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Harry is eighteen
Bright stars send pinpricks of light through pale clouds as Harry huffs and puffs his way up the final few steps. There are so many stairs leading up to the platform on the Astronomy Tower, and the air is heavy with memory. Dumbledore’s robes fluttering as he fell. The hot, angry magic of the curses Harry cast that night, and the numb grief afterwards.
He tips his head back until all he can see is the dark drape of the night sky.
Harry doesn’t know what he’s looking for, really. Hasn’t the faintest why he left his friends drunk and sloppy in the eighth-year common room, cuddling up, leaning in to one another, eyeing each other’s mouths while the last of the year bled away.
“Potter.”
Harry startles at the sound of his name, but his body does something altogether different at the sight of Draco Malfoy’s silhouette at the parapet. A delicate orange flame springs to life in Malfoy’s palms, lighting his face and a cigarette.
The tip is a warm ember as Malfoy inhales, grey eyes silvery in the starlight.
“Malfoy.” Harry shuffles over, drawn to Malfoy by Merlin knows what, and watches the smoke curl into the air until it blends with the clouds. “Why are you up here?”
“Why are you?” Malfoy’s question isn’t barbed, the way it would have been before. They’d had to talk it out or kill each other when they’d both come back to Hogwarts. Hadn’t been a long conversation. Harry had shoved Malfoy’s wand awkwardly back into his hand, and Malfoy had bitten out a red-faced apology, and Harry had waved his hands and said it’s over, it’s over, okay? Let’s just— and he never did say what they’d do, exactly, but get through eighth year was most of it.
Things have been easy between them since. So easy that Harry can’t fathom what life will be like without Malfoy when they leave Hogwarts.
“I thought it would be…” Harry gestures at the courtyard below and the grounds beyond and all the twinkling stars. “More momentous up here, or something.”
“What would be?”
“The new year. It’s the first—” The catch in his voice surprises him. “First year without—you know. Everything.”
It’s the first year without Voldemort. Without the threat of a war or a war-in-progress. It’s the first year that being the Boy Who Lived won’t matter so much.
Hopefully.
“Ah.” Malfoy smokes his cigarette in peaceable silence for a minute. “Well, it was quite momentous, actually. There were fireworks and trumpets and a choir.”
Harry gapes at him. “What? When?”
“At the moment of the new year.” Malfoy gazes at the sky. “You missed it, of course. You were late.”
Harry chokes on a laugh, his face going hot. “Tosser.”
“I was early. I saw everything.”
For a few seconds, Harry believes him. Feels like it could be true. Feels like the rest of his life. Climbing a tower in the dark, missing the main event by a heartbeat.
“Was it nice?”
He steals a glance at Malfoy—shadows in his eyes, a sad slant to his mouth, rounded shoulders—and looks away again, his chest aching.
“It was lovely,” Malfoy sighs. “If a bit lonely.”
Harry steps closer.
Not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel the promise of Malfoy’s heat in the bitter cold.
They stand side-by-side for a little while.
“What do you think you’ll do?” Harry asks into the stillness of the new year.
“I don’t know.” Malfoy Vanishes his cigarette and slips his hands into his pockets. “I’d like to avoid becoming my father, if at all possible.”
Harry turns that over in his mind. “I’d like to avoid being alone,” he admits, feeling instantly foolish. “But I can’t picture it.”
“You’re never alone, Potter.”
“I mean…” Harry swallows a lump in his throat. “I mean, I’d like a family, or—or a person. A partner. It’s just hard to imagine how that would—how I’d find—everybody knows me. They already think they know who I am, and if I was with someone, they’d probably figure out—”
“That you’re even more of a saint than the Prophet says?”
“That I’m so fucked up,” Harry blurts.
Malfoy snorts, and it tickles something in Harry, and he doubles over laughing.
They laugh and laugh and laugh, voices echoing off the stone and the sky. The sound of Malfoy’s laugh buries itself in Harry’s head, and in his heart, and in a wild moment Harry thinks, I love him. I could love him so much.
Harry’s belly aches, underused muscles burning, when Malfoy puts his hand on Harry’s shoulder to pull him upright. Malfoy takes a quick, sharp breath and freezes for a fraction of a second, so quickly that Harry thinks he’s made it up. The Firewhisky he had hours ago buzzes faintly in his blood. That must be what makes Harry want to put his hand over Malfoy’s and keep him there.
He doesn’t.
Harry wipes at his streaming eyes and breathes deep and even, trying to collect himself.
“I’m certain you’ll find your Gryffindor prince,” Malfoy starts, putting his hand to his mouth to stifle more laughter. “But worry not. If you’re still single in ten years, I’ll marry you.”
Harry shoves his hand out before he can think about it, his heart pounding, his magic rushing about in his veins. “If we’re both still single, we’ll marry each other.”
Malfoy puts his hand in Harry’s, a determined glint to his eye, his mouth set and struggling against a smile. “I accept your terms.”
“New Year’s Day,” Harry says, as if Malfoy might have forgotten in the last five seconds. He’s tipsy and cold and, yeah, pretty fucked up from his life, but this pact—drunk or not, joke or not—feels like a safety net stretching underneath him. Harry has never had one of those before. “Ten years from now.”
“Ten years. I swear.”
Malfoy squeezes Harry’s hand and lets go.
Harry is nineteen
Somebody’s screaming, the sound ragged and broken, almost inhuman. Harry covers his ears, but it doesn’t stop. His teeth feel like he’s bitten through ice, and his throat is raw.
Where are his glasses? He can’t see without his glasses.
He digs his heels into the floor and pushes his back against the wall as hard as he can. If he could see who was making that noise, he’d beg them to stop. His heart is beating so hard and fast that he’ll die. He’s going to die.
Footsteps rattle the floor under Harry. He recognises the rhythm even if he can’t hear them over that unholy racket, Merlin’s balls, how much longer are they—
A shaft of light slants from the space across from him, and a red shadow spills from the glow. It gets taller, closer, until it descends to the floor in front of Harry in a graceful movement and it’s Malfoy.
He’s always faster, but Harry got here first.
His face gets closer and clearer, then blurs as he pulls back to scan Harry’s body. Malfoy’s lips move, but Harry can’t hear anything he says. The scream is starting to pull him apart. It gets louder every time his heart beats in waves of pain.
Malfoy turns his head. Choppy words reach Harry on a delay. Got him, Harry hears, and then missed, and then attack.
Then Malfoy’s close again, crouched over Harry’s thighs. His Auror robes make a smaller space for the two of them. Malfoy tips Harry’s head away from the wall, his fingers gentle on Harry’s face. Then one of his black-gloved hands covers Harry’s, over his right ear. Malfoy bites at the tip of his other glove and pulls it off.
He’s still talking.
Harry still can’t hear him.
It’s so loud, the screaming, so so loud—
Malfoy pulls Harry’s other hand away from his ear and places it over the buttons of his jacket, his fingers warm over Harry’s shaking ones. His chest rises and falls under Harry’s palm, and he can feel Malfoy’s heart beating even through his uniform. He felt his magic every day of Auror training and every day they’ve been partners since, but somehow he hadn’t been sure if his heart—when that wizard had come out of nowhere, and the green light—
“—right,” Malfoy’s saying. A lock of his hair falls over one eye. “Look, Potter. Look. I’m all right. It didn’t touch me.”
One second his hand is flat on Malfoy’s chest and the next it’s a fist. One second he’s against the wall and the next he’s crumpled forwards into Malfoy’s arms.
Harry opens his mouth to apologise—this is mental, they’ve been in training since June, he’s fine, he’s fine—and comes to the horrible realisation that he’s the one who’s been screaming, and only then because it becomes a sobbed oh, oh, oh and Harry thinks it’s fifty-fifty whether he dies or passes out.
