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Chapter Text

It starts like this: 

Draco Malfoy isn’t in Azkaban. Yet. He’s out on parole, with a promise to appear before the Wizengamot on August 1st for his trial. He isn’t in Azkaban, but Harry hasn’t seen him since the final battle. 

Harry isn’t dealing with things all that well. The culmination of seventeen years of life has come and gone, and he’s been cold ever since he died in that forest. He lays awake at night, on the couch in Grimmauld Place, and stares at the ceiling, which is finally cobweb free and sparkling clean now that Kreacher doesn’t hate him anymore. He lays awake at night and his head thrums with the resounding pain of existence; with loss and grief and the certainty that the delicate peace Harry holds now will crumble away in his hands.

Sometimes, he lays awake and thinks about Draco. The way the ash from the fire turned his platinum blond hair ruddy. The feeling of his body against Harry’s on that broomstick. The desperate look in his eyes that night, like he was a man at the end of his rope, like he was a prey animal waiting for the hunt to find him. He had been a far cry from the Slytherin Prince that Harry was used to. 

He had been a teenager, like Harry was. 

He had been chosen, like Harry was. 

Chosen by two opposite sides of a war. By two men who needed children to fight their battles, because there wasn’t any other way. No other options, and no way out. 

It wasn’t fair, Harry found himself thinking, when he allowed the thought to fester. It wasn’t fair that Draco had done so much to hurt so many people. It wasn’t fair that Draco had been hurt so badly himself. It wasn’t fair that he had been so beautiful in his ruin, it wasn’t fair that he had turned down Dumbledores offer of freedom.

When Harry laid there and thought of Draco for too long, he got an itching under his skin. Like a bug bite, the more he scratched it the worse it got, until the spot that had been Draco began to bleed in the pit of his stomach. In the months since the war had ended, that itching only led him to one place. 

London, the muggle part, was bright and loud and full of seedy bars and clubs that were easily convinced Harry was eighteen. He looked older than that lately, with the aftermath of war sitting so heavily on his shoulders. 

So, it starts with a drink. Tequila, two shots, too strong burning its way down his throat. He likes the taste of it better than Firewhiskey. Sirius and Remus drank Firewhiskey during the one Christmas they all shared at Grimmauld Place. It was a drink for dead men who had left him behind. 

Tequila was better. It was a young mans game. 

It either sooths the itch or it makes things worse. On a good night, all Harry does is have a drink. On a bad night, he finds someone lithe and tall, someone blonde and smug, and crushes ferocious kisses against their mouth until he finds some way to sate himself.

It starts with Draco Malfoy. It ends with him, too. The rest is just middle. 

Blaise Zabini all but assaults Harry in an otherwise abandoned bathroom of the Ministry of Magic. And seriously, what is it with Slytherin’s and bathrooms? Did they all have some bathroom related trauma that made them  particularly aggressive when faced with mirror and white tile? 

Harry is washing his hands under too-hot water when Blaise appears like a spectre behind him. Harry hadn’t even used the bathroom, but today was Draco Malfoys trial date and Harry’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He feels a flush of annoyance that Blaise has caught him in such a vulnerable position, hands soapy and wet. He doesn’t turn, but he meets Blaise’s eyes in the mirror. 

“His father used to beat him, did you know?” Blaise says, conversational, yet bitingly intense. 

Harry’s hands only freeze in their moment for a second, the second during which he realises that Blaise is talking about Draco. 

“With a belt, and his cane. He used magic too, of course. The unforgivabeles, more than once. Did you know that Draco once spent an entire Christmas holiday under the imperious curse? I only realised because he wouldn’t snog me in his mother’s rose garden during their Yule celebrations that year.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” Harry snapped. He was doing that a lot lately, snapping at people. He felt bad when he did it to Hermione and Ron, who were just trying to help him. He couldn’t be blamed for doing it to Blaise, he thought, because — it was just too much. These were things he shouldn’t know about Draco. Just like he shouldn’t know the way Draco’s lips felt or the way he looked when he went down on his knees for someone. 

“Because I need you to understand, it wasn’t all his choice.” There’s growing desperation in that voice. He advances on Harry, pens him in, strong fingers clutching at Harry’s shoulder to turn him so Harry has to look into his eyes for real. “You have to speak for him. You have to tell them to let Draco go.” 

Harry shrugged the grip off and slipped away from Blaise, raising a hand. 

“You have to.” Blaise insisted. “I know he’s an asshole. I know he’s a meanspirited, bigoted freak. But he’s just Draco. He didn’t really want it. He would have said no, if he could have, but the Death Eaters were in his house and in his head and they were hurting him and he didn’t think anyone could save him —” 

This is more than Harry has ever heard Blaise Zabini speak. The most he has ever talked to the man. At school, Blaise had always come across as someone aloof and unbothered by the rest of the world. He was calm and collected, refined and elegant. He wasn’t desperately pleading for his best friends life in a pristine bathroom. 

“I’m already planning on it, bloody hell.” Harry let out. “You can stop now.” 

Something in Blaise seemed to deflate at the announcement. “You’re what?” 

“I’m already planning to speak on Draco’s behalf. You don’t need to bully me into it.” 

“Oh,” Blaise says, looking as if the rug has been rather rudely pulled out from under him. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” 

Or, maybe it starts like this: 

You see, when Harry was in sixth year, he came to the unsettling realisation that Draco Malfoy looked rather kissable. That Draco Malfoy might, in fact, be his type. When he stacked Ginny and Draco together in his head he realised that he wanted to kiss them for mostly the same reasons; they were a little mean, they were quick with a hex, they were brilliant flyers, they both had particularly pretty hair. 

He was allowed to kiss Ginny. He loved kissing Ginny. He loved her. 

He was not allowed to kiss Draco Malfoy, and he certainly wasn’t allowed to love him. So he didn’t, simple as that. Wanting Draco was a secret that Harry tucked away in a box, far in the dark recesses of his mind, somewhere he could never look at it. It only spilled out when he was drunk, and looking for someone to fuck, scanning every room for platinum blonde and usually settling for the next-best-thing. 

So when he catches sight of Draco’s face, at the end of a bar in a gay club in muggle London, it hits him like a freight train. 

The reflex in his mind is to think that Draco is here to hurt him, that Draco is here as part of some kind of nefarious plot. But Draco has more than one empty glass near him, and it’s clear to Harry that he’s the one gatecrashing Draco’s night of forgetting. 

What he should do is this: he should ignore Draco. He should walk out the door and go somewhere else. He should leave this place and forget he ever saw Draco here, two days before his trial. 

He should leave, but all he can do is look at Draco. Draco with his hair loose, catching the neon lights. Draco with his delicate features and sharp cheekbones. Draco and his stoney grey eyes — eyes that look up, and meet Harry’s, like the string of fate between them has pulled taut and demanded his attention. 

When Draco smiles it looks like a savage thing. Bloodthirsty. Otherworldly. Half feral. He reminds Harry suddenly of Sirius. Maybe that smile was a familial trait. 

It starts with Draco. It’s going to end with him, too. The whole bloody world is going to end with him; in fire and ash and too much tequila. 

By the time Harry and his friends returned to Hogwarts for their eighth year, Draco Malfoy had been in Azkaban for exactly one month. 

Harry had tried, really. He’d spoken on Draco’s behalf — it just hadn’t been good enough. The Wizarding World was hungry for punishment, hungry for a scapegoat. Lucius Malfoy got away with it by offing himself before his own trial, and now the Wizengamot was insistent that a Malfoy had to pay. 

Draco hadn’t looked surprised at the sentencing. He was a man who had already resigned himself to his fate, who was already expecting the worst. He had only met Harry’s eyes and smiled his savage, bloodthirsty smile again, and arched his eyebrow as if to say; are you happy now, Potter?

Harry wasn’t happy at all.

He locks Draco away inside his head again. Tries not to think of him. 

He can’t help thinking of him. 

Pansy Parkinson looks dead behind the eyes all the way until Halloween. In those months, Harry hadn’t been sure he heard her speak a word. The Eighth Years all share a table in the great hall, all share a common room, and she haunts them silently. On Halloween, he realised that the last thing he heard her say was that they should give him to Voldemort and be done with it. He expects to be angry. He expects to hate her. 

He can’t help but feel sorry for her, at the end of the day. 

“I fucked Malfoy.” He tells her, the only way he can think to break the ice when he sits beside her on a couch in the common room. 

She looks at him. Eyes dull. She’s buffing at her nails with a file, though they’ve always looked perfect to Harry. 

“I know.” She says, replacing the last words he heard her say. 

“What?” 

“He told me.” She says, as simple as that. “The night before his trial.” 

“Oh.” Harry says, and can’t help but blush. 

So, she was the keeper of Draco’s secrets. He wondered if that was where Draco went, the morning after, when he snuck away from Grimmauld Place. Did he go to Pansy, to give this last confession? Did he feel the need to share every secret he held before the aurors took him to Azkaban? 

Her eyes look more alive now, but only because there are tears welling up in them. “He said that now he could die happy.” 

“He’s not dying.” Harry said, defensive, somehow. 

“No.” She said, with a teary smile. “I think that would be kinder.” 

Harry remembers Sirius, again. The shadow of a man that had escaped from Azkaban. The hollow husk he became sometimes. The way his hands shook and his body shivered and they way he fell in to bouts of depression so bad that Remus would try and hide them from Harry. The fact, he knew, that Sirius wished he had died the same day as James and Lily Potter did. It was why he drank too much Firewhiskey at Christmas and cried when he thought nobody was watching.

It stuns Harry, slightly. Freezes him like ice, him looking at her and her looking at him.

“Everything alright, Pans?” Blaise Zabini has approached, looking down at the two of them with a suspicious air, clearly taking in Pansy’s teary eyes and thinking the worst of Harry for it. 

Her eyes tear away from him, they look up at Blaise. “Potter fucked Draco. Right before the trial.” 

Blaise seemed to buffer for a second, something crossing over his face. “Well,” He drawled. “Now Draco can die happy.” 

“He’s not dying.” Harry says, again. 

Blaise hums. “Life in Azkaban. There’s only one way that ends. He’s a resourceful chap, he’ll find a way to slit his wrists.” 

He took a seat beside Harry, the three of them lined up like ducks in a row. Harry could have left, but he sat with them instead, listened to them discuss all the various ways that Draco might find to kill himself while he was still behind bars. “It’ll be like sixth year all over again.” Blaise commented, at one point, and Harry found he couldn’t help himself. 

“Malfoy tried to kill himself during sixth year?” 

“Oh,” Pansy said, casual as anything. “Oodles of times.” 

“The boy could barely look at a butter knife without trying to stab himself with it.” Blaise agreed. “Rather annoying.” 

“I didn’t know.” Harry said.

It was like a dam had been opened for Pansy and Blaise, though. Draco had finally been brought up, the subject of him was no longer a taboo; and now they were free to discuss him at length with someone who actually wanted to hear about him. They told stories about Draco during their childhoods that made Harry burst out laughing — it even drew the attention of Neville, who joined them on the armchair as a silent spectator. 

They learned that Draco, aged eight, vowed that he was going to marry Harry Potter. They learned that Draco played the piano and only kept it up past fourth year because he thought his piano teacher was fit. They learned that Draco, in the confines of Slytherin house, had kind of been a slag — but only because everyone else had been too, Blaise was adamant that most of Slytherin house was sleeping together at one point or another. 

Every fact Harry learned about Malfoy was a hook under his ribcage. It tugged at him. It made him feel like he had lost something; something important, something vital. The problem was this, the undeniable fact that he really had lost something. For the last seven years of his life, Draco Malfoy had been a universal constant, the one thing that Harry could depend upon to never change. 

And now he was gone.

No, no, it starts like this: 

Draco Malfoy is looking up at Harry with slate grey eyes and the smell of whiskey on his breath. He’s smiling at Harry, lascivious, as if he’s enjoying this. 

“You do realise that this is a gay bar, don’t you?” He’s asking, the drawling sound of his voice sending shivers down his spine. He’s trying to embarrass Harry, maybe. Throw him off balance, make him feel caught out and unwelcome. 

Harry knows that its a gay bar. He knows its a gay bar because he’s been here four times since the final battle, and left with a man twice. He knows its a gay bar because he likes men; their chests and their roughness and their cocks. He likes fucking men; men with pretty blond hair and pretty eyes that look grey in the right light. 

“I do realise.” He throws back, unafraid. 

Draco is the one to look embarrassed, to look off balance, caught out. It disarms him and makes him look more fragile, helpless. Less bloodthirsty predator, more uncertain. Like Draco during the battle, a prey animal. 

It made Harry’s heart beat faster. Pounding in his chest. He’s never felt like a hunter before, but his teeth feel sharp in his own mouth as he looks at Draco. Draco and his pale skin, collarbones prominent, delicate and unarmoured and open for attack. He looked like he would bruise easily. Would he gasp, if Harry bit him? Would he moan if Harry pulled his hair? Would he beg for it, if Harry kept him waiting. 

His mouth is dry, suddenly. His palms sweaty. 

“Alright,” Draco says, a slow drawl, as his gaze stayed fixed on Harry. He shifts closer, tilting his head and exposing more of that long, long neck. He’s barely loud enough to be heard over the music playing. “Do you want to fuck me, then?” 

And yeah, Harry does.

Harry falls into step with Pansy and Blaise like it’s second nature, and after a brief argument, so do Ron and Hermione. They’re all fucking exhausted, after the war. None of them really have the energy to hold grudges. Blaise and Pansy have been on their best behaviour so far, and they’re getting better at interacting by the day. 

Pansy is still quiet, most of the time. 

Blaise is still aloof, unaffected. 

Only three Slytherin’s came back to Hogwarts for the year, so their friendship attracts Daphne Greengrass, too. As far as Harry can tell, the Greengrass sisters escaped the war mostly unscathed. They were entrenched with the wizarding pureblood elite, so neither of them had been bothered much by the Carrows during the previous year; but their family had managed to remain neutral in the fight against Voldemort, so none of them were being treated as branded criminals. 

