Archive of Our Own

one.

Draco lies curled in on himself in his bed in his Slytherin dormitory, all the hangings pulled down around him. It's almost gone nine, and the early April sun slid beneath the dark branches of the Forbidden Forest nearly an hour ago. The room he shares with Vince and Greg and Blaise and Theo is empty, dark, the only light coming from the muted Lumos at the tip of Draco's wand. It's Saturday, and the others are in the Common Room, most likely sharing the bottle of firewhisky Theo smuggled back into the castle from Hogsmeade earlier this afternoon.

Slughorn won't notice. The old bastard's probably cowering in his rooms. Not that Draco can fault him for that, given he's doing the same.

The small wireless lies beside him. Draco's cast a Muffliato. If the others come in they'll think he just wants a wank. They've all done that since they were third years and Vince had woken them all up with a noisy tug.

Draco lets his fingertip run across the top of the wireless. It's almost time. He takes a deep breath, touches his wand to the wireless, and whispers the password. This week's is Meadowes. He feels the wireless spark and hum to life beneath his hand; the dial glows blue and static ripples out from the speaker as the small box tunes into the protected feed.

"Welcome to Potterwatch," a cheerful voice says, and it sounds a bit tinny and wavery at first from the wireless. "You've River and Rapier here with you, for our weekly bit of undermining all authority on this wretched island of ours--"

"Anarchy forever, mate," another voice pipes in. "And a solid up yours to all Death Eaters, yeah?"

Draco doesn't know why they bother with codenames. He'd know Lee Jordan and Fred Weasley's voices anywhere. He'd heard Jordan's for years in Quidditch matches, after all, and no one in Hogwarts could ever not hear the Weasley twins laughing down the corridors. He shifts, the coverlet bunching beneath his hips, his head resting on his pillow, hair falling across his cheek. He lowers the volume, breathes out as Jordan and Weasley start to talk. He's been listening for almost three months now, since he heard the password being quietly passed from one Hufflepuff to another in the library stacks when they'd come back from hols. Not that it'd been a proper Crimbo this year for Draco. He'd spent most of his time hiding from the Dark Lord, not to mention the Death Eaters striding through the halls of the Manor, their boots ringing out against the stones. His mother had tried, transfiguring a small, pathetic tree in her sitting room, but it'd been slapdash and terrible, and when Aunt Bella had seen it, she'd just thrown her head back and laughed and called her sister a foolish bitch for even trying.

No one had felt like celebrating.

For the first time, Draco doesn't want to go back next week, doesn't want to spend Easter in that cold, dreadful house, terrified that another wand is going to be turned on him, that he'll feel the hot pain of another Cruciatus exploding across his skin just because the Dark Lord's bored. It's not home. Not any longer. Draco's not certain it ever will be again. At least here, he's protected. Severus has seen to that. The Carrows don't dare touch Draco, although they make their disdain for his family quite clear. It's a small comfort, particularly given the loathing Draco faces from every student and faculty member outside Slytherin House. Even Blaise has drawn back a bit, watching Draco silently from across the common room. Other than Vince and Greg, only Pansy really talks to him, putting her head on his shoulder and letting him stroke her hair. The others just eye him warily, as if the Mark on his arm sets him apart from them.

Draco knows it does. He looks down at it, peeking out from beneath the long, grey cotton sleeve of his Slytherin Quidditch jersey. It's Dark and thick, its black lines burnt into the pale flesh of his forearm. Draco'd taken it proudly, the summer before his sixth year, surrounded by Death Eaters, his father looking at him with a cool satisfaction, for once delighted with Draco's choice. It'd been the worst mistake of his life, he thinks. The fear had set in almost immediately, when the Dark Lord had summoned him, made it clear what he expected of Draco over the next year.

A way into the castle and a death. All in exchange for his life. His mother's life. Should he fail, the Dark Lord had said, his voice calm and emotionless, the consequences would be severe. He'd illustrated his point by flicking his wand towards a Snatcher who'd earned his displeasure, killing him instantly with a bored Avada Kedavra.

Draco will never forget the way he'd sicked up afterwards in his room, dry heaving into the toilet in his en suite, his whole body shaking, his mother bent over him, whispering in his ear that he needed to do what the Dark Lord asked, telling him that she couldn't bear for him to be hurt. Killed.

And Draco'd done his best. He'd still failed, but Severus had been there to protect him as best he could. To suggest the Dark Lord cast Cruciatus against Draco rather than the Killing Curse. To help Narcissa carry Draco's shaking, pain-wracked body to his rooms after the Dark Lord had punished him, Draco's screams echoing through the stone corridors, whilst his father cowered beside the Dark Lord's serpent, begging the Dark Lord's forgiveness for his idiot son's failings.

Sometimes Draco thinks that was his turning point. Knowing that his father had abandoned him like that. Knowing that nothing he did would ever be good enough. Knowing that he didn't have it in him to be a killer, to hate the way his father had taught him. Not when it came to taking lives. Draco's terrified by the joy the other Death Eaters take in it, by the thrill they have in extinguishing a life, even that of a Muggle.

Draco can still hear the thump of Charity Burbage's body against the dining room table, can still see the way Nagini pulled her corpse to the floor, consuming it whilst the Dark Lord ate his own dinner, calmly, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Memories like that wake Draco up at night, screaming.

Jordan and Weasley are droning on. Draco's half-listening. He doesn't care about most of what they say. It's not as if he doesn't know it from the other side. But he's listening for Potter's name, listening for any hint that Potter might still be alive.

He must be. The Dark Lord would have crowed it from the Manor rooftops if Potter had been killed, but Draco has to hear Potter's friends say the same, has to hear them talking about Potter, has to know that they need him to be out there as much as Draco does.

Draco doesn't know what he'll do it Potter doesn't defeat the Dark Lord. What any of them will do, really. Draco's not brave enough to run away, to be the kind of man Potter is. He never could be. He's a Malfoy, and Draco's starting to revise what he thinks that means, starting to see the foibles of his father and grandfather and all the generations stretching out behind him. He doesn't want to be like them, not any more. Weak and angry. Bitter and arrogant. A drunken, broken fool like his father. That's not the man Draco wants to be.

But he's no idea who that makes him now.

And so he lies here every week, curled up on his bed, listening to the wireless alone, heart in his throat, hoping that somewhere out there in the darkness Potter's still alive. Still waiting. Still their goddamned Saviour

Draco closes his eyes and breathes out and thinks of Harry Potter.

The Dark Lord is gone during Easter hols. Draco doesn't know where--he's learnt not to ask. He still has to endure Aunt Bella and the way she looks at him, her eyes wild and mad and far too knowing sometimes, but without His Lordship walking through the halls of the Manor, Nagini undulating at his side, Draco feels freer. Calmer. He starts to come out of his room, to join his parents in the drawing room after dinner, to pretend that perhaps everything might be right after all.

But he still listens to the wireless on Saturday night, his room warded, a Muffliato up. There's no mention of Potter in the list of the dead, no indication that Potter's not still out there. Draco waits for the next week's password to be given before he turns off the wireless. He walks to his window, stares out into the darkness, the thick forest of trees that surrounds the Manor, protects it from Muggles. His bloody birthright.

Draco knows he'll lose it all if the Dark Lord falls. His father's made that fucking clear. To be honest, Draco's not certain he cares. He's tired, and he wants this to stop. Wants things to go back to the way they were, when he could hate Potter without fear, when he didn't have to listen to the bloody wireless to just to hear Potter's name because it made him feel safer.

Circe, Draco thinks, what a fool he is.

Still, he writes down the password for next week's Potterwatch in a small notebook, charmed to open only to his touch. The list is getting longer, and Draco thinks he should destroy the page. It's incriminating, should it be found, and he's no way to explain it. But he can't. It feels like a lifeline between him and Potter, and Draco's afraid to sever that. Afraid of what doing so might mean.

He tucks it away in the drawer of his desk, dropping the wards on his room only a few moments before his mother knocks at the door, comes in to kiss him good night.

"It will be fine," she says in his ear, as she hold him close, and Draco can smell the familiar lilac of her powdery perfume. He feels like a child again, clinging to his mother for comfort, and she strokes his hair back from his forehead. It's grown long this year, falling to his chin, brushing against his cheek. "I promise."

Draco wishes he could believe her, but he's learnt now that his parents are liars.

They stand there for a long moment, wrapped around each other, and Draco thinks his mother's desperately unhappy too. He can feel it in the tightness of her arms, the faint slump of her shoulders as she leans against him.

And then she pulls away, and Draco feels empty and lost again.

"I love you," his mother says, touching his cheek, and Draco nods. He knows she does. It doesn't make him any less angry that she's put him in this position, placed him in danger, made him fear for his life. She could have stood up to his father, Draco thinks, but his mother's weak too. They all are.

And then she's gone, the door closing softly behind her.

Draco wonders what it would be like to be brave.

He looks out the window again, at the moon hanging low and bright over the treeline, and he wishes he could be.

The Snatchers storm into the Manor only a few days before Draco's meant to go back to Hogwarts.

Draco's in the drawing room with his father, silent and tired, having been unable to sleep the night before. His skin had felt prickly, too tight, as if it had known something momentous was going to happen today.

Narcissa comes in, Greyback and his men following her, three thin figures in their grasps, shoulders bowed, faces turned away. "They say they've got Potter," his mother's saying, but Draco already knows.

He recognises Potter instantly, despite the swollenness of Potter's face, the dirty length of Potter's hair falling to his shoulders, thick and tangled and almost as greasy-black as Severus'. His clothes are rumpled and dirty, and he looks like hell. But he's Potter.

"Draco, come here," his mother says, and Draco doesn't want to. He hesitates, his gaze going to Greyback behind her, and he can't move. His mother's mouth is tight, her face creased with worry. "Draco," she says again, and Draco slowly pushes himself out of his chair as Greyback pushes Potter forward, just enough so that the light from the chandelier shines on his puffy, pink, dirt-streaked face.

"Is it?" His father's voice comes from behind him, eager and excited. "Draco. Is it Harry Potter?"

Draco looks at Potter, then his gaze slides away. He knows what his parents want. He knows that it would give them glory, that the Dark Lord would praise them if they could hand over Potter.

But Draco can't. He won't. "I can't be sure," he says. He sees a flicker of something in Potter's gaze, and he turns away. He can't bear to look at Potter like this. His heart's thudding against his chest. He wants to scream at Potter to do something, to break away, to save himself for Circe's sake. Draco doesn't want to be the one to keep Potter safe. It terrifies him.

He listens dispassionately as his father and Greyback argue, and when Lucius grabs his arm, pulls him back to Potter's side, demands to know if Potter's scar is visible through the swollen, stretched skin of his forehead, Draco barely glances at Potter.

"I don't know," Draco says, and he jerks his arm free, walks back over to the fireplace where his mother's standing. Her hand settles on his shoulder; he moves away from it. He can't bear her touch right now. His whole body feels tight and as if it's on fire. He keeps his back to Potter, to Weasley and Granger. He knows them. He could give them up in an instant.

Draco makes the choice not to.

It's a small defiance. Meaningless, really, but it's all Draco can do. He won't give up Potter.

Not even if his aunt tortures him herself.

He promises himself that.

Somehow, he manages to keep it.

Draco stays through the battle. He doesn't know why. He could have run with Slytherin, but Vince won't go, and Greg and Draco can't leave him behind.

They ought to have, Draco thinks, as Fiendfyre rages around them. He had screamed at Vince not to kill Potter, done his best to pull Potter out of the way as Vince's Killing Curse sped his way. Idiot, Draco wants to shout, at Vince or Potter, he doesn't know. But Potter's face had been next to his, and Potter'd been angry, but Draco hadn't cared because Potter was still bloody alive.

He looks up at Potter, speeding towards him and Greg on his broom, and something about the determination in Potter's face makes Draco's heart clench.

Get out, he wants to shout. Save yourself. But the words don't come. Won't come. And Draco feels Potter's strong hand wrap around his, pulling him onto the broom behind him. Potter's body is warm and broad and solid against Draco's, and Draco twists his fingers in Potter's shirt and holds on, the heat of the Fiendfyre crackling behind him, snapping at their heels. He doesn't deserve Potter saving him, and if Potter dies here in this damned room, Draco--well, he can't think of that, so he screams in Potter's ear. "The door. Get to the door!"

They make it through with only a moment to spare, and Draco finds himself on the floor with Greg, his whole body shaking as Potter tells him Vince is dead.

Draco lies on the cold stones of the hallway, retching, as Potter walks away, a look of disgust on his face.

But Potter's still alive.

For now, at least.

And then Potter's dead. Carried into the Hogwarts courtyard by Hagrid himself, tears streaming down the giant's face as he follows the Dark Lord. The fighting stops. Stills. Potter's limp body is laid on the floor, and Draco falls to his knees beside his father.

"No," Draco whispers, and his father is pulling at him, insisting he stand, but Draco doesn't care any more. Because Potter's gone, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The courtyard is silent. Draco hears the soft click of his mother's shoes against the stones as she crosses to him and his father.

"Stand up," his mother says, and Draco lets her drag him up, and the look she gives him is even and steady. There's something about it that makes Draco's breath catch, gives him hope, and then he's looking over at Potter's body and he sees Potter's foot twitch.

The Dark Lord has his back turned to Potter. He's proclaiming his power, revelling in the destruction of his enemy, as Potter sits up, pushes himself to his feet. There's a roar from the Order, a shout that echoes across the stone courtyard, and then the Dark Lord turns in surprise, his eyes narrowing as Potter pulls a wand from the back of his jeans. His hair's pulled back from his face, twisted into a messy knot at the top of his head, and he needs a good shaving charm. But he's alive, and Draco looks at his mother.

"He saved my life," Draco says. "Tonight."

She just gives him a deep, searching look, and then she murmurs, "Do what you must, my love."

And Draco can't help the shout of "Potter!" that rips from his throat as he races across the courtyard, leaving behind his parents. The Death Eaters. Greg. Everyone. He hears his father calling his name, but he doesn't stop. He can't.

Potter just watches him, and Draco sees the wands that go up towards him, from the Order, from the Death Eaters, but he looks at Potter and says, "Please."

And Potter nods, grabbing Draco's arm and pushing Draco behind him. Hands catch Draco, pulling him back into the throng of Hogwarts students, and he finds himself beside Minerva McGonagall, her cheeks streaked with blood and dirt. She turns towards him and says, her voice grim and vicious, "Stay out of the way, Mr Malfoy."

Draco doesn't know what he's done here. Doesn't know what it means. He just knows he needed Potter to see him, to understand what Draco was walking away from.

Potter glances back behind him, meets Draco's gaze. He frowns at Draco, then turns away, drawing in a deep breath as the Dark Lord raises his wand.

"Harry Potter," the Dark Lord says, and his voice is cold and angry. "You've just taken one of my toys. How very, very rude."

"Didn't seem like he wanted to play," Potter says, and Draco feels his face heat, draws back further into the throng of students.

He feels a hand brush his, and he looks over to see Luna Lovegood, his third cousin, kept in the Malfoy dungeons, whom he'd snuck down food to whilst he was home on holidays. She gives him a small, careful smile, one that steadies Draco, lets him look back to where Potter and the Dark Lord are facing off, the courtyard silent and still around them.

Potter's wand goes up.

And all hell breaks loose.

two.

The summer after the battle, Draco spends most of his time trapped in what feels like a cavernous tomb of silence. The Manor is abandoned by all but his family, and even the house elves are sombre and grave as they ghost about the old pile. Since the Draco and his mother defected during the last battle, they have virtually no friends left. Draco spent the last months in terror only to have it converted to dreadful tedium and social scorn. Blaise and Pansy owl occasionally, but honestly they're both bollocks at corresponding and surely involved in more interesting things than Draco is. Anything would be more interesting than this pained quiet of the house and the dreadful, obsequious scraping and bowing his parents are forced to do towards a bureaucracy that seems determined to put his family on trial before the Council of Magical Law, but won't set a date. At moments Draco wonders if it's worse than cowering before the Dark Lord, but at least the Ministry hasn't threatened to kill them.

Yet.

Instead, the Wizengamot insists the three of them, Draco, his mother, and his father, be placed on house arrest until they can figure out what the bloody fuck they want to do with them. By the middle of May Draco's sure he'll go mad. With the terrors of the War, Draco hadn't realised how many people had surrounded his family until they're gone and the Malfoys are left alone, their movements locked to the house itself and the gardens. No further. Silence seeps into the absence of booted steps and screams and his aunt's mad laughter. And then the silence is replaced by the muffled, hidden sobbing of his mother in her sitting room, his father getting into the whisky at noon, ice and glasses clanking, and precious little bloody else.

Draco sits alone in his room, avoiding his father. Lucius will never forgive Draco's betrayal in the battle. Draco knows that. He humiliated his father in public. Chose Potter over him.

Honestly, Draco still doesn't know why, but he doesn't regret it.

The Ministry come weekly to sweep the grounds--team of Aurors out with magical instruments, surveillance spells, and sniffing dogs. One week, they find some old munitions from the seventeenth century in a shed on the grounds, another time they find an abandoned Snatcher's kit. Each week, his father has to sign for the materials found, and the Auror in charge makes three people witness it. A few times, the Aurors have a look around the ground floor of the Manor itself. Draco's mother offers them tea, but they always refuse, as if they're certain she'll poison them. Draco's stomach sinks with the realisation that, before the War, the Aurors wouldn't even have dared search the Manor, and now, they appear to be measuring it for furniture.

Draco wonders how long it will be before the Ministry takes away his family home. Deep down inside there's a flutter of relief at the thought. Draco wants to be rid of his family responsibilities. Wants to be free from the weight of his family name. Maybe this might start the process.

But when he mentions it to his mother, she's upset. Cries again. Draco learns to keep his thoughts tucked away, bent beneath the burden of his parents' grief.

