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Draco wakes to the familiar sound of clinking glass bottles and sighs, lying motionless for several seconds with his eyes closed. As always, morbid curiosity gets the better of him and he scrambles out of bed, pushing aside the rough sheets and yanking open the curtains. He blinks in the harsh morning light and scowls down at the milk cart—a float, Granger had called it—which is bumping over the cobbles of Grimmauld Place with far more vigour than should be allowed at a quarter to five in the morning.
He wrinkles his nose, watching the driver flick his cigarette ash out of the window, just as he always does, and wonders just how the struggling engine manages to propel the vehicle and its cargo anywhere at all. It sounds like a dying tumblefly trapped inside a glass jar, and Draco should know; he’s heard it, without fail, six days out of every seven since he came here, and that was longer ago than he really cares to remember.
He’s safe, he reminds himself forcefully, and so are his parents, though no one will tell him where they are. And here he is, stuck between Harry Potter’s minions and this creepy old pile, making himself ‘useful’ in between keeping tabs on floating milk carts, hiding from that awful bugger Kreacher, and staring daggers at the ugly black mark on his arm, silently and pointlessly fuming at Potter for not rescuing him sooner.
Which is ridiculous, he knows that. And besides, Harry Potter didn’t rescue Draco, he merely... facilitated his transition onto the winning team.
“The right team,” he admits grudgingly, knowing that no one can hear him, not even the man with the milk, who is now trundling up the neat front garden of number sixteen, bottles rattling merrily.
And whistling. Whistling, for crying out loud.
“Will you kindly shut it?!” he hisses, knowing that the magic surrounding the ancient house will swallow his words easily, even if the window is propped open in an attempt to allow some air into the stuffy old room.
The man returns for more bottles and Draco leaves him to it, allowing himself a briefly mutinous thought for the fact that no one else in this bloody house seems to be disturbed by the early morning whirring and clinking, before he shakes his head and turns his body into the sun. He basks for a moment, eyes closed and head tilted back, relishing the gentle warmth on his bare skin and the slide of soft cotton against his hips as he stretches. His underwear, unlike most of the garments he wears these days, are his own, and here in his dingy little bedroom, he doesn't have to pretend to like the ill-fitting clothes donated by various Weasleys.
A soft voice in his head that sounds a lot like his mother chides him, tells him that it's kind of them and that he should be grateful. He knows that, of course, knows he is fortunate and stupid and ridiculous, but it's not for them to know that his pride is in tatters. Especially not Potter, who is brave and roughly handsome and nonchalantly pleasant to Draco, knotting up his insides and making him forget himself, coming in at all hours looking bruised and windswept and exhausted. Draco thinks he should stay out, find whatever important thing he is supposed to be looking for and stop hanging about the place and making things unnecessarily confusing.
Draco glances at the clock. Five minutes past five. For a moment, he considers returning to his hard little bed and attempting to get some more sleep, but the urge quickly passes, as it always does. Instead, he allows himself one last glance through the window, at the privet hedges and the sauntering cats and the hazy, diaphanous cloak of morning mist that drapes itself over Grimmauld Place, and then he dresses and heads for the stairs.
It’s a long way down to the basement kitchen and he hums to himself, picking up the tune of the milkman’s whistling and threading his wand aimlessly between his fingers as he descends the many staircases. He has learned which steps creak the most and avoids them studiously, knowing that the slightest sound can bring a furious Kreacher up through the floorboards right in front of him.
Draco shudders at the thought and edges around the bottom two steps of the flight, holding his breath. As he nears the kitchen, the warm aroma of tea fills his nostrils and he frowns, both in confusion and annoyance. He is accustomed to having the kitchen to himself at this time in the morning.
“Who the bloody hell...?” he murmurs, trailing into silence as he steps into the kitchen.
Of course it’s Potter. Of course it is.
