Draco opened his eyes against the sting of burning water streaming from the shower head and, for the first time in months, really let himself think of his father. He knew that, rationally, it was normal for a child to look up to their own parents with almost unfaltering devotion. After all, children were dependent beings, helpless but to put their lives in the hands of others, and who better to hold this enormous trust if not for the ones that supposedly loved you unconditionally.
When he was really young, his father had been tall and strong and knowledgeable, all things that five years old Draco wasn't yet. With the passing of time, the siren call of power had resonated with his growing lust for control. And Lucius had plenty of power; he was influential, rich, handsome and clever, with a wand as much as with his wit. His friends both admired him and feared him, a trait that Draco was raised to believe he should strive for.
For years, he had been convinced that his father was incapable of failing that trust. For far too long, maybe, but until he was 15 he had never witnessed Lucius faltering in any social situations, had never seen him coming out any other way than on top.
So, perhaps, he wasn't to blame if he had believed blindly that his father was perfect and nothing less, because in Draco's narrow, sheltered world he had been.
He had scoffed when Theo, barely more than 13, had started questioning his own upbringing. Theo's father was nothing like Draco's, so it made sense that the other boy wouldn't understand why he "parroted" Lucius' opinions like they were law. It wasn't that Draco couldn't think with his own head, it wasn't. His own beliefs just happened to align with his parents'.
Convincing himself and others of that had certainly been easier than facing his own short-comings, more bearable than admitting he wasn't always on top. Maybe he lived his life with blinders on each side of his head, but Draco had spent 11 years as an only child, as a lonely child, in a life made for adults and politics, so he couldn't be blamed for believing in something as attractive as birth rights and status. It was alluring, to have people respect you and envy you despite your own merits.
It was easy.
Then the Dark Lord came, and Draco had witnessed his own, perfect, strong father bending over to please.
It was like a punch in the gut.
Seeing his father weak, his mother afraid, had been a wake up call. In this new, frightening reality, the Malfoys weren't at the top of the social ladder, but mere pawns at the bottom. Fighting tooth and nail against other pawns to be the ones granted the honour to hold their leader up, pleading for praise or a single glance.
Expendable.
Subservient.
Suddenly power wasn't as tempting. Draco didn't want to be at the top anymore, but rather just be free. Wanted to be young, to make mistakes, to make choices. Wanted to keep his chin high, his back straight. Wanted beliefs that were his own, that weren't made of hatred, wanted to feel good about himself without having to belittle others to do so.
More than anything, he wanted what Potter seemed to have in this new world, a life in his own hands. And here he was, just about to rip the other boy away from it, to ask him to die so that Draco could one day hope to have a taste of the same freedom.
Still, after all, Draco was selfish. He thought of his father and how the falling of the Ministry meant he was most certainly out of Azkaban. The Dark Lord hadn't been pleased with Lucius, and Draco knew that the war had to end sooner than later for his family to make it out unscathered, if at least physically. Despite seeing the positives of living in the Muggle world, Draco would never give up his parents. Or his magic.
So when he finally turned off the water, that had long gone tepid by then, it was with every intention of not letting himself grow to care about this new Potter, no matter how easy he seemed to like. There was no point.
When he reached for the towel and his hands were shaking, he told himself it was the cold.
By the time the other boys came knocking at his door, he was almost convinced that a month wasn't long enough for any sort of attachment to happen anyway.
Potter looked wrecked. His friend was watching at him with concern etched across his face and, for a moment, they seemed too engrossed in a silent argument to notice that Draco had opened the door.
"I'm fine!" Potter snapped, batting the other boy's hands away.
"Honestly, P-pal, you don't look so good." Draco chipped in, two pairs of eyes immediately snapping up to meet his own. Potter groaned, glaring at Scott as if to dare him to agree.
He was wearing glasses, Draco noticed, black rectangular frames that suited his angular face much better than the round ones had. His eyes behind the lenses were tired and bloodshot, his face covered in a slight sheen of sweat. Draco itched to reach out and check his forehead for fever, like his mother used to do when he was little.
"Rough night?" He asked.
"It's nothing." Potter was quick to dismiss, but he must have seen something in Scott's admonishing stare because he sighed and pushed his fringe aside, revealing his famous scar that now contrasted in angry red against his pallor. "We - I am not really sure what causes them, but I get migraines sometimes and they seem to be connected to this scar I got when I was a baby. Something about it not healing properly, maybe."
He sounded slightly unsure. Scott, on the other side, did nothing to hide his skepticism. "They have been pretty bad recently, Ellen is beside herself. If only you would see a doctor."
Potter rolled his eyes, clearly displeased with being fretted over "I've had them all my life, and with the costs of healthcare I don't really see the point. Anyway, have you got everything ready?" He turned to Draco with finality and he nodded, moving aside to let them in.
The morning was a dull succession of paperwork and subdue interactions, air heavy with tension. Scott's obvious worrying was grating on Potter's nerves, forever the martyr. Draco wanted to point out that suffering in silence didn't make him look any more the hero, but in a way he understood, so he kept quiet.