Malfoy’s hands stay steady on his back. He manoeuvres himself to the floor with Harry clinging to him, somehow, and sits there while other red shadows block the light at the door, then let it through.
“I can’t.” Harry doesn’t know how long it’s been. “I can’t, I can’t. Please, don’t. Just don’t. Please. Be done.”
“We’re done.” Malfoy rubs his back. “All right? Don’t think about it anymore.”
“Oh, God, but you—but—”
“We’ll find something else to do,” Malfoy promises.
He tries to say that he’s sorry, but the s catches between his teeth and won’t come out.
“Shhh. It’s all right. It’s perfectly fine. Weasley, I think you’d better—”
Harry closes his eyes. He can’t breathe, but Malfoy’s heartbeat never falters, never stops.
Harry is twenty
Harry’s a miserable drunk. That’s what he is. He stares into his Firewhisky at a grotty pub he can’t remember the name of and can’t stand to drink anymore.
Can’t stand to waste it.
He empties the glass in one, shoves some Galleons at the bartender, and leaves.
It’s spitting rain, and his Impervius doesn’t take. Can’t Apparate, or he’ll Splinch himself. Harry drags himself back to Grimmauld Place on foot. He falls into bed fully clothed.
All he sees when he closes his eyes is Malfoy.
It’s been four months since the Prophet put him on the front page. A photo of him with his new boyfriend, walking in Diagon Alley. Malfoy was a step ahead of the man, who was dark-haired and posh like Harry will never be, and he looked fondly annoyed with Malfoy for moving so fast, but that’s how Malfoy moves, so the tosser will have to get used to it.
Harry was happy to see the article.
He is.
Malfoy deserves a real life, and a boyfriend, and—and whatever else he wants.
His stomach lurches.
It’s morning, and it feels like he hasn’t slept. Harry leans over the side of the bed and sicks up on his bedroom floor. It takes three tries to Vanish the mess.
He’s a mess.
Harry doesn’t deserve a Hangover Potion. He takes one anyway and hauls himself into the shower. It seems pointless to wash his hair, but he does. Shampoo gets into his eyes, and honestly, that seems right. He left the Aurors determined to fix himself, and look where it’s gotten him.
Nowhere.
At least Malfoy found something else to do.
Kreacher appears in the bathroom with a crack. “Harry Potter has a visitor,” he announces, then disappears before Harry can ask who it is.
He turns off the shower and struggles into jeans and a T-shirt, still wet, absolutely miserable. Harry combs his fingers through his hair and casts belated Drying Charms on the way downstairs.
He’s expecting Ron, but when he picks up his head at the last second—
“Malfoy?”
Malfoy looks up at him, the corner of his mouth turning down. “Good morning doesn’t seem to be an appropriate greeting.”
“Not really.” Harry reaches the floor and sticks his hands in his back pockets. Malfoy’s beautiful in a blue coat. His hair is down to his chin, falling in a lovely spill, and Harry clenches his fists to keep himself from reaching for it. He’s gorgeous, and Harry’s disgusting, and he could drown in his shame. “Why are you here?”
“Why are you?” Malfoy’s eyes light, and Harry wishes, wishes, he was back on the Astronomy Tower.
“I live here.”
“Ah. Right.” Malfoy glances down, and—his eyes are red, aren’t they? Harry’s not imagining that. He lifts his chin, and Harry’s throat closes.
“Did something—er. You okay?” All of Harry wants to be closer to Malfoy, but he deserves that even less than the Hangover Potion.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really.” Malfoy waves his hand dismissively. “Just a bit of a breakup. Listen, would you like a job?”
“A bit of—what?”
“A job,” Malfoy repeats. “Would you like one?”
“Who says I don’t already have a job?” Malfoy gives him a look, and Harry scowls at him. “I was just—I took some time off, it’s not—”
“It’s part bookshop, part café.” Malfoy tilts his head to the side and looks Harry up and down appraisingly. Harry feels every inch of his tatty T-shirt and bare feet and messed-up hair. “Hard to be in two places at once, if you know what I mean.”
“What—” Harry’s throat has gone dry, and his face burns. Can he even keep a job? He doesn’t know. “What place did you—I mean—”
“There’s the books.” Malfoy puts one hand out. “Or the part with coffee and biscuits.” He extends his other hand, then bobs them in the air like two plates of a scale and raises his eyebrows at Harry.
“Who takes the other one?”
Malfoy drops his hands. “Me.”
“Yes.” He’s too fast, and too loud, but Malfoy doesn’t flinch. “Er. I mean. Yeah, that sounds good. That would be fine, I think.”
“I agree.” Malfoy holds out a slip of parchment. “There’s the address. Hours are seven to three. I’ll meet you there in the morning.”
Harry looks down at Malfoy’s neat writing with a crushing sense of relief. He’s been adrift for months, drunk and guilty and useless, and he doesn’t know the first thing about running a bookshop or a café but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care at all.
The door opens.
“Wait—Malfoy, I—”
Malfoy turns back, a light in his eyes that makes Harry’s heart race.
“I should say—a condition of the job is that you must call me Draco. Malfoy was my father.” He makes a scrunched-up face, winks at Harry, and closes the door behind him.
The sweet, silver scent of his magic lingers in the air long after he’s gone.
Harry is twenty-one
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Draco calls from behind a bookshelf. He’s always flitting from place to place in the shop like a hummingbird in flight. “Just open it! I can feel you fretting, Harry, and it simply doesn’t suit you.”
“Not yet,” Harry calls back.
The envelope arrived with the rest of the shop’s mail, and Harry has, in fact, been worrying at it all morning. Draco’s right, obviously. But when he opens it, he’ll know, and then—
Then he’ll have to decide.
Harry slips the envelope under the counter, puts four fresh biscuits in the display case, and flips to a new page in his sketchbook.
The drawing came as a surprise, same as the Mind Healer. Well—not surprises, exactly. When he started working at the café, they never had anybody in before eight except for one middle-aged wix named Iris who arrived every day at seven on the dot, as soon as Draco flipped the sign. She reminded Harry of Hermione a bit, warm and smart and oftentimes quiet while she drew in her own sketchbook.
Harry started talking to her out of politeness and kept talking to her out of interest. Iris showed up one day with a little square sketchbook, claiming it was an extra, and they really should stock them in the shop, didn’t Harry know?
They started sketching with pencils and pens. Since there was really never anybody else there, Harry would sit at Iris’s table a few times a week and let her teach him how to draw while Draco entered new books into their inventory and drank coffee and read the Prophet.
He’d never taken to anything so easily before, except maybe flying. It gave his hands something to do, and while his sketches seeded and grew across the pages, he made idle conversation with Iris.
He drew everything.
It was Hedwig in flight, the day that Harry told Iris about her. The Veil in the Department of Mysteries when he told her about Sirius. A Pensieve the day he told her about seeing Voldemort in Dumbledore’s memories, and from there it was a short leap to the presence of Voldemort in his head, and in the thoughtful silence afterwards, he felt shockingly unburdened.
“Is that why you find it difficult to be alone, do you think?” she asked, her own pencil brushing lightly across her page.
“Dunno.” Harry shrugged. “Sometimes one person at a time seems worse than being alone.”
She’d hummed in an inquisitive way.
“I mean, last time that happened was when I was with the Aurors. I hated that Mind Healer shit, being shut up in a room with some stranger.” Harry shuddered. “Then you’re supposed to go on and on about your deepest, darkest secrets. Horrible. And then—” He’d tilted his head, trying to get the angle right on the Pensieve. The perspective he’d chosen was a bit shit. “Then there’s just no way to tell if that person is—if you can even trust them or not. I bought into the stuff about the Department of Mysteries, so sometimes I can’t even trust my own head, much less some Mind Healer with a clipboard and a blank face.”
