Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

  “You have to go, Draco. You have to represent the family, Draco. We can’t do it, Draco. It is your responsibility, Draco …” He scoffed.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” he sighed, giving Astoria a strained smile. 

  She returned it hesitatingly, some crinkles of doubt digging into the fair skin around her brown eyes. “It’ll be all right,” she said then, “in a couple of hours you’ll be back home. It’s just a couple of hours.”

  A couple too many. But what he said was, “Yeah. Let’s go in, then.” Raising his chin and straightening his back, he led her into the huge ceremonial hall of the Ministry of Magic, his gaze instantly distracted from the decoration by heads turning towards them. Keep your expression neutral, no sneering, no smirking, just the hint of a smile. Nod at them … Yes, just like that. You know it’s an affront you’re here, they know it’s an affront you’re here, yet everybody and their mother wants you to be here. Even your mother wants you to be here. A token to show how well Death Eaters have been reintegrated into society. That’s exactly why everybody is staring bloody daggers at me! 

  “You’re hurting me, Draco.” 

  He winced and loosened his grip around Astoria’s arm, which was linked with his. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” She smiled at somebody, charming and endearing as always. 

  Merlin, he wished he could be as composed as she was! He really didn’t know why she decided to accompany him to this event. Yes, they had met once or twice, and their families were discussing the possibility of marriage, but so far, nothing was set in stone, she didn’t owe him anything. And if her sister had it her way, Astoria wouldn’t be here now to be gawked at like the latest attraction in a zoo. 

  “Maybe let’s get some drinks,” she suggested and pointed at the bar he hadn’t even noticed, mainly because he was still trying to politely glare everybody down who kept staring at him.

  Really, why did he have to be the bloody token?! Wouldn’t it have sent a far stronger signal to have his parents show up at this memorial instead?

  But six years since the end of the war probably hadn’t been enough to guarantee their safety. The chance that they’d give him the benefit of the doubt was probably a bit higher. 

  “Yes, fine,” he finally answered and let himself be led over to get something to calm his nerves. “Whisky, straight,” he said to the barman, and winced when sharp nails bore into his wrist. Astoria arched her eyebrows. “Um, I mean … elf-made wine,” he corrected himself and smiled falsely at the barman who scrutinised him from narrowed eyes.

  “And for the lady?” he asked then, bored.

  “The same, thank you, sir!”

  She got a nod in response before he turned to get a bottle from behind him.

  “Breathe,” Astoria admonished him while they waited, tracing her thumb over the back of his hand. When had she even taken his hand?

  He brushed it off. “I’m fine.” Yet he gulped down half of his wine the moment he got hold of the glass. How much time had passed? Half an hour?

  A melodious bell chimed, making the air around them vibrate. Thank Merlin! The call to take their places for the speeches. 

  “Do we have set places?” Astoria asked.

  “I’m afraid we have.” The cards he’d shown at the entrance said they had been placed in row four. Not right in the front, but up front enough to be seen. Taking Astoria’s hand with his left and gripping his wine harder with his right, he headed for the aisle leading to the dais in the front of the hall, all around them nests of whispers like the humming of a wasp at your ear following them wherever they went. Draco kept his gaze fixed on the still deserted dais, trying hard to block out the voices and people surrounding them. But on the back of his neck, a bead of sweat was running into his collar, and he rolled his shoulders.

  The crowd was growing thicker, several people jostled into him. He didn’t get a single apology, only glances asking him what he was even doing here. Some faces turned up that he recognised, Potter, of course, Granger’s mop of hair, several redheads, one of them pushing past him and Astoria with a cheeky smirk. 

  “Don’t spill that,” he even had the audacity to say and touched Draco’s hand holding the glass.

  Hands off me! He pulled away from the touch, indeed spilling some wine over his dress robes. “Thank you,” Draco ground out, unable to stop his lips from curling a bit.

  The redhead, one of the older sons—William? Charles? Not Percival, he wasn’t wearing glasses—huffed, amused, and went his way. 

  “Idiot,” Draco hissed.

  “Row four,” Astoria then chimed in and gently pulled him along. “Which seats?”

  “Um …” He gave her his glass to hold and fumbled the cards out of his pocket, rolling his shoulders again; he felt like somebody had put itching powder into the back of his robes. “Ten and eleven.”

  They were at the end of the row, and that was the first good thing he’d heard tonight—he had an escape route. 

  After settling down, he spelt his robes clean and Astoria gave him his glass back. Draco took another sip, focusing his attention on the dais and ignoring the whispers and scandalised gazes surrounding him.

  Only a couple of hours … I can do this.

  He gave her another strained smile when Astoria squeezed his hand.

  It was late when Draco returned to the Manor, yet—Ugh.—his father was still sitting in the salon and looked up from a book in his lap when he heard Draco’s steps approach. 

  “Father.”

  “Draco.” He snapped the book shut and scrutinised him from grey eyes that had never lost the dullness the war and Azkaban had cast over them. Or maybe they’d always been like that, and Draco’s perception had just been warped by the blind adoration he’d had for his parents. Maybe his father had been this man underneath the layers of money and pride he’d swathed himself in since he’d been born. Maybe the man he’d thought was his father when he’d been a child had never existed. 

  Well, he doesn’t exist anymore. Not for me, at least.

  “How was it?”

  “We will see what the press makes of it.”

  Lucius nodded slowly. “And how did you and Astoria get along?”

  The only reason I didn’t fuck this up was her. Hidden from his father’s eyes, Draco rubbed his fingers against his aching palms. They were carrying indents of his nails, like a cluster of half-moons gathered to support him when nothing else could. “She was enchanting. The press would do well to focus on her.”

  For a couple of seconds, they both were silent, Lucius sitting in his armchair in front of the fireplace, Draco standing in the doorway.

  “Well,” the latter then ended the silence, “have a good night, father.” 

  “You as well.”

  Draco lowered his eyes and left, failing to relax his hands until he’d reached the door to his room.

  He planned to have a lie-in the next morning, but around seven, his room was so bright that he couldn’t compel his body to stay asleep any longer. Sullenly, he turned on his back and watched a ray of sunshine sneak across the ceiling, once again shocked by how quiet the Manor had become. When he’d been a child, the low hustle and bustle of house-elves organising events and going about their work had been a sound so ever-present that he hadn’t even heard it anymore. Now, they only had two house-elves left, and the last event taking place here had been the house search following the Dark Lord’s demise. 

  Fiercely rubbing his face, Draco forced himself to sit up and dangle his legs over the edge of his huge bed. Exhaling in a huff, he looked over to the windows, both of which were still covered by curtains, and scowled at the gap that had allowed that ray of sun to sneak in and wake him way earlier than he’d planned to return into the realm of the living. 

  He shuffled over to the bathroom and took a shower, not paying his reflection in the mirror over the sink any attention. He didn’t need a shave today; although there was a slight stubble on his chin, it was blond and nobody would notice yet. 

  And even if somebody does, they can go and fuck themselves. 

  “Language, Draco,” he mimicked the chiding voice of Madam Rutherford, the ancient woman who’d taught him manners about fifteen years ago. Unbelievable that it was still echoing in his mind today … 

  He returned to his bedroom, a towel slung around his hips, and finally opened the curtains and a window before he went to his wardrobe to get dressed. The clothes from last night were still lying thrown over the backrest of an armchair; he’d carelessly discarded them and crawled into bed, exhausted in a way he hadn’t been for a long time. 

  Birdsong was floating into the room, and a soft breeze, still cold enough to pepper his naked skin with goosebumps. Shivering, Draco pulled a shirt from the wardrobe, only twitching his eyebrows when he saw it was a dark green one. Eh, will do. 

  It was when he swung it around his shoulders that something he saw from the corner of his eye caught his attention. 

  Stopping, Draco frowned and turned his head to the huge mirror affixed to one of the wardrobe doors. He looked as wretched as he felt, even paler than usual, shadowed eyes, half hidden by too long blond hair. But that was not what had caught his attention. 

  Draco slowly turned his shoulder so he could see his back in the mirror—and his head began spinning.

  “What the …”

  Stepping closer, he dropped the shirt and pulled at the skin on his shoulder as if that would make the lines and curves disappear that were covering his whole back, neck to buttocks. His heart was thumping a mile a minute while he took in the colourful pattern as far as he could see it, and slowly it began to make sense and shifted into a picture. Whiskers, scales, sharp teeth, and a long tail curling around his whole left side, as he found when he whirled around in front of the mirror to get another glance. 

  His formerly pristine pale back was covered in a huge depiction of a bloody dragon!

  “Are you fucking kidding me,” he murmured weakly, his eyes as huge as saucers. He still felt as if he were about to faint.

  But slowly his mind began working again. He’d seen something similar on the back of his mother a couple of times, only that she was wearing a blend of flowers and the night sky. The dots connected, and with a sudden clarity, he knew what the hell it was that had blossomed on his back. “Nooo,” he whined, twisting his face into a combination of all five stages of grief at once.

  He sneaked out of the Manor half an hour later and Apparated to London, wrinkling his nose when he noticed that he’d landed in something he didn’t want to inspect closer in that side alley. “Ew,” Draco muttered and vanished it with a flick of his wand, then—his lips still a bit curled in disgust—he looked around and left the alley, heading to a house down the street. 

  “What’re you doing here?” Theo muttered when he opened the door for him. Clad in boxers and a t-shirt, he blinked at him bleary-eyed. 

  “I’m wondering the same on a regular basis. So, will you let me in or …”

  He huffed and stepped aside, yawning. 

  “Have you been partying yesterday?” Draco sneered.

  “Sure.” He smirked and preceded Draco into the kitchen, padding along the corridor of his flat with naked feet. 

  “And did she leave already?”

  “Who?”

  “Whoever you’ve been chatting up last night.”

  “Ah, I’ve been a good boy yesterday, went home alone. Tea?”

  “I’d prefer whisky …” Sitting down, Draco rubbed his face. 

  “Sounds serious. Was the memorial so bad?”

  “Yeah. No. I mean …” He sighed. “The memorial was the disaster everybody expected it to be, but that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Astoria?” Theo inquired warily and cast him a glance while preparing two cups of breakfast tea. 

  “No,” Draco groaned.

  “Listen, mate, you’ll have to give me something if this is supposed to lead anywhere. I won’t play twenty questions with you at this time on a Sunday morning.”

  Grumbling under his breath, Draco scowled at him. “Why am I friends with you of all people again?”

  “Because I’m the only one of us who isn’t dead or has disappeared.”

  Unfortunately, that was true. Although Theo had always been part of Draco’s friend group in Hogwarts, somehow, it'd never been in a ride-or-die kind of way. He’d always been a loner, occasionally drifting closer for a while and disappearing back into his solitude again. That had only changed when all of them had been going through the trials following the Dark Lord’s demise. Theo’s and Draco’s hearings had overlapped sometimes, and one time, Theo had sat down beside him and chatted with him until Draco had been called in. He’d returned the favour the next time, and when they both had been acquitted—Draco because his father had paid a lot of money, Theo because he hadn’t done anything worth a sentence, not even taken the Dark Mark—they’d stayed in contact because there hadn’t been anybody else left. Goyle had been sentenced to three years in Askaban (the reformed one without Death Eaters), and Blaise had left the country as soon as they’d let him go. Draco didn’t even know where Goyle was today. Maybe he’d left England, too. Crabbe’s Death had hit him harder than Draco. And Graham … Draco had tried to reach out to him when everything had calmed down, but didn’t receive an answer. 

  Anyway, he was more or less dependent on that loser who was currently standing in front of two cups of hot water, making no move to add teabags because he was still half asleep, as it seemed. He didn’t have any other friends left. 

  “I got a soulmate mark,” Draco blurted into the silence, effectively snapping Theo out of his zoned-out state.

  He yanked his head around, brown curls flying, blue eyes gawking. “You’re taking the piss.”

  “Wish I were!” Draco scoffed and leaned back on his chair, his arms crossed.

  Disregarding the tea, or rather hot water, for good, Theo sat down with him. “No way! And? Who is it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He huffed a disbelieving laugh. Then he noticed that Draco wasn’t laughing with him. “Seriously?”

  Draco shrugged miserably. “The hall was crowded, okay? Many people have touched me!” He shifted his shoulders, trying to get rid of the crawling feeling that thought gave him. 

  “Well, what is it? Maybe we can figure it out from that.”

  Fuck. Rubbing his face again fiercely, Draco mumbled under his breath.

  Theo arched his eyebrows. “So bad?”

  “Worse.” For a few more seconds, Draco looked at him sullenly, then he decided that showing Theo would speed things up considerably. And who was he supposed to show if not his only friend? 

  Unbuttoning his shirt a bit, he shrugged it down his shoulders and turned so Theo could see the upper half of his newly acquired soulmate mark.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. Then he began laughing in earnest. “Are you sure you’re not your own soulmate?”

  “Oh, yeah, very funny,” Draco grouched and closed his shirt back up.

  “Sorry.” But Theo was still chuckling. “Well, do you at least have an inkling whether it’s a woman or a man?”

  “Will you stop this already?! I’m not gay!” He scowled at his friend, once again regretting the fact that a while ago he’d let himself get drunk enough to recklessly tell Theo that he’d never felt a difference between women and men regarding any kind of attraction. What he’d meant had been that he didn’t feel any, never had. While his classmates had mindlessly plunged into one sexual endeavour after the other as if it had been a contest, he’d never felt the desire to partake in that when he could achieve the same relief with his own hand and five minutes of solitude. He was fine with sex if it happened, mind! It just never seemed to be worth the effort to seek out someone else to do it with. 

  What Theo had understood, though, was that he was bisexual. 

  “All right, fine!” he now conceded and raised his hands. “Woman then, I guess.”

  “It better is, yes! I very well cannot marry a bloke, can I?” 

