Chapter Text
I wouldn’t have realised it was Christmas Eve if Potter hadn’t disappeared for an hour, then returned to the house with an enormous hamper in his arms.
I watched from the armchair, where I was reading Quidditch through the Ages—the selection of books here was limited, but it gave me a feeling of nostalgia to be reading this particular one again.
Potter grimaced when he saw my eyes following him as he set the hamper on the table.
“Hermione and Ron. They bring one for me every Christmas Eve, to give me a bit of holiday cheer. And to make sure I haven’t kicked the bucket, I guess,” he added with a wry laugh.
I rose eagerly from the chair to stand beside him and watch him unpack the hamper. There wasn’t much novelty in my routine, even with my weekly trips to Leeds now. I said a silent prayer for mince pies.
There were mince pies, and a Christmas pudding and some biscuits and homemade preserves. Beneath the food, several wrapped gifts lined the bottom of the hamper. Potter wordlessly lifted out each one and examined it before laying it on the table. The reminder of the world that he no longer belonged to clearly pained him. Instinctively, I lifted my hand towards his shoulder.
He flinched away from the touch, like a startled animal. I wondered how long it had been since someone touched him, deliberately or not. Whether he moved away from surprise or repulsion, he didn’t say anything about it, instead carrying the food to the cupboards. The gifts he took upstairs without opening them.
I mustered the courage to ask him about his friends the next day, when we went outside to walk off our full stomachs. Like two children, we had agreed to make a meal of the bounty from the hamper, though I’d secretly longed for roast turkey and gravy for a proper Christmas dinner. It hadn’t occurred to me to buy anything special for the day, despite the ubiquitous signs of the holiday in the shops.
“I don’t suppose they visit you other times, bearing hampers?” I asked after we’d agreed that mince pies were the best Christmas food. “I never imagined Weasley would turn out to be an accomplished baker.”
“He learnt from his mum, I’m sure,” Potter murmured. “No, they only come for Christmas and my birthday. Things have changed between us. They have their lives, and I have mine.”
I glanced at him as we walked through the snow that had fallen a few days before. His lips were pressed together and his eyes locked on the landscape in front of him. Even so, I couldn’t resist one more question.
“How long has it been like that?”
Potter exhaled heavily, his breath making a cloud in front of him. “Since the battle. Everything changed that day, and now they can’t—”
I stopped walking. “Can’t or won’t?”
Whatever had happened during the battle, or whatever changes he’d undergone since then, I found it difficult to fathom why two people who had been so devoted to Potter would deliberately distance themselves from him.
Because you aren’t afraid of me, he’d said to me. Why the hell would Granger and Weasley be afraid of him? What had he done? Or maybe the proper question was, what had he done to himself?
Potter didn’t answer me. He walked on, giving a sharp shake of his head to indicate that he didn’t want to discuss this anymore. I huffed with frustration. Hadn’t I agreed to keep his secrets and stay with him? Apparently, it wasn’t enough for him to confide in me.
On a whim, I transformed and surprised him by flying low over his head. He ducked down, swearing and covering his head with his arms. I wheeled in the air above him, craning my neck to look at him directly, steeling myself for the strangeness of his form to my crow’s eyes. From a distance, he still looked a bit like a walking shadow, though the silhouette impression was lessened by the bright sunshine.
I descended, tightening the radius of my flight with each loop, until I was beating my wings only a few yards from Potter’s head.
“What are you doing, you git?” he said. “Come back down! You’re making me dizzy.”
The words, though irritated rather than commanding, pulled me towards the ground, my own muscles bending to his will without hesitation. His magic flowed around me like a warm updraft. I landed in front of him and looked up, turning my head this way and that to study him some more. Now that I’d been forcing myself to look for a few minutes, Potter’s usual appearance seemed to flicker through the shadows at times.
I changed back and met his gaze head on.
“I think your friends are cowards.”
Potter’s eyes widened, then he pivoted in the snow and strode away in the direction of the Thestrals’ grove.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Malfoy,” he shouted without looking back. “No fucking idea.”
