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Malfoy falls asleep in herbology. A bowtruckle is making a nest in his hair.

It’s long and gleaming, falling like water down his back, except for the tendrils gently woven together at the top, making a tiny little cup. The bowtruckle is dipping the ends of it in the corner of Malfoy’s parted mouth, wetting the strands slightly before threading them together. Harry thinks Malfoy might have a conniption when he wakes.

He doesn’t. Instead, he smiles, a secret thing, and gently cuts the hair attached to the nest, slowly floating it to the table, the bowtruckle along for the ride. Tiny tufts of blond stick up in the middle of his head now, an odd kind of mullet.

Harry can’t bring himself to look away. No one else seems to notice. He looks down. His bowtruckle is nowhere to be seen.

It’s night when Harry looks out the window of his room, small glass panes bending the view outside. Dark shadows spread across the grounds, reaching towards the black line of trees of the Forbidden Forest. He’s sitting on the windowsill, fingers trailing spirals in the condensation collecting on the cold glass, when he sees it.

There’s a ripple of something, and Harry knows it’s Malfoy. How he knows it’s them and not Luna slipping across the landscape, winding through the shadows and disappearing into the trees, Harry doesn’t know.

He watches the forest line for what feels like hours. They don’t come back.

It’s only weeks later, once Malfoy’s grown out her hair again, and after Harry’s seen them heading to the forest nearly every single night, that Harry is overcome by his curiosity.

He’s taken to eyeing Malfoy in the classes they share, which happens to be nearly all of them, with the eighth year cohort so small. It’s not because of the gender thing, although Harry has noticed that too—the way Malfoy seems happier in herself, in her body. The way she quietly embraces her own expansiveness. The freedom suits her.

No, what draws Harry in is the way their eyelids flutter as they try to stay awake, the way they sometimes braid their hair in intricate designs that Harry can’t help but want to trace with his fingers. The way they no longer look at Harry anymore, which oddly makes him wildly desperate for just a glance.

He settles for stealing glances of his own, in between half hearted note-taking and even less enthusiastic casting, the droning of professors and the monotony of essay writing.

The only class he pays attention in is DADA, newly renamed Defensive and Healing Magic and now taught by Professor Olarinmoye, a tall dark-skinned and sharply intelligent witch who is probably the best teacher Harry’s ever had. She guides them through wandless, elemental magic, which makes Harry feel more than ever the gentle hum perpetually living under his skin. It lets him feel the thrill of feeling things after what seems like a lifetime of numbness. Of sheltering from the pain of living.

On a cloudy day, muted light filtering into the DAHM classroom, Harry chances a glance at Malfoy again.

He is staring back.

His eyes seem to match the weather. Harry abruptly turns his head, oddly shaken. His fingers tremble as he picks up his quill—a small black feather. There’s no reason for it; sometimes it’s impossible to explain the ways people react to things. There have been days when Harry can’t bring himself to bat an eye at the human carnage of the war, but weeps at the feeling of a Weasley sweater on his bare skin.

He’s jittery now, though—he’s gotten what he wanted but only wants more of it.

Against the wishes of his screaming mind, he looks again. Malfoy is dutifully taking notes, green peacock feather dancing near his earlobe, through which there is a small golden hoop. It’s as if Harry isn’t sitting only two rows away.

“What is your problem?” she says, black painted nails drumming on the table in the library.

Harry looks up, and for a moment thinks he’s dreaming. Malfoy is glaring down at him.

“Sorry?” is all he can think of to say. All he can notice is that her eyelashes seem longer than usual.

Malfoy’s jaw twitches. “I said, what is your problem?”

“Nothing!” Harry says. It’s not entirely true, but the only problems Harry has these days are with himself.

“Then why—” she turns her head away. “Why are you always…looking at me?”

“I’m not…” Harry says, but the effect is ruined by the fact that he can’t tear his eyes away.

She looks back at him, eyebrows raised. “Really.”

