Title: Change
Disclaimer: This story is based entirely on the story J.K. Rowling has written. She owns all of the characters, ideas, credit and copyright. This story is made simply for enjoyment and no money is being made from this. No offence intended. No copyright infringement intended.
Warnings: Eventual slash, angst
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Draco
Summary: The war is over. Harry is trying to put it in the past, but stumbles upon a part of it he cannot bury.
Author's Note: I am very new to writing fanfiction, and constructive criticism and suggestions are welcome. I have quite a few stories I'm working on, most of them Drarry-related. If you're a Drarry shipper, take the time to check out some of my other works and tell me what you think. The next chapter of this will be up shortly.
Chapter 1
Harry trudged to the Quidditch changing rooms wearily, exhausted after the day's practice. They were playing against Puddlemere United tomorrow, and their coach had been adamant that they fit in a full day of extra practice today.
Ever since Harry had joined the Chudley Canons it had leapt to the top of the league instead of its usual bottom, and they had never lost a single match. However, that did not change the fact that Puddlemere United was one of the best Quidditch teams in the history of the best Quidditch teams, which was the explanation for their coach's demanding training on the day before the match.
After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Harry was feeling decidedly better as he made his way over to Diagon Alley, where he had a dinner date with Ron and Hermione. It had become routine for the three of them to have dinner together every week at the Leaky Cauldron, and afterwards Harry and Ron going over to the Horntail's Hub for a drink or two, Hermione insisting that she didn't drink and certainly was not going to start now.
Apparating directly into the Leaky Cauldron, Harry immediately spotted his two best friends sitting in their usual corner booth, and made his way over. "Hey," he said, sliding into the seat across from Hermione and next to Ron.
"Practice again, mate?" Ron asked, eyeing his wet hair, which still hadn't dried completely from the shower. At his nod of assent Ron continued, "If I didn't know better I'd say that coach of yours was mental, training you guys seven days a week. I mean, does he ever give you a chance to rest? When's the last time you walked in here with your hair dry?"
"Yesterday, actually," Hermione said, looking amused and giving her husbund an affectionate smile and shake of her head. "Though to be fair it was only because he'd used a Drying Spell on it."
"See? They're training you way too hard, and it's not like you guys actually need any of it anyway," Ron said indignantly, "The Chudley Canons haven't been in this good shape since... well, forever."
Harry shrugged non-commitally as the couple began bickering about whether or not the Chudley Canons was in fact pushing Harry to train too hard, and helped himself to some of Ron's steak and a bit of Hermione's fillet.
Unnoticed by Ron, who was still arguing with his wife, Harry began sliding his fork toward his best mate's dessert, a very mouth-watering mound of molten chocolate with a scoop Florean Fortescue's chocolate chip ice-cream on the side. A deft hand intercepted his fork, successfully preventing it from getting to the dessert. "Not the chocolate, mate," Ron told him, grinning lop-sidedly, "Get the whole steak for all I care, but leave the dessert alone."
With a defeated sigh Harry withdrew his fork and settled for nabbing a spoonful of treacle tart from Hermione's plate. "We still going to the Horntail's Hub tonight?" he asked Ron, pulling Hermione's leftover fillet to himself and attacking it with gusto.
"You bet we are!" Ron replied enthusiastically, "They've got this new exotic cocktail imported from Hawaii that I want to try."
"Ron!" Hermione chastised, "Harry's got a game against Puddlemere United tomorrow, in case you've forgotten, and the last thing he needs is a hangover in the morning!"
"Oh, right," Ron said slightly sheepishly, "I forgot, sorry. Another time then, eh, Harry?"
"Yeah, alright," he replied, finishing his stolen dinner and signaling to Tom for the bill. "Dinner's on me," he told them, fishing a few Galleons out of his pocket, "I ate most of your food anyway."
The three parted company outside the Leaky Cauldron, Ron and Hermione back to their flat in Diagon Alley and Harry to Knockturn Alley to buy a few jars of Slug-Repellant for Hagrid, who'd mentioned he was running low.
He kept his head down and strode briskly down Knockturn Alley, hoping to get it over with as soon as possible. He had no love for the dark, gloomy alley, its grimy shops and its creepy occupants. Turning a corner, he saw the familiar peeling sign hanging crookedly on one side, blatantly advertising 'In Rep ants' to the deserted alleyway.
