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Chapter Text

“I’m dying,” declared Draco as Harry entered their bedroom and took a seat on the bed beside him. “Quick, Potter, get parchment and a quill. I’ll dictate my will. I’m leaving everything to Kreacher.”

Harry snorted, pulling out a flask of Pepper-Up Potion from the folds of his robes and filling Draco's mug with it. “Don’t be such a drama king, dear,” he said, leaning in to kiss his boyfriend on the forehead—a gesture he'd picked up from Molly Weasley years ago. “It’s just a little cold.”

“It’s not a cold,” insisted Draco miserably. “I’ve had the cold before. Nott used to have the immune system of a flobberworm back at Hogwarts and would always give it to us shortly after Halloween. This is pure agony, Potter, and I won’t stand for you mocking my pain.”

Harry made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh—a common exhalation from him where Draco is concerned. He held up the mug to Draco's lips. “Drink up,” he instructed.

Draco pouted, but drank anyway. Moments later, his ears began blowing steam. Harry laughed, especially as his boyfriend’s face seized up in discomfort.

“Thanks for that,” grumbled Draco once the steaming subsided. “Now I’ll be dying with bells on.”

“You’re not dying,” insisted Harry, with another kiss to his forehead. “Get some sleep. I’ll get Kreacher to send up some soup.”

“That’s why he’s getting everything in my will,” muttered Draco, as he subsided against his pillows.

Harry chuckled on his way back downstairs.

Chapter Text

“Ugh, what’s that smell?” demanded Ron as he and Harry entered their dorm room. “It’s like ten Dungbombs just went off in here at once. Should have a word with Seamus—”

“I don’t think it’s Dungbombs,” said Harry, nodding towards his bed. A pure white, vaguely-familiar-looking ferret was sitting in the midst of his bedding and his clothes, casually ripping up his Gryffindor hoodie into shreds.

Ron, too, gawked at the ferret. “Is that…?” he ventured.

Harry grimaced, approaching his bed. The ferret jumped at his hand, scrabbling up the sleeve of his robes to perch on his shoulder.

Ron made a face. “Look, if that’s Malfoy, then that’s—” he nodded at the mess on Harry’s bed, “right disgusting, that is. Should take him to Madam Pomfrey and get him fixed.”

The ferret screamed and burrowed itself into Harry's collar. Harry immediately squirmed at the ticklish feeling, and it took him a bit of manoeuvring before he could grab the ferret and hold it out at arm's length.

“I think Ron meant turning you back to your old prattish self, Malfoy,” he told the ferret.

“Wouldn’t not want the other thing happening, too, to be honest,” added Ron.

The ferret bit Harry’s finger and landed lightly back on the ground, before streaking off to hide under Harry's bed. Harry and Ron exchanged a look.

“Think Malfoy’s taken a liking to being a ferret?” wondered Ron.

Harry scoffed. “Who wouldn’t? No homework, no exams, and this is the cutest he’ll ever look—”

A protesting hiss met that last comment. Harry chuckled, kneeling down and pulling back the bed skirt. The ferret glared balefully at him from its spot next to Harry’s trunk.

“Come on, let’s get you back to normal,” he suggested.

“And I need to go ask Hermione for a deodorising spell,” grumbled Ron, waving a hand in front of his nose as the ferret hesitantly returned to Harry’s shoulder. “Sweet Circe, Malfoy, you don’t need to mark your territory like a ferret.”

Harry scowled. “I’m not his territory!”

The ferret hissed again, as if to dispute that.

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe your nerve, Scarhead, just because you saved the entire Wizarding world from the Dark Lord doesn’t mean you get to strut about the castle bothering people who just want to take their N.E.W.T.s and get out of this miserable place—”

“Oh, like the rest of us aren’t here to do the same? It wasn’t my idea, anyway; Hermione just felt sorry for you having no friends this year.”

“I don’t need Granger feeling sorry for me!” snapped Malfoy. “I have friends! Plenty of them!”

“Not at Hogwarts this year,” replied Harry. Parkinson, Zabini, Nott, Goyle—all of them had refused to return to Hogwarts; several of them had even fled the country. Malfoy couldn’t, though, given the terms of his sentence. House arrest for three years with no magic except to complete his schooling. It was as light as it could ever be for him and his mother, given how they’d saved Harry’s life.

Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need friends to pass my N.E.W.T.s,” he hissed. “And if you think I’d be so desperate for companionship that I’d stoop to befriending Gryffindors—”

Harry was about to argue back, but then the passageway ahead of them suddenly grew a wall. He turned around, and another wall sprouted to block their retreat.

Malfoy, on the other hand, didn’t even notice the blockage until he’d nearly walked into it. “What is this?” he hissed, glaring at the wall and then at Harry, as if Harry had conjured it himself. 

“No idea,” replied Harry. “Looks like we’re trapped, though.”

“Yes, Potter, I can see that; I do have eyes,” snarked Malfoy.

“Do you? You did nearly walk into that wall,” said Harry. 

Malfoy flushed. “Shut up.” He took out his wand, aiming some diagnostic spells at the wall. Harry watched him, curious. 

“Is it working for you again?” he asked, nodding at the hawthorn wand. The wand that had defeated Voldemort was Draco Malfoy’s—Harry suspected there was some sort of irony in that. 

“What?” grumbled Malfoy, frowning at the way the wall started to glow, as if trying to decipher the patterns. 

“You’re not having any performance issues with your wand?” wondered Harry.

Malfoy’s flush deepened. “Shut up, you berk. I need to think.”

“Oh, that must be really hard.” Harry grinned. Malfoy shoved him.

“If you must know, Scarhead, no. My wand is perfectly functional.” Malfoy leaned in closer to the lights. “Even if it has an unreasonable affinity with the worst person I know.”

“Funny, I’d’ve thought that would be Voldemort,” said Harry.

“He was the worst person, but then you defeated him, obviously.” Malfoy shook his head and groaned, wiping his hand down his face. “I hate this. We’re trapped in a Complimentary Curse.”

Harry snorted. “It’s a curse?”

“Yes, Potter. A curse. You can only break it by saying something nice about the person you’re trapped with.”

Harry snorted again. “No wonder you think it’s a curse. You’ve never said a nice thing about me in my entire life.” Malfoy looked as if he would dispute that, and Harry quickly tacked on, “saying you didn’t recognise me at the Manor doesn’t exactly count as a compliment, you git.”

“It was a compliment!” scoffed Malfoy. “I was complimenting Granger’s spellwork!”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Well, if the key to breaking this curse is as easy as complimenting you, then…” he screwed up his face, trying to think of something nice to say about Malfoy. 

Malfoy was pointy, and prattish, and a general prick. This was going to be hard. 

They stared at each other for a long time. Interminably long. Harry was starting to wonder whether or not Hermione and Ron would’ve noticed his absence, or if they were… getting up to other things instead. Eurgh. Best not think about that. 

Malfoy cleared his throat. “I… you… You have nice eyes,” he said.

Harry couldn’t help his snort. “Of course you’d like the one thing about me that’s green.”

“Shut up,” grumbled Malfoy, his face flushing pink again. “They were the first thing I ever noticed about you!”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Really? When you were eleven, you liked my eyes?”

Malfoy crossed his arms. “Are we going to get out of here before the next century, maybe?”

“Right, right.” Harry sighed. “You… uh.” What could he say about Malfoy that wouldn’t be taken in a weird way? Malfoy could probably, reasonably, be viewed as fit—he’d always been slender, and some people probably liked the pointy aristocrat look. Not that Harry did, of course. And Malfoy was always well-dressed, and he wasn’t bad at school when he wasn’t trying to make Harry and his friends’ lives hell, and he was a decent Seeker when he wasn’t being annoying…

“You were a really cute ferret,” said Harry instead, grinning at the way Malfoy’s face flushed embarrassed red, before the walls dropped down to let them pass. 

“A ferret,” stated Malfoy as they emerged into the wider hallway again. “Of all the wonderful things about me, you had to pick the most embarrassing moment of my life?”

“Well, it was really funny,” said Harry, shrugging. “And Moody turned out to be an unhinged Death Eater, so the fact that he thought nothing of transfiguring you as a punishment really should’ve been a clue. But yeah. You were a cute ferret.”

“I’m a cute human!” protested Malfoy.

“That’s debatable,” replied Harry. “But as a ferret? Objectively cute.”

Chapter Text

In the wake of the War and Father’s imprisonment, Malfoy Manor had withered before Draco’s very eyes. The cellar was full of whispering shadows, maybe even Pettigrew’s ghost, and some of the hallways upstairs still echoed with the shrieks of prisoners and the cruel laughter of Aunt Bella, the howling of the werewolf pack… 

Draco especially could not stand to be in the rooms that the Dark Lord had inhabited. The walls there were dripping with decay, like a wounded animal slaughtered and left to bleed out. The Dark Lord had forced himself into the command of Malfoy Manor’s magic; he had violated its connection to the Malfoy family. Draco didn’t know how to fix it. He didn’t even know if he wanted to.

