"You found it?" Weasely yelled incredulously over the chaos. The typically quiet hall resounded with a symphony of voices, each trying to rise above the others, eager to have their own questions answered first.

"Yes, I- yeah." Lupin replied between breaths. A small, stunned smile twisted the corners of his mouth, but didn't quite reach his eyes, that sloped down dolefully. Whatever he had found, had come with a cost. He was clutching the strange medallion close to his chest, visibly struggling to regain composure. Draco wondered if he had been running, given his heaving chest and windswept hair, the sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. It didn't look like it had been a pleasure jog, either. His voice was faint enough that everybody had to stop talking just to hear, words frozen on their lips. Draco bit down on his bottom one, resisting the urge to demand for an explanation right there and then. It was clear that he and Harry were missing quite a few pieces of the puzzle, and it was hard not to push for information.

"Oh Remus, how…where?" Granger broke the silence before Lupin could say more, voice quivering with excitement. She addressed him with a familiarity that could only come from spending a significant amount of time together. Harry, too, must have noticed the new dynamic between his friends and their ex professor, as he stood a little awkward, as if afraid to be intruding. He hung back, mouth parted just enough for a hint of teeth to be showing, eyes big. He was the only one of them that had yet to utter a word.

He adjusted the baggy t-shirt slipping off his shoulder and his fingers lingered, caught in the fabric. He toyed nervously with the material, pulling it, twisting it around in his hand like it felt too tight against his neck, despite it being a few sizes too big. Then he spoke, managing to sound both worried and angry.

"What happened to your face?"

Lupin's eyes snapped to him in an instant, intense and a little overwhelmed. Only then Draco noticed the congealed gash that cut down the edge of his jaw, flaky with dry blood. It looked nasty and deep, showing all the signs of a strong curse that had just barely missed its target. Dolohov's work, perhaps. Draco hated that he could almost tell with certainty.

"Harry…" Lupin said, so much emotion crammed into two syllables. "You- you have grown…so much."

Harry squinted a little, in the endearing way he did every time he forgot his glasses. "I have." He agreed, flatly. There was an edge in there, somewhere.

Draco shifted minutely closer, his toes dragging on the carpet, unsure of whether or not to expect an explosion.

Harry appeared deceptively calm, waiting with his back straight, his feet firmly planted on the ground, his breath slow and deep. If it wasn't for the raising and falling of his chest, one could have assumed he had always been there, in the hall. Part of the decor, the statue of a young man preparing for battle. His posture reminded Draco of the one he had been taught to assume just before a duel, Harry's intentions to stand his ground clear in every taunt muscle of his body. It was honestly a little intimidating. Lupin must have thought so too, as he briefly glanced at Draco with a strained smile on his lips, acknowledging his presence for the first time.

Draco nodded, unsure if it was meant to be in encouragement or resignation. Lupin had dug his own grave, and it didn't really matter if he had done so with good intentions. Harry was the one holding the shovel, now.

"It's a long story. There is a lot you need to catch up with, Harry." Lupin admitted, sheepishly. He scratched along his jawline, reopening part of the wound and wincing at the sight of blood on his fingernails.

"And why is that?" Harry asked, unsympathetic to the plea in the other man's eyes.

"Harry…" Granger spoke quietly, reaching for his arm, but Harry shrugged her off.

"Do you remember when Sirius-"

"Do I remember?!" Harry cut in, the edge in his voice turning dangerous.

"No, of course you do." Lupin hurried to placate him. "When I saw you on the train that day… I know I tried to explain before, when we talked, but I am not sure I really managed. Harry, I lived my entire life struggling with my sense of guilt, and that day… It was too much."

He glanced down at his hands, helplessly, as if hoping he would find the words written on his palms. From the open gash, blood trailed slowly, following the line of his neck and staining the collar of his shirt red. Granger and Weasley watched him with concern, like they were expecting him to collapse at any moment. Draco knew they had to let this confrontation happen, whichever way it went.

