fic: The Unfortunate Truth of Happily Ever After

[angelgazing]

Evil forces are preventing me from sleep, so this is getting posted a little earlier than it would usually be. I still suck at summaries.


title: The Unfortunate Truth of Happily Ever After
e-mail: angelgazing [at] gmail [dot] com
rating: R
words: 8,430
summary: Living in the aftermath isn't as easy as it was supposed to be.
notes: Written for wayfairer's challenge for the H/D MP3 Ficathon, the challenge was Freedy Johnston's Bad Reputation. Thanks to Twin and Chrystal for helping me through this. :)



Draco dreams in black and white, pictures of his father in his infinite, sneering grace. (Not like he died, but like he lived.) His cane tapping mercilessly on the doorframe in time with the ticking of the clock, and he says, "I didn't raise you to be a fool." Ghosts of the dead haunt him in his sleep, all his heroes disapproving and smug when he wakes up in their bed alone.

Harry dreams in color, thick and bright and real. Draco knows because in the hours just after dawn, when magic from the sunrise is buzzing under his skin in tune with the alarm, he finds Harry in the shower scrubbing away blood that only he can see on his hands.

They take one ragged, gasping breath together and Harry doesn't say it, but it's hanging in the air. He won't let Draco touch him when he gets like this, just tenses and swears and pulls away and won't even look at him, but that's almost alright now, sometimes, because the sun in the morning shines through the heavy curtains just right until he thinks he can see it too.

He leaves the steam filled bathroom and goes to make tea and toast. (Or, more accurately, to wave his wand in the general direction of the kettle that Granger gave them last Christmas to activate the spell built in to make their tea for them exactly the way they like it. Something neither of them has ever managed on their own.)

By the time it's done Harry is sitting at the table—his skin bright with the color of hot water almost burns and his eyes red rimmed from tears he would never cry—with his shoulders hunched, hidden beneath ill-fitted robes, not meeting his eyes.

They can never meet each other's eyes over breakfast, because they both carry their own little shames.

---

Little Susie Hufflepuff isn't so little anymore, and Draco would regret how often he teased her if she wasn't a Hufflepuff. And if he didn't dislike her quite as much.

She's taller than Harry, with high-heeled boots like Dumbledore favored, and her hat is far too tall and pointed, (Kind of like the wearer, hats.) faded a dark gray as though she spends too much time in the sun. She wears fake jewels like she's fooling someone other than herself and waves spell-stained fingers in front of her as she speaks. (About something incredibly dull that Draco stopped listening to the moment she opened her mouth and didn't say, "Why, Draco, I really feel as though I should grovel at your feet in apology for attempting to gather a small army within our army against your family and friends and loved ones to raise against you yourself at Hogwarts at the suggestion of my aunt who is the only reason I am employed anywhere, let alone at the Ministry. Could you ever forgive me for trying to overthrow you for your unhealthy hold over Mr. Potter?") She wears red even though it clashes with her hair.

It's like she's all of Harry's favorite people wrapped up into one little (or not so, in this case) package. Were it not for the fact that she works at the Ministry (and has breasts) Draco might just be worried instead of annoyed.

But it's amazing, really, and amusing as well, the way that Little Susie Hufflepuff plays with the bauble on the end of her necklace like she didn't get the memo.

Of course, Harry is hanging on her every word, leaning closer to hear her over the crowd as she taps the toe of her boot off beat to the soft music playing in the background.

It's been like this for ten minutes though, and the both of them are pretending that Draco doesn't exist to such a degree that Harry jumps a little, startled, when Draco brushes his fingertips over Harry's arm as he walks past them, finally. Not So Little Susie Hufflepuff looks smug around the mouth, but she doesn't stop talking.

He taps the bar when he gets there, and the alcohol pours itself into a glass without an order.

The burn of Firewhisky is almost enough to block the questioning look from Harry and the whispers that float across the room, over the noise of the crowd, "What is Harry Potter doing with him of all people!" "Oh, looks like trouble in paradise." "Who ever thought it'd last this long. I mean, Harry Potter and Malfoy?" "I had a Galleon on them blowing up before they left Hogwarts."

Harry is now surrounded by Hufflepuffs who keep touching his arm and smiling like it will make him fall in love with them and he's looking to Draco for help. Draco is fairly certain it's the least he deserves and downs the rest of the Firewhisky in his glass; he figures it's only fair to wait and let him get a little desperate.

Granger is in the corner with a raised eyebrow in his direction, and now Weasley is looking as smug as the Hufflepuff. (And there is something inherently wrong with a smug Weasley or a smug Hufflepuff so together it seems to Draco to be the sign of the upcoming apocalypse. He's taking his time deciding if he minds the latter or not.)

It's just another party in the life of Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter's Boyfriend.

---

He is still—though living with Potter and a blood traitor—a Malfoy. It's why he doesn't understand not having a House-Elf because Granger disapproves, why he doesn't wake every morning and scrub his hands raw to rid them of blood, it's why he refuses to wash dishes, the Muggle way or not, and it's why his shame lies in all the wrong things.

