Chapter Text
It was autumn when I found myself at the end of the road.
The closed gates of Hogwarts loomed a few yards ahead of where I stood shivering in the twilight. For some time, I had been staring at my bare hands and the clouds of mist that formed and dissipated with my every breath. These were to be my final memories of my human self. I had made my decision.
I’m still trying, Mother. I haven’t given up, I promise.
Despite losing everything after the war, I had soldiered on, fueled by a few small embers of youthful optimism. I’d believed that it was possible to make amends for the things I had done; I’d thought that I could claw my way back into respectability. At eighteen, the path immediately before me had looked bleak, but surely it would grow easier in time, wouldn’t it?
Three and a half years were enough to convince me that I was a fucking fool.
It was time to disappear, time to let the tangled depths of the Forbidden Forest swallow me whole. I closed my eyes and willed my body to shift, shrinking and darkening, as I had taught myself to do when wearing my own shape had become unbearable. When I had achieved the transformation for the first time after long months of study, I’d been pleased with what I’d seen in the dingy, spotted mirror of my room: a carrion crow, clever and nimble and utterly unremarkable. The seed of a plan was sown that day, and now it was time to reap it.
With a leap, I stretched my wings and beat into the air until I was above the treetops. The sky was blanketed with heavy clouds from horizon to horizon; it would be a dark night. I quickened my pace so that I could find a place to sleep far within the forest. The brisk air rushing over my feathers was exhilarating—a baptism that washed away the last traces of the past. I flew until I spotted a small clearing with my keen eyes and circled downward.
The rooks spotted me before my feet touched the ground.
Their harsh cries erupted all around me. I wheeled to ascend back to the darkening patch of open sky above, but the rooks perched in the trees began to dive towards me. I swerved away to fly between the tree trunks. The mob pursued me, still screaming in fury. Even without comprehending their calls, I understood that I had intruded on their roosting place.
In the fading light, I swerved between the gnarled trunks of the oaks and broken lower boughs of the pines which protruded like daggers. The crow instincts that I had acquired with this form told me that if the rooks caught me, I’d be lucky to escape with nothing worse than the loss of a few feathers. More likely, they would kill me.
I saw a brighter place ahead of me, another clearing. The large, dark shapes gathered there startled me at first, until I recognised them as a small herd of Thestrals. They were clustered closely together with their leathery wings tucked against their bodies. The rooks were almost upon me now, and my plan to escape into the open sky seemed too risky. Instead, I dove toward the herd, pulled in my wings at the last moment, and landed beneath them.
Careful not to get trod on, I hopped toward the middle of the group. Thankfully, the Thestrals didn’t seem perturbed by my presence among their slender legs. The rooks, however, were still seeking me. One landed beside the herd and screeched in triumph when it saw me.
“Leave him be.”
It was a man’s voice, sharp and commanding. The rooks immediately ceased their calls.
“Go on. He’s no threat to you. Go.”
I watched the rook on the ground take off, its wings rustling the dead leaves on the ground. The Thestrals scattered slowly and in unison, as if they had collectively decided to do so. Fear took hold of me again and told me to flee while I had the chance, but the sight of the man standing near the edge of the clearing immobilised me.
He barely looked like a man at all.
I cocked my head, trying to see him more clearly in the growing gloom. His figure was unmistakably that of a human, yet it also seemed like a silhouette—dark in form, yet faintly illuminated from behind. Or was he glowing from within, like a burning log? My crow’s mind could make no sense of it. As he stepped closer, I felt the magic pouring off of him, thick and molten. I flapped my wings once, but only managed to hop backwards a bit, as if I was caught in his gravity like a moon.
“Change back,” he said, and I again felt the authority in his voice as much as I heard it with my ears. “I know you’re not really a crow. Turn back, or I will force you to.”
I couldn’t disobey. If I’d been in my human form, I would have found it terrifying. It would have reminded me all too much of another man (if you could even call him that) whose orders I’d been taught to follow without hesitation. Yet the one before me now didn’t ooze the Dark Lord’s cruelty and malevolence; it felt like I was complying for my own good.
