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“No, I mean.” Draco’s crying and laughing at the same time, leaning into Harry for support, and even with everything, he still has time to wonder how they aren’t dating yet. “I don’t want to. Like, I can imagine nothing more likely to make me want to stab my eye balls out.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh. “I thought I’d walk in here and fix it up and when the year ended, I’d come back here with mother and everything would be the same. But it’s not the same. Nothing is. Not you, not my family, not this house. And definitely not me.”
They’re both quiet for a moment.
“Moving on isn’t so bad. But hanging on isn’t completely terrible, either.” Harry stood up, and they faced that crumbling place together, a house that he can no longer call his home. “We don’t have to decide now.”
“I want to burn it down.” Draco decides, and he feels better with a plan. “Build something else in his place. Somewhere he never touched.”
“Or we could keep it. Just needs a little TLC.” Harry grins down at him, making Draco notice for the first time that he was officially the shorter one. “But whatever we—you— decide, I’ll be there every step of the way. You won’t be doing it alone.”
“Together, huh?” They’ve still got their hands linked together. “I like the sound of that.”
“Yeah.” Harry squeezes his hand, and they are off, picking their way through the tall grass, going home, even though suddenly, Draco wants to stay. To show him the balcony that let him look out over the old wood, to take him out to the old fountain, show him the tree house that Dobby had magicked together for his sixth birthday. The good things, but there would be time for that later.
Chapter 24
Harry
He can’t say no.
He’s tried to think of ways to say no without losing face ever since he got the owl. And the owl after that. And the owl after that one, all of them formally requesting his presence at the ministry event that was going to be celebrating the official start of Kingsley’s time in office and where they would be honoring some of the people who made this new era possible. Harry knew that other people would be invited (Ron and Hermione, Dean and Seamus, Ginny and Luna and Neville, just among his friends) but that still didn’t make the idea of voluntarily putting himself in the spotlight any easier.
“What’s the big deal?” Draco was leaning over his shoulder, reading through the tenth owl they had sent him, this one even more desperate than the last and written in red ink so vivid that Harry thought it was likely to combust. “It’s just a party. I used to go to those all the time.”
Draco’s finding it easier to talk about what used to be ever since they had gone to the manor, like now that he had seen his past in ruins he had no problem with moving forward. Like maybe he was finally going to stop punishing himself.
“The big deal is that they’re going to ask me to talk.” Harry buried his hands in his hair, because there would be no good way to get out of this. Part of him must have thought that he could just ignore it and it would go away, the way he used to ignore the invites to go to Hogsmeade from giggling groups of girls back at Hogwarts. This time, though, he would have to give them an answer, and now that there was nothing to fight against, Harry was finding that he had trouble telling people no. “And I’m going to have to stand in front of everyone and say thank you when they present me with some award, even though they never wanted to help me back when I needed it. And I’ll have to talk to people I’ve never met, and fend of reporters, and—Merlin, I’m going to have to dress up, aren’t I?”
(It’s black tie. Of course he’s going to have to dress up, which means that he was going to have to go shopping, because there was no way that those dress robes from fourth year still fit him, and God knows running away from the worst wizard in history didn’t leave you time for dressing up.)
“I’m pretty sure I have something you can wear.” Draco sat down across from him and started slurping up his cereal. Ever since they started sleeping in the same bed, Draco hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night and been forced to fill up the empty hours, which means there is no home cooked breakfast waiting when Harry comes down the stairs. He thinks it’s a fair trade. “You’re running out of excuses, Potter.”
Draco was laughing at him in the way he does when he thinks Harry is being silly, his mouth twisting up into a smirk. Harry doesn’t know how to explain the real problem with being the center of attention—that how sometimes it winds you down, picks off pieces of you, takes away all your edges until you have nothing to protect yourself and there is no tough skin to hide behind, only you and the ugly truth of the public opinion. And there’s also the other part, about how going there and smiling and accepting their thanks would seem like he was more important than the others who had risked life and limb to fight beside him, to fight for him, and he couldn’t stomach it, not when the only thing Harry can really think he is being congratulated on is the fact that he had been lucky enough to stay alive, even though he had tried to die.
(Here’s the thing, the little thought in his head that he isn’t telling anyone, certainly not Hermione: He should have protected them all. That’s what he was trying to do, by walking into that forest. He should have protected them, or he should have died with them, and he didn’t quite manage to do either, so what kind of a hero does that make him?”
“They want to know if I have a plus one.” Harry reads over the letter for the third time, already ripping off a piece of parchment to send a RSVP. “Who do they think I’m taking? Everyone knows that Ginny and I broke up.”
They did. It was front page news as soon as it happened. Even the Quibbler covered it, which was sort of endearing more than annoying, because Luna had written it in her HERE’S WHAT MY FRIENDS HAVE BEEN DOING LATELY column, and Harry didn’t have it in him to be mad at her.
“You could take me.” There’s forced casualness in his voice, and even though they’ve gotten past the point where they pretend around each other, Draco is avoiding Harry’s eyes. “I’d be able to help.”
Like that’s the reason that Harry would want to take him. Because he’d be able to help.
“Yeah.” Harry had to clear his throat twice before he could get the word out, because this is raising more questions than it is answers, like if it’s a date and whether Draco wanted it to be a date, if this was part of their attempt to keep moving forward, if Harry should be expecting things to change if they go public like this. “Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”
Draco smiles, even though he still is not looking his way. “You would?”
Harry doesn’t know what to do with him when he is like this, so he just smiles, too, and goes to the cupboard to make his own bowl of cereal, wondering what in the world he was going to wear.
He makes it until thirty minutes before the party before he starts to freak out.
