Draco

Harry’s out saving the world, and this time Draco can’t quite stomach the thought of spending all night alone in this flat, wondering what might be happening and having no way to help, so he leaves, promising himself that he had a life before he got caught up in all of Harry’s heroics, and he had a right to have a life now. He had made no promise to stay here and wait like the worried wife, so he could leave, damn it, go off and find his own fun since Harry wouldn’t let him help, claiming that it was too dangerous, and he had all the people he needed.

It was a load of bullshit.

Draco wasn’t helping because he wasn’t capable, he wasn’t helping because they all still saw him as a liability, even Harry. They can’t expect him to turn on his past loyalties, even though he’s tried to explain to them all that there had been no loyalty about it. Just a scared little kid who was in way over his head.

“I just don’t feelfortable putting you in that situation.” Harry says, looking like he is trying to avoid the situation blowing up in both of their faces. And really, Draco knows he doesn’t have any right to be angry, because this is just one of those disappointments that came from finding himself on the wrong side. His choices (or lack of them) were going to haunt him for the rest of his life. “What if it’s someone you know?”

Draco wants to protest, but he hears the rest of it. What are you going to do when youe face to face with someone that you used to be friends with as a child, or had a wand pointed at you by a family friend? Are you really going to kill them? Are you really going to bring them in? You aren’t ready to do whatever’s necessary to win, but they are. And so are we.

So he didn’t argue after his original offer was shot down, even if his good bye tonight was a little colder than normal, just a press of his fingers into Harry’s wrist before he walks out the door for good, something that he hoped Harry was able to take as an apology and a warning at the same time, a silent plea for him toe back home to him.

Still, that doesn’t mean he isn’t angry, or that he’s fine just sitting on the steps and watching the hallway for Harry toe back home like he had the past three times Harry went to some meeting (meeting, bull shit, you don’te back from meetings and return covered in blood) or sat to stake out a house. He didn’t know where he was going or how long he would be there, if it was dangerous or just routine, if he was alone or the rest of the order was at his back. Draco was just so damn tired of being kept out of the loop.

“Give me a nightingale.” Draco slides into the bar, keeping his collar thrown up around his face. He had been intending to go to the Leaky Cauldron like every other sad wizard does, but ducked into this muggle bar at the last instant, picking a drink off the menu at random. “Make it quick.”

“So demanding.” The voice, recognizable in a place where Draco thought he would be able to avoid people he knew, made Draco jump. Behind him, Ge is grinning, and he leans around Draco to whisper his own order to the bartender, who smiles at him before asking if she should make him more than one, or if he was going to take it slow tonight.

“Just one, darling.” Ge clamps his hand down on Draco’s shoulder, and even though Draco is almost entirely sure it is meant to be friendly, it still feels like a threat. Like he has no choice but to stay here. “I’ve got to let my friend here catch up.”

The word friend shocks Draco, but he tries not to show it. The situation definitely feels grumpy now.

“What are you doing here?”

Ge snorts into his drink, drains it in one go, and then takes Draco’s when the girl puts it down in front of him. “Ohe. You didn’t want that.” Ge grins, and with the dim lighting, you almost can’t tell that anything was missing, like he had shown up perfectly whole. “It was terrible.”

“Didn’t stop you from drinking it.” Draco was grumpy. He hade here to be alone and surly, and here was Ge, walking over like they were best friends and had every right to sit here, pestering him, and drinking Draco’s drinks.

“I’m used to it. This is my usual place.” He wasn’t lying. All the muggles here seemed to know him, from the waiter with the flashy jacket to the bartender, and even a pack of grouchy looking old men by the front door. “You, however, don’t belong here.”

Draco knew he didn’t. Everyone else was in jeans and worn down t-shirts, and Draco had shown up like he was going to a five star restaurant. He couldn’t look more like a man who had just stumbled in here on a whim, desperate to run from something.