  “Wow, we’re talking about marriage already …”

  Draco felt his face grow warm and buried it in his hands, groaning. “Why me?” he groaned from behind them, “Why now? I never wanted to have a bloody soulmate! I can’t afford to have one!”

  Theo patted his shoulder and got up. “It is what it is, Draco. But nobody is forcing you to try and find out who it is.”

  He leaned back, watching his friend reheat the water and finally add some tea bags. “Could you ignore it?”

  “Hell no!” he huffed. “It’s not like my life is overflowing with people I’m close with. I wouldn’t rest until I found out who it was …” He swallowed thickly.

  And Draco grimaced. “Sorry.” He didn’t know an awful lot about Theo’s family, but he did know that his father was in Azkaban and would probably die there, and that his mother had died quite a while ago already; long enough ago that Theo had been able to see the Thestrals in their fifth year, and Draco was both curious to know and hesitant to ask how that had come about. How had his mother died that he’d witnessed it? Or had he seen someone else die instead? But he’d never felt like he deserved to know, so he’d never asked. He only thought that there had to be someone else left from his family; Theo surely hadn’t spent his summer after his father had been incarcerated in a children’s home. 

  Draco had just opened his mouth to ask about that when Theo muttered, “Never mind.” He brought the cups over to the table. “Do you want milk?”

  “No. But some sugar?”

  He got a pot from the cupboard and slumped back into the chair. “So … Do you want to find out who it is?”

  Draco shrugged, pouring a teaspoon of sugar into his tea. “What if …” What if it’s not a woman? And what if it is? What if she’s somebody Father wouldn't approve of? How am I supposed to marry Astoria if …

  “What if not?”

  “You don’t even know what I’ve been about to say!”

  “Not my fault if you stop talking.” 

  “Idiot.”

  “Blighter. Who attended?”

  “Everybody!” Draco huffed and steeped his teabag. “Felt like that at least.” And everybody had ogled him as if he’d had two heads.

  “Well, who was there who would give you a dragon soulmate mark?”

  “I don’t know, Theo!” He flung his hands up. “Everybody was there! Everybody who followed Dumbledore and some traitors who didn’t but were clever enough to keep that a secret! Everybody was there!”

  “And who touched you?” Theo inquired further, his voice bored. He took his cup to sip his tea after vanishing the bag. 

  Draco almost blew his cup up when he did the same, the china vibrated dangerously when it was hit by his seething magic. “I pushed through the whole crowd several times, just trying to get Astoria in and out of there in one piece. Everybody could have touched me. The only one I do remember explicitly is—” 

  … 

  “Don’t spill that!”

  … oh no.

  Theo leaned closer until his chair cracked. “Yeah?” he pressed curiously.

  Oh no, no, no, no, no. No. NO! 

  But it figured, didn’t it? Wasn’t he working with bloody dragons?! 

  “Nooo,” he whined again and let his head fall on the table.

  His mother was in her ever-flowering rosarium when Draco returned home around lunchtime, snipping withered flower heads off with a pair of clippers. “I missed you at breakfast,” she said without a greeting when she noticed him approaching.

  “I wasn’t hungry.” 

  Another flower head was snipped and landed in a basket at her feet. “Well, how did it go yesterday?” Snip, snip.

  I met my soulmate.

  “Hasn’t the Prophet told you already?”

  Snip. “I prefer hearing it from you.” Snip.

  I’m afraid it’s a man, Mum. 

  “It went as well as could be expected. Nobody killed me, nobody insulted Astoria, everybody got a good view of me and saw that I’m not throwing around killing curses …”

  “Draco,” she chided him, emphasised by a sharp glance.

  “Language, boy!” 

  He grimaced and blinked against the sun. “Did the Prophet claim anything else?”

  “No. They took a lovely picture of Astoria and you sharing a moment during the speeches. She suits you.”

  … what? “She’s not a cloak, Mother.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean.” Snip, snip. 

  Yeah, I know. You want to see us married sooner rather than later, don’t you?

  Snip.

  That mark doesn’t change anything, right?

  Snip.

  Because it didn’t change anything for you either, right? 

  Snip.

  You still abandoned her because she married a half-blood.

  Snip.

  And Charlie Weasley is a blood traitor, isn’t he?

  He lowered his eyes, the words drowning in dread. He hadn’t even dared tell Theo, whom he suspected was his soulmate. Had just made a hasty departure and wandered through London until his reeling mind had quieted enough to face his parents. 

  Blinking, he looked at his mother again. “Do you want something for lunch as well?”

  “No,” she said, not even bothering to return his gaze. “I had a full breakfast.”

  Nodding, Draco turned and went back inside. But instead of stopping by the kitchen and asking for a snack to be delivered to his room, he went into the library and began browsing for soulmate reports.

  Unsurprisingly, the Manor’s library was poorly equipped with books on soulmates, and it took Draco three more days to find an opportunity to go to the public library instead. His father had set his mind on training Draco so that he would already be involved in the Malfoy business when he would take it over one day. 

  Draco hated everything about it, especially where they got their money from. His father had become big in real estate. Buying, selling, renting, it was obscene how much money he was making off that. Only six years after the war, he’d regained everything he’d had to pay to keep himself, his mother, and Draco out of Azkaban. 

  Atoning for supporting a mad despot should take longer than six years, shouldn’t it?

  But Draco swallowed all of those thoughts. He wasn’t a Slytherin for nothing. Speaking out against his father’s businesses now would only lead to arguments. He’d just wait until his father retired and reform the whole thing then. Maybe Astoria would like to help him do something else with it.

  Astoria …

  He gulped when he sat down at one of the tables and began browsing the books he’d found. He needed to know what it meant to have a soulmate. Needed to know what it meant to have one and not be in contact with them. Needed to know how high his chances of even meeting his had been, how much fate had messed with him. 

  But two hours later, he found that he might have rather not known. 

  How much comfort could he get from knowing that his chances of receiving a soulmate mark had been about one per cent? That wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing either. Working with a lot of money on a daily basis had taught him so much. One in a hundred people found their soulmate. 

  Okay, fine. The chances that he and his mother had had that dubious luck might be a bit lower, but he wouldn’t open that can of worms. Sometimes odd things just happened, right?

  But how much comfort could he get from knowing that people who had lost their soulmate felt that loss for the rest of their lives? Or from the fact that he couldn’t find a single report of someone who had decided against being in contact with their soulmate in some form?

  Maybe an outlier after all.

  If he was strong enough to go through with that, that was. 

  He really shouldn’t have read the reports of people accepting who the magic had pointed them to. 

  “It isn’t that he’s the only important person for me, but everything feels a bit easier with him. I simply trust that he will understand what I feel, and if he doesn’t, I know we can work through it. There’s no doubt about it.”

  “I know it sounds awfully tawdry, but my soul settled down when we met. I was roaming around constantly beforehand, stumbling in and out of relationships or one-night stands, but the moment we understood what we were for each other, I felt peace trickle into me. Like stepping into the sun for the first time in my life.”

  “She gives me a purpose. I mean, my job does too, always has, I love what I’m doing! But there was also always that nagging thought of who I am when I’m not helping people, you know? Some form of ‘am I even real when nobody’s around to perceive me’. She answered that question the moment we met. I never spent another second questioning myself.”

  Draco slammed the book shut with a huff and earned himself some scowls and hisses. Discarding his haul on the trolley that would charm them back to their places on the shelves, he left the library and began walking purposefully. Because he didn’t need a soulmate to have a purpose! He had one already! His purpose was to keep the Malfoy family alive! To marry Astoria and father an heir that one day would take over the family business from him! That was his purpose!

  He nodded to himself, his face a grim mask of determination … 

  … until he remembered that he didn’t know where he wanted to go.

  Home?

  Merlin, no.

  To Theo?

  Nah.

  Astoria?

  … no. They hadn’t reached the stadium of unannounced visits yet.

  So, roaming around London again?

  He swallowed thickly when the words he’d just read resurfaced before his mind’s eye. 

  Bloody hell!

  “Language!”

  He balled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t kick the stupid rubbish bin he’d stopped at. And before he could question himself any further, he Apparated into the Ministry. He had to find out where that idiot was living!

Chapter Text

  “Oh, hell no!” Charlie exclaimed the moment he saw the blond man standing in front of his door and slammed it right back shut, even leaning his forehead against it, just for good measure.

  “Funny!” Malfoy sneered outside. “Now let me in!”

  “Why should I?”

  “Oh, you’d rather talk like this? Fine! Looks like we were bound to—”

  “Shut up!” Groaning, Charlie stepped back from his front door, giving the handle a push so it would swing open again while he went to the kitchenette. “That screams for tea,” he grouched without looking back. 

  “I think this screams for something stronger, but tea will have to do, I assume,” Malfoy said, and it sounded so snooty that the words crawled up Charlie’s skin like a spider.

  How the hell can you be my soulmate?!

  But it figured, didn’t it? The dragon … Draco … The magic couldn’t have been more on the nose. And yet he’d hoped for some precious seconds that his soulmate might be the Antipodean Opaleye who had arrived the day of that blasted memorial. He’d tended to her, talked her through the panic of waking up from about two dozen Stunners shot at her before her transfer from a reserve that had to be closed due to Muggles repeatedly finding out about it. The next city had just spread too close to it. She was a beautiful lady in her fifties, absolutely breathtaking. Wouldn’t have minded having her as my soulmate …

  But instead, I got you. He cast Malfoy a glance from the corner of his eye, finding him studying the charts of common dragon breeds he’d decorated his small hut with. They were drawings by Jasmine Strongbart, a pioneer of dragon science, the first one to seriously work with them instead of just killing them on sight. He’d paid a fortune for them, his mum would scold him into the next century if she ever found out. 

  But she never will …

  Taking his mug of breakfast tea, the only one he had, Charlie went back to Malfoy. “So?” he muttered.

  Malfoy looked at the single mug of tea Charlie was holding and curled his lip. But he didn’t comment on the blatant lack of hospitality and pointed at the drawings instead. “Jasmine Strongbart, isn’t it? Absolutely stunning art.”

  Mh. “You know her?”

  “Know … I’m traumatised by her. She’s a recurring topic at home, Father has tried for years to complete his collection.”

  You have no idea what trauma is, do you? “Well, he never will,” he drawled and sipped his tea. 

  Malfoy huffed. “I won’t tell him who has the missing drawings.”

  “Oh, no, please do! And please provide me with the memory of his reaction. I’d love to see a Malfoy digesting the fact that a Weasley has what he wants and won’t sell it, no matter how obscene the offer.”

  Malfoy twisted his nose into a grimace of disgust. “Wasn’t it enough to see us fall from grace after the war?”

  “No,” Charlie replied, delicately emphasising the word, and turned, wandering to his small table to sit down. His legs spread wide, he slouched on the chair and scrutinised the man. “So, still want to talk about magic’s fault or …”

  “Why, yes!” Malfoy crossed the small living area and sat down on the other chair. “I didn’t pay a hundred Galleons to find out where you live just so you can insult my family and see me huff off again!”

  “A hundred Galleons? Wow … You must be desperate.”

  “And you must be an arse.”

  “Only to people I cannot respect.” He calmly sipped his tea, enjoying the sight of that pale face getting a reddish tint that made it almost look healthy. 

  “You know,” Malfoy eventually hissed out between clenched teeth, “it isn’t my fault we’re in this … situation. You couldn’t watch where you were going and had the audacity to touch me after you ran into me!”

  “Doesn’t change the fact you not only deduced who was your soulmate, but came here too. And paid a hundred Galleons to find me!” He barked a laugh and shook his head. “What did you think I’d do? Welcome you with open arms after everything your family did to my family?”

  “I’m not my family.”

  “Aren’t you? Well, I haven’t seen you march to a different tune either in the past six years. You’re just lying low, exactly like the rest of your lot, trying to worm your way back into society and regain the power you had before Voldemort turned out to be the wrong dragon to back.”

  “Well, what else am I supposed to do if nobody trusts me? I don’t have money, Weasley! I can’t run around and support what you would call good causes, I can’t even work for anybody because they won’t have me. And believe me, I have tried! It’s impossible to march to a different tune if nobody will play it.”

  “Boohoo.” 

  Malfoy huffed. “Know what? Never mind. No bond can ever be strong enough to make up for how much of an idiot you are.” He got up. “I don’t even know why I came. I’m not even gay!”

  “Well, neither am I!”

  “Fine!” He marched to the door.

  “Fine! And don’t forget to send me the memory!”

  The hut rattled from how hard Malfoy slammed the door shut, and Charlie snickered into his tea. 

  Soulmates, my arse …

  “Hey, muppet!”

  Charlie turned, just about to open his door after doing his evening round to check on the dragons, and spotted his colleague sitting in front of her hut opposite his. “Who do you call a muppet?”

  “You, obviously!” Martha raised the cigarette clasped between her fingers. “Want one too?”

  Grimacing, he thought about his half-packed bag and the fact that he needed to get up at six o’clock next morning to travel home for Ginny and Harry’s wedding; since the end of the war, travel regulations had become more complicated and he needed to Apparate from border to border to be approved. Then again … He’d done more dangerous stuff after way less sleep. “Yeah, sure.” Strolling over, he took a cigarette from the pack she offered him. “Cheers.” And sat down on the bench she’d set up in front of her hut, enjoying the smell of an approaching summer. Some crickets were chirping around them already.

  “Saw the new Short-Snout?”

  “Better believe I did! Beautiful fellow … Can’t be old.” He lit the cigarette with his wand and took a deep drag.

  “Mh. Nine to ten months, I’d say,” Martha agreed. “Maybe we’ll get him to breed with Fiona.”

  “Ha! Good luck.” Fiona was a beast. Eleven-year-old Swedish Short-Snout, absolutely perfect, she’d be a dream to breed—but so far, she hadn’t accepted any male in her vicinity. The huge age gap wouldn’t make things any easier either.

