FIC: Harry Potter Gives a Shit (Harry/Draco) - Part 2

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Title: Harry Potter Gives a Shit
Author: talithan
Prompt: 42
Adapted from: Queer as Folk
Pairing: Harry/Draco, Harry/Others
Word Count: ~58,000 words
Rating: NC-17
Contains (Highlight to view): * drug and alcohol abuse, bisexuality (and accordingly, references to het sex), elements of PTSD*
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Many, many thanks to 9fn432 for the beta and reassurance (particularly in that final stretch!), to E for the feedback and encouragement, and to L for being my sounding board and assuring me I could do this. You all were invaluable and I truly could not have pulled this off without you ♥ Endless thanks to the lovely mods for their patience with me and their generous extensions as I completed this monster of a story, and for running this wonderful fest!

Also, an enormous thank you to ashiiblack for this prompt! I was immediately intrigued by it—primarily because I initially couldn’t imagine how to reconcile the Brian and Justin characters with Harry and Draco in an EWE scenario, which of course meant I had to try to figure out how to do so. The preference for EWE over AU and the request (requirement, even) that one of them be an Auror shaped this fic the most. Because of those factors, this adaptation is a bit loose, though all of does have its roots in the plot and characters of QaF. I hope you like it!

(The title?)

Summary: “Where are you headed?”

“No place special,” Draco fumbled, and flushed further.

But then:

“I can change that,” said Harry Potter.





Part I



PART 2: Coming and Then Going

Losing his virginity doesn’t change Draco’s life. The other Auror trainees still mock and avoid him. His mother still worries. His father still gives him judgmental looks instead of speaking to him. He still goes for drinks with Astoria, and to lunch, and spends nights on her sofa. He sees Weasley every day. He sees Granger when she comes in to see Weasley, and he goes through the motions of their coffee routine.

And he sees Harry at the Muggle club, which he now frequents. The first time, Harry is dancing with someone else when Draco gets there. Draco dances close and makes eyes at Harry’s partner, and soon enough the man decides that Draco is a more tempting prospect. Harry doesn’t like this; he takes Draco to the loo and fucks him hard from behind, standing in a cramped stall. Draco thinks that’s the end of it, but Harry takes him home and blows him, and after Draco returns the favour, Harry passes out. Draco Floos to Astoria’s and sleeps on her sofa and tries to make sense of what happened.

The second time, two weeks later, Harry comes up next to him at the bar and gropes him without ceremony. “We’re leaving,” he says low in Draco’s ear. A man has just bought Draco a drink, and he glares at Harry, but it seems half-hearted; he understands that no one could get an offer from Harry and not take it. Harry’s stairway seems exceedingly long, and they only make it to the first floor, fucking on a couch in some neglected sitting room. Afterwards, Harry is very quiet, and Draco follows his lead, leaving without a word.

The third time is almost three weeks after the second. Harry dances with him and they snog right there on the dance floor, pressed against each other and moving to their own rhythm. When they get back to Harry’s room, Harry doesn’t seem to want to stop kissing him, not for a second. He falls asleep curled around Draco, who extricates himself and goes home.

It still doesn’t mean anything.

Most of the time, Draco has sex with complete strangers, and each time he thinks it should feel much more novel and much less commonplace than it does.





When he sees Granger and Ginny Weasley out in Diagon Alley on a Saturday afternoon, it has been just over two months since Harry first took him home and fucked him and didn’t change his life. He is with Astoria, having just accompanied her to Twilfit and Tatting’s to select a gift for her sister’s birthday. She is telling him a story about her mother’s recent botched hair colouring, and he is laughing in the appropriate places. When he catches sight of Granger and Ginny Weasley, he loses track of Astoria’s tale because Ginny Weasley is holding James, and now Draco can’t think of anything but Harry’s intent look, Harry touching him everywhere, Harry’s mouth on his.

He knows it’s nothing. He knows, but sometimes he forgets for a moment.

Granger sees him, smiles, and waves, and Draco thinks that will be the end of it. But Ginny Weasley sees him too. She smiles too. She waves too. And the pair of women walk over, looking at Draco like he’s an old friend and not someone who was probably snogging that baby’s father at the time of birth.

Astoria has stopped talking about her mother’s hair. She’s staring at them as they approach, wide-eyed, and Draco realises she’s ogling James.

“Is that the baby?” Astoria asks, whispering even though the women are still well out of hearing distance and can see her staring anyway.

Ginny Weasley has been seen out with James twice so far, and he remains a source of intrigue for the public. Despite unforgiving gossip and prodding from the press, she has refused to comment on the identity of the child’s father, or even to confirm that she is his mother. New rumours arose that it was, in fact, Granger and Weasley’s baby (it didn’t seem to matter that Granger clearly had not been pregnant at all in the past year), or the bastard child of one of her other brothers. In the hall last week, Draco passed two witches who suspected the baby was in fact the offspring of Ginny and one of her brothers, and Draco had to fight not to hex them. He understands the desire for privacy, but he isn’t convinced that not acknowledging the gossip was a better defence than publicly refuting it with a small statement to set the facts straight.

Draco isn’t sure how many people know. Aside from the Weasleys themselves, the number could probably be counted on one hand. He’s impressed with Astoria for keeping it to herself; he’d been sure she’d at least let it slip to her sister, but unless Daphne has suddenly grasped the concept of ‘secret’, Astoria has kept quiet.

She stays quiet now, as Granger and Ginny Weasley weave around other shoppers to get to where Draco and Astoria stand, awkwardly unmoving. He forgets sometimes that Astoria is nearly as much of an outsider as he is. She’s never had the social aptitude for real friendships outside of her sister and, since training began, Draco. He feels the sudden and unfamiliar urge to protect her somehow, even though Granger and Ginny Weasley pose no threat.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Ginny Weasley says with a wide smile, and Draco doesn’t know what to say. Not because she’s being unfriendly, as he expected, but because she is being friendly, even though the last time she saw him he had sex with her ex. (And several times since, though Draco isn’t sure whether she knows about that.) She seems entirely genuine, and he truly has no idea what to say. Granger seems to recognise his hesitance; she doesn’t say anything either.

But Astoria does, to Draco’s surprise. “He’s beautiful. What’s his name?”

“Jamie,” Ginny Weasley says proudly.

“He looks just like you,” Astoria tells her, to which she smiles enigmatically.

“Are you two shopping?” Granger asks. Draco wonders if she’s trying to stop the conversation heading towards Jamie’s mysterious parentage. It’s far too obvious a question for her usual standards.

Astoria gestures toward her shopping bag. “It’s my sister’s birthday on Tuesday.”

“Oh, your sister! Is she well?”

No one points out that Granger and Daphne were never on civil terms in school. “Yes, she’s doing very well. She and Theodore Nott are recently engaged.”

“That’s wonderful! Please do give her my congratulations.”

It sounds so forced to Draco, but Granger and Astoria are smiling as though nothing is amiss. He begins to wonder if he can read any of these women at all, or if perhaps everything he thinks he knows about them is all in his head.

“I don’t think we’ve met before,” Ginny Weasley says, shifting James in her arms so she can hold her hand out to Astoria. “I’m Ginny Weasley.”

“I know,” Astoria says, her slight flush the first betrayal of her lack of confidence. “The Harpies are my favourite team. We all missed you this season, Miss Weasley.”

“Oh, please, call me Ginny,” Ginny says warmly, and Draco is so stunned at how surreal the situation is that he forgets how to move or speak altogether.

This, of course, is when a bright flash and puff of smoke calls their attention to a photographer standing ten feet away. He waves, smiles, and Disapparates. Draco wants to follow suit; he’s been able to ignore the staring from surrounding passers-by so far, but now it’s undeniable.

“I’m so sorry about that,” Ginny says, seeming truly apologetic.

Granger shakes her head in annoyance. “They can’t seem to leave Ginny alone lately.”

“Or ever,” Ginny mutters.

“That’s normal?” Astoria asks.

Ginny nods. “There will be something in the Prophet tomorrow.”

“As if lunch and errands are newsworthy,” Granger says scathingly.

“I’m sorry,” says Draco. “I’m sure you weren’t intending to be photographed with me.”

Granger gives him an odd look. “Why should that matter? People know that we’re friends.”

Friends?

Friends.

Well.

Shouldn’t he have known about that before other people found out?

Astoria is visibly surprised. Draco has always described his meetings with Granger as stilted and obligatory, not as coffee with a friend. Ginny, on the other hand, is still smiling in that bright, unaffected way, and Draco realises that Granger has been telling her friends that they’re friends.

“Right,” he says, hoping his confusion hasn’t shown on his face. “Of course.”

“Where were you two headed?” Ginny asks. “We’re on our way to my brother’s shop, and you’re welcome to some joke products, on the house.”

“I have to be home soon, actually,” Astoria answers. “But thank you.”

“And you, Draco?” Granger prompts.

He looks to Astoria, who nods just slightly.

“I’d love to,” he tries. Even as he says it, he isn’t sure whether it’s true.

They say their goodbyes to Astoria (Ginny even says it was lovely to meet her, and Draco would hate her for being so fake if only she didn’t sound like she really meant it) and head up the street toward Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

He doesn’t expect Ginny and her brother to actually give him free joke products, but they do—a whole bag full of devices, like Extendable Ears and Instant Darkness Powder. Granger excitedly points out their usefulness for stealth, surveillance, and other Auror duties, which makes Draco feel uncomfortably warm. We’re friends, she said, like it was obvious. And when they continue on with the rest of their errands (stops at a couple of bookshops, the apothecary, a tailor, and a cafe so Ginny can have a sandwich), not once is there any question of whether Draco is welcome to join them.

They talk the entire afternoon, about Granger’s work and Draco’s training and Ginny’s upcoming Quidditch season, for which practice will start in a couple of months. Gone is the sense of obligation that Draco has always felt when talking to Granger—his obligation to be polite, to convince her he’s doing fine, to keep her from trying to stand up for him. The feeling that she is only talking to him as an obligation is gone as well. Instead, she seems to be genuinely interested in his life, and Ginny appears just as sincere. Draco wonders how long he’s been missing this—and whether he’s been doing so on purpose, even unconsciously.

It feels natural to go back to the Burrow with them at the end of the day. He’s holding several of their bags, after all, since with Ginny holding James she can’t carry much else. He thinks he’ll just leave the bags, thank them for the afternoon, and Floo home, but Ginny immediately says, “You’ll be staying for dinner, of course.”

“That is, unless you have plans,” Granger amends.

“No,” Draco says, thinking of a silent dinner at the Manor with his parents. “I don’t have plans.”

“Oh, good. You know, Dad keeps saying you ought to come for dinner again one of these days,” Ginny tells him. “He’ll love to have you. And Mum always loves having another setting at the table.”

“She doesn’t mind that—” He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Despite Granger’s quick spell-work on his hickeys that night, he’s quite sure both senior Weasleys are aware of why he and Harry were together. Molly wants Harry to marry her daughter, and he’s having meaningless sex with people like Draco instead.

“That Harry’s slept with you?”

Draco nods, flushing.

Ginny laughs. “My mum is completely baffled by everything concerning Harry and has been for the past five years. Her method of coping has been total denial. She doesn’t mind because she has not and will not allow herself to process that information at all.”

Draco waffles for a moment, but decides he might as well just go for it. “And you don’t mind?”

Ginny laughs even harder this time. Her eyes start to water and she doesn’t appear to be able to stop long enough to give a proper answer, but Draco supposes this does the job just as well.

Granger rolls her eyes. She’s going through some of the bags, sorting and stacking the books she bought this afternoon. Draco remembers her telling him it has never been serious between Harry and Ginny, and how matter-of-fact she was about all of it. He wants to understand it, but it seems everyone is so accustomed to the way things are that no one can explain why at all.

“Do you mind that he’ll be here?” Ginny asks, when she’s done finding him utterly hilarious.

“He’ll be here?”

“For dinner,” she clarifies. “He’s here almost every night, and during days when he can spare it. Being a part of Jamie’s life, and all that.” She strokes her son’s head fondly, running her fingers through his already thick ginger hair.

“I don’t mind,” he says, even though his whole body has tensed and yes, he seems to mind quite a bit. “He might, though.”

“What Harry minds is irrelevant,” Granger says. “He’s lost the right to mind.”

James starts to cry and Ginny concludes that he’s hungry, so she gets situated in an armchair and rearranges her top to breastfeed. Draco hasn’t ever seen a woman do this and doesn’t know whether it’s polite to look at her or even stay in the room, but Ginny keeps talking to him and Granger as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening, so he tries to do the same.

“I don’t like to be away from him if I can help it,” Ginny tells him, “but being at home all the time has started to make me a bit mad, I think. Mum and Dad are at Bill and Fleur’s, so I had to bring Jamie when we went out today. Anyway, right now he can only make it an hour or two with Mum, and now that he’s a couple months old I feel better about bringing him places. Hopefully by January he’ll be all right with Mum or Harry watching him during the day.”

January, as Ginny has mentioned repeatedly in the past few hours, is when practice for the new season will begin. She seems to be counting down to then like it’s when her life can really start. Draco feels the same way about training ending in June. He just has to get through everything until then.

“I think they’ll be back soon,” Ginny says. “Do you want anything in the meantime? Tea? Juice? I think we have some biscuits—”

“I’m all right,” Draco interrupts. “Thank you.”

“Well, would you like to sit?” Granger asks.

Draco hadn’t realised both women were seated, while he was standing somewhat awkwardly in front of the fireplace. He quickly sits beside Granger on the sofa—only to spring up almost instantaneously as Harry steps into the room through the kitchen.

Harry stares.

Draco half expects Ginny to burst out laughing again, as is her way, but the room stays silent until Harry speaks.

“What is he doing here?”

He says it flatly, as though not remotely interested in the answer, which both comforts and bothers Draco. He doesn’t want Harry to be angry or even irritated at his presence. On the other hand, he’d like it if it made any difference to Harry whether he was there or not. Astoria has been insisting that Harry really does like him. She says he wouldn’t keep taking Draco home if he didn’t. He wouldn’t get jealous when he saw Draco with other men if he didn’t want Draco for himself. He wouldn’t kiss Draco nearly as much if he was only in it to get off.

Draco tries not to let Astoria get to him, but she has. She has, or he wouldn’t feel this crushed that Harry isn’t even slightly pleased to see him.

“We can’t ask a friend to dinner?” Granger says fiercely.

At the same time, Draco is also saying, “I’m sorry, where’s your toilet?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer—he remembers it as upstairs somewhere, from the time he came to dinner a couple of years ago, so he starts up the rickety staircase.

“Friend?” he hears Harry repeat below.

He keeps climbing the stairs and soon realises he must have missed it, since he’s already almost to the top, but it’s not as if he really needed the toilet anyway. The door at the top of the stairs is ajar, and he walks right in.

Harry doesn’t want him here. Harry is probably insisting they redact the dinner invitation so that he won’t have to be around Draco tonight. Why would he want to be around Draco with their clothes on, and with other people present?

Draco is for fast, hot fucks in a world where their names mean nothing. Harry would never want to touch him in front of people they both knew, especially not while sober. Only in front of strangers. Only when pissed out of his mind or fucked up on drugs.

Draco realises he’s struggling to breathe and has his eyes screwed shut. He’s leaning back against the door he shut behind him, a barrier between him and the sitting room below. He concentrates on his breathing, working through it until he no longer feels like his lungs can’t hold air. He opens his eyes.

