Pansy whips her head around to stare at him, and then stalks across the hall until they’re inches apart. It’s a familiar move, one of Draco’s, but when Draco does it he winds up looking down at Harry a little; Harry’s got about half a foot on Pansy, so her version isn't quite as effective. She does, however, change it up with the added element of a jab from one of her nails, which are all filed into long points and painted a deep, gunmetal grey.
“No?” she demands, like the very word is offensive. Harry wonders if maybe there’s some sort of emphasis on dramatics that the Sorting Hat seeks out for Slytherin House.
Then he remembers that the Sorting Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin, and promptly banishes the entire thought process.
“No,” he repeats to Pansy. When she continues to glare at him, he gives her a little shrug —it’s trying for apologetic, but Harry’s not sure he does that great a job. “Like I said, he’s asleep. You can, er,” he pauses and casts around, trying to come up with anything else to suggest, before he sighs and offers, “wait down here, if you like.”
Instead of seeming mollified at this perfectly reasonable offer, Pansy looks like she wants to rip Harry’s spinal column out and beat him with it. “You,” she spits furiously, “do not get to decide whether or not we can wait! You do not get to decide whether or not we go up and see him in the first place. I mean, who exactly do you think you are?”
Harry blinks at her. He’s too tired for this. “Er—”
“Now, now, Pansy,” Blaise says in soothing tones. “I know being unnecessarily aggressive keeps you young, I do, but Harry’s made some perfectly rational points, haven’t you, Harry?” He doesn’t wait for Harry to answer, just breezes right on ahead. “And since it would, actually, be quite a terrible idea to go wake Draco up, why don’t we just have a nice little sit-down in the parlor, hmm? Relax in the manner to which you were once accustomed? Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“Ugh,” Pansy says. She takes off her black leather jacket and drops it in Harry’s hands; Harry stares at in mute confusion and vague offense. “Fine, but only to stop you using that terrible Unspeakable voice on me. It’s so demeaning! I’ve known you since we were four, I’m aware when you’re manipulating me.”
“Doing a lot of that at four, was I?” Blaise says, amused, and follows her clacking black heels into the sitting room. Harry doesn't bother straining to hear her reply.
Kreacher peeks his head out from behind a bannister. “Harry Potter?” he whispers.
Harry sighs. “Yeah, Kreacher?”
“Kreacher could take care of tea for Master Draco’s guests,” Kreacher whispers, in an entreating little voice. He sidles up to Harry, blinking up at him with big eyes. “Master Draco’s guests can sometimes be…very difficult. Harry Potter would probably do best to let Kreacher handle it.”
“Kreacher,” Harry says with feeling, “thank Merlin for you. Please. Yes. God, what do I do with the coat?”
“Kreacher will take the coat, Harry Potter,” Kreacher says, and gives Harry a fond little pat as he does. He looks a bit nervous. “Harry Potter should just…do his best, okay?”
He vanishes, and Harry spends a dark moment alone in the hall thinking that even Kreacher knows that Harry is in over his head, and maybe he should just give this all up for a bad job and run screaming out into the afternoon sunlight.
Then he remembers all over again about the whole love situation, and once he gets done grimacing at the floor over the horror of it all, he decides he is going to have to learn to deal with these people to even have chance with Draco. Which he doesn’t, of course, and probably never will, and honestly the whole idea is pretty absurd anyway, since nobody ends up settling down with someone who once signed a blood oath not to eat meals with them on pain of burning entrails. It’s an insane crazy idea and Harry is insane and crazy for having it, and if he was smart, if he had any self-preservation instinct at all, he would run screaming out the door, and never look back for a moment.
He sighs. He goes into the parlor.
“Oh, good, you’re still here,” Pansy says, rolling her eyes. And it’s just—she’s sitting in the same spot Draco was when, more than a month ago, he said those exact words to Harry, that very first day. It’s like Harry can see that whole moment superimposed over her, him and Draco staring daggers at each other over the wreckage of the room, and he wants to reach out and slap the past version of himself, demand that he sit up and pay attention and not comprehensively screw over his future self with his stupid distractibility and refusal to interact with his emotions until they blow up in his face like this.
God. Harry’s really tired.
“Yes,” he says, collapsing into the nearest chair. “I’m still here. I’m staying here for a while. Until this all gets—whatever. Sorted.”
“What, as his live-in Auror?” Pansy looks to Blaise, a sour expression on her face. “Did you know about this?”
“I don’t think the Aurors know about this, Pansy,” Blaise says, and smiles at Harry. There’s a quality to it that makes Harry feel vaguely queasy. “As of 11 o’clock this morning, the last the DMLE has on Harry Potter is that he’s out on a sick day, and expected to return to work tomorrow.”
“You know that’s creepy, right?” Harry says, pressing the heel of his hand against his forehead to ward off an impending headache. When Blaise just nods cheerfully, unperturbed, Harry drops his hand, since it’s obviously not going to be any help. “Well. Great. As long as you know.”
“So you’re just,” Pansy says, turning incredulous eyes on Harry, “volunteering your time, then? To protect Draco? Draco Malfoy? Who you tormented mercilessly all through school?”
“Hey!” Harry snaps. “I did not—well, it was—mutual tormenting! And Draco started most of it!”
