"O'erthrown," for wynter_midnite
Story: O'erthrown
Author: Lenny (kiwisama@yahoo.com)
rating: G
pairing: Harry/Draco (sort of, implied), Harry/Snape (also implicit)
contains mild Hermione bashing, situations which may be similar to those
found in a western, etc. Thank you.
***
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness...
-Allen Ginsberg
Every morning at 8:30, after breakfast and before he left to prepare for
his first class, Snape came to snark Harry out of bed.
He had somehow inherited the job. Remus was in the hospital now, and
Snape didn't know when he'd be getting out, and Dumbledore's guilt trips
were a powerful weapon and not to be wasted. So this was routine.
Harry would usually get out of bed after about ten minutes of abuse and
slowly eat a piece of toast, wrapped in a dark green robe he had
acquired somewhere. Then Snape would head off to his class and Harry
would crawl back into bed, sometimes with a book and sometimes just to
stare at the ceiling.
His rooms were in the dungeon and had no windows; they were a small set
originally meant for the potion master's apprentice, although there
hadn't been such a position since before Snape was a student. Harry had
claimed them at the beginning of the summer, after graduation when he
was beginning the intensive training leading up to the final battle with
Voldemort. But the battle had been on the 31st of July and Harry hadn't
moved out of the rooms yet.
"Give him time," Dumbledore advised whenever Snape lost his temper with
the boy and stormed up to yell at the headmaster to just bloody do
something about it. This happened about once a week.
***
Nights, Harry roamed the castle, still wrapping himself in his cloak of
invisibility though he was no longer a student and couldn't be punished
if he was caught.
Draco laughed at him about this, sometimes, when they met out on the
ramparts.
Harry was standing on top of the tower, his cape billowing out behind
him in the cool September breeze and dappling his body with a strange
there-not there pattern.
"Hello," Draco said, sitting down beside him. The moon was silvery on
his skin, or maybe his skin was silvery and there was no moon.
"Hello," Harry said, folding up to crouch on the wall.
"They're worried about you, you know."
Harry shrugged. "They're always worried about me." He managed to
convey with his shrug that he didn't really believe them and didn't much
care.
"Snape is worried about you."
Potter snorted at that idea. Draco just looked at him mildly.
"Why don't you ever get up? What are you doing with your life?"
"I don't know." Harry paused to see if he has anything else to say, but
nothing came to mind. "I don't know," he said again.
"How long are you going to lie around feeling sorry for yourself?"
"I don't."
"Then what do you do all day?"
"I think about stuff."
"Quod erat demonstrandum." Draco looked infuriatingly calm. Harry
stood up.
"I'm going in."
Draco followed him with fluid movements. He looked slightly silvery
inside, too. It was just one of those things.
"You should make an effort. I think you'd feel better."
"What would you know about it?" Harry snapped, but without any real venom.
"Why are you wearing your cloak, anyway? No one here will stop you and
take points off."
"I don't want to see them," Harry said. He sounded uncomfortable.
Draco laughed. His laugh was silvery. "You're a lunatic." He watched
as a partially visible Harry looked sharply at him and tripped over a
suit of armor. "You, my friend, are the thing that goes bump in the night."
Harry picked himself up and stumbled down towards the dungeons. "I
exist solely to entertain you, as always."
"As always." Draco was still with him. "You have to get over it, Harry."
"Get over what?"
"It. Me, yourself, all this. You need to start living."
"What am I supposed to do?" Harry shouted.
"As long as you're asking, you can start by chopping the juniper
berries. It's about time you started earning your keep." Harry jumped
at the sound of Snape's voice, realizing dully that he had come into the
potion's lab without noticing. "Who were you talking to just now?"
"..." he looked around but Draco had vanished. Wimp. "No one." He
dropped the cloak over one of the student desks and made his way up to
where Snape was standing. The man looked surprisingly domestic with a
knife in one hand, an image Harry tried to banish from his mind as soon
as it appeared. "How fine do you want them cut?"
"About like this," Snape said, cutting one into several tiny pieces.
"After you're done with that I have some mugwort I need shredded."
"All right." Harry took the knife and set to work.
Snape watched him for a few minutes. "It's good to see you out of your
cave," he didn't say.
Harry didn't shrug.
"I wondered how long you'd mope around," he didn't add.
"Wasn't moping," Harry didn't reply. "Just thinking about things."
Snape frowned to himself and went back to the boomslang skin he had been
working on when Harry came in.
