The Door. The Eyes.
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Note: I sort of blended the books and the movies in this story, to give an approximate experience of what Draco might have gone through with Voldemort living in his house. I think the visuals from the movie were stunning, but of course, everything comes back to the books.
As always, the world and the characters are J.K. Rowlings. I'm not getting paid.
Part I. What Happens During.
It's Draco's job to take the prisoner's their food. Normally it would be the house elf's job, but because Draco failed in his last job, killing Dumbledore, he's been getting menial tasks every once in a while when The Dark Lord decides it would be a good idea to remind Draco of his place and his decisions and harden him up a little bit. The Dark Lord is everywhere, in everything. The walls shake with him, the beds ooze with him.
Draco doesn't feel hardened up at all. He feels like vapor inside. Sometimes The Dark Lord looks into his mind and Draco's sure that all he sees in there is a chasm, a puddle of urine, a scuttle of small feet in the dark, around a corner.
He finds himself down a stairwell. The light is faint and he has a flash of running through this corridor when he was younger. The door in front of him had been open then. He'd been playing hide and seek with Goyle. There were no smells, then.
When he looks up from the bowls in his hands through the bars he sees the biggest eyes he's ever seen.
"Hello. Are those for us?" the eyes and the mouth attached to the face says.
He looks away quickly. Don't look in anyone's eyes if you can help it, but keep your back straight and your chin up. These are physical things that can be manipulated and don't have to be felt.
"Do your customs not include greetings?" the voice is high and wispy.
He puts the bowls on the floor, in reach, and he leaves.
The next day he brings food again. Same stairwell. They are very steep and he has to manage them carefully, one step at a time, because once, a long time ago, he tripped and the food went everywhere. That was not a good day. The Dark Lord was Not Pleased. He Should Be Pleased.
The eyes watch him so closely.
"Thank you, Draco," the voice says.
He almost looks up, but doesn't.
For several days, the voice says, "Thank you, Draco."
One day the voice doesn't say anything at all. Draco looks up but the face accepting the food is the old man who can barely walk any more.
Draco frowns.
The Dark Lord has been screaming and rampaging. He has been quiet. His eyes are red are red are red. So red. Have to look into those eyes. The Dark Lord brings one finger to Draco's skin, drawing it against his cheek. Foul breath almost sweet. Think not of "I" or of "he," but of chasm, of wisp, of empty. Of empty. Just think of empty.
There is no one here but The Dark Lord and the chasm next to him. That is all.
Down the stairwell the bowls are given to the eyes and the face and the wispy voice. The wispy voice is less cheerful, less clear, today. It says, "Oh Draco. Oh Draco. What happened?"
Shaking of the head—spine straight, chin up—eyes down. Set the bowls on the floor.
The voice says, "Thank you, Draco."
The Crazy One has been pacing the floor. It's best to stay out of her way, because sometimes she practices curses. She and the others have been going on raids and sprees, and the smell of avada kadavra is on her all the time, hanging like mist.
Down the stairwell. So careful. Balance the bowls. The voice says, "Draco, this will not go on forever. Harry will come for us." It sounds so positive, it lilts up at the end, and has a firm beat, a firm heartbeat in the middle.
The jaw clenches a little. Maybe. For the world, Harry will come for the world to make things right, and surely those behind the door. Maybe he will come for those in front of the door, too though, and maybe things will be right for m-
And then a new voice, a deeper voice, a young male voice, "Luna's right. Harry will come for us."
It is clear. Harry will not come for everyone. Just the ones behind the door.
The Dark Lord searches for Harry Potter, too. The Dark Lord is away sometimes, and those times are quiet times, times when The Mother and The Father and the chasm can sit in one room, in the furthest corner of the house, for long stretches of time.
During one of those times the three wanderers are brought in. The Crazy One asks for identification. But what are eyes and face and nose—what do they mean anymore. Only red eyes mean Dark Lord. Only no nose means Dark Lord.
If it is Harry Potter, he will only take away the ones behind the door. This wanderer looks like he cannot even take himself away. Anyone who comes to this place is trapped. Behind doors, in front of doors, in the red eyes, always. In the red eyes.
