There was nothing for it. They liked each other.
They were not friends. So far as Draco was concerned, they were nothing more than temporary allies, and once they'd stopped huddling behind the protection their surnames offered, they got on well. Once it was safe for Draco to leave, he'd be doing so and not turning back. There was absolutely no room in his life for a social contact like Neville. They were not friends, would never be friends, and would have no contact once Draco brushed off the pieces of his life and put them back in proper order.
He'd probably owe Neville a favour. He supposed he could deal with that reality once it came along.
The strange thing was, having determined the proper course of action to nullify any future difficulties, it was remarkably easy to forget that course of action. It was especially easy when Neville popped the cap off a beer bottle and handed it to Draco one evening after supper, settling down on the sofa next to him with a bottle of his own.
It was easy to forget that Draco did not like beer, too.
"I'm having very little luck trying to work out your situation," Neville admitted after a few moments of silence, during which Draco had tried to remember why he didn't like beer.
Draco stared blankly. "My situation?"
"With the Brotherhood?" Neville looked pained. "The reason you're currently taking up space in my flat? Or did you manage to forget that already?"
Grimacing, Draco took another sip of his beer. He had forgotten, actually. It wasn't really something he had ever spent a great deal of time thinking about, at least until he'd been cornered in Knockturn Alley. "I thought Aurors weren't supposed to get mixed up with the Brotherhood."
"We're not. I'm not doing it as an Auror; I'm doing it as a private citizen - a private citizen with some usefulconnections." Taking a long draft from his bottle, Neville then looked expectantly at Draco.
The label of the bottle in Draco's hands was fascinating, and studying it gave him an excuse to not answer right away. "You're doing this for me?" he asked finally.
"No," Neville corrected. "I'm doing this because of you. I'd like my bed back, and I can't send you back to your own place until I'm convinced no one is going to come smash your head in." He paused for a moment. "I suppose that last bit is for you."
"How considerate." Draco studied the illustration of the dragon on the label for a few moments before he drew a deep breath. "You of course know the name Bryce Lancaster."
"Everybody knows the name Lancaster." The way Neville's brow furrowed did not look promising. "Don't tell me your troubles go that far up, because even I can't help you if he's got it in for you."
"Well then, you'd best get a set of bunk beds, because I won't be leaving for a while." Ignoring the horrified look on Neville's face, Draco took a swig of the beer. "In my defence, I had no idea that it was his heir at the bar that night. Nor did I have any idea that his father would place full blame on me for 'turning his son gay'."
Closing his eyes, Neville sighed heavily through his nose. "So let me get this straight. You screwed Harrison Lancaster, son of the most homophobic and cruel organised crime ringleader we've seen in this country in twenty years. And you were indiscreet enough to get caught."
There was really no way for Draco to sugar-coat it. "More or less."
Neville shook his head. "What have I got myself into?"
"A right mess," Draco offered. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't think he actually wants me dead. There are much more efficient ways to do that."
"Yes, but they're also much more detectable," Neville said. He'd put his beer down and was rubbing his temples. "Are there any other details I should know about? Did you deflower the entire family, or just the eldest?"
"Deflower? Please." Draco took another drink of the bitter ale. "He had experience. Plenty of it. I was just unlucky enough to be the first one observed with him. And it was just him - he's only got a sister, and she's not really my type."
"Well, there's that, at least." Sighing, Neville picked up his beer. "I might have an avenue I can pursue. It'll take some time."
Draco shrugged. "I've got a wand again, so I won't set the place on fire with matches anymore. Take your time."
"Thanks," Neville said dryly. "Feel free to invite yourself to stay as long as you'd like."
They lapsed into silence. Draco went back to studying the label of the beer again when something occurred to him.
"Why do you even have matches?" he asked suddenly.
"Hm?" Neville asked, lifting his head from the reverie he'd slipped into.
"Matches. They're a thoroughly useless Muggle nuisance. Why do you have them?"
"Ah." Neville stared at him for a moment, as though trying to decide how much to divulge. "I didn't come into my magic until I was eight," he said finally.
"Eight?" Draco felt his eyebrows shoot straight up. He'd been two. He may not have been able to do anything useful until he had a wand, but he literally could not remember a time when he didn't have magic.
"Nearly nine. The rest of the family kept trying to scare it out of me. My gran, though, she's practical. She started teaching me how to live like a Squib." Neville shrugged. "She kept it up until I was accepted at Hogwarts, and even a bit after. Just in case. So I've always kept matches around, and -"
Draco had stopped listening partway through Neville's explanation, his mind abruptly thrown into complete disarray as something occurred to him.
