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Chapter 9

Harry

They’re good together, Hermione and Draco.

It took a while, but he’d finally gotten used to coming home from training and seeing the two of them crowded around the kitchen table, a cauldron steaming on the counter behind them and a spreadsheet tacked up to the walls. Even if she isn’t here when he gets home, she comes later that night after she had a chance to talk to Ron, bursting through the door with a bundle of papers clutched in her arm and Harry would fall asleep to the sound of their murmured voices, knowing that he would find them both curled up on opposite sides of the couch when he came home.

It’s good work, they’re doing. Notable work. It had started out just being for Seamus, but then they really got to talking and decided to make a whole range, start the wizarding mental health program from the ground up. Hermione brings the muggle therapy practices and Draco brings the wizarding solutions, and the two of them sort of meet in the middle to form some groundbreaking health care. It’s gotten a bit of attention, both from the Daily Prophet and academic circles.

Draco’s let Hermione handle most of the public speaking.

“How’s it going?” Harry almost feels like he’s interrupting something by walking into his own kitchen. Hermione certainly thinks so, but Draco doesn’t. Draco actually gets up to greet him, and Harry can’t help but track his movements across the room, the way his hair curls at the edges from the heat of the fire and his shirt is sticking to his shoulder blades, the fabric so light it is almost see through.

“We’re almost done.” Draco leans across him to grab at a glass of pumpkin juice on the counter. Harry’s starting to pay more attention to moments like this, and he hates himself for it, because that is not what Draco is here for. “Should have the calming drought ready for full scale usage by next week. All we need now is an equation to help tailor it to different levels of need, height and body weight and age, that sort of thing.”

“Children shouldn’t use this stuff at all.” Hermione said, measuring the bit of frog bile she was pouring into the beaker. “Developing brains, and all.”

“I used it. Dad had Dobby give it to me every night.” Draco says the comment in an off hand sort of way, then reddens under Hermione’s stare. “What?” Defensive. Even though Harry knows Draco means no harm to Hermione, old habits make him want to step in between them, lest wands be drawn. It seems that nothing can override old instincts, no matter how different you feel about someone. “I turned out just fine.”

“Yeah.” Harry didn’t think he did, though. It made the nights more explainable, how Draco would stay up at all hours, or Harry would come down the steps with an entire project completed overnight, like he had worked straight through until the morning. Maybe it wasn’t just the war that kept Draco on his feet. “We know you did.”

Chapter 10

Draco

She’s waiting for him in the alley bar.

Draco isn’t really sure what the name of it is, only that the doorway is in the very back of Knockturn alley. You have to fight through street vendors to even get near it, and then you have to know exactly where the doorway is at to find it, considering how dark it is back there. It is where you go when you don’t want people to know what you are doing, or who you are meeting.

It is the perfect place for them.

She’s tucked in a back corner, a hood drawn up around her face so all he can see of her is the dark hair spilling out of it and the pale hands peeking out from lace sleeves. Her nails are long and painted blood red, as much for a weapon as for beauty. Every inch of her is poised to run, and he can tell that she sat on the side that she did so she can keep an eye on the shop at all times.

It makes him uncomfortable, that she saw him before Draco saw her.