In his room, locked away with the curtains drawn across the tall, paned windows, Draco tries to tune in his wireless. There's silence on the familiar frequency, the one he'd hidden himself away with every Saturday night for months, so he listens to the BBC instead, muffling the sound from his father. Draco doesn't want to put up with a drunken rant about the idiocy of listening to Muggle radio. From the local Wiltshire broadcasts, Draco learns more about fishing casts, Muggle cricket, and Swindon town politics than any young wizard needs to know, but Draco finds it oddly calming. The Muggles don't care about the War. Don't know anything about it. For them, the world's gone on as usual, and Draco likes that. He doesn't really care for most of the WWN programmes, although the news updates are helpful, but he loses himself to the Celestina Warbeck Hour faithfully, letting that one play loudly down the silent Manor halls. Sometimes his mother comes in to listen to Celestina with him, curling up beside Draco on his bed, falling asleep to the music. Draco sits next to his mother, smoothing her hair back from her forehead, the way she had done to him when he was small. She looks tired and fragile, and Draco would do anything to protect her, he tells himself, as Celestina sings from the wireless speakers. When the wireless is on, Draco feels as if the world might be righting itself. At least a little.

Still, Draco misses Potterwatch. He keeps scanning the dial with the last known password, Dobby. His heart pings at the name. Dobby had always been kind to him when Draco was a child. All the house elves had. Even when Draco'd been a complete menace. It was his father Dobby had hated.

Draco's starting to understand why.

After fruitless weeks of searching, Draco chances across Lee Jordan's voice in the middle of a reminder to tune in this Saturday for the new show. Draco's hands shake on the wireless dials with excitement. The broadcast is open--there is no need for passwords any longer, although if you know the last one, you can send away for a sweepstakes entry for a Firebolt signed by Harry Potter himself. Draco thinks about it for one wild, ridiculous moment, laughter bubbling up in him at the idea of owning a Potter-autographed broom, but he decides not to send away. It would only be awkward if he were chosen. Not that they'd keep his entry anyway. Not once they saw the name, much less the address.

Jordan does the first new broadcast alone. The programme is a memorial to Fred Weasley, and Draco finds himself oddly choked up listening to Fred's friends and family give tributes. He sits alone on the window seat in his room, his knees pulled up to his chest, remembering Weasley himself. If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear Fred and his twin shouting down the Hogwarts corridors, their laughter echoing from a classroom, their ginger heads rising up above a swarm of fourth years, desperate to buy Puking Pastilles to get out of their Transfiguration exam. A small smile curves Draco's mouth for a moment before fading away. He wonders how George Weasley's taking his brother's death, and he thinks about sending a note of condolence, but he knows he hasn't the right. It'd be incinerated in a heartbeat. So Draco sits and makes himself listen to the outpouring of grief and love over Fred Weasley. Rapier.

Draco doubts that anyone would have bothered if he had died.

In the outside world, there are a lot of trials and funerals according to the news. It's a summer of jubilation and mourning for the Wizarding World, and Potter appears everywhere. He's constantly in the papers according to Jordan--Draco manages to subscribe to Witch's Weekly using his own accounts, and his cousin Luna sends him a copies of the Quibbler when he writes and asks her. Draco picks up the covert subscriptions up from the owlery. Luna starts to write him more frequently, once a week, short but chatty notes about Nifflers and sage rituals and other mad items whose absurdity makes Draco laugh, as much as he'd rather sink into a sad loneliness. Draco doesn't always respond, but sometimes he does, stilted and uncomfortable at first, but Luna's replies are kind, and Draco starts to feel an odd, unlikely kinship with his peculiar cousin. He starts to gather things she'll find interesting, owling when he's got a few together.

He doesn't tell her that he tears a photo of Potter from the Quibbler and tucks it beneath a stack of books on his nightstand, pulling it out every night. He studies Potter's face, Potter's square jaw, his tired eyes behind new, thick black glasses. Potter hasn't cut his hair, but it's clean now, and he wears it twisted up. Draco likes the way it looks. He starts to pull his own hair back. His father tells him he looks like a fool when he comes down for breakfast. Draco doesn't take it down.

"I like it," Draco's mother says from across the table, and she gives Draco a faint, wan smile. "You look distinguished, my love. Like your father did at your age." She reaches out and takes his father's hand, and that mollifies Lucius enough to keep him from grousing further.

Draco just looks away, takes a bite of his eggs and swallows, something prickly and unsettling fluttering inside of him.

Potterwatch continues, flourishes, even, under Jordan's steady hand, and Potter's now featured on other WWN programmes that Draco tunes in during his long days of boredom in Malfoy Manor. He starts going to bed at odd times, and staying up late to listen to rebroadcasts. His mother is getting suspicious, but Draco pretends he's depressed. He is a bit, at that, but that's not why he's going to bed. He wants to be awake, to hear others talking about Potter. Some nights, if he's particularly lucky, he'll even hear Potter's voice, that rough, low accent that shivers through Draco's body. At least the wireless is a source of information, distraction, and also news about Potter. Sometimes the voice on the other end of the broadcast is the only thing in the world that matters to Draco, news about Potter the one thing that will comfort him, even if it's something as ridiculously simple as someone seeing Potter walking hand-in-hand with Ginny Weasley down Diagon Alley, getting ice creams at the newly reopened Fortescue's. The proprietor's got another name, Draco learns, but she's kept the shop name to honour Florian Fortescue.

The Ministry allow Draco and his mother to attend the Tonks-Lupin burial in mid-June. Lucius stays in the Manor, insisting he wouldn't want to go in the first place. But Narcissa asks for permission, and she's reluctantly granted it, with the caveat that she and Draco will be accompanied by Aurors. For a moment, Draco thinks about staying with his father. He doesn't want to be seen like this, doesn't want people to whisper behind his back, and he knows they will. But his mother wants to go, and Draco refuses to let her face the bastards by herself.

His Aunt Andromeda had buried her husband in April after he'd been murdered by Snatchers, and her daughter, Nymphadora, was now being interred in the Tomb of Heroes just outside of Hogsmeade. The new memorial's also a final resting place for the War dead--or at least those the Ministry finds fitting enough to be buried there--and Draco's surprised that he's allowed to attend. He knows that Fred Weasley is buried here too--he heard about it on Potterwatch and it helped him visualise where they are going.

When they arrive, two Aurors beside them in full dress uniform, his mother is quietly horrified at how gaudy the new memorial is--an epic pile of heroic sculpture replete with a miniature model of Hogwarts--but Draco is grateful to be off the Manor grounds. It's almost shocking to be around crowds again, even more so to see the burnt towers of Hogwarts rising up in the distance, over the forest's treeline. Work's just started on repairing Hogwarts; Draco's been following it on Potterwatch. Jordan's been whinging about how long it's taken to start it, about whether or not it was necessary to build the Tomb of Heroes rather than put resources and time on preparing Hogwarts for the next school year. Honestly, Draco doesn't disagree with him.

Their Auror escort--John Dawlish and another, younger witch--leads them through the throng, and people murmur when Draco and his mother go into the crypt. Draco thinks one old wizard even spits at them, he's not sure. He keeps his eyes down. He knows his place. Dressed in the dull black and grey of mourning garb, Draco and Narcissa sit in the back of the crypt during the service, Draco flanked by the witch and Dawlish to Narcissa's right, whilst Aunt Andromeda sits at the front, holding an infant--Teddy's his name, Draco's mother says--with Harry Potter himself by her side. Draco tries not to stare at Potter, but fails. The stone crypt is packed with Gryffindors and Weasleys. Draco even spies Percy Weasley sitting next to Minister Shacklebolt.

Draco's cousin Nymphadora is interred next to Remus Lupin, whom Draco remembers from Hogwarts. Draco hadn't hated him as a professor, even if he'd thought Lupin odd. And poor. Circe, what a twat he'd been, Draco thinks, and that realisation surprises him. Evidently Nymphadora and Lupin'd married, and the baby is theirs. Draco's chest constricts when he thinks about the blue-haired child, who'll now grow up not knowing either of his parents. More deaths that Draco holds his family responsible for. Draco wonders what it would have been like, to have Lupin as an uncle--or whatever the husband of a cousin is supposed to be called--what it would have been like to see his cousin Nymphadora and Lupin raise their baby and not watch them be buried here together and feel implicated in their deaths. Draco rubs his forearm against his thigh when it itches, not daring to draw attention to himself. At the end of the service, when his aunt stands with Teddy, and walks over to put a single white rose on her daughter's coffin, Draco chokes up, blinking back a tear or two. Draco never cries, and he has no idea why this should move him, but it does. Terribly.

Afterwards, as Harry Potter is processing out with Aunt Andromeda, they stop in front of the row where Draco and his mother are standing with Dawlish and the other Auror. His aunt, with Teddy quietly asleep in her arms, approaches her sister. The entire crypt stills, falls silent, and all eyes are on them. Dawlish steps to the side to give Narcissa space, and she comes forward into the aisle. Draco glances at his mother, and his aunt, who face each other ramrod stiff with impeccable posture, at Dawlish, whose eyes are scanning the crowd, and then directly at Harry Potter, who holds his gaze. Draco swallows, unable to look away from the intensity of Potter's brilliant green eyes. His heart flutters in his chest, and he thinks he might be sick from nerves. He's simultaneously so grateful to Potter and so queasy at seeing him again. Then Aunt Andromeda leans forward, cradling the infant against her thin shoulder, and gives Draco's mother a kiss on the cheek.

"Cissy," she says quietly, and Draco's mother breathes out.

"I'm so sorry," Narcissa says, and Andromeda just looks at her. For a moment, Draco thinks his aunt might say something else, but she just gives his mother a sad, small smile, and she walks away.

The entire gathering sighs, as if in collective relief. Potter gives Draco a nod, and then he's gone, along with Andromeda and the baby, and Draco can breathe again. A single tear slides down his mother's cheek, and she wipes it away with her thumb. The Auror escorts gather them to leave.

Draco thinks about nothing but Potter for days, troublesome thoughts of green eyes and the feeling of being pressing up against Potter, Fiendfyre hot against his back.

And then Draco surprises himself by crying again less than a week later. Tears roll down his face as he listens to the live broadcast of Severus's interment in the Tomb of Heroes, even if the mention of Potter among the small crowd of worthies makes Draco's heart do a funny little leap in his chest. Draco sits in his bedroom and he listens, almost mindless with grief. He doesn't muffle the sound, even when his father bellows from the hallway.

His Head of House had been a traitor to the Dark Lord, in the end, and he couldn't have been truer or more Slytherin, Draco thinks. Draco wishes he'd had Severus's courage to rebel against the Dark Lord, even just a little, wishes that he'd known Severus wasn't loyal, wishes he could have gone to Severus and told him how he felt, how scared he was, how he wished he had never taken the bloody Mark. He knows now that Severus would've understood, and that gives him an odd form of comfort.

Still, Draco finds it so unfair. Severus didn't deserve to die like that, not when so many others who were so much worse survived. Draco's father for one, and that's a thought that Draco feels awful about. He tries to push it away. Draco's still afraid of who's out there, Greyback and Yaxley and Dolohov for one, although his mother assures him he needn't worry about them. Draco is made to worry though--it's what he does best. He's up late listening to the wireless now because he can't sleep. He thinks he'll go mad in this house, buried in it like a wraith, his name forgotten among living creatures. His mother just tells him he's being dramatic and he should get some fresh air.

Draco wanks to thoughts of Potter instead, the stubborn jut of his jaw, the breadth of his hands, the broad press of his back, what he'd feel like naked against Draco's fevered skin. He leaves the Quibbler photo of Potter out, not caring if his parents see it. They seldom come into his room now, and Draco wants to look at Potter, to let himself have these strange, almost unwelcome feelings about Potter, wishing Potter would come rescue him. Would be the brave Saviour Draco had hoped Potter would be. Draco comes to fantasies of Potter walking into the Manor and picking Draco up, pushing him against the wall, his mouth hard and angry and hot against Draco's, before carrying him to the Floo and whisking him away.

To where, Draco doesn't care. He lies gasping on his bed, his hand slick with his own spunk, his ruddy prick softening only a little. Draco's young; another few strokes and he could bring himself to hardness again. And he does.

He's nothing else to do, after all.

In July, the summons to the Ministry are hand-delivered by Dawlish, whom Draco now thinks of as their personal Auror. Dawlish has been leading the most recent teams who've come to sweep the grounds; they look to be green recruits and pensioners to Draco's eye, and he hopes this is a sign that the Ministry find the Malfoys harmless now. Although, if he's honest, Draco's also a bit peevish that his family're not considered more dangerous. They'd brought back the Dark Lord, for fuck's sake, but Draco's not idiot enough to point that out to Dawlish and his team. Dawlish even took tea with them last week and whilst it was unbearably awkward most of the time, he and Draco had a rather lively conversation about the World Cup. Dawlish had been wrong, of course. Norway hasn't the slightest chance in hell of coming in above Estonia in the league tables, and Senegal are looking much stronger this year, but Draco'd enjoyed arguing the points with the man.

Now, standing on the doorstep, Dawlish's bearing is stern, but his face is soft as he hands the heavy official parchments to Draco's mother whilst Draco stands awkwardly next to her, reading his own name upside down on the address of the top parchment, Draco Lucius Malfoy. He wonders wildly if it's a death sentence--they don't put people to death, do they? He could be kissed, though, by the Dementors, and that's practically the same. Perhaps Potter will save him, the way Draco fantasies about. Whisk him away to someplace safe, where a Dementor won't come close to him.

Draco takes a deep breath, willing himself to calm, distracting himself by being quietly furious with his father, who's off sulking somewhere in the library, probably playing chess solitaire or with one of the elves, and moaning about how terrible his life is now. Draco can't really handle his father's self-pity, although his rages are fierce, so Draco knows to keep his tongue. Lucius Malfoy maybe be in disgrace, but he still has his claws.

"It'll be quick," Dawlish is saying to Draco's mother. "The Ministry wants to be done with everything by August, if they can. You'll be allowed your solicitor, of course, and anyone who'd be willing to speak for you." Dawlish hesitates, rubbing the back of his neck, and then he says, "I would, if you'd like. I've been here enough the past two months. I reckon you're not as dangerous as they'd like to paint you."

Dawlish is looking at Narcissa. Her cheeks flush a bit pink, and Draco frowns between them. "Thank you, John," his mother says, and she reaches out, touches Dawlish's hand. "I'd be most grateful."

And Draco doesn't know what to think about that, how to parse it. So he's silent, and he watches Dawlish with a curious eye. He's soft on Narcissa, Draco realises, this tall Auror with the broad shoulders and the kind blue eyes who must know he's no chance with Draco's mother. She's been in love with Lucius since she was a girl. Even Draco knows that. Still, his mother stops weeping in the sitting room. She comes back to herself after that, her chin high, her spine straight, and she tells Draco they'll come through this, whatever might happen, she and him.

Draco notices she doesn't include his father in this certainty, that when she mentions Lucius, it's with a worried frown and a quiet sigh.

Counselled by the family solicitor, the Malfoys dress without finery for their trials. It's unbearably hot, but Draco and his father are buttoned up in heavy suits and his mother wears a grey wrap dress. Draco privately thinks that his outfit for his cousin's funeral had been less sombre than the dull formal attire he's wearing. And it itches in the heat.

Draco sits with his parents in the courtroom, trying not to shift around too much despite his discomfort. He'd managed to choke toast down for breakfast, but his nerves were not the best today. After being named in the charges, he's sent out into the hall, Dawlish beside him, whilst his parents are tried together.

"You need something to drink?" Dawlish asks, giving Draco a sideways look.

For a moment Draco wants to say no, but his throat is tight and raw. He nods. "Thank you."

Dawlish secures Draco to the wall with an Incarcerous, loose enough that Draco can move to drop down on one of the benches in the corridor. "I'll be right back." He strides off, in his charcoal Auror robe with the red piping and his polished black boots. Draco wonders what it would be like to have Dawlish for a stepfather. The very thought makes him want to laugh, high and brittle and more than a tiny bit mad. His imagination's running away with itself, probably because of his isolation.

Sitting on the worn wooden bench, Draco twists his hands, then smoothes his trousers, trying not to wrinkle anything further by fidgeting. He's afraid of the trial outcome but strangely unable to muster the energy to be properly terrified. What if they all get sent to Azkaban? he wonders. Draco's sure wireless isn't allowed in the wizarding prison, nor any of the Victorian novels he's found among his grandmother's things and is now devouring. Are there libraries at Azkaban or books at all? Probably not, Draco thinks with dull horror. He tries to distract himself by looking around, but the heavy stone corridor isn't exactly cheering.

Merlin, but he wants Dawlish to come back.

To Draco's great surprise and also embarrassment, Potter appears instead, stalking down the hall towards the trial with a Ministry official at his side. His tailored black robe swirls around his legs and his dark claret tie is askew. He's made some attempt to tame his hair into the knot on the back of his head, but it's still messy. The order of Merlin hangs prominently from Potter's chest, its green ribbon bright against the dark fabric of his robe. It's almost the same colour as his eyes, Draco thinks, and he longs to reach up and straighten Potter's tie. After a moment, Draco realises he's still looking up at Potter with his mouth is slightly open. He closes it, coughs, hopes he isn't blushing.

It's one thing to wank in private to fantasies of Potter. It's another to have Potter himself, in the flesh, not ten paces from him, looking bloody fucking gorgeous. Draco straightens, trying to hide the fact that he's bound to the wall, but he knows Potter's sharp gaze has already seen the Incarcerous. Potter's eyes narrow for the briefest moment.

"Hullo, Malfoy," Potter says.

Draco swallows, tries to find his voice. He nods in acknowledgement. His hair swings forward, hiding his face. He's worn it loose today, and he's so grateful for that foresight. He doesn't want Potter to see him mimicking him. "Potter."

When did this become so hard? He's known Potter for years, they've shared classrooms and even a battlefield. Why can't Draco talk to him and why is his heart in his throat?

And then Dawlish is back with a small cup of water, handing it to Draco, and Potter's going into the courtroom, the Ministry official giving Draco a scathing glare before the door closes behind them both.

Draco thanks Dawlish and drinks the water. It's cool against his dry throat. He sets the cup down with shaking hands and waits, Dawlish at his side.

Neither of them speak until Draco's called back in.

