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Chapter Text

It’s the pier lights that catch his eye first. The brashness of them.

The P is missing.

BRIGHTON IER.

Fairground rides spin and sparkle, the distant, exulted screams of their passengers filling the air in tide swells. He grins, lifting his sunglasses to rest above his flop of curls slightly dampened by sweat from the walk down the cramped Lanes to the seafront.

They’ve chosen well, he thinks.

“Hotel’s this way,” he hears Dean tell the others. “You coming, Harry?”

Harry unsticks himself from the railing, hooks his thumbs under the straps of his rucksack, and follows his friends through the crowds. The sun is brassy, orange, sinking closer to the water’s edge; it’s that strange time of day, that transitional period between the end of a summer evening and the start of a summer night: on one side of the promenade, the bars are open, and on the other, the beach side, young families roam the boardwalk and pebbled beach, weighed down by bulky prams, by picnic baskets and damp, rolled-up towels. The smell of fresh brine wafts up from the water, mingling with the salty, savoury scent of fried chips from prom’s food huts.

The list of possible stag do locations hadn’t been a long one. In the end, it was Brighton versus Edinburgh, Brighton edging its win through its difference from and proximity to London, its mostly Muggle population, something that had given it a slightly exotic appeal for their groom-to-be, though Harry suspects Neville would have been content with anywhere as long as all five of them agreed to come along. 

“Would you look at that, lads,” Seamus breathes.

Their hotel takes up a sizable portion of the promenade. Built in neoclassical style, it’s all Victorian white stone and bay windows and wrought-iron balconies filled with blooming palm plants and flowers and windows so clean the sun bounces off them, turning them golden. A glasshouse wraps around the front entrance. It houses long tables and smart, fabric-covered chairs, the reception beyond it gleaming with marble floors and Persian rugs and glittering chandeliers overhead. 

Harry wonders if this might be the kind of place Ginny would like to visit. Probably not, but he bet she’d enjoy the seafront and the arcade. Maybe after the wedding they can all come back with the girls. They could take Teddy to Sea Life, have a picnic on the beach. 

Harry glances at Ron. Dean marches on, trainers squeaking against the floor. He leads the way towards the young man working on reception; Ron is eyeing the potted plants and Romanesque columns with an expression of mild discomfort, and just as Harry’s about to make a joke to lighten the mood—he doesn’t feel particularly at home in this hotel either, and he’s still not sure why they didn’t pick the much cheaper Premier Inn down the road—he’s distracted by a single bark of laughter straight ahead.

Harry and Ron shuffle forwards quickly to join their friends at the desk.

Behind it, uniformed to the neck in a crisp white shirt, navy blazer, and gold tie, is Draco Malfoy.

Seamus laughs again.

Malfoy stares at them, his expression completely unreadable bar the mottled, dark pink flush creeping slowly across his neck and cheeks. Harry peers down at the desk. Malfoy’s hand is clasped over a computer mouse, his knuckles starkly white.

Fucking hell.

Harry hasn’t seen Malfoy since the trials. Eight years ago now, the summer of 1998, the summer Malfoy’s parents were put on house arrest. In the years following, the Malfoy family name slowly faded from Wixen public interest; Harry can’t remember the last time he or any of his friends asked about them, even Andromeda, and Narcissa is her sister.

But here Malfoy is, working reception at this grand Brighton hotel, his grey eyes wide, staring at them all, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Physically, he hasn’t changed much. Same stark, blond hair, a little longer than it used to be, tied back at the nape of his neck, some shorter, flyaway strands tucked behind his ears; same slim, tall frame; same angular cheekbones and strong, patrician nose; same mouth twisted in a perpetual moue of discontent; same pink scar slashing across his lips and chin and disappearing under the collar of his white shirt.

“Can you bloody believe it?”

It’s Seamus, of course it’s Seamus.

Harry looks around at his friends. Ron and Neville are wearing the same expressions of shock he’s certain is written all over his own face, but Dean and Seamus look positively thrilled by the turn of events.

Fuck. This is bad.

“How the hell have you been, eh?” Seamus asks Malfoy gleefully.

Harry’s toes curl inside his trainers.

“I need your credit card to check your room booking,” Malfoy says flatly.

That cool, posh tone. In all these years, Harry’s never forgotten the sound of it.

“What’s the magic word?” Dean asks him.

“What’s the magic word,” Seamus repeats with a snigger.

“Hey, c’mon, guys,” Harry says tiredly.

A muscle in Malfoy’s jaw jumps. His gaze flicks quickly from Dean to Harry and back again. He clears his throat. “I need your credit card to check your room booking. Please.”

Dean snorts, tossing his card onto the desk. It skitters across Malfoy’s keyboard and lands flat in front of his hand.

Malfoy swipes it into his computer a little too hard. His movements are efficient, meticulous, well-practised, the hands of an excellent Potions student past, but Harry notices the quiver in them when Malfoy places three room keys on the desk, one at a time: the first for Neville, the second for Seamus and Dean, the last for Ron and himself.

In that same flat tone, Malfoy asks, “Do you know Brighton and Hove well? Would you like a map?”

“Jesus Christ,” Dean mutters.

“Yeah, go on then,” Seamus says, still grinning madly.

Ron and Neville look at each other uneasily and Harry scrubs a hand through his hair. Malfoy walks out from behind the desk and whips a visitor’s map from the display on the wall. He opens it out, folds it in three, using a biro to circle the location of the hotel.

“This is us. We’re right on the beach, so you shouldn’t have any issues finding that, but just in case.”

Seamus snorts. “Sassy!” 

Harry wants to die.

“Pavilion is here, aquarium here, the Lanes up here. If you need bar or restaurant recommendations, just ask. Any of us would be happy to help,” Malfoy says, but his expression belies his words: he’s all pinched and pale, his mouth pressed in a tight line, his eyes shifty, avoidant. 

He slaps the map onto the desk.

“Where are the strip clubs? Do you know any good ones, Malfoy?” Seamus goads.

And it’s Ron this time, his voice low and firm in warning: “Seamus.”

“Alright, fine, bloody hell,” Seamus says, holding up his hands. “Sorry.”

Malfoy’s tone is clipped. “Enjoy your stay with us.” 

His gaze flicks down to their outfits. Harry suddenly remembers they’re all in matching Hawaiian shirts: Harry in green palm print, Ron in red flowers, Neville in blue surf, Dean in salmon pink flamingos, Seamus in bright green and yellow pineapples. It’s so mortifyingly naff, and Malfoy’s glare burns right through him, a ghost of his hard, judgmental glower from school, only when he looks back up, when he catches Harry’s eye, he says nothing.

During Malfoy’s trial, Harry’s ribs had still ached from the fire. He remembers how they had somehow hurt even more as he stared at Malfoy from the lectern where he testified for him. Like Malfoy was still clinging to him for dear life.

And now Malfoy is here, and this is the life he’s made, and though Harry has divorced himself from thoughts of Malfoy and his family for almost a decade, he can’t help but wonder: why? 

Why here?

How did Malfoy end up like this?

“Come on, Harry,” Ron mutters, tugging his elbow. Ahead of them, Neville and Dean and Seamus step into the lift, but Harry’s rooted to the spot, staring at Malfoy. Being stared at by Malfoy.

Eventually, Harry nods stiffly, allowing himself to be pulled away.

“Enjoy your stay,” Malfoy says again, bland and robotic, and turns back to his computer screen.

_____

Five minutes later, after they’ve dumped their overnight bags in their rooms, they congregate in reception again. 

Malfoy is gone.

There’s a woman with short dark hair and severe eyebrows in his place, and when Harry looks over at her, she smiles back politely. And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe they can all just pretend it never happened. 

Harry’s okay with that.

He’s fine.

When Harry tears his eyes from the front desk, he’s met with Ron’s troubled gaze.

“Brighton,” Ron hisses. They file out the hotel together, Ron and Harry holding the rear. “He’s in Brighton. That’s mental.”

“I know,” Harry mutters.

In the room, before they left, Harry had inspected his reflection in the wardrobe’s full-length mirror: the shirts were his idea, a bad one he’s decided, but at least the rest of him isn’t too awful. He needs a haircut. His curls are big and frizzy and floppy, but his shorts aren’t badly wrinkled from the train journey, his chin has a nice shadow to it, so there’s that at least. 

Hopefully, Malfoy doesn’t think he looks like a total mess.

Harry’s not sure why it matters, but it does.

“I always wondered where he’d end up,” Ron says.

“You did?”

Ron looks at Harry dubiously. “You didn’t?”

Harry rubs the back of his neck and laughs. “Fuck off. No.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Did my part. Moved on.”

“Looks like he did, too.”

They stop for bags of vinegar-soaked chips and pints of beer from one of the huts on the pier. It’s a nightmare trying to find a seat; Harry’s never seen this many people outside of Oxford Circus on a Saturday. They end up standing instead, leaning against the railings, tucking in beneath the flash of lights overhead and surrounded by the pulse of music from the arcade. The beach is thinning out save for a few stragglers drinking tinnies on picnic blankets, bare legs outstretched towards the low tide as it kisses the pebbles in gentle ripples. It’s there Dean explains to them the concept of the humble Muggle pub crawl, and when he mentions there are over a hundred pubs and bars to cover in Brighton, Neville turns a little green around the gills.

“Don’t worry,” Dean says, patting their groom’s arm. “I reckon we’ll only hit about… what. Thirty?”

“Thirty pubs?” Ron asks. “Thirty drinks? Each? Are you having a laugh?”

“It doesn’t have to be alcohol,” Seamus says. He smirks. “But it’s strongly encouraged.”

After their earlier run-in, Harry thinks he might need it. 

_____

At the seventh pub, Harry swaps out his usual lager for a glass of water. Dean and Seamus have moved onto tequila shots, and across from them, Ron and Neville sip rum mixers. 

The bar behind their table is adorned with rainbow flags and snaps from Saturday nights: drag queens and celebrities who’ve visited over the many years it’s been open—thirty, according to the plaque next to the rows of colourful vodka bottles. Harry’s not sure how comfortable he feels encroaching on a space that doesn’t belong to them, but the staff are lovely and it’s certainly not the last gay bar in Brighton according to Malfoy’s map. The whole city’s famous for them, apparently.

“Would you ever snog another bloke?” Seamus asks the table curiously.

Dean chokes on his shot, shoving the lime wedge into his mouth, sucking on it vigorously. “What a question,” he wheezes.

Ron shrugs. “Yeah? Why not?”

Harry stares at him, laughing breathily. “Really? Who?”

“Viktor Krum,” Ron says without hesitation. “He’s gotten quite good looking, don’t you think? He was on the front of Q-Fever last month. Did any of you see that?”

“No, but it sounds like you did,” Seamus says, and Harry thinks, me too, I did too, and Ron’s not wrong, and what the fuck, because where did that come from?

“Does Hermione know about your bendy ways?” Seamus asks.

Harry feels his face get hot. He thinks about Ron snogging Viktor, because Ron put the image there for him to take and—it’s not terrible, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he really wishes they weren’t talking about this here. Not while there are actual gay couples around them trying to relax and enjoy their Friday night. 

He stares into his drink, running his fingers through the condensation building up on the glass.

“She wouldn’t care,” he hears Ron say, but it sounds like it’s coming from the other side of a cave, all muffled and echoey. “She’s more evolved than that.”

And then Seamus and Dean argue about whether snogging a man with a beard would be any better, and Neville just laughs, tells them all a bit tearily that he loves them, and when Seamus tells Neville to not get his hopes up, that he’s going nowhere near his lips, Harry snaps a bit and says, “Listen, guys, can we please not—”

Only, he’s cut off by Dean. “I know who you’d like to snog.”

Harry’s shoulders slump. “Who?” he asks, confused.

Dean nods at Ron. “Our matey Ronald right here.”

Harry tilts his head, stares at Ron, alarmed, perhaps a little flustered, but Ron shrugs. His eyelids are heavy.

“I don’t want to snog you,” Harry says emphatically. He looks at Dean. “I don’t want to snog Ron. Ever. He’s practically my brother-in-law.”

“Oh, really?” Dean asks, sucking lime juice from his fingers. “Is that another set of wedding bells I hear around the corner?”

No, Harry thinks in a panic, gaze swinging to Ron who’s suddenly found the beermat by his elbow very interesting.

It’s not like he and Ginny don’t want to get married. It’s just—they’ve never actually had a real conversation about it. It’s so out of reach, so grown-up and silly, something they’re not allowed to do yet, surely, like owning their own house or understanding the ins and outs of saving for a pension. Another undertaking they can worry about when they’re real adults.

Just then, a drag queen in a white PVC minidress comes by their table to clear away some empty glasses.

Harry drowns his water. “I need a piss,” he says roughly, smacking his lips, setting his glass down.

After he does his business, Harry washes his hands in the large metal sink, avoiding his reflection in the greasy, streaky mirror. Beside him, a boy with a bleached buzz cut and a nose piercing takes off all the rings on his fingers to wash his hands, setting them on the shelf one at a time. He looks at Harry with a smile. He has a heart-shaped mouth. His eyes are very dark.

“Hi,” he says, and Harry’s face is hot all of a sudden, burning and prickling.

“Hi,” Harry replies. He turns swiftly to the dryers. He glances at the mirrors then, their eyes meeting in murky reflection. The stranger smiles, a slow and quiet thing, perhaps a suggestion, and the flush on Harry’s face intensifies. 

He wonders if that was the right thing to do, to reply like that. Has he given him the wrong impression? Maybe he was just being nice. 

God, shut up, Harry thinks, focusing on the blast of air moving the water across the top of his hands, loud enough to drown out the noisy swirl of intrusive thoughts. He spends about another two seconds under the dryers, slipping back out the loos and heading straight for the bar’s exit.

He wriggles his Nokia out his back pocket. Checks the time. Eleven here. Ten in the morning in Sydney.

Gin picks up after six rings.

“Lo?” Crackle.

“Hiya!” Harry ducks out of the way of a couple on their way inside the bar, moving to lean against the wall between the pub and the souvenir shop next door. “How’s down under?”

Crackle crackle. “It’s—great! Gwen… didn’t… Quidditch match, and—you?”

Ginny left for Australia back in June for a Quidditch camp aimed at young girls, run by some of the best women Quidditch players in the world. She’s there to represent the Harpies with Gwenog. Harry remembers how excited she’d been when she told him all about it, how pleased he was for her that Gwen had asked her to go, and relieved to know she wouldn’t be going all the way over there by herself.

Though the line is broken, it’s nice to hear her voice. If Harry closes his eyes, he can imagine her standing right beside him.

“You’ll never believe who I saw today, Gins.”

“—sorry… terrible… Harry—”

Harry sighs and twists around, glancing at the pub’s entrance. “It’s alright. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later when we can hear each other properly, yeah?”

No reply. The line cuts out.

“Shit.”

Harry stares at his phone. Maybe he can try her again tomorrow.

_____

By the thirteenth pub, Harry’s had enough.

He’s been drinking water exclusively since pub ten; Ron, too. He thinks they’re both sober now, which is no fun when their other friends can barely stand on two feet.

“I think we gave it a good crack,” Ron says, propping Neville up in one arm while Harry gets his other side. Ahead of them, Dean and Seamus stumble towards the hotel, tipping into each other. 

When they make it over the threshold, Harry can’t help but glance curiously at reception, but the woman from earlier is still there and Malfoy’s nowhere to be seen. She glances over, taking in the state of them: Dean and Seamus’s plodding steps, Neville’s shirt barely hanging together by one button.

“We’re going to get barred from this establishment,” Harry whispers, bundling them all into the lift.

“Wouldn’t mind, honestly,” Ron says, panting. “I don’t belong here.”

They leave Dean and Seamus to fend for themselves and drop Neville off in his room, a fancier suite with a bath at the foot of the bed and a bigger telly. They tug off his trainers, roll him onto the bed on his side, and Ron empties the wine cooler from the bar to put it onto the floor by Neville’s head.

In their own room, Harry kicks his shoes off one at a time and collapses onto his bed with a groan. He stares at the ceiling, at the ghostly white light and shadows swimming against the plaster, reflecting the vibrancy of Brighton’s seafront at night. If he concentrates hard enough, he can still hear all the laughter and commotion that had spilled out of every bar they passed on their way back from the crawl.

“We were supposed to get pizza,” Ron says mournfully, struggling out of his Hawaiian shirt. He rolls it into a ball and tosses it onto one of the plush blue armchairs by the windows before padding his way into the bathroom. He leaves the door half-open. 

Harry’s gaze drops to the hazy yellow glow now seeping through the gap, spilling across the light beige carpet. He frowns, rolls onto his side, and stuffs a hand under his pillow. “Maybe tomorrow. The weekend’s just started,” he says distractedly. “Where d’you think Malfoy went?”

A pause. A clatter. Ron swears.

“Dunno,” comes his reply after a beat. “Maybe he quit his job after seeing us.”

Harry snorts, using his toes to peel off his socks, letting them fall to the floor. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“To be honest, I kind of thought the whole thing was a hallucination,” Ron says, sticking his head out the bathroom door, his toothbrush hanging out of  mouth. He brushes vigorously, talking around it, his voice muffled. 

“Nope. It was real,” Harry says, forcing himself to sit up. He slowly pulls  off the rest of his clothes, all heavy-limbed and bone-tired, tossing them off the bed carelessly. He presses a huge yawn into the back of his hand, throwing his glasses onto the little wicker table between their beds. “I wonder if his parents know he’s here.”

“Mate,” Ron says with a tired laugh. “Forget him. Why does it matter?”

Harry doesn’t know. 

He flops back on top of the sheets in his underwear, fighting sleep, knowing if he drops off before brushing his teeth, he’ll feel like death in the morning. 

But he can’t help himself. He’s so tired.

_____

Ron pokes a finger at the visitor information board and stares hard at Dean.

“‘Is it dangerous?’” Ron says, reading the words verbatim off the large FAQ poster pinned to the paragliding centre’s noticeboard. “‘Yes. There is an element of risk associated with paragliding.’” 

They’re not long off the bus, where Dean had spent the entire ride with his head between his knees while Ron practised his breathing beside Harry. Across from them, Seamus and Neville shared a jumbo packet of pickled onion Monster Munch, groaning every time the bus rattled over bumps on the windy rural roads.

“Why,” Ron says slowly, “are we booked on this activity the morning after the pub crawl, and moreover, when we can bloody fly ourselves. Using—” 

He glances around. They aren’t the only people here. Another group of stags are gearing up for the slot ahead of theirs: older men, in their thirties or early forties perhaps, real Ben Fogle types, all rugged beards and chiselled jaws and good banter, the kind of men who buy their clothes from Cotswold and Mountain Warehouse. They look far more suited to this activity than Neville’s lot.

Ron drops his voice to a whisper, “—magic.”

“Alright, shush,” Dean hisses. He’s wearing sunglasses to disguise the smudgy circles under his eyes. “I thought it’d be fun. A nice surprise.”

“Yesterday, on the way here, you told everyone this was just going to be a hike. Look at him,” Ron jabs a finger at Neville who’s currently being measured for a new harness, cheeks pink, arms wobbling in the air as the instructor tests the grip around his legs and groin area. “The poor sod.”

“I’m excited,” Harry says, picking up his helmet, tossing it back and forth in his hands like a Quaffle. “Besides, it says here it’s no more dangerous than horse riding or skipping. Both of which carry risks, but like, small ones? It’ll be fun!”

Harry’s right. It’s bloody brilliant. After they’re given a pep talk and safety demonstration from the instructors looking after them, they’re sent down the valley one at a time with each instructor in tandem. The whole ride takes about fifteen minutes, and while Harry of course has plenty of experience of flying, being in the air like this is so—well, novel.

He’s not chasing a Snitch. He’s certainly not chasing an evil wizard or band of bad guys. 

He just gets to—sit. Stare out at the stunning views, enjoy the ride, all relaxed and cradled like a baby with a middle-aged man named Frank holding onto him from behind.

The valley is expansive, more green than Harry’s ever seen outside of Scotland: it rolls forward for an entire mile, and from the sky, he sees parts of an old fort, the ancient grey stone erupting from the earth like the jagged teeth of a buried giant. At the bottom of the valley, a blanket of wild flowers: oranges and purples and blues and reds. 

He’s the last of their group to land. He’s greeted by Ron crouched on the grass with his hands on his knees, Neville asking if they get another go (“no,” is Dean’s short answer, his fist curled against his mouth), and Seamus chatting to the instructors about Brighton’s nightlife.

After, they walk across the valley to the local pub, a twenty minute journey along a narrow and bumpy footpath. Fresh air at a more sensible altitude seems to work wonders on everyone’s mood and hangovers; soon enough, Dean is back to his usual, chatty self, and Ron is daydreaming aloud about what he might have for lunch.

“Fish and chips, I think.”

“You had that yesterday,” Harry points out, kicking a stone off the path with the toe of his walking boot.

“True. Lasagne, then. And chips. And a big bit of sticky toffee for afters.”

Neville groans. “If I don’t fit into my wedding suit after this weekend, I’m blaming you.”

_____

Harry stares at himself in the hotel room mirror. 

He’s a little nervous.

Dean’s reserved a table for them at some trendy Thai place in the Lanes for dinner, which means smartening up a bit, something Harry hasn’t done in a while. And he’s not dressed to the nines or anything: black jeans, black Converse, maroon short-sleeved shirt. Nothing offensive, nothing flashy. He looks—okay, he thinks. Maybe. Not too scruffy, but not the kind of dressed up that makes him all too aware of all his lines and angles, all the unpolished bits of himself he’s never learned how to make shiny.

When they arrive, the restaurant is crowded, loud, the lights all arcade-neon pinks and reds, the walls covered in mint-green tiles all the way up to the tall ceilings. A young man with razor-sharp cheekbones, long hair, and a pierced eyebrow sits them at a big table at the back of the room under low hanging lights. 

The food is delicious. Everything comes out on silver platters designed for sharing: sticky rice cakes, crunchy spring rolls, larb salad, spicy drunken noodles, barbecue pork, fried aubergine. They wash it all down with Thai beer, and after paying up, Dean suggests they hit some of the bars they missed last night: lounges and clubs this time, with music and dancing and all the things Harry finds a bit terrifying. Give him a cosy pub with an extensive pie menu and a resident scruffy dog any day of the week over a packed, sweaty nightclub.

Still. Neville is keen, and that’s the most important thing.

They head to a split-level cocktail bar first; something lowkey to get them started. The lighting is soft, orangey, and the music is great fun: all old 70s soul and disco and funk and rock. It reminds Harry of Sirius and Remus, of the vinyl player they had in Grimmauld, the way they used to shuffle through Free, the Bee Gees, and Marvin Gaye albums from the attic during those quieter nights when everyone was exhausted and on edge. It always helped, listening to those old songs, letting the music take them somewhere else for a while.

Harry starts to unwind. He orders a whisky sour because it feels like the mature thing to do, and he leans against the bar, sipping it, his self-consciousness slipping off him in tiny, steady waves, the alcohol warming up his throat, his stomach, softening his senses just enough to lull him into a synthetic sense of it’s okay, I’m okay. 

They stay for another then head closer to the seafront to a bar with grotty blue carpet and a louder speaker system. There’s a dance floor, the beer’s cheap, and the clientele is incredibly friendly, but Harry thinks it might be because everyone’s a bit pissed.

“I saw a strip club,” Seamus says, leaning over Dean and into Harry to yell the words in his ear, his voice sharp, sore where it vibrates against Harry’s eardrum. Harry winces, pulling back to create some more physical distance between them, but Dean has his arm around them both, swaying them about to the music.

“Oh?” Neville asks. 

“Yeah. Just around the corner from here. Looks good. Next?”

Harry glances nervously at Ron, but Ron’s too busy chugging beer to pay him any attention, and that’s how Harry finds himself bringing up the rear as they file past a velvet rope across the road and the large, mean-looking bouncer holding it open for them.

The club is dark, smoky. It stinks of aftershave and the walls are covered in red leather panels. There’s a stage in the middle of the room. A lone dancer spins lazily around a pole, her blonde hair glowing halo-like against the hazy pink light behind her head.

They’re immediately ushered into a booth with its own table lamp and a laminated list of rules taped to the black wall above their heads.

No touching

No photography

No outside food

Table service only, remain seated at all times, no exceptions

Harry wipes his sweat-drenched palms against the thighs of his jeans, staring at the glittery shoulder of their bikini-clad waitress taking their first order. He barely hears Seamus when he asks for more tequila, for one of the dancers from the bar to come join them. 

Her name’s Rainbow. She’s tall and curvy with a shiny mouth and an electric-blue bob, and when Seamus puts money down for it, when he tells her Neville is their groom-to-be, she goes straight for him, sliding a knee onto the seat by the outside of his thigh.

Her strappy top comes off first, and Neville glances at the others with a what the fuck do I do expression, and Harry stares into his drink, praying he won’t get picked on, knowing it’s futile because there are so few of them and it’s Seamus, and he keeps stuffing money into Rainbow’s tip purse.

As soon as it’s suggested she might take off her knickers, Harry rolls out the booth and mutters something about needing the loo, his head throbbing, his heart racing in his chest. He needs air, and when he bursts through the club’s front door, he sucks in great big mouthfuls of it, staggering off the curb onto the cobbled road, crouching forward with his hands on his knees. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing everything to stop spinning.

Chatter and laughter filters thickly through the air. Patrons stumbling in and out of bars and clubs without a care in the world, and certainly without a second glance at Harry. To them, he’s just another pissed late-night reveller, sicking up on the curb.

He opens his eyes, swallows back a mouthful of bile, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his wrist against his mouth. He stands. Slowly breathes in through his nose and out again through his mouth. 

In and out.

It’s a technique he learned in mandatory therapy sessions after the war, the ones the Ministry arranged for him when they assumed he still wanted to be an Auror. He still remembers his therapist: lovely Angela, with her kind brown eyes and frizzy green hair and never-ending supply of chocolate digestives. Her relaxation and coping techniques he’d brushed off as a load of rubbish until the day he learned how to feel his trauma—everything that had happened to him, his friends, his family—and not just recount it.

Harry shakes his head, snapping himself out of memories long past. He gazes across the cobbled road, the shiny, parma-violet purple door of another nightclub catching his eye.

It’s busy. The line to get in stretches around the entire building twofold. Off to the side, customers with stamps on the back of their hands smoke in groups, their laughter and chatter mingling with the music coming from inside the club: a rhythmic, pulsing beat. A large rainbow flag hangs proudly above the door, fluttering in the barely-there breeze.

As if of their own accord, Harry’s legs move him closer. He wants to get a better look at the place, at the line of people, but he pauses mid-step in the middle of the road when he sees him.

Malfoy.

He’s leaning against the wall with one arm folded across his thin chest, his elbow cupped in his stamped hand as he smokes through a Muggle cigarette. A thin white t-shirt hangs off his broad, bony shoulders, and his legs are encased in a pair of ripped black jeans. His white Converse are scuffed. Harry can just make out the red smudge of the Mark on his arm where it’s folded.

There’s another man with him. Tall, thin, pretty too. Floppy brown hair. Tattoos on his fingers and arms.

Malfoy turns his head, blowing out a plume of thick white smoke, dropping his arm. The other man sidles closer to him, slips a hand over Malfoy’s narrow waist, murmurs something into Malfoy’s ear. 

Malfoy laughs.

They’re across the road, but Harry can hear it from here. The brightness of it. The ease.

And then they start kissing, a slow, sensual thing. Malfoy’s head falls back against the wall, helpless. The stranger slides closer and presses their bodies together, but Malfoy laughs again, gently pushing the man away an inch, breaking it.

Harry swallows.

Malfoy looks up, silvery eyes locking with Harry’s and—fuck.

