Chapter Text
It is already dark outside when Harry walks down towards the stairs leading up to the castle. The wind is slapping his face and Harry sucks in a long breath to blow some warmth in the freezing cold. His skin prickles everywhere the air touches it. He blows once more, on his gloved fingers this time, and starts stepping down the stairs.
The sky is completely cloudless tonight and the view over the mountain and the frozen lake is magnificent. He pauses for a few moments, admiring it, thinking of the whole universe and how small he feels in the middle of it. It helps. it gives him perspective, allows him to focus on simple things like the world around him, the white forest and the snowy trees and the water rippling under the thick ice, sparkling as a mirror of the starry night sky.
Nothing else matters.
Not the dead, not the nightmares, not his friends, those forever gone and those who are still here warm and alive and supporting. Just him and the wild.
He's been doing this little walk ever since he came back to Hogwarts. He needs it. Some alone time. A moment to focus on himself and who he might like to be. A moment to remember those who aren't here and won't ever be again. A moment to process everything they've been through in the past three years. The people he's lost, the things that have gone, destroyed or simply disappeared. A moment to appreciate life too. All the things that have evolved and the things that have been rebuilt. Hogwarts is both new and old and so full of life. And it's marvelous to see how life goes on and how people still laugh and play and are excited about things and just fucking live.
Harry loves that. He loves the quietness too, the solitude. Some private time away from the noise and excitement of the castle, away from his friends.
His steps crunches softly in the snow, leaving tracks all over the pristine whiteness. It is a cold December night and the silence is eery. The moon is so bright and so full that it clears up the path down to the Quidditch pitch. It's a perfect night for a walk. Harry follows the same path he has taken for the last two months.
He walks the snow-covered grass and gets lost in his thoughts, his mind freshened up and clear, his body invigorated. His heart is beating slowly and steadily and Harry listens to it, connecting to the peaceful nature around him, making one with the world.
As he reaches the strands, snowflakes start swirling around him. He looks up and sees the cloudless sky and wonders. Childishly, he sticks his tongue out and laughs as he feels the snowflakes melt into his mouth.
"And he's supposed to be our saviour, they say..."
The words are shrill and the tone biting. Harry can hear the sneer in the voice and it feels like en ice bucket poured down his neck.
More than the unpleasantness of a certain annoying blond's existence, it is the unwanted presence of someone else disturbing the joy and peacefulness of the moment that dampens Harry's mood.
His smile dies at once and he spins around, arms falling down his side, and glares at his former rival.
The grin that was most likely on Malfoy's face half-second ago seems to have died as well and he looks a bit caught off guard, a bit sheepish, his eyes widened, which gives him an air of almost innocence that could have been charming on any other person, on any other day. Harry stares at him up and down before focusing on his face again.
Malfoy is still in the snow like a very long and very thin coatrack. He is wearing a long black cloak and a dark green thick woolen hat that covers his ears and flattens his hair onto his high forehead. A thick matching scarf is rolled around his neck, withholding the warmth of his breath as he blows white puffs of air in the cold night. He is tall, looming over Harry from where he is standing, but thin, so thin that his pointy features are the only thing that Harry notices in contrast with the darkness of his clothes.
Malfoy just spent four months in Azkaban and despite his return at Hogwarts a little over a month ago, he still looks too thin to be healthy. His face is skeletal, his cheeks are hollow and his complexion is sickly pale. He stares back at Harry with cold eyes. Everything surrounding him is dark, like death itself. He looks like a bad omen.
The only thing about him that reminds Harry that he is alive are his cheeks, rosy pink with the cold, and his lips, slightly trembling. He parts them, letting escape a soft sigh that catches Harry's attention.
Harry is probably frowning too deeply when he finally addresses him, a hint of spite rolling off his tongue. "Malfoy."
"Potter," Malfoy answers in a tired sigh. He stills insists on the P as if the name tasted nasty on his delicate palate.
"Have you been following me?" Harry grumbled.
Malfoy chuckles in response. It is soft and low in his throat. "Sort of..."
Harry feels exaggeratedly offended at this and immediately steps back, feeling indignant. "What the hell?"
Malfoy, to his credit, lowers his gaze embarrassedly. "I've noticed that you like to go for a walk after dinner," he says demurely. "I just wanted to talk."
"What makes you think I wanna talk with you?" Harry spits.
Perhaps there's a glimpse of hurt flashing through Malfoy's eyes but Harry can't be so sure of it. The blond lowers his gaze again. "I'm sorry—" he whispers. "I was just—hoping that—that you might agree to—that you might be willing to—to—listen to what I had to say."