Harry had never thought much about Daphne Greengrass at school, and he hadn’t even known that Astoria Greengrass existed. They were both blonde and pretty, their delicate features reminding Harry endlessly of Draco. 

By Christmas, the rag-tag group they had formed almost seemed like it had always existed. They crowded around the fireplace at night, Slytherin and Gryffindor alike, and talked into the early hours of the morning. It’s peaceful. It’s strange. It’s good. 

Neville comes back from Christmas Hols with enough weed to hypothetically keep the Eighth Years high until exam season sets in, and the kind of generous spirit that makes it a reality. Even Hermione has a go at it — and those are golden moments, aren’t they? Ron and Hermione and him, giggling away at each other, not remembering to be bogged down by trauma and fear, not occasionally triggered into fits of grief by the mere sight of each other’s faces anymore. 

Harry comes back from Christmas Hols with news, and it goes like this;

“I talked to Kingsley, over the break.” Words announced at the breakfast table, his first day back, bleary eyed friends surrounding him in greater numbers than he’s had before. 

It caught the attention of Ron and Hermione, and even of Neville — but Blaise and Pansy didn’t seem to notice at all. Harry sniffed slightly, hoping to draw their gazes. 

“He, uh —” he said, a little louder than needed, looking at Hermione. “He’s suspending Draco Malfoy’s sentence. Reducing it. December 23rd, two years from now, he’ll get out of Azkaban.” 

Hermione’s face shifted. Pansy froze. Blaise turned to look at Harry like he’d announced the end of the world.

“That’s good.” Hermione said, eventually, which prompted Ron to nod along. Hermione was the moral center around which all of them must orbit. She was level headed. She knew right from wrong. “That’s good.” She seemed to insist. 

“Good for him,” Ron shrugged, and let it rest. 

“Do you mean it, Potter?” Pansy asked him, with watery eyes. 

“Yes,” He said, a nod of his head. “I mean it. Two years. He’ll get out in two years.” 

Unspoken was the fact that two years in Azkaban was still enough to drive a man mad, to drive him to the very brink. It was still two years that Draco would need to spend in a dingy cell, surrounded by dementors, while the rest of them lived their lives.

 He thought of Draco, with his dark eyes and delicate wrists, and felt that two years was still entirely unfair. 

Blaise, uncharacteristically, burst into tears — and through his tears he grabbed Harry, a hand on each cheek, and kissed him full on the mouth. 

Harry spluttered as he tore himself away, Blaise’s voice saying;

“You’re a beautiful, beautiful man, Harry Potter.” 

“Slytherins are so weird.” Ron said, and spooned his porridge into his mouth. 

No, this is the beginning; 

It’s Draco Malfoy kissing Harry Potter in a filthy bathroom in a filthy club. Draco kisses like he fights; dirty and intense, determined to win. In the end, it goes like all of their fights used to, with Harry fighting back just as hard and coming out on top. 

It feels like a victory to have Draco Malfoy here, with his lithe body pressed in a long line against Harry’s. Draco Malfoy, breathless under Harry’s hands — they’ve never touched this much, not since the day that Harry flew Draco away from the fire. They’ve never touched this much outside of life or death situations. Harry feels like he’s dying, while he does it; and he’s never felt more alive. 

The itch under his skin has turned into a new kind of fire. All consuming, all encompassing, until he doesn’t know anything except for Draco, Draco, Draco. The other boy is taller than he is, by a scant inch or so, but Harry feels massive against him. Where Draco has the height, Harry has the bulk. This is what my body was made for, he thinks, half delirious. He was made to push Malfoy around. 

Harry is panting, gasping into the kiss. He has to grab Draco’s hair and tug him back, just to get a breath in, just to ask;

“What—?” Uncertain of what he means to ask. What are we doing? What came over you? What kind of head injury led to you wanting to kiss me? It’s all derailed, in one way or another, because Malfoy does whine when someone pulls his hair, and its potentially the hottest sound that Harry has ever heard. 

“Need you,” Draco said, breathless and open. “Want you. Have done for a long time now, and this is the last chance. Last chance. So shut up and fuck me, okay?” 

It set something in Harry’s stomach to boiling, lit the fuse of the ticking time bomb that was his obsession with Malfoy. Last chance. If this was the last chance they ever had, he needed to make the most of it. He needed to make Draco cry with want, needed to drive him completely out of his mind with pleasure. He pulled Draco back in for a searing kiss, biting at his lips and coiling his fingers tightly through his hair. 

He only let Draco go when Draco forced him to, when he bit Harry’s lip bloody and pushed him away, panting for breath. Was it over? Was it all a cruel joke? No. Draco’s eyes were blown wide and glassy with lust, his cheeks pink and lips red from Harry’s relentless assault on them. He was beautiful. 

He was even more beautiful on his knees. Harry’s brain might have shut down for a moment, at the sight of Draco lowering himself down. There wasn’t any blood left for rational thought — not when Draco was looking up at him like that; half smug and half reverent and asking, rough voiced: “Can I?” 

His fingers were coiling below the waistband of Harry’s jeans. His touch felt like fire, felt like a brand against Harry’s bare skin. Something must have truly gone wrong in Harry’s head, because all he could bring himself to do was curl his fingers into Draco’s hair again and look him in the eye. 

“Say please.” He said, because if this was their last chance, he was going to fulfil every fantasy that he could. Draco Malfoy on his knees and begging was too good to pass up. 

Draco’s eyes glinted, the flush on his cheeks deepened. Harry watched him draw in a shaking breath, before he exhaled a soft: “Please.” 

“Never have I ever…” Hermione was pink cheeked and flustered. She was older than all of them, the oldest in the room — but she had never gotten much practice in on drinking. 

None of them had. They were too busy with the war. Too busy fighting for their lives, wearing a chunk of Voldemort’s soul around their necks like an anchor. They had never gotten the chance to be seventeen and stupid, never gathered around a table in the pub on seventeenth birthdays and had their first drinks. 

They were making up for it, this year. 

“Oh!” Hermione exclaimed, after a moment of aimless floundering. She sat up on her heels as she grinned, and fixed Harry with a look that meant trouble was coming. “Never have I ever caught a snitch during a Quidditch match.” 

A chorus of laughter erupted around them. Nearly every eight year was gathered around, propped against cushions before the fire. It was March 1st, and that meant it was Ron’s birthday, and that meant it was time to celebrate. 

Ron is an extremely affectionate drunk. He smiles and cheers when Harry has to take a gulp of his drink. 

“Never have I ever snogged my best mate.” Harry shoots back at them. 

Ron and Hermione both smile when they have to take their own drinks. 

Pansy, across the circle, perks up. “Are we bullying each other now?” 

She was a little too happy with the idea — little scary, when she got like that. Over this year, Harry has come to love Pansy as she is; a little intense, a little morbid, a little bit prone to over-dramatics. 

“No,” He tells her, at the exact moment as Ron says:

“Yes, absolutely.” 

She practically wriggles in delight. “Oh, my turn then! Never have I ever shagged someone in a bathroom stall.” 

Pansy is sharp in all ways, and that dart hits more than one target. Harry drinks, but so do Dean and Seamus, who look at each other after and burst into laughter. She looks delighted with herself. The joy around all of them is an infectious thing, and it becomes amplified more and more as they all keep drinking. 

Harry lets the sound of it wash over him. The sound of peace. The sound of them all, carefree at last — they’re not worrying about a war this year, they’re not locked in cages, they’re not being tortured. The healing has been slow, but it’s been happening while no one was paying attention. Slowly but surely, Remus would have said. Time heals all wounds. 

But Harry can’t stop thinking about bathroom stalls, now. He’d given Draco a wound in a bathroom once. The scars that covered his chest still, even now. In a circular way, Draco felt like a wound too. He had torn something in Harry on that last night they spent together, and ripped something open, and it wasn’t healing no matter how much time Harry gave it. 

That wasn’t Draco’s fault, really. He had been a wound already. He had been a gut-punch of a boy, the object of every obsession and jealousy and nameless passion. Only now it did have a name. Now it had a taste. Lust on the tip of his tongue. He’d tasted Draco now, and he couldn’t untasted him. The salt-sweat of his skin, the smell of his hair. He had to gnaw at the inside of his own cheek and swallow the rest of his firewhiskey in one harsh gulp just to drown out the sense memory of it. 

Yet he kept dwelling, as the game carried on. 

What would Draco be like, now? If Draco had been allowed to return to Hogwarts instead of being sent to Azkaban, what would be be doing? Harry tried not to dwell on that thought, usually. It was dangerous to create grand mythologies around Draco, to turn him into a creature of legend and fairytale — but Harry could imagine him so clearly. He would sit there, across the circle, with his shoulder pressed against Blaise’s. He would smirk and laugh and be utterly vicious. His Never-Have-I’s would be pointed and they would hit their targets well. 

He would look Harry in the eye and raise a challenging eyebrow at him. He would smile his sharp smile and Harry would want to kiss him. He would want it desperately; the way a knife wants a wound back, when its been viciously pulled out from those warm and enveloping depths. 

“I know that look,” Ron muses, as he settles in beside Harry. The group around them has dispersed into smaller sub-groups. The game finished before Harry could notice that it was over. “You’re thinking pretty hard there.” 

Harry felt guilty, suddenly. Ashamed of himself. Today was about Ron, and Ron was his best friend. The person who had stayed by his side throughout everything. He cut rather a dashing figure these days, Harry thought — he had come into himself at the end of the war and now walked with a confidence that couldn’t be faked. He was at ease in his own skin, proud of his own achievements, satisfied with his lot in life.

He was broken, too, in a lot of ways. Wounds that would never heal and trauma that could never be undone. But he was strong, getting on with things. 

Harry needed to get on with things too. 

“Sorry,” He said, with grimace. “I’m stopping now.”

The look Ron fixed on him was indulgent, a laugh blossoming up and out of him as he shook his head with an overabundance of fondness. “Its alright, I reckon. I’m used to it anyway. That look.” 

“What look?” Harry laughed, in return, trying to be as utterly clueless as he always was, and hoping that Ron couldn’t see right through him. 

It was a foolish hope. With Ron, he might as well have been a sheet of glass in a window frame. 

“The Malfoy look.” Ron told him, and Harry wished he had more whiskey in his glass. 

“Oh,” He managed. “That one.” 

“So…” Ron started, and trailed off. “You shagged him, then?” 

Harry winces, at that. “Sorry.” He says, again. 

The indulgent laugh comes out again. “Its alright.” 

“You’re not angry?” 

A tilt of Ron’s head, a tone that admitted he probably had been angry, at some point, and decided not to be. “No, reckon it’s okay.” 

“You hate him, though.” 

“Yeah,” Ron says, slow. “It’s just… I don’t really have the energy to hate people right now. I’m tired of hating people, and being sad, and — I guess I’d rather it all be over. Can’t say I’ll ever love having Malfoy around again, but I’m not gonna start a fight with the bloke.” 

“Oh,” Harry breathed, again, and felt something lift off his chest. A weight had been there without him ever realising it. 

Ron’s eyes are too aware, when they meet his own. His smile is too indulgent. “Not denying he’s gonna be around again, then?” 

“I guess not.” Harry says, because — 

Draco Malfoy has no reason to be part of Harry Potter’s life. They’re not sworn enemies or childhood rivals anymore. They’re not scared boys on the wrong side of a war, and not chosen heroes destined to die. They’re just Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy; and he didn’t know what shape that would take when they no longer had a fight to connect them. 

What did being around Draco look like, if he didn’t hate Draco? 

What did being around Draco look like if he actually liked Draco?

It seemed impossible. It felt inevitable. 

Draco felt inevitable.

Maybe the real beginning was after, when Harry made the mistake of taking Draco home with him. Neither of them had thought they should do anything different; both of them knew that after so many years of tension, one fumble in a bathroom would never be enough for them. 

No. 

If this was their one chance, they had to do it properly. 

So Harry brought Draco home with him and crowded him up against the front door of Grimmauld Place. So he bit at Draco’s mouth, his neck, tore the shirt off over his head. Draco was flushed, breathless, needy — he was fucking clingy, once he got going, hands everywhere and those noises that sounded a step away from begging. 

Harry fucked him there, right against the door, and Draco was slick and hot and open for him, and so tight at the same time. He was clingy, but he wasn’t docile, because he scratched at Harry’s back until it drew blood, and until Harry fucked him harder like he was asking for. He tightened like a vice grip around Harry when he came. 

Harry felt awkward, afterwards. When he pulled away from and out of Draco, it suddenly felt colder in the house. He felt something like shame coiling in his gut, because what the hell was that — Harry wasn’t usually so rough during sex, didn’t usually lose all sense of reason and fuck men in his entry way. He winced to himself when he picked up Draco’s tshirt for him and found that he had ripped the hem slightly when he tore it over Draco’s head. 

“Sorry,” He had said, when he held it out, only his eyes got caught on the silvery-thin scars that criss-crossed Draco’s chest. He had put those scars there, just like he had sucked the bruises onto Draco’s neck and bitten his lips red. 

Then Draco had taken the shirt from him, mouth open slightly in wonder. He had gazed down with it, before he looked up at Harry — and he had that glimmer in his eye again; like he wanted something and he was going to get it. Before Harry knew what was happening, Draco was kissing him again, backing him up so they stumbled into the living room and fell back on the couch. 

The shame went away when his sense of reason did, and both could be blamed on the feeling of Draco’s hand around his cock again. 

They celebrated the passing of their exams, and their subsequent graduation from Hogwarts, with a party at Grimmauld Place. Kreacher was beside himself with excitement, to have guests and to show off all of the work he had been doing while Harry was away at school again. 

