Chapter Text
Twenty-fifth of December – northern lights
Despite his best efforts, Harry is the last to arrive at the Burrow for Christmas lunch. He throws as much self control as he can muster into getting out of bed at a reasonable hour, but Draco is warm and languorous and already seems to know exactly how to touch Harry to make him lose his higher brain functions. It’s not Harry’s fault, the man just makes him weak, and by the looks on the faces of everyone present in the Weasleys’ kitchen, every last one of them knows it, too.
“I’m sorry I’m late, not a word, merry Christmas,” Harry says all in one breath, shutting the back door and inhaling the delicious savoury steam that almost seems to fill the kitchen.
“Here, get this on,” Ron instructs, flinging a wrapped package at Harry, who catches it and smiles.
Everyone else is already wearing their new Christmas jumpers, including Hugo, who is sitting on the floor and chewing on his blue woollen sleeve. Harry rips off the paper and inspects this year’s offering, a soft, chunky knit in deep red with a small ‘H’ over the breast and a large picture of a triple-decker bus.
“Thank you, this is brilliant,” he says, pulling the jumper over his head and turning this way and that to allow everyone to view it properly.
“Isn’t Draco coming?” Molly asks, rattling a tin of roast potatoes. “I’ve done one for him as well. It’s got a cat as well as a bus.”
“No,” Harry says, surprised. “He’s with the bi—erm, with the ladies,” he amends quickly.
“See, Mum, you actually have to invite people if you want them to turn up,” Ron says, and Molly gives him a stern look. He holds his hands up. “Just saying.”
“I’m sure he’ll be pleased he was invited,” Harry says, touched and bewildered by how easily his family and Draco seem to have accepted each other.
“Everyone’s just happy that you’re happy,” Hermione says quietly, displaying the sort of perceptiveness that makes Harry want to hug her and shake her at the same time.
In the end, he decides to hug her, wrapping his arms around her smile and her curls and her brand new lavender-coloured jumper.
“Merry Christmas, Hermione,” he mumbles. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m not going to Eritrea.”
She peers up at him, eyebrows knitted. “Well… alright.”
“Right, you two, less hobnobbing and more…” Molly frowns, bustling past them and setting an enormous, gleaming turkey on the table. “More sitting down and eating your dinner before it gets cold.”
“Can we hobnob while we eat?” Ginny asks, pulling up the chair next to Harry’s and yanking Neville into the one on her other side. He doesn’t seem to mind.
“Of course,” Fred says grandly. “How now, brown cow?”
“Behave yourself, Fred, George,” Molly says, handing the carving knife to Arthur.
“George isn’t here,” Percy points out. “He’s on his honeymoon.”
Molly frowns, turning to look at Fred and seeming startled to see only one twin looking back at her.
“Oh. Well, never mind. Everyone should be behaving—it’s Christmas,” she says.
“I’m behaving,” Rose says, accepting the slice of turkey held out to her by her grandfather.
“For now,” Hermione says under her breath. “At least one sprout, Rosie.”
She wrinkles her nose but obediently takes a single sprout from the platter before beginning to pile stuffing and roast potatoes onto her plate.
“They’re just like little cabbages,” Harry says, nudging her and making sure that she sees him scooping several sprouts onto his plate.
Rose regards her single sprout with deep suspicion. “Uncle Harry, that’s not better.”
Her indignant expression makes everyone else around the table burst into laughter, and it takes a solemn promise of an extra large piece of Christmas pudding to put a reluctant smile back on her face. Placated, she chews through the sprout in record time and begins attacking her potatoes, at which point the rest return to their food. As usual, Molly’s festive spread is outstanding, and Harry helps himself to a little bit of everything in sight, taking care to save room for dessert as well as the inevitable piles of mince pies and biscuits.
As he listens to a spirited discussion between Ron and Ginny about the right way to construct a Christmas dinner leftover sandwich, he wonders how things are going at Eilish’s dinner table: if she has cooked by herself or ordered in, what everyone is talking about, whether or not Montague and Juno—and, indeed, Harry the mouse—have been allowed to attend or whether they have been relegated to the bus to plot their revenge.