It's why, when Harry says, "You're just like every other Death Eater," he sneers and says, "I'm not the one who killed your parents, Potter. I'm not even the one who murdered the mentor that kept sending you into danger. I did, however, help to keep them from murdering you."

It why he finds it comforting to tell himself as he slams the door behind him that he did it because he knew to pick the winning team and not out of love.

Love is far too foolish a reason to do anything.

---

Granger insists that they all get together at least once a month. She takes it on herself to mother the group (from best he can understand the terrible trio and those who fell in line behind them along the way) and their extensions.

When they have dinner together he sits between Harry and Lovegood (he knows he's had too much to drink when she begins making sense) because Granger puts a scary amount of time into creating a seating chart. She keeps Weasley on the other side of him—out of his insult range but still close enough to carry on a conversation with Harry and herself—and Longbottom far enough away that any spills don't come close.

Though you could torture him and he wouldn't admit it, it's nice, sometimes--even if they are a lot of self-righteous, do-gooder Gryffindors.

After dinner and more wine than any of them should have had, they settle back, relaxed and lazy and—god forbid—enjoying each other's company. Draco has his arm on the back of Harry's chair and a fag dangling half forgotten in limp fingers, content, for once, to listen as Granger speaks about her latest theory for the perfect cure to something or another. (It's completely impossible, of course, but he can wait until she's finished to point that out.) While Weasley, Thomas and Harry all discuss the Cannon's chances this year, (dismal, as always, Weasley really is a sad sucker) and Lovegood, Granger's date and Longbottom's not-entirely-there wife (Paprika, a squib with an unfortunate name who refuses to acknowledge herself as such) and Lupin discuss the finer points of hunting jewel toned unicorns (they don't exist, and Lupin himself is thoroughly amused by the conversation) and whether or not it would be ethical to use hair from their mane for a more powerful wand against dark arts.

" Draco," Granger says, head cocked and arms crossed on the table, "Go ahead, you've been waiting patiently to give your thoughts on the subject."

"Your theory is sound," he answers, smirking as the table grows quiet with surprise. "And as long as your goal is to end up in Azkaban for extreme stupidity while brewing a potion then it should all work out smashingly well."

"I knew," Harry sighed, leaning closer and stealing his smoke, "that you couldn't possibly be pissed enough to agree with her about anything."

"Are you positive," Draco asks, "that you got your potion's OWL?"

Lupin shrugs, twirls his glass and grins. "Aconite and hair of centaur do cause quite the explosion, if I recall correctly."

"Add yellow moonstone and tail of newt and it's three times that."

"Delusion inducing as well, isn't it?"

"But, if I were to brew them separately, in three different parts…" Granger is smiling softly, leaning forward in excitement and all the glee of the over academic on a learning spree. "If I could just mix them at the precise moment, well, then, why wouldn't it work?"

"Explosion, Granger, great sodding explosion. It's the mixing them together."

"Come now, Malfoy," one of the twins (he still can't tell them apart when they're sitting, but Fred is the one with the limp) says, "the explosion is half the fun."

"Not when trying to cure the mental effects of the Curciatus Curse, it isn't," Longbottom interjects, looking down at the table as always.

"But why try this potion, with these exploding, delusion inducing things inside of it, to cure someone of being off their bloody rocker?"

They all take a moment to collectively wince and resist the urge to throttle Granger's poor, clueless date. (Another one, it seems, who won't last long at all. Draco feels justified in not have bothered to learn his name.)

"You treat dragon bites with an antidote comprised primarily of the poison," Lupin explains. "It does work that way sometimes."

"In this case, however," Draco says, sliding his fingertips absently in circles on Harry's shoulder, "explosion."

"Bloody great explosion," the other twin mutters.

Harry orders another bottle and they all get a little more shit-faced as Weasley goes back to proclaiming that this is the Cannon's year.

"Speaking of delusions," Draco mutters, smiling, and beside him Harry laughs softly.

---

It's the slow slide of fingertips across his stomach that drags him from that place just between sleep and wakefulness.

Harry smiles, presses a wet kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Thank you," he says.

"For?"

"Everything," Harry answers, grinning now, tangling his fingers in Draco's hair.

"Oh, that. Well, yes, you're very welcome, but should feel free to thank me in other ways. Words mean so little, you know."

Harry laughs as he nuzzles at Draco's collarbone.

---

His father moves slow—No, not slow. Graceful. Careful. His father moves with elegance and purpose.

Impatiently he taps the end of his cane, as the silver snake (except it's whitegray and angry—hissing, spitting furious—and Draco wonders if it would burn through Lupin now) on the handle winds its way up and round his wrist.

He's emotionless when he says, "You let them do this to me."

Draco can't answer, can't breathe. He lies in bed, shoulder pressed to Harry's spine, feeling the bumps of it move as Harry fucking breathes in all the air. It's Harry doing it, has to be, taking away the air. He can't get any and dead men don't need it.

