FIC: Benevolence (Part Two)
Sep. 27th, 2011 08:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dysonrulesThis fic has absolutely not been betaed in any way, so all mistakes are due to my own stupidity. Please to be pointing out errors and/or inconsistencies. Muchas gracias!
~~~~
Harry spent four more days stalking Draco, although he preferred to think he was “keeping an eye on him” and trying to “determine his motive” for helping out the various Muggles he had apparently taken an interest in. That very fact was perplexing.
The day after meeting with Daisy and her grandmother, Draco left the boarding house, stopped in at a tea shop, and then Apparated to a seaside town that Harry could not identify. Thankfully, Harry had renewed the Tracking Charm, just in case Draco had decided to quit the boarding house without notice. In the seaside town Draco met with a fisherman named Ned, asked about the fishing conditions, bought him a pint at the local pub, and left him with a sheaf of Muggle currency and the admonishment not to spend it all on drink.
Shortly after leaving Ned, Draco Apparated again, back to London, where he walked briskly to a Muggle orphanage. The place was hopping with people, too many for Harry to safely navigate while invisible, so he was forced to wait outside whilst Draco conducted his business. Once finished there, Draco went back to the boarding house and remained there for the rest of the evening, or at least as long as Harry remained standing outside until exhaustion forced him to go home and sleep.
The next couple of days brought more of the same, with Draco travelling hither and yon and checking up on a large number of Muggles. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to his selection and Harry’s curiosity was piqued. On the fourth day Draco returned to Daisy’s house, apparently to ascertain the boiler had been repaired to his satisfaction. He also gave in to Daisy’s pleas to escort her to a nearby park so that she could play on the swing set.
Harry followed, feeling more like an intruder than he had before while witnessing their interactions. Draco helped her onto the swing and then pushed her while they carried on a conversation that Harry couldn’t hear from his perch on a geometrical set of climbing bars. The air was cold and the sky was clear, so Daisy’s cheeks were soon pink and windblown. Draco made her stop swinging and then they walked to a nearby café for cocoa and pastries. Harry wasn’t hungry, having wised up and started eating a decent meal prior to beginning his forays into Draco-following.
On the way to the café, Harry stumbled over an uneven bit of sidewalk and nearly fell. His heart was in his throat as he righted himself and froze, checking to make sure the cloak had not uncovered him in any way.
Daisy had stopped and cocked her head, looking back over her shoulder.
“What is it?” Draco asked.
“I thought I heard something. Is someone there?”
Draco stared into the air; his brow furrowed and his mouth drew into a thin line. “No one is there,” he said after long moment in which Harry did not even dare to breathe.
Draco and Daisy began walking again and Harry hung well back and crossed the street before following. He had become too complacent and had forgotten Daisy’s enhanced senses.
Draco and Daisy had tea while Harry waited, and later they exited the shop without mishap. Draco escorted Daisy home, remained inside only long enough to bid farewell to her grandparents, and left the house at a brisk pace. Harry debated Apparating home, but Draco seemed to be in a hurry and he was not headed back towards the boarding house. Harry was curious, so he trotted after him.
Three streets and several turns later, Draco stopped in front of a cobbled square that bordered a decorative hedge maze. It featured several large shrubs shaped like animals and Harry peered at them for a moment, wondering if they had been fashioned with Muggle tools or if they had entered another wizarding area.
“You might as well show yourself, Potter. I know you’re there.”
Draco was staring into the bare branches of a cherry tree, hands clasped loosely behind his back. Harry made no sound. He bit his lip, debating. Draco could not know for certain.
“I suspected, when I saw you on the bridge, that it would only be a matter of time. I’ve been careful, but I suppose you have had much more practice in stalking than I have in hiding.”
Harry wrinkled his nose. Draco had done a fine job of hiding; Harry hadn’t heard a word about him in nearly five years.
“Are you going to come out, or shall I throw a few random hexes and see if I get lucky?” Draco cocked his head and looked over his shoulder, nearly straight at Harry, except that his eyes focussed on a point beyond Harry’s left arm.
Harry sighed and shrugged out of the cloak. Draco’s gaze snapped to him immediately and he turned, eyes narrowing. His lips twisted into an unpleasant frown. “I had hoped I was mistaken and you were not really here.”
Harry smiled without humour. “Here I am.”
“What do you want?”
The question took Harry aback. What did he want? And why had he not thought to ask himself that question? “I want… I want to know what sort of potions you are supplying to that poor girl’s grandfather.” Harry nearly bit his tongue as soon as the words blurted out. He hadn’t meant to sound confrontational.
Draco’s countenance grew even colder. Harry could not help but contrast the tense, angry man before him with the warm, friendly person he had watched for the past few days. He suddenly wanted that Draco back.
Before Draco could speak, Harry held up a hand. “Wait—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Draco’s eyes widened and Harry realized the apology had shocked him. He supposed it could be equated to a cold day in hell, at that. “I don’t know why I’m following you, really. I recognized you the other night, obviously, but when you professed not to know me, and seemed so certain of it… Well, I was afraid you might have been hexed, or Obliviated.”
