Chapter 2: The break-up

Harry appeared with a pop in the kitchen, where he knew Shaun'd be waiting.

"What the fuck, Shaun? Explain yourself."

"Me? I have to explain myself? What the fuck were you doing, Harry?"

"I already told you, I needed to give that guy something!"

Shaun was looking at him as if he had spoken a foreign language.

"What did you do last night then?"

"Look, I'm sorry about last night, OK? I know we were supposed to spend it - "

"Well, at least now you're admitting it was fucked up, the way you got all worked up over nothing yesterday?"

"Er…"

But Shaun continued, stressing each word with more and more force.

"Or the way you used magic to steal some guy's schedule right in front of 10 muggles? Or how you ditched me, and your friends?"

"Yes, OK. I'm sorry, OK?"

"What are you sorry about?"

"I'm sorry I ditched you last night."

"No, Harry, you still don't get it! You're driving me crazy!"

"I'm driving you crazy? Just tell me what's the fucking problem!"

"The problem is you're not even aware of what's wrong, Harry, and that's a really, really big problem."

"Oh my god, are you listening to yourself?"

"Oh, you think I'm exaggerating, is that it? In your head, you really believe I'm the crazy one, right?"

He didn't dare reply.

"The problem, Harry, is that you are unable to communicate. I've been patient with you, but I don't think I deserve to be treated like this."

"Treated like what?! Now I'm mistreating you also? "

"Treated like some stand-in boyfriend, that you only need to shield you from the press or whatever. And to fuck. Which we don't even do anymore, so there's that, because you're always at-!"

Harry's face was all red.

"Look, don't you think you're exaggerating? I was just giving him a le- "

"Oh my god, you really don't get it, do you? I don't care about that!"

"Then why are you upset?"

"I'm upset because I had to find out from Ron and Hermione who that was! Because you don't talk to me, Harry, about anything. You don't tell me anything about yourself!"

"So that's why you followed me?"

"Followed you? Are you insane, Harry? In your world, everybody's following everybody around? I was just going to return the book we were trying to return last night, when you made a fucking scene in the bookstore because you saw some guy from Hogwarts who obviously didn't want to talk to you, which is just something you couldn't accept, because then you went on to follow him around under your fucking invisibility cloak or God knows what you did last night! And then I found you there again, when you told me you were going to Ron's!"

"I was supposed to go to Ron's! I was going to go after that!"

"Yeah, sure. Look, Harry, this is just not working for me anymore."

"What is?"

"This."

"Are you crazy? You're breaking up with me because I didn't mention I'd drop by the bookstore before going to Ron's?"

"I'm tired of explaining things you refuse to understand."

"I don't know what that means! I'm sorry I don't tell you every detail of my day, I just didn't think you'd care!"

"And there's the problem, Harry! You assume what I care and don't care about!"

"OK, just ask me what you want to know, it's not such a big deal, right?"

Shaun turned his back to Harry, face buried in hands. When he turned around, he didn't look angry anymore. Which was way, way worse.

"Harry, I really care about you. But at this point, it's not enough anymore."

"Shaun… -"

"Please, get out."

Hearing the quaver in his voice, Harry didn't dare disobey. He was gone by the time Shaun had even turned around.

It was Hermione who opened the door.

"What did you tell Shaun last night?"

Ron's head popped out from the kitchen.

"Well, someone's in a mood."

Making his way to the living room, he tried to compose himself. He had appeared there directly from Shaun's and felt as if he hadn't had a moment to actually process anything that's been happening to him since that morning. He was still not sure what their fight had even been about.

"He's really mad at me."

Hermione and Ron followed him to their living room. They shared one of their signature glances.

"Well, yes, he was pretty upset last night."

They then told him how Shaun had come at dinner alone and angry, but mostly really weirded out by Harry's behavior. So when he described the blonde, pale, tall guy that ran away from Harry, Hermione figured out that it must have been Malfoy.

"He told us you became super obsessive and insisted on waiting for Malfoy to finish work, and when he refused you told him to go ahead without you."

"I did not become super obsessive ! I was just surprised - you understand, right, just how random it was to see Malfoy working in a muggle store? After all this time?"

Ron burst into laughter.

"Oh, yes, I imagine it was the most exciting thing to happen to you in a long time!"

Harry burst into laughter as well despite himself.

"Well, those were his words," Hermione concluded, slightly less amused, "but I think he was just hurt because we immediately knew who he was talking about, and why you wanted to see him, and he had no idea… you never even mentioned Malfoy to him, Harry?"

Having to think again about Shaun made Harry stop laughing rather abruptly.

"Well, yeah. I mean, what's there to tell? Was I supposed to tell him how we dueled in second year, or what?"

"You told us when you found the letter," Ron said wisely.

"Yeah, when we told you you should just give it to Roberts," Hermione added coldly.

"Well, I guess I should have listened to you, because Malfoy didn't even want it."

"Ah, so you talked to him?"

Harry recounted their exchange - leaving out the last part, just because he didn't know how to wrap his head around that revelation yet - and how that had led to the fight with Shaun. Ron opened up a bottle of wine mid-story, which helped. They tried to be supportive, as always, but he couldn't bring himself to face the reality of the situation as it stood, so in the end the conversation went back to Malfoy.

"I can't believe you actually followed him under your cloak."

Unlike Shaun, Ron was laughing when he said it, so he didn't feel as ashamed as he had earlier. Hermione just shook her head, amused but disapproving nonetheless.

"Yes, in hindsight, it was a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but I was just curious what he was up to", Harry said while finishing his glass of wine. "But he just went to the library," he concluded rather anticlimactically.

"To do what?" asked Ron incredulously.

"I think he was studying, er, chemistry?"

