"Wow, you really are a posh git!" Potter said with a demented smile. He was still holding onto his stomach, like the overdramatic wanker he was in both this and his previous identity.
It was a testament of what a strange day he had experienced, that Draco let the jibe pass without a snarking remark.
The two of them had just made it back from seeing Potter's landlord. As the idiot had predicted, Miss Pérez was easily convinced. A woman in her early forties, she had a strong accent and a striking face.
After agreeing to have the new contract ready to sign by the next morning, she was just reminding them to bring a copy of Draco's documents with them when he had thought it appropriate to dig out his wallet and hand over his bank card-thing.
From the mirror expressions of bafflement on both Potter and the Muggle's faces, Draco hadn't quite managed to convey the "here, take my money" vibe he was going for.
Potter, the absolute fuckwit, had started wheezing, grabbing him by the arm and, with the half arsed excuse that he was "Home schooled", dragging him upstairs after a promise that they would be back in the morning.
"I was not home schooled!" Draco sulked.
"No? Because I am pretty sure that even at Eton they teach you how to ride a bike." He quipped, referring to Draco's morning embarrassment.
"They don't teach you how to ride bicycles at school, you nimwit!" He ventured, feeling less confident about such claims that his voice let on.
"It's in the curriculum, trust me!" Potter nodded along, with a solemn expression. It was only when Draco started to look unsure that he bursted out laughing again, supporting himself on the door frame.
Draco wasn't sure what to make of this new, carefree version of the moody boy he remembered from Hogwarts. After all that had happened in the last year, he was tempted to let himself be pulled into the flow and enjoy being simply seventeen for once. Lupin might have robbed Potter of many things, but it was clear that he had given him back his youth.
"Whatever" He rolled his eyes and vindictively pushed past to enter the flat first. His victory was short lived, though, as just after crossing the threshold he stumbled over an orange blur that whizzed past him. It was only thanks to Potter's seeker-quick reflexes that he didn't end up sprawled all over the floor.
"What the fuck?" Draco glared in the direction of the blur, that now that his vision was settling had started to take the shape of a fluffy ginger cat.
"Oh, right, I thought I was forgetting something." Potter said, releasing the arm that had snatched around Draco's waist for support. "That's Ron."
Draco almost lost his footing again. He wheeled around, eyes darting between the other boy and the cat. The cat looked back, his head tilted in judgment.
"You named your cat Ron?" What. The. Fuck.
"Yeah. And it's not my cat, technically. It's Allie's, but he is staying for the time being, I really should have mentioned actually. I hope it's not a problem?"
"Your flatmate named her ginger cat Ron?" Draco asked again, stressing the word ginger with disbelief.
"Uhm, no. I named him Ron. But she's the one that rescued him, and he doesn't seem to like me much."
He regarded the furry beast bearing his best friend's name with narrowed eyes, although there was no true heat behind them.
"Ron?" Draco reiterated.
"Yeah. It was the first name that popped into my head and it stuck." Potter admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "Wait, am I missing something?"
His gaze found Draco's, green and confused. Draco gaped back, before realising that Potter had no clue of what was going on in his mind. He laughed, embarrassed, his right hand reaching the base of his head in a mirror gesture of the other boy's.
"No - No, it just reminded me of this absolute ginger tosser at school named Ron, that's all. It's a strange name for a cat."
"Was he homeschooled, too?" Potter inquired with a cheeky grin.
"You do realise I just said at school, right? Anyway, I doubt you would have liked him either." He replied, smirking at the thought of what a better friend he would have made compared to Weasley.
"I dunno, he sounds alright." Potter called, already halfway to the kitchen, where he picked a box of dried food and started pouring it into a dotted bowl on the floor that Draco had completely missed earlier. "Glad to know you have already got me figured well enough to make a judgment, though". Draco was relieved to notice his voice seemed simply amused.
Potter shook the box a couple of times, but the ginger cat gave him an unimpressed stare before rubbing his head against Draco's calf in invitation.
"That slut!"
The other boy looked so comically offended that Draco couldn't help bending down to scratch behind the tabby's ears, whispering "Don't worry darling, let that vulgar boy keep his own Weasel. I think me and you are gonna be good friends." He said the last part loudly enough to be heard, chuckling at Potter's responding groan.
A couple of hours later Draco was slouched on the sofa, Ron happily sleeping on his stomach. Potter had taken seat on the floor, his back propped against the coffee table for support, bare toes plucking mindlessly at the plush carpet.
Draco was starting to notice how he seemed to prefer smaller, almost uncomfortable, spaces, caging his body in between the furniture like he was used to blend into the background.
