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Everyone seems shockingly okay with the divorce.
Not just their parents, not just their friends, but Harry and Ginny themselves cannot stop talking about it being the best thing they could have done. About being Mature and Reasonable. About salvaging what good grace and fondness they have left.
The only one kicking up a stir are the tabloids–not the ally Ron was hoping for.
“How can you be so bloody calm?”
It’s Ron’s job, he would have thought, to aid his best friend in this horrible time. To listen to him complain and to nod and agree and awkwardly skirt around the fact that that is his beloved baby sister they are trash talking. Ron, like any good mate, was prepared to do this.
Harry, awfully inconsiderate, just shrugs.
“I’m not,” he says, like the admission means nothing. “But it’s still for the best, you know? We just weren’t right for each other.”
But then why get married in the first place? Why date, why move in together, why discuss children when you ‘just aren’t right for each other’?
Ron thinks he’s full of shit, is what he means to say. Or maybe it’s denial. Pretending he never loved Ginny all that much because it hurts less that way, somehow.
And Harry did love her awfully. That’s why Ron can’t understand it–they actually really were perfect for each other.
“We are great friends, you know,” Harry offers when Ron is quiet for too long. “Better friends, really, than we ever were romantic partners.”
It’s a good line for the papers. Good for the parents, good for friends. No one is to blame. These things happen. Adulthood is messy and unpredictable; it’s hard holding on to what you once thought Life might be.
People change.
But not Harry. Harry never changed, not when it comes down to it, so Ron knows who is really to blame for this catastrophe.
Malfoy has been back in the country for all of one week, and already their Happy End is crumbling.
The ferret has been hiding out in France, where the family money can still buy luxury. He stayed just long enough for Harry to get him excused from his war crimes (Malfoy really was terribly young, don’t you think? Awful parents, don’t you agree? We should be generous, shouldn’t we?) and then he promptly fucked off. Didn’t even say thank you.
Harry had claimed it didn’t bother him, that it was good riddance and he had much rather get on with things. Move on, you know? But Ron hadn’t known, and Harry hadn’t moved on.
No one really knows what Malfoy did abroad. Chiefly no one had cared, but the Malfoys know the right palms to grease, the right people to make nice with–they wanted to disappear and so they did, everyone who could have informed on them invested in their pleasure. And, after all, they didn’t do anything too gruesome, did they? Victims of circumstance. Unfortunate bystanders.
And so no one knew and no one cared, and everyone was quite shocked when Malfoy Junior, heir to the throne, suddenly returned to the motherland.
In a spectacular show of bad taste, Malfoy stays in the Manor. Which is, of course, his right, it being his house, but it also being the scene of atrocities, a refuge for blood supremacists and war mongers, Ron does think he might have done well to book himself a hotel.
But that’s Malfoys for you–proud to the last.
He even invites Ron in, utterly unashamed. Like he barely even remembers the last time Ron was here, when they tortured and killed his friends.
Needless to say, Ron declines the invitation.
“How about the Leaky?” he suggests instead, because that affords him both neutral ground and plenty of witnesses.
“Fine,” Malfoy agrees with his oily smile.
They ultimately decide against the Leaky because it’s impossible to have a serious, vaguely threatening conversation when the entire pub is blatantly staring. The Muggle cafe makes for a poor substitute (Ron doesn’t even know what he ordered, to be honest) but at least they aren’t being glared at.
“So,” Ron starts awkwardly. Somewhere in the kerfuffle he lost his righteous indignation. “How have you been?”
Malfoy laughs, low and melodious.
(It’s definitely studied. No one just laughs like that, especially not unpleasant twats like Malfoy.)
“France has been kind to me,” he says, like a dick. “But I have to confess that I missed home.”
He winks at Ron, like sharing a joke. Like he is in on some secret.
Ron scowls back at him. Shuts that shit down.
“Home didn’t miss you,” he says, and Malfoy laughs again.
“Then it’s a good thing I don’t need permission, isn’t it?”
Ron scowls again, maybe scowls still, and they are at a conversational impasse.
He should just tell Malfoy to get lost. To tie off whatever dirty business he came here to finish and fuck back off out of their lives. Because no one here needs him, or wants him, and Malfoy smirks at Ron like he doesn’t care at all.
“How have you been, Ronald?”
Ron refuses to answer that. Because he is mature and reasonable and Malfoy is bloody sparkling at him–someone needs to take this seriously, and clearly this burden will fall on Ron.