Draco made a scoffing sound, but some of the chill seemed to have thawed from his expression. “You expect me to believe that you’ve been stalking me because you were worried about me?”
Harry shrugged; he supposed it was only vaguely true, at that. “At first. Now, I’m merely curious. About the Muggles.”
“If you’ve been following me this long, then you know I’ve not harmed any of your precious Muggles.”
“I know. In fact, you actually seem to be helping them. But I don’t know why.”
“Is it a crime for you to not know everything? The last I heard, you had quit the Aurors and given up on doing good deeds.”
Harry flushed. He was not proud of having left the Auror Division, but he knew it had been the right decision.
"Look," Draco said without waiting for an answer, "I'm not doing anything wrong and I'll thank you to stay out of my business. What will it take to make you go away and leave me in peace?"
That made Harry pause. Since he had no real answer as to why he was following Draco in the first place, other than his initial need to find out what he was up to, he had no idea what would cause him to stop stalking him, especially now that he knew Draco was not doing anything illegal or harmful. However, that very fact made Harry's even more curious. "Answers," he replied. "Tell me about Daisy."
Draco's face closed up tighter than it had been before. "Not Daisy," he snapped with obvious finality.
"Fine, then just tell me why you're doing this. Just... give me something and I'll leave you alone."
Draco sighed heavily and brushed a droplet of water from the front of his coat. It was only then that Harry noticed it was beginning to rain. A droplet hit his face and another splashed onto the right lens of his glasses before trickling down in a zigzag.
"Not here," Draco said. "Come on."
Harry absently cast an Umbrella Charm and then took off his cloak to follow Draco without being invisible. He dried his glasses with a wandless charm. "Where are we going?"
"I think I prefer you invisible. At least then you are quiet."
Harry glared, but said nothing else as he followed Draco to a somewhat seedy-looking coffee shop. Harry thought all coffee shops were required to be bright and cheery, but this one seemed to have been a dingy pub in another life. A tired-looking painted sign displayed a large white coffee mug (that looked chipped thanks to the peeling paint) and a crooked arrow announced its existence down a flight of dank steps. Harry followed as Draco tramped down the steps and pushed open the wooden door with a squeal of metal on metal.
"Nice place," Harry muttered as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. A long bar proclaimed that the place had, indeed, been a pub at one time, although a large espresso machine gleamed at the centre of it now. A bored-looking woman with a tattoo splashed across her neck and a multitude of earrings in each ear glanced at them when they walked in. She looked to be busy reading a comic book and quickly returned to the page she was perusing.
Draco tipped his jaw towards a small table in the farthest dark corner. “Coffee or tea?” he asked.
“Coffee,” Harry replied. “Black, two sugars.” He made his way to the table and sat down. The clerk lifted her head long enough to hear Draco’s order and then heaved a heavy sigh, slammed her comic on the bar top, and walked to the large machine to concoct their drinks. Harry kept a close eye on her, lest she decide to take revenge on the interruption by poisoning them.
Malfoy seemed to have much the same thought. Instead of joining Harry at the table, he waited until he had both cups in hand. The woman immediately went back to ignoring them.
“Excellent service,” Harry commented as he took the warm mug. It wasn’t hot; likely the coffee had been sitting in the pot half the day. Harry took a tentative sip and wrinkled his nose. Make that definitely.
“I came here for the privacy, not the service and the ambiance.”
“Or the quality of the drinks,” Harry added and pushed the lukewarm liquid away. “So, are you going to tell me about your Muggle thing now?”
Draco took a slow sip of his tea and looked at Harry over the rim, as if considering his question. “You promised to leave me alone.”
Harry nodded. “As long as I get a satisfactory answer.”
Draco set down his cup. His eyes blazed. “Now there are conditions? It has to be a satisfactory answer? What if it’s not satisfactory? What if my reasons are personal and have nothing to do with being satisfactory or measuring up to your heroic Gryffindor standards, or whatever ethical scales you plan to weigh my motives upon?”
“Damn it, Dra—Malfoy, just tell me. I don’t think you’re doing anything illegal and I don’t have any ethical scales. I just want to know.”
“Maybe you should give me some information first. Why did you quit the Aurors?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “So we’re going quid pro quo now? Fine. I didn’t feel like being an Auror. Why are you helping Muggles?”
“Because I feel like helping Muggles.”
Harry sat back in his chair with an explosive sigh. Why did he even try? Draco Malfoy always brought out the worst in him and eventually he wanted to hex him.
Draco sat back as well, looking perfectly composed as he stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles before taking a long drink of his tea. His eyes were fixed on a point somewhere over Harry’s shoulder.
Harry considered leaving. He would be prudent to get up and leave this terrible excuse for a coffee shop, to go back home and forget about Draco Malfoy and whatever strange things he was up to that involved Muggles and living in boarding houses and buying pork pies and trinkets for little blind girls. It was the memory of Daisy that stopped him, Daisy and the man that Draco Malfoy seemed to be when he was with her.
