unding, “Incendio.” Flames burst merrily into life, and Draco bursts into laughter, the first genuine laugh Harry’s heard from him all night.

“I’m sorry,” Draco says, “I just—the sensation is just so strange. It’s like being fifteen again.” Then he looks at Harry, and, quieter, his smile going small and a little wry, adds, “Well. Not quite.”

Harry grins back at him, broad and easy, and laces his fingers behind his head, settles back in his chair. “What’re you saying there, Malfoy? I mean, what, did you not like me when we were teenagers or something? That’s hurtful, you know. I had nothing but kind and wholesome things to say about you.”

“I don’t like you now, Potter,” Draco says, clearly trying for obnoxiously earnest, but laughing on it a little. “I find you appalling in every respect. Your manners; your personality; your living conditions; your hair. The whole operation is tits-up, and I can’t believe I socialize with you. In short: egads. Alas. Etcetera.”

“Did fifteen year old you say ‘egads’ a lot?” Harry wonders aloud. “I mean, 1500 year old you, sure, that would make sense—”

“You genuinely and without reservation are such aplete horror,” Draco tells him, but he doesn’t bother to hide his smile when he says it, and doesn’t look away for a hanging second when Harry meets his eyes.

They sit in silence for a good while after that, just kind of…dpressing, Harry thinks, from the whole night. It’s nice. Usually Harry starts to feel a little antsy if a period of quiet goes on too long, sure he’s supposed to be doing something, saying something; sure he’s messing the whole thing up, somehow, by missing some cue everyone but him knows. With Draco, just now, it’s…like sitting in a room alone, but better. It’s a bit like sitting in the Gryffindormon Room, actually, late at night when no one who was still around was actually trying to talk. Harry used to sit and watch the fire for hours on nights when he couldn’t sleep, listening to the sounds of his classmates sneaking to and from each other’s dormitories, or the scratches of their quills on last minute homework.

He looks at Draco, whose legs are stretched out long in front of him, his head tipped back against his chair and his eyes on the dance of the flames. He doesn’t look panicked or resigned or affectless or sorrowful or anything else horrible, just now. He looksfortable, calm—maybe the calmest Harry’s seen him look this whole month. Maybe the calmest Harry’s ever seen him look. Harry thinks about being fifteen and hating Malfoy more than almost anything, hating Malfoy so much it burned and hissed beneath his skin, and wonders if maybe Draco wasn’t doing this too, back then, down in the Slytherin dungeons. If some nights it hadn’t just been the two of them, at opposite ends of the castle, sitting up alone with the fire.

It’s a ridiculous thought, a silly one. He doesn’t ask Draco about it, because he doesn’t want to find out that he’s wrong.

“We should call the Aurors,” Draco says eventually. “To report, you know. All of these unpleasant happenings. Criminals on the loose, and such.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, and sighs. “And you still need St. Mungo’s. Are you sure you’re—”

“Oh, just call your bloody Aurors, Potter,” Draco snaps, before Harry can get the word ‘ready’ out of his mouth, so Harry shrugs and sends a Patronus.

It’s only about 20 seconds before another one swoops back in, and Harry blinks at it a second, frankly astonished at the response time, before he realizes that it’s a Jack Russell terrier, and Ron’s.

“Harry,” it says, sounding furious, “where in the bloody fuck are you? Hermione’s been attacked.e to St. Mungo’s the minute you get this.”

It dissolves in the air between him and Draco, who is staring at him, eyes wide. For the second time tonight, Harry doesn’t think; he stands, grabs Draco by one of his wrists, and Apparates them both out of the house.

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