And of course he’s shirtless, just standing there at the counter in faded jeans and nothing else, because it’s Harry Potter, and of course he cuts up mysterious purple vegetables, half-naked, at five o’clock in the morning. Draco grips his wand tightly and takes in a long, ragged breath. Frozen to the spot, he watches the light muscles shifting under Harry’s skin, caught up in quiet absorption. His eyes drift along Harry’s spine, silently cataloguing the burns and bruises, the pink-silvery twist of old scars and the livid red of new ones. He holds in a wince, wondering for the first time why no one has ever thought to heal those injuries for him. It would be the work of a moment for someone who knew what they were doing; even he could...
“If you’re coming in, Malfoy, just come in. You’re making me nervous, standing there like a bloody statue,” Potter says irritably. He doesn’t turn around.
“How did you know it was me?” Draco asks before he can stop himself.
“The Inner Eye,” Potter says, bringing his large knife down with a bang onto a heavy wooden board.
Draco blinks. “I highly doubt that you are a Seer.”
“Sure I am,” Harry says, gesturing with his knife. “I can see you in the window.”
Draco shifts a couple of inches to the right and scowls when he realises that his reflection is clearly visible in the glass. Discomfited, he fiddles with the little strings on the strange sweatshirt given to him by Charlie Weasley. It’s too large and too short all at the same time, but secretly Draco likes the midnight blue colour of the fabric and the way the soft fleece feels against his skin.
When Harry goes back to chopping, Draco heads for the nearest bit of counter that is not currently occupied by gleaming purple vegetables and hoists himself up onto it. He doesn’t know what they are but he isn’t about to ask Potter. Fortunately, he soon comes up with a much more reasonable question.
“Why do you have so many of those?”
“Of what?”
Draco frowns. “Of those,” he repeats, gesturing at the vast piles of vegetables as though it is completely obvious, which, of course, it is.
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Potter says, tone hovering somewhere between amusement and hostility.
Draco stares at the back of his head, incensed. Potter is going to make him ask.
“Fuck you,” he mutters, but there’s no edge to the words. Not only does he not really hate Potter, he can’t even be bothered to pretend he does.
Harry snorts. “Fine, as soon as I’m done with this.”
Something swoops in Draco’s stomach and he swallows hard. “Hilarious.”
Potter says nothing, and for several long minutes, the only sounds in the kitchen are those of chopping from Harry’s side of the room, and restless finger-tapping from Draco’s. He is just about to slide down and retreat back to his bedroom when Harry speaks again.
He turns, knife in hand, seeming to sag slightly when he meets Draco’s eyes for the first time.
“They’re aubergines. And I’m sorry, okay? I’ve been up all night and I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Oh,” Draco says pointlessly, thinking that perhaps, on balance, he prefers the cross Harry. He’s easier to deal with, easier to predict, and he’s quite certain that cross Harry’s eyes aren’t so large and green. “So, erm...” he manages, dragging his attention back to the vegetables, “where did they come from?”
“Kreacher.”
Draco scowls and suppresses a shudder. “And where did he get them from?”
Potter laughs. “I find that with Kreacher, it’s better not to ask,” he says, and turns away to resume his task.
“Couldn’t agree more,” Draco says, mostly to himself.
“I thought I’d make moussaka for everyone for dinner, since I was up anyway,” Harry continues. “It’s a Greek thing.”
“I know what it is, Potter,” Draco says crossly. And he does, even if he didn’t know about the involvement of the strangely-shaped purple aubergine things. He has eaten it many times at the villa in Paxos but hasn’t ever seen it made.
Potter says nothing for a moment, just lets out a gentle sigh. After a moment, he continues chopping.
“My Aunt Petunia made it once—a couple of weeks before I left. Delia, you know,” he says conversationally, and Draco makes a sound of comprehension despite having no idea what he is talking about. “It was pretty good, as well, but my uncle said it was ‘bloody foreign muck’ and refused to eat a single bite, at which point Dudley, obviously, did the exact same thing.”
