Harry spends his first full moon as a wolf chained to the floor of a barn he doesn't own.
Well. Doesn't own yet.
He'd found the place, empty and perfect for his needs, three days after portkeying to Marian. He'd made a cash offer that same night, but even with a thirty-day close that meant he didn't sign the paperwork until eight days after the full moon.
He'd figured it was a good test, anyway.
He didn't escape.
No one called the police.
No one got hurt.
He signs the paperwork a week later and makes a mental note to buy more chains for the following full moon. Just to be safe.
It's a beautiful piece of property. One hundred and thirteen acres. Two barns. A full creek. An assortment of ponds. It's mostly overgrown, terraced, fields connected by red-dirt roads and surrounded on all sides by shockingly tall trees, insulated by thick undergrowth. The first night, he opens the hayloft doors in the smaller barn and sits with his legs hanging over the edge, bare heels against sun-warmed metal siding, looking at a sky full of bright, bright stars. It's so quiet, but simultaneously not: the night air a susurrus of nature-sounds that helps to settle the pacing, anxious, thing, that's taken up residence in his chest.
He thinks that, maybe, he could be happy here.
He spends his first week as a home-owner (barn-owner?) dealing with plumbers and electricians and a very inept AT&T installation technician who takes several days to set up his wifi. He makes three trips in the same number of days to the nearest superstore—a Piggly Wiggly—for cleaning supplies.
It's during the second trip, when he's trying to figure out what cleaner is mostly likely to get rid of old horse piss stains, that he's suddenly certain he can smell Draco Malfoy.
Which is absurd on a number of levels.
First, he can hardly smell anything because the overpowering scent of detergent has probably burned out the majority of his supernatural olfactory senses. Second, Draco Malfoy wouldn't be caught dead in America, much less in Alabama. Third, he shouldn't know what Malfoy smells like anyway.
He turns to look in the direction of the scent, more or less instinct, but there's nothing there. After a few minutes, he leaves his trolley and circles a few other aisles just to be sure. Still nothing.
He finishes his shopping and tries not to think about Draco sodding Malfoy anymore.
He's mostly successful until, a week later, he walks into the only grocery store in Marian and—there he is.
In khakis and a long-sleeved white shirt despite the heat.
Malfoy has always been skinny. Pointy. Angular.
But he's not just skinny, now. He's—emaciated. And even that word, awful as it is, doesn't feel suitably shocking enough for the change. Malfoy's cheekbones are so prominent they look painful. His hair, hair that used to be beautiful, Harry will grudgingly admit, is lank and brittle.
He looks like he should be at St. Mungo's, not stocking shelves.
And what the hell is he doing stocking shelves at a muggle grocery store in the middle of nowhere in Alabama?
Harry doesn't remember much of their following interaction but he does know that
Malfoy is still a cantankerous bastard, and more than once Harry wants to shake him. He looks like he might break if Harry did, though.
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Way Down We Go
FanfictionTHIS WORK BELONGS TO xiaq ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN. The war was over. Or at least that's what the papers said. They'd been saying it, for months, as if people needed reminding. Maybe they did. *** In which Harry and Draco both run away from their past...
