Chapter Text
Harry supposed he could have checked ahead of time just how cold the North Sea actually was in July.
Perhaps if he had practised a bit of uncharacteristic forethought, he wouldn’t have found himself here, standing in the dour, dank receiving room of Azkaban, carefully disrobing and casting off multiple layers of what had turned out to be quite unnecessary outerwear—a cagoule on loan from Hermione’s dad; a heavy trenchcoat with Waterproofing and Warming Charms sewn into the lining; a thick woollen scarf in faded reds and golds Molly had knit for him three Christmases back; a pair of overtrousers he’d bought last-minute from Tesco—before a gaoler who wouldn’t stop sighing every thirty seconds. As if waiting for Harry Potter to strip down was the most tedious job he’d ever been tasked with and was severely cutting into his time sat on his arse in front of the Wireless.
“Ain’t you done yet, Potter?”
“Do I look done, Savage?” Harry felt entitled to his snippy tone. On top of being drenched from the boat ride over, he was having more than a bit of difficulty getting his overtrousers off; one leg was caught, so he had to hop about on the other trying to wriggle free. He might have been tempted to just fire off a Slicing Hex and write off the ten quid as a loss had his wand not already been impounded, safely ensconced now in a glass case protected by a colourful array of charms sure to cause severe bodily harm should they be breached.
Savage shrugged his beefy shoulders. “Maybe wearing yer trousers half-off is the fashion nowadays on the mainland; I wun’t know, seeing as you lot’ve ‘ad me up here for thirteen bloody months.”
“I’m not in charge of rotations, Savage; take it up with Robards if you’re missing jolly old London.” He finally freed himself from the overtrousers, leaving them in a crumpled pile of polyester on the grimy stone slates beneath his boots. Good riddance. “And you said I’ve got to remove my outerwear, so I’m removing my outerwear.”
“I din’t say so; manual says so. Rules are rules, Potter. Even you’ve gotta abide by ‘em sometimes. Don’t look for any special treatment ‘ere—you’ll get an hour with the prisoner an’ no more.” His bulging eyes rolled to the clock hanging on the wall of his little glassed-in cubicle; it had but one hand, presently pointed squarely at ‘Time to contemplate the inexorable passage of time’. “An’ your time started fifteen minutes ago.”
Harry kicked aside the overtrousers with a curse, marching over to the entry gate and banging loudly on the iron bars. “Fine, right, let me through then.”
“Not so fast there—” Savage eased up from his chair, waving his wand with a bored flick and snatching a ring of heavy keys from a hook by the door to his cubicle as he waddled out. A piece of parchment popped into existence just below Harry’s nose, an inked quill floating in the air beside it. “Y’have to sign in.”
“…He asked for me. It’s already in your records.”
Savage moved his lips in a mocking imitation. “I don’t give a fig. Sign in, full name an’ the purpose of your visit.”
A visit. Like he was here on holiday—because everyone knew Azkaban was the hot-ticket getaway spot these days. Not that Harry’d taken a holiday in…so long he couldn’t remember where he’d last gone much less when. But still, if he was of a mind to request some time off, take a sabbatical and recharge, it sure as hell wouldn’t be here, signing his name in at the Azkaban visitor’s entrance and waiting to be escorted to the cell of Draco Malfoy on this the eve of his being Kissed.
No, he could easily think of at least three other much more appealing destinations. Perhaps nestled in the heart of an Acromantula nest, or strolling through the kelp forests along the bottom of the Black Lake.
The parchment and quill vanished with a snap once Harry had finished, and the great iron gate swung open outward as Savage waved him through, stopping him once he’d crossed the threshold with a held-up hand. “Arms out. No false moves.”
“You just saw me disrobe, Savage. What exactly are you expecting me to pull?”
“Who knows what sort of mischief-making paraphernalia you’ve got stored on yer person—or where,” Savage grunted, waving a Probity Probe over Harry and poking him with it at odd intervals. “Yer best mates with Weasley, an’ I ‘ear business is boomin’.”
And all right, he had a point, but Harry wasn’t here to ‘make mischief’. At least, he didn’t think so—truthfully, he didn’t exactly know what he was here for.
He only knew that Malfoy had asked for him, when offered a last request before his sentence was meted out. Perhaps a deathbed confession, as it were?
Not that there was really all that much left for him to confess—he was getting the Kiss, after all. Hardly anyone got Kissed these days—even Malfoy’s dad had avoided it, though only because he’d died before the Wizengamot had finished handing down sentences to all the convicted Death Eaters in the early months following Voldemort’s downfall. Harry didn’t know if that rightly counted as ‘avoiding’ it, but given he’d heard the Kiss was a fate worse than death, perhaps Lucius had lucked out in the end after all.
Evidently satisfied Harry wasn’t trying to smuggle in contraband clenched betwixt his arse cheeks, Savage finally waved him along, leading the way to Malfoy’s cell with a shuffling, reluctant gait. It was nearly as damp inside the prison as outside, and only now did Harry notice a biting chill start to set in, as his wet clothes began to wick away what little warmth there was within the stone walls. He absently rubbed at his arms, and Savage threw him an unhappy grin.
“That’ll be the Dementor they keep around for those gettin’ the Kiss.” He jerked his chin to indicate a heavily warded door made of iron with rusted copper bracings and indecipherable runes etched around the jamb. “Just ‘ug the far wall, it’ll pass. They keep him bound up tight with fancy charms from what I seen, but cor the chill, can’t do nothin’ ‘bout it.”
“Chocolate,” Harry muttered, plastering himself against the eastern wall.
“Huh?”
“Chocolate—bring some in to nibble on. It helps. Not much, but it helps.”
Savage’s bushy brow beetled, but he nodded.
They continued on in silence, down a long hallway that led to a block kept separate from the main hall, where Harry could hear loud, insistent banging and whooping as the inmates made every effort to drive their gaolers batty with incessant racket. Azkaban was several orders of magnitude more lively now that the Dementor guards had been exchanged for the unfortunate Aurors who had drawn the short straw and earned themselves a relaxing island getaway. More lively, yet somehow just as depressing. At least, Harry assumed it must be; he shuddered to imagine just how much more desolate, more crushing this place had been when Sirius had been locked up here.
