The Readiness Is All

Draco had never spent the holidays at Hogwarts. He had often wondered what it might be like to remain here--where the castle, with its garish decorations, was fairly drowning in Christmas cheer--rather than return to the pristine apathy that was Christmas at Malfoy Manor. There were twelve Christmas trees in the Great Hall. Draco Malfoy, of all people, could appreciate such excess. Under the circumstances, though, he seemed quite immune to the atmosphere.

Draco didn't know of anywhere--or anyone--to turn to, and so, much of the time, he concentrated on his studies. He spent the handful of days leading up to Christmas Eve holed up in the library or the blissfully empty Slytherin common room. He emerged only for meals--spent diligently ignoring Potter, the idiot, who repeatedly tried to catch Draco's eye--or for the odd midnight stroll. It was cathartic, in a way, to turn out scroll after scroll of parchment, crafting immaculate essays. Draco's intelligence was not his father's doing, and that helped.

It also helped that working kept his mind occupied and at a safe distance from the thoughts trying to push themselves to the forefront of his consciousness: his father, his mother, betrayal, lack of trust. Thoughts of Potter's involvement in all this didn't seem to make him feel bad, per se, just puzzled.

But when his hand grew too tired to write, Draco contented himself with rifling through the mahogany box. After nearly two months of nights spent skulking around the library and eavesdropping on Potter and his lackeys, it was overfull. Draco perused page after pilfered page on communication potions, charms, and spells and allowed himself to dwell--if only a little--on Harry Potter's daftness.

Going through them was comforting. He didn't know why, but Draco wasn't in the habit of questioning the few things that had made him feel sane of late. His father's letter was gone and, along with it, the after effects of Animo Linqui, but Draco felt far from normal. Once he'd resigned himself to the fact that eavesdropping on Potter in the library helped him sleep, Draco had surrendered to it. Now, he simply needed to surrender to this, too.

Sitting in his dormitory, on his bed, the hangings drawn--though there was no one around to disturb him--Draco ran his finger down a list of ingredients on a page he'd stolen from Moste Potente Potions. Two-thirds of the items on the list were illegal. He smirked. Potter had an uncanny affinity for being a meddlesome bastard, but not even Draco could blame him for having visions of Voldemort. He was able to sympathize more than he would like with Potter, with being far too involved with the Dark Lord through no fault of his own. Draco raked a hand through his hair, frustrated, and narrowed his eyes. It always came back to Potter, somehow, didn't it?

But it was time for dinner. Draco closed the box rather more forcefully than he intended, and slid it safely beneath his bed. As he drew back the hangings and stood, a loose page crumpled under his foot. He bent to retrieve it. It detailed the Colloquium Membrana charm. Draco scanned the page, recalling how it had intrigued him, well suited as it was for schoolgirl gossip. He shoved it into his pocket and made his way to out of the dungeons.

****

As Draco entered the Great Hall, he once again found himself a little unsettled by its emptiness. He hadn't fathomed how different, vast it could feel, with less than a hundred students to fill it.

Perhaps all those trees were meant to somehow compensate for the emptiness.

Potter craned his neck in that infuriatingly conspicuous way. Ignoring him utterly, Draco looked straight ahead as he walked to the Slytherin table, where no more than a dozen students sat, not one of whose names he knew.

And like a neutral to his will and matter / Did nothing

.

He found it incredibly hard to eat with Potter glancing across at him every five seconds in a would-be discreet manner from Gryffindor's table.

But Potter was hopeless at being discreet, and this left Draco torn between the urge to laugh and the urge to hurl his plate across the Hall, directly into that leering face. Rather than do either, he kept his gaze fixed on his plate, picked at his food disinterestedly for a few minutes, rose, and left--all the while not looking at Potter.

****

... Peace, sit you down.

Draco retreated to the library (past Divination, behind the shelf on Scrying). Even during the day, he gravitated toward the table from which he'd spied on Potter. It looked less surreal in the absence of an intricate play of shadow and moonlight, but he found residual comfort here and accepted it without question. Draco drew the Colloquium Membrana page from his pocket and flattened it atop the--his--table with the heel of his hand.

He considered the page for barely a moment when, almost without thinking about it, Draco summoned two pieces of fresh parchment from Madame Pince's desk and--with a flourish of his wand and a quiet "colloquium membrana"--performed the charm. Both pieces were momentarily suffused by soft light. Draco gave a small smile. Success.

There was a quiet cough somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoulder.

"You spend more time in here than Hermione, these days, you know."

He looked up, too startled to sneer or resent comparison with a mudblood.

"What are you doing here, Potter?"

He raised and lowered his left shoulder by way of an answer.

God, he was so...

"God, Potter, you're so..."

Draco gave up with a little shake of his head. Potter stood with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched. He was shuffling his feet a little, either uncomfortable with Draco or unable to stand still... probably a bit of both.

"Damnit, Potter, go away... sit down... just stop fidgeting for Christ's sake."

He sat. Draco cursed under his breath.

"So, uh..."

Potter began to drum his fingers absently on the tabletop, looking anywhere but at Draco. So much for getting him to stop fidgeting. He spied the newly enchanted parchment.

"... what're those, then?"

Draco gave him a look.

"Parchment, Potter," he drawled slowly, "I know you routinely skive off on your homework, but I should think that even you would have encountered it by now."

Potter laughs--actually laughs--softly.

"Touché."

And now Draco has no idea what to say, but he opens his mouth, anyway.

"They're charmed, Potter. You do know what that is? A charm?"

Apparently, now Potter can smirk, as well. Draco grimaces and looks away.

"Colloquium Membrana, Potter. You've heard of it?"

