Summary: Harry was at a loss, but it wasn't as though he could let it show. That wasn't what a Saviour did, after all. But loss entailed the need for direction. When a helping hand was offered, pointing him in just one such direction he clutched it like a drowning man. It wasn't a path he'd expected to be set upon, nor one he understood, but what more could he do?

Two years later after the war, and Draco Malfoy is relieved of his sentence. But doing his time is only half the battle. When tossed his own rope, an offering dangled from an unexpected direction, Draco takes it as the only option rationally viable. He hadn't anticipated who he'd meet on the other end of that rope, however, and that - that changed things. Especially when it was Harry Potter.

They always did have a way of bumping into one another. Fate, as it were, seemed intent upon ensuring that, if nothing else.

Rating: M

Tags: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy; Post-Canon Era; Not Epilogue Complaint; Post-War; Long Fic; Slow Burn; Moving on; Modelling; Photography; Probably a bit of OOC-ness; Eventual Explicit Content; Sexual References; Implied Dubious Consent; References to Drug Use; The Dark Side of the Industry

Chapter 1

The room was unremarkable. Once, Harry supposed that 'unremarkable' would have had him shifting uncomfortably in his skin, shuffling his feet and perching on the very edge of his seat for fear of somehow dirtying the fabric beneath him. Everything about such rooms, from the sleek lines of the mantelpiece, the crackling fire in the grate, the deceptively comfortable couches, and even the intricate rug that seemed to all but swallow up his shoes with its lushness – all of it was extravagant.

Harry wasn't used to extravagance. He'd lived without for most of his life, with even Hogwarts' particular brand of grandeur being distinctly less confronting. Such rooms, though - they were a little breath-taking, a little overwhelming. He didn't think he particularly liked it. Not at all. It made him feel somehow... small.

At that moment, however, the refinement of the room barely registered to him. It was a little difficult to maintain such awe when, for the past months, Harry had felt as though he were simply rolling from one such room to the next. Even the position of the glass cup on the heavy wooden table before him, the surface polished to a shine, was almost identical to the last. He settled back in the comfortable couch – the fabric was red this time, and distinctly reminiscent of Gryffindor colours as so much of the upholstery in those rooms seemed to be – and with blank detachedness watched the chaos that swirled around the room.

There were cameramen. There were directors, with headgear hooked into their ears that were reminiscent but not identical to their Muggle counterparts. There were attendants aplenty - a woman with a clipboard, waving a pen as she strode across the room, a man adjusting the umbrella-shaped stand that would glare a fierce light in Harry's direction when the time was right. Another fiddled with a tripod, adjusting nobs with a frown upon his face, and everywhere, everywhere, people hastened as though they were running late. As though every second was precious and they were already pressed for time.

Elbow propped onto the arm of the couch, his chin atop his palm, Harry watched. He observed it all as he had countless times before, and he couldn't help but wonder. So much fuss. So much fuss and bother, and for what? To hear his story? To ask questions of him as so may reporters and interviewers had before only with words slightly different and biases slightly more skewed? It was all terribly tedious. Without the discomfort of nervousness and unfamiliarity that had managed to fade over time, Harry was growing sorely tired of the proceedings.

He was watching without really seeing as a middle aged woman with frazzled curls scolded another that had to be half her age when a throat cleared at his side. Blinking, Harry straightened slightly and glanced over his shoulder.

A woman stood behind the couch, her hand resting casually on the headrest. Her nails were perfectly manicured, but subtly so, almost as though it were happenstance that found her fingers so perfectly adorned. Not so subtle was her beaming smile, the unfurling of her wide lips, and the brightness of her eyes that Harry had seen so many times before.

Lifting one perfectly groomed hand, the woman fluttered her fingers in a wave. "Hello, Mr. Potter. You're in the studio a little early."

Harry recognised her. He knew her smile – that smile of lips just a little too wide to be classically attractive – and he knew the arch of her eyebrows, too unmoving to be anything but pencilled on, if professionally so. He even recognised the customary linked chain that fell down the neck of her blouse to hang near her navel, the little frame of a caged bluebird pendant at the very bottom. Harry had learnt that reporters often clung to a particular style, to a noticeable feature, to a specific manner of presenting themselves, even, to make themselves more memorable. This was simply Gertrude Hitchcock's version.

