Entry tags:

fic, harry/draco, hp, novella

FIC: Now The Shining Sun Is Up
Eventually, I will get my own website and this can be posted in one piece. For now, a repost from the fest.

Author: tkp
Recipient: aoifene
Title: Now The Shining Sun Is Up
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco (Ron/Hermione, Ginny/Dean)
Summary:Someone at the Ministry has it in for former Death Eaters. Draco Malfoylaunches his political career as a rebel. Harry thinks it’s all a laugh.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer:All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling andBloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Also, there’s bunches of rather small, uncredited references.
Warning(s): Language? Fun poked at historical figures.
Deathly Hallows compliant? EWE. About five years after the battle of Hogwarts.
Word Count: ~23,000
Author's Notes: aoifene, I didn’t manage to work in all your requests. I had started a storywith lots of USTyness and jealous!Harry, but I think it didn’t like me.This does have clever!Draco and Harry slowly realizing he’s hotnessmade of hot, though, so I hope it suits you in some small regard.

Links: Beginning | Middle | End



“This is a sharp time, now, a precise time—we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God's grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it.” –The Crucible, by Arthur Miller

* * *

Harry sat at his desk with Malfoy and Malfoy’s file folder in front of him. They both looked fuzzy; Harry’s glasses got kind of smudged sometimes. It made the world blur and lack clean lines. Maybe he just got tired, Ginny suggested once, after they broke up.

Maybe she was right. It had been a long, pointless day.

He was supposed to be doing some good. Rounding up Death Eaters. Fighting Inferi. He didn’t know, maybe saving orphans from burning buildings.

Instead he was here bringing up Malfoy on charges of public disturbance.

“There’s been a big mistake,” Malfoy said.

“Sure.” Harry wondered how soon they could get this over with.

“It all began with the first letter you got from Hogwarts.” Malfoy settled in with the air of someone telling an involved and fantastic tale. “See, you were supposed to go to a school in a remote land called Nevada, but there was some mix up with the owls, and—”

Harry wondered how soon he had forgotten that this was Malfoy. “Shut up,” he said.

“Well, then.” Malfoy turned neatly and headed for the door. “Nothing to see here. I’ll just be going.”

“I’d say nice try . . .” Harry spelled the door closed.

Actually, it might have been a nice try, considering that pretty much the last thing Harry was interested in was messing about with Malfoy. There were real criminals in the world capable of real harm. Harry should be dealing with them, instead of people who were all sweeping epic talk and not even the littlest bit of action.

“So.” Malfoy strolled back into the room. “This is where you do your do-gooding. Rounding up Death Eaters and saving orphans from burning buildings. It’s very . . .” Malfoy paused, pretending to think of a word. “I can’t even be bothered. It’s too lame.” Malfoy was staring sadly at Harry’s dusty file cabinets.

Malfoy was getting the max sentence.

Harry made sure to mark it on his sheet.

“And how is that working out for you?” Malfoy continued, turning from the file cabinets, apparently having recovered from their depressing state. “Fighting evil, I mean.”

“Because you already know all about being lame.”

“That really the best you’ve got?” Malfoy smirked.

Harry frowned and looked down at the file, reading with mounting surprise. “You chained yourself to the Ministry sculpture?” he said after a bit. “Really?”

Malfoy’s smirk widened.

Harry again remembered it was Malfoy and was no longer surprised.

“I was protesting.” Malfoy’s voice was full of aggrieved dignity.

“Alright.” Harry made another mark on the file. “You have a thing against Ministry statuary.”

“No. I have a thing against the Ministry.” Malfoy came up to the desk and tapped his finger on the file, not even really looking at it. “Make sure you write that down on your very important papers.”

“Whatever,” Harry said, shutting the folder.

Trust Malfoy to want his criminal record to look dramatic.

“And just what did you think chaining yourself up would change about the Ministry?” Harry asked.

Malfoy shrugged. “You have to admit it was a significant improvement to the décor.”

“Do I really?”

“Come on. Live a little. Offerings of human flesh always spice things up.” Malfoy paused. “And serve as reminders of the immutable nature of mortality. You could be sacrificed to pagan gods any day. So, you know. Live a lot.”

“Okay.” Harry opened his file again. “So you were offering your flesh? Is that what we’re calling it now? List of charges,” he muttered, sifting through the papers. “List of charges. Here we go. P-R-O-S-T-I-T—”

“Only in your dreams. Oh, or if someone named Roxana is asking. Or Bridget. Or Azniv. She’ll sound kind of foreign.”

