Harry

There’s a full scale fight going on in Diagon Alley and even though he was in the middle of a duel and curses were whizzing by so close to him he could feel the wind on his skin, all Harry can think about is that this really isn’t what he wanted to happen when he was trying to gather enough nerve to tell Draco that it was over.

(Not over, over. He was going to make that clear before he even started talking. They could still live together, and be best friends, and act like they can’t function if they don’t walk around like they’re attached to the hip, but there’s certain things that they need to get rid of if they’re ever going to manage to be something more. Things like the bed sharing, and the hugging, and the kissing without talking about it, and saying I love you and pretending they mean it platonically even though they both know the words are too heavy in their mouths to mean that little. It wouldn’t turn into anything if they kept throwing road blocks up in their own way.)

In Harry’s head, his thought process was simple. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to keep all of that, it was just that he was under the impression that maybe they would have a sturdier foundation if they threw away all their shaky beginnings and started building it all up from scratch. In his head, Draco would understand, and the two of them could shift their not-so-functional relationship into something better, and move past being just friends when they were both standing on solid ground, with Draco not having the knowledge that one word from Harry could send him back to Azkaban hanging over his head.

It was easier to think of saying something than actually forcing the words out, so even though Harry was trying to soften the blow with a night out and ice cream that he bought (he always buys, because he likes to consider himself a gentleman, even though Draco always scrunches his nose up and gives him this look, like he knows exactly what he’s trying to do and thinks it’spletely stupid), he couldn’t quite make himself do it. Draco just looked so happy, and for once he wasn’t checking over his shoulder for imaginary enemies every five seconds. There was ice cream stuck to the side of his cheek but Harry wasn’t telling him, and when they left the store, Draco took Harry’s hand in his like there was no question that that was where they belonged.

Like, after all this time, they had just be an extension of each other, and that hurts, hurts so bad that Harry forces the words up from behind the lump that was growing in his throat and tries to make the words crash through the barrier that had formed behind his teeth, but they don’te, not even close. “Draco.” Draco turns to face him, and he is holding both hands now, tilting his head to look up at him because he is on the flat ground and Harry is still standing on the step above him. “Draco, I need to tell you something.”

He’s confused, but he does not look worried. There might have been a time where those words would have sent him into a panic, thinking that this was over and Harry was sending him away, but now their friendship was set in stone, up until the moment Harry says what he had brought him here to say and sends it all crumbling back into pieces. “What’s that, Harry?”

Draco also looks beautiful. They are under a streetlight, and his hair, which has grown much too long to be as sleek and shiny as it was back in Hogwarts, falls over his face in a fuzzy halo. Harry resists the urge to push it away from his face and looks up at the sky instead, which is streaked with the last strands of a sunset.

(He’s almost sorry that he had to say it in a place this lovely, but he has no other option. He could not do it at home, with all the memories, and he could not bring himself to taint any part of their life with his words. It had to be someplace different, somewhere that had the least chance of following them home.)

“I just…” He gives up on trying to be strong and reaches out to him, and Draco melts into his touch. It could be perfect, if Harry let it. It could be everything, if he would just give up on trying to do things the right way. If he would only stop trying to save him when he might not need saving. Might not want saving. “We need to stop. To do something different.”

He still isn’t getting it. “What do you mean?” Draco starts to take a step back, falters, and thenes back towards Harry again, because he still cannot fathom the thought that Harry might be the one to hurt him, after all his worry about what strangers might be thinking. “I don’t understand.”

“I know.” Harry takes a deep breath, shakes away the tension that had settled in his shoulders. “We just—”

He intends to tell him that it’s over. That’s what he had brought him there for, and that’s what he was going to do, even if it killed him, just as soon as he gathered up the nerve, but then the street exploded in what he thought must have been half of Ge’s stock of fireworks, and he found that he had run out of time.

Draco

It’s like the war again, because spells are flying by him and it’s scary and he could die at any moment, but it also isn’t, because this time, finally, he is fighting on the right side of things, with Harry disappearing somewhere into the fray, swallowed up by the smoke and the flashes of lights, and Ge leaping out of the busted display window of his shop, sleeves pushed up to the elbows and robes billowing out behind him.

(It’s a glorious entrance, wand spinning and red hair flashing through the smoke and landing in a crouch, a snarl in his voice and a smirk on his face, like he could not wait to tear someone to pieces. It was almost terrifying to see him, and Draco was kind of jealous.)