Something shifted around lunch time. Draco had been left to his own devices so that he could acclimatise to his new room and, when he finally emerged, it was to a scene that was sickenly domestic. Potter must have learnt how to talk about his feelings because the morning tension had dissipated and it was obvious the two of them had worked it out. He was perched on the kitchen counter, happily annoying the other boy by trying to dip his fingers into the mixture Scott was carefully folding over with a wooden spoon. The air was heavy with a grassy smell that Draco did not recognise.
Scott snatched the bowl away, but Potter was too fast and a glob of chocolate mix stuck to his finger. He swiped it at the other boy's nose before sucking it into his mouth with a pop. When he tried to reach for more, Scott was ready and grabbed his wrist between his fingers.
Draco cleared his throat.
"Oh, hi! Did you get everything done?" The Muggle asked with a faint flush, the smear of chocolate across his nose, just a couple of shades darker than his tanned complexion, now in stark contrast with the reddening skin.
Draco, who had used his wand to sort out his belongings in less than five minutes and had spent the rest of the time thinking about the situation at home, shrugged "I didn't have much."
Potter took the opportunity to escape his friend's grip and made another go for the bowl.
"Stop eating the mix, you idiot, they are for tonight." Scott scolded, nonetheless handing over the spoon. The idiot's smile, as he licked the chocolate off the wood with exaggerated delight, was dimpled.
"What's happening tonight?" Draco asked, wary.
"Wild stuff!" The Muggle assured, causing Potter to laugh and lose his balance, the spoon smacking onto his face while he tried to keep his feet.
"We are playing Trivial Pursuit, because we are under the drinking age losers and also broke." He corrected, rubbing the mixture off his cheek and missing half of it.
"I'm 19 in October." Scott shrugged in confirmation, before pouring the content of the bowl into a rectangular tray. "But we have brownies, and Evan is a complete tosser at Trivial. It's like he never went to school, really."
Draco tried to plaster an understanding smile on his face, lest he too would be accused of being uncultured, but he knew that his knowledge of anything Muggle was rather lacking. Proof enough the fact that he had no idea what a Trivial was.
"I love when you use anglicisms to insult me, albeit incorrectly, Scott-land!" Potter winked, before admitting to Draco "I am pretty bad."
"As a newbie, you get to be on his team. See it as a rite of passage and pray that you don't get history as one of the categories. Anyway, I gotta go, but I'll be back around six with Pizza and bitches. Bake these for 25 minutes and don't fuck it up, Eve, because that's my last stash and your answers get incrementally funnier the more you eat."
"Sir, yes Sir!" Potter mocked, pushing the tray into the oven with a solemn expression. His eyes had lost their reddish tinge and he was back to looking carefree and relaxed.
Draco watched them with the now familiar feeling of disorientation he seemed to get every time the other boys interacted with each other. Only after Scott had left and he was once again alone with Potter, the feeling faded to a comfortable level. The Gryffindor was surprisingly good company and evening came faster than expected.
"Why do they smell so weird?" Draco asked, sniffing one of the brownies that Potter was cutting into 4 x 4 inches squares. It wasn't an overall unpleasant scent, but there was a definite earthy note underneath the chocolate. Potter had let them rest on a cooling rack for the afternoon and, when they had returned from inspecting the nearby beach, the smell still lingered unquestionably around the flat.
Potter's eyes widened with glee and, with his still windswept hair, sunburned freckles and sleepy stance, Draco thought that he looked like a child on Christmas morning. Or a moron.
Probably a moron.
"And here I thought you swore you weren't homeschooled! The evidence is piling, mate. . . like, tons of it! You are basically a toddler that has been set free with no instructions." He teased, counting off his fingers while mumbling Draco's apparent list of offences to the world of "normal, well-adjusted" teenagers.
"Ha ha, hilarious." He deadpanned grumpily, "We have known each other for barely two days, so forgive me if I am still contemplating the likelihood that your cooking might poison me." Ironically, he knew well that if a Potter were to murder him, it wouldn't certainly be this friendly, clueless version.
"Yeah, given your er-experience, I doubt it's my cooking you have to worry about. But, no, yeah they're special brownies. You know. . ." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the tray, before fixing Draco with a pointed look.
He frowned, waiting for the punchline. He was about to ask what was so special about them, when Potter huffed in disbelief "Weed, Dean. They are edibles, you know, pot brownies. Weed, Marijuana… Whatever you wanna call it."
Draco wondered if they were still speaking in English. He surely had no idea of whatever he wanted to call it. Or what "it" was that he would be calling, for that matter. So, he nodded dumbly, hoping to look more confident than he felt.
Apparently, not convincingly enough to fool the other boy, because Potter let out a sharp laugh, loud and amused. "They get you high!"
His mouth rested into a huge grin and Draco spent a moment observing how his lips were slightly fuller on the right before his brain finally caught up. "Oh… Oh! Do you mean like a recreational potio- substance?"