The hesitance is his voice makes Harry pause for a moment. He swallows his anger and relaxes his clenching fists, staring right into the other man's eyes.
He nods briefly and mumbles a low. "Go ahead."
Malfoy nods back and walks down the last steps so they are facing each other. He is still taller than Harry though, of a couple of inches at least. He takes a deep breath and releases it shakily before opening his foul mouth again.
"I realize that I owe you my freedom and my presence here," he says. His voice is deeper than Harry remembers, rougher. It makes him shiver a little, he responds in kind, sneering at the man.
"Must be so hard to live with that knowledge, huh?"
He can't be sure if he dreamed the way Malfoy agreed with a nod or not but he looks a bit pinker, a bit more vulnerable. His eyes are shiny and wet with the freezing breeze.
"I've hated you for so long..." He admits with a soft smile that disappears as quickly as it came. "It is frankly humiliating, to be honest. But after having my childhood home invaded and desacralized by a bunch of raunchy murderous Death Eaters, after having been sequestrated in my own room and forced to witness horrors that still keep me awake at night, after sitting at my own trial and having you witness all of it, after spending months in Azkaban, you've seen me at my lowest, somehow, like a sick twist of fate, you've been there to witness all the times I've been at my lowest... And somehow, you've never held it against me... So I think one more humiliation hardly matters."
He is grinning by the end of his endless tirade. Something ugly, looking evil on his deathly pale face.
Harry didn't need to be reminded of all of it, he has enough nightmares of his own as it is but somehow, the childish animosity from earlier quickly dissipates after that.
It feels like they're standing on equal grounds and it feels a bit strange. Harry's slightly belligerent demeanor relaxes and he finally lowers his guard.
Malfoy's grin fades and his expression turns serious all at once, his piercing eyes fixated on Harry, holding his stare. "I'm truly grateful to you, Potter, I am." He says in a low hoarse voice.
Harry steps back in slight wonderment this time, truly not expecting this.
"You were the bigger man, in the end," he continues, his gaze shifty. "You've always been a better person than I'll ever be."
Harry huffs and leans onto his other leg, embarrassed.
"I wasn't going to stand there and let you rot in jail, Malfoy. For all your faults, you didn't deserve it."
"That isn't what I meant, though. I wasn't talking about—that, I—" He hesitates for a moment, eyes darting everywhere but towards Harry, and then finally, his gaze falls upon him, raw and loaded. "You saved my life," he says. "You didn't have to..."
"You didn't deserve to die, Malfoy! No matter how much I dislike you!"
Malfoy acquiesces silently and looks away, hurt glimmers in his eyes, Harry's sure this time.
"Still," he says. "It's quite humbling to know that after everything, despite everything, you still risked your life, to save mine."
It is Harry's turn to look away now.
He hates Malfoy a little bit right now, he hates this conversation. He hates that Malfoy has become a man since their last encounter, he's matured and makes Harry feel a bit childish in comparison. Harry hates that he came and disrupted his routine walk to have heavy talks with him about the war, Harry wasn't in the mood for heavy talks he wanted lighthearted conversations and gossip and playing in the snow... Anything that wasn't the war and the major role he played in it.
The silence lingers between them, heavy-loaded with unspoken truth.
"You risked you life to save mine too," Harry says after a long moment of guilty silence.
Malfoy scoffs at that. His laugh sour and mirthless. "You cannot possibly compare!" He exclaims. "I just held my tongue, you turned back and flew into a magical fire, for me, Potter! You can say whatever you want, but if the roles had been reversed, I wouldn't have come back for you. I wouldn't even have come back for my friends, I would have just saved my own skin. And I'd have been glad that I was able to escape."
Harry stares at him. He would have sniggered at his confession, if he hadn't heard the way Malfoy's voice broke when he spoke, the regret, the guilt and self-hatred seeping from his words.
It was humbling too.
"Okay," he says, swallowing noisily. "And you're telling me this now, because..."
Malfoy's eyes land on him, red-rimmed and wet, piercing through his heart.
"Because," he shouts frustratingly. "Because every time I look at you, across the wall, it hurts. I mean it physically hurts. I know what you did for me and I remember everything I did to you and it hurts. Like something is burning in my chest. Every time I—"
Like a physical manifestation of his own words, Malfoy brings a hand to his own chest and chokes on his last words. He bends down, staring wide-eyed at the snow and breathes heavily for a second before he straightens up and looks at Harry again, panting slowly.