“What do you want, Malfoy?”
“You are blushing,” Malfoy points out, amused, and he reaches for Ron like he might trace the colour with his fingers. Like he might cup Ron’s face in his hands.
It occurs to Ron only now, sitting here where no one knows them and being indulgently and fondly looked at by Draco sodding Malfoy, that maybe agreeing to see him again was a mistake.
The whole thing was stupid. It started just after the war, before the ashes had even properly settled. Everyone was in pain, everyone was relieved, everyone grieved. Everyone was very determined to move on, into a brighter future.
Malfoy was certain he would be executed. Certain he deserved it, even, but the prospect still scared him. Because as familiar as death was to all of them at that point, it is something completely else when it’s happening to you.
And so, ever the coward, Malfoy came crawling. He wanted to speak to Harry, of course, but Harry wasn’t speaking to anyone and Ron couldn’t do much for his best friend, couldn’t do much for anyone, but he could keep the snake from his door. This one thing, he thought, he could spare Harry.
He sent Malfoy away. Often. It became almost routine–reject Malfoy’s bribe, listen to the sob story and the pleas, send him on his way. Once a day Malfoy would come, and every time Ron refused him.
It was good for both of them, he thinks. The routine of it. The clear purpose. It might have continued on forever, certainly seemed that way. Ron wouldn’t have minded one bit–it was a nice turning of the tables, and watching the mighty fall was not yet something he was tired of. With Malfoy, it was personal.
They didn’t exactly get to know each other during that time. They didn’t talk outside of their respective roles, and they had no interest in it besides. Malfoy begged to see Harry, Ron told him he was out, and they sat in silence for the rest of the evening. Blessed silence.
This is where things went wrong.
Ron should have thrown him out, maybe. Should never have allowed him in, warded off the Floo and refused all owls. Ron should have cut him off at the feet, but he did not. Instead, he waited by the Floo around the usual time, prepared the tea he would offer while they pretended to wait for Harry.
Malfoy stopped pleading his case pretty quickly. He knew Ron was lying and he knew Ron would not be moved, but to stop asking would be to forfeit his soul. Ron knew this, and still he kept him coming back–maybe it was cruel. But he never made any promises, and they drank some of the best tea their humble kitchen could offer.
They did not have sex.
They never even talked about anything of consequence.
They met like this for maybe a month before Malfoy was summoned, and while their evenings grew longer, the scope of them never widened.
They just met for tea, and though Ron would never admit to it now, he can honestly say that it saved him from going mad.
“Harry is getting divorced.”
That’s what they are here to discuss. Harry. Like always.
“Is he?” Malfoy asks, like he didn’t already know. Like he is innocent.
“Yeah, he is.”
Malfoy shrugs, his small smile pleased.
He doesn’t ask to speak with him, doesn’t ask when it will be finalised.
“They have been married for two years.”
Malfoy, being out of the country, would not have known this. Except for how Malfoy, being Malfoy, he almost definitely did know this. Harry got married not long after Malfoy left, but everyone knew long before that.
Privately, Ron speculates if it wasn’t this that made him leave in the first place. Harry and Malfoy have always been obsessed with each other, unhealthily so, and Ron would not be the first to suggest romantic attachment. Pulling pigtails.
Malfoy nods, and Malfoy shrugs, and he sips his coffee and only sneers a little bit at the acidy.
“A tragic thing, young love,” he says, like it’s not a confession.
“Wanted it to be you, did you,” Ron says, a nasty accusation.
Malfoy laughs. Not the arranged, melodious thing, quietly pleased with himself. This is his real laughter, startled out of him in an ugly snort. Nothing refined about it, nothing decorous.
“No,” he says, finally, once he can breathe again. “No, I did not want to marry Potter.”
He says it like a riddle, though. Like it’s not the truth.
Which tracks, because Malfoy is a bloody liar and Ron should know better than to trust him. Did he honestly expect a straight answer out of him? When did that happen?
“Sure you didn’t,” Ron says, because they all know he did. Why else linger like he did? “But you can’t have him.”
This is what Ron came to say. To banish Malfoy once more, back into the past where he belongs.
“Oh?”
That wicked smirk, the quiet certainty he carries himself with. Just sitting there, looking at Ron like this is a warm occasion, like they are teasing each other instead of threatening. Like they are both still young and stupid and sharing tea.
“You can’t have him,” Ron repeats, and Malfoy’s smirk softens into a smile. Understanding, though Ron doesn’t know what he would have to be all understanding about.
