𝒻𝓁𝓊𝑒𝓇

Draco is eleven again, standing in Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions with his arms out and pins hovering at the hems of his robes. He sees a little black haired boy standing next to him.

Harry Potter.

He looks smaller than Draco remembers. His memory is hazy at the edges but Harry looks so thin, so frail. The robes he is in are being taken in at every seam because whoever measured him used a size that fit some other child, loved and fed properly.

Draco’s stomach lurched because he had read the tell-all in Luna's Quibbler wherein Harry had talked about his childhood. He had spent nearly eleven years living in a cupboard under the stairs, starved of food, of warmth, living there without being held, without being loved.

Harry looks at Draco with cautious but curious eyes.

Draco remembered this part all too well. He remembers saying something stupid to Harry, bragging about his father buying him this, his mother that, not even paying attention when Harry said his parents were dead and instead asking if they're the right sort.

Draco wanted to say ‘I've heard of you’, like he'd rehearsed in his head. It sounded neutral and proper.

He instead blurts out, “Does it hurt? The pins, I mean.”

Harry blinks behind his smudged glasses. “No. Does it hurt for you?” he asks.

“No,” Draco replies.

"I didn't know what any of this was," Harry starts after a pause. "Two days ago I didn't know I was a wizard."

Two days ago he was still in that house with those cruel people and he had been so much like the cousin Harry had to live with.

"I expect it's a lot to take in," Draco says, keep his face perfectly set.

"Yeah." Potter glances at him sideways. "Are you nervous? About Hogwarts?"

Draco thinks about the war, about receiving the Dark Mark in his own living room at the Manor, about chosing the wrong side, about standing in a courtroom at eighteen, about not going to Azkaban solely because of the testimony given by eighteen year old version of the boy in front of him.

"A bit," he answers. "What about you?"

"Terrified," says Potter, cheerfully, like he's had a lot of practice with terror.

The fitter calls done and they both step down, and Draco does not offer his hand yet because he is not sure he'll do that right. But he doesn't walk away, either, and when Potter grins uncertainly at him, trying his best, Draco nods back.