Ron doesn't say a word when their eyes lock across the frozen meats. He tenses, fingers gripping a cold packet of thighs, but Malfoy's gaze slips off him after the barest hint of recognition. Ron nods to himself, he can play it that way, but he still feels put out. As if he's not even worth the anger and derision anymore.

He's tempted to follow him when Malfoy turns away, but he doesn't.

**

The next time he sees him, Malfoy's making a scene over a street vendor, and Ron rolls his eyes. It's not a surprise to find him there. They're in the only remotely magical area in west London, and the rebuild is slow.

The war has left more people helpless than homeless, exposing them to Muggles, forcing them to intertwine their lives whether they want to or not. Ron runs into a lot of Wizards and Witches he knew before, and most all of them avert their eyes, as if they're ashamed. Ron suspects, though, that he just reminds them of something they're working hard to forget.

He would be home, warm in the Burrow, except Percy has a brilliant mind and no practical applications for it. So Ron is reason and labor in the long, arduous reconstruction of the city, narrowing Percy's theories and visions down to actual everyday usefulness.

The building behind him is nearly finished, and Ron is dirt-streaked and parched and he toys with a bit of Muggle money in his pocket, watching Malfoy with more annoyance than anything else. He just wants a bottle of water. In the end, he walks three blocks down and buys two from a corner store.

**

Percy is boring, and Harry's in Cairo, so Ron goes out at night by himself. His skin itches when he sits around inside, the flat air stifling and stale. Most times he finds himself half-drunk in a pub down on Peters St., but he sees 'Godzilla vs. Gamara' on the tiny theater marquee across the street, and steps into the overly ornate vestibule with a faint grin. The month before he'd caught Mothra, and he'd laughed more than he had in a good long while.

Halfway through the film, the short hairs on his neck prickle, and he wraps a large hand around his nape, turning his head to the side. Malfoy is staring at him from five seats down, his face gray-cast and wan in the dim light from the screen.

Ron doesn't know what to do, so he looks away. Afterwards, he can't remember the rest of the movie.

"Are you following me, Weasley?" Draco snaps at his heels, and Ron doesn't want to deal with him, but he stops and sighs, standing just outside the theater.

"No," he says tiredly, and then adds, because he's fairly sure it's expected, "Are you following me?"

Malfoy's lip curls, but his reply lacks a customary snarl. "Don't be an idiot."

There isn't much to say after that.

Ron doesn't have the energy to be angry anymore, and he has to get up at six the next morning, so he nods and starts to cross the street. Malfoy follows, and Ron finds that oddly funny, because he knows he's not following him. Because of course they live in the same building. It's the only one still fully cloaked, though the work is shoddy, and Ron would do something about that if he didn't come home so dead sick of wards and spells. Tainted Magic tastes funny, and even the clean up leaves his wandtip black.

In the lobby, Ron heads for the stairs and wonders idly what button Malfoy pushes on the lifts.

**

Ron lives with Percy, though he'd rather not, and Percy spends most of his time in his room revising security plans for the Ministry. He doesn't work there anymore. Ron works for the Ministry, and Percy works for Ron, though that's more than a bit hush-hush. Percy's black mark isn't tattooed onto his arm, but the Ministry has long memories, and pardons aren't anything more than slips of thin paper.

Ron's good at rebuilding. Cloaking. Memory Charms. He's good at recognizing different threads of Magic, good at weeding out the Dark, good at looking someone in the eye and knowing whether You-Know-Who had branded them. He doesn't know why he's good at that, but Hermione has a theory about that last rain-soaked battle, when the fields around Threave Castle burned to ash in blue flames, and Ron was nearly choked to death by a wide-palmed Death Eater. Trauma induced extra-sensory, she says, which always sounds wrong coming from Hermione, but the war changed her as well.

Ron often forgets to eat. Everything is bland paste in his mouth, anyhow, so he stops seeing the point of interrupting his day. The faster he gets a building done, the faster he can move on to the next one, and then he's that much closer to going home. Harry tells him to quit in every Owl, but Ron would rather be thin and tired and useful than content at the Burrow. He dreams of lazy afternoons, but he doesn't wish for them.

He feels responsible. He is responsible. He was old enough to fight, old enough to kill, so he's old enough to clean up his messes.

**

He thinks he remembers the next project. He wasn't there for most of the attacks in the city, but he thinks he remembers this building, remembers hiding five stories up, remembers muffling the whimpers of a frightened Witch with his hand, remembers watching a no-more-than-ten little boy trip on the wrong step, remembers not doing anything because there were too many of them and not enough of him. After that, he never went on missions alone.