Harry feels his face heat.

“If you find me so fucking offensive, just ignore me. It’s really not that hard—everyone else seems to manage it,” Malfoy says bitterly, moving to leave.

“What? No!” Harry knocks over his inkwell in his haste to stand up. “You’re not. Not at all.”

She stops and turns, a hand clutching the strap of her bag. One side of her face is in shadow.

“Not to me,” Harry says.

The only sound in the room is ink dripping onto the floor. There is an unreadable expression on her face.

“Tergeo,” Malfoy says, and strides out of the library’s double doors.

Hermione and Ron would tell him not to, but they are in Australia. So in the evening, Harry fishes his invisibility cloak out from the bottom of his trunk and drapes it over his shoulders. He creeps down the winding spiral steps of the eighth year tower, down seven floors of the grand staircase, careful to skip the missing steps. He quietly walks through the arched hallways of what he’ll always consider his first home, footsteps echoing off the ancient stones, until he reaches the main entranceway.

The door opens for him, silently.

It’s late October now, and the cool breeze lifts his hair as he steps outside. Various shades of the darkness spread out in front of him: dark greys of the grounds, shadowless from the new moon; the long thin black shape on the horizon to his left where the forbidden forest sleeps; midnight blues of sky littered with stars that seem cold and distant.

He’s walking the familiar path he’s traced with his eyes many times before, imagining the steps Malfoy might have taken minutes, maybe hours earlier. All the while he’s wondering alternately what they are doing in the forest, and what he’s doing following them in. It’s the place of his death, and yet something about them overcomes the dread and acute sorrow of the place.

When he reaches the forest, he hesitates before going in. Peering in through the trees, it’s nearly pitch black.

“Expecto patronum,” he says, the brightness of the stag lighting the way forward in a way a simple lumos would not. It seems fitting, a forest animal finding a temporary home here, despite being made of light. Why he finds himself thinking of Malfoy’s nest of hair, he can’t really say.

As he walks, the only sounds he hears are the crinkling of leaves beneath his feet, but soon his ears attune to the quiet and the sounds of night reveal themselves to him. Animals breathing, distant howling, the silent rustling of feathers, the wind in the canopy high above. The forest is old and alive.

Soon, the patronus is no longer the only light filtering through the trees, and he lowers his wand. Out of the gloom, wisps of light seem to be swirling upwards in a small clearing. With a jolt, Harry recognizes which clearing it is.

He approaches it invisibly, whispering a silencing spell so as not to disturb what is taking place. He almost can’t believe his eyes.

Where there was once bare ground sporting several dying tufts of grass, there are now shrubs growing in clumps bearing juicy berries, vines crawling up invisible trellises towards the sky, glowing flowers swaying in the night air. The garden sprawls nearly to the edge of the clearing and in the center is Malfoy.

They are gracefully walking among the plants, trailing a hand lovingly across their leaves, bending to smell a large spindly flower, hair braided simply and falling down their back. A wisp of it falls in their face, which is illuminated by the tendrils of light emerging from the little swaying flowers.

The plants almost seem to reach out to Malfoy as they pass by, and in turn they reach out to them, as if the plants themselves are God and Malfoy is Adam.

Something tight and wiggly lodges itself in Harry’s chest, and he can’t help but carefully step between the plants on the tiny curved paths Malfoy has walked, is walking. He smells the spindly flower because Malfoy is somewhere else now, partially obscured by the immense leaves of a creeping vine, suspended in midair. It smells sweet, like just after a rain shower or how nectar might taste to a hummingbird.

He touches a wisp of light and it feels soft. He snatches his hand away, surprised by the nearly physical sensation—that light could also be matter.

From within the garden Harry can hear Malfoy’s quiet murmurings and can feel the magic of the plants responding—something he’s become more attuned to under the guidance of Professor Olarinmoye. He couldn’t say what these plants are, despite or perhaps because of years of being decidedly mediocre at herbology, though he’s reasonably certain most of them he’s never seen before.