It was a strange thought, as the Potter he knew had never quite managed to go unnoticed. Even so, the demeanour was not completely unfamiliar. While at Hogwarts Potter had often tried to look unassuming, hunching on himself whenever he felt threatened under the attention he always seemed to attract, negative or otherwise. Draco had mostly accredited it to the other boy's arrogance and seemingly precarious tolerance for other people, but part of him knew the constant spotlight must have been exhausting.
He wondered what the other students would have thought of this new Potter, the one without the name and without the fame that came with it. Evan James. Would Evan James blend in the background, had he arrived in Gryffindor as a nobody?
Potter was not stupid, Draco was mature enough that he could admit as much. When bothered enough to put in the effort, he was a decent student, excellent in the subjects that caught his interest. Perhaps not academic, like Granger, but definitely not subpar, like Longbottom or even Weasley. That he rarely seemed to push himself to his full potential was beside the point and, as much as Draco did not understand, he guessed the other boy really had no one to please or to make proud. Even Dumbledore, despite his obvious favouring of the Gryffindor, could not be considered a parental figure. The thought of the Headmaster made Draco twitch, and he forced it out of his mind.
It must have been strange for Potter to have grown without someone that believed in him, without a mother. These Muggles of his sounded awful, even without Lupin's warnings. It had been a shock for Draco to hear Potter talking about his childhood, the loneliness lingering to each and every word even as he shrugged it off like it hadn't mattered. His father had many expectations and little pride to show, but Draco could always count on his mother's love, on her reassurance that he was enough.
Thoughts of his mother only made him sadder, and he glanced up at the other boy. Yes, it had been a shock to learn about Potter's past but in that very moment Draco knew it made a strange sort of sense. Now that he had seen the other boy truly relaxed and carefree, he wondered how he could have missed the signs of melancholy that always featured behind his ex schoolmate's reserved smiles. Not that they had known each other all that well, after all. Neither had bothered, caught up in their mutual dislike.
A second chance.
Potter was chatting idly about how he came upon his job as a server at the Mad Hatter, gaze twinkling narrowly on his traitorous cat. Draco, only half listening, took the opportunity to observe him.
On top of being a passable student, the bastard was obviously more than skilled at Quidditch. Half blind, and really, where were those damned spectacles, he had never failed to spot the snitch just that second before Draco regardless. And he had made sure to make that second count every fucking time. He was athletic, had been even as an 11 years old too skinny and short to pass for anyone older than 9. Fast and just competitive enough to be a problem that Draco's father had never allowed him to forget about, as if he wasn't obsessed over beating the other seeker enough on his own.
Now, though, as an almost 17 years old, Potter wasn't too skinny nor short. Now, he looked every inch the athletic git his skills already advertised him as, and Draco was bothered. He had towered over the other boy for years, giving him leverage where the Gryffindor begrudgingly bested him in fierceness and lionhearted bravado. Draco was a sensible person, after all, not a reckless idiot. Potter had decided to grow, though, and Draco had lost that advantage, knowing it was hard to look intimidating with those green eyes so annoyingly levelled with his own.
His gaze, once again, roamed subtly over the boy on the floor. He doubted that the recent healthy glow and tanned freckles that had taken the place of the underfed and skittish orphan would go completely amiss between the hormone-fuelled walls of Hogwarts, fame or not. He had never before stopped to consider if Potter was attractive, his irritating personality enough to overshadow everything else. Evan James, though, had a lean waist, long legs and the loveliest eyes Draco had ever seen. It felt only marginally better to think of Potter as someone else.
It was just a detached observation, he told himself with conviction. At the end of the day even Chang, who had dated someone as conventionally handsome as Diggory, was somehow taken by the speccy git, if rumors were to be believed. And Chang, even by Draco's rather gay standards, was very pretty.
Despite the growth spur, Potter had surprisingly dainty hands, almost feminine, compared to the long and elegant finger Draco had inherited from his Black side. The nails were still short and uneven, obviously chewed. That, too, was familiar, as was the way his digits seemed to always be in constant motion, fidgeting, pulling at a loose thread or scratching the skin just below the knee. Potter was a man of action, his unconscious squirming so obviously in contrast with the high society mannerisms Draco had grown surrounded by, where stillness and poise were considered ingrained values.
He almost laughed at the image his mind evoked of a Potter reluctantly sitting at a dinner table under the uncharitable scrutiny of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, jolting cat Ron in the process.
Cat Ron glared, digging his sharp nails in the soft skin of Draco's stomach. They both hissed and Potter looked at him with a tiny, knowing smile.
"You haven't heard a word of what I have been saying, have you?"
"Er -" Draco briefly considered lying, but Potter was smirking. "I am sure it was all perfectly fascinating" he drawled instead.
The twat laughed, unbothered "Were you thinking about human Ron? You know what they say about pulling pigtails and all that -" he said, poking gently at the feline counterpart.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Draco gagged, horrified.
