Reparations

v

Harry folds his arms on the desktop and meets Draco's glare with one of his own.

"You're wrong. In fact, you're so beyond wrong, that you're almost all the way back around to right," he opines, and Draco snorts derisively.

It's been surprisingly easy to drop the 'Malfoy', having had a weekend to think about it, and Harry now vacillates between 'Draco' and 'that blond git' as suitable epithets, depending on his audience. And his mood. Right now, it's Tuesday morning, and he's frustrated.

Because what's proving more difficult, is finding anything on which to agree. The blond git in question has clearly been born to argue, and no amount of cupboard-based interventions can actually stop him from being utterly infuriating.

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Draco says, leaning on his side of the desk. "I've been doing this for more than five years. You've been doing it for five minutes. Unless she has a personality transplant in the next twenty-four hours, you are going to be very embarrassed indeed."

"The only thing I'll be embarrassed about is showing up my 'boss' in front of his patients when he has to hand over his ten Galleons to me," Harry disagrees. "She's changed. She's ready."

"She's ready for nothing," Draco says. "It'll be Martin, and that's all there is to it."

"They all hate Martin!" Harry raises a frustrated hand to scrub through his hair.

Draco smiles slowly. "And that's your problem. You're such a Gryffindor, sometimes, do you know that?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Harry, that you have no idea what leadership is really all about," Draco pronounces, grey eyes glittering. "It's not about whether people like you, it's about authority and about power. Charisma, possibly, but it's nothing to do with being liked."

"Hark at you," Harry snaps. "And anyway, Martin has the charisma of a flobberworm."

Unexpectedly, Draco laughs, and Harry feels the corners of his mouth twitching in spite of his irritation.

"We shall see, soon enough," Draco says with a small shrug. "Perhaps this afternoon, definitely by tomorrow. You can leave the money on the desk, there," he adds, gesturing negligently.

"Right," Harry mutters. "Don't get ahead of yourself or anything, will you?"

"I'll try not to. Do you have something to do? Only, you're polluting my office with your ... wrongness," Draco says through a deceptively charming smirk.

Harry rolls his eyes and leaves the office, kicking the door shut behind him as he crosses to the Stage One ward. As he passes the main lounge, he peeks around the doorframe for just long enough to reassure himself that Draco's ten Galleons are all his. Not that either of them particularly need the money; it's more a matter of pride than anything else.

Cassandra is balancing precariously on the raised marble surround of the fireplace, nodding carefully as the small group in the chairs around her engage in what looks like a spirited discussion. She's come a long way in the past week, and Harry is confident in her to step up as the next unofficial 'leader' of the Stage Two community when Marguerite and Fyzal leave later on this morning.

Martin, Draco's pick, is sitting alone at the table, scowling and exuding 'fuck off' waves from him so intense that Harry can almost taste them. Harry remembers him as the truculent, slightly desperate group member he'd observed on his very first day, and very little seems to have changed, despite both his and Draco's better efforts.