“Did you just call him Draco,” Pansy says, her eyes wide with horror. “Blaise, come on —it’s too mean. I’ll leave your eyebrows alone if you just call it off now; I’m honestly not sure I can take it.”
“Not a trick,” Blaise says again, smiling winsomely at her. “Not that I’d change it if I could, of course. It’s basically street theater.”
“I’m not dignifying that with a response,” Pansy says, and sits back in her chair with her arms crossed.
Kreacher appears with a crack into the ensuing silence. He brings tea over to Blaise and to Pansy before he places a cup at Harry’s elbow and whispers, “It does not look like it is going very well, Harry Potter.”
“Good eye, Kreacher,” Harry tells him wearily. He thinks he hears a snort of laughter from Blaise, but he doesn’t have the heart to look over and find out.
Kreacher vanishes again, and Harry, slightly nettled by his comment, decides to try to make small talk. It’s got to be better than sitting here being glared and/or laughed at, and, also, if he doesn’t do something soon he’s going to fall asleep in this chair, and he doubts that’ll go over well.
With Pansy, anyway. He’s starting to think everything goes over well with Blaise, in the sense that he finds it deeply entertaining and that’s all he really cares about.
“So,” Harry says, striking out bravely, “Pansy. You live in Cairo?”
Pansy rolls her eyes over her teacup, but she does at least deign to answer the question. “I live all over. I’m a Cursebreaker.”
“Oh!” Harry says. He’d considered that line of work at one point himself, until he sat down with Bill and went over how much maths and analytics and other stuff Harry couldn’t be bothered about was actually involved. “That’s supposed to be quite an interesting job. How’d you, er. Find yourself in that line of work?”
Pansy raises her eyebrows. Then, slowly, she leans forward, this menacing little trick of body language that Harry does not enjoy at all. “Well, Potter, when I was about seventeen a genocidal maniac broke into my school and said he’d kill everyone if we didn’t turn over this one boy. He was a classmate, you know, that boy, who’d always been pretty horrible to my friends and me, and then nearly murdered one of them to boot. So I thought, well, maybe I’ll put it out there that his one life is probably not worth all the others, and perhaps we should consider giving him over before the maniac starts slaughtering twelve years olds for sport!” She gives Harry a filthy look, and adds, “I’m not saying it was a proud moment or anything, but I thought the resulting ostracism was a bit harsh, in the circumstances. I didn’t enjoy it, so I found a job traveling to places where nobody knew that particular story, and where, god willing, I’d never have to look that boy in the face again.” She looks Harry up and down. “Unfortunately, life does seem to come along with these little disappointments.”
“Er,” says Harry, wishing badly that he hadn’t asked.
“Is that all he says?” Pansy demands of Blaise. “Is he actually a functional illiterate? I thought that was just one of Draco’s mad childhood theories!”
Harry is saved from having to defend his literacy by the sound of footsteps on the floor overhead. They all fall silent, glancing up towards the ceiling, as the footsteps proceed across the hall above them and onto the staircase.
Then Draco calls, “I sincerely hope you’re making me breakfast, Potter, wherever you are. I’ve been through a traumatic ordeal, it would be shirking your duties as an agent of justice to deny me some…sausages…”
Draco trails off, having reached the doors of the parlor and discovered Harry, Pansy and Blaise sitting therein. He’s rumpled, clearly just awake, but he looks so much healthier than he did last night that Harry’s heart twists in his chest, and then…kind of stays that way, each beat painful and too hard. He wonders if this is just what looking at Draco is going to be like now, all agonized hopeless longing, or if maybe it will get easier over time, and Harry can work his way back around to not noticing it very much. Horrifically, he’s not sure which way he wants that one to go.
Just at this moment, Draco is giving him a slightly panicked look, which Harry returns with interest. He knows why he’s panicking, but as for Draco, he hasn’t got the faintest idea. They’re his friends, after all. He should know how to deal with them.
“Pansy,” Draco says, after a long pause. “Blaise. Hello. I see you’ve found Potter.”
“It’s a trick,” Pansy says. “I know it is; it has to be. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
“We broke your spirit when you were young,” Draco tells her, seeming to regain his equilibrium. He flicks a quicksilver grin at Blaise before he turns an expression of mocking concern back on Pansy. “It’s not your fault. You were only a child!”
“I don’t know why I even care that you’re alive,” Pansy says, and sounds like she means it for all of three seconds, before she gets up off the couch and throws her arms around Draco in a massive, vaguely alarming hug. Draco pats her on the back a few times, looking torn between being surprised and gratified.
Harry takes this as his cue to go. He’s not sure what happens when an interloper is caught viewing genuine affection between Slytherins, but in his current mental state he can’t help but think it might involve death by firing squad or something. He says, “I’m, er, just gonna—” and ducks out and down the hall to the kitchen before anyone can stop him. Not that anyone would, but. Just in case.
He’s drumming his fingers against the countertop, trying to decide what he’s going to cook, when Draco says, “Oh my god, I knew it,” from just behind him.
Harry turns, and blinks at him. The cut on his cheek looks less angry now; his hair is loose, and his eyes are warm. Harry is so, so stupid.
“What did you know?” he says.