It feels like minutes, but it’s only a fraction of a second.

“Potter,” Malfoy calls out. He licks his lips, tosses his cigarette. His hand is sitting flat over his friend’s skinny chest, holding him back. 

The stranger throws Harry a cool look over his shoulder and asks Malfoy, “Who’s this?”

“I,” Harry says helpfully, his throat dry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“Potter!” Malfoy says again, louder this time, pushing at his friend until he’s at arm’s length, and the last thing Harry sees before his vision is flooded with a flash of pale yellow light is Malfoy’s friend’s arms waving in the air, swearing at Malfoy and—

A loud, angry toot. A screech of brakes.

Harry stumbles backwards and stares at the taxi on the road in front of him. 

A pair of hands grab him by the front of the shirt, dragging him off the road. Warm, smokey breath brushes Harry’s face, the scent of citrusy cologne tickling at his nostrils, and then he’s let go as quickly as he was snatched, the deeply personal smell of Malfoy fading out from under his nose.

“Fucking hell, Potter, are you trying to get yourself killed?” Malfoy pants. His eyes are very wide, very pale, his gleaming hair falling loose around his throat. He has quite a prominent Adam’s apple, Harry thinks stupidly. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Harry points at himself. His heart is still hammering in his chest, ticking away like a timebomb. “With me?”

“Well, I could run off a whole shopping list of things actually, but—fuck.” Malfoy blinks. “Are you drunk?” He holds a hand in the air, his palm flat, his lips turning downward at the corners. “You know what? No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. You’re not my problem.”

“What the hell, Draco?” the stranger asks, because oh, he’s still here, isn’t he? And on closer inspection, he’s far more beautiful than Harry realised, model beautiful, and of course Malfoy—image obsessed, self-important, vain, loves-the-sound-of-his-own-voice posh cunt Malfoy—would be getting off with someone like him. “Who is he? Do you know him?”

“I should like to think that’d be obvious by now, Ruben,” Malfoy snaps. “He’s…”

“An old friend,” Harry says quietly.

A flash of shock passes over Malfoy’s pinched expression, his jaw slackening an inch. He recovers quickly with a frown.

The stranger—Ruben—slowly looks Harry up and down, an evaluating once-over that makes Harry’s skin crawl. 

Ruben pulls a face. “You’ve slept with him?” he asks, and Malfoy chokes on—well, Harry’s not sure. Air, by the looks of things.

“No,” Malfoy wheezes. His cheeks are mottled pink, his frown furrowing deeper when he finally finds his breath again. Harry doesn’t know why he feels so offended by Malfoy’s reaction, the mere suggestion that they—that they might have—

“Let’s get out of here,” Malfoy is saying, tugging Ruben’s elbow, who still looks pretty put out by the whole situation, his beady gaze roaming all over Harry’s body like a pair of fussy hands, turning him this way and that and inside out. “We can go back to mine,” Malfoy adds, his voice dripping with suggestion, and—

God.

“Potter,” Malfoy says again, shaking Harry out of his thoughts. “Get a fucking grip, okay? Stop walking out into the middle of the road, you bloody lunatic.” 

“I’ll—I’ll try not to,” Harry says, dazed, and then the pair of them are turning away from him and they’re walking in the other direction, skinny silhouettes against the wall of light radiating from the row of bars and clubs up ahead. At the corner, Malfoy throws Harry one last look over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.

Chapter Text

Draco wakes before Ruben does.

Ruben is sleeping on his front. The duvet is kicked over Ruben’s thigh to reveal the arch of his knobby spine, his sharp shoulder blades, the outline of his tattooed ribs, the curve of his arse embellished with faint bruises from Draco’s fingertips. Draco, who always sleeps on his back despite what his mother told him about old hags and night-cats—which, at sixteen years-old, had been far less of a worry to him than the deranged megalomaniac taking up residence in his home; better to sleep on his back and be aware of the dangers creeping up on him in the dead of night than not—takes one look at his alarm clock and pushes Ruben’s calf with a swift kick of his toes.

Ruben stirs, moaning pitifully into the pillows.

“Get up.” Draco’s voice is scratchy and sore. He stretches over, blindly palming at the top of the radio clock to turn off the alarm. “I’ve got work and you need to fuck off.”

Ruben moans again, snuffling against the sheets. “Can I walk you there?” He turns his head on the pillow, peeping at Draco through an errant lock of fawn-brown hair.

“No,” Draco says shortly, and that’s that.

Ruben’s gone by the time Draco resurfaces from the shower fifteen minutes later. He sighs, gripping the knot in his towel, leaning back heavily against his bedroom door. He’s dripping water from his hair onto the patchy beige carpet; he can hear the gentle tap of it as it lands, soaking the trodden, worn fibres around his feet.

Harry Potter and company, in Brighton. Who’d have thought it?

Certainly not him.

Funny, how Draco had once thought this place could belong to him, and him only.

Funny, how blissfully severed he’s felt from his past, for years.

Draco jumps at the sudden, sharp knock on his door behind his head.

“Draco?”

He rubs a hand over his chest, breath caught in the back of his throat. He blinks widely. “Yes? What?”

“Sei un raggio di sole! Always so happy in the mornings!” 

“Carlo, what do you want?” Draco asks, hopping into his underwear, tossing the damp towel from his waist onto the messy bedding he knows will stay that way all day. He combs his hair back with his fingers, wringing it out.

The voice behind the door turns sing-songy. “I made you toast and Nutella.”

Draco opens the door. A tall man with very short dark hair, a moustache, and a gold hoop in his right earlobe holds a plate out for him, and right enough, there’s a slice of cheap white Tesco toastie loaf smothered in Nutella. The sweet, warm scent of it wafts up under Draco’s nostrils. 

“Good morning, bello,” Carlo says.

“Give me that,” Draco huffs, snatching the plate. He turns, leaving the door open.

Carlo delicately picks the towel off Draco’s bed, tossing it into the washing basket while Draco moves around the scant space of the room, munching his breakfast, being careful not to get his fingers messy as he pulls his work shirt and trousers from his wardrobe. 

Carlo is already in full uniform, shiny black brogues and all.

“Sorry if we were noisy last night,” Draco says, wiping crumbs from his hands with a tissue from his bedside table. He dons his shirt and stands in front of his wardrobe mirror, inspecting his reflection, fingers flying up his buttons to fasten them.

“No you’re not,” Carlo says.

“No, I’m not,” Draco sighs. He grins at Carlo over his shoulder, tying his hair back. It’ll be dry by the time they make it to the hotel. 

Draco has been working at The Grand for nearly eight years

Every time summer comes around, he tells himself: this one will be his last. 

It never happens, though. 

He supposes that’s the problem when you have a scant CV, no passport, and barely any savings to your name. 

“Good in practice but not great on paper,” Draco had told his Muggle boss-to-be way back when, his chin held high, his palms sweating profusely beneath the table as she looked at him warmly over the job application form he’d hastily scribbled out in the Costa around the corner.

He’d been sleeping on the couch back then, in this very flat, Carlo the best shag he’d ever had but not for the sex—that had been fine—but for the kindness he’d shown in letting this irritable, transient mess stay until he’d found his feet.

“You could be a Potions Master, and a bloody good one at that,” Draco’s father had told him bitterly in those last few weeks at home. “You could be a—a Professor. A Curse-Breaker, an Auror if that’s what you want, for Merlin’s sake. You’re breaking your mother’s heart, Draco.”

Draco had never wanted any of those things, not really.

But he doesn’t exactly want this, either. 

Still. It’s a necessary evil. It bankrolls his Friday nights, as Carlo says.

They walk to work together, shoes clicking against the pavement, the early morning breeze kissing Draco’s skin, salt-scented and cool. The streets have that haunted, seven a.m. feel: Draco and Carlo share the space with council workers picking litter from the overflowing bins, with cats snooping around overgrown front porches, with seagulls swooping over their heads, looking for scraps from last night’s drunken kebabs, their squawks echoing across the kiss of soft waves at the seafront. Brighton’s magical soundtrack.

“Quick cig first?” Draco suggests, checking his watch. 

They dump their bags in the grotty little staffroom at the back of the building, the “rough in the diamond” as their boss Magda likes to call it, and they head out the side door to hang over the railings, lighting up a couple of Silk Cuts from the battered packet Draco’s been carrying around with him since last night.

Carlo is telling him a story from uni—he’s a part-time art student at Brighton, his hands often dotted with flecks of paint, his bedroom thick with the scent of turpentine—and Draco is laughing at him when he spots a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye.

He straightens immediately, glancing at the cigarette in his hand, then back at Potter.

“Are you lost?” he asks him, because he certainly looks it. Oh, but Potter’s always had that look about him, hasn’t he? It’s the messy hair, the dopey, downturned eyes, the way he somehow makes himself look far smaller than he actually is. If he practised his posture, he’d be almost as tall as Draco.

Maybe.

Carlo glances at Draco curiously. “Who is this?” he asks, lips tugging up at one side.

“A guest,” Draco says, feeling an enormous ripple of amusement when Potter pulls a face at them.

An old friend, indeed.

 “And… an old friend,” Draco adds slyly. “Potter, you and your friends need to check out by eleven,” he says, checking his watch. “Can I trust you to not get hit by a bus before then?”

To his surprise, Potter barks a laugh. The tenseness in his shoulders eases. 

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll try not to,” he says, then waves, disappearing around the corner. 

“An old friend?” Carlo asks Draco with a raised eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Draco mutters, tapping his fingers against the railing, watching Potter’s retreating form.

_____

Potter’s lot come crawling out of their pits ten minutes before check-out. The ugly Hawaiian shirts are gone at least, but they all look severely worse for wear: Finnigan especially, who, Draco is pleased to note, hasn’t particularly grown into his looks—nor his height. 

Draco wonders if this is what it was like, back in school, when they all discovered alcohol for the first time. A rare glimpse into Sunday mornings in the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory, a hovel Draco imagines messy and overhot and stinking of cheap deodorising potions mixed with a faint but distinct whiff of jizz, armpits, and feet.

Draco doesn’t bother smiling. There’s no point in pretending he’s happy to see them. 

Only—Potter’s not there.

“Good morning,” Draco says when Thomas slumps across the desk, rubbing at his forehead. “I can’t check you out until all of your party is present.”

Finnigan squints at his watch. “Where the fuck is Harry, anyway?” he asks Weasley, who’s yawning into the back of his hand, looking much paler than usual, his freckles standing out starkly across his cheeks and throat.

“He said he got up for coffee and a wander. Dunno where he is now.”

Lost, Draco thinks, bringing up their booking on the system, tapping his fingers impatiently against the desk. 

“What happens if he’s late?” Thomas asks him. His voice is all rough and deep and Draco supposes, if he’s feeling inclined—and he’s not, he’s just having a fancy, that’s all—that he’s the one who’s grown up the most handsome out of all of them. Perhaps Weasley, if he weren’t so sloppy and hungover and poorly dressed. Thomas is wearing a tight t-shirt, has good arms, and if he weren’t such a massive arsehole, Draco might feel like being nice to him.

But the only one of them Draco feels like being a smidge nice to is wandering the streets of Brighton right now, doing god knows what, and if Potter’s even five minutes late and Draco processes their stay without adding a late check-out fee, he’ll get pulled up and asked about it by management, and—

Draco can’t afford to get in trouble.

“There you are,” Weasley says suddenly. 

Draco checks his watch. A minute to spare.

His fingers fly across the keyboard as he processes their bill. 

“Sorry, I woke up really early,” Potter is saying. He’s carrying a takeaway cup, his sunglasses perched above his mop of curls. He must be using a sight charm. “Went out for a walk.”

Draco’s computer makes a noise at him and he tears his gaze from Potter to find he’s entered the wrong series of keystrokes. He swears under his breath, going back to correct it with the clunky mouse.

Draco hates Muggle computers with a fiery passion.

“We’re not paying nothin’ extra,” Finnigan says in that grating way of his, leaning over the desk, pointing a finger in Draco’s face.

“What’s going on?” Potter asks.

“Nothing,” Draco cuts in before Finnigan can get his knickers in a twist. “You made it on time, I’m checking you out.”

It sucks the wind from Finnigan’s sails a bit, at least, and he sinks back down, scooping up his rucksack from the pile they’ve left on the floor. They’re all chattering away to themselves about how to kill the time they have before they need to catch the train back to London. Draco supposes the right thing to do would be to give them some suggestions, but he’s tired and Potter is looking at him and he just wants to see the back of them all already, quite frankly.

“Thank you for staying with us, hopefully we’ll see you again,” he says politely, handing Thomas his printed receipt. 

“Not bloody likely,” Finnigan mutters. Weasley and Longbottom exchange gormless looks. Thomas sighs, stuffing the paperwork into his wallet. 

Potter hangs back, rubbing the back of his head.

“Thanks, Malfoy,” he says. “For saving my life.”

The others look at him oddly.

“Maybe it’s time for new eye test, Potter,” Draco says, unable to help the twitch in the corner of his mouth, and Potter bows, dropping his sunglasses back onto his nose, and the entire group leave in a cacophony of “what the fuck was that all about”s and “let’s go to the pier” and “my head is killing me”s.

So long, Draco thinks.

_____

Four hours later, Draco’s shift ends, and in the absence of Carlo for company—he has a lecture and studio after his shift—he picks up a bag of chips and curry sauce on the way home.

He eats, climbing the hill towards Hanover, circling the back of the Pavilion, up the Grand Parade, sticking to the park side, imagining—as he often does whenever he takes this route—what it must be like to live in one of the big, trendy townhouses lining the other side of the road, with their fancy Georgian windows and wrought iron fences and quaint sea views.

He wonders where Potter lives. Is he still holed up in the Black horror mansion in Highbury? Perhaps he has a house of his own now. Something painfully homey and twee, Draco thinks; somewhere in the countryside, with a garden and plenty of flying space. Somewhere with Ginevra, probably.

Draco frowns, stabbing at the particularly soggy chip threatening to slip off his little wooden fork. 

His shoes are pinching his feet. He’s dying to get into his joggers, to have some alone time in the flat where he can just rot on the sofa with a glass of wine and forget all about Potter’s pointy elbows and the way they’ve jammed themselves back into Draco’s life after he’s spent precious years trying to forget about their very existence. 

He gets as far as the little pub on the corner of his street when a familiar cat walks across his path: Berty, Mrs Gray at number forty-nine’s orange tabby. He is round and very old and extremely chatty, and he winds himself through Draco’s ankles, threatening to topple Draco over.

“If you make me lose my chips I’ll be having words,” Draco warns him.

Berty peeps and chitters, jumping up onto a nearby wall.

Draco stops to give him a scratch under his chin. Berty tilts his head, his long whiskers quivering in pleasure, his purr vibrating against Draco’s fingertips. 

“You’re such an old tart, Berty.”

The black cat from across the road joins them then, sitting patiently at Draco’s feet. Draco’s not sure what her—or his?—name is, or who she belongs to, but he almost always sees her lurking outside the house or sunbathing in glittery patches of sunlight in the overgrown back garden. 

“I get it, you’re both here to make fun of me,” he murmurs, lifting the lid of his neighbour’s bin to dispose of his mostly eaten bag of chips, crouching to run his hand over the black cat’s back, her fur silken, hot in the late afternoon sunshine.

“I wish I knew your name,” Draco says. She flops onto the pavement on her back, bringing her paws up under her chin.

He leaves them like that, perched in the sun, and he continues up the narrow street lined with small, colourful terraced houses, picking his keys out his pocket.

Draco’s house belongs to Alan, his live-in landlord: a forty-five year-old divorced graphic designer who loves cycling, the environment, and running marathons. Carlo had been living with Alan first, of course, with their flatmate Susan, who Draco only got to know for six months before she moved her jewellery business to Manchester, her old bedroom now his: a proverbial box with a window and just about enough room to swing Berty in.

He thinks he’s done okay, all things considered. He could have done a lot worse than this salmon-pink terrace with its draughty windows and funny little carpeted staircase and Carlo’s silly cocktail glass collection.

He has just turned twenty-seven, he is living independently, and he’s doing just fine.

_____

“Ducky,” Pansy whispers. 

They’re in his room. Pansy’s eyes are red, the skin around her nose tight and dry. There's a trace of soot on her cheek, a strip of black watered down by the tears she’d pressed into Draco’s pillow in the early hours of the morning.

“He’s dead,” she’d gasped, stumbling through the fireplace into his arms just after midnight.

He’s dead he’s dead he’s dead, Draco had thought as Pansy’s wailing sobs rattled around the room for what had felt like infinity, and all he’d been able to do was lie there on the other side of the bed and stare at the ceiling, too shocked to move, too shocked to sleep.

“No—don’t,” he says, a warning, a finger shooting outward; he’s frantically moving from one side of the room to the other, carrying armfuls of clothes back and forth. Pale morning light bleeds in through the tall windows, dust floating in the air, birds chirping outside.

He dumps the last pile into his trunk, steps back to inspect it—the bulging, hugeness of it, the weight and the sheer obviousness of it—and he thinks,

“—this won’t do. No, this isn’t going to work.”

“Ducky.”

“Don’t call me that! We’re not twelve anymore!”

“Would you just stop for a second!”

Draco falls to his knees and rummages through his belongings until he finds it: the bulky, waxed canvas rucksack designed for camping and hunting. He stuffs it first with what he needs before he thinks about what he wants: socks, underwear, undershirts, comfortable clothes, smarter clothes for making an impression.

Books: he can find those on the outside.

Trinkets: he can forget.

“Where will you even go?” Pansy is asking, her voice shrill. She’s on her knees on the other side of his trunk, grasping the edges of it, her knuckles white. Her nightgown is baggy and sheer and her collarbone is sharp like the span of a bird’s wings. Her hair is messy, puffing up in cloudy cowlicks; she hasn’t cut it since Sixth Year, and it hangs over her shoulders in coarse black waves, fringe pushed back to reveal her high forehead, her deep-set eyes.

And then she’s reaching for him, grasping for his hand, her blunt nails digging into his knuckles and it hurts, and—

“—a simple undertaking, if it’s a son. If it’s a daughter… we might run into some issues, but we try again. That’s what a contract is for.”

Their fathers laugh. To Draco’s ears, Lucius’s laughter has never sounded more strained, more desperate.

Draco locks eyes with Astoria across the table. She quickly looks away, two spots of colour blooming high on her cheeks. Behind her, the Malfoy family tapestry is tall and wide and fading at the edges, its pastel blues closer to greys, its silvers dull and worn.

She’s only fifteen.

He feels sick.

Narcissa’s hand comes down on Draco’s forearm, squeezing, nails digging right into the burn of the mark, and she whispers, “It’ll be okay, my darling, just do as your father asks—”

—he has a face full of smoky black curls. A sharp shoulder under his chin. A thin ribcage squeezed tightly in his arms. Muffled cries, muffled shouts, the lick of flames hot beneath their feet and burning through their clothes—

“—try not to kill yourself,” Potter says, stumbling back with an easy grin. Brighton is sunny, but there’s ash in the air. It’s in Potter’s hair, on his glasses, settling in the crevices of his collarbone where it peeks out from his too big t-shirt.

Draco shakes his head, confused.

“No,” he says. “It wasn’t me who did that—I didn’t—”

Draco wakes with a start.

He breathes in sharply through his nose and blinks rapidly in the darkness as the shapes around him come into fuzzy focus: the coffee table, the pile of magazines, the empty wine glass, the half-eaten box of Maltesers, Alan’s armchair, the small dining table under the window and the flowers Carlo put there two days ago.

All familiar things. All safe things.

Draco pats himself down. His limbs are intact, his hair is still on top of his head, and as far as he can tell, he’s still alive. 

Some gracious soul—Alan, probably—has turned the telly off and let him be, has draped a blanket over him to keep him warm. 

Draco flops back onto the pile of throw cushions under his head and stares at the ceiling, breathing hard. His mouth tastes like cotton. He’s sweating, the back of his neck slick with it, his hair sticking uncomfortably against his flushed skin, making it itch.

He can’t remember the last time he dreamt so vividly. He can’t remember the last time he dreamt, full stop. 

The objects in the room, though familiar, start to become strangely unnerving. Perhaps it’s simply the darkness, both inside the living room and outside the window; their long street eerie and silent and still. Draco remembers what it was like to not sleep for almost an entire year in that big, old, silent house: the agony of forcing himself to stay alert, to keep safe, to keep sane.

With a shiver, he pushes the blanket back and sneaks upstairs to his bedroom.

_____

Draco’s drinking coffee in his pants when the letter arrives. 

Alan’s kitchen is small and narrow: bleached wooden cabinets and dark granite worktops, chrome fittings dulled with love and use. An ancient ‘whatever happens, you’re fucking eating it’ oven glove hangs from a hook next to the oven, its thumb encrusted with the remnants of burnt cheese from that time Draco tried to make lasagne when he first moved in. The fridge is covered in magnets: a rainbow, a seagull, a standard Brighton postcard, a shirtless sailor, a shirtless cowboy. On the window above the sink, a row of cacti, the only plants they’re capable of keeping alive.

The owl is loud, insistent. When Draco first spots it tapping and scrabbling at the window, his coffee sloshes over the rim of his mug, dripping onto the floor, barely missing his toes. 

He swears, heart in his throat, because surely—

Surely fucking not.

“No,” he mutters under his breath, blindly dumping his coffee down the sink, tossing the mug into the basin of soapy water. “No no no. Fuck off!”

His parents wouldn’t—

He marches into the living room, but the owl gets there first, swooping onto the windowsill outside, staring at him from across the dining table.

It taps its little beak against the glass. It extends its leg outward, roll of parchment tied around it. Across the road, Mr Grimley from number sixty is walking his poodle, none the wiser.

Draco swears again, opens the window, grunting with effort, the old frame shuddering and squeaking on its hinges. 

“I don’t have anything to give you,” he hisses, untying the twine with shaking fingers. “So you can bite whoever sent you here.”

Still, the owl crossly nips his fingers and flies off anyway, and—

Draco doesn’t recognise it. His parents use eagle-owls, have always used eagle-owls, and that owl was a standard tawny: the kind used by the Owl Post in Diagon.

He sits heavily at the table, bare toes curling against the rug, his hand flat against the middle of his chest. His skin is hot to touch, his heart is still thudding beneath his ribs.

He unties the letter slowly—

Malfoy,

Pardon the method of delivery—I imagine this might be quite unusual for you these days, only I wasn’t really sure how else to reach you (well, I could have phoned The Grand I suppose, but I don’t think you would have been too happy about that).

Anyway. Just wanted to let you know that I made it back safely to London (because that’s where I live), and I wasn’t hit by anything—no taxis, no buses, no trains, no planes. I remember how concerned you were, so I wanted to keep you abreast of the situation etc.

It was weird seeing you. I’m sure you’d say the same about seeing me.

If you want to stay in touch, and I won’t be offended if you don’t because obviously we hate each other, I’ve put my Muggle mobile number at the top of the page. Do you use a phone? I suppose I’ll find out, one way or another. Or maybe I won’t. Your decision.

Yours uninjured,

HJP

“—fucking Harry Potter,” Draco breathes, hands dropping to the table, shoulders slumping back against the chair.

He laughs, dry and delirious, and reads it through again.

Chapter Text

Thanks for scaring the absolute shit out of me with that Owl. Good going, Potter.

Harry rubs at the back of his head. He rotates slowly in his chair, the squeak of the wheels filling a silence in the room that’s been going on for far too long.

He stares at the text. Reads it again.

Just wanted to keep u on your to—

He deletes his reply. Starts off fresh.

Desperate times call for desperate Owls

“Zacharias?” 

He sets his phone on his desk. Zacharias hums from the other side of the office, slow, bored. 

Zacharias’s desk faces the wall with the cork board and clock, the Quidditch posters and trays of incoming and outgoing mail, while Harry’s faces the enchanted row of windows projecting real-time images from the road outside the HM Treasury: St James’s park and the queues of tourists waiting to get into the Churchill War Rooms. This morning, they’re gathered under golf umbrellas, wrapped in multicoloured raincoats and plasticky ponchos, flicking through soggy A-Zs as thick summer rain bounces off the pavements and rushes into the drains.

“Yes, Potter?”

“Why owls? Do you not ever wonder?”

Zacharias sighs. “What? What are you on about?”

“Which Wix looked at owls and thought: you know what, yeah. That’ll do. They can send our messages from now on.” Harry sits back, the proposal on his desk annotated, half-finished, fully forgotten. He shakes his head. “Owls.”

“Potter,” Zacharias says. “Do not let it become one of those days, I am begging you. I’ve got a shit ton of work to get through—”

They both spin around in their chairs when the office door opens with a bang, and in walks Malcolm MacCrum, Head of Magical Games and Sports, one hand on his hip, the other clutching an enormous mug of coffee.

“Alright, lads?” He ambles across the room to perch on the edge of Harry’s desk. It creaks under the weight of him. “What’re we talking about?”

Harry clears his throat, subtly sliding his phone off the desk and into his pocket. He straightens his paperwork so it looks like he’s been having a hard time working through it. 

“Just—annotating the new league contracts.”

“Very good, very good,” MacCrum says, only it’s not very good at all, it’s boring as fuck actually, and it’s why Harry spends most of his day staring out the window and titting about with the fancy coffee maker in the kitchen instead of focusing on what he’s supposed to be doing.

“And what about you, Smith?”

Zacharias rattles off a whole song and dance over the planning permission project for the new Quidditch stadium in Norfolk, and Harry stares out the windows; the charmed glass is now a blur of heavy grey rain and washed-out parkland and trees. He can almost smell it, the warm, earthy scent of a good summer downpour, the break in heat.

“I have some news for you both,” MacCrum suddenly announces, startling Harry out of his daze. “King’s about to hand in her notice, which means—”

“The deputy position is open?” Zacharias asks hopefully.

“Right you are, Smith. Anyway, I wanted you to be the first to know, so you can get a head start on the application process.” 

MacCrum winks. Harry glances at Zacharias. He’s practically vibrating in his chair, the brown-nosing, corporate-ladder climbing twat. 

How could he want this? How could he want more paperwork?

When Harry first got this job, he’d been promised exciting community projects and global partnerships that would put the Ministry’s sporting efforts on the map. It’d been the refreshing change he’d needed post-war, something worthwhile and thrilling and interesting to wake up for, something he wouldn’t have to fight against or fight for or fight at all.

What he hadn’t been told was that ninety percent of the work is, actually, a battle: a battle against the reams of paperwork and red tape and bureaucratic bullshit.

“Well,” MacCrum says. He’s backing out the door. “Something to think about?”

He leaves them, and Harry turns back to his windows, and Zacharias back to his paperwork, and neither of them speak to each other for the rest of the morning until Harry asks, “Do you want to come to the pub with us later? After work?”, because it’s the polite thing to do, and unlike Zacharias, he’s not a total dickhead, but Zacharias’s clipped reply is, “No, I’ve got actual work to do, Potter,”, and that’s the end of that.

_____

On Tuesdays, Harry goes to a Muggle gym after work.

It’s a big chain gym in the City up by St Paul’s. The treadmills face sweeping views of the Thames and the three bridges, London stretching out for miles in front of the windows: layers of old and new, dull and shiny, mingling in shadowed cutouts against the hazy summer sky. 

Harry exercises alongside bankers, alongside MPs, sometimes alongside other workers from the Ministry who also enjoy stepping out of the Wixen world every once in a while.

The timer on Harry’s watch bleeps and he slows down until his run becomes a steady stroll, the muscles of his thighs and core burning, the back of his neck slick with sweat. He steps off the treadmill, burying his face into his towel, and he blindly winds his way through the maze of hulking machines and equipment towards the men’s changing rooms.

