A/N: I want to preface this by saying that, since this story makes such huge quantum leaps into the future with each new chapter, the early stages of their relationship will feel very rushed. I realise that, and it was intentional. Also, each one of these can be read separately, but I wouldn't recommend skipping around too much, as there will be a bit of carryover between chapters and you probably won't recognise all the characters in later chapters if you don't read straight through. That said, enjoy and REVIEW! :)

Disclaimer: All characters not of my own creation belong to JK Rowling

They Say That Things Cannot Grow Beneath the Winter Snow (I Simply Can't Agree)

29 December, 1998

Harry wakes with a start, his heart pounding in his ears. He isn't sure what's woken him, but there's a cold sweat clinging to his forehead. He wracks his brain, trying to remember. He'd been having a nightmare…that much he knows. It had been something terrible, something bad enough that his mind had jerked him from sleep. He glances around the room, his gaze fixing on the familiar walls, the cheerful morning sunshine pouring in through the frosty windows, the noise of the bustling London street below.

Even if he's not sure what he'd been dreaming about, he can make a fairly close guess. He's been having the same dream off and on for the last six months. It's been quite a while since he's gone more than a few weeks without screaming himself awake. He disentangles his legs from the blankets slowly, shoving his glasses on his face and blinking through the morning haze.

He swings his feet over the edge of the bed and shuffles to the window where an owl is waiting with the morning paper, tapping the glass impatiently. As he fumbles for coins, he feels a pounding headache beginning to build behind his eyes. It isn't the same pain in his scar that he's gotten used to over the years; no, this is different. It's the deep-set sort of fatigue that comes with an ordeal like the one he suffered, not something most people will ever be able to understand.

As the owl flies off into the cold, Harry shakes the Prophet open with one hand, glancing down at the headlines. More news on the rebuilding of the Ministry, of Hogwarts, of the search for competent government officials to take care of the restructuring issue. His name is mentioned a few times, and Harry, without reading much further, tosses the paper carelessly onto the bed and shuffles downstairs.

When he arrives in the kitchen, he makes his coffee mechanically, flicking his wand over his shoulder to start a fire in the grate, dragging a chair over and curling up near it, pulling his knees to his chest. As much as Harry gets caught up in his head these days, he knows that things have definitely changed for the better since the end of the war. It sometimes takes quite a bit of him insistently reminding himself of this fact for him to accept it, but the final death of Voldemort did more than remove an immediate threat. Whereas the end of the first war had allowed people to cautiously resume their normal lives, slowly picking up where they'd left off, the end of the second war seems to have brought a whole new breath of life to witches and wizards all over the country.

But even with all that's gone on in the past few months, with the progress made in wizarding law and the dawn of a brighter future, when the smoke of battle had cleared and the rubble littering the grounds of Hogwarts had been put back together, Harry was almost shocked to find that the world had not crumbled around him. After spending a month rebuilding the castle alongside his old professors and a handful of friends and classmates, he had returned to a world that was slowly picking itself up and moving on. It wasn't that people had forgotten what had happened; far from it, actually. They were cautious in changing the laws, in conducting trials, in ensuring that each person who had done wrong got their due.

With all the celebrations going on, though, Harry had known that he needed to get away for a bit, if only just to gather his head while things quieted down. Not least among his worries was figuring out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life now that he had completed what he'd always subconsciously assumed would be his final task. It felt like his entire life had been leading up to finishing the fight with Voldemort, like everything he'd believed in or stood for up to this point had been based on the assumption that he'd eventually have to make the ultimate sacrifice, and now he knew he needed some time to himself.

He'd wracked his brain for a way to get himself out of the spotlight for a bit, spent days brooding over it, but then one day, the solution had come to him as clearly as if he'd been staring at it all along. Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. It belonged to him now, didn't it? The wards on it were still heavy, so he wouldn't have to worry about reporters lurking on his front step. Honestly, as much as he resisted going to photo calls and giving interviews, it was the comments made by journalists that disturbed Harry the most. Being misquoted by Rita Skeeter was one thing, but one reporter's line that he would be a good candidate for Minister of Magic in a few years' time had nearly made him lose his breakfast all over Ron's shoes. But no one would be able to find him in the old Black house unless he personally told them how to.

So he had moved in, assuring Ron and Hermione and all his friends that they would be able to visit him to keep him from becoming a complete recluse. The first thing he had realised upon entering his new home, though, was that it needed some serious fixing up. The wallpaper was as peeling and shabby as ever before, the carpeting threadbare, the windows grimy and the decorations grotesque. On top of all that, everything seemed to be covered in a thick inch of dust.

