Entry tags:

fic, harry/draco, hp, hpfic, novella

FIC: Now The Shining Sun Is Up, part 2

* * *

At the time Ron got rejected Harry had been at least relieved he’d never have to worry about Hermione in that way. He didn’t remember her ever failing at anything she tried, and around then she was the picture of success. She had been attending the university of her choice and making top scores, just like she had always dreamed. And then when she graduated she applied for a Ministry position and got it, and began to slowly work her way up. And she started a million projects, her House Elf liberation and wizard Muggle education campaigns, and so on

What she failed at was making any difference.

Then Harry remembered she actually had failed at S.P.E.W. back at school. When it came to living on the run from a Dark Lord and outsmarting Death Eaters and withstanding torture Hermione won, but when it came to a cause she cared about things were different. There were no enemies or dangers or imminent threats of death and so even her friends didn’t help her as much as they could.

Harry and Ron helped her these days, especially because she’d added causes they could get their heads around, like freeing Buckbeak and reforming Azkaban and stopping the hunt of centaurs. But the world at large could care less, and making them care more was a long process at best.

“Tilting at windmills,” Hermione said.

“Er, or a bunch of lay-abouts who can’t see beyond their own noses,” Ron said, because that time he really didn’t understand the Muggle quote.

“There’s not an immediate threat so they think that everything’s okay.” Hermione shrugged. “Can’t see the forest for the trees, I guess.”

“We could lob them in the chins.” Ron sounded hopeful. “Tip their heads back.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You can’t just go around knocking sense into people.”

“I know,” Ron said, as though he regretted it. “Sometimes I just think it was easier when frog faces like Umbridge were in charge. You know, people you could fight. Then you could just form secret armies. Eh, Harry?”

Harry started and then looked away, because he hadn’t been thinking of Umbridge but of Voldemort, seventh year after everyone had admitted he was back and bad news and didn’t have to be convinced there were still things wrong with the world.

“It’s not like that,” Hermione said. “I mean, we don’t have to fight Fudge any more. There aren’t Death Eaters. It’s a different kind of war.”

“The kind you can’t win,” Ron mumbled.

“It’s just slower. You just have to work from within. You just have to try.”

They did. Hermione had her projects and societies and campaigns, and tried to use her position in the Ministry for good.

Ron put his considerable marketing skills to use. He was a personable salesmen, genuine and relatable, and people found him more trustworthy than the remaining twin. He adapted some of the Wizard Wheezes products in support of some of Hermione’s causes, and used them to promote anti-blood-bigotry and fair treatment of Elves.

And Harry thought that by becoming an Auror he’d be doing something good by definition.

It wasn’t that they wanted to save the world. They’d been there and done that, and frankly it hadn’t been Harry’s cuppa. He just wanted to be a normal bloke. But at the same time, he wanted having saved the world to be worth it.

* * *

About another week after Malfoy had mass distributed his aggravating little flier in the Prophet, Ron Flooed Harry and told him to turn to a program on the wireless network under a protected frequency.

The password was “Snape lives!”

The program was Protestwatch.

The voice was Malfoy’s, even if it was disguised, and this was personal.

Since last seeing him, Harry couldn’t stop thinking of every petty criminal he had to charge and process as Malfoy. It was just Malfoy after Malfoy, not truly evil, not truly even bad, but like Malfoy had said: not good for much else. The more Harry thought about it, the longer and more endless the procession of Malfoys seemed, and the more angry at the real Malfoy Harry became.

He had to keep reminding himself Malfoy was just one person. He’d just been crossing Harry’s radar lately because he was like all the rest of them: selfish, ignorant, misguided. He wasn’t out to annoy Harry personally.

Until now.

Harry knew where Malfoy lived from his file. When Protestwatch ended, Harry Apparated into an alley by a rundown complex in a not so nice Muggle section of London, and made his way to one of the tiny flats.