I let him go and walked a few more laps around the house before going inside to make a pot of tea. It was becoming more and more clear to me as time went on that Potter felt he needed to isolate himself. I was furious on his behalf that his so-called friends couldn’t offer any more support than a Christmas hamper and biannual visits.
I assumed our meagre festivities were over, since neither of us could think about eating again that day. But before he went to bed, Potter brought down a lumpy bundle of deep blue wool.
“I think you should have this,” he said holding it out to me. “Molly Weasley sends me one every year, but I have more than I need. They’re really warm.”
It was a jumper—handmade, by the looks of it—with a small, silvery “H” worked into the pattern over the heart, like a monogram. The weight of it told me it would indeed be warm.
“This was made for you,” I protested. “It was a gift.”
“Take it,” he insisted, “so I won’t have to listen to you complain about being cold.”
I gave in and pulled the jumper over my head. “Thank you.”
To my surprise, he lifted his hand and pressed his forefinger to my chest for a couple of seconds.
“Merry Christmas, Malfoy,” he said with a satisfied expression, then left to go to bed.
When I took off the jumper later, before transforming to sleep, I noticed that the silver “H” had been turned into an “D.”
***
Bitter weather arrived with the new year. Storms rolled across Yorkshire from the North Sea, blanketing the hills in snow. My daily walks became shorter and my flight time longer, since my oily feathers kept me warmer and dryer than any coat or Warming Charm could. From above, I followed hare tracks in the snow and dropped pebbles onto the frozen edges of the stream.
Spending the short hours of daylight in a house with few windows was even more monotonous than stomping or flying around Potter’s little piece of Yorkshire, I soon found.
“Don’t you get bored?” I asked Potter one morning when sleet was pattering against the window panes. “Don’t you have the urge to just go somewhere, anywhere?”
“I find things to do. And I do go other places, obviously, because I found you in the Forbidden Forest.”
“Ah, right. What about getting a wireless? It might be nice to have some music.”
“I’m not really keen on keeping up with what’s going on with the magical world, and a Muggle radio wouldn’t work here. There’s too much magic around.”
And most of it’s coming from you. I wasn’t bold enough to say it aloud; we hadn’t talked about how much bloody magic was radiating off him, and I knew I wouldn’t get an explanation if I brought it up.
While we ate breakfast, I made more suggestions for things to do while we were stuck inside, but Potter brushed them all aside with one grumbled excuse or another. It seemed I would have to keep myself occupied.
I started spending more time walking around the city and poking into different shops when I did the weekly shopping. Knowing that Potter always gave me more money than was needed for food, I started bringing home other things: cheap paperback books, jigsaw puzzles, a deck of Muggle playing cards. Potter didn’t do more than raise his eyebrows at my purchases. He must have decided it was a small price to pay to keep me out of his way.
As a kind of retaliation for his indifference, I invited him to help me with the puzzles and teach me any card games he knew. I found a long-forgotten thrill in goading him out of his usual routine, challenging him, making him rethink his ways. And if I was honest with myself, I might have admitted that it wasn’t for his sake alone that I did it.
I rather enjoyed his company—when he wasn’t being a surly bugger.
Potter brought meat to the Thestrals now that their usual prey was holed up in burrows and tree hollows. He didn’t tell me where he got the meat, but I suspected it was from a magical establishment because I caught him removing a Glamour on his way back to the house once. I didn’t ask what kind of animal the meat came from, either. One look at it told me that it wasn’t fit for human consumption.
He let me tag along when he fed them, and though it was a grisly chore, I didn’t mind. By spending more time with the herd, I was starting to recognise each Thestral, and they in turn were growing more accustomed to my presence. The stallion still eyed me warily, but the yearlings came up and butted my shoulders with their leathery black noses by my second visit. I tried not to think about how close their long fangs were to my flesh.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them flying around,” I said while Potter was tossing small pieces of meat to the creatures, one at a time, from a metal pail.
“They do, but they usually hunt at dawn and dusk, and they spend the rest of the time by the stream. They wander up to the moors in the warmer months.”