Two minutes later he was striding back up the street, two jars of slug-repellants clutched in his arms. Suddenly the wind was knocked out of him as someone staggered into him, knocking the jars from his hands and sending them clattering to the ground.
After applying a few choice swear words he had learnt from his Uncle Vernon, Harry bent and gathered up Hagrid's slug-repellants before straightening to see who had slammed into him and promptly did a double-take.
It was Draco Malfoy. "Oi, get out of my way!" Malfoy yelled, brandishing a largely empty Firewhiskey bottle in Harry's face, "I'm king of the world and I command you, lowly peasant, to get out of my sight this instant!" Apparently Malfoy was very drunk as well. How lovely, simply marvelous, Harry thought sarcastically.
The first time they ran into each other after the war it had to be at night in Knockturn Alley before the day of a Quidditch match, and Malfoy had the audacity to be drunk. "Right away, Your Majesty," Harry quipped in his moat sardonic tone of voice, which was lost on the drunk Malfoy, who simply grinned tipsily at him and promptly retched all over the ground before collapsing against Harry and passing out.
"Oh, bugger," Harry muttered, finding himself supporting the passed-out Malfoy's weight entirely, in the middle of Knockturn Alley in the middle of the night, with absolutely no clue as to what he should do next.
Fortunately Malfoy chose that moment to regain some measure of consciousness, and groaned loudly, "Ow, geroff me! Lemme go, lowly peasant!"
"Where do you live, Malfoy?" Harry asked, rolling his eyes and ignoring Malfoy's requests entirely.
"If you mean where my palace is, it's just round the corner!" Malfoy crowed, flailing an arm to accentuate his words.
"Think you can get there without throwing up?" he asked the other man exasperatedly, hoping against hope he would say yes and save Harry the trouble of taking him back to his house lest his Gryffindor conscience scream obscenities at him for leaving Malfoy drunk and defenseless in Knockturn Alley.
Unfortunately, Malfoy's only response to that was to retch again, longer and louder than before.
"I take it that's a no," Harry sighed dejectedly, before pulling one of Malfoy's arms around his shoulders and making his ungainly way up the street to the corner Malfoy had indicated earlier on.
After what seemed like an eternity of lugging Malfoy's drunken deadweight, they reached a rundown apartment block with a set of rickety stairs leading up. Harry did not want to contemplate how he was going to get Malfoy all the way up those stairs without killing them both, and while he had absolutely no qualms about killing Malfoy, he still wanted to live, thank you very much.
"Are you daft?" Malfoy demanded, "Apparate to my palace, I'm not wasting time here!"
"And what floor might that be?" Harry asked through gritted teeth, almost at his wit's end with the drunk git.
Malfoy gave a derisive snort and said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "Seventh, you imbecile," before his knees buckled and Harry once again had to support his full weight.
Harry, clutching the blonde under the armpits, closed his eyes and concentrated all his might on their destination. This was made more difficult by the fact that he only had 'Seventh floor of a random building in Knockturn Alley' to work on. He turned on the spot and, after the familiar experience of being squeezed through a straightjacket, was relieved to find that they were on a landing with a fading number '7' painted on the wall.
Malfoy pushed him away without preamble and promptly stumbled into his door, which banged open, allowing him access. Harry was debating whether or not to just leave and let Malfoy be, when the blonde tripped over his own doorstep and went sprawling to the floor, ending in a tangled heap next to what looked like a year's worth of dirty laundry.
Harry rolled his eyes and cursed his sodding Gryffindor conscience, before stepping over the threshold of Malfoy's flat and helping the other wizard up. After helping Malfoy onto the sofa, Harry surreptitiously cast an eye over the place Malfoy called home (or in his drunken state, 'palace').
The entire flat was about the size of the Dursley's living room, with a bedroom and bathroom off to the side, and the living room and kitchen cramped into the remaining space. Every single surface was covered with trash, and rubbish was strewn across the floor. The wallpapers were faded and peeling, the floorboards creaked under his feet, and the entire flat had a pungent odor hanging about. All the clothes Malfoy owned, it seemed, were heaped haphazardly in dirty piles here and there; and all the dishes Malfoy had ever eaten, it seemed, were stacked in filthy piles all over the place, some of them with lingering residue which had congealed over time, attracting the attentions of a formidable amount of fruit flies. In short, Malfoy lived in a dump.
Eyes watering from the smell, Harry cast a Bubble-Head Charm himself. When he was able to breathe without wanting to retch again, he asked Malfoy, "Will you be alright on your own, then? Can I go now?" He was quite eager to cut his little reunion with Malfoy short and get home as quickly as possible.
