Chapter Text
The first invitation came suddenly while Draco was fourteen pages into a book on charms— possibly, ironically, amidst the dissection of the intention of the first Accio. A question of what it truly means to call for something. The translations weren’t quite clear, but the concept of want and need seemed interchangeable within the text. Perhaps a spell intended to draw something in, beyond the whittled-down use of fetching mere objects?
But the charm didn’t work on the living, so what good would it be at fulfilling a human need? Draco thought that maybe the wizards of old had been trying to put a call out into the world, waiting for a response— for something to come and fill a void inside. He thought, perhaps, Accio once wasn’t a practical spell, but a failed attempt at summoning something more.
The sound of pages turning flitted through the bookshelves like leaves on a breeze. The library was busier than usual, every student inspired with newfound purpose in their studies as some kind of compensation for making it out on the other side of the war.
Draco would judge them, but he was there for the exact same reason. The guilt of the living, driving him to figure out how to prove he deserved to be among them.
The loneliness had long stopped feeling like something stabbing and swift in the pit of his stomach and instead settled in like a cantankerous roommate. Really, it only reared its gloomy head when Draco let his thoughts wander. He could keep the beast at bay if he just stayed focused on the scrawl of words and not the stretch of empty seating that bracketed him.
Accio, he thought, viciously.
Draco mused on the possible first use of the charm. What had the wizard been calling for? The text didn’t specify. As for the etymology— the meaning of the word itself was derived from I call, I summon— or the Hungarian variation of the incantation…
To invite.
In spite of his every effort to stay entrenched in the decidedly unsatisfying vivisection of the charm’s origins, Draco still clocked Potter the moment he swept through the library doors.
Aside from the oafish clatter that always seemed to follow him around, Potter’s presence flooded the room. Draco didn’t even have to look to know who had wandered in. He did anyway, just to take note of how particularly scraggly and stupid Potter’s hair looked that evening. But it was only a brief glance and he would cling to the deniability of it with his life.
After that, the letters practically dissolved before him into an inky miasma. He tried to blink away the haze, but knowing that Potter was lurking somewhere out of sight in the canyons of shelves made it impossible to concentrate.
Then, as if apparating from thin air, Potter swung one leg over the stretched oak of the bench beside Draco. He straddled it like a Neanderthal, or worse, a Weasley.
Draco was too stunned at first to speak.
“So,” Potter said, forcibly.
Draco considered the potential risks and benefits of throwing himself out of a window before Potter could continue, but the results were inconclusive.
“The lot of us are gearing up to have a match,” Potter finally said. “We could use another Seeker. Preferably one that knows the difference between a Snitch and a runaway beetle.”
Then Potter smiled in that contrived manner that he recognized from the front page of the Daily Prophet. That here’s-your-cue kind of smile that pulled his face into unnatural directions and made Draco want to just fucking deck him.
“What?” Draco snapped. His fingers crushed the weathered binding of the book of charms.
The smile, if it could be called that in good faith, faltered. The earnestness that bled through might have even been more frightening to Draco than the forced grin— so win a point, lose a point.
“Quidditch,” Potter said, as if that were a complete sentence.
“Yes, I bloody fucking know it’s Quidditch,” Draco hissed through his teeth.
Hadn't he suffered enough humiliation? Students already parted with sharp side steps any time Draco so much as walked down a corridor. The number of even Slytherins that would be caught socializing with him dwindled almost daily. At that point, he wouldn’t have been surprised if even Pansy and Blaise decided he wasn’t worth the stigma.
And now— what was Potter playing at?
Potter squared his shoulders and got that stupid Gryffindor look in his eyes.
“I’m saying you should play Quidditch,” he said. “With us. Me. Us.”
Several emotions flooded Draco all at once, the most prominent being a blend of embarrassment, on Potter’s behalf for the trainwreck of his rambling, and white-hot anger.
Draco turned his trunk to face Potter directly and tried not to get disoriented by the striking sap green of his eyes.
“What could possibly make you think that I would want to play Quidditch with a gaggle of Gryffindors?”
With you, is what he didn’t say.
“It’s not just Gryffindors,” Potter mumbled, but his confidence visibly deflated. “Besides, you have something more interesting going on?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just seems like you’re by yourself a lot, these days,” Potter said. “Never hurts to have a… you know.”
Draco was getting tired of offering up facial cues for Potter to get to a fucking point.
“Mate. Friends.”
Really, Potter may as well have just punched him in the face and saved them both the runaround. Although, Draco was one misstep from expulsion and McGonagall was surely keeping a close eye— looking for a good enough reason to tell him to pack his bags. Swinging back at the golden boy would likely qualify.