***
The next morning Harry wasn't at breakfast, as usual. Snape frowned to
himself as he stalked up to the potions apprentice rooms. It was
probably naive of him to hope for a change so soon, but last night had
seemed like such a step forward.
He opened the door. Harry was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Snape got the eerie feeling that whatever Harry was looking at, it
wasn't in the room.
"Get up."
Harry didn't look like he'd heard.
"You're useless! Harry-bloody-Potter, toast of the wizarding world.
Bah. Get. Up." He stalked across the room and set the tray down on
the small table. "The house elves have sent you...toast, with butter
and jam, and tea stewed so dark it will undoubtedly stain everything it
touches." There were two mugs on the tray and he poured himself a cup.
"Why aren't you up yet?"
The tea was hot, strong, and surprisingly sweet, as always. Snape
spared a moment to wonder how Potter gotten the house elves so
thoroughly on his side. Potter scrubbed his hands over his face.
"What?" he managed sleepily, without turning his head.
"Do you know what time it is?"
Again he had the eerie feeling that Harry was elsewhere. "Eight
something? It must be...almost quarter to nine, if you're here."
Snape rolled his eyes. "And what are you supposed to do at 8:45?"
"Get out of bed." Harry sat up and took the green robe from the bedpost.
"Where did you get that?" Snape was unable to resist asking.
"Get what?"
"That robe."
"Oh." Harry pulled the robe tighter around his chest and didn't answer.
When Snape saw the small snake on the breast pocket, he didn't need to.
"Draco."
"He knows I have it," Harry said, evidently mistaking the look on
Snape's face for one of suspicion.
"I'm sure he...does." Snape stood up, cup of tea held absently in one
hand, to let Harry be seated in the room's one chair.
"Thank you," Harry said automatically, and sat down to the toast.
Snape watched as he put butter and apple jelly on it, and realized he
hasn't seen the boy eat any other meals except this one partial one since...
Harry jumped when the door closed, but it was only Snape leaving.
***
Harry showed up that night at eight o'clock, long after even the worst
student would have left detention.
"I," he said, and cleared his throat. His voice sounded rough from
disuse. "I thought you might need some help."
There were always ingredients to prepare, and Snape sent him into the
storage room to fetch some willow bark. When Harry came back, Snape was
just straightening from in front of the fire. Harry stiffened.
"For god's sake," Snape muttered, stalking across the room. "I wasn't
calling Albus to tell him of your miraculous recovery. I was just
ordering some dinner."
"I'm not hungry."
Privately Severus considered the boy's thin frame and thought otherwise.
The lad hadn't been so skinny since he first arrived at Hogwarts eight
years ago. "I wasn't calling them for your benefit. I happen to have
worked through dinner and I want something to eat."
The dime dropped at last. "Recovered from what?"
"You don't consider your recent behavior normal, do you?"
"I..." Harry frowned to himself. "I don't know. I guess...not. But
Draco never said anything, so I wasn't really thinking about it."
"Draco," Snape said in a strangled tone. "Yes, of course."
Harry set the willow bark to soaking. When a house elf arrived with the
tray fifteen minutes later, he took a cup of tea to keep up the pretense
of keeping Snape company.
A few minutes later Snape noticed Harry staring longingly at the other
sandwich on the tray. "Fine, Potter," he snapped, "take it."
Harry took it, looking as though he didn't notice the potion master's
tone of voice.
***
Later Harry walked out on the castle's roof with Draco.
"--and when I mentioned you, he got all weird."
Malfoy nodded thoughtfully. "I can sort of see that."
Harry shuddered. "Is this some sort of thing with you and Snape that I
don't want to know about? Do you have a thing?"
"No, there is no ‘thing' between Severus and myself." He looked
thoughtful. "Do you and he have one? You've been spending a lot of
time together lately."
"I don't think so. I mean, he comes and wakes me up in the morning, and
brings breakfast, and he made me eat dinner with him, but I don't think
it's quite..."
"Hmm."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, nothing." Draco cleared his throat and looked up at the
starry sky. Extra stars tonight because there was no moon. "So have
you heard from Lupin lately?"
"He's still in the hospital. But they say he's getting better."
"That is good news." He looked up again. "Perhaps we should out of the
air? It looks like rain."
"And into my grave," Harry grumbled, but they did go in. Halfway down
the fourth floor hall he asked, "Would it bother you if we had a thing?
Snape and I, I mean."
