Running On Air

Chapter 12

In the apartment, the boxes of Draco's possessions sit neatly on the dining table. In the guest bedroom, there's still a half-glass of water on the table, the bed unmade.

Harry sits on the edge of the bed and removes the wand from his pocket. Hawthorn, ten inches, unicorn hair core.

He'd fetched it from Gringotts on Tuesday afternoon, when Draco had still been sleeping and Harry hadn't started worrying yet. The wand had sat forgotten for years; Harry had meant to return it to Draco after the war, planning to owl it off and spare the awkwardness of meeting in-person, but he'd simply forgotten. Too busy with other things, and the wand had ended up packed away in his crates of possessions at Gringotts after he and Ginny purchased the apartment. He'd never bothered retrieving the crates and unpacking. It took him quite some time to find the wand, and he wished he'd at least organised the crates in some way, or labelled them. The wand was amongst a jumble of other things: stacks of old Quidditch Weekly magazines that should have been thrown out long ago, one of the fake galleons Hermione made for Dumbledore's Army, a broom compass, a Weasley jumper, Sirius's penknife.

And Draco's wand.

Harry had been surprised when he first disarmed Draco, seizing the wand and fleeing with it. He'd expected the wand to be resistant and somehow unfriendly (though he'd absolutely dreaded using Bellatrix's wand). But the wand had been no different than using, for example, Hermione's, and had proved itself an excellent wand in lieu of Harry's own.

It makes Harry feel guilty again. Draco — judging by the letters written in the back of the calendar diary — had never forgotten his original wand and had agonised over the obstacle of asking for its return. But for Harry, the wand hadn't even deserved a second thought. He'd made vague plans to return it, but had been too busy with stupid things, smiling and busy with his friends, his life, and he'd thrown it into a box of other forgotten items and left it to gather dust in a Gringotts vault.

I'm sorry, Harry wants to say, but Draco can't hear him. He's not here.

He lifts the wand. "Defervesco."

Draco was right. Spell didn't work when attempted to cast on self.

The next afternoon, as Harry's halfway through revising the latest case, Ron strides into the office.

Ron only ever strides for something important, Harry knows. The rest of the time, he ambles into the office, eyes roving around for bags of sweets. Ron never quite grew out of his lanky and meandering gait.

"Malfoy's awake," Ron says without preamble. Harry looks up sharply.

"When?"

"He woke up last night, around nine o'clock. Went to sleep again, but they said it was a natural sleep this time. He woke up at around six this morning and stayed awake."

"How'd you know?" Harry demands, pushing the case file aside and standing up.

"Just dropped one of the junior Auror trainees off at St Mungo's — he'd been practising duels and accidentally replaced his own fingers with carrots. Thought I'd ask about Malfoy while I was there."

"You — you asked about Malfoy? Why?"

"Thanks a lot," Ron says, looking exasperated. "I behave like a decent human being and you interrogate my motives. Real nice, that is."

Harry's too distracted to feel apologetic. "Nobody told me."

"Well, they notified his mother this morning." Ron gives a sympathetic shrug. "You're not family or even a friend, you're just the case manager."

Harry frowns. "How'd you get all this information from the Healers? They don't tell me anything."

"What can I say? Natural charm."