Chapter Text
“We ought to talk about what happened today, Harry.”
Madam Arietta’s there, out of focus, bleeding into the edge of his vision as he stares through her. The ticking grandfather clock is the loudest thing in the room.
Talking, he decides, solves nothing.
Madam Arietta will disagree with that, but he’s past caring. His knuckles are red raw and his arm aches, and his brain is pulsing out of his skull. Yet he’s numb. All of him is.
He usually is.
The scratch of quill on parchment snaps him from his thoughts. Madam Arietta’s brow is arched; so she’s losing patience, or pitying him to the high heavens. Or both.
A bookshelf stands to his left—crooked mahogany with books pushed into every crevice, surrounded by intricate and unusual-looking brass ornaments. The volumes look different this time. She rearranged them. He can fill up a good amount of this hour analysing the spines on the hardbacks, filling his mind with useless information.
“Harry?”
Does she not realise there’s a tome on the fourth shelf titled ‘Layers of the Mind’ that needs to be squinted at from afar? His neck twitches. He rides it out, breath shallow, and pulls himself back to her face.
“Harry. Listen to me. You’ve attacked three people since returning to Hogwarts,” she says, as if stating his continuous fuck-ups is going to suddenly have him spilling his feelings. “Your wand has been confiscated.”
Another pause. She leans forward, wire-rimmed glasses sliding down her boney nose.
“I’m here to help you understand the gravity of your actions, Harry. We understand you’re struggling. You’ve been through a lot, more than anyone should ever have to face at such a young age.”
He grinds his teeth, jaw tense from the irritation of her condescending tone.
“We’ve made such good progress this year,” she says, though Harry feels quite the opposite. “I’m here to help you understand the choices behind your actions.”
Understanding isn’t the problem. He understands exactly why he did what he did. Admitting why is out of the question. Fuck unpacking that.
A dull pressure gathers behind his eyes, not yet tears but something perilously close, a tightening that spreads downward into his chest. It sits there, lodged beneath his ribs.
“And how about Draco?” she says, and Harry stills, the name cutting clean through whatever he’d been thinking before. He foolishly lets it show that he’s listening now, that she’s touched something fragile, something he’s not prepared to voice.
She follows it with a quiet, measured “Are you ready to talk about him?”
A simple ‘no’ should be enough, the shake of his head, the way his body shrinks from the question. But his words betray him, slipping out in defence.
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” he says, a silent plea. “I didn’t.”
***
Eight Months Earlier
Rule number one: no one is allowed to talk to him about the war.
It’s a fairly simple rule, and Harry’s one condition upon returning to Hogwarts.
This rule, however, has been broken three times before he's even stepped foot off the Hogwarts Express on September 1st.
“How are you, Harry? Must be feeling like a champion, right?”
“Is it true you used an Unforgivable, Harry?”
“What does it feel like to die, Harry? Does it hurt? Were you scared? Is Voldemort really gone for good?”
He bites his tongue and barges past the insufferable fourth-year. Somewhere close behind is Hermione, who sighs dismissively and utters an apology to the boy on Harry's behalf as she scurries along beside him. The fact that his patience is wearing thin only hours into the first day is concerning.
Summer had come and gone in a blur. Harry slept through most of it anyway, each day as grey as the next. He must’ve been at the Burrow for this birthday. The memory is foggy. He remembers a bread pudding cake from Molly, then leftovers the day after, and the day after that. He’d force breakfast down most mornings just to make her happy. Would blame the redness of his eyes on hayfever whenever they strolled around the back fields, then would slip away before dinner to cry quietly in the potting shed.
He’s not sure how long he stayed at Ron’s. No one asked him to leave. He floated about the place, ghost-like, staying out of the way.
Admittedly, it proved to be a safe haven of sorts, with the rest of the wizarding world still frolicing in the dust that was trying to settle. Molly took it upon herself to bat away the relentless string of letters that came for Harry; interview requests from reporters desperate to wring out every last drop from his already tormented mind, advanced allocation into the Ministry’s Auror Training Program, calls for Harry to be the face of ‘Rebuilding Wizarding Britain.’