"Snape and me," Draco corrected. "I think." He considered it. "No,
not really."
Harry pursed his lips. "I'm surprised."
"When you get to be in my position, you'll come to realize that not a
lot of things are worth getting too worked up about." He tried his best
to look serene.
"Who are you talking to?" Harry whirled around to see Hermione standing
there. PROFESSOR Hermione, rather. She was giving him the sort of
worried look that everyone he ran into seemed to have these days, the
one he tried his best to ignore. She looked rather tired, rings under
her eyes and hair more frazzled than usual, as though teaching wasn't
really agreeing with her as much as she had thought it would.
He looked around, but Draco was gone. "He had to go."
She nodded, a look of sad comprehension on her face. "Come on, let's
walk back down to the dungeons."
"Of course," he said, frowning at her. Perhaps she had gone crazy from
dealing with too many small children and she was confused... "You
needn't take that tone with me. I'm not eleven any more."
"I know, I know." She reached out to take his elbow and he jumped
backwards and hit the passage wall hard. He wheezed slightly. "Come on."
Without ever touching him, she managed to hustle him down to the potions
lab.
"I found him wandering the halls," she said to Snape in an accusing tone.
"I'm not his jailer."
"You're supposed to be keeping an eye on him."
Harry stepped away from her. "I am in the room, you know," he said, a
shade reproachfully.
"Good god, he's depressed, not mentally incompetent."
"He is standing right here, if you've forgotten."
Neither of them looked at him. "What if he'd done something? What if
he'd tried to throw himself from the parapet or something?"
"Harry, did you go up to the tower to throw yourself off it?"
"No, I went to talk to-"
"You see," Snape said dryly, cutting Harry off. "He's fine. He's an
adult, doesn't need to be watched every moment of the day." There was a
pause and Harry watched his eyes narrow like a snake that had seen a
mouse. "At any rate, I don't see you volunteering your precious time to
watch him. And you're supposed to be his friend."
Hermione looked wounded, like she might burst into tears or curse Snape
or something and suddenly Harry had his wand out and he fired a blast of
white light into the ceiling, where it left a dark splotch.
"That's quite enough," he said when they both turned to look at him.
"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. Thank you for your
concern, both of you."
Neither of them said anything for a few moments and Harry turned and
headed for his rooms.
"Harry," Hermione said gently as he reached the classroom door, "Would
you like to come stay with me? I've a set of rooms in Gryffindor tower.
They're quite nice, windows and things..." she trailed off.
"No, thank you. I find my lodgings here quite satisfactory." He cocked
his head to one side, but when no further comments were forthcoming, he
left.
***
Snape brought Harry muffins the next day, which made a nice change,
though he was as snarky as ever.
Harry turned up in the evening to help him prepare potions ingredients.
It was the new moon, which meant it was time to start the preparations
for the Wolfsbane potion, and Snape was too busy to send away an extra
pair of hands.
Time passed.
"Potter, why do you do this?" Snape asked one evening in the middle of
November.
"What do you mean?"
"Why--" He sighed. "Never mind."
"Draco thought it might be good for me to spend some time with you. And
anyway, I like the routine."
Severus chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. "Harry," he said as
gently as he could manage, which wasn't very, but nevermind. "You do
realize that Draco is dead, don't you?"
Harry didn't look up from the hemlock he was chopping. "Yes. We still
talk sometimes, though."
Snape looked around carefully. He hadn't seen the younger Malfoy's
ghost anywhere, but that didn't mean that he wasn't there. Perhaps
Harry's own brush with death and Voldemort had left him more attuned to
that particular plane than most.
"He's not here right now. He usually hangs about on the roof. Says he
likes to look at the stars."
"Of course," he said with measurable relief. That did sound like Draco,
who had always been good at astronomy and looked permanently drenched in
moonlight. "Why didn't you mention this earlier? Everyone's been going
around on eggshells for months trying to figure out if you were crazy or
not."
Harry grinned. "Dunno. I guess I wanted to see what you guys would do."
Snape chuckled dryly. "Sometimes I do wonder about you."
"Take a number." He finished the hemlock and pushed it aside. "I
noticed that the willow bark is getting low, do you want me to soak some
more?"
"Er, yes. And water the geranium while you're at it."
"Already did." Harry disappeared off into the storeroom. A few moments
later a house elf arrived with their dinner and set it carefully on one
of the desks. Potter returned and put the willow bark in to soak, and
they sat down to eat.
This was routine.
And this too was happiness, after a fashion.
