Chapter Text
He is too calm. Too quiet. Too normal? It doesn’t make sense. He must be up to something...
The last thought rang a bit too familiar for Harry’s liking - he could swear he had heard this inside his head before. A heavy dark feeling engulfed him - suspicion and unease settled firmly upon his shoulders, making them sag under the imaginary weight. He cringed at the feeling. Despite the warm Saturday morning - uncharacteristically sunny for early spring in London - Harry felt cold and stiff. He had spent the last couple of hours perched upon a rickety windowsill, closely watching a small and rather drab one-bedroom apartment across the narrow street. One that belonged to Draco Malfoy, who at the present moment was meticulously stirring his tea, as if in hopes to make the spoon dissolve instead of a meager pinch of sugar. The same meticulous, scrupulous, maddening stirring he did every single day for the past two weeks, from exactly 9:07 to 9:09. Every. Single. Day. Harry was going crazy.
Two weeks of close observation, not a minute unaccounted for, of a rather boring life one Draco Malfoy seemed to now lead. Two weeks of repetitive copy and paste routines, measured movements, learned actions. Countless pinches of sugar. Countless splashes of milk. Countless stirring from exactly 9:07 to 9:09, always followed by a pathetic boiled egg (boiled for exactly seven minutes), followed by changing into same sweater and jeans (religiously washed and dried every evening by exactly 9 pm to be worn just as religiously the next day), leaving for work at exactly 9:40, locking the door the exact same way, checking the locks with the exact same movements, same dry rhythm of steps down the moldy corridor of depressingly simple shabby doors. This was Draco Malfoy’s life now - shabby, repetitive, unbearably B-O-R-I-N-G! If the charms in his watch ever failed him, Harry could synchronize it to the unwavering monolith of Draco Malfoy’s routine.
Harry found himself painfully aware of the loneliness of his own life. During these weeks of watching Malfoy Harry had started to feel a weird intimacy towards him. After years of cold numbness, thick skin over his very soul, he had started feeling heat creeping over him. He felt like a stone giant, thawing under a spring sun - his limbs creaking with ache, resistant and slow to the sudden shock of warmth. As if watching Malfoy made them friends somehow - knowing him, obsessively pouring over every detail of Malfoy’s weird stagnant life made Harry’s stupid head believe they lived together, made him hunger for it - this mundane boring co-existence. Harry had also realized he had no idea what to do with this knowledge. Strange new emotions made him angry - the confusion and newness of it all filled him with antsy rage, an itch under his skin, impossible and too painful to scratch.
He couldn’t sit still anymore. He began pacing the room, feeling progressively more and more trapped inside his dingy rented flat, inside his suffocating rigid mind, swarmed by emotions he couldn’t identify. The emotions that felt grotesquely massive - boundless, expanding endlessly inside his scrawny exhausted body. Harry felt both paper-thin and incredibly dense - thick, heavy and drowning under his own weight.
Malfoy must be up to something!
That was what Harry must be feeling - his intuition screaming at him that Malfoy as usual was up to no good. There was no other explanation. The thought felt soothing and the relief that washed over him must have been a sign that he was right - Malfoy WAS up to something. Harry only had to find out up to what and all these weird feelings would be resolved. He felt a plan forming. He needed… he needed to get out!
Harry burst out of the apartment, trying to outrun his own thoughts. A fortnight ago, he would have laughed in the face of anyone who dared to suggest an insane scenario like this. How did he end up like this? It all had started with a simple errand. Hermione just needed this particular book from a library. That had been it! And she had been up to her ears with work and children and Harry could never say no to her. So he had diligently headed to the library she had mentioned, only to stop dead in his tracks when he’d caught a glimpse of a familiar shock of white hair. He hadn’t had such a visceral reaction in a while - the palms of his hands were abruptly drenched in clammy sweat, his heart pounded in his ears and his airways seemed to completely seize. He swiftly ducked into one of the endless rows of bookshelves. Draco Malfoy looked as surreal in this completely muggle library as Harry felt.
He squinted - something was strange about Malfoy. He looked so… plain. Draco Malfoy had never looked plain. For some reason Harry felt a stir of anger at that. He absolutely couldn’t just strut around a muggle library, as if it was a thing! Let alone in these washed out ratty jeans and a sweater so standard and simple it was painful. Not the Malfoy he knew. Harry gulped down an uncomfortable lump in his throat. Something was wrong. Another elaborate trick? Or worse - something nefarious? His guts clenched in concern. He couldn’t just leave it - could he? The picture immediately seared into his brains - Draco Malfoy felt too established in this setting. He couldn’t possibly look so normal, but he did and it was deeply unsettling to Harry. It just felt off. At that moment Harry knew that he couldn’t just leave it, he had to look into it. Not this time. He would not allow Malfoy to sneak behind his back again and harm others.
At first Harry just followed Malfoy at work. He watched him sort books for days - he filed the returns, walked long rows of shelves, searching for a dusty tome or two. Malfoy was meticulous and focused when he worked, his movements dry and precise. But he surprisingly never scrimped on smiles - Harry couldn’t believe his eyes at first - he smiled at every single visitor, while taking in the books they returned or when he patiently looked up their names on an old noisy computer. He shared his seeming warmth with ease, even with rowdy children, while Harry personally would have definitely shouted at them had he worked in the library.
Of course, all these weird inconsistencies forced Harry to extend his investigation to following Malfoy from work to his shoddy apartment… And naturally then - within the first days of his investigation - to renting a tiny apartment right across Malfoy’s flat. Harry couldn’t afford standing outside in all kinds of weather now that he had passed thirty. Besides, it was difficult to properly observe Malfoy from the street, while the windows in the apartment he had rented provided a perfect view into the suspect’s living quarters.
