Make It Even
Harry had spent the last hour and a half explaining everything he’d ever done to hurt or offend Draco, elaborating in more detail every time Pansy raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrow at him. He actually knew very little about eyebrows, but he could guess that it was perfect. Pansy didn’t seem like the type to settle for anything less.
When he’d finally run out of offenses to list (and he was fairly sure that Pansy was making a list now, at least mentally if not on her napkin), he leaned back in the booth and sighed. It was done. If nothing else, now Pansy could tell him whether or not salvaging this ‘thing’ with Draco was even possible. She’d been relatively silent throughout his monologue, only asking a few clarifying questions every now and then or shooting him a glare when she deemed something a greater offense than everything else. Now was his moment of judgement.
“So, let me get this straight,” She paused to suck down the rest of her third drink, then leveled him with a sharp stare. “You, among other things, have recently accused Draco of murder not once, but twice. You lied about your identity and used a glamour—which I understand, even if I wouldn’t have done the same—but you also witnessed a panic attack. At work, no less. You’ve warded both his office, which he is extremely protective of, and his apartment, which I’m shocked he even let you see, and let’s not forget that you got him involved in a Ministry case without even asking him first. Not to mention the interrogation, which you conducted. Is that all correct?”
Laid out like that, Harry could see how shitty it made him look. He knew that this wasn’t about appearances and that it shouldn’t matter if his own actions made him look bad in front of Pansy Parkinson, the girl who had tried to hand him over to Voldemort, but… Still, it wasn’t that bad, was it? Of course he’d fucked up and he’d admitted as such, but there were good things too, weren’t there?
“There was also that night after we found Ariana’s body.”
Pansy grimaced, but Harry fought to keep his expression neutral. He didn’t like remembering the way grief had rocked through Draco’s slim frame and he didn’t like focusing on the fact that those wounds were by no means healed. Grief was not a one-day kind of ordeal. But he knew now that, even if Draco did break down and sob, the blond would never seek comfort in him.
“Right, my bad. Let’s add ‘orchestrated Draco finding the body of his closest post-war friend besides me’ to the list. And no, Potter, I’m not blaming you for that. You couldn’t have known who she was or what she meant to Draco, but it still isn’t exactly a positive thing, agreed?” Harry nodded. “So now you want me to tell you what you should do.”
He nodded again, but had the decency to avert his eyes to the cup of lukewarm water in front of him. It felt pathetic to sit here in front of someone he’d hardly spoken to since Hogwarts, asking her how to fix what had become one of the most important relationships in his life. For possibly the hundredth time that morning, he wondered if Pansy would even want him to fix it. Would she trust him with Draco? Or would she take the more Slytherin route of protecting her own and tell him to fuck off before he could do any more damage?
“Well, first of all, he spent a year in a holding cell being guarded by Aurors and they were cruel. It’s no wonder he’s uncomfortable around them. For that first year, he had a panic attack at every parole meeting. He will never talk about it and I can’t tell you details, of course, but I thought it was important that you knew. It’s taken a lot for him to even accompany you to the Ministry, let alone to face you in an interrogation room, and I don’t think you appreciate how much trust he’s put in you. Just because it’s not something that triggers you doesn’t mean it won’t trigger him, you know?”
Harry nodded that he did know, but his mind was reeling. Of course Draco wasn’t comfortable around Aurors—he knew that, and even Hemione had picked up on that—but he’d never really stopped to consider why. God he’d really fucked this up…
“What do I do, Pansy?”
“Fuck, Potter! Why are you asking me? You know him just as well as I do.”
“That’s not true! You’re his best friend.”
Pansy shot him a look that Harry chose not to decipher. She seemed torn between making some snarky comment about stating the obvious or ignoring the fact that he’d spoken entirely. He noticed that she’d moved to water, suddenly. Did she feel the need to be sober for this conversation? Or was she just preparing herself to not appear under the influence when the Aurors showed up because she’d hexed him black and blue?
“Yes, I am his best friend,” she agreed. “But, if you don’t know him like the back of your hand after all the years you spent stalking and staring at him, then you’re a shit Auror.”
