but the world looks better through your eyes
Title: Full Speed Ahead (1/2)
Author:
veterization
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Harry/Draco
Word Count: ~17,000
Warnings: Slight language and sexual content (second part).
Summary: After the war, the Malfoy fortune begins dwindling. Draco swallows his pride and gets a job the only place he can find one: the Knight Bus.
"I don't drive around London much. Any journey around Islington involves hundreds of speed bumps that seem to tear the bottom of your car off." --Alan Davies
Even with the war over, and with it, the mortifying hosting duties Malfoy Manor held for the Dark Lord done as well, Draco can’t help but feel as if the dark times have yet to come.
As unnerving as having the most dangerous and hot-tempered dark wizard in history setting up headquarters in his living room was, Draco can’t deny that joining Voldemort’s forces had seemed to be the safest option when the war came to its ultimate peak and the Ministry had been successfully infiltrated and Muggles were victimized to random wizarding attacks. Unlike the peril the Muggleborns and half-bloods found themselves in during Voldemort’s rise to power, Draco’s family’s affiliation with the dark arts, despite their cowardice, kept them somewhat secured in reputation and influence alike.
The morning after the Battle of Hogwarts was over, however, and Draco sat in the corner of the Great Hall bedaubed in soot and bruises while Narcissa and Lucius rushed toward him and celebrated their miraculous survival, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the Malfoy name would be cruelly dragged through the mud and the blood his father’s hands spilled-not to mention his own-would be publicized and punished.
What he had never foreseen, however, was that the dip in his pocketbook would plummet just as swiftly as the drop in his reputation had plunged to the ground until he stumbled upon his mother stacking his grandfather’s ancient silver china into a box to be shipped to Borgin & Burkes and pawned off for a considerable sum that his mother apparently deemed worth giving up a Malfoy family heirloom for.
“Times are rough, Draco,” Narcissa had told him in a tone that he easily recognized as poorly veiled nostalgia as she packed yet more priceless artifacts into boxes and Draco could do little but watch helplessly on. “It’s time for us to make sacrifices.”
He wanted to tell her that he had made enough sacrifices when he was forced to poise his wand at Albus Dumbledore on top of the Astronomy Tower and drum up his inner murderous spirit in order to secure his own survival, or that the daily fear he lived when Voldemort lived in his house and he was ordered to incarcerate prisoners in the basement should have been a large enough surrender, but then he catches her warning eye right before he opens his mouth and lets the diatribe loose and decides to keep his griping at bay. Mentally, however, he wistfully thinks that these are no longer the times in which his father could afford enough Nimbus 2001s for the entire Slytherin Quidditch team and he was able to tease Weasley for the state of his hand-me-down robes while he strutted past him in shining shoes.
He supposes that this is the price to pay for standing on the wrong side of the war for more than seven years, and with that depressing contemplation swimming on endless loop in his mind, he does the unthinkable as a Malfoy, and decides to put in the effort necessary to save himself from ultimate financial ruin by becoming employed.
His mother is utterly shocked at her son’s proactive attitude, but not nearly as shocked as half of the employers who catch him wandering through the doors of their establishments and have the nerve to ask him what he’s doing not sobbing in Azkaban.
The first place he chooses is what he would have deemed the most dignified place to obtain an occupation, so naturally, it is also the one least interested in hiring the likes of an ex-Death Eater like himself. The secretary looked most astonish that he even dare show his face in the distinguished halls of the Ministry of Magic after he and his family nearly caused the Ministry’s destruction by helping Voldemort appoint his puppet Thicknesse as Minister during his reign, and when Draco grits his teeth and insists that his intentions with the Ministry are pure, the wizard who interviews him for the positions he’s interested in is more amused by the fact that Draco still believes the Wizarding World has enough faith in a family with a name such as the Malfoys to permit him to help run the very operation that keeps the Wizarding World afloat than he is concerned with orchestrating a professional interview.
“You’re having me on, boy,” the wizard wheezes, mopping his eyes with the edge of a handkerchief as he continues to giggle, “A Malfoy, working at the Ministry? As if we’re daft enough to make the same mistake twice!”
The Ministry, however, dreadfully enough, is one of the more considerate places when it comes to humoring Draco’s attempts to employ himself, as he is soon to see when he wanders into St. Mungo’s and is dealt with by a rather irate wizard who grills him with no-nonsense questions that have little to do with his abilities as a Healer and more of how genuine his remorse is for those who were injured or killed in the Death Eaters’ rise to power.
“I lost a sister last year,” he says gravely, ignoring Draco as he waves his credentials and Healing skills helplessly under his nose, “Do you know why?”
“Why, sir?”
“The Death Eaters smoked her just because she was there. Just sitting there in Diagon Alley having a smoke and looking to buy a new cauldron and then bang, she’s dead.”
“I had nothing to do with that, sir,” Draco assures him rather dryly, as he can already smell the failure of the interview wafting up his nose and settling there unpleasantly, “As I told you, I spent most of last year in my home-”
“Doing You-Know-Who’s bidding, I know. Tell me,” he seethes, “Is your Dark Mark even cold yet?”
Draco endures another twenty minutes of questions completely irrelevant to how strong his Pepper-Up potion is, how quickly he can brew up a Wolfsbane potion, or how precise his wand movements are when he heals broken bones, all questions that the pamphlet floating by the front desk had assured him would be covered during the hiring interview process, before he is finally free to go with a few foreboding threats and a warning to never reappear in the hospital again unless he’s being carried in by a body cast, and on that light note, he scurries out the front door and borrows the tolerant nature and reserve he needs that only a Hufflepuff could contain in order to not jinx his interviewer.
His next stop, although after his previous attempts to successfully persuade someone to hire him is leaving him wary of whatever awaits him next, he has hope in not because he’s not expecting whispers and possibly even hexes to be aimed at him when he walks inside, but because he was assured in the past that this is the place one goes when they need help and where one receives charity whenever they bother to ask for it.
Now he’s sitting Headmistress McGonagall’s office feeling supremely uncomfortable and wishing he could gently back out of the school whilst erasing the memories of those who saw him daring to enter the school he bullied Harry Potter in, nearly killed Albus Dumbledore in, and then almost set aflame with Crabbe in a fire that he also all but burnt to a crisp in.
“Mr. Malfoy, you have absolutely no teaching qualifications,” McGonagall tells him grimly as he informs her of his quest to actually earn his own money instead of pilfering from his father’s soon to be nonexistent stash of gold, “The only thing I could hire you as would be as an assistant to Mr. Filch, since he does not waste a day in which he complains to me about how the enormity of the castle and the mess the students make in it is unjustly disproportionate to a man of his size expected to clean it.”
Draco imagines soap suds, grimy sponges, and cleaning vomit out of the broom closets while Filch rasps and breathes down his neck. He wrinkles his nose, which McGonagall does not fail to notice.
“I see you have little interest in such a position,” she dismisses, and for a moment, her expression softens and she perches her hands on her desk, “Draco, I understand that you are undoubtedly having trouble finding work with the repercussions of the war doing little to help you along the way. I do not mean to discourage you when I say that your status as a Death Eater will hurt your chances of being hired for many years.”
“Bright outlook,” he drawls, and she looks at him like he should be glad his wand isn’t snapped yet with the bounty that many wizards and witches alike would be pleased to see floating over his head.
“You will find an occupation, Mr. Malfoy. Perhaps it is not as prestigious as you would like it to be, nor does it pay as generously. Just remember that you cannot afford to be choosy and an opportunity will eventually present itself if you follow that advice,” she looks at him, one hard, calculating look as if she’s waiting for him to whine, and then continues, “I have one such position you might find beneficial to look into.”
He pictures a number of demeaning jobs that flit through his head like flashes of nightmares before McGonagall thrusting a piece of paper under his nose draws him away from the horror his mind is creating to torture himself with.
“Thanks,” he finally mutters, although he’s skeptical at best of whatever opportunity awaits him on the address printed neatly on the bit of parchment in his fingers.
“You’re welcome,” she says, “Don’t fret too much, Mr. Malfoy. It may not be as esteemed as working as a Professor at Hogwarts, but is it a job nonetheless.”
Draco nods, feeling very much like one more step down into the pits of poverty and he’ll be sprouting red hair and freckles, and peels himself out of the chair, heading for the door.
He wants to say my father will hear about this, but he doesn’t want to hear the laughter.
-
The address turns out to be the Leaky Cauldron, except Tom the barman informs Draco that he has no spots that need filling in his pub for employees when he asks about the job opening and has the decency to look apologetic for Draco when he shrugs and returns to scrubbing down the counter, and that’s when a portly wizard with wispy strands of hair framing his face overhears their conversation and slips out his hand for Draco to shake.
“It’s me you’re looking for,” he tells him, leading him over to a table in the middle of a pub where countless bowls of already devoured pea soup clutter the top and sitting him firmly down, “McGonagall let me know you were coming. Draco Malfoy, am I right? You sure got your wits about you if a man in your position is looking for jobs. Suppose even the worst of us have some Gryffindor bravery, eh, Mr. Malfoy?”
Draco is too busy taking in the man’s appearance to bother replying as he tries to accurately deduce what his occupation is by the state of his robes and his hair. Before he can come up with a conclusion, however, the man is already barreling on once more.
“Anyways,” he grunts, pulling a sheaf of papers out of his cloak and stuffing them under one of the empty bowls, “I work for the Ministry and deal with Magical Transportation. As a matter of fact, I inspect the Hogwarts Express every year to make sure it’s working properly and all.” He draws himself up, looking rather impressed with his accomplishments.
“You have a job at the Ministry for me?” Draco asks, incredulous that McGonagall managed such a feat, but then the wizard snorts and chortles, sufficiently dampening Draco’s hopes that he would be able to walk through the Ministry with poise again.
“No, dear boy, absolutely not. Our screening process is much more stringent these days, there’s no way they would let a known Death Eater through,” he shakes his head and continues to chuckle, “What I have for you is a different job. Still ruddy important, so that’s what counts, eh? The Knight Bus is currently without a conductor, as Mr. Stan Shunpike, the previous man for the job, is currently in no state to run a bus.”
“The Knight Bus?” Draco parrots, feeling the blood drain to his shoes and ooze into his socks at the thought of having to dress himself in an offensive shade of purple every morning and entertain underage wizards running away from their parents with help from the Knight Bus with nothing but a Sickle to their name. “Why can’t Shunpike do it?”
