Archive of Our Own

It started, as so many terrible things in Harry’s life did, with his birthday.

Nothing good had ever come of him getting older, so in retrospect, why should he have expected this year—his twenty-second—to be any different?

Sure, he had a great job as an Auror (a proper one, even; not a junior! Granted, not a senior either, but well, he was only twenty-one—nope, twenty-two!), and it was fantastic seeing Teddy shoot up like a weed, looking more and more like whichever parent he felt like favouring on any given day as time went on, and shop-hands were finally starting to call him Sir instead of Son…

…but birthdays, among Harry’s circle of friends, always meant birthday parties, and Harry had found over the years that he really could do without such a to-do, especially over him. He got enough attention in his day-to-day; was it so much to ask that his friends and more-or-less family just let him have a bit of peace and quiet, especially on this, the anniversary of his birth?

“You’re mad!” Hermione had said, and, “Absolutely cracked!” Ron had added. “How can you expect us to just ignore your birthday? You’ve told us fifty times that you never even had a proper one ‘til Hagrid showed up and scared the mess out of the Muggles.”

“Quite,” Hermione had huffed, frowning down at her midsection; she was convinced her growing waistline was the product of all the junk food she’d been consuming of late and not on account of, you know, being nearly eight months pregnant. “I’m sorry, but your birthday though it may be, we just can’t let you have your way.”

“Out of the question,” Ron had nodded—then added in an aside to Hermione that he couldn’t possibly have imagined escaped Harry’s notice, “He tries this every year; you’d think he’d learn.”

“Well we’ll just have to keep reminding him,” Hermione had said, “that his birthday is a chance for the rest of us to celebrate him, to express our love and affection for him, and to show him how glad we are to have him around.”

She had delivered the reminder in a guilting maternal tone Harry was certain she’d picked up from Mrs Weasley, and that had been that. No more protests would be heard, so Harry was left with no choice but to present himself promptly at 7 PM at the Leaky Cauldron, where Neville had cleared out a back room that had once been used to store ale kegs but was, under Hannah’s supervision, now to be requisitioned for stag parties and the occasional reluctantly held birthday bash.

As parties went, he’d certainly had worse—the food was decent, the drink even decent-er, and the company the decent-est. George and Angelina had called it an early night at the Wheezes shop, Dean and Seamus had Portkeyed all the way from Dublin just for the occasion, Luna was in town for once between far-flung safaris spent looking for Dapple-spotted Manticores or something or other, and Hannah was keeping an eye on the pub’s front room so that Neville could sneak in a round of For He’s a Jolly Good Wizard. It wasn’t exactly a Friday night in Gryffindor Tower, but it was close enough that the nostalgia got Harry just a little bit choked up.

“You all right there, mate?” Ron asked, clapping Harry on the back and giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Do we need to tell Neville to cut you off?”

Harry shook his head, eyes watering as he knocked back a glass of water he thought was probably his but honestly wasn’t sure (was that lipstick on the rim? Oh well). “Went down the wrong pipe is all.”

“Well don’t go shuffling off this mortal coil just yet—our present’s up next.”

“Our present?” Harry asked. He’d already received a handsome new eagle-feather quill from Hermione that she claimed could transform even the most indecipherable handwriting into neat lettering, something Robards would probably send her a personalised thank-you note for.

“Yeah,” Ron said, nodding across the table to George. “Me and George and Neville went in on a little something we think you’re really gonna get a kick out of.” His brows began waggling enthusiastically, sending a worrisome chill down Harry’s spine. Ron’s idea—and George’s for that matter; Neville, he wasn’t so sure about—of something Harry would ‘get a kick out of’ could be more than a little eccentric and oftentimes downright dirty.

It helped matters none that Ron had gone above and beyond the call of best-mate duty to try and convince Harry he was fine, really, totally cool with the fact that a tiny, insignificant, microscopic part of Harry was kind of sort of attracted to blokes—often manifesting in attempts to hook Harry up with one of those blokes he was kind of sort of attracted to. Reminders that Harry wasn’t looking to date anyone at the moment, man or woman or otherwise, had only resulted in shrugged shoulders and, “Who said anything about dating ‘em?”

Tonight, though, he thought he might get off easy (pun most definitely not intended), as surely the slim envelope Ron was now pressing into his hand could not be hiding a self-lubricating auto-dildo keyed to the owner’s wand, or a Fantasieve—a Pensieve knock-off that let you view fantasies that had never happened rather than memories that had. No, perhaps this was just a card that sang a naughty limerick loud enough to wake the dead if opened unawares, or tickets to Burt Benson’s Burly Burlesque Show (which was, Ginny had informed him sullenly, sold out for the rest of the season).

“Go on, open it!” Ron urged, glancing to Neville and George and then back to Harry with a look of such excited expectation it might as well have been his birthday. “It won’t bite. Unless you ask it to.”

Well, nothing for it but to see what all the fuss was about, Harry supposed, and slipped a finger under the flap to break the seal on the envelope.

It wasn’t a card—and it wasn’t tickets to a strip show. It was—

“A coupon!” Ron crowed, brows waggling again, and he clapped his hands on Harry’s shoulders and gave him a good shake. “A free month of service courtesy of Butlers in the Buff!”

“They’ve got great reviews,” Neville piped up, cheeks flushed and head doing a quick duck of apology. “One of Hannah’s girlfriends used one to tidy up her flat before a hen night a few months back. She swore by him.”

“I’ll bet she did…” Harry said, forcing an uncomfortable smile. “…Dare I ask what exactly these folks do?”

“Well they’re Butlers,” George said, matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, that much I gathered.”

“In the buff.”

“Can read the name just fine, thanks.”

“Is this some sort of naked maid service?!” Hermione gasped, snatching the coupon from Harry’s grasp and peering closely at it as her brows knit blankets.

“No,” Ron said, defensive, and he snatched the coupon back from Hermione and pressed it towards Harry. “…It’s a naked butler service.” Hermione fixed him with a dark look of warning, but Ron was already leaning into Harry’s space, one arm thrown around Harry’s neck. “These guys come in and do all your housework—cooking, cleaning, washing, errands, whatever you don’t feel like doing yourself—and as if that weren’t great enough already, they do it without a stitch on!”

“I…see…” Harry said, suddenly unable to keep from picturing Mrs Weasley with a moustache wearing nothing but a smile while she dusted the Grimmauld Place mantle.

Ron must have mistaken the green tinge his pallor took on for disgust with the present itself, for he dropped his voice and whispered, “Wh—you don’t like it? I mean I guess we can try to get a refund…”

“No—no, that’s not it, mate.” Harry scratched the back of his head, wincing. How to unruffle Ron’s feathers and avoid coming off an ungrateful cad, especially now that George and Neville were giving him hopeful looks? “It’s just, you know how busy I get with work—some nights I don’t even get home ‘til after midnight. Even with a whole month, I’m not sure I’d be around enough to, er, enjoy it, if you catch my meaning?” Ron’s face twisted into something Harry knew meant he understood—he just wasn’t happy about it, so Harry clapped him on the arm. “Still—I appreciate the thought. It’s certainly not something I ever would’ve got for myself. I’ll save it to cash in when I think I’ll have some downtime, yeah?” He looked to George and Neville in turn. “Thanks to all three of you, seriously.”

“Well I still think it’s a crude gift,” Hermione said, but Luna only hummed, nodding with a soft smile that Harry wasn’t sure meant she agreed with Hermione or merely a sign of her having a ‘Luna’ moment. Given the way her gaze kept drifting around the room, as it often did when she was ‘monitoring Wrackspurts’ or whatever, Harry suspected the latter.

Further discussion of how appropriate or not the coupon was was interrupted by the arrival of dinner—which was really just the nicest fare that Hannah’s kitchen had to offer. Pub food, though, was never a poor choice, and Harry was only too happy to be supping with friends on this, the anniversary of his birth, eating fish and chips washed down with mediocre beer.

“I’ve already got ideas for next year’s gift,” Ron whispered to him between rounds, attempting a wink that wasn’t entirely successful on account of him drinking for two.

“I can hardly wait,” Harry said, lips stretched thin while Hermione mouthed silently to him from just past Ron’s shoulder Sorry!

The next day being a workday for Harry—really, every day was a workday when you were forever on-call—Harry cut himself off after three rounds, and bid his farewells and delivered his thanks. Dean and Seamus promised to catch up with him again before they made their way back home, though Harry wasn’t honestly certain they’d manage anything more than the evening’s festivities—Harry’s schedule was absolute chaos, and what more did they really have to discuss that they hadn’t already got through tonight? “I got my second Order of Merlin for busting a fairy-trafficking ring in December.” “We got hitched last April.” “Cheers.” “Cheers.” That about summed it up.

When had his life become so predictable? Not that it was really predictable, per se—only, it felt a little bit like he was repeating the same day over and over. There was always a new criminal organisation to infiltrate or Dark curse to try and break, but this Auror business was stealing the life from him. Literally, on some days. Hermione and Ron were about to pop out a kid, George and Angelina were talking about opening a second shop in the States, Dean and Seamus were Dean and Seamus, Hannah and Neville were doing booming business, such that the Leaky was almost downright respectable these days, and Luna…well, Luna was Luna and seemed just fine with that.

It wasn’t that Harry minded being single—he and Ginny had ended things amicably shortly after leaving Hogwarts, and Cho was one of the best Curse-Breakers the DMLE had on retainer. And though he appreciated Ron’s inelegant attempts to bolster Harry’s chances of ‘getting a kick’ out of anything, Harry wasn’t really ready to dive into that end of the pool just yet.

Still, he supposed things could certainly be worse—he had a great job, fantastic friends, and a huge house that was only a little bit cursed these days. Between Ron and Hermione and Teddy and everyone else who brightened his otherwise just a tiny bit dull life, he was doing pretty okay for someone who was twenty-one. No, right: twenty-two.

❖❖❖

Opportunity struck, as it were, three weeks later, when Robards told him to pack a Bottomless Bag and requisition a tent from Resources, as for the next three months he’d be on assignment in the Baltics. Chatter amongst informants was suggesting that a group calling themselves the Dark Brotherhood (how very original) was cooking up some nasty new curse in an old forest hideaway, and that sounded right up Harry’s alley. Or well, it sounded like a decent enough distraction—maybe he just needed a road trip to shake him from these doldrums. A bit of sight-seeing, brushing up on his Estonian, making nice with the locals from underneath a Glamour—the next best thing to a holiday, with the Ministry footing the bill.

The only trouble was it was three whole months.

He’d never been away on a mission for so long before—the longest he’d ever been away thus far had been a two-week stint in Rome acting as a glorified intern as he shadowed Senior Officers from the Organizzazione Internazionale degli Auror. He’d stayed in a hotel. This would be roughing it, with the only approved means of communicating with London likely to be Patronuses (Hermione had been trying for ages to get the Department to adopt Muggle communication tech, like mobiles, but the old guard weren’t budging). That meant no weekly gab sessions with Hermione, who was bored out of her mind now that she’d agreed to start her maternity leave early, no watching Teddy at the weekends while Andromeda enjoyed some much needed “nana time” that involved (as Harry heard it) a beauty shoppe that served hard liquor, and no nabbing scraps from the local butcher to feed his Beezilbud on the rare occasion he was able to head home before midnight.

This last point, while likely the least emotionally impactful of his worries, was the one with the most immediate consequences—largely because Lucrezia was liable to wilt and die if she went more than a week without a feeding. He’d spent years growing her from a cutting Neville had given him as a housewarming present when he’d finally decided to move into Number 12 Grimmauld Place and make something of it, so it’d be a great shame to let her wither away because he was neck-deep in Estonian old-growth forests searching for Dark wizards.

But he couldn’t just drop his beautiful little carnivorous clinging vine off with a pet-sitter, and asking someone to come by and feed her and trim her overgrowth once a week would get old pretty fast. On top of things, he shuddered to consider the state of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black once he returned. Too much time without human inhabitants did no favours for the structure—Harry remained convinced on some level that the house knew when it wasn’t occupied and acted out, inviting all sorts of nasty infestations, like the ghoul he’d found having taken up residence in Kreacher’s old cupboard after the job in Rome. Also it might get dusty and musty and Harry thought he was developing allergies and really didn’t want to chance it.

He needed a plant-sitter. And a house-sitter. And someone to maybe tidy up while he was away. But also someone without a job or family of their own he’d be calling them away from.

He needed, he ultimately concluded, a Butler in the Buff.

Really, it was a gloriously elegant solution when he sat down and thought it over. The coupon would get used—sure, it was just for a month, but he could send an owl asking for an extension of ‘services’ until he returned—his home and ‘pet’ would be looked after, and Harry would be hundreds of miles away and ergo never have to set eyes on some random stranger prancing about Harry’s home wearing only a smile and a feather duster. Not that he didn’t appreciate Ron and George and Neville’s very thoughtful gift, but they needed to have some boundaries, even after all they’d been through over the years. He and the Butler would only embarrass one another (god, what if they wound up being a fan? Harry couldn’t handle someone with their prick swinging free asking him for an autograph), so this was for the best.

A few quick owls back and forth and some discreet discussion concerning the Fidelius later, and Harry was finalising his packing for the mission the eve before the Butler was set to arrive to start his own mission. Harry had left detailed instructions regarding Lucrezia’s feeding schedule, a map of rooms the Butler was not to enter (there was still an Insect Jinx on the mirror in the third-floor bathroom that Harry hadn’t quite got around to dispelling, and though it could do with a good cleaning, Harry really didn’t want a stranger poking about in his-slash-Sirius’s bedroom), and the particulars needed to begin auto-withdrawals from his vault to pay for the remaining two months, with an option for extension should the mission last longer than anticipated.

It was thus with goodbyes and see-you-soons delivered that Harry reported for duty promptly at dawn the next day, placed one finger on the deflated basketball Portkey, and was whisked away for three whole months of cloudy skies, greying fields, and sharp Baltic accents.

Or at least, that had been the plan.

And it’d been a pretty sound one, Harry maintained, right up until he and his team had been exploring the remains of a hastily abandoned Potions lab three days into the mission and he’d taken a Muscle-degenerating Curse square to the torso, a security measure left behind by the Dark Brotherhood members, who were steadily climbing to the top of Harry’s shit-list.

The good news was, the Anti-Jinx armour all the Aurors were outfitted with had taken the brunt of the curse. The bad news was, it had only taken the brunt of it, and since it’d been a pretty damn debilitating curse, the arcane residue alone had been nasty enough to affect his limbs.

So here he was now, laid out flat on his back staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling in a ward at St Mungo’s while a Healer explained in soft, soothing tones (just outside of Harry’s now-limited eyeline) that he was lucky to be alive, as the curse could have stopped his heart if not for his armour, and that it would in all likelihood be months before he regained full use of his extremities.

“Months?” Harry had grunted, trying to angle his neck so he could see the quack pulling him off active duty just because he wasn’t in 100% fighting form (one wandless Wingardium Leviosa and he’d be good to go!). “My team’s still sitting on their thumbs outside of Tootsi waiting for me! Surely we can do better than that, right? Right?”

“Well, you should regain limited use of your limbs after a month of Myelo-gro,” the Healer had winced, flustered in the face of an unruly celebrity, which only served to further irritate Harry, because he didn’t know what the hell Myelo-gro was, but it sounded a heck of a lot like Skele-Gro, and he didn’t have too many fond memories of that stuff. Had Lockhart wormed his way out of the Janus Thickey Ward and onto the St Mungo’s staff at some point in the past decade?

As it was explained to him, the regrowth of muscle was a slow process compared to bone, strands regenerating one at a time, bit by bit, until the innervating nerves had something to, well, innervate once more. In the interim, he’d be on bed-rest and would need nigh-constant supervision. To Harry’s weak relief, he still retained limited use of his wand hand below the wrist, but when you couldn’t perform complex whole-arm wand movements, the repertoire of viable spells ran woefully thin. He could write if someone stuck a quill in his grip, and he could show someone a couple of fingers, so there was at least a faint silver lining to this cloudy stormfront rolling in, but on the whole, he was going to have a rough few months going forward.

Robards made an appearance while the Healer was preparing his discharge orders, informing Harry that he was not to overexert himself, that the mission could be completed without him (“Then why’d you send me to begin with?” “Because you refuse to take holidays and this was the closest thing I could manage.”), and that his desk would be waiting for him once he’d recovered full use of his limbs.

The hour was growing unseemly late by the time all the paperwork had been handled, and Ron was there waiting for him in the Admissions lounge, brows raised in amusement when Harry was carted out in a Levi-chair by a burly orderly.

“So how were the Baltics?” Ron asked as he took over Harry-pushing duties and eased him out the front door and into the cool August night.

“Nice, from what little I got to see. How’s Hermione?”

“Feeling like a tick about to pop, as she so eloquently puts it these days. Thought I’d give her the night off from Harry-rescuing duties. We’re both of us a bit rusty, on account of not having had to do it for a few years, but I told her there were probably not too many Dark wizards lurking around corners ready to pounce on us these days, so we ought to be fine for a couple of hours.”

“You’d be surprised,” Harry muttered, slumping back in the chair. “You really didn’t have to come pick me up.”

“I’m your emergency contact! What’s the point in having one of those if not to shove you around like an oversized curling stone when needed?”

“Yeah, but one of the orderlies could’ve handled it.”

“What, you want I should head back and turn you over to Probably a Distant Relation to Goyle?” He leaned in close over Harry’s shoulder to try and catch his eye. “Is that your type? ‘Cause if so, I might need to make a few alterations to your Christmas gift…”

“No—and no. I only meant that you didn’t have to come all the way down here, especially when Hermione’s ‘feeling like a tick about to pop’.”

Ron scoffed. “Ah, that kid’s not coming tonight. Probably. More than likely.” He palmed the front pocket of his jacket, where Harry suspected he now stored a magically warded mobile, and shrugged. “She said she could spare me long enough to see you home. Though—” He frowned to himself. “Wait, how’re you gonna manage? Being, like I said, like an oversized curling stone in want of shoving?”

Harry chuckled. “St Mungo’s is supposed to send over a home nurse first thing in the morning they said. Just someone to check in on me every few hours to make sure I haven’t fallen on my arse and handle my bare necessities.”

“Maybe you could get a Crup. That way when you inevitably do fall on your arse while the nurse isn’t around, it can run for help.” He then added in a more sober tone, “…Though you know you’re more than welcome to stay with me and Her—”

“And I told you—you’re gonna have yourselves a newborn inside of a couple of weeks. The last thing you’ll need is two helpless creatures who depend on you to eat, drink, and clean up their shit.”

Ron gave a grunt of admission. “Here I was hoping we could rack up some debt with you so we could call in babysitting favours without feeling guilty.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll do that anyway.”

“The Chosen Nanny—the Prophet’ll have a fit. Expect Floo calls on the daily, though. Hermione gets bored sitting around while I’m at the shop helping George, and with another mouth on the way, we could use the extra cash influx.”

“Ugh—might want to keep it to owls or Patronuses. I won’t be able to answer the Floo in a timely manner.”

“We could set you up with a mobile? Hermione mentioned something about a ‘family plan’. Dunno what that is, but she said it involved more of the things.” He retrieved what was indeed a mobile phone from his coat pocket, waving it in Harry’s face. “These things are practically indestructible! I drop mine something like five times a day and it keeps on ticking!”

Harry didn’t know how he felt about being one phone call away from a very bored Hermione, so he gave a weak, “I’ll…think about it,” and left it at that.

By the time they finally made it back to Grimmauld Square, the tall, staid houses sat dark and quiet in their lines, the only sounds the faint barking of distant dogs calling to one another and the soft buzz of the Muggle street lamps yawning overhead. The front garden of Number 12, Harry noticed, had been recently trimmed to something bordering on respectable, and the dead bushes had been cleared away. The front steps had been freshly swept, and the cobwebs in the awning had disappeared.

“Wow, been doing a bit of gardening in your spare time?” Ron chuckled. “Thought that was Neville’s bag.”

“Not really…” Harry said, puzzled. His confusion only grew when Ron finally managed the deadbolt on the front door and eased Harry over the threshold. The lamps lit themselves, as they always did when Harry returned, but the warm glow they cast over the entryway revealed a line of hooks along the left-hand wall, from which hung several travelling cloaks and Harry’s extra set of Auror robes (freshly pressed!). Harry’s footwear had been arranged in neat lines underneath the cloaks, and the toes of the troll leg umbrella stand had been polished to a shine. The whole space had a fresh pine scent to it that Harry didn’t hate at all.

Ron gave a low whistle. “The Chosen Nanny indeed, this place is looking great, Harry. Think we could get you to tidy up around ours as well?”

“…I mean, I don’t mind helping out with the dishes now and then to take a load off the two of you, but I certainly wasn’t the one who…” A cold tendril of worry began coiling in his belly. “…Oh, bugger.”

“What?” Ron asked, admiring himself in the hall mirror. It must have been recently polished, as it was gushing with compliments on the state of Ron’s dress.

Harry was sorely regretting not being able to bury his face in his hands and groan right about now. “The coupon.”

“Coupon for what?”

Harry gave him a hard look until Ron turned to lock eyes with him. “The coupon.”

Ron’s brows shot into his hairline. “Wh—you used it? Brilliant!”

“No, not brilliant!” Harry let his head loll back, sighing audibly. “I thought it’d be a good time to use it, what with my being out of the country for a few months—”

“Hey!” Ron said, hurt, and Harry winced.

“I mean, I appreciate the thought, really I do! It’s just a bit weird is all—a naked stranger wandering around your house when you haven’t even had tea with him.”

“I’m sure a Butler in the Buff would be happy to make you a cuppa—”

“The point is: that’s why the property looks so nice. Whoever they sent must’ve been attending to it.”

“And now he can attend to you,” Ron said, leer audible in his voice as he pushed Harry through the entryway and towards the staircase leading up to the first floor.

“Piss off,” Harry grumbled, slumping back in his Levi-chair. “I’ll owl the agency straight away first thing in the morning to let them know I won’t be needing their services for the rest of the month.” To soothe Ron’s ruffled feathers, he added, “Maybe they’ll give me credit and I can forward the remaining time to another contract later.”

“Right, you’re getting a pair of socks for Christmas instead, now.” Harry did not particularly want to know what this was a supposed downgrade from.

Onward and upward they made their way through Number 12, and by the time they reached the fourth-floor landing, Ron was huffing and puffing, moving Harry at a snail’s pace. “Home…sweet…home…” he wheezed.

“Thanks for the trouble, mate, honest,” Harry said, suddenly sheepish. He couldn’t move his limbs, but he still felt a bit awkward just sitting here while Ron whisked him around.

“Yeah, well, next time I’m dumping you on the couch downstairs.”

“Just get me situated in bed and then you can run on home; the nurse will be by to help me starting tomorrow.” He hoped whoever St Mungo’s sent wouldn’t cross paths with the Butler before he sent him on his way—the last thing he needed was word about this whole setup reaching the ears of the Prophet’s gossip columnists. He could see the headline now: Nude Nanny Serving Up Scandal With The Boy Who’s Laid Up. Skeeter would piss herself with delight.

With no small amount of effort and a fair bit more huffing and puffing, Harry finally found himself in his four-poster, covers drawn and lights turned low. He hadn’t a clue how he was going to manage a middle-of-the-night piss, but there were just some things you couldn’t ask of your best mate, so he’d manage. His wand was close enough he could probably manoeuvre it into his hand, and then it would just be a matter of skilfully Levitating a chamber pot into position. Easy as pie.

After being reassured five times that yes, Harry would be fine on his own for the rest of the evening, Ron bid him goodnight and made his way back down to the Floo in the basement. Harry listened to the soft thump of his tread on the stair until it faded into nothing and he was left alone with his thoughts in the darkness.

He could handle this. It would hurt like a motherfucker, regrowing all that muscle, and he’d be reliant on others to help him manage even the most basic of tasks until then—a prospect he was not looking forward to—but he could certainly be in much more dire straits had the curse hit him a split second later or from a narrowly different angle. So he’d have to sit on his arse for a few months and listen to the wireless. What a chore. Besides, his friends would be by whenever they could possibly tear themselves away from their own jobs or families, if only to gawk at him and mercilessly tease him about all the fantastic things he was missing being laid up as he was.

He needed a regimen, that was what he needed. A bit of stability. Security. Something to cling to while his world spun wrongside-up.

First, he’d have the nurse draft an owl for him, cancelling the contract with the Butler in the Buff. Then he’d have the nurse set him up in the garden—yeah. No sense in staying cooped up inside all day, just because he couldn’t go for a walk. A bit of sunlight—such as it was in the English autumn—would perk up his spirits. The Butler might’ve even tidied up back there, so there might be something worth looking at. Then he’d pen his report via Dictaquill and send that off to Robards—the rest of the team had probably already filed theirs, but Harry’s perspective might provide something useful. Perhaps Robards would even owl him back with some downtime work he could handle until he’d regained his faculties, just to keep him busy.

And so it was with visions of inboxes and outboxes and chamber pots dancing in his head that Harry finally drifted off to sleep, a smile on his face.

Everything was going to be just fine.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Harry awoke with a start, blearily blinking the sleep from his eyes. His vision was a blur of dappled sunlight and earth tones as he reached towards his nightstand for his glasses—

Except he couldn’t move his arms. He—fuck—he couldn’t move his arms, he couldn’t move his legs, he couldn’t—

No, no of course he couldn’t. His memory came flooding back as the panic subsided: a Dark Brotherhood lab, a Muscle-degenerating Curse, a Levi-chair. His glasses, evidently out of reach.

And someone knocking on his front door, four storeys down.

Bugger.

He bit back several colourful private oaths and called out as loudly as he possibly could, “Let yourself in! I’m on the fourth floor!” God, please be the nurse and not the Butler in the Buff. What time was it even? It felt like an ungodly hour, but that could simply be the lingering effects of the curse. His bladder hadn’t bothered him during the night, but now he was awake, it was beginning to make a fuss, and Harry’s wand had rolled off the bed during the night, it felt like, so no Levitating a chamber pot for him.

He strained his ear, listening for sounds of someone—anyone at this point—mounting the steps to at the very least situate him in his Levi-chair and shove him towards the nearest bathroom. He could probably handle it from there.

“Are you the nurse? Healer McCormick said you’d be by—I’m sorry I can’t exactly lay out tea for you, but I’m…well, you know.” Pause—listen. Still nothing. God, he couldn’t even cast a nice Homenum revelio to see if he was shouting the house down for no good reason. He flopped back down, staring up at the ceiling and its prominent cobwebs. Was that an egg sac? Maybe he should ask the Butler to give it a quick once-over before he dismissed him. “If you’re there, could you maybe just help me into my chair? Only, I’ve got to piss like a Hippogriff, pardon the colourful language, and I can’t move two-thirds of my body, so if you could just maybe stick my wand in my hand—”

“Do you actually want me to stick your wand in your hand, or is that a euphemism for something more salacious?”

Harry shot up—well, his head kind of shot up—off the pillow, straining to see over the edge of his bed at the figure darkening his doorway.

It wasn’t the nurse. It was the Butler in the Buff, because of course it was the Butler, but that wasn’t the worst of it, oh god no, that wasn’t nearly the worst of it.

He could handle a Butler. He could handle a naked Butler. He could handle a naked Butler standing (nakedly) in his room, offering to (again, nakedly) help Harry piss straight. He could handle all of that.

But he couldn’t handle all those things combined with Draco-bloody-Malfoy. Naked. In his room (well, leaning against the jamb, which was too damn close for Harry’s comfort), arms crossed, one lacy brow arched. Naked.

“What the hell are you naked?” Harry screeched, and Malfoy made a funny face.

“…Are you trying to ask what the hell I’m doing here, or why the hell I’m naked? Or both, at once?”

