Chapter Text
Harry didn’t like one bit that Draco had chosen now of all moments to suddenly develop his own saviour complex—but he had to admit, the sight of Draco charging down the labyrinthine hallways of the Essence Room, taking spellfire in every colour of the rainbow straight to the chest and having it cascade off a shimmering shield of black scales while he returned his own snarled Confringos and Stupefys, was kind of thrilling.
He hadn’t seen Draco actually duel since Second Year (well, arguably, he’d seen him duel just a few days prior, in that very same Pensieve memory), and they’d neither of them been terribly good back then, but this was a different beast altogether. Draco was, as professed, out of practice, but what he lacked in finesse, he made up for with sheer raw power.
It was like he was channelling every spell he was hit with back into his own arcane well, bolstering his own magic with that of the Unspeakables rallying against them as they charged forward. Harry wondered just how much of the Blackblood’s abilities he’d actually be able to harness, if he really tried—and he suspected Hermione, who was all but openly gaping at his prowess, was wondering the same. No wonder the Department of Mysteries was so eager to get him back under their thumb; with proper training (and under the heavy yoke of an Imperius Curse), he stood to be quite the force to be reckoned with indeed.
It did not take the Unspeakables long, however, to realise that their spells weren’t doing all that much to Draco, especially given they didn’t seem to be allowed to use anything truly deadly so as not to ruin their investment in ‘Project Bane’. But the burlier ones sent into the fray seemed to understand that raw muscle and fists were actually more effective than magic in this case, and the tide rapidly turned in their favour.
They had finally managed to reach the laboratory level with its horrific cavalcade of mutated and malformed experiments, when Draco turned to Hermione, shoved her forward in his place, and shouted to the both of them, “Cover me!”
Hermione had only a split second to yelp, “Protego!” before her head was nearly taken off by an errant curse flung her way, and Harry called after Draco’s retreating figure, “What the—get back here you idiot!” But alas, the idiot was gone, ducking into one of the labs and leaving Harry and Hermione to face down a dozen Unspeakables with more on the way.
“I’ve gotta say, I really don’t think this is a healthy work environment for you,” Harry huffed, casting a Stickfast Hex on the shoes of the nearest Unspeakable, forcing those charging up behind them to either shimmy around them in the narrow hallway or collide with them in a heap of humanity. “I’d start looking for a new gig if I were you.”
“You know, I think I quite agree.” She conjured a bunch of wizard crackers in the centre of the approaching horde, and the blast sent a shockwave echoing in all directions. “I’m thinking of pursuing a career in a field that’s a bit less dangerous—like Erumpent husbandry or Venomous Tentacula farming.”
“Sounds promising, but I’m not sure you could secure a refer—what the bloody hell?”
What looked like a bird of some sort swooped through his legs, nearly knocking him off his feet and squawking loudly. Its strident screech made Harry wince, along with all the Unspeakables, and then there came the sound of soft pattering wingbeats. Harry turned just in time to duck before a dozen more of the weird birds rushed by in a flurry of rainbow-hued plumage, and the corridor was filled with their irritating twittering calls that seemed to crawl inside the ear canal and beat incessantly against the eardrums.
“Fwoopers!” Hermione shouted, hands clamped over her ears. “Don’t listen to them! You’ll go mad!”
“What?” Harry shouted back, and she mimed for him to cover his ears as well.
On the tails of the Fwoopers came a massive snake with far more heads than was appropriate, and Harry plastered himself against the wall, hoping it might find the burly Unspeakables on the front line more appealing targets than Harry’s very stringy build. He closed his eyes tight, in case this was some sort of mutant Basilisk, and screamed when something grabbed his shirt collar. “Hermione! Run! Get out, now!”
“Take your own damn advice,” Draco hissed, shoving Harry forward by the collar. “And open your eyes, there’s Clabbert pus all over the place now, and it’ll eat through anything it touches.”
Harry blinked, glancing around—it was utter chaos, Draco having evidently set free every successful (and unsuccessful) experiment he could find as a distraction to clear the path for them. And it was working—a horde of little flying creatures that looked like Doxies crossed with Pixies were tearing out the hair of one unfortunate Unspeakable, while another lay unconscious on the floor as a sinister, black-skinned humanoid creature with eyes like glowing coals crawled over them, unhinging its jaw and opening its mouth impossibly wide over the Unspeakable’s head. The Fwoopers had left behind a shower of feathers in all different colours, and the tiled floor was, indeed, pockmarked with sizzling little droplets of a mysterious goo that smelled like pine sap.
“You’re absolutely mad!” Harry marvelled, a tiny bit terrified they’d just made things even worse.
“I told you, I can’t be held responsible for the beast’s actions. Granger? Granger!”
Hermione squeaked a response from the other side of some creature that looked like an Erumpent crossed with a Flitterbloom (or maybe a Devil’s Snare, Harry hadn’t gotten best marks in Herbology, and he did not want to check the massive beast too closely to find out), one hand waving in the air for their attention. “Fantastic idea, Draco—it’s bought us a little time at least.”
“Pleased you approve,” Draco said, waspish with stress. “Shall we take that precious time we’ve earned and get the fuck out of here?”
Harry was more than all right with that, and as a trio, they raced through the newly cleared hallways, dodging puddles of Clabbert pus as they went. They reached a t-junction, though, and distant screams could be heard down all directions, making it difficult to determine which way they ought to head next. Harry turned to Hermione. “Which way n—”
But Hermione was not there. Harry whirled around, scanning the hallway behind them—and found her stood before a doorway, chewing on a nail and looking like she was very much considering going through said doorway. Harry jogged back to meet her while Draco hissed Potter, get your bony arse back here! He was one to talk. “What’s wrong? Is that the way out?”
“I—no, it’s not, not really but—” She sighed, and it came out a half-growl-half-huff as she began stomping up the stairs. “We have to.”
“Have to—have to what?!” Harry looked back at Draco, helpless, then turned to call after Hermione. “What are you doing?!”
She stopped halfway up the staircase. “If we don’t get something on these people, they’ll just keep coming after us. Me to kill, and Draco to capture. We need something that can shut this whole endeavour down—and we need to get it now, before they have a chance to destroy anything incriminating.”
Harry gestured back to Draco. “We’ve got a whole human being! Someone who can testify what’s been done down here. And you too!”
Hermione shook her head. “You think anyone will listen to—” She dropped her voice. “To a Death Eater? You think they’ll listen to someone who helped a Death Eater? I love that you have so much faith in the good of society, but having worked here, been a part of all of this, I know we need something iron-clad. It can’t just be testimony—we need actual evidence.” She inclined her head up the stairs. “005’s office is just this way—the Archives will be guarded more securely than the Philosopher’s Stone was, but no one would dare defile a Director’s private space.”
