It is strange, how geography has so little to do with what we call home. I'm settled back comfortably now, but I keep expecting to turn from Grafton Street down to Seventh Avenue, or thinking to myself that it's Sunday and trying to wander into a room not attached to my house, in order to watch Gray's Anatomy with lalejandra.

One forcible reminder that I'm not in New York anymore? The book prices. I bought the first George R. R. Martin for three dollars, and now it seems that if I want to read the rest (and I do) I must pay eleven euro. Currently I keep trying to walk out of bookshops without paying.

Security Guards: Um, you haven't paid for that.
Maya: No, no I haven't.
Security Guards: So, you're uh, just going to leave with it then?
Maya: Oooh, can I?
Security Guards: ... No.

Other than that, though, homecoming has been very painless. All my ladies have welcomed me back to my lifestyle of debauchery and idleness, and all my gentlemen are just where I left them. That'll happen, if you take the precaution of locking them up before you leave.

I received two anonymous livejournal gifties, so I have written two fic chapters. Actually, I have written three: two chapters of Quality of Mercy, because livejournal told me I had written far far too much, and I will finish the last chapter of Ready Mind once my sister surrenders Half-Blood Prince unto me once more. Sorry for deluging y'all with stories!

Canon pairings, slash and het to follow. This one is for the shining catfluff, currently learning why a bonnie wee lassie should never trust a man in kilts.



Chapter Ten


It had been a chance remark.


Malfoy was stirring the Pensieve and making little faces at it, and Harry was wondering what was taking him so long and trying to make conversation. There was no reason to look at him as if he was an idiot when all he’d asked was how Malfoy had met Pansy Parkinson.


He couldn’t help his mouth falling open when Malfoy looked at him earnestly and said: “When we were three, at our betrothal ceremony.”


“I-” Harry said. “I – What, really?”


“It’s a pureblood tradition,” Malfoy assured him.


“You’re going to get married?”


“Of course,” Malfoy answered. “Well, think about it. Concerned pureblood parents couldn’t send their children off to Hogwarts able to form unsuitable attachments, could they? So we have the betrothal ceremonies.”


Harry stared at him.


“It’s a big event,” Malfoy told him, eyes wide. “The children all wear white and gold robes and we chant the secret rituals. Then, of course, we join hands and perform the dance.”


“The – dance,” Harry said.


“We call it,” Malfoy went on solemnly, “the Dance of Love.”


“Oh, you just think you’re hilarious, don’t you.”


Malfoy’s earnest face broke into a sly grin.


“I have my moments. Anyway, so that was how I met Pansy. We swayed to the sacred steps of the Dance of Love and vowed to have babies named Clytemnestra and Luchina and Potter you’re so gullible. Or I met her on the Hogwarts express, where you met your friends.” Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I just met a better class of people.”


“Go to hell,” Harry said automatically. “How was I supposed to know? You knew Crabbe and Goyle before school started.”


The white ceiling of Malfoy’s – the twins’ room – was illuminated with a sudden reflection of shifting light and liquid. Harry glimpsed a picture of Malfoy aged about six, with a pageboy haircut. The image flickered and then disappeared.


“Not very well,” he said. “Mother doesn’t like children much, but Father sometimes took me to their houses. So of course when we went to school I looked out for them.”


“You looked out for them?” Harry echoed skeptically.


Malfoy looked up from the Pensieve and frowned at him. “Yes,” he snapped. “Why shouldn’t I? It was a new school. They felt strange. What, d’you think I can’t-“


“I just meant,” Harry said. “They were a lot bigger than you.”


“Weasley is bigger than you,” Malfoy pointed out. “Does he guard your tiny helpless little self?”


Harry opened his mouth to say something about bodyguards or thugs, and then remembered Crabbe and Goyle looking forlorn without Malfoy, before Harry left Hogwarts too.


He could also foretell the next few minutes of his life, which would involve Malfoy remarking that while he’d certainly needed bodyguards at Hogwarts…


“No,” Harry said. “Forget it. It was a stupid thing to say.”


“Coming from you, imagine my surprise,” Malfoy muttered. “All right, at this point it doesn’t matter what memory we choose. You just need to get more comfortable with my mind.”


Harry looked at him. He had his arms propped on the rim of the Pensieve, his head bowed over it, and Harry could not see his expression, only a lock of hair that had fallen forward.


