Chapter Text
“No, sir. You need to settle your late fees before you can check these out.”
Draco stares blankly at the lanky teenager who stares blankly back at her.
“I returned them last night! You need to recheck the system, I swear I returned them yesterday—”
Draco closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. Draco Lucia Malfoy. Count to five before you say something… undiplomatic again.
“The ‘system’,” she bites out, scarcely resisting the urge to punctuate with finger quotes, “updates daily. I’m afraid you’re mistaken. If you’ve misplaced the rentals, we cannot offer you any new loans until you’ve settled the accrued late fees and the respective replacement prices of the lost discs—”
“That’s bollocks, why do I have to pay when you’re the idiots who obviously lost them—”
Draco’s eyes twitch, then gradually glazes over while she zones out to the pimply little prat in front of her ranting and furiously flailing his gangly arms with the righteous indignation only a slighted teenager could muster.
“Honestly, you DVD rentals are a total scam. I swear on my life—you lot are going to be completely out of business in 10 years tops. Digital is clearly the future, soon nobody’s gonna even want to bother with these stupid discs, mark my words.”
Draco pulls together a long-suffering smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I’m afraid I must ask you to leave if you’re going to continue to make a scene, valued customer,” Draco says, the sickly sweet smile still plastered stiffly onto her lips.
“Or else what?”
“SECURITY!!!”
Draco worked this shift alone.
“Oh, fuck—”
Mr. Valued Customer drops the hapless DVDs onto the grey linoleum floor as he runs out of the store, squawking juvenile obscenities at Draco.
She scoffs. She demurely adjusts the little red nametag pinned to her chest (Hello, I’m Lucy!), and smooths out the wrinkles of her apron. She takes a quick glance at the clock hanging on the opposite end of the DVD rental shop she’s held captive in for another 15 minutes.
At least her shift’s almost over.
If you’d asked Draco where she saw herself when she grew up, she’d certainly never have envisioned herself disgracing herself with lowly service jobs with the plebs she’d been raised to turn up her nose at. Much less working a lowly service job with Muggle plebs she’d been raised to scorn all her life.
But once the Dark Lord was vanquished and the Ministry scrambled to regain any semblance of authority and control over a broken society, one ravaged by death and torment for far too long, it was to be expected that things would have to change.
She just never thought they’d change like this.
A weary sigh escapes her mouth as she navigates around the cashier counter towards the DVDs left scattered across the ground. She bends over, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and picks up the discs.
The prepubescent brats were the worst. They always returned discs coated in soda residue and Cheeto dust.
Beverly Hills Cop III. Batman & Robin. Rocky V.
And evidently had the worst taste in movies, my god.
She shuffles idly between the aisles, returning the movies to their shelves according to their respective genre.
Despite her misgivings concerning Muggles that she carried practically all throughout her life, she’d grown accustomed to this life outside the wizarding world she used to call home.
Initially—naturally—Draco found Muggles and everything they stood for painfully, agonizingly mundane. No brooms, no Floo, no owls, no MAGIC. Honestly, how did they get by in life, the backwards brutes?
However, this view was begrudgingly remediated over time as Draco spent more and more time in Muggle London. No brooms, but they had vehicles that rivaled them in terms of accessibility and convenience. They even managed to voyage to the moon? She was incredulous. Perhaps Muggles deserved the tiniest bit of credit after all.
Still, it was nowhere close to Apparation or Floo, she noted with finality.
Much more interesting to her was how they entertained themselves. Moving pictures that were accompanied by sound. Little handheld devices that transmitted messages, oral and written, instantaneously without the need of an avian medium or Patronus.
No, the Muggles weren’t completely helpless after all.
Still, none of this would’ve been adequate motivation to place herself in the permanent company of Muggles. Her forebears of the noble house of Malfoy would be thoroughly mortified. Scandalized, even.
Though, she really was left with little choice in the matter. She understood perfectly well where her family stood in the war. The decisions her father made. The conflicted mask of apathy her mother wore in the face of unabashed brutality. Even her own actions facilitating the sins of the Death Eaters were inexcusable, no matter how you tried to frame things. There was simply no neutral position to adopt without claiming some degree of culpability in the Second Wizarding War.
Her mind briefly flickers to the image of a decrepit cabinet she’d spent the entirety of her sixth year desperately mending to a functional state. The mayhem that ensued after she’d succeeded. The clocktower. A flash of green light. A broken old man laying sprawled on the grass below, lifeless.
No, she certainly wasn't without her fair share of guilt after all.
Her family was long due to see repercussions, and oddly enough she found herself welcoming it.
Shortly after the Dark Lord fell, the Ministry descended upon Hogwarts, accounting for the injured and the dead. Taking into custody captured Death Eaters. The Malfoys did not resist arrest.
She had no expectations or wishes of forgiveness from those her family wronged. Some wounds were too deep, too old for that. She would unflinchingly face the Wizangemot Council and testify without any attempt to obfuscate or diminish the crimes of her family. Whatever they decreed was just punishment, she’d accept without protest. She’d suspected her parents were prepared to do the same.
