Secondhand Robes

DISCLAIMER: Warning! I make no claim to any property of J.K. Rowling's, and am in no way profiting by this. I do offer her my sincerest thanks for allowing us this garden of the mind in which we play. Further Warning! This story...and likely any I ever write...are dominated by gay themes and characters. That’s how it is, if this in any way makes you uncomfortable...do not read further.


Secondhand Robes (part 2)……….by Samayel


“He wasn’t supposed to know! What the fuck have I just done? What do I do? What the hell was I even thinking?”

Harry was still pulling in panic breaths as he made his way back to the Weasleys. Ron and Hermione had gone ahead to meet Ron’s folks at the Apothecary, and with a little luck…just maybe…Harry could get out of Diagon Alley before Draco decided to corner him and ask more questions.

Harry didn’t even really have answers for the one he’d just been asked. He’d acted on impulse, no real plan in mind. It was supposed to be simple; give the brat whose parents he’d gotten arrested a break, with no one the wiser. There weren’t going to be any conversations in the plan. Trust Draco Malfoy to trash the whole program out of pure Sytherin curiosity!

Harry hadn’t dwelt on his reasons for such an impulsive plan, for to dwell upon them meant the risk of realizing other, more significant things he was utterly unprepared to cope with. His mind settled on a cluster of curious half truths.

His first summer visit to Diagon Alley had been for supplies, and he’d been in the company of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks. The Order needed certain necessities at Grimmauld Place, and Harry had begged a chance to get out of the house that only reminded him of Sirius.

He’d been heavily disguised, with dual Glamours that only Aurors traditionally used. Most Revealing Charms would see through the pleasant outer Glamour, and the watcher would see an ugly fellow beneath. Such precautions were made necessary by Harry’s recent battle. He’d made too many enemies to walk safely anywhere, and had been moved to Grimmauld Place under heavy guard. This was his first day out of the house in almost three weeks.

Naturally, Draco Malfoy was the first person he bumped into. They’d been entering a small pub for lunch, and Harry hadn’t been paying attention, sandwiched between Lupin and Tonksy as he was. He’d stepped on Draco’s foot on the way into building, earning him a muttered series of curses about clumsy prats.

Harry had had no choice but to ignore it, since breaking cover would get him shoved back into the house for the rest of the summer with no hope of reprieve.

As they enjoyed a simple lunch, Harry noticed that Draco still hovered near the entrance. Other things became obvious as Harry stared. The mussed hair that had always been perfect before, the rumpled clothes, the dark bags beneath Draco’s pale eyes that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago.

Harry asked Tonks what had happened to Malfoy after his parents’ arrest. He’d simply assumed that Draco would be at his families estate, cared for by house-elves until the new school year. As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Harry had been informed that, with the arrest of the Malfoys, Draco had been ejected from the estate with the clothes on his back and his wand. Word had it that the Ministry had no intention of hurrying the case regarding his family fortune, since the name Malfoy was now only slightly better regarded than the name Voldemort. Draco was on his own until school started.

Harry had found it rather like poetic justice…at least at first. But his eyes kept flicking back to the tired, hungry boy who still stared through the front window, watching others eat what he couldn’t purchase himself. Other, crueler, notions followed, each one biting deeper than the one before.

Draco may have been a prat, a coward, and a bully, but that day he had something in common with Harry for the first time. He was alone, without parents to care for him, and he was hungry. A minute before, he’d been laughing inside at the thought of Draco Malfoy being destitute, and then Harry thought of James Potter taunting and bullying Severus Snape. It was not a happy comparison.

Was Harry any better than his father had been? Snape couldn’t have been right when he said those things! Harry was many things, and mostly just a teenage boy with a large stack of problems, but he wasn’t cruel…and he wasn’t a bully. He would never be like the Dursleys…not even to Draco Malfoy.

His mind was made up. Even if he didn’t actually pity Draco, he couldn’t stand by and watch the boy whose parents had been jailed by Harry’s testimony starve on the street. Harry slipped up to the bar under the pretense of fetching another Butterbeer, and slipped the barmaid a few Sickles, explaining that, when he left, she was to offer the boy outside a meal. Harry felt better than he had in days, knowing that he’d done the right thing. It wasn’t much, but it was something good and right that gave him a moment away from thinking of Sirius.

When the left the pub for the last of their errands, Harry saw the barmaid chatting with Draco, and saw the look of disbelief and flickering joy on the blond boy’s face when he was guided to a table and presented with a large bowl of stew and a loaf of fresh bread, complete with Butterbeer to wash it down with.

Diagon Alley was long behind them before Harry could get that look out of his mind. He knew that look well. He’d worn it on his own face at ever Sorting feast after starving at the Dursleys each summer. He’d never seen it on anyone else’s face…until that day.