Harry groaned, turning back to Draco. “She says we—”
“I fucking heard,” Draco growled, grabbing Harry roughly by the shoulders and shoving him towards the staircase. “At this rate I might eat someone after all.”
Hermione led the way from the front this time, hobbling as fast as she could on what had to be heavily battered legs; he was pretty sure he’d heard her seal a fracture earlier. He wondered what she knew about stemming internal bleeding. They were both of them going to wind up next to Ron at St Mungo’s before this was all said and done.
But when Hermione drew up short, it was before an open archway—the door had already been dissolved, and the nameplate was blank. Inside was an empty room, four grey walls and nothing else. “…No, no it was here, I’m certain of it.”
“Are…are you sure?” Harry glanced around; the chaos had not reached this level yet, it seemed, and they were all alone. “I mean, all these doors look the same, maybe you just got turned around—”
“I know it’s here! I know it is!” Her voice was getting strident and choked, and Harry sympathised, he did, but they couldn’t afford to get worked up like this right now.
“I believe you—I do. But we don’t have time to figure out what’s happened, we’ll have to take our chances escaping for now and live to fight another day. I can call in every favour I’m owed—”
“No one owes you any favours…” She burbled, shoving her hair back from her face. “They’re just nice to you because you’re you and everyone wants to be able to tell their friends at pub night that they did something for the Boy Who Lived.”
Harry frowned; that was probably true, but she didn’t have to come out and say it. Hermione was having about the worst day it was possible to have, though, so he decided to cut her some slack. “…Then I’ll give another few people a fantastic pub night tale, either way we’ll make it work. Let’s just go. We’re tempting fate as it is—you can’t make an office appear out of thin air, so if 005’s hidden it or covered their tracks somehow, then there’s—”
“Oh fuck!” Hermione yelped, hand going to her mouth. “Fuck!” And it sounded like a good ‘fuck’, so Harry raised his brows as if to say Well? She gave a little jump, twirled around, and whipped her wand through the air: “Appare Vestigium!”
A shimmering bubble of magic emanated from the tip of her wand, expanding out around her and bringing into definition the thin, sparkling outline of 005’s office, just barely visible, like a ghost of what had once been.
“Look!” Hermione shouted, delighted, and pointed at the floor. Outlined in a similar ghostly sparkle was a set of footprints, leading out the door and down the hallway. “Ooh, they’re heading for the entrance—come on, maybe we can still catch them if all those experimental horrors Draco set loose have held them up. Damn, if they make it out of the Ministry, there’s next to no chance we’ll be able to find them and shake them down for evidence.”
“Then that sounds to me like we need to make sure they don’t make it out of the Ministry.”
“Does this mean we can finally get the fuck out of here?” Draco called impatiently from the hallway, rapping the hilt of his wand against the doorjamb for their attention. “I’m seriously about to start eating people, and I can’t promise it won’t be either of you!”
Harry darted past him, tugging on his elbow. “You wouldn’t eat me. You like me.”
“I believe we’ve been over this before and concluded that I don’t like you.”
“Yeah, well, we can revisit that once we’ve finished our business here.”
The horde of horrors had helpfully scoured the halls clean of any more Unspeakables for them, such that they met no further challenge on their way back to the entrance room. Following 005’s magically enhanced tracks, it was no difficult task to make their escape this time, and they found themselves spat out into the long, dark hallway leading back to the main lift. The bluebell flames flickered in their sconces, throwing cool shadows along the walls, and as the door to the Department of Mysteries shut behind them, the cries and wails from either the Unspeakables or the sad creatures forced to endure their experimentation (or both) faded away—such that the only sound reaching their ears now was the faint mechanical whirring of the lift itself.
Someone was already inside—and on their way back up to the Atrium.
“Shit,” Hermione spat, pointing to the fading tracks. “It’s 005. We’ve just missed them. We’ll have to take the stairs!”
“I think I’ll take the lift all the same and meet you up there,” Draco said darkly, marching toward the latticework doors and already beginning to bulk out into the dragon.
“Shit—stairs, now!” Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand and jerked her forward—the last thing they needed was to get this far only to be crushed to death by a pissed-off Animagus in mid-transformation. The echo of scraping metal and stone being crushed beneath nasty, ripping claws followed them up the empty stairwell as Draco forced himself into the lift shaft and began climbing.
By the time they jogged panting from the stairwell, the Atrium was in an even more chaotic state than the Department of Mysteries had been. The lanterns had been fired, casting the space in a warm, friendly glow that seemed more akin to a busy weekday morning than what was still the dead of night, and there were already a dozen or more Unspeakables rushing for the Apparition Zone and disappearing with loud CRACKs that echoed around the hall. The nightwatch-wizard was whipping his wand frantically, calling up silvery border collies and urging them to go fetch his superior because, “There’s a fudging dragon attacking the Ministry and I sure as hell don’t get paid enough to slay it!” This, as Draco was clambering his way up through the lift shaft, bellowing in fury, and 005 was struggling to escape the lift before it had properly stopped at Level 8, scrabbling their way through the halfway-open lift doors. Their featureless Unspeakable mask had been lost in the confusion, and their wide-eyed panic was now writ large for all to see.
Draco released a roar of heady accomplishment as he finally burst through into the Atrium proper, hurling 005 into a red-and-white-striped push cart advertising a selection of 1001 ice cream flavours as he clawed his way out onto the polished marble floor. Several of the fleeing Unspeakables had summoned courage enough to turn back and brandish their wands in a feeble attempt to protect 005 from the massive creature that had just crawled up from the lift shaft and was presently attempting to knock them down like bowling pins with its lashing tail, which gave Harry and Hermione cover to attempt to apprehend 005 before they made it to the Apparition Zone.
005 had not risen to the rank they held in the Department of Mysteries by being stupid, though, and perhaps wisely recognising that they could not hope to take on a Carpathian Blackblood themselves, not even with several of their Department members attempting to provide aid, they quietly slipped into a darkened culvert and began attempting to Disillusion themselves.
Of course; they were a high-ranking Ministry employee. They had no reason to run, especially since Hermione had no evidence proving their involvement in anything untoward, and Draco was Draco, so who was going to take his word over a Department head’s? They didn’t need to escape, they just needed to wait long enough for Draco to be brought down and Harry and Hermione rounded up for questioning about the state of the Department of Mysteries, and then it would be their word against 005’s and the entire rest of the Department’s.
“…You’re right, you definitely need that evidence,” Harry said darkly. “Are you prepared to get your hands dirty if it comes to it, though?”
Hermione set her expression to one of grim determination. “No. But I’ve done rather a lot over the years I wasn’t prepared for, and a good portion of it was things I would never have thought myself capable of, for better or worse. That bitch fucked with my family, though.” Harry lifted a brow at her language. “And that’s just not done.”