Draco bristles at the idea of such poor manners and listens intently as Harry tells him how his uncle had grabbed his car keys and taken Dudley to a restaurant called McDonalds for dinner, how his aunt had cheerfully disposed of the meal and how Harry had heard her crying in the bathroom.
“I felt sorry for her,” Harry says, voice more wistful than Draco has ever heard it.
“So do I,” Draco admits. “Nobody in my family ever cooks anything.”
Harry says nothing but starts spreading out the round aubergine pieces onto trays. When he turns slightly to grab a tray from beside Draco, he seems to be smiling to himself.
“What?”
Harry glances at him, mouth flickering at one corner. “It’s nothing... just that the image of your father doing anything in a kitchen is pretty spectacular.”
Draco frowns, feeling he ought to bristle at this statement, but as Harry shrugs and turns away to start shaking salt onto his trays, he realises that he really cannot be bothered. He has the uncomfortable feeling that Harry means no harm, and worse, that he might be teasing him. Puzzled, Draco watches his movements around the kitchen, the easy grace of his steps as he retrieves pots and pans and various unidentifiable ingredients, the way he worries his messy hair as he thinks and the way he bites his lip in apparent discomfort every time he has to bend his left arm.
It’s a new injury, Draco thinks—not that he’s keeping count. He just notices things, that’s all.
He notices Harry Potter, but then, who doesn’t? Draco sighs and presses his palms to the cool surface beneath him, wondering if he can be bothered to slide down to the floor and put the kettle on. He knows how to do that now, at least; when he’d first arrived at number twelve, he’d tried to make tea by pouring cold water into a cup with a tea bag and heating it with his wand. Mrs Weasley had almost had a conniption, and the Weasel—of all people—had had to step in and show him how to do it properly. That had been a very strange day indeed.
In the end, the call of a warm, comforting drink is too much to resist, and he lowers himself to the floor. The tiles are cool against his bare feet as he walks towards the kettle and he enjoys the sensation. Going shoeless in Malfoy Manor was considered absolutely anathema; even in one’s own bedroom there were slippers to be worn until the moment one climbed into bed, but Draco finds it oddly freeing to wander around the old house in nothing but shirt and trousers, feeling carpet and tile and smoothly fissured boards under his feet. He feels connected to the ground beneath him, and somehow, with that, a quiet sureness of self that is, for the first time in his life, genuine.
“You still here, then?” Harry asks, voice light.
“I don’t know, you’re the Seer,” Draco says, picking up the kettle and filling it noisily.
“Milk and one sugar, please,” Harry says, and Draco can hear the smile in his voice now.
Surprised by the politeness, Draco says nothing, instead setting the kettle to boil and stepping closer to Harry in order to peer curiously over his shoulder as he stirs something on the stove.
“What are you doing?” he asks after a minute or two.
“Making a white sauce,” Harry says, turning his head slightly and making Draco jump with a sudden flash of warm green eyes, an astonishingly unguarded smile and gently raised eyebrows.
Draco’s heart stutters and he nods mutely, wondering if he shouldn’t step away from Harry. Or towards him; he’s not really sure. Eventually, he pulls his eyes away from Potter’s face and looks down into the saucepan. He frowns. The substance currently clinging to Harry’s wooden spoon looks nothing like any sauce he has ever seen. It isn’t even a liquid, just a mass of congealed brownish paste.
“I think there’s something wrong with that,” he says confidently.
Harry snorts. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a roux.”
Draco lifts a dubious eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“It’s the start of the sauce,” Harry explains, poking at the mixture with his spoon. “In a minute I’ll start adding milk, and if I keep stirring, it’ll turn into a sauce.”
Draco leans in closer, catching a waft of a warm, piney smell that he decides to ignore for now.
“Are you sure?” he asks, frowning at the contents of the pan.
“I promise,” Harry says. “In fact, pass me that bottle of milk and I’ll show you.”