“What do they eat? I’ve never seen anything larger than a hare around here.”
“Hares, squirrels—though I think they’ve cleared the grove of those now—and birds.”
I almost choked.
“Birds?”
“Don’t worry, you’re safe,” Potter said. “They know you’re not really a crow.”
“I’m not sure I trust them not to mistake me for one,” I retorted sharply. “For fuck’s sake, Potter, I’ve perched in the trees right above them!”
“I wouldn’t let them hurt you, and the Thestrals would never disobey me.”
He said it with such authority and conviction that I didn’t contradict him. Even if I didn’t understand how the Thestrals could make the distinction, I trusted Potter and his uncanny rapport with them. With grim amusement, I realised that I was probably safer here in the wildest part of the Dales with Potter than I’d been since I was a young teenager.
“Do they have names?” I asked.
“No, I haven’t named them. They aren’t pets,” he replied scathingly.
I huffed a laugh—as he’d said it, he’d been pushing away the head of a hungry mare, just as one would a large dog. She had snuck up behind him to reach the pail of meat.
“I mean, do they have names for themselves? You seem to be able to communicate with them, beyond telling them what to do.”
Potter seemed surprised by my observation. “Yes, a little. They do have names, but they’re not something I could translate.”
As if on cue, one of the Thestrals gave a shrill call, and others followed one by one. Potter watched them fondly.
“They’re introducing themselves to you.”
“They can understand me, too?”
“Yes, of course. They’re very intelligent. And hungry. Sod off, you’ll get yours,” he said to the persistent mare. “I know you’re eating for two, but that’s no reason to jump the queue. There’s enough for everyone.”
I could see that the mare was noticeably fuller around the belly than the others, now that Potter mentioned it.
“When will she foal?” I asked, taking a scrap from the pail to lure her away from Potter. She pranced after me as I backed away and nimbly took the meat from my outstretched hand.
“Early spring. You can come with me to watch, if you like. I try to keep an eye on them, just in case something goes wrong and I need to intervene.”
I looked into the milky, pupil-less eyes of the mare. “Maybe. I don’t think I’d be of any help to you, but it might be an interesting thing to see.”
“It’s amazing.”
When I looked over, Potter was wearing a proper grin, the first I’d seen since I had arrived here.
***
On what would have been my mother’s forty-seventh birthday, I struggled to think of a way to commemorate it. Her grave, marked only by a small stone with her initials and the date of her death, was far away in a pauper’s cemetery near London. Even if I visited it, I didn’t have any money of my own to buy flowers to place there.
I settled at the table with a scrap of parchment and a quill while Potter was out walking, and drew her a wreath of roses instead. Then I added other things that reminded me of her: the crystal perfume bottles on her dressing table at the Manor, her tea set with the handles shaped like the neck and head of a swan, her namesake flower.
Potter came back and noticed what I was doing on his way to warm up by the range.
“It’s Mother’s birthday. I was just drawing some things of hers that I remember from my childhood. She loved pretty things. Even after… you know. I tried to bring her little gifts when I could to make her eyes light up. Coming back to wherever we were living wasn’t always pleasant, but it wasn’t so bad when I had something to give her.”
“Why wasn’t it pleasant to come home? Because of where you lived?” Potter asked. He had settled in the armchair, waiting for the kettle to boil.
I swallowed the bitterness rising in my throat.
“No, because I often had to tell my mother that I was sacked again. And we might have to move out of whatever hole we were lodging in again because I couldn’t pay the rent. And then I’d have to watch her skip a meal again so that I’d get enough food in me to be able to go out and look for work the next day.”
“Fucking Christ.” Potter curled forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I would have helped if she’d asked me, you know.”
“She would never ask, Potter. She’d rather—” I had to wait for the choking horror of it to release its grip on my throat. “She’d have rather died. And she did.”
I got up and went to the window, desperately trying to replace the most terrible image of her in my mind, the one I’d gladly erase with an Obliviate if I could, with a happier one from my childhood. I heard Potter shifting behind me.
