Work Text:
Easy - Son Lux
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“Trying out hippotherapy?” yelled Harry.
“Piss off, Potter,” Malfoy snarled, not turning round, though he probably had no idea what Harry was talking about.
Harry had only recently found out himself. Hermione had once told him about therapy with horses for children and adults suffering from different physical or mental disorders.
Hippotherapy, she said, had helped her and her parents reconnect after their return from Australia. Although Hermione’s tone was smooth and light-hearted, Harry knew exactly where this was going.
After the deaths of Cedric, Sirius and Dumbledore. After the Battle of Hogwarts and the final death of Voldemort. The death and resurrection of Harry himself, but not the resurrected Remus and Tonks, or Fred, Snape, Alastor Moody—so many more deaths that it was impossible to count—no one could speak to him without pity and piety.
No one but Malfoy.
Harry felt a sudden burst of energy, as if everything was back to normal. Back when Harry still had no family and lived with the Dursleys, who treated him like dirt, and yet the darkness looming over him hadn’t seemed so hopeless. Back to the time when Harry and Malfoy were hurling insults or fighting in front of everyone to see in the endless corridors of Hogwarts, in the endless classes, or at the endless breakfasts, lunches and dinners in the Great Hall.
Only now there was no Ron around Harry, ready to punch Malfoy in the face at any moment. There was no Hermione, who was trying to calm them down by urging both sides to lay down their weapons—that is, to put down their wands. Nor was there Malfoy’s retinue; the Slytherins, whom Harry appeared to know better than some of his fellow Gryffindors.
There was no Crabbe and Goyle. There was no arrogant smirking Zabini. Or Pansy Parkinson who would grab Malfoy’s sleeve and he would always grimace and yank his hand away.
There was none of that.
Just them and the Forbidden Forest. And a herd of thestral nearby, spreading their massive bat-like wings and shaking their dragon-like horned heads. So frightening and so peaceful; strange and curious at the same time. Especially when Harry noticed a pair of thestrals trying to grab the tail of someone’s overly cocky post owl as it flew past them as low as if it wasn’t afraid to try its luck. Teased. And the thestrals weren’t exactly fazed by such insolence.
Their glowing eyes occasionally picked out the figure of Malfoy and probably his own, too. Then Harry thought that from the outside, the two of them looked like book characters. Kind of like the ones Lockhart used to write. His memoirs had sold well before and now, with a little extra circulation, they were a resounding success. Bad PR, as Harry knew from his own bitter experience, was still PR.
That had contributed to the unreality of where he and Malfoy were now, near the Forbidden Forest, apart from everyone else. A sanctuary which, to be fair, had more belonged to Malfoy than to him. Yet, such was the way he was. Harry owned everything halfway—even the things that could not be owned by anyone else per se.
Harry looked at Malfoy again. His back was terribly straight, and his hair was soaked wet and resembled icicles.
It was raining fine but persistent and had been going on for hours, so Malfoy looked like a moth now, whitish and squashed.
How long was Malfoy standing there? And how long was he standing there himself?
Harry cleared his throat, wiggled his shoe on the loose earth, then took a few footsteps further. To the thestrals, of course. Certainly not to Malfoy. The latter—out of sheer stubbornness, Harry knew—kept pretending Harry was not there.
And yet from the way Malfoy’s shoulders were slumped, and the fog beneath Harry’s own feet felt like it was biting into his ankles, and everything was blurring before his eyes, even with his brand-new contacts, it was clear to him that he was not the only one who felt this sullen, icky fatigue. The fatigue that had always plagued this day.
Malfoy snorted and raised the collar—or something that so desperately reminded it—of his black robe. This fop had never worn a hat or hood back then, not even during his time at Hogwarts. And it seemed Malfoy had no luck casting an umbrella spell whatsoever.
No seriously. If something doesn’t suit Malfoy, he is good to go. And Harry is simply too tired to look for another place like this. Too tired to think of a reason he wouldn’t do it in the first place.
Harry wasn’t going to hide from Malfoy either.
Malfoy was not a pleasant company. Malfoy was not pleasant. At times, when Harry had sneaked glances at his blank expression during the trial where Malfoy acted as a witness in Lucius’s case, Harry wondered if Malfoy was even human.
Back then, he and Narcissa reminded him of two white canvases. Or more precisely, two missing portraits. Not only did they not shed a single tear at the announcement of his sentence (even if Lucius Malfoy himself did not evoke a drop of pity in Harry), but their expressions hadn’t slightly changed as if they’d seen the Basilisk.
Harry imagined how after the hearing, Malfoy and his mother had stood up, used a public fireplace or Apparation, and then returned to the Manor to routinely burn out Lucius’s name from their family tree, just as Harry had seen the Blacks did in the house on Grimmauld Place.
Harry thought that Malfoy had not unlearnt how to snap, get angry, or blame it all on him, but over the last few years, he has well learnt how to hold his tongue.
Finally, Harry reached the last and, in his opinion, final argument—the Hogwarts grounds didn’t belong to any of them. That meant no one could stop him from hiding here.
Especially not Malfoy. Especially when it won’t cross anyone’s mind to look for Harry in a place where Malfoy hid, or that they could be hiding together. Not even Hermione could have been prepared for an unlikely duo like this.
