The pathways between the fields and farms of Bottlesford are winding and meandering, but Harry doesn't mind. His dragonhide boots make a pleasant slap against the tarmac of the main roads, and when he finally makes his way onto the rural pathways that are trodden in by Muggle tractors and horses' hooves, he delights in the soft squelch of mud beneath his sole. On his shoulder, he carries a light satchel, and although he wears dragonhide boots, he wears a Muggle jumper and a pair of loose trousers for the walk; in his bag, he has an appropriate change of clothes.

The sun shines. He feels the pleasant, golden heat of it on his skin, and he smiles as he looks over the fields around him, hears the birds singing in the hedgerows. A set of signposts has an extra sign that seems to radiate magic, and Harry looks at the neatly curving writing upon the wood.

MALFOY MANOR, it declares. ½ MILE. It points to a path onto private grounds, and Harry feels the magic around here too – warding magic, aimed at Muggles. Harry steps neatly over the threshold, and he begins to walk up the path. The Manor's grounds are wide-reaching and verdantly green: as he walks further, various magical flowers and plants lean toward him, and he sees blooms that tower over his head, or in their entirety are only the size of his thumbnail. Harry has always felt the Burrow was magical, in a ramshackle kind of way, but the grounds of Malfoy Manor are like that of a fairy tale.

Every wizarding home he visits is different again to 4 Privet Drive, and Harry delights in every single one of them. He wonders what his own home will be like, when he finds it. Now that Voldemort is defeated, he can think about a home that isn't Hogwarts.

What a thought.

On his left there is a large bandstand, decorated in curving metal and lattices painted white. Within, he sees the movement of many feathered creatures – doves. The more he walks, the more birds that pass him by, and none of them are like the well-fed hens Mrs Weasley keeps: the Malfoys have peacocks, grouse, pheasants. The birds seem tame and stupid, and a dove even alights on his shoulder when he stops to look back behind him.

Flowers have bloomed in his footsteps on the path. It is a simple act of magic, and it makes him smile like a loon.

"Mr Potter," says a soft voice. He turns: Narcissa Malfoy, her hands loosely clasped before her, is watching him with her head tilted slightly to the side. Her blue eyes, as ever, look sad. "You're not dressed." She seems outright horrified at his attire, staring at his trousers as if she has never seen their like: he vaguely wishes to object, and say he's at least wearing magical boots, and a magical coat.

"I brought a change of clothes," Harry says instead. These people have strange prejudices, he knows full well, and he supposes he shouldn't be surprised Mrs Malfoy finds trousers so shocking.

"Mmm," Mrs Malfoy says. He's barely ever met her before – he's come face-to-face with her once or twice in Diagon Alley, and he's seen her in Hogsmeade before, but that's all. He looks at her, with her narrow nose and golden hair, her pale beauty; she looks younger than she really is, as if she's barely passed thirty, when he knows she's into her fifties. She wears silk slippers that seem to repel the grass around her feet. "Come inside. You'll catch a chill."

"It's a lovely day," Harry says, but he follows her on the wake of his own objection. Mrs Malfoy wears robes of a mercury blue that shimmer in the light, the epitome of Pureblood grace. Harry's never seen a woman like her. Mrs Malfoy leads him inside, and she points him towards a "washroom" – he changes into his robes, and he looks at himself in the mirror.

His scar has darkened in colour, he thinks, since his fight with Voldemort at the end of the year. Instead of the soft pink he has always known it as, it is now a darkened, shiny red, the twists of scar tissue looking like tree roots across a good third of his forehead. It's impossible to hide even now, when Voldemort lies in a graveyard somewhere in Essex, Dumbledore had said.

Dumbledore had buried the body of Tom Riddle as he might have buried a son: he had asked if Harry would come to the funeral. Harry had refused.

Placing his hands upon the ceramic of the sink, Harry feels the cool whiteness beneath his palms. He meets his own gaze in the mirror. His eyes look tired, but he feels well-rested – perhaps they point to a deeper thing. Hermione's always saying stuff like that, isn't she?

It is the seventh of June, 1997, and next year, Harry will return to his last year at Hogwarts knowing that Voldemort is dead and gone, and that he is free, that the wizarding world is safe. He sees his reflection's lips quirk into a smile. Harry Potter is free.