Malfoy might’ve slipped off to his happy place there, for a moment.

Harry resisted the urge to bang his head against a wall.

“Where was I?” Malfoy shook himself. “Oh yes, my sacrifice on the altar of injustice.” Draping himself over a chair, he deigned to explain. “You see, we—me and many others—are appalled at the discrimination of our system. We were to be united in bondage as a mass statement of protest against the Ministry. We won’t stand for inequality! We are for the rights of puppies and unicorns and Pygmy Puffs, and we demand—”

“These others you say are with you,” Harry interrupted, before Malfoy could wax further poetic. “Shall we invite them to join us for tea?”

“Don’t be silly. You never put in that order for extra crumpets like I asked.” Malfoy flapped away Harry’s distinct lack of amusement. “Didn’t you notice they aren’t here? Goodness. And here I thought you were an Auror. Aren’t you supposed to have keen powers of observation and such?”

Harry recognized that smile from school. Now that it was turned on him and not to suck up to their professors, Harry realized Malfoy never actually expected anyone to believe all his bollocks. He just expected them to let him off anyway because he was . . . irresistible. Or something, Harry didn’t know. People weren’t actually charmed by that.

No, really. They weren’t.

“So, what?” Harry asked. “You forgot to pay these other people to be your friends?”

“They got held up, I suppose.”

“And you went through with it anyway? Chaining yourself to a statue in the middle of the Ministry all by your lonesome? Not much of statement. More like an embarrassment.” Harry couldn’t help being annoyed at having to write up charges on absurdities. “Like to make a fool of yourself, do you?”

Malfoy’s smile flickered, but when he spoke his tone was light. “I’m hurt. You would know the answer to that question if you remembered me at all from school. I guess you just never noticed me. No, I don’t blame you.” He put up a staying hand. “You were so big and important and world-saving; of course you would never notice little old me.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I noticed you, Malfoy.”

“Really? Because I stay up at nights, worried about whether you did.”

“Obviously. Since you did all that stuff to get me in trouble when most times I couldn’t be bothered to remember you existed.”

“Can you forget I exist now?” Malfoy asked hopefully.

“You don’t care what other people think,” Harry said, too surprised by it to remember to tell Malfoy to shut up. In fact, it was like Malfoy was coming into sharp focus, like maybe Harry’s glasses weren’t so smudged or maybe he was waking up some more. Like he was seeing something new, something that wasn’t paperwork or annoying gits who had to be processed or goose chases that ended in changing nothing.

“Sure,” Malfoy said, but didn’t sound so.

“But you can’t care what the Ministry thinks, either. This wasn’t about injustice or whatever, since it’s not as if one bloke chaining himself up in the Ministry is going to start some kind of movement anyway.” Harry shook his head, and Malfoy went back to looking like Malfoy, his washed out skin and hair not so very different from the beige carpet and gray file cabinets. “It’s always about getting attention with you.” He tried not to sound as weary as he suddenly felt.

Malfoy stood up again. “Well spotted. Now can you just give me my sentence and lock me up?” Malfoy glanced with wide eyes at the closed door. “Unless my sentence is listening to your vast untold wisdom. Dear God, have you no mercy?”

“Sit down.”

“Really, Potter? So hungry for company you lock criminals in with you? You’re even crazier than I—”

Harry stood up suddenly, fists on his desk. “Sit down,” he said again, angry because he couldn’t see straight, or was it the other way around?

Malfoy looked startled. “What’s that?” His voice was softer somehow. “A nerve?”

But he sat down.

“Look,” Harry said. Back on subject. “Why’d you do this? Did you even think about the consequences? Do you people ever think about anyone but yourselves when you—” Back off subject. Harry clenched his jaw for a moment and then let it go. “What do you have against the Ministry? Despite that it’s full of bureaucrats and incompetents.” Back off— “What is it this time? Did the Minister’s hippogriff, like, peck you, or something?”

Malfoy blinked. “You’re really asking me this.”

“You’re right,” Harry said sourly. “The Minister doesn’t have a hippogriff. Was it a big dark scary forest?”

“You really don’t know what’s going on. You really don’t even . . .” Malfoy looked tired, suddenly. It made him seem smaller in the chair.

It made Harry feel smaller also, like there was something vital he had missed.

“Well, this has been fun,” Malfoy said suddenly. “We should do it again—never. Possibly ever, but now I’ve got to run. I must get to Jimbo.”

“Jimbo?”

“That’s my future cell mate.”

“Um. Right. Here’s a thought. What if his name isn’t Jimbo?”

“Then obviously his parents named him wrong.”

