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Chapter Text

Prelude: The Aftermath

In the past, when Draco had imagined Potter on his knees, Aunt Bella had never been involved.

“Stop it!” Potter cried, his voice hoarse and tattered. “Stop!”

“Who is he, nephew?” Aunt Bella growled, her voice hissing and crackling like the fire of the torches on the lit sconces lining the corridor. Even the dim light hurt Draco’s eyes, and Draco wondered vaguely if that meant he was concussed.

Aunt Bella grabbed a fistful of Draco’s hair from where it tangled on the grimy stone floor. He remembered when that floor used to be pristine, back when he and Theo would sneak past the heavy doors at the top of the stairs to stare at the gleaming bottles of elf-made wine, daring each other to select one to uncork and give it a sip.

By now, all the elf made wine had been drunk or poured out, scarlet slashes on stone mixing with red of a different type. The sort of red that trickled down his chin from his bitten lip to drop onto the floor, his flesh split like that of an overripe fruit by white teeth clenched in agony.

Wrenching his neck, Aunt Bella turned his face to the bars beside them. The pain of it was a relief: anything jarring enough to distract from the electric bolts of agony which rattled through him to the marrow. The aftershocks of the Cruciatus Curse.

It was a challenge to focus his eyes on Potter, kneeling behind the bars. Blearily, Draco saw knuckles, skinned and bleeding, whitened by their grip around the cold iron. The metal in his left hand was smeared with blood from his rent palm, torn when he snatched the knife fated for Dobby’s heart out of the air. Potter, the delusional, self-sacrificing maniac, had grabbed it instead of the elf as his friends were whisked away to safety from the Grand Ballroom.

The ratty sleeve of a tattered muggle garment followed, torn and dirtied. Drawing his eyes further upwards, Draco saw a neck corded with strain. Crooked teeth which hadn’t known the same whitening charms as Draco’s were bared in a furious snarl. His eyes, green and flashing like Greek Fire, bore into Aunt Bella’s rictus grin as though his gaze alone could set her on inextinguishable fire.

Potter had ceased screaming long before Draco had.

Draco, unfortunately, hadn’t any choice in the matter.

“Harry Potter,” he whimpered finally.

Aunt Bella removed her hand from his hair. His head whacked the floor with a dull, hollow thud, and then lolled on his rubbery neck as he moaned.

Draco was not built for physical pain: he did not know how to steel himself against it. Occlumency, Draco was a dab hand at: obfuscation, subterfuge, he’d tested his abilities at the lot. Never was he so untalented than when enduring physical suffering.

Blood mixed with the saliva pooling out of his open mouth, snot running from his nose, tears streaking his sweaty face. Perhaps his whole body, if Aunt Bella was feeling particularly incensed, would become nothing but a mess smeared onto a grimy floor that was coated in the detritus of boots he should have never been forced to lick.

The pointed toe of Aunt Bella’s boot rolled his head to face her next. It pressed into the soft flesh beneath his jaw.

“We all had such high hopes for you, Dwaco,” she tutted in the bone-chilling baby voice she preferred with her victims. Draco could feel his soul begin to separate from his body and tunnel deep inside himself, as it had done before the Cruciatus had flung him, agonisingly, back into a mess of writhing nerves. “I fear this disappointment shall be your last.”

The boot pushed down, just enough for Draco’s breath to come out in a strangled wheeze, just enough for Potter to shout “No!” once more. Just enough for Aunt Bella to look over her shoulder at him with a bloodthirsty smile.

“We’ll get to see how the Dark Lord treats traitors, next,” she leered, the shadows of the sconces painting her once-noble face, now withered from the hardship of Azkaban and insanity, into a skull like the one she bore on her arm. “Perhaps he’ll keep you alive long enough to watch.”

And then, her boot was gone from Draco’s chin. The echoes of her heels cut as sharply as the rest of her through the heavy silence.

“Malfoy,” he heard from far away, a frantic whisper. “Malfoy, get up.”

But Draco’s battered head was spinning, and soon, even the blurry torchlight went black.

Chapter Text

The Escape

Draco awoke to a pungent bundle of smelling salts under his nose.

“Mipsy is sorry, Little Master,” the house-elf apologised, her eyes wide with remorse as she wrung the sachet in fretful hands. Her voice was soft but piercing as a peacock’s cry to Draco’s ears, ringing through his throbbing head. “But Little Master was not waking up.”

Draco groaned, every muscle protesting as he roused. “Mipsy, please,” he begged. The plea ground through his torn throat, sharp and wet. He didn’t know what exactly he was asking for. Death, perhaps, though diminutive, soft-hearted Mipsy would hardly be the one to grant it to him.

It would have nevertheless been the merciful thing to do, considering Aunt Bella could return at any moment, or worse, could summon the Dark Lord. Draco could almost hear her and Father pacing circles into the floor above them, debating whether or not the Dark Lord’s mission abroad was worth interrupting, lest they suffer his wrath alongside the Savior. Every atom in Draco’s body trembled with dread.

“Malfoy,” Potter urged, reaching a futile hand out to him through the bars, too far away to reach. The blood on his palm has turned a rusty brownish color, staining the creases in his fingers and the crescents of his nails. From the small pain in Draco’s palms, he was certain his nails looked the same. He wondered how long he had been unconscious for. “Malfoy, have your elf apparate us out before they come back. Malfoy—”

“Mipsy is not following your orders, Harry Potter,” she said quickly, her squeaky voice even higher from the tension that vibrated off of her.

Her small hand wrapped around Draco’s shoulder. With the sickening twist of apparition, Potter was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Draco was laying on something soft. He was enveloped by the comforting scent of vanilla.

“Merlin, Medea, and Morgana,” Mother whispered fiercely, rushing to his side. He realised dazedly, through the post-apparition roiling of his stomach, that he was laying on his mother’s chaise lounge in her private chambers.

He was across from the well-stocked vanity that Draco had loved to marvel at as a child. He would sit on the chaise and watch in awe as she selected tinctures and creams and sprays with practiced ease. She always looked so beautiful, even before she’d put any of them on, and he’d thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He thought anything was within her power. Even when his rapport with Father was at its most contentious, he felt so safe with her.

The panicked, prey-animal tenseness of his muscles twitched as they released, ever so slightly, in her presence.

His eyes were too sensitive to open more than a crack, but he heard her say, “The blue bottles, Mipsy,” and then his mother’s hand was wrapped around the back of his head, tilting it up. She tilted it up gently to pour something cold and herbal tasting into his mouth. “Drink, Draco. You must.”

Pain Relief Remedy, one of many that the two of them had assiduously stocked up on. Mipsy had spirited it from the cabinet that contained Concentration Concoction, Calming Draughts, Blood-Clotting Cream, and Strengthening Solution.

Draco had scavenged the Manor woods and greenhouses for months to procure the ingredients for such a store, even venturing under the cover of darkness to harvest those that needed the light of the moon, his ears perked for any of Greyback’s wolves, his hands gripping the withered wrist of the Hand of Glory.

As the potion trickled down his oesophagus, the acid roil of bile bubbled in his stomach. Draco lurched to the side of the chaise lounge. Though he didn’t sully the fine rose-petal pink fabric of the furniture, nor his mother’s pale blue cashmere jumper which she wore even in summer to chase away the chill of Dark Magic which sank deep into their bones, the white of the rug remained undefended from his surprise attack.

Draco could feel Mipsy’s hands gently combing his hair back from his face. The elf’s hands were rough-hewn from hard work and childrearing: Draco had not made her job easy. He was a messy child, and clearly, he had grown into a messy adolescent. “Be quick, Little Master.”

Mother’s hands had been opposite to hers in every way: delicate, fine-boned, perfectly manicured. She had once kept her nails varnished to gleaming perfection, a classic dark red or a pale pink that matched the delicate flush of her cheeks, but now they were cut short and cracked, flimsy around the second phial she pushed at him. The only ring she wore was her wedding ring, once polished and glittering, now dim. The war had given her more important things to focus on than vanity.

She leaned in, pressing another phial to lips that were not ready to open: he did so anyway. This time, the potion kept.

As the Pain Relief Remedy worked its way through his body, the sharp twist in his stomach lessened. The overwhelming agony in his head quieted enough to have a few, albeit sluggish, coherent thoughts.

“We’re leaving?” he croaked.

“You are,” Mother corrected. There was a steely glint in her light blue eyes that looked better suited to Lucius’ grey ones. “You and Harry Potter.”

~*~

All three Malfoys had their own personal elves, back before Draco had gone to Hogwarts and before Potter created some sort of rupture between Father and Dobby.

Father refused to speak of it. Instead, he simply called upon one of the remaining twelve out of their Wizard’s Dozen of elves to take up Dobby’s duties ad-hoc.

In the same way Lottie was Mother's elf, Mipsy had always been Draco’s. She had raised Draco from diapers. She had spent more time with him than his own parents had throughout his formative years. She quelled him when he cried with gentle pats on his back and soft, calming rocking. She tended to his skinned knees when he ran too recklessly through the garden parties of his youth.

He had always taken for granted that she would be there to listen to him, to shield him, until the Dark Lord and his marauding band of thugs trooped through the Manor and destroyed nearly everything of value, and had reduced the elves to watchful, flighty creatures, quick to complete any task, and even quicker to depart.

She hadn’t even been able to shield herself from the horrors within Malfoy Manor, let alone Draco.

When their home had become overrun, the elves’ duties had been stripped down to the bare necessities. Cooking, mostly: cleaning was of little import amongst the general mayhem of the household.

Those first few months, before things became truly awful, Draco would creep into the kitchens through the hidden corridors only open to the Malfoy family, and would listen to the dozen elves grouse and complain amongst one another.

Tippy, the parlour elf, had wide dark eyes and a small mouth often downturned in disapproval. She scowled darkly and muttered under her breath about the shambles the reception areas had fallen into. She had spirited away Draco’s Great-great Aunt Forsythia's fine china in the ever-expanding cabinet that could not be opened by anyone but a Malfoy elf or a Lord or Lady of the Malfoy house. The decision had been made to preserve it in this way after some of the coarser ruffians had taken up the sport of flinging them at targets in lazy intervals, barely even smirking in destructive triumph as the hand-painted porcelain shattered.

Leedy, the Manor’s chef, distractedly pushed a bowl of ice cream in front of Draco. The dessert was replete with chocolate shavings and fresh whipped cream, simple but delicious, and Leedy knew Draco was the easiest of his family to please. She tutted as he ate, fretting that the Little Master was whittling down to skin and bones. Surely he would never find a nice partner to marry if he continued to look so gaunt.

Draco didn’t have the heart to tell her that the only partner he could possibly attract, with the brands on his arm and in his surname, would be the unsuitable type. Not in the least to speak of his sexuality: the Malfoy family took pride in their elves espousing their traditionalist principles.

If Leedy knew about the newspaper clippings which Draco stashed under his mattress, which Mipsy had been kindly discreet about upon finding as she made his bed and gently reminded him that she did so daily, she surely wouldn’t have been so eager to press him into finding a match.

Of them all, however, it was the chamber elf Toddy who worried Draco the most.

“There is being terrible things happening in the cellars,” he had intoned gravely.

Draco knew it was true, somewhere in the back of his head that he didn’t allow himself to reflect on. But he ignored him anyway, because it was easier, and because even if he didn’t, what could he do? He wasn’t the smartest, nor was he the strongest, not even in his own direct family. These decisions had been made by people more knowledgeable than him. It would be presumptuous of him to question them.

He did not want to reflect on the dubious sageness of Father’s decision to invite a madman and his equally insane followers into their finely gilded ancestral home. He did not want to acknowledge that the screams which echoed from the cellars at brief but hair-raising intervals throughout the day and night were not from Father’s beloved peacocks, hunted down by Aunt Bella on horseback of Grandfather’s prize Abraxan herd. When the mightiest of the harrowing sounds emanated from the bottom of the stairway, Draco told himself that Aunt Bella had managed to somehow drag an entire Abraxan into the dark stone depths to slaughter. He forced himself to believe it, too.

Such it was to be talented at Occlumency. All it took was a dedicated and continuous rejection of the truth.

Until now, years later, Draco himself had been that Abraxan in the cellar, screaming high and raw until his voice had cut out.

Tippy, Toddy, Leedy, and Mipsy all crowded around Draco now, as Narcissa commanded them to come to her chambers with Draco’s emergency bag in hand. Their small bodies were a flurry of movement as they put even more items higgledy-piggledy into his ever-expanded satchel.

He had kept the four of them hidden in his bedchambers when they could be spared from their duties. Four was more than enough company, especially since Draco only had his bedroom and ensuite bathroom to huddle in terror. Mother, on the other hand, had not only a personal bedroom and ensuite but a private drawing room, a seemingly never-ending walk-in closet—which had once presented her with beautiful bejeweled fashions that all the prior Malfoy Ladies had worn, but now only presented her with black to match her mood—and an office, where she protected the eight remaining elves of their diminished wizard’s dozen.

Tippy Vanished the sick Draco left with a soft snap of her fingers. Blinking through his bleariness, Draco saw his mother on her knees, rummaging through the antique, ornate chest she kept locked from everyone else.

Shoulder-deep in the chest, Draco couldn’t see what his mother’s hands were doing, but the muscles of her back were hunched. These past few years of the war were the only times he had seen his mother lose her weightless, ethereal posture and traded it for a lowered chin and bunched shoulders.

“This should work for Potter,” she muttered, eyes wide in thought as she seized what she had been searching for and rose, tripping on her feet in her haste to get back to Draco. “Even disowned, Sirius was made Lord of the House… We’ll have to work fast—I’ve only made two.”

She carried with her a small, lumpy sack of burlap. The bottom of the rough-hewn fabric was stained dark and wet. “The key, Draco,” she said urgently, grabbing his arm and shaking him slightly. “To the safehouse, Septimus’ key. Where have you hidden it?”

Swallowing, Draco managed, “It’s in the emergency bag, in a hidden pocket.” It had lived there since the moment the portrait of Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus had given it to him in the summer before sixth year, hidden in his emergency bag, and the bag itself had gone wherever Draco went. He’d buried it in his trunk at Hogwarts and stashed it under the bed in his childhood bedroom. It had become a compulsive habit, reaching for it in the middle of the night or at odd hours during the day. He’d developed a need to reassure himself that if everything well and truly went to shit and Draco didn’t have the fortune of dying about it first, he had an escape plan within arm’s reach.

“Good. Good.” She gripped Draco’s arm, though if it was to steady herself or him, he wasn’t sure.

She turned to Mipsy. “Bring us to the cellars. Now.”

~*~

Draco’s stomach swirled with the apparition, but he managed, heroically, to keep himself from sicking up twice in ten minutes. He swallowed the spit which flooded his mouth with a heavy internal shove, and clutched his mother’s arm to keep from falling over.

There was a flash of green, and before Draco had time to turn, Wormtail’s body hit the floor. Mother strode past him, as though his death were nothing more notable than that of a fly’s, easily swatted.

Draco, however, was not so easily deterred. He found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the body: he had known his mother capable of casting Unforgivables—she had done so on Madam Rosmerta when meeting Draco for tea in Hogsmeade, once it became apparent in his coded letters that he was unable to achieve the same feat himself, and then again in the women’s bathroom with Katie Bell—but he couldn’t reckon the crimes committed with the mother he knew, who held his hand when he was a child, strolling through the gardens, or to pat a blot of blush onto his round cheeks and whisper with an impish little smirk, “Now, don’t tell your father, dear.”

The image of his aunt, leering and screaming with spittle flying from her rotten teeth, overlaid itself on the memories of his mother’s graceful poise. No doubt Aunt Bella wanted Potter in pristine form for the Dark Lord, to die at His hand only: that must’ve been why she had commanded Wormtail, the most spineless of all the Death Eaters, to preside over him. The snivelling wretch could always be trusted to be pathetic even when given authority.

But there had been no need for Mother’s Killing Curse, after all: her target had already been dead.

When Draco took the moment to peer at Wormtail’s corpse, his unwilling eyes took in the merciless grip of the silver hand. It purpled the skin of Wormtail’s throat. His bulging eyes had burst their blood vessels. His tongue had already begun to swell, the rotten creature.

“Salazar, fuck,” Draco hissed, lurching away.

He wrenched his knees and hips to do so, sore already from his time under Aunt Bella’s wand tip. He was not so successful at containing his bile for the third time. Nothing came up, his body already emptied, but the sounds of his retch echoed through the grim corridors until Mother hissed a hasty Muffliato.

Draco could not hear the scuffling movement in the cell beside them, but he heard the grating sound of the heavy cellar door squealing open. “Who’s there?” Potter called, as brave and as stupid as ever. He cupped his wounded hand over his myopic eyes, as though that would help him see. Draco noticed that he’d torn a strip from his shirt to tie around his injured palm.

Were Draco in Potter’s position, he would undoubtedly be a snotty, teary wreck huddled in the corner, vacillating wildly between bouts of uncontrollable panic and eerie calm.

Instead, Draco could see through watering eyes that Potter’s shoulders were squared. His fists were clenched by his side as though he would bludgeon any incoming assailant the muggle way. His glasses were nowhere to be seen on his face, but the swelling of the Stinging Hex he had suffered had subsided, and Draco could see the blazing green of his useless eyes.

It was a relief to see him whole and of relatively sound mind, whatever that constituted for Potter. His face was a welcome reprieve from the corpse. Draco couldn’t fool himself into believing Potter didn’t look handsome as a Fae in comparison to the waxy, pockmarked face of the most pathetic Death Eater Draco had ever met, up to and including himself.

“Draco, come here,” Mother ordered. She marched Draco to Potter with a firm hand on his bicep, pulling whatever grim object she carried from the sack as she did so. Mipsy followed trepidatiously behind them.

“Malfoy?” Potter squinted, his chin jutting at a pugnacious angle. “Mrs Malfoy?”

“Mr Potter, I’m afraid we don’t have much time,” Narcissa said. She thrust something cold, chalky, and heavy into Draco’s hands. The cuts on his palm stung as the flakes of it rubbed across them. He hissed with the sharp pain.

A golem, rough-hewn from grey dirt and muddy yellow clay. Its head was a cumbersome lump that melted coarsely into its neck. The indentations hastily pressed for eyes and mouth gaped at him.

“Spit,” she said.

The order was preposterous. Draco had never heard his mother refer to bodily functions in his life. Whenever he was sick, she’d let Mipsy take care of him, preferring to abscond to her rose gardens rather than endure the sounds and smells of illness. If the stakes had not been so dire today, Draco was certain she would have made herself scarce in his suffering still.

“Mother?” he asked, but she was already pressing the second of two into Potter’s hands between the bars of his cell.

“Into the chest of it, hurry now. It’s a Spitting Image, darling,” she explained. She looked as though if Draco and Potter refused, she was prepared to cast a second and third Unforgivable, the same sort under which she’d held Madam Rosemerta and Katie Bell.

Draco gasped. He’d read about Spitting Images during his frantic, futile research into all things Dark the summer before sixth year, trying to get an idea of how to kill the most powerful Light Wizard in the world. None of it had helped him, and he had decided to pivot his attention to the Vanishing Cabinet—better an accessory to breaking and entering than a murderer, he’d thought—but some of the more interesting tidbits he’d learnt had stayed with him.

“When did you get the grave dirt?” Draco asked her, confused.

He knew Bellatrix had dogged Narcissa’s heels throughout almost all of the past two years. Better to extort Draco with, knowing the craziest, most bloodthirsty witch in the world was looming over his mother’s shoulder at all times, nevermind that she was her sister. Grave dirt collected from the ancestral cemetery of those whose form it took was an integral part of the ritual, and without it, the magic wouldn’t settle properly.

“After we had tea in Hogsmeade,” she said, as though that had been a lovely morning instead of an assisted assasination attempt. “The Black Family Cemetery isn’t too far an apparition.”

That was a lie. She must’ve been completely exhausted, apparating around half of the United Kingdom in a day. No doubt she thought it was worth it, to devise her own escape plan for herself and her son, if the key to Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus’ safehouse ever needed using. Draco shivered, thankful nothing horrid had happened to her.

Without further protest, Draco did as he was told. He grimaced at the sharp pain in his lip from the motion, which he had bitten through sometime during his and Aunt Bella’s time spent bonding together. He ignored the pinkish tinge to his spittle and rubbed the mud that had become of the center of the golem’s chest.

“Mr Potter, you aren’t a blood member of House Black,” she explained, handing Potter his own golem. He held it so gormlessly that Draco guessed it would be no huge trial convincing the Dark Lord that a useless lump of clay was his greatest enemy. “But you are the Lord of House Black, currently, thanks to your godfather. Let us hope that it’s enough.”

Potter remained standing, like the twat he was, looking torn in sceptical indecision.

Draco hissed at him, “If we wanted to kill you, there were much easier options.” His voice was undermined by an unfortunate hysterical cast. He felt his panic rise to replace the pain he was in, now that he realised what his mother's plan was.

He snapped, “It’s a golem that takes the shape of you, like Polyjuice for clay. It’s called a Spitting Image. It’ll look and act like you until the magic wears off. Unless you’d rather Aunt Bella torture you next, instead of it?”

Taking in that very reasonable argument, Potter spat.

Once he’d done so and rubbed it in as Draco did, Mother took both of their golems from them and put them in the centre of the dark corridor. Draco stepped back. Beside him, Potter gripped the bars of his cell anxiously.

Mother raised her wand and began to cast, and this was when the pain in Draco’s forearm exploded.

Biting back a cry, Draco doubled over. There was no comparing it to Aunt Bella’s Cruciatus, but that was a meagre mercy: the Mark burned as furiously as its Master no doubt was, Summoned by Aunt Bella from whatever exotic locale in which he was extorting yet more perfectly behaved pureblood heirs with the extended death of their mother to stage elaborate break-ins of their secondary schools.

Abandoning her post at the two golems, her ritual aborted before it had even begun, Draco’s shoulder was caught by his mother's shaking hands.

“Mipsy, the key,” she commanded, and Draco felt Mipsy rummage around in the satchel that hung from his hunched shoulder. With a snap of her fingers, the key whipped into her hand. The tarnished, heavy brass of it gleamed dimly in the firelight. “Mr Potter, grab hold. Draco, you too. Mipsy, hold it as well.”

She hesitated, pausing, and removed her jumper, so that only the fine weave of her blouse protected her from the dampness and the ominous, low-hanging evil of the cellars. She pushed it into Mipsy’s free hand, who wrapped her reluctant fingers around it.

Mipsy’s wide eyes filled with tears, and Mother reassured her with surprising gentleness, “This isn’t an admonition, this is a security measure.”

Through the pain, Draco could hardly do anything but grit his teeth until they cracked. Even so, with slitted eyes, he sought his mother’s hand. “Mother, you as well—”

“I’m staying,” she growled rounding on him. “You father needs me here, as do you. Go and I shall finish the ritual. Mr Potter, please hold onto the portkey, if you would.”

“My wand—” Potter said, having seized hold of the key through the bars of his cell. Narcissa, taking no note of Potter’s predicament, had already activated the spell.

Gripping the portkey in his good hand, Draco didn’t have a chance to say goodbye before they spun away.

Chapter Text

Pre-Hogwarts

Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus’ portrait mouldered in the Disillusioned North Wing. It was the most separate wing of Malfoy Manor, and for good reason.

The Disillusioned North Wing was constructed specifically for the Malfoy family to sequester their members too addled, too insane, or otherwise too unsightly for sociable civilization.