He crunches Molly’s crisp, herby roast potatoes and nods while Hermione tells him an MLE story that he doesn’t understand but is happy to hear nonetheless. When Arthur offers him a glass of sherry, he drinks it and then remembers, just like he does every year, that it tastes disgusting. He wears his paper cracker hat and spends the best part of an hour trying to guess which famous person’s name Fred has written on it during the lull between turkey and pudding. Percy grills him at length about his Irish campaign and all the while, his mind is helpfully flashing images of Draco on an endless loop; kisses on frozen riverbanks, pale limbs stretched out and trembling, a real smile in a haze of scented steam.
He tries to reason with himself, tries to insist to his churning stomach and sore heart that it has been a matter of hours since he saw Draco and that is absolutely fine. Normal, in fact. It’s healthy and it’s Christmas and he’s here with his family, trying not to choke on Christmas pudding when Arthur tells a joke so terrible that it’s automatically hilarious.
When night falls and everyone gathers in the living room to listen to carols on the wireless, he sits on the floor and lets Hugo fall asleep on his lap. He’s totally fine, and all of this is lovely, just like it always is, comforting and familiar and right, but whenever a car passes the bottom of the lane, the headlights make him catch his breath whether he likes it or not.
“Harry, just go,” Hermione whispers, leaning down to touch his shoulder.
“What?”
“You can go. Look at them, they’re fine,” she says softly, and he follows her eyes to where Molly and Arthur are curled contentedly together on the sofa with Rose squashed between them. “I think we both know that there’s somewhere you need to be.”
“Is it that obvious?” he mutters, allowing her to lift Hugo from his lap.
She smiles. “It is to me.”
“And me,” Ron puts in helpfully.
Harry groans and rubs his face with both hands. “I’m starting to think that both of you know me too well,” he says, getting to his feet. He takes a deep breath. “Erm… I’m afraid I have to be off now. Thank you for the lovely dinner and I’ll see you all very soon, but I have to… I have to go.”
With that, he hugs Molly and Arthur and hurries to the back door, pretending that he doesn’t hear the giggling that follows him all the way outside. In the lane, he draws his wand and waits, heart pounding. The bus lurches up beside him within seconds, and Draco has barely opened the doors before Harry is up the steps and catching him up in a dizzying kiss that tastes of sugar and rich, dark fruit.
“That was ridiculous,” Harry murmurs, pressing his mouth to Draco’s skin and revelling in the rough sigh that slams right to the base of his spine. “I’m not doing that again.”
Draco drops his head to Harry’s shoulder and exhales against his jumper. “You won’t be surprised to know that I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
“Why wouldn’t I be surprised?” Harry asks, grinning.
“Oh, shut up.” Draco steps back, frowning. “What on earth are you wearing?”
“My Weasley Christmas jumper, of course,” Harry says. “And before you laugh, this one’s for you.”
Draco takes the parcel and unwraps it slowly, revealing a jumper in Knight Bus purple with a glittering white triple-decker and the promised cat.
“Where the actual fuck did this come from?” he asks, regarding it with astonishment.
Harry laughs. “Molly made it. She makes us jumpers every year.”
“And she made one for me?”
“She did. Do you like it?”
“It’s completely bizarre,” Draco says, shaking his head. “I love it.”
As is customary with Molly’s knitting, the jumper is a little on the large side and Harry imagines that, with a bit of wriggling, they could both fit into it at once, but Draco doesn’t seem to mind at all. He rubs the soft wool between his fingers and smiles, turning to Juno and gazing at her expectantly.
She looks up from a rather involved stretch on the arm of Corrie’s chair and regards Draco with her head on one side and her ears twitching. After a moment, she sneezes and then settles down to sleep.
“A mixed review, I think,” Draco says. The purple jumper swings on his slender frame as he turns to grab Harry, poke him into a chair at the front of the bus and retrieve the biddies’ gift from under the driver’s seat.
“I wouldn’t mind her,” Harry says, stretching comfortably. “She wears fur and she doesn’t seem to feel guilty about it at all.”
Draco laughs, and the lights turn his eyes a glimmering silvery purple. “Shall we open this?”