“Reasonable,” pronounced Iris.
“Yeah?” He’d let out a breath. “Sometimes I feel like an arsehole. I should be able to figure it out myself.”
Iris waved this off. “Humans aren’t solitary creatures, Harry. It’s not a deficiency to need other people.”
“Well…it wouldn’t be so bad to even it out.”
“Is it so imbalanced as all that? You’re here every day with Draco.”
It had fleetingly occurred to Harry that Draco’s constant presence was the only reason he sat down with Iris at all. He’d never have done it if he and Iris were alone in a room.
“He doesn’t need me.” At that moment, Draco was at the far corner of the shop, casting lemony Dusting Charms on the shelves. Harry frowned at the Pensieve.
Iris hummed again.
“He doesn’t!” Harry erased part of the Pensieve and started again. “Merlin knows I don’t make anything easier.”
“Easier isn’t always better,” Iris offered.
It was another two months before Harry jerked his head up from his sketchbook and stared at Iris.
She met his eyes after several long beats, eyebrows raised.
“What was your job? Before you retired and started hanging out in bookshops?”
Iris pursed her lips. “I had a private practice.”
“Doing what?” It began to dawn on him, very slowly. “Iris. Doing what?”
“Talking to people,” she said simply.
Harry stared at his sketchbook, wanting to be angry. And he was angry, for a minute. It was hot and tight in his chest. He felt it, and he let it go, and then he huffed a breath and bent over his drawing.
After a little while, he flipped it around and thrust the sketchbook towards Iris.
“Tell me how to fix this,” he said. “I know it’s wrong, I just don’t know how.”
She peered over at his work. “You’ve forgotten your foreshortening.”
“Bollocks.”
Iris had come less after that, and one day she’d come with news—she was going to France to teach at a small, prestigious art residency.
And Harry had applied.
And the answer had come.
He’s mid-sketch, trying to calm himself down, when starlight hair flashes in the corner of his vision. Draco’s hand darts under the counter and he’s off like a shot.
“No!” Harry chases after him, but Draco loops around the shelves, tearing the envelope open as he goes. He sprints in a mad circle around the shop, the couple at the corner table staring.
Draco goes for the door.
Harry follows him out, into the street, across the street, and finally pins him in an alcove, one hand by his head, grabbing desperately for the letter. Draco switches it to his other hand, shakes out the parchment, and—
“You’re in!” he shouts.
“What?” Harry shouts back.
“You’re in! You’re going!”
Harry throws his arms around Draco, biting back the words come with me, come with me, please.
Because.
If he can make it in France by himself, he can prove—
He’ll prove he’s more than a burden.
“I knew it,” Draco says, close to his ear, the smile clear as daylight in his voice. Some of his hair gets caught in the wind and blows into Harry’s eye. “I knew you’d get in.”
“I have a feeling you pulled strings.” Harry’s heart pounds and pounds.
“I would never,” Draco lies. “I swear.”
Harry is twenty-two
Harry draws and draws and draws.
He takes up charcoal and oil paints and French. It takes too much time to translate what his instructors say, and he inhales the language practically whole, if a bit rough.
Je m’appelle Harry
J’apprends à peindre
Je suis un artiste
Désolé, je dois peindre
Désolé, je dois dessiner
Désolé
Désolé
The letters he writes to Draco have fewer and fewer words, more of the parchment covered in small sketches, then larger ones, then paintings.
At first, it’s ecstasy. He loses himself in colour and form and doesn’t have to resurface. It’s better if he doesn’t. The more time he spends on his art, the better he gets.
The better he gets, the worse it feels.
Harry misses Draco desperately. When he comes up from a sketch or a painting, something like grief wraps a tight fist around his neck.
Iris comes to talk to him. He tries to explain it—he can’t just be Draco’s broken friend for the rest of his life. He has to have done something.
“You saved the world,” she points out. “You have done something, Harry. It’s reasonable to relax.”
But he can’t square this version of himself with a person who could conceivably demand so much of Draco’s time. Draco tells him over and over that he can come back to the bookshop anytime, and Harry knows he means it—he knows, he knows.
It’s only that Draco deserves more than that. More than Harry. More than who Harry is now—someone whose main purpose in life is behind him, who doesn’t have anything to offer.
“I can’t keep showing up empty-handed,” Harry says, the words a pale imitation of the fierce burn in his chest.
He’s not going back without something to show for it. He’s not going back without proof that he’s more than he was when he died at seventeen. Not only for Draco, but also for himself.
Not long after that conversation, he stops speaking completely.
He doesn’t know when to stop sketching, when to stop painting. Doesn’t want to stop. If he has a nightmare, he climbs out of bed, gets a canvas, and paints until it’s out of his head, like a Pensieve. He hardly notices the sun and the moon whirling in the sky. He ignores a dull pain in his wrist that sharpens until it feels like a broken bone, then fades to a numb beat. His room fills with charcoal sketches of the Black Lake and Hogwarts rising from a sea of oil paints and Hedwig and Sirius and Fred and Remus, ghosts waving to him, smiling, grinning in vivid colour.
At some point, he becomes obsessed with the cupboard under the stairs. Harry maps every inch of it—his thin mattress, his broken, stolen toys.
He paints every gradation in the shadows, the canvases getting darker and darker and darker until—
Harry wakes up in a room full of whispers. French whispers.
France?
He reaches for a paintbrush.
He doesn’t find one.
When his hand closes around nothing, he lurches up from the bed, panic stealing the breath from his lungs, and throws himself away from the mattress.
He lands in Draco’s arms, fighting. He’s in a hospital in France without his things. What is he supposed to do without his paints, without his pencils? He needs them.
Draco won’t let him go, and it scares the pants off Harry. He can’t think. He can’t understand a word Draco says, or why he’s holding on so tightly. A crowd of Mediwixens gather, and they all sound so bloody weird, and Harry’s vaguely aware that he might be losing his mind, for real this time, but he can’t—
He wrenches at Draco’s grip, his magic seething. A window breaks nearby. More glass rattles. “S’t plaît—lâche-moi, Draco, lâche-moi!” 1
“Shhh.” Draco’s breathing hard with the effort of keeping Harry near the bed, if not on it. “Mon cœur, tu dois te reposer.” 2
“Je suis mort,” Harry insists. He has rested. He’s rested for far too long. He has work to do. He has so much work. “Je suis mort! Lâche-moi!” 3
“Désolé.” Why is Draco sorry? Why is he crying? “Désolé, s’il te plaît, mon cœur—fais-le maintenant.” 4
Someone says an incantation behind Harry’s back, fast and low.
It’s dark for a long time.
Harry is twenty-three
He can’t really explain how he ends up in Alabama. The Portkey office in Paris, he thinks, but that’s the least of it.
Harry’s never been more embarrassed, and he can’t face it without an ocean between him and everybody he’s ever known.
Even Draco.
He begged Harry to come back to the bookshop in a quiet, reserved way that made Harry want to die from the shame.
And then, once he’d gone, Iris had broken the news that Harry had fucked himself over.
He thought she was talking about Draco, and she probably was, but she wasn’t only talking about Draco.
She was talking about Harry’s hands.
He’d taken it too far with the painting. Pushed his magic right off the edge of some invisible cliff. It had torn through him in some kind of revolt, and he’d been in bad shape, not sleeping, not eating, and—
And now his hands shake all the time. His magic shakes all the time. The charms to ease the tremors don’t work.
And the idea that Draco had come to rescue him again makes him want to disappear.
So he has disappeared.
He writes Draco one letter in his new, even-worse handwriting. Please, please, forget about me, it ends. Forget me as much as you can. I’m so sorry. I just want you to be happy.
Draco doesn’t write back.
Harry spends three hours a week in a Mind Healer’s office in the leafy downtown of the city he’s landed in. After every session, he stops to sick up in the parking lot bin.