Everything in the room is orange. He blinks, trying to clear his vision, but the colour doesn’t fade. It takes a moment to realise it isn’t simply an orange room, but a room covered in Chudley Cannons memorabilia. From the walls to the bedspread, everything proclaims Cannons pride.

The bed is long but narrow, and the whole room seems long untouched, as though no one has slept here in years. There is no dust or any sign that the room is anything but well kept, but it has a distinctly abandoned feeling all the same.

On the bedside table, there’s a picture of Harry, Granger, and Weasley. It looks to be from about fifth or sixth year. Harry and Weasley are still tall in that gangly, teenage way, neither having filled out yet. Granger seems smaller and more fragile than she does now. The change isn’t physical, but more in the way she carries herself—ever since the war, she’s seemed harder and more self-assured. Draco noticed it when they were at Hogwarts together for their eighth year, and he notices it even more now, seeing the sixteen-year-old girl she was after adjusting to the twenty-three-year-old woman she has become.

The three of them aren’t laughing or even really smiling; it isn’t a moment that Draco would think to capture. It is ordinary, wholly commonplace. But their closeness is palpable, and it hits Draco sharply in the chest. They look at each other with so much understanding and touch so easily, just small pats from Weasley on Granger’s shoulder, or Granger’s arm slung loosely around Harry’s waist. They didn’t seem to know the camera was there, and none of them look in Draco’s direction. It’s the friendship he remembers seeing across a room when they were in school, and resenting. They all mattered to each other so much, and nothing else could touch them.

It’s different now. Now, Weasley says Harry is a selfish prick. Now, Granger says Harry has lost the right to mind.

Draco is still holding the picture when he hears the door click open behind him. If it were Granger, she would have asked him if he were all right. If it were Ginny, she would have joked lightly about him getting lost and pointed out that this was clearly not the loo. If it were Arthur or Molly, just returned home, they would have said how pleased they were that he could join them for dinner and perhaps reminisced about when this was still Weasley’s room.

It isn’t any of them. It’s Harry, and he doesn’t say anything at all, only waits for Draco to turn around.

Draco sets the picture down on the bedside table. “What are you doing up here?”

“I could ask the same of you.”

Draco turns then. Harry knows why Draco made a feeble excuse to leave the sitting room; he doesn’t need Draco to tell him. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Do you even really want to be here?”

Draco is taken aback by the question, and Harry rolls his eyes before expanding.

“Why would you want to be around poor scum like the Weasleys, or Muggleborn filth like Hermione? What could possibly motivate you to spend time with any of them?”

“You know I’m not like that anymore,” Draco answers tightly. The insinuation hurts more than he’d have thought it would.

“I don’t know what you’re like at all.” His eyes are hard, more unfeeling than Draco has seen them since the morning after the first time, and Draco wonders if this is some sort of test. “I know you’re trying to become an Auror. I know you’ve won over Hermione and Arthur and now, apparently, Ginny. But I don’t know why.”

It isn’t a question, and Draco doesn’t have an answer. He meets Harry’s gaze head-on, and waits.

“Hermione told me they rejected you at first. You kept reapplying. You were waiting tables at a Muggle restaurant when they finally let you in.”

Draco nods.

“You’re willingly putting yourself in a position to risk your life for people who don’t respect you at all. Aligning yourself with people who don’t want anything to do with you, who call you names and refuse to work with you, who would turn on you in a second given the chance.”

Harry’s been talking to Weasley as well, then. These are the things Draco doesn’t tell Granger, but Weasley sees them every day. Draco nods again, after a moment.

“Why bother? Seems much more hardworking Hufflepuff to me,” Harry says mockingly. “What happened to your Slytherin sense of self-preservation?”

“Do you know anything about risk versus reward, Potter?”

“What do you mean?”

“There are a lot of risks in my chosen career path. I'm aware of that. Obviously my life will be put at risk in some situations. And of course, as with any occupation in the Wizarding world, my pride is on the line. That's why I worked in the Muggle world for a while; it cut the risks down to zero, and the money was still money. But consider the context, Harry. Is it so bad to risk your life when your life isn’t something particularly worth preserving?”

Harry opens his mouth at that, but Draco continues on.

“And the reward, well—with the jobs I could get after I finished at Hogwarts, I was nothing. The Ministry would only take me on as an errand boy, and I was seen as little more than a house elf. I was fired repeatedly, sometimes because of prejudice from my superiors, other times because customers complained and they didn’t think defending me would be worth it. But this… I’m already treated with sympathy almost as often as with derision. I have the likes of Hermione Granger and Arthur Weasley on my side, publicly, and their word means so much more than that of those who still don't trust me. Yes, respect beats pity, but pity beats contempt.”

The hardness in Harry’s eyes is still there, but it’s lessening. At some point while Draco was talking, Harry must have stepped forward, as he’s much closer now. “And do you respect them?”

“Who?”

“Hermione. Arthur. Ginny. Ron. All these people you’ve convinced that you are worth something.”

Draco wants to ask how Harry can talk about respect when he seems to have alienated everyone that cares about him, when his best friends remark bitterly on his selfishness, but he can’t. He only nods again.

Harry continues staring at him intently, and Draco again gets the feeling that this is a test, somehow. He doesn’t know how to pass it, but he wants to rise to the challenge.

They look at each other, unmoving, for several seconds, until Draco decides to do something about it. He steps toward Harry and leans in, wanting to prove something, though he doesn’t know what. But Harry catches his shoulder and pushes him back, lightly. He’s still looking at Draco with a dare in his eyes. Draco tries again, and Harry stops him with a hand on his chest.

Draco stands motionless, his breathing ragged and loud in the still room. Harry’s eyes have a wicked spark to them now, which makes Draco both nervous and excited.

He’s surprised when Harry finally pulls him close and kisses him hard. He expects it, but it still catches him off guard somehow. Something about the new setting—not Harry’s bedroom or anywhere else in his home, or the bar or loo or dance floor of that club, but instead Harry’s best friend’s childhood bedroom—makes Draco realise how familiar this has come to feel, how natural kissing Harry now seems. There were moments early on when it seemed important to try to impress Harry with his technique, or when he was overwhelmed by Harry’s seemingly expert skill. But now this is comfortable, even normal. Even while Draco is anxious and confused when it comes to talking to Harry, he still knows exactly how to kiss him. He’s kissed other men, but it’s never been like this. This feels right. This feels like something he should be doing.

He likes the way Harry touches him, how Harry’s hands move over his back and chest and arms and arse and hips, as if he needs to reassure himself that Draco is really present. Harry isn’t gentle about it, and something in that makes it even better. It feels like Harry is desperate for him, and Draco doesn’t want to think about why he needs to feel that.

Harry pushes him back against the wall, up against an orange Cannons hanging. Their bodies are flush against one another, touching everywhere, and Harry’s hands are pushing up his shirt at the sides to get at his skin. “So fucking hot,” Harry says, voice rough, and starts mouthing at Draco’s neck. “Why are you so fucking hot?”

It’s hard to remind himself that none of this means anything when Harry won’t stop saying these things. It’s also hard to remember that they are currently guests in someone else’s home when Harry grinds his hips forward like that and all Draco wants to do is get their trousers off. He wants to at least get Harry’s cock out, and maybe suck it if they can stop kissing long enough for him to get down there, but that would mean releasing his firm grip on Harry’s arse and separating their bodies at least a little, and he doesn’t want to do that.

Harry is thin but tightly muscled, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He has a beautiful body, but it isn’t really all that remarkable. In the past couple of months, Draco has had sex with plenty of men, many more attractive than Harry by far. But with each of them, Draco knew that he could be anyone, and it wouldn’t matter. He could swap out with another nameless bloke and it wouldn’t make any difference. With other men, Draco is just a body. With Harry, everything feels personal. If he were someone else, Harry would touch him differently, would kiss him differently, would say different things. But Harry isn’t with someone else, he’s with him. All of this is for him.

Harry wrenches away and holds Draco’s shoulders firmly against the wall. “I’m not coming in my pants like a teenager.”

“Okay,” Draco says, dazed.

He doesn’t expect Harry to start kissing him again after such an emphatic separation, but he does, only now he keeps some space between them and undoes the fastenings on Draco’s trousers. Harry’s fingers brush against Draco’s erection, which makes his hips jerk involuntarily, seeking more contact. Harry shoves Draco’s trousers and pants down to his knees, and when Draco opens his eyes as the kiss breaks, he sees that Harry has somehow managed to open his own trousers as well. Harry moves Draco’s hand to his cock and wraps his own around Draco’s. “You’re so sexy,” he says softly, his free hand thumbing at Draco’s nipples under his shirt. “So hard for me.” He starts stroking firmly. “Come on,” he says, and Draco moves his hand in the same rhythm.

Harry leans in close and Draco kisses him, assuming that’s what Harry wants, but Harry only returns it briefly. Draco opens his eyes and finds Harry looking right at him, his face mere centimetres away. He expects Harry to say something, to continue with the embarrassing nonsense he always says when his mouth isn’t otherwise busy, but he just rests his forehead against Draco’s and keeps staring. Draco gasps, and Harry’s hand moves faster. The air is hot and damp between them where their breath mingles, but Draco can’t pull away, or so much as look away. Harry’s eyes are entrancing, unfocused with lust but still fixed unwaveringly on Draco’s own. He thought Harry saw him, before, but that was nothing compared to right now.

Harry’s eyes squeeze shut when he comes, his mouth open in a silent moan. He kisses Draco again then, hard and deep, and Draco finishes too. Harry’s hands move to Draco’s arse, and they feel sticky as he squeezes.

It was just their hands, but even so, Draco thinks that was the most intimate they’ve ever been.

Harry is quiet afterwards, the way he has been. He takes out his wand to clean up the mess and does up Draco’s trousers for him before attending to his own. Draco doesn’t know what any of this means, or if it means anything at all, but he feels sure that this is different from the nights that started at the club and ended in Harry’s bed. He doesn’t like how those nights ended.

As Harry straightens and re-buttons his shirt (which Draco doesn’t remember unbuttoning), Draco leans in and kisses him softly, briefly. Before Harry can ruin it by speaking, Draco leaves and goes downstairs.

Molly and Arthur have returned and greet Draco warmly, just as Ginny said they would. Weasley is there as well, looking cross.

“He went up to look for you both,” Granger whispers to Draco. “Couldn’t you have gone somewhere else?”

Harry comes down less than a minute later, and Weasley immediately pulls him aside, whispering furiously. Harry grins the whole while, completely unapologetic. Molly and Arthur, still wilfully oblivious, go to the kitchen.

“Do you see what I mean?” Ginny asks, grinning. “They won’t know until you fuck on the table in the middle of the meal.”

They don’t fuck on the table, during the meal or otherwise. They sit across from one another, Harry on one side with Weasley and Granger, Draco with Ginny and Arthur, Molly at the head. Harry nudges Draco’s foot and ankle every now and then under the table and catches his eye when he looks up. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t say anything to Draco at all. But something has changed between them, and Draco finds himself hoping.






There is a brief article in the Prophet, just as Ginny and Granger predicted. The photo is captioned Ginny Weasley and soon-to-be sister-in-law Hermione Granger with Aurors-in-training Astoria Greengrass and Draco Malfoy. The article is entirely speculation on Ginny’s disappearance from the public eye, career intentions, and presumed motherhood. It doesn’t mention Draco, Astoria, or even Granger, only that after six months without a single sighting, Miss Weasley was seen out with friends in Diagon Alley.

Friends.

Peakes doesn’t like it, but Draco expected that. Peakes can always find something wrong with Draco. If the article had insinuated anything unsavoury on Draco’s part, Peakes would have never let it go, but not commenting on Draco at all seems to be even more offensive. It proves that Draco is manipulating everyone into forgetting all about his past. It proves that he is getting away with it.

Granger comes in one day just before Weasley gets off for lunch and smiles at Draco as she passes on her way to his cubicle. Draco and the other trainees are crowded into Stinton’s cubicle while he gives an incompetent tutorial on tracking, using only pins on a map and dramatic gesturing to aid his vague explanations. Draco and Astoria have been exchanging amused glances the whole time, and he almost misses Granger when she walks by.

He waves and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Peakes is glaring at him now, and Draco knows he won’t let this go with only a snide comment or two.

Stinton lets them out for lunch, and sure enough, Peakes corners Draco and Astoria and stops them just before they make it to the lift.

“How’d you convince her, Malfoy? How did a prick like you fool a girl that smart?”

Astoria stands between them, crossing her arms and glaring up at Peakes, but he looks right over her head.

“You don’t fool me. You’re still the same Death Eater, letting other people pull strings for your benefit. Hiding behind people and letting them fight for you.”

Draco knows he can’t say anything that will change his opinion, though he very well could say something that would make Peakes feel justified in cursing him. He doesn’t say anything at all.

Astoria does, though. “Draco isn’t a Death Eater. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“He’s a coward, is what he is,” Peakes spits, and he pulls out his wand. “You’re a coward, Malfoy.”

Draco will not get in a duel with a fellow trainee, particularly not when they’re only just down the hall from a room full of Aurors who wouldn’t hesitate to side with Peakes. He will not draw his wand. He will not jeopardise everything he’s worked for.

He doesn’t have to, because Peakes lowers his wand. “Auror Robards, sir,” he says respectfully, inclining his head. All malice has vanished from his voice.

“Mr Peakes,” Robards says in acknowledgement. He presses the button for the lift.

Draco stands frozen, terrified. It’s obvious that Peakes was ready to fight, and all he would have to do is claim Draco provoked him. Robards doesn’t need a good reason to throw Draco out of the program. He’ll take any reason. As Head Auror, he was part of the decision to reject Draco in the first place. He thinks about how it looks—him with his back to the wall, Peakes holding his wand, Astoria clearly defending Draco. There is no question that Peakes is the aggressor, but he could turn it around on Draco with no effort at all.

“Sir,” Astoria starts, not respectfully at all.

Draco touches her shoulder, tacitly requesting her silence. She doesn’t continue.

“Miss Greengrass,” Robards says. There is no way he doesn’t know she was about to accuse him of turning a blind eye to what he’d interrupted. He knows, and yet.

The lift doors open, and Robards walks through them. He did not acknowledge Draco once. Peakes smirks victoriously and follows Robards into the lift. Astoria turns around as the doors close, disappointment clear on her face.

“Draco,” she starts.

You have to stand up for yourself. You can’t let them treat you this way. You have to stop this.

“I can’t,” Draco says. He turns away from her and walks back down the hall. The remainder of his lunch break is spent in the loo, eyes shut tight and lungs constricted, blocking his breath.






The photograph in the Daily Prophet shakes Draco’s foundations, but within a few short weeks, it becomes routine. He hadn’t realised the extent to which the public cared about even the most routine, mundane aspects of his new friends’ (friends) lives. At his request, he has always met Granger in Muggle coffee shops. He knew this kept him safe from gossip and speculation, but he didn’t know that the gossip and speculation would be media-endorsed and not merely word-of-mouth. When they meet for lunch at the Leaky one Wednesday, a photographer from a cheap gossip rag takes their picture, and the next day there’s a sensationalised piece hypothesising that Granger has been lusting after him ever since she gave him legal help three years ago and plans to leave Weasley for him once he finishes Auror training. (There is no mention of Astoria, who ate with them as well but was in the loo at the time the photograph was taken.)

