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Chapter Text

The engagement party was perfect. If anyone had wondered, “why are these two people right for each other” or “why should this wedding happen”, the party, Harry thought, made a fairly solid case. Every decoration trumpeted Draco’s dramatics and was calmed by Neville’s restraint; every flower was Neville’s tenderness encouraged by Draco’s showmanship; every customized cocktail was Neville’s taste for the unconventional blended with Draco’s extensive repository of unnecessary archaic knowledge.

By eight o’clock, Harry was on his way to being too drunk. If he wanted to avoid being sick in a bush by the end of the night, he needed to switch to water. Soon. He hadn’t eaten beforehand—he’d barely had time for a shower after work—and the many different kinds of alcohol in the many different signature cocktails weren’t helping him keep a clear head. When he let his eyes go lazy, the teeming bouquets of flowers, magically-levitated gold and silver balloons, and white-clothed tables started to melt into one formless, oppressively matrimonial shape. The faces of the guests were hard to distinguish from one another, despite the fact that every face in attendance was one Harry knew as well as his own. Too well, came the caustic thought.

There had been a guilty top note to many of his thoughts, recently. Acidic, lemon-yellow. Jaundiced.

Harry wondered, not for the first time since they’d told him, wearing those matching smiles like the flashing lights of an ambulance, how Draco and Neville were so certain about this marriage thing. They'd barely started living their lives. Surely they hadn’t even met enough people to make that kind of decision, yet.

But that didn’t matter to Neville and Draco. At twenty-six years old, they were sure enough about each other to commit to something lifelong.

The most certain Harry had ever been was when he decided to die. He didn’t like the taste of certainty. It was overfull in the mouth, sharp, impossible to close your teeth around; Harry felt like a scavenger who’d chanced upon prey too big for him to take down.

His jaw ached, and he tried to remember to relax it, the way the Mungo’s Healers kept explaining to him at every annual physical. “Make a habit of it,” they said. “Whenever you notice the tension, let it go."

Harry didn’t understand that at all. How could you remember to notice something that never went away?

There was a pain pulsing through the lower half of his face, and his stomach was growling with the last pangs of hunger it would feel before he subdued the appetite with more alcohol. The insides of his nose itched. There must have been ten thousand flowers adorning the tables and Harry was fairly certain he was allergic to at least half of them.

“Gesundheit.” Seamus had come up next to him. He still stank of the burnt tire exhaust that clung to the guest portkeys. Malfoy Manor was coated thick in anti-Apparition wards, and every invitation had included an old sock or a broken doll arm to transport them to the party. “Alright, Harry?”

“Cheers.” Harry raised his glass. He tried to unclench his teeth. He tried to smile. “Just get here?”

“Yeah.” Seamus nodded over to where Dean was talking with Luna on the lawn. “Dean needed some time. Before we came.”

“Of course,” Harry said, remembering all at once why Dean and Luna would have sought each other out on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. “God. Is he alright?”

“Yeah,” Seamus said. “It’s in the past, isn’t it?” But then Seamus looked around and gave a shudder. “Still. It’s easier to get along with Draco when we’re not staring all this shite in the face. How do you stand coming here, Harry?”

Seamus was assuming that Harry had gotten used to the Manor. That was fair of him based on the amount of time Harry spent with Draco: every weekday—and often weekends—at work, the duelling club for children he ran with Neville, the “family dinner” hosted every week at their flat.

The Manor was the obvious venue for the party. Narcissa Malfoy was on house arrest for two more years, so she wasn’t exactly going to be inflating balloon animals at the Leaky Cauldron.

But Harry very rarely came here. Time, and a solid friendship with Draco Malfoy, had done nothing to lessen the revulsion he felt for the place. Hours ago, back when he was all the way sober, he’d gone through the exercise of pretending to himself that it didn’t disgust him to be there. Now even that pretence had been drowned by Malfoy Mules and Negronis a la Neville. Drunkenness and honesty always arrived hand-in-hand.

“How do you think?” Harry replied, voice light. “Getting munted.” He finished his drink in one gulp. It was a Longbottom Lager. The beer hugged his throat all the way down, fresh and mossy and bright.

“Cheers,” Seamus echoed. His grin was suddenly sly. From his pocket, he produced a greenish spliff. “Fancy something stronger?”

“Go on then,” Harry said, casting a quick disillusionment charm around them—then recasting it, because the first one didn’t take. He was too tipsy for precise magic. That was alright, though. One of Finnigan’s world-famous gillyweed spliffs was just the thing to even him out.

They passed it back and forth without talking for a little while, which suited Harry fine. Seamus was very obviously watching Dean, a worried crease wrinkling his brow.

Harry had always suspected that the generally small club of queer Hogwarts men—him, Draco, Neville, Blaise Zabini on alternate weekeends—could have included Seamus and Dean in its number, but the two of them seemed committed to proving themselves at least partly heterosexual by fucking half the witches in their circle of friends. Still, Harry thought, accepting the gillyweed spliff back from Seamus, there was something at least a little fruity about the sustained bachelorhood and co-tenancy well into their twenties.

And then there were all the ways they clearly cared for each other; took care of each other. Seamus’ face collapsed so obviously into a relieved crumple when Dean and Luna approached them that Harry felt embarrassed even to see it.

“Very subtle charmwork there, Harry,” Dean said. “You might as well have put up a sign that said ‘we’re doing drugs.’”

“Draco would be furious if you put up any signage that clashed with his decorating scheme,” Luna said. “I think you were better off with your very noticeable charm.”

“Thanks, Luna.” Harry held out the spliff to them both. “Want some?”

Neither of them took him up on it, so Harry and Seamus continued to pass it between themselves. Time didn’t move predictably, speeding up and slowing down with each inhale and exhale. The serpentine creep of stoned bliss wrapped its thick embrace around Harry's mind, the side of his tongue, his cheek. Once Harry started turning down hits, Seamus stubbed the thing out and put it away.

“So.” Seamus' pupils were blown wide. “No date, Harry?”

“As if Harry would ever keep someone around long enough to see daylight,” Dean said.

“That's not fair,” Luna mused. “Harry hasn’t dated a vampire in months.”

Dean and Seamus laughed, but Harry winced. It sounded like Luna’s typical vagueary and nonsense, except Harry had confessed to her recently that he had dated a vampire for a little bit. It had been a kinkier experience than even Harry, who considered himself very open-minded, had been willing to stick around for.

“Luna,” he said warningly, and she smiled beatifically at him.

“Have you said hello to Draco and Neville yet?” she asked.

Harry had lost track of the time since he’d arrived at the party. He’d seen the two of them when he got in, but they’d been doing the thing that couples do at this kind of event, circulating among the crowd like foreign dignitaries. Whatever charm Harry was emitting hadn't been enough to entice either of them over.

“Yeah,” he lied. “You?”

“Oh yes,” Luna said. “I wished them a joyous and magical union, and gave them a special fertility blessing.”

Dean laughed. “God, have we taken bets on that, yet? If anyone’s gonna get their husband knocked up, I bet Neville could do it.”

Harry forced out a laugh.

“Him and that monster dick of his,” Seamus said wickedly, sounding high and stupid. “Sorry, Luna,” he added, voice scratching dopily on the way out. “Roommate chat. Jesus, aren't lads awful?"

“I heard worse in the Ravenclaw common room my sixth year," Luna said airily. "Padma was such a gossip.”

Dean chimed in, too. “I always said if Nev hadn’t had that sword to kill a basilisk with, that thing in his trousers could have gotten the job done.”

Nagini hadn't been a basilisk. Harry didn't say so. He kept laughing with them. His stomach was clenching. He really should have eaten something.

“Is there any food here?” he asked.

“I saw some canapés floating around the koi pond,” said Dean. “And I mean literally floating. It was gross.”

“It’s good luck to eat floating food at a wedding!” Harry heard Luna say as he walked away. The ground seemed to be moving along with him, like he was at a Muggle airport. He shook his head. He really needed to eat some food. And stop drinking those bloody cocktails.

“Oi!” With great relief, Harry turned to the sound. Ron was here, thank bloody Christ.

“Mate,” Harry said gratefully. “Tell me you’ve found the food.”

“Yeah,” Ron said. “It’s divine. Now tell me if it was your boyfriend or his boyfriend who organised the catering for this thing, so that I can steal him from his fiancé.”

Your boyfriend. An old joke of Ron's, born from the shock of Harry and Draco being paired as Auror partners all those years ago.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” Harry said. “I won’t be responsible for breaking up this engagement at a party in its honor.”

“The first ones,” Ron said wistfully, nonsensically. “Did you think it would be them?”

It took Harry a second to understand what he meant, and then it hit him: the first to get married.

“No,” Harry answered automatically, biting his tongue on the honesty. He hadn’t thought Nevillle and Draco would be first, which really meant that he hadn’t thought Neville and Draco would ever. Marriage. The concept kept sticking in his throat. “Thought it’d be you and Hermione, of course.”

Ron laughed. “If I ever convince Hermione to marry me, we’re not going to bother with an engagement party. I’m taking her to the registry office before she changes her mind.”

“She wouldn’t change her mind.” Harry took a long swig from his champagne flute, then looked down at it with some confusion. He wasn't sure when he'd acquired it. “She might get called into work and postpone indefinitely, though. Best to do it quickly, like you said.”

“Can you believe this shite?” Ron raised an eyebrow at the cascading waterfall of white and golden flowers that kept showering them with enchanted petals. Earlier, Harry spat one out that had gotten attached to his wet lip. Each mouthful tasted a bit different—like coffee, or cardamom, or fig.

“Well—” interjected a familiar voice, making Ron wince. Neville wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders. “You have to remember that Draco was raised by a man who kept peacocks in his front garden. This is very modest by Malfoy standards.”

Harry's laugh clodded, like livestock chased out of a pen. He let out another one.

“But I don't care. Whatever makes him happy.” Neville’s face had gone that dopey, dreamy melt that always made Harry want to study the corner of his vision to avoid looking at it head-on. It was a recent addition, the expression. He was positive Neville had never looked like such an idiot before he and Draco got engaged.

“The guest of honor,” Harry said, making his voice sound confident. Grandiose. “Mr Longbottom, how does it feel to be made an honest man?”

“I’m not sure that’s within Draco’s abilities,” Ron said, earning himself a scoff on the side of his head from Neville and a drink-spew from Harry. Neville had to stop hitting Ron to wipe the spittle off the side of his face, but it had gotten them all grinning at each other. The grass felt more solid beneath Harry.

Perhaps this is what it would be like when Neville and Draco were married. Which was to say: exactly the same. Ron's broad barbs never catching on anything, smiling mouths spraying the occasional drink. The same as it had always been.

And then Neville said, “I’ve got to go find Narcissa.” Harry felt the pressure of a frown pulling at his mouth, and fought it. Neville craned his head. "And my gran. ‘The mums’ both insisted on a little engagement ceremony, it’ll only be a second but they’ll both have our guts for garters if we skip it.” Hermione slotted into the space Neville abandoned after he hurried off. Like Harry, she had clearly come in a rush from work; unlike Harry, she hadn’t bothered to change. She wore a smart set of robes marked by the lint fuzz and uncharmed wrinkles of a long day. She looked incredibly out of place amongst the garden party splendor.

In addition to genuinely being too busy to get washed and changed, Harry suspected she also relished sticking out like a sore thumb amongst all the bloodsoaked Pureblood architecture. She wasn’t afraid to make a political statement out of an outfit.

“You look great, Hermione,” Harry said, and meant it. “How was work?”

“Vile.” She launched into a thorough monologue, her voice probably louder than appropriate for someone else's engagement party, but Harry was happy to listen and nod and gasp at all the right moments. It was a small, ugly relief that there was someone else at this party who wasn't all that impressed with it.

It took about ten minutes, however, until even Hermione was distracted by the celebration. “Oh,” she said abruptly, interrupting a rant about the head of the internal review committee she chaired. “It looks like they’re doing some kind of ritual.” Her eyes narrowed in that way they did when she was preparing to absorb information.

Following the line of her sight revealed Neville, Draco, and the women who raised them standing all in a line: Draco and Neville facing each other, not touching, Narcissa and Mrs Longbottom standing on either side of them.

“That looks… private,” Ron said skeptically. “Merlin, Purebloods have no shame.”

“You’re a Pureblood,” Harry said.

“And he has no shame,” Hermione chimed in. “Shut up, both of you. These kinds of enchantments are so fascinating.”

Draco and Neville held their hands out as the two women did the same, only each of the women had a wand. Neville and Draco kept their wandless hands extended, Draco with his palms facing up, Neville’s down, like they were holding an invisible book between them. Tangible knots of magic twined in the air, wrapping around their fingers. The undulations of spellwork reminded Harry of a pile of thin green snakes.

“That looks like a bonding spell,” Hermione said, the little pause at the end the same as when she was awaiting house points for Gryffindor. “See how their hands are posed in equal and opposite positions?”

“It looks like an unbreakable vow,” Harry said, hearing the trepidation in his own voice.

Ron made a disgusted noise. “It’s definitely private. That’s a sex spell, mark my words.”

Hermione let out an irritated huff of air. “You think their mums are doing a sex spell for them, do you?”

“I wouldn’t put it past the Malfoys to have their family be part of their shag rituals. They’re all twisted like that.”

“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione said, genuinely irritated, but Harry could hear that she was also fighting the urge to smile now.

“Neville’s gran, too," Ron said. "She’s wild. It's in the eyes.”

“Enough, someone’s going to hear you, you sound deranged…”

Their familiar bickering faded into the background as Harry watched the last slithering trails of magic dissolve like smoke into empty air, and then saw Draco and Neville give Narcissa and Augusta the kind of quick and embarrassed but clearly tender kisses that Harry had gotten used to watching people share with their parents as adults. Narcissa, it appeared, was wiping away a tear.

Not a sex spell, Harry thought. Just another silly Pureblood custom; one that, by the looks of it, neither Draco nor Neville put much stock in. They must have done it to mollify ‘the mums,’ like Neville had said. That was an expression Harry had started to hear a great deal of from Draco, since they got engaged. Doves to deliver the betrothal announcements instead of owls: to mollify the mums. A solstice ceremony: to mollify the mums. Skipping their weekly Seeker game for a cake tasting: apparently something mums demanded.

Maybe that’s why they’re doing it all, Harry thought. Maybe that was the puzzle piece that made this all make sense. They were doing it for their families, and Harry couldn't understand it, of course, because he didn't have one. In the lonely cavern of his own thoughts he didn’t have to stamp down the bitterness. Maybe that’s what having a mum meant: you did silly things you didn’t really want to do, out of some obligation to make her happy. Maybe, if Harry had a mum, he’d be possessed by the unnatural urge to commit his life to someone when he was barely twenty-six years old, too.

The night staggered on. Time started to burst in drunken flashes between blinks and cocktails. Draco was nowhere to be found.

“Harold!” Neville’s grandmother was saying to Harry, all of the sudden. He was certain he'd just been talking to Blaise Zabini.

"Harold!" she repeated. Augusta Longbottom’s mind was as sharp as a tack, she absolutely had not forgotten Harry’s real name. Harry thought she just liked to remind him whenever she saw him that she didn’t think he was that special. It annoyed him, even though he usually agreed with her. “You’re looking tired.”

“Ta, Mrs Longbottom.” Harry gulped down some more of his drink. “Thanks for inviting me.”

She only acknowledged that with a sharp nod of her head. “Very good to see Neville embracing his adult responsibilities. Unlike some of his peers.” She narrowed her eyes obviously at Harry. “Shame about the Malfoy of it all. But what can we do?”

Harry raised an eyebrow, impressed, as he had been ever since he was a teenager, by Neville’s grandmother’s ability to insult so many people in a ten meter radius at once.

Augusta was full of hot air, anyway. He knew that she was thrilled Neville was settling down, and also that Draco had charmed her thoroughly. She and Narcissa played at a feud, but the two of them spent every weekend together. They had been lonely, Narcissa without her husband and Augusta without her adopted son. Draco had told Harry about all the ways they’d been good for each other. Another way that he and Neville fit so well into one another’s lives.

"You really do look like your father, don’t you?” Augusta said. Something in her tone suggested it wasn't a compliment.

“So they tell me,” Harry replied. The frequency with which he heard it had gotten a lot smaller over the past decade. Most everyone who'd known James Potter was gone.

“A flighty man,” Mrs Longbottom said. “But he was terribly handsome. You’re a sight more good-looking than Malfoy, at least. My son’s good taste skipped a generation. Neville killed that damned snake, and now he’s marrying one. Our children live to disappoint us.”

Draco had grown very admirably into his looks, and they both knew it. He’d seen Augusta track Draco’s form with poorly-concealed admiration many times. She just liked to hear the sound of her own insults.

“What’s that, Augusta?” Narcissa floated up beside them as if appearing from nowhere.

“I was just saying how very striking Draco looks in those white dress robes you picked out,” Augusta said smoothly. “Not many men that pale would chance the colour.”

The pursed-lip grimace on Narcissa’s face was so like Draco’s that Harry had to look down into his glass. A petal was floating in it.

“Your sartorial opinions are such a gift to us all,” Narcissa was saying. “The photographer wants us to queue up for pictures.”

“My close-up,” Augusta responded, twisting her neck in a way that made the bird on her hat ascend higher into the air. “Excuse me, Harold.”

“Yeah, nice to see you,” Harry said, looking back down at his drink. Thinking them already gone, he stuck his fist into the glass.

“Do you like the flowers?” someone asked him. Narcissa hadn’t yet retreated. The tight-lipped blonde pout was still appraising him, familiar and uncomfortable all at once.

“Er.” Harry pulled his fingers out of his drink, the spiraling soft petal coming with them. “Yeah. This one smells like affogato.”

She smiled. “Amortentia perfuming spells.”

“Draco cast them,” Harry said. Not a question.

Narcissa’s smile got a bit wistful. “His father was wonderful with that charm. A bouquet every year, on my birthday. And our anniversary. St Valentine’s day, too.” Her voice was filmy now, like the air hissing out of a can of coke.

Harry looked awkwardly at the ground and wished he was even drunker. He was, somehow, at a party with all of his best friends in the entire world, and the person he was stuck talking to was Lucius Malfoy’s wistful widow.

“What did you say you smelled?” Narcissa’s voice had gone solid again.

Harry threw back the rest of his drink. A Malfoytini. “I don’t smell anything,” he said. “Pardon me, Mrs Malfoy, I have to find your washroom.”

In the loo, Harry splashed water on his face, almost expecting his mouth to ache after tacking on so many fake smiles. He counted sixty seconds locked in the washroom before he forced himself back out into the crowd. He’d been too drunk and then not drunk enough; a premature hangover was already clouding his head, pushing in at the temples. He ached everywhere, actually. His throat had gone sore from saying the same vacant things to every stupid guest over and over again.

Every stupid guest, that was, except for Draco.

Harry scanned the lawn again for him; the tendon-trained instinct of finding his partner in a crowd making it short work. Harry hadn’t let himself fully look for Draco since he got there. Whenever he’d glimpsed Draco in the periphery of his vision, he’d stayed put. Draco was always on the other side of a crowd of people, party guests flowing between them like water. Harry didn’t trust his own feet to ford the stream.

This was a day in which Harry had no part. Draco could have found him if he wanted to.

Now that he was looking, though, he found Draco like a locating spell locking in on a target. There he was, across the lawn: tall and gleaming; grinning broad as a beacon for Pansy Parkinson. Augusta was right: in those white robes, in the dim twilight, Draco looked like a Muggle torch.

Harry thought about going to him. It could only be interpreted as—it was—rude that he hadn’t said hello to half of the couple being celebrated at this party. It was probably also rude to black out, and if Harry stayed at this thing any longer he was in serious danger of doing just that.

He kept telling his feet to move. To go over to Draco, clap him on the shoulder, and congratulate him.

But his legs wouldn't obey. They stayed planted in the ground. He felt a full minute pass by him. Then another. The gravity in Wiltshire was heavier than in London. He was growing roots; he was fading into the scenery.

Go over to him. Say congratulations. Then tomorrow, at work, it would be the same as always.

Nothing was going to change.

“Sorry, my love." The timbre of certainty loaded Draco’s voice like a missile and carried it above the crowd and into Harry’s ears. And then Draco said “Sonorus,” and his voice was suddenly loud and clear for everyone, the intimacy of his tone for Neville all wrong for the volume. The assembled crowd turned to look at him. Draco was blushing.

“That’s better,” Draco said. He moved to stand at—Harry blinked. Someone had conjured a dais, in the middle of the lawn. Like someone was about to deliver a lecture. Or a verdict. “If you all would humor me—there’s a few words I’d like to share.” It glided out as smooth as an orchestra score: practised.

“Out with it, wanker!” someone yelled.

That was unrehearsed, the narrow flash of Draco’s eyes confirmed it. Anything but rapt attention had not been accounted for. Harry grinned into his drink.

“Very well then,” Draco said, voice tight. It loosened as he returned to his prepared remarks. “Ever since I was a young child, I’ve always dreamed of a solstice wedding. Of course, in my dreams, I was marrying a Veela, or the Chaser of the Holyhead Harpies.” He stopped, as if awaiting a crowd reaction. Laughter, perhaps, or applause.

“Dream on, Malfoy!” came another shout. Harry didn’t have to look to know it was Ginny.

“But dreams change,” Draco said, unphased now by a second interruption. “For a while, my ambitions were—not what they should have been. I passed two of my teenage years in service to… to a very evil man.” His real voice, then. Draco paused to clear his throat. His robes really looked ridiculous.

It all seemed so suddenly stupid—the endless drinks, whatever public penance Draco thought he had to perform in front of a hundred people. He wasn’t marrying any of them. Who was this for?

“I don’t want to speak at length about the war, or the man to whom you all know I am referring. He’s stolen enough space in all of our lives. But when this home,” Draco gestured to the stately building behind him, “was occupied by him, I lived in terror every day. I was afraid of him, of myself, of my future.” Draco paused, cleared his throat again, and said, “But more than anything else – I was afraid of that awful snake.”

“I’d loved snakes as a little boy—of course I did. Slytherin to the vertebrae, as they say. But for too long a time I dreamed every night of dying in the jaws of one.”

Draco had never said any of this to Harry. There was plenty of air out here, but it felt harder to breathe.

Draco went on. “I was sure that thing would kill me. It slithered by my leg once, rubbed against it, and I was convinced for half a day that it had paralyzed me. But it was only—I was afraid. It was fear that made me feel like I couldn’t move. Like I couldn’t breathe.” His eyes flicked over to Harry’s for the first time that night. Harry stared back at him, throat dry. “And then the battle came to Hogwarts, and I was sure again that I was going to die. I almost…” A cough, to clear his throat. “I stayed alive to the end of the battle. To the moment when Neville Longbottom stood in front of so many of us here today and pulled that sword out of the Sorting Hat.”

The crowd shifted its attention to Neville, who was blushing as if on cue. He looked very handsome. Draco continued.

