Chapter Text
There were a lot of things Draco had wanted to say, but didn’t. He wanted to cry right there with Harry, just weap for the whole world to hear.
But that was Harry Potter’s moment.
A moment filled with bittersweet pain. A moment that almost made Draco hate Harry more, before realizing it might have been a reason to like the boy. It had never occurred to him that Harry was hurt by the passing of his parents. Why would he be, when he had the whole world to look after him? But when Potter had been so weak he had fallen to the floor, sobbing for the parents he had never known to “come back,” begging literal gravestones for answers, it finally dawned on him that Potter wasn’t the never-faulting hero.
Harry was a boy, with no family, and nowhere to go after Hogwarts. Harry was like him.
Harry was suffering, and Draco didn’t know whether he was glad of that or not.
Harry had stayed in that position for hours. Draped across his mother’s gravestone, growing colder and colder by the second. His face was visibly red, and snow had begun to freckle his dark skin, but he didn’t move. It was almost as if he couldn’t. Draco felt his heart ache when Harry stopped yelling, and instead began to tell the graves stories of his life. It sounded like he was catching up with old friends, and it dawned on Draco that Potter had never once had a conversation with his parents.
People had come out of their homes, confused by the yelling, but Harry didn’t notice. Draco wasn’t worried about being recognized, the people hadn’t bothered to step off of their porches. They wouldn’t be able to see who he was through the snow and the distance.
Besides, once they saw a certain black-haired boy sobbing at the graves of Lily and James Potter, they understood immediately and went back into their houses. No one would interfere with the chosen one, no one would interrupt his moment.
Draco had been cold, but he knew Harry was far colder, so he said nothing. He waited for the young wizard to stand up himself, putting on a stoic face before walking determinedly away from the resting place of his parents, not looking back even once.
He’d been surprised, but Harry seemed tense, and he didn’t want Potter to snap at him so he followed silently, not bothering Harry until he was spoken to.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get back into school.” Harry said, defeated almost. But before Draco could answer, there was Headmistress McGonagall, and they were whisked back into Hogwarts.
Harry hadn’t talked to him since.
-
“Hullo, Hermione,” he greeted half-heartedly. He was buried in a book so thick the table groaned under its weight. He had a parchment of notes that reached three feet long, and he’d nearly used up all of his ink due to the amount of writing he’d done over the past few days.
He was stressing himself out with work, but it was better than relaxing and being still. Being still would force his mind to think and wander, and that would only make him feel worse than he already did. So he worked, and he studied, and he tried not to think too hard about Harry Potter and how he had been ignored by the wizard since they returned from Godric’s Hollow.
He didn’t know why, but he chalked it up to embarrassment. It wasn’t as though Draco didn’t understand, so he decided he’d allow the chosen one to have as long as he needed. It didn't do Draco any good to do anything else, because Harry Potter was stubborn, and he’d do what he wanted.
“Hello, Draco,” Hermione responded cheerfully. She sat next to him, leaving a chair in between them so that she could have enough space to work on her own assignments.
Soon, Neville would come stumbling along, gripping thick textbooks on plant work, or a few feet of parchment filled to the brim with notes from Professor Sprout, or perhaps even a small plant he was assigned to study. Eventually, then would come Luna Lovegood who didn’t really work on her school work, but rather commented on everyone else's. Though it was a bit distracting, it always brought laughter around the table. Draco preferred it to the quiet, he preferred anything to the quiet.
Sometimes, Ron stomped in, if he and Hermione had had a squabble and he wanted to make up for it by actually doing his work. Occasionally other Eighth years would find their way over, and all was good. All in all, it was good fun; which he didn't mind in the slightest.
“Good day for you?” Hermione asked, organizing her materials. Draco found she did that often, but he never commented on it. Better to let her be than make her uncomfortable.
“Decent.” He said softly. “You?”
“About the same, I suppose. Are you still enjoying Muggle Studies?”
Draco nodded his head and turned the page of his textbook, scribbling down another set of notes. He wasn’t looking forward to when he actually had to study the parchment, navigating the long sheet seemed like it would be such a chore, but he couldn’t risk not taking the proper precautions and not taking the right notes just because he was tired.
“That’s good, i heard the professor was nice.”
“He’s great. He says he’s going to order everyone taking his class a Polaroid.”
“That's fun! You do know you have to smile when you take pictures though, right Draco?” Hermione asked playfully, and Draco wished she had chosen to sit a bit closer so he could shove into her shoulder for that little joke.
“Very funny, ‘Mione.”