As Savage had promised, feeling slowly began to return to Harry’s extremities once they’d distanced themselves from the Kissing Chamber, and he felt his dark thoughts scatter to the four winds when he caught a flash of white through the tiny barred window cut into the door through which Savage was now shouldering.
Malfoy was sitting upright on what Harry took to be his bed: a mean little camp bed that sagged beneath even his slight weight. He had his head thrown back against the pock-marked stone wall, eyes closed, and showed no reaction to Harry and Savage entering the block. His was the only occupied cell of the three on the block, but the stench was foul enough for ten, and Harry fought the urge to pinch his nose and breathe wholly through his mouth. He was meant to be a professional, and he certainly didn’t need Savage gleefully Owling the whole Auror brigade with tales of Harry Potter swooning between the twin assaults of a ravenous Dementor and Eau de Azkaban.
He tried to recall the last time he’d seen Malfoy—in person, and not in a clipping from the Prophet or a mugshot—and failed. Had they even spoken two words since the end of the war? Certainly they walked in different circles, always had, but he didn’t think they’d traded words even at Malfoy’s trial. The first one, that was—when the Wizengamot had been rushing through the smaller fish in their eagerness to hand down sentences to the higher-ranking Death Eaters. Harry had been out of the country on assignment and missed the second one entirely. Perhaps it was for the best; if he’d been present, he might have leapt into the pit of Courtroom C and laid hands on Malfoy himself, saving him nine months of failed appeals and just putting him out of his misery there and then.
Savage pieced through the rusted keys on his ring until he found one that suited, then slid it into the equally rusted lock on Malfoy’s cell door. A string of runes around the keyhole glowed green briefly before fading away, and the door swung open with a grating screech.
Savage extended a hand with a mock bow. “He’s all yours, Auror Potter.”
Harry stepped through, keeping his eyes trained squarely on Malfoy just in case he thought to try something—but he didn’t move. Still wouldn’t even open his eyes to look at Harry or Savage, and Harry wondered if perhaps he was asleep—or unconscious. He knew the gaolers sometimes put the inmates under if they became unmanageable, or for transport, but he somehow found it difficult to imagine Malfoy fitting either of those conditions. Not in his present state.
He was practically skin and bones, his cheekbones sharper than Harry remembered and exposed arms—Dark Mark tucked away from Harry’s line of sight—grossly knobby at the joints. His face was covered in splotches of grime, or else he was badly bruised, and his white-blond hair, so immaculately coiffed in Harry’s memories, now hung in lank, greasy locks the colour of old dishwater. Perhaps the Azkaban rags had fit him when he’d first arrived, but by now, they dwarfed him, at least three sizes too large for what was now a dangerously slight frame.
Harry might have objected to Malfoy’s state, had he thought it would do any good. At this point, there was nothing to be done for it, and even if Harry’d been of a mind to pull a Hermione and raise a stink about prisoner rights, he wasn’t about to do so for the sake of Draco Malfoy’s literal soul.
“Have fun,” Savage said, and yanked the door shut once Harry had stepped fully over the threshold. It hit the jamb with a rattling clang followed by the sound of several hidden magical mechanisms latching.
Harry whirled around, his hands on the cold iron bars. “What the—you’re leaving me here?”
Savage picked his teeth with a toothpick, snorting derisively. “What, surely y’ain’t scared?” He jerked his thick chin in Malfoy’s direction. “Not like there’s much he can do to you. ‘Cept maybe shit on you. And if yer gettin’ close enough to his dirty arse to risk that, well it’s none of my business is it?” He banged on the bars, and Harry jerked back. “Thirty minutes now, Potter. I’ll be back for you when yer time’s up.”
And then he was gone, and Harry was stuck there, locked in an Azkaban cell with Draco Malfoy, convicted Neo-Death Eater.
He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t. He was only surprised they’d been given privacy. But then, Harry’d already been practically turned inside out as Savage searched him for contraband, and his wand was sitting out in the lobby, so he wasn’t going to be breaking Malfoy out any time soon, not with his pitiful proficiency with wandless magic. Likewise, there wasn’t much Malfoy could do to him now either, except perhaps throw a punch. And seeing as Harry had earned top marks in his hand-to-hand combat module, he was pretty confident he could take Malfoy in a brawl, especially given the state of the git.
Still, it didn’t seem entirely wise for them to leave a condemned man—the most desperate sort—alone with one of the few people who might be familiar enough with the workings of Auror-run Azkaban to be able to break him—
“I confess, I’m surprised you came.”
Harry gave an embarrassing jolt.
For whatever reason, he’d been expecting a rasp. Something raw and exhausted—a voice that fit the pitiful shell Malfoy had been reduced to. He’d expected something broken, something barely human.
He hadn’t been expecting Malfoy. That grating, sarcastic drawl he’d been honing since First Year, fashioned into a fine cutting implement that knew just where to poke and press and stab for maximum irritation, how to peel back the skin and wriggle under it and burrow until it struck a nerve.
Harry took a breath, swallowed, then turned, leaning back against the bars as he crossed his arms over his chest. Why hadn’t he worn his robes? He looked so much more professional in red; Ginny had called him dashing even, though he thought perhaps she might have been taking the piss out of him. Instead, he was one threadbare sweater away from standing there in his pyjamas, and it left him feeling unnervingly off-balanced. Fucking summertime in the North Sea. Fucking global warming.
“That makes two of us,” he said. Malfoy still had his head tilted to the wall, but his eyes were open now, fixed squarely on the ceiling. Harry wondered when he’d get around to making eye contact, and then wondered further if he actually wanted that or not. He didn’t rightly know what he’d do if Malfoy’s eyes were as unchanged as his voice—maybe Azkaban hadn’t gotten to him after all.
Harry shifted his weight and cocked his head, trying to affect a cool calm. “What am I doing here?”