Author: Lenny (kiwisama@yahoo.com)
rating: G
pairing: Harry/Draco (sort of, implied), Harry/Snape (also implicit)
contains mild Hermione bashing, situations which may be similar to those
found in a western, etc. Thank you.
***
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness...
-Allen Ginsberg
Every morning at 8:30, after breakfast and before he left to prepare for
his first class, Snape came to snark Harry out of bed.
He had somehow inherited the job. Remus was in the hospital now, and
Snape didn't know when he'd be getting out, and Dumbledore's guilt trips
were a powerful weapon and not to be wasted. So this was routine.
Harry would usually get out of bed after about ten minutes of abuse and
slowly eat a piece of toast, wrapped in a dark green robe he had
acquired somewhere. Then Snape would head off to his class and Harry
would crawl back into bed, sometimes with a book and sometimes just to
stare at the ceiling.
His rooms were in the dungeon and had no windows; they were a small set
originally meant for the potion master's apprentice, although there
hadn't been such a position since before Snape was a student. Harry had
claimed them at the beginning of the summer, after graduation when he
was beginning the intensive training leading up to the final battle with
Voldemort. But the battle had been on the 31st of July and Harry hadn't
moved out of the rooms yet.
"Give him time," Dumbledore advised whenever Snape lost his temper with
the boy and stormed up to yell at the headmaster to just bloody do
something about it. This happened about once a week.
***
Nights, Harry roamed the castle, still wrapping himself in his cloak of
invisibility though he was no longer a student and couldn't be punished
if he was caught.
Draco laughed at him about this, sometimes, when they met out on the
ramparts.
Harry was standing on top of the tower, his cape billowing out behind
him in the cool September breeze and dappling his body with a strange
there-not there pattern.
"Hello," Draco said, sitting down beside him. The moon was silvery on
his skin, or maybe his skin was silvery and there was no moon.
"Hello," Harry said, folding up to crouch on the wall.
"They're worried about you, you know."
Harry shrugged. "They're always worried about me." He managed to
convey with his shrug that he didn't really believe them and didn't much
care.
"Snape is worried about you."
Potter snorted at that idea. Draco just looked at him mildly.
"Why don't you ever get up? What are you doing with your life?"
"I don't know." Harry paused to see if he has anything else to say, but
nothing came to mind. "I don't know," he said again.
"How long are you going to lie around feeling sorry for yourself?"
"I don't."
"Then what do you do all day?"
"I think about stuff."
"Quod erat demonstrandum." Draco looked infuriatingly calm. Harry
stood up.
"I'm going in."
Draco followed him with fluid movements. He looked slightly silvery
inside, too. It was just one of those things.
"You should make an effort. I think you'd feel better."
"What would you know about it?" Harry snapped, but without any real venom.
"Why are you wearing your cloak, anyway? No one here will stop you and
take points off."
"I don't want to see them," Harry said. He sounded uncomfortable.
Draco laughed. His laugh was silvery. "You're a lunatic." He watched
as a partially visible Harry looked sharply at him and tripped over a
suit of armor. "You, my friend, are the thing that goes bump in the night."
Harry picked himself up and stumbled down towards the dungeons. "I
exist solely to entertain you, as always."
"As always." Draco was still with him. "You have to get over it, Harry."
"Get over what?"
"It. Me, yourself, all this. You need to start living."
"What am I supposed to do?" Harry shouted.
"As long as you're asking, you can start by chopping the juniper
berries. It's about time you started earning your keep." Harry jumped
at the sound of Snape's voice, realizing dully that he had come into the
potion's lab without noticing. "Who were you talking to just now?"
"..." he looked around but Draco had vanished. Wimp. "No one." He
dropped the cloak over one of the student desks and made his way up to
where Snape was standing. The man looked surprisingly domestic with a
knife in one hand, an image Harry tried to banish from his mind as soon
as it appeared. "How fine do you want them cut?"
"About like this," Snape said, cutting one into several tiny pieces.
"After you're done with that I have some mugwort I need shredded."
"All right." Harry took the knife and set to work.
Snape watched him for a few minutes. "It's good to see you out of your
cave," he didn't say.
Harry didn't shrug.
"I wondered how long you'd mope around," he didn't add.
"Wasn't moping," Harry didn't reply. "Just thinking about things."
Snape frowned to himself and went back to the boomslang skin he had been
working on when Harry came in.