Both, dammit, but he wasn’t about to admit as such. “Get out.” Yes, that was more important than having rather obvious questions answered—getting Malfoy (naked!) off his property. Had he Apparated here already naked (naked!), or had he changed in one of the bathrooms? No, no he wouldn’t have had time between the KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK and showing up (naked!) in Harry’s bedroom. Apparition in his altogether it was, then.

“I thought you needed to piss,” Malfoy said, still being naked and still being in Harry’s room.

“I’m waiting for the nurse! Now get out! Why are you—no, no get out.” He concentrated very hard on a wandless Banishment, but he was mostly just giving himself a headache. Closing his eyes to concentrate did help a bit, but when he opened them again to peek and see if Malfoy had been Banished or not, he was back at square one. “Y—your services are no longer needed!”

“Not even to help you piss?”

“Especially not to help me piss!” Harry’s throat was going raw from the scandalised tone he found a naked Draco Malfoy drew from him, and very soon he was going to be forced to simply rasp out his demands that Malfoy remove himself from the property.

“Then—I suppose you won’t be needing this…” Malfoy produced a wand from god-knew-where (up his arse, probably, with that attitude) and with a lazy flick Conjured a fair rendition of a bedpan. Harry had mostly been thinking he’d manage with a flower pot. “Well, I’m off to see to that nasty cupboard on the third floor—smells like something died in there. You wouldn’t know anything about it would you?” Harry rolled over onto his frontside and screamed into the pillow. “Drat. Well, call if you need anything.”

And with the soft creak of floorboards underneath what were likely bare feet, Malfoy pranced away, taking his nakedness with him and leaving Harry alone, wandless, and still in sore need of a nice, long piss.

Not about to summon Malfoy back, not for all the gold in Gringotts, Harry began searching for his bedside rubbish bin. It was meant to be under his nightstand, but evidently Malfoy, being Malfoy and perpetually inclined to fuck Harry over, had entered Sirius’s bedroom despite Harry’s explicit instructions not to (or, well, perhaps Ron had kicked it aside in his struggles to manoeuvre Harry into bed the night before). He eventually found it near the foot of the bed, and with some awkward squirming and wriggling, pulled his pants down just far enough to aim a steady stream into the pail. It was not his finest moment, no, but once he’d relieved himself, his head began to clear—the nurse would be coming soon, and that meant Malfoy needed to beat a hasty retreat, forget the state of the third-floor cupboard.

“MALFOY!” he shouted, slumping back into the nice pile of pillows Ron had prepared for him (well, not so nice now after Harry’s squirming about). He tried, just to test it, to wriggle his toes—but he felt nothing, and a quick glance down proved the same. Well, clearly a single dose of Myelo-gro wasn’t going to cut it. He gave Malfoy a beat—he was only one floor down—before opening his mouth again: “MALFO—”

“Gads, Potter, I think they can hear you over in Hogsmeade. Shall I get you a bell to ring? I’ll place it on a loop and set it ‘round your neck so you don’t strain the Chosen Vocal Cords.”

“Did I stutter earlier? I told you to get out.”

“And I did. As I said, I’ve been trying to sort out your mouldy third-floor cupboard. I think I’ve found the source of the stench: there’s a false panel at the back where someone stashed a load of Dungbombs quite some time ago. Several of them had gone off, in every sense of the phrase. Shall I save the remaining ones for you, or would you prefer I just toss them?”

“I’d prefer you just march your pasty arse out the front door.”

“My arse isn’t pasty,” Malfoy huffed, twisting ‘round so Harry could see the offending globes of flesh for himself. Harry clenched his eyes shut tight, but not before Malfoy tensed his muscles, showing off the definition. “All that gardening I’ve been doing lately’s really begun to pay dividends, see?”

Harry turned away, staring glumly at one of Sirius’s posters of a Muggle woman—also, tragically enough, scantily clad and baring her rear end in Harry’s direction with a coquettish wink. There was just no winning. “Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear: I want you to leave. Leave the house.”

“Well, I was thinking about popping out for a bit of shopping—your pantry’s so bare it makes me look overdressed.”

“Not for an errand! Forever.” How to put this in terms the help-for-hire Malfoy might understand? “You’re fired!”

“Oh, you can’t fire me,” Malfoy tittered, stepping around Harry’s bed to place himself in Harry’s line of sight. From this angle, to Harry’s immense relief, he could see that Malfoy wasn’t naked-naked. Only mostly naked. He had a little paisley-patterned frilly flap of fabric covering his frontside, held in place with a bit of ribbon fashioned into a fancy bow at the small of his back. It provided only the barest semblance of modesty, but just now—from where Harry was sitting—it was everything. “I’m under contract.”

“Then I’ll break the contract!”

Malfoy tutted softly, leaning close so his face was mere inches from Harry’s. He had that little curl to his lip—the one he’d worn on several memorable occasions back at Hogwarts. The one that said You’re so screwed and I’m going to relish letting you know it. Regulation uniform of spoilt pricks everywhere. “Have I stolen anything?”

“I—what?”

“Have I stolen anything of yours?” Malfoy repeated slowly, as if Harry had lost not only the use of his limbs but his higher brain function as well. “Have I broken anything? Have I harmed you or yours in any way? Have I made any untoward advances? Have I done anything other than be precisely what you requested when you contracted with Butlers in the Buff? If not, then you’ve no grounds to dismiss me, so I’m afraid should you wish to cancel the contract prematurely, we’ll have to move to legal means of doing so—and that’s ever so distasteful.” He gave an exaggerated shudder of revulsion. “All that undue drama.”

Harry gaped. “Wh—what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, Mister Potter, that unless I have in some way violated the terms of the contract that you signed when you cashed in that charming coupon no doubt gifted to you by one of your adoring fans who had ideas about you, I intend to fulfil my duties to the best of my abilities.” He drew back, hands on his hips in a posture of triumph. “You’ll find I’m very dedicated to my work, so it’s best you just sit back, relax, and allow me to tidy up my ancestral home that has somehow fallen into your grimy, low-brow mitts.” He beamed. “You’re welcome to watch as I do so, though. In fact, it’s encouraged.”

And with that, he turned on his heel, baring that admittedly not pasty and in fact very well-proportioned arse to Harry as he strode back out into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind him.

Harry groaned and rolled back over, staring blankly up at the ceiling. A contract. He had signed one, hadn’t he? Yeah, he had—it’d been a big fancy one, too, since he’d had to give the Butler access to the Fidelius, which these days was more pain than it was worth, but who had the time to get that sort of complicated magic stripped from a building the size of Number 12?

But Harry had never had much patience for paperwork, so it was impossible to recall if any of the clauses Malfoy had just rattled off had actually been in there. He’d just signed—mostly because he'd been expecting to not be here when the Butler came to do his business! Certainly, he could contact the agency again to review the contract and call Malfoy’s bluff—but he couldn’t do so before the nurse arrived at…god, what time was it?

“MALFOY!”

A longer beat passed than before—either Malfoy had strayed further than the third floor, or he was just making Harry await his pleasure. Entirely possible it could’ve been both. At length, though, Malfoy gave the knob a twist, poking his head inside. “You called for me, Mister Potter?”

Harry had called him a lot of things privately, but that was neither here nor there. Priorities. “What time is it?”

“Oh dear, can’t even cast a Tempus?”

“What time is it?”

Malfoy sighed, producing his wand once more from seemingly nothing—Harry really needed to figure out how that worked—and cast the charm himself. “7:47 in the morning. Thursday, if that was to be your next question. Anything else I can do to help orientate you to space-time? Should I ask you who the Minister for Magic is? Dare I hope whatever’s keeping you abed is also eating away at your brainstem?”

He attempted and failed at a wandless Stinging Hex, opting instead for a couple of deep, calming breaths. “I need you to send an owl.”

“Right, I’ll just pull one of those right out of my arse, where I keep all my belongings while on the job.”

Harry wouldn’t have been surprised. “Or send a Patronus, I really don’t care—” Malfoy’s face tightened, almost imperceptibly. “The point is I need to notify St Mungo’s that the home nurse won’t be needed.”

Malfoy cocked his head, giving Harry a quick once-over and no doubt taking stock of Harry’s sad state—the way his legs and arms were splayed out noodle-like and immobile until Harry managed to twist his torso with enough force to send them flinging about, the fact he wasn’t actually wearing pyjamas but instead the bland shirt-and-trouser set they’d given him at St Mungo’s, and his cheek felt funny which meant he’d probably been drooling in his sleep and the trail of spittle had dried on his face, where it would rest forevermore (or at least until Harry regained use of his arms).

“…It certainly looks like one’s needed to me.” Malfoy then gave an experimental sniff and eased his way inside, following his nose over to the rubbish bin. He leaned down, squinting as he peered inside, then wrinkled his nose in disgust before Vanishing what were, Harry had to admit, particularly unsavoury contents. At least he hadn’t had to take a poo. Yet. God. Malfoy then straightened back up and fixed Harry with a narrow look of suspicion. “…What’s wrong with you?”

“What?” Wasn’t it bleedingly obvious? Well, all right, maybe not, but he still hadn’t expected the question.

“I was told the client would be out of the country for the duration of the contract and simply wanted someone to look after his home. I believe there was something about feeding a Kneazle or something as well.”

“Beezilbud…” Harry corrected glumly. Could Malfoy not just whip out a quill and start scribbling Harry’s dictations? They were kind of on a time crunch here, and in five minutes, Malfoy might be forced to go down and greet the poor soul St Mungo’s sent over wearing nothing more than a smile. Harry’s dignity was on the line here!

“…Whatever. The point is I was under the impression I’d have the run of this place—and yet here you are, pissing in rubbish bins and demanding I produce owls from my arse barely three days in.”

“Not from your arse—” Harry began, but Malfoy barrelled through.

“You’re an Auror. I saw the robes downstairs—dreadfully predictable line of business for Harry Potter, but I suppose it beats cleaning toilets for a living. So I’m left to wonder just how little crime there is in wizarding Britain these days that one of the DMLE’s finest—with two Orders of Merlin, no less!—could afford such a lazy day off. And require the services of a home nurse.” He raised his wand and gently poked at Harry’s big toe. Harry, of course, didn’t feel a thing. “…Fascinating.”

“Glad you’re impressed.”

“Is it just the one leg? Or both?” Harry’s scowl deepened, and Malfoy’s lips curled up at the edges in devious realisation. “And your arms too, I expect.” Harry showed him two fingers, and Malfoy gave a delighted little titter. “Oh, well, small mercies at least.” He drew up along the side of the bed, fingers trailing over the bedsheets. “So, Harry Potter is left to lie here limp and limbless, reliant on a home nurse to perform even the most basic of bodily functions. If only my father could hear about this.”

Harry was starting to get a bad feeling, realising only now that he was here, alone, helpless before a school bully and party to a number of war crimes who might very much like to exact a bit of revenge on the idiot who’d been kind enough to save his arse from being incinerated. “…You can’t harm me, it’s there in the contract.” His voice carried a bit of a tremor, and it wasn’t one of Harry’s finer moments, but he was feeling particularly vulnerable right about now, even though Malfoy was the one without a stitch on (well, a couple of stitches) between them.

“…I mean, I can harm you. I’d only be breaking the contract. It’s not like a personal shield, you know.” He leaned in, over Harry, face in shadow against the warm morning sunlight. “…But I, too, have developed a distaste for dragged-out legal matters, so let’s agree not to lay hands—or fingers, as the case may be—on one another and just leave it at that.”

The tightness in Harry’s chest relaxed a tic as Malfoy drew back, brushing the hair that had fallen into his face back with one hand. Harry watched him, just in case it was a trick meant to get Harry’s guard down and he was actually about to smother him with a pillow. With no smothering forthcoming, though, he was forced to conclude that Malfoy’s idea of getting back at Harry might err more towards the ‘force him to use a rubbish bin as a bedpan’ side of things than the ‘finally do what Voldemort and all his Death Eaters failed to manage’ side of things.

He cleared his throat, clawing back a mote of dignity. “…So, the letter I asked you to write for me?”

Malfoy crossed his arms. “Is that what the owl was for?” Harry rolled his eyes as if to say obviously. “Well, as I said, I haven’t got one of those. And from my poking about this place, neither have you.” Harry felt a groan building up in the back of his throat until Malfoy sighed and continued, “But let’s write your daft note and I’ll Spellotape it to the front door. Unless your home nurse is intending to Floo in?”

Oh god, they weren’t, were they? No—no, the Floo was warded. The nurse would be Apparating. Probably. He hoped. He shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

“Hm,” was all Malfoy said, and he twirled his wand in one hand, Transfiguring it into a quill. He then stepped over to Harry’s writing desk—which was honestly more for show—and began rifling through the drawers, presumably in search of some parchment.

“Oi—that’s private stuff!”

“I’ve had unrestricted access to most every floor in this place for the past three days, and now you’re throwing a fit? Or is this where you keep your, shall we say, accoutrements?” The rifling grew more invasive now, and he seemed somehow disappointed when he only turned up a few empty notepads and an unused box of stationery. “…Gads, even your deepest, darkest secrets are boring as shite. Haven’t you got a decent dildo on the premises? Shall I pick one up for you while I’m out doing the shopping? Perhaps that’s why you’re so tense…”

Harry didn’t know where to begin responding, and Malfoy seemed to thoroughly enjoy hearing himself speak as he continued helping himself to Harry’s desk. “Wh—stop that—just—take down my damn words!” How he longed to be able to kick his legs and fling his arms and have a good, long temper tantrum—but then, if he could do such things, he wouldn’t be in this position in the first place, would he? “Please,” he found himself begging through gritted teeth. “They’ll be by with my Myelo-gro dose any moment now, and this is really not the scene I’d like them walking in on!”

“What the fuck is Myelo-gro?”

He ignored the question. “‘Dear Home Nurse: I’ll be all right on my own, so please leave the Myelo-gro by the door and I’ll have someone pick it up. Thanks, Harry Potter.’” There was a long beat of silence, and when Harry didn’t hear the familiar scritch scritch of quill on parchment, he lifted his head up to glance over at the writing desk. Malfoy was sitting in the chair (god, he was going to have to burn that chair now—it had Malfoy’s arse print on it!), twisted around with one arm thrown over the back, just staring at Harry in baffled confusion. “Wh—write it down! I’m dictating here!”

“That’s what you want me to write? Shall I add a few ‘er’s and ‘um’s so it sounds authentically you? Haven’t you the faintest clue how to correspond in a professional manner?”

“Oh my god, are you lecturing me on epistolary propriety? It’s a note you’re gonna tack on the front door, not an inquiry about a job posting!”

“That’s absolutely no excuse,” Malfoy huffed, finally placing quill to paper. “Who’s your Healer?”

“I—what?”

“Your Healer—I assume you at least caught their name?”

“Er—” It’d started with an M, he was pretty sure. “…Macmillan? No—McCormick! That was it.”

Malfoy muttered something under his breath, shaking his head. “‘Healer McCormick (or staff otherwise attached): Please be advised that Patient Harry Potter is no longer in need of personal care services and will be retaining his own aid for the duration of his convalescence. As he does not wish to be disturbed at this time, his Myelo-gro prescription, along with instructions for dosage and dosing interval, is requested to be left on the doormat. Please ring the bell once you have done so and vacate the premises promptly. He shall report to St Mungo’s for previously agreed upon appointments but otherwise requests privacy. Regards.’”

Malfoy held the paper out, mouthing the contents to himself as he reviewed his work, and Harry had to (privately) admit, that did sound a heck of a lot nicer than what he’d come up with.

Publicly, though, all he said was, “Satisfied?”

Malfoy’s lips twisted into an unhappy little moue. “I haven’t been satisfied since Father bought my way onto the Slytherin Quidditch Team because he thought I wasn’t good enough to make it on myself. But I suppose it’ll do. I can’t imagine anyone will believe you to be this eloquent, but perhaps the home nurse won’t be familiar enough with your characteristic lack of character to press any further.” He rolled the paper up into a scroll, slipping it under the ribbon holding his modesty flap in place. “Will that be all, Mister Potter? Or might I be allowed to return to seeing to that third-floor cupboard once I’ve posted this? I’ve got expired Dungbombs that need disposing of.”

“That will not be all,” Harry said waspishly. “You’ll tack that up and then get your arse back up here, because you still seem to be labouring under the delusion I’m allowing you to continue this ridiculous exercise.”

“And by ‘ridiculous exercise’ you mean my job?”

“Listen, I don’t know how you got in here, or how you even heard about these ‘Butlers in the Buff’, but—” Harry narrowed his eyes. “…George didn’t put you up to this, did he?” Ron would never have associated with Malfoy, and Neville had certainly matured over the years, but not enough he wasn’t still a bit intimidated by anyone of Malfoy’s ilk, no matter how far his star might’ve fallen. George, though, was just devious enough he might’ve thought it a gas to both humiliate Malfoy and rile up Harry in one fell swoop.

“George who?”

“I knew it! That conniving little—” This was the thanks he received for bankrolling the Wheezes shop? Hilarious, really—he was going to send his first ever Howler as soon as he convinced Malfoy to stick a quill in his grip. After a moment spent in idle fantasy of all the ways he would get back at George for this, he registered that Malfoy was still stood there in the doorway, looking at Harry like he’d grown a second head. “Well?”

“George who?”

“George Wea—go post the note, would you! God, the nurse’ll be here any second.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes, scoffing in Harry’s general direction, but marched his way back out the door, and the sound of his light step on the stairs gave Harry some small measure of relief. There was one crisis (hopefully) averted. Now to see to the matter of getting Malfoy out of his life—with the nurse dismissed, it would be a hassle to call for them again, but perhaps he could summon Kreacher back from Hogwarts. It would be a shame to pull that cranky old elf out of retirement, such as it was—house-elves would never actually retire, but it had been the cushiest position Harry could think to order him to fill—but Kreacher didn’t seem the type to judge. Much. Anymore. Probably.

Between Kreacher and occasional pop-ins from his friends, he would get by all right. Mostly he only needed help getting into and out of bed and complicated tasks like preparing food and bathing himself. With some practice, he reckoned he could move himself about in the Levi-chair, so long as he could get the fine wand movements down, and then he’d be relatively mobile. As the weeks went by, too, he’d gradually get more and more command of his limbs back, and in no time flat he’d be back on his feet, literally.

At length, Malfoy finally made his way back up, stomping loudly as he did so and looking rather flushed. “…Right, you’re coming downstairs.”

“What?!” Harry yelped, tensing though he knew resistance to be rather futile. “No I’m not! Healer’s orders, I’m to stay in bed—”

“I very much doubt that—and I’m not climbing up five fucking flights of stairs just to tend to your every need.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, was the climb too much for you? Sounds like someone let his Quidditch figure go to pot.” He tried to press himself back into the pillows as Malfoy stalked forward. “I’m not moving!”

“Yes, that’s the issue.” Malfoy began easing one arm under Harry’s upper back, his face getting uncomfortably close to Harry’s in the doing.

“No one said you’ve got to ‘tend to my every need’, you know! You’re more than welcome to do as I’ve asked and piss off.”

“Don’t be daft—I’m not risking a black mark on my otherwise sterling record just because you can’t stomach the thought of a proper pure-blood finally whipping this place into shape.” He slid his other arm underneath Harry’s knees and began carefully levering him up. Harry could feel Malfoy’s muscles tensing and silently willed himself heavier, heavier—maybe Malfoy would strain a muscle and that would be the end of that.

“What’s wrong with a black mark?” Harry sneered in cruel delight. “You’ve already got the one, after all.”

Malfoy practically threw him into the Levi-chair, and Harry landed at an awkward angle and in rather a lot of pain. His legs were hanging off one arm of the chair while the rest of his body reclined against the other, and his head was flung back, leaving him peering up at an upside-down Malfoy. He tried not to be overly conscious of the fact that if Malfoy took one step closer, Harry’d be treated to a personal viewing of the Malfoy family jewels.

“…This feels achingly familiar, you know. You, paralysed before me, staring up with no means to defend yourself. Perhaps I ought to stamp on your nose again.”

“Thought you didn’t want a ‘black mark.’”

“There’s such a spell as Episkey, you know. Certainly not Expelliarmus, but it has its uses. Or were you going to complain to my superiors?” Malfoy leaned forward, stopping just short of slamming his forehead into Harry’s nose. “As I see it, you need someone to care for you, however long it takes for that Myelo-gro stuff to kick in.”

“…I do. I need someone to care for me. Not to piss me off and give me an ulcer.”

“That sounds like a ‘you’ problem to me. Me—” Malfoy shrugged. “I’ve worked with your sort before.”

Harry gave a rough snort. “You’ve worked with someone who got sideswept by a Muscle-degenerating Curse?”

“No, you dolt—I’ve cared for infirm clients before. Not everyone who hires a Butler in the Buff is a demented pervert like you.”

Harry’s cheeks heated with shame and no small amount of anger. “I’m not a demented per—”

“Sometimes they’re just lonely old geezers whose half-brained children simply owled the first company they found advertising a home care service without reading the fine print or wondering why we charge three times the going rate for the average maid service. Half the time they can’t even see straight anymore, so it’s not like they care we wear next to nothing, so long as dinner’s on the table by 6 and they’ve got someone to help them into and out of the tub to be sure they don’t slip and concuss themselves.” Malfoy leaned back, crossing his arms over his chair. “Ask yourself, do you really want your friends and acquaintances to see you like this anyway? They’ll lose all respect for you the first time they have to help you wash your arse crack. At least you don’t care what I think of you.” He arched a brow. “Do you?”

Fuck. The insufferable prick was insufferably right. He was rapidly coming to understand he was far more helpless than he’d realised, and all the small ways in which he’d need help functioning in his daily life would quickly become too much to ask anyone—even Ron—to handle. Kreacher would be discreet, he would be thorough—but Harry actually did care what the old house-elf thought, and there were some things you just couldn’t forget, not without Obliviation.

He could forget Malfoy, though. Would be glad to do so, even.

“…Sit me in this chair right, at least.”

“Uncomfortable?” Malfoy said, poorly hiding the twitch of his lips. “Perhaps you’ll learn to watch your tongue around me in the future. Don’t bite the hand that feeds, washes, clothes, et cetera.”

This was going to be the longest, most acutely distressing month of Harry’s life.

With Malfoy’s help, grudgingly though Harry accepted it, he finally found himself properly arranged in the Levi-chair and eased out onto the fourth-floor landing. He was still in the hospital pyjamas, which he could tell Malfoy didn’t like from the way he paused and looked pointedly at Harry’s wardrobe before Harry tried to forcibly rock the Levi-chair forward again, but he hadn’t yet sunk so low he was ready for Malfoy to strip him down and try to wrestle trousers onto his useless, noodle-like legs. Maybe tomorrow.

“You might as well put on some clothes at least,” Harry grumbled, forcing his focus to the wall clock he’d received from Mrs Weasley as a house-warming gift—Hermione was ‘Receiving a Foot Massage’ at present, and Ron was ‘Giving a Foot Massage’. He really needed to see about getting that thing adjusted—it went into entirely too much detail about his friends’ whereabouts sometimes. “I didn’t exactly redeem that coupon because I wanted someone swanning about my home in his altogether.”

Malfoy snorted from across the kitchen, where, last Harry had checked, he was tending a pan on the stove, poking at what smelled like fried eggs with a real, actual spatula instead of charming the thing to manage itself. Quaint. “Oh come now, don’t be coy. I’m not judging you—how could I, in my position?”

“I’m not being coy—I really didn’t want, you know, this.”

“Yes, yes—I’m sure you didn’t.”

“I didn’t!” Harry wasn’t quite sure why it was so important Malfoy understood he didn’t usually do ‘this sort of thing’, but it was. “Like I said, it was a birthday present.”

“And what is it about you that might encourage someone to gift you a coupon for a month’s worth of services from a Butler in the Buff, hm?”

Harry tilted forward, letting his head fall onto the table with a resounding thunk. “It was a gag gift. From George and Ron and Neville.”

“Longbottom was party to this? Gads, what has the world come to?”

Harry twisted around until he could fix Malfoy in his sights, keeping his eyes squarely above the waist—a difficult thing when Malfoy kept easing onto his tip-toes, rifling through Harry’s cupboards in search of god-knew-what. “And just so we’re clear, I still refuse to believe George—or hell, even Ron maybe—didn’t put you up to this. You can’t convince me it’s just sheer coincidence you of all people show up to dust my drapes and polish my paraphernalia.”

“That you think drapes require dusting suggests to me you’re in direr need of a housekeeping service than I initially feared,” Malfoy sighed, turning around and giving Harry a once-over. “And you’re right. It’s not a coincidence.”

Harry wished he could slam his fist on the table in triumph but settled for a mental jig instead. “I knew it, god I’m gonna write them such a Howler—”

“I’m the one they send when they don’t care what the client thinks of their services. The one they send to—as I said—the sick, the elderly, the absent. High profile a client as the Harry Potter might be at first blush, they weren’t going to waste a perfectly good face on a job the lowest rung on the ladder could handle. I’m not exactly Employee of the Month, for reasons I’m sure you can surmise, and the only jobs they send me out on are the ones where no one—or at least no one who matters—is liable to see me.” He made a face, then turned back around to poke the pan a bit more. “Or when a client requests me.”

“Why on earth would someone request you?” Harry said, half to himself. A petulant little dig, true, but he was in a mood. He was sat here helpless as Teddy waiting for Andromeda to prepare his breakfast. Malfoy was probably intending to feed him too—fat chance of that happening.

“Because,” Malfoy said, too matter-of-factly to be believable, “there’s no shortage of sorts out there who’d pay top Galleon to see me humiliated, scrubbing floors on my hands and knees or bent over a washboard rubbing out their unmentionables.”

Here, Harry straightened with a start, brows forming a dark, uninterrupted line. “…They don’t—I mean, surely they aren’t…”

Malfoy gave a sharp, derisive bark. “Harry Potter, defending my honour? You really do like to play the hero, don’t you? Can’t resist a sob story…” Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Malfoy ignored him, scooping out two sizzling servings of fresh-fried eggs onto a platter as he used his knee to open Harry’s coldbox. “Those sorts of clients sign the same contract you did, and though you may have felt that actually reading a legally binding document was beneath you, rest assured few others share similar failings. The only scars I wear these days are the ones you gave me.” He whirled around, carafe of orange juice in his free hand, and used his arse to shut the coldbox door again. He spread his arms wide, and Harry could see now in the bright morning light the gruesome criss-cross hatching he’d somehow failed to notice before. “The only man to have ever marked me. Well, one of the only—as you said.”

He slammed the carafe onto the table and let the platter of eggs drop with a thunk, where it rattled and spun a bit before settling. Harry winced, lips twisting in irritation—show an ounce of concern and he got his head bit off.

“A bit of morning delight, from me to you, Mister Potter. Choke on it.”

He then swept away, mounting the stairs what sounded like two at a time to disappear into the storeys overhead.

Well. Things were off to a smashing good start, weren’t they?

Likely to Malfoy’s rank disappointment, Harry did not in fact choke on his breakfast. He did manage to spill most of the orange juice on the table and floor (and himself), and only about every other bite of the eggs made it into his mouth as he went after his food like a dog—but he was going to count this as a win. It’d been too much to expect either of them to have a rein on his temper two hours after a less-than-happy reunion, so that they hadn’t come to blows yet was probably the best outcome they could have hoped for.

Still, if Harry wanted to have a proper meal any time soon—and he did, he very much did, as Malfoy did not seem entirely inept behind the hob—he was going to have to be the bigger man. Malfoy was a git, but he was a proud git, and stinging his pride tended to make his git-ness shoot through the roof. It was enough Harry had to deal with his nudity—really, they needed sort that out; Harry wasn’t going to be able to handle a month of near-misses with Malfoy’s cock—he shouldn’t have to deal with his foul attitude to boot. At least not if he could help it.

