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A thunderous knock at the front door shook Harry from a trance he hadn’t fully realised he was in, though it wasn’t unusual for him to disappear inside his head these days. The war had been long and cost too much and it was impossible to chase it from his thoughts. He supposed it was the same for everyone, no one had walked away from the carnage unscathed. He entertained the thought from time to time, that the survivors may in fact be the unlucky ones.
Rising slowly from his seat at the kitchen table, Harry began to wonder who would be calling at such an hour. It was almost half past eleven in the evening, a most unlikely hour for visitors to arrive unannounced. Of course, it wasn’t unusual for Ron to visit in the evenings, but it was always arranged beforehand and rarely so late.
His pace unconsciously quickened and his mind started to flood with possibilities. Perhaps something was wrong, and Ron urgently needed his help. By the time he reached the end of the hall his thoughts had worked him into such a panic that throwing the door open caused it to smash against the wall. Harry jumped at the sound, and it took him a few seconds to refocus and realise who was staring back at him. “Malfoy?”
At first Draco did not respond, his face devoid of any emotion. Harry almost missed the scowl Draco wore at school, that at least would have been a familiar sight that he could understand. “Can I help you?”
Draco’s eyes lowered from his own and his brow furrowed, slowly giving way to anger, a small part of Harry revelled in the sight of it. “Why did you save me?”
Harry was a little taken aback by the question and he thought carefully, taking in Draco fully. He looked just the same as the last time they had met, but still something about him was intrinsically different. His hands were balled tight at his side and he still refused to make eye contact. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll make some tea and we can talk.”
“I didn’t come here for a mothers meeting, Potter, I came here for answers,” Draco spat, finally locking eyes with Harry.
Though it would have been easy to fall back into old habits, something about the whole situation didn’t sit quite right and Harry couldn’t summon the will to argue. “Then we should sit down and talk, like proper adults,” he reasoned.
Draco looked furious, his fists clenching tighter. “Fine,” he hissed, marching past Harry and directly to the kitchen, withdrawing his wand from the inside pocket of his blazer and whipping the kettle into action on the stove.
“How did you…” Harry started, but Draco cut him off.
“This wasn’t always your home you know.”
Slowly it dawned on Harry that Draco’s mother had been Sirius’ cousin, no doubt the family would have visited Grimmauld Place on occasion. He nodded slowly in understanding, pulling open a cupboard and taking down two mugs and a small pot of sugar before making his way to the fridge for the milk.
“Why don’t you use magic?” Draco asked, his tone a little less highly strung than it had been moments earlier, watching Harry’s movements around the room with bemused curiosity.
“I lived with muggles for ten years, some habits are hard to break,” Harry responded with a shrug. “Sugar?”
Draco shook his head, dropping into a seat opposite the one Harry had previously been occupying and waiting quietly while Harry stirred each of their drink and set them down on the table.
Harry took a deep breath, having carefully thought over his words in the time he had bought himself. “I don’t really know what you want me to say. I couldn’t very well let you die.”
A flicker of confusion passed over Draco’s features before he realised that Harry was, at last, answering his question. “That’s what I don’t get,” Draco muttered, casting his eyes down to survey the surface of the tea. Still too hot to drink, he softly blew the surface, a little unsure of how to articulate what he was thinking without appearing weak.
Harry had spent more than enough time being schooled by Hermione on the emotions of others, and while the child in him enjoyed Draco’s discomfort, the war-weary adult he had become saw no point in drawing things out. “Well, I may be wrong in everything that I’m about to say, but let me take a shot at it,” Harry began, wrapping his hands around his own mug, comforted by the warmth that spread through his chilled fingertips. “I don’t think you were ever fully committed to Voldemort. That much seemed the clear to me that day at the Manor when you claimed you didn’t know for sure it was me the snatchers had brought in.”
Draco said nothing to his, so Harry decided he may as well continue in his thesis. “And before that, in the Astronomy tower, you lowered your wand, you had no intention of killing Dumbledore.”
Draco flinched at the memory, but still he said nothing. “All you ever cared about was your family, you loved them too much to refuse their wishes. In summary,” Harry swept on, determined to finish, “I think that you’re angry at yourself for the way you acted and you’re trying to push it back on me because it’s easy and familiar and nothing about the past six months has been anything of the sort.”
Draco stood suddenly and Harry prepared himself for the onslaught of bitter, angry comments that were typical of Draco, but the air hung heavy in the room for a few moments before Draco spoke, his voice softer than Harry had ever heard it. “Thanks for the tea.”
Draco swept from the room and the heels of his shoes clunked against the wooden floor of the hall as he moved swiftly down it. Before Harry was fully out of his chair, he heard the front door open and close again as Draco made his exit.
Harry sighed and settled back down in his seat, finally taking a few sips of his tea, noting the untouched cup on the other side of the table that he had been thanked for. Although, he supposed, the thanks was never truly intended for the beverage.
There was no denying that the interaction had been a strange one, but was it really? After all, Harry would be lying if he said he wasn’t suffering from a terrible sense of melancholy since he had left the Hogwarts grounds all those months ago, not realising back then that it would be the last time he would set foot there.
When he and Ron had made the decision not to return to school, it seemed like the right choice. There didn’t seem to be anything on paper or in the minds of their teachers that could make them more than what they had become, and the last thing he wanted was for people to be hailing him as a hero every minute of the day: but was the reclusive life he had chosen really any better?
In the wake of Draco’s departure, Harry had to admit he was a little disappointed that their conversation, no matter how disconcerting and one-sided it had been, was over so quickly.
Swallowing the last mouthful of his drink, Harry nodded to himself with a determined energy he hadn’t been able for conjure for a long time. Tomorrow, he decided, he and Draco would speak again. It didn’t make an ounce of sense, but something about the evenings events had him fired up. But it wasn’t out of anger or suspicion as it once had been.
The war with Voldemort had made victims of them all, and Harry and Draco were not on opposing sides. Not anymore.