Chapter Text
The rain splattered against the windows, the same pitter pat-tap it had made for the last three days. It caused Draco’s pulse to spike, his breath catching in his throat as though the rain was pouring into his lungs drowning him. House arrest until his trial was bad enough, but house arrest while torrential rains flooded away the world outside was interminable. He pulled the blankets around him as another gale picked up, sounding so much like a banshee that he had actually woken up two nights ago, sure the end was near for him.
He was anxious, he knew that, he could recognize the tight knot in his lungs, the prickly ball caught in his throat, and he knew that the storm outside was only making things seem even more dire. But he knew just as well that he had good reason to be anxious; his family had done wrong, he had done wrong, and in just five days’ time they would face judgement for their actions.
Draco wished, feeling every bit of five years old, for the comfort of his parents. But that was gone now too - his parents still loved him, but their poor choices and faulty beliefs had led them all here, and neither of them had found any reason to recant other than fear. Draco’s initial doubts about his family’s values had likewise been borne of fear, but in the two years since he had taken the Dark Mark and been willingly branded with his family’s shortcomings, his own fear had given rise to scepticism. Maybe he just didn’t have the disposition his father wanted for him, but he didn’t understand how anyone could witness a woman being murdered over the dinner table and still feel that their convictions were unshakable. It hadn’t been some great dawning moment of revelation for Draco, more of an extended crisis of faith, but he felt the end result had been positive nonetheless. He hadn’t given up Potter, the Dark Lord had been defeated for good, and his entire family had survived (even if at least one of them was likely to rot in Azkaban for the rest of their lives).
But, despite his family still being whole and hale, they might have otherwise been a thousand miles away for all they could help or comfort him now. That thought, though not particularly novel to Draco by this point, did still send a pang of loss and longing through him. He wanted... he wanted someone, someone to care about him and love him in a way that wasn’t completely futile, someone from whom he could draw comfort, and who he could love equally in return, someone made just for him, forever, no matter what. He wanted someone to rescue him, or maybe just someone to be there to rejoice when he rescued himself.
He wanted his soulmate, but years of his parents’ lectures made him recoil at the very thought.
He had spent his entire life being warned away from his soulmate, so to even think the word felt like touching an open flame, a sharp spike of pain and NO rocketing through his body. Soulmates were a Ministry ruse, his father had always said, something cooked up by an administration without any proper wizarding sentiment, something to muddy the lineage of the good pureblood families until no one could claim pureblood status anymore. “A proper arranged pureblood marriage has just as much affection in it than some spelled-up soulmate match could ever hope to, and far more compatibility besides,” Lucius had said on at least three separate occasions before Draco had turned nine and learned to stop believing in the fallacy of soulmates.
It was just supposed to be some magic, worked by the Department of Mysteries to detect [seek out?] magical compatibility, equality of emotional temperaments, and some other top secret je ne sais quoi. Plausible, if only barely, and just as likely to be a ruse, if taken at face value. But Draco had also heard the stories gossiped about by the other students in his classes - there was a pull of some sort too, apparently, some gaping emotional hole inside you that would cry out for your soulmate and not be satisfied until you found them. Draco didn’t want to give credence to those rumours, didn’t want to consider how a reality like that could coexist with the expectations laid out for him, and didn’t even want to imagine how something like that would have affected his parents’ relationship, yet some of the stories had been quite compelling, and now, sitting alone in his room surrounded by fear and despair, he worried that he was beginning to feel a tug in his own chest.
It was anathema to everything his family stood for, everything he had been raised to believe, but it was also, at that moment, the only thing Draco wanted. And maybe, he thought, slowly letting himself adjust to the idea, maybe that meant that it was the right choice to make.
He sat up, the duvet pooling around his waist, and flicked his hand to illuminate a dim lumos, one of the only wandless spells he could do, learned out of necessity. He ran his shaking fingers through his hair, took a deep breath, and announced to the empty room in a decisive whisper, “If I am shown grace at my trial, I’m going to find my soulmate.”
