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Like every other insane, nightmare scenario in Draco Malfoy’s young life, it starts and ends with Harry bloody Potter and his gang of misfits.
Well. No. Most nightmare scenarios in Draco’s life actually began with his grandfather pledging a bloodline allegiance to a homicidal megalomaniac without a nose. But certainly, the secondary nightmare scenarios? All Potter’s fault.
Which is why he’s holding what Tracey Davis calls a zee dee and trying to figure out how to make it play on the stupid muggle radio he’s been told he needs to learn to use by his roommates.
A shared dorm with Potter, Weasley and Blaise.
Draco is certain he hasn’t done anything to deserve this.
Worse is Blaise’s smug grin across the room, as he flicks through a muggle magazine. He’d been the only Slytherin in their original year to take Muggle studies. Tracey hadn’t bothered, what with her Muggleborn father. Theo… well. The Nott family had been in the same bind as the Malfoys, so although the curiosity was there, it wasn’t like any of them could satisfy it.
Millie had moved to Spain and sent them all owls containing worrying photos of herself at the aquatic creatures reserve she was doing her apprenticeship in. No one should be as delighted at the sight of grindylows as Millicent Bullstrode was. Theo had gone to Durmstrang, and Crabbe was in Azkaban.
Of his year, only four students remained.
“Figured it out, then?” comes Blaise’s drawl from across the room, and Draco can’t help his frustrated huff. He turns and looks at the stupid contraption, and figures the lid of it would be a good place to start.
In the absence of a button, he presses down on it, and it slowly pops open to reveal a spindle. Smiling in triumph - which he makes sure Blaise can’t see, he places the zee dee down, remembering Tracey’s “shiny side down” bit.
There’s a helpfully labeled “play” button, and so he presses it with an air of finality. A whirr of mechanisms fires off, and …
Well, music happens.
Draco had been the last holdout in the “returning class” to give in to the mad descent into a school-wide obsession with the admittedly vast catalog of muggle music. Celestina Warbeck could only get you so far, as Weasley would often shout during their raucous parties.
It had been Potter, of all people, who had squinted at Malfoy over their Advanced Transfiguration essays one evening and said “You look like you’d like Nirvana.”
At first, he’d been a bit confused by the non-sequitur. They didn’t talk much, Draco and Potter, other than the commentary necessary for two people living together, and somehow the implication that he needed to find a higher power in a Buddhist concept wasn’t exactly the conversation Draco had imagined having with The Insufferable Twat Who Lived.
The Most Handsome Twat Who Lived.
The Straightest Twat Who Lived.
If the rumors were true (though, those came from Lovegood, so Draco wasn’t overly inclined to believe them,) he was actually the Twat Who Lived Twice. At this point, Draco was certain that Potter was immune to the Killing Curse, though he was certain no one would ever test that theory.
“Pardon? Turn to Buddhism?”
Potter looked bewildered for just a moment before his features smoothed into amusement. “Right, right.” he let out a chuckle, and Draco frowned. He would not be mocked. “Ah, no, it’s a muggle band. American, for what it’s worth. They do uh, grunge? ‘S what it’s called.”
“Grunge?” It did not escape Draco that this was the longest time Potter and he had ever spoken, and of course it had to be over muggle music, of all things. “Why do muggles insist on naming music styles, anyway?”
Potter shrugged. He did that often, in various ways. Not that Draco was observing the ways Potter did anything. At all. “Guess there’s too many to not differentiate them.” he finally said, and then bent his head back down to the parchment in front of him.
He could almost hear Pansy’s giggles after their unmentionable kiss the summer before their fifth year, when they both had barely touched lips before recoiling. “You’re mad for Potter anyway,” she had crowed, while ignoring the absolute moon eyes she herself had been making at a Ravenclaw sixth year. Laurie? Lora? Something with an L.
Draco had tried to preserve his dignity most ardently that year. Not that it got him anywhere nice, mind.
Regardless, he was unsure of what Potter meant anyway. Looked like it? What kind of phrasing was that?
Two days later, he gives in, sits himself in front of Tracey, who looks at him with the same tired patience she had always held for her more biased housemates, and asks, focusing on the row of studs on her left ear, “I would like to borrow one of your zee dees, if you have it.”
Tracey Davis positively beams at him, her now moderately sharper canines glinting in the light.