Perhaps that should have made it even more worrisome.
When I was back in my human form, I found myself facing away from him. With a sinking feeling, I realised that my plan had crumbled to dust in less than an hour, and now I was alone in the Forbidden Forest. I spun around to face the man behind me, reaching into my pocket for my wand.
It was Harry Potter.
I staggered back a step at the sight of him, and not because he still had the strange silhouette appearance that I had seen in my crow form. In fact, he looked much like he did when I last saw him, sitting in the Great Hall after the Battle of Hogwarts looking utterly exhausted and shattered.
No, my shock came from seeing him at all. Potter had not been spotted in public since that day. Despite the fact that his friends had told the papers that he was well and staying out of the spotlight, wild rumours had been circulating about him. He’d broken down from the strain of the war. He was working undercover for the Aurors. He was dead.
Had Potter been here, in the Forbidden Forest, for the past three years? Had he never left Hogwarts after the battle?
He looked as surprised to see me as I did him—surprised and more than a little displeased.
“Malfoy. What the fuck are you doing here? Tell me now,” he added when I hesitated.
Seeing him through human eyes eliminated the force of his command, I noticed. I raised my chin in defiance. There was no reason for me to trust him. This plan I had concocted was my last hope, and I wasn’t about to let him interfere with it.
“I’m not doing any harm,” I hedged. “The forest is much more of a danger to me than I am to it. I just want to stay here tonight.”
“You should leave now, before it gets dark. The rooks will come back for you as soon as I leave.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Maybe I’ll take my chances.” I turned away and began walking toward the edge of the clearing.
“Maybe I’ll take you to the Headmistress and see how she feels about you trespassing here. I’m sure the Aurors would be happy to take you off her hands after that.”
I froze, fear gripping me like talons. After a moment of panicked calculation, I decided that I would need to explain myself after all, just enough to convince Potter to leave me alone. I pivoted to face him.
“Look, I don’t have anywhere else to go, Potter. I’ll stay away from the rooks. I’ll stay away from the school. I ran out of money for a room and I knew I’d be better off here than sleeping rough somewhere.”
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“God, Malfoy, you’re pathetic if you think I believe you came all the way to Scotland for a place to sleep. No one would look twice at a crow anywhere outside Diagon or Hogsmeade, but you’re too much of a coward to be around Muggles, aren’t you?” Potter shook his head in disgust. “I’m going to take a guess and say you came to a place with no magical people because you aren’t registered as an Animagus.”
I stared at him blankly, startled that he’d seen through my story so quickly. “That’s none of your business,” I said.
“It is now. Where’s your mother?” Potter demanded.
I recoiled, believing for a moment that he was taunting me, but as the seconds dragged on while he waited for my answer, it occurred to me that he hadn’t heard.
Closing my eyes, I forced myself to tell him. “My mother took her own life. Almost two years ago.”
“Oh.” Potter released the word with a heavy gust of breath that seemed to leave him deflated. “I… I didn’t know.”
I nodded in acknowledgement. Was he really so cut off from the magical world that he hadn’t heard? It was on the front page of the Prophet, for fuck’s sake. I'd seen the headline and her picture with my own eyes—though only for as long as it took me to draw my wand and cast an Incendio at it.
Merlin, maybe Potter had been hiding in the Forbidden Forest all this time.
While we were staring at each other, at a momentary impasse, I looked him over. He certainly dressed the part, with sturdy boots and a thick coat. He didn’t seem to be too fussed about his grooming, either—hair shaggy around his face and jaw darkened by several days without a shaving charm.
I watched silently as Potter ran a hand over his mouth, seeming to struggle with something in his mind. Finally, he sighed in resignation and stepped toward me.
“I don’t have any Galleons to give you so you could get a place to stay for the night.”
“A hundred Galleons wouldn’t do me any good, Potter, if no one wants to give me a room.”