Draco was forbidden to enter the DIsillusioned North Wing, and he was certainly not allowed to bring any guests to visit. This is exactly why he found himself there, at age ten, with none other than Pansy Parkinson.

“We’re going to get in trouble,” Pansy whined, her fists bunched in the pale blue tulle of her skirt. Her knees were bent as though she were prepared to leap away and spring back to Mother’s rose gardens at any moment. “Your father is going to forbid Mummy and I from coming over again like last time.”

“Last time you deserved it,” Draco scoffed, creeping around the ajar door with interest. “You punched me in the nose!”

“You said my dress was ugly and pushed me into a tree!” Pansy protested hotly, her face flushing blotchy red across her cheeks and her snub nose, which was wrinkled in ire. “It took Bitsy forever to get all the twigs out of my hair!”

With his own nose stuck straight up in the air, Draco retorted, “It improved your appearance.”

The Disillusioned North Wing was kept up by Toddy, in addition to his regular duties. The assignment made sense to Draco: anyone who was unable to keep up appearances for the sake of the family was worth less than the elf-made wine in the cellars. Toddy was the least talented elf when it came to cleaning, including Leedy, for whom cleaning was not even within her usual purview.

As such, a thin layer of dust covered the marble floors. The foyer was awash in an eerie silence that had Draco feeling scared in an adventurous, rakish sort of way. He remembered the adventurers in his storybooks that Mipsy read to him, daring wiz who fought giants, outwitted Sphinxes, and seduced sirens, and Draco was pleased to finally feel himself one of their ranks.

“Come on!” he hissed to Pansy, grabbing her hand and venturing further inside. The air smelled stale and heavy, especially in the summer heat, but Draco paid it no mind—it was only a matter of time until Mipsy or Lottie discovered their absence at the garden party and whisked them back.

For all the tell Draco had heard of the North Wing, it was not nearly as frightening as he had anticipated. There were a few bedrooms, spartan and poorly appointed: they had no drawing chambers attached, nor any en-suites. Instead, a bathroom and an additional water closet was planted in silent admonishment beside the French doors of the foyer, as though the residents did not deserve the privacy of an en-suite. None of the mirrors were gilt, and didn’t say so much as a single compliment when addressed. Their beds were a measly Full: even Draco’s bed was a Queen size, and he was hardly 10.

The wainscotting was unembellished on the walls, no elaborately carved serpents which slithered along the room, and none of the sconces lit by themselves nor any of the curtains drew themselves back upon his and Pansy’s entrance.

“What a dump,” Draco whispered loudly, and Pansy nodded vigorously.

“We should leave,” said Pansy, gazing around nervously. “Draco, Leedy must’ve served the lemon cakes by now—if we don’t get there fast, Vince and Greg will have destroyed them all!”

“Who dares,” a deep voice drawled behind them with a susurrus syllabic emphasis, bookended by the sound of metal hooks sliding along a rod and dragging with them the heavy brocade curtain, “disturb my peace?”

Beside him, Pansy stiffened and whimpered. With the hair raised on the back of his neck like a spooked Kneazle, Draco slowly, reluctantly turned.

The portrait behind him was a flaxen-haired Malfoy wearing a decidedly sinister sneer. He was bedecked in expensive garb, mink voluminously piled at his drawn-up shoulders, and his tapping foot swathed in sharp-toed Cockatrice leather. His cloak was embroidered with magical creatures running to and fro through the red and black fabric, their staring eyes made of glittering jewels.

“Well?” he drawled, looking down his nose at Draco in a manner that reminded him distinctly of his godfather. Unlike his godfather, however, the room this portrait was in was far more lavishly appointed than any Severus inhabited. The Potions Professor’s office was so devoid of personality, save for the stacks upon stacks of heavy tomes scribbled through with cramped, slanted writing, that it could have been mistaken as an empty storeroom.

This portrait’s environs were lavish, even gaudy. The walls were a jewel tone, burgundy, and Draco wondered if the portrait had been commissioned without knowledge of the Hogwarts Houses, or merely in poor taste. If this portrait was in the Northern Wing, he had to be addled–that must’ve been the reason for selecting such an offensive shade.

He was seated in a plush armchair, nearly sinking into it save for the straightness of his back. Beside him, a small table seemed carved from water itself for how the images of sea creatures flowed across its carved surface. Schools of fish flitted around and around the thick legs of the table. Across the face of a drawer, an octopus bobbed. Seaweed waved its fronds up onto the corners of the table, causing the glass face atop it to bob gently. The flowers in the long-necked vase upon it swayed gently, drawing Draco’s eye to the purple and white blooms.

Draco took a deep, fortifying breath. If this portrait was to act like Severus, then it was only correct that Draco would treat him as such.

“Who are you?” he demanded. Pansy huffed beside him. He slapped her tugging hand away from his arm.

“Who are you?” the portrait rebutted. “You’re in my chambers, Little Malfoy.”

“I’m heir Draco Malfoy, and I’m free to go anywhere I please in the Manor,” Draco declared. None of his bravado was false, and yet the portrait did not seem at all impressed.

“Hmm, yes,” the portrait drawled, and his thoughtfulness was anything but earnest. “Heir until you do something to displease your father, isn’t it though? You’ll have to wait until your old man kicks it before you’re free to do anything at all.” He eyed Draco up and down wryly. “Has patience come into vogue as one of our family’s virtues this century? If any of my history is to be consulted, likely not.”

“You don’t know anything about my father,” Draco scoffed, derision dripping from his tone, because Father was the smartest and most powerful person in the world, and Draco was going to become just like him, and make him immeasurably proud as he did so. “I’ll tell him you’re plotting against him, and he’ll have you burnt.”

“Ah, but then you would have to tell him you were in the North Wing, wouldn’t you?” The portrait leered. The jewel tones of the room he was painted into suddenly became darker, as though all but one sconce just before his face was doused. “Wouldn’t want to give him any ideas, little Draco. I wouldn’t be so ungrateful. It was, after all, my doing which secured your position.”

“Draco, let’s get out of here,” Pansy repeated. Scowling, this time, Draco let himself be dragged away.

“Tootles,” warbled the portrait, sending him a wave that was all ten dismissive fingers waggling. He had an amused look on his angular face that Draco did not like one bit. When Draco glowered at him over his shoulder, he tossed his hair for the audience, his old-fashioned coif flipping as he did so.

Draco did not tell Lucius to burn the portrait. He didn’t tell anyone, in fact.

By the time he and Pansy had returned to the garden party, Vince and Greg had eaten all the lemon cakes, and Pansy was well and truly in a strop. A quick question to Mipsy, who played fellytone to Leedy, who, in two shakes of her spatula, had an entire platter of cherry-chocolate miniature cakes ready for the pair of them under the shade, far away from the peacock enclosure and his mother’s tea table.

“You better not tell anyone about today,” Draco warned Pansy. “If you do, I’ll tell Leedy to make your food taste like the earwax-flavoured Bertie Bott’s.”

Pansy gave him a truly scathing look. “I’m not stupid, Draco,” she said, in a tone that nearly withered the green grass around them on the spot.

The grass, however, remained green, as did the ivy around the peacock enclosure, and even Mother’s whispering Fortune-Telling Roses remained in bloom. Perhaps they would have withered on the spot, had Draco told them he intended to defy the Lord of the Manor later that very night.

But the roses remained in bloom, whispering their prophetic mysteries, and after the sun set later that evening, the wide double doors of the Disillusioned North Wing once again creaked open. Draco tiptoed in, wishing he had something like the mythical Invisibility Cloak from Beedle the Bard’s tales.

The North Wing looked dilapidated from disuse in the daytime, but it looked downright eerie at night. The shadows from the windows stretched throughout the floors and up the ugly, uncomfortable furniture like bars in a cell. The moon spilled in like mercury set light, nearly full.

The portrait was no werewolf, but Draco was nearly as fearful when he stepped up to it. Whichever ancestor he was, he was asleep, his head thrown back in his outrageously tufted, upholstered seat. It was a dark blue, more royal than navy, and had gold threading run through it. It was incredibly out of place in the relatively subdued North Wing, and Draco wondered where it had been painted.

In for a Sickle, in for a Galleon. “I’d like to speak to you,” Draco said loudly.

“Has nobody taught you how to properly greet your elders?” the portrait sneered.

He lounged in his armchair with the sconces lit in his room, an old leather tome from the bookshelf behind him open in his hands. Draco wondered if he had anywhere else to go—he seemed the only portrait in the North Wing, and if reputation held, he doubted any of the portraits elsewhere in the Manor would enjoy the sunlight of his dubious company.

Had any adult with any real authority in Draco’s life said this, he would have been abashed, stumbling over himself clumsily to apologise. But Draco had been taught by Father to exude confidence in the company of his inferiors, and so he got straight to the point. “What did you mean, you secured my position?”

The portrait’s smile was Cheshire-esque in nature. His tone was mocking as he sat back in his seat and snapped his book shut. “Piqued your interest, have I?”

Draco frowned. He got the distinct feeling he was being made fun of, and that wasn’t how this was supposed to work. Draco picked who was made fun of, not the other way around. “You’ve got nothing better to do than tell me,” he muttered angrily. “You’re just staring out at an empty foyer for the rest of your enchanted existence.”

“An apathetic audience better than none at all, you think?” The portrait cocked his head, and then dipped it in grandiose acquiesce. “Alright, Little Malfoy. You’re right, and I’m bored. How have I secured your position, of all people, you may ask?” He pointed to himself with a flourish. He looked as though, if he had been painted with his wand, feathers or sparks would have emanated from it to frame his smug visage. “Have you ever wondered why you’ve no brothers or sisters?”

Draco’s frown deepened. “Mother said I was perfect,” he mumbled, glowering. “She said they didn’t need any more children.”

The portrait barked a laugh. “How trite of her. No, Little Malfoy, the reason you’ve no siblings isn’t because you’re perfect, though I’m sure you’d like to be—it’s because I cursed my eldest brother Proteus after he destroyed my reputation before all and sundry.” He scowled darkly, the shadows beside him elongating across jewel-toned walls. The eyes of the animals embroidered into his cloak widened, their fangs bared and flashing.

Intrigued despite himself, Draco clasped his hands behind his back and leaned in. “What did Proteus do?”

“Oh, what did Proteus do!” the portrait exclaimed, the darkness in his voice matching the depths of the shadows around him. The flames within his sconces flickered, painting his face in a menacing silhouette. “What didn’t Proteus do, but only ruin my life! He dashed my only hope for a jubilant future the moment he pointed his wand at my lover.”

“Did he cast dark magic on her?” Draco asked impatiently. It was clear that this portrait would never conceive of a story worth publishing — no book Draco had ever encountered had taken quite so long to get to the point. “Did he enchant her with a love potion? Did he cast the Imperius Curse?”

“Worse,” the portrait growled. “Much, much worse.”

Chapter Text

Interlude: Septimus’ Story

Septimus Malfoy was not expected for great things. This was fortunate, because he wanted no part in any of it.

He was the seventh son of Ursus Malfoy, a bear of a man in every measure. Gruff, lumbering, and taciturn, Ursus Malfoy was a tyrannical figure in the lives of all of his sons, and either they acquiesced alacritously—such as the case with prized Proteus, his firstborn and heir, and Secundus, his next in line after.

Septimus did not acquiesce. In fact, Septimus and his father remained at odds with one another from the time Septimus took his first breath and wailed straight in his father’s reddened, spluttering face, to the moment Ursus was interred in the family crypt.

There were many things about Septimus that Ursus saw fit to decry: his laziness, which was intentional and done with indulgent pleasure; his drunkenness, which was legendary, as any debaucherous party in high-society was incomplete without Septimus in attendance; his slovenliness, which compelled the elves in the Manor’s Wizard’s Dozen to abandon their stations and devise a task-force all their own for when Septimus came riding back through the wrought-iron gates from an elongated and unspecified amount of time carousing. What grated on Ursus the most of all, however, was Septimus’ promiscuity.

A young man was expected to pursue that which he admired—this, of course, Ursus had no qualms with, even encouraged. But Septimus took seduction to new heights. Not only did he frequent the brothels nearly every night, but he had begun seeking pleasure from more fraught sources than a simple transaction.

Septimus would never tell him that in the marriages he was defiling, it was more often than not the husband who piqued Septimus’ interest. He wouldn’t say no if the lady deigned to join them, but his eye was caught by the masculine, and Septimus, like all Malfoy men, had never learned there were things he could not have.

He preferred to fashion his reputation as a rakish ne’er-do-well with a blackened heart and liver. Certainly it had credibility. But one marriage, one man, in particular, had caught not just Septimus’ eye, but his heart as well.

Darian Weasley cut a fine figure in the well-cut robes of the Wizengamot’s Chamber of the Houses. His crystalline blue eyes were offset by the vibrancy of his lashes, which curled upwards to meet his eyebrows. Septimus had fought to win the heat in that angelic gaze, and when at last he did, victory did not taste nearly as sweet as his tongue in his mouth.

“Oh, gross,” Draco retched, holding his stomach. He knew, were he to look in a mirror, that his skin would have a faintly green cast. “A Weasley?”

Septimus, for that must have been the portrait’s name or else his waffling was long-winded and pointless indeed, huffed in irritation. “Be quiet,” he chided. He did so with a judgmentally curled lip that matched Draco’s own. “This is my story, and I’m going to tell it how I see fit.”

“I no longer wish to hear it,” announced Draco, but he made no move to leave. He told himself it was because he was struck dumb and frozen by the idea of any person, of even the remotest interest, finding a Weasley worthy of inciting paternal ire.

“Anyway,” Septimus harrumphed.

The sweet dalliance between Septimus and Darian would have been all well and good, but unlike Septimus, Darian had duties which consumed his busy days well into his nights. Lord Weasley did not attend to so much as Ursus Malfoy, but his responsibilities were nothing to scoff at, unlike Septimus’ own. Thus, because of course the noble Lord Weasley couldn’t be caught trifling of all unforgivable vices, it fell to Septimus to secure for them a hideaway less salacious than a half-Knut brothel’s private rooms.

The chateau was naturally available to all members of the Malfoy family, but no one had visited in decades by the time Septimus found it, searching through lists and lists of their ancestor’s investments. It had been a ski lodge of sorts, long ago, and had fallen into disrepair. The full Wizard’s Dozen could have whipped it to shape in less than a day, but as the elves were needed for their duties around the Manor, and they served Septimus seventh in line after all of Ursus’ other sons.

It took far longer than Septimus had hoped to reconvene with lovely Darian. Distance made the heart grow fonder, but proximity ignited a flame within both of them unquenchable unless within one another’s proximity.

Before long, Septimus’ reputation had deflated from a carousing party-boy to a shut-in. Gossip spread that he had fallen ill or had perhaps found Hecate and devoted himself to joining a cloister of warlocks. At the same time, it became known that Darian Weasley’s marriage, though already one observably of practicality rather than love, had recently become even more fraught. The Lord and Lady Weasley could hardly bear to be in one another’s eyeline, let alone in the same room, no matter how vaulted the ceilings and gleaming the mirrors.

Now, Ursus Malfoy was not the only Malfoy with whom Septimus held rancour. Proteus and Secundus held him in sneering contempt, seeing his antics as signs of their clear supremacy. They spared no opportunity to remind him of such, whether in public or in private. Proteus, in particular, was aggrieved most of all by Septimus’ lackadaisical nature.

Perhaps, as Draco so eagerly pointed out, because the Malfoy heir was always, undeniably, held to perfection. Anything less, and the lock of the gilded cage would click open and the boot of disgrace would eject him from the riches and the trap he had been born into.

It was because of this jealousy that Proteus held for Septimus, so unscrutinised, so outrageously himself, that Proteus made it a goal among many to make his brother as miserable a wretch as he was himself.

Septimus hadn’t checked the wards of the chateau—why would he? He was the lowly seventh son, set to inherit a paltry sum if anything at all, and he already had a thoroughly tarnished reputation. Nobody would be interested in his comings and goings.

Nobody, but Proteus.

When it was splashed across the papers the next morning that Darian was a sodomite, well. What else was the good Lord Weasley to do but challenge Proteus to a Wizard’s Duel for his reputation?

“Is this why we’ve the blood feud?” Draco interrupted once more. “Because Proteus Malfoy accused Darian of being a sodomite?”

“I would prefer if you used the word ‘homosexual’. Sodomite hasn’t been in vogue since last millenia,” Septimus tsked. “It ages you, darling.”

Draco scowled. “Whatever you call it, I still think being that would be an improvement from being the Weasley patriarch, even back whenever you were alive.”

“Five hundred years ago, give or take, and no, that is not why we have the blood feud.” Septimus pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “If you would let me finish, I’ll be getting to the crux of that matter posthaste, thank you.”

Hit with a small pang of regret at finding Septimus so aggrieved, given that he was five hundred and—Draco had no clue how old adults were supposed to be. Was he fifty? He looked more like Severus than any Wizengamot member Draco had met. He would have to ask Severus how old he was the next time he visited. Surely it was fifty—and whatever years older, and Draco had always been taught to respect his elders until they weren’t of any use.

He was even moved to compliment, “I think he should have been pleased to have the world know he’d seduced a Malfoy, even a lesser one,” in what he thought was a very conciliatory fashion.

“Right,” Septimus sighed.

The duel was called and witnesses were summoned. The stands heaved with throngs of spectators. Hawkers called, selling their wares under the sweltering humidity of mid-July. Alone amidst the hubbub, Darian Weasley cut a dashing figure in the centre square of Ottery St. Catchpole, his cloak streaming after him as he strode to the dueling circle. Proteus, on the other hand, looked as rodent-like as the animal he emulated squealing to the printmakers.

Alas, if only fate was as fair as Darian’s looks. Darian was struck down, dead from Dark Magic the likes of which only lived in the Malfoy grimoires. Mad with rage and grief, there was nothing Septimus could do but strike in kind.

Never again would Proteus, nor any of his lineage, be able to so frivolously destroy the lives of their less-vaunted relations. There would never be any less-vaunted relations, ever again.

Proteus inherited the Malfoy estate and its holdings, and Septimus was wise enough not to start the slaughter there: even if he had bested the eldest, it would be five on one before the hydra began ripping off its own heads.

No, the intimacies of Septimus’ curse would not be revealed until long after the casting. Had he been a wiser man, he would have absconded long before his magic came to fruition, taking in tow whatever gold he could carry.

Septimus was not a wise man. He was a spiteful one.

And so when Proteus could not father a second child, Septimus was there, lurking in the corridors to haunt his brother. When he married a second time, and then a third, disgracing his wives and denouncing them as barren, Usrus cursed, Proteus despaired, and Septimus laughed.

Septimus returned to the chateau, only to cut it off from the Malfoy line. No longer of the blood, the only person who could access its grounds was someone with his favor. And then, Septimus returned to the Manor, where he took his post in the Northern Wing, forever haunting Proteus for his misdeeds.

He never let him forget that their animosity needn’t have come to a head in such a terrible way. Not until he rubbed his sour little nose into business that did not concern him, and killed a man who had no business being dead.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: Early Hogwarts

“So you see, Little Malfoy,” Septimus said with a bitter smile, “I am the reason there is no Secundus to threaten your standing as heir.”

“And the reason we have a blood feud with the Weasley’s,” Draco noted.

Septimus nodded imperiously, puffing up his chest. “And father tried to convince me I did nothing of import with my unholy, preposterous life!” he beamed. “Of course nobody of importance remembers him, nor Proteus. Their only claim to immortality is in the stained glass window in the South Wing. I, on the other hand, have much more practical staying power.”

“Clearly,” Draco repeated with great scepticism. Draco would have rathered to be a relatively unremarkable Head of House Malfoy than an exiled homosexual ne’er-do-well deviant, but then, he supposed Septimus would not agree.

Septimus had never become a diamond of the family under the pressures of heirdom, after all. Unlike Draco, of course. “I’ll be going, then.”

“I beg your pardon!” Septimus exclaimed. “I do believe some thanks are in order.”

Draco gazed at him quizzically. “Thank you…for starting the blood feud?”

“Thank you for ensuring your inheritance, more like.” The portrait said this with a nasally, tetchy whine that Draco hoped never to emulate. His voice was all in his pointy nose, stuck straight up in the air.

“I didn’t need any help from you to do that,” sneered Draco, the haughtiness his father had taught into his bones straightening his posture and tilting his head back. “I will remain Heir because I am Father’s ideal son.”

Septimus’ smile was wicked. “So you say now,” he taunted. “But the doors remain open for you, and they never were for your father, or his father before him. Why do you think that is, Little Malfoy?” He cocked his head, cruelty sharpening the edges of his lips. “Do you think the Manor knows just how deviant you really are?”

Draco didn’t need the reminder of the shameful secrets he’d been hiding, ever since Father dragged him from Mother’s vanity. Just the utterance of it made his stomach drop and his breathing come in faster. His blood felt spiky in his veins, suddenly, at the remembered notion that he was unworthy for everything he was supposed to be and do.

“Goodnight,” Draco said with as much finality as he could muster, which meant the utterance came out somewhere between a squeak and a cough. And then, because he was an intelligent, cunning Slytherin filled with self-preservation, he fled.

If only he had been smart enough to let that be their final interaction, perhaps Draco could have become the Death Eater his father had wanted of him. But Draco had always been a curious child, ready to seize something he couldn’t understand and shake it until it revealed its mysteries to him, because he had gotten every other thing he’d ever wanted, and this should be no different. And he wanted to know—why was Septimus so eager to dismiss the Malfoy line? Why had he chosen to behave in such a vulgar way, to fraternise with such lowbrow individuals and engage in such improper matches?

No matter how many times Draco felt compelled back to the Disillusioned North Wing to poke and prod at Septimus like a zoo animal, no matter how many times they discussed his betrayal over the years, Draco could never understand.

Even as the other boys in the third-year dorms began passing around dirty magazines Blaise had pilfered from a gaggle of the older years, which sparked no emotion but vague disgust in Draco. Even when he began to appreciate the sharp slant of Adrian Pucey’s stubbled jaw and the hard muscles of Marcus Flint’s Quidditch Beater’s arms and the way Blaise’s dark eyes caught the light when he smiled in mirth, his white teeth gleaming.

He wouldn’t give up his life for a fleeting fancy. He would marry, as was proper, and he would father a son, who would inherit. He would be fabulously wealthy, and his wife would be beautiful, and he would be respected and feared throughout the Wizarding World just like his father was.

And then, the Hungarian Horntail incident happened. Then, naturally, Potter ruined everything.

For the rest of Fourth Year, Draco fumed. His rage had grown to astronomical proportions when he returned to the Manor the summer afterwards.

The first thing Draco demanded of Septimus when they saw each other next was, “Take it off.”

It was nighttime in the Disillusioned North Wing, the very first evening that Draco had returned. If it wouldn’t have raised his parents’ suspicion, he would have returned home far earlier, if only to accost Septimus as he was now. For nearly a full year he had been plagued with thoughts and memories and unwanted dreams. He knew they couldn’t have originated within himself. He wasn’t deviant. He didn’t belong in the North Wing.

His behaviour hadn’t befitted a proper Malfoy—he’d glumly received another letter rubbing his academic loss against Granger in his face in the snide form of a congratulations, never mind that he’d bested everyone else in their year. He’d snubbed Pansy, his most stalwart companion since birth, and it had taken three months to recover her favour after Yule.