Mother, too, sensed their powerlessness over the slow death of their ancestral home. She had withdrawn to the old groundskeeper’s cottage instead, refurbishing it into something simple, something homely. She spent her days tending to the roses in the garden, and not much else.

When he wasn’t studying for his N.E.W.T.s at Hogwarts, Draco was here, confined by his house arrest. The one loophole allowed to him were family visits to other houses that recognised him as kin. Grimmauld Place, despite belonging to Mother’s family, was right out—Potter ruled the roost there. The only other place was Aunt Andromeda’s.

Going to Aunt Andromeda’s had become a breath of fresh air, a gasp of relief amidst the drowning he felt whenever he walked through Malfoy Manor. Though initially things between them had been frosty, Aunt Andromeda eventually warmed up to him and Mother again—but Draco knew that was mostly for the sake of her grandson Teddy, the son of Cousin Nymphadora and the werewolf who taught Draco in third year. 

A younger Draco would have scoffed at that, but now he had neither the energy nor the inclination to care. Teddy was sunshine and innocence, like memories of Draco’s own childhood made flesh—sometimes even literally, when he’d make his hair blond like Draco’s whilst they played. Draco spoiled him, insofar as he could with his access to the Malfoy vault restricted by his sentence. He visited Teddy as much as he could, indulged all of his silly questions (within reason), acquiesced to every little dictate.

Which, of course, meant that when Potter came by to visit one afternoon and Teddy commanded for Cousin Draco to ‘stay’, Draco had no choice but to do so. 

“You don’t have to stay,” said Potter. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of better things to do.”

“Surprisingly, being confined to my home actually means I don’t have a lot of things to do,” retorted Draco. “Besides studying, and there’s only so many times one can reread dissertations on the exceptions to Gamp’s Laws of Elemental Transfiguration before one’s brains leak out of one’s ears.”

Potter snorted at that, and then pretended he hadn’t. He turned his attention back to Teddy, who was apparently his godson, of all things. Draco supposed he should’ve seen it coming. That werewolf did seem to have ended up as one of Potter’s numerous surrogate parents back in third year, along with basically every other Hogwarts professor without any sense.

“Uncle Harry,” babbled Teddy as he toddled to Potter with a book of Muggle fairy tales. “Read story!” 

Potter chuckled, taking the book from Teddy. “I thought I already read you this story,” he said. 

“Read again!” Teddy sat down in Potter’s lap and smiled at Draco. “Cousin Draco help!”

Potter raised an eyebrow at Draco, and held up the book. Draco frowned at the title.

“King Thrushbeard?” he echoed. “Never heard of it.”

“Well, yes. It is a Muggle fairy tale,” said Potter, rolling his eyes. “Come to think of it, you’d be perfect for the princess.” 

“Cousin Draco read princess!” cheered Teddy.

Draco resolved to never let Teddy lead him so desperately astray again. “Fine,” he said. “Only because Teddy requested it. I’m not doing this for you, Potter.”

“You say that a lot,” said Potter, and patted the spot next to him. Draco begrudgingly moved to sit beside his former school nemesis, and took the book from Potter to read.

“Once upon a time, there lived a king with a daughter as proud as she was beautiful. So proud, in fact, that when it came time for her to wed, she scorned all of her suitors—” Draco cut off, glaring at Potter. “Potter, you rotter.”

Potter was grinning innocently at him as he bounced Teddy in his lap. “What? Sometimes princesses are spoiled brats.”

With a huff, Draco returned to reading. “One day, the king threw a magnificent feast, where all the most handsome men of the land sought the princess’s hand in marriage. But to each one of the men, she had only cruel words and laughter. ‘This one’s like a wine barrel!’ she said, to the one who was too fat. ‘This one’s like a beanpole!’ she said, to the one who was too skinny—Potter, stop laughing.”

“I haven’t heard your ‘my father will hear about this’ voice in ages!” protested Potter, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “Oh, do go on.”

“Go Cousin Draco!” cheered Teddy, also clearly entertained. So Draco persisted, if only for Teddy’s amusement. Too bad it also amused Potter as well.

“Then the princess finally came to a king who was good and kind, but he had a crooked chin, so she said, ‘Oh look! This king has a chin like a thrush’s beak!’ And from then on, he was called King Thrushbeard.” 

“See, your cousin Draco used to call me all sorts of names at school,” said Potter to Teddy, grinning conspiratorially.

“Stop poisoning my cousin against me, Potter,” sniffed Draco. 

“I said ‘used to’,” replied Potter. He took the book from Draco, and continued reading the story. Draco rolled his eyes as Potter read about the spoiled princess being married off to a passing minstrel. He only chimed in again for the princess’s lines, as she vocally regretted not marrying King Thrushbeard when she had the chance. 

“Why do you keep talking about King Thrushbeard?” wondered Potter. “Am I not good enough for you?”

“Oh, I see where this is going,” muttered Draco.

“Shh!” hissed Teddy. “No spoiling!” 

“You’ve already heard this story before!” protested Draco.

“Uncle Harry reading!” scolded Teddy.

Potter read, with no small amount of glee, about the princess now being forced to live in a miserable little shack and do the work of a house-elf. Finally, one day, while she was working at the castle of King Thushbeard, the princess got dragged into a dance with the king himself. Humiliated by the state of her ragged clothing and all the other signs of her new downtrodden status, the princess fled into the garden, only for King Thrushbeard to find her and confess:

“Princess, do not cry! You have nothing to fear from your husband the minstrel. In fact, he and I are the same person.”

Draco had leaned in closer to see his next lines, and from here, he could smell Potter’s aftershave. It was more distracting than it had any right to be.

“But I’ve been beastly to you,” he read. “I’ve tormented you for as long as we’ve known each other, and all you’ve been is patient and kind. I’m not worthy to be your wife.” 

“Princess, I’ve loved you the moment I saw you,” read Potter, “but I knew your heart would be too proud to accept mine. I wanted us both to know each other as equals—not as a king and a princess, but as man and wife—so that you might grow to know me as I truly am.”

Draco’s heart skipped a beat at the words, even though Potter was reading, and wasn’t actually saying those lines to him. “Then, perhaps,” he murmured, his hand briefly brushing past Potter’s as he turned the page, “we could start over again?”

Potter’s hand covered his. “And King Thrushbeard smiled at her, and took her in his arms. ‘We will, Princess,’ he said, and kissed her—” He cut off, an odd expression crossing his face as he looked sidelong at Draco.

Draco immediately flinched back, as if scalded. “I’m not kissing you, Potter.”

“Oh, thank god,” retorted Potter, returning to the book. “And all the servants of the castle came and dressed her in finery, so that they could celebrate their wedding as king and queen this time. And so, the couple lived happily ever after.”

Teddy clapped his hands. “One more!” he cheered. 

“Isn’t it time for lunch?” asked Potter, ruffling Teddy’s hair. “Grandma’s making your favourite.”

“Uncle Harry’s spag bol?” wondered Teddy, eyes wide.

Potter snorted. “Oh, that’s your favourite? I’m flattered. But Grandma’s making shepherd’s pie.”

“Yay!” Teddy sprang out of Harry’s lap, dashing for the parlour door. “Grandma! Grandma! Shep pie!”

That left Draco and Potter in the parlour together, the book of fairytales still open between them. “I should go,” said Draco immediately, rising back to his feet and heading for the hearth.

“They’re your family,” said Potter. “You don’t have to leave.”

“No, I got the point,” said Draco, with a nod at King Thrushbeard. “I’m the princess. I’ve been humbled. I should get back to my own miserable little shack and wallow in my own misfortune.”

“You’ve only got a year left in your sentence,” said Potter. “You’ll be back in society soon enough. And with access to your money, too.”

“As if money will erase this,” muttered Draco, putting a hand on his left arm where the Dark Mark still rested, once black with prejudice but now just a reminder of his bad decisions seared into his skin. “As if money will undo what’s been done to Malfoy Manor.”

“I’d heard about that,” said Potter, looking a little uncomfortable. “I… I don’t suppose I could help you with that? I’ve helped rebuild Hogwarts, I restored Grimmauld Place with Kreacher…” 

“I don’t need your help,” snapped Draco, his pride rearing itself again. “We killed Malfoy Manor all by ourselves. I don’t need you coming in with your sanctimoniousness to kick it while it’s down.” 

“I’m not—” Potter cut off, sighing. “I’m not going to kick your house, Draco. I just want to help you.” He held out his hand. “To start anew.”

The little eleven-year-old voice in Draco wanted to knock the hand aside, wanted to say something snappy in return and fling Potter’s too-late offer of friendship back in his face. Instead, he just stared. 

“Why?” he asked, after a moment.

