Twelve Steps

Chapter Four

"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

- Al-Anon Family Groups

* * * * *

The next day, Draco was determined not to speak to Potter at all, not even to chastise him. He made it as far as lunch before his resolve broke.

It was impossible not to comment on the obscene way in which Potter tore into his veal flank, especially when Draco himself had been nearly doubled over with hunger pangs all morning. He glared resentfully as Potter chomped, closed his eyes in a fit of gustatory ecstasy, and proceeded to run his tongue over his lips. It was the most revolting thing Draco had seen since the ceremony in which he had received the Dark Mark. Scowling, he sipped at his tepid cup of tea, which the Muggles had refused to sweeten with sugar. Instead, they had handed him a carnation pink packet; Draco suspected it contained some sort of Muggle poison, so he had pushed it to the far side of the table.

"Have you no shame, Potter?" he snapped with irritation. After all, he thought, Potter should be awash in shame and misery. It was his negligence that had landed them here in the first place. And now Potter had the gall to act like a jovial barbarian from the wilds of the Forbidden Forest. "Even the Muggles exhibit better table manners. Didn't they bother to teach you anything?"

Potter blinked at him guilelessly. "Actually, they did teach me how to do a bit of cooking."

Draco stared. "They what?" On some level, he had known that Potter hadn't had house elves around to cater to his every whim. But still...cooking?

Cheeks flushing, Potter turned his attention back to his meal. In between heaping mouthfuls, he said, "It's a long story, and one I'm sure you don't want to hear. Anyway, I don't know about you, but I haven't eaten much of anything in two months, and I think I could swallow a Hippogriff at this point. Besides, I don't think anyone else cares what I do with my food. They don't seem particularly eager to befriend us, you know."

Startled, Draco glanced around the vast expanse of the cafeteria. Sure enough, the other patients all occupied a table on the other side of the cavernous room. From time to time, they darted furtive glances over at Potter's back. None of them would meet Draco's eyes except for the 'bulimic' woman, whom he caught gazing at him avidly. She then blushed crimson and looked away.

"That's probably because they've poisoned your veal and are biding their time until the convulsions begin," Draco sneered, pushing his own plate even further away. Even though they knew by now that he left his plates virtually untouched, the persistent nurses still continued to serve him.

To his chagrin, Potter let out an amused snicker. "You really are paranoid, Malfoy. I've been eating Muggle food for most of my life and I'm still here. Plus, this isn't even veal. Do you really think they'd serve gourmet meals to the patients at a place like this? Some of them are so out of it that they aren't even capable of chewing their own food."

Draco eyed the slab of grime on his plate with renewed suspicion. "What is it, then?"

"It's soy." When Draco returned his gaze with blank incomprehension, he sighed. "Soybeans, you know? It's supposed to be healthier for you than real meat."

"And how did you come by this fascinating tidbit of Muggle lore, Potter?"

"Well, my aunt was always putting my cousin on a diet, and she'd put me on it too. It's really not that bad, once you get used to it."

Poking the "soy" steak experimentally with his plastic fork, Draco contemplated the wisdom of actually sampling it versus facing yet another afternoon of dizziness and vulgar noises emanating from his stomach. Potter interrupted his deliberations. For someone who had been drugged, lost all of his friends, and now suffered from horrific nightmares, Potter seemed to have recovered his equanimity with remarkable speed.

"I swear, Malfoy, it won't bite you. Muggles prepared it, not Hagrid." Draco glared balefully at him. "All right, all right; don't eat, then. Just don't blame me if you end up looking like a refugee from Azkaban--oh, Merlin, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

Scrupulously avoiding all thoughts of his father, Azkaban, and the Dementors, Draco hacked off a slice of rubbery steak and began to gnaw on it. He would not talk to Harry Potter again. Once his hunger had abated, there would be no reason to allow Potter to goad him into yet another argument.

* * * * *

This time, Draco's resolution lasted all the way through their daily group therapy session. He purposely arrived late to the group, only to discover that the one remaining seat was next to Potter's. He again ignored the Muggles' pathetic whinging and managed to avoid looking at Potter except on two brief occasions, when his eyes inadvertently wandered in the other man's direction. Potter sat silent and brooding, dwarfed by the checkered upholstery of his massive armchair. When the circle reached him, he said only that he was not yet ready to speak. Then it was Draco's turn.

"Damien, would you like to share anything with us today? You've been very quiet lately," remarked Rain, her eyes brimming over with sympathy. She glanced back and forth between Draco and Potter. It was obvious from the previous day's conversation that they knew each other, and Draco could see the speculation in her eyes about the nature of their relationship. The meddlesome woman would probably draw him aside later and ask, in her most cloying voice, if they were in a tiff.

"No," Draco growled, and that was the end of that.

At the conclusion of the hour, they gathered into the traditional circle in order to recite the Serenity Prayer. Draco had been dreading this; it meant that he would be forced to hold Potter's hand. The greasy Gryffindor probably hasn't even bothered to wash his hands or his hair since he got here.

When Potter's hand slipped into his own, however, it felt freshly scrubbed, if a bit clammy. His fingers twined in Draco's ever so briefly, calluses from years of Quidditch practice and months of grueling battle rough against his smooth, pureblood palm. Although Draco's fingers were longer, Potter's hand was larger, and his own hand fit neatly into--I am not thinking about this! Potter killed my mother with those hands.