Malfoy hasn’t replied to his text yet.

Harry is trying not to let his mobile become a watched pot. From the handful explanations that could easily explain the radio silence—Malfoy’s run out of credit, Harry’s text didn’t send, Malfoy’s been too busy at work—the one that bugs Harry most is the obvious one: Malfoy just wants to leave things where they are.

After all, Harry had said so himself: obviously we hate each other.

The Owl had been a reckless decision, in retrospect. 

When he’d returned home from London that night to a quiet, empty flat—his kitchen bathed in golden hour sunshine, highlighting thin layers of dust on the counters, on the kettle, on the windows—Harry had hemmed and hawed over it for about nought point two seconds before summoning an owl from Diagon, writing without thought, cautiously hopeful he could—what?

Learn more about Malfoy’s life?

Become friends?

It’s absurd, really, that he could even—

—Harry pauses, his hand frozen the open door of his locker.

His phone, wedged between his rucksack and his shoes, winks slowly at him in the dim with one unread text message.

Harry laughs, tosses his towel onto the bench, and he sits down and flips his phone open.

You were really that desperate to let me know you’re not an idiot? Potter, I’ve known the truth since day dot. Stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes.

Harry laughs, swiping damp curls off his forehead. 

What’s with the delay, Malfoy? It’s like you hate me or something

He stuffs his phone back into his bag and grabs a clean towel. 

His shower is short, functional, just enough to wipe the exercise from his skin, from his hair, and he roughly pats his torso and legs down before taking himself into the steam room, damp towel tied in a knot around his waist.

It’s half empty. Harry chooses a spot by the wall, perching on the bench and breathing in slowly through his nose. The air is thick, hot, menthol-sweet; in the corner, a couple of older men chat lazily to each other, and when Harry looks up and blinks against the white clouds of steam prickling at his eyes, he spots a vaguely familiar figure walking into the room, the light from the changing rooms brief and fluorescent before disappearing again when the door is closed.

“Oh, hello, Harry.”

It’s the voice Harry recognises more than the fuzzy, damp shape of the man: the clipped tones, the rounded vowels. 

“Hi, Ernie,” Harry says, running a hand over his damp, glassesless face.

Ernie takes a seat beside him, at arm’s length. He’s changed a bit since school; the puppy fat he’d always been synonymous with has melted away, his adult physique stocky and fit, his soft chin hidden under a neatly trimmed beard. 

Ernie pushes back a swath of long, damp, dark blond hair.

“How’ve you been?” he asks Harry politely. 

“Yeah, good, thanks,” Harry says, tilting his head back, resting it against the tiled wall. “You?”

Ernie nods. “Oh, you know. Same old. I heard you were in Brighton last weekend, how was that?”

Seamus must have told him. He and Ernie work together in the Department of Magical Education two floors down from Harry, and Harry dreads to think about the stories Seamus has recounted. Still, he smiles, just a small thing. He wipes some sweat from his top lip. 

“Yeah, it was really fun. I think Neville enjoyed it.”

“Oh, smashing,” Ernie says. “Jus and I have been meaning to visit for a while, but we’re Poole lads, you know? It’s a bit more our speed down in Dorset, if you catch my meaning.”

Harry doesn’t, not really, but he suspects Poole is probably very nice and very expensive, perhaps with lots of scenic coastal walks and posh little cafes where they might serve cream tea and hang Union Jack bunting on the walls. 

“Still, the night life’s meant to be good fun, isn’t it?” Ernie says, smiling wistfully. “Top notch gay scene and all that.”

Harry clears his throat, pointing his gaze straight ahead. “Not something we really explored all that much, Ernie.”

Ernie laughs dryly. “Of course, of course. So, hey,” he adds, twisting around, his towel pulling up to reveal the wide expanse of his muscular thigh. Harry frowns at it, wondering how Ernie got so fit. Surely not just from getting older and going to the gym. Harry’s grown up, he goes to the gym twice a week, sometimes three times, and his knees are still as knobbly as ever. “Finnigan told me you lot saw Malfoy.”

Harry pauses. 

Of course Seamus told him that.

“Er, yeah.”

“Well? What’s he like?”

There’s a keenness in Ernie’s gaze, in his tone. It catches Harry slightly off guard, but it’s not as surprising as his own sense of—defensiveness? Is that what this strange, foreign sensation is? The need to keep Malfoy out of the rumour mill? Ernie—and Justin, in particular—are keen purveyors, after all. Once they get their claws into a piece of gossip, there’s no stopping it from unspooling out of control.

So Harry shrugs, plays the indifference card. “Pretty much the same,” he says. He leaves it at that.

Ernie’s shoulders slacken. He looks Harry up and down curiously, disappointment writ large on his face. He smiles. “Thought you’d have something better to give me, Harry.”

Harry laughs. “Sorry to let you down. Most of us spent the weekend fending off hangovers anyway.” He stands, holding onto his towel at his hip. “I better get going. I’m about six seconds away from passing out. Nice to see you, Ernie.”

They exchange brief, polite goodbyes, and after another shower, Harry changes back into his work clothes, hurrying out before Ernie can catch him again

He resurfaces onto the busy crossways behind the church yard, finding a quiet spot by a cluster of trees to Apparate, reappearing next to the bins in the car park at the top of Columbia Road.

At home—work trousers swapped for joggers, a bowl of microwave macaroni cheese in his lap—Harry finally checks his phone.

Oh, don’t worry. I loathe you. :)

“Of course,” Harry mutters, using one hand to text while scooping a spoonful of cheesy pasta into his mouth, steam fogging his glasses. 

Can’t believe u wasted a txt just to tell me that lol

Malfoy doesn’t text him back right away, and for a while, Harry forgets about it, going about his evening like he normally would: dinner and telly, a quick clean around the kitchen, more telly, his muscles singing, warm from a good hour of stretching and strengthening. 

His phone finally buzzes again when he’s curled up on the couch in front of QI. His eyelids are heavy and he’s been thinking about taking himself to bed, but he twists around, grabbing his mobile from the coffee table instead. He flips it open.

No time or resources were wasted telling you how much you stink.

“Oh, ha ha.”

Yes v good. By the by, ran into Ernie Macmillan today, do you remember him?

Unfortunately. 

He was very curious about you

Harry stares at his screen for two whole minutes, but nothing happens. He taps his phone against his chin. Turns the telly volume down. The sun is creeping lower towards the horizon, the light inside the flat jammy, so orange it’s almost red. 

Eventually, his phone buzzes again in the palm of his hand.

What did he want to know? 

Gossip, I suppose. Didn’t tell him anything tho

So bizarrely respectful of you.

He was very beady-eyed. U know how he gets… if you remember…

Probably because I used to shag his boyfriend.

Harry sits up so quickly his head throbs from it, stars flitting across his vision in fuzzy strips of red and green. He groans, rubbing at his temple.

U what now

Used to shag his boyfriend. Can’t you read, Potter?

Oh, cool, because I thought you said you used to shag his boyfriend, never mind. Tell me more?

What the fuck? No. Buzz off.

Harry snorts. “Buzz off. Posh twat.” He lies back, pulling the blanket back over his knees where it’s gotten twisted around his legs. 

Come on

I’m not willing to put anything further on the record. Besides, why are you so interested?

Dunno to be honest w u. Bored? Curious? Aren’t you curious about me?

Not really.

Charming

Harry looks up from his phone. The flat is bathed in blue twilight, and the breeze coming in from the open window behind him is starting to feel a little nippy. He checks his watch.

“Shit,” he hisses, jumping to sit up. It’s past eleven, which means it’s past nine in Sydney and he’s missed his arranged Floo call with Ginny. She’ll be in training now.

He tosses his phone onto the pile of blankets and pillows and crawls towards the fireplace, using his wand to trace any missed calls—but there are none.

He sits back on his haunches with a frown, rubbing at his tired eyes. 

“Tomorrow,” he whispers apologetically to no one.

_____

Andromeda steps out of the front door and into the garden and asks, “Is everything alright, sweetheart? You’re awfully quiet. Something on your mind?”

Harry scrubs a hand through his hair, shakes his head, smiling at her, squinting against the dying sunlight. “No—sorry. Sorry! Just a bit tired, I think.”

She sits beside him on the weathered bench, a large bowl of berries in her arms. She holds them out to him. “Eat. You look skinny.”

The weekly dinners at Andromeda’s and Teddy’s have been a tradition since Harry left Hogwarts. Every Friday after work, rather than joining his friends down the pub, Harry will step into the Floo in the Ministry atrium and step out again onto the rug in Andromeda’s sitting room in Norfolk. It’s a quiet, cosy little cottage on the water, no other houses for miles, with a bright and blooming garden and a gravel path that winds all the way to the grassy beach.

Teddy is playing there, running back and forth on the sand with their golden retriever, Archie, the sound of his laughter carrying up the salty breeze.

“Are you missing Ginny, is that it?” Andromeda asks, dipping her hand into the bowl, retrieving a shiny red raspberry, its juices staining the tips of her fingers.

“Of course I miss her,” Harry says right away, because it’s true—isn’t it? Just because they don’t talk every day doesn’t mean they don't miss each other. “She’s really enjoying it there, you know,” he says with a soft smile. “And she’ll be back for the wedding. We’ll get to catch up.”

“That’s right! Oh, how lovely. I do love weddings.”

Andromeda stares at Harry closely, her mouth tugging  into a soft, half-smile, a knowing smile.

He has a feeling he knows what she's going to ask him before it even leaves her lips.

“And when are you two going to walk down the aisle, I wonder?”

There it is.

Harry sticks a hand into the bowl, plucking out a big fat strawberry by its leaves. “Oh,” he says, holding back a sigh. “I dunno, to be honest.”

Teddy comes running up to them then, breathless, red cheeked, his turquoise hair wild. Harry leans forward after biting into his strawberry, tossing the end into the bushes, beckoning Archie forward with a hand that’s quickly snuffled and licked.

“What aisle?” Teddy asks.

Andromeda chuckles. “The wedding aisle!”

“Whose wedding aisle?”

“Harry and Ginny’s.”

Harry holds back a groan.

Teddy asks, excitedly, “Are you getting married?!”

“No,” Harry says hastily, perhaps a little too hastily, because Archie starts spinning around and Andromeda sits back to look at him with a raised brow. “I mean—not yet, anyway. Not at the moment. It’s a big decision, Teds.”

“Well, I’m just saying, Harry!” Andromeda says. “You’ve been together for a long time. And I’m sure Molly’s wondering.”

She is. She asks them the same question every Christmas, actually.

Andromeda waves a hand in the air. “I know, I know. It’s none of my business, of course! And things have moved on a lot since my day, that’s for certain. I know it’s not the done thing in your twenties, and you’ve got your careers to focus on…”

Harry thinks Ginny’s career is much more important than his, but he doesn’t say so.

He nods, grateful Andromeda is letting it go, and he takes a breath. Prepares himself to ask the question he’s been dying to ask since he got here a few hours ago. “Andromeda,” he says carefully. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always,” she says, picking out another raspberry from the bowl, now back in her arms.

“It’s about Malfo—Draco.”

Andromeda straightens. She clears her throat and turns to Teddy.

“I think Archie’s champing at the bit for another game of fetch, don’t you?” she says. 

Teddy picks up the stick he abandoned on the gravel path. “Do you want to come, Harry?”

“I’ll come down in a bit, yeah?” Harry says. “We can play pirates.”

“Amazing,” Teddy breathes. He runs down to the beach again, Archie fast on his heels.

Andromeda looks at Harry expectantly.

“Whatever happened to him?” Harry ventures quietly. “To Draco, I mean.”

A line forms between Andromeda’s dark brows, her expression thoughtful, perhaps a little sad.

“I don’t know,” she says eventually. “All I know is, he and his parents had a big falling out after the trials. Cissy doesn’t—well. You know we’re barely in contact anymore, and when we do talk, she certainly doesn’t talk about Draco.” She laughs, a dry sound laced with a desperate sort of sorrow Harry feels all the way to his chest.

He frowns. “I thought Mal—Draco and his mum… I thought they’d always been close.”

Andromeda shrugs. She holds up her hands. “That’s all I know, Harry. Why do you ask?”

“Nothing in particular,” Harry lies. “I was just thinking about the wedding and how—well. He’s technically Luna’s family, your family…”

Andromeda nods.

Teddy materialises by Harry’s elbow again then, panting, stick in hand. “You ready, Harry?”

The tightness in Harry’s chest slowly dissipates. He ruffles Teddy’s bright hair and smiles widely at him. “Yeah, of course, mate. Let’s go.”

Later that night, when the sky is a blurry dark blue, when the stars start poking out over the grassy dunes, Harry sits alone on the porch, listening to the chirp of cicadas, staring at the screen of his phone.

Would you mind if I came to Brighton tomorrow?

He sent the text an hour ago. Malfoy hasn’t replied. 

Harry sends another.

I’m going to come

_____

Harry is hit by a thick wall of heat as soon as he steps off the train and onto the concourse. 

Outside, the sky is cloudless, cornflower blue.

He runs a nervous hand over the damp nape of his neck.

The crowds are as bustling as they were the last time he was here: spilling out bars and pubs in the Lanes, strolling up and down the promenade, relaxing on ice cream-coloured deck chairs on the pebbled beach. It smells of candyfloss and chips and sea salt. 

Harry follows the ghosts of his own footsteps through the bustling streets, passing the club he saw Malfoy outside of that night: Saints.

He’d never noticed the name of it the first time around.

I’m here by the way, he sends Malfoy beneath his unanswered texts.

He heads onward, weaving through the crowds of Saturday shoppers and families and tourists, surrounded by more closed bars, their umbrellas drawn, their chairs turned upside down. 

He walks into the first decent looking cafe he comes across, craving something to wake him up properly after the long train journey.

He breathes in the warm, roasted scent of coffee that fills his nostrils.

There’s a string of rainbow bunting hanging in front of the counter, posters on the walls, cheerful yellow tables and matching chairs. An older man stands between the till and the coffee machine: tall, buzzcut, both ears pierced. He smiles at Harry, crows feet sinking into his temples; friendly, welcoming.

There’s another barista chatting away to the only other customer in the room, a younger man with long, strawberry blond hair and rosy cheeks. Harry looks at him curiously, perhaps for a little too long, because the man waiting for him clears his throat and Harry thinks, what the fuck, and shakes his head clear of—whatever it was that had got him stuck, all of the blood in his body congregating in his cheeks.

“Help you with anything, my love?” the man asks.

Harry can’t explain it, and he can’t explain why, but a slow burst of warmth radiates behind his breastbone. His shoulders relax.

“Er,” he says. “What would you recommend?”

“Depends on what you’re into, darling.” It isn’t humorous or salacious, only affectionate, curious, paternal. Of all the people he reminds Harry of most, it’s Sirius. “Are you a coffee or a tea man?”

“Tea all the way,” Harry says, sticking his hands in the pockets of his shorts.

The man points to a row of tins on the shelves above his head. “English breakfast? Earl grey? Chamomile? Summer berries? Mint? Ginger and lemon?”

“English breakfasts’s great,” Harry says, and the man sets to work making it for him, pouring it into a nice branded cup: a rainbow with a fluffy blue cloud beneath it. 

“It’s so nice here,” Harry says.

“Oh, this old thing? Yeah, she’s alright, isn’t she? Are you visiting, then?”

“How could you tell?” Harry asks, wrapping a hand around the offered cup and carrying it to the counter to add milk and sugar.

“This place is legendary among the local gays,” the man says with a jovial chuckle, and Harry spills a dribble of milk onto the table, swearing and grabbing a napkin from the pile to mop it up, swearing again when the top napkin refuses to separate from the three beneath it.

“Oh—I’m not…” Harry pauses, his heart beating loudly in his chest. “I’m not.”

The man chuckles loudly. “Sorry! I’m a presumptuous old queen and my gaydar is on the fritz, clearly.”

Harry panics slightly, hoping the man doesn’t think he’s offended or anything like that. Just as he’s about to say so, the man introduces himself.

Vinnie: cafe owner, dog lover, and again, old queen.

“Harry,” Harry breathes, relief washing over him. When he asks Vinnie about the dog thing, Vinnie gets all excited and ushers Harry over to the wall dedicated to customers and their dogs: pictures of every breed and size imaginable.

“God, I love dogs,” Harry says wistfully. 

“This one’s my girl, Kylie,” Vinnie says, pointing to a picture of a Jack Russell terrier with a pink bandana around her neck.

Harry punts a guess. “As in… Minogue?”

Vinnie laughs. “Oh, you know a lot more than you let on, don’t you?”

Harry snorts. “Everyone knows who Kylie Minogue is.”

Harry leaves the cafe clutching his rainbow takeaway cup and wanders the narrow, funny little streets with renewed curiosity. He stops at a market stall to look at the jewellery on display: the glass beaded bracelets and silver necklaces and skull rings, the crystal ashtrays and cheap plastic sunglasses lined up in multicoloured rows.

He spots more rainbow flags, more couples too: women with women, men with men, holding hands, completely relaxed in an environment that so obviously embraces them, that celebrates them.

Eventually, Harry finds himself in a giant second-hand shop unlike anything he’s ever seen before, in the Muggle world or the Wixen. 

Split over multiple levels, there’s something new and strange to be found around every corner: from rails of vintage t-shirts to glass displays of taxidermy squirrels, a whole host of antique furniture, a wall crowded with dusty old wedding hats, racks and racks of wingtip shoes and leather satchels, piles of old Muggle comics and action figures, video games consoles and great big teetering towers of dozens and dozens of board games.

He’s not sure how long he wanders for, but he spends a while trying on loud 80s bomber jackets and ski coats, picking up old books and odd-shaped teapots. A snowy owl ornament catches his eye, and when he turns it over in his hands, there’s a weathered stopper on its base. A piggy bank.

Ginny wouldn’t want something like this in the flat. She’d call it clutter, probably tacky too, but as Harry turns it the right side up and stares into its glazed, yellow eyes, he can’t help the tug of want he feels in his belly. Just to have something a bit silly and fun to brighten up the kitchen windowsill or something.

But he shouldn’t, so he doesn’t. He puts it back on the shelf amongst the other bric-a-brac and crouches to rifle through a furry-edged shoebox of old family photographs. Strange, how something so personal could end up here. Photos from Christenings and Christmases and birthdays past, some labelled with pencilled scrawl, others completely blank.

Henry’s First Communion

Frank and Margaret, Christmas Day, 1978

Ms Chandler’s class, Year 4, 1991-92

Harry wonders if any old Muggle photographs of him exist. The Dursleys never took photos of him or included him in any group shots, even during summer holidays and birthday parties, and they certainly hadn’t paid the fees for a primary school portrait. Harry remembers having to sit those days out, stuck in the classroom with his teacher and a pile of colouring books while his classmates’ giggles and the flashes and clicks from the photographer’s lights filtered in from the room next door; a mystery setup Harry was only ever permitted to imagine rather than experience.

Harry shoves the pile of pictures back into the box.

He wanders back to the seafront, leans against the blue railings on the promenade, breathing in the fresh air, staring out at the water. The sun is bright, shining over the pier and its garish signage. The beach is full again: families and friends laughing and eating ice cream, bags of chips, battling with parasols and towels.

Harry stares at a couple eating ice cream from the same tub: two women, probably the same age as him. They’re laughing and teasing each other, leaning in for the occasional kiss. Harry’s mind wanders back to Malfoy, to the man outside the club, the kiss they’d shared. Harry can’t remember the last time he and Ginny kissed like that: slow, easy, with the promise of something more.

Harry’s phone buzzes against his hip. He flips it open, turning against the rails, the sun warm against the back of his head.

Meet me outside the Co-op in Seven Dials in an hour.

Chapter Text

It had been easier, texting him.

Behind the screen of his phone, Potter had been an idea, still very much a memory, in a way. Six horrible years of school and one brief weekend of fleeting curiosity. 

And now he’s here, flesh and bone, standing gormlessly outside the Co-op with the wind in his hair and the sea on his cheeks, wearing a pair of navy blue shorts that are obviously too baggy for him.

It’s troubling, how beautiful Potter’s grown up to be. Not that he wasn’t—

—Draco squirrels his mp3 player away into his pocket, lifting his chin in greeting when Potter spots his approach.

“Oh look, it’s my ‘old friend’,” Draco says in response to Potter’s awkward, “You alright?”

Draco pulls out his battered packet of Silk Cuts from his rucksack, taps at the lid, eyeing Potter thoughtfully. “What’s brought you back down here, then? To be honest with you, Potter, I hadn’t banked on a return visit.”

But he’d hardly banked on late night text exchanges either, yet here they are. Practically penpals.

God.

“You said you weren’t going to disclose any more information on the record about Justin Finch-Fletchley, so I’ve come to ask you about it in person,” Potter says, the cheeky sod. He grins, a dimpled thing, rubbing at the dark hair on his chin like a puppy giving himself a scratch.

“Oh very interested, are you?” Draco drawls. He shoulders his rucksack and they stare at each other for a beat, that wall of strangeness and tension working its way back between them as neither thinks of anything else to say. 

Draco fully considers turning on his heel, heading back the way he came until Potter asks, squinting against the sun, head tilted, “Why’d you ask me to meet?”

It’s a good question. Draco doesn’t have a good answer for it (boredom, morbid curiosity—the same excuses as Potter), so instead, he says, “Take one,” and he holds out his packet of cigarettes. 

Potter stares at it. 

“Do you smoke?” Draco asks.

“Only when I’m nervous.”

Draco shakes the packet. “Well, then? Take one.”

Potter does as he’s asked, and, like pulling him from the path of a reckless driver, it feels like another small truce.

“I’m busy today, but you kept texting me,” Draco says, accusatory, keeping himself at a safe arm’s length. He starts walking, quickly. 

Potter jogs to catch up with him, inching closer into Draco’s personal space.

“Well,” Potter says, panting a bit. Draco slows his strides. “It was a bit of a warning, that’s all. In case we bumped into each other and you thought I was stalking you.”

“That wouldn’t be a very far fetched assumption though, would it?” 

“No, I don’t suppose it would.”

“Glad we can agree on that.”

“Yeah. So,” Potter says. “Where are you taking me?”

Draco laughs. “I’m not taking you anywhere, Potter. I’ve got business to see to, and if you insist on dragging yourself along, then…” He looks at Potter, at his terrible posture and gait. “By all means.”

“Ah, okay,” Potter says, and they leave it at that, and oh, but it’s awkward again. The quieter streets elevate the stilted silence between them. Draco clears his throat, racking his brain for something to say, something to ask.

There’s so much he wants to know.

He takes a quick puff of his cigarette. 

“So,” he says eventually. “How’d you get here today?”

“By train.”

“You do know you can Apparate, yes? Plenty of spots.”

“I know,” Potter says. He shrugs. “I like the train.”

Draco frowns. “Me too.”

“How long have you been working in the hotel?”

Draco hates the way his face grows warm at the question, because it’s not something he’s ashamed of. It’s something he worked his way up to, something he fought for, and sure, Potter probably thinks it’s beneath him, but he doesn’t know. 

“About eight years,” he murmurs. “And what do you do? DMLE, I presume? Or Hogwarts.”

Of course Potter would be a professor. He’s got that annoying get-up-and-go attitude, the easy smile of a favourite teacher, but Potter shakes his head, wrapping his lips around the filter of his cigarette. Draco watches his mouth, the gentle purse of it, the way his inky black lashes sweep down on inhale.

“Nope,” Potter says tightly. He lets go of his breath, smoke clouding his head. “Not at Hogwarts. Not an Auror.”

“You’re not?”

Potter shakes his head again, dark curls bouncing. There’s a lot of them. So much more than Draco remembers from school. “I work in Sports.”

“That would have been my third guess,” Draco lies, flicking ash from the tip of his cigarette. “Do you enjoy it?”

Potter shrugs, mutters something Draco doesn’t quite catch, but they’ve arrived at their destination, and it’s a good excuse to put a pin in their painful small talk.

The building is in the crooked little alley behind the Laser Tag. Draco steps up to the row of buzzers lining the frame of the weathered black door, glancing at Potter curiously over his shoulder. He rings the bell.

“It’s me,” he says when the voice of an older lady rings out across the street: harried, haggard, smoke-scratchy.

The door clicks away from its hinges. Draco enters, and Potter follows him through the dark stairwell. They climb three flights of muckily-tiled steps until they’re standing outside another door. 

Potter shifts impatiently from foot to foot. Draco stares at him.

“Do you need the loo, Potter?”

Potter flushes, his mouth hanging open, but Stella opens the door after a single knock, effectively silencing and stilling him. She’s short and round with heavy black makeup around her eyes and a shock of thin bleached hair, and when she beckons them inside, her powdery perfume wafts under Draco’s nose; a familiar scent.

“Who’s he?” she asks Draco, eyeing Potter closely.

“An old friend,” Draco says with a grin, dumping his bag on a nearby armchair. 

Potter jumps. Shadow, Stella’s fluffy black cat, has appeared at his ankles, and Draco crouches to greet him with a scratch beneath his chin before walking across the room to the coffee table, stubbing his cigarette out in the crystal ashtray there.

The whole flat is dim and stinks of cigarettes and woodsy incense. Gauzy black and purple curtains hang over the window behind a long, worn leather couch, and there’s a lamp on the sideboard: antique, with a stained glass shade and a brass base, emitting murky yellow light against the dark grey walls.

Draco sits at the dining table off the side of the couch and Stella joins him there, placing her hands on the crushed black velvet tablecloth. Between them, two red dinner candles flicker, dripping wax onto their cheap gothic holders.

“Is he wanting one too, then?” Stella asks. 

They both look over at Potter, still standing inches from the closed door with wide eyes.

“I don’t know,” Draco says. “Do you want a reading, Potter? Stella’s the best.”

“Three card spread’s twenty-five quid for first timers,” Stella says, shuffling her deck of Tarot cards. She winks at Draco. “Twenty for regulars.”

Potter sits heavily on the armchair and narrowly misses squashing Draco’s bag with his thigh in the process. “I’m alright, thanks,” he says faintly.

Draco pulls a twenty pound note from his wallet.

Stella tucks it away into her top.

“What’re we focusing on today then, love?”

“I’d like to know how to process my emotions, please,” Draco says. His eyes flick to Potter in the corner. “In the face of a returning past.” He smirks.

“I see, I see,” she says. She shuffles the deck again, her dark lacquered nails shining under the flicker of the candles. She draws three cards, spreading them on the velvet cloth one at a time, grumbling ominously in the back of her throat. 

“Are you sure you want your friend here for this, darling?” 

“Oh, yes,” Draco says, fighting back a wider grin. “I think he should know about it.”

“Your funeral, my love,” Stella says, then flips over the first card. She lights up a new cigarette, wafts the smoke curling around her face with a vigorous wave of her jewelled hand. “The Tower. Very appropriate, I’d say. A new challenge. Perhaps a warning of chaos.”

Draco looks at Potter over his shoulder and raises an eyebrow. Potter rolls his eyes, tapping his fingers impatiently against the arms of the chair.

“Everything you know is about to be turned on its head.” She flips the next card. “Judgment, reversed. This chaos and disruption is going to make you question a lot of things, Draco. But take it as an opportunity for self reflection and you’ll come to a deeper understanding about what it all means. Work on your self-love.”

From the corner of the room, Potter snorts.

“And don’t be afraid of sacrifices you might need to make in order to satiate your happiness.”

Despite himself, Draco feels his face grow warm. Stella flips the last card.

“Ah, there we are,” she says happily. “Four of Wands! A return to peace, a return to home.” She pauses. “Figuratively speaking, mind you. This is a milestone.”

It doesn’t make much sense. It never does. 

It’s not why Draco comes. 

