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Author's Note:
TW on this chapter for past abuse and bigotry (the wizarding kind).
Thanks for reading!
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The space expanded in front of their eyes, a silent refuge, the soft light of the hearth casting a warm glow across the hardwood floors. The flames sparked intermittently, sending tendrils of heat into the brisk air. Its amber illumination danced along the walls, decorating the shadows with gold adornment.
A soft alternative song thrummed easily from an unknown source, the steady and monotonous pulse seeming to emphasize the crackling of the hearth, creating an intimate atmosphere that enveloped Harry and Malfoy in an almost unreal cocoon of comfort and warmth.
"Whoa," Harry heard Malfoy breathe next to him, eyes wide as he took in the room before them.
To the left side of the room, a large black cauldron rested on the floor. The cauldron was heavy and tall, reaching up almost to the boys' chests. Its surface was well-worn, a few faint scratches and a sheen of age adding character and suggesting years of use. Directly above it was an elaborate, ornate mirror, its expanding frames similar to those of the mirror above Dumbledore's pensieve.
The mirrors were flanked on either side by dozens of rows of empty glass vials and stoppers, almost seeming to beckon their use.
Harry couldn't help the satisfied smile that crept onto his face then. He knew that the room would be able to help them—and this way, there was no need to involve the Headmistress. They could finally have some desperately needed privacy, away from the prying mental magic of the Dark Lord and the well-intentioned doting of professors and the ill-intentioned probing of Rita Skeeter.
As much as he despised Malfoy, or at least used to despise Malfoy, Harry knew that they had both been victimized by those intrusions.
Near the fireplace, two chairs were set up side-by-side, a small oak desk placed in front of them. The chairs had tarnished wood and soft cushions that were slightly sunk in from other passengers, inviting silent introspection or heartfelt conversation.
The simple, old desk was littered with several spare bits of parchment and a half-full inkpot with a quill sticking out, almost as though another group of students had just left. The ambiance was one of peaceful neglect, as though the rhythms of war had been routinely paused here and replaced with the gentle thrumming of instrumentals and sparking logs.
"I hate to say this, but…nice work, Potter," Malfoy relented, running his long fingers along the edge of the pensieve cauldron.
"Er, thanks," said Harry, heading over to the desk. He reached into his bag and started pulling out books and stacks of parchment, throwing the ones from their project onto the table and shoving the ones for other classes haphazardly back into his bag.
Malfoy stared in bewilderment, mouth agape, as he then watched Harry dump dozens of sheets of loose, unsorted parchment directly from his bag onto the desk.
"You give me heart palpitations," Malfoy said seriously, joining Harry by the desk.
"Yeah well, join the club," Harry teased, winking in a rare moment of confidence and mock flirtation.
Malfoy's cheeks reddened noticeably, even as he turned his face back down to their work in an attempt to conceal it. "Not what I meant," he added quietly.
"How do you even know what heart palpitations are?" Harry questioned. He had assumed that biology was really only a muggle thing.
"Well you see, Potter, there are these wonderful little inventions called books and they're full of all kinds of information—both magical and non-magical—and if you read these books, then you'll have the information too and—"
Malfoy seemed so enthralled by this little academic tirade of his own design that he didn't notice Harry rolling up a piece of parchment until it gently bonked him on the head, breaking him out of his playfully condescending speech.
"The information doesn't go in that way, though I don't doubt you've tried," Malfoy continued, still grinning ear-to-ear and clearly pleased with his own cleverness.
"You're a menace." Harry sighed, but he let out a chuckle with it too.
"I'm about to be more of a menace," Malfoy said, already seated and starting to sort through their project notes. He took out his wand and began muttering incantations onto the bits of parchment, rolling each stack of pieces into a single scroll.
Tapping each scroll with his wind, words started to appear in ink at the top of each page that specified the project topic and at the bottom of each page with any unanswered questions and potential resources discussed.
"Oh, that's—" Harry started to say, picking up the scroll of notes nearest to him, which now had Considerations on Occlumency and Memory Alteration scrawled neatly across the top in penmanship that closely resembled Malfoy's.
"I've tagged them all in a sort of magical filing system now. You'll be able to accio individual pieces of parchment directly from your bag so long as you know which course or project it's affiliated with," Malfoy explained, still waving his wand above the scrolls on the desk.
Suddenly, a new scroll materialized directly adjacent to each of the existing scrolls. Harry raised an eyebrow at Malfoy in question of this.
"So that we'll both have a copy and can work independently," Malfoy elaborated. "Anything I write on each topic will magically translate to your scroll on the same topic and vice-versa."
