Note: I can't believe I have to write this for clarity but I do not support JK Rowling's views. However, I grew up with Harry Potter. No matter what people say, it's actually very difficult to let go of a story that you have loved for so long. So, regardless of how much I dislike JK Rowling now, I will always love this world. Death of the author and all that. There are too many things that are wrong with the world, so the least I can do for myself is keep the stories I love with me.
And with that, here we are. My first HP fanfic which honestly is insane. I usually have an unspoken rule in which I don't write fic for books, but I saw the Cursed Child in theaters. I know. It was a family thing. It was definitely just made for cash grabbing and I hated it. The effects were pretty cool though, not going to lie. They did well with that. I absolutely hated how most of the characters were portrayed, especially Harry. He's a straight-up asshole, and not at all what he should be at that age. He and Malfoy deserved better, especially if they are supposed to be adults in the future and working together. So, I wrote this to fix that.
By the way, some blood descriptions and light gore ahead which accounts for the rating.
The Long Run
Draco was tired. Grime had settled on his face and the rest of him, traces of a battle he never wanted to be a part of. The mud had sunken onto the soles of his boots like gunk on a gumshoe trudging through the streets of London on a particularly muggy day.
Malfoy Manor felt empty. Moreso than it had been before. Dobby had not been their house-elf for years, but even his presence would have been welcome.
Instead, Draco listened to the echoing silence. The dark, intricate green tiles lined the walls in curving patterns. The sound bounced off them only when his heels clicked on the floor.
His arms still trembled. His legs wobbled with a burning sensation he had forgotten still stayed. He could hear the shouts of his parents as they sprinted through the Forbidden Forest, dodging the plants and the unforgiving creatures that cast their shadows upon them.
They had not spoken for hours, instead relying on their breaths and steady footfalls to guide them.
It was only when they had been far enough away from Hogwarts Castle that his father had linked arms with his mother and they apparated away together. As a family.
They never had been a proper one. Not until he had seen the fear on their faces as the Dark Lord smiled that smile. How he raised his black wand, moving in the same kind of diving pattern a dragon would perform when he prepared to snatch up his prey.
"Oh, Draco," his mother had whispered in his ear. "Oh, my son." Her breaths were oddly cold on his clammy skin. Even though he knew she meant them, he had been so far away from her for too long to know what a mother's love was.
They had made it home.
His parents disappeared somewhere in the night. To their own room, he presumed. Too tired to do anything but rest.
That had been all he wanted to do his whole life.
The owl tapped on the fogged glass of his window at some ungodly hour. He rubbed at his eyes, wishing that the dry redness there would just go away. He had not slept at all.
"All right, all right," he muttered, annoyed. "I'm coming, you stupid animal."
Rap, tap, tap. The noise of the barn owl's sharp beak on the windowpane was grating.
"All right!" Draco all but shouted. He shoved open the window, pushing up the glass with a grunt.
The owl flapped its wings indignantly and lifted its leg. He untied the furled message with a huff.
When he unrolled it, he did not know what he had been expecting. For all intents and purposes, he should have been on guard. The Dark Lord was out there. He had run away. They were traitors. They were monsters, murderers, killers, and—
Voldemort is dead.
The words were hurried, swift, and slanted. The black ink smudged at the ends of every letter as if someone had not waited for it to dry being swiping fabric over it by accident.
His heart pounded in his chest. His lips were dry and cracked. He could hardly believe what he was reading. He should not have. He really ought to burn the thing and watch the ashes crinkle away into the flames.
But he knew, somehow, the truth of them.
He paced. His socks slid on the wood panels. He wandered and thought. What was he supposed to do with that information? Why tell him in the first place? He did not even know who had sent it.
Draco lifted the note again. This time, the rising sun limned the edges of it like a halo in a church.
It was still early that day. It was still a time when most people were asleep. He had not heard a murmur or a creak for a long time.
Still, it was a while before he had decided to leave his room.
Draco found himself standing before the fireplace in the living room. The fire rose and fell steadily as if heeding to his own breathing. He felt for the pouch in his pocket, the one that contained floo powder. Some of it spilled onto the lining of his coat as he scooped some of it.
He stepped onto the coals in the fireplace, the low flames licking at his boots.
"High Street, Hogsmeade!" he shouted.
The rush of green fire engulfed him as he envisioned the sloped roads and the angled houses with a forest of chimney columns.
He was spit out into the hearth of the Three Broomsticks Inn. A maid screeched when she saw him, raising her wand, but he was able to placate her.
"I'm just here to go to the school," he sputtered out, dusting himself off.
The woman was rather spooked herself, and her curly hair was a bird's nest. "How do I know you're not—"
Draco offered her his wand. "I'm not," he said, knowing exactly what she meant. "I just got a message," he continued, trying to remain calm. "They say he's dead."
She raised an eyebrow at his outstretched wand as it balanced on both of his hands as an offering. "Dead?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "Him. V...V..." He still could not say his name.
But the woman stared at him. Her mouth was agape, and she did not move. He took that as his cue to leave.
Draco trudged away in the early morning as the beginnings of summer and the end of spring touched upon the hills that led to Hogwarts.
The trees swayed. The leaves rustled. It should have been peaceful.
But he saw that just beyond the rolling knolls was a smoldering castle. The smoke rose in swirls and past spires. Dark, gray, and fearful. Remnants of exploded statues were rammed into the path he took and the steps he crossed were riddled with cracks and overturned stones.