“I was tired,” Harry said. “Tired of fighting, tired of tracking down Voldemort’s supporters, tired of attending trials and listening to the lists of crimes and reiteration of horrors. Tired of thinking about the war.” As if the words had been a trigger, Harry was suddenly back in his final weeks as an Auror, wondering when it had all begun to go pear-shaped. He had been steadily losing his battle with unhappiness until it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the morning, trying to mentally prepare for another day of living up to other people’s expectations. He was Harry Potter; he could track down the former Death Eaters and bring them to justice, and fight the good fight for those that had fallen, couldn't he? It was up to him to bring them all in, to make sure that every last trace of Voldemort and his evil was wiped from the face of the earth. Except it hadn’t been that simple. No matter how many Death Eaters they had arrested, no matter how many trials and incarcerations, no matter how many half-crazed werewolves were dragged in, snarling and raving, it never brought back Fred and Remus, Tonks and Colin. It never fixed the light that had once gleamed in Molly Weasley’s eyes. All it had ever done was make Harry tired, cold, and increasingly lonely.
“Potter?”
Harry shrugged, shaken from his reverie. He reached out and picked up his mug to take a drink of his terrible coffee. Loneliness was relative, of course. Ginny had been there, and Ron and Hermione. And the other Weasleys. But none of them had ever understood Harry’s increasing dissatisfaction, except possibly Hermione. She had been the only one not surprised at Harry’s final decision.
“One day I walked in and quit.” Harry shrugged. It hadn’t been that simple, of course. There had been news conferences and meetings with the Ministry, urgent talks with Ron and shouting matches with Ginny. In the end, Harry had been adamant. He was done.
“You quit because you were tired?” Draco asked.
Harry nodded. It was as good an excuse as any, he supposed.
Another long silence filled the space. Harry brooded, fighting off memories, and Draco sipped his tea. The clerk read her comic and turned pages that sounded like the crackle of lightning in the quiet room.
“I wanted to make amends,” Draco said at last, surprising Harry.
“Amends?”
“Amends, Potter. Recompense? Restitution? Pay back others in some small way for wrongs done to them? Amends.”
“I know what it means. But they are Muggles.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Muggles are not worthy of amends?”
Harry glared. “Of course not. But you have never struck me as the sort to think so, what with all the pure-blood rhetoric and the…” Harry waved vaguely at Draco’s left arm, where he supposed the residual Dark Mark lay.
“Sometimes people change,” Draco said.
“And sometimes they don’t,” Harry replied, thinking, strangely, of Ginny. She hadn’t changed much at all since Hogwarts, still waiting for Harry, except that she was finally getting tired of waiting
“You really think I haven’t changed?”
Harry blinked at him. “I know you have. I’ve seen it.”
Draco looked away. He drank his tea and then said quietly, “Ned Newton is a fisherman who was deeply in love with his wife, Claire. One night they were out walking along the pier, going to eat dinner at a restaurant because it was Claire’s birthday. Unluckily for them, it was also the night some fool had claimed to spot you in a Muggle pub, so the Dark—so Voldemort decided to verify the man's story in person. Sometimes he seemed to get bored and would sit in his chair and wait for something to enrage him so that he could lash out and…” Draco scowled and peered into his teacup before swirling the dregs. “Well, Ned and Claire were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We—the Dark Lord and his underlings, of which I was one—Apparated to London. Did you know that the Dark Mark works almost like a Side-along if you don’t know where you’re going? He would Apparate, and we would all follow like sheep.” Draco shrugged. “Anyway, we appeared right where Ned and his wife were walking and Voldemort lifted his wand and killed her without a second thought. Ned was half-mad, trying to awaken her and not understanding what was happening; seeing Voldemort, the way he looked… One of the others lifted his wand to kill Ned, but Voldemort stopped him. ‘Let him suffer,’ he said.” Draco shook his head and his voice was barely a whisper. “’Let him suffer.’ I need more tea.”
Abruptly, he got to his feet and took his cup back to the girl, who glanced once at his face and then got up to prepare his tea with far less disdain than before.
Harry wiped his hands on his trousers. He knew Draco had seen horrors during the war; he had known, but he hadn’t really thought about it, beyond an occasional nightmare that featured Charity Burbage’s death and Draco Malfoy’s terrified face. The teacher’s death had been a single incident Harry had been privy to; how many others had Draco been forced to suffer?
Draco returned with a fresh cup and sat down. He would not meet Harry’s eyes. “So, Ned lived and Claire died and every single day he misses her and drinks himself half-blind. Sometimes I give him money to speed him to his grave.”
Harry swallowed. Despite Draco’s flippant words, Harry knew it wasn’t why he gave Ned money at all. He cared. He cared about the senseless death of a random Muggle woman and the man who had been left behind to suffer.
“And the orphanage?”