But he can feel the calming trembling of their magic in the air, and the way they love Malfoy. As if this person is their god and they themselves are Adam.

Harry looks up, and his heart stutters when he can’t see Malfoy—but there they are, bent over next to a fresh patch of earth. Their wand is pointed at the soil, moving in gentle swirling motions. Soon enough, three tiny green sprouts emerge. The smile on Malfoy’s face nearly makes Harry forget about the garden altogether.

All he can do is watch and wonder and sit in the garden, unseen and strangely lonely, wishing he didn’t have to be invisible here.

Harry falls asleep in herbology. A bowtruckle makes a nest in his hair.

When he wakes it’s more tangled than usual, which he discovers as he tries to run his fingers through it and they are stuck near his scalp. He stands up and walks across the room.

“Malfoy,” he says. Malfoy is wearing a light grey scarf. It looks so soft Harry is tempted to touch it. He turns around, surprise written all over his face.

“How can I help yo—oh,” he says, mouth suddenly twitching in amusement. It’s not quite a smile, but Harry will take what he can get.

“Er, I was wondering… ” Harry gestures towards the top of his head. He can feel a little tingling on his scalp, as if from the pressure of very tiny leaf-feet.

Harry is proven right when Malfoy says, “Yes, she’s along for the ride. Hold on.” Then he reaches a slender hand to the space above Harry’s head and his mind goes blank.

The hand comes down again, and with it a small laughing bowtruckle, maybe a young one, though Harry can’t really tell. Malfoy tickles her with the first finger of his other hand. “There you are,” he whispers. Harry is struck with the realization that he can’t possibly be just Malfoy to him now. Maybe he’s never been.

“Does she need her nest?” Harry says.

“Nest?” Draco says, looking up at him. They look at each other for a second too long, before his eyes flick upward and he actually laughs.

Then he’s bringing a hand over his mouth as if he’s surprised at the sound. “I didn’t notice,” he says, smiling. “It always looks that way.”

“Oh piss off,” says Harry, grinning.

But Draco’s smile seems to fall just a bit—enough to leave his face open, a flicker of something showing through.

“Not to worry, I will,” he says quietly. “Come here.” He points his wand at Harry’s head, and for a second he thinks he must be mad, giving him access to his eyes, his throat, his major arteries.

It’s anticlimactic really, the snip snip of his hair, the quiet snort before the soundless laugh.

Draco’s fingers are like little squids in the air beside his head, miming puffs of hair growing sideways. “You look like a grandpa.”

Harry pats the now much shorter hair on the top of his head and can’t help but frown a little. “Can you grow it back?”

“I could,” Draco says, stepping back and turning to place the woven black nest on the table. “But I like it this way.” He makes a shooing motion with his hand. “Now piss off, will you?”

Harry does, if only because that might be the single most civil conversation they’ve ever had, and it was so ridiculous he finds himself smiling about it at random moments throughout the day.

It rains in the afternoon, big fat drops falling on the stones just outside the castle steps, thunder rolling overhead. Harry walks through it, all but the ends of his hair kept dry with an impervius charm, to visit the garden, because this is when Draco is in Ancient Runes.

The garden looks different in the day—more normal, as if it’s waiting for night to come alive. Or maybe, as if it’s waiting for Draco.

There are slightly unripe fruits on the ends of delicate limbs, some thorny, others smooth. Harry pricks his finger and watches a drop of blood soak into the soil, diluted by the rain, which is forming puddles on the ground. He sucks on it to stem the bleeding.

It’s the most peaceful place he’s ever been, he thinks. More than the white train station in the vision where he’d chosen to live, more than his parent’s graves in Godric Hollow, where he visited nearly every day in the summer until he got sick of wishing for things that would never happen. More than the feeling of submerging himself in the prefect’s bath, soap bubbles rising above him as he contemplates whether he’d like to come back up again. Out of the warm water and into the cold.