“He’s in St. Mungo’s at the moment, being treated for mental trauma after being placed under the Imperius Curse,” the wizard casts him an odd look, as if of all people, Draco should know of Stan’s condition, and Draco bristles once more as the need to defend his honor bubbles up into his throat. “All we got running the damn thing is Ernie Prang, who Lord knows can’t do it all by himself. The poor bloke will drive straight into Diagon Alley if he doesn’t have a good conductor with him.”
“And the purple robes? I’d have to wear those too?” Draco asks, nose wrinkled as the wizard nods, zeroing in on the horrendous wardrobe even though he’s fully aware that there are worse aspects of this job he should be addressing with his concern.
“It’s easy, really. Just don’t be easily motion sick and you’ve got the gig, boy.”
The wizard peers up at Draco, waiting for a response, and Draco weighs his options, which currently, are looking rather sparse. He can either hide in his room at home, wallowing in pity while he watches his mother start scattering his possessions in the grass for a lowlife yard sale and the reputable Malfoy monetary earnings dwindle, or he can swallow his pride and be rocked around on the Knight Bus serving old men too frail for Apparition hot chocolate. He’s never been on the Knight Bus before, classier styles of transportation always at hand in the past, but he can picture it flawlessly in his mind-a grimy bus stacked with beds with moldy linens and crammed with hoary old witches murmuring in their sleep.
“Okay,” the word comes out of Draco’s mouth without permission, and the wizard on the other end of the table grins and shakes his hand once more before rattling down his hourly wage, where the bus will pick him up for work, and what safety precautions he needs to be aware of and how if he’s thrown into a window and breaks a leg, he can’t sue the Ministry for his injury.
Gleefully, Draco signs the papers.
-
His first day of work, despite his valiant attempts to slither out of the manor without being seen, Narcissa catches sight of Draco in his brilliantly purple robes and spends a good two minutes staring with her eyes as wide as cauldron lids before she settles for, in lieu of what would most definitely have been a humiliating spiel, a brief pat on Draco’s shoulder as good luck. He supposes that what renders her mute is the same thing that keeps him wordless: the ridiculousness of the situation is too much to comment on, let alone address.
Still, he tries to drum up some of the Malfoy pride he was teeming with as a younger narcissist, and when he steps outside of the manor gate and sticks out his wand to hail the bus like the wizard from the Leaky Cauldron instructed him to do, he barely has a moment to remind himself that he doesn’t know how to live life as a penniless beggar before a giant purple bus screeches to a loud halt on the sidewalk, nearly knocking Draco over with surprise alone, and its purple doors fold open.
Delicately, he picks his eloquence and poise off the floor and gathers his wits before he steps onto the bus, still vacant of any early morning passengers, and nods curtly at the driver, Ernie, who despite the wizard from yesterday’s accurate description, still manages to startle Draco a bit as he turns to look at him through thick glasses and a mop of flyaway white hair.
“Morning,” Draco says slowly, and Ernie nods again before he resumes busying himself with his sandwich and sending the bus off once more.
Draco is promptly thrown onto the ground, grazing the edge of a bed rolling along jerkily with the erratic movements of the bus, shoulder aching as it catches the brunt of his fall, and looks up helplessly at the chandelier flailing along to the bumpy ride overheard.
If this is how I die, mother, he thinks feebly from the floor, do avenge my death.
-
It only takes three and a half hours for Draco to officially hate his job and understand why house elves are always griping about menial labor when they think wizards aren’t listening, another five to want to slap the driver silly, and until the end of the workday for Draco to start pondering just how tragic it would be if he would have to resort to homeless wandering when his family goes broke and he remains jobless.
He is no longer convinced that the beds in the Knight Bus are there to comfort sleepy overnight travelers, but rather exist as refuges for injured conductors who need a sanctuary to rest and lick their wounds. He’s obtained at least five major bruises that are currently throbbing for attention even as Narcissa presses cool clothes to the purpling bumps and shushes her son, the most splendid of them all a hefty lump swelling on the back of his head that occurred when Draco was helping an elderly witch into her seat and Ernie unexpectedly began driving at full speed once more, sending Draco careening gracefully into the window headfirst.
He’s extremely wary of the old driver by now, who at the start of the day had appeared to be an innocent old curmudgeon who would totter along at a reasonable pace on the roads and brake tenderly when the bus would stop to let off passengers and naturally, proved to be the exact opposite. At one point he had begun to suspect that perhaps more was amiss about old Ernie than just an ignorance of safe driving, such as a vision impairment or even complete blindness, but whenever he asked the man about his medical conditions, Ernie gave off the impression that he was also hopelessly deaf.
The passengers were as lovely as riding on a jerky bus all day long was for Draco-they were the exact crowd he had predicted them to be: rowdy teenagers who weren’t old enough to Apparate or old wizards who were dreadfully frightened of Portkeys. The entire crowd today had been fussy enough to demand hot chocolate, an order that Draco began to dread as the first time he attempted to pour a witch a cup of the beverage, the bus had jerked left and Draco’s trousers had suffered the splatter of burning hot chocolate before he had the chance to finish serving the woman. He cared little of the stains on his hideous purple pants that he cleaned with a whip of his wand, for he was hardly fond of them from the start, but more of the scalding, blistering knees he endured as a result of his clumsiness and Ernie’s pitiful driving.
His mother heals his knees upon his return home and listens dutifully to all of his miserable complaints. As much as whining to his parents normally improves his sour moods, the fact that he’ll have to return to the dreadful bus the next day nags at his mind too much for him to find any satisfaction in his bellyaching.
-
“What a handsome boy you are,” an old witch croons the next day on the bus while Draco tries to placate the boy perched unsteadily on the edge of a bed while his cheeks turn a disturbing shade of green who seems to be one tremulous lurch of the bus away from splattering his sick all over Draco’s shoes. “Do you have a wife?”
“No,” Draco tells her, attempting to sturdy the boy swaying on the bed dangerously, hand flying up to cover his mouth as the bus jumps over a trash can.
“What a pity,” she coos, “Probably for the best, though. A job like this will never make enough gold to satisfy a woman.”
With that, the bus lurches to a sudden stop and the witch promptly picks up her frilly handbag and heads to the door with a cheerful look over her shoulder to Draco as goodbye. From the front of the bus, Ernie shuts the doors with a lever and takes another enormous bite out of his sandwich, and that’s all the warning Draco gets before the bus zooms off and the boy vomits chunks of his breakfast gracefully onto the bed.
-
The fifth morning of Knight Bus torture, Draco watches while buttoning up his purple jacket as his mother rifles through old trunks in the dining room, murmuring in a deep hiss with Lucius as she grabs one of her husband’s favorite rings and sets it atop the pile of Malfoy trinkets for sale. The pile includes more than Draco would ever like to see in the hands of careless wizards who don’t appreciate their priceless value, and with that dark thought, he finishes buttoning his jacket and heads out the door to flag down the Knight Bus.
-
Draco’s bad days at work get put into perspective two weeks after his first day, and suddenly, the idea of knocking his skull open on a bedpost, coming home bruised nightly like an abused housewife, or spilling hot chocolate down his pants while Ernie takes another unsuspected turn down an alley all seem like simple pleasures when Draco opens the bus door, ready to deliver his default conductor speech, and sees Harry Potter.
“Welcome to the Knight-oh, bugger. Potter?”
Draco drops his professionalism instantly at the sight of Potter standing at the bottom of the steps tucking his wand away and Ernie grunts as his Draco’s greeting unravels and comes to a sudden stop. There he is, just as he was on the last day Draco saw him consoling victims the morning of the battle, minus the scrapes and the dirt, same unruly black hair and tattered glasses. It takes Draco a full minute of gaping and wondering as to why the almighty Chosen One is choosing transportation as pedestrian as the Knight Bus until he notices that a frail, trembling old woman is clutching onto Potter’s elbow like he’s the only anchor in the sea dragging her onto the beach.
Potter looks just as surprised to see Draco, and for the first time since Draco first put on this ridiculous purple suit, he feels the red hot heat of embarrassment burn up his neck as Potter examines him and suppresses what is surely roars of laughter at the sight of Draco Malfoy, head to toe in shiny purple, working as a common lowlife expected to drag Potter’s luggage up the bus and pour him tea.
“Malfoy?” Potter asks, eyes wide as he takes in the sight of his former nemesis in such a demeaning position, regardless of the belittling attire, and Draco grits his teeth and counts silently to ten in his head while he waits for this humiliating moment in his life to pass and leave him in peace.
Vengeance is a bitch, Draco thinks miserably, suddenly regretting ever stepping on Potter’s nose or teasing him about his lack of parental guidance, as all those moments seem to lead back to this where Potter finally gets to revel in the sight of his enemy wearing glorified servant’s clothing and swallow back in relish.
“Do you work for the Knight Bus?” Potter asks, disbelief coating every one of his words.
“No, Potter,” Draco drawls, unable to pluck up any decorum and remain civil in this conversation when Harry Potter is staring at his purple trousers like Christmas came early. “I find it flattering to wear a conductor’s uniform and spend my time on this dump of a bus for fun.”
Ernie grunts again. Draco shoots him a look, but the man is steadfastly focused on his old sandwich, and returns his attention back to Potter and his elderly friend. He’s not laden with luggage, which saves Draco the trouble and ridicule of having to lug Potter’s bags up the steps after him and be shamed even further by turning into Harry Potter’s servant and personal assistant, nor does Potter require support climbing the steps and leading the elder woman up the stairs onto a musty bed.
At best, it’s awkward. Draco slides out of the way while the two pass by and settle onto a bed. The chandelier swings above them, crystals clinging together.
“Where are you off to?” Draco finally asks when he remembers that he’s a conductor and that the bus is used for transportation, the stomach used to constant motion settling in his body reminding him of the lack of movement that his organs have become fairly used to after traveling via the bus for several days.
“The Ministry,” Potter tells him quickly, his concentration focused on the quivering old lady in her woolly cardigan while he soothes her with a few pats to the back, and Draco’s curiosity overrides his requirement to inform Potter of the Knight Bus’ offers, including toothbrushes and hot chocolate.
“That your girlfriend, Potter?” Draco asks before he can help himself.
“Found her during an Auror investigation. She had been found locked up in her basement, I just have to bring her to the Ministry for her statement and I didn’t want to risk Apparating when she was so shaken.”
Auror investigation, Draco notes, the words emphasizing themselves in his brain. He’s hardly surprised. Kingsley Shacklebolt had announced a few days after the Battle of Hogwarts that all who had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts were granted Auror status without the prerequisite of extensive training and N.E.W.T.s, and undoubtedly Potter had seized the opportunity. Draco looks down at his purple robes and tries his hardest not to give into the superstitions that karma delivered him this ultimate failure.
