Archive of Our Own

Draco,
It is an ambitious idea, and a bad one. For your sake, if not mine, let it go.
Your Father.

Dear Draco,
I’ve spoken with the team. We are very interested in the non-fiction manuscript you have pitched. It is a diversion from your previous work in Romantasy, but you’ve proven both your numbers and your prose. Likewise, we suspect your lived experience as heir to the Malfoy clan and classmate to many key figures, not least of which the man himself, provides you with a very unique perspective which will likely add a great deal to the manuscript. While you were a child at the time and your involvement with the DEs was limited you also received a delicious glimpse into the Dark Lord’s inner circle. Few war correspondents or memoirists can say they ever met the bogeyman. People will want to hear your side, I do believe. Both those who cannot understand the pureblood perspective of the time and those who are recovering from it themselves.

The problem is, of course, that the market is flooded with botched, trite, Harry Potter memoirs. Even with your unique situation, being so close and having lived so much of the situation, people will likely still be slow to stir to excitement. The Publishing House risks scandal if bad agents accuse the memoir of being pro-YKW. I doubt you would write such a thing, to be frank. During my time working with you, you have always struck me as a well informed and sensible man. We both know that the market has zero interest in sympathetic discussions of the Dark Lord’s miserable childhood, but people will judge you harshly without some iron clad evidence that your motivations are good-natured and remorseful. You’ve always handled the topic well in interviews/statements during previous book tours, but people are sadly still eager to find fault with you. That’s just the way it is.

All this to say, Larkin and Nub Publishing are only interested in purchasing the finished manuscript on the proviso it includes at least one interview and/or written statement from Harry Potter himself. I don’t need to tell you that this essentially kills the project in the cradle (huh, is that a pun in this situation?). If Harry Potter won’t speak to the MOM press team to give an official statement I doubt we stand any chance of getting him to talk to us, good cause or not.

My condolences, I would’ve very much liked to read it,
Sincerely,
Marcus Berry-August  

Dear Draco,
Thank you for your letter. It was exceedingly thoughtful. I rarely get to discuss my work in such terms. Sure, having taken some of the most well-known photographs of Harry Potter to date, people always want to discuss them, but rarely do they ask questions as interesting as yours.

I get it, I grew up in the UK just like you, and even as a child everyone knew Harry Potter’s name. It’s well established now, his prowess and all that, but before he was thirty and the assassin of some– what is it now? 12? -- some dozen despots and tyrants across the international Wizarding community, he was a British child celeb. Which is a garish way to put it. Imagine being a war vet at a year old? Imagine being known, everywhere, for how your parents died and you were branded? It’s unsettling for me to imagine, personally. I have children of my own now and that quite reframes things for me. My daughter is almost eight, my nephew is twelve, and thinking about Harry Potter at that size, that age, killing basilisks and fighting dark wizards feels a lot less whimsical and thrilling now. I look at those kids and I think ‘Merlin, that poor kid’. Maybe it’s cruel to say but I’ve thought, sometimes, ‘why did no one love that little boy enough to protect him?’. Naive of me, probably. You went to school with the guy, maybe at twelve he was already half the super-human thing he seems now.

The photos, my famous five, are part of a small collection of agreed upon great Harry Potter photographs. Most of the others are from war correspondents abroad who took theirs mid-revolutionary siege. Mine were first and, being taken at such a pivotal point in the story, still hold a special place in the catalogue.

After the Battle of Hogwarts and the overhaul of the MOM there were several glossy newspaper images of Harry Potter in the press. Scant few though. The Prophet cycled through the same two for months. One was a group shot of the Order of the Phoenix, the other was another group shot which included Harry Potter next to the new Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt. In both he looked…. It’s hard to explain, but I get the public dissatisfaction. He was swallowed up by the energy of everyone else in the shot, like he wanted to be invisible inside it and almost succeeded. He was hard to spot in the images at a glance and after he’d just killed Voldemort people wanted proper photos.

I tried writing to him, like every dumbass journalist in Britain at the time. If he read my letter, amongst the no doubt thousands, he never replied. It wasn’t personal. He doesn’t talk to journalists or do photoshoots with anyone. It’s not even necessarily that I think he dislikes the press (although who wouldn’t?) I just don’t think he cares. I mean, back in the old days, you had cads like Gilderoy Lockhart posing non-stop and the Pap got lazy, I think. Harry Potter is that wonderful kind of famous who has zero interest in being famous. It’s great.

So, anyway, writing him didn’t work. Not that I sincerely expected it would. Honestly, I think I just wanted an excuse for later. I wanted to be able to tell myself ‘well, I tried asking first’. In my defense I was twenty-five at the time, not much older than you or Harry Potter were, and I was stupid and selfish. I own what I did was cruel but if it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else.

It was, I think, eight months post Battle of Hogwarts? Harry Potter had gone complete recluse. The paparazzi– including me– had camped out the Weasley estate, Hogsmeade, and a dozen other possible residences where he could be staying with friends. My advantage was that, like Harry Potter, I’d been raised by muggles. Muggleborn myself, first wizard in the family for two hundred years. I thought to myself, if I wanted to hide from wizards, I’d go hang out with my muggle relatives. Most wizarding folk don’t realize, from the inside, how insular the wizarding world is. They have no idea what the muggle world is like. Most can’t take a regular bus, or use a taxi, and that helplessness is quite a disadvantage.

I knew enough about the muggle world to properly use a phonebook. I knew Hermione Granger was a muggleborn, like me, and I had read somewhere that her parents were dentists. Found their clinic, found their house and, sure enough, found Harry Potter.

You can scarcely imagine my excitement but, credit to dumbass twenty-something me, I didn’t want to blow it. Paparazzi photography is, at its core, about chasing and hunting. It’s harassment. I’m not apologizing for that. The photos I took stand out not just in photos of Harry Potter but against the rest of my portfolio because I didn’t treat that work as Pap photography. I treated my time in that quaint little town as nature photography.

See, in nature photography, the game is totally different. You can’t ask a hyena to pose for you. Well, you can but you’ll regret it. It’s an exercise in patience, kind of like fishing. Hours and hours camped out in the rain and sleet, your fingers turning numb on your camera, trying to catch a glimpse of this wild thing you don’t want to see you too. You take thousands of photos, thousands and thousands, but it takes a certain skill to, from your hiding spot, catch the subject both clearly and in a way that has some kind of momentum or story. Anyone can take a blurry photo of the back of someone’s head. Screw that. I get paid to take photos with a sense of meaning, intelligence.

I was, for about a week, stupid enough to think he hadn’t noticed me. He was eighteen but he’d killed fucking Voldemort, and I thought he hadn’t noticed me in my orange boots and jeans? I can laugh about it now but at the time it felt pretty goddamn terrifying when he acknowledged me. My favorite photo, and the one everyone loves best I think, is the mailbox one. That was when I knew he’d noticed me.

It was a lovely, crisp, morning. Approx. seven am. He’d come out to check the mail for the Grangers. He stopped then and, standing straight, looked right at me. Where I was hiding, that is. Shoulders back, chin up, he didn’t even sigh. He didn’t say a word. He just looked right at me, fully aware, and seemed to say– ‘Go on then, jackass.’ 

I picked the best photo from that encounter, but I must’ve frantically clicked my way through half a cartridge of film. There’s a lovely contrast to the final image. The house, the mailbox, it's all so mundane. In casual muggle clothes he threatened to look boring too but it's his eyes that really carry that image. The way he looks right at the camera, the incredible presence of it. He’s young there, and small, but the magnetism of his stare, the fearlessness of it, gives the viewer some sense of how he might’ve looked down on his opponents. Some people assume the photo was taken with a muggle camera because, in the image, he doesn’t move, not even once, but it’s a wizarding image. He could move, the photograph could, but he just glares at you, daring you. It’s fantastic. That, in itself, is magical.

I want to say that I respected him enough with my approach that he let me get a few good photos. I want to say he appreciated it. I want to think he likes the photos I took. Nowadays I’m not that naive. I don’t think Harry Potter cares a lick about the photos I took, if he’s even bothered to look at them. I don’t think Harry Potter respected me or disliked me either. I don’t think he had any time for me or my nonsense. I think he wanted to live, mind his business, be eighteen. Be whatever he is now, I guess. 

No idea where he is now. That’s the million galleon question, isn’t it? I mean, the Ministry can get a hold of him, as can the ICW, when something goes wrong so he must live somewhere. If I had to guess, I think he’s in the muggle world somewhere. I think one of the most famous and storied wizards since Merlin spends his days going to a muggle Tesco. I imagine it’s easier for him there, better, because amongst a crowd of ignorant muggles he’s just a guy.

Thanks for your letter, please feel free to reach out again if you have any further questions. It was a pleasure talking to you. Good luck with your book!

Regards,

Jace Higgins. 

Dear Draco,
Thank you for your letter. I’ll do my best to answer your questions, although I fear I might not have much to say. At least nothing that’s of any real interest to your readers. I suspect if I did have anything worthwhile to tell you I might not have replied at all. I think it would’ve felt invasive of me to reply if I had any sense that I knew some part of Harry Potter that was of any importance.

As you know I’m a portrait artist. I’ve been painting since I was… Gosh, for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was a famous painter. I never met him, sadly, but in my family home my father still displays many of his paintings proudly. Those that we still have in our possession, that is. My grandfather painted, specifically, landscapes and pastoral scenes. They are lovely paintings. You’ve likely seen some of his work at museums and in the Ministry’s cultural heritage collection of esteemed British artists, but my favorite piece is one that hangs in my family home (a much less grand pureblood estate than yours, to be sure!). My grandfather’s style was very impressionistic. Blurs of color that feel dreamlike. This painting, my favorite, is of a stream in a valley somewhere. When the painting moves with his style it’s especially queer to watch these hazy blurs of color that I know are rabbits, and birds, and foxes, traipse through the frame even though there’s no real anatomical detail to their shapes. They are just impressions of rabbits. The vaguest sense of rabbits but in a way that even a little girl could recognize instinctively.

I never thought I’d be as famous as my grandfather. I don’t think I am now truthfully. I’ve painted a hundred portraits, and no one cared very much about any of them, or me, until I painted one of Harry Potter.

He doesn’t sit for portraits. Hasn’t since. People tell me that with such sharp jealousy. Before I painted him, I remember my peers chatting over coffee and croissants about who would get to paint him and how. They all had plans, schemes really. They thought he’d naturally want a skilled artist to render his likeness, but he didn’t, and he still doesn’t. People always ask why he chose me or how I convinced him to let me paint his portrait, and the simple truth is it didn’t have anything to do with me.

It’s funny to say but I really wish I hadn’t painted his picture. I wish someone else had done it. It’s rather destroyed anything else I might’ve done or been. I would resent him if I didn’t understand that he very much wouldn’t have sat for the portrait in the first place if he could’ve avoided it. I think he understood, or at least suspected, that painting him would mess up my career. My impression of him then, only nineteen, was that he was miserably wise. He’d lived too much too fast.

The story is that Minerva McGonagall had become Headmistress at Hogwarts. She’d commissioned me to do her portrait and asked me if I would paint Harry Potter for her too. I was startled by the request. I was a middling artist then. I wouldn’t have been in the top 50 potential artists to paint Harry Potter if you asked the Wizarding Institute of the Arts at the time. I said yes, because how could I say no?

