Chapter Text
They say that the savior came back from the Forbidden Forest completely unscathed.
Draco thought otherwise.
Well, it wasn’t like Draco was completely objecting to the notion. Potter was, technically, still Potter. Plain old Potter with a raging savior complex and a heart too big for the cavity of his ribs. Everyone had somehow come to the conclusion that yes, he hadn’t changed a single bit, as if being revived from death was a clear guarantee to being pieced back correctly the way a person was pre-mortem.
But. Sometimes.
Sometimes Draco thought he was the only one who saw it—the flashes of something terribly foreign in Potter's all-too-verdant gaze, as though there was a brand new second skin stretched too thinly over all the muscle keeping his body together. Draco had noticed the way Potter’s smile got slightly too sharp around the edges, too arrogant and just so bloody wrong.
People could argue that he was just being paranoid—the claim being merely hypothetical, a thought he tended to entertain, for it made it sound like someone was actually willing to trade a few words back-and-forth with a disgraced Death Eater—because Potter's best friends, Granger and Weasley, hadn't noticed anything wrong and kept sticking by his side persistently throughout the time the Wizarding World was sorting itself out after the war.
Paranoid, Draco could get that, since everyone came out of the war a little bit different and slightly wrong-footed, but that wasn't a complete answer to the problem.
Draco had watched Harry Potter for years. He had obsessed over the boy legend—studied him enough to know him like second skin, studied him enough to notice everything from the barest of flinches, the small, day-to-day spikes of anger that rippled on calm water, and even the tic he did whenever he was nervous; fingers flexing open and close at his side.
Crazy as it might sound, Draco could say that he knew Harry Potter like the back of his hand.
So loud alarms had been blared into his brain when Potter began to act the way he did—decidedly un-Potter.
His point has really been driven home one day when a fight broke out in the Great Hall—because who, in their right minds, would let trauma-ridden teenagers come back for another year of schooling?—between two Gryffindors and a single, poor Slytherin student infamous for his dad being an acute Dark Lord follower until his death had rolled around in the final battle.
It really had been, because he had watched with rapt attention, saw, how speckles of red began to dance like ember and ash inside the pools of green in Potter's eyes. The man had stood up from his seat, egg toast momentarily forgotten as he moved to diffuse the situation with an expression inches away from bearing a snarl when he said, voice deadly calm in the way that was eerily familiar to Draco, (not unlike the terrible, scratchy tone, the Dark Lord used to use to command respect,) “I hope that you know that we did not win the war to blame innocents and fight against our own.”
The Hall had fallen silent in answer.
Potter must have taken it as an answer nonetheless, since he sighed and sat down, focusing back on his toast and ignoring the worried look Granger sent him.
“You saw it,” Draco had said minutes after, part of him needing this peculiar change in the Wizarding World’s savior acknowledged. “Please tell me you saw it.”
Theo glanced at him, brows slightly pinched. “I—” setting down a fork, he huffed, “I think we all saw that Potter's got a way shorter fuse this time around. It's a wonder how he hadn't gotten that temper fixed yet. Is that what you wanted to hear, Draco?”
“No. Okay, we saw that but, no. No, that's not what I meant.” Draco waved vaguely to the direction of the Gryffindors. He hoped Theo understood what he was saying—because Theo was here and willing to talk to him, listening to him as though he wasn't a nutcase and a lost cause, and because Theo was one of the few Slytherins that had decided to come back for the last bloody Hogwarts year. “I meant,” Draco started again, “when he got angry, there was red in his eyes for a moment.”
“Pansy, did you?” Theo asked instead, chin cutting to Pansy who sat across him, who jerked as she'd been caught red-handed on eavesdropping.
(Not that Draco cared. He knew that she wouldn't dare to miss a single conversation happening around her if it meant getting potential blackmail material, the devil that she was.)
“You were the only one who was focusing on Potter, dear,” she said, deliberately slow in the same tone she used back in first year when all Draco did was nothing but go on about Potter, Potter, and Potter—the same tone she had used too when sixth year rolled around. “The only one who focused that much on him,” she corrected, “because I sure didn't see whatever you were on about.”