Harry quickly decided that she didn’t need that burden on top of everything else and retreated back to Grimmauld Place, stepping from the Floo flames and collapsing onto the bed until it went dark, and then light again, and then dark, and then light.
He missed her freshly-baked sourdough and the feeling of her hand cradling the back of his head. But she missed her son.
The funerals happened, for which Harry felt somewhat vacant, as if his ability to register the reality of it had crumpled to the floor like the corpse of the man that started it all. One by one, they buried the bodies. Each time, Harry’s capacity to feel something diminished, leaving him —in Hermione’s words—the shell of a boy they once knew.
Years of torment from the bastard that murdered his parents does that to a person, funnily enough.
It’s not that he doesn’t care; of course he does. He’s wracked with guilt almost every day, interrupted only by ones he spends entirely overwhelmed with despair. A few outbursts of emotions seem par for the course when facing a routine like that, he reckons.
Aside from the brief birthday excursion, Harry spent June to August at Grimmauld Place, in hiding, refusing to leave and content on staying put. A thread of Sirius’ presence still remained there. If he closed his eyes, he could hear a whisper of his voice, and sometimes, when nightmares didn’t overwhelm him, he’d dream of Sirius, his parents, all of them—surrounding him like they did that fateful night in the heart of the forest. They’d surround him, the magic of that stone enough to bring them back for good.
Then he’d wake, and stare at the ceiling until his eyes were red and wet.
Hermione was always loitering, the deep crease between her brows mapped a permanent feature on her face. When Ron wasn’t around to steal her furrowed focus, she’d direct all her attention into ensuring Harry didn’t throw himself over the bannisters at Grimmauld Place.
Have you slept? Have you eaten? I don’t care, you need to eat, Harry. You need to stop reading these ridiculous articles, Harry. You need to shower, Harry, for goodness sake. Have you spoken to Ginny lately? She’s asking about you. She’s worried. Did you receive Ron’s letter? Perhaps a few weeks taming dragons with Charlie will be good for him, and will take his mind off things. He wouldn’t visit the Mind Healer like I suggested. Will you visit a Mind Healer, Harry? You should. It’d be good for you. When was the last time you had fresh air? You should get out of the house, Harry. You’re returning to Hogwarts, aren’t you? We could visit Diagon Alley for supplies. What do you mean, no? It’s essential we complete our N.E.W.T’s, Harry—
“Harry? Hello?”
Hermione’s waving hand had floated in front of his face, and his gaze had refocused onto her wide-eyed, pitiful glare.
“Your education is important, Harry.”
“Important how?” Harry had sighed, sniffing at Thursday night's takeaway curry box and retreating at the smell.
“Furthering yourself academically will be beneficial—”
“To who?” Harry tossed the container down and beelined for the half-empty beer bottle by the sink. “I've already had more job offers than I know what to do with and I don’t give a toss about any of them.”
“Then come back for your own wellbeing.” She’d snatched the bottle from his grasp, ignoring his growl of disapproval. “Your friends will be there. Professors who actually care whether you’re eating and sleeping. Three meals a day, and a place that’s warm and… welcoming.”
She faltered, glancing toward the cobwebs creeping out from the portrait of Walburga Black, who was glaring at them with unmistakable disapproval.
“What I’m saying is that the Ministry can’t reach you from there. Neither can the press. You can finally have a normal year at Hogwarts, as a normal student. The biggest problems you’d face now would be Astronomy essays, or detention with Professor Binns. Life could be wonderfully mundane. An entire year of classes to enjoy without the threat of danger looming over us.”
“Is this your dream, or mine?” Harry had said.
He’d known she was right the moment she started talking, and that was the worst part of it. Hermione was always right in ways that left no room to argue, only to feel small and stubborn and tired.
“Ron needs you, Harry. We both do.”
