All Life Is Yours To Miss

Chapter 27

"Of course, the first time he asked me, I managed to come up with some sort of excuse. 'Nae bother,' he said, and so I did the same thing the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time. By the ninth time, I realised he wasn't going to stop asking. I told myself that it would be fine; after all, he was just trying to be friendly to his new upstairs neighbour, and it would probably be politic to stay on the right side of him, because, Harry, that man was the scariest looking individual I have ever laid eyes on, and that includes Volde-fucking-mort. That's what Stanley and I call him," Draco confides, shifting position and resting his feet on the edge of Harry's bed so that he can stretch out his stiff legs. "When we call him anything at all."

Stanley stirs in his sleep, turns through three hundred and sixty degrees and then settles back down in the same place, tucked into Harry's side for warmth. The temperature has now dropped back into the expected range for mid-October, and Draco is grateful for both his dressing gown and his blanket as he sits at Harry's side in the small hours of Thursday morning. He has been telling tales from Glasgow for several hours now, reaching into his past and spinning half-lost memories into stories that might provide enough of a distraction to stop Harry from going mad.

"So, one day, I finally agreed, and off we went to the Nag's Head. It was a Tuesday afternoon, so I thought it would be quiet. I knew Dave worked as a bouncer at the Velvet Lounge in town-that was a pole-dancing club," he explains, rotating his finger in slow circles as though Harry can see him. "Well, it probably still is. I never went in, despite Dave's frequent invitations, but the mental images are enough, believe me." He shakes his head. After all these years, he still can't quite understand why anyone would pay to sit with a group of other men and watch something so strange. "Anyway, I digress. I knew that Dave worked nights, but I thought most other people would be working during the day, so you can imagine my surprise when we walked into the Nag and it was absolutely packed to the rafters."

Draco laughs, amused by the naivety of his younger self. "I hadn't ever seen a place like it, and I haven't since. Everyone was talking over each other, everyone was smoking, and no one was paying attention to the television, which was showing some sort of football game, but I always had the feeling that if you tried to turn it off or change the programme, you'd be at risk of being stabbed. They used to have it stuck to the wall, right at the top, in the corner, just under the ceiling, as though they were worried someone might steal it. And the women in there, Harry..." Draco shudders, yawns widely, and shudders again. "They were terrifying. Enough to put a person off for life, if they needed putting off. And the whole place just seemed to be full of little flashing lights, ridiculous machines that asked you to put in money and never gave you any back. Dave loved it, though. Dave the Rave... that's what everyone called him."

Draco pauses, registering the heaviness of his limbs and the soreness of his eyes. He'll be asleep soon, one way or another, and rather selfishly, he wants his bed.

"Remind me to tell you the rest of the story tomorrow," he mumbles, collecting Stanley and heading for the door. "Unless you've been asleep for the past three hours, in which case I've been talking to myself the entire time."

Curled up under his quilt with Stanley sleeping on his feet, Draco dreams of his old neighbour and spends much of the next morning wondering how he's doing these days-if he ever managed to give up smoking, if he's still having noisy sex with the same noisy girlfriend, or if he ever achieved his dream of opening his own club, rather than working the door of someone else's.

When he makes it up to the hospital wing that night, it seems only right to continue with the story.

"Where were we?" he says, settling into his chair and inspecting Harry's pyjamas: the striped ones are back, and they rather suit him.