"I'm going to pass out," Draco informed Longbottom as he was fishing about in his robes for the key to unlock the door.

"Shut up."

This was not the first time this exchange had happened in the past several minutes of agonisingly slow progress up the stairs. Draco was fairly certain that Longbottom didn't realise how much blood was rushing to his head, dangling halfway upside-down like this, or how Longbottom's shoulder was digging into Draco's stomach. He was glad he'd been unconscious the first time round.

Longbottom finally found the key and unlocked the door, kicking it open before him. When Draco twisted around to see where they were going, his jaw fell slack.

"How many goddamn stairs do you have in this place?"

"I'm sure you can survive for ten more seconds," Longbottom said in a brittle voice that spoke volumes as to how tired he was. "It's a loft bedroom."

"Don't be gallant, Longbottom. The sofa will do fine."

"I'm not being gallant," Longbottom refuted as he began to walk up the steps. "I come and go at odd hours. If you're on the sofa, I'll wake you up every time I come in to get what sleep I can. At least up in the loft, you'll be spared that."

"And I'll starve to death."

"Don't be so dramatic. You'll be able to handle a dozen stairs by tomorrow." Grunting, Longbottom bent over and deposited Draco onto the bed. As Longbottom straightened and turned to look down over the balcony at the room below, Draco scrambled into a more dignified position. "I don't keep much around, but there's enough for sandwiches and tea, at least."

"And how am I supposed to do anything without a wand?" Draco asked pointedly as he drew the duvet over his lap. Longbottom paused.

"You've got a point." He shrugged. "Cold sandwiches, then. I trust you know how to make those without magic. With a bit of ingenuity, I'm sure you can suss out a box of matches to light the stove, as well." He turned and there was a wry smile on his face. "So long as you don't burn the place down, I'll bring you some take-away." The smile slipped a little. "Later. I'm bloody tired."

"He's bloody tired, he says," Draco said under his breath to no one. Apparently, it wasn't quietly enough.

"Yes, actually," Longbottom said in a cold tone that almost made Draco want to cringe: it sounded so alien coming from him. "I haven't slept in three days, Malfoy. I've spent most of the last one keeping your sorry arse alive and making sure we wouldn't be followed when we came here. And you might notice that you weigh slightly more than a bag of groceries to be hauling up three flights of stairs." The edge seemed to fall from his voice and he ran a hand over his eyes, and once again, Draco noticed just how weary the other man looked. "I'll bring you up a sandwich. And then, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me get a few hours of sleep."

Draco's eyebrows flew up in surprise. "Why wouldn't I?"

Looking taken aback, Longbottom paused. "I..." he shrugged. "Just seems like something you'd do, keep me awake. Make me your servant. You'd have loved that at school, making me your lackey."

Now that they were out of that blasted car, Draco's eyes were heavy and his body seemed to be demanding sleep. "You said it yourself. We're not thirteen anymore. And, well, to be frank..." He looked Longbottom up and down. "I imagine that if I tried anything like I did in school, you'd just throw me out a window now." A self-deprecating grin sneaked onto his lips. "I don't think I'd be able to stop you if you did, even if I wasn't a complete invalid."

"You're not wrong," Longbottom answered dryly. He passed a weary hand over his eyes briefly. "A sandwich. And then sleep. I won't toss you out of any windows today, I promise."

Fighting to keep his eyes open was a losing battle. As he heard Longbottom moving about the kitchen downstairs, the last thing Draco could remember thinking was that at least Longbottom had impeccable taste in bedding.

The notion of time, of days and hours and mornings or evenings, lost all meaning. Either Draco was asleep or he was drowsily awake, waiting for sleep to return.

Occasionally, Longbottom was there. Once, he hauled Draco to a sitting position and handed him a piece of bread, and he would snap his fingers in Draco's face to keep him awake until he ate it. Another time, it was a cup of steaming broth. Draco could only vaguely nod to Longbottom's pointed questions, blinking through the haze his mind was steeped in like cloudy tea.

"Your magic should have healed you by now," Longbottom fretted one evening. He was flipping through a book, biting his lip, as Draco cupped his hands around a mug of something hot. He'd not tasted it yet. Then, suddenly, Longbottom looked up. "Are you anaemic? Or is anyone in your family?"

Draco considered the question numbly. "My mother," he said distantly. "And Potter made me."

Longbottom's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'Potter made you?'"