To his dismay, Malfoy threw up yet again, this time appearing to heave up everything in his system except for his intestines. Long after he had finished emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor, Malfoy continued retching, his entire body convulsing with the effort.
"Merlin, Malfoy!" Harry groaned, Vanishing the vomit with a flick of his wand, "How much Firewhiskey did you drink?"
Malfoy's response to that was to finish retching and flop back down onto the sofa in a very undignified manner. Miraculously, his Firewhiskey bottle was still clutched in his hand and was also intact. That changed when Malfoy let it clatter to the floor, where it shattered into deadly shards of glass littering the ground.
Malfoy attempted to stand up and almost managed it before his legs buckled and he crumpled. Abandoning the taxing feat of getting up, Malfoy began crawling across the floor in the general direction of his bedroom. Harry, against his better judgment, decided to see Malfoy to bed before leaving, and hastened to help him up from the filthy floor, where the other wizard was still making a valiant effort at getting to his bedroom without having to stand up.
Upon staggering across the threshold of his bedroom, Malfoy wrenched himself out of Harry's supportive grasp and flung himself onto his bed, where he reached over to his bedside table and upended a drawer's worth of contents into his lap. After a brief search he found what he was looking for- a bottle of pills. Without further hesitation Malfoy scooped up several of the brightly colored pills and swallowed. Harry watched from his spot by the doorway, as Malfoy's mercury eyes slowly cleared and he visibly sobered, sitting up and wincing slightly as the pills kicked in.
"Potter?" he said, confusion written all over his face, and Harry was willing to bet his new Litening 2000 that Malfoy had no idea that he'd met Harry in Knockturn Alley, or remember any of the events that followed. He was proven right by the next words out of Malfoy's mouth, "What the fuck are you doing in my house?"
Harry very nearly lost control and punched him so hard Malfoy would see not just stars, but the entire sodding galaxy. He took a deep breath and counted to ten, visualizing Malfoy's bloody corpse with each count. That helped him regain some measure of self-control over himself, and when he opened his eyes he no longer felt the urge to bodily harm the wizard currently sitting with crossed arms on his bed, giving him a withering glare.
"In case your drunken mind forgot, I was the one you literally ran into in Knockturn Alley," Harry informed him sarcastically, "You were raving about being king and called me, and I quote, a 'lowly peasant'. So I decided to see you home in case you got killed on your own."
"Oh," was Malfoy's only response as he averted his eyes from their glare at Harry and dipped his head, turning the bottle of sobering pills over in his hands. The silence stretched on, and Harry, for lack of anything to say, cast his eyes around the bedroom he was in.
The one noticeable difference between this room and the rest of Malfoy's house was the level of hygiene, at least it looked relatively clean and there were no living creatures crawling or buzzing about the laundry heaped on the floor. The double bed, the bedside cabinet and the laundry lying in dirty piles were the only furnishings in the room, as well as numerous empty Firewhiskey bottles that lay scattered all over the place.
Harry shifted awkwardly and tried thinking of something, anything to say and break the uncomfortable silence. He was just about to compliment on the tasteful décor of Malfoy's house when a whispered, "Thank you, Potter" made him stop and whip his head up to stare at Malfoy, who was looking pointedly at a point somewhere to the left of his shoulder.
"Come again?" he said, gaping open-mouthed at the man who used to be a spoilt, snotty, conceited, arrogant bastard and who most definitely was not the type to say thank you.
"I said thank you, Potter," Malfoy said venomously, spitting out the words 'thank you' as though it were an expletive.
"What for?" Harry asked, acting completely oblivious in order to make Malfoy thank him once more.
"For helping me and not letting me get killed," said Malfoy through clenched teeth, and though he was obviously not happy that he had to thank Harry, he seemed completely serious about the 'getting killed' part.
Harry wasn't sure what made him bite back the million snide remarks and cutting comments, but he found himself saying, "You're welcome" in what was a fairly civil tone considering he had wanted to punch the living daylights out of Malfoy a few moments ago.
A short pause, then – "Why are you using a Bubble-Head Charm, Potter?" came the query, and Harry self-consciously waved his wand and removed it, then choked as the stench hit him and his eyes began to water.
