Chapter Text
Draco woke up hungover, which was unpleasant but not uncommon. He’d fallen asleep in his study, newspaper folded out over his chest, stationary strewn about his desk. The morning light that peeled through the room’s gauzy curtains made him feel ill. Draco was sick in the bin twice before he managed to scrounge up and swallow the dregs of his home-brewed nausea cure. Well, at least this gave him something to work on this afternoon.
He entered the kitchen just as Astoria was leaving. They exchanged dry “good mornings” and suffered through brief “how are yous” before she was off. The kettle still held fresh water, a rare mercy, and he wasted no time lighting the gas for the stove to let it boil.
Breakfast, he decided, would be two slices of bacon and egg on toast. That was likely all his freshly-settled stomach could manage. Since the Manor had been cleared of House Elves (a decision he made without the guiding hand of the Ministry), Draco found great and curious pleasure in feeding himself. While his food cooked, he folded open the newest copy of The Prophet and muddled around with the crossword, only managing eight answers before his egg timer hopped to life.
Breakfast plated and tea poured, he walked down to the garden with the paper under his arm. Today, he would venture into London to buy a muggle film camera. Partially because he’d seen a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition the previous week, but primarily because he thought the action would seem frivolous to Pansy and, therefore, bug the shit out of her. Draco also thought it might be nice to take the camera on his walks—send his mother pictures of what he actually did all day (i.e., nothing).
He’d just settled comfortably into his chair to read “RELATIONS WITH AMERICAN WIZARDS FRAGILE: COULD CROCHET COOZIES BE THE ANSWER?” when the bell mounted to the siding of the Manor rang for the front door (a little system he’d charmed after the departure of the aforementioned house elves).
Puzzled, Draco sat up straighter. Pansy would be directing the spread for the Fall issue of Witch Weekly . Blaise and his mother were still out of town. Astoria would never ring—she would never announce her presence to him at all, aside from telling him he was in her way—Theo didn’t like to meet at the Manor (terrible memories). Like his letters, the property wards should only allow a very small list of guests to enter the premises, much less ring the bloody front door.
That was when Draco remembered the letters, the clumsily folded paper, that little desk-shit Connors.
He made his way quickly to the foyer, hoping he was wrong, hoping it would be Pansy off work early or Blaise miraculously turning back up for a spontaneous friendly fuck. Instead, who he found returned his early morning nausea tenfold.
“Oh,” the man jumped. “You’ve cut your hair.”
Draco Malfoy promptly slammed the door.
He felt like he might fall over, or be sick all over Pansy’s vintage hand-knotted wool rug. There was a long pause. Another more hesitant knock at the door.
“Malfoy?” A muffled voice called—one that didn’t sound anything like what he remembered. He practiced the breathing technique Pansy once read to him from an online muggle therapist’s blog. Trunk-breathing, or some other such silly name. Regardless, it calmed him enough that he was able to stand without the support of the wall.
He must be seeing things. Perhaps this Connors fellow simply had curly hair and wore glasses—he’d been stopped cold on the street before by the silhouette of curly-headed men wearing glasses, thinking he saw someone he certainly didn’t.
Draco opened the door again. Took a moment to really look at the man. Tall-enough, tanned, little gold rimmed glasses, three-piece brown tweed suit, unruly hair, one little red-jeweled ring on his middle finger, the remains of stress lines pressed into his face. He carried a briefcase, he wore beautiful leather shoes, his ears were double-pierced.
This was it, then. Draco had finally snapped—there was precedent for this, of course. It was the punishment he’d begged so tirelessly to be dealt. Oh, to tell the fates or ancestors or spirits or whatever was out there, manufacturing the unfolding of his own personal doom, that his plea for “atonement” was meant to appear in more theoretical ways.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting…” Potter’s eyes were still trained on the top of his head—wide, green, guarded. Draco reached a hand up to his hair, rubbed his fingers in the soft downy feel of the buzzcut.
There were a million things Draco could say. He wanted to cook up something especially snide, but instead, “Neither was I,” tumbled out.
Harry Potter nodded, shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. Coughed.
“No, I imagine not. It was meant to be Connors, you know, but he’s, ah, sick. And well, his interview with you would just come to me. So. Thought maybe I could cut out the middleman. So to speak,” Potter paused, searching Draco’s face. “I’m here in a professional context, you understand.”
