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blamebramptonRight, it's time to come clean. After putting a toe into the dark and murky waters or HP fic, then having what was going to be a one-time paddle, I have stripped down to my scanties and thrown myself into the Channel Crossing Swim, and there's no turning back, even if I run out of goose fat and the shark cage comes apart in the waves.
Because, and I freely admit this worries me far more than it could possibly worry any of you, while reading Deathly Hallows, an entire other book unfolded in my brain.
In my defence, I picked up a terrible case of influenza while I was in New Zealand, and instead of queueing merrily with kids holding broomsticks I was reduced to sending out the lad and cuddling the book under the covers for a few hours when it came back before I could work up the energy to start reading.
So on my first read-through, I actually hallucinated a few sections. There was a whole Diana-death bit after the Ministry section, and then a Draco heroics moment while everyone was trapped in Malfoy Manor (embarrassingly, while I realised that the latter was an hallucination, I chatted merrily to several people about the former, all of whom looked at me blankly. I ended up justifying it through subtext after a re-read, which was not too much of a stretch.)
I am not a regular hallucinator, but this was not a regular dose of influenza. Rather, it was the sort of thing at which Mr Bingley would have ridden for the undertaker and settled down for a good wait till Georgiana was a bit older. (An aside: New Zealand is otherwise miraculous.)
And as I read the epilogue, I realised that in addition to hallucinating JKR's text, I had been mentally constructing one of my own.
And when I was mostly better, not only had that text not gone away, but I had written it into the world outside my head.
All of which is still less embarrassing than the time I hallucinated Teletubbies while being fed morphine through a drip after one of my more spectacular bike crashes. If only there were cleaning products available for the brain.
Part Two follows on directly from Part One. It will doubtless take me forever to finish this. The rules in my own head are that everything is canon until the last page of OotP, and after that we're somewhere quite different. Except that the previous six books still need to make sense in terms of the plotting.
So, there are still Horcruxes, there are still Hallows. And, because it seemed respectful, the same people will die. Just not always in the same ways.
GB's Story Part One
Not my characters, JKR's, not what I'd normally be up to, not quite sure how I ended up enjoying writing this quite so much.
Some degree of shagging, tastefully elided, in part 1, this part more blushing references.
H/D, because what's the purpose of HP fic if it's not?
Post-OotP, AU after that text ends.
VII
“What the hell is he doing here?” The smile on Ron’s face at seeing Harry appear disappeared the second he recognised the figure with him.
“He’s with me.” Harry dropped Draco’s hand and gestured for him to follow him through the garden they had apparated into, filling Ron in as they went. “… Snape’s not who we thought. If Dumbledore thought it was worth dying to keep Malfoy safe, I’m not going to second-guess him. We’re keeping Malfoy safe.”
“He’s a Death Eater,” Ron countered.
Draco held up his bare arm, sleeve pushed back, with a sneer.
“He’s a bloody wanker,” Ron muttered, opening the kitchen door of a neat town house.
“He saved my life this morning,” Harry told him, walking past through the door.
“So he’s not a complete wanker …” Ron allowed, wrinkling his nose in response to the glare he received from Draco.
They walked through the large kitchen towards voices that could be heard coming from the adjoining room. Draco did not let his face betray the lack of certainty he felt. The last day had been astonishing, but if anything the changes it had brought rendered him less sure of his place in the world, and somewhat less sure of himself. Now he had put his faith in Potter of all people, and apparently with Snape’s blessing. He concentrated on that aspect of the day’s developments, as any moment’s thought of the other caused an uncomfortable loss of equilibrium.
Ron pushed past them into the room beyond, they followed him into what turned out to be a well-appointed breakfast room. At the table sat Hermione, Remus and Tonks, on the sofa to one side Kingsley Shacklebolt stretched his long legs.
All of them looked over Harry’s shoulder intently.
Draco forced his voice to be even and polite. “Professor, Mr Shacklebolt, Sir, good morning. Granger, sorry to intrude. Cousin,” he bowed slightly towards Tonks.
Hermione blinked slowly. “Harry, have you Imperiused him?” she asked quietly.
Harry sat beside her, nudging Draco to the chair next to him. “I’m too tired for the long version. The short one is this: Dumbledore was protecting Malfoy. We already guessed that from what happened the night he died.” Draco was amazed that Harry could get that sentence out without choking, he knew he could not have. “I’ve seen papers that confirm it; they’re definitely Dumbledore’s, and what’s more, they were to Snape. He trusted him.”
“We all did, we were wrong, Harry,” Kingsley spoke gently.
“Yet he risked his own life for us this morning,” Harry countered.
“You said Malfoy …” Ron began, but stopped when Harry held up his hand.
“Malfoy helped me lay a trap for Snape. He did it of his own free will. He’s not working for Voldemort. He only cares that his parents are protected.” Harry exchanged a quick glance with Draco, who nodded, the essentials were correct. “When we caught Snape, he warned us that he was under surveillance. Sure enough, Lestrange and Amycus Carrow appeared. If it hadn’t been for Draco and Snape, I’d be dead.”
“Are you sure?” Remus’s frown was sharp. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Malfoy, but you seemed quite committed to the Dark Lord’s ideals the last time I saw you. It seems unlikely that you’d undergo an epiphany just as it looks as though we might be about to start properly losing this war.”
Draco tried to keep his voice level. “You hate him because he tries to kill you. Makes perfect sense. Now imagine my position. He is more than happy to have me killed to serve his purposes. And one of those purposes is teaching my father a lesson. I may not like you people, I may not approve of most of you, but I am forced to admit that the enslavement of the wizarding population of Britain is a worse fate than filling it with Muggle-borns and having the Ministry kowtow to the Muggle world.”
Lupin gave him a long look. He came to a decision. “I believe you. Well spoken. May I ask one thing?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Is it Kingsley who’s the one that you approve of?”
Draco wasn’t able to stop himself from smiling. The tension in the room decreased slightly. Remus turned to Harry. “In what manners do Marauders swear, Harry?” he asked.
“Solemnly,” Harry answered.
“Just checking.” They smiled at each other, then Lupin frowned again. “You look pale.”
“He was injured,” Draco spoke quickly before Harry could brush attention aside. “A spell rebounded. He was knocked cold, and lost blood from a head wound. Professor Snape cleaned him up, but he’s still weak.”
Draco was all but pushed aside as the members of the Order fussed over Harry, who was ushered to the sofa, covered with a blanket and had tea pressed into his hand. He glared at Draco, who wasn’t able to hold back a smile of amusement.
“Could have mentioned that when you got here,” Ron muttered darkly at him.
“In the five seconds between you all but pulling a wand on me and then interrogating me?”
“Shut up, Malfoy. I’m more than happy to pull that wand.”
Draco kept his hands palms-down on the table. “I’m here because Potter told me to come. I’ll go where he tells me to go. I’m not here to cause you problems and I’m not here to get in your way. I don’t like you, but I’m the interloper in this room and I’ll remember my manners.”
“Ron,” Hermione appeared beside him. “Leave him. There are more important things to do.”
Draco’s lips tightened. He couldn’t decide which was more galling: to have Granger defuse the situation or the patronising tone in which she did it. The two Gryffindors walked through the other door, off to other parts of the house. Now Draco’s cousin came and sat beside him, looking at him intently.
“You look like your mum,” she announced.
“You do, too, a bit,” he conceded. She changed her hair colour from blonde to dark. “Now you look like your mum. And Aunt Bellatrix …” he added with some distaste.
“Nah, can’t get the crazy eyes right,” Tonks whispered off-handedly.
Draco was so surprised he laughed, causing the group over at the sofa to turn their way briefly. When he looked back to Tonks, she was looking at him seriously, though he saw the start of a smile in her eyes.
“When they were little, your mum and my mum loved each other a great deal. Then a stupid pile of bigotry tore them apart. They never got past that. Can you?”
Pain crossed her cousin’s face, and he tried to hide behind a shrug. “Don’t know. Suppose I’ll have to try, it’s that or slavery and death, and that’s not the most inviting option.”
Tonks nodded. “I married the werewolf,” she added.
Draco’s eyes grew wide, but he put a smile across his face. “Really? Congratulations. Good news. He was a competent teacher and well-respected by the faculty.”
Tonks patted his shoulder. “Good boy. Gold star for decorum.”
Harry seemed to have finally convinced Remus and Kingsley that he was not likely to die in the next ten minutes. “I just need to shower, and sleep for a while. And so does Malfoy. We can sort out what happens to him later. For now I’m vouching for him, and that will have to do.” He stood up and came over to Draco. “Come on, you can borrow some of my kit until we can work out if it’s safe to pick up yours.”
