The next day I put on a cloak, hood up, and went into Diagon Alley under a disguise. It was only a twenty four minute bike ride, but I just wanted it over with quickly, in and out. The less time I spent there the less likely people would recognize me even with my changes in appearance. I changed some muggle money into galleons and went to the pet store, only the best for Hedwig, it would be part of her Christmas present from me. I got food, treats, a cage (I didn't plan to use it much thought) and a nice, dark wood perch that I would place right next to the window for her. As I was exiting the shop I saw the people I really wanted to avoid, the Weasleys and Hermione. They were all decked out in the most expensive cloaks, walking around like they owned the place, it really was painful to watch, They were acting just like the Malfoys, expecting the crowds to part for them and most of them did, just to stare.
"Look at you, walking around like you own the place!" Said a very familiar voice from behind them. They all turned around to see Draco Malfoy, all by himself in dirty black robes. "You really think you're all that, but to me you'll always be Weasels and blood traitors!" He yelled, making a scene.
"Shut it Malfoy! You're only mad because we now have money and you don't, you're nothing but a homeless orphan and you know it!" Hermione said in a pompous voice.
"At least my family had earned their money! You only have yours because you condemned an innocent man to Azkaban on false charges!" I was shocked, was Malfoy talking about me? And how DID the Weasleys get that money anyway?
"You be quiet Malfoy. Harry is dark and he killed my sister! It's not our fault the ministry gave us his money as compensation, he was the who murdered his friend and future wife!" This shocked me even more, they were parading around with MY money? Also, they were planning to set me up with Ginny? She was like my sister, I would never like her like that.
"Please, he was your savior and now look where we are! Terrified of the dark lord with no hope, you condemned our hope and now we're all going to die! Also, he would never marry your sister, didn't you see how he looked at her, it wasn't with lust but a sisterly love. Would you have married her Weasley?" Ron snapped at that, whipping out his wand and firing off a spell. I don't know what came over me, but I dropped my things and tackled Malfoy, narrowly missing the spell.
"Come on." I grumbled, pulling him up and dragging him off into a side alley.
"Take your hands off me!" He demanded and I let go of him, taking down my hood.
"You may not recognize me Malfoy, but some would say I was your worst enemy, most 'worst enemy's don't stick up for them like that." I said with a laugh.
"Well, well, Potter, you've cleaned up. I guess seven years in Azkaban didn't do you too bad." He said, giving me a once over.
"Yeah, I get it. I'm hot, but can you apparate?" I asked.
"Do you think I'm stupid? Of course." I rolled my eyes, some things never change.
"Okay, apparate to this location about twenty minutes, okay?" I handed him a piece of paper I had written my address on just in case. "Okay. I'll see you there." And with that, I was gone, leaving him behind confused.
When I got back I had set up everything for Hedwig, placing her cage on top of my dresser and her perch on my nightstand closest to the window. I was in the middle of eating a sandwich I had made myself when there was a tapping at the window.
"Hedwig!" I screamed, running over to the window and letting her in. She landed on my shoulder and started rubbing against my head affectionately. "I missed you to." I said with a laugh. I noticed how skinny she was and wanted to murder Hermione immediately, but I had to feed Hedwig and Malfoy should be showing up in a bit. I put down some food and water for Hedwig along with some treats and she immediately started eating like she hadn't in days. I heard a pop behind me and knew that Malfoy had come, to be honest I hadn't thought he would. I turned around to see him looking around my apartment with slight interest.
"Where are we?" He asked as I jumped down from my bed, walking over to him.
"This is my apartment." He raised his eyebrows a bit in disbelief. "What's that look for?" I asked.
"I would've thought you would be living in a box somewhere seeing as you're a wanted criminal." He said.
"Not in the muggle world, I work at two different places to afford this place and I love it." Malfoy sat down on the couch, but I walked over to the hammock and sat down in there instead, I always loved reading in it.
"So, why am I here?" He asked, his voice taking on a slightly snobbish tone.
"I wanted to talk like things, and don't talk like that, you sound like a complete ass hole." I said, making Malfoy frown a bit.
"You're not wrong. While you were gone the Dark Lord killed both of my parents and my father had made him his heir so I don't have any money. I've been trying to find work, but it's not going very well."
"Draco Malfoy, homeless." I said with a laugh, getting up and grabbing an old fashioned pipe I got at a smoke shop a few weeks ago. "How… ironic really. The sad thing is, I know exactly how you feel." I grabbed a little box I kept in one of the drawers by the couch and filled my pipe up with some nice weed.
"What do you mean?" Draco asked as I took my first hit, back in my hammock once more. "The great Harry Potter penniless and without a home? How could you have ever experienced anything near that?" I blew my smoke out of the window I had opened and started rocking back and forth.
"When I was little I was abused and used as a slave by my only living relatives until I was seven, that's when I had finally had enough and ran away. I had no money, but I was an extremely talented painter, so I went to London in hopes of selling my work and being famous. That however, didn't work out, no one wanted my paintings and I was living off of the money I had gotten from the ones who did. It wasn't working out, but then I started getting sharpies and discarded cardboard, i started drawing on that and selling it to the hipsters of downtown who are into that stuff. They loved it and suddenly I was off the streets and I rented a small closet to live in. That's when I got my Hogwarts letter, but I feel like I would've been better if I would've just ignored the letter. Azkaban messes people up." I said, I could see Malfoy looking around at the paintings on the walls in masked amazement.
"Is that why you're doing drugs?" He asked, still looking around.
