Happy birthday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raphsody606! -Work After Wartime, 2/3
Oct. 11th, 2007 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenThis is the second part; sorry for the spammage.
*
Harry began it the next day. They were both still in Potions—though, to Slughorn’s disappointment, Harry had lost his miraculous talent—but Harry usually sat with Hermione and Draco alone in the front of the room. This time, Harry nodded and smiled to Hermione but walked past her to sit down next to Draco and pull out his cauldron and tools as if this were something he did every day.
“Hello, Draco,” he said.
“Harry,” Draco with, with a slight inclination of his head but no pause in the smooth motions of his hands as he plucked out his knife and scales and lined them up neatly next to his own cauldron.
Harry could feel Hermione’s stare drilling into the back of his head. More significant, though, was the silence of the Ravenclaws in the class. Harry missed the muffled whispering now that he was listening for it. He smiled grimly. That was one of the things he had noticed yesterday and which had distressed him—how eagerly the Ravenclaws watched the “war heroes,” like Ron and Harry, and copied their actions towards the Slytherins.
Harry still didn’t think he and Draco were going to change the behavior of students in the school overnight, but if his “followers” were as dedicated as they pretended to be, they at least couldn’t act anymore as though their paragon was unquestionable.
Slughorn peered at him as though Harry were some strange species of beetle which had just flown into the room and demanded to be sliced into Potions ingredients. “Mr. Potter,” he said, his voice gentle. “Are you sure that you wouldn’t wish to sit in the back of the room?” Hermione sat there in order to have swifter access to the shelves of ingredients.
Harry looked up and smiled the way he’d learned to smile as he was bumped and washed through occasion after occasion. It was a small and cool expression, and it could mean almost anything that someone else wanted it to mean. “No. I’m comfortable here, Professor.”
That started the Ravenclaws whispering again, but in a different manner. Harry shot a sideways look at Draco and found him half-smiling, in a way unlike his more usual sneers and smirks. Draco, of course, caught his eye at once and jerked his head at Slughorn, to encourage Harry to pay attention to his part in the script.
When Harry glanced back at Slughorn, he caught what might have been a glint of appraisal in the Professor’s eyes. That didn’t worry him. Slughorn appraised everyone that way, and he was probably just trying to decide how much his own position as Head of Slytherin House would change if Harry changed his politics.
“Well, if you’re comfortable,” said Slughorn, laying so much emphasis on the last word that even Harry winced at the lack of subtlety, “I certainly wouldn’t try to move you.” And then he nodded and winked and moved away.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Ridiculous,” he said under his breath.
“I told you, Potter,” Draco muttered as he started copying down the instructions for the potion from the board, “the power of the name is very great.”
“If names are so powerful, then call me Harry,” Harry commented, and grimaced. The potion called for chopped slugs. He hated chopping slugs, and he wasn’t so stupid as to think that Draco would chop them instead.
There were stares on the back of his neck all through class. He ignored them—more successfully than he had expected he would. But then again, this wasn’t just a one-day effort. This was something that had to become a normal, workable part of the world after the war. So Harry would have to do this more than once. He might as well cope with stares the same way he did when he went out in public in Diagon Alley, and live with the consequences of his actions.
*
“Because I don’t like the way people treat Slytherins,” Harry answered when Hermione caught up with him after Potions class and demanded to know why he’d sat with Draco. Draco had turned down the corridor towards the Slytherin common room, since he had a free period next, but Harry had nodded to him before he vanished. “Draco thinks it’s likely that people might change their minds if I treat them differently. Maybe it won’t work perfectly, but I’ll try.”
Hermione said, with frown lines etched between her brows, “But I didn’t know that you were upset about the way people were treating Slytherins, Harry.”
“I am now.”
“But you don’t just make up your mind overnight to do something like this,” Hermione argued.
Harry stopped and faced her. “Well, I do,” he said. “And we practically made up our minds overnight to go after—what we needed to go after, didn’t we?” Even now, he and Ron and Hermione didn’t mention the word “Horcruxes” where anyone else could hear. Maybe Ginny would be brought into their confidence after she and Harry started dating properly.
“That was different,” said Hermione. “That was a quest, and it was important.”
“And this is important to me now,” Harry countered, and then turned towards the Astronomy Tower. They weren’t watching stars in the daytime, of course, but Professor Sinistra had assigned them essays on the fixed stars, and Harry hadn’t quite completed his. “Just like your exams, Hermione. I mean, they won’t matter to everyone else in the wizarding world the way you-know-what did, but they matter to you.”
“Harry! The NEWTs influence everything from the careers that we’re fit to pursue to wizarding society’s estimation of our talents—“
Harry grinned to himself. Now that Hermione was on the familiar track of the exams lecture, she would rattle on that way until they arrived at the Astronomy Tower. It quite convinced her to forget about small things like Harry being friendly to Slytherins, or Harry confessing freely to her what was important to him.
That was the way he wanted everyone to act, finally. Politeness to Slytherins, and friendliness with some of them, should be natural. Harry planned to play dumb with anyone who knew him less well than Ron and Hermione did, and portray this as something that he simply wanted to do. If someone argued otherwise, then and only then would he announce that he planned to keep it up for the foreseeable future.
Watch and learn.