“I’m trying something out.” Draco ordered himself another drink, and took it before Ge could get his hands on it. “It was working, before you came here.”

“Drowning your worries in booze until Harry deares back home?” Ge waves his hand for another, and this time, the girl just leaves the bottle. It seems to suit him better. “Trust me, it won’t work. Nothing will take the edge off the wondering.”

“How do you know about that?” Draco was pissed, now, because it felt like Ge knew something he shouldn’t, and he was also feeling like he was poking fun about Draco’s feelings for Harry. That would start a whole new round of problems, if everyone and their mother knew that he was in love with the world’s savior.

“Harry swung by the shop today. Told me all about it. Offered to take me into the fold, if I was up for it.” Ge dug his nails into a chip in the wood. “Told him he could bugger off. No way was I going to get into that again.”

Draco should have probably know to let it go, that Ge was working through some things, but talking to Harry’s friends was like picking your way through a minefield—most places were perfectly safe, but one wrong step and you find your world in pieces.

“Why not?”

“What do you mean why not?” He gestures wildly at the side of his head with the bottle, at the shiny mess of tissue where an ear used to be. “I lost my ear. I lost my brother. What more do you want from me?” And of course it would be about Fred, everything that has happened with Ge over the past year has been about Fred.

“You don’t have to stop just because he’s not here.”

He meant that to beforting.

(Actually, scratch that, he didn’t mean it to beforting, he was just thinking about the flames and Goyle, and Snape being dead and hailed as a hero without one word to the people like Draco who would actually mourn him, and his father in Azkaban who would be horrified to see how his son turned out, about how he could not stop just because they are gone, and then that fell out of his mouth.)

“You think I’m a coward,” Ge’s voice was soft and quiet, and Draco was forcibly reminded that he was Ron’s brother, because it seemed like all the Weasley boys would like to punch their feelings instead of working through them. Draco would admire it, if it didn’t keep meaning that he found himself thrown up against the wall with their fists inches from his face, hands raised in surrender and trying to fix whatever he had broken. “That I should never have walked away.”

“I don’t think anything.” There was a crowd around them, all these muggles watching with worried faces, and all of them on Ge’s side. “Really, man. Whatever’s going on with you, it’s cool with me.”

Ge snarls at him, face twisted in a way that makes Draco think he’s about to cry, and then shoves away, stalking out the door. Draco pauses long enough to throw money on the bar and then chases after him, ignoring the people who tells him he should let it go.

It doesn’t take long to find Ge, who didn’t get very far. He had only turned the corner, and now he was hunched over beneath a streetlight, hands on his knees. He looked like he was about to be sick.

“Are you having a panic attack?” A stupid question, because he was, and even stupider because even though Hermione was forcing them all to read up on their particular traumas, knowing the lingo and knowing how to help aren’t the same things.

Ge doesn’t answer, just wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up. “I was going to kick your ass.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

(Lie. It’s easier to feel confident when they’re ten feet apart, but back there, with the tension running high and no one moving to stop it, he was so, so dead.)

“I’ve punched you before.” Ge’s mouth twitched into a smile as he said it, and Draco had an ufortable flash of him curled on the ground, trying to protect himself, Ge and Harry’s fists flying. It had hurt quite a lot.

“I deserved it.”

“Yeah.” Ge said, smiling, and there was iveness in that syllable, enough so that when he sank down to sit on the curb, Draco thought it was safe toe and sit beside him. “You really were a prat.”

Draco choked on a laugh, feeling better than he had all night. “I meant it, though. About not thinking anything about you not fighting.” He was wading back into dangerous territory, because apparently Draco doesn’t have any self preservation skills. “You’ve done enough.”

Ge sighed, flopped back onto the sidewalk so he was lying flat on his back. “Try telling that to Harry.”

“Trust me,” He says, thinking of going back, of getting the first aid supplies ready and staring from the clock to the door and back again, forcing himself to stay awake until Harryes home. “I’m doing my best.”

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