Still, he thanks her, politely, and she smiles, a smug thing, puffing away at her cigarette, the lines around her lipstick-smudged lips deepening.

“You sure you don’t want a turn, poppet?” she asks Potter, twisting around to look at him. “You’re an Aries, aren’t you?”

Potter snorts. “Why’d you say that?”

“You’re a people-pleaser and you crave approval.” She points at him. “I can tell.”

Draco barks a laugh at the offence suddenly written all over Potter’s stupid face as he says, “I’m a Leo, actually!” 

“Oh, dear,” Stella says, tutting. “That’s even worse, I’m afraid. Oh dear, oh dear.”

Draco stands slowly. “I think we should probably get going now.” He thanks Stella again, grabs his rucksack from the chair, ushering Potter out the door and down the stairwell.

When they resurface outside, Potter turns to him, coughing up a lungful of sandalwood incense smoke and rotten potpourri. “What the—” cough cough, “—was that?”

“That was Stella. Come on, I fancy a drink,” Draco says.

With a quick march, he takes them across town to a little pub he frequents off Pavilion Parade. Potter is breathless by the time they sit themselves at an empty picnic bench along the tiny road outside, the entire street bathed in the shadow of tightly packed red brick Victorian buildings: offices and blocks of flats.

“I’ll have a Malbec,” Draco says.

Potter looks at him flatly, one leg poised to slide under the bench. He pulls it out again, patting his pockets for his wallet, sighing. 

Draco grins. “Get us some chips as well? I’m positively starved. Thanks, Potter.”

Potter returns with two glasses of red. “At least it’s not as expensive as London,” he grumbles. 

“Nowhere is,” Draco murmurs, nosing his glass. 

Minutes later, the barmaid appears with a big bowl of thick-cut chips, setting them down between them. When they both reach for them at once, Potter pulls his hand back. Draco grabs the best looking chip from the bowl, the one encrusted in salt and a bit of potato skin.

“Do you really believe all that shit?” Potter asks. “Back there? Readings and astrology and… Divination stuff?”

Draco snorts. “Of course not.” He sips his wine, smacking his lips. “Insofar as it’s a charlatan art performed by Muggles, but performed by Wix… that’s a different story.”

“Is Stella a witch?”

“No.”

Potter’s brow crinkles in confusion. “Then… why?”

Draco frowns, staring at the stem of his glass, fingers slowly sliding up and down it in thought. “Do you remember how much the girls were into it? In school?”

“Not Hermione.”

Draco looks up sharply. “I don’t mean Granger. I mean the others. My friends.”

Pansy, Daphne, and Millicent had been all over it. Soon enough, the Slytherin common room had turned into a temporary sacred space for readings and scrying, off limits to the disbelievers. Draco remembers the summer Pansy would study his palm, telling him all sorts of nonsense about his future; dark hair, tickling his nose, lavender incense clouding up her bedroom, her blunt nails digging into his wrist. She never predicted any of this, though.

Potter shrugs helplessly.

“It helps me feel closer to them when I—when I’m not,” Draco says. 

“Oh.”

Draco hums.

“Whatever happened—”

Draco holds up a hand. “Enough questions for now, let’s just enjoy our wine.” He grabs another chip, stuffing it into his mouth. 

“Okay,” Potter breathes, his shoulders slumping. He stares into his glass. Scratches at his stubbled chin. “What about Justin, then?” he asks after a beat, his mouth tugging into a tiny grin. “Can you tell me about him?”

Draco drops his pack of cigarettes between them, wriggling his lighter out his jeans pocket. “What do you want to know? There’s a reason we called him Finishes Fast Fletchley.”

Potter chokes on his wine, dabbing at his mouth with his wrist.  “Okay, I need to know more about that.”

Draco laughs, relaxing a fraction. “I would’ve thought it’d be all in the name.”

“So… were you boyfriends, or…?”

“God, no. Nothing like that. I never—no.”

Draco watches Potter curiously, from the way he’s shifting about on the bench to the nervous tap of his fingers against the tabletop. He can’t sit bloody still. 

“I never saw you with any other boys in school,” Potter says after a beat. His face floods with colour.

“What, were you looking?” Draco asks, incredulous.

“What? No! God!”

Draco chuckles, nudging his packet of cigarettes closer to Potter. “Hogwarts was hardly a hotbed of sexual liberation, Potter. One had to take certain—clandestine measures. Do you remember any gay students?”

Potter thinks about that. “It’s not something I thought about that much, to be honest with you.”

Draco licks his lips. “No. Of course you didn’t. But more boys were fiddling with each other behind closed doors than you’d realise.”

“Who?”

Draco laughs, swirling his wine. “You nosy bugger.”

“Can you blame me? I spent most of school trying to solve mysteries surrounding the greatest evil wizard of our time. I think I’m owed a little gossip I missed out on.”

“Oh, we were all very good at hiding it,” Draco drawls. “Even the times when we all got together for our little rendezvous.”

Potter’s eyes widen. “You all—”

Draco smirks. This is far too much fun. “There’s a reason why there was a fault in the Prefect bathroom’s password from time to time.”

“Who?” Potter urges, leaning forward. He’s fumbling with the cigarettes, tapping one out into the palm of his hand.

“I’m not in the business of outing anyone,” Draco says haughtily. “But if you guess correctly…”

“Justin and Ernie, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Erm… Zacharias Smith?”

Draco makes a face. “Ugh. No.”

“Well,” Potter sighs. “None of the Gryffindor lads.”

Draco raises his eyebrows. Potter is staring off to the side, unlit cigarette clasped between his fingers. 

“Nott?”

“Perhaps.”

Potter’s eyes light up. “Zabini? But… I always thought he and Daphne Greengrass…”

“Oh, Blaise will fuck anything with legs. And he doesn’t care who knows it. So, yes. He was a welcome addition to our little club.”

“Terry Boot?”

Draco moans, tilting his head back. “God, yes. He was always good fun. Great mouth. Nice and handsy. I wonder what happened to him…”

Potter laughs breathily, finally lights his cigarette. “Okay, I’m not going to ask any more. That’s—yeah. TMI.”

Draco shrugs.

“Charlie Weasley’s gay, you know,” Potter says after munching through some chips. 

“Is he really?” Draco asks with a low whistle. “God, I remember when he came to school that year you cheated your way into the Tournament—”

“—hey!”

“—gorgeous,” Draco sighs. “All that bulk and lovely thick hair. I bet he’s amazing in the sack.”

“Ugh. Stop.”

Draco laughs. “You brought him up.”

Potter’s squirming again. Draco looks at him curiously, then inspects the last few sips in his glass. He feels Potter’s eyes on him, the heat of them. They traverse the lines of his neck, his face, his arms. Draco’s wearing a t-shirt today, an old white thing with the sleeves turned up at the shoulders, and when he clocks Potter’s keen gaze on the skin of his forearm, he slowly slips his arm beneath the table out of sight.

“Should we go for a walk?” he asks briskly, sliding his cigarettes back into his bag. “How much of the beach have you seen?”

Potter shrugs, frowning. A troubled thing. “Just a bit from the pier.”

“Well, that’s not enough. Get up,” Draco says, standing. “I’ll show you more.”

_____

The stroll to the beach is short and less awkward than the walk they shared from Seven Dials. Perhaps it’s the wine, perhaps it’s that there’s more to look at than the tired, shadowed little back alleys and rows of indistinct newsagents and off-licences. 

“Come on,” Draco says, steering Potter away from the road by his elbow—warm, knobbly, skin a little rough and dry. He lets go at the seafront’s open gate. They head down the ramp together, Potter eyeballs the rows of shops lining the walk. Artist stalls mostly: canvases propped on easels, great sweeping landscapes of the Sussex coast, the chalk hills of the South Downs. Seagull ornaments and toys and shells on strings, David Bowie t-shirts and wine crates full of naughty beach postcards. Pride flags and buckets and spades and sunglasses. Tat. 

But Brighton tat is great tat. Brighton tat is Draco’s tat, and just as he’s about to give Potter a stern warning on the subject, Potter comes out with, “This is brilliant.”

Draco pauses, frowning at him. “Of course it is.”

They pass a merry-go-round, its eerie, vaudevillian music soft on the sea breeze. 

“What made you come here, Malfoy? How did you… know? To come here?”

Draco folds his arms across his chest. They keep walking. Past more fairground rides, open pubs, beach huts. He stops at the oyster bar, guiding Potter to join the queue. 

“I had a fairy godmother,” he says wryly, and in response to Potter’s flat expression, he rolls his eyes. “I can read, you know? I have the ability to research things if I need to.”

“It was as simple as that?”

No. Nothing is ever simple.

“Yes,” he lies. “Now, ask for a Jersey oyster with lime dressing. And get me one too. You won’t regret it.”

Potter, predictably, looks horrified. “Are you joking—”

But then he’s next in line and Draco pokes him in the ribs until he does as he’s bid, and a few minutes later, they’re standing a few feet from the bar, out of the way of passersby, oysters acquired. 

“It looks like a bogey,” Potter says apprehensively. 

“Well, there’s no accounting for good taste,” Draco says. He tips his oyster into his mouth and it bursts, bright and salty against his tongue, the tang of citrus following in its wake. “Delicious.” He tosses the shell into a nearby bin, and Potter, with a grumble, carefully slurps his down, grimacing through chews.

He coughs, turning away. “That was—ugh. What a waste of a fiver.”

“It’s an experience,” Draco says.

They pass more stalls, a surf shop, paddle board hire, more pubs and fish and chip huts. Draco leads them onto the beach proper, pebbles crunching beneath the soles of his trainers.

“Do you see it?” he asks Potter. He points at the West Pier: its burnt, skeletal remains. The sea sways around it, splashing gently against its old steel piling. Behind it, the sun is bright, cheerful, shining through the destroyed frame. 

Potter hums his acknowledgement.

Draco sits on the pebbles, shucking off his rucksack, stretching out his legs. “It burnt down five years ago.”

Potter joins him, shuffling on his bum to get comfortable, crossing his legs, leaning his elbows against his bare knees. His hair flops into his eyes. He pushes it back with twitchy fingers. 

“One of the oldest piers in Britain,” Draco goes on, not sure why he feels the need to fill the silence with things Potter probably doesn’t give two hoots about. His voice is fast, uncharacteristically nervous. “Built for Victorian holidaymakers, when a family summer holiday was still very much a new thing…”

“I’ve never been on a summer holiday,” Potter murmurs, slipping his finger into his shoelace, twisting it around and around over his bony knuckle. “Not a family one, anyway. Not to somewhere like this. I’d usually just get lumped with a childminder.”

“We used to take summers in France,” Draco says, sitting back on his hands, shaking his hair from his face, squinting against the sun. He sits forward again, rummaging through in his rucksack for his sunglasses, sliding them on. “But I always found it very boring and lonely.”

“Poor little rich kid.”

“Poor little orphan.”

They stare at each other, a beat of awkward silence throbbing between them. Draco’s heart pulses loud and hard in his throat.

Potter laughs first.

“Fucking hell, Malfoy.”

Draco flushes, but he rolls his eyes and glances away. “Sorry, I—I hope you know I don’t—”

“Yeah, whatever. Cunt,” Harry says cheerfully.

Draco whips his gaze around, looking at Potter over the top of his sunglasses. “Twat.”

“Knobhead.”

“Dickhead.”

They both laugh this time, Draco’s heart sinking back into his chest where it belongs. He tosses a little pebble at Potter’s feet.

“Do you live nearby?” Potter asks. 

“Yes.”

“In a flat?”

“In a house.”

“On your own?”

“Nope.”

“Er… with a… er… that… with that man? Uhm. Rick?” At Draco’s blank expression: “From the bar?”

Draco chuckles, his ribs shaking with it. “Oh. Ruben? Goodness, no. No. He’s just a friend.”

“Do you kiss all your friends like that?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

“Oh, right. Your little club.”

“Hm, yes, bathroom orgies. Those were the days,” Draco says wistfully. 

Potter wrinkles his nose.

“What do you see in him?” Potter asks after a minute. “Ruben, I mean? He seemed like a bit of an arsehole, to be honest with you.”

“He was drunk, we both were,” Draco says with a wave of his hand. “He has a nice penis.” 

Potter chokes on a loud bout of laughter, but just then, a group of men around their age park themselves on the pebbles nearby, playfully fighting over deck chairs and towels. They’re fit: tanned, well-groomed. Draco is certain he’s seen one or two of them on nights out at the bars.

Potter follows Draco’s gaze, squinting at the strangers, his finger twisting around and around his lace. 

Two of the men meet in a soft, more-than-friendly kiss. 

“How’s Ginevra?” Draco asks before he can help himself, his nosiness getting the better of him.

“Oh, Ginny?” Potter asks, tearing his eyes away, looking back out over the water, the waves kissed by sparkling sunlight. He squints, stretching a long, thin leg out, his calf dusted with dark hair. “She’s in Sydney right now, with the Harpies. Helping with a kids Quidditch camp… thing.”

“Oh,” Draco says. “Well. Of course she’s a pro-Quidditch player now. Of course,” he murmurs thoughtfully.

“Yeah, she’s there all summer. So we’re like… yeah, we’ve not seen each other for a good few weeks.”

“Must be difficult.”

Potter shrugs. “It is what it is. I’ll see her for the wedding.”

“Ah, yes. Longbottom and…? Hannah Abbott?”

“No. Luna,” Potter says softly.

Draco sucks in a sharp breath through his nose. “Well. I must say, I didn’t see that coming.”

Potter nods. “Weird. How we’re all growing up now.” He eyes Draco carefully. “Do you know if any of your old friends—”

“No,” Draco says. “No, I don’t. We’re not in touch.” He checks his watch. “I’ve got to go soon, Potter. I’ve got a thing.”

“What thing?”

“None of your bloody business. And no, you can’t come along this time.” He stands. After a beat, he offers Potter his hand.

Potter’s palm is soft, dry, his fingers long and strong. He pulls himself up and steps back instantly, letting go of Draco’s hand, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah, no, right, because we’re not friends,” Potter says.

“No, we loathe each other,” Draco says.

“Brilliant.”

“Glad that’s ironed out.” A pause. “I’m going this way,” Draco says, pointing in the opposite direction of where they came. “And the station’s back that way.”

“Oh. Okay,” Potter says. “Well. That wasn’t too awful, was it? And I survived.”

“Don’t speak too soon,” Draco drawls. They head back onto the promenade, poised to walk in opposite directions. “So long, Potter. Keep me updated.”

“I will,” Potter says with a half grin, and then he’s turning, his curls bouncing in the breeze, and he walks away.

_____

There’s no real reason why Draco couldn’t have asked Potter to join him.

But this—this is Draco’s. 

He doesn’t share this with anyone. Not Carlo, not Alan, not Ruben or any of his other friends, and certainly not Potter.

“One, please?” he asks the young man behind the counter. “And a small popcorn. Mixed.”

It’s an old theatre with fading plaster and cracked ceilings, roman columns and sticky floors. It smells of butter and faintly of cigarettes, and the chairs creak on their old hinges, upholstered in soft red fabric, oddly comfortable and so low Draco’s legs always stretch out beneath the seat in front of him.

The screening is practically empty this evening. The only other people here with him are an elderly couple sharing a bag of popcorn and another young man clutching a cup of coffee—dark blond hair, tortoiseshell glasses—his gaze occasionally flicking to meet Draco’s from the other end of his row.

Draco will never forget the first time he saw a Muggle film in the cinema. The awe of it, the suspense when all the lights went out, the blaring sounds and colours from the screen. Carlo had taken him, a few weeks after they met. He still believes Draco had never been before due to his “strict, religious, academic upbringing”; Draco has never told him the truth.

About anything.

The lights sink low, blinking out. The trailers start, and soon enough Draco’s mind wanders free from the day—from Potter’s sooty black lashes, from his lips curled around Draco’s cigarettes—as Édith Piaf’s sorrowful swansong fills the air.

Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu’on m’a fait
Ni le mal
Tout ça m’est bien égal
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
C’est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé

After—his empty popcorn bag in the bin, a shared cigarette smoked outside as the sun disappeared over the watery horizon—Draco is in an unfamiliar bed, plucking those tortoiseshell glasses off the nameless boy’s nose. They meet for a kiss, sinking low into the bedding.

Non, rien de rien

Potter’s voice echoes in his mind when his clothes start coming off.

That wasn’t too awful, was it?

No. It hadn’t been awful at all.

Chapter Text

Harry races home from the office, embracing the long weekend stretched out before him with the open arms of a man who suffers too much paperwork.

A pair of familiar, scuffed Adidas Gazelles greet him on the hallway mat. 

Early evening sunshine streams in from the kitchen windows, bathing the flat in warmth, highlighting all the bits Harry has forgotten to dust: the sideboard, the book case, the edges of the skirting boards. Even the half-dying money plant is coated in a soft, silvery film. He winces, hoping Ginny had been too tired to notice.

Harry follows the trail of clothes on the hallway floor to the bedroom: socks, a hoodie, a pair of jeans, a tank top. 

On the bed, a familiar-shaped lump hides under the wash-worn navy duvet.

“Ginny,” he whispers.

The lump groans.

Harry approaches the bed, pulling off his trainers one at a time, letting them fall to the rug, dropping his bag onto the chair by the window. 

He crawls on top of the lump. It groans again.

“Welcome home,” Harry says, laughing softly. 

Ginny slowly peels away the edge of the covers to reveal her flushed, tired face. “Hi,” she says, clearing her throat then yawning hugely in Harry’s face. Her breath is stale and she smells of Portkey Terminal, but he doesn’t care. It’s good to have his best friend back.

He pecks her on the lips. “Hi,” he says, chuckling in sympathy. “Good journey?”

“Absolute hell. Don’t even know what day it is. What time it is.”

“Friday,” Harry says, grinning. He rolls off to the side and checks his watch. “Midday-ish.”

She rubs her forehead. “It feels like the middle of the night.”

“Can I get you anything?” Harry asks. “Cuppa? Headache potion?”

“Both,” Ginny grumbles. She shuffles to sit back against the mound of pillows behind her, gathering her messy hair in a bun.

Harry kisses her again, using magic to summon both items, passing them to her one at a time: potion first, then tea.

She clutches the mug in both hands, wriggling around to rest her head against his shoulder.

“You looking forward to tomorrow?” Harry asks her gently.

“Can’t wait,” Ginny says sleepily. “Nap first, though.”

“Nap first,” he agrees in a whisper. 

She goes heavy against his arm, and when he adds softly, “Hey, I’ve missed you,” it’s too late. She’s already asleep.

_____

Something is off.

If Harry’s being honest with himself, something has been off for months, way before Ginny left for Australia, but this off thing—this strange, lumpy, stilted awkwardness between them that just seems to keep growing and growing and growing even with the absence between them gone, even with their reunion—is so obvious now, so tangible, so… threatening.

It’d been there when they woke up this morning in the guest cottage next to the bridal house, Ginny grumbling for coffee and Harry sprinting out of bed to go for a quick run on the sunny grounds, his mind racing, his phone disappointingly message-free in the pocket of his shorts. 

It’d been there when they met each other again during the vows, Harry standing with his friends on one side of the aisle, Ginny with the girls on the other, their gazes skirting over each other like they were teenagers again, like they were strangers still getting to know each other.

It’d been there at dinner, when they’d sat side by side, bickering over the wedding favours, a game they used to play with each other back in the beginning of their relationship: a funny little back-and-forth that turned quickly to teasing, then to fucking, back to teasing—their version of pillow talk. Back then, it’d been funny. Now, it just stings.

Harry wonders if their friends see it, too.

Is the earnestness of Hermione’s gaze pity?

Is the way Ron keeps asking him if he wants a drink commissary?

Is Andromeda’s incessant need to keep pushing him and Ginny together desperation for what she thinks could be a lost cause?

“You look so handsome,” she whispers. She’s fussing over the lapels of his suit jacket.

He’s desperate to take it off quite frankly, because it’s hot—outside the tent and inside of it. Devon is blue-skied, hazy, thick with sweet-smelling summer heat, and Harry’s counting down the minutes until sunset, until respite Cooling Charms can’t seem to offer.

Around them, guests clutch champagne flutes and pick from the buffet table. They dance, their laughter and chatter filling the marquee in joyous clouds over the beat of music from the band. The site of Neville and Luna’s ceremony is big, bright, romantic, whimsical. The willow arch outside of the tent they’d taken their vows under bursts with peach heirloom roses and purple alliums, the grass scattered with dry petals their friends and family had tossed at them after the vows.

“Thanks, Andi,” Harry says, not surprised when Andromeda finds Ginny’s arm in the crowd, gently pulling her into their circle, but then Ginny says, and not very kindly, “I need some air.” 

Harry quietly excuses himself from Andromeda. He follows Ginny outside, away from the looks and murmurs.

“I think I’m just Portkey lagged,” Ginny says, dumping her champagne out on the grass behind the tent, setting the glass on an empty stack of extra chairs. Her bridesmaid’s dress is a silky slip of a thing: burnt orange, almost copper, with a low neckline and a hem that skims her knees. Her shoes are missing, her bare toes curling into the dry grass.

Harry puts a hand on her waist. Her skin, like his, is warm. 

They kiss, quickly, shortly. And again, more firmly, and she nods.

His hand dips lower over her thigh to ruck up the fabric of her skirt, her arm slipping up to brace the back of his neck. She hangs from him, blunt nails digging into his shoulder.

We’re okay, he wants to say, blushing furiously. We’re okay, aren’t we? he wants to ask, yanking her underwear down, pushing his face into her hair when she turns around and bends over the chairs, knocking her glass over.

It’s over in minutes. 

Afterwards, Ginny starts crying softly, puddled on the floor with her fingers curled over her toes, her forehead pressed against her knee. 

It’s the first time they’ve had sex in a year, and Harry wishes he felt relief, not regret. Not shame. Not guilt.

He sinks to the grass beside her, swallowing against the lump in his throat.

“Gin, I—”

“I don’t want to come back home.”

It’s not what he’d been expecting to hear. 

He stares at her.

“I don’t want to come back home,” Ginny says again, lifting her head, using the heels of her palms to wipe the smudged tears beneath her eyes. She shakes her head. “Harry, I love you, but I—I’m not—this isn’t—”

The sound that escapes the back of his throat then, while muffled against his closed, trembling lips, is raw. 

He sucks in a shaky breath, his vision turning watery.

He pulls off his glasses, wipes roughly at his eyes.

They sit like that, side by side, for what could be minutes, what could be hours. Behind them, the music inside the tent pulses in joyous waves, lifting up and down with the sound of dancing, of laughter.

It’s nearly dark when Harry trusts himself to speak again.

“What’s in Australia?” he asks.

“Gwen,” she murmurs. “We never—I would never—” she adds hurriedly, her round eyes wide. She’s lifted her dress back up where it had fallen over her shoulder, and her long hair is tucked back behind her ears. 

He curls a hand around her arm and laughs, dry and sad, and he tilts his head back to stare at the stars. “I know you wouldn’t,” he says, and he means that.

Ginny, cheating?

Only in games with her brothers.

Never on Harry.

He lets out a slow breath. “I kind of knew. About—you. Us.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers shakily. 

“I’m sorry I tried to pretend it was something it never was.” And it’s not unkind—he doesn’t say the words cruelly, or with any accusation.

He really is sorry.

“Australia’s a long way away,” he murmurs after a beat. He smiles at her, slow, soft. “I’ll miss you.”

“You can visit any time, silly,” she whispers, finding his hand. Their fingers slot together easily. “But I think you need some space. From… everything. You know?” Her eyes search his face, round and shining and sad. “Are you okay, Harry?”

He swallows, unable to answer. So instead, he squeezes her hand, wraps his arm around her small shoulders, and pulls her in to lean against his side.

_____

Have y ever been dumped?

Good evening to you, too.

Haveu?

None of your fucking business. Why?

Just happened to me

Oh. I’m sorry.

No you’re not. Fckyou stuck uppptwat

Jesus Christ Potter, are you drunk? Are you spoiling for a fight? Do yourself a favour: put your phone down, step away, and drink a big glass of water… (1 / 2)

… Your embarrassment will thank you for it in the morning. (2 / 2)

_____

It’s not quite dawn when Harry wakes up. 

Ginny’s skylight in the Burrow is alive with stars. He stares blearily at the sky, his head pounding. He follows the zip of shooting stars as they pass across the fabric of the dying night. He can just about make out the first few signs of morning: the strip of fuzzy light around the edge of the glass—a deep, burnt orange. 

Beside him in bed, Ginny is curled on her side with her back pressed against Harry’s arm, the ridges of her spine solid and warm. The house is quiet, eerily so. The birds outside are just waking up.

Harry swallows against the ball of ache building in the back of his throat, the one he thought their drunken laughter had conquered last night when the four of them—Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Harry—stumbled home from Luna’s, deposited from the Knight Bus onto the grass at the foot of the pond, the balmy air around them brimming with the noise of nighttime animals: ribbiting toads, buzzing cicadas, scurrying badgers and foxes, hooting owls. 

Turns out Harry’s misery and guilt has just been waiting there all along for a quiet moment to catch him out.

Ginny’s old bedroom hasn’t changed much since she moved out: there’s an old Harpies poster on the wall and her desk is still piled with textbooks from school, their edges worn and furred. On the windowsill, a framed picture from their last day at Hogwarts, that year Ron, Hermione, and Harry returned: the Gryffindors with their arms around each other, laughing on a loop. 

Malfoy hadn’t come back that year.

Harry feels around the bedding until he finds it: his phone, warm, possibly from his grasp in sleep.

He turns onto his side, flips it open, ignoring the uncomfortable dip of his stomach, reading through last night’s drunken text messages.

Your embarrassment will thank you for it in the morning.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

He’s certainly not thanking himself for anything right now, but at least Malfoy’s persuasion worked. He could have let Harry go on and on and really humiliate himself—and isn’t that what the old Malfoy would have loved?

I’m sorry about last night—

Harry’s thumb hovers over send, but he deletes his reply before he can dig himself any deeper. 

He closes his phone and turns onto his back. 

Eventually, Harry falls into a loose, fitful sleep until Ginny wakes up an hour later and the sun outside is too bright to ignore, and in the quiet of the morning they agree, through gentle whispers shared across the pillows, to keep their breakup to themselves, at least until Ginny’s finished with camp and can put together a plausible case for moving to the other side of the world.

“Something that won’t cause mum to have kittens,” she says, passing the bottle of hangover potion to Harry, rubbing at her temples. “I’m not ready to tell her… about me, yet.”

The rest of the house is still asleep. There’s neither a cough nor a creak to be heard; it somehow makes their conversation easier—the hiddenness of it, the guilt of shrouding something so huge from their friends and family. 

“You haven’t really told me about you,” Harry points out. He smiles at her sadly.

She sighs, rubbing at her eyes, pulling her messy hair off her high forehead. “I don’t really know yet, Harry. I think that’s the problem. All I know is that—we… we’re not…”

“We don’t work.”

“No. We don’t work.”

He nods, nibbling his thumb nail. “It feels like we should have. Doesn’t it?”

Her breath is soft. “Yeah. It’s definitely how the story was supposed to end, in a way. How everyone wanted the story to end? Only… real life’s not a story, is it? It’s more messy than that. It’s more… indefinite and weird and chaotic.”

“And we were just kids,” Harry whispers.

“Just fucking kids.”

“Does Gwen know how you feel?”

Ginny blushes, a pretty pink thing that starts high on her cheeks and travels out to the tips of her ears. She nudges his ribs with her pointy elbow. Hard. “No.”

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” she huffs, but she nudges him again, just gently. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s probably quite obvious. And I think it’s—erm. I think it’s definitely reciprocated.” 