He thinks about the cupboard under the stairs. He thinks about the bookshop. He thinks about Draco constantly.
He tries to sort himself out.
He thinks he’s doing a decent job.
In May, he works up the courage to cast a Patronus. Harry’s relieved that he can still manage the Charm, but the silver-white form breaks his heart, so he doesn’t try again.
In June, Hermione sends him an owl.
Draco has a new boyfriend.
Harry writes him a letter. I’m really happy for you. I’m sorry I was so fucked up but I’m so glad you’re happy now. You deserve it.
He burns the letter in the parking lot of his Mind Healer’s office and never writes another one.
Harry is twenty-four
Hermione’s eyes are red, even through the flames of the long-distance Floo call.
“Harry.” Her voice wobbles, and she pauses to dry her eyes with the hem of her jumper. “I know you weren’t going to come back, but I think you should.”
The International Portkey is a nightmare. Harry has fewer strings to pull in the States. A bored official at the Portkey office in Montgomery doesn’t believe he is Harry Potter—Harry Potter doesn’t do that, he says, his eyes dropping to Harry’s hands—and Harry finally has to shove his hair out of his face to expose his scar, and even then the man is dubious.
It’s a multi-stage trip, first to Boston, then Lisbon, and he’s four hours late to the office in the Ministry due to some magical interference and ten minutes late to Narcissa Malfoy’s funeral at the Manor in Wiltshire.
He’s ushered to the rose gardens by a house-elf named Bibsy and breaks into a cold sweat at the gathered crowd.
There are more people than he expected.
Hermione and Ron, of course, and there’s Luna, and everybody he left here when he fled to the States. Fred is the only missing Weasley. Harry ducks behind a hedge, his breath short and his stomach in knots.
Draco’s starlight hair is a beacon in the front row. He’s cut it shorter, almost like it was in school. He sits tall in his seat, surrounded by a contingent of Slytherins.
Where’s his boyfriend?
Pansy Parkinson is the only one who touches Draco at all. She sits in the next seat, patting Draco’s shoulder, holding his hand.
Harry might’ve defeated a Dark Lord, but he’s still a coward. He hides behind the hedge through the entire ceremony, his hands balled into fists and shoved into his pockets, hiding his tremors even though nobody turns around. At the end, when everyone’s attention is elsewhere, Harry Levitates a rose onto the gleaming casket as a silent, cowardly sign of gratitude for saving his life.
When he scans the crowd again, Draco’s gone.
There’s food or something inside, Hermione said, but Harry skirts through the formal gardens and finds an entrance without anybody around.
Draco’s magic hits him like a punch to the chest. A beautiful, silvery punch, but a blow nonetheless. Harry follows it to the first floor and through a maze of rooms, each one opening into the next, until the magic leads him to a wide hallway.
Portraits murmur to each other as he makes his way down, his eyes resolutely forwards. The dress robes feel strange after his time in Alabama. Everything does.
Except for Draco’s magic.
Except for the Manor, which is…
Weird.
A door on the left-hand side of the hall calls to him.
It opens easily under Harry’s hand, unwarded.
He trips over a pair of shoes abandoned on the floor, but catches himself, blinking into the gloom.
The room is lit by a single shaft of light from one cracked-open curtain. A sitting area near the door reminds him of Grimmauld Place, with clothes slung over the backs of chairs and papers piled on little end tables.
Harry moves further in.
A huge bed is against the far wall of the suite. Draco’s hair sticks out the top of the blankets just enough for Harry to see. He’s a lumpy shadow otherwise.
The polite thing to do would be to announce himself, but the words stick in his throat. There’s a tug at his ribs like someone’s tied a string there and is yanking it towards Draco. Harry’s rumpled from his Portkey travel and he’s a coward and an arsehole, but there’s nothing for it.
He steps out of his shoes, pulls his dress robes over his head, and shucks off his jeans. He finds a place for his glasses.
And then he pads over miles of plush carpet to the side of Draco’s bed.
Lifts the covers.
Climbs in.
Draco’s duvet is heavy and expensive and lands on Harry’s shoulder with a comforting pat. Underneath, Draco is curled into himself, his spine a devastating curve through his undershirt. He’s in such a little ball that it’s actually possible for Harry to be the big spoon.
He slings his arm over Draco, heart aching, skin hot, and breathes in almond soap and silver magic and the clean, papery scent of books. Draco takes a big, heaving breath, his spine pushing harder into Harry’s chest.
They lie there, Harry drifting on the rhythm of Draco’s heartbeat, for a while.
Finally, Draco shuffles, stretching his legs out a bit. “You didn’t have to come.”
“Actually, I think I should have been here earlier.”
Draco lifts one shoulder, lets it drop. “There was nothing to be here for. It was fast. It happened so fast.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry says to his nape, and he really is, he’s never been sorrier for anything. “I’m so sorry she’s gone.”
Draco turns so quickly that Harry startles onto his back. He looms over Harry, his eyes bloodshot, cheekbones sharp in his face. Fury crackles through the silver-grey like a blade. Harry braces for him to shout, for him to throw Harry out, for him to ask him what in Merlin’s name he thinks he’s doing.
“I can’t do this,” Draco whispers, his chin dimpling, and then his whole face crumples, body going with it. He lets his forehead drop onto Harry’s chest. At the first broken, wretched sob, Harry pulls him the rest of the way down.
There’s nothing he can say to make this hurt any less. Harry knows that. Still, he can’t bear the thought of letting Draco sob in silence, and so he says whatever comes to mind. Shh, I know and désolé, désolé and mon cœur, tu dois te reposer.
“Elle est morte,” Draco cries into his shirt. “Pour toujours.” 5
“Shh, je sais,” 6 Harry says, over and over until Draco falls asleep.
Harry is twenty-five
Harry goes back to Alabama for the better part of a morning to pack up his things.
He moves to a flat down the block from the bookshop and shows up the next day at seven like he’d never left.
Draco is already behind the counter, putting biscuits into the case and checking to see if they have enough milk.
His silver eyes come to Harry’s, and Harry expects hesitation, or maybe even wariness, but instead he gets stark relief.
“Hard to be in two places at once,” Draco says, like they’re standing at Grimmauld Place again, Harry miserable and hungover. One thing hasn’t changed. Draco’s still perfect.
“Turns out, you can’t serve biscuits at this shop from Alabama.”
“Not with that attitude.” Draco quirks an eyebrow, and Harry laughs.
He’s pretty sure he knows that stark relief he saw in Draco’s eyes. Harry feels it down to his bones.
They chat the way they used to, take turns shelving and serving like they used to, brush up against each other in an easy, casual way. Harry only hides in the bathroom twice to grip the sink and sob silently until he can catch his breath.
Being so far away hurt. He just hadn’t felt the pain until he was back.
“How was it really?” Draco asks in the strange hour before they close. “Did you meet anyone?”
Harry shrugs. “I met a Mind Healer.”
Draco tilts his head. “For business or pleasure?”
Harry thinks of the bin in the parking lot and screws up his face. “Business.”
“What fun,” Draco teases.
“What about you?” Harry teases back. “I never got his name, you know.”
“Whose name?”
“Hermione said—” He doesn’t want to bring up the letter he burned, or the way he slunk into the garden like a criminal. “She said you were seeing someone.”
Draco squints at him. “All I see is you.”
“Draco,” Harry says, a bit desperate, his heart racing out of control.
“Honestly, Harry, I can’t think who she would have been talking about.” Draco dispels the idea with a graceful wave of his hand. “Whoever he was, he certainly didn’t stick.”
In December, Harry has a little breakdown behind the counter because he misses his sketchbook and his paintings. Draco pats Harry’s back, a distant frown on his face.
