His eyes had never left you.

It had been — unnerving, to say the least. Not so much the staring, because Malfoy has always stared at you. Always. The two of you have long since perfected the art of locking eyes across a crowded room.

This is different. It's like — well, the way he looked at you at the Manor, before announcing to his aunt that he couldn't be sure. You know the truth. He must have known it was you. You would know his face anywhere; surely, he would know yours.

It's the way he looked at you in the Room of Requirement, when you grabbed his hand and pulled him from the fire.

You've lain awake at night wondering what that look meant.

(His eyes have been cold, as long as you've known him. His eyes have been cold, set in a too-pale, too-pointed face that may as well have been carved from ice. You alone have seen it crack. He might have killed you for it. Instead, you nearly killed him.)

You turn, and he's standing there. He seems to be gathering his courage. He's gaunt and pale — paler than usual — and his eyes are fixed on his shoes. He's trembling. You say nothing, because you don't know what to say, and you're waiting for him to speak. You're waiting for him to thank you.

You've saved him again. You've saved the lot of them, because he saved you, and his mum saved you, and his father —

Lucius Malfoy is cruel and pathetic and cowardly, but you couldn't stomach the thought of saving only two out of three.

This family is fucked, but they are a family.

He never does say anything. Instead, he shuffles forward and flings his arms around you. You tense, but do not shake him off. He's still shaking. You think he might be crying, but can't be sure.

It's over before you've truly had a chance to process it. He withdraws as though burned, and hurries away from you. His eyes, you think, were wet when he turned away.

The memory of his arms around you haunts you for weeks.

(*)

You mail him his wand with a note attached:

Malfoy,

Thought you'd be wanting this back.
Bumped into your friend Zabini the other day. He said you weren't coming back to school.
It's too bad. Hogwarts won't be the same without you.

H. Potter

On September 1st, you see him on the platform. He is still too pale, too thin. So are you. The two of you have long since perfected the art of locking eyes across a crowded room, and this is no exception.

You raise a hand in greeting. He smiles.

Neither of you say a word. As the train speeds towards its destination, Hermione and Ron chatter animatedly in an effort to ease the unspoken tension – none of you have set foot in Hogwarts since the end of the war.

All you can think about is how beautiful Draco Malfoy is when he smiles.

(*)

You've been trying to teach him the Patronus Charm for weeks, and he's barely managed a incorporeal one – and even then, it lasts only a few seconds before vanishing. He's understandably discouraged, although you've tried to explain multiple times that the charm is difficult. Nobody masters it right away, and there are plenty of people who can't even manage an incorporeal patronus.

"…what memory do you use?" he asks quietly. "Maybe my memory just – isn't working."

"I don't use any one memory," you say. It varies. You tell him that, sometimes, you think of your family. The memories are contrived, flashes of things that never happened but might have, if things had been different. Your mother, stroking your hair, reading to you from the Tales of Beadle the Bard. Your father, teaching you to fly. Sometimes, you think of the night you met Sirius; you remember the life you'd planned, a house in the country where you can see the sky.

Tonight, you'd been thinking of that day at the ministry – Draco's arms around you. You don't tell him.

"I want to try again," he says after a moment. "I think I know a memory that will work." When he succeeds in casting a fully corporeal patronus, you don't ask him which memory he chose. You don't need to.

It's a stag.

A/N: If you would like to support my writing with a donation, my Ko-Fi is pinned to my Twitter profile - kath_lightfoot. As always, thank you for reading!