“Professional,” Draco repeated.
“Yes. Hard Wood &co.,” he said. “I understand you’re resistant to our process. Connors forwarded your correspondence. I’ll have to purchase more stationary for the office. Very unprofessional.”
Draco stared at Potter, he imagined very stupidly.
“Isn’t that Oliver Wood’s business? Are you another of his desk-boys? The Saviour of the appointment book?”
Draco sounded young and bitter, even to himself. Certainly not his finest work. Even Potter looked more disappointed than annoyed.
“No. I’m the ‘company.’ Wood has a very small hand in making the brooms. I don’t really perform house calls or conduct initial consultations,” he said, holding Draco’s gaze. “But this is obviously a tender case.”
“Tender,” Draco repeated, again, letting the word roll around in his mouth.
“Maybe particular is a better word,” Potter moved to look around him, into the house. “I’m a little short on time. Lunch appointment. Could I come in?”
Draco looked at Potter, who was fingering the little broom and snitch charm necklace that hung around his neck, and shook his head.
“No,” he said. Potter furrowed his brow.
“No?”
“Certainly not. This is ridiculous, you’re clearly not Harry Potter,” he said, “Clearly not. This is all very low. What are you, some sort of polyjuiced scammer? A lookalike dancer Pansy hired? How much are they paying you? How did you get through the wards? I put those wards up myself—there’s not a crack in them—I ought to contact the Aurors—”
“You wouldn’t,” the non-Potter said, a little too confidently for Draco’s liking.
“Like hell I won’t,” he said. “You’d be better scurry on home to your employer—whoever it may be—and tell them you couldn’t get what you were after. I knew that letter was a pile of shit—”
“Malfoy,” Potter said, firm, cutting him off. Draco had backed into the house, closing the door. Potter put a hand on it, applied just enough pressure that his pushing felt like asking. Draco felt sicker. “It’s just me. No tricks. I make brooms, I’ve been hired to make you a broom. I’d like to do it.”
“Tell me something, then,” Draco said, not letting Potter inside of the house, but not shoving him away, either. “Tell me something only we would know.”
Potter clenched his jaw.
“I didn’t want to get into all that Malfoy—”
“Don’t be foolish. This,” Draco cut him off, gesturing between the two of them, “is always going to be personal.”
Potter’s face hardened. Softened. Hardened again, then closed off completely.
“The fiendfyre,” Harry said. “You held onto me. On my broom.”
“Very obvious pick. I gave an interview about that in 2007,” Draco said.
“You did?” Potter’s brow furrowed. “I was out of the country.”
“Where?” Draco asked. Potter grimaced.
“That’s my business, isn’t it?”
This seemed more like the Potter he knew—exasperated, impatient—it was a better act than the detached professionalism, but still.
“You aren’t especially convincing, are you?” Draco countered.
“Sectumsempra,” the non-Potter grimaced to even say it. “In the bathroom. I–I was reactionary, I practically ribboned you—”
“2005, some rag Prophet reporters got Pomfrey tipsy. ‘EXCLUSIVE: SAVIOUR OR SAVANT.’ They ran a real revival-style hate campaign on you—him, I suppose—that summer. Your sort wouldn’t leave me alone for weeks.”
“My sort?”
“You know, impersonators. Information gatherers. Professional snoops. Anyone with enough coin and time on their hands to spend it bothering me.”
This seemed to trouble the non-Potter, who worked his jaw in frustration. There was something in his expression, the way he tensed when Draco spoke, the way he squared his shoulders while simultaneously hunching into himself, that felt…
“Look. No fiendfyre, no sappy sectumsempra nonsense, certainly nothing about my mother’s hearing or my lack of hearing—nothing about the war. Give me something else. Something real.”
“Do we have anything else?” non-Potter asked.
Draco hadn’t realized he’d leaned so far outside, standing nearly a head taller than Potter even now. He was looming, pushing his face closer and closer to the other man. This question—this ignorant, silly question—was enough to pull Draco back to the doorframe.
He scoffed.
“As I thought,” he said, putting his hand in his pocket, feeling the grip of his wand. “I don’t like to call on Aurors, but if you don’t exit the premises immediately I’ll be forced to—”
“‘I hate him,’,” Potter said, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes tight. “‘I hate him and if you testify for him, I’ll hate you even more than I already do. He should rot, and I should rot—you’ve only done my mother a favor and I’m expected to say thank-you. And I hate myself, too, because I am thankful. I am a thankful coward.’”