They were to have a working relationship, such as it was—Harry was not a client, no—so they needed to learn how to comport themselves around one another if they wanted to make it out the other side of this thing alive.

First things first, Harry decided: Malfoy needed to put on some clothes.

“Absolutely not,” Malfoy said, once tempers had cooled a bit and Harry’d got cleaned up. It was hard to have a conversation, was all, when your crotch smelled like fresh-squeezed fruit. “We’re under explicit instructions to stay in uniform during working hours for the duration of a contract. I’m not about to risk one of the few jobs that would have me just because you’re a prude.”

“I’m a prude just because I don’t want your arse hanging out in the open—among other things—while forced into proximity with you?!”

“It’s the human body, Potter—and it’s not as if I’ve got anything you haven’t seen before. Or—” He gave a little gasp of delight. “Worried you won’t be able to control yourself around me? Despite our fraught history, I must admit I’m flattered—but fret not, I’m more than capable of defending myself from a man who can’t even shit in a pot without my generous aid.” He produced his wand once more from seemingly nowhere and gave it a flick, sending a volley of brilliant sparks shooting from the tip. “We’re all trained to handle ourselves around clients who don’t understand the concept of ‘look but don’t touch’.”

“I’ll try to restrain myself…” Harry muttered darkly. “But honestly, wouldn’t you feel more comfortable? It’s only going to get cooler over the coming weeks, and the insulation in this place is shite.”

Malfoy shrugged. “I’ll wear socks, if it’ll stop you whinging.”

Somehow, the image of Malfoy in nothing but his little paisley modesty flap and a fancy set of wool socks seemed even worse than the present state of affairs, and he shuddered.

Further efforts to get Malfoy to at the very least don pants so Harry didn’t have to see his arse wiggle and tense as he moved fell on deaf ears, such that by the time noon rolled around, he’d largely resigned himself to another thirty-ish days of being flashed on the daily.

In brighter news, though, the note Malfoy had posted on the front door seemed to have done the trick, as around mid-morning, the clanging gong announced someone at the door. Harry panicked for a moment, hissing at Malfoy that he’d better not open it, to check the peephole and send anyone who came to call directly away. Malfoy rolled his eyes and shoved Harry’s Levi-chair into a free bedroom, shutting the door behind him. When he opened the door once more five minutes later, he held a nondescript brown paper bag in one hand and a scroll of parchment in the other. The bag was his Myelo-gro prescription and the parchment instructions concerning its use and how to order a refill.

Lunch went much more smoothly than breakfast had, with Harry far too famished to even think about sharpening his tongue to give Malfoy a few new scars. He sat quietly at the table, wondering if he ought to make small talk or just let Malfoy prepare their meal in peace, but the silence quickly became deafening, and so at risk of his foot working its way into his mouth, major limb paralysis be damned, he said, “…So where’d you learn to cook? Thought you lot had house-elves.”

“It’s a skill newly awakened within me courtesy of my Veela inheritance,” Malfoy said, slathering slices of bread with assorted condiments he seemed to have gathered at random from the cupboard. “At our awakening, we find ourselves imbued with all the traits necessary to secure a fit and suitable mate.”

“…Uh huh. So that’s what the cooking and cleaning and preference for nudity’s about, then? Gearing up for wifedom?” Harry narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t Veela female?”

“What’s cooking and cleaning and an appreciation for the raw human form got to do with being someone’s wife? Don’t be so archaic, Potter.” He began picking out parchment-thin slices of ham, layering them nearly an inch thick atop each slice of bread. “And surely there have to be some males out there, else how do you expect they procreate?”

Harry narrowed his eyes even further. “…You aren’t a Veela.”

“How would you know?”

“Well I’ve seen ‘em! At the Quidditch World Cup back in ‘94! You don’t soon forget a creature like that.” No, indeed you did not, and while Malfoy did have that sort of pale, unearthly glow about him in some lights and cutting, angular features that could’ve been carved from marble, he lacked that inherent siren-like pull that made a bloke want to pitch himself off the top of the Hogwarts Quidditch stands for a chance to get just a mite closer. Plus, he’d seen Malfoy narked off on plenty of occasions—the most recent one only a few hours earlier—and had yet to witness him sprout wings or rend flesh from bone with talons the size of baseball mitts.

“There you have it, then. Those were females. We males are nearly a different species entirely.” Lettuce and freshly sliced seasoned tomatoes followed the ham now, and Malfoy seemed to have found a cheese wheel Harry had entirely forgotten about buried at the back of his coldbox. Was it even still good?

“Yeah? And how’s that?”

“We look exactly like humans—you couldn’t tell us apart, even if you were staring right at us. Really, there’s only one way to spot one of us for certain.” Carefully, he placed another slice of bread atop both of the sandwiches he’d made, spearing them through with toothpicks. He seemed to consider his creations for a moment, then grabbed a knife and began slicing one of the sandwiches into bite-size morsels.

“And that is?”

“By the fact that we’re monstrously good fucks. And our generous cock size.” He hefted the platter of sandwiches in one hand and grabbed the freshly refilled carafe of orange juice with the other. “Care to test me, see if I’m telling the truth or not?” He placed the platter before Harry, then used the toothpick to spear one of the bite-size mini-sandwiches, bringing it to Harry’s pursed lips. “I’d hate you to think me a liar. It’s so important we establish a level of trust between us, don’t you think?”

“I think…I can feed myself. If you just set a fork in my grip—”

“Oh, gads no—I couldn’t possibly ask a client to lift even a finger on my watch. You requested a month’s worth of my services, and a month’s worth you shall certainly have. Now, part those pouty lips for me, and let’s see how much you can take.”

And as he opened his mouth with a sour grimace, it was here Harry decided that he would spend the next month thinking very hard about all the ways in which he was going to make Ron, George, and yes, even good ol’ Neville, pay for this.

❖❖❖

Malfoy was, if nothing else, a very dedicated Butler. Lunch had certainly taught him that much. What Malfoy had been up to since leaving Hogwarts that found him employed thus, Harry couldn’t even begin to imagine, but whether through self-study or learning-on-the-job, or—god—a sudden and most unexpected Veela inheritance, Malfoy was not merely competent, he was good.

For one thing, he performed all of his duties—yes, all of them, from the cooking to the cleaning to everything in between—entirely without magic. Harry had seen him use his wand on perhaps three occasions in as many days, and it was always for tasks that could not otherwise be accomplished mundanely, like refreshing the Levitation Charm on Harry’s Levi-chair.

He seemed to take genuine pride in doing his job—and in doing it well. “The clients pay for a Butler in the Buff. They don’t shell out top Galleon so we can show up, wave our wand about the place, and be done inside of thirty seconds.” It was a dedication Harry would not have credited him with had he not seen it with his own eyes. As it was, he still couldn’t quite believe it, such that even the Veela story was beginning to seem more and more plausible.

Malfoy’s quite unwarranted dedication, though, meant that for the next month, Harry was to be a ghost in his friend circle: an entity spoken about in hushed whispers, worried over, but never seen. Harry had already turned down all further Floo calls after a near-miss when Ron poked his head through to see how Harry was holding up with ‘The Butler’. Malfoy had blessedly been off on a grocery run—leaving Grimmauld Place, near as Harry could tell, still wearing nothing more than the modesty flap—and so had spared Harry the awkward introduction, but this hadn’t stopped Ron from leering and asking far too many pointed questions. Harry had instructed Malfoy on how to set the wards against unsolicited Floo calls after that, and they hadn’t been bothered since outside of exchanged owls and the occasional Patronus from Ron to update Harry on Hermione’s ballooning belly.

A good thing, too, because Harry didn’t think what little pride he had left could stand anyone else bearing witness to what had now become Harry’s day-to-day. Hell, if he could figure out how to manage it, he’d try to avoid bearing witness to it himself. As it was, he had to trudge on, head down and shoulders forward, into the humiliating fray of having his each and every need tended to by an overgrown school bully.

Now, meal times weren’t so terrible. Malfoy was, as Harry had noted, a fair hand in the kitchen. Whether it was Veela instinct or a few cooking classes or a very tiny house-elf hiding in Malfoy’s ear and whispering instructions, Harry didn’t know—nor did he particularly care. That there were fresh, filling meals on the table three times a day was good enough, even if Malfoy did insist on feeding Harry himself instead of just sticking cutlery in his grip and letting him give it a whirl on his own. His fine motor skills were gonna be shite by the time the Myelo-gro had done its work.

But if Harry had to trade a smidgen of pride for a full belly, well it was a small price to pay for the best food he’d had since Hogwarts. Honestly, Harry kind of worried what his waistline was going to look like after a month of Malfoy’s cooking and no real way to exercise it off. Robards was going to lock him in the training barracks ‘til Christmas after he was reinstated.

He’d given Malfoy rein to move about the house as he pleased now as well, even allowing him to tidy up Regulus’s and Sirius’s rooms, albeit with strict instructions he was only to clean and not to rifle through the brothers’ belongings or nick anything—of Harry’s or the Black family. Malfoy had rolled his eyes and said, “It’s quaint you think there’s anything in this mausoleum I’d want to nick.” And well, Harry supposed he had a point.

So Malfoy did the cleaning. He did the washing, he did the dusting. He weeded the garden and fed Lucrezia and went out shopping every afternoon for dinner, sometimes even asking Harry if he had any personal requests. Those requests usually amounted to, “For you to leave,” but Malfoy hadn’t yet complied, so they rinsed and repeated the dance the next day.

All these mundane tasks, Harry could stomach Malfoy’s help with. Could even appreciate it, to a degree. Job or no, it wasn’t exactly glamorous work, and though Malfoy claimed to take pride in seeing an assignment complete instead of skiving off as Harry might have expected, it couldn’t have been his greatest dream as a child to one day polish the Order of Merlin Harry had got for killing Malfoy’s old boss (with his own wand, to boot!). So that Malfoy completed these tasks with relatively little backtalk—at least concerning the tasks themselves—was testament to the fact that, if nothing else, Malfoy had learned to hold his tongue when it served him to keep his fat trap shut.

It was the less than mundane ones, though, that Harry was having trouble accepting help with. Specifically, he really really was never going to get used to being bathed by someone else, let alone someone named Draco Malfoy.

The first time, he’d nearly begged for a Freshening Charm. “Trust me, we’ll both be happier that way.”

“Oh yes, I know I would be—but you’d be less than thrilled with the rash that develops when human skin’s exposed too frequently to artificial Cleaning Charms. It’s itchy as anything and requires preparing a complicated poultice to relieve. Has your potioneering improved any since school?”

Harry frowned. “…No, but I’m assuming you’re still a dab hand at brewing.”

“I am. But that isn’t part of the services I offer. This is.” And then he’d thrown a fresh towel over Harry’s head and begun steering his Levi-chair to the massive fourth-floor bathroom.

It wasn’t the naked part Harry had so much problem with—as Malfoy had said, they neither one of them had anything the other hadn’t seen before, and six good years of Quidditch locker rooms had robbed Harry of most of his modesty. It was being naked, with someone else, while that someone else touched him in all sorts of places he wasn’t used to being touched (at least not by another person). And it didn’t matter that that someone else wore Draco Malfoy’s face—it was just the way it was. There was always going to be a sort of intimacy that came with touching skin to skin, whether it be holding someone’s hand, slapping someone’s cheek, or giving someone a scrub-down.

Harry had gone ten years—all the life he could remember at the time—never knowing another’s loving touch. So yeah, he was still a bit touch-starved, and it was a whole new kind of humiliation when Malfoy drew his arm out to soap it down, or buried his fingers in Harry’s messy black hair to suds it up or laid a towel over his head and began gently massaging until all the excess water had been sponged away.

Humiliation—because Harry liked it.

Humiliation—because Malfoy didn’t.

Impeccably discreet, Malfoy never sneered or spoke out of turn in these more intimate moments, but Harry could see him filing away this experience behind his eyes for later dissection. Indulging in silent judgement now for less-than-silent judgement later. Harry would have done the same, after all, had their situations been reversed, so he could hardly blame the git, but never in all his years had he felt so vulnerable—not in the graveyard, not lying half-dead on the forest floor. Someone he had never been very kind to and who had never been very kind to him had such horrible power over him, and Harry knew he could not expect Malfoy to be the bigger man when Harry wouldn’t have bothered in Malfoy’s position.

But Malfoy refused to leave, and Harry couldn’t go a month without bathing for a dozen different reasons. So he would bear these awkward interactions, as Malfoy seemed to be doing, and at the end of their thirty days, Harry would be free to summon another Home Nurse or prevail upon Luna’s or Neville’s or anyone else’s good graces.

And for a week, it kind of worked. They found a not-so-easy sort of rhythm to the day: Malfoy would arrive promptly at 7 each morning, at which point he’d head straight upstairs to help Harry out of bed. Harry made sure he was awake by the time Malfoy arrived, as he’d learned the hard way that one of Malfoy’s rare joys in life these days was waking Harry up in the most horrific ways imaginable, each more inventive and heart-attack-inducing than the last. After an incident involving a Screaming Yo-Yo, Harry started setting his wand to buzz him awake a few minutes before Malfoy arrived on the property.

Waking would be followed by breakfast and his daily dose of Myelo-gro, and then Malfoy would set Harry up in the back garden or the sitting room or wherever he wished to while away the hours that day, arranging a book in his hand or a quill and parchment before him so he could dictate a letter to Hermione and Ron or start catching up on the mountain of paperwork piling up in his absence, which Robards had oh-so-kindly been sending around so Harry didn’t get bored. Malfoy, in the meantime, would go about his nearly-naked tidying up—washing, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing. It was back-breaking work, from what Harry could see, but Malfoy bafflingly seemed to enjoy it, only zapping himself with a Freshening Charm at the end of the day. When Harry had asked why Malfoy was allowed to bombard himself with Cleaning Charms while Harry had to endure an old-fashioned scrub-down, Malfoy only shrugged and said, “Happy to teach you how to prepare the poultice just as soon as you can lift your hand above your head.”

Out-of-house errands, too, were Malfoy’s purview, including the shopping and delivering any parcels or post in need of sending. If Malfoy kept a change of clothes on the premises, Harry had never seen them, so he was left to wonder just how Malfoy navigated the wider world wearing nothing but a modesty flap and a prayer. Perhaps his Glamours were just that powerful, in which case Harry was going to be mighty impressed.

All in all, Malfoy was incredibly thorough in his work, which Harry honestly hadn’t been expecting. He was attentive, only giving Harry a bit of lip with some gentle needling whenever Harry called for him—though he could be downright bossy when Harry was being stubborn, which he was ashamed to admit happened more often than it ought to for someone Harry’s age. It was only, he felt so helpless. Being placed on leave was one thing—being placed on leave and deprived of the ability to so much as feed himself was an entirely different matter. In their brief time together, Harry had grown less irritated with Malfoy’s presence and more with his general state of being, and when the hour struck 7 PM, as it did every evening, and Malfoy clocked out, Harry was left all alone in his bed, staring up at the ceiling and waiting, interminably, for sleep to take him.

Malfoy’s prickly demeanour and Harry’s occasional mood swings notwithstanding, though, they got on well enough, in large part because they didn’t spend all that much time in each other’s immediate orbit. Harry was usually in one area of the house while Malfoy was tending to another, and if Harry needed him, he’d call, or else Malfoy would show up on occasion to reorientate Harry in the Levi-chair as the Healers had ordered. Harry tried very much not to need Malfoy whenever he could manage it, but even so, this arrangement was going much more smoothly than likely either of them could have expected.

So, of course, it couldn’t last.

The first hitch in the plan came just over a week in, on a day when it was raining Kneazles and Crups outside. The garden being nearly underwater, Harry was obliged to make himself comfortable inside for the afternoon. He’d nearly caught up on his paperwork over the weekend and didn’t fancy sitting hunched over his desk for the better part of the day, so he’d asked Malfoy to set him up on the couch in the sitting room. So rarely did he actually get the chance to put his feet up, he thought he’d give it a whirl—even if, technically, it was Malfoy who was having to put his feet up for him. Between the cosy lighting offset by the overcast day outside the front windows and the plush comfort of the couch, Harry found himself nodding off in the middle of his book—a Christmas gift from Charlie a few years back, Men Who Love Dragons Too Much. He hadn’t a clue what had possessed Charlie to gift him such a tome—had Harry been dropping subconscious hints he was interested in dragon husbandry…? Or…

He was startled awake from a comfortable doze by the sound of the knob giving as Malfoy pressed his way inside, his bare feet creaking across the ancient floorboards and rustling softly over the faded carpet. He had a massive feather duster fitted with an elongated handle gripped in one hand, and he ignored Harry’s presence on the couch for the chandelier hanging overhead, covered in a matt of cobwebs. “Save your breath—I’m only after the hard-to-reach light fixtures, and then I’ll piss off for the evening.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Harry muttered, ignoring the fact he’d been just about to. He resolutely directed his eyeline away from Malfoy, who continued to have no shame, and tried to focus on the words bleeding together on the pages before his eyes. Where had he been? Ah, right. Characteristics of the Drake in Rut—

Malfoy grunted as he eased the coffee table next to the couch aside, sighting the chandelier above them and moving what looked like one of the dining chairs underneath it before stepping up. The chair gave a worrisome creak—god only knew how old the thing was—but held.

Harry frowned. “Don’t break your neck.”

Malfoy gave a chuckle, seemingly genuinely amused at the thought. “Imagine if I did. Then that’d be both of us fucked until someone chanced along.”

“I could probably roll myself down into the kitchen, call for help with the Floo.”

“Roll yourself—down how many flights of stairs?”

“…Obviously I’d roll gently.”

Malfoy gave a little huff, then raised his feather duster. Really, this would all be so much easier if he’d just use magic. It wasn’t as if Harry was going to tell anyone. “And you won’t believe what I caught Draco Malfoy, my very naked Butler I hired through a shady home-helper service, doing! Using magic! The very nerve!” They’d stick him in the Janus Thickey Ward.

Harry turned back to his book, shaking his head.

Those new to dragon husbandry should be alert for several symptoms in males keen to impress a mate—

“Fuck,” Malfoy hissed under his breath, and Harry’s gaze swivelled upward—a mistake.

Malfoy had his eyes clenched shut, rubbing at them with one hand and wincing as he did so. A bit of dust in his eye, evidently.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Harry was laid out flat on the couch and Malfoy was standing on top of a chair two feet away, and from this angle—from this terrible, terrible angle—it was impossible not to see his everything.

Harry had done a pretty good job of not looking so far. The little modesty flap—which came in assorted colours and patterns Harry had now learned, with Malfoy donning a new one on the daily, including one decorated with cartoon Snidgets that Harry had privately found kind of cute—helped cover up the most important bits, at least. There was no getting around Malfoy’s arse, or the dusty golden trail of hair snaking down from his belly button, or the grotesque panoply of fine scars painted across his chest—but in such close proximity, and with Harry’s own modesty forcibly doffed for requisite bodily functions, he’d stopped being quite so aware.

Until now. Because that modesty flap was hiding absolutely nothing, and Malfoy had been right: male Veela (if such a thing existed) were evidently hung like hippogriffs—

Malfoy’s hand dropped away as he blinked the dust from his eye, and with a sniff he returned to his task. Harry, too, went back to his reading. Drakes in rut. Males. Mates.

—several symptoms in males keen to impress a mate that, if not properly managed, could cause damage to person and property. These include jealousy—

From the corner of his eye, Harry could see Malfoy lift up on his toes, and his eye followed the curve of his calf…

—possessiveness, tactile urges—

…up his muscled thighs (dodging a peek of pink winking at him from under the flap), around his arse…

—marking, hoarding, presenting—

…over his heaving chest as he stretched out, long and lean and puffing a bit from the effort it took to reach all the nooks and crannies of the chandelier. With one hand, Malfoy slicked his hair back from his face—he’d let it grow longer than Harry remembered from school, and it feathered about his neck at the back.

He looked like one of those fancy marble statues you saw in museums, but warmer and alive and yet no less Greek god perfection.

And Harry couldn’t move, even if he’d wanted to—just sat there, forced to take it all in.

It was strange, was all. He’d never had any sort of naughty thoughts about Malfoy before—his nudity had been a point of bawdy horror and vicarious shame. Being bathed by Malfoy had done absolutely nothing to him—at least in the downstairs department—and he was certain it’d done nothing for Malfoy either, as it would’ve been pretty easy to tell. There was no reason whatsoever for Harry to be sat here, practically gawping up at Malfoy while he batted at stubborn cobwebs and getting—oh fuck it all—hard.

Maybe it was the change in the weather. Maybe Malfoy had spiked his morning Myelo-gro dose with an aphrodisiac. Or maybe that brief flash of the third leg Malfoy kept hidden away under that little flap was waking Harry up to what Malfoy was and had likely always been: a very attractive, very cruel and vindictive arsehole (the latter of which evidently did nothing to mitigate the former, to Harry’s horror).

Malfoy had never been attractive before. He hadn’t, Harry was sure of it. He’d spent six (seven? Eighth year was fuzzy…) years around the git—he would have noticed, he would have. And maybe that had been the point—he hadn’t noticed. He’d been too preoccupied with what a little shit Malfoy had been—what a little shit he was, what a little shit he still was—and by the time puberty had hit and Harry had started, well, noticing things, Malfoy had been Malfoy. Kind of like how Harry hadn’t bothered considering whether or not he found Ron attractive—it just wasn’t something he’d been at all interested in pursuing, even from an academic perspective.

He froze a beat, mentally overlaying Ron’s head over Malfoy’s body and did a quick boner check—and despaired.

No funny feeling in his midsection, no sweat forming in inappropriate places, and no twitterpation whatsoever.

This wasn’t a late-blooming awakening to the fact that he’d spent his formative years surrounded on all sides by attractive people. This was a late-blooming awakening to the fact that this one particular arsehole was really, deliriously good-looking, at least as far as Harry’s libido was concerned.

Well, his libido hadn’t got his face stamped on by this deliriously good-looking arsehole, nor had it had to listen to this deliriously good-looking arsehole mercilessly tease and taunt his friends, calling them all manner of horrible names and doing his level best to help a Dark Lord in his ascension to power. He was a coward and a spoilt prick and—and—

And shite, yeah maybe he was all of that, had been all that, but these days it looked like he was mostly just trying to make ends meet doing grunt work he curiously took pride in. And Harry didn’t hate seeing that side of him—nor did he take any real kind of smug delight in it, like he might have thought. He liked it, in a funny sort of proud way. The way you felt when you saw someone who’d landed squarely on his arse try to pick himself up, dust himself off, and start taking small steps towards some manner of amends. Okay, maybe not amends, but he’d clearly grown up a hair from the daddy’s boy he’d been just five years ago. Grown up way more than a hair in certain respects. Really burgeoned into something respectable—

Harry cleared his throat, suddenly parched, and tried to ease his book over his crotch—not an easy task when you had zero greater limb control. He tried to focus on the words on the page, but no matter how many times he read them, his brain refused to process them. Possibly because a sizeable portion of the blood in his body was pooling in his nether regions, leaving Harry to watch in horror as his sweatpants began to noticeably tent.

No—no, this couldn’t be happening for so many reasons, not least of all because he couldn’t get himself off. He drew the line at asking Malfoy for sexual favours, even if the naked Butler bit kind of implied he might be perhaps open to it. He wasn’t a client—hadn’t he said as such on day one?—and he really shouldn’t have been ogling Malfoy, because this wasn’t that sort of arrangement. All Harry had had to do was just sit there quietly doing paperwork or catching up on dry reading for three more weeks (closer to two and a half, really!), and then they could go their separate ways and forget this had ever happened. There’d been absolutely no call to muck it up with—

“Oh my…” Malfoy said, taking Harry’s day from bad to worse in the span of two words. Harry gave a futile little wiggle, trying to roll over and feign sleep, but his body refused to comply, and Malfoy elegantly hopped down, taking a seat upon the chair and slinging one leg over the other. He leaned forward, chin propped up in one hand, as he ran his eyes over Harry’s body and the fit state it was in. “So the Chosen Dick does work…”

“It’s not ‘cause of you, obviously.”

“Oh, obviously. I wasn’t going to suggest it was. I assumed it was this no-doubt filthy tome you’ve been reading.” He reached forward, snatching Men Who Love Dragons Too Much from Harry’s feeble grasp. “What sort of depraved erotica could possibly get you…” His nose wrinkled. “…Really?”

“It wasn’t ‘cause of the book, either!”

“Gads, I hope not—‘A male ready to copulate will present with swollen hackles, and a female ready to receive him will hold her tail aloft. Pairs should be moved promptly to a mating pen no smaller than two hundred metres in diameter’—” And now Malfoy was giving him such a look. “Potter, I beg you let me fetch you some proper pornography.”

“It wasn’t the book.”

“Are you a tits man? Or an arse man? I can’t really help with the former, but I feel an intervention’s in order, so I’m up to calling in a few favours if necessary. You’re a national hero, we can’t have you getting your rocks off to flying lizards. I know a fellow who could probably find you something with Centaurs or Merfolk, if that would suit?”

Harry wanted to squeeze into the spaces between the couch cushions, just sink in and start a new life there in the darkness. He was going to burn Men Who Love Dragons Too Much after this. “It—was just—an accident.”

“What, you tripped and fell into an article on how dragons fuck and your cock happened to pop off?”

“No,” Harry snarled, “I happened to be stuck here, unable to move, while someone flashed me his willy and took entirely too long to sweep away some fucking cobwebs!” He threw himself back against the arm of the couch as dramatically as possible—which wasn’t much, but it was the principle of the thing. He thinned his lips into a tight line. “Like I said: it was an accident.” He then grimaced, adding in a small voice, “…Sorry for peeking.”

Forcing his eye to the corner of the room, he couldn’t see Malfoy’s expression—but then, he didn’t need to see it, when he had two perfectly functional ears: “Liar.” And then Malfoy said, from much closer, “It wasn’t an accident…and you aren’t sorry.” Then, right by Harry’s ear. “I knew you were watching.”

Harry swallowed, very thickly—god, he needed a drink, just some water, something. “I wasn’t.”

“You didn’t want to, I’m sure. Probably thought you were above that sort of thing—you’re Harry Fucking Potter, you don’t pay for it. By all rights people ought to pay you for it. But you still watched.” Malfoy pressed his palm to Harry’s chest, right over the spot where the locket had left a faint oval scar that he still wore to this day. “You want to watch even now.”

“I—don’t—”

“Then why’re you getting even harder? Is it because I’ve noticed? Because I’m here, near enough for you to touch now, but you can’t?” He dropped his voice, a soft, raspy hiss of threat. “Should I…?”

Harry’s head whipped around, nearly connecting with Malfoy’s long, patrician nose, and his eyes were wide with horror (and a hint of shameful intrigue). “You—piss off! You don’t offer those kinds of services! You said so yourself.”

“The company doesn’t offer them as part of the package. What I choose to do of my own volition…well that’s a different matter entirely.” A pink tongue darted out, wetting Malfoy’s lips, and this close, his grey eyes were dark and deep, drawing Harry inexorably in. Fuck, maybe he was a Veela… “I see no reason two amenable parties couldn’t do as their bodies pleased… Should we…” He quirked a lacy brow. “…Get to know each other a bit better? I’ve met your little friend in more formal settings, but I feel these sorts of things merit a proper introduction.”

Harry’s heart was thudding painfully against his rib cage, and he felt as if he were about to burst into flame. This wasn’t happening—no, no. Malfoy had broken his neck trying to dust the damn chandelier and then Harry had tried to roll down the stairs to reach the Floo. These were merely the addled thoughts flooding his brain as he lay broken and battered on the floor of the basement kitchen, inches from salvation but fading fast. Why his final thoughts were god I’d really like for Draco Malfoy to wank me off was a matter on which he did not wish to dwell, seeing as these were his last moments, yet that didn’t stop him from saying, “You aren’t hard,” like an idiot.