When it looked like Granger was about to interrupt, he told her "Go- would you go and make some tea, Granger?"

Weasley's brows furrowed and he took a step forward, eyes flashing. Before he could do anything as extreme as incinerating Draco on the spot, Granger stopped him, shaking her head. "I think we could do with some." She agreed softly, taking Weasley's hand and pulling him into the next room.

Draco wanted to follow, but his feet would not budge. Although aware that it had nothing to do with him, he craved answers. Part of him was still afraid that their return to Britain meant he would be pushed to the side, that there was no role for him in this game Harry and his friends had been playing since they were 11.

He sat down on the edge of the third step and tried to make himself inconspicuous, but it didn't look like the other men were paying him any mind either way.

"Look, I understand that you are angry…" Lupin was saying, his greying hair ruffled by the constant nervous pulling. He looked worse than Draco had ever seen him.

"I'm not angry." Harry argued, in a snippy tone that suggested otherwise.

"I- I've made so many mistakes during my adult life, Harry. When Ja- when your Mum and Dad died I was only 21 but I felt like my entire world ended that day. I might as well have died with them. Not only two of my best friends were gone, but Sirius and Peter too. And I should have never believed for one moment that Sirius was involved, but I did- Harry, Merlin, I did. That's my biggest regret and, as I said, I have many…"

"He didn't trust you either." Harry said, and Draco could hear the hurt and confusion there. For Harry, Draco was starting to understand, not trusting someone you call a friend was unfathomable. Maybe because he had so little trust for anyone else, or maybe because he didn't offer his friendship lightly. His face was starting to lose some of the hard edges and he looked young and disappointed.

Lupin sighed, long and breathy. "I know. He had his reasons, I was being distant and secretive. I had to, but being- without them my life was really lonely. It's not unheard of to take a dark path, when you are lonely and an outcast, and I was both, so he had his reasons to suspect me. Sirius, on the other hand, had James… and not in the same way any of us had James. Your dad, their bond, it was so strong Harry. I knew it and I still thought- I…"

He paused, looking down. Harry wiped furiously at the corner of his eyes, blinking, but did not speak.

"I left him to rot in prison, and even when I knew he had escaped, I never said anything. Never told anyone what I knew about him. About P-Peter. How easy it would have been for Peter to have faked his own death. I've tried to reason with myself that I didn't want to betray the secret that had made my school years a lot more bearable. That, deep inside, maybe I knew that Sirius could never- that he was innocent. You were in danger, or so we thought, and I stayed quiet. I'd like to say with confidence that I never believed he would harm you. Not you Harry, that he had watched coming into this world with the same love your parents had when looking at you. He loved you, Harry, like you were his own. But, the truth is, I was just trying to protect myself."

Harry made a choking sound, a small hiccup at the back of his throat that went straight to Draco's heart like an electric shock. Sirius Black had always been nothing but a long forgotten cousin, a speck of dirt in his otherwise immaculate lineage. Once more, he remembered his mother's words. Beautiful, she had called him, in a detached tone of someone speaking about matters of no importance whatsoever. Not handsome, like his father, or talented, like Aunt Bella, in her deranged kind of way.

Beautiful. Draco wondered what it meant to him.

He could only think of green eyes sparkling with laughter and slightly crooked teeth flashing between pink lips. His mind filled with memories of toes digging in the sand and the sound of words spoken against the current of the wind, distorted echoes of joy carried around in the air like music.

He had thought of Harry beautiful for the first time the day of his birthday, and now Draco knew that it had little to do with the way the other boy had looked. That day at the beach, Harry had felt alive, positively drenched in vibrancy. Draco had not been able to look anywhere else, but allowed himself to simply exist in the moment, unreasonably happy to just be.

