/Notes: Hullo♡ I've been going through this story from the beginning to edit it a bit and realised I accidentally left out a part from the original story. So if you want, chapter 9 has a new part, the very first section.
Thank you for reading and just being lovely in general.  /

  '~*~'   

Breakfast was about enough to feed ten people and included every single vaguely breakfast sort of food that Suppy knew how to make. Draco did his best not to react, but Harry glanced at him curiously as they sat down.

"No this isn't normal," Draco said, "Suppy just gets excited about feeding new people."

"All of your house elves are a bit strange."

"House elves are strange in general," Draco said,

Harry tore off the corner of a croissant and popped it into his mouth, "S'good."

Draco sat beside him and grabbed a chocolate croissant. "Try and refrain from talking with your mouth full when we eat with Mother."

"We're eating with your mum?" Harry asked.

Draco winced, "I might've forgotten to mention, she wants us to have dinner with her tonight."

Harry swallowed hard and put on a game face, "Any tips?"

"Don't eat with your hands?"

Harry gave him a look, "Like what fork to use."

"The one next to your plate I would imagine," Draco said and shook his head, "It's not a formal dinner party, you dope. There's probably only going to be three or four courses at most."

"Not fancy at all then," Harry said sarcastically.

Draco resisted chucking the rest of his croissant at Harry's head, but only because he wanted to eat it, "Hogwarts has anywhere from five to eight courses at every meal, the only difference is that it comes all at once."

"I suppose. It's still pretty different though, on account of it being dinner with your mum," Harry said.

"She doesn't bite," Draco said.

"She's very intense though."

Draco conceded reluctantly, "There are times..."

"Draco!" Pansy shouted from out in the hall, fury carried in her every footfall, "I can't believe you let me sleep in this dress! It's chiffon!" She flung the door open, stomping inside, a badly crumpled dress in one hand, "If you think I'm going to trust one of your elves to clean-" She went entirely still at the sight of Harry.

Draco said, "I was a bit drunk at the time and didn't-"

"What's he doing here?" Pansy asked.

Draco hesitated, "Harry came last night-"

"No," Pansy cut him off.

"-to see me. What-?"

"Nope. I'm not- No. No." Pansy held up a hand, "I can't- Not now." She turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

Harry broke the silence, "What was that about?"

Draco blinked, "Specifically at the moment, I haven't a clue. She doesn't particularly like you so it might just be your face."

Harry shoved him half-heartedly, "You're the one who ruined her dress."

"It isn't ruined. She's just being dramatic," Draco said.

Harry started putting together a proper plate of food, "Is it about her saying I should be handed over to Voldemort-? because I don't care about that. And I've never talked to the press about it, don't talk to them at all if I can help it."

Draco knew exactly why she didn't like Harry and had no interest what-so-ever in bringing it up. He just shrugged.

Harry handed Draco the plate, "Here. I still want to see your old room, and it's past noon as it is."

Draco took a bite of quiche, even as his appetite vanished.

  '~*~'   

Draco led the way through the hall and down the stairs, back into the main hall and across the ringing marble tiles to the large dark doors sealed with wards. He took a deep breath as he drew his wand, changing the ward signature to allow them through and opening the doors with another charm so he wouldn't have to touch them.

"Your old room is on the other side of the house?" Harry asked.

Draco barely glanced back to see the furrow on Harry's brow, "Yes." He didn't let himself hesitate and only shuddered slightly as they went through the wards.

The change wasn't immediately noticeable, the shadows were a little deeper, and there was a chill in the air that made the hair stand up on his arms. Draco knew that over time the shadows seemed to fill every corner and the chill couldn't be warmed by the hottest fire or charm.

Their footfalls were muffled by a faded carpet runner, its colours gone to shades of grey. The portraits on the wall clung with cobwebs, their occupants missing. Motes of dust floated on narrow slits of light between the closed heavy brocade curtains, kicked up into swirling patterns as they passed.

Harry drew closer to Draco without seeming to realise it, nearly matching him shoulder to shoulder as they entered the family wing.

Draco stopped at a small door halfway down, easing the knob open with a faint click and stepping inside. He quickly shut the door as soon as Harry was inside.

There was a distinct lack of dust in the room that indicated that Kipper was still cleaning it regularly, but all the cleanliness in the world could hide the stale stagnate feeling about the place.

"It's-" Harry looked around, "It's not what I was expecting, I guess."

"What were you expecting then?"

Harry touched one of the four posters of Draco's old single bed, "Well.... bigger for a start. This one's half- even less than your room now," he said.