Nodding, offering a small smile in return, Harry lifted his chin from his hand turned in his seat towards her. "Yeah, well, I've never really enjoyed waiting in the dressing rooms. I guess you could say I'm not a particularly patient person for this kind of thing."

Gertrude laughed, a low, musical sound that seemed about as sincere yet masterfully concealed as her eyebrows. Skirting Harry's chair, she paused at his side and spared a glance to the frenzy raging throughout the better half of the room. "It's always a bit of a production, isn't it?" she said conversationally.

Harry shrugged. "I suppose. I don't know all that much about the process, but I reckon it'd have to be pretty crazy trying to sort it all out."

"Oh, undoubtedly," Gertrude said, beaming down at Harry once more. "I'm never so happy to be one of the leading stars of the show as when I have to watch others at work."

Harry offered her another tokenistic smile in return. This kind of small talk - he hated it. He'd always hated it, had never seen the need for speaking when there was nothing important or enjoyment to talk about, and that dislike hadn't faded over time as he'd become desensitised to the rest of the frivolous proceedings. If anything, he thought his distaste had grown with frequent exposure. The only difference was that he was more adept at reciprocating in kind.

Harry had become rather practiced at pretending. He'd had never been able to do that, once. Not before... everything. The war had brought with it changes in ways Harry hadn't even known existed.

"I feel almost guilty, making such a huge job for them all," he said with a little laugh of his own. He knew it sounded sufficiently amused; not overly so, but enough. He'd had enough practice with that of late, too.

"Oh, never you mind that," Gertrude said. "You'll earn your keep soon enough. In fact," raising a hand, she jangled the collection of bangles adorning her arm until she flicked one around to reveal a watch face. "We have about ten more minutes by my count."

"I'm looking forward to it."

"As am I!"

She was too enthusiastic, but Harry supposed that was only to be expected. The reporters and interviewers were all the same; they tried to make nice, to be friendly, and all in the name of slipping under Harry's skin when the time was ripe in an attempt to drag forth the tantalising little bits of information that he hadn't revealed yet "surely kept personal and out of the public eye", if the papers and wealth of magazine articles were to be believed. He was used to it. He'd fallen prey to them too many times, had slipped up unwittingly, to not keep a close watch on his tongue. He was –

"I don't suppose you'd mind if I sit down, would you?"

Snapping his attention back to the moment, Harry stared up at Gertrude's bright face for a moment. he didn't really want or need her company, but he shrugged anyway. "Be my guest. This show is more yours than it is mine."

"Of course," Gertrude said with another chuckle, stepping towards and sinking into the seat opposite Harry's. "But you're the guest, and an honoured one at that. You're the linchpin."

Her smile when she settled herself, crossing her legs and regarding him with a slight tilt of her head, demanded a reply in kind. Harry pasted his own upon his face accordingly before drawing his gaze back towards the backstage workers. The man with the light had decided to readjust the height of the umbrella structure just a little, which was interesting only insofar as it was something to look at.

"You don't like that, do you?"

Harry glanced back towards Gertrude obligingly. "What?"

Surprisingly, her smile had faded slightly. It was still there, but it was edged with a strangely conspiratorial touch. Her leg jiggled a little as she considered him. "I've watched and read all of your interviews, you know," she said. "There's a bit of a common theme between them, or so I've found."

Adopting his own degree of casualness, Harry mirrored her crossed legs. "You've done your research, then?"

"Only as every self-respecting interviewer would – although I daresay there's barely a witch or wizard in all of Britain who can claim they don't keep up with each and every one of your new stories.

Smothering the urge to pull a face, Harry shrugged again. "I'm flattered."

"No," Gertrude said. "You're not."

Her leg stilled from its jiggling, and Harry felt himself freeze along with it. As Gertrude stared at him, her gaze intent and abruptly absent of the bright bubbliness that Harry had beheld from so many interviewers, he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

Oh. So this woman isn't one of the stupid ones.

He didn't let the thought show, let alone slip through his lips. Maintaining his smile, Harry tipped his own head to mirror Gertrude's considering tilt. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," Gertrude said slowly, her voice lowering with an intimacy suggestive of privacy rather than an audience barely a handful of steps away, "that I've watched you, Mr. Potter. I think I understand you just a little better than most."

"Please, call me Harry," Harry said, trying and failing to smoother his discomfort.

Gertrude nodded. "Alright then, Harry. Am I wrong?"