That… was a fair point. He did know Draco rather well in a lot of ways, but he didn’t know how to explain to her how it was different. Of course he knew Draco’s nervous tics and he knew every expression that that beautiful face could twist into, but that was hardly the same thing as knowing how to come back from irreparable psychological damage. He didn’t even know if he could come back from it.
“I don’t know how to fix it, Pansy.”
For a moment, she seemed struck by the emotion in his tone but, just as quickly, she was back to her typical Pansy-ness. She sat back in the booth, mirroring his body language, and took another long drink of her water. Harry still wasn’t sure what qualities made up ‘Pansy-ness’, but he was certain that there were at least a hundred and that she was painfully aware of every single one of them. He might have called it a Parkinson mask, similar to the Malfoy mask that Draco often wore, but it wasn’t entirely formal or aristocratic. Instead, it was more… unaffected.
“I’ll tell you what a wise soul once told me when I walked in on my roommate with a dildo so far up his ass that I’m surprised he didn’t have intestinal damage: you gotta make it even.”
Harry nearly spit his own water all over the table.
“I… don’t even know how to begin to explain to you how different these situations are. What even—wait, don’t you live with Blaise?!”
Pansy shrugged, but the sudden mental image of Blaise Zabini with a dildo up his ass was forever burned into his memory. He wanted to curse her. After almost two hours of pouring his heart out to her, the only advice she had was dildo-related? Maybe he’d been wrong to consult her in the first place.
“All I know is that things were weird as hell between us until I let him see some… things. Then, he wasn’t embarrassed anymore and we were fine. Make it even, Potter.”
“But this isn’t about being even.”
He didn’t want to address the whole Blaise thing because he really didn’t want to think about that situation more than he already had, but part of him still said it was fundamentally different. This wasn’t about tallying up who had inflicted more emotional pain on the other. He didn’t want to just neutralize the situation (though that would definitely help, he was sure) he wanted to repair it. Nothing about this was about keeping score.
“No, it isn’t. It’s about showing him that you’re willing to be even.”
Draco’s hands shook as he pressed his quill to the page, scratching through the first two ingredients he’d already written down. This was hopeless. He’d messed up three drafts in the last twenty minutes all because he couldn’t keep his damn hands steady enough to write, even with his specially charmed gloves on.
Thankfully, he didn’t have anyone coming to pick up an order today. The last two days had been a flurry of people in an out of his office picking up their end-of-the-month orders before Halloween could make the streets impassable and Draco was glad for the money—unbelievably so, actually, given the current state of his kitchen—but the social interaction was draining. It was easily more people than he’d seen in the last two months combined.
He was tired and overwhelmed. Given everything that had happened, including the ‘routine questioning’ from hell that had robbed him of sleep for the following two nights, Draco decided to give himself a break. It wasn’t often that he actually took a lunch break and sat at his desk to relax, but he’d earned it. Or, at the very least, he needed it.
That morning, he’d grabbed the mail on his way to work and he shuffled through the typical howlers and angrily scrawled notes, setting aside the ones he would keep for later. He tossed the rest into the fireplace. One, however, stood out and it wasn’t until he re-read the blocky letters on the front of the envelope that he understood.
Skinny Porn ASAP
At first glance, it looked like a flyer for some kind of Muggle website, but it was rare for flyers to end up in envelopes. He read it again, skimming over the letters, and then smiled. It was an anagram.
For Pansy Parkinson.
Even though they were legally allowed to contact one another, their letters were always read and copies of them were stored permanently in the Ministry archives. So, for more sensitive matters, Pansy liked to employ little tricks and games like this. If the Ministry caught it, it wouldn’t be the end of the world—nothing explicitly against the terms of his release, even if it was suspicious. But the chances of it getting to him unread were much higher.
Draco,
First of all, I’m sorry about Ariana. I wish you would have told me, but I also understand why you didn’t. If there’s anything I can do, just say the word, okay?