But his father is still smirking, sneering and whispering incantations long forgotten.

Harry is hot to the touch, and Draco thinks he's going to burn him. Going to burn through him like silver would the fucking werewolf. Like paper to a bloody flame he's going to turn to ash from it, turn to nothing.

"The least you deserve," his father hisses in time with the snake round his wrist like cuff. "The very least you deserve, you filthy blood traitor. Blood, Draco, it's thicker than your love. Did I teach you nothing? Help your love turn our lord into ash and see—look and see—if an eye for an eye isn't the rule the world lives by even now."

Draco still can't breathe, feels like the fires of hell are lapping at his skin.

"Do you think," his father asks, still mercilessly tapping the tip of his cane to the doorframe in time with the ticking second hand on the clock, "that he will save you, Draco? Come now, I didn't raise you to be a fool."

Draco wakes up suddenly, alone, his forearm blistered, weeping and sticking to the sheets. He finds Harry in the shower, and when they breathe together—just the once—then he's mostly good again. But then he leaves because Harry doesn't want him there.

---

When Harry comes home late he brings Chinese takeaway for dinner and grins tiredly over the mental cartons at Draco in as close to an apology as they come by.

Muggle takeaway from the Chinese place just round the corner is probably reason enough in itself for Draco to have switched sides. Forget winning and losing, forget blood and love and all that rot. Anyone who wants to rid of the world of this can't be right. It's a weakness Harry knows well.

"Bastard," Draco says, smiling back at him as he gets the chopsticks from the drawer and sits down across from Harry. (Using chopsticks is a trick that Harry hasn't quite mastered, but tries just the same.)

"Well," Harry answers, shrugs and shakes his head. "If Mad-Eye were to be forced back into retirement I would get home at a decent hour."

"Wouldn't know what to do if you were." Draco waves the hand holding his chopsticks dismissively, chews thoughtfully before answering. "I'd have a time hiding the bloke who's here when you're gone."

Harry laughs, sounds more tired than he should now. He's got a burn on his cheek, (Draco thought those days were over, said after the last night of the bloody war that he was through bandaging wounds and so Harry doesn't ask and he doesn't offer.) a cut across the bridge of his nose, almost hidden by his glasses. "Bastard," he returns.

His mouth is greasy when he leans across the table to press it to Draco's, lazy and easy and good. Salty and tired. His fingers are callused and cold on Draco's cheeks.

"Was this another of those life or death missions, then?" Draco asks. "Have you been forced to see the error of your ways and come to terms with all the very best things in your life, again, and see that it is worth going on and you're fortunate to have someone to come home to?"

"Shut up, you bloody tosser," Harry tells him, still smiling.

---

On the bad nights Draco gets sloshed at a pub just down the way; it's small and Muggles can't find it, so it's never busy or crowded. He can't breathe from stale smoke, but it's better than home sometimes.

He sits almost hidden in the back and they know to just give him the bottle.

No one talks about The Boy Who Lived, not in this place, not when Draco is here.

It makes it easier, somehow, to go home when he can barely stand.

It makes it worth it when Harry is waiting up.

---

"Have we ever stopped to consider that Dumbledore was evil?" Draco asks, turning pages in the newest book about Harry Potter Boy Savoir.

"No," Harry answers, looking up from his parchment only long enough to glare at the book.

"What about the fact that he wished you dead?" Draco smirks.

"Should we have?"

"Seven Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers and only one of them who wasn't at least marginally evil and willing to curse you into oblivion?"

"Just luck, I guess." Harry leans his head back against the sofa, takes the book from Draco's hands all at once and tosses it on the low table in front of him.

"No one," Draco tells him, pressing his thumb along the back of Harry's neck in slow, rough circles, "is that lucky."

---

He doesn't count his dead.

Two years out of Hogwarts and one year out of war and the only thing that's changed is the body count.

The memorials were quick to go up after the first six months of wearing black bands.

There's the Order Memorial, a wall of stone with their names carved in Dumbledore's writing, like he was the one who planned it all along. (Except his name is the first and largest. The chocolate frog cards with his picture are second only to Harry's in value.) It has all the names, from both wars against Voldemort (no one is afraid to say his name now) including, toward the middle, James and Lily Potter. Harry only sees it once, at the unveiling ceremony he'd had an obligation to attend, his eyes swept over the names and that was just it for him. He was done with it.

Draco goes back sometimes, because he's got nothing better to do during the days. Once, toward the end of October, with the weather turning cold and the full moon just days away, Lupin stood before the wall alone when he arrived. (They think he doesn't know, but the truth of it is that he knows better than they do by half.) Lupin was staring, shivering almost in his coat that was too thin, one hand shoved deep into his pocket and the other holding his smoke. He turned his eyes toward Draco, shrugged and (because it was cold and stupid and he was a lonely old fool who never let anyone near, and here, in this hushed place, this was where you shared secrets with your enemies) said, "Seems like all we ever got were endings." Draco understood all too well, and that's why he didn't say anything as Lupin caught his jagged thumbnail in the curve of the 'S' before bringing his cigarette back up to inhale deeply.