At first, as usual of modern music, Draco is put off by the mumbling. Why can’t a single person actually enunciate? But then he discovers the ‘CD’ contains a helpful lyrics booklet and he can’t help but snort at the absolute angst. Even though he’s only got a vague concept of what a gun is anyway.
He asks Blaise about it and discovers that, nearly at the same time as the Dark Lord was being resurrected, some Americans were into various concoctions that would alter their mindstate, and it was an entire epidemic, and the singer for this group had been one of the affected. Offed himself, too.
Bloody hell, the guy had problems.
However, the whole thing was rather well written, so he found himself asking Tracey for other recommendations anyway.
First it was Nirvana, again, and then she supplied a list. “Get to Inverness next weekend, there’s a good store there run by a Squib, she takes Galleons.” Helpfully, she jots down the address, and Draco nods in thanks.
As he’s standing up from her table at the library - which contains a positively bewildered Mandy Brocklehurst and Susan Bones, he’s struck by a thought. Next weekend, the full moon. “I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”
There, a public apology. That’d show them all.
Tracey smiles again, and he’s almost comforted by it, in the same way he’s been comforted by his mother’s smiles, by Pansy’s soft mutterings as she works on her essays, by Blaise’s bored scans of every room he enters. “Oh, it’s alright. Most people now think I’m rather cool, monthly issues notwithstanding.”
Even if her teeth are, truly, much sharper than the average human.
So Draco goes to Inverness, and buys a stack of CDs from an amused Squib who chatters about all the business she’s getting from Hogwarts ever since they figured out how to make electricity work in the castle.
Dottie skirts around the knowledge that a third of the castle had to be rebuilt after being proper wrecked not even nine months before then, and Draco isn’t sure if he thanks her more for this than the stack of CDs she hands him back from the till, bagged and ready to use.
Potter gives him a smug smile the first time he walks into the room and hears Everything Must Go playing at a respectable volume at his bedside table, Blaise and Pansy nodding along approvingly.
They still don’t talk much, but it’s easier now to share the space.
Then Draco begins to notice - thanks to Dottie’s gossip, he’s certain - that there is a bit of a muggle music fad going around the returning students, and it has spread through the rest of the school. He finds himself and his friends forming opinions on it all, and the first time he spies Pansy wearing a shirt - tastefully oversized, to compensate for the lack of robes, of course, it screams Oasis.
Granger and Lovegood are the worst, though. Come the end of summer, they had fallen into a close friendship, most of the work done on Granger’s part, by learning to not dismiss Lovegood’s odd nature, but by December, the friendship begins to involve listening to an imitation of screeching and complaining that even Draco’s alternative (for he had found out that Grunge was a sub-genre, and truly, what was it with muggles and labeling?) couldn’t reach.
He tentatively asks, once and is promptly told it’s called Jawbreaker, for some ungodly reason, and that it’s part of yet another subgenre called emo, and that there’s a rare few options for that sound because it blends into too many others. But Lovegood also listens to folk, and there’s even more there, and the band with the silliest name turns out to be the most enjoyable to him.
It’s called Neutral Milk Hotel, the album full of sad songs about muggle wars, and Luna crowns him King of Carrot Flowers, dragging him up to dance on a saturday afternoon.
That’s the day Lovegood becomes Luna, anyway.
Pansy says Luna is a core short in her wand, but smiles when Draco forces her up too, to imitate Luna’s odd spinning and flailing.
There’s even a smile on Granger and Girl-Weasley’s lips, though he’s not sure if it’s directed at him or at Luna, and he’s okay with it anyway, because it’s fun. For the first time since… Before it all, he’s having fun.
Potter has nightmares.
It shouldn’t surprise Draco as much as it does, but one night, when Draco can’t sleep, Weasley charges into the room, throwing back the curtains on Potter’s bed, as if possessed, and a silencing ward must break, because the moment he does, Draco can hear Potter’s hitched, frightened breaths.
He’s sitting up on the bed, black curls unruly and short on the sides, his glasses on the bedside table, and he looks pale - scared for his life, clutching his sides and looking as though the world was coming down on his shoulders.
Wordlessly, Weasley climbs into Potter’s bed. Slings an arm around the other’s shoulder, waves his wand to close the curtains. Draco would be impressed, if it wasn’t for the fact that Weasley had already proven himself an extremely capable wizard.
