Chapter 8

The kettle whistled.

Groaning, Draco struggled to peel his eyes open. He glared across his room at the wall and the offending kettle beyond, considered snatching at his wand to fling a charm its way and have it shut the bloody hell up, but instead sighed in defeat. Work. Work was the reason he set his kettle to boil like an alarm clock in the first place. The threat of a potential in-house fire was always more incentive to get out of bed than any alarm could possibly be.

Dragging himself upright, Draco scrubbed his face briefly and rolling from bed. He stopped briefly in the kitchen to inhibit a kettle catastrophe before heading to the shower and proceeding to drown himself in searing water for the next ten minutes. It didn't exactly leave him refreshed, but he was markedly more so than he'd been before.

His flat wasn't even brightening with the glow of daylight yet. The white walls, box-like and just a little too tight for his liking, were dampened to grey. Pansy had told him once that his objection to what he deemed the small size of his living quarters had more to do with the fact that he was accustomed to manor living standards, and that he should suck it up and get used to it.

"Oh, and you'd know all about 'getting used to it', would you?" he'd asked.

"Yes," she'd replied simply in return. No inflection. No teasing. It was that flatness that resounded with Draco, hinting at the wound of change buried beneath scar tissue, and he didn't pry further.

Over the years, Draco supposed he had gotten used to it. The middle floor flat wasn't ideal, but if was sufficient. The location wasn't perfect, but it was vaguely central and easy enough to get to and from even without Apparition. The kitchen was neat and clean, if empty of working house elves, and the living room, the bedroom, the dining room that was practically part of the living room itself, was all furnished before he'd moved in. Draco had made it his own, darkening the wooden surfaces and adorning them with enough remnants of home that the small rooms felt almost like it.

It wasn't perfect, but then, few things truly were.

Meticulously folding up the sleeves of his shirt as he stepped from the steaming bathroom, Draco paused in his bedroom only long enough to grab his wand before making for the kitchen. A flick, a muttered word, and the kettle was pouring itself, a plate flipping from the cupboard, and toast that had been pre-set to cook flying towards the butter as it shouldered its way from the fridge. The simple breakfast had set itself by the time Draco took his seat at the small table, loosely affixing his tie as he did so.

Jam. Butter. Milk. A napkin, because he wasn't a Neanderthal. Draco was just about to pick up his toast when the first of them came.

Tap-tap-tap.

Draco paused. He closed his eyes briefly, prayed for the strength to withhold from firing a hex, and turned slowly towards the window. It was a struggle not to glare at the oblivious owl perched on the window sill.

"Would you just fuck off for once?" he muttered, more to himself than to the bird, but he flicked his wand at the latch nonetheless and the owl hopped inside. He'd learnt that it was better to simply accept the rain of mail in the morning than attempt to avoid it – though avoid he'd managed to do of late. It was part of the reason he got up so early. The part that had nothing to do with punctuality for work.

The owl was a bit of a mangy creature, grey feathers tufted at odd angles about its head, and Draco regarded it with distaste as it hopped and fluttered towards the table, nearly face-planting as it made the leap from the window sill. He picked up his plate and raised it out of reach of feather lice as it approached him, and, with his wand rather than his fingers, untied the letter from its ankle. As soon as it was freed, the owl turned and, in another spray of downy feathers, it was gone.

Draco barely noticed it leave. He regarded the letter distastefully for a moment, considered exploding his table in an effort to avoid what was to come, then revised his decision. He'd only just managed to toss a Muffling Charm at the door, the windows, the walls, when the letter began to shudder, steam and hiss, and he snapped the wax seal.

It burst into a scream of noise.

"Malfoy, you are a disgusting devil. You make me sick. You couldn't just be a disgusting fucking arsehole in the war, could you? You couldn't just kill people, and scare people, and fight for the wrong fucking side and – and all that."

"So eloquent," Draco muttered, rolling his eyes. If anything, the words were terribly uninspired.

"But you don't get it, do you? Even two years locked away in what everyone knows wasn't good enough punishment for you isn't enough for you to get it, huh? You have to keep on taking and taking and taking and –"

"Here we go."

"It's not right. You Death Eater scum, you goddamn bastard, it's not right that you should walk free in the first place, but you're the one who's taking Harry Potter's pictures? You're shooting the interviews and... and... How dare you. You disgust me. How could you even understand what he means to the world? You don't know how important he is to us, to all of us who lost people in the war to murderers like you, and you presume to…"

Considering how many such letters Draco received – and almost every day, at that – they were remarkably similar. He was hated. He was a murderer. He'd hurt people, killed people, and some even accused him of killing their loved ones directly.