Draco looked at him wryly. “Voldemort killed a lot of people. He did not care whether or not they left small children behind.”
“But you do.”
Draco glared. “Do not look at me like that. I am not some do-gooder Gryffindor out to save the world. I am simply trying to help.” He scowled and looked away, clenching his hands around his teacup. Harry sensed there was more, possibly volumes, left unspoken, but Draco was defensive now and Harry knew he wouldn’t get much more information out of him. Harry wondered about Daisy, but dared not ask. “What have you been doing since your ignominious departure from the Aurors?”
“It was not ignominious!”
“According to the Daily Prophet it was.”
“According to the Daily Prophet, the way I get out of bed in the morning is a failure to the wizarding world,” Harry grumbled.
“How do you get out of bed?”
Harry blinked at him, but only Draco’s eyes were visible above the rim of the teacup. They seemed to sparkle. “The same way everyone does, you git.”
“Definitely not heroic, then.”
“I don’t think there is a heroic method to getting out of bed—why are we talking about this?”
“You brought it up.”
Harry sighed. Infuriating, that’s what he was. “I’ve been working for the Quibbler.”
“You have?”
“Well, not recently. I was writing articles for a bit, under a penname, of course. And then Luna mentioned that some of the advertisers were looking for someone to… You know, I don’t want to get into this.”
“Oh, now I am curious. Come now, Potter, I just told you my deepest, darkest secret. Surely you can share yours?”
“I don’t plan to ridicule you for yours.”
“Is it worthy of ridicule? Now I must know!”
Draco’s grin was enchanting and the way he leaned over the table towards Harry was… disturbing. That’s what it was. Disturbing, and not at all attractive. Harry knew he should stop talking; just because Draco liked Muggles did not mean he liked Harry.
“I write jingles for the Wizarding Wireless.”
The silence lasted for fully ten heartbeats. Harry gulped his horrible coffee and wondered if he could Obliviate all knowledge of that sentence from Draco’s memory.
“Jingles.”
Harry blushed and supposed he would never have enough skill for delicate Obliviation, and would probably end up eradicating Draco’s memory completely, which would never do. “Catchy songs used to sell products? You know, jingles.”
“I know what jingles are, Potter. Which ones?”
Harry found he could not meet Draco’s eyes. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his jingles, it was simply that they were… well, he always thought they weren’t very good. “Brushing your teeth won’t take you far, unless you brush with Zanzibar,” he sang in a low tone. “And your happy pet will rub its tummy, whenever you feed it Kneazle Nummy.”
Harry risked a glance at Draco; he looked horrified. “Those are wretched, Potter.”
Harry shut his eyes, mortified to have his own fears confirmed. He groaned. “I know! And yet they keep telling me they like them and I keep writing more. What is wrong with me?” To Harry’s surprise, Draco said nothing. No laughing, no ridicule. He did not even point out the obvious—they bought his jingles because he was Harry Potter.
“Maybe some of them are good?” Draco asked tentatively.
Harry raised his head and looked at Draco. For a moment, just a moment, he thought Draco Malfoy might be the best person in the entire world. Harry felt a smile nearly crack his jaws and realized he probably looked a bit mad. He quickly grabbed his coffee cup and took a gulp to prevent something idiotic from spilling forth. His heart was pounding with the shocking awareness that Draco had just been intentionally kind to him. It was more astounding than seeing him with the Muggles.
“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Harry blurted. He peered into his coffee mug, wondering if the girl had slipped something into his drink. Normally he was not so quick to spew forth stupid statements.
Draco blinked at him. “Eating?” he finally replied.
“Would you like to. Um. Eat with me? Somewhere?” Harry realized he would have to Obliviate himself instead of Draco. It was the only way to forget such awkwardness.
“Why?” Draco asked, which was a perfectly valid question, but one for which Harry had no answer.
“So we can talk more?”
“I did not realize we had anything to talk about.” Draco’s tone was guarded, but not unfriendly.
“We can talk about Quidditch,” Harry said quickly. When Draco said nothing, he added, “It’s not a date.”
Draco’s lips quirked at that. “Are you certain this is not some ploy to enable you to keep an eye on me?”
“That almost seems like a compliment.”
Draco snorted. “That would be giving you credit for cleverness. Where would this not-date Quidditch-talk dinner take place?”
“At my house. Remarkably, I can cook.”
Draco tapped the edge of his teacup with a fingernail and was silent, as though thinking it over. Harry tried not to hold his breath. “Why not?” he said finally.
Harry felt himself grinning like an idiot. He wasn’t sure why Draco Malfoy agreeing to have dinner with him should make him stupidly happy, but now was not the time to analyse it. He fished a scrap of paper from a pocket and Conjured a quill after shooting a quick glance at the preoccupied clerk. He scribbled the address of Grimmauld Place and slid it across to Draco.
“Eight o’clock okay?”
“Fine.”
Harry got to his feet. “I suppose I should go home and tidy up. See you later.”