“Ten points to Gryffindor. I could be, though, if you wanted me to. We could get there together. We could get there together. I’ve two hands—and you do so love telling me what to do.” He let his hand trail down to Harry’s stomach, not daring to dip lower, only offering warm, insistent pressure as he massaged Harry’s abdomen. “You can watch all you want this time.”

Oh god, Harry was going to do this. He was, and he was going to regret it—they both were, probably—but he was going to do this, it was a foregone conclusion. Malfoy was a Veela, that was the only explanation. He was a Veela, a male Veela, with an enormous cock and an equally impressive sex drive, no doubt. And Harry was going to let this atrociously sexy Veela wank him, because of reasons. Good reasons, of which there were many. All right, maybe not good reasons—more like terrible reasons, but it was happening all the same, so he ought to just give in and let it—

The clock on the wall began gonging loudly, tolling the hour: seven o’clock, on the dot.

Malfoy drew back his hand and eased to his feet. “Oh dear—look at the time.”

“Wha…?” Harry said, because somewhere along the way he’d lost his powers of speech along with limb control.

Malfoy tutted under his breath. “Where does the time go, some days? Ah well, have a pleasant evening, Mister Potter. And oh—” He gestured vaguely to Harry’s prominently tented sweats. “You’ll probably want to do something with that. It must be terribly uncomfortable. Anyway, ta for now.”

And with that, he practically skipped from the room, leaving Harry sprawled out on the couch, helpless and hard. He hadn’t even put Harry to bed, as he always did before he fucked off once the workday was over.

Harry was stuck here. Stuck here, for the rest of the night—horny and miserable and alone. Without even his dragon porn to keep him company.

God, he sure could use that self-lubricating auto-dildo right about now.

❖❖❖

Harry wanted to be furious with Malfoy. And he was—well, more angry than furious, a low, simmering boil of irritation that was always on, leaving him feeling prickly and out of sorts whenever Malfoy moved within his eyeline.

But mostly he was angry with himself, because even after Malfoy had left him lying there, helpless on the sitting room couch, Harry still—for reasons god only knew—was attracted to him. He hadn’t dared indulge in idle fantasy, as he’d learned it was abject torture trying to sleep with a rock-hard cock straining against your pants and no way to relieve yourself, but Malfoy seemed to have taken Harry’s unfortunate predicament as leave to do everything in his power to turn him on beyond belief while making zero further offers to help ‘ease the pressure’.

Blessedly, some spaces were evidently off limits to Malfoy’s cruel teasing—bath time continued to be as clinical and perfunctory as before, with Malfoy going through the motions and only speaking when spoken to—but outside of such situations, he was an absolute terror, the likes of which Harry had never before witnessed.

Now, Malfoy never touched him in a carnal way, not after what Harry now privately referred to as ‘the dusting and dragons incident’, but he didn’t have to. Not when he could do lethal damage simply by bending over (how did one get one’s arsehole so pink and perfect?) or indulging in a snack (Malfoy’s daily lunches somehow always ended with a banana for dessert now) or using the most suggestive turns of phrase possible (“You know,” he huffed, after fifteen minutes spent trying to haul Harry from the Levi-chair and into bed, “if you wanted me aching and panting face-down atop you in your bed, then surely there were easier ways to go about it.”)

He was doing what felt like everything in his power to get Harry hot and bothered, all the while relishing the fact that Harry couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Making matters worse was the fact that Malfoy never seemed to suffer similarly in the plumbing department—there was never any tenting of that little modesty flap or tell-tale awkward waddle of a man at half-mast and trying to hide it. Did he have some spell in place to keep himself soft? And if he did, how much would Harry have to beg to get him to teach it, or at least cast it on him?

By this point, Harry very much doubted Malfoy was doing anything more than indulging in lascivious flirtation for the sheer joy of winding Harry up. Perhaps he wasn’t even bent in any way to begin with and simply had a dirty mouth and sick sense of humour. Whatever the truth of the matter, Harry was going to go absolutely bananas if he didn’t find a way to get some measure of relief, and so it was on one sunny afternoon while Malfoy was off doing the shopping for dinner, that Harry arranged a Floo call with Neville. He’d had Malfoy himself deliver the message under the guise of needing Neville’s help as a civilian consultant on a case, and now with Malfoy safely off-premises for at least a good hour, he could have his first proper conversation with another human being in nearly two weeks.

It had to be Neville, you see; Harry and Ron were thick as thieves, but this wasn’t the kind of conversation he really wanted to have with his best mate, kind of like how he hadn’t wanted Ron to be the person waiting on him hand and foot while he recovered, even if Hermione hadn’t been in the condition she was. Neville, though, was a stand-up guy and kind of owed him for this Butler business (not that he knew it), so Harry was going to squeeze him for every drop of advice he could manage.

“Blimey, Harry—I heard from Ron, but you really are in a fit state, aren’t you?” Neville marvelled, his head sticking out of the Floo grate. Harry had arranged for Malfoy to set him up on the couch in the breakfast nook down in the kitchen, right in front of the Floo, so he had a front-row seat to Neville’s gawping.

“Yeah, it…hasn’t been fun, I’ve gotta confess.”

“No, I don’t expect it has!” Neville shook his head. “How much longer you gonna be like this? You can’t move anything?”

Harry twiddled his fingers. “Just the fingers, really—and it’ll be another two months yet before I’m anywhere near good as new. I’ve got a home nurse, courtesy of St Mungo’s, helping me out for the time being, but…” He cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. “I kind of…had a favour I wanted to ask. Well, not a favour, more a question, or maybe some advice?”

Neville leaned in further, almost conspiratorially. “Uh, yeah, sure thing, Harry—what’s up?”

Harry licked his lips, straining his ear for any sign that Malfoy might have returned from his shopping excursion early. Nothing—all quiet. It was now or never.

“So, er…hypothetically speaking here, if someone were to have, say, lost control of his limbs temporarily…” Neville nodded. “…Can you think of any way this person might, purely conjecturing, be able to…er…relieve himself? In the uh, you know.” God, maybe Neville didn’t deserve this. “Sexual way?”

“Oh.” It was difficult to tell in the green flickering flames of Floo fire, but Neville looked like he was blushing a deep, dark cherry tomato. “Oh. Er. Right.”

“Just—I don’t mean it to sound weird—”

“Of course not, no—”

“It’s just, it’s been almost two weeks now—”

“Yeah, I get it, that’s—”

“And sometimes when you start thinking about something, then you can’t stop thinking about it—”

“No, right, perfectly understandable—”

They both devolved into weak, half-hearted chuckles as they struggled to speak over one another until, at length, silence fell again, and Harry said, “…Seriously, if you don’t feel comfortable talking about—” But Neville raised a hand, offering Harry a rueful little grin.

“Forget it, it’s just not exactly what I expected from this call. But—” He seemed to glance over his shoulder, perhaps checking Hannah wasn’t anywhere about. “So, there was this one time, in fifth year, where I forgot to wax down my weeding gloves before tilling the bed of a bunch of Acid Betties I was working on for a Herbology project…”

Harry lifted a brow. “Yeah?”

Neville nodded. “Couldn’t feel my arms for three weeks. Had to drink soup through a straw for every meal—remember?”

“Oh, right…” Harry’s gaze went distant with recollection. “…Thought you were just going through a weird cravings phrase.”

Neville shrugged. “Was kind of embarrassing—I didn’t want to spread it around. Couldn’t even tell the professors. My marks in Potions took a nose-dive, and they were already underwater to begin with.” Harry winced in sympathy. “But—Seamus came through. He was a real mate—snuck me the instructions for a wandless self-wanking spell.”

Harry’s brows shot up into his hairline. “Wait—you’ve managed wandless magic? Neville Longbottom?” He didn’t want to discredit Neville, but wandless magic was difficult under the best of circumstances. The few spells Harry knew, he’d only mastered because it was part of the Auror training curriculum. Lay folk generally didn’t have any need to work without wands, and precious few had the patience to work at it.

Neville puffed up a bit with pride—then quickly deflated with a self-deprecating smile. “‘Managed’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Honestly, it’s the only one I know. But you’d be surprised how enthusiastic one can get about learning when certain needs are on the line.” He winked at Harry. “I reckon you’ll pick it up quick enough.”

Harry appreciated the vote of confidence—and appreciated even more the quickly rattled off instructions. He stopped short of asking for a demonstration, bidding Neville good afternoon and vowing to let him know if he needed any further pointers.

He didn’t dare practise too diligently while Malfoy was on the clock—at least not while he was on the property. Harry had been practising wandless magic since his training days, but Aurors were only required to be proficient in a few basic spells—Lumos and Protego were standard, though Harry had privately mastered Expelliarmus as well, because well, he had a reputation to maintain. Nonverbals were a taller order, so Harry was going to have to actually say ‘Ipsimulsus’ out loud, which he had to assume was near-Latin for jerk-me-off. Not quite part of the Hogwarts curriculum, that.

He timed his first real attempt to cast the spell two days later, just after lunch. Malfoy had been planning a trip to Diagon Alley with a shopping list a mile long, and Harry had suddenly remembered several other errands he needed seeing to, which would put Malfoy out of the house for at least three hours, by his private calculations. Feigning a bout of postprandial lethargy that left him in sore need of a nap, he let Malfoy set him up into bed, pillows fluffed and drapes drawn, and waited with bated breath for the sound of the front door slamming as Malfoy finally fucked off, leaving Harry free at last to set sail for horny heaven.

Now technically, one was supposed to train in wandless magic first using a wand, or else you risked the spell coming out wonky, like wild magic in kids—but alas, Harry didn’t exactly have that luxury, so this was going to be a bit of frenetic trial and error. Hopefully more trial and less error, because he’d done some stupid things in his years on this earth so far, but fiddling with a spell he’d never before performed that involved his bits was probably one of the stupider ones.

He therefore took things as slowly as he dared—he needed to get off before Malfoy got back, but also he needed to still have a dick when Malfoy got back. A fine balance would need to be struck, but Harry was motivated enough to take his chances.

It was nearly an hour before he felt the spell start to take at all, and another forty-five minutes after that before he’d shaped it into anything resembling a self-wanking spell. Neville had touted its efficacy effusively enough that Harry trusted he’d know when he’d actually managed it, so he kept at it until, at length, he’d finally managed a firm bit of pressure about his prick, releasing a sigh of mixed relief and frustration as he amped up his efforts. Focus was required here—sharp, pointed focus. Focus that was shattered every time he got close to a successful casting and pleasure began bubbling up through his thoughts, scattering them.

It was frustrating—it was blue-balling—but Harry was determined to make this work. He wouldn’t survive another wayward glimpse of Malfoy’s shaded bollocks hanging between his thighs as he bent to retrieve a roast from the oven, or a brush with the patchwork of scars surrounding a pair of pert, pink nipples as he drew one of Harry’s arms up to scrub at his pits. He needed to just get this out of his system in a healthy manner, rather than risking being rendered helpless the next time Malfoy made a pass at him that he didn’t intend to follow up on. It was bad enough he was physically reliant on Malfoy without having to be sexually reliant on him as well.

He could do this—and so, he did. He kept at it, until he could keep up a slow, easy rhythm without losing his head so much he dropped the spell entirely. It was almost as bad a cocktease as Malfoy was, but this was progress, and he began drawing more and more magic into the spell, wrapping the lines of arcane energy around his cock tighter and tighter, even bucking up into the imaginary channel a bit, futile though he knew this to be. This was good, this was really good, this could work. And if it didn’t, well maybe he’d pass out from blood loss and at least he’d have a few hours of blessed unconsciousness before Malfoy found him.

His focus sharpened, paradoxically, the closer and closer he got to really getting the hang of this thing, the hormones in his blood fuelling his desperation. He closed his eyes and leaned back, imagining a nameless, faceless anyone sitting on his prick. Tighter, tighter—and pulling off quicker, quicker. He repeated the incantation under his breath like a sacred mantra, his own little pornographic prayer, and imagined how good, how amazing it would be to finally get off.

“Fuck…” he breathed as the spell pulsed against him, though it came out a stutter, catching on the F. He refocused his thoughts, trying to recreate that pleasurable pulse, and his hips bucked sharply when he managed it, ecstasy rippling through his system.

When was the last time he’d wanked? Really given himself a good, long tug—not a quickie in the shower before work or releasing a bit of steam after a long day so he could fall asleep faster? Ages, he expected, and though these were less-than-desirable circumstances, he’d count it a win if it resulted in the best orgasm he’d had in who knew how long.

With each incantation, his handle on the spell grew stronger, the passes quicker and the grip tighter. He could feel his balls draw up and tense—god, it would’ve been just torture if the curse had robbed him of feeling from the waist down—and a familiar coiling sensation manifested just behind his navel. So much within him wanted to just thrust, hard, with a few punching snaps of his hips, really complete the fantasy, but willing though the spirit was, the flesh was still too weak. He therefore poured every ounce of magical focus within him into perfecting the spell, conscious somewhere in the back of his mind that Malfoy would be back any moment, would find him, would see him—watch him working himself over through sheer innate magical ability.

He could hear himself panting, groaning and whining and keening like he’d never been touched before in his life instead of just a matter of weeks—but he blocked it out. He drilled his focus down to pure sensation, to its connection with his magical core, the heat and sweat and needs of his body being met by the arcane energy boiling his blood as it zipped through his veins and wound itself in a tight spiral around his cock, squeezing constrictor-tight and yanking, jerking, tugging—

“So help me, Potter, if you’re having a fit I swear to—fuck!”

Harry’s focus snapped like a snipped wire, the connection between himself and the spell fizzling, impotent, as the reality of everything came rushing back to Harry in a sudden, ice-cold onslaught. Here, Grimmauld Place, in his bed, trousers wriggled down to his bum and prick standing at proud attention—and Draco Malfoy, nearly naked but for a flap of fabric bursting in, a million different emotions writ large on his features but mostly shock and shame.

There was a heartbeat of silence as they both took in the scene before them, and it was Harry who found his tongue first, angrily spitting, “Get—out! Get out! For fuck’s sake, leave me some privacy, would you?!” His voice sounded shrill and desperate—which, well, he was. God he’d been riding the bleeding edge there, so damn close, and if a stiff breeze blew through, he’d pop—but he didn’t want to, not yet. He wanted to go back to thirty seconds ago, when that spell, that glorious spell, had nearly had him, when he’d nearly had it, and everything had been right and tight and such a delight.

Malfoy faltered for a second, grip tightening on the knob and swallowing thickly, so Harry helped him on his way: “I said get out! Fuck off! And shut the door, dammit!”

“I—shit—” Malfoy said, for once bereft of pretty words, and he quickly ducked his head and folded himself back into the hallway, drawing the door shut behind him. Harry waited only long enough to hear the creak of the floorboards under Malfoy’s bare feet grow fainter and fainter as he walked away before taking a deep, bracing breath—and casting again.

Malfoy was back from shopping—and he probably had a faint idea of what Harry was doing up here. An hour ago, Harry might have cared. Now, though, after spending the bulk of the afternoon working on this spell and coming this close to mastering it, he was beyond caring. The arousal had muddled his thoughts, until all he could focus on now was getting off, emptying his painfully tight balls into the phantasmal grip the charm offered and finally being able to think straight once more. He could be embarrassed later, he could rip Malfoy a nice new arsehole later, he could thank Neville later—now…now it was just Harry, the quiet, dim light of late afternoon, and Ipsimulsus.

He bit his lip, closed his eyes, and sank as deep into the mattress as he could, a splayed-out lump of hot-wired nerve endings that could do nothing but feel the magic working him, not quite from a cold start but definitely from a still-mounting rush. The interruption had been unfortunate, but he’d heard about this sort of thing before—how cutting yourself off just before you climaxed could make the subsequent orgasm all the better. If that was the case, he’d thank Malfoy after this was all over—but for now, he just really, really wanted to get off.

He had the hang of the spell now, muttering it over and over under his breath. The words wrapped themselves around his cock, squeezing in time with the pulse of the magic, until he could feel himself teetering once more on the edge. He was close, so close—

And then Malfoy was there again.

No—not there, but there, just behind his eyelids, settled on his thighs with his long, pale fingers curled around Harry’s dark prick in a warm grip. He was whispering something, a soft susurrus, and though Harry couldn’t quite catch it, experience told him it was deliciously filthy. His hair feathered down around his face as he leaned over Harry, lean body thrown into shadow, working him faster, tighter, all the while keeping those dark, hooded eyes locked onto Harry’s. Come, he wasn’t saying, or maybe he was. How long have you been waiting for this? Too long… He leaned in close, nose brushing against Harry’s, and he could hear it now: Fuck me, you coward.

Harry’s back arched in a sudden seizure of pleasure, prick spasming as it painted the air with a violent spurt of release. His orgasm rolled through him in waves, and he panted loudly and vocally as fireworks went off in his vision. The spell abruptly faded—a blessed side effect of losing concentration, because he was one big nerve ending right now, too wired to bear any further stimulation. His skin was vibrating—at least it felt like it—and his chest was heaving as he struggled for breath. His mind was a jumble of thoughts, nothing making sense, until everything got slower, and slower, and more and more sluggish.

There was a high, tinny ringing in his ear, and then there was nothing.

He’d never passed out from an orgasm before. Never. It was more than a little embarrassing, really.

When he finally roused, the room was a fair bit darker, suggesting that dusk had fallen, and he directed his gaze to the clock on the wall that said he’d been out for nearly two hours. Malfoy’s workday would end in another half-hour, and Harry hadn’t eaten since lunch. God, where had the day gone?

Right out his cock was where it’d gone—and here it still was, caked into delicate lacy lines over his stomach and probably the bedclothes as well. Well that was gross.

All right, it was time to face the music: “MALFOY!”

His voice echoed down five storeys, and he gave Malfoy a long beat to climb his way back up from wherever he’d gone to ground after Harry had ripped into him in the throes of mind-melting ecstasy. At length—long length—the knob turned, and Malfoy eased his way inside, opening the door at first only a crack to check Harry wasn’t still in the midst of getting himself off. Evidently satisfied that Harry was now only normal-naked instead of naughty-naked, he stepped inside, drawing himself up straight and keeping his eyeline fixed on the far wall beyond Harry.

“…Yes?” His voice was flat and emotionless—quite unlike the Malfoy Harry had had to deal with the past two weeks. Where was the cheek? Where was the cruel, biting teasing? Harry more than deserved it—not that he missed it, of course.

Harry cleared his throat. “Er… Um, sorry. I guess. For…you know, going off on you.” There, a nice apology to start things off with—smooth any ruffled feathers and get down to the business of a quick dinner before Malfoy clocked out. “I…wasn’t quite myself.”

Malfoy just hmmed softly, crossing his arms. He shrugged. “…I shouldn’t have barged in. I was out of line—only, I thought you were having a seizure, or choking on your vomit. I worried for your person.” He wrinkled his nose, gaze darting quickly to Harry and then away again, searching the room for something else to focus on. “Is that honestly how you sound at climax? No wonder you’re single.”

“Ha ha,” Harry drawled dryly. “…If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to just forget it happened. That’s not the sort of…thing…I hired you for. Not that I hired you, just—”

“It’s forgotten,” Malfoy said simply.

“…Oh. Well. Okay then, good.” Harry nodded, doing a quick scan of Malfoy’s features. He kind of appreciated Malfoy making light of the situation—he knew how to navigate this Malfoy. The weird, overly polite one who addressed him as Mister Potter? Not so much. There was a tiny twinge of disappointment the encounter didn’t seem to have affected Malfoy much beyond that brief awkwardness, but better a stilted greeting than further merciless teasing.

After a tense beat of silence, Harry nodded to himself. “So, er…I know you’re off in a bit, but you think maybe you could…you know, help get me cleaned up—and maybe send some dinner my way, if you had anything warming?”

Malfoy arched a brow. “…Didn’t think this through very well, did you? What if I hadn’t come back? You’d have lain here, covered in your own spunk, starving and waiting to be found by someone who cared.”

“But you did come back. If only to spite me, right? So I figure if you’re gonna insist on hanging around and being a Butler, you oughta be okay with doing Butler-y things, and right now…that involves saving me from lying here, covered in my own spunk, starving and waiting to be found by someone who cared.”

Malfoy made a scoffing noise of disgust, drawing his wand from whatever pocket dimension he stowed it in while on the job, and deftly Vanished the caked-on mess from Harry’s person and belongings.

Harry frowned down at himself. “…Thought you weren’t supposed to use magic to clean things.”

“I draw the line at bodily fluids—or what, did you want me to fetch a warm towel to pat you down with and swaddle you like a babe?” He kicked at the rubbish bin next to the bed. “Piss in your rubbish bin all you like, I’m not scrubbing that.”

And all right, Harry supposed that made sense.

Time being of the essence, Malfoy quickly changed Harry into a fresh set of clothes—no time for a bath, as Harry might have preferred—before nipping down to the kitchen where he had in fact left Harry’s dinner under a Warming Charm. Harry found he was actually a bit touched at the thought—he wouldn’t have blamed Malfoy for doing exactly as Harry had told him to and pissing off, leaving Harry to be found weeks from now when Ron came around wondering what had become of him. Perhaps Malfoy was hoping for a tip or a good review after this business was finished. He did sound like he wasn’t the most popular fellow amongst his coworkers.

With Harry situated for the evening, Malfoy clocked out right at 7, with only a final reminder to Harry not to try anything too adventurous between the hours of 7 PM and 7 AM, as Malfoy really didn’t want to have to clean up another dead body. He was out the door before Harry could ask, “Another?!”

Harry didn’t dare try the self-wanking spell again while Malfoy was on the clock—whether he was actually in Grimmauld Place or not. It was entirely too easy to lose track of time and self, and he didn’t fancy another awkward run-in. Once Malfoy had Disapparated, though, all bets were off, and he enthusiastically dove back into practice the moment Malfoy was out the door at 7.

He thought perhaps Malfoy had realised this—or at least suspected—because he’d really amped up his sexy cleaning in the wake of The Incident That Shall Not Be Named. Hell, he’d even taken to walking in a seductive manner, glancing over his shoulder as he mounted the stairs to see if Harry was watching him whenever he left a room. Maybe he thought that since Harry had managed to find a way to achieve some self-relief, he was entitled to increase the challenge rating of their encounters. It was like they were engaged in sexual war games, with Malfoy presenting an enticing scenario and daring Harry not to ‘fire his torpedoes’.

The nature of those games changed abruptly, though, when the clock struck 7 while Malfoy was in the middle of helping Harry into his bed.

Typically, Malfoy was gone at 7 on the dot, no matter what he was doing—if Harry wasn’t in bed, he was left where he sat until morning; if the floors were in the midst of being mopped, they would stay that way until the next day; if they were in the middle of a conversation (or as was more common, an argument), then Harry won by default as Malfoy released a frustrated groan, showed him a couple of fingers, and fucked off.

Today, though, everything had gone wrong. Malfoy had arrived on site in an already foul mood, muttering something about impatient landlords and mistakenly frozen accounts, so breakfast had been little more than an apple (sliced into pieces that had been carved into rather adorable approximations of rabbits; he’d have to remember that one for Teddy once he could use his arms again). Then Malfoy had accidentally spilled the bucket of dirty mop water slipping on a floor runner that hadn’t been properly tacked down, and there’d gone most of the morning and early afternoon. Capping off the evening had been a delayed dinner, after the charm on the coldbox had decided now was the perfect time to go on the fritz, leaving everything inside spoilt. Malfoy was a dab hand with repair work, it turned out—magical and Muggle—but the job was too much to finish before end of day, so Malfoy had been obliged to do his very least favourite thing and order takeaway for the both of them. It was thus with only minutes to spare that Malfoy began shoving Harry’s Levi-chair up the umpteen flights of stairs in Number 12, looped his arms around Harry’s midsection, and hauled him out and onto the bed.

The clock was already tolling while Harry was still dangling half off the mattress, and he began struggling against the panting, exhausted Malfoy’s embrace. “Just—hurry up and—get me into—”

“I’m trying,” Malfoy grunted, red-faced. He squatted to wedge his shoulder under Harry’s bum.

Harry’s face was shoved into the mattress, and he turned to the side, glaring at the crown of Malfoy’s head, which was all he could see from this angle. “If you leave me here, I swear to god—”

“I’m not going to leave you, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”

“You’ve done it before!” On several occasions, in fact. Once he’d even left Harry sitting at the kitchen table when he’d complained overlong about a dinner Malfoy had, admittedly, worked pretty hard on.

“And I’ll do it again if you don’t pipe down and let me focus.” He wrapped his arms around Harry’s legs. “I’ll be on my way soon enough, don’t you worry your precious little head. Then you can indulge in your nightly wank session in peace.” With a final summoning of effort, he managed to get Harry wholly up onto the mattress, and Harry rolled himself over onto his side, eyes narrowed.

“…How’d you know about that? You’d better not have been hanging around listening at my bedroom door—”

Malfoy rolled his eyes, slicking his hair back from his face and fanning himself with one hand. “Please. I wash your sheets. I know exactly what you get up to the moment I’m out the door each evening.” He then made a face. “…Well, not exactly.” He began the task of arranging Harry properly in bed, pulling back the duvet and stripping Harry down to his undergarments. “How do you manage it, anyway?” He asked this with an academic sort of tone, as if he couldn’t care less if Harry answered or not, but the furtive little flick of his eyes over Harry’s person betrayed his curiosity. Ah, right. He’d always been something of a swot.

“…It’s a spell,” Harry said, not really up to discussing this sort of thing in detail.

“Obviously.” Off came Harry’s shoes and socks, his trousers following thereafter. “Where did you learn it? I’d wager not Hogwarts.”

“Your mum.”

Malfoy pinched one of Harry’s nipples and gave a sharp twist, and Harry yelped in pain. “My mother saved your life. Spare her your childish remarks.”

“Geez! It was a joke, god!” Fuck, that’d hurt. “A friend taught me!”

“Mm, a friend?”

“Not that kind of friend—Neville.”

“Goodness, you and Longbottom? I can’t say I saw that one coming…”

Harry sputtered as his sweatshirt was roughly tugged up over his head. “He was just helping me out—” Wait, no, that still sounded wrong. “I asked him for advice, and he told me about the spell, that’s all!”

“Longbottom’s the last person who ought to be offering instructions on casting to anyone else.”

“Hey, it works, and that’s all that’s important.” So Neville hadn’t had the best marks in school when it came to spellwork, who cared? He had a lovely wife, a respectable business, and he’d really helped Harry out when he’d been in a jam. Neville, he decided, was exempt from the revenge Harry was absolutely going to mete out on Ron and George when this was all over.

Malfoy’s head tilted in thought. “…How does it feel?”

Harry half considered offering another snarky remark, but something stayed his tongue, and he just shrugged. “…A little weird, I guess. It’s just—pressure. No…y’know, texture. Or warmth. And you’ve gotta keep concentrating on it to manage it wandlessly, which kind of defeats the purpose. It’s plenty good for someone desperate enough, but…” He made a face. “…I certainly wouldn’t choose it over a hand. Or, well, other options.”

Malfoy was settled on the edge of the bed now, and while he wasn’t looking at Harry directly, he still seemed very much aware of Harry’s presence. Like he was watching him, out of the corner of his eye, even though he was pretending to focus on Sirius’s bookshelves and the posters of scantily clad Muggle women straddling motorcycles. “So when’s the last time you had a proper wank, then?”

“I—what?” Harry sputtered, wriggling away in a pantomime of recoil. “Piss off, that’s none of your business!”

“That long? Gracious… Is it against department protocol?”