The house looked like an entirely new place. It still had the bones of the old house, was still cluttered with the ephemera of the ancient House of Black — but the curtains had been cleaned, the furniture too, and there was a bright kind of warmth to every room that almost made you feel at ease. Making it a home would take more time, but Harry had felt a strange sense of hope when he saw it. With the entirety of their Eighth Year Class crammed into the library and drawing room, it felt downright cosy. 

Blaise brought expensive champagne, courtesy of his mother, who had long since departed to Paris and closed the country house in England that Blaise had grown up in. They drank far too much, and laughed until it made their stomachs hurt. He watched Hermione and Lavender Brown chatting on the couch, wide smiles on both of their faces and all past grudges set aside. He listened to Pansy and Blaise argue about where they should start looking for a place where they could live — both having lost access to their family homes and the majority of fortunes held within. 

“You could live here.” He offered, without a moment of hesitation. 

They looked at him in perfect time, disbelief on both of their faces. “Really?” Pansy asked, as if she thought he might be playing some kind of cruel prank on her. 

“Really.” He nodded. “Ron and Hermione are finding a place of their own, but I could use the company.” 

“It’s a big house.” Blaise mused. 

“Lots of room. You can have your pick.” 

The two of them shared another look, communicating silently, before they gave him twin smiles. 

On the night when it began, they ended up laying in bed together after the third round. Their shoulders pressed together, the sheets beneath them damp. Draco looked ruined, destroyed, like Harry had left his mark permanently. 

Harry liked it. 

He liked Draco sex-mussed and exhausted. 

“This is Grimmauld Place.” Draco had breathed, eventually, instead of addressing what was happening between them. 

“Yeah,” He replied. “How did you know?” 

“I’ve been here before.” Draco’s throat moved as he talked, and Harry’s gaze was stuck on it. “Mother brought me to see my Great Aunt Walburga. She was terrifying.” 

“I’d have shit myself.” Harry agreed. 

“I almost did.” Draco agreed, and there was a touch of laughter in it. “The house was different then, though. More Gilded Age, less Haunted Mansion.” 

“I’m working on it.” Harry felt defensive, suddenly, of his house. Sirius’s house. But Sirius had hated it, and Harry couldn’t imagine this house looking like anything out of the gilded age, looking like anything other than a depressive wreck. 

Draco only hummed, and shifted. “I should go.” 

“You could stay.” Harry said, too quickly. It worked. It got Draco to stop. It made Draco lay his head down on the pillow, where his hair fanned out around him like a golden halo.

Harry laid his head down on the other pillow, and looked at him. They fell asleep like that, gazing into each other’s eyes. They fell asleep like that, together.

Harry woke up alone. 

The bed beside him was cold already. Draco had been gone for some time. There was a note on the bedside, and he picked up up with clumsy fingers. 

‘Goodbye,’ the note read, in Draco’s delicately curled handwriting. 

That was all. One word — as if this was the end of the story. 

Chapter Text

Harry spends a long time dwelling over beginnings. The way things started. Who hated who first, who kissed the other, which one of them began the dangerous game of love. 

He thinks about the start of things so he won’t have to worry about the way it will all end; about the way things will go when Draco Malfoy steps into the sun, into a new world where everything he knows had changed. 

It would be delusional, Harry knew, to think everything would be perfect. 

Not after so long.

Not after two and a half years of Draco in Azkaban. 

Two and a half years between kissing Draco for the last time and seeing him again.

“Come out with us.” Pansy demands, throwing herself onto the couch of Grimmauld Place at a quarter past ten on a Saturday night, while they’re still living in the middle.

Harry's fighting with the television. 

He’s certain he can get it to work. He’s certain he can get it to run off magic. At that moment, he’s got the back off of it, staring inside at the wiring like he can divine the meaning of life, the universe, and everything from what he sees inside. 

Since Pansy and Blaise have moved in, Grimmauld Place is starting to feel like a real house. Less ‘haunted mansion’, as Draco had put it, and more ‘gilded age.’ 

Everything is clean and comfortable now, and Kreacher has never been happier, and Harry is — strangely settled, with the two of them around. During the summer before his eighth year at Hogwarts, he’d been out of his mind, sitting in the house all on his own. 

Now he was out of his mind, living in it with them. 

He glanced up at Pansy. She was dressed to the nines already, make up done, hair fluffy and soft. Sometimes, he ran his fingers through it, and she sighed like a particularly standoffish cat. 

It feels like she’s been his friend forever, now. 

Funny, that she only has been for a couple of years. 

“I dunno.” He said, “If i quit now I’ll never remember what I was doing when I get back to it.” 

“If you don’t quit now, Parvati will murder you.” 

He only just managed to restrain a sigh. Letting Pansy and Parvati make friends with each other had been his first mistake. They were a bloody nightmare when they ganged up on people together. 

“She doesn’t have the guts.” Harry shook his head, ignoring the pointedly judgemental look Pansy was giving him. “Plus, killing an auror isn’t a good look for an aspiring business woman.” 

“Not showing up to her opening night isn’t a good look for her supposed friend.” 

He throws down the screwdriver he’d been holding uselessly. “Fine. Let’s go, then.” 

“You can’t go like that.” Blaise critizised, from where he leant against the door-frame. “You look like a depressive episode incarnate.” 

“What?” 

“You’ve been wearing that shirt for three days, Harry.” Pansy’s eyebrow arched. 

He made an animal, annoyed sound, and stormed past the two of them. A half hour later he’d showered, and changed, and stormed back down the stairs. 

They went to the opening of Parvati’s club. It was loud, and intense, and packed full of people. It was like the best muggle club Harry had been in, only full of more wizards than Harry had seen in one place for years. 

He makes the mistake of trying to match Blaise shot-for-shot, alcohol burning its way down his throat and pooling in his empty stomach. 

He makes the mistake of letting Pansy drag him onto the dance floor, and then losing her in the mess of sticky bodies. Pressed close, in the dark, Harry can almost be anonymous. 

He makes the mistake, too, of dancing with someone sharp and blonde, letting himself crowd them into a booth and kissing them until he can’t breathe. 

When they’re finished with each other, he leaves, ashamed and drunk and utterly miserable, thinking far too much about how no one could ever live up to Draco Malfoy.

He retreated down to the kitchen after stumbling back into the house. He laid his sweaty forehead against the cool wood of the table. When he turned his head, he could see the calandar hung on the wall, days checked off one by one with the destinctive lines of Blaise’s hand. 

They were coming to the start of August now. In five months, Draco would be free. 

And still, no one would ever live up to him.

The end starts like this:

Draco Malfoy isn’t in Azkaban anymore, because he’s just stepped out of it. 

There’s no sun to greet him. It’s the kind of brutal winter day where it never really gets light out, sky obscured by deep grey clouds, rain pounding down in thick sheets against the earth. Draco Malfoy steps into freedom and is drenched in an instant. It stops him in his tracks, turning his face up to the sky, eyes sliding closed as the rain runs down his delicate features. 

Harry watches him, awe-struck and sick to his stomach. He’s so thin; like a ghost somehow made flesh. He’s beautiful, even now. 

“Draco?” Pansy asks, shifting uncertainly on her feet beside Harry. She sounds very much like she wants to run to him, but he looks so much like a skittish animal that none of them can. 

Harry couldn’t, anyway. That isn’t something he’s earned. 

It’s Blaise who takes a step forward, slow, and extends a hand. “Time to go home, Draco.” 

Harry watches with rapt attention as Draco’s eyelids flutter open again. Water drips down his cheeks. If he was crying, you wouldn’t be able to tell. They’re all soaked to the bone already.

Draco doesn’t speak. His eyes flick between the three of them, empty, and cold. It’s a torturously long moment before he reaches out and lets Blaise take his hand. 

Installing Draco in Grimmauld Place is easy. Harry had expected more of a fight. 

He’d expected more fight from Draco in general. More life in his eyes. He’d expected opinions spat out in that sharp sarcastic tone of voice, a judgemental downturn of Draco’s lips. None of them get any of that. 

He walks through the front door with his hand still clasped in Blaise’s grip, still dripping wet. Pansy helped him out of his prison slippers, stroked strands of his hair back from his face. 

“You’re freezing,” She said, with that pinched expression on her face like she was about to start crying. “I’ll draw a bath.” 

And with that, she was gone, up the stairs. Pansy was like that. She didn’t like to cry in front of people. She’d draw the bath and pull herself together before any of them could think to go and comfort her. Draco didn’t even watch her go. 

Blaise handled him like a delicate piece of glass. Dried him off from the rain, spoke gently, but didn’t manage to coax a word out of him. It feels like watching something private, something he hasn’t earned. 

“I’ll go make tea.” Harry says, to the room at large.

If his hand shook while he filled the kettle, no one saw it. 

Being friends with Pansy and Blaise is entirely different from being friends with Ron and Hermione. 

Ron and Hermione are battle tested — so intrinsically part of Harry that it barely even feels like he’s spending time with other people when he’s around them. They’ve been living in each other’s heads and out of each others pockets since they were eleven, in one way or another. They’re comforting, steady and dependable and predictable and —

“Co-dependent.” That was what Hermione called them, when Harry apparated to their flat in the middle of the night and shoved Ron over in the bed, so that Harry could crawl in with them like a scared child in the aftermath of a nightmare. She had been half asleep when the word left her mouth, even as she pulled him in closer and held him through his shuddering, gasping panic attack. 

He had nights like this more often, at the start — during the first few weeks after the war had ended, and he hadn’t been able to convince himself that there was no danger lingering on the horizon. It had gotten better when they were back at Hogwarts. Harry was healing. They were all healing. But these bad nights still snuck up on him, when he expected them the least. He would feel worse for barging in, if they hadn’t done the same thing to him a dozen times since school ended. 

It had been gratifying, the first time they showed up at Grimmauld Place and crowded him into bed together, unable to find safety unless they were with each other. It made him feel less like the broken one.

So Harry knew not to take it the wrong way when Ron complained; “You’re fucking massive,” In that sleep rasped voice of his, with his hand rubbing soothing circles against the expanse of Harry’s back. “Was it the graveyard again?” 

Harry could only shake his head. 

“The fire?” Hermione hedged a guess. 

He didn’t shake his head. Just buried his face in the bushy mess of her hair and inhaled the scent of safety, let Ron keep rubbing those soothing circles. He fell asleep there, thinking of Draco. 

Pansy and Blaise are different. He had known it, even during Eight Year. He knew it when he walked through the doors of Grimmauld Place in the morning and descended down to the kitchen. 

Pansy and Blaise were sharp. And mean to each other. And they would kill to protect the people they loved. They would do horrible, horrible things out of loyalty. Somehow, that helped Harry too. His teeth have felt sharper since the day Voldemort died. His temper quick to snap. They don’t mind it. 

“Walk of shame?” Pansy asked, when he sat down at the head of the table. It was the seat where Sirius used to haunt the place. Harry worried his fingers over the spot where Sirius used to scratch at the wood until it had created a divot. 

“No.” He grumbled. “Is there any coffee?” 

“Kreacher,” She demanded, and then much kinder when the elf appeared. “Will you get the master of the house some coffee, please, dear? He’s being awfully grumpy without it.” 

He could imagine her as the head of some great pureblood house. That was what she had been raised for. To be a great lady with an important husband, pushing out children and teaching them to be perfect little purebloods too. She was imperious and superior — but she wasn’t the head of some great pureblood house. She was just Pansy.

She was carefully applying eyeliner in a sharp point. She’d gotten a job, out in the muggle world. One of those devastatingly attractive women who stood in department stores and sold overpriced makeup to less devastatingly attractive women. 

He watched her, fond. 

“I still don’t believe that you and the lovebirds aren’t fucking each other.” Pansy commented, and Harry didn’t feel so fond anymore. 

“Bitch,” He threw at her, something he never would have done before, something he probably never would have said to any of the other women he was friends with. 

But all it did was make Pansy smile. She stuck her tongue out at him, nose wrinkled, and the fondness came flooding back. 

It only intensified when Blaise came into the room like a hurricane, coat half shrugged on to his shoulders. He rushed to the calandar on the wall and crossed off another day — the countdown to Draco, the man who haunted the narrative of all their lives now. 

“Four months,” He commented, a grin. 

“Now that’s a walk of shame.” Harry pointed out. 

“Blaise doesn’t feel shame. He’s long since evolved past the need for it.” 

Blaise grinned all the wider. “I’ve been converted to the church of Neville Longbottom.” 

Harry met Pansy’s eyes. 

“I won’t abide it.” Pansy said.

“I’d like you to move out.” Harry told him. 

“His cock is massive.” Blaise told them, and all Harry could do was grimace. 

Harry made Draco endless cups of tea, in the days after he came home from Azkaan. 

Draco held the chipped mug between the palms of his hands, and took sips only very occasionally, and didn’t say a word. He watched the world like he wasn’t sure it was real, or like he wasn’t real, like the Real Draco was very very far away. He seemed to like the feeling of the scalding hot porceline against his skin, regardless of that fact. 

Every morning, he sat robotically at the old wooden table in the kitchen, and Harry put the tea down for him, and Pansy or Blaise watched on tensely from the doorway. 

The first morning, Kreacher had brought Draco a lavish breakfast. Eggs and sausages, black pudding, fried potatoes and rashers and beans. It was the kind of breakfast Harry liked when he was feeling down. Draco had taken a few bites, silent, seemingly forcing it down — and promptly thrown all of it up again about fifteen minutes later. 

Tea seemed to be the only thing that would settle in his stomach for a while. 

Harry played with different blends. English Breakfast, and then the Black Family blend, and then Camomile — and then Lady Gray with a hint of honey. Draco drank most of that one, so Harry made it for him every morning. Placed it down in front of him, sat at his own seat to eat his breakfast, and tried not to stare at Draco while he took delicate sips. 

He still didn’t say a word. 