“All right. Goodbye, Potter.”
“Bye, Draco.” With a nod to the girl in passing, Harry left.
~~~~
Harry spent four more days stalking Draco, although he preferred to think he was “keeping an eye on him” and trying to “determine his motive” for helping out the various Muggles he had apparently taken an interest in. That very fact was perplexing.
The day after meeting with Daisy and her grandmother, Draco left the boarding house, stopped in at a tea shop, and then Apparated to a seaside town that Harry could not identify. Thankfully, Harry had renewed the Tracking Charm, just in case Draco had decided to quit the boarding house without notice. In the seaside town Draco met with a fisherman named Ned, asked about the fishing conditions, bought him a pint at the local pub, and left him with a sheaf of Muggle currency and the admonishment not to spend it all on drink.
Shortly after leaving Ned, Draco Apparated again, back to London, where he walked briskly to a Muggle orphanage. The place was hopping with people, too many for Harry to safely navigate while invisible, so he was forced to wait outside whilst Draco conducted his business. Once finished there, Draco went back to the boarding house and remained there for the rest of the evening, or at least as long as Harry remained standing outside until exhaustion forced him to go home and sleep.
The next couple of days brought more of the same, with Draco travelling hither and yon and checking up on a large number of Muggles. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to his selection and Harry’s curiosity was piqued. On the fourth day Draco returned to Daisy’s house, apparently to ascertain the boiler had been repaired to his satisfaction. He also gave in to Daisy’s pleas to escort her to a nearby park so that she could play on the swing set.
Harry followed, feeling more like an intruder than he had before while witnessing their interactions. Draco helped her onto the swing and then pushed her while they carried on a conversation that Harry couldn’t hear from his perch on a geometrical set of climbing bars. The air was cold and the sky was clear, so Daisy’s cheeks were soon pink and windblown. Draco made her stop swinging and then they walked to a nearby café for cocoa and pastries. Harry wasn’t hungry, having wised up and started eating a decent meal prior to beginning his forays into Draco-following.
On the way to the café, Harry stumbled over an uneven bit of sidewalk and nearly fell. His heart was in his throat as he righted himself and froze, checking to make sure the cloak had not uncovered him in any way.
Daisy had stopped and cocked her head, looking back over her shoulder.
“What is it?” Draco asked.
“I thought I heard something. Is someone there?”
Draco stared into the air; his brow furrowed and his mouth drew into a thin line. “No one is there,” he said after long moment in which Harry did not even dare to breathe.
Draco and Daisy began walking again and Harry hung well back and crossed the street before following. He had become too complacent and had forgotten Daisy’s enhanced senses.
Draco and Daisy had tea while Harry waited, and later they exited the shop without mishap. Draco escorted Daisy home, remained inside only long enough to bid farewell to her grandparents, and left the house at a brisk pace. Harry debated Apparating home, but Draco seemed to be in a hurry and he was not headed back towards the boarding house. Harry was curious, so he trotted after him.
Three streets and several turns later, Draco stopped in front of a cobbled square that bordered a decorative hedge maze. It featured several large shrubs shaped like animals and Harry peered at them for a moment, wondering if they had been fashioned with Muggle tools or if they had entered another wizarding area.
“You might as well show yourself, Potter. I know you’re there.”
Draco was staring into the bare branches of a cherry tree, hands clasped loosely behind his back. Harry made no sound. He bit his lip, debating. Draco could not know for certain.
“I suspected, when I saw you on the bridge, that it would only be a matter of time. I’ve been careful, but I suppose you have had much more practice in stalking than I have in hiding.”
Harry wrinkled his nose. Draco had done a fine job of hiding; Harry hadn’t heard a word about him in nearly five years.
“Are you going to come out, or shall I throw a few random hexes and see if I get lucky?” Draco cocked his head and looked over his shoulder, nearly straight at Harry, except that his eyes focussed on a point beyond Harry’s left arm.
Harry sighed and shrugged out of the cloak. Draco’s gaze snapped to him immediately and he turned, eyes narrowing. His lips twisted into an unpleasant frown. “I had hoped I was mistaken and you were not really here.”
Harry smiled without humour. “Here I am.”
“What do you want?”
The question took Harry aback. What did he want? And why had he not thought to ask himself that question? “I want… I want to know what sort of potions you are supplying to that poor girl’s grandfather.” Harry nearly bit his tongue as soon as the words blurted out. He hadn’t meant to sound confrontational.
Draco’s countenance grew even colder. Harry could not help but contrast the tense, angry man before him with the warm, friendly person he had watched for the past few days. He suddenly wanted that Draco back.
Before Draco could speak, Harry held up a hand. “Wait—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” Draco’s eyes widened and Harry realized the apology had shocked him. He supposed it could be equated to a cold day in hell, at that. “I don’t know why I’m following you, really. I recognized you the other night, obviously, but when you professed not to know me, and seemed so certain of it… Well, I was afraid you might have been hexed, or Obliviated.”