Potter testifies on behalf of Draco's parents and stays to put in a good word for Draco when his trial begins, his bright green eyes on Draco as he lists the ways in which Draco showed support for the Order of the Phoenix and kept Potter from being discovered by the Dark Lord. Half of what he says is dragonshit, but Draco's impossibly grateful.

Draco also has wank material for months, what with the wider breadth of Potter's shoulders and the stern cast to his jaw that didn't used to be there. Potter's grown up in the past three months, and Draco's fascinated by the new seriousness in his appearance. Even his spectacles are less smudged. Draco finds Potter impossibly hot, every time Potter looks Draco's way, and Draco's fidgeting now, on the courtroom bench, has nothing to do with the confining nature of his formal clothes.

With the support of Harry Potter, Draco's family manage to stay out of prison. Mostly. Draco's mother must pay a fine, large enough to make the Manor coffers suffer, and Draco's father is given a reduced sentence which he's allowed to serve under house arrest. Draco himself is let off with a warning and a probationary period of five years. He has to register with the local Aurors and he's not allowed to leave Britain for two years after which time his rights will be reviewed, but he's free to leave the Manor now. Despite the insulting nature of his probation and the constraints it places on him, Draco's heart is singing in his chest.

Still, Draco soon realises the difficulties of being on the losing side and switching allegiance at the last moment. His family are pariahs, to the Death Eater sympathisers because Potter defended them and admitted they helped win the war and to the rest of the wizarding world because of their Death Eater sympathies. Draco tries and fails to get a suitable apprenticeship--all of the family connections have dried up. No one will give him a position or a spot in a training programme. Draco applies and is turned down for several opportunities before he stops trying. Each rejection letter is like a nail through his heart, pinning him here, to the nothingness of the Manor.

And then finally, the winds begin to shift. Much to his father's horror, Draco finds work at Eeylops Owl Emporium in Diagon Alley. It's menial labour: Draco has to clean the cages and feed the owls, but he doesn't mind. Draco's always been good with owls, and if they nip his hands and leave bite marks, well, he doesn't blame them. Of all people, he knows what it's like to live in a cage.

Pansy convinces Theo Nott to let Draco move into the city to join them in Theo's grandmother's old townhouse in Clerkenwell near St John's Gate. There are five of them sharing the multi-story wizarding house: Draco along with Greg, Millicent, Theo, and Pansy. Draco's mother doesn't think it's seemly, mixed company in a single dwelling with no supervision, but she helps him pack a few bags, including his precious wireless set and his favourite owl Phaedra, and set off for London.

The opulence of Theo Nott's grandmother's townhouse has faded with time--there are lovely mouldings on the high ceilings, but the floors creak, the stairs are bare, the furniture is either much older than their grandparents' generation or scavenged from Oxfam by Greg and Millie, and the water heater needs constant spellwork to put forth even a moderately warm stream. Draco gets used to tepid showers and sharing a loo with four other people. It's just like Hogwarts except Pansy shouts at him when he takes too long to do his hair in the morning and Greg's visits to the loo require serious scouring charms for whoever's next.

Actually, that last bit's just like Hogwarts.

Still, they manage to make it home. Draco takes rooms in the old attic and scrounges a small bookshelf and a narrow bed with an old duvet from the Manor. He'll need to get something warmer for the winter and work on his heating charms, but in late summer it's light and perfect, looking out over the rooftops of the City. Phaedra's dead brilliant at chasing out the mice and bugs from beneath Draco's eaves, even if Millie's cat Hecate hates her for spoiling her fun. Pansy and Theo's parents even take pity on them and send a house elf on rotation so conditions at the house don't get too squalid, but they have to market their own food for the first time and also cook it. When the house elves bring the occasional hot meal, they're all impossibly grateful. As the weeks pass, they discover that Millie's surprisingly decent at cooking spells and Greg's able to bake bread. Draco has a dab hand with spells for salads and veg dishes, and Pansy is responsible for procuring wine. They never ask where she gets it, and she won't tell anyway.

At the end of the summer, just before the Hogwarts shopping rush, Draco's sweeping under the cages outside to close up the shop when he hears a familiar voice. And then another. He freezes, his body clenching with surprise and, if he's honest, excitement.

Potter and Ginny Weasley are across the street coming out of Quality Quidditch, having what looks like an row. Draco turns back to his sweeping, not wanting to be caught listening in. All of the shows he listens to and the papers have crowned them the Golden Couple, and Witches' Weekly are constantly posting rumours about their upcoming nuptials and how they'll schedule it after Weasley's last year at Hogwarts and Potter's first year of Auror training. The odds are in favor of the Burrow, although there's good money put down on Godric's Hollow, Hogsmeade, and somewhere called Shell Cottage. France is a long shot, with eleven to one odds.

Really, Draco hates himself that he even knows any of this.

"I don't see why we have to go. We were just at the Burrow last week." Potter's voice is gruff, angry. Almost petulant.

Draco keeps sweeping, trying to pretend he's busily seeking owl pellets on the cobblestones. He keeps his head down, hoping they don't notice him. His hair's pulled back with a hair tie; Draco's learnt not to keep it loose around owls. They like to nip and tug at it; he'd lost a whole lock of it his first week. The owls are already safe inside and really, he should be going. He's supposed to be helping move Blaise's things into the townhouse tonight--he's back from hols with his mother in Corsica, and taking over one of the third-floor bedrooms.

"Harry, you know how Mum is. She doesn't want to let me go back to school as it is." Weasley's voice is strident as well, and Draco senses the rumours of their vicious arguments may not be too far off the mark. "It's because of Fred."

"Well, I'm staying in London," Potter says, arms crossed over his chest and a mulish set to his jaw. "I don't want to go to the Burrow this weekend. I haven't had any time to get ready. I'm tired, I've been busy all summer, and I start Auror training next week, in case anyone bloody well wants to remember that."

"Fine. Stay here." Weasley throws her arms up in the air. "I really don't give a flying Hippogriff's fuck, Harry. Merlin. You've been so moody as it is. Nobody in their right mind wants to be around you. Least of all me right now, you arsehole."

She storms off, past Draco, down the street, her ginger hair swinging in a long ponytail. Potter watches her go, unmoving, seemingly planted in the earth in front of Quality Quidditch. Draco's stopped sweeping, broom held in mid-stroke. He must look a right idiot, and of course, Potter catches sight of him across the street, the fierce scowl on his face shifting to recognition.

Draco straightens up, breath caught by the intensity of Potter's gaze. His face must be flaming, it feels so hot. He shrugs nonchalantly at Potter, desperately playacting to cover his horrific embarrassment at being caught listening to a private conversation whilst covered in owl shit and shreds of paper cage linings.

"You should go after her, you know," Draco says, gesturing with the broom handle. "If you think it's bad now, it'll probably be ten times worse if you wait. I've heard the Weaslette has quite the temper."

Potter huffs a quick, mirthless laugh. "You've no bloody idea." He starts to head down the alley, after Weasley, and pauses. "Thanks, Malfoy," he says, and he flashes a quick smile at Draco, then turns to go.

Draco stands holding his broom completely unsure of why his heart is beating at twice its regular pace and why he can't stop staring after Potter's retreating form.

This is madness, he thinks, as his blood thrums in his veins. It's far too late for a schoolboy pash on Harry Potter. He's Potter, for Circe's sake. And he's dating a girl.

He walks back into the shop, letting the door slam shut behind him. Draco sends the broom Levitating back to its place on the back wall with a soft thump.

God, but Draco's always fancied the worst people, hasn't he? He pulls his apron off and hangs it up, trying to shake away the thought of Potter and that lovely arse of his walking away from Draco.

"Fantasies only," Draco tells himself, trying to be as firm as he can. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging back behind the till, Eeylops Owl Emporium etched into it in gold. His face is pale, save for his flushed cheeks. There's a brightness in his eyes, but he looks a complete fright, hair rumpled by the wind, the shoulder of his shirt torn at some point today by an owl's beak. Draco tries to smooth his hair down, make himself more presentable. He laughs, and it's dry and mirthless. This is what Potter saw. How devastatingly fit. Not.

An owl hoots softly in the shadows, flutters its wings. "Yes, I know, Achilles," Draco says absently. He reaches through the cage, smoothes the owl's feathers. "I'm a bloody idiot."

Draco washes his hands, then sets the ward on the door.

Fuck Potter, he thinks. He has a bottle of wine waiting for him, and one of Millie's best meals to welcome Blaise to their home. He doesn't need to fret about Potter and those broad shoulders and that sharp jaw. He has friends, and a place of his own, shabby and rundown though it might be, and whilst he's not making a great deal of dosh, he has a job, shitty or not, that puts Galleons in his own Gringotts account, not his parents'. And Draco's damned proud of that.

Really, Draco thinks, he's actually happy.

He doesn't need Potter at bloody all.

three.

Lora Griffiths runs the London branch of Eeylops with an iron fist, a head full of snow-white curls, and a pair of twinkly blue-green eyes. She's been managing the shop since before Draco was born; he remembers her from his childhood spent eyeing the owls whilst his father and mother shopped along Diagon. Draco had bought his owl Phaedra from Lora before he'd gone to Hogwarts. She doesn't let the other shopkeeps harass Draco for who he is, but she won't let him near the till or the customers either.

"I'm sorry, Draco," she says regretfully at the end of his first fortnight. "I think you're doing a smashing job, really, I do. But it's better for everyone if you stay near the back during shop hours, yes? Take care of the owls as you need to, but keep your head down. There'll be parents in here soon with their children's Hogwarts lists, and we'll need to make certain there's no…" She hesitates, and a frown pulls her mouth down.

"Difficulties," Draco supplies for her, and Lora nods. Draco doesn't mind, not really. He doesn't want to interact with people if he can help it. He prefers the owls, and unlike the other shopkeeps, Draco'll take them out of their cages, letting them sit on his shoulder as he cleans out the bottoms. They ruffle their wings and hoot mournfully at him, but they let him stroke their feathers and they barely nip his fingertips when he puts them back in the cages.

He doesn't mind keeping to himself, really. That surprises him. At Hogwarts he'd wanted to be centre of everyone's attention, needed them to notice him, to know who he was. Now Draco'd rather stay at the back of the shop, his head ducked down, not looking at the students coming in for the next Hogwarts term. Fortunately most of their clientele are first years, eager for an owl to carry letters home and return laden with treats. They don't know Draco, nor do they care about the quiet young man slipping through the shop, carrying cages back and forth to clean. Draco's nothing to them, and their parents are too flustered to notice the Malfoy pointiness and pale complexion.

Until the shop's quiet for once, the last afternoon before the Hogwarts train's due to leave, the flurry of customers dying down towards the end of the day. The bell rings, and Draco doesn't bother to look up. Max is at the front of the shop, and Draco hears him say something. Achilles is perched on Draco's shoulder, nuzzling Draco's ear with his cheek as Draco Scourgifies his cage.

"Draco?" The voice behind him is light and girlish, and Draco turns in surprise to see his cousin Luna standing there, her eyes bright and happy. "Oh, it is you. How marvellous."

Granger's a few feet away, and Draco catches a glimpse of a pale, freckled face beside her and a ginger ponytail before the door opens again, and Weasley runs out. "I'll go after her," Granger says, and the glance she gives Draco is unsettled as she heads for the door.

Luna looks after them, her face thoughtful. "I'm sorry," she says. "It must be dreadful to have people do that."

It's not Draco's favourite thing either, but he's become used to it since the trial. "It's fine," he says, and he looks towards Max. "If you need help…"

"Oh, I don't." Luna reaches out and strokes a finger along Achilles' wing. "I just remembered when we were passing that you'd written saying you worked here now." She gives Draco a small smile. "I thought I'd say hello, but I suppose I ought to have warned Ginny." Her face falls. "She's having a difficult time of it lately. Her brother, you know."

Draco does. "I'm sorry." Achilles nips at Draco's ear, and Draco turns back to his cage, laying out shredded copies of the Prophet at the bottom. Ironically Potter's glasses glint off one strip. Draco would recognise them anywhere. "Thank you for your letters," he says after a moment, feeling awkward. "They've been...nice."

And they have been. Luna's odd missives have kept Draco's spirits up since he left the Manor. He doesn't let anyone else read them; Pansy and Blaise would be vicious about them, Draco's certain. Besides, they're meant for him and no one else.

Luna moves up beside him, watching as Draco puts Achilles back in his cage. The owl huffs, craning his head to look back at Draco, but Draco just says, "Go on, you," and Achilles hops up on his perch with a quiet hoot of protest. "Menace," Draco says, but his voice is filled with affection, and Achilles settles, blinking up at both of them.

"You're good with birds," Luna says, and Draco looks over at her. Her head's tilted as she looks up at him. "Other creatures too, I expect."

"Animals are better than humans." Draco closes the cage door.

Luna's laugh is soft. "Oh, without doubt." She rests her hand on Draco's arm, and Draco feels an odd, curious rush of calm go through him. "But I think maybe it's that you're wounded too." Her blue eyes are wide and bright, and Draco has to look away. "Everyone's a little broken when they're caged, you know. It takes time to find your place in the sky again."

"I suppose." Draco carries Achilles back out onto the sales floor. Max is watching them both closely, probably wondering if Draco's going to cock up a sale. Draco looks over at Luna. "If you need to buy something, Max is here--"

"No, thank you." Luna's smile widens a bit. "I should go find Hermione and Ginny. I just wanted to see you, Draco. To make certain you're all right."

Draco's throat tightens. No one does that for him. Not even his friends, not really. They just give him his space the way Slytherins do. He crosses his arms over his chest. "I'm fine."

But he thinks Luna sees past his words. She frowns a little, and then her forehead smoothes out. "Well, I'll keep writing then," she says. "Whilst I'm at Hogwarts. Would you mind terribly?"

For a moment, Draco thinks about saying yes. Just because he could. But he'd miss Luna's strange notes, written in her round, loopy handwriting, and so he nods. "I'd like that."

Luna's face lights up. "Lovely," she says, and she switches her crocheted bag from one shoulder to another. "Perhaps I'll see you at hols then." She starts to glide away, wafting towards the door, and then she looks back at him. "Chin up," she says. "I have a feeling things will get better for you, Draco."

Draco thinks she's off her bloody nut, but he feels it'd be rude to point that out. He waits until she's out the door before huffing a quiet laugh.

"She's an odd one," Max says, and it's the first time in two days he's said anything to Draco beyond a snarled get back to work.

"That she is," Draco says, but there's something about Luna's visit that makes his heart feel lighter, his head feel brighter.

He hears Achilles hoot behind him, soft and warm and filled with approval.

Draco thinks he agrees.

The Hogwarts rush ends, and work slides into the slow, boring days of September. Draco starts staying late to close up the shop so that Lora and Max and Rina can go home. He likes the quiet of the empty shop, the happiness of the owls as Draco feeds them, the emptiness of the street when he goes outside to sweep.

Draco's just Vanished the last remnants of owl pellets from the cobblestones when he looks up to see Potter limping down Diagon. He thinks about fleeing inside, but before he can, Potter catches sight of him. Slows.

"Malfoy," Potter says, and Draco's horrified when Potter stops in front of the shop, his hands in his pockets. He's wearing the Auror trainee uniform, his dark grey jacket unbuttoned to show his white t-shirt beneath, the brass buttons shining dully in the fading, early evening sunlight. He looks tired, and there's a bruise across one of Potter's cheeks, half-hidden by his glasses and the loose tumble of messy hair falling down to his shoulders.

"Potter." Draco doesn't know what else to say. "You look as if you've had your arse kicked." He almost flinches when the words come out, but he stills, refusing to let Potter cow him.

"A bit." Potter's hand goes up to his cheek, and he smiles ruefully. "You'd think I'd be better in hand-to-hand combat, wouldn't you?"

Draco snorts and drags the broom across the cobblestones again, if only for something to do. "You didn't anticipate quickly enough to block."

"No." Potter looks a bit surprised. "How'd you know?"

"The angle of your bruise." Draco glances over at it. "I'd guess a right hook that came at you before you could catch it." At Potter's raised eyebrow, Draco shrugs. "Slytherin enjoyed a few rounds of fisticuffs from time to time. I was shit at it, but Blaise could fight like a dream. I spent years watching him take down Vince and Greg."

Potter's mouth twitches. "Impressive."

Draco wonders if these are the most civilised words they've ever exchanged. "You should use your peripheral vision more, if you can. Try not to be so focused on what's in front of you. You're too bloody headstrong, you know." He frowns at Potter when Potter starts to protests. "Oh, shut it, you. Everyone's aware of that, and it's a flaw your opponent can use against you."

"Yeah," Potter says after a moment, and he looks a bit taken aback. "That's what Dawlish told me after our sparring session." He hesitates, and then he says, more than a bit bitterly, "Maybe you ought to be in Auror training instead of me."

Draco stills, and he feels heat flood his face. "That's an impossibility in my current state, you berk," Draco says, and his voice is cold and flat. He turns towards the shop door, and Potter catches his arm. Draco looks back at him, his mouth tight.

"I'm sorry," Potter says. "I wasn't thinking."

Obviously, Draco wants to say, but he just pulls away. "It's fine."

Potter drops his hand and looks miserable. Draco thinks the bruise across his cheek looks stupidly attractive. When the silence stretches on between them, uncertain and tense in ways it's never been before, Draco sighs. Potter's a twat, but he's a powerful twat, and he'd spoken for Draco in the end. Kept him out of Azkaban, and Draco thinks he should be grateful for that. He sweeps the broom along the shop stoop, then says, "Dawlish is a decent sort, though. He took care of us this summer." He doesn't add the part about his mother. Somehow, that's too uncomfortable, too secret to joke about.

With a faint smile, Potter says. "He's fair, although he's surprisingly intense as a sparring coach. He's tougher than you'd think."

"I'm sure," Draco looks back over his shoulder at the door. "Make sure you get a good healing salve on that. And ice."

"Yeah." Potter says. "See you around Malfoy."

"See you around," Draco echoes.

If he's honest, Draco isn't certain what's just happened, but he watches thoughtfully as Potter limps down the street, towards the Leaky, a faint breeze lifting his thick, black hair.