Brilliant. She had to play the friendship card, like it’s not obvious enough already that they’re completely useless without each other. Well, himself and Ron, anyway.
“You can play Quidditch again,” Hermione had said, nudging him with her elbow. “Visit Hagrid, and Honeydukes. Explore those caves off the lake shore that you and Ron always joked about. You can finally have some peace and quiet.” She’d smiled faintly. “Some closure.”
Closure? He’d tried not to laugh. The man attempting to murder him his entire life had died in front of his eyes; closure was handed to him on a silver platter. The deaths of all the other loved ones in his life, however, was a little more complicated, and the unanswered questions that kept him up at all hours of the night was another thing altogether.
But it must have been enough to convince him, because there Harry was, standing on the bustling platform, sinking into the rattling compartment, stepping off of the noisy train and walking through the tree-lined dirt paths that meandered their way up to the castle.
When he reaches the main entrance, a wave of something poignant hits him fast in the throat. The castle walls standing tall, entirely rebuilt, like they’d never fallen in the first place, the reminder of the battle has been scrubbed away along with the memories of those they'd lost with it.
For a moment, Harry stops in his tracks, staring up at the entrance to the Great Hall. He thinks of the first time he ever stepped inside at a mere eleven years old, Ron beaming by his side, the possibilities of a life with magic were endless. The Yule Ball, a mess of crushes and confusion, dancing and drinking and delight before the world suddenly went dark. The bodies that lined the floor, the sobs of his best friend now scarred into his memory, the tears and blood and dust, so much dust.
A shiver rolls down his spine. His neck cricks. It snaps him back into the room, and a sixth year boy he somewhat recognizes pats him on the shoulder with a pitiful smile and a curt nod.
Harry gives one in return, swallowing the regret that coils in his gut.
***
“Try to be positive,” Hermione says during the feast. Her hand clings to his arm desperately tight. He nods with a false smile and catches Ron peering over his plate at him, lips pressed with that ever-so-familiar look of pity. Even from his best friends he can’t escape it.
Positive?
He can be positive.
Positive thing number one: there’s a new common room purely for the returning eighth-year students. Apparently McGonagall deemed them all old enough and wise enough to have earnt their own space away from the rest of the school.
In the whirl of magic that had rebuilt the castle, a new room had formed on the fifth floor. A long stone corridor branched quietly from the south side of the faculty wing, narrowing as it went, until it opened upon a tall, arched glass door framed in wrought iron.
Beyond it lay a wide, circular room, half held in old stone, half given over to glass. High windows rise into a domed ceiling, where the light gathers and softens before falling back down into the space below. At its centre, a tree has forced its way through the cobbled floor, its roots splitting the stone, its trunk rising toward the glass above. Its branches stretch outward to the edges of the room, thinning into a canopy that catches the daylight and breaks it into shifting patterns across the floor.
The room is arranged around it with a kind of careful disorder—low, slouching sofas and deep armchairs scattered around the space, chess tables set between them, rugs layered unevenly over the stone. Along the curved walls, crooked bookshelves lean under their own weight, lit by glowing lamps that hang from the branches overhead.
It’s pleasant enough. More spacious than the Gryffindor common room, at least. As long as the leaves don’t fall from the tree come autumn, he’s happy.
He finds his dormitory down a passage half-hidden behind a draped curtain at the far side of the room. The corridor follows the curve of the room but slopes gently upward, spiralling as it goes, with each doorway set a little higher than the last, until the rooms themselves seem lifted away from the common space below.
It’s eerily quiet. The silence feels almost physical.
Nailed to the wall at the entrance of the corridor is a wooden plaque with each student's name written in alphabetical order. Beside each one, a door number, chosen at random by none other than the Sorting Hat.
He follows the line of ‘Potter, H — 10’ with his finger, then heads toward the tenth room, which appears on the left.
The door handle glows upon his touch. It swings open with ease, and Harry is met with the room in which he’ll reside for the next year.