Hopefully it is not Harry Potter. Hopefully Harry Potter stays far away from this place.
The Mother screams. The Father screams. The Crazy One screams.
Screams echo up from the chasm, too, but no one hears them, because it is such a long way down.
If Harry Potter hadn't come to this place, no one would be screaming.
The Mother and the Father bring the chasm to the hill overlooking the caster. Two figures slide up next to him—the fat one and the skinny one. The friends. The ones he played hide and seek with. The Crabbe. The Goyle.
The army is directed to beat down the Castle's protections. They do.
The Father tells him to get lost in the maze of dungeons of the castle, to look for stragglers.
The chasm sees bodies rushing, rushing through the school, fighting. At first they all seemed to be headed towards one place—the seventh floor—but now they are just fighting.
Harry Potter is spotted. It's definitely Harry Potter, now. The mistake won't be made again. The Dark Lord Was Displeased that the mistake was made in the first place. The scar should have given it away the first time. No body else has that scar, contorted face or not. Red Eyes Means Dark Lord. Red Scar Means Harry Potter. Night and Day.
Harry Potter took only the ones behind the door.
Harry Potter dashes through the school, shouting at people, seeming to not know where he's going. And then he does know where he's going.
The Room of Requirement is just as it was left. So many things forgotten. So big. So cavernous, yawning, huge.
Harry Potter is not being quiet, like he should. The Crabbe points in the direction of the ruckus. Harry Potter is flinging things, climbing up on tables, and then he gives a loud shout before falling silent.
The Goyle says, quiet, in the ear, "now."
"Harry Potter!" is shouted, and then Harry Potter is pursued. There are three of them—all the wanderers—who come from nowhere, and The Crabbe does something with his wand and then everything is hot and angry. Immediately all thought of pursuit vanishes. Up up up, that's all that matters. The chasm finds a stairway by way of a pile of desks and chairs and clambers up.
There is a woosh above, ahead. One, two, three. Three brooms. The wanderers. Gone, of course.
The pile of refuse is high but not high enough, the flames crawl up and up, in the shape of dragons and horses and an iguana, actually, on the left. It's a relief to not face The Dark Lord like this, but now that it's come to it the chasm is smaller than it thought, is tighter and hotter than it thought. In the manor the chasm was a deep deep nothing, but now it is running out of space and air. The chasm closes its eyes.
"Hey, Malfoy!" The Wanderer is back, Potter is back, Harry is hovering above the Iguana, the Iguana which is raising up on its haunches, ready to swipe, but Potter is out of reach, just barely, and has his hand outstretched.
So he reaches out and grabs Potter's hand. He sees Goyle on Weasly's broom. He holds onto Potter's torso, the firm, living, breathing weight of it, the determined space of it. The aliveness of it. They swerve the fire dragon, duck under the fire bird, they speed up to avoid the arch of what looks like pure lava that spouts from the floor. And then the door is opening the door is opening the door is opening, and he and Potter are tumbling down onto the cold flagstones, Weasly is coughing, Granger is shutting the door, and Potter is slamming what looks like a giant fang into a sparkly tiara, which screams and writhes and turns black.
The trio doesn't even spare him a second glance. They put their heads together over the smoking crown, too intent on whatever they're doing to even think about him. He guesses he didn't expect them to, because it's better that they don't worry. All it means is that for once he was behind the right door. Potter takes people out from behind doors.
He doesn't feel like he thought he would, if he'd thought of it.
He pulls Goyle up onto his feet and they get into another hallway. They don't look at each other but they have their hands on each other's backs for a moment because—Crabbe.
Then they move on. The castle is shaking. They move on.
The Dark Lord has brought Potter out. Dead, in the cold morning light. The Giant holding him is snuffling, crying, snotting up his beard. Malfoy has come out of the castle, watching the black coats march out of the forest. A large number of the Order of the Phoenix somehow decided to fight in sweaters with snowflakes and reindeer on them. Maybe he's just seeing the Wealseys. No, Neville Lonbottom is wearing a reindeer sweater, too. Amazing, he thinks, that there could ever be a reason for a reindeer sweater. Maybe there could be. What if there was. The day Potter dies—a day for a reindeer sweater.
