s at him pointedly. “Weasel’s going to have an aneurysm from laughing too much if he finds out that you’re feeding me breakfast.”

He raises an arm and tries to curl his fingers around the fork again.

It’s slow and it’s shaky, but Draco’s there and he’s trying, so Harry gets another pancake and respectfully looks away.

He’s not really hungry anymore. In fact, he’s fucking full, but he likes this, eating pancakes like this. By the time he’s finished eating the fourth, Draco has managed to swallow three pieces. There’s syrup on his lap and the front of his nightgown, and there’s also some dripping down his arm, but Harry respectfully looks away from that, too.

Draco makes it through half of his plate, before the fork slips from his fingers and clanks loudly on the marble floor of his balcony, and Harry looks up at him, ready to ask if he should get it for him, but Draco’s gone again.

His gaze is vacant, staring blankly at his plate.

Harry stands up before the squeezing pain in his chest can settle, and he goes around the table so he can pick up the fork near Draco’s feet.

On his way up, he glances at Draco’s face. There is no recognition, no life, but there is syrup at the corner of his mouth.

Harry sighs and reaches for a napkin. “You’re the one who should wipe the syrup off your face,” he mutters and gently dabs at Draco’s cheek.

It’s definitely weird, taking care of Draco Malfoy.

Or, well, he isn’t really supposed to be taking care of Draco Malfoy. He’s just really here to keep himpany, avoid the media while he’s at it, and eat the breakfast that Malfoy doesn’t eat.

But he wipes the syrup off of Draco’s mouth anyway, and his arm, and then searches for his wand in his pocket to charm Draco’s clothes clean.

“What do you mean you didn’t leave?” Harry asks twenty minutes later when Draco’s back and the pancakes and the mess on the table had disappeared with a pop. Two steaming mugs of tea have replaced them.

Draco looks at him wearily, as if he’s weighing whether he should agree to engage in civil conversation with him. In the end, he sighs and talks. “It’s…hazy. But I still know what’s happening. Sometimes. Don’t think I didn’t see you wiping my face like a child, Potter. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Should I have just left the syrup on your face?”

Draco snorts. “You should have just left, period.”

“The pancakes weren’t going to eat themselves,” Harry defends.

“Don’t you have enough pancakes with those weasels? I’m sure the Weaslette would love to fall all over your feet and hand feed you.”

It’s an attempt to get under his skin, and it works, because everything that Draco says works, but Harry tries his best to stamp down his irritation. “Don’t call them that.”

“I’ll call them whatever I like.”

Harry sighs loudly. He has otten what it’s like, to have Draco Malfoy be such an irritating git. He almost wants to rise up to the bait. “Pancakes were Fred’s favourite. They haven’t cooked them since…Well, you know.”

He looks at Draco then, and isn’t prepared for the shame that’s evident on his face.

He isn’t surprised when, moments later, the expression on Draco’s face melts away and his body goes slack.

“Fred isn’t your fault, you know,” Harry says, an hour later, when Dracoes back.

He’s figured it out, somewhat. The things that make Draco disappear. But although Draco doesn’t seem to like talking about the things that he did or the things he thinks that happened because of it, Harry thinks that maybe, Draco needs to talk about it.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Draco doesn’t answer. He looks away. “So that’s why you’ve beening here, because of the lack of pancakes?”

Harry shoots him a grin. “You got me.”

And that’s how they spend the rest of the morning. When Draco’s gone, Harry writes a letter for Hermione. He tells her that she’ll be proud of the fact that he’s been studying. He also tells her, for the first time, that Draco Malfoy is out of Azkaban and that Harry’s been looking after him.

The next day, she Owls him in reply. At the end of her letter, she writes:

I’m not really sure about you involving yourself with Malfoy again, but I trust you as always, Harry, and I am worried about him. And I hope that it’s been helping you cope with everything somehow. I know you’ve been trying to hole yourself up in Grimmauld Place lately. We are going to talk about that when Ie back.

How is Malfoy? Say hullo to him for me.

Four days later, Harry returns, and is surprised when he opens the door and Draco turns his head to look straight at him.

“You’re here,” hements, eyes wide and startled.

Draco raises an eyebrow at him. “This is my room, Potter.”

“I guess. Err.” Harry pauses by the door. “Can Ie in?”

“You’ve been barging in here for the past two weeks, or so my mother tells me. Don’t let something as trivial as the lack of my permission stop you now.”

Harry flushes, but enters the room, anyway. “Excuse me, then.”

He crosses the room, conscious of Draco’s piercing gaze on him the whole time. As he nears, he glances at the table. “Eggs?”

Draco follows his gaze, towards the table with two sets of breakfast: French toast, runny eggs, slices of fruit, and a cup of coffee. He sighs. “Well, sit down, Potter. There’s nothing much I can object to when even my house elf’s making you breakfast.”

Harry shrugs, and then takes the folded note on top of the napkin on his plate. It’s from Narcissa, with pretty much the same message as before. He sits down, swallowing the saliva that’s pooled in his mouth at the smell of the food. “Your mother asked me toe today.”

“You can refuse her, you know. You’re certainly under no obligation to babysit criminals.”