“So you’re an Auror, Potter?” Draco asks, even though Potter’s Ministry robes and their conversation has already adequately answered his suspicions.
Before Potter has a chance to reply, however, Ernie processes Potter’s instructions to drive to the Ministry and starts the bus with a jerk that by now, Draco has worked up a conspiracy theorizing that the old man is timing his jerky starts and turns at the most inconvenient time if only to hear Draco’s masculine squeals of terror as he falls flat on his delicate nose in sundry different painful positions. He has no time to adjust to the sudden jolt of the bus as it picks up speed, and in front of Potter, of all people, Draco cries out and is knocked elegantly onto the nearest bed, inhaling a mouthful of dusty pillow in the process. He spits out the linen fibers and sweeps the wayward strands of his hair dislodged by Ernie’s driving back into place with all the dignity he can muster. Beside him, Potter snickers.
“Shut up, Potter,” Draco snaps, picking himself up from the bed and smoothing out its wrinkled sheets as he draws his wand and flicks it toward the creases.
“Sorry,” Potter offers as an apology, even though the grin on his face betrays the candor behind his condolences. “I think you’re more graceful airborne. You know, on a broom. This whole being on land thing doesn’t look very good on you.”
Draco grumbles. The old witch leaning into Potter’s side seems to take no notice of their conversation, nor does she find the humor in Draco’s graceless tumbling throughout the bus. Draco is quietly glad of her lack of giggles to join Potter’s, for he doesn’t think he could handle Potter plus an accomplice amusing themselves on his own behalf without jinxing Potter’s hair a revolting shade of purple similar to his own robes.
“I’m not trying to insult you,” Potter finally says earnestly, and Draco does little but send him a skeptical glance in response. “And your question-yeah, I’m an Auror now.”
“Living the life, I suppose?”
Potter shrugs. Draco’s eyes zero in on Potter’s bare hands resting on his knees, fingers lacking any sign of wedding rings. Draco can’t help but be surprised, for the moment the war ended he had fully expected Potter to whisk off the Weaselette and make the front page of the Daily Prophet with his nuptials. He tucks his wand back into his robes after he’s finished smoothing away the wrinkles. Potter’s eyes follow the journey Draco’s wands make back into his pocket.
“You’ve got a new wand,” Potter notices, and Draco withdraws his wand once more, examining it before he nods at the other man. It’s not his original hawthorn wand that he carried for nearly seventeen years until Harry forcibly wrenched it from his grip while they escaped Malfoy Manor, and he supposes that the tone in Potter’s voice is surprise that the boy actually replaced his wand even though Potter never considered to return the wand he had pilfered from Draco.
“’Course I did,” Draco mutters. “Did you think I’d just keep pining after the old one?”
“No, I just,” Potter seems amply flustered for mentioning his own thievery. “I was going to give it back. I swear.”
Draco admits that a confession to return the wand of a former Slytherin adversary was not what he expected to come out of Potter’s mouth as he returns his new wand into his robes and steadies himself by grabbing the nearest bedpost as Ernie takes another lurch. This one seems to knock Potter off his guard as well as he makes a reflexive grab for his own bedpost while the old woman sits firmly and undisturbed on her spot on the bed beside him.
“Not one even the Knight Bus can shake this one,” Harry says, mildly amused, cocking his head toward the woman and mirroring Draco’s thoughts. “Maybe I could have actually Apparated with her and she wouldn’t have even been fazed.”
“Unlike you,” Draco drawls. “You’re looking a bit sick, Potter. I’ve already had to clean up vomit twice this week and don’t think I’ll scrub yours away too just because you’re Harry Potter.”
The jab-whether it was meant to harm or amuse, Draco isn’t even sure himself-doesn’t offend Potter as a slow smile tugs up on his lips instead. Draco mildly wonders what happened to the easily affronted boy in Hogwarts who always needed his Gryffindor gingers to step up for him when he or another Slytherin would aim verbal abuse in his direction, or if Potter had always been hard to offend and Draco had merely been just that obnoxious and irksome enough to rile an otherwise even-tempered boy to boiling point.
“I’ll try not to throw up, Malfoy, even though the sight of you cleaning it might make my life complete.”
“Of course it would, Scarhead. Can’t say I don’t wish the same for you.”
“Your wishes are devoted to hoping one day I get to sit in your digested food and clean it up?”
“Whilst I watch, yes,” Draco says, the thought already painting satisfying images in his mind as a filthy Potter kneels on hardwood floor drenched in sick and scrubs endlessly at the mess is born in his brain. A sharp bone knocks in his side as Potter gets to his feet and elbows him in the ribs.
“Stop grinning like that, you dolt,” Potter admonishes, and the bus staggers to its final stop that nearly pitches Potter straight into Draco’s unsuspecting lap before Potter’s hand darts out to wind around the bedpost once more to catch his fall.
“Nice Auror reflexes, Potter,” Draco says when Potter grazes his knee and nearly plummets flat onto his thighs before his hand catches himself. “Maybe it wasn’t your Firebolt doing all the work during Quidditch matches.”
“Only took you seven years to realize it,” Potter says as he holds out his hand to the elderly witch and gathers her up from her seat on the bed, and when he sneaks a look over his shoulder, Draco notices that he’s not sneering or shooting him a look of distaste, but rather smirking at Draco as if they’ve just shared a private joke together. Draco doesn’t know what to make of their almost civil conversation, free of duels and nasty spats about someone’s mother, and for a second, he feels the desperate yearning to shake the encounter off, but before Draco can process the fact that he’s suddenly gained the ability to behave amicably around Harry Potter when he couldn’t find it in himself to do so for a good seven years of schooling, Potter’s waving a handful of silver Sickles in front of his face.
“Oh,” Draco remembers the fact that he forgot to demand payment from Potter when he first boarded the bus and accepts the silver coins from his outstretched fingers.
“Thanks for the ride, Malfoy,” Potter says, arm wound around the old witch as he guides the pair of them out of the bus and onto the sidewalk, where through the dim light of the evening, Draco makes out the entrance to the Ministry of Magic.
That night when Draco makes it home and rids himself of the abominable purple outfit and his mother asks him how work treated him for the day, Draco doesn’t think of the adolescent brat that Draco suspected was running from the law or the snoring homeless man with the shabby socks who was unable to be woken even after the bus arrived at his destination, but thinks instead of Harry Potter’s mop of black hair and quick hands.
-
“Fifteen Sickles for hot choc’late? Don’t you thin’ that’s a bit overpriced, mate?”
“If you wanted cheap, learn how to Apparate,” Draco grits out, temper thin after-despite having learned to grow accustomed and prepared for the various jerks of the steering wheel Ernie would deliver randomly to keep Draco on his feet while he weaved between rickety beds-Draco had suffered a particularly nasty bruise on his temple by crashing into a wooden panel on the side of the bus while selling a witch in the corner a toothbrush. He waves the kettle of boiling hot chocolate under the wizard’s nose in what he hopes is tempting enough to encourage the man to cough up the few extra Sickles.
“Can’t very well do that when I can’t even stomach usin’ a Portkey once ev’ry year, now can I?”
“You dim tosser, do you honestly think that the Knight Bus is softer on your tummy?” Draco snarls, but the man has lost interest in their conversation, staring over Draco’s shoulder with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
“It’s him, it’s ‘Arry Potter! Right here in this very bus! Goodness me!”
Draco looks over his shoulder to where the man is ogling and sure enough, Harry Potter is climbing the steps, sending a curt nod to Ernie and standing, definitely alone and lacking any old women hanging off his arms, and scanning the bus to sit down on the nearest bed. Draco turns back to the fussy man in front of him, firmly pushes him into his seat before the bus begins throwing the man around the walls like he’s in a pinball machine, and before he can properly think through his actions, his feet are leading him directly to where Potter is sitting perched on a bedspread.
“Do you really love getting tossed around this bus that much that you just had to come back, Potter?”
“Aren’t you supposed to offer me amenities instead of standing there snarking?” Potter asks with a distinct lack of heat to his voice, and Draco feels the same prickle that tickled his stomach the last time he and Potter managed a well-mannered discussion as he feels the underlying amusement in Potter’s words instead of the expected aversion.
“No rescued old ladies today?” Draco drawls, choosing not to answer Potter’s question.
“You better sit down,” Potter says, also foregoing the decorum of properly replying to another’s inquiry, instead cocking his head to where Ernie is pulling the lever that closes the bus doors and alerts Draco to the spontaneous jerking of the bus that is to come. He hastily grabs the nearest bedpost and grips it tightly. He mentally sends Potter an internal thank you as the bus starts up, the finicky traveler at the back of the bus letting out a startled yelp and nearly rolling off his bed at the rapid gathering of speed.
“This bus is ruddy crazy!” the man roars from the floor as he picks himself up shakily. Draco smirks.
“Having fun watching other people tumble around all day?” Potter observes a moment later, obviously catching sight of Draco’s smug expression as the man gripes and curses in the corner. “This must be the perfect job for you.”
“Only when I’m not the one tumbling around,” Draco scoffs, gingerly pressing his thumb into the throbbing bruise on his temple.
“What happened to your head?”
“I work on the Knight Bus, Potter, figure it out,” Draco snaps, and once again, Potter doesn’t look as if he’s been slapped or insulted or even satisfactorily chagrined for asking a daft question, and Draco is once more left to ponder if the war’s armistice did wonders for calming the boy’s temper.
A second later, however, Potter draws his wand from his cloak, pointing it straight at Draco, and Draco is about to rethink his assumption that the boy is no longer annoyed by Draco’s Slytherin behavior as he expects a myriad of nasty jinxes to be sent his way-Lord only knows what defensive magic he’s learned through Auror training-when instead Potter gently murmurs a few unintelligible words and Draco’s forehead promptly stops aching. He blinks, straightening up from the recoil he had drawn himself into at the sight of Potter’s drawn wand, and brushes his fingers over his temple, no longer feeling a swelling bump on his head but rather a soothing coolness.
“Hermione taught me that,” Potter says, looking rather proud of himself as he examines Draco’s successfully healed bruise, skin no longer dotted with hues of green and purple. “I’m normally rubbish at Healing spells.”
“You could’ve broken my face, Potter,” Draco cries, not sure if he should be alarmed at Potter attempting to nurse him without his permission or grateful that the dull pain of his bruise is extinguished.