He was scum.

He was a bastard, despite what Draco liked to consider was his rather credible heritage.

He wasn't worth the air he breathed, and so on and so forth.

But most importantly, and perhaps the most common uniting feature: he shouldn't be anywhere near Harry Potter.

Once, Draco might have scoffed and agreed. He might have declared that he didn't bloody well want to have anything to do with Harry, and that he would get away from him if he could but that it was an opportunity that he couldn't miss. He might have even dropped the job that was like finding a diamond in a sea of sand, because Draco didn't care about Harry and the job wasn't worth the trouble.

Except it was. And he did care. In some way that Draco didn't quite understand himself, he realised he cared because Harry was fascinating. He'd always been fascinating, in whatever form he'd presented himself, but this was different. Seeing him without the filter of hatred, Draco had realised that there were infinitely more layers he hadn't noticed before, and an infinite number of secrets untold that he had yet to dig out and discover for himself.

And that was to say nothing of the job. Regardless of what the public might think of him, the job as Harry Potter's photographer for his official interviews, the interviews that he'd actually agreed to and even actively pursued himself, was sure to garner him attention. Even if not in the Wizarding world, it would put his name out amidst the Muggles. It was worth it, even if it meant weathering the death threats for a time.

"… should just bloody well kill yourself, you disgusting menace to society," the Howler spat contemptuously, predictably, before hissing in another fit of steam and bursting into flame.

"A menace to society?" Draco chuckled as he swept up the little pile of ash with a flick of his wand. "Well, that's a little more imaginative than most, I suppose."

If anything, the Howlers had become expected. They'd become amusing, if in a rather dark way. Draco almost regretted that they burnt themselves to dust before he could make a copy of them to plaster in a collage upon his wall. It would have been funny.

He did regret the pain that drove their delivery, however. Just a little. He regretted that there were so many that hated him, not so much because he disliked being hated but because he hadn't wanted to hurt anyone. Not like that. He regretted that so many of the Wizarding world believed he'd killed someone. Anyone. Many people, in fact.

The very thought turned Draco's stomach. Him? Kill someone? He didn't think he was capable of it. Despite the brief, discomforting tightening in his belly, he picked up his toast and took a deliberate bite in the echoing silence of the Howler's destruction.

Just another day at work, he thought to himself, and ignored that his urge to laugh had just the slightest hysterical edge to it.

Draco was having a bad day.

He should have known it would be bad by the second Howler. And the third. And the fourth. He usually managed to get out of his flat before most of them found him, returning home of an evening to find annoying little piles of ash scattered throughout the living room and across the dining table that were swept into nothing with a spell or two. But that day, they found him before he managed to escape. Upon reflection, Draco thought it could have even been a warning of sorts by some twist of fate.

He left even earlier than usual as a result, all but fleeing out the door of his own flat. Even so, even at such an early hour, the traffic was horrendous, and Draco cursed that he hadn't simply Apparated. To hell with all the Muggles who would 'potentially question' his lack of visible use of transport should he deny catching the bus. To hell with the Syren contract that demanded he catch said bus for at least the final few stops to keep up the act.

The rain that splattered him as soon as he climbed onto the curb. The receptionist that waylaid him when he entered the building with a frowning, "Who are you?" as though she didn't recognise him – which she likely didn't; Syren was a big company, after all. The lift that was crammed with more people than he was used to at such an hour, too. Where were they all coming from?

Draco should have accepted it was a bad day and decided to go home. To hell too with the interview that he was supposed to film. He didn't even like filming all that much. Photography was his passion, had become his passion. He shouldn't have to side-line it out of necessity.

But he did. He had. And despite the warning signs that bespoke promise of the day getting only worse, Draco stayed at work.

When the elevator pinged and the doors slid smoothly open, Draco all but elbowed his fellow passengers out of the way to climb out. Huffing to himself, he absently straightened his shirt, swept a hand down his buttoned vest, and adjusted his tie before striding down the stupidly narrow hallways in the direction of studio eleven.

As head photographer on the job, Draco had his own space. It was hardly considerable, was little more than a section of the back rooms off the studio than any kind of office workspace, and had an only partially concealed view into the dressing rooms for the models in one direction and the consultation space in the other. But it was Draco's space, and he made do.