"Do I mean like a recreational sub-" Potter parroted, incredulously" Oh, for the love of Merlin! Yes, drugs. I mean drugs! And, just for that, I really think you should not have any. For your own good, honestly." He watched Draco warily, as if he was about to reach for one of the brownies right that minute to stuff his face with.
When he went as far as to cover the tray with a cloth and place it on top of the micro-waver thing, Draco snapped, embarrassed.
"I have been high before!"
And he had. The summer after their fourth year, when their fathers had been too busy kneeling at the feet of their Lord to pay them any mind, he and Theo had found themselves, for the first time, facing the true uncertainty of the future. Nobody cared enough to question a couple of freshly turned fifteen years old roaming the streets, in Knockturn Alley, and they cared even less when the two youngsters came with their pockets full of Galleons. Maybe it was that summer, that Draco really shed the last of his innocence. In some shady, rented room, his lips full of the taste of Beetle Berry Whiskey and stolen Elf-made wine. And later, when they were both drunk enough to forget their inhibitions, full of the taste of Theo, of soft skin and the salt of tears. Because Theo had been scared, and Draco was only so good at pretending not to give a fuck, only so skilled to keep his closest friend mind away from his fears.
But, sometimes, he was just not skilled enough. It was in these moments, both too lost to help each other in other ways, that they had seeked cloaked figures in dark corners of the roads. It was stupid, and dangerous, but in some ways it felt like control. The last time Draco had been high was more than a year before, on the eve of the day everything went to shit. He had pushed magic mushrooms past Theo's stretched lips, hollow promises that everything would turn out okay falling from his own mouth. Together, they had watched the stars from the balcony of Theo's room, both lost in their own highs but with their pinkies linked between them like children they no longer were.
It hadn't gone well, their minds too preoccupied to take well to the drug. When Draco went back home in the morning, it had felt like the hallucination had only just begun.
Draco bit his lip to the point of pain, willing the memory away. When he glanced up, Potter was staring back with the same look of determination that he had often worn at Hogwarts.
"Not on my watch!" His tone was defiant and part of Draco, the one that was used to challenge the other boy, still wanted to defy him.
The door knocked just a few minutes past six.
"These are bitches." Scott introduced, sweeping his arm dramatically towards a small group of people, three girls and two boys. "Bitches, this is Dean, the new Allie."
"Don't let her hear you say that. Dean, these are my colleagues at the Hatter, Simon, Joy and Symone. That's Magdalenka, Sy's roommate." Potter said, pointing to the shortest girl with sleek black hair. She smiled shyly back at Draco.
"Just Magda." She said in an accent that reminded Draco of the students from Durmstrang.
"And this is my own flesh and blood, my baby cousin Pierre." Scott added, nodding towards the last of the boys, a blond with a nose eerily similar to Pansy's. The two of them couldn't look less related if they tried, Draco thought. He was used to his world, where the limited numbers meant that normally families maintained strong genetic traits. Although that was less true with Muggleborns and Halfbloods, it was rare to be exposed to the non-magical side of their genealogy and be able to compare. Even Potter was apparently the spitting image of his own father.
"Dad gave me some beer, said he hasn't seen you at the shop in a while Evan." The Muggle called Pierre said, passing a couple of plastic bags to Potter and therefore freeing his hands. He shook Draco's with a smile that lacked the mischievous quality of his cousin's. "Nice to meet you, how are you finding Cali?"
"Hot." He replied, making them all laugh.
"I have the games." The black girl Potter had introduced as Symone said with a smile. "I gather you have been told about Evan's lack of any common knowledge further than elementary school level, right?"
"Yes, I have to be on his team, apparently. I was advised not to feed him the brownies."
They laughed again.
"No, trust me, that is exactly what you want him to do! Actually, go fetch 'em, will ya Evangeline? Better get started!" Scott ordered, followed by a burst of cheers from the rest of the group.
"We are gonna smash it!" Potter told him with a grin, before sauntering to the kitchen. Draco found himself grinning in response, all the thoughts of home pushed at the back of his mind.
It was soon clear that, while Potter was pretty shit at Trivial, Draco was utterly clueless.
"1789!" He shouted, certain that the question had been "What year did the first Disney full-length animated feature come out?". That was the only thing he was certain of. Potter had whispered something about seven dwarves and Draco had the vague recollection of some War going on in the late 1700 involving the stupid creatures. Binn's was never his favourite subject. By the look on the other boy's face, he was miles off the correct answer, anyway.
"Man, what? No! Seriously! That's not even the correct century. In fact, it's like 150 or so years too early! Dude!! Du-de!" Despite his vehemence, Potter didn't look judgemental but merely incredulous and amused. His gaze, slightly unfocused from the brownies and losing his glasses sometime during the second round of the game, was friendly and full of mirth.
Draco chuckled, full of confidence, like he had known the answer all that time and was just messing around. For a moment, they just stared at each other until one of the other boys called for the next question.
Draco looked away, feeling pleasantly buzzed and content. By the end of the evening, he started to fear that perhaps a month would instead be too long.