With a flick of his wand, half of the scrolls had compressed in volume and were flying into Malfoy's open bag. When Harry looked back over, Malfoy had extended a hand towards him, palm facing the ceiling.
"Give me your bag," Malfoy demanded nonchalantly, face blank.
"I—what?" Harry questioned, looking down at the bag that he still had poised in the air from dumping contents onto the desk.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. "I promise not to go through your personal belongings. I saw that whole display of reaching around and yanking things out and throwing them back in—"
"I have my own system!" Harry protested, pulling his bag back defensively.
"Yes, I'm sure you do," Malfoy drawled, emphasizing his still-outstretched hand. "Mine will be better."
"Whatever you say," Harry relented, handing the bag back over.
Malfoy smiled slightly before dumping the contents back onto the desk, careful to avoid any personal items. As he surveyed the mountain of ink-stained parchment bits, spare quills, and pages ripped from textbooks before them, he turned to Harry with an incredulous look.
Harry felt a flush of shame color his cheeks. "It's been a busy few weeks…"
Malfoy just hummed, his look of perplexity at the mess being overshadowed by something resembling…excitement? Harry started picking up individual pieces of parchment and grouping them together by subject, mirroring the layout that Malfoy had started to develop.
When he started to explain the variation of epoximise he had used for the parchment binding spell, Harry grabbed his own wand and mimicked the movements, successfully binding together his notes from their first few weeks of Herbology courses.
Watching the properly executed spell, Malfoy nodded and hummed in approval. When the two had finished, they had 5 scrolls in front of them—one for each N.E.W.T.-level course that Harry was taking.
"The title and resources one is a homebrew. Do you want to try it?" Malfoy asked.
"Sure."
"Alright so just stick your wand out like this—yep, and then tap the top of the parchment and say 'sumactio'," Malfoy explained.
Harry did as instructed, tapping the paper and speaking the spell softly as the words Herb Physiology: Basic Concepts and Kinetics appeared at the top of the page.
Malfoy had leaned over, looking at the ink that appeared with a pondering expression on his face. Harry gave him a questioning glance in return, which caused Malfoy to lean back into his own space and start gathering up the scrolls for Harry.
"Forgive me, I was merely curious about something," Malfoy said.
"The handwriting?" Harry guessed.
Malfoy looked surprised at Harry's theory, but didn't question it. "Yes, I've noticed that my spell conjures writing similar to my own. Yours looks quite different from how it typically does, though."
The two looked at the new writing scrawled on the top and bottom of each scroll. The penmanship seemed to be a near-exact middle between Malfoy's calligraphic, evenly-spaced lettering and Harry's short, aggressive strokes that made the words themselves look rushed and chaotic.
"Thank Merlin for that, I suppose," Malfoy mused, that small I'm-only-half-joking grin dancing playfully across his lips.
"Ha ha," Harry said sarcastically, taking out only their most recent project notes to continue looking over. "How do you know how to do all of this anyways?"
"My father used to help me study," Malfoy responded instantly, his soft smile disappearing as his eyes fell back on his own project scrolls, "and he was never nearly as kind about it as I'm being right now."
"This is kind?" Harry retorted. "I've basically been forcefully organized into submission."
"It's kind-er."
A moment passed between them. Harry had almost complimented Malfoy on how steadfast and meticulous he was about school, but then he remembered all of the times when people had complimented him on how well he followed orders or risked his safety or moved about without making any noise—all expectations that had been conditioned in him through particularly unkind means.
And he remembered how much that made him want to punch the person complimenting him in the face.
"I don't know how much I like the rest of it—I mean, seriously, it's a bit much—" Harry started, not risking any chance of this compliment actually being directed at Lucius. "But that spell to title and suggest questions or next steps—that's pretty cool, actually."
Malfoy beamed at that—a smile that looked genuinely pleased, and not at all like he was only half joking about an insult.
"Do you want to try out the pensieve idea?" Malfoy asked, already bolting over to stand by the large, black cauldron. "Fastest way to test the theory."
"Er—sure," Harry said, slowly moving to join him by the bowl. "What memory do we start with?"
"I'd been thinking," Malfoy started. "Since you already saw my safe place, that we could take a look at yours? That actually might be a good place for us both to start as a general practice. To nix the emotional mind chaos before we test some actual occlumency and mental magic principles."
"Sure," Harry said. "Just give me a moment."
"Of course."
Harry grabbed one of the vials and thought deeply about his visualization from the other day. It was actually something he had been using in an attempt to clear his head at night, so the details were easily called into focus.