He is photographed again when he goes to lunch that Saturday with Granger, Ginny (with a cooing James in tow), and Ginny’s brothers George and Bill. The same gossip rag latches on to Weasley’s absence as evidence of Granger’s passion for Draco, but an ever-so-slightly more legitimate magazine publishes their picture with further speculation on James’s paternity. Draco is half afraid he’ll join the list of possible fathers, but this particular piece only goes on a barely civil tirade insisting that Ginny has no right to hide this information and the public deserves to know. Astoria reads this aloud to Draco on Tuesday morning, and they both have a laugh. Two days later, Draco sees the same magazine on a side table in his mother’s sitting room, and he finds it far less humorous.

The strangest change is at the Ministry itself. He’s used to the Ministry. It isn’t an unusual or interesting place, not anymore. The last time he received significant amounts of attention at the Ministry was five years ago when he was on trial. That much remains the same. He’s as invisible there as he’s ever been.

But there’s something he hadn’t ever given any thought before: when Harry is only seen by the public at the Ministry, the Ministry becomes the only place for photographers to ambush him. Before they started sleeping together, Draco hadn’t given much thought to Harry’s constant appearance in the papers. Now, he’s come to realise that in the absence of access to Harry’s personal life, even the smallest things become newsworthy. If he says more than a few words to anyone other than Weasley, Granger, or Minister Shacklebolt anywhere that anyone can see him—the Atrium, the lift, even a hallway—the media will cover it. They’ll write about him making eye contact with someone for too long, standing in one place for longer than necessary, taking any indirect route or visiting any level but the first.

It amuses Draco, to an extent. He cannot fathom how any of this is news, and it’s particularly ridiculous in light of what Harry really gets up to. What would they do if they saw him in his Muggle club wear? If they saw him kissing Draco? If they saw him fucking Draco in a public loo? If they knew that Ginny’s child, the mystery of mysteries, is in fact Harry’s?

But they don’t notice Draco. He thinks he’s beginning to understand why Harry acted the way he did that first morning after. He understands the resistance to eye contact, the complete silence while others were around. Draco stays invisible so long as he is unacknowledged. He can stand next to Harry and remain completely innocuous, but if he talked to Harry, well—he’d never hear the end of it. If Peakes doesn’t like that Hermione Granger is on Draco’s side, what would happen if Harry Potter was?

It doesn’t become an issue because Harry knows how to play his part. The closest thing to public acknowledgement that Draco gets from him is on a Thursday afternoon when Draco is returning from lunch with Granger just as Harry and Weasley are on their way out. Draco doesn’t notice anything unusual about it; Harry does stop briefly, but he only speaks to and makes eye contact with Granger. On Monday, Astoria tells him he and Harry made a fetching pair on the front page of the Prophet, in her bitingly sarcastic way, and Draco assumes she’s only giving him a hard time for being in yet another photograph.

But on Wednesday, he enters the dining room for a silent dinner with his parents and the Prophet is right there on the table. In the photograph, Harry is looking right at him, while his own gaze is fixed somewhere on the floor. Harry is smiling a wide, wholly Harry grin, nothing like the calculated Harry Potter smiles. He may have been smiling at something Granger or Weasley said, but Draco can see the difference in him, and he knows his parents can too. Neither of them mention it, but the paper sits there with the photograph visible for the entire meal, the smile spreading across Harry’s face over and over as his eyes stay fixed on Draco.






Three months ago, Draco didn’t think he could ever like Ginny Weasley. He mentally cast her as his rival, the socially acceptable partner for Harry. She was well-liked, famous, a Weasley, female. The person Harry would fall in love with if he could fall in love. He thought he would hate her long red hair and open smile and sloping curves and smooth, freckled skin.

But Ginny is so warm, and Draco doesn’t hate her at all. She reminds him of Astoria sometimes, all snappish and fierce, so much presence in a petite frame. He likes her. He really does like her, and she seems to really like him, and they may really be friends.

Tonight, they’re sprawled on the large bed in the first floor bedroom of Harry’s house, James asleep between them. Draco has had sex with Harry in this bed, and when that thought occurs to him, it also occurs to him that Ginny has probably had sex with Harry in this bed as well. He thinks this should bother him, but it doesn’t.

Harry isn’t here. Harry is out somewhere, probably fucking some stranger, while two of his undefined repeat sex partners spend time together in his home, without him. When Draco thinks about it that way, it seems very strange, even though it feels completely natural as it’s happening.

At the Burrow just before dinner tonight, Ginny hissed to him and Harry, “She’s driving me mad.”

She didn’t have to explain further. Draco has been growing quite fond of Molly Weasley, but he can understand a frustration with her constant fussing. He can’t imagine what it would be like to try to be a mother while your own mother won’t stop hovering and trying to mother you.

“I have to get out of the house after dinner,” Ginny said, still hushed. “How does quality time with your son sound?”

Harry was sitting on the sofa with Draco, an arm draped casually over his shoulders. (The extent of Molly’s obliviousness continued to impress Draco.) For some people, this public display of affection, however small, would have come with a hesitation to discuss plans for anonymous sex, whether out of consideration for Draco’s feelings or simply respect for social norms. Harry had no such hesitation. “I’m going out tonight.”

Once, he’d said this and Draco had asked, “Can I come?” Harry’s dismissal felt far worse when direct than when merely implied, Draco found. This time, he ignored the twinge of hurt and focused on the weight of Harry’s arm on his shoulders and how wonderful it felt to sit together like this, in front of everyone.

“Well, I’m going to tell Mum that I’m spending the night at yours so you can see some more of Jamie, all right?”

Harry shrugged.

After dinner, Ginny leaned close to Draco and whispered, “Keep us company?” Draco couldn’t have said no if he’d wanted to.

They made their excuses to Molly and Arthur, playing it as though Harry would be staying in. If Molly didn’t like that Draco would be joining them, she didn’t let it show. Harry Flooed along with them, but once he changed into a sluttier outfit, he was gone.

Ginny led him to the first floor bedroom, full of nostalgia for when she and Granger shared the room one summer, years ago. “It doesn’t look anything like it did then, of course,” she told him. “Harry made so many changes.”

Now she’s telling him all about how different the house used to look, how it had all sorts of awful Black family decorations and dark artefacts. From what Harry has told him, Draco has put together that this place belonged to his godfather, Sirius Black, Draco’s first cousin once removed, and that after the war, Harry got rid of just about everything, repainted and refurnished, and removed all of the old family magic woven throughout the house. Draco hasn’t had much of an idea of what it looked like before, though, until now.

“It was sort of an obsession, I think,” Ginny is saying. “He had to throw himself into something, give himself something to do, just to stay sane. He worked nonstop for almost a year.” She goes quiet for a moment, and then, “That was some year.”

Draco nods. He knows they experienced it differently, but the year after the final battle at Hogwarts was hard for everyone, and it feels like a shared experience despite the differences. He thinks of the trials that took all summer, of then returning to a school that was both a safe haven and the site of many of his worst memories. Ginny was there that year. She was in almost all of his classes. He’d forgotten that, somehow.

“Were you together then?” he asks, despite himself.

Ginny, Granger, and Luna Lovegood were a unit that year, he remembers. At first he thought it was so odd to see Granger flanked by the two younger girls rather than Harry and Weasley, but by the end of the year it seemed even more natural. He remembers weekends in Hogsmeade when the three girls would meet up with Harry, Weasley, and Neville Longbottom. It always looked like a triple date, but it’s not as though he were ever close enough with any of them to really know.

“Harry and I?” Ginny asks. At Draco’s nod, she laughs, like part of him had known she would. “We were never together. Not unless you count the two months at the end of my fifth year, and I don’t, not really. We were just kids.”

“You always seemed like a couple, whenever I saw you together.”

“It wasn’t… we were close. We are close. But we weren’t together. We were—are—good friends. Best friends, even. I don’t know.”

“But you have sex? I mean, did you have sex then?”

Ginny raises her eyebrows, and he feels a little awkward about having asked, but he meets her look head on. It’s been niggling at him for months now, not knowing what they are to each other, or what they’ve been to each other. Knowing there is no romantic attachment is something, but he still wonders why.

“We did have sex, sometimes. Harry had been a virgin, actually, which was sweet. But we never made each other any promises, and there was always a sort of understanding that while we liked each other enough and were comfortable enough together, we didn’t feel about each other the way Hermione and my brother did.” She looks pensive for a moment, and then, “Have you ever had a fuck buddy?”

He’s shocked by the frankness of the question, by the implication that this is what Harry is (or was) to her, but even more so, he’s shocked that she would ask something that he knows she already has the answer to. “I mean, there’s Harry,” he says after a pause.

She shakes her head. “You two aren’t fuck buddies.”

He wants to ask how she knows, what tipped her off, because if he doesn’t know what they are, how could she? But he is far too surprised at how sure she sounds to find the words to ask, and she continues on.

“It’s sort of… we know the other person is attracted to us, and cares about us enough not to be a total prick about it, but doesn’t care so much that they have any expectations. It’s easy. So when we don’t want to go through the whole production of finding a new sex partner, we have each other.”

“And you’ve gone on for years like this?”

“Well, we’re done now,” she says, matter-of-fact, like that’s obvious. “And back then—”

“You’re ‘done’?” Draco echoes. The finality reverberates in his head. He looks at James, peacefully asleep between them, and so small.

“We can’t be irresponsible like that anymore, not with Jamie to think about. It’s one thing to have that sort of arrangement when it’s just us we’re affecting, but this is our son. He doesn’t deserve parents who use each other like that.”

“But wouldn’t—” The words catch, and he has to pause to clear his throat. “Wouldn’t the natural conclusion, then, be that you ought to settle down? Give a proper relationship together a try?”

Ginny is oddly quiet as she composes her answer. Her expression is inscrutable. He wants to believe that she wants it but is protecting herself from Harry’s callousness, but he knows too much about her now. He knows that she loves her sport more than anything, save perhaps Jamie. He knows how much she enjoys the freedom of casual sex. He knows she really, truly does not want to be married, to Harry or anyone else. It would be simpler, he thinks, if she wanted it but couldn’t have it. Instead, she is stuck feeling like she should want it, but completely unable to force herself to. He guesses.

“We’re too close for that, I think,” she says at last. “We care about each other too much to let the other into a situation they don’t truly want. I think if we loved each other a little less, we could fake it, and maybe eventually settle into a sort of contentment. But I don’t want to settle for him, and I don’t want him to settle for me.”

“I guess I can understand that,” Draco says.

“It’s a pity, though. I really can’t have sex with him ever again, not if I want Jamie to have a stable home, but sometimes I just really want to suck on that gorgeous prick, you know?”

Draco barely suppresses a surprised squeal at that. “Hmmmng?” is what comes out.

“You know what I’m talking about. Doesn’t he have the most mouth-watering—”

“Ginny,” he interrupts, voice high. “Ginny, while I can perhaps wrap my mind around the arrangement the pair of you have had, I’m not sure I can handle hearing about it in explicit detail.”

But she’s grinning now, and he knows he can’t stop her. “You agree, though, right? Sometimes you’ve just got to go down on him. But it’s even better how much he loves to suck it, isn’t it?”

His brain practically self-destructs.

“We used to have threesomes sometimes,” she continues, a wicked look in her eyes, and he knows she’s only saying this because his reactions entertain her but he can’t stop the heat rising in his face. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw him give a blow job.”

“Ginny,” he says desperately, “please.”

She dissolves into giggles, and he waits patiently for her to compose herself. James sleeps on; from what Ginny has said, he used to wake constantly, but in the last few weeks has started to sleep solidly for hours at a time.

“You’re just gay, yeah?” she says, laughter still in her tone. “No flexibility there?”

It doesn’t feel like a come-on, but he can’t help checking anyway. “You don’t want to—”

“No, definitely not!” she says quickly. “Only curious. I’m flexible, you know. Mostly men, but I’ve fooled around some with women. When I’m on E, or drunk enough, I’m pretty open to it.”

Draco hasn’t ever considered being open to it. For a while he thought he had to, and once he knew he didn’t, he stopped thinking of it as an option at all. He recognises when women are attractive—he recognises that Ginny, for one, is exceptionally beautiful. People stop and stare at Granger sometimes because she is famous, but she’d be as invisible as Astoria if she weren’t. People would stop and stare at Ginny even if she weren’t a Quidditch player and a Weasley and an important figure in the war. Even Draco can’t help staring at her sometimes. But there isn’t any desire there. When he thinks of that feeling, he can only summon up images of Harry, or of faceless bodies of fit Muggle strangers.

“I don’t think I’m flexible much at all,” he says at last.

“Harry-sexual?” she quips.

He wonders how his thoughts can be that transparent, or whether perhaps Ginny has gathered that Harry was his first, and the only person he’s been with more than once.

She doesn’t tease him any further, though. “You know, I thought it was just a laugh,” she says instead, and her voice has turned newly sober. “When he brought you, I mean. I thought it was some sort of ‘bugger off’ to my mum, and I thought it was such a hilariously Harry move, yeah? But it—it’s about him and you, not him and other people.”

He has been looking up at the ceiling, lying flat on his back as he is, but now he looks at Ginny and finds her already looking at him, rather seriously.

“It is about you, you know.”

Draco doesn’t know. Sometimes he thinks maybe, possibly, perhaps—but no. He’s very convenient, given the way Harry’s friends have taken him in and created situations in which he is easily available. He’s private, the way Harry is, and very determined to keep himself under the radar, which means there’s no fear of things going public. And he’s willing to do anything Harry ever wants in bed. Draco doesn’t know whether any of this is about him; he only knows that Harry wants to have sex with him and doesn’t generally object to his presence.

“I see the way you are together. The way he is when he’s with you. Even when you’re out at the Ministry—you saw that picture last week, didn’t you? You saw how he smiled. Anyone could spot the difference. If you’d been making eye contact, it would have been a headline. They couldn’t make anything of it because ‘Harry Potter smiles’ isn’t news when they have him smiling blandly in every photo, but anyone could see this was a real one, and it was because of you.”

Draco doesn’t know what to say, but he doesn’t look away. Ginny looks very solemn and even concerned, as though she feels telling him this is incredibly important. It’s surreal. But then, so much of his life of late has been nothing like the reality he thought he knew.

Ginny continues looking at him intently, but she seems to be done with what she wanted to say. She thinks Harry is serious about him. Draco can’t even begin to conceive of the pair of them as a couple, of them holding hands and going on dates and announcing to the world that they mean something to each other. He doesn’t know why Ginny felt it was necessary to put that in his head. Harry is out with someone else at this very moment. Harry will never settle down. Harry will never share anything of himself with the world.

“Is that why you haven’t let anyone know that James is Harry’s?” Draco asks at last, after a long silence.

“Hmm?”

“Is the idea that it will minimize the scandal of it all? Not confirming that James is a bastard child, and Harry Potter’s at that—is it meant to keep the public speculation to a minimum? I suppose it could die down eventually, but so far the mystery is only feeding their curiosity, you know.”

“Yes,” Ginny says, “I know.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s difficult. I’m not pleased with how they’ve decided to go about it. Letting everyone know Harry’s the father will involve a bit of scandal, but it will have to happen eventually, and putting it off isn’t going to make it any easier. It might even be more scandalous if it looks like we’ve been shamefully covering it up all this time—and it will look like that because we have. They had months to figure something out, but they still aren’t sure how to fit this into the Harry Potter they’ve come up with.”

“‘They’?”

“Well, it’s not as though Harry makes these decisions on his own. At this point, Harry Potter is more of a figurehead than a person. It’s a combination of input from all of the important people. Kingsley, of course. Sometimes my father. The remainder of Order in general, really. You know Hermione writes all of his speeches.”