The room is silent again.
Sleep doesn’t come easy that night.
The next morning, outside of Charms, Granger corners him. Her eyes are hard, her spine straight. “Malfoy,” she greets, and it’s both terrifying and reassuring, that no matter what, Granger will always slightly hate him.
Even if it doesn’t feel like it as much these days.
Draco shoulders his bag and tries to look as pleasant as possible. Court face. Parole face. The face he should have worn most of his life.
“Morning, Granger. What can I do for you?”
Granger taps her nails where her crossed arms meet. A brown curl is sticking straight up from the top of her bun, looking much like an antenna for a wireless unit. He thinks of dancing with Luna, and drops his shoulders. There. Pleasant.
“You saw something last night.”
Draco nods. Slowly.
“Zabini wasn’t in the room, Ron told me.”
Oh, that’s where this is going.
Draco looks down at his feet. “I… I have dreams like that too, Granger. I would never -” use that. Use Potter like that.
When he looks up, Hermione Granger’s face is slack with surprise. And also something else. Knowing. Draco can feel the flush that flies up to his cheeks, the way his heart thuds a little faster in his chest. She watches him for a moment, and her surprise takes on a different shape.
“I know you wouldn’t tell. That isn’t you, anymore, is it?”
“No.” It feels like a promise. It feels like change. “I can’t say who I am yet, but. That’s not me anymore.”
Granger reaches out to him, her deep brown skin so much like Blaise’s. She squeezes his right forearm, hikes her overflowing bag further up her shoulder, and leaves him in the empty Charms classroom, the only mark of her presence the scent of parchment and vanilla.
What a weird group of people.
Towards the end of January, the Hogwarts rumor mill lets Draco know via an oddly bereft Luna, that Potter and Girl Weasley - after reuniting in September and giving it an “honest go,” (Luna’s words,) are no longer a couple.
“I think,” sighs Luna as she weaves strings together - for a bracelet to ward against Locust Heffalumps “that they were looking for something in each other that was never there.”
Draco nods. He’s unsure why Luna tells him this, but regardless, he uses his quill to draw a Snitch on his forearm. “Do you think they’ll find it?” he asks, and surprises himself by doing so out loud.
“Hmm. We all try to find that, don’t we?”
Above the now faded Mark, the Snitch looks much better on his skin.
Luna puts on a band called The Mountain Goats, and Draco asks her to teach him to braid one of those bracelets, because whatever Locust Heffalumps are, he wants nothing to do with them. Luna doesn’t even complain when Blaise joins them and pulls up his own bits of thread.
Mother,
Hogwarts is changed now, yet the same as ever. Strange and unexpected, but it has been fun. There is a new fad among the students, muggleborns figured out how to make their own version of the Wireless work. I have been listening to some of the music, and it is surprisingly good, for what it is. Different, certainly, but it seems the muggles like to separate everything into categories, and I am finding the ones that I like best.
Pansy and Blaise remain by my side, and they are for the most part all I need. No need to worry over my social life, or the nightmares, I promise, I have been making social overtures in the groups of returning students, and they seem well received. Luna Lovegood and I have spoken, and she thanks you for the help you gave when she was a prisoner in our home.
There is another person from Slytherin House that I have been speaking with. Do you remember Allora Ingram? Her daughter is Tracey Davis. She was bitten by Thorverton, but seems to be coping well with the changes. She says her mother and father hid in Muggle Ireland last year, and has very kindly offered her assistance in completing my required work for the parole board.
Blaise says his mother is returning from Corsica soon, likely in time for the May season. Will you be attending the Wizengamot gatherings? I am certain I could receive leave from the board to attend them if you would rather not, but Madam Zabini has already reached out to Blaise regarding holding the family seat, and I know you were close with her. It might help you to get out of the manor more.
I am happy to hear you are doing well, and that Aunt Andromeda is visiting more. How is Teddy Edward? It was nice to meet him over the holidays. Please give them my greetings.
Love, always,
Draco.
The Daily Prophet article comes out on Valentine’s Day. It is brutal.
Harry Potter’s Cursed Life?