*
On it went. Harry and Draco nodded at each other on their way into the Great Hall for lunch. They shared the same table in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and their new instructor—an old, battle-marked witch named Hilda Grayscale—partnered them together at their request. Harry showed Draco the basic defense spells that Dumbledore’s Army had already worked on, and Draco showed him a few hexes just this side of legal. They were talking quietly when Professor Grayscale announced that the class was over, and Harry found himself reluctant to end the conversation. He caught Draco’s sleeve as he was about to turn away, and asked, “Tonight at the lake?”
Only a flicker deep in those gray eyes warned Harry that Draco might have thought about backing out. He nodded, and then picked up his books briskly, as if the speed with which he did it could keep him from having to think about the water.
“Mate, what are you doing?” Ron caught up with him after Defense, and he wore an expression much like Slughorn’s—though since Ron wasn’t a Potions professor, Harry thought of it less in terms of looking at him like a beetle wanting to be sliced up and more as the way Ron would look if Harry lost a game of Quidditch.
“Being friendly to Draco,” said Harry. “I thought that was obvious.”
“I already tried to talk to him, Ron,” Hermione said, coming up on the other side of Harry and rolling her eyes. “He will be impossible about it.”
“I just want to know why,” Ron muttered. “I can see what for myself, thanks.”
Harry refrained from pointing out that Ron should have asked his question differently, then, though he knew it was what Draco would have done. Antagonizing his friends with sarcasm wasn’t the best way to get them to pay attention to the pranks on Slytherins. “Because the school’s practically in danger of collapsing from within with hatred of the Slytherins,” he said. “And I never noticed it before. And M—Draco agreed to participate in a friendship with me. If we can be civil, when we have reason to hate each other, maybe those people who were regular students in the war and after can figure out how to behave.”
“But no one’s doing anything serious,” Ron argued. “It’s just pranks. And I think it’s natural, since none of them would fight with us. It’ll pass.”
“It’s not just pranks,” Harry said. “I stopped at least one murder attempt.” He ignored Hermione’s gasp and went on. “And I don’t think the members of the House should be blamed for the actions of one individual. Unless you want to start saying that it’s the fault of the Gryffindors twenty years ago for not preventing Peter Pettigrew from betraying my parents.”
“Who tried to kill someone?” Hermione whispered. “Harry, this is serious. You have to tell Professor McGonagall!”
“I doubt this person would trust her, since she used to be Head of Gryffindor,” Harry said. They were the same arguments he had used on himself when he was wondering if he should ignore Draco’s desires and simply go to the Headmistress. “Besides, I didn’t see their faces. The person who was attacked says they were Gryffindors, but they might not be. Until I have some proof—unless I get it—I’m not going to tear apart the Houses looking and only turn everyone against the Slytherins further. This way is better.”
“I don’t see why you should have to save Malfoy,” Ron muttered. “You already saved everyone once. Isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t think so,” Harry said, and shook his head when Ron opened his mouth again. “If it’s about trying to persuade me out of this, it won’t work.”
Despite the warning, Ron kept asking him throughout dinner if he wouldn’t at least reconsider having his “Slytherin friend” be someone less dangerous, like Nott or Zabini. Harry ignored Ron’s questions, though he responded to everything else Ron said, and nodded to Draco again as he was leaving. This time, he saw several speculative Slytherin gazes, especially those of the younger students, following him when Draco nodded back.
It couldn’t hurt, Harry thought. He didn’t know how much the Slytherins might have fought back against the pranks directed at them, but if they could feel a little more secure at the same time, then the tensions might ease still further.
*
“Come on, Draco,” Harry said, as kindly as he could, considering he had already stripped down to his pants and Draco was still leaning against a tree and regarding the lake with profound distaste.
“I said I would let you teach me to swim,” Draco said, and his gaze traveled very slowly to Harry’s face. Every line of his body said he had better things to do, and only remained here to indulge Harry. “I never said it would be tonight.”
Harry opened his mouth to argue, and then shut it again. He would gain nothing from pushing Draco. Besides, this would probably affect their ability to act civilly towards each other tomorrow.
And perhaps a demonstration was more in order.
“Suit yourself,” he said, with a small shrug, and then turned and stepped into the lake.
“What?” Draco asked, apparently stunned by the lack of resistance. Harry smiled to himself. A good reason to do it more often.
“I said, suit yourself,” Harry said over his shoulder, and then waded deep enough that the water was up to his chest. It was cold, but the Warming Charm he had cast before he took off his clothes stood him in good stead. He was not a complete fool, no matter what Hermione thought, and this wasn’t a winter pool where he had to dive without any protection at all in order to receive a sword that a mad Headmaster—two mad Headmasters—had decided could not be retrieved any other way.
It was pleasant in the lake, despite the slimy things that sometimes pushed past his legs. The water supported his weight, and Harry was able to lie back and float, hair drifting around him, eyes fixed on the clouds obscuring the moon. They darted away again. Harry thought he heard a howl in the woods, but he ignored it. The moon was two nights past the full, so they didn’t have to worry about werewolves.
His eyes half-shut, and he yawned.
“Potter!” Draco’s voice was very nearly shrill.
“It’s Harry to you,” Harry muttered, and shut his eyes. “And what is it? Is the Giant Squid making for me?”
“You can’t fall asleep while you’re swimming.” Draco sounded scandalized. Harry found he didn’t even have to open his eyes to picture him; he would be leaning on the tree but straining forwards as if against invisible bonds, aghast at Harry’s stupidity. “People die that way.”
