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Faded Enmity	By : WillGirl Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Draco/Neville Views: 6385 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I make no claims to Harry Potter, either books or movies, and all rights belong to JKR. No money or other recompense is being made from this story.

Chapter List
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Neville Longbottom walked out of a shop that anyone else would have been far more discreet about walking out of, but he was Neville Longbottom. If one of the heroes of the war was visiting a place renowned for its traffic in illegal imports and cross-breeds, no one would bat an eye; everyone knew he was nearly finished with his studies for a Mastery in Herbology, and would be taking over the post at Hogwarts from Pomona Sprout when she retired next spring. If he wanted to brush up on some less-than-legal plants before he got there—indeed, if he had wanted to walk down the street, blatantly carrying a Class Three Untradable—no one was going to stop him, or even so much as sniff with censure.

Because he was Neville Longbottom, and he could get away with anything, these days.

Neville buttoned up his robes against the chilly November breeze, stuffed his hands in the pockets, and started to whistle. Everyone else along Knockturn Alley ducked their heads or hid their faces, not wanting to be seen there by Longbottom, in case he should take offense at their presence in this bastion of the Dark Arts, but Neville was no longer an Auror, and he no longer cared.

He did sort of like the way they all cowered before him, though.

But there was one figure who wasn’t cowering because of him. Neville slowed down and looked closer. It was a tall figure, very skinny, in shabby robes that hung too loosely on his frail frame. He shook slightly, head bowed low, one hand on the filthy walls to maintain his balance. He didn’t seem to have noticed that Neville was walking up the street behind him, and was studying him now curiously.

The bowed, white-blond head was very familiar.

“Malfoy?” Neville asked, when he drew even with the other man.

Malfoy jerked away at the sound of his own name, whirling around to stare at Neville with wide, shadowed eyes. He flattened himself against the wall, as if expecting a blow, and did not sag with relief when his gray eyes sharpened with recognition.

“Longbottom,” he said. His voice was low and raspy, harsh, nothing at all like the slow, cultured drawl that Neville remembered from school. “What—what do you want?”

Neville looked his old enemy up and down. Draco was even paler than he used to be, and seemed to have lost ten or twenty pounds that he hadn’t had to spare to begin with. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken over great, dark smudges that marked a distinct lack of sleep, and his thin lips were chapped and drawn tight. His pale hair hung lank and limp in his eyes, and was longer than Draco had ever worn it, with ragged ends. His clothing was several seasons out of date and not meant to guard against the chill of November. It hung loosely on his thin frame, like it had been bought for a larger man—or for Malfoy, before he had gotten so thin—and while it was rich material, high-quality, it was faded and shabby and worn, inexpertly repaired in several places, with mismatched thread and sloppy stitching. His shoes were the same: scuffed and worn, with the threadbare look of too many years; if they had not been such high-quality to begin with, Neville guessed, they would have fallen apart two years ago, and as it was, they were barely hanging on. He had one single ring on his long, trembling fingers; it was untarnished, but clearly very old.

“What the hell happened to you?” Neville asked.

Malfoy stared at him, then gave a bark of bitter laughter. “The war,” he replied simply. “The war, and your justice afterward.” He spat the word, then leaned back against the wall, coughing.

Neville frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“You took everything, your Ministry,” Malfoy elaborated dully. “This is what’s left,” he said, running a hand along his person in a terrible mockery of his former elegant gestures.

“But...but you were released,” said Neville. “They deemed your actions—”

“Harmless,” Draco supplied, his face twisting into a dark sneer. “Yes, I was there.”

“Well, then why...”

“Why am I in such a state?” Draco asked quietly. He smiled. “Because the Ministry seized everything as war reparations against father, and people aren’t exactly lining up to give jobs to Death Eaters these days, not even around here.” He waved his left arm in Neville’s face; although the sleeves of his robes hung well below his wrists, both men knew what was hidden beneath them.

“What about your mother?” Neville asked, strangely curious about his childhood nemesis.