Harry knew the techniques. He knew the prodding questions and had learnt how to peer beneath their superficiality to spy the booby traps hidden beneath, planted to trip his tongue into revealing more of himself than he'd ever wanted to share. He knew the habit of maintaining eye contact, of an unwavering smile, of body language – leaning forwards, copying gestures, the deliberate twitch of facial features – and he'd come to recognise more than a few in an instant of their flickering existence. It was necessary, just as it was necessary to dodge around the silent questions as often as the blatant ones.

Harry couldn't afford another incident. Not like those that had come before it. The explosion that had erupted after he'd accidentally let slip that he wouldn't be returning to Hogwarts was one such instance that still resurfaced almost every interview, despite the school year already beginning once more. "What will this mean for the Wizarding world, for the education system, for his comrades-of-war that will be attending without him?" The headlines had been in bold and screaming for attention - though his or the rest of the world's, Harry wasn't quite sure. Maybe both.

But that wasn't as bad as the disaster that arose when the prying attempts of an interviewer had discovered that he and Ginny were no longer dating. "We're still definitely friends, and maybe we could have been something more if we'd tried, but… we're headed in different directions. And Ginny has a career ahead of her, so –"

More explosions. More exclamations. More headlines printed in bold capitalisation. Ginny received Howler after Howler, accusing her of 'driving Harry away', the papers were rife with accusations that she was 'putting her love life on the line for her career' and demanding to know 'how could she do this to the Saviour Harry Potter?' It was as though his words had been spoken in misery and regret rather than tinged with the fondness that was the truth of their persisting friendship.

The explosion when he'd slipped up about his death. The calamity about the accidental revelation of Voldemort's Horcruxes. About reconsidering joining the Aurors, or hunting down any remaining Death Eaters, or joining the Ministry as the representative of the people that he already was.

Harry had learnt from experience. He'd learnt that it was necessary to dance and dodge his way through every interview, every attack from the paparazzi with their vehement questions flung his way. He'd learnt to keep an eye on any public room he attended, to be wary of eavesdroppers, because more than one story had been snatched unwittingly from him for such carelessness.

Harry had learnt. In barely five months, he'd learnt of a whole new world he hadn't known existed, let alone considered himself to be a part of. Interviewers like Gertrude were just one more player in the elaborate stage show.

Or, as it happened, not exactly like Gertrude. She seemed just a little atypical in her approach. Her prying was… different.

With her wide lips and intent stare, Gertrude was harder to read than most. Harry didn't consider himself an expert, but following exposure to rigorous interviewing, being chased by paparazzi, and abusing his skills of Apparition until he thought he'd be able to do it in his sleep, he thought he'd grown accomplished.

Gertrude, though – she was an expert. Clearly.

"I suppose you're right," Harry finally replied with a rueful little laugh. Feigned, because he could manage that, knew when to use it, why to use it, how useful it was to laugh when he didn't particularly want to. His voice dropped a little so that it was nearly lost beneath the barking commands of the stage directors, the shouts of the cameramen, the buzzing exchanges of the attendants. "I'm not really partial to flattery."

"Or to being treated like an honoured guest," Gertrude said, nodding knowingly. Her smile shifted distinctly in a way that Harry couldn't quite pinpoint the meaning of, and when she leant forwards in her seat, her intensity felt just a little different to what Harry was used to too. No flamboyance. No flirtatiousness. No effort to appear open and friendly. If anything, the gesture seemed somehow…

Conspiratorial. Just like Gertrude's smile.

"I've been watching you," Gertrude said once more. "And trust me, I mean in less of a stalking and more of an intensely curious manner."

"Aren't they practically the same thing?" Harry asked. He fought the urge to shift in his seat, a telling sign of his own discomfort.

"Not in the least," Gertrude said, shaking her head. "In more of a, ah… beneficial way."

"Beneficial?"

"Exactly."

"Beneficial to who?"

That smile, knowing and speaking a thousand silent words, widened further. "You're not nearly as oblivious as many of the gossip magazines would have the world believe."

Harry couldn't help but sink backwards a little into his seat. He abruptly wished that he weren't quite so far away from the crewmen. "Thank you?" he said warily.

"You're welcome. I've thought as much for some time, now. Do you know what else I've realised?"