"Cursed me." He absently fingered the scars on his chest. It was such a challenge to even think, and his tongue didn't want to work properly. "Didn't know what he was doing. Snape said my blood would never be the same."

"Fuck," Longbottom muttered, flipping to the index of the book in his lap. "I may have overtaxed your marrow with the replenishing potions, then... I know nothing about curse anaemia."

This didn't seem to require a response, and Draco felt his eyelids droop. A split second later, Longbottom snapped in his face again.

"Drink that. All of it. You're not getting enough food; that's the lion's share of the problem right there."

Obediently, Draco lifted the mug to his lips. Whatever it was tasted vile, but it would be more effort to resist Longbottom forcing it down his throat, and more humiliating.

The sound of Longbottom's muttering was underscored by the dry scratches of rapidly flipping pages. "I shouldn't have moved you so soon and drained of every reserve you had between that and the bone mending, especially if the blood replenishing was too much for your body to handle..." Draco considered asking him to shut up for just one moment, but it didn't seem like it was worth it. "You need food, apparently; that's what every text I've read says, but you can't stay awake long enough to eat anything substantial, and I don't know the nutrition charms they use at the hospital."

Draco forced down the last gulp of whatever evil concoction had been in the mug and slid down beneath the sheets, and before it could roll from his fingers, Longbottom glanced over and took the mug from him. With a sigh, Longbottom rose from his seat at the edge of the bed and waved a hand, extinguishing the lights in the room.

"That's a cool trick," Draco tried to say, but halfway to his mouth, the words lost their way, and he simply let his eyes close.

From that point forward, it felt as though Draco got no rest at all. He would just drift off when Longbottom would shake his shoulder or pull open an eyelid or even go so far as to yank the covers back and leave Draco shivering in the sudden cold. Aside from the various pleasantries they would exchange - "Sod off" and "Good morning to you too" being the most common - they had no conversation. Longbottom would shove a mug of something even more horrid than the last into Draco's hands and glare at him imperiously until he'd drained the whole thing, and then, Longbottom would take the mug and let Draco nestle among the bedclothes again until he was almost asleep, and the whole thing would repeat.

He had lost count of how many times he had been rudely interrupted when Draco realised his bones didn't feel so terribly heavy anymore when he sat up, and his skull didn't seem stuffed with cotton. He blinked hard a few times and then shot Longbottom a suspicious sidelong glance as he pushed himself to a sitting position against the headboard of the bed.

"Have you been drugging me?"

"And my nefarious scheme has been revealed," Longbottom lamented in overly dramatic tones. "I've spent this whole time wickedly trying to give you the strength to sit up of your own volition. Yes, I've been drugging you. Now that you're awake and coherent, can you please eat a goddamn bowl of soup?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You almost sound concerned, underneath all that exasperation."

"I'd have to buy new sheets if you died on these, and probably a new mattress as well." A tray hovered over Draco's lap, bearing the aforementioned soup and a cheese sandwich, and Longbottom gestured to it with his wand. "Now eat, or I swear I'm going to shove it down your throat."

Until he'd brought the first spoonful of soup to his lips, Draco hadn't understood how hungry he actually was. As he tasted it, his stomach suddenly felt as though it were a yawning chasm, and if it hadn't been for a lifetime of decorum ingrained in his pores, he'd have begun slurping out of the bowl like some animal. As it was, he ate with almost unseemly haste, spoon clinking against the bowl in a way that would have made his mother frown. The sandwich barely made for five bites, and then he was staring at the empty dishes in astonishment.

Even Longbottom looked impressed. "Right," he said, breaking the silence. "D'you want more? I can arrange for a roast ox if you're still peckish."

"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are," Draco shot back. "And it's unbecoming to taunt sick people."

An undignified snort accompanied Longbottom's arched eyebrow. "Is that a yes?"

Draco did not dignify that with an answer, but when Longbottom brought up the second bowl of soup, he set to without a moment's hesitation. Merlin's buggered arse, he was hungry.

It wasn't until he was fighting against his desire to lick the bowl that he realised the light in the bedroom was the bluish white of daylight, not the yellow of lamps. "Why aren't you at work?" Draco demanded.

"Because I'll be damned if I brought you back from death's door just to watch you waste away," Longbottom replied. "The Ministry can work out how to tie its shoes without me for a few days. It's not as though I'm doing anything useful with Harry gone." A packet of ginger biscuits was the next thing to come wafting up from the kitchen in response to Neville's lazy summons, and Draco tore into it greedily. "Oh, by the way, I took the liberty of telling your wife you were safe."