“We must be allowed by now.”
“I was warned throughout dinner not to touch it until you were with me,” Draco says. “I was tempted to turn it into a drinking game, but I resisted.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Harry says, feigning disappointment. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drunk.”
Draco grimaces. “I become very loud and very insistent on interfering with people’s clothing.”
“In that case, I definitely wouldn’t have minded,” Harry laughs.
“Perhaps another time,” Draco says with a smile that feels like a promise. “When I don’t need to drive the bus.”
“Oh? Are we going somewhere?”
“There are one or two things I thought you might like to see,” Draco says, waving a dismissive hand and placing the parcel in Harry’s lap. “Open it, then.”
Intrigued, Harry unties the ribbon from the bright red box and removes the lid. Inside, a layer of tissue paper conceals most of the contents, but a folded note sits on top. He smoothes it out, admiring the quality of the parchment under his fingers and the neat copperplate handwriting that almost certainly belongs to Eilish. He reads it aloud.
“Dearest Draco and Harry,” he begins, already smiling. “We of the biddy club offer you the gift of time and space. Now that you have found each other, you must strengthen your bond in a place where elderly passengers and the obligations of the modern world do not exist, at least for you and at least for a few days. Your Portkeys leave at 2pm on the 31st of December, and they will bring you home four days hence. With love and gratitude for all that you do, Eilish, Danica, Ida, Corrie, Audrey and Thora.”
Harry sets down the note and stares at Draco, relieved to find the astonishment he feels written all over the pale features.
“I think there’s more,” Draco says faintly.
Harry looks. “Oh. PS, Molly has already agreed to take care of Juno,” he reads.
Draco twists around to gaze at his sleeping cat and Harry removes the tissue paper from the box to find it stuffed full of extra gifts. There’s a set of scarf and gloves for each of them, one in green and one in soft slate grey; a selection of biscuits that smell like warm spices; a hand-written list of the best spells to ward off cold weather; a battered set of Omnioculars; a collapsible teapot, and, perhaps most telling, a pair of guidebooks—one to Iceland in general and one to Reykjavik in particular.
Harry sorts through the items in quiet disbelief, opening the topmost book to find Portkey passes and a note from Ida with tips on how to remember what their individual key will look like.
“Am I losing my marbles here or are they giving us a holiday?” he asks.
Draco nods. “A very cold holiday,” he says, and he seems torn between pleasure and irritation.
“What’s the matter?”
Draco takes one of the books from the box and flips through it, expression of disenchantment growing with each page.
“Nothing,” he says, returning the book with a sigh. “Except that they may have just one-upped me in rather spectacular style.”
“Was your present a trip to Iceland, too?” Harry asks, regarding him with curiosity.
“Actually, you’re sitting in it,” Draco says.
“I’m what?”
“My gift to you. You’re sitting in it,” Draco says, crossness fading to exasperation. “Harry, you really are about as observant as a brick wall.”
As he speaks, it finally occurs to Harry that he is quite a bit more comfortable than usual, and that is perhaps because his spring-loaded metal conductor’s chair has been replaced by something wonderful. Setting down the box, he scrambles to his feet to examine it.
“Oh! I didn’t… wow,” he mumbles, and he knows that Draco is smiling now.
His new chair is a thing of beauty. It is compact and unfussy but perfect in every way, made of a dark, chocolate brown leather that contrasts warmly with the lighter driver’s seat. When he sits down this time, the cushioned frame hugs him perfectly, and the back is set at exactly the right height for him to lean back and rest his head. The whole thing also smells fantastic, fits inexplicably into the same little space as the tiny flip-up seat, and is quite possibly the best chair Harry has ever had the pleasure of sitting in.
“I’m sorry I didn’t notice,” he says, stretching out one leg and resting his ankle against Draco’s. “You can be very… distracting. In a good way. And I think it’s brilliant. My own chair! Thank you.”
“You are welcome,” Draco says. “But you should thank the bus, too. Alterations of this type are very much a joint effort, and believe me, if it hadn’t approved of you, there would have been nothing I could have done.”