“I’m a foot taller than you,” Malfoy protested.
“No, that was last year, now you’re about two inches taller,” he was smiling in a way that made Draco uncomfortably familiar with why he should know just how tall Harry was now.
“Fine, let’s go.” It seemed safest to get away from company, he could feel a blush beginning its way up his neck.
Harry led the way through the house and up an ornately carved staircase. Harry’s room was on the south side, it was large, and Draco stopped in the doorway when he saw the huge bed that dominated it. He shut the door behind himself and walked in before speaking, careful not to be overheard. “Listen,” he began. “I’m still surprisingly good about last night and all, but if you’re thinking …”
Harry pointed past the main bed to where a smaller trundle was tucked against the windowseat. “You can have the main bed. I’ll clear out one of the parlours and move in there as soon as there’s time, but for now you’ll have to share.”
“That’s okay ...” Draco sat on the edge of the bed. “Thanks.”
“Do you want first shower?” Harry tossed a towel at him and rummaged through the clean clothes piled up on the windowseat until he found pants, reasonably good jeans and a new black shirt that he sent after the towel.
Draco picked up the shirt. “This hasn’t been worn,” he commented.
“It’s new, for my birthday last week,” Harry admitted. “Probably got the longest arms of all mine.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Harry smiled. “I’m really not used to hearing you say that.”
“What?”
“Thanks. I keep waiting for you to say Po-tter in that way of yours.”
“I never said it like that.
Harry snorted. “At least once a day at school. I was actually impressed at how you could leave all the unspoken swearwords so audible.” He sat on his bed with his legs crossed, a wry smile firmly in place.
“Family gift.”
“Remember the first day of school?” Harry asked suddenly.
“Which bit?”
“On the train, you came and introduced yourself, and I told you to piss off.”
“Ah, yeah … I seem to recall that I was something of a prat about Weasley.”
“Absolutely.” They exchanged embarrassed smiles. “I’ve been thinking, so much of what’s wrong at the moment is because everyone acts like idiot 11 year olds. We take the same sides our friends take. Or our parents took. And we’re not thinking. The Death Eaters have moved into the Ministry and they’re gaining power, and if people stopped to look at the last raft of legislation they’d realise that it’s been designed to make it easier for Death Eaters to go about undetected while restricting everyone else. But it’s the government, so everyone’s accepting it as what needs to be done.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Draco confessed.
“Sorry, I keep forgetting you’ve been out of the world these last few months. The Ministry’s declared that all non-human magical creatures must be registered and tagged. House-elves, giants, centaurs … goblins have an exemption at the moment because even the Ministry won’t go up against Gringotts, but let’s see how long that lasts.”
Draco whistled low. “Most of the house-elves will be OK, they’d see it as part of their duty to their families. But the centaurs … and who the hell thinks they can control the giants?”
“I don’t think it’s designed as a control,” Harry admitted. “I think it’s simply a way of making it seem as though something’s being done, while wasting time and attention away from the real problem. Meanwhile, Umbridge isn’t the only Death Eater who’s climbing the ranks in the Ministry.”
Draco looked at him with surprise. “She’s not a Death Eater.”
Harry looked doubtful. He held up his hand, where faint traces of scars could be seen. “She tortures students, and sucks the joy out of anything she can. You sure?”
Draco nodded. “She’s not, Dad even joked about her once. She’s something viler, she came up with all her beliefs on her own. At least my father can claim fear of the Dark Lord, or devotion, or whatever it is that keeps him bound to him …” he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.
Harry frowned. It was hard to believe that all of Dolores Umbridge’s viciousness had been casual. In some ways, it was worse. And that she could thrive in the current world was worst of all. It took him a moment to catch up with what Draco had actually said. “Hey,” he waited until Draco looked over at him. “Your mum loves you. I’ve seen her. She looks at you as though you’re the best thing she’s ever done. That’s something.”
Draco stood up with his towel and clothes and walked quickly towards the bathroom. But Harry still heard the quiet “Thanks.”
“Spare toothbrush in the cupboard,” Harry called after him. “And don’t be long.”
VIII
The sound of the old water pipes were a dead giveaway, so Harry wasn’t surprised when Hermione stuck her head in his door a few minutes later. “Can we talk?” she asked, looking towards the bathroom door.
Harry beckoned her in. “Should be at least five minutes,” he smiled.
She sat on the trundle beside him. “Draco Malfoy. I can’t work out if you’ve gone mad or are aiming for sainthood.”
Harry laughed. “Neither,” he assured her. “Dumbledore always told me that I had terrible prejudices about people. I’m trying to right some of that.”
She grinned. “That’s our Harry, no half measures. Start with one of the big three.”
He elbowed her genially. “He’s got just as many problems as we do at the moment.”
“He let Death Eaters into the school, Harry,” she reminded him. “He put all our friends, all the students, in danger.”
“Yeah …” Harry rubbed his forehead above his glasses. “I know. I know what he’s done, but the thing is, I think he knows it, too. You weren’t there, Hermione, you didn’t see the look on his face when Snape … when Dumbledore …” Harry swallowed. “It’s not so hard to believe if you just look at it all through his eyes. Voldemort used him as a pawn, and held the lives of his parents over his head to make sure he did as he was told. Dumbledore told him we could protect them, Snape seems to be protecting <i>him</i>, where else can he go? Even if you don’t believe his reasons, simple survival is enough to make him turn to us.”
“Who cares what he wants?” Hermione was implacable. “Send him back to Hogwarts next month, he can take his chances there.”
Harry smiled. “You hate him and you’re still not suggesting we throw him to the wolves.”
She screwed up her mouth. “Too bloody Gryffindor. That’s what they’ll say about us when he kills us in our beds.”
He patted her hand. “Thank goodness they had the brains to hold onto the boy who knows the names of all the Death Eaters. That’s what they’ll say.”
Hermione laughed outright at that. “They’ll never accuse you of brains, Harry,” she ruffled his hair. “Not after this. Clean yourself up, get some sleep. Tonks is brewing you up a tonic downstairs and you want to be asleep before she tries to force it on you.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Harry walked her to the door, brushing his hair back down with his fingers. “Just … see if you can convince Ron to give Malfoy a few days. He had plenty of opportunities to kill me in the last 24 hours, and he … he’s not the prat I thought he was.”
Hermione nodded, smiling. “I’ll try,” she promised.
It wasn’t till Harry had closed the door again that he realised the water had stopped. Draco was watching him from the bathroom door, dressed in Harry’s bathrobe. “Not a prat,” a smile played around the corner of his mouth. “I can live with that.” He sauntered over to the bed, carrying the jeans and shirt Harry had loaned him. He draped them neatly over the dressing chair, then turned back to Harry, who seemed to still be looking for something to say.
“It’s a nice house,” Draco complimented. “These old Georgians had a good sense of light. Whose is it?”
“Tonks’s dad’s,” Harry replied, glad for the diversion. “Apparently his parents had money, but he and Tonks’s mum wanted to make their own way. They rented it out to Muggles after his parents died, the last tenants left in March, and Tonks asked him to keep it handy in case the Order needed it. Since Snape knew all about our old location, this seemed a good alternative.”
Draco looked thoughtful. “I never thought of Ted Tonks as having money. He always seemed rough and common. I though that was what Aunt Andromeda fancied.”
Harry tried very hard to ignore the exaggerated innocence with which Draco said rough and fancied. “His parents owned the third-largest grocery chain in Britain. His little sister’s the CEO now, worth a fortune.”
“Right,” Draco nodded, grinning.
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
“My bathrobe doesn’t fit you very well, it’s too small for me,” Harry couldn’t help grinning, too.
“I never took you for being such a perve, Potter,” Draco shook his head sadly. “All these years you pissed me off with your moralising, and I missed the whole kinky subtext.”
“I’m ignoring you,” Harry announced, as he walked past and picked up pants and pyjamas. He threw a T-shirt in Draco’s direction. “No spare PJs, that’ll have to do.”
“I was quick, there’s loads of hot water left,” Draco called after him, laughing out loud when Harry rewarded him with a rude hand gesture as he closed the bathroom door.
On the inside of the door, Harry leaned his head against the cool oak. He considered knocking it a few times, but decided in favour of subtlety; for at least once in this 24 hours. “Yeah, sorry, Hermione,” he muttered to himself. “Decided not to capture Snape, even though I still have no idea what he’s up to and then thought it would be a good idea to shag Malfoy while I was at it. High tension, fear of imminent death, you know how these things happen.”