There are two beds—one for himself, and if the Sorting Hat has decided to finally stop pissing around in order to make sensible roommate arrangements, the other will be for Ron. All he has to do is emphasise his desire to be left in peace, please and thank you, and voila, a somewhat bearable first term back. It won’t exactly be as insulating as the uncomfortable bed back at Grimmauld Place, but it’ll do. It’s fairer than the five beds he used to meander around before. The amount of times he whacked his shins on the corners is something he’ll gladly leave behind.
The room is decent enough. The beds are snug against either wall, draped in mustard tartan sheets that brush the dark wooden floorboards. A bedside table stands between them, topped with a brass oil lamp, with a painting of a Highland cow framed just above it. A questionable piece of art, but he doesn’t mind. Crooked wooden beams stretch along the ceiling, drawing the eye toward the tall, arched window set deep into the stone.
He’s greeted with the smell of fresh oak and an evening breeze slipping through the leaded panes, propped open on the latch. The glass breaks the view into uneven shapes—forestry filling most of it, the Black Lake just visible in the distance beside the mountains. A family of thestrals glides over the treetops. A lot of people can probably see them now.
Behind him, there’s a desk, a large chest of drawers, and a small bathroom off to the left.
He peers around the space, then sits quietly on the end of the bed, his fingers tracing lines on the untouched duvet.
It’s quiet.
All he's heard since the moment he left Grimmauld Place was blaring traffic in the streets, crowds of families on the platform at Kings Cross station, and the loud, over-excited cheering and clapping during the feast. Not to mention every eye in the room darting in his direction. Every retelling of his triumph exaggerated beyond recognition. Every comment singing his praises as if he’s some knight in shining armour, not a boy with the world on his back.
And now, nothing.
The stillness greets him in a way unfamiliar to what surrounded him all summer. Not the eeriness of Grimmauld Place, or the weighted silence of held breath at the Burrow.
Just himself within these four walls, touched by the amber glow of daylight slipping out of reach.
He looks through the window. It feels strange to be back. To be so high above the ground. The forest to the left of his view travels far beyond the hills. He’s never seen it from this angle before. It looks calm from up here, untouched.
But he can map every footstep he took on that fateful night. He can recall the path of his final moments. The trail that meandered deeper into the heart. It calls to him.
He pictures his father, mother, Sirius and Remus. He remembers the surge of love and courage that embraced him during those final moments. The only time in his life he’d experienced it, and it sat in the palm of his hand—jagged and precious.
He could retrace it in a heartbeat, the path back there.
But the journey today has been enough, and for now, he’ll wait.
As he pulls his focus back to the room, he glances down at the trunk occupying the bottom of the other bed, something he'd failed to notice when he first walked in.
Black and leather bound, visibly expensive with silver locks and the initials of its owner engraved by the clasp. At the sinking of his chest, the door creaks open.
Inside, steps Malfoy.
Harry barely recognises him at first. Standing hopelessly at the threshold of the door. An oversized blue sweatshirt swamps his skinny frame, his legs poking out like matchsticks. His thin brow knots.
“You?”
“Yes?”
“You… came back?”
“Well spotted,” Harry says.
Malfoy’s jaw ticks. “And you’re in my dormitory.”
“Yours?” Harry’s nose creases up like a bed smell just wafted in. “I don’t think the Sorting Hat would be sadistic enough to give me you as a roommate.”
Or maybe it would. Maybe everyone’s in a joking mood now that the threat of war is a thing of the past. Harry wouldn’t know, he ventured off to his room not even five minutes into the feast. The prying eyes and surrounding whispers were enough to shrink his appetite to a pebble.
Malfoy huffs. His mouth softens. “Wouldn’t put it past that leathery tosser to play a sick joke like that.”
Harry doesn’t laugh. “Look, I’ve really had a day, alright? So just pack it in and piss off to your own bed.”
Malfoy scoffs, swinging the door closed with the back of his foot and plonks himself down on the opposite bed. He rests back on his elbow, his swan-like neck arched toward the ceiling. “I’m on my own bed. Now what?”