Shouldering his bag once more, he leaves the bathroom. The entrance hall of Malfoy Manor is very grand, and Mrs Malfoy is nowhere to be seen: Mr Malfoy comes down the stairs with an artful, completely unconscious grace. Harry watches the way he walks down the stairs, his robe skirt bobbing around his ankles and revealing the silver broguing on his shoes. His long hair is tied back from his face in a tight braid, but one or two strands escape from the hairstyle, and it seems to Harry like he might have been exercising: there is a healthy glow to his pale features, and a slight sheen to his skin.

"My apologies," Malfoy says quietly, offering Harry a warm smile as he extends his hand. "Mr Weasley informed me you were to walk in from the village, but I might have met you, had you wished." Malfoy has a strong handshake: although his face has a sheen of sweat, his hands are completely dry. They are not as soft as Harry had expected: Mr Weasley always makes Malfoy sound like a very pampered aristocrat, but he has calloused hands and hard palms. Harry does too. He can respect that in a man.

"You didn't have to do that, Mr Malfoy," Harry says. "I like the walk – I grew up in a horrible town in Surrey, with barely any proper nature: just gardens that had been pruned into submission."

"It is an awful thing to overprune a garden," Malfoy says seriously, as if he is condemning a horrible crime. His gaze is intent. Mrs Malfoy has eyes like the ocean, a dark, wide-reaching blue; Mr Malfoy's eyes are the colour of ice. Harry wonders what that says about them. "Come, let us to my study."

As they ascend the stairs together, Harry thinks of Voldemort's body, falling slowly to the ground. He had looked so small, hit by his own reflected Killing Curse, and lying so very still, his red eyes staring outwards. Harry had crouched beside him, touched his cold, inhuman wrist and felt for a non-existent pulse.

Albus Dumbledore probably had the funeral for him alone. Harry wishes he had gone.

"Come, come." Lucius Malfoy's study is a cosy room with books on every side, and a wide, mahogany desk. There is a fireplace to the side of the room, which is currently unlit, and above the mantelpiece there is a great portrait of a man with black eyes and a square nose. He has silvery hair like Malfoy's, and he is focused on a leather-bound book in his hands: the brass plate beneath the painting's gilded frames declares him to be Aodh Malfoy. Spelling open the window on the other side of the room and letting a pleasant, summer breeze come into the room, Lucius gestures for Harry to take a seat in one of the two leather chairs beside the fireplace. "We have been making elderflower cordial from our gardens," Malfoy says quietly, taking a jug from the windowsill and pouring a clear liquid into a glass for Harry. It has a slightly golden tinge to it, and he cannot remember what elderflowers look like, but his NEWT revision echoes in the back of his head that they can be used in calming draughts and sleeping potions.

He takes a sip. The floral elements dance upon his tongue, mixed with lemon and sweetness, and he sighs softly. The Weasleys have always made it sound like the Malfoys are catered to by an army of servants, and Harry wonders who Malfoy means by "we".

Malfoy sinks into the chair across from him, setting his own glass upon a coaster that hovers some inches to his left, and he looks seriously at Harry. A ghost of a smile is on Malfoy's face, and he leans back in his seat, his chin upon his hand.

"You have no idea what you have brought us all, Mr Potter," Malfoy says quietly. "With the Dark Lord's return, in its beginnings, when I first heard of his possession of Quirinus Quirrell… The fear I felt was indescribable. You have released us all from such fear."

"It wasn't just me," Harry murmurs, a little uncomfortable. "Most of it was Albus Dumbledore's work, Mr Malfoy. It was just in the prophecy that I had to face Voldemort—" Malfoy's flinch is carefully hidden, but Harry still catches it, "—and he was absolutely mad, at the end. He was irrational, and didn't know what he was doing, almost. With so few followers left to him, he had nothing."

Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater in the First War. Harry knows that: Mr Malfoy admitted it to Harry himself when they first met, in Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts. Lord Voldemort had returned, using the body of his servant, Bartemius Crouch, in some dark ritual.