They left Draco to handle the riff-raff, fanning out to flank 005. Harry hadn’t had a proper duel since Voldemort, now that he thought about it, and he probably could’ve gone the rest of his life never squaring off against a “villain” in that manner again, but here he was.
“There’s nowhere left to run, 005,” Hermione called out, and from their culvert, 005 jolted, realising only now they’d been made. “You’ve got two well-trained wizards on either side of you, a rather sizeable dragon who’d very much like to make your formal acquaintance, and a good hundred feet of open space between you and your only route out of here. You’re welcome to make a run for it, if you’ve decided hiding probably won’t work out for you, but my friend and I both have pretty good aim, and that dragon’s hungry.” She levelled her wand at 005. “Would you like to surrender quietly, or should we see who’s a quicker draw?”
005 released a bracing huff. “Always were too clever for your own good. I had high hopes for you, 072. You could have been a fine example for the Department—why you would throw away a promising career to save that is beyond me. He and his ilk would have slaughtered you given half a chance.”
“He and his ilk tried—and it didn’t take. Sinking to their level doesn’t prove we’re better than them—it only proves we’re no better than them. And don’t lecture me about having high hopes—I genuinely thought we were doing something in Essence, something that would change the world—”
“Oh, we were. A change you clearly didn’t have the stomach to see through. Countless man-hours of research, ruined because you couldn’t stand by and quietly watch as we were far kinder to that miserable little cretin and his friends than they were to me and mine.”
“Revenge is no excuse for torturing someone—” Harry started, and 005 cackled.
“Oh that is rich coming from you, Harry Potter.” And Harry flushed, because all right, they kind of had a point. “And apropos of your earlier offer, 072: I think I’d like to see who’s a quicker draw, after all.”
They snapped their wand in a flourishing movement, and Harry and Hermione both threw up Shield Charms—but 005 wasn’t casting at them, they were casting at the floor, which began crumbling away beneath their feet as 005 laid into it with a bellowed, “Defodio!”
Harry dived off to the side as a plume of dust and debris went up, and spells began to be traded rapidfire amidst the chaos.
He couldn’t see shit through the smoke, though, and didn’t want to fling spells about willy-nilly, wary of hitting Hermione. He wadded up the Invisibility Cloak, covering his nose and mouth so he didn’t inhale too much of the dust, and took a beat to reflect on the fact that he was using one of the vaunted Hallows as a glorified air filter. It felt like using the Elder Wand to dislodge a stubborn drain clog.
Through sheer luck, he managed to find the Fountain of Magical Brethren in the smoke and huddled behind it—where he found the nightwatch-wizard already pinned down and weeping with relief at Harry’s appearance. “Wh—what’s going on?! This is only my third night on the job! I haven’t even gotten my first paycheque yet! Is it always like this?!”
“I mean, honestly, it’s kinda been like this both times I’ve visited so…” The poor wizard blanched and then slipped into a dead faint. Good. One less innocent bystander to worry about getting caught in any crossfire.
From across the Atrium, Draco released a roar of frustration, and Harry heard the tell-tale whomp whomp whomp of him beating the air with his boatsail-sized wings. He grabbed tight to the fountain’s edge, bracing for the gale-force gusts coming his way, and sighed in relief as the air cleared—revealing Hermione and 005 in the midst of a nasty back-and-forth that looked like it could go either way.
Harry scrambled around the massive hole in the Atrium floor, wand in hand and ready to provide backup, and Draco, who seemed to have either eaten or otherwise dispatched the Unspeakables who’d been harassing him, began scrabbling across the polished tile to do the same, claws clacking brightly on the marble. 005 tossed an Expulso Harry’s way to ward him off, but it flew wide and exploded the head of the fountain’s centaur sculpture. Draco shrieked in fury at the gall and flared his wings wide, their span so great they easily covered both Hermione and Harry once he’d drawn close enough. He bared his fangs in threat, but 005 did not seem intimidated in the least.
Hermione pushed her hair back from her face as the three of them converged on 005. She rubbed at her cheek, smearing a streak of blood that had been trickling down from a cut across her temple, then drew herself up tall, wand brandished. “…I’ll ask again, one last time: will you lay down your wand and yield—or will you have us take it from you by force?”
This close, Harry thought 005 looked like they could be someone’s grandmother. They looked older than Andromeda, even, and more the type to ask if you took two lumps of sugar or three with your tea rather than to be directing burly thugs to use Unforgivables on their own subordinates. Harry wondered if they had children—or grandchildren. Maybe they did—or had, and that was the entire point of this sick business. Years later, and still they were left dealing with the repercussions of that fucking pointless war.
005 eyed them all in sequence—with Draco earning the darkest glare of them all. Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Animals were at their most dangerous when cornered, and humans were no exception. He tightened his grip on his wand, feeling a spike of adrenaline flood his bloodstream and setting his heart to thrumming in his chest. This person had tortured Draco for reasons Harry could kind of understand and Hermione for reasons he couldn’t—and they clearly still believed, perhaps with well-founded faith, that they would come out the other end of this smelling of roses.
005’s thin lips twisted into a toothy smile. “…Unfortunately for you, 072, we just learned only moments ago that I’m a quicker draw than you.”
Harry was ready for it, Expelliarmus on his lips, but he’d been expecting 005 to strike at Hermione, and suddenly their casting arm wasn’t where he’d thought it would be, swinging wide overhead as an arc of sickly green magic whipped out and struck Draco square in his heavily armoured chest, the dragon’s screeching roar mingling with the echoed cry of Avada Kedavra!
Time slowed to a syrupy crawl.
Hermione shrieked in horror, casting a reflexive Body Bind on 005 and sending them to their knees, where they toppled onto one shoulder, face pressed into the cold marble tile. Their grin of triumph was frozen on their features as their eyes, unblinking, took in the terror they’d just wrought.
Draco reared up onto his hind legs and seemed to freeze in place, wings spread impossibly wide, and Harry thought for one brief, glimmering moment that the dragon had shrugged this off, too, fucking Wizard’s Bane indeed!
And then everything went limp, and Draco staggered in place before falling, so so slowly, slamming into the Fountain of Magical Brethren as the flooring shook under the massive weight of his body slumping to the ground, unmoving.
Time unstuck itself—and then Harry was running, at breakneck speed, trainers slapping against the dust- and debris-covered flooring as he scrambled to Draco’s side. He was already casting Rennervate before he was even in range, heart in his throat and fucking up the verbal components. The creature’s body was still—too still, but that didn’t mean anything. Of course a curse of that magnitude would knock the wind out of him, of course it would—but it had taken the combined forces of most of the Department of Mysteries just to put him under stasis before. It would take more, so much more, than one offhand Unforgivable from a bitter old witch to bring him down for good.