“All year, he’d been fighting back, standing up for those weaker than him. And I was so afraid of everything, all the time.” Draco looked at Narcissa. The manicured tone he’d begun with kept shedding layers. “So afraid I couldn’t protect my mother. But Neville wasn’t afraid. He was so brave. He was always brave. And then right before my eyes, he chopped off the head of my worst fear.”

A few people in the crowd gasped; Draco had them now. An inappropriate laugh bubbled in the pit of Harry’s drunken stomach. This was so stupid. It wasn’t like the ending of Draco’s story was a twist.

“I think that’s when I started to fall in love with him,” Draco was saying. “But I hardly dreamed that one day I would be marrying him, that we would be bonded in magic in front of our families and all of our friends. That I would deserve—” Draco’s voice broke on that “—that I would deserve the love of such a good man.”

“So I’d like to propose a toast.” Draco raised his glass of champagne. It was fizzing with magic, partly luminescent in his hand. His pale skin, his bright white robes, and the bleeding sky behind him combined to paint the scene ethereal. A fantasy. Draco stood at the conjured dais, dripping in flowers, looking nothing like the Draco who made Harry cry with laughter at their stupid shared desk, who made terrible coffee and forced Harry to drink it, who once farted in a meeting and successfully convinced Robards he’d done it himself.

“To all the dreams that have changed since we were young,” Draco said. “To the changes in me that made me worthy of the man of my dreams, and to all the changes still to come.”

The enraptured crowd raised their glasses, arms puppeted up like a mass Imperius compelled them. Harry poured the rest of his drink on the ground. The colors of the sunset swirled on the horizon, leaking behind Draco’s head, spinning like pinwheels towards one another. It looked like the inside of Harry’s stomach must: a monsoon of brandy-amber, wine-blush, gold-champagne, piss-beer.

There were a few more speeches—Neville spoke, and Blaise Zabini. Which—Harry and Draco were close, they worked together closely. They were close. Why had no one asked Harry to speak?

The stars were very bright. Even in summer, with the sun down and only the moonlight and conjured lanterns limning the party guests, there was a bite in the air. Harry found himself having walked through the countryside, and to the point from which he could Apparate away. He didn’t remember deciding to leave the party.

He did it anyway, spinning on the spot and succumbing to the shuttering lid of his memory as the rest of the night winked out.

Chapter Text

Everything was going to be normal, Harry told himself, as he dressed for work the next morning and ignored the colossal hangover pulsing at the back of his skull. A throbbing had taken up residence behind his forehead, pushing against the parched meat of his brain. The light filtering through the curtains in his bedroom felt personal; an attack parrying with an insult.

Everything was going to be normal. As soon as he finished throwing up in the bathroom.

Daylight stalked him as he got ready for work. It was too hot; his body was swollen with it. The heat melted the sticky patches of beer adhering leftover cans to the top of the linoleum table. The smell oozed into air that was already stale with the tang of his own alcohol-polluted body odor. Harry, desperate, threw open his kitchen window; the one that he didn’t like to open because it always got stuck that way.

Everything was going to be normal. Once he got cleaned up.

But for now he let himself stretch the gummy edges of his own suffering a little, wallowing in it. He felt bad enough that the idea of feeling better was bitter and mocking. He showered. He dressed. He didn’t trust himself to Apparate, so he dragged himself onto the tube, ensuring he’d make himself even later.

Everything was going to be normal, just as soon as he got to work.

When he finally made it into the Ministry, Draco was already there, looking tired, and miserable, too, scowling at his surroundings and at the two coffees sitting on his desk. Drinking one of them would probably make Harry sick up on the spot.

Harry’s mood improved considerably. Draco being in a sour, bitchy state never failed to cheer him up. After all these years, Harry still found it very funny.

He strode over to the workstation next to Draco and dropped his jacket on the back of the chair, exchanging it for the Auror robes shrunken in his pocket, then grabbed up one of the coffees. Harry sniffed at it. It smelled like petrol and feet, and a little bit like coffee, too. It never failed to shock him that Draco, who was the most meticulous person he’d ever met about the food he’d put in his body, could tolerate his own brews. “I’m not drinking this.”

Draco didn’t look up. “You will if you know what’s good for you. There’s a cure-all potion in there.”

Harry took a cautious sip. Rancid, but the potion quieted some of the pounding beneath his skull. “You look like you need it more than I do, Malfoy. Is that thanks to the elvish wine or your mum? Both of them were packing quite a punch last night.”

“How would you know?” Draco finally raised his grumpy head to look at Harry, smiling familiar and sideways and feline. “I don’t recall speaking to you at my engagement party. Were you even there?”

“Not my fault you were too busy playing prince of the party to find time for me. Nice speech, by the way. I cried almost as hard as you did when you found out they don’t make Weird Sisters fan robes in an adult man’s size.”

The silky wave of Draco’s light hair was sticking up in a few different directions, like his fussy hairstyle was trying to run away from itself. It looked almost like it did when Draco first woke up after a nap; bright against the dark velvet of the break room sofa. Draco was ridiculous like that, muted with sleep and dusted at the eyes, his hair disobedient in rest.

It was rare to see Draco so thoroughly rumpled this early in the workday. Harry felt a voracious satisfaction that Draco was hanging as badly as he was.

“God, your hair’s a mess.” He reached out a hand, but Draco ducked just before Harry could reach him. Harry winced. The pain in his head throbbed harder. So much for the famous Malfoy cure-all.

He wondered if Draco had mixed as many drinks as Harry had the night before. It felt like a magnet was stabbing his skull and then siphoning out the soupy insides of his brain. Possibly this was just what it felt like to get older.

Draco ignored Harry’s questing hand. “Who am I to expect the great Harry Potter to wish me felicitations upon my happy union? Only his partner of six—no wait, seven years?”

“Exactly. You understand.”

“And remind me, vaunted saviour, how many times have I saved your life?”

“Not as many as I’ve saved yours, loser. I’m still winning by at least five; six if you count that thing with the sphinx.”

“Which I don’t.”

“Still winning by five. You’re welcome.”

“Don’t think that means you’re getting out of buying me a wedding gift, Potter. I want something expensive.”

“Fine.” Harry grinned. “I’ll buy the stupidest, poshest thing on your wedding list. And you can forgive me for not kissing your ring at your party.”

“Far be it from me to hold you to something so pedestrian as basic manners.”

“See, that doesn’t feel like you’re forgiving me. Now it’s the second-most expensive thing.”

“Alright.” Draco threw up his arms. “Alright. I shan’t say another word.”

“Shake on it,” Harry said, extending his hand. Draco grinned back, genuine now, the left side of his mouth quirking in the way it always did when he was smiling honestly, catching on the wrinkle on the side of his cheek that had showed up sometime in the past eighteen months. Harry let out a bit of his breath. He really hadn’t meant to piss Draco off by not sticking around the party. It was the wine that sent him home early. And the champagne. And the No-Longer-Single-Malt Malfoys.

Their hands met; Harry knew the shape of Draco’s well. In the field, facing down peril, Harry often felt like Draco’s limbs were an extension of his own. He knew Draco’s hands down to the air displaced by the extension of his arms when he cast offensive spells, or when he reached for a mug of tea.

Later, Harry would think that the pain felt the same way: like it wasn’t coming from outside of him, or being done to him. That it was a pain he’d always known, that had always existed inside himself.

It was subtle, at first. A low hum, almost hidden beneath the hangover, but then it began to grow. Expanding like a balloon in his chest, and then burning: a hot stabbing, tunneling below the skin at the place where his and Draco’s palms touched.

They both snatched back their hands.

“What the fuck?” Harry said. “Was that—Was that some bloody Wheezes shite? Are you pranking me, Malfoy? We’re a little old for that.”

“Oh, right, you’re so mature, Potter—everyone believes that. Of course I’m not pranking you. Are you—was it residual Dark magic?” The department housed plenty of artefacts that still needed to be seen by curse breakers; sometimes the foul off them leaked into the atmosphere.

“I’ve never felt anything like that from something residual,” Harry said. “I guess it could be, though. Ugh. We’ll have to file another report with Robards.” He touched his nose with the tip of his index finger. “Bagsy not writing it.”

Draco smiled at him. “Like I’d let you write my reports, you heathen. You don’t know how lucky you are to have me, Harry Potter.”

Harry scoffed. “No, I really don’t.”

His palm throbbed as badly as his head did. He watched as Draco rubbed his hand in the exact same place Harry’s was aching, the sensation twinned and reflected back at him.

Then, they went to work.

The stinging in his hand had finally abated when the alarm sounded. The department had settled into the steady hum of its morning routine; with the clanging of the alert charm, it sprang into motion.

“You’re up!” Greta, the charge secretary, called, as the badges on Harry and Draco’s uniforms flashed from their typical silver to the haloed red that signaled they were being dispatched.

“Assignment?” Draco called out.

“Dark magic containment, class five,” she called out. Harry and Draco were already shrugging on their Auror uniform jackets, Vanishing the cold coffee cups, and strapping wands to their holsters. “A monitor in zone eight of Portsmouth Downs was triggered three minutes ago. There’s twelve magical persons in the line of danger, thirty-one Muggles.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster to just say forty-three people?” Draco muttered dryly.

“The situation is still developing,” Greta continued. “Can you confirm you’re capable of targeting Apparition coordinates for Portsmouth?”

“Confirmed,” they both said at once. They shared a grin. The cure-all had done its job, in the end.

Harry reached over to Malfoy, as he always did, and flicked the side of his head. “For luck,” he said cheekily. As he always did.

A pain in his head and hand flared momentarily worse. Harry sent up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t face an unpleasant flare when he actually confronted whoever had triggered the Auror’s monitoring wards for containing Dark magic.

“A class five,” Draco said. His face had gone a little paler, like he was feeling the effects of last night, too. The alarms were not kind to the hungover. “Neville is going to be bloody furious when I tell him.”

That snagged the edge of Harry’s attention. “What? Why?”

“Oh, you know,” Draco said. “If I get disfigured before the wedding it will ruin all the photos.”

“Hm,” said Harry. “He’s seen your face though, right? A light disfigurement would probably be an improvement.”

Draco shoved him with his shoulder. Harry rubbed at the spot where Draco’s arm had pressed against him; it hurt. His hands traced over the ache, as if there might be some depression left behind. Odd. Draco hadn’t really hit him that hard.

It was the hangover, still. Or the adrenaline.

“No one is better at class fives than we are,” Harry said. On a slight delay, he heard the whinging tone of his voice. “And you like them. You’re always saying anything less than a four is boring as shit.”

“Well, I only say that because it’s true,” Draco snapped. Harry laughed, and then they were gone.

The mission gave them the second sign that something wasn’t right.

It was exactly the sort of case they excelled at: extremely dangerous, where everything that could go wrong did, fantastically so. One minute they were sneaking through the bins in a back alley of Portsmouth Downs, the next they were trapped in a magically-sealed room, every surface dripping with red, blood-sludgy pentagrams, confronting a wizard whose irises had gone black from Dark Magic, conjuring something putrid before him.

Whatever he had cast appeared to have its own sort of sentience. Now, a figure not dissimilar to a dementor was throwing itself at the shield Draco had conjured.

“Malfoy.” Harry eyed the menacing apparition stalking towards where they were corralled in the corner of the room. “Give me your wand.” Harry had been disarmed. Even in mortal danger, Draco had taken the time to laugh at Harry getting Expelliarmused in the field.

“So you can lose it like you did your own?” Draco scoffed. There was a bead of sweat running down the side of his face. “I think bloody not.”

“We need a Patronus for that thing,” Harry said. “Mine is stronger.” This was putting it generously. Harry’s Patronus could have eaten Draco’s and shat it out without strain.

“Fine.” With clenched teeth, Draco handed his wand over. It was warm in Harry’s hand, like always.

The incantation was a comforting intimacy, even in the rush of danger. “Expecto Patronum!”

Instantly, Harry was knocked backward by a recoil so powerful he was worried it might have taken off his arm. He cursed loudly and almost dropped Draco’s wand; only years of training kept him from doing so. His arse hurt where he’d hit the floor. Smoky, charred-smelling magic was billowing from Draco’s wand. It was like Harry’s Patronus had died.

“Potter,” he heard Draco say through the fog of his own pain and the failed magic. “Are you alright?”

“I—what was that?” Harry got to his feet, blinking slowly. He thought he might be concussed.

“I don’t know,” Draco hissed. Through the blinding pain splitting his skull in half, Harry registered that Draco’s voice was an audible wince, like the recoil from the Patronus had taken him out, too.

“What’s wrong—Malfoy, did you get hit?”

“No, no. I don’t—my head is killing me, did the spell go wrong?”

“Fuck,” Harry said. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” Draco sounded—resigned. The smoke had mostly cleared, and Harry could see him again. A trickle of blood had joined the sweat running down his face. Harry’s chest clenched.

The ghoulish creature hadn’t slowed. It was still steadily advancing on them.

“We need to end this,” Harry yelled, shoving Draco’s wand back at him. “I can’t use your wand. Maybe it’s something to do with the bastard disarming me. Cast a Patronus; I know you can.”

“My Patronus is unreliable at the best of times, you know that!”

“Come on, Malfoy.” Harry spared a glance for their attacker, who was making alarming progress breaking through Draco’s shield spell. “Didn’t you just have a gigantic party? Did I not just hear you give a very long speech about how your life is the most perfect it’s ever been? If a hundred guests and half a dozen topiary statues don’t get you a Patronus, I don’t know what can.”

Tight-lipped, Draco nodded. “Fine.” He raised his wand high. “Expecto Patronum!”

The stoat spilled out—small, but Draco’s Patronus was always small. It barrelled into the thing, knocking it to the side of the room and giving them the opportunity to charge the wizard. They moved without needing to speak, without even needing to look at one another. Even bleeding, and bruised, with a single wand between them, they operated like a well-oiled machine.

It took three more stunning spells and a few more stoat Patronuses, but eventually the dark wizard was subdued, subpoenaed, and shipped off to the Ministry holding cells.

They didn’t speak to each other for a while afterwards. Harry didn’t like this part—when the simplicity of their work faded into the necessary trial of dialogue, of communication. It was easier to communicate with Draco when they were saying nothing at all.

They were sitting side by side on the pavement; Harry’s wand had been recovered, and they were both drinking water out of conjured glasses. They smelled like sulfur and blood; Draco’s hands were trembling.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to say in your report?” Harry said, when the moment couldn’t endure any more silence. Draco didn’t meet his eyes.

“About my wand?”

“Among other things. Do you think it’s related to what happened to us this morning? The residual magic?”

There was something on Draco’s face. Beneath the fine powder of dust, and the weariness from the morning left behind in the bags in his eyes, there was—agitation. Caginess. Guilt.

“No. I’ll file the report,” he said at last. “Potter, I…”

After waiting a second for him to finish, Harry realised he wasn’t going to. “What?” he prodded. “What is it?”

Draco looked like he was fighting with himself over what to say. Harry knew that expression well on him.

“Just say it.”

Draco glared at him. “Fine. I just—I’d like it if you didn’t tell anyone about the thing with my wand. And with us.”

It wasn’t unusual for Draco to keep things tight to the vest. He lined his life with secrets; he waited until his plans played out to tell other people about them. Harry had gotten used to it. “Alright.” Harry said.

“Right,” Draco looked surprised, and mollified. Harry cleared his throat. Draco’s subterfuge wasn’t new; it had often kept things easier between them, when they were learning to be partners. But this was different. What had happened might not be anyone else’s business, but it was certainly Harry’s.

“Why not, though?” he asked, just as Draco’s posture had relaxed. Draco sat up straight, glaring.

“I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn’t be a nosy little cunt about this,” he snapped.

“I mean,” Harry smiled broadly. “You have met me. I do like to know things.”

This earned an eyeroll. When Draco replied, it was slowly, like the words were a burden tripping out of his mouth. “My suspicions are personal.”

“Your suspicions about the thing that’s happening to me are personal to you?”

“It’s nothing related to work,” Draco said quickly. “I just want to verify something before we involve the entire bloody department in my business.” His eyes met Harry’s. “Please.”

“Fine,” Harry said. He knew there was no point in trying to get more out of Draco—the more you pushed him when he was like this, the more he clammed up. And if Harry needed to know more, he would be able to find out.

Satisfied, Draco nodded. When he spoke again, his tone was removed, casual, as if nothing at all was strange. “You’ll be over for dinner on Saturday?”

“I'll try to be.” Harry hadn't been to family dinner at Draco and Nev’s in a while. The more nestled the two of them became in their own domesticity, the more Harry had found reasons to have dates on Saturday nights.

“Alright," Draco said, obviously not believing him. "You should come. Neville’s making grilled salmon and that salad you like.”

“Oh, you’re not cooking?”

“You’re annoying, Potter, but not annoying enough for me to try to kill you with my culinary talents.” Draco smiled angelically. “Though never say never.”

“I probably won’t be able to come.”

“Whatever, I don’t care,” Draco said. Harry always wondered about those invitations—did Draco actually want him there? Did he belong in Draco’s new, married life, or was he the awkward part that didn’t fit, the leftover piece of cabinetry that failed to be necessary in assembly and was left to languish forever in a junk drawer?

“Bring wine,” Draco said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“I just said I’m not coming.”

“And I just said I don’t care.”

“Don’t use me to work through your weird trauma and abandonment issues, Malfoy.”

“Please. It’s our trauma.”

“Our trauma needs to give me a rest,” Harry said. “I’m basically a single father to it at this point.”

“How dare you. Our co-parenting is amicable and lauded.”

Our trauma—a stupid, significant shorthand. They needed something to call all the things they couldn’t give a name, and so they had this nonsensical routine about the well-being of their otherwise unaddressed issues, which had grown into an imagined child of which they shared custody. The joke was absurd and always made them laugh. It was the sort of thing that Harry couldn’t have explained to anyone else and never had to explain to Draco.

“If I come to dinner, will you tell me what’s going on with our magic?” Harry said.

Draco leaned back on his arms. His hands were steady now. “Fine,” he said. “Come to dinner and I’ll tell you.”

“Fine,” Harry agreed.

The silence returned, comfortable, easy. They stayed on the street until the sun had dropped low in the sky.

Chapter Text

“Am I the first one here?” Harry asked when Neville opened the door to his and Draco’s flat in Richmond.

As badly as he wanted to know what the hell Draco thought was going on with their magic, Harry had still debated coming until the last possible second. He’d felt like an idiot, dancing on the edge of Apparition: his head still hurt, though the ache had subsided somewhat since he’d been home, and the thought of spending the evening listening to Neville wax poetic about the thrills of plant life felt like more punishment than he could bear in his current state.

“Hardly.” Neville accepted the bottle of wine Harry handed him without looking at the label. With Draco, Harry always got an earful. “Everyone is already in the sitting room with Draco. Padma and Ernie brought one of their diverting little party games. You know how Ravenclaw Padma gets about those things.”

“Lovely,” Harry said. “How long do we have to pretend to enjoy it?”

“At least for half an hour,” Neville answered, low. “She hasn’t made us play one of these in ages, I think if we entertain it we could go another few months without being subjected to one again.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Harry said.

Neville was all ease as he led Harry through his and Draco’s kitchen. Their home looked like the inside of a magazine: warm wood surfaces and muted hints of green, like someone had gone into a store and been able to walk away with the word “comfort” laden in their arms. Harry didn’t like coming here, even when he didn’t feel like shit. He hated the sight of people’s bare toes sinking into their lush carpets. It all felt so put-on.

“You made an impression on my gran,” Neville said. “She seems to think you’ve gone for Team Augusta in her fake rivalry with Narcissa.”

“Thank god for that,” Harry said. “Wouldn’t want to be on Augusta’s bad side.”

Neville went on. “Narcissa told Draco the same thing—she’s convinced she’s bagged Potter. The real test will be whose side of the aisle you sit on during the wedding.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not going to be sitting anywhere, I’ll be up at the front with you. I’m Draco’s best man.”

“Oh, you are, are you? I don’t recall hearing anything about that.” The loose grin on Neville’s face meant he was only teasing; everyone knew Harry would be Draco’s best man. They were partners.

But still. Draco hadn’t officially asked him, yet.

“Who else would it be?” Harry scoffed. “Goyle?”

“Maybe. Greg has hidden depths.”

“I have hidden depths,” Harry said petulantly. Neville just laughed at that. Harry switched tactics. “I died for him!”

Neville was shaking his head. “Nice try, Saviour. You died for everyone. And if we’re making a martyr list, Draco was easily like, number two thousand and forty-one of the people you were dying for.” He grinned, open and biting. “Should we count them?”

"Fuck off," Harry told Neville. And the rest of the group, as they arrived at the sitting room that very moment. The assembled guests looked mildly shocked, except for Draco, who was sitting to one side of the sofa and grinning openly at Harry.

Padma’s game (incomprehensible, full of logic puzzles and double meanings) kept them occupied for three quarters of an hour, until Neville mercifully interrupted to announce that dinner was ready. The table didn’t quite comfortably seat eight; Harry’s elbows kept knocking into Draco’s, and his head was throbbing worse than ever. Maybe the wine was off. It was stealing away his appetite.

“Stop pushing your food around,” Draco said under his breath. “Here, give me your peas, I know you hate them.”

Harry happily forked a few onto Draco’s plate, and stole a bread roll in exchange. Draco was a nutter about carbs, anyway.

“Still not a fan of vegetables, Harry?” Neville asked. He was seated opposite Draco, across the table.

“They’re great, Nev,” Harry said guiltily. “I’m just—I’ve been feeling poorly this week, I’m not all that hungry.”

“I’ve been looking forward to seeing you in a cozier setting,” Hannah said to Neville and Draco, over the pleasant clink of silverware against the dinner plates. “The engagement party was gorgeous, but I feel like I couldn’t steal a word with any of you.”

“Those sorts of things are always for the families more than anyone else,” Ernie said sagely. Harry felt his mouth twist; he looked down at his plate.

“Speaking of which,” Hermione said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you both. What was that ceremony that Draco’s mum and Mrs Longbottom performed?”

Ron whispered something at her. Reading lips was valued in Harry’s line of work: he watched as Ron mouthed, “Don’t be nosy.” Hermione scowled.

“Old fashioned engagement ritual,” Neville answered. “The mums insisted.”

“Did they?”

“It’s just a silly bit of magic, supposedly to make our marital bond stronger. Archaic, and very hetero,” Neville said. “Apparently it was all the rage pre-twentieth century.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially, “Of course its primary function was actually to keep nice Pureblood girls from getting up the duff out of wedlock.”

“Really,” Hermione said, letting both her fascination and mild disgust clearly show in the downturn of her brows. “But… I mean, obviously… you and Draco… Well, no one’s getting pregnant.” Seamus snickered. Harry rolled his eyes.