Rather than the stab of jealousy Harry almost expects himself to feel, he feels—fine. Pleased, even. He hasn’t seen Ginny this flustered and  happy in years. It’s a lovely thing.

“Good,” he says. “I think you’d make a really nice couple.”

She rubs at her cheek. “Try telling my mum that.” She groans gently into her palm. “Merlin, Harry. I’m terrified to tell them.”

He searches for her hand. Squeezes it. 

“I’m here for you,” he says. “It’s going to be okay. Whenever you’re ready, it’s going to be okay.”

_____

Ginny leaves for Australia later that day, after Sunday lunch at the Burrow where Harry thinks they do an okay job of pretending they’re still together. They bicker—playfully—they steal food from each other’s plates, they tease Ron over his hideous hangover when Hermione refuses to fuss over him.

Their hug is extra tight when she says goodbye. Ginny’s built more muscle, he can feel it in her shoulders, in the strength of her hands behind his back, and Harry passes off the lump in his throat as an oncoming cold—that he should probably get home to the empty flat, “before I pass on any more germs than I already have.”

Molly doesn’t blink an eyelid, and Arthur—well, Arthur sends Harry away with a homemade flu remedy: Firewhisky and local honey in an old jam jar, concealed in crinkly, brown wax paper, tied closed with a piece of red twine, and when Ron and Hermione head one way through the Floo to Diagon Alley, Harry heads the other, Apparating to Bethnal Green.

London is muggy, a wet heat thick with the smell of exhaust fumes, damp earth, people, bins left to spoil in the sun. The car park in Columbia Road is ghostly empty.

He can’t stand the thought of sitting in there, amongst all that dust and all those memories, alone. Not now.

So, he walks.

The market stalls are closed and packed up, the stretch of narrow road dotted with scattered petals and stems, errant takeaway cartons and cracked plant pots lost on their way back to their vans. All the cafes and antique shops the street is famous for are closed, but the pub on the corner—Harry’s favourite, with its wide oak tables and leafy beer garden often teeming with local dogs—is bustling.

He keeps walking. Through Shoreditch and Old Street, lively pubs and trendy restaurants giving way for empty office buildings and city gyms and the grim, scrubby old man pubs around Angel and Pentonville, those that haven’t seen a lick of paint or a new carpet since the 80s. He passes a whisky bar playing loud indie music—oh that boy’s a slag, the best you ever had, the best you ever had is just a memory and those dreams weren’t as daft as they seemed, not as daft as they seemed my love, when you dreamed them up—where a large group of smokers have found themselves sequestered outside, and when Harry stops to look at them again, he nearly trips over the curb when he spots a familiar figure among the crowd, only when the man turns to meet Harry’s gaze with a curious little smile, it’s not Malfoy at all, it’s some other tall, skinny blond bloke with the face of a model and—

No scar.

No perpetual smirk.

No home truths poised, ready to set Harry alight.

Flushing Harry marches onward, shuffling his mobile out his pocket, his Oyster card too, and when he walks into King’s Cross and sinks down the escalators into the bowels of the tube station, it’s loud and hot. A lone busker plays saxophone, the eerie sound of it following him all the way through the tunnel and onto the train where he’s crammed between a group of cheerful Italian girls on a night out and a man with an enormous, ratty rucksack on his back and another bag held in the circle of one burly, tattooed arm.

Harry comes out at Victoria station, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

He doesn’t question it when he purchases a ticket to Brighton. 

He doesn’t question it when he flops into an empty four-seater on the train and breathes in slowly through his nose and back out again through his mouth—in and out—and stares at London as it whizzes away from him in a sea of grey concrete and streetlight just coming to life. The landscape soon enough morphs into roomier housing estates, industrial parks, fields, darkened farms. With each stop and rush of air when the train doors open and close, that knot in Harry’s chest loosens. 

He can smell the sea getting closer.

Made off, don’t stray, well my kind’s your kind, I’ll stay the same—

—Harry turns off his iPod, winding his earphones around it, shoving it into the pocket of his shorts when he steps off the train. He heads down the hill towards the Lanes: streets now familiar to him, muscle memory taking him from one road to the next until he’s outside Vinnie’s rainbow cafe, but—

—it’s closed, Vinnie’s not there, and Strawberry Blond Boy is standing outside with keys in one hand and a balled up apron in the other, and he’s looking at Harry like he might recognise him but he’s not exactly sure where from, and Harry’s a bit embarrassed by the strange spike of grief he feels at that, because, it’s me, English Breakfast tea, don’t you remember—

“Er, hi,” Harry says.

Strawberry Blond Boy smiles uncertainly. His hair is tied back today, just like Malfoy’s, loose, wispy waves of it escaping around his face. Harry idly wonders if he’s a runway model on the side or something. 

“We’re closed,” the boy says. “Can I help you?”

It’s a good question. 

“No, sorry—I’m sorry,” Harry babbles dumbly. He turns on the spot and quickly walks away, wincing.

He texts Malfoy.

I’m in Brighton. Are you here? Are you working? Can we get some alcohol?

Malfoy doesn’t text back for a while, so Harry wanders. Brighton on a Sunday night is less mad than it is on a Friday and Saturday, but the pubs are open and busy, the beach scattered with a few visitors. Harry is trying to find his way around the back of the Pavilion when he sees him: phone in hand, head tilted, long arms hanging by his sides.

“I’ve just texted you back,” Malfoy says with a bodily sigh. 

His hair is loose, tucked behind both ears. It has that fluffy, just-washed look. He’s wearing boots and skinny jeans and a crinkly short-sleeved shirt—washed out paisley, lilacs and faded greens—and there’s a silver hoop Harry never noticed before, winking at Harry from Malfoy’s right lobe. 

He stands out against the eerie shadowed lights of the Pavilion, bright, tall like a marble statue. His skin is shining, flushed.

“What are you doing here this late, Potter?”

Harry checks his watch. “It’s not that late.”

“It’s late enough for an impromptu hop over from London. You’ll have to head back to the station soon if you want to catch the last train.”

“I can Apparate.”

“Drunk?”

“I’m not drunk.”

Malfoy steps closer to Harry, the light behind his head wavering, flickering. The glow of his skin, on closer inspection, is sweat. Just a light sheen of it.

Harry looks at his phone. Malfoy has texted him the address of a club a few minutes from where they’re standing now.

“You came out to find me?”

“Can you blame me for being a tad worried about your mental state? After that rubbish you texted me yesterday? Here,” Malfoy says, producing a battered packet of cigarettes. He hands them to Harry. “You have got to give me advance warning of this shit so I can at least do more than offer you cigarettes.”

Harry taps one out the packet, looking up at Malfoy through his hair, using a knuckle to nudge up his glasses. He smiles slowly. “You were worried about me?”

Malfoy lifts his nose in the air. “No. I said I was worried about your mental state, not you personally.”

Harry huffs. “It’s the same thing.” He grins. “You were worried about me.”

Malfoy’s gaze turns wary. “No,” he says again, quietly this time. He eyes Harry closely, his gaze searching Harry’s face, then dropping to his shoulders, his arms, his fingers, Malfoy’s eyebrows drawing together, his worried mouth twisting. His lashes are long, slightly darker than the hair on his head, almost grey in colour, Harry notices. 

“Are we real friends now?” Harry asks him suddenly. He passes the cigarettes back, their fingers brushing. Malfoy’s are shockingly warm. “It’s okay. We’re friends.”

Malfoy sighs. Rubs at his temples. 

“Come on,” he says eventually. He waves a hand behind himself, starts walking, and Harry jogs to catch up with him. “Follow me. You can tell me your whole pathetic sob story while I ply myself with rum. Just because I’m supposed to feel sorry for you doesn’t mean you get to ruin a perfectly decent night out.”

_____

“What time does this place close?” Harry asks curiously.

“Three.”

“Three?! On a Sunday?”

“Why, Potter? Would you rather be at church? Surely you have clubs in London that open ‘til the wee hours all days of the week.”

“I’m not exactly a big clubber, Malfoy.”

“Clearly.”

It’s called Revolution. Harry’s not sure why, because there’s nothing particularly revolutionary about the chrome chairs and tables, the disco balls and exposed brick, the cheap food and young, studenty crowd. It’s busy, it’s barely nine, but everyone’s a little half-cut already, dancing to the sparkly pop music and laughing with their groups of friends. 

Malfoy steers them to the bar, drags a paper menu close, and asks Harry to buy him a cocktail called a Spicy Rim Job, and Harry suspects it’s only because he wants to watch Harry squirm as he asks the bartender—a man of Herculean proportions with a shaved head and biceps the width of Harry’s waist—for a “pint of Stella and a spicy rim job, please.”

“You absolute fucker,” Harry mutters, shoving his card back into his wallet, picking up his beer, blushing furiously, and although he feels hideously out of place here, that he sticks out like a sore thumb with his footie t-shirt and bad trainers and frizzy hair, he feels more relaxed than he’s done all weekend.

Malfoy smirks. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

“I do actually,” Harry snarks, following Malfoy to the space beneath the bar where they perch by a pillar and a tall table without any chairs. “I remember how petty you were in school.”

“So,” Malfoy prompts with a dismissive wave of one hand, ignoring Harry’s words, stirring his cocktail with the other. “What happened?”

Harry launches into the whole sorry story: Ginny’s return, the wedding, the awkwardness that grew between them like a slowly inflating balloon, how she’d cried, how he’d cried, how they didn’t tell any of their family or friends and had to pretend everything was okay and normal, and how he misses her now she’s gone, but—

“—not like that,” he says.

Malfoy eyes him attentively over the rim of his glass, pale purple lights turning the outer edges of his hair white like a halo. 

“No, not like that, I just—she’s the person I turn to when I don’t know what else to do.”

Malfoy frowns. “What about Granger and Weasley?”

“It’s different with them,” Harry says. “I love them. God, I love them so much, but sometimes they can be a little—judgmental. And bossy. Opinionated. Ginny’s a good listener and she’ll call me out on my bullshit, but she won’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do. Besides,” he adds, sipping his beer, wiping away his foamy moustache with twitchy fingers, shrinking a little under Malfoy’s intense gaze. He’s not sure he’ll be able to hold it for much longer. It’s like Malfoy doesn’t care about the uncomfortableness of direct eye contact. “Gin doesn’t want them to know yet, so. I can’t.”

“But what about what you want?” Malfoy asks him. He tilts his head. “What do you want?”

Harry sighs raggedly. “Fuck if I know. I remember, after Vo—” Malfoy’s eyes darken, and his gaze flicks back and forth, but everyone around them is too wrapped up in their own shit to pay them any notice, “—after the war. I went on this therapy course from the Ministry. It was all about trying to figure out who I was after everything. Because in a way, I kind of had no clue, you know? Sure, I played Quidditch, I had friends in school. I went to lessons like everyone else, but—I also had this… impossible task. Every year, it hung over my head. It defined me, and everything I ever did in school, and outside of it. But then it was gone and I had nothing else to work towards. And now when I think about it, the next portion of my life was dedicated to… normalcy. Or at least some version of it. And it was good, and neat, and it was everything I thought I’d ever wanted, until—until it wasn’t?”

“Because it’s gone now?” Malfoy asks him slowly, his eyebrows drawing together.

“Well—yeah, but also because it wasn’t. What I wanted, that is. I watched my friends get married yesterday and it was beautiful, but I don’t want that. At least not yet. And I’m pretty sure I hate my job and my boss and I definitely hate Zacharias Smith, the snivelling arsehole. I love London but I also hate it, in a way, because I’m always there and always in the same place, and everything in the flat belongs to Gin and what happens when that’s all gone? It’s just empty, isn’t it?”

Malfoy stares at him.

“But then I come here,” Harry ploughs on nervously. “And it’s fucking incredible, and colourful, and full of cool people doing exactly what they want and… I don’t know. I feel like I’ve missed out on something. And I kind of want to say fuck it, and do what I want, but in a way I’m sort of just waiting for someone to tell me it’s okay. That I’m allowed that.”

Malfoy, very carefully, sets his drink down. He plants both hands on the shiny table. He spreads out his long fingers.

“Potter,” he says slowly. “Do whatever the fuck you want. I’m telling you it’s okay. Besides,” he adds with a sniff. “No one gives a shit about you here.”

“Well, no,” Harry agrees, glancing around. “Is that why you like it so much?”

Malfoy’s expression turns stony. “No one gives a shit about me on either side, so it doesn’t matter.”

“I doubt that’s true,” Harry says. “You don’t talk to any of your old friends from Hogwarts? Not even Parkinson?”

“No one,” Malfoy says. “And I already told you, I won’t talk to you about that. So leave it. Please.”

Harry relents. He holds up both hands. “Fine. Sorry. What about your housemates? Rick?”

“Ruben.”

“Right. Ruben.”

“Ugh,” Malfoy says inelegantly. He picks up his drink, wraps his lips around the straw, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks it. “Yes, I suppose they’re somewhat interested in my wellbeing.”

“But they care about this version of you,” Harry says, pointing at Malfoy with his pint glass. “What I’m guessing is your authentic self.”

Malfoy presses a dramatic hand to his chest and looks at the ceiling. “Potter,” he says. “So wise. You really get me.” He rolls his eyes. Harry ignores him.

“Only I suppose they probably don’t know you’re a wizard,” Harry muses. “Do they?”

“Of course not,” Malfoy mutters, sobering. “They’re Muggles.”

“Isn’t it hard? Hiding?”

“I’ve hidden plenty of parts of myself in the past. Hiding this is far less painful.” Harry’s not sure how true that is, because for the first time all night, Malfoy’s avoiding his gaze. 

“Plus it’s surprisingly easy, after eight years,” Malfoy adds thoughtfully. “Come on.” Malfoy  swiftly knocks back the rest of his drink, dumping his glass onto the table. “I need another Spicy Rim Job.”

_____

“Did you come out here on your own?” Harry asks Malfoy curiously.

They’re outside in the cordoned-off smokers area, huddled amongst the midnight crowd, working their way through the last two cigarettes in Malfoy’s packet. Harry has his back to the wall and Malfoy stands facing him, his back to the seafront, his shoulders hunched against the slight chill now the sun is completely gone. 

They’re a few more drinks in, and Harry’s lips are tingling, his cheeks warm, a little numb.

“It’s not unheard of,” Malfoy drawls. He clamps his lips down on his cigarette, lifting his wiry arms to tie his hair back with a black elastic band from his skinny wrist. Most of it springs back out to feather around his jaw.

“I dunno,” Harry says, “I just—I don’t really go out drinking on my own.”

“The goal wasn’t to come out drinking,” Malfoy replies pointedly, glancing at the late entry queue waiting to get in: all men, all attractive.

“Oh,” Harry says.

“Yes. Oh.”

“Sorry.” Harry grins. “Didn’t mean to blue-ball you, Malfoy.”

To his surprise, Malfoy laughs. A real, genuine belly laugh. It’s cracked, wheezy, and it climbs up a pitch from Malfoy’s deep register, and his eyes—usually so intensely round and unblinking—squeeze shut, his long lashes crinkling. 

He has a dimple on his face, high up by his cheekbone. 

Harry’s grin widens. “I can call the Knight Bus,” he says. He doesn’t really want to, but he will if—

“No,” Malfoy says suddenly, wrapping his thumb and finger around his cigarette, slipping it out from his lips. He tosses it to the ground, grinds it into the cobbles with the heel of his boot. “The Knight Bus takes hours after midnight.” He pulls in a breath. “You can… sleep on my floor or something.”

Harry straightens. The chance to see Malfoy’s bedroom? To find out how he lives now? Maybe meet one of his mysterious housemates?

“I’m in,” he says quickly, keenly. 

Malfoy looks at him oddly. “Okay.” He picks up his drink where he left it on the shelf under the umbrellas. “You have to be really fucking quiet when we get in, okay? Both my housemates are probably in bed sleeping, and we all have to get up in the morning.”

It’s how Harry finds himself climbing the hill back up from the seafront, four pints putting a sprint in his step as they wind through the narrow Lanes and head past the Pavilion and park until the buildings turn more squat and residential, rows and rows of terraced housing, their pastel coloured paint just visible under the orange glow of the rows of lamp posts lining the streets.

Malfoy digs out a set of house keys from his back pocket, heading up the tiled front garden of a small, salmon-pink house. The front door is white, a little weathered, and before Malfoy opens it, he turns to Harry.

He puts a finger over his mouth like a stern school teacher.

Harry repeats the action, lips quivering against his knuckle.

The hallway is dark. Quiet. Malfoy tugs off his boots one at a time, gently kicking them into a cupboard by the front door where Harry also sees the outline of a Henry hoover, an ironing board, a mix of coats and jackets. 

It’s all so curiously, peculiarly normal. Domestic, even. 

Muggle.

“Up,” Malfoy whispers, pointing at the stairs. “Third door on the first floor.”

Malfoy sneaks up behind Harry. The floorboards creak gently under their footsteps. Harry holds his breath until he’s closer to Malfoy’s bedroom, and—

—there it is again. That citrusy, smoky smell that came so close to him that night he ran in front of the car. It’s all over Malfoy’s room.

It’s all over Malfoy, right behind him, closing the door, leaving the lights turned off.

The bed is bathed in blue moonlight. It shines in through the wide window, curtains open, night sky milky, oddly pale. The bed frame takes up most of the floor—and the dresser and mirror against the wall across from it—but there are floating shelves on the walls filled with books and more of Malfoy’s belongings that, in the dark, are simple shapes and outlines, frustratingly unidentifiable. 

“Here,” Malfoy whispers, tiptoeing around the bed, grabbing a pillow and a throw cushion, setting them on the floor. After a beat, he tugs something out the back of his waistband, something Harry realises he hasn’t seen since—well, the trial.

Malfoy’s wand.

“You carry that around with you?”

“Shush,” Malfoy snaps. He transfigures the throw cushion into a sleeping bag. 

He straightens and eyes Harry up and down. “Do you need something to sleep in? We’re probably about the same size.” His mouth twists thoughtfully. “Though I’m certainly more broad-shouldered than you are.”

Harry frowns. “Are not.”

Malfoy snorts. “I most certainly am.”

Harry sighs. “It’s fine, I sleep in my underwear every night anyway.”

Malfoy makes a noise in the back of his throat. “No, that won’t do. That certainly won’t do.” He turns to the wall, pushing open the chipwood door of his built-in wardrobe. “Here.” He tosses a t-shirt at Harry and Harry catches it against his chest. The fabric pools against his fingers, a plain tan brown, worn, soft, and just as he’s about to say thank you, Malfoy barges past him, pyjamas bundled in his arms.

“I’m going to brush my teeth. Toilet’s next door if you need it. Goodnight.”

“Er. Goodnight?” Harry whispers to the door that closes quickly in his face.

Chapter Text

Draco is in Honeydukes looking at ice cream, only Honeydukes is in Brighton.

Potter’s with him.

The lady behind the counter is staring at him. She’s asking them a question.

“Are you interested in today’s special?” 

It’s snowing. The kind of snow Draco knows from winters in the Highlands: powdery and freezing. It clings to the shop’s window frames, to Brighton’s old lamp posts, to the edges of the promenade. Behind it, the murky grey sea crashes in choppy waves.

Pansy and Astoria are waiting for him there, bundled in thick, woollen winter coats.

“What is it?” Potter asks the lady.

She picks up a cone. Three perfectly stacked scoops of red ice cream.

Draco can’t ever remember there being an ice cream counter in Honeydukes—

“Take it,” the lady says.

“Don’t take it, Draco,” Potter says, but Draco does, grasping the cone between his fingers. 

The ice cream starts melting, trickling russet between his knuckles.

“Blood,” the lady says cheerfully. “Only the purest.”

Draco wakes with a start.

Harry Potter is asleep at the foot of his bed.

Harry Potter is snoring at the foot of his bed.

Behind the door, left slightly ajar, Draco can hear the recognisable soundtrack of the household on a Monday morning: echoed chatter, spoons clicking against crockery, Chris Moyles’s irritating voice as he introduces Amy Winehouse. The buttery, warm scent of toast wafts upstairs from the kitchen. Draco’s stomach twinges in protest.

“Fuck,” he grumbles, closing his eyes.

Potter breaks mid-snuffle and lets out a croaky moan. “Timezit?” he asks, voice thick with morning grog.

The room stinks of stale alcohol.

Draco glances at his alarm clock, wiping sleep from the corners of his eyes. “Just after eight.”

Potter moans again. 

“You need to leave,” Draco says. “Potter,” he adds when he gets no response, slowly extending onto his elbows, peering at the lump on the floor at the foot of his bed. He winces against the cheery sun streaming in from his dusty window. The room feels like a sauna. “Don’t you have work?”

“No,” Potter says. He sits slowly, fully, and—good grief, his hair is a mess. “Long weekend. Got the day off.”

Draco sighs. “Well,” he says, smacking his dry lips. “You still need to go. I have a thing.”

“Oh, another thing is it,” Potter says, all scratchy and sly. He then starts wriggling around in his sleeping bag, making a small noise of triumph as he retrieves his glasses and pushes them on. “What is it, anyway? Is it the same thing as last time?”

“No.”

Potter blinks at him. “Then… what is it? You can’t have two secret things.”

“That’s the most preposterous rule I’ve ever heard. People can have as many secret things as they like.”

Draco swings his legs off the bed then, pushing his toes into the carpet. His bladder is uncomfortably full, but if he wants to go to the loo, he’s going to have to climb over Potter to get there.

“Leave. Please,” he says sternly.

“But I want to come,” Potter says. “What is it?”

Draco’s stomach cramps up and he groans, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m going to use the bathroom, and when I come back, you need to be gone.”

Potter, the idiot, doesn’t go anywhere.

When Draco comes back five minutes later, teeth brushed, face washed, the front of his t-shirt dotted with water, Potter is sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, flicking through a magazine he probably found under Draco’s bed.

“Enjoying that, are you?” Draco asks him flatly, and Potter hastily shoves the copy of Attitude back under the bed frame. “Why are you still here?”

Potter scrubs a hand through his messy curls. “If I can’t come with you can I just… stay here?” he asks bafflingly. 

Draco frowns, closing the door, muffling the sound of the radio floating up from the kitchen. 

“Please?” Potter asks, his voice turning rough. “Because I really don’t want to go back home right now, Malfoy. I really fucking don’t.”

Draco sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine,” he says through his teeth. 

“I won’t look through any of your stuff…”

“Bollocks,” Draco retorts. “Yes, you will. You mean to tell me, if left on your own with all of my belongings, you wouldn’t snoop? Not even a little?”

“No,” Potter says completely unconvincingly. “Would you?”

“Of course I fucking would.”

Potter rolls his eyes.

“You can come with me,” Draco says decisively. He turns to his dresser, pulling out a clean white t-shirt with a rip in the collar. He tosses it at Potter’s head. “Put some clothes on. I’ll explain on the way.” 

When Potter picks the t-shirt off his face and smiles up at Draco, all hopeful and roguish, Draco fixes him with a look.

“I promise you right now, Potter,” he says warningly. “You’re not going to like this.”

_____

Draco doesn’t explain anything to Potter on the way, because he can’t find the words. 

So, after successfully sneaking him past his housemates and out the front door—Potter clad in last night’s shorts and Draco’s white t-shirt—Draco drags Potter back towards the seafront, ignoring Potter’s whinging complaints about being too hot, too hungover, too hungry. 

“There’s coffee and tea there,” Draco mutters, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, occasionally clocking his glassy reflection in shop windows and fixing his hair, his wrinkly t-shirt, hoping his skin doesn’t look too grey after a night of heavy drinking. “And pastries, I think.”

“Where?”

“Just… come on. I’m going to be late.”

He walks them down the Grand Parade, and when they reach the big glass building, he takes Potter by his pointy shoulders, gently nudging him through the doors and up the first flight of steps.

“This is…” Potter mumbles.

Draco urges him onward through echoey corridors lined with canvases. It smells of wet plaster and clay, charcoal and wood shavings, linseed oil and turpentine. 

“Do you…”

“No,” Draco replies shortly, walking into the studio.

“Ah! Draco!” 

“Sorry I’m late,” Draco tells his greeter: June, fine art professor, tutor of the morning life drawing lessons here at the university’s School of Art. She’s a small, middle-aged woman with long grey hair and fingers full of silver rings, and she glances at Potter curiously.

“Are you a new student…?” she asks him. Draco strolls across the room, leaving Potter to fend for himself. He listens in though as he disappears behind the folding screen at the back, isolating Potter’s voice from the rest of the room: students filing into the room, setting up their charcoals and paints. 

“Er, no?” Potter says. “I’m just—I’m with Mal—Draco.”

“Oh,” June says. “Well… I suppose there’s no harm in you sitting in on this… it really is for art students only, my dear…”

Draco sticks his head out from behind the screen. “He can stay. He won’t cause any trouble. Will you, Harry?”

“No,” Potter says, his tone faint, bewildered. 

June directs him to a small stool by the window out of the way of everyone else.

Draco swallows hard and ducks back out of sight. 

“Here,” June adds, handing Draco a silky piece of white fabric. “We’ll use this today, I want them to focus on their material details. Perhaps with you sitting on the block and draping it over one leg?”

Draco nods, running a hand over the back of his heated neck.

He’s absolutely fine with this.

He pulls off his t-shirt, folds it over the chair, and next comes off his trainers, socks, jeans, underwear. The room’s getting more crowded now—he can hear it, the wave of noise throbbing along with the nervous pitter-patter of his heart.

He clears his throat, steps out from behind the screen, fabric in hand, letting it fall over his groin. He walks to the middle of the room and climbs onto the block.

Potter, still sitting by the window, looks up curiously from the Basquiat book in his hands, nearly dropping it and swearing loudly when it flaps out of its dust jacket, tumbling awkwardly over his lap.

Draco turns, his back—and his bare arse—to Potter, and he sits down, spreading his legs out, draping the fabric into position. He leans back on his palms.

June claps her hands together. “Right everyone. I want to see a range of techniques. You have—” she checks her watch, “—twenty minutes for the warm up pose. Then Draco will change position every five minutes for another twenty minutes, and we’ll finish with one last pose for another forty. You can start now.”

Draco stares at a smudge of blue paint on the wall straight ahead, takes a small sip of a breath, and thinks of England.

_____

“Aren’t you glad you stuck around?”

Draco picks up his t-shirt from the back of the chair, shrugging it on. 

Potter isn’t the same fumbling, flushed mess as he was an hour ago, but his gaze is still shifty, and he’s clearly trying to find—well, the words.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Potter eventually says. His voice is all dry and rough. It suits him. 

“Gets boring after a while though, hm?” Draco waves at June on the other side of the room.

“A bit,” Potter says. He scratches his neck. Draco’s t-shirt hangs loose over his shoulders, gaping at his sharp collarbone. The lines of it are a thing of beauty. Potter would make a wonderful life model if he weren’t so squirmy and awkward.

They head out the university building together, back onto the Parade where it’s not any busier than it was an hour ago. It’s nice, a bit cooler too, and Draco relishes the breeze that kisses his flushed cheeks. His arms are still a bit sore from holding the reclining pose on his elbows.

“So, er,” Potter says, as eloquent as ever. They fall into an easy step, heading south towards the sea, crossing at the lights onto the park side. “How long’ve you been doing that?”

“Since I moved here,” Draco says. Potter stops to stare at a mural on the side of the row of terraces on Edward Street, tilting his head back to take in the storeys-high rainbow and clouds and the hands painted over the boarded-up windows. “It was easy money. It was either that, or—well. I didn’t need any experience. Just time and my body.”

Potter’s nose crinkles. He’s still staring at the mural. “How’d you find out about it?”