“Maybe it would’ve looked a right sight better, then,” Potter grins, and Draco feels the need to focus his attention on the bedpost behind him if only to hide the smirk that he would never let Potter have the satisfaction of seeing. “Anyway, I did have a reason for coming here. I didn’t exactly know how to find you and when we talked last, I just…”
Draco watches as Potter struggles with his words before he finally pulls from his pocket a far from foreign wand, ten inches and reasonably springy as he remembers Ollivander describing it to his eleven-year-old self as if it were merely yesterday when the wispy old man handed him his wand and had given him the sage advice to use it well.
‘You kept it?” Draco asks, staring at his wand as he’s being reunited with an old friend believed to be dead, and for a moment, the moving bus feels unspeakably still as Potter holds it out to him.
“I owe it a lot,” Potter says after a moment’s thought. “And it wasn’t mine to throw away either.”
Draco finally takes the wand from Potter’s fingers and takes a moment to run his palm down the wood and notice how comfortably it slots into his grip even after the long separation. Then Draco detects a smattering of smudged fingerprints along the length of his wand and sends Potter a stern glare at the sight of such mishandling of one of his dearest possessions.
“You’ve marked it all up with your sweaty hands, Potter,” Draco mentions, and Potter has the decency to look mildly abashed at his poor sanitation habits.
“Well, I could always take it back if you’d like,” He teases, and Draco feels himself clutch it possessively as if unconsciously worried it’ll be taken from him once again. Potter notices, eyes flicking down to where Draco’s fingers are wrapped tightly around the hilt of his wand, damn Auror observation skills spotting his moment’s worth of worry. “I was joking.”
“I know,” Draco assures him a moment later, sliding the wand into his back pocket and vowing to polish it when he returns home. “Besides, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let you steal my wand twice from me, Potter.”
Potter looks down at his laps, cheekbones crinkled as if stretched with a smile he isn’t letting Draco see, and once more, Draco feels the scary prickle of getting along with Harry Potter ghost over his body waiting to be desperately showered away.
-
That night, Draco pulls his old wand out of his pocket and rolls it back and forth in his hands until the familiar sensation of holding it in his hand returns to his body. He stares at the smeared fingerprints, fingerprints that Draco would never let besmirch and soil his wand even if they were his own, and wonders when each was imprinted onto his wand, if the one by the bottom was a slip of the fingers when Potter was disarming Voldemort, if the smudge by the middle was when he was wrenching it from Draco’s grip, or if the myriad of marks of four fingers in a row occurred during the battle when Potter was saving lives, as always.
He doesn’t know how any of the prints came about, if they were all Potter’s, or even why he doesn’t polish them away later that night.
-
Draco spends his days passing out mugs of hot chocolate to underage wizards steadying themselves on Knight Bus beds, allowing his mother to properly teach him Healing charms so he can rid himself of the bruises the bus inflicts on him when he’s not quick on his feet during a swerve left, and levitating old women’s luggage up into the footwell at the front of the bus while their old knobby fingers try to sort their Sickles from the Knuts and drop coins in Draco’s hand to pay for their rides.
Now and again, he chances a look out the window to see if a flash of green eyes and messy black hair are awaiting the screeching stop of the bus on the side of a road.
Whenever he catches himself doing so, he promptly turns around and tries to engage Ernie in a bit of light chatter so he doesn’t have to attend to the green-cheeked, queasy women swaying ominously at the back of the bus as if bobbing along to waves of the sea. When Ernie never responds, Draco is forced to return his attention back outside the windows to the flashes of color darting by and continue keeping an eye out for Harry Potter’s bespectacled face on the other side.
-
The Ministry, as it seems, is keeping Potter and his gang of Aurors occupied outside of basements where fragile old women in need of gentle transport are residing as prisoners nor does Potter have more of Draco’s lost possessions he feels guilty keeping, as it takes a good two weeks before Draco sees the man again.
It’s nearly midnight, Draco half asleep against one of the mothball-infested beds as the bus’ jerks hither and thither only seem to lull Draco into a groggy state of alluring slumber, when the sound of the bus screeching loudly against the road fast enough for the tires to sizzle yanks Draco torturously from his nap and alerts him to a rather alarming sight sitting in the dark outside of the windows.
Draco pushes himself from the dusty sheets and heads down the steps from the bus to the streets swiftly, any vestiges of sleep stolen from him abruptly at the sight of Potter’s crumpled figure collapsed on the sidewalk in the dark of night with his wand aloft to summon the Knight Bus.
The gloom of the crisp night does little to illuminate the dim scene in front of him, and Draco promptly reaches for his wand to light the tip and send its beam raking over Potter’s supine body. His shirt, torn in a nasty cut that seemed to slash into Potter’s skin as well, is dotted with a healthy puddle of blood also staining the shaking hand that’s pressing into the gash on his torso to subdue the bleeding, and it takes Draco a moment to take in the situation before he’s kneeling on the sidewalk and pulling Potter’s hand away from the laceration.
“Fuck, Potter! What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
The boy looks at him, slightly breathless and very windswept from the look of things. Draco spreads the light of his wand over the wound he uncovered and takes a moment to wince, not only because the sight and smell of coppery blood still doesn’t bode well with his eyes, but because the cut is larger than he had anticipated, obviously outdoing any amateur Healing skills Potter had attempted to fix it with.
“Wasn’t even supposed to be dangerous, just ran into some unexpected trouble,” he rasps out, and then, as if slowly remembering bits of the incident, his eyes widen and his feet scramble to find purchase on the sidewalk. “Ron-Ron was there, I need to-”
“The Weasley will be fine if he’s not as dumb as he looks, Scarhead, calm down and stop moving,” Draco says with more composure than he is actually harboring at the sight of such a nasty injury, heaving Potter up to his feet by winding his arm around his shoulders and leading him up the steps. Ernie seems to have abandoned his nighttime snack in favor of watching behind his thick lenses as Draco lugs Potter up the steps and sets him down on the nearest bed, and Draco doesn’t know whether to be alarmed or not at the fact that this incident actually caught the driver’s interest when Ernie normally resolutely keeps his gaze firm on the road and the steering wheel no matter the commotion occurring elsewhere.
“Don’t even know how we got separated,” Potter mumbles miserably, the pain in his expression replaced with the worry of the Weasley, a concern that he seems to deem more important than his own agony, a trait so very Gryffindor-like Draco once more remembers why the two of them are polar opposites. He pushes Potter’s heavy cloak out of the way to further examine the wound.
“So you thought finding the Knight Bus would be your best bet?” Draco asks, and a small thought Draco doesn’t allow to be born pops up in his brain suggesting that perhaps Potter summoned the bus because his first thought of where to find aid would be Draco’s assistance. He promptly rids himself of that thought.
“Didn’t mean to,” Harry admits. “I took my wand out and before I knew it I fell over and the bus was here. Forgot that you summon it by hailing it when you take out your wand.”
“You daft hero, Potter,” Draco mutters, mentally filing through all of the Healing spells he’s ever learned that would be strong enough to cinch together such a deep gash and hoping that St. Mungo’s isn’t too far of a drive away should he find his knowledge to be unhelpful in mending the damage.
“Can you fix it?” Potter asks, attempting to sneak glances at his wound in the light of the Knight Bus when Draco pushes him down onto the bed.
“Shut up, Potter, just shut up for a moment,” Draco retrieves his wand, knowing perfectly well both Potter and Ernie are watching him expectantly. He points his wand at the blood and mutters a variety of spells that are in the forefront of his mind in curing wounds and pain, and miraculously enough, Potter’s cut slowly stitches itself back into repaired skin, nothing but the crust of dried blood in its wake. He wonders for a moment if the pressure to save the Boy-Who-Lived while he was in the hands of his notorious school nemesis-a story that, had Draco’s spells somehow gone fatally wrong, Rita Skeeter and her swanky quills would be contorting into an article that would send him straight to Azkaban-had been the reason he had inexplicably been able to heal the oozing scar in front of him.
Clearly as bewildered as Draco, Potter runs his fingers over the clean flesh on the side of his torso and looks up at Draco, “Impressive,” he mumbles, eyes wide in what Draco can only assume is awe and another emotion he has yet to indentify and isn’t sure if he wants to. “Thank you, Malfoy.”
The gratitude is unexpected at the very least, and a heat and a prickle Draco isn’t entirely comfortable with dances up his neck and settles at the nape where the hem of his hair begins bristling softly. He stares at the bedpost, suddenly aware that since retrieving Potter off the street, the bus has been at a standstill.
“Just be lucky I was there, Potter,” Draco manages, mostly because he doesn’t think his mouth would let a you’re welcome touch his tongue.
“What happened to you trying to kick my arse instead of saving it?”
“You’re still an arse,” Draco says, for he’s not sure of the proper answer himself. Now that Potter mentions it, he can’t deny that a thirteen-year-old version of himself would be too busy mocking the golden Chosen One to even consider nursing him back to health on the Knight Bus. He wonders, idly, if this is what growing up feels like, and he still doesn’t know if he should feel nostalgic that he’s not the same arrogant little boy or eternally thankful that he’s matured. He looks down at Potter, lying on the bed at Draco’s complete mercy should he decide to whip out his wand and double the damage his previous wound had inflicted on him, almost trusting of Draco, an ex-Death Eater, of all people, and wonders exactly when the mutual loathing stopped.
“Likewise, Malfoy,” Potter says, faintly smiling, and he grabs a bedpost to upright himself on the bed.
“So where are we taking you, Potter? This is a bus, not a hotel.”
Potter glances at him oddly, like he’s working out all of Draco’s secrets or reading his diary, and Draco feels compelled to look away. He supposes it’s because Potter’s in perfectly fine condition to Apparate or even run and sprint back to where he may have left Weasley in mortal peril, with no more need of the Knight Bus and its beds for the feeble travelers, but Draco still offers it as an option as if he simply wants his presence to remain. Draco feels the same heat that’s still pooling at his neck travel down and lace itself around his spine at the realization.
But Potter mentions little of the coincidence, and Draco would rather charm his hair purple to match his uniform than voice his preference of Potter staying on board out loud, and yet, through some divine power, Potter stays on the bus until they reach his destination, foregoing the swiftness of Apparition or other easier, less nausea-inducing methods of travel.
They sit on adjoining cots while the Knight Bus jerks them back and forth through its hairpin turns and sharp curves in complete-yet dare he say it, comfortable-silence, which, to Draco, definitely trumps seven years of all but spitting in each other’s faces.
Part II.