He stepped out of his clothes and into the tall enamelled bath, turning on the brass shower handles. Once the water was running, he answered himself in a higher voice. “That’s fine, Harry, but are you quite sure it’s not the muscled chest and lean flanks that really caught your attention.”
Harry reached over and turned the hot tap off, then turned his face up into the cold water before whispering to himself in his own voice. “No, I’m really not sure at all.”
When he walked back into the bedroom a few minutes later, he expected to find Draco half asleep, but he was sitting up under his sheets, reading one of Harry’s Quidditch magazines. The T-shirt Harry had given him was carefully arranged on top of the bathrobe on the dressing chair, with Draco’s pants folded beside it.
Harry raised his towel to dry his hair and hide the view as he walked back to his own bed.
“Astonishing,” Draco drawled.
“What’s that?” Harry asked, twitching the curtains closed and climbing into bed.
Draco dropped the magazine onto a side table rather than light a lamp or wand to read by. “Apparently Viktor Krum is now the highest-paid player in any league. Granger should have paid him more attention.”
Harry chuckled. “Nah, she’d already made up her mind about Ron by then.”
Harry propped his glasses on the edge of the windowseat, closed his eyes and dropped firmly against his pillow.
Draco did not. There was enough light still to see his roommate’s pale face. He was pleased to note that it was a singularly attractive face. Apparently his taste remained intact no matter what happened to his common sense.
“Harry …” he was pleased to see Potter’s eyes snap open. “Last night …”
“Um, yeah …”
“We …”
“Yeah …”
“… it was good.”
“It was amazing.”
Draco smiled. “I had no idea you were …”
“Me either.” Harry sat up at that and put his glasses back on so he could look at him. “Don’t think I am … I never … before … but you kissed me and it just felt, tasted …”
“Yeah …” Draco tucked up his knees.
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “So, you?”
Draco waved his hand nonchalantly, “Oh, man of the world, no time for constraints when there’s amusement to be had.”
“Oh.”
Knowing he’d live to regret it, Draco reached out to the length of his arm and touched Harry’s cheek. “I’m lying. I told you last night. First time.”
Harry squeezed his hand fleetingly before it was withdrawn. He was smiling, and Draco forced himself to stay in his own bed. “You’ve got natural talent,” Harry whispered.
“You really have to stop talking now,” Draco said quickly. He could see Harry’s smile become a grin.
“G’night, or good morning, really.” Harry took of his glasses and rolled to one side, sheets drawn up around his neck.
“Get some sleep.” Draco lay back, fairly sure that he wouldn’t be able to follow his own advice for some time yet.
IX
Draco woke at the first rap on the door, and reached automatically for his wand. Before his hand made it to the table, clearly visible now in the midday light, a pyjama-clad figure had leapt across him, one hand shoving glasses into place, the other holding his wand like a weapon.
Harry positioned himself between the door and the bed, and without looking back made a hand gesture for Draco to stay down. “Who’s there?” he called.
“Me,” answered Tonks’s unmistakeable voice. “And I’m sorry to wake you, but we need you out here.”
Harry opened the door carefully, then let in a red-haired Tonks, who affected not to notice her cousin dressing under his bedcovers. “Hedwig’s back, she has a message for you from the Minister. Don’t be angry, but I opened it, I thought I might be able to let you sleep a while yet. No such luck, Scrimgeour has sent for you, apparently he has some of your property.”
Harry was baffled. “I don’t see how.”
“It could be a trap,” Tonks shrugged, “But as far as we know the top ranks of the Ministry are still uncompromised. Draco, do you know any different?”
“Minister’s untouched. Dawlish is Imperiused, and there’s Runcorn, but you know he’s a prick. That’s it as far as I know.”
Tonks looked at him with surprise, “I thought Umbridge …”
Draco shook his head. “Everyone thinks that, but she’s not one of ours.”
Tonks and Harry frowned at him.
Draco blushed red. “Look, it’s going to take me more than one day to get over my entire upbringing, if that’s all right with the two of you. And if it’s not, then you may as well dump me somewhere out of the way now and I’ll keep quiet so long as you can guarantee my mother is safe.”
“I want to believe you,” Tonks assured him.
“But …” Draco drawled resignedly.
“But I do.” Harry’s voice was decisive. “Because again you asked that we keep your mother safe, not you.”
“Yeah, well, took that as read, really,” Draco joked weakly. Almost unwillingly he added, “Are you sure? Are you sure that you trust me and that you’re not acting solely on … on the fact that Dumbledore had faith in me?”
Harry heard the unspoken words. “You put your life on the line for mine this morning.”
“But I’d only actually agreed to help you on a task that seemed safe. Carrow and Aunt Bellatrix were as much a surprise to me as you, I was fighting for myself, too.”
“You could have left me there bleeding and gone off with Snape.”
Draco sighed. “You are staking a lot on trusting me, I just want you to think it through. Don’t take this badly, Potter, but you’ve always been a bit of an idiot, and this time you can’t afford to let your loyalties or prejudices get in the way.”
Harry bit his tongue.
Tonks looked between the two young men, certain she was missing something, but not what that was. “I can keep an eye on him while you’re at the Ministry,” she offered.
“Thanks,” Harry jumped at the resolution, temporary as it may be. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can be.”
“Ron and Hermione are waiting at the front door for you.” At his look of surprise, Tonks realised that she hadn’t told Harry everything. “The letter was addressed to the three of you; I told them before I came and woke you. One suggestion?”
“Yeah?”
“Change out of your pyjamas.” She grinned cheekily. “I’ll wait out here. Draco, do you want lunch, or would you rather help me with some research?”
“Um, lunch then research?”
Tonks shut the door, nodding.
Harry stepped as close to Draco as he dared before speaking in a whisper. “What’s wrong with you?”
Draco concentrated on buttoning up his shirt rather than looking up. “I meant what I said about not wanting you-know-who to win, but you can’t just take it on face value that I’m no danger to you now.”
Harry was confused. “Are you? Because aside from being one hell of a distraction, the last thing you’re making me feel right now is afraid.”
Draco looked up at that, exasperation clear on his face. “Stop thinking like the good guys. If I was trying to get you to trust me, if I was trying to get into your secrets, how would I act?”
Harry had no idea how to say that pretty much any method other than seduction would have been a better actual plan if Draco had been a spy, so he settled for the more logical flaw in the argument. “But you had no idea I would appear yesterday.”
“I know!” Draco was finding it hard to keep to a whisper. “Everything that I’ve done and said since then has been true, but how do you know that? You’re so free and easy with your trust when you’re the last person in Britain who can afford to be.”
Harry rolled his eyes, went over to his bed and began changing. He half-understood, yet struggled to find the words that would explain why what Draco was saying was not something he could agree with. He had his jeans, socks and trainers on before he could begin to make it clear.
“I’m not a Slytherin,” he began.
“We’re not at school.”
“Yeah, I know, the point is that I’m not a Slytherin because I chose not to be. I chose the house where stupid and impetuous actions usually come out as brave deeds. And sometimes that’s worked, and sometimes that’s got people I loved killed.” Harry swallowed before going on. “The thing is, I don’t want to sit down and puzzle through whether or not I can trust you. I want to look into your eyes and see what’s there. And there’s anger and resentment and a whole lot of other things I can’t name, but you’re not evil, Draco. You’ve still got your soul, even if it’s a bit grubby. You care about your mother, you fought for me, hell, you were even nice to Moaning Myrtle. And if that makes me an idiot, then just kill me quickly in my sleep; you should be able to make an easy getaway down the front of the house.” Harry dropped a jersey over his head as he finished speaking, stuffed his wand in his pocket, and began to walk across the room.
Draco caught his arm as he passed. “I think I’m clear on about one tenth of that,” he confessed. “All I’m saying is be careful.”
Harry smiled. “I will be. Gotta go, see the Minister, convince your mum to let us protect her, save the wizarding world from destruction.”
“Harry?” Draco’s voice was low.
“Yes?” Harry looked into his grey eyes.
“Can you bring back some crisps and chocolate frogs?”
Tonks was surprised to see the two boys laughing as they came out to meet her. Further investigation, she decided. Further investigation. Their good humour was infectious, and she was grateful for it, both for the effect it was having on her and the effect it was having on Harry.
Draco followed her out to the kitchen, leaving Harry to Ron and Hermione at the bottom of the stairs. He was chatting amiably. Tonks was strangely pleased when Draco called her cousin. A sad corner of her mind pointed out how much she’d missed that word since Sirius had died.
