Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The train ride back to Hogwarts felt surreal.

Harry stood silently in the corridor of the Hogwarts Express, his forehead pressed lightly against the glass. The rolling countryside blurred past, green and golden and almost too normal. Behind him, laughter rang out—Neville and Ron arguing about Chocolate Frog cards, Hermione scolding them with affectionate exhaustion. Luna hummed something under her breath, plucking at the fraying hem of her robes.

None of it reached Harry fully. Not really. He was staring down a reflection of a boy who should have felt triumphant, victorious, grateful.

Instead, all he felt was tired.

Outside, the hills fell away, replaced by the outline of the Black Lake in the distance. Hogwarts stood like a sentinel beyond it. Familiar. And forever changed.

Ron slid the compartment door open. “We’re nearly there,” he said, nudging Harry’s shoulder. “You alright?”

Harry nodded, though his eyes didn’t leave the horizon. “Yeah.”

⸻

The Great Hall was quieter than usual when they arrived. Fewer students, a strange stillness. The four House tables were gone, replaced by round tables scattered across the room like puzzle pieces waiting to fit. The Sorting Hat lay untouched on its stool, silent for once.

It wasn’t a normal year. Everyone knew it.

Professor McGonagall stood at the front, robes crisp, chin high. Her eyes softened briefly when she looked at the returning eighth-years.

“We stand not only to learn,” she said, “but to heal. This year, you will not be sorted by House. The eighth-years will live, study, and rebuild together. You may not have chosen each other. But you must learn to choose unity.”

Malfoy sat at a table near the edge of the room, spine straight, hands folded tightly on his lap.

His robes were immaculate, his hair even more so. A silent performance of control. But Harry could see it—the way Malfoy’s fingers twitched, the way he didn’t meet anyone’s gaze.

Probation, Harry remembered. Constant Ministry supervision. Every step watched.

Hermione followed his gaze. “Harry. Don’t,” she said quietly.

Harry didn’t respond.

⸻

The new eighth-year common room was on the fourth floor, in what used to be a disused music hall. The enchanted ceiling still caught echoes of footsteps and laughter, twining them into soft melodies above. The space had been refurbished with mismatched furniture, warm lights, and bookshelves charmed to fill themselves with whatever the students needed most.

It was strange—intimate in a way Harry hadn’t expected. Too close. Too easy to see everything.

Slytherins stuck to one side almost immediately. Parkinson curled on a green velvet sofa with Greengrass and Nott flanking her like shadows. Zabini claimed the arm of a leather chair, watching the room with hooded eyes.

Malfoy took a corner seat, far from them all. He opened a book on his lap.

Across the room, Luna sat on the rug, building a constellation out of enchanted pebbles. Neville flopped beside her, already covered in herbology soil he hadn’t managed to scrub off his sleeve. Hermione paced the bookshelves, muttering something about study schedules. Ron ate a pastry he’d stolen from dinner.

Harry sat down on the floor beside them, but his eyes drifted again.

Malfoy hadn’t looked up once.

⸻

They were paired in Transfiguration the next day.

“Of course we are,” Harry muttered under his breath.

Professor McGonagall had given the assignment with a deceptively calm smile. “Partnering students from different Houses will encourage collaboration,” she’d said. “You may find you have more in common than you think.”

Harry approached Malfoy’s desk. “Mind if I sit?”

Malfoy looked up. His eyes were tired, shadowed, a shade lighter than Harry remembered. "Yes, sure.", he replied.

Harry sat.

They worked in silence. The charm they were practicing—altering the color of living matter—should have been easy. But Malfoy’s hands moved slowly, with a careful stiffness Harry hadn’t noticed before.

“You alright?” Harry asked before he could stop himself.

Malfoy didn’t look up. “Perfectly.”

Harry frowned. “You’re—shaking.”

“And you’re still nosy as ever, Potter.”, Malfoy was neutral, it lost the usual snide tone.

But that wasn’t what caught Harry’s attention. It was the way Malfoy’s wand hand trembled slightly, like his grip didn’t quite trust itself.

Harry didn’t push. Not yet.

⸻

The days bled together. Classes. Meals. Quiet conversations in the common room. The Slytherins remained mostly aloof, but Parkinson had struck up a strange friendship with Luna, and Hermione had begun exchanging notes with Greengrass on Arithmancy.

Harry caught Malfoy sneaking into the library at odd hours. Always alone. Always late.

He didn’t tell anyone.

One night, after curfew, he followed.