"I'd wager her relief was palpable," Draco said with a short nod. "It's always distressing when your allowance gets cut off." Although Longbottom glared, Draco glared right back. "Don't give me that. I'm fond of her, and we get on, but only if I stay away as much as possible and keep her in comfort. No amount of dirty looks is going to turn our marriage into blissful matrimony on principle, so how about you give it a rest?"

"Actually, she seemed genuinely distraught when I told her what had happened, and not about the money, which was obviously your first thought. But go on, keep assuming that I think the worst of you. It'll make me not feel so bad when I have to dose you again." Without another word, Longbottom stood and started down the stairs, his heavier-than-necessary footfalls betraying his irritation.

For the first time in he didn't know how long, Draco did not feel like immediately falling back to sleep, and his sluggish mental processes were picking up speed. It was, possibly, a bad idea to irritate the person keeping him alive, especially when he didn't entirely understand the motives behind it. He could almost feel the energy from the food suffusing his aching body, and after taking a deep breath, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and shakily stood, intending to hobble downstairs and mutter something resembling an apology.

Immediately, it was clear that this was a terrible idea, and his knees buckled. He landed heavily back on the bed. Downstairs in the kitchen, he could hear Longbottom running a tap - doing the washing-up, probably. It struck him as slightly odd that someone with enough magical clout to extinguish lamps wandlessly would clean dishes by hand, but then it struck him as odd that anyone would elect to think about cleaning dishes at all.

He heard a clatter of a bowl being jammed perhaps more forcefully than was required into a cupboard. Ah. Clearly, Longbottom was venting his frustration at Draco's antagonising presence. Well, that was hardly his fault - for the most part, Draco simply had to exist somewhere and the surrounding people would become antagonised. It was hardly a new experience.

However, he could work on being slightly less abrasive. Part of him pointed out that it had been Longbottom who had his hackles up to begin with. The larger part of him that had actually matured past the age of seven shushed the first part.

It was with mild surprise that he saw Longbottom coming up the stairs again, holding a mug of the pond scum Draco had come to know so well. He must have made a face, because Longbottom grinned broadly as he handed over the mug.

"I made it extra strong this time," he said with relish.

"You've been brewing this? And I'm not dead yet?" Draco looked with distaste at the contents while simultaneously wishing he could smack himself upside the head.

"If it would help restore your faith in the world, I can horribly spoil the next batch. Just for you." Longbottom shrugged. "But I'm not the one who has to drink it."

"And what is it, exactly?" Draco asked, peering at the thick vapour that rose from it.

Instead of responding, Longbottom plucked a book from the table he was standing by and tossed it onto the bed. "Page ninety-seven. Incidentally, you'll no longer be light-headed when you stand up too quickly, and your hands shouldn't be cold all the time anymore."

Draco flipped to the proper page. It was a dense medical text detailing treatment for a whole slew of blood-related disorders, some magical, some mundane. He couldn't wrap his mind around half of it and he looked up from the book. Longbottom was watching him, and he did not have the smug look on his face that Draco would certainly have been wearing had their roles been reversed. In fact, he almost looked embarrassed.

"You're just doing me all sorts of favours," Draco said finally.

"That certainly seems to be the case," Longbottom agreed amiably. "Are you going to drink that?" He indicated the mug that Draco still held.

"Why?"

"Because it tastes more and more like rancid pumpkin juice the longer it cools."

"No, I mean why do all this?" Draco gestured at himself, the book, the mug.

Longbottom lowered himself onto a clothing trunk and looked at Draco seriously. "I haven't been exaggerating, Malfoy. You'd have died days ago if I hadn't got to the bottom of why you weren't getting better. Now, you're on the mend."

"Yes, yes, I understand all that. Why?" When Draco took a sip of the potion, he shuddered; Longbottom had made it more potent than usual.

"Why am I trying to keep the man I'm hiding in my flat from dying? The paperwork, for one," Longbottom began, but Draco held up a hand.

"Spare me the clever repartee. Just tell me why."

For a moment, Longbottom stared at him appraisingly. "Because what I said before in the car is still true: this sort of thing is just what I do. Because I started something when I picked you up from that alley, and I intend to see it through." His lips twisted into a tiny half-grin. "And because a world without Draco Malfoy would be decidedly less interesting."