Theo nodded. “She's right.”
“Well that's bloody wrong,” Draco said, the words sounding unbelievable even to his own ears. He had seen it, the puddles of red oozing through a heavy layer of green. He had noticed it; had already carved the scene into his brain as something that needed to be replayed over and over again for the next few days. The problem was that it had been so easy for Draco to notice, so obvious just like all the other little tidbits in Potter that had changed ever since his reported death. Draco had said so in a low, rushed whisper at the breakfast table that morning and, when he finished, Theo said, “I don't know. I think you need to give it rest.” And Draco, slightly put-off and feeling wrong about the one thing he had been so sure about, said, “Yeah, maybe. Alright.”
They didn't talk of it anymore, Theo and Pansy veering far from the topic and from anything remotely close to Harry Potter in general, because a group of Slytherins gossiping about the savior seemed to only spell danger for the common people.
They would've probably talked about it if Draco had just brought it up the second time but he just. The fact that he didn't was due to a whole other reason he didn't dare fully unpack to his friends.
The fact that Draco was keeping this revelation about Potter only for himself almost felt relieving in a roundabout, thoroughly fucked-up way. It sang in his veins, a constant thrum running through his body at the idea of having something enough to be called as his own—like as though Potter's new demeanor was only his to know and his to dissect. As though they were sharing a secret, a completely tilted version of an inside joke, and Draco drunk the insinuation of it like a man in drought; taking it in an act of greed he had long not experienced, not after the war started and his life began to walk down a very, very much steep hill.
Or, maybe they were right. Maybe he was going off the rails—a part of him would argue. Draco the fool, they would say, would write in all the history books to come: the man who had gone insane and reimagined our savior as a demon. Don't be like him, the poets would then warn, for a boy who grew up in the wrong family would surely become rot.
But, in the end, there was one possible way out.
Draco decided he would not go down with a sinking ship. At least, not yet.
*
Draco felt Potter's gaze on him more often than not the following days.
It was hard not to notice, especially when Potter—or not-Potter, or possibly-high-chance-a-shapeshifter-Potter—himself wasn't doing a very good job on concealing his sudden spiked interest.
For several days, Draco ignored it; letting the long stares he was receiving slide off his skin, letting the unreciprocated attention simmer underneath for a bit. He tried not to think what it meant now that he was back on Potter’s radar, or at least tried very, very, very hard not to think of it. The attention itself rang like triumph, clear and heady against the stifling backdrop of Hogwarts’ old walls—telling him that, yes, he was finally worthy of something in his life—but it was eerily similar to sixth year which made Draco’s hand sweat, fingertips clammy and goosebumps rising along his spine whenever he caught sight of a messy black-haired head and an unwarranted smile too sharp in his periphery whenever he turned around.
It was an unpleasant reminder of the constant apprehension he had had to face during that long, dark year; the underlying current of fear of being caught, of the wood beneath his touch from a cabinet long broken, and of the gentle hiss of an Imperius for a woman who was nothing but a victim.
And, as Merlin would have it, because life was nothing more than a theater play and that irony always seemed to be Draco’s recurring theme throughout his life, he had come to be face-to-face with Potter in an empty bathroom just after Potions class.
Not the girls’ bathroom this time around. Maybe that was an improvement.
So now here he was, standing before the mirror, watching Potter move behind him on his way to the sink next to his. Draco wondered if the other boy was thinking of that day too.
Despite all the talks he had with himself, reassurances that no, he won’t be crossing Harry Potter’s path this time around, only that he would be observing him from afar, that everything was going to be fine if he were to hypothetically get stuck in a single room with Potter, Draco felt fear rise like bile at the back of his throat, burning through tender skin in a poor parody of the criss-crosses of wounds that had bloomed on his chest.
Fucking fuck.
“You’ve been awfully quiet this year, Malfoy,” Potter said suddenly, and Draco startled so badly he tore his gaze from the mirror way too fast.
Potter’s eyes were glowing red.
Full on red. A vivid red reminiscent of wine reflecting off crystal decanters, of blood splattered on white, scaly skin.