Feeling a solid recall of the space, he brought his wand to his temple and pulled the visualization from his head in a stream of silvery consciousness, letting it land in the vial resolutely. He poured the silvery material into the basin in front of him and watched as the insides filled with an ethereal, shimmering liquid.
He looked over at Malfoy, who seemed completely mesmerized.
"Have you used a pensieve before?" Harry asked.
"Only once," Malfoy replied, eyes still glued to the swirling liquid. "But I've had memories extracted from me lots of times."
Right, the trials. Harry thought it best not to dwell on that at the moment. "Same time?" he asked.
"Sure," said Malfoy, dunking his face directly into the liquid. Harry held his breath, almost instinctively, as he followed suit.
The experience was similar to the ones they had in the library, yet completely different. Rather than a tugging in Harry's stomach, he felt a nauseating disorientation until his mind settled into the scene.
It also differed from the legilimency experience in that he could completely see the shape of Malfoy next to him rather than feeling him as a vague presence behind the eyes. He noticed that Malfoy seemed to be surveying the scene around him thoughtfully before noticing anything else.
The scene had unfolded before them in a much faster and smoother fashion than their previous attempts. It was almost unconscionably bright with very little detail due to the haze that seemed to surround everything.
A bright white light emanated from somewhere in the distance, enveloping the pillars that segregated each part of the space into equal periods. The floors were a dull grey, although a checkered pattern could barely be seen through the monotony.
There were short ledges, almost appearing to be for sitting, that lined the narrow pathway that they stood upon together. The only real defining feature of the space were the pillars that stood greying and blurred at regular intervals.
The space seemed endless and completely neutral, as if it were poised in time—not necessarily in a comforting pause way as the Room of Requirement was, but almost in a way that nothing else existed here. Small, subtle feelings of nostalgia and threat gnawed at Harry's gut, but he found himself easily able to suppress them here, a skill that had never really been accessible to him elsewhere.
After a few moments in the space, Harry noticed Malfoy's figure disappear from view, dissipating in an unearthly cloud of surrealty. Mere seconds later, Harry felt himself also being pulled out of the memory of his visualization and back into the Room of Requirement.
He took a moment to get his bearings, closing his eyes as he focused on the melodic thrum of the room's music and the warmth emanating from the fire by their desk.
Malfoy was the first to speak. "Your safe place is...King's Cross station?" he asked, dumbfounded.
"You said to make it pleasantly neutral," Harry argued, suddenly feeling unjustly observed despite his consent to the scrutiny.
"Yeah, pleasantly neutral," Malfoy reiterated, starting to laugh at the distinction. "Harry, this is the creepiest shite I've ever seen."
Harry. For some reason, his name sounded nice in Malfoy's mouth, all light and tinkling as if the two of them joked like this all the time—and for some reason, that filled him with a quiet rage.
"Oh, that's the creepiest shit you've ever seen? Didn't you literally live with Fenrir Greyback for over a year?" Harry countered, agitation creeping into his voice.
Malfoy stopped laughing and sighed. "Can you not be intentionally obstinate for like five minutes? Are you capable of that? I just think we can do better than this to help you center yourself."
"Right," Harry muttered, berating himself silently for ruining anything good that came his way.
Another moment passed quietly between the two students before Malfoy spoke up again.
"Can't you produce a patronus? Is that true?" Malfoy asked, seemingly genuinely curious.
Harry cringed despite himself, feeling a mental barrage of the times when he had been excessively congratulated for being able to successfully execute such an advanced spell for his age. What a gift, they would say. Such a talented young boy. What a shame.
"You ok?" Malfoy prodded after a minute, seeming to survey him as he had surveyed the space in front of them just moments before.
"I'm fine," Harry confirmed, looking abashedly off to the floor. "And yes, I can produce a patronus."
"Well, why don't you try using whatever memory you use to conjure that charm as your visualization?" Malfoy suggested.
"I—" Harry started, suddenly hit with a feeling of fraudulence that he hadn't analyzed since their third year when he had first produced the patronus charm with Professor Lupin. The knowledge that his so-called happiest memory wasn't even real was something that he considered himself lucky to frequently forget. How simple it was to slip into a place where that could have been reality. "Yeah ok, I'll try doing that."
"Ok, maybe we can start with that next time," said Malfoy reassuringly, placing a soothing hand on the middle of Harry's back.
"You're different," Harry said before he could stop himself, his tone more conversational than accusatory.
Malfoy sighed, dropping his hand. "I suppose we're all different. How could we not be?"
"Yeah, but not like that. You seem…I dunno, sad," Harry said lamely.
