Drarry One Shots

Into the Light (Pt. 2 to 'In the Shadows')

The problem was, Harry thought to himself, he didn't like being 'Harry Potter'. He was laid in the bed in Draco's spare room in Draco's beautifully white house, as the early-morning sun streamed through the white curtains making the room far too light for Harry's liking.

Draco had told him he had moved out of the manor to this current location, the Malfoy London residence, as soon as he could after his house arrest had finished. The house, ostentatiously called 'the Malfoy Mayfair Mansions', was a double-fronted piece of prime real estate in London's most expensive postcode area, impeccably decorated and furnished completely in white from its attic rooms to the basement kitchen. All very tastefully expensive, Harry had thought to himself, slightly bitterly, but the truth was, for Harry, it was too clinical, too white, too blank. Draco had admitted it was this way to be everything that the Manor wasn't. As the sole heir of the Malfoy name, he was supposed to reside at the manor, but he had no desire to live there no matter how much redecorating his mother tried to do. Besides, ever since he had converted it into the Malfoy Institute for Interdisciplinary Muggle and Magical Studies, Draco had no wish to share his private space with oggling students, especially those that thought they might ensnare the wizarding worlds' most marriable man. He simply ensured he visited his mother regularly, met with Hermione there on a monthly basis, and spent a few weeks there in the summer.

Harry shivered at the thought, despite the warmth of the balmy May weather that persisted without sign of abating. Was that supposed to be part of his routine now? Now that, whatever this was, was happening between him and Draco.

It was to the Mayfair Mansions that Draco took Harry after he had walked into the Apothecary shop a week earlier. Harry was still pinching himself, metaphorically, uncertain how it could be May 2008, that they were both twenty-bloody-seven years old, and how he could have been 'missing' for five years. He felt broken, a shadow of his former self. He felt like the ten years since the Battle of Hogwarts had slipped into a void of indistinguishable obscurity.

Draco had expressed, the previous evening, his surprise at the change between Harry disguised as the sandy-haired stranger, so full of confidence and so sure of himself; and Harry as himself, tired, fragile, lost. Harry knew he was still trying to hide from the names thrust upon him by the wizarding world since the day he first 'defeated' Voldemort as a one-year-old baby: the Chosen One, the Saviour of the Wizarding World, the Boy who Lived. Yep, he was still the Boy who lived: he was nearly thirty, for Merlin's sake.

The first thing he'd requested was that Draco told no one that he was 'back', he needed to plan things, work out how he was going to move forward, what he was going to do about his work, how he was going to face the public again.

'I don't know what to do, Draco.' The public was his biggest fear. 'I don't know how to face them. It was hell after the war, everyone wanted a piece of me, they wanted to talk to me, shout at me, thank me, blame me, shake my hand, curse me, have my autograph, kill me, shag me, marry me, every response you could ever think of and then some. I can only hope that after ten years things might have calmed down a bit.'

He didn't even want Ron and Hermione knowing he was back.

'Mione will fuss and mother me, chide me and then question me about the future. Ron'll want to slip straight back into best-mate territory and going to the pub after work and slapping me on the back and taking me to The Burrow to see everyone. I can't cope with that at the moment.'

Harry stared at the perfectly smooth white ceiling with its white chandelier hanging from the white ceiling rose. The Black Dog sat heavily on his chest. He pulled the white covers over his head to hide, but even that became suffocating and he threw them back in frustration, groaning aloud. But he didn't get out of bed. At the moment, he wasn't sure if he could: his limbs felt too cumbersome; the thoughts in his head felt too weighty.