Author:
veterization
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Rating: NC-17
Genre and/or Pairing: Harry/Draco
Word Count: ~17,000
Warnings: Slight language and sexual content (second part).
Summary: After the war, the Malfoy fortune begins dwindling. Draco swallows his pride and gets a job the only place he can find one: the Knight Bus.
"I don't drive around London much. Any journey around Islington involves hundreds of speed bumps that seem to tear the bottom of your car off." --Alan Davies
Even with the war over, and with it, the mortifying hosting duties Malfoy Manor held for the Dark Lord done as well, Draco can’t help but feel as if the dark times have yet to come.
As unnerving as having the most dangerous and hot-tempered dark wizard in history setting up headquarters in his living room was, Draco can’t deny that joining Voldemort’s forces had seemed to be the safest option when the war came to its ultimate peak and the Ministry had been successfully infiltrated and Muggles were victimized to random wizarding attacks. Unlike the peril the Muggleborns and half-bloods found themselves in during Voldemort’s rise to power, Draco’s family’s affiliation with the dark arts, despite their cowardice, kept them somewhat secured in reputation and influence alike.
The morning after the Battle of Hogwarts was over, however, and Draco sat in the corner of the Great Hall bedaubed in soot and bruises while Narcissa and Lucius rushed toward him and celebrated their miraculous survival, he knew that it was only a matter of time before the Malfoy name would be cruelly dragged through the mud and the blood his father’s hands spilled-not to mention his own-would be publicized and punished.
What he had never foreseen, however, was that the dip in his pocketbook would plummet just as swiftly as the drop in his reputation had plunged to the ground until he stumbled upon his mother stacking his grandfather’s ancient silver china into a box to be shipped to Borgin & Burkes and pawned off for a considerable sum that his mother apparently deemed worth giving up a Malfoy family heirloom for.
“Times are rough, Draco,” Narcissa had told him in a tone that he easily recognized as poorly veiled nostalgia as she packed yet more priceless artifacts into boxes and Draco could do little but watch helplessly on. “It’s time for us to make sacrifices.”
He wanted to tell her that he had made enough sacrifices when he was forced to poise his wand at Albus Dumbledore on top of the Astronomy Tower and drum up his inner murderous spirit in order to secure his own survival, or that the daily fear he lived when Voldemort lived in his house and he was ordered to incarcerate prisoners in the basement should have been a large enough surrender, but then he catches her warning eye right before he opens his mouth and lets the diatribe loose and decides to keep his griping at bay. Mentally, however, he wistfully thinks that these are no longer the times in which his father could afford enough Nimbus 2001s for the entire Slytherin Quidditch team and he was able to tease Weasley for the state of his hand-me-down robes while he strutted past him in shining shoes.
He supposes that this is the price to pay for standing on the wrong side of the war for more than seven years, and with that depressing contemplation swimming on endless loop in his mind, he does the unthinkable as a Malfoy, and decides to put in the effort necessary to save himself from ultimate financial ruin by becoming employed.
His mother is utterly shocked at her son’s proactive attitude, but not nearly as shocked as half of the employers who catch him wandering through the doors of their establishments and have the nerve to ask him what he’s doing not sobbing in Azkaban.
The first place he chooses is what he would have deemed the most dignified place to obtain an occupation, so naturally, it is also the one least interested in hiring the likes of an ex-Death Eater like himself. The secretary looked most astonish that he even dare show his face in the distinguished halls of the Ministry of Magic after he and his family nearly caused the Ministry’s destruction by helping Voldemort appoint his puppet Thicknesse as Minister during his reign, and when Draco grits his teeth and insists that his intentions with the Ministry are pure, the wizard who interviews him for the positions he’s interested in is more amused by the fact that Draco still believes the Wizarding World has enough faith in a family with a name such as the Malfoys to permit him to help run the very operation that keeps the Wizarding World afloat than he is concerned with orchestrating a professional interview.
“You’re having me on, boy,” the wizard wheezes, mopping his eyes with the edge of a handkerchief as he continues to giggle, “A Malfoy, working at the Ministry? As if we’re daft enough to make the same mistake twice!”
The Ministry, however, dreadfully enough, is one of the more considerate places when it comes to humoring Draco’s attempts to employ himself, as he is soon to see when he wanders into St. Mungo’s and is dealt with by a rather irate wizard who grills him with no-nonsense questions that have little to do with his abilities as a Healer and more of how genuine his remorse is for those who were injured or killed in the Death Eaters’ rise to power.
“I lost a sister last year,” he says gravely, ignoring Draco as he waves his credentials and Healing skills helplessly under his nose, “Do you know why?”
“Why, sir?”
“The Death Eaters smoked her just because she was there. Just sitting there in Diagon Alley having a smoke and looking to buy a new cauldron and then bang, she’s dead.”
“I had nothing to do with that, sir,” Draco assures him rather dryly, as he can already smell the failure of the interview wafting up his nose and settling there unpleasantly, “As I told you, I spent most of last year in my home-”
“Doing You-Know-Who’s bidding, I know. Tell me,” he seethes, “Is your Dark Mark even cold yet?”
Draco endures another twenty minutes of questions completely irrelevant to how strong his Pepper-Up potion is, how quickly he can brew up a Wolfsbane potion, or how precise his wand movements are when he heals broken bones, all questions that the pamphlet floating by the front desk had assured him would be covered during the hiring interview process, before he is finally free to go with a few foreboding threats and a warning to never reappear in the hospital again unless he’s being carried in by a body cast, and on that light note, he scurries out the front door and borrows the tolerant nature and reserve he needs that only a Hufflepuff could contain in order to not jinx his interviewer.
His next stop, although after his previous attempts to successfully persuade someone to hire him is leaving him wary of whatever awaits him next, he has hope in not because he’s not expecting whispers and possibly even hexes to be aimed at him when he walks inside, but because he was assured in the past that this is the place one goes when they need help and where one receives charity whenever they bother to ask for it.
Now he’s sitting Headmistress McGonagall’s office feeling supremely uncomfortable and wishing he could gently back out of the school whilst erasing the memories of those who saw him daring to enter the school he bullied Harry Potter in, nearly killed Albus Dumbledore in, and then almost set aflame with Crabbe in a fire that he also all but burnt to a crisp in.
“Mr. Malfoy, you have absolutely no teaching qualifications,” McGonagall tells him grimly as he informs her of his quest to actually earn his own money instead of pilfering from his father’s soon to be nonexistent stash of gold, “The only thing I could hire you as would be as an assistant to Mr. Filch, since he does not waste a day in which he complains to me about how the enormity of the castle and the mess the students make in it is unjustly disproportionate to a man of his size expected to clean it.”
Draco imagines soap suds, grimy sponges, and cleaning vomit out of the broom closets while Filch rasps and breathes down his neck. He wrinkles his nose, which McGonagall does not fail to notice.
“I see you have little interest in such a position,” she dismisses, and for a moment, her expression softens and she perches her hands on her desk, “Draco, I understand that you are undoubtedly having trouble finding work with the repercussions of the war doing little to help you along the way. I do not mean to discourage you when I say that your status as a Death Eater will hurt your chances of being hired for many years.”
“Bright outlook,” he drawls, and she looks at him like he should be glad his wand isn’t snapped yet with the bounty that many wizards and witches alike would be pleased to see floating over his head.
“You will find an occupation, Mr. Malfoy. Perhaps it is not as prestigious as you would like it to be, nor does it pay as generously. Just remember that you cannot afford to be choosy and an opportunity will eventually present itself if you follow that advice,” she looks at him, one hard, calculating look as if she’s waiting for him to whine, and then continues, “I have one such position you might find beneficial to look into.”
He pictures a number of demeaning jobs that flit through his head like flashes of nightmares before McGonagall thrusting a piece of paper under his nose draws him away from the horror his mind is creating to torture himself with.
“Thanks,” he finally mutters, although he’s skeptical at best of whatever opportunity awaits him on the address printed neatly on the bit of parchment in his fingers.
“You’re welcome,” she says, “Don’t fret too much, Mr. Malfoy. It may not be as esteemed as working as a Professor at Hogwarts, but is it a job nonetheless.”
Draco nods, feeling very much like one more step down into the pits of poverty and he’ll be sprouting red hair and freckles, and peels himself out of the chair, heading for the door.
He wants to say my father will hear about this, but he doesn’t want to hear the laughter.
-
The address turns out to be the Leaky Cauldron, except Tom the barman informs Draco that he has no spots that need filling in his pub for employees when he asks about the job opening and has the decency to look apologetic for Draco when he shrugs and returns to scrubbing down the counter, and that’s when a portly wizard with wispy strands of hair framing his face overhears their conversation and slips out his hand for Draco to shake.
“It’s me you’re looking for,” he tells him, leading him over to a table in the middle of a pub where countless bowls of already devoured pea soup clutter the top and sitting him firmly down, “McGonagall let me know you were coming. Draco Malfoy, am I right? You sure got your wits about you if a man in your position is looking for jobs. Suppose even the worst of us have some Gryffindor bravery, eh, Mr. Malfoy?”
Draco is too busy taking in the man’s appearance to bother replying as he tries to accurately deduce what his occupation is by the state of his robes and his hair. Before he can come up with a conclusion, however, the man is already barreling on once more.
“Anyways,” he grunts, pulling a sheaf of papers out of his cloak and stuffing them under one of the empty bowls, “I work for the Ministry and deal with Magical Transportation. As a matter of fact, I inspect the Hogwarts Express every year to make sure it’s working properly and all.” He draws himself up, looking rather impressed with his accomplishments.
“You have a job at the Ministry for me?” Draco asks, incredulous that McGonagall managed such a feat, but then the wizard snorts and chortles, sufficiently dampening Draco’s hopes that he would be able to walk through the Ministry with poise again.
“No, dear boy, absolutely not. Our screening process is much more stringent these days, there’s no way they would let a known Death Eater through,” he shakes his head and continues to chuckle, “What I have for you is a different job. Still ruddy important, so that’s what counts, eh? The Knight Bus is currently without a conductor, as Mr. Stan Shunpike, the previous man for the job, is currently in no state to run a bus.”
“The Knight Bus?” Draco parrots, feeling the blood drain to his shoes and ooze into his socks at the thought of having to dress himself in an offensive shade of purple every morning and entertain underage wizards running away from their parents with help from the Knight Bus with nothing but a Sickle to their name. “Why can’t Shunpike do it?”