“Um,” he said. “Why?”


“Occlumency,” Malfoy said briefly. “Easier to shield from a mind that you know. Easier to get into one you know, as well. It’s like – knowing the layout of a building.”


Harry felt a little pleased that Malfoy thought he was ready for Occlumency: it had all been easy enough to understand so far. He should have known that Snape was just a bad teacher.


“That makes sense.” He paused and said: “I might not get it right the first time.”


“Oh, well, if you don’t-” Malfoy waved a hand dismissively. “I expect I’ll give up and have some tea and scones.” Harry snorted and Malfoy said: “I’ve made my peace with the fact that not everyone can be as gifted as I am. It’s not fair to hold it against you, Potter. I understand that you can’t help it.”


He made a face of enormous and enormously false sympathy. Harry snorted again.


He was actually kind of amazed that he and Malfoy got through Occlumency class as well as they did: he had to admit that Malfoy was doing his best to help.


“I suppose if you’re so curious about when I met Pansy I could show you that,” Malfoy said.


“Might be more interesting than watching you sit around doing a Little Lord Fauntleroy impression.”


Malfoy looked blank. “I don’t know any Fauntleroys,” he said. “Muggles?”


“Er,” Harry said. “Yeah, I suppose.”


Malfoy seemed to accept this without question. He reached for his wand and they both entered the Pensieve: the shimmer of his surroundings and the tug at his belly had become almost familiar to Harry.


He thought of what Malfoy had said about becoming familiar with a particular mind, and thought he might know what Malfoy had meant. It wasn’t anything Harry could put his finger on, exactly. Just that – light fell in a particular way in Malfoy’s memories, in the world he saw. With no other clue but that, he thought he might be able to distinguish Malfoy’s memories from someone else’s.


Other than Harry’s odd thoughts about light, the corridors of the Hogwarts Express seemed the same as ever. The train lurched as the track turned a corner, and a door rattled as tiny Malfoy opened it and swept forward with relatively tiny Crabbe and Goyle in step behind him. Harry recalled them as mountainous, and it was strange to see them as beefy eleven-year-olds, currently both wearing expressions of apprehension.


“I’ve seen girls before,” Crabbe said defensively. “Just not – up close, you know. Dad said that too much feminine influence is bad for a man.”


“They giggle, you know,” Goyle announced in a portentous tone. “They giggle at you all the time.”


Little Malfoy screwed up his pointed face. Harry apologised deeply to his former self for the fact that he sometimes thought little Malfoy was quite funny.


“They might be giggling with you,” he offered.


Goyle frowned. “I don’t giggle.”


Crabbe caught Malfoy’s elbow. “If one of them-“


“A girl,” Malfoy supplied.


“Yeah, one of them. If they talk to us, you’ll talk back to them, won’t you? You always know what to say.”


“Well,” tiny Malfoy said, looking pleased with himself.


Then the door to one of the carriages opened, and Pansy Parkinson walked out. She had butterfly hair clips in her hair, and she was walking with Parvati and Padma Patil. Harry had never noticed that they spoke much in school, but they were all whispering together now.


Crabbe and Goyle gave them looks of naked fear.


Much the same look flickered over Malfoy’s little face, but then he glanced back at Crabbe and Goyle and advanced bravely on the girlish foe.


“Hullo,” he said. “Hogwarts too?”


Padma Patil giggled and Crabbe and Goyle both leaned backwards.


“We are on the Hogwarts Express,” Padma said. She, Parvati and Pansy were all staring down at Malfoy with their arms crossed, making it clear that they were taller than he was.


Malfoy went faintly pink. “Right. Of course. Charmed,” he added.


The groups stared at each other in polite dismay until another brilliant notion occurred to Malfoy.


“My name’s Malfoy!” he announced. “Draco Malfoy.”


Pansy Parkinson tilted her butterfly-clipped head. “I think my mum has tea with your mum sometimes,” she said, her face brightening slightly. “Are you the one – did you have a near miss with a Muggle helicopter on your broom?”


The urge to preen was born and blossomed on Malfoy’s face.


“Well,” he said, buffing his nails against the front of his robes. “Well, yeah, that was me. It wasn’t a big deal. Of course,” he added hastily, “I was almost killed.”