Draco took another long gulp of the potion to buy time to think of what to say to that. He immediately regretted it and grit his teeth to force himself to swallow.

"My advice to you is to not worry so much about why I want to get you well, and just get well," Longbottom continued as Draco blinked tears from his eyes - the potion was hideously strong. "Then we'll both be out of one another's hair."

Draco grimaced and raised the mug to his lips again, but then Longbottom gave an exasperated sigh and snatched the mug from his grip. "Oh, stop that. I've had my petty revenge. Let me go brew you a less evil one."

Some days later, Draco could stand unassisted long enough to take a shower. Before he left for work, Longbottom encouraged him vociferously to do so, because during his phase of unconsciousness, Draco had exhausted the supply of sponge baths Longbottom was willing to give.

Maybe it was the deadpan delivery, or just his infuriating habit of selflessness, but Draco wasn't entirely certain Longbottom had been joking about that. He decided to believe it much more likely that Longbottom had simply used various cleansing charms.

The pressure from the showerhead was abysmal, but the hot water felt positively delicious. Draco simply stood for a time and let it wash over him as he let his mind wander.

He wasn't sure how it had happened, but over the past several days, he and Longbottom had become... warily comfortable. Bedridden as he was, Draco was a captive participant in whatever conversation Longbottom wanted to drum up, and somehow, Longbottom always knew when Draco was feigning sleep. Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Draco found himself enjoying it. Their verbal fencing continued to be sharp, but with intent to outmanoeuvre rather than wound - and Longbottom had proved himself more than capable of backing Draco into a proverbial corner more than once.

If he was honest with himself, Draco could admit that he was starting to feel a grudging respect for his old schoolmate that had nothing to do with the nursemaiding. They were not friends - that word was too fragile for the uncertain weight of what currently passed between them. Besides, Draco Malfoy did not have friends. One of the first lessons his father had ever taught him was that a Malfoy could not afford to have friends.

Oh, he had acquaintances. It had been comforting to have Crabbe and Goyle at his back, confident in their loyalty and ability if not their brainpower. Blaise had been intelligent enough for conversation or a game of chess, if one could ignore his naivety about political climate. When the situation arose, Theo had been a competent if unexciting shag. And he'd had confidants: he could talk to Pansy about anything. Of course, Pansy could talk about anything as well, to anyone, so he seldom made use of her in that capacity; the second thing his father had ever taught him was that a Malfoy could not afford to let slip their secrets.

Had he opted to render down everyone who had stood by him in some capacity, what would be left in the crucible would be something approaching a friend, but a Malfoy didn't work that way. The way things stood, everything was precisely balanced. He was not close enough to any one person for them to be a liability or a threat no matter what they did; similarly, his distance gave them plausible deniability when his involvement with the Death Eaters had made him an unsavoury social contact.

It wasn't until after the war that it dawned on him: he was still separate and apart from all his peers in that he had not lost anyone he didn't know how to live without. He'd understood intellectually, but that was when the seeds of prudence had come to fruition.

It was a lonely way to live, but when one's family held such great social and political clout, it was the only secure way to go about it. His father's careful web that he had spent years weaving was the only thing that had kept the Malfoy name from becoming a bruised and tattered embarrassment, and Draco was expected to uphold that standard.

So of course Longbottom wasn't a friend. If he was a friend, Draco would be honour-bound to never see him again, and he didn't want that.

The water went suddenly tepid, a warning against the cold that was going to come, and Draco grabbed for a flannel and scrubbed hastily, marvelling at how glorious it felt to be clean.

It felt so glorious, in fact, that it was with mild dismay that Draco lifted his wilted and sadly wrinkled silk shirt after he'd dried himself. It wasn't dirty by any means, but it was a far cry from freshly laundered, and at that moment, he could think of few things he would want against his skin less. The undershirt was in even less appealing condition, and the only thing that had saved his trousers from being in the same state was how they had been draped over the back of a chair since his first evening here. Draco pulled on his boxer shorts and ambled carefully over to the chair to pull on the trousers, and then he paused, one leg still in midair.

He'd never actually noticed the chest of drawers before; he had simply registered it as a piece of furniture that was present. But there were clothes in there. Clean clothes. Certainly, Longbottom wouldn't mind lending Draco clean clothes. A shirt, at least. Just a clean t-shirt would be the difference between night and day, even if it was several sizes too large for him.