"Partially, but weed calms my nerves and helps with the nightmares I have, it relaxes me too. It's a lot of work to do two jobs and try not to be caught and hauled on back to jail." Taking another hit I could start to feel myself relaxing a bit.
"You painted all this art on the walls?" He asked, looking particularly at a large painting of a fallen angel with broken wings. The painting was really expressive, with smeared paint as is water was spilled on it, but not enough for it to be a blur, it was one of my better works with a bright background of reds and oranges and the dark form of the crying maiden.
"Every single one, Azkaban really inspired me and gave me the hard emotion I was missing in my work." Malfoy was still looking at that one painting, examining every little detail of it as if trying to memorize it. "So, tell me, why did you stick up for me back in the alley?" Malfoy then looked back at me with sincerity in his eyes, something I didn't know he capable of expressing.
"It was because I know you would never kill Ginny Weasley, because I've been falsely accused of things I didn't do and people have turned on me like a flip of a switch. People naturally hate me because of my father or want to be close to me because of my money and power. All of that is gone now and I have nobody. I know how it feels and it hurts. Sorry, I'm being a huge girl, but it's true and it's sad that I had to lose everything before I realised it. The whole reason I hated you was because you denied my friendship one time, that's a horrible reason and I regretted it. You had such great friends, but it turned out they were using you to. It's heartbreaking to see what people would do for something they desire." I was speechless, I had never heard Malfoy talk like this, especially to me. Looking at him, he was different. His hair was wild and untamed, and his face sharper, his icy blue eyes older with wisdom and filled with pain.
"You know I wouldn't have denied you if you hadn't been such a prat to Weasley, he was my very first friend and I wanted to keep it that way. I was blinded by my neediness and never saw him or Hermione for who they were. Can we just start over, we're both very different people now and I think that would only be appropriate for the situation." He smiled and so did I, I don't know if it was just the buzz, but for once in my life, I didn't feel any hate or contempt for the man now sitting on my couch.
"I would like that… Harry." He got up and we shook hands, like we were suppose to nearly ten years before.
"It's nice to be your friend… Draco." We both smiled and sat back down. "I still have some of this weed left if you'd like some." Draco looked and the pipe and then back at me and shrugged.
"Sure, why not. I have no reputation that isn't already ruined, why not resort to drugs?" I chuckled for a bit, handing Draco the pipe and the lighter.
"Now, don't take a fast breath, take it slow and deep so you don't burn your throat to much." He nodded his head and lit the pipe, I watched him breath in and then start coughing like crazy, puffs of smoke coming out with each gust of breath. I got him a drink and soon enough he was back at it until the weed was all gone.
"I get what you're saying, this is great." He said in a tired sort of voice, laughing almost uncontrollably afterwards, and I could help but join him. High Draco was fun to be around. We were both stoned as a motherfucker when Sirius got back with a bag I'm assuming had my father's invisibility cloak in it.
"Ah! My amazing dogfather!" I yelled when he walked in, laughing with Draco afterwards. "Draco, meet my godfather and your cousin, the infamous Sirius Black!" I set, going into another fit of laughter.
"What's going on here?" Sirius asked, extremely confused with our sudden friendship.
"Oh, my dear, dear godfather. Draco and I met in Diagon Alley when I went for owl supplies and I brought him back here and we became best friends!" I walked over to Draco and draped myself over his shoulders, leaning heavily into him. " Isn't it great!" We both laughed together and Sirius set the bag on the bar.
"This is all good and everything, but just wondering, are you two… possibly… on any kind of drugs." Sirius asked, trying to sound casual.
"Oh no Harry! He's found us out!" Draco said, acting surprised making me laugh even harder.
"Yes, we are. Sirius, when we were talking about our friendship I was smoking and then I let Draco have some and ba bam, we're stoned." I walked over to the bag and pulled out the silky material of the invisibility cloak, draping it over my shoulders. "Look! I'm just a head!" Draco was now crying on the floor with laughter as I bounced around, nothing but a suspended head.
"You guys are crazy, drugs, really? And you didn't give me any? I was born in the seventies, I'm the biggest drug child of us all!" We were both shocked, but I grabbed my pipe and filled it up, giving it over to Sirius who held it like he had done this many times before. Soon enough, the three of us were running around in a drug induced haze of laughter and fun.
"You know what we should do?" I asked a bit later as we watched the sun set in wonder.
"What?"
"What?" Draco and Sirius said at the same time which made them both look up at each other and start laughing.
"We should order some chinese food!" I said and suddenly there was silence, Both Draco and Sirius were looking at me as if I wa God, both of their mouths watering.
"That sound like the most brilliant idea you've ever had Hary. Where's the phone? Why didn't we do this earlier?" We all ran around trying to find my phone which was in my bag, I then ordered us the food, we watched the sunset as we waited. Just as the sky turned red I put on some new lana del rey vinyl on my record player and went to sit next to Draco, leaning on his shoulder. To my surprise he grabbed my hand we watched as the red turned to orange then yellow, sparkling off of the snow capped buildings of downtown.
"Harry, I've always loved you." Draco said, never taking his eyes off the bright colored sky. I smiled, snaking my body up, meeting his soft lips with my own and kissing to the chorus of Lust for Love, it was perfect. This kiss deepened, Sirius was off in his own world, probably falling asleep until I was holding myself up on top of Draco. The kiss only broke when the doorbell rang, the food was here.
"I've loved you since the first time our eyes met." I said, getting up off of him, helping him off of the ground to go eat dinner. I don't know what just happened, but I liked it. Maybe it was the drugs or just the feelings we had always denied, but that kiss was perfect and I would always remember it in my mind.