you are both tired, you want to be done
*falls back into old fandom with undignified thump*
"The Tourist"
Harry&Draco, Hermione/Ginny
It's the end of the world. What's on for dinner?
you are angry, you are angry
you are less than angry, you are just
a small defeated thing
- Catherine Hunter, "Rush Hour"
1.
Harry lit a cigarette and grinned. "I still think you're fucking scum," he said with the first exhale. "But they say you're a good boy now. Even got your own set of white armor. Snape sent a recommendation letter, but honestly -" He paused and grinned again, his mouth stretching unpleasantly over his teeth. "I think they just wanted to get rid of you."
"Fuck you, Potter," Draco hissed. He wrapped his arms around his chest and slumped lower in his chair.
"None of us here are any use. Might as well admit that right away. Not me, not Hermione, not Ginny, not Terry, none of us, Malfoy, are told anything or given anything to do. This division, right, whatever they told you about us - elite task force, secret fucking service, I don't fucking know what they said - we're people Dumbledore doesn't need anymore. People he wants out of the way. You confessed? Told him all about those family parties? Well, congratulations, Malfoy, that's the last important thing you'll ever do."
Draco sniffed and looked away.
"Coffee?" Harry asked, motioning to the pot and paper cups behind him.
2.
July 21st, the advance line knocked down their front door.
"I guess we should start looking for a new house," Harry said conversationally to Hermione as he cast Avada at the nearest Death Eater.
"Oh, you think?" she spat out through clenched teeth.
They moved into a dead house in the outskirts of Dublin on the 27th. The dampener field stretched from the front steps to the back fence; they made their meals and washed their hair without magic for the first time in a very long while. Draco never bothered to help, and complained about the water that was always too hot or too cold: "And the fucking mirror doesn't even tell you when you've something stuck in your teeth," he said once, pink-skinned and dripping onto the ragged carpet.
3.
Sun trickled reluctantly through the dirty curtains. Nine in the morning, maybe. The clock's battery had died a few days ago; Ginny and Draco didn't know how to put in a new one, and Harry and Hermione couldn't be bothered to care. Nine, maybe nine-thirty.
Draco was drinking tea from a very small, very delicate, slightly chipped cup: the only one left of its set.
"So what happened to you, Potter?"
"Hmm?" Harry stared at the milk and cereal dripping from his spoon.
"You used to be so bloody earnest, always running off to do something stupid and gallant. Now you just sit around and look like someone just killed your dog."
"Mmm," Harry said, and pushed away the bowl.
"Where's Terry?"
"Always with the fucking questions. Upstairs, sleeping. Or jacking off, one or the other."
A pause, then, quietly: "Where's Ron?"
Harry inhaled sharply and looked up at the ceiling. "In Ginny's room. In a jar. You should go say hi sometime. He doesn't talk much, though."
4.
Harry stole a Time-Turner from Tonks the last time he saw her, and he's not guilty one bit. He figured that they owed him something. Owed him some part of his past that they irrevocably fucked up. So he took it, and he kept it in a shoebox under his bed. Some days he'd go out for a walk and then keep walking, into fields where the only witnesses to the disappearing boy were a few sheep. And he'd shake the years off his sleeves, adjust the invisibility cloak, Apparate to wherever he felt like going that day. Hogsmeade. Hogwarts. London.
Each time he stopped and stood and looked in awe at all the buildings that were still there. All the buildings that hadn't been torched yet. He lost himself in crowds.
"You're abusing it," Hermione said once she found out, because Harry never took much care to cover his tracks anyway. "It's not meant to be used like that, not to go back that far. It could be dangerous, Harry, you don't know what you're - "
"I'm just sightseeing, Herm. No harm done."
One night he came back around three, all the lights in the house off and Hermione sleeping on the couch. He took off his robe and shoved it into a closet, put the Time-Turner back into its box, and collapsed into bed. His mouth still tasted like acid pops.
"So what do you do, anyway?" Draco asked from the doorway, his face shadowed. "Hug people? Give balloons to small children? Play cards with Dumbledore?"
Harry closed his eyes. He stretched his arms out, dug his hands into the sheets. Breathed in the flat, stale air. "I relax. Get some exercise." he said.
"You're so boring, Potter. Let me use that thing, I'll go and kill you before you have the chance to start annoying me."
They stayed like that for a while, Draco slumped against the doorframe, Harry sprawled on the bed, neither saying anything.