Draco leans on his broom and sighs.

Phaedra lands on Draco's shoulder. She can smell the other owls on him, Draco knows, and she doesn't like it. She pulls on his hair to express her displeasure and Draco frowns at her.

"Stop it."

With an unhappy hoot, Phaedra hops onto Draco's bed, settles against Draco's thigh. She lets him smooth his palm over her ruff. Draco sets down his book. He's escaped up to his attic aerie after he'd help tidy up from dinner. He's tired, and his encounter with Potter today has made him feel awkward and uncomfortable in ways he's not quite happy about. The others are still downstairs in the drawing room. Pansy and Blaise are probably flirting. There's a secret house pool running on how long it'll take them to end up in bed together and another on how spectacularly disastrous it'll be in the end. Draco doesn't think the latter's likely though. He's seen the way they've both looked at the other when they think no one's watching.

But Draco is. Draco always watches now.

Theo tells him he's changed, and Draco supposes he has. He's quieter now, less likely to be in the thick of things. So's Greg. Draco thinks they're both still grieving Vince. It's only been four months, really, and a bit of change. Greg had gone to Vince's memorial in late July, just before Draco's trial. Vince's mother had slapped Greg's face in front of everyone, sworn at him for not getting her son out of the burning Room of Requirement. Greg had come to see him at the Manor afterwards and cried across Draco's bed. Draco can only imagine what she must think of him.

But Mrs Crabbe will never know how responsible Draco feels. How he wishes he could have kept Vince safe, how he wishes he'd never involved either of them, Vince or Greg, in what the Dark Lord was forcing him to do. Draco wonders how things might have been if he'd gone to Potter earlier. If he'd asked for help. For refuge.

"I'll never know, will I?" he asks Phaedra, and she looks up at him with her wide brown eyes, then butts her head against his palm. He pets her again, looking off towards the window that's covered in rain droplets. It'd started pouring on his way home to Clerkenwell. He'd meant to walk, at least part of the way. He likes the anonymity of Muggle London, the way no one even notices him when he walks past. No one makes a rude comment. No one spits on his shoes. No one tells him they wish a Dementor would have sucked dry what little of a soul he had.

He doesn't tell the others about those incidents. Pansy would be furious, would probably insist on walking Draco through Diagon every day. Blaise would just look away, unable to deal with any of it. Theo and Greg would try to comfort him, but there'd always be that oddness between them because their fathers are in Azkaban and his is sitting in the Manor getting drunk and grousing, and Millie would just go cook something decadent and slam it down in front of him.

Draco can't deal with any of it. So he keeps his mouth shut and stays out of the Diagon streets as much as he can. It's easier. He goes into the shop early and leaves late and stays in the back as much as possible, and even if Lora knows why he does all of that, she doesn't point it out. Instead she thanks him for his work ethic, and ups his pay by three Galleons a week. It's not much, but it's something, Draco thinks.

And now Draco's stretched across his bed, book forgotten in front of him, watching the rain pour down the window panes, listening to the wind rattle through the eaves. He thinks of Potter, of Potter's hesitant smile, and Potter's wide hands, and Potter's bright eyes. He remembers the warmth of Potter's fingers on his elbow, and the way Potter's face had fallen when he realised he'd insulted Draco.

Draco shifts, rolls over onto his back, and Phaedra squawks in protest and flutters to her perch in the corner. Draco barely notices. His mind's full of Potter, and when he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine Potter leaning towards him, looking at Draco as if he were Potter's whole world.

His breath catches at that thought, and Draco unbuckles his wide brown leather belt, pulls at the zip of his trousers. He has his hand between his flies, his pants down belows his bollocks, and he's stroking himself slowly, his fingers barely touching his already hot skin. He loves the way his prick swells, comes to life beneath his palm, and Draco thinks of Potter touching him like this, Potter's thick fingers wrapped around Draco's cock.

Draco shudders, catches his lip between his teeth. He tugs at his foreskin, pulling it up over the head of his prick, twisting it between his fingers before he lets it slide back again. Draco loves the feel of his foreskin, loves the way it moves across his swollen, hard shaft. He wonders if Potter touches himself like this, if Potter's foreskin feels soft and velvety, if Potter would press his finger against Draco's slit, pushing it in, widening the small hole until the tip of his finger's wet and slick. Draco digs his heels into the mattress, breathing hard. He swirls his fingertip over the head of his prick, pushes it in deeper until he's gasping, his other hand wrapped tight around the base of his cock. His bollocks feel hot and tight, and Draco knows he can't drag this out, can't take a slow and leisurely wank. Not whilst thinking of Potter.

He double-fists himself, lets one tightly curled hand slide off the end of his prick, followed by the other, over and over and over again, until his head's buzzing and his breath's ragged and his cock is thick and wet and red and curving against his belly, smearing slickness against the edge of his t-shirt.

Circe, it feels so good, and Draco pulls at the hem of his shirt, tugging it up so that he can pinch one of his nipples whilst stroking himself harder, faster. He thinks of Potter looming over him, of Potter stroking him so quickly, of Potter leaning down to bite at Draco's nipple, then dragging his mouth up to Draco's throat, sucking, biting, whispering against Draco's skin that he'd never touched anyone like this, that he'd never wanted anyone as much as he wanted Draco--

Draco's hips buck sharply, and he cries out, a roil of pleasure shuddering through him. His hand tightens on his prick, and he pulls harder, pushing his heels into the bed, rumpling the coverlet, pressing his shoulders back as his hips go up again, into Potter's imaginary touch, and oh Merlin, oh Merlin, oh, Potter, oh, OH--

"Potter," Draco shouts, and his body shatters with one last touch, spunk spattering through his fingers, over his belly, hot and warm and sticky, and Draco still pulls at his prick, smearing his come up and down his shaft, sharp, sparkling tingles still shuddering through him.

He falls back against the bed, gasping, his arms thrown out, his hand gummy and wet, sweat smeared across his hot forehead, his whole body thrumming with pleasure.

Phaedra frowns at him from her perch, turning her head away.

"Hush, you," Draco says, but his voice is raw and breathy. He stares up at the ceiling, his chest still heaving, his prick softening between his open flies. He closes his eyes for a moment. The pleasure's receding, replaced with an uncomfortable prickling of shame.

Draco sits up, pulls his t-shirt off and uses it to wipe away the stickiness on his hand and belly and prick. He doesn't have it in him to do a cleansing charm. He throws the t-shirt in the corner and shucks off his trousers, tucking his spent prick back into his pants. He curls up on the bed, exhales slowly.

This was stupid of him. Draco knows that, even as one last aftershock goes through him, makes his prick twitch. He sighs, rolls onto his back. Tries not to think of Potter.

Draco's terrible at that.

So he gets up, pads across the room to get his wand and turn off the lights. The attic room's lit with just the streetlamps outside, their bright light diffused by the rain. He stands at the window, looking out at the street beneath him, at the sweep of headlights from the Muggle cars turning the corner, at the handful of umbrellas winding their way down the pavement, coming out of shops or going into homes. He leans his head against the window and breathes out. It steams a window pane, and Draco raises a hand, draws something in the steam.

HJP.

Circe, Draco thinks, watching the steam fade away, taking the letters with it. I'm a fool.

Draco walks away. Turns on the wireless.

Celestina Warbeck's singing. Softly. Warmly. Your every wish is my command, she sings. My fragile heart is in your hand.

With a heavy sigh, Draco sits on the edge of the bed. He looks at himself, across the room, in the long, gilt mirror he'd brought with him from the Manor, his pale body half-hidden by shadows. Still, he can see his face is flushed, his shoulders slumped, his hair tangled at the back of his head.

Draco falls back against the bed and swears, running his hands over his face.

He hates these feeling twisting through him again. He'd been happy, damn it. He'd put them aside. Until Potter walked past. He groans, slamming his fist against the mattress. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't take the feelings away.

Draco curls up on the bed, wrapped around his pillow. He closes his eyes and breathes out.

And Celestina sings him into a fitful sleep.

"You were right."

Draco looks up from his sweeping. Potter's standing in front of him, with a wide smile on his face. The bruise from yesterday's faded quite a bit.

"I see you found some healing salve," is all Draco can say.

Potter touches his cheek. "Yeah," he says. "Ron had some in the kitchen cupboard."

"Not the place to keep potentially poisonous ointments," Draco points out. He Vanishes the pile of owl pellets. Really, he supposes he should be grateful Potter talked the Ministry into letting him keep his wand. Although that's another thing Draco owes Potter, and after last night, Draco's not certain he wants to think about that. His face heats, and he looks away from Potter.

"I thought you'd be a little more excited about me telling you that you were right." Potter sounds a bit put out, and that makes Draco glance over at him again. Potter's in his Auror training uniform again, and he looks delicious, with his hair pulled back this time, barely contained by a hair tie. There's a bit of scruff along Potter's chin, and Draco wonders what it would feel like against his skin. A shiver goes through him. Merlin, but Draco's going to have to keep his fantasies in check, he thinks.

Draco sets the broom aside and looks at Potter, his arms folded over his chest. The street's nearly empty, but Draco catches the odd look they get from a passing shop girl, coming out of Slug and Jiggers. He sighs. "Fine. Tell me how I was right."

Potter's smile widens. "Peripheral vision. It's my glasses. I have a hard time with them. So when I mentioned it to Dawlish, he taught me a spell to get around it, and it worked a charm. So you were right."

"I'm ever so thrilled to be helping you learn how not to get your arse kicked," Draco says, and Potter's smile fades a bit. Draco feels guilty. "Oh, stop it," he says, annoyed. "I'm glad what I said was right." That's the best Draco can do. He needs to keep Potter at arm's length. Potter's too damned dangerous. And too bloody straight. Draco's not doing that again, not falling in love with a straight boy. It'd hurt too much the first time.

"Well, it was good advice," Potter says, but he seems mollified. "So thanks."

"Any time, Potter." Draco reaches for his broom again.

Potter stands there, a bit awkwardly, then he says, "Right. Well. Later, Malfoy."

Draco doesn't look up from his sweeping. "Later, Potter." He hears Potter's steps as he walks away, and Draco can't help the small smile that quirks his mouth.

Something warm settles in the pit of Draco's belly, starts to unfurl. He tells himself he's being a fool.

He's not entirely certain he cares.

Draco and Potter begin to swap more than pleasantries on a regular basis.

Potter always stops by at the end of the day whilst Draco's closing down the shop. At first Potter finds Draco in the street, sweeping, and then, after missing Draco entirely one evening--Draco'd been in a foul mood for the rest of the night, snapping sharply at Pansy and Theo both during dinner and making Millie pull him aside and tell him to get his head out of his arse--Potter starts showing up a bit earlier, starts helping Draco carry the outside owls back into the shop.

It's odd, Draco thinks. To be honest, Draco's not used to having people talk to him, although his colleagues at the shop are beginning to warm up to him, at least some. By which he means Max and Rina aren't actively hostile any longer. Draco thinks that's a step forward, even if the end result is just that they both ignore him completely until they're forced to interact with him.

But he's starting to like the brief, awkward, uncomfortable chats he and Potter have, and that surprises Draco. Even if he does end up wanking at home afterwards half the time.

One afternoon, in the middle of September, Potter stops by the shop just as Draco's going to go feed the owls. He brings Harry into the back, and starts rummaging through the cages, finding the ones he hasn't yet cleaned.

Potter strokes the feathers of a horned owl when Draco opens the cage and lets him flutter out. "I had an owl," Potter says quietly, a soft look on his face. "But she was a snowy owl."

"I know." Draco says, frowning down at the filthy bottom of the cage. Boreas has always been a complete slob when it came to his living space. Wretched owl. He scowls over at Boreas, ignoring Potter. "Hedwig, right?"

Potter turns to look at Draco, surprised, and Draco blinks over at him. "You remember my owl?"

"I remember how pretty she was," Draco says, feeling oddly uncomfortable. He doesn't want to ask how she died, knowing it's not going to be good. Nothing that's died in the past two years has a good death, whether human or animal. He takes Boreas' pellets out and Vanishes them, then Scourgifies the cage, wrinkling his nose at the stench. "She was a great flyer."

Potter sighs heavily, stroking Boreas' side feathers. Boreas hoots softly. "She was killed last year."

Draco looks at Potter's face, sees the grief clearly written on his features. He understands, he thinks. In his own way. He doesn't know what he'd do if Phaedra was hurt. "Well, that's Boreas you have pecking at you right now. He's a bloody arsehole wanker of an owl, and he'll probably try to bite you at some point, but you can feed him a mouse, if you like." He turns his back for a moment, his heart heavy. Draco hates the thought of an animal dying; Merlin knows he wouldn't be able to bear it if he'd lost Phaedra. He also wants to give Potter a bit of space. He thinks Potter might need it.

"That'd be great, Malfoy," Potter says, and there's a raw thickness in his voice.

They don't talk about Hedwig again, but Potter comes in more to see the owls in the back and he seems particularly fond of Boreas. Draco doesn't ask Potter about replacing Hedwig. He knows it takes time. When he writes to Luna, telling her about his concern for Potter's loss, as obliquely as he can, his heart still full of his own grief, she says that she imagines they're all still figuring out where they're injured, much less how to heal from it. She tells Draco about the Thestrals, about how she's seen them for years, and he's haunted for days. He'd seen them for the first time last year, and they'd terrified him. He's fascinated by the way Luna writes about them, with a calm, forthright affection. Draco misses Hogwarts, and almost envies Luna being back at school. He'd never thought he'd miss it so much, but now that it's over, now that he's gone, he misses not having a schedule and a plan, not being able to take everything for granted, even when it was terrifying.

He wishes he could go back, could take the N.E.W.T.s he missed, the ones that will keep him from the apprenticeships he'd wanted. He daydreams as he cleans the owl cages, about working someplace else, with potions or charms research, thinks about changing his name so that his past wouldn't follow him. It's all a pipe dream, Draco knows. He's caught here, for now at least, and it could be worse, he knows as well. He has his friends and his life alone, away from the melancholy sorrow of his parents. Draco even stops going back to the Manor. His mother's hurt, but Draco can't bear the quiet gloom of the place, the memories that sweep over him, giving him nightmares for days after he's left. London is better for him, even at its worst, and Draco knows he's a coward, that he's leaving his mother alone with her own grief. But he can't carry hers with his. Not any more.

And so he makes room for his own pain, sits with it at night, wraps it away during the day. Lets himself feel, lets himself grieve. Lies on his bed with Phaedra beside him, her head against his hand as she hoots softly at him.

Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes Draco wishes so badly he were another man. Braver. Stronger. Better. A man like Potter.

But he's just himself, as broken and bitter and bowed as that might be.

He wonders if he'll ever be okay with that. With himself. With who Draco Malfoy is. With who Draco Malfoy might become.

The future frightens him, he thinks.

The news comes over the wireless shortly at the end of September, on a Potterwatch broadcast, of all things, that the Golden Couple have parted ways and that Ginny Weasley is dating a seventh-year Ravenclaw, according to sources at Hogwarts. Draco's first thought is complete lack of surprise. His second is concern--Potter'll be cut up, Draco thinks, the way all straight boys are when they're dumped by a girl who's gone on to another boy, and Potter's been having a rough go of it anyway. Auror training is hard, and the first weeks are meant to show you how little you know, according to Potter, and Potter freely admits that he's behind anyway, since he didn't have a seventh year at Hogwarts. Draco's secretly glad that he's not qualified for Auror training, even as he thinks it would be nice to practice more magic, to learn some of the defensive spells.

When Potter stops by the shop the next day, he looks bloody terrible. There are dark circles beneath his eyes, and Draco wonders if he'd slept at all over the weekend.

"You look like shit," Draco says to Potter, and Potter gives him a faint smile.

"Always tactful, aren't you?" Potter says.

Draco just shrugs. "Have you slept?"

"Some." Potter looks as if he wants to walk away. Draco knows he should let him, but he's worried about the grimness in Potter's face, and Draco's suddenly so angry at the Weaselette for doing this to Potter, for making him hurt like this.

"The owls need feeding," Draco says, a bit more sharply than he means to.

Potter steps back. "I should let you--"

"Oh, don't be a daft bastard." Draco holds the shop door open. "Do you want to help?"

For a moment, he thinks Potter's going to say no, and Draco doesn't know what he'll do after that. He just knows he can't have Potter walk away with that terrible look on his face, that hurt, that pain. Draco knows how hard it is to be left alone when you've lost someone. Even if you think that's exactly what you'd prefer.

"All right," Potter says finally, and he follows Draco into the shadows of the shop.

Draco doesn't really talk to Potter when they're in the back, just hands him a mouse for Boreas and lets him be.

"I'm sorry," he says after they've finished feeding the owls. He turns, and he looks at Potter. "It must be rough to be replaced."

Draco doesn't know anything about dating, really. His experience with Pansy had been laughable, and any other dates with girls had been for show. He'd done some groping behind the Quidditch shed and in the Slytherin common room, but the stuff that mattered, the stuff with other boys, had been slow and hard to come by. Everyone had been too afraid of discovery, and Draco hasn't got much further than snogging half his house on a dare, a few furtive hand jobs in the dark and one glorious blow job his sixth year from Theo that they've both never talked about since. But Theo's straight--or certain that he is, at least--and he'd let Draco down gently when Draco'd fallen for him. It'd still hurt though, and Draco'd felt a right tit. He still does sometimes, when he looks across the drawing room at home and sees Theo's profile, feels that odd fluttery feeling in his stomach again.

Potter's silent, and when Draco looks back, he's frowning. Then he pushes his glasses up and wipes his sleeve over his face, and Draco realises Potter's face is wet with tears.

"Circe, Potter," Draco says, almost shocked by the immediacy of Potter's emotions.

Potter coughs, wiping his glasses on the tail of his untucked shirt. "Sorry." He puts them back on his face, then tucks his shirt back in. "I didn't mean--it's just--sometimes…" He trails off, looking lost. "I don't want to make you feel uncomfortable," he says finally.

"Don't be an idiot," Draco says sharply. "Do you-- Is there anything I can do?"