“Oh, really,” Pansy said, uncurling her arms and smiling.


Malfoy caught her smile and reflected it back at her brightly. “I don’t like to brag,” he went on, encouraged: “but if it hadn’t been for my reflexes and quick thinking, it would have meant Muggles seeing me. The government would’ve had to deal with it.”


“But it wasn’t a big deal,” Pansy prompted.


Malfoy actually tossed his head. “Oh, no. That sort of thing happens to me all the time. That’s just the kind of guy I am.” He paused, saw she was still smiling, and was moved to add: “That’s just the way I roll.”


Pansy laughed. Parvati Patil looked at her and tugged at her elbow.


“We have to go,” Padma informed them.


“Nice to meet you, Draco,” Pansy said.


“Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” Malfoy told her, speaking in homeschooled the way little Malfoy often did.


They turned and were almost at the door when Malfoy blurted: “What’s your name?”


Pansy said: “Pansy Parkinson,” and tossed him a little smile over her shoulder. Then they left. As they went, Padma murmured something about a pipsqueak and Pansy said: “Well, I think he’s funny.”


Ordinary-sized Malfoy stopped his besotted gazing at his younger self in order to throw Padma a dirty look.


Little Crabbe and Goyle gave little Malfoy awestruck looks.


“That,” Goyle said earnestly, “was brilliant.”


“She seemed nice,” Crabbe said shyly. “The one who smiled. Maybe she’ll be in Slytherin.”


Goyle paused and went a bit pale. “I expect I won’t be in Slytherin,” he said in a strangled voice. “I’m going to be in Hufflepuff, I can tell. You’ll both be in Slytherin and I’ll be all alone, I just know it-”


“Get a hold on yourself, Goyle,” little Malfoy said imperiously. “You’re talking crazy.”


Harry turned to normal-sized Malfoy, who was leaning against the wall and looking a bit wistfully at little Crabbe and Goyle. He didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t know when he was going to see Ron and Hermione again.


He wanted to say something a bit nice to Malfoy, but was interrupted by the passing of older students through the corridor, and the sound of his own name.


“Harry Potter?” Goyle repeated. “D’you think I could get his autograph?”


Crabbe reached for Malfoy’s elbow. “You’ll talk to him, won’t you?” he said. “Like the girls.”


Tiny Malfoy tossed his head again. “Of course. I expect he’ll be in Slytherin with us, anyway,” he declared. “Father says it’s by far the best house. Father says that we should extend the hand of friendship, too. He’ll need to be shown the ways of the wizarding world.”


“That’s true,” Goyle agreed. “Because he’s been raised, like a lost prince, a world away from his birthright!” The others stared at him, and he explained in an abashed tone: “It said so in Mum’s Witch Weekly. I just happened to glance at it.”


Tiny Malfoy gave him a sceptical look. “Be that as it may,” he said. “Father says he should be glad for a chance to meet the right sort of people.”


“The article – which I just happened to glance at,” Goyle said, “It said he was seen shopping in Diagon Alley. Said he had hair of a raven blackness and eyes like green glass, with a wisdom in them far beyond his years.”


The other two stared at him again. Goyle coughed.


“That’s what it said,” he muttered.


“Right,” Malfoy said, and then bit his lip. “Did it say anything about him wearing specs?”


“No,” Goyle replied stolidly. “Didn’t say anything about specs. Not very heroic, specs.”


“Unless,” Crabbe ventured, “Well, he’s got a scar on his forehead, doesn’t he? Pretty close to the eyes, isn’t that? Maybe he needs glasses cos he got his eyes damaged, you know, battling.”


“He was only a year old,” Crabbe said. “Don’t know that he did much battling. Not actual battling. Don’t see how much actual battling you could do, in nappies.”


“Stands to reason, he had to battle a bit,” Goyle persisted.


“Will you both shut up!” tiny Malfoy snapped. “I’m trying to think! Honestly!”


He was looking very worried by now. Crabbe and Goyle shut up at once, and stayed shut up for a couple of minutes, at which point Crabbe said: “Um – Malfoy? Everything’s all right, isn’t it?”


“Of course!” Malfoy snapped. “C’mon. Let’s go find Harry Potter, then.”


