Chapter Text
Harry was wearing a plain, black polyester tie which he was adjusting for the thousandth time. He was sweating, and his palms were wet, and he felt exactly like he was being strangled in slow motion. There was a sea of reporters in front of him, and every thirty seconds he was blinded by another camera flash. Ginny was sitting beside him, looking pale. She had always hated the paparazzi but there was no avoiding them this time around, they had all been summoned for the same juicy story: the Potter-Weasley divorce.
Glancing nervously at his watch, Harry tapped his foot. In fifteen seconds he would tell the entire wizarding world that his marriage had fallen apart. He had gone back and forth as to what he would say, but still he had no idea. Ten seconds. He could tell them that he was gay, if he wanted to. Just rip the plaster right off and get it over with. Five seconds. But was he ready for that, did he want everyone to just… know? Yes, no? Maybe.
Four. Three. Two. One.
The entire room exploded into a din of scratching quills and invasive questions until the facilitator (a fat, stern media witch whose name Harry couldn’t remember) silenced the crowd with a flick of her wand. “Mr. and Mrs. Potter have prepared a formal statement, please be silent, questions will be permitted after the announcement.”
“Er…” said Harry into his wand tip after casting a sonorous charm. “Thank you all for being here today with me—uh, er, us. Ginny and I would like to say that…” he glanced sideways at Ginny, who looked like she was about to sick up over the table, then took a deep breath. He’d bungled so many things, and he was not going to bungle this too. “Ginny and I will be separating as of the end of this month. It is a mutual decision, and there are no hard feelings between us. I want to remind everyone to be respectful. Thanks.”
“Mrs. Potter?” prompted the media witch.
“Yes, just as Harry has stated,” Harry swallowed as he saw the practised media mask fall over Ginny’s face and mannerisms. “We will be separating, but we bear absolutely no ill-will towards one another as a result. We will now take questions.”
The questions came so fast and furious that Harry felt it hit like a wave. Mr. Potter, is it true you are having an affair? Mrs. Potter, is it true you are currently pregnant? The questions were all so outrageous and invasive that when Harry caught ‘what is the reason for this sudden separation’ from the din, he snapped his face in the direction of the reporter asking. “You there, the presswitch second from the left. What is your question?”
“Yes, thank-you Mr. Potter.” Said a perky blonde witch dressed head to toe in a violent shade of green. “Dottie Charm, Witches & Snitches Ladies Sports Edition. I was just wondering, for our devoted readers, what is the reason for your sudden separation?”
Harry froze. He could tell them. He could tell them all right now, and have it done with. Two little words: I’m gay. I’m gay! I’m gay, I’m gay, I’m gay. He felt the confession catch in his throat, and then he felt Ginny’s hand slip into his. “It’s okay,” she whispered in a voice so low that even he could barely hear it, “You don’t have to, just say something.”
“It wasn’t sudden,” Harry said, so uselessly grateful for the warm anchor of her blessing giving him permission to tell people in his own time. “Ginny and I married young. Right out of Hogwarts, right after the war. Neither of us were really grown, and we didn’t know what it was that we were looking for, and… and that’s about it, really. We grew up.”
“I had such a crush on Harry,” Ginny swooped in, plastering on a charismatic smile. “But you don’t know much at seventeen, do you?” she laughed, and several other witches laughed too, but only Harry noticed how hollow she sounded. “I think that we were both idealistic and young, and there isn’t much more to it than that, really. Just two silly kids.”
“Calvin Knox, International Magics Monthly. Are you still living together?”
“No,” said Ginny. “We have been living apart since last August.”
There was a scratching of pens and a titter of gossip upon learning that the separation was now months stale, “Jacine Wandmaker, Sage Witchery. Who initiated?”
“Er, both of us I suppose.” Harry squeezed Ginny’s hand, signalling to go along with whatever lie he said next. “We just—”
“Aracnis-Blane Spector, Scotland Sorcery. Who’s fault was it?”
“It was nobody’s fault!” snapped Harry, before getting his temper under control. “As we have both said already, it was a mutual decision with no hard feelings whatsoever.”