***
The next morning Harry wasn't at breakfast, as usual. Snape frowned to
himself as he stalked up to the potions apprentice rooms. It was
probably naive of him to hope for a change so soon, but last night had
seemed like such a step forward.
He opened the door. Harry was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.
Snape got the eerie feeling that whatever Harry was looking at, it
wasn't in the room.
"Get up."
Harry didn't look like he'd heard.
"You're useless! Harry-bloody-Potter, toast of the wizarding world.
Bah. Get. Up." He stalked across the room and set the tray down on
the small table. "The house elves have sent you...toast, with butter
and jam, and tea stewed so dark it will undoubtedly stain everything it
touches." There were two mugs on the tray and he poured himself a cup.
"Why aren't you up yet?"
The tea was hot, strong, and surprisingly sweet, as always. Snape
spared a moment to wonder how Potter gotten the house elves so
thoroughly on his side. Potter scrubbed his hands over his face.
"What?" he managed sleepily, without turning his head.
"Do you know what time it is?"
Again he had the eerie feeling that Harry was elsewhere. "Eight
something? It must be...almost quarter to nine, if you're here."
Snape rolled his eyes. "And what are you supposed to do at 8:45?"
"Get out of bed." Harry sat up and took the green robe from the bedpost.
"Where did you get that?" Snape was unable to resist asking.
"Get what?"
"That robe."
"Oh." Harry pulled the robe tighter around his chest and didn't answer.
When Snape saw the small snake on the breast pocket, he didn't need to.
"Draco."
"He knows I have it," Harry said, evidently mistaking the look on
Snape's face for one of suspicion.
"I'm sure he...does." Snape stood up, cup of tea held absently in one
hand, to let Harry be seated in the room's one chair.
"Thank you," Harry said automatically, and sat down to the toast.
Snape watched as he put butter and apple jelly on it, and realized he
hasn't seen the boy eat any other meals except this one partial one since...
Harry jumped when the door closed, but it was only Snape leaving.
***
Harry showed up that night at eight o'clock, long after even the worst
student would have left detention.
"I," he said, and cleared his throat. His voice sounded rough from
disuse. "I thought you might need some help."
There were always ingredients to prepare, and Snape sent him into the
storage room to fetch some willow bark. When Harry came back, Snape was
just straightening from in front of the fire. Harry stiffened.
"For god's sake," Snape muttered, stalking across the room. "I wasn't
calling Albus to tell him of your miraculous recovery. I was just
ordering some dinner."
"I'm not hungry."
Privately Severus considered the boy's thin frame and thought otherwise.
The lad hadn't been so skinny since he first arrived at Hogwarts eight
years ago. "I wasn't calling them for your benefit. I happen to have
worked through dinner and I want something to eat."
The dime dropped at last. "Recovered from what?"
"You don't consider your recent behavior normal, do you?"
"I..." Harry frowned to himself. "I don't know. I guess...not. But
Draco never said anything, so I wasn't really thinking about it."
"Draco," Snape said in a strangled tone. "Yes, of course."
Harry set the willow bark to soaking. When a house elf arrived with the
tray fifteen minutes later, he took a cup of tea to keep up the pretense
of keeping Snape company.
A few minutes later Snape noticed Harry staring longingly at the other
sandwich on the tray. "Fine, Potter," he snapped, "take it."
Harry took it, looking as though he didn't notice the potion master's
tone of voice.
***
Later Harry walked out on the castle's roof with Draco.
"--and when I mentioned you, he got all weird."
Malfoy nodded thoughtfully. "I can sort of see that."
Harry shuddered. "Is this some sort of thing with you and Snape that I
don't want to know about? Do you have a thing?"
"No, there is no ‘thing' between Severus and myself." He looked
thoughtful. "Do you and he have one? You've been spending a lot of
time together lately."
"I don't think so. I mean, he comes and wakes me up in the morning, and
brings breakfast, and he made me eat dinner with him, but I don't think
it's quite..."
"Hmm."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nothing, nothing." Draco cleared his throat and looked up at the
starry sky. Extra stars tonight because there was no moon. "So have
you heard from Lupin lately?"
"He's still in the hospital. But they say he's getting better."
"That is good news." He looked up again. "Perhaps we should out of the
air? It looks like rain."
"And into my grave," Harry grumbled, but they did go in. Halfway down
the fourth floor hall he asked, "Would it bother you if we had a thing?
Snape and I, I mean."
"Snape and me," Draco corrected. "I think." He considered it. "No,
not really."