“I’m so nervous,” Goyle whispered to Crabbe. “I won’t be able to say a word. I just know it.”


Tiny Malfoy opened the connecting door with unnecessary vigour, and Harry began to follow after them.


Malfoy grabbed his elbow.


“Let’s go,” he said abruptly. “You know what happens next.”


“Yeah, I’ll just take a look,” Harry said.


“Yeah, I’d rather you didn’t,” Malfoy snapped.


Harry looked at him and saw his face was a bit strained. He wondered what Malfoy’s problem was now.


“What’s your problem now?” he asked, taking the direct approach. “Like you said. I’ve seen it already.”


He pulled away from Malfoy’s restraining hand and went through the door.


“So’ve I,” Malfoy told his retreating back. “Once was enough!”


Malfoy was touchy all the time, but this was going a bit far. Harry suspected that he was overtired.


He went inside and saw his own younger self again, a tiny gawky thing who looked too small for his glasses and his robes and the entire world. He’d never realised when he was that age that he was bird-boned, fragile-looking: no wonder he’d set Mrs Weasley off on a holy quest to feed him.


He also hadn’t realised that when he and Malfoy caught sight of each other, they wore for a moment identical expressions of frozen dismay.


Little Malfoy squared his little shoulders and plunged into the fray. The small gesture made Harry turn to the Malfoy of the present day for some reason he couldn’t explain, and say: “Okay. You’re right, I have seen it. Let’s go.”


Malfoy’s face was set in determined spiteful lines and he stared with apparent interest at the carriage wall above tiny Ron’s head.


“Oh no,” he said. “You wanted to see it. Let’s see it. Wouldn’t want to deprive the Chosen One of a good laugh.”


“What the hell are you talking about, Malfoy,” Harry exclaimed.


While Malfoy was being frustrating and inexplicable, as was his way, tiny Malfoy was making himself known to his audience with a patently false air of grandeur. Little Lord Fauntleroy playing lord of the manor, Harry thought, and wished his younger self was not making such a horrible face.


It was weird to think that Malfoy had once been so young, so obviously affecting confidence, and that he had once been so young that he had believed it.


“Oh, this is Crabbe and Goyle. And my name’s Malfoy,” tiny Malfoy asserted valiantly. “Draco Malfoy.”


He said the name Malfoy, Harry noticed, as if he expected it to be recognised, and to be an automatic password to favour.



Harry noticed that small Ron, whose face was a battleground where freckles had overrun all else, sniggered audibly before Malfoy said his first name.


He had a sinking feeling that he had misinterpreted something about the wizarding world again. At the time, he’d thought that Ron was laughing at what was obviously a funny name. He hadn’t realised that Ron had grown up in a place where people were routinely called Horace Slughorn and Regulus Black.


He hadn’t realised the enmity that had thrown the fathers at each others’ throats in a bookshop had surfaced for a moment between the sons.


Little Malfoy had, though, and his eyes narrowed as he laid down his trump card. “My father says that all the Weasleys have red hair and more children than they can afford.”


“You’re a little bitch when you’re angry,” Harry said lightly.


It did not lighten the mood. Malfoy was still staring straight ahead with his mouth in a thin straight line.


“And all the rest of the time, I forgot to add,” Harry said, and turned his attention back to the action.


The tiny version of himself was looking positively ferocious, while little Malfoy had decided to change to an airy manner. They were so young it hurt Harry to watch them.


“I can help you with that,” Malfoy finished, with a disdainful look at Ron and a grandly outstretched hand.


“I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself,” little Harry said with a tilt to his chin he clearly thought was defiant and which actually made him look like a tiny carthorse straining on the bit. “Thanks.”


The white look of sheer humiliation that passed over tiny Malfoy’s face completely passed little Harry by, as he and small Ron were exchanging congratulatory looks on Harry’s brilliant wit.


The second time around, Harry felt a bit sorry for young Malfoy, who clearly did not have the faintest idea how insufferable he was being.


“Be a bit politer,” Malfoy said, losing his grip on his homeschooled tongue.


Crabbe and Goyle crowded up to Malfoy’s back supportively, and Malfoy glanced back at them, realised visibly that he had an audience and started to grandstand further about stealing Harry’s food.


He was now giving tiny Harry back glare for glare. The situation had been a hair away from a food fight, Harry thought, and was embarrassed for everyone in the carriage and possibly for everyone who had ever been prepubescent.