“She does?”

“Of course she does. Harry hates public speaking. He never has any idea what to say or how to say it. The only way he could get through that first summer was to say someone else’s words, and he became really good at that. So good that the system stuck, I guess. He’s not a complete puppet—he only listens to people he trusts, and he can do things his way whenever he wants. But he doesn’t really ever want to do things his way. But yes, in regards to Jamie—they haven’t reached a verdict yet, so the decision continues to be no decision at all.”

It’s unsettling how easy it is to accept that. It should be surprising that what he'd come to see as Harry Potter for the past several years was entirely, or nearly entirely, manufactured. This should be hard to believe. The speeches, the statements, probably the interviews too—very little (perhaps none) of that came from him. But it fits in perfectly with what Draco has come to know of him so far. Another piece of the endless puzzle.

Harry wouldn’t see it as lying, would he? He’d see it as his duty.

“January is approaching,” he says, and they're done talking about Harry. Now it's all Ginny's imminent return to Quidditch and the beginning of Draco’s final six months of training, during which he’ll finally have the chance to shadow Aurors during field work. He’s excited for her and she’s excited for him, and Draco thinks that maybe they could have been friends even without his ever going home with Harry.

They keep talking even as they both grow tired, and they’re still awake when Harry gets home at almost two.

“Quality family time?” he says flatly. Draco wonders if he’s angry, for a second, but there’s a hint of a smile playing about his lips as he approaches the bed. He leans down and kisses Ginny’s forehead, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. James has shifted toward Draco in his sleep and now lies against the side of Draco’s abdomen. Harry leans across Ginny and kisses James’s forehead, too.

“Come on,” he says to Draco. He doesn’t kiss his forehead, of course.

Draco looks to Ginny, who grins and winks. She carefully picks up James so that Draco can get up. “Don't be too loud. I’m hoping to get a solid night’s sleep.”

Harry doesn't comment, but Draco can't help flushing and saying, “We’ll be on the fourth floor, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Noise carries,” she says, still grinning.

Harry makes no moves to touch Draco, who follows him upstairs in silence. When they’ve entered his room, Harry closed the door behind them, which makes sense but catches Draco off guard anyway. He’s used to them being alone in the house and just fucking with the door wide open. Or against the door, or in the hall, or on the stairs, or on the floor of the landing. Anywhere, really. Anywhere but in his bedroom with the door closed, taking care to be quiet. It seems so domestic.

Harry finally touches him then, now that they’re away from Ginny and the door is closed. He tugs Draco forward by the front of his jumper and kisses him. He’s been smoking and drinking and probably sucking on strangers’ tongues, but he still tastes familiar. He still tastes like Harry, and even while he smells like sweat and alcohol and smoke, there’s that Harry-smell lingering underneath.

Harry kisses him deeply but doesn’t seem concerned with taking their clothes off, or getting horizontal. He gets languid and slow like this when he's drunk sometimes, and Draco loves it. He loves Harry kissing his neck softly, with no sucking or biting, and Harry’s hands creeping up under his jumper and t-shirt to run gently over the skin of his hips and the small of his back. He loves the warm, fond way Harry looks at him, with no thought to keeping up appearances.

They finally lie down on the bed, but there is still no urgency to it. Harry has him lying with his head comfortably nestled in the pillows, his jumper and t-shirt pushed up under his armpits so Harry can kiss and lick and suck his way down his chest. Draco has one hand in Harry’s hair and the other loosely gripping the back of his shirt. He feels warm and sensitised all over and so turned on he wants to scream, but he’s enjoying this far too much to speed it up.

Harry opens Draco’s trousers and slides them down his hips just far enough to get his cock out. He strokes it a bit, kissing Draco’s hip and lower abdomen. “Look at you,” he says quietly. “Look at you.”

Draco is too turned on to feel self-conscious. He doesn’t know why Harry says things like that, or what he thinks is so remarkable about the way Draco looks. He is in good shape, yes, but very narrow and unappealingly pallid. He's also constantly bruised, whether from duelling or sparring practice, wankers like Peakes shoving past him too hard when they pass each other, or just from sex with Harry. He doesn’t much care for how he looks naked, but Harry seems to like it rather a lot. At times like this, though, when Draco is so hard he can barely process complete phrases, Harry could say any number of horribly embarrassing things and it wouldn’t faze him at all.

And then—fuck, there it is, the face Ginny was talking about, the eager expression as he takes Draco’s cock into his mouth. For a moment Draco thinks he should feel uncomfortable, that the knowledge that Harry likes doing this to anyone and not just to him should bother him a little.

But Harry looks up at him and meets his eyes, and it feels personal. It feels personal as Harry sucks on the head of his cock and strokes the length of it firmly, maintaining eye contact all the while. It feels personal when Harry tugs his trousers the rest of the way down and runs his hands along the skin of Draco's inner thighs and presses his fingers on that sensitive place behind Draco’s balls. It feels personal when Harry takes him further in, deep inside, gripping Draco’s thigh hard with one hand and pressing one finger into him with the other. It feels personal when the hand on his thigh moves to where Draco's own is tightly gripping the duvet, and Harry weaves their fingers together.

When Draco comes, Harry swallows all of it, and he kisses the head of his cock when he pulls off. Draco feels completely liquid afterwards, lying pliant as Harry pulls his remaining clothing all the way off, as well as his own. He expects that Harry will expect reciprocation, and he wants to give it.

But Harry turns out the lights and pulls the duvet over them. Draco is disoriented for a moment—they’ve never had sex with all of the lights off—but then he feels Harry’s weight shifting beside him, and Harry reaches out to wrap an arm around him and pull him close. It isn’t long before his breathing evens out, slow warm huffs against Draco's neck.

“It's about him and you,” Ginny said. Draco thinks he might be beginning to believe her.







The first time they spend an entire day together is an accident. Draco Apparated to Harry’s after another tense, silent dinner with his parents with another Daily Prophet pointedly left on the table, again featuring him with Harry and Granger and Weasley. His mother cast so many worried glances between him and his father that when he finished eating, he immediately Apparated away. It was a Saturday night and he didn’t really think Harry would be home, but he couldn’t be in the Manor for another second. If Harry brought someone home with him, well, Draco could leave.

But Harry was already home, sitting with Ginny on the floor of the drawing room in front of the sofa. He held James in his arms, and for a second Draco felt like an intruder. Then Ginny smiled hugely. “Come in! Sit!”

Ginny had escaped after dinner again, and because Draco wasn't there to keep her company, Harry stayed in. It’s still early, and Draco half expects him to go out now that Draco’s here. He doesn’t. He stays in with Ginny and James and Draco for the entire night. Ginny and James sleep in the first floor bedroom again, and Harry and Draco fuck quietly upstairs with the door closed. In the morning, Ginny makes breakfast. Harry stays in bed and doesn’t come down until Ginny and Draco are both almost done with their eggs, and he starts his coffeemaker without so much as a good morning, largely ignoring the plate sitting out for him.

“You should both come for lunch,” Ginny says. “Mum would love it.”

Harry shrugs, which is as much of a yes as she’ll get before his coffee. She kisses them both on the cheek before going upstairs to fetch James, still asleep, and Floo home. “Come around eleven, all right?”

That leaves them almost two hours to themselves. More than enough time to fuck at least once, but Draco doesn’t want to do anything to irritate morning Harry, so he finishes his breakfast in silence as Harry sips his coffee and has a few bites of now-cold toast. They’ve reached the point of comfortably being together without feeling the need to fill the air with conversation, which both thrills and frightens Draco. The closer they get, and the more settled Draco feels, the harder it will be if (when) it all ends.

“Shower,” Harry says when he finishes his coffee, and it doesn’t sound like a suggestion or invitation, but he nudges Draco’s shoulder slightly with his elbow as he walks past, which feels like invitation enough.

They take a long, languorous shower and jerk each other off under the water. It feels very settled to Draco. Exhilarating and terrifying. On the surface, it isn’t any different from that first shower the morning after the first time, and Draco can’t put his finger on what has changed. But it is different, and it has changed. Somehow.

They steal kisses throughout the whole multi-step process of getting dressed, which is also the same and different to that first time. Harry starts getting handsy again, but by now it’s already a quarter to eleven and they’re almost fully dressed, so they keep it to deep kissing. They straighten up, conceal the various visible marks they’ve left on each other, and arrive at the Burrow five minutes early.

But no one is home. Instead, they’re greeted by a messy note from Ginny on the kitchen table.

H & D —
Had to run to Wheezes for George, brought Jamie cos Mum and Dad are at Bill and Fleur’s to see Dominique and Victoire (they’re ill and can’t make it to lunch sadly!)
I think we’re eating at noon so feel free to entertain yourselves for an hour.
That’s assuming you aren’t already late from entertaining yourselves an extra time or two!
G

“‘Entertain yourselves’?” Draco reads, to which Harry chuckles.

“Not a bad idea.” He lightly bites Draco’s earlobe.

“Harry—”

“No one’s here,” Harry points out. “And we’ve only entertained ourselves the once.”

“Three times,” Draco counters.

Harry nips at his neck. “Once today.”

“That’s true.” Harry’s hands are wandering around to his arse now, and he is forgetting any objections to this.

Kissing Harry is intoxicating and dizzying and all of those absurd things he’ll never admit aloud. Harry knows exactly how to touch him, and after the last few months, Draco’s learned exactly how to touch Harry. He knows how Harry will react when he sucks at that spot on his collarbone, or lightly traces the line of his spine under his shirt, or bites just there on the side of his neck. They’re good together. Even in the Weasleys’ kitchen, the edge of the table digging uncomfortably into the backs of Draco’s thighs, it’s so much better than it could ever be with anyone else.

“Do you have lube?” he asks Harry, and Harry laughs and presses his hips forward against Draco’s.

“What do you think?”

Draco can feel the small tube in Harry’s front pocket, though it takes him a few moments to pay attention to it, as Harry’s erection is significantly larger and more conspicuous. It was a silly question; of course Harry has lube.

Draco lifts himself up to sit on the edge of the table and wrap his legs around Harry. They grind against each other, hard and desperate, and Draco isn’t quite sure he can wait for lube and penetration. He’s already so close, and Harry is touching him so roughly, digging his fingers into Draco’s hips hard enough that there will probably be bruises later. “I want you so much,” Draco whispers, and Harry kisses him fiercely.

“Fucking—” Harry groans, his hand groping between them. “Fucking zippers, why do you wear trousers that zip—”

“Easier than buttons,” Draco says into his mouth. “And laces, and snaps—”

“Nothing’s easier than snaps,” Harry argues, his words muffled by Draco’s tongue. “And these have—they have a button, too.”

“Same as your jeans,” he says, but it doesn’t matter anymore; Harry’s got them open. He’s touching Draco through his pants and mouthing at his neck, and Draco moans. “Hurry, please, oh fuck, hurry up—”

“Just wait a second.” Harry pulls at his trousers and Draco holds himself up off the table with his hands so Harry can get them off, sitting down again as Harry tugs them down his legs.

“You forgot these,” Draco tells him, indicating his pants.

“Shut up,” Harry says, and kisses him. He shoves at the elastic waist of Draco’s pants and wraps his hand around Draco’s cock. “Just fucking shut up and wait a second—”

Harry stops himself and tenses, but Draco doesn’t understand why. The rushing noise in the fireplace doesn’t register. The two quick footsteps don’t register. The surprised gasp and quiet pop of Apparition don’t register. All he realises is that Harry’s hand on his cock isn’t moving anymore and a look of panic is taking over Harry’s features.

Then: “Molly,” Harry says, and Draco understands.

He has no idea what to do or say, and the one nonsensical thought his mind provides is At least my bare arse wasn’t on her table.

He tries to will away his erection, but Harry is still dishevelled and flushed and beautiful, and Draco’s body won’t listen. Draco’s trousers are still on his left leg, hanging off under his knee, and he struggles to get his right foot back into them. He doesn’t remember taking off his shoes; one is under the table, but he must have kicked off the other a little too enthusiastically because he doesn’t see it anywhere.

“Did she leave? Where did she—”

“In the sitting room, dears!” Molly calls shrilly. “Please don’t—” She clears her throat. “Please don’t come in before you’re decent!”

“Does she—” Draco starts, but Harry shakes his head and hands him his other shoe, which had been on one of the chairs.

“Can you please just—” He doesn’t finish, only motions mutely at Draco’s persisting hard-on.

Draco’s face heats. “Yeah, sorry, I’ll, er—” He doesn’t know what to say. Harry hasn’t hidden this from them, not exactly; he’s simply avoided saying anything about it outright. Even so, he probably intended to tell her and Arthur eventually, and this certainly isn’t how he planned for it to go.

“Draco,” Harry says quietly. Draco looks up from the floor and meets Harry’s excruciatingly green eyes. Harry looks like he wants to say something, but he presses his lips together and shakes his head. Instead, he reaches out and squeezes Draco’s hand once, before turning and walking to the sitting room.

Draco runs a hand through his hair, straightens his shirt, and follows.

He expects horror, outrage, shock. He expects catastrophe. He does not expect Molly to greet them with an exasperated but good humoured, “Six bedrooms in the house and you choose the kitchen?”

Draco looks back and forth between her and Harry, bewildered. Harry stares at the carpet and shrugs. He looks like a sullen, embarrassed thirteen-year-old preparing for a scolding.

“Harry, dear, did you think I didn’t know?” Molly asks gently, looking to Draco when Harry continues to avoid eye contact. “Goodness, with the way you’ve been going on for the last month I’d have to be blind not to see it!”

Harry looks up then, but his lips remain pressed together in a tight line. Draco catches himself wondering if he might cry, which is ridiculous—Harry wouldn’t cry, not over this.

“Harry,” Molly says, so warm and kind, “you know you’re one of ours.” She lays her hand on Harry’s shoulder, and Draco half expects him to shrug it off, but he stays still. “Arthur and I—we just want you to be happy, whatever that means for you. You’re family, dear, and we love you.”

“I know this isn’t what you wanted,” Harry says. His voice is quiet, but it doesn’t shake.

Molly smiles and shakes her head. “It’s your happiness, Harry, not ours. We only want all of our kids to be happy.”

It’s Molly that starts crying, not Harry, but she’s smiling all the while. She pulls Harry into a tight hug that seems to melt the tension right out of him. He hugs her back just as hard, and kisses her cheek as the hug ends.

“And you, Draco,” she says, turning her wet, happy eyes to him, “you’re a good boy. You’ve come such a long way, dear, and Arthur is so proud of you, and so am I.” The last words are muffled as she wraps her arms around Draco’s middle and squeezes him tightly. He is almost too surprised to return the hug, but she holds it long enough that he manages to hug her briefly before she releases him.

She and Harry smile at each other for what feels like a very long time. Draco’s sure there’s something he’s missed, something neither of them is saying, but it seems like everything is all right, now. He wants Ginny to come home and see this; he’s somehow certain that this will help her current frustration with her mother a great deal.

“Molly?” he says, once it’s been long enough that he isn’t afraid he’s ruining the moment. “Was there something you needed? Ginny said you were with Bill and his family.”

“Oh, yes!” Molly exclaims. “I nearly forgot all about it. I have to start cooking; everyone will be arriving soon and there isn’t anything on the stove yet! I meant to start earlier, but with the girls feeling ill—”

“We can help,” Draco offers, and Harry looks at him curiously. Molly is thrilled at the offer, though she tries to play it off as though she doesn’t need it. She starts a knife chopping vegetables for soup and has Draco supervise and provide it with a supply of onions and carrots, and she gets Harry to work doing something with raw meat.

