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+3.5 years.
“Did—?!” Hermione started, then fell silent. “No, go ahead.”
Harry was so nervous he felt like he would throw up. Which was stupid. This wasn’t even doing it, this was just talking about it. He’d gotten this far before successfully, though eventually he had failed. That, perhaps, was what made it feel frightening. “I think I’m going to — well, I know I am.” He breathed. On the next exhale he said it. “I’m going to ask him to marry me.”
Ron and Hermione did not give him the good reaction he wanted. They didn’t react at all, really.
“Draco, that is. I’m going to propose to Draco.”
Weird neutral faces from them, still. When Harry had told them he was planning on proposing to Ginny — which was before they got engaged, not that anybody besides him remembered or cared — they had both started crying and had leapt out of their chairs and gathered him up and said yes, perfect, oh Harry how wonderful. So he knew they had it in them.
But not for this.
“Say something,” he pleaded.
Ron started chewing on his lip. Hermione swallowed heavily and then said, “I don’t think you should propose to him.”
It wasn’t quite a shock, but it hurt. He knew they didn’t love Draco. They never would. Draco didn’t love them either, none of them would ever love each other. But Harry — was this selfish? — had assumed they all loved him enough to tolerate one another.
“It’s, um.” He swallowed. “If you can’t forgive him. I understand. But — but — I’m not choosing him over you. But I love him.”
“I know you do,” Hermione said, nodding feverishly, vertical nods that turned fiercely into horizontal head-shakes. “Just please don’t propose to him.”
She wasn’t giving him an inch. He began, despite himself, despite understanding that her disapproval of Draco was extremely valid, to get angry.
“This is my life,” he said. “I want your support, but I don’t need it.”
“You just can’t, Harry,” she started.
“I thought you got it,” Harry said. “I love him. And — and he loves me! Just because it’s — so what if it’s weird! I like it! I’m proposing to him!”
“I do get it,” Hermione said. “But you shouldn’t propose to him. Can’t you — wait?”
“Wait for what? It’s been long enough! It’s been three years! More than! That’s long enough!” Three years was how long it had been with Ginny, too, he realized. Was that bad? Was he the only person who didn’t understand some obvious situation with himself? “Isn’t it?”
“Yes, in theory yes, Harry—”
“You don’t—” The air left his lungs. “You don’t think he’d say yes?”
“I do think he’d say yes,” Hermione said. “But I don’t think he wants you to propose.”
Hermione had started to cry. What the fuck? Harry had made her cry? She was being mean to him! Fuck this!
“What the hell does that mean?” Harry said, trying to ignore the tears and keep up the hostility and quickly realizing he couldn’t and pivoting his aggression. “For God’s sake, Ron, can you say something?”
“You can’t propose to him,” Ron said. “He’s proposing to you.”
“What?” Harry’s legs gave out and he found himself sitting on the ground. “What?” he said from the ground.
Hermione was covering her face, crying. “Please, please, please don’t tell him we told you. You have to act surprised, Harry, he’ll never speak to us again!”
She emitted a growling sob of total frustration. “Why can’t I ever win this conversation, Harry, you stupid man!”
Her fury, and the revelation, were very quelling. “Please stop crying,” Harry said weakly, touching her trouser leg.
She kneeled down beside him, red eyes blazing as more tears flew from them. “Can I Obliviate you? So the surprise isn’t ruined?”
“What?” Harry said.
“No,” Ron said, pulling her back to her feet. “Not again. It’s Malfoy’s fault it happened again, he’s taking too bloody long.”
“What?” Harry said.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” Ron said, and finished tucking his wife back into an armchair and held out a hand to haul Harry up too. “And Hermione was so upset about having ruined the surprise that you told her she could Obliviate you. But now you’ve circled back to wanting to propose to him again.”
“When was this?”
“Like a month ago,” Ron sighed.
Draco did want to marry him. Confirmed. And he was doing something about it.
“You’ve known for a month that — that he’s planning to—”
The idea that Draco was talking to them independently of Harry — about Harry! About something extremely earnest like being in love with him and marrying him!
“We’ve known for three months,” Ron said. “He’s taking ages.”