He stands in the rain, watching as droplets pool in the flowers that are white in the dim light of day, and thinks about the world in which he’d chosen differently, and he’s not here to see them.

In Professor Olarinmoye’s class, Harry learns he has an affinity for fire. It sparkles on the tips of his fingers, but when he gets it wrong, he only makes smoke. Of course, everyone can master each of the forms, but somehow this makes him feel destructive, dangerous. He hates it.

Still, with morbid fascination perhaps, or a healthy dose of masochism, he practices it too often—in transfiguration where it earns him a gentle “Potter?” from Professor McGonagall that jolts him out of his trance and into feeling like a disappointment, and in the Great Hall when he’d like his vegetables a little extra crispy, among other times.

The only place he can’t bear to bring the fire is the garden, where he sits under the invisibility cloak day after day, even in the damp and the cold. Draco’s always tending to it somehow, giving the plants water, weeding, turning the soil, gently prying insects off the leaves. Harry is so afraid he’ll set something on fire by accident and destroy yet another wonderful thing.

Maybe it’s his shivering that rustles the leaves on the ground—Merlin knows he’s been too absentminded to purchase a winter cloak—or maybe it’s the slight chattering of his teeth, or maybe it’s simply the way Harry and Draco have always been attuned to each other’s presence, but one evening Draco says, “Ever heard of a warming charm?”

Harry starts from near sleep, the hood of his invisibility cloak slipping from his head. Draco is staring at him, looking distinctly unimpressed.

“How did you know I was here?” Harry rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. It’s aching now, after falling in a strange position against a tree.

“How could I not?” Draco says incredulously. “You snore like a hippogriff.”

Harry opens his mouth in outrage. “I do not—”

But he simply laughs, and says, “You’re right. But I’ve known you were following me since that first night.”

Harry feels his face heat, but he has to check. “Which one?”

Draco smiles. “The night before you fell asleep in herbology. It doesn’t take a genius.”

Harry looks down. His body is still invisible—a small protection against the brilliance of that expression.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Draco shrugs. “I don’t mind, to be honest. This is a sanctuary for all kinds of things. Weird stalker boys included.”

Harry clumsily rises to his feet, suddenly feeling like an intruder. “I—I should go,” he stutters.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Draco sniffs. “Now that you’re here, you might as well help.” He sends a spade zooming over to bounce against Harry’s chest before falling on the ground.

“Ow!”

Harry bends to pick it up, only catching a glimpse of Draco’s smirk before he turns around.

They work until dawn, when Harry’s hands are a little less clumsy and inexperienced, though significantly more cracked. Draco wordlessly hands him a small jar of hand cream.

“I make it,” he says when Harry looks at him, confused. “Trust me, it works wonders.”

And the funny thing is, Harry does. Completely.

Draco never asks why Harry keeps coming back to the garden, and though Harry feels oddly compelled to tell her, he never says. Perhaps because the real reason is too revealing, or because he doesn’t really know why himself.

There are some nights when he’s so exhausted there’s nothing he can do but sleep, but when he wakes in the dark his only thought is whether Draco is sleeping too, or out there alone.

When they’re both there, the fear of fire is never too far from Harry’s mind. In class Professor Olarinmoye has remarked on his control over fire, a notoriously free-spirited element. He’s learned it from the constant stream in his mind of don’t destroy this one thing, and from the increasing effort he needs to put in every time Draco’s arm or hand or elbow brushes his skin.

As they work, they talk. Sometimes it’s about nothing significant, which means nothing because everything is significant. Sometimes they talk about significant things as if they mean nothing, but they both know they don’t. It’s a steady hum of nothings in between the silence and the dark, yet they somehow feel to Harry like everything.

It’s a gradual catharsis of a kind, even while something else winds itself up tighter, like a music box preparing to play for a long time.