“Because—Because…” Potter grimaced. “Hermione told me all this stuff about reconciliation and how healing the wounds in society would help prevent the rise of another Voldemort, but, uh… basically, we’re not going to move on if we keep being pricks to each other.” He shrugged. “So… here I am.”

Draco’s fingers trembled as he shook Potter’s hand. Potter’s hand was warm in his, so warm that when Draco pulled back, everything felt a little colder.

“Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll stay for lunch. But it’s for Teddy’s sake, not yours.”

Potter laughed. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.” 

Draco rolled his eyes, and followed him out to lunch.

Chapter Text

“Harry, can you do me a favour?” asked Hermione.

“Yeah,” said Harry unthinkingly, barely even looking up from his N.E.W.T. revision. One would assume that defeating the worst Dark Lord to grace the Wizarding world since Grindelwald would mean he’d be exempted from the Defence Against the Dark Arts N.E.W.T., but apparently the Ministry would rather he just ‘take the bally tests as a formality, dear boy’, as a particularly penitent Fudge had put it.

“Could you fetch Draco for me? We’re working on this potion together and I can’t be away from this cauldron for very long, but he said he’d only be looking up an ingredient in the library for ten minutes about an hour or so ago. I’d hate for someone to have hexed him in the meantime.”

“Would you?” wondered Harry dryly as he rose to his feet.

Hermione made a face. “Okay, maybe a couple hexes for each time he’s called people Mudblood. Not awful hexes though. Little ones, like one that makes you feel like you’ve stepped on a Lego—”

“Hermione, that’s awful,” said Harry, grinning. Hermione ducked her face behind her copy of Advanced Potion-Making, as Harry left the classroom for the library. 

He found Malfoy writing something furiously in a journal in the back corner of the Restricted Section. “Looks like you’re really into your research,” said Harry, causing the Slytherin to jump at the sight of him, what little colour he had in his cheeks draining rapidly in his panic.

“Mind your own business, Potter,” snapped Malfoy, hastily shoving the journal into his satchel. “Did Hermione send for me?”

Harry seriously wondered when Hermione and Malfoy had graduated to first-name terms, and what Ron thought about it. 

“Er, yeah, actually. She can’t leave the potion, so you’ll have to go to her.”

“Yes, of course.” Flustered, Malfoy rose to his feet and swept off, though apparently he hadn’t packed his journal very securely in his bag, and it fell out without him noticing. 

Based on his previous experiences with diaries originating from Malfoy Manor, Harry should’ve known better than to just open the journal and peek inside. But he’d always been bad at ignoring his curiosity where Malfoy was concerned, and so…

My name is Draco Lucius Abraxas Hyperion Malfoy, and I have long silver-blond hair that shimmers like dragon scales (my namesake) and reaches my mid-back and cold grey eyes like frost-bitten steel. People say I look like Professor Firenze (if you know not of whom I reference, kindly desist from reading this!). I am not related to Fleur Delacour but I wish I was, as she is a rare and alluring beauty—

Harry flipped a couple pages, confused. What on earth was this? Why did Malfoy say he had long hair? Why did Malfoy think he looked like Professor Firenze—no, wait, Professor Firenze was pretty fit for a centaur. Hermione and Ron might take the piss out of him for failing to notice Dumbledore being bent, but at least in this case Harry had eyes—

Potter smirked dangerously at me as he pressed me to his tan and Hungarian Horntail-tattooed bosom. His hand fisted into my long, luscious locks, making me shiver down to my core. “You’ve been a bad boy, Draco, and you need to be punished.” 

“Oh, yes, Potter,” I said. His manly musk was overwhelming. If Potter wasn’t smothering me with his strong, rippling muscles, I would probably have swooned like a Pureblood maiden. “Do your worst.”

Harry could feel his ears burning. He turned the page, saw one line describing his own anatomy as engorged and throbbing, and quickly flipped through ten more pages. 

Potter held me down in the sheets, kissing the length of my neck, marking me as his—

Harry quickly slammed the journal closed, regretting all of his life decisions. He grasped the nearest bookshelf for a moment, unable to trust his knees to hold himself up. Surely this was some sort of evil plot by Malfoy to humiliate him, to make him think Malfoy fancied him and… and then what? Shame him in front of the school if Harry tried to act on it?

But based on how panicked Malfoy had looked when Harry had caught him writing, was that actually true? 

Harry looked down at the journal in his hands, hating how innocently the nondescript black leather cover shone up at him. His face felt like someone had set Fiendfyre to it. 

He would have to return the journal to Malfoy without the Slytherin knowing he’d read it. Somehow. Eventually. 

But first, he had a date with his four-poster.

Chapter Text

In the aftermath of the raid, Draco was among the first Healers on the scene. “Out of my way,” he snapped at a couple of Aurors hovering in the hallway of the dilapidated manor house. “Where’s Head Auror Potter?”

“Down in the cellars,” said Weasley, who was helping Li back to her feet. A couple neo-Death Eaters were being led out of the cellar door with their wrists bound behind them.

“Betrayer,” spat one of the neo-Death Eaters—not even that much older than Teddy, Draco realised with a shudder. How could kids be sucked back into the same hatreds that he himself barely escaped? “The time of Avalon is upon us! Mother Magic will judge you for turning your back on Her!”

“Okay, okay,” said Weasley, rolling his eyes. “Off to the loony bin with you, kiddo.”

“Don’t denigrate the work of Mind Healers like that,” chided Draco.

“Yeah, well, this kid’s gonna need an entire squadron,” declared Weasley, as a couple other Aurors marched the neo-Death Eater away. 

Draco lit his wand, in spite of the hovering crime scene lights, and descended into the cellar. It felt like he was in Malfoy Manor again, seventeen and scared, checking on the prisoners that Voldemort had stashed away like they were nothing more than vintage bottles of Elf wine. He concentrated on his breathing, counting the beats of his heart until his feet finally hit the ground.

The cellar looked as if it was serving as the centre of some sort of ritual, with circles and runes drawn in blood around a long, bloodstained slab of rock. A couple Aurors were down here cataloguing and photographing the scene. Department of Magical Law Enforcement Head Hermione Granger was here, too, her cloud of dark hair especially frizzy in the musty cellar air. She and Harry were standing in front of a mirror, conversing in low voices. 

“—think we should hand it off to Mysteries for examination; it’s clearly the gateway to some other dimension,” Hermione was saying, as Draco drew up closer.

“Hermione, this isn’t some sort of Muggle sci-fi show,” said Harry, exasperatedly. “It’s not clearly the gateway to anything. It’s probably more like the Mirror of Erised—shows you different possibilities in different timelines.”

“And that makes it less dangerous?” demanded Hermione, raising an eyebrow. “These neo-Death Eaters were doing something with that mirror, Harry. Something that five Purebloods and one half-blood have paid the price for. If you hadn’t managed to rescue Justin in time—”

“That’s the point,” said Harry. “We rescued Justin. And it almost could’ve been you, too. They were looking for a Muggleborn for the last victim.” He put a hand on her forearm, leaning in to press his forehead to hers. “Go find Ron, Hermione. And I’m not letting Mysteries have this mirror until our team has a go at figuring it out first.”

Hermione exhaled as she pulled back, nodding. She turned to see Draco standing there, and a sly smirk tugged across her face. “Your favourite git is here.”

Harry pretended to slump in exasperation. “Already?” he demanded, but when he turned to greet Draco, he was smiling. “Hello, git.”

“Hello, scarhead,” replied Draco. Hermione rolled her eyes and instructed for the other Aurors to come with her, in order to give them some space. “I don’t think a crime scene is the best place for a snog, but if Granger insists…”

“Shut up.” Harry chuckled and shook his head, before tugging Draco into a hug. “You didn’t have to come. I didn’t get hurt.”

“Oh, really.” Draco reached up to touch a clearly still-healing gash on Harry’s cheek. “This begs to differ.”

“Take a look at this,” said Harry, clearly trying to distract Draco from his Healerly duties. “Did you ever see the Mirror of Erised back at Hogwarts?”

“The mirror of what now?”

“Mirror of Erised. Dumbledore used it to protect the Philosopher’s Stone back in first year.”

“Is this one of those weird little adventures you went on that inevitably led to Gryffindor winning the House Cup at the end of the year?” asked Draco.

“Oh come on,” scoffed Harry. “You had to have known about it. Dumbledore said the whole school knew about it.”

“I don’t really like to reminisce about my eleven-year-old self, thanks,” said Draco. 

“Whatever.” Harry shook his head. “Point is, the Mirror of Erised was supposed to show you your heart’s desire. So for Ron it showed him winning the Quidditch Cup and being Head Boy and all of that—”

“I’m surprised it didn’t show him sitting on a pile of money,” remarked Draco, mostly because old habits died hard.

Harry elbowed him. “And for me,” he continued, as if Draco hadn’t just insulted his oldest friend and second-in-command at the Auror Office, “it showed me with my family, especially my mum and dad.” 

