irewhiskey he’s consumed at the Bowtruckle over the years. Out here, though, over the rush of the water and under the riot of birdcry, Harry can appreciate the richness and spice to the flavor, the subtle difference in the way it burns down his throat.

“Yes,” Draco says, “it is. Now talk.”

There really doesn’t seem to be any way around it, but: “It’s stupid,” Harry says.

“Oh, Potter.” Draco’s voice is very nearly kind. “So is nearly everything you say. I’d hardly expect otherwise.”

It makes Harry feel a bit better, weirdly enough. More capable of doing it. He takes a deep breath, hoping that Draco won’t actually make him spit it all out this minute, will take the hint and give him a chance to gather himself. Draco must, because he says nothing for once in his life, and Harry turns away from him to lean forward again against the wall of the bridge—not as far as before, just enough to balance his weight. He knows he can’t look at Draco while they do this. He knows that, if he does, he won’t even be able to bring himself to try.

Draco must know it too, because after a moment he leans on the bridge the other way, his back against the rough stone. “If you’re going to make me stand around waiting,” he says, “you could at least pass the Firewhiskey.”

Harry takes another long drink, and then he passes the flask to Draco without looking round.

“Ron and Hermione,” Harry says finally. His voice is gravelly with the effort it takes to push the words out. “They’re having another kid.”

“I heard,” Draco says. It’s nonmittal and brief, two things Draco rarely is, and Harry could just kill him for not being his usual babbling fountain of verbiage here, in this moment, when Harry needs it. “So?”

Harry stares out at the water, trying to find the words. For all the time he and Draco have spent together in the last month, for all the absurd, impossible, insane conversations they’ve had, somehow they never quite seem to get around to talking about the real stuff. Harry doesn’t mind or anything—he dodges these sorts of conversations when he can, in general, and usually pretty sessfully—but it’s strange, now, to realize just how much he’s going to have to say to make Draco understand. To realize just how much he’s managed, until now, to avoid telling him.

“They were my first friends,” Harry says, finally, and sounds eleven fucking years old. He wrenches away from that thought the minute he has it, a full body shudder, and tries to et what he sounds like; tries to just talk. “And they’re not—I mean, anymore, they’re not. My only friends. I have.” He swallows. “Lots of people. These days. Only it’s not…it's not the same, with Ron and Hermione. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s true. They were—when things were really bad, you know, just as bad as they could get, they were right there, the whole time. And it’s not just that,” he adds, too loud, a sudden spike of fury in his chest at the thought that Draco could think he means this is—about that, about what they did during the war. “God, it’s—I never really had anybody, and then I had them and with them it was like—like it was the three of us, no matter what, forever. Like it would always juste down to that, in the end.”

Quietly, Draco says, “They’re your family.”

“Oh, they’re their own family,” Harry spits, and grimaces, hating himself. He scrubs his palms over his face. “God, that’s horrible. I’m sorry. I just—and see, this is exactly the problem—we were kids, you know, back then. We were kids! And it all seemed like it just fit, like it would just fit forever, and there was always a goal, anyway. Some, whatever, evil to vanquish, or even just classes, just homework. It all…made sense. Or, it didn’t, none of it did, but there were constants and we were working together, for the same stuff, and I guess I just thought that’s how it would always be. I guess I thought that feeling of just—knowing what ground I was standing on, you know? I guess I thought that came from them.”

He throws a hand out without looking back, because he can’t look at Draco, but his throat is closing up; because if he doesn’t get a little more Firewhiskey into him he thinks maybe he’ll die before he gets this out. Draco puts the flask in his hand and says nothing at all, and Harry’s not sure if he’s grateful for that or not. He takes a swig and passes it back, stares down at the ebb and flow of the water.

“Nobody told me,” Harry says, his voice a low rasp, “that it would—get hard like this. That we’d grow up and there’d be all this…other stuff, this stupid emotional shit, this stupid —adulthood shit, and I know I’m not good at it! Not any of it, Malfoy, I hate my job, I hate my apartment, I don’t know how to do any of the—the big important things. The—other people stuff! And they know, and they can tell, and they act like it doesn’t matter but I know that it does. It matters to me! And it has to matter to them, anyway, if it doesn’t already it should, they’re happy normal people with a happy normal family and I’m…well, I’m whatever the hell I am. God,” he says, the words pouring out of him now, almost against his will, “d’you know, at dinner last week Hermione was showing us this chart about fucking—I don’t know, Muggle infant care or something, talking about how Rose was 18 months already and soon she’ll be a toddler and what a big deal that was. She wanted us to give her our suggestions on how we could, what was it, ‘foster a safe but not overly permissive environment,’ because if we didn’t she’d never grow up to be a healthy, well-adjusted adult! And I didn't, god, I didn't say anything. I just sat there, because the only thing I could think of to say was that I’d spent most of my childhood locked in a cupboard!”