But then he hears the sound of the black coats calling out and he knows that no one, not one reindeer sweater, will get out from behind this door. As The Dark Lord gets closer Malfoy sees his eyes. Nothing but his red, red eyes.
The whole world is a door and Potter is not here to open it any more.
When Voldemort—The Dark Lord asks for people to join him before it's too late, Malfoy feels glued in place. All he can see in front of him is Neville Longbottom's Reindeer sweater. No one else is moving, and he's on this side now, but happenstance. That's always how it's been—the sides he's been put on. Happenstance. Where he's gone, the friends he's had. The one person he tried to go out of his way to be friends with, such a long time ago in the entrance hall, turned out to be a bad decision.
He's never been a brave person. Just a happenstance person. He's not even cunning, really. If he were cunning he'd have been able to figure out a way out of any of this. All of this. But instead.
"Draco," his mother hisses from across the courtyard.
Ginny Weasly turns to look at him, her red hair matted, blood wiped across her jeans. Her face pinches. The deep male voice from the dungeon so long ago is there, too, Dean, and he watches as Malfoy unglues himself, urging him across the courtyard. There are rules.
His legs ache. The ground beneath them hurts so much.
When he turns around, in line beside his mother, her hand clasped around his, he looks up briefly and spots the eyes and the voice, the wispy voice from the dungeon. She seems so sad, her blond hair lank and matted with blood, too. He looks down at the ground again. Don't look in people's eyes. Straight back. Chin up. Physical manipulations you can control without emotion.
Longbottom cuts the snake in two. Potter springs from the dead like a jack in the box. The Dark Lord's eyes focus on Potter. His Mother and Father grasp both his hands and tug him away from the crowd.
It doesn't matter what happens. If The Dark Lord wins, they don't want to see what happens. If the Dark Lord loses, they don't want to be around for what happens.
Part II
What Happens After
Malfoy sips his tea in a muggle shop just outside of Wizarding London. It's ok to not be recognized. He learned that. They may not make the right kind of tea, but they have a spot in the sun and he can put a charm on his paper so that the pictures don't move and scare the table next to him. His mother thinks it's good for him to get out of their house.
Malfoy agrees. He learned that houses—big houses, small houses, school houses—do not offer any protection. People might. But people might also take it away. Lucius offered a type of protection, but his protection was taken away by both the Dark Lord and now by the Ministry. So.
Malfoy lets the tea cool just a little bit longer and then he sips it, carefully.
The chime above the door tinkles, and the customer sways over to the counter to order. Malfoy focuses on a new article about Harry Potter's inconsistent dating life. He snorts. Who wants to read about that? He flips the page.
"Are you reading the one about Harry? I know, he's having a dreadful time of it. Reporters all over him," the voice says, plopping down in the seat across from him.
Malfoy freezes.
The voice says, "I think probably he's acquired a Vorprilated Vapril, which sort of cling to the backs of magical beings and then distract everyone by making them really attractive so that no one suspects there's a giant, four hundred pound slug type creature along for the ride. It's fairly common. I think Cedric Diggory had one, too."
Malfoy is still staring at his paper.
The voice is quiet, and Malfoy can hear it sipping tea. Then, "I guess. I wanted to thank you for bringing us food and medicine down in the manor. You didn't have to, Draco, and I know it may have cost you."
Malfoy shakes his head, but he peers over his paper. The voice sits there, her head cocked to the side a little, still, patient, and those large eyes waiting for him.
He nods.
She nods.
The bell on the shop chimes, and Malfoy takes his feet off the chair, ready for the voice to sit and read her paper while he reads his. Sometimes she talks, and sometimes he nods. Once he said, "Your paper is rubbish," and she smiled, but then said, "Draco, your paper has just printed lies about Harry's sex life, as well as how long the restoration of Hogwarts is going to take, so I'll stick with the facts, thank you!" She brushed her long, crinkly blond hair back and then pulled her whirly glasses on and turned the paper upside down.
