The room they've deemed as his is as naked and cold as a prison cell, which he highly suspects it might be and it is just marauding under another name for his stay. There is a bed and a bedside table, a tiny little room locked away from what is now his bedroom with a toilet and a washbasin, his only means of hygiene and an old, battered chair in horrid tartan flare and that is all.
Draco realised there would have to be cut backs on his liberties and pleasures when he went into hiding but he'd never supposed they would be this severe and this controlled.
"Potter…" he begins but Harry isn't bothering to listen to him, instead he's talking to himself.
"Its all I could put together on short notice, me or one of the order will be round twice a day with some food for you and books, like I said I'm sorry its not much but really its all I could get."
"Its fine." Draco says coldly and pushes past Potter to throw himself into the chair, it groans uncomfortably underneath him and he loathes the whole room and Potter for brining him here.
"Remus donated the chair." Potter says absentmindedly and Draco leaps out of it quickly because he doesn't want to be sitting in anything formally owned by a werewolf. He knows a wolf bite isn't something in the air or a bug that can burrow in furniture but old prejudices die hard and this is a prejudice he'd rather keep.
"When can you take it away?" he asks and Potter shakes his head angrily, turning and walking towards the door and away from Draco and his isolation.
He stops just before he shuts the door and glares at Draco with as much hatred as he can muster.
"You know he was the only one who wanted to help you." He says and then shuts the door on Draco, trapping him alone with only a vague promise of retune and Draco realises he is ensnared, unable to leave and at Potter's mercy.
He's going to starve to death.
Harry storms through the door to Grimmauld Place, bringing a black cloud with him and slamming the doors as he goes. He ignores Hermione's worried questions and Ron's nervous scowl, Neville's attempts to take his mind off his problems and the soft sounds of swing music coming from one of the bedrooms upstairs because he doesn't want to talk, or look, or think about any of his friend right at the moment, he just wants to hex something badly.
"That Malfoy!" He finally explodes over dinner. "He doesn't seem to care that I'm risking my life to protect him, he wanted me to take back the chair."
"You can if you want," Remus says mildly, spooning potatoes onto his plate. "It was going to be thrown out anyway, I just thought he might like something to sit in."
"It isn't that! He didn't want it because it belonged to you." Harry says, emphasising i you /i and Remus goes rather pallid but passes the potatoes onto a ravenous looking Neville, acting as if hiding enemies with werewolf prejudices is a perfectly normal dinner conversation.
"I would expect nothing less of Mr. Malfoy." Remus says pleasantly "Pass the peas, Ron."
Harry goes to bed that evening confused and angry, covering his head with a pillow to drown out the music coming from Sirius's old bedroom, Remus's room now, that goes on until the record tapers out and he can't hear anything in the swelling darkness.
He dreams strange dreams about tartan chairs and Malfoy.
Hermione comes back from her meeting with Malfoy red-faced and with angry tears leaking down her cheeks. With Ron's arm slung around her shoulders like a protective shield she tells her story – words spilling out in a fast, furious torrent.
"He's not changed one bit, he's still as stuck up as he was at school" she spits and Ron grabs her hand, squeezing it. "He called me a Mudblood and wouldn't eat any of the food I brought. He demanded to know when Harry was coming back to take away the chair, ranting about werewolves when I left. I could have hexed him, the arrogant little slug!"
"I don't see why we have to look after him! He doesn't know anything." Ginny pipes up from the corner chair she lounges in stroking Luna's hair as the other girl lays her head in her lap.
Hermione wipes away her tears and sniffs.
"He asked us for safety and we're supposed to give it to him, we can't just leave him with the Death Eaters."
"I think we could." Ron mutters treacherously.
"How do we know he's not a spy like Pettigrew?" Neville asks, looking suddenly nervous as if perhaps Draco has fallowed Hermione home and is now lurking in the room, unseen, but listening to them. He lowers his voice "I mean we just gave him safety, we didn't ask any questions or anything."
"Well I, for one, trust Harry's judgment." Remus says, pushing himself up from the armchair.
"Yes, and you also trusted Pettigrew." Ron says irritably. Hermione gasps, Ginny whispers 'Oh Ron!" in a disbelieving voice and Neville punches him on the arm.
Remus stops, going rigid and looks at Ron with a cold, furious glance.
"Yes, and it cost me three good friends." He says and leaves the room. There is a pause, a heart-beat while everyone tries to work out what to say, whose side to take and then Hermione pushes herself out from Ron's embrace and fallows him, apologising for her boyfriend run-away mouth and carelessness while Ron buries his head in his hands and groans.
"You shouldn't have said that." Luna says softly and Ron looks at her crossly.
"We were all thinking it, he screwed over Sirius because he trusted Pettigrew more and look where that got him."
"Ron, stop it!" Ginny says, placing a hand upon Ron's arm – a gesture of composure, trying to prompt Ron to be the same but he shakes her off and stands up, glaring at them all.
"I'm going for a walk, someone else take Draco his food. I'm not going to and neither is Hermione from now on."
When Harry comes home that evening he finds Ron sulking in the kitchen, Hermione sulking in the attic and everyone else mysteriously missing.
"What did you do today?" he asks in what he hopes is a cheerful voice but Ron only sneers at him, from Hermione he gets a tearful, heated description of the fight. He storms back down to the kitchen, not sure what he intends to do to Ron but hoping it will be painful, for even though Ron is his best friend he doesn't need doubters at this time – not when he has to lead a falling war effort when he is still only a teenager.
He thinks bitterly he should be enjoying his life, watching movies and going out with his friends, not having to make battle plans and embracing each morning with the delight that he has made it to tomorrow.
"What were you thinking?" he yells at Ron.
"I wasn't! But what are you think? Taking care of Malfoy! Do you know what he called Hermione?"
"I do, and he's called her it before. She got over it then Ron and she'll get over it now."
"And Remus, do you know what he said about Remus?"
"Was it anything like what you said about Remus?"
Ron falters in the middle of his come-back argument and bangs his head on the table, muttering to himself.
"Ron…"
"I don't like this." Ron says "I don't trust Malfoy, no of us do and it just feels wrong that we should be helping him."
"We have to," Harry says and he smiles "Its what makes us the good guys."
"But its Malfoy!"
"I know, but Ron, think about how it is for him. He doesn't care for any of us but he's entrusted his life to us and we have to protect him now. You know what will happen if the Death Eaters find him don't you?"
Ron nods slowly, the blood draining from his face. They've all seen what the Death Eaters will do to those who betray them and not even Malfoy is deserving of a death like that.
"Just don't make me talk to him." Ron says and goes to ask forgiveness of Hermione.