“And I hate to confess it, but I have learned how to make toast and eggs. But if you tell anyone I’ll deny it and hex your toenails to develop unpleasant fungi,” he concluded.
Tonks realised that she’d missed most of what he’d said, and Draco realised it too, a beat behind her.
“Sorry, clearly you’ve got bigger things on your mind, I’ll make us eggs and toast.” His voice took on distance again, as he had sounded when talking to Ron and Hermione earlier in the day.
Tonks wasn’t having that. “I’ve been thinking about what I missed out on with you,” she told him. “I could have had the best fun teaching you all sorts of bad behaviour to appal your parents. You’re the only little cousin I have.”
She became aware he was no longer a step behind her. “Draco?” she looked back at him.
His face was stuck between a smile and a frown. “My parents would have hated that,” he managed after a moment.
She came back to him and took his hand. “I know,” she squeezed. “It would have been brilliant.”
X
Draco and Tonks would not have admitted it, but their next three hours were more simply entertaining than any others they had passed this last year. To begin with, they were both useless at cooking spells, and even worse at actual cooking. Draco was true to his word about the toast, but while he could boil eggs, he couldn’t tell in advance what state they’d be when they came out of the shell. If anything, Tonks was worse, since at least Draco’s didn’t explode.
“And then of course, Mother wanted to have The Talk with me before the wedding,” she said.
Draco nodded sincerely, “Because I can tell that you were a blushing virgin.”
“Absolutely!” Tonks changed her hair colour to white and encouraged it to form what Draco realised was a halo. “The twist to this conversation was that she wanted to know what Remus was like at his ‘special time’ of the month.”
Draco gaped in horror.
“So I told her no worse than me …”
Draco hid behind his hands and pantomimed imminent death. Then he peered out with a sly smile. “It could have been worse,” he began.
“Oh yes?” Tonks was sceptical.
“She could have asked what sort of restraints you’d prefer.”
Tonks’s yells of mock horror were so loud that Kingsley and Remus both ran into the kitchen with wands drawn.
“Sorry,” Tonks apologised quickly. “Draco was telling me how Death Eaters play house. Apparently, his Mum and Dad …” she trailed off giggling at the look of horror on all three male faces.
“We were catching up with family news, it got a bit silly,” Draco offered.
Lupin smiled with tired relief. “Good. That’s good, Malfoy, Dora. Family is important, even if this war has us all on … edge.”
“On different sides,” Draco supplied the unspoken ending to Lupin’s sentence.
Remus’s smile turned sad. “Yes, Draco. On different sides. Can you live with that? Can you stand by your choice when your father has made his?”
“Yes.”
“And if your mother stands with him?”
Draco looked lost for a moment. “She won’t,” he replied quietly. “Not now. Not now she’s seen what that means.”
Tonks dropped a hand gently to his shoulder. “No mother would risk her son if she had a choice,” she assured him. “We’re giving her a choice, just as you and Harry chose yesterday.”
Draco looked at her sharply, but she was all softness. “To fight on the same side for once?” he guessed. “Yes. That’s right. Because I can go back to hating him later once the Dark Lord is out of the way.”
“You hate Harry Potter?” Kingsley was surprised. “Why?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Habit, sir. We’re in different houses and he repeatedly beats me at Quidditch.”
Kingsley’s laugh was rich and deep. “I keep forgetting that you’re barely more than children.”
Draco’s look of affront was replaced by a scowl so deep that Tonks couldn’t help but shift her face to match it. Which would have been fine if Remus hadn’t leaned over to kiss her at that exact moment. It wasn’t just Kingsley who laughed at that.
Shaking his head in a bid to eradicate that last memory, Remus offered to take over the cooking. Draco pitched in with toast and for the next while the four of them enjoyed an unexpectedly relaxed lunch.
Afterwards, Tonks sent Remus and Kingsley back to whatever work had been occupying them and led Draco back into the breakfast room, where the table was now covered with books and notes. She was researching ward breaking, and Draco was embarrassed to admit he had some experience.
Draco began to believe that his parents’ views on bloodlines had some validity after all. Everything was easy with Tonks. They even worked well together, with his Slytherin quickness providing a foil for her Hufflepuff doggedness. When he teased her on her house, she looked at him with grand pity. “Poor lad, so burdened by his years at school that he never moved past them into an actual life.”
“Oi!” Draco grimaced. “Some of us are theoretically still at school. Besides,” his shoulders slumped. “Some of it was a burden.”
Tonks inwardly cursed her clumsiness. “Sorry, Draco, I forgot for a moment.”
Malfoy’s smile wasn’t quite as genuine as he’d aimed for. “Wish I could.”
She patted his hand, and he didn’t shake her off. “I’m only just getting used to the fact that I’m a real grown-up with a real job, and all of a sudden I’m married and we’re at war and we’re hiding out with three kids who should be on their summer holidays. Well, four now. And any day, any day all of this waiting and planning could be over and the battle could erupt around us.”
Draco turned his hand over and held Tonks’s. She squeezed his again. “Listen to me. It’s not as though any of you have been having any sort of holiday. You least of all. Harry didn’t say, but you looked as though you’d been through hell when you showed up this morning.”
“Didn’t get much sleep …” Draco was terrified that he might begin blushing. “For about a year,” he added, moving to safer territory.
Tonks looked at him with understanding. “Harry told us about the Tower,” she confided.
Now he did blush, but it was with shame rather than embarrassment. “I didn’t think … I didn’t think …” he muttered.
“Poor little coz,” Tonks put her arm around his shoulders. “It’s not a fair thing. You’re meant to be stupid when you’re sixteen. You’re meant to shag inappropriate people and get drunk in Hogsmeade and fail at least one Charms assignment. Adults aren’t meant to come along and take advantage of all that adolescent stupidity and tangle you up in their viciousness.” She was angry for him.
Draco looked at her with awe. “You mean all of that?”
“Of course,” Tonks smiled. “That’s the worst part about this stupid bloody war. It’s taken away all of our normal. People are all acting like stupid sixteen year olds. I don’t think it’s fair that we judge the ones who are.”
“I’m seventeen,” he corrected her.
She ruffled his hair maternally. “Same thing. You don’t even begin to get smart till about 23. But yeah, I remember last time, even though I was only little. Everything was crazy because no one knew they’d be alive tomorrow. In some ways it was exhilarating, in others it was terrifying.” She patted his hair back into place and let him go. “Harry told us you wouldn’t kill Dumbledore, that’s the bit that I’m going to think of when I think of what you’ve done this last year. And I can’t promise that everyone else will be able to do the same …” she smiled gently at the face he pulled. “… especially Ron, it appears, but I’m happy you’re here. And I hope that I get to know you before you leave.”
“Me, too,” Draco agreed fervently. “Talking to you has been better than you’ll ever know.”
Tonks beamed and her hair turned a celebratory orange. “That is because I am terribly good at being a grown up,” she announced.
“Indeed!” Draco agreed. “In fact when I return to Hogwarts at some point in the future I will petition the teaching staff to have you brought in as a regular tutor in how to overcome seven years of woefully inadequate real-life training.”
Tonks laughed. “With my husband covering the lessons in cooking and cleaning.”
“But you will be our favourite.”
“Because, as your cousin, I will feel obliged to mark you as Outstanding.”
“And because, as my cousin, you look immensely more attractive than anyone else on the teaching staff.”
Tonks pushed all Draco’s hair forward over his eyes. “Teenagers!” They settled back to the books.
Part three
Because, and I freely admit this worries me far more than it could possibly worry any of you, while reading Deathly Hallows, an entire other book unfolded in my brain.
In my defence, I picked up a terrible case of influenza while I was in New Zealand, and instead of queueing merrily with kids holding broomsticks I was reduced to sending out the lad and cuddling the book under the covers for a few hours when it came back before I could work up the energy to start reading.
So on my first read-through, I actually hallucinated a few sections. There was a whole Diana-death bit after the Ministry section, and then a Draco heroics moment while everyone was trapped in Malfoy Manor (embarrassingly, while I realised that the latter was an hallucination, I chatted merrily to several people about the former, all of whom looked at me blankly. I ended up justifying it through subtext after a re-read, which was not too much of a stretch.)
I am not a regular hallucinator, but this was not a regular dose of influenza. Rather, it was the sort of thing at which Mr Bingley would have ridden for the undertaker and settled down for a good wait till Georgiana was a bit older. (An aside: New Zealand is otherwise miraculous.)
And as I read the epilogue, I realised that in addition to hallucinating JKR's text, I had been mentally constructing one of my own.
And when I was mostly better, not only had that text not gone away, but I had written it into the world outside my head.