Then Peter Pettigrew bit Goyle.


Harry had never thought about that since he’d known the truth about Pettigrew. Had Pettigrew been venting some small spite against a fellow Death Eater, he wondered now, by biting his son? What had he been thinking?


A world of adult death and betrayal lay so close to them, but they were all too busy being eleven years old.


Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle fled precipitately. Goyle had tears in his eyes, Harry saw, and winced. He went after them a few steps.


“Well!” little Malfoy exclaimed. “Well! I – I expect that rat was Weasley’s, my father says they live in a hovel, I expect it’s rat-infested-”


“Thought Harry Potter would be less snarly than that,” Crabbe grunted. “Taller, too.”


“Don’t even talk to me about Harry Potter,” tiny Malfoy said with icy resolution. “I don’t intend to talk about him. In fact, I don’t intend ever to even think about him again.”


He was striding, as far as four foot and a half of enraged boy could stride, down a corridor.


“All right,” Crabbe said, hurrying after him. Goyle trailed behind, finger in his mouth.


“I don’t suppose we’ll see much of him, anyway. He didn’t strike me as Slytherin material,” Malfoy went on, clearly under the impression that he was being cutting. “I expect he’ll be in Hufflepuff.”


Goyle removed his finger in order to give a wounded cry. “Don’t make me think of Hufflepuff!”


“Oh for God’s sake,” Malfoy said, still storming along at a good clip. “You’re not – walk much?”


He collided violently with eleven year old Neville Longbottom. Neville blinked at him, up at Crabbe and Goyle, failed entirely to gauge Malfoy’s mood correctly, and said: “Have any of you seen my toad?”


Malfoy, who had instantly disengaged himself, stopped smoothing his robes and crossed his arms over his chest. Crabbe and Goyle fell in behind him as he drew himself up to his full, not terribly impressive height.


“Let me tell you,” he drawled, “exactly what you can do with your toad.”


“Got your kicks for today, Potter?” the current version of Malfoy inquired sharply. “Could we go?”


“Um – if you want,” Harry said.


Malfoy tugged imperatively at his wrist, and the close dark corridor, Malfoy’s small furious young face, the windows overlooking green hills and a view six years old, all melted together and vanished.


Harry found himself again in the twins’ room, looking across the Pensieve into Malfoy’s eyes, which were blazing with rage.


*


“Right,” Malfoy said, pushing violently away from the Pensieve. “I’m sure that reminds you of all sorts of good times you can go laugh about with Weasley, so go enjoy yourself, I need to get some work done-”


“Malfoy, why are you talking so fast?” Harry asked. “What are you upset about now?”


“Upset? I’m not upset about anything,” Malfoy said, staring at Harry with wide eyes for approximately one minute before they became slits of venom again. “I enjoy being humiliated at least once a day. Clever of you to guess. Thank you, really, for seeing to that for me so often.”


“Malfoy, for God’s sake-“ Harry stopped. “You can’t be angry with me over something that happened six years ago. I barely remembered it- ”


“Is that so?” Malfoy snapped. “I remember it quite well.”


Harry remembered suddenly Malfoy saying something about - the train, when they were in fourth year. If Malfoy had been brooding about imagined slights for six years, Harry would – Harry supposed it made sense, given that this was Malfoy.


“Look, I wasn’t the one talking about coming to the same end as my parents if I wasn’t a bit more mannerly to the precious purebloods, all right?”


“All right!” Malfoy yelled. “I certainly came off best in that little conversation! I’m sure you’ve felt burned about that one for years! And I’m not angry!”


“Then why do you keep shouting?” Harry shouted back at him. “And weren’t we supposed to do some Occlumency today?”


“Fine!” Malfoy screamed. “Yes! Whatever you want! After all, what am I doing trapped here if not to serve Harry Potter’s every whim? Go ahead, then, defend yourself! Legilimens!”


“Protego!” Harry shouted at him, and realised as he did so that Malfoy’d had no defences up at all.


Malfoy’s mind hit him and enveloped him like a tsunami, dragging him under.


It was different from the flashes of Snape’s mind, where there had been a distance that Snape had always managed to keep in place, had wanted in place when he was looking at Harry’s memories and managed to preserve even when Harry had broken through to his.