Draco froze. Potter said nothing, but removed his hand from the door. Backed up a half-step.
Draco looked at the ground, looked at Potter whose guarded expression now flooded with open pity. Draco sighed through his nose, cast his eyes back to the ground, and let his hand fall from the door. He backed further into the hall.
“You remember the whole thing,” Draco said. It wasn’t a question. Potter had the decency to look sheepish, at least.
“It left an impression,” Potter said, and Draco wished he’d look at the ground or the sandstone and slate siding of the Manor or really anywhere but at him.
“A horrible thing to be. Eighteen.”
“Horrible,” Potter nodded. Draco sighed again, rubbed a thumb into the back of his neck.
“I still. I. Damn,” he felt crowded by Potter, now, even though the man stood several paces away. “I–”
There was so much to say. None of it came out. Draco could taste it in the back of his throat. Panic. Disgust. Fear. Nicotine.
“You can always tell me no, after,” Potter said, his voice a fraction gentler than it had been, the same as he’d used all those years ago, bent next to Draco’s infirmary bed. Please, please, please I didn’t mean to—
“I’ll make us tea, you can ask me your questions.”
He took Potter to the kitchen and motioned for him to sit at the dining table while he put on the kettle. Draco swung open the window that looked two stories over the gardens. Outside, a rabbit nosed its way out from under a hydrangea bush. He took the glass ashtray from the drying rack, set it on the outside sill.
“It’ll take the water a moment,” he said absently, pulling a pack of Dunhills from the pocket of his trousers. “I’ve got Earl Grey, hope that’s alright.”
“That’s great, really,” Potter said, arranging and re-arranging a yellow legal pad and ballpoint pen. “You do it the muggle way?”
“Yes.” Draco flicked at his lighter. Nearly empty. “It’s loose, so it’ll need time to steep—my mother sent this blend while she was south.”
Draco watched the smoke curl into the mid-morning sky before looking over his shoulder, knowing Potter was watching him. The other man’s gaze always had a specific weight which made Draco feel as if he were in school again, which consequently made him briefly consider pitching himself from the window. Potter’s eyes had migrated focus from his buzzed head to his left forearm, which was tightly bandaged. Draco braced, anticipating an “innocent” question or pointed comment that never came.
“How is your mother?” Potter asked instead, meeting Draco’s eyes. He took another long drag from his cigarette.
“She’s fabulous.” Draco tapped ash into the tray. “Look, Potter, let’s keep this brief. I know you have an appointment.”
Potter looked poised to ask another question. The kettle whistled, which was fantastic. Draco smashed what little was left of his cigarette into the ashtray, moved to pull the kettle from the stove.
“Do you take milk? Sugar?” he asked Potter.
“Both please.”
They settled into a horrible silence as the kettle’s whistle sputtered, as Draco prepared the tea, as Draco walked to the refrigerator to grab a carton of almond milk.
Potter spoke again.
“Who made your cabinets?” he asked.
“My cabinets?” Draco repeated, looking up. He’d never considered them before. “They’re ancient. I have no idea.”
“They’re beautiful. Heartwood, I think. The grain starts out silver, you know, before it mellows.”
“ Fascinating ,” Draco said, certainly not meaning it. At least Potter had something new to focus his terrible, intense stare on. “How many sugar cubes would you like? Two?”
“Three, if you don’t mind. And a little more than a splash of milk.”
“Do you even want to taste the tea?” Draco asked, but tonged three little cubes into the brew anyhow. Potter didn’t respond. When Draco turned to set his cup on the island, the other man was still fixated entirely on the cabinets.
“So, you make the brooms then?” he prompted. Potter reluctantly peeled his eyes away from the wood.
“Yes.”
“Individual to the flier? Like wands?” he asked, repeating what he remembered from the Q’ s article. Potter made a face, but nodded. “How’d you ever end up doing something like that? I hadn’t heard of such a thing.”
“You realize the world is much bigger than ours, when you finally leave it,” Potter offered. Draco waited for more. It didn’t come.
“Cryptic,” he said. “I suppose you won’t tell me who my secret sponsor is.”