“What if you don’t even have a cell mate?”

“Then I shall imagine one.”

“Jimbo.”

“He’s very fit, by the way. And what we do in the privacy of our public cell is our own business. Don’t be a bigot, Potter.”

“Malfoy,” Harry said, realizing he still didn’t see something.

“Right then.” Malfoy stood. “Mustn’t keep Jimbo waiting. Off we go.”

Harry stood too.

“I’m eager to visit my cell,” Malfoy rambled. “I’m thinking of putting a nice little throw rug by the latrine, and hanging drapes over the bars. Jimbo so loves a jolly gingham print.”

Harry shook his head in frustration. “I just want to know what people like you think they’re doing, is all.”

“People like me?” Malfoy turned back, sounding interested in spite of himself.

“You know . . .” Harry had to loosen his jaw again to say it. “I don’t actually think you’re that bad a bloke.”

“Stop; I’m blushing.”

“I just think you make bad choices. And it’s not even all your fault. Your parents—”

“You don’t talk about my parents.” Malfoy’s voice was suddenly low. He was closer than before.

They were at eye level. Harry wanted to look down on him. “Whatever. I just mean, you’re ignorant—” he went on right over Malfoy—“and selfish, but you’re not cruel. Maybe in petty ways, but when it comes down to it, you don’t actually want to physically hurt or torture anyone. You’re not evil. And I think most people are like you. They don’t actually want to do anything wrong or commit crimes, they just don’t think . . .”

“Poor Potter.” Malfoy was looking at him almost thoughtfully. “No really, poor Potter. Living in a world full of Malfoys. Not evil enough to kill or let die in Fiendfyre, but not good for much else. Doesn’t the in-between suck?”

“I didn’t say—”

“What we really need is a villain of the piece. Hey, I know, make it out to be me after all. Me and other former Death Eaters. You could take away our rights, our jobs, our homes; you could start up talks about sending us all to prison or interning us in—”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

Malfoy clucked his tongue. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? When the world doesn’t give you all the dark packaged in a nice neat lord you can slay. When all the world gives you are human beings. Don’t you sometimes wish Voldemort was alive and you were the Chosen One so you could save us all?”

No.

No, Harry never thought of that, never wished it, even in dreams—in nightmares—

Where he was the one with the cold red eyes who wanted to remake the world in an image he could bear, a place where he could save them all from despair.

“Of course you’d say that,” Harry snarled. “Weren’t you a big fan of some dark lord or other? I seem to remember that.”

Malfoy looked away.

Take that, Harry thought savagely, but it was a strangely empty victory.

Malfoy walked over to the chair again and sat down. “Alright,” he said. “Fine. Tell me what the good choice is.”

“What?”

“Since I’ve made such bad ones in the past.” Malfoy’s expression was carefully neutral. “Say I have a problem with—with things that the Ministry is doing. How would someone who’s not . . . let’s see—ignorant and selfish and pettily cruel—go about fixing that?”

“Lots of people don’t like the Ministry’s policies,” Harry said, annoyed by Malfoy’s act. “But we don’t go around making public disturbances or anything.”

“Go through the proper channels. Why didn’t I think of that?” Malfoy gushed. “Thank you so much. You’ve been such a big help; I don’t know what I’d do without—”

“I’ve never gotten along with the Ministry either. What, you think you’re different, special?” Malfoy was just like all those others. They never did horrible, far-reaching things like the Voldemorts and Grindelwalds, who thought only of the world. They did small things, selfish things, stupid things, because they thought only of themselves.

In the end, there were too few Voldemorts and Grindelwalds to make the world so dark. There was just enough of everyone else.

“You can’t just go around doing random stuff because you don’t like something,” Harry said. “You want to change something, you have to work at it. You have to get inside it and work. A little bit at a time.”

“Right!” Malfoy said, falsely bright. “Because that’s exactly what you did against Fudge and Umbridge and the Dark—and my—and those dragons at the Triwizard Tournament. Yessir. You were patient and you waited and you worked within the system; you followed the rules.”

“It’s not like it was with Voldemort!” Harry took a deep breath through his nose, made sure to unclench his fists. “Weren’t you just saying that? Most things that are wrong aren’t like Voldemort. You can’t fight them all the time; you can’t defeat them once and for all. They don’t end, and there are some things you have to . . .”

“Accept? Give up? Because the world isn’t your oyster after all?”

Harry’s face grew tight. “The world was never my oyster.”

“So you never had a set-up where you had a clear enemy and you were the only one who could save us all?”

There it was again. That thought. That nightmare.