Some one, a crazy, foolish person, decided to put the names of all the members of the DA (as founded by Harry Potter, of course—he wondered how it was that Granger never got bitter about it) that were killed onto some gloriously tragic tapestry that was centuries old before they'd even touched it. Harry had been forced to go to that grand unveiling as well, and that meant that Draco had to go. It hangs at Hogwarts so they never saw it afterwards, which was just as well, really.

Harry carries enough weight without seeing the names of those he was supposed to teach to be better. (It isn't as though he doesn't wake up in the morning from dreams of their blood on his hands.)

The ever insipid Chang, (who wears a scar across her cheek with pride, because she earned it) wanted one for those lost to Voldemort. She wanted a memorial for those whose names didn't fit anywhere else because Cedric's was missing from all the others. In the end it became too much, too many people were dead by his wand or his order. Too many Muggles who would never know had lost their lives at a Death Eater's hand. She gathered all the names she could though, Muggle, mudblood, squib and wizard. Eventually others joined in; Granger spent a week in the London library (and dragged Draco along for part, much to his dismay.) There were too many names to count, and Draco knew they hadn't begun to touch on all of them. Each name and date was individually wand etched onto a brick. The bricks build the entire west wall of the new Ministry building.

Too many of them read 'Jane Doe' or 'John Doe' but there is Cedric and for some of them that's the only one that matters.

They don't count Draco's dead, though. They don't count his father or his mother or Crabbe. They don't count the first boy he ever kissed, or the man who taught him to hold his bloody wand, or the woman who nursed him when his mum was gone way to Paris and he'd caught a nasty strain of the Muggle flu. They didn't count any of them—and so Draco doesn't count his dead either.

His dead count him though.

---

Harry is in training to become an Auror.

He defeats the arch villain of the story, saves countless lives and instead of declaring him ruler and king they send him back to school to teach him to be their guard dog, their bloody puppet.

Draco would sit back and laugh at the irony if it weren't so absurd.

They save the bloody world and then go back to their lives and end up working for the Ministry like that is how they'll make things better. Granger in her lab casting charms and stirring potions all the day long, Weasley right beside Harry in his training, like that will be better than what was already done.

Like that's going to be their legacy.

Harry sits in front of the fire, staring at his hands, and says, "How do you stand it?"

Draco looks up from his book slowly, turns his eyes on Harry warily because it's been one of the bad nights, again, one the nights where they're just gearing for a fight. Itching for it just under their skin where they can't reach. "How do I stand what?"

"You've got more blood on your hands than I do," Harry hisses. "And yet you walk around everyday like it's nothing. How do you not see it? Are you just used to it?"

"The blood on my hands," he answers, sneering, "is the only reason you still climb into our bed at night. It's the only reason you can crawl anywhere. The blood on my hands isn't like that on my father's. It's not even like the blood on your favorite werewolf's hands. It's not like I made a sport of it, it's not like I made revenge of it."

"You've really got no shame for what you've done?" Harry stands up, pacing back and forth in front of the fire, wiping his hands on his robes. "You really," he asks again, hands flying now in front of his face, "don't even care do you, that you murdered them all?"

"Would you," Draco asks—demands, really, snaps in time with the closing of his book, "just stop being such a fucking Gryffindor for five bloody minutes so you could see? I did what I had to—we did what we bloody well had to."

"Who gets to decide that? Why did it have to be me?"

"Because, you stupid, ungrateful cunt, it was you. No one else had the power; no one else had the ability. The stars looked down and said, let it be this boy and not the other, and so it was. You want to complain, then take it up with fate and stop acting like it's the greatest burden in the world to be the bloody chosen."

"Christ, I don't know what I even bother trying to talk to you as though you're human."

"I'm the only one who knows, is why," Draco answers, calm as ever. He doesn't drop his eyes from Harry's as he opens his book back again.

"You've got all the answers then why don't you tell me why I ever touched you to begin with, why I ever spoke to you at all," Harry spits out the words as though they taste as foul as they are.

Draco narrows his eyes, tosses his book aside and stands. "Because, I'm the only one you've ever found who doesn't give a fuck that you're Harry fucking Potter."

"That isn't—"

"Yes, it is. Even Weasel didn't speak to you until he wanted to know if you were the legend, the hero. Did he ask for you autograph? Is that the first thing he said to you? What about Granger? Did she wet herself with glee at meeting the boy she read about in all her dusty books? You really think that your professors—the idiots teaching you how to become Fudge's lapdog a little more every day—don't see you as The Boy Who Lived? You think Fudge isn't going to call on you when he needs something taken care of? When he needs business done? Just your name and they'll give you what you want, won't they? Doesn't everyone but me?