To top it all off, after attacking him in public and forcing him to take the form of a hideous ignoble ratlike creature, not only had the DADA Professor received no repercussions but he had began their first class by selecting none other than Draco himself to be his star participant for the Imperius Curse, and all the mortification that entailed. Whenever they passed in the hallways, which Draco made sure was few and far between, the mad old man would stare at him unnervingly with his bulging fake eye and mutter things under his breath like not a day in Azkaban and not a real Death Eater.

Draco hadn’t been perfect, not by a long shot. And that was why he couldn’t afford any further missteps pinned to his rapidly tarnishing name.

“Wake up,” he said, rapping the metal frame of Septimus’ portrait with an impatient flick of his wand. “I need you to take it off me.”

Septimus blinked, squinting in the harsh wandlight behind a raised hand. “I’m sure I have no clue what you mean,” he mumbled groggily.

“You’ve cursed me!” Draco exclaimed, as though he were the Supreme Mugwump and Septimus was in the Accusation Chair. His Lumos light emitted sparks to punctuate his frustration. He felt ready to tear his hair out. “It’s awful, it’s so terrible. You’ve cursed me to be this way. I’m not deviant. I’m not shameful. I’ve worked so hard to be perfect, and I’ve failed at every other endeavour.” He gasped, his diaphragm unable to hold the breath he needed for the force of his elevated voice. “I can’t fail at this, too,” he all but wailed.

“Oh,” Septimus said softly, lowering his hand. His expression had become unutterably sad, and infuriatingly knowing. “Oh, Draco, what’s happened?”

“You already know, because it’s your fault,” Draco replied, his voice strained and thick.

He felt liable to blow something up, and maybe cry while he did it, as childish as though he were seven again and Millie had pulled his hair while they were playing dragon tamers. “You put these ideas in my head, you made me feel this way, stupid Potter and his stupid Hungarian Horntail. I don’t even like him, I’ve never liked him,” he said desperately, and he was losing the plot of who he was trying to convince, for Septimus never would have heard of Harry Potter if not for Draco. “Take it off!”

“Draco.” Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus’ voice was low and purposefully soothing in a way Draco had never heard it before. It only worked to incense him further. “I haven’t cursed you.”

“You must’ve,” argued Draco, his voice splintering like the wooden frame of Septimus’ portrait beneath Draco’s wand. An angry heat warmed his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “I can’t be like this. I’m already such a disappointment, I can’t be a— be a—” The slur he meant to use clogged his throat and refused to come out. He took a ragged gasp and tore at his hair. “I can’t be like you!”

Septimus’ eyes had never seemed so sad nor so deep. His shoulders had slumped, alongside everything in his picture frame: the jewel-toned walls seemed shadowed and lower, the proud wingback armchair seemed sullied and frayed. The flowers in the vase beside him began to wilt. “I know what you’re going through, darling,” he said, and it was unbearable, how compassionate his voice was when Draco didn’t deserve it, he didn’t want it, he just wanted to be normal for once in his miserable mistake of a life.

“Don’t call me that!” Draco screamed. He gripped his wand so hard he was sure the hawthorn would snap. Sparks flew from his Lumos, which flickered wildly, turning from a bright bulb of light to a reaching flame which clawed towards the high reaches of the crown moulding and back. “I hate you, I hate you!”

His pulse thudded in his ears. His fingers were in his hair, tearing, and all Draco wanted to do was set Septimus alight and let him burn in his unembellished frame. The walls shook, and the metal backing of the portrait rattled with them.

Septimus’ mouth pinched in alarm, his nostrils flaring. Draco had seen this family resemblance on Father’s face when he strode into Madam Pomfrey’s Hospital Wing in third year, after Draco had been mauled.

“Don’t act like you care about me!” he cried, the sides of his eyes pricking. Father had cared about him one time, in between bouts of frigid silence to express his displeasure each time he received the congratulatory end-of-year missive informing him of Draco’s Salutatorian status, and he never would again. “This is all your fault!”

“I do care about you,” Septimus said. He started backwards in his seat, clutching the side of the wingback chair and yelping as he ducked away from where the canvas directly in front of his face began to smoke.

Draco couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down his cheeks. He couldn’t stop himself from yelling, either. “Liar!” he screamed. He lost count of how many times he did so. Long enough that words eluded him altogether, and what once was coherent, became a long, loud howl instead.

He buried his face in his hands, lost for words in the wave of rage and helplessness that overcame him. His knees buckled onto the dusty carpet. There was a high ringing in Draco’s ears.

“I hate you,” he said once more, unable to stop crying. His throat hurt. His eyes burned. He wiped his nose roughly on the sleeve of his nightshirt and scrubbed at his cheeks. “You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

Draco heard the creak of wood, and when he glanced through his fingers, Septimus was crouched by the base of his frame, as close as he could get to Draco. He rested his forearms on the edge and leaned in. “I care about you,” he repeated. “No matter what you say, I care about you.”

“You don’t,” Draco sniffled, because Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus couldn’t. Father wouldn’t, and Father was the most important person in the world. He had forbidden Draco from sitting at Mother’s vanity when he was small: he had forbidden Draco from venturing into the North Wing. He was the most powerful person in Draco’s life, and he would hate Draco if he ever learned the truth.

To be rejected by Father but accepted by Uncle Septimus felt like the worst sort of betrayal. Like proof that he truly would never be good enough. “I just need to be better,” Draco gasped, a fresh bout of tears dampening his face. The creases by the sides of his eyes felt raw, his pale lashes gluey and stuck together in his vision.

“Darling,” Septimus prompted, and Draco still couldn’t look at him. Draco would have to figure out how to repair it. Visions of Gryffindor’s Fat Lady cowering in the incongruous paintings throughout the corridors passed by his tearful eyes, her unprotected canvas rent corner to corner. “It doesn’t matter how much better or how much worse you are.”

“Father—” Draco cut himself off, blowing his nose into his already sullied sleeve. Septimus grimaced, the first time this entire, harrowing, awful endeavour that he had expressed an emotion like disgust. “I need to be better for Father.”

“You don’t need to be better for me,” Septimus prompted gently, and Draco shot him a flat, unimpressed look.

“Well,” he sneered, though his dismissiveness was undermined by his swollen eyes and blotchy flush, “you’re you.”

Septimus’ laugh was a low, wry sound.

“That I am,” he agreed. Draco blinked in surprise, but Septimus wasn’t upset or offended, as he had anticipated. A wash of melancholy had pulled the corners of his mouth downwards and dragged his gaze faraway, his eyes resting on something only he could see.

“I don’t want to end up like you,” Draco repeated, mullish and stubborn, knowing it wasn’t good manners or proper etiquette to do so. He didn’t care—Mother wasn’t there, and if she was and had heard everything, she would make him Vow never to speak of it again.

“Yes, well, I didn’t want to end up like me, either,” Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus sighed, resting his elbow on the frame and perching his cheekbone onto the heel of his hand. “Tell me about that Hungarian Horntail. Was that some sort of euphemism? You’re a bit young, aren’t you?” Septimus squinted. “I’m so unpractised at guessing children’s ages. Are you twelve?”

Emotions drove through Draco like an Abraxan chomping at the bit. Prickling with embarrassment was followed swiftly by hot, itching indignation. “I’m fifteen!” he said, scowling. “My birthday was June 5th.”

“Huh.” Septimus raised his eyebrows and stuck out his bottom lip thoughtfully. “I’ve never been accused of prudishness in my life, but I would wager that’s still a tad young to be having sex.”

Draco balled his fists and glared. “We didn’t have sex!” he protested, feeling as though his hair would stand on end from sheer mortification. If his face wasn’t already bright read from an abundance of emotion, it certainly was now. “I don’t even know if I want to!”

Septimus looked intrigued. “Well, then, what’s all the fuss?”

“I just—he—” In describing Potter’s work ducking and weaving through the air around the snarling fangs and bouts of fire from the incensed Hungarian Horntail, words very nearly failed Draco. He felt his whole face heat as he said, “Hogwarts held the Triwizard Tournament, and Potter flew against a dragon to steal one of her eggs. He was—It was—”

Magnificent. The sight of him, so daring as he flew, as though facing a dragon were nothing more frightening than facing the boy with its moniker for the Snitch, had set Draco’s skin prickling.

Watching Potter had excited Draco in ways he couldn’t yet explain and didn’t think he wanted to, and that alone absolutely terrified him.

“I tried kissing Pansy Parkinson at the Yule Ball,” he said instead. Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus threw his head back and laughed loudly.

“And how did that go?” he asked in a knowing drawl once he was finished, following along gamely.

Draco grimaced. “It was wet,” he recalled with a curled lip. He stared at the twisting floral patterns in the rug, watching the flowers bloom, settle, and wilt in a never-ending cycle of life and death.

“Doesn’t sound like you got a lot of enjoyment out of it,” Septimus remarked. Draco shook his head.

The walls in Septimus’ painting had returned to their usual state of high-ceilinged brightness. The armchair was once again fully stuffed and well-polished. Even the flowers in their vase had begun to revive themselves, just like the ones in the rug before Draco.

Septimus prodded Draco gently, “Would it have been better, do you think, if it would have been with this Potter boy?”

“We don’t even like each other,” Draco groused. He had meant the words to sound angry and strong, but to his own dismay, he sounded like Leedy had given him vanilla cake with strawberries instead of the decadent chocolate he preferred—forever aiming for strident as his father was, and always landing somewhere between spoiled and snooty. “He doesn’t even want to be my friend.”

Septimus shrugged. “You don’t have to be friends to be lovers,” he posited airily, before adding, “though, like I said, you’re a bit young for that.”

“I don’t want to do that with him,” Draco grumbled. “You don’t listen to me.”

“Oh, my dear Draco, I have enough unseemly characteristics, I don’t need you inventing more.” He gave Draco a look, and then turned to his flowers with a self-satisfied air, rearranging them as they perked up even farther in their vase. “I listen to everything you say.”

Chapter Text

The Summer Before Sixth Year

The problem with Potter was that, firstly, he was the Dark Lord’s mortal enemy.

Secondly, this problem was exacerbated by the unfortunate fact that the Dark Lord, mortal enemy to Potter, was living in Draco’s family home.

This had not been of overly great consequence to Draco throughout fifth year, having just narrowly escaped making the Dark Lord’s majestic acquaintance by rabbitting over to Pansy’s before throwing himself onto the Hogwarts Express. The smear in the runework was the fact that Mother was involved.

But she seemed in relatively good spirits through her letters and gift baskets—or at least, determined not to involve Draco, even if she wasn’t. Draco had not yet bore witness to the abject devastation of the Dark Lord’s presence, and thus he was able to Occlude the worst of his worries away.

Returning home for the summer between fifth and sixth year blasted Draco’s blissfully ignorant illusion of relative tranquility to absolute bits.

“What am I going to do?” Draco lamented to Pansy, nearly tearing his hair out on the train to King’s Cross. “Father is in Azkaban, the Dark Lord is in the Manor—I always thought, with Father here, that I would never actually be required to serve,” he moaned, feeling queasy as he remembered his false bravado in front of Potter at the end of term.

He hadn’t actually wanted to fight Potter, it had just been so much easier to blame him for everything.

For Father’s imprisonment, for the Dark Lord’s ire, for the way Draco’s stomach swooped whenever he looked up in the Great Hall and found Potter’s myopic eyes straining to see him through his unfashionable spectacles.

Pansy’s face had taken on a greyish pallor. “You should talk to Theo,” she insisted, though Draco hadn’t wanted anything to do with him at that moment, nor Vince or Greg. He wasn’t sure of their loyalties, and he wasn’t sure of his own, either.

How was he supposed to seek advice when he couldn’t even trust himself?

And then there was the other thing, too.

~*~

“I want to dig my fingers into his flesh, rip bits off, chew with my mouth open and swallow him, so I can feel him in my stomach,” Draco said, staring at the dust bunny hopping in the corner where the walls met the rug beneath Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus’ portrait in the Disillusioned North Wing. “I want him to watch me while I do it, and I want him feed himself to me.”

Draco wasn’t certain if this was a wholly sexual need. Perhaps it was some sort of fucked-up psychological one, too. As though, if he imagined devouring Potter vividly enough, he could finally become imbued with the strong, heroic qualities Draco himself always lacked.

“Go on,” drawled Septimus. Where he’d gotten his glass of wine or the sweating bottle of Vouvray on his side table from, Draco wasn’t sure. Sourly, he wished he could have shared.

Then Draco thought of which sorts stalked the halls around his bedroom nowadays, and thought better.

“He walks away from me and I want to drag him back by his collar,” Draco continued. It felt good to confess to someone, these dark thoughts filled with desire that consumed him in the witching hours. “I want to put my tie on him, because he never wears his own, and I want to fasten it too tight. I want to make him pay attention to me. I know he can. He hasn’t, recently, but I know he could. He would, if I could do what I’ve been thinking about.”

Septimus looked amused, and smug, and contemplative, all at once. “What will you do now, with your father in Azkaban?”

Draco’s head shot up, ready to bring out the Abraxan cavalry from their stables in Lucius’ defense. “What does Father have to do with this?”

“Well, it seems you’re worried about his houseguests,” Septimus observed, taking a swig of the pale wine. “You could kick them out. You’re Lord of the Manor, as long as he’s imprisoned.”

Draco blanched. “I can’t do that,” he argued immediately. He hadn’t even thought of it, sending the wards after them, recalibrating the core of the Manor to push out Father’s compatriots.

It would have been a betrayal of the highest degree—the moment Father returned from Azkaban, Draco’s window on the Southern Stained Glass would be shattered. “I’ve got to live up to him. I need to make sure everything he wants is set up for his return.”

“You need to, sure,” Spetimus replied with rolled eyes, facetiousness and boredom dripping from his tone like the condensation on the side of the wine bottle. “But it seems like what you want is to steal this Potter boy away from this Dark Lord of yours and ravage him. I don’t see how these two things can exist congruently,” he summarised, raising his thin eyebrows in askance. “Do you?”

“Shut up,” Draco scoffed. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”

Draco had gotten literally everything else he had ever asked for, and many things he hadn’t thought of asking for, too. He owed his family a debt. He owed his father a debt, to show him that the bloodline would be in competent hands once he was no longer patriarch. Draco couldn’t let him down.

Septimus cocked his head. “What you want always matters,” he said with a confidence Draco had never known limning his statement in golden calm.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Draco clarified, as though it should have been obvious. “You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been the heir of anything.”

Septimus hummed and squinted at Draco. His wavy, coiffed fringe fell into one discerning eye.

“How do you plan on hiding your desires from your Dark Lord?”

“He won’t find them,” Draco said, brooking no argument because he couldn’t handle one. “He won’t find out.”

Sighing, Septimus leaned over. His head, the top of which, Draco was gleeful to note, had been painted rather sparsely indeed past the hairline, ducked down beneath the frame. He seemed to rummage there for an irascible moment, muttering and banging on the side of something, Circe’s Cursed Pigsty muttered under his breath.

Draco started when a thunk and a thud hit the metallic edge on his side of the portrait.

“There,” Septimus said in self-satisfaction, sweeping upwards and basking in whatever his accomplishment was like a crup in a mud puddle. He straightened and pushed his coif from his eyes, retrieving his glass of wine and swirling it in a smug toast. “You can thank me for your Plan B, when you need it.”

Eyeing the portrait suspiciously, Draco raised his wand. He hesitated before the frame until Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus urged him on with a bored wave and an eye roll. “Do I seem the type for treachery? It’s so gauche, at this age. You’re no Proteus, Little Malfoy.”

“I’m sixteen,” Draco muttered, but tapped his wand anyway. “Almost an adult.”

“Sure,” Septimus agreed in a way that suggested he absolutely did not agree at all. Draco was too busy inspecting the item that had previously been hidden by the frame, which had sprung open and deposited it into his startled palm, to hear him continue, “In everything but what actually matters, that is.”

Draco blinked up at him in confusion, holding the tarnished metal object. It was engraved on every surface, roses and flowers whorling through the metal, unlike most other things in the Disillusioned Northern Wing, and therefore wholly congruous with Septimus’ preference of decor. “A key?”

“For the gates,” Septimus said with grandiosity, acting as though Draco was his royal audience, and he the king stage master. “When you're in need of it, simply tap your wand to it, and it will activate the Portkey within. And as for the wards,” he gestured at the vase on the table next to him, beside the mostly-empty bottle of Vouvray. “Fern, Yarrow, and Purple Hyacinth is the password I devised, after that bilious backstabber Proteus convinced the gate’s grotesque to let him in on blood alone,” he said the last clause with a bit of tooth gnashing, which Draco also did not notice, too busy reviewing the codex of flowers and their meanings he had been taught by his tutors before Hogwarts.

Draco wrinkled his nose when he understood the meaning. “How trite.”

Glowering, Septimus scoffed. “You’re a teenager,” he snapped. Draco was reminded, briefly but with strength, of a Blast-Ended Skrewt clacking its malformed claws. “You’ve no sense of romance.”

“Sure,” Draco replied, doubting him powerfully, but pocketing the key nonetheless.

“Fern for the anchor of my magic, my most integral part. The object of my eternal fascination. My lover, kept secret, but my ardour never dimmed because of it.” Septimus sighed deeply, staring into the vase, tracing the lacy green leaves and the delicate purple and white petals. Draco wondered when the last time he had imbibed was, and felt certain it had likely not been for at least a hundred years, for how the drink seemed to have gone to his head.

Septimus continued, “Yarrow, my everlasting devotion. My heart and soul beyond my body.” He looked at Draco with great gravity, and Draco reconsidered. Such dramatics seemed on par with even a sober Septimus. “Purple Hyacinth, the depths of sorrow, our shared misery that we had to hide our brightest and most integral selves, only to be convened once in a blue moon, only for a night, never for a life.”

“Yes, thank you, I had tutors too,” Draco replied with a face like he’d just eaten a mouthful of sour lemon peel, snuck from Leedy’s bowl with sightless sticky fingers and plunged into his mouth in gluttonous haste.

Draco glanced at the doorway. He was tiring of conversation, tiring in general, wilting like one of Mother’s Fortune-Telling Roses, which had not seemed a positive omen when Draco had discovered them nearly stripped of all their petals. The weight of the Dark Lord’s presence had settled around the Manor like a sickly miasma, and Draco was no less affected by it.

The sun had long since set, and even though there were passages through the Manor only available to the Malfoy family, none of them ran directly to his chambers. Greyback had taken to loitering outside of them, and Draco shuddered to think of catching him alone.

“Stay a little longer,” Septimus urged, waving his bottle and topping up his glass. “There’s more wine still, and I’ve not yet bored of hearing about your handsome paramour.”

“He’s not my paramour,” Draco argued, and cumulus clouds had done less huffing and puffing. “We don’t even like each other.”

Septimus smiled. “Yes, it often starts like that, doesn’t it.”

Chapter Text

The Choice

Draco was in the cellars when the Snatchers came.

“Quick, Lovegood,” he hissed, hearing footsteps echo down the dingy stairway. “Cower.”

Lovegood was, unfortunately, not very talented at cowering.

She was far too curious for her own good. More Ravenclaw than sense, and no doubt she thought one of her lunatic creatures would protect her, the Humdingers or the Snorkacks or whatever other mad creation she muttered about to Draco and that Gryffindor Thomas who was grouchily slumped in the same cell as her.

Lovegood had made quite a few overtures towards Draco throughout her time spent in the Manor cellars, and he could admit that her approach, though completely barmy, was much more effective than Thomas’.

Lovegood had wrenched something in the back of Draco’s mind with her wide, guileless blue eyes and her unwavering, soft spoken gentleness. Despite his saner inclinations, Draco had spent a not insignificant amount of his time outside her bars. He threatened Thomas whenever any of the other Death Eaters were about, practicing wordless Convulsing Charms on him that he’d taught himself from his Healing and Apothecarist textbooks, learned while trying to figure out the best remedy for the Cruciatus Curse’s lingering effects on nerve health and trying not to gnaw his own fingers off in worry.

The spell Draco preferred was meant to be used by Healers to check which nerves could still activate on purpose: Healer Euripides Pike had invented it in the 1700s. It had been amended in the 200 interceding years to become a completely painless procedure, but to the onlooker, it appeared anything but. Fortunately, very few of the Death Eaters seemed to have a solid competence for Healing: their aim was often rather the contrary.

Perhaps this was why Thomas was so surly in Draco’s presence. But Draco was not about to pretend to Cruciate Lovegood. He would have thought that Thomas, the noble Gryffindor, would have appreciated chivalry at the very least.

Besides, Draco’s methods had a dual benefit: firstly, by informing many of the roving, more minor bad actors throughout the Manor that Draco was a man with a talent for the Cruciatus Curse, which was of course his main aspiration to the effect of keeping himself safe.

Secondly, as an unexpected but overwhelmingly positive side effect: there was fresher meat in the cellars to pick through than someone else’s leftovers, what with all the raids on Muggle Salisbury. Therefore, Draco didn’t have to add the screams of his classmates to his guilty conscience, at least not at the Manor.

Hogwarts under the Carrows was a different story, of course.

Draco had walked out of the first dubiously named Defence Against the Dark Arts Class with Amycus Carrow. He had, much in the form of the Impostor Professor Moody, attempted to teach the Unforgivables to his seventh-year class. His methods, however, were much more hands-on than Barty Crouch Jr’s demonstrations.

When Carrow dragged a huddle of silently sobbing first years to clutch one another and cower before Draco at the front of the DADA classroom, Draco had nearly lost his voice from the horror of it. He’d turned away from the children and towards Carrow, shaking with rage and poorly controlled fear for the gruesome man in front of him.

“I believe in blood purity,” Draco spat through gritted teeth, his eyes wide and wild like a cornered Abraxan, the kinds of which Aunt Bella torture as a sort of hobby on the Manor grounds. “Not savagery.”

He turned away from Carrow, his breath quick and his shoulders tense, and grabbed the hand of the closest child to pull all three of them away. Carrow retorted something in his scathing, scratchy voice, but Draco could not hear him over the roaring in his ears.

He’d fled the DADA classroom without his dignity, proving himself as the coward he knew himself to be, but at least he’d not had to endure failing to torture a weeping group of children before the jury of his classmates.

The firstie whose hand he held clawed at Draco’s knuckles and whimpered when Draco shook him off. “Go to your common rooms,” he barked distractedly. “Now.”

His voice was sharp with the panic he felt boiling up into his throat. He’d only just barely entered Severus’ chambers—he had never deigned to take up post in the Headmaster’s office, leaving it a shrine to the man he killed—when he collapsed to the floor by the door.

His hands and feet grew numb, his vision shrank to mere grainy pinpricks, and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

“Draco,” Severus breathed, his voice low and concerned, a firm hand on the jutting vertebrae of Draco’s rounded spine. “You’re having a panic attack.”

It wasn’t the first—he’d had many before, including his foiled, incomplete jaunt in Myrtle’s bathroom—but it was one of the most frightening he could remember.

Draco had never lost feeling in his extremities like that before, and he felt seized by some spirit outside of himself, sobbing and hyperventilating until he retched on the floor of Severus’ poorly lit dungeon office.

Severus had set Draco up in his personal rooms for half the week afterwards. He finally opted to leave the Potions Professor’s as Draco’s frightful lair in exchange for the Headmaster’s tower, as was his due. When Draco eventually skulked back to the Slytherin table, both Carrow siblings  levelled malevolent glowers at him, matched by Severus’ seething flat stares in their direction.

The Carrows hadn’t tried to bring Draco in on their hateful fun after that, and Draco wondered what Severus had threatened—or had done—to keep them in line.

However, Severus wasn’t in the cellars to save Draco this time.

