Ron was the first to smell the smoke. As they scrambled to their feet, grabbing for their wands, it became clear that something was on fire in the living room. Hermione acted quickly, whipping into the room and extinguishing the flames that had overtaken the armchair. The burned remains of Charlie's dragon book lay in the center but Harry couldn't seem to find how the fire had started. Before they could properly investigate the strange occurrence, Ginny's shriek came from the upper floor.
Harry had just enough time to see the color drain from Ron's face before they were running, vaulting the stairs towards the sound. Smoke billowed through the hallway and Harry coughed into his arm.
"Go find Ginny!" Harry yelled to Ron, as he opened the closest door, making sure no one was inside. He quickly checked each room, searching for the fire and to evacuate any spare Weasley's. Molly and the twins were gone on errands today but Harry didn't like taking those chances.
Ron soon ran towards him, carrying Ginny in his arms. "It's in your room! Go help Hermione!" And without another word the two boys moved in opposite directions. The smoke was making it hard to keep his eyes open but he coughed and found Hermione who was doing her best to extinguish Percy's old wardrobe. The flames were not as easily staunched as the fire downstairs with the entire piece of furniture engulfed, the tips licking at the ceiling, searching for something to spread to. Harry rushed to her side and cast the same spell, focusing his entire might into the cold sparks of magic.
It took a few minutes but eventually the fire was completely doused. The only evidence of its rage being the curling tendrils of smoke reaching for them. Harry and Hermione stood coughing, looking frantically around the room in case there was anything else that had simultaneously burst into flame. There was thankfully nothing.
Harry told her to go downstairs and he made short work of double checking the rest of the house. No other fires had started.
His lungs burned with every breath as he walked down the stairs. The group sat on the lawn just outside the door. Ginny looked shaken but unharmed and Harry gave her a reassuring hug as he joined them. "What happened?" he asked surprised with his own rasp. He checked her face for signs of damage as they separated.
"I don't know! I was in my room and then there was smoke and when I checked your room there was just fire everywhere and I couldn't see anything-" She spoke too quickly but Harry felt like he got the gist of it.
"It's okay. There was a fire downstairs too. Something must've happened, it's not your fault." Harry tried his best to sound confident. Ginny was the youngest among them, and even though she was only a year difference, the group had always tried their best to take care of her. Harry didn't have any real siblings but the protective urge towards Ginny was the closest he imagined it would feel to have a younger sister. "Hermione, would you help me get the smoke out?" She nodded and together they created small funnels of air at each window, slowly circulating the smoke into the yard.
"Molly's gonna be pissed." Harry said, rubbing the knot that was forming in his neck.
"It's not exactly our fault, is it?" Hermione replied, sending another stream of cooling magic through the front door .
Harry exhaled, and shrugged. He guessed she was right but the thought of explaining to Molly that their house had almost burned down was still exhausting even if they didn't directly cause it.
After about twenty minutes of sitting quietly together, listening to the whistle of air, Harry was anxious to go back inside. One fire spontaneously erupting was suspicious but two? What were the chances of that?
No one followed him as he stood up, brushing dirt and ash off of himself. They gave him long weary stares as he walked back inside. His memory had exaggerated the fire being bigger than it was but he breathed out in relief seeing that the living room was fairly undamaged. Aside from the single lounge chair, the fire hadn't even touched the carpet or anything else. Harry carefully picked up Charlie's book. It was unsalvageable of course, but Harry found that the pages on the inside had been far more eviscerated than the cover. It was like it had caught fire from the center. He scanned the chair, trying to find any other place that might have been the origin. The wooden legs were untouched and the majority of the damage had been done to the seat.
Harry took the book with him to his room, a worry he was unwilling to reckon with quite yet sitting heavy in his gut. The smoke was still pretty bad on the higher floors, and Harry opened windows as he moved, conjuring similar little tornados to clear it. His room smelled terrible of course but he pulled his collar over his mouth and continued. There was something he needed to check.
The room was a mess. The fire had touched the carpet and scorched deep black lines across the walls touching the wardrobe. The wardrobe itself was devastated, the original honey brown turned black and gray, wood finish melting down the side into the carpet. Harry wrapped his sleeve over his palm and pulled the still warm doorknob. The hinges protested but with a little force Harry was able to yank it free. In that moment, Harry hoped Percy had everything he cared about with him because the clothes hanging were no longer recognizable as clothes, what was left of them at least. The inside of the cabinet was significantly worse than the outside and Harry scrunched his face as the smell of burned cotton and chemicals. After a moment though, his suspicions were confirmed. The bottom left corner, where he kept his shoebox, was damaged worse than the rest, the shoebox itself reduced to a pile of ashes. Had Harry not been the one to place it there hours before, he wouldn't have been able to tell what it used to be.