He winced, wondering how she’d found out. There was nothing she could do, of course, (at least not that his pride would let him accept) but he appreciated the offer. In theory. It didn’t actually help at all, though. He didn’t want to think about Ariana right now, especially not at work, so he blinked a few times and continued reading.
A friend of yours paid me a visit the other day. We had an interesting conversation. I gave them some advice but, knowing how stubborn you can be, I thought it might be in everyone’s best interest if you heard it from me first. One, so you can’t justify killing me. And two, because I think you should give this person a chance. At least hear them out. For me?
Draco glared at the page and at the nerve. The only people who might have gone to Pansy for advice about him that he could think of were Potter or Andrea, and he would kill either of them for involving her in the first place. Pansy was meant to be riding the high of her engagement, not dealing with his issues. But, ever the nosy bitch, she still had the nerve to tell him to hear this ‘person’ out. For me. What was this—a cheap romance novel?
You know I love you, Draco. I’m always here for you. You know my floo address and you know that I’m just an owl away. Take care of yourself, okay?
Love,
Skinny Porn (ASAP)
P.S. there were a lot of acronyms that I could come up with, but I thought this one was the most eye-catching :) did you like it?
Sighing, Draco set down the letter. He wrote back something appreciative that ignored the first part of the message, something like: ‘Of course, Pans, you don’t know how much I appreciate that. I love you too. Say hi to Maeve for me.’ But it was a lie. It was just what he was supposed to say—what he knew she wanted him to say, rehearsed and fake—because Pansy’s promises only made his heart sink more.
He knew she meant it. Nothing about it was insincere or disingenuous and of course she cared about him, why else would she have stuck around this long post-war? But she wasn’t here. He was still alone, still crumbling under the weight of everything that had happened and bracing for whatever was coming next, and she wasn’t here. Not that she should have been ready at his beck and call, of course. She had a life and she was happy with Maeve and he was happy for her, but it still put a layer of distance between them that hadn’t existed there before. He didn’t want to poison her happiness.
He just didn’t want to feel so… alone.
“Malfoy, what are you doing? This isn’t leisure time.”
Draco jumped, but his brain recognized Kaiser’s voice before he could let himself make a face or reach for his wand.
“I’m on lunch.”
Kaiser hmphed, clearly displeased by the fact that Draco was not working himself to the bone the way he had three months ago, but didn’t have any legal right to argue. Instead, they just glanced around his office with an eyebrow raised.
“You’ve acquired a lot of new materials and equipment, I see. Should I be worried about the terms of your release?”
Draco stiffened. He tried not to show it, but he’d known this was coming for weeks now and he’d still let it catch him off guard. Of course people had been starting rumors. Bright and Bender had probably created at least half of them and been instrumental in the spread of the other half, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Everyone thought he was dipping into black market potions. How else would the failed Death Eater be able to afford new gloves and fancy ingredients? Certainly not with the Savior’s money.
“No, you don’t. The ingredients were supplied by a client to be used in their requested potion order, but I’ve been given free reign to use the remaining ingredients however I please. As for the new equipment, well, you yourself have signed off on my recent paychecks and you know I’ve picked up more clients.”
Kaiser looked displeased by this as well. They scanned the room again, looking for anything out of place or anything Ministry-regulated, but Draco had hidden those things back when he’d first gotten the job. When they found nothing, they merely stared at him. Draco fought the urge to fidget.
“Was there something else you needed? I still have another fifteen minutes on my lunch break and I’d like to eat, if that’s alright.”
Kaiser’s eyes narrowed, but they left without another word. Draco could have sworn he heard his supervisor mutter something about insubordination or mouthing-off under their breath as they left. It wasn’t a formal complaint though, so Draco wrote it off. For now, that was good enough.
He hadn’t been planning to eat but, now with Kaiser watching, Draco felt like he’d be lying if he didn’t. So far that week, he hadn’t managed to summon enough of an appetite. Apparently, the threat of his supervisor walking in once again and finding him not doing what he’d said he was planning to do (even though it was during his break, so Kaiser had no authority over it) was motivating enough. He summoned the three-day-old sandwich from his desk and took a bite.
It was not good.