His father’s sweaty palm clawed Draco’s shoulder in a painful grip. He hissed in his ear, gleeful and desperate as one, “This is our chance, Draco, this is our chance to redeem our family in the Dark Lord’s eyes.”

Draco ascended the stairway with dread pooling in the pit of his stomach, as though he was dragged in chains to the Accusation Chair. Unlike Potter in the summer before fifth year, whatever it was that Father had planned for Draco, Draco would bet all the money in his personal vault that it would incur much more dire consequences than a mere snapped wand.

Draco saw the shock of red hair first. Weasley couldn’t open one eye: it was swollen shut, black and blue. His one good eye was wide and unfocused with panic. Beside him, Hermione Granger glared at Aunt Bella, her lip stuck out belligerently. Draco could see the little wobble in it, though, belying her fear. Any sane person was afraid of Bellatrix Lestrange, and Granger was the sanest of her ill-fated friends.

Behind them both, a dark-haired figure sat hunched and bloodied.

Draco felt his soul leave his body through the pit in his stomach. His essence seemed to hover above them, as he stared down at the boy clutching his swollen, stinging face, his green eyes screwed shut, the tan skin stretched tight and shiny.

“Ronald Weasley,” Father sneered, his hand still heavy on Draco’s shoulder. “And the Mudblood girl who thinks she’s so smart. Draco, tell us.”

He gestured to Mother, who held herself tightly at the entrance to the ballroom, and Aunt Bella, whose head had swivelled like an owl’s and whose eager eyes fixed on Draco as though he were a mouse. “We must be sure. Is that Harry Potter?”

“I…” Draco began, swallowing heavily. He gripped his wand in his fist. Everyone’s eyes were on him, including two slivers of green, just barely visible.

Draco had spent all of sixth year unable to choose. He had been so, so grateful, when he’d thought Potter had made the choice for him in Myrtle’s bathroom.

Every day was a nightmare, a carousel of doubt.

At breakfast, Draco would convince himself he would no longer work on the Vanishing Cabinet. On the walk to the Potions classroom, he would be filled with the need to turn around, ascend the spiral staircase to the Headmaster’s office, and reveal everything he had been fruitlessly working on to Albus Dumbledore.

By the change of classes, Draco would have resigned himself to his impossible, inescapable task. He berated himself for his cowardice, for his ungratefulness, for his inability to put his family before his own selfish desires.

He called himself a traitor. He scolded himself that it was his obligation to put his parents first, after everything they had done and everything he was. His resolve to fix the Vanishing Cabinet redoubled with every plodding step to the seventh floor with Vince and Greg.

Until, that is, he was sat right before it. Its unsightly, cumbersome frame loomed over him as though it were about to tip over and squash him flat. Once more, Draco would become calcified with doubt.

Stupid, stupid, he was so unutterably stupid, Draco could never get anything right. Draco would never stop failing at everything he tried.

“Well, Draco? Is it?” Father asked behind him, his hands tight on Draco’s shoulders. His heavy rings dug into bone that, from years of nauseous vigilance, no longer had the flesh to protect it. “Is it Harry Potter?”

It was his duty to do this for his parents, because if he didn’t, they would be hurt. Injured. They might even be killed.

Draco loved his parents. Certainly, what he felt for them was the closest thing to love he could recall. It was a feeling to be eschewed, the bleak, niggling sense of doubt that stabbed into his stomach, which came over him as he blinked through bloodshot, bleary eyes across the Great Hall in sixth year to the Golden Trio, watching as they interacted so seamlessly with one another.

He wondered if it was love he felt, or merely obligation, and then he called himself a traitor once more.

How deeply did Draco' loathsome lack of character squirm that deeply into the marrow of his bones?

The mark from the Hippogriff’s claws was the lesser of the scars on the forearm. The flesh of Draco's arm was bracketed on either side by mistakes. One in third year, the other in sixth. 

Draco had learned to look away: the scars were reminders of his ignorance, of his cruelty, and of his powerlessness. One a testament to his whole and complete inability to conduct himself with the decorum befitting a Malfoy heir: the other, a brand denoting his duty, his birthright, the person he needed to become, all of which fell short of at every conceivable turn.

Draco thought of Septimus and the spiteful poltergeist he had become by the end of his time, determined to do nothing but condemn the family who had ruined his life to suffering. Draco didn’t want to be vengeful: he didn’t want to make anyone suffer.

“I can’t be sure,” Draco said.

He simply couldn't succeed. No matter how he tried.

Not even now.

He needed more time. He needed all the time in the world. He needed to gather all the time-turners from the Department of Mysteries, break them open, and shower himself in the sand until he disappeared. He needed the universe to freeze so that he could exist in a state of suspended animation for the next two hundred years, until he withered into dust and dissolved into the aether.

Even then, he would never be able to choose. Any amount of time would be too little.

Draco had never been a person beside his father.  The only version of Draco that was acceptable was a facsimile of Lucius himself. Until Draco ate his own tail and disappeared into a tight ball of nothingness, he would never be right. He would never be perfect. He would always be too much and not enough.

Too much, and never enough, and yet here, staring into Potter’s slitted eyes, the safety of his family fell squarely on his hunched and brittle shoulders.

Aunt Bella’s clawed nails dug into his bicep.

Draco bided his time on a heavy, terrified swallow. He repeated, “I can’t be sure.”

He knew who he should have been. He knew what he should have done.

And yet.

His eyes looked anywhere but Potter’s swollen face. Even in defiance, Draco chose the coward’s way out.

Draco learned by the pointed toe of Aunt Bella’s boot that not choosing was a choice all its own.

Chapter Text

PART TWO
The Safehouse

Harry was going to be sick.

The nauseating rotation of the portkey was only made worse by his lack of vision. Blurred clouds streaked across his hazy vision and howling wind whipped his hair into and out of his face. Even if he’d been wearing his glasses, which had gotten lost somewhere between catching Bellatrix Lestrange’s dagger like a Snitch and getting dragged down to the dungeons for a second time that day, Harry felt certain they would have soared off his face immediately upon the portkey’s activation.

Harry and Malfoy both stumbled when they hit the ground. Harry could hardly see six inches in front of him, put the lean, pale reed that was Malfoy hunched over and groaned, holding his left arm into himself tightly.

“Fuck”, he groaned. Harry stepped to him, tripping on the gravel crunching under the soles of his trainers.

Harry had never reached out to Malfoy before in anything other than anger. But Malfoy, for some reason, had lied for him.

Harry had seen the immediate spark of recognition in his stormy grey eyes—it was the only clear thing he could see. He’d noted the hesitation in his lukewarm response, poorly concealed in Malfoy’s voice, while his relatives slavered too greedily over delivering Harry, Ron, and Hermione over to Voldemort to hear it.

After Harry had torn him clavicle to hipbone and then turned tail and run, shoving down the memory of Malfoy bleeding out with firewhisky and Ginny’s lips on his own. It was undeniably the worst thing Harry had ever done in his life. Harry was certain that had Malfoy done anything similar to him, he wouldn’t have gotten away with a mere detention, and Harry wouldn’t have paused to piss on him if he’d been lit on fire.

Malfoy wasn’t known for his magnanimous and forgiving nature. Which meant Malfoy had an ulterior motive for biding time for Harry and his friends to escape, and Harry could never let a mystery lie, especially not when it came to Malfoy.

He wasn’t sure what he would have said, but it certainly wasn’t the cry that escaped his mouth, as a jolt of pain seared through his scar.

Doubling over, Harry clutched his forehead. In a faraway part of his mind unoccupied by the pain throbbing through it, he thought wryly that he and Malfoy must’ve made quite a pair, stumbling around uselessly and groaning in agony. A wash of manic happiness overcame him. He couldn’t stop the fizzing laughter which overcame him, bubbling out of his mouth.

“Fucking wanker,” Malfoy muttered from somewhere to his right, disdain dripping from every pained syllable. “Can’t bear ten seconds when he isn’t the centre of attention.”

If Harry could have defended himself, he would have. Instead, he just kept laughing. Finally, the Boy Who Lived was under the Dark Lord Voldemort’s control. Him and that repulsive, snivelling traitor, the younger Malfoy. That whole family was only worth the amount of gold in their vaults: every one of their members had proved that wealth never equated skill.

No bother. Lucius and Narcissa would watch as Lord Voldemort tortured him. Perhaps he would let Bellatrix do the honours, as she so clearly was eager to. It would be a beautiful sound, hearing what noises a fool who dared betray Lord Voldemort could make when pressed. And then, after Potter had gotten an eyeful of what the Dark Lord’s most loyal members would do to everyone he valued, Voldemort would kill that accursed boy himself.

Harry laughed until tears began rolling down his cheeks. He felt horror shudder through him, from the nape of his neck to his toes in his trainers, and struggled to remove himself from the foreign feeling.

As always whenever Harry felt Voldemort’s emotions, he felt subsumed with a lack of agency, with the feeling of wrongness. His mind and body felt invaded, tainted, like he could to rip off his own skin and he still wouldn’t be clean.

“Potter,” Malfoy snapped, grabbing a fistful of Harry’s tangled hair and tugging sharply so Harry’s tearful eyes were looking into his own wild ones. “Pull yourself together. You must know how to Occlude a little bit, don’t you?”

Haltingly, Harry attempted taking deep breaths through the champagne giggles. His diaphragm disagreed with him every time he tried. He grabbed Malfoy’s wrist tightly, the tug on his scalp grounding him into his body. He worried that if he let Malfoy release him, he would fall back into Voldemort’s wave of manic, bloodthirsty glee.

Malfoy seemed to understand, somehow. Keeping his fist in Harry’s hair, he pressed his left hand to Harry’s chest. “Breathe in time with me,” he said, and Harry had never heard Malfoy attempt to be commanding without being snide. “In and out.”

He was close enough that Harry could see his chest rise and fall, slowly and exaggeratedly. He was the only thing in sharp relief—the rest of the world was a brown and green blur. As Harry’s breathing began to slow, keeping in line with Malfoy’s, the sounds of their surroundings began to make their way to Harry’s ears, slowly overtaking Voldemort’s deathly high laughter.

Birds. Where were they, that there were birds around? Surely the Portkey hadn’t dropped them five feet from the Manor grounds in the Wiltshire woods—but no. The air itself smelled different, crisp and clear, and the air in Harry’s lungs felt less substantive, his body working harder than before to eke the oxygen from it.

“Where are we?” Harry asked hoarsely.

Though the foreign, intrusive mania had subsided, the jittery feeling in Harry’s body was quickly becoming replenished by the helplessness he always felt when separated from his glasses. He squeezed Malfoy’s hand on his chest, once and firmly, for the reassurance that certainly if Malfoy had plunged himself into such mortal peril thus far, he wouldn’t allow Harry to go walking into walls simply because he was half blind. Though maybe he would, the little arsehole—he’d probably laugh about it, too.

Malfoy sighed and released Harry’s hair, withdrawing his hand from his chest to massage his own forehead. Instead of answering, he turned to the house-elf who was wringing her hands a few feet away from them. “Mipsy, the key, please.”

Harry followed Malfoy as he strode down the gravel path, nearly walking into him when he stopped. This close, he could see the tense slope of Malfoy’s shoulders, which every other year before sixth had been as languid and at ease as the rest of him, as though he’d known no struggle.

“Do you mind,” Malfoy muttered at him unpleasantly, shifting his bag on his shoulder so it swung and dashed Harry in the thigh. “Your breath stinks panting down my neck like that.”

“I can’t fucking see,” Harry complained, scowling and squinting up at the dull iron bars before them. Amidst the elaborate metalwork, Harry could just make out an ugly, rough-hewn face scowling down at the two of them, its fangs bared threateningly.

“Yes, and you can continue not seeing away from me, if you please,” Malfoy huffed, and Harry along with him.

“Whatever,” Harry replied, rolling his eyes and taking a step back, nearly tripping over the house elf—Mipsy—who hastily raised a hand up to his hip to steady him before he squashed her flat. “Sorry!” he exclaimed. “Sorry, are you alright?”

“Mipsy is being fine, Harry Potter,” she sniffled, clutching the jumper he’d watched Narcissa give her in her shaky grasp. Though she didn’t seem on the verge of collapse the way Winky had been when freed from Crouch’s service, she didn’t exactly look like she was about to jump for joy like Dobby had done, either.

Malfoy had moved onto more pressing matters. The iron gate shrieked as the face within surveyed him more thoroughly, its thuggish features broad enough for even Harry to see. Despite the scrutiny, Malfoy’s back remained straight and proud as it ever was when challenged.

“A Malfoy,” it squealed in a sound of metal on metal, its serpentine tongue flicking through pointed fangs. Harry squinted to see its face crumpled in malevolent assessment. Suddenly, he feared that somehow the portkey’s coordinates had deposited them somewhere completely random. Although, were that the case, Harry reckoned any enemy of the Malfoy family would be a promising friend to have.

“Yes, yes,” Malfoy drawled with a dismissive gesture, drawing himself up as he flashed the key that matched the gate in the sunlight. “Not for long, likely. The password is Fern, Yarrow, and Purple Hyacinth, if you please.” Malfoy eyed the gate meaningfully, leaning in with a conspiratorial lilt to his low voice. “Who do you think I retrieved this from?”

Harry heard the creak of metal more than he saw the face in the gate cock its head, examining Malfoy. Harry watched Malfoy wince at the sound of metal on metal, doing much the same himself. Though the sharp pain in his scar had dulled to a steady ache, it was made worse by the high, ear-splitting squeals. Harry hoped the gate would come to a conclusion about them quickly, before Harry was forced to run away into what looked like dense woods, if only to recover in peace and quiet.

The gate’s gleaming copper eyes lingered on the dried blood streaking Malfoy’s chin and the way he cradled his left forearm into his body, protective of it even after Voldemort’s call. Its shining gaze flickered between him, Harry, and Mipsy.

“Not for long, indeed,” it asserted, its voice squeaky and especially grating at the last syllable of its agreement.

Without further ado, the lid on the lock for Malfoy’s key sprung open. It clicked easily as Malfoy turned the key, smooth and gliding as butter, despite the tarnish on both the lock and the gate, so thorough that even Harry could see it.

Once the wards let them through, Harry sighed. He turned to Mipsy, who was hovering beside him and wringing her small hands in anxiety. Harry was about to reassure her that he would help her any way he could, when Malfoy spoke instead.

“Mipsy, would you care to be in my employ?” he asked, and she was already nodding so profusely her large, pointed ears flapped.

“Yes, Little Master—Master Malfoy.”

Harry watched with interest as Malfoy shuddered. His face, pale and sleepless, had taken on a bit of a greenish cast at her words. “Just Draco, please,” he said. She blinked, and he clarified, “That’s not an order, just a preference.”

Much more hesitantly, Mipsy nodded once again. “I will try, Master—M–D—” she cut herself off, pulling her ears down in distress.

“It’s alright, Mipsy,” Malfoy sighed. Harry was shaken by the gentleness with which he addressed her, leaning down to pat her on the shoulder. Harry hadn’t known Malfoy was capable of any gentleness. The closest he had come in Harry’s observation was laying with his head in Pansy Parkinson’s lap and his socked feet wedged under Blaise Zabini’s thigh.

“I haven’t the energy to go creeping around,” Malfoy sighed, jarring Harry from his Hogwarts reverie. Malfoy gestured to the estate which loomed at the end of the gravel pathway, large enough that even Harry, with his horrible nearsightedness, could make out the shape of it clearly. “Can you please bring us to the Master Suite?”

He held out his hand for Mipsy to grasp. Before Harry could say that actually, he preferred to walk, thanks, lest the meagre contents of his already upset stomach get smeared across the far wall, Mipsy had whisked them away in an abrupt crack of displaced air.

Harry braced his hands on his knees in what he could only infer to be the Master Suite and stared at the patterns in the rug beneath him, concentrating wholly on not vomiting.

By the time he straightened, he and his stomach at a fragile truce, Malfoy had already sat heavily on the king bed. His satchel thudded to the ground beside him, making an incongruously heavy sound for such a small bag. He groaned on an exhale, long and relieved, and buried his head in his hands, his elbows braced onto his knees.

“Does Mas—Little Master Draco need anything from Mipsy?” she asked inquiringly from beside the foot of the bed, peering worriedly between the two exhausted boys. “A poultice for his arm? Or a rag for his chin? Mipsy can be searching the chateau for Healing Balms,” she said, shifting fretfully foot to foot as she strained to catch a look at Malfoy’s Dark Mark and the wound on his face.

Malfoy let out a long, slow exhale. “I have the rolodex of potions in my satchel,” he said, gesturing to it on the rug next to him. “Just some fresh clothes, if you would. I’ll call you if I need something else. You should get some rest, Mipsy.”

Mipsy’s large brown eyes became steely as she frowned at Malfoy. She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “Mipsy will be finding fresh clothes for Little Master Draco and his guest, and then she will be making dinner,” she decided in a no-nonsense tone similar to that which Harry recalled McGonagall using to chide Fred and George.

“If that’s what you’d prefer,” Malfoy said lightly, raising his eyebrows and leaning back. His hands were braced behind him, and his sleeve was wrinkled and mussed enough that Harry could almost see the dark blot of the Mark.

Malfoy had leaned his head back to face the ceiling.Harry traced the blurred line of his throat from bloodied chin to collar, where the pink of a scar, stark against his pale skin, peeked out from beneath the cloth. Harry wondered if the curse he’d cast had left scars, and if so, if that was one of his.

The thought left him with a whooshing sensation low in his belly, something not quite guilt but next to it. It gave him a reluctant thrill that filled him with heated shame, to think of the marks he’d left down Malfoy’s torso, and he focused on what the healed skin must look like rather than how Malfoy had appeared, prone and bloody on the wet bathroom floor.

Under her breath, as though the mere notion was preposterous, Mipsy grumbled, “Mipsy is not needing rest.” She gave Malfoy a dubious once-over, looking as though she deeply distrusted his ability to tend to his own wounds, and then shot Harry an even more scathing glance before apparating away.

Harry wondered if she could read his more intrusive thoughts that were currently splayed across his frontal lobe—unclothed, that long neck bared, head thrown back in something other than exhaustion—or if the feelings they evoked were simply painted onto his face.

While Harry was having what was likely one of the most minor crises of the day, torn between one of his worst memories and one of his most compromising fantasies, Malfoy had been bent over, rummaging around nearly shoulder-deep in his leather satchel.

Harry gathered a deep breath and let it out slowly, tearing his gaze away from the way Malfoy’s fringe had grown out from the neat slicked-back coif he used to keep it into something loose, long, and slightly unkempt as it fell into his face. Instead, he peered around the room for the first time since entering.

Though the details eluded him, the room was awash in whites and creams, well-lit by the dimming sunlight streaming through the large southern windows. Beneath his bloodied, grimy trainers, the rug felt plush and luxurious. Harry winced at the thought of soiling it and surreptitiously toed his shoes off, kicking them to the side.

His head still ached, as did his hand, and now that they had entered a moment of quiet, the pain of both resumed their place at the forefront of Harry’s mind. The pain seemed to redouble specifically as Malfoy seized whatever he was looking for with a victorious, “Ah!” and pulled himself from the satchel.

He brandished the small wooden box at Harry. “Well, come on, then,” he said brusquely. Harry didn’t like the red smear of blood that dripped down his chin, his split lip weeping from where it had cracked freshly cracked open.

“Come on where?” Harry asked, and then winced at the stupidity of the question. “Look, you need to fix your face.”

Malfoy scoffed. “Pot, kettle,” he remarked, and Harry scowled.

“The Stinging Charm wore off ages ago,” he said, and then, gleaning the point as Malfoy grinned smugly, added with rolled eyes, “Fuck off.”

“Right,” Malfoy drawled, and stood smoothly onto the rug with his bag in one hand and his box in the other, motioning for Harry to walk to the bathroom. “Get going, Potter. I don’t trust you to heal that yourself,” he said, pointing to the deep wound on Harry’s palm, over which he’d wrapped a stained, torn bit of cloth from his shirt.

Harry looked at Malfoy, then at what he assumed was his deceivingly small box of potions, and then to the loo. Humming to himself, he decided that out of everything that had happened that day, entering a bathroom with Draco Malfoy was likely to be one of the least threatening situations. For one, this time, neither of them were armed.

Harry walked into the loo, the sconces for which lit at his entrance, and he squinted at himself in the mirror. Though with the sink blocking him, he was slightly too far away to get a clear view of his face, he didn’t need to see clearly to tell he looked as haggard as he felt.

It was perhaps this that brought the heavy acquiescence to his body, heaviness which allowed him to place his hand in Malfoy’s freshly washed, impatiently waiting open palm with no hesitation.

“I would have thought you’d heal yourself first,” Harry couldn’t stop from saying.

Malfoy quirked an eyebrow. “Practice makes perfect,” he quipped, unravelling the cloth. Harry hissed as the dried blood cemented to it tugged on the ragged edge of his wound. “Sorry,” Malfoy apologised in a low voice, holding Harry’s hand closer to his face and wetting his fingers under the tap to delicately drip water onto where cloth melded with blood.

Looking at the bloodied cloth and the cut that was slowly being revealed beneath it made Harry feel vaguely ill, so he chose to look at Malfoy instead. He had sat on the side of the bath, with Harry leaning up against the sink, on which he’d set his box of potions. One of Harry’s legs was between his own. His white-blonde head was bent in focus. With only a few spare inches between them, Harry could see small scratches across the part in his hair, obtained, no doubt, as he had writhed in agony under the tip of Bellatrix Lestrange’s wand.

His hands were so gentle in juxtaposition. Once again, Harry marveled that someone such as Malfoy would be capable of such attentive compassion.

“Where did you learn how to do this?” he asked instead, his breath leaving his chest at the last word as Malfoy finally peeled the cloth away. Harry stared resolutely at Malfoy’s pale eyebrows, because Malfoy had not deigned to look up at him.

Instead, he had flipped open his potion’s box, which, as Harry had expected, was far bigger on the inside than the outside. The spinning shelves of gleaming phials seemed nearly endless, with potions of all sorts of colours and textures populating under Malfoy’s nimble, selective fingers.

He chose a phial filled with a clear liquid and one with a thick paste. “This will sting,” he warned, finally looking up to meet Harry’s gaze. His expression was drawn and serious, and Harry was glad for it—anything to stop the images which had sprung up behind his eyes in the Master bedroom from infiltrating into the loo, especially not now, when Harry was in eminently compromising close quarters with the feature figure of those particular thoughts.

He was less glad as Malfoy poured the clear potion into the gash on Harry’s palm. Harry hissed and jerked his hand, only just resisting the urge to tug it free of Malfoy’s firm grasp.

“I learned how to heal this past year,” Malfoy said, as though to distract Harry from the sensation of his hand enveloped in fire. “I’m no Madame Pomfrey, but I’m good enough. This is a neutral antiseptic. If I had my wand, I would have cast a scanning spell to see if it’s a regular or a cursed wound, but as I don’t, I’ll have to make an educated guess.” He looked back at Harry’s wound pensively.

For all that Malfoy had baulked at his own blood, he seemed strangely capable of handling Harry’s injuries. Though, Harry supposed, third year was a long time ago, and sixth year had been more than enough to acclimatise Malfoy to bloodshed.

“You’re lucky Aunt Bella generally favours traditional blades instead of cursed ones,” Malfoy said quietly. Harry shivered, feeling as though she had a taboo on her name as well, and invoking her name would Summon her into the small room with them. “She only Charms them to fly, like the Ministry paper planes. She enjoys the, ah… manual aspect.”