When he stumbles out of the half-crumbling structure just as the sun is melting behind the buildings across the street, he's surprised to find Malfoy sitting on the bottom step. They're on the outskirts, almost pure Muggle, and Ron can't think of any reason why Malfoy would be that far out.

"What are you doing here?" he asks before he can stop himself. They've run into each other more than once since that night at the cinema, but they never talk. Neither of them, Ron thinks, is ready to hear what the other has to say.

Malfoy shrugs and Ron feels fleetingly jealous of his round shoulders, of the thick hair curling over the ends of his ears, of the healthy solidness of his body. He obviously doesn't have any trouble eating. His eyes aren't bruised with the fatigue Ron sees in himself every morning.

John and Simon, the two other Wizards assigned, push past him with a somewhat cheerful, "See you tomorrow, boss," and, "G'night, Ron," and suddenly Ron is furious. Because John is ten years older than him and lost two daughters, and Simon was a juror for the last cell of Death Eaters and Ron doesn't see anything good about that. And Malfoy. Malfoy should be crying himself to sleep every night. He should feel like shit, should feel worse than him.

Malfoy hadn't fought in the war, for either side. He'd declared it beyond stupidity to face dying for something he believed in, when nothing would change either way for him personally. And then he'd flounced off to France or Japan or wherever the hell Malfoys went when they were being Switzerland. Malfoy had left his world to bleed, and Ron thinks he should be haunted by regrets for the rest of his life.

"What are you doing here?" he snaps again, slowly and with vicious emphasis, feeling more life crackling through his body than he's felt since... he can't remember when.

The curious amusement on Malfoy's face looks strange. "Following you," he says, and that trips Ron up enough that all the ire slips out of him as quick as it materialized.

He nods, a plodding dip of his head. "Fine."

They walk home in silence, and Ron breathes in the congestion of the streets, the smog, the lingering haze of Dark Magic, and for the first time doesn't mind the burning at the back of his throat.

**

It's oddly domestic.

Three out of six nights, Malfoy waits for him on the building stoop. Then he shows up one morning with an offering of a sack lunch and Ron asks, genuinely curious, "Are you really that lonely, Malfoy?" and Malfoy's narrowed eyes say he won't be following him home anymore.

Malfoy was always contrary and prideful, and while going through the war might have twisted him as much as it had Ron and Hermione and Harry, Ron remembers that Malfoy never went through the war.

Malfoy is contrary and prideful, and Ron isn't anymore, so he ends up searching down Mrs. Farconi, the wizened old landlady, and manages to charm Malfoy's flat number from her. He wants to go apologize.

He doesn't actually do it, but he thinks about it, and once finds himself just outside Five A, fist half-lifted to the door before he turns and walks away.

Even without the apology, Malfoy is only mad for a week.

**

Percy is sallow and hollow-eyed, and blinks owlishly whenever Ron forces him out of his bedroom. Malfoy thinks this is funny, but Malfoy has a weird sense of humor, Ron finds, and they can argue for hours over the tragedy of pratfalls and prop-gags, and Ron thinks it's even weirder that Malfoy enjoys physical comedy over sarcasm.

But then, Malfoy was never any good at laughing at himself.

Percy takes Malfoy's presence in stride. He doesn't rant anymore, but his reports are just as tedious and long-winded and pointless, and it takes Ron nearly a day to convert them into any sense relating to the reconstruction project. But Ron thinks Percy is happy, and that's all he wants for him.

**

Ron is wrong about Malfoy. He hadn't changed with the war, but Japan must have been polite to him, because he came home with manners. Ron would laugh about that, except when Malfoy bullies him into leaving the Magical grid, pushes him past the growing number of Muggles, makes him walk so far away from the reconstruction site that he can hardly taste any blackness at all, Ron feels more like kissing him.

The chocolate still has a tang, Dark Magic coating his teeth, but Malfoy's mouth is clean.

Malfoy freezes up under his hands, tensing as Ron tilts his head and leans into him, but his fingers are desperate in his hair and his tongue licks the corner of Ron's lips, and Ron hopes he doesn't mind the dust. Ron hasn't kissed anyone for years.

Malfoy breaks away, panting, and says, "You need this," only his eyes are steely and questioning.

"I want this," Ron counters, because Malfoy is the only thing normal in his life, and Malfoy looks at him too clearly, and Malfoy wasn't touched by the war, refused to be touched by the war, and Ron wants that. "I want this," he murmurs again, and Malfoy smirks at him.

Malfoy smirks and it's as if ten years disappear, and Ron feels a tightening in his chest that may be joy, only he's a little rusty with that. It could be indigestion. He doesn't think it is, though.

 

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