“Thanks, I thought so too.”
They giggled a bit before falling into a comfortable silence, each working on their respective assignments. Draco worked tediously, not noticing when Neville came into their secluded area concealed by four large bookshelves. By the time he looked up again, Both Luna and Neville had found their way in. Draco was taken aback for a second, but he chalked it up to their silence. Luna was reading a rather large book filled with Muggle stories and Neville was examining something that looked like a cactus, but for some reason kept heaving up and down as if it had just run a marathon of sorts.
He greeted them softly, smiled at their returned “hello’s” and went back to his work. It was actually rather methodical, and he found himself preening at the scratch of his quill on the parchment. Everything was perfectly fine.
Eventually the day grew into night and the group of four packed away their things and headed to the Dining Hall. Draco had long since stopped wondering when and how Luna was finishing her studies, and instead listened to her story of how she and Ginny Weasley had spotted a strange looking creature on the way to Hagrid’s hut, and followed it into the Forbidden Forest only to have it disappear before they could catch it.
It had been barely two weeks since Harry began to avoid him, and it was starting to become normal again. He seemed to also be avoiding Hermione too, because she had come to him a little over a week ago with tears in her eyes, trying to understand what she had done wrong. Draco had been more than surprised, to say the least, and he did his best to comfort her. Eventually he told her he must be coming down with something, and that might have a stomach bug that was making him act that way. Hermione, desperate to find an answer, agreed that that was the issue, and she was off again; probably to research sicknesses that made people act hostile towards their friends.
Neville and Luna didn’t comment on it, and he assumed that they might have been used to that treatment as well. He hadn’t told anyone about where they’d gone, he wasn’t even sure if anyone knew they had left the castle. Headmistress McGonagall had taken one look at Harry’s face, Draco’s reserved stance, and noted the date before realizing what had happened. She didn’t scold or reprimand them, only sent them off with some hot tea and told them not to be late to dinner. She hadn’t said a word to anyone, and Draco would honor that. If Harry wanted to tell his friends what had happened, then he would. Draco wouldn’t get in the middle of anything.
As they entered the Hall, they were greeted with the always amazing smell of the evening feast, and the buzz of chatter coming from the young witches and wizards. They all sit down somewhere in the middle of the table, and begin they’re conversations at random. Draco didn't join them, but he listened, absorbing in everything and letting their words swirl in his brain along with the numerous assignments and critical speeches he’d heard and studied in the past few weeks. Harry Potter didn’t come into the Dining Hall, and he knew why. A few days before, when he and Neville had been going to collect some last minute necessities for an upcoming assignment, they had spotted Harry Potter at the entrance of the kitchen. Though confused at first, they realized that Harry was missing meals because he had found a creative loophole, and took action. Draco was jealous at first, wishing he’d thought of that, but he let the jealousy diminish as he and Neville turned away.
Draco figured Harry would continue the arrangement until he felt well enough to face the public again. Had Draco been in Harry’s place, he’d’ve kept with the late night kitchen sprees for the remainder of the semester, but he didn’t have that spot in life, and in a way he was grateful.
People talked all around them, and Draco, becoming slightly overwhelmed with it all, began to scarf down his food, in hopes to escape to the common room for an early sleep.
Assignments were all that he allowed to occupy his mind, not books or other activities. Just school work. He had to get himself together, and there was only a short amount of time to do so before the painful world of adulthood crashed in on him.
He thought constantly of his work, all throughout dinner and even as he bid his friends goodnight, walking mindlessly through the halls and into the Eighth Year common room. As he headed to his dorm, opting for a bed tonight rather than a good view of the night sky, he turned and his eye caught the back of Harry Potter’s head. In an ideal world, he would have walked over to the boy and asked him why he’d been ignoring him for so long, after everything that had happened. He’d ask about the friendship that had been teetering on a rope between them and he’d question if the boy had been setting him up or something of the sort.
But it wasn’t an ideal world, and Draco Malfoy needed to get some sleep.
-
If Harry remembered anything from his “time as a Muggle” it was that Muggles loved statistics. They loved being able to tally up numbers and run tests on them. They loved being able to count out probabilities and determine what was going to happen next based on those random stats, and they could do it all day. Perhaps it wasn’t all Muggles, maybe it had just been Harry’s Uncle Vernon. After all, he had never been around many other Muggles besides them, and in those short long years he had with them he had been stuffed in such a cramped space that he had hardly known other people existed besides the ones that locked him in there.
