That’s Friday. Harry goes back to the office after he leaves Malfoy’s and then calls it a day an hour early, begs off dinner with Ron and Hermione and makes a Tesco’s run instead. He goes home and soothes himself with cooking aplicated French dish he’d always liked making as a kid, and which, as an extra treat, his Uncle Vernon had loathed with a passion. He can’t remember what it’s called but it tastes good, chicken and wine and onion and garlic, and the act of throwing it together grounds him, helps him shake off the dark mood that dogged his heels all afternoon.

So Malfoy’s an unpleasant git who prefers anyone’spany to Harry’s; what else is new? It’s never bothered Harry before, and he goes to sleep with a full belly and the firm conviction that it doesn’t this time, either. It doesn’t.

On Saturday he wakes up early, refreshed and restless, and finds himself at a loose end until the monthly round-up his friends are having that night at the pub. He goes to work, has gelato from the cart up the street for breakfast, liberates Malfoy’s records from his cubicle, and takes them home.

It bes clear, as the day wears on around the armchair where Harry sits pouring over them, that Malfoy, at 25, has already lived quite a life. There are travel records, as painfully meticulous as the rest, of trips Malfoy has taken for research, or to retrieve artifacts for the museum. He’s been to the Australian outback and the steppes of Russia, the States, the Amazon, the Savannah. He’s been to most of the major cities Harry can think of, Athens and Rome and Mumbai and Sydney, Cairo and Hong Kong, Moscow and Bogotá. They’re just little trips, all of them, never more than a few days, never long enough to absorb the culture, eat the food, talk to the locals…but still. He’s been. He’s gone. He’s seen for himself.

Harry’s never really been anywhere, discounting one disastrous holiday in Avignon with Ginny that ended in tears and sunburn, unhappy silences. It’s one of those things he’s always wanted to do, traveling, but between one thing and another he never quite manages to find the time. Harry realizes, ufortable to think that it’s happened without his noticing, that he’s put the idea of walking the world into the box in his brain where he keeps marrying Gin, or being raised by people who love him: things he knows won’t happen. Dreams he’s had to let go.

He slams the files closed, eats leftovers for dinner, and goes down to the pub.

It’s fine, for the first hour or so. It’s fun. It starts with just him and Ron and Seamus, the way it had in the old days, back when this little monthly gathering had been nothing more than a few old classmates trying to wipe clean a month’s worth of Auroring with drink. Harry has a Firewhiskey, indulges in a bit of office gossip—Seamus, in particular, can’t seem to help himself—and shouts with laughter at a story about Trent, their newest Junior Auror, nearly soiling himself during a routine pixie round-up.

Others start rolling in after a while, as they always do. Over the years, their monthly wind-down night at the Bawdy Bowtruckle has evolved into a proper piss-up, and people flit and in out of the rotation as they have the time. It’s people they knew in school, mostly, some work colleagues and friends-of-friends, a few stragglers they’ve picked up just from the sheer consistency of their meeting time and place.

It’s nice, Harry tells himself. It is. He doesn’t miss his quiet nights with Ron and Seamus, or sometimes Ron and Hermione and Seamus and Dean, at all.

Hermione shows up first tonight, having pawned Rose off on Molly for the evening. She’s followed shortly by Luna—it’s good to see her, and Harry slides over in his booth to make room for her and her latest paramour, a girl called Vi with pink hair and a piercing through her tongue. He orders another round and Dean shows up, kissing Seamus hello as he pulls up a chair, and then Ge and Angelina, and then Neville and Ginny. Harry’s eyebrows raise in surprise—they don’te often—but Neville gives him a cautious, questioning smile, and Ginny’s nervous little wave about breaks Harry’s heart. Maybe the encounter at Malfoy’s broke some of the awkwardness somehow. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing Harry’s ever seen do that job (the winner of that contest, now and probably forever, being “troll bogies.”)

Despite himself, Harry’s mood sours a little to think of Malfoy. He orders another drink.