"Must be nice," Draco says lowly.
"The air's cleaner," Harry almost-whispers. He wants to say and there's not so many fucking ghosts, but he doesn't.
5.
Draco was building, or trying to build, a house of cards: it took three failures for Harry to realize that he hadn't seen anyone else all day.
"Where's Ginny and Herm?" he asked, dropping the still-lit end of his fag into a can of beer and listening to it fizz.
"Out," Draco said. He swept the cards into a pile and started again.
"Terry?"
"Fucked if I know."
"Huh," Harry said louder than was necessary. "D'you want to play a game of...something?"
Draco just looked at him blankly.
"Like poker or...nevermind."
"How about Old Maid, Potter? In honor of your -"
Harry stood up abrubtly and crushed the can onto the table in front of Draco, the noise cutting him off. "Right, I'm off to bed." He stormed off.
"Fucking drunkard," he heard Draco hiss to himself.
Hermione and Ginny, always going out, always coming home smelling like smoke and booze and each other, always coming home and fucking loudly in the room next to his, the room they've started sharing. They almost seemed like they were having fun. Harry was jealous, he might as well admit it.
They go out, maybe just because there was nothing else to do, and maybe the same sort of boredom was why Draco kept giving him appraising looks when he thought Harry wasn't looking. He didn't want to think about it. He thought, instead, about Hermione and Ginny, and when they come (loudly) home and through the foyer, clattering up the steps, he thought about Hermione's hand making its way drunkenly up Ginny's skirt, and Ginny's lips hot and desperate and tasting like those fancy drinks she always orders.
He groaned as they slammed their bedroom door.
"Did you see the way he looked at us?" Ginny said, or maybe it was Hermione. Harry screwed his eyes shut and kept his hands flat against the bed.
6.
"I thought you were dead," Harry said mildly. "C'mon down, we're having dinner, Ginny made some sort of chicken-rice thing."
Terry mumbled something and scratched at the week's growth of beard on his chin.
"What's that?"
Terry glared at him with sleep-blurred eyes briefly before turning away and digging into a pile of clothing at the foot of the bed. He pulled out a pair of jeans, sniffed them, then tugged them on. "'M not particularly hungry," he slurred out.
"Drunk?"
"A little. I had, uh, I had pizza last night, the leftovers from, uh," he trailed off, waving a hand at the crusts on a plate on his dresser.
"Yeah, the leftovers from last week. Nothing says fresh like that spongy texture of last week's - look, Terry, I think you need to get some sun, some, y'know, human interaction. You've been up here for a week. What exactly do you do with yourself?"
"Drink," he said as he made his way to the door. "Read books. Sleep. Wank."
"So you're coming down?"
"Yes, Potter, we'll have a dinner party, and I will entertain you all with anecdotes of my time spent spelunking and learning voodoo from Haitians. Jesus fuck, Potter, I'm just taking a fucking piss. Go eat your fucking rice." He slammed the bathroom door in Harry's face.
7.
He came home at four in the morning, the Time-Turner swinging on a chain around his neck. His hands hurt. The lights in the house were off. He dragged himself up the stairs slowly.
Draco was in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, and Harry was about to yell at him, tell him to fuck off out of his goddamn private space (had even opened his mouth), when Draco held up the two jagged halves of a wand and smiled crookedly in an attempt at his usual sneer.
"I didn't mean to - it's not yours, by the way, don't get yourself in a twist - I didn't mean to, I was just sitting downstairs and feeling sorry for myself and trying to make this bloody thing work, and I went and broke it." He cradled the pieces in his hands and swallowed visibly.
Harry sighed. "Stop crying. Christ, it's not as if you're going to need it any time soon."
"Yeah, I know."
"Look, Malfoy..." Harry sighed again, scuffed his foot against the floor. He hated it when someone bothered to care about the future. No sense dwelling on what you can't change, he always said, or maybe that was what Hermione always said. "Look, take this," he said, pulling the Time-Turner over his head and handing it to Malfoy. "Go somewhere nice. Get a tan, you're fucking paler than Death."
He looked up at Harry, then at Harry's outstretched hand, then at the pieces of wand in his lap, then back at Harry. He took the watch and chain, not breaking eye contact. "Thanks."
Harry nodded.
Draco stood up and walked slowly out, stopping at the door. "Really, I mean it, thank you." He half-smiled at Harry before turning off the light.