It was a far cry from the huge manor. Not that Malfoy doesn’t deserve every bit of peeling paint and cracked tile.

Malfoy opened the door. “Potter? What . . . ?”

The quirked brow and expression of confusion—which of course was feigned—made Harry, if possible, even more angry. He pushed past Malfoy and into the corridor.

“Do come in.” Malfoy shut the door behind Harry and then turned to lean on it. “And to what do I owe this untold pleasure?”

“You already know.”

Gray eyes turned speculative as they roamed over Harry. “Hm, yes.” His eyes returned to Harry, smug now. He was smirking about something, his voice dryly amused when he spoke. “I think I do know. The question is, do you?”

“Potterwatch.”

The smirk slipped off and Malfoy’s expression went carefully neutral. “That program cashed in way too much on name recognition. I found it shockingly exploitive. Didn’t you?”

“You stole it.”

“We in the biz call it riffing.”

“Biz? What are you even saying, Malfoy?”

“That I’m a big time wireless producer now. That means I get to say things like take the mickey.” Malfoy rolled his eyes as Harry’s scowl deepened. “Don’t be this way. The program is fantastic. It’s the very definition of brilliance and cunning.” His lips twitched. “Natch.”

“You took something that was important, that gave people hope, and you cheapened it.”

The lips thinned. “Actually, I made it more expensive. I couldn’t bring myself to run a program on Potterwatch’s shoe string budget. It just isn’t dignified for an entrepreneur like me. So of course I had to start my own new program, which is infinitely more endowed. You should appreciate my—”

Harry never did find out what it was about Malfoy he should appreciate. He certainly couldn’t find anything on his own. He was too busy quelling the impulse to punch all Malfoy’s teeth out. Then Malfoy would be maimed, preferably also ashamed, and at the very least unable to host any Wizarding Wireless Network programs, without any teeth and all. Problem solved.

They kept trying to tell him at Auror Headquarters that violence didn’t always solve problems. Harry got what they were saying, really. They were saying there weren’t any solutions at all.

“Potterwatch is mine,” Harry said tightly. They were still standing in the dark hall behind Malfoy’s front door.

“Was it, really?” Malfoy said, interested. “Because if I remember my history correctly it was started by persons wholly unconnected to you by blood or contract, and none of the revenues ever passed through your hands. I could be wrong, though. I could go check the detailed legal proof I obtained before I launched my own—similar but clearly not infringing on copyright—program.”

“Just shut up, Malfoy; I meant it was about me.”

Malfoy looked so honestly startled that Harry wondered whether it was the first sincere expression Malfoy had used in years. Then Malfoy apparently recovered from whatever shock his poor system had been forced to endure, because his expression was sardonic again, his voice light. “Ah. I had no idea. You will excuse me, Potter; my confusion is understandable. You see, I thought the program was about truth when the rest of the magical media wouldn’t give it to us. I thought it was about laughing when no one else could. I thought it was about hope.”

“You have no idea what it was about!” Harry shouted, incensed that Malfoy was claiming a higher ground. “You were a Death Eater at the time!”

Malfoy looked blank. “Right,” he said eventually. “I almost forgot. I was far too busy flaying unicorns alive and murdering Muggles and torturing halfbloods to stop for a bit of tea between and a Potterwatch ‘Fenrir: Pup-‘er-Pet’ segment. What was I thinking?”

“You can’t act innocent,” Harry grit out. “You did torture people. You cast Crucio. You did whatever Voldemort told you; I know you did. You’re not innocent at all.”

Although it was obvious Malfoy was trying to maintain his mask of detachment, something behind it leaked out. Harry wondered if it made his cheeks pink, too, the way Malfoy looked those other times he’d flown into a rage, but the light was too dim to see by.

