sick, changes his mind, goes and brushes his teeth, and then flops back down on the couch to abandon this weirdness for the sweet release of sleep. Or possibly death. Whicheveres first.

No sooner has his head hit the cushion, however, than:

“Potter!” Malfoy calls from the hallway. He knocks again, but only the once, and less forcefully; it’s more of a tap than anything else. “Let me back in, there’s a very strange creature making faces at me from the door across the hall.”

Harry groans, drags himself upright, and shuffles back over to the door, which he throws open balefully. Waiting on his threshold is Malfoy, again. He seems to be glaring at the Christmas decorations that are still on Mrs. Across-The-Way’s door.

Harry thinks they’ve been up for too long, too, but he’s never stooped to using them of sentience about it.

“It’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Malfoy,” he says. He puts a fingers to each of his temples and rubs, not that it helps much. “A Muggle thing. For Christmas. Made of paper. Definitely not making faces at you.”

“Are you sure?” Malfoy says, still looking at the cardboard reindeer with wary hesitation.

“Very sure.”

“Well it’s February, in any case,” Malfoy says, “very poor taste,” and he steps past Harry and into the apartment without waiting to be invited. Harry’s just about to ask what kind of taste it’s in to invade someone else’s home without asking before 7 AM when Malfoy thrusts a little corked vial at him. “Here.”

Harry looks down at the bottle, the tell-tale neon green answering the question even as he asks it: “Wait, is this hangover potion?”

“No, it’s deadliest poison,” Malfoy says, rolling his eyes. “All part of my cunning plan to murder you, Potter—yes, of course, it’s hangover potion. I won’t have you telling the press that I left you here in the throes of agony the next time you decide to speak to them.”

Hotly, Harry begins, “I didn’t decide to—”

“Oh, I know,” Malfoy snaps, waving a hand. “My god, you are irritating. Just take the potion and shut up about it, all right? Assuming you’re even capable of that.”

Harry, who thinks that’s pretty riching from Malfoy, should throw the potion back in his face and tell him to get out. But. Well. He does feel pretty awful. “Fine.”

Still, he’s never been one to cede his ground entirely; he uncaps the vial and holds eye contact with Malfoy as he lifts it to his lips. But Malfoy, the little bastard, doesn’t even have the decency to look away, and so Harry ends up drinking the whole thing down with their eyes locked. It’s—weird, the potion pouring sweet relief through every inch of him even as the weight of Malfoy’s gaze makes him want to shift on his feet and rub at the back of his neck. Harry’s never felt anything quite like it before. He’s not sure he likes it, but…he’s not entirely sure he dislikes it, either.

Maybe, Harry thinks, difited, Ron and Hermione and even Blaise Zabini all have a bit of a point.

“There,” Malfoy says brightly, when Harry’s drunk the last drop and pulled the vial away from his lips. “You already look much less like you’ve spent a month in Azkaban, this was clearly a sess, I can’t wait to read all about it future Prophet articles. ‘Draco Malfoy Saved Me A Humiliating Death Covered In My Own Sick,’ Says Former Top Citizen Harry Potter. ‘He’s The Real Hero!’”

“You are,” Harry says. When Malfoy’s eyes widen satisfyingly in shock, he continues, “For not going into journalism, I mean. That’s a real service to the country you did there. You should get a medal.”

“For your information,” Malfoy starts, and then his eyes seem to focus, for the first time this morning, on something beyond Harry. They bug out a little, and he stops talking.

After a second, Harry caves and waves a hand in front of Malfoy’s face. “Hello? Earth to Malfoy? For my information…what?”

“Oh my god,” Malfoy says. His eyes snap back to Harry’s, and Harry takes an instinctive step back at the expression on his face. “Potter,” he demands, “do you live here?”

“Er,” says Harry, “yes?”

“Oh my god,” Malfoy repeats. He steps past Harry and, with an awfully cavalier disregard of basic courtesy for somebody who was raised in a manor house with peacocks, starts poking around, opening doors, and peering into air vents.

Harry feels much better after the potion, but would still like to take a nice seven or eight hour nap. He decides he’s going to need coffee if he’s going to deal with Malfoy at this hour of the day. Coffee, and sustenance, and possibly some sort of mood stabilizing potion, although admittedly he’s not entirely sure which one of them it would be for.

“Oh my god!” Malfoy calls again, from inside of Harry’s bedroom. He takes it back: definitely Malfoy gets the mood stabilizer.

