Chapter Text
Harry couldn't stop looking at Malfoy. This always happened when they were at Luna's. He wasn't sure if it was the bizarre reality of being at Luna's with Malfoy, or if it was that Harry was always utterly perplexed by Malfoy, no matter the venue.
Malfoy was in a chair shaped like a mushroom, next to a table of vegetable sticks and walnut pâté. He didn't look relaxed, exactly, but neither did he look markedly uncomfortable. In fact, he looked much like Harry felt—a bit bewildered, yet happy to be there.
Harry had been confused the first time Luna invited him over for "Circle"—by Malfoy's presence, for sure, but really by the whole thing. He'd expected a typical gathering, friends from Hogwarts, food, milling about, maybe some games. He should've known never to expect typicality from Luna.
Luna's Circle was, according to her, a group for "community" and "mutual improvement." Ever the Ravenclaw, she said she missed the "intellectual scaffolding" of school and wanted to create her own. To this end, Circle was a fortnightly gathering with a different theme each meeting. One attendee (on a rotating basis) acted as the host of each Circle, starting the discussion and, in Luna's words, "establishing the curiosity."
Perhaps the most surprising part of it, to Harry, was the people she invited. Neville was there, and the Patil twins, and some Ravenclaws Harry had never really met back in school—Orla Quirke, Mandy Brocklehurst, Terry Boot, Stewart Ackerly, Lisa Turpin, Morag MacDougal. But also Susan Bones, Daphne Greengrass, Millicent Bulstrode.
And Draco Malfoy.
If Luna had shared the guest list in advance, Harry would've given her an excuse. Not that he hated people from other Houses. He didn't. He didn't even hate Malfoy, though he had every reason to. What he hated was social situations without good friends. In this group, he had only Neville.
But Luna had never operated on other people's social assumptions and limitations.
Harry asked Luna once why she hadn't invited Hermione and Ron, or Ginny. She'd tilted her head, looking at him with honest confusion. "Do you think they would want to be here?"
Harry considered that. At their first Circle, Luna had explained how the Circles would function, including a little bell that one person would ring if the group "strayed from its intention." Then she had opened with an intro to crop circles.
No, Harry didn't think that Hermione, Ron, or Ginny would want to be there.
The only remaining question was why she invited Harry.
(And why she invited Malfoy. And why Malfoy bothered to come.)
Malfoy was, in all, a respectful member of the Circle. He raised interesting points and listened when others were speaking. He was near the end of Healer Training, which gave him interesting insights. He often made Harry laugh and was a welcome counterbalance to the Ravenclaw-heavy group. Harry struggled with Circle when one of the non-Ravenclaws was absent—Harry needed the non-Claw energy balance, and Malfoy was part of that.
It was just so strange. Why did Malfoy even want to come to Circle? What did he really think of Luna? He wasn't poking fun at her, was he? Was he silently judging her Lunaish, un-moneyed house?
Why, Harry wanted to know, was he willingly eating seitan pasties?
Harry could never make sense of it, and his befuddlement hadn't waned since Luna's Circles began over a year and a half ago. He and Malfoy had talked little at the Circles, and usually not directly. The Circle itself was a well-structured discussion, not leaving time for tangents or small talk. Luna always welcomed everyone to stay afterwards for "visiting," but since Harry was never overly comfortable with this group of people, he usually only stayed for a few minutes. Malfoy tended to leave pretty quickly, too.
At this Circle, Morag was leading a discussion about Muggle epigenetics. Harry was pretty sure he was having a harder time understanding than the pure-bloods—maybe epigenetics made more sense if your understanding of the world presupposed magic.
"Muggles used to think that genes were these very stable determiners," Morag said, waving a hand around excitedly, "because whatever your genes are when you're born, whatever makes up your DNA, it doesn't change in your lifetime. But what they're coming to understand is that changes in a person's environment, in their nurture, can affect the way their body reads the genes in their DNA."
And that was the thing: Circle was always interesting. It was nothing like school had been; instead, a person told everyone about a topic that excited them. It was impossible not to catch the host's enthusiasm—Neville had once managed to get Harry excited by fungi mycelium. He'd ended up telling Ginny about it the next day, and she'd looked at him like he had three heads and asked what kind of mushrooms exactly Neville had given him.
"Scientists know multiple mechanisms through which a person's environment can change the expression of genes. For example, methylation can essentially turn a gene off." Morag, all puffed up with brainy oration, was in her element.
Malfoy's nose was scrunched up like it always was when they discussed Muggle science. Differences in pre-Hogwarts educations were especially obvious at Circle. Harry was no science expert, but the years he'd spent at Muggle school before Hogwarts had given him a basic understanding of how Muggles approached science.
Malfoy looked across the circle and caught Harry's eye—they both quickly looked away.
Morag finished up and opened the floor for discussion. Susan Bones raised her hand. "I really don't understand what you mean by genes, Mor. Like, are they similar to prophecy? Telling you what will happen in your life?"
Luna shook her head placidly. "No, I think it's more like... hmm. A Muggle way of identifying exactly how traits pass down through families. Like, genes give Draco his unusual hair colour; the hair colour is passed down by his ancestors. That's done through DNA—it's like genes are the recipe your soul follows as you manifest in the physical plane. It's the Muggles' mechanistic explanation for how, for example, Harry looks so much like his dad."
"Except what I'm talking about," Morag said, "is how a person's experiences can change the way those genes matter. So it's like, we finally have an answer to the age-old nature/nurture thing. Well. I think we all already knew—the answer was always 'both.'"
Harry tried not to cringe. He'd always hated discussions of nature versus nurture, because all he could think about when people said "nurture" were the years he'd spent orphaned, living in a fucking cupboard. And also the whole thing where he had been hunted by a genocidal maniac for the rest of his childhood and adolescence.
