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After the war ended, an immense amount of trials had taken place in order to punish everyone who had fought on the wrong side, the Malfoy family, his family, was one of the first to be judged.
Draco never expected Harry Potter to step forward to lighten his sentence and his mother’s, his father did not benefit from that kindness of the Chosen One, but Draco could not look a gift horse in the mouth.
His mother was set free by all means, as a mere victim of coercion, despite her ideals, she did not have the Dark Mark and there were memories from several people in which her sister Bellatrix and her husband pressured her to submit herself before Lord Voldemort.
Draco was put under house arrest for one year, or otherwise, return to attend the seventh year again without Hogsmeade privileges and with a focus on Healing, being constantly watched. Even with Potter’s intervention, which reduced his sentence to the minimum —it could have been five years of house arrest, without ever being able to leave Malfoy Manor, in which he had terrible memories, where he was afraid even to enter his own dining room—, Draco was not completely acquitted.
Potter approached him at the end of the trials —in which Draco also appeared as a witness since the Death Eaters’ base was his manor— and with a slightly uncomfortable smile offered him his hand in greeting.
“We have a lot of history,” he said, while scratching the back of his neck with his other hand, “and we cannot forget about it, but we can start again. I’m Harry Potter, a pleasure.”
Draco accepted the handshake, a little stunned by the surprise. In some way he had ruined his life in many ways, his aunt had tortured him and still…
“I’m Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”
With one last smile, Harry disappeared, leaving Draco thinking about too many things. He knew immediately that Harry had not offered him his forgiveness, not at all. But in the black-haired boy’s eyes he was not a monster, but a being looking for redemption. It was better than nothing.
It was better than being nothing.
—
Hogwarts was different. They had four months to restore the school to its former glory, all with the support of the members of the magical community who offered their help for a place where they had grown up and learned to be the people they were now.
It was a little painful, in a way. Observing the school while the thestrals pushed the carriages, the innocence that before surrounded hundreds of people of not knowing what moved them reduced to a bunch of children who had to know death before it was even the moment to understand it properly.
Draco felt out of place with his house emblem, he felt that everyone else criticised the mere existence of the colour. He had never felt that way, so… judged.
He spotted the Golden Trio in the distance, Granger was hugging Weasley by the waist, while Potter was a little away, talking to Lovegood. She noticed his gaze and smiled at him, slowly moving away from Potter.
Draco took it as a sign to approach, he walked a little hesitantly, as he was not sure how well received he would be among the Gryffindors. But, once Potter noticed him, he gave him a smile and waved at him.
The recognition was perhaps the worst of everything, because it made him feel as if he was still someone.
“Thank you,” he said, in an impulse where the cowardice that seemed to always be biting his ankles moved away. “For everything. For reducing the sentence. It was…”
He did not let him finish.
“You don’t have to thank me, I’m not looking for you to thank me.”
“Then… why did you do it?”
He hated asking that question, because it tasted like weakness, it tasted like desperation.
Potter simply shrugged. “Because I don’t think five years locked up in your house are going to fix something. Being locked up is not as good as everyone seems to think.”
Draco felt his heart accelerate against his better judgement, because somehow —despite everything bad that there was with him— Potter cared about what was going to happen to him.
—
From that, Draco found himself looking for more and more excuses to see or be near Potter. It was not his best moment, as he felt that he was back in time trying to find the best way to annoy the black-haired boy, only this time he was not sure what the purpose of wanting to be so close was.
Unconsciously he looked for him in the corridors, in the castle grounds, in the mornings during breakfast… he felt lighter even when he managed to spot him and they exchanged smiles.
Often he found himself thinking that, without Potter’s intervention, neither he nor any of his Slytherin acquaintances would have had that opportunity to finish Hogwarts, to continue using magic. That was what in the end made them talk for entire hours next to the lake, both looking at the impassive surface of the water while they discussed all the good that the green-eyed boy had caused.