She believed herself mentally prepared to face the vindictive rage of all of magical society prior to her family’s trial, but that fateful day proved traumatic all the same. She remembers three wooden chairs in the centre of a cold and dark atrium. She sat in the middle with her parents on her sides. The chairs were too far apart to find comfort in her mother’s hand, a luxury she found herself desperate for in the moment.
She folded her hands in her lap.
The atmosphere was suffocating. Oppressive. Draco shrank against the hushed whispers of gallery members. “Traitors. Terrorists. Murderers.”
Draco was mistaken, she couldn’t have been prepared for this at all.
A sea of innumerable furious eyes, not one single pair belonging to an individual affording any sympathy to spare her family. To be expected. They’d done so much, after all.
She felt small.
She felt scared.
None, but a single pair of emerald green eyes.
She met his eyes with a pair of silver ones of her own before she bitterly avoided eye contact altogether, furiously blinking away tears that stung. Harry Potter, the boy she’d traded blows with for six years of her life—verbal and magical. He was a steady, enduring presence in her life whether she liked it or not. And now he was here, at the lowest point of her life.
Now he was here, pitying her with those bloody eyes.
He provided witness testimony attesting to her mother’s role in the Forbidden Forest when directly questioned by the Dark Lord. She said he was dead. She lied. He corroborated Draco’s actions when he and his ragtag group of stooges were brought to the manor by the Snatchers. That instant of horrified recognition that passed over her face when she saw his deformed, disguised face. How she refused to confirm his identity to her aunt Bellatrix.
Apparently, he’d attended the hearing on special request. The trial was originally intended to be a ceremonial affair. Judgements were already effectively made and all were anxious to speed things along for the imminent guilty verdict.
He didn’t want that, though.
No no no, the golden boy advocated for more.
“If the first act of this Ministry after Voldemort’s fall is punishment without record, sentence without evidence, and spectacle in place of law, then we have merely replaced the banners and kept the rot.”
How painfully idealistic. Naive fool.
Ultimately, both she and Narcissa Malfoy were judged to be materially significant in Saint Potter’s survival and his consequent victory over the Dark Lord. Their waived sentences were met with outraged cries of violent disapproval echoing in the halls.
A life sentence to Azkaban was meted out to her father. This was inevitable. An active Death Eater that even went as far as to house the Dark Lord and his followers in his home—no matter his willingness in the matter—could never have been pardoned.
Lucius Malfoy was equally unsurprised. It hurt all the same, having her family forcefully split apart once more. She had him back for barely a year, and now he was going back to the accursed prison.
Only this time, her father wasn't ever coming back.
The aftermath of the trial was a blur.
Throngs of onlookers, hurling abuse at her and her mother while they were rushed away from the hearing by a squad of ministry officials and Aurors. Blinding flashes of light from camera bulbs filled her vision as reporters struggled against the assembled Aurors keeping the crowd back.
They weren't seen as people, but a cautionary tale for the world to gawk at, a headline for the gossip column, the prestige and influence of her family name that had been carefully constructed over the diligence and sacrifices of countless generations long a relic of the past.
And to make matters worse, she was robbed of her opportunity for repentance, damned to live out her days in shame.
All thanks to Saint Potter.
She believed she'd have been better off in Azkaban with her father.
Draco shakes herself out of her thoughts.
She's doing much better now. Not good, but better.
She ran and hid from the wizarding world to preserve her mental well-being. Being under constant public scrutiny and enduring hateful looks wherever she went no longer felt like penance, but borderline cruelty.
Respite was absent even at home. Malfoy Manor was haunted by the sins of the past, the blood spilt on its floors scrubbed clean but remained unforgotten. It didn't serve its purpose as a home anymore, but instead as a looming, undeniable monument to her family's crimes.
She couldn't live like that anymore.
Draco packed her belongings and left in the dead of night, leaving behind only a note to her mother. She said she needed to get away, somewhere far away. She'd keep in contact by owl, but she wouldn't let her mother come with.
She needed a fresh new start. One without the luxuries afforded by her family fortune when she was now well familiar with what that fortune cost.
She'd make a new life for herself and grow into a witch deserving of respect. Reclaiming honor for the noble house of Malfoy was secondary—that was ultimately never going to be up to her.
“And this is where it's all amounted to, three bloody years later,” mutters Draco as she haphazardly shoves Rocky V into the Romantic Comedy section.
She returns back to the counter, retrieving a battered notebook that lay open with her potions notes compiled neatly in highlighted and categorized sections (Muggle stationery proved to be far superior to quills and parchment in practicality. Why in blazes did they insist on still using the archaic things anyway?!).
5 more minutes to closing. If she hurried home, she might be able to finish up her supplementary notes on the causal relationship between artificially synthesized catalysts and fissile binding agents. One step closer to a chance at publishing an academic paper and another step closer to realizing her ambitions. She gingerly tucks it into a black leather satchel, worn and scuffed from years of use, resting at her feet. A slightly tarnished silver emblem of a snake is fixed onto the flap closure. It closes with a soft click.
She stretches and yawns, moving to turn off the illuminated signage over the DVD rental shop when she catches sight of a lone man walking past the glass storefront strewn with outdated promotional posters.