And he made sure Draco heard this, voice quavering as he continued to cast a litany of spells between lectures at the cold, dead carcass lying before him that was not cold or dead or a carcass. “I wasted my entire fucking summer putting you back to rights you literal knob, so wake the fuck up and give me back my fucking Weasley jumper.” He gave the dragon’s soft belly an angry kick and screamed. “Wake up! What good’s your stupid ‘magical resistance’ if you can’t shrug off one measly little Killing Curse, huh? I mean, I did it twice! So wake your lazy fucking arse up—” He sank to his knees and began shaking one of Draco’s massive front limbs, now limp in death—
—and to his horror, the movement caused a handful of scales to slough off. He stared at his palms and the dull black scales stuck to them, no longer shimmering with that opalescent oil-slick sheen, and shook them violently, causing the scales to flutter to the ground. He sprang to his feet, taking several staggering steps back and shaking his head. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t happening—he’d gotten concussed in the fight earlier, and he’d fallen unconscious. Draco had taken him to St Mungo’s against his better judgement, and now the Healers had forced some vile but effective potion down his throat that would leave him feeling right as rain come morning, but not before he’d had to struggle through a series of ever-darker nightmares where he tried to save Draco one more time and failed.
A breeze he could not feel but could see the effects of began whispering through the Atrium, whisking away the dust and smoke still hanging in the air and whipping the scales that had fallen from Harry’s hands into little funnels. Harry stared ahead, numb, and felt his eyes grow hot as everything took on a soft blur. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like, losing a friend (“We aren’t friends!”), and worse, he’d almost forgotten what it felt like losing them when it was all your fault (“You can’t save everyone.”). It was kind of funny, when you thought about it: he had one spell he was known for. And the one time (well, all right, second time) it had mattered, he hadn’t been able to pull it off.
Draco, at least, would have found it funny. If it hadn’t been what’d gotten him killed.
The breeze was strengthening, beginning to whip at Harry’s hair, and he glanced around, unsure of where it had even come from. Countermeasures of some sort from the Ministry, perhaps? Too little, too late if so.
More scales began to flake away from the dragon’s corpse, skittering around the Atrium like dead leaves on the wind, and then whole patches were being ripped off, and Harry’s heart clenched. “Don’t—fucking do this—” he growled, frustration choking him. He clenched his wand white-knuckled tight and stepped close, but he didn’t know what he thought he could do—he wanted to cover the body, do something until this wind died down. Give this miserable sod some fucking decency in death at least. The Atmospheric Charms always seemed to be on the fritz here, and he recalled there being a spell that could restore them, but the incantation was about the furthest thing from his mind in this moment.
But more and more scales continued to either flake away or dissolve into dust and debris, and Harry reached down to gather as many as he could—there wouldn’t be anything left to bury at this rate, and why had Draco chosen now of all times to grow a spine? He wasn’t a Gryffindor—he was a slimy little snake who cowered in the shadows while people with bigger hearts and smaller brains than him risked their lives for him. This was what you got reduced to when you tried to be something you weren’t: a lumpy sack of meat lying cold on the floor.
An errant scale flew into his mouth, and he spat it out—but then another smacked him in the forehead, and another hit his cheek, and then there was a veritable torrent of them whirling around him, pelting him from all sides and lodging themselves in his hair and the folds of his clothes and all sorts of places scales were neither needed nor wanted. He batted them away furiously, shaking his head until they fell around him in a shower of little black flakes—
—and when he was able to open his eyes again, he saw that the dragon’s carcass had been stripped away by the whipping wind, reduced to a pitiful shell that lay cracked open and empty like a chrysalis.
No guts, no innards, no bones or blood or muscle, only…
Only a human body, curled up atop a nest of black scales that clashed fiercely with his white-blond hair and emerald Weasley jumper.
Breathing.
Harry let out a sound he’d never heard himself make before—hadn’t thought he could make, honestly—and rushed to Draco’s side, forgoing all care and gentleness for someone who it seemed had just come back from the dead and instead shaking his shoulders violently. “Draco? Draco!” He pressed his ear to Draco’s chest, just in case he’d imagined the gentle up-and-down. There was a faint but definite badump…badump…badump that Harry could have listened to for hours. He drew back and gave Draco a light slap on the cheek. “Wake up, O Great Wyrm. If I’m not getting any sleep tonight, you aren’t either.”
Draco grimaced, features scrunching up into a hideous visage, and Harry didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful to see someone look so ugly. He twisted his head away. “That’s physical assault. I’m filing charges.”
“They’d never convict me, I’m Harry-fucking-Potter.”
“Ugh,” Draco said, and Harry wasn’t entirely sure which part of the interaction it was directed toward. “What the hell happened? I feel like I got run over by a herd of hippogriffs…” He braced a hand against his forehead and winced. “Gads, my skull feels like it’s about to split open.”
“Welcome to my world,” Harry chuckled, throat still a bit tight. “And it was nothing, really.” He shrugged. “I mean. You may have just taken a Killing Curse to the chest and shrugged it off. But—you know, other than that. Nothing of note.”
Draco blinked at him with wide grey eyes for several long seconds—then closed them again and exhaled slowly. “Oh, is that all?” He leaned forward, shifting his legs under him, clearly intent on getting to his feet. Harry tried to help him, but Draco batted his hand away—and then made a hasty grab for him again when he wobbled unsteadily and his ankles buckled under him. “I thought I’d done something amazing.”
Harry thought he had too—but it wasn’t a good idea to puff a Slytherin up too much, so he said instead, “Afraid it was just the Blackblood being the fantastic magical creature that it is. I don’t think you get to take credit for it.”
“Well it’s my genes that made me turn into the damn thing in the first place—I ought to get some credit.” He let Harry fit his shoulder under Draco’s arm as they hobbled as a pair over to where Hermione had positioned herself at a respectful distance watching over the frozen 005, perhaps thinking it wasn’t her place to intrude on Harry while he mourned. A dark part of him agreed. She’d been able to save him—Harry hadn’t.
“Shouldn’t your parents get the credit, in that case?”
“And as their sole heir, I shall accept all credit on their behalf, do you know nothing of wizarding beneficiary law?” He leaned into Harry, stumbling a bit drunkenly over his own feet. “…I was hoping they might start calling me ‘The Dragon Who Lived’. You know, maybe start my own little fanatical cult following. It’s always been a dream of mine.”
“Oh, so you were just jealous of me in school, then? You didn’t think I didn’t deserve the attention—you just wanted it for yourself.”
“Good gad, man, it took you eleven years to figure that out? I know you’re no Ravenclaw, but still.” He used Harry’s shoulder to lever himself up to stand a bit straighter, and Harry saw why—they weren’t alone in the Atrium anymore. Others—others who were not Unspeakables—were starting to arrive. Soon, some of them would stop simply gawping at the destruction and work up the courage to confront them about the state of the place. “First the Cruciatus Curse—and now the Killing Curse. Hmm. That’s two Unforgivables I’ve shaken off now.”