  “He’ll need a couple of years more to be up to her, but then … It’s worth a try.” Pursing her lips, she exhaled smoke into the dusky air. “There has to be a lid for her pot, right?”

  “… What?”

  “German saying, never mind.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Well, maybe she has no … lid,” he challenged and gave his colleague a cheeky glance. “Not all of us are made to be partnered up.”

  “Ahh, but now you’re judging Fiona by your own standard.”

  “Just reminding you that I might not be the only one living by those standards.” He took another drag, cherishing how calm it made him. 

  “Can’t call it living anymore now, can you? It’s more clinging to it at this point …” She smirked. 

  Ugh. “You saw him?”

  “Better believe I did,” she laughed. “He slammed your door loud enough even Fiona heard.”

  “Wonderful …”

  “So, he’s the one who triggered your mark?”

  Charlie took another deep drag from his cigarette and held his breath. “Looks like it,” he pressed out, then, when the urge to cough got dangerously strong, he exhaled in a huff. “Don’t know why, though. As if I’d ever relate to a bloody Malfoy …”

  She chuckled. “You’d really hoped for Icie, didn’t you?”

  “Why, yes! I have chemistry with her! She adores me …” Icie, the Opaleye, had nudged his hand with her nose today when he’d given her some potion-spiked treats.

  “Bet she does …” Martha vanished her cigarette. “But talking to them gets a bit one-sided after a while.”

  “I’d rather take one-sided talks than Malfoy. What a prat …” 

  “Mh,” she hummed, “He did seem a bit snobbish when he left.”

  “Right?! And don’t even get me started about the shit his whole family did to us. His father almost killed my sister …”

  “Oof.”

  “And his aunt almost did, too.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Mhh.” Another drag, exhaled into the darkening sky. 

  “And what did he do to your family?”

  “Huh?”

  “Malfoy. Your soulmate …”

  “Oh, stuff it,” he grouched and scowled at her.

  She smirked.

  “Always looked down on us, that’s what he did. Judging by what Ron told us, Malfoy didn’t miss a chance to make fun of him. Called us blood traitors for not wanting to see Muggleborns killed. I doubt all of that just vanished after the end of the war …” To highlight his words, he vanished the butt of his cigarette instead and met her eyes gloomily. “And even if it did to some extent, I could never respect him.”

  “I see,” Martha said, seriousness where just had been mirth. “Well, maybe you are Icie’s lid after all,” she then quipped and patted his knee.

  “Yeah, maybe.” 

  Falling back into the Burrow’s madness reminded Charlie of why he was working so far away within an hour after his arrival. Although Ginny had refused steadfastly to get married there like Bill and Fleur had, the house was packed with guests and more nieces and nephews than he remembered having. “Have you had two already when we last met?” he asked Percy, tickling the neck of his daughter sitting on his arm, and earned himself a giggle from her and a miffed look from her father.

  “She’s two, Charlie! Do you think we summoned a two-year-old from thin air?”

  He didn’t dare ask for her name again, then. Maybe she herself would tell him at some point; children loved him for some reason. 

  First, however, he hovered his bag upstairs into the old room of Bill he would share with an uncle he only recognised as family because there was a hint of the Weasley red left between the grey strands, and when he went back down, he scowled at Bill. “I’ll never forgive you for marrying and letting me share my room with some old sod I don’t even recognise!”

  Grinning, Bill ruffled his hair. “Aww, poor Charlie!”

  “Hey! Stop that!” 

  “It’s Uncle Leland, Dad’s side. He’s only here because of the food, Mum said.”

  “Great.” He tried to smooth his hair back down, regretting that he’d had to cut it when it caught fire a month ago while he cared for a wounded Vipertooth. “If he snores, I’ll sleep on your bedside rug!”

  “Sure, if crying children is your preferred way of being kept awake …” He nodded at Fleur, who was rocking a baby in her arms, trying to stop its screaming.

  “Really, you all need to stop having children,” Charlie grimaced. As much as babies liked him, he preferred them to be somewhere else when they were crying. 

  Clicking his tongue, Bill grasped his shoulder. “I’m afraid Harry and Ginny will start soon as well, so … better prepare for being the odd one out, dear brother.”

  Marvellous. “I should have brought a dragon,” he grumbled under his breath and gravitated towards the kitchen while Bill went to relieve his wife of the whining baby. 

  “Charlie!” his Mum exclaimed when he poked his head in, and a second later her was swept into a rip-breaking hug. 

  “Hey, Mum.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Ten minutes ago, and I already succeeded in angering Percy.” He smirked.

  “Oh, you! What did you say this time?” She thrust a paring knife into his hand and gestured at the potatoes.

  “Asked him whether his daughter was new. Why do you want me to peel the potatoes by hand? Was magic dismantled while I was away?”

  “Oh yeah, right,” she mumbled absent-mindedly and took the knife back, “sorry.”

  “’s all right.” He did the deed magically then, freeing the potatoes from their peel and directing them into a pot his mother had put on the worktop.

  “I just got so much to do …”

  “Why? Didn’t Ginny and Harry get a caterer?”

  “Yes, for tomorrow! But everybody stays for a couple of days, they need to eat, don’t they?” She scurried out of the kitchen, leaving him alone with some pots boiling hot enough to make the lids rattle.

  No place like home …

  And the next morning was just as much of a chaos. Everywhere, a child was crying, people were searching for something, his mother kept yelling things nobody listened to (or heard to begin with), and Charlie was loitering around in the kitchen, still wearing his pyjamas, when everybody else seemed to be dressed up already. He just needed coffee! Uncle Leland had been snoring just as much as he’d expected, not even charms had sufficed to silence him fully. 

  “Charlie! What are you still doing here? Get changed!” 

  “Calm down, Dad,” he mumbled, “it’ll take them another half hour to get their children sorted.”

  “That’s because children like you make it difficult for us,” he scolded good-naturedly. “Off with you, or your mother will get a stroke before the ceremony even has time to get started.”

  “She’s just miffed Ginny wouldn’t let her help her get ready,” Charlie muttered and rolled his eyes.

  “I neither confirm nor deny that sentiment because it doesn’t change the fact that you need to get dressed!”

  Ugh. Putting his half-full mug of elixir of life into the sink, he grumbled, “I need to get showered first,” and left the kitchen.

  His negligence had its price, though, because when he returned to his blissfully deserted room about twenty minutes later to get dressed at last, his mother burst into the room before he had the chance to put on his shirt.

  “Charlie, will you—” She froze. Then her eyes grew almost comically large. “Is that a tattoo?” she shrieked.

  “Mum …” He turned further around to block her view of his back.

  “Don’t Mum me! You got a tattoo, didn’t you?” She grabbed his shoulder and tried to turn him back round to get another glance.

  But he’d long surpassed her strength and resisted it. “This is none of your business, Mum! Get out of here!” He pushed her back to the door and slammed it shut, leaning his forehead against some smooth wood yet again.

  Bloody hell.

  “Wasn’t it lovely?” Hermione sniffled later that day, dabbing some tears from the corners of her eyes while they waited in line at the buffet.

  “I suppose,” Charlie mumbled and sipped his champagne. “Ginny looks good.”

  “She really does. Harry, too! Didn’t think I’d ever see him in a dinner suit …” She looked at them, sharing what everybody kept calling amorous glances over their food instead of eating it, their cheeks red and eyes shining.

  “Yeah, I mean …” He shuffled a few steps closer to his destination, which was anything that would quiet his grumbling stomach. Half a cup of coffee just wasn’t enough to get him through a two-hour-long wedding ceremony. 

  Hermione followed him. “Will you stay for longer, Charlie?”

  “No. I’ll be returning to Romania tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, really? Pity …”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, just … Ron mentioned that he misses pub nights with you. I just thought …”

  He does? “He can Floo-call me anytime. I’m just some Apparitions away.”

  She smiled. “I’ll tell him that!”

  Another two steps, the plates slowly got into reach.

  “So …” 

  Oh no …

  “Have you met anyone special?”

  Ugh.

  Later that night, he fled the warmth inside with a bottle of lager and sat down on a stone wall, breathing a sigh of relief when the loud music quieted behind him and the chirping of crickets became the centre of his attention. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back and looked up at the stars; at least at those he could see. One was moving, though, so maybe not a star and rather a plane. He clicked his tongue. 

  Then the music increased again, and he turned to see who was following him. Oh, Merlin, no … Sighing, he braced himself for another chiding about that lousy mark he didn’t even choose to get and would pay a lot for to be able to give back.

  But his mother didn’t chide him. Instead, she sat down next to him and said, “It’s not a tattoo, is it?”

  Rubbing his eyes, Charlie shook his head. “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He huffed. “About what? About the mark or about yelling at me?”

  “Both. But a bit more about the yelling.” She smiled lopsidedly.

  “You still hope I’d meet a nice girl and give you another bunch of grandkids, eh?”

  “I just hope you won’t be lonely,” Molly corrected him. “I’ve long accepted that marriage and children are not for you.”

  “Did you now?”

  “Well … Sometimes I have to remind myself.”

  He grinned. But it faded quickly. “It’s not a girl, by the way.” He took another huge gulp of his beer to fill the moment of silence that grew between them.

  “Oh, Charlie, I didn’t know—”

  “I’m not!” he interrupted her quickly. “I’m nothing, Mum! I don’t want that with anybody, okay?”

  She nodded, visibly grappling with what he was telling her.

  “Dunno why it is him of all people …” he muttered.

  “May I know who it is?”

  He grimaced. But she probably would only understand the full extent of how fucked up the whole situation was if he told her. So he mumbled, “Draco Malfoy?” partly hoping she might not have understood him. 

  But she had understood him. “Draco M—” 

  Merlin, help me.

  “Well, that is a surprise …” She took the beer bottle from his hand and for a moment, he thought she would ex it. But then she gave it back to him, shuddering. 

  Chuckling, Charlie took a swig himself. 

  “But at least it explains why even your soulmate mark turned out to be a dragon …”

  He winced when she said it out loud. Soulmate mark. Groaning, he put the almost empty bottle aside and buried his hands in his hair. “How can it be him? That makes no bloody sense!”

  “Language,” she chided him with a click of her tongue.

  “I’ll curse as much as I want, Mum! Draco Malfoy is supposed to be my bloody soulmate! If that’s not reason enough to curse, I don’t know what is.”

  “Oh, you’re being such a dramatic, Charles!”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “It’s your name, I will use it. And while I didn’t expect Draco Malfoy to be the soulmate of any of us, I also trust in magic and think you should give it a try.”

  “Like hell I will! Have you forgotten what his family did to ours? Ginny almost died because of his father! And then she almost died again because of his aunt! Bill’s scars are thanks to Draco Malfoy himself! And don’t even get me started about how Lucius went after Dad at the Ministry! How can he be my soulmate?!” 

  “He isn’t easy to love indeed,” Molly murmured.

  “Love!” Charlie scoffed. “He isn’t easy to not punch in the nose, yeah …”

  “Yet the magic sees something in the two of you. Maybe you can learn from each other.”

  For fuck’s sake … “Why are you so relaxed about this?” Why am I the one losing my mind? 

  “Would it help you if I weren’t?” 

  “Yes!”

  “All right …” She cleared her throat. “Preposterous! Absolutely ridiculous! Draco Malfoy? Malfoy?! I didn’t raise you like that, Charles Weasley!” 

  The impeccability of her performance, squeaking voice, exasperation, clutching at non-existent pearls and all, caused him to chuckle despite himself. 

  “Better?” Molly then asked and put her arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a motherly hug he didn’t shake off for a change.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Anytime. But I still think you should give the whole thing a try. I cannot claim to know many people who found their soulmate, but the few I do know would never go back.”

  He sighed and gently disentangled himself from her hug after all. “I don’t even want a soulmate …”

  “Yes, you do. Everybody wants a soulmate, they might just call it by a different name. I bet you always thought of a dragon companion.”

  “Well …” He grinned sheepishly.

  “But you’re a human, Charlie. And even though you keep denying it, there are things dragons cannot give you.”

  “I told you, I—”

  “I'm not talking about sex! I talk about partnership, about camaraderie, about being supported and awaited when you come home at night. I talk about someone to share your excitement and grief with. Someone who will understand you and endure the hardships of life with you. Who’s not only there, but also understands the intricacies you might be going through one day. Young people don’t think about how hard it can be to become older. To see friends die and your own health wither away. To see the years run by faster and faster, and the world around you change until you hardly understand how it works anymore. It is a challenge facing all of that with people you love going through the same, I can’t even imagine having to do it alone.” She was breathing faster when she finished, her unsettled gaze roving over his face. “I don’t say you have to bond with Draco Malfoy at all costs. But don’t you think you might regret it one day to not even have given it a try?”

  He gulped. “I don’t know,” he croaked at last. “I don’t know if I want somebody to wait for me at night. Somebody I have to account for. Somebody I have to include in my decisions. I’m free right now. If the magic is right, I won’t be anymore.”

  Sighing, Molly patted his cheek. “Young people,” she repeated and got up. “Think well about the whole matter, Charlie. Even a soulmate might not be willing to wait forever. And now I’m going back in to have a dance with my one and only son-in-law.” 

  He huffed. “Have fun!” And stayed behind, watching the stars while trying to make sense of his feelings and thoughts.

  The moment he returned to Romania, his first steps led Charlie to the dragons. His colleagues had long stopped wondering about him doing what was considered work around here during his free time, he’d even talked with his boss about how being in contact with the dragons was his way of winding down and sorting through his thoughts and not work at all.

  “You know, other people just go and have a pint,” she’d said.

  “Yeah, well, not me.” 

  And so she’d accepted that he was spending his free time with the dragons, but told him she wouldn’t pay him overtime for that. 