Still, Malfoy smiles and then they really are back to those quiet evenings in the Burrow, two lonely boys sitting by the fire and pretending it meant nothing.
“Piss off,” Ron says, scared, not his best, but he can’t think with Malfoy looking at him like that. Like he knows him. “Go back to France.”
Malfoy does not go back.
He lets Ron storm out, doesn’t even call after him, but he stays in the Manor. He stays just in reach, should Ron change his mind. Should he find the spine to throw him out with conviction. Should he wish to make his case against Malfoy and his home wrecking again.
Malfoy stays, but Ron doesn’t go to see him again.
Once was plenty.
Ginny announces she is going to travel. She has always wanted to, she claims, and now that she isn’t weighed down by a husband intent on playing the martyr, she will bloody well do it.
No one tries to stop her. They all agree this is probably good for her, and that she should get to discover who she is outside of all of them.
If the divorce troubles her at all, it’s not Ron she confides in.
Harry, finally, has a break-down about it. The day they bring Ginny to the airport (why is his family so desperately fond of dangerous Muggle transportation?) Harry grins and hugs her and tries to carry her bags. And then he calls Ron at two in the morning, drunk out of his mind, sobbing.
This, finally, Ron knows how to handle.
He half expects that to be it. Ginny has left on a journey of self-discovery, Harry has succumbed to feeling like a terrible failure of a human being and not wanting to talk about it, the papers have moved on to something more thrilling.
Things are supposed to go back to normal, now. Malfoy might show up again, asking to see Harry, and Ron would deny him again. With an easier heart this time, because it’s not a chance to beg for his life he is denying, but a chance to exploit Harry’s vulnerable state.
Eventually, and Ron has no frame for how long this might take, Harry would recover and be more himself again. He would laugh again and see that it truly wasn’t his fault, that he is not awful for keeping Ginny here when she so clearly wanted to go and that he is not selfish for marrying the first girl he thought he could love. For wanting that, the blissful domesticity where nothing hurts ever again, and the worst fights you can have are about taking out the garbage and doing the dishes.
Harry would be himself again and Malfoy would still be prowling around, attracted by that. But Harry would send him away, much more firmly than Ron ever could. And Malfoy, scorned once more and unsuccessful in his ploy to steal Harry, would finally retreat back to France, where his life is easy and beautiful.
This, obviously, is not what happens.
Harry is miserable alright, and Ron tries his best to be there for him. Often they just sit, staring at the telly and pretending to care about football. (Ron thinks he could easily actually care, cuss out the referee not when Harry looks like he’s getting too deep into the dark places in his head but when they make a bad call, but that would demand attention. Attention that, frankly, he much rather spends on Harry.)
They sit in silence until Harry has something to say, and Ron listens and nods and tells him that’s stupid, don’t even think stuff like that. It’s like slowly purging a poison, letting it out bit by bit until Harry has said all the most awful things and Ron has taken them away.
He keeps expecting Malfoy to interrupt this process. To saunter in and offer Harry not absolution but distraction, drop himself in Harry’s lap and say something outrageous that Harry will have no choice but to argue with. Passionately. And then they would be off again, mutually obsessed and Ron getting into football.
But Malfoy doesn’t do that.
He doesn’t kick down the door in a swirl of melodrama and glitter, and he doesn’t send letters professing his concern. He doesn’t Floo, he doesn’t care to comment in the Prophet, and he doesn’t send a casserole.
Malfoy stays in his Manor, disgraced and alone.
There is no way this is what he came back for.
They meet again, a different Muggle cafe. They learnt their lesson about the Leaky and Ron didn’t even go up to the Manor this time (he sent an owl) and so they meet here. Different neutral ground.
Again, Ron feels ill-prepared.
“What are you still doing here?”
The one thing he wrote down, intended to be only the first of several prying and hard-hitting questions that would, in their totality, reveal Malfoy to be morally corrupt and a most insidious person.
Malfoy smiles at him, like no time passed at all.
“What do you think?” he replies, and he sounds like he would genuinely like to know.
Well, this one is easy.
“Harry,” Ron answers, and he knows he’s right.
“Wrong.”
No way. There is absolutely no way he is wrong about that.
“You have always been obsessed with him,” Ron says, and Malfoy makes a considering sound. “You came back because you missed him.”
Malfoy laughs, the annoying melodious and charming one. The one that invites you along, invites you to ask what, what’s so funny?