Yet he could see Malfoy’s eyes, even though the gray should have only blended into the shadows. They shone, and Harry wondered if it was because there were tears in them. He wondered when Malfoy’s face had become so dynamic that he could read its expressions and the emotions behind it, why he noticed, why he could see it. He wondered if it was because his glasses for once weren’t smudged and he could see clearly, just this once.

Then Malfoy looked away and Harry remembered Voldemort had forced Malfoy to torture the people Harry had seen him torture, forced him on threat of death to him and his whole family. Whom he loved.

And Harry hated that, hated that he couldn’t blame Malfoy. That Malfoy couldn’t just be evil. That Malfoy was just like all the rest of them—selfish and wrong doing but with reasons and justifications and a brilliant smile and bright eyes and a mother who he’d die for, tried to kill for, and Draco was human, so despicably and incredibly just human.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Harry said finally, having stared too long at the white curve of Malfoy’s neck below the purple shadow of his averted face. “I know that Voldemort made you do those things. I know you didn’t want to.”

Malfoy looked back at Harry and clicked his tongue, sounding prim even though his eyes still startlingly burned in the lackluster light. “Yes, but let’s be fair. I still did them, didn’t I?”

Annoyed, Harry wondered how Malfoy had manipulated him so that he was actually defending the git’s actions. “It’s not your fault.”

“Potter, Potter!” Malfoy sounded exactly like a very brittle Lockhart. “Honesty’s always best! We both know I could have said no.”

“And gotten yourself killed,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

“You don’t think that would have been better? Am I really such a boon to wizarding kind? You said you never noticed I existed. And now, it seems, I’m a burden to you. That’s all I am, all I’m doing, isn’t it, just getting in your way.”

Harry scratched the back of his head. “No. Well, I mean, you must get up to something else. Sometimes.”

Malfoy let out a sudden, surprised bark of laughter. It sounded strange to Harry. “I forgot how blatantly self-centered you could be. Don’t worry,” he added, catching Harry’s look. “It’s refreshing. Reminds me of my youth, when our positions were reversed. I was so carefree!” Malfoy reflected, a smile twitching at the side of his mouth. “And also frighteningly sophisticated for my age.”

“Positions?” Harry said suspiciously.

“Why, Potter! Thank Merlin I never had such a filthy mind, anyway.”

Malfoy turned to go down the corridor, airy, dismissive, and it made Harry bite out, “You didn’t really listen to Potterwatch. I mean, it was for our side, not yours. You didn’t listen.” He paused. His hand was rubbing anxiously on the side of his thigh. “Did you?”

Malfoy paused without turning around. “That year was all silence,” he said, and walked down into the shadows.

Harry could see the gleam of Malfoy’s white neck from behind, the way it held the head above so carefully, painfully high, the hair smoothed over it soothing and soft in comparison to that harsh insistence. Harry thought of the image that had flashed to mind before, Narcissa combing back those staticky strands. He wondered if Narcissa had laughed as Malfoy rode toy brooms when he was one year old, loved Malfoy as Lily had loved him, cooed to Malfoy as he drifted to sleep in his crib, while Voldemort came for them all.

He remembered Narcissa’s voice, soft and strained (silent, silent), after he’d just died once, asking whether her son was still alive. He remembered Narcissa begging Malfoy to identify him at Malfoy Manor, to save them all, but he had been unable to say. He’d looked lost, so defeated, sounded thick, weak, unable to speak. Silent.

Of course Voldemort had lived there that whole year and it hadn’t been quiet at all. There’d been screams and dying, the sibilant hisses of Parseltongue and the sad tones of Draco’s family cringing and shying, saying, “Yes, Master”, “no”. There had to have been a thousand terrible sounds, and Harry bet Malfoy remembered them all as silence, laid thick over the echoes of childhood love and laughter.

And now here was a home of no memories, a poor pokey corridor with warped wood that creaked beneath Harry’s trainers as he walked down it, walls that closed in close. Harry imagined the sitting room, barren and white, what Malfoy’s room must be like, empty, alone in the gloaming.