“Can’t. It’s against policy,” Potter replied, finally taking a sip from his mug. “This is good. I'm a little surprised you don’t have House Elves to do it for you.”
“I haven’t had House Elves since my mother left, Potter. Archaic, ghastly. I can fend just as well for myself.”
“You speak very individualistically for a married man,” Potter said.
“Fine, then, we can fend just as well for ourselves . Are you performing a consultation or an interview? Don’t you want to know my flying habits?” Draco snapped.
“No need to get testy, Malfoy,” Potter said, taking another sip of his tea. “As I remember, you wrote that you don’t fly.”
“I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t much care for it,” Draco said, rubbing at a suspicious brown spot on the granite countertops that had previously gone unnoticed. “I never have.”
“You’re lying,” Potter said. He hadn’t written anything down on the legal pad.
“I don’t need you to believe me,” Draco said. “I was forced into it as a child, I never cared for it, I stopped as soon as I was able.”
It was nearly true. True enough. As good as Potter deserved. It was too early in the morning for intense conversation about Lucius, especially with Harry Potter.
“I’ve seen you fly, Malfoy.” Potter said, as if Draco could interpret what the hell that was supposed to mean. “It left an impression.”
Draco, who didn’t know how to respond to that, cleared his throat.
“You saw me fly, Potter, in past-tense, almost fifteen years ago, now,” Draco took another sip of his tea. “I’m sure your imagination is flawed. There were more important things to think about than the House Cup.”
“Maybe. It was nice to pretend, though,” Potter said, somehow staring Draco down, even while sitting. Apparently, he expected a response.
“Yes. I suppose it was.”
Potter studied him for a moment, then scribbled something.
“What’ve you written?”
“Draco Malfoy agrees with me, and then the date,” Potter said, his face deadly serious. Draco, too caught off guard by the attempt at a joke, didn’t laugh. “Do you follow quidditch at all? You mentioned you read the Q .”
“Sometimes, yes. I favor the Kestrels this year for the cup, but I’ve always had a soft spot for the Harpies,” he paused. “Wood’s Bats are shite.”
“Of course they are, it’s an upper management issue.” Potter waved him off. “The Kestrals have a strong seeker. So do the Harpies. Do you think a strong seeker wins a game?”
“That feels like a trick question, coming from you,” Draco replied. “But technically, yes, that’s where all the points lie. The team supports the seeker, the seeker scores the points, the seeker gets the glory, and so on and so forth. Those are the basic rules of the game.”
“You were a good seeker,” Potter said. Draco stood up a little straighter.
“I was adequate.”
“More than adequate, I’d say.”
“You’re appealing to my vanity, Potter.” Draco stood abruptly, moving back to the window, fishing his half-finished cigarette from the ashtray. It filled him; held him like a warm hug.
“Why did you stop flying, Malfoy?” Potter asked. “Honestly.”
“I’ve already told you,” Draco said, pursing his lips. “I disliked it.”
“Okay, then,” Potter said, eyes still trained on his tea. He looked up for a moment, then back down. “Why did you cut your hair?”
“Why does my hair matter?”
“I’m curious.”
“You’re getting very personal.” Draco felt as if he were under a microscope—as if Potter were preparing him for some sort of sick emotional dissection.
“That’s how it goes,” Potter said, now running a hand over his tall kitchen table. “It’s part of the job. Professional personalism. I’ve got to know particulars to make something particular. If I’m left to assume things about you, it’s likely I’ll get information wrong, y’know? Start caulking gaps. I might think you’ve cut your hair because it was getting warm, or because you thought it might make you look—anyhow assumptions lead to misplaced aesthetics. In my experience.”
“I cut my hair because I thought it would look pretty,” Draco bit back.
“Sure,” Potter said.
“Don’t sound as if you know better.”
“That’s the thing, Malfoy. I don’t know any better.” Potter looked up from the table, where the tips of his fingers had found a particular gouged grove. Made, Draco knew, when his father had thrown a butcher’s knife into its surface.
Draco didn’t know what to say to this, to Potter caressing the split in the table, to this Potter who acted equal parts as if he were a stranger, an enemy, an estranged friend.
“Why are you doing this, Potter?”
“Because I think—” Potter paused, looking away from him toward the kitchen cabinets. Draco felt as if a wasps nest had broken somewhere low in his belly. “Because I had a good idea what I would make for you when I walked up the drive, and now I’ve got no idea. I think whatever I could do, there won’t be anything else like it in the world, and that’s really exciting.”