The next morning, there’s a new sketchbook and unopened pencils waiting at Harry’s favourite table.
Draco’s rules are that Harry is only allowed to draw from seven to eight and only when the shop is open, and he’s not to tear out or otherwise destroy the sketches that aren’t perfect.
Sometimes, Harry dreams of asking Draco on a date and wakes up crying.
He can’t bring himself to do it. There’s too much uncertainty on the other side, too much raw magic. What if Harry fucks it up and loses Draco? The risk makes his heart race.
So they’re friends.
They are friends.
Friends.
Harry is twenty-six
The heat of August sits heavy on the city. It’s hot when Harry opens the bookshop at seven and it’s hot when he goes to sleep at night. He tosses and turns, sweat-damp and miserable. His best Cooling Charms don’t do the trick.
He’s getting better, though. When he can’t sleep, he sits in the chair in the corner of his bedroom with a book. Harry reads books on art technique in French and romances in English. He tries a mystery once, but his heart pounds and it keeps him up three nights in a row, so he donates it to a book box at the train station and sticks to love stories.
A week before the Hogwarts Express leaves from Platform 9¾, Draco doesn’t come to work.
Merlin knows he should take more days off, so Harry doesn’t bother him. He sketches for an hour, putting away his pencils in accordance with Draco’s rules, and spends the rest of the day serving drinks and biscuits and ringing up books.
He doesn’t show up the next morning, either, and Harry goes back and forth between knocking on the door of Draco’s flat and being an adult who can survive one single day on his own. Well—two days, now. His rumination lasts all day, and all night.
On the third day, Harry takes out his sketchbook at seven.
Draco still isn’t there when his hour is up, and that’s all Harry can stand. He flips the sign on the door to CLOSED and goes.
No answer at Draco’s flat. Harry’s keyed into Draco’s wards, so he doesn’t have to tear through them by hand. He knows Draco isn’t there the second he steps through the door.
Harry checks Grimmauld Place, since sometimes Draco goes looking for Black family artefacts in the shut-up house. He checks Draco’s favourite lunch spot and a park he likes to read in and Pansy Parkinson’s townhouse, which isn’t far from the bookshop.
It’s ten but feels like noon, the heat golden, when Harry arrives at the Manor.
The wards let him in there, too. At least the air moves a little more freely in Wiltshire. He can finally breathe, walking up the long drive.
Bibsy the house-elf meets him at the door. “Harry Potter!” she cries, eyes huge with surprise.
“Hi, Bibsy. I’m looking for Draco. Is he here?”
“Master Draco is in the garden. Bibsy can show Harry Potter where in the garden, if Harry Potter is—”
“Oh, it’s okay. I’ll go and find him.”
When was the last time he came to the country, besides the funeral? Harry can’t remember. And, yeah, Malfoy Manor’s manicured grounds don’t exactly count as wild, but the open lawns and the trees in the distance feel less restrictive than the narrow streets in the city. Harry doesn’t notice how close the buildings are when Draco’s with him.
He feels Draco’s magic, silver and clean, before he hears him, and he hears him before he sees him.
A soft incantation in a purposeful tone.
Harry follows the border of the hedge until it turns him into Narcissa’s rose gardens. They burst with blooms, pinks and reds and whites and purples and yellows. His fingers itch for his brush and his paints, but the roses—they’re not half of it.
It’s Draco he wants on the canvas. It’s Draco he should have been drawing in France, instead of that cupboard. What has darkness ever done for him?
Draco’s light.
Sunlight glints in his white-blond hair, tied in a bun at the nape of his neck, an errant lock escaping down his cheek. His legs look a mile long in a pair of posh-person shorts, and he’s got the sleeves of his shirt shoved up to his elbows, his fancy shoes kicked off to one side. Draco extends his wand-arm—the left one, he’s left-handed, a fact that has always thrilled and excited Harry for a reason he can’t explain—with strong, fluid grace, and casts. His wand movements are lovely. They’re precise and perfect and Harry loves them. Circe’s peaches, he loves them.
But nothing happens. The Charm doesn’t work.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake.” Draco whirls, dropping his wand to his side. His eyes fly open wide at the sight of Harry, and Draco’s hand flies to his chest, and he jumps back. “Harry! Fuck!”
“Hi.” Harry waves. “You didn’t come to work.”
Draco flushes a deep, beautiful red. He was already pink in the heat, and the transformation is like a blooming rose.
“I’m sorry.” His hand opens and closes on his wand, and he twirls it through his fingers. “I was—I should have sent an owl. I got caught up.”
He glances away, and Harry ambles further into the rose garden. “Want help?”
“I’m sure I don’t.”
Harry ignores this. If Harry couldn’t feel the humming determination in Draco’s magic, he’d know by the slope of his shoulders. He’s hot and frustrated and will give himself heat exhaustion before he quits.
“Have you managed it before?” Harry stops about a foot away from Draco and looks him in the eye. He’s not staring. He’s not struck by the hopeless desire to brush the lock of hair away from Draco’s cheek. He’s not seized with the urge to ask him what it is that makes him grow his hair out and what makes him cut it off.
The corners of Draco’s mouth turn down. “Once, and it wasn’t corporeal.”
“Bibsy,” Harry says.
She pops into the garden at his feet. “Harry Potter has called for Bibsy?”
“Could you bring us some lemonade?”
“Right away!” Bibsy cries, and disappears with another pop.
Draco eyes him suspiciously. “What does lemonade have to do with the Patronus Charm?”
“Hard to cast a corporeal Patronus when you’re thirsty.”
“I’m not.” Draco seems to think better of this as soon as he’s said the words. “Ugh.”
Bibsy returns a moment later. They sit in the shade of a marble fountain and drink, their shoulders brushing.
When they’ve finished, Harry takes them to a tree with a bench nearby. They’re still surrounded by Draco’s mother’s roses, and Harry’s not foolish enough to suggest that it’s the location preventing Draco from casting. He’s chosen Narcissa’s gardens because they remind Draco of her, and he wants to remember.
They stand in the dappled light, a languid August breeze washing this way and that over Harry’s face. He slips his wand into his back pocket and turns Draco away from him.
“What are you doing?”
“Close your eyes.”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Close your eyes, Draco, Merlin. Do you want me to teach you my Chosen secrets or not?”
Draco makes another ugh sound and folds his arms over his chest.
Harry leans around to check.
His eyes are closed.
Harry steps back behind him, moves in close, and puts his arms around Draco. He pretends not to hear Draco’s sharp breath and pretends not to notice the way Draco leans into him instantly, without hesitation.
He puts his left hand over Draco’s, both their fingers curled around his wand, and slides his right hand over Draco’s waist and up until he can settle it over his heart.
“Harry,” Draco says, sounding a bit breathless. “What does this have to do with casting the Patronus Charm?”
Harry breathes out, steadying himself. “You always walk around like a maniac, but for this, you have to be still. Just for a minute.”
“I can be still without you clinging to me like a Niffler.”
“No, you can’t.”
Draco drops his head back until it almost rests on Harry’s shoulder, then straightens up again. “Fine.”
“Just stand here with me.”
Harry does not allow any thoughts of kissing Draco or sucking him or fucking him to enter his mind. He listens to the wind in the leaves and the burbling fountain and the clear, distant call of a bird.
“Harry,” Draco says softly. “Your hands.”
The words what about them? dissolve on Harry’s tongue.
His hands are still.
His magic is calm.
For the first time since he was twenty-two.
Harry breathes in, breathes out, and memorises the rose garden. Draco’s body against his. The humid August warmth. The angle of the sun. Worse things could’ve happened in France, and the tremors don’t hurt, exactly, but they go along with a sort of pent-up discomfort that never stops, even when he’s sleeping.
Except for now.
“You must be magic,” he says.