  As if this were about money … 

  Icie didn’t show her face, unfortunately, so Charlie went to see Herbert, a Peruvian Vipertooth. He was their oldest dragon, and despite his breed’s name, he didn’t possess a single tooth anymore. Sad for him, but good for their safety, as his boss kept reminding him. “A toothless venomous dragon is a non-venomous dragon. I have to pay less danger bonus for him, so yay!” 

  Charlie still couldn’t stop pitying Herbert. What was a venomous dragon without its teeth? 

  “How’re you doing, big boy?” he cooed now and ducked into the enclosure. 

  Herbert puffed and toddled closer. Bending his head down, he let Charlie greet him properly and rubbed his nose against Charlie’s chest. 

  “I missed you, too.”

  “It’s only been two days!” Pete called over; he was just passing by the enclosure with a wheelbarrow full of dragon food.

  “Bugger off!” Charlie called back.

  Even Herbert roared, albeit huskily, before smacking his lips. It effectively drowned out Pete’s chuckling. 

  Sighing, Charlie went back to tickling the dragon’s cheeks, right where he liked it best. Herbert closed his eyes, leaning into the touch. A low rumble vibrated through the massive chest. “What am I supposed to do, big boy?”

  Naturally, Herbert didn’t answer him, and remembering his mother’s words, that fact stung unexpectedly. 

  So, when he trotted off at last, showing the same fickle nature a lot of old folks called their own, Charlie had to admit that his mother might have had a point: if he didn’t give it a try, he would always wonder if that had been a mistake. 

  Well, at least I won’t have to pay a hundred Galleons to find out where the prick lives …

Chapter Text

  The moment the house-elf had disappeared, the nonchalant expression vanished from Draco’s face, and he hissed, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Charlie scowled at him. “Not sure yet.”

  “And how do you think I’m supposed to explain this? Don’t you know how to send an owl?!”

  “Did you think about how I was supposed to explain your turning up at my door?”

  Easy … You cannot strangle him. Father paid too much to— “Come,” he muttered and passed the ginger-haired idiot by, marching away from the Manor as if that would change anything about the fact that his parents would be informed about a Weasley asking to see him as soon as they returned home. 

  Still, making sure no nosy house-elf would eavesdrop on them might give him a chance to construct another reason for his turning up here than the truth.

  He followed a path leading into a small forest his father had planted almost two decades ago, his way of keeping the neighbours at a distance. Three kilometres of land protected by a fuck ton of wards just weren’t enough, apparently.

  When he was sure they were out of earshot, Draco slowed his steps and waited for Charlie to catch up with him. “So? What do you want? I thought you couldn’t respect me.”

  The brown eyes, sitting in a face so densely peppered with freckles that it looked tanned, seemed to pin Draco in place. “I can’t. Unfortunately, I can’t ignore this either.”

  Oh, really? “Since when?”

  “None of your business. But if you’re willing to give this another try, so … am I.” 

  Exhaling in a huff, Draco stepped through a line of trees he knew were hiding a clearing that opened the view to a wide field of nothing but grasses undulating in the wind. It was one of his favourite places to unwind. He’d even conjured a bench a couple of years ago, and that was where he sat down now, curious to see whether Charlie would follow suit.

  But the man stayed standing, leaned against a nearby tree. His arms, thick with muscles, were crossed tightly. “So?” 

  “I’m still thinking,” Draco sneered. “I’m not keen on a repeat of our last meeting.”

  Charlie’s jaw muscles bulged as he clenched his teeth. “I apologise for how I treated you the last time we met.”

  Hear, hear. “Why? Don’t tell me you didn’t mean it.”

  “Oh, I did.”

  Draco huffed, turning his head away and closing his eyes when a gust of wind brushed his hair out of his face and rushed through the treetops surrounding them. 

  Then Charlie added, “But I’m also willing to consider that I might not know you enough to form an adequate opinion.”

  Draco looked back at him. “Blimey! Did you write that down before you came here?”

  “No?”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  Prompting Charlie to raise his chin. “What? Do you think I’m stupid just because I’m working with dragons and come from a huge family?”

  Well … 

  Charlie curled his lips into a contemptuous smirk. “Surprise …” he said. “I know how to read a book.”

  Draco cleared his throat. “Okay, so … seems like we both have some prejudices to do away with.”

  “Right.” He brushed some hair from his face, his gaze wandering around the trees and then to the wide field extending before them. There it lingered, giving Draco the opportunity to scrutinise him a bit closer.

  Charlie Weasley was the opposite of him in almost every regard. He was a bit shorter, considerably broader, a hell of a lot more muscular, tanned, a man used to doing hard work. His arms, where they weren’t covered by the sleeves of his black t-shirt, were littered with scars of burns, cuts, and scratches, doubtlessly testament to the aforementioned hard work. From what Draco could gather so far, he was a no-nonsense kind of man, too. Which was a good thing; the last Draco would have had the patience to put up with was someone with the mentality of the Weasley twins. 

  Although they did succeed in building a fairly prosperous business, and even just one of them was able to keep it running on his own. 

  Still. 

  “Do you know anybody else with a soulmate?” Draco asked at last, causing the other man to whip his head back round.

  “No. You?”

  He grunted, but didn’t elaborate.

  Charlie arched his eyebrows again.

  “Will you keep this a secret?”

  Rolling his eyes, he shifted his weight to his other foot. “As fascinating as you might think you and your life are, Malfoy, I’m rather disinterested in sharing anything of this with other people.”

  Oh, fuck off. He was doing that deliberately now, wasn’t he? Parading his eloquence like a bloody cock its feathers. “Well, given the fact that I don’t know you enough yet to be able to gauge your level of secrecy, I thought it rather prudent to make sure first,” Draco retorted in the same kind of voice, crossing his arms as well. 

  Charlie huffed, amused. “I won’t tell anybody, fine?”

  “Thank you.” Taking a deep breath, Draco looked at the field again. “My mother has a soulmate mark.”

  “Your father doesn’t?”

  “No. I don’t think it comes as a huge surprise that they did not marry out of love.”

  Charlie narrowed his eyes a bit but said nothing.

  “My Aunt Andromeda is her soulmate,” Draco went on. 

  He hummed contemplatively. “Didn’t work out well for them, I reckon.”

  “… no.”

  “And yet you sought me out …”

  Feeling curiously naked all of a sudden, Draco averted his gaze. His heart was beating faster, and his back tickled uncomfortably. 

  It was Charlie, taking a deep breath, who ended that moment. “Well, I cannot promise you it’ll work out for us, but if that whole blood traitors thing is still relevant to you in any kind, I’m damn sure it won’t.”

  “It’s not.” Draco forced himself to look the man in the eyes again. “I was an idiot as a child, but I am not that person anymore. Actually, I’m grateful for what you did back then. The Order and … all. I …” … still have nightmares from a world in which the Dark Lord won sometimes. But as intense as Charlie’s gaze was, as intimate and safe as this moment began to feel, he couldn’t bring himself to say that out loud. “Thank you,” he croaked instead, trying to convey with his eyes how writhing at the feet of a maniac in pain beyond comprehension had the power to knock a lot of hard beliefs from a teenager’s mind.

  And maybe his silent message had reached Charlie. He swallowed thickly and nodded. 

  “Well, um …” Draco shifted on the bench. “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Charlie frowned and hummed contemplatively. “What do you expect … or hope … this thing between us will be like?”

  “I have no bloody clue.” He said it with such abandon that he elicited a chuckle from Charlie. “I mean … There seem to be so many different ways of being soulmates … Look at my mother.”

  “From what I gathered, the most non-familiar soulmates do end up being lovers, though,” Charlie remarked. 

  “Yeah … Well, as I said, I’m not gay. I think.”

  “You think?”

  Merlin … “Do we really have to discuss this now?”

  “Why, yes? I’d very much like to make some things clear before we get deeper into this, and that whatever this will turn out to be won’t be a romantic or even a sexual thing is pretty high up my list.”

  “Fine?” Draco shrugged. “I mean … I’m not out for sex. And I can’t be with you anyway, even if I wanted to. I have to marry and father at least one child, so … no worries, I won’t try to get into your pants, Weasley.”

  “Fine.” He nodded, rolling his shoulders as if to get rid of the same tickling feeling on his back Draco was plagued by. “Will you be marrying that girl you attended the memorial with?”

  “Probably.”

  “She seemed nice.”

  “She is.”

  “Will you tell her about us?”

  “Hell, no …”

  Charlie narrowed his eyes, but surprisingly, he said nothing to that. 

  “Do you want to marry?”

  “Fuck, no!” Laughing mirthlessly, he carded his hands through his hair, a gesture Draco connected with longer hair so much that he wondered whether Charlie had cut his recently. The man even seemed slightly irritated by the touch of it, there was a suspicious twitch around his eyes. He hid it quickly, though, by turning to the open field and crossing his arms again. His back to Draco, he continued, “No, that … whole relationship thing is not for me. I prefer to be free. So don’t expect me to discuss any decision I make with you.” He glanced over his shoulder.

  “Why would I?” Draco muttered.

  “Thought I’d mention that before you get any strange ideas.”

  He puffed. “I don’t want to discuss any of my decisions with you either.” I couldn’t change most of them anyway. 

  “Good.” 

  Silence settled between them again, and when it lasted, Draco got up and stepped beside Charlie. Now, standing rather close to him without being annoyed by his attitude, the height difference between them got even more obvious. Not that Draco would have been head and shoulders above Charlie, but about an inch or two, it probably was. 

  Something Charlie seemed to notice, too, when he looked at him; he curled his nose for a second. “Seems as if we had at least similar expectations,” he said, probably just to say something.

  “Yes. So you want to meet again?”

  He hummed, then he smirked. “I’ll send you an owl.”

  But something about the way he said it sounded like he not only meant that ironically, but twisted in another way. Draco narrowed his eyes, then they widened in horror. “You won’t send me a dragon now, will you?”

  Charlie chuckled darkly, a sound that sent a shiver down Draco’s back. “No, don’t worry. We’re not allowed to use them for shenanigans like that. We’re not even allowed to take them out of the reserve …”

  “You say that as if it were a bad thing.”

  “Why, yes! Maybe they want to see something else occasionally? I’d love to take a wee one with me to get through some family gatherings.”

  “A wee one?” Draco laughed.

  “Oh, stuff it. A colleague of mine is from Scotland, he infected us all with that.”

  “Oh my … Anyway, please promise me to never bring a dragon here. Not even a wee one.”

  “Fine,” he grouched. “But you have no idea what you’re missing out on.”

  “Oh, believe me, I’ve seen enough dragons to know exactly what I’m missing out on!”

  “Philistine …”

  “No,” Draco just said, shaking his head in emphasis. “Just … no.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes but smiled covertly.

  Smirking, Draco looked at the undulating grasses, breathing in the tranquillity that sight oozed. It had been a good idea to bring him here for this talk. At least for him, Draco, it had been good. He didn’t know about Charlie, of course, but he didn’t seem uncomfortable either. 

  Actually, he seemed more relaxed than Draco had ever seen him. Peering at him from the corner of his eye, he found the weather-beaten face smooth and calm, almost absent. So he dared turning his head a bit and eyed the freckles that petered out over his temples, the curves of his ear, the muscular neck that disappeared in the collar of his t-shirt. 

  He swallowed when he thought about what he would be able to see if the collar were a bit lower.

  “Do you …” The words tumbled out of his mouth unbidden, he only succeeded in swallowing the rest of that question.

  But it was enough to prompt Charlie to look at him, and Draco’s heart skipped a beat when their eyes met. “Do I … what?”

  Fuck. He scrambled for something else to ask, any way to wriggle himself out of this situation. Something like ‘Do you want to go back?’ or ‘Do you wish to discuss anything else?’ But both questions dried on his tongue and fell to ashes, and what he asked in the end was exactly what he’d tried to swallow down. “Do you have the same mark as I do?”

  For a moment, Charlie clenched his teeth again. “How should I know?”

  “Right.” Turning his head away, Draco looked at the field again, but this time, he sought tranquillity in vain. An army of ants was marching through his stomach and making him feel a bit queasy. 

  Charlie groaned. “Check for yourself, then,” he muttered and unceremoniously pulled up his t-shirt so the black fabric gathered at his neck, then he turned to Draco.

  Holy shit! He almost stumbled back from how unexpected this came, and for a moment, his gaze was everywhere but on the other man’s back. 

  Then, however, he could no longer escape the lure of the intricate lines and curves covering Charlie’s back as they did his. It was indeed the same mark, the same colourful dragon. The same scales, teeth, whiskers, and tail. Only that it seemed more alive following the pronounced muscles in Charlie’s back than on Draco’s. He swallowed thickly, absent-mindedly reaching out to touch the curve that was the back of the dragon. He snapped himself out of that notion in time, though, balled his hand into a fist and lowered it to his side. 

  “Well?” Charlie pressed.

  “It um … is the same,” Draco choked out and turned his head away. 

  “Great,” he noted ironically and pulled his t-shirt back down. Without looking at Draco, he checked his watch. “I need to head back now, I’m scheduled for the late shift today, and it’ll take me a while to get through all the border checks. Plus the time difference …”

  “Right. Well, um … Thank you for coming by and … giving me a second chance.”

  “Was more of a first chance, actually.”

  Draco huffed. “Send me an owl when it suits you. We could meet somewhere else entirely the next time, so none of us needs to explain anything.”

  “We’ll see.” Charlie looked at him. “You won’t get into any problems because I turned up here, right?”

  “Nah. I’ll think of something.” He smiled smugly. 

  “All right. Then … goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” Draco echoed and watched him Apparate away. 

  Exhaling deeply, he went back to the bench and collapsed onto it. That was … interesting.

  “Charles Weasley was here today, I heard,” Lucius said that evening, cutting a medium-rare piece of steak. 

  The off-handed remark made Draco stop momentarily, not, however, his mother. She kept her eyes on her plate and speared a bite-sized piece of potato. 

  “Yes,” Draco answered at last, glancing at his father. 