His breath caught in his throat and he kneeled down, unbothered by the ashes covering his pant legs. He reached out and tentatively touched the pile, watching what little remained of his precious keepsakes fall to pieces. The only explanation was that his letters had started the fires somehow. He'd left a sheet of parchment in Charlie's book a few days ago, and there was nothing else that he could think of to tie the two incidents together.
What could have possibly caused this? The charm mimicked what was written on it, did it also mimic physical state? Has something happened to D's letters? There must have been something, to cause every letter to simultaneously erupt in flame. Harry instinctively thought to ask D, and it took him an agonizing moment before realizing that he no longer had any of the charmed parchment left. He consistently stored it in his shoebox when he wasn't using it. The sheet in Charlie's book had been a rare exception because he'd simply forgotten.
So, Harry couldn't contact him. It wasn't a big deal though. D would send a new parchment and Harry would just ask then. He hoped he wouldn't have to wait long.
Harry watched Hermione warily as he crossed the living room. He suspected she was charming her trunk because that was the fifth stack he'd seen disappear into her luggage. He noted that he would not offer to help carry it for her.
She noticed his stare and caught his eye, smiling sympathetically. He returned the gesture but quickened his pace, not stopping to chat. It had been two weeks. Two weeks since the parchment had caught fire and two weeks since he'd heard from D. Hermione had been trying her best to comfort him but Harry was quickly learning that he didn't like the feeling of being pitied.
He mostly just wanted to know if D was alright. The fire had started so suddenly and while it didn't burn the house down, Harry felt like he'd lost everything. There were no unanswered questions; there was nothing to even search through. Harry had absolutely no means of contact and with the silence that had fallen in the days after, there could only be two reasons: D had been caught in a house fire or D didn't want to have contact anymore. Both seemed like terrible options.
But with nothing better to do in the weeks leading up to school, Harry had spent an incredible amount of time dwelling. He'd thought through every conversation they'd had leading up to the disaster. There hadn't been anything new, they'd been flirting and joking and everything seemed…normal. And so his mind had no choice but to take the darker route, hyper fixating on the fire. If something had happened to him, how would Harry ever find out? He'd been plagued with nightmares in the last week. Watching rumors spread around Hogwarts of a boy he'd never met, dead. Would the obituary be the place Harry finally learned his name?
Today was their last day at the burrow. They would be leaving for the Hogwarts express in the morning and he had yet to start packing. It felt like there wasn't anything worth taking now that the letters were gone. He knew it was just superstition but part of him felt like he needed to stay here. If he left, how would D be able to find him? Which was dumb, D knew who Harry was. If they were both returning to Hogwarts, D could find him at any point if he was alive. But leaving without closure felt strange, the ache in his chest had become painful.
He looked back at Hermione and decided that he might as well start packing. It would be better than facing her again. He'd spent days panicking about the situation. Together they'd spent long nights talking it out, trying to figure out what happened, neither had come to a real conclusion.
He made his way upstairs, nodding to Ron who was hauling his own trunk to the main floor. He would offer to help but he didn't want to watch his two friends be all couple-y. He wasn't in the mood.
Harry plopped himself down in the center of his room, avoiding the long scar in the carpet where the fire had touched. The wardrobe had been removed and the space cleaned thoroughly but they had yet to repair the damage to the surrounding walls. Harry wished he didn't have to sleep in here. It was impossible to see the scars as anything but a physical reminder of D's absence and possible fate.
He dragged his trunk over to him and started throwing things away. Lots of wrappers and year old assignments that he'd never turned in. He finished clearing it out, and started to replace his textbooks at the bottom. His old worn spell books looked rather strange next to the shiny new sixth year texts but he tried to organize them in a nice way. Once that was sorted he got up and started folding his robes on top of his bed. It was monotonous but Harry appreciated the distraction. He pressed them down until they firmly folded into perfect little squares that even McGonagall would be proud of.
As he lifted a shirt off the floor, something thudded to the ground. Harry jumped and looked around, finding a small book sitting there, staring at him. His heart had stopped. It was the copy of Benedict Batts that D had given him. He had assumed it had burned in the fire when he hadn't been able to find it. He picked it up with a delicate grip, as if terrified that it would fall to pieces in his hands. He hadn't had a chance to read it before it mysteriously disappeared. But now, looking at his pile of dirty laundry, he felt just a little stupid. It had been right here this whole time.
For a moment he considered that maybe this was a sign that he needed to keep a tidier room but then he just felt relieved. Not everything was gone. He would at least have one thing to hold onto from his Summer with D.
Suddenly, packing became incredibly unimportant. He sat back on his bed and held the book in his hands. This was D's favorite. This book was important to him somehow. He felt like he was holding a piece of his friend, a dying ember of every conversation they had shared. He delicately cracked the spine and opened to the first page.