"You need me, Potter, you always have. Who else won't treat you like you're special?"

Harry is shaking, fists clenched in fury. "You think that makes you better than my friends? You think that makes me want to see your face every day instead of theirs? At least they understand."

"No, they're the ones who don't understand, remember? Granger is the one who wouldn't dirty her hands for you, not me. Weasley is the one who wasn't sure. Longbottom is the one who couldn't stomach it, couldn't follow through. It was me there with you when it went down. It was me. You want to talk about the blood on your hands fine, but my conscious is clear, I did what they wouldn't. I did what was needed."

"You murdered them," Harry shouts. "It wasn't heroic, you should have shame in it, Draco, you killed them."

Draco grabs his coat and leaves, slamming the door behind him instead of answering Harry.

---

Harry carries his shame on his shoulders like a badge of fucking honor. Look at me. I'm a good person because I'm sorry for my sins. I didn't want to be your hero, but I was. I am. Look at me, I'll be worthy of it because I don't want to be.

It's like he's sorry for breathing, for being, for being right and real and a bloody disappointment. Oh, he saved them, alright, saved the lives of little girls and boys tucked tight into their beds at night, but just look at what it cost him. Like he's paid more than those who shed blood and blood rights and blood beliefs.

Look at the tears he won't cry, won't you? Can't you see, he's the hero after all.

He says Draco has no shame because he doesn't flaunt it? Doesn't wear it on his sleeve in place of his heart like love sick girls do? Well, no. No.

Draco has his shame; it just lies in his lack of it.

---

Draco spends the night at the Manor almost by accident. Wakes up in his father's office with sunlight screaming through the open shades and moth bitten curtains, with dust dancing in front of his eyes. He's got ink imprinted on his cheek and the stale taste of old alcohol and sleep thick on his tongue.

He stands from the chair and stretches, tired. There's a twinge in his back and his eyes are dry and heavy, but at least he didn't dream of his father again.

The room is quiet. The entire place is silent except for the murmur of portraits in the hallway and his shallow breathing.

Ancestors that go back for centuries line the hallway, each one glaring down and whispering as he passes that, well, at least he finally came to his senses.

The tea his makes is too weak to be stale and he misses the House-Elves that used to fill the kitchen, ready and eager to make his breakfast and his tea just right.

He sits at the dining room table—covered in dust, with eleven empty seats with places still set. He thinks of going home, and he thinks of coming home and he thinks of being home.

He goes upstairs to his old bedroom and smirks to find it torn apart.

But there is business to do, since he spends his days giving away his father's—his family's money, so he doesn't take the time to dwell.

---

"Do you think I'm pretty," she asks, hands tangled in the ruffles of her skirt.

Anna wears an old Muggle fur coat over fine, delicate lace that's torn in places and yellow with age. Her feet are bare; her toenails spell-stained pink. Draco smiles and tells her he's never seen a girl so beautiful.

She giggles like a child, plays with fire like it's the best bloody toy she's ever known. Her hands are red with the heat burning beneath her skin. Her powers are uncontrollable now, so they keep her locked in a room all alone. The wards on the other patients can't touch the fire she carries.

She puts the flowers he brings her into her hair and spins in circles clutching what one of the Muggle-born nurses called a 'teddy bear.' When they aren't looking she enchants it to dance with her.

"Oh, Merlin," she sing-songs, "Mudblood and wrong, all of the things good are now gone. Pretty little girl, listen to her scream, sing little girl, sing."

---

It never occurred to him that they're miserable. Both of them, all of them, every fucking last one left is left and miserable for it.

The world at large has yet to recover from it all. The Dark Lord still lurks in ever corner, and most people still don't believe he's gone. (Can't believe he's gone, can they? Can't rest in their beds at night because they've done that before and look at what happened.)

Granger wears a black band round her arm a year later. Weasley and his mother stand alone together every bloody Sunday in front of the Order Memorial. (He runs her fingertips over her husband's name, and then her oldest son's since she's blinder than a bloody bat now because of a misfired spell.) Lovegood travels all over looking for the amazing, to share it with everyone. (She told him once, in one of her more lucid moments, that what the world needed to be amazed by good things again.) Longbottom spends his days in a greenhouse tending to bushes of dark crimson roses.

They smile and laugh round the dinner table after too much wine and good food. They talk of old friends and new loves and their lives like they matter now. Like they've won and now the world is perfect.

Draco spends another night at the Manor and wakes up in the morning and realizes that he can't do it anymore. He can't.

He drinks his tea too strong and stops thinking about going back.

When he sees Harry on the street a week later (before he cuts across and goes the other way. He isn't hiding; he's just not ready to see him yet.) his shoulders are slumped a little more. (A little more every day, has been since the beginning, since the first ride on the Hogwarts train, since they met.)

Draco tells himself that it was never good with Harry, not really, and then he tells himself that he isn't just telling himself.

At best it was not bad.

He wonders if that's how everyone lives their lives.

