Disclaimer:All fictional elements referred to herein belong to their respective owners. Harry Potter is Rowling's. The title and references to Wildfires belong to The Limousines. Very little of consequence is mine. No copyright infringement intended.
Author's Note: This was a plot bunny that wouldn't let me be. I started it six days ago, thinking it would be a quick one-shot. It's complete now, and is eight relatively short chapters. I'll post one each day from now until next Friday (8/19). If you've never listened to Wildfiresby The Limousines, go do so. The title and a number of vague references in this story are based on it, and it's been on repeat in my head and on my iPod for six days.
Harry Potter hates the stars.
It's irrational and illogical, not to mention completely fucking barmy, but he does. Apparently others find peace when they look at the stars, but all Harry sees is too many white lights over top of an all-consuming darkness. Where the rest of the world finds tranquility, in the stars, Harry finds one more thing in his life that doesn't make sense. The weight of their chaos is suffocating, so much so that he's grateful for clouds and rain, because they blot out the dizzying disorder of a clear night sky.
He knows, if he thinks about it, that it isn't the stars that are the problem. They're nothing more than a symptom, a symptom of the quiet dissonance between his life and the lives of everyone around him since he watched Voldemort crumple before his eyes and beneath his spell. That moment changed everything; for the rest of the Wizarding world, it was the first moment of the rest of their lives. Lives in which there was hope and peace, lives that were filled with Ministry galas and reconstruction fundraisers and weddings and babies.
For Harry, it had felt like the end. Seven years he'd spent, seven of seventeen, with the knowledge that he was linked to the darkest wizard of their age. Even before he first heard the prophecy, some part of him had always known it would come down to one or the other.
In the end, when only Harry still stood, watching those around him break down in relief and hope and joy, he was empty. He'd saved the world at seventeen.
What the hell was he supposed to do next?
Ten years have passed since then, and he still hasn't found an answer to that question. His unending supply of money is still unending, owing to his inheritances and the Wizarding world's need to continue to pay tribute to their bloody saviour. The Auror corps has stopped trying to recruit him after his last very firm, "for the last bloody time, fuck off." Hermione has stopped nagging him to get a job or go back to school or do something, because he's said more or less the same thing to her as he said to the Aurors. The Weasleys leave him alone because the dead look in his eyes isn't that different from the one that was seared into their minds when Fred didn't get up from the floor at Hogwarts.
He is, for all intents and purposes, alone, although his friends are still his friends. They still love him and care about him, but they've moved on with their lives, and he doesn't begrudge them that even though he can't find one to move on with himself.
Ginny is gone, off playing professional Quidditch and dating a teammate, last he's heard. Not that he'd be with her if things had been different anyway. One of his finer moments about seven years ago included an embarrassing encounter with another of her teammates at the time that ended with Harry's realisation that it wasn't that he didn't like sex, it was that he didn't like sex with women. Ginny had done little more than nod knowingly when she found them in the back room of her flat (herflat, because Harry had refused to move in with her, or to get married, or really even to sleep with her, and suddenly the why behind that stubborn refusal was plain).
Harry liked the sex, he just didn't like the bloke. They lasted about four more minutes, and that was that.
So at 27, the great Harry Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World, Chosen One, Vanquisher of the Dark Lord, is single, alone, unemployed, unshaven, and, as often as not, hungover.
Which is why, when a menacing owl beats its beak on his bedroom window without pause for seven minutes and twenty-three seconds one morning (he has no idea what morning, because he has little use for dates, and if he's honest, he doesn't even know if it's morning, because he has about as much use for time), Harry drags himself from his bed and snatches a scroll from the bloody animal's clutches, but still gives him treats in spite of his irritation. He hasn't had an owl in months, much less one carrying a message with the Hogwarts seal on it, and frankly, Harry is curious to know who's left on earth that he hasn't told to fuck off enough times to be left alone.
When he opens the scroll and squints at the precise, angular script - absently thinking this would be easier with his glasses, but having no bloody idea where they are because he can't see without them to findthem - his interest is piqued. And he's not sure he remembers the last time he was all that interested in anything.
