Darling Coda: The Same

Darling Coda: The Same

a Harry Potter story

Draco looked up at the trio of Quidditch goal hoops from the center of the pitch. It was early morning; mist clung to the ground, reluctant to leave. He knew the feeling.

It had been nearly a week since the end of the Battle of Hogwarts. His mother and father had both been very reluctant to let him leave their sides, even for the loo, and he didn't argue. Snape was dead. Dumbledore was a portrait and therefore inadmissible in a court, even of Wizarding law. They'd been largely left alone for the first few days afterward, mostly, he thought, because if they hadn't been fighting alongside You Know Who in the end, people were too uncomfortable trying to arrest them.

So he and his mother and father got permission to sleep in the Slytherin dorm, which was pretty well empty anyway, while Aurors and agents of the Light cleared out whatever Death Eaters might have escaped and gone back to the Manor as their home base. Father had protested at first; it was their family home. Their things wouldn't be protected. They had no right-! But Draco had softly murmured, "better than Azkaban though, isn't it?" and his father grew contrite and let it go. The whole family slept together on the couches in front of the fire in the Common Room, not quite ready to split into rooms. Draco slept between his mother and father on the floor the first night, like he was three years old again, with his parents' arms around him.

Scarely a moment went by that he hadn't looked around for his mother in those first few days, whenever it happened that her hand wasn't in his or on his shoulder or cupping his face. When his father had vanished that once to bring them all sandwiches, Draco'd been a wreck, white as a sheet with panic by the time he'd got back. They'd both had to soothe him to stop the frantic babbling about how they'd lied, they'd lied and could never be trusted, and thank goodness no one had stopped to consider that he might have been making sense.

All in all, the war had done wonders for their family unit, so that Draco wondered whether he'd ever be suited to living on his own.

And so it was that misty morning saw him away from his parents for the first time in a week, the strain of the battle and ensuing uncomfortable feeling that they'd be arrested and separated any moment wearing off a little. It was because of his cousin Nymphadora Tonks- er, Lupin, reaching beyond her early grave, that he'd gotten a little brave. She'd left him a letter detailing things Snape had told her about his part in the war, about how things might be difficult, but that she'd helped secure his family's release without anyone knowing details which could not get out.

It'd been made easier by his mother's sacrifice, although Tonks would never know that. The notion left him misty-eyed, and even trying to marshal up anger at the humiliation her marriage to the werewolf had caused his family didn't work to de-Hufflepuff him. His cousin whom he never knew, gone. Snape, the last person to care about his survival save his parents, gone. Dumbledore, the old goat who tried to save him even as he wilted under Draco's shaking wand, gone.

His wand... gone.

"Hey."

Draco started and looked up, swiping the back of his hand across his eyes hastily. When he saw it was Potter, he lowered his brows and got to his feet, looking doubtful. "What do you want?" He looked around like he might be arrested after all.

Potter frowned. "Nothing, nevermind." He turned to go.

Draco closed his eyes and sighed loudly. "What did you want, Potter," he said again, decidedly less combative. He felt tired.

Potter turned back round and gave him a long considering look. "I shouldn't do this," he said, pulling his wand.

Draco's heart stopped for the briefest moment before it started hammering in his chest and he threw up his hands defensively even as he stepped backward. He tripped on nothing and fell gracelessly backward onto his arse.

Potter stared, then laughed derisively. "This is your wand, Malfoy. I thought you might like it back."

Draco narrowed his eyes, willing his heart to slow down. "What?" he said stupidly, trying to work out the trick.

"Your wand," Potter repeated, as though he were speaking to a slow person. "Would you like it back."

Draco looked at his wand, the wand he'd sworn would never be taken from him again, the wand he'd been ordered to give up to his chiefest childhood nemesis, the wand that had crippled him for life, that had tortured Wizards and Muggles alike. Without it, he was defenceless; even if he hadn't gotten his mother's toasted to cinders, he'd have had to give it back to her eventually. All the same, it was tempting to decline, to rebuff Potter's offer the way Potter had rebuffed his seven years prior. To deny himself the opportunity to be bested in a fair fight again, by shifting the odds necessarily in the other party's favour.