Draco huffs a laugh and settles in again. His heart beats under Harry’s hand in a fast, steady rhythm.
Harry follows that beat until everything else fades away.
Conveniently, that’s about how long it takes Draco to relax.
“You need a strong memory.” Harry spreads his fingers on Draco’s chest. “Part of the trouble with the Patronus is that people explain it wrong. They say it needs to be a happy memory, but it’s deeper than that. You need a memory that’s warm. You need one that glows.” He pats Draco’s chest. “One that you can feel here.”
Draco says nothing. He keeps breathing, in and out.
Harry feels the glow under his hand almost immediately. He listens to the birds and tries his best not to react at all.
It’s a long minute later when Draco says, “All right.”
“You’ve got it?”
“Yes.”
“Let it fill up every empty space in your mind. You’re standing in it. It’s everywhere around you. If you opened your eyes, you’d see it.”
Another stretch of silence. The glow builds in Draco’s magic.
“Okay,” Harry whispers. “I’m not going to do it for you, but I’m not letting go of your hand.”
“You’d better fucking not,” Draco whispers back.
Harry doesn’t want to do a countdown and make Draco feel like a racehorse, so he squeezes his hand.
A few beats pass, Harry’s own anticipation bright and heady.
And then Draco lifts his wand, taking Harry with him, right into all those graceful lines. “Expecto Patronum.”
A silver shape bursts from the tip of Draco’s wand, and Harry’s mouth drops open, and before he can look, before he can really see, Draco spins around and claps both hands over Harry’s glasses.
“I did it!” he shouts. “I fucking did it!
“I knew it!” Harry shouts back. “I knew you could!”
Draco laughs, his voice resonant with joy and pride and maybe even a few tears. “Merlin, that’s—” Magic sweeps past Harry, cool and lovely and unmistakably Draco’s. “Oh, look at that.”
“Are you going to let me see?”
Draco hesitates, and then his hands come away with Harry’s glasses.
The Patronus leaps around the rose garden, obviously corporeal, though Harry can’t tell what the bloody thing is.
And he doesn’t care, because Draco’s face is clear, and he’s smiling harder than Harry’s ever seen.
Harry is twenty-seven
Harry’s footsteps are loud on the pavement, and his breath is even louder in his ears.
He wants to run.
He wants to Apparate, but he can feel the splintering unsteadiness of a panic attack coming on, and he doesn’t know if he can do it. He doesn’t know if he can get to safety in one piece.
He’s probably overreacting.
The man had stopped by the bookshop once, and then Harry had seen him in one of the other booths on pub night, and when he asked Harry on a date, Harry said yes.
He didn’t tell Draco, because they’re not a couple, and Harry still hasn’t put himself back together again, not all the way. He still doesn’t have anything to offer. It seems weird that he hasn’t been on a real date, except for a few drunken chats at the pub that didn’t go anywhere, and he thought, fine, he’d tick it off his list. He’d be able to say he tried.
Harry doesn’t know what he said to make the bloke so pissed off. He’d just turned on him, right there in the pub, and Harry had thanked him for the drink and said he had to go, and—
And he can feel him, following, getting closer.
He doesn’t actually want to run, because he knows the arsehole will chase. He doesn’t want to cast, because he’s scared, and he’s done unforgivable things before. He’s cut people up. He cut Draco up. Harry doesn’t want to do that again. And what if there’s somebody else back there, somebody innocent? What if his shaking hands throw the curse at the wrong person?
“Harry,” the arsehole calls, his voice a scrape in the dark. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
He walks faster. Grips his wand harder. Harry doesn’t need it to cast, not usually, but he can’t be empty-handed, not now. His magic is a prickling heat, pulling at him, and he might Apparate accidentally if he can’t get there soon.
The man spits something else. Harry can’t quite hear what he says but it’s awful, he knows it’s awful, and it cracks his resolve.
He flees as fast as he can over the pavement, hoping to Merlin he doesn’t fall.
A hex hits the pavement at his feet. A shout slaps Harry’s back. It’s half a block to Draco’s building. He’s steps ahead when he charges into the lobby. Something explodes behind him with a dull bang—the building’s wards, and probably the door, too.
He gets flashes of the man on his way up the stairs, two at a time, lungs burning, and then it’s a final mad sprint down Draco’s hallway.
The door opens just as Harry comes level with it and there’s Draco, thank fucking Merlin there’s Draco, in pyjama trousers with his forehead creased, and Harry pushes past him, his chest seizing.
“Harry, what—drop your wand.”
His voice is as hard as it was during their short-lived stint in the Aurors. He registers incoherent shouting—the man—and the slash and cut of spells being whipped off one by one. The floor comes up to meet Harry. He can’t get any air. He digs his heels in and pushes until his back is against the wall. His heart—he’s going to die. He’s going to die.
Then Draco crouches down to his level. Harry doesn’t know that he’s covered his ears until Draco pulls his hands away and holds them tight in his. Draco’s lips move, but Harry can’t hear anything he says.
He keeps talking, though, and gradually his voice fades in.
“—here. Harry. Tell me when you can hear me.”
“I can,” Harry chokes. “I can. I can hear you.”
“There’s something I need you to see. Can you get up?”
“No.”
“All right.” Draco puts his arm behind Harry’s back and helps him to his feet. He keeps his arm just where it is while he walks him to the door of his flat. At the threshold, Harry turns in spite of himself, his heart thrashing, a gasp tearing out of his throat, and Draco catches him, holds him there. “I’m not making you leave. I just need you to see this.”
They step into the hall.
There are Aurors at the opposite end, at the top of the stairs, their uniforms bright splashes of red against the cream-coloured walls.
Ron is one of them.
He comes straight to Harry, stepping over the man on the floor.
“You okay, mate?” He puts his hand on Harry’s arm and squeezes, blue eyes so familiar that Harry could cry. “Any damage to your flat, Draco?”
“No,” Draco answers. “You wouldn’t happen to have two phials, would you, Weasley?”
“Statement via Pensieve?”
“We need to get back inside.”
Harry needs to get back inside.
Ron takes two phials out of his pocket and hands them to Draco. Harry stands close to him while he spools the memory out of his head and drops it into the phial, and then Draco turns to Harry. He doesn’t move away, not even an inch. His grey eyes are silver and sincere on Harry’s.
“Close your eyes and concentrate,” Draco says.
Harry should do this himself, but his whole body trembles, and he doesn’t feel capable, doesn’t feel like he’d be able to stop.
He closes his eyes.
He thinks of the pub, and the man, and the chase.
The tip of Draco’s wand brushes against Harry’s temple, soft as a kiss.
The sharp edges fade as the memory goes, tugged gently out of Harry’s mind at the tip of Draco’s wand. Harry can’t focus on what Ron says to Draco or what Draco says back. His heart races again, then abruptly slows down, and he thinks if he doesn’t get behind a locked and warded door soon, he’ll start screaming and never stop.
Then Ron steps aside, and Draco’s ushering him to the crowd of Aurors and the man.
He’s red-faced and helpless in an Incarcerous that’s so tight he can’t move at all, and there are hex-marks all over his clothes. When Draco steps into his eyeline, Harry actually thinks his eyeballs might pop out of his head. One of the ropes of the Incarcerous wraps around his mouth, and he’s really and truly subdued, but he still shakes a little in the bonds.
“That’s done,” Draco says, his voice soft and even. “Don’t think about him anymore, or anyone like him. They won’t bother you again.”
Harry’s mouth absolutely refuses to cooperate with him. He tries, then tries a second time, and then:
“Ils pourraient essayer de—” 7
Draco shakes his head. “Non, parce que je n’arrêterai pas.” 8
“Non?”