“This is not a bathtub, and I am not three years old.” Harry pushed himself back to the surface and shook his head, scattering trails of wetness down his face as he trod water. “Neither are you, for that matter. If you want to get in, I promise I’ll hold you all the time. It won’t hurt you.”
He paused, because Draco was looking at him with a very odd expression. Perhaps the Giant Squid had come up behind him after all. Harry waved a hand cautiously behind his back, but found only a curious fish which darted away after an exploratory nibble confirmed he wasn’t food.
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked, wondering if fear could send Draco into hypnotic trances.
Draco looked away from him then, and coughed theatrically. “Nothing,” he said. “Why on earth should anything be the matter?” But his voice shook slightly, and Harry wondered. “I—you promise that you won’t let me go?”
Well, this is a change of pace. But since it might actually let him repay the debt Harry still felt he owed—for not stopping and identifying the students, for not preventing the prank in the first place, for not noticing anything until Draco pointed it out—he wouldn’t complain. “I won’t,” he said. “My word as a Gryffindor, or as the hero of the wizarding world, if you trust that more.”
“There are no heroes,” Draco muttered, but he had started stripping. Harry was startled to realize his skin was so pale it actually shone the way the reflection of the full moon had two nights ago. It certainly wasn’t flawless—the lines of Harry’s own Sectumsempra twisted across his chest, and there was a large round scar on his back that might almost have come from werewolf teeth—but it was human, and mostly healthy, and Harry found himself studying it with more interest than was warranted.
He shrugged and looked away, breaking the spell for himself.
When Draco was stripped down to his pants, like him, Harry waded to the shore again and waited while Draco arranged himself, slowly and fussily, against his chest. Harry ducked his head so that his chin rested in Draco’s hair as he dragged him carefully back out, happy for no reason. It was an exact reversal of the position they’d been in when he saved Draco’s life.
In everything, even emotion.
“You can trust the water to hold you up,” Harry murmured, noticing that Draco had tensed the moment they moved too far for him to feel grass or sand beneath his toes. “You really can. Tilt your head back, spread your arms around you, and distribute your weight evenly. Close your eyes if you want,” he added, and Draco snarled at him.
“I’m not suicidal, Potter.”
“Harry,” he said, and he had never heard his own voice so gentle. Of course, he had never found himself mostly naked in the Hogwarts lake with Draco Malfoy before, either. It made a difference, somehow.
I’ve never done it before. Maybe that’s all it is.
“Spread your arms,” he whispered, and Draco did. “Lift your feet.” And Draco did. “Lean back against my chest now. I’ll support your head, but let the water take the rest of you.”
Several harsh breaths puffed against his ear. Harry repeated his instructions two more times, not varying his pitch or his words, letting the very act of repetition, as well as the fact that he hadn’t drowned yet, soothe Draco.
And then Draco actually did it, drifting, with his head and shoulders and the upper part of his torso resting against Harry as he paddled backwards, but nothing else.
“Excellent,” Harry whispered, a deep glow of happiness in his heart. He was reminded of times when the entirety of Dumbledore’s Army succeeded in some simple spell, but this was enhanced by Draco’s status as his rival, and their surroundings, and the one-on-one instruction, and—everything, really. “Now, why don’t I let you go, and you can float flat on your back—“
“No!”
Harry recognized active, instinctive fear in that tone, having felt it himself when he saw the basilisk coming for him. He curled himself around Draco at once, taking more of his weight, stilling his arms before they could begin a panicked thrashing. “Shhh, it’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s all right, I’ve got you, we won’t do it yet, we can wait, there’s no shame in this…”
“Easy for you to say,” Draco muttered, but he had stopped moving as if he thought sharks were going to tear his legs off. He drifted against Harry for a moment, then shook his head. Wet hair brushed Harry’s collarbone, and he had to stifle a startled chuckle. Draco probably wouldn’t take any laughter well right now, or give Harry a chance to explain that he was just ticklish. “You’ve never been afraid of something like this.”
“Not like this,” Harry said, and pulled him in to shore so that he could stand on his own two feet. “But I’ve been afraid. Of Voldemort, of dragons, of dying before I could—“
“But those are all things that you should be afraid of.” Draco sounded more than bitter as he sat down on the curve of the lakeshore, just before it vanished into the water. Harry studied his face in the light of their shining wands, and made out an ugly flush there. “Not water. That’s just—my father—“ And he turned his head away.
“Your father would be ashamed of you?” Harry asked softly.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” Draco said, and moved his arm roughly across his eyes, as if not looking at Harry would take back the embarrassing words.
“I think it needed to be said.” Harry sat down beside him and took his free hand, ignoring Draco’s attempt to pull away. Perhaps it was strange, that he sit here like this when they were both almost naked, and that his greatest concern was comforting a wizard he would have turned away from two days ago. But things could change. And if Harry wanted to live in the kind of world he had thought he was living in after the war, then they needed to happen this way instead. What had the old way brought them but hatred and fear and death? “And I don’t think he would care, not—look, Draco, I saw his face during the Battle of Hogwarts, all right? He only cared about you. He was asking Voldemort about you. It wasn’t his glory or his power or his Malfoy pride he wanted then.”