“Right. You can come home with me. Just until you figure something else out.” He held up his hands to stop me from interrupting. “I owe your mother for helping me during the battle. I owe her my life and I… can feel the magic of that debt weighing on me. Giving you a place to stay is the least I can do to repay her, I suppose.”
Potter had turned his head to look into the trees while he’d spoken of my mother, palm pressed to his chest and his face twisted with pain or grief. He held out his arm to me.
I kept my hands at my sides. “How do I know you aren’t taking me to the Aurors?”
“I’m not. Would you rather I leave you for the rooks to find? I think you know there are much worse things here, too.”
I almost argued that I’d be safe from those things in the upper branches of a tree, but I decided that if Potter was really offering me shelter, I’d be a fool to turn it down.
“Where are we going?” I asked as I linked elbows with him.
“You’ll see,” Potter replied.
He spun us into the darkness.
***
Potter lived in a shed, it turned out.
“It’s not a shed, it’s a field barn,” he corrected me, releasing my arm and striding forward.
I hurried after him. “Living in a barn isn’t much of a step up from a shed.”
“It’s not a barn anymore, you pillock. I turned it into a house. And you’re welcome to sleep outside if it’s not grand enough for you,” Potter snapped.
I kept my mouth shut and looked around instead. The light was almost gone, but there was an unmistakable sense of emptiness around me. Treeless hills loomed over the house, and the only sounds to be heard were a stream flowing nearby and the last evening calls of some hidden birds. The house itself was not large, just a tall, sturdy rectangle of stone with a small lean-to on one side. There was no sign of habitation on the outside and no lights in the windows.
Potter led the way through the unpainted wooden door of the lean-to and shut it behind me with a bang. Without warning, my bicep was caught in his strong grip. His voice growled close to my ear in the darkness.
“It goes without saying that you’re not to tell anyone where or how I live, Malfoy.”
“Who the fuck would I tell?” I sneered, trying to pull my arm away. “It’s not like anyone would believe me if I did.”
That seemed to satisfy Potter enough to unhand me. A light above us switched on. We were in a small, windowless vestibule with a stone floor. Potter took off his boots and hung up his coat, then left through a door that was a step higher than the entry. I rushed to do the same and follow him.
The main room of the house wasn’t large, but it was open to the rafters on one side, making it seem bigger. There was a loft over the other half of the room, accessed by a steep set of stairs like you’d find on a ship. A kitchen of sorts was tucked beneath the loft, with an old range and some mismatched wooden cupboards. The only other furniture was a small table with two chairs and a ratty armchair, set in the corner near the range. The rest of the room had trunks and boxes piled around the edges, but was otherwise empty.
“Are you hungry, or did you manage to catch some mice or something before the rooks chased you?” Potter asked over his shoulder as he lit the range.
“I’m not hungry. Thank you.”
I didn’t know what to do with myself while he made his dinner, so I edged over to the armchair to be out of his way. He glanced at me now and then while he cooked, but ignored me completely once he sat down to eat his tin of Muggle soup right out of the saucepan. It was obvious, however, that he was agitated by my presence.
“Where is this?” I asked when he stood to take his pot to the sink.
“Yorkshire. And before you get any ideas, you won’t be able to Apparate back in once you leave. I’ve made it Unplottable and the wards are set so far from the house that you wouldn’t be able to see it even if you came back to the general area.”
“Do you think I was planning to come back for a visit sometime in the future?” I asked with a laugh.
“You might. And you might decide to bring someone with you. Someone from the Prophet,” Potter said, rounding on me.
I glared back at him. “I wouldn’t. You may have forgotten how much I owe you—more than you owed my mother—but I haven’t. I have no intention of running off and telling the wizarding world that I’ve found their elusive hero hiding in a barn. Salazar, please tell me that you put a bathroom in, at least.”
Potter pointed to a door on the same wall as the one to the vestibule. “Through there. I’m going to bed. Don’t poke around my stuff.”
I got out of the armchair to follow him toward the stairs. “Wait, where should I sleep?”
