Canary Creams and New Yellow Paint - (DRARRY)

Chapter Ten

At half past four in the morning, Draco receives a call through the Floo Network.

"It's me," Potter says, as if Draco cannot see his face perfectly well, lit up in flames.

"Good evening and what the hell?" he replies. "Someone'd better be dying."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"Well, there's always next time."

"I think I've got something you need to see."

Draco tries to restart his brain, but it seems to be stalled in place. "At four in the morning?"

"Would you just get over here, already?"

Draco takes in Potter's reddened cheeks, his wild hair, and his ratty shirt, and he sighs. Because he knows he's saying yes.

Number twelve, Grimmauld Place is dark when he arrives, so he trips over the Floo grate Potter has carelessly pushed to the side. Heathen.

Potter emerges from a lit hallway with a pot of tea and a grimace. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Who needs all ten toes, anyway?"

"That's what I'm always saying."

Potter sets the tea on the coffee table and extracts his wand from his sleeve, lighting the tip with a quiet, "Lumos."

He walks closer to Draco — which is entirely unfair — only to pass right by him and go to the wall upon which most of his portraits hang.

Draco turns with him, and it takes a moment for his fuzzy brain to register that anything is wrong.

Then it does, jarring as a slap.

The first portrait Potter had painted, the one of Sirius Black, is smudged down the middle by a blurry streak, the paint on the right half slowly melting off the canvas. On the left, Potter's godfather is pulling at the skin of his face like putty, perhaps trying to see if it will start drooping down too. The paint is chipped in several places, revealing what looks like the man's skeleton all up and down his head and arm.

Next to him, Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks have abandoned their frame, leaving behind a red curtain that is steadily burning to a crisp over and over again. When the entire thing has blackened to ash, leaving the wall behind it bare cream paint, the process starts again.

"I can't help you," Draco says. "I don't know anything about magical portraits. Have you asked Dean Thomas?"

Potter massages his brow, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

He doesn't say anything.

"Are you ... all right?" Draco asks.

"I'm not sure I've ever been so exhausted. Even during the war. At least I was running on adrenaline, then."

"Well," he sits carefully in the armchair a few metres away from Potter, pressing his hands between his knees, "interpreting all that visual information at once is a lot. And you don't have any experience with it." Without thinking, he adds, "And you're not seventeen anymore."

Potter huffs out a laugh. "That's not what I mean."

"No?"

"I was exhausted before, too. Before all this. I don't know why. My life shouldn't be exhausting. It's easy. Easier than most."

"Except for all those formative years."

"Even including those."

Draco frowns, leaning forward. "Potter, I'm not qualified to act as a therapist."