“Siobain Moonright, Daily Prophet.” An uppity, fashionable witch with gapped teeth smiled nastily up at Harry from the front row. “Several highly credible sources have cited infidelity as the cause for divorce. Specifically, that Mrs. Potter nee Weasley has been seen about town with a certain well-known Herbology professor. Do you have any comment on your illicit affair with Neville Longbottom, and is it true that you are currently with child?”
The entire room went silent enough to hear a pin drop and Harry felt the blood pumping in his ears as he started to rise from his seat before Ginny yanked him back down, digging her thumbnail into his palm in a silent plea for him to not make it worse.
“Yes, I am currently seeing professor Neville Longbottom. However, Harry was the first to know about the relationship, which began after our separation. Harry was very supportive. I would also like to clarify that I am not with child, although I probably won’t be wearing this dress again.” There were a sparse few chuckles over Ginny’s very bad joke and then another reporter who didn't identify themselves shouted, “Harry, is this true?”
“Yes,” said Harry, coldly. “We were hoping for privacy, but given that no one at the Prophet has ever been accused of being halfway decent, I’d like to state for the record that I am aware of, and fully endorse, Ginny’s engagement.” There was another sudden explosion of noise as more cameras flashed and reporters yelled “She’s engaged?!”
Oh fuck.
Oh fucking fuck.
Harry just announced his ex wife’s engagement publicly, without her permission, in front of the entire wizarding world and there was nothing he could do to take it back. He glanced at Ginny, who looked sad, and a little mad, but not a bit surprised that he’d messed things up again. All attention was now on the upcoming nuptials: when was the date, where would the wedding be, have they already decided on a honeymoon, where's the ring? It was surreal how quickly everyone in the room jumped to the new story, and Harry felt like a massive boil saying nothing as Ginny fielded the next dozen questions alone.
Ten minutes that felt more like ten hours later, the media liaison they had hired shushed the lot and wound down the interview. It was about as controlled as any train wreck could be, and when the interview finally ended and they were both alone in the backstage dressing room, Harry held Ginny tightly as she sobbed snottily into his chest. He didn’t apologize for what happened, because she already knew that he was sorry.
As he stroked her red hair and inhaled the juniper smell of her shampoo for what would probably be the last time, he realized that something fundamental inside him had changed. He used to think that love was enough—no matter what was wrong, no matter how bad something or someone was broken, love could fix it. But as much as he loved Ginny, and he genuinely did, there was no fixing the way they were broken. In the post-war haze of his adolescence Harry hadn’t known the difference between the love for a friend and the love of a lover, it all felt the same until it didn’t. That was the difference between being a child and being an adult, he thought. Learning that not all fairy tales have happy endings; sometimes you’re just someone’s human handkerchief because they need you.
***
To Mr. Harry James Potter,
Ministry Registered Private Address
Owl Delivery Route KRJ9572, U.K.
Well, now you’ve gone and ruined my masterful poison plan.
I suppose we’ll just have to enjoy a regular meal, which in my opinion is far less exciting, but I suppose Granger would find some way to incinerate my liver if you actually died.
Do you like Italian?
D. Malfoy
***
To Mr. Draco Lucius Malfoy,
Ministry Registered Public Address
Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire, England
Hermione says the best way to incinerate a liver is to curse it directly, she’s looking up localized fire spells. Ron says just to Accio the whole thing out and chuck it at the stove.
I like Italian. I don’t want to learn a bunch of new forks, though.
H. P.
***
Draco leaned back in his heavy leather chair. He was in his study, collecting hate mail, but recognized Potter’s parchment right off. It was always creased and a little wrinkly, like he never got out of the schoolboy habit of keeping a spare roll in his back pocket. He read it over and laughed out loud. He and Harry had been owling back and forth for the last three weeks, and as brief as each message was, he was delighted at how genuinely quick-witted and funny Potter was when they weren’t actively trying to kill one another.
He quickly scribbled back a note with a date, time, and location, and then added a postscript promising no cutlery lessons, provided Harry could handle not eating with his hands like an ape. He then sent it off with the same owl, and considered that the contents of the last letter implied that Potter had told his friends that they were speaking. Draco wasn’t sure why, but it made him happy to know that he wasn’t some shameful secret. Not that Potter was required to spell a banner across his forehead proclaiming that they were now on casual owl-to-owl speaking terms, but it was also nice not to be tip-toeing around.
