@drarrymicrofic | prompt: letter | wc: 250 with strikethrough, 100 without
Ferret Malfoy—
Can’t believe I’m writing you a letter but mum’s making me. Harry’s driving me bloody mad. Hermione said you two talked and you’re all right. I’m trying to be the bigger man for some bloody reason. the past’s the past.
I’m not sorry for punching you in the face the last time I saw you.
How’s the nose? You got to keep all your money so I suppose a private healer was no problem.
I’ll start over if you will.
Harry is insane and won’t stop talking about how hot you are, honestly I support his gay awakening but did it have to be you who woke him up? Yuck.
Mum’s inviting you to the Burrow so we can make you think we’ve put things in your food, you can make us feel bad about not being rich toffs, your sour expression will put us off our meals, Harry can drool on you, we can start fresh. She says breaking bread’s the best way. I promise she (probably) won’t kill you like she did your aunt. She specifically told me to say you’ll be safe and welcome.
Sunday, noon. Write back if you’ll join. I hope you’re too cowardly to come, like always.
—Weasley
***
Dearest Weasel,
You do remember we learnt a spell in third year that lets me see everything you scratched out?
I’ll reply to your mother separately, but I’ll be there—if only to see if you’re telling the truth about the drool.
Severus did not call them playdates. Narcissa called them playdates. Severus called them scheduled supervisory obligations, which was accurate and which Narcissa ignored with the serene efficiency she brought to all of his terminology.
They were four. Both of them. Draco had turned four in June with a party at the Manor that involved twelve children and a peacock and what Narcissa described as a "small incident" with the cake that she did not elaborate on. Harry had turned four in July with Hagrid, a lopsided treacle tart, and a hand-knitted hat from Minerva that was green and slightly too large and which Harry wore for three weeks without removing it.
They were four and they had opinions.
Harry's opinions were quiet and structural. He knew what he liked. He liked the potions stool. He liked the lake. He liked Pip. He liked the rug in front of the fire and the way the water-light moved on the ceiling and the specific weight of Severus's arm when Severus carried him, which Severus did less now because Harry was four and four-year-olds walked, but which still happened when Harry was tired or when Harry wanted it or when Harry simply raised his arms without saying anything and Severus picked him up before deciding to.
Draco's opinions were loud and architectural. Draco knew what he wanted. He wanted the best chair. He wanted the first biscuit. He wanted to be the one who decided what game they were playing and in what order and with what rules, and he communicated these desires with the composed authority of a very small person who had been raised in a house with peacocks and a father who confirmed facts rather than asked questions.
The difficulty was that Harry did not care about Draco's opinions.
This was not hostility. Harry was not hostile. Harry was agreeable and patient and warm in the way of a child who had been raised by someone who was none of those things and had arrived at them independently. Harry simply did not recognize Draco's authority over the rug and its contents. Harry occupied the rug the way he occupied the castle: with the total, unconcerned belonging of someone who had been here first and did not intend to negotiate.
This drove Draco mad.
"It's my turn," Draco informed Harry, on the rug, at half past eleven, regarding a toy broomstick that Narcissa had brought and which both of them wanted and neither of them was willing to relinquish.
"You had a turn," Harry replied.
"I had a short turn."
"You had a turn."
"It wasn't long enough."
Harry looked at him. The look was steady and patient and contained the specific immovable quality that Severus recognised because he saw it in the mirror, the quality of a person who had arrived at a position and was not going to leave it.
"No," Harry told him.
Draco's cheeks went pink. This was the Draco tell, the one Severus had catalogued at seven months: the flush that arrived when Draco encountered a wall he could not charm his way through. His chin lifted. His jaw set. His hands, which had been at his sides, moved to the broomstick.
Harry's hands tightened.
Draco pulled.
Harry pulled back.
"Draco," Narcissa warned, from the settee, with the measured tone of a mother who had identified the trajectory of the situation and was offering one opportunity for course correction.
Draco did not take the opportunity. Draco was four and the broomstick was in his hands and the boy holding the other end had told him no, and Draco Malfoy at four did not have the infrastructure to process no with grace. He pulled harder. Harry held on. The broomstick, which was a toy and not built for the tensile demands being placed on it, creaked.
Severus set down his tea.