A beat. Potter sketched something loose on his legal pad, a shape Draco couldn't comprehend. He looked back up.
“You can always tell me no,” he repeated.
“I won’t.” It was too honest, Draco knew, and he saw it in the way Potter’s eyes flashed, his shoulders tensed.
“Besides,” Draco turned back to the window, studying the hollowed butt of his cigarette. “You’ve already been paid to handle me. I’d never deny a man his hard-earned income.”
“I didn’t say yes for the money,” Potter said, almost entirely sucked into whatever it was he’d begun on his legal pad. “Besides, I haven’t been paid yet.”
“No?” Draco asked. The rabbit outside was joined by another. They sniffed at each other, noses nearly bumping. “That’s awfully trusting, especially if it’s one of my friends. Haven’t you considered that I’d go to the papers?”
“Of course.”
“And you trust me?” Draco asked, turning away from the garden to regard Potter again. He didn’t even bother to look up from his drawing.
“No. I trust it’s my word against yours.”
As he showed Potter to the door, Draco caught his reflection—white shirt, striped sleep pants, his face shone, his eyes were wild. He was a horrible, oily mess. Too shocked to feel properly embarrassed, the realization was enough to stoke the fire of his emerging fury.
Draco had learned a great deal about anger management since his teens. Really, he prided himself on his ability to leave his wand in his pocket, to step back from a situation and analyze. Once he bid Potter a cool farewell, Draco returned to his bedroom, put his wand on the side table, and proceeded to dress himself. A linen button down, cream trousers, a thin silver glasses chain, the sapphire rings which were once his mothers’. He examined himself in the full-length mirror.
“Class,” he said to his own image. “Class, class, pure class.”
By the time Draco convinced himself it was childish to show up at Pansy’s place of work, he’d already apparated three times, booked an obnoxiously expensive portkey, walked through the great heavy doors of an Italian cathedral, and greeted her assistant, who looked confused, but not unhappy to see him. Draco was shuffled to the corner, where he took refuge in an empty pew, apart from other members of staff ready to jump to attention if called upon.
Pansy was doing her very best not to hover over the photographer, standing apart, bent over a collection of paper and bits of fabric, her eyes unmoving from the screen. After about ten minutes, she stood straight, pulled down the bunched-up hem of her dark purple waistcoat, and said:
“Andy—Andy, thank you, please just stop.”
She hardly had to raise her voice for everyone to pause. The white noise of shuffling fabric, encouragement called out by the photographer, clicking heels of the diligent PA in charge of straightening the almost comically long hem of editorial-style robes—it all stopped. The photographer lowered his camera.
Pansy pointed to the creative director with one, long finger. Beckoned him over. Turned her screen so that he might see it.
“Alban, what do you think the problem is?” she asked. The director scratched his chin. Glanced over at the models, who had unposed themselves and watched, tense as upright prairie dogs. Pansy sighed, plucked an open magazine from the top of the stack.
“This,” she said, tapping the spread, “this is from the Fall 1996 issue of Witch Weekly . Look here, look there. Tell me. What’s wrong.”
The creative director stayed silent, looking from the magazine to the screens to the setup in the pulpit. Pansy shook her head, turned away from him, pressed her thumb against her front teeth.
“Draco,” she said. “Come here, won’t you?”
All eyes turned toward the back of the room, where Draco stood. He made his way toward the front, where Pansy made space for him to stand.
“Darling, look at these. Tell me I’m not crazy,” she flitted a hand over the print ad, over the screen. He picked up the offending issue—witches and wizards posed in more conservative, traditional robes on the steps of a muggle cathedral. He looked up at the gaggle of witches who stared back at him, at the stone steps, at the significantly less impressive stained glass windows.
Pansy was watching him over the smallest pair of sunglasses he’d ever seen.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“It looks the same, doesn’t it?” he said. “Only less impressive. Did you happen to receive my letter?”
“Yes, exactly thank you— Alban did you hear that? This isn’t a copy, this isn’t an homage, this is meant to be satirical and we look tired, dry, boring. Is Witch Weekly boring?” She turned to the room, shaking the old magazine above her head. She was met with a sheepish chorus of no ma’am .