Malfoy blushed. The two offending articles from the Prophet were side by side. One said Harry was rumored to be routinely having sex with Hannah Abbot behind the Leakey Cauldron, and the other had said the restoration would be finished within the month.
Malfoy had frowned.
Today his paper says that Kingsley Shaklebolt is making great strides as minister. It also says that that Ministry Robes are twenty percent off at Madame Maulkins. Malfoy wonders which one is true. Sometimes clothing establishments raise the prices right before a sale.
She sits down across from him and shudders out a breath. She drinks from her tea and then opens her paper.
He looks at her over the top of his.
She shakes her head.
He goes back to reading the paper.
The door chimes as she comes in and she goes directly to his table.
"I can't sit today, Draco, I'm sorry," she says. "Harvey Bashook is having a hard time. We think he's cursed, still, from the last battle, and St. Mungos doesn't know how to help him. Daddy's looking for Leaping Leaflings, which will probably help, but he's never been good at finding them. I wanted to tell you why I wouldn't be here." She takes a breath. "I didn't want to just not come."
Malfoy clenches his fingers, once, around the edges of his paper, enough to crinkle and warp the paper. "Do you. Do you know what it is? The curse?"
Luna shakes her head, but describes it to him. The way his skin has started to turn to stone, the way he feels as though spiders are crawling up and down his body.
Malfoy looks at the floor. The Crazy One pacing back and forth, back and forth, shooting curses at prisoners at the far end, their cries, their screams. And the slow way some of them died. The stone still in the mud in the house that they don't live in anymore.
He nods. "Show me."
In the nights afterwards the chasm opens wide beneath him. Black, deep down black, edges sharp, red eyes all around, and maybe that's what it is to be. Fixing the mistakes of what happened when he was a chasm, when the world was a chasm, too little too late. Always too little too late. Bashook will always be stiff, have phantom pains. Everyone does.
The chasm—Malfoy wakes up puking with the faint tug, the faint memory, of somebody pulling him up by the arm.
He doesn't go to the tea shop for a few weeks after that.
The day he decides to go back to the tea shop—maybe he should find a new tea shop, but the promise of sitting with someone who is quiet but still ok, and who says his name, proves to be too much to resist—she sits down like he hasn't ever been away and says, "Want a biscuit?" shoving a plate towards him. He shakes his head. "I hope you don't mind," her paper is still closed, "A friend of mine has been pretty stressed lately and I told him about this nice shop I go to that's a little more out of the way where he can unwind. He's got a bad case of Vorprilated Vapril, I think."
Malfoy gapes at her. He has no idea what she's talking about. Also, has so much changed? Has she been lonely and invited other people here in his stead? He is about to get up to leave.
"Would you like my glasses?" she says, before he can move, holding out the swirly ones she wears when she's reading the paper upside down.
"Why?" he asks, stunned into speech. He's getting nervous.
She tucks her hair behind her ear and wiggles her nose. "For the Vapril. So you won't be blinded. They can be very powerful. This one, especially, has grown enormously." She shakes her head and tsks her tounge, "I've tried to tell him about this but he's not worried. He says it's something else."
Malfoy blinks. "What else could it be?"
"Oh, I don't know. He's full of theories." She shrugs. "Anyway, have a biscuit now, before he comes because he'll probably eat them all."
Malfoy looks at them. They are chocolate. "Thanks but. No thanks."
"Suit yourself."
They lapse into quiet, both reading. After the third page Malfoy says, "Maybe he's not coming." Maybe he won't come to this place.
She says, "He's just late. It's the Vapril, probably."
Malfoy nods. He reads another page, but he can't sink into it today, the way he would on any other day.
The door opens and the bell chimes. Malfoy looks up and a dark head bobs into the tea shop.
She taps him on the arm. "There he is!" then, her voice louder, "Harry! Over here!"
Potter sees them and makes a beeline for their table. When he's sitting he says, "Sorry I'm late, Luna, Malfoy." He tips his head to them both, then continues, glaring at the table top. "Damn reporters swamped me and I couldn't—you know what. Nevermind. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want. Ok. I'm getting tea. Are those biscuits?"