But could he really start folding his own clothes or heaving his own trunk? Hardly. He held his hand out for the wand.

Potter used it to heave Draco to his feet, which hurt his weak wrist but seriously warmed his insipid little heart. He frowned. "Thanks," he snapped.

Potter frowned as well. "Don't think because your mum did something decent it means we all love you now. You're just as horrible as ever. Really, staying behind to help your Dark-"

"Doesn't it get tiring," Draco sniped back, "being so good and righteous and judgmental all the time? You have no idea-!"

"Yes I have," Potter said suddenly, softly. His expression had changed. His eyes behind his glasses were ... Draco struggled to describe it - Kind? Even, understanding. "I saw you. Through Vol-" He stopped, probably because Draco winced at the name. "Through him. I saw what... happened with Professor Burbage, with Rowle..."

Draco went white. He remembered. He'd passed out or wanted to throw up or otherwise been terrified for his life, and he did not want Saint Potter privy to that information! He frowned. "Whatever you think-"

"Just shut up, Malfoy," he sighed then, apparently defeated. "I'm trying to say I know. I was on the Tower too, with Dumbledore. I saw you then. I- I think now maybe we should have tried to get you too, that time we were at Malfoy Manor and escaped."

Draco shrugged. "I was covered in blood at the time. I can see how it'd have been inconvenient." Potter looked at him seriously. Draco sighed. "You couldn't have. I'd have drawn them right to you, even if I-" Careful. "Even if I'd wanted to come, which I obviously didn't."

"Yeah..." Potter agreed doubtfully. "But I heard what happened after we got away. I still feel..."

"Sorry?" Draco scoffed.

"Anyway," Potter continued, ignoring him. "Here's your wand back."

"What about your one? I heard it was snapped in half."

"Yeah... I used the uhm, Wand to fix it." Potter looked uncomfortable.

Draco didn't get it. Uber powerful wand? He didn't even get why Potter would want his old wand back, least of all why he was upset at using the amazing one to fix his broken one. "Well if you don't want the really great all-powerful one-" he started, but Potter cut him off.

"You don't want it either," he said. "Even if it'd take you back."

Draco frowned. Not because Potter was right, although he was, but because it'd made him think of something else. "I guess that's the question," he said, mostly to himself.

Potter frowned as well. "I'm sure it'll be fine. If you want, we could duel and I'll let you win," he said brightly, looking disturbingly like he was trying to cheer Draco up.

"No thanks," Draco said, biting back comments of his own about how he hadn't actually dueled him for his wand in the first place, just swiped it from his hand like a thief while Draco was busy bleeding from the face after having been hit with a chandelier. He'd practically handed it to him. "I don't know if it'd work anyway." But getting a new one from Ollivander wasn't appealing, considering his family'd kept him in a cellar dungeon for a year. "How did it, in the first place. I took it from... Sort of. But afterward, er, over the summer-" He'd said too much.

Potter quirked a brow, apparently more intelligent than he looked. "You lost your wand to someone before me?"

Draco looked at him without answering. It wouldn't have risked letting Potter know stuff he couldn't learn, but it wasn't something he wanted to share with the Jerk Who Accidentally Survived.

Potter shrugged when he didn't answer. "Well whoever it was, I guess the wand didn't think they truly defeated you. Or I guess the wand rejected them as a Master or something. Ollivander said the magic involved was really tricky. I dunno why it accepted you though," he joked weakly.

"Knew what it was doing, I spose," Draco answered listlessly. He was tired and drained and hated the whole conversation without wanting it to end, which was a confusion tiring and draining all to itself.

"I suppose," Potter said doubtfully. "Anyway, try it. Don't get discouraged, though; this one works like rot anyway for anything really complicated."