It was like it was Harry, only it wasn’t. Harry didn’t feel things like this.

It was like a storm of emotion rather than a series of snapshots. It was all so different.


A father whose face was like the face of God, which if you were deserving enough might just be turned to you with approval. And Mother who was always distant, and a teacher always at a remove even though he was supposed to be Father’s friend, and friends who believed in him and couldn’t be disillusioned, and an enemy who had somehow worked out your secret unspoken fear, that somehow you weren’t good enough. That there was a fatal flaw in you somewhere that meant you would let everybody down.


And God was taken away, as if one day the sun was blotted out of the sky, and nobody cared. They’d all been in on it, they were laughing about it or indifferent or busy with other people they thought were worthwhile but you were going to show them all.


Being able to block off sheer screaming horror at the sight of a white reptilian face with red eyes, the same way you could block off pain and turn it into rage. Father had said it was an honour, Father had said this man was the only way forward. And you’d been chosen, and everyone would know that you were good for something, that you were good enough, and you’d know it, too.


And then learning, slow and cold, that being chosen meant less than nothing. That all those people you couldn’t let down were in danger. That your enemies had been right all along, that you were weak, that you were never going to be good enough, and hadn’t you always known?


And-


“That’s enough!”


Malfoy’s voice in his ear or in his mind, shrieking like the wind in a storm. And Harry was back in the twins’ room again, and his knees had gone out from under him. He was on the floor, Malfoy kneeling in front of him, hands locked on each others’ arms.


He glanced up and caught Malfoy’s unguarded eyes, which on top of everything else felt like seeing indecently too much.



Malfoy let go first, pushing him back violently and scrambling up and away. He got his back against the wall like an animal who felt threatened.


“So you aren’t endangering my mother just because she’s my mother, or because you hate her for betraying Black,” Malfoy threw at him at last. “You think you have to – and you’re able to do it because you’re a cold bastard when you have to be. That’s nice to know.”


It took Harry a few minutes to register exactly what he was saying.


“I – what, you were in my mind?” he gasped.


“You don’t think it can work both ways?” Malfoy asked. “I slipped past your shield while you were otherwise occupied. Learn some defence, Potter! Don’t let curiosity or anything get the better of you. On your guard before anything else, and don’t let anyone, ever, have access to your mind! That’s private!”


Harry drew his knees up to his chest and stared up at Malfoy.


“Right,” he said slowly.


“Now, if you feel I’ve been tormented sufficiently for one day,” Malfoy said, doing a bad attempt at his usual drawl. “I have some God-damned reading to do!”


He made for the door, the locket around his neck jangling angrily on its chain. Harry let him go.


*


“We’re half-way through all our books!” Hermione told them, glowing. “That’s excellent!”


“I am losing the will to live,” Ron informed her. “That good, too?”


He and Harry exchanged rueful grins. Ron looked a bit too big and vivid for this small dark room, hunched with his red head drooping over a book. Harry recalled for a clear moment exactly what Ron’d looked like when he was eleven, before his face had grown into his freckles.


He’d always been the best mate anyone could ever have. And Harry didn’t regret defending him for a second.


“Don’t complain, Ron,” Hermione said. “I still can’t believe Malfoy’s been the best research assistant.”


Malfoy looked up from his book and beamed. “Thank you, Granger.”


He was so transparently pleased by compliments of any sort that Harry couldn’t quite believe what he knew: the way Malfoy could divert feelings so even he didn’t know he had them. He could be really, really obvious sometimes: it didn’t make sense.


Only he’d seemed obviously and immensely self-confident when Harry was eleven.


Malfoy did not look like he was trying to be an international man of mystery. He was sitting under the brightest lamp in the room, peering at some small print. He was absently clutching at his hair with one hand, fingers loose in it, the lamplight making his rumpled hair look white. He looked too exhausted to care what he looked like.


Over the past few days, Harry’d seen Malfoy be eleven and fourteen and eleven again: now he watched him being seventeen and tried to see it at the same distance, in case that too seemed new.


Lots of kids looked like their bodies had too many elbows: Malfoy had been unfortunate enough to have a face that was all angles crammed into too small a space. He’d mostly grown out of it, though the line of his nose and chin were still too sharply cut to be good-looking. Mrs Weasley’d described him as overbred and he did sort of have the nervy look of the greyhounds Uncle Vernon laid bets on sometimes: his pale face had to either close down or show every emotion clear as day, it was marked by every strain.