“I don’t think so, either,” Pansy said. “Girls, take fifteen. Andy, refresh your film. Alban—if you can’t fix it by the time I’m back, I’ll be forced to do everything myself and take the extra pay.”
The wizard took the magazine from her, holding it up to the screen. He muttered something quick, bitter, and French. Draco was near certain he caught a particularly nasty une chienne. Pansy turned back to him, jerked her chin toward the back of the cathedral.
“Privacy, first,” she said. “Then we’ll talk.”
Pansy’s staff parted like the red sea, pulling him from the main room into what looked like an in-use office. Her tight, long navy skirt swishing to fill the silence. She sat behind the desk and motioned for Draco to have a seat. He perched, back straight, ass on the edge of an uncomfortable couch squashed next to an overcrowded bookshelf.
“Well?” she asked, pulling the letter he’d scribbled out in anger nearly two hours before from the front pocket of her waistcoat, tossing it on the desk. “What’s this about then?”
“You’ve read it?”
“I’ve read it,” she said, nodding, “but I’m not sure if this is a page from your schoolboy journal, a prank, or a delusion. I mean really, Draco, the wanking papers are harmless enough—”
“That is a gross misrepresentation—”
“—but ‘Harry Potter was in my kitchen,’ becomes deeply concerning. I mean, what am I supposed to make of this, Draco?” Her voice was equal parts firm and gentle as she reached an open hand out across the table. He stared into her open palm, but did not take it.
“Pansy,” he said slowly, crossing his arms, sitting even straighter. “Don’t act stupid. I know this little setup was your doing—I mean really, sending Potter to my house is crossing a line—”
“My doing?” She cut him off.
“You’re the only person I know with connections to businesses like this,” he said, “who might have been able to dig up the fact that Potter is secretly behind the brooms. Who knows about my, well—”
“Your obsession?” she asked, raising a brow.
“My vague interest,” he corrected her. “And while I in theory appreciate the gesture—”
“First of all,” she stood, pressing her hands into the desk. “Be serious. If I sent Harry Potter to your house mid-morning on a Tuesday, I’d expect you to come crawling on your hands and knees to thank me for my expert manipulation and generous gesture. You’ve taken a good decade off my life whining after him.”
“That’s certainly not true,” he narrowed his eyes. His expression was easily met tenfold.
“Really? ‘Oh, Pansy,’” she threw her head back, sighed, pitched her voice up and airy. “‘Pansy, he was watching me this morning at breakfast, didn’t you see? Pansy, I can’t believe he doesn’t want to be my friend. Pansy, do you think if I just talked with him? Pansy, we smoked in the courtyard, Pansy he told me about his uncle, Pansy he was seen with the buff Weasley he could do so much better, Pansy, he’s missing do you think he’s alright? I bet he’s sick of all of us, Pansy. Pansy, Pansy, he’s come back. You’re right, Pansy, it would be a terrible time to write—Pansy, he was in my house. Pansy, Pansy, Pansy—’”
She opened one eye to look at him. Draco’s arms crossed as tight as they might.
“Are you quite finished?” he asked.
“No. There’s my favorite, from when we went out on New Years, remember? ‘Pansy, I bet he’s got a thick, fat—’”
“Point taken ,” he snapped. “Also, I sound nothing like that.”
“That’s exactly how you sound. Pathetic. Draco, you’re a grown man—by my estimation if you wanted to seek out Potter for a fuck or a confessional or whatever it is, you have the faculties to manage it yourself.” She sat back down, placed one hand over the other. “So even if this isn’t a delusion—which is still where my bed lies, mind you—I certainly wasn’t behind it.”
“Not even a little?”
“Draco, my staff have been owling that man for months trying to get five minutes for an interview,” Pansy shook her head. “Again, even if I believe this is real—not me.”
“Pansy,” he said. “I woke up to Harry Potter, who I assume still thinks of me as some sort of bigoted degenerate, knocking on my door, offering to make me a broom in the name of Oliver Wood’s company. He told me things only I would know. He sat in my kitchen, he drank my tea, he acted strangely and then suggested we meet again this coming Thursday. I—have I lied to you before, Pans?”
She gave him a flat look.
“Since we’ve been adults,” Draco corrected.
“You said that coral two piece set looked good on me, three years ago, muggle charity shop,” she squinted.