Ron looked appalled at the thought.

"Of all the things I imagined he'd become, a chemist bookseller is not it. I don't know, I thought he'd marry rich or something."

Hermione mumbled something on her way to the kitchen, probably in defense of chemists. Or booksellers.

"Yeah, it was pretty weird. He was, you know, surrounded by muggles, doing muggle things…" Harry didn't know how to put into words just how unsettling it had been, seeing Draco Malfoy operating a cash machine or bagging books while smiling politely.

"Remember the letters?"

He remembered. A month or so after his trial, which had been a very messy affair due to his age, and had lasted much longer than all the other trials, they had each received a letter from him, apologizing for many things but mostly for having bullied Hermione and others for their blood status. None of them had answered - it had been such a hectic time - and then he'd just disappeared out of sight, like so many others that had been close to Voldemort but managed to escape prison. Harry had no idea what the last years could have looked like for someone in Malfoy's situation.

"Yeah. Well, at least it's done."

They spent the rest of the afternoon going over his and Ron's last case - a rather ugly affair involving some important personalities - until the evening fell and the street below their apartment became very loud, then quiet again. His friends had asked him multiple times if he needed to talk more about Shaun, or be alone, or if needed anything at all, but he had said no - talking about work allowed him to feel solid, so he talked about work. Around midnight, he made his way to his own neighborhood by foot, something he rarely did these days despite the short distance, hoping he would bump into someone he knew - which he did. And so it was almost morning by the time he apparated from the pub around the corner directly into his bedroom, where he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, already forgetting the names of the people he had met that night.

He slept in the next day, then went to have dinner at the Weasleys, like every Sunday. Nobody asked him where Shaun was, and he didn't volunteer the information either. In the evening, he went to have drinks with Luna and Neville in the village pub, which he rarely saw nowadays. They talked about their jobs, their relationships, their plans, until there was not much more to say. He often felt like that around his oldest friends, as if not much was left to say. Or maybe it was more nuanced than that - maybe he just found that everything they said to each other had been contaminated by meaninglessness, like a text that'd been translated too many times.

On Monday morning he dropped by Shaun's before work, but unfortunately Shaun still considered them broken up and had already gathered all of Harry's belongings and magically placed them all in one of his old backpacks. Harry took it with him at work, where he subsequently forgot it for another week. He'd not fought back this time, there had simply not been anything he could think of to say.

The next days and weeks all resembled each other: working and going out, with no time in between to be doing any thinking. He missed Shaun, of course - they had been together for almost one year - but not as much as he'd feared. He mostly missed not having to find different people to spend time with on the nights he wasn't working late. Ron and Hermione did their best to make themselves available to him, and so did all his other friends. And when none of them were free, he could always find someone happy to have a drink with Harry Potter. That's exactly what had happened that Tuesday. He'd joined some witches and wizards from the Quidditch Department for drinks after work, but since it was a weekday everybody left early. When he stepped out of the bar into the cold February night, cheeks burning from the booze and the heat, the emptiness seemed so much denser than before. And to make matters worse, he'd drank too much to go back to the office.

He reached into his pocket for the phone, thinking maybe he'll find someone to call, when he felt the piece of paper, and instantly knew what it contained. He took it out and stared at it. At a glance, he found the information he was looking for.

Tuesday : 1 PM - 9 PM

His watch read a quarter to 9.

It wasn't the craziest thing in the world, was it? He'd of course thought about Malfoy these last few weeks, trying to decide how he felt about his abrupt confession, how it changed the lens through which certain events could be interpreted. But he hadn't actually considered this .

And if it was crazy, so what? What was so bad about crazy?

He disappeared with a pop and appeared in an alley close to the bookstore Draco worked in, his heart beating faster than normal, as if he was going into battle. He immediately spotted Draco, perched up on a ladder, arranging some books on the last shelf. Making sure he didn't appear too drunk in the reflection, he pushed open the heavy glass door. The woman at the counter - a different one than the other day - noticed him immediately and said in a polite tone:

"Sir, just so you know, we'll be closing in 5 minutes."

Having not really formulated a plan of attack, he improvised.

"That's fine, I'm just waiting for Draco."

He'd said that loud enough for Draco to hear, aware of the contrast between his casual tone and the exceptional nature of the situation as it was unfolding. As predicted, Draco turned immediately towards him, looking both angry and confused at the same time, but didn't directly contradict his statement.

"Oh, OK. Draco, you can go if you want," the same girl announced. "I'll close up with Arianna tonight"

Slowly, as if he was thinking intensely, Draco got down from the ladder and then announced, to nobody in particular:

"I'll go get my things."

Harry's heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest, yet he was perfectly serene, his intentions clearer than ever. Not long after, Draco re-emerged from the back, wearing a black, beaten up coat and carrying the same backpack as last time. Harry opened up the door:

"Goodbye, then" he said to the checkout lady.

"Goodnight!"

"What the fuck, Potter?" Draco barked as soon as the door closed behind them. They started walking side by side, even though they had not agreed on a particular direction.

"What?" Harry laughed, feeling like a teenager for no reason at all.

"What are you doing here?" Draco retorted.

"I just thought - maybe you'd want to have a drink. With me."

"A drink?"

"Yeah, you know. In a bar." He carefully considered his next words. "Or at mine."

Draco stopped, so Harry followed suit.

"Are you drunk?"

Harry laughed again.

"Yeah."

Draco swallowed hard, carefully analyzing Harry's face, presumably looking for signs indicating that he was making fun of him. Harry made sure to display none. After what felt like a very long time to, he simply said:

"OK."

"At mine, then?"

"Sure."

Harry grabbed his arm and they both Disappeared out of sight in an instant.