good way. Sirius was kind of—and then I was kind of—well, and then he was kind of— but it wasn’t his fault, really. I think I might’ve done what he did, too, now that I know what I know.”

“Was any of that supposed to make sense to me?” Draco says, exasperated now. “Or are you just talking to yourself?”

“I guess I was just saying,” Harry says, a little pointedly, “that sometimes, when you’ve got a lot of history with someone, they hear things a bit differently from you than they might from other people.”

Draco’s eyes widen slightly, but before he can reply, Kreacher cracks back into the room holding…

Holding Draco’s hawthorn wand.

“Thank you, Kreacher,” Draco says. He is, Harry notes, very pointedly not looking at Harry; Harry does not blame him. He wouldn’t be looking at himself, either, if he were in Draco’s position. “Please let me know if there’s anything you need, all right?”

Kreacher makes a little wailing sound, but then he nods and vanishes again, leaving Harry and Draco to sit in silence for a long moment.

“So,” Harry says at last. “You did get it.”

It was maybe two years after the war when Harry found the wand—it was in a trunk of things he’d packed away six days after the Battle of Hogwarts, all the books and mementos and tools he’d associated, back then, with fighting Voldemort. He hadn’t wanted to look at them, hadn’t wanted to touch or see them, hadn’t felt like he even deserved to use them, when so many were dead and he was alive. It had helped, weirdly, for a while, keeping those things locked away; it felt like a small penance that made the act of walking around, of breathing, ever-so-slightly more manageable. Then he’d kind of…well, he’d otten about them, not to put too fine a point on it. They were out of sight and out of mind, and when he did eventually stumble across the trunk, shrunk down and hidden in the very back of his spice cupboard, it didn’t hurt so much to look at all of it.

He felt a bit guilty, though, when he pulled out the hawthorn wand and remembered who it belonged too. They weren’t anything back then, Harry and Draco, except what they’d always been—childhood rivals, and people who inexplicably kept saving each other from horrible deaths, and the only two living witnesses to the time Harry nearly identallymitted murder in a bathroom, which was another thing he felt guilty about. He’d spoken for Draco at his trial, because it was the right thing to do and because Draco really had played a part, however small, in turning the tide of the war—and, a little, because the idea of Draco locked away in Azkaban made Harry feel…something. Unsettled; difited; unbalanced; something. They’d seen each other in the hallway that day, after Draco was acquitted, their eyes locking for a second through the crowd that poured out of the courtroom. Harry’d thought about walking over, saying something, but in the end he hadn’t been able to figure out what.

Anyway, that was the last time Harry had even seen Draco when he found the wand, and by that point he and Ginny were right in the middle of breaking up. That was why he was cleaning out the spice cabs in the first place; she kept insisting he’d taken all his cooking shit back from hers already and Harry didn’t want to believe it, wanted to be petty and stupid and insist that he’d gone through everything and determined she was holding on to his paprika, or something. It was stupid, and he felt stupid about it, and then he found the wand and he felt stupid about that too, and he just…didn’t have it in him to track Draco down and give it back properly. It was kind of selfish and shitty of Harry, because he knew the wand probably wouldn’t work right unless they did the whole—whatever—the allegiances thing, but, well. He figured it had been two years, and Draco had almost certainly found another wand, and it wasn’t Harry’s job to make sure this one performed for him the way it once did. He figured just giving it back would have to be enough.

He chucked it in a box, and then, because he did still feel a little guilty, because he couldn’t help himself, he wrote a little note that said, “Here. Sorry. If you have any issues please contact me. -HP” with his address scrawled at the bottom. Then he gave the box to the Auror mailroom, because they could find anybody, and went on with his bloody life.

Draco never got back to him. He never Flooed or owled, not even to say that the wand wasn’t working right anymore, which had to be the case, Harry knew. It drove him quietly mad for about six months, wondering if Draco was just going to—pop up, one day; wondering why he hadn’t. Then he decided not to think about it anymore, and he pretty much hasn’t, since.

It’s bing very clear to him now, though, that what he long since decided was the most likely option—to wit, that Draco had simply not gotten his package, and has thought all this time that Harry had maybe dropped the wand in the Thames or something—is not what happened at all.

Draco doesn’t say anything for several long moments, just turns the wand over and over between his fingers. It’s strange to see—Harry’s gotten so used to the dogwood one he carries now that he’d otten the way the slightly darker wood looks in Draco’s hand. For a second Harry almost expects him to…oh, he doesn’t know. Cast a Jelly Legs at him, or something.