"Maybe have a drink with me at the Leaky?" Potter suggests, voice thick.

It's a terrible idea, and they both know it, but Potter looks so lonely and tired that Draco bites off his objections.

"All right," Draco says after a moment, and something about Potter's face shifts and softens.

Draco closes up and wards the shop, then follows Potter to the Leaky. They sit in a booth at the side, and Potter gets them their pints. They get some odd looks, but Draco's surprised that no one says anything, and after a while, he relaxes. He supposes this is the Harry Potter Effect in action. He's sure they'll be whispering behind his back, but with Potter here, they don't dare say anything openly.

Neither of them talk much at first. Whilst they're drinking their second round, Potter sighs. "It wasn't easy," he says after a moment. "You know. To go through a War and try to keep a relationship together." He looks at Draco. "I tried to break up with her. I thought it'd be best for both of us, but she insisted she could do it, that she wanted to be with me. She told me she'd be my rock. Keep me settled. Keep me safe." Potter's mouth tightens. "And then she goes back to Hogwarts, and three weeks later I've an owl from her telling me she thinks she's in love with someone else. That it wasn't working between us anyway." Potter barks out a sharp laugh that turns heads around them, then he takes a long drink from his pint before setting it down.

Draco watches the way his throat works, the angle of Potter's jaw. He wonders if it's bad form to be attracted to a man grieving his first real break-up.

Potter runs a thumb over the rim of his pint glass. "She's not wrong, though. It wasn't working. She had her grief over Fred, and I knew that, but there were other people to grieve too, you know?" He looks up at Draco. "Like Remus and Tonks, and I don't think Ginny ever understood the space I needed for that." Potter presses his lips together, looks away. "I know she was hurt. And I couldn't be there the way she needed me to. The way Duncan Inglebee evidently could." Potter spits the boy's name out.

"Well," Draco says, considering his words carefully. "Duncan Inglebee also didn't take down a Dark Lord. Or spend his entire seventh year running away from idiots like my father and his fool friends."

And that makes Potter look over at Draco. "I suppose."

Draco just shrugs and lifts his pint. "Don't be so hard on yourself, Potter." He thinks back to the argument he saw them having weeks ago. Weasley had been irrationally furious, at least in Draco's opinion. It'd been obvious that something was wrong, that she wasn't happy with how Potter was acting. You've been so moody as it is, she'd shouted at him. Nobody in their right mind wants to be around you. Draco doesn't really understand that. Not after what Potter'd just gone through. Of course Potter's moody. They all bloody well are. Even Ginevra Weasley herself. Draco scowls, hiding it behind his glass, before he says, "Perhaps it wasn't meant to last."

"Yeah." Potter sighs, looking miserable. "Maybe."

They sit quietly for a long moment. Draco sets his pint down. He catches a glimpse of a young witch watching him. She looks away quickly.

Draco glances back over at Potter. "So she tossed you over for Duncan Inglebee." Honestly, Draco has no idea what the hell Ginny Weasley's been smoking. Although he can imagine that Potter would be difficult to be around at times. Oddly, Draco doesn't see that as a con. Not really. It's not as if Draco's all sunshine and buttercups, after all.

"They were owling all summer." Potter takes a drink then sets it back down, cupping his glass between his hands. He stares down at it. "Ginny swears nothing happened. She'll even let me see the notes."

"Do you want to?" Draco studies Potter, the way a lock of hair slides out from the hair tie, falls across Potter's face. Please say no, he thinks.

It's almost as if Potter can hear his thoughts. He looks up, gives Draco a wry smile. "No." He's silent for a moment, and then he says, "She wasn't cheating on me. Ginny wouldn't. Besides, Hermione's told me it wasn't like that. That Duncan and Ginny are friends." He winces, corrects himself. "Were friends. And then they got back to Hogwarts and…" He sighs and holds his palms up. "Fate happened?"

"Fate my arse," Draco says, almost beneath his breath.

Potter laughs, and his eyes soften just a little bit. "It's nice," he says after a moment.

"What?" Draco tucks his hair behind his ear.

It takes Potter a moment to answer. "Having someone just take my side for once. Not trying to be there for both of us." His face shifts; he looks away. "I know everyone means well. Ron. Hermione. Luna. Everyone. It's just…" He sighs again, catches his lip between his teeth and worries it.

"No one's there to tell you it's okay to be angry," Draco says, his voice quiet, and Potter nods.

"They say I can," he says finally, and he doesn't look at Draco. "But they don't want me to be. It makes things uncomfortable for all of us."

Draco just sits there, his hands wrapped around his pint glass. He thinks it must be hard to be Harry Potter, to have to be perfect all the time. And so he reaches over, touches Potter's hand, his fingers featherlight on Potter's knuckles. "You can be angry around me," he says. "Throw a strop. Break something." He hesitates, considering, his head tilted to one side, then says, "I'd offer you a chance to deck me if you wanted, but you've been practising offensive spells, so…"

That makes Potter laugh, and a strangely happy warmth rushes through Draco at the sound. "You're an odd duck, Malfoy. You know that, right?"

Draco just smiles and lifts his pint to his mouth again.

The next day, there's a blind item on the wireless about Potter drinking at the Leaky with an unnamed blond. Looking terribly cosy, the presenter says, his voice a bit gossipy, and the witches on the programme with him gasp and giggle.

When he hears the broadcast, Draco's writing a letter to Luna, asking her to write to Potter. He drops his quill under the bed and has to go to great lengths to retrieve it.

Draco's never been a part of news about Potter before. He's not sure he likes it.

"I don't know how you think this is healthy for you," Pansy says, turning back from the refrigerator, a bottle of chilled white wine in her hand. "Honestly, Draco. Potter? Really?"

Draco's alone at the kitchen table, poking at the leftovers Millie'd kept in the oven for him. He'd stayed later tonight, arguing with Potter about the upcoming Quidditch World Cup. They're playing it later this year than usual, the beginning of October instead of the end of August, and Draco suspects that's due to the Dark Lord mucking about earlier in the year. At one point it'd even been cancelled, and half of Slytherin had been bloody furious with their parents.

"It's not that big of a deal, Pans," Draco says. He takes a bite of Millie's chicken. It's perfectly roasted, soft and spicy with a crispy skin that's held up an hour past dinner. Really, he thinks Millie ought to open up her own restaurant. He'd go every night.

Pansy sits next to Draco, pours two glasses of wine and pushes one towards him. The others are upstairs or in the drawing room. Draco likes being down here alone with Pansy, in the bright, cheerful warmth of the kitchen. "You know how Theo went."

Draco cuts off another bite of chicken, pops it in his mouth. "Potter's not Theo," he says, chewing.

"That's what I mean." Pansy's lipstick is smudged at the corner, and she looks tired. Worried. "Theo was kind when he realised how you felt. Potter…" She sighs.

"We're friendly," Draco says. He looks up at her. "It's not like that." Except it could be, and he knows that. "I'm not going to let myself…" He waves his fork and knife about. "You know. I've got everything under control."

Pansy snorts and takes a drink of wine. "You've been obsessed with him for years, Draco," she says as she puts her glass back down. "And you're far too happy when you come home from that awful job. Don't tell me it's not Potter stopping by."

It is. Draco knows this. But still, Draco thinks. He's fine. It's nothing that a good wank can't settle. He thinks Pansy's just being foolish.

Until the day that she's right.

It starts like any other conversation. He and Potter are in the back of the shop amongst the owl cages, the closed sign firmly in place on the door. Boreas is chewing on Potter's fingers, and Potter doesn't care. Draco suspects he should stop the possessive behaviour, but he thinks they would both miss it if he did.

"So, Malfoy," Potter says. "I was thinking. There's a World Cup party this weekend that my friends are throwing, and I wanted to invite you to come. It's nothing big, just blokes hanging out, drinking and slagging off each other's Quidditch team. You know. The sort of thing you like." He scratches beneath Boreas' beak, then yelps when Boreas nips him hard.

Draco stiffens, suddenly uncomfortable. "Potter, I hardly think your friends would welcome me." He lets Achilles swoop out of his cage, landing with a flutter of wings on Draco's shoulder. Achilles starts to preen Draco's hair, and Draco waves a hand at him to stop. "It's Weasley, I suppose. And Longbottom."

"And Seamus and Dean." Potter turns a smile on Draco, so disarming and warm that Draco's stomach flutters like a baby bird. "It might be uncomfortable for a moment," he admits, "but as soon as you share your opinion on Senegal's defence, you'll have Dean and Ron won over."

Draco raises an eyebrow. "And Finnigan?"

Potter laughs. "Seamus is just narked that Ireland didn't make it past the quarter-finals, so…" He gives Draco a sideways glance. "You could come with me. But we'd have to travel. It's in Spain, for the actual World Cup." His smile widens. "Tickets and all."

Ice floods Draco's heart. He'd love nothing more. He hasn't missed a World Cup since he was ten, and he wants to go. Wants to go with Potter, despite what Pansy might say. But Draco can't travel like that out of the country yet--not for another two years, at least--and he doesn't know how to tell Potter, doesn't want to remind him that he's spending time with a known criminal, with someone on probationary terms.

"Malfoy?" Potter asks, and Draco can't look back at him.

Draco stares into Achilles' cage, his heart in his throat. He barely sees the pellets, although the smell is helping him focus. "Pass, Potter." He tries to make his voice as cold as he can.

Potter stills beside him. "What do you mean? You just said…" He trails off.

Draco's silent for a moment, then he says, brusquely, "I don't think that's what I'm interested in."

"Oh." Potter sounds taken aback. "But we're friends--"

Draco's shoulders tighten. He swallows. "We're not that sort of friends, you and I. Are we?" But Draco wants that. Circe, how he wants it. He closes his eyes, his heart cracking a little. "And frankly, we never will be." The truth hurts. Terribly.

Potter puts Boreas back in his cage, then slams the door shut. Boreas squawks. "Fine. I got us tickets, you and me, but I'm bloody sure I can find someone else to go. Or fuck it. I'll just use them myself." He looks over at Draco, his mouth tight. "Sorry for fucking presuming. You berk."

Potter storms out, and Draco doesn't call him back. Instead he sinks to the floor, surrounded by owl cages, his heart feeling as if it's been gutted. Achilles butts his head against Draco's, wraps his wing around Draco's ear. Draco moves him, gently, sets Achilles down on the floor beside him. Achilles blinks up at him with wide eyes.

"He's got me in one, you know," Draco says, his throat tight. "I am a berk. A stupid one at that." His eyes burn; he blinks back tears. He can hear Boreas kicking at his cage above him, as angry as Draco's heartbroken. He rubs his hands over his face, letting his head fall back against the cabinet.

Pansy'd been right. It was too good to last.

Achilles settles beside him and sighs.

Draco tries to console himself for the next days with the thought that he and Potter'd wanted different things. Potter was just trying to be kind to him, to be a Gryffindor about things. Perhaps Potter even liked Draco because was an outcast, and really, Draco Lucius Malfoy was no one's pity project, ta ever so fucking so.

Draco's almost convinced himself this is the truth when he starts hearing Potter's name mentioned on the wireless.

The first is a blind item, about a certain well known young wizard being spotted in Seville during the World Cup. Out at a club. "Dancing with a bloke," the WWN presenter says, and there's a shocked cluck from the rest of his crew.

Draco sits still in his bedroom, Phaedra fluttering around above his head. He can barely breathe. He looks at himself in the mirror, sees his stunned, pale face. "No," he says to himself. "No. It doesn't mean anything."

But he thinks maybe it does. That maybe he could have been the man in the club, pressed against Potter.

Except he couldn't have been. He's a criminal, even if on probation. Saviours of the Wizarding World don't dance with criminals. Not even bent ones.

"It's just gossip," Draco tells his reflection, and if he didn't know better, he'd swear it looked away in disgust.

The stories explodes from there. It's almost as if Potter doesn't give a fuck any more, as if Potter wants to be caught. For the next few weeks, everyone's talking about the dating life of the Single Saviour, most reports heavily featuring blokes, shocking the wizarding world as a whole. There aren't that many openly bi wizards as famous as Potter. The last openly gay one had been Dumbledore, and even Skeeter's biography had glossed over the man's romantic details.

Draco doesn't know what to do, not even when Pansy comes into his room on a Saturday, whilst he's listening to Potterwatch. At least Jordan isn't talking about Potter's sexual escapades, thank Circe.

Pansy holds up his copy of Witch Weekly. "This just arrived," she says, and she throws it onto the bed beside Draco. "Page fourteen."

Draco flips it open. There's a blurry picture of Potter kissing some lucky man who appears to be blond, with longer hair as Draco peers carefully. A twist of jealousy goes through him, deep and dark and desolate.

"Fuck that Gryffindor arsehole," he says, and he throws the magazine across the room, just barely missing Phaedra. He casts Nox and curls up on his bed.

"I'm so sorry," Pansy says, and she wraps him in her arms, holding him tight.

Draco breathes out. "I did it to myself," he says. His voice shakes. He's angry; he's hurt; he's bitter. He hates himself. Fiercely. "I pushed him away."

"That doesn't make it hurt less." Pansy kisses his cheek. They lie there together on his bed in the darkness, listening to Jordan argue with some prat about the Quidditch tables.

Potter doesn't come back to the shop.

Draco doesn't wait for him to.

And Boreas squawks and scowls and sulks in his cage, looking up whenever the door rattles. When he realises Potter's not coming back, he starts biting Draco's fingers every time Draco feeds him, hard enough to draw blood.

Frankly, Draco thinks, as he wraps yet another finger in gauze, he deserves it.

four.

There's a Hallowe'en Carnival in Diagon this year. Draco's seen the flyers posted everywhere for it; Lora's even let the Ministry put one up in the Emporium. It's not the first Hallowe'en carnival Diagon's seen, but the Ministry wants this one to be the biggest, the grandest. When so many people die, Draco thinks, everyone needs to break free from the grief that's shackling them all down. He doesn't think he'll go though. He hasn't spoken to Potter in weeks, and he doesn't want to risk the chance of running into him.

It's not until Pansy announces a party to get ready before the actual carnival celebration in Diagon that Draco realises he hasn't any choice in the matter. He's going to carnival whether he bloody well likes it or not.

"I know we don't have a lot to celebrate," Pansy says after Sunday roast, whilst Greg is sneaking a third helping of mash with gravy--Draco can't fault him, as Millie's potatoes are divine--and everyone else is lazing about the table and eyeing the washing up they have to do, daring each other to go first. "But fuck it!" Pansy bangs on the table, nearly toppling her wine glass and startling Blaise, who overbalances on two chair legs and goes down, legs flailing, his bare feet hitting the side of the table. "We're still here, and I don't give a damn what any of those tossers out there who want us to starve to bloody death think." Her cheeks are flushed--with wine or anger, Draco's not certain. He does know that Pansy hates her position in the mail room of the Prophet--she'd thought her father's connections could help her get something a bit higher up, and she was so very wrong, once they saw Slytherin House on her CV--but frankly she's not working with owl pellets, so he thinks she should calm her tits a bit.

"Circe, Pans. Warn a lad," Blaise says from the floor whilst Draco snorts and Theo helps him back up, righting the chair as he does. Blaise rubs his elbow, then sits back down.

"What did you have in mind?" Millie is utterly unmoved by Pansy's fervour. She leans back in her chair, unfazed by the piles of dishes. She won't have to touch them; she did all the cooking, after all.

"Your famous punch, maybe some crisps." Pansy stops, a bit uncertain, before she adds, "And a hell of a lot of alcohol."

Theo glances up from his plate. "Hear, hear," he says. "Shall I raid Father's cellar?"

Millie nods brusquely at him. "Pans and Blaise have demolished what we have. I'll make canapes to soak it all up," she says, glancing at Pansy. "Just so no one dies of alcohol poisoning on our hearth later."

And that's how Draco comes to celebrate his first carnival after Hogwarts pleasantly blinkered and gleefully milling about Diagon with several of his best friends in all the world. They're all wearing costumes: Draco's dressed as a dragon tamer, complete with Theo's best dragonhide boots, soft leather trousers, a blousy white shirt, and a stuffed Hungarian Horntail that Pansy makes him swear he'll return draped around his neck. She's had it since she was six, and she'll murder him if he loses it. He'd turned around in the middle of his room when he'd finally dressed, and Phaedra'd hooted and ruffled her feathers happily, so Draco thinks he must look good in it. Phaedra has exacting sartorial tastes, after all, and doesn't mind letting him know her opinion with a sharp nip or two when she thinks he looks shit. Frankly, Draco's had more than one of those lately. Phaedra simply doesn't understand that he can't go out in a full suit to clean owl cages.

Pansy's in a flowing white dress, artfully stained with pomegranate juice, her hair twisted into elaborate curls and knots, playing Persephone to Blaise's elegantly suited and oh so very modern Hades. Theo is Mephisto--Draco notices underworld costumes are popular this year, although privately he thinks Theo just looks like a creepy clown, even if Theo brags that he has read Klaus Mann and not just seen the Muggle film. Millie's gone more traditional, dressed as Babbity Rabbity, and somehow, she's managed to talk Greg into being her stump. Draco privately wonders when she'll realise Greg's mad about her.

All of the Slytherins have masks on, and Draco imagines that no one recognises them. Or he hopes, anyway. There are a throng of people crowding through the winding street, and even though the Aurors had a wand check at the entrance to Diagon, Draco's still not sure that people can't get in on the side streets without being noticed. But he wants to celebrate, and for fuck's sake, Draco thinks he deserves a little fun. Even if there's a part of him that feels guilty for celebrating, that wants to punish himself for each person who'd died, who couldn't be here for this night of revelry.

When he'd admitted that, standing half-dressed in his attic room, Pansy had told him he was a damned fool, then kissed his cheek, smacked his arse, and told him to drink the firewhisky she'd just brought up for him and come downstairs to finish up the bottle with the rest of them.