Harry goes into the kitchen rather than confront whatever the source of Malfoy’s distress is this time. He pulls potatoes and coffee from the pantry, a rasher of bacon and a carton of eggs from the fridge, and sets to work. The potatoes slice up easily with a spell and Harry scoops them into a skillet, starts the range; the enchanted coffee maker Hermione bought him as a housewarming gift years ago is already drawing the beans out of the bag and grinding them. He’s just laying slices of bacon out into a cold pan when:

“Potter,” Malfoy says, bursting into the kitchen. He looks around like a wild man and makes a wounded little sound. “Oh, god, this might be worse than the rest. This might be the worst part. I didn’t think anything could be worse than the bathroom, but this is so terrible. It’s enough to make a grown man weep.”

“What’re you on about now?” Harry says, placidly enough. Malfoy is clearly mad, but Harry doesn’t mind his insane prattling so much when he’s got something else to focus on.

As if in response to this, Malfoy throws something at Harry’s head. Harry catches it automatically and then recognizes it as his third favorite sweater, a black one with thin white stripes that’s impossibly soft to the touch. He’s pretty sure it’s dirty, but he’s not about to tell Malfoy that, so.

“Clothe yourself,” Malfoy says imperiously. “And tell me how long you’ve lived in this —this—dwelling.”

Harry rolls his eyes, but he pulls the sweater over his head. Pointedly, he says, “About seven years, Malfoy. Give or take.“

“Aha!” Malfoy says, and points a wild finger at Harry. Harry has an ufortable flash of recognition for a gesture he directed at Hermione not three days ago, and busies himself with stirring the potatoes. “I knew it!”

Harry makes a face at his hash browns. “You knew what?”

“I can’t believe you threw over Grimmauld Place for this heap,” Malfoy says. “I always assumed that you’d, I don’t know, had a palace built for you beneath the Thames for your great service to Wizardkind or something—”

“Oh, sure,” says Harry, dry. “Totally natural thing to assume. Who wouldn't guess that?”

“—but I never,” Malfoy continues, as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “thought that you might have abandoned her to live in squalor. One of the greatest and most ancient Wizarding homes in Britain! The likes of which hasn’t been seen in easily 500 years! And you tossed her aside like yesterday’s garbage for this?”

“I did not,” Harry says, turning away from his breakfast in incredulity, “toss Grimmauld Place aside like yesterday’s garbage.”

“Oh, please. Of course you did.” Malfoy folds his arms and glares at him.

At a bit of a remove, Harry wonders if this is what all conversations with Malfoy are like—just ping-ponging from one dramatic usation to the next until somebody gives up or falls over—or if it’s just him. Then he remembers the overheard conversation between Malfoy and Zabini the other day and turns abruptly back to the relative safety of his fry-up.

“Leaving aside the condition,” Malfoy’s still talking, apparentlypletely unfazed by having a back turned on him mid-rant, “which of course we should not leave aside, because it was horrific—Potter!e on! You waived the Unbreakable. You might as well have spat on the front step on your way out.”

“What are you even talking about?” says Harry, who feels like he’s said this a lot more to Malfoy in just the last few days than he ever has, cumulatively, to anyone else. “I waived what?”

“You waived what—the Unbreakable, Potter.” Malfoy crosses the small kitchen to lean against the counter next to Harry’s stovetop, arms still crossed. “The binding spell? To ensure that the new owner won’t harm the home on pain of death? They must have at least sent you the paperwork.”

Harry thinks back. “Huh. Yeah, I guess I remember that. Seems a bit extreme, though, doesn’t it? What if somebody, I don’t know, wants to knock out a wall or something? Make a room a little bigger?”

“Knock. Out. A. Wall.” Malfoy repeats, his ent so thick it could cut glass.

“Well, sure,” Harry says, and turns the bacon. “Or redo a bathroom or something, I don’t know. I just thought—”

“If you want to make a room bigger in a Wizarding home you do not knock out a wall.” Malfoy nearly shouts this; Harry almost drops the spatula. “You take a mixture of salt and powdered dragon’s horn and you walk the new layout of the house, and then you make sure the salt line isn’t broken, and then you sprinkle on a few drops of blood and you go to bed! And in the morning, Potter, your home has kindly moved the wall that so offended, and done a much better job of it than you would have, without suffering any chaos or agony in the process!”

“You talk about them like they’re alive,” Harry says.

Malfoy throws his hands in the air. “They are alive! How could you not— ” He fixes Harry with a stern look, drops his arms to his side, and sighs. In a different tone—almost as if to himself—he says, “Okay. Just—okay. You were raised Muggle and you know nothing! That’s the explanation; you just know nothing. I always thought perhaps it might be that, but the thought depressed me terribly on the old girl’s behalf, so…okay. Elementary magical theory! Practically square one! Any magic that sticks aro

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