The trials were, in the end, a simple thing. Draco waited with his parents in the holding cell outside of the courtroom, and one by one they were called in. His father went first, and didn’t return. His mother went next, and was brought back only long enough to tell Draco, “We’ll see you soon, darling,” before he was whisked away, and that statement was left to rattle around unsettlingly in his mind.
Once he was seated in the courtroom – thankfully unbound, but with an Auror standing with a wand trained on him – the procedure was simple. The Wizengamont read him his presentment (criminal mischief, property destruction, misprision, conspiracy, accessory to murder in the first degree), he sat there in silence because he wasn’t sure how to respond to a list of his regrets read out in such a sterile way, and then the prosecution began calling forth the witnesses to speak against him. To Draco’s surprise, there weren’t that many people called forward. He would have thought that the list of former classmates and their families willing to do whatever they could to send him away for life would have been inconceivably long, but the only people who stood to give testimony against him were Justin Finch-Fletchley, an older witch he thought worked for the Ministry who mostly talked about Lucius, and a warlock he didn’t know at all. Draco had tried not to think about it over the last few months, but when the thought of his trial did invade his mind, he had always assumed that one of Potter’s crowd would testify against him, most likely a Weasley.
And indeed, there was a Weasley present in the courtroom. Draco had noticed the Golden Trio watching from one of the high benches almost as soon as he had been brought in, but none of them had gotten up to speak against him. Potter looked almost catatonic, forced to endure far too much and still required to keep going, and Granger’s posture appeared rigid to the point of pain, only softened where she held Weasley’s hand on the bench between them, but even that seemed to be for Weasley rather than her. It was clear that he was only here to support his friends, but by this point he needed their support just to remain in his chair. But stay in his chair Weasley did, getting up neither to testify against nor for Draco –- unlike Potter, who did take the stand in the only unexpected moment of the entire afternoon.
Potter was called forward as a witness for the defence, the last one, capping off the few luke-warm Ministry peons the family solicitor had been able to arrange for the Malfoys. Potter didn’t speak for very long, and didn’t have much emotion in his voice while he did, but the few things he did offer did far more to sway the court than the officially prepared and polished statements offered by everyone else.
“Draco Malfoy saved my life,” was a statement that couldn’t be easily overlooked, not even when matched up to Draco’s worst crimes.
In the end, Draco was sure that it was Harry Potter’s testimony that saved him. He was given a slap on the wrist, a small and temporary magic restriction (small spells only, no hexes, and a monitor on his wand for three months), and was then free to go, all because he hadn’t identified Potter when he was swollen and standing before him in the Manor. Draco was sure he deserved far worse, was sure he should have done a stint in Azkaban, or at least suffered house arrest like it seemed his mother was going to, but instead he was free, and now had to make good on his promise to himself. He was going to find his soulmate.
Discovering his soulmate was also a very simple thing, surprisingly enough. Draco left the courtroom, followed the instructions to retrieve his wand from the clerk’s office (Potter must have returned it for him, certain that his testimony would be enough to convince the court to overlook everything Draco had ever done), and then followed the instructions of the somewhat harried clerk down the three flights of stairs to the Department of Mysteries, where he waited for five minutes in a painfully beige room before being ushered into a maze of hallways and presented with yet another office and another clerk. He gave his magical signature, verified his age, signed a paper, and pricked his finger, hoping that the small amount of blood magic required by the clerk wouldn’t be considered too big, or too dark, or too Malfoy-ish to set off his wand monitor.
The clerk disappeared through another door for a moment, and Draco sucked on his finger to stop the bleeding while he waited for the man to return. He felt as though he were in a daze, or a dream that wasn’t a waking nightmare; everything had been so simple, so straightforward and easy today. Sit quietly, listen, be declared free to go, find the right offices, fill out paperwork, get a soulmate. It was easier than his life had been in over a year. So, of course, when the clerk returned with a single, thin file, the newfound simplicity of Draco’s life was shattered.
