In the Light of Things

We're Still Idiots

"Why won't you show it to me, Potter?"

"Oh, we're back to Potter?" Harry scoffs, or laughs, he doesn't know. He's just entirely too exhausted to even bother with trying to win this argument. "You know what, it doesn't matter. I'm going to bed."

"You're walking away," Draco asks incredulously, and Harry hears his footsteps nearing before his wrist is yanked and he's met with swirling storms for eyes. "You know you can't do that."

How long have we been like this, Harry asks himself. So domestic?

For as long as he invited Draco to come live with him, after he found him crouched in an alleyway on his way to George's shop, sobbing and shivering. His sentence had just been completed, and Draco had refused to step foot inside the Manor ever again, regardless of how many times his mother begged him to stay, and despite him not having anywhere else to take refuge.

And Harry, with a terrible habit of taking in strays, allowed him to take shelter on the couch of twelve Grimmauld Place for as long as he needed.

He'd spent countless hours trying to coax an explanation out of him, a reason, but it was pointless asking a question he already knew the answer to. Draco carried around the heaviness of Dark Magic, it showed. The way his shoulders sagged, the way he only wore a bathrobe around the house, the way his eyes had sunken in.

It changed the way one lived. Consumed their entirety, altered their soul. Draco was once a thriving young pure-blooded heir.

Then he was just a shadow of someone that barely ever existed.

Now, though. Now Draco smiles, and it reaches his eyes. He rolls his eyes at Ron's attempt at jokes but discreetly grins. He holds Teddy carefully, watches with intent when Hermione brings a new baking recipe that happened to catch her eye on a magazine. He uses his hands to create things, like the beautiful abstract painting that hangs in Harry's study, the one he looks to when he's stuck on a particularly difficult case, the one that relieves him of his stress because he knows that even though he can't find an answer, he can definitely find Draco reading in the parlor room and humming delightedly when the elves bring him his afternoon tea service.

He teaches the house-elves to properly tend to the roses, has inane patience and a knack for explaining things thoroughly to the creatures despite his short temper and their lack of proper education. Draco races Harry to the post-owl because they're both expecting a letter from George to know how Fred's first year of muggle primary school is going.

Draco also, however, was raised by Lucius Malfoy. And despite his blossoming absorption of knowledge and drastic change in lifestyle--he lives with the Boy Who Lived, for Merlin's sake--Draco has a one-track mind.

He only knows how to follow instruction. He's the embodiment of chaos without it. Harry remembers how Draco would sulk around the house endlessly for weeks before Harry finally told him to dust the bookshelves, surprised that Draco had jumped right on it instead of spluttering out an excuse as to why a Malfoy wouldn't degrade himself to such a mortal burden as dusting.

Two years after Draco had permanently settled in--which, now that Harry thinks about it, he did it quite comfortably, silently, as if they both were mutually content with the settlement--he had proposed a domestic arrangement.

First things first.

Dinner with the Weasleys is to take place every Saturday evening instead of Friday. Harry and Draco were free then, which made it easier for them to make it on time instead of rushing because Harry always wanted a change if wardrobe before heading over.