"And when you found me in the bathroom during sixth year shaking and clinging to the counter like a buoy in a storm, that looked—what, like I was having a blast?" Malfoy asked sarcastically.
"I guess I mean different from when we were kids," Harry tried to clarify.
"We're still kids."
"I know, but like—little kids. You looked sad in fifth and sixth year, too, always had that look on your face like you had no hope that things were gonna be alright again. I guess I just assumed that it would stop when things were closer to alright again," Harry said.
"And what do you know of how alright things are for me now?" Malfoy shot back.
"Er—nothing, I guess. I guess I never really cared to know before," Harry said, contemplative.
Malfoy chuckled darkly. "You don't care now, either. At least not really, not about me specifically. And I don't need you to. I'm not some little project for you and your Gryffindor friends to fix. So you can take that savior complex of yours and keep it the hell away from me."
"It's not a complex when you've spent your whole life doing it," Harry said, growing irritated now. "But don't worry, message received. I just wanted to say that if you need somebody to talk to, we're sort of chained together now anyways and I've been told that I'm a good listener. But if you'd rather just stay making those gloomy little faces and never letting anybody see you struggle—or Merlin forbid, see you happy—then that's your prerogative."
"I'm happy plenty, Potter," Malfoy insisted, breaking into a small smirk this time. "I just have resting Death Eater face. See, say something funny."
Harry snickered a bit at that. The insurmountable anger he had felt rising in him just moments ago had vanished, leaving only tiredness and a bit of amusement in its place.
"It's not your fault we keep having issues in each other's heads. Yours is absolutely full of Nargles," Harry said, conveying his best impression of Luna.
Malfoy scowled exaggeratedly, causing Harry to let out a full laugh. He wasn't sure if the look was meant to be truly smoldering, but all he could think was how much he resembled a younger Malfoy when he stuck out his bottom lip and furrowed his brows in mock upset.
Images of slicked-back blonde hair and a pompous sneer flitted to the foreground of Harry's mind as he reflected briefly on the events of their first few years in school.
"You look just like your father when you do that," Harry said without thinking, then immediately regretted it.
Malfoy's face fell, clearly impacted by what he had said.
"I didn't mean that as—"
"I want to show you something," Malfoy said, grabbing a vial and pulling out his wand.
Harry just nodded. "Okay."
Malfoy seemed to strain a bit as he pulled the memory out, wincing as a clump of silver emerged on the tip of his wand and made its way into a vial.
"Get your safe place visualization out of the pensieve first," Malfoy instructed, and Harry did so, storing it in one of the vials and tucking said vial safely out of sight in the back.
Without a word, he dumped the liquid into the cauldron and almost winced again as the swirling liquid expanded to occupy the space.
"Go ahead, whenever you're ready," he said, motioning to the pensieve. "Before I change my mind," he added softly, seeming to mutter it only to himself.
Harry dipped his face into the spiraling effervescence that occupied the pensieve and was immediately transported into the memories of Draco Malfoy.
This experience was markedly different from the legilimency, with him appearing as a separate entity viewing from the side rather than experiencing the event as a first-hand account.
He saw a very young Malfoy, so young that he seemed to not have started slicking back his hair yet—possibly seven or so. Lucius stood directly in front of young Malfoy, looking quite similar to how he had looked in their first year, straight platinum blonde hair cascading down a set of expensive-looking black robes.
They were talking in what appeared to be the dining room of the Malfoy manor, Lucius looming over Malfoy as he sat in a chair, the feet of his small frame dangling several inches above the floor.
A set of a dozen or so other thin, black chairs were placed perfectly around a long, obsidian table. Two impressive chandeliers hung suspended in the air, likely through magic, with sharp metal bits that extended downwards towards the table.
A hearth burned in the wall on the opposite side of the table from where Malfoy sat, its fire seeming to contribute no light or warmth to the area whatsoever.
The older Malfoy slammed the claws of his cane on the table in front of Draco, causing him to startle back in surprise. Lucius' face contorted in rage, seeming almost more upset at his son's reaction than whatever wrongdoing on Malfoy's part had triggered this interaction.
Lucius snarled down at his son, lips curling upwards in distinguishable distaste. Malfoy swallowed.
A second memory flooded forward, with Malfoy looking around the same age as in the first. He was in Knockturn Alley, reaching up to hold the hand of his mother, who was reading a newspaper rather intently with a concerned expression on her face.
Harry couldn't make out much of the news article's title, other than that it was something about a muggle-born wizard and a crime.