"The Tourist"
Harry&Draco, Hermione/Ginny
It's the end of the world. What's on for dinner?
you are angry, you are angry
you are less than angry, you are just
a small defeated thing
- Catherine Hunter, "Rush Hour"
1.
Harry lit a cigarette and grinned. "I still think you're fucking scum," he said with the first exhale. "But they say you're a good boy now. Even got your own set of white armor. Snape sent a recommendation letter, but honestly -" He paused and grinned again, his mouth stretching unpleasantly over his teeth. "I think they just wanted to get rid of you."
"Fuck you, Potter," Draco hissed. He wrapped his arms around his chest and slumped lower in his chair.
"None of us here are any use. Might as well admit that right away. Not me, not Hermione, not Ginny, not Terry, none of us, Malfoy, are told anything or given anything to do. This division, right, whatever they told you about us - elite task force, secret fucking service, I don't fucking know what they said - we're people Dumbledore doesn't need anymore. People he wants out of the way. You confessed? Told him all about those family parties? Well, congratulations, Malfoy, that's the last important thing you'll ever do."
Draco sniffed and looked away.
"Coffee?" Harry asked, motioning to the pot and paper cups behind him.
2.
July 21st, the advance line knocked down their front door.
"I guess we should start looking for a new house," Harry said conversationally to Hermione as he cast Avada at the nearest Death Eater.
"Oh, you think?" she spat out through clenched teeth.
They moved into a dead house in the outskirts of Dublin on the 27th. The dampener field stretched from the front steps to the back fence; they made their meals and washed their hair without magic for the first time in a very long while. Draco never bothered to help, and complained about the water that was always too hot or too cold: "And the fucking mirror doesn't even tell you when you've something stuck in your teeth," he said once, pink-skinned and dripping onto the ragged carpet.
3.
Sun trickled reluctantly through the dirty curtains. Nine in the morning, maybe. The clock's battery had died a few days ago; Ginny and Draco didn't know how to put in a new one, and Harry and Hermione couldn't be bothered to care. Nine, maybe nine-thirty.
Draco was drinking tea from a very small, very delicate, slightly chipped cup: the only one left of its set.
"So what happened to you, Potter?"
"Hmm?" Harry stared at the milk and cereal dripping from his spoon.
"You used to be so bloody earnest, always running off to do something stupid and gallant. Now you just sit around and look like someone just killed your dog."
"Mmm," Harry said, and pushed away the bowl.
"Where's Terry?"
"Always with the fucking questions. Upstairs, sleeping. Or jacking off, one or the other."
A pause, then, quietly: "Where's Ron?"
Harry inhaled sharply and looked up at the ceiling. "In Ginny's room. In a jar. You should go say hi sometime. He doesn't talk much, though."
4.
Harry stole a Time-Turner from Tonks the last time he saw her, and he's not guilty one bit. He figured that they owed him something. Owed him some part of his past that they irrevocably fucked up. So he took it, and he kept it in a shoebox under his bed. Some days he'd go out for a walk and then keep walking, into fields where the only witnesses to the disappearing boy were a few sheep. And he'd shake the years off his sleeves, adjust the invisibility cloak, Apparate to wherever he felt like going that day. Hogsmeade. Hogwarts. London.
Each time he stopped and stood and looked in awe at all the buildings that were still there. All the buildings that hadn't been torched yet. He lost himself in crowds.
"You're abusing it," Hermione said once she found out, because Harry never took much care to cover his tracks anyway. "It's not meant to be used like that, not to go back that far. It could be dangerous, Harry, you don't know what you're - "
"I'm just sightseeing, Herm. No harm done."
One night he came back around three, all the lights in the house off and Hermione sleeping on the couch. He took off his robe and shoved it into a closet, put the Time-Turner back into its box, and collapsed into bed. His mouth still tasted like acid pops.
"So what do you do, anyway?" Draco asked from the doorway, his face shadowed. "Hug people? Give balloons to small children? Play cards with Dumbledore?"
Harry closed his eyes. He stretched his arms out, dug his hands into the sheets. Breathed in the flat, stale air. "I relax. Get some exercise." he said.
"You're so boring, Potter. Let me use that thing, I'll go and kill you before you have the chance to start annoying me."
They stayed like that for a while, Draco slumped against the doorframe, Harry sprawled on the bed, neither saying anything.
