Harry woke up with a horrible start to a loud banging noise. For a moment, his insides lurched about, like he was on his broom and had just dropped into a steep, stomach-churning dive. What on earth was that? It sounded like someone was trying to knock his door down, except he could barely remember anyone ever knocking on the door before, let alone banging on it. His address was an open secret, and he'd often found wizards and witches loitering at the foot of his front steps, but anyone who wanted to get in that badly could simply—
Merlin's balls. Harry sat bolt upright in bed and said, firmly, "Accio wand." His wand remained very much un-Summoned, and Harry felt panic once again take a small but insistent grip on his insides. So, yesterday wasn't a dream. He leaned over to grab his glasses from the bedside table and shoved them on, looking round the room with distaste. His mouth felt like he'd sucked on a carpet – all thick and furry and gross – but at least he didn't have a hangover today.
The banging had stopped, and Harry briefly wondered if he'd imagined it, before it started up again with a vengeance. Someone really wanted him to answer the door. Harry scrubbed a hand through his hair, glanced over to the clock on his bedside table – ten minutes to seven, ridiculously early – and scrambled out of bed, straightening his pyjamas and reaching for the saggy dressing gown on the back of his bedroom door, before leaping down the stairs, two at a time. It only occurred to him that it might be Malfoy – he'd called up one of Malfoy's minions and left his address last night, hadn't he? – by the time he was already opening the door and wishing the ground would swallow him up.
It wasn't Malfoy. It was . . .
Harry blinked, completely thrown by this. "Parvati?" he managed, looking the woman up and down. It certainly looked like Parvati Patil, despite the horrible Muggle polo shirt and calf-length skirt. He felt a rush of sweet relief that made his knees nearly give way. If Parvati was standing on his doorstep, then she must remember being a witch! And she was a fantastic witch too, Harry thought as he looked at her. Brave and resourceful and, all right, she was no Hermione, but who was? She could still help him fix this mess and—
"Harry, for goodness' sake!" Parvati said cheerfully, rolling her eyes and pushing past him into his house. "Why are you standing around gawping like you've never seen me before?" She leaned back in and gave him a thoughtful sniff. "You don't smell pissed," she added, handing him a Styrofoam cup of coffee. "And yet, we need to be at work to open up in ten minutes and you're still in your . . ." She trailed off. ". . . really, really terrible night clothes," she concluded, her voice a laugh. "Gosh, it's no surprise to me that you're perpetually single. No offense!"
"None taken," Harry said automatically, feeling offended, but following Parvati as she appeared to lead the way into Harry's own house and straight into the dining room. She would know where things were, of course, he told himself. She'd been a member of the Order. Only . . .
"Well, go on then! What are you waiting for?" Parvati said, taking a seat at the dining table and slurping at her own cup of coffee.
"Um?" Harry said stupidly.
Parvati rolled her eyes, the movement sending her long, thick plait swinging over her shoulder to hang straight down her back. "Go and put your uniform on, you plonker!"
"Er, Parvati?" Harry managed, setting the coffee in his hand down on the side.
"Mm?" Parvati didn't appear to be actually listening any more. She was staring at her mobile phone, her fingers flying as she wrote out a text. Harry knew what that was; he'd sometimes seen Dudley do it. Dudley had been very fast too. It had been pretty much the only time Harry had seen him move quickly.
Harry took a deep breath. "If I said the word 'Hogwarts' to you, what would you say?"
Parvati paused, her flying fingers stilling, to hover over the phone's keys. She turned her head to look at Harry, a look of sympathetic interest on her face. "You feeling all right?"
"No, really," Harry persisted.
Parvati shrugged. "That posh school up in Scotland, isn't it? Bit like Eton, except it takes the thickos too."
"Right," Harry said, feeling a bit like a balloon with a slow puncture. "And . . . you don't have a wand?"
A look of pure incredulity painted itself across Parvati's face. "A wand?" she repeated, this time actually putting her phone down on the table to stare at him.
"No, sorry, ignore me. Feeling a bit delicate," Harry improvised in a panic. "Went out drinking last night, you know."
Parvati's eyes narrowed and she sniffed, before turning back to the table and picking up her phone again. "Well, don't think you're skiving off today, even if you have gone loony. I'm not doing a shift by myself. So get a move on, yeah?"
"Right," Harry said and, for a lack of any other ideas, went back upstairs and into his bedroom. Uniform . . . He had a uniform hanging in his wardrobe, he remembered. Horrible trousers, a horrible polo shirt that matched Parvati's and a horrible fleece jacket. Was he seriously going to have to wear it? He tugged open his wardrobe door to reveal that, yes, it was just as horrible as he remembered. But then yesterday he'd worn a horrible outfit too, and – and look how well that had turned out, he reminded himself brightly. Fuck's sake. What should he do? He examined his options. He could hide in his room, waiting for international arsehole Draco Malfoy to not come and visit him, or he could put on this terrible uniform and go to his job – whatever that was – with Parvati, who didn't seem to remember being a witch. Why didn't she remember being a witch? What did it mean? It was a puzzle – and one that any Auror worth his wand would want to solve.