The new Potter was clearly an enemy as much as the old one had been, because he merely laughed harder.
"You look tired." He observed, not unkindly, after calming down. "And I actually have to go. I'm sorry but I made plans for dinner a few days ago, but I can get you back to your motel on the bus and then me and Scott can fetch you in the morning with your things."
He looked apologetic, but Draco nodded. He needed some time on his own.
It was only after they had made their way downstairs and were waiting for the Muggle bus, considerably slower than the Wizard triple decker but looking a lot safer, that Draco wondered stupidly if Potter was going on a date.
Merlin, he really needed to get laid.
They parted ways at Draco's stop, the Motel half visible at the end of the road. It looked even more pathetic in the daylight and Potter gave him a sympathetic grimace before quipping "Are you completely certain you want to move out?"
Draco rolled his eyes, pondering if he could flip off someone he had technically just met, but the bus driver was starting to glare impatiently. With a last glance at his future flatmate, he hopped off, muttering "Ask me again when we actually start living together".
Potter's delighted laugh followed him all the way to his room.
The first thing Draco noticed was that the room had been "cleaned". He appraised with distaste the wrinkled bed sheets and the old-looking towels piled crookedly on the desk, before pulling his wand out of his magically enlarged jeans pocket. Reveling in using it again after a long day without, he set to "scourgify" every available surface.
Once satisfied he let himself fall on the mattress and reached blindly for the pink notebook that had been blessedly left on the bedside table. What Draco wanted the most in that moment was to get lost over the little figurine of his mother, to make sure that she was okay, but he swallowed convulsively against the need and opened the diary on the third blank page instead. He summoned a quill from his luggage, the only bit of wandless magic he had managed to master during sixth year, and started writing.
"I've found the Prat".
He had just finished brushing his teeth when Lupin's reply came with a faint light.
"Is he happy?" Draco's heart clenched at the tenderness of the question, not quite proud of the jealous urge to deny the truth, to keep his former Professor stewing in his guilt.
"He has a cat." He wrote instead. "A ginger tabby. His name is Ron, looks like your charm wasn't as effective as you claimed."
"How curious," Lupin mused. "Memory incantations are always complex. The memories are still there, just under many shields."
"Thanks a bunch for the lesson in the obvious, Professor."
Lupin, as per usual, ignored the rudeness. "I guess some harmless stuff like that just stayed with him, like an echo. It will make it easier for his mind to adapt again to the countercharm. Is that the only thing that you have noticed?"
"Apparently he swears to Merlin every now and then. His Muggle boyfriend finds it hilarious." Draco replied, wondering if the other wizard was going to be shocked at the news.
"Oh."
"That." It came after a beat, but something told him that this wasn't exactly something Lupin had been unaware of. How disappointing.
"About that…" The other wizard was writing, but Draco interrupted, quickly scribbling "Did you know he was gay?"
He suddenly remembered the owl necklace, a faint glint disappearing under Potter's hastily worn t-shirt. His eyes widened and he wished he could witness Lupin's discomfort when he asked what stuff his former Professor had unintentionally witnessed his precious boy doing.
"He actually isn't." The other man replied, throwing Draco off his plan.
"What do you mean?"
"Guess you'll find out." Lupin wrote, and Draco could feel the mocking tone through the page. "How did you find him?"
"We are going to be living together." He added, after a quick explanation. "Good thing the cat Weasel likes me better than the human one. He actually doesn't seem too fond of Potty, funny enough. His words, not mine, before you express your doubts."
"I have doubts."
"Of course you do. Well, imagine how happy Potter will be when he finds out you sent the only animal that ever loved him to a Muggle Rescue Centre or whatever." He drew a little smile next to his words,to convey just how Happy Potter would be.
Before leaving, Lupin had told him he had to arrange for the Gryffindor's snowy owl to be taken in by some Muggle Animal Trust or something along those lines, where she could live without attracting attention. It had entailed a lengthy sob story on how the owl accepted her fate graciously, after finding out it was to protect her human companion. Honestly, Draco thought it was utter bullshit, because not even Potter could be so universally lovable to deserve the compassion of a fucking owl. Draco's personal owl, Agatha, had almost pecked his fingers off on more than one occasion.
"Hedwig is fine, and I will get her back as soon as Harry turns of age."
"How are things over there?" He dared to ask, knowing that the previous night had been the full moon.
"I'm tired, even if I know that's not what you were asking." Lupin said "That's actually the only reason I am not with the Order right this minute. Things are not good, Draco. Probably soon, we will see just how bad."
They said their goodbyes not long after, and when Draco woke up the next morning he was greeted with the confirmation he never wanted to receive.
"The Ministry has fallen."