Now he questioned if his mother had ever seen any of that in Sirius black. If he, too, had once been just as full of life and energy. 12 years in prison for a crime he had not committed, sure did the job of sucking any remnant of it from the glimpses of the man Draco had seen in the newspapers. Narcissa had never called anything but her son beautiful, and Draco's heart clenched for someone he had never met.

"From the moment you were born, Harry, all that Si- we ever wanted, was to watch you grow and have a happy, normal life. We all wanted that, but Sirius especially. I was mostly gone from your life after those first few months, when things with the war became more pressing and your family had to increase security. I wrote, when I could, but any time I managed to talk to Sirius it was Harry this and Harry that. And I could tell how hard it was for him not to spend as much time as he wanted with you… Sirius was never into quidditch, that was always James's thing, but he would chat endlessly about how this tiny baby that barely moved had the reflexes of a seeker already. Wasn't wrong about that!" Lupin chuckles, a wet sound full of fondness. Draco felt guilty for witnessing such an intimate confession, but he could not leave.

Harry was crying freely now, silent tears that caught at the corners of his mouth and dripped down his chin. He sucked the salt off, still unable to speak.

"When he was back at Grimmauld Place, he was understandably frustrated." Lupin continued, his tongue darting out to wet his own lips, unconsciously mirroring Harry's prior movement. "But he had a purpose… a mission. And that was to, one day, give you the life that was taken away from you before you even had the chance to taste normality. He might have seemed reckless and juvenile but all he wanted for you, Harry, was to be a kid like everybody else. He joked to me that, for you, he would do his best to channel his inner Lily, so that you could get to experience what it meant to have an ordinary, slightly boring teenagehood as much as someone in your situation could. Not that Lily was boring, but you know what I mean…" He trailed off, gesticulating nervously with the hand that wasn't gripping the medallion.

"Not really, I never got the chance to find out." Harry replied, with the kind of spite that comes from being hurt and needing to hurt back. His words sounded hollow, but Draco could see a hint of guilt in the way he immediately winced and shut his lips tight, sucking them into his mouth.

"That's true. You never got the chance to, with Sirius, and I felt like I had failed him enough already. I had to try, when I saw you that day I knew I had to try to make things right. It was his only wish."

Harry sniffed, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. Lupin watched him, tired eyes full of sorrow. From the kitchen, the sound of clinking china filled the silence. Draco wondered if they had stopped breathing, three hearts in the hallway frozen in the moment. Then Lupin spoke again, quietly, but there was a newfound confidence there.

"Tell me just one thing, Harry. Did you? Did you get to experience that life Sirius wished for you?"

"Yeah." Harry was nodding before the words had even left his lips. "Yes, I did. Being Evan, it was- it… It was good."

It was great, Draco thought, a painful sense of longing squeezing at his heart. After the last few years, those short weeks living someone else's life were the happiest he had ever been.

"Good." Lupin repeated, daring a little smile that pulled slowly at the worn out edges of his mouth.

Harry didn't return it, still too shaken to soften his features into anything else but a frown. He averted his gaze, catching sight of the strange medallion still dangling from Lupin's fingers.

"What's that?" He asked. Lupin jolted, as if abruptly reminded of what he was holding. He glanced down at the golden locket with clear disgust.

"It's a long story. One that Ron and Hermione will have to tell you." He said, nodding towards the two teens that had reappeared by the door, carrying 5 steaming mugs. "No, thank you." He told Granger, when she tried to offer him one. "I can't stay."

"W-what?" Harry choked out, his friends echoing the sentiment.

Lupin looked apologetic and exhausted. "I found this-" He said, passing the medallion to Weasley. The boy recoiled before pocketing it, three mugs dangling dangerously from his other hand and sloshing hot tea down his fingers. "During a raid". Lupin continued, oblivious to Weasley's hisses of pain. "We received a tip that Mundungus was trying to smuggle some of the things he had snatched after the big purge of Grimmauld Place."

"Dung?!" Weasley yelled, indignant. Granger's mouth twisted in distaste.

