Letters

Overture (definition: an introduction to something more substantial)

Their whole somewhat-astonishing friendship had started with a stilted and formal but unexpectedly vulnerable letter...

After the war, Draco had been placed under house arrest with his mother, while Lucius was condemned to life-imprisonment in Azkaban. For three years, Draco and Narcissa had to stay put. House-elves could come and go and the DMLE Ministry officials who dealt with their probation detail could visit. But that was it. No contact with the outside world. Apart from they could send and receive letters, though they would be monitored too, unless the recipient had approved clearance from the Malfoys' probation team.

Two weeks into his sentence, Draco wrote to Harry, firstly to say thank you for speaking on his behalf at the trial, but then Draco poured his heart out into that letter as he opened up about how terrible their sixth year had been and how trapped he'd been and unable to think of a way out. How he hated himself for not being strong enough to go to Dumbledore to ask for help and how, as the further he went on down that path, the harder it was to turn around. He wrote about the seventh year too, about the Carrows, about how facing them at school was better than being at home, about how much he hated being stuck in the Manor and how he wanted to escape it desperately.

And then, much to Harry's surprise, Draco wrote in his neat cursive writing: It may seem strange for me to say this but I want to be open for the first time in my life. Perhaps I owe that to you after all this time. These days my thoughts often turn to you. Frequently, if I'm being honest about it. More so, now I'm shut away in this stark, empty, silent manor with just my mother and my ruminations. And I have come to the ludicrous conclusion that I miss you. I guess it stems from all that ridiculously intense rivalry and supposed warfare we held for each other over the first six years of school which, I'm sure you remember, consumed an awful lot of time and energy and created almost obsessional behaviour in us both. You were the focus of my life for a long time and now that's gone. You can imagine that it has come as somewhat a surprise to realise that I miss your presence: your blustering; your temper; your snarky comments; your dreadful fashion sense; your awful glasses; your 'Expelliarmus' (honestly, Potter, do you even know any other spells?); your Merlin-cursed messy hair; your startling-green eyes hunting me down...

I suppose the unravelling of my contradictory feelings about you started after you were captured by those Snatchers and brought to the Manor. I know you picked up on something of what I was going through because you explained as much to the Wizengamot during my trial. But, you cannot imagine the turmoil it caused, I was supposed to hate you and yet all I felt was huge relief to know you were still alive. I actually wanted to hug you, even grab you by the cheeks and kiss your ugly swollen hexed face (yes, ugh, Potter, but that was the strength of my feelings in that moment). You brought me a modicum of light amongst the desperate darkness when I looked into your eyes and knew it was actually you. And there was no way I could send you to your death. With those liberating thoughts came hope that you could actually save us from this awful mess (selfish on my part, I know, but the truth). But there was also the realisation that although the seventh year at Hogwarts had been miserable because of Voldemort's increasing strength and his power over our family and the ghastly Dark Mark which still taints my arm, the seventh year had also been miserable because you weren't there and no one knew where you were. Absurdly, in the midst of all that was going on, the habit couldn't be broken of walking into the Great Hall every Merlin-cursed mealtime and searching the Gryffindor table for your atrociously messy raven hair in the vain hope you would be staring back at me. Your absence left a certain empty ambiguity in life. After you escaped with Dobby, I suddenly found myself aware of worrying intensely about you and that brought confusion because I wasn't supposed to be feeling like this about someone from 'your side' of the war, let alone you.

Mother realised I was tormented by my thoughts; she came to me one night shortly before you reappeared at Hogwarts and we were all summoned to the battle. Finally, I told her the truth, I opened up about how much I hated my father, Voldemort, the Dark Mark, and our way of life. How you were our only hope. I remember as if it was yesterday how she held me tight and stroked my hair, whispering, 'I know, darling,' over and over as my tears finally flowed freely. That may help explain some of her motivation for saving you in the Forbidden Forest (we Slytherins are selfish and we look after our own first – but I guess that is just what you were doing too, so perhaps we are not so different underneath it all). Then, shortly after you escaped the manor, I was supposed to fight against you and our fellow students to bring down Hogwarts. I couldn't do it. I just wanted to get my wand from you and escape, that was why I told Crabbe and Goyle not to kill you. I planned to get my wand and run away to France but you know what happened next.

It took three days of ruminating before Harry picked up a quill and answered. Should he be writing to a convicted criminal? Then again, it was just Malfoy... But he was also his arch-nemesis, so surely that didn't make sense? But then again, he wasn't really Harry's arch-nemesis, that was Voldemort, who was dead and, actually, he didn't actually like to think of Draco as his enemy at all. And besides they were just kids and, if Harry really thought about it, he kind of missed Draco too.

He'd even shown the letter to Ron and Mione as he deliberated replying.

Ron had rolled his eyes and said, 'the bloody idiot! But at least one of you has realised and made the first move.' Then he'd said, 'you're a bloody idiot too, just write to him.' He'd said no more on the matter. And Harry didn't dare question exactly what it was that Ron meant.

Mione had pursed her lips, and shrugged, and told him to follow his heart on this one, and there was a certain glint in her dark brown eyes which Harry didn't trust in the slightest. Anyway, he wrote back. And he wrote a bit about being on the run and being caught by the Snatchers, and he told Draco all about Dobby, and what had happened after Bellatrix had thrown her knife. And he had cried when he re-lived that moment on the beach and giving his friend a proper funeral but it also proved a little cathartic. He closed his letter by saying to Draco: Feel free to write whenever you want. I prefer the idea of being friends with you rather than whatever it was we were before. Now that I look back, I regret all those years of stupid animosity; I wonder how things might have been if I'd shook your hand in the first year, things might have turned out so differently. Look after yourself, your friend (I hope), Harry.

Harry got a reply the next day.

And it turned out they had an awful lot to talk about. And the letters became daily occurrences, or even twice daily, and the Ministry finally got fed up with reading their post so frequently that Harry got clearance and their letters went uncensored.

*****