Harry’s teeth grind, jaw tense enough to hold a pause before he shakes his head and flops onto the mattress. “Merlin, you're such a piece of work.”
Malfoy falters. His comeback dissolves into a pissed-off smirk. Harry’s head pulses. Two minutes with Malfoy is enough to trigger a migraine. How could he forget?
“First thing in the morning, I’m telling McGonagall that this—” he points rapidly between the two of them— “Isn’t happening. I don’t give a toss what that bloody hat said.”
“The morning?” Malfoy says. “You can’t possibly suggest that we both sleep in here tonight.”
Harry’s brain pulses two, three, four times before he remarks, “Fine. Then pick up your shit, and go park yourself on the common room sofa for the night. Or the year, see if I care.”
Malfoy snaps upright. He’s all pointed features and harsh lines. “I’m not moving, Potter. I don’t care about you enough to waste my energy.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Harry pinches his brow. “Fine. Don’t move then. Forget it.”
Another silence, four, maybe five seconds of it in fact, before Malfoy says, “That’s it?”
Harry exhales. “That’s it.”
Ah yes. There it is. That age-old streak of competition that, even after fighting a battle, and friends in graves, and a father on trial for life in Azkaban, will never cease to end.
Harry can’t help but laugh—inwardly, of course. If Malfoy wants to play ‘who can out-stay the other in this coffin of a room’, then so be it.
He doesn’t have the energy to participate. Doesn’t plan on being here for long, anyway.
Malfoy’s deflated sigh breaks his train of thought. As he peeps an eye open, he catches Malfoy running a hand through hair that has grown out since Harry had last seen him at his trial. It’s not long, per se, just unruly. Strands of blonde poking out at the crown, others flopping over his forehead, almost reaching the dull grey of his sunken eyes.
“Why am I here?” Malfoy mutters, more rhetorical than anything else as he drapes his arms over his face.
Harry refrains from answering, given that it’s fairly common knowledge. A condition of Malfoy being spared time in Azkaban relied on his return to Hogwarts. The Ministry had ordered him to complete his studies, with grades that would reflect good intentions. Though, given the unwelcomed reception Malfoy had returned to, Harry could place a fair guess that this was another kind of prison altogether.
“And why are you here?” Malfoy says, still buried beneath himself.
Harry could answer, but he won’t. He glances out the window as a flock of geese fly past.
The lack of response has Malfoy dropping his arms to look at Harry directly. “Thought you’d be off gallivanting with the free, feeding that saviour complex of yours, no?”
“It doesn’t matter why I’m here. I just want to be left alone.”
“Well, that makes two of us. Perhaps this will work, after all.”
Harry rolls his eyes, but Malfoy may have a point. It seems as though the most popular boy in school and the most hated both want nothing more than total isolation. Maybe the Sorting Hat actually found a common interest.
Silence settles for a reasonable length of time, not hostile, but pricked with an edge of awkwardness that Harry feels bubbling under his ribs. A silence made of too many shared memories and no agreement on which ones to acknowledge.
Fabric rustles. Drawers slide open and closed. Malfoy moves about the room with efficiency, setting things down with quiet precision. There’s a squeak of bedsprings bowing, the pat of Malfoy’s pillow.
“I’ll speak to McGonagall in the morning.”
He already knows he won't.
Surprisingly enough, Malfoy in a bed three feet away from him is the least of his concerns. And fuck it, maybe Malfoy’s a better choice than Ron’s uncomfortable use of humour to mask his grief. Or Hermione, who’s one disgruntled look away from dragging Harry straight to the hospital wing for permanent post-trauma evaluation, or whatever the hell she labels it as.
“Fine,” Malfoy says. “My belongings are already in place. No point in you getting too comfortable now.”
Harry doesn’t bother retorting. He picks at the dead skin around his fingernail, letting it hurt.
“Whatever.”