A history of the Boy Who Lived
By: Amanda Cartwright
On May 2nd, 1998, Harry Potter fulfilled the challenge that had been marked upon him at birth. The seventeen year old Hogwarts student defeated He Who Must Not Be Named in a public duel after what is now called the Battle of Hogwarts. We at the Daily Prophet both recognize his efforts as well as those of the defenders of the prestigious wizarding school. [see page 9 for a list of the deceased.]
The Wizarding World has always known Mr. Potter spent his formative, pre-Hogwarts years with Muggle family members. However accurate this is, this reporter has recently gained access to Mr. Potter’s medical records, and readers, it is ghastly. From Basilisk venom to Acromantula bites and all manner of war curses, all well-known due to Mr. Potter’s exploits, we also discovered signs of a childhood less than charmed…
When the papers arrive, Potter sets his copy on fire, and storms out of the great hall. Several pitchers at the table explode.
Draco can’t deny looking for Potter in the days that follow, but he does not come to sleep in their shared rooms for a week. When he finally reappears in classes, there is a guarded, shame-filled look to his face. It doesn’t belong, Draco thinks.
It takes him over a week after that to crack a small, almost imperceptible smile at Longbottom.
Draco notices it all.
His experience with Muggle music continues. Draco finds he enjoys the stations on the wireless, which play more than one artist at a time. Blaise shows him a magazine with a list of the top one-hundred songs played on the radio and Draco has a fun time hunting down the stations that play those songs.
There’s The New Radicals, and Whitney Houston, and he overhears Weasley and Longbottom talking about The Backstreet Boys and feels an odd swell of pride about recognizing what, exactly they are talking about.
He was always hungry for knowledge.
Draco hears Potter humming a song on his way to the Great Hall, and tries to find it for days.
It’s called Your Woman. Draco quite likes it.
The common room is warm, and there’s a late winter gale coming through the highlands, so Draco and Blaise and Pansy are sitting in a corner, huddled up under their sweaters. Blaise is scribbling furiously in his Arithmancy workbook, sometimes glancing over at Pansy’s notes with the quiet desperation of someone who’s only now beginning to absorb the material.
It’s then that Tracey Davies flops herself inelegantly down onto the seat next to Draco, parchment held out in her hands. Her nails are short and painted a bright fuschia, and her blonde-brown curls are so tame - so well managed against her round face and sharp teeth, that they don’t remind him of Bellatrix at all.
“Potions. You’re good at it.”
It’s not a question. Draco glances down at the parchment. “Yes?”
“Can you make this make sense?”
Next to him, Pansy is eyeing Tracey with interest, as if they hadn’t shared a room for years before. Draco guesses that might be true, in a way. Davies was always closer to Brocklehurst, the Ravenclaw, and the Greengrasses - now at Beauxbatons, he thinks.
He feels a few eyes on him, a regular presence nowadays, and forces himself to relax. Dav-Tracey may now be a werewolf, but she’s new, and she’s brave, approaching him in the open. What he does next will be thought about, weighed against his previous actions, made a statement out of. It’s truly an approach worthy of Slytherin house, and he’s impressed by Tracey, by the way she’s simply sitting there, holding her work out to him in complete trust.
People always think of Slytherins as cowards, but they are merely self-preserving.
Sometimes, keeping yourself afloat means being brave.
He takes the parchment from Tracey’s hands, looks over her blocky handwriting, and pulls out his copy of The Potioneer’s Handbook, so he can start explaining the brewing time impact in restorative draughts.
Blaise looks up from his arithmancy work, squints at Tracey -
And there goes Pansy’s hand, forcing his head back down to the array of formulas.
Both Draco and Tracey laugh at that.
The next time, Pansy invites Tracey to the library with them. Brocklehurst is in the Potions Lab and Bones is on a date, so Tracey tags along.
Blaise takes to Tracey’s presence at their table with the same air he does everything else - a blend of boredom, amusement, and the burning glint of curiosity behind his brown-black eyes. It’s Ancient Runes and Care of Magical Creatures, this time around. Tracey’s a dab hand with charms, and Blaise can Transfigure the world at a whim, so it’s left to Draco and Pansy to explain Runes, even though Tracey never took the class.
Draco watches as Blaise sets his quill down and looks at Tracey, and from the upward tilt of his mouth, Draco thinks he already knows the questi-
“So, about your monthly issues.”
