It had taken Harry only a handful of seconds, hovering on Draco Malfoy's front step, to realise that he hadn't expected to get this far. They'd stood there for a moment, each silent and bearing an air of faint surprise, before Harry had finally shoved his hands in his pockets and asked if Malfoy wanted to come back with him so they could sort out a plan.

Malfoy did.

Or... perhaps want was too strong a word. But with very little protest, he'd accepted Harry's muttered confession of the address, along with landmark instructions for how to get there, and then simply Apparated away.

Now, the two of them had made it into Harry's living room without once yelling at each other or attempting to break something, and Harry was fast realising that he would have to put in a little more effort than he had so far. Mumbling vague summaries of essential information, with his hands shoved in his pockets and his attention fixed anywhere other than Malfoy's oddly calm face, wasn't going to cut it.

If records could be handed out for the fastest ever experience of an existential crisis, Harry well thought he'd earned one. In the space of a few awkward minutes, standing there in his living room with absolutely no idea how to speak to this boy when he wasn't the enemy, Harry came to the conclusion that the world had changed. Life had changed. The two of them had changed.

And Malfoy was helping him.

Really, it was simple when you put it like that.

Harry cleared his throat. "I'll get us some tea, then. You're two sugars, yeah?"

Malfoy blinked at him. "Yes," he said after a moment. Then his eyes narrowed. "Not going to poison it, are you, Potter?"

Malfoy, it seemed, had not come to the same conclusion at the end of his three minute existential crisis.

"Bit complicated, don't you think?" Harry threw over his shoulder as he left for the kitchen. "Could've just offed you at the Manor if that was my plan, rather than in my own home where I was obviously the culprit."

Malfoy trailed after him. With a scoff, he muttered, "We don't all keel over and die at the sight of Expelliarmus, you know."

Something cold slid down Harry's throat, landing with a pit in his stomach. He fixed his gaze ahead and focused on the task at hand: make tea.

Don't poison it, no matter how tempting it's becoming.

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Malfoy skimming his fingers over everything within reach—the picture frames that lined the hall, the more benign Black Family knick knacks that Harry hadn't yet dealt with. With each new item, his curiosity seemed to grow until he was leaning with his nose practically pressed to them all.

There was something slightly different about Malfoy here, in this space, although Harry couldn't work out what it was.

When they reached the kitchen, Malfoy stood in the doorway for a full minute, studying everything with a pinched expression, as though he'd just smelled something bad.

Make tea.

Don't poison it.

"The letter's on the dining table," Harry said without turning around as he felt around in the top cupboard for two clean mugs. He could hear the soft tap tap tap of Malfoy's fingernail rapping against something, and he didn't want to know what it was. "I found it upstairs, but the way it appeared makes me think it was spelled to wait until... I don't know... the Ministry was settled again? The house finally decided it couldn't kill me off and it was stuck with me? No idea. It's two pages long, so go ahead and read it, and then you'll know as much as I do. Then there's a stack of star charts somewhere, and a bunch of Hermione's research as well."

Malfoy hummed in vague disinterest. The tapping sound increased in speed.

Make tea.

Only poison it a little.

Harry shook his head, gritted his teeth, and flicked the kettle to boil with his wand. Then he arranged two teabags in the mugs, rearranged them, turned the handles to face the other way, and finally decided he couldn't avoid it any longer. He turned around.

Malfoy was levitating the dining table four feet in the air.

"What the hell are you doing?" Harry asked with a tired air of resignation that he remembered hearing in Professor McGonagall's voice more often than he should have.

Malfoy tilted his head back up straight, from where it had been tilted at a ninety degree angle so he could see underneath the table, and glared at Harry. "This is an original Portineau."

"So?"

"So?!" Malfoy spat the word in disgust. The table wobbled dangerously in the air, and with wide eyes, Malfoy carefully lowered it back to the ground. "So, why in Merlin's name have you stuck a wire fruit bowl in the centre?"

"Because it's easier to see if the fruit at the bottom begins to rot?" Harry suggested.

This, apparently, was not the right answer.

Malfoy closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and appeared to count to three. "Fine," he muttered, the word coming out all nasally.

He dropped his hand, snapped his eyes open, and reached for the fruit bowl, plucking it neatly from the centre of the table and depositing it carefully on the counter next to the window, in the shade.

"Portineau was well known for having a personal vendetta against the industrial revolution," Malfoy said in a bored tone, dropping into the nearest seat and arranging his elbows delicately on the surface. "You'll notice all his joinery is perfected in the old dovetail technique; no nails, no screws, no braces. He hated metal, Potter, and if you place anything vaguely modern near his work, the magic he's woven into it will turn your food rancid."

Harry wrinkled his nose. Shit, was that why his eggs were always too runny.

