"What's that?"
"Music, Harry."
"It's not bad,"Harry said.
"It's Mozart,"Draco replied. He stood in the empty drawing room wearing a t-shirt and old pants. His wand was raised and, as he moved his arm, new wallpaper plastered itself to the walls of number 12, Grimmauld Place. Under Draco's graceful control, the room slowly changed from dark and olive green to bright, and blue and white.
"That's an unusual color scheme for a Slytherin," Harry said. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, still holding his grocery bags. Kreacher did most of their everyday shopping, but there were a few Muggle items Harry liked to have as well.
"I don't see why every pureblood who was ever in Slytherin has to be confined to only using green and silver," Draco said. "It's getting so cliché. Anyway, you need some light in this house."
"I'm also surprised you didn't hire someone."
"Neither of us can afford that," Draco said. "We could always do it the Muggle way - where we'd end up having an adorable paint fight loaded with unresolved sexual tension."
"It doesn't need to be unresolved," Harry said. Draco shook his head and smiled.
"Go put your groceries away."
While Harry unpacked the food - noisily, as usual, Draco rolled out the matching rug and levitated the curtains in place. Harry stuck his head around the door again.
"D'you know where the silver candelabra from the study got to?"
"I lent it to Mother," Draco said.
"But that was mine."
"I rather think it was mine," Draco drawled. "Everything in this house you didn't buy with your own money is mine as well as yours."
"Sirius left this house to me," Harry snapped.
"The stuff in it was left to me generations before anyone thought about leaving anything to you," Draco said coolly.
"Yeah, yeah, and did those feet in ancient times, "Harry muttered and went off to clang around in another room. Draco put loud music on the wizard wireless to drown him out. Not being able to tell Harry the truth was starting to make him irritable, and Harry continued to go around broadcasting his Draco centric fantasies to anyone who was a halfway decent mind reader. Draco was starting to consider taking a chance on Harry but he found the strength of Harry's feelings a bit intimidating.
Harry and Draco left for Blaise Zabini's party around sunset and took their time walking there, crunching through the last of the autumn leaves. They found themselves holding hands, leaning slightly into each other.
Blaise Zabini and Theo Nott had returned from the British Virgin Islands, where they'd taken off to at the end of sixth year. Blaise had only been back since Snape's funeral. They'd strung the balcony of their luxury high rise flat with fairy lights. A witch in a silver dress met Harry and Draco at the door of the flat, and ushered them inside. The main room was huge and high-ceilinged, with a series of floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows, a matching door at one end that faced the balcony and stunning views of the water. Glowing balloons floated through the air. They'd decorated the place with the most modern Muggle furniture and souvenirs from the Islands.
Draco pilfered two champagne flutes from a passing waiter and handed one to Harry.
"Should you be drinking on the job?" Harry asked.
"Harry, it's not like being an Auror," Draco said. "I have to mingle. And no one minds if we come in to work hung over or even if we spend half the day having mock sword fights with umbrellas as long as we put out a newspaper at the end of the day."
"That's so childish."
"Welcome to journalism ," Draco said. "Of course, if we don't get a paper out, or if we print something wrong, then the boss comes and screams at us."
"I think it's traditional that when you're our age you have to work at a job where you get screamed at,"Harry said.
Theo Nott headed toward them, beaming. "Thank you for coming!"
"Thank you for doing a runner just when we needed you," Draco said with a smirk. "You bastard."
"You didn't come all this way just to insult me," Theo said.
"All this way?" Draco said. "It really wasn't that far. We walked it."
"Oh you," Theo said. He grinned. "I'm so honored to have Harry Potter at my-our-party. Come talk to me!" He whisked Harry off. Draco stood by the food and pretended to be working. All around him, his former classmates were relaxing and laughing, house loyalties forgotten for a moment. Lavender Brown, her left arm in a cast, was busy chatting up Zacharias Smith. Luna Lovegood sat perched in the lap of a stunned-looking Neville Longbottom. She was wearing an absurd straw hat and sunglasses, and a stuffed parrot on her shoulder.
"Why are you standing all by yourself?" Hermione asked.
"I'm guarding the rum,"Draco muttered.
"Who in their right mind would let you guard anything? "
"It was a joke," Draco said.
"Yeah." Hermione filled her plate with a variety of Caribbean-themed finger foods. "Are you always this fun at parties?"
"I heard you're interning at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement," Draco said. Yes, he would attempt to make conversation with Hermione Granger. Anything was better than standing here alone.
"Oh yes!" Hermione said, grasping at the opening. "It's so exciting. We're really working on revamping some of the magical laws, reorganizing things. Of course, I spend a lot of time getting coffee and sitting in stuffy archive rooms doing research. But we've got the Umbridge trial coming up, that should be interesting."
"I almost forgot about that," Draco admitted. "And I'm a witness!"
Hermione winced.
"Harry's not happy about that," she said. "He doesn't quite get it."
"It's not like I have a choice, is it? "
"You have none,"Hermione said. "I saw the subpoena. Umbridge is desperate for supporters, that's why her defense team wants you. And Harry doesn't have a choice about testifying for the prosecution either."
"It's just so embarrassing," Draco complained. "Standing up in front of the court to tell everyone about the idiotic thing I did when I was fifteen."
"But you've done so many idiotic things, "Hermione said, with a hint of a smile on her face. "And it's not as if you can take any of them back now."
"I can't go around being proud of them, "Draco said. "I'm supposed to be…you know…redeeming myself."
Hermione patted his arm.
"And you're doing such a good job!"
Draco glared at her.