The family slowly trickles in throughout the next hour, save Bill and Fleur and their daughters—Ginny with James and George in tow, Percy and his wife Audrey, Charlie, George’s wife Angelina and their son Fred, Arthur, and of course, Weasley and Granger. With all of the traffic coming through the kitchen fireplace, Molly shoos Draco and Harry both out of the kitchen.

“Is something wrong?” Ginny asks in a hushed voice, sidling up next to Draco where he stands in the sitting room. “My mum just snatched my dad away right as he arrived and started whispering frantically on the second floor landing.”

“We got here early,” Draco says quietly, right into her ear, “and since no one was home, we…”

She laughs and shakes her head. “You didn’t.”

“Your mum caught us on the kitchen table.”

Her smile vanishes, replaced by wide-eyed shock. “In the act?” she mouths.

Draco nods, but amends, “Well, almost the act? An act. I did have my pants on, which helped, I think.”

“So is she—”

“She was great about it, actually. She knew we were—well, she knew something was going on. Not that she wanted to see it for herself, but…”

“I would have thought she’d be disappointed, at least,” Ginny says, pensive.

“She said she and your dad just want Harry to be happy.”

George comes up to them then, which ends the conversation unceremoniously, and Ginny looks very thoughtful for a while afterwards. At one point she talks to Harry quietly in the corner, but that is broken up when an oblivious Percy joins them.

There are too many people for them to all eat in the kitchen, so everyone winds up milling about and settling in small groups in both the kitchen and sitting room. Draco ends up in the kitchen with Harry, Arthur, Charlie, Percy, Audrey, Granger, and Weasley. No one comments on Draco and Harry sitting side by side, but Granger smiles every time she looks across the table at them, and Arthur seems to barely keep himself from doing the same.

After lunch, the family leaves gradually, just as they arrived. Eventually, he and Harry are the only ones left who don’t live there. They settle in the sitting room with Ginny and James, once Molly and Arthur have disappeared upstairs. Ginny interrogates them about what happened; she tried asking Molly about it but Molly hushed her in the name of their privacy, given all of the other family members present. Harry is rather stoic, but does reveal that Arthur pulled him aside just before lunch was ready and expressed the same sort of sentiments that Molly had.

Ginny is thrilled. “I never even let myself hope it would go this well,” she says, grinning.

Harry shrugs, but he’s smiling a little.

Draco can tell her mind is whirring with all of the possible implications for her—whether Molly is done with the marriage hints for good, whether her parents just wanting Harry to be happy means they can accept whatever makes her happy, whether an illegitimate child with a Harry Potter in a relationship with another man would be easier to swallow for the public. Draco can see her processing all of it, and he knows her mind is going to the same place his is, particularly in regards to that last one. Harry may never want any of his personal life to be public knowledge, but it will come out that he’s James’s father, sooner or later, and Draco can’t help wondering whether acceptance from Molly and Arthur might make Harry willing to share his bisexuality with the Wizarding public as well. What has looked like a pipe dream for months no longer seems impossible.

They stay with Ginny and James for long enough that Molly insists they stay for dinner as well. “You clearly aren’t feeding yourself nearly enough, dear,” she says to Draco, patting his forearm.

It’s a pleasant meal, and at times Draco manages to forget about what happened at this very table only hours earlier. Afterwards, he and Harry say their goodbyes. Molly and Arthur always say goodbye warmly, but this is the first time that both have taken the time to hug Harry and Draco individually and at length. Tonight, Ginny has no interest in using them as an escape and only gives them each quick hugs; it’s apparent that she wants them to go so she can talk to her parents candidly about the situation.

When they get back to Grimmauld Place, Harry immediately shoves Draco up against the closest wall and starts frantically working at their clothing. The lube that has been waiting in his front pocket all day finally comes out, and he turns Draco around and fucks him right there against the wall. They go up to Harry’s room and have sex a second time, somewhat less desperately. Draco dozes off afterwards, sated and exhausted.

He wakes an hour later, alone. For a moment, he expects the worst; Harry has gone off to get high and fuck a series of nameless strangers, and he regrets everything to do with Draco, with all of this. Draco’s lungs seize up, just for a moment. But Harry’s wand is lying on the bedside table. His and Draco’s clothes are still in a crumpled pile at the foot of the bed, where they dropped them when they came in. Nothing is out of place. Harry did not leave in a panic.

Draco rifles through the pile of clothing and puts on his pants and Harry’s t-shirt, not caring to deal with getting fully dressed. He finds Harry in the sitting room, slouched on the sofa in his jeans and nothing else, a tumbler of amber liquid in hand. There’s a fire going in the fireplace, and the light dances over Harry’s features, glinting off his glasses brightly enough to obscure his eyes.

His glasses.

“What are you wearing?” Draco asks, crossing the room to the sofa.

Harry turns when he speaks, and Draco wonders whether he would have noticed his presence if he hadn’t said anything. With the light hitting Harry’s lenses at this new angle, Draco can see his eyes, tired and unfocused.

“What are you wearing?” Harry asks, and stares at Draco’s bare legs.

Draco sits beside him, his knee knocking against Harry’s thigh. “I meant these,” he says, tapping the side of Harry’s glasses.

“My glasses.”

“You never—”

“The contacts were irritating my eyes.”

“Contacts?”

“Contact lenses. They correct your vision, like glasses, but sit directly on your eyes instead. It’s a Muggle thing.”

“I know what contacts are.” Draco had freaked out a little bit the first time he saw one of the waitresses at the restaurant he worked at take one of hers out to reposition it; he thought her eyes were coming apart, which she found hilarious. He had assumed Harry had permanently corrected his vision somehow, whether with a magical procedure or a Muggle one. It’s strange to see him with the glasses on again. In one sense, he looks younger and more like his old self, but at the same time he seems harsher and farther away with this barrier in front of his eyes.

“I can leave them in for about a month at a time,” Harry explains, “before I have to put new ones in. I think I left those ones in too long.”

He swallows down the rest of the alcohol in his glass and stands to refill it. When he comes back, Draco takes the tumbler from his hand and takes a sip.

“Malfoy,” Harry says warningly.

Draco hands it back. “Malfoy, is it?”

Harry sits back down, slouching low. “Piss off.”

They sit in silence. Harry drinks, and Draco watches the fire.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” Draco says after a while.

“Wasn’t your fault.”

Draco knows that, but part of him still feels like it was. “I suppose it could have been worse.”

Harry shrugs; Draco is still looking at the fire, but their shoulders bump. “I was supposed to marry Ginny,” Harry says.

Draco doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t have anything to say to that. (Perhaps, Yes, you were, and you still should. Or, You can’t; she doesn’t want to. Or, You can’t; you’re with me now. And he can’t say that.)

“I tried,” Harry says, and he sounds so broken. “I do love her. I love her so much. I think I love her more than I ever did before, when I thought I really loved her.”

Draco feels hollow, sitting and staring at the fire and hearing this. He feels emptied. It doesn’t hurt; it’s more like his emotions have just been wrenched from him, all at once, and now he has to wait for new ones.

“But it’s like Ron love, or Hermione love. I—I’ve never wanted to fuck her less. She’s so beautiful and I fucking loved fucking her and now it’s just—it’s gone. I don’t want to fuck her at all.”

Draco can’t breathe.

“It’s as if having James means it’s really—we’ll never be together like that. Any potential that was still there is gone. We’re family, and we will always be family and we will always love each other, but we will never be in love and it’s… it’s strange to realise that. To know that for sure.”

Draco is frozen, unable to brave looking at Harry but no longer able to stare directly into the fire. He closes his eyes, and the flames dissolve into purple-blue blurs behind his eyelids.

“I want her to be happy.”

Draco takes slow, deep breaths. His arm touches Harry’s from shoulder to elbow, and he reaches blindly for Harry’s hand. He keeps his eyes closed as he asks, “What would make you happy?”

Harry doesn’t answer.






The next morning, Harry doesn’t get out of bed. His presence is not required at the Ministry at all today, Draco gathers, so he showers and dresses alone. He left a spare set of robes in his locker at the Ministry for mornings like this. He puts on the same trousers he’s been wearing since Saturday and one of Harry’s shirts. He’ll have to go home to the Manor later, and if his mother catches him there she’ll insist he stay for dinner. He tries to prepare himself for the idea, but after Saturday, he thinks he may have to just pop into his room, pack a few changes of clothing, and come back here.

When he Floos to the Ministry, something feels off, and it takes him until he’s in the lift to notice what’s different. Even though he’s alone, people are looking in his general direction today. Everyone stares at Harry and quite a few people will stare at Granger and Weasley, but no one ever looks at Draco. It doesn’t feel malicious, but he can’t help noticing that their eyes aren’t passing over him the way he’s grown accustomed to.

“Is everything all right?” Astoria asks as he comes out of the lift. She’s lingering in the hallway, seemingly waiting for him.

It’s a question he could easily just nod to, but he doesn’t actually know the answer. No, being caught in his pants on the kitchen table by Molly Weasley was not ideal, but he truly does think things are better now that it’s out in the open, so to speak. Harry talking about Ginny last night was hard, and clearly difficult for Harry as well, but they eventually went back to bed and slept through the remainder of the night, and Draco woke feeling optimistic.

“Yeah,” he says, “it’s all right.”

She seems concerned about him for the rest of the day, though, and asks oblique questions during their lunch break, and again in the lift on their way down to the Atrium before they go their separate ways. He doesn’t know what’s bothering her, but if it isn’t something she wants to discuss outright, Draco supposes there isn’t anything he can do about it.

He Apparates home, directly to his room, and turns to his wardrobe. And there’s his mother, sitting on his bed with her arms crossed.

“What are you doing in here?” he asks crossly.

“You haven’t been home in days, Draco,” she replies, matching his tone. “Where have you been?”

His go-to answer is usually at least partially true, but he didn’t see Astoria once all weekend, not until this morning. “I was only gone yesterday,” he answers weakly.

“You did not come home for two nights in a row,” Narcissa says. She is not the meek, worried woman he’s been dismissing for so long. Her voice is firm, demanding an answer.

“I have friends, Mother. I go out.”

“You disappeared for nearly forty-eight hours, and you will give me an explanation.”

“Get out of my room, Mother.”

“I am not leaving until you tell me where you’ve been.”

The door opens suddenly, slamming against the wall with the force of it. Draco’s father stands in the doorway, visibly shaking with anger.

“Lucius, don’t,” Narcissa warns, but he already is stepping in from the hallway.

He has a newspaper crumpled in his fist, and he throws it at Draco. It hits his chest and falls limply to the floor. Draco, baffled, stands motionless, eyes darting from his father to the paper and back again. Lucius does not speak, but his glare tacitly demands that Draco read whatever has angered him so.

Draco picks up the paper and spreads it on his bed, smoothing the creases left by his father’s hand. His mother stands and steps away from both him and Lucius, giving space to whatever is going to happen.

It isn’t the Daily Prophet. Draco doesn’t understand at first; he knows his father reads the Prophet to keep up on the goings-on in the world outside Malfoy Manor, but he doesn’t read cheap gossip rags like this. No one he knows reads gossip rags like this, except perhaps Daphne Greengrass, much to his and Astoria’s amusement.

His own face looks back at him on the first page in grainy black and white. He isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, only coming out of one of the fireplaces in the Ministry Atrium and walking toward the camera, but just to the left; whoever took the photo must have been in the queue for the lifts. He cannot process why this photo is associated with a front page story, and he has to read the large text beneath three times before he understands.

Is Draco Malfoy on the Road to Redemption, Or Is There Something Sinister up His Sleeve?

Underneath, with the main body of text, there is a smaller image of Draco at seventeen, his sleeve rolled up to reveal his Dark Mark. It was taken the day after the final battle at Hogwarts, after he and his parents were taken to the Ministry for questioning to determine whether or not they’d be prosecuted for war crimes. They were released to the Manor to await trial, which took nearly two months; they were not considered a high priority. Draco blinks uncomprehendingly at this picture, half expecting it to morph into something else.

The article, if it can be called an article, is a compilation of observations that have thus far gone without public comment. There are things that have already been photographed but not considered significant, like his lunches with Granger, Ginny, and various Weasleys, and his presence alongside the Golden Trio in the Atrium. There are things that have long been public knowledge, like his assistance from Arthur and Granger in his acceptance into the Auror program. But the ‘exposé’ also notes how frequently he and Harry arrive at the Ministry one after another, and it takes the step legitimate papers wouldn’t, drawing attention to the mysterious difference in Harry’s smile as he was looking at Draco.

On the second page, there is a series of photographs of him with Ginny, Granger, Arthur, Weasley, and Harry in various combinations. Each is captioned with wild speculation, and Draco can’t read another word.

“Where did you get this?” he asks evenly.

The article isn’t at all inflammatory; there is the insinuation that he is up to no good, but nothing is said outright, and it also posits that he may be a genuinely good person that other genuinely good people genuinely like. It shouldn’t hurt his chances with Robards, and while Peakes will be irritated that Draco has snaked his way in with the right people, he’ll also be pleased that someone has caught on to the idea that something off is going on. And it helps that this is not at all a legitimate news source, and their calling attention to Draco will not actually cause many people to care.

“I know you don’t subscribe to this rag,” Draco says. “Who gave it to you?” He is suddenly reminded of seeing another issue in his mother’s sitting room. He turns to her, but she is looking at his father.

“Lucius—” she starts, but it’s too late.

“I am your father,” Lucius shouts, “and you are my son, and you will explain to me exactly what you are doing with these people.”

“Oh, will I?” Draco matches his volume. “I don’t owe you anything. You’re pathe—”

“What are you doing with this filth?”

“‘Filth’? That’s rich, coming from you—”

“Draco, please—” Narcissa tries.

“Harry Potter saved my life,” Draco says, stepping toward his father. “He saved all of us. You’re a sad, middle-aged man who can’t so much as leave his house.”

“Oh, he saved you,” Lucius spits. “What would Harry Potter want with you?”

“That’s an interesting question, Father!” Draco can no longer control the pitch or volume of his voice. “An interesting question with a rather interesting answer—”

“Lucius, don’t, please—Draco—”

“I’m fucking Harry Potter, Father.”

All other noise in the room comes to an abrupt halt.

“Or, pardon me, being fucked by Harry Potter. At length, and with much enthusiasm, on a near-daily basis. Sometimes several times in a day! All over the place! In his sitting room, in public toilets, on the Weasley’s kitchen table—”

His mother starts crying, which only angers him more.

It seems to snap Lucius out of his shocked silence. “Whoring yourself out like a—”

“Yes, Father, I’m slutting it up with the hero of the Wizarding World. What do you think of that?”

“No son of mine—”

“I’m not your son, Father. I’m a fully grown man and I am making something of myself. I am proud of what I’ve accomplished. And I’m ashamed of you.”

He takes another look at his father’s red, contorted face, and his mother’s, blotchy with tears, and Apparates away.






He takes himself to Harry’s sitting room. At first he doesn’t move, only stands right there in the middle of the room, feeling his anger ebb and waiting for his breathing to even out. He closes his eyes, focusing and trying to let his parents’ voices leave his head.

Harry isn’t there. Harry can feel when someone arrives, and he would have come in by now if he were home.

