Princes in Exile

This chapter was written by literaryspell.

Harry let his head slam against his desk. He could barely feel it, anyway. His brain was total and complete mush. Paperwork. It was the bane of his existence, and Neville wouldn’t let him foist it off on him any longer. He'd cottoned on to Harry's sly ways, and now Harry couldn’t even convince him with bribes or pints or new brooms or his own endorsement with George's shop.

Neville could be a real…

"Neville!" Ron poked his head through the door of their office, giving Harry a grin that said he was going to like what came next. "You're needed onsite."

"Oi, mate," Harry cried, devastated that Neville got to leave and he was stuck here amidst quills and parchment and nary a Firewhisky in sight.

Ron just smirked. "Boss said Neville was to handle it." To Neville, who looked interested, Ron said, "Someone tripped up the Auror wards at Malfoy Manor."

"What wards?" Harry demanded. "I took them all down last week!"

"Not all of them. There's a memo saying one's going off right now even though they were supposed to be cleared." Ron looked entirely too thrilled at the prospect of the Malfoys getting caught up in the wards of their own home.

"I should go," Harry said, rising. "It was my mistake if I missed one."

"S'exactly why Robards wants Neville. He says it could be that the ward rejected your dismantling. Happens sometimes when you do a lot at once." Ron nodded sagely; everyone knew he'd fumbled his own share of ward dismantling.

But Harry never had.

"All right, thanks, Ron." Harry waved him away, grateful when Ron didn’t take umbrage but just left with a chuckle. "I'm going in your place," he informed Neville.

"Harry…"

"Listen, I don't ask you for anything… and when that pretty bird had trouble with that boggart not once but eight different times, I let you handle it, didn’t I?"

"That's because you don't like birds," Neville grumbled, obviously put out at the idea of not following the rules.

Harry waved it off. "Regardless. I need to do this. If I don't, Malfoy will never let me live down the fact that I fucked up."

"Okay, but if you need back-up—"

"I'll send my Patronus. But don't worry about me—this is nothing I can't handle." He didn’t need to say that half his eagerness came from the fact that Neville would feel obligated to finish his paperwork and they both knew it.

When Harry Apparated to the gates of the manor, again he was struck by the appearance. There was no majesty at Malfoy Manor these days—though in the short time they'd been home, the Malfoys had obviously begun the spellwork to bring it back to its former glory. Whether they'd ever be able to accomplish that, Harry couldn’t begin to guess.

Half because he had to by law, and half because it made him smile, Harry rang the chime a few times. It amused him to think of Malfoy trapped inside a room, unable to answer the door, possibly even shouting for help.

Getting a hold of himself, Harry created an emergency opening in the wards, something only Aurors could do. He then opened the door by magical force when, as he'd expected, no one came to let him in. With his holly wand drawn, Harry waited to see if the Malfoys had any traps set for intruders the way most pure-blood families did, but nothing happened.

"Hello?" he called, then repeated the greeting with the Sonorous spell. No response. A complicated spell had the outline of the manor in glowing blue lines before him, like a floating Muggle blueprint. One section had an additional outline in red, meaning the wards in that room had set off the alarm that had brought Ron to dispatch Neville.

The room was through a door in the parlour. It was a study—Harry remembered it well from when he'd been in it putting up the wards, years ago now, because it was obvious that someone spent a lot of time there. Harry had wondered if it was Draco. It hadn’t seemed like his type of room, but then Harry knew hardly anything about the man.

The reason for the alarm became apparent when Harry followed the blueprint and saw an additional door, hidden to both casual and prying eyes. If the wards hadn't been lifted from all doors, an alarm would go off and the wards would react to whoever broke them—which meant someone was trapped inside the room, a Malfoy victim to their home's own magic.

Instead of the taking the time to dismantle the wards, Harry made another emergency entry, hastening to get to the person inside. When the secret door, hidden behind a rich-looking tapestry, swung open to admit Harry, he was horrified at what he saw.

