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Draco wakes up at 5:30 on a nondescript Tuesday morning. He brews a pot of coffee. He sips and he thinks and he stares past the beige curtains of his flat at the sparrow pecking around the windowsill.
He realizes he’s never done anything for anyone.
On Friday, he walks past the same bulletin board in the lobby he’s walked past every day since he moved into this shabby old building, but this time he looks at the poster with the pink ribbon, and on Saturday, he signs up for a half-marathon.
He’s never been a runner, and half-way through he seriously doubts that his legs could ever cure cancer, and thinks about how the entrance fee is probably pennies in the grand scheme of things. But he sweats it out, and he runs, and he runs, and he runs, and he collapses on the finish line once he’s done, and vows to never do it again.
Thursday’s are awful. Draco doesn’t know why, they’re just always shit. He’s become one with his couch, wrapped up in enough blankets to build a small castle in his living room. A commercial asking for a penny a day flickers on the screen, interrupted by brief static– a consequence of being ensconced in Draco’s magic day after day. Draco would call. He’s recently become interested in charity, after all. But, his home phone is all the way in the kitchen, and he’s comfortable.
It makes him sick, but he still doesn’t call.
On Sunday, he meets Pansy for brunch. Her boutique is closed on Sundays.
“I saw a piece on the news about the spike in homelessness after the war.” she says, flippantly, like it’s just a conversation topic. They’re actual people, sleeping on the streets of London, ducking under the cover of shopfronts when the rain pours and drenches their sleeping bags. Draco should be one of them. Draco shouldn’t have anything. “Merlin, I could have cried.”
“But did you?” Draco says. It feels like vomiting.
Pansy looks affronted, clutching her mimosa glass to her chest, “What?”
“Did you? Cry, I mean?”
“Well, no.” she turns her nose toward the sky, the picture of nobility and filth all at once. It’s like looking in a mirror. “But I could have.”
On Monday evening, Draco sits in front of the telly, blanketless on purpose. He’s waiting.
“For just a penny a day, you could support a child who has been affected by food insecurity-”
Draco hurriedly scratches the number down on an old take-out menu. He calls.
Draco doesn’t have much money. Unlike Pansy, he was left with nothing but whatever he could get selling old relics he’d managed to smuggle out of the Manor before it fell into Ministry hands. Stuck with his job at a Muggle country club, folding pool towels and serving drinks to the people he used to feel superior toward. They sneer at him, or worse, act like he’s not there. Some people think justice was never served, that he should be locked away from good society forever. However, being among so-called good society has taught him more than Azkaban ever could.
Here are three things Draco has learned since the war:
1. All the systems he once thought were in place at any given establishment in order to keep it running smoothly do not exist. Everything runs horribly, even the most expensive of country clubs, held together by rotting beams hidden from the eyes of customers and nestled on the backs of the pariahs that are employed there.
2. Being good would be easier if he was rich. Therefore, it makes his former behavior and the behavior of those he once associated with all the more confusing.
3. People are good. Deeply good. Disgustingly good. A lot of them just don’t know where to put all that goodness, and that’s the problem Draco’s running into now.
Draco went into a church once, just to see. The minister was terrifying, American, talking about the end times. He didn’t know that Draco had already seen the end of the world, and had to keep living beyond it. He fell for Lucifer’s tricks and damned himself, and one passage he read described Draco in naked detail.
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
There’s another marathon in March. Draco remembers his vow, then decides to forget it, and then he practices.
He runs until he can’t breathe and then keeps going. He sweats all the moisture out of his body, puts some back in, and then does it again. And again. And again. Until it hurts, but not quite as bad as the first time.
When March finally dawns, Harry Potter is waiting at the starting line.
“Thank you, Potter.” Draco had said after his trial, freshly free of his shackles but still sore, his ego and body beaten and battered. “How can I repay you?”
“Do something.” Potter replied, slipping Draco’s hawthorn wand into his waiting, trembling hands, “Anything. As long as it’s good.”
And maybe the life he’s been living as of late is his way of finally repaying Potter, or maybe it’s a desire he had all along, but now Draco has to face him.
“Doing something good?” Potter asks, lacing up his trainers. The question is poised as casual, but there’s a whole world of curiosity beyond his eyes.
For some reason, Draco doesn’t want to admit it. He wants to tell Potter about all of those times he sat in front of his television, watching the images of half-starved children pass by and still refusing to pick up the phone. He wants to make himself seem irredeemable, because he’s still not sure if he believes in his own ability to change. But Harry Potter has always stood for hope, and Draco feels it when he looks in his direction.
He wants to say, “I don’t know how much good I have to do to balance the scales. I don’t know when I’ll cross the threshold from repaying my debts to being truly, wholly good. I don’t think any of these marathons actually do anything, but I’m going to keep signing up anyway.”
Instead, he says, “Maybe. Maybe.”
Potter runs beside him, obviously slowing his pace to keep his spot next to Draco. When they reach the half-way point, Draco turns to him.
“Do you think this is actually curing cancer?” he asks, choking his words out while trying to inhale fresh air into his aching lungs.
Potter shakes his head, “Maybe. Anything to help, I guess.”
“Yeah.” Draco says, stopping, resting his hands on his knees and squinting up at Potter’s form, outlined by the afternoon sun, “Anything good, right?”
Potter nods, a toothy smile creeping onto his glowing, sweat-soaked face, “Anything good.”