Chapter Thirty-Eight

The house windows were lit when we apparated onto the back porch again. We had left the station without anyone paying us much heed; those people waiting on the platform for the train were far more interested in finding their family members in the crowd, than they were sorting out who else might be there, and who was leaving with whom. A quick step through the enchanted wall and we were Muggles for all anyone knew, easily slipping into the London night, and then vanishing altogether.

The back garden was barren, I hadn't had the time to plant much or tend to foliage over the summer. There were some mature tress that offered shade from the summer sun, but now, in the midst of winter they were dark and skeletal looking with only the wan moonlight breaking through their branches. I wanted to say something auspicious to Draco about coming in, and finally having time alone together, properly, but nothing came to mind. The truth was; I was nervous and a little afraid about the holiday. Not to say there wasn't also a nervous excitement, but the thought of intimacy bore both sides of worry for me just then. I didn't know where things were going to go, I knew what I wanted, what I thought a wanted, selfish as it was, but I didn't know what Draco wanted, and I had avoided asking him that very question for fear that his answer would be one that would shatter the calm I was working on so diligently. I smiled at him, probably looking weaker than I should have and I opened the back door.

The house was warm and the kitchen smelled of dozens of different foods. For a moment I was afraid that Molly had come by early to get started, making my gut twist further with anxiety, but it was only Kreacher, whose little face greeted us, hands outstretched for our coats, and he had been busy.

"Master, and Master's friend, come in, come in out of the cold. Kreacher has been waiting for you." He bustled around us, gathering up our bags and outerwear, all the while talking on about everything he had prepared for our late dinner. We were hustled into the dinning room to another feast or warm soup and fresh bread, cheeses and fruits, and goblets of wine, offered with a knowing grin that while we were eighteen, and legal to drink, that a treat like that wouldn't have made it's way to Hogwarts. There was no time too talk about anything serious for it was obvious that Kreacher expected us to dig in, and so we did, conscious of his anxious smile, waiting for our approval of his labours; something that was given freely by us both because everything was, as usual, amazingly delicious.

When we were done he shooed us out of the room to tidy after us, even after we tried to help clean up. It seemed best not to argue with him at any rate, and the glass of wine had left me a little giddy; though not out of control or anything. I followed Draco into the front room where he stood by the lit fireplace, not looking at anything in particular in the flames. The Floo network was still disconnected, I planed on getting around to it eventually, once I took up permanent residence. It would make it easier to travel to the Ministry; but for the time being it was just one other thing I'd have to worry about. So I left it be.

I reached for Draco's hand, warm as it was from proximity to the grate. He let me take it.

"Do you want me to show you the guest room?"

"Okay."

Our bags were on the landing, Kreacher hadn't gotten around to taking them up, or he didn't know which bedrooms to put them in, either or. We grabbed them up and I led Draco to the second landing, which was where Regulus and Sirius' bedrooms were. I opened the door to my Godfather's room, the first time I'd done so in a great while, and took the few steps in, illuminating the sconces with my wand. Flames lit up the Quidditch posters that were still on the walls, and the Gryffindor Gold and Magenta souvenirs from Sirius' time at school. I hadn't even stopped to wonder if they would bother Draco, but that wasn't the only thing I had neglected to think about.

"This was my Godfather's room." My whisper sounded a little too reverent, even to my ears.

"Sirius." He answered, "Yeah, he was in Gryffindor wasn't he?" It was a rhetorical question. "What was he like, my second cousin?" That one wasn't rhetorical, and I felt like a complete idiot, of course, Sirius was Narcissa's cousin, and he and Draco were related.

"I never got to meet him."

Of course, he wouldn't have been part of Black Family get togethers; in fact, he was in Azkaban for the better part of both our lives. I had had known him better than Draco; and that wasn't saying much sadly.

"He was complicated." It was a pitiful answer at best. Draco just kind of smiled at me sadly.

"He was loyal, to his friends, all the way to the end. And I don't know if he ever got over his guilt at how my parents were betrayed to Voldemort."

"How was he when he escaped from Azkaban?"

"Driven, I guess. Determined to get revenge, maybe to assuage some of his responsibility."

"Did the Dementors change him?"

"I don't really think they did. They torture by sucking out a person's happiness and good memories, forcing them to live through the terrible ones." I knew that feeling all too well, the Dementors had crippled and nearly killed me too many times. "I don't think Sirius had much happiness for them to feed off of at all, having lost his best friends, having been accused of killing Peter and a number of Muggles. He didn't have anything to give them. He seemed quite complete when I first met him. But perhaps a little on the feral side, though that might just have been his nature."

Draco was silent, and I knew why; I wasn't completely dense, perhaps eighty-five percent or so back then. He wanted to know what to expect from his father when he was released. Even though the Dementors no longer worked at Azkaban prison, his father had been exposed to a great many of them, and even under Kingsley's watch, there was no telling what other creatures might now be employed to guard the prisoners, or even if there were any Dementors themselves now imprisoned there.

"Do you want me to leave you alone for a while Draco?"

"No. I've had well enough time being alone."

"Do you want to come upstairs with me?"

"Yeah I do." A pause, "Should I bring my bag with me?"

It was all so blissfully innocent, the two of us dancing around things as simple as sharing a bed for the whole night. How easy it all really was back then, and how lucky we were that that was the worst of our stresses.