Crossing to his desk, he plucked the file Pansy had handed him weeks before from the top of a pile of similar papers, and fell to scanning the loose script for that day that he'd already been over countless times. Within seconds, Draco was lost in his work – in considerations, speculations, angles, and directions he planned to take.

The dressing room, accessible to both studio ten and eleven as the only two on the floor, niggled only peripherally at Draco's attention. He ignored it. The consultation room on his other side roiled with noise that peaked before descended into silence intermittently, and he ignored that too. The clock was ticking towards eight and Draco was frowning at the spread of draft shots he'd taken the previous week scattered across the table, hands steepled to lean over them, when another wave of noise signalled more entrants into the dressing room.

Only when an exclamation of "Harry!" sounded did he even spare the room a glance. A glance, and then a stare. Why did he always stare? Draco didn't know, but he couldn't quite help himself.

Draco didn't see Harry outside of work hours. Not really. There had been their initial consultations with Picard and Pansy in tow, Von always watching with keen attentiveness like the guard dog he was. There were the interviews themselves, and Draco had little enough to do with them outside of his filming. Then there were the shoots, and though Draco was in charge, though he could conduct the proceedings and direct just as he wanted, it was ultimately still work.

As such, he'd never seen Harry like this. Not smiling and even laughing casually to a man Draco detachedly recognised as a casting director he'd seen a handful of times around Syren. Not idly bumping shoulders with that man, accepting the gentle clasp of his hand upon his shoulder that to Draco's eyes seemed just a little too intimate. He'd never seen Harry like that, and most notably not in the guise of what appeared to be the midpoint between the model he was and the teenage Saviour he'd been.

He wore glasses, for one. Not the old pair he'd once had, but ones that actually fit and suited him. His hair was as much of a curled mess as it always was, yet less stylistically so than usual. His oversized jumper wasn't quite the same as had been the unfitted clothes of his past; he tucked the sleeves comfortably over his hands as though they were intentionally but casually long, and the open collar sat just wide enough to expose his collar bones. Draco may have been staring at them just a little too long, too.

Harry had never been big. He wasn't tiny either – or at least hadn't been in his later years at school – and stood barely an inch or two shorter than Draco. It made him short by modelling standards, but not small.

Except that he was thin. Very thin, even, and as was currently so fashionable in the Wizarding modelling industry, if not yet so pronounced in the Muggle world, leant definitively more towards the waifish than the muscular end of the spectrum. Draco would never had considered Harry 'waifish' in the past, but in fitted jeans that only emphasised the lines of his legs, the absence of what had once been childish puppy fat in his cheeks, the way his jumper seemed to swim on his just a little, certainly made it seem that way.

The modelling industry could be brutal, and not just for photographers, though Draco had experienced more than his fair share of back-breaking hours, time spent editing and stylising shots that was ultimately rejected, and overall dissatisfaction when he couldn't achieve what he wanted just right.

For models, it was different. It was a world of regular workouts and starved meal plans. It was rejections not for their work but for how they looked, how they stood, how they carried themselves and for any and every perceived imperfection. It was manipulation – by agents, photographers, directors – and exposure in a way that Draco hadn't quite understood the full extent of before witnessing it himself.

It was what made him look at the way the casting director's hand lingered on Harry's shoulder and swallow back a rush of sceptical disgust. He wouldn't jump to conclusions, but he would have to be naïve to think such things didn't happen.

"Keep your eyes to yourself, Malfoy."

Flinching slightly, shaking himself from his thoughts, Draco snapped his gaze towards the voice above him. Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, an older man with a younger woman at his side stood across the table from him. They looked nothing alike but seemed like two peas in a pod for the way they both stared down their noses, eyes narrowed, and lips drawn downwards in disgust.

Draco blinked up at them, eyes hooded and expression carefully blank. "I'm sorry, can I help you?"

The woman tipped her pointed chin towards the dressing room where Harry and the director still stood smiling and chatting practically in the doorway. "Just because you're working with him doesn't give you the right to get familiar. Keep your distance."

Draco almost scoffed. It was ridiculous, really. The claim the Wizarding world had to Harry, as though he was a possession, an icon, an idol to be coveted and defended, was disgusting on a whole new level. Even if Draco had been less averse to the idea of Harry Potter – of working with him, befriending him, and anything beyond or less than that – he would have been disgusted. Just because Harry had saved them and their world, ridding magic of an evil taint that would otherwise have wrought even more destruction than it already had, didn't mean he owed anything to those he'd saved. If anything, Draco thought that rescue alleviated him of any supposed debt.