Harry sighed and started to pull off his pyjamas to get dressed. When he thought about it like that, it was a no brainer.
^^^^^^
Harry worked in a convenience store.
It took him a good half an hour before he could actually take this in, process it properly. In this alternate dimension, or whatever it was, Draco Malfoy was a pop star, and Harry worked in a convenience store.
Not that there was anything wrong with working in a shop, Harry thought as he tried to use the till without making it obvious he'd barely seen one before, let alone operated one. Luckily, instead of mysterious buttons it had a touch screen with pictures. It was just . . . if he'd been in charge of constructing an alternate reality where he lived as a Muggle, he would have chosen a job as . . . What, exactly? Harry wasn't sure, but maybe a police officer, or a firefighter, or something.
Ron worked in a shop now, of course – he left the Aurors a year in, to run Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes with George – and that was fine, and Harry had sometimes helped out stacking the shelves when they'd had a run on a new product line, but even the thought of spending his working life confined behind a counter made him feel itchy and restless, somehow. He wondered if this was real. Whether if he had lived his life as a Muggle he'd have really made this choice, or if this was just a by-product of the wish magic. He found the whole idea depressing. No magic, no Hogwarts schooling. No girlfriend or . . . or . . . whatever. No Ron, no Hermione. No Kreacher. OK, he still had a house, and that was something to be grateful for, but what was the point of a house if he had no life to put in it?
"God, what's with you today?" Parvati said, giving him a sharp nudge in the ribs when the customer he'd been serving – poorly – finally left the shop. There was no one else waiting, thank goodness; the shop was small, and quiet. "Were you abducted by aliens last night who wiped your memory or something?"
"Maybe," Harry said, because it was the closest he could get to the truth, and Parvati laughed.
"Seriously, though, you all right?" She leaned against the counter next to him, her rows of multi-coloured bangles jingling pleasantly as she did so. She really was very pretty, Harry thought, and wondered why he didn't fancy her. He hadn't fancied her when he'd taken her to the ball at school, either. Merlin, he really had been a dickwad.
"I think I'm having a crisis," he said honestly, and she grinned at him, her nose wrinkling as she did so.
"No different to usual then," she said.
"Seriously, why do I work here?" Harry asked, because he didn't know, so maybe this woman who appeared to be his friend would.
Parvati seemed to think he was asking as a joke though, because she nudged him again, still grinning, and rolled her eyes. "God knows." She stood up and stretched widely. "If I was estranged from my family, with a fuck-off inheritance, I would be sipping drinks on a beach, not scanning beans."
"Not much of a fan of sand," Harry said, trying to sound light.
Parvati snorted. "More of a bean man? I thought as much. Still –" she touched Harry lightly on the wrist, her bangles jangling – "don't forget to take me with you, if you change your mind. I always wanted a rich boyfriend to bankroll the lifestyle I'm not accustomed to." She winked. "I can even put up with your bean fetish, weirdo."
"Oh! I, er—"
"Joking," Parvati said firmly, cutting through Harry's awkward panic. "God, don't be a tosser. You're about as much my type as I am yours. I couldn't go anyway, you know I couldn't. Can you imagine what Dad would say? He never stops banging on about 'Perfect Padma' –" the sarcastic quote marks slotted into place – "and her amaaaazing maths degree, and her internship with Willis Towers Watson and her career prospects. If he had to cut me off, who'd he get to run this fine chain of convenience stores, hmm?"
Harry took this to mean that Parvati was being trained up to run this, uh, fine chain of convenience stores, and tried to look like that wasn't news to him. If he'd had to pick a job for Parvati in this alternative reality – Parvati, who'd duelled Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts and had lived to tell the tale – he wasn't sure this was what he'd have gone for.
"Do you want to run this fine chain of convenience stores?" he asked, because why not.
Parvati shot him a look of fierce dislike. "Do I fuck!" she said. "But someone's got to. What a stupid question, Harry. You really are acting dimmer than usual today," she added bitterly, before turning, all smiles, to the customer who'd just approached the till.
"I'm sorry," Harry said when the customer had left and the bell over the shop door had stopped jingling.
Parvati appeared to have got over it already. "For what?" she said, and rolled her eyes. "Sorry you're not my type?"
Harry grinned at her. "A little?" he said truthfully. Even in the horrible shop uniform she was lovely. So much fire and spark.