“Well,” Malfoy said, sighing dramatically, “All the people I like are either dead, in hiding, or in prison themselves, and of all the people I don’t like, I pegged you as the most likely to actually come. Given you were always sticking your nose into my business.” He swivelled his gaze down from the ceiling with a roll of his head, letting it loll forward as he fixed Harry in his sights. Harry reminded himself not to swallow. “Though I suppose Weasley might have come too, if only to ask if he might be allowed to stay and watch.”
His voice took on a bitter edge, which helped set Harry back to rights, and he straightened up, stepping away from the bars to within striking distance. There, he wasn’t scared. “You can’t think there’s anything I can do to stay the Kiss, right? I mean, even if I wanted to—” He was quick to add, “—and I don’t, it’s beyond my pull.”
Draco cocked his head, grey eyes obscenely bright for the circumstances. “I thought saving people was your thing.” Before Harry could muster a retort, though, he continued with a bored wave, “But no, I’m well aware of that. It’s only that they told me I could have a final visitor, anyone I wanted, and they’d try to make it happen.” He shrugged, somehow still elegant in motheaten rags. “I thought to make them work for it.”
Harry scoffed, and suddenly they were fifteen again. “You asked for me just to piss off the Ministry?”
“Only half—I hoped to piss you off as well.” He lifted his brows hopefully. “Did it work? Dear old Gawain’s so stuffy and formal, it’s hard to get a read on him. You’re an open book at least, which I have always appreciated.”
Perhaps it was for the best his wand was back with Savage, or else Harry’d likely find himself written up for prisoner abuse before the half hour was up. He clenched his fist—to remind himself not to use it to bash Malfoy’s brains in. “You’re a fucking piece of work, Malfoy.”
“And time has not dulled that patented Potter charm. Know that it will be while meditating on fisticuffs that might have been that I shall meet my hereafter on the morrow.” He nodded to Harry’s hands. “Unless you’d like to have a go? Last chance,” he sing-songed, waggling his brows in childish temptation.
And Harry unclenched his fists, shoulders sagging, because this was wrong—wrong, because it was too right.
Malfoy was being entirely too…himself. Too blithe, too bright, and too keen. A bag of tricks, meant to charm and disarm. Fucking Slytherins.
Harry frowned, and put away his temper. “You’re awfully blasé about your own impending mortality.”
“Now hold on—where did you learn words like blasé and impending and mortality? That’s N.E.W.T.-level English.” His brows lifted, and he nodded sagely. “I must say I’m impressed.”
“Cut the shit.”
“That’s more like it.”
Harry stepped in close, until he was standing in the cradle of Malfoy’s knobby knees, and Malfoy had to crane his neck back to keep looking at him. “What am I doing here?” he asked again, softer and serious, and from this distance, he could see the telling little twitch right at the corner of Malfoy’s eyes, the flare of his nostrils, the bob of his throat.
“Well I wanted to see you, obviously.” His voice was still light and lilting, that frustrating haughty tease, but Harry knew to look for the tremor now, and he heard it like a fucking clarion.
“You wanted to see me? Or—you wanted me to see you?” He took one step back, so he could take in the whole of Malfoy’s pitiful state. “I’m here to—what? Bear witness? See you, see you like this, so someone remembers you? So you don’t just—” He snapped his fingers. “Vanish?”
Malfoy inclined his head, a half-nod. “Well, Father is dead, perhaps Mother too—and I’m the last of my line. As you say, it’ll only be too easy for me to fade from memory. I haven’t even bothered to fashion a shiv and carve my name into one of these bricks like the rest of the refuse that’s passed through this block.” He leaned back, bracing his arms behind himself. Even now, he still managed to contort himself so Harry could only see the edges of the Dark Mark peeking out. “But having the Harry Potter remember me… Now that’s a legacy I could be proud of.” He smiled, thin-lipped. “If only my father could hear about this.”
Harry laughed and stepped away, because he couldn’t just stand there. He began to pace, Malfoy’s nervous glee entirely too catching. “That is it, then. You’re going to make me carry this around with me, for the rest of my life—for ego? Knowing I was your last request—the last person to give enough of a shit to go out of their way to see you?”
“Come now, you could always Obliviate yourself.” Harry stopped his pacing and looked at Malfoy—who only grinned in return, toothy, his upper lip curling. “But you won’t. You make yourself remember everything you’ve ever done, or had done to you. That’s what they make Pensieves for, you know.” Malfoy sighed. “But you wouldn’t be our glorious Saviour if you weren’t carrying around the weight of the world on your strapping sanctimonious shoulders.”
“Maybe I’d make an exception, just for you.”
“Be still my beating heart.”
Harry held his eyes for a long moment. He wouldn’t be the one to blink, not this time. If he had to carry this memory with him, out the front gates of Azkaban, then he’d have it include this: Harry looking at Malfoy, and Malfoy looking back at him, and then flinching.
Malfoy sniffed, then seemed to find the fraying ticking holding the thin little mattress beneath his arse terribly interesting, and Harry allowed himself to breathe again. Malfoy ran his tongue over his teeth, seeming to consider his words carefully, cautiously, and then: “I did have a reason.”
“A reason?”
“For asking for you. Beyond the obvious desire to fuck with you. That was just a special personal treat; I thought I deserved one, considering.” Harry did not agree, but he let Malfoy hang on to his delusions.
Harry waited a beat, and when Malfoy did not continue, he prompted, “And that was?”
“I had a question that needed answering, and only you could give me a proper response.”
Harry wanted to scream. “Listen, you’ve got about twenty minutes now before Savage comes back and I fuck off for good, so if you actually have a que—”
And then Malfoy sat up, very straight, fingers clenched at the edge of his camp bed. “All right. Just. Shut up. Does it hurt?”
He spoke very quickly, and the lilt was well and gone, crushed to pieces as Malfoy’s question ran roughshod over the mask he’d quickly and quietly doffed.
Harry seized up, to keep himself from stepping back, as if Malfoy had rushed him physically. “What?” He blinked, several times. “Don’t—does what hurt?”