The man, noticing movement behind the glass, stops and peers through the empty space between posters into the store and locks eyes with Draco.
Emerald green and silver mirror one another in stunned silence.
Draco, frozen with her arm still raised, reaching for the light switch, stares at the unmistakable face of one Harry James Potter, whose stupid, dumbstruck face is dimly lit by the warm glow of neon outside her shop.
Neither of the two move for what feels like an eternity.
…
…
Draco blinks twice, then wordlessly flicks the switch off, plunging Harry's face in the darkness of the night and swiftly retreats back to the cashier counter, her pounding heart betraying the collected composure she wears on her face.
Go away go away go away go away—
A tinny jingle rings out as the final customer of the day enters, much to Draco's absolute despair.
“Malfoy? What in Merlin's name are you doing here?”
“I regret to inform you that we are currently closed for business, valued customer. Operating hours are from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. We'd be happy to help you tomorrow—”
“W-wha—wait no, you’re definitely Malfoy, aren’t you? Where've you been, nobody knew where you'd gone—”
Draco clenches and unclenches her jaw, struggling to subdue the frustrated scream bubbling in her throat, threatening to erupt any second now—
“You just disappeared and—don't tell me you were just hiding out here this whole time? I thought you'd left the country or something, to Southern France someone told me, but you were here in London of all places—”
Draco massages her temples, in a vain attempt to soothe the migraine building behind her eyes. The rambling man in front of her hasn't stopped for a single breath so far, she observes.
Count to five, Draco. Count to five.
“You've been living with the Muggles? You? A Malfoy? Muggles? How—”
“I SAID WE'RE CLOSED, POTTER,” barks Draco, unable to quell her raging emotions any longer.
Harry flinches. The shock in his face gradually morphs into undeterred excitement, a shit-eating grin growing larger and larger.
“I can’t believe it. It’s really you.”
Harry sizes up the imperious blonde crossing her arms in thinly veiled irritation, a single untied Converse sneaker tapping impatiently on the floor.
He notices she's wearing Muggle clothes. Thrifted ones, it seems. Completely uncharacteristic of the aristocratic blood purist he used to know.
An oversized, grey sweater peppered with tiny balls of lint. A modest pair of sunfaded jeans. An apron—work attire, Harry assumes—with a little nametag introducing the petite girl vibrating with rage in front of him.
Harry squints. “You're calling yourself… ‘Lucy'?”
“Potter, I swear to god—” she snarls.
“Sorry, sorry,” Harry raises his hands in an attempt to placate. Or in surrender maybe, he's not quite sure either.
Draco glares at the physical embodiment of a day gone horribly, grievously wrong opposite her. He's cleaned up much nicer since she's last seen him. Not that she particularly cares.
Gone was the scrawny, awkward Gryffindor boy she derided on the regular for his impossibly unkempt clothes that poorly disguised his wiry frame hidden underneath.
In front of her was a young man standing a head above her. A black twill trenchcoat draped the length of his figure, with an understated wool jumper peeking through the gaps, clinging onto shoulders broader than she ever remembers him having. A relaxed pair of jeans rested comfortably on his loafers.
His hair was regrettably still a lost cause, but that's neither here nor there.
She stresses that how he looks is utterly unimportant.
Was this because she dissed the last customer's movie picks? Fine, Batman & Robin wasn't actually that bad, she takes it back. Just please, somebody make him leave already.
“A video rental shop? That's a choice pick, Malfoy.”
“God, give me patience.”
“I think you mean, ‘give me strength.’”
“If god gave me strength you'd be dead, Potter.”
Harry snorts.
Draco visibly deflates as her anger crumbles away, giving way to exhaustion. She exhales and fixes her eyes onto his in tired resignation.
“...Just go, Potter. I need to close up shop. It's late.”
Harry frowns. “You vanished into thin air for three years, Malfoy. Three whole years. I had no idea if you were even alive, your mother wouldn't say a word to anyone about what happened.”
Narcissa wasn't too pleased about Draco leaving. Notably, she wasn't at all angry or disappointed with her choices. Just concerned. An anxious mother desperate to shield her only daughter from an unsympathetic world that held her in such overt contempt.
She's tried offering to move elsewhere with Draco in her letters. We can leave England altogether, she'd write. Come home, we can figure this out together.
I miss you, Draco.
Draco swallows a lump in her throat.
She missed her mother too.
She rejected her mother's pleas. In the back of her mind, she still believed that she still hadn't earned the right to live in any amount of comfort, nor enjoy any privilege that came freely from simply existing as a Malfoy.
“I hate to disappoint but here I am, alive and well,” she says in feigned disinterest. “If that's all, I'd appreciate it if we moved on from tonight like it never even happened.”
Harry doesn't want to. Curiosity has stubbornly implanted itself into the young wizard's head and refused to vacate until his questions were answered to satisfaction.
Still, he could tell he was teetering on the razor edge of Malfoy's rapidly thinning patience and he knew when to relent.
“...Fine, have it your way.”
“Exit's to your left.”
“I know where the exit is.”
“Then go.”