Controlled breaths keep him silent for a while as he rests against the headboard hugging his knees to his chest. Curling up into a ball seems most ideal given how absolutely brilliant the first day back has been.
Peering out of the window, he can just about see the trees, still vibrant shades of greens, speckled with rust. The lake shimmers like jewels reflecting off of the surface, birds circle overhead and the sun dips in and out of the drifting clouds, brightening up the entire landscape before sucking the colour away with it.
At the corner of the window frame, almost tucked out of sight behind the walls of the castle, he can just make out the familiar sight of Hagrid’s hut nested neatly in the hills. His heart instantly pinches with comfort. Hagrid’s is a safe haven, even during the worst times he could always escape the chaos and find warmth in the embrace of the twelve-foot man and his huge cups of tea.
He’d visit if he weren’t rooted to the bed.
The castle stands firm like nothing happened four months ago. Beaming smiles of fresh-faced first-years bloomed in the Great Hall, as if there weren’t bodies there before. They swept the death away. Polished the floors of blood. Replaced it with a facade of normalcy.
The memories in his mind grow too vivid, so he studies the wooden beams travelling along the ceiling, eyes going in and out of focus.
Malfoy is, for once, uncharacteristically quiet. He’s folded himself into a ball on the bed, his jumper worn and stretched over his knees. The pillow musses his hair, and the last edges of deep, orange sunlight catch on it.
There’s a knock at the door, but neither of them move.
“Harry? Are you in there?”
Harry climbs off the bed and resists the urge to throw a middle finger when Malfoy huffs loudly.
“Found your dorm then?” Ginny grins—all toothy and bright before she peers inside over Harry’s shoulder and double-takes at Malfoy on the bed. “That’s not—?”
“Yup.”
“He’s your—?”
“Yup.”
“Shit,” she whispers. “Did you piss off the Sorting Hat or something?”
“Probably,” Harry shakes his head.
She smiles timidly, in the way her lips press a little too tight when she’s not sure what to say.
“You’re going to complain to McGonagall, right? Surely she can’t expect you to—”
There are students over in the common room peering and pointing out the tall windows. Another with their legs dangling over the arm of the sofa. Noise of excited chatter echoing down the dormitory corridor. Ginny unfocused in his peripheral vision, just a blur of red hair and rosy cheeks.
“Hm?” Harry blinks hard. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”
There’s a hand on his arm now. He looks down. Her nails are painted soft green.
“The last thing you need is someone like Malfoy bothering you every day,” she says, in a tone edging too close to pitiful. “You’ve had a difficult year.”
Hasn’t everyone? He wants to say. He nods sharply, swallowing those words.
Perhaps he could give McGonagall an earful tomorrow. Or maybe he’ll just look like an entitled prick—the very thing he loathes Malfoy for. Maybe out of all the students in this place, he’s the most suitable candidate to play roommate to that git.
Maybe everyone else deserves a normal year. And what’s more normal than Malfoy at his throat day and night?
After all, he’s done dragons, and dementors, and Dark Wizards. What could Malfoy possibly throw at him that he hasn’t seen before?
“Right, well, Ron let me into your fancy new common room,” Ginny says. “It must be nice having a space where there aren’t any annoying first-years wandering around. Us Gryffindors are having a first-night-of-term party in the old common room and since you’re still technically a Gryffindor, you’re welcome to join. Ron and Hermione and the others too.”
He can’t think of anything worse.
“Cheers, but I’ll give it a miss. I'm tired.”
“Sure,” Ginny says, disappointment cracking through her forced smile. “If you change your mind you know where to find us. You’re always welcome back there; you know that.”
Before Harry can answer, she leans in and kisses him.
The taste of cherry lip balm hits him first, then the meadow-sweet scent that comes at him in a rush. It’s familiar. No salty tears brushing his cheek this time. No delicate hands holding his face, but a gentle, wanting kiss, laced with hesitance. Neither one of them spoke of being boyfriend or girlfriend before, they’re just… together. Two people lost after the war, returning to what felt right.