---

There's a tiny place, hidden behind the bigger, busier shops in Hogsmeade where Draco has tea in the afternoons. It's quiet here, not busy enough for anyone to whisper about the gossip in the papers now.

He sits by himself, buttering a crumpet, when Granger takes the seat opposite him.

"I see that you haven't completely disappeared from existence," she says, taking off her Gryffindor scarf. "You missed the get together the other night, you know. We all had to walk on eggshells and Harry looked like he was going to be sick while he watched the door and waited for you. Any reason that you haven't sent him so much as an owl?"

"He knows why I left," Draco tells her.

She sighs, like they're talking about her life, like it matters to her happiness. "He doesn't seem to know why you've stayed gone this time."

"Because I should've all the other times."

Granger curls her figures round the lapels of her coat and pauses. "He's miserable, you know."

"He was before, Granger. We both were. You think my hanging round in his bed helped matters? He stopped letting me near him months ago, he stopped looking me in the eye long before then."

"You never," she starts to say, stops and takes a breath to seem more calm. "I never noticed it. You never seemed it."

"No, no we couldn't, could we?"

Draco taps his fingers impatiently, looks out the window and into a charmed scene of children playing happily in the sunny street.

"What's it matter to you anyway?" he asks. "I would've thought you and Weasel would be the ones throwing the parties in the streets. You lot hate me. You think I don't know? Think I never saw that it didn't matter that I fought by his side every bit as much as you did in the end, more so at times. No, you still thought nothing of me, waited and dreamed of the day that it would be over and on you could move."

"Well," she says, smoothing the tablecloth with slight, steady hands, "maybe so. But sometimes part of friendship is learning to tolerate the things that your best friend loves. Besides," Granger adds, almost as an afterthought, "sometimes people surprise you."

She takes a crumpet of her own as the tea pours itself into a cup and the saucer it sits on slides to sit in front of her. "Pass the knife, please."

As he does, he gets the sinking feeling that this is the beginning of a new tradition.

---

The front page of The Daily Prophet reads, Has Harry Potter Finally Comes To His Senses?

The streets are buzzing, practically vibrating with the idea that it's finally over.

Draco tosses the paper in the fire and locks himself in his father's study. It's safer—easier this way.

---

"Well," they whisper, not even bothering to wait until he passes, "it's really no surprise."

He was so wrong for Harry Potter, yes, of course. Just a bloody Malfoy after all, got Death Eating in his blood. No surprise it didn't work out, really. Should've known it all along.

Harry Potter should have just followed the script, done like the storybooks dictated and directly after Hogwarts, directly after saving every bloody one of them, he should've snogged the littlest Weasley like they do in Muggle films. Should've married her straight away and gone on to work a desk job at the Ministry while she stayed home to clean and have lots of little Weasley-Potter babies.

Should've spent his life doing the same thing every day. Wake up, go to work, be mind numbingly boring, come home, continue being mind numbingly boring, tuck in the kiddies and go to bed. Do it all over and over again until you forget there is anything else.

That's what Harry Potter should've done.

Because that certainly would have made him happy.

Stupid, nosy bints, the lot of them.

---

She hung pictures of monsters on her bedroom walls. A silly little Ravenclaw who thought she was smarter than she was, thought her books and knowing things inside of them would help her out there, in there. Clippings from newspapers, articles and pictures and biographies (missing, naturally, all the most gruesome parts. Bellatrix killed her cousin in cold blood, pointed wand at Harry Potter once, twice, died the third time by Draco's hand for it. Snape was a turncoat, sold truth and lies to both sides, both wars, until Voldemort himself took care of it, cackled as he did and said, "All the dead do is lie" like, let this be a lesson to you all. Crabbe Senior was a coward, was set on fire from the inside, because he fucked the wrong girl and said the wrong thing. Crouch Jr. escaped Azkaban, was the only bloody reason that Voldemort was able to rise again, until he slipped off his Mad-Eye mask too quickly and was kissed by a dementor.) tales of monsters that read the way that fairytales do.

These were her idols, her pray. Those who hated her for what she was, for her birth.

She had a picture of his father from just after the trail, the article underneath proclaiming his guilt, the one beside the headline of his escape. Anna cocked her head and said, "Tell me the story, Draco." As though the stench of her upbringing didn't hang off of her like a dress too big.

He wouldn't then—couldn't then—but he tells her now.

---

Harry shows up instead of Granger.

Sits down in her seat and drums his fingers on the table anxiously. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry." He doesn't look Draco in the eye.

Draco laughs, softly, and thinks he should have been expecting this. "No, you aren't," he answers.

"No—I mean, yes. I am. I'm sorry. For what I said to you."

"No," Draco repeats, "you aren't. You don't know enough to be sorry."

Harry's fingers still, the line of his mouth tightens, thins. "I want you to come home," he says, eyes on the scene outside the window (children building snowmen, but Draco isn't sure there are children that innocent left in the world) and his shoulders hunched.