“I'm going to.”
“Good.”
“Yep.”
“Enjoy your evening, valued customer.”
“You too… ‘Lucy.’”
Silver eyes twitch, the dead, unamused stare they're sporting contrasting sharply against the well-practiced customer service smile below.
She's going to kill this man.
Harry's lips curl upwards, apparently satisfied at the reaction he's elicited and shoots her a mock salute with two fingers. He turns and leaves, his back quickly disappearing into the night.
Draco doesn't move for another ten seconds, smiling still at the empty space that Harry fucking Potter previously occupied, before she gurgles out a strangled scream in the privacy of a now empty store.
“TWAAAAT.”
She carelessly slams her head straight down onto the counter, the impromptu faceplant unfortunately only compounding the throbbing headache she is suffering.
“Twat. Twat. Twat.”
She underlines each ‘twat’ with an additional slam to the counter, the cash register next to her dinging in distress each time she does so.
She imagines her mother chiding her unladylike behavior. “Don't be crass, dear.”
“Not now, mother.”
She lifts her head by a fraction from the counter, barely enough to peek at the clock across the room.
9:24 p.m.
She's also just now missed her only bus home. How nice.
She snatches up her satchel from the floor, stuffs her apron into a cabinet (“That's going to leave wrinkles, sweetheart,” complains Imaginary Mother) and storms out the store, locking the doors shut behind her.
What a horrific day.
Draco furiously stomps down the street before a foot snags the untied shoelaces of a traitorous sneaker and she plants her face firmly onto the second hard surface of the night.
…
All of it is Potter's fault.
The trudge back to her flat is a therapeutic affair, and Draco welcomed the peace and quiet after the turmoil she was ungraciously subject to previously. The crisp autumn night did wonders to assuage the migraine that gradually eased into calm.
…What was she going to do now that she's been discovered?
Draco admittedly hadn't been particularly careful in keeping a low profile. It's not as if she were some wanted fugitive, and the wizarding world was more than happy to let Draco Malfoy fade into a distant memory of a time they'd prefer to move on from.
She counted herself extraordinarily lucky to make it three years without being recognized thus far.
Draco curses her complacency. She ought to have seen this coming, especially considering she couldn't even bring herself to leave London.
This could've been entirely avoidable. It wasn't like she was married to the job she currently worked. She would've settled for anything that paid her decently enough to fund a modest living while she worked on her academic endeavors on the side. It really didn't have to be this specific job at all.
Owing to her aristocratic pedigree, she was fluent in French and Italian, which made it entirely possible to find some far removed town across the Channel to settle down in instead. As a bonus she'd be far less likely to get recognized that way, too.
Taking all these factors into consideration, maybe she should've left the country after all.
Perhaps she should've taken up her mother's offer.
Draco absentmindedly chews on her bottom lip and shakes her head.
No, that's not right either.
She couldn't leave England because despite it all, this was still her home. She grew here, made her friends here, and even bled here. It was utterly crushing enough, having to leave behind everything she knew all by herself with a resentful public in her wake.
Besides, if she planned to return on her own terms once she was ready, what difference did it make if she were in France, or Italy, or even England anyway?
She recalls her commitment to independence from her family's abundant resources and connections. If she were to earn her right to return to the magical world, it absolutely had to be a consequence of her own merit and wherewithal. She was resolute this was the correct decision. This much will be self-evident in the near future; Draco was certain of it.
Draco reaches her flat door and unlocks it. Kicking off her sneakers and tossing her satchel onto the couch, she throws herself onto her bed facefirst and breathes heavily.
She's worrying over nothing, Draco decides.
She's come a long way in the last three years since she'd walked out the gates of Malfoy Manor, remembering a dispassionate new moon as the only witness to her self-imposed exile that fateful night.
Months of readjusting to a society wholly alien to her and her sensibilities. Dozens of letters to various potions masters all over Europe to request apprenticeship. Going to great lengths to procure suitable equipment and ingredients to facilitate a range of experimental brews. Countless sleepless nights diligently scratching notes and observations into a quickly filling shelf of notebooks.
She’s put in the work. Finally, the fruits of her labor are tantalizingly within reach and she was determined that a ghost from the past wasn’t about to interfere with her ambitions.
“I had no idea if you were even alive.”
…
Ptuh. Like Potter even cared. Even after three years, the sanctimonious boor couldn’t help himself could he?
Three years of burying herself in work, three blissful years of uninterrupted peace.
No vulgar redhead to trade vicious barbs with.
No self-righteous Muggleborn preaching unsolicited sermons she never took seriously.
No infuriatingly confusing half-wit whose emerald green eyes unexplainably seemed to pierce right through her, like the walls of snark and arrogance she performed to perfection weren’t even there.
She’d successfully buried Potter, once a permanent fixture in her most private thoughts, deep in her subconscious and now he was back with vengeance.
…Forget Potter.
Today just wasn’t your day. Just a fluke. A karmic practical joke.
Soon enough, she’d be finished with her paper. She’d acquire her letters of recommendation. She’d put in her applications to St. Mungo’s. She’d go back home, and finally make a positive difference in the world. Quietly and without fanfare, one step at a time.