Tracey snorts - and really, was she raised in a barn? And looks up at Blaise. “Which one, Zabini? The one where I turn into a rampaging beast or the one where I bleed profusely?”
Blaise looks like he might crack a laugh at that one. “Well, are they not both… aligned?”
Tracey mumbles something that sounds very much like “Wouldn’t that be nice.”
Draco thinks he’s never heard something so crass from a Slytherin. And then he remembers, once more, that none of them are Slytherins. They’re returning students, their ties purple and silver, their common room in a third floor corridor.
Madam Pince looks particularly satisfied when she boots all four of them from the library for their laughter, as they all try to figure out how to make Tracey’s monthly problems sync up. Potions? Charms? A runic amulet?
Friends. Draco has friends.
Harry Potter, for once, is alone. This is remarkable because Draco has been attempting to speak to the other man privately for days.
It had occurred to him, after presenting McGonnagall with yet another essay for the parole board that he had never actually thanked Potter for his testimony - for both himself and his mother.
Those are not the manners he was brought up with, even if the Malfoy name is now rather derided upon in polite society.
He clears his throat across the room, and Potter looks up from his bed, where he’s been staring at the canopy. It seems like a waste to Draco, until he realizes Potter has charmed the thing - it looks like a folded up night sky, constellations out of order but easily identifiable. The Dog Star watches over him, and so do Aries, Andromeda, Serpens. His throat tightens as he begins to speak. He can’t look at it.
“I never - I never thanked you, Potter.”
Potter looks at him, and from the turn of his face, Draco knows he may have never expected it. “You don’t have to.”
“You saved my mother’s life. You saved my life.”
“And you were forced into it.”
His voice is deeper. It rasps at the end of words, and Draco wonders if Potter can sing. Because it could sound good.
“It still won’t be enough to just thank you.” Draco watches as Potter sits up on his bed, runs a hand through his unruly hair. He catches Draco’s eyes, and it feels like Draco might die, pinned down by a gaze both understanding and earnest in its forgiveness.
“I’ll accept it, since you’re offering it.” A wry smile shows on his face. “It was never about the two of us, anyway.”
It was bigger than us goes unsaid by either of them. Draco returns a tentative smile. “Could we start over?”
Potter shakes his head and Draco’s stomach feels like it has fallen out of him. “No. I like who we were. I like who we could be.”
After a pause, Potter continues. “We could call a truce? See where that goes.”
There is a warmth in his chest that threatens to overwhelm him, so Draco nods, spins back to the door, and runs all the way to Pansy’s startled arms.
She says nothing of his tears of relief, simply rubs circles on his back and hums a song.
Don’t Look Back in Anger.
He’s marching up to the owlery to visit Archimedes and send off a new letter to his mother when he runs into Brocklehurst, who is heading down from the tower, a worried look on her face. When they are about to pass each other, Brocklehurst blocks his path.
Wary, he nods at her and hopes it’s not a hex that’s coming his way when he reaches into her pocket. But he merely holds the letter in his hands slightly tighter, and Blocklehurst holds out a card instead.
“Was looking for you, Malfoy. Tracey said you owl your mum on Wednesdays, and - “ she coughs. “I wanted to give this to you in person.”
It’s an invitation to a party. He hasn’t been invited to a party in years now. Not since his father’s capture at the Ministry. “What’s the occasion?”
“See, this is why I wanted to hand it in person. Get your paranoia out, go on.” Brocklehurst now seems annoyed, speaking in a slightly clipped tone. “No one here is as angry with you as you think they are. We were all dealing differently. And you didn’t torture us.”
She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “It was your wand, but not your will.”
Draco flushes, and blames his complexion on how quickly Brocklehurst softens at him. “Anyway. It’ll be Susan’s birthday, but we’re calling it a joint surprise ‘do since it’ll be Tracey’s two weeks after. Most of the year is already coming, so we had to move it out to the forest.”
“You’re ah, hosting a party in the Forbidden Forest?” Draco shudders, remembering silvery white unicorn blood.
Brocklehurst actually snorts at this. “You’re like, the seventh person to say that. There’s a clearing out behind Hagrid’s hut that’s warded. We’ll all be perfectly safe.”
Draco clears his throat again. “Of course. Right. Well, I’ll be there.”