Straightening, absently collecting his prints from the table, Draco felt his lips thin. Don't get angry, don't get angry, don't get… Why am I even considering getting angry? "It's a little hard to keep my distance as his photographer," he said coolly.

Both man and woman had no such restraint in masking their own derision. The woman glared, propping a hand on her hip, her overlong nails curling into claws as they did so, while the man smiled in a way that looked more like a snarl. "Exactly. You shouldn't have been given the job."

"Actually, I was chosen," Draco corrected. Which he had been, of a sort. By Pansy, yes, and there was a degree of nepotism that he preferred not to consider too closely, but Harry and Picard had accepted him. Picard seemed to almost approve of him nowadays.

"An error, clearly," the woman all but hissed.

"I beg your pardon?" Draco arched an eyebrow. "Are you saying that Harry made a mistake?"

"More than he was influenced," the man said. "He has a tendency to cling to lost cases that should otherwise be scrubbed away like a dirty stain. Estellas should let him go before it drags him down with them."

Draco rolled his eyes. "For someone who considers him to be infallible, I'd have expected you to be more accepting of his decisions."

"Even the infallible can be led astray."

"I think you're misunderstanding what the word 'infallible' means."

"Are you mocking me?"

Draco raised his other eyebrow. The words that slipped from his lips – he shouldn't say them, but he couldn't help himself. "Oh, you can tell? I'd have thought the minute extent of your brain cells couldn't comprehend such a thing. It is, after all, a somewhat sophisticated way of thinking. I wouldn't expect you to be able to make such leaps in logic when you put a living human being upon a pedestal and all but worship him like a starving man would a leg of lamb, but –"

The man was upon him. The woman hissed a sharp, fierce retort, but it was the man that launched himself forwards. Somehow, he made his way across the table – over? Around? Draco wasn't sure which – and grabbed Draco by his collar. Draco's prints scattered. He nearly fell to the floor, but the man, bigger than himself, twisted his fist in Draco's shirt and all but hauled him off his feet. His other fist rose threateningly right beside Draco's cheek.

"You fucking scum," he growled, spittle spraying. "You think you're so high and mighty now that you've got this job? Just you wait; whatever protection you think you have – it'll be gone the second your assumed reign ends."

His fist twisted further, and Draco, on his toes, choked slightly as his airways were momentarily cut off. He grasped the man's wrist, blood abruptly pounding like a drum and all but deafeningly him to the woman cussing something similarly threatening as she too rounded the table.

Was he scared? A little. Draco would be a fool not to be, not after years of learning what happened if he wasn't. Too many black eyes, bloody noses, and bruised cheeks left a mark even after those bruises had faded.

Draco was scared, but certainly not enough to withhold a reply. "You clearly think I'm more intimidated than I am, then," he managed, breathless. "What are you going to do, punch me?"

He might have. The man might have done just that – except that even as his fist rose higher, his face twisting with fury and eyes swimming in it, a hand appeared and curled around that fist. "Whoa, hold on a second, Billy. What's going on?"

Even if Draco hadn't recognised the words as Harry's, he thought he would have known it was him. The way the fury, the hatred, the aggression, immediately vanished from the burly man like water swiped from a window could have it be no one else. Still, Draco was more than a little surprised when, with a compulsive step backwards, the man seemed to disregard Draco entirely. Draco nearly tumbled to the floor as his collar was abruptly released

"Harry," the man said, attention swinging towards where Harry had appeared at Draco's side. "This? Oh, ah – nothing. Nothing at all. Malfoy was just being a mouthy git, as ever."

"Really?" Harry said mildly, head tilting just slightly.

How he managed to appear so neutral, so unassuming, Draco didn't know. He would never have been able to manage anywhere near something so passive himself. But then, Harry seemed to have lost his ability to become properly angry somewhere over the years. He even managed the hint of a smile when he glanced towards Draco.

"What poor conduct, to pick a fight in the workplace," he said.

Hands compulsively fixing his shirt as though they didn't know what to do with themselves, Draco strove to grasp a hold of his own composure, grappling with rising anger that always flickered like a suppressed flame when he was harassed. He attempted – and likely failed – a returning smile. "Quite. I wouldn't have thought that Syren would be the kind of place to play host to fisticuffs."

The man – Billy – visibly twitched, but Harry's smile widened, and that was the important thing. His fingers, still curled loosely around Billy's hand and somehow managing to stay its violent motion, tapped a finger gently on his knuckles. "Exactly. I'm sure Draco didn't mean any harm by saying whatever he said, Billy. It's pretty deplorable behaviour, breaking into a fight, and from my experience Draco's not really inclined to do that so much these days. I'm sure he would have backed off quickly enough."