“Get out. You’re off the clock, or didn’t you hear the toll?”

“I heard. Only we were in the middle of a conversation; didn’t seem polite to leave.”

“Certainly hasn’t stopped you before. And our conversation’s over now, so off you go.”

“…I could stay longer, if you liked.”

“Well I don’t like, so leave.” Why was Malfoy being such a knob tonight? God, what if he refused to leave until Harry taught him the spell? His wandless casting was probably shite, so it’d take forever. Or maybe he’d been forced to master a few basic spells back during the war, when Harry had nicked his wand for a time? In which case maybe they could get this over with quickly.

Malfoy exhaled rather loudly, pursing his lips. “Why do you insist on being like this?”

Harry’s brow crinkled in offence. “Like what?”

“Well it’s bleedingly obvious you want me, but you won’t allow yourself to do anything about it. You’re absolutely mad, you know.”

“Wha—that’s the most absurd—”

“I assume you think I wouldn’t allow it, if you did try anything. Or that I’d take it as opportunity to embarrass you—both, I admit, fair concerns, given our history. But if you made it interesting enough—tickled my fancy, as it were—I could be game.”

“I don’t want you,” Harry sputtered. “And that’s a rich accusation, coming from the guy who swore up and down I had an ego the size of the moon back in school.”

“Yes,” Malfoy sighed. “I was a foolish little boy, wasn’t I? About rather a lot of things, but that’s neither here nor there. No, I can definitely see now you’ve got all the confidence of a Flobberworm.” He learned forward, both hands on the mattress as he peered into Harry’s face. “I could help you there.” His gaze then drifted down to Harry’s midsection, and the traitorous tent beginning to form in his pants. “And here.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Harry grit out.

“And I’m better. Shall we prove it?”

“…No,” Harry said, after what he was certain was too long a pause. It was only, Malfoy was really sending him mixed signals, and he couldn’t take that sort of thing right before his regularly scheduled evening wank. “No. I don’t need your ‘help’. I can handle myself.”

“Except you can’t. Handle yourself, that is. Whereas I…” And here, Malfoy did something terribly unfair, if you asked Harry: he peeled back the little modesty flap that had been the only thing sparing Harry’s sanity for the past nearly three weeks. The Malfoy prick was, as boasted, atrociously well-proportioned to Malfoy’s long, lithe frame, and dusky pink at the tip and bollocks, contrasting nicely with his pale complexion, though he’d darkened up quite a bit thanks to his work in the front and back gardens. It hung limp between his thighs—until Malfoy produced his wand, waved it over his crotch, and whispered something under his breath that Harry thought sounded like Finite Incantatem. In an instant, his prick swelled and hardened to an impressive erection that would likely only take a few more strokes to be ready for action. On cue, Malfoy palmed himself, giving a gentle, lazy tug of demonstration. “…Most definitely know my way around a prick.”

Harry wanted to say something snappy, like Takes one to know one or to scoff derisively at the display, so Malfoy knew he wasn’t impressed (lies). Instead, though, what came out was, “…I’m really not in the mood to be cockteased, if it’s all the same to you.” It was a miserable admission, and Harry was going to chalk it up to the Veela pheromones Malfoy was probably pumping out. Yes, that would explain it.

“Why not?” Malfoy asked, entirely too innocently. “You’ve got your fancy new spell now, haven’t you? Or—” He settled on the edge of the mattress, leaning back with his prick standing at pert attention. “—Is it my saying things like this that’s made you realise just how pathetic and unfulfilling that spell really is?” Harry swallowed thickly, and Malfoy seized his opportunity, voice gone husky and eyes hooded. “…If you asked for it, I’d give it. I’m generous that way, but—” He placed one hand on his prick, curling long fingers around himself. “You do have to ask for it.”

He then began to work himself, and Harry short-circuited.

He’d never watched another bloke wank himself—hell, he’d never even kissed another bloke. There was porn, sure, but Harry wasn’t really into that sort of thing. It always felt so fake—just, if you were paying someone to fuck, how did you know it was real? It wasn’t most of the time, right? So he’d never seen the allure—porn, strippers, prostitutes. Butlers in the Buff. It wasn’t for him.

But it was a bit hard to remember this sort of thing ‘wasn’t for him’ when Malfoy was sitting here, on Harry’s bed right in front of him, leaned back on one hand while he worked himself but good with the other. Harry watched with unabashed desire, mouth wet and throat dry, as Malfoy’s wrist snapped on the upstroke and his fingers formed a tight circle through which the head of his cock popped with a loud squelch on the down, leaking like a faulty faucet.

“…And make it quick.”

Harry snapped back to attention, and he knew he had a dumb look on his face, because he felt pretty brainless right about now. “Huh?”

“Make it quick,” Malfoy repeated slowly, though not without some effort. “Because as soon as I’m done—and while I will admit I have enjoyed teasing you, it’s not something I enjoy for myself—then I’ll take my leave.” Up, down, up, down, up—flourish at the crown—down. God, he even wanked like a prig. “So if you really do want me to go, only give me a few more moments, and I’ll be out of your absurdly messy hair.” He closed his eyes, mouth dropping open into a delicate O as he released a laboured exhalation. “But if you’d rather I wanked you to within an inch of your life, then say the word, my dear Mister Potter.”

“Don’t call me that,” Harry said, almost reflexively.

“What?” Malfoy asked, eyes still closed and focused intently on pleasuring himself.

Harry swallowed. “Mister Potter. I’m not a client.”

Malfoy gave a rough, short little laugh. “…Oh, right you are. They generally know what they want and take it. You, by contrast, are dithering. And losing precious time.” He licked his lips, and spat, “Potter.”

Time. Time. Time—for what again? God, what was… It was just, Malfoy was sitting here, stroking his ridiculously beautiful cock (how did you get the head to flare like that? And the veins to be so defined? Was it a product of letting it hang free all the time? Perhaps Harry should look into doing away with his boxers…), with his head thrown back and throat exposed and fuck Harry wasn’t even going to need the spell. He could just sit here…watching…this…

“F—uck…” Malfoy hissed, growing more vocal as his grunts came with increasing urgency and his whining shot up an octave. The pace of his strokes began to grow frenetic and rushed, and the close air of the bedroom was filled with the sound of the slick slide of flesh on flesh. “Oh—oh, shit…Ah…Fuck, that’s—”

“Just—stop, stop, please—shit, okay.” Harry licked his lips, breathing open-mouthed and glassy-eyed. “Okay.” He nodded. “Okay.”

But Malfoy didn’t stop, nor did he slow. He only cocked his head just to the side, enough to catch Harry out of the corner of one eye. His fringe was slicked back, the roots dark with sweat, and he arched a brow. “‘Okay’…?”

“…Don’t go yet,” Harry said, the words wrenched reluctantly from his throat. How was it he still came out of this feeling humiliated, when Malfoy was the one sat here pulling on his prick for show?

Malfoy’s strokes slowed—and then stopped entirely, and a triumphant smile spread over his lips. “…There, was that so very difficult?” He then twisted around onto his hands and knees and began crawling up and over Harry, settling back to sit on Harry’s thighs in very much the same position he’d adopted in the dream-slash-hallucination-slash-fantasy Harry’s arousal-addled brain had concocted.

“Watch,” Malfoy said in soft command as he tugged down Harry’s pants. “Perhaps you’ll learn something.”

He shifted enough to where his prick was pressed up against Harry’s, itself now plump and at firm attention, and wrapped his fingers around the both of them. Bollocks to bollocks, shaft to shaft, and Harry groaned, sinking back against the pillows. He was so warm—burning hot, everywhere they were touching (well, everywhere he could feel). He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him like this, firm and cocksure with steely intent.

He’d imagined what it might be like, being with another bloke this way—someone who knew where a man might most like to be touched, someone who’d touch him the way they touched themselves. Draco Malfoy had certainly never factored into any of those imagined scenarios, but he was here now, regardless, and it was the hottest bloody thing Harry had ever experienced.

He watched, half because Malfoy had told him to and half because he couldn’t have looked away even if he’d wanted to, and it felt downright pornographic, the things Malfoy was doing to him. His own personal Fantasieve, except this was actually happening, because even his wildest imaginings couldn’t have dreamed up this, the sight of his cock, dark and dusky with a bright pink head contrasting against Malfoy’s, just longer and girthier enough to make Harry really wonder about that ‘Veela’ stuff.

Malfoy had his fingers wrapped tight around their cocks, giving a few test strokes to coat them in the slick seeping from both, then eased his weight onto his knees enough he could draw his own cock back, alongside Harry’s in a manner that sent shivers up Harry’s spine. He then pressed back in, until their bollocks came together, warm and firm, and held there for a beat. He released a long exhalation, eyes fluttering shut, and Harry could feel him tense, thighs pressing tight against Harry’s.

Harry squirmed, eager for more—for someone who didn’t like to tease himself, Malfoy was taking this achingly slowly. Who was he trying to impress? Surely not Harry, whose brain was already running three minutes behind schedule and racing to catch up.

Malfoy’s eyes shot open, and he gave a warning squeeze—tight enough Harry stilled. Harry tilted his head as if to say well?, and Malfoy gave a responding roll of his hips that drew a soft oh from Harry. Malfoy’s lip curled—not in a superior way, more a yeah, that’s what I thought way, and Harry settled back again, giving himself over to sheer sensation. Malfoy continued to rock atop him, their cocks sliding together, his movements coming faster and jerkier. Shortly, he was executing punishing thrusts against Harry, arched over him with beads of sweat dappling Harry’s chest. Harry’s cock was a bundle of nerve endings, balls hard as walnuts, and each stroke of Malfoy’s cock against his had him huffing and grunting wordless pleas of fuck, yes, there.

Maybe Malfoy somehow managed to interpret these monosyllabic entreaties, or maybe he was just of a similar mind, but in a sudden burst of activity, he was rutting against Harry with his whole body, the bed creaking and rattling beneath them. He announced his approaching climax in high, desperate tones that stuttered and keened, and with a rattling shudder, he released, painting his hand and Harry’s prick and stomach with long, spurting lines, until Harry’s chest looked not entirely unlike Malfoy’s, covered in lacy ‘scars’. The pulse of Malfoy’s cock against his own was enough to draw Harry’s own climax out, and with a loud grunt, he spilled as well, release dribbling over Malfoy’s fingers to pool in his navel. Harry’s everything continued to vibrate for several long moments after, and his and Malfoy’s breathing mingled in great heaving pants.

At length, conscious of their mutual releases cooling on his skin, Harry said, breathless, “…You were right. I did learn something.”

Malfoy lifted his head with obvious effort, squinting at Harry in the failing light. “…What?”

Harry couldn’t help the smug little grin that tugged at his lips. “You whine as much when you’re about to come as I do.”

Malfoy reached forward and flicked his nipple—the same one he’d pinched before, still sore—and laughed (he could laugh? And not just snicker derisively? Would wonders never cease…), “Fuck you.”

Harry frowned down at their cocks, still nestled together between them. “I always wondered…”

Malfoy arched his back, stretching his muscles like a cat who’d been curled up too long in the sun. “About what?”

“…Why you never got hard.” It must have come out a little petulantly, for Malfoy glanced down at him, the corners of his lips curling into a knowing little grin, and Harry wished to every higher power he could think of that he had strength enough in his lower half to toss Malfoy off onto his arse.

Perhaps one of them heard his plea, for Malfoy gave an elegant one-shoulder shrug. “A useful little chastity spell. It’s dreadfully difficult to dust at half-mast, after all.”

Harry processed this confession—did that mean, then, that Malfoy had needed it? Or was it standard protocol for Butlers in the Buff? Had he always had the spell activated—or only once he realised he might need it? And why the hell did Harry care? Well, he didn’t, not really—it was only, it was nice knowing Malfoy hadn’t been entirely unmoved by his own unwarranted teasing. At least two were playing these games now.

The question was…why now? What had pushed Malfoy to actually participate—past 7—in a scene he’d derided but a few days earlier? Harry wanted to think he was just that desirable—enough that someone who’d utterly loathed him for the past decade-plus would doff his heretofore distaste for all things Potter and decide to get their rocks off together. But he knew that couldn’t be the case—he was no troll, of this he’d been assured, but he wasn’t exactly Witch Weekly’s Hottest Bachelor. He was on the shorter side of things, he had far too many scars (even for those enamoured with the most prominent one), he’d never grown out of that lithe Seeker’s build to put on a decent degree of mass, despite Auror boot camp, and Malfoy had a point: his hair was just a mess. Calling it a ‘bird’s nest’ was an insult to birds.

So no, he was pretty sure it wasn’t his dashing good looks and rakish charm that had drawn Malfoy into his bed.

He frowned up at Malfoy, who was carefully spelling away the leavings decorating his hand and Harry’s stomach. “…Why?”

“Well, it gets in the way—and it’s just indecorous, puttering around with your prick at attention—”

“No,” Harry said, lifting his head and fixing Malfoy with a look that said he wasn’t looking for more deflection. “Why?”

And Malfoy sat there, back folded into a hunch as he clenched his fists, lips pursed tight. “Because,” he said, “evidently I haven’t grown out of making terrible choices around you.” He then eased onto his knees and dismounted, hopping back down and snatching up his forgotten modesty flap. “Good night,” he said, dismissive, and was out the door before Harry could ask him to at least draw up the covers.

❖❖❖

The next day, it was as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

Malfoy showed up, promptly at 7, clad once more in his modesty flap and absolutely nothing else, and began the business of preparing Harry for the day. His landlord issues evidently having been put to bed, breakfast was a fantastic little spread, and perhaps to make up for the pathetic offering the previous morning, Malfoy added a platter of fried eggs he’d managed to mould into fancy shapes like stars and flowers and hearts. More mental notes in preparation for Harry’s future nannying efforts were being made. Teddy and the future Granger-Weasley (Weasley-Granger? He always got it mixed up) child were going to dub him the best Godfather ever.

Harry asked to be left to read in Buckbeak’s old room, which had been turned into a sort of solar and got lovely light in the afternoons, while Malfoy resigned himself to a day spent washing all the bedding in the house, which was quite a task and not one Harry envied. Some of those sheets hadn’t been washed once in the four years he’d lived here now (and however long before he’d moved in after leaving Hogwarts), and he could only imagine the musty, dusty odour baked into the linens by now.

Malfoy popped out before lunch to restock the coldbox now the charm had been restored, so dinner was held ‘on schedule’, and Harry spent the final hour of Malfoy’s workday digesting the scrumptious shepherd’s pie and treacle tart that Malfoy had somehow carved out the time to prepare. He could feel his waistline beginning to balloon, so it was just as well Malfoy would be gone in another tendays, leaving Harry to subsist on crackers and cheese for the remainder of his recuperation. Maybe by the time he was back in fighting form he’d have birthed this food baby. He was starting to sympathise with Hermione.

The hour was nearing 7 when Malfoy retrieved Harry in his Levi-chair and began the long trek up to the fourth floor, and he deposited Harry in his bed with little fanfare and no backtalk. Harry had to admit, he was…well, kind of a little disappointed. Malfoy’s Chastity Charm was working like a dream, and he’d barely shared so much as three words with Harry the entire day. He’d expected more frustrating flirtations, awkward and unwarranted touching meant only to rile Harry up while he was helpless to do anything about it—until the end of the day, when they’d find themselves up here once more, and perhaps one thing might lead to another.

Not that he necessarily wanted any of that to happen—it was just convenient was all. And it felt amazing. And they’d strangely worked really well together. And all right, fine, he did want it to happen again. And he wasn’t about to let Malfoy accuse him of dithering again, so he said, as Malfoy situated the pillows behind his head, “Should we not have?”

“Of course we shouldn’t have,” Malfoy said, irritatingly calm.

Wow. Well, he had a point, but that had been a bit harsh. “…I mean, I didn’t exactly force you.”

“I never said you did.” He moved over to Harry’s wardrobe. “Socks on or off?”

“…On, I guess. It’s getting cold.”

Malfoy hmmed and grabbed a pair Mrs Weasley had knit for Harry last Christmas after she’d caught him wearing ones with holes in the toes.

As Malfoy slipped them on him, Harry said, “You’re a difficult sort to read, you know that?”

“Am I? I don’t think so.”

“Oh, you’re an open book, then?”

“If you speak my language, yes.”

“Ah, sorry, I never picked up egotistical prick in my extracurriculars.”

“Well you shouldn’t have had to—it’s your native tongue.”

Harry rolled his eyes and let his head settle back onto the pillow. “Listen, I dunno what your deal is, but you’re being a total—”

The clock began to toll, and Harry mouthed an obscenity to himself as Malfoy pulled away.

“Drat. You’ll have to tell me in the morning what a total blank I’m being.”

“And I’m gonna. I’m making a mental note as we speak, so—what—what are you doing?”

Malfoy tugged on the bow holding his modesty flap in place, and it fluttered to the ground. With a whispered Finite Incantatem, clear now that Harry was listening for it, his cock gave a gentle bounce and began inflating like a balloon. “What does it look like?”

“Well, I mean, it looks—” It looks like Christmas, he didn’t say, but he kind of wanted to. “You’re sending very mixed messages, you realise?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Just—you barely made eye contact with me all day—”

“You said you didn’t want me to treat you like a client. So I didn’t. But now I’m off the clock, and I’d really like to take care of this before I leave. Even with the Chastity Charm, it’s still uncomfortable.” He held his arms out. “…Want to help me make another terrible choice?”

Harry swallowed thickly, eyes comically wide, and nodded, bottom half already squirming. “F-fuck, right, yeah, get these off me. Why’d you put socks on me?”

“You said you wanted them. Wouldn’t want the Chosen Toes catching frostbite.”

Malfoy climbed onto the bed, straddling Harry as he’d done the previous night, and slipping his fingers under the hem of Harry’s pyjama bottoms as he shimmied them down and off. Harry’s cock was already well on its way to being up for anything, and he wondered what Malfoy was in the mood for. Had he been thinking about this all day, then? God, why did Harry have to be attracted to such an absolute arsehole? It was enough to drive him ‘round the twist. These orgasms had better be worth it.

Malfoy didn’t retake his seat atop Harry’s thighs this time, though, hanging down around his shins and slowly, carefully working himself as he took in the sight of Harry with an appraising eye.

“You gotta stare?” Harry grumbled, trying to shift himself around so his everything wasn’t on display—pointless though it was.

“You told me to ‘get these off’ you—why, if not to let me appreciate the view?”

“Because there’s only about a dozen other things we could be doing that’re a lot more enjoyable than sitting around gawking?”

“Oh?” He cocked his head. “Like what?”

This bastard loved to hear Harry beg for it, didn’t he? Of course he did—it let him claw back that sense of superiority he’d felt at Hogwarts for those precious few years before the war had struck him close to home and suddenly schoolyard animosities hadn’t seemed like such a big deal anymore. On the bright side, he did seem down for most anything Harry might ask for, if only he had the balls to say so, so why not shoot for the moon?

Harry licked his lips. “Well. I, um. I haven’t—been sucked on in quite a while. So there’s that.”

Malfoy’s brows sprang up. “…A bold request. I could bite it off.”

Shite. Maybe that hadn’t been a smart move. “I…would leave you a very poor review if you did.”

Malfoy grinned, white teeth peeking out. “I’m on thin enough ice as it is, that would probably get me sacked—I shall have to try and be very careful then, won’t I?”

And in saying so, he bent forward, placing himself at eye level with Harry’s prick, and took it in hand, proceeding to give Harry what was, hands down, the absolutely best head he’d ever received.

Not that he had too many occasions for comparison, mind, but the point was, it was fucking amazing, and why had he waited so long to get with blokes? Sure, there was the public perception issue, but he’d never particularly cared about that sort of thing—it was just going to be a chore to deal with, that was all. If getting it out of the way meant there was more of this in his future, though…well, it was lighting a fire under his arse, that was for sure.

Malfoy was atrociously talented with his tongue—this, Harry had kind of already known. Only now it was being used to give Harry pleasure instead of a headache, and he liked that a lot better, he decided. Where had he learned to do this? How did you learn? Practice, probably. Private tutors. Lots…and lots…of extracurricular study…

Harry felt his climax approaching embarrassingly quickly this time, and he hoped Malfoy would take it as a compliment and leave off any teasing. Only, what had he expected when he nearly swallowed Harry whole and worked metaphorical magic with Harry’s balls?

The polite thing, Harry surmised, was to let Malfoy know he was nearly at his limit. So he did so with a strangled, “Erp,” by way of announcement, and then he was seizing in place, arching up off the bed and shoving himself down Malfoy’s throat as he shot his load.

Malfoy recoiled immediately, hacking and coughing and rubbing at his throat. “Good—gad—Potter—” he wheezed, spittle (and probably other bodily fluids) flying everywhere. “It’s common courtesy to speak before you spill!”

Harry just lay there, particularly boneless now, and grinned loopily up at the ceiling. “I mean, I said erp. Thought you said you spoke egotistical prick.”

Malfoy wiped a hand over his mouth, grimacing. “See if I ever offer that again.”

Oh. Fuck. Harry’s head shot up. “Aw, c’mon—I’m sorry, all right? It just snuck up on me, when you did that thing with your tongue.” Really, it’d been all the things he’d been doing with his tongue that had done Harry in, but his thoughts were still scattered and muzzy, so it was the best he could muster right now.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Malfoy said, though the bite in his tone was gentled, and Harry thought he caught him grinning behind his hand just a bit self-satisfactorily. “Well, I’ll have you make it up to me.”

“What?” Harry said, a distinct quaver in his voice, and Malfoy definitely heard it, because he gave a soft little snort.

“Make a fist.”

“Uh…what for? I can hold a quill, sure, but much more is kinda…” Harry doubted his fine motor skills were going to be sufficient for whatever daft idea Malfoy was entertaining.

“Oh—fuck, that’s right. Well then, you won’t mind if I borrow this, will you?” He then crawled over Harry, drawing his right arm down and moulding his fingers into a tight channel that—

“Oh.”

“I don’t trust you not to bite it off, sorry, so I’ll make do with this.” Malfoy then braced his thighs and slipped his prick right into Harry’s grip, curling his own fingers around Harry’s to hold fast. He drew out, exhaling slowly as he did so, then drove in again. He watched, and Harry watched, and it was a flipping tragedy Harry couldn’t be the one making it happen, all on his own. He wanted to twitch his fingers right when Malfoy pulled out, give a little pinch at the crown and spread some of the leaking slick down the shaft as he dove back in. He wanted to feel how tight Malfoy liked to be squeezed, find the bleeding edge of his pleasure and keep him there.

Watching, though… Watching was pretty good, too. He got to see Malfoy break apart and know he was, at least, fractionally responsible for it.

Malfoy had his eyes closed, lips drawn back and breathing harshly through his mouth as he fucked Harry’s hand. He’d already been in a fit state after suckling on Harry, and it was clear it wouldn’t take him long to get himself off this way, as he claimed to dislike a drawn-out tease (Harry had his doubts about that, but that was for another time). Was this what he looked like when he really fucked someone? Taut and tense and closed off as he chased after his own pleasure? It felt a bit impersonal, like he only cared about himself, and whoever he was with was little more than a hole in which he could lose himself. Maybe Malfoy liked porn, then.

“Speak before you spill,” Harry said, apropos of nothing.

“What?” Malfoy said, distracted, and his eyes fluttered open as he searched for Harry in the low light. “What?” he repeated, exasperated now.

“It’s common courtesy, I hear.”

“What the hell are you—”

“I’m saying tell me when you’re close.” He spoke in a tone that demanded Malfoy look him in the eye and show he understood—and Malfoy did, nodding weakly. There was to be no getting around the fact he was doing this with Harry, and if Harry had to remember it, well Malfoy would have to as well. So he held Malfoy’s gaze, intense and demanding as Malfoy lost himself in the slick, tight slide of Harry’s grip.

At length, though, it turned into something of a staring contest, as Malfoy was taking his damn sweet time getting off, and Harry said, soft and close so that Malfoy had to lean in to catch it, “Got more stamina than I might’ve given you credit for.”

Malfoy was not as easily goaded these days as he once had been, though. “There’s such a thing as extending one’s enjoyment.”

Harry had to chuckle at that. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone make an excuse for taking longer than usual. I thought you didn’t like teasing yourself?” Perhaps the humour was infectious, for Malfoy’s lips curled into something resembling a smile. Harry wondered if there was more to it, though, and felt necessarily like he hadn’t done much work at all himself in this encounter. “…Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

“Yes, well, I knew I’d be doing most of the heavy lifting.”

“Also sorry for not…you know.”

“I’ll get you back at some point, fret not.”

Harry’s brows quirked up. “Not sure if that’s a promise or a threat.”

“Bit of both, really.” He released a hiss of pleasure, biting his lip, and his thighs spread wider as he changed the angle at which he made his thrusts, bucking a bit more wildly and off-rhythm. “Fuck…”

“Close?” Harry asked, and Malfoy nodded. “Finally. Snap it up, then. I’m tired, and you’re keeping me from my precious beauty sleep.”

Malfoy snorted, leaning in close enough that, if he’d wanted to—if Harry had let him—they might have kissed. They didn’t, though, with Malfoy only saying in a voice husky with threatening promise, “Far be it from me to deny the Chosen One this simple request, then.”

With one hand braced against Harry’s chest and the other wrapped tight around Harry’s grip on his prick, Malfoy began thrusting with abandon, the mattress creaking and the headboard thumping against the wall in a frenetic beat. Harry imagined, for a moment, that it wasn’t his hand Malfoy was manically rutting into but Harry himself, where he could clench and tug and pull and be part of this, instead of an ogling onlooker in his own bed. Though he was himself still recovering from his own head-spinning orgasm, his cock gave an eager little twitch, and Harry knew that if this happened again (it would, it had to), he wasn’t going to be content sitting on the sidelines and letting Malfoy do all the hard work.

It wasn’t a proper game, after all, with just one Seeker in the air.

“C’mon,” Harry said in gruff encouragement. “Finish.”

It was like he’d said the magic word, and with a final few punching thrusts and a choked whine of completion, Malfoy’s body seized once and then shuddered. Harry kept watching his face, drinking in all those expressions he’d never seen nor expected to see cross Draco Malfoy’s features. Every little wrinkle and line, the prominent flush to his cheeks, pink tongue darting out and jaw hanging open as he panted, open mouthed, from overexertion. There were beads of sweat forming at his hairline, and his fringe was hanging down, obscuring his eyes. He looked a mess. It was a ridiculously attractive thing.

Harry desperately wanted to see more of it, this beautiful disaster.

“Took you long enough.”

“Mm, take it as a compliment.” Malfoy glanced over his shoulder at the clock. “Shite, it’s nearly gone 8…”

“Hope the lost sleep was worth ‘extending your enjoyment’.”

Malfoy shrugged. “It generally is.”

“Generally?”

Malfoy did not take the bait as Harry fished for more information, only sliding off the bed and snatching up his modesty flap. With a flick of his wand, produced from its pocket dimension, he cleaned Harry in a flash—though he was still pantsless.

“Oi—do you mind? It’s chilly like this.”

“Don’t worry. I left your socks on.” He then tipped a bow, one hand on the doorknob. “Good night, Potter.”

As Harry lay there, splayed out flat on his back, nude from the waist down but for a colourful pair of socks, he was comforted by the thought that he was definitely going to bite it off next time he had the chance.

❖❖❖

Secure in the knowledge that though Malfoy might ignore him during the workday, things would be different once the clock struck 7, Harry found he was much more capable of concentrating on other matters without the niggling worry that he’d only imagined the fantastic sex he’d had not twenty-four hours ago sitting there in the back of his mind.