"I can't," Draco sighs, laughs. "You can't live with yourself, Harry, how are you supposed to live with me? How're we supposed to live with each other? We can't." He stares at the table for exactly the length of time it takes for Harry to leave. "I can't," he says again. His teacup bumps, rubs against his knuckles like a cat.

---

He walks the Manor when he can't sleep, tries dusty room after dusty room, leaving footprints behind him in dirt and things that should never have been in this place to lead himself back to where he started.

(He doesn't know what he's looking for, and just assumes he'll know when he finds it.)

---

The Daily Prophet is full of lies and fairytales. They make it sound like Draco cleans his teeth with the bones of babies, hunts children for sport.

Harry Potter is a prince, a saint. One of the few good men left, just trying his damnedest to make it in the world. Especially now that he's finally rid himself of the Imperius that Draco's had him under for years now.

Draco, they claim, is in hiding to avoid an Azkaban sentence and to keep the world from seeing his desperately broken heart.

---

"The problem isn't me," he tells Granger over tea the next week.

"Draco," she says, warning and surprised. They don't talk about Harry as an unspoken rule, not since the first time.

"It's not," Draco says again, bloody emphatic in it like he's trying to prove something to himself.

Granger shifts, gets ready for a fight, or something. Gets ready at any rate. "He apologized for what he said, he doesn't know what else to do if you don't want him."

"Don't," he chokes, laughs like a bitter thing is stuck and bleeding inside of him. "Don't want him? If I don't want him? Granger, he doesn't want himself. He can't look himself in the mirror because he knows what he'll see. He talks about monsters and blood like—You think I don't want him?"

"He loves you," she says. "He's miserable without you, Draco. You're both miserable."

"It's not me that's made us this way. The problem isn't me."

Sighing, Granger picks up her cup and takes a sip. "You're both stubborn as asses if you ask me."

"I didn't."

"You did. Invited the observation, at any rate."

"Look, Granger—"

"No, Draco, you look. All I'm saying is that he loves you. He loves you, and he misses you. Do you know what people would give to have that? What I would give to have that? To have my best friend be the man who loves me with all of his heart?"

He laughs again, still sharp edged and bitter. "You know why it never happened with you and Harry? Do you know why it wasn't you instead of me?"

"I've a few guesses," she answers, smirking all the while.

"Because you always belonged to Weasley in his eyes. You were the one thing that the Weasel could have that he couldn't."

She laughs then, shakes her head in something like disbelief. "You weren't his second choice, Draco, you weren't his third or fourth of fifth choice. If someone had told us first year that we'd all end up here no one would have believed it, but here we are and we have to make the best of it. Since Harry went to Hogwarts he's got to be the lucky bastard who chose every person who matters to him. Can't you see that everyone wants to be chosen by him? The way Susan Bones throws herself at his feet at Ministry parties and that horrid woman who writes for the Prophet talks about you… You're living their dream."

"That doesn't make everything workable again."

"No," she sighs again, "I suppose it doesn't."

---

They put up Christmas decorations in Hogsmeade sooner every year, play Christmas carols all the bloody time as people trample through snow up to their shins and dream of sunny days and presents under the tree.

The spirit of Christmas, they sneer when he snarls, wouldn't expect you to understand.

Lights on every house, trees in every store, children marry in the bloody streets, choirs singing carols on the corner, begging for a Galleon. Buy this for your loved one, the signs proclaim, Christmas is the time to show you care!

These are the times when he'd settle for the complete annihilation of the wizarding race, of the fucking human race and nothing less.

And Christ he hates it when Hogwarts has their Hogsmeade weekends when he's here.

Lovegood and Granger bounce on their heels to keep warm while they wait for him, though he's never been less sure why the fuck he's doing anything. Shopping, Christ, why not just curse him with boils until you can't find skin and then wrap him in sandpaper.

Granger says, "I've no idea what to buy for Harry."

Three weeks 'til Christmas, the sign in the window behind her exclaims in flashing letters, who's missing from your list?

---

Anna is just a girl, turned twenty-one two days ago but she's been locked inside her mind for ages now.

She swings her hips, watching as the coat swings in her reflection in the window, fingernails sharp as claws tapping on her chin. Her hair is long, but it always has been, black as night and tangled, snarled. She isn't wearing flowers now, just the same fur and lace and pearls.

She looks over her shoulder at him and giggles, says, "You think we didn't know?"

Draco swallows hard, like he's choking, like he's dying.

Anna turns toward him, trails those long, lethal fingers along his cheek. She keeps the teddy bear clutched tight in her other hand. "You think you could hide? You think that we couldn't taste how dirty your blood is? Did you think we couldn't smell the stench of dirt you're made of when you sweat like this? Foolish little girl, just look at you, look at how you shiver and shake now. Birthed from a bitch, dog or Muggle makes no difference here. Muggles aren't as good as pets 'til they learn to scream just right for you. Think you could scream right for me, little Anna, little Mudblood? Didn't you know to be afraid before now?"