Shuddering with rage, he snatched his hand out of Potter's at the first opportunity and headed back to his room, slamming the door behind him. After several minutes, Potter had yet to return, and Draco began to rummage through his drawers. He was desperate to find an outlet for the fever that coursed through his veins and stung his skin in pinpricks of rising heat. A frenzied search yielded only the pair of nail-clippers that he had used to garner a blood sample for his potion. Before he quite realised what he was doing, Draco had shut himself in the bathroom. Extra blood, he told himself, could only strengthen the potency of his potion.

This is a bloody ridiculous addiction, Draco thought later, staring down at the mess of congealed blood that was spattered along his calf. What pleasure could the Muggles possibly derive from this?

As lacerating his leg had done little to dull his rancor, he hastily tended to his wounds and began another catalogue of the contents of the room. Potter still had not arrived, and Draco found himself rifling through the other man's scant personal effects. Very little remained of Potter's belongings from the days before the war: a portrait of his parents, the glass cracked; a picture of the famous Gryffindor trio smiling and waving jubilantly at the camera after a Quidditch match, stained with pumpkin juice; a stack of tattered Chocolate Frog cards. Draco recognised one of the infamous Weasley jumpers and caught himself sneering, even though there were no Weasley children left at which to jeer. In the topmost bureau drawer, a sheaf of papers caught his eye.

Potter, he saw with dismay, had taken this Twelve Step flim-flam to heart. He was actually following the path of indoctrination outlined by the many pamphlets that Draco himself had disposed of soon after he had received them. On one of the pages, Potter had jotted down two brief lists of words, under a scribbled heading that Draco could barely make out as a "Moral Inventory."

In one column, presumably the positive one, Potter had amassed a list of his positive qualities. Draco smirked; they comprised such vaunted Gryffindor traits as honesty, bravery, dedication, loyalty, and generosity. Scanning the other side of the page reflexively, he noted that Potter's list of flaws was half again as long as his virtues. His perceived inadequacies included insensitivity, preemptive judgement, stubbornness, grudge-holding, refusing to trust others, pride, and...

Draco stared, doubting his own perfect vision. He rubbed at his eyes with one hand while an errant finger traced over the words, penned in cheap red Muggle ink, in disbelief.

At the bottom of the page, written in a nearly illegible scrawl, was the word "homosexuality."

He was jolted from his shock by the ominous creak of the bedroom door. Then Potter was beside him, his usually bland features contorted in an aggrieved scowl. He snatched the papers out of Draco's outstretched hand and stuffed them back into the drawer, shoving the handle forward with such force that the edges were crushed. Draco clambered to his feet, still gathering his wits. Potter, he thought incredulously, is a poof. He had spent vast amounts of time and money concealing his own predilections, certain that Potter would have used them as ammunition in their endless verbal sparring matches. Now it occurred to him that Potter might have been distressed about the very same thing.

"Just what you do think you're doing, Malfoy?" Potter seethed, waving his arm in a deranged circle to indicate the rest of the room. "I'm your roommate, not your property. You have no right to browse through my belongings like you're on a shopping trip!"

"I was merely correcting your papers, Potter," Draco said with a languid smirk, trying to mask his discomfiture. "You've always received low marks for your parchments, and I thought you might appreciate some assistance from someone who was brought up in civilised society."

Potter nearly choked. "We're not at Hogwarts, Malfoy!"

Draco gestured toward the drawer. "Perhaps the esteemed Professor McGonagall should have held you back a year, then. The last time I checked, uphill gardening was not a criminal offence--at least not in our world, that is. Neither is it a personality trait. Some purebloods even count it as a sign of good taste."

"Uphill what?" Potter spluttered.

Clucking his tongue, Draco lounged back on his own bed. "Your vocabulary leaves much to be desired. Shall I rephrase?" When Potter failed to respond, he went on with acerbic scorn. "It is no sin, as these mindless Muggles call it, to find fellow wizards attractive. Especially when you consider the poor breeding of many of the Mudblood witches these days."

The last comment must have hit home; when he looked up, Potter was facing the wall, his sinewy frame trembling ever so slightly. His shoulders were hunched over, and when his voice came out, it was much softer than before.

"What, so you're going to taunt me for the rest of my life, now? I didn't choose to be this way. I tried not to--how dare you invade my--"

"Potter," Draco cut in, scrambling off of the bed. Against his better judgement, he found his hand snaking forward to brush Potter's shoulder, but he withdrew it before the other man noticed. "That would be the pot calling the cauldron black, now, wouldn't it?"

Potter whirled to face him, comprehension washing the shock off of his features in a sudden, drenching wave. "You, Malfoy? But you and Pansy Parkinson were always snogging all over the place."

Draco stepped back swiftly, mentally berating himself for having revealed so much. Why had Potter such an uncanny knack for ferreting out the chinks in his own armour?

"A pureblood heir," he explained derisively, "must produce a steady line of descendants, regardless of his or her proclivities. Had you been properly educated, I would not be obliged to waste my time imparting such obvious information to you."

A faint noise emerged from Potter's gaping mouth, but it bore no resemblance to speech. He continued to stare at Draco, but his eyebrows had drawn together in an expression that Draco would have termed pity, had he seen it on any other face. Unable to confront the idea of empathy from his one-time rival, he pivoted on his heel and walked toward the door.

"Come on," Draco muttered. "We'll be late for the prayer hour, and it sounds as if you ought to have a discussion with those Muggle deities of yours."

* * * * *