Chapter Text
“Why do I have to bother taking care of someone I barely know now? I couldn’t even tolerate him back then. Or have you forgotten that?”
Harry huffed as he fell onto the couch. He spread his arms along the back and let his head fall against the soft cushion. Hermione pushed at him and he reluctantly moved to allow her space to sit.
“It’s because he has nowhere else to go.”
Anyone other than Harry would be a better choice to take care of Draco Malfoy and so, Harry drew in a long breath, getting ready to argue again.
Before he could speak however, Hermione continued, “I know you had your problems,” He snorted at that, “But you both went through a lot to reach where you are. And he has changed a lot. I am his friend now and would I even associate with him if he hadn’t changed?”
Harry ignored her question and hedged for another reason to refuse.
Half heartedly he made an attempt to find an excuse, “Seriously? What about his friends from Hogwarts?” Those people who had hung around him, treating his words as commands and gospel.
It was her turn to huff now. “Friends,” she spat, “He made an attempt to reach out to them. They didn’t even bother to open his letters, returning them unopened. I would never term those heartless creatures as his friends. Leeches, the lot of them.” She finished darkly.
A strange tightness began in his chest at her words. Harry rubbed at the spot closest to where he felt the emotion. Then, Harry frowned at her vehemence. Malfoy had had friends. People on whom he could rely back then. Crabbe and Goyle had always hung around him. And Parkinson. The girl had been his girlfriend for a while, he remembered vaguely.
Or was that all some strange form of powerplay among purebloods?
“He should have been more careful then. And maybe he should have chosen the right house.” Harry said, unaware he’d spoken aloud. Hermione looked at him strangely and he shrugged before returning his attention to the empty fireplace he sat across. His eyes flitted from the photos of the three of them to those of him and Teddy with Andromeda smiling in the background before they fell on the jar of iridescent Floo powder that was almost empty at the other end.
He sometimes missed having a television set like at the Dursley's house. All his furniture faced a fireplace instead of facing the focal point a television created and somehow it felt wrong in a way not many others could understand. Muggle habit he supposed. Strange how they mattered suddenly to him in the placement of furniture. With a TV though, the muffled sound of the men and women acting and speaking in the background would have been a welcome addition to the quiet loneliness he felt living at Grimmauld Place all alone.
He shook himself out of his meandering thoughts. He had been doing that a lot over the past years. But no one said anything whenever he clocked out of conversations so he never knew how long it took him to return his focus to the here and now.
“Why am I the first choice? Surely you can house him.” He questioned. The thought had floated in and out of his mind from the moment Hermione had asked him to help her, accompanying the flurry of angry thoughts and old memories as a thin voice of doubt and he finally voiced it out.
“You were the only choice.” She leaned back, settling against his outstretched arm. She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration and then began to massage her temples. “And I can’t house him. Rose is so small. Ron and I have a hard time keeping up with her needs. And that is with Molly’s help. Draco will not get the rest he needs if he stays with us.”
Harry laughed wryly at that. His goddaughter, the two year old munchkin had everyone wrapped around her chubby little fingers but was fully capable of bringing the whole house down and generating chaos wherever she went, waddling from one room to the next with a grace and athleticism that no one could attribute to as belonging to the Grangers or the Weasleys. A man healing from a dangerous magical accident would certainly not get any rest in such a household.
“No one wants anything to do with a former Death Eater. People continue to hold grudges against the families that caused them such grief and terror. Even the Healers are hesitant to treat him.” Hermione’s voice cracked. But she cleared it and swallowed, waiting for Harry to ask his next question.
“You can’t blame them for their fear.” Harry said simply, turning back to face Hermione. She nodded slowly.
“Draco is no easy patient either. He all but snarled at the woman who tried to remove his burnt clothes. If I hadn't taken his wand away, he would have hexed her. He didn’t make it easy to find someone to help him heal.”
He didn’t stop her from talking but he inched his hand closer to her and curled it around her shoulder. Tension began to seep out of her frame at the tiny movement of comfort and she quieted for a few moments.
Another thought occurred to him then but he quashed it for now. He decided to hear her out and then maybe if he’d not gotten an answer to it, he’d consider asking her.
“Draco has," She hesitated, but when he squeezed her shoulder she continued. Slowly and cautiously but she still spoke. “Been through a lot after the war.”
‘So have we all.’ Harry wanted to say but he held himself back. He knew a little about the Malfoys which helped him understand what Hermione was talking about. Not that he’d interacted with them over the years.
His parents’ deaths had been in the Prophet a few years back. Back when he was constantly scanning the newspaper for any indication that Death Eater activity had started again, he’d read the tiny article hidden between Ads for wands and owls.
“I know about Lucius and Narcissa’s deaths.” He said quietly.
Hermione bent her head. “Yes. But I’m sure you don’t know that he was cut off from his home.” Harry spun to stare at her in shock. He was thrown out of his house? By whom?
“The Ministry took over Malfoy Manor and he was thrown out of the place when they discovered the modifications V-Voldemort had done to the place.” She still struggled to say his name even now after 7 years after the War. Her hand moved unconsciously to her neck, rubbing at the hollow there.