"Oh sweetheart," she said, grinning back, "I am so sorry." She reached under the counter and pulled out a copy of a newspaper. Malfoy's face stared soulfully and sweetly out of the front page. "Now him – him I'd run away with," she sighed, spreading it out on the counter and leaning on her elbows to gaze at it. "Shame he bats for the other side too, but—"
Too? "Um, Parvati, I—"
Parvati waved her hand vaguely at him to shut him up. "Yes, yes, I know, Harry, you just haven't met the right girl. You keep telling yourself that."
What the fuck? Malfoy was not gay. And neither was Harry. He was just . . . confused, that was all. Confused, and . . . Harry tried to think, his mind tangling itself up in knots, but his eye got caught on the headline above Malfoy's face. "Says right there he has a girlfriend," he pointed out, trying to keep his voice sounding level.
"Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?" Parvati pointed out in return. "If they wanted to keep it a secret. Which, duh. Can you imagine the outcry if teen heartthrob Draco Malfoy came out?" She snorted. "His management would kill him."
"Maybe he's just straight," Harry protested, alarmed by the turn this conversation had taken.
"If he's straight, I'll eat my hat," Parvati said. "Poor baby." And she looked at the photo of Malfoy with a mixture of sympathy and lust that was strangely enraging.
"I happen to know him a bit," Harry said firmly, to put an end to this sickening display. "And I also happen to know that he's not very nice."
Parvati turned to him and raised her eyebrows. "Sure," she said, her tone disbelieving. She reached up and patted Harry on the top of the head, smiling sweetly. "Whatever you say." She turned back to the paper, and then seemed to think hard about something. "Do you actually need to be nice, though, when you're that hot?" she asked, and then mimed fainting dead away.
Harry wanted to protest that Malfoy wasn't that hot, and that, actually, yes, it was fairly important on a fundamental level to be a nice person, but by the time he'd pulled himself together there were more customers in the shop that were waiting to be served. And, unfortunately, at the moment it appeared to be Harry's job to serve them. So he tried to put Malfoy from his mind and cracked on with it.
^^^^^^
The shop remained busy as the morning passed, a steady stream of customers buying bread and milk and unreasonably preventing Harry from extracting any more details about his 'life' here in this reality from Parvati. She seemed happy enough to talk when she wasn't actively serving someone, punctuating the beeps of the two tills and the almost continuous jangle of the bell over the door with a stream of gossip, but was difficult to steer to anything that Harry actually wanted to talk about. She was just how he remembered her from school, Harry thought, suddenly strangely nostalgic for his final year there. It wasn't as if he wanted to be back there, with Voldemort hanging over everything, and Ron making them all sick with his pawing over Lavender, Parvati's best friend, but . . .
"Do you still talk to Lavender?" he asked, cutting into a story about a recent shopping trip when she hadn't been able to decide between a green dress and a blue dress.
"Who?" she asked, and that had depressed Harry enough to let her finish her story and move on to another scintillating story about shoes.
Harry had hoped to be able to talk to Parvati privately during lunch, but they took their breaks in the small, cramped back room separately, and when he came back out after eating a tasteless sandwich it was to find another woman on the till next to her. She was tall and blonde with very dark eyebrows, and probably only a couple of years older than he was. From her folded arms and disgusted expression Harry deduced that she'd rather be anywhere else in the world than here. The new woman – Laura, according to her name badge – grunted a hello, but then roundly ignored him, and Harry took this as a hint and went to lurk about on the shop floor and make his own entertainment.
The rest of the shift passed slowly and with extreme tedium. Harry swept the floor, and restocked a shelf, and directed customers to the loo roll, and felt extremely and painfully discontented. It seemed pointless, to stick around in this job rather than dash off to try to fix reality. But he was uncomfortably aware that he didn't actually know what to do next. It was difficult to dash, when you didn't know where you were meant to dash to. His best hope so far still seemed to be Malfoy, which was a fucking dreadful state of affairs, Harry thought gloomily as he turned tins around so their labels all faced outward into the aisle. He was the only person Harry had met so far who still remembered the wizarding world. It had to mean something. But the next move was up to Malfoy himself, as far as he could see; Harry had already spent hours waiting on the arsehole, only for Malfoy to take the piss. It didn't inspire confidence.
Meeting Parvati had actually made things worse, Harry concluded as he relieved Parvati on the till; Laura shot him a sidelong glance but said nothing, so he said nothing right back. It had introduced an element of doubt into an already doubtful situation. If she was here, but had lived a life without magic, what was to say that Ron and Hermione still had their magic? What if he spent all day on a train up to Scotland, to find that they had no idea who he was? Merlin – the whole thing was a mess.
"Laura," Harry said, turning to his co-worker when there was a gap in the flow of customers and the shop was quiet.
Laura was leaning against the counter staring into space, but she turned her head a fraction and screwed up her nose at him. "What?"