"Muggle-borns who don't respect our laws and contribute to the wizarding world are a huge problem," Malfoy said, the words sounding oddly misplaced in his young voice as his lips curled into a half-sneer, half-snarl.
"We need to protect our own," he continued absolutely, seeming as if he were quoting something rather than producing the words himself. He looked up at his mother, disapproval still plastered on his face while his young eyes searched frantically for approval.
"You look just like your father when you do that," she whispered lovingly, gently sweeping stray locks of blonde hair across his forehead. As an adult, Harry could tell that she subtly disapproved of what was occurring in some way, but Malfoy just looked up at her and beamed at the supposed praise.
A third memory came then, and this time the frustrated snarl was already spreading across Malfoy's face. He was a bit older now, possibly thirteen or so, with a face that had thinned out considerably since early childhood.
He was standing in the dungeons, likely directly following a potions class, looking up at the expressionless face of Professor Snape. It seemed as though Snape had just asked him a question, as Malfoy's hands were outstretched by his sides to emphasize a point.
"I don't see what I'm meant to do," he huffed. "It's not my fault the mudblood's basically a potions master." He nearly spat the words with vitriol, disgust and anger clearly etched into his face.
"You look just like your father when you do that," Snape said, his voice equal parts condemning and contemplative despite his neutral demeanor.
A fourth memory faded in, and Malfoy seemed only slightly younger than he was today, the memory likely from within the past year or two. He was in a bathroom that Harry didn't recognize.
As he walked towards the sink, he caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked shut down and exhausted, heavy dark circles clinging to the bottom of his eyes, which seemed more dull grey than their usual steely blue.
He took a hand to his cheek, bombarded with images of his father's jaw, then to his eyes—but again, he could only see the piercing gaze of his father's eyes reflected back at him. He started to scream in frustration, fingernails digging into his forehead and dragging down the sides of his face.
When Malfoy looked back up at his reflection, not only had he broken skin and started bleeding, but he had shattered the mirror's glass into thousands of little splinters in a fit of accidental magic.
Finally, Harry came back to himself in the Room of Requirement, taking a few breaths as he took in the current Malfoy standing propped against a nearby wall.
Malfoy was taking him in right back, anticipating and assessing for a reaction.
"You really don't look that much like your father, you know," said Harry finally.
Malfoy chuckled, "I know that I do. And that's okay."
"Is it?" Harry questioned, his brow furrowed.
"Well, what's the alternative?" Malfoy asked grimly. "Die?"
Another silence passed between them.
"The alternative is that it's not okay and it sucks and then you keep living," Harry said slowly.
This seemed to stun Malfoy, who looked down as if he had been properly chastised for his neuroticism. "It figures you would think that way."
"I mean, I kinda had to, didn't I?" said Harry. "I was basically groomed to die at the right time. If I had figured that I could never live up to this heroic reputation that everybody painted of my father or live down this villainous bully caricature that Snape had painted for me in his memories and offed myself during fourth year or something, everybody would have died during the Battle of Hogwarts."
There was a brief pause then in which Malfoy almost looked as though he'd been slapped.
"That wouldn't have been your fault, though," he said eventually.
Harry shrugged.
"No," Malfoy said, growing angry now. "You were entitled to those feelings. Your parents fucking died, for Merlin's sake, and they died protecting you. Those are incredibly big shoes to fill, even before taking the removing-the-Dark-Lord-from-power thing into consideration. It would've been unhealthy if you didn't feel some sense of pressure to live up to that."
Harry shrugged again, feeling immensely uncomfortable as he reached a hand to the back of his neck and scratched a phantom itch.
"And I know what it's like to see your father as a bully. Trust me, I get that bit, and it's not fun at all," Malfoy asserted. "There's no way to really separate yourself from the person you came from—to not feel like a colossal piece of shit about everything you've done afterwards. But you're not your father, and he's not you."
"You deserve to know that," Malfoy said seriously. "Do you know that?"
"I guess," said Harry sheepishly, still avoiding eye contact.
"It's getting late," Harry said abruptly, waving his wand to cast a quick tempus charm that illuminated the wall with a script that read 11:42 PM.
Malfoy nodded slowly, moving with Harry back towards their bags. The two packed up their things without continuing the conversation.
"A group of us are meeting to study for charms and arithmancy in the common room tomorrow. Will you be around?" Harry asked. "I bet everybody would appreciate that 'unanswered questions and resources' spell you showed me today."
Malfoy seemed to think about it, but eventually nodded. "Ok, Potter—I'll be there."
"Perfect," he said, exiting the Room of Requirement. "6 PM, after class."