I knew immediately, when he arrived for the first of three very strictly timed sittings, that he was only there because he had agreed to be for McGonagall. I got the sense that it was a matter of personal, filial perhaps, duty to him. Someone he loved very much had asked for a portrait of him, in that old fashioned way elderly witches do, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her no.

Minerva McGonagall had given me what would’ve, otherwise, seemed like a delightful brief. It was the kind of brief a grandmother would give for her freshly graduated grandson– “Paint him how he is, don’t bother making him grand or handsome. I want to remember him just how he is.” Which struck me as beautiful and sweet. But this was Harry Potter. That hung over me for a long time. The night before his first sitting I couldn’t sleep. I puked in the studio bathroom before he arrived. I almost took so long to answer the doorbell that he left.

He was not rude and he was not shy, but he was reserved and spoke very little to me. There was that massive, terrible, gravity to him but sitting in a room with him he was a person in a way that made it worse somehow. I had agonized over how to arrange the set and how to pose him. He did exactly what I asked. He sat straight in the very proper armchair and I could’ve painted him to look very kingly, very heir to the throne, but that wasn’t me and it would’ve been a misrepresentation of him too.

This is hard to explain and, to be clear, this was my very biased impression of a young man who said, at most, maybe a hundred words to me across two weeks and nine hours. That said, if you’ll allow a woman her impressions, it goes something like this– that first sitting, we both struggled through my attempts to paint Harry Potter, the hero. The portrait was stupid and fake and wrong. It wasn’t me and, worse, it wasn’t him either.

I was young and I was torn. This was an unexpected boon to my career. It could be life changing, I knew only too well. I was trying to paint the portrait I knew everyone would want to see but that portrait doesn’t exist. As an artist I have always taken pride in capturing the authentic likeness of a person. That is why we paint portraits. It is an effort to capture a little more of a person than a photo. A photo is a moment in time, a portrait is supposed to give a sense of that time, that place, and that person at that age as they were to those who knew them. In painting Harry Potter I was torn between the pressure of what he meant to people, and to history, that I threatened to abandon my artistic integrity.

I knew the painting was failing horribly. When he returned for the second sitting what I had thus far I had hardly touched since his first visit. Wizarding paintings, good ones, will start to move on their own before you’ve even finished painting them. His was dead on arrival. I was frantic, exhausted, and scared to fail. Then he sat down, just like the first time, and I actually looked at his face properly for the first time.

I tried to forget who he was, what I had heard, and just look at him. It struck me then, like a slap to the face, the discomfort in his entire person. He had not once complained about how I had posed him or arranged the set. He had offered no opinion at all. I mistook that as disinterest at first, a soldier's disinterest in the arts. I was terribly wrong. He wouldn’t look at me, even accidentally, the whole first session and, looking at him that second session, I recognized the look on his face properly.

As a woman and as someone with sisters and many female friends, I recognize the look that fills a woman’s eyes when she is doing something that gives her no joy. There is a look of detached pain. The look of a caged animal. It is a look that says “I want to be anywhere else. I want to be alone. I want to be on the moon. I want to be invisible. I want to be home, in my bed.” It is the look someone very dear to me got once when asked to give a statement to law enforcement about a sexual assault that almost killed her. It is the look of someone who is resigned to doing things they don’t like to do because the only route to survival is forward, through discomfort.

It occurred to me that this wasn’t just a matter of my artistic integrity but his dignity. I had not been asked to paint a war hero by the Ministry. I had been asked to paint a portrait of a young man by his Nana, essentially. I did myself, nor him, any favors by lying or bringing anyone else into the room who had no right to be there. Even just the looming aura of his own fame.

We re-arranged the set immediately. The armchair used in the final portrait was from my very cheaply decorated flat, thrifted from an uncle. He asked how I wanted him to sit, and I said– “However you want.” And, for a second, there was a glimpse of relief that could’ve knocked over a giant.

The final portrait is striking in a very peculiar way. It was displayed briefly before being installed at Hogwarts, at the request of the Wizarding Gallery in London. A columnist wrote extensively about it. I’m sure you’ve likely read that already. I enjoyed it very much. She understood.

The final portrait has been noted, and criticized, for its limited motion. It is not an inability of the image to move but a disinterest in doing so beyond how it does already. I love it. Every time I see it, despite my regrets at having accepted the assignment, I am always proud of how the portrait turned out. If it were not for the plaque, you might not even know who it was. He’s sitting sideways in the armchair, like it's a hammock. Legs dangling over one arm rest, shoulders pressed against the other, reading the book in his hands with an easy-going focus. In profile like that you can’t really see his famous scar, which my peers constantly bemoan as evidence of my lack of talent and my misunderstanding of the fundamentals of composition. The portrait doesn’t really respond to conversation when you speak to it. He just, happily, contentedly, reads his book. Lost in his own little world. The book isn’t even anything special, just the first thing that caught his eye on my bookshelf. A muggle crime thriller, I think.

I think it says something about Harry Potter that his photos, and his portrait, seem to resist magical motion for the most part. There is a certain power in that. A control, a resistance.

I have heard the portrait speak. Both during my painting and afterwards. I was worried, at first, that it couldn’t hear me. That happens sometimes. Wizarding portraits have certain technical levels that muggle portraits don’t on behalf of their animation and responsiveness. Sometimes you have to troubleshoot not only lighting but the portrait’s ability to hear. Then, I asked– “What do you think of the book?” And it replied, “it’s really good.” Without turning towards me, but he smiled and I liked that very much.

Sincerely,
Prue Marcella 

[Letter to HARRY POTTER, address; REDACTED]
[Letter RETURN TO SENDER]
[Letter unopened]

Mister Malfoy,
The greatest skill any Auror can have is almost impossible to teach: common sense. That, more than anything, keeps folks alive. ‘Common’ sense is a misnomer of course. Humans have very little sense especially when you put people together in any kind of group scenario. Peer pressure is just the little brother of group helplessness and mob mentality. Same family, however.

Common sense saw me through a decorated career of over forty years of service and common sense dictates I ought not answer your letter. However, I must respect that you were smart enough to realize that no active-duty member of the Department for Law Enforcement nor the International Confederation of Wizards would speak to you on this and honest enough to say that outright in your letter. I appreciate that.

So, let’s get to it. I served with the Ministry for Magic, within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and then for the ICW as a peacekeeper. Which is just an Auror with a larger jurisdiction. I was discharged, with honors, after I lost my leg. Seemed as good a time as any to get out. People who work at that level understand, as I did, that every operation is a lottery of risks. You prepare, you act sensibly, but the sheer nature of statistics means the more often you put yourself in dangerous situations the greater the likelihood of something going wrong and you, ultimately, getting your ticket.

I was not in Britain during Voldemort’s brief dominance of the MOM. I was stationed abroad and, like many ICW peacekeepers from the UK, refused summons to return home with the support/protection of the ICW who were, at the time, working on formal war plans against Voldemort. These were never necessary, as you know.

I have never worked with Harry Potter, but I have met him several times across three different operations in the proceeding years. He was 22, 25 and 28 respectively. Most kids could tell you, from that alone, which dark wizards he was ripping apart at those times like its goddamn quidditch trivia.

I ate with him, maybe twice, the same way soldiers on duty have eaten across the history of the world– quickly and without pleasure. I was on the field, in active combat, with him once. It was the most terrifying day of my life. Magical combat is a frightening thing. Most folks would be traumatized by a scuffle with a couple of wand wielding thugs. Organized crime is a different ballpark. But wizard on wizard military combat with trained fighters is a different universe. It is difficult to explain the scope of how big the spells get and how quickly, how terribly, they can turn you inside out in a second. I’d grit my teeth through plenty of such skirmishes, even a revolution or two by then, but this was different. I had never much bought the clout of ‘Harry Potter, the modern Merlin’ until I saw what he could do when he really wanted to let rip. I believed it then, hated to find it was true, that someone like that was alive and walking around amongst us with a driver’s license and a tax return. The whole sky changed color, Mister Malfoy. I thought, if he wanted to, he could’ve wiped the whole field clear as a used chalk board.

I’ve been told that Harry Potter said he wanted to be an Auror, at school, and I’m sure he did before he knew what an Auror was, properly. The question I get asked, retired or not, is always “why doesn’t the MOM make Harry Potter the head of British Law Enforcement?” and there are two answers to that question.

Firstly, no sensible Auror, or trained wizarding officer, would ever employ Harry Potter in that capacity. Children, even children with an acute sense of justice, don’t fight like those kids did. You fight like that because you have no other choice. Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ronald Weasley, were motivated above all else by survival. For them it was always a matter of life and death. I do believe they made the most of it, and are altogether altruistic and idealistic folk, but children who learn to duel before they pass their OWLS, children who kill before they graduate, do not become the kind of adults who make good Aurors. Being an Auror is a job. Being an Auror is as much representing the government as keeping the peace and stopping crime. Children who can go toe to toe in a death match with grown adults become adults who cannot be domesticated. Aurors are domesticated creatures. They have to be.

Secondly, and this always seems to baffle people, Harry Potter has never asked for any position at the Ministry, in law enforcement or otherwise. He has never applied for a single job listing at the Ministry. Ministers (who will remain anonymous) have, to my knowledge, offered him various positions and he has declined every single time.

There are several classes of people I speak to who, from my perspective, do not understand Harry Potter as an individual. Harry Potter has zero interest in joining the Ministry or the ICW. Ever. I will be shocked if he ever changes his mind on that. He doesn’t need them and, from his perspective, like Dumbledore before him, they get in his way. All the Ministry or ICW would do is put a shit load of red tape and busy work between him and what he does best– Killing Dark Wizards.

He is, to be scientific, if we were to classify him as a genus of animal, a vigilante. Just like grasshoppers become locust in swarm conditions, in times of famine and drought, vigilantes are fighters who have entered a specific stress state. Britain in the 90s was prime conditions for wizards like Harry Potter and his kin to develop. Dumbledore, who I will always maintain was a vigilante bastard of the worst kind, purposefully made it worse in my opinion. He’s lucky he’s dead because he has a lot to answer for.

Most folk don’t really understand this, given the vital actions of the Order of the Phoenix during the so called ‘Second Wizarding War’ (ICW calls it a civil war, or a revolution against an extremist regime, but Brits love to think we’re the main characters on the international stage), but during Voldemort’s first takeover attempt the Order of the Phoenix began its life as a terrorist cell. The original order, under Dumbledore, was a lot of kids recruited by their esteemed Headmaster. Kids he knew would not question him and who trusted him as a moral compass because they were hardly out of school uniforms themselves. The Ministry at the time was aware of Voldemort and resisted him actively. The Order of the Phoenix was formed so Dumbledore could anonymously execute wizards he decided were in cahoots with Voldemort without the oversight of a judge or jury. Pure fight fire with fire extremism.