“The—” Malfoy cut himself off, licked his lips, and closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. And then Harry knew what he was going to ask, before he did: “Dying. Does it hurt?” Once it was out, over his lips, Malfoy seemed to recover, and quickly followed up with words that sounded to Harry’s ears rather rote and practised. Like Malfoy had rehearsed this moment and finally received his cue. “…I know you’ve done it before. Mother told me, she told me everything. So don’t try to tell me you didn’t. I don’t care how you came back, so don’t think I’m trying to—” He bit his lip. Harry doubted that had been part of the planned speech. “I only wanted to know about the dying.” He blinked slowly, then lifted his head to look at Harry. Now those were the eyes of a condemned man, and Harry hated it wasn’t half as satisfying a sight as he’d thought it would be. “I’ll have it straight, if it’s all the same to you. Pray don’t sugarcoat it. I’d rather not be surprised when—you know.”
Harry balked. Malfoy was looking up at him with a desperate kind of hope that turned his stomach, and part of him wanted to pull semantics—to object that Malfoy wasn’t going to die. But he did at least recognise how ridiculous that stance was; he’d be as good as dead, wouldn’t he? Without a soul, Malfoy’s body would be but a husk, and could it even survive at that point? Or would it be disposed of? Once the Kiss had been delivered, would the remains just be chucked into the North Sea and picked apart by lobalugs?
“…It won’t be the same,” he settled on, and at Malfoy’s crinkled brow, he went on, because Malfoy had begged him not to sugarcoat it, “It’s—the Kiss, it’s not… What happened to me, and what’ll happen to you—they’re different. They just are. I can’t tell you what’ll happen, because I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does.” And maybe that last bit had been unnecessarily cruel, because the stricken expression on Malfoy’s face told Harry that he’d been relying rather a lot, mentally and emotionally, on Harry telling him that no, it didn’t hurt, and yes, there was bliss and relief and loved ones waiting in the beyond, or at least blessed quiet before the consciousness was snuffed out.
And maybe there was—Harry could still recall, though less clearly now, meeting Dumbledore in that strange dream-like version of King’s Cross Station those years back.
But it wouldn’t be like that for Malfoy, not as far as he could imagine. While Sirius and Remus and his parents had told Harry that dying was easy, he couldn’t tell Malfoy the same, not when that sort of death wasn’t what Malfoy would face in twelve hours’ time. It wasn’t a Killing Curse waiting for him, though Harry reckoned that sort of quick, clean ending might be more of a mercy than the rending of soul from body.
Malfoy seemed to wilt, though in a very Malfoy way, hunching forward with his elbows resting on his knees so his knobby back curved in a sharp arc under the ratty prison rags. “Did you know they deliver the Kiss just before sunrise? Right before the break of dawn?” He looked up at Harry, lips stretched into a smile that was more than a little mad. “So the world can keep turning apace, starting bright and early with one less worthless bit of scum marring its pristine surface.” He released a sniffling huff of forced laughter. “Fucked up, don’t you think? Even for this place.”
It was, Harry thought, and then hated that he was being forced to agree with Malfoy on something. He felt something snap inside—the last of his patience, he thought, though he hadn’t realised he’d been practising any in here—and before he could stop himself, he was biting out in sharp, unkind tones, “Perhaps if you were so concerned about the state of your soul and what’s to become of it, you shouldn’t have let it come to this.” Malfoy’s smile wavered just a tic, but he seemed to bite the inside of his cheek, keen to keep it in place, and this somehow made Harry angrier. He shook a finger in Malfoy’s face, like a parent scolding their naughty child. “You’re here because of your own damn actions, your own decisions—you put yourself here, so don’t expect an ounce of sympathy from me, Malfoy. Not now.”
Malfoy’s eyes darkened, but he made no move to defend himself, so Harry trundled on, working himself up into a fierce lather.
“You had every chance—every chance to change things, to stop this train before it jumped the tracks. And you may not want to hear this, you may not even believe me, but I’m going to tell you, because I want you to know exactly how royally you fucked yourself: I was pulling for you. I swear to god I was, every step of the way. I wanted you to be better. And I would have stepped in, I would have done whatever I could—whatever I could—if you’d shown an ounce of sodding courage and asked. If you’d put aside your fucking pride, shown a genuine desire to right yourself, I don’t know that there’s anything I wouldn’t have done, if I’d had the power.” He swallowed thickly, throat parched. He was the one who sounded like he’d spent three years in Azkaban now. He drew himself up tall, so that he could stare down at Malfoy, and really really rub it in, because god he was furious. Didn’t know if he’d ever been this wound up. It was exhausting. “You curl your lip and wrinkle your nose and sneer and call me Saviour, yet you only seek my help at the eleventh hour. That’s what’s fucked up, Malfoy.”
“Oi!” Savage roared, bursting through the door to the cell block with enough force to rattle it from its hinges. His beady eyes bounced between Harry and Malfoy like a ping-ping ball. “What the blazes are you yammerin’ on about in here, Potter? He try and pull some shit?” He drew out a long length of wood, rather thicker than a wand, and smacked his palm with it in threat. “You’d think he’d go nice and quiet, being one of them respectable Purebloods and all, but I guess looks can be deceivin’.” He rapped the wooden rod on the bars of Malfoy’s cell in an angry rhythm. “On your fuckin’ feet you scumba—”
“We’re fine,” Harry said, short and sharp, and he fixed Savage with a look just as cutting. Savage left off with the banging. “We’ve still got ten minutes left, by my count.”
“His count’s wrong, Savage,” Malfoy said, smoothly rising to his feet. “In fact, I think our time’s just about up.”
Harry whirled back around, brows crinkling. “Wha—it’s not—”
“You heard him, Potter,” Savage said, stabbing his key into the lock and yanking open the cell door again. He hooked a finger into Harry’s collar and dragged him out, then slammed the door shut in Malfoy’s face. “There. You’re a free man once more.”
Harry pressed himself against the bars, clinging to the cold, raw iron. He tried to summon up the fury again, tried to hold it and handle it, but it was quickly being subsumed by a panicked desperation. “We aren’t finished.” He hated how it came out almost in a whine.