Harry frowns at that, but doesn’t rise up to the bait. “I know. I just want to. I’m the one who offered.”

Draco stares at him, and there is genuine curiosity in his next question. “Why?”

Harry shrugs. “Free food.” He starts to dig in into his breakfast. Draco continues to stare at him. He swallows down a mouthful of eggs and toast. “How are you feeling?”

Seeming to understand that he’s not going to get a straight answer, Draco looks away. “Dreadful. My back hurts.”

Harry tamps down the urge to smile. After so many visits of Draco just sitting there like a vegetable, it’s refreshing to hear his usual snark. “Hermione says hi, by the way.”

“Tell her she doesn’t have to pretend to be civil just because the war’s over.”

“She’s not pretending. She’s really worried about you.”

Draco scoffs. “Are you going to tell me that Weasley’s worried about me, too?”

“Well, he’s mostly worried about me. But he does ask about you from time to time.”

“Probably just to make sure we’re not hiding Death Eaters in our dungeons ready to ambush the Golden Boy to revive You-Know-Who,” Draco mutters.

Harry’s fork pauses halfway into his mouth. Bits of the egg plop back onto his plate. “Err. You’re not, are you?”

Draco looks at him straight in the eyes, unamused. “Merlin, Potter, if we wanted you indisposed, Binky would have poisoned your pancakes by now.”

Harry relaxes. He’s glad Binky hasn’t poisoned his pancakes. Those pancakes were great. “Okay, good. I’ll tell Ron that.”

Draco sighs loudly. “Why are you here again?”

Harry shrugs. “You know, I’m not really sure myself,” he says honestly.

At that, Draco leans back in his chair, studying him.

Harry resists the urge to shove another mouthful of eggs in his mouth in an effort to avoid his gaze.

After a while, Draco looks out into the garden. His voice is small and quiet. “You’ve done your part. My mother escaped Azkaban, and for that, I am indebted to you. My sentence was also reduced because of you. I am not so ungrateful as to et that. But this…” He glances back at him, eyes tired. “What do you get out of this?”

It hurts, to see Draco Malfoy so defeated. Once upon a time, Harry thinks he would have relished seeing Draco like this, atoning for everything that he did. Atoning for everything that he had to do to save his family.

Once upon a time isn’t now.

“I’m sorry,” he lets out in a rush. “You shouldn’t have gone to Azkaban.”

The smile that Draco sends him at that is dry. “Have you otten the things I’ve done?”

“No,” Harry shakes his head, and then he meets Draco’s eyes head on. “No, I haven’t.”

“What is this, then?” The smile turns into a smirk. “The Golden Boy’s feeling guilty?”

“Don’t call me that.” Harry glares. It’s getting harder to stay calm when Draco’s so decided to be an asshole. “Look, Malfoy, there’s no deeper, ulterior motive to this. Can’t we just. I don’t know, be friends?”

Draco flinches and looks away, mouth curled downwards. “We lost the chance for that back in first year. Too late for friendship bracelets now,” he mutters.

Harry recalls it, 11-year-old Draco and the hand that he refused. He blinks, surprised at Draco’s reaction. Surprised that Draco still remembers that moment and thinks much of it.

Draco sighs, snapping Harry out of his thoughts. “And besides, why would you even want to be friends with me?”

“Merlin knows why, you’re such an irritating git,” Harry responds, mimicking his sigh. He points his fork at Draco. “But I’m staying, so stop trying to pick a fight with me. I don’t want to explain to Narcissa why I taped your mouth.”

Draco raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m actually asking serious questions here. You’re the one being all defensive about it.”

Harry flushes with shame, because he knows that that’s exactly what he’s feeling right now. He shoves a piece of toast in his mouth. “Sorry. I just want to do it, okay? Isn’t that reason enough?”

The look that Draco gives him tells him that no, it is not enough. Draco still looks like he wants to ask another question, but in the end, he just takes the napkin from his plate and unfolds it on his lap.

“Potter.”

“Hm?”

“Stop eating like a Neanderthal. You’re making a mess.”

Harry swallows down his toast. He grins. “Sorry, Malfoy.”

“Potter,” Draco says, three days later. Breakfast and lunch has bothe and gone, and this is the first time Draco has spoken today.

Harry looks up from his book.

Draco peers at him and then his book, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. He tilts his head. Swallows. It takes a while before he talks. “What are you doing in my house again?”

“Reading?”

Draco blinks, and his eyes clear. He sags back in his wheelchair, as if tired from the effort ofing into the world again. He clears his throat, swallows the dryness in his voice away. “Merlin, I thought they sent me to Azkaban, not some other dimension where you actually have the refinement to read a Potions book.”

“I do want to pass my NEWTs this year, Malfoy.”

“I’m not betting on it.”

“That’s why I asked Narcissa to let me borrow your books.”

Draco’s eyes widen and he glares. “Those are my—! Get your germs off them.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Why did I even worry about you? You seem fine for somebody who just spent three months in Azkaban.”

Just like that, there is a flash of hurt in Draco’s face. “What did you expect? A—”

And then he’s gone.

Harry is stunned. The guilt st

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