Beyond Potter, Pansy had also kept in communication and had dropped by a half dozen times since the remembrance. Their rekindled friendship was tentative, and still tender, but Draco felt optimistic. It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t approach him with an overabundance of caution, like he was a bomb that would go off at any moment.
Overall, it had been a good few weeks, he had even found himself a very lucrative contract for a hundred transfigured ring boxes designed to unfold themselves into a shapely wooden flower, then fade back to a real flower, before combusting and leaving behind, presumably, a beautiful engagement ring. Draco didn't even let it bother him that the only reason the flustered magi-jeweller had agreed to hire a Malfoy was because he was the only interviewee clever enough to actually produce a working prototype of the man’s idea on the spot. Work smarter not harder Father always said, and so he did.
***
The first Weasley dinner following the press conference was, in so many words, an absolute shitshow. While Ginny insisted that nothing would change and that they were still family even if they weren’t married, Harry (who knew that everything definitely would change) stupidly agreed to come for Sunday roast anyway. Even still, he wasn't actually prepared for the uncomfortable absence of Molly pestering about when her newest grandbaby would be arriving, or that Arthur—who desperately loved his one and only little girl—would try so valiantly to put his fatherly anger anywhere that wasn’t Harry Potter that he would end up picking fights with other members of the family instead.
Distracted, Molly burned the roast and turned sixteen pounds of potatoes into an inedible milk slurry and Arthur got into an shoving match with Charlie over his most recent injury (it’s only a damn pinkie, Dad!) that ended in Bill physically blasting them to opposite ends of the kitchen to cool off. George, trying to lighten the mood for everyone, snuck both his father and brother a new and improved canary cream (now available in cool blue raspberry flavor!) forcing Hermione and Ron to transfigure two of Molly’s dining chairs into enormous bird cages to keep them from pecking each other’s eye out.
Harry, trying his best to apologize for ruining dinner by existing, was made to eat three portions of desert while continuing to pretend everything about the evening was totally, one-hundred-percent normal. After coffee, Ron, George and Harry slipped outside under the pretext of playing a quick Quidditch pickup, but it was really to give him a break.
“Sorry ‘bout Dad,” said Ron, as soon as they’d cleared out of earshot. “He’s not mad at you, he’s just mad. Which I don’t know why, he likes Neville just fine. And with Charlie, dunno. They just keep fighting over dumb things, always have. I mean, his finger grew back eventually! It just took him a few tries before it stopped looking like a breakfast sausage.”
“Yeah,” said George. “And I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that he found out his son and his son-in-law were swapping wands over eggs and toast.”
“Thanks for that,” Harry winced. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone., y’know.”
“You didn’t,” said Ron. “Not to be a jerk ‘cause he’s my brother, but Charlie has polished more knobs than a door factory. Dad always kinda knew, they just didn’t talk about it. Although, it probably would have helped if you hadn’t married Ginny first.”
“Well, let me just go get my Time-Turner!” snarked Harry.
“Sod off, you know what I meant.”
“Besides,” added George. “It’s more like… all these big things were happening with you, with Ginny, and with Charlie too, and Dad kinda got looped in after. I think he’s mostly sad, thinking nobody trusts him to talk about stuff. He likes to be involved, y’know?”
“He likes to meddle, you mean,” said Ron.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” asked Harry. “Charlie and your Dad. I don’t want to be the reason they’re fighting all the time. I don’t know if I should say something, or…?”
“Naww, don’t bother. They’ll be fine, it’ll just take some time.” George clapped Harry on the shoulder, “But on to the most important part of this evening, how did you like the new improvements on my secret recipe? I’ve patented those feathers, you know.”
Ron groaned, and Harry chuckled. “They were very life-like.”
“I’m working on two new variations, peacock and parrot. The parrot formula is almost done, I just need it to stop setting the transformee drunk. The peacock is gonna take a bit longer to perfect, but I’m confident it’ll hit the market in time for next Christmas.”
“What’s wrong with the peacock formula?” asked Ron.
“Turns your eyelids inside out and makes a brown deposit in your trousers. Trouble is, there’s a two hour delay. Shat my pants right in the center of Diagon Alley.”