“This isn’t normal, is it?” Pansy asked, one afternoon, when Draco had ascended back up to his room for a nap. Knowing his track record, it would last until dinner. “What was it like with —” 

Harry cracked his knuckles in his absentminded tugging on them. “I don’t know.” 

“You don’t know?” Blaise questioned. 

Harry threw a scathing look in his direction. “Me; Thirteen. Him; On the run from the law. I didn’t exactly get a lot of up close and personal time with Sirius when he’d just gotten out of Azkaban.” 

“Well, Draco has always been an annoying chatterbox.” Pansy sighed. “I’m worried about this. The no talking thing.” 

“But not the barely eating thing?” 

Pansy and Blaise shared a look. Something passed between them. 

“Well.” Pansy shrugged. 

“Not unheard of.” Blaise agreed.

Harry shook his head. The weight of it had settled over his shounders, a heavy blanket of worry and responsibility and gnawing frustration. “The only way out is through.” He said, with a heavy sigh. “He’ll… just let him settle in a bit, and he’ll be alright.” 

He’ll be alright. It was a promise, not just to Pansy and Blaise, but to himself as well. Harry repeated it in his head a thousand times, over and over agian every day. He repeated it with every cup of tea, with every slice of toast they tried to coax into Draco. He repeated it when Draco dozed, silently, on the couch in the library, with the light streaming in the windows. 

It was Draco’s right to be fucked up. It was his right to be silent, if he wanted to be. 

They just needed to be patient. 

But — Harry’s patience had been a fraying thing, since the end of the war. He’d spent a long time being patient, being kept in the dark, waiting for happiness and comfort and family. Now he had it, but Draco was casting a dark shadow over what had been a warm and thriving home. 

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyones fault. But it wasn’t fair. 

Every morning, across the table, Harry’s eyes locked onto Draco’s sharp profile, to the hollowness in his cheeks, to the way his gaze slid right through everyone like they weren’t there at all. 

Be patient, he’ll be alright, just hold on. A mantra, repeated over and over and over again. 

Pansy tried; to coax Draco back to his old self, back to the world of the living, to biting and sarcastic conversations. She filled the silence with a running commentary on everything happening in their lives, with recollections and memories that were meant to spark some life behind Draco’s eyes.

Blaise tried too. He hovered, gentler than Harry had ever seen him, offering small comforts at every moment — an extra blanket, a touch to the shoulder; but Draco didn’t rise to any of it.

He was there, but not there. A ghost within the walls. 

It made Harry’s teeth ache, made his skin itch. It made him want to grab Draco and shake him; anything, anything at all, if it meant Draco would start looking like he was alive again. 

“Say something,” Harry muttered one night, under his breath, when they were alone in the sitting room. The fire was low, casting Draco in orange shadow, his face unreadable. Harry leaned forward, fingers gripping the arm of his chair. “Anything.”

Draco didn’t even look at him. Just kept staring into the fire like it might consume him if he blinked.

The silence was worse than any insult. It was worse than Malfoy’s sharpest sneer, worse than the cruelty Harry had braced for. This wasn’t a fight. This was absence, and Harry didn’t know how to fight absence.

His fists clenched uselessly in his lap. “You can’t just disappear while you’re sitting right in front of me,” he said, louder now, frustration cracking in his voice.

But Draco gave him nothing.

The fire popped. Somewhere upstairs, Pansy’s laughter rang out, faint through the walls. In the kitchen, Kreacher clattered with dishes. And here, in this room, Harry wanted to scream just to hear something break the awful quiet.

Instead, he sat there, glaring at the ghost of Draco Malfoy, and hated himself for wanting him back so badly.

Grimmauld Place was glowing, every lamp lit, the old carpets muffled under the shuffle of dozens of feet. Someone had charmed the gramophone to play Celestina Warbeck at double speed, and it kept skipping between verses with drunken glee. Bottles of champagne were littered across every flat surface, some half-empty, some tipped over, glittering as the firelight caught them.

Harry stood in the doorway of the library, a glass in his hand, letting it all wash over him.

Pansy had claimed the best armchair as her throne, legs crossed neatly, tiara askew in her dark hair. It was her birthday, and so she had the right to be superior, to make herself the centre of attention. They were all glad enough for the excuse at a party; for a chance at revelry, the chance to be young and free and stupid. 

Blaise was sprawled on the rug at her feet, laughing at something Seamus had said, Neville watching the both of them with open fondness on his face. Sometimes, when Neville looked at Blaise, Harry thought he must be falling in love; though they both insisted their relationship was nothing but a bit of fun. Hermione and Padma were near by, deep in a debate no one else could follow — looking a step away from pulling books down off the shelves to conduct proper research and prove each other wrong. 

Every sharp joke Pansy made, every careless smile Blaise threw at the group, every echo of laughter that bounced off the newly-bright walls of Grimmauld Place—it all pressed against Harry’s ribs. The ebb and flow of gratitude, of love, fondness. These people were his family, all of them bound together in intricate trails of trauma and fighting and love. They had chosen to be here, to be together, to keep a tight hold on each other and never let go again. 

The ache against his ribs had an edge to it, though. It made him think of the glaring empty spaces that were left around the room. 

He wondered, not for the first time, what Draco would look like in this light. Would he smirk at their games, vicious and amused? Would he engage in energetic academic debates with Hermione and Padma? Would he sit with Lavender and Parvaiti while they criticised the latest fashions? Would he sit back and let the others orbit him, as he always used to, or would Azkaban have hollowed him out too far for that? 

He thought of Sirius, in those days after his release. Out in the world, on the run, with no one to take care of him. His recovery had been slowed, surely, by all of the help he lacked. Draco would have it better. 

Would better be enough? 

Harry swallowed hard, staring into his drink until the golden bubbles blurred.

For now, the house was full. For now, he was surrounded by friends. But he couldn’t help it—he kept seeing the empty space by the fire where Draco might have been.

He wanted that space filled. He wanted three months to vanish in an instant.

Sometimes it seemed like Draco might be getting better. 

Sometimes, he finished his tea. Sometimes, he ate all of the toast Harry made for him. Sometimes, he almost smile at Pansy’s commentary, and the house felt warmer and lighter and full of open. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. 

Sometimes was a fleeting thing. Other times, the house felt cold under the weight of how much worse Draco seemed to be. 

Harry could feel it happening again.
The house had gone quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that pressed down on him until his ears rang. Somewhere upstairs, behind a closed door and heavy curtains, Draco Malfoy was lying in bed, not moving, not eating, not speaking. He was barely existing at all. 

And Harry hated it.

Not Draco. He couldn’t bring himself to hate Draco, not any more. He hadn’t been able to summon that hatred since that night on the Astronomy Tower, when Draco was supposed to kill Dumbledore and hadn’t been able to stomach the courage. No, Harry hated the silence. He hated the way Grimmauld Place seemed to fold itself around Draco’s absence, how even Pansy’s sharp tongue had dulled, how Blaise had stopped making jokes. 

He hated the way it made him feel: like he was back in those first months of summer after everything ended, jittery and cold, like the sting and stain of the killing curse would never wash off his body. 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thought to himself, as he stared at the untouched cup of tea he had made for Draco that morning. It was stone cold now, the honey clinging to the edge of the cup like a broken promise. 

In his head, over the last two years, Harry had imagined a hundred different ways that Draco might come home. He could have been sneering and brittal, raging against the world for all of the years that were stolen from him. He could have been delicate and cold, shaken from more than two years under the thumbs of the dementors, desperate for the warmth and love of his friends. He might have been sharp edged, like before they sent him away, with his smile like a knife and the way he sparked off of Harry like a flint, summoning fire with every movement. 

Whatever shape he’d been in when he got out, Harry thought he’d get better by the day. Surely, with enough warm attention, with enough food in his stomach and a fire to keep him warm, whatever hurt he’d faced would be snuffed out and replaced with a Draco, alive. 

He picked the mug up and threw it against the wall, shattering there into a million shards of gleaming white ceramic. The shattering took his breath away, but satisfaction flooded through him with the action of it. Sometimes, you just needed to break something. Sometimes, you needed to let your temper out, sometimes you needed to be forceful. 

That was what Remus had told him, once. That sometimes, when no one else was in Grimmauld Place, he’d needed to physically drag Sirius into the world of the living. 

He pulled in a breath. His chair scraped against the stone floor as he stood. 

He stormed up the stairs before he could talk himself out of it, anger building with every step. His hand shook on the door handle, but he forced it open with a bang.

Draco was exactly where he had left him: curled half-turned toward the wall, pale against the dark sheets, eyes open but unfocused. Not asleep. Not awake, either.

Harry’s fury boiled over.

“You can’t keep doing this,” he said, voice rough, too loud in the stillness. He strode into the room, each word sharper than the last. “You can’t just lie here like you’re still in Azkaban. You’re out. You’re free. For Merlin’s sake, act like it.”

He reached out and tore the blankets away from Draco. Draco shifted with a half-flinch. Good. It was a reaction, at the very least. Still, he didn’t quite look alive. He didn’t meet Harry’s eyes. 

Harry’s chest ached. “At least look at me when I’m talking to you!”

Draco huffed out a breath, and turned away instead, pulling one of the plush pillows down to cradle against his chest and laying his head back down on the other. He seemed ready to ignore Harry for as long as it took for him to go away. 

Harry wanted to scream. In general, and with a more specific direction. He swallowed past the urge of it. He spoke instead, though it was gravelly and intense and raw, grating against his vocal cords with every word. “Do you know how many people fucking worked themselves raw themselves so you could be here today? Pansy cried over you for months. Blaise fucking begged me to speak up for you, and you know Blaise, so you know it killed him to lower himself to begging. I —” He swallowed. “I called in a milling different favours for you! With Robards, with Kingsley, with the entire damn Wizengamot, just so that they would let you go. And now you’re just lying there like none of it fucking mattered.” 

Draco didn’t move.

“Say something!” Harry shouted, finally, stepping closer. He rounded the bed to put himself back in Draco’s eyeline. “Anything! Call me pathetic. Tell me to fuck off. Tell me you hate me, I don’t care. Just— just feel something.”

A beat. Another. Harry felt disappointment and distant grief clawing up his chest. Only then — 

Draco moved. He sat up in shaky coltish movements. His exhausted eyes caught on Harry. Eyelashes fluttered, delicate movements, a hint of life behind the deadness that had overtaken him. Harry watched him with rapt, obsessive attention. 

Please, he begged, silently. Please, please, please. His throat moved, like he was fighting past the silence and tension that had taken hold of him since his release. It looked like Draco was fighting through the fog slightly, finally, thankfully.

“Fuck off.” He finally managed. 

Something cracked open in Harry’s chest, a deep chasm of the sweetest relief. It must have shown on his face, in the shaking breath that escaped from him. It was his voice, Draco’s voice — long yearned for, ages since he heard it last. It hadn’t been since the trial, since the day they locked Draco away behind the black walls of Azkaban. It was a raspy thing, a shaky ghost of what Draco used to sound like. But it was his. 

Draco’s own expression twisted somewhat, the slightest furrow of his brow. Something like anger flickered behind those dead eyes. 

“Get the fuck out!” He repeated, throwing the pillow he had been cradling in Harry’s face. It landed against him with a dull thud. 

Laughter burst out of Harry’s chest, unbidden. A sweet sound that felt almost alien when it escaped his chest. The anger behind Draco’s eyes flickered again, the dullest flame that brightened the sleet-grey of his eyes. 

He moved back, quick, trying to choke back the laughter. “Okay. Alright. Thank you. I’m sorry, but thank you. Dinner is in an hour, alright? Come down if you want, call me a bastard, it’ll go down a treat!” 

Another pillow hit Harry’s chest, even as he backed away. He ducked outside the door again to avoid further projectiles, closing it behind him. He leant against it, breathless. 

Pansy was looking at him from the doorway of her room, just down the hall. Her hair was up in a towel, face half painted with make-up, lipstick clutched between her fingers. Her eyes were wide, slightly tender. “Did he—?” 

Harry nodded, smile cutting across his face like a blade. 

She sqeeked, and soon she was jumping into his arms, a happy hug — he spun her around gently before he dropped her back to her feet. She kissed his cheek, quick, before she ran back into her room and closed the door again. 

He didn’t feel angry at all anymore, as he watched her go. Not an ounce of frustration left in his blood. 

Something like hope was starting to creap back in. 

The kitchen of Grimmauld Place always felt more alive when someone was actually cooking in it. It harkened back to the years during the war, the winter they spent living here, with Molly Weasley constantly at the stove and fire. 

Warmth clung to the walls, thick with the scents of garlic and rosemary, something sizzling in a pan that Hermione insisted would turn out fine if Ron stopped interfering.

Harry leaned against the counter, chin in his hand, and watched them with a half-smile tugging at his mouth. Ron was stirring far too vigorously, sauce splattering across the countertops, while Hermione swatted at his arm with a wooden spoon, scolding in sharp whispers. They looked domestic in a way Harry never thought he’d see—two people who had spent years in the mud and blood of war now bickering over seasoning like it was the most important battle of their lives.

“You’re not even tasting it before you add more salt!” Hermione huffed.

“Better too salty than too bland,” Ron shot back, grinning like he knew he was winding her up.

Harry’s smile widened despite himself. This— this was safe. This was family.

And yet, beneath the warmth, the ache was there. Sitting heavy in his chest like an unwelcome guest.

The house got too quiet when Harry was in it alone. That was why Hermione and Ron had stormed over with bags of groceries and a grand plan for the evening. They’d come to save him from the absence of Pansy and Blaise. Harry hadn’t even asked them to come. They had just known, intrinsically and innately, that he would need their help tonight. 

His eyes caught on the heavy wooden table, set for three. Something ached in the back of his throat. He should have brought Draco down here, before, he mused. He should have memorised how Draco looked in the warm light. He should have fucked him on the table in front of the fire, let him scratch lines into the wood, leave a mark indellable. 