However, it was food and it was something for him to do while he waited the next fifteen minutes out of principle. Could peanut butter and jelly go bad? He didn’t think so, but he inspected it heavily before taking his next bite. Not that he had any other food options. It seemed fine.
He took another bite and washed it down with a sip of hot chocolate.
Exactly one week later (which he had been advised to wait by Pansy), Harry felt like shit. He’d spent the days either buried in the Broken Crown case, as it was now called, or moping in his apartment and dodging owls from Ron and Hermione about weekend plans. They didn’t know about anything that had happened. Trying to explain it would just make things worse—particularly with Hermione, who was still touchy about the way he’d given Draco the cold shoulder before, but also with Ron who was still not a fan of the blond. There was no way he’d be able to hide his mood though, so he made up excuses and tried to read a book.
It didn’t go well. About halfway through the second chapter, Harry realized that he couldn’t have said what the book was about even under Veritaserum. To avoid prematurely going to Draco (and Pansy had assured him that anything less than a week-long cool off period would end in disaster), he’d tried to focus on work.
Aidan had been keeping his distance for the last week or two, which was nice but also suspicious. They’d found three more bodies which brought the grand total up to thirteen confirmed victims (fourteen if they counted the guy who’d killed himself in interrogation) with at least five more still being considered as strong possibilities. These new confirmed victims had pushed the case over the Ministry threshold from ‘homicide’ to ‘serial killer’, which had warranted bringing another six Aurors onto the team. Which was… great.
It wasn’t that Harry was ungrateful, of course—he truly appreciated having more eyes and more minds on this case because it increased the chances that they could save the next victim before it was too late. But the new additions were not Aurors that he usually worked with and that tended to cause problems. Two had already tried to ask him about the war and about killing Voldemort, which Harry had deflected with one of the practiced lines he’d memorized after the trials. Another stared at him constantly. One of the older crotchety ones seemed to despise his very presence. He probably thought Harry had just used his fame to get the job, which was why more Aurors were being brought in.
It didn’t matter if Harry had one of the best arrest rates in the department, or if he was being promoted soon once Robards retired. There were some people who would just never be convinced. He tried to be okay with that, most days. But days like today where no one seemed to understand and he was surrounded by people who refused to treat him like a normal person… Days like today were the kind of days when he usually went to visit Draco.
But he couldn’t. Not without fucking things up even more, according to Pansy, and he’d already scripted his way through a thousand different iterations of the talk they might have once that week was over, so he just sat in his office. The door was closed and locked under the guise of trying to get work done without being interrupted. Really, he just felt on edge and didn’t want to deal with people. Especially not Aidan.
Once again, Harry felt incredibly alone. He was alone. Not just physically, but in life. He knew that he wasn’t—Hermione, Ron, the Weasleys, and hell even ‘Meda and Teddy were just a firecall or an owl away—but he was alone. They wouldn’t really understand. Not the right way, at least, or the way he so desperately needed them to.
No, once again, Harry was alone and forced to solve his own problems.
Alone.
Draco had sent him the latest ingredient breakdown for the potion their latest victim had taken to kill herself, affectionately named the ‘death potion’. The list was… extensive. It was ridiculously thorough and Harry felt a pang of something deep in his chest even as he skimmed it when he realized just how much work and effort Draco was putting into this case. Was it because Harry had brought him on? Or because he was still afraid of the Ministry?
Ron’s comment about his hero complex still boiled under his skin in something akin to rage. It’d been a joke—or at least mostly a joke, Harry was sure—but that didn’t make it sting any less because Harry had tried to explain it to them at least a thousand times. Harry didn’t want to be the hero. He didn’t want to save people (okay, maybe he wanted to save a few of them, but not the whole bloody world) and he didn’t want praise or recognition.
Neither of them would ever understand it. Ron had grown up with far too many family members and Hermione had had a far too emotionally healthy relationship with her parents to ever understand. Harry didn’t see a situation, consider his options, and then decide to do it alone. Most of the time, he’d never even thought about involving someone else or calling for backup or even owling on a bad day, he just… dealt with it.