Draco Malfoy, flat on his back in the centre of the room. His chest wasn’t rising and falling, and Harry gave a shout and fell to his knees before the arrested form.

"Malfoy! Can you hear me?" Harry shook his shoulder and noticed the body was stiff—too stiff. Rock solid, even. "Draco!"

Draco's eyes were opened, and to Harry's somewhat confusing relief, they darted over to him, panic and fear as vibrant as if the emotions had been spelled out on his forehead. He was alive. Immobilised.

"Hang on, I've got you," Harry said, trying to sound reassuring. The ward wasn’t complicated and it was easy to take down, but it felt like forever before the last bit of magic gave way.

When Malfoy was released from the spell, he took a deep, shuddering breath and scrambled back against the wall, a hand to his chest. He was more vulnerable than Harry had ever seen him, with the possible exception of when he'd been sandwiched between his parents in the Great Hall after the war.

Harry rose and waited for Draco to gather himself… but he didn’t seem to be able to. His breathing became more and more shallow, and he was rocking himself with his hands clenching his hair.

Harry knew enough about panic attacks to be able to recognise one. He got up and knelt beside Draco, his hand hovering awkwardly before landing on Draco's back. "It's okay," he said, feeling useless. He'd never seen Draco like this, though there'd been one time… Harry's mind drifted back, water and blood. No, this was different. This wasn’t fear in the face of unimaginable pressure and a near-certainty that his life was going to end if someone else's didn’t. This was just simple fear because something bad had happened. Draco must have been truly beyond himself if Harry was even allowed to see him like this.

As soon as the thought filtered across Harry's mind, Draco's face shuttered and he rose, brushing off his robes as if he'd just stepped through the Floo, not been freed from an Immobilisation spell after who knew how long.

"Do all Aurors have free rein to break and enter, or is it only the great Harry Potter?" Despite his attempt at nonchalance, Draco's fingers trembled as he refastened a finicky tie on his sleeve.

"Malfoy." Harry scrubbed at his face with his hands. He had to give the wand back. That was all there was to it. Leaving Draco to die from something that could have been easily thwarted, had he had a wand, might be fitting and maybe even deserved, but it wasn’t something Harry could stand to have on his conscience. "Where's your wand?" He had to have another one. There was no way he'd gone seven long years without one. It was impossible. And Harry really didn’t want to give up the hawthorn wand.

"I must have left it in the other room," Draco said. Harry remembered him being a better liar—he couldn’t even meet Harry's eyes now.

"Let's go get it," Harry suggested.

Draco folded his arms over his chest. Maybe he meant it to be distancing, but it looked self-protective and Harry had the strangest urge to force those arms down at his sides, to force him to let someone in that space. "I'd rather you just leave."

"You don't have a wand," Harry told him, not leaving any room for Draco to think his words were a question or a guess. He was stating a fact. "You haven’t used a wand—you haven’t used magic—in seven years. You haven’t been a wizard—"

"I'll always be a wizard," Draco snapped, eyes glittering like Floo powder. "Always."

Harry waited until Draco realised he'd as good as confirmed Harry's comments about him being wandless. When it struck Draco, it seemed to defeat him. He closed his eyes, his shoulders slumped an inch or more, and his head bowed a fraction—but it was enough.

"I don't need one," Draco said. Like a chameleon that'd been rudely moved, Draco's demeanour changed once more, gearing up for the fight they both knew would ensue.

Harry laughed, but it wasn’t funny. "You can't be serious. How long do you think you would have lasted in that position? Can you imagine the horror of dying of thirst in your own home all because you couldn’t cancel a ward? Is that the sort of death you imagined for yourself, Malfoy?"

"And what the fuck do you care?" Draco snapped. He unfolded his arms, though it looked like an effort—his hands were clenched at his sides and since they were no longer shaking, it was his voice that took on a trembling cadence.