"My name is Lucius Malfoy, young man," he had said softly. "I followed Lord Voldemort once." Harry had thought of the shade in the back of Quirrell's head, at the monstrosity of it all – this almost-immortal creature of a man, this lich.

"Bit of a tosser, weren't you?" Harry had said, expecting rage. Lucius Malfoy had looked at him with his icy eyes soft with a sense of tragedy, and in that moment Harry had felt nothing except an emotion he could never describe himself, until he saw it in a book. A profound melancholy.

"I was foolish," Malfoy had whispered. "So foolish." Malfoy, Harry had learned, had revealed many of the existing Death Eaters to the Auror force through the Order of the Phoenix, meaning that they were arrested before they could ever return to Voldemort's side, and Dumbledore had implied Malfoy had helped in removing Voldemort's immortality, too. Perhaps that's why Harry's here. Perhaps he wants to know the ins and outs.

He doesn't. Not really.

Malfoy had invited him: that's why he's here.

"You faced him, Mr Potter, upon the duelling ground. He even killed you, did he not? You each fell dead upon the ground: it is merely that you stood again, and he lay still." Relief seems to shine out of Malfoy's every feature, and Harry doesn't know what to say in response: so few people realized Voldemort had returned, after all. Nobody thinks of him as a hero. Everything is so quiet.

"I don't know anyone that talks like you," Harry says. Malfoy stares at Harry, his lips parting in surprise.

"Do you not?"

"It's not horrible or anything," Harry murmurs. "It's just very different. Very classical, I guess – I've been reading some novels from the 1800s as part of my History course. You talk like that." It's true, too: there's something classical in the way Malfoy phrases himself, the very height of 19th century gentility. It doesn't seem like this is something Malfoy has ever considered, and he seems surprised at the prospect. "You called me here to talk about something."

"I wished to thank you," Malfoy murmurs. "For your service – to us all, even if the world at large knows not. And—" Malfoy pauses. Hesitates. "I—" A knock on his ajar study door distracts him. "Yes?"

In the doorway stands a boy. The boy is maybe Harry's age or older, with hair the same silvery colour as Mr Malfoy's that is coiffed back from his head. The hair might be similar, but he mostly looks like Mrs Malfoy: he has a thin nose and a pointed chin, his features symmetrical but more pretty than handsome. His eyes are an icy grey, and he has golden eyelashes that catch the light.

Dressed in a loose under robe that is made for exercise, the boy is wiping his hands with a kerchief: he glances curiously at Harry before looking to Mr Malfoy. "Mr Llewellyn sent a letter back." Mr Malfoy leans forwards in his seat, craning his neck.

"And his response?"

"Well, he said no," the boy says, shrugging his shoulders. "He seemed to feel he needed to reiterate his point several times, and implied it was a great insult that I dared even apply." The boy curls his lip, and seems like he wishes to spit.

"My name—"

"Is nothing more than a threat," the boy interrupts cleanly, before Mr Malfoy can continue. "I hardly wish these people to stand my company upon pain of death, or even upon pain of Ministry inconvenience. I'm going for a walk." The boy leaves, and Malfoy leans back in his seat, taking a long drink from his glass of cordial.

"I didn't know you had a son," Harry murmurs after he feels the silence has gone on long enough.

"No," Malfoy replies. He traces the crystalline base of the glass with his thumbnail, idly. "He did not attend Hogwarts."

"Beauxbatons?"

"No."

"Not Durmstrang?"

"No."

"Ah," Harry says. "My old childminder was a Squib." Malfoy looks at Harry cautiously, as if he doesn't know where precisely where is leading. "She was a nice woman. Bred Kneazles."

"Weren't you raised by Muggles?" Malfoy says the word "Muggle" as if he is mentioning the unutterable, and Harry wishes he could laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Malfoy betrayed Lord Voldemort, after all, and yet he seems to hold every prejudice he had as a Death Eater, even now. Except the anti-Squib sentiment, anyway.

"That's right," Harry says. "But they didn't know she was magical – they just thought she was a bit bizarre."

"Squibs aren't magical," Malfoy says. It looks like it pains him to say it, and Harry wonders if this is really why he did it all, why he betrayed the other Death Eaters, why he helped Dumbledore, why he talks with Arthur Weasley almost civilly if it's about Harry himself. All because of his son, a Squib.