“In that case, thank you very much,” Harry says gravely, patting the dashboard and waiting for a piece of fruit to fly out and hit him. Nothing happens. The idling engine continues to purr and his lovely new chair doesn’t dematerialise beneath him. “Looks like there’s no getting rid of me now.”
“Shall we get you a conductor’s uniform?” Draco asks, all innocence.
Harry snorts. “If that’s what does it for you.”
“You’ll be sorry if that turns out to be true,” Draco says, and when Harry makes a rude gesture and hands him a badly-wrapped package, he manages to look surprised.
“This is for the bus as well as you, I suppose,” Harry says, chewing anxiously on his lip as Draco unwraps his gift. “It’s a bit scratched. I tried all sorts of removal charms but it wouldn’t go. I got it from this dodgy-looking bloke on a market stall…” He pauses, scrubbing at his hair, but Draco is staring at the object with wide eyes. “Yeah, okay, I’m, not really selling it, am I? It’s just… when I saw it, I couldn’t resist.”
“I see,” Draco says, and Harry just can’t read him.
“It’s got all this diagnostic magic built into it, and all these different settings for fixing engines,” he says, words just spilling out as he begins to panic. “I think it works… I mean, I tried it and set my curtains on fire, but I think you’re probably only supposed to use it with a… what?”
Draco is staring at him now, mouth twitching at the corners. “You set your curtains on fire.”
Harry shrugs. “Only a little bit.”
Draco laughs, fingers curling around the battered old spanner and holding tight. “Do you see these letters?” he asks, relaxing his grip.
“Yeah. I said it was scratched but I did try,” Harry says.
“This isn’t just a scratch. These are initials.”
“Are they?” Harry says, squinting at the three etched letters. “I thought it just said ‘EEP’.”
“I suppose it does,” Draco concedes. “The thing is, these are very rare. Very few were ever made, and this one happens to be marked with the initials of Ernest Egbert Prang.”
Harry’s eyebrows lift under his fringe. “Seriously? Ernie Prang, who used to drive the bus?”
“The very same.”
Delighted, Harry laughs. “In that case, I think I got a bargain. Poor dodgy-looking man.”
“Yes, I feel terrible for him,” Draco says, weighing the spanner in his hands. He is clearly itching to have a go with it, but his self control prevails and he tucks it away carefully in one of his not-so-secret compartments.
“You’re not going to set the bus on fire?” Harry says, taken by surprise when Draco kisses him and then immediately starts the engine.
“Not today.”
As the bus speeds away from the Burrow, Harry settles in his chair and enjoys the ride. He has learned by now that Draco is very unlikely to answer questions about their destination, particularly when he is in what Harry thinks of as his magical mystery tour mode. Instead, he makes himself comfortable and reads aloud to Draco from ‘A Magical time in Iceland’ and ‘Resplendent Reykjavik’, deciding not to dwell on the cross little exhalations that issue from the driver’s seat whenever he mentions the Northern Lights.
The drive is a long one, and by the time Draco parks up the bus, every muscle in Harry’s body has turned stiff and even the most comfortable chair in the world has been unable to prevent his backside going completely numb. When he stands, the blood races back into his extremities, making him swear and hop from foot to foot.
“Pins and needles or interpretive dance?” Draco asks, stretching until his Christmas jumper rides up, exposing a flicker of pale abdomen.
Harry grins. “Shut up. Where are we?”
Draco opens the doors, letting in a rush of icy air. “Callach Muir.”
Harry stops hopping and stares at him, heart thumping. “The place in the photograph?”
“Yes. This is it.”
“You remembered?” Harry mumbles, and Draco shrugs as though it’s nothing, but it’s not. He knows it’s not. It’s everything, and just for a moment, the world beyond the Knight Bus ceases to exist.
Wrapping him tightly in cold, stiff arms, Harry buries his face in Draco’s hair and breathes him in, feeling his whole body sing with belonging. Draco’s fingers slip into his hair and he sighs, letting go of everything that doesn’t matter to this, now, here.
“I love you,” he whispers, because he does, and because he can’t hold onto it any more.