An hour and seven chapters later, Hermione knocked on his door. He closed the book but didn't put it down, afraid that if he stopped touching it, it would vanish. "Yeah?" He called, inviting her in.
She peaked her head inside and looked around his whirlwind of a room. "Ron and I have finished. Do you need any help?" She looked pointedly at the pile of unorganized laundry and folded robes thrown haphazardly onto his trunk.
"Thanks! Um but I think I'll be okay!" He said, giving her a weary smile. "I was just taking a quick break." She nodded looking at the book in his hands. He was glad she didn't pry as the door shut behind her. She would want to read it, and he didn't know if he was ready to loan the precious thing out. He doubted he ever would be.
He opened the book once again. Not to read it this time, he really did need to pack, but just to admire it for a moment longer. He ran his fingers along the spine and admired the detailing on the leather cover. Flipping through, admiring the delicate illustrations, he was surprised to find a slip of paper pressed in between the pages. He jolted to attention before realizing with great disappointment that it was in fact, not a hidden bonus message from D. It was a receipt. Harry sighed, regretting the allowance of hope that he had felt. Absent-mindedly, he read it. And then his attention was caught once more and he read it more thoroughly. The receipt was from the bookshop D had purchased it, the same bookshop Harry had visited that day in Diagon Alley. The date was the same day he'd been there in fact. The timestamp read 12:17, only about five minutes before Harry himself had gotten there. His heart was beating fast and he wasn't sure what to do with himself. D had been in the bookshop right before him. He tried his best to remember everyone he'd walked past on that street. Maybe one of them had been- Harry's stomach lurched.
A brown parcel, blonde hair, a soft voice. Draco Malfoy. He couldn't tell if he was breathing as he turned the book over in his hands. He opened the cover again and stared at the receipt. It was unmistakably from the same store. Who else could have been there? Who else hadn't Harry noticed. There must be someone else. He remembered the soft tone in his voice and the tired eyes and how strangely civil he had been. Swallowing the forming lump in his throat, he recollected their conversations from the past months. With a hint of paranoia, he started placing things side by side in his mind, comparing what he knew about his pen pal and what he knew about Draco. Wizarding family, quidditch, blonde, even down to small details like being hospitalized in third year and his dislike of the Weasley family that Harry had always found quite odd.
Despite his considerable efforts, he couldn't think of a single thing that would rule him out. He flipped through the pages to give his hands something to do while he tried to calm the confusion in his mind. He thought of the delicate handwriting and felt stupid for ever assuming it could have belonged to anyone but Malfoy.
He gingerly placed the receipt back into the book and closed it, inundated with the image of Draco wrapping it and sending it to him. Even the damn barn owl had screamed Malfoy. He stood up and took a step towards the door, not totally sure what he was planning to do with this new information. Suddenly, the fact that he was romantically attracted to boys seemed like the easiest problem in the world, had that boy not been a pure-blooded bigot.
He wanted to be angry, send D, or Draco he corrected himself, a letter with lots of exclamation points, demanding the truth. Harry wanted an apology for stringing him along. Had this entire thing been a practical joke? Harry seethed, thinking of the flaming pile of correspondences that he'd read and reread dozens of times. Had that fire been the punchline?
And like a bucket of cold water hitting him across the face he remembered Draco's confession from so long ago. I don't think we would be friends if you knew who I am. Do you still want to talk to me knowing that? Harry remembered how certain he had been that D's identity wouldn't matter to him. His anger disappeared, shame taking its place. If Draco really was D, Harry had reacted the exact way that his friend had feared he would. What did that say about him? Harry squeezed his eyes shut, a headache starting to form.
It took him several hours to actually start processing the possibility of Draco. He was picking at his dinner with Ron and Hermione when he recalled their conversations of muggles. Draco had been inquisitive and curious, obviously naive to how they functioned but never derogatory. He'd even read the entire series Harry had recommended which was written by a muggle. Had Draco been playing him, acting like he could ever be anything but small minded? It's not like he'd tried to hide his distaste for the Weasleys or Harry's foster family. If he was committed to the bit, why would he only hide his opinions on some things and not others? Or was this just who he is when no one is watching?
He bid his friends goodnight early, making excuses that he still needed to pack (which was true but felt like a lie.) As he sat alone on his bed, with the dreaded book in hand he remembered all the conversations where D had admitted to the pressure his family had put him under. He thought of the weeks that D's handwriting had been shaky, and inconsistent. Harry had assumed things were getting better for him as his writing had recovered but now, recalling how pale and tired Draco had looked in Diagon Alley, Harry wondered if things had ever improved at all.
