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…Ron and Hermione…
Harry groans again, bits and pieces of the night coming back to him. Draco showed up at the pub night, and then—Harry was all selfish and stupid about—god, Ron and Hermione are having another baby and—and Draco took him to a secret forest about it? Maybe that part was a dream, Harry thinks. It doesn’t feel like a dream, though. Fuck, his head hurts.
“Stop,” Draco mumbles, eyes still closed, “with the sounds. Death to sounds. Be silent.”
“Oh, make me,” Harry mutters back.
Draco’s eyes snap open.
For a second they just look at each other, and Harry thinks Draco’s probably having the same train of thought he did a minute ago. He wonders, in too much pain to care about it all that much, if Draco’s going to panic and throw himself out of the bed, but he doesn’t. He just kind of…draws in a big breath and then sighs it out again, wincing on the exhalation.
“Hi,” Draco says at last.
“Hey,” says Harry.
“Are we dead?” Draco asks. It sounds like a genuine question. “Or do I just wish I was dead? If this is death I hate it, and I won’t stay, and I want my money back.”
“We’re not dead,” says Harry, though he does have to take a moment to consider it. “And that’s not really how death works, anyway.”
“It is too early for your Boy Who Lived rubbish,” Draco says grouchily. His eyes fall closed again, though this doesn’t seem to deter him from talking. “Just be a fucking person for seventeen seconds and talk about, I don’t know, how your mouth feels like it’s been coated in sewage, or something.”
“Not sewage,” Harry says, considering it. “More like—I don’t know—bile and sadness?”
“I hate you,” Draco says, mostly into his pillow. “I can’t believe I’m going to die here, like this, and the last thing anyone’s ever going to have said to me is that their mouth tastes of bile and sadness.”
“You said—”
“Oh, I know what I said, shut your terrible breath hole,” Draco snaps. Without opening his eyes, he makes a valiant attempt to sit up, gets about halfway there, lets out a little heartcry, and collapses back down onto the bed. “This is it. The end times. The final note in a tragically short symphony. Please write my mother and tell her I died with dignity, will you? Lie as baldly as possible. Share nothing of the true events and say I was taken down in a heroic—a heroic—well, make up something heroic, anyway.”
“You’re being dramatic,” Harry tells him, and Draco swats at him blindly, his fingers brushing Harry’s sleeve but not landing any more serious blows. Harry grins, even through the hangover. “Missed me, Malfoy.”
“Bite me, Potter.” Draco yawns hugely; Harry think he’s one to talk about terrible breath. “God, I need—potions—Kreacher!”
Kreacher appears with a crack; Harry and Draco let out simultaneous half-shouted groans of agony at the sound.
“Why,” says Harry, burying his face into the pillow as deep as it will go.
“Master Draco summoned?” Kreacher sounds too chipper by half, even through the pillow. Probably he thinks this is what they deserve for stumbling in here at whatever o’clock in the morning drunk as skunks; he might not be wrong, but Harry doesn’t have to like it.
“Hangover Potion,” Draco says, the way a man might gasp for water after days stranded in a desert. Harry lifts his head a bit and sees that he looks like it, too, a little. “I urge you, I implore you, I beg on bended knee—”
“You’re laying down, Malfoy,” says Harry, just to be obnoxious.
“I will actually kill you,” Draco says. “In cold blood, right here. You watch! I’ll do it!”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Harry says, and then, when Draco glares at him and reaches threateningly towards a spare pillow, “God, fine. I’m shaking in my boots, are you happy?”
“Oh my god you are actually wearing boots,” Draco says—yelps, really. Harry winces against the soft fabric of the pillowcase. “In my bed! Did you take some kind of intensive course on being the worst houseguest in all of space and time—no, wait, don’t answer that, we have more important matters to attend to. Kreacher,” he continues, in ingratiating tones, “if you could please, I beg you, get the Hangover Potion. And don’t—”
He vanishes with a crack right as Draco says, “Disapparate. Oh my god, please just let me die.”
“Me first,” Harry says.
“Rude,” says Draco, and closes his eyes again, only to jump violently and moan when Kreacher reappears.
It hurts like hell for Harry too, but. Well. It’s pretty funny.