Draco’s face twitched into something like pain, then went still, the old mask of Malfoy Indifference hiding everything but the dark, wounded shadows in his eyes. “She’s...she’s with her sister,” Draco said quietly. “Andromeda is...is looking after her.”

“Looking after her?” Neville repeated.

Draco’s eyes flared with anger. “Yes,” he snapped, “because all of you destroyed her!”

“What are you talking about?” Neville said, “she was totally acquitted. Harry—”

“Yes,” Draco sneered, “Potter, he wouldn’t see her punished when she’d saved his life. Or wouldn’t see her imprisoned, at least. But you all still managed to punish her well enough despite that, didn’t you? I wouldn’t be surprised if that was Potter’s plan all along: look noble and magnanimous, and still get the revenge he wanted.”

“What are you talking about!” Neville repeated loudly, demandingly.

“You took everything from her!” Draco yelled, “Everything! And she couldn’t take it, all right? Not on top of—of everything that had happened!” There were tears in his grey eyes now, although his pale cheeks were still dry. “You threw father in prison, took everything she owned, everything that was familiar, and threw her out on the street with a wand and a suitcase, the few photographs that weren’t seized in ‘evidence,’ and it destroyed her!”

“I...I didn’t know...” said Neville, wide-eyed.

“Her sister took pity on her, took her in—as if that wasn’t the worse blow of all, forced to crawl to a woman she hadn’t spoken to in over twenty years, a woman who’d been burned right out of the family—forced to take pity from the only relative she had left! She couldn’t take it, couldn’t handle the idea of—she snapped, she’s gone.

“Half the time...half the time she doesn’t even know who she is, the rest...the rest she thinks she’s a girl again, before everything went wrong, before her sisters abandoned her, before...before father...” Draco clutched his left arm, the long fingers convulsing over the hidden mark there, as if it pained him. “Before the Dark Lord came into our lives,” he whispered, and his face was hollow.

Neville swallowed hard. “Oh,” he said. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say to that. But, “so why aren’t you with her?” he heard himself asking, his curiosity hot and demanding.

“I couldn’t stay there,” Draco muttered, “I just...I made things worse. I make her...she remembers, when she sees me...”

“So where are you now?” Neville asked.

Draco shrugged. “Wherever,” he said.

“You’re on the streets?”

“Sometimes,” Draco replied calmly. He shrugged again. “It could be worse. It’s not prison. And it still beats being at home when they were there.” He shuddered.

Neville nodded slowly, studying the mysterious man before him, the man he’d been so familiar with when they were boys, when they were enemies. He was trying to make sense of the two disparate people that called themselves Draco Malfoy, and he could not make them reconcile.

Malfoy’s shuddering did not abate, but worsened, and soon he was trembling all over. The shakes got so bad that he had to clutch the wall to remain upright, but then he suddenly doubled over, clutching himself as though stabbed in the gut. Neville reached out instinctively, catching the tremor-riddled form before it fell, crouching next to Draco and holding him out of the gutter.

His eyes were closed, his mouth open and gasping, as though he could not breathe, and then the pleading started. It was quiet and breathless, but bent so close to Draco’s face, Neville could hear every word clearly:

“Don’t, please don’t...I’ll do it...whatever you want...please...not them, don’t hurt them...oh no, please no, aunt, don’t—I’ll obey, I will, I won’t...please...please don’t make me...please, I can’t...I will, I promise! Please stop, stop—father! Father, help me! Help—”

The words choked off in a sob, and the violent shaking slowed to a steady tremble. With great effort, Draco straightened up, bracing himself on Neville, on the wall. His eyes flickered open reluctantly and he stared at Neville, and himself, and the cold pavement beneath them in confusion. “I...did you...thank you,” he gasped. He seemed surprised not to find himself in the gutter with Neville miles away.

Neville kept a hand on Malfoy’s shoulder, in case he should suddenly keel over again. “What was that—I’ll get you to St. Mungo’s, come on—”

“Stop,” Draco rasped, as Neville made to turn in midair and Disapparate them both.

Neville paused. “Don’t be daft,” he said, “you need to see the Healers, you just about—”

“I know what happened,” Draco rasped harshly. “It’s not exactly uncommon. Look around,” he said, gesturing curtly to the alley they stood in.

