Chapter Text
Draco woke slowly from his sleep. He had dreamt very little, except for one strange dream in which he and Severus were walking through the gardens at the Manor. It was autumn, and the leaves on the trees had turned the most subtle shades of ochre and gold. As Draco stirred, what few details he could recall slipped away. He remembered vaguely that towards the end of the dream, Severus had gripped his shoulder and reminded him to be brave. But what was it he was supposed to be brave for? All too quickly, he forgot.
Now more fully awake, Draco looked up at the ceiling. He was in the Room of Requirement. His dormmates must be wondering where he was. Smirking at the thought, he gave in to the pleasure of stretching languidly across the bed. He checked his wristwatch: it was about to turn six. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept for so long. For once, his mind was at ease. He wasn’t gripped by the nervous energy that usually sparked through his body, or the "what-if" scenarios that regularly plagued him. He lay there a moment longer, enjoying the gentle stretch, when suddenly it occurred to him: ‘where’s Harry?’
He sat up abruptly, pushing the sheets away. He was about to call out when he spotted Harry sitting in the scarlet armchair in front of the fire. "You're here," he gasped. "I didn't see you at first."
Harry looked back, smiling. “Sorry if I woke you,” he said.
“You didn’t.” Draco crawled out of bed and stood there for a moment, watching Harry. His hair was as messy as Draco had ever seen it. His clothes were ruffled from sleeping in them all night. Draco took out his wand, meaning to perform a basic Ironing Charm for him, when he froze.
Harry had the velvet pouch in his hands.
“What’s this?” Harry asked innocently, holding up a vial.
“Where did you find that?” Draco hissed, lunging towards him. Harry jumped as Draco ripped the vial and pouch out of his hands.
“Your cloak was on the floor,” he yelped. “I didn’t want you to trip on it when you woke up, so I picked it up…and this pouch fell out…”
“Why the hell would you go through my things?”
Harry’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. “I don’t know! It fell—I thought, after we said—I just thought—”
“What? We’re married now, so what’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine?”
"No!” he said, blushing furiously. “I didn’t think it was a big deal. It was just there. I wasn’t thinking.”
"Evidently.” Draco stuffed the vial into the pouch, pulling the drawstrings tightly.
“Why are you so angry?” Harry asked, stricken. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I can’t believe you’d go through my things,” he said coldly. “You have no idea…if you knew…”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Harry scrambled to his feet. “I know it was wrong. I’m sorry.” He made to reach for Draco’s arm.
“Don’t you dare touch me,” he spat. “Where’s my cloak?”
Harry took Draco's cloak from where it hung on the armrest and held it out. He grabbed it angrily and yanked it over his shoulders. As he found his shoes and pulled them on, Harry sat down.
“Don’t you…don’t you come near me again,” Draco warned him. “This was so stupid. God, I’m so stupid. I’ve made such a mistake…if you had…”
“What do you mean?” Harry asked. “What are you talking about?”
For a moment, Draco felt a brief flash of guilt at the pained look on Harry’s face, but it was quickly swept away by the bubbling tide of his fury. He was terrified, and his fear fueled a formidable anger. He felt as though he was going to be sick, and so with one last snarl in Harry’s direction he shoved the pouch deep into his cloak and stormed out of the room.
On his way back to the Slytherin common room, Draco cursed himself for being so stupid. That vial was likely his father’s last chance. How, then, could he have just left it laying on the floor all night? What if Harry had opened the vial? Or dropped it? Or what if Draco had somehow forgotten his cloak on the floor and left the room without it? The very thought turned his stomach.
By the time he reached his dorm, the others were awake and getting ready for class.
“Draco!” Nott said. “Where the hell have you been?”
“None of your business.”
“You’ve been gone all night!” he pressed. “Who were you with? Go on, tell us.” Nott shot a sly grin at Zabini, who said, “Yes, Draco, tell us, who was the lucky lad this time?”
“Fuck off,” he mumbled. He ripped off his clothes and cleaned himself with a quick flick of his wand—he didn’t have time for a shower, although he badly wanted one.