“You’re making that up,” Draco whispered, the words so quiet with disbelief that Harry winced. Why did he have to be the one who had seen Lucius Malfoy like that, and not Draco? He was forever receiving gifts that should have gone to other people, he thought, attention and adulation not the least of them, but there had never been something quite this personal before.
“I’m not,” Harry said quietly. “Your mother asked me about you before she lied to Voldemort to save my life, too. They love you, Draco.” He paused, then added, to move them past the moment, “And I think they’d want you to keep on with the swimming lessons.”
Draco sighed, but managed to turn it into a sneer by the time he lowered his arm and faced Harry. “So says the man who likes the look of me naked.”
Harry blinked, well aware that either “Yes” or “I do not!” would be the wrong response.
“Well?” Draco had risen to his feet and glanced down at his chest, as if the Sectumsempra scars were reasons to be proud. “Don’t you? Say that you only want me in the lake so you can flirt with me.”
“Maybe when you eat some more,” Harry said, shaking his head as he stood. Draco was teasing, and he was glad to see it. He didn’t think he was ready to explore, quite yet, that he’d reassured Draco Malfoy about his parents loving him, as if they were best friends. “Or put on some color. Honestly, Malfoy, you’d think your ribs had never seen the sun.”
“Malfoys are naturally pale,” Draco said, managing to look down at his nose at Harry even as he reached for his robes. “And naturally handsome, I’ll have you know.”
“Call it ‘beautiful,’ and you’d have it closer,” Harry muttered.
“Your flirting so far has been pitiful, Potter, but make efforts like that, and you may well improve.”
Harry rolled his eyes and whipped his wand over his body, drying his skin, before he pulled his robes on. Much as he preferred towels, he would simply arouse too much interest if he used the showers in Gryffindor Tower now. “I think we have the strangest friendship ever, Malfoy.”
“You’ve never flirted with the Weasel?” Draco hummed. “I suppose that you do have some standards. That is reassuring. You may continue to pay court to me.”
Harry acted before he thought about it. He scooped up a handful of lake water in his palm and threw it at Draco.
Then he winced, wondering if he ought to have done that, if Draco would react badly to suddenly being soaked again, if it would remind him of the attack—
When he caught an enormous blast of water in the face a moment later, he supposed the answers to his questions was no.
He didn’t get back to Gryffindor Tower that night without his hair hanging in dripping wet strands down his back. He couldn’t mind that much, not when the “fight” had also increased the size of his grin.
*
Harry had hardly entered the Great Hall the next morning when Zacharias Smith caught up with him and hissed into his ear, “What are you doing?”
“Currently? Saying good morning to my friend.” Draco had crossed behind him—they’d planned it that way—and towards the Slytherin table. Harry nodded to him, and received a nod in return, with a faint smile that he knew remembered the water fight in the lake but which he suspected would be absolutely impossible to interpret for anyone who hadn’t shared that experience. He smiled, too, then, and turned to face Smith. “Was there something you wanted?”
“You know what he did!” Smith’s face had turned red, but he appeared reluctant to actually point at Malfoy.
“Rather better than you, I imagine.”
Harry disliked pulling “rank” as a war hero on someone else, but Smith deserved it for being a fucking wanker. And it worked. He’d turned pale, and even though he had a resentful look in his eyes, he couldn’t quite keep himself from glancing at the floor.
“It’s your right to associate with Slytherins if you want to,” he muttered.
“So glad you recognized that.” Harry leaned forwards. He felt slightly sorry for Smith, but on the other hand, anyone who approached him right now would be made an example of. It was just Smith’s unlucky day that it happened to be him. “And I reckon you won’t object if I talk to Draco outside of classes, or forgive him for his part in the war, or even continue my friendship beyond Hogwarts? That meets with Your Majesty’s approval?”
Most of the Great Hall was watching them by now. Smith had no graceful way out of this, and from the clenched fists that hung at his side, he knew it.
And then he did a stupid thing. He decided to threaten Draco.
“You know,” he hissed, “even you can’t protect him forever. What happens when he’s walking through the corridors after detention one night and someone ambushes him? Are you going to cry fake tears then?”
Harry had his wand out before he thought. He could hear surprised gasps and Headmistress McGonagall’s snap of, “Mister Potter!”, but he didn’t care. Smith was grinning openly at him, and turning his head as if inviting others to witness his triumph.
The idiot.
“Listen to me, Smith,” said Harry, in a voice that stole the Hufflepuff’s smile and his triumphant stance. “If something happens to Draco, you’ll be the first person I question. And whether or not you had anything to do with it, you’ll be the first person I take revenge on, too.”
“That’s—you’re threatening me?” Smith blinked, as if the school could tolerate threats to Slytherins with impunity but anyone else was beyond the pale.
“Of course.” Harry leaned closer. “You might ask yourself exactly what happened to the Death Eaters Voldemort sent to trail me during the war.”
A bluff, of course, since he’d so rarely run into them. But Smith shivered, and Harry gave him a disgusted glance, put his wand back in his sleeve, and turned away.
McGonagall bore down on him and assigned him a detention with her—his second since he’d come back to school. Harry barely heard. He was watching the other students instead, the fascinated and horrified and grief-stricken faces as they took in where he stood—
And the small smile on Draco’s face.
Still small, Harry noted absently as he accepted the Headmistress’s punishment, but not the same smile that had recalled the lake. This one promised something different.