Malfoy took three slow, measured steps forward, close enough that if Harry wanted, he could reach through and throttle him. “No more swooping down to save me on a broomstick then, eh, Potter?” He held Harry’s gaze for only a heartbeat, then flicked his attention back to Savage. “Thanks, Archie. You can escort Auror Potter back to the entrance now. Mind the Dementor on your way back; Potter’s allergic.”
Savage rapped the bars again for good measure. “Told you to stop fucking calling me by my given name, Malfoy.”
Malfoy waved him away, returning to his camp bed and settling back down. “Apologies, Archie. I’ll try to remember.”
Harry opened his mouth, a treacherous apology on his lips, but blessedly before it could escape, Savage grabbed his bicep in one meaty fist and jerked him towards the door. “C’mon, Potter. Time’s up.”
“Wait—I just need—” He just needed to reach in there and shake some sense into Malfoy, to see he wasn’t already dead, that he was still alive right now, because his eyes and his voice were fading fast. He’d kept those last true bits of himself locked away, safe where Azkaban couldn’t touch them, until he saw Harry, and now that’d been done, Malfoy was spent. Harry nearly wrenched his neck, twisting to try and see—
Malfoy had one hand raised, waving his fingers as Savage shoved Harry back into the corridor, and as the heavy door closed behind them, he only just caught Malfoy’s final, “Have a nice life, Potter.”
And fuck. Now Malfoy was always going to have had the last word with him. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to do a lot of things, actually, a million different emotions warring inside of him, so he wound up doing nothing and just let himself be chivvied along by Savage.
Savage was muttering to himself, a string of uncharitable comments targeted at Malfoy narrating the long plod back to the entrance, but Harry wasn’t listening. He was too busy trying not to drown in the wave of fresh, crushing guilt washing over him, because had that outburst been called for in any way? Sure, every word he’d said was true, and he didn’t actually regret any of it, not really, but there was no sense in ruining a man’s final night on earth, was there? Malfoy had asked him a question, a very revealing one, and Harry had told him to go fuck himself. He’d been Malfoy’s last request. Bet he regretted that now.
Harry wanted to get out of here. Away from this place full of memories new and old he’d never be rid of—fuck a Pensieve—and depression and despair and, all right, death. He couldn’t help Malfoy anymore, so he just wanted to be away.
Once back in the entryway, he began the arduous task of layering up again, pulling on his cagoule and scarf and coat. The blasted overtrousers he just Incendio’d as soon as Savage returned his wand to him, stubbing his toe in the pile of ash left behind.
“When will the boat return?” he asked, frowning at the heavy, bolted double doors marking the entrance. A portrait of Kingsley hung just off to the side, so that anyone who entered had to do so under the watchful eye of the Minister. Portrait Kingsley gave Harry a little wave when they met eyes.
“Eh, not ‘til after dark, I expect.” Savage was already back in his cubicle, tapping his wand against the side of the Wireless until the volume was high enough for his liking. “May as well settle in. There’s a rerun coming up on the hour of last week’s Harpies game I’ve been hoping to catch, if you’re interested.”
“The Harpies swept the Arrows by over 200 points. Cotton knocked down one of the goal posts when he smashed into it, and that was pretty much the end of the match.”
Savage gave a sharp protest. “What the fuck, Potter? I just told you I hadn’t listened to the bloody thing yet, didn’t I?” He slapped his desk with a rolled up copy of the Prophet—the previous day’s, Harry gathered, as Malfoy’s pinched, sallow face stared back at him from the topsheet beneath the words Malfoy Heir Gets Good-night Kiss. “You’re a fucking jackarse, you know that? I shoulda let Malfoy have at you.”
“Mm,” Harry said, noncommittal. “Can I Apparate back to the mainland from here, do you think?”
“Not from the grounds,” Savage grunted, shaking open the paper and raking it with a squinty gaze until he found the Wireless on-air listings. “Anti-Apparition wards. Have to head down to the dock. Past the third post and you’ll be clear.” Harry gave a curt Ta and started for the doors. “But I’d wait for the boat, if I was you. It’s a trip and a half to the nearest waypoint, and yer liable to overtax yer core tryin’ to make a jump that far.”
“Then I’ll overtax my core. Enjoy the game, Savage.” He turned his back on the fingers Savage showed him, bracing his hands against the double doors and giving a great shove as he stepped out of Malfoy’s life for the last time.
It was well past midnight by the time Harry made it back to his flat; he’d wound up overtaxing himself Apparating to the mainland, as Savage had warned, and had wasted nearly two hours in the sleepy little dockside village trying to track down an Apothecary who could put him back to rights in order to make the remaining series of jumps back to London, as all the Portkeys had already been booked for the evening.
He toed off his still-waterlogged boots in the entryway and peeled his socks from his feet, tossing them haphazardly into the laundry basket to deal with in the morning. The lamps sputtered weakly overhead, even when he hit them with an extra tap of his wand, and he made a mental note to get the landlord to look into resetting the charms. He probably could have had Hermione tend to them in two shakes, but he was paying three times the room’s actual value in rent, just so he could live a walkable distance from the Ministry, and he intended to get his money’s worth.
Besides, if he asked her, she’d only give him one of those looks and ask him for the tenth time why he didn’t just move back into Grimmauld Place, as surely Andromeda and Teddy would love to have him, and didn’t it get lonely living in such a decrepit little hovel, at which point Harry would take offence at the decrepit little hovel comment, even though it was spot-on, and then Ron would remind him they had a spare room at their place, and Harry would spend the rest of his lunch break trying to explain to them that he lived in his ‘decrepit little hovel’ all by his lonesome because he wanted to live there all by his lonesome, and they would spend the rest of his lunch break trying to convince him that no, he didn’t, he couldn’t, and living on his own wasn’t healthy for him.
Well, six years in and he was still kicking, so it clearly wasn’t hurting him too badly either.
With no real ties to the house and seeing a greater need in his godson, he’d gifted the keys to Grimmauld Place to Andromeda and Teddy. She’d objected at first—they didn’t need all that space for one, and she didn’t have the best memories associated with the place for another—and then pleaded with him to stay on, as there was more than enough room and he’d be able to spend so much more time with Teddy that way, but Harry had (he hoped gracefully) declined the offer, professing a desire to strike out on his own, starting by renting his very first flat.