He’s now on the receiving end of an honest smile, and it’s all so weird.
“You just don’t understand girls, Draco, dear heart.”
Pansy is attempting to braid his hair as they sit near the lake, enjoying some carefully laid out warming charms and the brisk March sunlight. It’d been raining for days, so the ground is beginning to defrost, and they have magic, so outside they were, while Blaise was shoved in a corner of the library, completing an Ancient Runes assignment both Pansy and Draco had tried to remind him of several times that week.
“Well, you certainly don’t seem to, Parkinson.”
He feels a tug to his hair that is definitely not part of the braiding process.
“My struggles in dating are not the topic at hand here, Malfoy.”
“Ah, we’re back to Malfoy, then?”
It’s only teasing, because they’ve never been Parkinson and Malfoy. Not to each other.
“Only if you’re going to continue being a prat. I told you, that thing for Bones was not advisable.” she laughs, her whole body going with it. “Imagine that. She’s so pretty though.”
Draco lets himself be rocked into a bit of a lull by Pansy’s hands in his hair and her laughter, her running commentary on what he imagines is basically every girl in the school. He’d spent most of the weekend working on a DADA essay that had him upside-down, a history of leithfold attacks and ways to combat the invisible nightmares, so he supposed he was tired after all. A passing thought of asking Potter for help had crossed his mind, but he had dismissed it.
He thinks about Potter far too much. From the casual lounging by the fire to the way his brow would furrow in concentration when there is a book in front of him, or how he would immediately brighten when near Weasley and Granger and Longbottom. And Luna and Girl Weasley, and Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott and … well, really, anyone. It also seemed the last year of running had finally awakened his appetite, because Potter was putting on weight. No longer wiry and almost frail looking, the Twat Who Lived was, most unfortunately, becoming even more attractive with age.
As if torturing him, or perhaps reading his mind, a shadow descended upon both he and Pansy, and when he opened his eyes to grumble about more rain, he found Pansy looking up at Potter who had appeared above them on a broomstick. He was grinning, his tan skin flushed from the cold air, and wearing a full quidditch kit.
Again, quite unfortunate.
For Draco’s wellbeing, at least.
“Alright, Potter?” Pansy waved at him, beckoning Potter to hover lower so he didn't shout down at them.
Pansy Parkinson, a traitor.
“Yeah, just wanted to ask if you both were coming down to the party tonight.” He’s still smiling, but it’s smaller, tentative. “We thought everyone should come, and Ron helped Mandy with the decora-”
“Potter,” Draco sighs, pointing up at Pansy. “Lesbian.” He truly thought everyone in the school knew.
“Oi!” Pansy tugs at his hair again.
Potter is now bright red. Must be from the cold. “Er, well, good? Uh, that’s not what I-”
“Right, nothing to worry about, Potter. We’ll be there,” Pansy says, glaring down in Draco’s direction. It’s rather ineffective, since Draco mostly gets a full look at her nostrils.
“Great! Good, uh, good.” Potter nods, and then lifts his broom upward, flying away towards the Quidditch pitch without even a goodbye.
Pansy snorts. Once again, Draco gets a flattering look up at her nostrils. “You sure about that never in a millennium, Pans?”
Draco does the right thing, and swats up at her nose.
It should be known, though, that Draco Malfoy will always, always, love Pansy Parkinson.
So he misses on purpose.
And that night, sipping firewhiskey questionably acquired, Pansy, aided by Girl Weasley discovered The Spice Girls.
Girl Weasley (Ginevra, what a name,) is screaming along to the lyrics of some pop song about lovers. There’s a catchy rhythm, and people are attempting to dance to it. But mostly, everyone is sloshed, under the careful eye of Longbottom and Abbott, each choosing to nurse a single drink for the night.
Draco sticks to only two, and enjoys the pleasant buzz as he and Blaise stand by the refreshments, chatting with Boot and Abbott about the group - The Spice Girls, Abbott supplies, and giggles as she describes them.
“Well, there’s a fun one, and a cute one. A mean one, a sporty. And uh, a posh one.”
Blaise and Boot immediately point to Draco, and he laughs. “Posh Spice!” they shout in unison.
It’s fun, and silly. He’s Posh Spice, he’s the King of Carrot Flowers, he is…
“Draco! You’re here!”