Harry could only hum in response, Hermione’s screams ringing in his ears. He tried to clench his hands into fists and winced at the pain. “D’you think they escaped safely?” Harry asked, though of course, Malfoy had no way of knowing anything more than Harry did.

Malfoy looked up at him briefly, his lips a thin line. “Safer than us, at any rate,” he said ruefully, and then raised the phial of cream. “This is an ointment with dittany and murtlap,” he explained, peering back at Harry’s hand with a small noise of malcontent.

“If I had my wand, I would try my best to heal the muscle—the puncture wound is deep, and I’m not skilled enough to know just by looking at it if she’s torn any of your ligaments. I wouldn’t try to move it,” Malfoy advised wryly, as Harry tried just that and grunted in pain. “I’ll put the ointment on it and wrap it, which will expedite the healing process on a surface level at least, so you don’t have a great bloody hole in your hand. But you’ll need to get yourself a proper Healer.” Malfoy scowled, likely thinking—as Harry was—that finding any “proper” Healer with a bounty on his head was unlikely to happen.

“This is good enough for now,” Harry said, struck by the familiarity of trying to convince Hermione that “good enough” was fine for foraged food living on the run in a tent, and not everything she did needed to be perfect. “Thank you for helping me.”

Malfoy’s eyes flicked up to him and then back down to the ointment, which he’d hastily begun smearing onto his own fingers. “It would be pointless if I saved your life only for you to die of some preventable infection,” he muttered gruffly.

“Thank you for doing that, too,” Harry replied, knowing he was pushing his luck.

“Whatever,” Malfoy said, clearly uncomfortable.

Harry chose not to push him further as he finished smearing the ointment into Harry’s palm. He rummaged through his satchel once more, pulling out a clean strip of gauze, and fastened it securely around Harry’s hand.

“It’s not too uncomfortable?” Malfoy asked, his hands hovering over Harry’s own. Harry flexed his fingers, the tips of his own brushing Malfoy’s, and grimaced.

“Still feels like there’s a great bloody hole in my hand,” he replied, but continued, “but it feels better than it did before.”

Malfoy nodded curtly. “The dittany and murtlap have soothing properties,” he said, thumbing through his potions. From the spinning platform, he pulled a pinkish, bubbly phial. “Pain Relief Potion. You can take another one in six hours.” He held it out to Harry expectantly.

Harry took it, uncorking it with his teeth since he remained unconfident about his injured hand. From the expression Malfoy made, Harry could only assume that he was thinking How uncouth! in his posh drawl, and smirked as he slugged the potion down.

“Now you,” Harry said. He sighed in relief as he felt the potion take near-immediate effect, the strength of it coursing through his body from his hand and forehead.

Malfoy shook his head, slumping now that he had no patient to tend to. “I can’t mix potions,” he said. “I need a Nerve Soothing Solution. I’ll deal with the rest after I’ve slept.”

“I can help,” Harry said, sitting down next to him. He reached for the box, waiting and meeting Malfoy’s eyes before he touched it.

Malfoy looked extremely hesitant. An anxious sneer curled his upper lip. “I’ve watched you explode nearly as many cauldrons as Finnegan,” he said, glancing from Harry’s hand to his potions stores. “I spent almost two years making all of these.”

“I won’t be brewing, just holding,” Harry snapped, a little offended that Malfoy assumed everything Harry touched would burst into flames. “You’ll be here to tell me if I’m doing anything wrong. I assume the Nerve Soothing Solution won’t make you stupid?”

“Not as stupid as you,” Malfoy rejoined, looking mightily proud of himself. “I can’t take the Pain Relief Potion and the Nerve Soothing Solution together though. The bat spleen in the first will react poorly with the Dead Seawater in the second.”

“I’ll make sure you’re not in pain, then,” Harry said distractedly, thumbing through the potions and squinting to try to read Malfoy’s elegant cursive Spell-O-Taped onto the side of each small phial. “Is it this one?” he asked, pulling one which he thought said Nerves. Malfoy’s face looked rather flushed when he peered into it.

“No, that’s the Calming Draught. Honestly,” he huffed a little breathlessly, and gruffly took the box from Harry’s hands to flip expertly through the phials until he seized a phial filled with thick and dark greenish grey liquid. Harry noted that his stores of this particular brew were far less than most, and wondered, not for the first time, what living at the opulent Malfoy Manor must’ve looked like for this past year.

Malfoy uncorked the phial—using his fingers, and Harry could almost hear the unspoken admonishment of I’m not some wild animal, Potter as he did so—and drank it. He licked his lips afterwards, wincing at the sting of it on his split lip, and Harry reached out to him.

Harry gasped, “Wait, wait,” catching himself before he got halfway to Malfoy, and moved to the sink to begin trying to wash his hand without wetting the gauze. Without a wand to Impervious the wrapping, Harry struggled to get his hands as clean as he would have liked, grime and blood sunk deep into the crescents of his nails.

“Useless,” clucked Malfoy. In short order, he was standing beside Harry, close enough that Harry could feel the warmth of his side as it pressed into him.

Malfoy grasped Harry’s injured hand in his own once more, carefully wetting his hands around the wrapping and scrubbing the blood and dirt from Harry’s knuckles with soapy water. When he felt the edge of Malfoy’s nail gently scrape under his own, working out the dried blood and returning the dark crescents to their healthy white, Harry shivered.

Harry was certain that nobody had ever touched him there before—why would they? He barely gave that part of himself thought. It was hardly anything more than what they had done just before, and yet, Harry couldn’t remember anyone, including himself, treating his body with such fastidious, careful intensity. It felt hot and embarrassing as one, to have someone pay attention to even his smallest of details.

When Malfoy moved onto Harry’s good hand, pressing his thumb into the meat of Harry’s palm and sliding their soapy fingers through one another’s, massaging the tense muscles of them, the sensation was so wonderful that Harry had to take long, measured breaths through his nose to avoid embarrassing himself.

“There,” Malfoy said eventually, pressing a fluffy white towel first to Harry’s injured hand with delicacy, and then to his uninjured one with significantly more roughness. The flush had returned to his cheeks, hectic and blotchy, and had spread from the small pointed tip of one ear to the other. “Now you may touch me,” he said, regally enough to make Harry laugh.

“Oh thank you, Your Highness,” Harry simpered mockingly, nodding his head in an exaggerated little half bow. He found himself grinning for the first time since he could remember, after this awful day, and before today the long, unending stretches of hopelessness and uselessness in the tent.

Malfoy simply nodded gracefully back, leaning against the sink to face Harry more fully. The tenseness of his bunched muscles had receded slightly, and from his more languid, trustful demeanour, Harry reckoned one of the reasons Malfoy was reluctant to mix potions was the soporific effect even one alone observably inspired.

“Thank you for letting me help you,” said Harry quietly, stroking the bruised line of Malfoy’s jaw. Malfoy inhaled sharply. “Sorry,” Harry hastened, immediately awash in guilt, worried that he had already hurt him. “Sorry, sorry.”

“No,” Malfoy reassured him, replacing Harry’s hand where it had been before. “I…”

He hesitated, his lips a thin white line that made the split in them even more pronounced and painful-looking. Harry ran his thumb near it carefully, and Malfoy’s lips parted, soft once more.

“I don’t trust easily,” he murmured, and Harry felt himself consumed by a strange, bittersweet, almost mournful affection, thinking of another time they’d found themselves in a bathroom together.

“I know,” he whispered back hoarsely. “Thank you.”

Malfoy raised his eyes to the high ceiling, closed them, and sighed. “Go on, then,” he said tiredly, pressing his cheek more firmly into the caress of Harry’s palm. “You’ll want to use the same cleansing solution and ointment as I did. For the cream, just pour the amount you think you’ll need into your hand, I don’t want you ruining the lot of it by double-dipping.”

“Okay,” Harry said. Malfoy had poured the cleansing solution straight into Harry’s palm, but Malfoy’s wounds were much shallower. Harry wet one of the towels, patting off the blood as best he could, holding Malfoy’s face steady with his injured hand. His fingers twined into the fine, soft hair at the nape of his neck. Malfoy seemed to melt under his touch, the Nerve Soothing Solution clearly doing its work.

Malfoy hissed when Harry used another towel to daub on the cleansing solution. “I know, you’re doing so well,” he said, and Malfoy took another sharp inhale as the cleansing solution touched his injured lip. “You’re alright.”

“Just get on with it,” Malfoy said through gritted teeth, his face bright red and his eyes somewhere above Harry’s head. It made Harry feel a little fond that the dramatic boy from third year was so integral to Malfoy’s person that he reacted like so even now. On impulse, he scratched his nails through the fine hair at Malfoy’s neck, and Malfoy shivered.

Harry had other thoughts about him, other ways he could make that flush appear, but now wasn’t the time. Malfoy was in pain—Malfoy was tired—Malfoy clearly just wanted this over with, so he could go collapse in that king bed piled high with blankets and pillows that beckoned them both from the other room.

“Can this work on bruises too, or just cuts?” he asked, pouring a generous amount of the ointment Malfoy has used onto his good palm.

“Bruise Balm is different,” Malfoy sighed. “Arnica is its main ingredient. It’s used when the skin isn’t broken.”

“Okay,” Harry said, moving methodically from Malfoy’s chin, which had already begun healing once the ointment was applied, to his lips. Harry touched the torn portion as gingerly as he could, his face close to Malfoy’s so his vision was clear. Once more, Malfoy’s breath stuttered.

“You’re doing so good,” Harry praised him, and he hummed, low in his throat. Harry watched closely as the skin knitted itself together. He swiped his thumb across the soft new flesh of Malfoy’s lips, smearing off the excess ointment.

Then he did it again, just to be sure. If his thumb lingered, and if his mind was filled with visions of what it would be like not simply to stop at Malfoy’s lips, but to press his thumb past Malfoy’s straight white teeth to feel the tongue behind them, what it would look like to have Malfoy’s cheeks hollowed around him—

Well.

Malfoy’s eyes were closed, so he couldn’t see the blush across Harry’s face, anyway.

Harry rifled through the rolodex of phials (“It’s the light blue, Potter,” Malfoy mumbled from beside him) until he found the Bruise Balm, and then, returning to Malfoy, saw how tired he truly was. He was barely standing upright, leaning on the sink with his eyes closed and his breathing slow and heavy.

“Come on,” Harry said, echoing the phrase Malfoy had used to urge him into the bathroom. “We don’t need the sink for this next bit, and you’re dead on your feet.”

“Mm?” Malfoy asked, cracking an eye open. He swayed towards Harry, and Harry swapped the Bruise Balm to hold gingerly in his bad hand, as he wrapped an arm around Malfoy’s side, and put his good hand firmly on his back.

“Come on,” Harry repeated quietly. “Let’s go to the bed so you can be more comfortable while I finish this.”

“I’m alright,” Malfoy yawned, his jaw audibly cracking as he did. Even exhausted as he was, he managed to move gracefully, one hand coming up to cover his mouth, his slender long fingers sweeping over the freshly healed skin.

“Sure, Your Highness,” Harry replied, and pressed them forward until he’d settled Malfoy onto the bed. A pile of fresh clothes, soundlessly deposited by Mipsy, waited for them on the far side of the duvet. Desperate as he was to change from his sweaty, torn, bloodstained clothing, Harry wasn’t quite finished enough for that yet.

Instead, he stood beside Malfoy and tilted his face up. Malfoy acquiesced with more trust than Harry had ever known of him, shivering as he did so.

“Thank you for letting me do this,” Harry said.

“You’re the one healing me,” muttered Malfoy.

Harry hummed. Malfoy was right, of course, at this juncture at least, but he was also a flighty, finicky, mercurial creature. Harry knew for a fact that an olive branch could meet an Unforgivable if he struck the wrong tone. So he didn’t say anything further as he examined the discolored skin on the underside of Malfoy’s jaw, whispering the pads of his fingers across the purpled bruise.

“It would be easier—here,” Harry said, crouching down to kneel in front of Malfoy. Malfoy blinked down at him, bleary and surprised, and his mouth opened in a question he couldn’t seem to figure out how to form. “I can’t see it easily from above,” Harry explained. “Tilt your head for me, would you?”

Malfoy did so, and Harry smeared the Bruise Balm where it was needed. He cupped Malfoy’s jaw and watched the purple fade to grey, then a sickly green, and finally a mottled yellow, before smooth, unblemished pale skin replaced it. As he had with the dittany and murtlap ointment, he swiped away the excess slowly, making sure none remained on the skin. When Malfoy’s throat bobbed beneath his palm, Harry realised he’d been holding it in the palm of his hand, his thumb stroking the unhurt skin with the tips of his fingers beneath the lobe of Malfoy’s ear.

He removed his touch, clearing his throat, and asked in a voice that barely cracked, “Is there anywhere else?”

Malfoy lowered his head, and his sleepy grey eyes were half-closed and molten metal with an emotion Harry couldn’t place. “No,” Malfoy said, his voice barely a whisper. “None but the back of my head, where I hit the ground.”

“I’ll do that too, and then I’ll let you rest,” Harry promised him, snifting his weight to his heels so he could stand. “Here, can you tilt your head forward for me?”

Malfoy bent his head forward as asked and sighed when Harry’s hands began gently carding through his hair, searching for the bruise beneath the flaxen locks. Malfoy was so soft beneath his touch, he acquiesced so beautifully beneath Harry’s fingers—perhaps all Malfoy had needed throughout school was a Nerve Soothing Potion, and he would have been downright pleasant.

“Good job,” Harry said softly when Malfoy flinched, his fingers prodding a sensitive spot. Harry sorted the locks away from the bruise as best he could with care, pressing his hand to the nape of Malfoy’s neck to keep him still, and scooped a bit of Bruise Balm onto his fingers. “You’re doing so well.”

Malfoy hummed, swaying forwards slightly. The hand he reached out to steady himself landed on the outside of Harry’s thigh. Harry wouldn’t complain about it, though it made the images of Malfoy on his back, his head in the pillows, his scars on display, all that harder to repress.

Malfoy’s hair was so soft and sleek beneath his fingers. It felt so different from Harry’s own coarse locks, which preferred to fight each other into tangles rather than slide silkenly under his touch like Malfoy’s did. He combed through his hair carefully with his fingers, first cautiously, then with a bit more firmness as the bruises faded.

Harry realised he didn’t want to let go. So few things had been certain, even less in the past few hours. Holding Malfoy’s head in his hands, holding his trust and keeping it safe, made Harry feel in control. It stopped his frantic, worried thoughts from spiralling to Hermione’s screams or to Dobby’s close escape or to the Spitting Images that Narcissa had made to fool Voldemort and the rest of his followers.

“Go to sleep,” Harry said eventually, releasing Malfoy and stepping away.

Malfoy blinked at him, eyes watering at the corner with tiredness, and murmured something that may have been “Alright,” may have been “Night,” and may have been nothing at all. He turned away, melting into the bed, and didn’t even take the time to remove the duvet from where the edges were tucked between the mattress and the frame before laying down.

Harry hesitated, resting his hand on the covers near Malfoy’s shin. “You can’t sleep in your shoes,” he said softly, knowing Malfoy would be upset when he awoke if the dried blood and grime of the dungeons was smeared onto the bedding. He would likely be more upset, Harry thought, glancing at the fresh clothing Mipsy had provided, if Harry pointed out that he hadn’t shucked his now ruined robes, or even worse, if Harry actually tried to help him with them. No, it would have to be the shoes and the shoes only. Malfoy could sort out the clothes himself after a long rest.

It would be intimate, but this whole day had been—Harry had watched Malfoy scream himself hoarse in agony mere hours before, and if the actions he took to replace those memories erred too far on the pendulum swing in the other direction, so be it.

So, Harry knelt down for the second time that evening beside Draco Malfoy, and began the slow process of unlacing his dragonhide boots with one dextrous hand.

Chapter Text

The Nightmare

Harry wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep for when the crying began.

He was laying on the plush white rug a way away from the side of the opulent bed. He’d stuffed two pillows under his head and the decorative quilt he’d pilfered from the foot of the bed over him. He knew that there were more than likely a dozen bedrooms in the chateau that he could have taken over for himself, but finding a new room to lodge himself in, all alone, would be the last fray in the thread of Harry’s tenuous tie to sanity for that day.

Malfoy’s night terror began with a whimper so faint that Harry thought perhaps he had dreamt it.

“No,” Malfoy protested again, and this time, Harry knew he’d spoken. Malfoy thrashed under the duvet that Harry had folded on top of him, cocooning him in it from the far side rather than making him get up again. It had seemed the considerate thing to make sure he was warm enough in his sleep, but now Harry could see they did nothing but panic him further as he struggled to get out of it. “No, please, please, I’ll do better…!”

Harry scrambled to his feet, but once there, found his hands raised before himself at a loss. Hermione had described to him the difference between nightmares and night terrors, but Harry hadn’t paid enough attention to what she’d said. All Harry could remember was that although waking someone up from a nightmare was fine, trying to wake someone up from a night terror only made things worse for them. And Harry had no idea what the difference between the two of them was, or how he could best help Malfoy.

Harry reckoned erring on the side of caution would be best, but as Malfoy’s begging increased in frequency and pitch, he found he couldn’t just stand there and plug his ears. Gritting his teeth resolutely, he approached the bed.

In the darkness, Malfoy’s distressed face was painted shades of grey. His brow was furrowed with pain and fear, and the duvet and all the sheets beneath were a complete mess. The silky strands of his hair fell wild around his head. “Please,” he begged, and Harry’s chest seized.

Harry knelt beside the bed and gripped the side of the mattress. He wasn’t fool enough to try to touch him without asking—he knew that, even if Malfoy wasn’t in the midst of a horrible night terror, such an action was likely to win him an elbow to the gut.

Instead, Harry tried to reach out the only other way he could: with his magic.

He couldn’t say how he did it, exactly. He just wanted to help, so badly, and he couldn’t think to do anything except what his gut told him. His intuition had never failed him before, so he took a deep breath, centred his focus, and tried to reach.

He felt the magic in his chest, pulsing like a second heart, and when he tried to send thin tendrils of it through his arm and out of his body, he found Malfoy’s magic was there to meet him.

His magic was all tendrils of silver thorns, twisted and turned and tangled together, sharp and unforgiving, as ready to cut its originator as it was anyone else. Harry tried to wend his way carefully through it, trying to make his own less solid, move like waves in a gentle ocean.

He thought of calmness, of the feeling of stillness and quiet when he was alone in the air on his Firebolt. He thought of the first time he had discovered magic, clinging to Hagrid’s enormous hang and swinging his head with owl-like wide eyes at all the shopfronts in Diagon Alley. He thought of the Burrow, the coziness of the warm, tilted living room, strewn with knitted blankets and smiling pictures waving at him from their frames. He thought of the steaming soup that the Hogwarts elves served in the middle of winter, hearty and salty and warming in his belly as he ate it with his two best friends at either side.

Slowly, Malfoy’s cries lessened. His fearful thrashing diminished into a restless stir. His gasps of terror calmed into small sounds of distress, and then swift, tremulous sighs.

“You’re alright,” Harry said, clutching the side of the mattress, gripping it tightly to resist the urge to caress the side of Malfoy’s cheek as he had done earlier. “You’re safe, you’re alright.”

When Malfoy’s eyes opened, they were bloodshot and a little wild. He lurched up and away from Harry, scrabbling beneath his pillow for a wand that was not there.

“I—I—” Malfoy gasped, and Harry interrupted him.

“It’s me,” Harry said, and winced, realising that quite likely Malfoy wouldn’t immediately place his voice two seconds after a horrible nightmare. “Harry. It’s Harry.”

Malfoy’s scoff was shaky and without heat, but it made Harry smile regardless. “I know who you are, Potter,” he retorted, his body slowly relaxing to puddle back into the bedding. He frowned down at him. “Why are you sitting there like one of Father’s particularly officious house elves?”

“You were having a nightmare,” Harry said, and Malfoy, clearly not needing the reminder, shuddered. “I wasn’t sure how to best wake you up.”

A shaky, self-satisfied smirk worked its way onto Malfoy’s face. “So you decided to bow before me?”

Harry glared at him. “I’m not bowing,” he retorted.

“No, you’re kneeling,” Malfoy smirked. “You know I’m not actually royalty, don’t you?”

“Thank god,” Harry muttered, rolling his eyes and pushing off his heels. “Right, then, I’ll be going back to sleep.” He stood, angling back to his quilt and pillows.

“Wait,” Malfoy squawked, grabbing his arm, and when Harry startled and glanced back, he saw Malfoy staring at the pile on the rug. “You’re sleeping on the floor?”

“Well, yeah,” Harry said, because it was obvious. The rug was more comfortable than the cot he’d slept on for eleven years with the Dursleys, even.

“No you’re not,” Malfoy snapped, looking suddenly furious. “You’re not sleeping on the floor like some—like some prisoner in the cellar, not when we’ve this enormous bed.” He untangled himself from the duvet, searching for the end of it, and nearly snarled in frustration, “Why have you given me all of it, you dolt?”

“You were tired,” Harry grumbled, a pugnacious, defensive tilt to his jaw.

Malfoy sighed. He yanked himself to his feet, unravelling the duvet and bedsheets from around himself, and grimaced at the state of his clothes beneath them. “Oh, ugh,” he groaned, clearly as upset as Harry had predicted that he hadn’t had the energy to change before falling asleep. He looked over at Harry with a critical eye.

“You know there’s a bath in the ensuite,” he drawled, raising an eyebrow at the state of him. After Malfoy had fallen asleep, Harry had peeled off his filthy clothes and left them in a pile that was near-sentient with filth. He opted to sleep in his boxers rather than sully the fresh clothing Mipsy had given them, a choice he now regretted, feeling vulnerable under Malfoy’s critical eye.

“You know your elf got you clean clothes,” Harry retorted, and Malfoy simply blinked at him in frustration.

After a moment of scowling at his own hands, Malfoy stomped to the ensuite himself, grumbling something like “filthy horklump, I swear to Merlin” under his breath. He slammed the door shut behind him.

The hurricane of Malfoy’s presence behind closed doors away, Harry finally had a moment to pause. His stomach, ignored and neglected until this point, released a loud gurgle.

“Mipsy?” Harry called tentatively, wondering if she would come when Harry asked, or only Malfoy.

With her demure crack of apparition, she appeared in front of him and curtsied. “Yes, Harry Potter?”

Harry cringed and grabbed the duvet Malfoy had thrown onto the floor to cover himself, sinking onto the mattress in embarrassment. It was still warm where Malfoy had slept.

If Harry was alright with Malfoy seeing him nearly naked, he supposed he should have been alright with Mipsy doing so as well. Certainly she hadn’t batted an eye—Harry wondered how long she had been in the Malfoy family’s service for, and what unsavoury sights she must have seen. Harry winced, his mind taking him to places where Lucius Malfoy lounged in states of dishabille, and wanted to wash out the back of his eyelids with dish soap.

“...Harry Potter?” Mipsy prompted, concern building in her high voice.

“Sorry!” Harry said, jolted back to the present. “Erm, sorry. You wouldn’t have happened to make dinner already, would you?”

Mipsy beamed. “Mipsy is making roast lamb with mint sauce on jasmine rice with roasted green beans for Little Master and Harry Potter!” she said, snapping her fingers. A gigantic silver platter appeared in front of Harry on the bed, from which mouthwatering scents wafted. “Mipsy is also making chocolate ice cream with fruit for Little Master and treacle tart for Harry Potter.”

