Drarry One Shots

The Simple Joy of Baths

A/N This story was a request by a friend who really couldn't believe I hadn't written a story involving Drarry in the Prefect's Bathroom. Mistake amended. This is for you, happy birthday, darling!

Usual warning: contains swearing, no smut, just fluff (and the headcannon that Draco and Luna are cousins).

***

In the hours immediately after Potter defeated the Dark Lord there was an uncanny lull of emptiness. The fight was over, the villain was dead, you can all go home now, thank you very much...

Like his parents, Draco had milled hopelessly around in the Great Hall as the celebrations happened around them. He certainly wasn't in the circle of people allowed to pat Potter on the back and congratulate him wholeheartedly, even if it was what he wanted to do. And he did want to. Of course, he did. Potter had saved the Malfoys from a terrible fate – well, realistically, death. Draco saw that. Mother and father did too. But their defection was not enough at that point and they were caught in a deafeningly silent no man's land between the two sides.

Once the celebrations subsided, and to be honest they didn't last very long, it was a strange environment because the atmosphere and the actions were so subdued in a place that was so familiar yet so uncertain. Death weighed heavy in the air. And as the dust began to settle, shock blanketed everyone.

What was someone like him supposed to do in that situation?

Well, anyone, really, not just him. It seemed no one knew what to do with themselves and no one actually wanted to leave the school.

Those who had fled, had reason to flee. The rest of them... well, they just sort of loitered until they found something useful to do.

Of course, there were those who had a purpose or reason to stay; they were the ones who grieved and didn't want to leave their loved ones in the cold ruins of the school's Great Hall.

Of the rest of them, well, there were those who comforted or healed, those who found food and refreshments to share with those present, those who quietly rejoiced in their reunions with loved ones. There were those who gave statements to the Aurors when they eventually turned up at the scene and those who were helping the younger students reunite with their parents as they arrived at the school in droves. The Head of Houses were busy with registers, though McGonagall delegated her role to Neville Longbottom and no one argued about that. She was automatically presumed to be in charge alongside Potter and Kingsley Shacklebolt. There were those who just lingered, wanting... needing company after such devastation. There were those, like the Malfoys, who simply did not want to go home. Draco wasn't even sure where home was anymore; certainly not Malfoy Manor.

As a family, they did what they could and helped where they saw it would be accepted. With his jacket and tie finally discarded and lost somewhere, Draco helped Poppy Pomfrey. Mother helped lay out the bodies of the dead who had no family there to tend for them. And father, well, Draco saw him ask to borrow mother's wand and begin to clean the Great Hall. Perhaps not a priority in the grand scheme of things but Draco understood his logic for what else could father do that people would accept. He started in the area surrounding Severus, whose body had been brought up from the boathouse. Then he moved to Remus Lupin and Draco's cousin Tonks as mother tended to them, then other deceased, but only those without family or friends around them, clearly feeling like he couldn't be imposing. He meticulously cleaned the floor and space surrounding them, all equal in death to his care whether he knew them or not, whether they were child or adult.

Draco supposed it surprised him when people joined father's efforts elsewhere in the Hall, but there was a feeling of belief and hope in the activity, as if it wasn't right to have the bodies of the fallen laid out in such mess and devastation, as if people felt that by cleaning around them, it honoured them. The first to join the effort was Arthur Weasley. After tending to the area around his son, he worked beside father, the two unspeaking but a bridge crossed, as swirls of dust were gently and silently vanished and rubble and broken furniture removed. But Draco noticed that it was father, alone, who repaired the damage as he went, quietly mending the brokenness surrounding him.