Through the Invisibility Cloak, Harry crept silently down the corridor, his heart hammering. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing it. Just—he needed to know what Malfoy was doing. Why he seemed so…

Broken.

Malfoy stood in the shadow of the Room of Requirement’s blank wall. His hand hovered above the stone, but he didn’t call for a door. He simply stood there, unmoving.

The expression on his face was unreadable—painful in its stillness.

Harry left before Malfoy could turn.

⸻

There were whispers, always.

About Slytherins. About the past. About forgiveness.

“Why is he even here?” a Hufflepuff girl had said once outside Herbology, not quietly enough. “He should be in Azkaban like his father.”

Harry had turned so fast, the girl had flinched. But before he could say anything, Malfoy had walked past, expression carved from ice.

He never answered them. Not once.

But Harry saw the way his shoulders tensed afterward. How he stopped eating lunch for two days straight. How Parkinson had gripped his arm that night when they returned to the common room, whispering something low and fierce.

“You’ve been watching him a lot,” Hermione said one evening as they left the library.

Harry blinked. “Who?”

Hermione throw him unimpressed look, “Don’t lie to me, Harry.”

He didn’t answer.

Hermione sighed. “I know what he did. But I also know what he didn’t do. Some of us remember.”

Harry looked at her. “You don’t hate him.”

“I used to,” she said. “Now I just feel… sorry.”

Harry didn’t. He felt something else. Something heavier. It curled in his chest whenever he saw Malfoy in pain. Or alone. Or trying so hard not to be seen.

It wasn’t pity.

But he didn’t know what it was yet.

⸻

One night, as the fire crackled low in the common room, Harry woke to footsteps.

Malfoy again. This time not toward the library, but just standing near the fireplace. Arms wrapped around himself, face turned toward the flames. His breathing was ragged—too shallow.

Harry slipped out of bed and walked over.

Malfoy didn’t move.

“You okay?”, it was an olive branch.

A beat. “Nightmares,” he said finally.

Harry nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

They stood in silence for a long time.

Malfoy looked at him. Minutes passed, then he whispered. “Do you ever wonder if we’re meant to feel this haunted forever?”

"I don't know.", Harry softly replied.

⸻

By the end of the first month, things had shifted.

Malfoy no longer flinched when Harry spoke to him.

Harry realized, somehow a kind of truce had formed.

Chapter Text

If there was a prize for People Who Pretended To Be Fine (While Absolutely Not Being Fine), Draco Malfoy would have a shelf full of trophies by now—polished, symmetrical, maybe even cursed to hiss “I’m fine” whenever anyone dared to ask otherwise.

He hadn’t spoken to anyone that morning. Not even to Pansy, who usually got at least a sardonic comment or two out of him by breakfast. He just sat at the Slytherin table, buttering toast like it had personally wronged him, eyes half-lidded and unreadable.

Harry tried not to watch. He tried very hard. And failed with astonishing consistency.

“Seriously, mate,” Ron muttered around a mouthful of eggs, “you’re going to get a neck cramp staring at him like that.”

Harry blushed furiously, but didn’t answer. He stirred his tea instead, letting the spoon clink around like it might drown out the thoughts. Malfoy looked tired. Not in the usual “exam-week-tired”-way but in the way people did when their bodies hadn’t quite forgiven them for surviving something they shouldn’t have.

He kept his left hand tucked under the table. Harry remembered—unfortunately, vividly—how that hand had once gripped a wand in the middle of a burning Room of Requirement. It had been steady, then. It’s not now.

They had Transfiguration first thing. Which was great, because what better time to be trapped in a classroom pretending to pay attention to laws about conjured objects than immediately after reliving trauma via dry toast and emotional repression?

Professor McGonagall had assigned the class a few basic transformations to review theory and wandwork. No one really expected to master anything this early in the term—it was more about shaking off the summer rust. Groups of two or three were scattered around the room, turning quills into paper cranes and back again.

This time Malfoy partnered with Zabini and Parkinson. They worked in a bubble of silence, their muttered incantations precise, if joyless. Zabini looked as though he wanted to be anywhere else.

Harry tried to focus on Hermione explaining something about conjuration boundaries, but his attention snagged again—inevitably, maddeningly—on Malfoy.

It happened all at once.

One second, Malfoy was halfway through a flick of his wand. The next, his entire right side jerked like he’d touched a live wire. His wand clattered to the desk. His breath caught sharp and too loud in the hush of the classroom. And his hand—his left hand—spasmed. Fingers curling tightly in on themselves.