Trying not to think of it as taking orders from Potter, Draco picks up the cold bottle and is just about to hand it over when he freezes.
“Oh, no, not again, not again,” comes the muttering voice of Kreacher as he wheezes and creaks his way down the stairs towards the kitchen. “Kreacher will have their hides, oh yes, Kreacher will...”
Draco hesitates for only a fraction of a second before pure instinct kicks in. Heart pounding with fear and adrenaline, he grabs Harry’s wrist and pulls him into the far corner of the kitchen, drawing his wand from his sleeve and tapping it against a section of whitewashed wall, barely breathing as he whispers, “Let me in—I’m afraid.”
Harry’s pulse jumps under his fingers as the stone grinds and twists and a small hole appears in the wall, just about big enough for two people and a milk bottle.
“Come on,” Draco whispers urgently, pulling a confused but unresisting Harry inside and tapping his wand to reseal the wall behind them.
The stone scrapes back into place just as Kreacher’s footsteps begin to patter on the kitchen tile and Draco lets out a long, messy breath, pulling his knees in tight to his chest and resting his head against the cool, rough wall of the tiny cavern. The darkness is heavy and soothes him, allowing him to release Harry’s wrist and cling pointlessly to the half empty bottle in both hands.
Harry, now little more than a glowing pair of eyes in the gloom, shifts position, winces, and attempts to look around.
“What was that about?” he says at last, sounding more curious than concerned.
“Shh,” Draco whispers, pressing his ear to the wall and straining to hear Kreacher’s words.
“Kreacher heard someone in here, Kreacher did... what have they done? Oh, mistress will be—”
“Draco,” Harry hisses, and Draco turns to him, startled.
“What?”
“My sauce is burning.”
Draco stares at the green eyes in the near-darkness. “I have no idea what you want me to do about that.”
“Well, maybe you could let us out of this little... whatever it is,” Harry suggests, and he has the nerve to sound as though he is being completely reasonable.
“I will,” Draco whispers, pressing his ear to the wall again. “But not yet.”
“Why not? And how did you even know this was here? I’ve spent months in this house and I thought I knew about all the little weird bits.”
“Well, you don’t know everything,” Draco says sulkily, rubbing his fingers over the raised letters on the glass bottle. What he really wants to know is exactly what happened to his self control. It could be spending all this time with the Order and all their Gryffindor friends, but he doubts any of the others could have induced him to drag them into a secret hole in the wall in order to protect them from a marauding house-elf.
Horrified, he lets his forehead rest on his knees and groans softly.
Beyond the wall, Kreacher bangs the door of the range and Draco flinches, hating himself.
“Of course I don’t know everything,” Harry says quietly. “That being said, I have a fair idea that you’re afraid of Kreacher... which is interesting.”
“I’m not afraid,” Draco says hotly. “I just... he gives me the willies, alright? Always has.”
“Always?” Harry asks, leaning closer and filling Draco’s dark little world with the scent of tea and forests and warm man.
Draco rests his chin on his knees and fiddles with the milk bottle at his feet. He suddenly has the rather gripping feeling that he isn’t going to come out of this situation quite the same way he went into it, and that knowledge somehow calms the flurries of panic to a manageable level.
“I used to come here when I was little—five or six, maybe. They sent me away when they wanted to talk, and I used to come down here and...” Draco hesitates.
“Please,” Harry says softly, and his voice seems to creep out of the darkness and wrap around Draco.
He shivers. “I used to play with my marbles on the floor. I had really good ones—my father used to bring me a new one every time he went away on business. ‘Business’,” he repeats, shaking his head. “There’s a word to cover a multitude of sins.”
Harry says nothing, but Draco suddenly finds a warm knee pressing against his own in the darkness.
He takes a long, deep breath, wrinkling his nose slightly as something acrid-smelling catches the back of his throat. Harry’s right; his sauce is burning. Fortified by the thought of Kreacher having to clean up the blackened pan, Draco continues.