“Spoken like someone who’s never gotten fucked by Longbottom,” Draco said, low enough so that only Harry could hear it. Harry elbowed him in the ribs. His head throbbed a bit harder—and Jesus, what the fuck was going on with him? This migraine had lasted days.

When he looked up from the noxious wince of the pain, Draco was giving him a strange look, and Neville went on before Harry could begin to pick it apart.

“No, of course. We obviously didn’t get into the gory details with Narcissa and Gran, but they got so emotional about the symbolism of it all. And it made them happy, so.”

“Yes,” Draco said, no trace in his voice of the discomfort and concern Harry had just glimpsed. “We gave them the engagement bonding ritual, and now we can actually fight them on the godawful ceremonial garb they think is proper wedding attire.” He gestured down at his narrow torso. “It would be a sin to dress this figure in eighteenth century dress robes.”

“But—” Hermione’s voice had gotten a little louder. Ron and Harry exchanged a nervous look. This was her dog-with-a-bone voice. Ron lightly touched her arm but Hermione shrugged him away. “But what does the ritual do? It can’t be purely symbolic, especially if it involves fertility magic.”

“Oh no,” Neville said. Harry felt Draco go tense next to him.“There’s no fertility magic. That’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t do before the wedding, it’s too easy to curse yourself barren. No, it was far more simple than that. It just keeps you from, well—” Neville went a little pink.

“It acts as a deterrence to physical intimacy,” Draco said, saving Neville the embarrassment of continuing. “It’s quite rudimentary, really.” His tone was very even, but his eyes were a bit too wide, his jaw tight.

“It prevents premarital sex?” Hermione asked, matter-of-fact.

“Well, in a manner of speaking,” Neville answered, red as a beet. “There’s nothing to keep you away from your intended—what would be the point? The whole reason for the thing, really, was to make sure no one got pregnant with the wrong wizard’s child. You know.” He rolled his eyes. “Someone the parents didn’t approve of. Or who might threaten the succession of the estate, or some rubbish. So if you try to shag someone who isn’t your fiancé, you get a nasty little dose of pain.”

Pain.

Harry wasn’t sure who looked at the other first — if he looked at Draco, or Draco looked at him. Things never seemed to properly start or stop between them—it always seemed as though something was already well underway. Either way, they were staring right at each other.

“How archaic,” Hermione murmured, looking satisfied.

Everyone else around them was still facing Neville, fascinated and oblivious, and then Draco stood up.

“Does anyone want another drink? Potter, can you help me?”

Harry followed him into the kitchen.

Once they were out of earshot of the rest of the group, Harry said, “What’s going on? Is there—”

“Shut up, not yet—”

They rounded the corner, passing out of the eyesight of the guests in the other room. Draco spun on his heel, and took a step closer to Harry. Harry, startled, stepped back.

“There’s only one way to be sure,” Draco said. “Touch me.”

Harry stared at him. “I—but—”

The words were heavy and stupid in his mouth, and his mind was already several paces ahead, because of course; because this made sense, didn’t it; because being an Auror for seven years should mean he was a little more capable of drawing a conclusion based on some pretty clear evidence. He shook his head. “But you said it’s a curse that keeps you from shagging someone. We’re not—”

“It’s not a curse,” Draco said, like that explained anything. “And we haven’t tested it yet. Come on.”

He held out his hand, palm upwards. Harry looked down at it. He found he really, really didn’t want to know. Once he knew it to be true, something would be changed between them; something Harry didn’t even really understand.

“Come on,” Draco said, impatience layered thick on his words. Harry looked up from Draco’s hand. His irritation was a mask. Draco looked scared, too.

“Okay,” Harry said, and couldn’t bring himself to take Draco’s hand.

Instead, he laid his palm on Draco’s shoulder.

For a single moment, he felt only the warmth of Draco’s skin beneath his clothes—comforting, familiar. And then the pain hit him, spreading from the tips of fingers against Draco’s arm and quickly becoming searing, unbearable, like putting his palm against a stove.

“Fuck,” Draco yelped, jumping back. “Fuck, fuck.”

“What the fuck,” Harry was saying, shaking his hand like he could shake off the burn. “What the fuck?”

The wide, pale-white panic was all over Draco’s face. In his eyes. In his voice. “It’s—clearly there’s something wrong with the magic. Whatever our mums did. Bloody buggering fuck.”

The earth was moving beneath Harry’s feet. “So we have been cursed?”

“No!” Draco hiss-shouted, exasperated. “I already told you, Potter, it’s not a curse. It’s bonding magic, it’s… it’s ancient marriage enchantments. And anyway, I still thought maybe it wasn’t anything to do with the ritual. I couldn’t be sure until we tested it.” He looked helplessly at Harry. “I didn’t want it to come out like—like this. In front of everyone. I was going to tell you. You know I was.”

“But—it’s a shagging curse,” Harry said, ignoring the way Draco’ eyes narrowed when he said ‘curse.’ “We’ve barely touched.”

“I know that!” Draco snapped. “Believe me, I would have noticed something as horrifying as you trying to seduce me, Potter.”

The ground was too far beneath his feet; Harry grasped for the familiar.

He exhaled and said, voice level, “Like that wouldn’t be the best thing to ever happen to you, wanker.”

Draco’s mouth opened and closed. Once. Twice. Then he grinned and said, “I’d rate it just below being turned into a ferret.”

Harry was preparing his comeback—not sure exactly what it would be—when Neville called from the sitting room, “What’s taking you so long in there?”

The two of them went silent. The ground grew further away, again.

“Listen—” Harry started, just as Draco said, “I don’t think we should tell anyone—”

"You don’t—why not?”

Draco’s eyes were everywhere but Harry’s face. “I think it could be—awkward. Easily misconstrued. The magic’s clearly malfunctioning. But…” He trailed off. Harry still felt adrift. His heart was hammering an uncomfortably rapid rhythm in his chest.

“Okay,” he said at last, massaging his still-stinging chest. “And—and even if we can’t fix it, it’s not going to last forever, right? Like, it will go away once you and Neville are married?”

Draco nodded. “I see no reason why it wouldn’t. The ritual only lasts as long as the engagement.”

“So that’s what, six more months? Give or take?” Harry made his voice sound bright, unbothered. Six more months.

“Yes.” Draco was scratching at the skin of his thumb with the tip of his ring finger. He still wasn’t looking at Harry. “Just about that.”

Harry rubbed at his chest. The ache had migrated from his skull to his sternum. “Do you think it will make anything weird at work? I mean, what if one of us needs to use the other’s wand again? Or one of us gets injured. Should we ask Robards to reassign us?”

“No,” Draco said vehemently. Harry blinked, startled. Draco cleared his throat. “I don’t think it will really hurt us. We can—we should be able to touch, if it’s an emergency. It won’t be pleasant, but I don’t think there will be any real chance of fatality. So long as we don’t involve magic, like with the Patronus. And even then, well.” Draco couldn’t meet his eyes. “No one died.”

“So it will just hurt like a bitch,” Harry said. “Wonderful.”

“Well,” Draco said. “I could endure it to save your life.”

That shut Harry up. He looked at Draco. “I mean, me too. Obviously. Sorry.” He reached out to clap a hand on Draco’s shoulder and stopped himself a second before it happened, dropping his hand back down. “I’m just—this is a lot.”

“I know,” Draco said. “Listen, Potter, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let Mother insist on this ridiculous ritual. No one does these types of things anymore, of course the magic’s gone dodgy. It’s just — you know how it is. With Mother. And the confinement. She has so little else. It felt like the only thing I could do.” Draco’s eyes went stony. “But of course I should have realised it would be a mistake to dredge it all up. Nothing good has ever come of the Malfoy magics.”

When Draco talked about his family, his face usually went all pinched, something painful battling to come to the surface. It was happening now. Harry felt his chest constrict. He didn’t know what it was to be so at odds with your parents. His hadn’t lived long enough to disappoint him.

“Alright, well that’s enough of us apologizing to each other, don’t you think?” Harry tried to arrange his face into a convincing, buck-up, facsimile of a smile. Draco let the tension fall out of his shoulders, his face. His exhale shook the foundation Harry stood on.

“Alright,” Draco said softly.

“It won’t be so bad,” said Harry. “Who wants to touch you, anyway, you slimy git?”

Malfoy grinned in earnest this time. “‘Slimy git’—you’re one to talk, Potter. Only one of us has ever been reprimanded for extreme disrespect to the Auror uniform, and we both know it’s not me.”

“I was attacked by a dragon, you wanker. A dragon that was trying to eat you.”

“Yes, well, the patrons of Gringotts didn’t appreciate the view of your bare arse.”

“Like hell they didn’t. That was the best day of Philippa Morrison’s life, she told me she was going to Pensieve it.”

“I know,” Draco’s grin had grown fond. “You made me Obliviate her.”

“I suggested she might not be in a position to contain confidential information about escaped dragons.”

“Quite.” The two of them were laughing, now. They'd moved closer together. It wasn’t the sort of thing Harry would have noticed before—but now, as he turned towards Draco, towards the comforting cadence of his voice, his body started to ache and burn in all the places that were closest to Draco. He moved back, irritated. Guilty, somehow.

Neville was calling out to them again. “Harry! Draco! How long does it take to fetch some drinks?”

They both jolted, as if caught out. Fucking curse, Harry thought. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Neither of them were.

“Better go back,” Draco said.

“Yeah, you go ahead.” Harry ran a hand through his hair. “I need the loo.”

“Okay.” Draco hesitated a moment longer. In normal circumstances, he would punch Harry on the shoulder. Or make some sort of arsehole comment. Anything would be better than this awkward silence, this strange new forcefield between them.

Well, it wasn’t the first time something strange and nonsensical had gotten in the way of Harry living his life like a regular person. He thought that as he watched the line of Draco’s back disappear into the sitting room, a moving shadow against the horizon of the future. It was always something, some outside force cursing him, damning him, telling him what he was and wasn’t allowed.

He’d faced worse before, Harry thought. He’d always emerged fine. This time would be no different.

Nothing was going to change. Not for good.

Chapter Text

“The two of you aren’t fooling anyone,” was the first thing Hermione said when Harry met the next day for coffee.

He choked on his Americano. “The two of—” His throat was a closing trap. A few coughs later, he let himself chance a look into Hermione’s eyes. She was watching him, narrow and scowling, and, exactly as she’d said, unfooled.

“That ritual Draco and Neville did,” she said. “At their engagement party. It’s doing something to you and Draco. ”

“I wasn’t part of any bloody rituals,” Harry said petulantly. No actual denial uttered, though, which would be as good as a confession to Hermione.

“Not to mention,” she continued, as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “you’ve been jumpy as little snidgets around each other. And don’t think I didn’t notice how long you disappeared during dinner last night. Something is obviously going on. You can tell me what it is, or I can figure it out myself. But I’m rather busy with work, so you might spare me all that trouble to find out and just explain instead.”

Harry weighed his options. Doubtless she would pursue an answer until she found one that was satisfactory. Hermione unleashed was—well, it was probably worse than just telling her the truth. It wasn’t, Harry reminded himself, fiercely, as if he had done anything wrong.

So, relenting, Harry explained—in the barest, most opaque terms he could—that Malfoy and Neville’s engagement spell had singled out Harry as the object of its torment.

“It’s this bloody Pureblood archaic magic,” he said. “It was created three hundred years ago and certainly didn’t account for … for what a normal friendship between men might entail in the twenty-first century.” He bit at the corner of a fingernail, worrying at a piece of skin with his teeth. “It’s probably homophobic, too.”

“Harry,” Hermione said. “I don’t disagree that this magic is completely mad. But that doesn’t mean you can just ignore it because it’s inconveniencing you—no, don’t look at me like that, I know that’s what you’re trying to do. How exactly do you plan to deal with this?”

“Well, considering I only just found out about it yesterday, I don’t exactly have that part figured out yet. For now, we just have to avoid touching each other.” Harry took a bitter sip of his drink. “Just until they’re married and the bond breaks itself. Which isn’t like it’s all that difficult, obviously.”

Hermione scoffed. “Naturally.”

He glared at her, daring her to say more. She glared back, eyebrow raised in challenge.

“What about work, then? You’re partners, and your jobs aren’t exactly catastrophe-free. What if you need to perform magic on each other? I imagine the spell also sees that as a kind of touch.”

Harry winced, thinking of the disaster that had resulted from him trying to use Malfoy’s wand.

“We’re dealing with it,” he said, which of course Hermione would interpret to mean that they absolutely were not.

“How?” she said. Harry rubbed at his temples. He loved Hermione so much. But she was really bloody annoying when she got like this.

“Well, maybe I can trick the curse,” he said. The idea had occurred to him the night before, after an unsatisfying wank that he’d hoped would take some of the edge off. It had not.

“Trick an ancient curse? Oh, Harry.”

“No, really, it’s not dangerous,” he said quickly. “The curse has decided, for some completely mental reason, that I’m a threat to Draco and Neville’s union, or some bollocks. So I thought—what if I find a serious relationship of my own?” He cleared his throat. “The curse seems weird about… sex stuff. And I’m in a bit of a dry spell. It can probably tell I haven’t gotten a leg over in weeks.”

“Lovely, Harry.”

“Sorry.”

“So that’s your plan?” she asked. “Dating someone to get over Draco?”

“I’m not under Draco,” he snapped. “A curse like this would be horrible for anyone. Even you and me, Hermione. It’s punishing us for perfectly normal things. I can’t shake his hand, I can’t use his wand… You don’t understand what it’s like for us. Your work isn’t—”

“Yes?” she said coolly.

Harry shook his head. He’d been about to say something he didn’t even mean about Hermione’s work being less stressful than his. She was just being such a know-it-all about this. Between the pain, the whiplash of finding out at dinner, and being asked to keep this a secret, Harry was wound tight enough to snap.

Hermione’s eyebrows stayed high and disappointed on her forehead. “I’m sorry you’re hurting—physically and, though you’re dead set on denying it, emotionally, too. But that doesn’t give you license to be bitchy to me. I’m not the one who got you into this mess.”

“No,” Harry said bitterly. “I just assumed you’d jump at the chance to play Fixer Hermione, like you always do; acting like everyone’s mum.”

Her eyes went steely. “I’m not your mum, Harry.”

The effect was almost as instantaneous as the curse: as soon as she’d said it, both of them recoiled. Hermione opened her mouth, clearly to apologize. Harry waved it off.

“Sorry,” Harry said, finally. “For being a cunt about the Malfoy thing. And work. It’s been a really shit week. I know it’s not your fault.” He sighed. Rubbed his palm across his face. “I’m really, really sorry.”

She smiled sadly at him. “Me too. Things have changed between you and Draco. I can see how that would summon up some bad feelings for you.”

“God,” Harry said. “If you happen to know how to dissolve ancient puritanical marriage rituals, feel free to be nosy about it.”

A crinkle of her nose. “Maybe you were onto something with the dating thing.”

Harry startled. “You think?”

“Well, who knows. But if the spell is sensitive to you because you’re unattached, perhaps an attachment would help deter it.”

“Ugh,” Harry said, scrubbing at his face. “That’s horrible. I hate dating.”

“Well,” Hermione said, a sly grin growing on her face. “You’ve only ever really enjoyed things you excel at.”

He kicked her lightly under the table. She kicked him back, harder.

“Let’s—let’s just see,” he said. “What you can figure out. And I guess I’ll try to go on a date. Find a boyfriend or something.”

“All that it takes to get Harry Potter in his first serious relationship is the intervention of a couple centuries’ worth of backwards Pureblood magic.”

“Hey! I’ve been in a serious relationship!”

Hermione looked genuinely confused. “No, you haven’t. Unless… Did you date someone we didn’t know about? Harry!”

“What? No! I mean—Ginny! I dated Ginny very seriously.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “When you were sixteen?”

“I almost married her!”

“When exactly were you two considering matrimony? When you were serving detentions for McGonnagall or when she was studying for her O.W.L.s?”

“Shut up. It was very serious. Her mum still wants us to get married.”

“Yes, well, Molly Weasley would probably try to marry someone off to the ghoul in the attic if they hung around her house long enough.”

The conversation had wandered back into grounds that made both of them uncomfortable. Marriage was, for Hermione and Ron, an unpleasant topic—particularly when burdened with Ron’s mother’s expectations about what both a wedding and a marriage should entail.

“What if you test it out yourself?” Harry said, changing the subject back to his own Pureblood mum-induced crisis. “Could you maybe think really hard about snogging Malfoy the next time you’re around him? And we can see if the curse gives you a bloody headache?”

Hermione made a face. “Harry, I love you dearly, but I don’t think I could put any intention into the thought of snogging Malfoy if my life depended on it.”

“Well it’s not like I’m dying to snog him,” Harry said defensively. “The curse just… doesn’t want me to touch him.”

Hermione looked levelly at him. “Hmm.”

He ignored this. She always thought she knew everything. Harry wasn’t an idiot—he knew she was thinking about his feelings for Draco. But she didn’t understand what it was like between them. No one else could understand it, except him and Draco.

Harry leaned back in his chair. Dating someone was a good idea. This was exactly what he needed. He would get the curse to leave him alone, get Hermione off his back, and get laid. Lemons into lemonade, Harry thought. Lemonade that also involved sex.

On its face, not touching Draco was hardly that much to ask. Or really, it shouldn’t have been. They were grown men; they were colleagues. It’s not like they were teenagers prone to braiding each other’s hair at pyjama parties.

But now, faced with the knowledge that he couldn’t touch Draco, Harry found himself confronted with the irresistible urge to do it. His fingers kept trying to find purchase on Draco’s back, or the line of his neck, which, as the days plodded onward and they found no remedies to the aching constant of the curse, looked more and more tense and unhappy, like his whole body was frowning.

The offices of the DMLE were just so small, was the thing. And Draco was so many long intersecting lines, branching out across every surface. The department had always squeezed in more desks per square foot than made any sense, even with magic, and Harry’s and Draco’s desks sat crashed into one another, like two tectonic plates being pushed together by the grinding churn of the earth itself.

Even a shoulder brush, accidental and unwanted, triggered the mechanism of ancestral, tight-arsed magic. The curse couldn’t be blamed for making Harry clumsier, but he wasn’t going to attribute none of his bumbling idiocy to it: he’d never tripped this often in the hall, never before stubbed his toe so often on the imposing mammoth of Draco’s desk. He recoiled when he got too close to Malfoy’s robes, which smelled just like him, draped over the back of his chair, even though surely touching Draco’s clothing wouldn’t trigger it.

Still. Better not to risk it.

It felt like they were being obvious. Blushing, stammering, like cadets on their first duty shift. Harry thought constantly of Hermione’s words. The two of you aren’t fooling anyone.

Another day at work, nothing solved or improved, Harry found himself pushing down the feeling that everyone in the office was noticing them, their awkwardness, Harry’s clumsiness. Beside him, Draco was shuffling papers at his desk, his face pinker than usual.

“What’s wrong with you?” Harry asked. “Besides, you know. The obvious.”

Draco sighed. “Nothing.”

“Liar.”

Another sigh. “Neville’s been offered a position. Teaching.”

“Oh.”

“At Hogwarts.”

“Oh,” Harry repeated, dumbly.

Hogwarts teaching positions were tenancies in their world. And Neville loved educating—Harry saw it in their silly little duelling club. Plenty of the kids idolized Neville just as much as they did Harry. He had that easy, dirt-under-his-fingernails charm that seemed so compelling to children.

“So—what’s the job?” Herbology, Harry’s mind insisted. Neville of course would be teaching Herbology.

Draco met his eyes, level. “Defence.”

Something leaden sank through Harry’s esophagus.

He made his voice light. “That position is cursed, you know.”

“Yes, thank you. I said the same thing.”

“Neville is a gardener.”

“Neville is a war hero.” Draco sounded irritated. There wasn’t anything playful in it. “He volunteers extensively in fields that fight the Dark Arts, and he’s wonderful with children. He’s perfect for the job.” Draco said it again, the sharp sound of it echoing in the space between them: “He’s perfect.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “He’s bloody perfect.”

It was sour—the jealousy. Only, Harry had been the teacher of the two of them at school. He’d taught Neville all the defensive spells he’d first mastered. Without Harry there wouldn’t have been much of a chance of Neville killing that snake. Which didn’t matter, of course. Neville had killed the snake, hadn’t he. It didn’t matter that Harry had been too busy dying to take care of it.

“So he’d go to Scotland?” Harry said.

Draco was not meeting Harry’s eyes. “Yes.”

“And you’d stay here?”

Finally, Draco looked at him. “Potter,” he said.

Something snapped in Harry’s chest. “You’d go with him. To Hogwarts?”

“Well, it’s very good for Neville’s career.”

“I thought you said it was cursed.”

“Be serious.”

“What about your career?”

“This is a dangerous job… if we’re going to be starting a family soon…” Draco looked around the room helplessly. “There may be a position for me on the Board of Trustees.”

Harry couldn’t help himself from laughing. “Wow. Like Lucius before you.”

“It’s not like that at all.” Draco’s voice had gotten quieter, like it always did when he was angry. “I can’t spend the rest of my healthy years protecting you from wayward curses, Potter. It’s a good path for me, too. I can make a difference.”

“Fuck making a difference,” Harry said. “I don’t want things to be different.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Of course, how could I forget? The most important thing for me to consider for myself and my husband’s future is what Harry Potter wants.”

“I’m not Harry Potter,” Harry said, the words tumbling out, incorrect and stupid but with a cold-iron tang of truth to them. “I’m your partner. I’d have thought about you, if anyone had tried to convince me to leave.”

“Well.” Draco’s eyes were as icy as his voice. “You don’t have anyone else to think about, do you?”

He wanted to grab Draco and shake him. He might have, if the curse wouldn’t have made his skin feel like it was peeling back from the meat around his bones.

Harry was spared from snapping back at Draco by an alarm going off in the office. It was the soft pink charm that signaled not an ongoing attack, but a sparring drill.

Harry loved sparring drills. He loved the rush of dueling without the tunnel-vision anxiety of adrenaline brought on by danger. He loved working with his colleagues—he liked instructing the younger recruits, helping them improve their defensive magic. Draco called him ‘professor’ about it.

That suddenly felt very hollow.

The pink light in his face right now was like a flare sent up above a choppy ocean storm. He felt it in the pit of his gut. Danger.

Mechanically, he filed into the training room, feeling Draco at his back. When they walked into the sterile white of the practice room, blinking back the bright, Harry turned left. Draco cut right.

Robards, stood at the front of the room, called out, “Wait a minute, now. Potter, Malfoy, what’s wrong with you two? Partner up. Sparring drills.”

“I thought I’d partner with Junior Auror Hughes today,” Harry said, his own voice hollow inside his skull.

“I don’t know what Auror Hughes could have possibly done to deserve that,” Robards barked. “We don’t make a habit of mopping the floor with our cadets in the first round, Potter. You’ll partner with your actual partner. Hughes can have a go after Malfoy’s worn you down a little bit.”