All of which is still less embarrassing than the time I hallucinated Teletubbies while being fed morphine through a drip after one of my more spectacular bike crashes. If only there were cleaning products available for the brain.
Part Two follows on directly from Part One. It will doubtless take me forever to finish this. The rules in my own head are that everything is canon until the last page of OotP, and after that we're somewhere quite different. Except that the previous six books still need to make sense in terms of the plotting.
So, there are still Horcruxes, there are still Hallows. And, because it seemed respectful, the same people will die. Just not always in the same ways.
GB's Story Part One
Not my characters, JKR's, not what I'd normally be up to, not quite sure how I ended up enjoying writing this quite so much.
Some degree of shagging, tastefully elided, in part 1, this part more blushing references.
H/D, because what's the purpose of HP fic if it's not?
Post-OotP, AU after that text ends.
VII
“What the hell is he doing here?” The smile on Ron’s face at seeing Harry appear disappeared the second he recognised the figure with him.
“He’s with me.” Harry dropped Draco’s hand and gestured for him to follow him through the garden they had apparated into, filling Ron in as they went. “… Snape’s not who we thought. If Dumbledore thought it was worth dying to keep Malfoy safe, I’m not going to second-guess him. We’re keeping Malfoy safe.”
“He’s a Death Eater,” Ron countered.
Draco held up his bare arm, sleeve pushed back, with a sneer.
“He’s a bloody wanker,” Ron muttered, opening the kitchen door of a neat town house.
“He saved my life this morning,” Harry told him, walking past through the door.
“So he’s not a complete wanker …” Ron allowed, wrinkling his nose in response to the glare he received from Draco.
They walked through the large kitchen towards voices that could be heard coming from the adjoining room. Draco did not let his face betray the lack of certainty he felt. The last day had been astonishing, but if anything the changes it had brought rendered him less sure of his place in the world, and somewhat less sure of himself. Now he had put his faith in Potter of all people, and apparently with Snape’s blessing. He concentrated on that aspect of the day’s developments, as any moment’s thought of the other caused an uncomfortable loss of equilibrium.
Ron pushed past them into the room beyond, they followed him into what turned out to be a well-appointed breakfast room. At the table sat Hermione, Remus and Tonks, on the sofa to one side Kingsley Shacklebolt stretched his long legs.
All of them looked over Harry’s shoulder intently.
Draco forced his voice to be even and polite. “Professor, Mr Shacklebolt, Sir, good morning. Granger, sorry to intrude. Cousin,” he bowed slightly towards Tonks.
Hermione blinked slowly. “Harry, have you Imperiused him?” she asked quietly.
Harry sat beside her, nudging Draco to the chair next to him. “I’m too tired for the long version. The short one is this: Dumbledore was protecting Malfoy. We already guessed that from what happened the night he died.” Draco was amazed that Harry could get that sentence out without choking, he knew he could not have. “I’ve seen papers that confirm it; they’re definitely Dumbledore’s, and what’s more, they were to Snape. He trusted him.”
“We all did, we were wrong, Harry,” Kingsley spoke gently.
“Yet he risked his own life for us this morning,” Harry countered.
“You said Malfoy …” Ron began, but stopped when Harry held up his hand.
“Malfoy helped me lay a trap for Snape. He did it of his own free will. He’s not working for Voldemort. He only cares that his parents are protected.” Harry exchanged a quick glance with Draco, who nodded, the essentials were correct. “When we caught Snape, he warned us that he was under surveillance. Sure enough, Lestrange and Amycus Carrow appeared. If it hadn’t been for Draco and Snape, I’d be dead.”
“Are you sure?” Remus’s frown was sharp. “I don’t mean to be rude, Mr Malfoy, but you seemed quite committed to the Dark Lord’s ideals the last time I saw you. It seems unlikely that you’d undergo an epiphany just as it looks as though we might be about to start properly losing this war.”
Draco tried to keep his voice level. “You hate him because he tries to kill you. Makes perfect sense. Now imagine my position. He is more than happy to have me killed to serve his purposes. And one of those purposes is teaching my father a lesson. I may not like you people, I may not approve of most of you, but I am forced to admit that the enslavement of the wizarding population of Britain is a worse fate than filling it with Muggle-borns and having the Ministry kowtow to the Muggle world.”
Lupin gave him a long look. He came to a decision. “I believe you. Well spoken. May I ask one thing?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Is it Kingsley who’s the one that you approve of?”
Draco wasn’t able to stop himself from smiling. The tension in the room decreased slightly. Remus turned to Harry. “In what manners do Marauders swear, Harry?” he asked.
“Solemnly,” Harry answered.
“Just checking.” They smiled at each other, then Lupin frowned again. “You look pale.”
“He was injured,” Draco spoke quickly before Harry could brush attention aside. “A spell rebounded. He was knocked cold, and lost blood from a head wound. Professor Snape cleaned him up, but he’s still weak.”
Draco was all but pushed aside as the members of the Order fussed over Harry, who was ushered to the sofa, covered with a blanket and had tea pressed into his hand. He glared at Draco, who wasn’t able to hold back a smile of amusement.
“Could have mentioned that when you got here,” Ron muttered darkly at him.
“In the five seconds between you all but pulling a wand on me and then interrogating me?”
“Shut up, Malfoy. I’m more than happy to pull that wand.”
Draco kept his hands palms-down on the table. “I’m here because Potter told me to come. I’ll go where he tells me to go. I’m not here to cause you problems and I’m not here to get in your way. I don’t like you, but I’m the interloper in this room and I’ll remember my manners.”
“Ron,” Hermione appeared beside him. “Leave him. There are more important things to do.”
Draco’s lips tightened. He couldn’t decide which was more galling: to have Granger defuse the situation or the patronising tone in which she did it. The two Gryffindors walked through the other door, off to other parts of the house. Now Draco’s cousin came and sat beside him, looking at him intently.
“You look like your mum,” she announced.
“You do, too, a bit,” he conceded. She changed her hair colour from blonde to dark. “Now you look like your mum. And Aunt Bellatrix …” he added with some distaste.
“Nah, can’t get the crazy eyes right,” Tonks whispered off-handedly.
Draco was so surprised he laughed, causing the group over at the sofa to turn their way briefly. When he looked back to Tonks, she was looking at him seriously, though he saw the start of a smile in her eyes.
“When they were little, your mum and my mum loved each other a great deal. Then a stupid pile of bigotry tore them apart. They never got past that. Can you?”
Pain crossed her cousin’s face, and he tried to hide behind a shrug. “Don’t know. Suppose I’ll have to try, it’s that or slavery and death, and that’s not the most inviting option.”
Tonks nodded. “I married the werewolf,” she added.
Draco’s eyes grew wide, but he put a smile across his face. “Really? Congratulations. Good news. He was a competent teacher and well-respected by the faculty.”
Tonks patted his shoulder. “Good boy. Gold star for decorum.”
Harry seemed to have finally convinced Remus and Kingsley that he was not likely to die in the next ten minutes. “I just need to shower, and sleep for a while. And so does Malfoy. We can sort out what happens to him later. For now I’m vouching for him, and that will have to do.” He stood up and came over to Draco. “Come on, you can borrow some of my kit until we can work out if it’s safe to pick up yours.”
“I’m a foot taller than you,” Malfoy protested.
“No, that was last year, now you’re about two inches taller,” he was smiling in a way that made Draco uncomfortably familiar with why he should know just how tall Harry was now.
“Fine, let’s go.” It seemed safest to get away from company, he could feel a blush beginning its way up his neck.
Harry led the way through the house and up an ornately carved staircase. Harry’s room was on the south side, it was large, and Draco stopped in the doorway when he saw the huge bed that dominated it. He shut the door behind himself and walked in before speaking, careful not to be overheard. “Listen,” he began. “I’m still surprisingly good about last night and all, but if you’re thinking …”
Harry pointed past the main bed to where a smaller trundle was tucked against the windowseat. “You can have the main bed. I’ll clear out one of the parlours and move in there as soon as there’s time, but for now you’ll have to share.”
“That’s okay ...” Draco sat on the edge of the bed. “Thanks.”
“Do you want first shower?” Harry tossed a towel at him and rummaged through the clean clothes piled up on the windowseat until he found pants, reasonably good jeans and a new black shirt that he sent after the towel.
Draco picked up the shirt. “This hasn’t been worn,” he commented.
“It’s new, for my birthday last week,” Harry admitted. “Probably got the longest arms of all mine.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Harry smiled. “I’m really not used to hearing you say that.”
“What?”