Really, Draco thought, once he had stopped hyperventilating in the Department of Mysteries’ loo, he didn’t know what he had been expecting. If he had stopped to think about it properly, there wasn’t really any good potential outcome. Either his soulmate would be someone aligned with his family and the losing side of the war, in which case he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with them, or, even worse, his soulmate would be from the winning side and wouldn’t want anything to do with him. There was no universe in which Draco would deserve happiness after everything he had done, he knew that, but he hadn’t anticipated just how much it would hurt to realise that he was destined for a future of misery.
True, Draco had been spared the punishment he so deserved for everything he had done to contribute to the horribleness of the war, and of the Dark Lord’s reign of terror. And yes, Draco had chosen to turn his back on every part of his upbringing in the end, especially now to find his soulmate.He was going to do his best to set the world right again, but he knew he still hadn’t wiped the slate clean. However, this seemed extreme, even for the universe’s twisted idea of karmic payback. He was bonded for life with the subject of his own schoolboy infatuation, and to make it worse, the magic connecting soulmates was strong, and the blood the Department of Mysteries took wasn’t just to ensure that the parties were true; soulmates were connected with a longing for each other too strong to resist, a longing that Draco had just inadvertently activated in himself by pricking his finger and now becoming tethered to someone who would hate him for the rest of his torturously long life, soon to be spent all alone.
It was a little strange, Harry thought, shifting the boxes he was carrying to one side, how Draco Malfoy suddenly seemed to be everywhere Harry himself was. To be fair, Harry hadn’t seen him for over two months after the War, not until Malfoy’s trial, but seeing as how the entire Malfoy family had been on house arrest during that time, and as Harry never planned to return to Malfoy Manor ever again, maybe his sudden reappearance in Harry’s life wasn’t so strange.
But still, if someone had asked Harry how often he thought he would see Malfoy after the War, his answer would have been somewhere between a snort of laughter and a resounding “Never, if I can help it!” So, to have seen Malfoy three times in as many weeks felt odd.
It felt even stranger to start running into Malfoy twice a week.
Harry started to feel like Malfoy was lurking around every corner, just waiting to startle Harry with the sight of his blond hair and pointy features. He had been walking along Diagon, then in Flourish and Blotts, then volunteering at a soup kitchen. He had been picking up a to-go order at the Leaky, then shopping twice more in Diagon, and now, finally, in Tesco of all places.
When Harry saw him at the checkout counter he wanted to storm over and demand to know what Malfoy was doing, but just like the last six times Harry had seen him he was brought up short. The Malfoy he wanted to grab and interrogate was the Malfoy he had known at the start of sixth year, and this Malfoy simply wasn’t him.
Two years removed, this version of Draco Malfoy looked similar at a glance – the same shoulder-length hair in a shiny shade of near-platinum, the same grey eyes, and the same pointy, slightly upturned nose – but upon closer inspection, he didn’t match up with his past self at all. He kept his eyes low when they weren’t nervously darting around, and he gave quiet nods to the shopkeepers without a single sneering glare. He still walked gracefully, but now his steps were quiet, and he didn’t call attention to himself. Worst of all, when he noticed Harry, Malfoy hardly reacted at all. He didn’t sneer, or stalk over to insult him, or make a ride gesture across the street. Instead, his face twisted in what might have been a look of repressed pain before going carefully blank, and each time he simply nodded at Harry before looking away and leaving quickly.
It was infuriating because it wasn’t. Harry couldn’t be mad at him for doing nothing wrong, simply for being polite, but he wanted to be, because this was Draco Malfoy, and they had never interacted peaceably in their lives. Harry wanted to chase after him, to ask him what he was doing, to find out who he was now, to pull at whatever loose strings he could find until Malfoy unravelled before him and Harry could see exactly who he was now.