"Oh, right," Malfoy said, comprehension dawning as he saw Harry's reaction after exposure to the air in his flat. "Sorry about that, the bloke who lives in the flat below mine raises pigs in his bathroom, and the lady in the flat above mine makes a very disgusting newt stew every day."
"Really?" Harry asked, re-casting the spell on himself and sighing in relief as he breathed in the scent of fresh air. "Sounds interesting," He wondered why Malfoy didn't move elsewhere if he had to contend with pig-raising blokes and newt-stew-concocting ladies every day.
Some of his thoughts must have been pretty obvious, because Malfoy said softly, "Not everyone came off better after the war, Potter."
"What? I wasn't – I wasn't trying to – to make you feel – feel bad or anything," Harry muttered, scuffing his shoe against the floorboards, "Sorry."
"Make me feel bad?" Malfoy laughed, though it didn't reach his eyes, then said in a self-deprecating manner, "Potter, nothing makes me feel bad anymore, not after the war, and I was forced to watch my dad receive the Dementor's Kiss, or when my mum went mad after awhile in Azkaban, or when they snapped my wand, took every last Knut I had left and forced me to do my community service at Azkaban, where I could see my parents everyday." At this Malfoy closed his eyes briefly and sank back against his pillows, and Harry could hear the slight tremor in his voice that indicated he was probably very close to crying.
Harry was once again at a loss for words. He hadn't known what Malfoy had been up to since the war, but he'd always figured he would have restored his family name, gotten back to the top of the social ladder and sat on his aristocratic arse all day watching the Galleons pour in. It seemed he couldn't have been more wrong.
"Would you like a drink, Potter?" Malfoy asked from his lazy sprawl on his bed, apparently having recovered from his brief lapse into Memoryland.
"Um, what?" said Harry ineloquently, not having paid attention, wrapped up as he was in his own musings.
"A drink?" Malfoy repeated slowly, as though explaining that one plus one equals two to a three-year-old, "It's only courtesy for me to offer you a drink now that you're in my house as a guest, and besides, with my house in this condition, I can't really offer you a seat that isn't dirty laundry or my bedside table."
"Oh, okay," Harry said agreeably, realizing he could do with a drink or two.
Malfoy reached for his bedside table, fumbled a bit in the drawers and drew out a bottle of Firewhiskey, which seemed to be the only liquid Malfoy ever drank, and held it out to Harry, who had to do an ungainly tap-dance to make his way over the obstacles to the bed and take it.
The Firewhiskey burned his throat, but it was a pleasant burn, and one Harry was quite accustomed to, after four years of hanging out in the Horntail's Hub with Ron every week or so. He still remembered the first time they'd gotten drunk, the night after Harry defeated Voldemort and they'd had to find an outlet for their grief and remorse over the people they'd lost, those who had died in the battle. Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Mad-Eye, Colin, Fred, Dobby... All of them were dead, all because of Tom fucking Riddle and his stupid sodding Death Eaters.
Harry felt tears stinging his eyes at the thought of everyone they had lost, the families that had been destroyed, the lives that had been wrecked, and blinked rapidly to clear them. Malfoy's was one of those whose life had been wrecked after the war, and at the moment Harry felt a surge of uncharacteristic sympathy towards him, despite the fact that he had been a complete and utter prat to Harry during their Hogwarts years.
He was shaken out of his reverie by Malfoy's voice saying, "Potter!" very loudly.
"Sorry, what?" he asked, not having heard a thing Malfoy had said.
"I asked if you would care sharing the Firewhiskey," Malfoy sighed, rolling his eyes exasperatedly at Harry's obvious lack of attentiveness.
"No, but don't you think you've had enough to drink?" Harry asked, even as he held out the bottle and watched as Malfoy threw back at least a quarter of its contents.
"There is no such thing as having too much alcohol," Malfoy drawled lazily, handing the Firewhiskey back, "Here, sit down, you look like something out of a Twilight film." And with that he flopped languidly to the other side of the bed, clearing a space for Harry to sit down on.
Harry perched gingerly on the edge of the allotted space, not wanting to jostle the impressive amount of debris scattered about the double bed. "Want another?" Malfoy asked, indicating the almost empty Firewhiskey bottle.
Harry hesitated, thinking about the match against Puddlemere United the next day, and the reprimanding from Hermione if she got wind of him drinking the night before. He thought about Voldemort, his Death Eaters, the war, its victims and Malfoy. The consequences he was facing now because of the war.
He reached his decision, "Sure, why not? You got anything stronger?"
TO BE CONTINUED…