Part Two

The first week at the Black Mansion was almost disconcertingly peaceful for Draco. The idea of not being in danger of loosing his life was almost novel.

He got up in the morning and found no one in the house except for him and the werewolf.

They ate most meals in the cold kitchen, and Draco quickly realized that he was getting better food than Lupin was used to. He felt a little guilty at that. It was obvious there wasn't a lot of money running through these scarred hands.

During the day Lupin was usually out, not to return until late in the evenings. He worked long hours, plus Order work. Periodically people came over for dinner and Draco did his best to be invisible. He didn't want their pitied looks or their scorn.

One night was spent quietly in front of the fire, reading.

"Tomorrow, Molly and Arthur are coming to stay for a while with the kids."

Draco froze.

"Harry...?" he said quietly.

Lupin nodded.

Draco felt a strange twist in his stomach. Harry would be here. After all the shit between them...

---

He heard them come in, a great calamity of noise that fair shook the old house. He heard Mrs. Weasley exclaim over Lupin's thinness, about the dreariness of the house, about the weather outside (dreadful!)...

And he heard unmistakable voices. Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

He sat on the stairs leading down from the bedrooms, listening to them. They sounded so happy together, just talking and laughing and making supper. His family had never been this loud or this boisterous, but they had been a family. The only family he had ever known.

Not a family any more.

His head rested against the railing.

What a mess...

---

"Pass the potatoes, Malfoy."

"Ron! Manners!"

He didn't meet any of their eyes. He passed the potatoes.

He snuck glances at Harry across the table. He wondered if Harry had heard the real side of the story yet. Whether Harry really thought that he would have killed Dumbledore, given a few more minutes. Whether Harry still hated Snape. Whether Harry still hated him.

He was paid patient attention to by the adults who had heard the story, those who hadn't known him at school long enough to build up a grudge. The Weasley children were rude, to a point, meaning: when their mother wasn't looking. Hermione was ignoring him, and Harry...

Harry was poking at his food and laughing a little off key, and eyeing him back, albeit with a little less mournfulness and a little more suspicion.

---

He really hadn't meant to catch Harry alone. As much as he wanted to know what Harry thought of him, the conversation that would have to come before the understanding was not something he relished the idea of. He could hardly hope that Harry would come diving into his arms, weeping apologies for misunderstanding him.

And so, he nearly turned around and left again when he found Harry in the library one quiet afternoon.

"Wait!"

He paused and slowly turned back, seeing Harry half-standing out of his chair, a book in one hand.

"Um, if you came in here to be alone, I can go, I mean..."

Draco brushed his hair out of his face and approached a chair.

"You don't have to go either," Draco said quietly, collecting the book he had been reading off a table and sitting down on one of the worn wing-back chairs, flinging his legs over one arm and rested his back against the other. "It is your house, after all."

He had heard as much from Remus during their talks.

Harry sat back down.

He shifted in his seat a few times while Draco pretended to ignore him, before finally Harry dropped the book onto a stack and let out a long aggravated sigh.

"Why did you do it?"

Draco had anticipated the question. He had played it through his mind a million times, this confrontation between the two of them, bereft of masks of anger, and yet he found himself as cold as ever.

"Do you want the nice version or the truth, Potter?"

Before, Harry would have snapped at him to hide his confusion and indecision, yelling at him to stop being such an asshole and just fuckin tell him already.

Now, Harry just glared at him and he sighed, tired, so very tired.

"My father was in Azkaban and he fucked up big time. He was supposed to kill you! He insisted upon me being given this impossible mission to punish me for my father's loss. So my mother felt. And she was on the point of breaking, almost left herself. The Dark Lord would have killed us all without blinking, or had someone else do it. It was the only choice. Success was the only option, as those muggles say."

Harry was silent for a moment after this speech. Draco couldn't remember ever having a semi-civilized conversation with Harry before, and the irony that it was now, now at the crux of all things that it was happening.

"That's why Snape swore the Unbreakable Vow to take care of you, right?"

"Yes," it was more than that, he knew, but he wasn't about to tell Potter that.

Something shifted in Harry's face and the old anger bubbled to the surface.

"Is Snape still mad at me for what my father did, then? Was he only ever on our side for Dumbledore's sake?"