“Sir, I don’t think—”

“I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Auror Malfoy,” Robards said. His tone was ice, the ‘you’re-courting-insubordination’ edge glinting like steel.

Making too big a fuss of this would be just as bad as tempting the curse. The other Aurors were gawping openly at them. Harry and Draco hadn’t taken an issue being paired together since their first month of training. Refusing to train together invited speculation, made an obvious spectacle.

This was going to be a long fucking six months.

“Yes, sir,” Draco said coolly, clearly arriving at the same mental endpoint. He and Harry faced each other and bowed, customary, and for the first time that day, Harry let himself study Draco.

The scar on the underside of his jaw, only visible when he raised his chin, like he’d done just now to nod at Harry. The clean line of his cheek; he always insisted that facial hair never suited him well. His uniform pressed into crisp readiness, each line and fold sharp.

Underneath his folded readiness, though, he’d clearly forgotten the ironing charm on his shirt. Harry found himself smiling at the slight blemish.

“Something funny, Potter?” Draco asked wryly.

“Just your face, Malfoy,” Harry said good-naturedly, and Draco’s mouth twisted in on itself like it always did when he was fighting a grin.

Robards called out, “Begin!” and Harry let himself go.

It felt like cheating, sometimes, to fight Draco, because he knew Draco so well, knew his wand well enough to be his own. But it went both ways: Draco knew him just as well, and he adapted to Harry’s offensive strikes before Harry was even done formulating his next avenue of attack.

They weren’t practising to fight anyone else. Duelling each other was like training to fight themselves.

He threw a few blasting curses at Draco — showy, distracting things, meant to make it harder for Draco to tell the kinds of shielding spells Harry was raising on himself. Draco parried them admirably, and for almost a minute, Harry forgot about anything else.

Reality intruded, however, when Harry remembered that he and Draco always made duelling a contact sport.

Draco cast a sinuous attack jinx, and in the seconds that Harry needed to untangle it, Draco took advantage of the distraction to ram his shoulder into Harry’s.

It felt like Draco had punched him with his entire body, and another man’s body on top of that.

Fuck it, Harry thought, when he finally regained his balance. He couldn’t cast in this state. And it’s not like he could feel much worse.

He dropped his wand and ran into Malfoy like he was the wall of a train station.

The collision rattled Harry’s jaw, shaking his molars. White hot starbursts of agony exploded along the ridges of his cranium, running like veins of burning magma through every synapse. For a moment he no longer had a body; he was only the pain, and the pain was Harry, and the pain was Draco.

And then Harry came back to his body, himself again, alone and aching. He and Draco were lying side by side on the rancid mats that smelled like old sweat and dried blood—or, no, the iron tang of blood was coming from Harry’s mouth; he’d bitten his tongue hard enough to slice it open.

“Merlin’s balls,” came the voice of Robards. “What’s the matter with you two?”

Harry rolled to the side, concentrating very hard on the act of breathing. Draco, next to him, was doing the same in the opposite direction. The pain lessened slightly with every centimeter of distance between them.

“Sorry, sir,” Draco was saying.

“Your nose is bleeding. Both of you—get back to your desks. Actually, no, go home. I don’t want to see you back here until you’ve pulled yourselves together.”

Harry stood up, panting. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, sniffing, the coppery tinge of blood dripping at the back of his throat. He chanced a look at Draco to find his back turned. His robes were ripped—Harry hadn’t noticed that, but the sight of it made him want to grab at them, to feel the satisfying tear of fabric between his fingers.

Look at me, Harry thought. It’s not going to set off the curse if you just look at me.

Draco didn’t turn around.

Harry Apparated into his sitting room with a violence that dislodged several photos from the mantlepiece and sent them tumbling to the floor. The inhabitants of each frame beamed out at him, blissfully unaware, and Harry glowered back, slamming them back in place.

Sweat was still sticking his clothes to his skin, and the phantom pain of the bloody curse repelling him and Draco like two sides of the same magnet was still wrenching his blood away from itself.

What Harry really wanted to do was smash his fist into a wall, or someone’s face—Malfoy’s face, that would be best. It was Malfoy’s fault he felt like this, like his skin was on fire and didn’t fit over the screaming bloom of his muscles and organs; it was Malfoy’s fault that this curse was ripping him in half.

Harry needed to stop thinking about this. He needed a distraction. He wanted to take a shower long enough to drown in. He wanted to set something in his bloody house on fire. He wanted to stop thinking about the shape Draco’s shoulder made against his chest when he rammed into him from the side, the smell of his surprised sweat, the way they’d been close—finally close—

His clothes came off in a pile on the floor of the washroom, kicked into a sweaty heap.

The shower was hot enough to distract him. Everything would be fine. His partner was suddenly untouchable, caged behind some invisible barrier made of evil, snotty magic. But the barrier would go away, once Draco and Neville got married. Everything would go back to normal.

Harry’s blood had risen to the surface of his body, over-warm from the shower. The swimming thickness of it was almost tangible under his fingers, skin slippery from the soap and the steam. There was too much of it, he thought, coming to a boil inside of him; the flimsy casing of his own body was suddenly insufficient to stand against the surging tide of it.

His dick was hard.

It was the stress. The adrenaline. The heat. He leaned his head against the tile of the shower, hoping that the porcelain would have some sort of regulating effect on the maelstrom of his own confused bloodstream. But the wall wasn’t cool at all; the condensation of the shower had turned it wet and warm. The chaos was inside his body; it needed to be let out.

He let his hand come to rest at the stiff base of his cock. The weight of it was grounding in his palm. It felt so good to finally be touched.

The need for release blacked out the edges of his vision; his grip raced faster. Tighter. Luxuriating in it, drawing it out, would be agony—there’d been too much touch denied him. His thoughts were lagging behind the speed of his hand, the hot clutch of his fingers around his even hotter cock, the untidy grip uncontrolled and rough enough to press the head of his dick against the shower wall on alternating strokes, the responding solidity of the tile making Harry’s mind conjure images of taut stomachs, armored in too much muscle. The glint of a piercing in a pink nipple. The smell of cardamom and blackcurrant.

He spilled like a cistern running over, messy and overfull and still churning. He watched the propulsive spurt slow to an aimless sap, and shuddered as he finished coming. He turned into the tap and shoved his come-coated hand under the water, not wanting to see it or feel it for a moment longer.

The rank shame settled over him like another layer of sweat, but at least he didn’t feel like his own veins were charting a course out of his body. When he finally turned off the water and grabbed a towel, he scrubbed hard enough at his skin to scour it once again.

Chapter Text

Hermione set him up with a colleague of Padma’s named Tom Plemmons. For their first date, they’d gone to a Quidditch game, because Tom worked at Magical Games and Sports, like Ludo Bagman had. He also looked like Ludo Bagman had in his prime: thick in the chest, strong thighs. He was a few years older than Harry—the same age as Charlie Weasley, apparently; they’d been at Hogwarts together. That fact alone supplied them with forty minutes of small talk. Tom was a Muggleborn. Tom’s parents were an accountant and a teacher.

Harry imagined meeting a boyfriend’s Muggle parents: it wouldn’t be anything like meeting the Weasleys, or other Purebloods. For one thing, they wouldn’t force their sons to undergo strange courtship rituals or reminisce fondly about their dead husbands who had tried to murder Harry in cold blood. Harry might even feel normal around them.

He and Tom had several other shared interests, and Tom was very fit, and he didn’t gawk at Harry’s scar in the way that made his skin crawl. In fact, Tom’s only fault, as far as Harry could tell after one date, was that he had the same name as Harry’s dead childhood enemy.

He hadn’t planned to mention that to Tom, but over the course of their conversation it had arisen on its own—easy, like a bubble floating aimlessly to the surface of a pond.

“Well, I’m keeping the name,” Tom said. “That evil bastard lost his shot at it when he kept changing it. I’ll be Tom. He can be Lord Fuckface.”

Harry burst out into surprised laughter. “Lord Fuckface?”

Tom nodded. “I had to go into hiding for six months when that rotter was running things at the Ministry. I’m not a man made for life on the run, Harry.”

Harry allowed his eyes to travel up and down Tom’s figure. He looked like he ran all the time, actually.

Mostly because he liked Tom, and only a little because he was sick to his stomach of the curse, Harry asked Tom out again. Drinks, this time, at a quiet pub near Harry’s flat. Coincidentally.

Tom had played Quidditch at Hogwarts—Hufflepuff, Chaser—and, according to his own self-effacing evaluation, had been “twenty or thirty percent less talented than you needed to be to go pro.”

“But I’m glad I couldn’t, actually,” he said to Harry, voice a pleasant rumble, resonant enough to be heard over the ambient slur of the pub. “I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much if I’d been playing for money. And I love the job I have now, but it’s a job, it’s not like Quidditch. It’s nice to keep the things you do for fun separate from the things you get paid for. You must have felt the same way.”

The thing Harry got paid for was, actually, one of his primary sources of fun. He loved going to work every day. “How do you mean?”

“Do you think we all forgot about how good you were on a broom just because you killed Lord Fuckface?” Tom had a devilish kind of grin. Harry could imagine that it looked very hot when he was barreling at a goalpost at 80 kilometers an hour. “You could have gone pro, if you’d wanted. I just assumed you weren’t interested.”

Harry laughed. “Would you believe that no one recruited me?”

“You’re kidding.”

Harry shrugged. “I never really considered it, anyway. But no, no one asked.” He smiled. “Maybe it was the Lord Fuckface of it all.”

“Huh.” Tom looked at him appraisingly. “Does that happen to you a lot?”

“Not getting asked to play professional Quidditch? Yes, all the time.”

“People assuming that you won’t be interested. Missing their chance, because they’re too afraid to ask.”

The air went charged in a second. They no longer appeared to be talking about Quidditch. “I’m not sure I’m the best judge of that,” Harry said slowly.

Tom’s hand moved closer to his where it rested atop the table. “What does a second date normally look like for you, Harry?”

“Hm.” Harry pretended to think about it. “I’ll be honest with you, Tom. I don’t go on a lot of second dates.”

Tom smiled, satisfied. “Exactly. I bet people are afraid to ask for another date from you. Expect you to take the lead. And just like that, they miss their shot.”

Fingers closer on the table now. They were touching. “I have to say, your argument is a bit defeated by the fact that I asked you for this second date, Tom.”

“Well, yeah. Because you asked me out less than twenty-four hours after our first date. I would have asked you out on my own if you hadn’t been so eager.”

Harry wasn’t embarrassed. He was pleased. “So you say. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“Am I the only one who’s eager here, then?”

“Not at all.” Tom was looking very openly at Harry’s mouth.

Harry stretched back in his chair. “My flat’s very close by.”

“Hmm,” Tom said. “And if I come home with you, do you think you’ll be asking me on a third date? Or is it all in the thrill of the seeking for you, Harry Potter?”

Harry laughed again. “Who’s to say you’ll even want to see me again after coming to my flat? You don’t know what it’ll be like.” Harry leaned in closer, mouth close enough to tickle the edges of Tom’s coarse cheek. He was a few days past a shave, it felt. “For starters, I’m a bit of a slob.”

“You’re right.” Tom waved his wand over the bill, taking care of it. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

“Cheers.” Harry’s grin really was wide. Genuine. “But I wasn’t joking. My place is a mess. I didn’t think I’d be entertaining.”

“I can’t tell if I should feel insulted,” Tom said. “Either you didn’t want to fuck, or you don’t think I’m worth making a fuss over. That stings, Harry.”

The word—fuck—punctured something in the atmosphere; whatever was left of Harry’s indecision whistled out like air from a balloon. Harry considered the man before him, almost anew. Tom was good-looking, he was keen, he was an athlete: this was going to be a bloody fantastic shag.

“I’ll make a fuss over you,” Harry picked up his drink, necked it, and set it back down. He felt good. In control. “Come back to my flat with me and I can get started right away.”

Going back to Harry’s flat was blurry; his vision hazier from the drinks, from desire. The warm summer night stretched out before them like a carpet, leading back to Harry’s; inviting, liquid.

“Do you bottom?” Tom asked, when he had Harry pushed up against the door of his own sitting room, the tops of their shirts already unbuttoned and his tongue painting a hot line between the tendons in Harry’s throat.

“Not usually, no.” It came out a gasp, three punctuated sighs. “Found some quicker ways.”

Tom smiled. “Quicker? Let me guess. You’re mostly getting sucked off in the loos.”

“Mostly,” Harry agreed, still breathless.

“Would you want to?” Tom kissed the side of his neck. “Let me show you how good it can be.” He kissed him again. “I really want to fuck you, Harry.”

“Well.” Harry had assumed he’d get an eager blowjob, maybe a lazy morning rubbing off against each other in his shower, if Tom felt like sleeping over. He pulled back from where Tom was nuzzling at his clavicle. Tom watched him, face wide open, smiling.

“I’m being brave. I’m asking you. Like I said, I don’t think many people do that.”

Harry thought about it. It seemed like the sort of thing that would appease the curse. Non-anonymous, penetrative sex with a serious boyfriend prospect.

“Okay,” he said, leaning in to catch the sharp edge of Tom’s jaw with his teeth. “Show me, then.”

The sun seemed to be shining brighter the next day, and Harry walked into work feeling, for the first time in ages, like the morning wasn’t actively trying to sabotage him, despite the lingering headache from last night’s drinks. Draco was at their desks with two coffees; as soon as he saw the expression on Harry’s face, he frowned.

“I got you a coffee,” Draco said, unnecessarily. Paused. “Things got out of hand the other day—with the sparring. And what I said. Before that.”

Harry waited. “I didn’t actually hear an apology in there.”

“That’s because you’re not getting one. You were being a tosser, too.”

It was familiar to be bickering like this. This was what they did. It was normal; normal was nice. But the emotion sitting in Harry’s stomach didn’t feel nice, really. There was a twist to it, overlarge and uncomfortable. Harry opened his mouth to snipe back, and then felt a stern warning from the curse, dragging and hot like a mean needle on skin. Harry exhaled, and thought of the solid grip of Tom’s thighs. He didn’t need to fight with Draco. He wasn't at the whim of a curse; he was the one in control of this situation.

“Right.” He took the coffee at the desk and sipped at it, grimacing. “You’re not getting an apology either.”

“I don’t require one.”

“Good.” Harry took another sip of coffee. “Any cases today?”

Draco looked confused. “That’s it?”

“What?”

“That’s—I mean, fine. Nothing. Yes, there’s a memo from Misuse of…” Draco stared indecipherably at him. “Why are you in such a good mood? What did you do last night?”

Harry grinned at him over his terrible coffee. “I had a date.”

Draco’s frown deepened. “Since when? With who?”

“Tom Plemmons. From Games and Sports.”

“Isn’t he quite old?”

“Hardly. He’s like, seven years our senior.”

“And still single. That doesn’t exactly recommend him.”

“Most people aren’t child brides like you, Malfoy. There’s nothing abnormal about being single in your thirties.”

“Hmm. Well he’s not exactly your type.”

“What are you on about? He’s gorgeous.”

“He’s so… chesty.”

Harry quirked an eyebrow. Sensing his own advantage slipping, Draco barrelled on. “Never mind that, there’s no accounting for your awful taste. Did you have a nice time?”

“Yeah, it was alright.” This coffee was undrinkable. Harry Vanished the cup and got up for the kitchen. Draco followed. The water in the kettle had gone cold. Harry fired a quick heating charm at it and didn’t realise for a moment that Draco had said something.

“Hm?” Harry said.

Draco was scowling at him. The tap of his foot against the scuffed wood floor was echoing cavernously in the small kitchen, his fingers were white where they gripped at his horrible coffee. “What, are you shy, all of the sudden?”

“What?”

“I asked if the date had led anywhere interesting. It’s not like I care. But it’s unlike you to be such a blushing virgin about it all.”

“Yeah, that’s me, the blushing virgin.” Harry cocked his head at Draco, genuine confusion misting across his brain. “I think you’d like him. He hates that painting in my flat just as much as you do.”

One of Draco’s eyebrows twitched, quick, before he schooled it level. “You brought him back to your flat?”

“Well,” Harry said sarcastically, “of course you know I’m a bit of an exhibitionist, but shagging in the middle of a pub is a bit much, even for me.”

“Oh please, you take it where you can get it, everyone knows that about you.”

“Jesus, Malfoy. What’s crawled up your arse today?”

“Nothing at all. I’m not the one clearly in need of a hangover potion on a Tuesday.”

Harry threw a tea bag into his mug with more force than it needed, and said the next words into the countertop, not looking at Draco. “We fucked. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Draco flinched. “Another one night stand, then? Another mouth to take the Chosen Cock?”

“Well, no.” When Harry turned around, Draco looked mollified. The urge to shock him was building in Harry’s stomach like bile. “Actually, I was the one taking it.”

Draco blinked, and Harry grinned, satisfied. He’d shut him up.

“So what—do you think you’ll be serious with Plemmons? The aging Hufflepuff?”

“Don’t talk about him like you know him.”

“I’d love to get to know him,” Draco said fiercely. “Any friend of Potter’s is a friend of mine.”

“Wonderful,” Harry said. “Maybe I’ll bring him over for dinner on Saturday.”

All of the colour drained from Draco’s face. “You—Good. You should. Yes, that’s—” Draco's mouth opened and closed once. Twice. “Good.”

“Good,” Harry echoed.

They didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the day.

Tom had agreed to Saturday easily. He was so easy, so good. It was good, with him. Relationship-ish. It was going to be a really good dinner.

Even if Harry’s reasons were a bit more convoluted than normal, inviting someone to meet your friends was a very relationship-ish thing to do.

Another very relationship-ish thing to do, Harry reasoned, watching the crown of Tom's head bob efficiently in his lap, was get a blowjob at half five in the afternoon.

"Fuck," Harry breathed. "We're going to be late."

Tom pulled off. Harry watched appreciatively as he flexed his jaw. "I'm not the one holding things up."

Harry laughed, gesturing down at himself. "Go on, then."

Tom redoubled his efforts, and it was—it was really good. It was different, too.

They were in Harry's flat with a plan to meet his friends after. They were having sex while the sun was up, and they were sober. Either one of those alone would be a feat Harry had not accomplished with someone in years.

With a dedicated stroke of his tongue, Tom found the right amount of pressure to apply to the underside of Harry’s cock, and Harry’s balls tightened. Tom was good at this. If they kept doing it, Harry thought, if they kept sleeping together, it would get even better.

As he was coming, Harry was struck by the realisation that they would keep doing this. He wanted to keep doing this, curse or no curse. He liked Tom.

Saying so, pleased and post-coital, would be a bit sappy. He pushed Tom down onto his carpet and set about showing him, instead.

They were very late to dinner.

"Harry!" Neville said, overly cheerful, when he opened the door. "And this must be Tom—come in, come in, we're so glad to meet you."

They followed him in, the bottle of wine (expensive, but Tom had insisted they not show up with swill) in Tom's right hand, the small of Harry's back underneath his other. It was nice, walking into this haven of coupledom with an actual ally for once. Harry turned back to Tom and smiled at him. Tom pinched Harry's side.

When Harry turned back around, Draco was standing in the door to the kitchen. A glower looked like it had been scratched out across his face and redrawn several times over.

"Decided to grace us with your presence at last?" Draco said sweetly.

"Hi," Harry said. "Sorry we're late." The kitchen smelled not-quite right, like another recipe had been abandoned halfway through its preparation. Something abandoned, unwanted. "What's for dinner? It smells great."

"Moussaka," Draco said. "It was meant to be lamb, but apparently life made other plans."

The unhappy expression on Neville's face was beginning to make more sense. "If you wanted lamb, it would have been helpful to know that two days ago, when I went to the butcher." He smiled apologetically at Harry and Tom. “He runs out if you don’t reserve.”

"Is that wine for tonight?" Draco asked, ignoring Neville and moving toward Harry and Tom. “It won’t go with the meal.”

"Draco, this is Tom," Harry said, too loud and too slow. Obvious, to draw attention to the sawtooth edge of Draco’s rudeness.

Draco looked up from Tom's outstretched hand holding the wine bottle, to his face, and then at Harry. His face was blank.

"Yes, hello, Tom. Nice to meet you. Welcome."

"Thanks for the invite," Tom said breezily. When he smiled, his whole face got brighter, more open. It was a good smile. "Sorry about the wine."

"We shall make do," Draco said. Harry glared at him. He had somehow thought that Draco would pull it together for dinner, but he was being even more annoying than he'd been at work.

"Your timing's perfect," Neville insisted. "Dinner's all ready. Shall we eat? Can I open the wine?"

"Shouldn’t we wait for… erm. Is it just us?" Harry asked, taken aback. He hadn't actually intended for this to be an intimate evening with Neville, Draco, and the man he was recently fucking.

"It was just going to be Padma and Ernie, but they cancelled," said Draco. "I hope you don't mind the extra attention. We're so looking forward to getting to know you.”

Harry’s heart sank. Dinner was not going to be good.

The interrogation began in earnest over the starters.

"I'm eating your salad, Potter. It’s full of tomatoes,” Draco announced, and then turned to Tom. "I can’t believe our paths haven't crossed before. Although, not much of an opportunity, come to think of it. You were long gone by the time we started at Hogwarts."

"He'd only just left school the term before our first year," Harry said, teeth gritted. He took a large bite of his salad. Draco’s habit of eating his vegetables, which he had always thought was very funny, suddenly seemed stupid. Harry wasn’t a child. He liked vegetables fine. Across the table, Neville was watching them.

Draco ignored Harry and said to Tom, "What was your house?"

"Hufflepuff."

"Oh," Draco said. He smirked at Harry. "Do you know, Hufflepuff was one of the first things Harry and I talked about, the day we met."

"Yeah, that was a memorable conversation," Harry said. "Malfoy makes a great first impression, I'm sure you've noticed."

“Your partner is protective of you,” Tom said. “I think it speaks highly of you. You’re easy to like.”

“Oh yes,” Draco said sarcastically. “Potter and his famous easy disposition.” He stole another tomato off Harry's plate.

The scrape of a chair made all of them start. Neville had risen to scoop a large serving out of the bowl in the center of the table. Silently, he upended it onto Draco’s dish.

"Sorry," he said, tone flat. "It seemed like you really wanted more salad."

Draco’s neck flushed pink. He set down his fork.

"Tim—" Draco began.

"Tom." There wasn’t any annoyance or malice in Tom’s voice.

"Right, sorry. It's usually not worth keeping track of the names of Potter's paramours."

This comment was clearly intended to embarrass Tom, or Harry, or both of them, but Tom just turned to Harry and winked.

"That's one of the first things Harry and I talked about," Tom said fondly. "On the day that we met."

A delighted, shocked grin pulled at the corners of Harry’s mouth. Draco’s smile got bigger, which rarely meant that he was happy. He didn’t say anything more, though, and the conversation eventually plateaued into the banal sort of small talk that Harry had expected from the evening.

