Gloria

Harry Potter saved the world again at four twenty two p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. It was in retrospect a relatively simple matter; he got dressed up in a slightly tattered old suit, insisting that he had to dress for the occasion, set a much loved tweed trilby on his head, tucked his wand into his pocket and emerged from the rambling building he lived in. He was careful to dislodge as little of the ivy and creeping vines as he could, and left the small cast iron gate swinging in the wind behind him.

He did have a certain image to live up to, and that image said that he was dead as far as most people knew and Godric's Hollow long abandoned.

Cedric had enough food and water to last several days, and all the windows and doors were shut - he was as safe and secure as Harry could possibly make him, and that was how things were between the man and his dog.

By three-oh-five he was walking along the streets of Bristol, and by three-twelve he'd apparated to the distant field in Sussex where yet another final battle was about to take place.

A small ring of Ministry personnel waited for him there, huddled together in thick coats and gloves against the January chill. They looked at Harry as if they thought he might freeze, and maybe he should have. Harry gave them a thin smile, knowing that in days to come they'd speak of The Young Man Who Didn't Feel The Cold. They were probably also quite surprised he wasn't dead, but then again, so was he.

Draco wasn't there of course; Harry had left strict instructions about that, which was why Draco was probably sitting anxiously in Somerset and sipping lemon tea to attempt to get rid of the knot in his gut. It wouldn't work, but that really wasn't the point, and knowing Draco he'd be at Malfoy Manor in his mother's old parlour.

The young Malfoy had a thing for self-recrimination and punishment; the tea cup would be his mother's finest china, and lemon was always Narcissa's favourite blend. It was her only tendency towards the plebeian, and Draco would remember that as he remembered everything else.

The bunch of Ministry people didn't speak to him, although one did make a lame attempt at a wave. Harry just looked at him until he stopped. He needed no consideration, no adulation; he was just there to do his job, as were they. To watch and record and fall back if anything went wrong.

There was a small hut on one side of the field; it looked like mud brick, white washed and cast iron roof. Harry just jammed his trilby on tighter so the wind wouldn't blow it off as he strode towards the hut. One brief look over it just before he went inside, and clearly dastardly evil had lost a lot of its street cred if these were the digs it could find nowadays.

Wand at the ready, Harry Potter entered the small daubed lean-to at three-twenty. He emerged from the hut at four twenty five p.m., a little shaky and a little scuffed around the edges. His trilby had disappeared and no-one was quite willing to ask where it had gone. The five or so Ministry personnel waited on the edge of the field, wands at the ready, and didn't blink when Harry Potter doffed a hat that was no longer there before he Apparated away.

He could have been possessed or under Imperius, but they doubted that, and even so they knew they couldn't have stopped him. After all, Harry was supposed to be dead, and this technically never happened, so the five figures just disappeared as well, and the day was lost to history.

Harry Potter arrived home at four-thirty-five p.m. on a Sunday afternoon having just saved the world, and made himself a cup of tea. He made sure that Cedric was alright, and looked through the pantry to see what he could rustle up for dinner. After another look at his dog, pulled out a stack of Post-It Notes from a drawer, cribbed a pen from somewhere and wrote out in a messy, basic hand "Tomorrow: Wash Dog."

The night went both slow and fast, with Harry settling in to watch Sunday night telly behind a plate of spaghetti bolognaise. He checked his watch every now and then, and the ticking of the clocks lined up along the wall made him drift off to sleep. When he woke up Monday morning it was eight-sixteen a.m., and someone was singing badly in the kitchen.

The dishes had already been cleared.

Harry rubbed the cobwebs from his eyes, found his slippers, and trundled into the kitchen, where Draco Malfoy was the one singing off key, and looking somewhat anxiously at the pile of dishes in the sink, a bottle of detergent clasped by a pale hand that was never as well manicured as he wanted it to be.

It was eight-twenty when Harry showed him how to do the dishes the Muggle way, and eight-twenty-five when he asked Draco what he was doing here.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Draco, drying plates as the young man handed them to him, and set them aside to be put away later.

Draco nodded to the suitcases that stood by the kitchen door. Harry had seen them when he came into the room, but having Draco acknowledge them made them real. "I thought I'd move in," he said simply, and handed Harry a fork.

"Did you now?" Harry remarked, and placed the fork with all the other cutlery that was waiting to be shelved.

"I did. After all, I'm the only one who knows you're here. Seeing as how I'm now here with you, you can make sure no one learns your secret."

"I could kill you," Harry told him as if they were discussing the weather, and moved to start putting the kitchen things away. Tick went the clocks in the background, tick tock and it was eight-thirty-seven now.

"You could," Draco said, and didn't miss a beat. "You could very easily, and I might even be good for the gardenias out back. But I don't think you will."

"I do things Muggle style here. You'll go mad."

"Have you seen the way they're doing things back home now?" Draco enquired tartly, and instantly regretted it. "No, I suppose you haven't. Anyway, there's barely enough difference to piss over."

Harry blinked, and pushed his glasses a little more securely up his nose. "Right. You can wash Cedric tomorrow then."