“I lost track of what happened to people after the war. I couldn’t stay there, you see,” he started to explain.
I cut him off. The last thing I wanted to hear today, of all days, were his bloody excuses.
“You keep saying that, but I still don’t understand what the hell you’re doing out here,” I growled. “You had everything—money, friends, the entire world at your feet—and you walked away to be some sad and lonely hermit. I tried for years to make a go of it there, even after I lost Mother. I worked so hard and got spit on and sacked and ended up without a Knut to my name. I don’t pity you much.”
“You know fuck all about me, Malfoy.”
“Well, it’s not like you’d tell me anyway.”
I stomped away and shut myself in the bathroom again until I heard him go up to the loft. When I returned to the table, I couldn’t think of anything else to draw. The parchment vanished with an angry flick of my wand.
“It must be a difficult day for you,” Potter said later. “I didn’t mean to make it about me. And you’re right—whatever I’ve been through in the past few years doesn’t compare.”
I nodded to show that I accepted his apology.
“She didn’t deserve to suffer like that. The reparations were too harsh.”
“Mother was… not accustomed to poverty. It wore her down, made her lose hope, especially after we heard that Father had died in Azkaban,” I said, staring into one of the dark corners of the room. “I adjusted, being younger I suppose.”
“And you learnt to turn into a crow,” Potter said. “Was that part of adjusting?”
“That was part of surviving. She made me promise, before she died, that I’d find a way to do that.”
“I’m sure she’d be proud that you’ve done it.”
“Well, not alone,” I pointed out. “I’m grateful, of course, and I know Mother would be, too. But I’m hardly making my way in the world, am I?”
“I suppose not,” Potter murmured, looking pensive.
***
I woke one bright February morning burning with a fever and a sore throat. There was no hiding it from Potter in that small house. He brought me my tea and some Muggle pills that he claimed would reduce the fever.
“I don’t suppose you have any Pepper-Up?” I asked, trying to find a comfortable position in the armchair. My back and neck were beginning to ache and my head throbbed.
Potter shook his head. “I can’t remember the last time I had a cold.”
“I must have caught it when I went to the shops. Some germ-laden child probably sneezed in my direction in the queue. Disgusting.”
“Will you be all right if I go down to feed the Thestrals?”
“Yes, of course. It’s just a cold, honestly.”
It seemed like he was gone forever, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour. By the time he returned, I was beginning to feel truly miserable.
“You need to lie down. Let me help you move. Do you need to go to the loo first?”
I shook my head, too tired to speak. I didn’t understand that he was offering me his bed until he had helped me up the steep stairs and guided me towards it. It was even dimmer up here than downstairs, with only one window placed strangely at floor level in the gable end. With one arm still supporting me, he flipped back the covers.
“Can I help you put on some pyjamas?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. After sitting me down on the edge of the bed, he dug through a small chest of drawers and brought over a T-shirt and some pyjama bottoms, then helped me change. I lay down with a loud groan, causing Potter to look at me with concern.
“Comfortable,” I murmured, sprawling on the soft sheets and pushing my face into the pillow. “Almost forgot how nice they are, beds.”
With a hum of agreement, Potter pulled the duvet over me and told me to sleep. Either because he was able to command me in my weakened state or I was simply exhausted, I slipped into unconsciousness while Potter was still standing beside the bed.
It was dark when I awakened, sweaty and parched. I kicked off the duvet to let the cool air reach me. There were footsteps on the stairs a moment later. Potter arrived with a glass in his hand and sat on the edge of the bed.
“Water?”
He turned on the small lamp on the bedside table, then helped me sit up enough to drink.
“Now this,” Potter said when I had drunk half the glass. He uncorked a glass vial with a distinctive, minty aroma.
“Where’d you get that?”
“I went to Hogsmeade.”
“Oh. Thank you.” I held out a shaky hand for the vial and tipped it into my mouth in one go. “Better stand back. Gonna start steaming soon.”