“On the floor, I guess. Or in the chair,” he shrugged, “though I should warn you it’s not very comfortable for sleeping in. Change back into a crow and perch somewhere. That’s what you were going to do tonight, anyway, right?”
He climbed to the loft, leaving me standing at the foot of the stairs. Away from the range, I was already starting to get cold. I went back to the armchair and pulled my knees up against my chest. Above my head, the floorboards creaked under Potter’s footsteps. I waited until he seemed to be in bed, then went to the bathroom.
Like the main room, it was quite spartan: a tiny space tucked under the sloping roof of the lean-to with a stone floor, but it was clean. I splashed some water on my face and found a towel to dry it off. There was no mirror above the sink.
The lights in the main room had extinguished themselves (or maybe Potter had put them out) while I was in the bathroom. I cast a Lumos to get back to the armchair, then sat in the dark for a time, asking myself if this was all a fucked-up dream.
Only this morning, I had got rid of my few remaining belongings—a couple of changes of clothing and some other worthless things—intending to live out my days as a crow. And at the end of the same day, I was in Harry Potter’s house, which barely had enough comforts and conveniences to merit the name. I had so many questions about why he was apparently living alone in Yorkshire that I forgot to think about my own situation until my numb fingers and toes brought me back to myself.
There didn’t seem to be anything at hand that I could Transfigure into a blanket, and Potter was right about the chair. My neck and back were already stiff. With nothing to cover myself and the fire in the range giving off very little heat anymore, I had no choice but to transform for the night. The back of the chair proved to be a comfortable spot to cling to. I ruffled my feathers a bit and tucked my black beak under my wing.
Thankfully, birds don’t dream.
***
The clatter of the range woke me. I blinked my eyes, feeling disorientated. In the periphery of my vision, I saw that strange light again that seemed to emanate from Potter. I felt his magic again, too, warmer than the heat thrown off by a red-hot stove. Rather than look at him directly, which was bloody disconcerting, I hopped to the floor and transformed back into my human form.
“Good morning,” I said, attempting to catch his eye.
Potter ignored me, so I went to the loo. When I returned, there was a pot of tea and two mugs on the table. It was as much of an invitation to breakfast as I was likely to get. I sat down and waited for Potter to join me. Five minutes later, he set a plate of scrambled eggs and a slice of buttered toast in front of me. I waited until he brought his own plate to the table to begin—however awkward this was, it wouldn’t hurt to display some manners.
“Do you have any milk?” I asked after pouring my tea.
Potter finally looked me in the eye, glaring balefully. “It’s not a fucking bed and breakfast, Malfoy. No, I don’t have milk.”
I murmured an apology, and the rest of the meal passed in complete silence. Potter kept his eyes on his plate while he bolted his food, then sprawled in the armchair with his eyes closed after he was done.
“Can I do the washing up for you?” I asked after carrying my dishes to the sink. The dirty saucepan from Potter’s soup last night was still sitting there, as were a few other sticky-looking dishes.
“No, I’ll do them,” Potter said, gripping the arms of the chair. “Can you just get the fuck out of my house, please?”
A cold wave of shock washed over me. I hadn’t expected him to send me on my way so soon.
“All right,” I said quietly.
“I don’t mean you can’t stay anymore,” Potter explained. He had opened his eyes, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “Can you go for a walk or something? I’m not used to having another person here, and it’s sort of weirding me out.”
I leaned against the sink with relief. “Oh, I see. Of course I can do that. Is there any particular direction I should go?”
“Just moorland in all directions,” Potter said. “Stay inside the wards—you’ll be able to see them faintly. I’d rather not have to come looking for you if you wander through them by accident and can’t get back in.”
With a nod that Potter probably didn’t notice, I found my shoes and coat and went outside, closing the front door behind me as quietly as I could. If I had ever tried to imagine how Potter was faring these days, it certainly wouldn’t have been like this—a contradictory tangle of irritability and awkwardness that could be knocked off kilter by having one houseguest for a night.