“Because there’s a lot of stuff he has to do!” Hermione said. “I don’t know if you know this, Harry, but he’s really sort of — traditional in some ways…”
“Of course I know that!”
“And he’s had a lot of trouble getting his parents to advise him on the family customs…”
“He consulted his parents? About a gay marriage? To me?”
“And then he had to break into Malfoy Manor to get the ring he wanted, and he got caught, and had to explain the whole thing to your boss…”
“Robards…knows…?”
“And then he got into a big fight with Ginny because he wanted to know all about your wedding plans with her so he could avoid any bad associations…”
“He spoke to Ginny without me supervising?” Harry said, head swimming.
“No one’s been very cooperative,” Hermione said, frowning in sympathy. “Except us.”
“What did he want from you?”
“Our blessing,” Hermione said, and new tears began filling her eyes. “He said we’re your family.”
“It was very weird,” Ron said. “I mean, we aren’t your parents.”
“It was nice,” Hermione said. “I think it means a lot to him, Harry.”
“I’m having so much trouble picturing any of this,” Harry said. “It just seems so — so candid for him…”
“It wasn’t candid,” Ron said. “It was extremely formal.”
Hermione cracked a smile. “He wore dress robes.”
“He bowed,” Ron said. “He did this insane thing where he put his wand at the threshold of the door and stepped over it. Harry, he called me ‘Ronald.’ It was fucking bizarre. Are you sure you want to marry him? He’s, like, from another planet.”
“Completely sure,” Harry said. “Hermione — can you Obliviate me again? I want it to be just what he expects.”
Hermione seemed amenable to it, but Ron cut her off. “No! This is what happened last time! We’re not Obliviating you a third time, you’ll get brain damage!”
“Er,” Harry said. “What?”
“Last time was actually the second time,” Hermione admitted. “After you learned about all this, you wanted to make sure he could go through with it the way he wanted to.”
“But you’re obsessed with marrying him,” Ron said resentfully. “As soon as you forget, you come up with the idea again.”
*
For about a month after that, Harry was watchful to the utmost. He was used to Draco being secretive and slightly dishonest, but everything, for a while, felt like a tell. Harry scrutinized him hard when they were with Ron and Hermione, in continuing disbelief that Draco had conspired with them. It seemed impossible considering that they were still not more than polite to each other; Draco was as nice to them as he could be but that was mostly achieved by being quiet.
Doesn’t matter, some kind of conjugal demon whispered to Harry. Three years is only the beginning of their progress. You’re getting a hundred more.
Harry was even more attuned when they were alone. Sometimes Draco would leave the room for a while and then come back in and the devil of nuptial obsession would say look alive you dumb prat, he’s gone and gotten the ring and force Harry to fix his posture, but then Draco would come closer and smell like the hollow spelled-away trace of tobacco and Harry would realize he’d just been sneaking a cigarette.
Then another month passed, and Harry got used to his anticipation. Then another. The demon bedded down. Harry got sucked into knotty projects at work, Andromeda finally decided Teddy was old enough for Harry to teach him to fly, a branch from a dead tree fell on the house and the roof needed repairs and the tree needed taking down. Life moved in with other worries.
When the day did arrive, there really wasn’t any mistaking it. It was the winter solstice, first of all. Draco called out of work, claiming it was a religious holiday for him although he’d never taken it off in the past. “Sun’s up, I’m fasting,” he said when Harry tried to give him some food. Harry leaned in to kiss him on his way out and he turned his face away: “No, all libidinous energy should be saved.”
Saved for what? Harry Apparated to work so hard he blew all the parchment off his desk. Rising like a clean little bubble through his emotional roil: after three years, Draco still assigned “libidinous energy” to a peck goodbye from him.
At his lunch break, Harry had a paranoid thought and firecalled him to ask if he was meant to also be fasting.
“What? No.” Draco had come to the fire with a distinct smear of oil in the middle of his forehead. “But don’t call again. I’m supposed to be meditating on you.”
“Okay,” Harry said.
When Harry arrived home it was already dark. Shortest day of the year. The lighting in the house was normal but it smelled herbaceous in the extreme.
Draco did not look normal. He was wearing an ivory white robe with gold hems, like some kind of sexy druidic priest.