Their laughing, delightfully pissed group is eyed by several of the Aurors on patrol, one of whom has suspiciously unruly black hair pulled up into a familiar messy knot, and, yes, when he turns, Draco wants to fall on his knees and rejoice. Or run away screaming, he's not quite sure. Possibly the latter, more than anything. It's Harry Potter, gruff and unsmiling with his fellow Aurors. Or recruits. Or whatever. He looks brilliant in his dark grey wool jacket and the black armband with PATROL written around it in tall, thick white letters. Draco keeps an eye on Potter throughout the evening, wishing he could go up to talk to him, but even on Hallowe'en, he doesn't think it's a good idea. They'd left things so awkwardly, and, besides, Potter is working.

Still, Draco keeps watching Potter out of the corner of his eye. He can't help himself, even if every time Draco sees him, his heart aches with such a fierce intensity that it makes Draco's breath catch, makes him turn away, his smile faltering.

Draco thinks Pansy notices, but she doesn't say anything.

Late in the evening, when Pansy and Millie go to find a loo and Theo and Greg are competing at one of the games with Blaise mocking them both, Draco gets bored and wanders off. He doesn't mean to, at first. He means to find a booth with ice cream or some such, but he finds himself near the Emporium and he decides to check that no one's messed with the owls.

Achilles hoots softly at him when Draco steps into the shop, and Draco strokes him through the bars of his cage. "Hello, lad," Draco says, and Achilles nips Draco's fingertip affectionately.

Boreas ignores him, turning his back to Draco the way he's taken to lately. Still Draco scratches the back of Boreas' head, the way Boreas likes.

"I'm sorry," Draco murmurs. "Don't tell, but I miss him too."

Boreas tilts his head, one eye looking back at Draco, then he leans into Draco's touch with a rustle of his feathers.

Draco has a slash in the loo at Eeylops, and then, when he comes out, most of the lights along the street are dimmed in preparation for the fireworks, and Draco forgets where he left everyone. Since he's lost his bearings, he decides to ask for the stall where he remembers Theo and Greg playing, but when he finds it, it's closed, shutters down and no one nearby. They've all moved down Diagon, towards Gringotts where the first firework explodes against the dark, velvety sky. Draco follows the fireworks flashing overhead, pushing his way through the awestruck crowd. He has no idea how they get away with fireworks in central London, but it's a tradition, and he supposes the Ministry has ways of suppressing them from Muggles. Honestly, Draco's too drunk to consider exactly how it might work.

Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes are evidently sponsoring the show, and Lee Jordan is broadcasting live, interviewing a string of wizarding celebrities as the fireworks spiral above them. Draco stops at the soundstage for Potterwatch, listens to Jordan for a bit, then wanders a bit further away since it's very noisy and crowded, and, really, he's rather pissed. He stumbles over a cobblestone, catches himself, and swears, possibly more vociferously than he means to.

"All right there?" a voice asks behind him, and it's so familiar, Draco's toes tingle.

Draco takes a deep breath before turning around and answering in the crispest tones possible. "Yes, thank you, Auror. I'm quite well." He tries not to look at the curve of Potter's mouth, tries not to imagine who might have been sucking on that luscious bottom lip lately.

Fucking arsehole slag.

Potter frowns, and he leans up against the side of Madam Malkin's. "Hey, Malfoy. I didn't recognise you." He looks Draco up and down, and Draco feels his face grow warm. "Nice costume, by the way."

"I like your costume, too, Potter," Draco says, letting his voice drawl a bit, just to be even more of an arse. But Potter does look scrummy in his faded jeans and dark grey jacket that's Auror standard issue. It looks smashing on him, and Draco almost hates Potter a bit for how attractive he is. And for how some bloke who isn't Draco has been snogging his stupid face. Above them, a particularly large, particularly pink starburst explodes, followed by an enormous bang. Draco flinches, then tries to cover it. The sound reminds him too much of the explosions of the war, of curses and hexes going off around him in battle, of the fear of Potter being taken away and killed, of everything he'd rather forget.

"It's not a costume. I'm on duty." Potter moves closer. From this distance, Draco can see the small vee of golden skin where his collar is unbuttoned, the strong lines of his shoulder and the curve of his neck.

Draco flattens himself against the stones of Madam Malkin's neighbouring shop. Terror Tours, Draco thinks it's called, but his mind's a bit fuzzy with alcohol. And Potter. He licks his lips. "Well, obviously, you twat. I'm not a complete idiot, you know. Even if I didn't get my N.E.W.T.s." And Draco's still irritated about that. Honestly, sometimes it's what he's the most furious at the Dark Lord for. And Potter, really. "I mean, really, couldn't you both have waited a few more weeks to have your stupid duel? How rude." He scowls at Potter. Chalk that up to the things Potter's denied him as well.

Potter just gives him a bemused look. "You're definitely pissed."

"I'm not," Draco says, just to be contrary. "I'm relaxed."

"Ah." Potter's pretty mouth twitches to one side. "Is that what you are?"

Draco sniffs. "And we're not talking, so you can fuck off and do whatever the fuck it is that you're supposedly fucking doing tonight stomping around like a fucking Auror--"

"I am a fucking Auror," Potter says mildly. He looks amused.

"In training." Draco scowls at him. "You're not a real one yet." He doesn't like the way Potter makes him feel, all fluttery and lightheaded, as if he might sick up at any moment. Furious with himself and Potter, Draco kicks at the shop stoop and swears at the pain that shoots through his foot. Also there's a small scuff at the toe, and Theo's going to kill him. "Fuck."

Potter glances down at Draco's boots, and he looks impressed. "Jesus, are those dragonhide?"

"Yes." Draco raises an eyebrow at Potter, suddenly a bit weak in the knees. "They're Theo's, though," Draco admits, and he wishes he could stop his mouth. "I wasn't ever allowed dragonhide. My mother thinks it's cruel."

"I have a friend who'd agree with her," Potter says. "He's a dragon tamer, too."

Draco leans his head back. His hair catches on the stones behind him. "I told Theo that when he gave me the boots to wear, but he insisted." Draco looks down at the shimmering red-brown boots. He feels oddly sad. "I always liked dragons," he says. "Not that I'd ever be allowed to do anything with them. Father thought such things were beneath us." He barks a laugh. "And now I'm Vanishing owl shit every day." He turns his head, looks at Potter. "Funny how such things happen."

"Do you hate it terribly?" Potter's voice is low, and there's something in his eyes that Draco doesn't quite understand. Something that makes the rage in Draco settle, makes him feel small and uncertain.

"No," Draco says after a moment. "I should, I suppose, but it's not the worst." He gives Potter a half-smile. "I like the owls rather a lot. They're better than most people I know."

He knows he shouldn't be talking to Potter, not like this, but he's really too drunk to care. Also Potter smells really nice--Draco wishes he'd been this closer before, maybe taken Potter up on that offer to go to Spain. He wonders now whether it would have made a difference, whether Potter could've got him permission. It would have been warm in Seville, and Potter would have taken his shirt off at some point, Draco's certain. Potter's the type. They could have danced, and it would have been him in the WWN gossip items. It's a lovely fantasy, Draco thinks, and he closes his eyes for a moment, as if wishing could bring it into existence.

Draco wants to touch Potter's chest, to feel it beneath his hands, and that unsettles him more than he's willing to admit. He wanks to thoughts of Potter, sure, but there's fantasy and then there's reality, and Draco knows full well what's expected of him there. A wife. A child. The continuance of the Malfoy name. Not someone like Potter with bright green eyes and solid, shoulders and narrow hips that Draco wants to wrap his legs around. But tonight he's not a Malfoy, is he? He's just a rogue dragon tamer, roaming the streets of London, where he stumbled across a deliciously fit Auror. Tonight's different. Magical.

Draco shifts, turns towards Potter, his shirt gaping open a bit when he does. "Anyway. Enough about owls. Tonight I work with more fiery creatures." He strokes a hand along the plush Hungarian Horntail hanging around his neck. "So tell me, Potter." He ducks his head, gives Potter a glance from behind the fall of his pale hair. His heart pounds in his chest. "Do you have a dragon that needs taming?"

"I might." At first Potter's smiling at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and then something shifts, deepens. Draco feels hot, prickly beneath Potter's gaze. Potter moves closer, leans in to murmur, "But he won't return my firecalls."

"Oh." Draco's voice is a bit breathy. "Do you mean me?" A shiver goes through Draco at the thought that Potter's been trying to reach him. Draco looks over at Potter, surprised. "I never had a message." He's fairly certain that'd be one that even Greg would remember to pass on. The whole bloody house would be on him about Harry Potter firecalling. Pansy would bloody well kill him.

And then Potter pulls back. "It's just an expression." He glances away. "Besides, even if I were going to firecall you, I didn't have your Floo."

He chews on his lip, still not looking at Draco. Honestly, Draco might think Potter was hurt, except that would be madness, wouldn't it? Draco shakes his head. Merlin but he's pissed. And then Potter looks over at him, and Draco's breath catches at the scowl on Potter's face. Really, every time Draco's uncertain about his sexuality, he just has to think of Potter glowering at him. It makes his toes curl every damned time.

"Besides," Potter adds, "it wouldn't matter. I'm fairly certain you've been hiding in the shop whenever I walk by."

Draco had done exactly that for the first week, trying not to come out when Potter might be walking past. He lies. "I would never."

"I thought I saw a flash of blond hair in the window when I go by." Potter eyes him; Draco tries to keep his face blank, and Potter frowns at him.

And then Draco ruins the effect by laughing, sharp and bitter and vicious. He can't help himself. "Sorry." He looks away. "Boreas is furious with you. Just so you fucking know."

This makes Potter frown. "Is he?"

"It's not fair to him, you know." Draco can't look at Potter. "He's just an owl, and he doesn't understand. And here you disappear on him--" Draco's voice catches. He breathes out. "You're an arsehole, Potter." To both of us, he wants to say, but he doesn't dare.

They stand there for a long moment, the street flowing past them, loud and lively. For all Draco can tell, it's just the two of them, so close, so distant, neither of them looking at the other.

And then Potter sighs softly and says, "Malfoy, how much have you had to drink?"

Draco looks at him then. Potter's so earnest and so bloody Gryffindor, Draco thinks, as Potter scans his face, and there's a definite worry frown wrinkling Potter's brow. Draco wants to reach out and smooth it away. He wants Potter to kiss him, to make it all better.

Instead Draco looks away, thinks for a moment. "It was only a bit of firewhisky," he says, and his voice sounds odd to him. Strained and brittle. "And Millie's famous Hell Punch at home. Then Pansy made us get some of those lovely appletini thingies from a stall somewhere over there." He waves back at the main part of Diagon and wavers, losing his footing just enough on the rough cobblestones to send him swaying towards Potter.

Potter reaches out an arm to steady Draco. "Do you want me to find someone for you? Are you alone? Where's Parkinson?" The questions come at Draco, quick and fierce, and they make Draco's head hurt. He slaps Potter's hand away, then he turns, stepping back as Potter's hand falls to his side.

"I'm always alone, Potter," Draco says, his voice quiet. "But I did come here with my housemates, wherever the fuck they are."

"Malfoy." And then Potter's hand is on Draco's arm again, and Draco finds himself being pulled back against Potter. "You're not alone."

Potter's chest is firm and solid, and Draco turns his cheek, looking at Potter. "You've no idea."

"I think I do." Potter tucks a lock of Draco's hair behind his ear, smoothes a finger along the edge of Draco's half-mask, brushing across Draco's cheek. "I know how alone feels too."

Draco closes his eyes, breathes in Potter's scent, the musky earthiness of him, the faint whisper of firewhisky on Potter's breath. "Merlin, you smell nice," he says, and he feels a complete idiot when he looks at Potter again. Draco bites his lip, waiting for Potter's scorn.

But Potter just laughs, soft and low, a warm huff against Draco's ear. "If you weren't pissed, Malfoy," he murmurs, "I'd think you were chatting me up." He pets the velvety head of the stuffed Hungarian Horntail, then smiles at Draco.

And Draco wants to wrap himself around Potter, to press himself up against Potter's firm, strong body, to feel Potter's muscles shift beneath Draco's hands. He breathes out. "Oh, I am," Draco says softly. "I very much am." He lets his mouth skim Potter's jaw. He'll even forgive Potter that slag he was kissing if he just turns his head, catches Draco's mouth with his.

"I'll keep that in mind." Potter's looking at him with a hot, hungry gaze, and then he turns his head, untangles them both. "But you're pissed right now, Malfoy. And this is the middle of Diagon Alley, and I'm on duty..." His voice sounds uneven. Uncertain. And then Potter steps away.

A wave of disappointment rolls through Draco. Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World, is never going to want Draco Malfoy, Death Eater Unexceptional. His heart sinks and he feels a damn fool for trying. Of course Potter was going to turn him down. What else had Draco expected?

And Potter's saying, "Let's go find Parkinson. Or Zabini. Where did you last see them?" His fingers brush Draco's jaw, ever so lightly, and Draco looks over at him, sees the look on Potter's face, the fondness mixed with something else. Something more heated. Something more primal. Something that calls out to Draco, makes his blood burn in his veins.

Perhaps Draco wasn't so wrong after all.

Potter walks Draco back through the crowd, until Potter spots the small group of Slytherins, huddled together on the Gringotts steps. Draco knows he should find this ridiculous, or humiliating, but he's enjoying having Potter's hand on his back a little too much.

Just before his friends see them, Draco gets bold. He'll never have this chance again, and he can only hear the reports of Potter's potential bent tendencies echoing in his head, can only see the image of Potter kissing someone who looks remarkably like Draco. So, in a fit of madness, Draco stops, turns, presses his hand to Potter's chest, stopping him as well.

"What?" Potter asks.

Now or never, Draco thinks. He leans over to Potter's ear and whispers, "I know you're bent. Just like me." And Potter's breath stutters against Draco's cheek. "I saw the photograph." He lets his lips close lightly on Potter's earlobe. The Horntail's stuffed body presses between them.

"Did you?" Potter's voice is thin, terse. A muscle in his jaw twitches. He's staring straight ahead.

Draco nods. "You and that bastard…" His teeth bite down, and Potter hisses. Draco lets his hair fall forward, brush against Potter's cheek. "I never knew you liked blonds."

"Maybe I don't." Potter's voice is even, but he's breathing hard.

"Liar," Draco says, nipping Potter's ear again and then letting go.

Potter just exhales, still and silent, his chest solid and heaving beneath Draco's splayed palm.

"So, any time, Potter," Draco murmurs, feeling daring and brazen and brash. "Just so you know." He lets his hand drift down Potter's chest. Draco doesn't know whether he imagines it, but he thinks Potter shivers. "Any time."

He steps back. Potter's cheeks are flushed, his eyes bright. "Malfoy," Potter says, but then Pansy's there, with Theo, both of them drawing Draco to them.

"We have him now, Potter," Pansy says, and there's a sharpness in her voice that surprises Draco. "So you can fuck off, thanks."

For a moment, Draco sees Potter's face, vicious and angry, but then it shifts, smoothes out. "Glad to be of service, Parkinson," Potter says, his voice excruciatingly polite, and then he's gone, lost in the throng of costumes and drunken witches and wizards.

Draco feels a bit wistful.

"Are you all right?" Pansy asks, turning Draco to face her. She looks a bit wrecked, her eye makeup smudged, her lipstick half-gone, her once pristine hair tangled and messy. Draco wonders who she's been kissing. "He didn't…"

"I'm fine." Draco pats her face. "And you're lovely. Isn't she, Theo?"

Pansy flushes and rolls her eyes as Theo agrees. "You're both utter arseholes," she says, but she pulls Draco back to the rest of the group.

"Was that Potter?" Blaise asks, and Pansy just shakes her head and frowns. Blaise gives Draco a thoughtful look, but he doesn't say anything else.

Draco's glad.

They go home, rowdy and raucous. The walk out of the Alley isn't bad, and the Knight Bus is offering express service right in front of Diagon, so they're home in a jiffy.

"Where did you disappear to with Potter? Really?" Pansy asks as she and Draco are trailing the others up the front steps, waiting for Theo to unward the door.

Draco just smiles, thinking of the way Potter had felt against him, warm and solid and delicious. "I'll tell you in the morning." He plans to have an epic wank and then perhaps some headache potion. His stomach's already a bit dodgy from the terrible food and the ocean of alcohol he's consumed.

"No sicking up, everyone," Blaise announces loudly from the hall. "We've only got one working loo."

And on that promising note, they go inside.

Draco wakes up hungover and mortified. He hadn't made it to wanking and evidently his headache potion's out of date because it's doing absolutely fucking nothing to the way his head feels, all achey and viscous, and it's pounding like a goblin's smithy, and if he remembers correctly, he propositioned Harry Potter last night. At least twice. And whilst wearing Theo's boots and a stuffed dragon around his neck. Draco groans and buries his face in his pillow. How the bloody fuck could he have been so daft?

He'll never go out in public again. Ever.

And yet Draco still remembers the press of Potter's hand in his lower back, the warmth of Potter's fingers, the heat in Potter's gaze. It's enough to convince him that a morning wank will relieve his headache, and he reaches down, slides his fingers beneath the elastic of his y-fronts, presses his heels into his mattress. The wank's quick and fast, and in just a few rough strokes Draco's spunk covers his hand and his belly, leaving him gasping and shaking, thoughts of Potter and how he smelled last night filling his head.

Draco's headache's still there, but a good tug does make the world seem less grim. He slides out of bed and heads for the shower. He's in there a good twenty minutes--long enough for another wank and for Blaise to pound on the door, demanding that he get out. Draco shuts off the tepid water, towels himself off. He pulls on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, then goes downstairs, shoving past Blaise in the hallway.

"All yours," he says, and Blaise rolls his eyes, his towel over his shoulder.

"You know I'm going to have to use a warming spell on the water," Blaise grouses. "And I'm shit at those, arsehole."

Draco just flips two fingers Blaise's way, and wonders if there's hangover potion down in the kitchen cupboard. He pads down the stairs in bare feet.

Since it's a wizarding bank holiday, everyone's home. Millie's in the kitchen making fry-ups, and Draco wants to kiss her. After beans and toast and tomatoes and eggs, he can face the world again. He has several strong cups of tea--Greg brews tea so strong it could wake the bloody dead; Pansy swears it's half Inferius bones in the brew, which disgusts everyone but Greg who just shrugs and laughs--and then he goes back up to his room to listen to the wireless.

