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“What is this, Pansy?” Draco asks as Pansy heaves a thick wad of decorated paper onto the table. It whimpers softly with the additional weight.
Pansy had recently come back from her trip to Japan and was insufferable about it. Her hair now hung around her face in a hime cut, the two sets of bangs framing her face perfectly, and she seemed intent on spending the whole afternoon crowing heartily about one random fact or another.
Apparently, Pansy had got the hime haircut because hime meant princess. Apparently, her family was like the Malfoy’s back in Japan, strong with purebloods running back generations to the Heian era, armed with cherry wood wands, and only the most powerful wizards got cherry wood wands. Apparently, one of the Japanese National Quidditch Team players had taught Pansy and her cousins a martial arts based move exclusive to the Japanese National Quidditch Team called the Tsunami .
Pansy had smirked when she caught Draco’s eyes gleaming with uncut jealousy as she talked about how the famed Japanese National Quidditch Team player had let her use his customized broom meant for speed, and she had gone faster on his custom broom than Draco ever had in his entire life.
Father often stressed the importance of cultivating relationships that could be easily commodified, and Draco couldn’t bully Pansy into following his bidding. He doggedly put up with another hour of Pansy’s stream of nonsense until he could no longer and had asked her with strained politeness if they could actually do something instead of merely talking. Pansy had taken one look at Draco and at his hands tapping rhythms into the table before declaring she had exactly the thing to do and came flouncing from her bedroom with her hands full.
“ Kami ,” Pansy says, as if the word explains everything and as if Draco understands a lick of Japanese. Draco stares. After a beat of silence, Pansy clarifies, “It means paper in Japanese.”
“Ok…” He says and lets his voice trail off. Pansy was expecting a simpering show of awe that she would never receive from Draco. Best to leave the act to people who best excelled at it like Crabbe and Goyle. “Why did you not have the house elves fetch it? It is merely paper.” Draco adds at Pansy’s pointed look, rolling his eyes.
Pansy gasps, mouth full of silly horror. “This is foil-backed origami paper handmade by onis and far too expensive for house elves to touch with their grubby hands.”
“Fine,” Draco waves his hands towards the paper. “What are we doing with this?”
“Watch me,” Pansy commands as she rifles a crisp sheet of paper out of the stack. Draco humors her, his eyes watching creases erupt into being under Pansy’s careful ministrations. If she ever ends up as his wife, Draco will make sure that not a single sheet of kami will ever enter the Manor. God forbid he spend his time doing foolish tasks such as folding origami instead of doing big important business like his father.
The tip of her tongue peeks out through thick lips as she bends the edges of the paper into place. A crane sits in place of the paper, and Pansy peers up at him through her bangs. She mutters a soft incantation, and the crane flaps its paper wings weakly once, twice before sputtering into flight out of the room.
A wicked grin spreads syrupy sweet across Draco’s lips, and he can almost taste the familiar crackle of Potter’s anger rippling against his skin as his mind births a fleeting daydream of him running and tripping flat on his stupidly handsome face chasing Draco’s cranes throughout the halls.
“Perhaps this will be useful for tormenting Potter next year,” He turns back to Pansy and watches her face mirror his with matching smirks. “Show me how to fold one of the cranes.”
-
Draco’s arm winces as he adds the last finishing touches of Potter’s scar to his drawing of him being electrocuted by lightning while playing Quidditch. He will never be able to capture the exact likeness of Potter’s wild eyes in his drawing, but he doesn’t need to since Potter’s got a lightning bolt stamped smack dab onto his forehead, the way livestock are branded for identification.
Those same eyes sear into Draco’s skin as his fingers pull a crane out of the drawing. He cups the crane in his hands and mutters the incantation Pansy taught him in the summer before school, blowing a gentle puff of air to encourage it to take flight towards Potter.
Snape’s lulling drone diffuses throughout the room along with Goyle’s soft snickers which increase in anticipation. Potter snatches the crane out of the air, his Seeker reflexes kicking into drive, and carefully undoes Draco’s crisp folding. Looks once at the drawing before wordlessly incinerating the drawing into ashes on his desk, his jaw working in anger, and looks back at Draco with his eyes burning brighter than they ever have.
Draco leans back in his seat and ignores the crick in his aching arm and sees the weight of Granger’s hand on Potter’s forearm stopping him from launching out of his seat right at Draco after class. Potter’s sharp gaze is the sweetest balm that Draco could have asked for.
-
Pansy’s in Draco’s bed when he comes back. Her midnight hair lies scattered across her back, pooling in the creases in her starched uniform, and hundreds of cranes devour the entire dorm. Some are strung up on massive lines of string with silver beads and trinkets that glitter like miniature stars under the dim water filtered light. Others flit through the air as if they’re real and their thin paper wings have given way to soft, downy feathers.
“Draco.” Pansy sits up. The sudden movement sends a couple of innocent cranes sprawling to the floor.