Tonight there’s not much left to do here, but neither of them want to leave. Harry is still wearing the invisibility cloak for a semblance of warmth. Draco is gently touching the berries glowing on a prickly vine.

“They only glow once they mature,” they say. “See the colours?”

Harry does. Little multicoloured lights flicker in different shades from within the berries, lending an effect similar to Christmas fairy lights.

“They’re magic,” Draco says, though Harry thinks that’s pretty evident.

Draco seems to sense his confusion, looking up at him. “In potions,” they continue, “we only use the seeds. If you eat them fresh and whole, you actually see magic.” They pluck a berry from the vine, and pull Harry closer by the hand, holding it up to his mouth.

“Want to try it?” Draco whispers, from way too close. Harry’s already starting to get heart palpitations.

At his hesitation, they say, “We don’t have to.”

But Harry trusts Draco, and all of a sudden he finds himself immensely curious. What would magic even look like? The essence of their world, distilled into a visible wavelength. How would it feel to see it?

“Wait, yes,” Harry says, taking the berry. Their fingers brush. Harry puts it in his mouth.

Draco’s looking at him so intently, he feels as though there must be something on his face. He resists the urge to wipe it with his hand.

“So?” Draco says, putting a berry that’s temporarily glowing green into their own mouth.

Harry shrugs. “Nothing, so far.”

Draco’s shoulders slump, and well, Harry can’t have that. He moves to take another berry from the vine when Draco says, “Wait. Ask first.”

“…Ask?”

“Magic relies on intent. Consent is part of that,” they explain. “For healing magic especially, consent determines whether it works. It’s why stealing a Unicorn’s blood is such a vile act.”

Harry nods. “So how…?”

“Just think.”

Can I please have this berry? Harry thinks to the plant. I’d like to see what magic looks like. He waits a bit. Then suddenly, he feels it. It’s like nothing that can be described in words.

“Woah,” he says.

Draco smiles. “Yeah. You can take it now.”

Just as Harry puts the second berry on his tongue, the first one hits. Colours filter in from the corner of his vision until he’s squinting at the brightness. Draco seems to be undergoing the same predicament.

“It’s the plants,” they say, taking hold of his hand again. The world is buzzing around them. “Come on.”

They lead him to a small grassy clearing a few steps away from the garden. Harry opens his eyes fully, and immediately breaks out in goose pimples.

Everything is glowing—each species of plant in the garden has its own shade, or sometimes multiple. Even the trees around them are emitting a faint red glow. The spindly flower on the floating vine is so bright Harry sees spots for a while after looking at it. Flashes of color move between the trees in the distance, little dots of light scurry around the tree leaves above. Suddenly the world is moving around him and he gingerly lowers himself to the ground before he has the chance to fall over.

He sees Draco lying on the ground and wonders when that happened. They are glowing a bright purple that’s nearly violet, a violet that’s nearly blue. It’s beautiful.

Draco reaches a hand upwards. “Look,” they say.

Harry looks up at the moon. It’s almost full. It looks close enough to touch; he thinks he can see Draco’s face in it. He looks down. The magic of the invisibility cloak is itself invisible. His body, partially covered by the cloak, ripples in the darkness.

“We’re everywhere…and nowhere,” Harry says.

“Uh huh” Draco replies from where they lie sprawling on the ground, staring up at the sky, eyes wide.

The plants are still so colourful they hurt his eyes. He squints at them, like looking at a red sun as it’s rising. “Why the…” he trails off, forgetting what he means to say.

He flops on the ground next to Draco, giggling at the purple blob of magic around their head. He reaches out to touch it, but accidentally boops Draco in the nose. They jerk their head back five seconds too late.

“What are the plants for?” Harry asks.

Draco turns to look at him, slowly. Then they smile. “Hair potions.”

That sets Harry off again. He rolls to lay on his stomach, a fluttery feeling flying through his chest at the sudden increase in proximity. “But why?” he touches Draco’s eyebrow, then threads a finger through a few strands of their blonde hair.