"Huh," he said, not managing to find any other response.

"Huh," Malfoy mimicked him, in a much lower and denser tone, before rolling his eyes. Then he tilted his chin toward the kettle. "Kettle's about to boil."

It whistled immediately.

"Oh for fuck's sake," Harry muttered under his breath as he turned around to pour the tea. "Any particular reason you're being a giant twat? Or did you only agree to help me so you could insult me at every opportunity?"

"Naturally," Malfoy said with a smug grin, accepting the mug from Harry's outstretched hand before Harry could throw it at him. "But no—believe it or not, insulting you is relevant. You need to consider these things if you're on a quest."

Harry paused halfway into his seat. "On a quest?"

"That's what this is, isn't it?" Malfoy asked, arching one eyebrow as he drew Sirius's letter towards him and read it, blowing on his tea absentmindedly.

Harry's gaze fell to Malfoy's lips—to the calm, deliberate shape of the 'o' as he blew. He blinked, feeling unexpectedly dazed.

"Potter?"

Harry's eyes snapped up. Fortunately, Malfoy took a second longer to look at him, waiting for an answer with a faint line of irritation between his brows.

"This is a quest, isn't it?"

"Well... that sounds a bit fancy, but I guess—"

Malfoy made an irritated sound, but the look on his face was, if anything, delighted at Harry's ignorance. "You've never heard of a quest have you? They're Will contests, used in cases when the bequeathments are likely to protest who receives them. You have to earn the contents of the Will; you can't simply take them."

Oh. Well, that made sense.

"Yes," Harry said slowly. "The letter talks about making the magic trust me. That's why I need to do this with someone of Black blood, I guess. Because you're, like... vouching for me. Or something."

The furrow between Malfoy's brows deepened. "I've never heard of that," he confessed reluctantly. "But your godfather would have known the intricacies of his particular family magic more than I do. It can be fussy."

Still reading, he began to tap his finger against his bottom lip. It was very distracting.

Abruptly, Harry got up, needing to put space between him and Malfoy, although he couldn't quite work out why. Besides, the clock above the mantel kindly informed him that he was going to be late if he didn't start getting ready soon. Impulsive decisions to see Malfoy really hadn't done wonders for his schedule.

Malfoy barely flinched, deep in thought as he apparently analysed every word of Sirius' letter.

"I'll be back," Harry said.

With a grunt of acknowledgement, Malfoy waved him off.

The stairs of the old Black house still creaked like mad when Harry trod on them. He might have been imagining it, but he swore they didn't creak that much whenever he had guests over. It was like they reserved every aching, whining protest for him.

The sound as he stepped lightly toward his bedroom was like a herd of elephants traipsing along.

Shaking his head in irritation, he threw the door open a little harder than he meant to and crossed the floor to his wardrobe. He'd taken Sirius's room—naturally—and even though he'd known from the beginning that he would walk into the half-furnished remnants of his long dead godfather, he hadn't been prepared for what that meant.

He'd thought Sirius lived sparsely. That he'd thrown himself around his old family home with a lingering undercurrent of rage, leaving behind an imprint only in the form of violence. Harry hadn't considered that Sirius might have left behind something he loved.

And he certainly hadn't considered that it would be in the form of this wardrobe.

He set his cup of tea on top and opened the door. It was, now that he thought about it, the only wooden thing in this house that didn't screech and protest Harry's very existence. The door swung open smoothly, revealing a pleasant-smelling array of fabric.

Harry brushed his hands over the surface of the clothing, taking in the faintly familiar scent of the man he'd barely had the chance to know. Soon, that scent would fade. It already was, on the items of clothing Harry had worn more than once. But Harry had the quiet, slightly daft, secret belief that the smell wasn't fading from the clothing, to be lost forever.

It was transferring to him.

He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor, then plucked out a fresh T-shirt—a worn, grey 70s punk shirt emblazoned with The Cramps in white, and a man's head in yellow and white. As soon as he slid it on, he felt... relaxed. Calmer. When he'd gone to speak with Malfoy, he'd been acting on impulse, leaving the second he decided, which happened to be after he'd spent the morning with Ron and Hermione.

He didn't wear Sirius's clothes around Ron and Hermione. They didn't even know about them.

They didn't know about the rows of punk rock shirts, or the two leather jackets tucked at the back. They didn't know about the tight leather pants that fitted like a second skin. Or the multiple pairs of ripped, grey jeans that hung low on his hips and made him almost feel... good.

Harry would never have guessed that one day in his life he would choose to wear second-hand clothing. But this was different. It was so, so different.

With these, he could pretend he didn't struggle to fit inside his own skin. Like he wasn't still the moody, angry boy that no one wanted.