It wasn't the friendliest of responses, but Harry decided to forge ahead anyway. "If you'd lost your friend's phone number –" if she had any friends, Harry added doubtfully in his head – "how would you find it again?" If only he could call Hermione in advance, to know for sure if she still had her magic, if she remembered the way the world was meant to be.
Laura gave him a look that suggested he was a prize idiot. "You got friends?" she said.
"I'm friends with Parvati, aren't I?" Harry said indignantly, stung by this accusation from someone he'd just thought the exact same thing of.
"Yeah," Laura said with a snort, as if that said it all. "The boss's daughter. What you need her phone number for, anyway? Bit creepy. You could just ask her."
"It's not her!" Harry protested.
"Uh huh," Laura said, but she bent down and rummaged under the shop counter, coming up with a chunky but floppy directory that she half-slid, half-chucked at him. "Look her up in the phone book. Under O for Out of your league, loser."
Harry bristled, but decided there was nothing to be gained from having an argument other than a headache. He took the book and flicked through it. It was pages of addresses and telephone numbers, ordered by surname. He wondered if he was in the book. He still hadn't worked out what his own number was, had he? He looked himself up, finger sliding down the list of Ps until he hit Potter, H. His address was there all right, but no telephone number was listed.
Harry turned to find Laura at his elbow, smirking at him unpleasantly. "Forgotten your own number, have you?" She tapped her head with a finger. "Braindead as well as blind, I see."
"Yeah, sorry," Harry said, actually glad he didn't have his wand, because it wasn't a great idea to hex random Muggles, even if they did bloody well deserve it. "I should learn from your great example, right? Maybe if I try really, really hard, one day I'll have a sparkling personality just like yours."
"You what?" Laura said, drawing herself up to her full height.
Harry smiled sweetly. "Just paying you a compliment."
Laura twitched alarmingly, as if she was on the verge of giving him a slap, but luckily a customer sloped up to her till and she was forced to abandon the fight.
Harry turned back to the phone book. It looked like it only covered London, but if he was lucky, he thought, maybe Hermione's parents would be in there somewhere and he could get her number from them.
There were over a dozen entries for 'Granger', and Harry was just starting to wonder if he'd have to note down all the numbers and call them one by one, when he found one that made him pause for thought. Granger, H. (Ms). It could be Harriet Granger, of course, he told himself. Or Helen. Or . . . some other name beginning with H that he couldn't think of right now. But something in his gut told him that it was, indeed, Hermione. Listed in the phone book, without Ron. Harry stuck his finger in the 'Granger' page and flicked to the back to check out the Weasley listings. There weren't any. Damn it!
Harry grabbed the nearest pen and scribbled down Hermione's – no, H's, he told himself firmly – details on the back of an abandoned till receipt and shoved it in his pocket. "Gross," muttered Laura, but he clenched his jaw and ignored her, glad that he'd at least got something out of this tedious shift. Now all he had to do was wait for it to be over, so he could go home and call the number.
^^^^^^
At three twenty-nine on the dot, two pleasant-looking middle aged women in the same uniform as Parvati entered the shop, vanishing briefly into the back room and emerging without their coats to take up their positions on the tills.
"Thank goodness," Parvati said to Harry with a gusty sigh of relief, catching him by the front door. "Slaving over for another day. Have you got plans for the rest of the afternoon?" Harry briefly wondered if she was going to suggest they hang out, when she continued, "I'm going to get my nails done – look at the state of them! – and then I'm going up the West End with Cho and Rose, and . . ."
Cho? Harry wondered if he'd heard that right, but Parvati was already talking about something else – her thousands of plans for the weekend, if he understood correctly – and he couldn't think of how to ask if it was Cho Chang she was meeting without sounding like a stalker or a lunatic.
"So jealous you don't have another shift until Monday, ugh, I can't even," Parvati said, and she gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before setting off at double-pace in the opposite direction to Harry's house. "See you then! I'll bring you coffee as usual. Be wearing clothes this time!" she called over her shoulder.
A passing elderly lady gave Harry a very funny look, and he resisted the urge to protest that he always wore clothes! Always! Even in the bath! But instead he just smiled weakly at her, and she shied away like a startled Hippogriff, gripping her walking stick more tightly in case Harry, the secretly naked sex pest, suddenly decided to attack.
Best to get home as soon as possible, Harry thought, speeding up. He groped in his pocket for the folded bit of paper with the address and phone number on it, and sped up a bit more. Maybe it was Hermione, he thought, hope rising in his chest. Maybe it was her, and she'd answer and would take charge of the situation in her usual calm and efficient way, and explain that the reason she hadn't called him first was because he wasn't in the phone book, was he? And she'd been too busy, anyway, working out how to fix things, which was why she hadn't visited, and she'd already got a plan, and—
It was only a minute's walk, if that, from the shop to his house. Harry was almost at his front door. He stopped dead, his heart suddenly speeding up unpleasantly. There, sitting on his top step, wearing a very sharp skirt suit and talking rapidly on a mobile phone, was . . .
