Harry’s voice is only a whisper. “You do.”
Draco throws his hand off, steps away, and maybe they are not talking about protection anymore but he still does not stop. “I don’t. You’ll realize it one day.”
“Damn it.” Harry’s curse is hissed under his breath, but his next words are loud. “I don’t care, alright! I don’t care about your dad, I don’t care that you fought against me, I don’t care that you used to hate me and that I used to hate you because we were absolute cocks to each other in school, okay? None of that matters to me.” He takes a step closer. “The only thing that matters to me is this. You. Us.”
There is no us, Draco wants to sneer, but he is learning not to be cruel all the time.
“I know! You said!” He yells instead, throwing his hands in the air, because it is all so unfair, all the time. “You’re trying to save me because you don’t think I deserve it. But guess what, Potter? Obviously, some people don’t agree with you.”
“Then to Hell with them.” Harry stares at him for a long time, and then rounds the table, getting so close to Draco that he half expects another punch. “This isn’t about saving you, you git. This is about being your friend. Because I care about you, not because I want to wash away your past sins or make your the new wizarding saint, or whatever the hell you think is going on, alright? This is just you and me.”
Draco is still breathing hard and ready for another fight, but really, he’s in too much pain to stay angry. “Two mates against the world, just looking out for each other?”
When Harry turns to look back at him, Draco gets the sense that he has said something wrong, though he can’t imagine what. “Sure,” Harry says, and Draco chalks the flat tone up to being just the aftermath of the fight. “Something like that.”
Chapter 13
Harry
Percy’s got a project.
He tells it to them over a drink at the Hog’s Head, standing in front of the room with his eyes shining, glistening over with tears. Glistening with the ghosts of his pasts, Rita had wrote once, and now looking at Percy he had an idea of what that was supposed to look like.
“This was a horrible, horrible thing. The war.” Percy swallowed hard, and Harry drank the rest of his beer just to give himself something to do. Beside him, Draco’s hand found his way onto Harry’s leg underneath the table, forcing it to stay still and then let go. “But it was history in the making. And someone has to tell it, to make sure the people who come after us know how it started, so they can see the next Voldemort for what he is—just a man.”
The sentence was almost a mirror image of the thing that Harry had been trying to convince himself of since the final battle. How in the end Tom Riddle was only Tom, and when he died he did not go out in a blaze of glory or for a cause, he only fell hard and final on the cold ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Like he really was only a man.
“There were a lot of people who did good things during that time. And there were people who did bad things. When he first rose to power and seemed to have been defeated, we tried to shove all the memories under the rug, and none of us knew anything about it. But this time we’re not making mistakes. There were heroes in this war, some of them in this very room.” He raises his glass in a semblance of a toast, and the people around Harry were nodding. George pounded his glass down on the wooden table, and there was a answering cheer as they looked around at each other. Everyone in this room had fought, everyone was forced to grieve. “We should know their names.”
Harry knew that all of them had gotten a little obsessed with something after the war. For Percy, it was recollection, of hearing all the stories and getting them down as fast as he could, the right way, with the biases. He didn’t want anyone who died for the cause to be given over to oblivion, their names erased and with no one to remember them. And he didn’t want anyone to forget the sins of those who fought on the wrong side.
“I don’t want another group of kids to grow up like we did.” The moment, with Percy standing in front of them, reminds Harry fiercely of the time when Hermione stood in front of them all and tried to start Dumbledore’s Army. It makes a lump rise in his throat and he swallows it down. “We don’t need another fight like this. So please, help me?”
There is silence, where Percy looks unsure for the first time during this whole speech. And then, just as Harry knew he would be, he makes himself be the first one to stand.
His chair scrapes on the stone, making everyone wince, but he worms his way through the jumble of legs and chairs and tables to the front of the room. Percy smiles and claps him on the back, like he had done something special. Harry smiles back. “Where do I sign?”
In the end, his name is first on the list.
Draco’s is second.
It starts immediately.
Percy has schedule drawn up for them, and they all take slots. Harry, Ron, and Hermione would have to do an interview together. “We can just have you meet at the burrow.” He looks excited, but also pale and drawn. “It’ll be a long night.”
Harry doesn’t want to talk about it. If he talks about it, he might have to talk about how it started, with his parents. He’ll take about basilisk fang in his arm and the burn of phoenix tears, about a man who lived as a rat for thirteen years and was killed by a molten hand because he made the mistake of mercy, about Dobby, about Sirius disappearing into a veil, about what happened in that forest. He doesn’t want to think about it, so he pushes the prospect of the interview away and lets it form a knot in his stomach, and when Draco asks him if he’s alright he always says yes, no matter how tense and defensive it may sound.
