“He says, like he’s not part of the problem.” Draco smirks. “You might be stupider and more infuriating than the whole rest of the world combined, actually. Some days I honestly wonder.”
It’s pretty hard to take Draco’s insults to heart anymore on their worst days; against the backdrop of the glen, Harry can’t even muster up a decent scowl. “My sincerest apologies for any trouble,” he says, and even though he means it to sound sarcastic, it comes out…real. Genuine, horrifyingly enough. He makes a face into the darkness.
“Oh,” Draco says, strangled, “would you just—come on already, stop lollygagging and —and speaking, Potter. God!”
He picks up his pace, drawing the flask from his pocket to take a swig, and Harry follows more sedately a few steps behind, pulling in long, deep inhalations of the cool night air. He’s definitely been drinking, but he thinks he’d probably feel this way even without the Firewhiskey singing through his veins—like he’s somehow both drunk and sober, balanced on the knife-edge between them. It’s a heady sensation, in its way, different than anything Harry’s experienced before. It reminds him a little of flying.
Draco comes to a stop in the center of a bridge, one that Harry can tell must have been pulled up out of the ground, crafted and shaped, by magic. It’s just one huge slab of rock and earth, and Harry leans over the edge to get a better look at it, the faintly glowing moss and lichen crawling up the side. When he pushes a little too far over—not so far that he’s in danger of falling, but far enough that he might be shortly—he hears Draco sigh, feels him take a fistful of Harry’s jacket.
“Are you going to vomit?” Draco’s inquiry seems more wicked than concerned. “Blaise warned me about that, you know. He said you left a spectacular mess in a bush that night he ran into you last month, and that you didn’t even have the decency to Banish it, just left it there for someone else to deal with. For shame,” he adds, sounding pleased with himself. “Terribly irresponsible of you.”
Harry rocks slowly back off the edge of the bridge, his back hitting against the solid weight of Draco’s hand. It’s steadying, and he needs steadying—Draco’s comment reminded Harry of the last Gryffindor piss-up, which reminds him that they just left the Gryffindor piss-up, for all they did it to go somewhere that’s for all intents and purposes at several hundred years’ remove. It crashes back into him, Ron and Hermione’s announcement and how it’s wonderful, completely amazing, except for how it means that he’s going to lose them, watch them drift away, walk the rest of his life alone—
“All right, Potter,” Draco says, and there’s nothing wicked in his tone now—it’s firm, insistent. “Out with it.”
“Out with what?” Harry’s aware that it’s not a particularly skillful dodge; he just doesn’t care that much.
“With whatever’s got you all,” Draco gestures broadly at Harry, makes a face, “this way. You know, looking like perhaps you’re about to crawl under the bridge and cry?”
“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry snaps, “I am not.”
“I’m not saying you are, I’m saying that’s what you look like,” Draco says. “I could say you looked like the myopic offspring of a Kelpie and a Grindylow, and that wouldn’t mean you were one, just that you looked like it. Do you understand the concept I’m laying out for you here?” When Harry doesn’t say anything, just sticks his hands in his pockets and looks down at the water, Draco huffs out an irritated breath. “Do I have to ply you with additional Firewhiskey? Is that really what it’s come to?”
Harry doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no, either, and Draco proffers the flask with an annoyed little flourish. Harry takes it, amazed to find it still feels full. “How have we not killed this thing yet?
“Hmm? Oh, it’s from my wet bar,” Draco says. He gives Harry a wary look as Harry takes a sip, like he’s afraid maybe Harry will throw him over the edge for daring not to be as miserable as he is, or something. “It’s refilling itself from one of the bottles I keep in there. The twelve year, I believe, but don’t quote me.”
“It’s good,” Harry says. He hadn’t really noticed it at the bar, because in the bar it had tasted more or less like every other glass of cheap, basic Firewhiskey he’s consumed at the Bowtruckle over the years. Out here, though, over the rush of the water and under the riot of birdcry, Harry can appreciate the richness and spice to the flavor, the subtle difference in the way it burns down his throat.
“Yes,” Draco says, “it is. Now talk.”
There really doesn’t seem to be any way around it, but: “It’s stupid,” Harry says.
“Oh, Potter.” Draco’s voice is very nearly kind. “So is nearly everything you say. I’d hardly expect otherwise.”
