Draco at Nineteen

PART 2

His face is different. It's him, but it's different, he's―

"We just celebrated your twenty-fifth birthday together."

"Together." The time travel bit is nothing to the strangeness of that word.

He grins again, a great warm thing, overflowing with humour, and delight, and something like— "Yes. Listen, it's chilly out here. Can I get in?"

It's the middle of the night, and Harry Potter is sitting in my room. He says he's from the future, and he looks older, and he wants to get into bed with me. I've had some fucked up dreams in my time, but―

"You told me that you'd probably think it was a weird kind of dream. You said you had a lot of those the year after the war."

"Merlin, Potter!"

"Don't start freaking out. It's OK. That's what I've come to tell you. It's all going to be OK." He's pulling at the covers, nudging at me until I move over enough for him to scramble onto the bed and tuck his legs in.

He looks around appraisingly. "Your room is nicer than mine was in Eighth Year." He waves at the hangings on the wall. "You've got tapestries, and stuff. And your bed is more comfortable." He bounces a little, making us both sway. "You would have thought they would have given me the better bed, wouldn't you, seeing how I was the Saviour and everything?"

It's so uncanny. His smile is just the same. Bloody brazen. You want to hate it, but you can't, because it's so infectious. The glasses are the same shape, but subtly more stylish. The hair is‒ well, whoever's been giving him advice about his hair knows a thing or two. He looks‒ really good. Fucking good. And his eyes are just as green as ever, and those bloody long black lashes, and—

"I don't understand." My voice sounds higher than I would have liked.

"Don't worry. It is a bit bonkers. It's strange for me, too, coming here, and seeing you like this. You're nineteen, right?"

"Tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm nineteen. Why did you come?"

"I told you. It was your idea. To come and tell you. About us. And everything. That it's all OK. Everything works out, you see. In the end."

"Everything works out." It sounds flat. But there's a tiny bubble of hope creeping along my spine. It's hard not to believe in impossible things, with Potter sitting in my bed grinning like that.

"I know you haven't exactly had a great year."

A scornful noise huffs out of my mouth.

"Yeah. You've told me," he says. "About having to leave the Manor. And people being generally shitty all the time. Thinking you were going to fuck up your NEWTs. Not to mention the nightmares, and—"

"Fuck, Potter, did you turn up simply to remind me how crap my life is?"

"No, that's the thing. In the future, things are different. I just came from your party. You're‒ happy now. Really happy. You love your work, and you like to travel, and‒ Things are good. We're good."

I look at him. There are tiny lines by the corners of his eyes, when he smiles. He looks like he smiles a lot. But this is all bollocks.

"Time turners don't take people back six years," I say. "You can only travel a few hours, and where would you get a time turner from anyway?"

He raises his eyebrows. "Hermione's a marvel. She invents all sorts of things. Then I nick the interesting stuff from her."

"My parents? Are they—" I know it's not real. I just want to hear what he says.