He goes to meet Ron at a muggle pub. They always meet at muggle places now, both so they are not recognized and because Ron has developed a taste for everything fried. It works, to be able to sit and pretend to be normal.
“I still can’t believe we’re doing this,” Harry says, talking about the next day, how they will let everyone pry into to what they never talked about.
“It’s important. Remus, Tonks, Mad-Eye, Fred—they deserve to be remembered, don’t you think?” Then, as an afterthought, “so do we, for that matter.”
“Still, it seems…” Private? Special? Wrong, to talk about what they have kept close to their chest for so long? “Odd.”
“Maybe.” Ron shrugs, drains the rest of his beer. “But if it keeps my kids from being taught about goblin wars in history class, then so be it.”
Harry laughs. Somehow, maybe because it was so boring, history class and Professor Binns came out of the war unscathed, with nothing to taint those dull afternoon classes. “He’ll still make them fall asleep.”
Ron smiles, tugs on his jacket, and lays a heavy hand on Harry’s shoulders. “And so it goes.”
Draco
He’s at the Burrow.
Draco had sworn that no matter how close he got with Harry, no matter how much Hermione seemed to like him, even if he was friends with George, he would not set foot here. He did not want to picture the place where Ron had grown up, did not want to be able to feel the holes that Fred Weasley’s death had left in this house. But when Harry tells him that that’s where he’s doing the interview, and asks if Draco would like to come along, just for support, he couldn’t find it in himself to say no.
So now he’s here, drinking lukewarm tea from a chipped mug and listening as the story spins out. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were squeezed onto the couch, Percy sitting across from them. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley (call us Molly and Arthur, dear, no need for formalities) were watching it all, just like he was.
There was a lot to talk about. Draco wasn’t aware that there was so much. About the first year, and starting the fight. About their second year and the Chamber of Secrets, how Hermione figured it out and Ron stole Lockheart’s memory and Harry almost died, but they destroyed the first Horcrux. About third year and wormtail, fourth year and the first time that death came to them, the start of the war. And then fifth year, about battle plans and dreams and scars on the backs of their hands that won’t go away, a night at the ministry they won’t ever forget, about veils and duels and lying brains that break your bones.
It had been eight hours already, and they were only on the sixth year.
It was draining work, but none of them showed signs of stopping. Harry was tracing the words writing across the back of his palm, and Ron’s voice was hoarse from all the talking, and Hermione had cried so much it seemed like she was out of tears, but here they were, warriors to the end.
It was Draco who broke first, leaving through the back door as quietly as he could muttering about fresh air, all because he could not take this year. This year meant cursed necklaces and poisoned mead and a boy shouting a curse in the bathroom and then blood, so much of it, about a night in the astronomy tower and a body crumpling on the castle grounds like a little rag doll. He could not take that, and because he is a coward instead of a soldier, he leaves.
But then he wishes that he had stayed inside, because now he was face to face with Molly, who was staring out at her backyard with tears slipping down her face, just the barest twitch of a smile on her lips.
He does not ask her if she is alright. He does not have the words to fix this for her, but Molly speaks anyways.
“I brought them up the best as I could. Tried to raise good children that would become even better people, even in the middle of a war I tried. And then Harry ended the war and I thought they could all be safe. I was wrong.” She breaks down crying, and then takes a few gulps of air before calming down again. “I tried to raise children but ended up with warriors instead. I never could quite figure out how that happened.”
Draco wants to tell her that she didn’t do anything wrong. that the fact that they were ready to fight showed that she did everything right, that her children were brave and good and kind, and every other thing that a mother dreams of. But she knew this already. That was not what her tears were for, but he did not have the words to fix that, so he puts a hand on her shoulder and lets her lean on him for support until her sobs were done.
And when they were ready, they went to face the story inside together.
Harry
He knows he shouldn’t be listening.
Percy had come two hours ago, walking through the house with the same authority that he used to have when he was a prefect. He had a bag slung over his back and a binder tuck under his arm, ink stains already splattered on his fingers. and then he and Draco disappeared up into the library.
Harry knew that if Draco wanted him to know what was being said, they would have done it in the kitchen of the living room. Still, that doesn’t stop him from pausing outside the door when he goes to bed, watching them both from the doorframe.
Neither Percy or Draco sees him. Harry knows he should walk away, but he can’t, not when Draco’s shoulders are hunched in like that and there are tears streaming down both his and Percy’s cheeks. He wants to storm in and tell them both that the interview is over, because he does not want to see Draco in pain, but that is not his choice to make.
“If you could tell people one thing,” Percy says, and Harry gets the feeling that it’s almost over anyways. “One thing about what you’ve told me here today, what would it be?”