"I realize it now," he mutters breathlessly, calmly, his gaze fixated on Harry's face. "Everything that I said and done to you in the past. How much my actions and my words have affected you and your friends. I knew that I was hurting you then, but I didn't realize, not completely. I do now. I'm aware now. And I'm sorry. You didn't deserve it. No-one did. No-one deserves to be treated the way I treated you and your friends and I'm sorry. For all of it."
It feels like a blow to the chest. Something winding.
Harry wasn't prepared for him to unload years of traumatic memories on him on a random December night. He wasn't prepared at all. To Harry, after everything, after a fucking war happened, all of their boyhood rivalry had ended up at the back of his mind, long forgotten and dismissed as stupid childish behavior and he hadn't harbored any kind of rancor towards it. As a child, it had hurt, but then in the cusp of a waging war, Malfoy's shenanigans had stopped holding his interest and his opinion had mattered less and less to Harry until he could see Malfoy for the sour bully that he was and the significance of him had dwindled like the rest of his childhood trauma.
Now though, his untimely apologies feels like reopening old wounds and adding salt to it, bringing back stuff Harry has long forgotten and didn't care remembering or even acknowledging the fact that it had happened and perhaps affected him, too.
He grins at Malfoy, mirthless. "I hope you're feeling better now that it's off your chest."
Malfoy is anything but stupid and sees exactly what Harry meant. He stares wide-eyed at him, apologetic. "I'm not-I'm not looking for absolution. I'm not expecting you to forgive me or anything."
Harry snorts, sounding bitter and sarcastic even to himself.
Malfoy gathers himself and frowns, an air of seriousness on his face again, contrasting with the vulnerable innocence from before. His expression is genuine however.
"I won't apologize for what happened in the war," he says. "We both know what I did. We were at war and I did what I thought I had to do. To protect my family. But I am sorry for the way I treated you when we were kids. Whether my beliefs were unfounded or not, whether I was conscious of my behavior or not, that's still no way to treat a human being. Let alone a child, who had already suffered so much. I am truly sorry, Potter, and I hope that we can be at least civil to one another from on."
The silence between them stretches again. Only their breathing can be heard in the cold wind. The snow is swirling around them and falls onto Malfoy's lashes. He looks ethereal in the darkness.
Harry wipes his face and cleans his glasses before putting them back on. He looks at Malfoy who seems to shiver a bit in the cold night. "Look, Malfoy," he says. "I appreciate your—" he waves a hand between them, "whatever this is you're doing right now."
Malfoy nods.
"I'm glad that you're alive and out of Azkaban. You didn't deserve to be locked up there. You didn't deserve to die. Believe what you think but I understand your motivations during the war. I don't agree with your choices but I understand them and I'm not sure I would have done differently, were I in your shoes."
He nods again, letting out a sigh of relief. "Even though you hate me?" He asks, sounding unexpectedly hopeful.
Harry sighs. "I don't hate you. I never hated you."
At first Malfoy's eyes widen, ingenuously, and then he frowns, laughing bitterly. "So, I was only a footnote in your story, is that it? I think it's even worse!"
Harry feels back for a second or so but then he remembers that he doesn't owe Malfoy anything. He shrugs the feeling off.
"As I said, I appreciate what you're doing. I'm glad to see that your opinion on things has changed. I don't like you though and if I don't feel much animosity towards you right now, I'm not particularly interested in being your friend either. I don't think we have much in common, apart from the war and not even that. I won't engage in any kind of rivalry with you but I don't want to be reminded of everything you did so just—just stay out of my way. That's all I'm asking."
Malfoy listens to him attentively, nodding in acquiescement.
"I understand," he says when Harry is finished.
The air fizzles between them. The snow keeps falling on their faces and the wind feels so cold suddenly that it burns their skin. Malfoy blinks the snowflakes away, his gloved hands pushed down the pockets of his long and thick woolen cloak.
The sight of him somehow makes his heart clench so he swirls on his feet and leaves, shortening his daily outing.
As he climbs the path back toward the castle, Malfoy calls after him. "Potter!" Harry turns back and looks down at him, perched on a few steps from him. There is something quite angelic about his face while he looks up at him among the swirling snowflakes.
"For what it's worth, I'm glad that you survived," he voice is tired and breathy but his expression is soft and genuine. "I'm happy that you've won. That your side won."
When he goes to bed that night, Harry feels both lighter and like a heavy weight is pressing onto his chest.