  “Well, what did he want?”

  That’s none of your business. But the looks both his mother and his father were giving him told Draco that that notion was his alone. “We got talking at the memorial, and he told me he was contemplating organising a charity event for the dragon reserve he’s working at. But since he’s never done something like that, he didn’t know how to start, so I offered him to come by and give him some ideas. It was rather busy at the memorial.”

  “A charity event?” his mother echoed, “For a dragon reserve?”

  “Yes.” Draco smiled non-committally and returned to his meal, using a touch of Occlumency to help him calm his nerves—the only good thing he’d learned during the war. 

  “Why would anybody want to engage with such an event?”

  He stopped and looked up at his mother again. Her blonde hair was pinned up as always, not a single hair escaping the artistic knot, revealing the line of her slender neck. At least up to where her high-collared blouse was covering what even Draco had only seen a handful of times during all of his life. “I didn’t ask him, Mother. I just assumed it would be what I was there for. To engage with society and show my willingness to be a productive member. People do help each other, don’t they?”

  She blinked. “I assume they are.”

  “You should have brought him into the parlour, then,” his father interjected, “instead of showing him around the estate.”

  “I offered him to do so,” Draco said smoothly, “but he seems to be an outdoorsman. He preferred a walk.”

  Lucius harrumphed softly, reluctantly accepting that a guest’s wishes weigh higher than parading your wealth. Still, a sourish crease remained between his eyebrows until they were done with all five courses of their dinner.

  And despite Draco’s best attempts at making up a sensible excuse for Charlie’s turning up here unannounced and delivering it as nonchalantly as possible, his mother sought him out in the library later that evening. 

  “Am I interrupting you?” she asked.

  “No.” He folded the book about business sciences his father had advised him to read shut, not ungrateful for the opportunity of getting a break. Although the look on Narcissa’s face didn’t bode well.

  “I keep thinking about Mr Weasley’s visit earlier today.”

  Yes, that was exactly what Draco had been afraid of. “Oh?” he said innocently.

  She hummed softly and sat down beside him at the huge table. “I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that he seriously plans to organise a charity event for dragons.”

  “It is something new indeed.”

  “It is,” she agreed in a soft voice. “Do you plan to support him any further?”

  Fuck. “I haven’t thought about that. And I’m not sure he would want me to, to be honest. I was surprised he was even interested in what I could tell him. The sentiment between his family and ours hasn’t been the best for quite a while.”

  She scrutinised him warily, her eyes a tad bit narrower than usual. Draco knew that look, and he’d learned to withstand it. Eventually, she nodded. “You’re right. It might be a step in the right direction. Still, I hope you … won’t lose sight of what is important for our family.”

  “Of course not, Mother.”

  “You should invite Astoria for dinner.”

  He blinked. “I will.”

  “Good. I’ll leave you to your studies then.” She smiled and got up to leave, not without giving his shoulder a firm squeeze that meant nothing else but, Make sure you stick to the plan, or I will make you.

  “That was to be expected, wasn’t it?” Over his pint, Theo twitched his eyebrows at Draco. “That’s the part of being aristocracy I never missed, the whole marriage rubbish … Fit to ruin your whole life.”

  “Cheers to that,” Draco muttered and took a sip of his ale, letting the hum of the pub fill his ears for a moment. “Worst thing is, it won’t even interfere with any of my parents’ plans and yet I have to be careful because they’d never believe me.”

  “To be honest, I have a hard time believing that, too! The odds are against you, mate.”

  “I am not gay!” Draco hissed again, scowling at his friend because he didn’t want to throw his glass at him. “And neither is Charlie. I don’t know why it’s us, but it’s not like that!” 

  “Okay, okay!” Theo raised his hands in surrender. “Well, if you need an alibi, just tell your parents you’re with me. I’ll cover for you while you go and explore what is between you and your soulmate.” He smirked.

  “Merlin, I hate you.” 

  “I can live with that. So, did I tell you about my latest soulmate? Her name’s Trisha, and I swear to Merlin …” He gave a whistle that sounded inappropriate.

  Sighing, Draco put his chin in his hand, a position nobody who ever entered Malfoy Manor would have let him get away with, and listened to his friend’s latest fling. 

  “I’m thinking about renting us a flat to meet.”

  Charlie barked a disbelieving laugh. “I thought you didn’t have money!”

  Draco curled his lip. “Well, not supporting good causes in a considerable magnitude money, but it’s enough to rent a small flat.”

  “You really have no idea what a considerable magnitude is for a charity, do you?”

  Oh, shut up! “Do you want me to rent a flat now or …”

  “What for?” He spread his arms wide, looking around the forest near the dragon reserve he’d suggested for them to meet this time. “We don’t need a flat. You can come over to me if you’re looking for privacy.”

  Can I now? “Okay,” Draco said, wincing at how meekly he sounded. 

  “I just thought not being in a closed room with nothing else to look at but each other might be the nicer setting for our second talk.”

  “Right.”

  He nodded. “So, donate that rent money to someone who can use it.”

  Huffing, Draco buried his hands in the pockets of his cloak. It was a surprisingly cool day, considering they were approaching June and closer to the equator than England was, yet he was feeling cold. Maybe because the thick forest was swallowing all the sunlight, overshadowing the path they were trudging along. “If I want to visit you, how do you want me to go about it, then?” he eventually asked, frowning at the man walking beside him; he was only wearing a jumper, and Draco had no bloody clue how he wasn’t growing icicles on his nose. 

  “Just pop by?”

  Seriously?! “Didn’t you tell me last time I should be more considerate about who might see me when I come visiting you?”

  “That was a joke, Malfoy! You were being an idiot, and I was returning that sentiment. I don’t need to hide the people I associate with.”

  “Pillock,” he murmured.

  Charlie laughed in earnest at that. “Didn’t expect you to revert to insults when you’re being driven into a corner.” Becoming serious again, he looked at Draco. “I hope I don’t need to tell you that the way families like yours are handling stuff like this is rather worrying?”

  “What do you mean by stuff like this?”

  “Relationships that don’t conform to the rigid path your parents have laid out for your future. That they have planned your future at all is worrying enough …”

  “Well, we do have a considerable wealth to pass down! Of course, they would plan what happens with that!”

  “Right, now it’s about me being poor again …”

  Draco stopped dead in his tracks. “That’s rubbish! That you have some disgustingly expensive pieces of art hanging on your walls without any form of suitable protection tells me you’re anything but poor! But I’m an only child! There’s nobody but me who can make the family name live on. I mean, yeah, there’s my … second cousin, I think, but for reasons you might not condone but at least understand, my father is not keen on leaving all of that to him. I know, you don’t give a damn about my family and its continuation, but I do. It’s my family!”

  Charlie clenched his teeth, making his jaw muscles bulge. “I do understand that. My family is important to me, too. I still think they should let you do your thing as long as you promise to provide an heir someday. I mean, you’re twenty-four?”

  Draco nodded jerkily. “Almost.”

  “I’m thirty-two and cannot imagine having a child yet!”

  “You don’t even want to marry! You’ll never be able to imagine having a child!”

  “Touché,” he smirked. “But it’s not as if time would be running out for you. You're a wizard, you will likely live past one hundred. No need to hurry yet. And they shouldn’t make it hard for you to have friends ever!”

  “They don’t. They just wouldn’t ever believe me, I’d voluntarily be friends with a Weasley.”

  A sour expression flitted over Charlie’s face. “I’m not forcing you to be here.” Then he marched on.

  Fuck’s sake. “That’s not what I meant!” Draco exclaimed and followed him. “And you know that! Don’t tell me you’d ever contemplated being friends with me!”

  Charlie didn’t answer, he only slowed his steps. Slightly. 

  Draco exhaled in a huff. “They will be fine with this as soon as I’m married. Then I can explain it all to them. Okay?”

  “Do as you wish, it’s your family …”

  “Oh, come on! What do you want me to do? Shout it from the rooftops? Charlie Weasley and Draco Malfoy are fucking soulmates?” A flock of birds burst through the trees at his shouting, making him wince as if Merlin himself were descending on them.

  Charlie chuckled despite himself. “You’re such an idiot sometimes, Malfoy …”

  Despite the cold, his cheeks grew warm. “Well, at least I can make you laugh. That’s a start, I guess.”

  “I guess it is,” Charlie sighed, twitching his eyebrows. “Let’s head back then before you freeze to death out here. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, I get one this time?”

  “Yeah … That’s my family legacy. If I don’t care for you adequately, my mother’s ghost will haunt me forever.”

  “Oof … That’s a hard fate.”

  “At least she doesn’t force me to have children.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I won’t be the uncle of yours, by the way.”

  “Noted.”

  “Got enough uncle businesses coming from my own family …”

  “Boohoo.” Draco earned himself a slap on the back of his head with that one, resulting in him uttering another, this time surprised, “Ouch!”, but he was smirking nevertheless. 

Chapter Text

  Martha grinned when he opened the door. “How’s it going with the Malfoy spawn? He left late the other day.”

  “What do you think?” Taking his bumbag, Charlie pushed past her and pulled his door closed. 

  “No idea! Considering what you said about him, you could either share some stories over a cup of tea or you could keep him hostage until he swears to never pop by again.”

  “Since he keeps showing up, I’d be a lousy torturer.”

  She grinned, almost stumbling over a root sticking out from the ground. “Right you are. So you do get along?”

  Charlie grunted his agreement. “Surprisingly, we do,” he murmured. “I feel like his big brother sometimes. The bloke needs a family that doesn’t expect him to breed within the next three years …”

  “Good it’s you he ended up with, then. Maybe the magic really doesn’t make mistakes …”

  He hummed, frowning, letting the silence between them be filled by only the scrunching of their shoes on the gravel and the roars of some dragons they passed by on their way to the Ironbelly’s enclosure that needed to be mucked out. After greeting three colleagues, he turned to Martha again and said, “I’m not sure I’m really his lid, though. Unless lids sometimes want to make their pots shut up, by force if necessary.”

  Martha laughed. “He’s talking that much?” 

  He twisted his face. “It’s more about what he says and not how much. His life experience and mine? Not the same!” 

  “Sounds eye-opening for both of you …” She wriggled her eyebrows. 

  “Wrong. It’s eye-opening for him, but straight up unbelievable for me. How can you get to twenty-four years old without realising that your perception of wealth is absolutely twisted? I mean, he wanted to rent a flat just for us to meet! A flat!” 

  Martha giggled at his incredulous head-shaking. “I’m sure he just wanted to be nice and provide some privacy!”

  “I know! That’s the problem! Sometimes I just want to shake him. That can’t be normal …”

  “Well, that sounds like something that would result in sex for people who are interested in such things.”

  He scrunched up his face. “Really?”

  Shrugging, she said, “Well, yeah … You know, first you argue, then you have make-up sex … Get rid of the tension …”

  “Ew.” He passed her a pitchfork from the storage. 

  “I’d say you need to find something else to get the tension out of your system, then.”  

  “I’m fine with arguing, actually. Relieves a hell of a lot of tension, especially when I can slap him in the end.” With a smug grin, he marched away.

  “As long as he feels the same about that …”

  “He needs to get himself another soulmate if he doesn’t. A flat …” He huffed.

  Two weeks later, just as Charlie had reluctantly left the bath he’d soaked his aching muscles in after caring for Herbert most of the day, he found the coin he’d charmed for Draco and himself as a birthday gift to spare them the owls buzzing on his bedside cabinet. 

  Do you have time to meet?

  Groaning, he rubbed his itching eyes and took his wand to charm his answer into the gold. Sure. Where? He put it back down and went to fetch some clothes, looking up when there was a sudden knock on his door.

  Huh? 

  Securing the towel around his hips again, he walked over, his naked feet making smacking sounds on the floor. He was half expecting Martha to ask for something, because there was no way Draco could be here so quickly, right?

  But he was here and blinked at Charlie from tired eyes, his posh business robes looking a bit rumpled.

  “Were you already here when you contacted me or …”

  “No. I’ve got myself a permanent Portkey.” He pulled a battered dicky from the pocket of his cloak. “I was tired of waiting in line to be admitted at the borders.”

  “Clever.”

  “I have my moments. So, may I come in?”

  Charlie stepped aside and opened the door wider. 

  Draco’s eyes wandered over his half-naked form. “Did I disturb you?”

  “No. I was done. Make yourself comfortable while I get dressed.” He gestured at the couch.

  Harrumphing, Draco wandered over and collapsed into the cushions. 

  Charlie huffed. “Will you be asleep when I come back?”

  He cracked an eye open. “Maybe?” But there was no joking in his voice, just exhaustion.

  “Everything all right?”

  Draco shrugged, but he looked as if he was short of crying.

  “I’ll be right back,” Charlie mumbled, a frown stapled to his forehead, and went to throw on some clothes quickly. He was still barefoot when he went back to Draco, though, and sat down beside him. They were almost uncomfortably close on his tiny couch, and Charlie noticed Draco trying to move off a bit but being stopped by the armrest. “Well, what happened? Did your family find out?”

  “No,” he groaned, “It’s just been … a horrible day at work. I fucked up and Father wasn’t happy about it.” He scrubbed his face, mumbling, “I just needed someone to not look at me like I’m disappointment personified, you know?” through his fingers.

  No, not really. Even when he’d told his parents that he would certainly not apply for a Ministry job but go to Romania to work with dragons, they hadn’t looked at him as if he were a disappointment. Sure, his mum had pestered him for a full month about how he would regret that decision, or get killed, or maimed, or wouldn’t find a woman who’d be fine with that ever, but apart from that … Still, he hummed. “Is Theo covering for you again?”

  Draco grunted, keeping his face hidden behind his hands.

