"Malfoy!" The minister yelled, Draco turned sharply around.
"Yes?" He said through clenched teeth and a forced smile.
"One more thing before you go, I need you to take this to Mr. Potter." He then handed Draco a large stack of paperwork.
"What...! Why me? I don't even know where the git lives!" Draco said, more than a little bit peeved. Not only had his boss kept him working late but now he was asking Draco to do something else?
"Well, since he lives right next door to you, I find that very surprising." The minister said, feigning a look of utter shock.
Draco could've slapped himself... The yell. "WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO DIE!" So purely Potter-ish after the Weasels death. Why hadn't he thought of it before!
"Whatever." Draco said and walked out of the office.
'If he doesn't answer after five knocks, I'm leaving.' Draco thought savagely as he stood outside Harry's apartment, paperwork under one arm and the other raised with the fist resting against the door as if he had just knocked.
But he hadn't, he was just standing there, preparing to knock. This was Harry Potters home for goodness sake!
With a resigned sigh, Draco finally knocked, expecting no one to answer. It was, after all nearly ten o'clock at night.
That's why he was so shocked when the door was flung open roughly before he could even pull his hand back to knock again.
"I brought you..." Draco started but was interrupted by Harry grabbing him roughly by the collar and shoving him against the wall on the other side of the hallway. The paperwork fell to the floor, but oddly enough, landed in a neat stack.
"What the hell!" Draco demanded, feeling very claustrophobic this close to someone he had hated since he could hate.
But upon closer inspection he could see that Harry's eyes were bloodshot and his face was covered with a thin film of sweat or tears.
"Why did you do it?" Harry asked softly. "They never did anything to you!"
"What the bloody hell are you going on about, Potter? I just came here to give you some paperwork from the minister. Somehow when he told me to do so, he didn't mention that being manhandled was part of the job description." Draco yelled right at those red-flecked green eyes.
'Hey! Christmas colours!' He thought vaguely, having the sudden urge to break into a Christmas carol. Then he remembered he was plastered against the wall by a very much angry Harry Potter.
"Ginny didn't kill herself, it was murder. And I'm still waiting for the lab results from Ron's autopsy but I'll bet anything he was poisoned. So, why'd you do it!" Harry yelled, and Draco noted the beginning signs of tears in his eyes.
Draco closed his eyes and sighed.
"Listen, I don't know what to tell you. Besides of course, I wasn't exactly fond of either of them but you know bloody well if I wanted to kill someone then I would use magic. And besides, how could I have killed either of them? Like they would let me into their houses!" Draco explained as rationally as he could to the screaming madman pinning him to the wall.
"Rubbish." Harry said, letting go of Draco, and backing into the wall across from him.
"So, you realize that it wasn't me, eh?" Draco asked, from the floor where he had slid when Harry released him.
Harry sat on the floor across from him, and a cream coloured cat slinked out of Harry's apartment and crawled into Harry's lap.
Harry looked at the cat mournfully as it meowed. He had inherited it from Ginny.
"Yeah, I'm sorry about attacking you and all. I've just been on edge lately." Harry said, turning and facing Malfoy again.
"Considering that your best friends were possibly murdered, I'd be a bit surprised if you weren't." Draco replied, standing up and brushing his robes off. "Well, there's the paperwork, as promised. Be sure to owl the Minister, I don't think he believes that I would give it to you. I could've sworn I heard him say something about not throwing it out the window as I was leaving."
Draco walked forward, stepping over the paperwork to the door to his apartment and sticking the key in the keyhole.
"Wait," said Harry from the floor, Draco paused momentarily and turned around. "You live there?"
"Yeah, bit closer to the office." With that Draco turned the knob and walked inside his apartment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry looked back and forth between the bottle of scotch in one hand, the phone in the other, and the couch that looked so enticingly at him from across the room.
He could call Hermione... But then again, he could finish his scotch and take a nap on the couch...
The great decisions of life...
Harry's eyelids drooped, so he of course, chose the latter. Harry leaned forward and unplugged the phone.
"That'll teach you to ring at me, you bastard." Harry said drunkenly, emphasizing this with a good kick before stumbling across the room and laying down on the couch, slopping some scotch onto himself in the process.
Ginnys cat crawled up onto the couch next to him and laid down for a moment, it raised it's nose in the air and sniffed the scotch.
Looking disgusted, it hopped back down and decided that curling up the corner was a far better option.
Suddenly, Harry's eyes fell onto the paperwork and he stood up. He had to owl the minister, tell him that he got the paperwork and that his friends were murdered.
Well, maybe he'd save the last part until they were face to face. Then he remembered that Hedwig was sending a sympathy card to Mr. and Mrs. Weasley right now.
Perhaps if Harry wasn't drunk, he would've realized that Hedwig would probably be back in the morning and he could send the Minister a letter after he'd rested.
But he was indeed drunk and he decided that the only logical thing to do would be to go tell Draco Malfoy to send the owl himself, because Harry couldn't.
So he walked out of his apartment, mostly empty bottle of scotch still attached to his hand and knocked on Draco's door.
"What!" Came the irritable response, before the door was roughly flung open to reveal an only slightly disheveled looking Draco Malfoy.
Of course, Draco looked pristine in comparison to Harry, who was in flannel pyjamas, glasses falling off his face and hair in such a state of disarray that it appeared that a bird could've made quite a comfortable nest in it.
"What happened to you?" Draco demanded, before eyeing the bottle of scotch in Harry's hand. "Ah, the evils of alcohol. Now what important revelation did you want to reveal to me, Potter? Have you come to confess your undying love for me?"
Draco leaned against the doorframe and examined his fingernails.
"No...Malfoy..." Harry managed to slur out. "I don't love yew...I...My owls not here so yer goin to have te send that owl yerself."
"You came here to tell me that?" Draco asked, standing up straight and looking Harry in the eyes.
"Yes."
"Oh, well then. I'm going to have to tell you something in all honesty. Do you want to know what it is?" Draco asked, leaning forward, a big grin plastered on his face.
"Yeah." Harry replied with childish curiosity.
Draco's grin seemed to fall off and be replaced by a smirk.
"You are a complete idiot." And slammed the door in his face.
"Always wanted to do that." Draco said with a satisfied smirk to his closed door.