It really, really suited him. The cloth was like water, making a slender column of his tall figure. The robe had a drawstring closure of gold thread crisscrossing his sternum and showing off his throat, elegant and precisely tailored sleeves that hugged his arms to the wrist. It swept the floor. Harry was pretty sure he was not wearing anything underneath. He didn’t want to say he looked like an angel, but. He didn’t not.
“Should I change too?” Harry said, heart trying to fly out of his mouth.
“No, there’s no need,” Draco said.
“I’ll just get out of my work robes,” Harry suggested. He felt faint with nerves.
“Anything’s fine as long as you’re barefoot,” Draco said, and Harry went into the bedroom.
Anything’s fine was a cruel riddle when Draco said it, and clothes were definitely not a strength of Harry’s. He gave up and just put on normal things, as if he were coming home from work and preparing for an evening of being normal.
Harry returned to the living room, only to find Draco had moved to the dining room. “Okay, I—” He stopped himself from saying I’m ready. “Okay.”
Draco gestured to the table. “I’ve prepared a meal for us. This is winter plum wine, this is ambrosia—”
“Actually?”
“—and this is a salt baked whole fish.”
Harry could see that. “I’ve never eaten a whole fish. I don’t really know how to.”
“That works, that’s good if I help. We have to eat in observant silence.”
As he settled into the silent dinner, Harry’s nervousness eked away. He felt, actually, increasingly, pretty relieved. This was so ostentatious and mannered that he didn’t really have to pretend he was surprised. Primarily because Draco’s behavior announced so very loudly that he was doing something momentous, but also because the behavior was so weird that Harry actually was surprised.
He did his best with the fish. Usually he watched Draco for cues on how to eat unfamiliar food, but tonight he couldn’t because Draco was watching him, waiting in silence for moments to jump in and help. When Harry finished the side of the fish facing up, Draco’s knife invaded his plate and quickly took out the backbone for him. He sliced out the cheek and made sure Harry ate it.
Harry finished eating first, as he always did, and sipped the wine, which Draco had limited to a decorous single glass each. They were eating off white porcelain that Harry hadn’t even known they owned. Then again, there was an entire china cabinet in his house that he didn’t touch, it was all priceless Malfoy shit.
Draco cleared the table by hand with absolute precision and zero rush, removed the tablecloth even though no one had made any mess, put down a new one, smoothed it with harsh swipes. Then he straightened and stood there.
He definitely was not wearing anything underneath. All quite tasteful, but. Harry averted his eyes back to his face.
Draco cleared his throat. “Harry Potter,” he said.
Harry’s nervousness had reconfigured totally. It was like the ref was about to blow the whistle and start the match. Let’s fucking go. “Yes,” he said.
“Stand up,” Draco said. Harry stood up. Draco led him out of the dining room, back to the living room, placed him in a spot that seemed arbitrary. Then he left and came back with his wand.
Draco went up on the balls of his feet, then back down. As if he was beginning the rehearsed choreography for a dance. Holy shit, Harry thought. This was not going to be normal.
Draco held his wand two-handed vertically in front of his face like a sword. His eyes were closed and he breathed. Was he praying? Harry stood there, frozen.
Draco inverted his right hand and took the wand by the casting end, then extended the handle end to Harry. He kept his head bowed and waited. Harry took the wand.
“I place my magic in your hand,” Draco said. He sounded nervous as hell. But with swiftness and firmness he closed his hand on Harry’s wrist and brought the wand’s point to his own throat. “I place my life in your hand.”
Then he moved Harry’s hand to his chest. When Harry, baffled, didn’t do anything, Draco uncurled Harry’s fingers, so his palm was flat against Draco’s chest, the wand pinned between them. Harry could feel that his heart was pounding hard and fast.
“I place my heart in your hand,” Draco said.
Then he did it. He took Harry’s hand in his own and sank gracefully onto one knee. Still with his head bowed like Harry was his liege, he said, “My magic, my life, my heart I give to you forever. And I ask for their eternal return.”
Harry, who had tears fucking dumping out of his eyes, almost started laughing. Draco had planned all of this without ever realizing that Harry wouldn’t know his lines.
“I don’t know what I’m meant to say,” he whispered.
Draco finally looked up at him. He looked completely overwhelmed with nerves. “It — it depends what you want to say,” he whispered back.