Instead, he jerked his head in a slight nod back at Malfoy, walked further into the store, and picked out a wine that seemed suitably grown-up and well-priced to share with Ron and Hermione back at Grimmauld Place.
“…and so, we went to the office,”
“-and it was the weirdest thing, because the whole place was so creepy when we were there in fifth year, but that room was so normal-”
“-and it only took them a minute, but I could actually feel the magic for just a moment when they took our blood. And of course, I’d read all about it, everything that’s been published, at least, and so I thought I knew what to expect, but it was still so strange to feel the pull when they were performing the spell.”
“But then the bloke came back into the room, handed us the envelopes, and just ushered us back into the hallway.” Ron shrugged, mildly indifferent to the strangeness of the Department of Mysteries.
“I’m so happy for you,” Harry said, and he meant it with every fibre of his being. “I’m not surprised at all, but I’m thrilled for you both.”
Ron and Hermione both beamed, and any jealousy Harry might have expected to feel (and he’d felt it a lot lately, seeing others so happy when he had felt so adrift) was squashed entirely in the wake of the joy he felt for them. They were his best friends, the two most wonderful people he had ever met, and they were perfectly matched for each other. They didn’t have to wonder if they were meant to be together or if someone would show up in a few years to tear them apart, they could just be happy.
“We weren’t really that surprised either,” Hermione said, smiling at Ron. “I think we both knew, even before we went there, but it’s so nice to have the official record, and it was fascinating to research the spell and feel it taking hold for a moment.”
Ron leaned in and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “That’s my ‘Mione. She loves me almost as much as she loves magical theory.”
Hermione rolled her eyes, but leaned into him affectionately.
“So, what about you, Harry?” she asked, turning her attention back on him.
“Oh, I definitely love Ron more than magical theory.”
“Cheers, mate,” Ron said, huffing out a small laugh.
“You know what I meant,” Hermione pushed. “Are you going to go find out who your soulmate is?”
Harry looked at the two of them, thought about how happy they were together, and felt a pang of longing shoot through his own chest at the idea of having someone who would love him like that. But then, he considered the rest of it and shook his head.
“No, I don’t think so. Not any time soon, at least,” he said. “I think I’ve had enough of fate and destiny for a while.”
Ron nodded sagely. “Yeah, that makes sense. Especially considering it’s the Department of Mysteries and all too.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, because he could have happily gone the rest of his life without thinking about the Department of Mysteries ever again.
“Still,” Hermione pressed, “it is a lovely thing to know. I mean, I knew that Ron and I were well-suited for each other, but it is nice to know that we are literally a perfect match. We’ll support you whether you choose to find out who your soulmate is or not, we just want you to be happy, but it really is a wonderful thing.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, Harry gracelessly attempted to change the subject.
“Er, yeah, thanks. So, I saw Malfoy again today.”
Despite his clumsy attempt at a transition, Ron and Hermione let the subject of soulmates drop.
“Again? That must be the fifth time this month!”
“The seventh, actually,” Harry said, and Ron wrinkled his nose.
“Do you think he’s following you or something?” he asked.
Harry considered it for a minute, then said, “No, I don’t think so. At least, he’s not all the time. He usually seems to be where I’m going, but he’s always there before me. I saw him at Tesco today, but he was checking out as I was entering.”
“He was at Tesco?” Hermione looked intrigued.
“Yeah, and I thought that was really weird. I mean, since when does Malfoy shop at muggle grocery stores?”
Ron gave a contemplative hum. “Maybe he’s planning something, and that was his recon mission, or maybe he doesn’t want to be tracked.”
“Do you really think that Malfoy would risk something like that?” Hermione asked sharply, looking flatly unimpressed and so much like McGonagall that Harry sat up straighter in his chair. “He’s just barely avoided Azkaban, I hardly think he’d be so foolhardy as to try anything right now. Besides, he’s still under a magic restriction, so the Ministry would know right away if he attacked anyone. It just doesn’t seem likely.”