“One day I was down here for hours—I started to think they’d forgotten about me, but my father was always extremely explicit that I must never disturb the adults.” He scowls and closes his eyes. “I was hungry. I took some bread from the table and about five seconds later, Kreacher just shot out from nowhere and screamed at me, saying I was a thief and a disgrace to my family. I was little, Potter,” he adds, all at once defensive. “I was terrified.”
“I’m not surprised,” Harry says easily.
Draco opens his eyes to find the green ones gazing steadily back at him. “Well,” he says after a moment. “Exactly. Anyway, I ran away, but the next time I heard him coming, I started waving my wand about and demanding a place to hide.”
“You had a wand?” Harry asks, apparently astonished.
Draco rolls his eyes. “Of course. Mother had just bought a new one in Romania, and she gave me her old one to play with. Don’t tell me you didn’t have any wand at all until you went to school.”
“I’m going to pretend that you didn’t know that I grew up with Muggles,” Harry says, sounding amused.
“I don’t know everything either,” Draco says with far more nonchalance than he feels.
“Are you sure?” Harry asks, and the green eyes gleam.
Irked, Draco continues, pretending he hasn’t heard. “So I was tapping all along the walls... I could hear him coming, his horrible breathing and the way he always mutters to himself... I sort of pleaded with this bit of the wall to let me in and... it did. It just opened up.”
“Like a little cave of requirement,” Harry says, sounding unexpectedly impressed.
Draco shrugs. “A little room for hiding things.”
“And people,” Harry adds softly, seeming closer than he had a moment before. “Do you think it was built with the house?”
“I don’t know,” Draco says, catching his breath as Harry’s bare arm brushes against his ankle. “I never told anyone about it.”
“Until now,” Harry says, almost in a whisper, and when he lights the tip of his wand, the smile that can be heard in his voice flickers into life on his softly-illuminated face.
In the kitchen beyond the wall, Kreacher can be heard stomping back and forth across the tiles. Distractedly, Draco gazes at Harry in silence, allowing his eyes to drift from his face and rake over his bare torso and frayed jeans and scattered scars. His attention is quickly drawn back to Harry’s left arm, which is being held stiffly at his side at rather an odd angle. Draco bites his lip momentarily, attempting to fight down an incongruous urge to interfere, but then Harry shifts on the cold stone and closes his eyes as the injured arm is forced into a new position.
Draco sighs. “Don’t you think you should let someone look at that?”
Harry blinks and looks down at his arm. “This? Oh, no, it’s fine.”
“It certainly is not,” Draco says, leaning an inch or two closer and gently prodding at Harry’s elbow. The touch provokes an immediate hiss of pain and he withdraws, noticing that he is still close enough to touch, close enough to feel the warmth from Harry’s skin, close enough to want to slip his fingers into the holes in Harry’s jeans and sneak curious strokes along his thighs.
“Well, whatever, I haven’t got the time to be buggering off to St Mungo’s right now,” Harry says, and there’s a curious tremor in his voice as he meets Draco’s eyes again.
Draco flushes, forcing a disdainful tone into his voice with some effort. “Who said anything about St Mungo’s? Practically everyone in this house has healing experience of some kind, you know that. Any one of them would have helped you if you’d asked. Idiot,” he adds, in an attempt to pull back a sliver of his usual control.
Harry stares at him for long seconds and then drops his eyes, regarding his knees with intense interest. “Yes, well. I didn’t think.”
“You didn’t think?” Draco repeats, incredulous.
Harry huffs. “I didn’t think, I didn’t know, it didn’t occur to me to ask—all of the above,” he snaps, tracing one of the more recent bruises with the fingers of his right hand. “Now, if you’ve quite finished making me feel like a complete tit, I’d quite like to get out of here.”