If "nurture" could explain life outcomes, Harry was screwed.
Malfoy's gaze was on his feet, and Harry found himself wondering. By most accounts, Malfoy's "nurture" had been ideal. On the other hand... Malfoy never seemed to mention his father anymore. Ever.
Neville adjusted himself in the seat next to Harry, accidentally knocking his knee into Harry's as he did so. Neville's "nurture" had sucked, too, hadn't it? Parents as good as dead, family who pushed him out a window to see if he could do magic. That was definitely the sort of thing that sent a bloke to therapy.
Harry had the urge to give Nev a hug. Instead, he fiddled with his hands.
Maybe there were infinite ways to have shitty "nurture."
Which made it even more disturbing to think that someone's environment could change their genes. Harry liked to think his genes were one of the main things he had going for him—his parents' bravery, their intelligence, their love.
He could hear Hermione's voice countering him; bravery, intelligence, love—those are nurture and nature. (Harry's internal voice of debate always sounded like Hermione.) Fair enough, inner Hermione.
Harry just didn't like the idea of the Dursleys or Voldemort or even eleven-year-old Malfoy having the power to change the expression of Harry's genes.
Malfoy reached for the Stone of Sonorous (a rock of Luna's—she said they could only talk if they were holding it). "I think we all know that environmental factors can change a person. So in some ways it simply makes sense, right? But my question is—what then? What if their life changes again...?"
Morag's eyes lit up. "Isn't that exactly the fascinating thing? Yeah, epigenetic changes are reversible. So like, if methylation can turn a gene off, demethylation can turn it back on."
Something in Malfoy's eyes made Harry look away. It seemed too private.
Most of the Ravenclaws—and Morag in particular—were such abstract thinkers that they sometimes failed to realise how discussions affected people in the room. Harry found it hard to not think about what their discussions meant for this roomful of war veterans. Maybe that was because of Harry's experience as a teacher—when he was at the front of the classroom, it was his job to watch all the faces in the room, to make sure everyone was okay.
Neville took the Stone from Malfoy. "My plants that are physically closer to me thrive compared to the plants that are frther away—could this be the reason? Their environment changes them through epigenetics? I had thought maybe it was magic or love or my talking to them. And maybe it is those things, but the way those things affect them is by changing the way their genes are expressed?"
Harry really needed to hug Neville later.
One of the best things about Harry's life, five years after the war, was that his friends routinely gave him that feeling—intense gratitude that these people were in his life, pride in knowing them, a disbelief that they could even be real. It helped with the PTSD and loneliness. His friends never let him get too lonely. He had a standing invitation to dinner at Ron and Hermione's, and weekly video game sessions with Ginny, and Luna's Circles, and babysitting Teddy every weekend, and he often helped at Nev's greenhouse. (Harry didn't particularly like tending plants, but there was something calming about sitting in the dirt with Neville.)
Padma and Lisa launched into a story about one of their Herbology projects from school—how they'd studied the effects of ambient magic on three different plant species; Padma explained how they'd created a chamber with a magical barrier—no magic could enter the chamber—and then put some of the plants in there. Morag kept interrupting to offer insight into how their results might relate to epigenetics.
Harry didn't think he'd ever commiserated with a plant before, but here he was. Sure, let's put a plant in the cupboard under the stairs with insufficient nourishment, light, love, and no magic, and see what happens!
Malfoy caught Harry's eye for a long second. Harry had the strangest sense that maybe Malfoy understood where Harry's maudlin thoughts had travelled, even though the rest of the group was oblivious, chattering away with detached curiosity.
Harry looked down at his trainers. He hated feeling bad for Malfoy; he always had. Malfoy was a spoiled brat who didn't deserve anyone's empathy.
But, like an unwanted throwback to having visions of Malfoy when he was stuck in a tent in the Forest of Dean, Harry couldn't help it. Maybe Harry was the plant in the deprivation chamber and Malfoy was the plant that got the wrong kind of attention. Like a shit ton of fertiliser, but for the wrong type of plant.
You're stretching your metaphors, Harry's inner Hermione said with an amused laugh.
With an effort, he tuned back into the conversation.
"What do you think, Harry?" Luna asked, fixing him with her piercing gaze.
Harry smiled, gave a shrug. "I don't know. I think we should figure out how to use magic to fix genes that are off when they should be on or on when they should be off."
Luna's face split into an incandescent smile.
Stewart piped up, "Of course, we need to remember that we hardly know what the effect of any individual gene is—so there's a real danger of unintentional harm if we were to use magic that way—"
Harry grinned at Luna. He was glad brains like Stewart's existed, but honestly—he did not have that kind of brain. If there was a toddler locked in a cupboard somewhere, Harry would rush in, get them out of the cupboard, and cast magic to fix their fucked up epigenetics. Well, he didn't know how to do that, and he was pretty sure it was more complicated than that. But he would. Fuck the theoretical implications.
Malfoy took the Stone. "Sure, Stewart. But you can't pretend no harm is done by not using magic that way. What Potter is saying is—harm has already been done by the environment and other factors—that is harm. If we can undo it, we have to at least try, right?"
Parvati accepted the Stone to speculate whether divination could anticipate the effect of epigenetic changes.
Malfoy caught Harry's eye again. They always seemed to be doing that; it was fucking awkward.
On a whim, Harry smiled.
Malfoy's face creased with surprise; he gave an inelegant nod and looked away.
Afterward, Harry and Neville went to the pub, then Harry went home feeling like he always did after Luna's Circles—satisfied, somehow, while also acutely aware of his social awkwardness and uncertain why he'd enjoyed it at all.