“Je ne m’arrêterai pas aux maléfices.” Draco’s eyes flash, steely underneath the silver. “Et personne ne m’arrêtera.” 9
“Je veux rentrer à la maison.” 10
“Entre,” Draco says. “Tu y es, mon cœur.” 11
Harry is twenty-eight
By the time Harry realises he’s not going to fall asleep, the winter sun is struggling over the horizon through flurries of snow.
It’s the last day of December.
He’s sat in the chair by the window in his room at Draco’s flat.
At their flat.
Harry slept in Draco’s bed after his disaster of a date, and the next morning they’d gone to the bookshop together. At closing time, Draco had said, what do you think, the Leaky? and Harry had said yeah, and after he’d eaten fish and chips and Draco had eaten shepherd’s pie, they walked back to Draco’s flat.
A few days later, Harry’s things had quietly appeared in Draco’s second bedroom, and when the month was up, Harry found a neat stack of parchment on his bedside table confirming the cancelation of the lease for his old flat, the security deposit duly returned to his vault at Gringotts.
Everything stayed exactly the same, except Harry’s owl post address.
They went to the bookshop together and came home together afterwards. Draco tentatively allowed Harry another hour of drawing in the evenings while they listened to Draco’s programmes on the wireless. They went to pub nights and dance parties and dinners with their friends.
And if Harry bolted from this pub or that one on short notice, his breath a pinched wheeze and his own heartbeat choking him, Draco was always there, ready with a Side-Along home.
And if that man’s friends, pissed-off and out for retribution, came to the bookshop one day—
Well, Harry can’t say for sure if that happened.
What he knows is that one rainy day in October, Draco took him by the elbow as he stood at the register and said turn this way, Harry, and Harry had assumed Draco was only stepping past to put more biscuits in the case. He turned towards the robin’s egg blue of Draco’s jumper, thinking of him in his mother’s rose garden and a sketch Harry had been working on. Draco reached past him in the elegant way he always did—biscuits, Harry figured for the second time—and the Incarcerous rolled off his tongue like he’d say oh, for Merlin’s sake, the incantation low and easy in Draco’s mouth.
Wait, Harry’s brain supplied. What?
In the time it took him to have that confused thought, Draco snapped off a series of spells, half of which Harry didn’t recognise at all.
And then he’d switched places with Harry, calm as anything, and left Harry to tend the register while he went outside to chat with the Aurors who arrived all of three minutes later.
And now Harry’s in his chair at the window, his sketchbook open on his lap, watching the last day of the year stretch and yawn into being.
Tomorrow is ten years.
If you’re still single in ten years, I’ll marry you.
If we’re both still single, we’ll marry each other.
Harry’s still single.
They’re both still single.
His certainty rises in him like the sun.
Ten years.
I swear.
The pact they made on the Astronomy Tower is almost beside the point. Harry doesn’t bother debating whether they meant it or whether it was a joke—that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Draco’s face is the only one he wanted to see during that first hellish Auror raid. He’s the person who slipped into Harry’s life sideways a year later with a lifeline disguised as a job offer so Harry could pretend he wasn’t hanging by a thread. Harry has never worried, not once, about being worth something to the world. He’s only ever wanted to be worth something to Draco.
Because Draco is worth everything to him.
“Fuck,” he whispers to the new sun. What is he doing? Is he seriously going to wait until New Year’s Day like the world’s biggest tosser?
Harry leaps up from the chair. The sketchbook tumbles to the floor. No! No, he’s not! Merlin, no! Fuck, no! He’s not waiting another second!
He doesn’t let the fear come, massive as it is. Harry tears across the flat, through the sitting room where Harry draws and Draco listens to his programmes with his fingers steepled under his chin and his eyes glued to the wireless. He sprints down the little hall past the kitchen, swings by the glassed-in environment for Draco’s Hellebore plant—which he cultivated so he can brew the Draught of Peace that’s sometimes Harry’s only way out of a panic—and bursts into Draco’s bedroom.
“Draco.” Harry skids to a halt near the bed, trips over the frame, and falls on top of Draco.
The heat of Draco’s body says he was sleeping—Merlin, he should be, it’s basically dawn—but he throws his arms around Harry and catches him, his hold gentle but sturdy, without even opening his eyes.
“What is it, mon cœur? Is everything all right?” Draco’s voice is sleep-heavy and warm. Harry wriggles until he’s gained a bit of space, his hand planted over Draco’s heart.
All the things he meant to say fly out of Harry’s head at Draco’s pink cheeks and his haphazard bun and how he moved so fast, without thinking, to comfort Harry. Oh, no. Oh, fuck. He feels like he might explode, that’s how much he wants to tell Draco how foolish he’s been, how he still has absolutely nothing to offer that makes their lives any easier, how he—
How he—
Draco cracks one eye open, a frown creasing his forehead. “Harry?”
He didn’t bring his wand, but that’s fine—he doesn’t need it.
Harry sticks his hand out and thinks of Draco laughing on the Astronomy Tower and Draco saying Ten years, I swear and Draco saying I’m all right, it didn’t touch me and Draco’s arms around him in France and Draco’s arms around him in London and Draco lying right there on the pillow and Draco and Draco and Draco. “Expecto Patronum.”
He’s got his glasses, but even if he’d left them behind, it wouldn’t matter.
The silver-white dragon that bursts from his palm is so enormous that Harry would see it from all the way across a Quidditch pitch. It fills most of Draco’s bedroom.
Draco yanks Harry down to his chest with a gasp. His hands freeze on Harry’s back, and Harry feels his heart thud and then thudthudthudthud as it begins to race.
And then Draco’s hands are at the sides of Harry’s neck.
And Draco’s mouth is on his.
And Harry’s not at all ashamed by the way he scrabbles at Draco, finding anyplace he can hold on. Draco makes little noises into Harry’s mouth, relieved, like he’s spent ten bloody years waiting for this to happen and now it is, now it is, now it is.
It’s too soon when Draco pulls back. His eyes burn into Harry’s.
“Marry me,” he demands. “Marry me a day early.”
Yes is all Harry gets out before he’s being pulled bodily out of the bed. Draco rushes them into the shower and it’s the first time they’ve been in the shower together and Harry can’t breathe, he’s so hard, and Draco looks like he’s going into battle, his jaw set and his eyes running all over Harry’s body.
But Draco doesn’t touch him, except to rinse the shampoo out of Harry’s hair faster. He hustles Harry into clothes and hops into his own and it can’t be ten minutes before Draco’s throwing too much Floo powder into the grate and dragging Harry in.
“Malfoy Manor,” he calls.
Draco is still holding Harry’s hand when they touch down, and he pulls Harry out of the Floo. The drawing room is silent but warm, because the Manor is always ready for its sons and daughters to return. Sconces flicker to life as Draco steers Harry through familiar hallways at a fast clip. Portraits grumble in their frames, getting louder with each one they pass.
“—Lucius’s boy?” one of them calls. “Is he—”
“—Fleamont,” Harry hears. “I say, that’s—”
They don’t stop to talk.
Draco’s old bedroom is as spacious and elegant as ever, and the fire springs up in the grate as soon as they step through the door. The curtains fling themselves open wide. Pinkish-gold daylight glows across the horizon, the blush warming Draco’s hair.
Draco stops by the big windows overlooking the sprawl of the grounds, neatly blanketed in snow, and faces Harry. He’s breathing fast.
Then his eyes come up to Harry’s, silver and gorgeous, and Harry’s heart does a funny little stutter.
“I love you.” The words in Draco’s voice are simple, but they feel priceless. “You’re the only person I ever want to love.”
“I’m so fucked up,” Harry says, his throat tight, his lungs pinched.
Draco does not laugh. “I know.”
“Did you know ten years ago?”
“Yes, and I made it worse. I didn’t go to France with you, and I should have. Forgive me. Please, forgive me.”