Harry stops, breathing hard; it’s more than he meant to say. It’s too much—it’s so much Harry thinks he might vomit after all, prove Zabini’s dire predictions right. Honestly, that might be better than standing here, the weight of what’s just been drawn out of him sitting so heavy on his shoulders that he thinks he might collapse underneath the load. It might even feel good, just because it would be something else to focus on.

Then, into the ringing silence between them, Draco says, “Well, that’s not at all safe, but I’ll grant you that it isn’t overly permissive.”

Harry huffs out a little noise of surprise—it’s nothing like a laugh, but it’s as close as he imagines he could get right now. After a moment, Draco says, tone very even: “I suppose there’s no chance that was a metaphor?”

“No,” Harry mutters, looking at his hands.

“So the Muggles who raised you,” Draco says carefully, “were…”

“Very incredibly crap, yes,” Harry bites out, and waits for the rest of it. Waits for Draco to look at him with pity, the way Hermione does whenever Harry slips and brings up his youth, or say something well meant but awkward, trying-too-hard, the way Ron always seems to. They’re the only two examples Harry has to go on; he’s never really told anyone else, though he’s suspected, more than once, that Molly and Arthur know.

Draco says: “Quite.” And then, after a beat: “So, is that all of it?”

Harry turns to look at him, a full-body, involuntary action. He can’t let himself believe it without seeing it, but—there’s Draco, leaning back against bridge, elbows bent to prop himself up against the stone, looking for all the world as though they’re having a conversation about Quidditch or the weather, except for the very slightest hint of anxiety in the set of his mouth. He looks Harry right in the eye, slowly raises one eyebrow, and Harry is so hideously, pathetically grateful that he has to look away. That he can’t bear it, the relief of it, for a single second longer.

“All of what, Malfoy?” he says.

“Oh, you know,” Draco says. He turns, now, so he’s leaning on the bridge in the same direction as Harry, but he doesn’t make Harry look at him. “The big wad of emotionalpost you’ve had lodged in your chest all night. That’s one thing I’ve figured out about this ‘stupid adulthood shit,’ as you so eloquently put it—at some point, gauche though it is, you do have to talk about things, or they just end up rotting inside of you.”

“I don’t really think of you as someone who does a lot of emotional sharing,” says Harry, who once saw Draco actually stand up and walk out of a restaurant rather than answer Harry’s perfectly innocuous question about why it mattered which fork he used.

“Yes, well, mostly Ie out here and talk to myself,” Draco says, tone wry. “You know, sort of a ‘We’ll do this where no one can hear you scream’ kind of thing. It’s all very healthy.” Harry laughs; he can’t help himself. Draco knocks their shoulders together with a little noise of what Harry is almost certain is mock outrage. “Don’t laugh! It’s better than your strategy —how long has that been building up, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Harry admits. Then, a little more honestly: “Probably a while.”

“‘Probably a while,’” Draco repeats, mocking, and sighs, drops the tone. “I ask again, Potter: is that all of it? Now’s the time, if it’s not.”

“No,” Harry says, itchy all over at the very thought of saying anything further. “I think I’m done.”

He’s surprised to find that Draco might be right; he does feel better for having talked about it, a little. He also feels unbearably exposed, and a bit like he wants to throw himself off the bridge and let the cool rush of the water carry him away, but—better, a little.

Of course, then he actually thinks about what he’s said and immediately feels much worse. “God, Malfoy, I just realized—I’m sure you think I’m—Jesus, I’m really happy for them, I am, I shouldn’t have said all that stuff—”

“For god’s sake, Potter, do shut up,” Malfoy drawls. “I certainly don’t care that you’re not pure as the driven snow inside your own head all the time. In fact, I already knew you weren’t, and I for one am glad of it. I’m sure some people think it’s thrilling, but I find the St. Potter facade very tiresome.”

“It’s not a

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