"'Course they are," Harry replies. "You don't have to do magic to be magic, do you? Just look at a Swedish Short Snout." Malfoy laughs. The sound rings through the room like the peal of a church bell, striking Harry right in his chest.

"I never thought about it from that particularly perspective." They speak for another forty minutes – about the Wizarding War, and about how Voldemort drew up his power in the beginning. Mr Malfoy doesn't outline his own reasons for joining Voldemort, and Harry doesn't press him. He is grateful, despite Mr Malfoy's sins, for what the other man has done.

"Thank you for coming," he says as he walks Harry out into the grounds. "You had no obligation."

"No," Harry agrees. "But I wanted to."

"Are you returning to your Muggle relatives this summer?" Again, he spits the word. If the Muggles in question weren't the Dursleys, perhaps Harry would argue with him.

"No, no. With the threat over, there's no need. I'm living with Sirius now, down in London," Harry answers. When Harry was twelve, Remus – an old friend of his father's – had visited him at the Weasley Burrow. He had recognized Ron's rat as a man he'd thought was dead, Scabbers, and Harry's godfather had been released from Azkaban before the day was out. Driven half-mad by the Dementors, he had spent many months on one of the mental wards in St Mungo's, but these days he seems almost sane.

Almost, Harry thinks to himself, and has to suppress a grin. Sirius is reckless, and excitable, and everything one could want in a godfather. He is nothing like the Dursleys, and Harry couldn't be more grateful to have him.

"You must join us for a meal some evening," Mr Malfoy says. "Narcissa, Draco and I would be so very glad to have you."

"I'll let you know when I'm free," Harry says. Mr Malfoy steps away from the path, going through the archway and into the aviary Harry had noticed on the way in: Harry keeps walking down the path, until he is once again in Bottlesford proper. He wants to walk for a while longer before he Apparates home, anyway: the scent of summer is on the air, and in the hedgerows Harry can see green blackberries, ready to ripen in the summer sun.

"Harry Potter, isn't it?" The boy is suddenly beside him, his steps synchronized with Harry's own.

"You move very quietly," Harry says, but he offers his hand to shake nonetheless. Malfoy Junior doesn't have the workman's hands of his father: he has muscled fingers, but his skin is very soft. Harry bets he uses his mother's moisturizing balm. "What's your name?"

"Draco," the boy says. He says nothing else. For minutes on end, they walk in silence in the middle of the country road, their steps synchronized, their gazes forwards. For some reason, the silence between them is companionable rather than awkward. Harry takes a glance to his right, watching the other boy – Draco – for a long few moments. "Have you considered what position you might pursue in this wide world, once you're finished with school? Father tells me the Auror office is keen to adopt you as one of their own."

"You talk like him," Harry says. "Do you know that?"

"I do," Draco says. "It would be rather odd if I didn't, don't you think?" Harry looks out over the wheat fields that stretch out across the green land of Bottlesford. It's such a strangely pedestrian name, he thinks, to host such a manor as that of the Malfoys.

"I don't want to be an Auror," he murmurs quietly. "I don't know. I never really wanted to fight. What are you going to do?" Draco frowns at him, furrows his brows, which are a silvery-white, paler even than his pale hair.

"Do? You do understand the situation, don't you? I'm a Squib."

"I don't understand, I guess," Harry says, feeling himself frown. His brows furrow, and he narrows his eyes at Draco Malfoy as he stares at him through the lenses of his glasses – he knows life can't be easy for Squibs, but what is Malfoy Junior supposed to do? Absolutely nothing until the end of his life? How could someone be satisfied with a life like that? "Don't you want to do something?"

"My father never mentioned you were an idiot, Potter." Draco steps away from him, gracefully taking two steps onto a style and slipping down into the next field, where the wheat is high and golden in the summer light. It's nearly up to the other man's hip, but he doesn't seem to care: he walks on.

Staring after him, Harry finds his gaze dropping to the other boy's shoulders, which seem to ripple with muscle under the fabric of his robes, and the way his hair curls at the nape of his neck.

His mouth dry, Harry turns on his heel, and Apparates away.