Title: Acts of Life

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, eventual Harry/Draco

Rating: R

Warnings: Angst, some violence

Summary: That Harry returned Draco's wand to him was only one small act in a life, one thing that he might have done or not done. But more acts succeed that one, and Harry and Draco find themselves sharing more and more of them.

Author's Notes: Despite the angst warning, this story is more fluffy than anything else, and is episodic. It will be updated every Monday.

Acts of Life

Returning

Harry stretched as he rolled out of bed. He had slept almost six hours, he saw, when he cast the Tempus Charm, and that seemed to be what he had most needed.

He felt wonderful. His muscles were softly relaxed, he could move without wincing again, and his head was clear. If he had to, Harry knew now, he could face the stares when he stepped into the Great Hall.

But best of all, his holly wand was whole and back in his hand.

Harry smiled at it and made his way down the stairs.

It seemed that the only change that had been made in the Great Hall was covering up or removing the bodies and setting out food. Harry glanced at the place where Mrs. Weasley had defeated Bellatrix, with a morbid curiosity, but there was nothing there, not even blood. He nodded, a little relieved, and grabbed a cup of the strong tea that the house-elves must have brewed from the Ravenclaw table.

There were still plenty of people milling around, sitting in corners talking, or huddled in blankets and weeping. Some of them stared up at him, but no one made a move to approach. Harry grabbed a sandwich that had insufficient cheese on it, slapped some more on, and stared around, searching for the Weasleys.

Instead, he saw more people he would have expected to be gone by now. The Malfoys still sat in a sheltered corner near the doors, whispering to each other. Narcissa appeared to have fond a grey cloak from somewhere and was wrapping Draco's shoulders in it. Harry shuddered for a second, then relaxed. If it was grey, then it probably hadn't belonged to a Death Eater.

And if it had belonged to someone dead, well. They didn't need it anymore.

Harry looked around one more time, for Weasleys. Their hair should have made them stand out, but it seemed they'd all gone to bed. Probably for the best, Harry thought, and closed his eyes for a second as the memory of Fred's death came to him.

Then he took out the hawthorn wand he'd conquered and considered it. There was no reason to keep it, when he thought about things. He already had one wand he didn't want. The Aurors might want this one as evidence—Harry had no doubt that all three Malfoys would go through a trial—but they could just as well take it back from Draco as not.

The Malfoys apparently noticed the instant he started walking towards them. Lucius tensed up and spread his hands flat on the table in front of him, to show they were empty. Draco ducked his head, muffling his face. Narcissa was the only one who went still and hostile and simply looked up at Harry, as if to say that she wouldn't move an inch away from her son now she'd found him.

Harry didn't want her to. He wanted this resolved as simply and neatly as possible. He held out the wand the instant he got in front of Draco. "This is yours."

Draco stared at him, then at the wand again, his face as pale as glass. When he reached out a shaking hand, Harry was startled by the rush of compassion in his own heart. He held the wand firmly until Draco could grasp it, so he wouldn't drop it and embarrass himself further. It whisked away into his cloak in a second.

"Why?" Draco whispered.

Harry wondered for a second how many questions there were that he could take that to mean. But there was no point in pretending he didn't understand, not when his goal wasn't to embarrass Draco. He smiled at him, shrugged, and said, "I think you aren't going to run off and cast Dark Arts spells in the time before the Ministry comes to collect you. So you might as well be able to warm yourself or something."

He'd started to turn away when there was an intense bout of whispering behind him. Harry turned back, and found Lucius leaning forwards and fixing him with a haggard gaze.

"Will you take care of my family?" he asked.

Harry thought about that, then gave the most honest answer he could. "I don't know how much I'll be able to. The Ministry doesn't necessarily listen to me. I'll tell the truth about what they did for me during the war, though."

Lucius blinked, then nodded in exhaustion and sat back down. "That is the best I can hope for."

"Yeah," Harry said, as gently as possible. "It kind of is." He wasn't going to lie maliciously just because Draco and Narcissa were Slytherins, which was probably what Lucius had been afraid of, but on the other hand, he wasn't going to lie positively for them either and pretend they had been secretly on Dumbledore's side all along.