And he saved my life, Harry did not say. Instead, he muttered, “It looked like he was buying things to make biscuits.”
Ron laughed, and the conversation moved on.
Three days later, Harry finally snapped. As far as spur-of-the-moment, impulsive interactions with Malfoy went, it was probably one of the less disastrous occasions in Harry’s life, but he could admit that his behaviour hadn’t been ideal.
Harry was in Flourish and Blotts, attempting to choose a birthday present for Hermione, and was teetering into the giddy side of frustrated and helpless at not being able to remember which books she already had (it wasn’t his fault she already owned half the shop!), or which authors she favoured versus which authors she couldn’t stand. Privately, he felt that buying a present for one of your closest friends shouldn’t be quite so hard, and he was just beginning to contemplate asking someone to help him find a book for ‘War Hero Hermione Granger’ (because saying it like that would probably work, right?), when he saw Draco Malfoy.
Malfoy was tucked away in an alcove along one wall of the shop, and Harry vaguely remembered that that was where he had been the last time Harry had seen him here, only two weeks ago. Suddenly at the end of his rope with both shopping and Malfoy’s sudden appearances everywhere Harry was, he stalked over without giving it another thought.
“Malfoy,” he said, and felt a small jolt of satisfaction at how Malfoy’s eyes went wide when he startled at the sound of Harry’s voice.
“Hello, Potter,” he said, seeming to regain himself slightly.
“What are you doing?” Harry asked, well aware just how stupid he sounded as the words came out of his mouth, but willing himself not to cringe at his own idiocy.
Disconcertingly, Malfoy didn’t respond to Harry’s question with a sneer or a snarky comment. Instead, he simply said, “I’m looking for a new cookbook.”
And yeah, Harry thought, that should have been fairly obvious, seeing as Malfoy was standing under a sign that said “Cookbooks” in foot-tall lettering. But still, it wasn’t like Malfoy was someone he expected to do a lot of cooking for himself.
“Why?”
“I want to cook something new,” Malfoy responded, still without any ire, although with an edge of concern for Harry’s mental status creeping into his voice. At Harry’s continued silence, he added, “We didn’t have any cookbooks at the Manor, and none of the elves would take clothes, so I’m worried that they’ll be seized as reparations, and I thought that I should learn how to cook on the off-chance that it becomes necessary.”
Harry had to take a moment to process all of that. He vaguely remembered Hermione throwing the Prophet down in disgust a few weeks ago and talking about how it wasn’t right for the Ministry to seize house elves like they were property, and Harry thought that it had been the Notts’ elves Hermione was talking about then, but the political ramifications of house elf seizure were quickly overwhelmed in his mind by the mental image of Draco Malfoy cooking. It was almost too much for him to imagine, the idea of Malfoy wearing a long white apron in a lavish kitchen with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, delicately tasting a sauce on the end of a wooden spoon. It was all too much.
“You cook?”
“I’m learning to,” Malfoy retorted, tensing suddenly, and oh, that was interesting.
“You’re rubbish at it, aren’t you?” Harry asked, with far too much glee.
“No!” Malfoy snapped, finally regaining a bit of the venom Harry usually associated with him before deflating a bit. “I mean, I’m still learning, but my skills have been improving. I don’t see what business this is of yours, Potter.”
Harry, bizarrely, had to bite back a smile at the return of Malfoy’s pompous tone.
“Whatever you say, Malfoy. But you might want to try this one, if you find your skills aren’t quite up to par yet,” he added, grabbing a copy of Dinners for Beginners – So Easy a Flobberworm Could Do It! off the shelf and dropping it into his hands. And then, feeling for once like he had achieved something, Harry walked away and stepped back out into the sunshine. Maybe he would get Hermione something for Crookshanks instead.