Too bad Harry had no idea what it was.
Part 3.
*
Harry began it the next day. They were both still in Potions—though, to Slughorn’s disappointment, Harry had lost his miraculous talent—but Harry usually sat with Hermione and Draco alone in the front of the room. This time, Harry nodded and smiled to Hermione but walked past her to sit down next to Draco and pull out his cauldron and tools as if this were something he did every day.
“Hello, Draco,” he said.
“Harry,” Draco with, with a slight inclination of his head but no pause in the smooth motions of his hands as he plucked out his knife and scales and lined them up neatly next to his own cauldron.
Harry could feel Hermione’s stare drilling into the back of his head. More significant, though, was the silence of the Ravenclaws in the class. Harry missed the muffled whispering now that he was listening for it. He smiled grimly. That was one of the things he had noticed yesterday and which had distressed him—how eagerly the Ravenclaws watched the “war heroes,” like Ron and Harry, and copied their actions towards the Slytherins.
Harry still didn’t think he and Draco were going to change the behavior of students in the school overnight, but if his “followers” were as dedicated as they pretended to be, they at least couldn’t act anymore as though their paragon was unquestionable.
Slughorn peered at him as though Harry were some strange species of beetle which had just flown into the room and demanded to be sliced into Potions ingredients. “Mr. Potter,” he said, his voice gentle. “Are you sure that you wouldn’t wish to sit in the back of the room?” Hermione sat there in order to have swifter access to the shelves of ingredients.
Harry looked up and smiled the way he’d learned to smile as he was bumped and washed through occasion after occasion. It was a small and cool expression, and it could mean almost anything that someone else wanted it to mean. “No. I’m comfortable here, Professor.”
That started the Ravenclaws whispering again, but in a different manner. Harry shot a sideways look at Draco and found him half-smiling, in a way unlike his more usual sneers and smirks. Draco, of course, caught his eye at once and jerked his head at Slughorn, to encourage Harry to pay attention to his part in the script.
When Harry glanced back at Slughorn, he caught what might have been a glint of appraisal in the Professor’s eyes. That didn’t worry him. Slughorn appraised everyone that way, and he was probably just trying to decide how much his own position as Head of Slytherin House would change if Harry changed his politics.
“Well, if you’re comfortable,” said Slughorn, laying so much emphasis on the last word that even Harry winced at the lack of subtlety, “I certainly wouldn’t try to move you.” And then he nodded and winked and moved away.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Ridiculous,” he said under his breath.
“I told you, Potter,” Draco muttered as he started copying down the instructions for the potion from the board, “the power of the name is very great.”
“If names are so powerful, then call me Harry,” Harry commented, and grimaced. The potion called for chopped slugs. He hated chopping slugs, and he wasn’t so stupid as to think that Draco would chop them instead.
There were stares on the back of his neck all through class. He ignored them—more successfully than he had expected he would. But then again, this wasn’t just a one-day effort. This was something that had to become a normal, workable part of the world after the war. So Harry would have to do this more than once. He might as well cope with stares the same way he did when he went out in public in Diagon Alley, and live with the consequences of his actions.
*
“Because I don’t like the way people treat Slytherins,” Harry answered when Hermione caught up with him after Potions class and demanded to know why he’d sat with Draco. Draco had turned down the corridor towards the Slytherin common room, since he had a free period next, but Harry had nodded to him before he vanished. “Draco thinks it’s likely that people might change their minds if I treat them differently. Maybe it won’t work perfectly, but I’ll try.”
Hermione said, with frown lines etched between her brows, “But I didn’t know that you were upset about the way people were treating Slytherins, Harry.”
“I am now.”
“But you don’t just make up your mind overnight to do something like this,” Hermione argued.
Harry stopped and faced her. “Well, I do,” he said. “And we practically made up our minds overnight to go after—what we needed to go after, didn’t we?” Even now, he and Ron and Hermione didn’t mention the word “Horcruxes” where anyone else could hear. Maybe Ginny would be brought into their confidence after she and Harry started dating properly.
“That was different,” said Hermione. “That was a quest, and it was important.”
“And this is important to me now,” Harry countered, and then turned towards the Astronomy Tower. They weren’t watching stars in the daytime, of course, but Professor Sinistra had assigned them essays on the fixed stars, and Harry hadn’t quite completed his. “Just like your exams, Hermione. I mean, they won’t matter to everyone else in the wizarding world the way you-know-what did, but they matter to you.”
“Harry! The NEWTs influence everything from the careers that we’re fit to pursue to wizarding society’s estimation of our talents—“
Harry grinned to himself. Now that Hermione was on the familiar track of the exams lecture, she would rattle on that way until they arrived at the Astronomy Tower. It quite convinced her to forget about small things like Harry being friendly to Slytherins, or Harry confessing freely to her what was important to him.
That was the way he wanted everyone to act, finally. Politeness to Slytherins, and friendliness with some of them, should be natural. Harry planned to play dumb with anyone who knew him less well than Ron and Hermione did, and portray this as something that he simply wanted to do. If someone argued otherwise, then and only then would he announce that he planned to keep it up for the foreseeable future.
Watch and learn.
