NOT A WORD
"You promised, remember?" Draco said.
Harry's eyes only had time to quickly glance over the room. He smiled at Draco, nodding.
Draco seemed relieved. "Stay where you are?" He asked. Harry didn't move from his place in the center of the room and Draco sighed in relief, as if he had expected Harry to run around and touch everything.
Draco was very obviously not comfortable in any place in the house. In his own home. He was tense, alert, watching for anything, as if he expected the dead houseelves to suddenly appear or Lucius Malfoy's ghost to be just around the corner. In this room tension had been built so strongly it was painful to look at him, the thin lips set sternly on his face, lines wrinkled around his eyes in seriousness.
They were in Draco's bedroom. This was where Draco had grown up.
The right part of the wall was covered in bookshelves, stuffed with tomes and volumes of reading that certainly no child could ever have the patience for. The left wall was a closet, huge, the doors broken, one almost falling off its hinges, and Harry could find no explaination for that. A bathroom, small, with a little bath Draco could no longer fit into, was in a corner, no door. There was a dresser, a full-length mirror, but the only sign that this could possibly have ever been a child's room was the small bathtub and the small bed with a black silk canopy. There was not the slightest mess, nothing out of place, nothing fun, nothing entertaining, no toys, absolutely nothing personal.
'Don't speak', Draco had warned. Harry and him had a small conversation going as they surveyed the rest of the house, looking in the kitchens, Lucius' study, the dining hall, but Draco had warned him about the bedroom. 'Do everything I tell you, but don't touch a thing, and please don't say a word.' Harry agreed, he always did when it came to Draco.
Draco's hand flitted over the shelves, touching the leather bound books, staring at the titles with nostalgia. "Father bought me these," Draco told Harry.
Keeping silence was harder than Harry thought it would be. He forced himself not to say a word, staring at the floor and moving a collection of dust with his shoe.
"Mother never bought me anything, she never wanted to have anything to do with me, or Father, she was in Germany most of the time," Draco said, "she liked it there. The operas.". He'd told Harry that before but he repeated it anyways.
He stepped into the bathroom, opening a cupboard. A half used toothpaste was inside along with a child's wand for the basic cleaning spells. Draco only glanced at the bathtub, turning his face away. "I hated this room," he said, "I always felt trapped in here, like Father would be coming inside any second."
Harry wanted to jump forward and hold him. Draco looked so morose, so saddened, and so very afraid standing there, his gaze purposely sliding over the bed to the closet. It was such a test of Harry's love for him not to move.
Draco walked to the closet, surveying the broken doors. "I used to hide in there. The houseelves didn't fix the door because Father told them not to."
Draco took Harry's hand, their fingers entwining together. "Let's sit down," Draco whispered.
Harry followed Draco as he led him to the bed. It was so small Harry was certain it had only been changed once, when it was traded for a crib. He knew this was where Draco's posture at night came from, curled up into a ball. He could almost see Draco as he looked at it, just after his growth spurt, doing his best not to fall off of the bed. Black sheets. A normal child would have cowboys or stars or snitches, but Draco's were black, black to hide what had been happening.
Draco sat Harry down on the bed, not looking at him. He sat down himself, turning pale.
Harry imagined he could feel it. The indents in the bed Lucius Malfoy had left behind. All those times he had come into his own child's bed because his wife was gone, unfaithful elsewhere in Europe. He was sick, Lucius Malfoy was the sickest person Harry could imagine.
Harry was glad he was dead.
"It looks so different, being back here after so many years." Draco said. "I never came home that summer after fifth year, Mother took me straight to the Dark Lord's fortress and I was sworn in."
Harry kept his hand wrapped in Draco's and he tried to smile at him.
Draco glanced around. He leaned his head against Harry's shoulder as if he were afraid someone would be watching him. "I used to keep things in a secret compartment on the bookshelf," Draco whispered, "a stuffed rabbit, a book of children's stories, some Muggle things I snitched when I was in the village, they might still be there."
Harry couldn't imagine a little child having to hide such normal things. He couldn't imagine Draco as a child, he'd been forced to grow up far too quickly.
Draco stood up, leaving Harry on the bed. He made his way to the bookshelf, pulling out all of the books on one of the bottom shelves. Draco, as always, was organized, he set them down exactly as they had been on the side. "Here," he mumbled, tugging at the end of the wood. There was only a centimeter between the wood and the floor but it had been enlarged to fit Draco's secret compartment.
"Haven't been here in ages," Draco repeated. They were only eighteen, it had been just under four years, but Harry could imagine how long it felt. Everything was over now, the war, their schooldays, their rivalry. They had moved on.
Draco reached down, lifting a book with solid leather binding. "Muggle fairy tales," Draco smiled, "never read Beetle the Bard." He tossed the book to Harry who caught it in midair.
Harry turned over the cover, reading the title. 'The Young Folks' Shelf of Books' it read, and he opened it to a random page. A caption, 'The Bremen Town Musicians' was on the bottom and he saw an illustration which almost made him laugh of a donkey with a dog on its heels, a cat holding its leg, and a chicken on its back. Harry skimmed over the story out of curiousity, reading it and concluding that the book he held was extremely old.
Draco, meanwhile, had pulled out several things, a ball which Harry could tell by sight would bounce, a single child's glove which had been white but was not grey with dust, a little toy that resembled a nutcracker, a porcelain dalmation artfully crafted but its nose was broken, a fake flower, and a Bertie Botts card of Merlin. They were just a tiny collection of those little things children collect and craft with their imagination. A very tiny, tiny collection.
Draco seemed to purposely hold this last item to be last to hold, like every grown person does with the favorite toy of their childhood. It was a stuffed rabbit, just like Draco had said.
It was a light brown. The stuffed rabbit was very worn, whiskers bent in numerous directions, the soft cotton-like fur scratched and ruined on its face. An eye had fallen out, half the stuffing was gone, the tail was long, malformed as if the person who had made it didn't know a rabbits tail was supposed to be a bunch. The ears dragged down, one half-ripped, threatening to come apart.
Harry could see, in his minds eye, a child, crying in pain, clutching onto the only soft thing it owned, being comforted by cotton and thread molded to look like an animal.
"I'm not very imaginative," Draco mumbled, "I called her Mrs. Rabbit."
Harry could only smile sadly.
"She got me through a lot." Draco crossed his legs, holding the stuffed animal with unheard of reverance. "I liked to talk to something, even if I didn't make since. Father barely ever let me say anything, especially to anyone else." Draco looked up questioningly at Harry. "Did I tell you he made me take an Unbreakable Vow when I was eleven, so I wouldn't tell anyone at Hogwarts?"
Harry only nodded.
Draco almost petted the stuffed rabbit on his lap but he opted instead for just looking at it. "Rabbits are harmless," Draco told Harry, "they don't do anything but sniff and eat and have thousands of little babies." He chuckled, "I've always like them, don't know why."
Harry knew why. Draco liked rabbits because of the stuffed one he was holding.
Draco stood up, coming back to Harry. He wrapped his arms around him, burying his head in Harry's hair. "Thank you for killing my father," Draco whispered. "And thank you for loving me despite it all."
"I love you," Harry said, even though he had been ordered not to say a word.
Draco smiled.