“What, really?” Harry marveled, lifting the large silver cover to find exactly what had been described sitting in front of him. Harry’s stomach released another gurgle, and he thought he might burst into tears. “Mipsy, how did you know that’s my favourite dessert?”

Mipsy looked cagily over towards the closed ensuite door, which now had citrus-scented steam wafting from the crack by the floor. “Little Master is speaking often of Harry Potter,” she whispered with a mischievous smile.

“Was he?” Harry asked, intrigued. He was reminded of Lavender and Parvarti, heads nearly pressed together as they shared the latest Hogwarts gossip at the dinner table. “When?”

Mipsy stepped back and stuck her pointed nose in the air in a move she had to have learned from the Malfoys. “Mipsy is not saying,” she said snootily, though the impish smile remained.

Harry had served himself a plate of lamb, cross-legged. He had already tucked in when a thought struck him. Mipsy had not left, walking over to Vanish Harry’s reeking clothes with a judgemental, “Mipsy will be washing these,” tossed over her shoulder, when Harry asked her his question.

“Mipsy, I don’t mean to be rude. And you don’t have to answer,” Harry hastened to add, thinking back to Lucius smacking Dobby with the silver snakehead tip of his cane, and how Dobby couldn’t refrain from hurting himself when he tried to speak ill of him, “but are you happy to be in Malfoy’s service?”

Mipsy turned from assessing the closed door of the ensuite bathroom, where she looked as though she was contemplating apparating in and Vanishing Malfoy’s ruined garments as well. She narrowed her eyes at Harry. “Mipsy has been taking care of Little Master Draco since he is being in nappies,” she snapped.

“Yes, but—but do you enjoy it?” Harry wondered if he had offended her, like Hermione had all the Hogwarts elves with her frantic knitting mania.

She crossed her arms across her chest and sneered at Harry. “Mipsy is being the best at her job,” she scolded him. “There is no other elf who takes care of Little Master as well as Mipsy.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Harry said, his hands raised placatingly as he tapped his chest and forced himself to swallow an overly large mouthful of lamb. “I’m sorry if I offended you, Mipsy,” he coughed, trying to dislodge the uncomfortable feeling from behind his clavicle.

“Mipsy is liking living with the Little Master,” she said, her tone an admonishment, scandalised that Harry would even ask her such a question. Harry reckoned he should have figured as much—the more elves he met, the more he realised Dobby was an anomaly. “Mipsy is liking being at Septimus Malfoy’s chateau. Even if the chateau is not giving Mipsy access to its meat cellar for three hours!”

She raised her voice on the last sentence, staring into the crown moulding near the ceiling, as though the chateau’s sentience originated from there. Harry could have sworn the lights from the sconces flickered moodily.

“Centuries old meat cellar with elf-made Preservation Magic,” she harrumphed in frustration, glowering, her small fists clenched at her sides. “Meat cellar would not exist without Mipsy’s great-grandmother, but the chateau does not trust Mipsy.”

“The lamb is delicious,” Harry interjected repentantly, feeling rather sorry that he had stirred Mipsy up when she was clearly already vexed.

Mipsy’s glare softened on him. “Mipsy knows it is,” she said, and Harry barked a laugh with his mouth full, covering it belatedly. “Mipsy eats it too.”

She made like she was going to curtsey and disapparate again, clearly more finished with Harry’s company than he her, but paused once more and glanced at the ensuite. She gave Harry an assessing—and, if he was bluntly honest, slightly disapproving—once-over that made him wish he’d changed into the pyjamas Mipsy had given them, grimy as he was or not.

“Little Master Draco cares deeply,” she said. “Mipsy knows. Mipsy has nannied the Little Master all his life.”

Harry wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at. “Mipsy, I don’t—”

“Mipsy wants Harry Potter to know,” she interrupted him, “that Mipsy will not welcome Harry Potter’s presence at the chateau, if Harry Potter is being cruel to Little Master Draco.”

Harry blinked, dumbfounded. “I’m not being cruel to him,” he said, thinking of how he had run his fingers through Malfoy’s hair, of how holding his head had felt like holding the whole world in his hands.

“Mipsy will decide,” she said ominously. Her crack of apparition was much louder than normal when she disappeared.

Harry chewed his lamb contemplatively. Though still delicious, it felt tasteless and dry after that confusing and vaguely threatening conversation on the part of the elf. Harry hadn’t been anything but pleasant to Malfoy—kind, even, ever since they got to the safe house. Hadn’t he?

Their history was so muddled, so muddy. Harry stared at the closed bathroom door, from which Malfoy had still not emerged, even as Harry began to work on his treacle tart. He’d considered licking the plate clean to get the last of his mint sauce, but if the chateau was as sentient as Mipsy seemed to think it was, Harry didn’t want to give yet another member of the safehouse a reason to dislike him. Especially not for something as unimportant as barbaric etiquette.

No, Harry didn’t think he had been cruel. But their rapport had always toed the line to cruelty. Was that what Mipsy was after? Afraid that they would begin pummeling one another into submission physically, now that they were stripped of wands?

There was truly no need for that animosity, not anymore. They weren’t schoolchildren. Both of them had already been in battles. They had already battled each other. Each of them had nearly died in one another’s presence.

Harry nodded pensively, licking his fork. When Malfoy emerged, he would make sure he knew Harry meant to set things right. No more childish grudges, no more infantile fights.

They had a war to win, and they would.

Chapter Text

The Vision

Malfoy strode out of the washroom in a cloud of steamy citrus. Though he wasn’t exactly the picture of health—neither of them were—he was glowing. Likely, Harry reckoned with a critical eye, due to the translucent goo he had smeared liberally all over his clean face.

His hair was shining again and wavy without the usual gel he used to hold it back. His fringe, an awkward length that he no doubt used his favoured hairstyle to cover, flopped into his eyes and ended about halfway towards his cheekbone. His face was pinkish from where he’d scrubbed it clean, and the bags under his eyes looked far less puffy and discoloured than they had before.

The pyjamas were a bit too short for his long legs, a bit too broad in the shoulders, and they bunched oddly under the stretched cashmere of what was, Harry recognised, Narcissa’s discarded jumper, taken from Mipsy upon reinstatement as Draco’s elf. Sticking out from the neckline and sleeves, the pyjamas had lacy collars and cuffs which reminded Harry of Ron’s third or fourth-hand robes from the Yule Ball.

Harry struggled to repress a smile imagining just how offended Malfoy would be to hear such an unseemly comparison. Harry eyed the fiddly, pearly little buttons of them and reckoned that, in ordinary circumstances, he got on well enough with one of Dudley’s cast-offs as a nightshirt, the humongous thing landing at Harry’s mid-thigh. It was no doubt a hell of a lot more comfortable than trying to sleep swathed in the sort of fabric that itched on principle.

While Harry’s eyes feasted on Malfoy, Malfoy clearly had other food in mind.

“You didn’t even wait for me!” he squawked, descending upon the half-empty platter more like one of the birds of prey who delivered their mail in the Great Hall than one of the students.

“Sorry,” Harry said, self-satisfied and unapologetic as he leaned back onto the pillows and patted his stomach, eyeing Malfoy’s threadbare table manners—duvet manners?—with interest. “I could have eaten yours, too, but I made a resolution not to be an arsehole.”

“Only marginally succeeding,” Malfoy quipped around a mouthful of lamb, and then groaned, his eyes rolling back. “Morgana’s sunny crack, Mipsy always gets my favourites.”

“She cares about you a lot,” Harry said softly, a bit more fondness than he meant to creeping into his voice. Malfoy shot him a funny look.

“She’s my personal elf,” he said, drawing out the syllables as though Harry were very young, very slow, and very hard of hearing, all at once. “Of course she does.”

Shrugging, Harry said, “Dobby was your father’s, wasn’t he? He didn’t seem to share the same sentiment.”

Malfoy swallowed his own lamb heavily. “How d’you know Dobby?” he asked warily. “I wouldn’t have thought the two of you would ever cross one another’s paths.”

“Oh, he hoarded all my mail the summer before second year,” Harry explained, grinning as Malfoy’s face crinkled even more deeply in confusion.

“He does act like a creepy little superfan, doesn’t he,” Malfoy mused, dabbing at his mouth delicately with one of the cloth napkins Harry had ignored. “He was the only one who—ah. Well.” Malfoy cleared his throat. “Nevermind.”

“Who what?” Harry asked, and watched in fascination as a flush crept up Malfoy’s lacy collar. “What did he do?”

Malfoy shoved a forkful of lamb in his mouth. Harry smirked, thinking of Mipsy saying that Draco spoke of him. He was reminded of a far-ago memory from within a dusty cabinet, covered in ash and trying not to cough while Malfoy examined a shelf of skulls and muttered under his breath about what everyone else thought of Harry, while Lucius Malfoy sighed exasperatedly beside him, ‘You have told me this at least a dozen times already.’

Harry bit his lip, which did nothing to stop the smug, knowing grin from completely eclipsing the rest of his face. “Was he the only one who listened when you talked about me?”

Mouth still full, Malfoy looked at him with wide eyes, as though he was a chipmunk and Harry a sharp-eyed falcon in mid-dive. Decisively, he stabbed the tines of his fork into Harry’s thigh.

“Fuck!” Harry yelped, batting him away. Malfoy hadn’t broken the skin, but the four marks he’d left were an angry red. Harry scowled back up at him.

Malfoy pressed his napkin to his mouth daintily, holding his head up with icy elegance, his eyes half-shut in a heavy-lidded glare. “You look better without that shit-eating grin on your face,” he observed loftily.

“You look better,” Harry began heatedly, and then, remembering his resolve to not be an arsehole if he could help it, leaned back. He took a deep, steadying breath, and rather than an insult, opted for something more real. “You look better,” he repeated.

Rather than assuaging Malfoy, however, Harry’s comment only made the flush creep all the way to the apples of his cheeks. He stared at him, lost for words, and Harry could have sworn he saw his left eye twitch.

“You don’t,” he replied eventually, staring at the rat’s nest of tangles that Harry could no longer run his hand through without snagging, as though the whole thing was one large mass of its own. “You’re filthy. Go bathe yourself—I’m sure you don’t need my instruction on how to do so.” Malfoy muttered this last bit to his half-empty plate rather sulkily.

Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He was itching to scrub the grime of the cellars off of him. The bathroom, when he entered, smelled of citrus and bergamot. Bottles lined the shelves beside the bath and above the sink, all with fiddly, fancy names like “Hair Bath” and “Scalp Massage” and “Emulsifier”.

“Just tell me in plain English what you are,” Harry muttered, feeling a bit like he was about to take a potion that said Drink Me! and turn two inches tall.

He grabbed the most straightforward bottles he could find—Body Scrub, Cleansing Face Wash, and the sole plainly-labelled bottle of shampoo in the whole washroom—and turned on the tap. By the time he did so, the scent of Malfoy’s products had faded, which wilted an unexplored and unprodded part of Harry.

While he waited for the bath to fill, Harry went hunting. He opened tall bottles and small bottles, peering into their contents and taking a whiff. He wasn’t fully sure why he was so curious, but he decided to indulge himself, just for the sake of it. By the time the bath had filled and the air was steamy once more, Harry had found the luxurious bottle of what he thought was conditioner, that Malfoy must’ve used on himself.

He breathed in deeply before returning it to the shelf, happy to have discovered something that felt like a secret. The warm water was heavenly when Harry sank into it, careful to keep his injured hand well out of the water. It was steaming, almost scalding, but water that hot was exactly what he needed to feel as though the layers of grime had finally come unstuck from his exhausted body.

Once he was done scrubbing himself as hastily and as thoroughly as he could manage, he laid in the steaming water and luxuriated in the feeling of weightlessness. He knew it couldn’t last—this entire night of suspended animation couldn’t last. Voldemort would learn the truth about their Spitting Images, and then Harry and Malfoy—if not Mrs. Malfoy as well—would be in a world of pain if they were ever caught again. Harry needed to find Ron and Hermione, needed to make sure Hermione was alright and that Dobby was alive. He needed to resume the Horcrux Hunt, now more urgently than ever.

But there was nothing Harry could do tonight, short of hobble out of the chateau in lacy Victorian pyjamas and attempt to wandlessly apparate all the way back to the Burrow from whatever mountaintop they were on. He wondered if Mipsy would know where Ottery St Catchpole was, or if Dobby’s knowledge of the Manor and how to get to it was purely a fluke based on his prior employment. He would have to ask her, when she was in a less threatening mood.

Exhausted and finally in a state of near-relaxation, Harry leaned his head against the side of the tub. Before he knew it, he had begun to drift off. Against his will, he found himself slipping into a dream that was all too real.

“Draco Malfoy”, Voldemort hissed. Hatred dripped off his tongue like venom. This boy, who had won his attention with his scheme with the Cabinet and proved his worth enough to remain alive—this boy, this wretched, trembling little whelp born into riches that he did not deserve—this pathetic creature, who thought he could succeed in defying Lord Voldemort, quivered on the floor before him, curled in the foetal position.

“It’s not very polite to ignore an honoured guest,” he snarled. Nagini’s tail thrashed around Voldemort’s legs, and she darted up to the Malfoy child, forked tongue flicking inches from his bowed head as she hissed mightily.

From the floor, he whimpered. Slowly, he raised himself on trembling arms, his bloodless face tear-streaked, the whites of his eyes bloodied from the blood vessels which had burst as he screamed throughout the Cruciatus Curse.

His lips moved as though he wanted to speak, but all that he managed was a groan, dribbling out of his mouth from a tongue he’d nearly bitten in two after his last round with the Cruciatus Curse. The sight of it gave him a pleased, violent thrill.

“Quiet,” Voldemort snarled, casting his gaze instead to Harry Potter himself, held still with Bellatrix’s blade to his throat, kneeling on the ground with his arms and legs bound. “You see what happens to your little friends, Potter? First the Malfoy boy, then that filthy Mudblood, and then all the way down the Weasley line.” He smiled mirthlessly, feeling a dark, viscous satisfaction replace the blood in his veins. “I’ll let you watch, until I’ve slaughtered every one of them, until you’re begging me to kill you. Do you understand me, Potter?”

“Don’t hurt him,” the Potter boy spat, foolish and bold as ever, as though he was in any position to bargain.

Voldemort merely laughed. “Oh, it’s far too late for that, Potter.”

Harry woke up with a flash of red light and Malfoy’s screams ringing in his ears.

He must’ve looked completely insane when he burst the bathroom door open with a slam, dripping wet and in nothing but a towel he’d hastily thrown around his waist. Harry had hardly been asleep for all of thirty seconds, and yet he was wild-eyed and panting, shaking with unresolved adrenaline.

“Circe’s pigsty—” Malfoy shouted, bolting upright on the duvet in a fluff of flung pillows and messy fringe. The silver tray and empty ice cream bowl thudded onto the rug. “What the fuck, Potter?”

Harry must’ve truly looked crazy, unable to do anything but stand there and stare, gripping the towel around his hips and gasping in fear. He’d just seen Malfoy incoherent with agony, tortured half to death, and here he was, smelling of citrus and wearing his mother’s pink jumper, staring at Harry like he’d sprouted a second head straight from his heaving shoulders.

“Are…you quite alright?” Malfoy asked hesitantly.

“No,” Harry answered, and was mortified to hear his voice crack. He felt panicked tears begin to escape the corners of his eyes. “Fuck, fuck.”

“Hey,” Malfoy said, clambering out of the bed and stumbling up in front of Harry. “Hey. What’s going on?”

“Don’t leave,” Harry said thickly, so fucking frustrated. He was meant to be protecting everyone. He was the Chosen One, the Saviour, that was his job. And now, not only had he witnessed Hermione and then Malfoy get tortured right in front of him, but sleeping wasn’t safe either.

When he closed his eyes, he saw Voldemort torturing Malfoy again. Twice in a single day, to death, maybe, all because Harry couldn’t stop himself from saying Tom Riddle’s pithy, self-chosen nickname.

Harry’s hands gripped into the soft fabric covering Malfoy’s biceps, feeling like if he took one step out of Harry’s sight, he would disappear back into the Grand Ballroom, and Harry wouldn’t be able to do anything to help him. “Don’t leave me.”

Malfoy hesitated, his gaze taking across Harry’s frantic face. “You haven’t finished washing up,” he said, as if that mattered a single whit.

Harry scoffed. “I don’t care,” he said, his voice sharp and crackling with barely suppressed magic. The door rattled on its hinges. Back in the bathroom, all the fiddly little bottles began to shake, emitting distressed little tinkling noises as they bounced against the walls. “I don’t care, I can’t—what does it matter if I’ve washed up, when I don’t even know if Hermione’s alright, and he’s in my head, laughing about—” Laughing about killing you, Harry didn’t finish. Because he and Malfoy hadn’t ever been friends, but they’d always been important to each other.

Malfoy’s hand was on the small of his back, guiding him back towards the bathroom. “Come here,” he said, and his voice was calm and final in a way Harry hadn’t ever heard.

It wasn’t sharp or cold, the way Lucius spoke. No, his voice sounded more like Narcissa’s, strong and gentle at once.

Malfoy led him back into the bathroom and turned away. Harry clutched at his arm.

“I’m not leaving,” Malfoy said reassuringly, his fingers hovering over a row of bottles. He selected one containing a large amount of white powder, the title an illegible, blurry cursive scrawl to Harry’s eyes. “It’s kaolin clay powder. Make sure the water is hot again, and sprinkle it into the water.”

“I don’t want to bathe,” Harry protested, feeling all sorts of strung out, like he was a hair’s breadth away from losing his mind with fear and worry from witnessing Malfoy in agony, from having witnessed Hermione in torment, from hurting everyone he ever loved. “I don’t know—when he kills the golems, the magic, it’s got to stop, right?”

Malfoy took a deep, slow, measured breath. “Potter…”

“The enchantment will wear off. He’ll know—and then—” Harry shuddered. “We have to leave.”

“No,” he said, his hand pressing into Harry’s shoulder. He replaced the bottle he was holding back on the shelf, and put his other hand on Harry’s shoulder as well, as though he was about to shake him. “No, we’re not leaving. This is a safehouse for a reason, Potter. Uncle Septimus warded it, and then I double checked, just in case. Nobody but Mother knows we’re here, and she’s an even better Occlumens than Severus.”

“Hermione—and Ron—”

“Are with Dobby,” Malfoy snapped. “And I’m sure Dobby brought them back to whoever sent him off in the first place. You won’t help them any by running into battle in the nude with shampoo suds dripping from your hair and getting yourself killed, Potter. Honestly.”

Harry squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the hand that wasn’t clutching his towel to his forehead. He pressed the heel of his hand to his scar, harder and harder, over and over, until Malfoy seized it and pressed his forehead to Harry’s instead.

“You’re going to follow my breathing,” Malfoy said, that authoritativeness returning to his voice. “In…and out. Come on now.” One hand cupped the side of Harry’s face, the other pressing into the large scar that the locket had left. “In and out.”

It took Harry a long time to follow Malfoy’s lead. By the time his breathing had returned to normal, and he was no longer seized by the unendurable urge to hurt himself as a way to crawl out of his vibrating, razor-edged body.

The hand on his chest was steady and warm. His voice was low and clear when he said, “I’m going to refill the tub with clean water, and then I’m going to pour the clay into it, and then I want you to get back in it. Alright?”

“Why?” Harry asked hoarsely.

Malfoy blinked at him. “Because you’ve been dripping suds on the floor for ten minutes,” he said, gesturing to the trail of soapy water Harry had left from the bath to the bedroom and back.

“No, I…” Harry had wanted to ask, Why are you helping me? but he swallowed the words down, worried that if he voiced them, they would shatter whatever illusion of what Harry wanted most was happening, stripped away like he was eleven again, standing in front of his mother and father smiling down at him, and Dumbledore was at his side, telling him it did not do to dwell on dreams.

When it became clear Harry wasn’t going to finish his thought, Malfoy sighed through his nose and moved Harry aside, kneeling at the tap until the bath drained and refilled. Once he sprinkled in the clay, mixing it with his hand, the water turned milky and opaque.

“What’s that?” Harry asked, feeling wobbly but desperate to focus on something else.

“The clay?” Malfoy glanced at Harry and then back at the water sharply, his cheeks reddened by the steam. “It’s good for your skin. It will open your pores. It will also, ah. Protect your privacy. I’m going to wash your hair out.”

“I…” Harry began, feeling the need to protest, because he didn’t want Malfoy’s pity. But when was the last time anyone had washed Harry’s hair for him? All he could remember was Aunt Petunia’s nails scratching harshly at his scalp. “I can do it myself,” he muttered reluctantly.

Forgetting himself in the wash of embarrassment that crashed over him, he tried to scratch his scalp and winced as a whole quarter of his head tugged at the follicle.

He felt ham-fisted and dirty, like he had when he was very young and the other primary school children refused to sit near him. He was mortified to think Malfoy may have felt the same as those scores of children who refused to befriend him. “Or, if it’s too far gone, I reckon I could just chop it off.”

“I beg your pardon?” Malfoy said sharply, his raised voice bouncing off the tiles. He turned back to Harry and gazed at his hair in dismay, clearing his throat as his voice returned to a normal volume. “Chop it off?”

“I—well.” Harry shuffled on his feet. Heat suffused him, defensive and embarrassed. It was like he was shrinking under his well-meaning teacher’s clicking tongue once again, Miss Applegate from year two scolding him that he was a big boy who should know better how to clean himself by now, and he shouldn’t be coming to school in filthy clothes just because they were his favourites. “I, ah. It just seemed easier.”

Nobody had ever looked as fish-like, not even Viktor Krum with his half-transfigured shark head, than Malfoy did just then, staring at him hard. He should have looked foolish, with his flushed cheeks and his lace collar rumpled, his mother’s too-small cashmere jumper straining around his shoulders, his fringe sticking straight up and straight to the side in some parts. But the expressions that crossed his face—confusion, dismay, then something positively melancholic—were anything but.

“Would you prefer to shear it off?” Malfoy asked, his voice carefully measured. “Or would you prefer it longer?”

“Well, longer, obviously,” Harry thought, shuddering at the memory of Aunt Petunia forcing his head still and shaving every bit of hair off except his fringe while Harry cried. “But that’s not going to happen, so.”

The shelves of bottles and creams were a circus of color and shape from which Harry could hardly parse any meaning, but Malfoy clearly knew what to look for. His expression landed decidedly on determined. “Go on and get into the bath,” he said, rising, his fingers already collecting bottle after small bottle. “Let me know when you’re settled.”

His tone brooked no argument, and Harry was too exhausted to do so anyway. He was nervous, though, about being so intimate with Malfoy. Malfoy’s hands in his, his nails carefully cleaning under his own, and now, soon, Malfoy’s hands in his hair. The thought made Harry shiver, and he was grateful Malfoy had tried to preserve what little of Harry’s privacy possible in their position.

Malfoy returned to his side with nearly a half-dozen bottles in his arms. Harry squinted at them, certain his weak eyes were deceiving him.

“What’s all that?” he asked. None of the bottles Malfoy held had the same fiddly little screw-top as the one Harry had selected for himself.

Malfoy looked at him in surprise, then down at his small pile of treasure, then back up at Harry. “For your hair,” he explained, with far more patience than Harry would have thought he possessed. “This one is coconut oil, it will help detangle it and make it softer,” he said, holding it up. He held up another. “Then I’ll use this one, it’s a clarifying shampoo.” He picked up another few bottles and brought them close to Harry’s face. “Then a deep conditioner, a leave-in spray, and a different type of hair oil for your ends.”