Well, perhaps it was the fact that the houseguest was me, specifically. I set off on my walk to give him some space.
The air was still wet with morning mist below the low clouds. The house sat on a hillside enclosed by a drystone wall. If it was once a meadow, it was now becoming overgrown with rough grasses and heather encroaching from the moor. Along the bottom of the hill, a narrow stream emerged from a dense grove of bare trees in one direction and twisted away out of sight in the other. On the far side of it, another hill rose, rocky and steep.
I decided to climb the hill on this side of the stream. I found a place where the wall had fallen, then trudged upwards until there was a clear view before me. Panting from the climb, I looked around.
There wasn’t much to see but stretches of dull-coloured moorland and the faint shapes of other hills in the haze. Whatever his reasons, Potter had chosen a damn bleak and lonely place to hole up. I couldn’t see another house, much less a village, from where I stood.
After a while, I grew restless and explored a bit more, keeping the wall in sight so I wouldn’t get lost. I wandered down to the stream next, but there wasn’t much to do there besides throw stones into the shallow water. Other than the curl of smoke drifting from the stove pipe, there were no traces of human activity to be seen outside. I wondered if Potter did anything besides eat and sleep here.
I didn’t return to the house until the middle of the afternoon, cold and exhausted from tramping around. Potter seemed to have gone back to bed, so I took the opportunity to do the same on the top of his armchair, as a crow again.
He seemed resigned to seeing me there when he came back to the kitchen to make dinner, but we didn’t speak beyond the few questions I ventured to ask about why he’d chosen to settle in this remote place, which he flatly refused to answer. He retreated upstairs again after dinner, leaving me to do the washing up and then curl up in the armchair until the fire in the range burned down again. The silence of the house and the empty hills outside felt deafening. I didn’t understand how Potter could live here alone and not go a bit mad.
I was almost relieved when I began to feel drowsy. I transformed again and welcomed the oblivion of sleep.
***
The next few days followed the same blueprint as the first one. After breakfast each morning, Potter gave me a pointed look that sent me towards the door. I spent cool, drizzly days under an Impervius Charm, roaming a little further afield as I got my bearings. When the sky began to grow dim or the rain too heavy, I returned to the house and kept as silent and inconspicuous as I could until Potter cooked dinner. There wasn’t any conversation, but he didn’t seem to be as irritated with my presence as he’d been the first day. I took it as a sign that I was tolerated for the time being, if not welcomed.
The most interesting discovery I made was on my third day, when I followed the stream into the trees and found a small herd of Thestrals milling around there. The mares and yearlings ignored me as I watched them from what I hoped was a safe distance, but the stallion immediately moved between me and his herd. I didn’t linger long. If he turned on me, I wouldn’t stand a chance, in either human or crow form.
I asked Potter about the Thestrals at dinner.
“The herds at Hogwarts had become so numerous that they were fighting over territory, sometimes brutally,” Potter explained. “After I bought this land, I got permission to bring a herd here as long as I convinced them to stay within my wards. Otherwise, I’d have to keep them Disillusioned to keep them out of sight of Muggles.”
“You… convinced them to stay here?” I asked. “How did you move them here in the first place?”
Potter shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They were happy to come here, when I asked. And they do as I tell them, now they’re here,” he said tersely.
Like the rooks did. I had more questions about that, but he was so tetchy when asked anything about himself, I didn’t dare.
As the days went by, I noticed that Potter seemed to have an uncanny connection with animals besides the Thestrals. There were a few ravens who liked to visit and perch atop Potter’s house, and arrived with an unholy racket that never failed to startle me. He rushed outside whenever he heard their croaking and always returned to the house with a pleased look, as if his favourite neighbours had stopped by for a chat.
He had no human visitors. I never saw an owl arrive, nor did Potter seem to have one of his own. There was no fireplace to connect to the Floo Network. The only time he left was to go buy food and supplies, and he locked me out of the house while he was gone.
It was all very strange and vaguely distressing to see him live like this.