Harry pressed his hands into his temples.

“Maybe it wasn’t pleasant or easy,” Malfoy went on, “maybe it was bloody awful, but at least you knew what you were doing.”

Harry lifted his head. “I never knew what I was doing,” he grit out.

“That’s a lie. You walked into that forest and you knew you were going to die.”

“I’m still alive. In case you missed that part.”

“Doesn’t matter. You believed it, and you believed it’d save everyone. You knew what to think. It wasn’t fair, maybe it wasn’t even easier, but at least you knew.”

Harry slumped with his cheek in one palm. “Yeah, you had it so much worse being an ignorant sheep. Cry me a river.”

“All I’m saying is it usually isn’t so black and white. But that doesn’t mean you have to give up, have to accept, have to go with it because it’s all so unclear and too late to choose sides and there’s nothing you can do. I did that once and it was fucked up enough for me, thanks. I’m not doing it again.”

“Bully for you,” Harry snapped.

“Great. I’m glad we had this chat. But I’m sure Jimbo is worried about me, so—”

Harry flicked a hand. “Just go.”

It was obvious from the way Malfoy paused that he hadn’t expected to go anywhere for a long time. “You’re not going to charge me?”

“Not if you leave quickly enough.”

Malfoy hesitated.

Still.

“I said get out,” Harry said, and Malfoy did.

* * *

The autumn after Voldemort’s defeat they’d gone back to Hogwarts, but it hadn’t felt the same. The castle was still being repaired, faces were missing, students repeating their seventh year looked too old.

“You can’t go home again,” Hermione had said.

Ron had said sure you could, because Hogwarts had never been his home, and “we’re of age. We can Apparate any time we want.”

It was less that Ron didn’t understand the Muggle quote and more that he’d been wanting to comfort Hermione. “Anyway,” he’d said more seriously, “I’ve got this Putter-Outer.”

“Yeah, I guess. It can always bring us back,” Hermione had affirmed, and smiled.

After school Harry and Ron went into Auror training. It was three years long. Ron didn’t make the final cut and Harry did.

“Maybe it was never really meant to be,” Ron had said. George had needed help with the joke shop anyway, and Ron seemed content with business and marketing for the time being. Maybe he took it so well because he remembered a time when he wouldn’t have, a time when he would have run away, made himself useless by virtue of feeling so. A time when he’d needed the Deluminator to bring him back.

As glad as Harry was that Ron was being reasonable this time, Harry was used to fighting it out. Harry was used to conflict, climax, resolution; he was used to every part of his life being exposed and explored and ended definitively, for good or ill. But Ron had changed, for the better, Harry knew, and this time Ron accepted, didn’t hold a grudge, and moved on. No fighting, no talking about it, no clapping each other on the back about it, no diving into freezing pools. That Ron was gone and even the Deluminator wouldn’t bring him back.

It didn’t change that Harry felt miserable that he would be an Auror and Ron wouldn’t get to. He felt defeated and angry on Ron’s behalf, strangely guilty and wrong-headed on his own, and he didn’t know where to put these feelings. Seventh year when they’d been hunting Horcruxes and Ron had deserted them, he’d known exactly where to put those things he felt: deep down where they couldn’t touch him, couldn’t stop him, couldn’t get in the way of finally defeating Voldemort.

He’d hated that. Hated having to put Ron in second place, hated having to shove down his heart into hiding where Voldemort couldn’t find it. Harry was glad he would never have to do it again, would accept any amount of confused feelings if it meant he didn’t have to be an automaton who couldn’t take the time to mourn after losing a friend that way. But that was the one thing he hadn’t had, camping in the forests after Ron had left: confusion. Harry had had a mission. Everything else came after.

Harry had done the same with Ginny. He’d put her away, put her away so he could take her out again later, when everything was over, when he could deal with things like romance and love and happiness. He had hated that, too. As with the confusion of friendship, he would take the real Ginny any day over merely dreams of Ginny, over dreams of her softness and fire, of their white picket fence and three children. The real Ginny was wiser, was funnier, was strong in a way dreams could never convey.

But the real Ginny also wasn’t for him, not her softness nor her fire; the fence and the children were not theirs. He took her out again and she had changed, as had they all, and Harry didn’t know how to deal with that, because it was something he could fight. There was nothing to fight for; it just was.

Harry had put his life on hold that year finding Horcruxes and fighting Voldemort. It’d been hard and unpleasant and he had hated it; he was glad he’d never face that again. But he’d known, then, what had to be done. He’d known who the bad ones were, what had to be fought and how, where he stood in it all. He’d made the choice in the end, as Dumbledore said, but choice was mostly nominal when your only options were live free or die.