Magic took about fifteen years to fully mature in an individual. By eleven, most wizards had enough to start channelling it usefully. By seventeen, they'd probably achieved their adult levels of magic much as they'd reached their adult height. If Neville had had enough magic to be accepted at Hogwarts after just three years of development and had managed to keep up - however incompetently - with the rest of the students his age throughout school... and yet followed the same fifteen-year pattern...
"I know what you're thinking. Go ahead and say it." Neville sounded more than a little resigned.
"You must be a goddamned powerhouse." If that was blunter than Draco had ever spoken in his life, he could blame it on the way everything he'd ever assumed about the man sitting next to him had suddenly been turned on its head.
Something like anger seemed to flash in Neville's eyes, but Draco blinked and it was gone. "Most magic is more finesse than force," Neville said offhandedly. "But if you ever need a house levelled, let me know." He took a long drink from his nearly-empty bottle. He was openly avoiding eye contact with Draco now. Despite the fact that the subject was obviously making Neville uncomfortable, Draco's astonishment overcame his instinct for social grace and tact.
"But you must be... do you have any idea the sorts of things you could do with that much power?" he blurted.
Neville looked at him with an expression Draco had never seen on his face before, a shift of the jaw and a furrowing of the brows that could have been disgust. "Oh? You mean like accidentally kill someone with a Stunning spell? Set a house afire trying to light a lamp? How about breaking ribs with an Impediment Jinx?" His mouth twisted as though he'd tasted something sour. "Do you realise how careful I have to be? All the time? Did you never notice that I rarely ever use a wand?"
"I thought you were just showing off," Draco replied hesitantly.
Vehemently, Neville shook his head. "Do you know what Snapping is?"
The abrupt change of subject made Draco blink before he shook his head.
"It's using trauma to try and get someone to reach a heightened level of magic." Neville's tone was short, as though discussing something unpleasant. "Like I said before, scare it out of them. Used to be the go-to method for kids like me."
Unsure of whether he was supposed to say something, Draco decided it would be safer to keep his mouth shut.
"It's illegal, of course. Snapping someone on purpose, that is." The bottle in his hands was empty, and Neville stared at it intently as though to save himself from having to look up. Draco got the feeling that Neville wasn't actually looking at the bottle at all. "Used to be that Snapping would kill a couple of Squibs a year – either they were desperate to have magic, or their parents were desperate to not have a Squib as an heir." He cleared his throat. "My family's old, you see – Snapping was just something they did in our family history. Probably yours, too."
The silence stretched to something nearly unbearable until Draco coughed. "And it worked, I assume. When you were eight."
"Yeah. It worked. Nearly cracked my head open, but it worked. And it made me much more susceptible to Snapping later, too." There was no mistaking it; Neville's eyes were very far away, despite how fixedly he stared at his hands. The silence threatened to return again before Neville took a deep breath. "Did you read about the arrest and sentencing of Unspeakable Ross a few years back?"
If Neville was going to keep changing the subject like this, Draco would need a map. "Life sentence, wasn't it? All over the news. No idea what he was sentenced for."
"Me." At the word, Neville's eyes went oddly flat and dark. "And he never served the sentence, because he was dead when it was passed. There was no trial; you can't try a corpse. It was all a sham."
No matter how he looked at them, the random bits and pieces of information weren't meshing. Draco took a breath before deciding that blunt was the way to proceed. "I'm sorry, but how does this all fit together?"
Neville glanced up at him and Draco felt like swallowing when he saw how Neville's eyes flashed with… what was it? Impatience? Irritation? "Unspeakable Ross was one of the Unspeakables responsible for the anti-torture training for Aurors. Everyone had to do it. Except Ross was in charge of a small but fervent faction that wanted to try and force their pupils to Snap – add some vigour to the Auror force. And they started – and finished – with me."
"And you were already prone to Snapping." Like tumblers in a lock, everything else started to fall into place, and the beer in Draco's stomach churned sourly. "Oh God. What did they -?"
"Oh, you know. Burned me alive, didn't let me sleep, that sort of thing." The words were so bitter and glibly casual that they nearly seemed to twist the air around them. "They were successful, but they didn't take into account exactly what a Snapped adult who has been driven to the edge of sanity is capable of."