“Beauty,” Draco says.

“I know,” Harry says. “You are.”

It feels like an eternity that the two of them lie there, staring at each other. Time seems to be moving differently. Harry’s not sure if it’s the berries or just Draco. Maybe they are the same thing.

“Berries,” Harry is saying, but Draco is rolling him onto his back, coming up onto their elbows to hover above him. Slender fingers trail from his hairline through his hair. They are still looking, looking.

“Feels so good.” Harry can still feel the tingling, can imagine the streaks of magic they’ve left there. The warmth of Draco is above him, and the cold frozen ground is pressing into his back except where Draco is cradling his head with one hand.

Their breath is coming out in gentle little clouds, mingling and then vanishing.

“Is this…” Draco whispers.

“Yes.” Harry’s heart is thudding, sending vibrations into the ground.

They smile, “I didn’t finish.”

“Yes,” Harry says. “To everything.”

Draco’s mouth is coming down onto his, the hand on his cheek is burning, and all the colours of their magic are converging.

They kiss and kiss and kiss, Draco winding a hand around his hip as Harry pulls their chest to his, hands splaying across their shoulder blades. They kiss until Draco pulls away with a gasp, the side of their face brushing Harry’s, lips hovering near his ear. Harry blows a bit of hair out of his mouth.

Draco’s glow is still vaguely purple, but not so much that when they turn their face towards him in apology, Harry can’t see the way they’re looking at him still. Silent and burning.

They rest their head next to his and drape their arm over him, gently pinning him in place, a set of fingers twirling the small curls in his hair.

It’s a long time until they move from this embrace, long enough for the colours to fade completely, and for the sun to peek its yellow light through the trees instead.

It becomes a bit of a routine, the addition of this thing to the gardening. It’s harvest time, later than muggle crops since it’s mid November now, and they’ll pick the berries without eating them, curiosity having been satisfied. Draco shows him how to ask the plants for permission to take their leaves, their flowers, and their roots. She explains that they are rare ingredients for healing potions, although they do work wonders on her hair. But by beauty, she says, she means the way they exist and emit magic—the way they’re alive. Harry still thinks Draco is the source of all this beauty anyway.

Then when they are done tending to the plants, under the soft blanket of a warming charm, they tend to each other in the dark. Harry’s holding back though, made-up visions of flames engulfing the little white flowers enough to make him wary of letting go of too much of himself. He’s been in his own mind—he knows he’s overwhelming.

He can tell it frustrates Draco, even when she doesn’t say anything.

On the first of December, Harry’s walking through the seventh floor corridor on the way to the DAHM classroom, when he’s pulled behind a tapestry. It takes a minute to catch his breath and ease himself of the tunnel vision.

“Draco?” he says. “I—what?”

Draco looks far too guilty, like he’s afraid Harry is going to fall into pieces right there in the hall.

“Sorry, I just...it’s nothing,” he says.

Harry doesn’t believe that for a second. Draco never approaches him inside, except that once in the library. Harry’s always thought he was uncomfortable with that, so he doesn’t usually go up to him either, no matter how many lingering glances they share in class. “No, what is it?” he asks, now getting worried. Maybe Draco is tired of this, of him. Most people are, Harry especially.

“We only see each other in the garden!” he explodes.

Oh. Oh. “I thought—”

Draco’s shaking his head now. “Is that what you want?”

“No, of course not,” Harry says, weak with relief, reaching out to lightly curl an arm around Draco’s waist.

“Then what is it?” he says desperately. “Why are you hiding this part of yourse—”

Harry kisses him. It’s familiar, but at the same time completely new. He’s not suffocating the fire.

The tapestry bursts into flame.