"Must be nice," Draco says lowly.
"The air's cleaner," Harry almost-whispers. He wants to say and there's not so many fucking ghosts, but he doesn't.
5.
Draco was building, or trying to build, a house of cards: it took three failures for Harry to realize that he hadn't seen anyone else all day.
"Where's Ginny and Herm?" he asked, dropping the still-lit end of his fag into a can of beer and listening to it fizz.
"Out," Draco said. He swept the cards into a pile and started again.
"Terry?"
"Fucked if I know."
"Huh," Harry said louder than was necessary. "D'you want to play a game of...something?"
Draco just looked at him blankly.
"Like poker or...nevermind."
"How about Old Maid, Potter? In honor of your -"
Harry stood up abrubtly and crushed the can onto the table in front of Draco, the noise cutting him off. "Right, I'm off to bed." He stormed off.
"Fucking drunkard," he heard Draco hiss to himself.
Hermione and Ginny, always going out, always coming home smelling like smoke and booze and each other, always coming home and fucking loudly in the room next to his, the room they've started sharing. They almost seemed like they were having fun. Harry was jealous, he might as well admit it.
They go out, maybe just because there was nothing else to do, and maybe the same sort of boredom was why Draco kept giving him appraising looks when he thought Harry wasn't looking. He didn't want to think about it. He thought, instead, about Hermione and Ginny, and when they come (loudly) home and through the foyer, clattering up the steps, he thought about Hermione's hand making its way drunkenly up Ginny's skirt, and Ginny's lips hot and desperate and tasting like those fancy drinks she always orders.
He groaned as they slammed their bedroom door.
"Did you see the way he looked at us?" Ginny said, or maybe it was Hermione. Harry screwed his eyes shut and kept his hands flat against the bed.
6.
"I thought you were dead," Harry said mildly. "C'mon down, we're having dinner, Ginny made some sort of chicken-rice thing."
Terry mumbled something and scratched at the week's growth of beard on his chin.
"What's that?"
Terry glared at him with sleep-blurred eyes briefly before turning away and digging into a pile of clothing at the foot of the bed. He pulled out a pair of jeans, sniffed them, then tugged them on. "'M not particularly hungry," he slurred out.
"Drunk?"
"A little. I had, uh, I had pizza last night, the leftovers from, uh," he trailed off, waving a hand at the crusts on a plate on his dresser.
"Yeah, the leftovers from last week. Nothing says fresh like that spongy texture of last week's - look, Terry, I think you need to get some sun, some, y'know, human interaction. You've been up here for a week. What exactly do you do with yourself?"
"Drink," he said as he made his way to the door. "Read books. Sleep. Wank."
"So you're coming down?"
"Yes, Potter, we'll have a dinner party, and I will entertain you all with anecdotes of my time spent spelunking and learning voodoo from Haitians. Jesus fuck, Potter, I'm just taking a fucking piss. Go eat your fucking rice." He slammed the bathroom door in Harry's face.
7.
He came home at four in the morning, the Time-Turner swinging on a chain around his neck. His hands hurt. The lights in the house were off. He dragged himself up the stairs slowly.
Draco was in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, and Harry was about to yell at him, tell him to fuck off out of his goddamn private space (had even opened his mouth), when Draco held up the two jagged halves of a wand and smiled crookedly in an attempt at his usual sneer.
"I didn't mean to - it's not yours, by the way, don't get yourself in a twist - I didn't mean to, I was just sitting downstairs and feeling sorry for myself and trying to make this bloody thing work, and I went and broke it." He cradled the pieces in his hands and swallowed visibly.
Harry sighed. "Stop crying. Christ, it's not as if you're going to need it any time soon."
"Yeah, I know."
"Look, Malfoy..." Harry sighed again, scuffed his foot against the floor. He hated it when someone bothered to care about the future. No sense dwelling on what you can't change, he always said, or maybe that was what Hermione always said. "Look, take this," he said, pulling the Time-Turner over his head and handing it to Malfoy. "Go somewhere nice. Get a tan, you're fucking paler than Death."
He looked up at Harry, then at Harry's outstretched hand, then at the pieces of wand in his lap, then back at Harry. He took the watch and chain, not breaking eye contact. "Thanks."
Harry nodded.
Draco stood up and walked slowly out, stopping at the door. "Really, I mean it, thank you." He half-smiled at Harry before turning off the light.