When he scans the bottom of the parchment, holding it so close to his face that it flutters with every breath, and sees the signature at the bottom, he feels a surge of something he can only vaguely remember as adrenaline course through his body.
Regards,
Draco Malfoy
"Draco Malfoy," Harry whispers, and his voice is harsh and raspy against the silence of Grimmauld Place.
The barrage of memories that go along with those two words, that one name, is so overpowering that Harry nearly needs to sit down. Blond hair and a deceitful, condescending gaze. An outstretched hand that Harry doesn't take. A foot crashing into his nose so hard he saw stars and heardpain. Terrified grey eyes flickering over his distorted face at Malfoy Manor under the insane gaze of Bellatrix Lestrange. Screams of terror in a room full of fire. A broken, defeated family, set apart from the rest when it was all over.
What the fuck does Draco Malfoy want with him after all these years? And what is he doing sending a letter from Hogwarts?
Harry rubs his eyes and fumbles around on all the flat surfaces near his bed until he locates his glasses, which he has to spell clean, since apparently he's picked them up by the lenses and has covered them in fingerprints. He pulls on the nearest pair of crumpled jeans from his floor - who needs a closet when there's a perfectly good floor anyway - and stumbles to the kitchen for a cup of tea, the scroll bearing Malfoy's name still gripped in his fist.
He resists the urge to read it while the water boils, while his tea steeps, while he waits for the only-slightly-questionable bread in his cupboard to toast. It isn't until he sits at his table in the uncomfortable silence of a very large house that's only inhabited by one inconsequential person that he smooths the parchment in front of him and reads it properly.
Potter-
Harry's not sure what it is, but he can hearMalfoy when he reads the words on the page. For some reason, it makes him smile. He tries again.
Potter -
I'm uncertain if you're aware, but I've recently been awarded the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. Evidently Minerva has decided that the best way to make sure students know how to fight dark magic is to bring in a former expert. Doubtless you'd agree she'd find anyone more qualified outside of Azkaban, except perhaps yourself.
I've a matter I wish to discuss with you in regards to some of my lessons. Much as it pains me to say it, Potter, I require your assistance. I wonder if you might be amenable to meeting with me, here at the school. I could meet you in Hogsmeade if you prefer, but I'm told you're not much for adoring crowds these days. Something we have in common, I see.
If it isn't too much trouble, do send a reply back so I can make alternate arrangements if necessary. I'd be concerned it's cutting into your hero time, but I hear things. I know you're not too busy.
Think it over, Potter. Just don't take too long, they do have exams in the spring.
Regards,
Draco Malfoy
Malfoy needs his help. Malfoy is a teacher? Malfoy needs his help? Teaching? Children?
Harry shakes his head and realises he's started muttering those words out loud into the empty kitchen. Still, there's something that makes him want to go. Maybe it's that connection to whatever they once had, full of passion and fire and disdain. Or maybe it's Malfoy's complete lack of tact about Harry's...complete lack of a life.
Or maybe he's just bloody bored, and this is the first thing that's so much as roused his curiosity in ages. Disinterest in most things and dislike of the rest means he hasn't got much to show for the last ten years, outside of a string of bad dates, several horribly-slanted Day-In-The-Life interviews in various news publications, inconsequential travel to places he doesn't really remember or care about. Yet for all their probing and questions and prods, none of his friends have been able to make him consider a change. But something about Malfoy's I know you're not too busylights the tiniest spark in Harry, and he scratches his head while he looks blankly around the kitchen for a quill and some parchment.
In the end, he settles for little more than a scrap, and he finds a dull pencil in a drawer, but it'll do. Without thinking, because he knows if he does that, he'll just keep thinking and never write, he scribbles out a quick message.
Malfoy -
I'll come to Hogwarts. This afternoon, unless I hear otherwise. After all, you said yourself I'm not very busy.
Harry
He snorts and wanders back upstairs to find, unsurprisingly, that Malfoy's owl is still scowling at him from his bedroom windowsill. He sends the bird on its way and looks around, still a bit lost, a bit confused, and more than a bit curious.
He also has no idea what to wear, because he thinks perhaps impromptu visits to Hogwarts to see Draco Malfoy might be exactly why one needs a closet, instead of keeping all of one's wardrobe on the floor.