It was true, what Harry had thought before. Malfoy was just like all the rest of them, Malfoy after Malfoy, survivors of the war. Harry didn’t think it in so many words, but felt it, that they were each of them, all of them walking down a long dark tunnel to a destination unknown. And though each of them walked the same path, they always walked alone.

Which was why when the corridor turned into sitting room with a magic fire crackling in the defunct grate, resentment flared. The wood had all been polished to shine gold beneath a deep red rug, and cheerful light spun silver off of tinkling bits of broken glass hanging from the ceiling. Malfoy had chosen quality-and-old over cheap-and-new, so though the fabric of the sofa was worn and didn’t match the sagging leather chair, they both looked warm.

Malfoy’s back was turned, his bright head bent over books and papers across which his slender fingers thoughtfully—lovingly, Harry thought—trailed. Then Malfoy gathered up the parchments and things, holding them to his chest so stray papers couldn’t slip away, like an embrace, Harry thought, and hated that too.

As if he had made a sound, Malfoy turned around slightly, raised a brow and said, “Oh, it’s you. Did you get lost?”

Harry heard himself snort and look around the room derisively. “Nice place. Where’d you put your peacocks?”

Malfoy’s brow dropped and he turned around again, clutched his papers closer, and went over to the table. Spreading them out in a tea-stained colored mess, he arranged himself in front of them, on the floor, and somehow managed to look very busy. “You might want to ask Goyle that,” he said distractedly. “He’ll eat just about anything.”

Harry had been about to say, “Sorry, I didn’t mean it,” but instead he gaped and said, “Goyle ate your peacocks?”

“Mm,” Malfoy said without looking up. “Little lemon butter, they can be very tasty. If you’re very hungry.”

Even if Malfoy was having him on, it seemed kind of tasteless. For Malfoy, anyway, whose truffles from his mother weighed in at fifty Knuts a pop and who always had a peacock feather quill.

Harry frowned and sat down on the sofa across from Malfoy on the floor. He sunk in deep and it was hatefully comfortable, and he wondered for a moment why he forgot to bother about things like cushions and nice couches in his own flat. He just never thought about it, he’d told Hermione, when she’d asked why he’d left the walls white.

Malfoy was ignoring him, whizzing about magic scissors spelled to cut things into squares and bits of Spellotape and a goopy paintbrush from a pot of glue. He was scribbling things with a seagull quill—those were the cheapest kind, and there were inks of other colors and quills scribbling on other portions of his papers.

Somehow Malfoy had managed to make the pine chest he was using as a coffee table look like Mrs. Weasley’s kitchen. Harry guessed he was pretending to look very industrious so Harry would go away.

“What are you doing?” Harry said finally, irritated because Malfoy just kept whizzing about and wasn’t paying him any mind.

“Making a newspaper,” Malfoy said absently, not looking up.

“Like your pamphlet thing?”

“No, less like that and rather more like a newspaper.”

Harry saw now that the big sheet in the middle was a lay-out, like one he had seen for the Quibbler at Luna’s house, only this one was big like a sheet on newsprint. Malfoy was arranging the articles and pictures and drawings, sticking them into place, making notes for headlines, shading in backgrounds with the doodling quills. Harry was sure it was all very cunning and brilliant, just like Malfoy’s Potterwatch rip-off. “Thought you said you couldn’t be in the papers?” he demanded.

“That’s why we’re making our own.” When Malfoy went on, Harry was pretty sure it was because he wanted to hear himself talk, and not because he actually wanted to share. “We have enough writers and resources for a weekly, now.” Then he went back to his very important doodles and Harry was back to watching.

Malfoy’s quill was gray, but Harry could see the lines of black and white in it, each individual strand like veins from the center. The reason he could see them was probably the brightness of the light in here, the warmth and the golden color of it; Harry can see every detail everywhere, even the color of Malfoy’s face between the ruffled strands of the feather. That should be gray, too, but it wasn’t; it was pink and thoughtful from the fire, and the plume kept brushing Malfoy’s cheek as he wrote.