"Harry," he instructed. "Release the—"
Harry released the broomstick. This was not compliance. Severus recognized this immediately because he knew his son, and his son's version of releasing a contested object involved releasing it at the exact moment his opponent was pulling hardest, which meant Draco stumbled backward three steps, hit the edge of the rug, and sat down hard on the stone floor with the broomstick in his lap and an expression of total indignation.
Harry looked at him from across the rug.
His face was not smug. Smugness was not a thing Harry did at four. His face was the neutral, patient, slightly interested face of a boy who had solved a problem using physics and was observing the result.
Draco stood up.
His cheeks were red. His hair, which was always precise because Narcissa ensured it, was not precise. His chin was up and his hands were in fists and he crossed the rug with the focused velocity of a very small person who had been wronged and intended to address it.
He tackled Harry.
It was not a punch. It was not a shove. It was a full-body commitment, the launch of a four-year-old who had decided that the situation required a physical response and had not considered the logistics of the physical response before initiating it. He hit Harry at approximately chest height and they both went down, a tangle of limbs and robes and indignation, rolling across the rug in a way that was not violent but was deeply committed.
"Draco Lucius Malfoy," Narcissa announced, rising from the settee.
Severus was already standing. Not because he was concerned. He was standing because it was a reflex, the reflex of a man who had spent four years being responsible for a small body and whose legs moved when that body hit the floor regardless of context.
Harry was on his back. Draco was on top of him, pinning him with the determination of someone who had committed to a strategy and was not going to abandon it. Harry's hands were on Draco's shoulders. Not pushing. Holding. His expression was one of mild surprise, the expression of a person who had not anticipated this development and was evaluating it in real time.
"Get off," Harry instructed.
"No."
"Get off."
"You dropped me."
"You pulled too hard."
"You let go on purpose."
Harry looked up at him. Draco looked down at him. Their faces were six inches apart. Draco's hair had fallen forward and was brushing Harry's forehead and neither of them had registered this because they were four and registering it was nine years away.
Harry moved.
The move was fast and efficient and entirely unscripted. He rolled sideways, using Draco's weight against him in a way that Severus would later identify as instinctive and which bore a concerning resemblance to a wrestling technique Harry had no business knowing at four. Draco went over. Harry ended up on top. Draco went pink with outrage. Harry's knee was on Draco's chest, not hard, just present, the calm, definitive weight of someone who had won.
"I was on top," Draco protested.
"Now I'm on top."
"That's not fair."
"You tackled me first."
"Because you dropped me."
"Because you pulled too hard."
They had arrived at a logical loop and neither of them was going to exit it. Severus could see this. Narcissa could see this. Both of them stood at the edges of the rug looking down at two four-year-olds in a deadlock, and the moment held the specific quality of a scene that was simultaneously a discipline issue and the funniest thing that had happened in the quarters in months.
Severus picked Harry up. He lifted him off Draco with one arm, the practised efficiency of a man who had been extracting his son from situations for four years and who had the technique down to a single motion. Harry dangled. He did not resist. He was accustomed to being removed from situations by this method and accepted it with the passive compliance of someone who knew the removal was temporary and the situation would resume later.
Narcissa collected Draco. She did this with the composed grace of a woman who had been managing Draco's outbursts since birth and who could do it in formal robes without creasing them. Draco was upright, brushed off, and repositioned on the settee in under four seconds. His hair was fixed in five.
"We do not tackle," Narcissa informed him, with the level, precise tone that was her version of Severus's classroom voice.
"He started it."
"He did not start it. He released a broomstick. You started it. We will not be discussing this further."
Draco's mouth opened. It closed. He looked at Narcissa and recognized the expression and chose, with the specific tactical wisdom of a Malfoy, not to press the point.
Harry, still in Severus's arm, was looking at Draco across the room. His expression was not triumphant. His expression was the calm, settled expression of someone who had been in a fight and was now out of the fight and was already thinking about the next thing, which appeared to be the biscuits on the table.
"Down," Harry informed Severus.
"You are not in a position to make requests."
"Biscuit."
"Biscuits are for children who do not instigate wrestling matches."
"He tackled me."
"You engineered the conditions."
Harry looked at him. The look was steady. The look was four years old and was already doing the thing Harry's look would do for the rest of his life: the quiet, direct, unblinking look of a person who knew exactly what he had done and was waiting to see whether the person holding him was going to pretend otherwise.
