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Hullo Magpie! If it's not too late, maybe an university AU or a historical AU? I'm not sure how involved you're planning on this being, perhaps just a snippet or something, but perhaps our boys gallivanting across time and the world! Renaissance Drarry perhaps, or Brideshead Revisted Drarry, or even WW1 Drarry! Whatever strikes your fancy :D

Hey, my lovely! You might have forgotten that once upon a time, many, many months ago, you prompted this, but I hadn’t! I’d planned from the beginning that a historical AU would be one of the AUs I’d write, but it took me forever to get to it, partly because the historical genre isn’t my forte, but mainly because I couldn’t settle on a time period. I wrote a few hundred words on the Elizabethan era (Harry being an actor at the Globe and Draco a noblet in the Court), I debated a Rennaissance painter and muse thing, and I thought I’d decided on the 20s where Draco and Harry would be house guests in a wealthy mansion, or they’d go to jazz clubs idk. I wrote a few thousand words, but it didn’t really grab me, and then I had the visual of two patients on a bench in a hospital after WWI, and this story flowed in one morning.

Much love and gratitude to the wonderful @nerdherderette and @lower-east-side for looking it over <333

So here it finally is, Historical Muggle AU, WWI era. Hope you enjoy it! <3

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Young and Beautiful (Mature, 3k)

Every afternoon thesame patient sits on the bench by the pond, gazing at the willows. Harry sitsbeside him.

‘Hello.’

The man turns to lookat him. Nods. Turns back to the willows.

The next afternoon,he’s there again. A duck and its ducklings cross the pond, sending ripplesacross the surface. Birdsong fills the air. Spring has sprung in the gardenssurrounding the convalescence hospital. In the fragrant, cool breeze, Harry couldbe mistaken in thinking France was years ago.

It’s not. It’s beenthree months.

‘I’m Harry Potter.’He doesn’t expect a reply – perhaps the fellow can’t speak. He has no visiblewounds; usually those are worse.

It’s peaceful by thepond, but far from still. Kingfishers and ducks and bees flit in and out of thefoliage and the swaying reeds. White butterflies flutter around the bushes.Harry joins the man on the bench every afternoon now, sitting in silence andwatching. The late April rains have given way to sweet sunshine and lightbreezes.

‘I don’t remember myname,’ says the man out of the blue one warm day.

‘What do the nursescall you?’ Harry asks.

‘Soldier. Or “dear”.’

They’re all called“dear” or “love” by the nurses. Come now, dear, take your medicine. Here’syour lunch, love, mind you eat it all. They see in them their husbands andtheir sons, their brothers and their fiancés, volunteering their time andeffort to make their convalescence easier, while praying someone else islooking after their own dears, whether in earth or heaven.

‘Do you remember yourbattalion?’

The man looks away.‘Nothing. I remember nothing.’

*

‘I was in the Somme,’Harry volunteers one day. The man hasn’t asked, and he probably doesn’t care.They all have stories like that. The Somme, the Marne, Gallipoli…

‘Is that where youhurt your leg?’

‘I was one of thelucky ones.’ Harry fishes a photograph from the front pocket of his pyjamas.‘That’s a few of us before we left for France. See that man? Ron Weasley, mylieutenant. Took a bullet to the head a week before the Somme. He was a goodman; a good friend.’

The memories chokehim and he points to the other men. ‘Longbottom; the man knew his way around agarden, I can tell you that. McMillan. Thomas. Goyle, that big lad with thecigarette.’ All are dead or wounded, scattered in military hospitals or unnamedgraves. Half his peers gone once the dust had settled.

‘Were you in battle?’he asks the man.

‘I’m not sure.’ The manopens his palms and stares at them as if he’ll be able to divine who he is. ‘Mywounds aren’t on the outside.’

Harry wants to tellhim they all have wounds on the inside.

