Word Count: 1020
~ Chapter 6 ~
If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
Draco watched as Potter—no, Harry—blinked.
"You're right, that is a stupid question. The answer is pretty obvious, isn't it?"
"What would you say?" Draco asked, interested. He knew that the answer should be obvious, but Potter... well, as much as Draco didn't think he was as bad as he'd always believed him to be, he was still a Gryffindor.
"Retain the mind, obviously," Potter—Harry, dammit—replied, rolling his eyes. "What's the point in having the body of a thirty year old if your mind is mush?"
Draco snorted. "That's one way to put it, I suppose. But I agree. If you've still got your mind, you can learn the spells to make your body appear younger if you really feel the need."
"Even if you didn't…" Harry wrinkled his nose. "It's just a bit pointless to have an old mind with a young body. I don't understand the purpose of the question."
"Oh, because when you last sang a song was definitely important."
"Huh. Point. What even is this article?"
"A way to fall in love, apparently," Draco replied, grinning. "Are you in love with me yet, Potter?"
"Absolutely. I'm infatuated. Can't you tell?"
"Wipe away that drool, you're embarrassing yourself."
Harry snorted, and threw a biscuit at him. "Have you got any parchment?"
Draco blinked at the non sequitur but nodded slowly. "I have."
"Can I borrow some? I want to write to Kingsley."
"I don't think we're meant to send letters, Potter. It'll give away our position."
"Which is why I'm going to floo it to him instead," Harry said with a nod. "I want to double check that Kreacher can come here before I call him."
"You've got an elf?"
Harry nodded. "He was the Black family elf. Sirius left everything to me, including him, so." He shrugged. "It was an adventure at first, but we came to an accord."
"That sounds like a story."
Harry just smiled. "I guess it is. Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime."
Draco accepted that, and went upstairs to grab the parchment and a quill for Potter. It was odd how easily they were getting along. Draco put it down to the lack of outside interference, and the fact that both of them seemed too tired to fight.
Draco knew he was, anyway.
And he hadn't been lying to Harry when he'd said he wanted him to believe what he'd told the Wizengamot. He'd been so utterly convinced he'd be joining his father in Azkaban, that when Potter had shown up on his trial day, Draco had thought he was even more doomed.
He certainly hadn't expected the boy-hero to speak in his defence, until there was no conceivable way for the old gits to convict him.
When he returned to the kitchen, it was to find Harry leaning against the cabinet with a box of blueberries in his hand.
"How do you feel about blueberry muffins?" he asked, when he spotted Draco in the doorway.
"I feel… good about them?" Draco offered, a little nonplussed. He couldn't imagine Potter was going to make them from scratch.
And yet, apparently he was.
It was a surprisingly simple process, and it didn't take long until the kitchen was permeated with the scent of fresh muffins.
"You're really going to have to tell me how you learned to cook, Potter."
"It'll probably come up on the question list," Harry replied, shrugging his shoulders. "But I learned some before Hogwarts, and then some from Molly Weasley."
Draco nodded. He should have expected the Weasley matriarch was at least to be partially credited for Potter's skill in the kitchen. The Weasleys weren't rich enough to have an elf, so she'd likely do all the cooking given Arthur Weasley spent his days at the Ministry.
It was different to the way he grew up, but he was beginning to realise that different didn't automatically mean wrong.
Potter sat down at the table and accepted the parchment and quill, quickly writing his note.
"Your handwriting really is atrocious," Draco commented, from his own seat. He couldn't properly read the words upside down, but he got the general gist of it.
"I grew up using muggle pens," Harry replied, shrugging. "Hogwarts really should offer a set of beginner's classes for Muggle-born and Muggle-raised students. Teach them how to use a quill properly, perhaps the basics for ingredient preparation in potions. Snape seemed to expect us to know how to do things, when I didn't have the first clue what the difference between chopping and dicing was."
Draco frowned. "McGonagall didn't do that with you? Snape did with the Muggle-borns in Slytherin."
Harry blinked. "It seems stupid now that I think about it, but I didn't realise there were any Muggle-borns in Slytherin."
Rolling his eyes, Draco sat back in his seat. "It is stupid. We just integrated them better, so people didn't assume that they were Muggle-born. I wondered if the other houses did it in a different way but… Gryffindor doesn't do it at all?"
Harry shook his head. "Unless I was excluded from it because I'm technically not Muggle-born, but I think Hermione would have mentioned it."
"She's a freak of nature, that one," Draco said, shaking his head. When Harry bristled, he held up a hand. "I don't mean it as an insult. I've just never seen a Muggle-born take to the theory of magic so fast. You picked up the actual magic easily because you're powerful, and that's all genetics, but Granger was… something else."
Harry smiled proudly. "She saved my life so many times because she knew random facts about random things that I'd have never even thought to research."
Draco's lips tilted up. "Was she the one who made you use Gillyweed in the Triwizard Tournament? I knew you hadn't thought of that yourself."
"I didn't, but it wasn't Hermione."
"Oh. Who was it?"
Harry grinned. "Dobby."