But he remembered the numbers. If Uncle Vernon and his team didn’t sell the appropriate amount of nuts and bolts or whatever it was that he had been so intent about, he’d come home furious and Harry would be the brunt of his anger. If Aunt Petunia didn’t have the most pristine garden, or kitchen, or car compared to the neighbors, she’d find herself in a fit of rage and yet again, Harry would be pushed to the front lines to deal with her. The same was true with Dudley.
And Harry found that numbers were important to him too. He figured it could have just been humans in general who had such an interest for numbers and competition, but just in case he was wrong, he didn’t bother to ask anyone. It was easier to keep things to himself than risk embarrassment.
Draco Malfoy and Sirius Black, down the line, were family. There were decades and decades of information and family history that Draco just had in his brain, or in his house, and they were all his to explore. Anything he wanted to know could be easily found and researched. Draco knew stories of Sirius’ childhood, of his family line, of his siblings and parents and cousins. There were baby pictures somewhere, maybe images of a scabbed-kneed Sirius Black who was missing his front teeth, or even 11-year-old Sirius, on his way to Hogwarts.
And Harry, Sirius’ Godson, owner of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, had nothing. No stories of a messy-haired Sirius Black on Christmas morning, no tales of mischievous adventures he’d gotten into as a boy. Harry had only two years before Black was ripped away from the world right before Harry’s eyes. Two years, and Draco had decades.
He didn’t want to be jealous, but he knew that he was. He knew that Draco had probably never even met the man before Sirius’ death, but the idea, the very thought of Draco knowing more about Harry’s godfather than Harry did haunted him. It made him seem unworthy of the title of Godson, even though it wasn’t a name you could earn.
It angered him, like so many things did these days. But instead of taking his rage out on Draco, which he found himself desperately wanting to do, on numerous occasions, he distanced himself from everyone. It was easier that way. He was always alone as a boy, and it seemed that he was entering his manhood alone too.
Harry sighed, wishing he could shut off his brain. He hated the way fragments of memories would float aimlessly through his mind, taunting him as if they knew he couldn’t control them. He wanted to sleep, if only to silence them for a moment, but he knew the nightmares would take their place.
There was no escaping the memories, and Harry wished he could die. If only to get away from the pain.
Harry turned his head when he heard a rustling noise behind him, and sure enough a teal-haired boy was staring at him like a deer in headlights. Quite a few beats of silence passed and Harry wished Draco would say something, just so he could get out of being the first to speak.
“Draco.” He gave in after a moment, and he instantly regretted ghosting the boy the way he did. The moment they shared could have been the beginning of a friendship, but instead Harry had let his emotions get in the way.
Draco straightened at the sound of his name, and he looked down to the floor as if he was ashamed. Harry didn’t think there was anything to be ashamed of, and if there was, he certainly wasn’t the person to be ashamed around.
“Potter,” Draco said, and Harry hoped he’d imagined the shakiness of Draco’s words. “Didn’t mean to disrupt you, I’m just heading to bed.” He lifted his arm awkwardly to the staircase, before letting it slam down to his thigh.
“Not sleeping in the window tonight?” Harry asked and he wanted it to sound like a playful joke, between friends perhaps, but he hadn't smiled in days, let alone laughed. It didn’t go as planned, but it was too late to take it back.
“I thought a real bed might be better tonight.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Harry let his mouth fall into a thin line, and he studied Draco, wondering what the wizard thought of him now. Harry almost wished Draco would go around chanting about how Harry Potter had cried in the snow, because it would mean he was very similar to the posh boy he’d once been. The fact that he’d stayed loyal meant that Harry knew absolutely nothing about him.
Draco bounced on his feet for a moment before nodding his head to the side, gesturing for the stairs and muttering out a goodnight. Harry almost let him go, but he felt compelled to get the last word.
“I’m sorry, Draco.”
Draco hesitated, hand on the railing and foot only barely touching the first step. “For what?” He asked without turning around.
“That day, everything that happened after.” Harry said shortly. This was turning awkward, and Harry almost wished he’d let Draco go with no further conversation.
“It’s fine, Potter.” Draco said, twisting a bit. He frowned at Harry for a bit. “Besides, it proved you really are human.”
Harry made his mouth match the small smirk Draco was giving him, although it practically hurt his face to do so. “I could say the same thing about you, you know.”
Draco’s smirk deepened. “Good night, Potter. It’s rude to ignore people for long amounts of time.” Harry smiled at the cheek and wished Draco good night as well.
Friend. Draco Malfoy could be called a friend.