“Percy would love to meet the giant squid,” he had heard Potter say, while it made the water splash with one of its tentacles. “I’m sure they would be great friends.”
Draco did not pay as much attention to him, he was afraid to admit, because his eyes were fixed on the way the sun illuminated Potter so pleasantly, with a radiant dreamlike halo.
—
The December holidays were just around the corner, Draco, because of the whole mess of the house arrest, was not allowed to return to Malfoy Manor, but would stay at Hogwarts like most of the students.
He was not ready, in fact, to return home. Not when the screams of pain still echoed through the walls and the smell of blood and decomposing bodies was still impregnated in every room.
“Oh, I won’t be staying,” he said, his smile became less enormous, a little more private. His eyes softened like Draco had never seen before. “They’re waiting for me. So I’ll go home.”
Draco supposed that Potter’s Muggle family would want to see him, yes. He had been running away for a year and then because of everything that happened he did not return to London in the summer. Surely they missed him.
“I’ll miss you around here,” he said, without thinking too much about how pitiful his voice sounded when saying it.
Potter rolled his eyes, his smile becoming a little wider. “I’ll miss you too, Draco.”
Draco.
Draco. Draco. Draco. Draco.
It was not “Malfoy”, he did not call him by his surname.
He called him by his name, for the first time.
“Then see you later, Harry.”
—
During the first days of the holidays, Draco realised in a very uncomfortable way that he had made his routine around Harry —because now they used first names—. He had breakfast a little later than usual to coincide with Harry first thing in the morning, he studied in that poorly lit corner of the library because Granger and Harry were always there.
The four tables had disappeared to make room for a single bigger one, but even so, he looked ahead out of habit, exactly where the Gryffindor table would be.
But Harry was not there, so it was a little useless for him to do all that.
Draco realised something he had ignored, because he had barely noticed the big space Harry occupied in his day-to-day life, until Harry stopped occupying it.
The days passed slowly, too slowly. Christmas went by in the blink of an eye, the feast was warm and full of presents. He spent the following days inside the common room without too much to do, because there was nobody who would voluntarily approach him for mere trivial conversation.
It was a relief when everyone returned to Hogwarts on a Sunday in January, there was more noise in the castle and fewer shadows that chased him in his paranoia induced by loneliness. Dinner was less tense, more pleasant. When looking ahead towards the Gryffindor table, there he was.
There was Harry.
It was not until the next morning that they really spoke, Draco was walking towards his first class of the day —which he shared with his whole year, because not everyone decided to return to Hogwarts to get their NEWTs— when he heard the voices of the Golden Trio.
“…the holidays?” That was Granger’s voice. “Did you do anything interesting?”
“I spent them with Peter and Percy,” Harry answered. “I finally got to take them to meet Teddy, I also got to see Sally and May, it was fun.”
Just before entering the classroom he feels a touch on his shoulder, when he raises his eyes he finds Harry, who gives him an easy smile. “Hello, Draco.”
And against his better judgement he feels relief.
He felt that breathing was easier, he felt that it was easier to exist in that moment and place.
During the rest of the day Draco felt a thorn of discomfort stuck at the back of his mind, because he could not stop thinking about the slight detail he had heard. Who were Peter and Percy? Maybe he was referring to one of the Weasleys? He remembered that they called one Percy, the one who was a prefect during his first year.
It disturbed him a little to feel so annoyed about it. But the thought, no, the confirmation that Harry had a life he really did not know about made him feel strange. He knew he had a life outside Hogwarts, that he had other friends and had family; his head simply could not conceive it.
—
The months kept passing and, before he could even properly reflect on it, he was graduating.
Many things remained the same after leaving Hogwarts for the last time, walking back along the same path that had once taken him to the school gates when he was eleven years old.