"Parkinson?" Harry said, stomping up the steps and trying not to glower at her. "What are you doing here?"
"Got to go," Pansy said into her phone, snapping it shut and giving him an unimpressed stare. "Have we met?" she said, and then, before he could reply, let out a very sharp sigh and said, "I presume you're Harry. Have you any idea how long I've been waiting?"
"No?" Harry said, not sure whether he was pleased or disappointed that she didn't recognise him. If she didn't recognise him, then she definitely didn't remember the wizarding world. But on the other hand, even if she had, what use would that have been? Pansy loathed him, and the feeling was entirely mutual; he suspected she'd rather spit in his eye than help him, even if it was in her own self-interest.
Pansy stood up, batting at the seat of her skirt with her hand, and swinging her handbag into the crook of her arm. "Well, come on," she said, and started descending the steps, her heels clicking on the stone as she went.
"Where to?" Harry demanded. But, in a way, he already knew. There was only one reason why Pansy would be sitting on his doorstep. Sodding, arsing hell. "I've only just got home! I need to get changed and—"
"No," Pansy said, scowling at him from the foot of the steps. "If you don't come now, I'm going without you."
Harry considered this. It sounded lovely. Horrible Pansy Parkinson sodding off and leaving him alone, rather than dragging him to Malfoy's foul lair. Harry was surprisingly tired after a day on his feet, and he wanted to go inside, drink a pint of coffee and have a boiling hot bath before calling Hermione and going home, back to the world where he belonged. He didn't want to schlep all the way to wherever Malfoy was lurking, all . . . all . . . popular and pretty and . . .
Harry could feel himself starting to flush bright red. Pretty! For fuck's sake. Malfoy was a toad and Parkinson was a cow and everything was too awful for words.
Pansy was tapping her foot impatiently on the pavement now, her arms folded tight and her whole mouth a scowl. "Well?"
"All right! All right!" Harry said crossly, slouching back down the stairs and following her into the back of a sleek black car parked up outside his house.
"Driver, Elstree Studios, Eldon Avenue entrance, as fast as you can," Pansy ordered, and the man in the driving seat nodded and pulled out before Harry'd had a chance to put his seatbelt on.
Despite the fast start, however, the journey seemed to take ages. Pansy appeared as reluctant to talk to Harry as he was to talk to her, but after half an hour the silence seemed to have mutated into something alive and furry, and Harry felt compelled to break it or else be smothered alive by it. "Known Malfoy long?" he asked.
Pansy shot him a poisonous look. "Since school." She went back to tapping away at her phone, but then turned her head to give him a nasty smile. "We were at Hogwarts together, you know. Where did you go to school?"
Where had he gone to school? Harry didn't think the answer 'dunno' would go down very well. "St Brutus' Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys," he said, mostly to see Pansy twitch. It was entirely possible he had been sent somewhere like that by Uncle Vernon though, he realised once he'd said it. If he'd been sent a Hogwarts letter in this reality, Vernon would probably still have chucked it in the bin, out of spite. And with no Hagrid, how would Harry have ever known about it?
"God," Pansy murmured, sounding absolutely disgusted. "Draco's taste, I swear . . ."
"Sorry, what?" Harry asked, but Pansy pursed her lips tight and turned away to stare fixedly out of the window, so Harry gave up on getting an answer, feeling incredibly unnerved.
It took another twenty minutes of Harry constantly checking his watch before the driver pulled off the main, ugly road and into an equally ugly private side road. Harry tried not to groan when he realised that the road was packed with a queue of teenage girls again, and Pansy swore under her breath, looking with irritation at her own watch. The driver beeped his horn loudly, and the girls made a minimal attempt to clear a path for the car, peering with interest into the windows and looking both very excited to see Pansy and hugely disappointed to see Harry. It was a novel experience.
The car inched along, finally rolling to a halt in front of a horizontal red and white striped pole blocking the way, along with a row of bored-looking security guards. By the side of the road was a small booth holding an equally bored-looking security guard, who stuck his head out of the window to glance vacantly at the ID pass Pansy was waving at him, before vanishing back inside. The pole raised, the security guards parted, and the car started up again, driving further down a road flanked by squat, concrete buildings and pulling up outside an unprepossessing doorway.
"Who are the girls waiting for?" Harry asked gloomily, not really wanting to hear the answer, as Pansy punched a code into the grid by the door and yanked it open.