Harry purposefully ignored the nagging thought at the back of his mind. This place - old, cramped, almost claustrophobic - still felt better than the vast emptiness and solitude of Grimmauld Place. His “home” that had never made anyone living in it happy had succeeded to carry on its sad legacy. It was hollow yet full of memories and cobwebs. It felt abandoned despite Harry living there for over a decade now. Basking in the sun struggling through a dirty window, Harry chased the thoughts of staying in this shoebox of an apartment away. He would hate to admit, even inside of his own head, that the quiet agitated existence he had seemed to live these past few weeks had actually been far more enjoyable than endlessly trying to force himself to inhabit Grimmauld Place.
Harry hated himself for the resentment he felt at the only thing that was left to him of his godfather. And he had also always felt he actually fit this home very well. Every time he stepped inside, he could hear the resonance of his own steps both in the house and inside of his core, as if they both - this house and him - were completely hollowed out by grief and guilt, abandoned to live out their days. They understood each other in their emptiness and uselessness. So mere hints of enjoyment he had experienced inside this rented flat felt like a betrayal, so he tried his best to avoid them, shove them deep and focus on the task at hand.
Harry could barely recall past twelve years of his life. Sometimes he wondered if all of him had returned after he died. These twelve years were a wet lump of cardboard - faceless, devoid of anything vivid or memorable - a blur of going to work, going to memorials, shaking hands, nodding at people, dreading the return home. After years and years of being stuck in the same cycle of work and lonely hours at home for the first time Harry felt something exciting stirring inside of him - a small creature with soft fur and tiny claws scratched itchy lines into the insides of his chest. He couldn’t quite give this emotion a name, but suspicion was familiar so he went with that gratefully and without question.
Another infuriating thing among this grey indistinguishable mass of Malfoy’s routine - Harry was a witness to for entire too long already - was a crooked Asian woman who lived next door. Harry had puzzled over the mystery of her for countless sleepless nights. What was Malfoy’s hidden agenda there? Why did he always stop at hers on the way back home? Not once had he missed a visit. He always dropped by her apartment, knocking twice with the same precise movements at the same precise time and then they just… talked? They talked and had some tea with Malfoy’s usual pinch of sugar and a dash of milk, and some biscuits, which Malfoy diligently brought to the woman and which always looked criminally good. Was it an elaborate plan to… to infiltrate muggle society? Or the woman could be the target - even though she looked old and plain, there must have been something Malfoy wanted from her…
What were their endless conversations about?
Harry knew that they at least talked about gardening - a cramped balcony the woman had was overflowing with all kinds of tomatoes - tiny yellow flowers, like little stars, dotted the bushes, some of which were already fruiting with tomatoes unlike any Harry had ever seen. Huge, bulbous, almost black blobs grew next to bright yellow cherry tomatoes, some resembled pumpkins in both color and lumpy shape and some were even shaped like hearts!
Harry regularly saw Malfoy among the wild bushes - pruning, watering, re-arranging - he felt very established there too, acting as if he had grown tomatoes since the very childhood. The normalcy of it once again filled Harry with a strange, unsettling feeling broiling in his stomach. He felt weirdly anxious at the sight of how mundane Malfoy’s gardening looked. He could almost see a ghostly vision of a younger Malfoy - head held high and proud, immaculate robes lining out an elegant silhouette, sharp eyes and sharp tongue threatening Harry’s resolve. An epitome of high class, snobbiness and entitled privilege. The image layered over the Malfoy Harry saw now and the juxtaposition was so stark it made Harry dizzy. He felt almost intoxicated - his vision doubling, his head adrift and his stomach flattering. He hated the feeling and most of all he hated the person who had caused them. A tiny silent part of him also hated himself for allowing Malfoy with his strange normalcy of a restricted yet somehow cozy life to get under his skin. And most importantly - in a month that Harry had looked into Malfoy’s life, why hadn’t he done anything yet? Was Malfoy actually capable of such a long-winded plan? If he truly were up to something, why had Harry seen nothing yet?
All of this itchy confusion, weird unwelcome emotions and questions, endless unanswered questions had forced Harry to find himself fleeing the rented apartment and heading towards Malfoy’s place of work at an odd jittery pace, riding the torrent of anxiety, determination and something else, an urge unnamed and powerful. He had never been good at planning, but he felt an idea forming - a great idea on how to resolve this whole frustrating intense confusion, the degree of which he seemed to have never felt before. Observing from a far clearly hadn’t worked - Malfoy was way too cunning to betray any of his secrets in his routines. Harry was absolutely obligated to get close to him. To gather enough information and catch Malfoy off guard, of course! There was only one way to make sense of it all. Get closer. Watch him up close. Befriend him.
First step - befriend Malfoy!
Second step - casually get the answers from him.
Smooth.
Harry was very proud of himself - years of working in law enforcement had finally paid off! He would infiltrate Malfoy’s space and trust, and then - naturally - Malfoy would spill all about his secret, insidious, perfectly-normal-and-definitely-not-suspicious life. Harry was vibrating with the force of his elation. No more weird feelings, no more confusion. He was going to execute a flawless undercover mission.
To instigate this perfect plan, he had to get something first. Something that might tip the scale to Harry’s advantage. Something he stole. Something that Malfoy might have been missing all this years. Something that upon return might convince Malfoy Harry could be trusted. Something he had hidden away in the aftermath of post-war celebratory chaos. Something he felt weirdly unable to part with. Something he had taken for himself and kept secretly close - always somewhere in his vicinity. A 10-inch hawthorn and unicorn hair wand.