This was how Draco moved into Godric's Hollow, and how Harry did not stop him.

As promised, on the first day Harry got Draco to wash Cedric, although Draco ended up the wetter after that encounter. On the second he put bleach rather than washing powder in with the laundry and ruined a load of washing. On the third he burnt supper, and they were up till all hours cleaning the oven out. On the fourth he cut himself while shaving, and tried not to complain. Harry had all the mirrors covered off with cloth; those he couldn't remove completely at any rate, and when Draco pointed to his bleeding face, Harry airily commented that it didn't take long for one to learn to shave without a mirror. On the fifth Draco managed to succeed with dinner, but he clumsily asked why every room in the drafty old house had more than one clock ticking away, and Harry watched B.B.C. One for the rest of the night while pointedly not talking to him. Draco didn't raise the subject again of course; he'd been brought up to know that the customs of a household ran deeper than any law, and that was doubly so when you used to fuck the host. As recompense Draco took Cedric for a walk on the sixth day, and nearly ended up with a fine not knowing how to clean up behind him, and on the seventh Draco finally cracked under the constant sound of time passing, and grabbed one round, tubby clock from a bookshelf to hurl it at the wall.

Harry moved like a mad thing, pinning him up against the wall and taking the clock gingerly, so gingerly out of Draco's hand to set it back on the bookshelf where it just kept ticking along.

"Why do you have so many clocks, Harry?" Draco asked quietly, and picked himself up from off the wall. "You only had a few last time I was here; I certainly didn't notice the noise."

"You came back," Harry told him, and sank slowly onto the couch. "And the world came back and I wasn't a part of it any more no I wasn't. I knew that sooner or later I'd help you, and then there would be something else and something else. I couldn't escape it any more, so I wanted to capture it. Measure it. I could be dead in a second; I will be dead in a second. Already am dead, depending on how you look at it." He chuckled slightly, and drew his knees up under his chin. "A second is all we have, Draco. I wanted to be sure of the time."

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, Draco thought, but he didn't dare say it. "And the mirrors?" Draco asked, and it was nine-oh-eight p.m.

"I didn't want to see myself," Harry murmured, face pressed into his thighs. "Not after what I've done. No. I am not that person. I am no general, I am no killer. I never did the wrong things for the right reasons and I did not do them again for you and the world, although not necessarily in that order."

"Harry, no-one's ever asking you to-"

"I'm not Voldemort," Harry said, and his head came up so fast Draco briefly wondered if he got whiplash as a result. "He wanted me to be, you know. I could feel him. I understood everything he did, and I knew he was right, but I had to kill him. I had to kill him so I wouldn't turn into him, although by killing him I lost who I was. The reflection in the mirror isn't me; it's him. I'm older than I appear to be and alone and I have a dog called Cedric and the name means nothing and I buy my groceries between nine-twenty a.m. and nine-fifty a.m. every Thursday morning and the world has passed me by."

He started shivering despite the fact it wasn't actually cold, and Draco moved across the floor to him, slow and obvious, careful not to make any sudden moves. He had seen enough of the War and its aftermath to have a vague idea how to tread here, and Draco Malfoy had been made cautious by the War.

"You remember who I used to be, don't you?" Harry asked him softly, face turned up to see Draco as he moved forward, and his eyes were so big behind his glasses.

"I do," and Draco sat besides him on the old and faded couch, sure to slip one arm around his waist.

"You always were my best mirror," was the sleepy reply. "Better than any glass."

Draco got him up to bed - they weren't sleeping in the same bed, it wasn't the right time and Draco didn't want to move too quickly - but he undressed Harry as gently as he could, and was surprised when Harry's hands snaked themselves up his shirt to cup his face, and pull him down for a slow, languid kiss, tongue moving slyly between Draco's lips to map his mouth so thoroughly Draco wondered if Harry was trying to memorise the shape, the taste, the texture of teeth and jaw and palate, and perhaps he was at that.

Still clothed, Draco settled himself in the small cot he'd made up against a wall, and pulled the blanket over his body. There was always tomorrow, and the last syllable of recorded time would not wait.

The next morning Draco rose (at seven-fifty-seven a.m.), showered (at eight-oh-four to eight-oh-nine a.m.) at which point Harry joined him and they continued to shower together until eight-forty-three. That morning Draco cooked breakfast: eggs, bacon, toast, things even he could find were not too easy to ruin and he had it on the table at nine-eleven.

"I never answered your question," Draco remarked as he was carting away the dishes, and he didn't need to turn to see Harry pressed lightly against his side.

"What question?"

"About whether I wanted to be you or not."

"Oh, I think you have," said Harry, and kissed his ear to end the conversation.

Precisely one hour and twelve minutes later, and they were enjoying tea and biscuits in front of the telly. Harry had explained what Sainsbury's was, and was now attempting to make a good showing of what exactly Basil Brush was, but Draco seemed distracted.

"You get used to the clocks, after a while," Harry told him, honest and open and eager, and Draco nodded once in response.

"I expect I shall, after a while."