He'd immediately set to work, with Kreacher's help, shooting Scourgify charms wherever he could reach and stripping down the ancient tapestries to replace them with fresh paint in cheerful, inviting colours. This was no longer the headquarters of a huddled resistance army, and he intended to give it a complete turnaround. There was one thing, however, that he didn't seem to be able to remove.

The portrait of Sirius' mother remained as fixed to the wall as ever before, shrieking about filthy halfbloods besmirching the name of her ancestors as he hauled moulding mattresses and ancient sofas down the stairs and onto the street. Sometimes, when he woke from a nightmare or simply couldn't get to sleep, Harry would intentionally provoke her and scream back all his frustrations until he'd exhausted himself. The first time he'd done this, she'd seemed to be quite taken aback and had sat in her frame blinking at him silently as he yelled obscenities at her. After a few weeks of this, though, Harry thought she'd begun to rather enjoy the challenge, and it had become a sort of competition to see who could shriek loudest. Not that he's grown fond of her. She's a downright bloody nuisance, as a matter of fact, but he still hasn't managed to think of a single way to get rid of her.

Harry takes a deep breath, sipping at his coffee, the headache still building behind his eyes. He's been cooped up inside the house since Boxing Day because of a massive snowstorm and he's beginning to feel as though the only person he's spoken to lately is Walburga. He runs a weary hand through his hair and rises from his seat. Maybe a bit of fresh air will do him good. No one in the Muggle world knows him, and as long as he avoids Diagon Alley, he should be safe from overeager people wanting a moment of his time.

He sets down the coffee mug and moves into the front hall, careful not to make too much noise as he pulls on his jacket and boots; he's not in the mood for a screaming match just now and the last thing his headache needs is a shrieking portrait to make it even worse.

He pulls open the front door, wincing at the rush of cold air, but before he's made it more than a few steps down the path, he stops dead at what he sees in the street in front of him. Of all the unexpected visitors that Harry never thought he'd see again, this has to be the most shocking of all. Harry blinks once, twice, expecting the sight to go away, but no, there's no mistaking that white-blonde hair, even from a distance. Draco Malfoy is sitting on the curb in front of number eleven, knees pulled up to his chest, his head bowed against the icy wind. He shifts a bit as Harry watches him, curling in tighter to himself, the backs of his ears a bright, livid red. He just looks so small, like he's dangerously thin and pulled out, as bad as Harry remembers him looking in the last few months of the war, and Harry feels an inexplicable twinge of sadness run through him.

He walks quickly down the path to the street and comes to stand in front of Malfoy, staring down at him. The last time he'd spoken to the boy, Malfoy had been clinging tightly to his waist, hands slippery, shouting into his ear, terrified. Harry blinks and shakes his head in an attempt to banish the memory from his mind.

"Malfoy, what are you doing here?" he asks, and the other boy jumps a bit, looking up at him in surprise. Harry's vaguely reminded of the way Sirius looked when he was straight from Azkaban, his eyes hollowed out and his skin a sickly pale colour.

"Oh, Potter," Malfoy says, his voice a bit brittle. "Took you long enough to realise I was out here."

Harry shakes his head in confusion. "Why are you here?" he asks again, hands shoved in his pockets in a futile attempt to keep warm. Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, "You must be freezing."

"Well, I thought it was obvious. I was waiting for you," Malfoy says in a feeble aim at bitterness, but his voice doesn't seem to hold nearly as much malice as it once did, "but now that you're here, do you think maybe we could go inside? You may be used to living on the streets like an urchin, but I don't think I'll ever be properly warm again."

Harry rolls his eyes, and it's strange, but he doesn't feel as though he needs to be cautious of the other boy anymore. There's something about the way Malfoy is looking up at him hopefully that makes Harry think that maybe, just maybe, he isn't here to pick a fight. He sighs. "The residence of Harry James Potter is located at number twelve, Grimmauld Place," he recites mechanically, and Malfoy whips his head around as the old house grinds into view.

"You're your own secret keeper?" he asks sceptically, turning back to Harry with a raised eyebrow. "That doesn't seem very secure."

"Well, it's not as though I need much protection anymore, do I?" Harry asks, reaching down and grabbing Malfoy's bony hand to help pull him up, not really knowing why he does it. "I'm mostly hiding from reporters these days."

"Ah, yes," Malfoy says through chattering teeth as he follows Harry back up the path. "The famous Potter is as elusive as they come. How could I have forgotten?"