"You killed him. Ross." Draco did not need the silent nod to know it was true. "And when you… when you Snapped. You didn't have your wand?" A shake of the head. "And so…"
"The whole point of a wand is to focus magic." Neville's voice was perfectly flat. "If I focus mine anymore, bad things usually happen. There aren't many things that require that much brute force - except duelling." His voice took on a sour cast at that. "I'm great at taking people down. One of the only things I'm useful for. And one of the only things the Ministry bothered helping me master, once I recovered and decided to finish my Auror training."
Shaking his head, Draco carefully put his empty beer bottle on the table. "I'd have shown them my back so fast their heads would be spinning."
Neville shrugged. "Harry convinced me. Said what happened to me was exactly the sort of thing we were supposed to be fighting against. We didn't run out of battles when Voldemort died. There's still plenty to do. And if I have to be nothing but the Ministry's casualty machine… then so be it." This last was said so softly that Draco wasn't entirely certain he had been intended to hear it.
"At least you're useful for something." Draco regretted the words as soon as he said them. They sounded far harsher than he'd meant them, and one look at Neville's eyes made it perfectly clear how little the other man appreciated them.
"Oh, yes. It's fantastic. Everything I'd always dreamed and more. My parents would be so proud." Neville glared at the empty beer bottle, as though it were the bottle's fault it was empty. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
Draco opened his mouth and then shut it again. There didn't seem to be much more to say. Still, he had to try. "You use a wand for other things, though. You didn't snap your fingers to mend my ribs."
"I learned that after. Anything I learned after it all happened is fine. Anything before…" Neville shuddered. "Harry tells me it's a matter of practice - of getting my fine-tuning back. But I'd rather not destroy an entire city block trying to light the stove. So. Matches."
"Matches," Draco agreed faintly.
He was not sure how it had happened, but as though a mist had receded, Draco saw the man sitting on the sofa next to him with perfect clarity, in a manner Draco had never seen Neville in before. Draco did not see the boy from school with some gained height, broader shoulders, and a few days' worth of stubble. Nor did he see the weary Auror at the end of a long day.
Instead, he saw the once-teenaged war hero whom everyone had forgotten, who spent his days alongside the war hero whom everyone remembered. Draco saw a man who knew full well he was being used, formed into the most efficient of weapons because he was convenient, and who put up with it because at least, for now, he was being pointed in the right direction.
And Draco saw a man who was still every bit the gentle, sentimental lump he'd been in school, forced by situations beyond his control into a hard, protective shell. A shell that shielded Neville from the things he was forced to commit by his own hand in order to make it through the world that had forgotten him.
As though he needed the reminder, the inside of Draco's left forearm itched, and he licked his lips. He was familiar with the notion of settling into the niche the world had created, because there was no other place for him to go.
"I could help you," he said finally. "Start small. Candles and the like. Or – my family has a library. A sizable one. I'm sure there's something there –"
"The East End Eagles just signed a new Chaser," Neville said very firmly. "I hear he's taking the preseason matches by storm."
"He's an egotistical blighter who doesn't know the meaning of teamwork, and I wasn't done with the previous topic," Draco said, a bit taken aback.
"That's a shame, because I am." Abruptly, Neville stood from the sofa and held out a hand. "I'll take your bottle if you're finished."
Draco did not miss the double meaning of the statement, and thrust the empty bottle into Neville's hand roughly. He stood, and then hesitated.
"I can sleep on the sofa. If you want your bed back."
Neville looked Draco up and down as he considered the peace offering. "No," he said finally. "I'm fine with the way things are."
Draco shrugged. "If you say so." Neville made a noncommittal sound and turned to deposit the bottles in the bin in the kitchen. "And thanks," Draco added. The other man stopped and looked over one shoulder, eyebrows raised, and Draco cleared his throat. "You're going through a lot of trouble because of me. I imagine you can't have your mates round with me here, and you're feeding me and all... and the whole saving my life thing, which I haven't thanked you properly for yet... so thanks." He shifted awkwardly as Neville studied him.
"It's not a problem," Neville said after a moment, turning to continue into the kitchen. "My pleasure, really. And don't think you're crippling my social life, because with Harry gone, I haven't got one - except you lately, I suppose." Though Draco couldn't see Neville anymore, he could almost hear the grin in his voice warring with the sour afterglow of their conversation. "I suppose I should be thanking you for not being a git." Neville reappeared around the corner, holding two more bottles. He held one up invitingly. "It's still early."
They were not friends, it was not still all that early, and Draco did not like beer.
He took one of the bottles and sank back down onto the sofa anyway.