Last year was gone, but Malfoy would carry signs of it besides the Dark Mark for as long as he lived. He had a small fan of lines at the edge of each eye that showed only when he was squinting like he was now: he had the heavy-eyed, care-worn look of a graduate student, maybe, going sleepless in his early twenties. He didn’t look seventeen.


He certainly didn’t look eleven. Neither of them were eleven anymore.


“Take a picture, Potter,” Malfoy suggested, looking balefully up from his book. “It won’t punch you in the face.”


Harry returned to his book without comment.


When Ron lifted Hermione by the elbows out of her chair and down to dinner, Malfoy slammed his book shut and moved at once to follow them, without looking at Harry.


Harry said: “Malfoy, wait.”


Malfoy was already half-way to the door, but he stopped. He fixed his eyes on the floor, kept his arms crossed and said with no inflection: “What.”


“We were kids,” Harry said. “And you were being a total little brat. I’m not sorry.”


Malfoy lifted incredulous eyes to Harry’s face and demanded: “Is there something wrong with your brain?”


“No, would you just – give me a minute here, Malfoy, okay? But you know, I can, I can tell you meant well. Sort of. And we’re grown up now, and on the same side – sort of. I think so. So – look, here.”


Harry had been moving towards Malfoy cautiously as he spoke. Now he held his hand out for Malfoy to shake.


Malfoy looked at it as if Harry might produce a biting rat from his sleeve at any moment. He kept his arms crossed over his chest and he stared at Harry until Harry felt very uncomfortable indeed.


“Sorry,” Malfoy said at length. “Are you serious?”


“Um.” Harry could feel his face getting hot. “Yeah.”


“It’s been six years,” Malfoy said. “I tried to get you expelled. You beat me up on the Quidditch pitch. I tried to get you expelled a lot more. You hexed me into jelly. You eviscerated me on a bathroom floor and I tried to kill the headmaster. And now it’s what, well played everyone, shake hands and forget about it?”


“Not exactly,” Harry told him. “I meant, more sort of-“


“I don’t care,” Malfoy said. “I mean – no, I mean I don’t care. You think six years don’t change things for everyone? I didn’t even know you when I offered you my hand. Did it ever occur to you that I really don’t like you? Did you really think I was going to fall all over myself to accept your hand whenever you graciously chose to extend it?”


“No,” Harry answered. “Look, I’m not crazy about you either, Malfoy, in case that hasn’t been blindingly obvious. I meant-“


“I do not care!” Malfoy repeated. “You look. I’ve had plenty of time to decide what kind of people I like, and in the words of a rather well-known person you might’ve heard of, I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself. Thanks.”


He drawled out the last word, dwelling on it with obvious satisfaction. Harry realised that for some stupid reason he still had his hand held out and snatched it back, his cheeks stinging with the rush of blood to them.


Malfoy tipped his head back and laughed.


“I’ve been wanting to say that for six years.”


“Well, I hope it was everything you dreamed of, Malfoy,” Harry growled, busying himself shutting up his books so he wouldn’t have to look at Malfoy’s stupid smug face.


“It was, Potter. It was a beautiful, special moment, and I shall remember it always,” Malfoy assured him, practically purring with satisfaction. “And now I do believe it’s time for tea.”


He left. Even the way he closed the door was obnoxious: the hinges squeaked victoriously at Harry.


Harry threw himself back in his chair in order to fully contemplate all the horror that was bloody Malfoy, and the full stupidity that had been him in softening the slightest bit towards him.


The door opened again five minutes later.


“All right,” Malfoy said. “I’ve had my gloat out. It was good for me: I hope it wasn’t any good for you. Shake hands?”


Just looking at his face suddenly gave Harry a migraine. He was still smiling, looking absurdly pleased with himself, eyes lit up with triumph, and Harry actually wanted to murder him.


“If this is a joke, Malfoy,” he said. “I don’t think you’re funny.”


“It’s not a joke,” Malfoy said. “Oh, come on! You exposed me to irresistible temptation. I had to do it.”


Harry stared at him.