*
On it went. Harry and Draco nodded at each other on their way into the Great Hall for lunch. They shared the same table in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and their new instructor—an old, battle-marked witch named Hilda Grayscale—partnered them together at their request. Harry showed Draco the basic defense spells that Dumbledore’s Army had already worked on, and Draco showed him a few hexes just this side of legal. They were talking quietly when Professor Grayscale announced that the class was over, and Harry found himself reluctant to end the conversation. He caught Draco’s sleeve as he was about to turn away, and asked, “Tonight at the lake?”
Only a flicker deep in those gray eyes warned Harry that Draco might have thought about backing out. He nodded, and then picked up his books briskly, as if the speed with which he did it could keep him from having to think about the water.
“Mate, what are you doing?” Ron caught up with him after Defense, and he wore an expression much like Slughorn’s—though since Ron wasn’t a Potions professor, Harry thought of it less in terms of looking at him like a beetle wanting to be sliced up and more as the way Ron would look if Harry lost a game of Quidditch.
“Being friendly to Draco,” said Harry. “I thought that was obvious.”
“I already tried to talk to him, Ron,” Hermione said, coming up on the other side of Harry and rolling her eyes. “He will be impossible about it.”
“I just want to know why,” Ron muttered. “I can see what for myself, thanks.”
Harry refrained from pointing out that Ron should have asked his question differently, then, though he knew it was what Draco would have done. Antagonizing his friends with sarcasm wasn’t the best way to get them to pay attention to the pranks on Slytherins. “Because the school’s practically in danger of collapsing from within with hatred of the Slytherins,” he said. “And I never noticed it before. And M—Draco agreed to participate in a friendship with me. If we can be civil, when we have reason to hate each other, maybe those people who were regular students in the war and after can figure out how to behave.”
“But no one’s doing anything serious,” Ron argued. “It’s just pranks. And I think it’s natural, since none of them would fight with us. It’ll pass.”
“It’s not just pranks,” Harry said. “I stopped at least one murder attempt.” He ignored Hermione’s gasp and went on. “And I don’t think the members of the House should be blamed for the actions of one individual. Unless you want to start saying that it’s the fault of the Gryffindors twenty years ago for not preventing Peter Pettigrew from betraying my parents.”
“Who tried to kill someone?” Hermione whispered. “Harry, this is serious. You have to tell Professor McGonagall!”
“I doubt this person would trust her, since she used to be Head of Gryffindor,” Harry said. They were the same arguments he had used on himself when he was wondering if he should ignore Draco’s desires and simply go to the Headmistress. “Besides, I didn’t see their faces. The person who was attacked says they were Gryffindors, but they might not be. Until I have some proof—unless I get it—I’m not going to tear apart the Houses looking and only turn everyone against the Slytherins further. This way is better.”
“I don’t see why you should have to save Malfoy,” Ron muttered. “You already saved everyone once. Isn’t that enough?”
“I don’t think so,” Harry said, and shook his head when Ron opened his mouth again. “If it’s about trying to persuade me out of this, it won’t work.”
Despite the warning, Ron kept asking him throughout dinner if he wouldn’t at least reconsider having his “Slytherin friend” be someone less dangerous, like Nott or Zabini. Harry ignored Ron’s questions, though he responded to everything else Ron said, and nodded to Draco again as he was leaving. This time, he saw several speculative Slytherin gazes, especially those of the younger students, following him when Draco nodded back.
It couldn’t hurt, Harry thought. He didn’t know how much the Slytherins might have fought back against the pranks directed at them, but if they could feel a little more secure at the same time, then the tensions might ease still further.
*
“Come on, Draco,” Harry said, as kindly as he could, considering he had already stripped down to his pants and Draco was still leaning against a tree and regarding the lake with profound distaste.
“I said I would let you teach me to swim,” Draco said, and his gaze traveled very slowly to Harry’s face. Every line of his body said he had better things to do, and only remained here to indulge Harry. “I never said it would be tonight.”
Harry opened his mouth to argue, and then shut it again. He would gain nothing from pushing Draco. Besides, this would probably affect their ability to act civilly towards each other tomorrow.
And perhaps a demonstration was more in order.
“Suit yourself,” he said, with a small shrug, and then turned and stepped into the lake.
“What?” Draco asked, apparently stunned by the lack of resistance. Harry smiled to himself. A good reason to do it more often.
“I said, suit yourself,” Harry said over his shoulder, and then waded deep enough that the water was up to his chest. It was cold, but the Warming Charm he had cast before he took off his clothes stood him in good stead. He was not a complete fool, no matter what Hermione thought, and this wasn’t a winter pool where he had to dive without any protection at all in order to receive a sword that a mad Headmaster—two mad Headmasters—had decided could not be retrieved any other way.
It was pleasant in the lake, despite the slimy things that sometimes pushed past his legs. The water supported his weight, and Harry was able to lie back and float, hair drifting around him, eyes fixed on the clouds obscuring the moon. They darted away again. Harry thought he heard a howl in the woods, but he ignored it. The moon was two nights past the full, so they didn’t have to worry about werewolves.
His eyes half-shut, and he yawned.
“Potter!” Draco’s voice was very nearly shrill.
“It’s Harry to you,” Harry muttered, and shut his eyes. “And what is it? Is the Giant Squid making for me?”
“You can’t fall asleep while you’re swimming.” Draco sounded scandalized. Harry found he didn’t even have to open his eyes to picture him; he would be leaning on the tree but straining forwards as if against invisible bonds, aghast at Harry’s stupidity. “People die that way.”