He saw them, the bodies. Piled and bloody, or void of any sign of previous life at all. Empty shells of themselves, the people that had been his classmates and his teachers.
He thought of the look on Crabbe's shocked face as he fell into the raging flames that consumed the Room of Requirement before the doors slammed shut.
He swallowed back the uneasy feeling in his throat.
He walked further up. Parts of people and limbs of giants and creatures littered some parts. He wanted to gag.
But it was when he reached the Great Hall that things turned.
The battle had been over for hours it seemed. Mere hours. Children younger than him and those who were underaged had appeared in a daze. They had not been there before. They had been told to leave with the others.
But the ones who stayed, he could tell. Their robes were torn to shreds. Cuts marred their cheeks, their faces. Nothing was in their eyes but reluctant survival.
Hardly anyone paid attention to him. He had not expected them to, per se, but he thought someone could recognize him.
He sank down to the side, watching where people had decided to start the cleanup. He raised his wand, aiming it for rubble, and some of it lifted into the air.
"What are you doing here?" spat a Gryffindor he could not recognize. They had messy strawberry blond and a wild look.
Draco gasped. He dropped the rubble in a hasty pile where the others had.
"I um," he started, unsure. He was not sure why he was there either. He had simply decided to be. "I just..."
"He's helping with the debris, Nigel," said a familiar, melodic voice. He whipped around, surprised to see Luna Lovegood defending him. "Can't you see? We need all the help we can get."
Draco blinked at her.
Luna nodded, a soft smile on her face. "Go on then," she urged.
Nigel slogged away with a frown. Luna seemed to leave him to his own devices too.
Draco moved as if he were a charmed snitch, zipping by and in between without care. He tried to disregard it, the smell of death. The blank stares, the groans of the wounded. Tinctures spilled and potions unstoppered.
He got looks, of course. Many of them.
In this castle of witches and wizards who were so much like him, he also found that they were so very not like him at all. They shared magic and learning, some even potentially related to distant ancestors of his. But he looked around, and there were no friends here. He had realized too late that he never really had any.
He stopped at a back entrance hall, framed in the archway of a destroyed courtyard. A dragonfly flitted by, and then he heard chattering.
Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger stopped right in front of him, odd looks in their eyes. They both cleared their throats and thinned their lips.
"Luna said you're here to clean," Granger started with a grimace. He could not blame her. It was quite uncomfortable. She gestured vaguely elsewhere. "Just...have a look. The ghosts found a few pillars that need mending near the Ravenclaw common room."
Weasley looked away. "Well, uh, thanks then. Food's in the History of Magic classroom," he added. "Or you could...go to the kitchens."
They left him there all alone. He could see the backs of their heads as they walked away, leaning into each other as if sharing a big secret. He had always wanted loyal friends like them.
Draco felt a twinge in his gut as he decided at that moment to follow the path Granger and Weasley had come from. He picked through the rocks and stones, pretending with some trepidation that the bloodstains were not there too.
He told himself that he could have caused these deaths. He could have started it all. He might have. (He did.)
The wind blew past his face, the smell of decay causing him to hold back a breath. Then, he stepped onto the bridge outside.
There was Harry Potter himself, looking every bit as lost as he did. He was not picking up the pieces of glass and gore off the walkways like the rest of them had been. He was sitting there, back toward him, staring at the afternoon sun. The crack on the lens of his round glasses was obvious in the daylight.
Draco cleared his throat.
Potter stood, shooting out of his haze in mere seconds. "Wha—what are you doing here?" he stuttered out.
He could not help but scoff. "I keep getting asked that," he responded wryly.
Potter only stared at him as if he was seeing a different person he had not expected to see ever again. "Sorry," he said.
"Right," said Draco, "the bridge needs fixing."
"Right," agreed Potter with a nod.
The two of them worked in silence. A strange one at that. Perhaps in a way, it was cathartic to be doing something side-by-side with the boy he had hated so deeply for much of his life. Yet, he had not truly hated Harry Potter in a long time.
In the short run, everyone lost a lot. It did not matter who they were at that moment, or who they thought they were supposed to be. The blood still sank into the earth, unyielding and untamed.
Draco turned to Potter as they finished their work. In quiet fortitude, they had agreed that it was time to take a break soon. Get a bottle of pumpkin juice, maybe. Though Draco did not like the taste much.
As Potter waved his arm over the last heap of bricks, he noticed that his sleeve was smeared with black ink.
Draco paused. He stopped everything he was doing. He did not much think about what he was about to do before he was already doing it.
"Thanks," Draco said aloud after a beat.
Harry looked at him, confused.
Draco breathed out. The years he had spent wondering who he was and how he would get there were twisted up inside his chest. He let them go. After so long, they unwound and detached. Strings unweaving, tapestries unfolding.
In the long run, what they had left were not the fires that burned away the wreckage nor the leftover floo powder that coated the inside of his pocket. The lingering rot of terrible, ancient curses could no longer faze any of them. That was something he and Potter had in common. But they did leave a rather sour and unpleasant taste in Draco's mouth.
No, in the long run, the things they had were not the ones that had been lost along the way. They were the memories and the experiences that even enemies shared in a world that was unforgiving.
So, when Draco Malfoy finally decided to say something to Harry Potter, it was the first time he meant the words to be spoken to a friend.
"I hope to see you around," Draco said.
Harry looked at him then, his distinctive green eyes as wide and as curious as he had always seen them. After a moment, they crinkled into a smile.
Note: Thank you for reading! Please leave a review if you liked it :)