Harry ignores him, walking silently with his hat pulled over his ears, and he kicks his boots off when Malfoy closes the front door behind him. He turns to look at him, still confused as to what exactly is going on, watches him shrug out of his coat and notes absently just how hollowed out he looks. "Malfoy, you never actually said what you're doing here. In my home. In London. The last I heard, you weren't even in England," he says finally.

Malfoy shuffles a bit uncomfortably, and this is one of the few times that Harry's seen him at a loss for words. "Well," he says slowly, staring down at his wet shoes, "I was in America for a bit after the war ended. You know, letting things cool off some. Only, when I came back, there was just one thing I wanted to do."

"And that was…" Harry trails off, trying to get Malfoy to look up at him.

Malfoy takes a deep breath, like he's preparing himself to say something that's been eating away at him for a while, and when he finally does meet Harry's eye, Harry's surprised to see that he looks nervous. He scratches at the back of his head, running a hand through his hair before speaking. "I don't often say this, but I wanted to thank you," he says, and Harry watches as a muscle in his jaw clenches a bit harder. "You know, for keeping me out of prison…you didn't have to say those things at my trial, and, I guess, it's thanks to you that I'm not wasting away in a cell right now."

Harry feels himself flush, and he kicks at an imaginary pebble with his toe. "I didn't do much," he says, staring down at the ground. "I just said my piece at your trial. You were there. You heard what I had to say. It was all true."

"I know it was. I just…you have a lot of sway right now, if you hadn't noticed," Malfoy says, surprisingly civil. "People listen to you. And it was good of you to speak up like that. I probably didn't deserve it."

Harry looks back up at him, studies him for a moment, calculating. "No, you probably didn't," he says after a beat. He hopes this conversation will take a turn. He feels like they're getting into dangerously heavy territory here, and it's all very foreign to him when it comes to Malfoy.

There's another awkward pause of silence before Malfoy speaks. "Just your hero complex acting up again, then?" he asks, his face pulling into a weak looking smirk. Harry's relieved to see that he seems to have closed himself off a bit. He's pretty sure he isn't ready to hash out their years of history right here, right now. "Typical."

"I don't have a hero complex," Harry grumbles, arguing back mostly out of habit.

Malfoy rolls his eyes. "Well, that's a little piece of denial we'll save for another day," he says, pulling his shoulders a bit straighter. "Anyway, I'm really here because I refuse to remain indebted to anyone, especially you."

Harry raises an eyebrow at him. "And you plan on repaying that today?" he asks, unsure. "How?" What could Malfoy, of all people, possibly do for him?

"I was hoping you'd have something in mind," Malfoy says, looking around the foyer. Then, absently, he adds, "This place looks a lot different than it did the last time I was here."

"You've been here before?" Harry asks, surprised.

Malfoy fixes him with a cold look. "Yes, Potter, I've been here before. I would have inherited this house if it hadn't been for you," he says, frowning a bit.

"That's right, I'd forgotten," Harry says awkwardly, staring at a spot on the wall behind Malfoy's head. "Well, I don't know what kind of debt you expect to repay, but why don't we just call it good? I mean, you saved my life twice during the war. That's got to be enough to count us even."

"I can't just forget about it," Malfoy says a bit disdainfully. "It's a binding magical contract, and it's going to hang over my head until it's been closed out. No, of all people I could possibly be tied to, you're about the lowest on my list. At least let me do something."

Harry scratches at the back of his head a bit. "Well, there is one thing," he says slowly, not really sure what's making him voluntarily give Malfoy a reason to stay. "But I'm not sure if you'll be much help with it."

Malfoy nods once and begins to roll up his sleeves. "I'll give it a try. I just want this to be over with so I can leave here in peace, knowing I never have to see you again," he says. "What is it?"

But Harry's lost his train of thought. He stares at Malfoy's bare forearm, veins prominent under his nearly translucent skin, and his eyes fixate on the fading Dark Mark that stands out in bold against his white complexion. Harry feels the blood begin to pound harder in his ears, a lump forming in his throat, making it difficult to swallow.

"You didn't want it, did you?" he asks Malfoy, his voice coming out a bit strangled, even though he knows the answer before even speaking. "I mean, maybe at first, but once you realised…it was a mistake, right?"

Malfoy doesn't even have to ask what he's talking about, and his right hand quickly moves to cover the tattoo. Harry looks him in the eye, and the boy he sees staring back at him isn't the Malfoy that he used to think he hated. He's struck by how…just…broken Malfoy really looks, all hollowed out, bony angles and sharp cheekbones. He knows now (and would have realised it sooner had he given Malfoy much thought since the war) that he never really hated him. No, hate is not the word he would use to describe his feelings toward Malfoy. Maybe, at one point, contempt, disdain, strong dislike, but never hate. Hate is an emotion that starts wars, that breaks people down and turns them to dust, that tears apart lives, that reaches into every crevice and digs out your humanity. But now, staring at the shell of the boy Malfoy used to be, he can't muster up any emotion except…pity.