His throat was parched. He needed to get out of here. Fuck, he needed to—
“Yeah?” He said, strained.
“Yeah.” Potter shrugged, a small smile stretching his face. He looked so much at ease, as though the fact that they were inside a bathroom together wasn’t sending endless waves of déjà vu crashing down against their shores.
Draco kept silent, rinsing his hands for a second time in an attempt to calm down.
“I thought you would be chattier, you know,” Potter continued, voice a murmur like he was talking more to himself. “After the Malfoys’ fall from grace, I’d thought you would want to get honor back for your family.”
This time, an incredulous laugh tore itself unwarrantedly from Draco’s mouth, letting the sudden burst of energy tip his head behind and laugh, laugh, laugh only on pure mania. This was fine, if not a little better. They were threading through common grounds now.
“And since when did you indulge yourself in politics, Potter?” Draco asked, derisive, head slightly tilted and trying not to notice how red eyes were tracking each move that his neck made. “Surely the matters of my family won’t be any new news for you. You didn’t care when we were placed on trial.”
Potter’s expression cooled just a fraction, the smile dissolving into a small frown.
“Your father deserved Azkaban, I hope you knew that.”
“Only an idiot would believe otherwise,” Draco agreed. “But my mother. She didn’t deserve the Ministry holding cells. She was innocent.”
“I tried.” Potter’s eyes blazed just a little bit brighter, red eating away all the green like a forest fire. “I didn’t testify for the Malfoys, true, but I did try to get her to anywhere other than the bloody cells. I did. But they wouldn’t hear the voice of a nobody like me - both an orphan and a kid, the title savior be damned.”
Tongue-tied, Draco found himself still in his place. Mesmerized by whatever was happening before him.
“And you changed, don’t tell me that I didn’t notice it,” Draco said, when his limbs finally didn’t feel like jelly anymore. He turned off the tap, the sound of water dripping a constant rhythm in the silence. He never did understand being brave, he was not Gryffindor, and yet—
“You changed, because the real Harry Potter would do everything to get what he wants. He would’ve testified for her.”
Potter chuckled, bitter and cruel. “And you’d know all about it, wouldn’t you? The real Harry Potter.”
“Maybe,” Draco said, muscles pulled taut as he pushed deeper into the metaphorical abyss awaiting him. “But I know that you’re still him.”
Potter took a step closer, two, his shoes gentle against ceramic tiles.
“How is that?”
There were barely any inches left between them, the good distance Draco had put on burned away by Potter in mere seconds. They were close enough that Draco could faintly register heat caught between them, something he would’ve noticed immediately if it weren’t for the rush of blood in his ears that seemed to drown everything out. He could even count each lashes belonging to Potter, could almost feel the slight dip of his forehead skin where the thunderbolt scar ran through, a prophecy foretold in the mark of someone who didn't want it.
“You two share the same attitude,” Draco said, slowly in a whisper, each of his nerves standing up in high guard. “You both stalk.”
Potter's eyes lit up, then a smirk as wide as a gaping wound graced his face as he raised a hand near Draco's face. For a second, Draco thought he’d hit him, but his hands moved to curl around his neck, Potter’s thumb a gentle pressure on his pulse point.
“I knew you weren’t that dense.”
Draco hated it. Hated this situation, the danger lurking behind closed doors he had decided to open on a whim. He hated his own rabbiting heart, the pulse pattern no doubt not going unnoticed by Potter. He should’ve bloody ran away when he had the chance before he fucked it all up. He could have resorted to being a coward once again, because that was what he had been since the beginning: a cowardly boy hiding behind the thick wall he calls a family name. But no, like the fool he was, he hadn’t done any of it, and death would surely be what befalls him soon.
The thought of death was strangely enough for him to act reckless.
(Potter was acting like this and Draco was starting to turn Gryffindor. The world was truly on its way to the end.)
“What do you want from me?” He asked, and the fingers around his throat clenched just barely. He couldn’t stop thinking of how warm was the hand his life was currently depending on—how intimate was the picture painted of a death caused by someone too close to your face, too close to all the spots a lover would target, too close for two breaths to mingle before one abruptly stopped.