“I’ve been living elbows-to-ears in a dormitory for the better part of the past eight years,” he’d said with a wry smile. “It’ll be nice to have a little peace and quiet for once—though don’t think I won’t be around to harass the two of you so often you’ll be sick of me before the month’s out.”
Andromeda had let the matter go in the end, and Harry had held up his side of the bargain by joining them for dinner at least every Saturday. She’d started subletting some of the rooms recently, and Harry thought that between Kreacher and her boarders, she wasn’t wanting for company. Teddy, too, seemed no worse off for all the attention, with his grandmother and godfather and all the interesting sorts of folk who passed through Grimmauld Place. He was growing like a weed, sporting a new hairstyle and colour every time Harry saw him.
And it hadn’t been a lie, Harry saying he’d wanted to exercise a bit of independence and enjoy some solitude after years of dormitory living. He did want those things: living by himself, at his own whims, he could be sure that whatever he did inside the walls of his ‘decrepit little hovel’ was what he wanted to do, and not because someone else had asked him—or manipulated him, consciously or otherwise—into doing those things. It was always just—so much work, being around others these days. These years, rather. Having to pretend he’d moved on, because everyone else had, and if you hadn’t gotten your life sorted, back on track, after seven years, then there was something wrong with you. He didn’t need that sort of instability rubbing off on Teddy. The kid would have enough of a rough go in his life without being forced to take a front-row seat to Harry spinning his metaphorical wheels while he waited for things to finally make sense again.
No, he was handling things. Handling things just fine. Except for the lamps. That, he’d have to get the landlord to tend to.
After peeling off the last of the unnecessary outerwear and zapping himself with a Freshening Charm because the neighbours complained when he used the shower past ten, Harry shuffled to his kitchenette and rummaged around in the coolbox in search of dinner.
He eventually decided on the remains of takeaway Indian from two nights back—no sense letting good chicken tikka go to waste—and dumped the contents into a shallow bowl before hitting it with a Warming Charm. Molly would probably have frowned on the shortcut and reminded him food never tasted half as good when you used too much magic in the making, but Harry was too tired to care. Besides, with Kreacher back at Grimmauld Place, taking care of Andromeda and Teddy (and probably happier for it, being able to serve someone from the Black line), Harry wound up half-arsing his meals more often than not and had reached a point where he didn’t so much notice his food tasted a bit cardboard-y.
It was tasting particularly cardboard-y tonight, though, and barely five bites in, Harry told his stomach he was finished, Vanished the leftovers of the leftovers, and threw himself into his bed, hoping to snatch a few winks before he was expected back at his desk the next morning. He probably could have asked Robards for a half-day, he thought, especially considering he’d had to travel to the North Sea and back, but half the Department still thought he’d earned his position wholly on account of that little favour he’d done the whole of the wizarding world back during the war, and seven years out it somehow still grated. Showing up bright and early, without missing a beat, was what you did when you’d moved on, he reminded himself, and closed his eyes.
But his mind continued to whir, full-tilt, and in the dark, every time he could just feel himself drifting off, Harry would find himself back in Azkaban, staring at Malfoy leaned back against the wall of his cell, the long white column of his throat exposed, like he was just waiting for Harry to wrap his hands around it and put him out of his misery.
That got old rather quickly, and Harry threw off his duvet and padded back into the kitchen, putting on the kettle to brew himself a cup of chamomile. With mug in hand, he stepped out onto his little balcony, quite the nicest place in the whole flat, and sat down to sip and wait and watch the sun rise.
It was the least, last thing he could do for Malfoy, to witness this moment that Malfoy never would again, and he told himself that the twinge he felt in his chest right before dawn broke was only his imagination, or perhaps indigestion from the chicken tikka that had gone off.
He dragged himself to work the next day and spent an agonisingly slow morning buried under paperwork, wrapping up the final bits of his most recent case, which he’d had to put off on account of his impromptu jaunt out to Azkaban the day before.
He was still waiting for the Potions Analysts to get back to him with the diagnostics concerning a residue Harry’s team had found at a crime scene. The stuff had had the colour and consistency of an accelerant detected at a few other incidents the Department had been managing in recent weeks, but the Potions Analysts had demanded they be allowed to do their job and seemed utterly bereft of the urgency the Aurors held. What was it about Harry, he wondered, that drove Potioneers to make his life a living hell? He sincerely doubted the Analysts just hated him on account of his resemblance to his father.
At lunch, Hermione descended from her tower up on Level 1, and Ron swung by on break from the shop, clapping him firmly on the back with a grin when Harry stepped into the canteen. Hermione was already at his side, pressing a card into Harry’s hands that read You’re halfway to your mid-life crisis, Old Boy! “A birthday card, from my parents,” she explained. “Since they won’t be attending the to-do at the Burrow this weekend.”
Bloody hell, he’d forgotten his own birthday.
“Bloody hell, he’s forgotten his own birthday!” Ron laughed, clapping him on the back again. “C’mon, mate. It’s only twenty-five. Way too young for that business yet!”
“I didn’t forget it,” Harry protested. “I just—didn’t remember it. Right away. Anyway, let’s grab a table, yeah?”
Ron mouthed He forgot it to Hermione, then quickly slipped out of reach when Harry raised a hand at him in threat.
They secured a table near the bay of windows at the back of the canteen, through which could be seen the crowds bustling about the Atrium in a colourful, dazzling display of humanity. It was an entirely different sort of liveliness from the rowdy Azkaban cell blocks, but Harry felt compelled to sit with his back to it all the same.
“Well I hope you haven’t ‘not remembered’ your party this weekend,” Hermione said, delicately peeling the wrapper from the sandwich she’d just bought. “Molly’s pulling out all the stops.”
“Yeah,” Ron said, one arm thrown casually over the back of Hermione’s chair. “You’d think you were being coronated. Don’t think she was half this keen at our wedding, even.” Hermione gave him a fond little pinch, and he recoiled dramatically, as if mortally wounded. “Spousal abuse!” he cried, snorting when Hermione rushed to cover his mouth, her cheeks dark with mortification as her eyes darted around the canteen to see if they’d been overheard.