“Maybe someday you’ll make it a trifecta so you never have to worry about this bullshit happening again.”
Draco had nothing to say to that, though, only gave a mock bow to Hermione when they drew close enough to speak. “Please, hold your applause—it’s gauche in public.”
Her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears, and she smiled. “I’m very glad to see you’re still around to engage in such witty repartee.”
“Well, for my next act, I think I’d like to disappear—” He cast a furtive glance to someone who looked very much like an Auror who’d been rousted from his bed before the crack of dawn and was presently marching their way. “Will that be a problem?” 005’s paralysed body lay near the pit they’d carved into the Atrium’s floor. Harry kind of wanted to kick them into it—he might have, if Hermione hadn’t been there. Draco, he firmly believed, would have asked to help.
Hermione reached into her pocket, palming a glowing glass orb. She gave it a little shake, and a silvery liquid sloshed around inside. “Pocket Pensieve. I reckon there’s enough juicy memories stored in here to set a few things right. And…” She too had spotted the sleep-deprived Auror who was waving them down now. “Perhaps it’s for the best we head back to Harry’s cottage for the evening—morning—whatever it is and turn ourselves in later.”
Harry quite agreed with that idea—and as a unit, they quickly made their way, dragging Draco between them, to the Apparition Zone and disappeared with a CRACK.
When they popped back into being in the middle of Harry’s sitting room, he immediately moved to get Draco settled in the armchair, which he would admit was much more comfortable than the guest sofa. He was considering fetching a blanket when Hermione placed a hand on Harry’s arm. “Ron?”
Oh. Fuck, he’d nearly forgotten. “He’s all right—or at least, I think he is. He’s at St Mungo’s—Molly and Arthur were with him, last I heard. I think he was unconscious, but Arthur seemed to think the Healers would be able to put him to rights. We didn’t really have time to check on him personally…”
“No, no—I rather appreciate you coming to find me directly instead of popping by to deliver a get-well-soon bouquet to my husband.” She wiped a hand over her face. “I should go see him, though. Start planning how we’re going to deal with—well, everything. Oh.” She palmed the pocket Pensieve and passed it to Harry. “You should hold on to this. It might be all that stands between us and a dank cell in Azkaban.”
“Maybe they’ll name a wing after my family,” Draco muttered, eyes closed and head resting against the tall, plushly upholstered back of the armchair.
Harry pocketed the orb. “Yeah, I’ll keep it safe.” He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna pick through my drinks cabinet and see if I can’t fix him something strong enough to kill him this time. Would you like anything?”
“Well, if I’m going to get alcohol poisoning, it’s a good thing my next stop is a hospital. Sure.”
“I prefer liqueurs if you’ve got any banging around in there,” Draco called after them, and Harry ignored him. Wanker.
He didn’t go right for the liquor cabinet, though, stopping at the kitchen table to sink into one of the not-very-comfortable seats to really catch his breath for the first time since they’d been jumped in the garden the previous afternoon. Hermione joined him, letting her head fall forward to rest on the table, cocked to the side so she could see him. She smiled softly. “Well, that’s two for two in ‘breaking into the Department of Mysteries and then breaking out of it’. Shall we try making it an annual thing? Get the old gang back together, take turns getting captured and needing rescuing?”
Harry snorted softly. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to go at least another seven years before we try again.” He pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes; he was remembering now that neither he nor Draco had gotten any proper sleep in the past twenty-four hours, and it was starting to catch up to him now. “At least no one died this time.”
Hermione’s expression fell, her lower lip beginning to quiver, and Harry felt immediately contrite. Before he could apologise for the remark, not having meant it in quite the way she seemed to have taken it, she reached forward to place her hands over his own, whispering, “I am so sorry, Harry. I never should have brought him to you. I mean—of course I don’t regret what I did, but…” She shook her head. “I should have found somewhere else to hide him. Probably should have gone to Kingsley or someone else in the Order, someone I could trust to do the right thing—not that I couldn’t trust you to do the right thing! I just—” She buried her head in her hands. “…I’m so, so sorry for getting you caught up in all this.”
“‘Caught up in all this’?” Harry poked her gently. “You think I’d have any right to complain, after all the shit I got you and Ron caught up in over the years?”
“We agreed to be caught up in it, though,” she sniffed.
“And so did I. I’m a grown-arse wizard, I can make my own very bad decisions, thank-you-very-much. And as for whether or not you should have brought him here—of course you should’ve. Only you also should’ve brought yourself and Ron along as well. Would’ve been like hunting Horcruxes all over again—just with a very odd tagalong, and probably better food this time.”
She gave a warbling little chuckle, sniffing. “Much as I enjoy your company, I recall it being very cramped quarters in that tent, and your cottage isn’t any bigger. Can you imagine what a horror Ron would be if he’d had to spend every waking moment the past two months around Draco? Or what a horror Draco would have been having to spend every waking moment around Ron?” She leaned back in her chair, shaking her head in admiration. “I’m shocked you managed it yourself, given your history—especially now that it seems he’s…well, more or less back to normal.” She cast a glance back toward the living room, and Harry followed it—but Draco was still dozing in the armchair it seemed. “…How long has he been like that?”
“Like—what? Like himself?” She nodded. “Yesterday afternoon. We were out in the garden—though there isn’t much of one left now—and we got jumped by a bunch of Unspeakables. I guess it was a big enough threat the dragon bits of him finally decided it was time to go all in, and he transformed fully—and then absolutely massacred them.” Hermione blanched, and he quickly corrected, “Exaggeration. But not by much. You should’ve seen him—he didn’t really get to strut his stuff at the Ministry, but out here, fields and open air as far as the eye can see?” He nodded to himself. “I could see why they called them ‘Wizard’s Bane’. He was fucking terrifying—but don’t tell him I said that.”
She gave him a queer look, one bushy brow arching. “…Harry Potter, are you fond of him?”
He straightened. “What? I mean—of course? It’s not so strange, is it? I’ve gotten used to him, certainly, and he’s not been horrible, which is saying something for him. He’s been…” He shrugged. “Decent, even. Almost nice—but don’t tell him I said that either. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard him utter a single slur since he started talking again, so—you know.” He gave a little fist pump. “Progress.”
“Right…” she drawled, nodding slowly. “Well, regardless, I do think you ought to come to St Mungo’s with me to get checked out while I see to Ron.”
“Eh?” Oh—right. Actually, now that he considered it, it wasn’t a bad idea at all. The potions he’d guzzled at the Burrow were starting to wear off, leaving him feeling achy and queasy.
“Yes—see, you’ve got a massive bruise just there on your neck.” She reached forward and poked a sensitive spot over his jugular where Draco had paid particularly avid attentions earlier.