I wonder if you’ve heard of Bloody Mary, Mister Malfoy? No shame if you haven’t, I hadn’t. It’s a muggle superstition. It’s based in a very, very, primitive understanding of the supernatural. Bloody Mary is an entity, entirely fictional, created for muggle children to scare each other. The game is they dare each other to say her name three times in a bathroom mirror and she will appear and murder you or something equally gruesome. All this to say, this informs my own and I believe the current military understanding of Harry Potter’s “strategy” for lack of a better term. Harry Potter does not work for any official agency specifically so he can dangle, as an active threat, over heads of state. He wants every sitting Minister for Magic, till the day he dies, to feel if they sign off on one too many bad policies or sanction one too many bad decisions that Harry Potter will appear in their home and break their skull open and be gone before anyone can stop him. He is a very real promise of revolutionary violence. His popularity amongst civilians, especially young people, has only increased since he killed Voldemort and we all know it. If he was to be arrested on any charge– real or not– assuming you could catch him, assuming Azkaban could hold him, the civilian uprising which would follow would be catastrophic. The MOM can’t act without his implicit support without being labelled tyrannical.

This isn’t ideal, or necessarily right. I don’t think anyone should have that degree of power or influence. That isn’t to say, however, that I dislike Harry Potter as a person. None of this is even to say I suspect Harry Potter will misuse this power either. I met Dumbledore, and I disliked him very much. I never met Voldemort but there is less than a degree of separation between the two if you ask me. Harry Potter is a little different. I also, you see, had the privilege of meeting Alastor Moody, one of the greatest Aurors to ever live. 

Harry Potter and Alastor Moody are cut from the same cloth. For them it’s not a power struggle, it's not a duty, it's not even a sense of justice, it’s a pure, fundamental, instinct. Harry Potter and Alastor Moody become activated by the existence of a dark wizard the same way a shark does when it smells blood in the water. The same way salmon are struck by an unshakable compulsion to swim upstream, Harry Potter and Alastor Moody can’t cross a dark wizard without hunting them down. It’s not hatred, it’s certainly not personal, it’s animal. I don’t even think they can control it. I don’t think you could stop a lizard from shedding its skin no matter how much therapy you tried to give it. It is what it does.

Kind regards,
Anonymous.

[Letter from HARRY POTTER, included in its entirety]

No.

[INTERVIEW - RUBEUS HAGRID - FULL TRANSCRIPT]
[Author’s Note: Rubeus Hagrid is the current Care for Magical Creatures professor at Hogwarts, as he has been since I was a student at the school. He still resides in the same hut he has occupied since he was groundskeeper for the school.

Hagrid is a humble, kind, man with a fierce fascination with and passion for magical creatures. Half wizard, half giant, he is exactly the kind of mixed-race person explicitly targeted by Voldemort’s regime since its earliest days. Many know Hagrid for his small but significant role in the life of Harry Potter. He carried Harry Potter as a baby from the ruins of the Potter house in Godric's Hollow and, years later, he would carry what he believed to be Harry Potter’s corpse through the gates of Hogwarts. He and Harry Potter are still good friends to this day.

I confess, dear Reader, that being the indoctrinated child of a Death Eater family I was never kind to Hagrid as a student. I never really took the time to consider if I liked him or not as a person because I had already written him off as a second-class citizen. I am surprised then that Hagrid agreed to talk to me and more so, rather guilty, when he welcomes me inside his home with a warmth that I certainly would find hard to extend to a man who had once been a very cruel student during the infancy of my teaching career.]

DRACO: –turns on like that. See?

HAGRID: That’s a marvelous thing, that is.

DRACO: It’s a new muggle thing I’m trying out. Very cool. I can’t send you copies, if you don’t have anything to play the audio on, but I can send you a full copy of the transcript afterward. So, if you want to make any amendments you can tell me.

HAGRID: Amendments? Like what?

DRACO: Well, just, sometimes when people give interviews they say things one way in the moment that they might’ve worded differently if they had a little more time to think about it. If you think you didn’t explain anything properly, or it doesn’t sit right with you how something sounded today, you can tell me and we’ll add an amendment.

HAGRID: Oh, yes, that sounds great. Sure. What did you want to start with? You said you had questions.

DRACO: Yes, that’s right. I wanted to start– Hagrid, most people don’t know this, I didn’t, but you actually went to school with Voldemort, didn’t you?

HAGRID: Yes, I did. It seems very strange now, after everything. I was so little then– Not, physically, ha! But, yeah, and he was just a kid too. I hardly recognized him later, let alone much later and…

DRACO: Of course. He changed a lot, I imagine.

HAGRID: A crazy lot.

DRACO: Hagrid, if I can just summarize what I’ve heard, can you tell me if any of this is wrong?

HAGRID: I’ll certainly try, memory’s not what it used to be, but I’ll try.

DRACO: I’ve read that, basically, the year Voldemort opened the Chamber of Secrets, and killed Myrtle Warren, he told everyone the murder was your fault. Because you were keeping a large magical spider, is that right?

HAGRID: Yes, and he grew up to be a lovely spider, mind you, but he didn’t hurt anybody. Not poor Myrtle least of all.

DRACO: But folks believed Voldemort, and you got expelled for what happened, or what people thought happened. Is that also correct?

HAGRID: Miserable business. They snapped up my wand and everything. Never got a formal education but I turned out alright, I think?

DRACO: I think so, fair to say you turned out better than Voldemort anyway, don’t you think?

HAGRID: [laughs loudly] That’s probably a mean thing to say, speaking ill of the dead and all, but…

DRACO: I think we get a pass, if it’s Voldemort. Surely?

HAGRID: I hope so. Screw that old bastard.

DRACO: [laughs] Well, that was actually the first thing I wanted to ask you. Did you get the impression, at the time, that Voldemort, then Tom Riddle, was a bad person? Or a mean one?

HAGRID: No. I want to say I did, but not really. He was always nice to me back then. I rather felt for him, you know? He was an orphan and it was hard back then for odd ball kids like us. The other Slytherins were always a little harder on me, but they were hard on him too at first, and he was always nice to me.

DRACO: In what ways was he nice?

HAGRID; Oh, nothing important. Just kid stuff, you know. Just the courtesy of noticing a person. He would say good morning to me if we passed each other. If we were in the same place, he wouldn’t be afraid to talk to me. Back then some of the other kids treated me like I had two heads and he didn’t seem to notice at all. Just didn’t mind who he spoke to. I really liked that about him. Worst part is, he made me think the whole thing was true, about my spider, that he had hurt someone somehow, by accident he said. Convinced me he had to tell the Headmaster, not cause he wanted to upset me, but because it was the right thing we ought to do. And I was so upset but I respected that. I couldn’t be mad at him for it.

DRACO: Some people say that Voldemort was always rotten, that he was doomed to be rotten, do you think that’s true? Do you think there was any chance he could’ve been a different person?

HAGRID: Oh, I wouldn’t know. I can’t pretend to know much about things like that.

DRACO: No, of course, but, in your opinion of people in general, do you think some folks are born bad? Do you think people can be bad and change later? Ignoring Voldemort, what do you think? Not saying you think you have all the answers, just what’s your personal sense on the matter?

HAGRID: I don’t want to think anyone is born bad, honestly. Lots of folk have said I was born bad on account of who I am. That I’m dangerous and no good, but that’s not true. From what I’ve seen bad people can be all shapes and sizes, but they make bad choices, you know? And bad things happen to people, that they can’t control, and I know that hurt animals make bad choices quicker than they make good ones. Some of the best animals in the world will lash out if they’re already hurt. I want to think people are like that. But it’s hard with people. Cause we want to help each other, but when is it right to help and when should you hold someone up for what they done decided to do wrong?

DRACO: I think those are great points, personally. I think it’s a very hard question. When is someone so bad that you have to give up helping them? I don’t know, that’s for sure. And I wonder, when has someone done so many bad things they can’t make up for them, even if they decide they want to?

HAGRID: I think anyone can make it right, if they want to.

DRACO: I want to agree with you but I just… If Voldemort had stopped, that last day at Hogwarts, and said “I quit, I’m sorry.” Would it matter? Would we be able to forgive him? Should we forgive him in that scenario? Would he have to do something?

HAGRID: Gosh, you know, I don’t know. You’re right, it is a big mess. If he’d said sorry, that last day, I don’t… I don’t know if I could’ve ever forgiven him. I probably still would’ve socked him in the face if I could.

DRACO: I don’t think that’s unfair, or a silly way to feel. I wonder sometimes if people– probably not Voldemort– but people, sometimes get so far down one path they get scared to turn the other way? Or they think there’s no point anymore. I know– To be honest, Hagrid, I felt that way a lot near the end of school. Like, even if I did stop or say sorry for things I knew in my heart were shitty and untrue when I did or said them, that no one would forgive me. The idea of… sometimes I thought, “well at least I have bad friends” because I thought if I started being a better person then I’d be all alone.

HAGRID: I’m sorry you felt that way, Draco.

DRACO: You don’t have to–

HAGRID: Being alone is scary. It scared me a lot as a kid. I wanted to belong somewhere so badly. I wanted people to like me. I think that’s why a lot of people liked Voldemort in the first place, he made them feel wanted and safe and liked. For what it’s worth, Draco, you peeved me off sometimes, but I never thought you were evil, even if sometimes I did think you were stupid.

DRACO: I was sometimes, though.

[Both laugh]

HAGRID: But, see, I think this is a good thing you’re doing. Trying to understand it all. I think that’s a good thing. I think talking about it all helps people. Helps you and me and everyone else who lived it.

DRACO: I hope so. Hagrid, I wanted to ask, because everyone will want to know, what was Harry like– or how did Harry seem to you, as a kid?

HAGRID: You know, it’s funny, I guess, but when we were talking about Voldemort as a kid? Harry was a lot like that, as a student. I think with Harry though it goes all the way through him. It’s honest. Maybe it was honest with Voldemort once too, I don’t know, but Harry makes a person feel welcome and respected when he talks to them. Harry’s a bit odd but I think he makes everyone feel safe in their own oddness that way. He’s kind.

DRACO: What do you think he’s like now, as an adult? Do you think he’s different now in any way?

HAGRID: You know, he might not like me saying this, but what do I know? I think Harry’s sad these days, at least sometimes. I think it’s kind of like how Dumbledore must’ve felt. Knowing you’re a damn good man in a world that’s not half as good as you. Knowing you can’t make it right all the way.

DRACO: Do you think that’s why he’s so reclusive now?

HAGRID: No, I think… I think he must be scared. You get that big and that important and everything you touch turns to gold, but gold kills people, you see? You like people, and even if they're good, liking Harry makes people…. Targets?

DRACO: Shall we take a break for a second?

[TRANSCRIPT END]

[Author’s Note: Reader, it occurs to me that Hagrid is a very insightful man. I suppose humans are just another kind of animal and if you can understand animals, you can very well understand the human heart. Despite what the wizard supremacists might say.

I am not in Harry Potter’s position, of course. If you’re reading this, you likely know that my family was disgraced after Voldemort’s defeat. The proud and ancient Malfoy line, while still rich and only getting richer, was toxic waste even when my parents and I were pardoned.

That said, I know what it’s like when your name, or any association with your name, marks the people around you. My father did not leave our house for three years after the Battle of Hogwarts, not because he was under house arrest or anything of the sort but because he was humiliated and ashamed. No one wanted to talk to him. No one wanted to be seen with him. And, for a man who had lived a life of privilege as he had, that was devastating for him. He had never thought it could all go away, that the world would move on without him. He still barely leaves the grounds now, over a decade later.

For me, while my writing career has, in part, recuperated my reputation, I still know people who won’t take my letters, who won’t publicly acknowledge me, and lovers who having learnt my name or after talking to their peers stop speaking to me entirely. I also know that every person who took a chance on my first manuscript did so knowing that an association with me could drag them down too. Could, in a very real way, hurt them.