And they all were, Draco discovered when he yanked a drawer open. Except for the Gryffindor Quidditch t-shirt (and Draco had at least enough self-respect to not stoop that low), he would be swimming in every shirt Longbottom owned. He settled upon a dark blue one that proclaimed "2ND JNR AUROR LONGBOTTOM" across the left breast, which he presumed to be an exercise shirt from Longbottom's training days. It was merely loose on him, rather than having enough extra material to make half another shirt. Not for the first time, he wondered where Longbottom had found all that extra shoulder.

Now fully clothed, Draco made the long and weary trek down the stairs to the kitchen, where he cobbled together a ham sandwich and struck the first match he'd ever used in his life to light the stove. Tea and food accomplished, he pushed aside Longbottom's duvet and pillow on the sofa and sank onto it gratefully. Having completed his morning routine in slightly under an hour and a half, he determined that morning time well spent and deserving of a nap. The thought of negotiating the stairs again dizzied him, however, and that was why the afternoon found him curled up on the sofa in a half-doze when the lock on the door clicked.

Draco was immediately awake and sat bolt upright, eyes scanning his surroundings for his wand before he remembered he'd lost it. He had little time to prepare a backup plan, so it was with great relief that he realised it was Longbottom coming in the door and not some nameless thug ready to finish what he'd started. He relaxed against the back of the sofa, laughing weakly at himself.

But Longbottom did the exact opposite of relax: his shoulders tensed, his frame becoming instantly taut and drawn. His eyes seemed to be focused on Draco's chest.

Inwardly, Draco smirked. "Something wrong?" he asked in his best infuriating drawl.

Longbottom licked his lips. "That's my shirt," he said pointlessly.

"Is it?" Draco looked down at his chest, making a show of inspecting himself.

"It's got my name on it, hasn't it?"

"I suppose it does." He looked back up, and the words he was about to say died on his tongue.

Longbottom didn't look angry. He didn't even look annoyed. His eyes were slightly unfocused, his lips slightly parted, his jaw slack. If Draco had to put a name to the carefully blank expression, he'd almost call it... hungry.

No. Not hungry. Needy.

With that realisation, the energy in the room changed completely. Draco was suddenly very aware of the feeling of the fabric against his skin, the fabric of a shirt that wasn't his. It belonged to another man; in fact, it had another man's name proclaiming the true ownership. Pinned under that gaze, Draco felt as though he'd... submitted, somehow, that he was being looked upon as someone who should be wearing that shirt, belonged in that shirt. Longbottom licked his lips again and Draco felt his breath catch in his throat, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Suddenly Longbottom gave his head a little shake, and the tension dissipated like a pricked soap bubble. "I'll pick up some of your clothes from your flat tomorrow," he said dismissively. "I should have thought of that before." His eyes narrowed. "I certainly hope you left my underwear drawer alone."

"God, yes," Draco responded, slightly shaken by the rapid change in atmosphere. He was not sure what had just passed between the two of them, but if Longbottom was prepared to ignore it, Draco was an old hand at pretending nothing was amiss.

"Good." Shaking his head again, he reached into his sleeve and strode over to the sofa. His eyes flicked to Draco's chest and then landed on his face. "Here."

Draco's jaw dropped, and the events of the last few minutes fled from his mind as he reached out a hand to take the wand that Longbottom was holding towards him. His wand. Longbottom had recovered his wand.

He looked up, and any clever quips he could have possibly come up with had dissipated. "How...?"

"If anyone asks, you got it back on your own," Longbottom said by way of explanation. "Officially, Aurors aren't supposed to get caught up in the Brotherhood mess."

"How did you get it?" Draco finally managed, dropping his eyes back down to his wand. He was not a drippy romantic; he refused to believe that the wood had grown warm at his touch, or that his arm felt more complete with his wand firmly gripped in his fingers. Refusing to believe and not believing, however, were two completely different things.

"I'd prefer to stay enigmatic for a while longer," Longbottom said with an impish smile. "Let's just say it was no trouble." His gaze lingered on the shirt for another moment, and then he cleared his throat. "I'm going to take a shower and change. Then I'll grab us some take-away."

Draco nodded, rendered more or less speechless. There was a notch in the wood near the tip of the wand that hadn't been there before, but it was his wand.

"Thank you," he said finally. He licked his lips and then added, haltingly, "Neville."

The other man paused halfway up the stairs. Draco couldn't see his face.

"Any time, Draco," Neville replied, and then he continued upstairs.