“Get out,” he ordered after a moment. “I don’t want to kill you in the Weasleys’ house, but I might forget that any second.”


“Oh no, come on, really,” Malfoy protested, and extended his hand.


Harry looked at it. “Really, Malfoy. I’m so close to killing you. You have no idea.”


Malfoy dared to actually give a long-suffering sigh, and leaned one elbow against the back of a chair, keeping his other hand outstretched.


“All right,” he said. “I admit it: you hurt my pride. I wanted to hurt yours. There. Happy?”


“It’s been six years, Malfoy!”


“Well, exactly,” Malfoy said, and fixed Harry with an implausibly wide-eyed, earnest gaze. “I can’t take another six years, Potter. I swear. I have plenty to be getting on with as it is. I can’t do it.”


Harry thought about looking back in six years and thinking that he hadn’t moved past eleven.


He was going to kill Malfoy if he wasn’t serious. He was going to kill him, and hide him in the pile of already-read books.


He reached out, expecting Malfoy to pull back and laugh his stupid head off. Malfoy didn’t. They shook hands, very carefully, eyeing each other in a wary sort of way.


It was very strange.


“Well – right,” Malfoy said, in his most polite way and with his eyes still wide. “I’m going to let go now.”


“Okay,” Harry said.


Malfoy drew his hand away and folded both his arms over the back of the chair he was leaning against. Then he glanced down at nothing in particularly, and smiled a tiny bit.


“So, Ginny,” he offered. “Not half as friendly with me when you’re not around.”


It took Harry a few minutes to realise that Malfoy wasn’t criticising Ginny: that he was, in fact, just telling Harry that he didn’t need to worry.


“Oh,” he said. “And – that doesn’t bother you?”


“My God, no,” Malfoy answered. “She’s good-looking and everything, but what would we do as a couple? It’d be like performing together in front of an empty theatre.”


“You prefer Pansy Parkinson,” Harry said, not quite able to grasp the idea.


Malfoy’s small smile broke out into a brilliant one. “I do prefer Pansy Parkinson. So that’s me sorted out, Potter, as regards your girl. What you’re going to do about your unspeakable attraction to the Dark Lord, I don’t know.”


Harry laughed, feeling distinctly incredulous about life as he did so. He pushed his closed books away and got up to go downstairs to dinner with Malfoy.


“So the Occlumency, it went pretty well, right,” he said experimentally. “I mean, I could do it a bit.”


“A bit,” Malfoy conceded agreeably, holding his fingers together about an inch apart. He followed Harry out the door.


“So it shouldn’t take too long before I can convince the snake that I’m Voldemort,” Harry went on. “And then I cut it up with the sword and we’re down another Horcrux.”


“Well, all right,” Malfoy said. He sounded a bit doubtful: Harry glanced at him and he shrugged. “It seems a very complicated way of getting his attention, that’s all, Potter. You could probably just ask him out.”


Harry laughed incredulously again. “Shut up, Malfoy.”


He saw Hermione staring at them from the bottom of the stairs, and stopped laughing. She was looking at them as if she suspected they’d got a touch of the sun while shut up in the study all day.


“Er, Harry,” she said. “I was wondering if I could have a word.”


“Shocking,” Malfoy remarked cheerfully. “I shall go and tell Weasley how he is betrayed.”


He wandered down the stairs and Hermione looked after him with total incomprehension, and then shook it off.


“Harry. I just wanted to tell you that the Veritaserum’s ready. We can use it anytime.”


She looked at him, clearly expecting him to be pleased. He looked back at her and hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he’d completely forgotten about the Veritaserum.


“Ron’s being silly and says he won’t slip anything to a guest in his own home or something,” Hermione said dismissively, “but I think you or I can slip it to him in-”


“About that,” Harry said slowly, working it out as he spoke. “I – I think Ron’s right. I’m sorry you went to all that trouble, but we’ll keep it around and I’m sure it’ll come in handy.” He looked at her blank face, and shrugged helplessly. “I mean – you’ve got to trust someone sometime, don’t you?”


“Yes, but Malfoy? Now?”


He looked at Hermione’s unyielding face, and at his own hand, and then back at her. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think so.”


Hermione stood firm as he passed around her, heading for the kitchen, and before he went in she said:


“Harry. I think you’re making a big mistake."