The thing about walking into a forest with Voldemort in it is you know what’s going to happen. You tell the Snitch it’s the end and you whole-heartedly believe it, and that makes it easier in some ways than walking into the unknown.

Your life was written out for you and you’ve followed the text to a letter.

Shut the book.

You’re done.

That’s when the real war begins.

* * *

A week or so after failing to bring Malfoy up on charges of public disturbance, a pamphlet appeared in every copy of the Daily Prophet the Auror department could track down.

Harry took one look at the pamphlet and immediately thought of Malfoy. He knew from looking at Malfoy’s file the week before where Malfoy worked. Harry went there immediately after the Auror briefings.

Once at Borgin and Burke’s, Harry strode into the backroom and dropped the pamphlet on Malfoy’s work bench. “Got anything to do with this?” he asked.

Malfoy turned to look up at him, and Harry had to blink several times. Then his annoyance fell away in sudden peals of laughter.

Looking at him now, Harry wondered how he could’ve let Malfoy get to him so much this past week. He’d been aggravated at having to waste time on him, and peeved at having to come here to take care of more of his stupid pranks. Harry must’ve forgotten again that it was Malfoy, that he wasn’t worth the fuss. Malfoy was ignorant, bigoted, selfish, but mostly harmless, and completely ridiculous. He was just a punk.

And he was wearing the thickest goggles, his irises the size of Galleons, blurry gray moons blinking on and off.

Malfoy ripped them off his face, but by that time Harry was guffawing.

“Laugh it up, four eyes,” Malfoy muttered. “Can you please?” Louder now. He tossed the pamphlet aside. “I’m trying to work.” He went back to tweaking something with a tweezers on a weird old typewriter.

“What the hell are these things?” Harry picked up the goggles. “They look like the petri dishes we grew things on in Potions.”

“Can I help you, Mister Great Auror Potter? I mean, aside from all the things that there’s obviously no help for.”

Harry looked through the goggles without putting them on. Everything looked huge, so huge he could only look at one thing at a time, but each thing was sharp and breath-takingly clear. He could see details in the wood-grain on Malfoy’s desk that he never would have guessed were there. The image made Harry’s vision go so wonky he felt nauseous. Wondering if that was how Malfoy saw the world, Harry put down the goggles and picked the pamphlet up again. “This article,” he said, vaguely amused by it now rather than annoyed. “It’s what you were talking about. Before.”

“What article?”

“This one. About poor Death Eaters being oppressed by Ministry restrictions on where they can work.” Harry scoffed as he flipped through the pamphlet. “Is this kind of propaganda legal?”

“Let me see.” Malfoy took the pamphlet and opened it up, primly smoothing down the folds. His white-ish head bent over the text for a moment, his expression looking thoughtful and intent. “Oh, you mean this article. Yes, I got it with my paper, too. I haven’t read it yet.”

“Right.”

Malfoy looked at it for another moment. “But from the opening sentence I can tell whoever wrote it is a genius. I wish I had that kind of skill. That way with words, his sense of timing. Oh, the power of a quill! His way with rhyming.” Malfoy folded the parchment up neatly, handed it back to Harry, and pretended to go back to his work.

“It’s also slander.”

Malfoy threw down the tiny hammer he’d picked up. “Come on. It’s talking about Carthage Parris. The bloke is insane.”

“Really? I wonder why. His whole family was tortured and killed by Death Eaters.”

“Doesn’t give him a right to be a mad man. No, wait, you’re correct.” Malfoy held up a hand, looking almost apologetic. “I’m mistaken. He completely has that right. No man should be denied stark raving lunacy, if that’s his calling! . . . If he pursues it St. Mungo’s, where he’s locked up and not influencing politics and not sowing fear in our society.”

“Sowing fear?” Harry snorted. “Can you purple that prose up a bit?”

“You think I’m being over-dramatic?” Malfoy’s voice was going tighter. He was agitated now, his hands moving quickly and expressively. “Carthy’s the one who’s saying even the Death Eaters cleared of all charges should go to Azkaban. He’s accusing people of being Death Eaters just because they might’ve been friends with Death Eaters. He’s even accusing Zabini’s mother of being a Death Eater.”

“She wasn’t one?” Harry shrugged. “Knock me over with a quill.”

Malfoy stared at him irately for a few seconds, then snatched the parchment out of Harry’s hands. “You don’t get to hold this.”

“Good. Because it’s bollocks.”

