Harry

He’s got a thing for making dramatic proclamations.

Harry’s really only aware of it because Hermione had pointed it out to him, once, back in their sixth year. She hadn’t meant it to be one of those times where she says something very introspective and real, but it had been, because suddenly Harry was finding himself looking back on all the big moments of his life and couldn’t help but agree that he had a flair for dramatics—his speeches to the DA and his one first declaration of love for Ginny, when he first told them about the prophecy and how he had told Dudley that he had almost died five times before he was even sixteen.

It’s not really something that he’d grown out of.

“I really hate this house.” Harry waves his spoon in the air to punctuate the importance of his words, splattering the newspaper Draco was reading with soup. “I think I’m going to move out.”

There wasn’t much that Harry could spout off that would make Draco turn away from the Quibbler before he was done searching for any mention of their names, but this was one of them. He looked less alarmed than Harry had thought he would. More exhausted than anything. “What?”

“I want to live somewhere else. Look at this place!” They hadn’t even taken down the severed house elf heads lining the walls, despite Hermione’s loud noises of disgust whenever she had to walk down the hallway to get to the bathroom. “Nobody can be happy when they live here.”

“We’re here.” Draco said, a little bit of alarm creeping into his voice. “We’re happy.”

“Yes, but—” It still catches him off guard, sometimes, that this thing between them was new and breakable but definitely there, that he was able to reach across the table and squeeze Draco’s hand without wondering how he would take it. “I meant long term. This isn’t a place to make a home, Draco.”

Draco nodded once, twice, then folded up the paper. “Alright.” He had a look on his face that Harry hade to associate with trying to get the proportions of a potion right. “Then let’s find you a home.”

Draco likes projects.

Harry had known that from the start, because back at Hogwarts there was never any shortage of them—Draco had always done the extra credit even when he didn’t need it, he had never gotten less than an A on any essay, not to mention all the badges and the rude songs that he had made up just to spite Harry over the years. It’s one thing to know that, though, and apletely different thing entirely to be a part of it.

They’ve got newspapers spread out across the living room floor, all of them opened to prospective houses. Draco’s got ink smeared across his nose and Harry had ditched his sweater two hours ago, because even though Draco was trying hard to find something that suited him, try as he might Harry just couldn’t picture himself in any of these houses.

“I’m sorry, Draco.” He had just read out a description of ten different places—a house buried deep in the country side, a stately manor hidden on the outskirts of London, a flat in theplex beside Hogsmeade, different homes from wizarding suburbs. “I just don’t know what I want.”

He kept trying to think of what he wanted a home to be like, but try as he might, all he was able to think was the Burrow. It was the closest thing to a home he had ever known, besides Hogwarts, but all sentiment aside, Harry had to admit that if he was going to pick his ideal house, it would not look like that.

“Alright.” Draco folded up the paper in the shape of an airplane and chucked it into the fire, as calm as he had been when they first started this, like Harry hadn’t shut down every single one of his attempts to be helpful. “Then what is it that you don’t want?”

“I don’t want it to be like the Dursleys. Nothing like them. It was—there was never—” He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about shiny floor tiles and crystal glasses and blinding lights, expensive couches whose cushions don’t seem very inviting and a cupboard, alwaysing back to the cupboard, the way the dust would fall into his eyes when people walked through the stairs and how since he never knew what time it was, he could trick himself into thinking that the hours were really days, months, years, life spinning out in front of him without him ever getting to live it. “It was like living in a glass house. Like if you talked too loud, you would break it.”

“Like you were suffocating,” Draco said, and it reminded Harry that they were building this home together. That Draco had his own things that he was trying to pull away from. “Like there was never a moment that they weren’t watching.”

“But I don’t want this, either.” Harry said, because even though they had done their best to make it seem like a place they could live in, it was just filled with too many memories. “I want somewhere that has more light.”

“Light.” Draco picked up his quill again and stared at the fire like he regretted throwing away his newspaper. “I can work with light.”

“Tell me what you want,” Draco says later, whispering the words right into his ear like it’s some sort of secret, and Harry can barely pay attention because of the way that his hands were moving, searching him out underneath the covers. “Tell me what you want and I can give it you.”

A chair with the stuffinging out of the cushions. Hermione’s afghans stacked up in a basket we keep in the corner. A big front porch with rocking chairs, a garden off to the side that won’t grow in rows no matter how hard we try to make it. Mismatched dishes in the sink and a kitchen table scorched from your constantly overflowing potions and fresh baked bread in the ovens, the radio always turned on low so we can dance when the mood strikes us and a big picture window in our bedroom. And maybe a dog, too, an old dog with a bum leg that we get from a muggle shelter, the one that had been there so long that it had given up hope that anyone was going to love him, we can be the ones to rescue him, can’t we? It’d be a good life, that.

“Nothing,” is what he says, because all that would take too long and would kill the mood and maybe Harry still doesn’t think it’s going to happen, anyways. “Just you.”

He’s started walking through the house again.

See, the thing about moving on that Harry didn’t know is that it’s sort of just another word for goodbye, where you have to loosen your grip on all those memories that you’re afraid of etting in order to keep facing the future, in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And it should be easy, in theory, but that was before you take into ount all the things that had happened in this miserable old building—how it was the only safe spot for them in the war, the party when Ron and Hermione were prefects, Ge and Fred together, where Remus and Tonks fell in love, where Sirius was.

Sometimes, if Harry is not careful, he can trick himself into thinking that he will turn a corner and see them watching him, waiting to see if he had lived up to the hero that they had taken him to be. Sometimes, he wants to rip this house down wall by wall and brick by brick in the hopes that one of them will get to go free. Sometimes, he thinks of standing in the doorway and screaming that he is sorry, just in case there is any chance that they would be able to hear.

He is not sure if he’s ready to leave them all behind.

“You don’t have to get rid of it.”

Harry jumps at the sound of Draco’s voice. He’d been caught in the middle of staring at the place where the portrait of Sirius’ mother used to hang.

“And why wouldn’t I get rid of it?”

“Because you’re one of the lucky people who can afford to buy a house without selling the old one.” Draco tilted his head, looking at the empty space, maybe thinking of how he should redo the wallpaper so you cannot even tell where the picture had been. “Too many memories here to just walk away.”

“I don’t want it.”

The idea of keeping it was met with a revulsion so strong that if Harry had had any doubts about moving out before, he wouldn’t have any now.

“Then donate it to the historical society, let it be turned into a museum for merlin’s sakes.” Draco clutched Harry’s fingers in his own, like that would make him listen. “All I’m saying is that you don’t owe this place, or anything in it, any more of you. You don’t have to figure out anything now, and you don’t have to do it alone, remember? I’m here, for good.” He was here. Here, and despite everything, not running away. Harry keeps expecting him to. “Don’t let this war take another piece of you.”

Harry wishes it were that easy.

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