He slapped a hand over the spot, scooting back away from her, and began stammering, “Er—I mean, I think that was from an Unspeakable.”
“I’d say something very unspeakable.” She crossed her arms, lips pursed, and flicked her gaze again toward the sitting room to check that Draco wasn’t paying them any mind. “Please tell me you did at least wait until he could speak again? I mean, I know he was very…forward…with you, but it strikes me as more than a little unethical to—”
“God!” Harry hissed, leaning forward. “Yes. Of course! Give me some credit! We were—just, emotions were, you know, running high after the attack, and…” He trailed off, not wanting to get into the particulars with her in the middle of his kitchen. Or anywhere, for that matter. Hermione was smiling, though, a soft little knowing thing that he wasn’t sure he liked. “…That doesn’t weird you out?”
She bobbed her head, scrunching up her features in thought. “Yes…but also no, not really.” At Harry’s bald confusion, she continued, “Just, you two have always had a—a way about each other. You couldn’t not be baited by each other, couldn’t not let each other really get under your skin. I mean, Sixth Year you all but stalked him—”
“I—did not! He was up—”
“Up to something, yes, so you said.” He didn’t like her tone—Draco had been up to something, and Ron had very nearly paid the ultimate price for his desperation. “But the way you went about it was very…” She sighed. “Circumspect, we’ll say. Like it was your solemn duty to see he made no mischief. You didn’t talk to him, you didn’t leave it to any of the professors to handle—you made him your business. With everything you had to deal with, you still let him get to you. So no.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t ‘weird me out’. Honestly it’s felt kind of inevitable.”
Inevitable sounded a lot like fated, and that was getting a bit too much for Harry’s already sensitive stomach. “I—fail to see how my investigating him for attempted murder in any way meant we’d wind up—” He pointed at his neck, and Hermione flushed.
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that—more like…there was always a charged energy between you that was bound to undergo some kind of a reaction. I always thought that once we left school and he got out from under his parents’ influence, you might find you actually got along. I mean, you’ve got quite a bit in common, you have to admit: you both like Quidditch, you’re both Seekers, you both come from money—after a fashion—and…” She frowned to herself. “All right, maybe that’s it. The point is, you felt more strongly about him than about pretty much anyone else in that school, and he went out of his way to make your life in particular a living hell. I’m not saying you were made for each other, but there were clearly some issues that needed resolving, and, well, I suppose this was one way to go about it.”
Harry groaned. “He doesn’t even like me—he’s said as much, and honestly, I’m inclined to believe him.”
Hermione cleared her throat delicately. “Liking someone isn’t always a prerequisite for—well. And in his particular case, I suspect that his Animagus form’s overwhelming instincts turned the very complicated feelings he had for you into very simple ones. And now that he’s back to himself, he has to figure out how to complicate those feelings again—or if he even wants to. But those feelings were always there, Harry. He didn’t lose his memory or gain any new ones through this whole fiasco—he just learned a few perhaps uncomfortable truths about himself.” She twisted her lips into a wry grin. “And unfortunately for you, though, you can’t just turn into an animal to uncomplicate your feelings. Those you’ll have to figure out on your own.”
Yeah, Harry had been afraid of that. He let his forehead fall against the table, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly while Hermione patted him gently on the back.
From the sitting room, Draco called with a waspish tone, “Are you two quite done talking about me, or shall I go take a turn about what’s left of the garden and see if Thom’s left us any tomatoes?”
Foregoing the drink after all, Hermione headed off to St Mungo’s to check on Ron, though not before leaving Harry with a tight hug and, after a moment’s consideration, Draco with an even tighter one. Draco froze at first, but when it became obvious she wasn’t going to let go until he returned it, he gingerly patted her back, grumbling, “Unhand me, or I’ll tell Weasley you did this.”
She rolled her eyes. “You already escaped death once today—so keen to try it again, are we?” She then waved her fingers at Harry. “I’ll send a Patronus once I’ve got word on Ron’s condition. I noticed the wards were down outside, too, so reset them when you can, all right? And stay put until you hear from me or Ron. I’m still not 100% sure how the Unspeakables found you all the way out here, since I’m sure Ron would never have given you up, so there’s a non-zero chance you might find yourselves facing another Strike Team if 005’s able to talk her way out of Auror custody quickly enough.”
Harry bid her farewell—Draco, pointedly, did not—and then she disappeared with a bright CRACK, and it was just the two of them once more.
Outside, over the rolling hills surrounding Harry’s cottage, the sun was beginning to rise. The past twenty-four hours had felt like twenty-four years, and there was nothing Harry wanted to do more right now than to stumble into his room, faceplant onto his bed, and not wake up until he had to either eat or piss or both.
But sleep was a luxury he couldn’t yet allow himself—not before he had a very uncomfortable but necessary conversation with his erstwhile houseguest and occasional wanking partner.
“It’s not very polite to eavesdrop on people, you know,” Harry said, turning to Draco, who was presently curled up in his armchair and nursing the tumbler of Blishen’s—unfortunately the only spirit on hand—that Harry had poured for him.
“It’s also not very polite to talk about people behind their backs.” Draco fixed Harry with a pointed look. “Any other witty hypocrisies you’d like to drop in my lap?”
“I wasn’t talking behind your back—”
“Well you certainly weren’t doing it to my face.”
Harry sighed and settled onto the couch, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Fine. Then I’ll talk to your face.” Draco sank back into the armchair, losing his edge, and let his gaze wander away from the conversation—it seemed he wanted to have it about as much as Harry. Too fucking bad for the both of them.
“…I thought you’d died.”
Draco’s attention snapped back to Harry, grey eyes wide and searching.
“I saw that curse hit you—hit the dragon—and all I could think was the one thing I’m supposed to be good at is saving people, and you were somewhere you weren’t meant to be, taking that curse, because of me. The last time I broke into the Department of Mysteries, someone I loved died. And it was because of me that time, too. So all I could think was: Fuck. Not again.” He wiped a hand over his face. “I’m just really—really fucking tired…of getting attached to people and then having them taken away from me.”
There was a long beat of silence, and then Draco said, in a forcibly superior voice, “So don’t get attached. Problem solved.”
Harry locked eyes with him. “You first.”
“…Unlike some people in this conversation, I can assure you, I have no problem separating my wants from my needs.”
“Yeah? Then what the hell were you doing in the Ministry? Paying back Hermione for busting you out in the first place?”