He quickly finished changing, tugging on fresh, tattered jeans and throwing one of the leather jackets over the top. As he looked in the mirror, tussling his hair—it was so long now that it formed small curls around his face—he briefly wondered why he didn't care that Malfoy would see him like this. He supposed it was because he didn't really care what Malfoy thought of him at all.

Which was an odd thought.

Everyone in the wixen world had an opinion about him, and Harry never ceased getting annoyed whenever he heard them share it. But Malfoy was different. He had a thousand opinions about Harry, none of them good, and Harry couldn't care less about any of them.

Plus—and this was the kicker—he wouldn't know where Harry had gotten these clothes and why he was wearing them, which meant he wouldn't look at Harry with that wistful sadness. He wouldn't speak in that hushed tone. He wouldn't encourage Harry to talk about his feelings.

When Harry was wearing his usual clothes, familiar and safe and old, he felt... awkward. Bumbling. Like that Hogwarts youth who hadn't quite known how to fit into this world that knew every useless fact about him and didn't care enough to learn a single thing that mattered.

But when Harry wore Sirius' clothes, he felt like a different person. Less like an awkward, long-limbed, gangly teenage boy, and more like the man he was supposed to be.

It helped that he also felt, for the first time, kind of cool.

A noise came from behind him—nothing like the creak of a step, more like a soft gasp. Harry turned abruptly, heart hammering, but it was only Malfoy. Somehow, he'd climbed the steps without making a single sound, because of fucking course he had.

There was an expression on Malfoy's face that Harry couldn't quite recognise. Something a little darkened, a little wide-eyed. But then he blinked, and it was gone.

He tilted his chin up, looking around the room with a faint sneer. "Merlin, Potter, is this a time pocket or do you just like everything to look thirty years older than it should be?"

Harry snorted. Even Malfoy didn't bother him the same when he was dressed like this. "Because you're just dripping in taste with all that gilded crap up at the mansion."

Malfoy's head whipped around, surprise flickering in his expression. He hummed thoughtfully and stepped into the room, sliding his hands elegantly into his pocket as he continued his assessment of the room.

It struck Harry what was different about Malfoy here as opposed to when they'd met at the mansion. At the mansion, he'd been a sloth. Barely awake. Barely moving or showing any emotion. And for a boy Harry remembered as being nothing if not animated, it was unsettling.

But here, Malfoy was almost like he'd been at Hogwarts. A little shit, sure, but at least he looked alive again.

"This was your godfather's," Malfoy said after a beat. It wasn't a question.

"Yep."

Malfoy ran his hand over the top of the dresser, just as he'd done downstairs to everything he passed. He glanced back at Harry, eyes sliding over his body from top to toe in a way that felt just as physical as the touch of his fingers would have. Harry swallowed.

"And the clothing," Malfoy continued, once more unreadable.

"No," Harry said with an eyeroll. "I've just been digging around in secondhand shops for anything that looked like it would fall apart while I was wearing it."

The corner of Malfoy's lip twitched, although he looked like he'd firmly deny it if anyone asked. Harry waited for the hushed voice, for the pity or guilt to flicker in Malfoy's eyes. He waited for the feelings.

"Well," Malfoy muttered, turning back to the room. "This is the perfect place to start then."

Harry blinked. The feelings hadn't come. His brain caught up to what Malfoy had actually said. "What, now?"

"No, Potter," Malfoy drawled, pulling Sirius' letter from his pocket and slapping it into the centre of Harry's chest, where he had to catch it or let it fall. Harry caught it, and in so doing, accidentally brushed Malfoy's fingers with his own.

Malfoy's hand lingered, although there was no reason for it to, their eyes catching. "There's a mathematical component to tracking the constellations, and the best time isn't for three days," he said. "We'll start then."

Finally, he withdrew his hand, leaving Harry holding the letter against his chest. Malfoy's eyes dropped to it, then to the leather jacket, and then back up again. "Are you going out?"

"Yeah," Harry said, not elaborating.

Malfoy didn't ask, the silence stretching a little too long.

Then, he seemed to catch sight of something behind Harry. A frown deepened on his face. "That's Severus's handwriting."

Harry blinked, turning to catch sight of one of the many bits of paper Sirius had left strewn over the desk in the corner. He'd given them a brief look over, but nothing seemed important. Until he'd found the Will of course.

"What do you mean?"

Malfoy was already lifting a piece of paper. It was brief, only a few words, reading: Thank you for your assistance last night. Your suggestion has been noted.

Malfoy's eyebrows lifted. "That's practically a friendship bracelet, coming from Severus."

Harry snorted a laugh. "I doubt it. Can't quite see those two mending their bridges."

A shadow crossed Malfoy's face, but he continued to frown at the paper for a few seconds more before shrugging and setting it aside.

"I'll see you in three days, Potter."

"Can't wait."