Harry forced himself not to break the ritualistic posture they were in to embrace him. “I want to say yes,” he whispered.
Draco swayed in his uncomfortable kneel. “Then you say, ‘I give you my hand.’”
“I give you my hand,” Harry said, smiling uncontrollably.
The wand grew hot, still clutched between them. A ribbon of green silk wrapped around their hands, the cool fabric pulling snug.
Draco choked on a happy laugh.
For what was probably only ten seconds but felt like ten minutes, they held there. Harry loved looking at their hands, loved Draco’s happiness, but he wanted to let him get up off the floor, too.
“How long do we stay like this?”
“However long you want,” Draco said. “When you untie it, we’re married. But we can walk through the village first, or sleep the night handfasted, or go on a tour and receive blessings from your loved ones, or — or you can untie it under an auspicious phase of the moon, or. Whenever you’re ready.”
Harry untied the ribbon. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was the marriage. I thought it was just the betrothal. But this is even better, I’m happy it’s the marriage.”
“I know,” Draco said. “It wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t wanted it to. We can still have a party, but, yeah. That’s the marriage.”
He got off his knee and then they were standing in their house again. Only now they were married. Harry still held the green ribbon. It was real, he would get to keep it.
“I have a ring,” Draco said. “I have rings for both of us.”
He extended a forearm and Noctua flew very silently from who knew where and landed balancing on one leg. The other talon uncurled and dropped two rings into his waiting palm.
“Friar Bacon wanted to help but—” Noctua clicked her beak and flew away, disgusted; “—his audition didn’t go well.”
Draco gave one ring to Harry. “Here’s mine, it’s my great-grandfather’s. You can — if you want.”
It was a simple, normal gold band. Harry held Draco’s shaking hand and put it on him.
“And yours,” Draco went on. “I don’t know whether it’s your style but — just tell me if you want anything changed. It’s Sirius Black’s. Kreacher the house elf stole it from the Black house and brought it for Mother but it was a man’s ring so she ended up just leaving it at the Manor…I know his relationship with his family wasn’t exactly happy…which was why this was still at the house…and, you know, it’s a bit teen, I think he probably only wore it as a teenager…just, just let me know what you think. I can get you a more normal one. You can have this as a keepsake and I can get you something else to wear.”
After all that preamble, Harry expected it to be really garish. But it was also just a band. It was a band of obsidian set in a border of silver.
“See what I mean, it’s slightly goth, no? But, look, I know it was his…”
Draco tugged from the sleeve of his robe a photograph. He passed his wand over it to remove the bend it had acquired from hugging his wrist: he’d been keeping this on his person for hours in preparation for providing this proof.
It was a photograph that belonged to Harry, that he must have taken from Harry’s photo album. That Harry had looked at a million times. The four Marauders in their Hogwarts uniforms, laughing with their arms slung around each other, shoving and grinning.
Harry had gone to some trouble to obtain it. The original was stuck permanently to the wall in Sirius’ bedroom at Grimmauld Place; Harry had never been able to get it off. That was the way Sirius wanted it, Sirius had no way of knowing that someday someone would want it to be sentimental about him and his friends. So in his covetous desperation Harry had taken a photo of the photo, which was what this was. There was detail and fidelity lost in the copy, the figures’ movements were more repetitive, they wouldn’t wave back at the viewer when the viewer waved. But he’d had to have it.
“Watch his hand,” Draco said, pointing at Sirius. “Look, there it is. Don’t you think it’s the same one?”
It definitely was. Sirius, who was not quite full grown in this picture, was wearing it on his middle finger because it was too big for his ring finger. Harry fought a little sob, thinking about Sirius wearing this, wearing it at Hogwarts and feeling cool and rich and young, not yet knowing how painful and short his life was going to be. Then thinking about Draco looking through Harry’s belongings for leads, squinting at this photo, bringing it to his mother and making her help him track down a tiny thing in it you could only see if you looked carefully and for a long time.
“It’s, wow.” Harry wiped his eyes. “Okay, put it on.”
He extended his hand and Draco put the ring on him.
“I wish it were something of your father’s,” Draco said. “His wedding ring was buried with him. But I promise I prayed to him a lot.”
“You prayed to my father?” Harry said.