***
Potter became indifferent to my presence after he’d had time to adjust. He still made it clear that he didn’t want me hanging around the house all day, but he was concerned enough about my safety to warn me to keep an eye out for falcons if I decided to transform—they were known to attack crows.
He didn’t ask me any questions about myself until my third week as his guest, when I decided to make myself useful around the house. It was the least I could do to repay his hospitality, debt or no debt to my mother. The sight of me doing menial work seemed to rouse his curiosity at last.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he demanded when he saw me clean the bathroom and cast laundering charms on his towels.
“I’ve been taking whatever jobs I could get for the past few years, Potter. Cleaning toilets was far from the most disgusting job I had, believe me. And despite what you think of me, I did try to find a job with Muggles, but I didn’t have the right documents.”
“You really took work like that? Wasn’t it—”
“Humiliating? Of course it was, at first. But it was better than letting Mother and myself starve.”
Potter narrowed his eyes. “And do you think you should be forgiven, Malfoy? Welcomed back into decent society now, just because you’ve suffered?”
I shook my head. My mother’s thin, tormented face rose before my eyes. I threw the towel I was holding on the floor and fled from the house, shifting shape and launching myself into the sky from the front step.
When I returned at dusk, shoulders aching from hours of flight, Potter appeared at the railing of the loft, as if he’d been listening for me. I ignored him and collapsed in the chair, but I couldn’t help trying to explain myself when he came downstairs.
“No, I don’t think anyone should forgive me—unless they want to. I apologised at my trial for the things I did, and I meant it. I truly meant it, Potter. Do you think it’s really too much to ask that someone take a chance on me, even one fucking person, so I can show I’ve changed?”
“What do you want them to do, exactly? Write a letter to the Prophet to tell the world you’re a better person now?”
“No, just a proper job, not whatever stupid tasks they need doing for a day or a week or a month! A way forward out of the fucking hole I fully acknowledge I dug for myself.”
“And you tried? Really tried?”
“Of course I did! I tried so many times that every magical establishment in London has threatened to hex me if I show my face there again.”
“You really don’t have anywhere else to go, if I tell you to leave.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, but I shook my head, nonetheless, too humiliated to speak.
“Honestly, Malfoy, if it weren’t for the debt I owe your mother, I’m not sure I could bring myself to care.”
Stung by his indifference, I fled to the bathroom and stayed there, huddled on the stone floor, until my body and mind were numb.
***
I was afraid Potter would tell me to leave in the morning, but he only seemed thoughtful, if distant. He spent more time outside after our row, warily ceding the house to me. It was the first time he’d left me alone inside, and his trust felt like a small gift.
I tried to keep busy with a few chores and the stack of books I’d found in the corner, but it didn’t feel right being in the house by myself. I usually became restless after an hour or so and went outside for a walk.
Once, I spotted Potter from a distance with the Thestrals while I walked along the stream. He was playing with two of the yearlings, letting them chase him around in an open area beneath the trees. It felt too close to spying on a private moment, something Potter wouldn’t want me to see, so I turned around and walked up to the moor instead.
It was well into November by then, and there’d been several light coatings of snow already. I’d cajoled Potter into loaning me some warmer clothes, but I knew the weather would only get harsher when winter truly arrived. My feet crunched on the frozen grass as I walked over the hills, keeping a fast pace to stay warm. The regular meals and exercise in the past few weeks had improved my health and stamina greatly.
I had finally learnt that Potter had bought this parcel of land when a nearby farm changed hands, then (I deduced) had warded it so well that even the Muggles forgot it existed. With what little he’d told me, I estimated that he’d moved here some time before Mother died. He didn’t say where he’d been living before that.
Another week went by, then another, and Potter didn’t kick me out. I wanted to express my gratitude somehow, and the opportunity finally came one morning when I saw Potter writing out a shopping list.
“Let me do it this time,” I offered. “I know you hate going.”
Potter directed a scowl at his list that confirmed my statement. He tended to put it off until his cupboards were almost empty and we were down to eating rice and tinned peas. I tried not to complain, not only because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but because I also knew that, unlike him, I could find food outside that was palatable to a crow if I was really desperate. The only explanation that I’d got was that he didn’t like going to towns and being around a lot of people.