The usual hush of the library somehow became even more quiet. A dropped wand would hit like a downed tree. Stares weighed heavy from neighboring tables— slipped between the spines of books and over shoulders.
Had they been loud? Did they even need to be? Potter deigning to sit beside Draco was surely a spectacle in itself.
“Are you suggesting I don’t have friends?” Draco said in what he hoped to Merlin was a neutral tone.
Potter looked around before he could stop himself, as if to say, where are they? He raised his eyebrows at Draco— opened his mouth and closed it again. He could see the wild streak inside Potter that wanted to be an asshole, but he could also see how hard Potter fought against the urge.
“You’re an imbecile,” Draco said, returning to his book.
The letters had not become any less scrambled, but he was determined to keep his eyes on the page, not on Potter, who awkwardly climbed off of the bench with little to no grace.
And Draco, absolutely, did not watch Potter amble away.
He really was so embarrassing.
The plan was simple. Stay out of trouble. Graduate. Reevaluate his long term goals now that the majority of Draco’s aspirations were likely off the table due to his brief stint on the very wrong side of the wizarding war. That wasn’t to say he had no hope of a future severed completely from those very dark ties, but he would have to work for it. He knew that. Twice as hard as any other wizard and probably ten times as hard as Harry fucking Potter.
Focus on the work and not on the way that every room Draco was in felt empty, even when crawling with witches and wizards alike.
Stir no metaphorical cauldrons.
It was however, while Draco was stirring a literal cauldron, that Potter’s next invitation came. As sudden as the first, only worse because Draco’s alarmed jolt splattered bubbling Flobberworm Mucus onto his robes.
“Well. I can genuinely say that was not my intention,” Potter said.
Draco bit hard at the inside of his cheek. Grabbing Potter by the hair at the back of his head and plunging his face into the brew would also likely be cause for expulsion.
But it would be oh, so sweet.
“Spare me the agony of your one-sided conversation and get to the point.”
“There’s a game night, tonight,” Potter said. “In the common room. Inter-house unity building, and all that.”
He’d rather fucking die.
“I would rather fucking die,” Draco sneered. He used a spare cloth to dab at the putrid stain, but the smell was already setting in. A cleaning charm would make quick work of it, but his wand wasn’t allowed in the classroom as a stipulation of his continuing education. McGonagall had given her word that with ongoing good behavior, that restriction would be lifted soon enough.
Yeah, right.
Potter raised his wand.
“Here, just—“
Never in his life would Draco admit to flinching, but he didn’t have to admit it. Potter saw it.
He lowered the wand.
“Leave me alone,” Draco hissed. “or I’ll tip this on your head.”
“We both know that’s an empty threat, Malfoy,” Potter said, but he had the decency to leave.
Once, the bristling back and forth with Potter filled Draco with something blistering and exciting. Now the pendulum swing just made him nauseous. That mischief felt further and further away– buried under waves of confusion, fury, and unavoidably, shame.
Draco wanted to lash out– wanted Potter to take the bait. Hex him, even. He could go through the motions, play the game. They could pretend that the ways they had changed had not changed anything between them.
If only Potter would stop inviting him places.
“We’re going down to have a butterbeer,” Harry said, using his increasingly broadening frame to block Draco’s path in a corridor. “Do you like butterbeer?”
“Do I like… butterbeer,” Draco repeated slowly.
Potter’s face blossomed dark red, maybe for once actually recognizing how stupid he sounded. Draco was skeptical of that, but it gave him a secret thrill to watch the other young man squirm.
“Hard pass,” Draco said, sidestepping Potter and continuing to class.
But it didn’t stop.
“Going to the lake for a swim,” Potter said as Professor Sprout dismissed them from Herbology. “Pretty hot out today.”
It wasn’t.
“Ron has been trying to find someone new to play Chess with,” Harry mentioned the following morning. “He’s getting pretty fed up with wiping the floor with me. Seems like it might be your kind of thing.”
It was, but Draco would rather swallow his tongue than admit it.
Some invitations were silent, but no less jarring.
Once, by no intention whatsoever, he caught Potter’s eye in the Great Hall. Draco was settled amidst a handful of Slytherins at the far end of the Eighth year table. A sizable gap separated them from the other returning students, and Potter practically had to crane his neck to see Draco. He should have looked away— meant to look away. Potter tilted his head at the bench gaps closer to his end of the table, peppered between the amalgamated Gryfindors, Ravenclaws, and occasional Hufflepuff.