Severus set him down. Harry went to the table. He took a biscuit. He took a second biscuit. He carried the second biscuit across the room to the settee where Draco was sitting with his arms crossed and his chin up and his dignity in visible disrepair.
Harry held out the biscuit.
He did not offer it. He held it out in the space between them and waited.
Draco looked at the biscuit. He looked at Harry. He looked at the biscuit again. His arms were still crossed. His chin was still up. His pride was still active and functioning and doing its best to maintain the position that he was wronged and had no intention of accepting concessions from the person who had wronged him.
He took the biscuit.
He took it without uncrossing his arms, which required him to uncross one arm and recross it, which he did with the flustered efficiency of a boy managing a capitulation he did not want to be seen performing.
They ate their biscuits. Side by side. On the settee. Not speaking. Not touching. The distance between them the width of a cushion and the length of a grudge that would last approximately eleven minutes before Draco suggested a different game and Harry agreed.
Narcissa looked at Severus.
"Saturdays," she confirmed.
"Your son tackled my son."
"Your son provoked my son."
"My son released a broomstick. The provocation is an interpretation."
"An accurate interpretation."
Severus looked at the settee. At two four-year-olds eating biscuits in silence. At the broomstick, abandoned on the rug, the cause forgotten before the crumbs were finished.
Rory, my beloved, I hope you enjoy this drarry endgame one shot heavily featuring Dean/Harry bro-ship. (T; 2k words)
Also on ao3 here.
They’ve been at The Leaky for a while and the gang’s all here. Neville is helping Hannah behind the bar, both of them flirting openly with each other and stopping for poorly hidden kisses more often than would be appropriate if this were any other night. It’s supposed to be a private event for Hannah in celebration of the pub's remodel. The place looks great. New, more modern features somehow perfectly compliment the old-style Tom favoured when Harry was first brought into the Wizarding World. It feels like nostalgia and a new, better future, all wrapped up in one.
There are only about 20 or 30 people in the whole place, and nearly everyone will be staying in one of the rooms upstairs since the plan was always to get too drunk to apparate. Hannah wanted a soft opening surrounded by people she could trust to give an honest review, so everyone here is close to her in some way. Nev seems friendly with everyone too, which isn’t too surprising since he and Hannah have been together for over a year now. What is a surprise is seeing Malfoy walk in like he belongs.
Harry watches as he strides over to the bar, stepping right behind it without a word. He wraps his arms around Hannah’s waist from behind and picks her up, spinning her in a full circle with a look of pure ease on his face. She looks surprised, and maybe a bit put off, so Harry’s hand clutches his wand in his pocket on instinct. But when she turns around to spot Malfoy, she breaks into a huge grin and smacks him playfully on the chest, then gives him a hug. Neville walks over and claps him on the shoulder, and Malfoy pulls away from Hannah to give him a firm, but strangely brotherly, handshake.
It’s weird to see, but the more Harry thinks about it, the more it makes sense. He’d heard that Malfoy was homeless for a bit while the ministry cleared out the manor, so it wasn’t a huge leap to assume he’d stayed at The Leaky during that time. Even without a home, Malfoy was still one of the richest wizards in Britain. It would have been pretty easy for him to bribe his way into–
“What the fuck?” Harry asks when Malfoy is tapped on the shoulder, then subsequently hugged by a tall blonde Harry knows is Hannah’s older sister. Her muggle older sister.
He doesn’t realise he’s spoken out loud until Ron leans past him with a slightly slurred, “What?” and then, with a huff of laughter, “Oh. Malfoy.” He turns back to the table and says a little louder for everyone to hear, “Malfoy’s here.”
A cheerful murmur of approval makes its way around the table, and Harry is even more confused. Hermione, ever the perceptive one of the bunch, leans in to explain.
“He supplies the sobriety and hangover potions Hannah has decided to stock and sell. Neville was talking about it earlier when you were in the mens.”
Well, that at least makes sense. He watches as casually as he can while Malfoy sits down at the bar next to the oldest Abbot sister, Sarah, and begins chatting in earnest. He’s smiling, occasionally swiping his fingers behind his ear as if to tuck a phantom strand of hair away. He must have cut it recently. The last time Harry saw him, about a month ago now, it was down past his chin.