It makes Harry feel a bit better, weirdly enough. More capable of doing it. He takes a deep breath, hoping that Draco won’t actually make him spit it all out this minute, will take the hint and give him a chance to gather himself. Draco must, because he says nothing for once in his life, and Harry turns away from him to lean forward again against the wall of the bridge—not as far as before, just enough to balance his weight. He knows he can’t look at Draco while they do this. He knows that, if he does, he won’t even be able to bring himself to try.
Draco must know it too, because after a moment he leans on the bridge the other way, his back against the rough stone. “If you’re going to make me stand around waiting,” he says, “you could at least pass the Firewhiskey.”
Harry takes another long drink, and then he passes the flask to Draco without looking round.
“Ron and Hermione,” Harry says finally. His voice is gravelly with the effort it takes to push the words out. “They’re having another kid.”
“I heard,” Draco says. It’s non-committal and brief, two things Draco rarely is, and Harry could just kill him for not being his usual babbling fountain of verbiage here, in this moment, when Harry needs it. “So?”
Harry stares out at the water, trying to find the words. For all the time he and Draco have spent together in the last month, for all the absurd, impossible, insane conversations they’ve had, somehow they never quite seem to get around to talking about the real stuff. Harry doesn’t mind or anything—he dodges these sorts of conversations when he can, in general, and usually pretty successfully—but it’s strange, now, to realize just how much he’s going to have to say to make Draco understand. To realize just how much he’s managed, until now, to avoid telling him.
“They were my first friends,” Harry says, finally, and sounds eleven fucking years old. He wrenches away from that thought the minute he has it, a full body shudder, and tries to forget what he sounds like; tries to just talk. “And they’re not—I mean, anymore, they’re not. My only friends. I have.” He swallows. “Lots of people. These days. Only it’s not…it's not the same, with Ron and Hermione. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s true. They were—when things were really bad, you know, just as bad as they could get, they were right there, the whole time. And it’s not just that,” he adds, too loud, a sudden spike of fury in his chest at the thought that Draco could think he means this is—about that, about what they did during the war. “God, it’s—I never really had anybody, and then I had them and with them it was like—like it was the three of us, no matter what, forever. Like it would always just…come down to that, in the end.”
Quietly, Draco says, “They’re your family.”
“Oh, they’re their own family,” Harry spits, and grimaces, hating himself. He scrubs his palms over his face. “God, that’s horrible. I’m sorry. I just—and see, this is exactly the problem—we were kids, you know, back then. We were kids! And it all seemed like it just fit, like it would just fit forever, and there was always a goal, anyway. Some, whatever, evil to vanquish, or even just classes, just homework. It all…made sense. Or, it didn’t, none of it did, but there were constants and we were working together, for the same stuff, and I guess I just thought that’s how it would always be. I guess I thought that feeling of just—knowing what ground I was standing on, you know? I guess I thought that came from them.”
He throws a hand out without looking back, because he can’t look at Draco, but his throat is closing up; because if he doesn’t get a little more Firewhiskey into him he thinks maybe he’ll die before he gets this out. Draco puts the flask in his hand and says nothing at all, and Harry’s not sure if he’s grateful for that or not. He takes a swig and passes it back, stares down at the ebb and flow of the water.
“Nobody told me,” Harry says, his voice a low rasp, “that it would—get hard like this. That we’d grow up and there’d be all this…other stuff, this stupid emotional shit, this stupid —adulthood shit, and I know I’m not good at it! Not any of it, Malfoy, I hate my job, I hate my apartment, I don’t know how to do any of the—the big important things. The—other people stuff! And they know, and they can tell, and they act like it doesn’t matter but I know that it does. It matters to me! And it has to matter to them, anyway, if it doesn’t already it should, they’re happy normal people with a happy normal family and I’m…well, I’m whatever the hell I am. God,” he says, the words pouring out of him now, almost against his will, “d’you know, at dinner last week Hermione was showing us this chart about fucking—I don’t know, Muggle infant care or something, talking about how Rose was 18 months already and soon she’ll be a toddler and what a big deal that was. She wanted us to give her our suggestions on how we could, what was it, ‘foster a safe but not overly permissive environment,’ because if we didn’t she’d never grow up to be a healthy, well-adjusted adult! And I didn't, god, I didn't say anything. I just sat there, because the only thing I could think of to say was that I’d spent most of my childhood locked in a cupboard!”
Harry stops, breathing hard; it’s more than he meant to say. It’s too much—it’s so much Harry thinks he might vomit after all, prove Zabini’s dire predictions right. Honestly, that might be better than standing here, the weight of what’s just been drawn out of him sitting so heavy on his shoulders that he thinks he might collapse underneath the load. It might even feel good, just because it would be something else to focus on.