“They were investigating his case against the perpetrators of his family’s murders. They….. actually… I discovered that it was a ticking time bomb waiting to be unleashed at the slightest trigger. It is a miracle the house held out for so long. The entire thing collapsed as we tried to break the curses. Draco just…”
She stayed silent for a while. A melancholic air replaced her nervousness. She shivered a little and Harry didn’t retract his arm from around her. It was starting to numb a little at his finger tips but he ignored it.
“Well?” He prompted when the silence stretched out too long. He tried to crush and hold his distaste but it seemed to leak out a little anyway and Hermione winced as the tone in his voice. “What is my role here? You only told me I have to help Draco. Do I have to give him a place to stay? Does he not have his vast wealth to at least find an inn to hole up in till the investigation is over?”
Hermione laughed wryly. “What wealth? The Ministry has sucked the Malfoys dry.” She hiccupped suddenly. Harry stared in horror as he saw a tear slipping down her cheek. He pulled her closer, tilting her face to look at her. Her face scrunched up, she closed her eyes. Harry drew her into a tight hug, confused by her reaction.
“He lost it all. I’m sorry. I just… feel responsible for it.” Harry smoothed his hand down her back as she slowly regained her composure. “You don’t have to apologize Herms.”
His sleeve damp with her tears, stuck to his shoulder but he ignored the wetness.
“He lost his wealth?” Harry prompted, not knowing what else to speak about, trying to get her to talk.
“Yes,” Hermione hiccupped again. She pushed back and let her bushy hair out of its pony tail. Her fingers returned to massaging her temple. She took a few deep breaths and restarted, her breakdown nearly forgotten.
“He lost his wealth.” She repeated after a long breath. “He shifted to…”
Her words faded slowly as Harry considered her response to the Malfoy predicament.
For the umpteenth time Harry cursed their younger selves for being so open with their passions, for the adults in his life for not having warned Hermione, Ron or him about the toll their jobs would take on them, especially in light of all they had done for the seven years they were in Hogwarts. Though, of course, the last year didn’t count.
They never got a chance to leave their memories and heal. Instead the three of them had plunged into the world of crime and magical horrors at tender ages with far too much knowledge and power but no one to guide them. They had been full of hope and optimism, driven by visions of changing the world with the high of the end of the war propelling them straight into making the decisions that they were still stuck in now.
Harry would turn twenty four this year but he felt no real change within himself. He still had nightmares that plagued him at night though they had countless new additions of people he’d failed to save, of prisoners screaming at him about their innocence or their slurs echoing through the halls as they were carried away.
He’d taken to roaming Grimmauld Place at night, cataloging its many rooms and hallways or he went to the library and picked a book at random. He had picked so many tit bits of information that way which he interspersed in conversation.
Sometimes, he walked through the London streets at night, unafraid of anything that lay in wait for him. He’d found various alleys and nooks between buildings where he stopped to simply breathe in the cool fresh air, tainted though it often was with the scent of stale urine and the unmistakable odor of vomit.
“Harry. Harry?” He surfaced to Hermione peering at him anxiously.
“Ah sorry. I was lost in my thoughts.”
She didn’t seem reassured in any way. But he couldn’t deal with her concern today. Not when he had other things that he wanted the answers to.
“What were you saying?”
“Well,” She still had the anxious look on her face, the question of Are you alright? reflected back at him but he chose to ignore it, paying attention to what she was saying for now.
“With the link to his Manor severed, the magic that held the Malfoys together dissipated. It’s a small blessing he still has his own magic. He began working for the Ministry, forcing them to give him a job. He worked his way up and through the Departments, not staying in one place longer than a year because no one was willing to work with him.”
How had Harry never known this? He’d glimpsed the blond sometimes in the corridors at the Ministry over the years but hadn’t paid attention to it, swiftly leaving whenever he could. Reminders of the past didn’t sit well with him. He had a hard enough time meeting his friends for a weekly drink at the pub without having to face people with whom he had had a strained relationship from the beginning.
“Then he began working at St. Mungo’s.” St Mungo’s?
“As what, A Healer?” Harry asked incredulously. But, the more he thought about it, he could see Malfoy working with patients in his mind’s eye. Though he couldn’t see him having the bedside manner and patience associated with the tough profession. The Malfoy he knew would be more likely to stuff herbs down someone's throat while berating them for being foolish enough to have gotten sick in the first place.
“Not exactly a Healer,” Hermione answered. “He has something to do with brewing potions for usage at the hospital.” Well, that made a lot more sense. The blond Slytherin had always been rather good at Potions. He'd been Snape's favorite pupil after all. That had to mean something.
A quiet silence reigned as Harry absorbed everything Hermione had told him so far. He had already made his decision. There wasn’t a choice really and he knew that his friend knew it too. But there was one more thing that he still needed to clarify.
“Why do you care so much about Draco so suddenly?” He asked plainly. “Not that I don’t understand your sense of responsibility but you would hardly ask me to help when you could find so many other options.” Harry hastened to add.
Hermione looked up at him again, startled. She hesitated, opening her mouth to speak and closing it again. This wasn’t something she had told many others yet, Harry inferred from the way she seemed to be avoiding replying.
Finally, she spoke in a voice too low for him to hear and he leaned ahead catching the last few sentences. “......saved my parents. I owe him. And he had asked for you. He refused help from anyone else.”
Harry stilled. Malfoy had… what?