Malfoy clears his throat pointedly, pulling Harry from his thoughts. "Yeah…er…well, you see, there's this portrait," Harry says quickly, avoiding Malfoy's gaze as he moves to stare at the curtains. "She's sort of fixed herself to the wall, and I've tried everything I can think of but…"

"No luck?" Malfoy finishes for him, raising an eyebrow as Harry shakes his head. "Well, I suppose I'll need my wand back if you expect me to be any help at all."

Several hours later, a very sweaty Harry and Malfoy slump against the wall, panting to catch their breath. They had taken turns hurling every conceivable hex, every curse they could think of, but even the few mildly illegal ones that Malfoy came out with had no effect. Druella just screamed on, this time about blood traitors and heirs who had been cheated out of an ancestral fortune that they didn't deserve to carry in the first place. Harry's face screws up against the noise, and he notices Malfoy shove his fingers in his ears as a fresh wave of shouting begins.

"THE NOBLE AND MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK HAS BEEN BEFOULED BY A LOATHSOME EXCUSE FOR AN HEIR. CONSORTING WITH HALF BLOODS! BRINGING MUDBLO — "

Harry feels the skin on his neck turn red with a deep kind of anger as she shrieks on, and Malfoy's fists begin to ball up in fury. Without thinking much about it, they raise their wands together and shout "REDUCTO!" at the same instant, and are thrown backward into the opposite wall by the force of the blast from their spells.

A ringing silence follows. For a brief, horrible moment, Harry thinks he's gone deaf, but then he hears Malfoy groan next to him as they sit up and slump against the wall, shoulder to shoulder. Harry stares over at Malfoy's hair, wildly out of place, at his rumpled clothing, at the shocked look on his face, and then he looks to the wall. Where there had been a furious portrait just seconds before, there is now only a smoking hole leading into the kitchen, large enough for a man to climb through.

"Well," Malfoy says finally, his voice laced with an amused tone that Harry's never heard from him before, "I suppose we could always make it into a second door. Or a servant's entrance."

Harry snorts, then begins to laugh outright, and when Malfoy joins him, Harry abruptly realises that, for the first time in their lives, they're laughing together. "I guess this means I owe you now," Harry says once they've slipped back into silence, a smile still lingering on his face. "What'll it be? My house elf? My Firebolt? My undying gratitude?"

Malfoy studies him for a moment, and Harry notices that his face looks much more pleasant when he's smiling rather than smirking. "I think some Firewhiskey should do it," he answers.

"To the kitchen then," Harry says, picking himself up off the floor and pulling Malfoy up after him. He leads the way through the hole in the wall, which brings on a whole new wave of laughter.

He doesn't know it yet, but it's already beginning; some sort of link is forming between them, healing them, making them whole again. It's small at first, but ever growing. Eventually, it will reach into every corner of their lives, working its way into the cracks between them until they're inextricably woven together. Over the next few weeks, Firewhiskey will become dinner, which will become Harry offering up his spare room, which will inevitably lead to breakfast. Eventually, Malfoy will become Draco, sporadically at first, and only when Harry's in a good mood, but ultimately the switch will become permanent, and they'll only use last names when joking or on the admittedly frequent occasions that they allow themselves to fall back into their habitual schoolboy squabbling. In time, they'll grow closer and closer and, after a rather concerted effort, they'll manage to convince their friends that they haven't gone mad. In the end, without intending to, it will be in a completely roundabout way, really, that Harry will discover that Malfoy steals all the blankets but curls so close in his sleep that it doesn't really matter.

In years to come, when Harry looks back on their relationship, he won't ever really be able to pinpoint the exact moment when things changed between them. There won't be any explosive, romantic catalyst, no heart wrenching confessions to bind them inextricably together, no snap of the sexual tension that's probably been building itself up for years. No, the truth is, they'll just sort of fall into a rhythm with each other, tumbling together through this strange new world where the old prejudices and bloodlines just don't seem to matter anymore.

Today, though, sitting at the kitchen table with Malfoy, so much history between them, Harry begins to feel something warm and unfamiliar curling in the pit of his stomach. He passes it off as a side effect of the Firewhiskey, but in reality, somewhere in a hidden little corner of his mind, he knows, even at eighteen, that it's the start of something permanent.


A/N: I hope you liked the first chapter. Please Review! :)