Harry groaned. Draco was bloody impossible. "Well, for one, I would have gotten sacked if you'd died because I hadn’t properly lifted all the wards—"

"You will be sacked!" Draco interrupted. There was a look of manic glee in his eye, like he was thrilled to have been given something to latch on to. "I'll have your job and your pension for your… your… your sheer ineptitude!"

It wasn’t that Harry loved his job that much. It wasn’t even the thought of Malfoy, grey with ignoble death in the middle of his study that made Harry lose his temper.

No. It was the fact that Draco looked so goddamned smug, as if he'd planned his own Immobilisation just to get the opportunity to get Harry in trouble. As if the tremor in his hands and voice were nothing more than an affectation, that he'd like for Harry to believe that it was all nothing—

That was what set Harry off. No one should be so nonchalant. No one should have to be. And that Draco still was, after all these years—it made Harry angry.

So it seemed like the most natural thing in the world—an acceptable progression of events—to slam his hands onto Draco's shoulders and launch him against the wall. A portrait to their right shuddered but Harry paid it no mind, hoping it would return the favour.

"You absolute prat," Harry said, his voice almost a growl. Maybe he didn’t have any height on Draco, but he felt more intimidating, and he used that, getting into Draco's personal space and not relenting. His hands were still squared on Draco's shoulders, pinning him to the wall as surely as if Draco was still under the ward's spell. "Maybe you don't give a shit one way or the another if you live or die, but I'm sure your parents do. How would Lucius suffer if he'd been the one to find your body, if it had come to that? What would your mother have felt, deciding which flowers would follow you into the grave?"

"You…" Draco pressed his back even closer to the wall; Harry hadn’t thought it would be possible. "You don't know the first thing—!"

Harry shrugged. "You're right. So tell me."

Draco recoiled. "What?"

"Seems like you need someone to talk to. I'll make you a deal. You take your wand back, and I'll play therapist." Harry blinked at his own offer, uncertain if he'd meant to be sincere or sarcastic.

"Fuck you, Potter," Draco snapped, for what felt like the hundredth time over the course of their acquaintance. His eyes were narrowed and his lips pursed hard enough that they were almost white. He looked furious and had Harry been any other man, he might have felt nervous.

As it was, he wasn’t deterred. Without relenting his grip, surprised that Draco hadn’t made too much of an effort to escape it, Harry chuckled. "All right, but you do have to take your wand. This is ridiculous, Draco. I can't keep coming over and saving your arse."

"One time!"

"But it won't be the last." Harry's voice was serious now. "And you know it. Wherever you were for seven years, maybe you didn’t need magic. But you know better than me how these old manors function. You won't be able to manage forever. And like you said—you're a wizard. So… do magic, Draco."

In what Harry knew to be a rare moment of vulnerability, Draco said, "It's more complicated than that."

"It always is." Harry finally took a step back. He was starting to get a little confused. This Draco wasn’t the man he'd known growing up. Yes, the sneer, the cultured tones, the imperial attitude, they were all the same. But there was something more, something as yet indefinable, and damn it—Harry was drawn to it.

Reaching into his wand holster while keeping an eye on Draco as one would a wild animal, Harry withdrew the hawthorn wand.

"It's only a stick," he said with a goofy smile. He took another step back and placed it on the floor between them. "You're the one with the magic, not it."

"Leave now," Draco said, but there was no power to it, no conviction. His eyes were on the wand. He was pale and still slightly dishevelled; the rather violent meeting with the wall had mussed his hair, but his pale, slender fingers twisted in front of him instead of straightening it. All at once he seemed to notice what he was doing. His hands were back at his sides, his eyes cool and face blank. "Now, Potter!"

Harry sighed and left the room. He checked the blueprint spell one last time, making sure all the wards were down. They were.

He didn’t think of Draco, alone in the manor. He had other, more important things on his mind.

Like the Firewhisky—or twelve—he'd be treating himself to when he got home.