Harry froze.

So did Zabini, who muttered, “Merlin, not again,” under his breath and reached out instinctively, but Malfoy batted him off.

McGonagall was already moving. She approached without fuss, no gasp of concern, no panic—just that hawk-eyed focus she usually reserved for students about to detonate something.

She bent over Draco’s desk and placed a small folded note next to his wand. “Take this to Madam Pomfrey,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Don’t argue.”

Draco clenched his jaw, nodded slightly.

He stood. Slowly. With the stiffness of someone trying to convince everyone—including himself—that standing upright was still within his capabilities. His shoulders were rigid, and there was something faintly unnatural about the way his limbs moved, like each one had been coached separately on how to function.

Zabini stood up, but Malfoy stopped him. "No need, Blaise."

"But Draco—" Parkinson tried to argue.

"It's nothing, Pans. I'm fine. I'll see you at lunch."

Parkinson and Zabini reluctantly nodded.

And Harry—

Harry couldn’t stop watching.

Malfoy didn’t glance at anyone. Not at McGonagall. Not at Harry. He picked up the note and his wand, walked toward the door, and vanished into the corridor.

The room didn’t even shift. Most students had already returned to their spells. McGonagall said nothing. Harry felt like someone had pressed pause on a memory he hadn’t meant to revisit.

“Don’t,” Hermione said softly beside him. “He’ll be fine, Harry.”

Harry blinked. “Is he sick?”

"He probably just ate something wrong, mate." Ron brushed it off while trying out the incantation and accidentally lit up the quill like a mini fireworks.

Harry just bit his tongue to prevent himself from saying anything more about Malfoy.

—

Harry couldn't go back to focusing on his quill transformation.

Instead, he spent the rest of Transfiguration alternating between staring blankly at his parchment and trying to replay exactly what he’d seen—Malfoy’s fingers locking in mid-spell, the wince he tried to bury, the breath he didn’t quite catch in time. Like a wire had snapped somewhere behind his skin.

The class dragged on, every ticking second a beat too slow. As soon as they were dismissed, Harry let Hermione and Ron walk ahead toward the Great Hall, murmuring something about being knackered and catching up. He turned back instead, doubled into a corridor off the main stairs—and yanked the Invisibility Cloak from his bag. He moved fast, keeping close to the wall, breath shallow.

By the time he reached the Hospital Wing, the door was cracked open. He slipped through silently, barely disturbing the air.

Malfoy was in the third bed on the right.

He was lying on his side, half-curled under a charmed blanket, one hand tucked beneath his cheek, the other resting on his chest, twitching slightly as if dreaming. His wand lay just within reach.

There was no visible injury. No blood, no bandages, no lingering magic crackling at the seams of his skin. Just Draco Malfoy, looking far too pale against too-white sheets, his jaw tight even in sleep. He looked… wrong. Just wrong, like someone had twisted the idea of him ever so slightly off-center.

Harry took a quiet step back as he heard approaching footsteps. Moments later, Madam Pomfrey swept in, followed by Professor McGonagall.

“He insisted on walking here,” Pomfrey said, keeping her voice low. “Didn’t even let Mr. Zabini help him out of the classroom. You’d think he’s allergic to looking weak.”

“Yes. He is.” McGonagall murmured wryly.

“I’ve done the scan,” Pomfrey continued. “The flare was worse than the last. It’s spreading. Not quickly, but steadily.”

“I thought the stabilizing potion was working.”

“It is. Just not enough. The residual curse damage is… more extensive than he lets on. And he’s pushing himself. Too much walking, not enough sleep. He’s holding himself together with sheer bloody force of will.”

McGonagall sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Do you think it was a mistake to let him come back?”

Harry’s heart kicked. He pressed himself flatter against the wall, trying not to breathe.

“No,” Pomfrey said after a beat. “He needs to be here. He wants to be here. That matters more than I think even he understands. But someone needs to keep an eye on him. Quietly. He’ll shut down if he feels pitied.”

They moved away toward Pomfrey’s office, the door closing softly behind them.

Harry remained still. Frozen, really. He replayed every word, every implication, but none of it gave him anything clear. Just fragments.

Flare. Curse damage.

What curse?

What damage?

What had actually happened to Malfoy after the war?

He looked again at the boy in the bed. So still. So tired. So guarded, even in sleep.

He backed out slowly, footsteps careful, thoughts anything but.

He didn’t have answers.