Harry pursed his lips. "I'm surprised."
"When you get to be in my position, you'll come to realize that not a
lot of things are worth getting too worked up about." He tried his best
to look serene.
"Who are you talking to?" Harry whirled around to see Hermione standing
there. PROFESSOR Hermione, rather. She was giving him the sort of
worried look that everyone he ran into seemed to have these days, the
one he tried his best to ignore. She looked rather tired, rings under
her eyes and hair more frazzled than usual, as though teaching wasn't
really agreeing with her as much as she had thought it would.
He looked around, but Draco was gone. "He had to go."
She nodded, a look of sad comprehension on her face. "Come on, let's
walk back down to the dungeons."
"Of course," he said, frowning at her. Perhaps she had gone crazy from
dealing with too many small children and she was confused... "You
needn't take that tone with me. I'm not eleven any more."
"I know, I know." She reached out to take his elbow and he jumped
backwards and hit the passage wall hard. He wheezed slightly. "Come on."
Without ever touching him, she managed to hustle him down to the potions
lab.
"I found him wandering the halls," she said to Snape in an accusing tone.
"I'm not his jailer."
"You're supposed to be keeping an eye on him."
Harry stepped away from her. "I am in the room, you know," he said, a
shade reproachfully.
"Good god, he's depressed, not mentally incompetent."
"He is standing right here, if you've forgotten."
Neither of them looked at him. "What if he'd done something? What if
he'd tried to throw himself from the parapet or something?"
"Harry, did you go up to the tower to throw yourself off it?"
"No, I went to talk to-"
"You see," Snape said dryly, cutting Harry off. "He's fine. He's an
adult, doesn't need to be watched every moment of the day." There was a
pause and Harry watched his eyes narrow like a snake that had seen a
mouse. "At any rate, I don't see you volunteering your precious time to
watch him. And you're supposed to be his friend."
Hermione looked wounded, like she might burst into tears or curse Snape
or something and suddenly Harry had his wand out and he fired a blast of
white light into the ceiling, where it left a dark splotch.
"That's quite enough," he said when they both turned to look at him.
"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. Thank you for your
concern, both of you."
Neither of them said anything for a few moments and Harry turned and
headed for his rooms.
"Harry," Hermione said gently as he reached the classroom door, "Would
you like to come stay with me? I've a set of rooms in Gryffindor tower.
They're quite nice, windows and things..." she trailed off.
"No, thank you. I find my lodgings here quite satisfactory." He cocked
his head to one side, but when no further comments were forthcoming, he
left.
***
Snape brought Harry muffins the next day, which made a nice change,
though he was as snarky as ever.
Harry turned up in the evening to help him prepare potions ingredients.
It was the new moon, which meant it was time to start the preparations
for the Wolfsbane potion, and Snape was too busy to send away an extra
pair of hands.
Time passed.
"Potter, why do you do this?" Snape asked one evening in the middle of
November.
"What do you mean?"
"Why--" He sighed. "Never mind."
"Draco thought it might be good for me to spend some time with you. And
anyway, I like the routine."
Severus chewed on the inside of his bottom lip. "Harry," he said as
gently as he could manage, which wasn't very, but nevermind. "You do
realize that Draco is dead, don't you?"
Harry didn't look up from the hemlock he was chopping. "Yes. We still
talk sometimes, though."
Snape looked around carefully. He hadn't seen the younger Malfoy's
ghost anywhere, but that didn't mean that he wasn't there. Perhaps
Harry's own brush with death and Voldemort had left him more attuned to
that particular plane than most.
"He's not here right now. He usually hangs about on the roof. Says he
likes to look at the stars."
"Of course," he said with measurable relief. That did sound like Draco,
who had always been good at astronomy and looked permanently drenched in
moonlight. "Why didn't you mention this earlier? Everyone's been going
around on eggshells for months trying to figure out if you were crazy or
not."
Harry grinned. "Dunno. I guess I wanted to see what you guys would do."
Snape chuckled dryly. "Sometimes I do wonder about you."
"Take a number." He finished the hemlock and pushed it aside. "I
noticed that the willow bark is getting low, do you want me to soak some
more?"
"Er, yes. And water the geranium while you're at it."
"Already did." Harry disappeared off into the storeroom. A few moments
later a house elf arrived with their dinner and set it carefully on one
of the desks. Potter returned and put the willow bark in to soak, and
they sat down to eat.
This was routine.
And this too was happiness, after a fashion.