Draco nodded. “I see,” he said. “And what about this mirror, then? What does it show you?”

“Take a look,” said Harry, and dragged him in front of the mirror. 

Draco looked inside. For a moment, all he saw was himself—nearing middle-age, with more forehead than he cared to admit—and Harry, standing side-by-side. But then, the silver surface seemed to ripple like water, and then their younger counterparts were standing there looking up at them. 

Except, oddly, the younger Harry didn’t have a lightning scar on his head.

“What is this thing?” asked the mirror-Draco, his eyes narrowing at Draco. “Is that me? Why do I look so old?”

“It’s an older version of you, Malfoy,” said the mirror-Harry, rolling his eyes. “You know, it’s that thing called ‘aging’, which everyone does…”

“Why’s my forehead so big?” demanded mirror-Draco, scandalised.

Harry snorted. “I happen to like his big forehead,” he told mirror-Draco. “It’s more space for me to kiss.”

Mirror-Draco’s eyes widened. “We’re Bonded?” 

“What?” demanded mirror-Harry. “Ew, no! Why would I want to Bond with Malfoy?”

Mirror-Draco gasped in offence, shoving mirror-Harry. “I’m a very eligible Pureblood Heir! You, on the other hand—who’d want to Bond with you? You can’t even tell the difference between a butter and a fish knife!”

“So it’s definitely not our past,” said Draco, watching their mirror-selves argue. “But it does seem to be the past.”

“Hermione thinks it’s some sort of alternate reality,” said Harry, gesturing to how his mirror-self had no scar. “We had a conversation with her mirror-self, too—she mentioned Bonding as well, and some deity called Mother Magic—”

“And in Her compassion, Mother Magic created for each mage their other half,” recited mirror-Draco suddenly, like a little parrot. “It is the duty of each Pureblood to find their soulmate, their helpmeet. Some loves are Fated; when they meet all of Avalon shall rejoice and their Bond will last for millennia.”

“I have no bloody idea what he’s talking about,” added mirror-Harry, jerking a thumb at mirror-Draco. 

“That’s because your mother raised you Muggle. You don’t care about the Old Ways, you just want to destroy them and replace them with Muggle culture.”

“I don’t want to—” mirror-Harry scoffed. “I just want to get through a school year without people assuming I’m soulmates with my best friend!”

“Clearly you are not, though, because this mirror shows that we’re Bonded!” snapped mirror-Draco. He looked comically devastated, which Draco would have found a lot more funny had it not been for the strange religious stuff that he was able to recite at the drop of a hat. “Mother Magic never makes mistakes, but… maybe She has off days!”

Both Harries snorted at that. The one standing beside Draco turned to take his hand. 

“You see?” he said. “There’s some, and I’m quoting Hermione on this, ‘rather foundational cultural differences’ between their world and ours. I think in theirs, Purebloods are actually nobility?”

Draco tilted his head. “What, like that ‘Sacred Twenty-eight’ nonsense Theo’s grandfather wrote about back in the nineteen-thirties?”

“Yeah. Apparently in their world, those families have existed since the time of Camelot, serving King Arthur, so therefore they’re all nobles now, with land in some magical dimension that only the true believers of Mother Magic can access.”

“We’re the Earl of the Silver Isles in Avalon,” chirped mirror-Draco smugly. “But Potter here is Duke of the Eternal Eyrie and Earl of the Blood Moors.”

“And Baron of Godric’s Hollow, but apparently that one actually exists,” said mirror-Harry. “Or rather, I’ve got an ancestral home named Godric’s Hollow.”

“I thought that was a village,” said Draco faintly.

“There’s a village named after the manor,” explained mirror-Harry. “I haven’t been, though. This prat has. He says it’s enormous.”

Draco looked at Harry, whose hand was warm in his. He looked at his mirror-self, who seemed to have all the arrogance he himself had at eleven, but somehow a shade even worse. This was a world where blood and tradition mattered, where the reign of the Purebloods was justified by belief in some ‘Mother Magic’... 

This was a world in which their Voldemort would have already won, hence the lack of a scar on mirror-Harry’s forehead. This was a world in which magic was might, and mirror-Draco was standing in the eye of a cyclone not even knowing about the brutality that lay just outside his Pureblood bubble. 

He would know. He’d been in those shoes before. 

“I think you’re right, Harry,” Draco said after a moment, only dimly cognisant of how tightly he was gripping Harry’s hand. “There’s a reason the neo-Death Eaters have this mirror. Either they want the world in that mirror out here in our world, or they want to bring the Voldemort in that world out here to ours.”

“Who’s Voldemort?” asked mirror-Harry, tilting his head. Harry smiled sadly down at the scar-less boy, his green eyes swelling with emotion. Draco remembered their mirror-selves alluding to Harry’s mother being alive in their world. No doubt he was thinking about mirror-Harry having grown up with a loving family.

“Either way,” continued Draco, looking down at his own mirror-self, “if we give it to Mysteries, we’ll never find out for sure. And that could be dangerous, especially if the neo-Death Eaters have infiltrated the Unspeakables.”

Harry nodded. “There have been some rumours, but you know the departmental politics. If I try to run an investigation on the Unspeakables, I’ll be accused of starting a witch-hunt. Literally.”

Draco huffed in amusement, before letting go of Harry’s hand and kneeling down so that he was eye-level with his mirror-self. “I think I want a word with this world’s Draco,” he said. “Do you mind, Harry?”

“I can give you a couple minutes, but we’ve got to finish cataloguing the place,” said Harry. “You going back to St Mungo’s after this?”

“I have a shift to finish,” replied Draco, rolling his eyes. “Meet you for dinner after? Not curry. We had curry yesterday.”

He could practically hear Harry slumping in exaggerated annoyance. “Ugh, fine, we’ll go to the French place you like so much.”

“Love you too, scarhead,” said Draco, biting his lip to hide a smile.

“Love you too, git,” replied Harry, and then his footsteps receded. The mirror-Harry vanished as well, leaving Draco with mirror-Draco. 

“You can’t be serious. You Bonded with him?” demanded mirror-Draco, still disbelieving.

“I grew up,” replied Draco simply. He rolled back the sleeves of his Healer robes, showing his younger self the Dark Mark branded on his arm. It wasn’t dark anymore, but it was still a mark of his old beliefs, of the world he’d left behind. “I got this when I was sixteen. I was stupid. I didn’t know that the beliefs my parents raised me with would end with me almost dying, my mind almost broken, my world completely shattered.”

“What happened?” asked mirror-Draco, looking at the Mark with a mix of confusion and aversion. Draco wondered if that meant Voldemort didn’t exist in their world—would he need to, if the Purebloods had already won?—or if he just went by a different name with a different Mark. 

“There was a war,” said Draco simply. “We lost.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said mirror-Draco. “The chosen ones of Mother Magic do not lose.”

Draco pursed his lips. “Are you happy, Draco?”

“What sort of question is that?” scoffed mirror-Draco. “Of course I’m happy. I’m chosen. I’m special. Mother and Father think I’m perfect.”

“Does that make you happy, being perfect?”

“Of course it does! Why would anyone not want to be perfect?” 

Draco resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. No wonder Harry had rejected him on the Hogwarts Express, if this was the sort of nonsense he had to listen to! “Do you have any friends?” he asked. “Friends you didn’t grow up with—friends you made at Hogwarts?”

“I—” Here, mirror-Draco visibly faltered. “Well, I was going to have one, if it weren’t for stupid Lord Potter and his stupid blood traitor vassal! They stole Granger from me! She was going to be a New Blood, and we were going to be friends, and maybe Bond later if we turned out to be Fated—”

“New Blood?” asked Draco.

“Muggleborn who follows the laws of Avalon and honours Mother Magic,” said mirror-Draco automatically. “She was going to be initiated to become a New Blood but then she ran away and now she’s friends with Potter and the Weasel and they’re ruining her. They’re making her a Mudblood.”

“Don’t call her that,” said Draco.

“She can’t help it if that’s what she is,” snapped mirror-Draco, though he looked miserable about it.

“She isn’t anything other than a powerful, intelligent witch,” replied Draco. “And a bossy know-it-all, but that’s got nothing to do with blood. Theo’s a bossy know-it-all, too.”

Mirror-Draco stared up at him in disbelief. “You’re talking like a Betrayer,” he accused.

“I’m talking like someone who’s been where you were,” said Draco, shaking his head. He showed him the Dark Mark again. “I made the wrong choice when I was young. It’s taken me ages to get to where I am today because of that wrong choice. You’re still eleven. You can make better choices.”

“I’m not giving up the Old Ways,” insisted mirror-Draco, now visibly fearful. “I made a covenant with Mother Magic when I was anointed. I can’t break that. I’ll lose everything.”

“How old were you when you were… anointed?” asked Draco.

“I don’t remember. I was a baby.” Mirror-Draco paused. “You’re not anointed?”