“He’s in St. Mungo’s at the moment, being treated for mental trauma after being placed under the Imperius Curse,” the wizard casts him an odd look, as if of all people, Draco should know of Stan’s condition, and Draco bristles once more as the need to defend his honor bubbles up into his throat. “All we got running the damn thing is Ernie Prang, who Lord knows can’t do it all by himself. The poor bloke will drive straight into Diagon Alley if he doesn’t have a good conductor with him.”
“And the purple robes? I’d have to wear those too?” Draco asks, nose wrinkled as the wizard nods, zeroing in on the horrendous wardrobe even though he’s fully aware that there are worse aspects of this job he should be addressing with his concern.
“It’s easy, really. Just don’t be easily motion sick and you’ve got the gig, boy.”
The wizard peers up at Draco, waiting for a response, and Draco weighs his options, which currently, are looking rather sparse. He can either hide in his room at home, wallowing in pity while he watches his mother start scattering his possessions in the grass for a lowlife yard sale and the reputable Malfoy monetary earnings dwindle, or he can swallow his pride and be rocked around on the Knight Bus serving old men too frail for Apparition hot chocolate. He’s never been on the Knight Bus before, classier styles of transportation always at hand in the past, but he can picture it flawlessly in his mind-a grimy bus stacked with beds with moldy linens and crammed with hoary old witches murmuring in their sleep.
“Okay,” the word comes out of Draco’s mouth without permission, and the wizard on the other end of the table grins and shakes his hand once more before rattling down his hourly wage, where the bus will pick him up for work, and what safety precautions he needs to be aware of and how if he’s thrown into a window and breaks a leg, he can’t sue the Ministry for his injury.
Gleefully, Draco signs the papers.
-
His first day of work, despite his valiant attempts to slither out of the manor without being seen, Narcissa catches sight of Draco in his brilliantly purple robes and spends a good two minutes staring with her eyes as wide as cauldron lids before she settles for, in lieu of what would most definitely have been a humiliating spiel, a brief pat on Draco’s shoulder as good luck. He supposes that what renders her mute is the same thing that keeps him wordless: the ridiculousness of the situation is too much to comment on, let alone address.
Still, he tries to drum up some of the Malfoy pride he was teeming with as a younger narcissist, and when he steps outside of the manor gate and sticks out his wand to hail the bus like the wizard from the Leaky Cauldron instructed him to do, he barely has a moment to remind himself that he doesn’t know how to live life as a penniless beggar before a giant purple bus screeches to a loud halt on the sidewalk, nearly knocking Draco over with surprise alone, and its purple doors fold open.
Delicately, he picks his eloquence and poise off the floor and gathers his wits before he steps onto the bus, still vacant of any early morning passengers, and nods curtly at the driver, Ernie, who despite the wizard from yesterday’s accurate description, still manages to startle Draco a bit as he turns to look at him through thick glasses and a mop of flyaway white hair.
“Morning,” Draco says slowly, and Ernie nods again before he resumes busying himself with his sandwich and sending the bus off once more.
Draco is promptly thrown onto the ground, grazing the edge of a bed rolling along jerkily with the erratic movements of the bus, shoulder aching as it catches the brunt of his fall, and looks up helplessly at the chandelier flailing along to the bumpy ride overheard.
If this is how I die, mother, he thinks feebly from the floor, do avenge my death.
-
It only takes three and a half hours for Draco to officially hate his job and understand why house elves are always griping about menial labor when they think wizards aren’t listening, another five to want to slap the driver silly, and until the end of the workday for Draco to start pondering just how tragic it would be if he would have to resort to homeless wandering when his family goes broke and he remains jobless.
He is no longer convinced that the beds in the Knight Bus are there to comfort sleepy overnight travelers, but rather exist as refuges for injured conductors who need a sanctuary to rest and lick their wounds. He’s obtained at least five major bruises that are currently throbbing for attention even as Narcissa presses cool clothes to the purpling bumps and shushes her son, the most splendid of them all a hefty lump swelling on the back of his head that occurred when Draco was helping an elderly witch into her seat and Ernie unexpectedly began driving at full speed once more, sending Draco careening gracefully into the window headfirst.
He’s extremely wary of the old driver by now, who at the start of the day had appeared to be an innocent old curmudgeon who would totter along at a reasonable pace on the roads and brake tenderly when the bus would stop to let off passengers and naturally, proved to be the exact opposite. At one point he had begun to suspect that perhaps more was amiss about old Ernie than just an ignorance of safe driving, such as a vision impairment or even complete blindness, but whenever he asked the man about his medical conditions, Ernie gave off the impression that he was also hopelessly deaf.
The passengers were as lovely as riding on a jerky bus all day long was for Draco-they were the exact crowd he had predicted them to be: rowdy teenagers who weren’t old enough to Apparate or old wizards who were dreadfully frightened of Portkeys. The entire crowd today had been fussy enough to demand hot chocolate, an order that Draco began to dread as the first time he attempted to pour a witch a cup of the beverage, the bus had jerked left and Draco’s trousers had suffered the splatter of burning hot chocolate before he had the chance to finish serving the woman. He cared little of the stains on his hideous purple pants that he cleaned with a whip of his wand, for he was hardly fond of them from the start, but more of the scalding, blistering knees he endured as a result of his clumsiness and Ernie’s pitiful driving.
His mother heals his knees upon his return home and listens dutifully to all of his miserable complaints. As much as whining to his parents normally improves his sour moods, the fact that he’ll have to return to the dreadful bus the next day nags at his mind too much for him to find any satisfaction in his bellyaching.
-
“What a handsome boy you are,” an old witch croons the next day on the bus while Draco tries to placate the boy perched unsteadily on the edge of a bed while his cheeks turn a disturbing shade of green who seems to be one tremulous lurch of the bus away from splattering his sick all over Draco’s shoes. “Do you have a wife?”
“No,” Draco tells her, attempting to sturdy the boy swaying on the bed dangerously, hand flying up to cover his mouth as the bus jumps over a trash can.
“What a pity,” she coos, “Probably for the best, though. A job like this will never make enough gold to satisfy a woman.”
With that, the bus lurches to a sudden stop and the witch promptly picks up her frilly handbag and heads to the door with a cheerful look over her shoulder to Draco as goodbye. From the front of the bus, Ernie shuts the doors with a lever and takes another enormous bite out of his sandwich, and that’s all the warning Draco gets before the bus zooms off and the boy vomits chunks of his breakfast gracefully onto the bed.
-
The fifth morning of Knight Bus torture, Draco watches while buttoning up his purple jacket as his mother rifles through old trunks in the dining room, murmuring in a deep hiss with Lucius as she grabs one of her husband’s favorite rings and sets it atop the pile of Malfoy trinkets for sale. The pile includes more than Draco would ever like to see in the hands of careless wizards who don’t appreciate their priceless value, and with that dark thought, he finishes buttoning his jacket and heads out the door to flag down the Knight Bus.
-
Draco’s bad days at work get put into perspective two weeks after his first day, and suddenly, the idea of knocking his skull open on a bedpost, coming home bruised nightly like an abused housewife, or spilling hot chocolate down his pants while Ernie takes another unsuspected turn down an alley all seem like simple pleasures when Draco opens the bus door, ready to deliver his default conductor speech, and sees Harry Potter.
“Welcome to the Knight-oh, bugger. Potter?”
Draco drops his professionalism instantly at the sight of Potter standing at the bottom of the steps tucking his wand away and Ernie grunts as his Draco’s greeting unravels and comes to a sudden stop. There he is, just as he was on the last day Draco saw him consoling victims the morning of the battle, minus the scrapes and the dirt, same unruly black hair and tattered glasses. It takes Draco a full minute of gaping and wondering as to why the almighty Chosen One is choosing transportation as pedestrian as the Knight Bus until he notices that a frail, trembling old woman is clutching onto Potter’s elbow like he’s the only anchor in the sea dragging her onto the beach.
Potter looks just as surprised to see Draco, and for the first time since Draco first put on this ridiculous purple suit, he feels the red hot heat of embarrassment burn up his neck as Potter examines him and suppresses what is surely roars of laughter at the sight of Draco Malfoy, head to toe in shiny purple, working as a common lowlife expected to drag Potter’s luggage up the bus and pour him tea.
“Malfoy?” Potter asks, eyes wide as he takes in the sight of his former nemesis in such a demeaning position, regardless of the belittling attire, and Draco grits his teeth and counts silently to ten in his head while he waits for this humiliating moment in his life to pass and leave him in peace.
Vengeance is a bitch, Draco thinks miserably, suddenly regretting ever stepping on Potter’s nose or teasing him about his lack of parental guidance, as all those moments seem to lead back to this where Potter finally gets to revel in the sight of his enemy wearing glorified servant’s clothing and swallow back in relish.
“Do you work for the Knight Bus?” Potter asks, disbelief coating every one of his words.
“No, Potter,” Draco drawls, unable to pluck up any decorum and remain civil in this conversation when Harry Potter is staring at his purple trousers like Christmas came early. “I find it flattering to wear a conductor’s uniform and spend my time on this dump of a bus for fun.”
Ernie grunts again. Draco shoots him a look, but the man is steadfastly focused on his old sandwich, and returns his attention back to Potter and his elderly friend. He’s not laden with luggage, which saves Draco the trouble and ridicule of having to lug Potter’s bags up the steps after him and be shamed even further by turning into Harry Potter’s servant and personal assistant, nor does Potter require support climbing the steps and leading the elder woman up the stairs onto a musty bed.
At best, it’s awkward. Draco slides out of the way while the two pass by and settle onto a bed. The chandelier swings above them, crystals clinging together.
“Where are you off to?” Draco finally asks when he remembers that he’s a conductor and that the bus is used for transportation, the stomach used to constant motion settling in his body reminding him of the lack of movement that his organs have become fairly used to after traveling via the bus for several days.
“The Ministry,” Potter tells him quickly, his concentration focused on the quivering old lady in her woolly cardigan while he soothes her with a few pats to the back, and Draco’s curiosity overrides his requirement to inform Potter of the Knight Bus’ offers, including toothbrushes and hot chocolate.
“That your girlfriend, Potter?” Draco asks before he can help himself.
“Found her during an Auror investigation. She had been found locked up in her basement, I just have to bring her to the Ministry for her statement and I didn’t want to risk Apparating when she was so shaken.”
Auror investigation, Draco notes, the words emphasizing themselves in his brain. He’s hardly surprised. Kingsley Shacklebolt had announced a few days after the Battle of Hogwarts that all who had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts were granted Auror status without the prerequisite of extensive training and N.E.W.T.s, and undoubtedly Potter had seized the opportunity. Draco looks down at his purple robes and tries his hardest not to give into the superstitions that karma delivered him this ultimate failure.