“Do you really need to go through so much hassle?” Harry asked, wanting to sink under the water and not return until Malfoy had left. At least Myrtle wasn’t here to terrorise him.

God, it felt awful, to feel so fussed over by someone who’d done nothing but suffer over him for the past year. Myrtle’s bathroom, and then the Snatchers, and then that awful vision…Harry knew Malfoy wasn’t there, being tortured on the stained floor of the Grand Ballroom, but it had looked so real, so convincing, just as Malfoy had said it would.

Harry didn’t feel like he had the right to be cared for in this way. A fancy bath, all these finicky little bottles of whatsits…and Harry hadn’t even done his job right. He hadn’t even protected the people helping him.

“No,” Malfoy said simply, while Harry twisted to see him. “But it’ll feel nice.”

Harry didn’t deserve things that were a hassle and didn’t do anything but feel nice. It’s not what Harry needed. What Harry needed was all his people, gathered together, in this safehouse or truly any other.

Harry realized, with a start, that by lying to Bellatrix Lestrange, Malfoy had made it quite firmly into that small group. And suddenly, Harry wanted to do something about it, anything about it, to take one small step down the road of making up for the price that now lay solidly on his head.

He didn’t know any of Harry’s thoughts, however, as he quirked a smile and rolled up his right-hand sleeve. “I know all about luxury, Potter. Have you forgotten who I am?”

“Call me Harry,” Harry said, because he could never have forgotten who he was, even if he was Obliviated, apparated away, and bashed on the head multiple times. Draco Malfoy was as indelible to Harry’s lived experience as magic itself.

Draco’s brow furrowed. Firmly, he took Harry’s head in one hand and turned it so he was squinting down at the far wall. With a shifting sound of fabric and the tinkling of the little glass bottles, Draco folded a towel beneath his knees and crouched behind Harry’s head. “I don’t think I will, no.”

Harry began to speak, starting to turn but deciding better, lest he get a knuckle to the temple. “Draco—”

“I didn’t say you could call me that,” he said. Harry could practically hear in his tone how puckered his expression had become, as though he’d just bitten into a sour lemon expecting it to be sweet.

“It’s your name,” Harry argued hotly. He thought he might re-heat the bathwater anew just by the force of his conviction. “I won’t if you really don’t want me to, but… trust you—you’re not just your family.” He scoffed. “Your father was practically slavering to hand me over, but you didn’t. You’re not like him at all.”

Draco hummed pensively. “Once upon a time, not so long ago, all I wanted to be was like my father.” Harry heard him untwist the cap of the first bottle, fiddling with it longer than necessary. “I would have taken great offense to being called different than him.”

“Well that’s a load of tripe,” Harry announced, moving to turn around and receiving Draco’s nails pinning his scalp to face forwards, a glob of coconut oil falling straight into the largest tangled mass of Harry’s hair. “Not the part about wanting to be like your father—I knew that already, and I can’t really blame you, I guess. My dad did some really shitty things, and it was hard to learn for me too.”

Draco made an interested noise behind him, but Harry continued onwards without stopping, because it was important to get the words out right then while he still had the courage. “But I like who you are when you’re not trying to be him. I’d like you to be that person more often.”

Draco’s fingertips twitched in Harry’s hair. Listening intently, Harry could hear the slight quiver to his breath as he inhaled. He removed his nails, thank heavens, from Harry’s scalp, scooping up the largest gob of coconut oil from atop his head to rub between his hands.

He was quiet for so long that Harry wondered, a little nauseously, if he was ever going to receive a reply. He got his answer when Draco finally said, “I’m going to touch you now,” as though it was a warning.

The feeling of Draco’s hands in Harry’s hair nearly made him sigh from the first touch. His fingers were thinner than Harry’s, softer and nimbler. He rubbed his fingertips into Harry’s scalp, not yet attempting to tease out his tangles, just applying pressure to spread the contents of his first bottle.

Harry had to bite his lip to stop from groaning. The last time someone had touched him had been Hermione, swaying with him in the tent. The lack of physical touch had inspired something like a hunger inside of him, clawing at the inside of his skin until he had Draco’s hands on him.

“Tilt your head a little farther back for me,” Draco asked him, and Harry did so without thinking. Draco’s fingers stroked his hair back from his temples, careful over his tender scar. His fingers dug into Harry’s tangles by the root, working the oil carefully throughout

His touch was firm but gentle, and Harry had to keep his eyes open and stare at the ceiling he could not see to remind himself to remain quiet. If he focused, he could feel the dampened, sudsy lace of Draco’s unrolled left sleeve brush the longest of his tangles.

“You probably don’t have to do all this,” Draco said, clearing his throat before he spoke, so that his voice was light and casual. “Your hair is so thick already. But scalp massages stimulate hair growth, so this is what I do every time I wash my hair.”

“Feels nice,” Harry mumbled, hoping Draco didn’t catch the slight slur to his speech that he heard.

“Mm,” hummed Draco. He worked slowly, carefully, and Harry didn’t know how long it took for Draco to work the tangles from his hair, only that by the time he did, the terror his vision had inspired had almost faded. It was only when his mind circled back on it, chewing on it like a starved dog with a bone, that the jolt of fear electrified him once more. The zing of anxiety was assuaged soon thereafter, however, by the feel of Draco’s hands.

When he began with the shampoo, Harry found himself disappointed. “Why does it smell like that?”

Draco paused, his hands already in Harry’s curls. “It doesn’t smell bad,” Harry clarified, straining his neck to see Draco’s expression. His face was much closer than Harry had anticipated. From upside down, he could see a tiny mole, just under the outside of one of his eyebrows. It was almost impossible to see upright. It felt like a secret. “It just, ah…it doesn’t smell like oranges.”

“Would you prefer it if it did?” Draco asked, a small, bemused half-smile on his lips. “Is that a requirement? For someone who looks like they use bar soap as shampoo?”

“I…well.” Harry didn’t want to admit he had expected it to smell like oranges, because Draco smelled like oranges after the bath. “It’s fine. How do you know so much about this?”

The smile had most certainly transformed from bemused to amused, and Draco sounded doubly so as he tilted Harry’s head back into a more comfortable position for his neck. “About bathing?”

“All these little things,” Harry said, “these oils and fragrances and things, they’re really confusing. I just picked them at random,” he admitted. He reckoned even Hermione, with her vast knowledge of all things, would have been lost and adrift amongst all of the chateau’s offerings.

“I like nice things,” Draco replied, and Harry could feel his arms move as he shrugged. The sodden lace cuff snagged on one of Harry’s curls, and Draco brushed it out of the way with sudsy fingers. “I like feeling good. I’ve always had very sensitive skin, so taking the extra care is a necessity, but I’ve come to enjoy it.”

Harry hummed, letting his eyes flutter closed. “Nobody’s ever touched me like this before.”

If they hadn’t been so close, Harry wouldn’t have heard the slight intake of rushed air behind him, or felt the slight tremble in Draco’s fingers. “Surely your nanny must’ve?” he said, masking whatever emotion Harry had unwittingly elicited by that forced casualness in his tone. “You mustn’t have had house elves, growing up with muggles. A governess, perhaps?”

Harry blinked. If Draco’s hands had not been sunk into his hair, applying something thick and luxurious to it, Harry would have turned to laugh in his face. “My best friend is Ron Weasley. I looked all around Platform 9 and ¾, with you and all your pureblood friends dressed as smartly as anything, and I felt the most comfortable with that family. What do you think?”

“I. Ah…” Draco sounded genuinely perplexed. “But. The Potter family was beloved,” he said, almost beseechingly, as though this was a truth that Harry was simply hiding from him for some reason. “Even before the first war. Speaking of hair care, your grandfather invented Sleekeasy’s—yours was a notable family of inventors and entrepreneurs. Surely there must’ve been lines out the door from Fleamont’s associates to help care for you?”

He sounded so confused it had almost tipped over to anger, and Harry thought that made sense, too, that someone who budged up against Hermione for valedictorian of their year six years running would become incensed at not immediately understanding something.

When he gave context like that, it was. “They…they were?” Harry asked, his voice hoarser than he meant. “I…Fleamont Potter?”

This time, Draco took the side of Harry’s face and guided it to look at him. “Fleamont and Euphemia Potter, née Shreya Anand,” he said seriously. “The Potters were—are, with you as heir, though I’m assuming you’ve never been forced into taking Sacred Twenty-Eight Ancestry lessons every Sunday from age four to fourteen—a well-established English pure-blood family.”

Draco explained, sounding as though this was a story told so many times that he could recite it in his sleep, “By the time Fleamont came around, they had branches in almost every other wizarding family in Britain with whom they were on good terms. My family, and those like it, didn’t make the cut,” he explained with a mocking twitch of his eyebrow. “But the Anand family was well-regarded in Mumbai for their imports, and Fleamont just happened to expand Sleakeasy’s overseas and partner with them, and, well.” Draco shrugged. “That was that.”

“Do all you Slytherins know this?” Harry asked, unable to keep the edge from his voice. He hated that still, even now, he was discovering that everyone knew more about his life than Harry did himself.

“And Longbottom too,” Draco shot back, just as tetchily. He made to cross his arms and stopped before smearing his clothing with foam. His hands hovered awkwardly in front of him before grasping the edge of the tub. “Lovegood as well, but I don’t think she was paying any attention. She used to try to talk to me about some Blibbering Humdinger nonsense, since I was made to sit next to her.”

“I would have rathered been in ancestry lessons,” Harry grumbled, sliding back down into the hot water until it covered his lips and his nose blew ripples into the surface.

“Moping isn’t attractive,” scolded Draco, but it wasn’t half as harsh as Harry knew he could be. When it became clear Harry would take more convincing than that, Draco sighed.

“You can rinse out your hair, anyway,” he said, and reached down to wipe his hands off with the towel he’d been kneeling on. Scooping up the little bottles he’d gathered, he made to stand. “If you’re feeling well enough to sulk, I’d say you’ve returned to normal.”

“Wait,” Harry said, and while he had never been a fan of well-thought plans, this one truly had to be one of his most impulsive.

He just didn’t want Draco to leave. He didn’t want Draco to stop touching him. He didn’t want to have to turn around and keep pretending that he wasn’t sitting rock hard in this opaque water at the thought of Draco’s hands on his body.

So, he turned, he reached, he pulled Draco’s face down—

And he kissed him.

Chapter Text

Mipsy's Worst Nightmare

“We should talk about this before we do it,” Harry said, pausing with his hands braced on either side of Draco’s head. He was dripping water onto the bedding. Beaded droplets from Harry’s untangled curls splattered across Draco’s cheeks and forehead.

“Yeah,” Draco agreed breathlessly. The sodden lace cuff of his sleeve was cold at Harry’s side. His pupils were blown so wide that only the smallest sliver of silver-grey remained around them. He licked his lips and looked like talking was the last thing on his mind.

“Do you want to right now?” asked Harry, beginning to pull away with a reluctance so deep it felt like a Compulsion Charm had been cast to keep him on top of Draco.

Draco scoffed. “Absolutely fucking not,” he replied. “We should, we won’t, we’ll deal with it later. How does that sound, Potter?’

Harry grinned. “Sounds like all my best plans.”

Draco reached a hand in his wet hair and tugged sharply. “Then get back down here.”

As Harry leaned down to press their lips together once more, Draco rose, meeting Harry midway and turning on his side. He rested a hand into Harry’s chest, slowly but firmly pressing him into the mattress instead.

“If you think I’m just going to lay there, you’ve got another thing coming,” Draco said, meeting his eye with an excited flush. A real smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, genuine and pleased, and Harry didn’t think he’d ever seen him so unguardedly happy.

Ordinarily, Harry would have cringed at the idea of laying on a relatively clean bed while completely soaking wet. Right now, Harry truly did not give a fuck.

What Harry was worried about was the fact that, while he was very naked beneath the towel that he had hastily thrown on, Draco remained far, far too clothed.

“Get those stupid things off,” Harry said, tugging at the jumper and pyjamas Draco wore.

Sliding up to kneel beside Harry, Draco tugged his mother’s jumper over his head, folding it carefully and leaning over the side to deposit it safely on the bedside table. Despite his obvious eagerness to continue, his fingers hesitated at the small, pearly buttons of his night shirt that were revealed from beneath the jumper.

“I’ll unbutton it,” he said resolutely, as though only half to Harry. “But I’m leaving the sleeves on.”

“I’m lucky to see any of you,” Harry said too honestly, flushing immediately and cursing himself when Draco’s wide, surprised eyes snapped to him and his lips pressed into something teasing and incredulous. “I know what’s on your arm, anyway. I don’t care.”

The teasing expression faded swiftly at that. “I care,” he said, something harsh and admonishing twining under the raspiness of his voice, and he turned his attention back to his shirt.

Draco’s scars kissed the side of his jaw, skipping down from the angle of it to the line of his collarbones. The scars were pinkish and a little raised on his otherwise unblemished skin. Harry would have liked to pause there and admire the view that was slowly being unwrapped for him, but Draco didn’t let him do so for long. Perhaps that was purposeful, for the hot flush that covered his face under Harry’s gaze.

Instead, Draco leaned back in, stopping at Harry’s chest to take one of Harry’s nipples in his mouth. Harry bucked beneath him, his fingernails scraping into his hair and then softening hurriedly to stroke the flaxen strands instead.

Draco pulled his mouth off of Harry’s nipple, scraping gently with his teeth, and blew on it. Harry squirmed in arousal from the sensation, so foreign and new.

“Have you ever had sex before?” Draco asked with that false cavalierness he put on whenever something struck a chord, covering the seriousness of his question in a thin veneer that likely would have fooled anyone who hadn’t spent all of last year staring at him from across the Great Hall.

“No,” Harry breathed, shuddering as Draco’s free hand began roving Harry’s body, lingering featherlight at his navel. Feeling oddly abashed, he felt compelled to add, “Sorry.”

The pleased smirk on Draco’s face only deepened. He raised himself back up to loom over Harry’s face, eye to eye, their lips just barely not touching. “Don’t apologise to me,” he said, his breath hot in Harry’s mouth. “Not while you’re in my bed.”

He moved like he was going to kiss him, and then leaned over, making Harry groan as he captured his earlobe between his teeth instead and sucked lightly. “I should be apologizing to you. I’m going to make this so good for you, Harry Potter. I’ll show you how good you can feel, and then you’ll be a mess for it.” Draco licked the side of his jaw. “You won’t be able to get enough of it, and then anyone else will be ruined for you.” He pressed sucking kisses to Harry’s skin just after, and Harry shivered. “Would you like that?”

“God, you’re so hot,” Harry said, feeling like his mind was thick and slow with arousal but his body electrified. He reached up to hold Draco’s head once more, pausing before he made contact. Of course, Draco noticed.

“Go ahead and pull my hair,” he said, his voice low and smug. “I like to feel how turned on I make you.”

Harry did, burying his hand in Draco’s hair as he once again, achingly slow, made his way down Harry’s torso. He bit and sucked and licked at the space where the fluffy fabric of the towel met his bare skin, scraping his nails into the coarse dark hair that trailed from Harry’s navel to beneath the fabric. He pressed his nose into it, breathing deep, and Harry had to laugh a little for how unexpected it was.

Earlier that evening, Harry had thought he’d experienced the most physically intimate moment of his life when Draco had slid his nail carefully under Harry’s own, over and over, until the crescents of them returned to a healthy white. To have someone else wash his hands for him so carefully, wash his hair for him so slowly, had been breathtakingly intense.

This was a different form of intimacy. To have someone so focused on his body, and not even the parts of his body that he’d expected out of sex, was arresting in its vulnerability. It took Harry’s breath away, this feeling of being adored for the first time in his life.

Right when Harry felt like he was about to lose his mind with lust, Draco looked back up at him. Harry’s erection tented the cloth impatiently just under his chin, right in the spot where Bellatrix had kicked him after he had saved Harry, and then Harry had healed him.

“Want to take this off?” Draco asked, fingers scratching at the towel, and Harry almost kneed him in the throat in his haste to unwrap it from around him. Where he expected a scolding, Draco just chuckled, low and amused.

He leaned back on his heels once Harry was fully uncovered. He rubbed his hand down the side of Harry’s thigh appreciatively, his eyes fixed on the dark thatch of pubic hair and the flushed cock that was now on display as though committing it to memory. Though Harry felt embarrassment heat his cheeks, he couldn’t take his eyes off of him either.

The Sectumsempra scars scrawled across Draco’s torso like someone had taken a knife to a canvas and then patched it up again. He looked like a work of art that had been debauched and ruined and then painstakingly put back together. A beautiful painting, torn at Harry’s hand. Where Harry should have felt guilt, probably, if he were a more normal person, he simply felt lust instead.

Draco watched Harry’s cock twitch in anticipation. He reached down and paused, his hand inches away from him. Draco gave him a significant look, and Harry nodded vigorously, eager to truly do anything Draco wanted in that moment if it meant he would touch him.

When Draco took him in his hand, Harry groaned at the feeling of Draco’s skin on his own. He’d only ever felt his own hand, and he’d never imagined having someone else touch him could feel this good. He thrust his hips upwards, trying to get Draco to move faster.

Draco, always one to be disagreeable, only moved even slower, drinking in the expressions flitting across Harry’s face. “I’m going to tell you what I’d like to do,” Draco said lowly. “And then you’re going to tell me if that sounds like what you’d like to do. Alright?”

“Touch me,” Harry said, reaching for his own cock, or maybe for Draco’s. Really anything to grab, Harry wasn’t picky. He was too far away for hair tugging, clearly, but if he came just a bit closer, Harry could dig his fingers into the side of his thigh, still encased in far too much fabric, or if Draco came closer still maybe his arse. The thought of doing so made Harry’s mouth water.

Draco didn’t come closer, however. His hand on Harry slowed impossibly more. “I’d like to suck you off,” he began, counting on the fingers of his free hand, clearly reveling in Harry’s frustration. “And I’d like you to pull my hair while I do it. I’d like you to come in my mouth—that’ll get a bit messy,” he wrinkled his nose. “I’m no expert, I’ve only done this once before.”

“Who did you have sex with?” Harry demanded, and then flushed hot, immediately embarrassed at how forcefully the question had torn out of him. “I mean—”

Draco cocked his head and straightened his shoulders. He looked like a crowing rooster, or perhaps like one of his father’s prancing albino peacocks, and suddenly, Harry didn’t feel very charitable towards him at all. “Are you jealous?”

His resemblance to fowl was killed by a sly, knowing, foxlike grin, and Harry had just unlocked the henhouse. Chaos was inevitable. “Jealous that Blaise and I sucked each other off in the abandoned Alchemy classroom back in October? I could tell you more things we did, too—”

“Shut up!” Harry protested, feeling outraged and itchy with possessiveness and a little overwhelmed. “I didn’t mean it like—I didn’t mean it to come out so…” He flushed, wrong footedness causing his arousal to flag.

Or course, Draco noticed, what with his hand directly on it. He changed tactics with a remorseful, startled grimace flitting across his face.

“I’m sorry for teasing,” he said, much more gently.

He removed his hand to stroke Harry’s side, long and slow, like one would the flank of a spooked animal. “It didn’t mean much to me, my first time, so it’s easy for me to make fun of. I should have figured firsts would mean more to a Gryffindor.”

“Why did you do it, if it didn’t mean much?” Harry asked. He and Draco hadn’t been friends, but the feeling of intensity between them ran so deep, anything they did would be meaningful. Harry couldn’t imagine a world where he’d prefer anything different.

The shrug which undulated through Draco’s torso was one part sheepish and two parts rakish. “Call it practice,” he replied. Harry remembered the night before, when Draco had quirked an eyebrow at him and said, “Practice makes perfect.”

Harry hummed, unconvinced but relieved to be moving away from the topic of his —inexperience? Jealousy? Whatever it had been that had made Harry so uncomfortable—and Draco, eager to do the same, ran through his list again.

“Alright, once more to get it straight,” he said, and began: “I’ll suck you off, you’ll pull my hair, I’m going to see if I can swallow your come without choking on it—no promises—”

“That’s really sexy,” Harry breathed, because the idea of pristine, put-together Draco watery-eyed and spluttering around his cock with Harry’s release dripping down his stretched lips was a truly dumbfounding image.

“And then,” Draco grinned, “when I finish, I’m going to paint your chest.”

“I get to do that,” Harry interjected breathlessly, and then amended to clarify, “I get to make you finish, I mean. Though—I mean—coming on you would also be hot. All of it’s hot. I want to touch you.”

Harry wanted to do so many things all at once. If he let himself sink into it, he could become overwhelmed with the amount of different ways he wanted to get to know Draco’s body, all at once.

Draco’s erection had been largely neglected until now, but not for lack of prominence. It stretched the thin cotton cloth of his pyjamas in a way that was beautifully obscene. Harry wanted—if there had been a way to reach all the way down his own body, and all the way down Draco’s, he would have. “You could lie next to me instead and I could make you finish while you blow me.”

Draco looked rather stunned at the thought, staring into the middle distance as he contemplated Harry’s suggestion. He blinked and shook his head. “No, not for our first time having sex.”

“Okay,” Harry agreed readily, because a first time implied a second time, and maybe a third, and a fourth. Maybe they would get to do this a dozen times or more, and that was a truly fantastic future indeed.

“Okay,” Draco breathed, leaning down to say so directly into Harry’s mouth again. He pulled back when Harry reached up, grinning, only to swoop back down and press a kiss, hard, to Harry’s lips, before relenting just enough to open his mouth, and coax Harry’s open as well.

His tongue was a slow slide against Harry’s own. He sucked Harry’s bottom lip between his teeth and tugged, just a bit, until it fell free.

When Harry reached for him, to hold the side of his head and deepen the kiss, Draco grabbed his wrist, pulled Harry’s hand to cradle the back of his head, and tucked himself back down.

“You just like having the upper ha—ha—” Harry began, but Draco’s mouth was already on him before he could finish his thought, and whatever he was about to say suddenly no longer mattered in the slightest.

The silken wet heat of Draco’s mouth, when he took Harry into it, was indescribable. It had Harry pulling on Draco’s hair almost immediately, and then burying one hand in his own hair, trying to get a grip on himself before he thrust all the way into Draco’s teasing mouth.

Draco was taking his time with it, sucking the tip of Harry’s cock, licking up and down the shaft, from the tip to the base where he’d loosely curled his fist and then back up. His hand moved with his mouth, the skin now slick with his own spit. When Harry made the mistake of looking down his body, Draco looked up, meeting his eyes between his lashes, and smirked, just before the tip of Harry’s erection.

“Like that?” he asked, twisting his wrist in a way that had Harry unable to answer coherently. His voice was gravelly and smug when he said, “Yeah, you like that.”

“Fuck,” Harry swore, and he thought Draco would likely have laughed, low and amused like he had done before, if he hadn’t redoubled his efforts to take even more of Harry in his mouth. Fuck, it felt good, feeling Draco’s cheeks hollow around him, the suction of his mouth as he began to bob slowly up and down on Harry’s cock with a steadying hand on his hip. Harry felt like he was about to rip his own hair out, to keep from shoving himself down Draco’s throat and coming that instant, cutting his first experience extremely short indeed.

“I’m—fuck, Draco, you can’t—you can’t—” Draco shuddered at the sound of his name. He popped off Harry with an audible wet sound that had Harry groaning and rolling his head back, the cold air replacing his mouth on his cock making Harry shiver.