She didn't deign to reply, so Harry followed her in, down a maze of dull grey-painted corridors, the sound of her heels muffled by grim-looking mid-blue carpet tiles. Finally, she paused outside one of dozens of identical-looking doors and knocked smartly, turning the knob before she'd heard an answer from the room's occupant. "We're here for Top of the Pops, of course," Pansy said to Harry as she walked through the door, an eye roll in her voice. "You know – the hit music programme?"
"If only you'd asked, I'd've told you I can't sing," Harry said snidely as he followed after her, to come face to face – of course – with Malfoy. And—
"Luna?" Harry said in surprise, nearly falling over his own feet. "Is that you?"
"Hello to you too," Malfoy said snidely, and Harry opened his mouth to say something snide right back but found himself tongue-tied, remembering, very inconveniently, how he'd fantasised the night before about Malfoy sucking him off.
"Hello," Luna said peacefully, her hands moving restlessly through a rail stuffed with outfits, "are you one of Draco's friends?"
"No," said Harry, at the same time as Malfoy said, "Yes."
Malfoy shot him a look of intense dislike. "Ha ha," he said. "Potter, this is Luna, my stylist. We were at school together. Luna, this is . . ." He stumbled on the word. "Harry. Harry Potter. We . . ."
"Weren't at school together," Harry said solemnly, going up to Luna and offering his hand for her to shake.
Luna took it and, to his surprise, kissed the back of it, before smiling at him. "You have a wonderful aura, Harry," she said, and waved a hand vaguely around his head. "So vibrant and sparkly."
Pansy snorted. "I notice that our star turn isn't very vibrant and sparkly right now, Loony. What are you putting him in for his performance? The rabid fans are already lurking outside, so preferably something with spikes in case they attack."
Luna didn't seem to take offense at being called Loony, but Harry bristled on her behalf. "I'm waiting for the stars to send me inspiration," she said, closing her eyes and smiling beatifically at the fabric in front of her.
"It's light outside," Pansy said. Her foot was tapping again.
"Not where they are," Luna replied brightly, her eyes still closed.
Harry shot a glance at Malfoy, to find that Malfoy was watching him, and looked away immediately, feeling himself flush.
"Luna's into new-age mystic shit, Harry," Pansy said, irritation clear in her voice. "In case you hadn't noticed. God, I need a ciggy."
"Go and have one then," Malfoy said dryly. "Take Luna with you."
Pansy narrowed her eyes. "Not up to mischief, are you?" She looked from Malfoy to Harry and back again in a way that made Harry's face feel even hotter. "Don't forget your fans are lurking everywhere, tosspot. That time with Blaise—"
"Yes, all right, Mum," Malfoy snapped, shifting uncomfortably in his chair, but Pansy seemed satisfied.
"Come on, Loony, let's take ten," she said, pulling on Luna's arm.
"Lovely to meet you, Harry!" Luna said, still beaming brightly, still with her eyes closed, as Pansy half-dragged her out the room.
". . . That time with Blaise?" Harry repeated faintly.
Malfoy shrugged, looking bored. "Use your imagination."
Harry did, and found he didn't enjoy it. Malfoy seemed to enjoy watching him though, a glimmer of spite on his lips.
"Well?" Malfoy said, when Harry had wracked his brains for several painful seconds and found he had no idea what to say.
Harry wet his lips nervously and looked around for inspiration. They were in a small dressing room of some sort, the rail of clothes on one side, and a bank of mirrors on the other. Squashed against the wall was the uncomfortable-looking sofa Malfoy was currently perched on. He was in Muggle clothes again, of course. Dark, closely fitting jeans and a white T-shirt topped with a very thin pale grey hoodie. "You look . . ." Harry started, and then trailed off at the look Malfoy was giving him. Sort of knowing and baffled, all at once, with a hideous layer of speculation under it all.
"I look?" Malfoy prompted, because he was that sort of little shit.
"Muggle," Harry said, folding his arms. There was no way he was giving Malfoy the satisfaction.
Malfoy appeared as satisfied as if Harry had told him he looked amaaaaaazing, though. "And what are you disguised as today then, saviour?"
Harry sensed a dark, deep pit looming in front of him. "Nothing," he said defensively, and Malfoy snorted.
"I thought you were happy to help?"
Harry looked down at his chest and the name badge proudly pinned to it. "Yeah, yeah, take the piss," he said. "Listen – have you—"
To Harry's irritation, the dressing room door swung back open and Luna re-entered, rolling up her sleeves with a look of determination. "Don't mind me!" she trilled, heading straight for the rail of clothes. "I know exactly what I need now. I've had a vision! I won't be long."
"I didn't know you were friends with Luna," Harry said levelly, looking Malfoy in the eye.
Malfoy stared right back.
"Since first year!" Luna said from behind the rail. "Some of the other children teased me, you know, but Draco was always so kind. He appreciates my vision."
