Que Sera Sera

War has a way of destroying all the things you once held sacred. This narrow, cobblestoned street, bordered on both sides by blackened, boarded ruins-this had been Diagon Alley once. In the distance the ruins of the old Ministry building, three years burned, still smoked. Muggle London spread out before him, dismal and dark; Voldemort had done what neither Grindelwald or Hitler had managed: had turned out her lights forever. There was a homeless man on the sidewalk, wrapped in a swath of black cloth with a Hogwarts badge on the breast. Draco rolled down his window and dropped a dozen Galleons into his hand, and turned away as the man scrabbled to contain them in twisted, spell-blasted fingers.

Three blocks further on he drew the car up to the curb and set the alarms. It was a Ministry vehicle, with the morsmordre and the phoenix graven on the number plate. It would be safe enough, much as he disliked the thought of leaving it. He had lost a great deal in the war: his illusions, his wealth, his family, his best friend, his first lover. But he thought that this day might turn out to be the hardest of his life. He turned his collar up to hold off the wind and checked that his wand and his gun were still in his pockets. He climbed through the three strands of barbed wire separating the wizarding and Muggle districts, and began the long walk to the Tower.

He was challenged half a dozen times as he trudged toward the Tower of London, but he did not need to produce the paperwork the Ministry had given him. It was enough to show his mediwizard card; mediwizards and Muggle healers were officially neutrals, and unofficially welcomed on both sides of the city. Three of the challenges were from ordinary MPs in the curious mottled clothing the Muggle military favored; two wore the dark blue uniforms of Home Government. The sixth was a young Asian woman of Muggle extraction, with the Dark Mark tattooed on her cheek. She caught his arm to stop him and said to him, "Voldemort lives."

Draco touched his right forearm with the fingers of his left hand; he was not sure how she recognized him but he knew what she wanted. "And Dumbledore dies," he answered her. They had been Death Eater codes at the beginning of the war, before the Muggles and the Ministry had gotten involved. Now they were only a part of the legend.

At the Tower he showed his identification papers, and was given more papers to sign-in triplicate. The Muggles could not provide decent health care, or keep their children fed, but they were champion at forms. He scrawled his name across them and marked them with his seal, and received into his custody one Harry James Potter, paroled murderer.
He had expected Harry to be changed by his three years away, expected him to be thin and quiet and pale, with long hair and a beard and haunted eyes. The way prisoners looked on leaving Azkaban, or the prisoner-of-war camps both sides had maintained. But Harry was not so much changed as amplified. He seemed bigger, heavier, his arms bulging with muscle under his cheap white prison-issue shirt, his eyes a darker, more poisonous green than ever. He walked beside Draco with the swagger Draco had previously associated with cowboys and Voldemort, and all at once he was afraid.
He touched the gun in his pocket as if it were a talisman and withdrew his fingers quickly. Pansy had said something to him, the night before, something about rabid dogs and kindness. But Harry had been his first lover, his first love, even. That had bound them since they were eleven, and it had survived hatred and love and hatred. It bound them still. The Harry bouncing beside him was one he recognized, but he was also a man capable of shooting Voldemort in cold blood in the middle of a United Wizarding Nations meeting.

In the car Harry stroked the leather seats with envious fingers and Draco had to look away to prevent himself from growing hard. It made him angry, how easily Harry could still rouse him, and when Harry complimented him on his flash ride he couldn't stop himself from snapping back that it was the Ministry's beast. Harry grinned at him and put his feet up on the running board. Only the fact that Draco needed both hands to drive kept him from a slap.

There were so many things Draco had wanted to say to Harry; it was the reason he had volunteered to chauffeur him. Now that he had the chance he could not think of a single one. He and Harry rode in bad-tempered silence and he pretended not to notice Harry staring at the remnants of London. The Muggle riots that had burned the city had begun with Voldemort's death, televised into millions of Muggle homes. The Death Eater raids on the Muggle portions of the city had been after his sentencing. It was hard to tell how much of it Harry had known about, and how much he was just becoming aware of.

They were maybe halfway to the Ministry building when Harry fumbled for a cigarette. Draco watched him light it with a certain amount of fascination; he hadn't seen anyone smoke since the war.

"Want one?" Harry offered. "These things were like Galleons in there."

"No," Draco answered a little too quickly. "I mean--I don't smoke anymore."

"Have one anyway," Harry said, and it was more order than question.

"I'd rather not, really." But Draco could see that wasn't going to work. Harry had already lit the cigarette, and was holding it up with a look on his face that mixed expectation with threat.

Draco took it, and inhaled much too quickly. It burned his throat and made him cough, and Harry smiled the same sweet, tender smile that had drawn him in in the beginning. When they were seventeen, and hated each other. When they were eighteen, and had traded one great passion for another.

"Don't," Harry had said, his thumb gentle on Draco's cheekbone, "I don't want them to know you were crying for me." They had had only a few minutes, and they should not have had even those: a dozen people were looking the other way in order to give them this chance to say goodbye. Harry was going to prison, and when he had gone Draco would go back to his job, back to healing what remained of the troops. It was not a job he was good at, or even suited for, but because it was difficult and unpleasant it allowed him to forget that no one trusted him or liked him but Harry.

And now Harry was a free man, and Draco was a fool, and those green eyes that had been his world burned holes in him. He would not turn to look at Harry, he would not. He looked, but only out of the corner of his eye, and he was nearly sure Harry hadn't noticed. He had lost everything during the war, everything but his pride, and Harry could take that from him now so easily.

"Where exactly are you taking me?" Harry asked, and this time Draco did turn. Harry wasn't looking at him. Draco, irrationally, was annoyed. He hated to be ignored. Flinging the cigarette butt out the window, he muscled the car around a corner too fast and wished he'd let Ron Weasley have chauffeur duty. He watched Harry and tried to think of an answer, and Harry stroked the leather of the seat with absent fingers and watched the city go by.

"I'm supposed to take you to the Ministry," he answered finally. "There are some people there who'd like to talk to you."
Harry swallowed, and lost some of his cocky confidence. "Do you have to?"

Draco tried to be strong. He would not give in to Harry, not this time. Almost before he had finished the thought he found himself saying, "What did you have in mind?"

Harry leaned over and kissed him, so hard that Draco's hands flexed on the steering wheel and he nearly lost control of the car. "Jesus," he said, when he had caught his breath, "you have been deprived." And almost without realizing it, turned the car for home.

War has a way of taking things from you, but sometimes it gives you things you hadn't realized you'd lost. It gave Draco back his soul, his pride, and his heart. Without the war he would never have had Harry.