“So you’re an Auror, Potter?” Draco asks, even though Potter’s Ministry robes and their conversation has already adequately answered his suspicions.
Before Potter has a chance to reply, however, Ernie processes Potter’s instructions to drive to the Ministry and starts the bus with a jerk that by now, Draco has worked up a conspiracy theorizing that the old man is timing his jerky starts and turns at the most inconvenient time if only to hear Draco’s masculine squeals of terror as he falls flat on his delicate nose in sundry different painful positions. He has no time to adjust to the sudden jolt of the bus as it picks up speed, and in front of Potter, of all people, Draco cries out and is knocked elegantly onto the nearest bed, inhaling a mouthful of dusty pillow in the process. He spits out the linen fibers and sweeps the wayward strands of his hair dislodged by Ernie’s driving back into place with all the dignity he can muster. Beside him, Potter snickers.
“Shut up, Potter,” Draco snaps, picking himself up from the bed and smoothing out its wrinkled sheets as he draws his wand and flicks it toward the creases.
“Sorry,” Potter offers as an apology, even though the grin on his face betrays the candor behind his condolences. “I think you’re more graceful airborne. You know, on a broom. This whole being on land thing doesn’t look very good on you.”
Draco grumbles. The old witch leaning into Potter’s side seems to take no notice of their conversation, nor does she find the humor in Draco’s graceless tumbling throughout the bus. Draco is quietly glad of her lack of giggles to join Potter’s, for he doesn’t think he could handle Potter plus an accomplice amusing themselves on his own behalf without jinxing Potter’s hair a revolting shade of purple similar to his own robes.
“I’m not trying to insult you,” Potter finally says earnestly, and Draco does little but send him a skeptical glance in response. “And your question-yeah, I’m an Auror now.”
“Living the life, I suppose?”
Potter shrugs. Draco’s eyes zero in on Potter’s bare hands resting on his knees, fingers lacking any sign of wedding rings. Draco can’t help but be surprised, for the moment the war ended he had fully expected Potter to whisk off the Weaselette and make the front page of the Daily Prophet with his nuptials. He tucks his wand back into his robes after he’s finished smoothing away the wrinkles. Potter’s eyes follow the journey Draco’s wands make back into his pocket.
“You’ve got a new wand,” Potter notices, and Draco withdraws his wand once more, examining it before he nods at the other man. It’s not his original hawthorn wand that he carried for nearly seventeen years until Harry forcibly wrenched it from his grip while they escaped Malfoy Manor, and he supposes that the tone in Potter’s voice is surprise that the boy actually replaced his wand even though Potter never considered to return the wand he had pilfered from Draco.
“’Course I did,” Draco mutters. “Did you think I’d just keep pining after the old one?”
“No, I just,” Potter seems amply flustered for mentioning his own thievery. “I was going to give it back. I swear.”
Draco admits that a confession to return the wand of a former Slytherin adversary was not what he expected to come out of Potter’s mouth as he returns his new wand into his robes and steadies himself by grabbing the nearest bedpost as Ernie takes another lurch. This one seems to knock Potter off his guard as well as he makes a reflexive grab for his own bedpost while the old woman sits firmly and undisturbed on her spot on the bed beside him.
“Not one even the Knight Bus can shake this one,” Harry says, mildly amused, cocking his head toward the woman and mirroring Draco’s thoughts. “Maybe I could have actually Apparated with her and she wouldn’t have even been fazed.”
“Unlike you,” Draco drawls. “You’re looking a bit sick, Potter. I’ve already had to clean up vomit twice this week and don’t think I’ll scrub yours away too just because you’re Harry Potter.”
The jab-whether it was meant to harm or amuse, Draco isn’t even sure himself-doesn’t offend Potter as a slow smile tugs up on his lips instead. Draco mildly wonders what happened to the easily affronted boy in Hogwarts who always needed his Gryffindor gingers to step up for him when he or another Slytherin would aim verbal abuse in his direction, or if Potter had always been hard to offend and Draco had merely been just that obnoxious and irksome enough to rile an otherwise even-tempered boy to boiling point.
“I’ll try not to throw up, Malfoy, even though the sight of you cleaning it might make my life complete.”
“Of course it would, Scarhead. Can’t say I don’t wish the same for you.”
“Your wishes are devoted to hoping one day I get to sit in your digested food and clean it up?”
“Whilst I watch, yes,” Draco says, the thought already painting satisfying images in his mind as a filthy Potter kneels on hardwood floor drenched in sick and scrubs endlessly at the mess is born in his brain. A sharp bone knocks in his side as Potter gets to his feet and elbows him in the ribs.
“Stop grinning like that, you dolt,” Potter admonishes, and the bus staggers to its final stop that nearly pitches Potter straight into Draco’s unsuspecting lap before Potter’s hand darts out to wind around the bedpost once more to catch his fall.
“Nice Auror reflexes, Potter,” Draco says when Potter grazes his knee and nearly plummets flat onto his thighs before his hand catches himself. “Maybe it wasn’t your Firebolt doing all the work during Quidditch matches.”
“Only took you seven years to realize it,” Potter says as he holds out his hand to the elderly witch and gathers her up from her seat on the bed, and when he sneaks a look over his shoulder, Draco notices that he’s not sneering or shooting him a look of distaste, but rather smirking at Draco as if they’ve just shared a private joke together. Draco doesn’t know what to make of their almost civil conversation, free of duels and nasty spats about someone’s mother, and for a second, he feels the desperate yearning to shake the encounter off, but before Draco can process the fact that he’s suddenly gained the ability to behave amicably around Harry Potter when he couldn’t find it in himself to do so for a good seven years of schooling, Potter’s waving a handful of silver Sickles in front of his face.
“Oh,” Draco remembers the fact that he forgot to demand payment from Potter when he first boarded the bus and accepts the silver coins from his outstretched fingers.
“Thanks for the ride, Malfoy,” Potter says, arm wound around the old witch as he guides the pair of them out of the bus and onto the sidewalk, where through the dim light of the evening, Draco makes out the entrance to the Ministry of Magic.
That night when Draco makes it home and rids himself of the abominable purple outfit and his mother asks him how work treated him for the day, Draco doesn’t think of the adolescent brat that Draco suspected was running from the law or the snoring homeless man with the shabby socks who was unable to be woken even after the bus arrived at his destination, but thinks instead of Harry Potter’s mop of black hair and quick hands.
-
“Fifteen Sickles for hot choc’late? Don’t you thin’ that’s a bit overpriced, mate?”
“If you wanted cheap, learn how to Apparate,” Draco grits out, temper thin after-despite having learned to grow accustomed and prepared for the various jerks of the steering wheel Ernie would deliver randomly to keep Draco on his feet while he weaved between rickety beds-Draco had suffered a particularly nasty bruise on his temple by crashing into a wooden panel on the side of the bus while selling a witch in the corner a toothbrush. He waves the kettle of boiling hot chocolate under the wizard’s nose in what he hopes is tempting enough to encourage the man to cough up the few extra Sickles.
“Can’t very well do that when I can’t even stomach usin’ a Portkey once ev’ry year, now can I?”
“You dim tosser, do you honestly think that the Knight Bus is softer on your tummy?” Draco snarls, but the man has lost interest in their conversation, staring over Draco’s shoulder with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.
“It’s him, it’s ‘Arry Potter! Right here in this very bus! Goodness me!”
Draco looks over his shoulder to where the man is ogling and sure enough, Harry Potter is climbing the steps, sending a curt nod to Ernie and standing, definitely alone and lacking any old women hanging off his arms, and scanning the bus to sit down on the nearest bed. Draco turns back to the fussy man in front of him, firmly pushes him into his seat before the bus begins throwing the man around the walls like he’s in a pinball machine, and before he can properly think through his actions, his feet are leading him directly to where Potter is sitting perched on a bedspread.
“Do you really love getting tossed around this bus that much that you just had to come back, Potter?”
“Aren’t you supposed to offer me amenities instead of standing there snarking?” Potter asks with a distinct lack of heat to his voice, and Draco feels the same prickle that tickled his stomach the last time he and Potter managed a well-mannered discussion as he feels the underlying amusement in Potter’s words instead of the expected aversion.
“No rescued old ladies today?” Draco drawls, choosing not to answer Potter’s question.
“You better sit down,” Potter says, also foregoing the decorum of properly replying to another’s inquiry, instead cocking his head to where Ernie is pulling the lever that closes the bus doors and alerts Draco to the spontaneous jerking of the bus that is to come. He hastily grabs the nearest bedpost and grips it tightly. He mentally sends Potter an internal thank you as the bus starts up, the finicky traveler at the back of the bus letting out a startled yelp and nearly rolling off his bed at the rapid gathering of speed.
“This bus is ruddy crazy!” the man roars from the floor as he picks himself up shakily. Draco smirks.
“Having fun watching other people tumble around all day?” Potter observes a moment later, obviously catching sight of Draco’s smug expression as the man gripes and curses in the corner. “This must be the perfect job for you.”
“Only when I’m not the one tumbling around,” Draco scoffs, gingerly pressing his thumb into the throbbing bruise on his temple.
“What happened to your head?”
“I work on the Knight Bus, Potter, figure it out,” Draco snaps, and once again, Potter doesn’t look as if he’s been slapped or insulted or even satisfactorily chagrined for asking a daft question, and Draco is once more left to ponder if the war’s armistice did wonders for calming the boy’s temper.
A second later, however, Potter draws his wand from his cloak, pointing it straight at Draco, and Draco is about to rethink his assumption that the boy is no longer annoyed by Draco’s Slytherin behavior as he expects a myriad of nasty jinxes to be sent his way-Lord only knows what defensive magic he’s learned through Auror training-when instead Potter gently murmurs a few unintelligible words and Draco’s forehead promptly stops aching. He blinks, straightening up from the recoil he had drawn himself into at the sight of Potter’s drawn wand, and brushes his fingers over his temple, no longer feeling a swelling bump on his head but rather a soothing coolness.
“Hermione taught me that,” Potter says, looking rather proud of himself as he examines Draco’s successfully healed bruise, skin no longer dotted with hues of green and purple. “I’m normally rubbish at Healing spells.”
“You could’ve broken my face, Potter,” Draco cries, not sure if he should be alarmed at Potter attempting to nurse him without his permission or grateful that the dull pain of his bruise is extinguished.