"Really," Harry said doubtfully, and Malfoy raised an eyebrow.
"Everyone loves me, Potter," he said, with deep, displeasing smugness. "Didn't you know?"
"Yes," Harry said through gritted teeth, and he took a seat on one of the hard chairs by the mirrors. "But . . . even so, don't you think it would be better if things were, you know, back to normal?" he hissed at Malfoy, feeling unable to be more explicit because of Luna's lurking, cheerful presence.
Malfoy raised his eyes to the ceiling as if considering this. "No," he said eventually, and shot Harry a hard look. "I can't say I do."
"So you won't help fix things, then," Harry said flatly.
Malfoy was still looking at him – hard, and fierce, and inscrutable. Then he raised his eyebrows. "Did I hear you say please?"
Harry thought about this, and the idea of saying please to Draco Malfoy seemed a mountain he just couldn't climb. Had Malfoy ever said please to him, over anything? Or, more to the point, sorry? Of course he fucking hadn't.
"Draco?" Luna called from behind the clothes rail.
"Yes?" Malfoy said, finally turning off the Lumos-bright stare and turning towards Luna. She'd stuck her head out through a gap in the outfits, her cheeks framed by green velvet on one side and white lace on the other.
"How do you feel about clouds?"
"I love them," Malfoy said snidely. "What do you think, Harry?"
'Harry' thought that Malfoy needed a smack, but he didn't say it.
"Don't be sulky, Draco," Luna said, pushing a pile of white fabric into his arms. "It doesn't suit you, and you're making Harry nervous."
Malfoy snorted. "Nervous? Harry Potter never gets nervous. He's famed for it." He set the clothing down on the sofa next to him, and bent down to undo his shoelaces. He wasn't . . . was he?
Luna turned her pale, knowing gaze on Harry. "Oh, no, Draco, you're wrong there. I think he's pretty nervous right now," she said, her voice small and clear. She leaned in a fraction towards Harry and lowered her voice. "You're making him nervous too, Harry," she said confidentially. "If that helps."
It bloody well didn't help.
"Stop talking nonsense," Malfoy snapped, kicking off his shoes and standing up. He grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt and yanked it over his head, before reaching for the fly of his jeans.
Harry tried not to stare, and couldn't stop himself. It was as if the picture from that fucking book had come to life and was stripping off the rest of his clothes in front of him. He tried not to feel turned on, tried not to think about Malfoy's mouth, and the harder he tried, the worse it got.
"It's not nonsense," Luna said serenely. "Look, you're both going red."
Harry looked at Malfoy. Malfoy, who was now dressed solely in tight, white boxers, and whose crotch was level with Harry's face. If Harry hadn't been red before, he certainly was now. Fucking hell.
Malfoy turned, displaying a firm, rounded arse, and stepped into the white trousers Luna had passed him. They weren't particularly tight, but they were so ripped in places that they were mostly hole. He followed it up with a top – thank Merlin – but it was sleeveless, the fabric so thin it was almost transparent.
"Perfect," Luna said, and she clapped her hands when Malfoy turned towards her. "The fans will eat you up."
Malfoy glanced sidelong at Harry. "Will they?" he asked. His expression – his voice: it all suggested he knew exactly what Harry was thinking, and was ready and willing to take full and horrendous advantage of this new and unexpected turn of events. Harry, feeling a shock of horror a bit like he'd been plunged into a bath of cold water, wondered for a split second if Malfoy was a Legilimens, before remembering that Malfoy probably didn't have a wand. Malfoy had no way of knowing what he was thinking, Harry told himself firmly. He'd just seen that Harry was embarrassed over the whole stripping off thing and was playing on that for all it was worth, that was all.
Luna skipped over and patted Harry on the top of the head. "Don't be mean to Harry," she said to Malfoy, and then skipped her way right out of the room, humming something underneath her breath.
Harry tried not to grind his teeth. His jaw was killing him. Malfoy – fucking gorgeous Muggle Malfoy, Harry felt like he was going nuts – looked like he was about to start laughing, and Harry had had enough. "Merlin, you're milking this for all it's worth, aren't you!" he said indignantly, and Malfoy's smug smirk turned sour. "Who'd have thought that you would make such a wonderful Muggle!"
"Jealous you're not the important one any more?" Malfoy asked, voice now cold. He slouched back on the sofa and glared at Harry.
"Of course not!" Harry snapped. "I just want things to go back the way they were!"
"Yes, of course you do," Malfoy said, lip curling. "You're a nobody here, aren't you? You always pretended to hate being famous, but the minute no one's fawning over you, you're crawling to me to fix it. To me!" Malfoy repeated incredulously. "And you can't even bring yourself to say please! Honestly, Potter. You always deserved to be taken down a peg or two, even if you and your self-righteous friends could never see it."