“Oi,” Ron said, snapping him back. “You’re brooding again.”

Harry blinked, straightened. “Not brooding.”

Hermione set the spoon down, fixing him with the look that meant she’d already worked it out. “You’re thinking about him.”

Heat rushed to Harry’s face. “I wasn’t—” He stopped. Lying to Hermione was pointless. He rubbed at the back of his neck instead. “Two months. That’s all. Trying to imagine life with Draco Malfoy in the house.” 

“The thought gives me hives.” Ron joked — and it really was a joke. He’d accepted what was going to happen a long time ago. Ron sighed, more gently than Harry expected. “We’ll get there together, yeah? Two months is easy work. A few dinners, some distractions, he’ll be home before you know what hit you.” He grinned as he tipped the sauce into a dish with more clatter than was strictly necessary. 

“And food that isn’t takeaway curry.” Hermione added, a sly smirk on her face. 

Harry laughed, surprised by the sound of it. The ache didn’t vanish, not really—but it loosened a little, tucked under the warmth of their voices and the smell of garlic and rosemary. For now, that was enough. “Kreacher keeps us fed well enough.” 

“And thank god for him.” Hermione nodded. “You’d stavre if he wasn’t here. I hope he knows how grateful you are.”

“We tell him every day.” Harry promised, with a fond shake of his head. 

Together, they settled down around the table. Together, the dug into the meal they had cooked together. 

Sunlight streamed through the windows of the kitchen. Dinner smelled rich, comforting. Roast chicken, potatoes crisping in the pan, carrots glazed and shining under Kreacher’s charm and attention.

Neville had joined them tonight — or rather, was still lingering after bringing Blaise home and doing filthy, filthy things to him in his bedroom. He was moving fludily around Kreacher, talking him like an old friend, asking permission to add this seasoning or that. He was comfortable here, at home in a way that warmed Harry’s heart. 

They were connected, the two of them. The boy who had killed Voldemort, and the boy who might have done it for him instead. Neville had grown into the heart of a hero in a way more natural than Harry had, it seemed. These days, Harry felt stilted under the weight of it, while Neville seemed to thrive more and more with every day. 

Harry sat at the table with Pansy on one side and Blaise on the other, watching Neville carve the chicken for dinner, all distantly admiring the strength of his arms and his gentle demeanour. It should have been another ordinary meal in their strange little household. The four of them talking over each other, Pansy being imperious, Blaise being smug, Neville fussing, Harry pretending not to love it all.

Then Harry heard the step on the stair.

Soft, hesitant. Unmistakable.

His body went taut in anticipation. Anxious hope, fingers clenching in his lap. He forced himself to breathe — and there Draco was, standing in the doorway. Pale and thin, barefoot, sunlight streaming in to catch against his hair and turning him to gold. 

For one quick, fleeting moment, Harry forgot how to breathe. 

He looked different when the sun hit him. More different still, caught between teh sunset and the roaring fire in the hearth against the wall. Draco was more than a man, in light like that. He was a Caravaggio painting, or a sculpture by a long dead artist. His hair hung around his shoulders, his shoulders slumped under the weight of his thin white shirt. He looked tired. 

Harry was struck with the not unfamiliar urge to wrap a blanket around him and press tea between his palms. 

Draco didn’t look at anyone in particular as he entered the room; just shifted around the table until he could slip, ghostly silent, into the seat across the table from Harry. 

Pansy watched him, wide eyed, as he reached and took a delicate portion of crispy roast potatoes from the dish in the centre of the table. Blaise’s gaze was transifxed, full of aching hope. His smile was a flickering thing, uncertain. 

“Do you want some gravy with that, Draco?” Neville asked, as if it was the most normal interaction in the world. There was no heavy weight, no overwhelming expectation. 

Draco’s throat moved, a harsh swallow. He nodded his head, and Neville sevred him some of the thick brown gravy. “Thank you,” Draco managed, voice hoarse. 

He didn’t say another word over dinner, but it didn’t dull the mood of his companions. 

Blaise and Pansy were more than capible of filling a room with happy chatter. Their conversations moved lightning quick, with Neville and Harry picking up whatever slack they left. 

Draco ate slowly, little bites, until the small portion he had served himself was mostly clear. 

Harry had to do everything in his power not to stare at him. He was mostly successful, except for the point where Draco flicked his gaze up and caught him looking. 

Then, Harry had to do everything in his power not to look away. It was important, he thought, to be unflinching with Draco. Show no fear, never let him know that he had the upper hand. 

Draco didn’t flinch either, just stared back at Harry as he reached down and took a sip of his water. 

It feels like a challange. It tastes like hope on the tip of Harry’s tongue. 

Blaise crossed off the last day of the month on their calendar, and turned it up to show the next. 

It could be seen clearly then, the glowing beacon of golden sharpie around the day when Draco would go free. 

All three of them stared at it with an anxious kind of energy. All three of them were overwhelmed with their anticipation; the constant longing for the boy they all missed. 

Sometimes Harry felt like he didn’t have the right to be so wrapped up in this. What was he to Draco, after all? An old enemy, the boy he’d hated, the boy who’d almost killed him and the man who saved his life? Harry was just a stranger, at the end of the day. A stranger who had fucked into Draco on the couch, and bitten fervent kisses to his lips. He’d drawn blood when he bit at Draco’s shoulders, and made him cry out with relief. 

He still felt like no one, and nothing. 

“We should drink, I think.” Pansy suggested. 

Blaise hummed in agreement. “Excessively. With gusto.” 

“Better invite someone over.” Harry added. “It’ll be depressing on our own.” 

“I’ll call Parvati.” Pansy nodded. 

Parvati brought her sister, and invited Lavender Brown too. The three of them could always be counted on to throw a party. Lavender, to the surprise of everyone, brought along Daphne Greengrass. The two of them looked bed-mussed when they arrived, which made them the butt of every joke. 

It was a good night, all in all — enough noise and laughter to drown out even the deepest of their longing. 

“You are an overbearing bastard.” Draco tells him, at one breakfast. 

“I still hate you.” During the next. 

“You look pretty today.” He tells Pansy. 

“Will you read to me?” He asks Blaise. 

These are the small efforts he makes every day. Harry can see the effort it takes him to not be a walking corpse. He can see the strain and the exhaustion behind Draco’s eyes; the shake in his hands as he spoons breakfast and dinner into his body. 

They fall into some kind of equilibrum, some kind of celestial balance. Everyone in place, everyone with a role to play. 

Harry is the one who pushes Draco; because he knows, now, that it’s effective in prompting Draco to try harder. He’s the one who shows up with the tough love. It has to be him, because Pansy needs to coddle Draco, and Blaise needs to be gentle with him, and Draco needs them to be his safety net. His best friends. 

Harry is just a stranger he used to hate, the man who fucked him once. 

So Harry can, occasionally, glare down at Draco’s dinner plate and say: “You can do better than that.” 

“Fuck you.” Draco spits. They’re alone, of course, because this is always better done without company. 

“No thank you.” Harry sighs. “How about a few more bites instead?” 

Draco throws his glass of water in Harry’s direction. It shatters against the wall, because Harry knows exactly when to dodge now. It stil makes him smile, but he has to fight the urge, because it will only make Draco angrier. 

But it’s okay for Draco to get angry. It’s good, really. Angry is a feeling. He talks more when he’s angry. Usually, he never manages more than four or five words a day, but if Harry can really piss him off…

“Come on!” Harry urged. “You need to eat more. You’ll get stronger, the more food you can get into yourself. That’s all any of us want — to see you better, but it’s like you don’t even care!” 

Draco looked like he was going to throw his plate at Harry next. Harry welcomed it. This was it, he could feel it, a break on the horizon.

“Do you think I want this?” Draco finally spat. “Do you think I want to feel sick every moment of the day, forcing your disgusting food down just to make Pansy happy? I am trying, for fucks sake!” 

Harry smiled, somewhat victorious, after listening to the longest string of consecutive words that Draco has managed to summon since the day he came home. It was like the damn had broken, and every inch of frustration that had been building up in Draco was finally spilling out. 

“In fact, I might make more progress if you weren’t hovering over me like a perverted little freak every moment of the day. With your eyes and your fucking tea and your obsession with every bite; holding all the effort you put in over me like it gives you the right to tell me what to do! I didn’t ask for you to save me, and I do not have to put up with you standing over me with your hero complex and your fucking halo, waiting for me to grovel in grateful adoration and beg to suck your cock again.” 

The words landed with more force than a hex.

Harry’s heart slammed against his ribs, so hard it hurt. Ridiculous— he should have been offended, should have bristled at the insult, should have said something cutting back. But all he could think was he’s talking. He’s here. He’s alive enough to hate something again.

He was choking back the wide smile, choking back the laughter. He nodded his head, firm. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Try finish the plate, if you can.” 

“I fucking hate you.” Draco called after him. 

He wanted to laugh, or cry, or both at once. He almost did, when he ascended the stairs and leaned against the wall of the entryway. He wanted to grab Draco by the shoulders and hold him close, then press his forehead against his and whisper thank you, thank you, thank you.

Chapter Text

The mirror was fogged from steam, but Harry swiped at it with the edge of his sleeve until his reflection appeared in a streaky oval.

He looked… older. Not just the lines of his face, though there were more than he remembered, but the weight of everything behind his eyes. Still, the dress robes helped. Dark, well-cut, surprisingly comfortable. Hermione had insisted on them, and he had learned long ago not to argue when she used that particular tone of voice.

Harry adjusted the cuffs, smoothed his fringe, tilted his head to try on a smile.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Behind him, the room was chaos. Ron’s shoes had been kicked into the corner, one sock balled inside out beside them. A pile of ties lay draped over the back of a chair in defeat. Hermione’s neat calligraphy covered the scattered place cards, each with perfect curls of ink spelling out names Harry half-recognised from school or the Ministry. The windows were flung open to let in the late afternoon breeze, carrying the sounds of the gathering crowd below: voices, laughter, the faint clink of glasses.

It all felt… alive.

Ron stuck his head in the doorway just then, his hair sticking up worse than Harry’s ever had. “Tie,” he demanded, tossing a length of silk in Harry’s direction.

Harry caught it. “You’re hopeless.”

“And you’re smug,” Ron shot back, though he let Harry loop the tie around his collar and knot it properly. Hermione appeared a moment later, swooping in to straighten both their robes with brisk, efficient hands.

“Nearly time,” she said, her eyes bright, her smile tight with excitement. She smoothed Harry’s shoulder, then Ron’s. “You both look perfect.”

Harry felt something warm unfurl in his chest. Weddings were supposed to be hopeful things, weren’t they? A promise. A future.

He let himself lean into it. For once, he wanted to stand in a room like this and believe the future could be bright. That joy could be simple. That the ghosts of the past didn’t have to follow him everywhere.

He looked at his reflection one more time. Smiled. This time, it felt real. 

He was ready for part one of the grand Happy Ending. 

The library at Grimmauld Place had changed. Once it had been suffocating — thick with dust, curtains drawn, the weight of Sirius’s mother lingering in every corner. Now it was tidier, shelves lined neatly, fire burning low, the air warmer than Harry remembered.

And Draco was in it.

He sat curled into one of the high-backed chairs, long legs tucked beneath him, a book balanced carefully in his hands. Pale hair falling across his face, catching the lamplight, eyes following the words with quiet intensity.

It had started cautiously. At first Draco had only wandered into the library, stood before the shelves as though he didn’t know how to begin. Then he’d carried a book back to his room. Days later, another. Now he was here, in the chair, actually reading — lips moving faintly, brow creased as though the words demanded all of him.

Harry stood in the doorway, hardly daring to breathe.

It wasn’t just the books. Draco had eaten half a slice of toast that morning. The night before, he’d managed three bites of soup before pushing it away. The tiniest things, laughably small, but Harry hoarded them like treasures: the scrape of a fork on a plate, the sound of a page turning.

He thought of Azkaban, of the silence that had clung to Draco like a second skin when he first walked through the door. To hear these little sounds now felt like miracles.

Blaise and Pansy played it off as nothing, tried not to look too proud, but Harry caught them stealing glances too. They were holding their breath just like he was, waiting for the next small step.

Harry wanted to laugh at himself for it. To think that the Boy Who Lived, who had faced down Dark Lords and walked to his own death, could be undone by the sight of Draco Malfoy chewing a piece of apple. But it was true. It was happening.

Fragile. Easily broken. But real.

Draco turned a page. Reached absently for his glass of water. Lifted it, drank. His hand trembled faintly, but he didn’t spill a drop.

And Harry let himself feel it — hope threading carefully through the quiet, through the glow of the fire, through the sight of Draco Malfoy, alive in his library, breathing, reading, here.

“What are you reading?” He asked, against all better judgement. Sometimes, Harry felt like he was starving for any scrap of Draco he could get. He just wanted to hear his voice, however small a scrap of it that Draco was willing to give him. 

Draco shifted, delicate hands lifting the book so that Harry could see the cover. “Harris and Waugh’s Spells for the Aspiring Dark Wizard.” He intoned, dark and deadly and utterly grim. He said it like he was trying to put Harry in his place, or shock him into some kind of violent action. 

Harry thought he might be falling in love. 

You know, if he hadn’t been doing that already. 

“Some light reading before bed, then?” He managed, with only a hint of tightness in his throat. 

“Better than a fairytale. I don’t have much of a taste for Happily Ever Afters.” 

Harry quirked a smile. Every word something coveted. “I dunno. Haven’t we earned them, at this point.” 

Something darker crossed Draco’s expression, something almost sad. “Maybe you have.” 

The house was chaos, but the happy kind.

Someone had charmed half the hallway sconces to float after them as they moved from room to room, lighting up stairwells and banisters as people dashed past with shoes, flowers, hairpins, and bottles of champagne. Doors banged, laughter spilled down the staircase, and every other sentence Harry overheard sounded something like, “Has anyone seen my—” followed by some essential item no one could locate.