Of course, like anything that involved Draco Malfoy, the matter couldn’t just end there. Just by dint of being connected to Draco, it lingered and became more complicated.

Two weeks later, Harry was back in Diagon Alley. He had his keepers with him, but this time he had a plan. He’d kept tabs on the news from the Prophet, and quizzed friends on the status of the Malfoy case at the Ministry. Harry knew that Draco was still here, stuck at the Halfway Inn, out of money, and still two weeks from school.

Harry had brought his Cloak this time. He meant to see what Malfoy was up to, but more truthfully, he just wanted to see that Malfoy was alright. Moody trusted Harry a bit more than most, and Tonks was a pushover for Harry when he smiled and pleaded. Harry had pulled a stack of favors to get there, but he made it to the Halfway Inn, keepers downstairs, Cloaked and silenced, just to slip up to Malfoy’s room and see if he was still healthy.

It only took a whispered spell to pop the unwarded lock on the door of Draco’s room, and what Harry saw changed everything.

Draco’s room was a tidy little box, scarcely six feet by ten. A recently opened letter from Hogwarts lay on the bed, and Draco himself stood by the window, his back to Harry, oblivious to the recently opened door behind him. Draco wasn’t wearing a shirt, and Harry’s mind might have taken in the fine lines of his pale back, or the gentle arch of Draco’s neck, but those weren’t what stole Harry’s concentration away.

Draco ribs had started to show. He’d been slender in school, but this was the slenderness that came of starvation…this was slow death, and that wasn’t all. The back turned to Harry bore the marks of old pains. Mottled and faint scars that must have dated back over a year, and nearly healed bruises that could only have been from recent months.

Harry knew what it meant to be cuffed and kicked and shoved about…but the marks on Draco suggested something much worse than anything the Dursleys had ever dished out. It was hard to stop himself from retching and breaking his cover. A sick curiosity overwhelmed Harry in that minute. Harry did the unthinkable…he quietly raised his wand and Legilimized Draco.

Draco’s mind was like butter, his will ruined by hunger and confusion. Harry pierced Draco’s memories with ease, and Draco slumped to the ground. With luck, Draco would simply assume he’d had a fainting spell. Harry, on the other hand, came away from Draco’s mind a few minutes later, and reeled away, stumbling down the hall, wishing he had never done anything so impetuous or stupid.

The things in Draco’s mind were not the kind of things meant to be witnessed, and Harry had seen much more than he had wanted. He had seen the flashing images of beatings beyond counting, felt his own heart leap in terror at the sound of Lucius’ enraged voice, and watched Draco, whom he had always seen as a spoiled brat, frantically strive to be colder and crueler, just to please a father he both feared and desperately craved affection from. He’d seen the shock on Draco’s face when the manor was closed and he was curtly ejected from the premises. He also saw Draco weep openly when he got his Hogwarts letter.

Above everything, through the pain, the starvation, the isolation and fear, one thing held Draco Malfoy together. An unshakeable pride that towered above his suffering, that kept him moving when malnutrition and shame might have slowed his steps. In spite of everything, Draco still possessed a pride that made him strive to endure any indignity, and he would die of hunger before that pride would reduce him to begging.

Harry fled Diagon Alley with Tonks and Moody in tow. He wouldn’t discuss what he’d done; he was too ashamed. He had violated Draco’s mind on a whim, and what he’d seen had been so very bitter. Guilt had gnawed at Harry the rest of the day, and when night finally came, his dreams became nightmares of a skeletal Draco’s accusing glare, implying that Harry was responsible for his death. By dawn, Harry had been a nervous wreck.

He’d needed a way to make amends. What he’d done wasn’t merely illegal, it was also as unethical as anything a Death Eater might have done. Even if no one knew, he had to do something to make it right.

Thus had been hatched his ‘perfect plan’. He’d owled his orders to the appropriate stores, and discreetly insured that Malfoy’s meals would cost him far less than normal, thereby stretching Draco’s dwindling budget a little further.

All Malfoy had to do was show up to buy his school things, and the bill would be shunted to Harry’s account at Gringott’s. Surely Draco would at least attempt to get credit for his school needs? It seemed likely, and if Malfoy had just done that, all would have been well.

Naturally, Malfoy did MORE than that. He’d ferreted out the source of his good fortune and demanded an explanation! Now Harry was thoroughly screwed! The trip back to Grimmauld Place was a silent agony. He couldn’t share this. His friends would be floored when they heard what he’d done, and ashamed if he confessed why he’d done it.

Harry threw himself into his room as soon as they returned, and buried himself in his blankets and pillows, just wishing the world, and its complications, would be gone when he woke up.