He thought about the indecent thoughts he'd had, the words he'd written, suddenly replacing the faceless blond boy in his fantasies with that of Draco Malfoy. His mind wanted to thrash, the cognitive dissonance threatening to spill over but after a few moments, the images settled in his mind. He thought of how beautiful Draco looked as the light caught his hair and as much as he felt like he was betraying everything he knew, he wasn't disappointed.
He closed his eyes and imagined Draco answering the many questions Harry had asked over the months, intentionally replacing the arrogant sarcasm with the soft voice he had used when they'd spoken briefly. If Harry trusted that the letters had been sincere, then that could only mean that Draco wasn't who Harry had always assumed. And if Draco really was the person Harry had been falling for, did it even matter that it was Draco?
Hermione came to check on him after a little while, apparently having noticed his behavior was a little off at Dinner. Her concerned gaze turned feral at the site of his room in its untouched state of chaos. Harry suddenly felt very afraid and pushed the book under his pillow. His suspicions felt real and well-founded but until D admitted his identity, there was no real way to tell. Hermione stared intently at him as he snapped back to reality. "Harry Jame Potter, you are such a weasel!" She almost yelled, gesturing at the room around him. "You've got to get packed or I'm going to magic you into the suitcase along with all this rubbish!" Harry winced, putting his hands up in surrender.
"Sorry, 'Mione. I'll get started now." he slid off the bed and started refolding robes, significantly less carefully this time.
He could feel her standing at the doorway, but was afraid to look up. He didn't want to risk her wrath. Her voice wasn't mad when she eventually spoke. "Is everything okay? I know I ask you that a lot these day but-"
Harry nodded, "Yeah. I think I might have figured out who D is." Her face lit up. "But I don't know if I like who I think he is?" As the words left his mouth, even he thought he sounded like an idiot.
"But he's alive?" She clearly was not following and it was evident in her expression.
"Uh, maybe. I haven't checked yet… I don't even know if he'll answer. Honestly I'm a little in shock, I think."
She came over and touched his arm sympathetically. "Do I know him?"
Harry stared into dead air. It felt wrong to tell her before he talked to Draco, or even confirmed his theory. "Yeah. But it's just a hunch right now. I'll tell you later." She nodded and dropped it, opting to sit next to him and start folding his dirty shirts with a disgusted scowl.
"You boys really are filthy, you know that?" She muttered to herself, peeling a granola bar wrapping from a pair of jeans. "What are you going to do then?"
Harry shrugged, placing the robes in his case. "I haven't decided yet."
It was her turn to nod. "Well, if he's alive…" her scowl deepened in classic Hermione fashion "I'm going to kill him."
"Hermione, no!" Harry laughed, his first real genuine laugh since the fire. Hermione smiled at him, the tension leaving her posture. It took Harry a minute to settle before continuing. "I think that's all I care about right now. I just need to know if he's okay. I can figure the rest out later."
She patted him on the shoulder. "Well, let me know if you need anything."
"Would you mind if I went to send an owl?" She quirked an eyebrow. "I swear I will be ten minutes and then I will pack and be a good student all year." He raised his hand as if making a solemn vow.
She tsked and waved him away. "Sure, fine. Go make sure your boyfriend's alive. But then I want these pants folded, Harry Potter!" Harry laughed but got up and ran down the stairs.
He went to the kitchen and rummaged for some paper and a pen. Hedwig cooed from her perch with the other Weasley owls and Harry gave her a timid grin. It only took him a moment to think of what to say as he started on his last ditch effort.
I don't even know if this will find you but I've tried everything else. Are you okay? I need to know that you're okay. I'm worried and I don't know what to do, D. Please answer.
-H
He folded the note and placed it in a yellow envelope, and, just as he had done months before in a separate desperate attempt to contact someone who had vanished, wrote 'Padfoot' across the front. He walked over to where Hedgwig sat and gave her the letter "Take this to Draco Malfoy. Okay, Hed?" The owl chirped happily in understanding. He walked her to the window and watched her fly, keeping his eyes trained on her silhouette until she flew past the treeline and disappeared. Malfoy Manor wasn't very far. It wouldn't take long.
He ran back to Hermione and tried to busy himself with packing. She didn't question his erratic behavior or ask about the letter he had sent. They simply packed in silence, occasional protests coming from Hermione at finding even more egregious evidence of the filth that her friends lived in.
Harry was desperately shoving his quidditch uniform into the last inch of space when the pop of a spell sounded. The folded note drifted down to Harry and he plucked it out of the air, disbelief and shock written across his face. Hermione's eyes were shooting between him and the paper, confused but intrigued.
With his breath lodged firmly in his chest, Harry opened it. The elegant writing of Draco Malfoy greeting him just as it had done so many times before.
I'm fine. Please don't try to contact me again. -D