Luna nods and Harry grabs four, shoves them into his mouth before going up to the counter to order.
Malfoy is shaking.
"Just breathe, Draco, ok? Just breathe," she says.
He sucks in loud breaths and tries to put his paper down on the table top.
When Potter gets back with tea and more biscuits, which are Malfoy's favorite kind—the ones with jelly in the middle—Malfoy doesn't even try to disguise how nervous he is. He doesn't have to. This is his shop, with his wispy voice blond hair tea mate, and no matter that she invited him and that Potter once saved his life, this is new territory. Potter could do anything. Malfoy is not trying to do anything bad, here, but Potter will probably try to find something wrong with it. It's how it's always been. Or he'll take away his wispy blond hair tea mate.
Potter says, "Hey Malfoy, these are your favorite, right? I probably ate all your biscuits, so here are more."
Malfoy looks at them. Then back at Potter.
Potter sits down and finishes the chocolate ones. "Right. Good. So."
"How is that Vapril going, Harry?" she asks.
"I told you, Luna, I don't think it's a vapril. Just the wizarding world being pants at leaving me the fuck alone. I'd love a little peace and quiet. It must be nice to just recover." Potter looks at Malfoy. Luna looks at Malfoy. They pause. He doesn't say anything.
Luna goes on. "You need to stab it with the toenail of a Gorber Pikefish, you get them in Malaysia. You could go on a trip."
Harry groans. "How is traveling going to help me relax?"
Both of them pause. And wait for him to say something out of the side of their eyes.
Then Harry runs a hand through his hair. "Besides, even if I DID travel, I'd probably bungle it up. You know me, I don't know anything about other cultures, or etiquette, and half those countries speak French. I wouldn't know what to do."
Luna chimes in. "A lot of people are doing that now—going abroad and feeling totally flummoxed by the new culture. It's one thing to deal with muggle culture, but then also to deal with Wizarding culture on top of that can be very hard."
Harry nods. "I would love to get out of England for a while, but I don't know anyone who could help me navigate who I don't hate. Dean's out. Neville's busy with his plants. Hannah's with Neville. You've got the quibbler. Ron's just gotten promoted. Hermione's working on new legislature and won't take time off even though she's got four months of vacation at this point. So I don't know what to do." He sips his tea.
Malfoy sips his tea, too. This is turning out to be an afternoon of time not spent in quiet relaxation.
She and Potter eye each other and he doesn't say anything. Malfoy can feel them shrugging. Everyone lapses into silence, after a while, and Malfoy makes his excuses with only half the paper finished.
A week later he tries the shop again, after looking around for other muggle tea shops but finally coming to the conclusion that this one was the one with sun, decent tea, and the right distance from Diagon Alley to be convenient for him but a trek for everyone else. He comes into the shop and both She and Potter are there already, Potter using large arm movements to describe some event. She nods.
He brings his tea to the table and finds there are three plates of biscuits, all different types, but one type are definitely the jelly filled ones. She and Potter smile up at him while he takes his seat and pulls out his paper. They quiet down and pull out their papers, too.
When she finishes her tea—much faster than she normally does, she stands up, touches Malfoy on the shoulder, and says, "I have to get back to Daddy. I'll see you tomorrow, Draco?"
Malfoy looks up at her, mouth open. He wasn't finished even half of the paper, and she wasn't either.
She waves to both of them and skips out of the shop.
Malfoy turns to Harry, who shrugs. "Well, do you want more biscuits?" Potter looks down at the still full plate. "Oh. I thought. I thought you liked this kind?" He nudges the jelly filled kind. "But I thought maybe your tastes had changed. Nothing wrong with that. So I got others. You should have whatever you like."
Malfoy blinks. He does. But. "I do. I like those. The. Those. But."
"You should eat them." Harry shoves the plate forward.