Malfoy jumped off his stool. “You can leave,” he said. His face had gone livid very quickly.

He should get that checked out. “Thanks.” Harry pulled over Malfoy’s stool and sat down. “I’m fine right here.”

“No, we should be leaving; you should be arresting me.” Malfoy sneered. “I’d far prefer that to the keen torture of tolerating your ignorance.” He was apparently in a passion about something or other.

“You really think the Ministry’s being unfair to former Death Eaters?” Harry asked incredulously. “Lots of people think that what most Death Eater got wasn’t half what they deserved. What do you deserve?”

Malfoy’s lips, if possible, seemed to go whiter. He was practically vibrating with restrained emotion. “It’s not to the point yet where I’m forced to listen to you,” he said. “You can’t harass me in my place of employ. I still have a few of my rights.”

“Shop’s public property, you know.”

“This room isn’t!”

“You’re probably right on that. Which is why I talked to Borgin before I came back here. Technically, it’s his property. He said I could come back here without a warrant, or anything.”

Malfoy sat back down abruptly. He faced away, but Harry could still see a slight trembling in Malfoy’s hands. It had to be only through sheer stubborn will power that he was able to pick up the little hammer and go back to doing whatever he was doing with the typewriter.

Harry watched for a while with that same abstract curiosity, remembering the conversation they’d had when Malfoy had been arrested before. Then, too, Malfoy had seemed worked up, as if he was really convinced as to the seriousness of whatever quibble he had with the Ministry.

“I’m not saying I agree with everything the Ministry’s doing,” Harry said eventually.

“Alert the press.”

“I just want to hear what you really think. So the Auror department can determine the threat you pose.”

“Here you go.” Without looking up from his tinkering, Malfoy handed him back the pamphlet. His face was taut, and his knuckles were still white.

“You admit to writing this.”

Malfoy flung down his hammer and gestured expansively, turning back to Harry. “Yes oh yes, I confess; please arrest me now or my conscience will never be at rest.”

Harry smiled involuntarily. “You really do want to go to prison. Missing Jimbo?”

Malfoy frowned. “Who?”

“Your cellmate. You—er, you made him up? Last time.” Harry wondered why he remembered that so clearly when obviously Malfoy didn’t. In fact, that whole conversation remained very stark in his memory, which was odd considering most days blurred into the rest lately.

Harry shook his head. Jimbo had just been weird; that was all.

Malfoy’s expression turned thoughtful. His head tilted as though he saw something in Harry’s face, something that mollified him somehow. Or just made him really tired, because he sighed and looked down at his work again, fiddling with his hammer. He seemed over his former ire, or had swallowed it somehow. “Oh, him,” he finally said. “Jim. Good old him. He bent the bars, rolled the toilet paper out the window, slid down the roll, and had himself an escape.”

Harry smiled again. “Clever.”

“More than throwing a whole water fountain at a window.”

“So I guess you’re hurting for company.”

Malfoy glared at Harry. “Apparently not like some people,” he murmured, and went back to his work.

“What?” Harry shifted on the stool, then picked up the goggles again. “What are these? Really.”

“Stop pawing at them. They are used to very delicate handling and will be very cross with me for letting you touch them with your big ruddy club hands. And I won’t be able to explain it to them because they are goggles, Potter.”

“I do not have club hands,” was mostly what Harry got from that.

“That’s what I told my abdomen in fifth year after you embedded one into it, but it was headstrong and refused to be convinced.”

“Your abdomen was headstrong?”

“Abdomens can be headstrong.” Malfoy managed to look arrogant about knowing this when Harry apparently didn’t.

Harry scowled down at the goggles. “I’m surprised you even wear these things.”

Malfoy made an annoyed sound. “I do intricate work. I need to see some of the little parts up close. Now give them back.”

“It’s just you’re always so meticulous about your appearance.” Harry gave them back.

“Meticulous about my . . .?” The goggles dangled from Malfoy’s hand as he trailed off.

Harry glanced at Malfoy’s hair, still sticking up and kind of staticky from when he ripped off the goggles. The planes of his face were awkward, even more so than when he was a kid, because when you were a kid you might grow into narrow, pointed features, but adults were stuck with sharp bits poking their chin and cheekbones out. Malfoy’s collar was unbuttoned and his clavicle was visible, sharp and pointed as his face. The bones of his wrists were just as visible under rolled up cuffs, hard barbs delicate and vulnerable looking in their nakedness.

Harry looked away, clearing his throat. “You used to be. In school.”

Malfoy huffed. “My mother—anyway, just because some people’s parents taught them how to be properly groomed. I mean,” he said, glancing at Harry, “just because some of us had parents at all.”