Maybe then Draco can finally find some permanent peace.
She tosses, then turns to face an uncurtained window adjacent to her bed.
She stares at the faint reflection of herself in the window, still clad in her frumpy grey sweater. Her hair was a mess; her eyes underscored with dark circles were partially covered by overgrown bangs. She averts her gaze in mild distaste. He saw me like this?
She flips around and stares at the bare, concrete ceiling above her.
It was a far cry from what she’d grown up admiring in the Manor, absent of the ornate plasterwork boasting patterns and frescoes suiting the nobility of her name.
Draco scoffs at her own audacity. ‘Nobility’, in her current state? Please.
She felt undeserving of the word.
“I can’t believe it. It’s really you.”
Inexplicably, she feels a sharp twinge in chest as she remembers the way Harry’s eyes softened as he looked at her. The way he effortlessly smiled like she’s never seen him smile before, their contentious history altogether forgotten.
All for her.
…
She felt undeserving of his attention, too.
Just why did he even bother with somebody like her?
Draco uneasily shuts her eyes, the lingering uncertainty and self-doubt stubbornly preventing her from a restful slumber.
Harry glances at his watch impatiently, then looks back up at the employee stationed behind the cashier counter inside the store.
It’s 8:51 a.m.
The indifferent employee returns his irritated gaze, propping his cheek up with a cupped hand. He disinterestedly taps a watch of his own, and mouths slowly and deliberately, “we open at 9.”
Harry groans, then resumes pacing in front of the still-locked doors.
He couldn't catch a wink of sleep last night.
Which isn't to say it was for lack of trying, of course. But after the fourth consecutive hour of fidgeting under the sheets, Harry knew when he was beaten.
…Merlin help him. Harry Potter lost an entire night's worth of sleep—as a fully grown adult man, by the way—because he couldn't stop thinking about a girl. Ron would've eaten this up if he ever found out. He could already picture the smarmy look on his face, the smug little prick.
“Mate, it's not like that,” he wildly gesticulates into the air in vehement protest. A passing elderly lady tightens her grip on her purse and quickens her pace past the clearly disturbed man. Harry charitably ignores her.
This wasn't pining. This wasn't some unresolved schoolyard crush, or anything to that immature effect. No, this was purely… academic curiosity. Right. Academic curiosity works.
You couldn't fault him for just being curious. Especially given their complicated history to take into consideration.
This was Draco Malfoy we were talking about, after all.
The same girl who reserved a bottomless well of biting snark aimed at him and his friends that never seemed to run dry over the six years they were stuck together within the perimeters of Hogwarts’ castle walls.
Initially, every derogatory aside and every unkind word hid no deeper implication.
They were just two kids, meaning with earnest every childish insult pitched at one another.
It didn't stay like that forever, however.
Draco, sole heir to the house of Malfoy, demonstrated herself to be an exceptionally talented witch, whose scholarly acumen was only matched by Hermione. Her adept proficiency in transfiguration was nothing to dismiss. Her expert potioneering produced brews of clarity and potency that even a sullen Snape found difficulty nitpicking on his worst days.
Harry was likewise a worthier rival Draco originally anticipated. He was uncontested in his dominant position at the top of their Defence Against the Dark Arts class. He was no slouch in charmswork either, quickly mastering most spells he was introduced to in record times. This was without mentioning the (ill-advised) ‘heroics’ he regularly found himself entangled in.
Before long, the juvenile bickering between the two of them simmered down into unspoken, earnest competition.
The verbal abuse eventually softened with time as both students begrudgingly learned respect for their counterpart.
Though, they'd never fully reconciled their differences.
The roots were too deep, the gap was too wide to reasonably cross. Too much happened between them during the later half of their Hogwarts years. Lines were drawn in the sand, and sides had to be taken.
But Harry had always wondered.
He'd catch glimpses of her on her own, immersed in small mountains of books in the Great Hall and in the library, her sharp silver eyes narrowed in focus while unconsciously nibbling on a quill.
He'd notice her haughty face falter when her test scores were not up to par.
Her unguarded expression of victorious elation when she fooled him with an expertly maneuvered feint during a particularly eventful Quidditch match was a sight to behold.
She joined her housemates in senselessly bullying younger Muggleborn students less and less over the years (“Grow up, this childish behavior is far beneath us. A complete waste of my valuable time,” she'd snap as her housemates would visibly wilt under her severity).
There were layers to this girl; her immaculately fabricated façade of superiority and ego concealed hints of vulnerability, and Harry was hungry to uncover more.
The distinct click of a door unlocking breaks him out of his reverie.
“Lucky for you, we're open for business now,” quipped the employee.
“Lucky me,” Harry deadpans, unamused, as he follows the man in.
He enters the DVD rental shop, surveying the place in quiet contemplation. Why on earth would Malfoy work here?
He pretends to busy himself browsing the shelves as the store clerk languidly chews a stick of gum with an open mouth, dilated pupils fixed to a display monitor playing Toy Story with the audio turned off.
It looks like he's the only one working here right now. Maybe Malfoy is running late? Only one way to find out.