Harry bloody Potter slings an arm across Draco’s shoulders, grinning. His olive skin is rather flushed, and there’s a drink in his other hand as he smiles at Blaise. “Alright, Zabini?”
Blaise is actually fettered. “Y-yeah, Potter, ‘m alright.”
Potter isn’t sloshed enough to not notice, and he begins to steer Draco away from the conversation. There are butterflies in his stomach that won’t let up, and the firewhiskey swims uncomfortably, altering his gait just enough that he leans into Potter.
Yes, it’s the drink.
Potter takes him in front of Granger and Weasley, spotted snogging quite enthusiastically at the beginning of the whole thing. Tracey is speaking in hushed tones to Pansy, and Blaise is caught between Boot and Abbott now, and Draco is alone, it seems, with the Golden Trio.
But Weasley merely raises an eyebrow, and Granger smiles in a welcoming manner.
It all looks quite ridiculous, especially with the way Weasley is wearing Granger’s lipstick across his jawline.
Potter, however, is delighted. “Look, Draco came!” he slurs at his friends. Draco’s entire face bursts into flame when Weasley catches the double entendre.
“Uh, yeah. You asked if we were earlier, right?”
“Yes! Pansy is a lesbian, did you know?”
Granger looks… like she’s about to burst into laughter. “Oh, Harry.” she says, biting her bottom lip. “Yes, we know.”
“Oh, that’s good, that’s great.” Potter nods. “It’s good she’s proud. You know, the Muggles do something called Pride. It’s a parade. For uh…” he trails off. Draco imagines it’s because that’s a lot of words for someone so intoxicated.
“Yes, Harry. We’re going to Pride this year.” Weasley sounds both placating and ready to crack. His cheeks are red with how hard he’s holding his laughter in.
“Th-thank you? For letting me know?” Draco tries.
Potter squeezes him closer, and it’s April, it’s only slightly warmer with the charms Weasley and Brocklehurst laid out, and it’s so nice. Potter smells like grass, like caramel, like all the things Draco loves.
It hurts.
Except it doesn’t, because Potter is trying - in his own, slurred way, to invite Draco to Muggle London for this… Pride thing.
“I’ve uh. Never been to Muggle London, Potter.”
“It’s so good! My aunt never took me. Hermione did, though.”
“Harry, maybe you should let go of Malfoy?” Prompts Weasley. The burning in Draco’s cheeks thanks him effusively.
“No. No, Draco. His name, we’re all friends.” Potter insists. Draco’s name sounds good coming from him. Potter, no, Harry holds him impossibly closer - as if he was Harry’s favorite pillow.
Granger can’t hold it in. She starts laughing madly, and in his bewilderment, Draco looks around the clearing, ready to beg for help. People are dancing, chatting, and there’s Tracey and Pansy and they’re. Oh, they’re holding hands.
That’s new.
Ignoring the development, Draco raises his eyebrows at Pansy, who merely smirks at him and deliberately ignores their age-old signal for “get me out of here.” She turns away from him, leans in to shout (for they all need to shout, in the noise of the radio,) and they both leave.
He thought he could trust Tracey.
Harry is saying something else, but Draco is dazed, confused, and Weasley is holding Granger up by the waist as she shakes and giggles towards them. “- aaaand you’re really pretty.” is what he hears when he turns back to Harry.
“P-pretty?!” he splutters.
This is what breaks Weasley. He starts laughing, turns both himself and Granger, and walks away. He’s alone.
“Oh yeah. You know. Pretty! With your hair. And the face. I wan’ kiss it.”
“Merlin, Harry.” Draco sighs. “Alright, let’s get you back to the room.”
Guiding a drunk Harry Potter back to their shared dorm room wasn’t necessarily in Draco’s agenda for the party, but it’s an event if there was ever one. By the time they reach the room, Harry has progressed from calling Draco pretty to petting his hair absentmindedly until Draco sits him down on the edge of the bed, conjuring a glass of water for him.
Harry drinks it, smiles toothily at Draco, and lays down on his side.
Draco tries to justify all of this as Harry being drunk as he sits on the edge of his bed, watching Harry’s breaths even out, until Weasley and Blaise walk back into the dorm, and Blaise dejectedly hands Weasley two galleons.
