Work Text:
The owl reads simply: Alley behind Ollivander’s, three o’clock. Malfoy stubs their cigarette out on the underside of their shoe when Harry arrives at quarter to.
“My, we’re a bit trigger happy tonight, aren’t we?” they say.
Harry pulls the invisibility cloak off the top of his head. “Then that must make two of us.”
Malfoy is in what they usually wear these nights: dark trousers and a sleek black cloak, those flint gray eyes glinting out from the shadow it casts over their face. They look like the poster child for a recent Hogwarts graduate who is up to no good, and Harry guesses that’s exactly what they are. Malfoy crowds in next to him, and he slings the invisibility cloak over them both, letting Malfoy lead them off the side alley and down the empty, darkened street.
This time, it’s a small novelty shop that sells sweets and collectibles on Diagon. Malfoy is disturbingly skilled at advanced unlocking charms, and has them through the front door in seconds. Harry casts a disillusionment charm on the windows, but he knows they won’t be caught.
“You can thank Pansy for the tip,” Malfoy says, hair cast with an amber sheen from the Diagon street lights trickling in through the window. “She spotted them last week.”
“I’ll have to send her a card.”
When Harry lights a lumos, his face smiles back at him from every corner of the store. He grins out from posters, winks from t-shirts, waves cheerfully from a set of postcards. They’re all images of a faded, dated version of himself, someone he no longer recognizes — shoulder length hair and Gryffindor skirts, even a poster of him in that gaudy blue dress they’d gotten him into for the Yule Ball.
Malfoy picks up an honest to God votive candle with Harry’s face on it and smirks. “You’re like a god to these people.”
They toss the candle over to Harry, who looks down at his old face beneath his old name and the calligraphed text: The Girl Who Lived.
“Yeah,” he says. “Then you’d think they’d at least get my name right.”
Malfoy always starts the fires. Harry can never control his magic the way they do, emblazoning a small square of flame in the middle of the shop, artfully contained by a sphere of fire-resistant wards. Harry christens the flame by tossing the candle into it, and it belches out a cloud of gray-blue smoke.
Into the fire goes the rest of it — keychains with Harry’s deadname, collectors’ edition Prophet articles with photos of him when he was in Hogwarts, his long braided hair, his eyes glowering at the camera. He’d given the world a year to catch on, and most everyone had. Even his chocolate frog card got it right. Anyone who didn’t at this point just wasn’t trying.
The flame sparks and grows as they make their offerings, devouring a version of himself he never really was. Malfoy’s face is painted in yellows and golds as they tear posters off of walls and watch as they crumble into nothing but light and ash. The fire licks Harry’s skin with heat and beads sweat at his forehead and reminds him that even now, he, too, can burn.
Malfoy smokes another cigarette on the countertop while Harry makes sure they didn’t miss anything. They’re quieter now than they were in school, and Harry doesn’t know exactly how they became so skilled with flame spells, but he knows that the line between fear and mastery is razor thin.
When Harry is finished, Malfoy extinguishes the fire with a wave of their wand, and the tower of flame collapses into a pile of ash, soot, and ribbony smoke. Harry can’t help but to think of Fawkes, her tiny newborn beak edging out from the ashes, dark eyes ready to overflow with tears.
Malfoy tosses the butt of their cigarette into the pile. “They’ll know it’s you doing it eventually.”
“Good,” Harry says. “Then maybe it’ll make them remember my name.”
They leave the shop like that, half ransacked, reeking of smoke and the scent of burning plastic. Malfoy doesn’t even pull the door behind them when they follow Harry out onto the street.
“It’s been fun,” they say, pulling the hood of their cloak back over their eyes. “Maybe next week we do something more exciting, like rob Honeydukes.”
Harry sees Malfoy at parties now and then, the odd pub, the occasional Quidditch match. This is the only time they ever speak. He can hardly remember how it started sometimes, or when he started trusting Malfoy more than most people in his life. But Harry knows there are parts of themself Malfoy throws into the fires too, even though they might not burn in the same way.
The night air is thin and cold, and the fire has burned an afterglow onto Harry’s eyes, the shape of the raging flames outlined in white everywhere he looks — the empty night, the starless sky, and Malfoy shrouded in darkness beneath it. Not the only person who cares, and not the only person who understands it — but the only person who’s willing to do anything about it.
“Thanks,” Harry says. “For the tip.”
Malfoy shrugs one shoulder, the way they always do. “I wouldn’t want anyone to do it to me.”
Malfoy pushes their fingers into Harry's hair when Harry kisses them, like they’ve been expecting it, like they knew Harry was going to do it before he did. Harry tastes smoke on their lips, the memory of extinguished flame. There will always be more to burn, Harry knows, even when the flames singe his skin. But in the spaces in between, there will also be room for this: faint whispers of light, and pockets of immutable warmth, waiting to be sparked into life.