Draco stiffens against him, fingers coming to rest in his hair. Harry forgets how to breathe. Everything is pulled tight, motionless around him, and then there is a warm mouth pressed to his, a smile against his lips and three words spoken into the space between them that make his heart swell and ache.
“I do love you, Draco murmurs again, kissing him and frowning. “I didn’t ever imagine saying it, though.”
“You can keep saying it,” Harry offers. “I don’t mind.”
Draco lets out an inelegant snort and grabs his hand, pulling him out into the freezing cold night. There isn’t an artificial light for miles around, and it takes Harry several seconds to adjust to the blanket of complete darkness, but when he looks up, his mouth drops open. The sky is littered with more stars than he has ever seen in one place, more even than seems reasonable, and wherever he looks the tiny points of light seem to follow him.
“I realise that you wanted to see the loch and the mountains, hear the landscape sing and such,” Draco says, gripping his fingers tightly, “but they’ll still be there in the morning, and I thought you might enjoy the night time view.”
“Yeah,” Harry says, gulping at cold air that tastes like clean, damp moss. “Hang on, though… this is where George and Angelina are staying. What if they see us?”
“Do you honestly think I didn’t consider that?” Draco sighs. He lets go of Harry’s hand and leans into the bus to turn on the headlights. “Can you see how the water curves around the crag there?”
“Yes?”
“Well, their little cabin is on the other side. They can’t see us and we can’t see them.”
“Okay,” Harry says, allowing himself to relax. Seconds later, he is on his hands and knees in the cold, wet grass. “Look at this!”
“What is it?”
Harry grins, balancing himself on one hand and reaching out gently with the other. There, illuminated in the bus’s headlights, is a whole family of bristle beetles, scuttling around like little black nail brushes, cutting the tips from the frozen grass with shiny pincers and leaping, crackling, into the air to impress one another. Harry stays as still as he can, and his patience is rewarded when a large male crawls onto the palm of his hand. Slowly, he gets to his feet and shows the beetle to Draco.
“Do they just know where to find you?” he asks, peering at the beetle. The beetle peers back, wiggling long, upright antennae and flailing its little legs.
“Possibly, but the bristle beetle is native to Scotland,” Harry says. “It’s unusual to find a whole family group out in the open, though.”
Draco regards him thoughtfully. “You do seem to enjoy all this conservation stuff. Perhaps you should focus on that.”
Harry laughs. “Thanks for the career advice.”
“It was just a suggestion,” Draco says, startling when the beetle jumps several inches in the air and lands back on Harry’s palm.
“It’s a good suggestion,” Harry admits. “I’ve already decided to focus on projects a bit closer to home. Isn’t he handsome?”
“Yes, he’s very handsome,” Draco says, adding with a small smile: “And I’m glad to hear that.”
“Do you think the bus needs a mascot?” Harry wonders, inspecting the beetle’s characteristic bristles.
“I don’t know, but I doubt he’d last long with Juno around,” Draco says.
Harry wrinkles his nose. “She wouldn’t eat him?”
“No, but it would only be a matter of time before she stood on him with one of her great big feet, and that would be the end of it. Shall we go inside? I can’t feel my… anything,” Draco says, and Harry takes one last look at the stars, returns the beetle to his family and follows him inside.
Cold to the bone, they trudge up to the top deck and fill the copper bath with water so hot that it turns their skin pink. In a haze of delicious-smelling steam, they trade lazy kisses and slow strokes until, finally returned to a comfortable temperature, they retreat to the bed, splashing footprints on the floor and flinging big white towels over the bedclothes.
Clean and warm and aching hard, Harry gives himself up to sensation, drifting in comfort and pleasure with no need for a rush to the finish line. He sprawls, feeling every brush of Draco’s damp skin against his as a thrill in his veins, every gentle creak of the bed and every press of rough, air-dried towel underneath him. He trails kisses over every inch of pale skin he can reach, closing his eyes when Draco leans over him and slides his cock into his mouth. He groans and lifts his hips and Draco just slows down, making heated, amused eye contact until Harry grabs his hips and pulls him closer, close enough to let Draco’s cock slide, heavy and leaking, against his tongue.