Draco made a scoffing sound, but some of the chill seemed to have thawed from his expression. “You expect me to believe that you’ve been stalking me because you were worried about me?”
Harry shrugged; he supposed it was only vaguely true, at that. “At first. Now, I’m merely curious. About the Muggles.”
“If you’ve been following me this long, then you know I’ve not harmed any of your precious Muggles.”
“I know. In fact, you actually seem to be helping them. But I don’t know why.”
“Is it a crime for you to not know everything? The last I heard, you had quit the Aurors and given up on doing good deeds.”
Harry flushed. He was not proud of having left the Auror Division, but he knew it had been the right decision.
"Look," Draco said without waiting for an answer, "I'm not doing anything wrong and I'll thank you to stay out of my business. What will it take to make you go away and leave me in peace?"
That made Harry pause. Since he had no real answer as to why he was following Draco in the first place, other than his initial need to find out what he was up to, he had no idea what would cause him to stop stalking him, especially now that he knew Draco was not doing anything illegal or harmful. However, that very fact made Harry's even more curious. "Answers," he replied. "Tell me about Daisy."
Draco's face closed up tighter than it had been before. "Not Daisy," he snapped with obvious finality.
"Fine, then just tell me why you're doing this. Just... give me something and I'll leave you alone."
Draco sighed heavily and brushed a droplet of water from the front of his coat. It was only then that Harry noticed it was beginning to rain. A droplet hit his face and another splashed onto the right lens of his glasses before trickling down in a zigzag.
"Not here," Draco said. "Come on."
Harry absently cast an Umbrella Charm and then took off his cloak to follow Draco without being invisible. He dried his glasses with a wandless charm. "Where are we going?"
"I think I prefer you invisible. At least then you are quiet."
Harry glared, but said nothing else as he followed Draco to a somewhat seedy-looking coffee shop. Harry thought all coffee shops were required to be bright and cheery, but this one seemed to have been a dingy pub in another life. A tired-looking painted sign displayed a large white coffee mug (that looked chipped thanks to the peeling paint) and a crooked arrow announced its existence down a flight of dank steps. Harry followed as Draco tramped down the steps and pushed open the wooden door with a squeal of metal on metal.
"Nice place," Harry muttered as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. A long bar proclaimed that the place had, indeed, been a pub at one time, although a large espresso machine gleamed at the centre of it now. A bored-looking woman with a tattoo splashed across her neck and a multitude of earrings in each ear glanced at them when they walked in. She looked to be busy reading a comic book and quickly returned to the page she was perusing.
Draco tipped his jaw towards a small table in the farthest dark corner. “Coffee or tea?” he asked.
“Coffee,” Harry replied. “Black, two sugars.” He made his way to the table and sat down. The clerk lifted her head long enough to hear Draco’s order and then heaved a heavy sigh, slammed her comic on the bar top, and walked to the large machine to concoct their drinks. Harry kept a close eye on her, lest she decide to take revenge on the interruption by poisoning them.
Malfoy seemed to have much the same thought. Instead of joining Harry at the table, he waited until he had both cups in hand. The woman immediately went back to ignoring them.
“Excellent service,” Harry commented as he took the warm mug. It wasn’t hot; likely the coffee had been sitting in the pot half the day. Harry took a tentative sip and wrinkled his nose. Make that definitely.
“I came here for the privacy, not the service and the ambiance.”
“Or the quality of the drinks,” Harry added and pushed the lukewarm liquid away. “So, are you going to tell me about your Muggle thing now?”
Draco took a slow sip of his tea and looked at Harry over the rim, as if considering his question. “You promised to leave me alone.”
Harry nodded. “As long as I get a satisfactory answer.”
Draco set down his cup. His eyes blazed. “Now there are conditions? It has to be a satisfactory answer? What if it’s not satisfactory? What if my reasons are personal and have nothing to do with being satisfactory or measuring up to your heroic Gryffindor standards, or whatever ethical scales you plan to weigh my motives upon?”
“Damn it, Dra—Malfoy, just tell me. I don’t think you’re doing anything illegal and I don’t have any ethical scales. I just want to know.”
“Maybe you should give me some information first. Why did you quit the Aurors?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “So we’re going quid pro quo now? Fine. I didn’t feel like being an Auror. Why are you helping Muggles?”
“Because I feel like helping Muggles.”
Harry sat back in his chair with an explosive sigh. Why did he even try? Draco Malfoy always brought out the worst in him and eventually he wanted to hex him.
Draco sat back as well, looking perfectly composed as he stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles before taking a long drink of his tea. His eyes were fixed on a point somewhere over Harry’s shoulder.
Harry considered leaving. He would be prudent to get up and leave this terrible excuse for a coffee shop, to go back home and forget about Draco Malfoy and whatever strange things he was up to that involved Muggles and living in boarding houses and buying pork pies and trinkets for little blind girls. It was the memory of Daisy that stopped him, Daisy and the man that Draco Malfoy seemed to be when he was with her.