Draco thinks about that. “I saw it on a noticeboard in the library. That’s where I was spending most of my time when I first got to the city.” He smiles softly, memories coming back to him. “I met Carlo during my first sitting. My housemate. The one you saw with me outside the hotel.”

“The one you snuck me past this morning, you mean,” Potter grumbles.

Draco chuckles. “Yes.” He sighs, happy. “We had sex in the studio after everyone left.”

Potter chokes on his own tongue, staring at him. “What? Really?”

Draco hums. “And a few times after that. It was wonderful, but not meant to be, of course. We have a different dynamic now.”

They continue walking through the Parade, but Draco steers them down a side street just before the seafront, plonking Potter at a curbside table at his favourite greasy spoon. 

“Bloody hell. What else are you hiding up your sleeve?” Potter asks, twisting around curiously to look at the simple brown awning advertising Sandwiches - Breakfast - Omelettes - Salads - Coffee. “Any other mysterious hobbies or interests? Next you’re going to tell me you’re in a band or something.”

“I volunteer with old people,” Draco says, handing Potter a plastic menu, held between a box of napkins and a plastic bottle of ketchup in the shape of a tomato. 

“No, you don’t.”

“Oh, you think I’m joking?” Draco asks, flipping through the menu even though he knows exactly what he wants, because it’s what he always gets after a sitting: a bacon roll, a cup of tea, and an orange juice.

“I don’t know to be honest with you,” Potter says, pushing his thick mop of curls back from his forehead only for them to flop back down again. “At this point, you could tell me you’re training to be a clown and I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Draco laughs. “I’m not fibbing. I do volunteer with old people. Muggles. Only once a week though.”

Potter makes a face of absolute dumbfoundedness. “Doing what?”

Draco, despite himself, feels his face heat up.

He never set out to tell Potter everything he likes to do in his spare time. In fact, he’d been very determined not to let him know anything, but—here Potter is. Looking at him like that. All floppy hair and stupid, downturned eyes and dimply cheeks, smelling like Draco’s clothes and his cigarettes, his knees so warm where they rest just inches from Draco’s beneath the table and—

—Draco’s fucked. 

Potter is fucking him, and his senses, and his defences, left right and centre. 

He’s so frustratingly easy to give in to.

The waitress stops by the table to give them some water and take their orders, scribbling them on a little paper pad. When she disappears, Draco looks at Potter and sighs. “Dancing.”

“Dancing?”

“Indeed. Dancing.”

“What kind of dancing?”

“Ballroom.”

Potter, at least, has water to choke on this time. Not air or his own tongue.

“Yes, very good,” Draco says, handing him a napkin, blotting out the mess he’s made on the table. “Let it all out now.”

“Why?” Potter wheezes.

Draco shrugs. “I like it. I always have. My mot—” He clears his throat. Squashes memories of stepping on Narcissa’s toes as a child, holding onto her cool, soft hands as she twirled him slowly around the Manor’s ballroom to Rameau and Delibes, as she let him run on the waxed floors to his heart’s content. “I know it. Well. And I took the opportunity to keep at it while I could. Besides,” he adds with a sniff. “Old Muggles are fun. And hilarious and often very cutting. They’re my speed.”

Potter blinks. “Alright, then,” he says after a beat. “That’s—well. That’s really cool, actually.”

“It is,” Draco says, hating how defensive he sounds. “My life doesn’t revolve around my shitty job, Potter. I do things that make me happy.”

Potter looks at the table, pressing his thumb against a groove in the wood. Just then, the waitress appears with their breakfast—bacon roll for Draco, cheese and ham omelette for Potter.

“Good,” Potter murmurs thoughtfully once they’re left alone again. “Good, I’m really—I’m glad. Honestly.”

They eat in a strange, new, companionable silence. Every so often, Potter’s knees bump against his own beneath the table. Draco is loath to pay and leave, but it must be done—by Potter, of course.

“Thanks for keeping me company last night,” Potter murmurs. He tucks his wallet away. “I really needed it.”

“You were moderately bearable, I suppose,” Draco says, standing, and Potter laughs, a weak, thick thing, and without conferring, they begin their ascent up the hill towards the train station.

“Are you working later?” Potter asks him conversationally.

Draco shakes his head. “Sundays and Mondays are my days off this week. I’m back on the morning shift tomorrow.”

Potter makes a throaty noise of sympathy, and Draco hums his agreement.

At the station, they hover around each other awkwardly until Potter leaves it until the last few minutes to board his train. 

“Well,” Potter says, inching closer to the gates. “Maybe see you next weekend? Not for another eyeful though,” he teases. “Might skip that part.”

“Your loss.” 

Draco holds a hand in the air, and Potter turns, jogging down the platform, jumping onto the carriage before the train doors close behind him with a loud bleep.

It’s only when Potter’s train is pulling away Draco realises Potter is still wearing his t-shirt, and Potter’s own top from last night is lying in a heap on his bedroom floor.

_____

You left a Shrunken jam jar of Firewhisky here by the way. And your t-shirt. (1 / 2)

… Twat. (2 / 2)

Whoops. Soz. I’ll wash urs n return it when I cum back nxt weekend :-)

If you must. Don’t ruin it. Don’t text cum.

Malfoy it has a hole in the collar :-(

It’s intentional. 

Suits u I spose but it makes me look like an xtra in Oliver Twist

Potter, every single article of clothing I’ve ever seen you wear has made you look like a vagrant.

Wot about my Quidditch uniform? ;-)

Don’t use smiley faces. Goodnight.

G’night dickhead :-) :-)

_____

This enough advance warning for u? I make it just before 7. And I’m on a train. On my way to Brighton. Hopefully ur awake

I am not awake.

Ur awake enough to text me back. Meet me at the station?

Fuck off. No.

Aw come on. Ur up now and it’ll still take me an hour to get there

I’m texting you my address. Just come here instead. I am far too hungover for this, Potter. It’s Saturday morning for fuck’s sake. See you soon.

_____

When the sound of keys rattling in the front door wakes him up, Draco rolls quickly onto his back and sucks in a deep, fortifying breath through his nose.

He pats the space on the bed beside him. Empty, thank fuck.

Downstairs, the faint mumble of voices. The irritating, scratchy chuckle of one Harry James Potter.

Draco sits up quickly, swallowing back the resultant wave of nausea crawling its way up his throat, blinking away the stars flitting across his vision.

Potter, meeting his housemates without him? It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

It’s a disaster already happening.

Grotty and grumpy, Draco drags himself out of bed, pulls on a soft pair of joggers and a faded blue t-shirt from his dresser, running his fingers through his hair as he quickly exits his bedroom and descends the carpeted staircase.

Potter is standing in Draco’s hallway, looking fresh as a daisy with all of his bouncy brown curls, his green Golas and stupid khaki shorts with the pockets on the thighs, and he’s pushing up his glasses with the knuckle of his index finger as Alan chats away to him, bike helmet in one hand, house keys in the other—

“—and I was like, excuse me, you dropped this, and he was like...” Potter trails off, staring at Draco standing at the foot of the landing. He blinks, pulling his curls back from his forehead. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Draco says.

Potter lifts a battered plastic bag from HMV. “Brought your t-shirt.”

“Lovely.”

Alan clears his throat.

Draco presses his fingers to the middle of his forehead. Points at Potter. Then at Alan. “Alan, this is Potter. Potter, Alan.”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Alan says slyly. 

“And it’s Harry,” Potter says haughtily.

“I’m very hungover,” Draco says. He steps off the last stair, squeezes past Potter on his way through the living room to the kitchen. Potter smells of freshly mown grass and tea and fabric softener, and when he pushes the bag into Draco’s hands, Draco balls it up, dropping it onto the empty counter next to Carlo who’s drinking coffee and eating cereal in his pants.

“Harry,” Draco says grouchily. “This is Carlo. Carlo—Harry. But you can call him Potter, because I do.”

“I know you,” Carlo says. Potter shuffles awkwardly into the room, his arms hanging limply by his sides, his eyes flitting all around as if they don’t know where to land. 

Draco grabs another mug and drops a tea bag into it, filling it with boiled water. “Milk and sugar?”

“Both,” Potter says. “Thanks. Er, yeah,” he adds, glancing at Carlo. “I think I saw you when you were working at the hotel the other weekend.”

“Oh!” Carlo says “Questo è divertente! I do know you—”

—Draco hates this tone, because it’s Carlo’s naughty tone, and as soon as Carlo twists around to look at Draco, as soon as the words fall from Carlo’s lips—

“—this is the boy you had a big crush on in school, bello?”

—Draco’s entire face floods with heat, all the breath in his lungs exploding from his mouth in one great panicked wheeze.

Potter, the little fucker, looks positively tickled by the turn of events.

“No,” Draco says sharply, wincing against the throbbing pain in his head. His mouth still tastes like the back end of a cigarette. “No, of course not. Potter, don’t listen to him, he’s being an arse on purpose. He’s trying to embarrass me.”

It’s working.

Draco presses the mug of tea into Potter’s hands. Potter grins at him.

“Bello, he’s adorable!” Carlo goads, waving a hand up and down the length of Potter, from his shitty trainers to his floppy mop. “You’re lying to me, how could you not have such a crush on this gorgeous man?”

“Yeah, Draco,” Potter says, all dimpled and cheeky and far too beautiful for his own good. “How could you not have such a crush on this gorgeous man?”

“He is flustered,” Carlo says, wagging a finger, pushing back from the counter to store his empty bowl in the dishwasher, bending over in Potter’s eyeline to do so. Potter looks away quickly. “Draco is flustered, he gets like this.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Draco mutters.

Carlo laughs heartily. When he stands, he presses a chaste kiss to the corner of Draco’s mouth. “Alright, I’m getting ready for my class now, bello. It was very nice to meet you, Harry.”

“And you,” Potter says. 

Carlo leaves the room. Potter turns to Draco. “Wow.”

“You’re both a couple of arseholes, and I hate you,” Draco sniffs.

“I mean, I can totally understand you fancying me in school,” Potter says, following Draco back into the lounge. “I mean, I was, after all, the Saviour…”

Draco snorts into his cup. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll do anything to wind me up.”

They drink their tea, exchanging surprisingly easy small talk about their weeks—Potter’s been moving furniture around in his flat, trying to figure out what to do with everything because apparently Ginny won’t be taking any of it with her when she moves. When he tells Draco he went for a big dinner with his friends earlier in the week, Draco suddenly remembers why: it’d been Potter’s birthday.

 “Oh—happy birthday,” Draco says a little awkwardly. “Sorry I forgot.”

Potter shrugs. “Didn’t expect you to remember. It’s not like we ever said it to each other before, is it?”

“Point.”

Potter sets his empty mug on the coffee table, stretching his arms out until his elbows click. “Wanna go to the beach?” he asks.

_____

“Are you and Carlo still…?”

Draco looks at Potter over the top of his sunglasses. He is showered and fed but he still feels like death warmed over, and the cigarette he’s rapidly smoking through certainly isn’t helping matters. 

“Are we still what?” he asks, stopping at a small kiosk, picking out a can of Lilt from the fridge by the register. 

Potter looks at the man behind the till, then at Draco, and lowers his voice. “Fucking,” he murmurs.

“What? No,” Draco says, heading back out into the sunshine. “I told you—we have a different dynamic now.”

“You kissed each other on the lips.”

Draco shrugs, cracking open the can, tossing his cigarette. “We do that. We all do. It’s just… it’s just something we do.”

“We?”

“My friends here.”

“I don’t kiss any of my friends on the lips.”

“Thank heavens for that,” Draco teases. At the turn into the North Lanes, he steers Potter in by his shoulders, clinging onto his can of pop between his thumb and index finger, his sunglasses bumping down to the tip of his nose. 

The restaurants on North Road are quiet, but a few early risers are eating brunch at the tables outside. Starbucks has a queue out the door. Kensington Gardens, as narrow as it is with its red cobbles and fluttering, colourful bunting overhead, is busier. The market sellers are already out in their swathes, the gift shops and vintage outlets teeming with tourists. 

Potter stops outside of Snoopers to eye a nearby rack of vintage leather jackets. “What d’you reckon? Think I could pull one of these off?”

Draco thinks about it. Perhaps a little too keenly. He swallows hard, knocking back a gulp of ice-cold pop, ignoring the burn of it in the back of his throat.

“I think it’d be a better look than what you’re sporting now,” he says tightly, curling his fist over his mouth. “Not with those shorts,” he adds.

Potter shucks on a biker jacket, its black leather creased and worn and well-loved.

It fits Potter like a glove.

“Sirius had one just like this,” Potter murmurs softly, ignoring Draco’s words, touching the zips and lapels with careful fingers. “There was a patch on it. Right here,” he murmurs, turning to show Draco the upper arm, running his fingertips against the buttery leather and quilted stitching on the shoulder. “I wish I could remember what it was.”

“Probably some Muggle musician his mother hated,” Draco murmurs. 

Potter slips the jacket off, putting it back on the rack, scratching at his stubbled chin. “Probably.” He turns his back to Draco, looking at the next table over.

Draco flips over the label inside the jacket’s collar. It's still warm from Potter’s body.

It’s more expensive than he thought it’d be.

He sighs. “Come on,” he says, quick, decisive. He takes the jacket off the hanger. “Let’s go in. I’m getting this for you.”

“But,” Potter stutters, eyes wide. “It’s—”

“—your birthday,” Draco replies, clipped. He walks over to the first register he sees, pulling his wallet from his pocket before he changes his mind. He feels a bit dizzy, a bit out of breath. “Don’t make it weird, Potter. Just take it.” 

The sales assistant folds the jacket and stuffs it into a pink plastic bag, and when Draco takes it, he shoves it into Potter’s arms.

“Think of this as me doing you a favour. I’m helping you look less unattractive. Happy birthday.”

Potter’s mouth—hanging open for the past half minute or so—tugs into a little smile. Dimpled. Full of quiet wonder.

Draco rolls his eyes. “I said don’t make it weird.”

“You got me a birthday present.”

“You’re the most insufferable person I know.”

Potter beams and folds the plastic bag under his arm, and then they’re off, squeezing their way back through the Lanes and out onto the seafront.

They end up on the pier where they grab a couple of deck chairs facing west, and Potter buys them a bag of chips they quietly share, staring out at the low tide, the water bright, sparkling merrily under the light of the midday sun. After a while—he suspects it’s the sugar and salt’s doing—Draco’s hangover abates, and he slips his sunglasses off to perch atop of his head so he can see Potter more clearly as he waxes lyrical about the new plants he’s bought from the flower market next to his flat, about how he loves looking after them and, “isn’t that weird, because I was a bit rubbish at Herbology without ‘Mione and Neville’s help.”

“You're a plant parent,” Draco says, picking out the end scraps from the bag held between them in Potter’s hand. “Of course you are. Next thing you know, you’ll be joining a local rambling group and wearing Birkenstocks on the regular.”

Potter laughs, scratching a hand over his flat stomach, the edge of his t-shirt lifting to reveal a strip of dark hair and smooth coppery skin. Draco puts his sunglasses back on and stares out resolutely at the shore. 

“I like walking,” Potter says thoughtfully. “Never really thought about joining a group. I go walking with Andromeda sometimes in Nor…”

He trails off, staring at Draco, and Draco shifts forward to wipe the greasy, salty crumbs from his fingers. 

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about his aunt—or Edward—in all these years, but Potter bringing them up so casually throws into stark reality how close Potter is to them, how involved he is in a world Draco has long abandoned, and it’s—

Painful. Unsettling. 

He closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Potter breathes. “I just—it just came out.” And then, “I’m sure she’d love to see you, Malfoy. To know you’re okay. Andi’s great, she’ll understand, and Teddy—”

“Edward doesn’t know me,” Draco says, effectively cutting Potter off. He takes the bag, scrunches it in his hands, getting up to toss it into a nearby bin. “Let’s go. I need more food.”

“Okay,” Potter says softly. “Lead the way.”

They end up in the same pub where they shared their first drink, at the same bench outside by the road, and they pick at a mezze board and sip cold beer as Brighton moves around them. Potter keeps the conversation clear of Andromeda and Edward, of anyone in Draco’s family, and he starts rambling about walking again, about playing Muggle football with Dean Thomas and Sunday Quidditch games in the garden at the Weasley household. Draco wonders if any of Potter’s hobbies involve him staying still. If he’s even capable of it.

There are moments when Potter will occasionally stop talking and stare into the middle distance, dark eyebrows drawing together, twitchy fingers picking at the label of his bottle or scratching at the hair under his chin. His big eyes will glaze over, turn sombre, just for a flash, before he’ll shake himself out of it with a shudder of his shoulders, picking his glass up again or popping an olive into his mouth, wincing through the chews.

“You don’t have to eat those if you don’t like them,” Draco points out over the neck of his bottle. “You do realise you have free will, don’t you, Potter?”

“I’ve heard if you eat eight in a row, you’ll grow to like olives,” Potter says. 

“You sure know how many beans make five,” Draco says dryly.

Potter’s gaze flicks to the space above Draco’s head. Draco instinctively twists around to follow it.

“Draco,” Ruben says. He’s standing just behind him on the curb, sunglasses holding back his floppy hair, a takeaway cup of coffee in one hand, a paper bag from AllSaints in the other. He glances at Harry, gaze flickering.

He bends close, kissing Draco’s cheek in greeting. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Draco says, resisting the urge to swat Ruben away like a fly. He keeps looking at Potter like he wants to pick a fight with him, and Draco gets it, but that’s his thing. 

Potter is his to pick on, not anyone else’s. 

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Ruben says with the kind of hard-suffering sigh that signals he’s about to vent about something incredibly tedious, like how annoying his hairdresser is, or that Waitrose are out of his favourite brand of lemon curd. “Had that gig last night. The one I told you about?”

Potter clears his throat. “Hi!” he says cheerfully, a little too loudly for Draco’s liking. “I’m Harry by the way.”

Ruben frowns, then plasters on a fake, bitchy smile Draco’s seen about a thousand times before. “I know. I remember you. From Saints? You walked out in front of the car.”

“Not intentionally,” Potter mumbles, his shoulders slumping.

“Anyway,” Ruben says. He looks at Draco. “You didn’t come.”

“Sorry, I forgot,” Draco lies, sighing. “It’s a shame, because I really do want to lose my hearing before I turn forty. I should have made an effort to remember.”

Ruben laughs. “You’re such a bitch!” He licks his lips. “Come out tonight?”

Draco looks at Potter. He’s staring intently at his phone. 

“Maybe,” Draco says. 

“I’ve got to run.” Ruben puts his sunglasses back on, leaning down for another kiss, this time pressing it squarely to Draco’s mouth, letting it linger. It’s warm, and firm, and his fingers dig into the flesh of Draco’s shoulder. He slips him the tiniest hint of tongue before pulling away again. “Hopefully see you later? Bye, Henry.”

“Harry,” Potter and Draco both say at once, but Ruben is already out of earshot, strolling across the road and around the corner.

Draco pinches his temples. “Sorry, he’s…”

“A dickhead?” Potter asks, pulling out his wallet. “Yeah, I got that. Another?”

Draco nods.

_____

They stay for another couple of rounds, and after, they stroll back to the seafront, along the length of the promenade, walking as far as the multicoloured beach huts at Hove Lagoon where the wind is stronger and the waves are choppier. Potter stops at the railings, leaning over them, plastic bag in hand. He stares at a windsurfer traversing the swell in the distance.

“What was the gig?” he asks.

Draco leans against the railing, his back to the sea. He digs around in his pocket for his cigarettes. “The what?”

“The gig your friend invited you to.”

“Oh,” Draco says, unlit cigarette bouncing between his lips. He flicks his thumb against the flint wheel of his lighter, swearing softly when it refuses to spark up. A warm hand cups itself over the back of his own, the tips of Potter’s fingers grazing his cheek. Potter slides in closer, wandlessly summoning a small flame that lights Draco’s cigarette for him, the sound of paper crinkling and burning filling the strange, gentle silence between them.

Draco inhales sharply, pulls away an inch, and Potter turns back to face the water. 

“Ruben’s in a band.”

Potter laughs dryly. “Of course he is. Lead singer?”

Draco shakes his head, hiding a smirk. “Guitar.”

“Ugh.”

“He’s an aspiring stage actor, too.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah, the whole lot,” Draco says, flicking some ash into the air, watching it spark and spiral and disappear into nothing. “Don’t worry. He’ll warm up to you eventually.”

“Oh, you’re expecting us to meet again, are you?”

“Well,” Draco reasons. “He’s part of my life here, Potter. As dickish as he is. And, well, you—”

“Are kind of part of your life now too?”

Draco squints. “As dickish as you are.” He grins.

“But he doesn’t… know everything. Does he?” Potter asks, snatching the pack of cigarettes from Draco’s hand. 

“Of course he doesn’t.”

“Is that why you’re not properly together?”

“No. We’re not properly together because… I’m not a ‘together’ kind of person, Potter. Anyone I choose to ‘be’ with would want to know more. Everyone wants to know more, don’t they? No one’s satisfied until they have every little part of you and I can’t—I can’t—”

Potter puts a hand on Draco’s arm. His fingers are cool, slightly calloused at the tips. “Alright, Malfoy. It’s alright. I get it.”

Draco takes a breath. Closes his eyes. “I can’t share everything with a mythical, maybe-someone. Ever.”

“But—what if you fall in love?”

Draco flicks his cigarette, letting it dangle from his fingers. “You can’t fall in love if you don’t let yourself get close enough to try.”

Potter tilts his head forward, lighting up, his hair whipping about in the wind, covering half his face. He has a strong jawline, a pretty mouth. Draco swallows and sucks another drag.

After a few minutes, Potter asks, “What would you have done if you stayed in the Wixen world? For a job, I mean.”

Draco groans and pinches his nose. “Are we really having this conversation?”

“Yeah?” Potter asks. “Why not? It’s hypothetical.”

“My father wanted me to be a Potions Master,” Draco replies shortly.

“So?” Potter says. “What did you want?”

Draco tosses his cigarette, pushing himself away from the railing. “It doesn’t matter because it’s hypothetical. And I’m starting to get a headache now, so…”

“Oh,” Potter says. He pushes himself to stand, grabbing his bag from the ground. Around them, the air has turned misty, the clouds overhead a smoky grey. “I’ll go. I should go. It’s getting late anyway.”

Draco sighs. “Potter…”

“No, it’s okay,” Potter says, checking his watch. “I might just Apparate from here. We’re a bit far from the station now…”

Draco follows Potter to the back of the beach huts where empty row boats are lined up, covered in mucky and worn tarp. Potter lifts the bag in his hands, offering Draco a crooked smile. “Thanks for the birthday present,” he says.

“Come back next weekend,” Draco says before he can stop his mouth. “We’ll do something fun.” He frowns, suddenly remembering himself. “Devised by me, of course. You’re incapable of coming up with anything fun.”

Potter laughs. “Alright. Deal.”

They hover around each other awkwardly for half a second, then Potter slides his wand out his pocket. When Draco opens his mouth to say goodbye, Potter is already gone in a twist and zip of efficient, powerful magic.

_____

That night, Draco dreams of the Manor. 

He dreams of Aunt Bellatrix staring at him from across the dinner table, rolling the tip of a steak knife on the antique walnut until the wood splinters.

He dreams of his mother’s hand on his arm, of her nails pressing insistently into his flesh, Astoria hiding behind her swath of hair, sitting by her father’s side. 

He dreams of his own father taking him out hunting, showing him the correct way to hold his wand, telling him his posture is too soft, “too goddamn soft, and it’s your mother’s fault.”

He dreams of Pansy stumbling through his fireplace covered in soot and blood, and she’s holding Greg’s old school tie and she’s screaming, “he’s dead! He’s dead!”

He dreams of all the Owls he wrote over summer and how they all came back to him from Arran unanswered after the fact: after Greg’s mother found him in the woods and it was too late.

He dreams of burning his medical textbooks, the scant future he’d told himself he might have been able to have even if it meant marrying the wrong person, because how on earth could he ever call himself a Mind Healer if hadn’t been able to save his friend?

He dreams of Pansy, of her crying and holding his hand in her bedroom, the air thick with the scent of lavender, wind chimes clinking together where they hang around her windows. 

He dreams of her turning over his palm and whispering, “I never predicted any of this.”

Chapter Text

The Thomas-Patil flat in Dalston is a shoes-off household. Their shoe rack—tall, raw pine, with a thriving spider plant sat on the top shelf beneath the large hall mirror—overflows with new additions: Harry, Ron and Seamus’s trainers; Hermione’s Birkenstocks; Ernie and Justin’s expensive Oxford loafers. 

For the past two hours, the eight of them have been crowded round the dining table by the patio doors—flung open to let in the fresh, summer evening air—drinking wine, sharing big serving bowls of thakkali curry and paneer cheera, spinach and potatoes and tamarind rice, plates of paratha and masala dosa and appam. 

Harry is full. Ron is still eating, perched on the edge of the sofa, watching Muggle football highlights with Dean and Seamus while Hermione and Padma and Ernie crack open another bottle of Sauvignon in the kitchen. 

“C’mere,” Harry urges, setting himself out on the dry square of grass in the back garden, holding out a hand to Bark—Dean and Parma’s two year-old dachshund—waving his fingers in an attempt to lure him away from his squeaky pig toy. 

“He’s expelling all his energy,” comes an arch voice from behind Harry. “He’ll be up for cuddles soon I’m sure.”

Harry twists around, holds a hand above his eyes to block out the low setting sun.

Justin—all beanpole height and springy blond curls—pushes up his horn rimmed glasses. He grins at Harry. “Another?” He holds out a fresh glass of the beer Harry’s been drinking all night. 

“Oh—cheers, mate.” 

Harry pushes himself to sit up, accepting the glass with a squinty smile. 

Justin sinks onto his haunches on the grass beside Harry. He’s drinking wine. His wrists are delicate, fingers bony, long like Malfoy’s, only Malfoy’s look a bit stronger, a bit more capable, and Harry’s not sure where that thought came from, but it’s there.

He swallows, embarrassed as he remembers Malfoy leaning forward on the block in the middle of the studio at the art college, chin in his hands, the long, strong line of his spine curved as the afternoon sunlight dappled through the smudgy windows to create shadowed patterns against his pale skin.

Harry eyes Justin curiously. He has an attractive face, nice skin. 

Harry gets why Malfoy wanted to fool around with him in school. They would have looked nice together, Harry thinks.

Finishes-Fast Fletchley.

Harry hides a little smile against the rim of his glass.

“Say, Justin,” he says, a sudden thought popping to mind: “You were friends with Theodore Nott in school, weren’t you?”

Justin laughs, surprised, dry. “Yes?” he asks slowly. “Why?”

Harry shrugs, looking at his nails, picking away a little bit of skin from the corner of his thumb.

“I was just thinking about him and, like—our old schoolmates, you know? The Slytherins, anyway. From Eighth Year or… whenever. And what they’ve been up to.”

And because Justin’s a fountain of knowledge and gossip and all things juicy, he immediately launches in with, “Theo’s in Cambridge.”

Harry sits up straighter. 

Justin nods, smug and knowing.

“He studied at Cambridge University—Magical law. I believe that’s why he chose to settle there.”

“So he turned out alright, then?”

Justin gives Harry a look. “Well—yes, Harry. Theo was always alright.”

Bark finally lets go of the pig, waddling over to them, pushing his wet, warm nose into Harry’s hand. 

“I didn’t really know him,” Harry says.

Justin snorts. “And you’re telling me you knew the others?” 

“Well,” Harry says. “No. Not really. Not socially.” He makes a face. “They were all pretty horrible.”

Justin’s expression turns to one of mild pity. “We were children,” he says. “People change.”

Harry sets his beer down and scoops Bark into his arms, holding him close against his chest, frowning into his soft, flat fur. “What about the others?” 