Dean and Seamus had taken over the drawing room, one of them ironing dress robes with his wand while the other kept accidentally spilling champagne down his front. Ginny was fastening something sparkly into Hermione’s hair in the upstairs bedroom, both of them tipsy enough to giggle every time a pin jabbed the wrong direction. Ron had abandoned tying his cravat in favor of sitting cross-legged on the floor with a half-finished glass of bubbly, arguing with someone in the hallway about boutonnières.

Harry weaved through it all with a grin he didn’t have to fake. This—this was the kind of mess he loved. The house, once grim and silent, felt swollen with life. Every room was humming, every voice familiar. He passed a bottle from one hand to another as he moved through a crowd in the corridor, someone clapping him on the back, someone else yelling for a spare hair elastic.

Lavender hurried past in just one shoe. “Has anyone seen Neville?” she called over her shoulder. “He was supposed to help with the flower charms but he’s vanished.”

Seamus shouted from somewhere unseen, “Check the greenhouse! Or the attic! Or a hedge!”

Hermione poked her head out of a doorway. “Does he even know what time it is? We’re leaving in less than an hour!”

Harry was already stepping toward the stairs. “I’ll get him,” he said easily, taking another swig of champagne before handing off the bottle to Padma as she hurried by. “Where’d you last see him?”

“I think he went to drop something off in one of the spare rooms,” Hermione said, tucking a curl behind her ear. “Or maybe the garden. Or—I don’t know, he’s gone quiet.”

Ginny popped out behind her and pointed her wand at Ron’s tie from across the landing. “Good luck,” she said to Harry, smirking. “He’ll probably be talking to a shrub.”

Harry was still smiling as he headed down the corridor. The noise of the house followed him—footsteps overhead, music starting up in the parlor, someone shaking a bottle and shrieking when the cork nearly hit a portrait.

This was exactly the kind of evening Grimmauld Place had never been built for—bright, noisy, loved. And as Harry moved toward the back stairs to hunt down Neville, his chest felt full in a way he didn’t question.

Neville began with the dirt.

One morning in early spring, he appeared in the back garden of Grimmauld Place with a stack of clay pots, a trowel, and a determined expression that brooked no argument. Harry found him kneeling in the patchy grass behind the house, wand behind his ear, sleeves rolled to his elbows as he muttered to the soil like it was a skittish creature in need of coaxing.

The garden had always been a lost cause — overgrown ivy, brittle brambles, the ghost remnants of whatever the Blacks might’ve planted decades ago. But Neville treated it like sacred ground. He cleared a space beside the old stone path, humming under his breath, and within the hour had neat rows sketched into the earth, like he could already see what would grow there.

Harry hadn’t meant to stare from the kitchen window as long as he did.

Then Neville dragged Draco into it.

No one would’ve tried that but him. Pansy wouldn’t have risked it, and Blaise wasn’t suicidal. Even Hermione had given Draco a wide berth when he was silent and brittle and unpredictable in the early weeks. But Neville just appeared in the doorway of Draco’s room one morning and said, “Come outside. I need a second pair of hands.”

Harry braced himself for a hex. Or a refusal sharp enough to cut.

What he got instead was Draco — blinking, irritated, but silent — appearing in the back garden ten minutes later in a borrowed jumper and boots that didn’t fit quite right.

Harry nearly dropped his mug.

Neville wordlessly pressed a trowel into Draco’s hand and pointed to a flat of seedlings waiting to go in. Draco stared at him for a long moment, some unreadable calculation behind his eyes, then crouched stiffly beside the row Neville had already marked out.

He didn’t complain. Not once.

From the kitchen window, Harry watched as Neville worked slowly, talking only when it felt natural, not filling the air but leaving space. Draco followed his lead, hands careful, movements precise. Kneeling in the dirt made him look smaller, younger somehow. When Neville corrected the angle of his wrist with a gentle nudge, Draco didn’t flinch — just adjusted and kept going.

Blaise joined Harry at the window, leaning one hip against the counter as he dried a plate with a tea towel he clearly had no intention of finishing.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “Longbottom’s either a saint or a menace.”

Harry didn’t answer. He couldn’t take his eyes off the way Draco’s fingers pressed into the soil, how his shoulders had loosened just the slightest amount.

Blaise glanced sideways at him. “You expected him to refuse.”

Harry huffed a breath. “I expected him to set Neville on fire.”

Blaise snorted softly. “Draco’s terrified of him, you know. Seventh year did that. You don’t forget the people who stood their ground when you didn’t.”

Harry’s fingers tightened around his mug. He remembered that year too well — the Carrows, the broken halls of the castle, the way Neville had risen while others shrank away.

“And he used to garden with his mother,” Blaise added, more quietly now. “Greenhouses at the Manor. Orchids and rare hybrids Narcissa smuggled from gods-know-where. He won’t talk about it, but he remembers every plant he’s ever touched.”

Harry swallowed hard at that. Outside, Draco brushed dirt from his palm with the back of his sleeve, then pushed another seedling into the ground with surprising care.

Neville said something Harry couldn’t hear. Draco didn’t smile, not quite, but one corner of his mouth twitched like he might remember how someday.

Blaise bumped Harry’s shoulder with his own. “You know what the bastard likes? Structure. Rules. Quiet. And not being watched.”

Harry flushed and looked away from the window, though not for long. “I’m not watching.”

“Mm,” Blaise said dryly. “And I’m a Hufflepuff.”

Outside, Neville handed Draco a watering can, and to Harry’s complete disbelief, Draco took it without complaint.

The earth was still bare and uneven, nothing green pushing through yet — but for the first time, Harry could imagine it full. Rows of herbs and flowers, the scent of mint and sage on warm evenings, something alive rooted in the ground here.

Something growing back.

And Draco, hands in the soil, was part of it.

Harry took the back stairs down to the kitchen, dodging a floating bottle of champagne and someone’s discarded shoe along the way. The noise of the house faded behind him with each step — the laughter, the rustle of clothes, someone swearing at a button that wouldn’t fasten. He could still feel the hum of it in his chest, warm and light.

He reached the kitchen door with the vague plan of checking on the caterers or grabbing something he’d forgotten — he wasn’t sure. But his hand paused on the doorknob.

Through the small square window in the upper half of the door, he could see straight out into the garden.

And there they were.

Summer had transformed the patch of ground Neville once knelt in like a prayer. The garden stretched in color and texture — clusters of lavender and foxglove standing tall near the wall, thyme and sage spilling across the stone edging, late roses climbing the old brick with soft, heavy blooms. The air shimmered faintly with sun and green and bees.

Neville stood by the raised bed closest to the kitchen, hands in his pockets, his dress shirt sleeves rolled up, waistcoat gaping open where he hadn’t finished buttoning it. Draco stood opposite him, just beyond a burst of flowering mint, pale hair silver-bright in the sun. He looked… well. Healthy. Stronger. His face was still all angles, but softer now — there was color in it, and focus in his eyes.

They were facing each other, talking quietly. It wasn’t casual. Neville’s expression was steady, grounded, and Draco was listening with a seriousness Harry hadn’t seen in years. Not brittle or defensive — present. Like the conversation mattered.

Harry hovered at the kitchen threshold, fingers curled around the frame of the open door, unwilling to break the moment. He’d seen Draco alive. He’d seen Draco functioning. But this — this was Draco engaged. Draco comfortable in his skin. Draco with dirt still under his nails from tending something that grew.

A breeze moved through the garden, brushing the leaves and lifting the hair at Draco’s temple. Whatever Neville said then made Draco’s mouth press into a line — not tight with anger, but with thought. He didn’t look away.

Harry realized, with a faint kind of awe, that he was seeing the end of the conversation rather than the beginning — something important finishing rather than something fragile about to break.

Neville nodded once. Draco nodded back.

Only then did Harry step out onto the back stone step.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, voice lower than he meant it to be. “Neville — Lavender’s been hunting for you. Something about flower charms and you disappearing like a coward.”

Neville huffed a laugh under his breath. “Right. I’m going.”

He clapped Draco gently once on the shoulder — and Draco didn’t flinch, didn’t tense, just rolled his eyes in faint, familiar exasperation. Neville headed for the house, brushing past Harry with a nod and a quiet, “You clean up nice.”

That left Draco alone in the garden, the sun catching on the silver threads in his robes.

He glanced at Harry then, properly, and there was something startlingly clear in his eyes. Not gratitude exactly — something quieter, deeper. A kind of acknowledgment. Of Neville. Of the garden. Of Harry finding them instead of calling out from the window.

Harry took a step closer — couldn’t help it.

Draco looked him up and down, slow and deliberate, and said dryly, “If you don’t step back, you’re going to ruin those robes, and I refuse to be blamed for it.”

Harry blinked — then a laugh broke out of him, warm and surprised. “Threat noted.”

Draco didn’t smile, not quite — but the corner of his mouth shifted, the ghost of one lingering there like it might settle properly if given the chance. And in the quiet that followed, with bees humming in the thyme and the garden alive around them, Harry felt something in his chest loosen — the kind of ease that came only when healing had already begun.

“I’d better go. Blaise will kill me if I’m not ready on time for the church bells.” 

Neville had taken over the kitchen.

The others had learned not to fight him on it — mostly because he threatened violence with a wooden spoon the first time Ron tried to season something without permission. Tonight, he’d recruited an assistant, and to everyone’s disbelief, Draco hadn’t refused.

Harry still wasn’t sure how Neville had managed it. But there Draco was: sleeves rolled to the elbow, hair tied back at the nape of his neck, slicing herbs with lazy precision while Neville stirred something bubbling on the stove.

The sight of Draco barefoot in Harry’s kitchen — barefoot, hair back, shoulders loose — struck something low and dangerous in him.

“Hand me the thyme,” Neville said without looking.

Draco passed it over with a wry flick of his wrist. “If you put one more handful of sage in that pan I’m calling it self-sabotage.”

“You didn’t complain when you were chewing on it straight from the garden two weeks ago.”

“That was different. That was alive,” Draco retorted, but the bite in his tone was thin, almost theatrical. Neville didn’t even glance at him as he smirked.

Harry watched from the doorway longer than he meant to, pretending to be checking the wine level rather than staring like he’d forgotten how to blink.

At the long dining table, Pansy and Hermione were setting out plates, arguing quietly about centerpiece height. Blaise was pouring red wine with the reverence of a priest. Ron hovered by the bread basket, waiting for permission to tear into it.

It felt startlingly normal.

When dinner was finally brought out — roasted vegetables, chicken and lemon, something green and fragrant Harry couldn’t name — they all gathered at the table like they’d done it for years instead of months.

Draco didn’t sit stiffly anymore. He didn’t flinch when someone’s sleeve brushed his, didn’t tense if the conversation got too loud. He sat between Blaise and Neville, posture elegant but not rigid, his plate full enough that Pansy didn’t glare at him even once.

Harry took the seat across from him.

The meal was loud in the best way — overlapping voices, Pansy roasting Ron for his appalling taste in table wine, Hermione and Blaise threatening to unionise against Neville’s ban on pre-dinner snacking. Draco even joined in — a soft, wicked comment about Ron’s inability to identify basil from grass had the whole table snickering and Ron throwing a roll at him.

Draco caught it one-handed. “Pathetic aim.”

Harry nearly choked laughing.

He couldn’t stop looking at him. The way Draco’s fingers curled around his wine glass; the way he licked a stray drop of sauce from his thumb without thinking; the way his throat moved when he swallowed. It was obscene, the way Harry’s thoughts wandered — to pinning Draco against the counter, to tasting wine from his mouth, to pressing his palm to the soft skin just under his jaw and—

A sharp kick landed to his shin.

Harry jerked and looked up — Ron was squinting at him with the subtlety of a brick. Across the table, Hermione tried and failed to hide a smirk behind her napkin.

Harry looked away quickly, cheeks hot, stabbing pointlessly at his food.

Draco was mid-conversation with Neville and Blaise, but his eyes flicked — just once — in Harry’s direction. Not questioning. Not cold. Just… aware.

Harry’s pulse tripped. He reached for his wine to distract himself and nearly knocked it over.

Blaise arched a brow at him. Pansy rolled her eyes like she knew everything and was bored by it.

Conversation rolled on — about plans for the September garden, about whether Ron could be trusted with pruning shears, about dinner next week at Hermione’s parents’ cottage. Draco didn’t fade out, didn’t drift. He was part of it — not at the center, but fully there.

And Harry, pretending to listen, let himself imagine it — Draco brushing past him at the sink afterward, fingers grazing his hip by accident, mouth close enough to kiss. Draco leaning back in his chair with a lazy smirk and letting Harry tug him closer by the collar. Draco murmuring his name, voice low and deliberate.

He swallowed hard, pulse buzzing under his skin.

Neville said something then that made Draco genuinely laugh — soft, quick, real. And Harry thought, with something like awe and hunger all tangled up together:

I’m in so much trouble.

Harry found Pansy in one of the guest rooms, swearing creatively at a dress that looked like it had been engineered by someone who hated human anatomy.

“Finally,” she said, spotting him in the mirror. “Get over here before I hex this thing off and show up in a bathrobe.”

She stood with her back to him, the deep green silk of her dress gaping open where the zip was stuck halfway. Her hair was already done — sleek and glossy, twisted into something artfully complicated — and she wore earrings that looked expensive enough to fund a small country.

Harry stepped behind her and caught the zipper between careful fingers. “How is this my job?”

“Because Blaise is already dressed and Hermione will scold me if I rip it,” Pansy said. She lifted her hair out of the way with both hands. “And you owe me.”

“For what?”

“For not strangling you over the last decade. Zip.”

Harry pulled gently, working the fabric into place. The scent of her perfume — rose and something darker — lingered in the air between them.

She watched him in the mirror, eyes narrowed in thought rather than vanity.

“Big day,” she said.

Harry huffed a quiet laugh. “Just a little.”

