Even Jimmy's wariness had ceased to bother him.

The silence stretched between them as they worked on this particular order from a large shop in Switzerland. Draco was fine with the silence, so when Jimmy spoke, he had to stop himself from reacting too severely and revealing how startled he was. He hadn't heard Jimmy speak much at all in the two months Draco had been at The Cottage.

“You... you're not as bad as I thought,” he said nervously, watching Draco from the corner of his eyes as he attempted to keep a steady grip on his cutters.

Draco didn't reply, letting the silence hang thickly in the air. What could he say to that? Was it a compliment? Jimmy, however, continued before Draco could decide what to do.

“I... I thought you'd be just... just like them. I was... scared of you.”

Draco focused on his work, trying to still his shaking hands long enough to cut a marigold without crushing its fluffy head. His palms hadn't sweat this way since the day he had arrived, when he had faced Ginny's loathing for the first time.

The fact that this man, who was old enough to be his father, if not older, was scared of him—him!—made Draco want to laugh. The nervous kind of laughter people forced out of their mouths when they were uncomfortable. As uncomfortable as he was, though, Draco did not laugh. Instead, he continued hiding behind the silence.

“But you aren't.” Jimmy turned back to his own marigold, snipped, and placed the flower in the basket. “I was wrong about you. All this time you've been here, you've kept to yourself. My fear just seems so pointless now. Maybe there's nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

At that, Draco finally looked at his companion. Lit by the sunlight, he appeared younger than usual—his gray hair less stringy, the wrinkles that lined his face shallower, his eyes a more youthful blue. Draco didn't know what he was doing at The Cottage, what kind of rehabilitation he was undergoing. He couldn't imagine the older man as an ex-convict from Azkaban, so why else would he be there, cutting and fertilizing flowers with someone like Draco? This was his first time wondering about it, even thinking about it. And now Jimmy seemed like a real person to him, rather than a fearful shadow avoiding the sun lest he be exposed and disappear.

Yes, he was a real person, but an idiot nonetheless. For a person who hadn't trusted Draco since he'd arrived, he too easily forgave. He should have known better than to take Draco's good behavior at face value, especially when Draco's freedom was on the line. No Slytherin would make that mistake, and this man was obviously not as cunning as any Slytherin.

“Don't be daft,” Draco finally answered. “Of course there are things to be afraid of, but you can't waste your life away hiding from them. They'll find you anyway. And then where will you be?”

At the top of the Astronomy Tower, holding the most powerful wizard of the age at wand point? Breaking bread with the Dark Lord as his snake devoured a woman whole?

“Alone,” Draco concluded. “Dissatisfied. Even more terrified than you were before.”

Then Jimmy did something Draco never expected him to do. He smiled at him. It was the kind of smile that made the creases in his face completely disappear. It made him real and new, and, for the first time since meeting him, Draco thought he might have actually been younger than he appeared.

“You're right,” he agreed jovially.

All this time, Jimmy might have feared Draco, but Draco had feared Jimmy just as much. He was the voice of the war, of all the people who had been hurt by Draco's actions and the actions of his family. Draco might not have killed anyone, but he had been a pawn in the Dark Lord's game, and the events with Dumbledore at the top of the Astronomy Tower had set the game in motion. No, he may not have been directly responsible for the death and destruction, but he was a representation of the destroyers, and Draco hated seeing himself like that in Jimmy's eyes. They both feared each other and had avoided one another as much as possible because of that.

But look at Jimmy now: he was smiling at Draco and speaking of fear as if it were a legend of the past. No, Draco didn't know what kind of rehabilitation Jimmy had come to The Cottage to receive, but it was clear that he had shaken his demons, well and truly.

And by the end of the following week, Jimmy was released from The Cottage.

“What did you do?” she screamed at him after he'd jolted awake.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he mumbled groggily.

“Jimmy's gone! What did you do to him!”

He shook his head to clear it, uncomprehending her words. “What are you talking about?” he growled impatiently.

She reached for his blankets and pulled them off his bed with a flourish. “Jimmy. Is. No. Longer. Here. What. Did. You. Do.”

“Hey! What do you think you're doing!” he cried while reaching for the discarded blankets.

Before she could retort, a stern, “That's enough!” made both of them freeze in place. Lucy stood at the door, her arms crossed over her chest disapprovingly. “Jimmy no longer needed us. He's returned to his family.”

“What family?” Ginny cried, tears in her eyes. “Death Eaters killed them!”

“Ginny!”

Draco's heartbeat faltered at the mention of Death Eaters. The way she threw the words out there was a shock to his system, though even if he had been expecting them, he imagined his heart would have malfunctioned anyway. He hadn't heard the words spoken out loud in years. A part of him had longed to forget that they had existed.

And then she was spinning back around and looking at him with that accusing glare he hadn't seen since she'd started seeing the deliveryman and avoiding him.

“Death Eaters invaded his home and tortured his family! How does someone just recover from something like that?”

“Ginny!” Lucy cried again, before grabbing hold of her arm and dragging her out of the room. “Come help me with breakfast.”

Draco remembered the warm smile that had lit Jimmy's face the last time he had worked with him cutting marigolds. “Well, good riddance to him,” he mumbled to the empty room.

The words tasted false somehow.