It's Draco shivering now, shaking but not back away as she draws blood, as she wraps her fingers round his wrist and drops all but her favorite toy.

"You think," she whispers, harsh and thick, "that you were smart enough to be one of us? Is that it? Did you think you were good enough? Filthy, dirty, little Mudblood. Do you play in the dirt? Bathe in it? Are you afraid now? Oh, yes, of course you are. We let you in this far didn't we? Let you in this far so you'd know what we were going to do to you. You still want to sing for me, Anna? Scream for me?"

When her hand falls like a hot iron onto his arm, over the mark, Draco is the one that screams.

"Why?" Anna whispers – "Why? Why? Why? Why did you hurt me? I was good. I was a good girl. I was a good little Mudblood, just like you wanted me to be." – but he can't hear her over his own pain.

Draco's shame lies in his lack of it.

---

One day, he finds it.

There's a portrait of himself as a child, locked in a hidden safe, behind selves of Dark Arts books that the Ministry would arrest him for owning.

Out in the snow for days, until it started melting. He'd been pink cheeked and made of bloody ice an hour in each day, but he's sat through it because that's what his mother wanted. The artist whispered once that he'd never seen a child so vain, to sit so still for this kind of thing.

The six-year-old him is blinking, coming out of the dark for the first time in too many years. The corner of the painting is chipped, fading.

"Well," he says, "hello."

The him in the portrait has built a fort of ice and is hiding behind it, but no one is coming.

Nothing is coming but silence.

---

"None of it was worth it," Snape snarls, fingers curled tight around the slow, leaking bleed of his arm (it won't stop, it will never stop, not even in death) where his mark was carved out. "Didn't I say that it wouldn't be?"

Draco sighs, rolls over and stares at the canopy above his childhood bed. The sight of blood makes him sick, always has and war didn't cure it, only made it worse. Even now when it's as close to black as anything is, it's thick, the smell of it, of copper and death and rot hangs heavy in the air, choking him.

"Look at what they did to me, Draco. You watched it happen, you did nothing to try and stop it. You watched it happen with all the others. Now you can't stand to see it? Look at what it took for me to get rid of the mark."

He wakes up suddenly, alone and gasping, his arm on fire, blistered, weeping and sticking to the sheets.

---

No one ever comes.

Draco gets drunk at a seedy Muggle pub, meets a bloke named Ethan with devil blue eyes and hands to die for, but it only lasts for half an hour before he walks out of the most boring conversation he's ever had without an explanation or backwards glance. Ends up laughing like a nutter, all alone in the middle of the street.

A car drives past just a little too fast. The lights blind him, force him back onto the pavement as it sloshes slush onto his boots.

His fingers fumble with his wand when he goes to light his cigarette. He leans back against the streetlamp on the corner with a bottle of Muggle alcohol of some sort (terrible sort, terrible stuff, but it keeps him warm in the winter air) clutched tight in his other hand as he smokes.

"I want to go home now," he tells the falling snow. "I'd go home now."

But his feet won't move and no one ever comes.

---

The snow is packed tight, hard and harsh and gleaming too bright on the ground from lamps and candles floating above.

A week before Christmas someone puts together a service at the Order memorial, families and friends huddled together in tears, hands and fingertips tracing vowels and consonants in the names of those that used to be constants.

He steps up beside Harry, hiding in the back, the candlelight sharp on his face.

"Rumor has it," Draco says, all conversationally polite enough to make his father proud, "that Harry Potter is a miserable git."

"In more ways than one, it's told," Harry replies.

"And can you believe that he couldn't even find a date for this terribly tragic and romantic celebration of mourning?"

Harry snorts, almost laughs as he says, "Seems he still hasn't got over that bastard Malfoy, who just never came home one day."

"Well," Draco says, squeezing Harry's hand before pulling away, "maybe he should just wait a little longer then. Give him some time to figure out how to fix it."

"I—He can do that. Just misses him, is all. I hear he's really sorry, for all the things he said."

"He meant them though, didn't he?" Draco asks, shifting his feet and shivering from the cold.

"Not like—"

"Not like Malfoy's hands are clean. Not like a Malfoy's hands have ever been. But—"

"You did," Harry says, chokes on his own words but says them just the same, "we did what was needed. I just… I don't know how to deal with it all, just yet."

"But he loves you," Draco continues, as though uninterrupted, his eyes never straying from the mourners in front of them. "That should count for something."

"It does. Counts for more than you know." Harry pauses, they both pause and the crowd is singing, now, a church hymn that people sing at Christmas. "So just… time, then? To figure things out."

"For the both of us, I think."

"The wards are all the same," Harry tells him slowly, "I haven't changed the locks."

"Good." Draco turns his head, looks at Harry, looks at him for the first time in too long. Draco kisses him, just quickly, as the snow keeps falling all around them. "Granger's got her big Christmas party dinner planned a few days from now. I'll see you then."

"Yeah, I'll see you then."