  Sighing, Charlie contemplated what to do. He should probably approach this situation with a bit of caution, considering how Draco had just reacted to his closeness. But then again … Distance was one of the main problems of that muppet’s life, and magic had certainly pushed them together for a reason. So Charlie unceremoniously pulled him close and wrapped his arms around the idiot’s shoulders. What had helped most of his siblings and himself more times than he could count might also do the trick for Mr Stick-Up-My-Arse. 

  “What …” Draco mumbled, muffled against Charlie’s t-shirt.

  “Shut up,” he said, “you’re not even here, remember?”

  Draco murmured something Charlie didn’t understand, but then he stopped resisting and melted against his chest, exhaling so deeply it felt like he’d been holding his breath the whole day.

  “You’re not a disappointment,” Charlie eventually said, “you’re just young and stupid.”

  “Hey …”

  “It’s true. And your father’s company will survive whatever you did. Hell, it survived the Ministry’s sentence, and they tried really hard to ruin it!”

  Draco chuckled despite himself. “Can I still stay the night?”

  Stay the night? That was a new one. To his surprise, however, he found that he didn’t really mind. Huh. That soulmate thing was becoming eerie … 

  But he’d had half of his siblings here to sleep off their buzz or have a cry over a split-up in the past, too, so adding Draco to his list of nightly visitors wouldn’t be exactly shocking. “Um … sure? But be warned: I can only offer you this couch or half of my narrow bed.”

  “Oh.” Draco sat back up, brushing his hair down. “I’d better go back home then, I guess.”

  “You can stay,” Charlie clarified, “I just wanted you to know. You also should know that I sometimes snore, but you can shut me up with a hearty smack against my shoulder. At least George says that works.” He smirked.

  Draco rolled his eyes. He couldn’t stop the corner of his mouth from twitching, though.

  “Fancy a stroll before we go to bed?”

  “A stroll?”

  “Yes. You know, the thing we’ve been doing all the time during our first meetings. Setting one foot in front of the other …”

  “I know what a stroll is, blighter!”

  “Sounded not like it. So? I could show you my dragons.” He wiggled his eyebrows and was sure his eyes were lighting up, saying it. 

  Enough at least to make Draco huff a laugh. “As you wish … But you will put on shoes for that, right?”

  “Yes. And you should borrow a pair of mine, too. Else those—” He pointed at the fine shoes he was wearing, brightly polished black dress shoes going with his grey business robes. “—will be ruined.”

  Draco was a sight to behold in Charlie’s Dragon-hide boots, which he’d had to magically adjust to his own shoe size to be able to walk in them at all (for a man of his height, he had surprisingly dainty feet), and the old jumper he hadn’t bothered charming and was thus almost drowning in. That he’d refused to change his trousers was giving the whole look an edge of absurdity. 

  “I won’t enter any enclosure anyway, how dirty can the paths be?”

  “Very,” Charlie said truthfully, “but suit yourself!”

  Then they’d wandered off in the waning light of the day. Charlie inhaled the scent of approaching summer lingering in the air, and shoved his sleeves up his arms because a jumper might have been too warm a choice after all for him.

  Draco, however, didn’t seem to have such notions. He let the sleeves fall over his hands, looking around alertly. “What kind of dragon is that?” He pointed at a sleeping, dark-green dragon with golden horns. It was curled in on itself and released puffs of air that were hot enough to singe the grass in front of his snout.

  “That’s Cassandra, a Romanian Longhorn. She’s been here since she was a baby, her mother abandoned her. We brought her up by hand.”

  “How many of your scars are from her?” Draco quipped.

  “Some …” He grinned. 

  “You’re nuts,” Draco huffed.

  “I know.” He bumped Draco’s shoulder when he laughed and nodded ahead. “Let’s visit Herbert,” he said and swallowed thickly. “Might be the last chance.”

  “What do you mean?”

  But Charlie didn’t answer. His hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, he marched ahead. 

  Herbert lay curled up in front of the cave he usually preferred to sleep in, but hadn’t for the last couple of days. In fact, he hadn’t moved much at all anymore lately, had even stopped eating. He just lay there, blinking around tiredly. A faint wheezing sound underlined each one of his breaths, and his mouth was hanging open in sleep.

  “Oh,” Draco mumbled when he’d caught up with Charlie.

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “He’s seventy-six years old, as far as we know, a Peruvian Vipertooth.” His condition had declined quickly over the last days, leaving little room for hope. Charlie brushed his eyes, watching him. A gentle giant in the dying light of day.

  “He’s beautiful,” Draco said softly.

  “He is. And kind. I learned everything I know about dragon care from him. There’s not a single scar on my body he caused …” But he wished there was. He’d never told anybody about that, but his scars were like souvenirs from the dragons he’d met. They’d all left their marks on him, and the scars were the visible part of that. Nothing visible would remain from Herbert.

  “Sounds, um … special.”

  Bugger. A lump grew in Charlie’s throat, robbing him of his voice. So he only nodded. 

  And turned his head to Draco when he softly bumped his shoulder again, finding a sad smile on the younger man’s face.

  “Do you want to stay with him?”

  “I can’t.” Charlie swallowed thickly. “When dragons die, they release an enormous shockwave of magic. Can be deadly for humans.”

  Draco’s eyes grew almost comically large. “Come again?”

  Charlie ginned lopsidedly. “Calm down, numpty. It starts with smaller impulses that our wards pick up on. They begin glowing when it’s time for us to seek shelter in our huts.”

  He exhaled slowly, his nod looking only half reassured. Then he frowned. “So dragons die alone?” he asked softly.

  “No. The dying shockwave isn’t dangerous for other dragons. They usually gather to … be there for their dying mates when we can’t.” The lump began hurting again, and Herbert growled as if he’d heard what they were talking about, slightly turning his head in their direction. “’scuse me,” Charlie muttered and ducked into the enclosure. Herbert had been asleep most of the time in the last days, and Charlie had been afraid he wouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye. “Hey, big boy,” he said now and approached the Vipertooth to kneel down in front of his enormous head. “How are you?”

  Herbert grunted a huff, nuzzling his snout into Charlie’s hand.

  “It’ll be fine,” Charlie said, “wherever you will go, I’m sure you’ll feel warm and … welcome.” He sniffled. “And you’ll be remembered.” He began tickling his cheeks for the last time, at least the one he could reach. 

  Herbert hummed a deep, low tone of comfort, his eyes drooping closed again.

  Charlie swallowed thickly. “Goodbye, my friend.” He leaned down to press his forehead against the dragon’s head for some seconds, then he nodded to himself, got up and left the enclosure. “Let’s go back,” he mumbled at Draco, not meeting the grey eyes, and marched back to his hut.

  The bed felt larger with Draco beside him than it ever had sharing it with one of his brothers. Lying on his side, facing Draco’s back, he felt almost too far away, as if they were two poles of a magnet that could only feel whole when they touched. Skin on skin. Draco’s warmth seemed to stretch its tendrils through the whole bedding, luring him closer, tempting him to do even more than just touch him, to pull him as close as possible and … He didn’t know.

  Huh. 

  “May I get closer?” he asked eventually, finding that silent contemplations of this matter didn’t bring him anywhere, and certainly no sleep.

  “… Why?”

  “Dunno,” he murmured, “just a feeling.”

  Draco glanced over his shoulder, a frown creasing his forehead. “A feeling?”

  “Yeah. Y’know, that emotional stuff that makes your body feel weird?”

  He groaned. 

  And Charlie smirked to himself. Then he became serious again. “It just feels like it’d be right to be closer to you. Might be a soulmate thing, and if it’s fine by you, I’d like to test it.”

  He even heard Draco swallow. And for at least a full minute, he didn’t react. But at long last, he murmured a timid, “Okay,” so soft it almost got lost between the sheets. 

  “Really?”

  He took a deep breath. “Yes. That feeling … I have it, too. Might as well see what it is, I guess.”

  Charlie hummed softly, then he scooted closer and wrapped an arm around Draco’s middle.

  He sucked in a breath when his naked chest met Draco’s naked back, a feeling completely foreign to Charlie and more intense than he’d ever expected. Warm and soft, and although a bit sticky, just right. As if his arms were the place Draco was meant to be.

  Maybe it was.

  “Okay?” Charlie murmured after a moment.

  “Yes, um … yes.” 

  The lean body nestled against Charlie’s as only his younger siblings sometimes had been nestled against him when they’d had a nightmare and slipped into his bed for comfort, Charlie exhaled slowly. And when he inhaled again, Draco’s scent, a mixture of something tangy and the fading hint of an aftershave, filled his nostrils. It gave him a sort of calm feeling in the pit of his stomach he’d never felt before, and goosebumps that ran down his spine and his arms in the best way possible. It made his heart beat faster at first, then slowed it down as if it had finally found peace. All of that corny stuff he’d always thought had to be made-up—suddenly, he was in the midst of it. And it wasn’t nearly as awful as he’d ever thought it would be. “Wow,” he whispered eventually.

  “Yeah,” Draco mumbled back. “That soulmate bond thing hits hard …”

  Charlie chuckled into his neck. “It does.” Relaxing into the contact, which was soothing something he hadn’t realised was aching, Charlie closed his eyes and soon fell asleep.

  The impulse was strong enough it rattled the whole hut, making them both flinch from their sleep and sit up, the crackle of magic marking each of their movements.

  “What the hell …” Draco muttered.

  Charlie, however, gulped, turning his head in the direction he knew Herbert’s enclosure was. Closing his stinging eyes, he hid his face behind his hands. Goodbye, big boy. 

  “What was that?”

  He brushed his hand along his nose. “Herbert.”

  “Oh … Oh, Merlin!”

  His last exclamation probably came from the lament the dragons intoned then, a mixture of high-pitched shrieks and low roars that made the hairs on Charlie’s arms stand on end, even hearing it for the fifth time since he’d begun working here. Closing his eyes, he opened himself for the pain of the creatures he’d dedicated his life to, letting it wash through him and finding that for a while, he didn’t feel quite as alone with his grief about losing Herbert. 

  It was about a minute or two until he blinked and looked around at Draco again, who was sitting upright in bed, almost looking shell-shocked. 

  “What’s wrong?” Charlie murmured, just loud enough to be heard above the lament.

  He shook his head, only briefly, his face as pale as a piece of parchment. “It’s just … terrifying, is all.”

  “They won’t come in here, you’re safe.”

  “I know.” He swallowed, wincing at an especially loud roar rattling the hut.

  Glinda, Charlie thought at a spike of his pulse. He’d recognise their Ironbelly’s roar everywhere. Normally, it was a cheeky roar, tinted with defiance, a sound that made him bark out a laugh, because he knew she was hand-tame most of the time. Now, however, it was filled with rage and pain at having to let one of her best friends go. A tear slipped down Charlie’s cheek when he blinked, and he brushed it away covertly.

  “You’re surprisingly calm,” Draco remarked at last, probably after realising that the hut would indeed not collapse. 

  “I’m not,” he murmured, “just looks like it.” 

  “Oh.”

  He huffed a mirthless laugh. “’m sorry. If you want to leave, that’s fine. I’m sure the Portkey works from inside the hut, too.” His voice trembled a bit on the last words, as did his chin, which he hid behind his arms lying crossed on his bent knees.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  Dunno. So far, he’d always been alone when a dragon had left them. Had had the space he’d craved to mourn their deaths, something he felt nobody could understand, not even most of his colleagues, because although they loved their work, nobody seemed to bond as intensely with the dragons as he did. Nobody seemed to feel like a part of their heart was ripped out when one of them died. That was the most private part of him, the one thing he’d never shared with anybody. And normally wouldn’t have thought to ever share.

  Yet he had been fine with Draco staying tonight. He’d known about the risk. That he might be here when Herbert died and … had decided to let him stay. So … Maybe he wanted to share this part of him after all. 

  He couldn’t speak, though, so he just shrugged his shoulders without looking up, let alone looking at Draco.

  “Because I don’t want to leave,” the man whispered. “This is terrifying, like … like a war …” He gulped. “But also … beautiful?”

  “It is,” he mumbled in a husky voice.

  “I'd like to stay, if that’s okay.”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes.”

  For a moment, Draco fell silent, and only the dragons’ lament shooed away the silence. Then he touched Charlie’s shoulder and said, “I could do with some more of that soulmate bond thing. How ‘bout you?”

  Charlie huffed a trembling laugh and tried for several seconds to get himself back in check enough to give Draco an intelligible answer, but he failed. So he nodded again and lay back down, welcoming a pair of arms to loop around his torso, a body to press against his, a presence to soothe his pain in one of those nights he’d always spent alone crying from a heartache nobody seemed to be able to understand. 

  Maybe, he thought, his nose buried into the crook of Draco’s neck, freedom is more than owing nobody anything after all.

  “Do you have to work today?” Draco asked, his voice still husky from sleep, when the sun had long crept high into the sky, bathing the front of his hut in golden light.

  “No. I’ve got the day off today.” Initially, he’d planned to spend his free time with Herbert, but … He swallowed against the lump trying to sneak back into his throat.

  “Want me to stay for a while longer?”

  Charlie frowned and blinked at the blond mop of hair underneath his chin. “What about your work?”

  “Don’t care.”

  Huh? “What about your father?”

  “He can—” Draco interrupted himself from saying what probably had been meant to become a fuck himself, and cleared his throat. “—think about his attitude,” he eventually mumbled and sat up.

  “I mean … My home is your home!” Charlie smirked despite himself, for a moment distracted by the soulmate mark covering the whole back in front of him. It was a beautiful mark, and the first time Charlie saw it up close. Studying his own in front of the mirror had proven tricky. 

  Then Draco looked around at him with a frown and distracted him. “Are you serious?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “It’s just a hut I don’t even own anyway. And you’re surprisingly nice to have to cuddle at night. Who would have thought with how skinny you are?” He poked one of Draco’s vertebrae. They stood out on his back like a bead chain, even though the mark hid it a bit.

  “Hey!”

  “Ticklish?” he teased.