“Yes, thank you, Malfoy. I’m now reminded of my perfectly parentless status. Shall I go off and cry?”

“Don’t get my hopes up.” Malfoy hitched a shoulder. “I just thought I should remind you about the orphan thing.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I feel sorry for you never having had anyone to teach you how to comb your hair?”

“Your mum taught you to comb your hair?”

Almost self-consciously, Malfoy pushed his hair down, then seemed to realize he was doing it, and stopped. “Well, of course she did,” he said finally. His voice sounded funny. “It’s what mums do, Potter.”

The sudden image that came to mind of Narcissa standing over young Draco with a comb made Harry feel distinctly odd. Whenever he remembered how much Narcissa had loved her son, Harry remembered Malfoy was a normal kid, who probably had done lots of normal kid things. And he wondered if his own mum had lived, loving him as much, whether he would have grown up normal too and found Malfoy not so different after all.

Malfoy went back to working on his typewriter. Harry watched for a while, uncomfortable. He started sorting through Malfoy’s tools while Malfoy harped at him for touching his things.

“What delicate work do you do, anyway?” Harry asked after a while.

Malfoy gave a subdued sigh again, but for once gave a straight answer also. “Mostly I repair magical antiques.”

He’d better watch it, or he might start to sound amiable.

Harry demanded, “Like Vanishing Cabinets?”

Malfoy changed color again, but he didn’t look up. “Yes, just like that.” His voice was all hard and prickly. “I couldn’t picture a better career for me, even if I’d actually had a choice. Isn’t it just smashing to have the opportunity to facilitate some impressionable teen in loosing murderers and werewolves on a lot of school children? I’m so frenzied with anticipation at the possibility, I can barely work on this.” He pushed down a key on the typewriter and then took the key off to poke some pieces down inside.

Harry’s voice was flat. “You can’t bait me, Malfoy. You’re not worth it, so don’t try.”

Malfoy paused, and then went back to poking the insides of his machine. “You really are that self-centered. When did everything I say start to be about you?”

“You are talking to me, you know.”

“Of course. Silly me. Because my job right now isn’t actually fixing this. It’s keeping your pathetically bored and lonely self entertained.”

“You wish. You couldn’t keep me entertained for the life of you.” Harry paused. “Except for those first couple of seconds when you were wearing those goggles.”

“Are you requesting that I wear them? Is it just me, or is that a little . . . deviant? How particular your tastes are.” Malfoy said all this without even looking up.

“And I’m not lonely,” Harry added. “Whatever your sad, pathetic needs make me out to be, this is not a social call, Malfoy.”

Malfoy snorted.

“Shacklebolt came in this morning with this.” Harry picked up the pamphlet again. “Said it was inflammatory material and we should find out the author just to make sure he isn’t up to something serious.”

“Shacklebolt said my news bulletin was inflammatory?” Malfoy said, and beamed.

He shouldn’t look like that. He should be ashamed of himself, obviously, for being preposterous and troublesome, for doing all this just to gain some attention. He should hang his head and blur into the background, instead of being the clearest, brightest thing Harry had seen in weeks.

Malfoy was practically glowing, with pride, a spark of humor, and something more beneath, the passion from before.

It annoyed Harry endlessly. “I’m keeping my eye on you, Malfoy.”

“Voyeur. Deviant, like I said. Want me in the goggles, do you?”

Harry smiled sourly. “Yeah, I can hardly wait.”

Malfoy looked at his typewriter for a while. “You know,” he said, without looking up. “It’s not like I can get a job in the Ministry to—how did you put it—take the beast down from within, all that.”

“I don’t think I mentioned beasts. Or taking anything down. I said you’re melodramatic.”

“None of my friends can get jobs in the Ministry. And we can’t get jobs at the Daily Prophet either, or any of the syndicated publications. What voice are we supposed to use to dissent, again?”

“Well, not little bits of rubbish in the dailies, anyway.” Harry waved the pamphlet around once more, frustrated again. He didn’t like Malfoy’s reaction to finding out the Aurors were taking him seriously; he didn’t like Malfoy beaming like that. Malfoy wasn’t serious; the pamphlet was rubbish, and Harry resented Malfoy acting like he was on some kind of crusade when all he was really doing was getting in the way. “You think this is really doing something? You think this is really fighting in the real world?”

“I think my world is more real than yours.” Malfoy clenched his fists, beginning to get angry again, too.

“Uh, no. No, I really don’t think so.”

“Let me tell you a little story.”