“Thanks. I keep waiting for you to say Po-tter in that way of yours.”
“I never said it like that.
Harry snorted. “At least once a day at school. I was actually impressed at how you could leave all the unspoken swearwords so audible.” He sat on his bed with his legs crossed, a wry smile firmly in place.
“Family gift.”
“Remember the first day of school?” Harry asked suddenly.
“Which bit?”
“On the train, you came and introduced yourself, and I told you to piss off.”
“Ah, yeah … I seem to recall that I was something of a prat about Weasley.”
“Absolutely.” They exchanged embarrassed smiles. “I’ve been thinking, so much of what’s wrong at the moment is because everyone acts like idiot 11 year olds. We take the same sides our friends take. Or our parents took. And we’re not thinking. The Death Eaters have moved into the Ministry and they’re gaining power, and if people stopped to look at the last raft of legislation they’d realise that it’s been designed to make it easier for Death Eaters to go about undetected while restricting everyone else. But it’s the government, so everyone’s accepting it as what needs to be done.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Draco confessed.
“Sorry, I keep forgetting you’ve been out of the world these last few months. The Ministry’s declared that all non-human magical creatures must be registered and tagged. House-elves, giants, centaurs … goblins have an exemption at the moment because even the Ministry won’t go up against Gringotts, but let’s see how long that lasts.”
Draco whistled low. “Most of the house-elves will be OK, they’d see it as part of their duty to their families. But the centaurs … and who the hell thinks they can control the giants?”
“I don’t think it’s designed as a control,” Harry admitted. “I think it’s simply a way of making it seem as though something’s being done, while wasting time and attention away from the real problem. Meanwhile, Umbridge isn’t the only Death Eater who’s climbing the ranks in the Ministry.”
Draco looked at him with surprise. “She’s not a Death Eater.”
Harry looked doubtful. He held up his hand, where faint traces of scars could be seen. “She tortures students, and sucks the joy out of anything she can. You sure?”
Draco nodded. “She’s not, Dad even joked about her once. She’s something viler, she came up with all her beliefs on her own. At least my father can claim fear of the Dark Lord, or devotion, or whatever it is that keeps him bound to him …” he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.
Harry frowned. It was hard to believe that all of Dolores Umbridge’s viciousness had been casual. In some ways, it was worse. And that she could thrive in the current world was worst of all. It took him a moment to catch up with what Draco had actually said. “Hey,” he waited until Draco looked over at him. “Your mum loves you. I’ve seen her. She looks at you as though you’re the best thing she’s ever done. That’s something.”
Draco stood up with his towel and clothes and walked quickly towards the bathroom. But Harry still heard the quiet “Thanks.”
“Spare toothbrush in the cupboard,” Harry called after him. “And don’t be long.”
VIII
The sound of the old water pipes were a dead giveaway, so Harry wasn’t surprised when Hermione stuck her head in his door a few minutes later. “Can we talk?” she asked, looking towards the bathroom door.
Harry beckoned her in. “Should be at least five minutes,” he smiled.
She sat on the trundle beside him. “Draco Malfoy. I can’t work out if you’ve gone mad or are aiming for sainthood.”
Harry laughed. “Neither,” he assured her. “Dumbledore always told me that I had terrible prejudices about people. I’m trying to right some of that.”
She grinned. “That’s our Harry, no half measures. Start with one of the big three.”
He elbowed her genially. “He’s got just as many problems as we do at the moment.”
“He let Death Eaters into the school, Harry,” she reminded him. “He put all our friends, all the students, in danger.”
“Yeah …” Harry rubbed his forehead above his glasses. “I know. I know what he’s done, but the thing is, I think he knows it, too. You weren’t there, Hermione, you didn’t see the look on his face when Snape … when Dumbledore …” Harry swallowed. “It’s not so hard to believe if you just look at it all through his eyes. Voldemort used him as a pawn, and held the lives of his parents over his head to make sure he did as he was told. Dumbledore told him we could protect them, Snape seems to be protecting <i>him</i>, where else can he go? Even if you don’t believe his reasons, simple survival is enough to make him turn to us.”
“Who cares what he wants?” Hermione was implacable. “Send him back to Hogwarts next month, he can take his chances there.”
Harry smiled. “You hate him and you’re still not suggesting we throw him to the wolves.”
She screwed up her mouth. “Too bloody Gryffindor. That’s what they’ll say about us when he kills us in our beds.”
He patted her hand. “Thank goodness they had the brains to hold onto the boy who knows the names of all the Death Eaters. That’s what they’ll say.”
Hermione laughed outright at that. “They’ll never accuse you of brains, Harry,” she ruffled his hair. “Not after this. Clean yourself up, get some sleep. Tonks is brewing you up a tonic downstairs and you want to be asleep before she tries to force it on you.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Harry walked her to the door, brushing his hair back down with his fingers. “Just … see if you can convince Ron to give Malfoy a few days. He had plenty of opportunities to kill me in the last 24 hours, and he … he’s not the prat I thought he was.”
Hermione nodded, smiling. “I’ll try,” she promised.
It wasn’t till Harry had closed the door again that he realised the water had stopped. Draco was watching him from the bathroom door, dressed in Harry’s bathrobe. “Not a prat,” a smile played around the corner of his mouth. “I can live with that.” He sauntered over to the bed, carrying the jeans and shirt Harry had loaned him. He draped them neatly over the dressing chair, then turned back to Harry, who seemed to still be looking for something to say.
“It’s a nice house,” Draco complimented. “These old Georgians had a good sense of light. Whose is it?”
“Tonks’s dad’s,” Harry replied, glad for the diversion. “Apparently his parents had money, but he and Tonks’s mum wanted to make their own way. They rented it out to Muggles after his parents died, the last tenants left in March, and Tonks asked him to keep it handy in case the Order needed it. Since Snape knew all about our old location, this seemed a good alternative.”
Draco looked thoughtful. “I never thought of Ted Tonks as having money. He always seemed rough and common. I though that was what Aunt Andromeda fancied.”
Harry tried very hard to ignore the exaggerated innocence with which Draco said rough and fancied. “His parents owned the third-largest grocery chain in Britain. His little sister’s the CEO now, worth a fortune.”
“Right,” Draco nodded, grinning.
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
“My bathrobe doesn’t fit you very well, it’s too small for me,” Harry couldn’t help grinning, too.
“I never took you for being such a perve, Potter,” Draco shook his head sadly. “All these years you pissed me off with your moralising, and I missed the whole kinky subtext.”
“I’m ignoring you,” Harry announced, as he walked past and picked up pants and pyjamas. He threw a T-shirt in Draco’s direction. “No spare PJs, that’ll have to do.”
“I was quick, there’s loads of hot water left,” Draco called after him, laughing out loud when Harry rewarded him with a rude hand gesture as he closed the bathroom door.
On the inside of the door, Harry leaned his head against the cool oak. He considered knocking it a few times, but decided in favour of subtlety; for at least once in this 24 hours. “Yeah, sorry, Hermione,” he muttered to himself. “Decided not to capture Snape, even though I still have no idea what he’s up to and then thought it would be a good idea to shag Malfoy while I was at it. High tension, fear of imminent death, you know how these things happen.”
He stepped out of his clothes and into the tall enamelled bath, turning on the brass shower handles. Once the water was running, he answered himself in a higher voice. “That’s fine, Harry, but are you quite sure it’s not the muscled chest and lean flanks that really caught your attention.”
Harry reached over and turned the hot tap off, then turned his face up into the cold water before whispering to himself in his own voice. “No, I’m really not sure at all.”
When he walked back into the bedroom a few minutes later, he expected to find Draco half asleep, but he was sitting up under his sheets, reading one of Harry’s Quidditch magazines. The T-shirt Harry had given him was carefully arranged on top of the bathrobe on the dressing chair, with Draco’s pants folded beside it.
Harry raised his towel to dry his hair and hide the view as he walked back to his own bed.
“Astonishing,” Draco drawled.
“What’s that?” Harry asked, twitching the curtains closed and climbing into bed.
Draco dropped the magazine onto a side table rather than light a lamp or wand to read by. “Apparently Viktor Krum is now the highest-paid player in any league. Granger should have paid him more attention.”
Harry chuckled. “Nah, she’d already made up her mind about Ron by then.”
Harry propped his glasses on the edge of the windowseat, closed his eyes and dropped firmly against his pillow.
Draco did not. There was enough light still to see his roommate’s pale face. He was pleased to note that it was a singularly attractive face. Apparently his taste remained intact no matter what happened to his common sense.