Billy's face flushed slightly, and Draco couldn't help but feel a rush of satisfaction. Billy clearly wasn't as stupid as his tendency towards violence suggested he was; Harry wasn't being particularly subtle with his reprimand, but it wasn't exactly written in glowing letters and held aloft.

"We were just having a difference of opinions," Billy ground out, jaw clenched.

"Of course," Harry said easily. "On that note, actually, do you mind if I have a chat to you about something? It'll only take a second, I promise. If you have the time."

How readily Billy melted at his words. Why was that, exactly? That Harry smiled at him, and it was somehow a different smile to those that Draco had seen from him before? That he was Harry Potter, and Billy really did worship the ground he walked on? Or was it something else entirely, the same thing that kept not only Billy's attention suspended but also that of the woman who had ceased spitting like a cat and Draco himself?

Draco wasn't sure, but whatever it was, it worked. His hands still twitching at the hem of his shirt, he watched as Billy lowered his fist and Harry held onto it for just a moment longer before letting it go. Draco watched as Harry led the way to the door, Billy and his companion followed after him like dogs to heel. He watched and, breathing slowing, his heart still quivering, could only shake his head at the rapid turn of events.

"You alright, Malfoy?"

Glancing towards to his side, noticing for the first time the company of the casting director Harry had been talking to, Draco rubbed his throat where it still protested to his rough treatment. The director was frowning, arms folded across his chest as he watched Harry disappear through the doorway with the gorilla and stalking cat respectively trailing after him. He still stared when the doorway emptied, unblinking and attentive, as though awaiting their return.

That Billy – he in particular is one to watch out for in future, Draco thought, fingers massaging abused skin. Innocent until proven guilty was a stance Draco strongly supported, but he wasn't a fool. He wasn't so naïve as to lower his guard, and in the position he found himself in? It was indeed foolish not to view every narrow-eyed stare with suspicion.

"I'm fine," Draco said, his voice a little hoarse. "It's hardly unexpected."

"Mm."

The director didn't really care. Draco knew that. More than likely, the man was only being civil to Draco because Harry had made of show of raising a hand between Draco and a swinging fist. A hand that, despite being little enough protection, had effectively stayed the white-knuckled punch. If he was anything even vaguely reminiscent of Billy in his own adoration, the director wouldn't be so stupid as to act in an untoward fashion so quickly afterwards.

Disregarding the man, Draco dropped to his knees and began scooping up his prints. It was a good thing they were only untouched drafts; even if he could reprint them, he would be seething if he was required to. Copies weren't cheap.

But Draco wasn't seething. He wasn't even all that angry anymore, despite the momentary bout of rage that had risen in the abrupt dismissal of his fear. Glancing towards the empty doorway, Draco found himself straining his ears for any approaching feet. He thought that maybe, despite how ludicrous it might sound, he would be able to identify Harry's step.

Swallowing a little painfully, Draco dropped his gaze to the floor. Around him, the sound of voices murmuring in conversation through the walls, of models and stylists readying themselves next door and what sounded like another consultation of sorts beginning in the opposite room. But Draco hardly noticed. His fingers paused on the edge of one white-framed print, and he couldn't help but stare at the image of Harry staring back at him with his unwavering gaze.

He'd stood up for him. Before him. In defence of him. What exactly was Draco supposed to do after that? He didn't know, but just as had begun from the first moment he'd seen Harry's picture, he knew that something else, some other change, had clicked over within him like the hand of a clock, steadily approaching its peak.

"… make it sound so normal. I doubt I'd be the only person in the world who would have expected something a little more unusual of your school life."

"I don't really know how it's supposed to sound. It's the only schooling experience I've ever had, after all."

"That's true. Although, despite the apparent normalcy you indicate, there are those few key incidents that certainly aren't typical for an average student."

"Haha. Yeah, I guess you could say that."

"You said that your success in the confrontation with Quirinus Quirrell under his hypnotism was more a product of luck and chance than anything?"

"Pretty much. It wasn't even really my own ma – ah, skill that drew him out of it."

"Just as it wasn't your skillsin your second year when you confronted returning student Tom Riddle? You saved your friend Ginevra Weasely from a potentially devastating catastrophe."

"It wasn't just me. Ron helped out a whole lot, and Professor Dumbledore's bird."

"Yes, you said that. How, pray tell, could a bird assist you?"

