not have any part of any of it you know?"
Draco nodded. "Same," he said, "I don't want any part of it either, even if I could turn a blind eye and just stick to grocery shops and avoid farms the rest of my life, I would know now what's really going on, and I can't live with that."
Harry nodded.
They finished their dinner and attempted to clean up the dishes, but the elves were having none of it and shooed them out of the kitchen.
"Do you want to meet up here again for breakfast in the morning?" Potter asked, "Or do you want me to just have the elves send you up some safe food to the Slytherin table?"
Draco thought for a moment, he had enjoyed watching Harry cook, and the company hadn't been bad either. "I think I'll join you," he said, and smiled.
Potter for his part held out his hand, "Well then I'll see you in the morning," he said.
Draco hesitated for a moment, flash backs of a rejected handshake so long ago flashing through his head, but he finally reached out and grasped Harry's hand. "See you then."