“I admit I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Draco. “Look. I don’t have very long. They’re going to take this mirror and they’re going to study it, so I don’t think I could come back and talk to you again. But—you saw me and Harry. You don’t have to follow the path your parents gave you.”

“Lord Potter hates me,” muttered mirror-Draco. “It’s not like it is with you and your scarhead.”

Draco snorted. “Harry and I hated each other, too, when we were your ages. Like I said, we grew up.”

He reached out, touching the cool surface of the mirror. Mirror-Draco reached for him too, his palm much smaller than Draco’s. 

“Don’t make the same mistakes I did,” said Draco quietly, after a moment. “Blood supremacy, the Old Ways—they won’t give you what you really want. I hope you figure it out sooner rather than later.” 

It was hard for him to leave mirror-Draco standing on the other side of the mirror, stranded in a different world, a darker world. But as he emerged from the dilapidated manor house to see Harry waiting for him, Draco couldn’t help a small, secret smile.

“D’you think we’ll have to destroy that mirror?” asked Harry. 

Draco exhaled. “Not sure,” he admitted. “Not my field. But I’m worried about that world’s version of myself.”

“Yeah.” Harry pressed in, brushing a kiss to his cheek. “But knowing you, I’m sure he’ll come around. I’ll see you after work?”

Draco smiled at him, and turned on the spot back to St Mungo’s with thoughts of his mirror-self still haunting his mind.

Chapter Text

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Scarhead.”

Harry groaned as he opened his eyes. Healer Malfoy’s pale, pointed face swam into view. “Yes, exactly what I needed to see this morning,” he joked. “My favourite blond git.”

Healer Malfoy’s face twisted into Horrified Grimace No. 47, which was different from Horrified Grimace No. 48 and Horrified Grimace No. 46 by virtue of it having a slight shade of concern. “How dare you imply there are other blond gits that you interact with on a daily basis, Potter.”

“Do I really visit St Mungo’s that often?” wondered Harry mildly.

“More than should be considered reasonable for an Auror of your experience, certainly,” sniffed Healer Malfoy as he waved his wand for a diagnostic spell, comparing the results with Harry’s patient chart. “We ought to get a plaque for this bed. It’ll read ‘Property of Scarhead Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World’.” 

Harry laughed. “Only on your shift,” he teased. 

“Oh, so you deliberately time your life-threatening injuries to coincide with my shifts?” demanded Healer Malfoy, his face now sliding into Horrified Grimace No. 49. 

Harry couldn’t help but laugh again. Horrified Grimace No. 49 was one of his favourites, for the sheer drama of Malfoy’s offence. “I seem to remember you screaming at the orderlies yesterday because you’d ‘do anything to make sure Harry walks back out of this hospital alive’.”

Malfoy’s face went, impossibly, even paler. “Well, you—you must’ve missed the following sentence, where I threatened to do what the Dark Lord couldn’t and kill you with my own bare hands if you died on my watch.”

Harry grinned. “Was that the first time you’ve ever called me Harry?” he asked, clearly throwing Malfoy for a loop, because it took him a couple minutes of pondering before the colour immediately flooded back into his cheeks, bypassing pink and going straight for Gryffindor red.

“Don’t think anything of it,” he muttered. “I was distraught and it was your fault.”

Harry waved a hand, and his hospital bed moved him into a sitting position. “Thank you, Draco, for not giving up on me,” he offered, with his best smile. Healer Malfoy’s mouth twisted into Horrified Grimace No. 38 before he broke eye contact, cheeks now a dark brick red. 

“Just do me a favour and stop getting yourself into life-threatening situations, Harry,” he muttered. “You’re not seventeen anymore. It can’t be good for your health.”

“It wasn’t exactly good for my health when I was seventeen,” Harry pointed out. 

“I’m sure Granger and the Weasel have lost enough years of their life worrying about you,” retorted Healer Malfoy—no, Draco. “You yourself took at least a decade off mine last night.”

“I’ll figure out some way to get them back to you,” replied Harry, waving a hand. “We should catch up properly sometime. Not just patient-healer chats in St Mungo’s every other week.”

“Every other day,” corrected Draco.

“That’s got to be an exaggeration,” insisted Harry. “Anyway, when I get out—drinks on me?”

“I only drink the most expensive cocktails,” warned Draco.

Harry laughed. “Whatever you want, Ferret-face.”

Draco shot him Horrified Grimace No. 49 again. “I think I preferred ‘favourite blond git’.”

Chapter Text

Draco Malfoy woke up to the distinct sense of something new. Something that hadn’t been there the night before. Something strange and a little uncomfortable, yet very, very warm, nestled under his ribcage just below his heart.

It throbbed when Draco tried to sit up, the pain causing him to groan and flop back against his pillows again. He turned, and came face-to-face with the cause of the strange new feeling: Harry Potter, scar shining and glasses askew, asleep in the bed next to him. 

Draco rubbed gingerly at the spot just below his heart, trying to figure out why it hurt to be even just a couple inches apart from the Scarhead. He tried shifting back a little, only for the ache to return again. Potter winced in his sleep, before rolling onto his back, exposing the love bite-mottled line of his throat.

Draco couldn’t help but peek under the covers between them. The Weaselette had been lying about the Hungarian Horntail tattoo, but she hadn’t been lying about Potter being fit. Ridiculously so. There was still a bit of the scrawny, specky child he’d been back in Hogwarts, but for the most part Potter had filled out well. His brown skin, darker than it’d been when Draco first met him at eleven, was warm to the touch.

Potter cracked open one eye, the startling green gaze warm with sleepiness, and smiled. “Hey,” he said. “Still here?”

He sounded as if he’d expected Draco to have left the moment sobriety kicked in and revealed that he’d slept with his Hogwarts archnemesis last night. Draco couldn’t help but bristle. 

“Of course I’m still here, you idiot,” he said. “Something’s happened. You cursed me last night and now it hurts to even be an inch away from you.”

Potter frowned a little and quickly sat up, adjusting his glasses again. Draco hissed in pain and moved in closer, sitting up as well with one hand covering Potter’s. His Dark Mark shone an angry pink in the morning light; he quickly tried to cover it, but Potter took his wrist, tracing his thumb against the scars of the past.

“What makes you think it’s a curse?” wondered Potter.

“Because you cast it,” replied Draco immediately. 

Potter snorted. He then dropped Draco’s wrist and moved away, almost experimentally. The pain bloomed out again, but this time it seemed to show on Potter’s face, too.

“Fuck,” he muttered, moving back closer.

“Merlin,” agreed Draco, putting his head in his hands. “So, what did you do?”

“I dunno,” said Potter. “How is it my fault, anyway? I don’t even know what this is.”

“What did you do yesterday?”

“Besides you?” Potter winked at him, the absolute menace. “My job, obviously. Misuse of Magic sent over an old grimoire for a case. I was up to my eyeballs in that until Ron and Hermione dragged me off to pub night, where you were with Zabini and Parkinson.”

Draco tried to piece together the rest of the night, too, in between the beer and the Firewhisky and ending up at a Muggle club doing shots off of Potter’s alarmingly fit body. Then back to Potter’s roost at Grimmauld Place, much more warm and cosy than Draco had remembered from his childhood, and snogging Potter before they even got to the stairs—

But this wasn’t Draco’s first wild night out. What made this one end with him magically unable to move an inch away from Potter, while other ones had him awkwardly eating toast with his shag the morning after and making empty promises to owl?

“What sort of case was it?” he asked. Potter hummed, twining their fingers together. He turned and pressed Draco back against the pillows, peering down at him with that horrible, wicked smile of his.

“A bunch of couples have turned up dead after owning this grimoire. We’re working with the Misuse of Magic office in figuring out which curse specifically, and who sold them the book, but—”

Draco clutched at his chest and shoved Potter off him. “Potter… did you… read any of the spells in this grimoire yesterday?”

“What? No! They all require rituals, anyway, it’s not as if…” Potter’s expression suddenly went from bemused to horrified, as a particular memory struck him. “The Heartstring Enchantment,” he muttered. “Supposedly meant to bind together those who are destined for one another. It only kicks in after you’ve…” he gestured awkwardly between them.

Draco could have strangled him with his own stupid heartstrings. “So, what you’re telling me,” he said, his voice deliberately calm, “is that we’re bloody soulmates?”

“I dunno if I’d put it that way—” protested Potter.

“What else would you call it, if a spell that ‘binds together those destined for one another’ works on us!”

“I reckoned it was something similar to a love potion?” Potter ventured, shrugging. “Someone casts this, seduces someone else, they end up unable to separate themselves from each other?”

“How long does it last?” demanded Draco.

Potter groaned. “I don’t remember. The book’s in my office at the Ministry.” He made to get up, but only managed a groan of pain before he flopped back instead. “Or maybe I’ll owl Ron and ask him to grab the book…”

Draco covered his face with his hands. “You absolute idiot,” he muttered.