"Well, yeah. We had our suspicions, didn't we? I tried talking to Kreatcher about Regulus. It fit, that the note had been written by him, after all. I'm just sorry Sirius never found out. It wasn't easy, though. All I could get out of Kreacher, between the insults, was that they were all gone. All of his master's possessions were gone."

Granger brought a hand to her mouth, trembling. Harry, who had started to look impatient, watched her curiously.

"When I asked if it was Dung that took them, he wailed. It was enough for me to know, though, and when we cornered Dung the locket was just there. Inside his pocket, with a load of other rubbish."

"Did- did he do that?" Granger whispered, pointing to the cut on Lupin's face.

He shook his head. "No, we were cornered. Apparently we weren't the only ones informed of

Mundungus' business. I just about managed to grab it and hide it in my cloak, before three of them came out of nowhere. Lucius was there."

He said, addressing Draco for the first time. Three heads turned to him as if just remembering he was in the room at all. Draco found himself swallowing, trying to keep his chin high and steady.

"Was he…" He trailed off, the question clear in his voice.

Lupin shook his head again. "No. It was actually thanks to him that I managed to escape. He wasn't interested in any of the items Dung was selling, not like the other two. Powerful dark artifacts, some of what the house of Blacks had collected over the years." He chuckled darkly, before turning somber once again. He searched for Draco's eyes and continued, softly. "No, your father was looking for you.

"W-what?" Draco said, hating how brittle it sounded.

"Of course he is looking for you. I doubt much else is going on in his mind these days. He looked desperate. They were aiming to kill, the others… Dolohov and Crabbe. But he wanted to ask questions more than anything else."

"Shit." Weasley said, and Draco had the horrifying sensation that the other boy felt sorry for him. "Who else was there?"

"Dora and Mad-eye." Lupin replied, sounding worried. "I was meant to meet them in-" He glanced at the worn-out watch on his wrist and winced. "Five minutes ago. Sorry, guys… Harry. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Before anyone could say anything else, the older wizard disapparated with a plop.

Draco felt slack-jawed and out of his depth. He looked at the other three faces around him, all expressing various degrees of worry and disbelief. "And now what?" He voiced, and three sets of eyes met his.

Harry was pacing.

"So that- that thing contains a piece of V- Riddle's soul?" He said, pointing at the locket that had been thrown on the kitchen counter an indefinite amount of time before. It laid, deceptively inconspicuous, between four mugs, untouched tea long gone cold.

"Yes. It's awful, I know." Granger said, leaning onto her boyfriend's side in search of comfort.

"And Regulus Black…" Harry said, not for the first time, tasting the name on his tongue with the same hesitancy of someone trying a foreign food. "Sirius's brother?" He repeated, a bit more forcefully.

"Yeah, Lupin was shocked when he thought he recognised the handwriting and initials on the note." Weasley replied, his gigantic paw stroking up and down Granger's arm.

"And the diary was one- one of those things, those… horcruxes?" Harry asked, his bare legs taking long strides across the floor like a caged animal would. Draco had been impressed that he had managed to destroy one of these things, albeit unknowingly, at just 12 years of age.

Granger nodded and Harry stopped, a hand still tangled in his hair. "Fuck!" He cried, staring at the three of them. He looked repulsed and nauseous, and Draco could share the feeling, although the whole conversation had taken another meaning for him.

Horcrux. That's what Harry had become, accidentally or not it didn't really matter. A piece of Voldemort's soul was still attached to him in the same way one resided inside the medallion they were all regarding with disgust. And that, alone, was reason enough for why the other people in the room could not know about the secret Draco had been hiding for too long already.

Draco didn't want the beautiful light emanating from Harry to be tainted with such horrid knowledge. He was already terrified of that light burning out before its time, when they had already been given so little of it.

Until the very end, he vowed to himself. He would keep his secret until then.

"Where is Hedwig?" Harry asked suddenly, apropos of nothing, jolting Draco out of his musing.