“This is not a bathtub, and I am not three years old.” Harry pushed himself back to the surface and shook his head, scattering trails of wetness down his face as he trod water. “Neither are you, for that matter. If you want to get in, I promise I’ll hold you all the time. It won’t hurt you.”
He paused, because Draco was looking at him with a very odd expression. Perhaps the Giant Squid had come up behind him after all. Harry waved a hand cautiously behind his back, but found only a curious fish which darted away after an exploratory nibble confirmed he wasn’t food.
“What’s the matter?” Harry asked, wondering if fear could send Draco into hypnotic trances.
Draco looked away from him then, and coughed theatrically. “Nothing,” he said. “Why on earth should anything be the matter?” But his voice shook slightly, and Harry wondered. “I—you promise that you won’t let me go?”
Well, this is a change of pace. But since it might actually let him repay the debt Harry still felt he owed—for not stopping and identifying the students, for not preventing the prank in the first place, for not noticing anything until Draco pointed it out—he wouldn’t complain. “I won’t,” he said. “My word as a Gryffindor, or as the hero of the wizarding world, if you trust that more.”
“There are no heroes,” Draco muttered, but he had started stripping. Harry was startled to realize his skin was so pale it actually shone the way the reflection of the full moon had two nights ago. It certainly wasn’t flawless—the lines of Harry’s own Sectumsempra twisted across his chest, and there was a large round scar on his back that might almost have come from werewolf teeth—but it was human, and mostly healthy, and Harry found himself studying it with more interest than was warranted.
He shrugged and looked away, breaking the spell for himself.
When Draco was stripped down to his pants, like him, Harry waded to the shore again and waited while Draco arranged himself, slowly and fussily, against his chest. Harry ducked his head so that his chin rested in Draco’s hair as he dragged him carefully back out, happy for no reason. It was an exact reversal of the position they’d been in when he saved Draco’s life.
In everything, even emotion.
“You can trust the water to hold you up,” Harry murmured, noticing that Draco had tensed the moment they moved too far for him to feel grass or sand beneath his toes. “You really can. Tilt your head back, spread your arms around you, and distribute your weight evenly. Close your eyes if you want,” he added, and Draco snarled at him.
“I’m not suicidal, Potter.”
“Harry,” he said, and he had never heard his own voice so gentle. Of course, he had never found himself mostly naked in the Hogwarts lake with Draco Malfoy before, either. It made a difference, somehow.
I’ve never done it before. Maybe that’s all it is.
“Spread your arms,” he whispered, and Draco did. “Lift your feet.” And Draco did. “Lean back against my chest now. I’ll support your head, but let the water take the rest of you.”
Several harsh breaths puffed against his ear. Harry repeated his instructions two more times, not varying his pitch or his words, letting the very act of repetition, as well as the fact that he hadn’t drowned yet, soothe Draco.
And then Draco actually did it, drifting, with his head and shoulders and the upper part of his torso resting against Harry as he paddled backwards, but nothing else.
“Excellent,” Harry whispered, a deep glow of happiness in his heart. He was reminded of times when the entirety of Dumbledore’s Army succeeded in some simple spell, but this was enhanced by Draco’s status as his rival, and their surroundings, and the one-on-one instruction, and—everything, really. “Now, why don’t I let you go, and you can float flat on your back—“
“No!”
Harry recognized active, instinctive fear in that tone, having felt it himself when he saw the basilisk coming for him. He curled himself around Draco at once, taking more of his weight, stilling his arms before they could begin a panicked thrashing. “Shhh, it’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s all right, I’ve got you, we won’t do it yet, we can wait, there’s no shame in this…”
“Easy for you to say,” Draco muttered, but he had stopped moving as if he thought sharks were going to tear his legs off. He drifted against Harry for a moment, then shook his head. Wet hair brushed Harry’s collarbone, and he had to stifle a startled chuckle. Draco probably wouldn’t take any laughter well right now, or give Harry a chance to explain that he was just ticklish. “You’ve never been afraid of something like this.”
“Not like this,” Harry said, and pulled him in to shore so that he could stand on his own two feet. “But I’ve been afraid. Of Voldemort, of dragons, of dying before I could—“
“But those are all things that you should be afraid of.” Draco sounded more than bitter as he sat down on the curve of the lakeshore, just before it vanished into the water. Harry studied his face in the light of their shining wands, and made out an ugly flush there. “Not water. That’s just—my father—“ And he turned his head away.
“Your father would be ashamed of you?” Harry asked softly.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” Draco said, and moved his arm roughly across his eyes, as if not looking at Harry would take back the embarrassing words.
“I think it needed to be said.” Harry sat down beside him and took his free hand, ignoring Draco’s attempt to pull away. Perhaps it was strange, that he sit here like this when they were both almost naked, and that his greatest concern was comforting a wizard he would have turned away from two days ago. But things could change. And if Harry wanted to live in the kind of world he had thought he was living in after the war, then they needed to happen this way instead. What had the old way brought them but hatred and fear and death? “And I don’t think he would care, not—look, Draco, I saw his face during the Battle of Hogwarts, all right? He only cared about you. He was asking Voldemort about you. It wasn’t his glory or his power or his Malfoy pride he wanted then.”