*

In the hospital, theymeet coming in and out of the bathroom, in the dining room, in the common room.The man always stays by himself. He’s almost invisible to the others, unnoticedeven by Harry, until he’d spoken to him by the lake. Harry doesn’t approach himin the hospital. He likes the afternoons by the water when it’s just the two ofthem. He wants to have something to look forward to.

But he can’t staysilent when the man exits the bathroom late one night, his shirt unbuttoned.Harry’s gaze falls on the scars crisscrossing his thin chest. He can’t fathomwhat they are. The man pauses, his eyes wary. Harry doesn’t even realise he’sstepped closer. ‘How did this happen?’

‘I don’t remember.’

For the first time,Harry doesn’t believe him. Something in his tone, in his immediate reply, ringsfalse.

Harry’s riveted bythe scars, by how cruel they seem and also how incongruous they are to thebattle wounds he’s used to seeing. He stretches out his hand. ‘May I?’

They’re alone in thecorridor. A single oil lamp is flickering down the hall, casting them in longshadows, The man nods. Harry touches the scars lightly, almost reverently.‘These are not battle wounds. These are…’ They look like the result of torture.Someone carefully and methodically sliced across the man’s chest. Possiblytaking their time to ensure maximum pain.

Emotion overcomesHarry. He splays his fingers across the raised, pink skin, as if he can absorbthe viciousness that’s been inflicted on it.

Gently, but firmly,the man grabs his wrist. He removes Harry’s hand and lowers it slowly.

‘They’ll heal,’ hesays. ‘Don’t pity me. I deserved those.’

It hasn’t escapedHarry’s notice that the man hasn’t let go of his hand. ‘No one deserves those.’

*

Harry’s coming out ofthe bathroom when he sees the man waiting. He’s holding a razor. Harry gaspsand the man hastens to explain. ‘I’m only going to shave my head.’ Harryexhales with relief; Crabbe’s suicide three weeks ago has shaken him.

‘Will you help me?’the man asks.

‘Why are you doingthis?’ Harry asks ten minutes later, the razor running smooth down the man’sscalp. He’s a little taller than Harry, his body exuding warmth and solidity,but there’s something of the wind in his scent, as if he was born for flight.

‘I felt like it.’ Itsounds as truthful as the insistence of his amnesia.

Harry will miss thealmost-white hair. He’s grown used to seeing it from the distance as he limpsto the pond. He doesn’t say anything, though. The war has gouged them all, andif they want to indulge in a little fancy, who’s to blame them?

‘Done.’ He meets theman’s eyes in the mirror. He looks almost unrecognisable without the halo ofhis hair. His cheekbones and his pointy chin stand in sharper relief – aknife of a face, sharp enough to make Harry bleed. He holds Harry’s gaze, whofeels hot from his proximity to the man’s body and the smell of his skin, soapand sweat and hospital, that particular smell clinging to them all. Heswallows hard.

‘You look likesomeone else,’ Harry says, and makes to leave.

‘That’s the idea,’the man murmurs, seemingly to himself.

*

The nurses areflustered. A man of some importance has arrived. He wears a long coat and amustache and shows an ID to the doctors.

Head Nurse Burbage iscalled in the office.

Harry follows herdown the corridor. Nurse Burbage has left the door ajar and Harry pauses,making a show of needing his cane more than he does. Doctor Lupin’s voicedrifts to where Harry is pretending not to eavesdrop.

‘…BritishIntelligence. Draco Malfoy?’

‘We don’t have anyoneby that name,’ Nurse Burbage says.

‘He’s six-foot-one,very blond…’

*

‘I’ll call you“Bob”.’ Harry sits on the bench beside the man.

‘Bob?’ The man isstartled in laughter. It’s short-lived, as if he’s forgotten how to do it. ‘Idare say, I don’t look like a Bob.’

‘I think “Bob” suitsyou. Bobs have a good life, you know.’

‘I knew a Bob whodied in the war.’

Harry shrugs. ‘Bet hehad a good life before that, though.’

The man smiles. ‘Bobit is, then.’

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