He had to be fucking crazy to think that Draco would take any one of those nightmarish seats. But Potter didn’t give up easy and wasn’t that the fucking crux of it all? He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head again twice, rapidly.
Draco forced himself to look down at his untouched plate. Beside him, Pansy and Blaise murmured softly to each other, caught up in a conversation that didn’t leave room for him. Pansy at least had made attempts to involve him at first, but Draco’s noncommittal ‘hmmn’s shut it down quickly.
Things between them just hadn’t been the same since the start of term. Unlike Potter, she wasn’t one to waste her time on someone who showed her little interest.
The next time Potter approached him in Potions, it was almost worse despite the lack of Flobberworm Mucus.
Potter sprung up in front of the desk, his face warped behind the blown glass vials and twisting pink fumes. The vividness of his eyes pierced right through the nearly opaque murkiness.
Draco felt dizzy. Was it the fumes? He wasn’t sure. His knees were a breeze away from buckling.
“I was thinking…” Potter started.
“That’d be a first,” Draco snarled.
“Shove off, Malfoy!” a voice shouted from the other side of the room. Always nice to have an audience.
Harry at least looked chagrined.
“That’s a short leash on those guard dogs of yours, Potter,” Draco said.
His eyes darted to the array of ingredients set out before him. Maybe one of them would provide an escape from the quickly unraveling situation. He couldn’t even recall the names of what he was looking at. Draco genuinely thought he might be due at St Mungos.
“Wait, Malfoy. This isn’t… I wanted to ask you—“
“Listen to me, Potter,” Draco seethed. “Whatever you want from me, the answer is no. It’s always been, and always will be, no.”
After that, Potter stopped cornering Draco— instead scrawled invitations on vellum scraps and couriered them to him at the most inopportune times, which was all times.
The first note: Magical beast exhibit on the Flying Class Lawn. Maybe this one will go a bit better?
Crumbled and Incendioed.
The next: I can’t imagine you’re faring any better than me in Arithmancy. They’re starting a study group for most of us Eighth years, if you didn’t know.
Ripped in half.
Party in the Eighth year common room tonight.
The decision to merge the four houses of the Eighth years into one common room had been highly regarded as a risky move. Unsurprisingly, the Slytherins had given the most pushback at the announcement. In their defense, the threat of retaliation was very real, and McGonagall had shown genuine thought about the whole thing before deciding that the walls between their houses would never crumble until someone took the first step.
Draco, Pansy, and Blaise were the ones made to take that first step. Sure, a handful of other Slytherins had returned as well, but their role in the occupation of Hogwarts was minimal enough that nobody paid them much mind.
Even after weeks, there was still typically a stiffness in the air when their houses shared the space. A nervousness. A feeling of being watched.
That night however, something shifted.
Alcohol was flowing. That probably accounted for something. Although, he was two glasses in and Draco still didn’t have the urge to loosen his lips.
Pansy however, was engaged in a frankly disturbing and animated conversation with Granger of all possible people. Draco wasn’t mad about it, even though the only reason he was even attending the bloody soirée was because Pansy had snagged him by the elbow while he was passing through and proceeded to guilt him within an inch of his life into staying.
We never have any fun anymore, Draco. All you do is mope, Draco.
Everybody’s trying except for you.
Draco swallowed the last of his drink, eyes scanning the crowd. He tried for a moment to convince himself that he wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, but when he couldn’t find Potter he was undeniably disappointed .
Merlin knows why.
Maybe he just wanted to see Potter’s reaction to his attendance. He had, after all, invited him. Would Potter think he was the reason Draco was there?
Was he the reason Draco was there?
No, Draco decided. That was Pansy. Or maybe it was that the common room was his space, too, and the excessive jabber was impossible to block out of his room, even with his strongest silencing charm. His attendance was logical, so he would have appreciated it if some of the other houses would stop darting their eyes at him like skittish foals.
Draco crossed his arms, empty cup clutched in lazy fingers. He sharpened his gaze at a stupidly curious Hufflepuff who had been pissing him off all evening. He couldn’t afford to let himself be goaded into a confrontation, but nobody else needed to know that.
“You came.”
Draco was getting increasingly irritated with Potter’s ability to sneak up on him.
“I live here,” was Draco’s nonsensical reply.
Seriously, what did that even mean?
“Yes,” Potter chortled. “I live here, too.”
Then he grinned like the sun and there was something a bit crazy in his eyes, like he genuinely thought he had just said the funniest thing anyone had said all evening, and it was fucking stupid—
And it was endearing, damn it, and—
“Harry!”
Draco’s roving mind came to a squealing halt when the girl Weasley appeared and hooked her arm through Potter’s elbow.