In the back of Harry’s mind, he knew it would happen. But it’s worse than he imagined now it has. The horrible smell of burning silk rises in the air, and Harry has to leave right now. He nudges Draco, who's still wearing an awfully shocked expression, out from behind the tapestry and into the hallway. He follows suit, turning towards the fire, attempting to draw it inwards, sucking it smaller and smaller until it’s a single flame floating above his index finger. The tapestry is charred; once beautiful in an antique way, now simply ugly and destroyed.

Harry flicks his finger to extinguish the flame and turns around, hands trembling as he walks away. He doesn’t look back—he can’t bear to see whatever Draco’s face is doing right now.

Harry doesn’t go back to the garden for three nights, until Draco practically abducts him and drags him there.

“You are being unreasonably stupid,” they say as they pull him by the elbow across the grounds, “even for you.”

“Thanks, Draco,” Harry says.

“Haven’t you been listening to Olarinmoye? You’re controlling it through denial, and it’s never going to work.”

They reach the edge of the forest just as the sun is dipping behind the castle. It casts a long shadow over them as they make their way to the garden. When they get there, it’s still achingly beautiful. The grass surrounding it is frozen and silvery, and some of the frost is resting on the flowers. Harry moves closer and realizes they’re nearly frozen, gradually shriveling up from the cold. Draco leads him to the center of the garden, to the spindly flower. They murmur something Harry can’t hear, then with a sharp movement of their wand, slice it clean off the vine.

Harry’s hand reaches out before he can stop himself. “What are you doing?” he cries.

Draco turns around, gently placing the flower inside Harry’s outstretched hand. “Look inside,” they say.

He does. The spindles have opened more now, and in the center is a deep well. Inside is a clear liquid, but when he looks closer, he sees it.

It’s a flame.

Flickering slowly within the nectar, it burns perpetually and not at all, suspended in space, carefully tucked away within this growing life form for all this time.

“What does it do?” he says, looking up at Draco.

They smile enigmatically. “Many things. It’s one of the most powerful healing essences known to magic.”

“Like phoenix tears,” Harry says quietly. He glances at his forearm, where there is no puncture scar. Willingly given, he thinks.

“Yes.” Draco holds out a hand, and Harry places the flower in their palm.

“Where will it go?”

“I may bring it to Madam Pomfrey, or give it to someone when the time is right. It’s not meant to be unused forever. Hoarding it out of greed renders it about as effective as sugar water.”

They summon a vial from inside their robes, and siphon the essence of the spindly flower into it. The flame dances inside. Then they tuck the vial into their robes once more, setting the flower down carefully in the center of the garden.

Draco stands and makes her way over to Harry, kissing him gently. Lips barely a centimeter away, she whispers, “Burn it.”

Harry opens his eyes, gaze flicking to the garden. Draco’s are trained steadily on his. No, no, he can’t. This is something Draco made, and Harry loves him, and he can’t.

Draco steps away, and says, “The thing about this plant is, it needs a particular nutrient to grow. Without it, it will never produce another flower.” They’re walking briskly to the other side of the garden. “Burn it, Harry,” they call.

Hands trembling, Harry calls the sparks to his fingertips. They feel lively, itching to get out. He lets one fall to the edge of the plot, and watches as it thaws the frozen stem, slowly making its way upwards to set the small white flower alight. The flames leap from flower to flower, gradually setting the garden ablaze. The heat begins to warm Harry’s skin.

It feels good.

He begins to laugh, overcome with an overwhelming sense of joy as more sparks flow down his fingers into the growing bonfire. Finally, the tension is breaking in his body, giving way to unbelievable relief. The fire is reaching upwards now, nearly as tall as the trees themselves, swirling into the darkening sky. Through the flames, Draco is illuminated against the backdrop of the forest. The magical colors of the garden flash among it, reflecting in Draco’s hair, shining onto his face. The light is flickering in his eyes and Harry loves him.

It overwhelms him so much he gazes straight into the blaze, right where the spindly flower used to grow. But Harry can’t keep his eyes away for long.

He looks up through the flames.

Draco is looking back.