Harry didn’t even know why he was still there. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t know why he had come in the first place, to Malfoy’s stupid flat, his stupid mismatched sitting room, where he was waving that stupid feather around his stupidly sharp cheekbones.

Harry snatched the quill out of Malfoy’s hand. “You were making me want to sneeze,” he snapped.

Malfoy humped and grabbed it back.

“I could just inform the Aurors you’re creating a problem,” Harry pointed out, still waspish. “You haven’t crossed the line yet, but—”

“Except for that minor incident with the Ministry furniture and bondage,” Malfoy added helpfully, sticking the article he’d been working on to his base paper.

“They’re going to be worried about the broadcast. It’s worse than the pamphlet. It will get people talking, and—”

“And Shacklebolt thinks I’m inflammatory.” Malfoy preened.

“I just don’t understand why you’re using Potterwatch,” Harry exploded. “Protestwatch, whatever; you stole the idea. It’s wrong to use it to go defending Death Eaters when Death Eaters rounding people up and torturing and killing them was the reason there was even a Potterwatch in the first place.”

Malfoy finally stopped sticking things to his paper. He was swirling his quill. “What if people were rounding up and torturing and killing Death Eaters?”

“Come off it! No one’s doing that!”

“But they want to.” Malfoy looked up. His voice had gone flat. “Don’t you think the fact that just one word from you could stop free press that I have every right as a Wizarding citizen to produce is a bit . . . telling?”

So Malfoy had been listening to his threats.

Well, good, Harry thought, but felt slightly disgruntled. “That’s only reasonable, seeing what your side did during the war. I mean,” he added, seeing Malfoy’s head dip back down with a sneer, “I don’t see how you can compare not letting you have a wireless show that could cause a lot of problems to not letting Muggles and Muggleborns live.”

“I’m not comparing them,” Malfoy said, waving a wild hand. The scissors stopped their magic chopping and dropped to the table with a thunk. “I’m just saying this is the way things start sometimes. Certain people can’t be in the papers, on the wireless. We can’t get jobs, can’t get housing. Sooner or later, people question their right to live. I can assure you Carthage Parris already does.”

“No one’s denying you housing, Malfoy.”

“Oh, honestly.” Malfoy flung down a photo and sounded so much like Hermione Harry looked at him closer.

Malfoy’s hands were poised for flight, bones curled and ready for unfolding; the fire was flashing on his face and making the blood that had risen beneath his skin flicker and flare like its own pale, pointed flame. He was saying something, his voice just as sharp and hot, but Harry wasn’t listening. It was just Malfoy; it wasn’t important; Harry just watched those hands.

“Why do you think I’m living here?” Malfoy finished in a huff.

“Er . . .” Harry looked back up at Malfoy’s face, licking his chapped lips. “I thought the Ministry took all your money?” he ventured.

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “And you think I don’t make enough at Borgin’s to live in a better hole than this? With my mum? And Goyle, Merlin help me?”

“Your mum lives here?” Harry looked around, trying not to appear worried.

“Look at this place!”

“I said it was nice. I like what you’ve done with—”

“Spare me.” Malfoy made a gagging sound.

“It’s warm,” Harry said, and was annoyed with himself for feeling defensive.

Malfoy’s eyes widened, and then he quickly looked down at his lay-out thing. Picking up the quill, he started swishing it around again. His expression was thoughtful, his lashes made fairer by the light, strangely coy. “Fair enough,” he said finally. His voice was soft and weird and stilted. “I—thank you. I guess.”

Harry didn’t know what it was about Malfoy that made him feel just fine when he insulted him and feel like he needed to apologize if he complimented him. “Anyway, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve hardly been arresting former Death Eaters for having big townhouses,” Harry said, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s not illegal to live somewhere . . . else, if you wanted.”