The shorter cut looks good though. The windswept strands part at the front and fall just below his eyebrows. It draws attention to his eyes, which Harry knows to be a blueish-grey, even if he can’t see them from this distance. Like a slightly damp cloud on a mostly sunny day. Fitting, that.
As he watches, Malfoy and Sarah both start laughing, and her hand reaches out to grasp his elbow as if she needs to hold on or she’ll fall off her barstool. Before Harry can really think much of it, he’s asking, “But why’s he flirting with Hannah’s sister?” like it’s any of his business.
“I don’t think he’s flirtin’, mate,” Seamus calls back with a wild grin. And fuck, Harry must be a bit deeper in his cups than he thought if he’s shouting his whispers loud enough to be heard down the table over the noise of the bar.
“Oh, but Sarah definitely is,” Dean adds. “Wonder if she knows he’s bent.”
That takes a second to register, but when it does, Harry’s face heats up without his permission. He wants to ask about it, but that would only draw attention to how flamed his face feels, and there aren’t enough drinks in the pub to justify that.
“Doesn’t look like any of them do,” Ron says moodily. Hermione gives him a look and he shrugs apologetically.
Ron’s right, though, there are at least six women casting looks at Malfoy from various vantage points around the pub. A few giggle together with their heads close, then look back over at him, and Harry wonders if any of them are planning to make a move. A strange sort of impatience passes through him, like the feeling you get when you look at the time and are suddenly sure you’ll miss the train if you don’t run, so you take off at a sprint. His leg starts bouncing under the table, and he takes a large gulp of beer.
“I’m just saying,” Ron is defending himself to Hermione, “Not that I want any other girl’s attention, it’s just… why Malfoy?”
Harry speaks before his brain can tell him not to.
“Eh, I can see it.”
Ron gives him an incredulous look, and Harry’s face heats up again.
“What?” he says with a shrug, hoping it looks casual. “He’s a bit feminine, ya know? Like… I can see it… in that way.”
Ron laughs and shakes his head. Before he has the chance to respond, Seamus is challenging him to a game of darts, trash talking even as he struggles to get up from the booth. Ron agrees heartily, and Harry thinks maybe they are at least at the same level of inebriation because he stumbles into Hermione as she gets up to follow. Harry glances up and across the room at Malfoy, still grinning and talking with Sarah, then drains his beer.
“Another round?” Dean asks, nodding to Harry’s empty bottle. It’s just the two of them left at the booth, and Dean has been sipping slow most of the night. Harry has a room upstairs waiting for him though, and he’s not worried about overdoing anything in this crowd.
“Could do, yea,” he replies.
Dean comes back a few minutes later holding two beers and some chips. “Had to get these myself. Hannah and Neville were on a “break”, and there were some sounds coming from the back that sounded suspiciously sex-like.” He let out a dramatic shutter and Harry laughed. “Figured the least I was owed for the trauma was a basket of chips.”
He places the food between them and passes off Harry’s beer. They watch and sip and eat and laugh as Seamus lands the only dart from an entire round, and everyone cheers like he’s just won the world cup. When he and Ron begin to pick the stray darts from the floor and wall, Dean turns his attention to Harry.
“Back in school I used to pretend Seamus had tits.”
Harry promptly chokes on his beer because–
“What the fuck?!”
Dean just smiles and shrugs a shoulder, looking a little sheepish. His eyes dart over to Seamus, then down to his beer where he’s been scratching at the label, and Harry realises that he’s not actually all that amused by his own admission. He looks a little pained by it, actually.
“Yea,” Dean laughs, a little forced. “I think it made me feel better to think about him as a girl. Like… I would work so hard to convince myself I wasn’t bisexual, he was just a girly looking bloke, ya know? So then it was normal to want to kiss him.”
Harry laughs again, unable to stop himself. Seamus was such a classic lad, it must have taken a great deal of effort for Dean to manage getting that one through his imagination.
"Girly? Seamus? No, way mate. Did you ever tell him that? Once you started dating?"
"Oh yea. We were sozzled at Luna's coming out after you and Gin left, and he ended up dancing on the table with Susan's bra on over his clothes shouting ‘am I girly enough for your big manly cock, Deany weeny?;"
Again, Harry picks the wrong moment to take a pull of his beer and starts to choke, even as he laughs. Dean reaches out and slaps his back a few times, and Harry is happy to hear he’s laughing too.