Pansy knocks on the door a half hour later. Draco looks up. "Can I come in?"

Draco just shrugs. "I'm listening to the wireless."

"That's all right." Pansy closes the door behind her and comes over to curl up on the bed beside Draco, her head on his shoulder. There are love bites on her neck, he notices, but he doesn't point them out. If Pansy wants to talk about them, she will.

For now, though, they just sit and listen to a programme on Stonehenge on BBC Wiltshire, and then a replay of last night's Halloween concert on WWN that Draco thinks might have Celestina in it. When an interview with Potter comes on, Draco turns the set off, his wand shaking in his hand.

Pansy just watches him for a moment, and then she asks, "Do you want to tell me what happened with Potter?"

"Nothing." Draco leans back against his pillows. Phaedra watches him from her perch, her head turned towards him. She clicks her beak at him, and he frowns. "Hush."

Pansy glances over at Phaedra. "She knows when you're lying."

"She's a cow, is what she is," Draco says, and Phaedra turns herself around on her perch so that her back is to Draco. She clicks again, sharp and angry. "Well, you are," Draco snaps. He feels hot and unsettled, and he doesn't want to talk about Potter.

"Draco." Pansy raises up on one elbow. Her black t-shirt is stretched out at the neck, and he gets a glimpse of her breasts. She's not wearing a bra, and there's definitely a love bite on the upper curve of one tit.

"Are you going to tell me who you fucked last night?" Draco gives her an even look. "Or is this all about me and my horrible mistakes?"

"I'd prefer the latter," Pansy says. She pulls her t-shirt back up on her shoulder and sits up. She won't look at him.

Draco doesn't say anything for a moment, and then he sighs. "It's Theo, isn't it? That's why you're not telling me."

Pansy bites her lip, pulls her knees up to her chest. She's silent.

And Draco expects the familiar lance of pain through his chest at the thought of Theo with someone else. Particularly Pansy. But it doesn't come. He feels nothing. Just a bit weary. "It's all right." He looks over at her. "He's hung like a Hippogriff, and he's good at oral. I can tell you that." Somehow the mock bravado makes him feel better. He doesn't want Pansy to know he's never gone that far, never had a prick inside him, as much as he desperately wants it.

Pansy laughs, but it's half a sob. "I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean…" She trails off, pushes her hair back from her face. It's still matted and snarled from the night before. "It just happened."

"Does Blaise know?" Draco looks over at her. "I thought you were mad about him."

Pansy sighs. "Blaise is the one who told me I should go for Theo." She looks over at Draco. "And that I shouldn't be so worried about you and Theo. That maybe you really had moved on to someone else."

"To another mistake, you mean." Draco sits cross-legged on the bed next to her. He feels young, like they're both first-years again. "Have you all been talking about this?"

"Just me and Blaise." Pansy folds the hem of her t-shirt between her fingers. "Do you think I'm a horrible slag?" She looks up at Draco. "I mean, neither Blaise nor Theo minds…" She trails off, then sighs. "Sharing. It's just casual. With all of us." She laughs. "I mean, none of us are even dating, so…" She shrugs. "Yeah. It's just casual," she says again.

Draco's not so certain of that, but he'll hold his tongue right now. Everyone deserves a chance to stumble around blindly, he thinks. It's a bloody rite of passage. Even for him.

"You're my hero, Pans," Draco says. "You always have been. If I weren't bent…" He wriggles his eyebrows at her, and she laughs again. This time it sounds more real.

Pansy moves closer. "I've spilled my secret. What did you do with Potter?"

Draco shrugs and he raises his arm, letting her slide beneath it, pressing up against him. She's warm and soft, and he cards his fingers through her tangled hair until she yelps and smacks his hand away. "Draco," Pansy says.

He sighs. "It's all a bit blurry, but I'm pretty sure I propositioned him." He winces, and Pansy's eyes widen.

"Are you fucking serious?" Pansy looks up at him. "Propositioning an on-duty Auror? Much less the Saviour of the Wizarding World? And you with your probation." She shakes her head. "Merlin, Draco. You do like living dangerously."

"Shut up." Draco's stomach flips at the memory. He wants to bury his face in his hands. He manages not to. He looks over at her. "Oh Pans. I'm such an arse."

"Yes, you are," Pansy says.

He's a bit hurt that she just agrees like that. "Thanks."

"But we love you," Pansy says. "And Potter's a fool if he doesn't want some of that arse." She pokes his hip.

"Merlin, Pans."Draco frowns at her until she gets up.

"Fine, fine." Pansy picks the stuffed Horntail up from the floor where Draco had dropped it last night. "I have to go to my parents' today anyway. I'll be back tonight. Don't sulk too hard, darling--you might rupture something." Pansy kisses him on the cheek and toddles downstairs in her fluffy slippers, stuffed dragon firmly wrapped around her neck. She looks faintly ridiculous, but Draco adores her.

He falls back against the pillows with a sigh, then turns his head towards Phaedra.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Phaedra turns her head, giving him an owlish glare. "I'm a tit. We all know that."

Phaedra hoots softly, but she turns on her perch to face him again. She clicks at him.

"Come on." Draco holds out a hand, and Phaedra hesitates, then flies over to him, landing on the bed. She waddles up to his side. "Forgiven?" Draco asks.

Phaedra nestles against Draco's arm and hoots. Draco smoothes her ruff.

He's an idiot, he thinks, but at least he has people--and an owl--who love him.

That's all Draco needs. Potter doesn't matter.

Not at all.

Draco lounges about until early afternoon, then he pulls on a pair of work trousers and a soft grey jumper that's already been bitten on the sleeve by the Eeylops owls. Phaedra's far too finicky to bite a jumper, but the Eeylops rabble aren't. Although, they seem to prefer wool to cotton, and knits with a bit of texture at that. And bank holiday or no, Draco has to feed them and make sure the shop's ready to open tomorrow.

Diagon Alley is silent in the warm November light as Draco walks in to Eeylops. The Leaky is doing a brisk business, but most of the shops are closed for the holiday, and the mess from yesterday has already been tidied up. If Draco blinks, he can imagine it was just a dream. He still has the traces of a headache, but it's evaporating. Slowly, at least.

He's finished clearing the pellets from the cages, which weren't too bad today, and setting in new insects. He's just given the screech owls their mice and water when he hears the bell at the front. Mentally cursing the inability of some wizards and witches to observe the closed sign, Draco wipes his hands on a cloth and walks into the front.

"We're not--" The words die on his lips as Draco recognises Harry Potter. He's wearing a green jumper that make his eyes impossibly deep and a pair of jeans that're worn and delightfully snug on his muscled thighs. Draco swallows and looks away. "Hullo, Potter."

"Malfoy." Potter rubs the back of his neck. "Look, is it okay if I come in? Only, you told me you'd been hiding, so I thought I'd come find you."

Draco dies a thousand deaths inside. "Merlin. I'm so--" He breathes out, then nods, and he can feel the warmth of his cheeks. "If you'd like. I've just finished with the owls, though, so if you're here for that..."

"Not really." Potter walks into the shop, his gaze fixed on Draco's. Potter's hair is pulled back, twisted up in a knot, and Draco loves it like that, loves the way it makes Potter's face look so sharp and angled.

"Oh." Draco watches him. "Then…" He trails off again as Potter moves towards him.

"The thing is," Potter says. "You said I could collect any time." And Potter's crowding Draco's space now, solid and warm, making Draco back against the counter in surprise. "Is this a good time?"

Draco shivers, his hand coming out reflexively to rest on Potter's arm. He looks at him, noticing in daylight that Potter's a few inches shorter than he is, but much broader. Auror training looks good on Potter, Draco decides. He bites his lip. "Yes?" The word's a whisper.

"I'd really like to kiss you," Potter says quietly. "If you'd let me."

Draco stills, looking at Potter. "All right," he murmurs, his breath a soft huff.

And Potter presses Draco against the counter, his hand coming up to Draco's jaw, making Draco shiver. "This is something I've been thinking about," Potter says. His thumb drags across Draco's bottom lip. The look in his eyes is hot. Bright. "That photograph--"

Draco tenses. "It's nothing--"

"I found someone who looked like you," Potter says. "Because I needed to know what it might feel like. I never thought you'd…" Potter's hand cups Draco's cheek. "Christ, Malfoy. I think I've wanted to do this for years."

Draco closes his eyes, and when Potter's lips touch his, his whole body melts. Potter's lips are firm, his body warm and solid. Draco leans in, opening his mouth to Potter's, letting Potter's tongue curl around his, Potter's arm around his back. It's a kiss like nothing Draco's ever experienced, soft and careful and heated, and he gives himself into it, lets himself be taken by Potter, his hands digging into Potter's arms.

"Fuck," Draco says, tearing his mouth away. He's panting, his body pressed against Potter's and he's worried for a moment about his obvious erection against Potter's muscular belly, but he can feel Potter's own hard length firm and insistent against his hip.

"Is this okay?" Potter asks, shifting a little so his hips are not pressing into Draco's quite as much. His mouth is swollen and wet, and Draco wants to suck that lovely bottom lip between his teeth again.

Draco smiles at Potter. "Oh, this is amazing. It's just--" he nods with his head to the door. "The shop's unlocked. Anyone could walk in."

Potter mutters a wandless spell, and Draco hears the bolt shoot in the lock.

"Fuck, that's hot," Draco says, his eyes widening, and Potter grins at him, cheekily.

"It comes in handy," Potter says, his voice light. "Now, weren't we doing something like this?" He bends his head back to Draco.

Potter kisses Draco, and then again, until Draco thinks he might die from sheer bliss. He's so glad he wanked this morning, but it's having little effect on his current readiness. Draco's sure he's going come in a minute flat if Potter keeps rubbing against him like that. Potter's hips have a delicious motion, and the press of his prick into Draco is driving Draco bloody wild.

Draco pulls his mouth away. "Potter," he says with a gasp. "I don't know if we should do this here."

Potter looks at him lazily from behind his spectacles. Draco quite likes the new ones, they frame his face well. "What do you suggest? I'm staying in the barracks this month whilst they're working on my house." Draco remembers something vaguely from a programme on Grimmauld Place, but he doesn't ask about the period woodwork and how the restoration's going. Frankly, he can ask that question later. After they're lying sated and tired in bed. He hopes that's where this is leading.

"We could go to mine," Draco says. It's ridiculous, but he's not going to shag Harry Potter in the middle of a room filled with owl cages. He thinks Boreas might just peck him to death afterwards.

Potter's smile is low and lazy, and he smoothes Draco's hair back off his forehead. "All right then," he says, and Draco can feel the hot press of Potter's prick against his again. "Take me home, Malfoy." He nips at Draco's jaw. "Because if I can't get you off soon, I swear to Merlin I'm going to die."

"Well," Draco says against Potter's hair. "I can't be responsible for that, can I?"

Which is how Draco ends up staggering out of the Floo in the Clerkenwell townhouse with Harry Potter in tow, stumbling into a group of astonished Slytherins in the middle of a game of Exploding Snap in the drawing room.

"Hi everyone." Draco pulls Potter by his wrist past a stunned Theo, Blaise, Millie, and Goyle playing the game with what looks like flaming plum brandy shots.

"Draco." Blaise turns around in his chair as Draco leads Potter towards the door. "Are you going to explain--"

"We'll be upstairs." Draco stops at the drawing room door, his fingers still curled around Potter's wrist. Potter looks as if he's about to laugh, although his cheeks are flushed. Draco points a free hand at Blaise. "Don't bother us unless the house is on fire. I bloody well mean that." Given the games they play, it could be, Draco thinks as he pulls Potter forward. "And don't fucking set it on fire, either," he adds over his shoulder.

"Have fun," Millie shouts as they stumble up the stairs. "Remember to hydrate!" Draco hears the sound of a card exploding. "What?" Millie says. "They're obviously going to fuck--"

"We know," Blaise and Theo say in unison.

Greg just whimpers.

"You're friends are weird," Potter says, taking the second floor landing as an excuse to press Draco into the wall, nipping at his neck. "You know that, yeah?"

Draco's breathing hard, his hands already sliding up the back of Potter's jumper. "I like to think of them as supportive." He groans as Potter's hands curve around his arse, lifting him up, and he wraps his legs around Potter's hips. "Merlin, you can't--"

"Watch me," Potter says, and he sucks on the curve of Draco's throat as he makes it up the next flight of stairs, carrying Draco as if he weighs nothing. He laughs against Draco's skin, stopping on the landing to adjust his grip as he presses Draco up against the wall. Draco groans, and he wraps his arms tighter around Potter's neck.

"Circe," Draco breathes out. "How can you--"

"Auror training," Potter says into Draco's jaw. "You should see the things Dawlish has us do…"

Draco shifts, his prick rubbing up against Potter's. "Thank Merlin for John Dawlish," he chokes out, and then Potter has his hand up beneath Draco's jumper, fingernails scratching across Draco's nipple. Draco hisses and writhes against Potter, the heels of his trainers hitting Potter's firm arse.

"God, you're so fucking hot," Potter mumbles against Draco's skin, and Draco can't breathe. Potter's holding him against the wall with one hand, tugging at Draco's trousers and sliding his hands into his pockets to rub his dripping cock. Merlin, but Draco's harder than he thinks he's ever been, and his brain can barely function. Everything Potter does feels so good. He just wants to allow him to do anything he pleases.

"One more flight," Draco says as Potter nips at his neck. "Just one."

They make it up the stairs, barely.

"Which door?" Potter asks, and Draco lets his legs slide down, pulls back just a bit. They're both shaking, and Potter's pupils are blown, a few wisps of his hair starting to come down from the knot at the back of his head.

Draco knows he must look the same. He takes Potter's hand, leads him towards his bedroom. "Watch the ceiling. It's low."

Potter comes in and sees Phaedra on her perch. "Oh, she's beautiful."

Draco clucks at her a bit, with Potter standing behind him, arms wrapped around Draco's waist, his fingers twined in Draco's, holding Draco against him. Potter nuzzles the curve of Draco's throat. Phaedra hoots softly, ruffling her feathers. Draco looks at her and smiles. "Cage, Phaedra."

Phaedra hesitates, looking between Potter and Draco, then she takes off, flying across the room to her cage in the corner. She waddles in, her back to them, then settles down with a quiet click and another hoot. The door swings shut behind her. She can get out, if she truly wants. Draco knows that. But she's usually decent about staying in when he wants her to.

Draco turns in Potter's arms. "You know," he says, a bit reluctantly. He fiddles with the neck of Potter's jumper, smoothing it with his thumb. "There's something I have to tell you. About Spain I mean."

Potter stills, his hands on Draco's hips. "Yeah?"

Draco takes a breath. "The terms of my probation are that I can't leave the country for two years. At least. And I didn't want to tell you." He bites his lip, sighs. "I wanted to go, but I couldn't." His gaze flicks over to Potter. "So I thought I'd be a prick instead."

Potter's face is slightly stunned. "Malfoy. I'm so--" He runs a hand through his hair, steps back. "Jesus. That was so bloody insensitive of me. I should've fucking remembered." He hesitates. Looks away. "Fuck. I was so angry I kissed all those blokes just to get back at you--" His cheeks flush. "I--"

Draco shuts him up with a kiss, slow and long and filthy, letting his body press up against Potter's, rutting his swollen prick against Potter's hip. Potter's hands go back to Draco's hips, fingers tight in the twill of Draco's trousers. Draco pulls back, breathless and aching. "Well, you got what you wanted. I wanked and cursed you for days."

"That's not what I wanted." Potter's looking at him, lips bitten and slick.

"But," Draco says, and his hands dig into Potter's arms, holding him still. "You see, Potter, I don't think I'm good enough for you. I'm not going to be part of a Golden Couple, like you or Weasley. Fuck, I'm not going to be anyone that people think you should be with. I'm not a good person, and I'm sorry about it, but I can't change what I am. Or who I was." He draws in a shallow, uncertain breath. "What I did."

He looks at Potter then, daring him to contradict him, and he drops his hands, stepping away from Potter. This is something he needs to say. Something he needs to be clear about from the beginning. Whatever this might be between him and Potter.

"I am sorry, though," Draco says, his voice quiet. "I've been sorry for so very, very long."

Potter's silent for a long moment, and then he says, "I know." His gaze slides down to where Draco is rubbing the sleeve of his jumper over the Mark on his left forearm. "I know who you are. At least I think I do. And I know what you did. But I do think you can change. You have changed. Still, that's not just why I want you. You matter to me."

"You want me?" Draco says, shocked out of solemness.

Potter laughs then, and Draco frowns. Potter reaches out, brushes his knuckles across Draco's cheek. "Sorry, Malfoy, but yeah. I'm here because I want you. I've wanted you for such a long time. Circe, I don't even know how long. I think as long as I've know I've wanted blokes, I've wanted you." He looks at Draco. "That's been a while, you know. Sixth year. Maybe fifth."

"But Weasley…" Draco looks at him.

Potter shrugs. "I loved her. I wanted her too. I thought we might even have a life together, but…" He looks away. Sighs. "Things are different, and maybe that's good, yeah? But just because I wanted her then doesn't stop me wanting you now."

They stand silently for what seems like an eternity, both of them looking at each other, something warm and deep filling the space between them.

"Do you still want her?" Draco asks. His voice only shakes a little. "Because I can't--" He breaks off, biting his lip. "I can't share, Potter. I know people who might be able to." He thinks of Theo and Blaise and Pansy. "But that's not something I'm capable of. I'm vicious and jealous and--"

Potter kisses him. It leaves Draco breathless. Needy. "Ginny left me," Potter says against Draco's lips. "She's happy. And I think I deserve a chance to be happy too. Don't you?"

Draco leans against him, lets Potter card his fingers through Draco's hair. "So what exactly do you want from me then?"

Potter huffs a breath out onto his cheek, lets his fingers drift down Draco's throat. They rest against Draco's pulse. "This. You." He turns his head, looks at Draco. His eyes are soft. Warm. "Some time to be with you, to see what you feel like."

Draco breathes out. "It's yours." He closes his eyes."Take what you want."