“Fine, so you didn’t miss him,” the heartless prick, the arrogant tosser, “but you wanted him. Couldn’t stand the idea of someone else having what’s yours.”
There, possessive and controlling and obsessive. He ran because he was scared and hurt, bought his confidence back in the two years of forgetting, and now he is returned with new style, to whisk away the love of his life into the peace he built himself.
Malfoy halfway acknowledges that, his head cocked to the side. He nods, motions for Ron to go on.
“You broke them apart, didn’t you? Made Harry question himself and Ginny want to travel–you wrecked their marriage so you could swoop in and comfort Harry when he was alone.”
Did he forget Ron would be here? Did he think he could just charm his way past Ron, could smile and glide his way into Harry’s heart on bribes and sheer arrogance?
Now Malfoy shakes his head, but only slightly. Aghast. Trying to hypnotise Ron into agreeing with him.
Fat chance of that–Ron forges on, all the stronger for Malfoy’s denial.
“You knew it would be easy, didn’t you? Harry has always been too invested in you, all you had to do was show up and be suspicious. Of course Harry would drop everything to investigate.”
“I think you’ll find Potter dropped nothing.”
Sorry?
“I returned relatively unobserved, Ronald,” Malfoy continues, eyes intend on Ron. Willing him to understand. “No one dropped anything for me.”
No one, that is, but Ron.
But that cannot be true, can it? Granted, the reporters might not care, and it’s not like Malfoy made a spectacle of himself, but Harry cared. Harry got divorced over it, is depressed and moody over it.
And he didn’t go to see Malfoy? He didn’t knock at the Manor, demand to know what Malfoy thought what he was doing? Harry didn’t watch his every move, didn’t worry about what it meant and what he might be scheming?
Malfoy is still staring at Ron, leaning close over the table and holding his gaze.
Malfoy reaches out again, his hand like an offering, and Ron watches like in a trance, the world reorganising itself around them.
“I think,” Malfoy says, low and careful. Like he’s speaking to a skittish animal, his hand warm where it settles over Ron’s. “The better question is what are you doing here?”
Back when they were young and stupid, when they saw each other every day to keep from going insane and doing something drastic, Malfoy asked Ron to come with him.
After Harry saved his life by yelling at the entire court, after the sudden and brutal end to their evenings of quiet companionship.
Malfoy turned up when Ron didn’t really expect him anymore, tea made out of habit and hope. After all, Malfoy was spared without ever having to ask Harry about it. (Ron did that for him, casually mentioned to Harry that Malfoy would stand trial the next day–that was all it took. Ron knew it would be.)
So Malfoy was saved and Ron fully expected him to disappear, to crawl back into his Manor and never come out again. To lick his wounds in solitude from now on.
But Malfoy did come, and he told Ron that he would not be staying. The first real thing he said to Ron, and it was about leaving.
He explained that they could not stay, that they were traumatised and ostracised and that his mother is shrewd and well liked, and all the right people would turn a blind eye on various parole violations. They would escape the doom and gloom, and because they were rich and fancy, it would be called a tactical retreat, not a flight.
Ron absorbed all of that numbly, not really understanding what any of it meant. Functionally, it would be no different to Malfoy hiding out in his hovel, of course, and still he felt a profound loss at the news.
And then Malfoy asked him to come with him. To join him in France, or wherever Ron wanted, really, though they already had the house in France.
Ron doesn’t remember the rest.
He doesn’t remember if he considered it, how long he spent imagining himself at Malfoy’s side, away from all the pain. Maybe he never seriously thought about agreeing, maybe he laughed in Malfoy’s face right away. They weren’t friends, after all, and Ron couldn’t stand him. He wanted Malfoy to disappear and leave them all alone–the very last thing he wanted, one should think, was to disappear with him.
Next, the Kiss.
He doesn’t remember why they kissed. Did Malfoy initiate it? Out of desperation, to convince Ron to come along? Or did Ron, to convince him to stay? Whoever started it, whoever wanted to convince the other, it didn’t work. It was a bad kiss, unexpected and full of teeth, and Malfoy left alone.
The kiss was bad and it left Ron buzzing, his lips warm and his hands empty where, briefly, they held Malfoy. It was like he had slipped into an alternate version of reality, one where they smiled at each other and touched casually and talked about their days.
He waited for Malfoy the next day, and one more after that.
After that, he stopped.
The third time, Ron does finally accept the invitation to the Manor. It only seems fair, given how much time they spent in his home.