In that way I do understand Hagrid’s sentiment about Harry and his social isolation. It rings true to me, from where I’m sitting. But, in my experience, I have always been wrong about Harry Potter.]

[INTERVIEW - MINVERA MCGONAGALL - FULL TRANSCRIPT]
[Author’s Note: Minerva McGonagall was my transfiguration teacher. Mine and Harry Potter’s before she was Headmistress of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. She is now an elderly witch but was stern and regal as she ever was. You can count on Minerva McGonagall, always could. It’s something I sense she takes great pride in, and who wouldn’t? I don’t know if she’ll ever look comfortable in the office we both remember as Albus Dumbledore’s but, on the wall, between her portrait and his, I get my first glance at Prue Macella’s portrait of Harry Potter.

The portrait is wonderful in person. I think Ms. Marcella has undersold it entirely. The Harry Potter she painted is in every way the Harry Potter I remember from school. He seems, at once, in the room with us. It is eerie and, before starting our interview, I forget the Headmistress for a moment to ask the painting– “How’s the book?”

He looks at me, just for a second, and says– “Good today,” with a little grin. Minerva is, I think, a little taken aback by this but the exchange seems to improve her mood and, after a steely greeting, she suddenly offers to get out the tea pot, which I accept enthusiastically.]

DRACO: Thank you, again, for the time.

MINVERA: I don’t have much of it these days.

DRACO: You always struck me, ma’am, as someone who liked to stay busy. What did you tell us about laziness? Idle hands or…?

MINERVA: Well, look at that, you almost listened. That’s something. Most of my students don’t remember that much.

DRACO: I’m starting to realize I should’ve listened more. Not just to your transfiguration lessons but certainly some of the other things too. I could’ve saved myself a lot of trouble, I sense, if I’d… heh.

MINERVA: My goodness, Draco, you’ve grown up. I am so terribly sorry for both of us, dear boy. Tragically, wisdom doesn’t come to any of us without pain.

DRACO: I wanted to ask you about wisdom.

MINERVA: What kind?

DRACO: I think… To start, the whole purebloods versus muggleborns…. Debacle? Situation? The bigotry. Obviously. We know it’s wrong. We know it’s not founded in any proper science, but then… Why do you think some wizards hold to this philosophy that purebloods are superior and that muggleborns are dangerous?

MINERVA: Do you want the reasons alphabetically or chronologically?

DRACO: [laughs] can I get your top three?

MINERVA: It all boils down to fear, in the end. There’s never been a very large wizarding population to begin with. Magic occurs, congenitally, rarely. More often if both parents are magical but not always. Genetically we need muggleborns to keep incest from driving wizarding kind extinct but…. We are terrified of extinction. Pureblood families, especially, are afraid of being replaced. Of being lost. Of being wiped out. There is so little of us that we hold it so tight.

That’s not right, of course. It’s like pots and plants, you see. A plant that’s filled a pot will die if it doesn’t get a bigger pot. I’m sure to that plant the small pot feels safe, familiar, but it’s killing it slowly. In the same way as much as pureblood families want to protect their culture, pushing away fresh blood and change, stops that same culture from ever expanding.

DRACO: The muggles have a term for that, “scarcity mindset”.

MINERVA: I like that, very clever. Succinct. Writing and communication, I hear, is about being succinct.

DRACO: In part, to be sure. It’s a kind of good writerly hygiene to be succinct if you can be, where you ought to be. There’s nuance, I’m sure you can imagine.

MINERVA: I’m sure that’s right. I never pictured you writing romance, Draco. If you’ll permit me to say.

DRACO: Neither did I, honestly. You know, at some point, I…. I needed something to do, being a social pariah. I thought, “this is so ridiculous, how could anyone ever take me seriously if I publish this?” and then I realized no one took me seriously to begin with, so… Besides, romance is approachable. It let me process a lot of complicated feelings but it also, I think, showed people that I was a person again. A silly, stupid, person who could write silly, stupid, little books. I don’t feel bad about it anymore. I think it was good to stop worrying so much about being serious.

MINERVA: I agree entirely, Malfoy. For the record, I very much liked the one about the green witch. Lots of kissing between those witches, not a lot of running their various enterprises like I would’ve thought necessary, but I enjoyed it.

DRACO: Thank you, Professor, I’m so glad. You’ll have to let me send you a personally dedicated copy. That sounds entirely vain, I know, but I don’t mean it that way. More as I gesture of gratitude.

MINERVA: I would like that very much, Mister Malfoy, sincerely.

DRACO: I wanted to ask about Dumbledore too.

MINERVA: Yes?

DRACO: Do you think, in the end, he was a good person or not? And does it matter?

MINERVA: Goodness, Malfoy, here I expected you’d want the gory details or some juicy gossip about his personal life but you go and ask such an existential question.

DRACO: I think Rita Skeeter rather covered all the juicy gossip, I’ll leave that to her, she’s better at it.

MINERVA: To be honest, Malfoy, it has troubled me more nights than most other things have. Wondering that exact question. I knew Albus very well, and for a very long time, but after he died we all realized that, in the end, no one knew Albus any more or less than he wanted them to. He kept so many secrets and there are things I now know he did, intentionally, that at the time he let me believe were unintentional in a way that’s hard not to feel betrayed by.

I would’ve never agreed to use Harry Potter as a human sacrifice and he knew that, which is why he never told me, but led us that way anyhow. He knew we trusted him, all of us, and he knew how to play that game exceptionally well. Was he manipulative? Yes. Do I think he was a good man? Also yes. At least I think he always did what he felt was right.

Albus wanted to seem very whimsical. He worked with children, that’s safe for them. I understand that but I think the real Albus, certainly the Albus I knew, was a realist. He was, at worst, a very ruthless and pragmatic man. He wanted to save lives. Sometimes I think he took it upon himself to make decisions no one ought to make because a decision had to be made. He was prepared to take the blame for that, at least, but I genuinely think, to him, it was an equation. A kind of mathematics. What is the least number of people that need to die for the most to survive?

DRACO: Do you think Harry’s like that?

MINERVA: Not at all.

DRACO: Is that better or worse?

MINERVA: Neither. To Harry, it seems, the equation is different. To Harry, it seems to be- what is the least number of people I need to kill to save the most lives?

DRACO: That’s a brutal idea.

MINERVA: They are both brutal ideas.

DRACO: Do you think Harry feels that way because of Dumbledore?

MINERVA: In some part, probably.

DRACO: Do you think Harry has grown up to be a good man?

MINERVA: I think, just like Albus, Harry tries to be the best man he can be. I think there’s great honor and love in that. I think Albus and Harry, both, were burdened by being men asked to make very critical decisions they both cared about very much. Someone has to be in charge. I don’t mean that in a glamorous or superior way. It’s a burden. If the ship sinks, it’s the captain that goes down with it.

[TRANSCRIPT END]

[Letter from HARRY POTTER, included here in its entirety]

“No”
(Adverb/determiner)
-Not any, not one, not a
-used in signs and on notices to show that something is not allowed
-used to give a negative answer

[INTERVIEW - NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM - FULL TRANSCRIPT]
[Author’s Note: Neville Longbottom is the current Herbology Professor at Hogwarts and an esteemed academic in the field. I am surprised Neville agreed to talk with me, so when Neville dictated the terms of his interview, I felt it unwise to argue with him.

We sit down to talk in one of Hogwarts’ smaller greenhouses. A faculty-only space which Neville has fastidiously and lovingly filled with rare plants which seem to be thriving. The space is tight and with the sun magnifying the heat of the glass I am sweating but the scent is herbaceous and wonderful.

Neville does not offer any refreshments and, as I prepare my recording equipment, Neville’s expression tells me I ought not get too comfortable. I have no doubt that, at the slightest misstep, Neville will toss me out by my ear. Not because Neville Longbottom is a cruel man, quite the opposite, Neville Longbottom is a classic underdog story. An ugly duckling who grew up to be handsome, capable and charitable in all things. Beloved by his students, the sort of role model I would’ve benefited from having in my life and an example that, like his plants, love and care make obvious, in time, that people can change in alarming ways. Neville, like Harry Potter I think, has been hammered by the world around him but it has only strengthened his integrity.]

DRACO: It’s recording now.

NEVILLE: ….

DRACO: Thank you for speaking to me.

NEVILLE: We’ll see how long for. You said this is for a book? About Harry?

DRACO: Yes, sort of. Harry, yes, but also kind of unpacking the culture and the context of the world where you, me and Harry grew up. A retrospective, a debriefing? I’m working on it.

NEVILLE: Funny thing to write without getting Harry’s point of view

DRACO: I’m hoping he’ll consider talking to me or writing a statement.

NEVILLE: I wouldn’t hold my breath.

DRACO: No, for sure. I mean…. But, hey, you said yes. That’s more than I expected.

NEVILLE: Call it scientific curiosity.

DRACO: Can a leopard change its spots sort of deal?

NEVILLE: Yeah. Again, not holding my breath.

DRACO: Right.

NEVILLE: So where do we start? How dramatic are you trying to make this? I hear you write romance now, some of my sixth-year girls love it. The one with the– God, the gay vampires, I think. With the fucked-up kid vampire.

DRACO: Ha, yeah, that’s one of them. And no drama needed. The situation is dramatic enough without artificial gravitas, don’t you think? Adding romance to a bloody, dirty, thing feels like lying.

NEVILLE: I never got the impression lying bothered you.

DRACO: I would’ve liked to be better at it. By– God, fourth year? I think you all knew I was full of shit. More bark than bite. So, I’m trying a new thing.

NEVILLE: Do you have a question in that notebook or…?  Because I have essays to grade.

DRACO: I wanted to ask, particularly, about bravery.

NEVILLE: [Laughs] Oh geeze, Skeeter who? Yes, Harry’s enduring bravery in the face of–

DRACO: No, no, your bravery.

NEVILLE: Excuse me?

DRACO: You’re one of the bravest people from our year.

NEVILLE: Fuck you.

DRACO: What’s surprising about that? Longbottom, you started First scared of your own shadow, scared of wet rats like me, and then, by Seventh, you were hiding students from Death Eaters at great personal risk to yourself and then, when the cavalry did show up, you cut the head off Voldemort’s fucking snake with a great big sword. What’s weird about saying you’re brave? The sky is blue. What else do you want me to say?

NEVILLE: ….

DRACO: How did you do it? What changed and how?

NEVILLE: You’re serious?

DRACO: As the grave.

NEVILLE: Who the fuck cares about that?

DRACO: I do. I reckon plenty of other people will too.

NEVILLE: I thought this was about Harry.

DRACO: It is. The world that created Harry– the world we both grew up in– was a world where kids sank or swam. It was a world where we were asked to make some really, really, hard decisions. You did, I did, and you did it better. It wasn’t just Harry but understanding Harry means understanding the culture of the time that meant we all had to grow up fast. Understanding Harry means providing my readers with some understanding of what that was like, not just for him, but for the rest of us. For so called ‘regular’ students.

NEVILLE: Is that it then? A sob story? Poor widdle Malfoy had only his money and both his parents, so just couldn’t hack it in a cutthroat Hogwarts? Doomed to fail. Doomed to be a coward and a loser. Is that it?