“Excuse me. I'm looking for someone called Lucy, does she work here?”
“What's it to you?”
Prat.
“Um. We used to go to school together. Heard from a friend that she's working here now. Do you know when she comes in?”
The clerk gives a non-commital shrug.
“We work flexible schedules here, got no clue when she's coming in today.”
“Any chance she's coming in soon?”
“Mate, like I said, no clue. Only one of us works here at a time per shift, and my shift's not over for another three hours.”
So she won't be here until noon at the very earliest. After that, it was anybody's guess when he'd have another chance to see her again.
“Great. Thanks.”
The clerk grunts in response, then returns his attention to Woody screaming silently at Buzz in a petrol station.
This might be longer than expected.
Whatever, it's not like he had anything that urgently needed done by today.
Harry's eyes settle on a single uncomfortable looking chair near the back end of the store.
His poor back was going to absolutely hate the next several hours to come.
Draco pushes her reading glasses up onto her head and lowers her notebook. Despite her best efforts, she just can't seem to focus on the words. Not that she's much surprised—sleep was regrettably elusive last night.
I should've stopped for coffee.
Too late for that now. And she was running a little late to her shift, even. She was only a stop away from her destination and with any luck, business would be slow tonight. Karma owed her that much today for yesterday, at least.
Draco puts away her notebook and climbs out of the bus into another chilly evening. The nights were noticeably getting colder by the day. She pulls her shearling jacket tighter around her frame and hurries towards the rental shop.
She walks into the store, greeting her coworker who's currently engaged in a phone call with a cursory wave of a hand. Her colleague nods back in acknowledgement.
“Oh hey, Lucy just got here. Right. I'll be over in a few—no, you don't have to wait, go ahead and start without me. Yeah. See you down the pub.”
She snaps shut her cell phone and puts on her coat.
“Sorry about the time Chloe, I was a little distracted today,” explains Draco as she takes over Chloe's spot behind the counter.
“Eh, happens. By the way Lucy, some weirdo's been holed up back over there waiting on you all day. Bloke says he knows you from school. Figured I'd hold off calling the police on him at least until you got here.”
Draco freezes.
He just didn't know when to quit, did he?
She groans and buries her face in her hands in exasperation.
Chloe raises an eyebrow, and slowly holds up her phone.
“So… Do I..?”
Draco sighs.
“No, that's fine. He's harmless, don't worry about it. Go see your friends, I got it handled here.”
“...If you say so. Catch you next week, Lucy.”
“Mm.”
Draco watches Chloe leave, before turning her attention to the back wall of the store where she assumed Potter was situated.
Might as well get this over with, then.
She fishes out the apron she'd stuffed in the cabinet last night and throws it on, before marching down the aisles towards the back, determined to give the idiot a piece of her mind—
And pauses as she takes in the bizarre scene laid out in front of her.
A small tower of stacked, empty disposable coffee cups sat next to a random assortment of DVDs.
Harry himself was draped awkwardly around a chair far too small to accommodate someone of his stature. He was hopelessly knocked out, the only sign hinting at life being the subtle rise and fall of his chest under two folded arms. A pair of circular glasses were precariously perched on the tip of his nose, valiantly fighting a losing battle against gravity.
Draco allows herself to stare for a moment longer before clearing her throat into a balled fist.
…
No response.
She crosses her arms and clears her throat again, a little louder this time.
…
Nothing.
A snore escapes Harry's hanging jaw.
Draco picks up a copy of Back to the Future from the floor and without hesitation flings it at Potter's stupid, dumb face.
“OHMYGOD—”
Startled awake, the chair jerks backwards and Harry crashes into the wall behind him. He's left dazed, sprawled across the floor in an undignified heap of aching limbs and discarded coffee cups.
Still disoriented, Harry blearily searches his immediate surroundings for where the offending projectile was launched from, as his vision eventually focuses on a likely suspect.
Draco crouches down to meet his face at eye-level, a thin, ominous smile greeting him.
“Enjoy your nap?”
Harry blinks sluggishly.
“That was mean, Malfoy,” he says petulantly.
“Shut up, Potter. Mind explaining to me why exactly you thought it was a bright idea to come back here?”
Harry groans as he pulls himself up from the ground in apparent difficulty. He sets his chair upright, sits and thinks for a moment.
Is this imbecile still half-asleep?
A hefty box set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy tempts Draco from the corner of her eye.
I should throw another at him.
“...Oh, I brought you some coffee.”
“...What.”
Harry points over to a lone, untouched cup of coffee set far aside from the mess he'd made around him.
“Over there.”
Draco doesn't move.
Harry waits expectantly for Draco to take the coffee. When she doesn't, his face betrays the tiniest hint of dejection.
He picks himself off the chair with a groan and retrieves it for Draco. She dumbly receives the coffee, still staring at Harry for an explanation.
“‘s still hot. Or at least it should be.”
“Potter.”
“Warming charm should still be in effect.”
“Potter.”
“I can recast it if it's worn off.”
“HARRY.”
“What!?”
Draco takes a deep breath.
“Why are you back here?”
Harry hesitates, then scratches the back of his neck in chagrin.