“You didn’t listen to anything I just said, did you.” Malfoy didn’t appear to require an answer. “The Ministry hasn’t done anything yet. It’s the fact that they’re quietly letting it happen. Sometimes not so quietly. Look at Carthage Parris.”

Malfoy apparently meant literally. He was waving around a parchment, and when Harry grabbed Malfoy’s wrist and pressed his thumb in the pulse so he could still and see it, he saw there were crude moving drawings on it. Two panels: the top one full of little stick Muggles with little stick pitchforks chasing after a witch. She looked suspiciously like McGonagall, with her pointy little hat and the square shawl with cross-hatched lines on it to represent tartan. She ended tied to a stake, burning in a fire of scribbles.

The lower panel was full of wizards and witches, including the McGonagall figure, chasing after a wizard who looked suspiciously like Stan Shunpike. There was a Muggle sad-face on his arm with a wiggly line coming out of its frown. There were even little spots on his face, and then he burned on a stake too.

It was actually all rather horrific, but Harry had to stop his lips from twitching at the expression Malfoy had managed to capture on the face of the figure who was obviously supposed to be Parris, leading the pack. Harry scowled instead.

Malfoy jerked away from him, and it wasn’t until then Harry noticed he’d just kept holding Malfoy’s wrist to look at the comic, instead of taking it himself. He sat back, feeling funny, and Malfoy, now happily liberated, picked up his comic again in order to gaze at it with fondness. Pushing his tongue between his teeth, he bent to add more scribbles to someone’s hair, and Harry realized with a start was supposed to be him, caught in the pushing mob chasing after the spotted bloke. There was a zigzag on his forehead for the scar.

“Why are you so obsessed with Carthage Parris, anyway?” Harry demanded.

Looking up in surprise, Malfoy broke into a smirk. “Jealous?”

“You said people were looking for a villain,” Harry said testily. “Someone to blame. Isn’t that what you’re doing with Parris?”

“I’m not blaming everything on him. Just all the things he’s doing wrong.” Malfoy painted glue on the back of the comic and pressed it onto his lay-out, tongue pushing back out as he tried to place it just right.

“Voldemort killed his family.”

“Someone may have mentioned that.” Malfoy was going to get glue in his hair, the way he was flourishing about. “Once or twice.” He already had a tiny scrap of paper taped to his sleeve.

“Well,” Harry continued, “then you can’t just throw him down, say he’s evil, expect people to attack—”

Malfoy froze. His glue brush was in the air and the scrap fluttered on his sleeve. Then he very carefully sat the brush down. “Potter . . .” he said, then tried again. “Potter, who said anything about evil? Who said anything about attacking?”

“If he’s messing up your life as much as you say, you obviously want him out of the picture—”

“Out of the picture?” Malfoy made an uncontrolled movement. Pale-faced, he licked gray lips and said, “I see. I think killing the Dark Lord addled your brain, Potter. You don’t know any other way to fight.”

Harry didn’t know what Malfoy meant. “First off, I didn’t kill Voldemort; I tried to disarm him, and his own Curse backfired—”

“But you’re not exactly wracked with guilt over that accident. Face it, Potter, even if you never could commit murder, V-Voldemort was bad enough to die. We all wanted him to; it’s okay. But that doesn’t mean that in every fight you come across from now on, you have to keep at it until your enemy is dead, with the only alternative being to let him walk away.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“I’m talking about everyone. How no one is as bad as Voldemort, and that makes it so you feel you can’t fight anyone, because the only thing you’ve known is an epic struggle to the death.”

“You don’t know what I know!”

“That’s true.” Malfoy tapped a headline with his wand and it started moving. He peered down at it with a little line between his brows, then sat up in obvious satisfaction. “I just know what I know, and that’s that you have to pick your battles, and you have to find new ways to fight them every time. And that is what I am doing. I am not trying to destroy Carthy as a person. I am fighting a battle of ideals. I am just like Ghandi.” He raised his chin and looked angelic.

