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It’s a daily chore: Walking through the sea of reporters, head held high, face blank and dressed in impeccable uniform.
“Mr Malfoy! Mr Malfoy! How do you respond to the allegations against your family?”
“Can you confirm that you continue to shelter objects of the darkest magic within the impenetrable wards of the manor?”
“How does it feel to be essentially a Squib?”
His uniform is his armour. The words ricochet right back at the ones who shout them. Inquiries remain unanswered. His silence is as condemning as words would be.
Their headlines were written before the questions were even finished.
Death Eater Walks Free - Malfoy Family Still Refusing To Cooperate.
He Tipped The Wizarding World Into War, But Walks Away Unscathed. Wizengamot Fails To Punish The Malfoy Heir For His Crimes.
Black Family Roots And Black Magic - They May Have Dropped Their Masks, But They Will Never Drop Their Ways.
Another day, another walk through a mob armed with questions and cameras.
“Mr Potter, Mr Potter, do you believe the sentencing Draco Malfoy to five years without magic was just?”
“What do you say about Ginny Weasley’s alleged affair with a Falcon?”
“Mr Potter, we heard you are going to join the Auror program. Do you intend to make a legacy of being the most successful prosecutor of dark wizards?”
Again, there are no answers.
Again, the headlines are already written
You can’t leave the house without being accosted and you can’t stay inside without going crazy. The rooms echo with screams, darkness dripping from the wall. You live with shadows and ghosts. Memories turned into nightmares, or was it the other way around? It’s not what you imagined your life to be, but then, you never imagined any life at all.
You hoped for death, but the world holds no mercy these days.
You read every word they print, stomach churning with the dark truths you hide. You incinerate them all, shoving away the plate of toast without taking a bite. Then you put your own uniform back on and go out again.
Everything is heavy. Every day it gets harder to breathe, impossible to keep still when the blows fall down and down. There’s just so much you can take before there will be nothing left of you but bones and dust.
Sometimes, you put on a different uniform: baggy jeans and a shirt, above it an oversized hoodie. With the hood pulled up to hide yourself, you take the floo, keep your head down as you waive your way through familiar spaces and unfriendly faces until you step out of it all.
Outside, you take a deep breath, maybe two and then you merge with the crowd, head still down but lighter. Your temporal respite only a few blocks away.
Harry watches and waits. Just like he always does. When Malfoy finally steps out of the door, he looks different from his official, polished self. Less put together but no less costumed. The oversized clothes make him look like he’s drowning in his own skin. Maybe he is, or maybe that’s Harry projecting.
It doesn’t matter either way.
The familiarity of following at a distance is soothing. Harry would consider it a habit, formed in sixth year, if it weren't for the fact that two years have passed between then and now.
Two years in which he couldn't follow.
Two years of wading through the aftermath of a war finished but not really won.
Two years without any contact whatsoever, safe for the farce they called a trial.
Their walk ends at a nondescript metal door, concrete steps leading down into the dark. Electric staccato beats pound up from the basement. The door slips shut, hiding that one thing Harry keeps missing. Hiding what he never should have considered finding.
Eyes glued to the door, Harry waits, his heartbeat almost as loud as the distant music.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Beat by beat, time passes like glue.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Finally, he can go in.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Harry gives the guy at the base of the steps a bill and enters.
Music swallows him with the scent of sweat and spilled liquor. It's a club like any other; grimy floors, dim lighting and bad ventilation, smoke hanging thick in the air. The patrons look the way they do; baggy jeans and shirts interspersed with girls wearing skirts that barely cover their arses and tops that spill out tits and bellies.
Harry doesn't like it very much, and yet he can't stay away. Can't stop watching, searching.
He wears his woolen hat drawn low into his forehead, his hair tucked in tight. He ditched his glasses in favour of contacts and resists the urge to rub at his eyes.
Everything always itches.
His scalp, his eyes, his fingertips.
He curls his hands into fists and hopes the sting of his nails will keep him sane.
Knows it won’t because they are bitten down to the quick.
At the bar he orders a drink. It is too bitter, the acrid taste of cheap liquor burning his throat and barely offset by the saccharine sweetness of whatever they used to mix it with.
It doesn’t matter.
None of it does.
It's nothing but a facade, a tool to get what he wants.
Or at least get close.
Taking huge gulps he let his eyes glide through the crowd. Light flash and strobe at intermittent intervals, giving everything stop-motion quality. Like evidence photographs put out for his assessment. His favourite game of seek and find.
You have to be here somewhere, he thinks. Even if you are a little ferret lost in another man’s skin, you can’t hide forever.
There.
The hood hides Malfoy’s face and hair well, but as he tips his head back to empty his glass it slides back.
A glint of white, quickly covered.
There’s no one with him. Just Malfoy and his already empty drink at the other end of the bar and the bartender between the two of you.
Malfoy gets himself another drink and Harry downs his own to get even.
You’d like to think you come here for the fun, the music and the drink. But you never dance and you refuse to talk to anyone.
You’d like to think you come here for the solitude, the anonymity of being inside a crowd of strangers who don’t give a damn which side of the war you fought on.
You look at the pairs on the dance floor and you’d like to think you come here because of the freedom to be. To love who you want and don’t give a damn who’s watching.
But you know none of it is true.
You come here for one reason and one reason only:
To think about all the things you can’t do and who you can’t do them with.
You follow your past like it follows you.
You crave his attention more than the solitude.
And you’d rather feel nothing than continue to bear the weight of it all.
There’s an unspoken promise in coming here. In continuing to do so when you know who is watching.
There’s the promise that one day things could change.
That someday you will be brave or drunk or desperate enough to make that first step.
That someday none of you will care about the questions they scream at you and the headlines that follow.
One day, you will go to that dancefloor and you won’t do it alone.
One day, it will all be worth it.
One day, you will feel worthy enough to try.
And until then, you keep watching, you keep waiting and find solace in the fact that you’re not doing it alone.
As soon as you step back into that other world, you are whatever they say you are:
You are a Death Eater born and bred to rule yet fallen from the throne.
You are a war hero expected to continue a never-ending fight for peace yet shattering underneath the weight of it all.
You are a renegade, a revolutionary, a liar, a hunter, a thief and a coward.
And you know whatever you will become, they will throw it back in your face anyway.
No matter what you do, their headlines will already be written before they finish their questions.