"… You're really asking me to explain that?"

"If you would."

"Well… I guess Fawkes just interrupted our confrontation at the right place and the right time."

"And what of your godfather. Sirius Black, yes? Breaking into the school to find you –"

"Not me, as it happens. My father's old friend, Peter Pettigrew, was squatting on the grounds. Sirius had a bit of a vendetta against him."

"Peter Pettigrew was – was squatting? On school grounds?"

"Yes. It's almost funny how long he got away with it when you think about it. You'd think the professors would have noticed."

"You would indeed… And yet you were, again, ultimately the one responsible for remedying the situation."

"What do you mean by that, exactly?"

"Only that it seems you were made to handle a fair share of the issues that arose at your school, issues that should rightly have been dealt with by your teachers and the adults in charge. Rubeus Hagrid, for instance. As the groundskeeper, one would think, particularly in the case of Pettigrew, it would be his responsibility to –"

"No."

"No?"

"No. He shouldn't have been in charge of that."

"But you should have been?"

"It wasn't meant to be my responsibility. It just happened that way."

"Just like it happened that you managed to resolve so many situations without the support of the teachers on hand?"

"Yes."

"How so?"

"I was lucky."

"Lucky?"

"Yes."

"Do you perhaps drink liquid luck in your spare time, Harry?"

"Only once."

"… I see."

"Something wrong?"

"No, no. Not at all. Would you care to elaborate on that?"

"Not really. It was just some schoolkid antics. I'm sure you're familiar with it. My friends and I just having fun. Hagrid too, actually. He's a good guy."

"Indeed. Speaking of your friends – how was your relationship with the other students at your school."

"The other students being… my friends?"

"We'll explore your closer friends in a moment – trust me, I've got a whole segment just for them, to say nothing of your romantic relationships."

"Looking forward to it."

"Yes, you sound it."

"What gave me away?"

"Ha. Now, your classmates: aside from Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, were you particularly close to anyone else?"

"Not really. I mean, the boys dormitory I was in with Neville, Dean, and Seamus – we were all friends, even if I was closest to Ron. They're all pretty good guys too."

"And the girls?"

"I admittedly didn't have much to do with them other than Hermione. And Ginny."

"Oh, come now. I can hardly think of a teenage boy who wasn't making eyes at the girls. Are you that pure of heart, Harry?"

"Maybe I was just looking in a different direction."

"…"

"…"

"Is that… so?"

"Come on, Pansy. You've surely heard the rumours."

"Is this your means of confirming them?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Is this your way of asking me to?"

"… Maybe. Maybe not. But I'll loop back to this. Don't think I won't."

"Oh, I believe you."

"So, you were fairly tight with your dorm mates. What of the rest of your cohort?"

"Well, I guess in fifth year, when Hermione, Ron, and I started up a club of sorts – yeah, that was probably the first time I really got a chance to meet most of the people outside of my dormitory."

"You were fairly withdrawn, then?"

"Not withdrawn so much as – I mean, I guess I've never been one much for making a huge group of friends."

"You were friendless in your younger years? Before attending Hogwarts?"

"Did I say that?"

"Not exactly."

"Are you putting words in my mouth, then?"

"… You know, Harry, I think you're learning how to deflect me."

"Thank you. I take that as a compliment."

"You should. Not many can manage it."

"I can believe that."

"Alright, then. What of your less than friendly acquaintances?"

"You mean schoolyard rivals?"

"If you'd like."

"Like yourself?"

"I'm not naming names."

"Of course not. Neither am I."

"Do you feel you harbour any lingering resentful? It's common knowledge that many of your old 'rivals' are those who joined the less than savoury clubs at the school, and that they're still feeling the negative effects of their actions."

"Those clubs have since been gutted, or so I've heard."

"They have. Yes, they have."

"So why should it be relevant anymore?"

"The effects do still linger, even years later. Some would consider that you're entitled to resenting those who effectively made your schooling experience, to put it bluntly, living hell."

"I thought we'd established that it was practically boring for how normal it was."

"You mean you conveyed it as being normal."

"Same thing."

"Not really. But would you care to expand upon that?"

"If you'd like. I suppose I don't hold grudges – or at least not any more. What some of those kids did was wrong. Really wrong, and I hope that they don't still think there's any way to look at it with any positivity. But people seem to overlook the fact that most of the kids who were involved in school were honestly just kids. How can you blame them for what they did when they were just being influenced by their parents, or by the people their parents taught them to trust?"

"… How indeed."