"She is staying at an animal shelter not far away." Weasley said, sheepishly.

"M-mh. I'd like her back." Harry said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He appeared perfectly calm, and Draco really wished he could read the other boy's mind.

"What, now?" Granger exclaimed, allarmed. "Harry, if you need to write to someone you could borrow Pig, right Ron? Although I would advise against-"

"I don't need to write to anyone, Hermione. I just want my goddamn owl back."

Granger looked completely taken aback, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. Before she could regain composure, Weasley grabbed her hand, flashing a warning glance towards their friend.

"Let's go, Hermione. I think Harry needs a minute."

With that, they left. Not long after, Draco heard the front door shutting behind them.

"Nothing hurts more than burning hot jam on your fucking skin." Harry cursed, a while later, running his hand under cold water.

They had barely spoken, in the couple of hours they had been spending alone together. Draco had tried, at first, to engage the other boy in conversation. It had been a lot to digest for the both of them, after all. But Harry had ignored his attempts, rushing around the kitchen and banging cupboards and drawers open in search of something. Draco had given up, sitting at the table and watching as Harry threw flour and eggs and butter in a glass bowl and started mixing with his hands, adding ingredients here and there.

The only request from Harry had been to check the pantry for jam, and he had picked apricot when Draco came back with two jars

After working the dough with a wild energy that borderlined on rage, Harry had taken two long breaths, gripping on the counter with both hands. He had seemed calmer, after that, almost absentminded. Draco had wanted to ask what he was doing when he had rushed upstairs to take his wand, but he hadn't dared disturb the newfound calmness in the room. Harry had then magically cut out the mix into perfect circles, spreading a spoonful of jam on each and completing the biscuits with a round edge.

The wait for them to cook in the oven had, yet again, been agonizingly slow. Harry must have felt the same, as he had rushed at the ding of the timer and had ended up with burning jam all over his left hand.

"Let me help you." Draco pleaded, ponting his own wand towards the other boy's damaged skin.

Harry nodded, his face lost and sweet. Draco offered a reassuring, wobbly smile before murmuring a healing spell.

"Thank you." Harry said, turning away abruptly.

He dusted some icing sugar over the top of the better looking biscuits, placing them neatly on a pretty, serving plate he had found in one of the cupboards. Once he was done, he conjured a piece of paper and a pen, scribbling a "I'm sorry, H." and setting the note beside the plate.

For one, long second Draco worried he was about to do something stupid, like leaving. Before he could say anything, though, Harry nudged him, holding a smaller plate full of the remaining biscuits.

"Do you want to come upstairs with me? I've noticed my school trunk under the bed and I want to go through some things."

"Okay." Draco replied, following Harry and the inviting smell of baked goods towards the stairs, unsure of what to expect.

"You were adorable." Draco said, wiping crumbs from the corner of his mouth. He cooed over a picture of a 7 years old Harry looking disgruntled, his round glasses too big for his skinny face. His eyes had been enormous and beautiful, even back then.

"I looked like an unkept rat, or something!" Harry said, rolling his eyes. He was holding a misshapen knitted sock with golden snitches all over, the other hand deep in the mess of his trunk.

"An adorable one, at that." Draco chided, smiling idiotically at the photos in his hands. There were a series of them, all with the same dull blue background. Seven years of Harry's muggle school, starting from a tiny 4 years old up to the boy Draco remembered meeting at Madam Malkin's. In the first photo little Harry looked nervous, with his massive clothes and messy hair, but, by the last one, he was sporting the same expression of defiance Draco had gotten really familiar with. He wished his past self had been kinder to this green eyed boy that carried himself like his daily life was nothing but a fight after another.