Harry, who wasn’t sure what he expected, and Ron, who should have known exactly what to expect, dissolved into a fit of giggles that turned into a gasping, guffawing wheeze until they were both doubled over. Laughing too hard to breathe they both collapsed onto the dewy evening grass, wiping the corner of their eyes. George, who was grinning ear to ear, flopped down beside them and for the next hour all three made idle conversation about nothing and everything as they watched the evening bats swoop overhead hunting for moths. When they were all finally sure that the rest of the Weasley’s would be asleep or at least in bed, they snuck quietly back inside so that Harry could use the Floo.
At home, Harry felt so drained that he didn’t bother to get undressed, just kicked off his boots and fell into his bed. Outside wind whispered across the treeline, the lullaby of Galloway’s Stead making him feel sleepy. The last image that ran through his mind was of George, waddling towards the Leaky Cauldron with an unpleasant surprise in his drawers, and for a second he thought that maybe there really were worse things than an awkward family dinner with your ex in-laws or a divorce in your mid-twenties; after all, he might be a total disaster of a wizard, but at least he’d never done the turd shuffle in public.
***
If someone had told the Harry Potter from four weeks ago that four weeks forward he would be sitting in a dimly lit restaurant watching Draco Malfoy suck on a gelato spoon, he’d have handed them over to the Janis Thickey ward for 24/7 observation. Only, here he was, overfull on a creamy pasta he couldn’t pronounce and doing just that. His own desert—a delicious looking single-serving tiramisu—had already been boxed up because he’d made the mistake of filling up on garlic breadsticks (to Malfoy’s utter disdain).
Arriving late in the nicest jeans he owned and one of the three jumpers he had that hadn’t been knitted by Mrs. Weasley, Harry had, after careful consideration, put on his hiking boots rather than his mud stained trainers. Draco, on the other hand, arrived in a flawless wizard suit that stuck out like a sore thumb in a mid-range eatery. Not that Draco cared. Harry was starting to notice that about him, he liked hogging up public attention.
Dinner had been good. Dinner conversation had been… well, also good.
Draco talked about taking his T.O.A.D.S. and getting his Mastery. Apparently his school also did something called finishing, which taught manners and decorum and, yes Potter, dozens and dozens of forks. He talked about his flower box contract, which Harry found interesting if a bit over his head. Harry didn’t have as many things to talk about, but Draco had been so obviously delighted by his lake diving story that he told the one about being chased out of his own kitchen by an elk and having to climb a tree with no shorts on.
“Well, I feel that we’ve overstayed our table long enough,” Draco said, counting out a small tower of Galleons for their meal. “Coffee, drinks, or do I release you to the night?”
“Er, drinks sound good. I know a place, if you’d…?” Harry offered his arm.
“Not in this lifetime,” scoffed Draco. “I don’t trust you not to splinch me.”
“I can apparate just fine, thanks!”
“We’ll walk, there is a place a block up from here. Did you bring a jacket?” Harry looked down at his outfit as if he’d already forgotten what he was wearing, and pointed at the sleeves of Sirius’ leather coat. Draco rolled his eyes. “A dinner jacket, like mine.”
“Uh, yeah. Nope.” Harry shrugged, “Not sure I own one, actually.”
“On brand,” replied Draco, flourishing his wand. “This will have to do.”
“What are you—hey!”
Harry felt a strange, warm tingle spread from his shoulders downwards. Cold and hot all at once, fuzzy like the outside of a peach. It only lasted for a second, before he realized that he was now standing in the middle of the street in a dark, dapper jacket and new trousers cut the muggle way, with a burgundy shirt, matching tie, and shoes. He looked like he earned a million galleon salary. Impressive didn’t even begin to cover it, that kind of a transfiguration magic took an immense amount of focused talent and raw ability beyond anything he had ever seen or read about at school. He swallowed hard.
“The shoes aren’t real leather,” Draco said offhandedly. “Purella’s Law of Animal Modification, you must choose between the hide or the hair. Wool pants, rubber shoes.”
“Amazing,” Harry fingered the buttons on his shirt, “Where’d you learn that?”
“Here and there,” said Draco loftily, “It’ll last about three or four hours.”
