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“Maybe I should.” He turns to leave, and then hesitates, because he does not have to be afraid any longer. “But I could come back. Later. When you’ve had some time to get used to the idea of.”

When you’ve had more time to be alone, is what he is saying. When you realize that you really do miss me.

Draco waits a moment, but his father does not answer. And that’s okay. Draco isn’t the one that needs someone to care about him.

Chapter 41

Harry

They are packing up to leave.

He can’t believe it, honestly. Even though he had been the one to sign the papers for the cottage, a part of him must have thought that it was too good to become reality, like he had been living in half a day dream for these past few weeks. Harry had spent so long living a life where happy endings are nonexistent that he must have been constantly preparing himself for the other shoe to drop, but now, with only a few days until the move in date (and before Luna and Ginny’s wedding) he finally is able to accept that he might be getting his happy ending.

“That’s it then.” There was a loud ripping sound as Draco taped over the top of the box, looking around the living room. He despised doing things the muggle way, but despite how many times he had tried (and Merlin, had he tried, all last night, the tape twisting and bunching and sometimes getting so wrapped around Draco that Harry had to come cut him out of it), he couldn’t levitate the tape dispenser in a way to get it to lay neatly over the folds of the box. “Did we get everything?”

“I think so.” Draco picked up his notebook and leafed through it until he found the right page. He had made lists for every room in the house. When Ron saw it, he had given a low whistle and said that it was a shame that Draco and Hermione hadn’t been friends back in school. Imagine the study schedules, He had muttered when their backs were turned, and Harry thought that that was a good enough reason for the two of them to never have been allowed in the same room together back in school, had they not hated each other. “According to the list.”

“And the list is always right.” Harry tugged the notebook out of his hand and threw it down on the table, distracting him with a kiss, because if he doesn’t head this off before it starts, Draco will spend the evening checking and rechecking and rechecking the recheck, working himself into such a state that Harry has to run through everything they had packed before he can walk away from the boxes. “It seems smaller, now. All packed up.”

The whole house did, really. Harry had thought about turning it over to the ministry like Draco had suggested in the beginning, turn it into some sort of museum, but he decided against it, because he did not think that Sirius would have liked that. His godfather, who had spent his whole life wanting nothing more than to break free of this place, would have wanted to strike a match and burn the whole place down himself. It felt like the best way to honor him, making sure that Grimmauld Place dies with the ones who had lived in it.

(In a way, walking away from this house felt like the final act of saying good bye to all those ghosts he had been afraid of facing. The first step to working through the grief he had ignored, where he walks through rooms in the house and greets memories like old friends— of Sirius, of Fred, of Mad Eye, Remus, Tonks, even Dobby, like this house was the bad parts of those memories, the raw, bloody parts that are still scabbing over, and once Harry walks out of this place for good, the memories will ease their aching, turn bittersweet instead of the white hot burning they are now.)

That’s not to say it’s been easy. Just as the house had fought against the cleaning crew back in Harry’s fifth year, it was fighting against them now, like it could sense that when Harry and Draco drag their boxes out the door, it would be shut in, left to fall into dereliction and disrepair. Harry had picked up the crusade against its many rooms all over again, and together, he and Draco had torn the heads of house elves from the wall (they buried them in the ruins of the Malfoy garden, because Harry could not stand the act of just throwing them in the garbage like Ron had urged them to, not under Kreacher’s watchful eye and Hermione’s glare), broken into boarded up closets to clear the shelves of anything dangerous, and sealed up the cellar for good, until it was nothing but an old, creaking house with nothing left to offer the world.

Even if he tried to sell, Harry wasn’t sure that there would be anyone crazy enough to buy it. The thought fills him with a little bit of joy, like he had done right by Sirius after all.

(It’s sort of a fuck you, too. Like, hey, painting of Sirius’ crazy mother, remember when you would yell about mudbloods and traitors and filth? Now you can scream all you like, until the paint fades and the wallpaper peels and you are nothing but rot, no one will hear you, though it is a new level of crazy to seek revenge against a painting.)

“Maybe you’ve just gotten bigger.” Draco grins up from his spot on the floor, surrounded by empty boxes and pile of rubbish that they were giving away and that always present tape dispenser. “Too grown up for it now.”

Yes, Harry thought, kneeling on the couch cushion above him and bending over so he can hug Draco from behind, that must be it.

Draco

As the house empties, becoming more and more like a new place altogether, Draco is finding it hard to sleep again.