Harry was striding determinedly towards Malfoy, slapping in the mud and the rain-damp grass.
As he took a breath, his lungs felt as if they were filling with water—that’s how humid it was. Scotland in general, and the area nearby Hogwarts in particular was especially enchanting this time of the year, but it didn’t lose any of its familiar features.
“Still,” Harry began again. His voice, after a long pause, sounded muffled and brittle, as if he’d stepped on a dry branch, and it suddenly started to speak.
He wondered if of all the people gathered at Hogwarts tonight, Harry was trying to strike up a conversation with Malfoy, how crazy was he on a scale of one to ten?
“What are you doing here, Malfoy?” he continued.
Harry couldn’t see his face, but he realised Malfoy was squirming. Like a lemon. Or like a mandrake.
In fact, Harry thought suddenly, the mandrake described him best. (It was also consonant with his name.) Anytime Malfoy frowned or shouted at him, he became the exact replica, and all of his aristocratic features, with his long, knotted fingers, his long, narrow nose, and his loose tongue, vanished. The only thing that remained was that shrill, shrivelled, unattractive appearance.
Now to call Malfoy handsome would be about as ludicrous as it got.
Malfoy was wringing wet and pale. Slouching, even with his nose held high. So when Harry finally approached him, he was pleased to notice he had outgrown Malfoy by one inch if not two.
“Well?” Harry tried again and bumped Malfoy’s shoulder to spur him on, and it definitely had an effect.
Malfoy flashed like Lumos.
“What am I doing here, Potter?” he blurted out, turning sharply towards him. His nose and cheeks were slightly red, and so were his eyes. It was almost like Malfoy had been crying or had fallen in love, or had caught a cold.
Harry was scared by all three options. Primarily because he was rather dismayed by the fact that when assessing Malfoy’s look, he wasn’t too blunt as was usually the case.
“You mean in Magical Britain? Or perhaps at the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts?” Malfoy continued wryly: “Who invited that coward here?” he said, mimicking Ron’s voice, and tapped Harry on the shoulder too, but harder. Bony from every angle, Malfoy now looked like thestrals, which he clearly had a soft spot for.
A harbinger of death, Harry thought abruptly, staring straight at Malfoy. That was how he’d thought of him at the time, wasn’t he? Believing it was Malfoy who’d been the cause of the drastic wrong-turn events that followed, even though Harry knew—he knew for a fact—that Malfoy was no more guilty than most.
“Come on, Potter!” Malfoy’s eyes were fierce, though not genuinely evil. “Speak more precisely. Now whatever nonsense comes out of your mouth, everyone will rush to fulfil the will of the Great Harry Potter, our brave hero and saviour. It’s about time you’d learnt to use your brain without utterly relying on Granger.”
Harry clenched and unclenched his fists.
He sensed the movement in the air momentarily, but he didn’t let the outburst of anger control him. Even if the idea of becoming the Headless Horseman sounded extremely tempting for a short moment. After all, Malfoy had annoyed Harry back in school of course he could have easily pissed him off now.
Harry took a deep breath and… laughed.
Having to stay with Malfoy, fighting with him over nothing not far from the Forbidden Forest on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, while hearing the neighing of thestrals, usually silent, behind him was both the best and the worst idea he’d had.
“You’re a real nutcase, Malfoy, you know that?” Harry concluded simply. Laughter settled into his chest in a pleasant residue. Or perhaps it was the several glasses of champagne, Harry wouldn’t rule this one out. “I interceded for you in court. I never wanted you to leave.”
Malfoy turned away, and they stood in silence for five minutes. Or eternities. Harry didn’t even have a watch, and his mobile phone was of no use at Hogwarts.
Malfoy swung himself over the swaying fence. The thestrals, even though Hagrid had tamed them, didn’t look very friendly, but Harry refused to save anyone. He especially refused saving Malfoy.
So Harry didn’t move and continued to stare at him, just as flamboyant and fucked up and arrogant as Malfoy had always been all the way back in the third year. Only now, he wasn’t acting or sobbing.
Malfoy beckoned one thestral to him with a strange, fluttering sound, then pulled an apple from the hollow of his robe. Either the thestrals were very hungry, or they refused to perceive the lean figure of Malfoy as a meal or a threat, but much to Harry’s surprise, the whole herd soon stopped treating Malfoy as a stranger. And the apparent danger was no longer emanating from them.
Malfoy fed the thestrals two red apples, stroking one of them on its webbed wings and fluffy black mane until it started to squirm. As if he wanted Malfoy to scratch his horns, or ride him, or… Harry didn’t know what else he could have possibly wanted from Malfoy.
Even though Harry had lived in the magical world for years now, and he was slowly getting used to all its inconsistencies, miracles, and oddities, what he had seen was something completely different. Something he had yet to consider and process.
This Malfoy he had been seeing in front of him was grown-up and angular, sharp and angered, wearing a fine but rather ragged robe, with his floppy wet hair, falling over his forehead like some white feathers, surrounded by thestrals like the loyal Slytherins. This Malfoy simply couldn’t exist.
Still, it was him, of that Harry had no doubt.
And maybe, just maybe, he decided, surprising himself, Hermione was right, and hippotherapy was not absolute nonsense.