“You shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing, you know,” she admonished. “Especially not here.”
“Oh right, of course not, where was my head?” He added as an aside to Harry, “Might interfere with her campaign.”
Harry brightened with interest. “Wait—so you’re going to do it? You’re going to run?”
“No,” Hermione said, giving Ron a serious look. “I mean, I haven’t made up my mind yet, is all. I’m still weighing the decision.”
“What decision?” Ron said, the not-so-subtle whine in his tone suggesting they had had this conversation on several occasions already. “It’s a no-brainer, love!”
“Perhaps for someone with no brain. Love.” She straightened up in her seat, giving a sniff. “I’m just not entirely sure it’s appropriate for someone in my position to run for one of the elected Wizengamot seats.”
“Appropriate? Kingsley’s the one who suggested it in the first place!”
“Which is precisely why some might deem it inappropriate.” Hermione turned to Harry, evidently seeking his support. “I mean, I’m Senior Undersecretary, and I’m only twenty-five. I worry it might seem like…well, like Kingsley’s groomed me for the position, so that I can work as an arm for the Minister…”
“I hate to break it to you,” Harry said, “But he kind of has.” Her brows knit in offence, and Harry hastened to add, “In a good way, though! I mean, he knows you’re the best person for the position you’re in now, and he’s doing what he can to let others see that too, by trying to give you more responsibility. It’s Kingsley. He’s seen you in action, and he just wants everyone else to see it now as well. Plus—” He patted her hand with a smile. “You’ve got too many morals to let him use you as his arm on the Wizengamot, even if he wanted to do so. He has to know that.”
She frowned in thought. “…So you think I should run, too?”
“I think you should do what you want to do.”
“She’s really good at that,” Ron said, waggling his brows, and Hermione leaned into him, throwing an elbow.
“Why are we even discussing this on Harry’s birthday? We should be celebrating him.” She turned back to Harry, breezily changing the subject. “Did you have a chance to look over the menu I Owled you on Friday? Molly’s being very particular.”
“Particular isn’t the word I’d use…” Ron said.
“Oh.” Harry winced. “No, sorry, it completely slipped my mind. I was travelling all day yesterday, because of…well, the thing.”
“Ah…” Hermione said, and Ron suddenly had no clever rejoinders. She cleared her throat softly. “How, er…how was it?”
She posed the question with polite curiosity, but he could feel the both of them watching him carefully. He knew they were morbidly curious—especially Ron—about whether or not Malfoy was actually dead (or Kissed at least) and doubtlessly wondered why he’d asked to see Harry. He couldn’t blame them, not after everything, but he found himself strangely protective of what had probably been Malfoy’s last real human interaction.
Harry tapped his fork against his plate, spreading his peas around absently. “Lovely this time of year, actually. Did you know you don’t need three layers of clothes to stave off the cold when it’s only fifteen degrees at worst? The North Sea’s quite temperate in the summer.”
“Well it was good of you to go,” Hermione said diplomatically. “I hope there was…well, some closure.”
On whose part, Harry wondered.
Really, they both could probably have used some, and he didn’t think they’d either of them gotten it.
Malfoy had deserved everything he’d gotten and more—that Harry firmly believed—but Harry hadn’t been lying when he’d told Malfoy (shouted at him) that he’d been pulling for him. That he’d wanted so much more for him.
Life had not been kind to Malfoy since the war, but he’d had his chances. A half dozen of them, by Harry’s count, and he’d squandered each and every one of them, for reasons that entirely escaped Harry.
He’d been tried and convicted in the post-war trials, like everyone with a Mark on their arm, but in light of his age and the fact he hadn’t participated in the Battle of Hogwarts—at least not that anyone had seen, and Harry opted to keep his mouth shut about things people hadn’t seen—he’d been granted a reduced sentence of three years’ community service. The first of these would be served at Hogwarts as he returned alongside a number of others, including Harry, whose final year of education had been stolen from them by Voldemort’s reign of terror.
But then, once cut loose at the end of Eighth Year, Malfoy had gone ghost, fleeing England for the Continent, where rumour held his Mother had retired following the death of her husband. Lucius Malfoy’s murder by another Azkaban inmate on Christmas Eve, nearly eight months after the war, had been discussed in the Prophet in lurid detail, along with an accounting of every shady business dealing he and his family had been involved in over the past twenty years. The murder had been all anyone had been interested in for nearly a week, and there’d even been talk—just talk, but still—that perhaps the other two Malfoys hadn’t paid a high enough price for their complicity in Lucius’s crimes. Harry couldn’t blame Narcissa for wanting to get away from it all.
But he sure as hell could blame Malfoy, who promptly became a wanted fugitive for violating his ban on international travel.
They’d tracked him down, of course. Not Harry, mind—not even British Aurors. A helpful tip from a local had led an international squadron of Aurors to find him doing manual labour, working as a field hand at an elf-wine vineyard in northern Italy. Draco Malfoy—digging drainage ditches. Harry had wanted to laugh when he’d read the report. Instead, he’d only been able to muster seething fury and rank disappointment, slamming his fist so hard on his cramped desk in the middle of the DMLE bullpen he’d knocked his Order of Merlin off its stand.
And right around then things had gotten truly fucked, when a pair of dirty Aurors had helped Malfoy escape from custody while he was being transported back to England. The break had turned out to have been orchestrated by the Neo-Death Eaters, an organisation comprising those few dark sorts who still clung to Voldemort’s and Grindelwald’s ideals, carrying out their dead masters’ orders in grotesquely brutal and distressingly public ways. They’d been implicated in several high-profile violent crimes over the past half-decade, including the incident that had ultimately earned Malfoy his Kiss: an assassination attempt on Arthur Weasley that had resulted in twenty-seven casualties and three fatalities.
Arthur had survived; any pity Harry might have had for Malfoy up to that point had not.
So why then, Harry was left wondering, could he not shake the nagging guilt churning in his stomach and making his birthday lunch most unpleasant?