DRACO: No. What’s the story in that? Who cares about the losers, like me, Neville? Actually– No, there is a story there. Folks who want to think they would’ve done better themselves who don’t really know. Other kids, the entire rest of Slytherin, who grew up and never moved on and have to look in the mirror at cowards and losers every day and wonder why? What the fuck was wrong with us? Why were we so stupid and weak and scared when everyone else was scared but did the right thing anyway? It’s not an excuse. There isn’t an excuse. Men like me are trying to figure out why they don’t have any backbone, any spine, and I’d like to give them some glimpse. I’d like us all to learn something from the soup, hammer out some of the pain into syllables.

I am not entitled to your forgiveness, or even your respect, and I know that. But my options are, Neville, are either wallow forever or try and claw my way to something else. Do you want me to just disappear? Is there no recovery for the rest of the dickheads like me? Because if that’s true, tell me. If I’m wasting my time trying then I don’t have to sit here, with you, twisting myself in knots.

And, actually, I never said sorry, did I? I should’ve. Whether or not it matters, I should say sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I treated you like shit. I wanted everyone to think I was so cool and so capable and I wasn’t, so I took that out on you. You just wanted to be a kid and, I know, that Neville, if I had just acted like a person you probably would’ve been my friend and that would’ve been way nicer than any of the shit I did instead trying to be cool. I put myself in this hole. I know that. You, Ron, and Harry, and everyone else, you would’ve pulled me out. At any point if I’d had the balls to ask for help, you would’ve helped me, and I get that now and I’m sorry.

NEVILLE: ….

DRACO: ….

NEVILLE: It was… it was the hole thing, I think.

DRACO: Pardon…?

NEVILLE: I think… I heard something, once, maybe Hermione said it? Yeah, I think she read it in some muggle self-help book. Something like ‘don’t take criticism from people you wouldn’t take advice from’. I realized, at some point, that I was begging you assholes to like me but I didn’t actually want to be friends with you guys. I wanted to be– Not even cool, just normal. Just okay. Just someone that people didn’t… talk shit about all the time, humiliate.

But I realized, somewhere, that the people I did like, the people I did respect, treated me great already. Yeah, like Harry, and the others. I didn’t need to prove anything to them, I’d already earned their respect and they always gave it back to me. So who gave a fuck about the rest of you? I didn’t like you anyway, so why did I care if you liked me? And, then, I thought, realized, that whatever I did someone made some stupid joke about so I could either live my life trying, hopelessly, to stave off stupid jokes or I could stop caring about you and your stupid jokes.

When I stopped caring, when I started just being me without worrying about it all, it quickly became obvious that the only way you guys could really hurt me was if I agreed to care about your opinions.

From there… I don’t know. People talk about it like it’s magic, like it’s something some people are born with and others aren't, but it’s not. Bravery, I mean. The truth is-- kind people try to be kind even to strangers. They have sympathy. It’s just dominoes. When someone is kind to you, you become kind too. Kind people will try, even in a regime of terror, to do kind things, even if they’re so small they’re almost invisible, and when everyone around you is willing to take even tiny risks to help others it’s easy to do the same yourself. It greases your own wheels and when everyone in your life is trying, just trying their best, all of you are covering for each other when you can, all those little nods and handshakes, those little donations of kindness, start to become a landslide. Voldemort didn’t lose because of one big battle or one special spell. Harry knows that and we know that as his friends too. What destroyed Voldemort was erosion. The steady unceasing decision to be kind even in the tiniest ways.

DRACO: …

NEVILLE: And, before you ask, the prophecy thing? Yeah. It could’ve been me. I don’t put much stock in prophecies, neither does Harry. We’ve talked about it. I’m glad it wasn’t me. I’ve never been jealous of Harry. I’m sorry for both of us. Sorry that a game of telephone got both our parents ripped apart by some dumbfuck loser who really wanted to be special. So special he was paranoid enough to try and kill babies, cause that’s so tough.

What Harry got, being chosen? That’s not a gift. That’s a burden. That’s a curse. We get to move on. I get to move on. Even you, after all the shit you did, you get to move on. Harry doesn’t. This is who Harry is now. This is what Harry is now. He has no option to just let someone else handle it. He is nailed to his seat at the table. A seat he didn’t choose, a seat he didn’t ask for. He has been on the run from people who wanted to kill him for his entire life and now he’s so tired, and so raw, the thunderous noise of people wanting to adore him is just…

What’s he supposed to do? He wanted to be a kid, Malfoy, just like the rest of us. Now he doesn’t get to be an adult either. You people, the world, they won’t even let him retire. They won’t let him just… stop. You all want something. A picture, an interview, an autograph… We gave up our childhoods, our families, our hopes and dreams, and you all just want more. It’s never enough. People like you want answers, want stories, want forgiveness… Grow up. Leave him alone. Save yourself for once.

DRACO: Thank you.

NEVILLE: You’re welcome. Kind of. Thanks, for that, I guess. That helped, weirdly. You?

DRACO: Yeah, that did help. Thank you for being honest. I’m… I’m trying to do better.

NEVILLE: You sat there and you took it. You didn’t even get snide. That’s something. I’m kind of impressed. I thought you would’ve blown it halfway there.

DRACO: That means a lot, thank you.

NEVILLE: I don’t think Harry will talk to you though, Malfoy. I’m not even sure he should. Not even necessarily because you might have bad intentions, or anything. I just don’t know if it’d be good for him. I don’t think he’s selfish enough. My job, as his friend, is to tell him to be selfish.

DRACO: I understand, I still have to try though.

NEVILLE: I’m not going to suggest it to Harry, but I assume you want to talk to some of the others too?

DRACO: Ideally.

NEVILLE: I’ll write them. A couple of them. Up to them, in the end, but it might help.

DRACO: I really appreciate that. We both know you don’t have to do that.

NEVILLE: Don’t make me regret it.

[TRANSCRIPT END]

[INTERVIEW - HERMIONE GRANGER- FULL TRANSCRIPT]
[Author’s Note: Few people alive scare me as much as Hermione Granger. I would wager if you asked Harry Potter who he’d rather duel if given the choice between Hermione Granger and Voldemort, he’d say Voldemort, and not because of his lifelong friendship with Granger, although they are still the dearest of friends.

Hermione Granger, as I get older, demonstrates to me the capacity for evil versus greatness. The newly minted Minister for Magic has a mind like a cattle dog. It has to be kept well exercised and enriched or it will tear the house apart in restless agony. I can tell, sitting in her office, that this has not changed since we were teenagers. I have had the pleasure of sitting inside the offices of several high-ranking officials but few, if any, have an office like hers. It’s a workshop, it’s an active tornado. This is a desk that is used. This is a mind that is whirring. This is a mind that could do anything and has accepted, graciously, the tedious task of helping others even when they aren’t grateful.

I know I am here because Neville Longbottom’s recommendation likely got Hermione Granger to even open my letters. I sense too that this is as much a test as it is a discussion. If I fail here, if I disappoint her, a woman who is one of the two people in the world Harry Potter would heed above his own instincts, I will never, ever, speak to Harry Potter. On her desk, turned towards her, I get a glimpse of a photo of Harry, Ron and Hermione, not terribly old, and in it I see a joy that no other image of Harry Potter has caught or shown to me yet. In this photo Harry’s image moves as freely as the others.

It is a funny feeling, dear Reader, knowing a living legend doesn’t just think poorly of you but actively dislikes you. You, personally. That puts me in a club with the likes of tyrants and despots. Petty, maybe, but can I really blame Harry Potter or his friends for their grievances? Neville said Harry isn’t allowed to be a person, shouldn’t I then allow him at least the privilege of being childish if he wants to be in his own heart? Doesn’t everyone deserve that?]

DRACO: –probably already seen one before, for wizards it's quite a novelty.

HERMIONE: It’s nice. Was it hard to learn how to use it?

DRACO: A little bit awkward at first but there’s an intuitiveness to it after a while.

HERMIONE: Most Wizards tell me they find, if they give it a chance, that Muggle tech is very intuitive.

DRACO: Arthur Weasley is a bit of a pioneer in that way, I suppose?

HERMIONE: I suppose so. Now, shall we? If you’re ready?

DRACO: I wanted to apologize first.

HERMIONE: I wish you wouldn’t.

DRACO: I am sorry.

HERMIONE: I understand that, but I don’t need an apology, Draco. Whether or not you apologize has no relation to whether or not I forgive you.

DRACO: How do you decide who to forgive? I imagine, as Minister, and in Law Enforcement previously, you’ve had to think about that a lot. You were heavily involved in the trials immediately following the war. People wanted accountability, consequence. How did you decide who deserved what?

HERMIONE: It’s interesting. People view forgiveness like pregnancy. You either are or you aren’t pregnant. There’s no ‘sort of pregnant’. People, in the same way, think you either are forgiven or you’re not but that isn’t my experience. Forgiveness is a spectrum. A process. There is, I think, thirty-percent forgiveness and sixty-percent forgiveness. Gradients, you understand?

DRACO: I do.

HERMIONE: To elaborate the point. I will never, really, know if my dog is tame until it bites me. I can decide however if it sleeps in the yard, the shed, in a crate, on the couch, in my bedroom or in my children’s bedrooms.

DRACO: And how do you decide that?

HERMIONE: Forgiveness is a process, but in another way it’s also a relationship and the way you make decisions in any relationship is based off trust. People can earn your trust or damage it. Trust can be rebuilt, over time, with consistency, with action, with intention.

It’s not a matter of grand gestures. It’s not about capitulation. Some of the people I talk to feel that they’re being asked to grovel when, really, they’re being asked to acknowledge how much they hurt others and that they made those decisions knowing, but not caring, that others would be hurt. They think if they make one massive donation to charity the slate should be wiped clean and people should treat them like they used to, but trust doesn’t work like that.

You, for example. You’re here because Neville wrote to me, yes, but that’s not the only reason you’re here. You’re here because, for the last decade, you have quietly signed every petition we have sent out. You are here because, in every interview you’ve done on your release tours, you have expressed nothing but remorse. You are here because, when I asked to see a copy of your manuscript so far, you sent it to me.

DRACO: But… How do you know? How can you tell, how can anyone tell, with their neighbors or their relatives, if people like me are being sincere or strategic? I am sorry. I think. I want to believe. But, from your perspective, how can you trust that I’m sorry because I understand it was wrong or because we lost? Half the wizards I’m related to have no option but to be sorry. How do you know, if we hadn’t won, I would have never become sorry?

HERMIONE: Well, on some level, the reality is that, just like my dog could bite at any time, forgiveness is always a risk. Even if you think you know what someone will do. Even if decades have passed. Forgiving someone is taking a chance. It is giving someone else the chance to hurt you again and trusting that they won’t.

DRACO: If our positions were reversed, I think I would find that very difficult.

HERMIONE: It is hard. Can I ask you a question? It might help me make my point.

DRACO: Go ahead.

HERMIONE: Why do you want to be forgiven? In your own words.

DRACO: I think…. I know people who want to be forgiven because, exactly as you said before, they want their old lives back. They want people to talk to them the same way. They want the same opportunities they used to have before their reputation tanked.

I want to be forgiven because… This is going to sound existential.

HERMIONE: Hit me with it.