“Will there be milk and biscuits?” Harry mocked. “Because I can’t have story time without biscuits.”

“No. But you’ll sit there and listen because it’s what you really want, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. He was spitting his words, meaning them to sting, his whole face tight. “That’s why you’re here. Saying these things, trying to get a rise out of me.”

Harry made a derisive noise. “In your dreams.”

But he sat there and listened.

He didn’t know what compelled him. Maybe he was just fascinated by the things Malfoy came up with. By how clueless he could be, how selfishly blind, trapped in his own view of things.

He wanted to see Malfoy’s eyes go bright again, his lips go white again, his hands move quick and furiously like articulate birds.

“After the—Voldemort,” Malfoy was saying. “Voldemort died and we acted like everything could go back to normal. But there was Mud—Muggleborn registration. There was Purebloods watching it happen. The trials happened so quickly; everyone just wanted it to be over. Over, instead of actually resolved. Sometime soon, it’s going to explode.”

“And somehow you’re the only one who sees this.”

“You’re the only one who knew Voldemort was back.”

Harry, who’d been in the process of rolling his eyes, suddenly went stiff. “That’s entirely different.”

“Why? Is it so impossible to believe people are burying their heads in the sand all over again? Not facing the truth?”

“It’s different,” Harry hissed. “I saw Voldemort corporealize. Maybe you even mean what you say; maybe you even think you’re seeing things, but it’s not the same. It was flesh and bones and blood.”

And Cedric Diggory’s dead eyes.

Malfoy was wrong, because nothing would ever be as real as that still gaze was in Harry’s dreams.

Nothing would ever see so clearly as those eyes; the rest was just a blur.

“Like I said,” Malfoy went on, “isn’t it nice to have evil all in one big bad. But when people can’t turn around and fight a common enemy, they turn around and fight each other. If a real war starts, it’ll be even uglier than the last.”

“And you’re going to prevent it. What, want to be a hero after all this time, Malfoy?”

Malfoy regarded him for several moments, then seemed to withdraw from the fervor he’d slipped into all over again. His eyes were cool and his face blank, and Harry could read nothing in his hands.

Resenting the distance, wanting to press deeper, Harry said, “I heard you, you know. At Hogwarts, sixth year, you talking about your precious task. With Snape. About how you thought he was going to steal the glory. Is that what you’re after now?”

“I can see where you would make that connection.” Malfoy nodded. “Because civil disobedience and peaceful protest are so much like killing D-Dumbledore.” His voice only slipped a little. “At least we’re agreed now as to the magnitude of the situation.”

“Magnitude? Do you even care about the magnitude? I don’t think you ever really acted for any cause, Malfoy. Just for yourself. For the attention. Your glory. Don’t you realize you’re just looking for a battle?”

Malfoy’s short and self-imposed resolve seemed to break. “Yes!” he said wildly. “Yes, I’m looking for a battle, and you should be too! They’re everywhere, all around you, and there’s so many, you don’t even know where to begin. Why do you think you’re even here, Potter? You want a fight!”

Harry made a loud choked sound that he was sure was meant to be a laugh. “Battles everywhere? What are you on about?”

“There are,” Malfoy insisted. “But they’re all the same to you, aren’t they? It’s just a job, isn’t it, because nothing has the desperation or immediacy o-of Voldemort. But to me it doesn’t follow then that if there’s something bad, something wrong, we should just accept it because it’s not as bad as all that."

Frowning, Harry shook his head. Malfoy didn’t know what he was saying. “It’s not that simple.”

“Nothing ever is. But you wish it was. You and the Ministry. That’s why they’re fighting us. And that’s why you’re fighting me. You want the times when it was just me you had to fight. Just me to yell at and insult, just me to trip you in the hallways.”

Harry stared at him incredulously. “Wow,” he said eventually. “You really believe that, don’t you. Malfoy, for your information, it was never just you and me. I always had something bigger going on. More important things to think about.”

“Oh, please, don’t shatter more of my delusions; I can’t stand it.”

“I’m doing my job,” Harry hissed, more annoyed than ever at Malfoy’s sarcasm. He stood up. “But not very well. Next time they bring you to me to write up your charges, I’ll just throw you in a cell.”

“Glad we’ve got that cleared up.” Malfoy smiled brightly. “That way I can give my regards to Jimbo.”

Harry paused. He was angry and he didn’t care and he wasn’t going to ask: “I thought Jimbo had himself an escape?”

Malfoy laughed, and Harry had to scowl and leave because Malfoy’s weird mood swings made him want to smash things.

* * *
Continue . . .