“And Death came to find me right after that.” Harry says, breaking another biscuit into small pieces on the plate. There are three left intact now. “Well, a couple days later.”
“You saw me descend to madness.” Draco says, rubbing his eyes. “Greg and Remus call that day my lowest point.”
“They told you that?”
“No, I was pretending to be asleep to listen to them talking about me.”
“Hm.” Harry hums with a soft smile, brushing crumbs from his fingers.
He sits back on the sofa, looking across at Draco. He looks good. He always looks lovely, but the last time Harry had seen him was that day at Grimmauld, where Draco was skeletal and exhausted and a little bit manic. More than a little, actually.
Draco now is still pale, but with pink to his cheeks and life to his eyes. The insane glint has faded, settled in his features. Still there, but lessened. Tempered.
“You seem much healthier.” Harry tells him. “Much more alive.”
“I feel more alive.” Draco says. “I don’t feel like I’m living on borrowed time anymore. I don’t feel like I’m one day away from certain doom.”
Releasing a heavy sigh, Harry nods.
“Death was not what I expected him to be. Very odd. He talked a lot but didn’t say much, and sometimes he left big pieces out of his explanations. I’m still not sure what my limitations are.”
“You can go back and forth?” Draco asks. “What if you died again, physically?”
“I don’t know.” Harry admits. “I died physically the first time, but I’m not sure if I could create more bodies like this.”
Ever since leaving the afterdeath, Harry’s coordination has been off. He’s not used to being so big, and he’s still blind without his glasses.
“Do you have my glasses?” Harry asks. “I still need them to see.”
Draco’s eyebrows lift, and he nods.
“They’re in your trunk. Remus got them back when they mummified you. I left your trunk at Grimmauld. Your new and improved body didn’t include a vision upgrade?”
“No, sadly. It must be in my genes to have bad eyes and bad hair.” Harry laughs, pulling on a piece of hair. Dad had still messed with his hair a lot, as a dead person. He hasn’t broken the habit. Maybe Mum thinks it’s cute.
“You don’t have bad hair.” Draco says. “What did Death tell you?”
“Oh. Thanks, er.” Harry crumbles a chunk of biscuit between his fingers, grinding the crumbs into dust. “He told me that I was in the afterdeath, and the afterlife is a different place across a huge, tumultuous river that’s nearly impossible to swim across.”
“The River Styx is real?” Draco asks, sitting forward, the light of curiosity in his eyes again. He looks the same way he had when Hermione had told Umbridge about the ‘secret weapon’ the DA has been supposedly working on. Excited, swotty.
“It’s not called that, but in a way, yes.” Harry says. “I asked him about the River Styx too.”
Harry sort of wants Draco to know he's not the only one who knows about mythology, but Draco just waves for Harry to continue talking.
“The main way to cross the river is by boat. There’s a ferryman, but he requires payment, and in the afterdeath, it’s really difficult to learn how to interact with anything besides your own body. I could only do it by accident, like with the Elder Wand.”