“No, I don’t need—I was never angry. Not at you. I forgive you, if that’s—but—” Harry’s throat closes. “Did you think—did you hope I would be—”
“You are so fucked up.” It's not a barb, or a joke. It strikes Harry as pure, clean acceptance. “And I love you. And I’ll never stop loving you.”
“I’m so sorry.” Harry drags in a breath, then another. “I was late. You were early. And I’ve been late for so—Draco. I would have married you then.”
“Marry me now.”
“Je t’aime.” Harry’s not getting married without saying it. “Je t’aime pour toujours.”
Draco’s face lights up. He takes Harry’s face in his hands, pulls him in, and murmurs shh, je sais, je sais.
And then he takes a box out of his pocket.
Out of his…pocket.
“Your pocket? Your pocket? Draco!”
Harry cannot believe this, and yet he does. Draco didn’t get the rings from some family vault. He had them in his pocket. He had them there when they were at their flat.
He opens the box to show Harry. A silver ring, nestled next to a gold one.
“I want to perform the ritual and I am in need of a bonder,” he says, his voice clear and ringing.
Magic sweeps over the room, over both of them, and hovers in a column of white and gold. It sings, and the song grows until it covers everything Harry can see.
Draco slips the gold ring on Harry’s finger.
“I promise,” Draco says. “I swear.”
That’s all they need, after ten years.
“I swear,” Harry repeats, as the silver band fits itself to Draco’s finger. “I swear, pour toujours.”
The song continues after Draco has brought him in for a hot, deep kiss, and Harry’s body vibrates with the soaring hum of it.
“We have to seal the bond,” Draco says into the kiss.
“Draco, if you don’t fuck me soon, I’m going to die.”
Harry does not die.
He’s arranged reverently over a pillow on Draco’s massive bed, where he promptly panics and admits in a nearly unintelligible mix of English and French that he is, in fact, a virgin at the age of twenty-eight.
Then he can’t panic anymore, because Draco is above him and over him and everywhere, his magic moving easily through Harry, his mouth on Harry’s nape and his spine and his shoulders, and he is making the hottest sounds Harry’s ever heard.
Draco kisses his way southward with focus and passion and a tenderness that Harry has learned to expect by now. Harry’s thighs open by themselves. His cock presses hard against the pillow as Draco settles behind him, and Harry can’t possibly be afraid.
He can’t possibly think, when Draco spreads him open and licks a hot stripe from his bollocks all the way up to his lower back. Harry makes a strangled sound into the pillow and realises belatedly that it was a moan. He’s never done that before.
There’s no stopping it, once it’s started, because Draco doesn’t stop until Harry’s liquefied. Is he even holding himself up anymore? Doesn’t think so.
“Shh,” Draco says, and Harry understands in a hot, languid sort of way that he’s shushing Harry because he’s pressed himself all alongside him and his fingers are stroking over Harry’s hole and yes, Harry is panicking. It’s just a small one, because he’s never done this and he’s not afraid that it will hurt, he’s afraid that he’ll disappoint Draco in some way he can’t even fathom.
But then a slick finger slides into him and Draco says you’re so beautiful like this, you feel so tight and hot and wet, how are you so perfect, je pourrais faire ça pour toujours, relax, relax and next Harry knows there are two fingers inside him and then he thinks there are three and he’s fucking back onto them because it feels so good he could cry or come or both.
The light changes, or there’s a shadow, and Draco leans down over him and kisses the nape of Harry’s neck. It feels different, like sparks. Like a glow. A gentle burst of magic on his skin.
“What—” Harry’s face is half-buried in the pillow. “What was that? I felt—”
“Your soulmark.” Draco nuzzles into that spot, then kisses it again.
“What? What?”
A mad scramble finds them on the floor of Draco’s enormous dressing room a minute later, Draco kneeling behind Harry, holding up a hand-mirror so he can see the mark.
It’s a faint spray of flowers in a little constellation.
“What? Those are holly berries and—”
“Flowers from the hawthorn tree.”
Harry twists in Draco’s arms, his mind flooded with a wild combination of disbelief and certainty. “What’s yours? Where’s yours?”
Draco holds out his right hand.
The same mark is kissed into the delicate skin of his wrist.
“When?” Harry manages.
“Oh, I’ve always had a bit of pink there. My mother thought it was a birthmark. But then, when I was eleven, it changed into this. I only saw yours that night on the Astronomy Tower.”
“You never said!”
“I wanted…” Draco bites his lip. “I didn’t want you to feel obligated.”
“Don’t you?” Harry’s stomach drops. “Don’t—for the last ten years, you’ve—”
“Harry, I loved you long before then.”
And of course it’s true. Of course, if Harry looks back along the years of his life, he loved Draco too. From the moment he saw him, eleven and haughty in Madam Malkin’s. Of course neither of them had called it what it was. Of course it was so strong that it felt like hate.
The magic in the air has gone from a hum to a ring, and new heat rushes down Harry’s body. He brandishes a finger at Draco.
“You tell me next time we’re soulmates,” he demands. “You tell me.”
“I will,” Draco promises, and then his mouth crashes into Harry’s, and it’s like they never left the bed.
Draco stays behind him, both of them on their knees, and Harry drinks in the sight of them in the mirror as Draco kisses his neck and his shoulder and holds Harry close to his body and lines himself up.
He watches himself start to panic.
He watches Draco soothe him with a hand on his chest and whispers in his ear.
He watches Draco’s other hand drop to Harry’s hip, coaxing him back onto Draco’s cock slowly and gently.
And he watches himself take Draco for the first time. He watches his mouth drop open when Draco pushes in, watches Draco’s eyes rake over Harry’s body, all silver heat, watches him murmur shh, je t’aime, shh, je t’aime, you’re opening so well, you feel wonderful, move your hips towards me, ah, again, again, that’s it, I love you, I love you and at some point the last of Harry’s nervousness fades away under the relentless slide of Draco’s cock over his prostate.
He turns his face into Draco’s neck and babbles, pleasure cresting, and Draco takes Harry’s cock firmly in his fist and strokes him slow while he comes all over the floor.
Draco comes with his mouth open on Harry’s shoulder, deep as he can get inside Harry, and Harry feels like the sun, hot and glowing and endless.
The song of the marriage bond peaks with Draco.
Afterwards, Harry thinks it’s fading away.
But then there’s a stirring in his chest, a sort of unfurling, magic stretching its arms wide, wriggling its fingers. The song is in him now, a quiet presence like Draco has always been, and…more. There’s the Manor and the grounds, the forest and the lake, the gardens under snow.
There’s Draco, at the heart of it.
“Oh,” Harry breathes. “That’s—that’s lovely.”
Draco’s arms tighten around him, his eyes shining in the mirror, his hair falling around his shoulders.
“Yours now, too,” he says.
Harry takes Draco’s hand in his and kisses the soulmark on his wrist. “Mine now, too.”
Harry is twenty-nine
The June sun is sweet on Narcissa’s roses.
Harry stands in the dappled light beneath the tree, Draco at his back. Draco’s left arm loops around Harry’s waist, and his left hand rests over Harry’s heart.
His right hand curls over Harry’s in a gentle hold.
Draco doesn’t add any pressure to Harry’s hand, but he doesn’t let go.
He’d better not.
Harry guides his brush over the canvas, his hand steady under Draco’s.
He’s painting the two of them in the rose garden, just as they are now.
One last stroke, and Harry leans into Draco with a contented sigh. He inhales the scent of roses and early summer heat and Draco’s soap. Birds titter in the branches nearby. Draco’s heart beats against Harry’s back. The rhythm never falters, never stops.
“It’s done,” Harry says.
“It’s beautiful.” Draco drags a lingering kiss over Harry’s neck. “Shall we take it inside and find something else to do?”
“Je t’aime,” Harry answers. “Yes.”