"I think that it would be both blind and stupid of me to blame them for everything they did. I mean, I wasn't particularly close to any of the kids who got involved – we just weren't in the same social circles and, as you said, I was rivals of a sort with most of them – but that doesn't mean I hated them. I never hated them. I don't think it's right to hold them accountable for what they did, and even less so when most of them didn't actually do half of what they're being accused of."

"Like…?

"Like hurting people. Stories seem to have gotten a little bit muddled along the way. Just because the cult they were dragged into was responsible for such acts of violence doesn't mean that everyone caught up in it participated. It doesn't mean that they all approved, either."

"That's a very extreme opinion you've stating, Harry. One that I don't think many would agree with."

"Well, it was an extreme situation. And, if nothing else, I hope that my saying so will convince people to look at those they're judging from a bit of a different angle."

"I see."

"Yeah."

"And your words wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that I'm the one interviewing you?"

"No. Why would you think that? I don't have any hesitation in admitting that I think you were a right bitch in school, Pansy."

"Haha. I see. That's heartening to hear. Now, before we drift too far from the central topic –"

"Central topic?"

"These interviews are supposed to be of your history, Harry. Let's not forget that."

"Right. How silly of me."

"Silly. Yes. Now, returning to where we left off: your fourth year was a great point of excitement, wasn't it?"

"I guess you could call it that."

"Not in your opinion?"

"Well, when you nearly get blasted to pieces in your first round of a tournament, it sort of sets you up for failure."

"Yes, I can understand how that might be somewhat discouraging. But interschool sports competitions are always fierce, and the Dragons have always been noteworthy for their overwhelming strength in football, so it's only to be expected that…"

Draco packed up slowly that evening. So slowly that he was one of the last to leave the conjoined rooms that sat adjacent to the studio he'd spent most of the day in. The clock on the wall ticked steadily closer to six o'clock, but Draco hardly noticed. Just as he barely noticed his hands moving as he packed away the last of his equipment.

The sounds of chaos that had flooded the hallway just outside the studio all day had died to near-silence. Murmurs of conversation still interrupted Draco's isolation, but it was negligible. It left Draco with his thoughts, whirling in a mess that had been afflicting him for hours.

Why?

How?

What would possess him to say something like that?

The same thoughts, turning around and around and tumbling over one another, and Draco couldn't answer them. Just as he hadn't been able to conjure an answer as to just what had possessed Harry to stand between him and Billy that morning. Was it his hero complex? Draco had long suspected Harry possessed such an affliction, but really? A hero complex?

It didn't fit. Ultimately, it didn't fit what Draco had been gradually deciding was the default setting of the current Harry Potter. Harry at twenty-one was very different to how he'd been at seventeen, or fourteen, or even eleven, when he was still bright-eyed and naïve. This Harry was mellow and calm. He was a piece of driftwood bobbing down a roaring river, tied by an instructional string to a boat that Picard drove with a deft hand. He let things happen, didn't object, and he didn't get angry.

Harry Potter had lost his anger, and with it, Draco had assumed he'd lost his voice. He'd assumed that, like so many models he'd come across, he had retreated into being a voiceless, obliging doll before the camera, malleable and obedient, with little tendency towards more active responses when away from the limelight, too. From what Draco had seen, he'd appeared to be just that.

Apparently, he was wrong. Harry wasn't silent. He just chose the moments he spoke, and when he did, it wasn't in a fit of rage but with calculated deliberation.

How can you blame them for what they did…?

Draco swallowed thickly. He knew he was to blame for what had happened in the wat. He knew he'd done wrong. If he was to do his time again, he even knew that he'd do the same thing all again. What else was he supposed to do? It wasn't like he had a choice in the matter. It wasn't like he could step out of the situation whenever he pleased. It wasn't possible to simple shrug, decide he didn't like what the Dark Lord demanded of him, and say no.

Draco was a coward. He knew he'd been a coward, and that he still was. But who out of everyone he knew, who besides Harry, and Granger, and Weasley, and their chosen posse, weren't?

How can you blame them for what they did when they were just being influenced…?

Draco squeezed his eyes closed against the recurring influx of remembered words. His fingers tightened upon his camera – his personal camera, that he'd brought out to the shoot even knowing he wouldn't use it, just as he'd made a habit of doing for years. It was a comforting weight in his hands. Familiar.