Draco sniffed. "Worked just fine for me," he defended.

Potter smirked. "Not that I've noticed," he sniped.

Draco narrowed his eyes, but Potter was grinning, and it made him want to grin as well, because grinning was pretty contagious even if it was your arch-nemesis doing it, and because the Dark Lo- er, the He Who... er. The bad guy, right, who'd made his life horrible for the past two years and nearly got him killed several times over and who had made his mother into a nervous wreck and his father into a loony monster was dead, and Potter'd killed him, and - "It's a wonder you can notice anything with that mop over your eyes. Ever think of getting a proper haircut, Potter?"

"What," said Potter, chinning toward him, "Like yours?"

Draco patted at his hair, which really had grown quite long and was desperately in need of cutting itself. "At least mine doesn't stick up in back," he jibed mildly.

Potter still had his mouth quirked up in half a grin.

"What?" Draco said, his good mood swiftly dropping into his stomach at the notion he'd missed something.

"Nothing," Potter replied wistfully. "We coulda been friends," he said then, consideringly.

Draco chewed his bottom lip. "No we couldn't have been. Can you imagine it? I'd never have survived that first summer if I'd thrown my lot in with you. Of course if you'd thrown in with me, you'd have been captured and killed before any of us knew your famous Expelliarmus battle cry." Draco shrugged. "It was for the best."

"For the best that you were an evil git?"

Draco frowned and thought a moment. "Yes, I suppose so," he said. "So what are you gonna do now?"

Potter frowned. "What are you gonna do?"

Draco sighed. "Go take a trip, out of the country for a while. Then... come back home, live with my parents. I haven't got the NEWTs to do anything else. They're letting me make some up, on account of my... situation the past couple of years. Which I suppose you think I don't deserve."

Potter sighed dramatically. "Why would you think that? You might be a horrible person, but I'm not. I already said I saw what happened on the Tower. I know you were ... doing what you thought you had to, for your family, to survive. I never did apologise to you, for the bathroom thing."

Draco narrowed his eyes and waited.

"I'm sorry," Potter said then, after a moment. "Maybe if we'd... I don't know. Talked or something. I could have helped you."

Draco scoffed. "Helped me? You'd have got me killed, because if I'd told you what I was doing, you'd have probably killed me yourself. You nearly did that anyway."

Potter seemed to think about that. "Maybe..." he said slowly. "But we'll never know for sure. We're both completely different people now."

Draco thought fondly of Luna Lovegood, before the revulsion of that incident killed the moment for him. "I'm still the same person. I'm a horrible person out to save my own skin, and always will be."

Potter looked right at him and smiled. "No you aren't. You aren't at all the same person."

There wasn't any arguing with the idiot. Draco stuck out his hand for his wand, and again, instead of giving it to him, Potter shook it. Shook his damned hand. Draco burst out laughing, tears welling up in his eyes from mirth. Potter looked affronted. "Can I please just have my wand back?" Draco tittered, shaking his head.

"What? Oh, fine," Potter mumbled, smacking it handle first into Draco's palm. "So... You think we ought to, I dunno, stay in touch? Get a drink now and then?"

"What, couples dating with you and the baby Weasel?"

Potter pinked up. "Maybe," he stammered.

Draco took a moment to imagine it, and it could have been nice, but Snape's words echoed in his mind and his grin drooped slowly into a wistful smile. "I don't think we should, no." It hurt more than he thought it would. Nothing was as he'd wanted it, and yet everything was as it had to be. It was decidedly unfair. In twenty years, he wanted to say, meet me here on this pitch, and I'll explain everything. But even that might have been too much. "See you around, Potter," he said instead, even though he knew he wouldn't.

"Yeah," Potter said, looking doubtful and just a bit disappointed. "See you, Draco."

Draco lifted his brows as the Gryff turned and walked away. Draco? "Bye, Harry," he said softly.