He remembers he should close his eyes, and he does, and it’s warm and pleasant, but his chest feels oddly tight, and anyone could walk past at any moment and—is the door creaking back open again?
He breaks away to catch it before Malfoy gets a full show. Ginny doesn’t try to hide her disappointment this time.
“Sorry,” Harry says, rubbing his face. “Today’s been a bit mental. Enjoy the party, yeah?”
She nods half-heartedly, face settling back into the moulded smile she so naturally falls into nowadays. She really is pretty. She’s always pretty, and today her cheeks and nose have a tinge of soft sunburn from the send-off dinner Molly held in the Burrow garden yesterday. Her chestnut lashes catch under the lamplight.
He should’ve kissed her properly.
Headache returning, Harry closes the door quietly, beelining for the bed with his head down.
“If you’re going to be snogging her, at least warn me first so I can hex my eyeballs off?”
Not even two seconds of peace.
“Sod off, alright? You sound jealous.”
Malfoy spits out a laugh, “Oh yes. You’re swapping spit with a Weasley. I’m so jealous.” He rolls his eyes and saunters toward the bathroom, swiping his towel from the chair back. The sound of the shower nozzle squeaks, then water gushes. It sounds like rainfall, and more importantly, drowns out the excitable ruckus coming from the common room beyond.
With Malfoy out of the room, Harry seizes the moment to unpack without prying eyes.
He lifts his trunk onto the bed, opens the latch, then stops and turns to look at the closed bathroom door. He shouldn’t really be unpacking if he’s requesting a room change tomorrow.
So he unpacks his robes, his trousers, jeans, jumpers and socks, dumps most of them carelessly into the only drawer Malfoy has left empty, then kicks his trainers under the bed along with the rest of his books and supplies. His bag is new, sort of. A worn, leather satchel he found in one of the closets at Grimmauld Place, with S.B. embossed on the fraying leather flap. He hangs it carefully on the hook on the back of the door and steps back, looking out the window at the last of the sun disappearing behind the mountains. A thin veil of steam coats the glass, likely from the running shower.
He changes into plaid pyjamas and sits cross-legged on the bed when Malfoy re-appears from the bathroom. Steam follows him out as he opens the door, and Harry flicks his gaze up from the magazine on his lap to the sight of Malfoy with only a fluffy, white towel wrapped around his waist.
Malfoy returns somewhat sheepishly. He doesn't quite look at Harry, doesn’t look anywhere, really, just hovers by the doorway as if considering whether to return at all.
Harry notices it before he means to. The pallor doesn’t stop at Malfoy’s throat; it drains down the rest of him, colourless and cold, his skin stretched thin over bone and muscle. There’s no warmth to it, just the faint shift of movement beneath, the quiet, reluctant flex as he breathes. His torso is a map of thin, vicious lines carved across his chest and stomach, pale pink against white, akin to cracks splintering through porcelain. They’re faded and somewhat healed, but visible nonetheless and, worst of all, permanent.
What catches him off guard are the scars on Malfoy’s face. One that travels from his left cheek, across the bridge of his nose and through his brow—pale, almost invisible until it catches the light. The other—fainter and thinner—cuts through the corner of his lips, up into his cheek. Harry can’t help staring. They weren’t there earlier.
And there, where the Dark Mark used to be, the skin is all wrong. Mottled, a patch of angry pink stretched tight against the surrounding flesh.
And then it makes sense; someone like Malfoy learning the art of using glamours to hide the scars Harry inflicted.
His throat tightens with sickness. He did that.
And maybe Malfoy wants him to see it.
“Are you done? Gawping at me like I’m some sort of freak?”
Or maybe not.
“I don’t think you’re a—”
“Fuck off.”
Fucking off isn’t exactly doable in a room of this size. The best Harry can do is to lay back under the unyielding weight of shame, stare at the ceiling, bring his knees to his stomach and wait for darkness to encase them.
Malfoy quietly changes into and slips under the sheets. His movements are slight, almost ghost-like.