He finished off the latest batch of paperwork from Robards in record time—thanks in no small part to the Dictaquill he’d finally found, still in its box from when he’d received it as a gift from Hermione on completing his Junior Auror training (how was it all her gifts were generally work-related?)—and nearly ran poor Pigwidgeon ragged corresponding back and forth with Hermione herself in a rapid conversation concerning baby names (Hermione wanted Jeanie, after her mother, and Ron wanted Molly after his, but Harry confessed he kind of liked Rose, as so many of the important women in his life seemed to have been named after flowers: Lily [of course], Narcissa [strangely], and yes, even Petunia after a fashion). What was left of the afternoon was then spent dictating a reminder to Healer McCormick that yes he was starting to get feeling back in his toes by this point and no he couldn’t make an appointment this week, but St Mungo’s should try reaching out again next week, as surely he’d be able to clear his schedule then.

He wolfed down dinner with silent apologies to Malfoy, who’d clearly worked hard on the chicken tikka (where had he picked up these skills? It was difficult to imagine the Malfoys dining on Indian every Friday night.). It was only, now he had something to look forward to, and with the day nearly over, his patience was fraying, and he was all but bouncing in his Levi-chair as Malfoy pushed him up to the fourth floor.

He let Malfoy go through the motions of preparing him for bed—socks included—though his eye kept drifting to the clock on the wall. 6:58…6:59…how could sixty seconds seem so interminable? Was the second-hand actually going backwards, or was he imagining things?

Harry winced as something struck him in the forehead. “Staring at it won’t make 7 come any more quickly.”

Harry glared up at Malfoy. “Yeah, well you’d know all about not coming quickly, wouldn’t you?”

“I sense you meant that as an insult, but I confess it didn’t quite feel that way.”

And shit, he had a point. Harry was pants at this sort of back-and-forth quipping. Best to change topics. “So I was thinking—”

Malfoy reached for the covers. “That’s dangerous in your condition—I’d avoid it if I were you.”

“Fuck off.”

He let the covers fall over Harry, then turned on his heel, showing him his arse. “Fine, I will—”

“Wait, no, come on!” The clock finally let loose those beautiful gongs. “Look! It’s 7! You’re off the clock!”

Malfoy had one hand resting on the knob, and he threw a casual backwards glance at Harry over his shoulder. “Indeed. That generally means I’m free to do as I please. I thought to curl up in front of the fireplace I don’t have with a snifter of Firewhisky I don’t own.”

“Well, I have to admit, that sounds like a stacked evening you’ve got there. I wouldn’t want to horn in on that action…”

Malfoy turned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you saying you’ve got a better proposal?”

“An indecent one, at least.”

Heaving a dramatic sigh and making a poor attempt to hide what Harry thought was a rather goofy grin, Malfoy hopped up onto the mattress and began absently untying his modesty flap. “And how, pray tell, shall I be servicing you this evening?”

“You make it sound like such a chore,” Harry said in good humour, Malfoy’s goofy grin somehow catching. “But like I said, I was thinking…” When Malfoy had no witty rejoinder this time, Harry licked his lips, and said in a garbled rush, “Maybewecouldsuckoneachotheratthesametime?”

Malfoy stared at him blankly, and Harry could see the gears turning behind his eyes as he struggled to parse Harry’s incoherent babble. “I got…maybe three percent of that…”

Harry sighed. “I said that maybe…you know…we could s-suck on each other. At the same time. Might…” He shrugged—and then remembered he couldn’t control his shoulders, so nothing happened. “Be fun. I dunno.”

“…I’m more in the ‘I dunno’ camp, personally. Have you…” Malfoy gave him a once over. “…Ever done anything like that before? Not even at the same time—I mean at all?”

“Well—no. But it doesn’t seem complicated. And I’ve had it done to me a few times.”

“A few times.”

“…Couple times. Twice, okay. Okay, it was twice. Counting yesterday. The point is I’m a quick learner when it’s something I’m keen on. And you may find I have natural talent, who knows?”

Malfoy scrubbed at his face. “…Your first attempt, and you want to hamstring yourself by having someone else trying to get you off at the same time.” He sighed, fixing Harry with an unreadable look. “…You really are Harry Potter. Never do anything by halves.”

“No, in fact I think I’m doing this by doubles, if my maths check out.” He raised his brows hopefully. “…So? What can it hurt?”

“Quite a lot, actually—particularly for beginners…” Malfoy shook his head, letting his modesty flap drop by the wayside, and began crawling over Harry to manoeuvre himself properly. “Here, roll onto your side.”

“Why?”

“Because I confess I’m not sure I’ll have the restraint not to shove myself down your throat if I’m straddling you. There’s also the risk I might simply collapse atop you once I’ve finished. I don’t expect you’d enjoy either experience, no matter how skilled I might be at distracting you.”

Harry supposed he had a point and wriggled as well as he could with Malfoy’s help until he’d shifted onto his side, with Malfoy arranging himself in the opposite direction. It was a tiny bit awkward, as Malfoy was a couple of inches taller than Harry by this point, so cocks weren’t entirely in alignment with mouths—but they could make it work. They would make it work. Harry was tired of sitting on his arse and letting Malfoy have his way with him—at least this way, he could wrestle back a smidgen of control and show Malfoy he could damn well hold his own in these encounters. Why it was so terribly important Malfoy think him a fair and capable partner, he wasn’t sure, but well, he couldn’t have Malfoy thinking he was every bit as selfish and self-centred as he’d considered him to be back in school, right?

Of course right. That made sense.

He’d been just about to ask if they ought to start, or if there was some sort of countdown needed in these situations, when Malfoy wrapped his fingers around Harry’s prick and began summarily sucking him off without warning. “Oh—shit—” Harry said, and blacked out for a good ten seconds before he recalled he was meant to be doing something now. What had it been? Ah right—servicing the handsome one-eyed fellow lying here before him.

It was certainly not the blowjob Malfoy had probably been expecting—for one, Harry could barely fit more than a couple of inches into his mouth before his gag reflex reminded him it existed and didn’t appreciate him trying to swallow what felt like a foot-long cock, and for another, it was damn difficult giving head when all you had was your head. Harry’s neck ached after only a few minutes, and he was overly conscious of precisely what he was meant to be doing with his tongue and teeth and lips. He could feel the prick plumping in his mouth as he pressed in and drew back out, and he tried to give a flourish with his tongue when he reached the tip, but he was sure he was making a hash of this whole business—helped not a whit by the fact that Malfoy’s job on his own prick was dreadfully distracting.

He applied just the right pressure on the drawback, cheeks hollowed and tongue stabbing at Harry’s leaking slit in a manner that felt divine, his hips shaking reflexively in pleasure on each pass, and those fingers, wet and slick, formed a tight channel that had Harry seeing stars.

God, Malfoy had been right—there was no way someone as new to all this as Harry was going to be able to walk and chew Drooble’s Best at the same time. But he owed Malfoy, because all in all Malfoy’d been a pretty good sport about Harry’s condition and allowed him to get off multiple times without asking for much more than Harry’s hand to use as he pleased. More to the point, Harry wanted to do this—and when he had his mind set on something, he generally ignored all good advice until he’d seen it through.

So he went after Malfoy’s cock with avarice, greedily servicing the thing in places he knew felt lovely—laving his tongue along the great vein, suckling at the tip, kissing the flared head, drawing it as deep into his throat as he could possibly manage without embarrassing the both of them. His voice would probably be shot tomorrow, but that very thought kind of turned Harry on even further.

He could hear Malfoy vocalizing around Harry’s own cock and surmised that his efforts must be doing something, because he wasn’t drawing off to yell at Harry to cut that out, so he kept at it, and—

Was it his imagination, or was Malfoy actually stepping up his own efforts? Was th—

Was this arsehole racing him?

Oh fuck it all, of course he was, and now that Harry knew that, well obviously he had to get Malfoy off first, because his pride was on the line. He willed himself to hold on, not to give in to the fact Malfoy was trying to suck his brains out through his cock, and focus—focus—on the task at figurative hand.

Tight, hot, wet, hard—pressure—Malfoy. Treat this beautiful specimen as it ought to be treated, show Malfoy he wasn’t a completely lost cause. Show—prove—

“F—uck…” Harry hissed, drawing off and panting open mouthed as everything suddenly crested, quite without his realising, and he was bucking up once more into Malfoy’s mouth. Perhaps more alert to signs of Harry’s impending release now after the disastrous previous evening, Malfoy abruptly drew back—though only just to the tip, letting Harry’s leavings pool on his tongue before driving back down until he’d milked Harry dry. He then pulled back, lips pursed, and gave an exaggerated, smacking swallow.

Harry gaped, dumbfounded at the display—and so missed Malfoy’s prick tensing and pulsing, realising too late he too was about to release. The lacy white lines painted his face, dripping into his mouth and leaving him sputtering in disgust. “Wh—oh god, pllbt!” He buried his face in the sheets, twisting and squirming in his struggle to wipe his face, and Malfoy had the nerve to laugh, collapsing back onto his elbows.

He daintily dabbed at his lips. “Not much fun when someone spurts right in your face, is it?”

Harry made a mocking sound under his breath, then with a great effort rolled himself onto his back once more, staring up at Malfoy. Without his glasses, Malfoy had a soft blur to him, limned in a warm glow. Angelic, almost—Veela, more likely. Either way, inappropriate for someone who strove to be the biggest bastard in the room.

And Harry’d just done his level best to swallow said bastard’s prick whole. He cleared his throat, which twinged now—he’d rubbed it a bit raw in his introduction to competitive fellatio. “So, er…how was I?”

Malfoy closed his eyes, tongue darting out to wet his lips and then slipping back into his mouth. He sighed.

“I see I’ve left you speechless,” Harry said, when this seemed to be the extent of his response. “I appreciate the compliment.”

Malfoy gave him a wry look. “I’m only trying to decide how best to phrase myself so as not to hurt your feelings.”

“Draco Malfoy cares about my feelings? Who are you, and what have you done with my pain in the arse?”

“Shocking as it may seem, yes, I kind of do care about your feelings.” His expression went a bit funny, and so did Harry’s insides—because he sounded almost genuine, like he truly meant it, until he added, “You still need to write my review after all.”

“Dictaquill, transcribe: To whom it may concern, please be advised that my Butler in the Buff, Draco—what’s your middle name again?”

“Lucius,” Malfoy drawled.

“Of course—Draco Luscious Malfoy has absolutely no respect for the afterglow. I think you ought to sack him, or else give me my money back.”

Malfoy snickered. “If you think that’s the worst review I’ve ever had…” He shook his head, then gave Harry a sidelong look, shrugging. “You could stand some practice is all.”

“Right, well I’ll just get to training with all the other Butlers in the Buff I spend my evenings with and get back to you, shall I?”

“Hey, we all must start somewhere. Even I had my…hiccoughs, shall we say, as a young cocksucker.”

“Oh yeah? Well that sounds like there’s an exciting tale there.”

“I’m your Butler—not your Nanny. Go bother someone else if it’s a bedtime story you’re after.”

And Harry had learned by now that if it was a story Malfoy had actually wanted to share, then he would have, so not wanting to end the evening on a sour note, he let the matter drop. There were other things he was far more curious about, after all.

“So, are you…you know?”

Malfoy propped himself up on one elbow, brows furrowed in amusement. “I’m aware I shouldn’t expect eloquence so fresh on the heels of an orgasm but you’ll need to find your tongue if you’re hoping to have a conversation.”

Harry rolled his eyes. This one always had to be difficult. “Are you—I mean, would you consider yourself…bi?”

“Hah!” Malfoy barked. “Absolutely not.”

Harry frowned, puzzled. “But you—oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” He sighed, squirming a bit to flop down alongside Harry and stared up at the ceiling with him. “…I tried. With Pansy. Just the one time. Fourth year. Puberty had had its way with her over the summer holiday, and she insisted on wearing shirts five times too small for what I will admit was a very impressive bosom. She let me touch them. That did nothing for me. Then she grabbed my cock—and that did something for me, but only long enough to make us both uncomfortable. I had to take her to the Yule Ball as an apology and let her step on my toes the whole night through. I never bothered with girls again.” He cocked his head to the side so he and Harry were staring at each other. Shockingly, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as Harry had feared. It was nice, even. This close, Malfoy almost looked human. “…I confess this isn’t really something I saw coming from you, though I suppose I ought to have. You’ve always favoured butch women.”

“Oi,” Harry said, immediately regretting his moment’s weakness. “I have not.” He didn’t know why this accusation offended him so, but he felt compelled to defend his former paramours.

Malfoy began ticking off on his fingers. “Chang. Weasley. Diggory.”

All right, now he was just being ridiculous. Again. “Cedric wasn’t a woman—”

“Mm, but you did favour him.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest—then slowly let it shut again. This was a part of his formative years he hadn’t yet had occasion to really ruminate upon, and he certainly didn’t want to get into it right now, with Draco Malfoy.

The clock on the wall tolled 7:30, and Malfoy groaned before heaving himself upright again.

“Wait—” Harry said, the word leaping from his lips before he’d realised it—and Malfoy did, turning to gaze down upon him with a curiously guarded look.

Harry licked his lips. “Um.” Right, find his tongue. “…We could, um. Go another round. If you wanted.” They were adults, and it wasn’t like there was a limit of one orgasm per night.

Malfoy gave a soft snort of derision, as if Harry were being very silly. “I have to be up early.”

“Well, you could stay. Then you’d already be here. Two birds with one stone—very efficient.”

Malfoy regarded him for a long moment, then slowly shifted around to lean over Harry, face cast in shadow by the low lamps lit around the room. “And what would we do with all that extra time?” He lifted his brows. “Reminisce? Perhaps about the time you got me into detention by flaunting curfew? Or the time you sicced your Patronus on me? Or the time you gave me these…?” He swept a hand over his chest, exposing his neck and the gruesome patchwork of scars leading down to his navel.

Harry didn’t flinch this time, though. He’d seen those scars every day for three weeks now—had had plenty of time to reflect on them, who’d put them there, why they’d been put there, and why he wasn’t allowed to flinch from them anymore. This wasn’t Malfoy genuinely guilting him over a horrible mistake made years ago—it was deflection only. He was trying to goad Harry, for reasons he couldn’t understand, into a fight. Into telling Malfoy to piss off, because they’d done what they always did and Harry wasn’t allowed to ask for more.

Except Harry was greedy, and Malfoy was too, he just sometimes needed permission to want things, because again: war games.

The trick was to give Malfoy something he wanted so much, he granted himself permission. So Harry said, casual as he could manage, “I was thinking you might fuck me.”

Malfoy looked like he’d swallowed a frog, but he quickly recovered, saying smooth as anything but with a distinct quaver in his voice, “Is that what you’re into, then?”

“I don’t actually know what I’m into. Aside from, you know, the general concept of orgasms as a whole. But I figure it’d be hard to do much of anything myself, given the current state of affairs.” He nodded to his lower half, and Malfoy gave him an appreciative once over—then brought his eyes back up to Harry, a wicked glint in them.

“Oh, my dear Mister Potter—on that you are very wrong. You simply need an amenable and enthusiastic partner, willing to put in the work.”

Harry didn’t really know what he was getting at, so he asked, “And…are you such a partner?”

“Well…” Malfoy said, reaching forward to smooth back a few stray strands of Harry’s hair that had escaped the bird’s nest. “You’ve witnessed my work ethic these past few weeks—you tell me. Do I seem the type to put my whole back into a job, to really work it over, to put in sweat and effort until my client is satisfied with the results?”

Harry swallowed, sensitive bits waking up once more. “I’ve gotta admit, you strike me as a, uh, model employee…”

There was a quiet, empty beat, and Malfoy held his gaze. “…You know who I am. What I’ve done.”

Which was rich, because: “Have I ever pretended otherwise?” He hadn’t intended to, if it’d come off that way. Sure, maybe on occasion he needed a gentle reminder—after all, the Malfoy he’d been forced to interact with for the past three weeks sometimes seemed a different beast altogether from the one Harry’d gone to school with. But they weren’t. They weren’t different beasts, they weren’t different sides—they were one and the same person, with only a handful of years and formative life experiences separating them. Just like Harry was probably still Potter, that knob from Hogwarts who thought his shit didn’t stink.

So yeah, Harry knew who Malfoy was. And Malfoy knew who he was. They were neither one of them pretending, no blind eyes turned, and though they’d learned somewhere along the way to play nice (to play very nice) together…they still knew. That was kind of the point: they were here despite that knowledge. “…Besides, I imagine I could say the same to you. You’re the one who can leave and find other entertainment for the evening any time he likes.”

Malfoy huffed. “And miss the chance to be Harry Potter’s first?”

“Hey, who said you’d be my first?” he said, knowing it was bleedingly obvious.

“…Right. You’re telling me you’ve fucked a man but never sucked a cock?” Harry made a face, knowing he’d been caught out, and Malfoy leaned in, close enough to kiss—though he never did. He was finicky like that. Maybe if Harry pressed for it, he’d do it—but no one wanted to be the first one to ask for a kiss. It was somehow more intimate than fucking. …Huh, maybe that was why. “So new…” Malfoy said, voice soft with threat. “I could ruin you.”

Oh, now those sensitive bits were definitely up and ready to go. “…When you say it like that it kind of makes me want you to ruin me.”

Malfoy snorted, shaking his head. “You’ll live to regret those words,” he said, pulling his wand from its pocket dimension and proceeding to cast a volley of spells, only half of which Harry actually caught and even fewer of which he’d ever actually heard. He kind of liked that Malfoy was using magic here—he never did when he was on the job, so it was a nice little reminder that this wasn’t part of the services offered by a Butler in the Buff.

He didn’t necessarily think Malfoy was doing this because of his line of work—only…Harry guiltily (greedily) wanted to think that Malfoy wouldn’t move on to his next client in the coming week and slip immediately into their bed too. Malfoy had assured him that he was only dispatched to clients who were old or infirm—or else who hated his family name and requested him simply for the humiliation factor—but who knew what the future might bring if it turned out he’d impressed a client like Harry?

“Oi, focus up, Potter—this isn’t charity work. I could just as easily be soaking in a nice bubble bath at home, you know.”

“Could be soaking in a nice bubble bath here, too.”

Malfoy seemed to realise this was, in fact, the case—then shook his head. “Don’t distract me. You’ll regret it later if I’m not as thorough as can be.” He cast another spell under his breath that Harry didn’t catch—but he immediately knew what it did as he was left feeling…oddly refreshed and empty.

“Oh…wow. That’s. That’s a weird one.”

“No one said buggery was glamorous.”

No, indeed they hadn’t, though Harry had never given it all that much thought, admittedly. Something occurred to him here, though: “Wait, I thought I was going to get to do the fucking?”

Malfoy gave an ambivalent little shrug. “We can, if you’re insistent, but I confess…” He reached for Harry’s cock—and Harry shivered. Malfoy’s fingers were coated in a slick, slimy substance, which he slathered over Harry’s shaft in a perfunctory caress before tweaking his balls and diving deeper. “Now I want to try and ruin you, since you seemed so enamoured with the idea…” He leaned in close. “…I’ve never been someone’s first. Let me?”

And oh fuck, Malfoy had learned his weakness: being asked. He tried to play it cool. He was good at that. “…Only if you teach me the Chastity Charm.”

Malfoy’s grin went wicked. “Never.”

Despite promises to be gentle, Malfoy proved too human—or else too inexperienced himself—to make his preparations as thorough as they probably ought to have been. Harry, too, was growing frustrated with the mounting discomfort of fingers in places it didn’t seem like they ought to be and holes that ought not to be stretched being forced to do so.

“I thought this was supposed to feel good,” he grit out, and Malfoy rolled his eyes.

“It is. It will.”

“For you.”

“Of course for me. And you as well.” He then crooked a finger—and Harry saw stars, seizing in place and releasing a sharp cry of holy fuck. “Ah. There we go. Seventh time’s the charm.”

Harry squirmed against Malfoy’s fingers. “Fuck, that—fuck.”

“Mm, yes, divine, isn’t it?” He gently pressed against the little nubbin he’d found, and Harry nearly came right there.

“Shit—shit, stop, I’m—”

“You can, if you like. In fact, it might be better if you do.”

Harry shook his head though, silently willing his orgasm to hold—not yet, not yet. “No—no, I wanna wait. I want to—when you’re ready.”

Malfoy immediately drew his fingers back, releasing a shuddering breath. “Well, that’s an invitation if I ever heard one.”

Harry wasn’t entirely sure he was ready quite yet—Malfoy had mostly only poked at him a bit, and though it hadn’t really hurt, he’d seen Malfoy’s cock enough times by now to know his fingers were a very poor substitute. This wasn’t going to be pleasant, at least not at first—but perhaps that was for the best. It might stave his orgasm off long enough he could actually enjoy the experience a bit more.

Malfoy reached over Harry, yanking one of the pillows from behind his head and shoving it under his bum as he arranged Harry’s noodle-like legs, useless for now, around himself.

“Thanks,” Harry snorted. “I’m sure that’ll make this way more comfortable.”

Malfoy made a gesture as if threatening to pinch a nipple, and Harry flinched. “Don’t be smart. It’s to help with the angle.”

“Angle?”

“So that when I’m fucking you—when I’m sliding so deep into you my cock tickles your heartstrings—I can punch that little pleasure button we discovered until you go supernova.”

“Oh. Fuck.”

“Yes, I wholly intend to.” He then pressed the head of his cock to Harry’s entrance, and with only a quick glance to check Harry wasn’t going to stop him in a panic, began slowly—god, too slowly—easing his way in.

Malfoy wasn’t a Veela. He was a goddamn Hippogriff. Or at least his cock was, and Harry half wondered if he hadn’t hidden a broomstick in that pocket dimension along with his wand and was shoving that up Harry’s arse instead. He took in gulps of air, open-mouthed, and willed his eyes not to water, because how would that look if he started crying just because it twinged a bit when someone shoved a body part somewhere it was never meant to be shoved? He’d had his bones Vanished, had been subjected to the Cruciatus Curse multiple times, had nearly been torn to shreds by a Basilisk—and he couldn’t handle a bit of buggery? Ridiculous.

Malfoy leaned down, resting his forehead against Harry’s shoulder, and began pumping—slowly at first, and then when Harry offered no protest, picking up into a rapid clip. Harry tilted his head to the side, pressing his face into Malfoy’s hair and inhaling—sweat and the clean, musky scent of Malfoy’s shampoo. It smelled expensive, and Harry wondered how he afforded it if he’d been reduced to working as a Butler in the Buff.

Malfoy moved his hands down to cup Harry’s arse, grabbing tight to each globe and shoving. Harry’s back curled further in on itself, almost painfully arced, and Malfoy was slamming in now, like he was trying to drill Harry right through the mattress—

And then he shifted his weight just an inch to the right, and it felt like he’d connected a live wire straight to Harry’s cock, pure electric pleasure bolting up his spine.

“See?” Malfoy breathed around a self-satisfied smile. “And you doubted me…”

Harry couldn’t find his tongue just now, or else he would surely have had a ready quip to fire back with. As it was, he was lost in the delicious distraction of Malfoy thrusting into him, shooting sparks off with each punching press of his body against Harry’s, as the silence between them rapidly filled with the bright slap of flesh against flesh and a chorus of grunts, whines, and keening oaths.

The rhythm was getting predictable now, though, and it was breeding frustration within Harry. “F-faster, fuck—faster—”

“You—are absolutely mad—I’ll break you—”

“Promises…promises…” And Malfoy, never one to be able to resist a challenge thrown by Harry, moved his hands up to under Harry’s thighs, nearly pressing them back to the bed, and drove in deeper, harder, and—fuck yes—faster. The bed was creaking indecently, and Harry’s back was aching as Malfoy nearly folded him in two as he raced for his own completion. Harry could feel each punishing pass keenly, that little nub of pleasure within him being mashed like a Muggle pinball machine.

God, never in the weeks since that curse had hit him had Harry so fervently wished he could use his limbs again. He wanted to claw at Malfoy, to draw him in even closer, to wrap his legs around him and lock him there until this bastard finally came and brought him along for the ride. He wanted to bury his fingers in Malfoy’s hair that was getting too long (he was starting to look like his old man Lucius, and that was not a good look), to run his fingers over the panoply of scars upon his chest and feel Malfoy’s muscles tense beneath him, to reach down and take that beautiful cock of his in hand and jerk him until he spilled all over Harry’s fingers. He wanted to feel what it was like to really couple with this arrogant, ridiculous arsehole.

But he couldn’t do any of that. All he had was this, lying here and letting Malfoy take him to new heights, and it would have to be enough for now, because honestly Harry wasn’t sure he could quite handle more, so he would be content. At least until he could flex his fingers and wiggle his toes, and then? Then Malfoy was going to be quite literally fucked.

Malfoy was getting more vocal now, cursing violently under his breath, as if it were Harry’s fault he always took his sweet time to find release. Harry tensed with Malfoy deep inside, and Malfoy shuddered violently against him, gritting out, “You—fucker.”

“I told you: faster.”

“I’m going…as fast as I can…”

“No wonder I always beat you to the Snitch.”

That seemed to do the trick, and with a frustrated grunt, Malfoy reached for Harry’s cock, jerking it with feverish urgency as his hips continued to piston in-and-out-and-in-and-out, and oh, that was cheating, but he really shouldn’t have expected better from Malfoy.

Still, his pride was on the line, and he struggled to hold out between the twin onslaught of the slick, tight channel of Malfoy’s fingers from the front and his prick mercilessly pinging that bundle of nerves buried in Harry’s arse from the back.

They matched wills for what seemed an interminable amount of time before Malfoy finally relented, unable to both wank Harry off and give him a thorough fucking at the same time. He released his grip on Harry, slicked back his hair, and grabbed Harry’s legs, wrapping them around his waist and leaning in with hands braced on either side of Harry’s head.

His shadow fell across Harry’s face, and Harry gazed up at him, struck by his expression of wanton abandon. In a moment, he’d climax, and then he’d go back to being a total wanker—but just now, in this heartbeat, he was real and raw and utterly undone by Harry. The result of the terrible choices he was inclined to make around him.

Harry clenched again, and Malfoy gave a strangled cry—and after three more punishing pumps, he seized and emptied himself within Harry. Harry felt it as a sudden warmth filling him up, and with Malfoy mashing that lovely little nub inside him and pressing the whole long length of his body against Harry, he too gave a spasming jerk and spilled and spilled and spilled.

It was several long moments before either of them had strength enough to do more than catch their breath, panting open-mouthed into the gloaming darkness.

Harry swallowed thickly as awareness came creeping back to him in a sluggish haze, suddenly conscious of the fact Malfoy was practically lying atop him and still had his prick buried inside Harry. “…Get your dick out of my arse,” he groused.

“Get your arse off my dick,” Malfoy replied in a mocking tone before slowly, arms trembling as he struggled to support himself, eased his way off of and out of Harry. He withdrew with a squelching sound, and Harry was glad he couldn’t contort himself enough to see the state of his lower half. It felt disgusting enough.

“Thought I heard you cast Prophylaxis…” Harry said, squirming at the disgusting sensation.

“I did.” Malfoy snatched up his wand from where it had nearly rolled off the mattress and delivered a delicate swish. Harry felt a tingle sweep through him, leaving him feeling once more oddly refreshed. “And it worked. No fuss, no muss. No risking Vanishing your colon.”

“Oh.”

He could feel Malfoy squinting at him in the low light as Harry fixed his gaze elsewhere. The chandelier was in want of more dusting. “Are you telling me you never actually cleaned up after casting it before?”

“Well, I mean—that’s…usually they prefer to do it themselves…”

“I can assure you ‘they’ do not.” Malfoy flopped down dramatically onto the bed next to Harry, sighing loudly. “Good gads, yet more evidence as to just why you’re a bachelor.”

“Oi, I’m a bachelor ‘cause I want to be. It’s got nothing to do with spells.”