“I bet it was Boot or Goldstein,” Nott declared. “You were all buddies at the Three Broomsticks, weren’t you?” Zabini sniggered, which seemed to only encourage Nott further. “Had them both at once, did you?”
Draco ignored him, pulling on a fresh shirt as quickly as he could.
“Or maybe it was Potter! You sat with him at the pub, too, and you—”
Before Draco knew what he was doing, he had whipped out his wand and was pointing it at Nott.
“I’m only joking,” Nott said weakly, holding up his hands in a display of innocence.
“Don’t you ever say that again,” Draco growled. The urge to hex the stupid look off of Nott’s face was nearly overwhelming.
“Alright, alright…put your wand away, for fuck’s sake…”
Slowly, Draco lowered his wand, still glaring at Nott as he pocketed it. He saw Nott and Zabini exchange a wary look; Greg carried on buttoning his shirt as though nothing had happened. Draco threw open his trunk and took out his textbooks. As he reached down to retrieve his Arithmancy book, he heard Nott mutter to Zabini, “What the hell is up with him…”
At breakfast, he sat in a moody silence. The air was tense at the Slytherin table. The results of his father’s trial were detailed in that morning’s Prophet, along with a commentary on the use of the Dementor’s Kiss as a punishment and whether it was justified. Draco was surprised to find that nobody, not even Nott or Zabini, brought it up. Instead, Pansy led them in a forced discussion of the new bookstore opening in Hogsmeade. One small mercy: it seemed that Pansy, Daphne, and Millicent were unaware that he had never returned to his dorm the night before.
Across the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table, Harry was not even trying to hide the fact that he kept staring in Draco’s direction. Disgusted, Draco glared angrily into his cup of coffee. Every time he thought of Harry sitting in the armchair, gently turning the vial in his hand, a fresh wave of rage washed over him. Just because he was their Lord and Saviour Harry Potter, he didn’t have the right to go through other people’s things. And he hadn’t even seemed that apologetic. The realization that someone else knew about the pouch was horrifying. At any moment, Harry might choose to go to McGonagall or someone from the Ministry and tell them what he knew. He had all sorts of connections, didn’t he?
Draco sipped his coffee until finally the others pushed away from the table, ready to head to their classes. As Draco followed Daphne and Pansy out the Great Hall, he swore he heard Harry call his name. He refused to look back.
***
After the awful fight in the Room of Requirement, Draco became more sullen and withdrawn than ever. He categorically refused to acknowledge Harry during the study groups they led. If the other students noticed, they didn’t comment; they were too busy practicing their Growth Charms. He skipped the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff Quidditch match without even bothering to come up with an excuse. He spent those two hours laying in bed, sliding the vial through his fingers. It was so small that it fit quite comfortably in the palm of his hand. The amber glass was opaque, preventing him from seeing what was inside. Occasionally, Draco brought the vial up to his ear and gave a soft shake—if he listened carefully, he could hear liquid sloshing within. What on earth could the vial contain? The possibilities were endless, and thinking them through tended to give him a headache.
At first, he suspected it to be some kind of poison, perhaps to kill the Minister or a key member of the Wizengamot. But that seemed rather bold. And anyway, how would his father get close enough to slip poison into someone's drink? For a while, Draco had been certain that the vial must contain Polyjuice Potion. Maybe his father planned to transform into a Ministry worker, or someone else who could leave the Manor unsuspected. One night, Draco sat up in excitement, wondering if perhaps the vial held Felix Felicis: Liquid Luck. Surely if his father drank Felix Felicis, the next hearing would end in his favour. He might possibly be cleared of all charges.
He wanted desperately to open up the vial and confirm his suspicions, but he knew better. After all these years, he was still afraid of his father, and the prospect of angering him was daunting. Besides, there was also the question of whether opening it would be safe. There were extremely complicated potions that spoiled if they were opened too early or by the wrong person. What if he ruined his father’s one chance at escaping the Dementor’s Kiss? What if he accidentally spilled it? And that was another thing—knowing the velvet pouch contained a small, glass vial was horribly nerve-wracking. He now kept it exclusively in his satchel, carefully tucked away at the bottom so as not to crush it under his textbooks. Whenever he accidentally bumped into a student in the busy corridors, the moment he was alone he checked the pouch to make sure that the vial hadn’t broken. Fortunately, it seemed quite robust.