“Yes, well, to be fair—”
“A coral canvas two piece set, no label, faux pockets,” she rolled her eyes, poked a finger into her mouth and pretended to gag.
“It was vintage .”
“It was horrendous,” she said. She leaned back in the chair of whatever clergyman belonged to this office, kicked her feet up on the desk, chewed the inside of her cheek. “Say I give you the benefit of the doubt—”
“I’d take veritaserum if that makes it easier on you.”
“—and believe this isn’t all some strange drunken dream, or that you’ve got a terrible concussion, or that you’ve undone about a decade of progress—”
“Pansy, I’d make a pensive memory if you’d like.”
“—you’re suggesting in this letter that I’ve set you up for some sort of intended or unintended emotional torture. And that I take a little offense to,” she rubbed at a spot of dust on her skirt, trying very hard not to look bothered. “I’d never force you in a room with someone we knew from school, whom you feel indebted toward, just to, what? Laugh at your expense? Pray you get your rocks off and shut up about it?”
“Well, maybe you thought it was Oliver Wood,” Draco asked. “And you’re always trying to get me to take up some sort of hobby. I—Pansy, I’ll concede that it’s unfair to say you sent Harry Bloody Potter to my home, but if you put in for me to get one of these brooms as a nice gesture—well, thanks but no thanks.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You don’t need an artisan broom to fly around your backyard. I don’t have money to toss at a gift you’d never use.”
“Then who?”
“The easy answer is your mother,” Pansy said, sounding a little more venomous than Draco might have liked. “Perhaps Blaise. Maybe it was your sweet little wife.”
“Yes, and tomorrow the sky will purple,” Draco crossed his arms. “You swear it wasn’t you?”
“On my job.” She sat up, leaned back across the desk, extended a hand. This time, Draco took it. “On. My. Job.”
“So you believe me?” he asked.
“Tentatively,” she said, squeezing his hand. “But if you display signs of a concussion, I will forcibly restrain and deposit you in the emergency care unit at St. Mungos.”
“Pansy, the things he told me—”
“Can wait,” she said, checking her watch. “I’ve got to wrangle the imps. Get off my set, go to my apartment, and pour yourself a shot of Dreamless Sleep if you like. When I get off work we can get pissed and talk through every microscopic detail. Does that sound alright?”
“Sounds perfect,” Draco stood, held the door for her. “Want to make dinner?”
“I’ll be exhausted,” she shook her head. “Best to pick up takeout on my way back. You can use the company portkey to get you back to Diagon, if you like. I’ll write you off as a consultant or something equally useless.”
“Pansy,” he said her name, stopping her before she could tornado away from him. “Thank you.”
“It’s what I’m here for.” She smiled, dipped her head, and hurried back down the corridor.
xx
Pansy’s family kept nothing after the war. Her parents liquidated the family estate along with various assets across the United Kingdom—including a house in Northern Ireland where she and Draco had spent much of their childhood. Her parents and brother relocated to join the Parkinsons in South Africa. Of course, she’d been offered to come, continue living in comfort, so long as she was married.
They’d considered it, Draco and Pansy. Shacking up, nullifying the heir, doing as they pleased with who they pleased for as long as they liked. It had been his idea, and he’d proposed it to her very seriously a year after the trials officially ended.
In the end, Pansy Parkinson couldn’t imagine a life framed in duty. She said as much to her parents. They, of course, promptly cut her off.
Even at the time, she’d seemed nonplussed. She lined up an internship with The Tattler, which turned into a freelance sex column in The Prophet, which found connections to a more managerial, creative position at Witch Weekly , which, at the time, had been desperately attempting to distance its image from conservative pureblood aesthetics.
“I’m a queer who's been cut off from her shady family,” she’d told him, pink with firewhiskey and hope. “I’m a public, controversial hire. They’re practically slobbering at my feet.”
It was only a matter of time before Pansy climbed the editorial ranks. She was efficient, she was productive, she was Witch Weekly . This had come with a significant bump in salary, which in turn was reflected in her beautiful two-bedroom apartment, a mere two blocks away from the office.
Unlike the Manor, Pansy’s home smelled and felt and looked entirely like her. Draco remembered when the walls were once bare, the furniture was cheap and easy to break down, and the brick fireplace did little but cough up ash. They’d wired in the floo network themselves, scoured London art galleries and secondhand shops for the art underlit in her foyer—art nouveau posters, abstract ballerinas, an original film poster for The Passion of Joan of Arc . Draco took comfort walking through this, took comfort in the memories of Pansy telling him one frame was too far left, the other too low.