DRACO: I’ve come to feel that the one thing that can’t be bought, or inherited, is integrity. Most people don’t even really know if they have any. Not really. People think– I thought, for a long time– that integrity is doing the right thing. But it’s not. That’s no test of integrity. Integrity is doing the right thing even if the right thing is a sacrifice. Doing the right thing, if it’s easy, is still good. Intention doesn’t necessarily make an action less good, but you don’t know how much integrity you have until someone asks you to give something up for what you believe. Big or small.

Since the war… My father has been sequestered in a mansion, with servants, and he is miserable. Meanwhile, our whole childhoods, the Weasleys lived in a hovel and were happy anyway. I tried to understand that, and I realize that the difference is– Arthur Weasley has his integrity, and my father doesn’t. And when the whole house of cards falls, even if you lose, it's a lot easier to lose if you can do so with your integrity.

That’s what I want, my own integrity.

HERMIONE: You want to know a trade secret?

DRACO: Always.

HERMIONE: What you just said? The conviction with which you said it? People can’t fake that. There’s sorry I got caught, or sorry I lost, and then there’s that. There’s sorry for what I became. People who haven’t really, truly, looked at themselves in the mirror and seen it can’t sell me that story. They don’t even know the right lie to tell. And, after a while? You get really good at telling when someone understands and when they don’t.

DRACO: I guess… I always kind of thought it was selfish. You hear a lot about bettering yourself for the good of others, your community, your children, the people you hurt. Bettering yourself, so you can live with yourself always seems selfish.

HERMIONE: The people who have integrity are, most often, the people who want to be able to look themselves in the eye when they brush their teeth at night. It’s the same thing. 

DRACO: Gosh, Granger, has anyone ever told you you’re very smart?

[Laughter]

HERMIONE: You think so?

DRACO: Maybe you should run for Minister or something?

HERMIONE: [Laughs] Smart people don’t run for Minister.

DRACO: Probably not.

HERMIONE: For the record, Draco, you were at about sixty percent. You’re creeping up to seventy-five.

DRACO: I’ll work on that.

HERMIONE: We all do. Sorry, in advance, because having integrity sucks.

[TRANSCRIPT END]

[Letter from HERMIONE GRANGER, included in its entirety]

Dear Draco,
Unfortunately I fear we are a no go in regards to Ron or Ginny. Especially Ron but no surprises there. Luna is open to the prospect of speaking to you, however, as are my MIL and FIL despite protests from their children. Kingsley is rather booked on a European cruise for retirees but, if you can wait, he’s happy to meet you when he gets back on the 16th. Alternatively, he’s open to correspondence?

I visited Harry. Do not misconstrue silence for disinterest or obliviousness. He’s aware of your project already. I’ve given him my perspective and, as much as Harry ever listens to anyone, I’m confident he heard me out. Neville, I believe, still thinks it’s a bad idea but Harry is considering things. He’s asked to see the manuscript so far. I’ve included a forwarding address. You won’t have this one, not many people do. Don’t abuse it, please, I’m taking a risk on you.

Sincerely,
Hermione.

[Letter from HARRY POTTER, included in its entirety]

Malfoy,
I’ve considered the manuscript thus far. It’s lopsided, charming (sincerely) but biased.

There are voices you are neglecting that I would very much like to hear from as a reader. I can’t imagine being in a project like this that doesn’t include at least one of those perspectives. I suspect you already know what I mean but I have no idea if you have the balls for that conversation yet. And, if you don’t, talking to you would be a waste of time. If you’re not ready for that conversation, if you can’t handle it, then there’s no real shame in that, but you won’t get anything out of talking to me yet.

-HP

[INTERVIEW - LUCIUS MALFOY- FULL TRANSCRIPT]
[Author’s Note: Dear Reader, full disclosure, I am mortified. Sitting in a room with my father, like this, is my personal hell. I am thirty years old, but my father makes me feel that I am perpetually four years old. I don’t think he sees me as an adult or, if he does, I don’t think he really hears me when I speak to him. Since the end of the war we have existed as ships passing in the night, hardly speaking without my mother as a conduit between us, and, when we do, I often feel I’ve moved so far away from him and the version of me he knew that it sometimes feels like we don’t even speak the same language anymore.

I would like to tell you I hate my father but like so many pureblood kids in my position, I don’t. I am disappointed in him, yes, but there is also a great deal of pity and bitter resentment that chokes me. I feel, can’t help but feel, like he betrayed me as a father. I don’t know if that’s fair. I don’t know if fair matters. Family dinners are not courtrooms, after all, they shouldn’t be at least.

To be honest with you dear Reader, my dirty secret is that forgiving my father for his actions is hard for me. If only because, if I admit he did his best at the time, I have to fully, finally, own the final frontier of things I don’t want to accept were my fault and my decision.

My father says he did what he did because he was afraid, because Voldemort was a tyrant. That’s not good enough, of course, but facing that means accepting that the things I did because I was afraid of my father, who was a tyrant in his living room, is not an excuse either. If he is just a man, then I am just an idiot.]

LUCIUS: –don’t like that thing.

DRACO: I know, but it’s not any different from a quick-quote quill.

LUCIUS: Then why can’t you just use that?

DRACO: Because this works better for me.

LUCIUS: I don’t understand. If it’s the same thing–

DRACO: Why does it matter? What does it matter if it's a wizard recording device or a muggle one? Do you think it’s going to poison you? It’s just an object.

LUCIUS: It’s about taking pride in our culture.

DRACO: [Sigh] Okay. Fine. The same culture that let a lunatic use our house as a hotel?

LUCIUS: It’s not–! That’s different.

DRACO: Okay. I’d like to hear about how it’s different. I want to understand how you feel about it.

LUCIUS: Will it change anything? To these people who will read this book? To you? You’ve already decided I’m wrong. That I don’t know anything about anything. That I’m some monster who– who wanted children to get murdered and awful things like that.

DRACO: I don’t think you’re a monster.

LUCIUS: Yes, you do.

DRACO: I love you. I love you very much. I just don’t understand. For me, my experiences were different to yours, I think. You… it seems like, when you met Voldemort the first time, he was charismatic and handsome and philosophical. I get that the change probably happened so slowly it felt like you lost control. I’m sure you were scared too, Dad. But, for me, the first time I met this man he was a snake skinned creature who made us staff in our own home and told me if I didn’t kill a grown man, as a child, that he would hurt you, and Mum, and me. And, worst of all, it felt like you let him do that to us.

LUCIUS: I didn’t want it to be like that. It wasn’t supposed to be like that.

DRACO: I believe you. I don’t think you like violence. I don’t think you enjoy it. I want to understand what it was supposed to be like. He lied to you too, Dad. I get that. I just want to understand what he told you and why it felt like a good idea at the time. That’s all.

LUCIUS: ….

DRACO: ….

LUCIUS: When I was your age, younger actually, it was…. Times were hard and frightening. For centuries muggle technology had been inferior to ours and we felt secure even if our numbers were so small. Then they just… They started to outpace us. They made these catastrophic weapons. They…

DRACO: Legacy is important to you, it must’ve been scary as a young man to consider how you were going to steer the family through unprecedented times.

LUCIUS: It was… It was nice what he sold to us, comforting. It was all very soft and sweet at first. He said wizarding kind was special, inherently and evolutionarily superior, and the idea that we were– not even entitled to be in charge, but that it would all naturally go our way because it just would. That confidence that we’d make it through and come out on top even if we didn’t know how. That it was guaranteed was…

DRACO: I can see how that would be nice.

LUCIUS: People don’t understand that, at the beginning, it was just writing essays and peaceful protests. It was petitions and policy reforms we wanted. He didn’t start with enslaving all muggles and murdering muggleborn children. It started with this idea that we’d be custodians, or stewards, of mankind. Benevolent. That we would take care of things because we were kinder than muggles, enlightened, not ruthless.

DRACO: Was it like a frog in a pot sort of thing?

LUCIUS: A what?

DRACO: It’s a muggle saying. You put a frog in a pot of water and turn the heat on, but the heat rises so slowly that the frog doesn’t register its being boiled alive until it’s too late.

LUCIUS: Oh. Yes, a little like that, I think. That’s a good way of describing it.

DRACO: I don’t mean this as an accusation, okay? But when did you first start to think you were involved in something that you didn’t want to be anymore? Or did that not happen until after it was over?

LUCIUS: No, I… I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the things we were being asked to do, or the way we were being treated. He used to talk to us like family, like equals, but then he didn’t anymore. I hated the things he asked you to do, Draco, I did. And I hated that I couldn’t protect you. It was so humiliating and terrifying I just thought if I stuck my head in the sand and held on it’d all get easier eventually. I thought if we just played along then we’d be safe at least. That if we just did what he said…

DRACO: Did you ever think about getting out? Or running for it? I know it would’ve been hard. I’m not saying it would’ve been the right idea, or even possible, I just want to know if you thought about it.

LUCIUS: All the time. Your mother and I spoke about it all the time. You have no idea. I didn’t want to scare you more than you were already scared. I wanted to be in control. I wanted to be a father and a leader and a wizard, but I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t know where we would go, or how we’d leave, I didn't know if anyone would help us, I didn’t know who we could really trust and… It sounds foolish to you, I’m sure, but I was raised in this house. Our whole bloodline lived in this house. I know it’s just a building, but it means something to me. I didn’t want to abandon it. My memories of your grandparents, of everything they’d worked for so we could have a good life. I thought if we ran, even if we got out to Russia or something, then we’d have to change our names and if I wasn’t Lucius Malfoy anymore, if I’d failed so badly I’d killed my father’s name then was there any point?

DRACO: It’s not silly to care about this house, or our history, or our culture. It’s not…. Anyone would’ve been scared. It was a hard position to be in. I don’t…. It’s hard, if I’m honest. Because I know, in your position, I probably wouldn’t have done any better, but it was really hard to be a kid and feel like you were deciding not to protect me, even if I know that’s not what you wanted.

LUCIUS: I’m sorry about that. Really, I am. I know I don’t say sorry a lot. You’re much better at it than I am. I know that sounds insulting but I just mean that… It takes a lot of bravery and class to be the kind of man who can say sorry. If I say sorry, I feel like I’ll never get back up again. I feel like an animal in a rat trap. Like I’m constantly biting at people who might help me because I can’t get out of my own mess.

I am so sorry for the things I let that man and those people do to us. I am sorry that… when push came to shove, I let myself down. I was so proud as a young man and then I was so embarrassed by how easily I collapsed under pressure. I wanted to think I was strong, but I wasn’t.

Now, it’s… it’s hard to talk to you.

DRACO: I know I’m not exactly the person you hoped I’d be.

LUCIUS: It’s not that, Draco. I… I don’t think I knew how to be a good father. My idea of what a man should be was clearly broken somewhere. I don’t know what I’m doing well enough to teach anyone else. It’s just… I thought, after he died and we made it through the trials, that it would be better. That I’d feel better. And I do, sort of, but… I feel so guilty when I look at you. Because I can’t undo any of that. Your grandfather gave me such a wonderful childhood and I let you down. Worse, because of what I did, we’ll be lucky if any witch in Europe will agree to marry you. Not because of you, either. You’re a nice man. You’re charming and smart and genteel but because you’re a Malfoy, and because of what I made that mean, I feel like I crushed your prospects. I feel like I killed your chance at a future, at a family, at…

DRACO: I don’t think it’s as bad as it seems. I think this will help. I think we’ve been working on it, both of us. But it means a lot to me to hear you care so much about that stuff. I know you love me, Dad, but neither of us are very good at talking to each other so sometimes… I don’t think I feel like you love me. Part of that is just how I feel about myself, not you, but… yeah.

