Cat for Dinner

by duckfeathers

Sitting in the dusty dark pub with a beer glass resting next to his down-turned hand didn't seem like the most pleasant place to be, but when Harry Potter took the fact that no one there knew his name, it was a very nice place to be indeed. Some people said that wasting your time among muggles was doing just that– wasting your time, but to him, it was a much needed gulp of fresh air. It was nice to escape, sometimes, especially when your own people heralded you as a war hero.

Fame had hit him with a hard left hook on his eleventh birthday, and ten years later he was still staggering from the blow. Six years of school before hell had broke loose in his seventh, and he'd spent so much time watching foes and allies alike fall in battle, one needless death following another until faces became statistics and names became numbers.

The dead were better off celebrated; he just wished they'd leave the living in peace.

Harry didn't make a habit of hanging around in muggle pubs (he didn't care much for liquor, really), but sometimes obsessions overruled common sense. Right now, his obsession was standing at the bar, skinny and dressed in blue jeans while he huffily wiped the corner of the bar some lightweight had just vomited enthusiastically onto.

Draco Malfoy. He'd gone through ten years and a complete memory wipe since Harry had first laid eyes on him, and he hadn't changed at all.

Draco hated this job.

He hated the people, hated the faces, was starting to hate the smell of alcohol. It was embarrassing to watch people get shit-faced drunk and stagger around like they owned the world until they finally just collapsed in a puddle of their own vomit, an occurrence which happened often enough to be a little off-putting.

Money was money though, and he wasn't sure where else he was going to get it. He had tried other jobs, but the places that were willing to hire him (namely fast food establishments) just didn't cut it. It was difficult finding employment when all you were was a pretty face and an adopted surname.

And really, that's all he was. Draco Hanover, amnesiac extraordinaire, who was found two years ago outside the house of an old, batty widow who'd had to teach him how to do the simplest things. She practically had to hold his hand when he tried to address an envelope for the first time; he kept forgetting where to put the stamp. He had no ID on him, no personal affects and no memory at all, save the taste of blood in his mouth and the knowledge (or maybe dream) that his name was Draco.

The woman died a little over a year after taking him. The death had not been a surprise, but her will had left him with her small home and all four of her dogs. He wasn't sure if he had ever come to love her, but he was grateful.

Grateful for the place, but not so sure if he was for the job that kept the bills paid. He had been spit at, spit on, hit on and hit in the face, most of the time multiple times in a single night, and while part of it had been expected at first (okay, not really) it did get old, and quickly.

Especially the vomit.

Upon tossing the rag he'd been cleaning the chipped bar top into the rubbish bin, he was a little pissed to find Green Eyes laughing at him. It wasn't even a real laugh– more like a tired, amused sort of smirk, and Draco rolled his eyes as he turned, pacing toward the back to wash his hands. He didn't assign the face to a name because it was just so much easier that way, but when he returned to the front and found the same look still on his face, he couldn't help but duck into the main sitting area and cross over to where the other boy sat.

Stalker, he wanted to accuse as he took a seat, sprawling himself lazily in the old wooden chair and sizing Harry up from across the table, narrowing his own eyes a little bit as he took in Harry's perplexed expression. "You'd look better if you lost the glasses and got a haircut," he found himself drawling. And, oh, maybe if you stopped following me around, too.

Draco gave him a look, head tilted to the side and brows knit even more deeply, as if pissed because Harry couldn't read his mind.

Harry was, in a word, bewildered. He hadn't expected Draco to notice him, but had obviously been deadly mistaken. Self consciously, he lifted his hand, sliding it through his hair. "Thanks," he said, his voice an odd mixture of offense and something else, especially when Draco's narrow, silver eyes seemed to silently add 'and sleep, too' when they finally finished appraising him.

The blonde was silent after that; he just silently steepled his fingers on the table and looked at Harry. Harry, not sure whether it was the stare or the alcohol, felt himself getting a little bit flustered. "What do you want?"

"Well, you're going to ask me out, aren't you? I'm just giving you the chance."

Smug bastard. "What gave you that impression?"

"You've been following me around everywhere, mate." Draco flashed him a grin, all superiority and white teeth. "The supermarket, the park, and now you show up here? I think I'd rather get this over with while I'm still flattered and not creeped out."

Harry stammered something out, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, before taking a drink of the beer (ugh, nasty stuff) to get a worse taste out of his mouth. "Now look here, Malfoy–"

But Draco's head was already bent over a napkin, scrawling something out in careful, compact print. He shoved it at Harry as he pushed he seat out, standing up and sliding a pen back into his shirt pocket. "Tomorrow night at seven, dinner, show up there–" he indicated to the address on the napkin "– or I'll tell the police I've got a bloody stalker. Goodbye, goodnight, get out of my sight, I've got work to do."

And off he was to the bar again, pausing only to call back an "And, oh, get some sleep, would you?" before he was back at work, as bored and disinterested looking as ever.

Harry squinted his eyes at him from his seat. Who's idea had this been, again? Oh, right. His own. He drained his beer and left the bar.