“Ghandi,” Harry repeated, disbelieving.

“Yes. You should learn about Muggles. It’s your heritage, and anyway they are very good at setting examples on how to be stupid. Granger wrote her thesis on Muggle relations; I should think you—”

“Weasley,” Harry corrected.

“Don’t say filthy things like that.”

Then Harry exploded, “What were you doing reading Hermione’s thesis?”

“Informing myself, unlike some people.” Malfoy sniffed. “Ghandi was a bit of alright, for a Muggle. And he was played by that very attractive Muggle actor.” Malfoy’s voice turned wistful. “I wish I looked just like him.”

“What?”

“I told you,” Malfoy said, snapping out of that happy place he went to all over again. “He’s very attractive. Meanwhile, look at me.” Malfoy shrugged and went back to doodling under the headline he’d just enchanted.

Harry didn’t look at him, because he didn’t want to accidentally open his mouth and have words come out.

“I’m thinking about shaving all my hair off, just like him,” Malfoy rambled on.

Harry accidentally opened his mouth. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” Malfoy demanded, scowling. “I would look good bald. I’ve been told I have an eggshell scalp, thank you.”

“Just . . .don’t.”

The scowl fell away and then Malfoy’s lips started twitching in that way they had. “Fine, fine,” he said, smirking. “I won’t. Just for you.”

Now it was Harry who frowned, and went back to looking anywhere but at Malfoy. He eventually slid to the floor and fiddled with Malfoy’s papers for a while, getting his hands lightly slapped away until Malfoy finally squawked, “Can you touch anything without crumpling it, Potter?”

“How did you get the text to move like that?” Harry asked instead of answering, pointing at the scrolling headline.

Malfoy said his typewriter, and that Harry was a luddite, and didn’t he know anything? And then he proceeded to babble about it while absently folding a bit of parchment.

“Here,” he said suddenly, thrusting a paper crane into Harry’s hands. “I know you haven’t been listening to a word about my genius invention. Murder this poor wee thing, and don’t bother me if you’re going to sit here.”

Harry flipped through Malfoy’s comics and articles, stopping to read some and deliberately crinkling the crane loudly while he was at it. Malfoy’s drawings were mostly composed of stick people, but somehow they managed to have very expressive faces, and their theatric gestures were actually amusing, though Harry would never admit it. And the articles were sharp, incisive, often witty. Harry guessed he’d really never given Malfoy enough credit for those Skeeter articles.

He glanced from one of them back up to Malfoy, who had his tongue between his teeth again and real glue in his hair this time. He seemed perfectly happy in his state of dishevelment, and the quills and office supplies whirring all around him in a manic dance.

Harry leaned in around a pair of scissors, which snipped warningly at his hands, and plucked the scrap of paper taped on Malfoy’s sleeve.

Malfoy looked up in surprise. Harry thought he may have forgotten anyone else was still there.

Harry didn’t meet the odd look Malfoy was giving him. “Did you really listen to Potterwatch?” he asked finally, to avoid it.

“Maybe.” Malfoy looked back down. Licking the nub of his pencil, he went back to shading a corner of his lay-out. “One or two episodes. ‘Fenrir: Pup-’er-Pet’ really is a classic segment.”

“How did you even know about it? It was a secret.”

“With ingenious passwords such ‘phoenix’ and ‘Boy Who Lived’ and ‘Free Buckbeak!’, you can’t really be all that secret. Shame is never private, Potter.”

“They really had ‘Free Buckbeak’?”

“Exile was too good for that chicken. Potterwatch laughed at lots of things,” Malfoy continued eventually. “It could make bad things—not so bad. The whole point was hope. People need something to believe in.”

But there’s nothing, Harry wanted to say.