The food tasted like nothing, and Harry’s side was stinging where he was too close to Draco. Moving further away felt like a concession to the curse, so Harry forced himself to wince against the pain, the irritation compounding against his skin. Draco was being such a dick. And that was—fine, actually, when he was doing it to Harry; that’s what they did. He wasn’t used to Draco turning it so strongly on other people, though. The grind of Draco’s rudeness was—it was all wrong, tonight, like nails on metal. It wasn’t private between them, part of their language. It didn't fit, with an audience.

Tom was talking about the World Cup, and dropping very obvious hints that it would be played in Iceland. Harry kept waiting for Draco to interrupt, to share some silly charmed childhood anecdote about the World Cup box seats his father had treated him to, about the make and models of each of Team England’s brooms and how they compared to what he thought suited each athlete's strengths.

Draco, however, was silent.

“Do you both play Quidditch?” Tom asked, swinging open the door of the conversation. He was good at that, Harry had noticed. Inviting people in.

“Sometimes,” Neville said. “I’m rubbish. I didn’t play for the House team, like Draco and Harry did. They play quite often, though.”

“Maybe we could all play together sometime,” Tom said. “I can usually book time in at some of the pro stadiums.”

“That would be great,” Harry said, when Draco didn’t say anything. His face was stony, like he was deliberately keeping it still. “Malfoy and I usually just play Seeker’s games.”

“These two are bloody awful about working out,” Neville added. “Addicted to it.”

That was—Draco was addicted to working out, and he always guilted Harry into coming along with him. Harry liked flying, but he wasn’t a maniac about fitness the way Draco was. He looked to Draco to clarify, to land some jibe about Harry being a horrible gym partner, but Draco stayed quiet.

“Well, with four of us, we could play proper two-a-side,” said Tom.

“Yeah!” Neville said, enthusiastically. He was trying, and Harry smiled tightly at him, grateful for the effort. All three of them turned to Draco, who was wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“I would enjoy that,” Draco said at last, and a relieved exhale decompressed Harry’s chest. He smiled at Draco, a loose, genuine one. Draco nodded, terse, back at him. It was barely anything, but Harry felt grateful for it.

“So, you two didn’t compete against each other at Hogwarts,” Tom said, looking between Draco and Neville. “How did you two start dating? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It was because of Harry,” Neville said. Harry choked on a forkful of cucumber. “He and Draco were partnered together at the Aurors, and once we all saw that Harry didn’t hate him so much anymore, it was easier to give him a chance.”

Harry chewed on his food, thoroughly, so he wouldn’t choke again. That wasn’t how it had happened at all, was it?

“Did you fancy each other at school?” Tom asked.

Neville laughed. “No, not really.”

Draco smiled at him. Affection crinkled the edges of his eyes when he looked at Neville; Harry stabbed his fork at his food, missed, hit the porcelain of his plate. “I was rather evil when I was a teenager.”

“And not evil in the normal teenager kind of way, mind you” Harry added. “Malfoy loves to remind us about all the noble suffering he’s done as an adult to repent for his adolescent sins.”

“Harry,” Neville said. “That’s not—Draco’s past isn’t fair game for jokes like that.”

But Draco was grinning at Harry. “You’re just jealous that someone else had the nerve to be traumatized by the war, Mr Boy-Who-Died.”

“Oh, is that so?” Harry replied.

Draco nodded. “My trauma is feeling very shafted.”

“Your trauma?” Harry said, incredulous.

“Our trauma,” they both said together, automatically. Harry felt the press of Tom’s boot against his under the table, and flinched. They were being—stupid, probably. Rude. Irritating. He had caved to Draco after two seconds of him being a little bit nice. He was too accustomed to the sting of Draco’s barbs; a single inside joke felt like a salve.

The table was silent.

"You get used to it," Neville said at last, to Tom. “Believe me, I've got years' worth of experience." He stood up. “I’ll go fetch the moussaka. Can you help me in the kitchen, Draco?"

Once Draco and Neville were out of the room, Tom leaned closer to Harry and whispered, “You could have given me a heads up that you and your partner used to fuck.”

Harry recoiled. “We did not used to fuck.”

“Then why’s he so jealous?”

“That was just—Draco is just acting like a dick because he’s a dick. He doesn’t do well with change.” Neither of us do, Harry thought.

“Okay,” Tom said, not pushing it. “They’re fighting in there, you know.”

Harry cocked his head. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s how you know they’re fighting. Silencing charms.”

Harry’s face heated. He swigged a hefty glug from his glass. The wine was dry, which was—that was good, right? That was how wine, the right, expensive kind of wine, was supposed to taste. But it left his mouth even more parched after drinking.

The rich smell of veg and cheese was suddenly very strong, and Harry looked up to see Neville standing in the doorway of the dining room. He was holding a steaming tray, and his eyes were over-wide and red.

“Not the first choice, I’m afraid, but it should do,” he said. “Let’s eat.”

Chapter Text

“I think Harry’s living his greatest fantasy, actually,” Ginny said the next weekend, over drinks in the pub. A swath of them had gone out together; Harry tried not to dwell on how much awkwardness could have been avoided if even one of them had bothered to show up to the disastrous double date.

Neville and Draco, in a united front, had Flooed Harry to apologise for dinner. The stress of wedding planning, they’d explained, had made them both short-tempered. Harry had said there was nothing to apologise for, and thought guiltily of the pain that still surged whenever he knocked elbows with Draco at work, at what Tom had said while he was fucking him on Saturday night: I think it’s kind of hot, that he has a crush on you.

When he said it, Harry had come messily, immediately, all over himself.

“What do you mean, his greatest fantasy?” Ron asked. “He’s found a nice bloke with a big broomstick?”

Harry kicked him.

“No,” Ginny said. “I mean he’s finally dating a hot older Hufflepuff. You should have seen him in fourth year: the great Diggory Sexuality Crisis.” Everyone around the table let out scandalised little gasps. “Oh, come off it. Like you didn’t all know. While I was busy mooning over Harry, Harry was mooning over Cedric. He spent all of that year panting after Diggory.”

“Ginny,” Ron scolded. “Have some respect for the dead.”

“And for your Yule Ball date,” Neville said jokingly. “Speaking as the guy you settled for when you couldn’t get the object of your affections.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Men and your precious egos. Who cares who I was mooning after when I was thirteen? Both of you are gay. And anyway, I can’t think of a more respectful way to honour poor Cedric. So, Harry, tell us, is Tom a tribute?”

“Shut up, Ginny,” Harry said, grinning at her. Tom did have a bit of Diggory to him, now that he thought about it. Besides being so good looking, there was also the stabilising weight of confidence he carried about him; it made Harry feel more secure, himself. Cedric had been like that, too: generous with his kindness, like he had so much of it it cost him nothing to give it away.

“What are we talking about?” Draco asked, coming back from the bar. He slid a drink into Neville’s hand and kissed the top of his head. He was being very demonstrative with affection this evening. Harry thought back again to what Tom had said that night: they’re fighting, you know.

“Your boyfriend’s boyfriend,” said Ron.

“Hot Tom,” said Ginny.

Draco wrinkled his nose, but when he spoke, his tone was warm, all the acid from last weekend’s curdle burned off. “I think a nice older man is just what Potter needs to calm him down. Will you be checking him out of the retirement home again tonight? Is he allowed this many excursions? Does he require a physician's note?” Even as he said it, he was twining his fingers between Neville’s.

“Yeah,” Harry said. This was good. They were joking about it. That was a good thing. “But his doctor actually prescribed more shagging, apparently it’s doing wonders for his back pain.”

Ron laughed. “Our Harry, always so charitable.”

“So you’ve let Draco and Neville meet him, and the rest of us are what—chopped gurdyroots?” Seamus said. “We don’t merit an introduction to the only man who’s good enough to date Harry Potter?”

“The only man with low enough standards, more like,” Draco said, brash and performative, to the table. No real bite to it—just a normal Draco ribbing. Neville shushed him affectionately, and everyone laughed. It was all perfectly expected; it was boring, even.

“Now that Harry’s settling down,” Ron said, “does that mean Seamus and Dean will be next? What will the witches of Britain do without you two? Fuck, are we getting old?”

More laughter. Harry let out a breath as the hot spotlight of everyone’s attention swung off of him. This was—this was what Harry liked the most: being surrounded by so many friends he couldn’t hear his own thoughts, the life that he’d built around himself. He could see how someone like Tom could fit into it.

It had all happened as it was supposed to, hadn’t it? Harry had Draco, because of work, and Draco had Neville, because of Harry apparently, and that meant that everyone else accepted Draco, too; Harry opened a door, everyone else had followed him through it. It was like a dance, well-choreographed. Everyone knew their steps. Like any decent dance, it was delicate. It could all come crashing down with one step out of balance. And it wouldn’t just take down Neville and Draco and Harry. The implosion would pull everyone else down, too.

The night surged on, warm and familiar. There was so much safety in this. Harry got a second drink, sipped it slowly. Everything seemed very clear to him now: the way ahead, the path beyond the momentary insanity of the curse.

When he came out of the loo some time later, Draco was standing there. The blink of shock when he saw Harry told him that Draco hadn’t been waiting for him; he’d just needed a piss.

“You’ve been gone for a while,” Draco said. “I thought you might have snuck away to see the ever-fascinating Tom.”

Harry started. All of the rancour in Draco’s voice was back, like earlier at the table had just been a show. Something burned in his gut.

“So,” he spat. “You’ve haven’t actually decided to stop being such a cunt about Tom after all.”

Draco sniffed. “I wasn’t aware you had the exclusive license on being a cunt.”

“Well, no,” Harry said carefully. “I wouldn’t say exclusive. I can rent it out, for a small fee. If you want to be such a dick to the people who care about you, I do have to charge a royalty fee. That’s one of my specialities.”

“I’m not in the mood for your cute little banter.”

“No, you’re just in a mood to ruin every weekend you can because—” Harry peered at him. “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I have no idea why you’re acting like this.”

“Acting like what?”

“Angry at me! Angry that I’m actually trying to fix this thing—which, by the way, I had nothing to do with starting.”

“You had nothing to do with it? You think, what, the ritual just selected you randomly? You think this has nothing to do with how you treat me?”

“How I treat you? Are you joking? You’re the one who’s flying off the handle because I had the nerve to start dating someone.”

“That’s not—”

Another patron of the pub walked by the hall, gawking at them. Harry gritted his teeth. “Come on.” He reached for Draco—but no, the curse; he snatched back his hand—and then turned on his heel and led him to the quieter area by the supply cupboard. He threw up a quick concealment charm for good measure.

“Malfoy,” Harry said. Severe. “Tell me what you’re on about. Stop being a cagey little twat. Be honest with me.”

Draco laughed, a cold, bitter bite out of the atmosphere. “Honest. Right. That’s what you want.”

“What are you talking about? Your stupid family magic went haywire, and I’m trying to keep it from burning us both alive.”

“Went haywire,” Draco repeated. “That’s how you feel.”

“I feel like crap. I feel like my skull’s going to break in half, and my skin’s going to peel off. It’s bullshit, and I just want things to be back the way they were, I just want my partner back, I want things to be like they used to —”

Another cold laugh interrupted him. Heavy, wet, sopping with the drench of disgust and disappointment. “You want things to go back to normal? Well, that’s all I want, too. My life was going quite well, Potter. I’ve done well in my career. My mum is soon to be done with her sentence, and between myself and Augusta she’ll be welcomed back into society. I’m marrying a war hero. I’m partnered with Harry Potter.”

Harry flinched as if Draco had slapped him. “That’s what matters to you, then? That’s why you bother with me?”

“Climb down off your high horse, Saint Potter. You’re the one who’s making demands about honesty. Which is bloody rich, since you’re being intentionally obtuse about everything right now.”

“Oh, now I’m not being honest? And thick, too. Why don’t you just say what you fucking mean, Malfoy, and stop wasting both of our time. I’m tired, and I’m drunk, and I’m done with this.”

Draco’s pale, angry face was a mask. He was looking at Harry with a fury that Harry hadn’t seen in a decade. “You want everything to go back to normal?”

“I do,” Harry insisted. He did. That’s why he was doing all of this, wasn’t it? Avoiding ruffling Draco’s hair like he used to, getting out of sparring, dating. He was trying.

“You’re telling me you don’t enjoy this?” Draco moved closer, and the curse screamed inside Harry’s skull. “You don’t enjoy the fact that there’s more magic singling you out, marking you the most special man of all the men in the whole world? To me?”

The proximity was punishment. Draco kept talking. “Magic doesn’t lie, Potter, no matter how much we’ve been trying to make it. That’s the only thing that’s honest, right now.”

Helpless, Harry stared back at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Of course he wasn’t enjoying this. Of course he wanted the curse to stop.

Something was dancing on the edge of his vision, something darker, meaner, truer than the other thoughts in his head. He blinked, like he could force it away. Draco wouldn’t shut up.

“A curse meant to deter me from straying hurts you. Of all the people in the world, you’re the one it picked.” Closer, now. Harry’s skin burned.

“I haven’t done anything!” Harry protested. Draco was twisting everything around. “I wouldn’t even feel this way if it wasn’t for the curse! I wouldn’t even be thinking about…”—the words rushed out over the broken dam of Harry’s indignation, he couldn’t stop them to be seen before they tumbled over the brink—“Anyway, it’d probably feel like sticking my dick in a power socket, thanks to your lovely family curse…”

“I told you, it’s not a curse—” Draco’s mouth shut tightly as he studied Harry, realisation dawning across his features. Harry hated how well he knew Draco’s face, hated every second in the field that had taught him what every crinkle of Draco’s nose and crease in his brow and pressed-lip smile meant. “And it doesn’t create feelings. You wouldn’t be thinking about what, exactly?”

Harry had said it. He’d let it out of his chest and put it on the floor between them, and now it was there, throbbing like a heartbeat.

“I should leave,” he said.

“You should,” Draco agreed.

Neither of them moved.

Harry swallowed. “I’m going.” He stayed still.

Then Draco leaned forward and kissed him, and the universe exploded.

Chapter Text

Once, Harry had been hit with a hex so strong that it set off a seizure. He didn’t remember it, but he recalled the dead faint that preceded it. So the weightless, uncontrolled vertigo, the about-to-meet-the-ground feeling he had now was familiar. The pain had sublimated into something without gravity; it was almost beyond sensation, it existed before feeling, it was remaking Harry from the inside.

Harry was not unfamiliar with pain. Harry had been burned, Crucioed, almost drowned. His nose and ribs had been broken; he’d regrown every bone in his arm.

None of it hurt as much as Draco kissing him. The places their mouths were touching were raw nerve endings, flayed open. Harry’s desire was a chemical burn crawling across his skin, a chain reaction igniting rivers of fire inside his veins.

And Harry endured it, he dug his fingernails into it. He leaned eagerly into the pain and let it burn through him, and past it he tasted Draco’s lips, he felt the inside of Draco’s cheek with his tongue, he grabbed the back of Draco’s neck and pulled him closer.

They kept chasing it. Draco’s hands seared along his jaw, burning with the curse, with the volcanic surge of Harry’s longing. The slide of Draco’s mouth was hot, too; greedy, Harry drew Draco’s breath into his own lungs and felt it burn. He breathed deeper.

When they broke apart, gasping, Harry had to lean his arm against the wall next to Draco’s head to avoid keeling over. Draco’s mouth looked rubbed raw, almost blistered. He knew it was going to hurt so much, and Harry did it anyway, lifting his hand to the place where Draco’s skin was angry and bare. His touch couldn’t have been soothing. Draco pressed in anyway.

“Fuck,” he said.

“Malfoy.”

“No.” Draco pulled away. “No. I have to—we can’t—”

“Malfoy,” Harry said again, but Draco was already out of the shield of Harry’s spell, being swallowed back into the crowd. Draco’s fiancé was turning, solid and sure, towards him.

The need to pursue Draco, to grab him again and keep him from moving, abruptly died. Neville was circling Draco in his arms. Draco whispered something into his ear and Neville nodded, concern sketching worried lines across his face. He took Draco’s hand.

And then without looking back at Harry, Draco was gone.

Monday arrived. Sleep had been scarce since Saturday. The night played on a ceaseless loop, coloring the black backs of his eyelids. The accusations in Draco’s voice. Draco’s leg wrapped around Neville’s ankle at the table. The taste of Draco’s tongue.

He’d tried to reach him. The Floo had been blocked, and Harry’s owls came back with his letters undelivered. He’d instructed his owl not to deliver any post unless Draco was alone, and tried not to dwell on the thought of Neville and Draco together, all weekend, wrapped up in each other. The thought sent his stomach roiling, his skin itching. He was no longer sure what was the curse and what was—him.

It shouldn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.

Because Draco was engaged. To Neville. Because what happened between them was wrong. It was dangerous. It was stupid.

It was the only thing Harry could think about.

For the first time that Harry could remember, he arrived at work earlier than Draco. He sat dumb at their desk, unsure what to do with his body, awkward suddenly in the familiar room. He should have a coffee waiting for Draco, like Draco always did for him. He should have gotten Draco more coffees before this. The way you treat me, Draco had said.

They didn’t see each other until the ten a.m. briefing. Harry felt Draco enter the room and his body moved on its own, turning towards Draco; flinching from the scolding bite of pain and fighting to stay in his seat all at once. Draco sidled in with murmured apologies to Robards, sliding into a seat on the opposite side of the room. Harry couldn’t see anything else, couldn’t focus on anything Robards was saying.

“Potter!” Robards snapped. “Did you hear me?”

Harry shook his head. “Er—sorry—what?”

“I’m assigning you and your partner surveillance. Take the squad car. You’ll pose as Muggles.”

“Yeah,” Harry said quickly. Clarity hit, then. In the cramped squad car, Draco wouldn’t be able to avoid him.

Draco didn’t protest. Across the long mahogany table, he looked horrible, and lovely. The bags under his eyes were purple and deep. He hadn’t slept much either, it seemed.

In less than a half hour, they were seated next to one another. Alone. The warehouse stood before them, the only ostensibly occupied building on the derelict street. There were hardly any city sounds, apart from the occasional rattle of rubbish bins in the wind. They might have been the only people on earth.

The car smelled like old fish and chips. Harry cast Draco’s air-freshening spell out of habit, and when he looked up, Draco was watching him trace the familiar wandwork through the air. His eyes were hungry.

Harry cleared his throat. “Fancy listening to the radio?”

“Not really,” Draco answered. Then he leaned forward and pointed his wand at the dial to turn it on. The car was turned off, but with the aid of magic, the music streamed in. It must have played whatever radio station it had been tuned to last.

“So,” Harry said. “I guess we should talk.”

Draco barked out a hollow laugh.

“Certainly.”

“I just—” Something in the seat was digging into Harry’s back. “I can barely think straight. I haven’t been able to sleep in weeks. I feel like shit. Worse than shit.”

“I know,” Draco said. “It’s this fucking spell.” His voice was picking up speed—hysteria; the makings of a classic Draco rant. “My bloody mother. I swear she’s getting back at me for something. She says she and Dad did this ritual before they got married, too, but I think she’s lying.”

“Is Neville suffering, too?”

Draco looked over at him. “You know he’s not.”

Harry bit his lip. “Yeah.” He let his head thump back against the seat, staring miserably up at the roof of the car. “I know.”

Saying Neville’s name had broken something open in the space between them. Harry noticed then how little he and Draco usually talked about Draco’s boyfriend—his live-in boyfriend. His fiancé. That was weird, wasn’t it? It wasn’t normal that Harry and Draco had nine-thousand inside jokes, that they spent more time with one another than they did with anyone else; it wasn’t normal to be this co-dependent with your work partner; the way Harry felt about Draco wasn’t fucking normal at all.

“Does it hurt right now?”

Draco lifted his wand arm, as if trying to study the reactions of his own magic. “Not really. The headache, like usual. But so long as we’re not touching, it’s bearable.”

“Yeah. Same for me. I feel a bit foggy. Slow.”

“Hmm. But how is the spell affecting you, Potter?” Draco rolled his head over the side, half a smile twisting his thin lips up, and Harry felt it slam into his solar plexus, and he thought, fuck, fuck, fuck, and pain went off like a firework wedged between his ribs.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Harry cleared his throat. “Sometimes I can be near you and it’s fine. But sometimes it’s like I just have to think something when you’re around—”

Hunger again, scrawled all over Draco’s face. A long pause before he said, “Yes. I’ve noticed that, too. If I mean to get closer to you, the curse can tell. But it doesn’t seem to punish—thoughts.” He cut himself off with a cough.

“Have you tested that theory?” Harry asked. “Tried thinking… things, to see if it sets the curse off.”

“It’s not a curse.”

“Right.” Harry waited to see if Draco would go on. When he didn’t, Harry said, “I have.”

“Is that so?” Draco sounded very polite, very posh. This was the tone of voice he adapted when they were interviewing hostile witnesses, or suspects.

Harry wasn’t a suspect. He cut to the chase. “I thought about you while I was wanking.”

Draco went very still. “What?”

“I wanted to see how the magic would react.” That was only half a lie. After they sparred, Harry hadn’t cared so much about the magic; he’d just been impossibly hard, unable to stop himself.

Draco shifted in his seat. Harry watched from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t look quite at Draco. He couldn’t stop talking. “Do you want to know what happened?”

Draco hummed, softly, almost warm.

“No pain,” Harry said. “A normal wank.”

“Except you were thinking about me.”

Harry finally looked Draco in the face. He held Draco’s stare, noticing the dilation of his pupils, cataloging every change in Draco’s body. “Like I said. A normal wank.”

Draco didn’t have anything to say to that. Harry kept going. “Why did you kiss me?”

A sigh.

“Because for the first time in my entire life, you looked like you wanted me to.”

A truth, offered from Draco this time. Not carved out and thrown carelessly between them, as Harry had done on Saturday, but submitted intentionally; honest. Braver than Harry had been.

“I did want you to,” Harry agreed.

Draco sighed again, a helpless, involuntary noise.

“I want you to right now.”

“Harry—I don’t want to hurt you.”

Not we shouldn’t. Not we can’t. I don’t want to hurt you.

"If we—" Harry's voice was coming very low. Breathing required substantial effort. The windows of the car were foggy, veiled with layers of their shared breath and almost-confessions. "If we don't actually make contact, do you think we—"

"Harry," Draco said again. It might have been a question. Harry peered at him. Draco's hair was falling into his eyes—he hadn't cut it in a few weeks. Longer than he usually let it go. He'd been slipping. Harry had been watching him fall apart; he'd just been too busy crumbling himself to notice it.

He could see Draco clearly now.

The two of you aren't fooling anyone. They had, though. They'd been fooling themselves. Harry had been fooling himself.

A question was hanging in the balance between them, words that needed to be said, and Harry couldn’t find the courage to voice them, wasn’t even quite sure what he was supposed to say. Everything was blurring by, a whole landscape racing past the car window.

But doing nothing, at this point, was an equally impossible action. So Harry acted.