She tilted her head, considering him. “You’re not twitchy.”

“Do I usually twitch?”

“You usually brood. Or vibrate. Sometimes both.”

He smirked. “I’m fine.”

Pansy didn’t look convinced, but she let it go in favor of something softer, deceptively casual. “It still amazes me, you know. That we’re doing this at all. That he said yes.”

Harry didn’t ask who she meant. He didn’t need to.

Pansy lifted one shoulder. “You’re sure he’s ready for this?”

Harry’s hands stilled for a moment against the zip. He smoothed the fabric and kept working. “Yeah. I am.”

“He’s got the emotional stability of a lit fuse,” she said, lips twisting with fond exasperation. “And a dramatic streak the size of Wiltshire.”

“I know.”

“And he panics at the idea of permanence.”

“I know.”

“And he has sabotaged every serious connection he’s ever had.”

Harry met her eyes in the mirror. “I know.”

Pansy held his gaze for a long moment. Her expression softened — not pitying, not warning. Something like reluctant approval. “And still he’s still not running for the hills.”

“Not anymore.”

She snorted. “Merlin help us all.”

Harry zipped the last inch into place and stepped back as she smoothed the fabric over her waist. For a heartbeat, neither of them spoke.

Then Pansy said, quieter now, “This’ll be good to him.”

It wasn’t a question.

Harry’s answer was equally steady. “Yeah, I really think it will be.”

Pansy nodded once, almost imperceptibly, then flicked invisible lint from her shoulder like she hadn’t just said something that mattered.

“You look great,” Harry said.

“I know,” she replied, already turning away to check her lipstick. 

Harry left her to her mirror, heart beating warm and certain beneath his dress shirt.

The house was loud, in the way it only ever was when Pansy was holding court. Someone had set a charm over the gramophone to loop through three different records. Smoke curled lazily near the ceiling; bottles lined the mantelpiece like a strange little shrine.

Harry had lost Neville an hour ago to Blaise and a half-bottle of something expensive. When he finally caught sight of him again, Neville was leaning against the kitchen counter, sleeves rolled up, coaxing Draco into trying something from a paper-thin joint. Harry froze in the doorway at the sight — Draco, of all people, with his pale hair mussed and his lips pursed around the smoke like it was a challenge.

The next time Harry saw him, he was tucked in the far corner of the library. The lights were low, a fire banked in the grate, shadows moving gently across the spines of books. Draco was folded into an armchair with a blanket thrown over his lap, an old thick sci-fi paperback balanced in one hand. His eyes moved slowly, deliberate, like each word was something he had to win from the page.

Harry lingered, watching. Draco’s hair had fallen into his face again; the sharp lines of him were softened by the lamplight, by the faint haze of Neville’s influence still clinging to him. For the first time, Draco didn’t look like a ghost haunting the house. He just looked… young.

Harry crossed the room before he could stop himself. He sank down into the chair beside Draco’s, their knees nearly brushing, the quiet between them warm instead of brittle.

Draco didn’t look up right away. He turned another page, lips moving faintly, before he spoke. “You’re staring.”

Harry huffed out a laugh, embarrassed. “You’re reading.”

A pale brow arched. “Astute as ever.” But the words lacked bite. He shifted a little, and that was when Harry realised how close they were sitting. Too close. His pulse picked up; he didn’t move away.

They stayed like that for a long moment — the music muffled through the walls, the laughter and clatter of the party feeling very far away.

“What’s it about?” Harry asked finally, nodding at the book.

Draco tilted it so he could see the strange planet painted on the cover. “Colonists. Ruining a world they don’t understand.” His mouth twisted — not quite a smile. “Some things are universal.”

Harry’s chest ached. “Do you like it?”

Draco was quiet for a beat. Then: “It’s… distracting.” He glanced at Harry then, properly, and something fragile flickered in his expression. “That’s enough, for now.”

Harry swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. He wanted to say too much — to tell Draco he was glad he was here, glad he was reading, glad he was breathing. Instead he only nodded, and let the corner of their knees brush in the firelight.

Draco didn’t move away. He didn’t even really look at Harry. He just turned the page of his book, face soft, fingers delicate. He was beautiful. 

The fire crackled. The laughter from the drawing room rose in a swell and then fell again, like the tide. Here, in their quiet corner, the air seemed thicker, weighted with smoke and with something more. Their knees were still touching. 

Draco tilted his head, finally turning to study him. “You’re staring again.”

“Maybe I am,” Harry admitted. His mouth was dry. “Haven’t seen you like this in a long time.”

“Like what?”

“Relaxed.” The word came out before he could stop it.

For a long moment, Draco just looked at him. His lips parted, closed again. He licked them slowly, and Harry couldn’t drag his gaze away.

Then Draco leaned a fraction closer, his voice pitched in a conspiratorial murmur. “Do they know?”

Harry blinked. “What?”

Draco’s mouth curved — not quite a smile, more like a dare. “Do they know we fucked on that couch?” He nodded faintly toward the settee by the fire, the very one where the two of them had once tangled desperately together, before Azkaban had taken him away.

Harry’s stomach flipped. His ears rang. “Draco—”

Draco cut him off with a languid tilt of his head, eyes heavy with intoxication and something far sharper beneath. “It’s a fair question.”

Harry wanted to laugh, to scold, to drag him into silence. Instead, his body betrayed him. Heat crawled up his neck, down his spine. “No,” he managed, rough and quiet. “No one knows.”

“Liar.” The word was a whisper, but it curled like smoke between them. Draco shifted, the blanket slipping lower on his lap, and leaned just close enough that Harry could feel the warmth of his breath. “Potter, you wear me like a bruise. Everyone must know.”

Harry’s breath hitched. The distance between them was almost nothing now, just the barest brush of air. His hand twitched against the armrest, aching to touch.

Harry couldn’t breathe properly. The smoke in the air was thick, but that wasn’t what was choking him. It was Draco — this version of Draco — perched before him like some impossible return.

It startled him, how familiar it felt. Not the hollow-eyed silence of the past weeks, not the brittle shell Azkaban had left behind, but something else. Something older, sharper. Harry was pulled back, in an instant, to that night in the Muggle club: neon lights painting Draco’s hair, that savage smile flashing like a knife, like he was daring the world to underestimate him.

This was the same, and not. That Draco had been brittle with desperation, dancing with ruin at his back. Tonight, in the firelit haze of Grimmauld’s library, the sharpness was tempered — not softer, not harmless, but freer. A blade without blood on it. A man with something to prove, yes, but not because death was waiting in the wings.

Harry’s heart lurched. He had forgotten, somewhere in all the silence, that Draco Malfoy could be like this. He hadn’t realised how much he had missed it.

Draco was still watching him, pale eyes gleaming in the low light. His mouth curved faintly — that same weaponised smile, though dulled by the lazy curl of smoke in his lungs. He looked devastating like this: high, smug, alive.

“They don’t,” Harry said, and it sounded like a plea.

Draco hummed, eyes half-lidded. “Good. Let’s keep it that way.” A pause. Then, softer: “For now.”

The words lodged in Harry’s chest, dangerous and promising and impossible all at once.

Outside, someone cheered, glasses clinked, Pansy’s laugh rang out. The world kept spinning on. But in the corner of the library, Harry sat breathless, caught in the gravity of Draco Malfoy, wondering if he would ever escape it — and more certain than ever that he didn’t want to.

The car rattled faintly as Hermione shifted gears, her hair pinned up in a way that made her look both older and more radiant. Muggle cars didn’t quite trust wizarding hands, and Harry suspected she was holding the entire thing together with sheer willpower and a charm or two.

Ron had his long legs sprawled out in the backseat beside Harry, jacket rumpled already, tie slung loose around his neck. “You’d think we’d be Flooing,” he grumbled, though the smile tugging at his mouth gave him away. “Or at least Apparating. But no, Hermione insists on a proper drive through Muggle London like it’s some sort of tradition.”

Hermione’s voice was dry, though warmth threaded through it. “It is a tradition, Ronald. Besides, Apparition wrinkles dress robes beyond repair, and the Floo would deposit soot all over us. You want to show up looking like you’ve been dragged through a chimney?”

Ron huffed, leaning his head against the window. “Would be authentic. We were dragged through worse.”

Harry laughed, and the sound startled him. Light, unburdened, carried away by the hum of the road beneath them. He smoothed his hands down the front of his own robes — neat, for once, though the collar itched.

“You can’t tell me you’re not enjoying this,” Hermione added, softer this time. Her eyes flicked up to the mirror, catching Harry’s. “A proper ceremony. People we love. A day that isn’t about war, or funerals, or saving the world.”

Harry’s chest tightened, in that old way it always did when happiness startled him. He glanced sideways at Ron, who shrugged as if to say, she’s right. He was smiling, though, and there was something boyish about it. They looked the way Harry sometimes remembered them in the tents during the Horcrux hunt — tired, yes, but united, facing forward.

“Feels… good,” Harry admitted, voice low. “Like something we didn’t think we’d get.”

“Too right,” Ron agreed. He stretched his arms, nearly elbowing Harry in the ribs, before leaning back again with a satisfied sigh. “It’s nice. This is nice.”

The car turned a corner, and Harry caught sight of the steeple in the distance. Bells tolled faintly on the air, carried over rooftops. It made his pulse jump — not fear this time, but anticipation.

He pressed his palm to the window glass, cool beneath his skin, and thought: we made it here. Somehow.

Harry slammed the door shut behind him and stumbled into the night air, cheeks hot for reasons that had nothing to do with the weather. The back garden of Grimmauld Place had been tamed under Neville’s steady hand, green spilling out in neat beds and unruly corners, and the evening smelled thickly of damp earth and herbs.

Draco was crouched at the far edge of the garden, wand hovering over a patch of stubborn weeds. The glow from the house caught pale strands of his hair, turning them silver.

“They’re doing it again,” Harry blurted, half strangled with frustration.

Draco didn’t even look up. “You don’t say.”

Harry dragged a hand down his face and dropped onto the nearest stone bench. “No silencing charm. No bloody courtesy. I thought Pansy was going to hex herself just to drown it out.”

That finally earned him a glance — cool, grey, amused. “You Gryffindors. So easily scandalised.”

“Scandalised?” Harry sputtered. “They were shouting.”

“They were enthusiastic.” Draco straightened, brushing soil from his knees with fastidious care. “Besides, Blaise has always been loud. It’s practically a character flaw.” His lips twitched, like he was trying not to smirk.

Harry groaned and let his head tip back, staring up at the stars. “I did not survive Voldemort just to be traumatised by Blaise Zabini in bed.”

That drew a soft huff of laughter. Draco stepped closer, pale fingers idly stroking the leaf of a nearby plant. “Still. Neville Longbottom.” His tone was one of genuine bemusement. “I would have bet a great deal of money that Blaise would end up with a French model, or perhaps a very expensive husband from Milan. But a Gryffindor?”

“Not just any Gryffindor,” Harry pointed out, smirking despite himself. “Neville.”

Draco’s expression shifted, thoughtful. He sank gracefully onto the bench beside Harry, though he kept a careful few inches of space between them. “Yes. Imagine my surprise when the boy who once murdered my favourite potted fern grew up to… well.” He gestured vaguely toward the house, where a muffled shout and burst of laughter filtered through the walls. “That.”

Harry barked a laugh, sharp and helpless. It startled something in him — joy, maybe, or relief, bubbling up where it hadn’t in a long time. He looked sideways, catching Draco’s profile in the low light. There was humor there, yes, but also something softer, something open.

“I’ll never get used to it,” Draco said finally, quieter now. “Blaise. With a Gryffindor. With Longbottom.” His mouth twisted, equal parts disbelief and… affection? “It’s absurd.”

Harry nudged him, just barely, their shoulders brushing. “Absurd, maybe. But they’re happy.”

Draco didn’t answer right away. He watched the garden instead, the leaves moving in the faint night breeze. Then, almost grudgingly: “Yes. They are.”

And for a moment, with the air cool and sharp around them, the sound of muffled laughter spilling out from the house, Harry thought maybe — just maybe — they could be too.

The air stretched between them, fragile, humming with something Harry couldn’t name. Their shoulders pressed lightly together, heat bleeding through layers of cloth. Draco tilted his head, pale hair glinting, and said, almost like a secret: “Perhaps Gryffindors aren’t as bad as I thought.”

Harry’s throat went dry. He should have laughed, should have teased, but the words tangled in him. He could feel Draco’s breath when he turned his face, could see the pale line of his throat, the faint curve of his mouth.

The thought came unbidden, scorching: I could kiss him now.

He didn’t, of course. The world would collapse if he did, the fragile thread between them snapping too soon. Instead he sat frozen, his pulse hammering, the night suddenly alive around them — damp earth, distant laughter, the faint brush of Draco Malfoy against his side.

Draco didn’t move away.

And Harry thought, wild and certain, that someday he wouldn’t stop himself. It was strange, funny. He felt like they’d done everything backwards lately. It was ridiculous that a few years ago, he’d had Draco Malfoy on his knees in a filthy bathroom at a muggle club. Draco had Harry’s cock in his mouth long before they ever spared a kind word for each other, before they could have called themselves friends.

And now here they were, with simmering tension behind everything. Draco was healing more and more by the day, and every ounce of him that got better made the fire in Harry burn brighter. 

Falling in love. Falling in a strange sense of adoration. Finding friendship between the cracks. Draco didn’t believe in happy endings, but god if Harry didn’t want to build one for him. 

The church smelled faintly of lilies and polish, sunlight pouring in through stained glass and painting the aisle in fractured colour. Guests were finding their seats, voices hushed and reverent, shoes echoing softly against the stone floor.

Harry stood at the front, collar too tight, hands clasped behind his back to stop them from fidgeting. He had fought battles with steadier nerves, but this — this felt monumental in a way that made his chest ache.