Harry pulls the covers close to his chest and turns towards the wall, as if that will quiet his thoughts.
Twilight bleeds across the room, leaching colour inch by inch. The oil lamp’s glow stutters out, Harry’s eyes growing heavy as shadows gather in the corners, stretching long and wide until it feels like they’re buried under it.
Harry exhales shakily, curling tighter into the sheets. Every movement feels wrong, every breath heard, and judged, and unwelcomed. He keeps his back turned, but he’s aware of the quiet rustle of sheets, the faint shift of fabric, the low, shallow exhales.
He doesn’t mean to look, but he does.
Over his shoulder, Malfoy’s doing a better job at trying to sleep than he is. He doesn’t care. Must think less. 0% of his mind occupied by Harry. How nice that must feel?
The covers are drawn loose over his body, one arm bent under the pillow which his hair is fanned against, still slightly damp. Like this—sleeping—his features fall soft, the crease between his brow is gone, his fair lashes almost soft against high, sunken cheekbones.
This Malfoy is something entirely new.
It leaves a thickness in Harry’s throat, some deep-seated instinct telling him that this isn’t Ron in the other bed—Ron, who’ll start arbitrary conversations out of nowhere, or who’ll be humming out of tune at the latest hour, asking pointless questions to pierce the silence. It’s Malfoy.
“Still obsessed with me, I see,” Malfoy utters.
Harry quickly snaps his head back to the ceiling. His cheeks feel warm. “Sod off.”
“Are you done staring at me?”
“I wasn’t looking at you,” Harry mutters, “I was falling asleep in your general direction.”
“It’s off-putting.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, should I just hurl myself out the window, then?”
Malfoy huffs a soft sound. It’s not a yes, so that’s progress.
Exhausted, Harry slips under bed sheets that are cold and too thin and thinks back to a time long ago when he would call this place home. It isn’t home any more, and returning was a mistake. He turns onto his side, dragging the covers tighter around himself to force the warmth into them. His body aches with tiredness, bones sinking into the mattress, followed by the heaviness that settles over his ribs—a feeling he hasn’t been able to shake for months. But his mind is loud and relentless, picking at things he’d rather leave behind.
He squeezes his eyes shut. Sees everything more vividly. Turns again, sheets twisting with him.
He stills, listens, then turns again. Drags a hand through his hair, down his face, exhaling long and slow.
Minutes pass. Or hours. Bars of moonlight have travelled across the floor and are now creeping up the far wall. Each time he glances, it moves. He drifts on the edge of sleep, never fully falling, then turns again and buries his face into the pillow in defeat.
“Potter—”
His body stills. A prolonged moment of silence follows, long enough for Harry to question if he actually heard anything at all.
“You’re awake, aren’t you?” Malfoy quietly asks.
Harry clears his throat, groans, pushing himself up from the pillows. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
The question lands and goes unanswered, another silence. Perfect timing for Malfoy to pipe up just when Harry was just on the blink of sleep.
“I need to say something,” Malfoy says at last, voice low, carefully measured. “And you need to listen.”
He shifts, dragging himself upright, the mattress dipping beneath him as he turns. Across the room, Malfoy is little more than a shape carved out of shadow and moonlight, the pale edge of his face caught in silver. He doesn’t look over. Doesn’t move.
“What happened at the Ministry…” Malfoy says, quieter now, “the day before my trial…”
He pauses, gaze piercing through the dark.
“...You’ve kept it to yourself, yes?”
Harry swallows. It takes a second for the words to form in his mouth. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
He’s awake now, chest tight against his ribcage. He catches the subtle movement of Malfoy nodding to himself, a shrunken silhouette lost in the bleak night.
“Is that all?” Harry asks.
A pause, and then, “This is the last time we’re to mention it, understand?”
Harry nods his compliance, barely a movement, but Malfoy must register it, because he quietly slips back under the bedsheets, leaving Harry alone in a silence so brittle he fears one breath will shatter the whole room.
***