“Maybe it would’ve looked a right sight better, then,” Potter grins, and Draco feels the need to focus his attention on the bedpost behind him if only to hide the smirk that he would never let Potter have the satisfaction of seeing. “Anyway, I did have a reason for coming here. I didn’t exactly know how to find you and when we talked last, I just…”
Draco watches as Potter struggles with his words before he finally pulls from his pocket a far from foreign wand, ten inches and reasonably springy as he remembers Ollivander describing it to his eleven-year-old self as if it were merely yesterday when the wispy old man handed him his wand and had given him the sage advice to use it well.
‘You kept it?” Draco asks, staring at his wand as he’s being reunited with an old friend believed to be dead, and for a moment, the moving bus feels unspeakably still as Potter holds it out to him.
“I owe it a lot,” Potter says after a moment’s thought. “And it wasn’t mine to throw away either.”
Draco finally takes the wand from Potter’s fingers and takes a moment to run his palm down the wood and notice how comfortably it slots into his grip even after the long separation. Then Draco detects a smattering of smudged fingerprints along the length of his wand and sends Potter a stern glare at the sight of such mishandling of one of his dearest possessions.
“You’ve marked it all up with your sweaty hands, Potter,” Draco mentions, and Potter has the decency to look mildly abashed at his poor sanitation habits.
“Well, I could always take it back if you’d like,” He teases, and Draco feels himself clutch it possessively as if unconsciously worried it’ll be taken from him once again. Potter notices, eyes flicking down to where Draco’s fingers are wrapped tightly around the hilt of his wand, damn Auror observation skills spotting his moment’s worth of worry. “I was joking.”
“I know,” Draco assures him a moment later, sliding the wand into his back pocket and vowing to polish it when he returns home. “Besides, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to let you steal my wand twice from me, Potter.”
Potter looks down at his laps, cheekbones crinkled as if stretched with a smile he isn’t letting Draco see, and once more, Draco feels the scary prickle of getting along with Harry Potter ghost over his body waiting to be desperately showered away.
-
That night, Draco pulls his old wand out of his pocket and rolls it back and forth in his hands until the familiar sensation of holding it in his hand returns to his body. He stares at the smeared fingerprints, fingerprints that Draco would never let besmirch and soil his wand even if they were his own, and wonders when each was imprinted onto his wand, if the one by the bottom was a slip of the fingers when Potter was disarming Voldemort, if the smudge by the middle was when he was wrenching it from Draco’s grip, or if the myriad of marks of four fingers in a row occurred during the battle when Potter was saving lives, as always.
He doesn’t know how any of the prints came about, if they were all Potter’s, or even why he doesn’t polish them away later that night.
-
Draco spends his days passing out mugs of hot chocolate to underage wizards steadying themselves on Knight Bus beds, allowing his mother to properly teach him Healing charms so he can rid himself of the bruises the bus inflicts on him when he’s not quick on his feet during a swerve left, and levitating old women’s luggage up into the footwell at the front of the bus while their old knobby fingers try to sort their Sickles from the Knuts and drop coins in Draco’s hand to pay for their rides.
Now and again, he chances a look out the window to see if a flash of green eyes and messy black hair are awaiting the screeching stop of the bus on the side of a road.
Whenever he catches himself doing so, he promptly turns around and tries to engage Ernie in a bit of light chatter so he doesn’t have to attend to the green-cheeked, queasy women swaying ominously at the back of the bus as if bobbing along to waves of the sea. When Ernie never responds, Draco is forced to return his attention back outside the windows to the flashes of color darting by and continue keeping an eye out for Harry Potter’s bespectacled face on the other side.
-
The Ministry, as it seems, is keeping Potter and his gang of Aurors occupied outside of basements where fragile old women in need of gentle transport are residing as prisoners nor does Potter have more of Draco’s lost possessions he feels guilty keeping, as it takes a good two weeks before Draco sees the man again.
It’s nearly midnight, Draco half asleep against one of the mothball-infested beds as the bus’ jerks hither and thither only seem to lull Draco into a groggy state of alluring slumber, when the sound of the bus screeching loudly against the road fast enough for the tires to sizzle yanks Draco torturously from his nap and alerts him to a rather alarming sight sitting in the dark outside of the windows.
Draco pushes himself from the dusty sheets and heads down the steps from the bus to the streets swiftly, any vestiges of sleep stolen from him abruptly at the sight of Potter’s crumpled figure collapsed on the sidewalk in the dark of night with his wand aloft to summon the Knight Bus.
The gloom of the crisp night does little to illuminate the dim scene in front of him, and Draco promptly reaches for his wand to light the tip and send its beam raking over Potter’s supine body. His shirt, torn in a nasty cut that seemed to slash into Potter’s skin as well, is dotted with a healthy puddle of blood also staining the shaking hand that’s pressing into the gash on his torso to subdue the bleeding, and it takes Draco a moment to take in the situation before he’s kneeling on the sidewalk and pulling Potter’s hand away from the laceration.
“Fuck, Potter! What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
The boy looks at him, slightly breathless and very windswept from the look of things. Draco spreads the light of his wand over the wound he uncovered and takes a moment to wince, not only because the sight and smell of coppery blood still doesn’t bode well with his eyes, but because the cut is larger than he had anticipated, obviously outdoing any amateur Healing skills Potter had attempted to fix it with.
“Wasn’t even supposed to be dangerous, just ran into some unexpected trouble,” he rasps out, and then, as if slowly remembering bits of the incident, his eyes widen and his feet scramble to find purchase on the sidewalk. “Ron-Ron was there, I need to-”
“The Weasley will be fine if he’s not as dumb as he looks, Scarhead, calm down and stop moving,” Draco says with more composure than he is actually harboring at the sight of such a nasty injury, heaving Potter up to his feet by winding his arm around his shoulders and leading him up the steps. Ernie seems to have abandoned his nighttime snack in favor of watching behind his thick lenses as Draco lugs Potter up the steps and sets him down on the nearest bed, and Draco doesn’t know whether to be alarmed or not at the fact that this incident actually caught the driver’s interest when Ernie normally resolutely keeps his gaze firm on the road and the steering wheel no matter the commotion occurring elsewhere.
“Don’t even know how we got separated,” Potter mumbles miserably, the pain in his expression replaced with the worry of the Weasley, a concern that he seems to deem more important than his own agony, a trait so very Gryffindor-like Draco once more remembers why the two of them are polar opposites. He pushes Potter’s heavy cloak out of the way to further examine the wound.
“So you thought finding the Knight Bus would be your best bet?” Draco asks, and a small thought Draco doesn’t allow to be born pops up in his brain suggesting that perhaps Potter summoned the bus because his first thought of where to find aid would be Draco’s assistance. He promptly rids himself of that thought.
“Didn’t mean to,” Harry admits. “I took my wand out and before I knew it I fell over and the bus was here. Forgot that you summon it by hailing it when you take out your wand.”
“You daft hero, Potter,” Draco mutters, mentally filing through all of the Healing spells he’s ever learned that would be strong enough to cinch together such a deep gash and hoping that St. Mungo’s isn’t too far of a drive away should he find his knowledge to be unhelpful in mending the damage.
“Can you fix it?” Potter asks, attempting to sneak glances at his wound in the light of the Knight Bus when Draco pushes him down onto the bed.
“Shut up, Potter, just shut up for a moment,” Draco retrieves his wand, knowing perfectly well both Potter and Ernie are watching him expectantly. He points his wand at the blood and mutters a variety of spells that are in the forefront of his mind in curing wounds and pain, and miraculously enough, Potter’s cut slowly stitches itself back into repaired skin, nothing but the crust of dried blood in its wake. He wonders for a moment if the pressure to save the Boy-Who-Lived while he was in the hands of his notorious school nemesis-a story that, had Draco’s spells somehow gone fatally wrong, Rita Skeeter and her swanky quills would be contorting into an article that would send him straight to Azkaban-had been the reason he had inexplicably been able to heal the oozing scar in front of him.
Clearly as bewildered as Draco, Potter runs his fingers over the clean flesh on the side of his torso and looks up at Draco, “Impressive,” he mumbles, eyes wide in what Draco can only assume is awe and another emotion he has yet to indentify and isn’t sure if he wants to. “Thank you, Malfoy.”
The gratitude is unexpected at the very least, and a heat and a prickle Draco isn’t entirely comfortable with dances up his neck and settles at the nape where the hem of his hair begins bristling softly. He stares at the bedpost, suddenly aware that since retrieving Potter off the street, the bus has been at a standstill.
“Just be lucky I was there, Potter,” Draco manages, mostly because he doesn’t think his mouth would let a you’re welcome touch his tongue.
“What happened to you trying to kick my arse instead of saving it?”
“You’re still an arse,” Draco says, for he’s not sure of the proper answer himself. Now that Potter mentions it, he can’t deny that a thirteen-year-old version of himself would be too busy mocking the golden Chosen One to even consider nursing him back to health on the Knight Bus. He wonders, idly, if this is what growing up feels like, and he still doesn’t know if he should feel nostalgic that he’s not the same arrogant little boy or eternally thankful that he’s matured. He looks down at Potter, lying on the bed at Draco’s complete mercy should he decide to whip out his wand and double the damage his previous wound had inflicted on him, almost trusting of Draco, an ex-Death Eater, of all people, and wonders exactly when the mutual loathing stopped.
“Likewise, Malfoy,” Potter says, faintly smiling, and he grabs a bedpost to upright himself on the bed.
“So where are we taking you, Potter? This is a bus, not a hotel.”
Potter glances at him oddly, like he’s working out all of Draco’s secrets or reading his diary, and Draco feels compelled to look away. He supposes it’s because Potter’s in perfectly fine condition to Apparate or even run and sprint back to where he may have left Weasley in mortal peril, with no more need of the Knight Bus and its beds for the feeble travelers, but Draco still offers it as an option as if he simply wants his presence to remain. Draco feels the same heat that’s still pooling at his neck travel down and lace itself around his spine at the realization.
But Potter mentions little of the coincidence, and Draco would rather charm his hair purple to match his uniform than voice his preference of Potter staying on board out loud, and yet, through some divine power, Potter stays on the bus until they reach his destination, foregoing the swiftness of Apparition or other easier, less nausea-inducing methods of travel.
They sit on adjoining cots while the Knight Bus jerks them back and forth through its hairpin turns and sharp curves in complete-yet dare he say it, comfortable-silence, which, to Draco, definitely trumps seven years of all but spitting in each other’s faces.
Part II.