“Um, well. I came to apologize for last night.”
“Apologize?” repeats Draco.
“Well, yes. It must've been a pretty nasty shock, me bursting in here like I did yesterday.”
“And your idea of an appropriate apology is camping out here for hours and freaking out my coworkers?”
“That's reductive,” Harry sulks.
“It's what happened, Potter.”
“Okay, yes. But to be fair, I had no idea when your next shift was going to be and—”
Eyeing the copious number of coffee cups littering the floor, Draco interrupts.
“So you came here from the moment we opened in the morning and waited all day in that tiny chair in the hopes I'd eventually show up?”
“...Yes.”
“It's 6:30 p.m.”
Harry looks defeated.
“...Too much?”
Draco stares at Harry, then at the cup of coffee in her hands.
Still warm.
She tries to ignore the growing knot in her chest. Her face feels warmer.
What an idiot.
Between the two of them, she's unsure who she's referring to.
Draco swallows, and looks away.
“...Luckily for you, I needed some coffee anyway. Clean up this mess then come up to the front, we can talk over there.”
Harry perks up, unable to hide his relief.
He pulls out his wand and vanishes the scattered coffee cups in an instant with a flick of his wrist. He gathers the remaining DVDs left on the floor and tucks them under an arm, chasing after Draco who's hurriedly retreating to the front counter with a telltale flush spreading across her porcelain cheeks.
-
Draco raises her cup and slowly takes a sip of the coffee, a soft wispy column of steam brushing against her face. Dark and fragrant, a hint of lightly roasted nutmeg. She took another sip before she realised she was smiling.
“It's adequate.”
Harry grins.
“Adequate?”
“Quite.”
“High praise coming from you, Malfoy.”
“Don't get cheeky with me, Potter,” sniffs Draco.
Harry laughs.
“Just glad you like it, is all. Can't help but pick up a taste for coffee when all I drink at work is the stuff, but you never know with individual preferences.”
“You drink coffee for a living? You must be very proud.”
“Ha, ha. Forget working here, a career in comedy looks far more promising, Malfoy. No, I've been back in Hogwarts for a while now.”
Draco raises an eyebrow at the new information.
“Whatever for? Don't tell me you still haven't graduated.”
“Rude. No, I'm teaching there. The work hours can get absolutely brutal, you have no idea.”
Draco snorts. “You? A professor? Who's the comedian now?”
“I'm serious! Have been for more than a year, now.”
“Defence Against the Dark Arts, I assume?”
“Correct.”
“Predictable as always, Potter,” she sighs, then pauses.
“...Wait, that doesn't make sense,” Draco frowns. “It's late October, what are you doing all the way here? Shouldn't you be at school?”
“Just taking a short break. Ron and Hermione's just had Rose, and I offered to come out to help around where I can.”
“...Rose? Don't tell me, Weasley and Granger had a child together?”
“Correct again,” Harry beams. “Five points to Slytherin.”
Draco purses her lips. “That was awful. Don't say those words to me in that order ever again.”
“I thought it was clever,” huffs Harry.
“You thought wrong,” says Draco, arms crossed. “But a child? I didn't expect the two of them to even last this long.”
“Why not?”
“This is Weasley we're talking about, Potter. Not a single witch on this planet has the capacity to tolerate the tactless oaf for any extended period of time, not even Granger.”
Harry snickers a little at the expense of his best friend's reputation. “That'd mean a lot more coming from literally anyone else, Malfoy.”
“I fail to see how my assessment of Weasley is impaired in any conceivable way.”
“I'd give you the benefit of doubt if this were three years ago, honestly. Ron's changed a lot since, trust me.”
“You'll have to forgive my skepticism, Potter. People don't change that easily, and three years isn't that long ago.”
“...Well, you've changed a lot too, Draco,” replies Harry quietly.
Draco falls quiet and becomes painfully aware of the heart drumming violently in her chest.
“Oh?” she says, unnervingly neutral. Her fierce, silver eyes silently dare Harry to continue.
“Well for starters, this is the most relaxed I've ever seen you,” he says, undeterred. “Like you're relieved you don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not.”
A hint of edge crept into those silver eyes, shielding the blossoming discomfort behind them.
“And what would you know about me, Potter? You have no idea what kind of person I am, so quit the psychoanalysis. It's beyond vulgar.”
Harry doesn't react to her barbed words, unfazed by the icy glare she's mastered over a lifetime of meticulously crafted emotional detachment.
“We've known each other a long time, Malfoy. I may not know everything about you, but I'm not clueless enough to buy that you're still the same diehard blood supremacist all those years ago,” he says. “Hell, I have my suspicions your heart wasn't ever in it to begin with.”
“Bold conjecture for someone without any proof to back it up.”
“Look at where you're working,” Harry gestures at the store they're in.
“Unavoidable circumstances—”
“Malfoy Manor,” interrupts Harry.
“I… I didn't want to risk summoning the Dark Lord for something so uncertain, it was simply self-preservation—”
“Our duel in the bathroom in our sixth year.”
Malfoy's words die in her throat, as painful memories she'd kept buried resurface.