“Not what you were calling me last night,” joked Potter, because of course he had the audacity to do such a thing after having cursed them into this situation. “And, hey, of all the potential soulmates out there in the world, I really could’ve done worse. I had a much worse destiny as a kid, didn’t I?” 

Draco spared him a glance at his infamous lightning scar. “Being a better soulmate than Lord fucking Voldemort is a bar on the fucking ground, Potter.”

“Do you want to figure out how to undo the enchantment or not, Malfoy?”

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. As long as he had this annoyingly fit git with him in bed for a moment longer, he was going to milk it for what it was worth. “You know, it would be horrible if I remained in bed, so that you weren’t able to get out of it.”

Potter raised an eyebrow at him. “What’re you playing at now?”

“I’m saying you’ve got to convince me to get out of bed.” Draco crossed his arms and pouted at him.

Potter rolled his eyes. “We need to eat.”

“You have a house-elf.”

“Who has the day off,” retorted Potter. “I was going to make breakfast.”

Draco’s nose wrinkled, even though the prospect of having the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice make him eggs and toast was incredibly exciting. “You’ll have to bribe me with more than food to get me out of bed.”

Potter eyed him, that surprisingly Slytherin brain of his going into plotting mode. Draco could practically hear the wheels spinning around in there. “Oh, I see,” said Potter, licking at his lips as he moved in closer again. 

He threw back the covers, baring the two of them to the cold morning air. Draco hissed and curled up, only for Potter to grab both of his wrists and pin him open again. Heat shot through Draco, tensing up his thighs. 

“How would you like it then, Malfoy?” murmured Potter in his ear, his breath hot against Draco’s neck yet still making him shiver. “My mouth? My fingers? Or…?”

Merlin, Draco was not going to survive being soulmate-bound to Potter after all. “Do your worst,” he suggested, tilting his head back challengingly.

Potter captured his lips in a kiss, one hand shifting to palm Draco harder. Draco arched into the touch, secretly hoping that even after they figured out how to undo this enchantment, Potter would still want to shag him on the regular.

Chapter Text

Considering that Potter had vanquished the Dark Lord just a year ago, getting laid low by the common cold must be incredibly embarrassing for him.

Draco paused at the threshold of the Hospital Wing, peering in to ensure that the coast was clear. Madam Pomfrey had insisted Potter spend the night, and he seemed to be swaddled in a veritable cocoon of infirmary blankets with an enormous beaker of Pepper-Up Potion on his bedside table. The entire foot of his bed was covered in cards and sweets and other well-wishes. He probably wouldn’t even look twice at Draco’s. 

Draco looked down at the tin of treacle tarts. Mother had sent him the recipe that the house-elves used to make, at Draco’s request. She’d even got him the enchanted gift tin with the flying Golden Snidgets. Mother had stressed the importance of playing it nice with Potter and his cohort, since it was thanks to Potter that they managed to get out of the aftermath of the war relatively scot-free. Sure, Malfoy Manor was still falling apart, drenched in the blood of house-elves and Death Eaters and festering with the wounds of werewolves and Dark Lords, and sure, the Malfoy Vault in Gringotts was not quite as full as it used to be after the Dark Lord and the Ministry-mandated reparations took their fill, but they all had their lives and their liberties—even Father, who seemed to have grown so silent with shame that Draco sometimes thought he’d grown into the stonework.

How could a box of tarts—the very last results of Draco’s numerous attempts—measure up in comparison?

Draco’s feet took him over the threshold before he could stop them. They took him right to the foot of Potter’s bed like they had a mind of their own. Potter, his nose red and his glasses askew, raised an eyebrow at his approach before sneezing into the crook of his arm. 

“Come to have a laugh, Malfoy?” he asked wryly. 

Draco gritted his teeth. “How pathetic. The great Saviour of the Wizarding World, taken out by a cold.”

“Yeah, well, could be worse.” Potter waved a hand. “There’s worse ways to die. Not that I’m going to. Madam Pomfrey’s just worried I’ll get cold in here.”

“I’ve come to place my offering at the sacrificial slab,” replied Draco, with a nod towards the mountain of get well cards. “You don’t have to pretend to like it. Just open it when I’m not here.”

Potter, damn him, had never been good at following instructions, and promptly lunged forward and seized the tin the moment Draco set it down. Draco sprung back, complaining about Potter’s germs, which earned him an eyeroll before Potter opened the tin and his jaw went slack.

“I love treacle tarts,” said Potter after a moment, his voice thick. 

“Please don’t tell me you’re about to cry,” complained Draco.

“I’m not,” insisted Potter, wiping at his eyes. “Thanks, Malfoy.”

“I haven’t poisoned them,” said Draco. “In case you were wondering.”

Potter huffed in laughter. “How thoughtful of you.”

“I did consider it,” added Draco, more as a joke.

Potter snorted. “What made you change your mind?”

“I wouldn’t have anyone halfway decent at Quidditch to play against.”

That finally earned him a proper laugh from Potter, and Draco did not like how he looked—green eyes alight with little creases at the edge, nose wrinkled in delight. Merlin, Potter even had dimples. 

“So you had better get better,” he snapped, “or else I’ll die of boredom.”

“Can’t have that,” agreed Potter, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “Thanks, Draco.”

Draco very much did not blush or shiver at the sound of Potter saying his first name, almost like a friend. He also did not run out of the Hospital Wing without another word, no matter what Potter might say about it later. 

And he certainly did not hover like a bat at the door for a little while longer, watching Potter tuck into his treacle tarts with an appreciative hum, before finally stalking off back to the Slytherin common room.

Chapter Text

As the glass elevator shot up to the top floor, Harry looked to the side to see Draco with both of his hands over his eyes. Grinning, he nudged Draco a little, asking, “Not going to enjoy the view?”

Draco’s fingers opened just a crack in order for him to glower at Harry. “I can’t look,” he said simply.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were a Quidditch player. You’ve been this high up on a broom before.”

Draco made a face at him through his fingers. “This, in case you hadn’t noticed, is a Muggle elly-vator. Muggles designed this. What if it breaks on us?”

Harry snorted. “It’s not going to break. Loads of Muggles come up here all the time. They wouldn’t have opened it up to all these visitors if it was unsafe.”

Draco wrinkled his nose and hid his face in his hands again.

Harry rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the panel in the elevator telling them their progress. Soon, they made it to the thirty-fourth floor, and with some prodding, Harry managed to move Draco out of the elevator and onto an escalator (Draco gripped the railings on this one and stared straight ahead, unseeing). 

And then, finally, they were at the observation deck. Down below, the Osaka city lights twinkled up at them like a sea of tiny stars, drowning out the light from the stars above.

“What do you think?” Harry asked, once Draco had got his bearings again. “It’s almost like the Astronomy Tower back at Hogwarts, isn’t it?”

“I try not to think about the Astronomy Tower, to be honest,” muttered Draco. 

Ah, right. “Sorry.” Harry took Draco’s arm, nonetheless. They walked past a kiosk selling love locks in a myriad of colours, as well as a café stand selling ice cream floats and fried cheese balls. “Is something wrong? I thought you’d like it up here. Maybe we could go up to the roof, get the wind in your hair like we’re chasing the Snitch together again?”

Draco wrinkled his nose. “I don’t trust those Muggle railings—do they really just let people walk on this roof up here without any magic?”

Harry sighed. Draco getting into an extra-complain-y mood usually meant he was trying to distract himself from something else. “Look. We don’t have to stare at the view the whole time, if you don’t want that. Let’s go split an ice-cream float and pretend like this is just like any other date spot, anywhere else in the world.”

Draco seemed incredibly tempted by the prospect. “Can we get the pink one?”

Harry grinned. “Yeah, sure. What about a love lock?”

“Green. And we’re getting it engraved ‘Snakes rule, lions drool’.”

Harry snorted. “Very mature,” he said. “You’re casting the translation spell for that request, then. I’m not having a repeat of the eel incident again.”

Chapter Text

Click. Click. Click.

“Stop that,” said Harry, scowling across the library table at Malfoy, who was holding, of all things, a Muggle biro and mercilessly clicking at its barrel. “Seriously, Malfoy, that’s annoying.”

Click. “Not my problem.”

“Not your—you’re literally the one causing the problem!”

Click-click. “I’m doing research. You’re the one with the problem.”

“Research?” echoed Harry, disbelieving. “What the hell kind of research requires you to be so annoying?”

“I’m trying to figure out how the Muggles manage to get the ink inside the pen without the ink drying up,” said Malfoy, with another click for good measure.

Harry groaned. “I’m going to Vanish that stupid pen of yours if you click it one more time.”

Malfoy clicked it ten more times, and laughed as he dodged Harry’s Vanishing spell. “When are you going to learn, Potter, that you catch more pixies with sugar than arsenic?”

“When are you going to stop fiddling around with that biro?” retorted Harry.

“For the right price, I will,” replied Malfoy smugly.

Harry gritted his teeth. “What price?”