Although they were no longer speaking, Harry was suddenly everywhere. Draco tried to ignore the awful pang in his chest whenever they passed each other on the way to class. Although his mouth went dry and his stomach twisted during Potions class as Harry fooled around with Weasley, Draco forced himself not to look up. It was painful enough that they were ignoring each other. What made it worse was that Harry seemed to have forgotten all about him. He spoke loudly with his friends during meals, and he was as lively as ever during their study groups. One evening, when Draco had been walking the grounds alone, he saw Harry and his friends traipsing down to the Quidditch pitch. They were singing some nonsensical tune and laughing uproariously. He remembered Harry’s insistent demand that they play against each other one last time. It felt as though that night at the pub had happened in another lifetime.
During their study groups, the silence between them was suffocating. They didn’t have much need to talk—Harry had always been the one who addressed the group as a whole, and so Draco kept to himself, quietly directing the students as they practiced. Usually, he found it highly amusing to correct the likes of Ron Weasley and Ernie Macmillan, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. One evening, Weasley butchered the incantation he was working on so badly that he grew his parrot to five times its usual size as opposed to turning it into a quail. Draco, who had been passing by, shrunk the parrot before continuing on without comment. He had seen the looks on the Gryffindors’ faces, staring at him in confusion. In his mind, he dared them to say something. He was barely sleeping at night, and his exhaustion had eroded what little patience he had left. Wisely, they went back to work, although Draco felt Harry’s eyes boring into him.
He had started to spend more time sitting in the Quidditch stands. Up in the Slytherin box, he was shielded from the few students who braved the cold to walk through the grounds. Occasionally, he heard the sounds of Hagrid’s Care of Magical Creatures classes. From the dismayed screams and Hagrid’s insistent shouts that they stay calm, Draco suspected that he had unleashed Blast-Ended Skrewts upon another unsuspecting group of students. Safely concealed in the stands, Draco stared out at the pitch for hours, endlessly mulling things over. Sometimes, he went through his satchel, which now contained his old wand, his father’s pouch, and—he was embarrassed to admit—the Chocolate Frog card Daphne had given him in Hogsmeade. He had started to think of his satchel as the Bag of Sad Things. When he was feeling particularly masochistic, he would take out the card and study the small picture of Harry. Harry gazed fiercely back at him. He told himself repeatedly to just toss the stupid card: if Nott or Zabini found it in his bag, they would never let him hear the end of it. But in a strange way, Draco felt as though the card belonged there next to his old wand and his father’s vial. They formed a growing collection of reminders of his many failures.
The Quidditch pitch had become his sanctuary until one incredibly awkward afternoon when Harry and his friends suddenly burst out of the Gryffindor changing room just as Draco settled into his usual spot. He froze as he saw Harry, both Weasleys, Finnegan, and Thomas stroll onto the pitch. He hoped he wouldn’t be spotted, but, of course, he was as unlucky as ever. Ron Weasley almost immediately noticed him. Even at that distance, Draco recognized the look of displeasure on his face. The Gryffindors stood there stupidly, looking between him and Harry, until finally Draco's mind connected with his feet and he jumped up. He hurried down the stands. He wasn’t sure why—he hadn’t done anything wrong, or particularly embarrassing—but he felt absolutely mortified at being caught alone by Harry of all people. He tried to reason with himself as he rushed back to the castle, but by then he heard Harry and his friends calling to each other as they flew above the pitch. Those moments were perhaps the most miserable of all. Harry seemed so unbothered, as though nothing had happened between them. And, inevitably, Draco felt a sharp pang of jealousy when he saw Harry with his friends. Try as he might, he couldn’t seem to push away the absurd voice in his head whispering ‘mine.’