Then Draco clears his throat and looks at Harry, something wry and almost apologetic in his twisted little smile, and Harry is too consumed with trying to figure out the man he is now to dwell on the child he once was.

“I did think about writing, you know,” Draco says. He rolls the wand between the palms of his hands and sighs. “I started to, even, a couple of times. But I couldn’t—I didn’t know what I would even say. After the trial, and…”

He trails off, and Harry takes pity on him after a second and nods; he knows what Draco means. He means after the trial, and the Fiendfyre, and the incident at the Manor, and the incident in the bathroom, and Dumbledore, and Narcissa, and Snape, and all the other stuff they don’t ever really talk about. He means after the war, and Harry doesn’t need him to drag all that up, especially not tonight. It’s long over. It won’t change anything now.

“I think maybe I would have, if it wasn’t for the house,” Draco admits. “Blasted wand never did cast quite the same, and I always rather wanted to ask you about that, but…I figured you didn’t know it was me that bought this place. I kind of…did my best to make sure you wouldn’t find out, while I was buying it. And then, after—I mean, it would have been easy enough for you to figure it out if you wanted to, and when I got the wand I just kind of assumed you hadn’t.” He shrugs, looking ufortable. “I thought…Pandora’s box, you know?”

For a second, Harry wants to say that he doesn’t. For a second, Harry wants to snap, “No, Malfoy, I’ve actually got no idea, but thanks for assuming I would’ve been reflexively horrible to you, it’s great to hear that your opinion of me was so high.” For a second Harry wants to stand up and walk out of the house and just—take a couple of fucking breaths, or something, because sometimes Draco is so frustrating that it’s all Harry can do not to tear all his own hair out. Harry can’t believe he hasn’t mentioned it over this month and change they’ve spent getting to know each other, and if he’s honest it hurts, a little—not that Draco hadn’t said anything when they were neen and idiots, but that he hasn’t said anything now, when they’re twenty-five and…well. And still idiots, probably, but older ones.

But then Harry looks at Draco, the unhappy slant to his mouth, the way his eyes are looking anywhere but at Harry, and realizes: Draco is telling him, right now. This is Harry’s opportunity not to do what Draco was afraid of in the first place.

“I get it,” Harry says. Draco whips his head up to glare at him at once, and Harry even laughs a little, shaking his head. “God, you suspicious little freak, I’m not—mollycoddling you, or whatever. Stop looking at me like that; I mean it. I get it. I almost didn’t send it to you, and I definitely wouldn’t have if I’d, I don’t know, bought Malfoy Manor and turned it into a restaurant, or something.”

Draco rolls his eyes, but he looks relieved. “Malfoy Manor would make a terrible restaurant, Potter. The layout’s all wrong, and it’s far too large, and it wasn’t for sale, anyway.”

Harry shrugs a shoulder. “Still. It’s fine; it was a long time ago.” He pauses, and then, a little awkward, adds, “I do, er, probably know why it never worked the same way again, though.”

Draco raises one eyebrow, the corner of his mouth. “Do tell.”

Harry figures it’ll be a lot easier to just show him, so he offers Draco his own wand, hold his other hand out, palm up. “Trade me for a second?”

After a long, wary look, Dracoplies. The hawthorn wand feels good in Harry’s hand, an old, familiar friend; it still thinks of him as its master, not Draco, and Harry enjoys the feeling just for a moment, knowing that it will be the last time.

“Disarm me,” Harry says.

“One of your eyes is very slightly larger than the other one,” says Draco.

Harry blinks. It takes him a second to recognize the self-satisfied expression on Draco’s face, and then a second more to actually get the joke. When he does he groans, rolls his eyes, and waves the hawthorn wand in the air a little despairingly. “For fuck’s sake, Malfoy, I meant—”

“Expelliarmus,” Draco says, eyes glittering, because he’s never missed an opportunity in his life to be an annoying little git and Harry shouldn’t have expected him to start now. The wand flies through the air, and Harry can almost feel its allegiance tug loose from his fingertips with it, over to Draco, where it belongs.

Draco snatches it out of the air like a Snitch. He tosses Harry back his own wand without even looking at him, says, as if to himself, “Could it really be that simple?” and throws a fire into the grate with a curious-so

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