Beside him, Neville shifted on his feet, tugging once at his cuffs. He looked solid as ever, broad-shouldered and steady, but his hands betrayed him — a faint tremor, a restless twitch.

“Breathe,” Harry murmured out of the corner of his mouth.

Neville shot him a crooked smile, sheepish. “I am.”

Harry huffed a laugh. “Not enough. You’ll faint, and then what kind of example will that set?”

Neville snorted, the sound quiet but warm. “You sound like Hermione.”

Harry glanced sideways, catching the flicker of nerves in Neville’s eyes, and felt an unexpected swell of pride. This was Neville, who had once stood trembling in front of them with a toad clutched in his hands, who had stood taller with every year until he was the kind of man people followed into fire. And now here he was, waiting for something good. Something they had all fought to live for.

The church quieted. The sunlight shifted, pooling across the aisle. The great double doors at the back loomed shut, but Harry could feel the moment perched there, trembling, ready to open.

His pulse hammered in his throat. It was absurd, maybe, that this — not war, not death — was what left him breathless. But he thought, fiercely, as Neville drew in another deep breath at his side: this is what we survived for.

The kitchen of Grimmauld Place was quiet when Harry came in, late, shoulders aching from the day. He smelled like smoke and parchment, and the robes he still hadn’t bothered to change out of were creased at the elbows. The house should have been empty at this hour — Blaise and Neville off somewhere unspeakable, Pansy draped across the drawing room sofa with a face mask and Witch Weekly — but Draco was there.

He sat at the table with a chipped mug between his hands, untouched, his hair loose around his face. His whole body was drawn tight, coiled like a cat in the rain.

“You’re late,” Draco said flatly, before Harry could even open his mouth.

Harry stopped, exhaled, rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. Ministry paperwork.”

“Of course.” Draco’s voice dripped disdain. “You spend half your life drowning in paperwork. You hate it.”

Harry frowned, sinking into the chair opposite him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Draco said, sharp now, “that I don’t understand why you keep torturing yourself in that job when you clearly despise every second of it.”

Harry bristled, temper flaring. “Because someone has to do it. Because I’m good at it.”

“You’re miserable at it,” Draco snapped, grey eyes flashing. “Every time you walk through that door, you look like the dementors followed you home.”

Something in Harry cracked — weariness, pride, the simmer of months and years of unspoken things. “And what would you have me do instead? Grow bloody plants with you and Neville? Bake biscuits with Pansy? Not everyone gets to—” He bit the words off, too harsh, too close to cruel.

The silence rang. Draco’s mouth pressed thin, his jaw tight. For a long, suspended moment, neither of them looked away. “Of course. I get to sit around in the lap of luxuary while you go out and martyr yourself. I should be grateful. I’m hear at your pleasure, after all.” 

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.” His voice was clipped, brittle.

Harry flushed, guilt rising quick and sharp — because yes, the thought had been there, unspoken. “I didn’t—”

“You did,” Draco cut in, voice low now, hurt threading through every word. “And if you hate your job so much, Potter, maybe stop punishing the rest of us with the fallout.”

Harry stared at him, stung and furious and so tired his skin ached. “Fine,” he bit out, and left the kitchen before he could make it worse.

The next few days in Grimmauld Place were brittle. Meals passed in a tense silence broken only by Pansy’s acerbic commentary or Blaise’s wry interjections. Draco stayed pointedly out of Harry’s path, ghosting through the hallways, quiet in the garden, unreadable in the library.

One evening, Pansy cornered Harry in the kitchen, eyeliner sharp as knives. “What did you say to him?”

Harry bristled. “Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me, Potter.” Her gaze softened, just slightly. “He’s hurt.”

Blaise leaned lazily against the doorway, but his eyes were sharp too. “Fix it. Whatever it is. You’ll both be unbearable otherwise.”

Harry grumbled, but their words stuck.

The breaking point came three days later. A raid gone wrong, too much blood, too much paperwork afterwards to make it all neat and tidy for the Ministry. Harry sat at his desk until the room tilted, quill in hand, and realised he hated every second. Hated the grind, the endless cycle of hurt and hollow victories.

And worse: it was bleeding into the only good thing he had — this house, these people, Draco.

When the thought came, it was so sharp and clear it left him breathless: I don’t want this job. Not anymore.

So he walked into Robards’ office and quit. Just like that.

The house was quiet when he got home. He climbed the stairs with shaking hands, heart hammering like he’d faced down another war. He stopped at Draco’s door, knocked once.

A pause, then the door creaked open. Draco stood there, hair loose, pale in the lamplight. His expression was carefully neutral, but his eyes — tired, wary — betrayed him.

Harry swallowed. “I quit,” he said, blunt. “The Aurors. I’m done.”

Draco blinked. The mask slipped, just for a moment, surprise flickering sharp and bright. Then something else — softer, almost like relief.

Before Harry could say another word, Draco stepped forward, caught him by the collar, and kissed him.

It wasn’t neat. It wasn’t gentle. It was furious, grateful, desperate — weeks, years of tension collapsing into heat. Harry clutched at him like he might disappear, tasting salt and smoke and the sharp, impossible sweetness of finally.

When they broke apart, Draco’s breath was rough against his cheek. His voice, hoarse, threaded with triumph and something dangerously close to hope: “About time.”

Harry’s whole body felt like it had been struck by lightning. The kiss should have stunned him into stillness, but instead it set every nerve alight, urging him forward. Years of tension, of wanting and not having, of dreaming about this in the dark and hating himself for it — all of it surged to the surface at once.

He pushed Draco back into the room, the door falling shut behind them with a dull thud. Their mouths clashed, bruising, desperate, teeth knocking, but Harry couldn’t bring himself to care. Draco’s hands fisted in his robes, dragging him closer, as though he wanted to fuse them together, as though this was survival.

“I thought—” Harry gasped against his mouth, breaking just long enough to breathe. “Merlin, I thought we’d never—”

Draco cut him off with another kiss, fierce, almost punishing. “Shut up, Potter.” His voice was ragged, and it only made Harry’s blood roar hotter.

They stumbled backwards until Draco’s knees hit the edge of the bed. He fell into it with surprising grace, pulling Harry down on top of him, mouths still locked. Harry groaned into the kiss, overwhelmed by the heat of him, the sharp bite of his nails through fabric, the reality of Draco Malfoy beneath him after all this time.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. Harry kissed him like he’d been starving, like every moment apart had been one long ache that only this could cure. He couldn’t stop touching — Draco’s jaw, his hair, the sharp line of his collarbone under thin fabric. Every inch was a revelation, a bruise he wanted to press his mouth to.

“Years,” Harry muttered, lips dragging down Draco’s throat, tasting sweat and the faint bitter tang of smoke. “We’ve wasted years.”

Draco’s breath hitched, his hand curling hard into Harry’s hair. “Then don’t waste another bloody second.”

And Harry didn’t.

Clothes were torn more than removed, hands frantic, mouths desperate. Harry’s world narrowed to heat and pressure and the sound of Draco’s voice breaking apart in his ear. They moved together with the urgency of people who thought they’d never be allowed this, who thought their story had already ended.

Harry trembled when he pulled Draco’s clothes off his body. He wasn’t so thin anymore, after months of feeding and care. He was beautiful. He ran his hands over the criss-cross scars that littered Draco’s chest, and Draco pushed them away. He pulled Harry back into a painful, biting kiss. 

Draco kissed like he was fighting a war. Brilliant, beautiful, with the passion of the gods between every movement. Harry went back to work, undressing him in frantic movements, while Draco’s own hands scrambled at the tie of his auror robes, the ones that he would never don again. 

Every moment of contact was heady, overwhelming. He slipped fingers into the wet heat of Draco’s body to carve out a space for himself, and soaked up every keening sound that escaped from Draco’s lips. He’d earned it after months of silence, after swallowing every ounce of Draco’s rage and anger. He coveted it, he would hoard it in his memory until the day he died. 

“Please,” Draco gasped, and it lanced like lightning down Harry’s spine. 

When Harry finally fucked into him, it felt like nothing could ever be better. The intimacy of being so close to Draco was unmatched. It was better, somehow, than the first time they had done this, all those years ago. Before, they had been weighed down by the upcoming trial, by Draco’s doom around the corner. Now, there was nothing standing between them and the future. This would not be the last time Harry touched him like this. 

Draco clawed at his back like an angry kitten. It would leave marks. He would draw blood, and Harry was so grateful for it he could cry. He bit kisses along Draco’s throat with every thrust, and ripped sounds of passion out of him. Part of him wished he could record those noses so he could listen back to them later. 

When release finally came, it was shattering. Harry collapsed against Draco, panting, skin slick with sweat. The room smelled of them, sharp and undeniable.

For a long moment, silence stretched — not brittle, not tense, but heavy with something new. Harry pressed his face into the curve of Draco’s neck, tasting salt, feeling the steady thrum of his pulse.

Draco’s fingers traced idle lines down his spine. His voice, when it came, was quiet. Almost tender. “About time,” he repeated, softer this time, and Harry laughed breathlessly against his skin.

The hush fell as the great doors of the church opened. Sunlight spilled across the aisle in fractured colours from the stained glass, catching on the sheen of Blaise Zabini’s robes as he stepped inside.

He was devastatingly elegant — black suit cut within an inch of perfection, a sheen of silver at the cuff, a sprig of green pinned neatly to his lapel. But for once his composure wasn’t smooth, wasn’t calculated. His steps were careful, almost reverent. His lips parted with the faintest quiver of breath as he began the long walk forward.

Harry’s heart clenched at the sight of him. Blaise Zabini, who could slink through any ballroom like a predator, who could smile sharp enough to cut — looking, in this moment, as though he’d been stripped bare.

At the altar, Neville waited. Solid, steady, grounded as always, his robes plain but dignified, a bloom tucked neatly at his breast that matched the garlands crowning the pews. His hands were folded in front of him, but Harry could see the faint twitch at his side, the little tells of nerves in his shoulders.

And then Blaise looked up, saw Neville waiting there for him, and everything else vanished. His face split open with a smile so unguarded it stole the air from the room. Not lazy, not practiced, not sharp — but brilliant, alive, almost boyish with joy. He walked faster, almost stumbling, as if he couldn’t bear the distance between them a second longer.

The congregation exhaled in one soft, collective sigh.

Harry tried to keep his eyes on the grooms — on the way Neville’s shoulders eased when Blaise reached him, on the way their fingers laced instantly, instinctively. But his gaze kept slipping.

Because at Blaise’s right hand, standing slightly behind in his role as best man, was Draco.

Draco in black, perfectly tailored, pale hair gleaming like silver in the filtered light. He stood with his hands clasped neatly at his back, posture immaculate, expression calm and composed. But Harry, who had learned to watch him too closely, saw the pride there. The affection softening his mouth when Blaise stumbled over his vows. The faint tremor in his fingers when he passed over the rings.

Harry swallowed hard, heat crawling up his throat. The priest’s words rang in the air — solemn, ancient, binding — but Harry barely heard them. His attention was caught on Draco’s profile, the sharp cut of his cheekbone, the way the light caught his lashes.

When Blaise and Neville leaned together for their kiss, the church erupted in applause. But Harry wasn’t watching the grooms. He was staring across the altar, heart pounding, wondering what it would be like — impossible, catastrophic, inevitable — to cross the space between them and kiss Draco Malfoy in front of the whole world.

The reception hall glowed golden with lanternlight. Tables sagged under the weight of food, candles floating lazily above them, and the air rang with laughter and music. The war was years behind them, but Harry still felt a pang sometimes when joy came this unrestrained, this complete — like it might vanish if he blinked too hard.

But tonight, there was no fear. Just Pansy clinking her glass far too often to demand another toast. Dean sketching portraits of tipsy guests on the backs of napkins. Seamus charming the band into letting him sing a raucous verse that had half the hall crying with laughter.

Harry’s chest ached with it, full to bursting. These were his people. His family. Every face turned toward Blaise and Neville, radiant on the dance floor, and Harry thought: we made it here. All of us.

He lifted his glass, drained it, and when he looked up, his gaze snagged — as it always did — on Draco.

Draco in black, gleaming under lanternlight, head tipped back in laughter as Pansy scolded him over something Harry couldn’t hear. He looked alive in a way that still startled Harry, every time: colour in his cheeks, lips curved, eyes alight. And when he stepped into the crowd to dance — not stiff, not scowling, but truly moving, loose and graceful — Harry’s pulse stuttered.

Draco, Draco, Draco. Beautiful, impossible, devastating. Harry’s every thought seemed to bend toward him like a compass to north.

He couldn’t help himself. He fetched a drink from the bar, weaving through the crowd until he reached him. “Here,” he said, thrusting it forward a little too quickly.

Draco arched a brow, but took it. Their fingers brushed, lingering just a fraction too long. “Thank you, Potter. Thoughtful.”

Harry smirked, trying to ignore the heat in his chest. “Don’t get used to it.”

They ended up at a table together, sharing the plate cake that they’d managed to steal from the desert table. Draco rolled his eyes when Harry speared the last bite but didn’t pull away, didn’t move his chair. The music thumped around them, voices rising and falling, the glow of lanterns soft on Draco’s pale hair.

Harry couldn’t stop staring. Every angle of him was a study, every shift of his mouth a knife to the ribs. He wanted to memorise it all, keep it in his chest where nothing could touch it.

Draco caught him looking, of course. He always did. For once, though, he didn’t mock him for it. He just tipped his head slightly, eyes searching Harry’s. Then, voice low enough to be swallowed by the music, he asked:

“Do you ever think about doing something like this?”

The question hit Harry like a spell, hollowing him out and filling him all at once.

“I dunno, sounds awfully like Happily-Ever-After stuff.” 

Draco smiled, a quirk of his lips, as bright and beautiful as the sun. “Haven’t you earned it, after all this time?” 

Harry smiled too, leaning forward and thunking his forehead against Draco’s. “Only if you’re there with me.”