Malfoy cocked his head to the side to look Harry in the eye, and this close Harry could see he was definitely squinting at him with a probing, judging gaze. “Indeed? So what’s this, then?” He gestured between them. “Throwing yourself at me the moment you thought me amenable, begging me to fuck you—”

“I didn’t beg—”

“You did. It was quite fetching, too. You won me over despite our sordid past. You, Harry Potter”—He reached over and poked Harry pointedly in the chest—“are quite horny, and so hard up for carnal engagements you gave it up for the first warm body to stroll over your threshold. Just think if you’d killed me back in Sixth Year. You’d have been stuck getting handies from an overly hirsute St Mungo’s nurse who could have doubled as Beater for the Falmouth Falcons.”

Harry didn’t really appreciate the dark humour, or the implication he was up for it twenty-four-seven, but he was also too exhausted to keep up with Malfoy’s wit just now. “All right, yeah. You got me. Your Veela Allure has utterly undone me—I’ll never be able to take another lover again without comparing them to you. You did it: You ruined me, just like you wanted.”

Malfoy snorted, rolling over into his side and poking Harry in the nose. From anyone else, it might’ve been endearing; from Malfoy, it felt patronising. Probably because it was. “Oh, Potter. I’ve not yet begun to ruin you.”

Harry arched a brow. “You haven’t, have you?”

Malfoy shook his head. “But we’re off to a smashing start, I’d say. And tomorrow’s another day.”

❖❖❖

Tomorrow was indeed another day—another whole day, even, and it dragged. Oh did it drag.

Malfoy, the coward, had fucked off at some point after Harry had drifted to sleep, leaving Harry to wake up alone, but he’d come back, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 7 AM, clad once more in his nothing-but-a-modesty-flap. He’d given Harry a thorough scrubbing in the bath, which Harry had appreciated, and then slipped a bit of a restorative tonic he swore did wonders to heal the aches and pains that followed a night of enthusiastic coitus into his juice at breakfast, which Harry had appreciated even more.

But once Harry’s discomfort had been seen to, Malfoy became a ghost, disappearing into the bowels of Grimmauld Place, not to be seen again until meal times approached or Harry summoned him. Harry knew this was just how it was—how Malfoy operated—but they had only a handful of days left, and the house was clean enough, dammit. Harry was ready to live down to Malfoy’s very low opinion of him and lie about in bed all day, just sucking and fucking, until the coupon expired.

Malfoy was unmoved, though, by Harry’s less-than-casual invitations they slip away for some afternoon delight, and Harry half-considered indulging in the self-wanking spell again to try and force Malfoy’s hand. But Malfoy could be quite stubborn, and now with several evenings of very real human intimacy in recent memory, he worried the spell might not be quite as effective as it had been before Malfoy had set about trying to ruin him.

So he endured, grit his teeth and read his book—god, now was not the time to be reading about how dragons fucked—and waited, impatiently, for the clock to strike 7.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” he asked, breathless, as Malfoy spat out his release into the rubbish bin and spelled clean the fingers he’d just had knuckle-deep in Harry’s arse. “Twelve hours of waiting—waiting until you get done with the mopping and dusting and braising the coq au vin?”

Malfoy zapped his mouth with a Refreshing Charm. “Mm, I thought you liked my coq though?”

Harry held his eye so he couldn’t so easily deflect. “…The house is clean enough. It’s cleaner than it’s ever been, I’d wager. And you’ve been working nonstop for nearly a month straight. Surely you deserve a bit of time to relax?”

“And by ‘time to relax’ you mean ‘time to fuck you stupid’?”

“Well, I mean, if a bit of carnal fun were to happen during all that relaxing…I certainly wouldn’t report you to your boss.”

“A sterling example of Harry Potter not having grown out of the notion that rules were made to be broken and certainly did not apply to him.”

“Hey, I’m not saying break the rules—I’m saying…satisfy the client.”

Malfoy crawled over him. “And here I thought you didn’t want me to treat you like a client.”

Harry hardened his jaw, then sighed. “…We don’t have much time—”

“Don’t say that,” Malfoy said, suddenly sharp. “It doesn’t matter.” Harry frowned, opening his mouth to protest, and Malfoy sighed loudly. “Fine. Fine, you want to waste your likely only chance to get this place fit for company? Want to never get rid of that ring around the toilet bowl on the second floor? Then let that be on your head. It’s your house. Despite the fact it’s my face on that tapestry in the sitting room, it is your house. So if you were to bar me from stepping foot in any room but your bedroom, I really couldn’t do otherwise.”

And Harry knew a loophole when he heard it, grinning. “I mean, I could be convinced to let you explore the kitchen a few times a day, but…really, I think my bed’s in need of attention, and I’d like to make the most of you while you’re here.”

“Your bed? And what’s the matter with it? It’s seemed in fine working order thus far. Actually—” Malfoy frowned, glancing up at the headboard and then down to the foot and back, and he patted the duvet. “…It’s held up quite well, for how old I have to assume it is. Great-Aunt Walburga certainly knew how to furnish a home…”

Harry ignored any mention of ‘Great-Aunt Walburga’, whose portrait still sat behind a curtain. He’d thought it curious Malfoy had never asked to speak to her, but then again, he couldn’t imagine she would’ve had anything but choice words to dispense on seeing her great-nephew swanning around her ancestral home in the nude.

“I dunno,” he said, distracted. “It seems to be in one piece, is all. I was under the impression I was going to be fucked through it? Or were those just pretty words?”

“I don’t think there’s anything pretty about any of the words I’ve said to you within these four walls—but if you’re in the market for a new bed, I do believe I can help you break down the old one.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh indeed. Home renovation is an intense passion of mine, you see.”

And so, they set to work.

They fornicated just about every moment they had free—Harry did not limit their liaisons to the bedroom, as Malfoy had suggested, and they found pleasure in two different bathtubs, at the kitchen table, before the fireplace in the sitting room (while Harry furtively showed two fingers to the tapestry watching them), and once in the (decidedly chilly by now) back garden (Harry briefly considered the front garden as well, since the Fidelius meant no one could see them, but there was always the off chance someone he knew might pop by, and it wasn’t a risk he was quite yet ready to court).

Harry had more sex over the next week than he’d had, well, ever, and each encounter was somehow more arousing than the last. Perhaps it was because they both knew their time together was drawing short, as the one-month period of free Butler services was nearly up, and any association they shared subsequently would have to be…well, would have to be because they wanted to. Which was not something Harry thought Malfoy would be comfortable admitting—the one thing he hadn’t yet given himself permission to want.

Harry would therefore have to be the bigger man and actually have out with it—but since he knew Malfoy would not take the topic gently, he put it off for the very last minute: 7 PM, the eve before Malfoy’s last day of Butler duties. It wasn’t as if 7 PM meant much anymore, but it still served as a formal cut-off to allow Malfoy to be a bit more himself than he felt he could do while ‘on duty’.

“How long do I have to suck your cock to make you stay the night? You haven’t done it once this whole time.”

Malfoy snorted, helping Harry into a jumper he had to know was going to come right back off once they got down to business. “Obviously longer than you’ve done so far. I’m sure you’ll figure it out sooner or later.”

“I mean, it’ll probably have to be sooner rather than later, don’t you think? The coupon expires after tomorrow.” To this, Malfoy made no effort to respond, picking at a hole in the armpit of the jumper with a frown. “Malfoy.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes and sighed, “What?” as if Harry were being terribly tedious.

“I said the coupon expires after tomorrow.”

“I can read a calendar. What of it?”

Harry exhaled sharply through his nose. “Well, I need to start making plans if you’re not going to be around anymore.”

Malfoy narrowed his gaze, lip twitching as if he were just barely holding back a sneer. “…And what sort of plans might those be?”

What was up his arse? “…I dunno, a home nurse? I’m starting to get back some feeling below the knees and elbows thanks to the Myelo-gro regimen, but the Healers said it’ll be at least another month before I can start with physical therapy, and another month after that before I’ll be able to safely manage myself independently.”

“Oh. That.” The tense line that had been stretched across Malfoy’s shoulders seemed to ease a hair.

“Yes, that—unless you were about to offer to keep helping me piss straight. Or—” He frowned. “…Did you think I meant the sex part?”

“Don’t be ridic—”

“You did,” Harry grinned, feeling a bit loopy with the realisation. “You got jealous—” Malfoy reached to cover his mouth, but Harry twisted his head out of the way. “You know, it’s healthy being open with your feelings—it’s no good, keeping them bottled up inside. If you wanted to be exclusive, all you had to do was say so.”

“And what on earth”—Malfoy grabbed Harry by the wrists and wrestled him to the bed—“would suggest I in any way wanted to be ‘exclusive’? Exclusively what? This is a business relationship, nothing more. And it will end when the business ends.” His tone was short and tense—and honestly, it sounded kind of like he was more trying to convince himself than Harry.

“It doesn’t have to, though,” Harry said. “You told me I wasn’t a client—”

“You told me you weren’t a client.”

“—So I don’t see why the expiration of this job should have any bearing on what two consenting adults do in their free time.”

Malfoy narrowed his eyes in bald suspicion. Fucking Slytherins, always looking for an angle. “Enlighten me, then: what would we two consenting adults be doing in our free time?”

Harry made a non-committal noise. “I dunno. What do couples normally do? Hang out—go shopping, out to eat. Visit friends. Sit around and listen to Quidditch on the Wireless. And, presumably, fool around.”

Malfoy recoiled. “We aren’t a couple.”

“Well, no, but I mean—we do a bunch of stuff couples do, and I realise we aren’t exactly a match made in heaven, but we get along all right, don’t you think? We could try something a little more…” He bobbed his head. “Formal.”

Malfoy scoffed, words dripping disgust. “Why the hell would you want to ruin all this good fucking by putting a label on it?”

“It’s not a label, god. It’s—expanding our options. You don’t want to say we’re a couple, then fine—we don’t have to call it anything. But it’d be nice to actually leave the house once I’ve got full control of my limbs again. Be seen in public, you know. Do stuff.”

“The only thing I’m interested in doing once you’ve got control of your limbs again is fucking in the shower,” Malfoy said, tone waspish—but the quip betrayed a chink in his argument’s armour: he had thoughts beyond tomorrow. Thoughts that involved them still being together, even if his definition of ‘together’ was rather more narrow than Harry’s.

Harry willed his temper to stay in check—a tall order with Malfoy, but one he needed to meet if he didn’t want Malfoy storming off. Granted, he’d probably wind up storming off regardless, but they could at least get some much-needed talking in before that happened.

“I’m serious.”

“And you think I’m not?” Malfoy sneered. “I don’t know where you got the idea that I in any way want to go domestic with you—was it the Butler business? Thought all that washing your sheets and dusting your photographs and making you a fantastic fry-up was just my way of preparing to be your blushing bride?”

Harry did not mention that Malfoy himself was the one who’d joked (probably—very likely—almost certainly) about all this being a convoluted Veela mating ritual. “Of course not. I know you aren’t actually stupid, so don’t play at it. All I’m saying is we actually kind of get along, despite everything, and I’m up for continuing our…acquaintanceship, if you want to call it that, and maybe expanding on it even. It’d be nice to take a beat and try to get to know each other better with our clothes on. Or—what, are you saying all you want to do, all you want to do, is have sex?”

“Yes,” Malfoy said, flat, and Harry was shocked at how much a single syllable could sound so harsh on his ears. Malfoy wielded his words like a weapon, and it cut deeper than Harry had been expecting.

He drew back, as much as he could. “…Well I don’t. I mean, I do, of course, but…I want more. It’s just how I’m built. If you aren’t of a similar mind, then…”

“I’m not,” Malfoy said, jaw tight, and he slid off the bed—casting about in search of his modesty flap like a one-night stand hoping to make a quick exit.

Harry craned his neck up—fuck, Malfoy hadn’t even got him situated properly in bed. “Wha—c’mon, where’re you going? We’re in the middle of a conversation.”

“No,” Malfoy said, “we’re in the middle of you lecturing me—”

“I’m not lecturing you! I’m talking to you!”

“Talking at me. And talking only, not listening.”

“And you think storming out’s gonna make me finally see sense?” He was supposed to have been listening, was he? Well all Malfoy had talked about was how he didn’t want to be a ‘couple’, how all he wanted was to fuck, to never set foot outside, to—oh. “…Are you scared?” And Malfoy went scarlet with what looked to be a mixture of shame and rage, but Harry didn’t give him leeway to get a word in. “Of being seen in public—or being seen in public with me?”

“Not everything’s about you.”

“No, it’s not—but I feel like this is. Is it my friends? Are you still sore over them? We aren’t schoolchildren anymore—if you just mustered up anything close to a proper apology, I know Hermione would come around, and Ron…well, Ron would probably at least not clock you.” Probably.

“An apology? You want me to apologise?” Malfoy scoffed. “First you want us to go out for cake and coffee, now you want me to be your double date and make nice with the co-captains of your fan club?” He leaned in close and dropped his voice to a sharp hiss. “I’m not your fucking boyfriend.” He then raked Harry with a harsh, judging gaze. “And accusing me of being scared? That’s rich, coming from the man who’s been so terrified anyone might see him making use of a Butler in the Buff he warded the Floo against all comers.”

Harry’s cheeks darkened. “That was—before! I wouldn’t mind if they found out now.”

“Well I would! I’ve got a reputation to protect—cleaning houses is one thing. Cleaning houses naked is one thing. Cleaning houses naked and spreading for the Boy Who Lived? Right out.”

“Yeah? Then why’d you do it?”

“Because you won’t go wailing about it to the Prophet. This way, I get to have a bit of fun and then be on my way. Just business.”

Harry nodded. “Uh huh. Except evidently you’re entertaining fantasies of me, back on my feet, pressed up against the shower wall while you fuck me—so where’d that come from? Because it won’t be happening for at least another two months. And as we’ve established—you’re out of here tomorrow.” He smiled cruelly. “Just business.”

Malfoy’s features screwed up, lips twisting, and he shoved Harry away, pacing angrily as he gesticulated with frustrated fervour. “Why do you have to fucking complicate things? It’s never enough with you! You take and take and take, because all that matters is if you’re satisfied—and who gives a fuck what I want? You want to fuck, so we fuck. You want to fuck all the time, so we fuck all the time. Did it never occur to you that I actually kind of liked this job? Maybe not the part where I get harassed on occasion or take home a pittance after working twelve hours straight, seven days a week—but I like fixing things. I like seeing shitholes like this place and making them look half-decent. I’m good at it. And it was one of the few jobs available to me now where my name didn’t get me turned away at the door. But now you want to go out, and rather than just going out, you want to make me go out with you!”

Harry groped for words, but they’d vanished in a blip, scared off by Malfoy’s uncharacteristic display of passion. Harry was still hung up on the bit where Malfoy evidently liked scrubbing toilets—while Malfoy was miles ahead and still going.

“We had a decent thing going—simple, uncomplicated. You let me do my work in peace, and at the end of the day, we had some fun. I liked it. I might’ve even been amenable to finding a way to keep it going. Because I love a good routine now. Predictability is a hell of a turn-on for me.”

Harry shook his head, baffled. “How…is anything I’ve suggested complicated? All I was thinking was dinner—or maybe just some coffee! Nothing more. And if you don’t want to get to know Ron and Hermione, then…fine. Don’t. I don’t particularly want to get to know any of your friends either, so fair’s fair. And maybe we’d realise we still hate each other’s guts and we’d tell each other to fuck off after the one time. All I wanted was to try. No commitments or promises involved.”

“Do I need to cast a Sonorus? I like things just the way they are. Nothing more—and if it’s as you say, and this won’t ever be enough for you, then I suppose it was fun while it lasted.”

His tone was stiff and mechanical, and Harry doubted very much he even believed his own words. All right, so maybe Harry had been a bit selfish. He didn’t know Malfoy, didn’t know what Malfoy had been through—hadn’t even remembered Malfoy’s middle name. They were practically strangers, with most of their understanding of one another steeped in Hogwarts-era prejudice and old grudges. The only difference now was that Harry wanted to actually get to know Malfoy—while Malfoy just wanted to ignore everything and keep on as they had been. Regimented. Routine.

Except things were going to change, whether Malfoy wanted them to or not. In twenty-four hours, the coupon would expire, and Malfoy’s job would be done. In another two months, Harry would be back on field duty. This little limbo they’d enjoyed for a few weeks would disappear, and they’d never be able to return. That was life—chaotic, ever-changing. Certainly no regimented routine.

Harry let his head fall back to the mattress, staring up at the ceiling. “…Fine, what exactly is it you want? Like, from a realistic perspective. Because in a couple of months, I wholly intend to be reinstated and back running missions with the DMLE, and you’ll be off cleaning some other wanker’s house sans trousers. I don’t see how that’s a situation any less complicated than going to a Quidditch game or—or having a single real, actual conversation.”

Malfoy shifted in place, crossing his arms over his chest and looking the picture of petulance. “…You could order another month. You can afford it.”

That was his solution? Try and drag this out longer, so that in one month they could have this exact same argument? “And after that?” Harry asked. “I’m not emptying my vaults to keep you on retainer just because you’ve got cold feet.”

“I haven’t got cold feet,” Malfoy snapped. “I simply prefer our arrangement as it is.”

“And like I said, I don’t prefer it this way, because I’d like to think I’m sleeping with another person and not my ‘Butler in the Buff’. Call me selfish all you like—this isn’t a demand. It’s an ultimatum. It’s me saying this is the way I am.” He cocked his head to the side to look at Malfoy, who had his head hung and shoulders clenched. “…Is that the only way you can stomach doing this with me? Pretending like it’s part of the package and I’m just another client?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. Like I’ve said maybe fifty times already. And besides, I don’t think you do this sort of thing with any of the others anyway, because you told me day 1 that the only time people request you are when they can humiliate you. Maybe you thought I’d humiliate you too, and now you’re realising that oh shit I might actually be a decent bloke who’d be nice to get to know and that scares the pants off you. Figuratively.”

Malfoy’s lip curled. “Someone’s still got an ego the size of Scotland, I see.”

“Wasn’t it, like, a week ago you were accusing me of having no confidence in myself? Make up your mind.” Malfoy’s face gave a little spasm, and Harry seized the moment. “I’m not asking you to marry me, for fuck’s sake. I’m asking you to—” He sighed, reminding himself that nothing good would come of them both losing their tempers. “A date. I’m asking you on a date—one date. Is that prosaic enough for you? Do you get my meaning? Or do I—” Hold up, Malfoy liked regimens—which was just a low-brow version of tradition. “Fuck, do I have to court you or something?”

Malfoy seemed physically taken aback by the suggestion, and Harry immediately felt foolish. “Court me? What century do you think this is?”

“I dunno how pure-bloods work…” Harry groaned. “Just—we could do something normal for a change. Instead of you strutting around in your altogether.”

“Fucking’s perfectly normal. And I like strutting around in my altogether. My altogether’s quite nice. It’s a good opportunity to show it off.”

“For who? The arseholes who want to see you humiliated? You don’t actually want to do this. You don’t. You say you like fixing things, spiffing things up, and that I can believe—but not this. Not at the expense of your self-worth. You’re Draco-fucking-Malfoy. You’ve got buckets of pride—and it’s steadily being drained away by this joke of a job.”

Malfoy’s gaze went arctic. “Well pardon we can’t all just pick and choose who deigns to offer us employment or lean on the Minister for a favour.”

“Hey, I earned my spot—proper. Even failed the Entrance Exam the first time and had to do another three months of training ‘til I made it onto the force.” He didn’t know why he was trying to convince Malfoy he’d nearly not made Auror in the first place; he mostly just wanted him to recognise Harry hadn’t had an easy ride. “And I’m only saying that there’s got to be something out there you’re both better suited for and might actually want to do. Like, I dunno, the magic you work in the kitchen that’s got fuck-all to do with a wand? Start a delivery service if you’re so convinced no one would ever buy from you based on your name. Or start a redecorating business and make people pay you to say their places look like shite. Or sell your story and retire a gazillionare with enough Galleons to fill a swimming pool. Not that you don’t make a fucking fantastic Butler and honestly this place has never looked better, but…”

Malfoy allowed him a beat before pressing, “But?”

“But…” But—there were some things he wasn’t allowed to say yet. Because he’d just finished telling Malfoy how not greedy he was, and here he was, being greedy again. Trying to tell Malfoy how to live his life. “…Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

“Done,” Malfoy said, the knob, and Harry really wanted to throttle him.

“…You said you make terrible choices around me. Why?”

Malfoy released a dry, mirthless huff of laughter. “You think if I knew the answer to that I’d still make those terrible choices?”

“You’ve got a point, I suppose…” Harry sighed. “I think I have a bad habit that comes out around you, too.”

“Indeed?”

Harry nodded. “I get this…image of you. In my head.”

“That’s called a fantasy—I’m flattered.”

Harry ignored his feeble attempt at deflection. “And I get irritated when the real you doesn’t fit how I think you should be. For better or worse. Used to be I thought you ought to not be a prick to me and my friends—and so I got pissed off when you were, well, a prick to me and my friends. Except I never stopped to think about why you were a prick to me and my friends—or tried to do anything to show you why you shouldn’t be a prick to me and my friends. I just let it happen and then got angry. And then I thought, ‘All right, maybe if I do him a good turn, he’ll stop being a prick to me and my friends,’ except, again, I still hadn’t stopped to think about the why of the situation, so…you continued to be a prick to me and my friends. And I got angrier. And then I slept with you, and I thought, ‘Well he must feel the same way about me as I feel about him,’ so I asked you to do something you’re evidently disinclined to—and then when you refused…I got even angrier.”

“…You always were slow on the uptake,” Malfoy said, quiet and just a little bit miserable.

Harry gave an amused huff. “Yeah, no one would accuse me of thinking first and acting later.” He cleared his throat gently. “I like you. I’m honestly not entirely sure why—but I don’t think it’s anything people generally have much control over. And I’ve had fun the past couple of weeks. Genuinely, I have. I thought I was gonna go stir crazy, being off my feet and out of the line of duty for a month, but all in all it’s not been half bad. Best not-a-holiday I’ve probably ever had, even. But…” He licked his lips. “But I can feel myself…wanting to pour more of me into this. This good thing you don’t want to label. And I don’t want to do that for someone who just wants to mess around. I…am a stupid gallant Gryffindor who’s plagued by emotions and the need to give and receive them. And I get if that’s not—something for you. So if that really is the case, then just…tell me now. I promise I’ll listen this time. So we can stop wasting each other’s time.”

He locked eyes with Malfoy—and waited. And waited. And waited. But all Malfoy did was press his lips into a thin, tight line with some unreadable emotion flitting over his features, and Harry seized on the hope that, at the very least, Malfoy was going to let him keep talking.

He decided this was tacit permission to be just a bit greedy—and tried to remind himself not to build up Malfoy in his mind. To just let the git be a git and come what may. “…Every year, the Ministry holds a fundraiser. The Midwinter Charity Gala—ostensibly for, well, charity, but it’s no great secret quite a bit of hobnobbing goes on as well. But there’s a silent auction, and tickets for the general public are two hundred Galleons a head, so it does well enough for what it’s advertised. Anyway, staff are obliged to attend—but it’s always a good time. And there’s lots of booze at least. And dancing and music and all that stuff I reckon they teach you about in Pure-blood Primary School.” He swallowed. Here went nothing. “…I’ve got a plus-one, if you wanted to come with? See if we can stand each other while we’re, well, standing? Maybe while we’re dancing too? We could give it a shot…”

It was a hell of a lot taller an order than dinner or a coffee date—and maybe that had been the problem. Maybe they just needed to dive in feet first and hope they could swim.

Or maybe not, as Malfoy seemed to close off again, taking a step back. “Give it a shot? Like if it goes tits-up, we can just forget it ever happened. No harm, no foul?” He scoffed. “I’ve spent years working to keep a low profile. Trying to avoid attention—of all sorts, but mostly from the kind of people who see my name on a registrar for a Butler in the Buff and gleefully think Yes, that one, I want to see that one on his hands and knees before me. And you just want me out there, on your arm, like a trophy? For everyone to gawk at?”

“You really think I want you as a trophy?”

“Less in the prize sense and more in the victory sense.”

Harry tossed his head in disbelief. “I realise that somehow you’ve still got the demented idea in your head that I like to seek out the spotlight, but I really don’t.”

“Oh, you don’t? What do you think will happen when you show up with me on your arm to something with as stuffy a name as the ‘Midwinter Charity Gala’? Galas involve spotlights. Otherwise it’s just ‘ball’.”

And now Malfoy was being dramatic again—but Harry kind of liked that better than the moodiness.

“The world won’t end just because you show your face in public. You barely had to serve probation—”

“Yes, thanks to your testimony. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that little humiliation.”

Harry frowned. “It wasn’t for you—it was mostly for your mother.” He refrained from mentioning I didn’t care enough about you to give a fig whether you got sent away or not. Malfoy had been appropriately punished, as far as the Wizengamot was concerned, and Harry had had far more important matters to worry about in the wake of the war than if Draco Malfoy lost sleep at night about the horrors he’d been accomplice to if not actually engaged in during Voldemort’s reign of terror. “And the point is, people move on. No one’s going to spit in your face because of your family name—”

“Maybe not at a gala.”

“Well isn’t that what we’re talking about? What social terrors you might be faced with by showing up to a function in your best dress robes? People will be shocked—and then they’ll get over it. I did.” And Harry reckoned he had a hell of a lot more to begrudge Malfoy than just his family name, so why shouldn’t his approval be deemed an appropriate metric?

“Yes, well, I fucked your brains out until you lost all sense,” Malfoy smiled sharply. “Can’t quite do that to the general public. Not quickly, at any rate.”

“Wait—I’m confused…” Harry tried to sort out his thoughts. “Are you worried about your own reputation should you go out—or mine?”

Malfoy practically cackled. “You’re mad if you think I’ve got the energy to worry about your relationship with your adoring public when I’m trying to sort out my own life.” He leaned in close. “I don’t want to go on ‘dates’ or to ‘pub nights’ or ‘galas’. Honestly I never did. That was Mother and Father’s scene, playing in the public eye—fucking tedious. I only ever wanted to be…let’s say unobtainable. Sought by many, touched by few. And now? Now I simply want to quietly fade into obscurity. To not have to be Malfoy—but Draco. Just Draco. I’ve got enough baggage of my own to handle without having to shoulder my family’s as well.” He gave Harry an appraising glance. “Surely someone named Harry Potter ought to be able to appreciate that.”

Harry exhaled softly. “…Yeah, there was a time I thought that’d be nice, too. To be Harry, just Harry.” He shook his head. “But that was never going to happen, and if you get too bogged down in fantasy, you miss the chance to actually live the life you’ve been given. Everything I’ve been through has made me who I am, and I can’t deny that. I’ve got to live with it.”

“Yes, and everything I’ve been through has made me me. I can’t deny that either. Except your choices earned you praise, while mine got me fuck-all.”

Harry didn’t mistake the whinge in his voice, and it sparked his temper. “And that’s my fault? I tried—I tried to help you—” Well now that was a lie, time to backtrack. “Dumbledore met his end trying to help you! And Snape would’ve helped as well probably, but you squandered it.”

Harry’s outburst sparked one of Malfoy’s own, as it always had, and then he had his voice raised as well. “You think I don’t realise that?! That I don’t fall asleep every night agonising over every last fuckup that’s brought me to where I am today?” He grabbed his modesty flap, shaking it viciously. “This is my penance. The only thing I can think of to even begin to make some manner of amends for what I’ve done.”