Two hours and several drinks off a menu with no visible prices later, Harry realized that he had made a very, very big mistake. In the dark, smoky glow of the establishment that Draco had taken him too, Draco looked different. Handsome. Still pointy and prickly, too fair-skinned for sunshine, too well-coiffed for rain, but there was this… quality. Harry couldn’t explain it, because it wasn’t one thing but a bunch of things. A crooked smile that crinkled his eyes when he laughed at Harry’s inane drunk ramblings. The laugh itself, unreserved and cackling—just like back at school, but, better now. The way his magic felt still tickling Harry’s skin, the way the blue-black bar lights made his hair look soft.
Then, under the table, Harry felt the warm, pleasant presence of Draco’s knee falling against his and any ounce of logic or composure he had flew right out the window.
“I’ve got to go,” Harry said abruptly, pushing off from his seat.
“Loo is that way,” Draco said, pointing. Harry followed his finger, but shook his head and started off quickly towards the front door. “Hold on—wait, where are you going?”
Harry only walked faster, willing himself to walk a straight enough line to reach the exit so he could apparate home and never leave. Draco, after scrambling to pay their tab and follow him, was too late, only the crackling echo of an apparition left where he stood.
“What the actual fuck, Potter.” Draco said to the empty night.
***
Draco didn’t make a habit of replaying bad dates over and over in his head, his philosophy was that if it didn’t go well, their loss, not his. With Potter, it was different. It wasn’t a date, for starters. But if it had been one, it would have been going great. Potter laughed at all his jokes, told a few of his own. They were getting along like a cauldron on fire until something happened that he couldn’t pinpoint and it was driving him mad.
Staring up at the ceiling of his enormous bedroom, Draco squinted his eyes and tried to replay everything from when they first sat down, but the haze of alcohol made it difficult. They had been talking about quidditch on the walk there, Harry had just finished a rousing defense of the Holyhead Harpies and Draco had started talking about brooms when—when—when what? Frustrated, Draco stood up, tossed on his housecoat and slippers, and headed for his study. Once there, he pointed his wand at the side of his head and withdrew a long, silver thread of memory which he placed in the family pensieve.
He was going to have a splitting headache tomorrow, but ready for a knut giddy for a galleon. He plunged his face into the swirling mass and watched the night re-unfold.
“How come there are no prices listed?” Harry asked, after staring at his menu for a few minutes. “And how am I supposed to know what half of this stuff is, it’s in Elvish.”
“It’s cursive, you goon. I can read it.”
“Doesn’t explain why everything is free.”
“Potter, this is the kind of club where if you have to ask how much something is, you already can’t afford it. It’s not free, it’s just so expensive you make the assumption.”
“That’s not reassuring, I’m unemployed.”
“By choice, according to the Prophet.” Draco countered, shutting his menu tight. “But you can relax, I happen to know exactly how much everything is and I’ll order us a few rounds that won’t leave you destitute. Try to act like you belong here, will you?”
True to his word, Draco ordered them a mid-shelf brew made from some mix of cranberries, pine needles, and some mystery ingredient that turned the whole thing a luminescent sky blue. Harry, doing as told, tried his best not to stick out like a sore thumb.
“So, tell me the truth,” said Draco, leaning close. “Are you actually unemployable?”
“Over-employable, more like…” Harry grumbled, and Draco waited for him to elaborate. “It’s stupid, really. Most people would kill to be able to get any job they wanted, but I know I’d be hired in an instant any place. No skills, no prerequisites. Dragon tamer? Oh, well, here’s your whip and saddle, good luck!” Harry sighed, finishing his drink in one go. “I’d likely get killed on my first day, or else I’d be too busy posing for pictures and signing autographs to be useful. I get so many owls—they wanted me to play for England!”
“Quidditch? For England?! You’re not even good.”
“See, that’s what I said!”
“I mean, you’re not terrible but—”
“I know I’m not, but I’m not the best either. Same with the Aurors, they sent a letter telling me I could skip first year. But how does that do me any good, out in the field with no field training? I’ve got a target on my back the size of a… a… well, a really big target.”
“Alright, so what if you weren’t?” asked Draco.
“Huh?”
“Famous, I mean. If your blessed arse wasn’t plastered across the cover of every tawdry Witches magazine from here to the Americas, if you were just… some wizard.”
“I have my own brand of shoes, Malfoy. With my face on them.”
“Humor me.”