"Get over yourself, Potter," Draco snarled, feeling the irony bite into him as he said it, when he was the one who couldn't get over Harry. "Severus could have killed you a million times over this year! Not to mention the fact that he saved you from the Cretatious curse that night, and saved you a million times over with his information. And have you ever tried to get to know him? No!"

They were yelling now, standing, the book hanging from Draco's clenched hand, trying not to go for his wand. This was not what he wanted. He wanted Harry to understand, wanted to get over this stupid enmity, but he couldn't let him stand there and insult Snape like that. Severus who was nearly a father to him, more than a father.

"Severus is it, then, Malfoy?" Harry sneered, the disgust showing on his face plainly. "Of course, dear Severus couldn't let them kill me; I have to be saved for Voldemort, don't I?"

"Stop being such a goddamn hypocrite, Potter!"

He had lost control. The situation was gone, might as well vent his frustrations while he was here.

"All those years using the old Gryffindor excuse that I had insulted your friends to hex me in the back hallways when no one is looking, but the moment I challenge your stupid little ideals with such a novel idea as maybe you're wrong and you start cursing the people I care about and expect to be justified! You're a fucking asshole, you know that! You think, maybe, there's pain worse than boredom!"

Draco was shaking, his voice was horse and he felt his throat burn. Someone was knocking on the door and Lupin opened the door, looking in with a frown. Before he could say anything, Draco swept out, leaving an equally angry and stunned Harry in his wake.

The room was silent once Draco had left and Remus stepped in, closing the door behind him.

"You heard him?" Harry croaked out and then cleared his throat. "How could he think for a moment..."

But his resolve was shaken and he absent-mindedly ran his hand through his hair.

Remus gave a small encouraging smile and sat down in the chair Draco had just vacated, ushering Harry back into his own.

"I heard most of it, yes. I was just down the hall, in my bedroom, although I suppose the entire house heard most of it as well."

Harry looked sheepish and pushed up his glasses. "Sorry," he mumbled.

Remus waved a hand dismissively and got down to the point.

"Before you go off to tell Ron and Hermione what has happened, I would like to point out that Draco has a point, although I doubt that was the best way to present it."

Harry snorted and glowered out a window.

"Harry, listen to me," Lupin said sternly. Harry obeyed.

"Draco is in a hard place right now. He has lost his greatest friend, his mentor..." Here Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Lupin glared him down wearily. "And no matter who that person is in your mind, Draco needs a friend. Although I realize that this grudge has passed down through Sirius and James to you, it would be for the best if you got rid of it now, for Draco's sake."

Harry was silent, curled into himself.

Another knock on the door and Hermione's bushy head was ducking inside.

"Harry? Ah, oh sorry, Professor."

"I was just leaving," Remus said mildly, indeed getting up to leave. Ron and Hermione came quickly in and before the door shut behind him, Remus heard them start exclaiming over what they had heard of the argument.

Molly was at the bottom of the stairs, looking somewhere between guilty and motherly.

"Should I go up to see him?"

Lupin didn't ask which one Molly was concerned for.

"I think we should leave them to it," he said quietly, heading to the kitchen stairs, craving a nice cup of tea. "Harry needs to straighten things out with Draco on his own."

---

"He must be nutter to think we'd forgive him for all that stuff he's done to us."

But Harry was watching Hermione, proven to be better versed in the ways of human beings than either of the boys, and she was chewing her bottom lip with focus.

"Hermione?" he asked hesitantly. She started and looked up as if she had forgotten where she was.

"What? Oh, Harry, I really think you need to talk to him again. If you look at it from his point of view, you really have been a rather big prat about it all..."

"Harry's not a prat!" Ron said indignantly. "Draco brought it all on himself, the little bugger!"

Hermione continued as if she hadn't heard him, a long-practiced habit.

"You know that Malfoy was Professor Snape's favorite student and they spent a lot of time together. Malfoy probably looked up to him, as a mentor or a father or something."

A small flutter of wings in his stomach heralded the onset of guilt for Harry Potter.

"Yeah, Remus said something like that..." he mumbled, rubbing his hands under his glasses and over his eyes.

He almost yearned for the good ole days where the bad guys were evil and the good guys were perfect.

But of course, he had been the one who had wanted to shatter that illusion of himself in the first place.

Enter the grey shades.

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