The sound of dripping water suddenly felt too much.
“I don’t like you,” Potter said, and Draco replied, in a mumble, “Likewise,” but he hadn’t paid attention to it as he continued: “I don’t like you, that’s always been the same. I still see you the same way I did before, a constant, and - and now that I’ve seen everything else, you’re not as bad as I thought you were. Not as bad as those bloody pigs in the Ministry.
“Then bleed them dry,” ran Draco’s mouth without thinking. When Potter’s hand slightly loosened up, just enough so that he could breathe again, Draco said, “I don’t see why you can’t bleed them dry like the pigs they really are.”
“That's—”
This time Potter’s hand dropped immediately, green flooding his eyes so quickly to a point where Draco distantly thought he had imagined the red.
Distantly questioned whether it was all a figment of his imagination or not. In a way, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched.
“Why, is that too much for you?” Draco asked, vitriol a deadly concoction in his tone, unable to stop it from sounding like a mock now that Potter looked so much like his usual self—green-eyed and too kind, a born hero with legacy pulsing in tandem with his heartbeats. “You're not the same anymore. The least I thought was that you would be alright with bringing justice with your newly acquired title. Or,” Draco's voice dropped low and lower, “despite everything, are you still the Harry Potter I hated at eleven?”
“Don’t say that,” Potter snarled, whipping out his wand so quickly with such precision that it landed just beneath Draco’s chin. “Don’t associate me with him. He’s dead - fucking dead after whatever’s happened. And it’s not that I don’t want to bleed them dry. I do. I just don’t know how yet—”
Adrenaline was like a drug in Draco’s blood, enough to make him cock his head to another side, muttering with a dreadfully hollow smile, “Well, but It sounds to me that you’re scared, Potter. Killing has never been your thing.”
The wand under Draco’s skin raised a little bit further, its tip digging into flesh.
Ah, Pansy was going to murder him if she found out.
“I could kill you,” Potter whispered, eyes downcast. “I could, right here.”
Draco tried to entertain the idea, his mind connecting their current situation with the Sectumsempra incident years ago where instead of being held at wandpoint, Draco was on the cold tiles bleeding out and unable to breathe, Potter’s terrified face watching rigidly from the side as his hands trembled before Severus got to them and everything went black. Draco tried to entertain the idea, of his death that was caused prematurely on an inconspicuous day just moments after their class ended. Imagined, for a fleeting moment, the people who would even care if he were to get killed—his mother, sure. Pansy and Theo, if they got their heads long enough from their own personal problems, perhaps. But he knew it was nothing but Potter’s nonsense, his lack of conviction ringing true and his angry snarl hiding something more like fear beneath all those bricks that’d been placed down and it was—
It was frankly incredible (terrifying) how easy it was for Draco to see right through him.
He decided to close his hands around Potter’s wrist, pulling it up to sink the wand deeper into his chin—to a point where it was almost uncomfortable—and his smile turned wry, like he was unhinged—like the rumors were true that the last Malfoy heir is nothing but a goner—
“Then do it,” he said, finally, honesty raw like a wound torn open, because Draco really didn’t care. Because a part of him wanted to be ended by the savior himself.
Potter watched him, the briefest of red flickering, face a complicated mess that didn’t mix well with all the haughty smirks he had given in the past few weeks.
Draco pulled away the hand that was holding Potter.
“You can’t,” Draco said then.
“I can’t,” Potter agreed, wand falling to his side, window-refracted afternoon sunlight casting half of his face in gold and leaving the other to the shadows. “No, I can’t.”
Draco didn’t ask why, didn’t dare to, but Potter’s mouth twisted all the same.
“You don’t deserve death by my hands.”
And Draco left, leaving echoes of footsteps in his wake.
He wasn't sure how long Potter stayed behind before breaking free of his stupor.
*
“Are you going to keep being brain-dead or are you going to help me with this?” Theo said, voice an ear-splitting thunderous boom throughout the empty common room.
Pansy looked up from where she'd been carefully inspecting her new manicured nails, now in black and topped with glitter. “He's been off dallying with romance. Let him be, Theo.”