Then, into the ringing silence between them, Draco says, “Well, that’s not at all safe, but I’ll grant you that it isn’t overly permissive.”
Harry huffs out a little noise of surprise—it’s nothing like a laugh, but it’s as close as he imagines he could get right now. After a moment, Draco says, tone very even: “I suppose there’s no chance that was a metaphor?”
“No,” Harry mutters, looking at his hands.
“So the Muggles who raised you,” Draco says carefully, “were…”
“Very incredibly crap, yes,” Harry bites out, and waits for the rest of it. Waits for Draco to look at him with pity, the way Hermione does whenever Harry slips and brings up his youth, or say something well meant but awkward, trying-too-hard, the way Ron always seems to. They’re the only two examples Harry has to go on; he’s never really told anyone else, though he’s suspected, more than once, that Molly and Arthur know.
Draco says: “Quite.” And then, after a beat: “So, is that all of it?”
Harry turns to look at him, a full-body, involuntary action. He can’t let himself believe it without seeing it, but—there’s Draco, leaning back against bridge, elbows bent to prop himself up against the stone, looking for all the world as though they’re having a conversation about Quidditch or the weather, except for the very slightest hint of anxiety in the set of his mouth. He looks Harry right in the eye, slowly raises one eyebrow, and Harry is so hideously, pathetically grateful that he has to look away. That he can’t bear it, the relief of it, for a single second longer.
“All of what, Malfoy?” he says.
“Oh, you know,” Draco says. He turns, now, so he’s leaning on the bridge in the same direction as Harry, but he doesn’t make Harry look at him. “The big wad of emotional compost you’ve had lodged in your chest all night. That’s one thing I’ve figured out about this ‘stupid adulthood shit,’ as you so eloquently put it—at some point, gauche though it is, you do have to talk about things, or they just end up rotting inside of you.”
“I don’t really think of you as someone who does a lot of emotional sharing,” says Harry, who once saw Draco actually stand up and walk out of a restaurant rather than answer Harry’s perfectly innocuous question about why it mattered which fork he used.
“Yes, well, mostly I come out here and talk to myself,” Draco says, tone wry. “You know, sort of a ‘We’ll do this where no one can hear you scream’ kind of thing. It’s all very healthy.” Harry laughs; he can’t help himself. Draco knocks their shoulders together with a little noise of what Harry is almost certain is mock outrage. “Don’t laugh! It’s better than your strategy —how long has that been building up, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” Harry admits. Then, a little more honestly: “Probably a while.”
“‘Probably a while,’” Draco repeats, mocking, and sighs, drops the tone. “I ask again, Potter: is that all of it? Now’s the time, if it’s not.”
“No,” Harry says, itchy all over at the very thought of saying anything further. “I think I’m done.”
He’s surprised to find that Draco might be right; he does feel better for having talked about it, a little. He also feels unbearably exposed, and a bit like he wants to throw himself off the bridge and let the cool rush of the water carry him away, but—better, a little.
Of course, then he actually thinks about what he’s said and immediately feels much worse. “God, Malfoy, I just realized—I’m sure you think I’m—Jesus, I’m really happy for them, I am, I shouldn’t have said all that stuff—”
“For god’s sake, Potter, do shut up,” Malfoy drawls. “I certainly don’t care that you’re not pure as the driven snow inside your own head all the time. In fact, I already knew you weren’t, and I for one am glad of it. I’m sure some people think it’s thrilling, but I find the St. Potter facade very tiresome.”
“It’s not a facade,” Harry says, even though he thinks he knows what Malfoy means, and he finds it tiresome too, sometimes, always trying to keep things on an even keel.
“Yes,” Draco says, his tone thoughtful, “in fact in your heart of hearts you’re a very naturally pleasant person. Placid, even. I think I describe you most often as ‘difficult to rouse.’”
He only lasts a second before he starts to snicker, and Harry, to his own surprise, snickers too, shaking his head. It’s so strange, how Draco can see these things about him that Harry works so hard to play down, tuck away; stranger still how he doesn’t seem to mind. Some days Harry thinks Draco might even like him better for all the ways he’s not the man he probably should be, as though Harry’s unkindnesses and rages and shortcomings make him a more interesting person, and that’s more important than being good or just or right… but that’s impossible.