He continued his studies in Healing almost immediately, trying to make a good name for himself and, with luck, be hired as a trainee nurse at St Mungo’s. Every Friday afternoon he went out to Diagon Alley to have coffee with Harry, sometimes Lovegood accompanied them to tell them about her investigations and even some discoveries about magical creatures —or whatever she believed them to be, by that point—.
The last time they had seen each other —him and Harry—, the black-haired boy had lent him one of the many books that were in the library at Grimmauld Place. He claimed that he was a Black and had the right to access his family’s legacy, so he was free to take whatever books he wanted as long as he gave them back, and that was exactly what he planned to do.
He would return the book to Harry and, with luck, he would let him stay a little longer in the house —for tea time if he was lucky enough— and they could talk about the few days they had not seen each other.
He knocked twice on the front door, he expected Kreacher or Harry to answer the call, perhaps even some Weasley or even Granger.
A pair of brown eyes greeted him. The boy was slightly dishevelled and that vaguely reminded him of the rare occasions when his mother allowed him to lie down on her lap and stroked his hair, so when he looked at himself in the mirror afterwards his hair was out of place.
“Are you a friend of Harry?” the boy asked. “Harry says very few people know his house, so…”
“Who’s at the door, Peter?” shouted an unknown voice from the living room. “Hurry up.”
Draco passed the now familiar Peter by and walked quickly towards the origin of the voice, his grey eyes immediately finding a scene that was far too homely; Harry was lying against the chest of a black-haired man who was hugging him by the shoulders, there was a blanket over his legs and he was arranged in such a way that surely the now familiar Peter could fit.
Harry had been stroking Peter’s hair while being hugged by another man.
Harry had been stroking Peter’s hair while being hugged by another man.
Harry was with them.
He was with both of them and because of that there was no place for Draco.
He felt dizzy, he turned around quickly, raising his wand towards Peter, a spell came out of his mouth.
“Draco, what the fuck?! Leave him alone!”
Peter had moved away too quickly for Draco’s eyes to realise, his head was throbbing and he felt as if his heart was being squeezed by an imaginary fist and it hurt because that meant that deep in his soul he already knew that Harry had someone else and all those special moments had meant absolutely nothing.
His body stopped responding to him.
It felt similar to an Imperius, but at the same time it did not. He felt that fog in his mind, but there was no little voice in his ear telling him that he needed to do something desperately, it was more the desperate feeling that his body was clearly out of his control and he could not move and in his ears he could feel the beating of his heart, but no.
“Percy, enough, stop, oh my gods!”
Harry seemed completely agitated, it reminded Draco a little of that time when he left him half-dead in Myrtle’s bathroom. Good old times.
His limbs tingled as soon as he regained control of his body, he fell face-first against the floor and was able to see Harry and his other guest better, now known as Percy.
He was holding him reassuringly by the arm, while Peter cautiously approached and helped him stand up. Percy’s eyes were full of hatred and, as soon as they made eye contact, he felt as if his stomach sank, because his gaze was absolutely terrifying.
Harry’s gaze, on the other hand, was one of absolute disappointment. Draco, very deep in his head, could only think that it was ten times better for Harry to be absolutely angry with him, because anger was better than having broken the illusion of the unspoken affection they had.
“I don’t know what the fuck went through your head when you barged into my bloody house and attacked my bloody boyfriend,” a soft “hey!” could be heard next to a pout from the brown-haired boy, Harry ignored him. “But I’m so angry and, gods, even disappointed because I stupidly thought that the Draco Luna and I have coffee with was no longer the same idiot Malfoy I spent six years of my life with.” Harry stopped, taking a breath of air before letting out a sound of frustration. “How wrong I was.”
“I thought that…”
He stopped immediately. What could he say? I thought you likef me? I thought there was no one in your life?
A single lonely tear fell from his left eye.
“I thought you loved me,” he whispered.
Harry’s face changed, his eyes softened and his mouth curved in that way he always did when he felt sorry.
“I do,” he affirmed. “But not in the way you think.”
That…
Fuck, that hurt.