(Connecting the words ‘manor’, ‘Malfoy’, and ‘home’ makes Ron feel slightly queasy, but maybe that is for the best. No use getting sentimental when he is about to break up with the man.)
Malfoy invites him in with a swoop of his arm and a glowing smile. There is no butler and no house elf and the lobby is well-lit, almost friendly. It’s weird.
Malfoy doesn’t let him linger for long, leading him through various hallways (clean, not a speck of dust anywhere in this ridiculous palace) and up the stairs, down again, until Ron feels certain the purpose of the exercise is to confuse and annoy him.
Or, possibly, to show off. To take the oppressive spook of the name, make it a normal house that has been scrubbed clean and restored. A house that, over the generations, withstood too many ugly crimes to count and still, somehow, had to remain a home.
Whatever Malfoy’s intentions, he leads them finally into the library. Warm with books and smug in ancient wisdom, the library holds no traumatic memories, no portraits of sneering Malfoys long dead, and there is tea already waiting for them. Next to the fire, like they used to take it.
Ron sits down without acknowledging this. He drinks the tea (sweet, like Malfoy prefers it) and enjoys the plush armchair, and pretends not to notice the intent way Malfoy is watching him. The consideration, the ill concealed hope.
Ron is here to send him back to France, that’s all he needs to do. It was a stupid idea then and it’s a stupid idea now, and Ron hasn’t even heard yet what exactly it is Malfoy wants from him.
They drink their tea in silence, as is their wont, and it doesn’t strike Ron as odd that Malfoy, who used to be so loud and garish, could be content with that. He does wonder at himself, though, at how badly he wants Malfoy to ask again, to ask him away to France. He would say yes now, he knows he would, and he could not explain why to anyone.
But Malfoy doesn’t ask.
Maybe he doesn’t want Ron anymore. Maybe, in France, he met other people and realised, belatedly, that he doesn’t actually know Ron. That they shared nothing, really, and that people you can silently drink tea with are a dime a dozen.
“What do you do in France?” he asks, when he can’t bear it anymore.
Malfoy smiles, a small but pleased thing, and he tells him.
Ron doesn’t send him back to France, and he doesn’t break up with him.
They don’t discuss it at all. Malfoy talks of his life, of his art (who’d have thought, eh?) and the fields of lavender. He talks of the calm he found, the safety. He might not want to stay there forever, completely shut off from the world, but for right now it suits him perfectly.
Almost. He doesn’t explicitly say this, but he has asked Ron to run away with him before–Ron knows what to listen for.
Malfoy doesn’t say it, but France would please him better if Ron were there with him.
Ron leaves without acknowledging this.
They have tea at the Manor regularly, after that. Malfoy leads them through different rooms, definitely showing off but never explaining what they mean to him, what all he had to do in reconstructing and decorating.
This, officially, is what he came to do. To recover what was lost.
They have tea and they don’t talk about the future, but they talk a lot about the past. Not the war, not yet, but Hogwarts is a safe topic now. They laugh a lot, which is never something they used to do. They joke, tease each other, and when Ron talks about how obsessed Malfoy was with Harry, he goes quiet and blushes.
Ron blushes too, then, and they quickly change the subject.
Harry insists he is doing fine. He has heard of Malfoy’s return, by now, but he doesn’t think much of it. It’s a free country, after all, and Harry has enough problems of his own.
Ron, despite not believing him, lets the matter drop. They still watch football, but they are both picking up on the rules now. They yell at the referee and the calls they make, they cheer on any team at random, and slowly but surely Harry returns to himself.
Ron gets terribly sick in March, feels like he is dying of the plague, and though he didn’t send word to Malfoy to let him know, Malfoy sends him soup and potions.
Ron is in too much pain to question this.
This, strangely, changes things.
Not materially, not enough to be crass. But definitely, enough to be noticed.
Malfoy cares for him, demonstrably. Neither of them can pretend he doesn't, anymore.
And so it's perhaps not strange at all that it changes things. Not strange, no, except for how Ron thought they would never change. Eternally frozen, talking about nothing.
Ron can't rightfully say that he minds.
When Malfoy finally leaves, Ron sees it coming.
Just like the last time, there was a clear but easily ignored end date to their frivolities. The Manor only has so many rooms, even as big as it is, and no matter what he said before, England is no longer home to Malfoy.
“I’m leaving in a week,” he says, much more blunt than they say anything. “I would like it if you came.”