Harry rose to his feet as fast if he'd been pushed. "This is why none of your so-called friends stuck by you when your side lost!" he found himself half-shouting. "Because you're a nasty piece of work, Malfoy. How long do you think it will be before Luna and everyone else here finds out the truth for themselves?"
Malfoy launched himself out of his own seat, and for a moment Harry thought that he might have to fight him, was struck again by the thought that he didn't know for certain that Malfoy didn't have a wand. Malfoy was breathing heavily, his face red and his hands coiled into fists by his side. But rather than hexing, or even just punching, he simply turned and went to sit back down on the sofa again, his face very tight. "Fuck off, Potter," Malfoy said eventually, his voice angry and unsteady.
"Yeah, all right, I will," Harry snapped. "Thanks for nothing." And he stalked out, slamming the door behind him.
Harry's anger deflated as soon as he was in the corridor, leaving behind a sensation of flatness and a pressure headache, as if someone was resting a heavy weight on the top of his head. Well, that had gone well, he thought, trying to resist the urge to throw himself to the floor and have a tantrum like a toddler. Instead of enlisting Malfoy's help, all he'd managed to do was start an argument. God, but Malfoy was a tosser though, Harry thought crossly, looking up and down the corridor and wondering which way was out.
Pansy and Luna were both tossers too, he concluded shortly after when they both sprung out of nowhere to give him uncomfortable, judgemental stares. Instead of offering him a lift back to Islington, as he'd hoped, Pansy also told him to fuck off, while Luna looked at him with her pale, protruding eyes and wondered out loud why he wasn't planning to wait and watch Draco perform on the show. "Because I don't want to!" Harry had said, and had stomped off in a direction that he later learned was the wrong one, of course it was.
He managed to find a train station eventually, and by the time he'd worked out where and how to buy a ticket, and which train to get, it was rush hour and he'd almost lost the will to live. The angry words he'd exchanged with Malfoy kept running round and round in his head, and to his irritation he started to wonder if it was him who'd been the dickhead, rather than Malfoy. But then he remembered again how Malfoy had seemed to enjoy casually making him uncomfortable, and how he'd said that Harry deserved to be taken down a peg or two, and he was angry all over again. He'd lost his childhood being groomed to fight a monster, while Malfoy's troubles had been entirely of his own making. Harry shut his eyes against the sway of the train, the smell of stale coffee and stale sweat, and felt very unhappy indeed.
^^^^^^
By the time Harry was nearly home, he was no longer angry, or unhappy, or much of anything, really. He just felt tired, and flat. He grabbed another takeaway pizza, because he couldn't be bothered to cook, and let himself into his house. It was gloomy, and quiet, and he managed to find a light switch, which filled the hallway with artificial brightness and illuminated the dust.
He made his way up to his bedroom and slumped on the bed to kick off his shoes, dumping the pizza box on his duvet, before standing up again briefly to switch on the TV. He missed his wand, almost as much as if he was missing a limb. Its quiet presence made him feel secure, somehow. Just the feel of it – warm, and almost electric, under his fingertips. It wasn't as if it was difficult to adjust back to Muggle life, really, Harry thought dully as he crossed his legs on the bed and opened up the pizza box. He'd had plenty of practise at it. But, right now it felt like someone had briefly pulled back the curtain to show him a world that was more vibrant, more full of life, and once he'd got used to it, they'd drawn the curtain in his face.
Was it the magic he missed most, or his friends? His life? Harry morosely pushed a slice of pizza in his mouth and chewed. He genuinely couldn't tell.
His attention was caught by cheerful, pulsing music pounding out of the TV, and he looked up, bracing himself when he heard the presenter introduce the show as Top of the Pops. He didn't want to see Malfoy on TV, absolutely not. But he couldn't seem to bring himself to turn it off. So he waited, mechanically chewing, as the perky presenter babbled on about the upcoming acts, informing the viewers that unfortunately tonight's number one couldn't be with us – the crowd made sounds of despair – but they'd be revealing, exclusively, their brand-new music video instead.
Harry wasn't sure he'd understood, but as he sat through the show, not enjoying a variety of pop acts who very much weren't Malfoy, it became increasingly clear. Malfoy was number one. But, despite being very much in the studio earlier and allegedly there to perform his single for the crowd, he hadn't done so.
Jayne Middlemiss finally announced this week's number one – "Draco Malfoy's emotional and magical 'I love you', from the number one album of the same name!!!" – and an obviously pre-recorded video started playing. Malfoy, looking lost and fragile in the centre of a dark screen, stared at the camera as a piano started to play something haunting and emotional. Harry had never seen him pull that expression before. As if he was broken.
Harry reached for the remote and switched it off, falling backwards on the bed with a thud. None of this was real, he reminded himself, staring up at the ceiling. None of this was real.