Harry hasn’t ever been very good at multitasking, but he holds on for as long as he can, urged on by Draco’s shudders and gasps and the unhurried flicker of a hot tongue exactly where he needs it, until all he can think about is that mouth on his and Draco’s cock inside him. Without a word, he summons the oil from the bedside into his hand and rolls Draco onto his back, feeling himself flushing all over as he fucks himself on his fingers and holding the eye contact anyway, because Draco’s breathing is ragged, beautiful, and he can’t look away from Harry.
“Oh my god,” Draco whispers, eyes fluttering closed as Harry sinks down onto him and stays there, hands resting on Draco’s chest and thighs clamped tightly around his hips. “Just… give me a second.”
Harry stares down at him and bites his lip. He’s already burning up, tight and full and impossibly turned on just by the thought of having Draco inside him. The sensation itself is almost too much to bear and it takes everything he has not to move immediately. He breathes slowly, pressing his heated cock against his abdomen. The cold outside is already forgotten and he can feel the sweat prickling at his hairline and slipping down his back.
Finally, Draco grips his hips and urges him to move. Harry closes his eyes and allows himself to be guided, rising and falling and rocking in a rhythm so slow that he wants to cry with the intensity of it. Draco’s fingers dig into his hips, holding him firm and pulling him down onto his cock again and again. Tension vibrates through every line of Harry’s body, making his muscles ache and his skin slick with sweat, but he pours himself into it, staring down at Draco and frowning to see him holding his wand.
“What are you doing?” he pants.
“Look up,” Draco instructs, and when he does, he laughs.
It all makes sense. All of it, even the part where he’s having sex with Draco Malfoy on the top deck of a magical bus while the sky is lit up in swathes of green and blue and gold.
“Don’t stop,” Draco murmurs, and Harry hesitates only for a second before abandoning himself to it, losing himself to the slide of Draco’s cock inside him and tipping back his head to watch the stunning, swirling colours of the Northern Lights.
The icy air whips into the exposed top deck, sweeping over his heated skin, and it’s glorious.
“Did you really think I’d get bored of seeing this?” he laughs, shuddering when Draco wraps a slicked hand around his cock and strokes him. “Did you—oh, god.”
With a mingled laugh/groan, Harry looks up at the sky and fights for control, but Draco’s fingers are insistent and the slow, languid rhythm inside him is gaining momentum and all he can do is let go, intense pleasure spreading through him as he looks up at the glowing lights and comes all over Draco’s fist.
Head spinning, he closes his eyes, rocking his hips to a new, more urgent pattern until Draco groans and holds onto him so tightly that his fingernails cut into Harry’s skin. Falling forward on his hands, Harry kisses his chest, tasting salt on his tongue and smiling wearily.
“I think we might need another bath.”
“I don’t know,” Draco says, picking up his wand again. “Look how the last one ended.”
Harry says nothing, just watches in confusion as Draco casts a spell that protects them from the icy wind while leaving the view of the Aurora intact.
“Why didn’t you just do that before?”
“I did my best,” Draco says, resting cold hands on Harry’s waist. “I’ve never had to use that feature while distracted before.”
“Distracted?” Harry repeats, amused.
He disentangles himself from Draco, looks over at the bath and then shivers. After a moment’s thought, he hits them both with cleaning charms and then scrambles under the quilts and blankets, pulling Draco with him.
“Do you have to put your cold hands all over me?” Draco grouses.
“Yes, I do. And a Merry Christmas to you, too.”
Draco shuffles back against him, pressing his back to Harry’s chest and attempting to hide a smile in his pillow. They fall into a comfortable silence, warming gently and watching the lights ripple across the sky. When Juno leaps onto the bed, she stares at the place where the roof should be for several minutes and then gives up, curling up to sleep at their feet.
“I think Juno wants to hear more of your dating stories,” Draco says.
“Juno is snoring,” Harry mumbles against Draco’s shoulder.
“We only got to number twenty-nine,” he says, and Harry already knows he’s going to give in. He doesn’t mind.
“Okay,” he says, heaving a dramatic sigh. “So, number thirty took me to the circus.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
Harry presses a cold foot to the back of his leg. “Good. So, here’s what happened…”
-the end-