“Pansy, what are you doing here?” Draco asks, his voice hoarse from disuse.
Pansy had broken up with him two months ago, right before Christmas break, after he spent his days alone oscillating between mind numbing apathy and blood rushing anxiety instead of with her on dates so sickeningly saccharine his teeth rotted into enamel dust.
She had left Hogwarts with a promise of an angry woman’s retribution the way how an earthquake leaves, with everyone in Slytherin aware of what had happened. Slytherins could smell a drop of blood in gallons of water better than a shark, and Pansy had returned, sheathed in a blanket made of the cruelest words she could muster, her hime bangs so straight it could cut through glass, no doubt tempered by knowledge she had learnt in her house of the Dark Lord’s resurgence and the captivity of Draco’s lack of choices.
Pansy gnaws on her bottom lip, blood blooming the color from baby pink into a salmon, before releasing it. “Apparently if you fold a thousand cranes, the gods will grant you a wish.” Her voice sounds cold, but Draco knows there’s soft warmth and affection for him lurking underneath.
Draco moves the cranes out of the way so that he doesn’t crush them and sits next to Pansy. Her hands snap a piece of string taut. They move around unnecessarily as if they can say everything Pansy wants to tell him
“It comes from a Japanese belief called senbazuru . Cranes live for a thousand years, so you have to fold a thousand cranes, one for each year of its life,” She says and starts to thread cranes and beads and trinkets through the string.
“Did you know that I used to wish that we could get together?” Pansy asks. She slides a crane onto the string. “I used the cranes we folded in the summer before third year to start off my senbazuru , but we got together before I finished.”
Draco doesn’t have a chance to reply because Pansy keeps on barreling on ahead with her words. He’s not even sure if he even wants to.
“Do you still remember how to fold cranes?” Pansy grabs her wand and flicks it so that tens of strings thread themselves with the cranes and beads and trinkets. She swishes her wand once again, and the strings tie themselves together so they’re all connected at the top. It looks like a wind chime, but with cranes instead of chimes.
Draco nods. Thinks back to all of those years ago when he had sent a crane to Potter and relished the way how anger worked through Potter’s system, lighting his eyes up with wildfire into a knife so cutting it left Draco’s body thrumming with a heat that he should have rebuked, but secretly relished in.
Pansy’s fingers work another sheet of paper into a crane. She places it into Draco’s hands and Vanishes most of the mess with a weak flourish. She doesn’t say anything. The crane in his hands does all of the talking, shrieking silently about how Slytherins don’t look out for one another, but you still did and don’t kill yourself, please live .
“You should make a senbazuru , Draco,” Pansy says and walks out of his dorm, leaving Draco in the leftover rubble.
He doesn’t want to admit that the crane in his hands breathes life into one of his most childish dreams, a dream that he crushed with his fist into fine sand last year, a dream that he’ll make it through the war alive.
-
Tremors wrack through Draco due to the aftermath of his latest Crucio session with Bellatrix. His fingers shake the most like a leaf blown apart in the wind as he folds a corner over another. Despite the twitches, the lines of Draco’s crane shine sleekly with the help of the memory of Pansy’s lithe fingers gliding over his hands.
Folding cranes had blown into a lifeline for Draco. One crane for each day Draco survived. One crane for each Crucio inflicted onto his body. One crane for each person he tortured. Experience compresses the time needed to fold each piece of paper into a crane from fifteen minutes in third year to a couple of minutes now.
Pansy comes over sometimes, and they tangle their limbs together in the chaise or in Draco's bed as they sip from Ogden’s and Firewhiskey bottles stolen from Lucius’s office. Theo comes over too, not as often as Pansy though. Theo’s not sure if he likes boys like how Draco does, but loneliness breeds a touch-starved Theo, so sometimes they’ll kiss until they hear a scream running through the house like a bolt of lightning and they jump back until they’re a respectable distance apart. When Theo is sure he likes boys like how Draco does, he steals Draco away to the Nott estate, and they fuck hard and fast in stolen moments.
The heavy afternoon sunlight sinks into the room. It seems almost diseased the way how it trickles into the room, bit by bit, the bright yellow warped into something ugly and off-putting. Draco’s accumulated hundreds of cranes now. He knows the final battle is coming far too quickly, before he can finish his senbazuru .
He wonders if praying to gods he doesn't even believe in and putting his faith in a belief that he doesn't even trust will pay off. Maybe Japanese gods recognize intent. Maybe they’ll understand that Draco wants this godforsaken Manor to burn down, the godforsaken Dark Lord to die, and this godforsaken war to end for once and for all. He doesn’t mind folding another crane if a thousand of them grant his wish, even if it wears away at his Crucio-damaged nerves.