Draco could go to the Burrow—Harry might be there, and if he isn’t, Ginny definitely is. But he feels like a hug from Molly Weasley would break him right now, take him from holding it together to completely falling apart, so he sits on Harry’s sofa and waits for calm to settle in.

He isn’t aware of dozing off, but when he wakes, the clock above the mantel reads ten past eleven. He stays horizontal on the sofa, attempting to sort out his thoughts. He hasn’t eaten since 12:30, but the thought of food makes him feel ill. He’s still wearing the same trousers for the third day in a row. And Harry—Harry hasn’t come home, or he’d have woken Draco.

He can’t do anything about food without wanting to retch, and he can’t do anything about Harry. He can do something about his trousers.

He closes his eyes and concentrates on his bedroom. His parents aren’t in it anymore, he’s sure, and at this point they probably don’t expect him to come back tonight, so he can grab some clothes and come back here. It’s a step. It’s something, and he can do it.

But as he tries to take himself there, nothing moves. The tight, spinning sensation of Apparition—it doesn’t happen. He stays right where he is, standing in front of Harry’s sofa. It feels like running into a wall, but inside his body. It feels awful.

His father has changed the wards, then. Draco cannot enter his family home.

So that’s how it is.

Harry comes home just past midnight, neither sober nor alone. Draco is in the kitchen downstairs, eating a sandwich in an effort to take care of himself, when he hears the front door open. Harry only uses the front door when he brings Muggles home. And Draco hears voices, Harry’s familiar one and a high-pitched, giggling female.

He can’t help going upstairs when he hears her laugh; his curiosity at Harry bringing a woman home beats his fear of what might happen.

Harry has that horrible, confident grin he wears when he pulls, and one of his hands is on the woman’s breasts while his other gropes her arse. The woman is pliant in his arms. Then she sees Draco, and she tenses up and shakes him off.

“You didn’t say anything about a three-way,” the woman says, eyeing Draco with a hint of revulsion. Draco knows his hair is mussed from falling asleep on the sofa, his third-day trousers are wrinkled, and his eyes are red after crying into his sandwich, but he can’t imagine his appearance truly warrants disgust from a Muggle tart willing to go home with one of Harry’s fake names.

“Don’t worry, Miss,” he says sweetly, “I have no interest in fucking you.”

“Why are you here?” Harry asks, his tone barely civil.

“What, is there a two-night limit?” Draco snaps.

“What’s going on here?” the woman asks. “You aren’t gay?”

“He’s not gay,” Draco answers, clearly implying the opposite.

“Go home,” Harry says. “You don’t live here.”

“I can’t.”

“Excuse me?” the woman says. “He told you to—”

“Kindly stop talking,” Draco says, cutting her off. “I—I tried,” he tells Harry. “I can’t.”

Harry stares blankly.

“What are you—” the woman starts.

“I fought with my parents,” Draco says. “There was something in one of the papers. We fought, and I left.”

“Well, I’m sure if you run on home, your mummy will make everything all better,” Harry mocks.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Draco says. “I tried to go home and I—” He glances at the woman, who is crossing her arms and looking very put out. “I physically can’t. They changed the—the locks.”

The woman raises her eyebrows and looks to Harry as though waiting for him to remove Draco from the foyer by force.

Harry turns to her. “You can leave.”

“What?”

“Here’s cab fare,” he says, taking a wad of cash from his pocket and pressing it to her palm. “Have a nice night.”

“Who even is he?”

“He got here first,” Harry says with a vaguely apologetic shrug. He locks the door behind her. His expression is softer, just slightly, when he turns back to Draco. “What was in this paper?”

“Just…a series of insinuations, I suppose. About me, and all of you.”

“Baseless?”

Draco shakes his head. “It was only a gossip rag, I don’t know—Who’s Who or something like that. It connected all of the dots the Prophet hasn’t been connecting.”

Harry looks quizzical. “The Prophet?”

“Yeah, I’ve been in the pictures but they haven’t—”

“I don’t read the papers,” Harry says. “What pictures?”

“I’ve been in your photographs. The photographs they’re always taking of you, and Ginny, and Granger and Weasley—I’ve been in them, because I’ve been with you, but they haven’t said anything about me, not until now, and—”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing outright, only suggestions, but—I told them, Harry. I told my parents.”

“Told them—?”

“I told them I’m—I’ve been sleeping with you.”

Harry stares blankly.

“I was so angry, and my father was so angry, and I came here but you were gone and then an hour ago I tried to go back because I’ve been wearing these trousers for three days but he—he changed the wards. I can’t get into the Manor anymore.”

Harry is quiet, staring at Draco with his brows knit together. After a few moments, he says, “So they know?”

“They won’t tell anyone. They’re horrified. They wouldn’t want anyone to know.”

“I guess it’s all coming out, then,” Harry says, voice remarkably calm. “All right.”

“All right?” Draco repeats, but Harry ignores him.

“You plan on sleeping here tonight?”

Draco nods.

Harry turns and starts for the stairs. The smell of cigarette smoke and what must be that woman’s perfume wafts off him as he walks past, and Draco has never needed a smoke more.

“Can I—do you have a fag?”

Harry hands him a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his back pocket. It’s the lighter Draco left here, that first time.

Harry goes upstairs and Draco goes out to the front stoop and has a smoke. It’s early December and Draco is only wearing a shirt and a pair of wool trousers, but Harry must have warming charms out front for this very purpose, as the cold doesn’t seem to touch him.

By the time he comes upstairs, Harry is in bed with the lights out. Draco strips down and gets under the covers beside him. Harry is still awake; Draco can tell by his breathing. He rolls onto his side, facing away from Draco.

Harry doesn’t get out of bed the next morning, either, but he does mumble something about Draco borrowing a pair of trousers. So Draco wears one of Harry’s shirts and a pair of Harry’s trousers. Both are a little loose, but once he puts his trainee robes on, no one can tell the difference. It feels like an incredibly stupid move, going out dressed entirely in Harry’s clothes just after rampant speculation as to his connection to Harry. But Harry is only ever seen in immaculate semi-formal robes these days, so it’s not as though anyone will be able to recognise his dark grey trousers and blue shirt.

But then, people who regularly see Harry as just Harry will be able to tell. Granger is able to tell, when she comes down to the second floor from the first just as the trainees are released for lunch. She starts toward Draco but stops halfway, staring at the grey trousers. “Are those—?”

Draco nods.

“I’ll just—I’ll go speak with Auror Harvey,” Astoria says, excusing herself and going back to the cubicles. She’s been talking about wanting to ask Auror Harvey for more information about tracking charms and sensors on specific spells, but Draco can tell she’s trying to give them privacy. He doesn’t understand why, at first, but then he notices the seriousness of Granger’s expression, and understands that she is readying herself to tell him something.

She takes him to one of the private rooms, used for interviews, questioning, and confidential meetings, with a nod of permission from Weasley. She sets a black leather satchel on the table between them, and Draco knows it must be important, but he cannot fathom why.

“Your mother just came to the first floor and demanded to speak with Harry Potter.”

Draco did not have any expectations at all, but he’s now sure this is the last thing he expected her to say. It doesn’t make any sense, not at all. “I didn’t think Harry was here today,” he says. It is the only part of the story he can begin to put in rational terms.

“We had a meeting at ten thirty,” Granger says. “Your mother came in halfway through. She gave this bag to Harry and said, rather cryptically, ‘Please take care of him.’ Everyone was very confused, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“So am I,” Draco says after a moment. “And then she left?”

“And then she left. I think she wanted to avoid a scene,” Granger adds, thoughtful. “That was about the smallest, most secure audience she could have found at the Ministry, that’s for certain.”

“What’s in the bag?” Draco asks. He could open it himself, but.

“Some of your things. It’s expanded on the inside; I think at least half of your wardrobe is in there. Harry had to go, but he asked me to give it to you.”

Draco nods and picks up the bag. He isn’t ready to look at it, to see his life neatly packed away, but he slings the strap over his shoulder.

“Draco,” Granger starts, “did you…leave home?”

“Harry didn’t tell you?”

“Does Harry tell anyone anything?”

It seems harsh, after what happened Sunday, but Draco doesn’t comment on it. “Did you see the—”

“I saw. George showed it to Ginny and she Flooed me and Ron last night. Ron says it’s nothing,” she says, as though she thinks the opposite.

“My father thought it was something. And then, well, I told him it was something.”

Granger’s eyes widen. “You—?”

“I told him Harry and I are fucking.”

Granger’s head jerks back in surprise.

“And then I left, and when I tried to come back I found out he’d changed the wards, so—yes, I left home.”

She comes around the table and hugs him, which is a bit of a comfort but also quite awkward. “Let’s get you something to eat,” she says.

There’s only ten minutes left of his break now, but she takes him to Weasley’s empty cubicle and gives him the carton of hot soup sitting on his desk. Draco can only assume it’s meant to be Weasley’s lunch, but Granger insists he eat it and he really is very hungry, so he goes ahead and eats.

He spends the next two weeks with Harry. They don’t talk about it, but Harry makes it clear that this is not a permanent solution. It’s awkward and sometimes uncomfortable. Harry sometimes gets in strange, quiet moods and seems to want to be alone. Sometimes this ends in them sleeping on opposite sides of the bed or even in different rooms. Other times it ends in sex, and Draco can never predict the outcome.

Twice, Harry brings other people home and fucks them in other bedrooms. Draco lies awake in Harry’s bed trying not to hear the muffled noises. The first time, Draco doesn’t see Harry the next morning and showers, dresses, and leaves alone. The second time, Harry wakes him up with a blow job and then fucks him in the shower.

They have dinner at the Burrow most nights. There, Harry’s behaviour is largely unchanged, though he sometimes tenses when Molly implies that they are in a relationship. Once, she refers to Draco as “your young man” while Draco is in the other room. Ginny relays this to him, laughing, but Draco finds it much less funny when Harry won’t look at him afterwards. They have rough sex on the floor when they get back, and when they’re done, Harry gets up without a word and takes a long shower before drinking alone in the sitting room for the rest of the night.

The two weeks come to an end when Molly finds out that Draco is technically homeless. She yells at everyone present for not telling her (including Arthur, George, and Angelina, who didn’t know), and she’s still yelling as she insists that Draco come and stay in Percy’s old room. Draco is too intimidated to refuse. Ginny gleefully throws her arms around him, and once Molly has calmed down, she hugs him so tight he’s afraid he’ll bruise.

For whatever reason, Harry is more relaxed after that. He still doesn’t take well to labels of any kind on their relationship, but the moody avoidance lessens. He takes Draco back to his after dinner sometimes, still, as well as going upstairs with him to Percy’s room. The first time, Draco is almost too conscious of their surroundings to go through with it, but it’s an easier adjustment than he expects, especially with a full floor between his bedroom and Molly and Arthur’s.

Harry also suggests that Draco try writing to Narcissa, one night as they’re lying in Harry’s bed between rounds. He avoids eye contact as he says it, staring up at the ceiling instead, and Draco knows he’s been thinking about it for a while. He knows he can’t say thank you, but he holds Harry’s gaze as they fuck afterwards, and he thinks Harry understands him.

He and his mother begin writing daily. They avoid mentioning Lucius, for the most part, instead working on getting to know each other again. Draco tells her about training, about the Weasleys, about Harry (in vague terms, of course). He learns that while he’s been spending so much time with Harry and Ginny and their family, Narcissa has been getting reacquainted with her sister Andromeda, spending afternoons with Andromeda and her six-year-old grandson Teddy. He likes the idea of his mother getting out of the Manor and spending time with someone other than his father. He wonders if there’s hope for them as a family after all.

A week before Christmas, in the Weasley’s sitting room, Harry casually says, “Andromeda and Teddy are coming to mine for Christmas Eve.” Teddy is Harry’s godson, Draco has gathered, and Harry has mentioned him offhand a few times. Draco is pretty sure that Harry sees him regularly, whenever he isn’t busy having drugged-up sex or being the figurehead of the post-war Ministry, but Draco hasn’t met him yet.

“That should be nice,” Draco responds carefully. Molly and Arthur have assured him that he’s fully welcome at the Burrow for Christmas, but it will be his first time spending it without seeing either of his parents at all, and he can’t help feeling sad at that.

“Andromeda has asked if your mother could join us,” Harry continues, just as nonchalantly, “and would like me to extend the invitation to you, as well.”

Draco is so happy he is afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he speaks, so he kisses Harry enthusiastically in response, right there in front of everyone else. Harry doesn’t say anything more on the subject, but Draco doesn’t miss the slight flush that crosses his cheeks.

On Christmas Eve, his mother hugs him for a solid five minutes before saying a word, while Andromeda looks on in amusement and chats with Harry. Six-year-old Teddy is enthralled, and once Narcissa has released Draco, he wraps his arms around Draco’s legs with excitement. “I’m so glad to see you,” Narcissa says, Teddy between them. “I’m trying to… I want to sort things out with your father, Draco, but these things take time.”

“I know,” he says, and pats the top of Teddy’s purple-haired head.

Narcissa smiles, and it feels like things might be right again.

They eat in the dining room that Harry never uses (Draco only knows of its existence because they had sex on the far end of the table once), just the five of them at one end of the long table. Harry seems to have borrowed a house elf from Hogwarts for the occasion, though as with all good house elves, it remains unseen throughout the night.

After dinner, they move to the sitting room and exchange gifts. Ginny helped Draco select Teddy’s gift, a colouring book full of children from all over the world drawn in thick black lines. Draco doesn’t understood how fitting it is until Teddy opens it and immediately turns his hair bright white. He flips through the book with glee, exclaiming at all of the nose shapes and skin tones and eye colours he can try. Andromeda gives Draco an approving smile.

Harry didn’t get anything for Draco. Draco knew he wouldn’t, and so he didn’t get anything for Harry, either. It feels like more than enough to spend Christmas Eve with him, and wake up with him on Christmas morning.

Christmas at the Burrow is a much rowdier affair, and much more crowded. As an only child, he never imagined what a family this large would feel like. It’s overwhelming, if Draco is honest with himself, but thrilling all the same. Everyone treats him so warmly, as though he really does belong there. As though he really is one of them. Molly knitted jumpers for everyone. Draco recognises them; he remembers seeing the some of the Weasleys wear them back at Hogwarts. As she hands them to her children, one by one, and they put them on to appease her, Draco watches and smiles. Then Molly gives one to him, a slate blue with a great big D on the front, and he feels so warm inside that he forgets for the moment that this life is only borrowed.






Life speeds up when January arrives. Draco has been looking forward to it for so long, to this last six-month stretch, that sometimes it doesn’t feel real. Ginny, too, is amazed that it’s all finally happening. Every night when she returns from Quidditch practise, she is nearly vibrating with excitement and full of stories from her day.

The trainees are now out in the field almost every day, rather than hanging back with the Aurors who have desk work to do. Who goes out is up to the Auror partners who bring them along. Some trainees are gone constantly; Peakes is a favourite to take out, since he’s known for his strong magic. Astoria is taken on several stake outs. Draco is the least popular pick. He anticipated it, but it still stings. Weasley and Adler are the only ones who ever choose him for the first two months, until Robards sends out a departmental notice that this is meant to be a rotation.

Draco worries that it is going to go wrong now, in the final months. He worries that he’s been deluding himself all along and now, right as the end approaches, it will all amount to nothing and he’ll have wasted three years of his life on an impossible hope.