Malfoy glances at Potter—the shape of his nose, his forehead, his cheek, his hair that goes every which way and obscures his scar just enough. Could he ever have not recognized that face? He remembers, though, when the whole world was Red Eyes. Red Eyes and nothing else and there were no other faces. When he hoped he never saw Harry Potter again. When Harry Potter wasn't going to take those who weren't behind the door.
He clenches his fist and looks at the table.
"It's just a biscuit," Potter says.
Right. A biscuit.
Harry chews on his lip. "You don't have to. Luna says you could use biscuits. Something about a Blinkering Crinker-whatsit that feeds off the bile in your system and doesn't like sugar. I don't know. Anyway. Just a thought."
She thought. Was she only doing this because of a blinkering crinker-whatsit?
He must have reared back, because he hears the chair slide across the floor and then suddenly Potter is standing and so is he.
"Woah, Woah, ok, ok. I'm sorry," Potter says, his hands up. "I'm sorry. I didn't think—She likes coming here. You know. She likes quiet and she told me she liked you. She said you—were different, that's all. And that you could use friends like she always could use friends. And that all of us could use quiet. That's all. And then she went on about Blundering Crunkers-what have yous, but I think that's just how she says she likes you. You know." He raises his eyebrows in a question. "Malfoy?" He pauses. "Draco?"
Malfoy doesn't say anything.
Harry hangs his head. "I came because I wanted to thank you for not telling who I was in the Manor, that time. I vouched for you at the trials because of it, but really. I was thinking about it the other day. I wish we'd not been such sworn enemies, because I have a feeling you weren't as comfortable with everything you were told to do as you pretended and I could have helped you more. I know it's water under the bridge, but. Also, Luna likes you. So." He smiles.
Malfoy swallows. He's been looking at the table, but now he looks up, up, at Potter's face.
Potter's eyes are looking at him and they're green, but it's hard to tell across the table like this. They look like normal eyes. They look so normal.
He sits back down, and so does Potter.
Potter says, "Ok. Ok. That went ok. Right?" He looks so tense, so Malfoy nods. "Great. Draco. Good. That's. That's good. Luna said it would be all right, but what if you hate me forever? I mean, fine, allright. Whatever. But I don't think that'd be particularly the best. Especially if you're going to be cleaning up Hogwarts and helping break curses and stuff. I mean—Good work with the Bashook case, Draco, by the way."
Draco eyes him as he rambles. Potter's leaning back in his chair, throwing his arms out, talking to the ceiling. Draco takes one biscuit and holds it up. It feels very tenuous, very thin, like it will break and crumble the minute he eats it. Potter says, "Oh yeah, have more, please." And pushes the plate closer to him. His stomach twists. Harry has grabbed her Quibbler and is perusing it.
They have a moment of quiet, where Malfoy holds his paper up in front of him, with the biscuit sort of near his chest, waiting to be either put down again or eaten. He skims the article on fraud in China that he was reading before, but his eyes keep darting back to Potter, who's focusing on the page in front of him with what looks like actual interest.
"You don't have to read that. It's rubbish," Malfoy says, after a while.
Harry raises an eyebrow, looking at him. "I don't know about that. What you're reading prints lies all the time." He squints at the back print. "Ha. Look at that." He jabs at a coupon with his forfinger, making the paper tent on Draco's side. "Madame Malkin is so over priced it's not even funny. And the stuff they say about me—I don't even want to know." He rolls his eyes and goes back to the Quibbler.
Draco is still holding the biscuit. Potter reads too, chuckling sometimes. He even takes a pair of glasses out of his pocket and reads the paper upside down.
"You too?" Draco asks. He can't help it. It's so bizarre.
"Well," Potter says. "I guess so. But it's rune stuff and I'm pants at runes. I'm pants at pretty much everything except investigating criminals. I have no idea what it says. Baby's got back or something." He turns the paper back around and stares at it again.
Draco lets him stare at it a little longer, and then holds out his hand. "Fine, Potter, hand it over."
His face lights up as he gives it across the table. Draco takes the glasses and perches them on his nose. The pink hue everything turns is bizarre, but not totally unpleasant. He focuses on the game, and can feel Potter staring at him.
"You should call me Harry," Potter says.
"What?"