“I would be happy to take over the task for you,” I coaxed. “I’ve bought food in Muggle shops before, in London.”
What I didn’t tell him was that, after six weeks here, I desperately needed a change of scenery.
After some hesitation, he agreed and handed me the list with a small stack of Muggle paper money. He walked me to the edge of his wards so that he could set them to allow me back in without him, then took me by Side-Along Apparition to a narrow alley in Leeds. After pointing me in the direction of the supermarket down the street, he watched me go with an unreadable expression.
The streets and shops were decorated for Christmas, and I took my time walking from the Apparition Point to the supermarket. It was lovely to feast my eyes on all the lights and colours after spending my days in Potter’s dim and dreary barn-house. Once I reached my destination, it took a considerable amount of time to find the correct things in the aisles. I also took the liberty of adding some biscuits and fresh fruit to the trolley, which were things he never bothered to get himself.
Potter might be inclined to deny himself better food, but I wasn’t, if given the chance.
It was well past lunch time by the time I hauled the bags (aided by a few discreet Lightening Charms) to the Apparition Point and back to Potter’s doorstep. He flung the door open when he heard me arrive. As I held out some of the bags to him, I noticed the strange look on his face.
“What?”
“You were gone so long,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I was looking at the Christmas decorations, and then it took some time to find everything on the list. Merlin help me, why are there twenty different varieties of beans, and in different size tins, too?”
Potter still didn’t budge from the entry, blocking my way.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he said quietly. “I thought you took the money and…”
I stared at him, confused at first, then furious that he thought I’d return his kindness with betrayal.
“I wouldn’t have lasted long on a couple of hundred pounds, would I?” I said icily and pushed past him into the house.
I heard him follow me inside and close the door. With a pointed look, I took the receipt and the money left from what he’d given me and slammed them down on the table.
“Look,” he said as I started putting the food away, “I know you can’t be happy stuck here in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do and only me. I thought you’d want to go, if you had the chance to.”
I shoved tins into an open cupboard. “I could have left anytime, Potter. I could go live in the Forbidden Forest right now, if I wanted to. That was my plan before you found me, you know.”
“You were going to live there? Permanently? In your Animagus form?”
“Yes,” I growled. “I was going to become a fucking carrion crow and literally live like an animal, rather than spend one more day in the magical world. I told you what it was like, trying to survive there. Did you really think I was going to take your money and run back at the first opportunity? And since when are you so eager for me to stay, Potter? Don’t you want your blissful, noble solitude back?”
“No, I want you to stay.”
His words startled me out of my anger, and I spun around to face him. “Why? Why would you want me of all people to live here with you?”
Potter met my eyes. “Because you aren’t afraid of me, even though I’m... different now. I can tell you see it, when you’re a crow. I can tell by the way you’ll only look at me out of the corner of your eye.”
I considered what to say for a moment. Leaving wasn’t an option I wanted to take, no matter how much Potter’s accusation had hurt me. I held his gaze until I was certain he was being sincere.
“Yes, I can see it. But I can tell that it’s not Dark magic. I don’t think you’re a danger to me.” I studied him silently for a moment, from his familiar, round glasses to his socks with a hole in the toe. “You look like the same, old Potter to me the rest of the time—just as unkempt and belligerent as you always were.”
He attempted a smile, but it wavered quickly.
“So, you’ll stay?”
The room seemed to hold its breath around us while he waited for my answer. I knew, somehow, that by accepting I would be putting myself in Potter’s hands—he’d already helped me more than he’d needed to, so I would be the one indebted to him once again. Not only that, there was still so much I didn’t understand about him.
Two months ago, I had found myself alone at the end of the road I’d been on since the war ended, out of good options and driven by despair. Somehow, the step I was about to take now felt much more momentous, more frightening, and yet I barely hesitated.
“Yes, I’ll stay.”