-
Draco cuts the last string with his teeth. Thirty-nine strings gleam on the floor. Draco drops the last one onto the ground next to him as the excess material of his pyjama pants pool around his body. He tips his wand up so that the strings hang themselves in the air. One of them falls, and Draco curses under his breath as his magic pulses weakly. A three month stay in Azkaban has sapped away at his magic, and he finds that calling on his magic to do the simplest of things requires behemoth effort. He tips his wand once again, and the fallen string realigns itself with the other strings.
Draco has spent every waking moment after coming back from Azkaban to finish his senbazuru . He had nearly a hundred cranes to make up for his time in Azkaban, and he finished them with a furious emergency yesterday.
Draco vaguely remembers that Pansy’s wish was fulfilled before she finished her senbazuru and that they broke up. Although he’s not quite sure which wish of his was fulfilled, Draco knows that one of them must have been fulfilled. Part of the Manor burned to ashes. The Dark Lord died. The war ended. He doesn’t want to tempt the gods, even if he doesn’t believe in them.
Draco’s beading cranes onto the strings when he feels the heat of a gaze prickle at the back of his neck. It gusts over sensitive skin and the baby hairs curling at his nape like a lover’s breath. Draco knows his gaze. He’s had the chance to become intimately acquainted with it over the course of seven years.
He looks back, and there’s Harry Potter, looking horribly out of place in Draco’s home, his battered dragonhide combat boots and dark leather jacket clashing with the bright, verdant plants. Draco’s swathed in his monogrammed silk pyjamas which hangs off of his body. While Draco had withered away in Azkaban in the last three months, his muscles atrophying, his skin lightening, Harry had become more bronzed and returned to his lean cut figure before the war, packing on some muscle due to his Auror training.
“Malfoy,” Harry nods.
Draco manages to wrangle a Potter out of his throat before all of the suspended strings collapse in a heap on the ground. Harry’s gaze cut his attention to holding the strings upright into tatters. Draco does nothing but let out a deep sigh. He’ll have to try again when Potter isn't around.
“What are you doing here, Potter?”
Harry scratches at his collarbone, clumsily averting his eyes to the mess of strings and cranes. “I, uh, have tea with Narcissa every week.” Upon Draco’s slackened jaw, Harry blushes, maroon red barely peeking through his copper skin. His ears take on most of the color. “She invited me.”
Weakness lingers in Harry’s words that Draco could jerk his teeth around, but he’s too tired to verbally spar with Harry the way how he did for most of his childhood. The Battle of Hogwarts had beaten most of the fight out of Draco, and Azkaban had ripped any remaining from him.
“Of course, she did,” Draco loosens another sigh and waves his wand once again, spelling the strings into dangling midair. “She must be running late. You can wait here if you would like.”
Draco doesn’t blame Narcissa for inviting Potter over for a cup of tea. He can’t blame her. Her heart had been taken from her. Both he and Lucius had been locked up immediately after the battle, their stay in Azkaban interrupted briefly by their trial. Their trials had been some of the first trials post-battle, so that the Ministry could crucify them for the mistakes of everyone on the wrong side of the war, including the Ministry’s mistakes. The only difference was that Potter’s testimony saved Draco from a lifetime in Azkaban like his father.
“Ok,” Harry says and sits on the ground next to Draco, his jeans brushing softly against the silk on Draco’s skin as he settles.
Draco nearly gapes, mouth open ready to catch flies, unbefitting a Malfoy, but catches himself at the last minute and snaps his mouth shut.
Potter doesn’t say anything. He just watches Draco flick his wand, the wand he gave to his mother to give to him, with that sharp, sweet gaze of his and worries the thick fibers of his ripped jeans thinner. They sit together in silence until it stretches so much, wrought with tension that threatens to shatter into pieces that could cut like knives. It pulls at Draco much like a child wanting to be acknowledged, and he can’t focus on holding the strings up with his attention being dragged in two opposite directions.
Draco takes a deep breath before speaking into the open air. “I’m making a senbazuru .”
Potter furrows his brows, just slight enough that Draco catches it.
“The gods are supposed to give you a wish. You have to fold a thousand cranes to make a senbazuru , one for each year of a crane’s life.” Draco says, his words echoing those of Pansy’s two years ago.
The silence bends between them when Potter doesn’t reply, close to snapping, and Draco ties more cranes to the strings, the noises twinkling faintly, in an attempt to placate it.
“Alright then,” Potter says, drumming his fingers on the ground. “What did you wish for?”
Draco doesn’t reply. Doesn’t look at Harry. Sunlight pours into the conservatory like a tidal wave, the plush plants surrounding them teem with life, and they’re bathed in gold. Everything glitters here from Draco’s silkspun hair to Harry’s bronzed skin.
“Malfoy,” Harry says, pulling Draco back to him again. His gaze is sharp once again, but it’s slightly tamed with something soft.
I made them for me. I made them for you. I made them for us.
“Harry,” Draco says, and it’s a reply and a confession and a plea.