Neville did so, and although there were people peering nervously at him, and many others who looked away quickly, avoiding his eye, none of them showed the least bit of curiosity about Draco Malfoy’s seizure of moments ago. Neville frowned and turned back to the tall man trembling in front of him. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“They’re used to it,” Draco sneered, “and so am I. There’s nothing the Healers could do, even if I went to them—they gave up on this case long ago.”

“Gave up?” Neville repeated stupidly.

Draco shrugged. “There’s nothing they can do, so why waste time on me?”

Neville stared. “But...they’re Healers.”

“And I’m a Death Eater,” Draco retorted. “For some reason, they don’t see my case as particularly compelling.”

“Particularly compelling? You nearly shook yourself to pieces!”

Draco nodded. “I noticed,” he said wryly, “I was there.” He shrugged. “It happens pretty regularly,” he continued, “I’ve learned to live with it. Thanks for helping, though,” he added, much less grudgingly than Neville would have expected. “I didn’t fancy landing in that puddle. Cold enough out here already,” he said, and Neville couldn’t tell if he was shivering or trembling.

“What...what causes it?” Neville asked, voice hushed. He was shaken himself; he didn’t know how the denizens of Knockturn Alley could be so blasé about the sight of a man convulsing like that in front of them. Even if it happened in front of him every day, Neville doubted that he’d be able to get used to it. The wild shaking had been too...familiar.

“The war,” Draco said simply. When Neville kept staring, he continued: “Some curse, or punishment, or amusement I was subjected to,” he said with a disinterested shrug. “Maybe one of Potter’s,” he mused, his fingers steeling up involuntarily to brush his chest, “but more likely something from my side.” He smirked humorlessly. “I’ve always suspected it to be a lingering aftereffect of too much Cruciatus—”

Neville slapped him.

Malfoy recoiled as if from a much heavier blow. He stumbled back into the wall, his head cracking dully on the stone, and slipped halfway down its filthy surface before he managed to stop himself. He stared up at Neville, his eyes wide and shocked and pained.

“Don’t,” Neville snarled, “don’t. You don’t get to—you, of all people, don’t get to talk about the lingering effects of Cruciatus.” He was breathing hard, his nostrils flared, as if he’d just run a great distance, or beheaded a giant snake.

Draco nodded slowly, wiping blood from his lip. “Right...” he murmured, “your parents, right...my aunt...that’s right. I’d forgotten.” He smiled humorlessly. “Well, not really forgotten...sometimes I wish she’d kept the wand on me longer, pushed me over that edge, too...then maybe I wouldn’t have to remember so sharply, when it clears again...”

Neville wondered that he had no urge to hit him again. Ordinarily the very idea of anyone being bastard enough to say that they “envied Neville’s parents” would have sent him into a fury, but something in Malfoy’s tone—the broken, haunted way the words fell from his lips, maybe, like he was speaking from across some great chasm—just made him sad.

He stared at Draco, and came to a decision without realizing it. “When did you last eat?” he asked.

Draco shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied, as if that was an ordinary answer.

“How about have a bath?” Neville asked the usually immaculate man, looking at the smudged dirt on his fingers and the dull lifelessness of his hair.

“A proper one?” Draco asked, his lip curling in a smile that held no amusement. “Three days ago,” he said, “Thursday morning.” Something in his hard, icy eyes told Neville not to ask about that further, and for once, he didn’t.

“Right,” said Neville, “you’re coming with me.”

Malfoy flinched away, his eyes narrow and suspicious. “Why?” he hissed, “I haven’t done anything wrong—”

“I’m not taking you to the Ministry,” Neville interrupted impatiently. “We’re going to my flat. You’re going to clean up, and I’m going to feed you.”

“Why?” Draco said again, the suspicion deepening.

“I don’t know,” Neville replied honestly. “Maybe so that I can live with myself.”

He held out his hand.

After a long, trembling hesitation, Draco took it, and they were gone.
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Faded Enmity