"Apparently he thought the whole idea was very funny,” Dean says, passing Harry a handful of napkins. “Sometimes I think it bothers him a bit, though."
"Oh?"
"Yea. I'll tell him I love him and he'll say something like 'even though I haven't got tits?'"
"Oh."
Dean nods and pops a chip into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
"I was a mess. It was harder coming out to myself than it was coming out to other people, really. Sometimes I wish I'd never told him about it– about how hard it was."
"Why did you?" Harry’s voice is quiet now and he feels quite a bit more sober all of a sudden. They don’t talk a lot about serious things, him and Dean, and he can’t help but wonder why that is. It’s nice.
"He asked why it took so long. Why I made him wait until 7th year when it was ‘so obvious’."
Harry grins at his friend with raised brows.
"It was pretty obvious, mate."
"I guess it was, yea."
Dean laughs and goes back to scratching at his label. Harry lets his eyes roam again, first finding Malfoy, still in the same spot as before, only now he’s leaned over the bar talking to a distinctly mussed-haired Neville. He’s clearly taking the piss if Nev’s reddened cheeks and Malfoys wicked grin are anything to go by, and all the girls around him are laughing at whatever is being said.
They sit there in silence for a while. Harry doesn't want to think about his own confusing thoughts, and he doesn't want to see Malfoy chatting with someone else across the bar, either. So his eyes move to their friends, gathered around the dart board in the back corner arguing loudly over whether a bounce off the board should count or not when you’re sozzled. Seamus throws his arm around Ron’s shoulder and jostles him a bit, then they pull apart and high five.
"Seamus... as a girl..." he laughs again, and Dean chuckles next to him. When he looks over he sees Dean is watching their friends too. Seamus picks Ron up from around the waist and walks several paces for reasons that are absolutely not clear. It’s probably another competition of some kind. He and Ron were always trying to show each other up.
Dean, smiling and looking a little lost in watching the love of his life act like a drunken fool, adds, "Yea, he's not all that femme, I suppose."
Harry snorts a laugh, thankfully not taking a drink for this one. "Not really, no,” he agrees.
Dean lets his eyes flick over to Malfoy before landing on Harry again, nodding to himself. As he stands to head over and join the others, he levels Harry with a look that feels heavier than any they've ever shared in their long friendship.
"Well,” he says meaningfully, “neither is Malfoy. But that doesn't mean you're not allowed to like him."
He claps Harry on the shoulder with a small smile, jerking his head Malfoys way as if to say, ‘get going’, then walks away before Harry can reply.
For a moment He sits there, a little stunned and a lot embarrassed. Has he been as obvious as Dean was all this time? If Dean knew, did the others? And if they knew… did Malfoy?
He looks over to the bar again, pleased to see that Malfoy is sitting mostly alone for the moment, still talking to Neville, but it looks like more idle chatter than deep conversation. So Harry takes one last pull of his beer, centres himself with a deep breath and walks over.
The thousandth Hogwarts 8-th year AU no-one asked for
~
It's their last year at Hogwarts.
Harry looks along the platform, a chill running down his spine. Will King's Cross always remind him of death, now? Ron waves for him to follow, and Harry takes a deep breath and strides through the masses, trying to ignore the eyes following him wherever he goes.
Their last year... He'll try to make the best of it.
Technically, it's an additional year - everyone who had been unable to attend their seventh year at Hogwarts the year before, or didn't feel like participating in the NEWT exams directly after everything that had happened was welcomed back by Professor McGonnagall.
It feels weird, going there again another time- oddly final, in a way.
Before, Harry had thought that his sixth year would be the last he ever spent at the castle- but during the year, he hadn't thought much of it, none of the others were expecting it to be the start of the war quite as much as he already had, and so there was no feeling of goodbye and nostalgia in the air the way it is in a planned last year- although, Harry thinks now, perhaps the nostalgia everyone seems to feel now has more to do with how things were before the war than with how things will change after school.
He hadn't planned to go back to Hogwarts, to be honest. Not after everything that happened, everyone who lost their lives in the castle...