“You alright mate?” Ge crosses the few steps to him like they’re seeing each other from opposite ends up of a bar, nothing special, just two friends running into each other after a long week of work. The glass crunches under his feet, and his eyes are darting around the street, and when he draws even to him, Draco can see that he is bleeding from his daredevil leap through the window.

“I’m fine. You?” He nods down at his arm, which is cut open and bleeding, dripping down his hand and catching at his wand.

“This?” Ge doesn’t even look at it, just flashes a grin at him. “That’s nothing mate. Wait and see what I do to them.”

It’s almost ferocious, the way he walks forward into the smoke. He cuts an impressive figure, and within a few seconds, it bes clear that he is just as skilled at dueling as he is at charms. Ge can see his outline even when the fight swallows him up, the vibrant spiky hair and the too-long robes that whip around at his ankles, the snapping of his spells and the bark of his laughter. It’s almost like they are watching hime back alive after months of being asleep, right there in Diagon Alley.

Only when he loses sight of both Ge and Harry does Draco shock himself into action, yanking off his jacket and walking forward. He can’t see what he is fighting, but he knows where it is—he can follow the hazy outlines, throws back spells when onees towards him, and within seconds, it is like he is doing nothing moreplicated than following the steps of a dance he had been taught long ago and almost otten, stepping backward when they step towards him and pressing forward when they draw back, answering one curse with one hex, hoping beyond hope that Harry is not hurt, even though he lost sight of him long ago.

“Look at you.” There’s a voice behind him that sounds like gravel, and without turning around, Draco knows who it is, but he turns anyways. “Always were a hotshot.”

There’s Crabbe, standing in front of him. He had not seen him since the war, since that moment with the fire and Goyle’s screams and the burns tearing at their hands like white hot needles. Draco hadn’t thought he would see him again. He hadn’t even wanted to. Last time he talked to Pansy, he heard that he was in Azkaban, anyways.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He cannot curse him. He knows that the moment he sees him, because the sight of himes with so much guilt, the sense of knowing that even though they were bad people he had been the one who started them down that path, that the choices they made were in part because of him. He thinks about the first year on the train, about a rat’s teeth sinking into knuckles, about sulking along the walls at parties while their collars strangled them, and about stupider things, about the blinding moments of pure friendship, like the time where Crabbe was naming girls and Draco named a guy and neither of them skipped a beat, or when his father first went to jail and Crabbe beat up a third year to make him feel better, which was misguided, but it helped, because all Draco needed was to see someone made smaller than he was feeling.

“You like to show off,” Crabbe says, and there is no such hesitation in his movements, Draco can tell. He always was the brutal one, even if Draco planned it. He was the one who liked it just for the sake of hurting someone. Draco had his reasons, because he had been told to push others down in order to stay on top, but Crabbe never needed to ask why. “All flash and no power. But me?” He’s advancing on him, a hand reaching out, and Draco will not raise a hand to defend himself. He has debts to pay, and this one, this one little shred of guilt, will be one that he can wash away. “I’ve got nothing else.”

His hand is reaching out and grabbing Draco by the neck, and his wand is raising up, and Draco has just enough time to close his eyes and hope it does not hurt (he is still a coward, even if he is trying to stop) when another hand flashes out and hits Crabbe right in the head, sending Draco flying and Crabbe stumbling sideways.

Draco stares down at the now not-so-tough Crabbe, and then he stares up at Ron, who is panting and looking down at Crabbe with something like disgust.

“Jesus.” Ron stares at him, and Draco repeats himself, once, twice. “Do you ever remember that you have a wand?”

There’s a moment where they both stare at each other in disbelief, and then Ron laughs, then kicks out at Crabbe. “If I leave, can you handle this?” Draco doesn’t answer and Ron nods, kicks him again, and then sends silver ropes flying with a wave of his wand, making it impossible for Crabbe to move. e on.” He claps him on the back, and even though they are not friends, not even close, Draco can feel the truce that came about in all this magic and dust. “We’ve got others to fight.”

Don’t we always, Draco thinks, but he moves forward without a protest, because somewhere in there is Harry, and he will not stop fighting when there is someone like that to follow.

Harry

“Didn’t I tell you that I was done fighting?” Ge demands, but there’s no bite behind the words.

They’re all at St. Mungo’s, each of them nursing their wounds and waving away any actual medical help. He hadn’t wanted toe, and neither had anyone else,

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