Potter made a soft bark of laughter. When I was settled back on the pillows, he reached over slowly and brushed my damp fringe out of my eyes for me. The gentle gesture made me think of my mother nursing me through childhood illnesses. I closed my eyes and swallowed the lump in my swollen throat.
“Need anything else?”
I shook my head. I could already feel the potion starting to send a wave of coolness from my stomach to my limbs.
“Please don’t just sit there and stare at me. This is embarrassing enough,” I mumbled.
I felt the mattress shift as he stood.
“All right. Call me if you need anything.”
***
Potter slept downstairs that night. In the morning, he helped me use the bathroom and insisted that I stay in bed for the day. I didn’t argue. Even though my fever and other symptoms were gone, I felt as weak and wobbly as a newborn Mooncalf. And besides, getting to stretch out in a proper bed felt like a luxury.
“Why is the window like that?” I asked Potter.
I was propped up on pillows against the headboard, while he sat cross-legged near the foot of the bed. Playing cards were scattered on top of the duvet between us. Seeing me ill had finally worn down his resistance to teaching me a game.
“That was the door where they put the hay in when it was a barn. The cows lived under the loft in the winter, and the rest of it was filled with hay, right up to the rafters.”
I wrinkled my nose at the reminder of the house’s former life. “I hope you used an abundance of cleaning and sanitising charms. How do you know that about the building? The state of the meadow and the walls led me to believe this land hasn’t been grazed for a long time.”
“The farm down the stream stopped using it decades ago. It’s over a mile from the house,” Potter said, scooping up the cards to shuffle them. “I learnt about field barns when I bought it. And yes, of course I cleaned it. I had to replace a lot of the wooden parts anyway. Everything was rotten.”
I watched him shuffle the cards nimbly, then deal them out again. “Wouldn’t you rather live close to a village? You could walk to the shops instead of Apparating all the way across Yorkshire, and there’d be people to—”
“No, I don’t want to be near people, not even Muggles. That was the entire point of buying this place. And no one’s forcing me to do it. It was my choice.”
“Something made you do it,” I pressed.
“That’s really none of your business,” Potter snapped. He leaned back on his arms and looked up at the ceiling. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
I watched him for a few moments, taking in the wiry physique that he’d had as long as I’d known him. He’d always seemed resilient in spite of it, through all his school and wartime fights and misadventures. There’d been a spark of stubborn righteousness within him that had seemed to drive him on. Looking at him now, I worried that he couldn’t possibly go on like this, isolated as he was out here. It was a terribly dispiriting thought.
“I think I need to sleep for a little while,” I said.
Potter nodded, still looking mildly displeased. He gathered up the cards and set them on the bedside table in a neat stack. I caught his hand before he walked away from the bed. It was rough and warm in mine.
“Thank you for keeping me company. And for looking after me.”
“It’s no trouble,” he answered. He met my eyes steadily for a few long seconds before pulling his hand away and turning off the lamp.
After he left, I lay watching the winter light outside turn bluer, then fade away, and thought about the way Potter had just looked at me.
I must have been still fever-addled, because I got the impression that he almost seemed sorry for speaking so sharply.
***
I was well enough to get dressed and go downstairs the next day. From the armchair, I watched Potter cook and take care of what little housework needed doing. He seemed preoccupied with something, uncomfortable.
“Knut for your thoughts,” I said after he got up from the table a third time to look out the window.
“Oh. Well, I was thinking about what you said the other day, about not being able to make your way in the world. And I was wondering…”
“Yes?”
He spoke haltingly, like he was forcing out the words. “I was just wondering, would you leave England and start over somewhere else, if you could?”
“I’ve thought about it, of course, but I was never able to save any of my wages, much less enough to buy a Portkey and get by until I found work and a place to live.”
“I could give it to you. I have more than I’ll ever need, and some of it is from the Black vaults.”
My breath caught at the offer—a way to build a new life somewhere that had never heard the name Malfoy, among people who could see beyond the shameful mark on my arm. Merlin, with enough gold, I could finish my education, arrange an apprenticeship, maybe even make a name for myself.
“Would you take it?” Potter pressed.