But Hermione as well as Mrs. Weasley had insisted they take their NEWTs, and having missed the seventh year entirely there was no way they would pass the exams without going back. Except for Hermione, perhaps... she had her nose buried in a book more often than not, but these days Harry often felt as if it was a gesture of hiding instead of a real passion for studying, and over the summer he and Ron tried to drag her away and to other distractions as often as they could. And Ron himself is carrying his own burdens, the heaviest being the grief for Fred...
Harry hopes it won't be even worse, once they're back at the castle. Not just for his friends, but for himself as well: He's been having nightmares, silent but shaking him to the core, and sometimes after a particularily gruesome one featuring red eyes and green light, he jumps put of bed to alert someone that he's dreamt of Voldemort again before remembering that that is in the past, if anything there are memories in his mind, no prophecy or horcrux-linked dreams.
The Weasleys are standing huddled together in front of the train, both Arthur and Molly having come to accompany their children, Molly smiling at him and pressing a parcel of sandwiches into his hands, chattering away.
Harry is glad that they all stayed friendly with him, after he and Ginny had broken up. Sure, it's been a mutual agreement that they didn't work out as a couple, and they've stayed friends, but still- he wouldn't have held it against any of them if it had been too awkward to keep including him into their family gatherings.
He'd said as much to Mrs. Weasley, shortly after he and Ginny had broken the News to everybody- that he could at least move into Grimmauld Place for the reminder of the holidays, if it would make it easier. Now he smiles as he remembers what she had said.
"Nonsense!" Molly wiped her hands on a towel, leaving the rest of the dishes to magically scrub themselves in the sink. "If Ginny is alright with it, then so am I. You're family, Harry- don't interrupt me, young man, you're Ron's friend first and you'll better let me mother you whether you're my son-in-law or not! You're a good man, and I'm sure you haven't hurt my daughter, at least not on purpose, so as far as I'm concerned, it's alright. Come here-"
Harry had blushed terribly at that, stammering an apology and letting Molly drag him into a hug.
Now the memory makes him feel warm. No matter what happens, he'll always have a family.
The Hogwarts express toots, startling Harry out og his thoughts.
Deep breaths, he forces himself to inhale. It's just the train. That was a thing Hermione taught them all, to better deal with the demons still following them all in their minds.
She's convinced they all need therapy, except she started reading books on it instead of going to see a muggle therapist or a mind-healer herself. That made Ron be sure that she's extragerrating, but while Harry didn't say anything on the matter and didn't go look for help during the summer, yet, he personally thinks she might be right.
They've all seen terrible things in the war. Lost people, too. Been ripped from their childhood- although Harry doesn't quite remember ever feeling like a true child at all.
He's jumping at everything now, shadow and noise, and the worst are city neon lights, or noises like muggle cars backfiring which sound too much like someone apparating... Harry has stayed away from London all summer, holed up in the Burrow and only visiting Grimmauld Place once to make sure that everything was alright there and Kreacher was getting along.
The others think it's the memories of the house itself keeping him away, perhaps still the thought of his godfather, and they understand- but in reality, as mean as it may sound, that's the least of his problems right now.
Hugging the Weasley's goodbye, Harry follows Ron and Hermione through the crowd, the other two creating a blockade no-one can pass through. He thinks he sees a sliver of pale white hair in the crowd, and something like hope tugs inside him- that maybe something stayed the same, that Malfoy will still be there with them at the castle. That maybe they can go back to meaningless snide remarks and house rivalry. Like the kids they once were. But he doesn't even know whether the other is even coming back to Hogwarts- whether he'd been allowed, as a former quasi-deatheater. Harry'd spoken at his hearing, at Narcissa Malfoy's as well and at some others, and he only spoke the truth at all of them but he knows the Malfoys are the only ones he really spoke positively off, especially Draco.
They were just kids, he thinks again. Fighting a war of adults.
Ron helps him and Hermione drag their belongings into the train, they’re among the last to jump on, the doors closing behind them.
As the train starts moving, the three of them stay by the door, looking out of the window at the platform shrinking in the distance until they can't see it anymore.
"Come on." Harry feels Hermione's hand on his shoulder as she drags him and Ron around.
"We've got a school-year to pass."
~
I might turn this into a longer fanfic on my ao3 :) let me know if you liked it so far, and feel free to like and reblog!