Because Harry Potter was capable of solving his own problems. Of course Ron and ‘Mione (and even Andrea, when they tentatively talked now) all insisted that they understood that and that they weren’t questioning his abilities, but that wasn’t it either. On a fundamental level, Harry tended to forget that other people existed. He never thought to ask for help or to delegate or even to talk to someone about it because, growing up, Harry had always had to do it himself.
And if he didn’t? Then it just didn’t get done. Sure, there might be consequences for that—Harry could still remember the first time he’d completely given in to a panic attack and had spent the three hours he’d been meant to be cooking in a heap on the floor… he hadn’t sat for weeks. But those were the only two options. Either Harry did it, or it didn’t get done. They would never understand that.
But Draco might.
Harry remembered the way the blond had cut himself off from everyone during Sixth Year to the point that even Crabbe and Goyle had started avoiding him. He could still see that panicky, hopeless desperation in those grey eyes. The way Draco had coiled and shrunk in on himself, wasting away more and more with every passing day because he was hiding something. An assignment.
Vaguely, Harry wondered if the Slytherin had ever gone to his friends or asked for help. He was pretty sure he hadn’t, and Draco had said at his trial that no one else had known about his assignment except Snape… Even if Draco hadn’t grown up with the same forced independence, maybe he understood?
Harry knew better than to press his luck right now, though. In spite of the relative peace between them lately (ignoring the horrific disaster that was the questioning), Harry couldn’t help feeling like Draco was still holding back. There was still something sharp and frosty in the air between them that hadn’t thawed, even after a hundred apologies and explanations. You are not forgiven, Potter.
But Harry needed to be forgiven. He couldn’t demand it and he couldn’t force it, but he felt overwhelmingly alone and he needed Draco to at least not hate him. Not forgive him, necessarily, but not hate him. If the blond also managed to break through his typical do-it-yourself complex, then that was… unrelated.
Under any other circumstances, he would have asked Andrea what he should do, or maybe even Hermione because she’d always been more emotionally aware than him. Neither were valid options, though. He couldn’t tell if it was his own instinct to isolate and solve everything on his own, or if he was discounting their help for a genuine reason.
Either way, it left him with no ideas other than Pansy’s plan.
Draco felt the magic before he heard the knock. It wasn’t that he was waiting for it, per se, but now that he’d used Harry’s wand and personally used that magic, it was as if his senses had become attuned to it. He wondered how much of it was intentional. Before, whenever he’d noted the magic in the air at Hogwarts, he’d assumed Harry was just showing off. But he didn’t even seem entirely aware of it, usually, so Draco had dismissed that theory and moved onto wondering how much of it was even a conscious choice. Given the way it was seeping under the door and smoothing against his ankles, he was guessing not much.
“Hey, we need to talk.”
Draco didn’t let himself jump. He didn’t remember leaving his office door open but he also hadn’t heard it open so he reasoned it must have been. Harry was standing in the doorway, though he didn’t turn to look at the Auror. It was not the ‘hey, are you busy’ or the ‘can we chat’ that he’d been expecting—’we need to talk’ left no room for argument or disagreement. Had Pansy told him to do that?
“Somewhere public.”
He heard the sharp intake of breath over his left shoulder. Was his voice somehow giving him away? Or was Harry just surprised that he’d even responded and agreed?
“Are you scared of me?”
“Well, it’s not like I don’t have a reason to be.”
Even as he said it, Draco knew that was too far. Cold, wet tiles and the deep red of blood pouring out of his body. He caught the flinch of pain in Harry’s expression and regretted it, but couldn't take it back.
“Okay, dinner then?”
“You have a thing for buying me food, don’t you Potter?”
He tried to lighten it with a joke. It didn’t really work because there was still a tension hanging thick in the air, but it felt less like anger and more like unaddressed issues. Harry smiled softly.
“Yeah, yeah, run your pretty little mouth all you want. I’ll pick you up at six.”
He nodded in agreement. Harry left without another word, closing the door behind him on the way out. Draco stood there agape, wondering if Harry had really just called his mouth ‘pretty’.