Everything about stepping into Pansy’s apartment felt familiar—and it was with ease that Draco entered her kitchen, poured himself a glass of firewhiskey, and made himself comfortable in the guest bed. He dug out a second set of ‘indoor’ clothes left in her dresser, and moved to change in the bathroom where, two years ago, she’d shaved off his hair.
The weather had been especially foul the day Lucius Malfoy was released from Azkaban. Torrential rains, as if the spirits were crying on behalf of Draco’s total misery. He kept himself busy, locked in his study with an Ancient Rune translation project. A play about a young wizard murdering his father and, consequently, feeding him to his unwanted children—that year’s passion project. It was only a coincidence he’d picked it up when whispers of ‘good behavior’ and ‘parole’ began circling through pureblood circles.
That morning, he sent an official statement to The Prophet, and that afternoon he and Astoria got into their worst yelling match since the first year of marriage.
“It would have been much better to say nothing,” she’d said, paper trembling in her hand. “You may ruin us with this—our friends—”
“He deserves to have his soul sucked through his arsehole,” Draco yelled right back. He hadn’t raised his voice at anyone in a very long time. He sounded hoarse, on the verge of tears.
“It’s a good thing for him to be absolved, you understand. For your name, which is now our name—I let you scream and fuck and treat me as if I were a ghost but if you are going to ruin anyone, make sure it is yourself, Draco Malfoy.”
“You make me feel like your jailer.”
“You’re acting like one,” she said, “making comments for all of us. Your father—”
“He is not my father,” Draco said.
“Then why do you try so hard to be like him? Your tailored clothes, your vague diplomatic speech, your letterhead, the cold hatred you carry in your heart—”
“Astoria—”
“—even your bloody hair. If you hate the man how can you stand to look at yourself —”
“Astoria, you are as much an inconvenience to me as I am to you.”
She’d broken something. A vase or a pot or a clock, it didn’t matter. She’d taken it from the bookshelf and smashed it to the ground, and she’d looked at him with more hatred than he knew a person ever could. Her hand was on her wand, and she raised it at him.
“Get out.”
Along Diagon and onto Knockturn, that face stared down at him—pictures from during the war, pictures from when Lucius was in school, some which included Draco and his mother.
THE FORGIVEN WILL NOT EXTEND FORGIVENESS.
The Prophet headline that Astoria had been so concerned about was posed up by a photograph that must have been taken just that morning—Lucius Malfoy in a new set of expensive robes looked solemn, guarded, bitter. His hair somehow the same length as when he’d entered.
It took Draco another look to realize the picture was of himself.
Somehow, he wound up at Pansy’s apartment, where he shouldered through the door and taken a pair of kitchen scissors to his hair, tied in a ponytail at the base of his neck. He had to saw at it—repeat the motion until he freed himself of the long, thick hair his mother had said made him look ‘so grown’ only days before. Pansy had said something to him about the mess, about her kitchen, about blood. She’d steered him quickly, gently by the shoulders into the guest bathroom, where he’d look at himself in the mirror. He was deathly pale. His hair was uneven, greasy. When he ran a hand through it, it slicked back. He looked fourteen again—sickly and strung-out.
“Pansy,” he said, and turned to look up at her. She’d been crying, at some point—mascara and eyeliner smudged below her eyes, across her cheek. “Pansy, I—Pansy it’s got to go, I need it off, I look like—”
She’d done it without question, used the tip of her wand and went around his head steadily. They did not speak until she was done, rubbing the remaining bits of hair from his head onto her bathroom floor. She’d nicked the top of his ear.
“I can fix that,” she said, offering him a hand towel. “I’ve got a potion—”
“No,” Draco said. The white towel bloomed red. “Leave it. Please.”
He didn’t return to the Manor that night. They laid in bed together. She held him tight as he cried. Just like they had during the war.
In the morning, Pansy burned pancakes and complained about work. She pretended, gracefully, that nothing happened. As she mixed mimosas, Draco’s owl rapped on the window. A white envelope with green ink, addressed to My Son .
With a flick of his wand, it was burned without reading.
Just as well.