LUCIUS: I’m sorry.

DRACO: I know.

LUCIUS: I don’t… to be honest I don’t really know anything about muggles. Not really. I’m just so used to that script, to saying those things. It’s so instinctive now. It feels better to be aggressive and superior than to admit I’m ignorant and it makes me feel stupid. I feel like the world is moving along without me and I can’t keep up and I should ask for help but…

DRACO: I get that. It’s hard. I’m sure there are a lot of wizards like you who are confused by muggle technology and customs and it freaks them out. As a dad you want your family to think you’ve got things under control, that you can help them, but when you’re faced with stuff that’s totally foreign to you it’s easier to push it away. I can get how it would feel better, like you’re holding onto the sense of security you want your kids and grandkids to have, right?

LUCIUS: Yes. Very much. I think, sometimes, that…you could have a muggleborn wife, or that my grandchildren, Merlin willing, might have muggle relatives and I’m…. I don’t want to be useless. I want to be close to them. I want to understand them. I want– I want them to like me. I want to be needed. I don’t want them to think I’m some idiot caveman, but I don’t know anything about this stuff. I never had to. But your kids will, and sometimes that feels like this massive yawning wedge between me and them.

DRACO: I’m sorry you feel that way. I didn’t know that was so important to you.

LUCIUS: I looked up to your grandfather my whole life. He was my hero. I know we don’t have that relationship, but I wanted that, and it’s sad. I’m grieving the life I thought I would have and the man I thought I would be.

DRACO: That would be sad. I can’t promise that our relationship can be like that. I don’t think that’s who we are or where we’ve ended up, but I do love you. Really, I mean that. I do want to have a relationship with you. I want you to know your grandkids one day. I don’t want to leave you behind, Dad. I don’t want you to lock yourself up in this house like a leper. I don’t want shame to cripple us or get in the middle of us. I want you to be able to go out and talk to people again. I want you to feel safe to do that. I want you to be able to be proud of yourself again. You made mistakes. I made mistakes. We fucked up and people got hurt. We certainly screwed ourselves plenty, karma came in like a wrecking ball, but… We have options. We don’t have to lay down and die in this shame. I don’t even think it helps the people we hurt if we do.

LUCIUS: I don’t feel like I know the right things to say or do anymore. I want to mend bridges. I want people to look at me like I’m a person again. I have no idea how to do that. I am sorry for those kids and people who got hurt, who lost their lives. I didn’t really want that, or to be the kind of person who wanted that to happen. I just don’t know how to begin making it better for them. I know my existence bothers people, it’s a bad memory, and I guess, to me, it seems like the best thing I can do is stay inside out of their way.   

DRACO: Let’s work on it together. I’m not saying everyone’s forgiven me, or will, but I feel like things are a little better now than they were.

LUCIUS: I think you’ve done a great job. I’ve been drowning and you’ve been trying to drag all of us to shore alone.

DRACO: I know being a romance writer isn’t–

LUCIUS: What’s wrong with being a writer? There’s nothing wrong with being an artist. If you got people to publish it, and read it, after everything then I think that means you have talent. You must.

DRACO: Thank you. Hey, let’s turn this off, yeah? We can talk about the house and stuff. I think being cooped up here isn’t good for you, yeah?

LUCIUS: Did–? Your book, I don’t know if that…?

DRACO: You did great. Don’t worry about it.

[TRANSCRIPT END]

[Letter from HARRY POTTER, included here in its entirety]

Malfoy,
Let’s chat.

-HP

[INTERVIEW - HARRY POTTER- FULL TRANSCRIPT]

[Author’s note: Mr. Higgins was right. Harry Potter, it turns out, lives in a perfectly muggle apartment in a perfectly muggle place. There is almost no evidence the magical world exists inside his flat. His photos don’t move, his dishes are washed by a machine, and the scarf hung by the door is for a muggle football team from the part of England where Harry Potter was raised with his very muggle relatives for seventeen years. I wonder, looking at it all, if Harry Potter wishes he’d never been a wizard. If he could take it all back and start over, would he want his Hogwarts’ letter? I am, for now, afraid to ask.

We sit on opposite ends of his soft but uninteresting couch. There is a scant two feet between us and we are both twisted to face each other. He is seated cross legged, I am more awkwardly arranged with one leg on the couch, one off, like I might spring away at a moment’s notice. I have not, dear Reader, been this physically close to Harry Potter since– I have not, I confess, been in the same room as Harry Potter since before the Battle of Hogwarts.

He has at once changed entirely and not at all. He is, somehow, exactly as I remember him and a stranger now. Maybe that’s because I’ve changed so much. I hope so. It’s hard to explain if you’ve never met Harry Potter in person but, despite all appearances, despite how hard he tries with his jeans and his band shirts and his messy hair and his cheap glasses, it is impossible to sit next to him and not feel it. Feel the ripple of something very large and very wild. Something he controls not with shackles but with a kind of painterly instinct. A magic that one is lucky to witness once in their lifetime, let alone be in personal possession of. It is disarming how young we still are, when you think how much younger we were when bad things started to happen very quickly.

For me, dear Reader, sitting in this warm, cocoa-scented, lounge room is supremely difficult. I have not felt like this since I was eleven years old. Harry Potter, a wizard who could get a few good licks in on Death himself if he wanted, doesn’t face me the way he would a stranger. He looks at me with the contempt of someone who knows me. Not as an abstract, not from a name on a list of suspects, but as someone he has lived parts of his life in the same building with. It is a personal glare from those illustrious and wicked green eyes, and I am frightened, dear Reader, not because I think Harry Potter would ever hurt me but because I want him to like me and because, for the first time in three decades, there is a tiny, tiny, chance he might.]

DRACO: ....

HARRY: ….

DRACO: …. Um ….

HARRY: Eloquent as always Malfoy.

DRACO: [Inaudible, maybe a laugh, maybe mortified choking]

HARRY: Come on, arsehole, don’t be so sorry you act like you don’t know me. If I wanted to talk to someone who didn’t know me–

DRACO: Do you want to talk to me?

HARRY: I haven’t decided yet.

DRACO: Then why are we talking? You could talk to anyone. Anyone would love to listen. If you wanted to tell your story–

HARRY: Yes, if I cared about telling my story, I’d do it myself. I don’t need you for that. I don’t need anyone for that.

DRACO: Then why? Is there something you want people to know? Or is there something you don’t want them to know? Is that why no one ever really sees you around?

HARRY: You’re a writer now. You tell stories with words. Painters tell stories with pictures. I tell stories, my story, with actions. Events. Everyone knows my story. They love to imagine there’s some interiority to it, some secret, but everything you need to know about me, everything I want people to know, you can see. You can hear. It’s every newspaper and history book printed in the last decade. I don’t need words. Words are too small to fit it all. A revolution, the thousand witness accounts from the day something bad went bust, the magic of something good coming together to halt the machinations of something very bad… I’m in all of that. That’s what I want to say. The mess of opinions about why it’s good and why it’s bad still, about what it means and what it doesn’t… That’s all of me. That’s all inside me. All the time. I am the same inside as I am outside.

DRACO: That’s not true. I mean– It is, but it isn’t. What about the you who sits eating dinner with Hermione and Ron? Who is that?

HARRY: Mine, and only mine. You don’t get that, Malfoy. No one gets to take that from me. Because if you get the me I am when I wake up, and when I brush my teeth, and when I write Christmas cards…. Then I am not a person anymore. I am just a thing, just a force. Just a lot of magic. I will not give up my soul, and I will not share it. Not even with a world that wants to worship me, whatever they think that means. I need an inch that’s just mine or I will go insane.

DRACO: Then why did you agree to talk to me?

HARRY: Why do you want to talk to me? You sent me so many letters. You fought for this. Now you’re here though, you’re sweating bullets. Your heart rate’s a good 180, I can feel it from here and we’re not even touching. You’re this close to shitting those slacks. You’d rather be in Azkaban. I knew you’d be just like this, we both did, but you still kept asking to talk to me. Why?

DRACO: I want what happened to mean something.

HARRY: It already does. It doesn’t need you for that.

DRACO: No, but I need this. I need to make sense of it. You can have your soul but, Harry, if I don't talk to you, I will go insane wondering for the rest of my life. I need to know if…

HARRY: On two conditions.

DRACO: Conditions?

HARRY: Three, I guess. One, for every question you ask, I get to ask one. Two, you have to answer honestly or we’re done–

DRACO: How will you judge that?

HARRY: I know when you’re lying Draco Malfoy, what do you think I am? And, three, you keep it all in the book. Every word. No cuts. No edits. Everything that goes on that tape goes in the book or it didn’t happen. None of this happened.

DRACO: There’s no book without a statement from you anyway.

HARRY: Then that’s how I want it. You don’t edit me. And however you come out in that mess you don’t edit yourself either.

DRACO: ….

HARRY: ….

DRACO: Okay. Deal.

HARRY: First question. Go.

DRACO: Do you think Voldemort could’ve been a good person in another life?

HARRY: No.

DRACO: But–

HARRY: Extra marital affairs are not accidents, not mistakes; they are a series of conscious decisions. Same with this. Voldemort decided to be what he was and he knew exactly what that was. Voldemort, personally, couldn’t have been anything but what he was because what he was, was lazy and stupid.

DRACO: That’s not what–

HARRY: No, of course not. But he was. Fundamentally. He was too stupid and too lazy to create or contribute anything of value to the world around him. He was too stupid and too lazy to put in the work to change anything, to leave a legacy, a real legacy. He was too stupid and too lazy to do anything that mattered to anyone. He wanted to be important. He wanted to be loved. But he was too lazy to do the work to be sincerely loved. Being loved means loving others and loving others is not an instinct or a thing that happens naturally, it is an action and a choice to take action. It is work. Every day it is work. Any mother who loves their child will tell you that loving them is something they have to decide to do every single day and it is not always the same as liking their children.

Voldemort was scared of death because he knew he’d done nothing of value in his life and no one would mourn him if he died, nor would anyone be waiting to greet him on the other side when he did. You don’t need to artificially extend a life with meaning. He was running from his own failure to manifest into a person even he could respect. He was a loser.

Could he have been good in another life? Give me a fucking break. He couldn’t even be good in this one. This is the only one there is. Every day he could’ve been good. Every day he could’ve stopped. Every day he could’ve decided to do something else. He didn’t. And, yes, his childhood sucked but plenty of people with shitty childhoods don’t commit genocide. Traumatized children hurt people, yes, but you don’t stumble your way into a fascist dictatorship. He did what he wanted to do. No one made him. He did insane, evil, things and that only makes more obvious his capacity to do wonderful, beautiful, things.

DRACO: ….

HARRY: …

DRACO: It’s…. You have a question then?

HARRY: Before the Battle of Hogwarts. When my friends and I were captured and taken to Malfoy Manor during the Christmas break, you were asked to identify me.

DRACO: I know, I remember, your face was all messed up. You didn’t even look like you.

HARRY: Why didn’t you tell them it was me?