Perhaps it was not because Malfoy had wasted all his chances at redemption—but because Harry had wasted all his chances to help.
Not that Malfoy had really deserved it, but Harry hated leaving a job unfinished, and it would have been so easy to set Malfoy’s life to rights, he thought, if he’d bothered to try and do so. Malfoy was never going to ask Harry for help, this he had known. But that simply meant Harry should have given him no choice—when it was the difference between living and dying, you didn’t get that luxury.
But Harry had been a mess in Eighth Year. All of them had been, really, and Harry had been too caught up with trying to put his own life back into some semblance of order to worry about sorting out pasty-faced pricks who’d as soon bite his hand as accept it. Malfoy was ever so far down on his list of people to reach out to, and between Ron’s grief over Fred’s passing and Hermione’s initially disastrous attempts to restore her parents’ memories and Ginny and him never quite finding their rhythm again, Harry would’ve been hard pressed to give Malfoy a passing thought, much less a kind word or hand up.
Still, Ron had mourned and moved on, and Hermione’s parents only spoke with Australian accents on rare occasion, and while Harry and Ginny would never more be Harry and Ginny, they were friends again.
He still caught himself, at odd moments, wondering what might have been—but they were just wonderings. Not regrets, not really. They left him feeling a little warm, a little sad, and a tiny bit relieved as well. He’d missed her so much out there on the road, in the dark and isolated from all but Ron and Hermione, and then after…he’d found he was mostly missing missing her. Missing the longing. Missing the feeling he got, in the pit of his stomach, thinking there was someone out there, wanting him and needing him, and how it fired his drive to do what needed to be done to get back to them.
Maybe he was the one with the complex now, building Ginny up into something she’d never been except inside his head. She’d wanted him, but not really needed him, and he maybe…maybe wanted someone who was a bit the opposite. Who needed him, but didn’t want him. He worked better with people like that, he thought. He felt like he had a reason for being with people like that. He liked the challenge.
But no one needed him anymore, once the war ended. They needed healing, they needed closure—they didn’t need saving. And for Harry, it felt like he’d come to a sudden, slamming stop, leaving him disorientated and lost. Watching while everyone else around him began the arduous process of rebuilding, steadily passing Harry up. The war was over, but it was still wartime somehow, and Harry laboured under that same tense, oppressive atmosphere that had blanketed everything he’d known and loved.
Time heals all, the Mind Healer had said, when Harry had gone in for his psychological evaluation after being accepted into the Auror program. It was a right crock. Time didn’t heal shit. It just dulled the pain. The wounds were still there, underneath the scars, and sometimes they went septic.
Maybe that was what this was, this throbbing ache for something that never could have been, because Malfoy hadn’t wanted it and Harry couldn’t have given it.
But if he could have…fuck he would have. Because Malfoy might have needed saving the most out of anyone who’d made it out of the war, and for Harry, it didn’t matter one whit whether he deserved it or not.
Harry realised he hadn’t spoken in a long beat, and swallowed. “…I feel like maybe I could have done more for him. Before—” he added quickly when Ron’s mien darkened in anger, “—before, I mean. Just—he’s the same age as us. Was. And it seems a waste is all.”
Hermione had her hand on Ron’s, squeezing gently—in comfort, or to remind him not to launch himself across the table to shake sense into Harry, it was difficult to tell. “It was a waste,” she said, soft but admonishing. “But he lived his life as he saw fit. Made his choices. Had his chances and squandered them.”
“I know.”
“Yes, you know.” Her fond smile tightened. “But do you know?”
He rubbed at his face. “Yes. I do. I’m not—making excuses for him. I’m only saying.”
“Saying what?” Ron asked, tone flat and accusing.
“Saying that—” Harry made a noise in the back of his throat, frustration stuck in his craw. “That it was a fucking waste of a life he led. That’s it.” Potential. Squandered. Harry hated that sort of thing, and he felt the anger start to bubble up again. Anger at Ron for deliberately misunderstanding Harry’s feelings on the life and death of Draco Malfoy, at Malfoy for just being himself and feeling the need to sink to Harry’s low expectation of him, at himself for not being able to just fucking let this go. A dog with a bone, he was. “And maybe I should have made more of an effort to do something about that.”
“There it is,” Hermione sighed, and god, he was going to scream if she said— “He wasn’t your responsibility Harry. You can’t save everyone—and no one expects you to.”
Me, he didn’t say. I expect me to. He managed to keep from screaming, but only just barely. “It’s not about saving him. It’s about—” He wilted, exhausted. He’d gotten maybe a half hour of sleep altogether, and between the insomnia and the travelling and the tedious paperwork, he was shot. “…I dunno what it’s about, honest. It’s just me being me.”
“And him being him,” Hermione said cryptically, dipping her spoon into her fruit-bottom jelly.
“Told you you shouldn’t have gone,” Ron said, voice still a bit strained. Malfoy had always been a touchy subject with him, and the incident with Arthur had not improved his standing. “Should’ve just told Robards you were going, then had yourself a spa day instead.”
“I had to go—I mean, it was his last request…” Now both Ron and Hermione were giving him looks. He groped for sounder reasoning than they were probably imagining. “I was hoping for…I dunno. A deathbed confession or something. The Neo-Death Eaters aren’t going anywhere just because one of their members got Kissed, you know. We’re still trying to make inroads into their organisation but we’re getting piss-all, and I couldn’t chance a valuable source having an eleventh-hour change of heart.”
Ron snorted. “Heart. Rich, that. Makes me wonder, though: maybe the Kiss didn’t actually work on him? I mean, you’ve gotta have a soul for them to suck it out, right?” He lifted his brows, glancing between Harry and Hermione expectantly. “Stands to reason.”
Hermione reached for her husband’s chocolate mousse. “You’re not going to eat that, are you?”
“Evidently not now…” He shook his head at Harry. “Why bother to diet, when she’ll just eat all the tasty things off my plate for me?”
Harry smiled at them, nudging his own mousse cup towards Hermione before she thought to make a move on it as well, but his thoughts were already miles away. Drifting on the high winds out over the unseasonably warm North Sea and wondering if dying had wound up hurting, in the end.