He knew he'd had autonomy, at least to a degree. Draco knew that he should have known better, and a part of him had. Yet even in the face of the violence, the fear, and what had progressed to death and destruction so quickly and uncontrollably, Draco couldn't turn away. There was a part of him, even as he saw his classmates being shot down by Death Eaters, that whispered it was right. That it was how it was supposed to happen. That the Dark Lord had to win.

It was wrong, and yet it had felt right. Even nauseating retrospect couldn't erase that fact.

That doesn't mean I hated them. I never hated them.

Draco wasn't sure if that part had been a lie. He didn't know if it was lip-service on Harry's part or if he truly meant it. Draco knew that they had a less than polished past to put it in the mildest of terms, and even if he acknowledged that he'd been – and likely still was, as Pansy called it, 'a little bit obsessed' with Harry – he knew they hadn't been friends. He knew he'd even hated Harry a little.

But now was different. Now, it had changed. Now, it mattered that Harry didn't hate him, and could look at him without glaring, and spoke to him –

"See you tomorrow, Draco."

Draco snapped his eyes open, glancing towards the dressing room. Harry was standing just inside the doorway into the hallway, Von ahead of him and already disappearing. Draco swallowed with difficulty once more, because how could he not? How could he not stare and be just a little enchanted by the Harry that wasn't quite the model he presented himself as before the camera but wasn't the boy of their shared past, either?

Maybe it was the casual dress, the return of his oversized jumper and plain jeans to replace what he'd been dressed in for the formalities of most of the day. Maybe it was the glasses. Or maybe it was that, when Harry looked at him, Draco felt as though he was actually being seen as himself, and there really was no hatred in his eyes. He just looked, and saw, and accepted.

Without intention, Draco raised his camera. His fingers flicked it on without deliberate intention. Just as detachedly, in a motion slow enough to halt should objection arise, he raised it to his eye and snapped a picture. It wasn't the captured image of the model with nearly perfect lines and nearly perfect make-up that he saw through his viewfinder. It was just Harry.

When he lowered it, he met Harry's gaze silently. Whether Harry understood the silent question he asked or simply didn't care, he only smiled slightly in reply, a little confused but otherwise accepting. With only a final nod of his head, he turned and disappeared through the doorway, leaving Draco to cradle the captured image in the depths of camera.

He rose after that. He made his way through the nearly silent hallways, satchel slung over his shoulder and head down as he'd learnt was the easiest way to pass unnoticed. When he stepped into the elevator, it wasn't until the doors slid closed that he realised Billy and his companion stood at the back as the sole other occupants.

None of them spoke. None of them moved. The woman wasn't hissing anymore, and Billy didn't raise his fist again. Draco stared fixedly at the closed doors, nowhere near as concerned as he should be, for he didn't care. There were more important things to think about. More fascinating things to occupy his mind.

That was, until the doors slid open a floor before his own and the pair strode past him to leave. When the woman bumped his shoulder he glanced up, but it was only to see the back of her head and Billy's half-turned face as he glanced back at him, striding away.

"You're lucky he likes you, Malfoy," Billy said, so low and so fast that Draco almost missed it. When the elevators slid closed once more, leaving Draco staring at only his own reflection on the polished metal, he was stunned into adding just one more comment to the myriad of confusing echoes rebounding off the inside of his skull. They were still jumbled, still chaotic, when he forsook the bus ride hope and Apparated at the earliest chance he could get after stepping from Syren's head building.

As it turned out, it wasn't the worst day he could have had. It hadn't even turned out all that bad, despite its beginning, because… because the interview had gone well. The shots had turned out well, too. And –

And Harry had said he didn't hate Draco. That he may have disliked him, but not anymore. It was something so irrelevant, so trivial, even, but to Draco it meant something. That, and that he'd spoken for him.

Don't get ahead of yourself, Draco thought, grappling with the thought of Harry in a favourable light that he really shouldn't consider. He wasn't that kind of photographer. He wouldn't let himself be. Just because he sticks up for you as no one else in the bloody industry does doesn't mean anything. It… it doesn't.

Not even Draco believed his own thoughts. He doubted he would have been particularly convincing to anyone if they asked how he felt about Harry's defensiveness. Draco could defend himself, had clawed his way into becoming a photographer in a hateful world, and he could stand on his own two feet. But he didn't think he could convincingly deny that Harry standing up for him – it really meant something. It meant something bigger than Draco knew what to make of.

A/N: I am so sorry. Honestly, I'm even frustrated with myself for how much of a slow burn this is. I didn't even realise at the time of writing it!
Thank you to the lovely readers sticking with me nonetheless. I hope you're still enjoying the story!