“It isn’t guaranteed until we actually graduate from the program,” Draco tells Harry one night. “Some people make it all the way through but don’t graduate.” It could be for any number of reasons—bad reviews from the Aurors on fieldwork, lack of necessary improvement over time in weaker areas, subpar performance on the final practical exam. Draco still worries that they’ll find a way to reject him for his criminal history.

“You’ll graduate,” Harry says simply.

It doesn’t help that Peakes is doing well in all the ways that Draco isn’t. Much of this is left to chance; trainees are meant to only be in the field for very basic cases, and any excitement is entirely unplanned. It’s an accident that Harvey and Mathers underestimate their suspect and wind up bringing Peakes on a chase through Hogsmeade, but it gives Peakes something to brag about for weeks. Thankfully, fieldwork means the trainees see much less of each other, so Draco’s exposure to Peakes’ success is minimal.

Draco understands all of the theory, and he’s excelled in all training simulations. He can’t prove himself, though, when his only opportunities to put his training into practise are investigations into dark artefacts tip-offs that only lead to empty warehouses, completely legitimate businesses, and once, a hidden stash of enchanted umbrellas.

“This isn’t illegal,” Weasley tells the woman who gave the tip.

“They’re exceedingly water-resistant!” the woman informs them.

Adler glares at her.

“I understand that fieldwork is a valuable experience,” Draco says to Astoria over lunch. It’s the first time they’ve been able to eat together in over a week, with the new lack of overlap in their schedules. “It feels a bit pointless, though, when I never actually do anything.”

“I’ve been enjoying it,” Astoria says. “You should see if you can tag along for some stake outs or something. I know no one ever picks you, but honestly, most of them hate it and would be glad to pass off the waiting and watching to someone else. We could see if we could do one together, maybe. We always got the best ratings on stealth.”

“You always got the best ratings on stealth.” Astoria smiles winningly. “That would be nice, though. I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“That’s because you don’t,” Astoria says with a shrug. “Speaking of seeing, though—I’ve been seeing someone.”

“Oh?” Draco chokes a bit on his sandwich and has to sort that out before he can speak; Astoria watches his struggle in silent amusement. “Who?” he asks, voice slightly hoarse.

“This boy who’s friends with Theodore. His name is Archie and he’s in Healer training at St. Mungo’s.”

“How long have you been seeing him?”

Astoria shrugs. “A couple of months.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t said anything, that’s all.”

She shrugs again. “You aren’t really around enough to say anything to.”

Which hurts, a little. It isn’t Draco’s fault that their schedules don’t match up the same way anymore. Of course they see less of each other now that they aren’t stuck together with the same few people from nine to five every weekday. They don’t get a chance to say much of anything further, though, as they go their separate ways for the remainder of the afternoon. “Can I come by for dinner tonight?” Draco asks, wanting things to be how they used to be.

“Sure,” she says as she leaves.

Daphne cooks, which is new. She chatters on about how she’s trying to be more domestic for when she starts her new life with Theodore. Apparently, they’re moving in together next month, which is also news to Draco.

“The new flat is gorgeous,” Daphne tells him excitedly as they eat. “It’s it gorgeous, honey?”

Theodore nods, stoic as ever. At least that hasn’t changed.

“Pansy’s moving into her room when she leaves,” Astoria tells Draco. “She’s just started as a receptionist at Daddy’s store, so it makes a lot of sense.”

“Pansy Parkinson?” Draco confirms. Astoria, Daphne, and Theodore all nod. Apparently Daphne and Pansy, best friends throughout their Hogwarts years, reconnected at some point last fall, which Draco supposes must be great for them. It’s strange, though, to hear about it after the fact like this. He hadn’t meant to stop coming round to their flat. He didn’t mean to get this out of touch with Astoria, or with any of them.

As he looks across the table at her, he realises she now represents his old life, and perhaps she has to him for a while, if unconsciously. He doesn’t know anything that’s going on with her at all, and as he thinks about everything that’s happened in the last few months, he realises she doesn’t know much of anything about what’s going on with him, either.

Daphne and Theodore disappear to Daphne’s room after dinner, while Astoria and Draco catch up in the sitting room. Astoria complains about Daphne a bit in a whisper, and how annoying her attempts at domesticity have been. (She tried to clean the bathroom last month with some charms and Astoria’s next shower turned her skin yellow.) She also complains about the marriage hints her parents have been dropping lately, now that Daphne’s June nuptials are approaching. Her mother won’t stop asking to meet Archie. “Which is annoying,” Astoria says, “since we haven’t been dating for very long and she’ll definitely send him running.”

“My mother is doing the same thing,” Draco commiserates. “I think the only way for her to wrap her mind around the Harry thing is if we are Very Serious about each other, which terrifies him, obviously, so I’ve been doing what I can to keep her away from him.” The last few times he’s seen her have been in Muggle London, actually; she finds the same comfort in anonymity there that he always has.

“So ‘the Harry thing’ is mother-sanctioned now, is it?”

“Oh, I think it has been for a while now, actually. She probably credits him for getting us speaking again. Christmas at Harry’s was the first time we saw each other in person after Lucius kicked me out,” he says.

“I thought you had Christmas with the Weasleys,” Astoria says, sounding oddly bitter.

“We had dinner at Harry’s on Christmas Eve. My Aunt Andromeda is raising Harry’s godson Teddy, actually, so—”

“It just seems strange that you never mentioned it.”

“It was a while ago, Astoria.”

“Exactly, Draco,” she says, eyes flaming. “It’s been nearly three months, and you haven’t seen fit to tell me that your mother fully supports you and your boyfriend.” She spits boyfriend as though it’s a dirty word.

Draco is dumbstruck in the face of her sudden anger. “He isn’t my boyfriend.” It’s all he can manage to say.

“I use the term as shorthand for ‘man who has put his dick inside you several hundred times at this point.’ It rolls off the tongue a little more easily.”

Draco doesn’t understand where the venom is coming from. “What’s your problem with Harry?”

“Excuse me for not being thrilled that you’d rather have that prick fucking you than ever spend time with me.”

“That’s not true! We’ve both been busy—”

“No, Draco, you’ve been busy with your wonderful new life while I’ve had to sit around twiddling my thumbs. You know I can’t just wait for you forever, Draco, and if you’re—”

“Wait for me?”

She goes silent.

“You don’t mean—”

She does.

“Astoria, I’m—I’m gay. I’m not—we’re not—”

“He’s awful to you,” she says, and her voice is shaking. “He treats you like a dirty little secret. Like you aren’t worth anything to him at all. He doesn’t even know you, Draco, not in any way that matters, and you don’t know anything about him either.”

Draco wants to contradict her, wants to tell her all the things she doesn’t know about Harry, about him and Harry. He wants to, but he has no idea where to start. Even more, he knows she doesn’t want to hear it.

“Do you know what Pansy’s been saying? She’s been saying that all you care about is being in with the right people. You’ve found the right people and somehow convinced them you’re one of them and you’ve forgotten all about all of us. And I’ve been telling her she’s wrong, but—is she wrong, Draco?”

He can’t bring himself to say anything.

“We’re the same,” she says, and though her eyes are dry, her voice sounds like tears. “You aren’t any better than me. Maybe Harry Potter thinks you’re good for a fuck, but that’s all you’re good for, so don’t go thinking you’re better than me. You’re still down here with the rest of us, trying to claw your way up.”

He wants her to scream or cry, or something, anything other than this quiet, venomous calm.

“Get the fuck out of my flat,” she says. She goes to her bedroom, and she doesn’t slam the door behind her; she closes it so quietly that Draco barely hears the click.






It’s harder without Astoria. All of it. His dependence on her throughout training had become second nature, unconscious, and the days are slow torture without her. She’s still there, of course, and she doesn’t ignore him. It’s worse; she is always extremely polite, the way she is with loose acquaintances.

He has lunches with Granger more often now. She doesn’t check up on him anymore, the way she used to; now, when she asks him how training is, it isn’t code for, ‘Who is giving you a hard time and what can I do about it?’ When he complains about the pointlessness of his fieldwork experiences so far, she laughs and says, “Don’t worry about it too much—the same thing happened to Ron. He says you’re doing quite well.”

Weasley seems to be warming up to him, though Draco would never know it from their interactions. He’s as short-tempered and visibly annoyed by Draco as ever, but then Draco will receive another compliment from him through Granger, and he wonders if Weasley isn’t as annoyed as he’d like everyone to think he is.

On the last Monday in March, Granger meets him for lunch at their usual cafe. She stopped coming to the second floor to meet him after the exposé, for which Draco is thankful. Today, she greets him by setting an envelope on the table. “For you,” she says needlessly.

He opens it to find an invitation to the Sixth Annual Battle of Hogwarts Remembrance Ball. “Apparently someone ‘forgot’ to send it, so Ron gave it to me to hand-deliver.”

“I hadn’t realised it was already that time again.”

“You should actually come this year.”

He looks up from the couple dancing across the invitation. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

“You’re going to be an Auror in three months, Draco,” she says, stating the obvious as though this somehow changes the situation. When he clearly isn’t convinced, she continues, “You can’t let them bully you out of being a part of this. You belong there with us.”

He shrugs her off and pockets the invitation. He forgets about it entirely until Harry is taking off his trousers that night and the crumpled invitation falls to the floor. “What’s this?”

“It’s—the Remembrance Ball, it’s at the end of April.”

Harry scoffs. “You’re going to that?”

“I’ve never been,” Draco says, which isn’t really an answer.

“Neither have I.”

“You haven’t?”

“I haven’t.”

Draco wants more information, but Harry has his trousers off, so he gets a bit distracted from that goal and focuses on a different one, and by the time that one’s been achieved, he’s forgotten about the ball again.

He remembers when Granger asks again whether he’ll come, the next time they have lunch.

“Harry’s never been?”

Granger shakes his head. “It’s always the weekend before the anniversary,” she says. “And then we have the Memorial the day of, which Harry does attend. He always delivers a speech.” She knows Draco’s never been to the Memorial, either.

“A speech you write,” he says.

“Yes, with Kingsley’s input. Harry edits it, cutting anything he doesn’t want to say. The first year it was very, very short.”

“So he does that, but not the ball?”

“Well,” Granger starts, “the ball is—well, it’s a very happy sort of occasion. Sort of remembering the lives of those we lost, rather than the fact that we lost them. And being thankful that we made it, and that those we lost didn’t die in vain. The Memorial, on the other hand—that’s the mourning part.”

“Mourning good, dancing bad?”

Granger shrugs. “Something like that.”

Ginny sighs when Draco brings it up that night, after dinner. “You can try to get him to go, if you want to labour fruitlessly for weeks on end.”

“That bad, is it?”

“He was so moody the last time I tried. For a whole month, I kid you not. But that was three years ago, so go ahead and give it a go if you want.”

Draco waits a week to bring it up. He’s afraid of what Harry might do—if he’ll get distant and closed-off again, or if he’ll get angry and lash out, or if he’ll simply dismiss Draco entirely. He isn’t sure which would be worse.

“I’m not sure whether I want to go to the Remembrance Ball,” he says as casually as he can manage. He just blew Harry, and he’s pretty sure there isn’t a better time to give this a try.

Harry grunts noncommittally.

“Why don’t you want to?” Draco tries.

“Never liked dancing.”

“I don’t think you have to dance.”

“Of course I don’t have to dance. I’m Harry Potter.”

It may be the closest thing to a joke Draco’s heard come out of his mouth while sober.

“Why do you care, anyway?” Harry asks. “What do you need me there for?”

Ginny feels the same way about it. “What do you need Harry for? Just come and have a good time.”

“I’d feel awkward alone,” Draco says. “It’s a pair thing, isn’t it? Your brother and Granger together, and George and Angelina, and Bill and Fleur, and Percy and—”

“Yes, all of my brothers are taking their wives,” she interrupts, “or near-wives, but that doesn’t mean it’s a pair thing. It just means they all have wives.”

“Everyone I’d know there would have a date.” He heard Astoria telling a couple of the other trainees that she’d be going with her boyfriend Archie, which shouldn’t have surprised him but sort of did anyway.

“Not true! I’m going stag, in fact. All right, technically I’m going with my dad—Mum’s staying home this year to watch the grandchildren—but he isn’t a date. You should come so we two sad, dateless losers can keep each other’s spirits up.”

“Wouldn’t that just make us each other’s dates?”

Ginny shrugs. “If you want to think of it that way, then sure.”

“I’ll think about it,” he says.

And he does, but no matter how he envisions it, the night seems wrong without Harry there. He can’t imagine celebrating Harry’s defeat of the Dark Lord without, well, Harry. But the next time brings it up to Harry, he rolls his eyes and tells him he ought to go with Ginny, which makes Draco laugh for a long time, and then Harry pushes him up against the wall and kisses him for a long time, and Draco doesn’t pursue the point any further.






If Draco hadn’t already decided to go, Peakes’ insistence he not attend would have convinced him. Draco only glances at the poster in the hall, a large version of the illustration on the invitation, and Peakes accidentally knocks into him with his shoulder.

“You’re not going, are you, Death Eater?” He’s knocked Draco against the wall and stands in front of him, big and broad, keeping Draco right where he is. He has this down to a science; he keeps his hands off Draco and his wand stowed away, and if anyone comes into the hall, all he has to do is step away and they will be none the wiser.

Two more months, Draco tells himself. Two more months and you’ll graduate and he won’t be able to touch you.

“Yes, I’m going,” he says, voice even.

Peakes steps forward, almost close enough for their noses to touch. “Are you sure about that?”

“Should I give you some privacy?” asks a voice from somewhere beyond Peakes’ huge frame. “Are you having a moment?”

It’s Astoria, and Draco knows that Peakes will back off. She’s risen in his esteem now that her capability in the field has become apparent, and he now seems to group her in with the Aurors rather than with Draco.

“Just having a chat,” Peakes says, stepping back. He gives Draco one last threatening glare before heading for the lift.

Astoria gives Draco a small smile. “Are you coming, then?”

“What?” It’s the first time in over a month that she’s instigated conversation with him.

She nods in the direction of the poster. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” Draco says, stepping away from where Peakes had him against the wall. “Yeah, I think so.”

“You think so? Did you RSVP?”

“Granger did, before she even delivered my invitation,” he says with a laugh. “Sort of made the decision for me.” He didn’t feel obligated to go, even with that in mind; his final decision was made over curry with his mother only a few nights ago, as she urged him not to miss out on the experience if the only thing stopping him was other people telling him he doesn’t deserve it. It means more coming from his mother than from Granger, and she smiled so brightly when he said he’d go that he thinks it’ll be worth it, regardless of what happens.

“I’m going,” Astoria tells him, perhaps unaware he already knew (or perhaps to fill the silence).

“With Archie.”

Astoria shakes her head sheepishly. “We broke up, actually.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I mean, I ended it with him, so it’s—it’s fine.”

It’s the end of the day, and everyone is starting to leave for the night. They pass Draco and Astoria on the way to the lift, and Draco wonders whether they should relocate, and whether they’ll be talking for much longer. He hopes so. He wants things to be good between them again.

“Are you going with anyone?”

Draco shakes his head. “Going alone, actually. Ginny is, too, though, so we’ll keep each other company, I guess. Not as dates, though.” They talked about it and Ginny concluded that she doesn’t want to subject him to the inevitable rumours that he’s James’s father, so she will stick to coming with Arthur.

“Harry isn’t coming?”

Draco shakes his head. “He’s never gone, actually. Doesn’t like dancing.”