With each prickly word, Draco can feel the strange new warmth between them starting to slip away, and before he knows what he is doing, he’s reaching out and catching the wrist of Harry’s injured arm, pulling it carefully but firmly towards him and tucking it between his knees. As he draws his wand, Harry merely stares at him, wide-eyed, and when he doesn’t pull away, Draco takes a deep breath and casts, trying not to think of all the times he has had cause to use this spell before.
The familiar magic roars through him, creating a warm blue glow around the entire injured arm and a burst of light that wraps so brightly around Harry’s elbow that he has to look away, eyes drawn immediately to Harry’s open-mouthed, blue-washed expression of incredulity. Hand still tucked tightly between Draco’s knees, Harry clutches at Draco’s trouser fabric and drops his chin to his chest as the spell peaks and fades away in a shower of aquamarine sparks.
Draco stares at the top of his head, mouth dry and heart racing. His fingers shake as he drops his wand to the stone with a rattle and he reaches for the milk bottle, holding onto it as though doing so will somehow keep him afloat. He has no idea what he was thinking, throwing healing spells at Harry fucking Potter as though he’s some kind of expert... some kind of friend. It has finally happened. He has finally taken up his leisurely and inevitable trundle down the path of complete insanity.
He has always known it would happen, but he never expected it to be right here, like this, and he barely notices when Harry tugs his fingers free and starts to experimentally bend his arm.
“That’s amazing,” he murmurs, straightening the entire arm until his fingers are resting on Draco’s shoulder, and then pulling it in tight enough to touch the back of his own neck.
“Hmm?” Draco manages, dragging himself from his contemplation of madness.
“It worked,” Harry says, smile caught somewhere between surprise and delight as he looks at Draco.
Draco’s stomach flips violently. “Did it? Oh, well, that’s... rather good.”
Harry laughs, and it’s a wonderful sound, but Draco puts a finger to his lips. “Kreacher,” he whispers.
“Sorry,” Harry whispers back, mouth crooked as he scrambles to his knees and wavers dangerously into Draco’s personal space, such that it is in a tiny hiding-from-Kreacher cavern in the wall.
“What are you doing?” he asks as Harry leans closer and sets a wave of panic-slash-arousal sweeping over Draco’s skin.
“Listening,” Harry whispers, pressing his ear to the wall.
“I see,” Draco mumbles, holding himself perfectly still in the knowledge that one false movement in any direction will have his face buried in Harry’s chest, his knee in Harry’s groin or his tongue darting out to taste Harry’s throat. None of which will be his own fault, and none of which are entirely advisable.
“I think he’s gone,” Harry says, voice seeming far too loud in the tiny space now that he is no longer whispering.
Draco listens too, straining to hear Kreacher’s muttering and pacing above the hammering of his own blood in his ears.
“I think you’re right,” he whispers, turning his head and finding Harry right there, eyes dark and breathing shallow.
He’s so close, so warm, and the way he looks at Draco is so unlike anything he has ever seen before that the hope—tentative and impossible—begins to spark inside him. Harry leans closer still. Draco freezes. Closes his eyes. Stops breathing altogether, because he thinks Harry Potter is going to kiss him, and it’s just possible that that simple action will break him into a million pieces.
When he feels Harry’s shoulder brushing against his and hears the tapping of a wand against the stone, Draco lets out a long, aching breath. He opens his eyes as the stone begins to grind open and blinks rapidly when the morning light floods his vision. He scrambles out, still clinging to the milk bottle, and quickly finds himself a place to lean against the counter, determined that Harry Potter will never know that Draco Malfoy expected to be kissed, even for a moment.
“Well, I think I’ll have to start again on that sauce,” Harry is saying, peering into the pan and then blasting it with a strong cleaning spell.
“Yes,” Draco mumbles, thinking mutinously of Kreacher and that fact that Harry Potter has managed to save him a job.
“Draco?”
Draco looks up to find Potter standing right in front of him, face uncertain and previously injured arm outstretched. On the palm of his hand sits a small, slightly dusty glass marble. Astonished, Draco reaches out to take it, noticing that the marble fades from dark blue to bright red as it changes hands. He smiles.