“You’re awfully curious tonight, aren’t you?” Justin teases airily, lips twisting in amusement, wine glass hovering inches from his mouth. “That’s normally my job, isn’t it?”

Harry laughs. “Must be the alcohol.”

Justin leans forward, dropping his voice. “And running into Draco Malfoy last month, perhaps?”

Harry blushes. “Yeah, maybe. It just—well, it brought a lot of stuff to the surface, you know? Unanswered questions.”

“Well, I can tell you this for a fact,” Justin says with wide eyes. “Blaise and Daphne are married. They live in a big converted villa in Rome. How glamorous.”

“What about Parkinson? Bulstrode?” Harry’s not sure why he’s digging, but the shovel is firm in his grip now, and Justin is a willing participant. If he’s able to give Harry more information, then—maybe Harry can help Malfoy, somehow. 

It helps me feel closer to them when I’m not.

“Pansy, I believe, teaches in France. Bulstrode…” Justin frowns. “I’ve no idea.”

“Goyle?”

Justin stares at Harry, and Harry stares back, waiting for an answer, his mind offering all sorts of possibilities: he fled to France with Parkinson, he’s at home with his parents still, he’s a dragon tamer in China, he changed his identity and is living as a spy in America.

What he hadn’t been expecting to hear is the words that come from Justin’s lips, quiet, hesitant, “Harry… Gregory’s dead. You didn’t know? How could you not know that?”

Harry jerks his head back. “Wait. No, that was—Crabbe. It was Crabbe who died.”

“Harry,” Justin says gently. “They’re both dead. Vincent Crabbe died in school, during the Battle, but Gregory Goyle died later that summer. I think his parents managed to keep it under wraps for a few months, perhaps longer, but—it all came out, eventually.” He blinks, and asks again, “You really didn’t know?”

Harry shakes his head, his heart thudding in his chest, his ears roaring. 

He doesn’t remember a lot, from Eighth Year. Lounging. Drinking. Wandering the ruined hallways like a ghost. Waiting for it all to end so he could start real life, with Ginny, with his friends. 

Being wrapped up in all of that.

“How?” he asks. His throat is dry, raspy. He clears it. Swallows a gulp of beer, wincing against the burn of it. “How did he…?”

“Suicide,” Justin whispers. “He killed himself.”

“Oh my god.”

“I know. It was awful. His parents found him and everything. Pretty gruesome.”

Harry runs a hand over his face. He doesn’t know how close Malfoy and Goyle really were—on the face of it, Malfoy had treated Crabbe and Goyle like his henchmen, not exactly real friends, but Harry has no idea what had gone on behind closed doors.

Clearly.

“Shit. That’s terrible. Do you know… why? I mean. I think I can guess, but…”

“Sorry,” Justin says. “I’m not exactly sure on the specifics but—from my point of view, it was probably because of what happened to them all. And their parents, and…” He holds up his hands. “No, you know what? Not for me to speculate.”

“No,” Harry agrees. “No—no, of course not.”

Justin sighs. “Anyway. It was a long time ago, of course. And that’s all I know. Ern and I have kept in touch with Theo.” He stands, his knees clicking audibly. “God, I need to follow Ernie’s lead and go to the gym. My bones are like brittle.” He knocks back the last of his wine. “I’ll catch you later, Harry.”

Overhead, the sky is turning pale blue, the sun is sinking lower. Harry looks down at Bark in his arms. He sighs gently.

“I’m an idiot,” he whispers, and Bark responds by gently licking his nose.

_____

Did I tell u Dean and Padma have a dog?

I’m not sure when that piece of information would ever be relevant or applicable to me.

Well I’m telling you now. He’s so cute!!! His name is Bark

Of course that’s his name. Go on then, what kind of dog is he?

Sausage

Dachshund, Potter. My grandmother used to have one. And a Pekinese. Horrible little things.

You don’t like dogs?!

They’re fine. I prefer cats.

It’s not a war

If it was, cats would win. 

Oh yeah? How come?

They’re sly, smart, and they don’t let their emotions get in the way of strategy.

Ur such a cat person

See how well we’re getting to know each other?

It’s a beautiful thing. Btw Im at a dinner party rite now and Bark is in my arms. He says… hello!

Hello, Bark. A dinner party with the Gryffindors? Sounds like torture.

I won’t lie to you Malfoy it is a bit. I love everyone here but being on my own is kind of shit

I dare you to come to Brighton. I’m out drinking. You’re welcome to join in. Far more fun than your drab little gathering.

Draco Malfoy it’s a school night

It’s never stopped me before. Has it stopped you? If you’re inclined, meet me and my friends in Saints. We’ll be here all night.

_____

Harry stares at his phone for all but five seconds before making his mind up.

He comes up with a fairly plausible excuse about needing an early night, nothing too blatant of a lie. 

He Apparates from Dean and Padma’s back garden into the multi-storey car park outside Brighton’s shopping centre, appearing with a loud crack on the second highest level where it’s shadowed and quiet, the darkened sea half hiding behind the back of the Grand.

He weaves his way through the rabble of students and other mid-week revellers towards Saints, and after climbing the shiny steps down to the bar, he spots Malfoy right away, taller than most, standing out with his pale hair and skin, his face tilted towards the glow of the hazy lavender lights overhead.

As if literally by magic, Malfoy meets Harry’s gaze across the crowd, and his whole demeanour changes: from slouched against the table behind him to standing taller, the lines around his mouth softening. His smile changes from amused to—more serious, Harry thinks.

Malfoy pushes his way out through his group of friends, approaching Harry with something that looks like purpose.

Harry waves at him.

“Potter,” he says. “You actually came.”

And that’s when the bottom of Harry’s stomach threatens to fall out. 

He drops his hand back by his side.“You weren’t serious?”

“Well,” Malfoy says. 

He clasps Harry’s shoulder. His thumb brushes Harry’s throat, warm and intentional. 

“I didn’t think you’d actually come, it’s mid-week for god’s sake. But—” He squints, still holding onto Harry, pulling him closer. The music pounds loudly around them. He presses his mouth to Harry’s ear.

“Good,” he says. “Good for you for escaping a ghastly evening with the Gryffingeeks.” 

The words vibrate against Harry’s ear, ticklish. His breath is warm. He presses his drink into Harry’s hand. It’s blue.

Without thinking, Harry wraps his lip around the straw and sucks. It’s sweet, tart, a little watered down, but he likes it. He looks up at Malfoy’s pale grey eyes, the slope of his cheeks, the way he is staring at Harry so raptly.

Should he say something?

Should he mention Goyle? Apologise for not knowing?

Harry opens his mouth. The hand on his shoulder tightens a fraction then lets go when someone appears beside them, breaking their little bubble.

Long red hair, heart-shaped face.

“I know you,” Strawberry Blond Boy says. He looks at Malfoy. “I didn’t know you were friends.”

Malfoy frowns. “How do you know Harry?”

Strawberry Blond Boy’s gaze swings back to Harry and he says, smirking, “From the cafe. I always remember the good customers.” He holds out a hand. “I’m Ollie.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes and steers Harry away before he has the chance to return Ollie’s greeting. “Harry isn’t interested, you slut. Come on, Potter. Buy me another drink.”

And with that, Goyle is forgotten.

“Wait,” Harry says, glancing back at Ollie, now hanging back with Carlo and a few other men Harry doesn’t recognise. “Was that flirting? Was he flirting with me?”

“Ollie will flirt with anyone, so I wouldn’t take it too seriously,” Malfoy says coolly. “Besides. He’s not exactly your type, is he?”

Malfoy is looking at Harry with keen, narrowed eyes. His hands are wrapped around the edge of the bar. He’s wearing a silky short sleeved shirt tonight, a sort of heathery grey. His hair is tied back, loose strands falling around his ears.

Harry can smell him. Citrus, smoke. 

It’s a little disconcerting, the closeness of him. The way he is in Harry’s nose, on Harry’s lips, the ghost of his touch burning at the skin of Harry’s neck.

And it might just be the beer swimming in Harry’s system, but—

Harry blinks, shaking that thought off before it forms, before it takes over. “No…?” he says eventually, his heart thudding rapidly behind his breastbone.

“He’s not your type,” Malfoy says, clipped. “Buy me a Lusty Leonard.”

Harry snorts. “A what?”

Malfoy pushes some hair behind his ear, tilting his head back so the lights overhead turn his eyelashes translucent. “A Lusty Leonard. It has enough vodka in it to knock out a donkey.”

“Oh, so it’ll be cheap, then,” Harry says dryly, pulling out his wallet.

He finishes Malfoy’s cocktail and orders another fancy drink that tastes like Refreshers, and they find their way back to Malfoy’s friends: Carlo, Ollie, Paul the part-time drag queen, and some guy called Andrew who doesn’t know any of them but clearly fancies Carlo quite a bit.

Malfoy doesn’t force him to dance—thank fuck—but after another strong cocktail Harry finds himself wanting to anyway, at ease with it when Carlo and Andrew lure him to the dance floor where the mostly-male crowd grind up against each other to Rihanna and Girls Aloud.

Harry’s terrible at it. And he’s aware he sticks out like a sore thumb, but no one here is unkind, no one is sizing him up or putting him down, not even Malfoy, who playfully grabs his hand and spins him around like he might if they were ballroom dancing to With Every Heartbeat, and at some point, Harry ends up in the loos with Ollie and Malfoy, sitting on the counter with his legs dangling, his eyes pointed towards the flickering fluorescent lights.

“I look like shit,” he mumbles as Malfoy swipes his thumbs beneath his eyes.

“We all look like shit,” Malfoy reasons. “There.” He gently places Harry’s glasses back on. Steps back.

He grins. “Take a look. It looks good.”

Harry hiccups. “Don’t believe you.” He hops off the counter. Malfoy washes his hands in the sink, inspecting himself in the cracked mirror. 

It’s Ollie’s, the silver pot of glitter. He pulled it from his pocket twenty minutes ago, started attacking them all with it. Carlo got a glittery moustache. Malfoy glittery cheekbones. Paul glittery lips.

“Initiate Harry!” Ollie had cried, to which Malfoy had irritably reminded him that Harry has nothing to be initiated for, but Harry had waved him off all in the name of good fun and now they’re here, and he’s staring at the silvery flecks smeared under his eyes like warpaint, and Malfoy is hovering behind him in the reflection, sweat curling the fair hair at his temples and turning it a few shades darker, his silky shirt now open halfway, his collarbones shining.

Harry stares at him, and when their gazes meet in the mirror, Ollie nudges his way between them to tie back his hair. “Lights up soon,” he says. 

Malfoy folds his arms over his chest, tilting his head. “Shall we go back to mine?”

_____

Harry shouldn’t. 

But he does.

They climb into a taxi together: Carlo, Andrew, Paul, Ollie, Malfoy, Harry. It winds up the narrow roads towards Hanover, dropping them off outside the pink terrace, and once inside, Carlo makes them more cocktails and Malfoy closes all the doors downstairs to keep noise to a minimum even though Alan apparently sleeps like the dead.

Harry giggles and tells them he’s got work in the morning, but he stays, because someone has put music on, and suddenly he and Malfoy are dancing again, spinning around the room and bumping into furniture as Malfoy teaches him the Vietnamese Waltz.

“The Viennese Waltz, you idiot,” Malfoy says. He glances over his shoulders at the others. Ollie and Paul recline on the green couch, and Carlo and Andrew perch on the floor by the coffee table, sipping their drinks. “You should have seen him in school. Absolute disaster, and all on show too.”

Carlo raises one dark eyebrow. “At your very conservative Christian boarding school?”

Harry pulls back, staring at Malfoy.

Malfoy steps sharply on Harry’s toes—Harry swears—and says, “Yes, that one.”

“Er, yeah,” Harry says, recovering. “That one. I won a competition and… it meant I had to lead the school in our, erm—”

“Formal dance,” Malfoy finishes calmly.

“Our formal dance. Yeah.” Harry meets Malfoy’s eyes—huge, grey, quietly pleading.

“Sounds like hell,” Andrew the stranger bemoans, lighting up a cigarette.

“It was, Andrew,” Harry says. “It really was.” And with that, he spins Malfoy around the room, and Malfoy swears when they nearly knock over one of Alan’s prized crystal elephants.

“Oaf,” Malfoy teases, his breath puffing over Harry’s cheek, warm, pineapple-scented.

“Sorry,” Harry whispers, but not for nearly breaking the ornament. He squeezes Malfoy’s hand.

Malfoy nods and lets him go. When he retires to the sofa to finish his drink, Harry takes himself upstairs to use the loo, his head fuzzy, his face warm. 

He quickly does his business with one hand pressed against the wall by the window above the toilet, resting his forehead on his arm, breathing in slowly through his nose, the floor slightly uneven beneath his feet.

Behind him, the door opens.

“Oh—sorry!”

Harry lifts his head and looks over his shoulder. Ollie’s standing in the threshold, wide eyed, pink cheeked. 

Embarrassed, Harry tucks himself away and moves to the sink to wash his hands. “It’s okay, I’m just about done,” he says. “I was just taking a bit of a breather, sorry, I’ll let you—er…”

Ollie steps into the room and closes the door. He rests his bum on the narrow counter beside Harry, and Harry looks at him, at the way his reddish blond hair curls over his shoulders, at the sweep of his fair lashes and the glint of makeup on his eyelids.

He’s pretty.

“Harry,” Ollie says. “I think you’re really hot.”

“Thank you,” Harry says after a beat, and then he’s being kissed, and it’s his first kiss since Ginny, it’s his first kiss with a man, and it’s not all that different really. It’s soft, warm, wet, perhaps a little firmer, perhaps a little—sexier. Charged.

And despite the alcohol swimming in Harry’s system, he’s painfully hard in seconds.

He’s never gotten hard from just a kiss before.

“I want to suck you off,” Ollie huffs, clinging to Harry’s shoulders, kissing him again, pushing his whole body against Harry’s, all wiry and hot and solid and hard too, Harry can feel him. Christ. “Please let me suck your dick.”

God.

Harry doesn’t want to admit he’s ever done anything like this before. He suspects that’s what’s giving him reservations about the whole thing, because even though his cock is so hard he could drill ice with it, he just—

He can’t.

Not tonight.

“I’m drunk,” he whispers, breaking their third, sloppy kiss, his lips burning from Ollie’s barely-there stubble. “You’re drunk, too.” Harry swallows. “I’m really drunk.”

“You’re so fucking hard.”

Harry’s cock twitches. “I know,” he breathes. “But—I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Ollie moans in protest, but he relents, letting go, sinking back against the sink, running a hand over his own crotch. Harry closes his eyes, wondering what it would feel like to have a hard prick against his tongue, hot and leaking against his lips.

He bends over the sink, running his hands through his hair.

“Next time?” Ollie asks him, nudging his knee against Harry’s to get his attention. Harry looks up at him through the crook in his elbow. “When we’re sober.” Ollie grins. His two front teeth are a little crooked. “I promise you won’t regret it.”

He leaves, and Harry sits heavily on the lid of the toilet seat.

Downstairs, the music continues. Someone laughs loudly.

When Harry takes himself in hand after freeing his cock from the confines of his jeans, he leans back against the cistern and closes his eyes, running through blurred images in his mind. At first, he guiltily thinks of Ginny: her small freckled breasts, the line of her back, the fall of her hair through his fingers, the way she had tasted after swimming in the sea that summer in Cornwall all those years ago, but it’s no good. When the images shift to Ollie—to his lighter hair and fuller mouth—Harry starts leaking, and he bites the back of his hand, trying desperately to think of something else, anything else: Hannah Abbott’s low cut tops and ample curves spring to mind briefly, but she’s quickly shoved over by Carlo in his pants in the kitchen, by Malfoy changing position in the studio, the cloth in his hand slipping away to reveal more strong, pale thigh and the thatch of dark blond pubic hair between his legs and—

“Fuck,” Harry wheezes, spilling over his fingers, splashing onto the dark material of his jeans, his toes curling. 

“Fuck,” he repeats with a groan, looking down at the mess he’s made.

_____

When Harry returns to the living room, the atmosphere is markedly different. 

The music is quieter. Andrew is murmuring something inaudible into Carlo’s ear, making him smile. Ollie is pulling on his trainers, lacing them with slow, fumbling fingers. Paul is asleep on the couch under a blanket.

Malfoy’s gaze flicks to Harry’s jeans. His expression is cool, bored. 

Harry presses two fingertips to his burning lips.

“I can’t Appa—”

Malfoy’s gaze swings back up to meet Harry’s.

“I mean,” Harry backtracks quickly. “I think I’ve missed the last train home.”

“You can stay on our couch,” Carlo offers, slipping an arm around Andrew’s slim shoulders. He looks at Paul. “Uh… our other couch, I mean. Plenty of room.”

“Taxis are still running,” Malfoy says. He’s slouched in the armchair next to the television, one leg crossed over the other, his gaze pointed at his loosely curled fist as he inspects his nails.

“Bello,” Carlo huffs in disbelief. “Draco. Darling. A taxi cab to London? That will cost Harry a fortune, come on. Be reasonable.”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” Malfoy asks, his tone taking on a particularly nasty twist Harry recognises from school. “Potter’s a secret millionaire. He could afford to get a taxi everywhere if he pleases.”

“Hang on... that’s not exactly true,” Harry offers weakly, still standing in the doorway like a spare part, like everyone here has woken up to the fact he doesn’t belong.

Only, Carlo is shaking his head, and he lets go of Andrew to stand, placing both strong hands on Harry’s shoulders. “You’re staying,” he says firmly. “Do not listen to Draco, he is a bear with a headache tonight.”

“Like a bear with a sore head,” Malfoy sighs. He rolls his eyes, pointing his gaze at the ceiling. “Fine. Stay. I’m fine. I…” He breathes in slowly through his nose. “I’m absolutely fine.”

Ollie leaves not long after that, rolling into a taxi home across town, and Andrew disappears with Carlo upstairs after Malfoy drags down some bedding from his room.

“No sleepover on your floor tonight?” Harry teases in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood, because—honestly, what’s he even done? Malfoy’s acting like a right prick for no bloody reason.

 “No thank you,” Malfoy says lightly, smiling. He shoves a folded duvet into Harry’s arms. “You know where the bathroom is.”

And with that, he leaves Harry alone in the living room with a sleeping stranger, surrounded by empty glasses, shoes that aren’t his, and Malfoy’s pack of cigarettes on the cluttered coffee table.

_____

When Harry wakes up, a middle-aged man is pushing a bicycle through the living room.

Their eyes meet, lock in place.

“Sorry,” Alan mouths, stabbing a finger in the air at the frosted glass door leading into the hallway. “I’ll…”

Harry nods, running a hand over his forehead, pushing his hair back from his eyes. Alan pushes his bike out the room, and a few minutes later, Harry hears the front door swing open and close again with a gentle click.

The pale morning light is streaming in through the bay window, hitting Harry’s side of the room, blinding him. Paul is still asleep on the other sofa, curled onto his side, snoring gently, a lump under the moss knit blanket.

Harry’s mouth tastes like death and cotton wool. He smacks his lips, suddenly overwhelmingly thirsty and hot.

“Paul,” he hisses after retrieving his glasses from the floor.

Paul moans.

“Psst. Paul?”

Paul shuffles under the blanket. He starts snoring again, a low whistling sound like a train coming into the station.

Harry delicately peels himself off the couch, clutching his head. The trip upstairs is a short one, but his vision is tunnelling and his stomach is churning, and by the time he makes it to the bathroom he’s on his hands and knees on the hard tiles, head just making it into the toilet bowl in time, stomach cramping as he expels last night’s ten quid cocktails and the pint of water he’d forced himself to guzzle before bedding down. It’s grim.

He splashes his face with cold water and duly ignores his reflection, instead skulking out and padding his way down the hallway until he gets to Malfoy’s room.

He bursts through the door without knocking.

Malfoy’s not there.

The bed is neatly made, the curtains pulled back.

It smells of citrus cologne and deodorant and nothing like the foul hangover seeping from every pore in Harry’s body.

Harry glances at the alarm clock on Malfoy’s bedside table.

“Shit,” he hisses. “Shit—fuck.” He’s late for work, and Malfoy’s already at work, and the selfish dickhead didn’t even think to wake up Harry on his way out, and Harry—Harry is nowhere near any sort of hangover potion, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that smells of sweaty nightclub and cigarettes, and he’s late, he’s so fucking late.

“Fuck it,” he mutters, wrenching open Malfoy’s wardrobe with purpose, ignoring the whistling in his ears and the sicky taste in the back of his throat. He rifles through Malfoy’s clothes, retrieving a clean black t-shirt that he swaps for his own.

He Apparates from there, landing in the Ministry atrium with a pop and a banging headache. He curls a fist over his mouth, quick-steps it to the lifts, curls flying.

Harry bowls into the office, making a beeline for his desk. He pulls out all his drawers until he finds it: the handy little phial of Hanging Bat he’d left there for future Harry to use should he get too jolly at a work do.

“Where the fuck have you been, Potter?” Smith hisses.

Harry sits down heavily, pops the stopper, and just as he’s about to tip the green, viscous contents into his mouth, MacCrum steps through the door.

“Potter,” he barks. He hesitates. “What on earth is that all over your face?”

“My…?” Harry carefully presses a finger to his cheek. He spins in his chair, peering at the copper paperweight on his desk. His murky, bulbous reflection stares back at him: sweaty, grey-skinned, frizzy haired. Covered in silver glitter.

Fuck.

“Can I see you in my office?” MacCrum asks after a beat. He waves a hand, pity and disgust bleeding into his expression. “Once you’ve… done what you need to do.”

Harry swallows. “Er. Yeah. I’ll be there in just a minute.”

Smith shakes his head and turns back to his work. “Sort yourself out, Potter. You smell like a fucking fag end.”

“You’re late,” MacCrum says five minutes later. 

Harry is sitting on the chair across from MacCrum’s desk. He’s clearer-headed, cleaner-skinned, but embarrassment sits in the pit of his stomach like a stone, heavy and unbudgeable. 

MacCrum’s office is smaller than the room he and Smith work in, but the ceilings are taller, the walls encased in solid walnut panelling, the window behind the desk arched like a cathedral door, its stained glass figures playing a never-ending game of Quidditch over the rolling hills of Scotland. Above their heads, memos and paperwork float around, vying for MacCrum’s attention. He bats them away, frowning at Harry, stern and resolute.

“You’re almost an hour late, Potter. What happened?”

“I slept in, I’m sorry,” Harry says quietly. “It won’t happen again.”

“No,” MacCrum agrees. “I mean, it’s not a punishable offence, Potter, we all fuck up. But certain patterns of behaviour are noticeable after a while, aren’t they? They become habits. Bad ones, that impact your work and reputation. Your team, your department. You’re very visible, you know that?”

Harry swallows. “Yes,” he breathes.

MacCrum leans forward on the desk. “I’ve had a memo about the Wixen Pro-Chess Cup sitting on your desk for over a fortnight. You haven’t touched it.”

“Wait, I… really?”

MacCrum nods. “Really. Smith’s picked it up now, so we’re not going to miss the deadline, but—Potter. You have to tell me if your workload is getting too much for you.”

It’s not. It’s never been too much. It’s too easy, and too boring, and too of little consequence.

“You’re going to miss out on this promotion if you don’t buck up your ideas, Potter.”

 MacCrum sends him away after that, but not before an awkward, fatherly squeeze of his shoulder. “I believe in you,” he says, like he means it.

_____

Ravenscroft Park is quiet. 

It’s dinner time, warm outside, and Harry is sitting on a park bench eating a box of chips and nuggets from Chicken Cottage, reading a book he picked up from Oxfam on the way home from work.

He glances periodically at his phone, unable to help himself, but there’s nothing new from Malfoy after his invitation to Brighton yesterday.

Wiping his fingers on a clean napkin, Harry looks up when a lady chatting loudly on her mobile walking her French bulldog strolls by. He frowns.

Did I do something last night?

He hits send before he can change his mind.

The reply comes instantly.

Yes. You did lots of things last night. We all do things, all the time. It’s what happens when you’re alive.

“Alright, smartarse,” Harry mutters.

But did I do anything to upset you? U seemed angry

I’m not angry.

Harry laughs dryly. “Yes, you fucking are.”

Alright fine. Hey guess what

Harry stares at the lack of response for two minutes, then decides to fill the proverbial silence.

I just saw a v cute dog

Okay.

“Why are you being a dick?” 

Is it because Harry got so drunk? Is it because he stayed over without asking for permission first? Is it—

No. It can’t be because of Ollie. Malfoy wouldn’t have known, and besides, what’s the big deal? So they had a little drunken kiss or two. It’s—it’s fine.

Harry groans, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, forced to relive the moment Ollie’s mouth came searching for his own in a full blown snog. 

The way his body had reacted, as if waking up from—Harry’s not sure, but that’s what it felt like.

Waking up.

He shoves his phone back into his pocket. 

It must be because he stayed over. It must.

He needs to do something nice for Malfoy to make up for it. He can’t stop going back to Brighton. He can’t. He can’t stop being Malfoy’s friend, not now, not after everything he’s shown him, not now Harry knows a world where it feels safe to do what he wants to do and not get punished for it.

_____

“I’m sorry, are you saying you know where Draco is or not?” 

Theodore Nott’s eyes are large, hazel green. His words are fast and impatient and a little breathless, and the hands around his cup of tea tighten, his knuckles turning white.

The Cambridge cafe is busy, humid. It overlooks Mill Pond,  rich students floating by on punts on the sparkling water. 

Theodore—“call me Theo, please,”—is more handsome than Harry remembers. He has a square cut jaw and a head full of thick brown hair, warm olive skin, a straight nose, broad shoulders. Beneath his white cable knit vest, his body is athletic, solid.

“I—yes,” Harry admits softly.

They’ve been here for twenty minutes, nervously poking around the topic, drinking coffee and picking at scones. Theo had replied to Harry’s Owl right away when he asked him if he wanted to meet, if they could talk about Malfoy over coffee and, maybe catch up, if you’re up for it?

“Where?” Theo says, his gaze sweeping quickly over Harry. “When? Is he alright?”

“You don’t know?” Harry ventures.

“I don’t know what?” Theo asks him, his voice edged with irritation.

“I just mean… he hasn’t kept in touch?”

Harry knows Malfoy hasn’t, but he wants to hear it from Theo.

“No,” Theo breathes. “I haven’t seen or heard from him in years, not since…” He trails off. Stares at the stiff cuff of his pale blue Oxford, nervous fingers twiddling with the shiny gold cufflink.

“Where is he?” he asks again.

“Brighton.”

Theo blinks. “Brighton? What on earth is he doing down there?”

Harry shrugs. “Working. Living his life.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Theo groans, pinching his forehead. He looks at Harry through the gaps in his fingers. A gold signet ring winks at Harry from Theo’s pinkie. “You know, all the times he said… I never actually thought he’d go through…” He sighs, cutting himself off. “He’s with Muggles?”

Harry nods. “Look. I know it’s a lot. Took me a while to get my head around the whole thing too, believe me, but—he seems really happy, Theo. Only, I think he misses his friends. He does stuff that reminds him of all of you and—I don’t know. I think right now he might benefit from a catch up. From a reunion of sorts so you all can, I don’t know. Reconnect. Or get some closure, either way—”

“Excuse me, but why do you give a shit exactly?” Theo asks, one dark eyebrow raised.

It’s a fair question. And Harry’s been battling with it ever since he asked Justin.

Why does he give a shit?

“I’ve spent the past few months getting to know Malfoy,” he says quietly, poking at a fallen packet of sugar on the pristine white tablecloth. “And—”

“And yet you still call him Malfoy,” Theo cuts in flatly. “Like you’re both fourteen.”