"Harry, nice to meet you. " Harry extends his hand across the table. "I'm a nervous wreck, I eat too many biscuits, sometimes at loud noises I randomly shout disarming spells, and I'm gay but the Prophet hasn't picked up on it yet, so don't tell anyone." He smiles and Draco freezes. Is this a thing? This hand. Is this friendship? Why would Harry—what is this?
He takes off the quibbler glasses slowly and extends his hand. Harry's hand feels warm and solid in his. "Harry," He says. "Draco. Nice. Nice to meet you. I." He doesn't know what to say. "I do like these biscuits. I also like tea and sun." In a fit of inspiration and without thinking it through first he adds, "and I like having a house without a Dark Lord in it, too. That's been very nice." His eyes go wide and he withdraws his hand and puts the quibbler glasses back on.
Harry smiles, though. "So. These Runes. One of them is baby, right?"
Draco peers down at the paper spread out. "Yes, but—but you have it right side up. Upside down it reads 'old person with a pock marked nose.'" He takes a bite of the biscuit. It's flakey and buttery and the jam is cool and sugery.
Harry frowns. "That's specific."
"It refers to a specific old man, in this case Humberdink Polard, who contracted dragon pox late in life and died from it." Draco tilts his head. Harry is trying to read the runes without the glasses and without any knowledge of what the runes mean.
He finishes the biscuit and he takes a pen out of his pocket and hands it to Harry. "Here, you transcribe."
A half hour later they have, "Never Send in the owl post your sister gate of the womb ointment cream recommend past apothecary old person with pock marks."
Draco studies this.
Harry turns the phrase upside down. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know," Draco says. "I don't know." He thinks about it. "recommend past" could be 'past tense,' so he changes that to "recommended."
Harry says, "maybe gate of the womb means 'chastity'?"
Draco shakes his head. "No. There's a rune for that. But there isn't a rune for—oh god."
"what?" Harry looks at him, breathing on his cheek. "What?"
"Vagina."
"Vagina?"
"Vagina," Draco writes in, over top of 'gate of the womb'.
"Wait, ok. Here: "'Never give your sister vagina ointment recommended an apothecary man with pock marks,'" Harry reads. "Oh wait, hold on, Ok." He writes in a few words. "Ok, Here, 'Never give your sister vaginal ointment recommended by an apothecary with pock marks.'"
"This is what Luna's been reading?" Draco says, leaning back in his chair. "Helpful tips for every day life?"
Harry laughs and wipes a hand over his face. "No wonder she's so invested in it."
Draco laughs and the hitch in his own chest is strange. Amazing. He looks at the plate of biscuits on the table. They're gone. "You do like biscuits," he says.
"What?" Harry says. "I only ate the chocolate ones. You ate the rest. Swear it."
Draco looks down at his lap and sure enough, a few crumbs are sprinkled over his pants. He brushes them off.
"I guess. I guess so. Thank you for. For buying them."
"No problem," Harry says, raising to his feet and stretching. Draco thinks it's probably been the longest he's sat in a chair ever—Harry's never been the most stationary type.
He looks down at his lap again. "And. Thank you. For. The Room of Requirement—the fiendfyre. I'm sorry that Crabbe—"
But Harry puts his hand on Draco's shoulder. "Hey. Don't apologize for Crabbe. He did what he did. But, in any case, you're welcome. Thank you for saving my life at the Manor."
Draco nods.
Harry looks around. "This place is great. Same time tomorrow?"
Draco crumples his eyebrows together. "You want to do this again?"
"Sure, why not?"Harry leans against the table.
"But you have things to do." He stands up and folds his paper together.
"Yeah, but this is more fun." Harry tucks the Quibbler glasses into his pocket. "C'mon, I'll walk you back to the apparition point. Yeah?"
Harry pulls the door open and the bell above the door chimes. He holds it against the wall and makes a grand sweeping gesture with his arm, Draco smiles and walks through into the street outside, where it's sunny and no one is looking at him except for Harry, who has his hands in his pockets and has started singing something raunchy.
This could be ok. this could be all right.
A/N:Thanks for dropping in!