“I was tired,” Harry said. “Tired of fighting, tired of tracking down Voldemort’s supporters, tired of attending trials and listening to the lists of crimes and reiteration of horrors. Tired of thinking about the war.” As if the words had been a trigger, Harry was suddenly back in his final weeks as an Auror, wondering when it had all begun to go pear-shaped. He had been steadily losing his battle with unhappiness until it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the morning, trying to mentally prepare for another day of living up to other people’s expectations. He was Harry Potter; he could track down the former Death Eaters and bring them to justice, and fight the good fight for those that had fallen, couldn't he? It was up to him to bring them all in, to make sure that every last trace of Voldemort and his evil was wiped from the face of the earth. Except it hadn’t been that simple. No matter how many Death Eaters they had arrested, no matter how many trials and incarcerations, no matter how many half-crazed werewolves were dragged in, snarling and raving, it never brought back Fred and Remus, Tonks and Colin. It never fixed the light that had once gleamed in Molly Weasley’s eyes. All it had ever done was make Harry tired, cold, and increasingly lonely.
“Potter?”
Harry shrugged, shaken from his reverie. He reached out and picked up his mug to take a drink of his terrible coffee. Loneliness was relative, of course. Ginny had been there, and Ron and Hermione. And the other Weasleys. But none of them had ever understood Harry’s increasing dissatisfaction, except possibly Hermione. She had been the only one not surprised at Harry’s final decision.
“One day I walked in and quit.” Harry shrugged. It hadn’t been that simple, of course. There had been news conferences and meetings with the Ministry, urgent talks with Ron and shouting matches with Ginny. In the end, Harry had been adamant. He was done.
“You quit because you were tired?” Draco asked.
Harry nodded. It was as good an excuse as any, he supposed.
Another long silence filled the space. Harry brooded, fighting off memories, and Draco sipped his tea. The clerk read her comic and turned pages that sounded like the crackle of lightning in the quiet room.
“I wanted to make amends,” Draco said at last, surprising Harry.
“Amends?”
“Amends, Potter. Recompense? Restitution? Pay back others in some small way for wrongs done to them? Amends.”
“I know what it means. But they are Muggles.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Muggles are not worthy of amends?”
Harry glared. “Of course not. But you have never struck me as the sort to think so, what with all the pure-blood rhetoric and the…” Harry waved vaguely at Draco’s left arm, where he supposed the residual Dark Mark lay.
“Sometimes people change,” Draco said.
“And sometimes they don’t,” Harry replied, thinking, strangely, of Ginny. She hadn’t changed much at all since Hogwarts, still waiting for Harry, except that she was finally getting tired of waiting
“You really think I haven’t changed?”
Harry blinked at him. “I know you have. I’ve seen it.”
Draco looked away. He drank his tea and then said quietly, “Ned Newton is a fisherman who was deeply in love with his wife, Claire. One night they were out walking along the pier, going to eat dinner at a restaurant because it was Claire’s birthday. Unluckily for them, it was also the night some fool had claimed to spot you in a Muggle pub, so the Dark—so Voldemort decided to verify the man's story in person. Sometimes he seemed to get bored and would sit in his chair and wait for something to enrage him so that he could lash out and…” Draco scowled and peered into his teacup before swirling the dregs. “Well, Ned and Claire were in the wrong place at the wrong time. We—the Dark Lord and his underlings, of which I was one—Apparated to London. Did you know that the Dark Mark works almost like a Side-along if you don’t know where you’re going? He would Apparate, and we would all follow like sheep.” Draco shrugged. “Anyway, we appeared right where Ned and his wife were walking and Voldemort lifted his wand and killed her without a second thought. Ned was half-mad, trying to awaken her and not understanding what was happening; seeing Voldemort, the way he looked… One of the others lifted his wand to kill Ned, but Voldemort stopped him. ‘Let him suffer,’ he said.” Draco shook his head and his voice was barely a whisper. “’Let him suffer.’ I need more tea.”
Abruptly, he got to his feet and took his cup back to the girl, who glanced once at his face and then got up to prepare his tea with far less disdain than before.
Harry wiped his hands on his trousers. He knew Draco had seen horrors during the war; he had known, but he hadn’t really thought about it, beyond an occasional nightmare that featured Charity Burbage’s death and Draco Malfoy’s terrified face. The teacher’s death had been a single incident Harry had been privy to; how many others had Draco been forced to suffer?
Draco returned with a fresh cup and sat down. He would not meet Harry’s eyes. “So, Ned lived and Claire died and every single day he misses her and drinks himself half-blind. Sometimes I give him money to speed him to his grave.”
Harry swallowed. Despite Draco’s flippant words, Harry knew it wasn’t why he gave Ned money at all. He cared. He cared about the senseless death of a random Muggle woman and the man who had been left behind to suffer.
“And the orphanage?”
Draco looked at him wryly. “Voldemort killed a lot of people. He did not care whether or not they left small children behind.”