“Sounds like a reasonable explanation for an otherwise uncharacteristic act to me.” And then he squared his shoulders and threw one leg over the other. “See—I know what you're thinking.” Harry waited to be regaled—it would certainly be news to him. “You think I've undergone…well, not a change of heart—because you probably don't think I have one—but some wild transformation, and I don't mean the Animagus one. You think some bit of you has rubbed off on me—and not in the fun way—over these past few months as you mollycoddled me back to good health while I searched for my lost gobstones, such that now I’m a new man, a better man. Better than that shitstain you went to school with, right? I don’t have Mummy and Daddy telling me what to think and who to consort with any more, I’m wearing Weasley jumpers and Cannons tees, why, I even hugged Granger!” He leaned forward, uncrossing his legs and lacing his fingers together. “I recognise you don’t subscribe to the Prophet these days, so I’ll give you a news flash, just for free, because I’m feeling generous: I am not a different person. I’m presently a victim of circumstances, and very soon, the trauma will fade, and I’ll go back to being the bitter little pissant who drove you mad and called your friends names and stamped on your face such that yes, my dear Potter, your nose did mend crooked.” Harry reflexively felt the bridge of his nose and hated himself for it. “Listen to me all you like, it’s still going to be the same damn song.”
Harry waited, until it sounded like he’d said his piece, and then it was his turn. “And what about me?”
Draco narrowed his eyes. “What about you?”
“Have I changed at all? Am I still the same self-aggrandising pretentious prick you went to school with? Is there nothing about me you find at all…interesting, we’ll say?” It was a safe choice of words, he felt. “Because I think I’ve changed. In lots of ways—some you haven’t even seen yet. All you know is ‘Arry. You don’t know me, not from a few scant weeks sharing space. And maybe you don’t want to get to know me—it’s a chore, revising your image of someone, especially after this much time. But I can say with a fairly strong sense of certainty that Hogwarts you would never have put me on my back and rubbed off on me ‘til he messed his pants.”
Draco’s expression warred between gobsmacked shame and a superior sneer. “No? Think you know Hogwarts me so well, do you? I can’t say I would’ve been anywhere near the gentleman I was last night, but I might have given you a turn, if you’d offered—”
“No,” Harry said, firmly. “I do know. You never would have. Ever.”
And Draco shifted uncomfortably in the face of Harry’s rock-solid conviction—but he quickly rallied. “I fail to see the point of this exercise.”
“The point is that you can claim nothing’s changed, that I shouldn’t expect some revolutionary shift in our relationship just because we had a nice little wank together, and I don’t expect some revolutionary shift in our relationship because of that. I expect it because it’s already happened.” And Draco gave him the nastiest look, but Harry pressed on. “You do like me. And you hate that you do, almost as much as you hate that I might like you back.” He leaned in. “How likeable you are has no bearing on how much I like you, I’m sorry to have to inform you.”
Draco was breathing very loudly by this point, and he looked furious. Good. He tended to let the truth slip out when he got emotional.
“And I’m sorry to have to inform you that you liking me has no bearing on me liking you. I’d have thought the past eleven years, or at least the pertinent seven, might have taught you as much. You don’t know me—you don’t know a damn thing about me.”
And then Harry heard himself, his own words echoing behind Draco’s: I’m just really fucking tired of getting attached to people and then having them taken away from me.
Maybe Hermione was right. Maybe they did have a lot in common.
Harry glanced around the sitting room. “What’s today’s date?”
Draco blinked, very loudly. “What?”
Harry moved to the little side table next to the armchair, rifling through its drawer looking for his scheduling book—which he found and then began flipping through. “Ah. The 27th of August.” He snapped the book shut again, tossing it back into the drawer. “One year.”
Draco continued to boggle—then narrowed his gaze in suspicion. “…Fuck, we need to get you to St Mungo’s—what are we doing here? Come on.” He leapt to his feet, grabbing Harry roughly by the bicep and beginning to turn in place.
Harry snatched his arm from Draco’s grasp, though. “You think that once you’ve caught your breath and the excitement has died down, everything you’ve experienced these past few months will wash off and you’ll go back to being the person you were before, such that I’ll find you just as horrid now as I did back in school. Me? I think that won’t happen. So I’ll give you a year.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And we’ll come back here, next August 27th, and see if it’s true. See if you really don’t like me and never could and if the person I thought I fancied ever even existed. That way we’ll both be safe. No attachments.”
Draco recoiled, stepping around to place the armchair between them, as if he thought Harry’s ridiculousness was infectious. “Don’t be absurd. I’m not going to sit around with my thumbs up my arse waiting for you—”
“I’m not saying you should. I will—because honestly I’ve got no better prospects at the moment, and some recent incidents have gotten me curious about the concept of fingers up arses—but I’m not saying you have to. I’m just asking you to come back here, August the 27th, 2003, and tell me I was wrong. I mean, if nothing else, it ought to be worth the trip for that alone—you like telling me I was wrong about things.”
And Draco pursed his lips—but did not immediately shoot down the idea, which Harry thought was progress.
After a long beat, he said, “I don’t like Muggles.”
“…All right.”
“They’re silly at best and dangerous at worst, and nothing good has ever come from wizards fraternising with them.”
Oh, were they going to have this conversation now? Harry would have rather gone back for round two with the last one, honestly. He released a long, frustrated sigh. “Except it was a Muggleborn who rescued you from the deepest, darkest pit known to wizarding kind.”
“After another one put me there!”
“Can you blame them?” Harry said, a bit too pithily, and Draco’s face went white with rage, a vein standing out in his temple.
“Are you suggesting I deserved—”
“Fuck no, of course not.” He refused to let Draco’s anger begin building until they either or both said something they would regret. They’d come too far to undo it all in a moment of incensed emotion. “…I am suggesting, though, that hating someone only leads to more hate. Pain to more pain. It’s got to stop somewhere.” He stepped closer, keeping the back of the armchair between them as Draco treated it like a security blanket. “…I’m not saying you’ve got to become Muggle Lover #1. But maybe it doesn’t have to be your whole personality.”
Draco’s lip curled. “It’s not my whole personality.”
“Uh, it was, like, 90% of your personality at school. At school. Maybe now…” He shrugged. “You just focus on the other 10% for a while.” He forced Draco’s eyes to meet his own, instead of letting them wander the room as they were wont to do when Harry was winning an argument. “You said I don’t know you—I think you don’t know yourself. You haven’t gotten to be Draco Malfoy in four years now. You think you haven’t changed—I think you have, a bit at least. Maybe just take some time to do a little soul-searching.”
Draco sank back down into the armchair in an elegant heap. “…A year, was it?”
Harry leaned over the back, poking the little whorl on the top of Draco’s head. “…If that’s what you need.”
Draco’s shoulders relaxed, just a tic—Harry wasn’t sure what that meant. He tilted his head up, frowning at Harry. “And if I find I’m still me?”
Harry sighed, collapsing over the back of the chair. “You’ll always be you. There’s no ‘still’ about it. You’re as much you now as Malfoy was you and you at Hogwarts was you.”
“Says the man whose first words to me after my mind got unscrambled were ‘Are you you, or are you him?’”