Malfoy’s expression screwed up with thought. Harry suspected he was looking for something incredibly torturous. Like hexing a first-year, or announcing to the Great Hall that he wished Voldemort was still alive, or… 

“A kiss,” said Malfoy. “I’ll put this thing away if you kiss me. And you’ve got to put effort into it, no pecking.”

“Can I do literally anything else?” wondered Harry dryly.

“Nope.” And to illustrate that fact, Malfoy clicked the biro again.

Harry lunged across the table and hauled the git to his feet. He grabbed the git by the back of his head, smashing their lips together with all the grace and romance of a Bludger. Malfoy briefly flailed a bit, but then kissed him right back, mouth opening under Harry’s with a soft, embarrassing moan. 

They pulled apart after a while, though Harry kept feeling like it was far too soon. Malfoy’s eyes were wide, the pupils blown open; a slow, heady flush was spilling from his ears to his cheeks.

Then he grinned and clicked the pen one more time.

Harry grabbed it from him and flung it across the room.

Chapter Text

“Pawn to E4,” said Draco, watching his footsoldier stomp forward onto the square. 

“Pawn to E5,” countered the Weasel, flanked, of course, by Potter and Granger. 

Eighth year at Hogwarts was… different. The lack of a Dark Lord living at Malfoy Manor helped. Father being in Azkaban and Mother abroad in France was less fun, but Draco had been in worse situations, honestly. He’d expected to just apologise to Potter and his friends and move on—getting his old wand back, too, as a bonus—but now Potter had apparently taken that as an excuse to continue bothering Draco. Just… in a different way.

“Knight to F3,” said Draco, watching as his knight jumped over the pawn right in front and landed on the square. The Weasel mirrored it, scratching at an itch on his cheek. It was so irritating watching him stir the cauldron in his head.

But Draco had heard of the Immortal Life-Sized Game these three—mostly the Weasel—had played against McGonagall in first year. There was definitely something brewing in that cauldron up there.

“Bishop to B5,” said Draco.

“Oh, I know this,” said Granger. “I think I just read about it. It’s the Spanish Game, isn’t it?” 

“Ron, put the king on E7 for maximum disrespect,” added Potter.

“Can you two shut up and let him think?” demanded Draco. 

“I’m used to it; I used to play with my mum screaming at Fred and George in the background all the time,” said the Weasel.

“I’ve heard good things about the Augurey Defence, so if you move your knight to D4, you might be able to conquer the centre,” Granger prattled. “Or you could run the Kurtev Variation by moving a pawn to A5—”

“King to E7, Ron, trust me, it’ll be really cool,” insisted Potter.

“Why would Weasley put his king on E7?” snapped Draco. “That’d just completely scupper any chance of his queen and bishop developing naturally. Don’t be such a dunderhead.”

Potter ignored him. “Fart in his general direction. King to E7.”

“Knight to F6, actually,” said the Weasel, and the knight leapt out accordingly.

“See, he actually knows what he’s doing, unlike the two of you,” said Draco, before commanding his king to castle. 

“Knight to G4,” said Potter immediately. 

“Don’t listen to him,” countered Draco immediately.

“Yes, I think it’s a rather bad idea; there’s no real feasible reason for the knight to go there; it can’t do much except harass the king,” added Granger.

The Weasel, for some unknown, dunderheaded reason, put his knight on G4. 

“What the fuck?” demanded Draco, as he pushed his pawn onto H3 to counter the knight. Maybe that would chase it into retreat? 

Except the Weasel then reinforced his dumb idea by putting his pawn on H5 to defend his stupid knight. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Ron,” said Granger as she surveyed the board. “You’ve got a very good chance of it getting taken.”

“Don’t worry, it’s defended,” said Potter. “Now he can jump the horsey in circles around Malfoy’s king when the time comes!” 

“Where’d you learn chess strategy, Potter, in the Janus Thickey Ward?” demanded Draco. “Take that knight, pawn. Do as I say.”

“Pawn to G4,” said the Weasel, and his pawn immediately chucked Draco’s off the board. 

“I’m not dealing with this,” muttered Draco, retreating his knight back to the first rank. “Come back when you aren’t playing such thick-headed tactics and giving me all your pieces for free. You’ve only developed your knights and I’m already pinning your king with my bishop—”

“Queen to H4,” said the Weasel, and—oh. Curses.

“Bugger you,” muttered Draco with a baleful glare at Potter, as the Weasel checkmated his king in three more moves. “I’m going to have my revenge, and when I do, you’re not allowed to be there. Or you,” he added, pointing a finger at Granger, who was now grinning like the Kneazle that had got the cream. “Do you do this with everyone he plays? Run a concerted council of evil right behind him so that other innocent chess players stumble right into his traps?”

“Ron’s perfectly capable of trapping people on his own,” said Potter, with his own devastating smirk. “Sacrificing the knight was how we beat McGonagall’s chess game, too.”

The bell ran for afternoon classes, and the four of them cleared up their pieces. “We’re having a rematch without those two, Weasley,” said Draco as they all headed down to the dungeons for Potions.

Weasley shrugged. “Tonight in the eighth-year common room?” he suggested. 

“You’re on.” 

Chapter Text

“Well, isn’t this wizard?”

Draco paused in his cauldron-scrubbing to shoot a dirty look at her. Stupid Holly Potter and her stupid messy pigtails and hideous glasses. She looked like Moaning Myrtle. It was unfair as hell that she could punch him in the face and they would both land in detention. So much for Professor Snape having any semblance of sense. 

Okay, well, maybe he shouldn’t have tried to sabotage her potion. But she needed to be taken down a peg or two for being such an arrogant Gryffindor cow. How dare she beat him in Quidditch. (Again.) And everyone knew the only reason she got good marks in anything was because her stupid Mudblood girlfriend insisted on helping her study for everything. They were practically joined at the hip. It was sickening.

“What in Merlin’s name are you blathering on about?” he demanded. “You think I want to have detention with you? You punched me in the face! You’re lucky Madam Pomfrey sorted it out, or else my father would’ve had to call in the family healer—”

“I didn’t even break anything,” said Holly, rolling her eyes. “Stop being such a big baby. You’re more of a girl than I am.”

Draco loathed her. Which was a problem, since his parents had specifically told him to be nice to the Girl-Who-Lived. Because of course it could be possible that she was secretly an even more powerful Dark Lord, and Malfoys always kept fingers in as many different pies as possible.

Not that he wanted his finger in Holly Potter’s pie. The very thought of putting a finger anywhere near her was just vile.

“I’m the one working like a house-elf here and you’re just sitting around uselessly,” said Draco as he dumped another cup of Mrs Skower’s All-Purpose Mess Remover into the cauldron. “I guess the Girl-Who-Lived can’t be arsed to do servants’ work?”

“I already finished my cauldrons,” said Holly.

Draco blinked. “Since when?”

Holly gestured to her line of cauldrons. “I suppose being my aunt and uncle’s live-in Cinderella helps.”

“What’s a Cinderella?” demanded Draco.

Holly quirked an eyebrow. “It’s only the most famous… oh, is it a Muggle story?”

Draco wrinkled his nose. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Well, it’s basically about a servant girl whose fairy godmother turns her into a princess for a night so that she can go to the ball,” said Holly hastily, her cheeks flushing as she moved to examine Draco’s line of cauldrons. “You didn’t even get half of the gunk in this one.”

“It’s part of the cauldron,” insisted Draco.

“Is not.” Holly brought over her brush and started scrubbing at the insides. “Anyway, I guess Cinderella really is my life in more ways than one. I’m still wondering when the clock will strike midnight and… all of this turns back into pumpkins.”

Draco frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, getting away from my aunt and uncle was everything I wanted,” said Holly, shrugging. “And—the existence of magic, the chance to learn it—it just doesn’t feel like it’s really mine.”

“But your parents were mages,” said Draco, his annoyance flaring up again. Was she really this thick? “If they can do magic, then of course you can do magic, too. It’s not that hard to understand.”

Holly rolled her eyes at him. “I was raised Muggle, you big berk,” she pointed out. Her brush lifted a giant glob of some sort of half-burnt ingredient from the cauldron at that moment. “Oh my god. Did you not even bother with any of these?”

“Well if you’re such an expert at cleaning, why don’t you do it?” huffed Draco.

Holly had the audacity to laugh. “Why would I want to do your dirty work?” she scoffed, before coming over to peer into the cauldron he was currently scrubbing. “You suck at this, by the way. I bet Snape’ll give you extra detention to get it properly cleaned.” 

Draco made a face at her. “Was Cinderella ever such an arrogant cow like you are, Potter?”

Holly beamed obnoxiously at him. “You’re hardly Prince Charming yourself, Malfoy,” she replied, before skipping over to the Potion Master’s office to tell Professor Snape she’d finished her cauldrons. 

Draco stuck his tongue out at her retreating back.

