"Sorry, Aunt Petunia."

Chapter 8: Missing Mail

He’d almost forgotten about daring Malfoy to come eat at the Gryffindor table.

Or, well, correction: he had completely forgotten about it until Malfoy actually came to their table.

“And what are you doing here?” Ron sneered from the other side of the table.

It took Harry a second to realize that he was talking about someone behind him, rather than Harry himself. Easy mistake to make, since Ron for some inexplicable reason seemed to have been cross with Harry since last night.

Another second passed before he remembered Malfoy.

“Oh, hi!” he said, turning around. Scooting to the side, he patted the free bit of bench next to him. “Glad to see you here!”

“Of course I’m here,” Malfoy said with a sneer of his own, but maintaining an air of superiority to go with it seemed a bit hard to do when he was simultaneously climbing onto the bench. “Malfoys keep their promises.”

Harry wisely decided not to point out that it was a dare rather than a promise.

“Here, try some of the jacket potatoes!” he said instead, passing the dish over to where an additional plate had appeared in order to accommodate the new arrival. “They’re really good!”

The rest of the table was unusually quiet. Harry looked up, noticing all of them staring at him.

“What?” he said, defensively.

“You… you do realize that this is Malfoy, right? A Slytherin?” Ron said, the emphasis making it clear that he had no idea which one of those was worse.

“Yeah, so? Last I checked it wasn’t illegal to eat at a different table.”

That made most of the others slowly restart their conversations, although Harry was pretty sure that Malfoy would feature in them heavily.

But Ron wouldn’t give up that easily.

“It doesn’t mean he’s welcome here,” he grumpily said, crossing his arms. It was kind of weird to see him forget about his food.

“Actually, Potter invited me yesterday,” Malfoy said, finishing loading his plate. “That means that I am, in fact, welcome.”

“Mate, what were you thinking?” Ron turned to Harry now, who had froze with a fork halfway to his mouth.

“I’m pretty sure I was thinking about how different the food at the Slytherin table is,” he said, popping a piece of chicken inside his mouth.

“How do you even know about that?!”

“I ate at theirs yesterday.” Harry shrugged. Why was it such a big deal?

“Wha-!”

“Mate, just drop it.” Seamus rolled his eyes at Ron. “So, Malfoy, heard the news? Upper years keep saying we’re gonna have flying lessons this week.”

“What, you’re just going to talk to him?!”

“That’s what we usually do during dinner, isn’t it?” Honestly, why was Ron so angry about it?

Ron stood up, stomping off angrily. Deciding to talk about it with him sometime later, Harry turned back to Malfoy. He looked quite smug, but still in the range of normalcy.

“What are we going to fly on?”

***

It turned out that wizards actually flew on brooms. And that Malfoy loved jacket potatoes.

***

The first flying lesson was scheduled for Thursday, directly after lunch.

Malfoy, who so far had stayed away from the Gryffindor table since the first time, decided to join them for breakfast.

Ron, who hadn’t been speaking to Harry since Sunday’s dinner, immediately left the Great Hall, leaving his breakfast half-eaten. It seemed that upholding your principles required quite a lot of sacrifice.

“How come you never get any owl-post?” Malfoy decided that that was a proper way to greet Harry as he was wiggling his way into the bit of free space that he had next to him.

“Who’s supposed to write to me?” Harry snorted, moving a bit. “My aunt and uncle are Muggles.”

“Oh.” Malfoy furrowed his brows, loading up his plate. “What about the fanmail?”

Um, what? Since when- oh. Right. He was considered a celebrity in the wizarding world, as Professor Snape had so aptly put it during their first lesson.

“I’ve never gotten a single piece of mail addressed to me, save for the Hogwarts letter,” Harry said, stuffing his face with bacon. Crispy, warm, perfect, and what was best: cooked by someone else.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Harry shrugged. “Besides, wouldn’t they need my address to write to me?”

“Owls don’t need addresses,” Neville said, broodingly stirring his porridge. Why was he even getting it if he seemed to not like it very much? “You only need the name of who you’re writing to.”

“That seems pretty convenient.” Harry nodded in approval. “Maybe it’s just that no one thought to write, then?”

Malfoy and Neville exchanged glances.

“I wrote a letter when I was seven.” Malfoy shrugged, looking into his plate like it held all the answers in the world. Or tomato slices sprinkled with chives. He seemed to hate chives very much.

“Me too,” Neville added. “Gran said that I should. I bet a lot of people wrote to you.”

Harry blinked at them.

“I’ve honestly never gotten anything,” he said. “I’m so sorry, you must’ve felt awful when you didn’t get any response.”

The moment got broken by the parliament of owls - Granger said once that a group of owls was called that, and Harry only remembered it because he found it funny - swooping down with their mail.

Malfoy and Neville got packages. Harry didn’t.

“Oh!” Neville dug out a glass marble full of white smoke. It kind of reminded Harry of his parents’ wills. Had Neville’s Gran died? Did they send him her will?

“My condolences,” he said, just in case. “I’m sure that your grandma is happy, wherever she is.”

Neville stared at him like he was crazy, ignoring the way the globe lit up with red.

“Potter, what are you talking about?” Malfoy asked, looking just as perplexed.

“Um…” His parents’ wills hadn’t glowed red… “What is that, then?”

“It’s a child’s toy,” Neville said slowly. “A Remembrall, it glows red when you forget something.”

“Why would you think it meant that his grandmother died?” Malfoy didn’t even look smug like he usually did when Harry didn’t know something; he just looked confused.

“I thought it was her last will?” he offered hesitantly.

“Why would they send her last will to me?” Neville put the glowing ball back in the packaging, hiding the entire bundle in his bag. “That’s silly. There would be an official reading at the Ministry-”

“How do you even know what a last will looks like?” Malfoy interrupted. “I didn’t think Muggles could do that?”

Harry didn’t know if he was allowed to tell them about the visit to Gringotts, but he was pretty sure that the answer was “no”.

“Oh, look, it’s so late, I gotta go,” he said, grabbing a couple of bagels and running off.

How long could you avoid a person you shared a dormitory with? At least Malfoy would be easier.