"What recently happened to him?" Draco rudely questioned.
"Mind your own sodding business!" Harry shouted, reaching out a hand and shoving at Malfoy when he saw his blurry shape start to lean in too close.
Draco appeared to shrug it off. "Whatever. But yeah, stay clear of the Muggle drugs. You can get better effects with magic, anyway."
"Then why'd you try the Muggle kind?" Harry gibed.
"Slumming. Why did you?"
When Harry didn't answer, Snape shook his head, incanted Nox, and tucked his wand back into his robes. "Let's try your glasses," he suggested, setting them carefully on his face. Harry remembered then, Snape taking them off partway through the torture. Presumably, his teacher had kept them for him, ever since. "Any better?"
"Ah, no. Actually, they really make my eyes hurt." He reached up a hand and took them off, pushing them onto the night table. Draco's hazy outline deftly caught the item that had been shoved off the other side.
"Flowers, Potter? Ooh, from Halsey Kiersage. Mmm, and nicely spelled to last."
"Stop mucking about in my personal stuff!"
"Fine," Draco answered, and dropped the vase.
"Draco!" the Potions Master exclaimed. "We talked about this!"
"You talked to him about not smashing presents from my friends?" Harry jeered. "Isn't he a little old to be learning that? Did you also talk to him about not trying to get other people's pets executed? How about not stealing things he happens to find lying around in the Slytherin common room, or--"
"We talked about impulse control," Snape interrupted, laying significant stress on the final two words as he trained his gaze on Draco. "Well?"
"Oh, fine," Draco drawled again. "Vasula reparo. Floreuesco. Wingardium Leviosa. There, good as new, even renewed their lovely floral perfume."
The vase settled itself back down onto the night table.
Harry decided the better part of valor might be pretending that Draco Malfoy was nothing but a patch of air. "Professor? What do you think is going on with my vision? Why do my glasses hurt?"
"I suspect the Elixir's repairing your eyes to the state they should be in," Snape surmised. "You might not need glasses after this."
"I'd rather have skipped getting my eyeballs poked full of holes, all the same."
"I have no doubt. Well, I do have quite a few potions to tend. Is there anything else you need at the moment, Harry?"
"Yeah. I need to talk to you alone. Seriously alone, Professor."
"I will come eat dinner with you in a few hours," Snape promised. "Anything else before I leave?"
"Take him with you, and send Hermione back. I need to write a letter, and while I think I could sort of see the parchment now, I don't think I could write worth a damn."
"Draco will be pleased assist you," Snape smoothly announced. "Am I correct?"
"Certainly, Professor," Draco replied, just as if he'd helped Harry with correspondence a thousand times before.
"Harry?" Snape sounded a tad less smooth when he posed a similar question to Harry. "Will that be acceptable?"
Funny he'd be asking, when the man had been so bloody autocratic before, had been all but shoving Draco at him, but Harry suddenly realized that yeah, it was acceptable. Just probably not for the reasons Snape thought.
There were, after all, far better things to do with Draco Malfoy than ignore him.
"Yeah, all right," Harry groused, making it sound good and reluctant. Snape was as wily as they came, and it wouldn't do to rouse his suspicions. "But he has to promise to get out when I say, this time. That's not negotiable. And you have to promise you'll take points from Slytherin if he sticks around after I've said to leave. A hundred points, say."
"Mr. Potter drives a hard bargain," Snape observed, sounding rather... satisfied by that, actually. Harry almost snorted. He knew what his teacher was thinking: that Harry's bargain was rather Slytherin in of itself. "Can you abide by those terms, Mr. Malfoy?"
"Oh, certainly," Draco said in his holier-than-thou voice, which Harry had always thought really suited his angelic appearance. It just didn't suit the demon he was inside. "However, in the interests of Slytherin, I should like to point out that you will have only Potter's word for whether I go when asked, or not. That is, unless we'd like to ask Madame Pomfrey to referee us?"
"I think we can trust the word of a Gryffindor," Snape drawled. "Even if he is a marginal one."
"Marginal?" Draco caught the meaning, but not the implication. "His middle name's practically Godric! What do you mean?"
"Harry knows. All right, then?"
"All right," the two boys echoed in unison.
Harry waited until Snape's footsteps had echoed away, before snarling with vicious intent, "Yeah, all right. Have you got a quill and parchment handy? Let's get started."
Of course he had no intention whatsoever of actually sending the letter. To anyone. He just wanted to write it, or rather, have Draco write it. Dudley would never see one word of what Malfoy was going to write, but the Slytherin boy didn't have to know that.
And as for his real letters, Hermione could help with those. Yeah, a letter to Dudley, and another one to Remus. But those were none of Draco's business.
This one, on the other hand....
A slow smile split Harry's face in two.
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"Dear Dudley," Harry recited, leaning comfortably back on the pillows he'd demanded Draco fluff. Five times, until they were just perfect.
Draco obediently started writing, no doubt in the extremely elegant, looping script he always used on his essays. It was practically calligraphy, and took considerable effort and time, but that was okay with Harry. He wanted Malfoy to have to linger over every word and absorb every phrase.
"Who's Dudley?" Draco asked as he carefully drafted out the name.
"My cousin," Harry explained, letting each fact sink in before he moved on to the next. Sort of like Draco would have to do with the letter. "I grew up with him. His dad just died. Guess how? Death Eaters killed him. Guess why? You gave them his address."
Draco froze in mid-stroke, his jaw working though he didn't seem able to speak.
"What, you didn't know you were a murderer already?" Harry sniped. "Yeah, his dad, my uncle. Dead, at your hand! Not that you'd care; he was, after all, only a Muggle. But I've got just one relative left in the whole wide world, and his father just met his end in a horrible, absolutely sickening way. Now maybe you'll understand why I didn't feel so compelled to thank you for giving me back a stick of wood!"
Draco's quill slipped from his slack fingers and drifted to the floor.
"Well, pick it up!" Harry impatiently ordered, able to track the motion even with his half-healed eyes. "I thought you wanted to help me. Isn't that your new mantra? I've got a lot more to say to my cousin than just 'Dear Dudley,' so hop to! Or do you not want to help me so much any longer?"
"Just dictate," Draco muttered. "Accio quill." A scratching sound told Harry that the other boy was finishing the salutation.
Harry paused a moment to collect his thoughts, then began speaking phrase by phrase, with long pauses in between so Draco could keep up.
"Dear Dudley,
"I'm really, really sorry over your recent loss. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for you, to stand out on your own front lawn and watch all that black smoke come pouring out the broken windows, knowing your father was trapped inside. How absolutely horrifying for you. And then to see the house crush in on itself, like that, and wonder if your father somehow made it out, and then realize he couldn't have, realize he's dead and gone forever... Dudley, I am so, so heartbroken that you had to see all that.