Harry sighed, but thought about it for a moment. “Well, I thought of maybe becoming a professor or something…” he seemed to cringe internally at the thought, “But I’m not sure I could handle parents and students thinking I was some type of celebrity.”
“Anything else?”
“I guess I could—hey, what’s with the twenty-questions?”
“Getting to know you,” Draco said, gesturing for another round of drinks for the table, “It’s this thing that civilized people do. They ask questions, get answers, et cetera.”
“Well, did you always want to be a tranfigur…rator, slash… barrister? I’m not entirely sure what you do, actually.” Harry finished half of his new drink in a single gulp.
“Absolutely not,” said Malfoy. “I wanted to be something dangerous and cool, y’know, like Weasley’s older brother, what’s-his-name, Chuckie. Works with dragons.”
“Charlie,” corrected Harry automatically.
“Close enough. Point is, I had a very different plan for my life before Father got me dragged into Deatheater recruitment camp, the absolute bastard. Things changed.”
“We don’t have to talk about that,” said Harry.
“It’s fine,” Draco waved away his concerns. “It’s not privileged information.”
“You still could, y’know, do something else.”
“So could you.”
“Maybe I could be an owl trainer,” said Harry thoughtfully. “Or a wandmaker. Even if I was famous, most wizards only need one or two in a lifetime. I could do them mail-order.”
“Potions are mail order friendly, as well.”
“I’m pretty sure the only thing worse than being famous for being me is being famous for most people murdered by botched Pepperup potion in a single day.”
Memory-Draco snorted, finished his drink, and ordered another round. Then another, then another. The conversation was flowing well, and present-Draco, watching from within the pensive, was still confused until drink number five when he noticed a sour, glazed expression take over Harry’s face. Draco was in the middle of a raucous retelling of the time he and Blaise Zabini had filled Filches office floor to ceiling with banana trifle when the sixth drink arrived. Harry slurped it down quickly, still listening intently as Draco prattled on about nothing, laughing and relaxing into his chair. The moment Draco paused to take a sip from his own glass was when suddenly Harry sprang up like a man on fire insisting that he had to leave right then and there before sticking him with the bill.
But why? Was he about to be sick, couldn’t hold his liquor perhaps? Draco pulled his face from the pensieve more annoyed than anything else. Nothing had gone wrong!
***
Everything had gone wrong.
Harry woke up to sunlight streaming in through his bedroom windows, a splitting headache, and absolutely no hangover potion in sight. It had been a long time since he’d drank that much—since his anniversary, actually. Hermione had been bothering him so much that he finally did crack the spine on that self-help book she’d given him, and he had been making a concrete effort not to pickle his liver before thirty. A bloody good thing too, because apparently six shots of blue mystery elf juice made him lusty for Malfoy. Blech.
The only benefit of collapsing into his bed drunker than a butterbeered elf was that he didn’t wake up in a shivering sweat, cursing the first thing he saw. Harry knew it was normal to have nightmares, Hermione said as much. Actually, what she said was ‘Harry James Potter, if you don’t get yourself to a mindhealer to talk about those flashbacks, you’re going to blow your house right off its foundation one of these days!’ which, to his credit, he had not yet done, even if he’d come close a few times. Still, the idea of explaining to some random stranger that sometimes when he woke up he believed that his curtains were dementors coming to kiss him or that the shadowy outline of his hung-up plaid overcoat was actually Lord Voldemort reincarnated made him feel deeply uncomfortable.
Hauling himself upright he dragged a broom-calloused hand down his face and cringed at the taste of his skunky breath. Pulling on a lumpy pink and green jumper, he spelled his kettle to boiling, made a pot of tea and tried to drink his first cup so fast he burnt his tongue. Next he opened his fridge; empty, except for half an apple, a block of questionable cheese, and a lone takeaway container that he wouldn’t have opened for all the galleons in Gringotts. He closed it again, sighing. Malfoy was probably eating croissants and fancy jellies and some kind of caviar that Harry couldn’t pronounce, the flash bastard.
“Stop thinking about Malfoy,” he chided himself, “Probably doesn’t even eat breakfast, else he wouldn't be able to fit his pompous arse in his skinny suit pants.”
And now he was thinking about Malfoy’s arse. Great.