"As long as I can hope," said Lucius, and turned back to talk to his wife. Draco huddled into the cloak his mother had found him and said nothing.

"Harry!"

That was Ginny's voice, from the other side of the Hall. Harry turned around, waved, and moved towards her. It was almost midnight, so there was no sunlight to actually shine down from the ceiling, but he didn't care. He had enough sunlight in his heart for both of them.

And it remained when she grabbed him around the waist and held him tight, even when she began crying about Fred, and Harry could hold her through their shared mourning and murmur reassurances into her hair. They would move on together.

"Draco, dear. You're staring."

Draco flushed and lowered his eyes from Potter's back. It seemed like a dream, even though it had just happened. Potter had come over and handed him back his wand. And he hadn't said anything insulting, either, and it sounded as though he might talk about things like Mother saving his life in the Forbidden Forest.

Draco felt off-balance. The Dark Lord falling had been like a burst of fire in his heart and brain. And then, burned, he had sat back and waited for the appearance of Aurors. He had thought he would find himself in Azkaban before the next sunrise.

Instead, they had been left to sit here. Draco had seen an Auror or two, but they had paid no attention to his family except to glance at them now and then. They had seemed far more interested in removing the bodies and rounding up Death Eaters.

Other Death Eaters.

Draco closed his eyes. He had never felt like a real Death Eater. He rather doubted that the Aurors would take note of that argument, though.

"Here," said Mother, and Draco opened his eyes and looked at her. She had extended a plate of sandwiches, most of which looked as if they were simply cheese, with here and there a glimpse of green that might be lettuce. "You need to eat something, Draco."

Draco nodded and accepted a sandwich. He felt the crunch in his mouth and the swallow a second later as if they were happening to someone else, in another world. While his parents were occupied with the sandwiches and talking to each other, Draco sneaked another glance across the Great Hall.

Potter sat at the Hufflepuff table with the rest of the Weasleys. Littlest Weasley had an arm around his waist and her head leaning on his shoulder. The rest of them sat across from Potter, their faces all decorated with identical expressions of pain.

No, wait, not all of them, Draco discovered a second later. One of the twins that had so often plagued him was missing.

Draco sat slowly back. It wasn't as though he had ever known the Weasley twins well, and they had got him into trouble and pranked other Slytherins to the point where he had thought he would be happy to see their dad lose his job or something. He hadn't shed any tears when the twins defied Umbridge and left the school, either.

But it still set up a strange resonance in him to see one of them gone. He had thought—he would take it better. He had thought he was prepared for war.

Now, though, all it made him feel was hollow, and he turned away from the Weasleys and stared down at the uneaten sandwich in his hand. He had thought he was a grand, brave warrior, both when he had got Marked and when he had thought of the plan to go and capture Potter in the Room of Hidden Things. But instead, he had failed to kill Dumbledore, and he had trembled at the Dark Lord's feet, and he had never succeeded even in the things that would have saved his family.

War was so different from what he had thought it would be, and so was life, now. He had been sure, eight hours ago, that he would die in battle. Or running away from battle. His back had itched frantically because of the curses Draco was sure would hit it while he was running, and amazingly, the itching had bothered him more than his fear.

A thought stirred to life in Draco's mind, and sat there stirring no matter what he did, how much he tried to sit on it.

What are we going to do now?

He didn't know. Draco toyed with the sandwich. Now, more than ever, he wanted the Aurors to come, because that would mean he'd know one way or the other.

"Eat your sandwich, dear."

Draco obediently lifted the sandwich to his mouth and took a bite. When he shifted, he could feel the hawthorn wand at his side. When he turned, his mother pressed a gentle hand on his shoulder, and even his father gave him an exhausted smile.

No, it's different from what I thought it was going to be.

Not least because I'm still alive.

All right, then. Draco would find out what things were going to be like now, and he would do what he could to continue living in a way that would help his family and satisfy himself. Much the same thing he had tried to do during the war, only now with fewer Dark Lords threatening him and curses flying around.

Draco did his best to hide his grin, because he knew neither Mother nor Father would understand if they saw it.

So. Much better, then.