He’d been hard since Malfoy started talking about kissing him; the sound of Draco's voice was enough. More than. The pressure of his cock against his trousers was a different, but at least more familiar ache; another part of him trapped, another desire caged.

He brought his fingers to his belt. Slowly, watching Draco the whole time, he drew it out of the catch of its buckle.

"Tell me to stop," he said.

"No," Draco breathed. "Don't stop."

It was impossible to keep from watching Draco; at the way his gaze had gone dark and heavy, the way he watched Harry back. All of that control, perfect Draco and his perfect image, perfect reformed little Death Eater who never did anything he wasn't supposed to do: Harry was peeling that away now, and Draco, finally, the real, bare Draco was staring right at him.

Harry’s hand moved on its own, finding the warm length of his own cock, drawing it out of his trousers.

"Potter," Draco said. Pained.

"Is—is it the curse?"

"No." Draco swallowed. "I want—I wish I could touch you."

"Touch yourself," Harry said. "For me."

It happened so quickly—Draco's robes pushed open, and then his cock was in his hand, too.

"God, Malfoy." Harry's voice was stupid and thick. Draco began to wank himself, and Harry’s heart poured out of his mouth. "How are you beautiful everywhere?"

He tore his eyes away from Draco's lap and looked at his face, pink already from the humid air in the car, glowing darker under Harry's words. Harry was doing this to Draco. Perhaps he couldn't touch him, but still: the burn of Draco's skin belonged to him.

“Ruck your shirt up,” Harry said, between pants. “I want to see your abs.”

Draco groaned, pushing his shirt up with his elbow while he kept working his cock. His stomach wasn't anything Harry hadn't seen before, and pretended not to see, pretended not to notice the slight valley of it beneath the arch of his ribcage. Now it was fluttering rapidly with the pulsing beat of Draco's breath while the tip of Draco’s cock brushed against the fair hair trailing down from his navel.

“Fuck, further, push your shirt up more…. Your fucking… your fucking nipples…” Harry knew they were pierced, because Draco had gotten it done when they were twenty and stupid and trying to prove something, and Harry hadn’t said anything, swallowed the questions thick on his tongue. Did it hurt? What does it feel like when someone’s tongue—

Draco pushed his shirt up further, up his lean hard chest to show his nipples, pale and petal-pink and pushed through with barbells. His shirt was so tight that it stayed where he’d pushed it, taut across his chest, all the reminders on Draco’s body that he could deal with pain—the piercings, the curling tattoos—and the older proof it, too, the scars Harry had put there, that he'd always seen sideways, a truth he couldn't bear to look at.

Anyone who touched Draco would see those scars and know Harry had gotten there first. Draco could marry Neville, and Neville would still have to look at the scars Harry had put there every time he fucked his husband.

He looked at the claim now, and he wanted to taste it. Harry felt his heart in his cock, thrumming hard as he stared at Draco’s body, at the story of Draco’s life etched across it, at the only thing Harry ever fucking wanted to see again. Draco could tolerate pain, it was written on his chest. If Harry touched him now—

“You too,” Draco said, cutting through the static in Harry’s mind. “Get your shirt off.”

Off, off, of course, he could take it off, why hadn’t Harry asked Draco to take his off? It felt like he’d used up his turn, though, so he didn’t say anything, just paused stroking himself to pull his t-shirt over his head. Draco groaned.

"God. Malfoy. You're—" Harry bit down on the inside of his cheek. Pain bloomed from between his teeth, the normal kind; nothing was doing this to him but himself, himself and Draco, and the sight of Draco's wet, panting lips and the sweat falling in glittering pearls down his neck and his stiff pink cock disappearing and reappearing in the tight grip of his fist.

"You look so fucking fit, you drive me insane—"

"Fuck, Harry, I… "

"Yeah—slow down, I want to see your cock, show it to me, let me see."

Draco cursed again, his hand slowing. He let go of his cock, and both of them looked down at it, the pumping blood-red hardness of it, the single wet drop at the tip.

"I'm so close," Harry said.

"Yeah, I—me, too."

"Keep going, then," Harry said. "Finish yourself off, let me see you come."

"No," Draco said, and Harry felt the word like a lance through his chest. But then Draco said, "I need to see you first, I can't miss it, if I come I won't be able to concentrate, and I—I need to see it, can you come for me, Harry, can you show me, please, show me—"

There was no stopping it now. The words tumbled out of his mouth, slurry and dumb, unpolished, surely not sexy, "Yeah, fuck, Malfoy, yes, I'm coming, fuck—it's for you—"

And he was, he was coming all over the Ministry-issued Ford Fiesta that was covered in coffee stains, relics from all the other wasted moments they’d sat side by side in here, anywhere, not doing this. Harry came with his eyes screwed shut and the air punched out of his lungs into the shape of Draco's name.

When he looked up, he found he'd missed it—Draco had come, too, he was already vanishing the mess away with his wand. Loss—that was the sinking feeling in his stomach. He’d missed it.

“Do you think we could—” Harry reached a hand out, and Draco snatched his back, and something in Harry’s chest was crushed, like a bird wrapped in a fist.

“No,” Draco said. “I feel too good to feel bad right now. I couldn’t stand it.”

“Right,” Harry said.

“But—” Draco simply looked at him, and Harry wanted to kiss him so badly his tongue hurt with it. “I have an idea. It’s—I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

“What is it?”

Draco shook his head, cheeks aflame. He’d gone all blushing when he came, and the stain of it was still all over him, dyeing him like a drop of blood in a pool of water. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and Draco’s eyes flared. “I trust you more than I trust myself.”

A sigh escaped Draco’s lips. Harry would have liked to bottle it. “Then lean your head back. Don’t move.”

Draco shuffled to his knees, more than a little awkwardly, then half-crawled over the gearstick between them, until his face was only a few inches from Harry’s.

“Harry,” Draco said, his voice sliced a little on the edge of it, bleeding with want. Harry didn’t care if it killed him, he had to touch him, he had to tell him.

“Malfoy, I—”

“Don’t. Stay still. Open your mouth.”

The words sputtered out in his throat. Harry opened his mouth; his jaw creaked a little when he did. Draco’s gaze flitted down to it, like he was mapping Harry’s face with his eyes instead of his fingers.

Then Draco leaned impossibly closer, the edges of the curse flexing, as if preparing to protest. But Draco stopped at the boundary, the forcefield they both could sense well enough to protect. Instead, Draco closed his eyes, gentle, soft, and then he spit into Harry’s mouth.

Harry felt it on his tongue before he fully registered that Draco had done it, and then he moaned before he could think to stop himself, and he grabbed at his own softening cock because he couldn’t grab for Draco, even though Draco was right there, and he was Harry’s, he had Harry’s marks all over him, and Harry belonged to him, too; he had Draco’s sounds and spit and heat in his mouth. They belonged to each other. When Draco’s eyes opened Harry swallowed it, watching Draco study the movements of his throat.

“Any pain?” Draco asked, eyes big enough in his face that they looked like planets. Harry felt the weight of his stare like gravity.

“No,” Harry said, then, “Yes.”

Draco frowned. “Really? I don’t—“

Harry brought a hand up to his chest, feeling the old scars there. He still wasn’t wearing his shirt.

“It—nevermind. Fuck.”

They stared at one another.

The right thing to do would have been to say something honest.

“So what do you think would happen if you came on my face,” is what Harry said instead.

“I don’t know,” Draco answered. “Fuck. I want to find out.”

Harry closed his eyes. “Yeah. This—uh. Certainly doesn’t clear things up.”

A croaking, humourless laugh. “Do you think we missed those criminals we were supposed to be surveilling?”

“I don’t really fucking care,” Harry breathed.

“No,” Draco said. “Neither do I.”

Another moment dragged itself past. Harry couldn’t see anything ahead of them. Everything had been planned out, everything had been fine; it had worked, the way it was. Everything was different, now.

“What are we going to do?” Draco asked.

Harry laid his head on the steering wheel, wiping off the mess with his sleeve. “God, Malfoy. I really don’t fucking know.”

Chapter Text

The strangest part, after what happened between them in the car, was that nothing really changed. They went to work. Harry kept seeing Tom. At family dinner, the engagement plans were discussed with excitement and good-humoured anxiety. The world continued as it had.

But underneath it, now, was something else. Nothing in their old lives had been replaced, or exchanged, but the space of their existence had expanded to let in something new. Or possibly something old, something that had been there all along, something they’d kept folded in between their jokes and the synchronized work routines, something that happened now in the broom cupboard at the office, in the squad car parked on back alleys, in the twenty minutes between when Draco got home from work and when Neville got back from dinner with Hannah Abbott.

They never talked about it. Since the first time, in the car, they hadn’t broached the question again—what are we going to do?

What they were going to do, apparently, was keep pretending everything was the same. Keep stealing an hour every day to wank themselves off while they watched each other, starving and half-satisfied, and never touching.

Two weeks passed. Another. On Thursday night, an owl knocked against Harry’s window. It was a nothing sort of Thursday; he’d eaten dinner cold, and his living room was still full of beer cans he needed to clean up.

The owl was familiar—Draco’s. Blood rushed to the surface of Harry’s skin, and the last swig of his beer went tasteless in his mouth. The delivered letter was brief, written in a careful slope, ink bright and black against the parchment.

Free. Alone. Floo?

He could almost picture the shadow of Draco’s hands, spilling out the words. Buzzing static roared his ears. He was kneeling in front of his fireplace before he finished tracing the final punctuation, pressing down against the question mark which loped elegantly against the open, asking mouths of his letters.

“Hey,” Harry said, when Draco’s head came into view through the flames.

“Hi.”

Alone, the note had said. “Where’s, um…?” Harry trailed off, looking at Draco helplessly. The name felt stuck in his throat.

“At his gran’s,” Draco supplied. “She had some garden project that took all day and still isn’t done, so he’s staying over tonight to finish in the morning.”

The floor was unyielding on Harry’s knees. Tension coiled in his jaw.

“Why’d you call?” Harry said.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you in pain?” Harry asked quickly. The thought broke through the dam of his own willful ignorance—what if the curse was finally taking notice of the loophole they’d slipped through?

“No,” Draco said. “Not any more than usual. You?”

Harry shook his head. “No.” He shifted. “No, it doesn’t hurt right now.”

Draco nodded. “I think this will be even… easier. Because we’re not actually near each other.” He gestured between them. “It’s not real.”

Not real. Draco’s face was right there: the deep line in his cheek, the dusting of his eyelashes.

“It feels real,” Harry said. Soft.

“I know,” Draco said. “But—I was thinking. Because we aren’t actually close. We could probably… try something.”

Harry’s pulse was a pounding hammer. “Like what?”

“That depends,” Draco said, leaning further into his fireplace. His chin was practically resting on the coals. “What do you want me to do?”

So far they’d just wanked next to each other. The dreamlike fog it conjured blurred out the rooms beyond the closed-cupboard doors. Neither had stopped to ask for more, for anything different. What else could there be? Nothing else beyond the bright bloom of Draco’s face mattered.

Harry swallowed. Draco had asked him a question.

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. The pain of the magic had ground Harry’s fantasies down to mundane particles. Lately, he was getting off to the fall of Draco’s hair across his face, the gleam of light off a platinum barbell, the steam of breath against a window sweating with summer. The quill that lived on both and neither of their desks that Harry sometimes picked up and found still warm from the clasp of Draco’s fingers.

“You said you let Tom fuck you,” Draco said.

“Yeah,” Harry said.

“Is that how you like it?” Draco asked.

He shrugged. “It’s how Tom likes it. I don’t not like it.” The idea of sex with Tom felt as fanciful right now as the world beyond this room. Despite the fact that Harry could touch him, and had, and would again, in this moment, Tom was so much less tangible than Draco’s magic-projected face in the fire.

“I wondered,” Draco said. “It’s just—you said something else, to me.”

“What?”

“You said you—” Even in the orange-limned light of the Floo, Harry could see the sunset stain of Draco’s rising blush. “You said something that implied you’d want to be the one. Doing the fucking.”

Like sticking my dick in a power socket, Harry had said. He hadn’t even known the words coming out of his mouth; he hadn’t let himself acknowledge then that he wanted to fuck Draco.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I guess—I mean, I’d like anything. But yeah I have—I have wondered. What you’d feel like.” Another dry swallow. “Inside.”

“I wish you could feel it.”

Fuck. “Me too.”

“I could show you.”

The words were a crack. A fissure opened in Harry’s stomach, exposing a chasm that must have always been there, waiting. So deep now that he had to close his eyes against it, swaying back on his knees against the yawning depth of his own longing.

When he spoke, every syllable came out parched. “Yeah. Yes. Fuck. Show me.”

“Alright.” Draco moved to undo his trousers.

“Wait—” Harry choked out. “All of them. Take all your clothes off. I want to see all of you.”

The Floo was utilitarian, cumbersome. Not engineered for sex. Nothing about this should be hot, not really. To show his body, Draco had to step back from the Floo, forcing Harry to squint. The lines of ink on Draco’s arms and chest went fuzzy as he backed away. The pain in Harry’s knees was only getting worse, and a dull, inflexible ache was beating at the base of his spine.

The hearth drowned him in heat. Before he pulled it off, Harry’s shirt was heavy on his chest, stuck with sweat. Even bare-chested, he was overwarm.

He was hard against his thigh, and Draco was naked, now. Dark crossing lines—flowers, mostly, because he was a sap—twisted across his body. And then Draco muttered a few words, a summoning spell, and something caught the edge of Harry’s vision like a Snitch, zipping into Draco’s hand.

Draco knelt down, facing away from the hearth. The whole of Harry’s vision was consumed by the lower half of Draco’s torso. He was just on the wrong side of too far from the flames, but Harry couldn’t ask him to get closer. His arse must be burning as it was.

“Can you see?” With his back turned, Draco’s voice was muffled. Harry tried to breathe quieter.

Harry’s face flamed with the awkwardness, with the need to keep going. “Um, sort of. I can—I can only see part of,” he forced out the clumsy rest, “of your arse.”

The shape of Draco shifted; he rose onto his heels, pitching himself forward a few inches. It would be harder on his thighs like this. There would be pain tonight, anyway. But now all of him was in view—the soft curves of his arse, the shadow it made, the jut of his cock between his thighs.

The thing Draco had summoned was suddenly in his hand. “Can you see this?” came his voice, disembodied. Of course, Harry had known what it would be—he’d asked to see, and Draco wanted to be fucked. The toy was in his house, which meant he’d probably bought it with Neville. For Neville. Because of Neville’s giant dick, probably. Draco probably needed all this fanfare to take it.

None of those facts made Harry want to stop.

“What should I do?” Harry hated how far away Draco sounded.

“Just—show me what you like. Tell me how it feels.”

It didn’t take long; Draco clearly did this often enough that he was practiced in efficiently opening himself up, talking the whole time. Nonsensical, almost bland. The head of the toy was nudging into Draco’s hole, though Harry couldn’t see it clearly enough through the fire. Harry gripped his cock.

It was good that Draco was doing this over the Floo. If there had been even the most remote possibility that Harry could actually touch him, he would have grabbed him by the fistful, his face would probably be buried in Draco’s arse. Sweat pooled at his throat and under his arms.

He couldn’t stop the words from coming out. “You couldn’t do this if we were really together—I think the curse would fucking kill me, I want to touch you so badly.”

“What would you do?” Draco gasped. “If you were here. If you could.”

“I would fuck you,” Harry said, voice thick. There was no art to it. He had never been especially accomplished at this kind of talk; his tongue was heavy in his mouth. Draco was propped on his ankles and his elbows, miles of milk-white skin on display, panting himself pink with a fucking dildo in his arse, and all Harry could do was stare through the fire and grunt at him. “I wouldn’t stop touching you, if I could.”

“Here?” Draco said. He bent further forward. Wet smears of lube streaked the insides of Draco’s thighs, catching the firelight. The toy must be almost all the way in him now. “Like this?”

“Yeah, fuck, of course—”

“And you’d fuck me.”

Harry swallowed. “Yeah. I’d fuck you. I’ll put whatever you want inside you, so long as it’s me you’re taking it from.”

Draco’s body quivered in the fire. “I want it to be you,” he said, or Harry thought he said. It was harder to hear him, his mouth must have been close to the floor, his abs must have given up the fight.

Stunned, words stolen, stupefied, Harry just watched while Draco fucked himself; for once symptomless, no curse-borne pain bursting behind his skin.

But the ache was there all the same. Not just in the twinge in Harry’s back, or the complaint in his knees from the hardwood, but in the pit of his stomach, in the cavity around his heart. Harry wanted to fuck Draco, yes, but he also wanted to ease his discomfort, to put a pillow under Draco’s knees. He wanted to wipe away the sweaty hair that was falling in Draco’s face. Really, he’d just like to hold Draco’s fucking hand.

“I’m coming,” Draco said, “you’re making me come.”

Harry’s dick was flagging. He hadn’t even touched it yet. His chest was bursting, and he wanted Draco so badly he could feel it in his scalp. All at once, it wasn’t enough at all; it wasn’t even close.

“Are you coming?” Draco panted, and Harry’s heart cracked.

“I finished,” he lied.

“Good,” Draco rasped, murmuring a spell. It must have cleaned him up. “Fuck. I should—I need to—I have to make another call.”

To Neville, he didn’t say. Didn’t have to say.

“Okay,” Harry said.

“I’ll be alone all morning,” Draco said. “I could Floo you again—”

“No,” Harry said. He didn’t want this again. He only wanted Draco in front of him. The pain was worth it. “Come over tomorrow.”

“In the morning?” Draco bit his lip. “I should be here when he gets home.”

“We’re wizards, aren’t we? Apparition has to be good for something.”

Draco’s face was a mess. He was still naked, kneeling in front of the fire. There was soot on the side of his neck. Draco had done this for him, knelt in ash for him. His fingers itched to pull Draco out of the hearth.

“Please,” Harry said. “Please just come here.”

“Okay,” Draco said. “I’ll be over in the morning.”

There was nothing else to say. The awkwardness expanded; any longer and it would be sentient.

“Sleep well,” Harry said, and cut the Floo connection.

Draco put in his notice at work. It would be months before he and Neville left for Hogwarts, but they had, apparently, decided that it was enough of a certainty to warrant setting the grinding gears of Auror bureaucracy into motion.

They talked less, much less, now that they were doing… whatever it was they were doing. Harry found out about Draco’s resignation at the ten a.m. briefing, delivered, like so many of Robards’ morning instructions, through a heavy torrent of spittle and swears. He avoided looking over at Draco when Robards said the words.

By this time next year, Draco would be gone. Harry tried to imagine it: coming to work and finding Draco’s cramped desk occupied by a stranger, eating lunch instead with Junior Auror Hughes. Running sparring drills with him, maybe. Eventually it would probably feel almost normal. He thought of lying in his bed as a teenager, scouring a piece of parchment for Draco’s name, seeing it vanish. It probably wouldn’t be like that, really; watching for Draco and never seeing him, the skipped-stair lurch of finding a familiar space left unoccupied. Harry was older now, and anyway, it’s not like he didn’t know where Draco was going. Back to Hogwarts. Back to the only place that had felt like home to Harry, where he’d felt he belonged, until, well.

Noon found them crowded into the same stall of the toilets on the least-used floor of the Ministry, a locking spell welding the door shut and a charm cast to vanish their feet. He watched Draco’s face twist, his eyes searing shut, a sad trickle of come spilling out of the slit of his cock. They’d already done this once, today, after all—Draco had sent him a letter that just said, Be at work an hour early, and he’d cornered Harry against the wall of an alleyway outside the ministry, bags of rubbish on either side of them, Draco’s arms caging Harry’s head, not touching, while he watched Harry get himself off, then finished himself off while Harry panted down at the pretty curve of Draco’s red cock.

There was so little space between them in the toilet stall that it was difficult not to touch, but they were well practiced at it by now. Like duelling. They anticipated one another’s movements: when Harry’s elbow crooked up, moving faster as he pulled himself off, Draco leaned back further into the wall, giving them another centimetre of distance, limiting their contact to his breath on Harry’s neck. He was a good height for this sort of thing, they were good heights for this.

“So,” Harry said, when they were done. “Twice in one day.”

Draco was already moving away from him, trousers done up, slamming open the door of the stall and striding to the mirror to straighten his hair and cast a litany of freshening charms on his clothes. He found something interesting to examine in the pores of his face and didn’t look at Harry. “Is that a problem for you, Potter?”

Harry got cold and shivery after he came; he liked to be held. The gulf between him and Draco was a solar system. Harry finished tucking himself away. “It just seems like you—like you want to say something to me. But you’re doing”—he gestured between them, at Draco’s fingers doing up the buttons on his shirt—“this, instead.”

“What would you like me to say?” Draco asked, whirling around. He leaned back against the sinks, the line of his cheek deepening, and Harry stepped closer. They both winced when the curse protested the proximity.

Draco watched him, face open, cheeks high and flushed. Waiting for Harry to speak.

“Nothing.” The words died in his throat. “Congratulations,” Harry said, knowing that it would wrench another flinch from Draco. “On your thrilling new role as Hogwarts Trustee.”

Draco’s face shuttered. “Thank you.” He twirled his wand, and the lock on the door came unstuck. Draco walked out without looking back.

In September, the wedding invitations went out. Harry woke up to an alabaster dove shitting on the inside of his windowsill, paper thick with the weight of a future clutched in its beak.

It was a Wednesday; he and Draco didn’t talk about the invitations, though some of their coworkers complimented Draco on the curve of the calligraphy and the grain of the paper, whatever that was.

At lunch, they slammed themselves into the supply cupboard. They’d not-fucked enough places in the office that it had taken on the feeling of a habit. Harry chased it with the rank clutch of addiction; he was never left satisfied, it only ever grew worse. And he couldn’t stop.

Wednesdays, especially, were hard. Wednesday nights were the duelling club. Gangs of little kids, armed with practice wands, learning defensive spells at one percent potency, laughing in glee when Harry and Neville demonstrated actual magic, alternately worshipful and nonchalant. It was the only time of the week he and Neville were alone together.

Around Neville, the absence of Draco cast a long shadow across them both, reminding Harry vividly of the things he had recently gained but couldn’t keep: the way Draco’s eyes couldn’t stay open when he came, the heat of his breath spilling out Harry’s name.

That evening he and Neville ran the kids through warm up drills. The actual lesson part of the club took up about ten minutes, the remaining thirty two mostly consisted of the kids running and screaming enough that they would be tired when their parents came to pick them up. Sometimes, Harry and Neville sparred—a small, toothless duel—but they were both good enough that it was enough to make them sweat a little.

Neville didn’t ask if Harry wanted to spar today. He was being his usual self: accommodating, warm, polite. He was a really good person, a good friend. Harry kept trying to look Neville in the eye, and then losing his courage and finding instead the side of Neville’s scalp, the grown-in scruff of his beard. Neville was a little taller than Harry; the kids liked him better for it. In this room, Neville was the authority. No wonder he’d been made the professor.