The war was over, but the world was still a very, very dark place.

Heading home that night with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, Harry had to remind himself one or two times that, yeah, it really had been worth saving. Depressing, yeah; Voldemort no longer lurked in the shadows, but other evil did, and it had taken him a long time to accept the fact that as strong as the light side grew, darkness would always swell to balance it out.

Draco had been right, as much as Harry hated to admit it. He did need sleep; it wasn't like himself to get philosophical, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

He barely allowed himself a bitter grin as he masked a yawn with the palm of his hand and recalled the last time he'd spoken to Draco before that night. Remus had been hospitalized and the blame had fallen on Draco, who couldn't seem to decide which side he was with and which one he was double-crossing, and in a fit of rage at angry denials, Harry had let loose a spell that left himself weak and Draco in a coma, only to wake up sans memory with no one really willing to put up with him.

St. Mungo's was packed already; Harry couldn't remember who had decided to just let the muggles deal with him.

He figured that, in the end, Draco had gotten off pretty damn luckily.

But the war had ended, not with an explosion but a cry, and everyone was sent home empty handed and heavy hearted.

Harry, claiming vacation, pleading sanctuary, pleading asylum, has escaped to the little muggle village the Order had left Draco in. It wasn't guilt that led him there, or remorse for anything he'd done. He just needed somewhere to go. Closure, because he wanted to know what really happened, what story would have told had Harry not cut him off so abruptly. The attack launched on the area Remus and Shacklebolt were guarding left the latter untouched but rendered the former completely mute, unable to perform some of the simplest spells. It had killed Harry to see his godfather's best friend's hair turn almost completely grey, and not gradually, but suddenly, all at once.

He hadn't been expecting Draco to apprehend him like that. Shoving the key into the lock of his apartment door and slipping his shoes off in the hallway, he hadn't been expecting to see an irate Irishman pacing in his living room, either.

"Seamus?" Harry barely had time to look confused again before the tirade started.

"Theodore Nott. He's living with Blaise Zabini."

Harry shrugged his jacket off and lay it across the back of an old chair, stepping over to his couch and sitting down. He looked up at Seamus, urging him to go on, but Seamus just shook his head as if that was all there was to say.

"Well... what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Harry!" A dark look crossed the blonde's face. "He killed Neville. We watched him." His voice was low, like there was something caught in his throat. "He can't just walk away from that."

"Death Eaters who gave their wands over willingly during the war were granted amnesty." Harry looked away, obviously about as happy about it as Seamus was. "We're trying to curb the bloodshed, not urge it on."

"He was in the hospital ward," Seamus said, looking like he didn't know whether to sit or stand, his knuckles paling with the force of the fists he was making at his sides. "He wasn't supposed to make it out. If I had known, I wouldn't have agreed to it. I wouldn't have let him go."

"Seamus..." Harry groaned under his breath, torn between studying the lines that mapped the palms of his hands and actually looking up at Seamus's face. "There's nothing we can do. We'd be opening up an entire can of worms if we went after him..." His voice was tired, pleading.

Seamus looked disgusted.

"I thought you'd understand, out of everyone. What it's like to lose someone important to you." His words were quick now, sharp, strongly accented. His face was red, the smatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose lost in the color.

"Seamus–"

"Forget it, Harry, I've got to get back before Dean gets home." And with a sharp crack, he was out of the room.

Harry stared at the space Seamus had occupied for a long moment, before changing into his pajamas and going to bed. He never quite realized how badly his hands were shaking.

"So why've you been following me around, anyway?"

They were eating pasta and salad in the small dining room, a hefty golden retriever thrown down across Draco's feet, tail thumping in a lazy, syncopated rhythm on the floor. Harry had arrived ten minutes late looking flustered, had helped Draco with the meal and wondered what kind of odd life the other man had lived through the two years that he felt comfortable enough to invite a perfect stranger home for dinner.

Harry didn't think he came off as that disarming, anyway.

It wasn't until a noodle was thrown in his face that he realized he'd been asked a question.

"I moved here a few months ago. It's not exactly that big of a place, so it's not hard to find people." He pulled the pasta off of his nose, wrinkling it distastefully and dropping it onto the side of the plate. "I didn't do it consciously. You just remind me of an old friend."

It was a horrifying thought, him enjoying the company of this Draco. Not the one he'd loathed through Hogwarts, or had mock-dueled with in front of a handful of other Death Eaters to keep up a facade, or even the one that had pinned his wrists to the bed and bruised his mouth with his own on the furtive, short nights stole somewhere between sleep and war.

This Draco was still arrogant, still infuriatingly poised, but he lived in a small house with four canines and a countless number of books, spanning shelves and stacked on desks and tucked away in the corners of the rooms, and perhaps Harry had been the most startled of all when Draco had answered the door with a book in his hand and reading glasses on.

"Old friend," Draco drawled between bites of tomato. "Let me guess. You followed him around, scared the holy hell out of him, and he ran away screaming?" He carefully quirked a single eyebrow.