A blank look, and a small shake of his head. Back on familiar ground.

"I'm shocked, Potter. Really." Draco doesn't bother mentioning he'd only discovered it himself by stealing pages out of library books in the middle of the night whilst spying on a certain Boy Who Lived. "They can talk to each other."

"... Talk to each other..."

Potter repeats it slowly and the role-reversal throws Draco entirely for a loop. Harry Potter should not go around doling out disdain, of all things and Draco Malfoy has never, ever said anything so appallingly stupid.

"Of course not," he snaps in a last ditch attempt at maintaining the upper hand. "They transmit messages, you git. 'Talk' in the proverbial sense. But I suppose heroes are only capable of thinking literally? After a long day of shameless attention-seeking and martyrdom, metaphor taxes you something fierce, doesn't it?"

"Oh, stuff it, would you, Malfoy?" Draco watched Potter's jaw tense up, just a bit, in anger. "Learn to take some of your own goddamn..."

"Look, Potter, do you want yours or not?"

Christ. He certainly hadn't planned on saying that. Potter looked rather as taken-aback as Draco felt.

Where be your gibes now? Not one to mock your own grinning?

"My what, Malfoy?"

His what, indeed.

"The parchment, you imbecile," as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "One piece is for you."

"For me..."

Potter was looking at him with an expression that quite surpassed confusion.

"Do I sense an echo, Potter?" Draco was sneering for fear of letting his features arrange themselves into a more telling--misleading--expression. "Consider it a Christmas present. You and I both know that I'm fairly swimming in Yuletide joy." He waved a hand carelessly, as if to clear the air of it. "The season never fails to get to me."

He chewed on his bottom lip, and allowed himself to look at Potter--not too expectantly--who had seemingly become entranced by his cuticles.

"Why," he asks his hands, and Draco feels the most ridiculous compulsion to be honest.

"Because."

But he has to do better than that. There is a pause, pregnant with anticipation, and by now Potter must have taken to memorizing the grain of the tabletop. More than anything, Draco wishes he would look up. It might not be so hard if he did.

"Because, Potter, I had a father, but that didn't work out so well. I thought I may as well try having a friend."

Potter's looking at him, now, and Draco was wrong. It's much, much harder this way. He should look down again.

"You want to be friends with me," Potter says flatly and, for some inexplicable reason, Draco's stomach is at his feet.

"Look, Potter, fucking forget it. Terrible idea... even Malfoys have them on rare occasions. I should have known..."

"No! No," Potter's voice sounds curiously shrill, "that's not what I meant. It's not that, it's just... this is dark magic, isn't it?"

Draco has to bite down on his lip very hard, in order keep from laughing, but--thank Christ--his stomach has returned itself safely to his abdomen. Potter is glaring at him, now, cheeks slightly flushed.

"I just don't like... I don't like not knowing where something keeps its brain."

Draco does laugh now--softly, genuinely amused for the first time in what seems like years.

"Oh, sod off, Malfoy," he glowers and snatches a piece of parchment from beneath Draco's hands. "How does this ruddy thing work, anyway?"

"Whatever you write on your piece, miraculously," Draco sweeps an arm through the air in a grandiose, mocking gesture, "shows up on mine." A dramatic pause. "And vice versa. It's just like magic, Potter."

"You're such a bastard. Why I want to subject myself to your company is completely beyond me."

Draco's expression suddenly turned serious.

"My company? Not a chance, Potter. I will not be talking with you in any manner that supercedes this," he nodded toward the parchment. "Whatever misguided notions you had about chatting in the Great Hall like lifelong chums or partnering up in Potions..."

Potter was visibly seething, but he had to understand.

"What the hell, Malfoy? Then why bother with 'this,'" Potter waved his parchment wildly in Draco's face, "at all?"

"I'm serious, Potter. As far as everyone else is concerned, nothing between us changes. I loathe you, you loathe me, the world keeps turning."

"Oh, really. I know you haven't had much experience in the field, Malfoy, but loathing doesn't generally factor into friendship."

"If it means my life, Potter, it will."

"Your life. Oh my God. How melodramatic are you?"

"How thick are you? Must I spell it out for you? If my father is still alive, if he's so worried about tipping Dumbledore off as to use and deceive me... Lucius has eyes and ears in more places than you could possibly imagine... and the Dark Lord..."

The Dark Lord... horridly tricked. With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, / Baked and impasted with the parching streets, / that lend a tyrannous and damned light / To their Lord's murder. Roasted in wrath and fire, / And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore, / With eyes like carbuncles...

Draco had to look away from those infuriating green eyes and take a steadying breath in order to continue.

"... I won't give them any reason to think I'm a liability, Potter. You of all people should understand that. Clearly you thought they were a danger to me in my own home. Why shouldn't they be a danger here, as well?"

"Voldemort wouldn't dare attack the castle with..."

"Dumbledore. Yes. Your faith in him is rather stupidly unflagging, I know. But I haven't any reason to trust him." Draco forced his eyes up. "You don't have to take it, you know, Potter. Don't take it, if you don't want to. But we do this my way or we don't do it at all."

Potter looked at him stonily for a moment and Draco tried to pretend that his heart hadn't, in fact, taken to performing acrobatics.

"Jesus, Malfoy, you are such a bastard."

"Yes, I think we've established that already."

Potter exhaled harshly, stood, and stalked off. He took the parchment with him.

In his most simpering, Hufflepuff voice, Draco called "Happy Christmas!" to his retreating back.

Harry made a decidedly rude hand gesture by way of an answer. A grin spread across Draco's face, unchecked, and he was quite powerless to get rid of it.