I don't want to know, but I bet you'll tell me. It was a sincere struggle to withhold from sinking further into his seat. A flicker of something that felt almost like anger sparked within Harry, but it died just as quickly beneath the familiar weight of resignation. Weeks of interviews and the weariness of constant attentiveness and attention in return had long ago frazzled Harry's nerves in a remarkably different manner to how they'd been in the war. To use anger as a shield, or even as a weapon, was nigh impossible to manage.

"What's that?" he said flatly instead.

Gertrude waited a beat. Both elbow's propped upon the arms of her chair, she delicately steepled her fingers. "I've realised that you're a little lost, aren't you, Harry?"

Had Harry not been frozen before, he would have stilled into the semblance of a statue. As it was, he found himself almost unable to breathe. He wanted to dart a glance towards the crewman, towards one of the directors, one of his managers, who could surely diffuse the unexpected confrontation with a woman who seemed nothing if not a shark on the prowl, trailing a bloody scent. But he couldn't. He couldn't look away from Gertrude's dark, intelligent eyes.

She was perceptive, that much was apparent. It always stung a little to have the truth so blatantly and unexpectedly exposed.

Swallowing was a struggle and didn't quite manage to clear Harry's throat for his reply. "I'm not quite sure what you mean."

"Aren't you?" Gertrude's voice was a comfortable hum. "You mean that you don't feel like a dingy that has been cut loose from a pier?"

"I…" Yes.

"You don't feel as though you have no direction? As though you don't know what to do with yourself at the end of it all?"

"What do you...?" I don't. I don't have any bloody idea.

"You doesn't feel like you're a little like a paper boat sailing down a river, just one splash away from sinking beneath the waves?"

Harry swallowed again. The buzz of voices hummed in his ears, a hitched clatter of noise that suggested shooting was minutes away, but he couldn't tear himself away from Gertrude's stare. He could barely blink himself. Facing a Death Eater was one thing, and it was terrifying. Facing Voldemort was another entirely, and that had been a whole new level of terror. The deaths of the war had been fear-inducing for different reasons, and the chaos that had gripped the Wizarding world before Kingsley Shacklebolt became the new Minister for Magic was overwhelming, and stressful, and dizzying. The interviews, the paparazzi, the questions and praise and congratulations…

Each were a different level of terror, but none were quite the same as how Harry felt in the face of the truth that Gertrude presented. Not how he felt when he was…

Lost.

After all, what was the purpose of a Saviour after the world had already been saved?

With a struggle, Harry dropped his gaze to where he hadn't even realised his hands clutched one another. His knuckles had turned white, fingers shaking slightly, and no amount of mental scolding seemed capable of making them stop. "I…" he attempted.

"You don't have to explain your," Gertrude said. She straightened, lowering her own hands to her lap, but only leant forwards in her seat rather than sinking further away. "I can see it. Would it surprise you to know that I was once lost and drifting myself? It's probably of a different lost, as every instance is, but I like to think it's a little the same."

Her smile softened slightly, pleasantly, but it didm't quite dampen the predatory undertones. Not that Harry could look away. He was a rabbit hypnotised by a snake.

"Would you like me to help you?" Gertrude said, her voice lowering even further, almost lost between the shout of "we're set to go!". "Would you like me to show you how to find yourself?"

Harry couldn't move. He couldn't find his voice to reply - not as Gertrude stared at him, and not even when the majority of the lights in the room abruptly dimmed. He stared at her through the ensuing spotlight brightness fixed upon them both, and she stared at him in return, smile small again and waiting.

"I…" he attempted again.

"Camera's on you, Gertrude, in ten… nine…"

The director's voice snagged his attention in the direction of the blinding light , but only for a second. Only for a beat of murmured crewman and fastening attention before the gentle touch of a hand upon his arm drew it back to Gertrude. She tipped her head again, and when she spoke it was in barely a murmur.

"You've got potential, Harry, and not just as the Saviour of our world. Would you like me to show it to you?"

Harry didn't get a chance to reply. He barely had the opportunity to relocate his voice when the lights flared slightly brighter still and Gertrude was turning towards the camera with her beaming smile reaffixed. But despite that, and despite the predatory attention that Gertrude turned upon him throughout the entire interview and then afterwards, he found himself fastened by her words and unable to banish the possibility they presented to him.

Would you like me to show it to you?

Yes. He would. Harry thought he'd like that very much.

A/N: First chapter of a new fic! As daunting and undermining of self-confidence as ever!
Thanks for giving it a shot, and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a review if you have the chance. I have no shame in admitting that I thrive on reviews. No shame at all.