“How’s the end of the summer treating you, Harry?” Neville asked him, while they perched on the bleachers, watching the little monsters do laps around the room. Harry took a long sip of water.

“Great,” Harry said, tonelessly. “Really great. I—er. I think the new trainee class is good. Maybe Draco’s told you. Not as big a bunch of idiots as we usually get.”

“He said so, too,” Neville agreed. “Has he asked you to be the best man yet?”

“Er. No.” Another sip of water. Harry reached for a joke. “Zabini gave a pretty good speech at your engagement party, though. I didn’t realise we were meant to prepare an audition, otherwise I would have rehearsed.”

“Slytherins,” Neville said wryly. “They’re always practising some performance.”

Harry made himself laugh.

“You know,” Neville said, and his tone was so casual that it stopped Harry’s heart; so casual that it couldn’t be anything but studied. “Something odd happened when I came home on Friday morning the other week.”

Harry hummed. The gears of his ribcage started to grind, circle, like machinery whirring to life, igniting the emotion that had been lying in wait: fear.

“I’d just been at my gran’s,” Neville continued. “Helping her with the garden. And I had this feeling like—like I didn’t want to go home. Because I knew when I got home, something was going to be wrong. Of course, I told myself I was being a tit, and I went home, and you know, it wasn’t like the place was on fire. But. Draco wasn’t there.”

A foundation was being laid in the sentence; a case was being built. Harry was an Auror, he knew how an interrogation worked. He knew what words were accusations even before they had taken on the slant.

“We haven’t had sex in almost a month.” Tone still casual, but rolling, gaining steam. “I thought it was, y’know, the wedding. The stress. Maybe work. It seemed dramatic, to care. To even bring it up. But—there’s other things, too. A jumpiness. He can’t stop rubbing at his hands, his chest. I thought maybe he was allergic to something—I’ve switched laundry detergents twice this summer. Hasn’t made a difference.”

“Oh,” Harry said.

“Yeah,” Neville said back to him. And then, “Are you fucking my husband?”

Inside Harry’s ribcage, the gears shuddered to a stop, snapped; his bones came unstuck from themselves, his lungs constricted into the opening chasm of panic. His breath tripped on its way in.

He shook his head. “I’m—we’re not—” He swallowed around nothing, a poor method of bringing oxygen into his collapsing lungs, but it kept him standing. He tried to smile. “Your husband? Since when?”

Neville’s mouth twisted. He smiled. “My fiance, then. Are you fucking him?”

“No,” Harry said, overloud. But firm. Convincing. “I’m not.”

Neville was peering at him with his handsome, honest face open all the way—no guile. No anger, even. Just the question, still hanging in the air.

Harry scratched at the edge of his thumb, caught a fingernail on a flayed scrap of cuticle, ripped at it. Pain bloomed. His voice was firmer when he insisted. “I am not fucking Draco. I swear.”

They weren’t. What they’d done—they hadn’t even touched. They hadn’t declared anything for each other. It was a hideous limbo, it was so much worse than it had been before. Harry couldn’t imagine stopping.

“Why are you asking me this?” Harry said slowly.

“You two…” Neville began, then stopped. “I’ve never quite understood the thing you have. The way you are together. I know you were his partner before I was, and you’ve been my friend for a very long time. So. I don’t bring this up lightly.”

“I know,” Harry said. He didn’t know what else to say. “We’re friends, Nev. You should—you should talk to Draco. It’s not my place to get in between you.”

“No. It’s not.” Neville fixed him with his gaze, and Harry felt the warning in it. He knew that Neville wouldn’t push further, and he also knew, down to his bones, that he hadn’t quite been let off the hook.

But Harry wasn’t between them, not really. He was shunted to a corner; he was drinking the last drops of Draco before he lost him. Neville had the whole meal of Draco, laid before him forever; Harry was grabbing at scraps. Soon even those would be gone.

A kid’s scream cracked in the middle and bellowed itself into a wail. Someone had tripped, or been hit, or bitten.

Neville rose from the stands, dusted his palms off on his trousers. Like nothing at all had passed between them. “Let’s see what’s wrong with Sergio, shall we?”

“Hey.” Draco drew up short in surprise. Harry was waiting for him in the hallway of their office. A summer rain shower had opened up the skies; the lapels of Draco’s work robes were wet, and drops of dew were shining in his bright hair. “We need to talk.”

A raised eyebrow. “In a cupboard?”

“No,” Harry said firmly. “Let’s—let’s get out of here.”

“We’ll be terribly late for work.”

“Good thing you’re quitting, then,” Harry said. “Come on.”

Draco followed him. He always followed Harry. It made them good partners. It had made Harry—too comfortable. He’d never doubted that Draco would always be behind him, stepping into the space left behind by his own footprints.

Outside, the air was choking on the summer humidity. It was difficult to breathe around it. The sun was cutting through the sheets of rain, unaware, it appeared, that it was storming. Harry blinked against it, carving a path through the downpour. He felt Draco behind him with every step.

They stopped a few streets from the Ministry, in a Muggle area, unlikely to be seen, but not somewhere they could cast charms to guard against the storm.

Harry whirled on Draco and found Draco’s attention was already fully on him. Harry wasn’t used to it; he stumbled when Draco turned to him.

“Neville said something to me,” Harry said, all in a rush. It had been a weighted pull inside of him; he expected the declaration to tip Draco forward with its mass.

But Draco didn’t look that surprised.

“What did he say?”

Harry let the air out through his teeth. Breathed in again. Choked on the warm, wet, grass-green taste of it. “He asked if we were fucking.”

Again, no alarm flashed on Draco’s face. Underneath the heavy drops of rain, his expression was still and placid. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him we weren’t. We—we aren’t. But…” Draco’s blank stare was infuriating, it was making Harry’s neck hot. “He knows something is up.”

Draco looked almost bored. Harry felt the familiar urge to shake him; clenched and released his fists around empty air instead. “And what do you think is ‘up,’ Potter?”

Harry exhaled slowly. “What’s up is, your mum cast a curse—”

“It’s not a curse.”

“—she cast a curse on you, and it made it really bloody hard for us to be around each other. And then it—it made me realise that not touching you is unbearable. I think about touching you all the time. I’m going mad. And—and then you kissed me. For all we know, it could have killed us. And you kissed me.”

Draco’s mouth stayed firmly pressed in a line. He watched Harry defiantly. Silent.

Harry let out a frustrated breath. “And now you’re—I don’t bloody know, Draco! Nothing’s changed. We’re doing—whatever, and we aren’t talking, and I miss you, Draco, I miss you so fucking much. And you’re still leaving, so I don’t—I don’t know why we’re even bothering. You’re still getting fucking married.”

“Did I,” Draco said coldly, “miss something? Did you at any point express a desire for me not to get married?”

The static was back, loud as the ocean in his ears. “What?”

“I haven’t heard you say anything about my wedding. This, in fact, is the first time you’ve brought it up.”

“I—what the fuck? You’re the one who won’t bring it up! Of course I don’t want you to get married!”

“Why not? Do you want to marry me?”

“Marry you? We’ve—we can’t even kiss each other, and you want to get married?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to get married. You haven’t actually bothered to ask me what it is that I want.”

“Okay, fine.” Harry let out a swearing breath, a rush of hot air. “Fine, we can play this game. What do you want, Malfoy?”

“I want to keep the redemption I’ve earned,” Draco said. “I want my mother to be comfortable, when her sentence is up. I want not to be hated, and maligned, by the people whose esteem I’ve spent the past eight years working to deserve. I want children, who I can raise to be better than I was. I want a nice house, I want a traditional wedding, I want a fucking dog.”

Draco stepped in, closer to him. “And I want to know why you, Harry Potter, never showed an inch of interest in me when it would have made a difference.”

Reeling, Harry drew back. The whole street was spinning. Nothing Draco was saying made any sense. Harry didn’t know where to begin, which thread to start pulling on. He wanted to untangle all the strange words, the nonsense that Draco was tossing in between them.

“What are you on about?” Harry demanded. “‘Never showed an inch of’—you shacked up with Neville like five minutes after we left school. When exactly was I supposed to have had a chance?”

“We were partners for almost two years when Neville and I started dating,” Draco hissed. “We spent every evening at the pub together for months; we both liked men. If you had any desire for me, if you were attracted to me even a little bit, something would have happened between us then. I was—I would have done—you could have had me, obviously, if you’d wanted me.”

“You think I don’t want you?” Harry’s voice was a siren of disbelief. “I’m risking my job, and this bloody stupid, dangerous magic, and all of my friendships, just to see your dick a few times a week, and you think I don’t want you?”

“You have me!” Draco yelled. “If it wasn’t for the curse—” the words tripped out, unguarded, and Draco clamped his teeth around them. “No. The only thing keeping you around is the fact that you can’t have me entirely yet, but once you get that, you’ll be done with me, and what will I have? I have everything to lose.”

Harry crossed his arms. Satisfaction curled in his gut; inappropriate, ill-timed. But. “You called it a curse.”

Draco’s eyes went darker than Harry had ever seen them. “You’re the curse,” he spit out. “You’re my curse. You can’t help yourself from ruining me, cutting me open. And I keep just… letting you.”

Draco drew back, face gone paler. “Neville isn’t stupid—of course he knows something is going on. We fight about it every week. He doesn’t even trust me enough to have confronted me about it—he went to you because he knows that I am capable of lying about Harry Potter with a skill that is frightening.”

Harry’s reality was being rapidly remade, once again, in front of him. Draco was—he had known, all along. He had known and he hadn’t told Harry.

“Neville is a wonderful man,” Draco was saying, racing ahead while Harry was still trying to catch up. “And I don’t deserve him. I’ve been too weak to end this madness, because I’ve always been a weak, stupid fool over you. But I am. I’m ending this. I’m leaving in a few months, and all of this idiocy will be behind us.”

“Idiocy,” Harry repeated.

“Idiocy,” Draco snapped back. “Pure idiocy. You don’t love me, and I can’t leave him, and this can’t ever happen again. I’ve loved you longer—that’s not a secret anymore—but I love him deeply, and he loves me, and we’re wonderful together. Everything we’ve built is wonderful. What idiot would ruin that?”

Harry couldn’t catch up. Draco was saying these things, but Draco was the one leaving him behind. Draco was leaving him.

“I can’t,” Harry started, hated the sound of his voice, and stopped. The words were too heavy, they couldn’t rise fast enough to the surface. “I need a fucking minute, Malfoy.”

“You’ve had years,” Draco said.

He meant it as a statement, but Harry could hear uncertainty, hidden in the corner and rolling to expose its belly. Draco was asking him a question. He was giving Harry one last chance.

Through the sunshower, past the arcing rainbows bouncing off the thick, dirty puddles, Harry could see it: how following these feelings down the road would loosen a stone in the pavement, uproot whatever was buried, and ruin the ground beneath them. Every brick each of them had laid down threatened: jobs, relationships, and families all firmly in the path of the damage. And Harry the one standing above it all with a wrecking ball, arms aching to let go.

Harry's lips stayed glued together. The last chance drowned in the downpour and sloshed into the storm gutters, and Draco's whole face swung shut like a locking canal. In the middle of a Muggle street, eyes red and wet and wide, Draco Disapparated away.

Chapter Text

Harry didn’t go back to work.

Instead, he walked a long time through Muggle London. The storm had been a typical summer shower—torrential and then gone in an eyeblink, leaving his hair and robes sopping, making him heavy and slow. Everything around him was still wet. The air was pungent with earth, the pavement soaking out the smell of stale ozone. But the sun bore brightly down on him, insistent on shining, like it knew it had to seize the moment while it could. Soon the season would turn to autumn, and it would be dark and cold again, and then—winter.

Winter. And with it: Neville and Draco’s wedding. The curse would be broken.

It seemed very clear to Harry, by this point, that the only thing worse than living with this curse would be the life that came after it.

Every day would be like this: drowning in the empty, nothing feeling he was carrying with him now. He’d gotten so used to its opposite; to unblunted agony instead of gnawing loneliness. It was rare to be in the middle of a morning without pain.

He'd sought it out. They’d sought it out. In cupboards, and on the corner of Harry’s dining table after Draco unfastened his trousers on top of it. Harry had been inviting the pain in at every hour of the day.

He felt, keenly, the lack of the ache now. The Healers had instructed him to notice pain in his jaw, but he’d never gotten the hang of it. Pain was easy for Harry to ignore. Its absence was what he noticed.

What else hadn’t he noticed?

Harry had never liked disappointing people. His life counterbalanced the lives of all those it touched. As the years of adulthood had stretched the fabric of his existence thinner, the childhood stitching at the core of him remained the same. Neither he nor Draco could untangle themselves from the knot they’d tied of themselves and everyone they knew. There were friends, mums, grandmothers, and boards of trustees all snarled up with them, who had claimed little pieces of each of them until they'd pledged most of themselves away. There was a whole population that stood to be disappointed by their choices.

Harry Potter did not let people down. He wouldn’t even know how to try.

And he’d been so comfortable. He had his friends, all of them wonderful, and sure about each other; he had Draco, who had shown up without an invitation and annoyed Harry into making space for him in every corner of his life. Draco with his sharp mouth, his bad coffee, the way he and Harry spoke without words and had lived in each other’s bodies long before they’d ever learned them.

His life had been good, because his life had Draco in it. There were many things that made his life good, Harry knew he was lucky. He was loved. But—

He stopped short in the street.

The ache had been constant, even before the ritual, before the pain became symptomatic and acute. It hadn’t been clear to him what had been missing. He hadn’t noticed the earlier pain, because it was perpetual. It was the pain of having Draco in his life, and of not having him the way Harry wanted him.

He was in love with Draco. He was in love with him, and it would hurt forever not to be with him.

“Fuck,” Harry said out loud, startling a pedestrian next to him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

His watch read almost noon. Lunch, then, at the Ministry. If Draco had gone back.

Harry knew Draco well enough. He wouldn’t have gone back. He would be doing the same thing Harry was, wandering the streets of London feeling sorry for himself in a bitter, soggy sulk.

He would be angry and stubborn and frustrated and scared. He was just like Harry, that way.

“Point me,” Harry said to his wand. And, as it always did, his magic pulled him towards Draco.

He found Draco only a few streets away, after a push through waterlogged pedestrians, and tourists staring open-mouthed and inconvenient at the suddenly clear late summer sky, like they hadn’t ever seen it before.

Draco was leaning against a brick wall, twirling his wand obviously in his hand, and glaring at nothing. It hadn’t taken long at all for Harry to reach him, once he’d been looking.

“Oh,” Draco said, a bitter frown at his dramatic exit being ruined. Harry loved him. “You.”

“Hi,” Harry said. “I’m—I’m sorry. About before. I needed time—”

“Potter, I already told you—”

Harry held up a hand to quiet him before Draco could wind himself up. “I didn’t need that much time, Draco. Christ.” A laugh let itself out of his throat. “I just needed a minute.”

“For what?” Draco asked, suspiciously.

He inhaled. He hadn’t planned what he was going to say, but it didn’t matter. The words were buoyant, now. “I was wrong. I haven’t—I haven’t been willing to open my eyes.”

Draco was so clear before him now, and bright; Harry fought squinting at the brilliance of him.

“I was too stubborn to admit that anything between us could change,” Harry said, “and I’ve been too much of a bloody coward about everything. I just—I’ve always just let things happen to me. I’ve been stupid. You know how stupid I’ve been. ”

“I’ve always said it,” Draco said faintly. His eyes had unnarrowed. Just a bit.

“Yeah, you have. But—you’ve been wrong about some things, too.”

The glare squeezed back into Draco’s eyes. God, he was annoying. Harry loved him.

“You said you wanted to keep the redemption you’ve earned,” Harry said. “What if instead—what if you just keep living, if you just—make your choices every day, as the person you are?” It had all gotten tangled up for them, Harry thought. What they owed to the world, to their friends, and what they owed to themselves. Just because Draco had made mistakes once didn’t mean he could never make a mistake again. Just because Harry had sacrificed everything once didn’t mean he had to keep sacrificing the things he wanted.

“Forget about the perfect war hero husband, forget about being the perfect son. Just—be Draco. Be with me.”

“With you.” Draco repeated.

Harry nodded. “I’ll make my own choice, for once in my life. I want to pick something for myself, instead of letting other people pick it.”

“I don’t—” Draco was biting at his bottom lip, worrying it white between his teeth. “I don’t know that we get to pick this. It’s not—Harry, none of this is selfless. None of this is good.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “It’s fucking selfish. What if we’re selfish?”

Harry stepped forward and cupped Draco’s cheek in his palm. The curse screamed beneath his skin. Draco’s eyes were wide, white-rimmed, watering. He didn’t move away.

“What if we let it hurt, for a little bit? It’s going to hurt, it’s going to be terrible, but what if it’s worth it?”

He leaned in. His knees felt like they might buckle. It was very hard to stay standing. Draco reached for him and clutched his arm, trembling too. Harry’s face was wet, his eyes had started to water with the pain. It helped, Draco grasping at him, painful at first, but still stabilising. They were holding each other up.

“I’m not going to say I’ll marry you. This might not even work, I can’t promise you the future you have planned. I’m an idiot, you know that. I already said it. Fuck. I’m not doing this well. But I’m not—I’m not going to do it right, all the time. I’m going to fuck up. But I, you know… love you. So.”

“What?” Draco was crying in earnest; fat, solid tears running down his face. He was pink, splotchy all over. Harry loved him. He told him again. He kissed him. It blistered the skin of his lips.

“I have to—” Draco was breathing fast. “I have to go.” He stepped backwards, hand lingering on Harry’s arm. Time moved very slowly. It took several long moments until they were no longer touching.

“Okay,” Harry said back to him. “Take your time. I’ll wait.”

Harry felt it when the curse broke, a shivering whisper across his scraped-raw skin, numb from months of scuffing up against the edges of whatever magic had been summoned at the engagement.

A few moments later, it was gone. Harry flexed his fingers, rubbed at the sides of his arms. He felt awake. The fatigue of carrying a perpetual forcefield on his shoulders had been making them slump. He sat up straighter.

He should—he should clean his flat. Draco was going to come here; he hadn’t told Harry that, but Harry was sure—he was almost completely sure—that he would. They were going to be selfish; they were going to be brave. They were going to be okay.

The place should look nice, for Draco.

The beer cans on the dining table were too stuck-on for magic. He had to pry their sticky carcasses off the surface with his fingernails, each one making a treacly popping noise when it came off. He put his coffee pot in the sink, scrubbed it until the flaky brown waterline soaked off. He went into his bedroom and picked the clothes off of his floor—the shirt and trousers he’d worn to the disastrous family dinner were still crumpled in a corner. Draco would be merciless if he saw that—

The thought of Draco in his bedroom made his stomach roll over in an excitement so pungent it felt like dread. He made the bed.

An hour passed. Then a second. Harry went back into his bedroom and pulled at the duvet until it looked messed up again.

Another hour passed.

Maybe Draco wouldn’t come today. That would be alright, Harry thought. He laid both his hands on the table, reminded himself to breathe. Opened and closed his mouth to stretch the muscles of his jaw. Draco didn’t have to come today. It didn’t mean he wasn’t ever coming, if he didn’t come.

The quiet of his flat was unbearable. He’d felt the curse lift; he knew he had. That had to have been what he felt, right?

But. Maybe it hadn’t been the ritual. Maybe it had only been a breeze from his open window, the one that didn’t close all the way. He scowled at it, then strode over. With a grunt, he tried to push down the sash, but it fought back. He exerted more effort, enough to sweat. Three more minutes of cursing and slamming and it still hadn’t budged, and Harry had jammed his finger twice for his troubles.

“You fucker,” Harry said to the window, feeling suddenly very miserable and alone. It was going to stay stuck. Everything was going to stay stuck.

“If this is a bad time,” came a voice from his doorway, “I can come back later.”

Harry spun around. Draco was standing in the entryway, still wearing the robes the rain had ruined. He was slouching, spine a slack bow, his eyes fever-bright. He looked like he’d been on the losing side of a battle. But he was here. Draco was here. Harry’s heart leapt.

Harry stepped towards him. His flat wasn’t very big. In four steps he was close enough to Draco to see the line in his cheek, the unkempt collar of his shirt beneath his uniform.

“No pain,” Harry said, trying very hard to sound casual.

“No,” Draco said. “The ritual—it ends when the engagement is broken.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t sure what the right thing to say was. “Are you okay?”

“Not really.” He walked to Harry’s sofa, sank down into it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Harry asked cautiously.

Draco shook his head. “No. Not—not yet. But. Ugh.” He dropped his face into his hands. “I think I have to move back in with my mum.”

Words—the wrong words—burst to the seam of Harry’s lips, and he swallowed them back down. It was new, it was delicate. It would shatter like glass if shoved into too much heat.

You’re never leaving this flat, actually, is what he’d wanted to say. “Well,” he said instead. “It’s only temporary.”

“She’s going to kill me.”

Harry hummed supportively. “Maybe. Augusta Longbottom is definitely going to disembowel me.”

“Yeah. Probably.”

“You really think your mum will be angry?” he asked. It felt daring to move closer to Draco, who wasn’t quite looking at him. It felt like they were getting away with something. Harry inched closer to him.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Draco said, picking at the front of his robes. “She’ll hate the scandal, but mostly because she can’t be out in society enjoying it.” Tone more serious, he added, quietly, “I think it will be hard for her to lose Augusta. I’ll probably have to spend more time there. So she doesn't get lonely.”

More time with Narcissa Malfoy. Well. Harry had said it would be painful.

Harry had thought a lot about how he didn’t understand what it must be like for Draco to have grown up with parents, to have people to whom he felt inextricably accountable. People who loved him, whom he loved, without any thought or possibility of end. And while it was still true that Draco carried the burden of parental expectation and Harry did not, Harry thought that he had been wrong. Looking at Draco, curling up onto Harry’s sofa, sad and tired but there, Harry thought he understood it. That kind of love: bottomless, undefeatable. He would have loved Draco like this even if the curse had killed him for it, even if Draco had married Neville. His love for Draco was a constant, it had grown like an extra organ in his body. He would always carry it with him.

“It’ll be okay,” he said, sounding more sure than he felt.

“Yeah,” Draco said again.

The instinct was still pushing him to lean away from Draco, to get close to him but keep the barest sliver of empty air intact. He realised that he didn’t have to, anymore.

“Um,” Harry said, awkward. “I’m going to—”

Closing the space between them took no time at all, but it was enough for Draco to look up at him, shocked, eyes wide and bright as headlights. And then Harry’s arm had wrapped around him, pulling him close. Draco was warm, his hair was tickling the stubble on Harry’s cheek; the insides of Harry’s nose burned with blackcurrant and fig. Draco’s body spilled out of his arms; it was long, pointed, more than he’d expected. Harry wasn’t used to holding it. He wouldn’t ever get used to holding it.