“Couldn’t even pass out on the same bed” he hears Blaise grumble as he pulls the curtains to his own bed closed.
On May 2nd, 1999 the British wizarding world mourned.
Draco, Pansy, Blaise and Tracey hold a steady line among the students, even as some look at them in renewed anger all through the hall.
May rolls around with abandon, ensuring Draco forgets all about Harry calling him pretty, because there’s exams coming, and he’s scheduled to meet the parole board. His wand will be scanned, select memories will be taken and reviewed.
They’ll assess the essays he’s submitted, the people he associates with.
It’s humiliating.
But he gets to see his mother. When McGonagall lets him through the floo in her office, he lands in the Ministry’s lobby and is enveloped in the warmth of Narcissa Black’s hug - amber and jasmine and home. Draco lets her hold him as long as she needs, and when she pulls back she takes both his cheeks in hand and kisses his forehead, like she used to when he was little more than a boy, running around the manor with scraped knees and paint-spilled hands.
“My son,” she breathes. His mother looks better than over the holidays, dressed in lovely cerulean robes, her hair tied back to show not Malfoy heraldry, but the Black family crest. She’s reclaiming it, she had told him in a letter. Demanding that the world respect the Black family again.
“How are you?” she sighs, looping her arm around the crook of his elbow and guiding him to the check-in counter, where a bored-looking witch takes both of their wands.
There are so many answers to that question. So many things have changed in his life, are changing in his life. How can he even begin? “Well. Better than before.”
Narcissa smiles, indulgent at him. “I’m glad. What about dear Pansy? Still seeing that new young lady?”
“Mother, it’s been two weeks. Even Pansy is not that … flighty.”
A laugh escapes his mother - she has known Pansy as long as Draco has, and Narcissa sees the girl as a bit of a sister to Draco. But Draco knows she’s merely distracting him from the walk to the DMLE, to the parole hearing.
They’re trying.
Together.
The hearing goes well. Madam Houghton stamps his file with a check, and sooner than he’d like, Draco is parting from his mother and landing back into McGonagall’s office. Sitting in the office, drinking a steaming cup of tea, Minerva McGonagall gives Draco a nod, and lets him head back to the dorms immediately.
It’s a free period, and most of the students are outside enjoying the newfound sunlight, but when he walks into his dorm to change into his robes, Harry and Weasley are there, Weasley looking patently bored and Harry pacing the room.
The moment Draco opens the door, Weasley huffs, stands from his bed with a quick “Wotcher, Malfoy,” and leaves the room in a streak of ginger hair.
And Harry and Draco are alone.
The silence descends on them like lead, heavy in both of their ears, and Draco can’t take it much, so he goes to his bedside table, shuffles through the CDs there, and with shaking hands, puts on the first one he thinks might work.
It’s Tracey’s copy of Nevermind, which he really should give back to her, and he knows the music is harsh and likely not the right background for this, but the conversation is going to happen regardless, so he’s willing to leverage nostalgia here. Even if the nostalgia is only from eight months ago, when everything was tentative, and the entire class was tip-toeing around each other.
“Hi,” Harry says, and Draco’s entire body warms, his heartbeat in his throat, butterflies in his stomach. “I wanted to see you.”
Draco takes a page out of his friend’s books and snorts. “We share a dorm, Harry.”
There’s a flush high on Harry’s cheeks, but he smiles anyway. “You know I meant alone.” He rubs his hand across his jaw. Nerves. There’s stubble there, and Draco wants.
He’s always known. This would always be more.
Draco looks at Blaise’s bed - empty, and at the door where Weasley has just exited. And when he turns back to face Harry - fully intending to send a sarcastic quip his way, Harry is just there. A hair’s breadth away, green eyes trapping him in place.
Slowly, Harry places his hand on Draco’s shoulder. It’s steadying, it’s strong. “I meant it, you know?”
“What?”
“When I told you I wanted to kiss you.”
Draco swallows. He swallows his hopes, his fears, the burn of years following an impossible star. He swallows back the way his hands shake when at the parole board, the way his mother no longer hides her family crest. The sight of the night sky above Harry’s bed.
He chooses to be brave. It’s his turn after all. “Will you?”
Harry nods. And leans forward, closes the distance between them, as small as it already was. His lips are chapped, tentative, and they change Draco’s life.
And, well. Music happens.