Eventually, when he'd had more than enough to drink, he convinced Harry that they should really go home. Harry stumbled a bit coming down the steps. Draco laughed as he propped Harry up. A fat raindrop splashed on his hand. It was joined by a dozen others a moment later. Draco transfigured a stick into a large black umbrella and raised it over their heads. They held hands as they walked. Harry pointed out facets of the Muggle world that Draco hadn't known about.
"Those cameras monitor the traffic. We have them almost everywhere public now."
"That's really quite creepy,"Draco said. "Aren't we lucky we have ways around that. It's the Muggle Aurors who keep track of the footage?"
Harry nodded. Draco shuddered. He didn't like law enforcement, they reminded him of raids conducted in the middle of the night, people coming to take his father away. It wasn't made any easier by the fact that he was holding hands with an Auror in training.
"Muggles call them the police."
"The pleece,"Draco repeated. "I think I knew that one. And those are the time machines, yes?" Draco pointed at a telephone booth as they passed it.
"No, uh, that was just on telly," Harry said. "Muggles don't really have time machines. And that one's the wrong color anyway."
"Well, wizards can go back in time," Draco sniffed. They were at Grimmauld Place now, Harry fumbled in his pockets for the door key. They climbed the stone steps, which were narrow and forced them to press together. Harry was warm and the sleeve of his coat was soft. Draco leaned forward and kissed him. Harry responded but it felt awkward. Maybe he would have preferred to make the first move. Good. Draco liked confusing and irritating him.
"Maybe things would have been easier if we'd been friends at school,"Harry said.
"You didn't want to be my friend."
"Draco!"Harry exclaimed. "That was seven years ago! How can you hold a grudge for seven years?"
"Because it never got dealt with, Harry." Draco spun around on the steps. "And it didn't stop - you and your friends and all the teachers who snuck around behind the scenes fixing things so you'd come out on top- every time I came up against you I lost. I didn't just lose; I got humiliated, often publicly. I'm not the sort of person who learns not to want something by being repeatedly denied it. "
"What did you want?"
"To win. I wanted to win just one time," Draco retorted, bitterness in his voice. "I wanted for you to be wrong and me to be right and for everyone to know it, at least once."
"But why?"
"Because! Harry, because if I couldn't manage to succeed at Hogwarts, with everything I should have had going for me, then I wouldn't be able to succeed anywhere! And you cheated and everyone knew it but nobody would say it except me and when I did everyone labeled ME the whining brat who had it in for the Great Harry Potter! If I couldn't make you be my friend, at least I could make you hate me and that meant you couldn't ignore me. No one would be able to ignore me!"
"Fine!" Harry said. "We'll get Hermione's Time Turner and go back and you can be the one Lord Voldemort tries to kill."
"He DID try to kill me!" Draco said, his voice grew louder, bordering on shouting. "He set up me up to die, as a punishment for my parents, and then in the Great Hall he told you he was going to find me and kill me!"
"That's not the same thing at all!"
"How is it not the same?" Draco yelled. "How?"
"Because you were never important!" Harry shouted in exasperation. Draco felt like Harry had slapped him. Harry shrugged and muttered "Just listen, Draco. You were just a pawn to him, that's why he could think nothing of getting rid of you. And stop it with your conspiracy theories- nobody listens to you because nobody cares! You didn't matter enough to anyone for people to go out of their way to hurt you. Draco Malfoy wasn't a factor in anything. Even the love of your life preferred someone else."
"You even took that away from me!" Draco blinked back traitorous tears. "She couldn't just be some woman or even some Muggle woman, she had to be your mother."
Harry pointed his wand at Draco. Draco felt a sharp pain inside, but not from any spell: the pain was caused at the sight of his old wand, the one Harry took from him. He ran upstairs and locked himself in his room, Harry shouting after him and calling him a coward.
"You're looking very drawn," the portrait above Draco's bed remarked. Draco sat up, rubbed his eyes and sniffled. He glanced around his bedroom at all the possessions he'd hurled about in his temper tantrum. It had been an undignified, unseemly display, something that might have got him in trouble if he were younger and still living at Malfoy Manor. The portrait of Severus frowned at him. He'd been painted in his favorite high necked black robes, standing behind his desk with his arms folded.
"I wouldn't have tolerated that either," he said.
"You can't read my mind!" Draco muttered. "You're just canvas and paint and spells."
"No, but I've been observing you for the last twenty minutes," Severus said. "You're acting childishly, you lost control. I know what Lucius would say about that. "
"I'm so angry,"Draco said, the frustration twisting in his chest and almost cutting off his breath.
"And did this help?"
"Yes," Draco said. "No. "
"Now tell me what you're angry about. And use your words."
Draco turned away, he couldn't look at the portrait as he spoke.
"He takes everything away from me."
"Spending your life seething over old high school wounds isn't worth it," Severus said. It sounded insincere to both of them and they both frowned. "It all looks different when you're dead." Severus made another attempt at sounding like he meant it.
"Well, you would know!" Draco cried. "You're still in love with HER."
Severus was silent.
"You loved her and you did even when you were-" making me feel better than I've ever felt in my life. "It's always been about Harry. Harry Potter and his dead Muggle mother!"
"You're angry because you had to share my affections with a dead woman."
"No, because she was his mother!" Draco kicked the nightstand.
"I had a life before you were born,"Severus said. "If it hadn't been for Lily Potter, you wouldn't want to be with me. Believe me, Draco."
"You could love me because you'd loved her," Draco said slowly.
"And he finally catches on," Severus said. "I wouldn't have been able to teach you potions or defense spells if someone hadn't taught them to me. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Draco nodded, feeling foolish once again.
"You never talked this way with me when you were alive."
"There was too much risk involved," Severus said and Draco knew he was referring to more than just the political implications of loving a Muggleborn or being a half blood and having relations with a pureblood. .
"I miss you."
"Now, Draco. Don't." Severus murmured.