Chapter Text

“Congratulations, Mr Malfoy,” said Healer Smethwyck, as Harry handed his glowering Auror partner a clean set of robes, “you’ve got a clean bill of health. Well, barring one notable condition.”

The rustling behind the privacy screen paused. Moments later, Draco leaned around it with his customary glower in place. “What condition?” he demanded.

Healer Smethwyck coughed. “You appear to be pregnant.”

A pause. “What,” said Draco flatly.

“How does that even work?” added Harry, incredulous. “He’s a bloke, right?”

Healer Smethwyck coughed again. “You were conducting a raid on an illegal fertility potions ring, weren’t you?” 

“Yes,” said Harry, “but how does that—”

“And you mentioned that Mr Malfoy was splashed with one of the fertility potions in question during the fight, correct?”

“Yes, but he didn’t ingest anything, so how—”

“And instead of coming here directly to ensure that there were no unintentional side effects, the two of you went home and, uh, promptly…”

“Yes, yes, get to the point,” snapped Draco. 

“We’re already at the point,” replied Healer Smethwyck. “I’m sure you can put two and two together, Mr Malfoy.”

There was another pause, this one presumably as pregnant as Draco was.

And then: “Merlin’s taint!” swore Harry’s partner, crossing back to the bed and sitting down, still only half-dressed in his robes. “How am I going to explain this to my parents?!”

Chapter Text

“This is puerile,” grumbled Draco, slogging along behind Harry as they prowled down the darkened hallway. “We don’t need to have a test-of-courage competition. Our aborted seventh year was already one big test of courage.”

Harry snorted. “Yeah, but the stakes on that one were way too high. At least this is just some harmless inter-house bonding activity.”

“Harmless inter-house bonding.” Draco scoffed. “Didn’t we all have to fight a boggart in the werewolf’s class back in third year? We should all know each other’s worst fears by now.”

Harry held his wand aloft, squinting down the hall to see if any of their classmates might be nearby. They were supposed to be in the region occupied by Ron and Hermione’s team, which was going to be either the most horrifying thing Hermione’s spellwork and Ron’s strategising could think up… 

…or absolutely nothing at all, because they were a bit more preoccupied with each other than actually trying to terrify their yearmates. 

“You’ve got to hand it to them,” groused Draco as Harry tugged him away from the very-indisposed noises coming out of the broom cupboard, “knowing what the Weasel sounds like in coitus is one of my worst fears.”

“Aren’t you glad you know that about him now?” Harry grinned in spite of himself, relishing how Draco’s cheeks flushed pink in the wandlight. “Come on, let’s see if we can get past whatever Ernie and Pansy have cooked up.”

Chapter Text

Kiss him, says the voice of Felix Felicis. The lights of the club are low, Draco’s sloshed out of his Merlin-cursed mind, and Potter is swaying like a drunken madman. How Draco could find himself capable of falling for this drunken madman is truly beyond his own comprehension.

Kiss him. Felix Felicis isn’t really luck, Draco knows—it’s more analytical than that. It calculates the probabilities of each of his actions having a beneficial outcome and then advises him on the best one. Maybe he’s wanted to do this for a while. Maybe Potter’s wanted it too, and it’s only taken Draco until now to notice. 

Kiss him, you berk. Felix Felicis is practically shouting in his head now.

And Draco obeys.

Chapter Text

“Here you are,” said Harry, placing a piping hot mug of tea down on the kitchen table across from Malfoy. Malfoy. Of all the people who had to blow into his cottage out here in the middle of nowhere, it had to be Draco sodding Malfoy. Harry truly had the worst luck sometimes.

“Cheers,” said Malfoy, grey eyes boring into Harry’s as he raised said mug. Harry reciprocated with his own. 

Malfoy took a sip of the tea before making a face, and then caught sight of Harry’s judgemental stare and quickly coughed and looked away. 

“Not to your taste?” challenged Harry, arching his eyebrows.

“Not Grey Lady?” wondered Malfoy, before examining the label dangling from the tea bag. “Earl Grey? Must be some Muggle brew.”

“Well, I didn’t realise the Pureblood Tea Patrol was popping by to pay me a visit,” replied Harry waspishly. 

Malfoy’s cheeks turned a faint shade of pink. “It’s just until the storm has passed. Why you chose to live somewhere where the storms can regularly affect one’s magic is… utterly beyond me.”

“All the easier to avoid magical intruders.” Harry shrugged.

Malfoy’s mouth flattened briefly, before he sighed and took another sip of his tea. Harry leaned back in his own seat, savouring the rest of his decidedly Muggle English Breakfast.

“How long has it been since you and… girl Weasley…” Malfoy’s voice trailed off hopelessly. 

Harry snorted. “Her name’s Ginny. And it fell apart not that long after the War, actually.” She couldn’t bear to be with someone who sidelined her, and he couldn’t handle the way she kept wanting to burrow into things he’d rather leave well alone. The War was over. No need to dwell. 

“Oh,” was all Malfoy said. “My condolences?”

Harry snorted again, getting up to grab the copper kettle off the hob to refill his mug. “What about you and… what’s-her-face Greengrass?”

“Asta?” corrected Malfoy. “In France. The Riviera’s more salubrious for her health, allegedly.”

“Oh.” Harry wasn’t quite sure how to feel about all this—about catching up with Draco sodding Malfoy at his own kitchen table. Like they were nothing more than distant acquaintances trading pleasantries, rather than the nemeses they’d been back in Hogwarts days. 

They fell into a semi-silence, broken only by Malfoy mashing at his tea bag with the spoon. “Could use some more milk and sugar,” he remarked. 

“Just ran out of milk this morning,” said Harry, as he set down the sugar bowl in front of his old nemesis. He then went to refill the kettle and popped it back on the hob.

Malfoy stirred in a heaping spoonful of sugar. Harry had remembered him liking the sweets his parents used to send him at Hogwarts. Typical. 

“So you and… Asta,” he said, resuming his seat. “Going well? Or…” his eyes narrowed at the way Malfoy seemed to hunch a bit at his wife’s name. “Trouble in paradise, I’m guessing.”

“Perceptive, Potter,” drawled Malfoy, no longer looking him in the eye. “But it’s hardly any of your business whether or not my wife and I are ‘having trouble’.”

“You asked after me and Gin; I thought it was only fair,” Harry shot back.

Malfoy’s mouth crinkled again. “Would I be here in the arse-end of Merlin-knows-where with you if Asta and I were incandescently happy together?”

“Yes, what brought you up here, anyway? I mean, to be blown off-course on a broom in such a storm—”

“Mysteries wants to know why those storms are affecting people’s magic,” said Malfoy shortly, just as the kettle began to whistle. “And I intend to get to the bottom of it.”

Chapter Text

Draco’s family lived in a small tower in the Hogwarts enclave—a modest space within the larger castle complex, but still bigger than the dormitory bed Harry had been assigned to. “Sit down; I’ll get Dobby to fix some tea,” said Draco, pointing to a lumpy armchair. It looked like it’d been fished out of the rubble from the Wizard-Muggle War. There were springs poking out of the seat.

Harry sat down, his hands still tingling from his earlier transformation. “What’s happening to me?” he asked, his voice slightly hoarse. 

Draco, who had been whispering to something behind a curtain in the kitchen alcove, turned to fix Harry with a scrutinising stare. 

“You’re an Obscurial,” he said, as he grabbed a stool and dragged it over to Harry’s armchair. 

“A what?” echoed Harry.

“An Obscurial,” repeated Draco. “They’re extremely powerful. Father says some Obscurial transformations can destroy just as much as a Muggle nukular bomb.”

“Nuclear,” corrected Harry, but faltered under Draco’s look. 

“An Obscurial is only created when magic is suppressed,” continued Draco after a moment. “Something in your past must’ve made you do that.”

Harry swallowed, not sure how much he was willing to tell this strange boy. The arrival of the tea-tray fortunately gave him enough time to think.

“My mum was sent to the Hogwarts enclave when she was eleven,” he murmured, stirring at his tea. “My aunt said she and my dad deserved to be blown up in a Death Eater attack, because they were wizards.” 

He swallowed down a mouthful of tea. It tasted like roots and leaves, with a hint of pine needles from the forest by the castle. 

“I didn’t want to have magic. I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be brought here like my mum. And now you’re saying I’m cursed to—to be a bomb—”

Draco put a hand on Harry’s wrist, his eyes piercing. “You’re not cursed,” he insisted. “This—” he gestured around them, “is cursed. You’ve been blessed with enough power to flatten a Muggle city. You’re our key to freedom—to ending these enclaves. ’Tis better to taste valiant death than to starve under Muggle cruelty.”

Harry could hear Hermione’s voice in his head: What starts in blood will end in blood. But what good did that do her, in the end? She’d been gunned down—slaughtered with all the other peaceful protestors. 

He took another sip of tea, and locked eyes with Draco, green on grey. “Where do I begin?”

Chapter Text