The look Harry gave him was deadpan. "Something like that."

"Sounds like a call for drinks."

An hour and a little bit of alcohol later, Draco had decided that a three year old could drink Harry under the table.

"I'm a good wizard, you know," the dark-haired boy claimed, slamming his hands palm-down on the table. "And you..." Draco found a fork pointed in his face. "..are not."

Draco tried not to laugh, but the effort was just too much. He grabbed the fork out of Harry's hand and snorted. "You've had too much to drink."

"I know when I've had to drink too much." Hiccup. "Shut your ruddy mouth!"

Draco's hands flew to his chest, palms outward. "Didn't say a word."

Harry groaned and placed the heel of his palm against his own forehead, not even resisting when he heard Draco drop the fork onto the table and felt hands against his shoulders, guiding him to a cool, dark bedroom somewhere in the back of the house. It was the alcohol's fault that Harry twisted in Draco's grip and kissed him, hard and clumsily, on the mouth; it was Draco's fault that their clothes soon piled together in the floor and all he could taste was the wine on Harry's lips, all he could feel was cool fingers sliding across bare hips.

The first thing that Harry realized was that he was naked. The second thing was that he was hung-over, and desperately he turned and groped at the bedside table, hoping to Merlin that he'd find his glasses there. "We had sex," he croaked out, disgusted as his voice and the way his head pounded behind his eyes.

"Mmhmm." Draco's bare back was to him, a towel slung haphazardly around his waist, hair dripping with water. He was toying with something; Harry couldn't quite see yet.

"Bopsy watched us."

"No, that's Mopsy," Draco answered in a nearly bored tone, looking at the perky German Shepherd who sat in the corner of the room. "She always does that when I have someone over." Pause. "Bopsy's in the kitchen, anyway."

Harry nearly whimpered, wanting nothing more than to flip over and bury himself into the pillow, but better judgement prevailed and he tugged the sheet with him as he crawled across the bed, trying to feel disgusted and a little disappointed instead of satisfied. He nearly fell from the bed when he saw just exactly what Draco was doing; he had Harry's wand in one hand, the other arm stretched out while the tip of it traced the outline of his Dark Mark.

"Magic wand, huh," Draco said, looking up at Harry just to smirk, and memories from after dinner the night before surfaced back up. He opened his mouth to make up excuses, tell him it was a game or... or something, before Draco looked back down and frowned. "Damn, I miss my own. What happened to it?"

Harry's mouth gaped a little bit. ".. It's at Order headquarters," he finally managed out, and Draco grimaced.

"Hell of a chance I've got getting it back from there, huh?"

Harry's mouth open, shut, then opened again. "You know."

There was a moment of silence before Draco laughed out loud, dropping the wand back on top of the pile of Harry's clothes. He stood up and dropped the towel, because shame had never been an issue with any of the Malfoys, stepping over to a drawer and searching for a something to put on.

"Of course I do," Draco shot back, squirming on a pair of boxers and digging through rumpled clothes for a tee-shirt. "Hells, Harry, did you really think that puny spell of yours would keep me out of commission for /this/ long?"

Harry leaned down, snatching up his wand protectively before rolling his eyes at himself and dressing, too. "Well, you had me fooled."

"Not that hard." Draco turned; his eyes flashed dangerously at Harry. "Come on, are you really that stupid? What was I supposed to do when my memory came back, come flailing back to Order Headquarters? You lot had no use for me after what happened with Lupin - which was a mistake, by the way–" he added at Harry's grimace, "–and the rest of the Death Eaters were onto me. I wasn't exactly enjoying it here, but at least I was safe, right?"

Buttoning up his shirt, Harry admitted to himself that Draco was right; it was part of why they had dropped him off in this place, this tiny town in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of a war– Voldemort didn't have enough forces to expend, looking for the wayward son of the late Lucius Malfoy.

"So you led me on?" If Harry hadn't been so hung over, he would have been incredibly pissed off. "Instead of saying 'oh, Potter, by the way, I know who you are, we can quit this little game of cat and mouse', you invite me over for dinner."

Draco gave him a look. "Of course."

"You haven't changed at all."

"Neither have you." And then he turned, seemingly on a whim, back to the bed, urging Harry against the mattress. He seemed surprised when he was met with resistence, Harry's hand pressed hard against his shoulder.

"Mm." He shook his head, green eyes narrowing when Draco pulled his glasses off. "This is wrong."

"I know," Draco murmured, and this time, the smile wasn't mean. "But don't you get tired of always doing everything right?"

There was hesitation again, uncertainty, but this time when Draco sank down, down, down, Harry went with him.

(end)

Notes: Harry Potter and everything related to it belong to JK Rowling, blah blah blah, end disclaimer. This fic is something that's been living in my head for the past forever, was just an excuse to get Draco in jeans, and I realize that it's not much by the way of STORY, but it's the first real fic I've written in forever. )

Either I'm purging my system to actually write better stuff or I'm done with fanfiction altogether, I'm not sure. XD

Tata! 3

(Becksi, Addie, you're my heroes. uu;)