“What you should be asking is, do I believe in me?” Malfoy said. “Your evening’s entertainment is over. Go home and annoy yourself. In case you haven’t noticed, I am very busy and important here.” Then he went back to his scribbling.

* * *

Harry got back together with Ginny after they both got out of Hogwarts. It might have seemed to others—Ron and Hermione, for instance—a long time to wait, but a part of Harry had felt like he had been waiting forever. Was still waiting. For her.

Because when they got back together it was glorious enough, and more than that, but it wasn’t what he remembered. It was something new. She wasn’t the Ginny he had been waiting for; she was new too. And rounder, sharper, braver and more gentle than before, just not . . . home again.

And the Harry she had been waiting for was gone, too. Of course there had been a Harry she had waited for before, and that was a different Harry too. When she was ten she had fallen in love with a hero Harry, fallen so far down into the depths that she had had to wait for Harry to come save her. But by her fifth year she was a new Ginny who didn’t need saving, who had loved a new Harry who wasn’t a hero, only a boy. She had thought every Ginny who would ever come to be would love every Harry; the pattern was so prevalent she’d thought that was who she was.

“You think you know yourself,” she told Harry a long time after, a long time after he had gotten over it, a longer time after she had fallen for Dean. They both had had too much wine. “You think you are a certain way, want certain things, need certain things. But things change, so gradually some times you never notice, unless you’re truly looking for it . . .”

“Lot of good that does,” Harry said, taking off his glasses. He rubbed his temples. “Think I need a new prescription.”

“You’re just tired. Anyway, I’m not talking about that kind of seeing; I’m talking about seeing. Like if something opens your eyes, or someone takes you by the hand, or you make the choice—see the choice, recognize yourself in it. That’s when you see who you’ve become, and it’s different than before, and the things you thought you were are stripped away to who you really are.”

“Sounds complicated,” Harry said, and thought she was right: he was just tired.

“But it’s not,” Ginny whispered. “It’s easy. God, Harry, it’s so incredibly easy.”

Harry wondered at that because it wasn’t as if Hermione and Ron made anything at all look easy. He wondered if Ginny would’ve said they hadn’t looked enough, hadn’t seen that they were no longer right for each other when for so long they thought they were. Oh, they obviously loved each other just as much as they ever did; that much was certain. It was in the warmth in Hermione’s eyes when she looked at him, in the eagerness of his touch when she was near, in the way they always came back together after every single fight.

Harry just never thought there would be so much fighting. Maybe he thought it’d tone down or something after they were finally together. Maybe he thought Hermione wouldn’t espouse her career almost as fatefully as she did her husband, that Ron would never feel the need to run away again now and again, the way he had escaped once before he remembered why he would always come back. Maybe Harry thought they’d make a nice little family and get a nice little house and it would be home again.

It was the “again” part that got Harry, because he didn’t think he’d ever really had one, a home. If he had they had been Hogwarts and Sirius and both were gone now. He’d walked once from the former to the latter, from life into the arms of his godfather, death, and Voldemort—the end, he’d told the Snitch. He hadn’t had to worry, then, about finding a place to stay.

He worried now, because part of what Ginny had said was true. He looked up and saw himself, and he wasn’t who he was before; what he wanted was something new. He realized how he’d always noticed the way blokes looked, the way they flew, the movements of their muscles as they walked. He noticed he never knew what to do with girls, their soft parts, their tears, their feelings he could never understand.. He noticed men, on the street, and in pubs, even his friends, all around him, everywhere.

But it wasn’t easy, incredibly or at all. It felt like the Prophecy had, the Chosen One settling about his shoulders, this fate making him different from all the rest. He didn’t think he was disgusted by it, or disapproved at all, or anything of that sort. He mostly thought about how he just never got to choose to be this way, that he never would have chosen to be gay when he’d always pictured himself with a wife, when all he ever really wanted was a family, a normal life.

He had come out of that forest without a home; he had been looking for one ever since.

* * *

Continue . . .