And Draco didn't know how to refute that. It wasn't like they were right because, face it, they really aren't, but Draco had felt as if a haze had been firmly placed upon him, a fog blocking the neurons in his brain and turning him a little bit stupid—only somewhat—maybe the word less sharp would be the more viable option to explain his condition. He was just—muddled from his meeting with Potter.
“Shut up,” he said, glaring at Theo and his stupid Arithmancy homework which Draco had finished almost a week ago. “How I'm faring is none of your problem.”
He received the very lovely accusing finger of Pansy’s glitterful manicure right between the eyebrows.
“You,” she said, “disappeared after class. You came back looking like a bloody wreck and you expect us to think nothing of it?!”
It was genuinely sort of sweet how she seemed to care for him. Maybe even cared for him in a literal sense, since Pansy’s the only person he had ever known in the whole Slytherin house who would allow herself to get so attached to another person and trust and worry for them unconditionally. She had probably rubbed off on Theo, on Blaise too, way before he fucked off to one of his villas in Italy and live with his mother. Draco shrugged at her. He had already established Potter’s new behavior as his to crack, to open and inspect with a scalpel, and he was going to run with it. He couldn’t let either of them know of the things that’d transpired including Potter’s own empty death threat, so.
So.
“It was nothing,” he answered as steadily as he could, thumbing a page from his book absently as he willed himself to just look normal. “Bullies,” he lied. “Threatened to hurt me with a Cruciatus to the chest.”
It was weak, but it was also the perfect lie for them.
“Funny,” Theo grinned sardonically. “They jump to save Gryffindors at the thought of a paper cut but wouldn’t save those who actually need it.”
Pansy slumped on her seat, taking up more than a third of her couch and huffed. “‘S not like they want us to be here in the first place.”
The common room felt too dark for them to talk about this—the circumstances everyone had unanimously decided to place upon what was (in Draco’s own, humble opinion,) the most victimized house out of all four in this godforsaken school. The shadows were too much, curling and uncurling like wisps of smoke around them, on the corners of the room, a predator waiting for prey if they said so much as the wrong word despite being left to their own relative privacy.
Whereas the war had already ended for anyone else, the Slytherins were instead placed in a constant state of paranoia. It was the cyclical theory of violence happening in real time; boys and girls from younger years being subjected to silent abuse from those who thought they were better, stronger, even though nobody under their eighth year class had actively participated in the war.
(Nobody in the school had participated in the war more than Draco Malfoy, anyway.)
Even in September, the room underneath the lake felt as cold as winter.
Draco flicked aimlessly through his book, thinking heavily of green-red eyes and the man’s vehement belief of a past self long gone, before sometimes glancing up at the silent figures of the people he would actually call friends now—unlike the boy burned during a fall of grace who Draco had been too late to call as a friend.
“I saw him too,” Draco mumbled to the dancing fireplace, ignoring their instantaneous focus on him. “I saw Potter earlier.”
And, Merlin, he despised seeing them like this: a once so bright, rising gossip girl Pansy Parkinson left to fight all the demons gnawing away at the back of her mind every night in an empty eighth year girls dorm room, her struggles evident by the dark circles she’d tried to hide under makeup, and the once calm, unmoving presence of Theo, now burdened by the sins of his father passed on too quickly to the son.
Draco—not for the first time, of course—wished for things to be slightly easier.
Pansy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, black manicures blending seamlessly with the color of her hair.
“Well, you’ve always been fated to stick with him,” she said, and Draco didn’t have an answer in return.
Theo dropped his quill, ink splattering to the floor and seeping deep into the fibers of their green carpet.
Not as if the stain was still going to be there tomorrow when they wake.
*
It was a Thursday afternoon when Potter stood up and walked away from his seat, ignoring the calls of his friends as he stormed out of the Great Hall.
It happened during rush hour, sure, so not many at all had seen the display, but—
“That was weird,” Pansy remarked around her cake. “Wonder what’s got his knickers in a twist.”
“A quarrel.” Draco shrugged, his voice thin even to his ears. “Maybe.”