I could hear his real question crouching within the quietness of his voice, and the difficulty he seemed to have making the offer.
What he really was asking was, would you leave me if you could?
I tried to imagine what it would be like for him after I had gone, week after week, month after month, with nothing but Thestrals and ravens for company. I pictured him cooking meals that he would eat by himself in his silent, half-furnished house, and opening the next Christmas hamper alone.
The misery of it sent a shudder through my shoulders. I was certain that, whatever good things came to me if I left, I’d never be able to shake the shame of abandoning him.
“No, I wouldn’t take it. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable accepting that much gold from you, and there’d be a chance that I’d never be able to repay you. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me until something turns up for me in England.”
“Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure about it.”
When Potter went out to pick up the meat for the Thestrals that afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking about what I might have just given up. An awareness tickled the back of my mind, whispering that it wasn’t only sympathy that kept me here with Potter. Something bound me to him in a way I could imagine with no other living person. It was more than our long acquaintance and our shared experiences at a formative age. It was more than the aching loneliness I’d felt since Mother died or the vulnerability of being alone in the world.
Before I dozed off in the armchair, I tried to make a vow to myself that I’d go forwards with my eyes open where Potter was concerned. I’d already sensed the magnitude of his power and the otherworldliness cloaking him. It would be foolish to forget that, no matter how mundane he appeared to my human eyes and the faint glimpses of vulnerability that I’d seen in him.
Despite the nap, it wasn’t long after dinner that I became sleepy again.
“I’m fine to sleep in my crow form tonight,” I told Potter.
“You’re still getting better. Do you want me to move those and try to Transfigure something into a bed for you?” Potter asked, gesturing at the piles of boxes along the wall.
“No, I know from experience that it’s hard to make something comfortable. I honestly don’t mind sleeping in my Animagus form.”
“You should sleep upstairs again,” he insisted.
“You can’t have been comfortable sleeping in this chair,” I said, then raised my eyebrows. “Unless you’re an Animagus, too, and haven’t told me. Let me guess, you’re a tabby like old McGonagall, and you spent the last two nights curled up on the cushion.”
Potter rolled his eyes. “I’m not an Animagus. I made do with a few charms, and I don’t mind doing it again.”
“It’s your bed.”
“It’s going to be freezing down here when the range cools down. Unlike you, I can cast Warming Charms on myself that last all night.”
“I have feathers, unlike you, so I won’t get cold.”
“Malfoy,” he said, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbing his eyes. “Just take the goddamn bed.”
I gave in, less because I wanted the bed that badly (though it was nice), and more because I was simply too damn exhausted to argue with him anymore.
“Fine.” I rose from the chair to go upstairs, then was halted by a sudden thought halfway to the stairs. “We’d both fit, you know. It’s a double bed.”
Potter stared at me and didn’t answer, so I went upstairs and got ready for bed. I put on a clean pair of pyjamas (the line between Potter’s clothing and my own was rather blurred at this point, he’d shared so much of it) and slipped into the fresh sheets that he’d put on the bed that morning.
I had intended to stay awake until he decided to come upstairs or settle into the armchair for the night, but I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Just in case he chose to sleep here, I wriggled over to one side of the bed.
When I woke in the morning, it was with a view of Potter’s back as he slipped out from beneath the covers. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to sleep until he went downstairs.
I had lain beside him all night without knowing it.
The next evening, when he told me that I should keep sharing the bed with him, just through the coldest months, I didn’t protest at all.
***
I recovered from my cold quickly and resumed my daily walks, as the weather allowed. On the days when the sky cleared, the air was sharp and cold, and I relished transforming so that I could fly high enough to see for miles. I steered clear of the Thestrals’ grove in that form, just to be safe, but I found a waterfall further up the stream, near the edge of Potter’s land. There was a small pool below it, surrounded by steep walls of dark stone that sheltered it from the wind. It became one of my favourite places to spend time.
The weather grew milder as February drew to a close. The ice along the banks of the stream thawed and my boots sank into the soft ground when I climbed the hill behind the house. Potter still fed the two pregnant mares, but the other Thestrals began to hunt again now that their prey was emerging from their winter shelters.