“Harry …” he was pleased to see Potter’s eyes snap open. “Last night …”
“Um, yeah …”
“We …”
“Yeah …”
“… it was good.”
“It was amazing.”
Draco smiled. “I had no idea you were …”
“Me either.” Harry sat up at that and put his glasses back on so he could look at him. “Don’t think I am … I never … before … but you kissed me and it just felt, tasted …”
“Yeah …” Draco tucked up his knees.
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “So, you?”
Draco waved his hand nonchalantly, “Oh, man of the world, no time for constraints when there’s amusement to be had.”
“Oh.”
Knowing he’d live to regret it, Draco reached out to the length of his arm and touched Harry’s cheek. “I’m lying. I told you last night. First time.”
Harry squeezed his hand fleetingly before it was withdrawn. He was smiling, and Draco forced himself to stay in his own bed. “You’ve got natural talent,” Harry whispered.
“You really have to stop talking now,” Draco said quickly. He could see Harry’s smile become a grin.
“G’night, or good morning, really.” Harry took of his glasses and rolled to one side, sheets drawn up around his neck.
“Get some sleep.” Draco lay back, fairly sure that he wouldn’t be able to follow his own advice for some time yet.
IX
Draco woke at the first rap on the door, and reached automatically for his wand. Before his hand made it to the table, clearly visible now in the midday light, a pyjama-clad figure had leapt across him, one hand shoving glasses into place, the other holding his wand like a weapon.
Harry positioned himself between the door and the bed, and without looking back made a hand gesture for Draco to stay down. “Who’s there?” he called.
“Me,” answered Tonks’s unmistakeable voice. “And I’m sorry to wake you, but we need you out here.”
Harry opened the door carefully, then let in a red-haired Tonks, who affected not to notice her cousin dressing under his bedcovers. “Hedwig’s back, she has a message for you from the Minister. Don’t be angry, but I opened it, I thought I might be able to let you sleep a while yet. No such luck, Scrimgeour has sent for you, apparently he has some of your property.”
Harry was baffled. “I don’t see how.”
“It could be a trap,” Tonks shrugged, “But as far as we know the top ranks of the Ministry are still uncompromised. Draco, do you know any different?”
“Minister’s untouched. Dawlish is Imperiused, and there’s Runcorn, but you know he’s a prick. That’s it as far as I know.”
Tonks looked at him with surprise, “I thought Umbridge …”
Draco shook his head. “Everyone thinks that, but she’s not one of ours.”
Tonks and Harry frowned at him.
Draco blushed red. “Look, it’s going to take me more than one day to get over my entire upbringing, if that’s all right with the two of you. And if it’s not, then you may as well dump me somewhere out of the way now and I’ll keep quiet so long as you can guarantee my mother is safe.”
“I want to believe you,” Tonks assured him.
“But …” Draco drawled resignedly.
“But I do.” Harry’s voice was decisive. “Because again you asked that we keep your mother safe, not you.”
“Yeah, well, took that as read, really,” Draco joked weakly. Almost unwillingly he added, “Are you sure? Are you sure that you trust me and that you’re not acting solely on … on the fact that Dumbledore had faith in me?”
Harry heard the unspoken words. “You put your life on the line for mine this morning.”
“But I’d only actually agreed to help you on a task that seemed safe. Carrow and Aunt Bellatrix were as much a surprise to me as you, I was fighting for myself, too.”
“You could have left me there bleeding and gone off with Snape.”
Draco sighed. “You are staking a lot on trusting me, I just want you to think it through. Don’t take this badly, Potter, but you’ve always been a bit of an idiot, and this time you can’t afford to let your loyalties or prejudices get in the way.”
Harry bit his tongue.
Tonks looked between the two young men, certain she was missing something, but not what that was. “I can keep an eye on him while you’re at the Ministry,” she offered.
“Thanks,” Harry jumped at the resolution, temporary as it may be. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can be.”
“Ron and Hermione are waiting at the front door for you.” At his look of surprise, Tonks realised that she hadn’t told Harry everything. “The letter was addressed to the three of you; I told them before I came and woke you. One suggestion?”
“Yeah?”
“Change out of your pyjamas.” She grinned cheekily. “I’ll wait out here. Draco, do you want lunch, or would you rather help me with some research?”
“Um, lunch then research?”
Tonks shut the door, nodding.
Harry stepped as close to Draco as he dared before speaking in a whisper. “What’s wrong with you?”
Draco concentrated on buttoning up his shirt rather than looking up. “I meant what I said about not wanting you-know-who to win, but you can’t just take it on face value that I’m no danger to you now.”
Harry was confused. “Are you? Because aside from being one hell of a distraction, the last thing you’re making me feel right now is afraid.”
Draco looked up at that, exasperation clear on his face. “Stop thinking like the good guys. If I was trying to get you to trust me, if I was trying to get into your secrets, how would I act?”
Harry had no idea how to say that pretty much any method other than seduction would have been a better actual plan if Draco had been a spy, so he settled for the more logical flaw in the argument. “But you had no idea I would appear yesterday.”
“I know!” Draco was finding it hard to keep to a whisper. “Everything that I’ve done and said since then has been true, but how do you know that? You’re so free and easy with your trust when you’re the last person in Britain who can afford to be.”
Harry rolled his eyes, went over to his bed and began changing. He half-understood, yet struggled to find the words that would explain why what Draco was saying was not something he could agree with. He had his jeans, socks and trainers on before he could begin to make it clear.
“I’m not a Slytherin,” he began.
“We’re not at school.”
“Yeah, I know, the point is that I’m not a Slytherin because I chose not to be. I chose the house where stupid and impetuous actions usually come out as brave deeds. And sometimes that’s worked, and sometimes that’s got people I loved killed.” Harry swallowed before going on. “The thing is, I don’t want to sit down and puzzle through whether or not I can trust you. I want to look into your eyes and see what’s there. And there’s anger and resentment and a whole lot of other things I can’t name, but you’re not evil, Draco. You’ve still got your soul, even if it’s a bit grubby. You care about your mother, you fought for me, hell, you were even nice to Moaning Myrtle. And if that makes me an idiot, then just kill me quickly in my sleep; you should be able to make an easy getaway down the front of the house.” Harry dropped a jersey over his head as he finished speaking, stuffed his wand in his pocket, and began to walk across the room.
Draco caught his arm as he passed. “I think I’m clear on about one tenth of that,” he confessed. “All I’m saying is be careful.”
Harry smiled. “I will be. Gotta go, see the Minister, convince your mum to let us protect her, save the wizarding world from destruction.”
“Harry?” Draco’s voice was low.
“Yes?” Harry looked into his grey eyes.
“Can you bring back some crisps and chocolate frogs?”
Tonks was surprised to see the two boys laughing as they came out to meet her. Further investigation, she decided. Further investigation. Their good humour was infectious, and she was grateful for it, both for the effect it was having on her and the effect it was having on Harry.
Draco followed her out to the kitchen, leaving Harry to Ron and Hermione at the bottom of the stairs. He was chatting amiably. Tonks was strangely pleased when Draco called her cousin. A sad corner of her mind pointed out how much she’d missed that word since Sirius had died.
“And I hate to confess it, but I have learned how to make toast and eggs. But if you tell anyone I’ll deny it and hex your toenails to develop unpleasant fungi,” he concluded.
Tonks realised that she’d missed most of what he’d said, and Draco realised it too, a beat behind her.
“Sorry, clearly you’ve got bigger things on your mind, I’ll make us eggs and toast.” His voice took on distance again, as he had sounded when talking to Ron and Hermione earlier in the day.
Tonks wasn’t having that. “I’ve been thinking about what I missed out on with you,” she told him. “I could have had the best fun teaching you all sorts of bad behaviour to appal your parents. You’re the only little cousin I have.”
She became aware he was no longer a step behind her. “Draco?” she looked back at him.
His face was stuck between a smile and a frown. “My parents would have hated that,” he managed after a moment.
She came back to him and took his hand. “I know,” she squeezed. “It would have been brilliant.”
X
Draco and Tonks would not have admitted it, but their next three hours were more simply entertaining than any others they had passed this last year. To begin with, they were both useless at cooking spells, and even worse at actual cooking. Draco was true to his word about the toast, but while he could boil eggs, he couldn’t tell in advance what state they’d be when they came out of the shell. If anything, Tonks was worse, since at least Draco’s didn’t explode.
“And then of course, Mother wanted to have The Talk with me before the wedding,” she said.
Draco nodded sincerely, “Because I can tell that you were a blushing virgin.”