“Ah, Ginny,” Potter welcomed her.
His eyes were warm and it made Draco sick.
He couldn’t hex her if he wanted to, and he certainly wanted to. She looked at Draco like he was a hairpin trigger– her brown eyes dark and daring, never leaving him while she spoke.
“Harry,” Weasley said again, and really, was she just reminding everyone she knew his name? Her and the rest of the wizarding world. “We were just discussing Bludger tactical maneuvers and would love your input.”
Draco’s empty cup creaked under his tightening grip.
Potter darted his eyes between him and the Weaselette briefly, as if Draco would ever buy that he actually had to think about whether to go with her or… to what? Make miserable small talk with him? Draco wasn’t even sure he would pick his own company.
He sighed.
“Go on then,” Draco said, rolling his eyes. “the adoring masses await.”
Potter frowned, and it was a stark contrast to the lopsided grin he wore not moments before. A chill ran up Draco’s spine, but he was getting used to the cold.
Weasley led Potter away.
Two refills had Draco’s head swimming and his feet heavy like cinder blocks. He kept finding himself watching Potter as he cycled through the Eighth years, each stopping to blather while he gave a polite smile and appropriately timed nod… like it was some kind of political campaign and not a stupid party for stupid kids to get pissed.
Draco was definitely pissed, in more ways than one. The chemical taste clung to his mouth and the only thing that subdued it was more alcohol.
The Weaselette made her own rounds of the common room, but frequently swung back to stand beside Potter and clutch at his arm or his shoulder as if they were together.
It occurred to Draco, they probably were.
Not for the first time since they’d parted, Potter looked at Draco. Students were prattling in his ear— Weasley doting on him with affectionate little pats, but Potter was staring at him.
The alcohol made him dizzy, stomach plunging like the trough of a wave.
Merlin, what had he been thinking?
Turning on his heel, Draco left.
Hiding in his quarters wasn’t an option. Getting caught wandering the halls past curfew wasn’t ideal either…
He just wouldn’t get caught.
Draco was halfway down the corridor when the sound of heavy footfall followed. He wouldn’t go so far as to say he knew Potter’s footsteps, but he did know that Potter was the only person in probably the whole bloody school who would ever waste their time on Draco Malfoy.
“Where are you going?” Potter called after him. “You just got here.”
“A stupid, impulsive decision in the first place,” Draco said.
“A speciality of yours, then.”
At that, he swung back around. Potter had the audacity to look annoyed. Draco was tempted to give him something to really be annoyed about. They were alone. Even the portraits that lined the walls were silent shadows. Draco bet he could get at least one good swing in.
“What do you want from me?” he all but yelled.
The alcohol tampered with his volume control but he was too wound up to feel self conscious.
Potter opened his mouth to reply but Draco cut him off.
“Why do you keep doing this?” he continued. “Belligerently inviting me to each time you so much as take a piss. Meanwhile, nobody else at this sodding school wants me within spitting distance of them. What’s your bloody game, Potter?”
“Why do you say that like I’m doing something wrong?” Potter asked. “I’m not setting you up, Malfoy. I’m being nice.”
Draco practically recoiled.
“I don’t want your pity,” he ground through his teeth.
“It’s not pity–”
Draco turned away, refusing to let Potter see his face distorted with shame.
“It’s not,” Potter insisted. “If anything, it’s gratitude.”
That was a lark.
“Gratitude?” Draco repeated back. “What in Merlin’s name for?”
“You know what for, Malfoy.”
A heavy silence settled in the hall, broken only by the drifting chatter from the common room. Draco thought of his wand, nestled in its ornate box beneath his pillow. He thought of the moment Potter had handed it back to him— when the trials had ended and he had stepped out into the cool air a free man.
They hadn’t talked about it. Frankly, he wanted to keep it that way.
“I know you probably don’t want anything to do with me,” Potter said.
Draco wished he was right.
Potter continued.
“I can only imagine all the fucked up things I remind you of. But Malfoy, you’ve been a part of my life as long as any of this has.”
He gestured broadly around him.
“I don’t think I can be neutral with you,” Potter said. “And I’m so, so tired of fighting. So I think… if I have to choose, I choose to be your friend.”
He knew what he would see if he turned around. Potter, with eyes foolishly sincere, as if he truly believed with every part of himself that nothing that had transpired between them was insurmountable. Draco didn’t have time for such delusions, and if he looked, he might for a moment believe it too, and where would that land him?
“You said it yourself. I don’t have friends.”
This time when he walked away, Potter didn’t follow him.