"I'm not sure why my aunt kept them, really. They had to buy them, of course, because Dudley was in my class and it was all about appearances with them. They couldn't just buy his, people knew I lived with them and it would have seemed odd I guess. But, yeah, why she kept them I don't

get. I found them shoved into a shoebox outside my door a couple of years ago. It's the only pictures from my childhood I have of myself. Oh, and that one." He said, with forced nonchalance, pointing to a picture of a baby in the album Draco had still open on his legs.

The baby was tiny, wrapped in a blue blanket with sparkly, silver stars. He was sleeping peacefully, his lips pursing in a frown. He wriggled under the scrutiny of his older self, a small fist coming up to rub at his face. Doing so, he moved a tuft of his dark hair aside, revealing an unblemished forehead underneath. Then he yawned and stilled once again, nothing but a memory trapped inside the rectangular limits of its frame.

Draco smiled, feeling a surge of love for that baby and the man he had become. He glanced at the photo next to it, depicting a beautiful red headed woman not much older than the two of them now. She grinned back at him, a little impishly, a hand going protectively to rest on her bulging belly. Her nose scrunched up in laughter, her entire being glowing with happiness.

She didn't have freckles and her lips were smaller and plumper, but the eyes and angular, slim face were very recognisably Harry's.

"You look a lot like your mother." Draco told him, without thinking twice. It was glaringly true to him, in the same way one that knew him well could see all of Narcissa in his face.

"What?" Harry said, startled, looking up. He was blinking rapidly behind his glasses and Draco could see they had the same chin, too.

"Yeah, she was much better looking, though."

"Oh." Harry laughed, a little flushed. "No one has ever told me that."

"Yeah."

"Thank you, I guess." Harry ducked his head down, but Draco could swear he had caught a glimpse of his mouth upturning into a pleased smile.

"I used to sleep with the light on." Draco blurted, suddenly taken by the strong urge to share part of himself and hopefully getting something in return. He desperately wanted to get to know everything he could about Harry, and for some reason he couldn't wait any longer.

"Wha- how is this relevant?" The other boy said, a bewildered chuckle escaping his mouth.

Draco shrugged, sifting through the objects Harry had been throwing carelessly on the bed.

"I used to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs." Harry offered, as if it was in any way comparable.

"What the fuck? Why?" Draco questioned, snapping his head back to look at him.

"It's not like it was my choice." The other boy said and Draco once more wondered how he could talk about his past with so much detachment. "But I liked when it was pitch black, because I could imagine I was in a huge room full of toys and space instead."

Their past had been so different, Draco acknowledged at that moment. While Harry could only count on a few, battered school pictures to tell the story of the child he had been, Narcissa and Lucius had kept plenty of albums documenting each and every milestone of their only son. While Draco had demanded for a light to keep away the fear that overtook him at night, in their huge, silent manor, Harry had welcomed the darkness that made him forget for one moment where he really was.

And, yet, they had both made it to a point in time in which it had become possible for them to share their past with each other in the same way long-term friends would. Despite their differences, here they were, together.

They talked a long time, about important things and silly stories, just letting their voices flow with the rhythm of their emotions.

After a while, Draco's wandering fingers caught on something round and smooth under a pile of socks. He lifted it to inspect it closer and burst out laughing when he realised what it was. "You kept one of these?" He exclaimed, showing Harry one of the old badges he had crafted during fourth year. It had stopped flashing and now it read, ironically enough, "Potter Diggory, the real Hogwarts champion" in red and yellow.

Harry grinned unabashedly. "Yep. Good reminder of how lame you used to be, actually."

Draco snorted, feeling the need to kiss that smirk off the other boy's face. So he did, surging forward and knocking Harry off balance. Green, beautiful eyes peered up at him and Draco finally connected their lips.

They kissed leisurely, with a tenderness they had never dared before. When Draco's knees started to ache, he pulled back, staring into Harry's flushed face with what he was sure was an embarrassingly dopey fondness.

"And now what?" He said, repeating his earlier statement.

"Now we were thinking you should try to summon Kreacher, Harry." Came Weasley's strangled voice from the door they had left ajar.