Harry propped his head up in his palm, elbow resting along the chair back. He poked at the whorl of hair again, and this time Draco caught his finger, tightening his grip in threat. “Hallucinations, from massive blood loss. I’m feeling much better now.” Harry pulled his finger back. “I just think you’ll find there’s more sides to you than you might have thought.” He straightened. “And speaking of which…”
Draco twisted around to watch him leave the room, heading for the bedroom—and the little box he’d hidden on the top shelf of his wardrobe. He pulled the box out, setting it on his bed, and removed the lid as Draco came up behind him, craning his head to see what he was getting into.
Harry lifted the bowl ever so carefully, and held it out for Draco to take—but he recoiled, taking a step back and glaring at the thing as if it meant to do him grievous harm. “What the hell is that?”
“A Pensieve,” Harry said.
“I know a fucking Pensieve when I see one—I asked what the hell is that?” He leaned over to peek inside the box, perhaps searching for an instruction manual or gift card. “Where did you get it?”
Harry swallowed. “Malfoy Manor.”
Draco’s eyes snapped to Harry’s. “…What the hell are you doing with a Pensieve from Malfoy Manor?” Harry could see him searching, just behind those sharp grey eyes, for any recollection of having owned a Pensieve himself and coming up empty. He probably thought it belonged to his parents.
“I was collecting it to return to its owner.” He held it out to Draco again. “It’s yours.”
Draco shook his head. “I don’t own a Pensieve—that’s not mine.”
“It is. You only don’t remember it.” Harry looked down at it, admiring the simple, clean lines. It didn’t look like something Draco Malfoy would own, admittedly. “I will confess, I had a peek at the memories inside it—I thought they might help bring you back to your senses, that maybe there was something in here that might constitute a sufficient jolt your humanity would just slip right back to the forefront and everything would be set aright.”
Draco still hung back, giving Harry a healthy berth. “…And?”
Harry sighed, shaking his head. “No, not really. But they’re still your memories. You ought to at least be allowed to decide if you want them back or not.”
“Why would I want them back? Pensieves are for storing memories you’ve got—not ones you haven’t got. I’ve never owned a Pensieve in my life.”
“You did, though. Mimsy told me you asked her to hide it for you.” Draco mouthed Mimsy to himself, frowning. “And then you made it so you forgot you’d done so.”
“…Why…why would I…” And Draco’s confusion, writ keenly over his features, was stained with a hint of worry now. “Why would I do that?”
“…I don’t know,” Harry said, and it must not have been very convincingly, for Draco cut him a sharp glare.
“Bullshit you don’t know. Tell me.”
“I don’t! Genuinely, I don’t know.”
“But you think you do. You’re giving me them back now—why?”
Harry hedged. “Because—because they’re your memories. You should be in charge of your own mind—and whether that involves accepting these memories or rejecting them should be up to you too.”
Draco stared at the Pensieve for a long moment—then shook his head. “No. No, I don’t want them. Clearly I didn’t think I needed them, if I ripped them out and had a house-elf hide them from me.”
“Or,” Harry countered, wanting to ensure Draco made as informed a decision as possible, “maybe they meant so much to you, you didn’t want to risk being caught with them.”
Draco’s gaze narrowed. “Caught with them? When did I create this Pensieve?” He took a step closer, eyeing Harry suspiciously. “…Do you want me to have them back?”
“I want you to be you. Whatever version of you it is that you feel most comfortable with. If you think you shouldn’t have these memories, then that’s all right—and if you think you should have them back, then that’s all right too.”
“Even if it changes who I am?”
Harry wanted to bang his head against one of his bedposts. “I told you, you’ll always be you. There are—immutable parts of ourselves that just are. Things that are ingrained within us that split personalities and memory loss can’t change. I genuinely do not believe that these memories will change who you are.”
Draco studied Harry carefully—then drew back. “…Then I don’t want them.”
“You don’t?” Harry had to admit, he hadn’t been expecting that decision after his little speech.
Draco crossed his arms. “So you do want me to have them. Why?”
“No, just—I thought you would. Want them, I mean.” He set the Pensieve back down in its box, fidgeting with the lid. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to stand not knowing what was in them.”
“What is in them, then?”
“…I don’t want to tell you—it should be your decision.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “And so it shall be—as soon as you tell me what’s in the memories.”
Harry rolled eyes right back. “Like you said—you removed them for a reason. Telling you what’s in them before you decide if you want them or not defeats the purpose!”
“They’re my fucking memories that you spied on quite without my permission!”
“To try and help sort you out! God, I know I shouldn’t have looked! Believe me, if I could un-see what was in those memories, I would! I felt terrible watching—”
“Felt terrible watching what?” Draco rounded on him, backing Harry up against the wardrobe. “If they’re so horrible, whatever’s in those memories, I deserve to know before I inflict them upon myself. I’m gathering from context and your absurd reaction they’re from the depths of the war—did I kill someone? Did I kill someone you love?” He took a shuddering breath. “…Did I kill someone I love?”
God, Draco was going to convince himself of every horrible potentiality his vivid imagination could possibly concoct if Harry didn’t say something. He sighed, exhaling loudly. “They’re—you figuring some things out about yourself. And you didn’t really seem to like it. You might…” He grimaced. “You might be—embarrassed. Not because you ought to be, mind, but well.”
“Well?”
“…Because most people don’t like to see themselves being vulnerable. And I expect you’re no exception.”
Draco drew back, frowning at himself and blinking as he processed Harry’s words. Then he shook his head. “…No. I’m not.” He stepped away, standing in the doorway, and braced a hand on the jamb.
Harry’s lips tightened into a thin line. He shouldn’t have said anything. “…What do you want me to do with them, then? I don’t think you can actually destroy thoughts—I expect it’s why you had Mimsy hide them in the first place, so I can’t get rid of them, but…” He could put them back, he supposed, though he didn’t relish the idea of another romp through the Malfoy family mausoleum in the middle of summer.
“…I don’t care. I don’t want them, I—” He made a fist. “I don’t need them—I feel perfectly myself without them, and if they’re as horrible as you make them out to be—”
“I’m sorry, honest I am—I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just they’re private, they’re yours, and I shouldn’t have—”
But Draco was waving him off dismissively. “I don’t care. I don’t. I obviously put them away for what I’m sure were at the time sound reasons, and I’ve made it this far in life without them, so clearly they weren’t all that important in the long run.” He swallowed, throat bobbing, and ducked his head. “And you’ve seen them, so…” He leaned against the jamb. “So at least you’ll remember them. You’ll know what’s in them, in case I ever get the daft idea I want to see them.” He lifted his eyes to Harry. “…Will you hold on to them for me? Just in case.”
Harry placed the lid back on the box, then returned the Pensieve to the top shelf of his wardrobe. He settled his hand at the small of Draco’s back and guided him back into the sitting room. “Of course. That’s what saviours do.”