She rolls her lips between her teeth and back, slowly. “I’m—I’m sorry about what I said. That time. You aren’t—”

He shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

“No, really, Draco, I’m—”

“It’s fine, Astoria. I was—I was shitty to you. I’m sorry, too.”

She attempts a smile, though it comes off as more of a grimace. “Are we—all right?”

“Yeah,” he says, trying a smile of his own, “we’re all right.”

She gives him a genuine smile now. “I’m so glad, truly. I’m so—”

He hugs her; he can’t stop himself. He missed her. He really missed her. He hears people walking past, but he’s too pleased to be bothered.

“Is it—” he starts after they separate. “Would it be strange for me to accompany you in Archie’s stead? Er, as friends?”

Astoria grins brilliantly. “No, that would be wonderful! Would Ginny mind?”

“She’s the most flexible person I know,” Draco says. “I don’t think she’ll mind at all.”

She doesn’t mind. “The more the merrier!” she says when Draco tells her during dinner an hour later. “She’s lovely, Astoria is. We’ll have fun.”

Harry doesn’t mind either. Or rather, he doesn’t care at all. He doesn’t say anything when Draco tells him, only licks Draco’s left nipple. In his defence, he was already in the middle of doing that.

“It’s this Saturday,” Draco adds. Harry doesn’t say anything to that either; his mouth is now just above Draco’s navel. It moves lower, and Draco stops hoping for a reaction. This is better, anyway.

The Yule Ball, back in fourth year, has been his only formal ball experience thus far, and he isn’t entirely sure what to expect. He thinks there will be food, he assumes there will be music, and he knows everyone will be in formal dress. His mother took him to get new robes tailored on Sunday, after he decided he’d go. Up until then he’d been planning on borrowing some of Harry’s and tailoring them himself if need be, but he appreciates the new ones. It feels more special this way, and more real, somehow.

Ginny’s robes are a beautiful green silk, and Molly has arranged her long curls in a loose but intricate crown. She looks unreal, and she flushes pink when Draco tells her so.

“And you only have eyes for Harry, so I know you really mean it,” she jokes, and kisses him on the cheek.

He Apparates to Astoria’s and is stunned at how dramatically different she looks. She normally dresses in neutrals and never wears makeup, and now her sky blue robes set off her colouring in ways he didn’t know were possible. “Daphne did my face,” she says uncertainly. “I’m convinced I’m going to smear something.”

“You’re beautiful,” he says. He’s never actually noticed the clear blue of her eyes before now.

“We sort of match,” she notes, eyeing his deep blue robes.

“Then it’s good we’re going together,” he says, smiling.

Daphne insists on taking a photo, for which Draco is secretly glad. He wants to be able to remember tonight. He’s filled with a strange, jittery excitement. It feels like tonight is the beginning of something new, like everything has come together and it’s time for his life to begin. He’ll be celebrating the outcome of the Battle of Hogwarts with the victors. He’ll be one of them. Hurdles will remain, but even so, this feels like the culmination of everything he’s been working toward for years.

He and Astoria emerge at the Apparition point and are immediately surrounded in a swirl of colours and lights. The Ministry ballroom is decked out in spring colours, and the guests comprise a veritable rainbow of dress robes. At first, the pair of them simply walk around the room, getting their bearings. Lights hover above them in layers, orbiting in slow circles about the room, and there are tables set for about a dozen each all along the perimeter of the room. Most are empty, as the guests flitter across the floor and greet one another, and there doesn’t seem to be any sort of assigned seating.

Eventually, they catch sight of Ginny waving to them from a half-empty table. They cross the room to her, and she greets them both with tight hugs. “Isn’t it just lovely? Here, I saved you both seats.”

He doesn’t recognise everyone who winds up at the table with them; there’s Granger, Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Luna Lovegood, Hannah Abbot, and another girl he thinks he remembers from Ravenclaw. Astoria knows her, at any rate. The rest are unknown to him, but smile across the table like he’s an old friend. He doesn’t see a single expression of animosity; not once, not from anyone.

Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt opens the evening with a brief word, reminding them of the events of May 2, 1997, of the people who gave their lives that day, and of everything they have been able to achieve in the wake of that victory. An award is given, which Draco gathers is a yearly occurrence; Minister Shacklebolt presents it to a small woman about ten years Draco’s senior who runs a home for Muggleborn children with unsupportive families. Draco can see why Harry doesn’t like this ball as a form of remembrance, but he can also see how celebration and moving forward are important parts of looking back.

After the initial formalities, people come and go from the tables freely. Trays of various dishes rotate at the centre of each table, coming forward and serving themselves to the guests at the raise of a hand, but there’s no requirement to eat at any particular time. After trying some of the offerings, Ginny drags Longbottom out to dance and insists Draco and Astoria come as well. They swap partners after a few songs, Draco dancing with Ginny and Astoria with Longbottom, and eventually Abbot comes to claim Longbottom, bringing Astoria back to Draco. He’s never seen her this energetic, this bright, and he can’t stop smiling as he dances with her.

“I need to drink something,” she says loudly into his ear, over the music, just before the song ends. “Back to the table?”

They return, finding Granger sitting with Lovegood and eating some sort of pink cake. Draco sits in Weasley’s vacant chair, Astoria in Ginny’s on his other side.

“Aren’t you glad you came?” Granger asks with a broad grin.

Astoria drinks something fruity and bubbly and stays and talks to some of the others at the table when Ginny returns and pulls Draco back out onto the floor. Draco looks back at Astoria even while he dances with Ginny. She’s smiling her wide, toothy, genuine smile, not the polite one she uses with strangers. It makes Draco feel hopeful. They are the same, they really are, and if Astoria can be this confident and happy, well, surely he can be, too.

When Draco comes back to the table (Ginny having disappeared with some old housemates), Astoria is deep in conversation, so he sits with Granger, who has grown a bit tipsy and spends a good amount of time letting him know how much she loves Weasley and how proud she is of him. Draco feels so very fond of her in this moment, and he hopes that he can eventually pay her back, somehow, for everything she’s done for him.

He is only peripherally aware of the relative hush that comes over the room, as the hum of voices lulls for a moment. He wouldn’t give it a second thought if not for Astoria saying his name and giving him a pointed, urgent look while tilting her head to the left.

“Harry?” Granger says, while Draco is still looking at Astoria. “What is he—”

Draco turns, and he’s there. He’s really there.

The hum is returning, as whispers of Harry’s arrival travel throughout the room. It vaguely registers that the others at his own table are whispering about it as well, but Draco can’t focus on anything but Harry, standing there by the entrance and scanning the room. He’s the only one in the entire room wearing black, which Draco is sure won’t escape notice. What Draco can’t help lingering on, though, is his crooked collar. He’s quite sure Harry Potter hasn’t had a stitch of clothing out of place in years.

People seem unsure whether to flock to him or give him his space; most of those on the floor continue to dance as though nothing has changed. He seems to be talking, greeting the folks around him who are greeting him, but he doesn’t look at any of them; his eyes run across the room, searching.

Draco’s heart is pounding in his chest, and he’s smiling so hard it hurts.

Granger, still tipsy, only stares, as though attempting to process what she’s seeing. Draco is so full of surprise and excitement that he can’t quite remember how to move. It’s Astoria who finally does, standing and waving to Harry. He’s never met her and has no reason to understand who she is, but in a room full of people unsure whether they’re allowed to ask for his attention, her waving immediately catches his eye.

He sees Draco, and there’s a small, sheepish smile tugging at his lips. Draco stands, then, but doesn’t know whether he should move; Harry is already crossing the room to him. To him. Harry is crossing the room to him, right here in front of everyone. The press will go wild with this tomorrow, Draco knows. He’s sure that if he were to look away from Harry now he’d find the photographers who came to cover the ball already snapping away at this unexpected story. This should bother him, but—if Harry doesn’t mind, then Draco doesn’t mind either.

Harry came.

Harry is here.

Because Draco asked him to be.

He doesn’t care what the papers say tomorrow. He’s sure that for every redemption tale, there will be two convinced he has Harry Imperiused, but the public’s assumptions about him have never seemed more inconsequential. He has Astoria, and Ginny, and Granger. He has his mother; he has Molly and Arthur. Everyone else can think whatever they want to think.

“Hey,” Harry says.

“Hey,” Draco says back.

They look at each other for a long time. Draco wants to kiss him, wants to so, so badly, but even with his new dismissive attitude toward public opinion, that would be too much, too fast. He wants to tell Harry how much it means to him that he’s here, but he can’t begin to come up with the words to describe what he’s feeling. He can see all of what Harry’s feeling right there on his face anyway, and he’s sure his own expression is just as transparent.

Harry looks away first, turning to Astoria, who is watching them with open curiosity. “Astoria Greengrass?”

Astoria nods, eyes wide.

Harry holds out his hand. “Harry Potter. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

She grasps his hand tentatively. “Likewise?”

“You look lovely,” Harry says with a smile. A real, Harry smile.

Astoria meets Draco’s eyes and mouths, I take it all back.

Harry’s there for Draco; there isn’t any question of it. But so many of his friends are in attendance, and so many people want to thank him for what he did six years ago, that he can’t avoid them entirely. He squeezes Draco’s wrist once, quickly, before he steps away.

Astoria steps close and asks, “Didn’t you say he wasn’t coming?” Draco looks around, unsure whether he should say anything. “Don’t look secretive!” she says quickly. “We’re Silenced. If you act normal, everyone will just assume we’re speaking too quietly.”

“Oh.” He forgets that she can do these things so easily. “Yes, I said he wasn’t coming because he said he wasn’t coming, but then he came anyway, and—”

“Because you asked him to?”

Draco nods.

“But without telling you beforehand.”

Draco nods again.

Astoria laughs. “I don’t think I can even begin to understand how you two work,” she says, “but I think—there’s a small chance—he just might like you. A little bit. Maybe.”

Draco wonders whether his smile is permanent.

“Do you want to be alone?” she asks.

“Merlin, yes. I want to snog him until neither of us can breathe and then snog him some more. I mean, it’ll have to wait until later, though. When this is all over and we go home.”

“Or it could happen now?” She laughs at his undoubtedly ridiculous quizzical expression. “I could get the attention off Harry so you can sneak off to some hallway and debauch yourselves right here.”

“And the sorting hat at didn’t put you in Slytherin,” Draco says, shaking his head. “You want me to go make out with Harry in a hallway?”

“Find a nice corner and put up some privacy charms and you’re golden,” she says. “Or you could wait the three or four hours it would take before you could get back to his place—”

“No, here,” he says, looking over to where Harry stands with Longbottom and Dean Thomas, in his black dress robes with the collar crooked. “Astoria—I love him. I really fucking love him.”

“I know,” she says, and kisses him on the cheek. “I know.”

Draco leaves the ballroom, heading down the long hall that Granger tells him leads to the toilets. Astoria goes to tell Harry the plan and cast the spell to hide him. Draco conceals himself once he’s in the hall. It’s a handy spell that doesn’t so much render the user invisible as deflect attention from them unless they choose to reveal themselves. It’s difficult, and he can’t perform it nearly as well as Astoria can, but far more people are paying attention to Harry than to him.

Harry reveals himself the way Astoria told him to, by tapping twice on the wall next to the door to the women’s toilet, and Draco follows suit. “Oh,” Harry says as he suddenly notices Draco.

Draco is already smiling—he can’t stop smiling—but it feels like it gets even bigger. “Come on.”

He takes Harry by the hand and leads him to the end of the hall, and immediately as they come to a stop, Harry backs him up against the wall and kisses him thoroughly. Draco starts to pull away but forgets why he wanted to, and it isn’t until Harry has to go up for air that Draco remembers, and quickly puts the privacy spells in place.

“You look fucking edible,” Harry says, and runs his hands down Draco’s sides to his arse, feeling the fabric of his robes. “Where’d you get these?”

“Mother got them for me last weekend,” he says into the side of Harry’s mouth. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”

“It’s funeral garb,” Harry says, laughing, between kisses.

“You still look hot in it.” Draco means to kiss him again, but he opens his eyes and sees Harry already looking at him, and he holds still for a moment, returning his gaze. He is overwhelmed by so much feeling, and he needs Harry to know, but he doesn’t know where to start. He traces his thumb down Harry’s cheek, fingers splayed down the side of Harry’s neck. “Thank you,” he whispers.

Harry leans in and nudges Draco’s nose with his own. Their breath mingles between them. Draco closes his eyes, and he can feel Harry’s pulse beneath his fingers, his own heartbeat racing in his chest. Harry brushes his lips across Draco’s very softly and begins to press gentle kisses to the corners of his mouth, to his chin, to his nose, along his jaw and cheekbones. He kisses Draco’s forehead, and down the bridge of his nose to his mouth again.

Draco cups Harry’s face and keeps him there, kissing him over and over. It’s slow and exploratory in a way that usually only ever happens after sex, as they take their time and have no goal in mind. Draco could do this for hours, will do this for hours if Harry lets him. One hand moves to stroke the hair at the nape of Harry’s neck, while the other traces over his throat and chest. Harry’s hands move over Draco’s back and shoulders, holding him close.

When Harry breaks the kiss, he stays just as close, leaning his forehead against Draco’s. “Do you remember,” he asks, his voice low and rough, “when Molly came home while we were—”

“Yeah,” Draco whispers, “I remember.”

“Do you remember when we went home after?”

“And finally got to fuck, almost ten hours after the initial interruption?”

“After that,” Harry prompts, “in the sitting room.”

Draco can still see the fire glinting off Harry’s glasses. “Yeah.”

“You asked me what would make me happy.”

Draco’s breath catches.

Harry’s hand smooths over Draco’s shoulder, up his neck, and he traces Draco’s cheek with his thumb. “You’re it, Draco.”

Something unhooks inside him. Something releases. Draco is looking into Harry’s green, green eyes, and something is shifting, correcting. He kisses Harry hard, again and again, until it melts into more of that languorous exploration. His chest feels full, even fit to burst, and he can’t believe how lucky he is. He can’t believe he gets to live this life.

His hands start to wander, trying to creep under Harry’s robes, and Harry steps away slightly, though still within kissing range. “Later,” he says.

“What?” Draco asks, dazed.

“We’ll get to that,” Harry says, “but later. Just…come to mine when you’re done here, yeah?”

Draco pulls Harry in for another series of kisses. Then, “You’re leaving?”

Harry nods, and gives him another quick kiss. “I think I’ve had my fill of all of the excitement.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, stay,” he insists. “Enjoy the rest of the night with everyone. It’ll only be another hour or so.” He runs his fingers over Draco’s hair, tucking a bit behind his ear. “I’ll be there when you’re done. I’m not—I’m not going anywhere.”

Draco kisses him again.

They have several more last kisses before Draco really starts back for the ballroom. “Come on,” Harry finally says, “don’t you think Astoria’s been missing her date for long enough?”

“It was her idea,” Draco points out, but takes a couple of steps.

Harry steps after him and kisses him; the actual last one. “Later,” he says, the beginnings of a smile playing about his lips.

“Later,” Draco echoes.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, but he wants to make his excuses and join Harry at home as quickly as possible. Astoria will be fine without him. He’ll promise to fill her in on the details tomorrow, and then he’ll go. He’ll go to Harry, who isn’t going anywhere. Harry, who Draco can make happy. Harry, who he loves more than anything. Draco wonders whether it’s too soon to tell him so.

“Draco,” he hears, and he starts to turn.

There’s a bright flash of light, and someone is screaming—

Then everything is heavy and dark.





Part III