And it’s still fun, after that. Of course it’s still fun. People keep pouring in until it’s so crowded in their corner of the bar that Harry can’t really track who’sing and going, but that’s fine. Who needs to do that, anyway? He orders another drink and definitely doesn’t mind that it’s too loud to have a conversation with anyone. It’s a good time, a chance to let loose, to get out on the dance floor—not that Harry dances, never good at it with a partner and too hopeless to even consider making the attempt by himself, but he’s sure it’s just as much fun to watch. He’s not at all bothered, when he flags down the waitress for another round, that it takes him three tries to get her attention over all the shouting, laughing bodies, or that when she reaches him she looks overwhelmed and frantic. His Firewhiskey is delicious and absolutely no part of him is screaming at the top of its lungs that he can’t see either of the exits and wouldn’t be able to spot a threat in this crowd until it was too late. It’s great. Really a blast. Harry’s having a fabulous time.

It’s only after about the sixth drink that Harry can admit to himself that he’s well and truly miserable. This, too, is a regular feature of these pub nights, although admittedly Harry doesn’t tend to remember all that much of this part in the morning.

He slouches a little in his seat—he’s got the corner booth, his back to the wall, which always seems to be where he ends up. Not that anyone ever calls him on it, but he’s got his reasons, could defend his choice admirably if anyone were to bother: it’s the most easily defensible position in the whole place and Harry doesn’t like to have his back exposed while he’s this drunk, in this big of a crowd. God, there are too many people, the Bowtruckle’s got to be over capacity and technically it’s his job to check; he’s not going to but it rankles anyway, a splinter under his skin he can’t quite manage to worry loose. His ears are ringing a little with the volume of the place, a headache beating on the door at the back of his skull that all the Firewhiskey he’s downed is currently holding shut.

Which is fine, of course, since it’s not like anyone’s talking to him. Because: of course they’re not. Because: in times like this, on nights like these, they’ve all got people to talk to. Ron and Hermione are laughing breathlessly on the dance floor and Seamus and Dean are snogging for England in the corner; Luna and her latest have vanished, probably to the women’s toilets and probably for a good while; Angelina is draped across Ge’s lap with her fingers in his hair, smiling and smiling at him. The worst of it is the way Neville and Ginny are standing by the bar, their heads bent in towards one another, faces lit with the simple pleasure of sharing space.

It’s all just so wonderful that Harry could choke on it. The thought’s unfair, leaves him guilty just for thinking it, even though he knows he’s just vicious with drink and exhaustion and how much he really, if he’s going to be honest with himself, hates every last part of this particular experience, and has more or less every time. It’s not like he can say so, though— they’re his friends and they like having him here and it’s important to be social and they’d just worry about him if he started begging off. Anyway, it’s not like Harry has anything better to do.

He glowers down at his Firewhiskey. There are a few nearly-melted cubes of ice floating forlornly in it, a smudge of something that looks like lipstick on the side of the glass, and Harry finds his mind filled suddenly with the image of the little spread the wet bar at Grimmauld Place pulled up for him the day before. That glass which had looked sturdy, solid, like it had some real heft to, some weight; that perfectly spherical ball of ice; that warmly appointed study, all wood and leather, where you could have a conversation, or hear yourself think.

Sometimes, on nights like these, Harry walks the crowded bar and looks for— something. Some guy or girl who will smile at him, kiss him messily in the street, follow him home, stay until morning. He finds it, even, not always but…usually, when he puts in the time, and though it’s never once made Harry feel even half as good as he’d hoped it would, there are months where it’s better than nothing. There are months when Harry feels so drunk, so alone, so doomed to sit forever with his back against the wall and no one to talk to, that it’s worth the sinking sensation of the morning after, just to have a warm body to ward off the cold.

Not tonight, though. Tonight Harry sits and sips his seventh glass of Firewhiskey and thinks about that stupid room in that stupid house that he sold to stupid, stupid Malfoy. He didn’t even want the damned place until he knew it was Malfoy’s—not that he wants it now, he corrects himself quickly, taking another sip. He doesn’t want anything of Malfoy’s. It’s just—just—galling, is what it is. It’s galling, and he’s galled.

God, he’s drunk. He’s too drunk; he doesn’t want to be here anymore, in this awful bar, he hates this bar, the bar and the crowd and the noise and the house and—

—he runs into somebody, hard, in his haste to beat a retreat to the front door.

“Terribly sorry,” says a familiar voice. Slowly, as if moving through water, Harry looks up into the face of a handsome black man who he wouldn’t be able to identify as Blaise Zabini if he hadn’t been essentially eavesdropping on him the afternoon before.

Being an adult, Harry thinks with the conviction of the tr

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