“God,” Harry said, and buried his face in Draco’s neck. “You smell so good.”

“You’re deranged. I need a freshening charm or twelve.” ”

Harry pulled back to look at him. Draco was still damp with city rainwater, blotchy in the face, and, under the heady bouquet of warm roasted coffee and cardamom, sweat and exertion and a muscle-deep alive-scent. Harry stuck his nose into Draco’s chest. His next words were muffled by the wet fabric of his robes.

“Fuck no. I’m mad about the way you smell.”

“You’re one to talk,” Draco said. He breathed out, then shuffled forward, climbing close into Harry’s space. “You always—you always smell like the outdoors. Like a stupid bloody fresh mountain spring. It’s driven me to distraction for years.”

Harry highly doubted that he smelled like a mountain spring. He put a hand on Draco’s cheek. Marvelled that he could. Neither one of them was flinching back.

“You’re barmy,” Harry said. He took a large swallow of air into his chest. Draco was here. Harry was holding him. Harry was still quite afraid. “And I love you.”

Draco was looking down at him, he was practically in Harry’s lap. His face was a mottled coral shade of pink, and his lips were red, and wet, and open. He was soft under Harry’s hands.

“Again,” Draco instructed.

“Draco. I love you.”

Draco let out a strange, nervous sort of laugh. “God, nevermind,” he said, breathless, shaking his head. “I can’t—it’s too much. Not yet. Later.”

Later felt like a promise. Harry’s whole body was a messy blush. The two of them had been jerking off almost daily in front of each other for weeks. But he was—they were both—still so nervous.

“Later,” he agreed, final. “Right now I’m going to do this.” He pulled Draco in closer to him—no matter how close Draco was, it wouldn’t be enough—and kissed his open mouth.

Draco’s answering kiss was a sigh. His mouth was warm too, and soft. Harry grabbed at Draco’s neck, drawing him in. He had to get closer.

The fucking between them had been fast. It had been heady, addictive, thrilling while it was happening, and suddenly worse when it was over. It had also been fast because of the pain. And because they were always in danger of being caught, one way or the other.

Now, Harry was going to go slow.

They stayed like that, kissing, for a long time. Harry held Draco and laid him on the sofa, moving over him, kissing the soft skin of his throat, tracing his finger over the line of Draco’s pulse just to feel it move faster. Faster because Draco was underneath him, because he was kissing Harry, not because of magic. Harry bit at Draco’s clavicle, he kissed the underside of his chin.

Draco’s skin was so smooth—he must use charms to shave, Harry thought. His cock twitched at the thought of exploring Draco’s body, studying it, learning it. He pushed his hands under Draco’s robes, felt the raised ridges of the scars he’d put there, and bit the inside of his lip. He felt like he was going to come.

“Can you take these wet clothes off me, at least?” Draco whispered. “If you’re not going to let me tidy up.”

“I’m not letting you tidy up,” Harry said firmly. “I want you messy.”

“I’ll be messy,” Draco swore, fervent. “I can be slovenly with my clothes off.”

“Slovenly.” Harry laughed into the dip of Draco’s throat, unfastening his robes, pushing them to the side. “Why didn’t you use a charm on these, anyway? To dry off. You must have had a few minutes without Muggles at some point.”

Draco hissed as Harry released the buttons on his shirt, leaned down to catch the barbell at Draco’s nipple in his teeth. “I—Potter, god—I forgot. Really.”

“Crack job, Auror Malfoy.”

“It’s not funny, Harry—ouch, god, keep doing that—I’m so uncomfortable. I’m probably going to catch my death because you won’t let me dry off.”

Harry pulled back. Something occurred to him.

“Want me to do it?”

Draco blinked at him. “It’s a little late for that. And I’m distracted now.”

“I want to.” Harry nipped again at the soft flesh of Draco’s chest. He was so fit. “Give me your wand.”

The sharp intake of Draco’s breath made Harry’s cock throb. Wordlessly, Draco fumbled at the holster on his arm. Unstrapping his wand, he gave it to Harry.

Harry’s fingers closed around it; it was humming, skin-warm. The magic in it nuzzled, friendly, into Harry’s bloodstream.

“Siccesco,” Harry murmured. Both of them shuddered with it, the sensations doubling against one another: Harry’s body on top of Draco’s, his magic channelled through Draco’s wand, burrowing hungrily into Draco’s body.

“Harry,” Draco begged. “Please.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “God, yes.”

The rest of Draco’s clothes came off quickly. Harry had wanted to go so slow with Draco, he wanted to make this last forever, but the resolve got weaker with every naked inch of Draco’s skin that came into view. The scars on his chest, the delicate lines of ink, the soft, impossibly paler skin of his forearms. The light, spare mess of hair at the base of his cock, standing so hard.

“God,” Harry said again, and collapsed forward. His tongue was licking up the sides of Draco’s cock, he felt dizzy. He could touch him, he could taste him. He’d watched Draco stroke himself so many times. He knew the map Draco traced when he wanted to make himself come. Harry could follow it.

Draco let out a hiccuping, raw mess of a gasp. “Potter—Harry, don’t, slow down, I’m going to come…”

“Yeah you are,” Harry said, and then swallowed Draco down.

It was fast, after all. The weight of Draco’s cock in his mouth was too intoxicating for Harry to stop, to slow. He took him as deep as he could and then took him further. The discomfort nudging the back of his throat was nothing compared to the scorch of magic underneath his skin. Draco begged, whined, fisted his hands in Harry’s hair, said his name. Harry ground his own cock into the sofa, circled his hand around the base of Draco and tightened it, working him quickly. Draco’s leg started to shake, Harry’s other hand traced a soothing line down the flank of his thigh, holding him in place, not letting up until the wet muscle of Harry’s throat had wrenched Draco’s orgasm out of him. Draco spilled fast and bitter and Harry swallowed it all.

“Fuck,” Draco panted, a few moments later. Harry was resting his head in Draco’s lap, both of them a sweaty mess. “I—you’re still wearing your clothes.”

Harry looked down at himself. He’d forgotten he had a body, for a little bit.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well?” Draco demanded. The stupid, sleepy glow of an orgasm faded quickly for him, it seemed, even under more normal circumstances. He propped himself on his elbows, stomach flexing with the movement. “Aren’t you going to remedy that?”

Harry grinned. “Okay.”

Instead of undressing, though, he scooped Draco’s naked body into his arms and pulled him down the hall. Draco wasn’t really small, it wasn’t easy, or graceful, or probably all that sexy. It was awkward, Harry’s clothes half-on and Draco all a smudged, blushing tumble of limbs. When they made it to Harry’s bedroom, they both were laughing.

“Now, Potter,” Draco said, the mean edge fully risen again in his voice. I love you, Harry thought. Later, Draco had said. Harry pulled off his clothes while Draco reclined on his bed, eyes burning.

When his clothes were in a pile on the floor beside him, Harry took a step closer to the bed and said, “Turn over.”

Draco caught his bottom lip between his teeth. He nodded, but didn’t move. He was so still, like he’d gotten stuck on something, frozen there. Harry’s hand reached out, caught the muscle of Draco’s calf. Realised.

“Now, Malfoy.” And then Draco sighed, a little pleased noise, and rolled onto his stomach.

Harry hadn’t seen much of Draco’s back, except for that one time in the Floo, everything stained with ash and thick with shame. Now it spread before him, miles of it. A long plane, narrow-waisted, the line of Draco’s spine a delicate crease down the center. His arse was barely two handfuls.

Breathless, Harry leaned forward, kissed the wings of Draco’s shoulder blades. “I can’t stop looking at you,” he rumbled into the hot press of Draco’s skin. His hands traced the lines of muscle down to Draco’s arse, he squeezed at it, pulled it apart.

“You can—” Draco gasped, “you can do more than look. You can do whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want,” Harry repeated, dumbly. His thoughts were losing their connective threads, firing at random inside his skull. There was so much of Draco underneath him. Harry sucked his thumb into his mouth, let it get wet with his spit, then found the edge of Draco’s rim and pushed at it without pressing in. Draco was so much warmer there.

“Yes,” Draco hissed. Harry needed to feel him now.

He stepped back, found his own wand in his crumpled robes, and filled his palm with slick lube. He rubbed it over his cock, walked back to the bed, and smeared another palmful over the insides of Draco’s thighs.

“Like this,” Harry said, pushing his thumb in further, wetter. Squeezed Draco's thighs together.

He needed this. He needed to be touching Draco everywhere, he couldn’t go slow anymore. Holding Draco between his hands, he pushed his cock between Draco’s dripping thighs, felt Draco’s balls when he shoved into the wet mess of his body. Draco was whimpering beneath him, Harry’s hips were moving fast, slapping, sliding against him. He held Draco’s little arse between his hands and slammed into him, thumb still breaching him, working him just a little. Harry could barely see, everything was hot, everything was Draco.

“Inside—Harry, I want you inside, please—”

“Later,” Harry promised, and came.

After, they stayed like that, wrapped around each other, naked in Harry’s bed. The syrupy, wet smell of sex was everywhere, and Harry breathed in, heart hammering in his chest.

It was real. This was real.

“What are you thinking?” Draco asked him, already alert beside him. Annoying. Harry smiled.

He turned his head to look at Draco; close up like this he could see his eyelashes, each individual curl; they were so fine it was hard to tell, but there were so many of them.

“I’m thinking that,” Harry swallowed, “that I love you. And that I’m scared. A little. A lot.” It wasn’t romantic to say. But everything had been so opaque between them before now. They had to be clear. They had to start somewhere.

Draco’s mouth tugged itself up before he smoothed it down, but still—Harry had caught him. He was happy. He was happy Harry loved him. Harry had just fucked him, Draco had wanted him to, he’d loved it. Along with the satisfaction of making Draco come was a quieter pleasure, small and secret: he could tell Draco that he loved him, and it would make Draco smile.

Harry took his hand, because he could.

“This will be difficult,” Draco said carefully. “Although, I do think the sex will help. With that.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, I reckon it will.”

“And—and it will be worth it,” Draco said. It came out half-statement, half-question. His voice was uncertain, but Harry didn’t mind. Harry wasn’t certain either. He didn’t need certainty about any of this. Certainty was the crushing pressure of an immutable future, certainty was neither can live while the other survives. Choosing Draco wasn’t certain, but it was true.

“It will be worth it,” he answered, and kissed Draco’s lips.

Chapter Text

The pub where he was meeting Ron wasn’t one either of them had visited before. The old haunts were ceded ground; Harry and Draco avoided most of them. They kept to their own territory: sticking to bakeries and shops in Harry’s neighbourhood, rarely lingering around the Ministry and Diagon Alley after Harry or Draco finished work. On weekends they took tea in the gardens of the Manor.

Harry still hated the grounds of the place, but, unexpectedly, he was thawing towards Narcissa.

On the day they’d moved Draco’s things into the Manor, Draco’s mum had watched while Harry, Zabini, and Goyle levitated Draco’s trunks across the threshold, sipping from heirloom porcelain in the corner, not offering to help.

Despite Draco’s best efforts, Harry had eventually found himself alone with her.

“Enjoying your tea?” he hadn’t been able to help himself from asking.

“It’s affogato, actually,” she’d said, and Harry went red.

“Right. Well. Sorry about—everything. I imagine you put a lot of trouble into the engagement. And that spell.”

“The magic had its intended effect,” she’d said simply. “Though this is not the path I would have chosen for Draco, I still desire the same thing for him that I always have: happiness. Wherever he may find it.”

It took a bit of the sting out to see who she was in private: as protective of Draco as he was of her.

When Harry and Draco went out in London, they met Hermione and Luna mostly in Muggle spots. There wasn’t really anyone else to see. The list of people who were currently tolerating their company was very short.

Hopefully after tonight, that list would include Ron. If no one else except Ron came back into his life as they had been, Harry could stand it. He didn’t let himself imagine what might happen if Ron never did. A future without Ron felt as aching and empty as a future without Draco in it. And Ron had asked him to come out for drinks. Even if Ron was now noticeably late.

With every minute that passed, he sank deeper into the dread that Ron wasn’t coming at all. But eventually the door opened, washing the whole inside with a scrub of icy December air, and Ron was strolling in, tall, red-eared, frowning.

“Ron,” Harry breathed, relieved, then bit his tongue on the eager jump of his own voice.

“’Lo,” Ron said, flat. The frown didn’t flake off. He sat across from Harry and picked up a menu, not saying anything else.

“Er. How are you?”

Ron had taken the news badly, which came as a more unpleasant surprise to Harry than perhaps it should have. Harry had taken Ron’s loyalty for granted. But of course, Harry had surprised Ron, too.

Ron hadn’t outright sworn he’d never speak to Harry again, like his sister had, but the blunt punch of his disappointment was palpable in the few times Harry had been around him since he and Draco had broken everything apart. Hermione told him to be patient. He had been.

And Ron was here now, glaring at him, cheeks still pink under his freckles from the cold.

“How am I?” Ron repeated at last, dropping the menu to the table. “Well, mate, I’ve recently found out that my best friend has been lying to me for months, possibly years. One of my other oldest friends is bloody heartbroken, my little sister is planning to kill you, probably, and—and it’s all well fucked, isn’t it?”

It was the most Ron had said to him in weeks. Harry clung to that, if not the actual words Ron was saying. “It’s fucked,” he agreed.

“Hermione reckons I should have seen this coming.” Ron was avoiding looking at him in favour of ripping up a beer mat. “Apparently it was obvious.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that from her, too,” Harry said. “But if it makes you feel any better, I had no idea until pretty recently, either.”

“So, what? You were too thick to figure out you fancied Draco, and all should be forgiven?”

Harry shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I just—I’m not asking you to forgive everything. I’m not asking anyone to forgive anything. I’m trying to tell you the truth. I didn’t know. Really. Until—until things were already. You know. Underway.”

“You mean after you started fucking Neville’s fiance.”

Harry winced. “I mean—look, I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But it happened. It’s happening. I’m not—there’s no going back to how it was. I really am sorry that I fucked things up, the way they were, but you—” Harry stopped his breath. Inhaled. Let the start of whatever excuse he’d been preparing die in the air. He wasn’t here to fight with his best friend.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply.

“Yeah, I heard that, too,” Ron said. The beer mat was in two dozen pieces on the table between them. “Neville showed me the letter.”

Another wince. “That’s his right.”

“Are you two proud of yourselves, running him off to Scotland five months early?”

“No.”

“You—you really let us down, Harry,” Ron continued. “You let me down. I just—I still can’t believe you’d betray Neville like that. Betray your friends like that.”

“I—I know. But—” Harry didn’t know how to explain it. “It wouldn’t have happened with anyone else. I promise, Ron. I just—it’s Draco, for me. That’s all there is to it. I’ve been an idiot about him forever, and I’m sorry I got so many people hurt. But I’m not gonna fuck up this massively again. I can promise that.” He didn’t let himself blink at the furious beam of Ron’s soft blue eyes, intense even without focusing on Harry head-on. “And it would have been worse. To pretend. I know a lot of people got hurt; I know it’s my fault. But faking it would have hurt everyone, too.” It’s not an excuse, he doesn’t mean it as one. It’s just the truth.

“You didn’t—” Ron scowled again, and finally met Harry’s eyes. “You didn’t even tell me.”

Harry’s heart gave a stuttering, hopeful beat. “I wish I’d told you. Mate, you don’t know how badly I needed your advice. I will never keep something like this from you again, okay? I promise.”

Ron seemed to be debating something with himself, still not quite finding the center of Harry’s gaze.

All at once he sighed. “So, listen. Hermione says we have to make up by Saturday.”

“What’s Saturday?” Harry asked, running through a quick mental diary. No one had birthdays in December, except Charlie, who was taking it as a personal offence that Harry had dumped his old Quidditch league pal. Harry didn’t think he’d be invited to any of his birthday celebrations. The only other tradition that month, besides Christmas, was visiting Hagrid up at Hogwarts. It would be hard to let Hogwarts be another ceded territory; it was going to be awful to stop visiting so often, but of course, that was where Neville lived, now. And Draco didn’t have the same fondness for Hogwarts that Harry did, anyway.

But—no. No other December occasions that he could think of. The only December event that he’d been anticipating that year had been rather dramatically called off.

Ron was watching him, a grin started to tug at the corners of his lips. “What? What’s happening?” Harry demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s going to be so bloody awkward,” Ron said, “to have you as our best man, given that I’m still so fucking cross with you.”

“Your—” Harry’s mouth fell open. “Your best man?”

Ron’s smile fully dawned across his face, huge and shining, and Harry wanted to leap across the table and pull Ron into his arms. He didn’t, but he let himself grin back at Ron, savouring the sunrise of Ron’s pleased, lovesick look. It was nice to sit there, like idiots, just happy. Both of them started to laugh. Harry’s eyes were stinging.

“Fuck,” Harry said stupidly. “A wedding in December after all. So what’s the plan? Massive ceremony? Hermione in white? You in tails?”

Ron held out his broad palms and started ticking off a list, which was as precisely calibrated as Hermione Granger’s civil ceremony demanded. Hermione had agreed to take a full day off work to visit the registry office on the next weekend. Harry, apparently, would be going shopping with her later that week, and he would be lending Ron his best suit, for which he would receive no apology or compensation if Ron ruined it with tailoring charms to suit his frame.

“You and the bloke I hired to take photographs will be our only witnesses to the ceremony. And,” Ron finished, sweeping the ruined scraps of his beer mat onto the ground. “You’re coming when we break the news to mum that we eloped.”

One of those things was an honour, the other was a punishment. Harry was hopelessly glad about both.

“Only you though, okay?” Ron repeated. “Your boyfriend’s not invited.”

Your boyfriend. It was the first time Ron said it since it had become true. Ron barely choked getting the word out.

“Yeah, of course. Thank you,” Harry added, holding Ron’s gaze. “Really. I—I love you both, so much. I’m so happy for you. I’m so, so happy.”

“Yeah, me too, wanker,” Ron said. “Alright, what are we doing, let’s get a pint. You’re buying, obviously.”

Harry ordered Ron two drinks instead of one for the first round. Eager to give something, to stretch it out, to stay. They talked about work. Ron asked him where he’d been hiding; Harry admitted, while trying not to sound too glad about it, that they often took Portkeys to Paris and Lisbon for dinner dates, though he spared Ron some details about the trips he probably wouldn’t appreciate. The two of them were still guilty with the delight of it—salt air, art museums, Draco writhing naked in sun-warmed sheets.

Eventually, Harry told Ron some of the things he’d been keeping in; things that were still harder to talk about, even with Draco.

Draco hadn’t been able to get his job with the Aurors back. He’d found temporary contract work with some curse breakers, good work, but they were both adjusting to no longer being partners. Harry missed that part of Draco; selfishly, he hoped Draco missed it too.

Change was, unfortunately, every bit as terrifying as Harry had feared it would be. The landscape of every day was still uncertain; Harry's place in his world was the least clear to him it had ever been. Over the past few months, Harry had often considered what things would look like if they had continued on as they had been; if everyone else had continued on with them. He dreamed of it: the old routines, the wood of the well-worn table they'd sat at for family dinners, the futures he and Draco had detonated still standing, aging and weathering like stone. He woke from those dreams sweaty, his body on fire with the familiar burn of the curse.

And that, really, was the crux of the matter. He was learning to grow around the discomfort of change. Staying in the dull ache of his old life, the one he didn’t want, would have worn him down until there was nothing left.

The conversation with Ron turned back to the wedding, to how Ron had proposed (during a fight, apparently), and to what they might want as a wedding present (Chudley Cannons cutlery, limited edition—over Hermione's dead body). When the words lulled between them, Ron said, “Anything else I should know about? More scandalous love affairs?”

Harry began to shake his head, then stopped himself and offered, “I’m pretty sure Seamus and Dean are like, already together? Maybe? Something’s going on with them, I think.”

“Obviously. Come on. I’m not that thick.” Ron scowled. “I meant about you. Any other secrets you’ve been keeping?”

Harry shook his head, vehemently this time. “No. Just, please don’t plan a fidelity curse for your wedding. I wouldn’t want it to stir up any lingering feelings between us.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “Mate. Too soon.”

“Sorry.” Harry chanced a breath. “But—listen. Ron. I know your wedding isn’t the right place for him but—you are going to see both of us, right? Me and Draco?”

Ron let out a sigh. “I suppose. Yeah.” Wistfully, he added, “I’ve always wanted a ferret of my very own.”

“You can’t call him that.”

“I’m going to call him that.”

Harry smiled. “Fine. Don’t tell him I said so.”

Ron peered at Harry, thoughtful. He appeared to steel himself with a breath. “You seem—you seem happy. Settled. I hadn’t realised it, but—you’ve been a bit. Asleep. I dunno. I guess—I guess I really was missing things.”

“Yeah. Well. So was I.”

They stayed late at the pub; Harry not wanting to give up Ron’s company now that it was being offered again, Ron shamelessly taking advantage of how badly Harry wanted to buy him drinks. When Harry finally stumbled home, he found Draco asleep in his bed.

Draco was doing that more and more. Harry told him at the beginning to let himself in even when Harry wasn’t there; that he always wanted Draco around. Harry was getting better at telling Draco things that were true. At realising them himself.

Harry peeled off his shirt and trousers before rolling on top of Draco to wake him up. He watched the angry wrinkle of his eyebrows as Draco slowly came to.

“Potter,” Draco rasped. Harry kissed Draco’s neck, made his way down Draco’s bare chest. His eyes were still closed and his nose scrunched in disgust when Harry kissed him, the taste of bad, warm pub beer heavy on Harry’s tongue. “You reek.”

“You don’t,” Harry said into his skin. “Did you shower here?”

Draco hummed in assent. “They had me handling cursed flobberworms today. There was slime in my hair.”

Harry tugged some of Draco’s hair between his fingers until Draco hissed at the pressure on his scalp. Draco used magic so that it was fresh and styled already when he woke up. Harry hadn’t yet tired, wouldn’t, of touching every part of him, every way he could.

“Tragic,” Harry said. “What if I messed your hair up again, right now?” Harry had a lot of ideas about how he could do it. He was wide awake, barely tipsy. He’d had a good night. Good nights weren’t to be taken for granted.

Draco opened one bleary eye, enough for him to glower with. “I have an early morning, and some of us hold our appearances to actual professional standards. I won’t have time to redo the charms tomorrow. If you mess up my hair, I’ll have no choice but to cause you immense physical pain.” He found Harry’s side and pinched it, hard, as a threat.

Harry shivered. The flat was draughty, his naked skin was cold. Beneath him, Draco was warm. The pinch in Harry’s side bloomed with heat.

“Alright then, Malfoy,” Harry said into Draco’s ear, lingering there to take the delicate shell of it between his teeth, biting until Draco was shivering too. Everything between them was like this: hot, sharp, real. Everything felt good, even when it hurt. Harry’s hands found the line of Draco’s spine and pulled him closer. “Do your worst.”