Potter strews featherlight kisses across Draco's jaw. "Jesus, you're so fucking beautiful, Malfoy. You have no idea."

Draco smiles but doesn't open his eyes. "I rather think I should be telling you that."

As Potter's lips claim his, as his mouth opens, Draco senses everything broken being made whole again. This is what he's wanted. What he needs. Harry Potter touching him, holding him.

Healing him.

And Potter pulls away, slowly. Draco's eyes flutter open; he starts to protest, but then Potter's pulling his jumper over his head, throwing it down onto Draco's floor. His body is perfect. Strong and solid, his golden shoulders wide, his nipples hard and brown, his stomach flat and muscled. He takes Draco's hand, presses Draco's palm against his skin.

"Please," Potter says, and Draco shakes, letting his fingers drift across Potter's warm, soft skin. It feels different from anything Draco's ever experienced at school, those quick, furtive fumbles in the darkness of a classroom, a Quidditch shed.

"You're so fit," Draco whispers, and his fingers graze the cut of Potter's hipbones, sharp above the waistband of his trousers. "It's so unfair."

And then Potter smiles, reaching for the hem of Draco's jumper. Draco almost doesn't want Potter to pull it off, to see how lean and lanky Draco is. But he doesn't stop him. Doesn't keep Potter from pulling it up, jumper and t-shirt as well, tugging them both over Draco's head.

Potter stops, the jumper still clutched in his fingers, and Draco knows Potter sees the pale spiderweb of thin, silvery scars twisting over his chest, across his shoulders, onto his back. He meets Potter's gaze.

"It's my other Mark," Draco says quietly. "The one that binds me to you."

And the look Potter gives him is terrible, filled with grief and sorrow. "Malfoy, I--"

Draco puts a finger to Potter's lips, hushing him. "Don't," he says. "I like these scars. On my darkest days I'd sketch them out with my fingertip, remembering you, thinking of you. Promising myself that a man who could cast a spell like that could save us all." He lets his finger brush across Potter's jaw. "I may have hated you at first for them," Draco says, "but I came to see them as power, and I knew you could take him down." He swallows. "The Dark Lord. I couldn't do it. I couldn't be that brave. But you could--"

Potter pulls Draco closer, presses his face against Draco's throat. "You're an idiot," he says, but there's an affection there that Draco craves. He lets Potter lead him to the bed, lets Potter lie beside him.

They touch each other in long, slow, exploratory strokes. Draco lets Potter unbuckle his belt, open his trousers. He nearly comes from the pressure of Potter's hand on his prick through the fabric of his clothes, his pants.

"Malfoy," Potter says, almost reverently, and he looks up at Draco. "I want to feel…."

Draco just nods.

And then Potter's on his knees, pulling off the rest of his clothes, and Draco pushes down his trousers and pants, kicks his shoes to the side of the bed, toes off his socks, and they're naked and it's only skin-on-skin, their bodies pressed together in Draco's long, narrow bed.

Draco's struggling for breath now. Potter's fingertips ghost over his stomach, causing it to shiver, and Draco gasps at the touch.

"Tell me what you like," Potter says.

Draco's almost too embarrassed to answer. He hides his face behind a curtain of hair. "I don't know what I like."

"What do you mean?" Potter's fingers card through Draco's hair lazily, pushing it back from his face, and Draco thinks he's going to die as Potter looks down at him.

"I've never done this before," Draco says. It costs him everything to tell the truth. He licks his lips; his mouth feels dry.

Potter tilts his head. "As in, sex, or as in, me." He gives Draco a faint, careful smile.

Draco rolls his eyes. "Potter, you know I've never done you." He shifts on the bed, feeling odd about being this exposed to someone else. "But I mean, I've never been with anyone like this before." He tries to fight the urge to roll on his side, to keep Potter from looking at his swollen, bobbing prick. "I've done some things. Hand jobs. A blow job. But…"

"But nothing more." Potter keeps stroking small circles on the skin of Draco's shoulder as Draco nods. "Okay. So, what do you think you'd like?"

"I'd like you to finger me." Draco bites his lip, trying to be brave. He can feel his cheeks heat, knows that his face is flushed. He looks away."And maybe fuck me, if that's something you do."

"Oh, that's definitely something I do," Potter says. "Do you have any lube up here?"

"Chest of drawers," Draco says. "Third one down."

Potter leans back, snaps his fingers. "Accio lube."

The bottle comes flying out of Draco's dresser, and only Draco's quick reflexes keep it from hurtling past them. It smacks into his hand, hard and stinging. Draco hands it to Potter, his eyes bright.

"Do you trust me?" Potter asks, his voice quiet, and Draco nods. He surprised, but he does.

They kiss again, long and slow, and then Potter says, "Roll over."

Draco lies on his stomach whilst Potter spreads lube over his fingers. Draco's quivering with anticipation, and also dying a bit inside from embarrassment at the same time. He'd wanted to be cool, act jaded in front of Potter, but he'd needed to tell him the truth, to tell him that this is something Draco's never done.

Potter's fingers are cool, slick and delightful. Draco squirms as Potter pets his arsehole, fingertips sliding across the soft furl of puckered skin. "This good so far?" Potter asks. Draco nods, burying his face in his forearm. It feels wonderful, but Draco's a bit horrified with himself, with how he's spreading his body wide for Potter. And at the same time, he wants it so much.

Potter's finger enters his body, and Draco comes apart, gasping with the sensation, arching up into it. His heart's pounding, his legs tremble. "Oh," Draco says. Potter's careful--too careful, really--but Draco's entranced by the fullness of it, the feeling of another person, here, with him, in his body. And knowing that it's Potter is only intensifying everything. He rolls his hips. "Oh," he says again, and he hears Potter laugh softly.

"Just wait," Potter says. He twists his finger deeper. "Let your body relax."

Draco tries, spreading his arms out above him, pressing his face into the mattress, and Potter works another finger into him. "That good?"

Draco pushes back against it. The stretch burns a little. But he likes it too. "Yeah." He breathes out, letting his body adjust to the feel of Potter's fingers deep inside of him.

"Okay, I have to say, I'm not going to last too much longer," Potter says from behind Draco, withdrawing his fingers carefully. Draco misses the warmth of them, the stretch of his arsehole around their thickness. "Because you look and feel bloody amazing. But I can take care of myself if you'd rather not."

Draco shakes his head, his hair falling in his face, hiding his flushed cheeks. "I want you to try." He's not sure it'll work. He's read books on this and looked at Pansy's sex manuals, but he doesn't know how his body'll respond. He wants it, and he knows that's important.

Potter says, "I'm going to cast spells. There's a cleaning spell, a loosening spell, and a protection spell. Is that okay with you?"

Draco presses his cheek into the coverlet and nods. "Yes."

When Potter casts the spells, sensations sweep over Draco's body. His nipples harden from the unexpectedness of it all, as his body relaxes and something else shivers through him. His stomach is suddenly hollow, and his arse is cool. "Wow, okay," Draco says. "Those're intense."

Potter has his hand on Draco's arse, fingers making small circles across his skin, thumb stroking along the top of Draco's crease. "Too intense?"

"No." Draco pushes back a little. "I think I'm ready to try."

Potter puts his glasses down to the side of the bed, then guides Draco to his hands and knees. "This is one way to start. We can change if you don't like it."

Draco shifts a bit, finds the right way to hold himself up. "I think this is good." He looks back at Potter, at the breadth of him, at the way his prick bobs in front of his belly, thick and ruddy, rising up from a crisp thatch of black curls. That's going to be in him, Draco thinks, and he doesn't know if he's thrilled or terrified. Both?

"Would you mind if I licked you a little?" Potter asks.

Draco gives Potter a hesitant look. "What?"

Potter smiles, lets his thumb slip over Draco's arsehole. "I'd really like to lick you here."

"Oh." Draco chews on his bottom lip, uncertain. "You'd like to?"

"It feels good for you," Potter says. "I promise. And I like eating people out." His cheeks are pink. "I mean, I don't have to. I just…" He trails off, looking a bit uncertain. "If you'd like me to try it on you, I wouldn't mind. I could stop if you wanted."

Draco's never done this. Never thought of doing this. It's not as if he hasn't read about it. But he just assumed no one would want to. Not with him at least. "All right" he says finally, and he's surprised at the spark of delight in Potter's eyes.

Potter pushes Draco forward again, positions his hips up. Draco's body tenses as Potter's mouth is over his arse, and then Potter's tongue is swirling over Draco's hole, pressing inside the ring of muscle a little.

It feels incredible.

Draco moans, low and raw. His body is wracked with shivers. Draco cocks his thighs wider, pushes back against Potter's face, lowers his head to the mattress. His legs tremble; the head of his prick drags across the coverlet, already wet and aching.

"Merlin," Draco breathes out, and Potter sucks at him, the tip of his tongue pressing deeper, curling inside Draco's hole, and Draco could spend hours like this, being slowly opened by Potter's mouth, feeling the slickness of Potter's tongue as it fucks him, goes deep inside of him, Potter's teeth scraping lightly across Draco's skin.

Draco twists his fingers in the coverlet, trying so hard to hold off. He'd never known sex could be like this. So intimate. So perfect. He groans, flinches when one of Potter's teeth scrapes his hole, but the pain goes away as Potter's tongue drags across the puckered skin, making Draco's whole body shake.

Potter pulls his lips away and he's breathing heavily now. "Shit. How you feel." His hands are on Draco's arsecheeks, holding them open, pressing them wide, and Draco doesn't care that Potter's just watching him, seeing Draco's hole flutter the way Draco can feel it doing. "You're incredible, Malfoy."

"Stop flattering me, Potter." Draco looks back at him and his laugh catches at the sight of Potter's wide eyes and swollen mouth. He looks gorgeous. Brilliant. Draco swallows. "And fuck me properly," he says, but his voice is low and raw, filled with the need Draco doesn't bother to hide.

"Your wish is my command," Potter says. He's reaching for the lube, pouring it into his hand, then stroking his prick once, twice, before smearing the remnants around Draco's hole, into it, fingers dipping deep inside again.

Draco groans. "Potter--"

"Patience." Potter shifts, and Draco can feel the mattress dip beneath Potter's knees. Potter has a hand on Draco's hip, light but firm. "Let me know if anything needs to stop or slow."

The tip of Potter's cock presses against Draco's arse. Draco relaxes, lets the loosening spell work, and he feels Potter moving, gently waiting, then pushing. Merlin, but Potter's cock feels bloody enormous. He's bigger than Theo, that's for fucking certain, and Draco'd nearly gagged around Theo's cock. Somehow that thought only makes Draco's mouth water, eager for Potter's thick prick inside of it.

"Okay so far?" Potter asks on a ragged gasp. His fingers dig into Draco's hipbone, and Draco can tell Potter's holding himself back.

Draco breathes, opening his body around Potter's prick. It hurts, but it's not unbearable. He can feel his own cock soften a bit, but it doesn't go down. Not really. "Yeah. Okay so far."

Potter presses a bit further, and Draco's body clenches around the intrusion. A jolt of pain goes through him. "Wait," Draco says, wincing, and Potter stills immediately.

Draco takes a few breaths. The head of his prick is dripping, but his arse still feels tight. He hopes this will work with Potter. They're already in it, after all, and he wants Potter to fuck him. Hard. He feels his body start to relax once more. "Okay, you can move again."

Potter shifts, slicking with a bit more lube, pulls back just a little, then pushes. He slides much further this time. Draco feels a deep twinge inside his body. "Wow." Potter says.

"Yeah," Draco's relaxing now, willing his body to let this happen. "Keep going."

Potter puts both hands on Draco's hips, and the springs of the mattress creak as he pushes again, forward, deeper. Draco tries to spread his body wider for Potter, tries to let him in.

Something releases and then Potter slides all the way in, quickly, and it knocks the breath out of Draco. He gasps, body quivering. "Fuck," Draco says. "Oh, fuck."

"Good?" Potter asks, and all Draco can do is nod. Potter is over him, reaching to touch Draco's slick prick. Draco keens as Potter strokes him, and his cock firms up, strains against Potter's touch. Circe, but his body is getting used to this, even as he's still shaking with the intensity and the strangeness of it.

"Hey," Potter says in Draco's ear, and Draco can feel the soft, warm huff of Potter's voice against his skin. "I'm going to sit back and pull you with me. You might like this better. Okay?"

Draco just nods again, incapable of saying anything.

Still attached, slotted deeply within Draco, Potter sits back on his heels and pulls Draco with him. Draco groans, feeling the shift of Potter's prick deep inside of him. Potter holds him close, helps Draco find his balance, his thighs on either side of Potter's. "That's it," Potter says softly. "God, Malfoy. You're doing so good."

Draco leans back against Potter, arches back, his arms going backwards around Potter's neck. He lets Potter stroke his chest and praise him, tell him how brilliant he is, how amazing his feels around Potter's prick. It feels like it's been hours that they've been doing this, but it's only been a couple of minutes. The strangeness is shifting into pleasure, and when Potter circles his hips, his cock pressing further into Draco's body, Draco moans with the deep, satisfying ache of it. "Merlin, Potter. Again."

Potter leans forward, his mouth near Draco's ear. "Don't you think you should call me Harry if I'm fucking you?"

Draco smiles, leans his head back, seats himself more solidly on Potter's cock. "Why rush things?" He kisses Potter's jaw, bites the soft skin just below.

And Potter laughs, his hand going to Draco's slick, aching cock, pulling, his hips bouncing, pushing Draco up on his knees, then letting him slam back along Potter's prick. Draco can feel the slap of Potter's bollocks against his arse, the press of Potter's other hand against his chest, holding him as Draco arches back against Potter's body. Draco's hands are pressed backwards, slipping over Potter's shoulders, holding on tight as Potter gasps against Draco's ear.

"Jesus, Malfoy," Potter says, his mouth brushing against Draco's earlobe, his nose pressed into Draco's hair. "I want to fuck you, make you come, yeah? Can you feel me inside of you? Because fuck, I've never felt like this in someone's arse, never felt so tight, so…" He moans, pushes his hips forward. "You have the best little arse. So tight. So perfect. God, I'm filling you up, stretching you so wide--" He bites Draco's throat, his tongue licking away the sting. "First one here," Potter says against Draco's skin. "In your tight little hole." His fingers are flying across Draco's prick, pulling at his foreskin, his thumb smoothing across Draco's slit, pressing into it the way Draco loves. "Fuck, you're mine--"

"Yes," Draco breathes out, as the bed shifts and moves with their weight, and Draco feels like he's floating, lighter than air, like he's flying with Potter, moving in tandem, and it's so sweet he doesn't want it to end. Except he wants to come, desperately.

Potter rocks him, bouncing harder on his knees, and as he thrusts harder, Draco sees stars. His prick is rock hard and Potter keeps striking these delicious spots inside him. "Circe. Potter. Fuck. Yes. Just like that. There. There. Fuck, yes. There!"

On the last thrust, Draco shouts as his body begins to clench, and then he spills over Potter's fist, his arse spasming around Potter's mercilessly hard length. It's a vicious, intense, brutally satisfying orgasm, and Draco's body is wrecked with pleasure. Potter pulls out, pushing Draco forward to lie on his stomach, arse twitching with aftershocks. Potter grunts, his hand slapping over his prick, and then Potter comes all over Draco's lower back, his come streaking Draco's skin.

"Fuck, how you feel, Malfoy," Potter says, gasping.

"I thought you were going to call me Draco," Draco says from the duvet where his face is pressed. "And I was supposed to call you Harry." He looks up at Potter. "Harry." The name feels right on his tongue.

Harry gives a huff of laughter. "Was I?"

Draco nods, feeling deliciously undone. His breathing's starting to slow. "You were." He stretches, flexes his arse beneath Harry's hands.

"Well, then." Harry lets his palms drag down Draco's arsecheeks. "Draco, you have a fucking phenomenal arse." He traces Draco's hole gently with his fingers, dipping inside to feel him, then rubbing Harry's come into Draco's skin.

It makes Draco shiver, his skin breaking into goose flesh on his thighs. He likes it, but he knows it'll dry soon. "Cleansing spell," Draco says. "Please."

After saying the spell, and another on himself, Harry drapes himself over Draco. They shift, finding a comfortable position in the narrow bed, pressed up against each other. Draco's sated and warm, glowing from his orgasm and amazed at what they've just done, what he's just done. He's rather impressed with himself, even if he's sure his arse will be sore later.

Harry mouths at the back of Draco's neck. "You're impossible."

Draco sighs, pulling Harry's hand over his body, twining their fingers together. "Only for you, Harry. Only for you."

They lie there quietly for a long moment, Harry's thumb tracing small circles across Draco's knuckles.

"We can do this again, yeah?" Harry asks, his voice soft, a warm rumble across the back of Draco's neck. "It's just I don't think I can walk away, now that I've had a taste."

"Am I to be your rebound?" Draco smiles, but he feels Harry still behind him. He glances over his shoulder, takes in Harry's shuttered face. "I didn't mean--"

Harry shakes his head. "I know." He presses his face against Draco's shoulder. "But no. You're not." His mouth moves across Draco's skin. "You're you. I'm me. And I want to see what we can be together. If you'd like."

Draco relaxes, his body softening against Harry's. "All right," he says. He's quiet for a moment, then he says, "But you'll have take on Boreas too. I meant it when I said he misses you." He hesitates. "Almost as much as I did." He shifts, turning to face Harry. "It would make Hedwig happy," he says, quietly. "You know she wouldn't want you to be alone."

Harry's eyes are bright and wet. "I know." He looks away. "I suppose I've just got used to it. In a way."

"Well, you're not alone." Draco cups Harry's cheek with one hand. "Not any longer, Harry Potter. I bloody well promise you that."

Draco doesn't know if this is his happily ever after. But he doesn't care. Because right now, lying here in this bed with Harry Potter is everything Draco has ever wanted. Could ever want.

All he ever needed was to open the door.

Love pays no mind to desolation
It flows like a river through the soul
Protects, proceeds, and perseveres
And makes us whole

-"How Does a Moment Last Forever?" (Céline Dion)