“Wh—cleaning? Cleaning is your idea of penance? Instead of fucking apologising?” Malfoy opened his mouth to protest, purpling with rage, but Harry charged on, driven by frustration that Malfoy still couldn’t seem to figure out how to be a decent human being, even if now it sounded like he at least wanted to. “So you fucked up! Big deal, we all have!” Malfoy threw his head with a scoff and turned away. “The difference between us isn’t how many times we fucked up or who got hurt in the doing—it’s whether or not we accepted help when we needed it, and whether or not we tried to make up for what we did. In a meaningful way. I’ve tried to fix things, to make amends—and you just want to hide in a hole, thinking it’s ‘penance’. You take these jobs because you think it’s what you deserve—that your suffering somehow balances out others’. And I’m sitting here saying for as much as you made my school years hell, however much you hurt the people I love, there’s probably a dozen other people who rank higher on my shit list than you. So cut yourself some slack, you really weren’t as big a badarse as you think you were.” Malfoy’s grip was tight on the doorknob, and Harry could see him practically vibrating with anger. He might yank the door off its hinges after this. “…And even after everything you did, to me and my friends and everyone else during the war, I still want to give you the time of day. What does that tell you?”

Malfoy took a long, measured breath, and then said, sharp and cutting, “That you’re just as much a gormless fool now as you were back then.”

And then he was gone, and Harry was alone—pantsless and freezing.

❖❖❖

Malfoy didn’t show up the next morning—which didn’t really surprise Harry, but it was rather inconvenient, and he spent the entire morning and well into the afternoon trying to cast the most basic of Patronuses to summon Ron over stat. He could finally manage finer wand movements thanks to the Myelo-gro, but it was still a pitiful casting by Harry’s standards, and he hoped the message didn’t wind up garbled because the wand kept slipping from his grip.

When Ron finally found him, he was absolutely starving, a mess of tangled bedsheets and poorly-aimed pissing attempts. Ron was horrified by the sight, but Harry waved it off as a miscommunication between himself and the St Mungo’s home nursing service, taking the blame wholly onto himself. From the sound of things when the home nurse finally did arrive, greeted at the door by Ron, his best mate still had a piece or three of his mind to share with the poor fellow who’d been assigned to Harry’s case.

Monday morning, a postcard arrived from Butlers in the Buff, delivered by owl, seeking feedback on his recent experience with the agency and confirmation that he wished to continue receiving those services for a further two months (at a discounted rate, as a new client).

Harry put a stop order on the extension—but left Malfoy a glowing review, ticking all the appropriate boxes and gushing about Malfoy’s dedication to the position and thoroughness in dispensing services. ‘A truly outstanding worker who is likely criminally underappreciated. My highest commendation.’

Malfoy deserved it, after all. He was criminally underappreciated by his coworkers—and he had been exceedingly thorough in his attentions, domestic and otherwise. The fact he was an Order-of-Merlin-First-Class git was an unrelated matter, and Harry would not let their final argument tar what had otherwise been a well-spent coupon for menial services.

Because, of course, Malfoy had been entirely out of line. Where did he get these ridiculous thoughts? Yes, Harry had been a bit myopic—even with his glasses on—in suggesting Malfoy simply find a better line of work, that being a Butler was both beneath him and doing nothing to make up for his acts during the war, but it was true. And if Malfoy could set his pride aside for five seconds and see that such menial labour was only meant to make himself feel better (and failing at that, to boot), then perhaps he’d be able to make some headway into restoring the karmic balance and feel better about his lot in life. For a Slytherin, he sure didn’t have much self-worth.

“…Do you think I’m selfish?” Harry asked Ron, who’d dropped by with a serving of pot roast from Hermione that had progressed to banoffee pie for dessert by the wireless, which was pumping out something that sounded disturbingly similar to the droning muzak played in the Ministry lifts.

“D’I shink you’ wha?” Ron said, crumbs tumbling from his lips.

“Or, I dunno, maybe not selfish. But like I think I know what’s best for people?”

Ron snorted, swallowing thickly, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Mate, I married Hermione. I know bossy when I see it—and you don’t even approach her.”

Harry frowned. “That didn’t really answer my question.”

Ron bobbed his head a bit. “I wouldn’t call you bossy—or selfish, or say you think you know what’s best for people.” Harry could hear a But coming. “But…as long as we’re having a friendly conversation, you still have kind of a, uh…”

“A what?” Harry didn’t think he was going to like this.

“A…well, a saving people thing. I mean, you’re an Auror for crying out loud. How predictable was that?”

“Uh. Wow. Okay…” This wasn’t exactly what he’d been asking Ron for advice on…

“No, don’t get me wrong—you’re good at saving people! I mean, you’re a full-fledged Auror now, right? That’s gotta mean something.”

“…A full-fledged Auror who got hit with a debilitating curse that’s knocked me out of commission for three months…”

Ron winced. “Well, we all have our off days. Listen, the point is: you like taking care of other people, sometimes to a fault. You don’t take holidays, you donate like half your annual salary to charity, and when’s the last Saturday you took for yourself instead of tending to Teddy?”

“But I like tending to Teddy!”

“No doubt! But you’re stretching yourself too thin, using other people’s happiness to replace your own. And sure, making others feel good is a fun way to make yourself feel good too—but it shouldn’t be your only source of happiness. In fact, I think you aren’t selfish enough.”

God, he was getting such mixed signals from the people in his life.

But ignoring the bit about not taking proper care of himself or seeing to his own happiness, maybe Ron did have a point about the ‘saving people’ thing… It was an extension, he supposed, of the way he’d always ignored the Malfoy—or Draco, as he’d wanted to be called, which sounded so weird even inside his own head, but whatever—in front of him for the one he’d imagined. And then even after spending nearly a month with the Malfoy—Draco—in front of him, he’d still retreated back to that fantasy. The one he could save. The one who wanted saving.

God. How humiliating must it have been to open himself up to Harry, to share his fears and self-loathing and the base acts he tolerated because he felt he deserved it…only to have Harry tell him everything he’d been through and done had been useless, pointless? Harry would’ve clocked someone sideways if they’d accused him of retreating into an Aurorship because he had a hero complex. Which, he did have a hero complex—but the two were entirely unrelated, and he was working on the latter. The Auror stuff was just…he was pretty good at getting into sticky situations and finding his way back out through sheer dumb luck, and it turned out that was exactly what the DMLE looked for in recruits.

Who was he to judge someone for how they tried to work through their trauma? If Malf—Draco said he was all right with the Butler stuff, then…then Harry needed to be all right with it too. Draco hadn’t once told him he shouldn’t be out there risking his skin every day for total strangers, even if Harry thought, deep down, he kind of wanted to tell him that.

And as for Ron’s insistence that Harry ought to be more selfish…

Well, there was a thought. Except Harry evidently had difficulty leveraging his own happiness against others’. Draco gave him an inch (several, even), and Harry took a mile, because when you’d been crawling through a desert and finally found an oasis, restraint became a difficult thing to manage. If he didn’t learn to control himself, though—to control these urges to save people just because he thought they were in trouble and despite their protests otherwise—then he stood a very real chance of losing these little bits of happiness he’d cobbled together.

Because…despite it all—the frustration, the embarrassment, and did he mention the frustration?—he’d actually been having fun with Draco. All right, maybe not fun, but he’d…liked it. He’d been happy. The sex had been great, of course, but he’d even started warming up to the interactions that happened out of bed as well. It was nice having someone to share meals with, to just be there to fill the silence that Harry’d started to accept as part of his life now, and though he could hear Ron in his head saying Told you you oughta get a Crup, it was more than that.

They knew each other—knew the things they’d been through, more than anyone else Harry had ever been with. Except for maybe Ron and Hermione, but they had each other, while Harry had no one. Just had his Beezilbud and a big empty house.

And he didn’t need someone all the time. But now and then? It might actually be nice to be Potter, instead of Harry. To have someone who didn’t tolerate his bullshit, and who had bullshit Harry could enjoy not tolerating himself. He’d thought Draco might feel the same way. Maybe he had, and Harry had really botched this whole thing.

Just, he liked that Draco was a fuckup. He liked that he had a dark past they’d need to discuss at some point if they wanted this to be anything more than it was already—because Harry was no treat either, and they were both a little bit broken in just the right places to fit together pretty well.

He liked, weirdly, that they didn’t like each other. Even though Harry liked Draco, he didn’t really like him, and it’d been a fun challenge seeing just how far they could push one another before it became too far. Draco had seemed like he’d liked it too, those sharp edges wearing down to something softer that Harry could bump up against and be bruised but not scarred. It probably wasn’t healthy, not in the long run, but there was never going to be a dull moment between them at least.

Still, once again it seemed Draco needed permission to be human and to want what he wanted, so Harry supposed he was once again going to have to be the bigger man here. He’d have to drum up some of that confidence Draco seemed to see in him, because these war games were tiresome as fuck. He was glad they were almost over.

His mind made up, and with Dictaquill at the ready, he prepared a letter for Draco, because his Patronus was still a bit fussy—and also because Patronuses could not deliver fancy gala invites that would probably be ripped up and discarded, but Harry had to at least try.

So he lay there on the sitting room couch while the home nurse prepared some exceedingly bland fare that Healer McCormick had prescribed and dictated his heart out.

Dearest Fuckup,

I’ve changed my mind.

I actually don’t like you. I think I’d forgotten how much I don’t like you—perhaps it was that ‘Veela Allure’ of yours messing with my good senses—but now that we’ve had some time apart, I’m beginning to think more clearly and recalling that we really don’t get along at all.

I mean, you flirt way too much for someone who can’t admit when he likes someone. Who does that? Who says ‘come and get me’ and then pisses off when someone actually tries to get him?

And you’re entirely too self-aware of how good you look. Humility is very sexy, did no one ever tell you that? You’d probably get more people besides the Saviour of the Wizarding World (the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived, He Who Struck Down the Dark Lord) courting you (Ron assures me this is in fact a pure-blood thing, so) if you’d stop being so full of yourself. And you accuse me of having a big head!

For these reasons and ever so many more, I don’t like you. But you don’t like me either, and I hear that being honest with one another and open with your feelings is the best place to start a new relationship. Because you do want a relationship—and this isn’t me once again telling you what’s good for you. That, I’m working on. Instead, this is me making a simple observation of fact, because you were right (I know you love to hear that): you are an open book—and I do speak fluent egotistical prick.

So, this is all to say that, since I don’t like you and you don’t like me and we’re both probably better off without each other, you should make another terrible choice involving me and come to The Thing with me, even if you’ll probably be burned at the stake for it (or tarred and feathered, or boiled alive—I’m not sure what’s in fashion these days; maybe they’ll invent a new form of public execution just for you). I’ve enclosed a ticket. Do with it what you will. If you decide not to come after all (that’d be a first), you can always pawn it. Don’t accept less than five hundred Galleons, though—that’s Harry-fucking-Potter’s plus-one.

Oh and also: whether you decide to ruin both our reputations or not, I reckon you should stop being angry with me and start visiting Grimmauld Place again. Not to clean or anything—it’s only, that self-wanking spell’s really losing its lustre now, and the Healers are gonna get me started with physical therapy in a couple of weeks, but that’s not soon enough to get myself off properly, so if you could be a lad, I’d appreciate it. Think of it like pro bono work. Since you’re so obsessed with your cosmic debt, I figure that might be up your alley.

And also also: …I wouldn’t hate it if you were just around again in general. Working off your cosmic debt by wanking me to within an inch of my life or not. I suppose if you wanted to think I missed you, you wouldn’t entirely be incorrect. I’ve never said or thought that before in my life, but I have now, so you should enjoy lording it over me while you can. Grimmauld Place has gone to pot. I think it misses you (too).

Hoping the Gryffindor bits of me have rubbed off on you in more ways than one.

Yours,

Gormless Fool

❖❖❖

It was 8:06 PM, Sunday the 22nd of December, and Harry had seen every picture of Rose that Ron owned three times already tonight.

“I mean, look at the grip on this girl! I let her hold a chestnut, and she wouldn’t let go! She’s gonna be a Seeker for sure.”

Harry took a very long sip of his champagne—his second of the evening so far; at this rate, he was going to be utterly smashed before they even started the silent auction.

It wasn’t that hearing about Rose bored him—he was thrilled for Ron and Hermione. More so for Hermione, actually, who was back on her feet now and looking very relieved to not be pregnant anymore, even though Ron was already pulling for Baby Number 2. They were clearly loving parenthood and all of the sleepless nights and projectile bodily fluids that came with it. It was only, it was all they talked about now, and Harry thought at this rate, the only way he’d be able to visit their house and not have to hear about the latest adorable thing Rose had done would be to nanny for them so he could be alone with the newest Weasley-Granger (Granger-Weasley? He was going to have to buckle down and just ask one of these days…) and witness those adorable things for himself.

“So who’s watching her?” he asked, if only to avoid Ron pulling out the magically-warded mobile he’d taken to carrying around solely because of how many pictures of his newborn it could hold.

“Hermione’s parents—Mum and Dad would’ve been delighted to, of course, but Dad had to come tonight, and he didn’t want to leave Mum to look after a baby all by her lonesome.” Ron leaned in close, adding sotto voce, “Though I think it’s just ‘cause he would’ve been jealous—doesn’t want Rosie getting more attached to Mum than him, I reckon.”

Harry smiled and nodded, taking another sip of his champagne. Where was Ginny? Harry needed a quick rescue, and even if she showed up with that sidepiece she’d picked up at one of Burt Benson’s Burly Burlesque Shows, she’d at least be a solid source of entertainment. He’d spotted the Department Head from Magical Games and Sports shortly after walking in, so she had to be around here somewhe—

“Bloody fucking hell…” Ron breathed.

“Ought to watch your language now that you’re a dad,” Harry said into his flute, and then Ron punched his shoulder. “Ow. I have feeling in my limbs now, thanks.”

“Shut up—look at that and tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing. I’m hoping I’m just hallucinating from getting three hours of sleep a night these days.” He pointed across the room to the entrance to the Grand Ballroom, all thoughts of adorable baby photos having fled, as a dark cloud rolled over his features. “That’s not who I think it is, right?”

Unfortunately for Ron, it was precisely who he thought it was—unless he was thinking it was anyone other than Draco Malfoy, absently flashing the plus-one invitation Harry had gifted him to the greeters at the door as he strode inside and immediately began scanning the crowd. He drew many an eye—not merely because of who he was, but because, well, he looked a fucking vision.

The dress code for the Midwinter Charity Gala was simply ‘formal’, but evidently ‘formal’ meant something different in the more traditional pure-blood circles, moving beyond ‘best dress robes’ and landing squarely in ‘attending a coronation’.

Underneath what had to be something like fifteen metres of dark shiftweave dress robes (god, he nearly had a train), he wore an atrociously well-fitted waistcoat of midnight-and-charcoal in warping paisley patterns over a high-collared shirt of inky black with delicate silver embroidery at the collar and cuffs and a line of pearl-faced buttons down the middle. Over breeches so tight they seemed indecent, he wore boots that nearly reached the thigh with heels sharp enough to stab a man with. Draco wasn’t dressed to the nines—he was dressed to the nine hundreds, and Harry felt positively frumpy standing there in his scarlet Auror robes, even though they were the set reserved for formal occasions and had hardly any holes in them.

“Oh god, he’s looking this way, I’m gonna go see if Hermione can get us excused from this gig early now that the riff-raff’s somehow found its way here…” Ron then quickly scurried away through the crowd, jostling fellow gala-goers as he went.

Harry, though, could not tear his eyes from Draco, not even when he waylaid a floating tray of champagne flutes and grabbed a pair—then knocked them both back himself and Vanished the empty glasses.

Harry had never seen Draco wearing this much—well, not since Hogwarts—and it was doing funny things to him. How was it he seemed more attractive with all these clothes on than he had with all his clothes off? Perhaps it was the novelty. Yes, he was going to go with that. And the Veela Allure business—those pheromones were doing a number on Harry’s senses, and was it just his imagination, or was Draco glowing?

“Mind the drool, Potter,” Draco said once he’d drawn within sniping distance. “Someone’s liable to slip, and I didn’t bring my mop tonight.”

Harry was distantly aware he’d been insulted in some manner, but he was too distracted with the way Draco’s hair had been combed over just so, shorn short on one side and messily rumpled in style. Harry’s fingers itched to card through the locks, and he hastily shoved his hands into his pockets. Draco was already making a scene as it was—no need to give the Prophet more ammunition than they were already going to be packing.

“Hi…” Harry breathed. He could feel his cheeks heating as baffled awe lit up his features, and maybe it wasn’t Draco who was glowing but Harry. Were the Temperature Charms on the fritz? “You…look fucking amazing.”

“And you look like a troll.” Draco reached out, tugging at Harry’s sleeve with a frown. “Gads, I’d blame this atrocious number on the fact you couldn’t dress yourself, but I get the sense, given you’re standing on your own two feet, that’s no longer an issue.”

And then it dawned on Harry that Draco was here, standing in front of him and picking apart his presentation like it hadn’t been over two months since he’d stormed out of Number 12 fully nude. “Wait—you came. You came!”

Draco shrugged. “I do eventually get around to it.” He Summoned another champagne flute, swirling its contents absently. “Besides, since you apparently don’t like me after all and I was feeling bored, I thought it might be the perfect opportunity to piss you off, so here I am to make your evening miserable.”

“Here you are, indeed…” Harry made a show of looking him up and down. “Where…on earth did you scrounge this up?”

Draco held his arms out, taking a look at himself. “Step up from the modesty flap, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m not entirely sure it’s on the same plane of existence as the modesty flap…” He shook his head. “How did you…”

“Afford it?” Harry hadn’t been going to finish the sentence, but he couldn’t deny his curiosity. “Well, after the Ministry garnished our family vaults and confiscated our land and holdings, I suppose they thought they’d done their duty—so they never actually absconded with any of our personal effects. Most of the Malfoy possessions are in storage or being held in retainer overseas, but…” He flicked an imagined piece of lint off his waistcoat. “I did manage to nick a few personal items before they were all packed away.”

“A few?”

“All right, my entire wardrobe. I live in a shanty flat with a prince’s finery in my closet.”

And Harry was reminded anew that Draco Malfoy was, and always had been, utterly ridiculous. “…Right. Not entirely certain how to reconcile your clothes horse nature with your choice of career, but I’ll leave it at that.” He titled his head, bemusement giving way to confused curiosity. “…Why are you here?”

Draco reached into his pocket and produced the gala invitation—on the back of which Harry had Dictaquilled in bold letters DATE ME, YOU COWARD, adding in smaller lettering beneath (please? also, sorry for being a prick—you rubbed off on me in several ways). “Well, I assumed this meant you wanted my company this evening. Either that, or you were challenging me to a very interesting duel.”

“I mean, yeah—but I have a distinct recollection of you pretty much telling me to shove that invite up my arse.”

Draco stepped in close. “…I’ve got a passing familiarity with your arse by this point, and I know I never suggested anything of that sort being shoved up it.” He took a bracing breath, gaze flitting about the room. Harry didn’t need to take a sweeping look of his own to know there were rather a lot of eyes on them right now. “…After I had a moment to…let my thoughts simmer—reflecting on all those fuckups I agonised over, I realised I had…inadvertently added a new one to the list.”

“…Did you now,” Harry said, and it wasn’t a question.

“…I allowed my reluctance to face judgement for the things I’d done to deprive me of one last chance to embarrass you in public. It’s always been a passion of mine, taking you down a peg, and I just don’t know how I would’ve been able to live with myself if I’d ignored your generous invitation to attend this stuffy affair in favour of sitting at home, in the aforementioned shanty, alone in the dark with all my finery and no one to show it off to.”

“Ah. So this is a spite appearance.”

“Of course it’s a spite appearance—I’ve even got my spiting gloves on.” He held up both hands, on which he wore sleek, black silken half-palm gloves. “See the way they draw attention to the fingers—so when you show someone a couple of them, it really sticks.”

Harry was trying not to smile but having a difficult time of it. “…I’m beginning to forget why, but somehow I missed you.”

Draco snorted, casting about as he knocked back half the flute he was nursing. He was going to be more soused than Harry at this rate. Perhaps that was telling. “Whatever for? I was only ever an owl away. You could have sent one at any time.”

“…I did send one. You know, with the Gala invitation? You never responded.”

“Oh. Yes. Well, I’ve been busy.”

“Busy,” Harry repeated flatly.

“Don’t sound so dubious. I’ve got a life outside of scrubbing your floors and fucking you senseless, you know.”

Harry cleared his throat loudly. “I—we don’t need to—let’s not mention—” He made a sharp cut it out motion, gaze flicking nervously around the hall. Ron was still watching them nervously from across the way, and Hermione had a hand on his arm and seemed to be saying something under her breath. Probably Don’t do anything I’ll have to beg the Minister to pardon you for…

“Oh? Why so shy all of a sudden? Weren’t you the one who wanted us to faff about in public, flaunting ourselves?”

Harry rubbed at the bridge of his nose. This wasn’t the way he’d envisioned this evening going. “Right—no, sorry. Please, let’s take out a full-page spread in the Prophet on all the sounds you make when I’ve got your prick down my throat. That’s precisely what I meant when I said, ‘Hey, maybe we could get coffee together sometime.’”

“I don’t make sounds.”

“Uh, yeah you do. They’re really—” Harry shook his head, pressing his lips together, then made a soft ahem. Probably not best to get caught up in such recollections at a Ministry function. Robes only hid so much. “Anyway. You’ve been busy.”

“I have.”

“Mmhmm. Organising your wardrobe? Clipping your nails—which you really ought to be more diligent about. Fucking talons, rending me open from the inside out…”

“Told you I was a Veela,” Draco said, one brow arched, then sniffed, “But no—I had a meeting.”

“A meeting?” Harry narrowed his eyes. “With…a new client?” If all Draco had shown up for was to try and make Harry jealous, well then—it was going to work.

Draco finished off his present flute and promptly Summoned another—and Harry caught it before it reached his lips, taking a sip himself. “…Not exactly. With my solicitor.”

Harry frowned. “Solicitor? Are you in trouble again?” There’d been something about a landlord and overdue rent somewhere in there, hadn’t there been?

“Stand down, Auror Potter. I’ve been a good boy. No, this was a meeting concerning the establishment of a business trademark. Nothing’s been committed to parchment yet, but I’m leaning towards Veela Vittles—what say you?”

Harry felt like he’d missed half the conversation. “I…I dunno—what do I say?”

Draco rolled his eyes, snatching back the champagne flute to finish it off. Clearly he subscribed to the belief that intoxication was the stoutest armour one could wear when forced into awkward social engagements. “It’s a business name. A catering business.” Harry still wasn’t following, but this didn’t stop Draco. “And I’ve an appointment with Rita Skeeter on Tuesday to discuss her ghost-quilling my memoir—”

“Skeeter? And your—memoir? But you’re barely 22…”

“And I’m meant to touch base with Blaise next weekend to discuss Mrs Zabini’s plans for redecorating their chalet in wizarding Davos. It hasn’t been touched since the 40s and is in sore need of an update, while I am in sore need of a paycheque. Match made in heaven, I say.”

“Zabini’s married?” Harry said, because somehow this was the most shocking thing he’d heard in all that rambling, and Draco snorted.

“Very droll, yes, but pray don’t make me laugh—these breeches are tight enough I’m liable to split them if I move too suddenly. His mother, you tit.”

“Oh.” That made a bit more sense, because from what Harry recalled, Zabini had been one of the most promiscuous— “Hold on, a catering business…a book deal…and redecorating?” He fixed Draco with a sly bit of side-eye, and Draco gave an elegant shrug.

“…What? You do, on occasion, have a good idea or three.”

Harry shook his head. “You—are—”

“Mm, I am?”

“They don’t have a word for what you are. A headache, though, you’re that at least. And anyway, I told you to forget I said all that stuff. I didn’t want you to…” He found himself scratching nervously at the back of his neck. “…I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to fix you. I’m…told I do that quite a bit.”

“Surprised you needed to be told you do that—considering how often I’ve called you Saviour. But…” Draco adjusted himself. “I’m sharp enough to know I need fixing—so I’ll take your fairly good advice and fix myself, thank you very much.”

Harry was still mentally reeling from the information dump, but what he gathered was that Draco was…doing things. Things that probably involved turning his life around and definitely involved more headaches coming Harry’s way (Skeeter? Skeeter? There was going to be a whole chapter on Harry, and he was already penning rebuttals to it in his head).

“So you’re back on your feet, I see.”

Harry’s thoughts were sharply tugged back to the moment. “What?”

“Good gad, did you get hit with a Confundo while I wasn’t looking? Pay attention.”

“I am! I—what?”

Draco gave him a funny look. “…How many glasses of champagne did you have before I arrived?”

“Irrelevant. Though I’m liable to have a lot more now you’re here.” Now it was his turn to give Draco a funny look of his own, and he said, apropos of absolutely nothing, “My place is getting cluttered again. Cobwebs everywhere, dust six inches deep, and I think a new ghoul’s moved into the attic.”

“Mm, so you mentioned in your missive, it sounds absolutely dreadful.”

“Yes, it is.” Harry dropped his voice, chin jutting a bit. “So I was thinking I might prevail upon the services of a Butler in the Buff once more. Any chance I could still get you on retainer? It’s only, it’d be so much paperwork getting a different Butler worked into the Fidelius, is all.”

Draco released a sharp hissing noise. “Ooh, I’m afraid that’s going to be difficult. You see—I’m actually no longer employed at that fine establishment. And fret not, I wasn’t let go—your glowing review was most appreciated. I memorised it even and will likely be repeating it at odd moments should you ever forget again what a stand-up serviceman I was. No, no—I’ve decided to go freelance, actually.” He leaned in close. “Should you require my services from now on, it’s going to cost you a lot more.”

Harry didn’t know why the prospect of emptying his vaults for Draco now titillated him so, when he’d refused to do so but two months back, but it did. Perhaps it was the lack of a middleman. “Yeah?” he said, swallowing thickly. “And…what might the going rate for that be?”

Draco seemed to actually consider this—and the way his lips gently curved into a devious smile ought to have been Harry’s first clue he was screwed.

“A kiss,” he said, close enough they might actually do so if either of them made a false move.

“A—what?” Harry laughed, a nervous tinge in his voice, because this was a dangerous game Malfoy was proposing—and not one Harry was at all prepared to play. “A kiss? Here?” Draco’s smile only grew more wicked, and it struck Harry here he might actually be serious. Or else was playing a very good game of chicken. “…You never let me kiss you before.”

“That was business,” Draco said matter-of-factly. “This isn’t. And also, if I’m to be tarred and feathered by your adoring public—I opted for the tarring and feathering, by the way; felt fitting, what with my being a Veela and all—it might as well be for something worthwhile.” He began to draw back. “…Unless you’d rather n—”

Harry’s hands snapped out, doing what he’d wanted to do for ages and burying his fingers in those messy blond locks as he grabbed Draco’s face and yanked him forward into a deep, draining kiss. Harry could taste the champagne on his lips and drank him down hungrily.

Distantly, he was aware of the sound of glass shattering, which was probably Ron, dropping his drink—and scuffling, which was probably Hermione, having to hold him back from launching himself at Draco.

With great reluctance, Harry drew back and said through puffy, kiss-swollen lips, “…We should probably get out of here.”

Draco’s cheeks had a high pink tint, and his eyes had darkened considerably, but he only smiled, reaching up to relieve Harry of the deathgrip he had on Draco’s head. “Fleeing a social engagement? After all the work you put in to get me here? Oh, I think not.” He then rearranged the nearer of Harry’s arms so he could loop his own through it, dragging Harry towards the section of the ballroom cordoned off for dancing. He leaned in close to Harry’s ear, whispering, “I told you before: I’m going to ruin you.”

And Harry, who had faced down Dark Lords and terrifyingly powerful magical creatures, felt a familiar thrill rush through him as, tripping over his own two feet, he scrambled onto the dance floor after Draco, eager to meet his doom.

He couldn’t wait to see what Ron got him for Christmas now.