But he wanted them. Badly.

And something told him that whatever this was—whatever Malfoy was going through—it was serious.

Chapter Text

⸻

The thing about Harry Potter, Draco decided, was that he didn’t know how to mind his own bloody business.

Not that Potter ever had—merlin, no. He’d made a career out of sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted, ever since the day he’d marched up to Draco on the Hogwarts Express and rejected a perfectly good handshake. And yet, somehow, here he was, years later, trying to talk to him. As if that weren’t entirely absurd.

It had started with small things. Potter nodding at him across the common room, as though they were casual acquaintances instead of lifelong enemies. A mumbled “thanks” when Draco had passed him the inkpot in Charms. And—most perplexing of all—a quiet, almost tentative question one night when they’d both ended up in front of the common room fireplace at some ungodly hour.

And somehow that had led to… this. Whatever this was.

⸻

Now, Potter had taken it upon himself to attempt conversation at the most inconvenient of times. In the library, when Draco was doing his best to drown himself in Arithmancy essays, the Gryffindor had the audacity to sit across from him.

“Don’t you have friends?” Draco asked dryly, quill scratching against parchment.

Potter only shrugged, his mouth twitching in something that might have been a smile. “They’re all busy. Thought I’d annoy you instead.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “How considerate.”

And yet… he didn’t tell him to leave. He should have. But there was something disarming in the way Potter leaned back in his chair, glasses slipping down his nose, not glaring, not posturing—just being there.

⸻

It happened late in the afternoon, when the library had emptied of most students. Draco had been hunched in a corner table, his notes spread before him, when the ache in his fingers started. A dull throb, spreading up his wrist like fire catching on parchment. He tried to ignore it—he was good at ignoring pain. He’d had practice.

But it didn’t stop. It sharpened, knifing through his nerves, his whole arm seizing as if invisible chains bound him. His vision blurred. The room tilted. He barely registered the sound of his own chair clattering to the floor before darkness surged forward, swallowing him whole.

⸻

He was standing in the Manor’s drawing room again. The air thick with smoke, the stench of damp and despair. Hostages huddled in the corner, their eyes hollow, their skin grey. Children. A man coughing blood.

Draco’s hands shook as he carried a tray—bread, water, a vial of healing draught he’d pinched from the potions cupboard. His mother’s voice echoed in his head, warning him not to be reckless. But he’d ignored her.

He crouched by the hostages, sliding the vial toward the coughing man.
“Drink this. Slowly.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Why are you—”

“Shut up,” Draco hissed. “Just drink. And don’t tell anyone.”

He stood too quickly, turning away, pretending he hadn’t cared.

⸻

The door had opened. The Snatchers had shoved prisoners forward. Potter. Granger. Weasley.

“Draco,” his aunt had purred. “Come here, darling. Look closely.”

And he had. He’d looked at Potter, swollen-faced and filthy, his heart pounding. He’d opened his mouth—
and closed it again.

“I—I can’t be sure,” he’d said, voice trembling.

Bellatrix’s eyes had narrowed. “Can’t be sure?”

“I can’t,” he insisted. “Their faces are too swollen. Could be anyone.”

Potter had met his eyes for the briefest second, green cutting into grey, before he was dragged away.

⸻

And then came the screaming.

His screaming.

Bellatrix’s laughter rang in his ears as the Cruciatus ripped through him. His body had convulsed, back arching, throat raw. She shrieked at him for being a traitor, for protecting blood-traitors, for daring to show mercy.

“Not good enough, Draco! Not Malfoy enough!”

He’d thought he would die from the agony. Perhaps he’d wanted to.

And then—
“Enough.”

His mother’s voice. Cool, sharp, furious. Narcissa stepping between them, shielding him with her body. Bellatrix’s wand lowering, though her mad eyes gleamed with contempt.

⸻

He woke with a gasp. His throat was dry, his limbs trembling. The sterile scent of potions and antiseptic burned his nose. He blinked, disoriented, before recognizing the familiar starched sheets of the Hospital Wing.

Madam Pomfrey loomed, fussing with vials at his bedside. “You fainted, Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco scowled, though his voice was weak. “How mortifying.”

“Mortifying would be letting your nerve damage go this bad,” Pomfrey scolded, though there was no real bite in it.

Draco turned his head—and froze.

Because across the room, half-hidden by a curtain, was the faint shimmer of an invisibility cloak. And underneath it, he sense the unmistakable outline of Potter.

Of course.

⸻