“Absolutely!” Tonks changed her hair colour to white and encouraged it to form what Draco realised was a halo. “The twist to this conversation was that she wanted to know what Remus was like at his ‘special time’ of the month.”
Draco gaped in horror.
“So I told her no worse than me …”
Draco hid behind his hands and pantomimed imminent death. Then he peered out with a sly smile. “It could have been worse,” he began.
“Oh yes?” Tonks was sceptical.
“She could have asked what sort of restraints you’d prefer.”
Tonks’s yells of mock horror were so loud that Kingsley and Remus both ran into the kitchen with wands drawn.
“Sorry,” Tonks apologised quickly. “Draco was telling me how Death Eaters play house. Apparently, his Mum and Dad …” she trailed off giggling at the look of horror on all three male faces.
“We were catching up with family news, it got a bit silly,” Draco offered.
Lupin smiled with tired relief. “Good. That’s good, Malfoy, Dora. Family is important, even if this war has us all on … edge.”
“On different sides,” Draco supplied the unspoken ending to Lupin’s sentence.
Remus’s smile turned sad. “Yes, Draco. On different sides. Can you live with that? Can you stand by your choice when your father has made his?”
“Yes.”
“And if your mother stands with him?”
Draco looked lost for a moment. “She won’t,” he replied quietly. “Not now. Not now she’s seen what that means.”
Tonks dropped a hand gently to his shoulder. “No mother would risk her son if she had a choice,” she assured him. “We’re giving her a choice, just as you and Harry chose yesterday.”
Draco looked at her sharply, but she was all softness. “To fight on the same side for once?” he guessed. “Yes. That’s right. Because I can go back to hating him later once the Dark Lord is out of the way.”
“You hate Harry Potter?” Kingsley was surprised. “Why?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Habit, sir. We’re in different houses and he repeatedly beats me at Quidditch.”
Kingsley’s laugh was rich and deep. “I keep forgetting that you’re barely more than children.”
Draco’s look of affront was replaced by a scowl so deep that Tonks couldn’t help but shift her face to match it. Which would have been fine if Remus hadn’t leaned over to kiss her at that exact moment. It wasn’t just Kingsley who laughed at that.
Shaking his head in a bid to eradicate that last memory, Remus offered to take over the cooking. Draco pitched in with toast and for the next while the four of them enjoyed an unexpectedly relaxed lunch.
Afterwards, Tonks sent Remus and Kingsley back to whatever work had been occupying them and led Draco back into the breakfast room, where the table was now covered with books and notes. She was researching ward breaking, and Draco was embarrassed to admit he had some experience.
Draco began to believe that his parents’ views on bloodlines had some validity after all. Everything was easy with Tonks. They even worked well together, with his Slytherin quickness providing a foil for her Hufflepuff doggedness. When he teased her on her house, she looked at him with grand pity. “Poor lad, so burdened by his years at school that he never moved past them into an actual life.”
“Oi!” Draco grimaced. “Some of us are theoretically still at school. Besides,” his shoulders slumped. “Some of it was a burden.”
Tonks inwardly cursed her clumsiness. “Sorry, Draco, I forgot for a moment.”
Malfoy’s smile wasn’t quite as genuine as he’d aimed for. “Wish I could.”
She patted his hand, and he didn’t shake her off. “I’m only just getting used to the fact that I’m a real grown-up with a real job, and all of a sudden I’m married and we’re at war and we’re hiding out with three kids who should be on their summer holidays. Well, four now. And any day, any day all of this waiting and planning could be over and the battle could erupt around us.”
Draco turned his hand over and held Tonks’s. She squeezed his again. “Listen to me. It’s not as though any of you have been having any sort of holiday. You least of all. Harry didn’t say, but you looked as though you’d been through hell when you showed up this morning.”
“Didn’t get much sleep …” Draco was terrified that he might begin blushing. “For about a year,” he added, moving to safer territory.
Tonks looked at him with understanding. “Harry told us about the Tower,” she confided.
Now he did blush, but it was with shame rather than embarrassment. “I didn’t think … I didn’t think …” he muttered.
“Poor little coz,” Tonks put her arm around his shoulders. “It’s not a fair thing. You’re meant to be stupid when you’re sixteen. You’re meant to shag inappropriate people and get drunk in Hogsmeade and fail at least one Charms assignment. Adults aren’t meant to come along and take advantage of all that adolescent stupidity and tangle you up in their viciousness.” She was angry for him.
Draco looked at her with awe. “You mean all of that?”
“Of course,” Tonks smiled. “That’s the worst part about this stupid bloody war. It’s taken away all of our normal. People are all acting like stupid sixteen year olds. I don’t think it’s fair that we judge the ones who are.”
“I’m seventeen,” he corrected her.
She ruffled his hair maternally. “Same thing. You don’t even begin to get smart till about 23. But yeah, I remember last time, even though I was only little. Everything was crazy because no one knew they’d be alive tomorrow. In some ways it was exhilarating, in others it was terrifying.” She patted his hair back into place and let him go. “Harry told us you wouldn’t kill Dumbledore, that’s the bit that I’m going to think of when I think of what you’ve done this last year. And I can’t promise that everyone else will be able to do the same …” she smiled gently at the face he pulled. “… especially Ron, it appears, but I’m happy you’re here. And I hope that I get to know you before you leave.”
“Me, too,” Draco agreed fervently. “Talking to you has been better than you’ll ever know.”
Tonks beamed and her hair turned a celebratory orange. “That is because I am terribly good at being a grown up,” she announced.
“Indeed!” Draco agreed. “In fact when I return to Hogwarts at some point in the future I will petition the teaching staff to have you brought in as a regular tutor in how to overcome seven years of woefully inadequate real-life training.”
Tonks laughed. “With my husband covering the lessons in cooking and cleaning.”
“But you will be our favourite.”
“Because, as your cousin, I will feel obliged to mark you as Outstanding.”
“And because, as my cousin, you look immensely more attractive than anyone else on the teaching staff.”
Tonks pushed all Draco’s hair forward over his eyes. “Teenagers!” They settled back to the books.
Part three
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 11:56 am (UTC)i've friended you btw so i can keep up on your writing.
and would also like to note i live in wellington, nz and am terribly put out you didn't visit me when you were here, despite the fact that you don't know me. heee!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 01:05 pm (UTC)I do have another chapter of this mostly written, but it has been put to one side while HP Next Gen eats my brain (probably another week).
I LOVE Wellington. I pop over quite a bit, actually. After living in Sydney for years I finally started going to New Zealand in 04 and have now been back many many times. There's a bit of work to do there, but it's mainly for pleasure. Your botanic gardens are one of my favourite places on Earth, and the art bridge down near Te Papa and the Museum of Wellington City and Sea sings to me (although that could just be the gales blowing through the structure ...)
Nice to be friended by you! I'll go and chase my partner off the good computer so that I can get back to writing (I'm on the spare G4 with OS9, to think I once thought this was high tech and fast!)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-26 12:39 am (UTC)sweet! am rather fond of wellington myself (and te papa, have just arranged to go two lectures on fashion there as well as a tea with the canadian high commissioner as a fund raiser for them. they actually get a good deal of my money throughout the year, but i get a lot of nice things in return so it all comes out fair in the end). maybe we can have tea next time you're in town.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-25 04:10 pm (UTC)I really like this story a lot - printed it and read it on the beach this week-end, so that's why I'm only commenting on it now. I'm looking forward to the next chapter (after Sins of the Fathers that is ;-)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 09:11 am (UTC)I will update this v soon, promise!
*In actual fact, the drug conversations from my parents were more along the lines of "You should only buy from pharmacology students or medical doctors, because then you know your dosages." But they were rich hippies and I had already turned into the "Seriously, do you think I am ever taking the same drugs that you two did?" pure living child of sober bad behaviour that I still am ...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 01:05 pm (UTC)Besides, I want to see how my story ends!!! :)
no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 01:25 pm (UTC)Oh No...
Date: 2007-10-15 07:28 pm (UTC)Re: Oh No...
Date: 2007-10-16 08:49 am (UTC)I Love it and want more
Date: 2007-11-24 06:04 pm (UTC)Re: I Love it and want more
Date: 2007-11-25 08:11 am (UTC)There is also a next-gen AS/S fic that you should be able to find by clicking on the fic tag that I finally remembered to put in above, and it has a HP/DM sequel that is about half-way done and should have a rush towards the end now that life is looking a bit less frantic. Plus there are many many more chapters of this one, many sketched, one or two even mostly written ... I'm sorry I'm so slow! (rushes off to write some more ...)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 05:38 am (UTC)Peace,
Bubba