“Stop laughing at the misfortune of others, Potter,” Draco says, sitting up to grab a vial off the tray in Kreacher’s hands and downing it in one go. He collapses back against the pillow with a sigh. “Oh, thank Merlin, I really thought that was it for me.” He fixes Harry with a dark look. “Go on, then. Your turn.”
“It’s cheating,” Harry protests. It is a feeble protest, but he feels it necessary to make all the same. “If you’re going to drink you should—suffer the consequences. Of drinking.”
“That’s absolutely the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Draco says, but Draco says this to Harry at least three times a week; it’s kind of lost its punch. “Your little martyring streak is very upsetting, and if you don’t take the bloody potion I will be forced to transfigure this pillow into a tiny violin to play for you about it.” He smiles sweetly, and adds, “Well, I say 'play.' I’ve never actually studied the violin, so the correct word might be ‘torture.’”
“You’re a bad person,” Harry mutters, “I hope yours stops working,” but he sits up and takes the stupid potion anyway. It leaves his mouth tasting fresh and clean, and helps a lot, actually, which is annoying.
“There,” Draco says, sounding satisfied, as he flips back the covers and burrows into his bed. “Doesn’t that feel much better than your moralistic nonsense? Now: go make me breakfast.”
Harry is so occupied with trying to think of a way to avoid admitting to the first half of that statement that it takes him a moment to process the second. When he does, he rolls his eyes. “Seriously, Malfoy?
“That’s the going rate of exchange for my Hangover Potion,” Draco says. Only one of his eyes is visible, but that one eye is wicked. “Don’t look at me, Potter, you’re the one who set the precedent. If you didn’t want to make me breakfast you shouldn’t have accepted the potion in the first place.”
“Which time?” Harry says, more to entertain himself than for any other reason, since either way it’s not like Draco gave him much of a choice.
“Oh, either,” Draco says. “Both. Who cares? Take your pick.”
He yawns then, huge and cracking, eyes falling shut and staying that way, one arm sprawling out to stretch halfway into the space Harry vacated when he sat up. Harry looks down at his wild hair, the faint circles under his eyes, and finds himself suffused, suddenly, with a rush of affection for this man, however odd or bossy or exhausting. He’s remembering more of last night now that his body’s not actively fighting him, and he’s not sure anyone’s ever—done anything quite like that for him, before. He can’t even entirely wrap his mind around it, the shape of the memory strange and incongruous, its smooth, polished edges not finding anywhere to fit with the rest of Harry’s largely jagged mental landscape.
He wouldn’t trade it, though. Not for anything. Breakfast’s probably the least he can do.
“Don’t get used to this,” Harry warns, standing up. “I don’t want you to go getting any insane ideas about bossing me around being a good or effective strategy for making me to do stuff.”
Draco makes a little scoffing noise into his pillow. “Oh, please. Like I don’t know how to get you to do things. I want sausages.”
“You’re getting bacon,” Harry says, automatic.
“See?” Draco says, and yawns again. “You’re so easy, Potter. It’s honestly quite sad.”
“I don’t know why I spend time with you,” Harry says, “I really don’t,” but he picks his coat up off the floor anyway, walks downstairs and opens the front door to head out for supplies.
At least, he starts to. Kreacher appears with a crack between him and the door before Harry can open it more than an inch, grabs him by the ends of his shirt, and says, “No! Harry Potter will not do this again!”
Harry sighs. “Look, Kreacher—”
“Harry Potter will not ‘Look Kreacher’ Kreacher!” say Kreacher. “Kreacher will ‘Look Harry Potter’ Harry Potter! If Harry Potter likes to cook, then Harry Potter likes to cook. Kreacher understands. What Kreacher does not understand,” he continues, his tone going dark and foreboding, “is why Harry Potter keeps insisting on leaving! Is why Harry Potter keeps bringing into the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black foods that smell awful and are locked in packages which Harry Potter must cut with a knife!”
“Er,” says Harry, staring. “You mean—groceries?”
“Kreacher does not care what they are called!” Kreacher nearly wails this, pulling hard on Harry’s shirt. “Why is Harry Potter not using the storeroom? Kreacher worked hard for many years on that storeroom! The House worked hard for many years on that storeroom! Harry Potter does not otherwise seem like a cruel person!”