Harry’s wearing an old suit of Draco’s, because apparently it’s in fashion to wear muggle formal wear to things now (or at least, if it’s not in fashion, it will be after they see the two of us wearing it, and it’ll be easier to take you shopping at a muggle place, anyways) and it feels like the collar is strangling him. He tugs at it, hearing Hermione’s voice in his head telling him to leave it alone, and looks at his reflection in the glassware cupboard, nervously trying to flatten his hair, even though Ginny had reassured him at this point in his life, it keeps him from looking less like he’s trying too hard and more bad boy chic.
He doesn’t know what that means, but if Ginny says he looks fine than he probably does, so he spends the rest of the time pacing the living room floor, and it’s only the thought of how excited this had made Draco that keeps him from going to the bottom of the steps and cancelling on him, saying screw it and locking the door and throwing himself down on the couch, and he won’t ever make the mistake of giving into the pressure again, even if they send so many owls the letters fill up the whole house.
“Draco?” He swings himself around on the bannister, even though the wood was creaking in protest. Harry spends half his time seeing how far he can go before this old house breaks, just so he has an excuse to fix it up. So far, no luck. Wizards make things for keeps, apparently. “You almost ready? We’re going to be late.”
Not really, but Hermione wanted pictures, and she also wanted Draco’s opinion on her dress before she throws herself at the mercy of the mob. Ron’s written and said that she had spent all day getting ready, with that hair sleeking potion and doing her nails. It seems that childhood taunts had made her unwilling to go if she looked anything less than perfect.
“We’re not going to be late,” Draco says, and there’s creaking of the steps behind him. Harry knows without turning around that Draco is rolling his eyes and putting the finishing touches on his hair at the same time, like there’s a string twisting the two of them together so Harry knows exactly what’s happening with him at all times. “You can’t rush beauty.”
Harry’s already forming a response, the words right on the tip of his tongue, but then he turns around and forgets anything he might have said, because even though he knew that he found Draco attractive, this was the first time that he was caught off guard enough to allow himself to look without feeling guilty.
“You look…” He’s in a new suit, too, this one grey. He’s in incredibly muted colors, with his pale skin and light hair and the dark grey of his suit, like he wanted to melt into the background while giving Harry all the room to shine, but there was nothing that would let him fall out of sight when he’s walking around looking like this. “Amazing.”
“Thanks.” Draco scratches at his collar, but other than that, there’s no sign that he was flustered at all. “You do too.” He didn’t. Harry didn’t look bad, but he didn’t look great, not the way Draco did, like he was going to be the only thing in the room worth looking at. “Except for the tie, you…”
Harry fumbled at it for a moment, and then Draco was there, pushing his hands away and putting everything back in place, smoothing out the wrinkles and folding the collar just the way that Draco liked it. “Better?”
He’s only two inches away. Two inches, and Harry could change everything, but he won’t, because he does not want Draco to push him away again. “Better.”
The party was almost as awful as Harry had thought it would be.
There’s a bunch of important people that Harry doesn’t know the names of, and they all want to thank him for his service, his sacrifice, his bravery. It’s a wave of introductions and stories and not-very-funny jokes that leaves his head spinning, and he finds himself turning to Draco for support more than he could imagine. Draco picks up the slack without missing a beat every time, asking about the person’s relatives or saying the thank you that Harry was sure he was supposed to be the one giving, sending them away so eloquently that they didn’t even know they were being dismissed, until every seemed to get over the shock of having THE BOY WHO LIVED in their presence and left him alone.
“Thanks.” Harry’s breathless with the effort of hanging on to the present. There were half moon circles where his nails had dug into the palms of his hands. It’s amazing how even the simplest phrase can send him back—back to the smell of soil in his mouth, to a mother’s whisper in his ear, the chill of the stone in his hands, Neville and his sword and Nagini’s head, thump, the cry McGonagall made, but wait, no, that’s not what he’s here to think about tonight. “I didn’t think it would be that bad.”
“That?” Draco grins around the rim of his wine glass. He seems to be enjoying himself, and for the first time, Harry began to realize how odd it was for this boy to let himself be shut in the house the whole day. He was meant to bask in the limelight. “It was nothing. You should have seen me when father was pushing for a bit of legislation to go through—I’d charm them better than any spell could.”
He’s bragging. Preening, really, coming more alive with each person he talked to, falling back into himself with every person that stops looking at him as an extension of his father and starts to see him as his own person. If nothing else, Harry is glad he came just to have that happen.
“Still.” Harry’s not as good at this as him. He cannot smile for the cameras and make it look natural, he cannot force laughs, and he cannot remember names of people he does not plan on ever seeing again. “Let’s find Ron and Hermione before they come back, alright?”
Draco pouts a bit, but then he sees the new wave of people coming and hastens to agree, cutting a line through the table until they find where Ron, Hermione, and the rest of the Weasleys were sitting.
“Oh, good.” Hermione’s a bit pink in the face, a little breathless, and Harry has to wonder if she had remembered to take her calming drought before she came. Maybe Ron hadn’t managed to talk her into. “They’re about to start the presentation.”
“Presentation?”
“Oh, you know.” Ron leans around Hermione. He seems to have decided to ignore Draco altogether, which Harry is grateful for, because it might be the only good solution they could agree on. Clearly, they aren’t ever going to become friends. “Where we all clap for Kingsley, and everyone thanks us and pretends that they were on our side the whole time.”
Harry snorts. It’s funny, but it’s also not, because it’s been hard to forget the days where everyone would sneer at him, where they all thought that he was crazy and heard voices just to cover up the truth, how so many of them hid while he was leading the fight.
“You just have to smile.” There’s a hand in his, peeling back his fingers, pads of his thumbs smoothing over where his nails had dug in, like Draco was trying to make his pain go away. “That’s all you have to do.”
