Prologue.
"A proof that experience is of no use, is that the end of one love does not prevent us from beginning
another."
-Paul Bourget
1997. London.
Harry's head would perk up every time he heard a soft knock on the door of his smallish London flat. In his heart
he knew who he wanted it to be on the other side of the door. The person he wished was there and hoped wasn't. The
person he needed to be there and prayed never would be. Regardless of his wishes it almost never was. Most of the time
it would be reporters, biographers and the various people who had started what he thought was a cult that centered
around him. But when it was her, when she was on the other side of that knock, she may have been the worst guest of
all. She confused him in ways that he was not prepared for. None of it made sense. Nothing made sense.
Harry leaned back into the safe comfort of his couch, opened his book and shuddered against the cold he knew was mostly
in his head. He had been fighting insomnia since the war, being cold was a familiar symptom. He read at night to have
something to do, to try to force his too alive brain to calm down enough for sleep to finally take him. The knock
became urgent, then soft again, and finally went away. Harry concentrated on his book, when the rain started it almost
drowned out the sound of pebbles hitting his window. He almost convinced himself that it had, but eventually curiosity
got the better of him. He got up and looked out. In the street stood Hermione, her purple sundress soaked through and
clinging to her form.
Harry got up and grabbed an umbrella before going downstairs. He let out a breath of air when he reached the bottom of
the stairs, shook his head and steeled himself against the rain and against what he knew was waiting outside the door
to his apartment. He stepped out and felt the wet sidewalk moisten his bare feet. Hermione rushed to his side, and he
brought her under his umbrella.
"Ron's not here anymore." Harry spoke loudly to be heard over the rain, "He moved in with his
brother when you two broke up."
"I know." She countered, "You know I'm not here for Ron."
Harry looked longingly at the light in his living room window. Imagining that he had never walked out in the rain, that
she had never summoned him out, that he had been a normal boy and that everything for the first time in years made
sense to him. He hung his head and leveled his eyes at her, hoping she could see how much pain he was in. How much pain
she had put him in.
"What do you want from me, Hermione?"
She shot daggers with her eyes, "You know what I want."
"I don't know how to be that guy. I don't think I ever did."
"So you're going to stand out here in the rain with me and tell me that.. what? that you want to shut the
world out? Talk to me! Goddamn you, Harry!"
"You don't want to do this tonight. Go home." He said evenly.
"Can't you see how much we all care about you? How much I care about you?"
She put her hands around his waist and pulled him to her. She held her wet face against his chest and breathed him in,
mouthing those three words they were both too scared to say aloud. Harry wanted to put his arms around her, he wanted
to acknowledged what the last few months had been, what they had finally begun to realize they were to each other.
Instead he looked up at the apartment that he and Ron had shared until three months ago. He recalled how hard it had
been for Ron, how difficult it was for himself when his two best friends had declared war on each other. Finally he
pushed her away and handed her his umbrella. He turned around and walked back to the door.
"Go home, Hermione."
1998. London.
Harry knocked on the door of an apartment that had taken him weeks to discover the location of. He waited patiently,
but after several minutes he knocked more forcefully. Finally when it had started to rain,the light but constant rain
London was famous for, the door opened. Behind it stood a tall thin boy, the patchy, ill defined blond beard on his
face betraying his eighteen years of life.
Draco stared at Harry, his gaze a strange mixture of loss and anger. His hand gripped the door frame until his knuckles
grew white and his forearm shook. He did not open the door any wider. He did not smile.
"What do you want, Potter."
Harry smiled, "I just want to talk, Malfoy."
"Go ahead then." Draco narrowed his eyes.
"Can I come in?"
"Did I forget that we were friends at some point?"
Harry reached across the threshold of the door and put his hand on Draco's exposed elbow, "Malfoy, we still
could be."
Draco recoiled at the touch. His eyes widened and for the first time in many years he saw Harry. Somehow this poor boy
had become an old man, Draco couldn't remember when that had happened. He opened his door and let Harry in.
"I guess we can be at that."
1999. New York City.
Harry shifted his weight to steady Draco on his shoulder. Draco moaned but otherwise made no indication that he was
conscious. Harry almost tripped on a discarded bottle of scotch, but caught himself in time. He dumped Draco in the tub
of their apartment and turned on the shower. Draco awoke, bleary and fat tongued, under the pouring hot water. He
looked up to see Harry standing over him. It was always Harry, his rival, his protector, his vile enemy, and his
greatest friend.
"This has to stop." Harry said before he turned and left Draco in the bathroom.
When he got to the hallway he hunted down the bottle of scotch and threw it against the wall. Draco could hear it
shatter from the bathroom. He tried to find comfort by burying himself in his soaking wet tee shirt.
In the kitchen Harry was emptying every bottle of alcohol in the flat into the sink.
2000. New York City.
Draco was having a quick breakfast before he left for work. He had opened a gallery to display local artists. He was
proud of his gallery. It was the first thing he had built with his own hands, run with his own mind, and decided to do
of his own volition. He was dating a respectable muggle Lawyer called Amber, who was the perfect combination of sweet
and bossy. For the first time in his life he was happy.
Harry was down the hall in his bedroom sorting his laundry and ignoring the stack of letters on his desk. Each one
addressed to him in the neat loopy handwriting of one of his oldest and dearest friends. The same friend who he had run
across an ocean to escape.
He folded all of his pants and put them in his dresser. He smiled at his room. It was a complete mess, clothes
everywhere, twice read books laying on or around his bed, movies on the shelves where the books ought to have been had
he not wanted them close when insomnia struck him. He loved his room.
2001. New York City.
"Maybe we should just get out of the city?" Amber said.
Draco looked at Harry across the table. Harry's jaw was set firm, his eyes clouded with the memories of his own
fight against the violence in this world. Draco shook his head and Amber said she understood. They talked until the
early hours of the morning about the madness of it all, the hatred it took, the state of fear in the world now and how
that effected them. Harry just sat looking out the window towards the place where thousands of people had died.
When Amber caught a cab home, she had briefs to prepare for her boss, Draco pulled up a chair in the kitchen and
coughed to announce himself. Harry turned his head.
"I'm okay, Malfoy."
"I wish you wouldn't call me that, Harry." Draco said, "You're my best friend."
"I'm okay." He repeated, "Go to bed."
2002. New York City.
Harry jumped back onto the curb as a bike messenger zoomed past him. When the messenger was gone Harry set off across
the street. He had grown to love this city, it didn't have the ancient feeling of his native city, but it felt
powerful in a much different way. The people moved about their lives in a hundred million stories about each other and
themselves.
London was a city built on the hard tack past of hundreds of years of violence and love, New York was the most
beautiful gasoline rainbow. Harry was headed to the coffee shop where he would pick up his black coffee, then he would
buy some cigarettes from the magazine stand and get a pretzel from a street vendor for breakfast.
He breathed in the life of his city and felt it's great arrhythmic heartbeat against the soles his feet.
2002. London.
Hermione was sitting on the steps leading up to her flat and crying uncontrollably. Her neighbors were polite enough
not to open their doors and interrupt.