One afternoon when I was in the city, meandering around to get my fill of sights and sounds that weren’t moorland, Thestrals, or Potter, I watched several people walking dogs while they enjoyed the warmer temperatures—tiny dogs with tartan coats, large dogs panting with happiness, and every size in between. Normally, I didn’t pay much attention to the people around me, but I noticed that the bland expressions they usually wore on the city pavements softened into something more cheerful and open when they had their dogs with them.
I couldn’t help but compare it to the guarded and morose look that often resided on Potter’s face.
“Have you thought about getting a dog?” I asked him while we were cooking dinner that night.
“No, I hadn’t, really. I do like dogs.”
“Maybe not one of those enormous, slobbery beasts like Hagrid had. It might be nice for you to have some companionship besides me and the Thestrals.”
“I’d have to train it not to bother them,” he said thoughtfully, “but you’re right. It might be nice.”
I came over to the range where he was frying sausages. Our shoulders brushed as I gave the large pot of pasta on the hob a stir. He didn’t flinch away anymore when I got this close, but I could tell he was very aware of my proximity by the way he tensed up. I didn’t think he was averse to being touched as much as he was unaccustomed to it.
I wasn’t averse to it, myself. Sometimes I longed for my mother’s hand on my hand, her cheek against my cheek, so much that it was almost unbearable. Part of me wanted to wrap my arm around Potter’s waist while we cooked or stood side by side watching the Thestrals. Sometimes I thought about coming up behind him when he was looking out the window and resting my chin on his shoulder. Or reaching over to drape my arm across him when he tossed and turned within our shared warmth beneath the duvet.
I always resisted, telling myself that I might just be going a little barmy from the isolation.
The subject of a dog didn’t come up again, and when Potter told me two weeks later that he was going to visit the Thestral herds in the Forbidden Forest, it didn’t occur to me that he might return with a wriggling, half-grown mutt in his arms.
“Potter,” I said, trying to be stern, “you really do rush headlong into decisions, don’t you?”
He set the dog down on the floor. It was a lanky, black thing with a plumy tail and ears that couldn’t make up their mind if they wanted to fold down or perk up. A herding dog of some kind, I guessed. It began to sniff around the room.
“I overheard a couple of people in the butcher shop in Hogsmeade say she’s been wandering around the high street for a few weeks now. She needed a home,” Potter said.
“She could be a lost dog. You may have stolen someone’s dog.”
“No collar, and someone would have come looking for her or asked around if she had an owner.” Potter knelt down and the dog went right to him, wagging and trying to climb into his lap. “She’s not going to get big and drooly, and I can tell she’s really smart.”
“She’s going to look like the Grim when she gets bigger. You realise that, don’t you? You’ve brought an omen of death into your home.”
“Don’t say that!” he said with surprising vehemence.
He looked so taken with the dog that there was nothing left for me to do but throw up my hands and give in.
“It’s your house. You don’t need my approval. But I’m not going to clean up after her,” I said.
“Of course not. I’ll do that, and figure out how to train her.”
“Well, I suppose I don’t have any objections, then,” I sighed. “And it was my idea in the first place.”
“It was,” Potter said, smiling at the dog. Then he sobered and cleared his throat. “Um, I’ll need you to buy some things for her today, if you wouldn’t mind. Food and some things to wash and groom her. And a bed. I’m not sure what else, to be honest.”
“Fine. Make a list and I’ll go.” I stepped closer and held out my hand for the dog, and she immediately turned her intelligent eyes my way. A sudden thought occurred to me. “Potter, you’re sure she isn’t another Animagus, aren’t you?”
He tousled her ears. “She isn’t, I checked. Like I said, just an ordinary dog. And now she’s ours.”
Ours.
I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard it, but my mind stayed caught on that word like a sleeve caught on a bramble thorn.
All I could do was watch Potter, smiling at another lost and lonely creature that he had brought home, feeling helpless and hopeful in equal measure.