“I prayed to your ancestors every day for a year,” Draco said. “The memorial is very convenient to the house.”
“You prayed to my mother?” Harry said, hoping he wasn’t insulting him with his shock.
“Yes,” Draco said, holding his gaze now. “With piety in the highest.”
“For a year? Is that usual?”
“Well, you’re supposed to pray to the ancestors, but, I might have.” Draco started to blush. “I just wanted to make sure they knew I was serious.”
Harry looked down at his hand, with its ring. For his whole adult life he had wanted to be married and now he was. To somebody who took it really seriously. Who had conducted the marriage himself with a magic ritual. Harry had given his hand.
“Has — has my name changed?” he asked, determined not to let his upset show if it had.
“No,” Draco said. He added swiftly, “I’ll take yours if you want me to.”
Harry had never seen him offer such total acquiescence. He honored the vows. His family was important to him and he was willing to surrender it completely. But Harry didn’t need his surrender, didn’t want it.
“You should keep your name, it suits you,” Harry said. “Is that okay? If we both keep our names?”
“Of course,” Draco said. He gestured to their hands. “The magic’s the magic. We’re married however we want to play it.”
We’re married. Harry couldn’t believe it was already true. He could believe it. It felt true.
“We should kiss,” Harry said. “Don’t you think?”
“Well, there’s the ceremonial lovemaking yet to go.”
“Oh yeah, entailing what?” Harry said, feeling rather stirred.
Draco kissed him. “There isn’t really. I’ve run out of sacred rites. It’s all improvised from now.”
Harry slid his hands around Draco’s waist, threaded his fingers at the small of Draco’s back. Felt the ring that was already almost as warm as his skin. There was something to this private marriage ceremony under the authority of one’s own magical power. It could transition very smoothly from thorough and upstanding to thoroughly intimate.
“The fact you’re not wearing anything under that vestment tells me you haven’t really left it up to chance,” he said.
Draco smoothed down the garment. “This fabric is very unforgiving, any bulk ruins the silhouette,” he groused. “But as your perfect husband, I’m prepared for any eventuality.”
“You look gorgeous,” Harry said. “I should’ve told you when I came in but I was so nervous.”
“Why were you nervous?” Draco scoffed.
“Well, I did sort of…suspect…”
Draco deployed a few skeptical blinks’ worth of silence. “It wasn’t meant to be a surprise.”
Harry considered trying to play this off. But one was meant to be honest with one’s husband.
“But you were doing all this sneaking around…preparing for this big proposal…”
“Proposal?” Draco’s disbelief deepened into something worse. “Harry. I proposed at midsummer. As is customary.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
“I woke you up at sunrise and pledged that my love was as clear as the longest day! And asked you if yours was as profound as the longest night! And you said yes!”
“Well, it is,” Harry said, blushing.
“We stayed in bed all day! From sunup to sundown! As is customary!”
“I thought you were just feeling a bit,” Harry laughed helplessly, “insatiable. Listen, I’m not the only one who misunderstood. Ron and Hermione thought—”
“—that I was seeking their permission?” Draco hmphed in disdain. “Typical. Utterly.”
Harry dipped his head forward, grinned, rested his forehead on Draco’s shoulder. He didn’t care if Draco was slightly mean to Ron and Hermione. He liked the rough edges. He could hear fondness creeping into the insults little by little, the fondness in Draco’s voice that nobody knew how to listen for except Harry. Harry slid the ring down his own finger, enjoyed the feeling of sliding it back home.
When he was seventeen he had been scared his life was done changing. That he had done too much too fast and arrived prematurely at an end point, stultified and calm. Marriage had felt like that. The conclusion of love. He had rushed toward it despite that or because of it. But here he was in his own house, wearing normal clothes, the minutes queuing up and slipping past like always, with the person who had surprised him the most in the first years of his long adulthood.
Draco’s hair tickled Harry’s ear as he leaned in. It was long again; he had let it grow out. He liked to change it. It was impossible to know how much they had had to change for this to happen to them, because it had happened. Harry felt the same but he knew he was different.
Some things were still the same, he thought. Draco was the perfect height for Harry to put his head on his shoulder and rest. That had been secretly true all along, and they’d only had to figure it out.