  “Hellishly! And I will kick to escape.”

  Charlie clicked his tongue. “Better not risk that, then.”

  Draco shrugged his eyebrows, a sly smirk curving his mouth.

  “Well,” Charlie said and sat up too, “how about you use our bathroom first, while I make us some breakfast?”

  “Sounds perfect. I guess I may use our towels, too?”

  “You may. Actually, you may have everything here, except for the drawings. Lay a finger on them and you will regret it.”

  “Naturally,” Draco huffed and scrambled out of bed. 

  Charlie watched him leave, his chin resting on his crossed arms. It really is you … unbelievable.

  They spent the whole day together, Draco reading one of the books he’d found on Charlie’s shelves, Charlie catching up on some reports he had to write. It was a peaceful being together, they didn’t even talk much. And even though Charlie was overcome by his grief every now and then, he didn’t feel uncomfortable having Draco around and witnessing it.

  On the contrary. He even went and plopped down on the sofa beside him before scooting around and resting his head in Draco’s lap, his legs dangling over the armrest. 

  Uttering a surprised sound, Draco raised the book and looked down at Charlie. “You know, it’s polite to ask people before you do stuff like that.”

  “What did you expect? I live among dragons, they just trot up to you and squash you.”

  Draco huffed a disbelieving laugh. “I can’t believe it’s you,” he muttered, more to himself.

  “Is it the dragon stuff or the red hair that throws you off most?”

  Cocking his head, Draco frowned. “That I don’t really mind either, actually.”

  Charlie hummed softly, his gaze jumping back and forth between Draco’s grey eyes. “You need to tell Astoria about this, Draco.”

  The comfort of their position vanished within a split second, and Draco shut the book, becoming so restless that Charlie sat up and scooted around so he could get up. “Why?” he asked. “This has nothing to do with her. We don’t want to make this public anyway, right?”

  “Right,” Charlie said slowly. “But I won’t play a game of hide and seek with your future wife. When you’re here, I want to be sure she knows and is fine with it.”

  Draco whirled around. “But why? My marriage isn’t even your business!”

  “But the way you treat others to be with me is.” He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. His legs tingled, compelling him to stand up, too, but he had the feeling imposing himself on Draco wouldn’t help matters. “I’d never get into something with a married person behind the back of their spouse, and my soulmate won’t be an exception.”

  “Get into something?” Draco huffed. “Didn’t you tell me you’re not like that? No sex and all of that?”

  “I am. But sharing a bed and cuddling half-naked can hardly be called a simple friendship either now, can it? And the fact that you blew a fuse the moment I mentioned it only supports that.”

  Draco’s features hardened and he clenched his hands into fists, standing in the middle of the living room, all but vibrating from the intensity of his emotions. “It’s not fair that you demand that from me.”

  “It’s not fair that you want me to play along with your plan either.” He sighed and brushed his mouth. “Look, I don’t care what you do about your parents. Tell them or don't, I don’t mind. But Astoria will be your wife. It’s never a good idea to build a marriage on secrets. Not when divorce is not an option. Wizards get old. That’s a lot of years to hate each other’s guts if she finds out by accident.”

  Draco turned away with a gasp that sounded like Charlie had kicked him, and rubbed his face. 

  Which was something that felt so much like surrender that Charlie dared to get up at last. He went over and pulled Draco’s lean body against his own, crossing his arms over the younger man’s chest. “It wouldn’t be fair to her, Draco,” he murmured in his ear.

  And after another moment—Draco had long since curled his hands around Charlie’s forearms—he nodded. 

Chapter Text

  When he opened the door, Draco stumbled a step back, hit by the sight of his scowling father. What … “What are you doing here?”

  He arched a blond eyebrow. “A good morning to you, too.”

  Ugh. “Good morning. What are you doing here? Are you waiting for me to leave my room?”

  A crease formed on his forehead. “Hardly. I just wanted to knock as you opened the door.”

  “Mh,” Draco murmured. “And how can I help you?” He stepped out onto the hall at last, pulling the door closed.

  “By answering me where you were yesterday, for a start.”

  “I was with Theo. As I told you.” He held his father’s gaze for a second longer, then he turned and walked down the hallway, slowly enough for Lucius to keep up with him, because this was not a flight. Of course not.

  “Well, what would you say if I told you that I know for a fact that you have not been with Theo?”

  Bugger. Stopping himself from swallowing, one of his telltale signs of being caught lying, Draco retorted, “My answer would be the same, complemented by stating that spying on me won’t give you what you want, Father.” He was about to turn into the dining parlour where a table was set for breakfast, when Lucius grabbed his arm.

  “When will you stop holding the things that happened seven years ago against me?”

  Clenching his teeth, Draco pulled out of his grip. “When looking at you doesn’t make me angry anymore,” he hissed, unable to stop his lip from curling. But it was satisfying to see his father’s telltale sign of being hurt when Lucius’s nostrils twitched. 

  “You know I never meant for all of that to happen.”

  “Yet it did. And given the fact that you paid your way out of any official penalty, it’s only fair that you have to endure an unofficial one now, isn’t it?”

  “I paid your way out of any penalty as well!” Lucius ground out. “A fact you prefer to leave unmentioned.”

  “Because you haven’t!” he blurted. “Not really! It’s me, all eyes are watching. It’s me who has to visit those stupid events! It’s me you expect to clear your name! How am I free of penalty, Father?”

  “If you think that is a penalty, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, right! Because I have never been in Azkaban.”

  He took a deep breath, paling a bit. “Exactly.” 

  “Know what? I wish I’d been! Maybe then you wouldn’t tell me that a house-elf would be quicker to understand what I seem too thick to learn.” Now he did swallow, hit unprepared by how much the remark that had driven him to Charlie the other day still hurt.

  Lucius grimaced and briefly looked away. “I apologise for that,” he murmured, “I was stressed, but I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Draco huffed softly. Shouldn’t have said that, not I didn’t mean it. “Never mind,” he spat, “I'd rather be stupider as a house-elf than devious like you. Really, I wish they’d sent you back to Azkaban. Would’ve spared both of us, Mother and me, a lot of trouble.” With that, he whirled around and headed down the hall, his appetite gone.

  Narcissa found him when he just sent off a letter from the Manor’s owlery. She was suddenly standing behind him, making him jump. “For Merlin’s sake, Mother!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes following the bird that was getting smaller in the sky. “Was that a letter to Astoria?”

  He sighed silently. “Yes. I invited her and her family over for the weekend.”

  She, however, did not bother to keep her relief silent. “Good.”

  Of course. “Don’t worry, I’ll be a good son and keep the family tradition of marrying out of convenience alive.” 

  Her gaze snapped back to him. “What is wrong with you, Draco?”

  What isn't? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. First, you disappear for a whole day, now you are picking fights with us … Something has changed, and I cannot shake the feeling that it has something to do with Mr Weasley’s visit the other day.” She reached out to brush a strand of hair from his face that a gust of wind had freed from behind his ear.

  Draco had to force himself not to recoil from the touch. “I assure you, nothing has changed. I’m courting Astoria and hope she will agree to become my wife when I ask her the next time we meet, I’m working to understand Father’s business, and I will do my utmost to clear our family’s name.”

  She hummed softly, her eyes a tad bit narrower than usual. “That you do,” she agreed in a soft voice, “yet you are lying to us.”

  Do—not—swallow! “If you’re talking about Father’s accusation, I wouldn’t have been with Theo yesterday—”

  She withdrew her hand and interrupted him, “I’m not.”

  Oh? “What are you talking about then?”

  “The fact that there are no plans to organise a charity event for the dragon reserve, and never have been.”

  Fuck. He swallowed.

  A fact that elicited a tiny, calculated smile from his mother. “Don’t worry, Draco, I haven’t told your father, and I don’t plan to do so. You are an adult, and I trust that you know what you can handle on your own and what you might need help with. I just want you to remember that I will always be there if you need me.”

  Will you? Really? He had an inkling that all of her understanding would go right out the window if he told her about his soulmate mark and what Charlie began to mean to him. “Okay,” he choked out nevertheless. As she’d said, he was an adult, he could handle it.

  “Still, I would ask you to refrain from arguing with your father so openly. The staff doesn’t need to know your state of mind.”

  Staff! The two house-elves maintaining the Manor could hardly be called staff. “Yeah, of course,” Draco mumbled and returned the nod his mother gave him before she turned to leave.

  But at the door, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “If you plan to propose to Astoria, remember to get your grandmother’s engagement ring, will you? It won’t do to have nothing to show.”

  He nodded, his cheek giving a traitorous twitch of the grimace he’d tried to quell.

  Naturally, Narcissa noticed it, but she didn’t remark on it. Just finally left after all.

  Draco exhaled deeply and rubbed his face. Merlin, life would be so much easier in a hut in Romania …

  “I have no idea how he could’ve found out! I didn’t even leave the house after you left for Romania!”

  “It’s not your fault,” Draco sighed and slumped onto the couch. “Father is just …”

  Theo grimaced miserably. 

  “Honestly, it was more impressive when I was still a child.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to get rid of the tiredness the board meeting had left him with. For two hours, first his father and then some other old men had talked about things Draco did understand but had only learned to against his will. At the end, he’d convinced himself that the whole meeting had been nothing more than a payback for the things he’d said to Lucius yesterday. He did go to apologise in the evening, but his father had never been one to accept apologies easily. Especially when he knew perfectly well that they were not genuine. 

  But Draco just couldn’t apologise wholeheartedly. He’d meant everything he’d said.

  “What will you do about Charlie now?” Theo snapped him out of his thoughts.

  “Nothing. I won’t give them the chance to take that away from me, too. Honestly, even if he followed me to Romania, I’d give a flying fuck about it. I’ll marry Astoria, it’s all they can ask for.”

  Theo’s miserable expression turned into a smirk. “Look at you,” he chortled, “first you weren’t even sure you’d want to meet him, and now you’d commit your life to him in a heartbeat.”

  “Stop that.”

  “Why? It’s true. And it’s good! I’m happy for you.” He smiled.

  “Dunno what’s good about that … Makes everything more complicated.” Sighing, he took a sip of the butterbeer Theo had given him.

  “Yeah, I mean … That’s how relationships are. How people are! Still worth it, though, isn’t it?”

  Draco shrugged. Was it worth it? Maybe. Sometimes, he did mourn the clarity he’d had before he met Charlie. It wasn’t a life he loved to live, but it was structured, and he knew what he had to do. Had wanted to do it, even! Marrying, taking over the business in due time, clearing the name Malfoy … Sure, it wasn’t as if he’d had a choice, but even when he’d still been a child, he’d looked forward to carrying on the Malfoy legacy. He’d always wanted to do that, had liked being a part of something larger than him. 

  Now … 

  Now everything wasn’t different, but things had become murkier. He did want to carry on the Malfoy legacy, but it wasn’t the most important thing to him anymore. Working towards that wasn’t the most important thing to him anymore. He wanted to spend as much time as possible with Charlie, not show up at events, study business theories, or plan his future as a family man. 

  In fact, he found himself planning how he could manage all of that, spending time with Charlie and being a husband and father at the same time without everything crashing and burning, and every time he did, he ended up realising that Charlie had been right.

  He did need to tell Astoria.

  More complicated, that’s all this is at the moment.

  Theo was watching him attentively when Draco snapped out of his silent contemplations, a fact that made his face heat up. “I could’ve done well without it,” he muttered and sipped his butterbeer again. “Anyway, what about you? Why didn’t you leave the house the other day?”

  Theo smirked. “Company was too good.”

  Ugh, what else? “Did she use the Floo to come here?”

  “Nope, she Apparated.”

  Draco clicked his tongue.

  “Told you I didn’t know how he found out.”

  “Yeah … I’m still dumb enough to hope.”

  He’d asked Astoria for a walk when they were finished eating, leaving their parents and her constantly scowling sister behind to have a chance for a private talk. Her arm was linked with his, the subtle scent of a flowery perfume thankfully drowning out the scent of the roses surrounding them, and Draco was annoyingly confused every time he looked at her and didn’t find the mop of red hair he’d become used to so laughably easily. 

  I’m absolutely screwed, he found himself thinking while she admired the huge blossoming buds which were his mother’s pride and joy, and how the sunlight revealed that they were indeed deep red and not black. If she tells me to fuck off, I’m absolutely screwed.

  Her eyes, brown and deep and always a little bit guarded, fastened on his face again. “It’s beautiful, Draco, thank you for taking me here.”

  He smiled, as he should. “I assumed you’d enjoy it.”

  “I do.” She quickly looked at the ground and their feet, slowly carrying them around the rosarium. “But that is not the only reason you brought me here, is it?”

  Fuck. He took a deep breath, like his Aunt Bellatrix had taught him back when Occlumency had been his only tool of survival, and his spiking pulse calmed a bit. It did nothing, however, to quell the prickle rushing through his body. Merlin, if only he didn’t have to tell her that … 

  But Charlie deserved better than to be a dirty little secret. And Astoria deserved better than a marriage that would be founded on a dirty little secret. So he swallowed and forced himself to say, “No.”

  It was unexpectedly painful to see the defeated little nod and her downcast face. “You don’t want this anymore,” she murmured.

  But he clasped her arm tighter when she tried to withdraw. “That’s not it,” he assured and met her eyes. “Really. You just …” He wet his lips. “I need to tell you something before I propose to you, because … maybe you’ll be the one who doesn’t want this anymore then.”

  A frown crinkled her forehead. “What do you mean?”

  In for a Sickle, in for a Galleon. “When we visited that memorial,” he began, “I ran into somebody. Literally.”

  “Okay.”

  Another deep breath. “They … turned out to be my soulmate.” Draco kept his eyes ahead, his hands stiff from not curling them into fists, and held his breath, waiting for Astoria to say something.