“Malfoy. Can’t what?” Draco asked, his voice raspy with arousal. With a smug lilt underlying the hoarseness, and mischief, challenging and compelling, on his face, he added, “Harry?” and fuck, fuck, Harry was going to come anyway, with Draco’s hand on his cock and his pupils blown wide and his lips swollen and red from Harry’s dick when his first name slipped past them.

“Oh, my fucking god,” Harry gasped, and reached down to cover Draco’s hand and gave himself a squeeze. “Wait, wait, I’m gonna come.”

“Yeah?” Draco asked, letting his hand be stilled. Where Harry had expected to hear disdain, he only heard excitement in his low, breathy voice. “Already? That’s so sexy.”

Draco blinked, mouth open in a curious little half-grin, and asked, “What if I kept going, after you finished? Would it be too overstimulating? Or would it be overstimulating in, like, a good way, and then you’d get hard again?” Draco gazed down at Harry’s cock as though it was a dessert all for him, and then leered back up at him, his tongue caught between his teeth. “It’d be fun to play with you until you got hard again.”

Harry whimpered. “God,” Harry breathed, feeling for the first time in many years like it really was a prayer, tugging his hair again and wriggling his hips and desperate. “What planet are you from? Christ, Draco.”

“Malfoy. Can I?” Draco asked, staring at Harry’s face as he once more began to move his hand slowly. “Make you come, and then make you come again?”

Harry’s eyes rolled in their sockets. “Uh-hmn,” he breathed, biting down on a knuckle lest Draco have to enact the second half of his proposed plan with more immediacy than either of them anticipated.

As Harry tried his level best to picture anything not sexy at all—Snape in a tutu at the front of the Potion’s classroom, Mrs Figg and a legion of her cats all tap-dancing down Privet Drive—Draco pulled Harry’s hand gently away from his cock. He firmly replaced Harry’s hand into his hair, nails scratching lightly, as if to say, do this back to me.

Snape and Mrs Figg fruitlessly tangoed behind his eyes, but visions of them were obliterated once Draco’s mouth was back on him. Four, maybe five strokes, and the feeling of Draco on him was too much.

“I’m gonna come,” he warned, and Draco gripped his hip and hummed low in his throat, just like he’d done when—when—

“Fuck, you’re doing so well,” Harry said, mouth open in a ragged pant but a smile curving at the corners of his lips when he felt Draco groan around him. More unrestrained as he had done earlier outside of the bedroom, when Harry had said those words with his hand on Draco’s throat, and his fingers on Draco’s bottom lip.

That was the last coherent sentence Harry was able to make before the sensation overtook him, gripping Draco’s hair hard as he couldn’t help but thrust while he shuddered to completion. Harry’s head was rolling on his neck, overcome by pleasure.

He fought through it to watch Draco, who, true to his word, didn’t quite manage to swallow. He spluttered and coughed, tears rolling from the corners of his eyes, but as he reflexively jerked back, he clapped a hand onto the back of Harry’s own on his head, pressing gamely farther until Harry’s tremors subsided.

He pulled off of Harry, gasping for breath. He wiped the tears which had collected from one corner of his eye with the heel of one hand, and Harry’s orgasm off his chin with the thumb of the other. He looked like the sluttiest, filthiest, most heaven-sent wet dream Harry had ever had.

“That was fun,” he panted, and then licked Harry’s come from his fingers.

Harry groaned, pressing his hands over his eyes, briefly forgetting to be gentle with his injured palm. He was grateful for the way the sting of it grounded him.

“You’re so fucking hot,” he whined, accusatory as though it was a terrible truth rather than the best thing that had happened to Harry in a long, long time.

He reached down blindly until Draco moved up, Harry’s palm gliding over his shoulder blades and the knobs of his spine. Harry gripped his shoulder, then the back of his neck, until Draco was back up to Harry’s face and Harry could taste himself on Draco’s tongue.

Harry was gathering the courage to praise Draco, to say something he was sure would have him shivering in pleasure. However, like always, it seemed that Draco had other ideas.

Before Harry could say anything, Draco backed away from him, shucking off his pyjama bottoms with messy, clumsy haste and straddling just above Harry’s hips. Harry wondered if he moved so fast in part to escape his own nervousness, which wrote itself into his slightly hunched shoulders and the vague, aborted movements of his arms almost pressed into himself for protection.

Harry wanted to show Draco, very explicitly, that he had absolutely nothing to be nervous about. Harry’s mouth watered just looking at him, nearly naked save for the unbuttoned nightshirt. Seized by the need to touch him, he reached for him, his pale muscular thighs, his erection pearling with precome. He wanted to feel the velvety skin slide in his hand and watch Draco’s silvery eyes roll back in his head.

“Wait, wait.” Draco stilled him with a raised hand.

Harry made an impatient noise. He held onto his own hair instead, needing to hang onto something, or else he would simply bodily launch himself at Draco which clearly wasn’t quite right for this exact moment.

No, in this exact moment, Draco’s eyes were already at the ceiling. Not rolling in pleasure, a sad fact that Harry was determined to change posthaste. He was blinking rapidly, one finger lifted to still Harry.

“Wait—” He brought the crook of his elbow up to his face and sneezed, once, twice, three times in rapid succession.

“Bless you,” Harry said automatically. He dropped his hand to Draco’s thigh and squeezed, humming in pleasure as he gripped the hard muscle.

“Uh,” Draco managed, pressing his nose and blinking, snatching the duvet from beside them and wiping his face and then his arm off in a move that had Harry grimace. “I got your come up my nose.”

Harry didn’t know whether he should have been horrified or horribly turned on. As was a common trend with Draco, he felt both at once.

“Uh?” he offered, and then corrected himself. “Erm. I’m sorry.”

Draco shook his head in a smug little twitch. “Next time I’ll come on your face, and I’ll get you back.” He said this in a way that struck the exact midpoint between a promise and a threat. Harry thought there was likely something deeply wrong with his own psyche, that he found that so arousing.

Thoughtfully, Draco added, “I promise to try not to get it in your eyes, though. It’ll be easier to avoid once you’ve got your glasses back. I’ve heard that stings.”

“Who told you that?” Harry asked, pleased that he was able to pose the question without revealing quite as much jealousy as before. It was easier, now that his fingers were digging pleasantly into the flesh at Draco’s hips and Draco’s lips were still red from Harry’s cock. “Blaise, was it?”

“Pansy,” he said innocently, shaking his head. He grinned, the fox back with the hens. “She also did sex things with Blaise.”

Harry squinted, a smile pressing into the side of his cheek despite himself. “Did everyone in Slytherin do sex things with Blaise?’

“Blaise is a huge slag,” Draco announced eagerly, as though he had been on tenterhooks waiting to say so, and though that didn’t exactly answer Harry’s question, it did make him laugh.

Draco, never one for the virtue of patience himself, followed up this pronouncement with, “Now. Do you want me to make you come again?” He rolled his hips suggestively on the soft stretch between Harry’s pelvic bone and navel, where he was seated. Behind him, Harry’s spent cock twitched.

“I dunno if I can,” Harry said doubtfully, though that was proving less true by the second.

“I love a challenge.” Draco grinned. “Shall I ask you if you’re scared, like we used to before we dueled? For old time’s sake?”

“This isn’t Quidditch, Draco,” Harry protested.Though the image of Draco’s arse on a broom did return to him, pleasantly. Draco hadn’t yet been in any other more sexual position that put it on display quite so nicely, but Harry could think of a few they could try the second time they shagged. Or the third. Or the twelfth. Harry wasn’t picky.

Quidditch or no, Draco shot back “Scared, Potter?!” with his absolute poshest popped “P” on Harry’s surname, eradicating his entire final syllable.

Shaking with mirth, Harry laughed, “I never knew how weird you were.” What a treasure it was, to learn it now, when he may have easily not been afforded such a precious gift had things gone ever so slightly differently.

Draco scoffed. “I dressed up as a Dementor to scare you off the Quidditch pitch. I mimed fainting in front of the whole school just to get your attention,” he retorted. “You’ve always known exactly how weird I am, and yet you still think I’m so hot that you’re hard for the second time in a row.”

Draco knew this for a fact, because he had reached behind himself to stroke Harry’s cock. He had only just touched it when he muttered, “fuck, wait,” and brought his hand back to his mouth to spit on his palm, before reaching for Harry once more.

Harry, for one, felt like he was having an extended heart attack. Draco, on the other hand, could have been having a quaint stroll in the gardens of Malfoy Manor, or at least it seemed that’s what he wanted to project.

“I like feeling you underneath me,” Draco said, in such a conversational way that they may have been discussing the weather. Harry wondered if he did it simply to fuck with him, mind and body at once. “And if I lean forward in this position, I bet you can rub against my arse.”

“Great,” Harry agreed, voice strained.

Draco hardly needed him to interject his thoughts, however. “I don’t like the idea of using any of the lubricant that might appear here, since the charms Conjure it from any Malfoy property that’s not currently making use of it, and, well,” he screwed his face up. “Mipsy Banished mine since I’m not married and I kept hiding it under the mattress. I’d hate to think whose lube we ended up using instead.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, Draco’s words falling on deaf ears.

He should have guessed that Draco would become chatty and performative with nerves—he was chatty and performative without them. But he wouldn’t have guessed quite how dedicated Draco would be at it, now that he was the centre of attention instead of Harry, his mind moving ten million miles an hour.

Harry’s injured hand was holding Draco’s arse, and his good one was stroking down his torso towards his cock, and not even the pain in his palm could stop him from relishing both. “Uh. We could use something else?”

As though Harry hadn’t offered his suggestion, Draco continued, taking hold of Harry’s wrist and arresting his downward trajectory at his hip. “Thrice-Great Uncle Septimus’ maybe if we’re lucky—though gods know what that stuff is, did you know they used to use sheep intestine to protect themselves before they invented charms against sexually transmitted infections—“

He seemed to have lost the plot. Easily pivoting into Draco’s grasp on his wrist, Harry opted hold Draco’s hips tighter and undulate beneath him, rather than to try to touch anywhere on Draco’s body that Draco clearly wasn’t quite comfortable with.

“You don’t need to be so anxious,” Harry said lowly. Draco’s mouth shut with an audible snap, and he scrunched his face up like he was about to sneeze again, which told Harry he was cooking up a truly monumental protest.

Hurriedly, Harry added, “I think you’re gorgeous. I don’t care what we do. I can give you a blow job too, that doesn’t require lube, or…” He focused hard, trying to remember what the bottle looked like. He didn’t struggle to recall what it smelled like: the scent was all around him.

A clattering, tinkling noise could be heard from the ensuite bathroom as the tiny bottle bashed its way around the shelves, butting other bottles rudely out of the way. It rattled and knocked other creams, tinctures, and lotions to the ground in its haste to smack into Harry’s open palm. He held it up victoriously, as though it was a prize he had hunted down and killed for Draco’s honour, or at least for his dick.

Draco paused, mouth slightly agape. “Did you just do wandless magic?” he asked, snatching the bottle out of Harry’s hands. “That’s my conditioner!”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed, monumentally pleased with himself. “We could wank with it, if you want.”

Draco’s shock, awe, and aghast expression was wiped off his face by a rather rougher thrust from underneath him. He tried to speak, “I—haaah,” and breathed out a cross between a sigh and a moan when Harry grabbed a handful of his arsecheek roughly and squeezed.

“I thought it would be hot on top of you, but I think—I think it’s just, uh,” Draco looked a picture, flushed cheeks and heavy lidded eyes, but there was a wild, overwhelmed glint in them that made Harry stop moving. “I don’t know…”

“We’ll change positions again,” Harry told him, gently tugging his wrist free and petting Draco’s side. He almost added, “if you feel too vulnerable in this one,” but, wisely, thought better of it.

If Draco felt vulnerable, he was liable to do serious damage if Harry did him the mortification of actually naming it. “I’m getting a stitch in my side.”

“I could have you in my mouth again,” Draco said, sliding off of him gratefully and shimmying to Harry’s side. He looked hungry at the prospect, his tongue caught once more between his teeth. “It would be fun to feel you get hard on my tongue.”

“I think that ship has sailed,” Harry observed, moving so Draco could feel him against his thigh, throwing a leg over him.

Draco wriggled closer, his own hard cock dripping precome onto Harry’s stomach as he moved. Harry uncapped the bottle, holding it over their heads and squinting at it so he wouldn’t elbow Draco in the face. Draco pressed himself against him as he did so, and they slid against one another, tantalising and unendurably hot.

“How have you lasted so long?” Harry half-laughed in incredulousness, nearly seeing stars himself. He reached for their cocks, his uninjured palm coated in citrus-scented conditioner, and they groaned in tandem as Harry took both of them in his hand.

The sound of them was obscene. “O-oh,” Draco moaned breathlessly, melting into the sensation for a moment. Burying his face in Harry’s neck, he mumbled, “I wanked off in the bath.”

Harry pulled back and gaped at him. “I used that bath right after you!”

He could feel Draco’s laughter in his ear, puffing through curls only just barely dry. Harry wouldn’t be deterred. “And you had just had a nightmare! Draco—I was feeling guilty for thinking of you like that!”

“You thought of me sexually?” Draco asked, brightening with a self-satisfied smirk. He pressed in closer to Harry, hardly a centimeter between them.

Harry felt the bones of Draco’s ribcage and the softness at his belly, skin to skin. “Yeah, I thought of you sexually. Obviously,” Harry said, his last word an approximation of Draco’s posh drawl, gesturing between them.

Draco preened for a moment, nuzzling more solidly into Harry’s neck. He bit his trapezius muscle, and Harry let him do it. He wasn’t sure if it was done as a threat for Harry’s mocking tone, as an expression of the overwhelm that had thankfully begun draining from Draco’s posture, or something else—but if Draco wasn’t about to reveal it, Harry didn’t much care.

He could ask the fourth time they had sex. Or the fifteenth. He wasn’t going to be fussy about it.

“How often did you think of me?” Draco asked, and Harry remembered Mipsy saying Little Master is speaking often of Harry Potter. He remembered Draco mentioning, with an embarrassed, caught-out flush, that Dobby, the little superfan he was, was the only one who would listen to him talk.

Before Harry could reply, however, Draco cut him off. “Actually, don’t answer that. That’s not a right now question.”

Like they’d agreed before, they had a lot to talk about, and not a lot of that talking was sure to get done right then.

“But yelling ‘Scared, Potter’ at me was a right now question?” Harry asked instead of pressing. He didn’t know how it was possible for a person to be so silly and so sexy at once.

“There’s always time for that question,” Draco told him solemnly. The seriousness of his tone was undermined by the breathless gasp which came out of his mouth when Harry began moving his hand again.

“I do want to try that other position at a different time,” Draco said shakily. Maybe the seventh time. Or the twentieth. “We would need lube, I think. Certainly if you were going to fuck me,” and Harry felt like his body shut down and restarted at the same time. “But for just the outside? I’m not sure. Mipsy kept stealing my magazines.”

“Any is good,” Harry breathed. “I like that idea. I like what we’re doing now.” If Draco was determined to try to talk to him while he was halfway to his second orgasm, Harry would indulge him. “Where were you leaving your magazines?”

“Under the mattress, with the lube,” Draco replied, looking at him as though he thought Harry was kidding. Obviously, Harry thought again in Draco’s voice.

He twisted his hand, watching smugly as Draco’s eyes rolled instead. “I’m gonna make you come so hard,” he rasped.

Draco moaned shakily, and Harry thought, finally, he’d wrung all the words out of him.

He’d certainly try his level best, anyway.

Chapter Text

The Choice (Part Two)

Harry did not think he was a sentimental person, but he would have liked to lay back and enjoy the post-coital languor of his first time for a little longer than all of thirty seconds.

Instead, his head cracked into Draco’s shoulder, and Draco’s forehead into Harry’s side, as each of them doubled over. Both of their body parts with a pulse on Lord Voldemort’s moods burned in tandem.

“Fuck!” Draco swore. Harry was too busy grinding his teeth into dust to speak. It was rare that Harry had insight into Voldemort’s mind as well as his moods when waking, but flashes overcame him of bloody clay smeared across the Grand Ballroom floor, of terrified Death Eaters with bone-white faces and of long-fingered, yellow-nailed fists clenching in rage.

“He knows,” gasped Harry. He thought he might be sick from the pain in his scar and the force of Voldemort’s fury.

“No fucking shit,” Draco retorted, clutching his arm as though he was about to start clawing it off.

“We have to go,” Harry said, grabbing Draco’s shoulder. Draco braced a hand on his, and another at the side of Harry’s face. From the murderous glint in his eye that had lit when Harry said go, he could consider himself lucky Draco hadn’t begun to shake him.

“This is a safehouse,” he ground out. “Nobody knows where it is, not even Mother. Fuck, I don’t even know where we are, just that it’s far.”

Draco took a few huge, long breaths, greedily inhaling through his mouth to blow the air out long and slow through his nose. “Mipsy,” he called without warning.

Harry yelped when he heard her crack of apparition, both at the noise to his throbbing head and at the state of undress she would surely see him in, and scrambled to cover himself. Draco, apparently, didn’t give a shit.

“Can you please fetch the Pain Relief Potions from the box on the desk?” he asked politely, interrupting her exclamation at finding the two of them curled up in agony, as though a vein wasn’t throbbing in his pale, sweaty temple right that moment. “I don’t believe I can walk without vomiting, right now.”

Mipsy hurried to do so, her large ears flapping as she scrambled to and fro in the room. She gave one phial to Draco, one to Harry, and then pressed the whole box into the duvet in front of both of them.

The potion seemed to move through Harry quicker than it did Draco. He could feel it coarse through his veins and travel along the threads of his magic. He sighed in relief, collapsing in on himself and rubbing his face.

“I need to get to the Burrow,” he said, because that was the one place he knew. It wasn’t the safest place to be—he vividly recalled the fires all around the fields, the terror that had clenched his heart in his chest when he thought the house would catch as well—but it would be a start. Molly could floo or owl the rest of the Order, and they could find out where Dobby had taken Ron and Hermione. They could resume the Horcrux Hunt. They had to.

The bloody clay had never faded from behind Harry’s eyelids.

They needed Voldemort dead, now more than ever.

“Mipsy, could you apparate to a place you’ve never been?” Harry asked abruptly. She was stiff fussing over Draco, picking through the potions in his store and holding them up to the light, selecting which ones she thought might best help him while he exhaustedly told her it was no use.

“Mipsy…could,” she said, glancing from Harry to Draco apprehensively. “If Little Master Draco wanted Mipsy to do so.”

“Little Master Draco doesn’t want Mipsy going anywhere,” Draco growled, “because stupid Harry Potter is going to run off and get everyone killed!”

“I’m not—I’m not.” Harry pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. This felt just like fifth year, just before the Department of Mysteries. But Draco was right in front of him, and nobody had died yet. Harry hadn’t even seen Narcissa’s face, in the flashes he’d gleaned of Voldemort’s rage. Perhaps she, too, had managed to escape in the interim. “I’m not. I swear.”

“Are you absolutely certain?” Draco asked, his words slow and sharp, though the pain in them was beginning to recede as the Pain Relief Potion wended its way through his body. “Because I’m not a Gryffindor. I’m not throwing myself into danger unnecessarily.”

“I’m certain,” Harry replied, and then sighed, casting a sidelong glance at Mipsy and securing the bedsheets more carefully around his middle. “Is there—are there any clothes here that aren’t pyjamas?” he asked.

Draco seemed, at this point, wholly convinced that Harry actually was stupid. “Whatever necessities are not in use at one Malfoy estate are available at the next,” he explained, gesturing to the ensuite. “Hygiene, clothing, bedding, whatever. Not personal artefacts, and not grimoires or the like, obviously—those remain wherever the Lord puts them. But you can certainly have clothes.”

The garments that Mipsy handed Harry were too long in the leg and too tight in the shoulder. In the relative calm he’d drained into, she left them both to their privacy, glaring at the two of them with a strident, scolding sort of expression that seemed much harsher than any she’d levelled at them before.

After she left, Draco sighed, “She’s angry that we’ve engaged in sexual acts without being married first.” The jittery, uncomfortable edge was clear in his voice, and his giggle was more than a little hysterical. Harry knew it wasn’t about Mipsy’s reaction at all.

Draco wrung his hands, pressed his face into them, and then burrowed back into the bedding, as though the duvet could insulate him from the reality of their situation. He watched Harry struggle into the borrowed clothing, fancier and of a finer weave than anything Harry had ever even touched.

Harry could have sold everything in his scuffed-up, secondhand closet, and it wouldn’t have made a dent in the expense of even the simple white shirt alone, he was certain. Harry suspected these may have been Draco’s own clothes, from the cut of them.

Neither of them said anything. Draco didn’t get up, and he didn’t get dressed.

“I have to leave,” Harry repeated. “I need to figure out a way to kill him. I can’t do that cooped up here.”

Harry envisioned a future all too like the past few months, staring dully into the forest beyond the tent, listening to Hermione’s light snoring from within. The tense, back-aching days of nothingness, where they would argue about tiny things that didn’t matter because they didn’t know what to do about the only thing that did.

The sinking feeling in Harry’s gut told him all he needed to know—he didn’t want to return to that secondhand tent reeking of cats, foraging for food and biting Hermione’s head off for no reason. He wanted to do something useful, be somewhere useful. He couldn’t just hide away.

It seemed, however, that Draco could.

“It’s safe here,” he repeated, and Harry felt like they were in their own separate echo chambers, unable to hear one another over the desperate sounds of their own voices.

“That’s not the point,” Harry said, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of his voice. He took a deep breath. “Safe is relative. Nowhere is safe, not really, for as long as he’s alive. I would rather front load it all, be unsafe and terrified for only a little bit, have him dead, and then live my life the way I want—than to be ruled by running and hiding away from him for the rest of whatever my life would be.”

Harry looked at Draco.

His lips were pressed together, and his eyes were cloudy in thought. His brow was drawn down, and Draco looked smaller than Harry had ever seen him, smaller even than tearfully hunched over the sink in Myrtle’s bathroom.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Harry said softly, feeling sick as he forced the words out because he wanted Draco to come with him, anyway.

The mattress dipped under him as he sat on the bed beside where Draco lay. “I’m going with or without you.” The words tasted bitter on his tongue.

He didn’t want to leave Draco behind. He was one of his people now, within his circle. Harry wanted to keep them all close. God only knew Harry had spent enough time separated from the people he loved, and they most often ended up dead far too soon even so.

“I’d rather be with you, despite the danger we’d both be in, but…” Harry sighed, rubbing his face as though to clear away the uncertainty of trying to reunite with Ron and Hermione, of trying to figure out what to do next. “That choice is yours.”

Draco blinked at him. He remained still and speechless in deep thought for so long that Harry began to think he would melt into the mattress and become one with it in lieu of answering.

Harry was just about to get up when Draco did so himself. Instead of sinking into the stupor, he began picking at the skin of his lip, gazing around the room with his back hunched and his brow furrowed. He seemed to weigh his words for an endless eternity before turning back to Harry.

“You might as well call me Draco.” He sighed, snatching the button-down Mipsy had brought him from the nightstand and forcing it over himself. Rough and fast was how he moved and spoke, as though he knew that if he didn’t act now, he never would. “No use invoking my surname when I’ve been shattered from the family stained glass. If not now, then once I’ve been seen with you lot again, for certain.”

Draco refused to meet his eyes as he stuck one leg, and then the other, into his trousers, but the flush was back across the tips of his ears, and Harry couldn’t help but smile despite everything collapsing around them.

“Bring me the fucking satchel,” he huffed. “Let’s see just how different from my family I can be.”