Hide and Seek

Chapter 4

Harry didn't sleep well that night. But then again, he never did. Knowing that Draco Malfoy was downstairs in his living room didn't help matters. He lay in his bed with his eyes clamped shut, straining his ears for the inevitable sound of the living room door creaking open. He fully expected his high school nemesis to ignore his orders and explore the old house, because if the shoe was on the other foot, Harry knew that he wouldn't have been able to resist doing just that. But much to Harry's surprise, Draco never left the living room. He never heard a peep out of him the entire night.

When the first pale light of dawn began to crawl up his bedroom wall, Harry dragged himself out of bed. A hot shower helped to wake him up a little. After pulling on a wrinkled but clean uniform, he stomped downstairs to make his morning coffee. He retrieved the dirty mug he'd used the previous morning from the sink and tapped it with the tip of his wand. The cleaning charm wasn't perfect—he still had fingerprint smudges on the outside—Harry figured it was clean enough. As he poured coffee into the mug, a little voice in his head told him that he should prepare a cup for Draco. It was only the polite thing to do, wasn't it?

Even though he'd rather throw the drink in Draco's face, Harry found a clean (albeit, dusty) mug in one of the cupboards, gave it a quick clean with his sleeve, and filled it with hot coffee. He didn't need to bother checking the fridge for any milk; he knew that he didn't have any. He added grabbing milk to the mental list of things that rarely got done and walked steadily from the kitchen into the hallway, careful not to spill the hot drinks.

Walburga Black's portrait stirred as the kitchen door opened, but her usual screams and obscenities were muffled by the heavy velvet curtain that Harry now had draped over it, having fixed it in place with a Permanent Sticking Charm. He thought Sirius would have approved. He kicked the living room door open with his foot before entering. Draco yelped in surprise and sat bolt upright from the couch, his normally perfect hair sticking out in all directions.

"Argh! Wha...?" Draco looked around with bleary-eyed confusion for a moment before his shoulders sagged and he flopped back onto the couch. "Urgh, I'm still here."

"Unfortunately," Harry quipped.

"I was hoping that last night was just an incredibly vivid nightmare."

"You and me both." Harry sat the mug of hot coffee on the table in front of Draco. "Drink up and then we'll make our way to the Ministry."

Draco scrunched up his nose at the proffered drink. "I don't like coffee."

Harry felt that familiar stab of annoyance whenever Draco opened his mouth to speak. "Best I can do is tap water if you don't drink coffee."

"Don't you have any tea?"

"No."

"Why am I not surprised?" Draco yawned and stretched like a cat before demanding, "I'll have boiled eggs and toast for breakfast. With a runny yolk. You wouldn't happen to have mooncalf butter, by any chance? That's the kind I prefer to butter my toast with."

Harry snorted. "Oh yes, I'll get right on that. And I'll give you a foot rub while you eat your breakfast, how does that sound?"

"That sounds lovely," said Draco, sounding a little brighter. "Make it two eggs, will you, Potter? Having one's life threatened certainly builds up an appetite."

"I'm not making you breakfast, Malfoy, This isn't a bloody hotel."

"Well of course, I don't expect you to make it," he drawled. "Get your house-elves to do it."

"I don't have any house-elves."

Draco frowned. "What do you mean, you don't have any house-elves?"

"There are no house-elves in this house," Harry repeated. "Not anymore, at least. Kreacher was the last elf to care for this place, but he died a couple of years back."