“I haven’t seen this for a very long time,” he says.
“I sat on it,” Harry says, adding quickly: “I don’t think I did it any harm, though.”
Draco smiles reluctantly. “This came from the Cayman Islands,” he says, rubbing the little marble against his sweatshirt until it gleams. “It’s a mood marble—not like those things Muggles have set into rings—this really does show you the mood of the person holding it. I lost it years and years ago.”
He looks over at the patch of wall concealing the cavern and smiles.
“So, what does blue mean?” Harry asks.
“I think dark blue means you’re worried,” Draco says, casting his mind back.
“And red?”
Draco gazes down at the glittering scarlet marble and then tucks it into his pocket.
“I don’t know. I haven’t ever seen it turn red before,” he admits, feeling himself flush slightly even though the words are absolutely true. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for fixing my arm... and... er, for saving me. From Kreacher,” Harry says, eyes meeting Draco’s with a glint of mischief.
“Yes, well, I’d prefer it if you didn’t tell anyone about that part,” Draco says stiffly, setting down the milk bottle at last and crossing his arms over his chest. He looks down at his feet and sighs.
“I wasn’t going to,” Harry says, and when Draco looks up, he is right there again, close enough for his breath to brush Draco’s cheek, and though a ghost of a smile still lingers on his face, Draco doesn’t think he has ever seen him look so serious. “Listen, I just...” Harry begins but falls silent, reaching out to press tentative fingers to Draco’s waistband, pulling in a hitching breath as those fingers slip under Draco’s borrowed sweatshirt and onto his skin.
“I don’t understand,” Draco whispers, leaning in the last two inches to reach for the kiss.
Harry smiles against his lips and kisses him over and over again, soft, quick kisses and slow, searching ones, pushing Draco back against the counter and resting his hands there. Draco kisses back, catching soft groans between them, tasting tea and salt and terror. Harry’s fingers are cold on his back but the rest of him is warm and alive and surprising under Draco’s hands, shifting in the morning sunlight and melting against Draco as though he’s the only thing that matters.
“Don’t think I didn’t think about it,” Harry says at last, new stubble grazing Draco’s heated face as he presses the words to his ear, making him shiver.
“What?” Draco rests his hands at Harry’s hips and stands very still, searching for his missing edges and the thing that will stop his head from spinning. Right now, he doesn’t have much hope for either.
“Back in there,” Harry says, gesturing negligently at the now-unassuming stretch of wall. “I wanted to... well... I didn’t want you to think I was only interested in kissing you if we were hidden away where nobody could see.”
Startled, Draco stares at Harry and then around at the sun-drenched kitchen that is shared by countless Order members and what seems to be the entire Weasley family at times. Some as-yet-nameless emotion swirls around the base of his spine, flutters through his stomach and spirals around his heart, making it swell and ache. He wraps his arms around Harry and presses his face into his shoulder, breathing him in and wanting to laugh as Harry’s fingers thread through his hair and pull him close.
He doesn’t register the footsteps on the stairs until it’s too late, but when he jerks away from Harry at the sound of the kitchen door, Harry calmly holds onto him, fingers slipping down to twist into his belt loops.
“Put it away,” laughs Bill Weasley, taking one look at them and heading for the kettle. “I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”
“Alright, but I’ll remind you of this the next time I catch you and Fleur ‘looking for potions’ in the attic,” Harry says, and he laces his fingers through Draco’s and pulls him away before Bill has a chance to reply.
Draco is gratified, however, to see that the eldest Weasel’s face is turning a rather unbecoming pink as they head for the stairs and away from the kitchen.
“Where are we going?” he asks, even though he couldn’t care less.
Harry says nothing but turns to smile at him. He holds up the mood marble, apparently filched from Draco’s pocket, between two fingers.
“Red,” he points out, eyes full of promise, and he takes off up the stairs, two at a time.
Draco laughs and follows him.