  But she stopped dead in her tracks instead, forcing him to look at her again. Her face was blank, a bit paler than before, her mouth hanging open—something he’d never seen her do. Then she blinked and pressed out, “You have a soulmate?”

  He gulped. “Yes.”

  Astoria huffed what sounded like a bitter little laugh and withdrew her arm from his for good. “Who is she?”

  Merlin, help me … “It’s a man.”

  Instantly, her eyes snapped back up, now even more shocked. Shocked enough, in fact, that her mannerly facade cracked and a hushed, “You are gay?” escaped her mouth.

  “No,” he said and brushed his hand down his face. “And neither is he. It’s not that kind of … bond.”

  She took a sharp breath and straightened back up, her mouth pinched and her eyes looking at a spot on the gravel path. “Who is he?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Why not? Don’t you think I deserve to know?”

  Fuck. He was screwing this up, wasn’t he? He blinked repeatedly, occluding some more. “Yes, you do,” he answered calmly, “if you decide to marry me. Otherwise … this is my private business.”

  Astoria exhaled in a huff. “You shouldn’t marry if there’s someone else you love,” she said and went on, her shoulders pulled back into the stiff, straight posture she’d probably been taught when she was still a little girl, most likely with some ruthless charm forcing her to hold it for hours on end. 

  “I have to,” he said, his voice equally stiff. “And I want to. Just because I have a soulmate doesn’t mean I should be denied a family of my own, now, should I?”

  She slowed her steps a bit, casting him glances from the corner of her eye while she contemplated his words. “I suppose so,” she admitted at long last.

  Oh, thank Merlin! All hope was not lost, then. “You and the children we would hopefully have would always be my top priority—just not the only one. I never expected that to happen, but …” He gulped again, finding his throat blocked all of a sudden, the words stuck between his brain and his mouth. 

  Astoria stopped and faced him again. “But?” she pressed.

  Draco clenched his teeth, his palms clammy, and between his shoulder blades a prickle he wanted to believe was coming from his soulmate mark, because he could imagine it was Charlie’s warm hand supporting him through this then. “But … I need him in my life,” he almost whispered, mortified at how strung up it sounded, how desperate. “I-I don’t think I can do without him anymore. I’m sorry.” He tore his eyes away, blinking rapidly to drive away the sting he hadn’t seen coming.

  “Oh, Draco,” she murmured and touched his arm. 

  “I’m fine,” he said quickly, and looked at her again, lips curved into a smile he didn’t feel.

  But it was apparently pitiful enough that she linked her arm with his again and pulled him forward, farther away from their parents than they already were. “I don’t want to come between you and your … soulmate. I heard it is a unique bond.”

  “It is,” he felt compelled to confirm, keeping his voice cool, though.

  “But what if he comes between us?” She cast him another glance. “I mean, I never assumed you’d truly love me. Love is not a requirement for a marriage in the world we live in, after all.”

  He huffed.

  “But I want my husband to be my partner. To stand by my side. To respect and value me. If we don’t stand united, we will lose each other and end up hurting.”

  “I will,” he said and meant it. “I will stand by your side. And I already respect and value you.” He grimaced, but looking into her wavering eyes again, he gave himself a kick and added, “Honestly, I was … am, scared stiff to tell you, didn’t even want to do it initially. But—” He stopped himself before he could say Charlie’s name. “He said I’d have to. And he was right. You deserve to know.” He swallowed compulsively. “I swear to Merlin that I will never disappoint you, and if I do, I want you to tell me so it won’t happen again. I will never humiliate you, I will never betray you.” He huffed a laugh that came out bitterer than planned, but before he could lose his nerves, he went on, “Honestly, I saw what happens to a couple if humiliation and betrayal move in, and I swore to myself that I will never do that to my wife.”

  Sympathy flitted over her face. “How can you be sure about that?”

  “Because I decided to make it happen.”

  She sucked in a breath; whether it was because of what he said or how he said it, though, he couldn’t tell. “Okay,” she whispered and turned to get going again. “So if I want you to stay at home instead of going to see him, you would do that?”

  For a split second, he hesitated. “Yes,” he said then, “yes. As long as you don’t use that against me …” He caught her eyes again. “I want you to be my partner just as much as vice versa, Astoria. I want your respect, too. I will support you in everything that makes you happy, but I expect you to support me in everything that makes me happy, too.”

  “Everything,” she murmured softly, a frown creasing her forehead again. “Are you speaking about affairs as well?”

  “No. As I said, I’d never betray you. I’m not overly interested in … that anyway. I think I might be fine with it if that were something you’d like to pursue, though.” He swallowed and cast her a glance. “Discreetly, that is.” 

  She stared at him, perplexed. “That is … a lot.”

  He twisted his face. “I know. Please, think about this before you agree to marry me.” Please don’t punish me somewhere down the road.

  She got a bit teary-eyed, although he couldn’t tell why. “I will,” she said softly and put her free hand on his forearm, leaning closer. “I will.”

  I told her, he charmed onto his coins when he’d retreated to his rooms that evening.

  It didn’t take Charlie long to respond. Well?

  Draco grimaced and rubbed his tired eyes. She will think about it. When the words had vanished, he added, Whether she can do it.

  Clever woman.

  Draco smiled lopsidedly. She is. He hesitated. Then he raised his wand and nudged the coin again. I hope she agrees. I really like her. 

  She will. 

  “How do you know?” he whispered, remembering all of Astoria’s wary glances and hesitating answers. He wasn’t sure at all she would accept. And he couldn’t even blame her! It was rather strange, this whole thing. 

  Then the coin vibrated again in his hand. If she’s the right one for you, she will agree. And if she doesn’t …  The words stayed for some seconds, then they vanished and were replaced by the second part of the message. … you’ll find someone else. You’re not alone, we’ll figure that out. 

  Draco brushed his hand along his nose, nodding to himself. Then he replied, If she agrees, you two should meet.

  Sure, Charlie wrote back, and Draco could hear him say it. You and my family should meet, too, eventually.

  “Oh, hell no!” Draco muttered, but then he chuckled despite himself. We’ll see about that, he sent back and grinned when he heard Charlie’s laugh in his mind. 

  For about a minute, neither of them sent a message, but Draco couldn’t bring himself to put the coin away. There was a dull, aching throb in his chest ever since he’d left Romania, and he knew it’d become worse when he accepted that that would be all the talking they’d do today. 

  Yet he was still contemplating what else he could write when the coin hummed again in his hand. The words, I miss you, swam into existence, and Draco’s heart skipped a beat. 

  “Fuck.” Was he serious? And what was he supposed to answer to that? 

  His hand was trembling a bit when he wrote back, I miss you, too. 

  “Please don’t tell me it was a joke,” he mumbled to himself, staring at the coin so hard that everything else seemed to blur around it. “Don’t do that to me …”

  He sucked in a breath when it vibrated again. When can you come over again, then?

  “Oh, thank Merlin!” He slumped, and the coin almost slipped from his fingers when it announced another message. 

  Or do you want me to visit you next?

  Draco smiled and skidded up higher on his bed to lean against the headboard before he replied, I’d love you to visit me, but it’d only end in a mess. When the words had disappeared, he added, I’ll try to come over at the weekend.

  Bring some spare clothes and a toothbrush, Charlie wrote back, eliciting a bright smile from Draco. 

  I will, he answered and—assuming that Charlie wouldn’t write anything more now—closed his hand around the coin, a strange fluttering feeling in his stomach. “How dare you make me feel like that, Weasley?” he muttered, smiling sheepishly, and slipped underneath his duvet before extinguishing the lights.

Five years later

  Scorpius’s wails were loud enough not even the closed bathroom door could block them out, and Astoria closed her eyes. He’s fine, she told herself, Draco will manage, it’s okay. Blinking, she finished brushing her damp hair and put on her dressing gown.

  When she left the bathroom, she looked at the stairs, then at the bedroom. Still a bit unfamiliar, all of it, even after two months of living here in Romania. But her brain was slowly beginning to understand that her family and friends were only a couple of Apparitions away. And that they had an amount of privacy here they never had in England. Plus, Draco had promised her. “Let's try it for a year,” he'd said, “and if you still hate it, we move back at once.” So she'd agreed. Constantly travelling back and forth between Romania and England had exhausted him; she couldn't stand seeing the dark circles under his eyes anymore. 

  It was Draco’s voice, humming a lullaby for their son, that snapped her out of her reverie and made her sneak downstairs, her naked feet completely silent on the smooth floor. She peered into the salon and caught her lips between her teeth, watching her men. Scorpius’s crying made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, Draco’s attempts at soothing him made her tear up. 

  She smiled when he spotted her. 

  He smiled back, albeit waveringly. “I wish I knew what’s wrong with him,” he said.

  “We all do,” she sighed and went over to kiss her baby’s bald head. “I think he’s just nervous.”

  Draco harrumphed and began rocking him again. 

  Just like his father, she added silently. It's been a rough week for him, approaching the dinner with his parents to tell them about Charlie. After almost five years of not living with them under one roof anymore and becoming a father himself, their relationship had improved enough that he'd decided to take the leap. That didn't mean, however, that he wasn't scared stiff about it.

  A knock on the front door, causing him to wince and breathe, “Oh, thank Merlin!” before he hurried off, was proof of that.

  “Numpty,” Astoria smiled and followed them slowly.

  “Hi, big boy,” she heard Charlie say, “What’s wrong, eh? Bad day?”

  “Bad week”, she chimed in and joined the men in the hall. Charlie had taken hold of Scorpius; the small body of the baby almost disappeared behind his huge hands. “Draco is making him nervous,” she added and pushed herself on tiptoes to kiss the redhead’s cheek. 

  “Hey …”

  “It’s true, love. You’ve been on edge the whole week. Hi, Charlie.”

  “Hi.”

  “Want me to take him?”

  “No, I’m fine. He loves me,” he grinned confidently, although it didn’t seem like his charm was working on Scorpius today.

  “I wonder why.” She smiled and turned to her husband. “Get showered, Draco, I cannot welcome your parents alone, now can I?”

  “You could welcome the Minister alone, but I won’t make you. Just a minute, okay?” Draco kissed her, his hand resting on the small of her back for a moment.

  Merlin, I love you … A warm, tingly feeling spread through her whole body, making her smile like an idiot, as Daphne kept saying. “I cannot understand what drew you to him. He’s a cocky ponce.” Maybe. But he’s my cocky ponce, she thought and pecked his lips again when he withdrew. Plus, he was only a cocky ponce when Daphne or somebody else he didn’t feel comfortable around was there. As soon as they were alone, or as soon as Charlie was there, his cool demeanour melted to reveal a man who knew what it meant to hurt and who tried to do his best to do that to no-one else.

  He smiled at her, then the sudden silence distracted him, and he looked back at Charlie. “Oh, come on, Scorpius! You just had a bottle!”

  “He really had,” she murmured, watching her son suckle on the man’s pinky.

  “I think he’s teething, not hungry.”

  “Excuse me?!” Draco gawked. 

  “But he’s only four months old!” Astoria exclaimed.

  “I got my first tooth at five months,” Charlie smirked.

  She groaned. “Marvellous. I’m sure your parents will love spending their evening with a crying baby.”

  “I’ll pop over to the apothecary when you’re dressed,” Charlie offered, directed at her, “it'll be all right.”

  Instantly, she got teary-eyed again. “Thank you!” she said with abandon. 

  “I wouldn’t know what I’d do without you,” Draco sighed.

  “Neither do I, honestly,” the redhead grinned. “How did you survive before we met?”

  “Luck and spite, I guess.”

  “Get in the shower, then,” she reminded Draco and touched his hand, receiving a squeeze in return. 

  “I’m on my way.”

  He clearly was not, but she decided to let it slip and turned to head back upstairs and get dressed. 

  On the landing, she stopped, though, and looked back down to the men. Draco and Charlie were talking softly, and she sighed silently when she saw the fragile expression on her husband’s face. Although he did talk with her about his worries, feelings, and wishes, there was a level of vulnerability he only seemed to be able to share with Charlie. She knew how he was feeling about today, they’d talked about it a lot, he’d never turned her off. But the comfort she was able to give him was limited. A part of his soul seemed to be reserved for Charlie’s reassurances, hugs, and forehead kisses. 

  During the first year of their marriage, it had been hard for her to watch it. Despite everything she’d expected, she’d found herself falling for him, and that her love for him seemed to run deeper than his for her had given her a hard time. 

  Then, however … Then she’d come to realise that it wasn’t that easy. Love could not be measured up like that, and as she succeeded in taking a step back and watching Draco’s behaviour around her separately from what he had with Charlie, she’d seen that Draco did indeed love her as much as she loved him. She just wasn’t the only person he loved. 

  And not only that, she also realised that what he and Charlie were sharing was something she would never be able to give him—and shouldn’t expect herself to be able to give him. They were not soulmates, and didn’t need to be. They were still exceptionally good for each other. Draco’s love for Charlie didn’t diminish that, it just added to it.

  After that, it had become easier for her to accept that Charlie and Draco were sharing something that went beyond what she would ever experience, and although she was sometimes a bit jealous of that, of the magic of soulmates she would probably never get to know, she didn’t feel threatened anymore by Charlie’s presence in their lives. Yes, Charlie could give Draco something she would never be able to give him—but she could also give Draco something Charlie would never be able to give him. She was just as important to him, she had her place by his side.

  So she smiled as she now watched the redhead first hug Draco lopsidedly, the baby thankfully slumbering in his arm for the moment, then kiss her husband’s forehead. As every time he did that, there was an expression of … almost shock on Draco’s face. She always wondered what he was still shocked about, after all those years. But maybe it just wasn’t that easy to reconcile the state of utter vulnerability with how good those moments felt, because a split second later, the shock turned into something else, something that reminded her of the feeling of coming home.

  No matter what your parents think about this, love, she thought, it’ll be fine. We’ll still have each other.

  Nodding to herself, she left them to have their moment in private.