How dare he?
“You were crying. I know you didn't mean to curse Katie. I know you didn't mean to poison Ron. You had no choice. The Death Eaters and the cabinet, it wasn't your fault—”
“Then why did you curse me!?”
Harry recoils, guilt overtaking his face.
“That's… I didn't know yet—”
Draco isn't finished, however. “Do you have any idea what it felt like, bleeding out on the floor in that toilet, Potter?”
Harry doesn't answer.
“I was drowning, Potter. Nobody was around to help. My father was withering away in Azkaban, and my mother was reduced to nothing more than a contingency measure if I didn't toe the line,” she hisses. “It was my turn to keep my family alive, but I had no idea how.”
Draco's nails dig into her palms, trembling in rage. “A sixteen year old child, conscripted to fight a war she had absolutely nothing to do with.”
“You say that like I wouldn't understand what that's like, Malfoy—” Harry angrily started.
“YOU DIDN'T! If you had a single clue, if you had an ounce of sympathy to spare, you'd have done something, anything but hound me all year in your self-righteous crusade,” Draco interjects furiously. “Your war was never fought by yourself, Potter. You had Weasley. You had Granger. Dumbledore. The Order. You had other people to fall back on. I had nothing, I had nobody.”
“A single mistake, and my parents were dead. Because of me. A single slip of the tongue, and they'd start questioning my allegiances. A moment's hesitation was all the justification they'd need to hurt me and my family. All the while everyone I knew inched farther and farther away, terrified of the person I had to become,” she continues.
“...Do you want to know what it felt like, on the toilet floor that night? It was peaceful. I felt light. Like I was lifted of all burden. Then you had to ruin that, too. Knelt beside me, blithering with your pointless apologies, like you had any bloody right to feel remorse for what you did to me.”
Draco struggles to catch her breath, overcome with bitter resentment. “I thought you of all people would understand. Then you turned your wand on me, and showed me exactly how naive I was.”
Harry watches Draco breathe heavily, fatigued by the weight of her emotions.
“...I was there at the clocktower that night.”
Draco's breath hitches and she feels her heart skip a beat. “W-what?”
“I was under my invisibility cloak. I was there when you talked to Dumbledore. I really believed you were a willing recruit to Voldemort's cause up till then. Then I saw for myself the tortured look on your face… Only then I understood the pressure you shouldered all on your own. I… I realised I was wrong about you, but I was far too late to do anything for you. For that, I'm sorry. I truly am.”
Harry lowers his head in deep shame.
“I'm sorry about what happened in the toilet. I haven't stopped thinking about it since,” he says. “You're right—I should've understood. But…”
Harry hesitates, struggling with words he didn't know how to appropriately express.
“I… I felt betrayed. I used to think you were the worst, Malfoy. But then over the years, you showed me there was more to you than the shallow insults and the shameless arrogance you performed to keep up appearances. Don’t think I didn't notice how you'd rein in your housemates when the bullying went too far. I started to suspect you acted the way you did out of self-preservation, and never malice. I was beginning to think you weren't so bad, that I'd been mistaken all along, but then…”
Harry's voice trails off.
“Your father helped kill my godfather. You started hurting my friends. Then you tried to hurt me too when I confronted you in the toilet. You were this close to casting an Unforgivable on me, Malfoy.”
“I'm sorry,” Draco whispered, hating how fragile her voice sounded.
Harry shakes his head. “Like you said, you had no choice, you were cornered with nobody to turn to. I didn't know back then, but now… I just want to make things right. I want to treat you like you deserve, if you'll please let me. I don't know what you're going through right now. But I want to know, more than you can imagine.”
He offers a hand to Draco. “The past is in the past, and you're more than the sum of your past mistakes. Please, let's start over. You never have to be alone anymore. Let me be your friend, Draco.”
She stares numbly at Harry's outstretched hand. She notices how it subtly trembles, despite his best efforts to hide his anxiety.
“You're making a mistake, Potter. I… Everything I touch, everyone I love—all I do is make things worse. You're wasting your time on the wrong sort of person.”
“...I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks,” says Harry, his green eyes twinkling with unchecked mirth.
She slowly lifts a hand of her own, and hesitantly meets Harry's. She ignores the burning sensation spreading from her neck to the tip of her ears.
“I'd better not regret this, Potter.”
Harry allows himself the tiniest smile. “I'll see to it that you won't, Malfoy. I promise.”
More notes:
Hi, hope you liked the first chapter! I've never written anything for other people to read before, so I'd sincerely appreciate feedback on what you liked, what doesn't work and suggestions for my writing. I think of myself as a relatively slow writer, but feeding me comments might push me to work a little harder *wink wink*.
Also, a quick shout out to Cyn_thia_18 and Zest1al for their story Beneath the Silver Dawn.
“If the first act of this Ministry after Voldemort’s fall is punishment without record, sentence without evidence, and spectacle in place of law, then we have merely replaced the banners and kept the rot," was an absolutely killer line from their second arc (which has been unfortunately deleted :/) and I really wanted to use it in this chapter.
I'll get out a new chapter soon, please bear with me until then!