DRACO: I didn’t kn–

HARRY: You lie to me, Draco Malfoy, and we are done. Is that your final answer? Think carefully. You looked me in my eyes, just like you’re looking at me now. You would know me if you didn’t have eyes to look at me with. You know me. You know me too well to be fooled by a cheap trick. Voldemort was stupid, you aren’t. Are you?

DRACO: I… I knew it was you.

HARRY: I know. That wasn’t what I asked. Why didn’t you tell them?

DRACO: Because I… I don’t really know. I didn’t want to. It didn’t matter anyway, they didn’t listen to me even at the time. They still called him.

HARRY: Do you really think that doesn’t matter? That was the bravest thing you ever did. It didn’t help you at all. No one asked you to do it. You did it anyway. You knew it was me and you didn’t tell them.

DRACO: So? I made one good decision. I didn’t even really decide, I just shut down. It didn’t change anything. They called him anyway. It didn’t even buy you any time. It didn’t matter.

HARRY: Yes. It did. It matters because it didn’t make any difference and you still tried anyway.

DRACO: So? So what? It just means I could’ve done it a thousand other times too. And I didn’t. I was a coward.

HARRY: [Sigh] Ask me a question.

DRACO: I, um…. Fuck. Um. Fuck. [Checks notes]

HARRY: Breathe.

DRACO: Shut up. I mean– Shit. I didn’t– Sorry.

HARRY: Don’t say sorry.

DRACO: I am sorry. Don’t tell me what to say.

HARRY: Then ask a question.

DRACO: [Deep breath] Why are you still so actively involved in combating dark wizards? If it doesn’t bring you any joy, why don’t you retire or really go MIA?

HARRY: Who said it doesn’t give me joy? If it didn’t give me joy, I wouldn’t do it. The problem is people see it as me ‘fighting dark wizards’ but that’s not what I do. That’s just a part of what the job entails. I don’t care about dark wizards. They’re a dime a dozen. They’re uninteresting. I care about helping people. I care about freedom and justice and love. If people need help, I come, and I help because it gives me great joy to help others. To use all this terrible power to do something that matters. My part of the work I do with others is fighting big, fat, monsters but that is not the most important part of the work. The important parts of the work are saving lives, fixing things, making a better world than the one we have or had. I find incredible meaning in that. Dumbledore trained me to die for the greater good, but I’m alive because living to make sure children don’t have to die for anything is worth so much more to me.

DRACO: And Dumbledore, how do you feel about him?

HARRY: Probably the same way you feel about your father. I loved him and I still do. He was a great wizard and he was an asshole. Those three things can be true at the same time. I love him and he was very talented, but he was an asshole and he was wrong about the important stuff. I don’t have to agree with him to love him or miss him. I miss him every day and I am glad I got to grow up with him but if I could have five minutes with him again three of them would be spent breaking his femur and two would be spent hugging him.

DRACO: But, if you could–

HARRY: That was two questions.

DRACO: No–

HARRY: Yes, it was. Why don’t I retire and how I feel about Dumbledore. That’s two, I let you ask two. Now it’s my turn.

DRACO: Fine, fine, okay. Your turn.

HARRY: Your mother told him I was dead, in the Forbidden Forest. Does that matter?

DRACO: I don’t know. We’re not talking about my mother.

HARRY: I can talk about whatever I like. You didn’t specify there were boundaries, neither did I. Your family got pardoned on the basis of what your mother did. Did that one action make her a good person?

DRACO: No, I don’t think so.

HARRY: So how many do?

DRACO: What?

HARRY: How many good things do you have to do before you’re a good person? How many bad things do you have to do before you’re a bad person? What’s the exchange rate?

DRACO: You’re making fun of me.

HARRY: I’m trying to understand.

DRACO: It doesn’t work like that, okay? We both know it doesn’t work like that.

HARRY: What your mother did mattered, right? Agreed?

DRACO: Yes. It saved a lot of lives, and it was a big risk on her part.

HARRY: How is that any different from what you did? Why does that good thing matter and your one doesn’t?

DRACO: It’s my turn. You asked like– That was at least three. You’re pushing it.

HARRY: They’re my rules. If I’m running circles around you, don’t let me, Malfoy. You are not helpless. You are not dumb.

DRACO: I know that! I know that. I know it’s not an excuse.

HARRY: I never said it was, or that you did. Listen to me.

DRACO: I am. I do. I do listen to you.

HARRY: Here, you want a story? I’ll give you this one for free. Your readers will love it. My mother–

DRACO: Fuck you. You know that’s not what–

HARRY: Did you know Snape left me his house?

DRACO: What…?

HARRY: Yeah. It’s insane, I know. Everything he had left, in the whole world, left it all to me in his will.

DRACO: He hated you.

HARRY: He did. And I hated him. I hated his fucking guts. No one hated Snape more than Snape hated Snape, though. You know, after the Battle of Hogwarts, I needed to get away for a while. A long while. I went to his place, because no one would look for me there because when would I ever willingly go to Snape’s house? Who would even think I had the keys? And, for the record, his house was just as miserable as you’d expect. Whatever you’re picturing, double it. The most hideous, miserably ugly, house in the world. A place designed to be unwelcoming to every person inside it for any length of time.

And, one day, I’m sitting in Severus Snape’s kitchen. I’d made this pot of pasta. Just the exact way my Aunt Petunia used to make it when I was a kid. Which isn’t very well, and Aunt Petunia hated me too. But I wanted that pasta I had when I was a kid because it was…. It was familiar, and normal, and anchoring.

I got a fork. Snape’s kitchen had the most obtuse organizational system so it took me five minutes to find the fucking cutlery, but I got a fork and, of course, it’s Snape’s fork so it is the most wonderfully hideous and utilitarian thing you’ve ever seen. Because Snape was so committed to the bit that he even bought forks that fit his petulant aesthetic. And I just… I just started laughing.

Next thing I know I’m thinking about Snape, almost missing Snape. And it hit me then, properly, that Snape was dead. Gone, forever. That I would never speak to him again, even if I didn’t want to it wasn’t an option anyway. And then, I’m crying? All of a sudden I was crying so hard. All of a sudden I was back in that boathouse. In this vivid memory, that moment, of him bleeding and broken and trying to talk to me so we could both get the work that mattered to us done even if we hated each other.

It hit me how permanent it was. Him being gone. And then I let myself think about all the people who are gone now. Tonks, Lupin, Fred. Even further back to deaths I never had time to grieve in the middle of the war– Sirius, Dumbledore. I just cried. I cried so hard.

DRACO: …

HARRY: The thing about Snape, about Voldemort, is that no one could love them more than they hated themselves. Snape, especially, couldn’t even love my mother more than he hated himself, in the end, but he tried. It’s sad and it makes me angry that there’s no room inside you for people to love you because you’re too busy waiting for, literal, written permission to love yourself.

DRACO: Do you hate me?

HARRY: No.

DRACO: Did you ever hate me?

HARRY: Not half as much as I wanted too, or a quarter as much as I should’ve. We didn’t stand a fucking chance, Draco. We were kids. Why is it your fault? Why is everything your fault?

DRACO: I don’t know. Ask another question. Please.

HARRY: You sure?

DRACO: Anything else, Potter. I don’t know what you want me to say.

HARRY: Okay, let’s fucking do this then. Honestly, Draco fucking Malfoy, when did you first realize you had a crush on me?

DRACO: What…?

HARRY: Did I stutter? You heard me.

DRACO: I… you…

HARRY: Answer the question.

DRACO: [Laughs] Who knows? You don’t really know when you catch a fever, you notice when it’s bad. That’s what tells you you’re sick. Your brain’s the last part of your body to know, you know? I guess… I noticed it for the first time at the end of second year… 

HARRY: …

DRACO: How long have you known that?

HARRY: Sixth year, maybe earlier. I’m not sure. For a long time I didn’t want to know because it hurt. Because you want me but there’s no room inside you for me. You wrote me these goddamn letters, and they’re all fucking love letters Draco, this whole thing is as much about clawing your way to me as looking at yourself. You are begging for my forgiveness, the Holy Grail of redemption passes, but I never hated you. I can’t forgive you, Draco. It doesn’t matter if I hate you or not because you hate yourself so fucking much and I agreed to talk to you because Hermione and Neville made it sound like maybe, finally, you were willing to give yourself some grace. Like you gave your father some fucking grace. You’ve even given Voldemort an olive branch in this fucking book you’re writing. You gave him an out. You give them all an out.

You don’t give a shit whether or not someone deserves forgiveness, or how they earn it, you have been trying since we were eleven years old to figure out how to be nice to yourself. Since the moment you blew it outside the Great Hall, our first day at Hogwarts, you have made an itemized list of every reason why you suck too much for me to ever like you. I am telling you, for the last time, that I would’ve given you a second chance that day and I will still give you a second chance now if you are willing to grab the fucking life raft. Please.

DRACO: ….

HARRY: ….

DRACO: C-Can I turn the…?

HARRY: Turn the recorder off.

[TRANSCRIPT ENDS]

Author’s Note:
I really want to like myself. I think we all do. I think we all want to feel worthy and the hard part is no one else can make you feel worthy.

In the Wizarding Britain men like Voldemort left behind it’s hard sometimes to see the forest through the trees. There are a lot of reasons people get radicalized onto the wrong side of history, but I think the most enduring lie people like Voldemort try to program into people like my father, like me, is that no one will take us back afterwards. That, if we leave, we won’t have any home to return to anymore. That the bridges we burnt, listening to men like him, are gone forever and the people on the other side of them have stopped waiting for us. Sometimes, that’s true, but the beautiful thing is that it very rarely is.

People who love you, people who want to love you, the kind of people who value kindness and love, are also exactly the kind of people who will be there to help you if you’re willing to help yourself. People stay on this side of that burnt bridge because we’re scared to jump, to swim back, and that keeps us on the wrong side of history longer than anything else. It’s actually not the acceptance of my father that made me make some of my worst decisions. It was the fear of being rejected by the people I’d already pushed away.

I think Hermione was right. Forgiveness is a risk we take. Both a chance we give other people, but also a chance we give ourselves. And, sadly, we are often more frugal with ourselves than others.

Thank you kindly for your time
Draco

[EXCEPT FROM THE DAILY PROPHET, LINDSAY SUSPENDUM’S GOSSIP COLUMN ‘KEEP THE KETTLE ON’. FOUR WEEKS PRIOR TO FINAL RELEASE]

–Although the rumor has yet to be substantiated by credible sources, there have been a number of reported sightings across London of Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter together. Potter, famously reclusive, is an already rare sight and, while Draco Malfoy has made a concerted effort to distance himself from his family’s dark reputation in the past decade, the pair are an unlikely duo for obvious reasons. Is this some kind of reconciliation, we wonder? Draco Malfoy’s upcoming release, his first work of non-fiction, is slated as a Harry Potter memoir so, perhaps, we can write this off as a marketing stunt to drive both publicity and sales for the novel. That however, to me, seems ludicrously out of character for our boy Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived has never concerned himself with the business of clout based economics. Then again, a marketing stunt is less absurd than the suggestion, passed onto me anonymously and shared with all of you in confidence, that the wizard duo might be courting? One never knows, dear readers, crazy things do happen, but as soon as we know we’ll be sure to pass it along to you!

Keep the kettle on, I like my tea hot,
XOXOX