“You’re making that up,” Draco whispered, the words so quiet with disbelief that Harry winced. Why did he have to be the one who had seen Lucius Malfoy like that, and not Draco? He was forever receiving gifts that should have gone to other people, he thought, attention and adulation not the least of them, but there had never been something quite this personal before.
“I’m not,” Harry said quietly. “Your mother asked me about you before she lied to Voldemort to save my life, too. They love you, Draco.” He paused, then added, to move them past the moment, “And I think they’d want you to keep on with the swimming lessons.”
Draco sighed, but managed to turn it into a sneer by the time he lowered his arm and faced Harry. “So says the man who likes the look of me naked.”
Harry blinked, well aware that either “Yes” or “I do not!” would be the wrong response.
“Well?” Draco had risen to his feet and glanced down at his chest, as if the Sectumsempra scars were reasons to be proud. “Don’t you? Say that you only want me in the lake so you can flirt with me.”
“Maybe when you eat some more,” Harry said, shaking his head as he stood. Draco was teasing, and he was glad to see it. He didn’t think he was ready to explore, quite yet, that he’d reassured Draco Malfoy about his parents loving him, as if they were best friends. “Or put on some color. Honestly, Malfoy, you’d think your ribs had never seen the sun.”
“Malfoys are naturally pale,” Draco said, managing to look down at his nose at Harry even as he reached for his robes. “And naturally handsome, I’ll have you know.”
“Call it ‘beautiful,’ and you’d have it closer,” Harry muttered.
“Your flirting so far has been pitiful, Potter, but make efforts like that, and you may well improve.”
Harry rolled his eyes and whipped his wand over his body, drying his skin, before he pulled his robes on. Much as he preferred towels, he would simply arouse too much interest if he used the showers in Gryffindor Tower now. “I think we have the strangest friendship ever, Malfoy.”
“You’ve never flirted with the Weasel?” Draco hummed. “I suppose that you do have some standards. That is reassuring. You may continue to pay court to me.”
Harry acted before he thought about it. He scooped up a handful of lake water in his palm and threw it at Draco.
Then he winced, wondering if he ought to have done that, if Draco would react badly to suddenly being soaked again, if it would remind him of the attack—
When he caught an enormous blast of water in the face a moment later, he supposed the answers to his questions was no.
He didn’t get back to Gryffindor Tower that night without his hair hanging in dripping wet strands down his back. He couldn’t mind that much, not when the “fight” had also increased the size of his grin.
*
Harry had hardly entered the Great Hall the next morning when Zacharias Smith caught up with him and hissed into his ear, “What are you doing?”
“Currently? Saying good morning to my friend.” Draco had crossed behind him—they’d planned it that way—and towards the Slytherin table. Harry nodded to him, and received a nod in return, with a faint smile that he knew remembered the water fight in the lake but which he suspected would be absolutely impossible to interpret for anyone who hadn’t shared that experience. He smiled, too, then, and turned to face Smith. “Was there something you wanted?”
“You know what he did!” Smith’s face had turned red, but he appeared reluctant to actually point at Malfoy.
“Rather better than you, I imagine.”
Harry disliked pulling “rank” as a war hero on someone else, but Smith deserved it for being a fucking wanker. And it worked. He’d turned pale, and even though he had a resentful look in his eyes, he couldn’t quite keep himself from glancing at the floor.
“It’s your right to associate with Slytherins if you want to,” he muttered.
“So glad you recognized that.” Harry leaned forwards. He felt slightly sorry for Smith, but on the other hand, anyone who approached him right now would be made an example of. It was just Smith’s unlucky day that it happened to be him. “And I reckon you won’t object if I talk to Draco outside of classes, or forgive him for his part in the war, or even continue my friendship beyond Hogwarts? That meets with Your Majesty’s approval?”
Most of the Great Hall was watching them by now. Smith had no graceful way out of this, and from the clenched fists that hung at his side, he knew it.
And then he did a stupid thing. He decided to threaten Draco.
“You know,” he hissed, “even you can’t protect him forever. What happens when he’s walking through the corridors after detention one night and someone ambushes him? Are you going to cry fake tears then?”
Harry had his wand out before he thought. He could hear surprised gasps and Headmistress McGonagall’s snap of, “Mister Potter!”, but he didn’t care. Smith was grinning openly at him, and turning his head as if inviting others to witness his triumph.
The idiot.
“Listen to me, Smith,” said Harry, in a voice that stole the Hufflepuff’s smile and his triumphant stance. “If something happens to Draco, you’ll be the first person I question. And whether or not you had anything to do with it, you’ll be the first person I take revenge on, too.”
“That’s—you’re threatening me?” Smith blinked, as if the school could tolerate threats to Slytherins with impunity but anyone else was beyond the pale.
“Of course.” Harry leaned closer. “You might ask yourself exactly what happened to the Death Eaters Voldemort sent to trail me during the war.”
A bluff, of course, since he’d so rarely run into them. But Smith shivered, and Harry gave him a disgusted glance, put his wand back in his sleeve, and turned away.
McGonagall bore down on him and assigned him a detention with her—his second since he’d come back to school. Harry barely heard. He was watching the other students instead, the fascinated and horrified and grief-stricken faces as they took in where he stood—
And the small smile on Draco’s face.
Still small, Harry noted absently as he accepted the Headmistress’s punishment, but not the same smile that had recalled the lake. This one promised something different.
Too bad Harry had no idea what it was.
Part 3.
