"Don't you ever get bored?" Harry asks.
"With what?"
"Haunting me. I'd think you'd have better things to do with your life. Er, afterlife. Not ready to be a Hogwarts house ghost?"
"I don't think the Bloody Baron would appreciate the competition."
"Well, it's not like there's anything he can do to you, with you both being dead and all. Is there?"
"Care to find out?"
Harry removes the towel he's been drying off with from his face and turns to look at him, finally taking in the bedraggled hair, the torn face and robes. It's always strange to see him this way. Wizarding deaths, he's learned with time, are usually far neater. All the beauty potions Snape never taught them still couldn't measure up to magic's ability to leave a flawless corpse. But death is the first thing Draco never had easy, Harry figures.
"Death is cold, Harry," the ghost continues, laying an icy finger on Harry's arm as he pulls on his robe. "No, there's nothing he could do to me. Being dead is enough."
"How profound," Harry says, and Floos his way to work.
**
"How do you put up with it?" Hermione asks. "Ron doesn't even want to talk to you anymore, not after what happened with Ginny. Not that I blame him. I barely want to see you after what he did to my vibrator."
"You'd be in a snit, too," Harry says. "Strangely enough, I don't think he's taking to death like a duck to water. Draco. A drake. To water. Ha! That's clever. And to think, people always thought you were the smart one."
Hermione rolls her eyes. "If you're quite finished?"
"Yes'm."
"You could exorcise him."
Harry sighs. "I don't think he'd like that."
"The ghost liking it is not the point, Harry. I think the point here is that you wouldn't like it, so here's option two: Resurrection."
Resurrection means bad shit. Harry doesn't have to be the worm in Hermione's bookpile to have an idea of what's at stake. And to be honest, despite the whining, Harry has a sneaking suspicion that Draco really prefers being dead. There are infinitely more possibilities for deviousness when you can walk through walls, after all. These things almost make Harry less sorry that he killed him in the first place.
Still, the other choices are
a) Never see Draco again, ever (bad), and
b) Continue to live a life filled with such fun surprises as getting ready for work and finding that all of his pants have been flushed down the loo, so resurrection it is."I knew you'd say yes," Hermione says, in the face of Harry's long silence. She always was the smart one.
**
"Come on, resurrect me."
"No."
"Resurrect me!"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because it's wrong, Draco."
"Hello, I'm a Slytherin. Well, was. Should they still really care about house affiliation after you die?"
"I'm a Gryffindor. Pleased to meet you."
"Oh, come on. I'd break the law for you, if I could."
"You already have broken the law for me, though I daresay you'd have done it anyway. Also, no."
"Please?"
Harry throws up his hands. "Fine. I'll fetch Hermione. You're damned lucky she's still willing to do anything for you at all, by the way."
"Woohoo!"
If going bright pink means a ghost is happy, Harry wonders, does it mean all the school spirits are perpetually depressed?
**
"I feel like an anti-abortion poster."
Right, that's eerie, Harry thinks. Funny how Draco never succeeded in scaring him all the time he was dead, yet is managing without effort in the process of his rebirth. Talking fetuses. He feels like a character in a David Lynch film. "A what now?"
"It's an American muggle thing. Dad took me on holiday a few years ago."
"I see. Anyway, give it a minute, I'm sure you'll be fine soon enough."
Hermione carefully adjusts the pile of mouldering clothes at her feet, and suddenly Draco-the-fetus is nearly exploding up and out, changing changing up to baby, toddler, child, teen, silver-blond hair sprouting, baby fat appearing and disappearing. Pretty neat, Harry thinks. And all we had to do was break the law and endanger our lives. And kill a chicken.
"Help him up," Hermione says, once Draco appears to be his pre-dead self again. "AbFab is on, so I really must go. Bye!" And with a flash of Floo powder, she's gone.
Harry takes off his robe and wraps Draco up in it, making a mental note to do a cleansing charm on it and the carpet later. He brushes his fingers gingerly over Draco's new hair, and it shouldn't be the exact same colour, really, or keep the same smell it always did when Harry would hold him at night, shower or no shower. This isn't his body. What would the fetus have looked like if it had lived? Would those tiny fists have grown into these same long hands?
"I'm hungry," Draco mutters, curling around Harry as he carries him to the sofa.
"I hope you like poultry," Harry replies.
**
"Nothing like a good bath to make you feel like a new man. In a manner of speaking."
"Get dressed. Dinner should be done roasting any minute," Harry says.
Draco disappears into the closet, cursing as he bumps his toes on the door - the perils of solidity - and then goes quiet.
"Harry, what's happened to all your underwear?"
end.