“But you do.”
Draco glared. “Do not look at me like that. I am not some do-gooder Gryffindor out to save the world. I am simply trying to help.” He scowled and looked away, clenching his hands around his teacup. Harry sensed there was more, possibly volumes, left unspoken, but Draco was defensive now and Harry knew he wouldn’t get much more information out of him. Harry wondered about Daisy, but dared not ask. “What have you been doing since your ignominious departure from the Aurors?”
“It was not ignominious!”
“According to the Daily Prophet it was.”
“According to the Daily Prophet, the way I get out of bed in the morning is a failure to the wizarding world,” Harry grumbled.
“How do you get out of bed?”
Harry blinked at him, but only Draco’s eyes were visible above the rim of the teacup. They seemed to sparkle. “The same way everyone does, you git.”
“Definitely not heroic, then.”
“I don’t think there is a heroic method to getting out of bed—why are we talking about this?”
“You brought it up.”
Harry sighed. Infuriating, that’s what he was. “I’ve been working for the Quibbler.”
“You have?”
“Well, not recently. I was writing articles for a bit, under a penname, of course. And then Luna mentioned that some of the advertisers were looking for someone to… You know, I don’t want to get into this.”
“Oh, now I am curious. Come now, Potter, I just told you my deepest, darkest secret. Surely you can share yours?”
“I don’t plan to ridicule you for yours.”
“Is it worthy of ridicule? Now I must know!”
Draco’s grin was enchanting and the way he leaned over the table towards Harry was… disturbing. That’s what it was. Disturbing, and not at all attractive. Harry knew he should stop talking; just because Draco liked Muggles did not mean he liked Harry.
“I write jingles for the Wizarding Wireless.”
The silence lasted for fully ten heartbeats. Harry gulped his horrible coffee and wondered if he could Obliviate all knowledge of that sentence from Draco’s memory.
“Jingles.”
Harry blushed and supposed he would never have enough skill for delicate Obliviation, and would probably end up eradicating Draco’s memory completely, which would never do. “Catchy songs used to sell products? You know, jingles.”
“I know what jingles are, Potter. Which ones?”
Harry found he could not meet Draco’s eyes. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of his jingles, it was simply that they were… well, he always thought they weren’t very good. “Brushing your teeth won’t take you far, unless you brush with Zanzibar,” he sang in a low tone. “And your happy pet will rub its tummy, whenever you feed it Kneazle Nummy.”
Harry risked a glance at Draco; he looked horrified. “Those are wretched, Potter.”
Harry shut his eyes, mortified to have his own fears confirmed. He groaned. “I know! And yet they keep telling me they like them and I keep writing more. What is wrong with me?” To Harry’s surprise, Draco said nothing. No laughing, no ridicule. He did not even point out the obvious—they bought his jingles because he was Harry Potter.
“Maybe some of them are good?” Draco asked tentatively.
Harry raised his head and looked at Draco. For a moment, just a moment, he thought Draco Malfoy might be the best person in the entire world. Harry felt a smile nearly crack his jaws and realized he probably looked a bit mad. He quickly grabbed his coffee cup and took a gulp to prevent something idiotic from spilling forth. His heart was pounding with the shocking awareness that Draco had just been intentionally kind to him. It was more astounding than seeing him with the Muggles.
“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Harry blurted. He peered into his coffee mug, wondering if the girl had slipped something into his drink. Normally he was not so quick to spew forth stupid statements.
Draco blinked at him. “Eating?” he finally replied.
“Would you like to. Um. Eat with me? Somewhere?” Harry realized he would have to Obliviate himself instead of Draco. It was the only way to forget such awkwardness.
“Why?” Draco asked, which was a perfectly valid question, but one for which Harry had no answer.
“So we can talk more?”
“I did not realize we had anything to talk about.” Draco’s tone was guarded, but not unfriendly.
“We can talk about Quidditch,” Harry said quickly. When Draco said nothing, he added, “It’s not a date.”
Draco’s lips quirked at that. “Are you certain this is not some ploy to enable you to keep an eye on me?”
“That almost seems like a compliment.”
Draco snorted. “That would be giving you credit for cleverness. Where would this not-date Quidditch-talk dinner take place?”
“At my house. Remarkably, I can cook.”
Draco tapped the edge of his teacup with a fingernail and was silent, as though thinking it over. Harry tried not to hold his breath. “Why not?” he said finally.
Harry felt himself grinning like an idiot. He wasn’t sure why Draco Malfoy agreeing to have dinner with him should make him stupidly happy, but now was not the time to analyse it. He fished a scrap of paper from a pocket and Conjured a quill after shooting a quick glance at the preoccupied clerk. He scribbled the address of Grimmauld Place and slid it across to Draco.
“Eight o’clock okay?”
“Fine.”
Harry got to his feet. “I suppose I should go home and tidy up. See you later.”
“All right. Goodbye, Potter.”
“Bye, Draco.” With a nod to the girl in passing, Harry left.