Draco looked over packed bookshelves of stories and adventures, read until dog-eared and soft, a chest full of old stuffed toys and dolls, figures of quidditch players and magical animals displayed on shelves. Posters of his favourite quidditch teams adorned the walls and a small desk set in front of the window, the wood stained with ink and the scratched doodles of a child bored of their lessons. The room was small but full of everything a boy could ever want, provided he whined enough.

"A boy should have a boy's room," Draco said, "A man earns his place."

Harry paused and gave Draco a quizzical look.

"It's a Malfoy tradition," Draco said as he charmed the curtains open and filled the room with light.

Harry wandered around looking at all the different toys and knick-knacks. He touched one of the many figures displayed on one of the many shelves and grinned as it started moving.

Draco sat on the edge of the bed.

"You were spoiled rotten," Harry said.

"Did you really expect anything different?" Draco asked, pressing a quelling hand on his knee to try and stop it from nervously bouncing.

"I guess not," Harry said, tapping a little quidditch figure and sending it flying in a circle around him. "Did your parents ever say no? To anything?"

"I think they just avoided taking me to shops whenever possible," Draco said. "If I asked from something completely ridiculous Mother would buy something reasonably similar to try and placate me. It never worked. I threw an embarrassing number of tantrums."

Harry had managed to get the entire team of quidditch figurines going, all looping around him like he was a massive goal hoop. "Explains a lot," he said grinning, his eyes following the tiny seeker as it chased a golden snitch the size of a pea, "You threw a few tantrums at school, with what you tried to do to Buckbeak."

Draco slid off the bed, kneeling in front of the small bookcase beside the bed running his fingers along the spines. He pulled out the Young Wizard Wallace and the Mysterious Magical Malady and flipped towards the end where he had marked his favourite part. It was where Wallace discovered that the spirit of his great-aunt Lucinda in the basement was the was source of the mysterious curse, and had to banish her with a powerful spell he'd found in a locked box in the attic. Of course, the locked away spell ended up being a problem all on its own that had to be solved in the next book.

He set the book on the bed, "That wasn't a tantrum."

"What?"

Draco took out a few of his other old favourite books, along with the first three volumes of A Young Wizards Guide to Growing Up. "It wasn't a tantrum. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to be fawned over, and it was the most attention my father-" He broke off and pointedly flipped through the fourth volume of Amelia Enchanted. "...Now, I know that he was just using the hippogriff incident to gain power and discredit the headmaster." He shook his head, "I got quite the lecture about how I should have known better than to put myself in harm's way to begin with."

Draco stared blankly at the books in his hands, brushing his thumb over a faded cover, the gold leaf embossing nearly gone.

Harry plucked the quidditch player out of the air one by one and replaced them on the shelf, "It seems like it's been a while since anyone's been here... You must have moved just before school started."

"Right after the war ended," Draco said quietly. He cleared his throat, "...This is the first time I've been back here."

Harry looked around the room with a faint frown, "Why?"

Draco stood and went over to the door, pausing his hand on the handle and gesturing for Harry to come over before he opened it. He leaned back against the door frame and pointed to the end of the hall. "The room at the end-"

"Yeah?" Harry said, stepping out into the hallway to see.

"That's the master bedroom, it was my parent's room. Riddle took it when he moved in," Draco said his voice quiet and flat. "My parents moved to the rooms adjacent," he pointed to the first door on the right after the door at the end of the hall. "Bellatrix took the rooms opposite, then there was Dolohov, Avery, Pettigrew," he went down the line, each door he pointed at drawing closer to his own.

Harry stared down the dark hallway.

"Most of them had homes of their own, but they would stay here during meetings," Draco said. He pointed at one more door, behind Harry, right across the hall from Draco's room, "That was Greyback's room."

Harry turned.

Draco told Harry's back, "As Father lost favour there was more and more talk of punishment. Any chance he got Greyback would tell Riddle that he should be allowed to bite me and then lock my parents and I in a room on the full moon so either I would kill them, or they would be forced to kill me. I think he was considering it near the end."

Harry slowly turned back to Draco, his jaw clenched so tight Draco could see the muscles jumping under his skin.

"The moment Riddle took the master bedroom and moved all his people in here, in the family wing, we- I should have realised we had no-"

"Draco," Harry said.

Draco blinked rapidly, anxiously clearing his throat, "I know it's nothing compared to what you went through." He nearly laughed, "You're probably the only person in the world I could say that to."

Harry took Draco's hands in his, "You're shaking."

"I'm fine," Draco said, trying to sound unaffected and failing quite badly, "After all there's nothing here any more."

Harry wrapped his arms around Draco and held him tightly until his shaking eased. He cupped Draco's face and brushed his hair back, "Let's get out of here, alright?"

Draco nodded. He picked up his pile of books, and impulsively took the seeker toy as well, shrinking them and putting them in his pocket.

Harry closed the door behind them, taking Draco's hand and leading the way back.