“Valid point,” Harry whispers. He starts again. “I’ve spent the past few months getting to know Draco. And we’ve grown close to each other—”

Theo laughs. Loud, essentially cutting Harry off again. He shakes his head, stares at Harry in disbelief. “Of course. I should have seen this coming! It’s all he ever wanted, isn’t it? And whatever Draco wants, he gets. The two of you…”

Harry frowns, backpedalling, and—

“No! No, no we’re not—we’re not…” His heart jumps into his throat. 

It’s all he ever wanted.

“We’re just friends.”

Theo’s dubious expression doesn’t budge.

“We’re just friends,” Harry says again. “And—he’s doing really well down there, Theo. He’s got so much going on and—” he frowns, “yeah, okay, maybe he’s not exactly in his dream career, but he’s got tons of hobbies and interests and friends but—”

“What do you want from me, Potter?” Theo’s voice is weaker, his expression slack. 

Harry just throws it out there. Nothing to lose, now. “I think it’d be nice if you came down with me to visit him some time. And the others. Only, you’re the only one I’ve been able to reach. Apparently Blaise and Pansy are in France now?”

“Pansy is in France, Blaise and Daphne are in Italy,” Theo says.

“Yes! Right! And I can’t Owl them because it’s international and I need their exact home address and…”

“I can reach out to them,” Theo says softly. “I’ll reach out to them. Pansy will be—well, she’ll be shocked. And upset, and probably very angry too. But she’ll want to see him.”

Harry nods. “I’m sure Draco will feel the same way. I know he will.”

“He was never the same, you know,” Theo says quietly. “After the war. After Vince and Greg. Then after everything with his parents…”

“What happened?” Harry asks.

“He was engaged to be married. To Astoria Greengrass, Daphne’s sister?” Harry nods, vaguely recalling her from school. “But he refused to do it. He fought back against them, and there wasn’t a lot they could do, given their legal situation, their political reputation. Draco took that as his chance, and—he left. Which is what he should have done, I’m not arguing with that. He had to get away. But when he left, it’s like he disappeared.”

Harry swallows hard.

Theo glances out the window. A punt floats by on the water, its inhabitants laughing loudly, the sound muffled through the glass.

“I don’t know him anymore,” Theo murmurs. 

Chapter Text

After two more nights of incessant texting, Draco finally gives in to Potter. 

It’s petty, holding a grudge. Draco knows this, but he’s fantastic at holding grudges, it’s one of his greatest and most satisfying vices, but—

Potter’s like a fucking kicked puppy when he’s down. It’s hard to remain withdrawn from him, angry with him, when he will literally spend every night texting Draco tedious tidbits of information from his life. 

It’s how Draco finds himself traversing a seven kilometre circular trail in West Yorkshire at three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon.

Potter is flicking through a small guidebook, rucksack on, knobby knees out, wild curls pinned back with a thin black elastic hairband Muggle football players favour on the pitch. He looks equally awful and good enough to eat, and Draco is sick to death of battling the two conflicting sentiments.

“Nearest pub’s about half an hour away,” Potter says.

The trail’s soil is bumpy underfoot, cracked from a dry summer, the grass patchy and discoloured. The moors around them remain green and lush though, stretching for miles, bordered by handsome oak trees and working farms full of baaing sheep. 

It’d been Potter’s idea, the hike.

 “I think we should meet on mutual ground,” he’d said when he called Draco last night, their first ever phone conversation. His voice had tickled against Draco’s ear like a touch, and Draco is ashamed of the way his body had reacted to it—the instant rush of arousal and heat.

“Why, do you have something to confess?” had been Draco’s murmured reply.

“No,” Potter had said. “Don’t be daft, Draco.”

Draco.

That’s a new development.

After ringing off, Draco had taken a bath. He’d stared at the ceiling’s cracked plaster, idly playing with himself under the water, thinking about the fresh smell of Potter’s sweat as he pressed up against him in the club, about the way he’d leaned into Draco, smiled at him, trusting and joyful. Authentic.

 And then Potter had gone and fucked it all up by disappearing with Ollie, and Draco has no proof anything happened between them, but he’s still furious.

Mostly at Ollie now, more than Potter.

Ollie doesn’t deserve to be Potter’s long awaited gay awakening. He’s not good enough.

Back on the trail, Draco looks straight ahead at the approaching field, at the sheep grazing close to the old stone wall. The earth cracks in two, water sparkling between the rocks in the late afternoon sun.

“Let’s head up this way first,” he suggests, pointing. “Check your book. I think it might be the Brontë Waterfall.”

“I think you’re right,” Potter says, turning the map in his hands. 

“If we keep east, we’ll make it to Haworth, it’s where the Brontë sisters lived,” Draco says, picking up the pace a bit, adjusting the straps of his rucksack, retying his hair. He pauses, thoughtful. “And worked. And died. It’s all rather tragic, really.”

Potter wipes his forearm across his forehead, placing both hands against his hips. The breeze ruffles his t-shirt, highlighting the strong lines and lean muscles of his chest. “How far?”

“It’s about another hour,” Draco says, tearing his eyes away. “But it’ll be worth it.”

“This is the Brontë trail,” he babbles some ten minutes later when they’re climbing over the dry, dusty stone bridges over the water, following the path up the farmland, a steady incline. His voice is tight, a little breathless. He’s loathe to quit smoking, but perhaps this is his sign. “Behind us is Top Withons, a farmhouse, which many scholars believe was the inspiration for Wuthering Heights. And in Haworth, there’s the Parsonage Museum, which is essentially the house where their father raised them. And their brother, the often forgotten Branwell Brontë, who unfortunately died believing he wasn’t worth much at all.”

They’ve made it to the crossroads a mile outside Haworth, both slightly out of puff and sweating.

“What happened to him?” Potter asks.

“What happened to most people during that day and age? He died of tuberculosis.”

“Grim.”

“Yep.”

“What made him think he wasn’t worth anything?” Potter asks. They cross the road together. They are higher up now than ever before, farmland stretching out for miles beneath a near perfectly blue sky.

“Well, he was skilled in many things,” Draco says. “Poetry. Art. Prose. But he became very ill, towards the end. Addiction. He left a lot of work unfinished. I think one of the last things he said was: in all my past life, I have done nothing either great or good.” Draco swallows, his pace steady and purposeful. “I don’t know why, but that quote’s always stuck with me.”

Potter reaches out to pat his arm, but his touch becomes a squeeze, his fingers lingering over Draco’s forearm before slipping away again.

“Come on, not far now,” Draco says softly, urging them onward, hiding a small smile.

_____

“Okay, I actually do have something to confess,” Potter says sheepishly, joining Draco at the table, plonking down two overflowing pints of pale ale.

The pub is situated on the steep, cobbled Main Street, a traditional inn with local beers on tap and an extensive Sunday lunch menu, hardwood floors and walnut furniture, an unlit hearth and dark walls covered in dreamy moorland watercolours.

Draco drags his glass towards himself, staring at Potter, his stomach teeming with butterflies. He definitely hates himself a bit for that, but he soldiers on, mastering a straight face.“Oh?” he asks.

Potter presses the tip of his finger into a deep groove on the table, staring at it intently. “Yeaaah… it’s not great,” he says at length.

Well, so much for Potter confessing his undying lust.

Draco frowns. “What is it?”

“Well, maybe it is great,” Potter chunters on, squirming in his seat. “I think it’s great. I mean, I think it could be great! I think it could be amazing for you, but, you might not think so right away, you see, it might take a while to bed in—”

“Jesus Christ and Merlin in a bed, Potter,” Draco snaps. “I’m growing greys here. Get on with it. What’s your confession?”

Potter pauses. “Your entire head is grey.”

Draco chokes on his beer. “My hair is not grey, you arsehole,” he says crisply once he’s found his voice. He dabs his mouth with a napkin. “It’s ash-blond.”

Potter grins. “It’s white.”

“It’s blond. Silvery blond.”

“Yeah, it’s silver alright.” Potter is properly laughing now, dimples on show, green eyes watery. “Who the hell has white, silvery blond hair?”

“It’s in my genes, you mannerless fuckwit.” 

Draco, scowling, touches the top of his head self-consciously, but Potter reaches out to him, pressing a warm hand to his forearm.

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” he says through giggles, his thumb brushing the sharp bone of Draco’s wrist. “You have great hair. I love your hair.”

They stare at each other for a beat, Potter’s hand still wrapped around Draco’s arm. Warm, solid.

Draco clears his throat. “Wish I could return the sentiment,” he says roughly.

Potter pulls back. Grins. “Git.”

“Knob.”

“Tosser.”

“Bellend.” Draco sighs impatiently. “Come on, Potter. What are you so desperate to divulge? You can’t not tell me now, the cat’s out of the bag.”

Potter’s expression sobers immediately. He sits back, and he says, quiet and abashed, “I met Theodore Nott earlier this week. In Cambridge, where he lives.”

It’s a punch to the solar plexus. A physical reaction, the middle of his chest swooping, hollowing out, the breath caught in the back of his throat to join the rapid beat of his heart as decades old memories flood to the fore. His friends, laughing in the common room. Pansy, crying in his bedroom. Theo, lying in the grass of the Manor gardens. Blaise, rolling his eyes at him in the Herbology classroom. Astoria, a small, scared thing by her father’s side.

Faintly, “You—”

Potter nods, quick and nervous. “It’s okay. He’s okay. He just—I can tell he misses you. And he’s worried about you. And he mentioned Pansy—”

“Pansy,” Draco breathes. He leans forward, pinching his temples, and it’s a bit of a shit time for the food to arrive, the waitress awkwardly dropping off his slow roasted lamb shoulder and Potter’s steak pie, the smell of it all turning his stomach.

“Come on, Draco,” Harry pleads, touching his arm again. Draco’s too weak to pull away, but he’s angry at Potter; angry at him for poking around his business without permission, angry at him for knowing where his friends are, angry at him for talking to someone who used to be so dear to Draco but is now a near stranger to him instead.

“Don’t,” Draco says, lifting his hand in Harry’s face. He straightens, face hot, throat sore. “How? And why? Don’t skirt around the truth, Potter.”

“That’s a bit rich, coming from you,” Potter says. He leans forward, lowering his voice. “You pick and choose what to tell me, like, all the time. You still haven’t told me why you really left home. Why you cut all your friends out your life. Like, I get it, you came to Brighton because it’s some sort of gay utopia—” Draco scoffs at this, but Potter carries on, “I only just found out about Goyle —”

Draco inhales sharply.

“Yeah,” Potter says darkly. “Because you don’t talk about him, do you? Or Theo Nott, or Pansy Parkinson, or Blaise Zabini or any of the rest of them. You don’t talk about your parents either, but you will drag me on some weird fortune telling escapade for shits and giggles, and you’re happy to tell me how amazing your life is here with all your cool Muggle hobbies and your shit day job and your pink house and Ruben Nice Knob—”

“Well excuse me for wanting to focus on the life I’ve made myself now! The life that makes me happy!”

They’re drawing looks. Potter shuffles his chair closer to the table, cutlery held tightly in both fists. He lowers his voice again. “Yeah, I get it, your parents are absolutely shit for being homophobic dickheads. Well,” he adds, frowning. “They were shit for a whole lot of other reasons too of course, but—to me, it sounds like your friends liked you, loved you—for you. For just the way you are.”

Draco makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat, but it sounds more like a honk against the sizable lump building up. 

“Spare me your holier than thou, save the world, everybody hold hands in a circle Gryffindor bullshit, Potter.”

“You miss them,” Potter says, firm, matter-of-fact. “And by all means, live your big gay life in Brighton. I see who you are now, I see who you are there and—it’s amazing. But just because you want to close one door, doesn’t mean you have to close them all, you know?”

Draco groans, looking at the ceiling. The lights are swimming, the sunshine streaming in from the dusty old windows warped. 

“Come on,” Potter whispers. He touches the tip of his shoe to the tip of Draco’s beneath the table. “Just—give it a chance. You never know, you might be surprised.”

“Oh, I’m surprised alright,” Draco says weakly. 

“I could bring them to you? Or we could find somewhere neutral?”

Theodore Nott and Pansy Parkinson in Brighton. It would be hilarious, and strange, and miserable, and wonderful.

“I’ll think about it,” Draco whispers. 

Potter nods, sits back, slowly starts deconstructing his pie. Steam wafts as he lifts its pastry lid to fog up his glasses. 

“We lost Greg because he didn’t know how to handle what his parents wanted from him,” Draco says quietly after a beat, his food still untouched. “All that trauma of the war, after the fire… losing Vince. It just became too much. And like my own, his parents wanted him to follow through with tradition, because that’s what we do; we must fulfil roles and duties and keep the sacred name alive. They had a contract going with another pureblood family somewhere out in America, and for some reason, I don’t know because he never talked to any of us about it… he must have felt he had no other way out.”

“That’s fucked up,” Potter breathes after a beat.

Draco picks up his fork. “Quite. But it’s just the way it is.” He clears his throat and begins eating, although everything is a bit tasteless.

“I’m glad you got out,” Potter says softly.

“I had to,” Draco murmurs. 

_____

Draco feels decidedly less shit about the whole situation after some food, and less cross with Potter too, and when they leave the pub together he doesn’t experience any overwhelming urges to strangle him or push him down the cobbled hill, so there’s that.

Potter’s a nosy, meddling git. But his stupidly big heart is in the right place, and he’s done something Draco should have sorted out himself years ago.

The evening is light and balmy. Main Street is lively. Tables spill out onto the road, ice cream shops are open and buzzing. A street performer sings old 1950s Muggle pop songs, standing at the top of the steps outside a vintage shop crowded by rails of tweed jackets and 1930s tea dresses. 

“Look,” Potter says, pointing at an approaching shop window filled with tarot card sets, crystals, new and used books on demonology, forest bathing, dream interpretation. “They do readings! You could get one here.”

Draco grins. “I’d never cheat on Stella. The old swindler.”

Potter grins, turning onto the steep hill, leaning on the old wall, the whole of Yorkshire shining emerald and blue behind his head. “I took tomorrow off, you know. Couldn’t be bothered going into work after a long walk. And—well, just couldn’t be arsed in general.”

“Why are you still there if you’re so miserable?”

“Why do you work on reception at a Muggle hotel?”

“Cheap shot,” Draco says dryly. “You know, Potter. It’s not exactly easy for everyone to do whatever the hell they like.”

Potter thinks about that. “Theo and Pansy and Blaise are doing what they like. I think. I actually don’t know what Blaise does.”

Draco swallows. “What about Pansy?”

“Justin told me she’s teaching in France.”

Draco closes his eyes. Pulls in a deep breath. “France,” he says wistfully. “She always loved it there.”

And then Potter asks him the question again. Extends a leg, gently kicks the toe of his walking boot against Draco’s socked ankle. “Come on. Tell me what you’d really like to do. I wanna know.”

“You want to know everything. You’re worse than some of the old ladies I dance with. You’re a busybody.”

Potter shrugs, grinning his dimply grin.

“Once, I thought I could be a Mind Healer,” Draco blurts before he can stop his tongue. He swallows.

Potter straightens a bit against the wall, his grin softening.“Yeah?”

Draco nods. “I was always interested in puzzles and how things work, you see. But people aren’t puzzles. And I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to help anyone.” He ignores Potter’s frown at this. “And besides, I’m not one for noble professions anyway. I would need something quieter, something solitary.” He clears his throat. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Hypothetically speaking,” Potter repeats seriously.

“You know what’s easier than people?”

“What?”

“Stories. And perhaps that’s a real medicine, right there. It certainly is for me. Getting lost in stories.” He turns to stand by Potter’s side, leaning back against the wall, his rucksack flattening a bit. “I’d run a bookshop. Or better yet, a cinema.”

“You like the cinema?” Potter asks him, surprised.

It had been Draco’s one thing. 

But Potter—damn him.

He’s about the easiest thing to give in to.

Draco nods. “You?” At Potter’s blank expression: “What would you do? Instead of working at the godforsaken Ministry.”

“Walk dogs,” Potter says right away. “Lots of dogs. I love dogs, and I love walking, and that would be me sorted right there.”

Draco snorts, but it comes out a soft breath, a gentle laugh. Their arms are touching, seamed along the forearm, pressed together at the wrist. Intentional. “Yes, I can see that for you.”

“Teddy has a dog too, did I ever tell you?”

Draco shakes his head, an overwhelming pang of grief rippling through his stomach. “What kind of dog?” he asks thickly.

“Big golden retriever. Archie. He’s so happy, like, all the time. And he’ll follow you everywhere you go.”

“Sounds familiar,” Draco says, going for dry, mostly succeeding. 

“I’m not happy all the time.”

“No, you’re grumpy and easily ruffled.”

Potter snorts, jamming his elbow into Draco’s side. Draco grabs it, circling his hands around Potter’s arm, sliding down to grasp Potter’s hand before letting go again. 

They’re both quiet for a while after that, the backs of their fingers gently pressing together, slotting back and forth as they stare ahead wordlessly.

“Andi and Teddy would want to see you, you know,” Potter says eventually. “I know they will.”

“I don’t even know how old Edward is,” Draco says weakly.

“Eleven,” Potter says.

“Gosh. He’ll be starting Hogwarts this year, then?”

Potter nods. Draco chances a look at him. He’s squinting against the sun. “You could come back, you know. You could come back, and it’d all be waiting for you. Andi and Teddy, your friends.” He’s blushing. “I kind of want to kiss you right now.”

Draco’s head whips around. He stares at Potter, at the outline of his profile: the strength of his nose, the cut of his jaw, the curve of his soft lips.

“I can’t come back,” he whispers. “I have a life now, in Brighton.”

“You could have both,” Potter says, finally looking at him. “Plenty of people have both.” He clears his throat, his eyes flitting awkwardly to the side, gaze hovering somewhere over Draco’s shoulder. “Er, did you hear what else I said…?”

Draco licks his lips. 

Of course he heard.

He’s wanted to kiss Harry Potter since the moment he knew what kissing someone meant.

“Let’s get another drink,” he says instead, his heart thrumming wildly behind his breastbone.

_____

Potter is confused but willing when Draco drags him to another picturesque pub back up the top of the hill. They order a bottle of red and grab a picnic bench in the crowded outdoor seating area, Draco choosing to sit alongside Potter instead of across from him. He doesn’t think the locals will appreciate them staring longingly into each other’s eyes here, but he can press their thighs together beneath the table and get away with it, he thinks.

Are you sure, he wants to ask Potter, but instead he fills his glass with a surprisingly steady hand, resting his elbow on the table, his head in his hand, and he listens to Potter chatter away nervously, content to analyse his fidgeting, that terrible habit he has of flitting from one conversation topic to the next without any sort of meaningful segue.

“What?” Potter asks, pausing his long-winded monologue about the difficulty of keeping prayer plants alive, a speech that has somehow come directly following a discussion about their favourite Muggle TV programmes (Potter’s: QI and, more hilariously, Footballer’s Wives; Draco’s: a toss-up between Poirot and Come Dine with Me).

“What?” Draco repeats, grinning.

“You’re smiling at me.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah.” Potter’s lips tug up, one cheek dimpling. He leans in closer. The sun is much lower in the sky now, the old-fashioned lamps lining the street winking to life. There’s one right behind Potter’s head, its orangey glow twinkling through the frizzy gaps in his wild curls. “Have you thought any more about… er… my proposition…”

Draco pushes himself to sit straight. Refills their glasses. “I have,” he says. 

It’s much easier to tease Potter like this rather than focusing on the very real, very sober facts of the matter: Potter’s not long from having his heart broken; he’s navigating this very new, very real and fragile part of himself; he could probably do with some time on his own to figure everything out. 

But Draco is a weak man, and Potter smells of grass and sunshine and red wine, and he’s right there for the taking. 

There, and willing.

“You said you were off tomorrow?” Draco says casually, sipping his wine, looking at Potter over the top of the glass.

“Yeah?”

“Well, I don’t have to be in work until the afternoon. I’ve changed my shifts around this week.” He shrugs. “We could find a room here. Make a proper break of it.”

Potter chokes on a mouthful of Rioja, blushing profusely. 

“Not for that,” Draco says, but he’s smirking. “But—why not, eh? It’s late, we’ve been drinking, we’ll never be able to catch a train now. We could get up early. Go for a walk on the moor in the morning. Talk about… things. Your… proposition.”

“Yeah,” Potter says, immediate, breathy, his pupils dark. “Yeah, alright. Let’s do it.”

Potter is quick to consult his guidebook, circling the hotels and inns in close vicinity, making a plan to start from the top of the Main Street and follow the path down until they reach the last listed guest house in the village. 

They finish their wine, pay their bill. The first three guest houses are full, but the bed and breakfast at the bottom of the road has space, and when the woman behind the desk looks at them, she does so over the top of her glasses, taking in their walking gear, their rosy cheeks. 

“It only has one bed, is that alright loves?”

Potter is quick to tell her yes. He pays upfront.

It’s the uppermost suite, a small double room with a window overlooking the hills and its own white-tiled ensuite. The bed frame is solid oak, open, situated under a tilted roof window, and when they close the door behind themselves the reality of the situation makes them—stall a bit.

They’ve rented a room. Together.

With one bed.

Potter drops his bag onto the armchair by the tea service. Wipes his hands nervously across the thighs of his shorts.

“Do you want to lie down and watch telly for a bit?” he asks. 

They pick open their boot laces, shuck the raincoats from their waists. Draco peels off his socks, climbs onto the bed in his shorts and t-shirt; Potter lies back against the mountain of pillows, wiping his glasses on the bandana around his wrist while Draco tries to work out the complicated science of the remote control point it to the small television atop the dresser on the other side of the room.

There’s an old Muggle film on, with Julie Walters and Michael Caine, and Draco convinces Potter to let them watch that instead of Match of the Day. Potter only puts up a little bit of a fight, and it fizzles completely as the film’s plot unfolds: a young hairdresser, frustrated with her job and her ordinary life, yearning for something more.

“Would you ever go to university? Wixen university, I mean,” Potter asks sleepily, an hour in. 

Draco is now lying on his front with his chin piled atop the down pillows in his arms. Every so often Potter will reach out to brush the back of his knuckles against Draco’s bare ankle. 

Draco turns, looking at Potter over his shoulder. 

Potter’s eyes are closed, his glasses slipping down his nose.

“To do what?”

Potter nudges Draco’s ankle, his eyes opening a slit. “To study.” He yawns loudly. Smacks his lips. “Twat.”

Draco snorts. “What, with all the qualifications I have?”

“You could sit your exams, you know. I’m sure that’s a thing.”

“It’s a thing rewarded to those who weren’t active participants on the wrong side of the war.”

Potter groans, long and loud like a tortured Inferi. “You’re worse than that Michael bloody Caine. So negative.”

Draco sniffs. “I think the word you’re looking for is pragmatic.”

After a beat, Draco rearranges himself on the bed, carefully turning to put the pillows back, gently placing one hand on the headboard above Potter’s head. 

“Potter,” he murmurs softly, hovering over him.

But Potter’s already asleep, his arms limply crossed over his chest, his mouth slack.

Draco sighs, gently picks Potter’s glasses off his face, setting them on the bedside table. He turns off the lamp, then the TV, plunging the room into darkness, and he settles down onto his side of the bed.

_____

Draco’s dreams are wine-fuzzy and peculiar. 

He dreams of a dark forest in Scotland, a woman’s distant sobs carrying on the wind as it slips through the bare branches of winter-shorn trees.

He dreams of playing Quidditch above the lavender fields at Pansy’s great-grandparents’ home in France, Pansy cheating like she always used to, her dark hair whipping into her eyes as she flies alongside him. 

He dreams of being six years-old, of his grandmother’s long-dead dogs scampering around the waxed floors of the Manor, of running away from them because they keep trying to bite his ankles and all he wants to do is dance.

He dreams of the blush-coloured lights of Saints, he dreams they’re in the sky. It’s New Year’s Day, he’s swimming in the frigid English Channel with Potter, drifting further and further from the pier, from the coast.

Potter turns to him and asks, “Are you sure you’re okay here?”

Draco wakes quickly, Potter’s naked, worried eyes fading quickly from memory.

Beside him, Potter sleeps on his side, one knee kicked up, pressed against the outside of Draco’s thigh, his hand flat against the pillows. 

Draco studies Potter’s fingers: his short nails, the nibbled skin around his thumb and index finger, the bony, dry-skinned knuckles, the wand calluses and light dusting of dark hair on the back of his wrist, disappearing beneath his green bandana. 

He lets his gaze wander further, to the line of Potter’s throat, the sharp ridge of his Adam’s apple, the elegant curve of his collarbone where it disappears beneath the collar of his t-shirt. 

The room is hot; Draco doesn’t normally sleep in his clothes like this.

He thinks of what Potter told him, that he normally sleeps in his pants at home, and he wonders if —

—a sudden cool touch swipes across Draco’s forehead, breaking Draco’s sluggish train of thought. It moves slowly, Potter’s arm momentarily blocking the hazy morning light shining in from the window above their heads.

Draco looks up. 

Potter is staring at him across the pillows, his inky black lashes low, his face sleep-soft. His fingers are ticklish, careful, and when they find Draco’s scar, Draco holds his breath.

Potter runs the pad of his thumb from the point of Draco’s chin to the inch just below Draco’s nose where the scar ends; he follows the path, over and over, warmth and shame and hurt swirling deep in the pit of Draco’s stomach. 

Draco opens his mouth but no words come out. 

Potter’s thumb dips to touch the most sensitive, fragile part of Draco’s throat, his fingers splaying across Draco’s jaw, and he says, his voice rough, “I’m sorry—”

—and Draco says, “Don’t—”

—but Potter says “I’m sorry,” again, and Draco kisses him.

He presses into Potter’s space to do it, pushing a hand roughly into Potter’s wild, dark curls, hooking his thumb onto the hinge of Potter’s sharp jaw. Potter’s mouth opens readily, and it’s hot, so hot, and Draco doesn’t care that he tastes like last night’s wine, he doesn’t care that his own body is grotty and unwashed in yesterday’s clothes, because all that matters is the heat of Potter’s mouth and the swipe of his tongue and the immediate arch of his hard, willing body against Draco’s when he kisses him back roughly, moaning from the deepest part of his chest, hands gripping Draco’s arms—

Bzzz. Beep. Bzzz. Beep.

Potter pulls back, breathless, blinking.

Draco’s lips sting from the scrape of Potter’s beard, his heart hammering hard in his chest, the heat between his legs throbbing.

“What—” he mutters, but Potter’s already sitting, patting his hands wildly around the bedding until he finds it: his phone.

“Shit,” Potter says, rubbing his eyes, pushing his glasses on, peering at the screen. He groans. “Shit, I—Draco, I’m sorry,” he says. He looks at Draco sheepishly. “I kind of have to go. Like right now.”

Draco sits up quickly. He ignores the rush of blood, the sicky feeling in the back of his throat. “Go? Go where?”

“Home. London. I’ve—shit,” Potter mutters, climbing awkwardly out of bed, hopping around to find his shoes. He won’t meet Draco’s eyes. “I’ve messed something up and I have to go.”

“Er—alright,” Draco says, swallowing.

“Everything’s paid for,” Potter reminds him.

“I’m not worried about that,” Draco snaps.

“No—I… I know. I’m sorry,” Potter babbles, running a hand through his messy hair. He shoulders his rucksack. Grips his wand in hand and hobbles to the bed. “I’ll text you, alright?” he murmurs, leaning over Draco. He presses a quick peck to Draco’s lips, then another longer, lingering kiss, and with that, he Disapparates, vanishing from the room with a soft pop.

Draco flops back onto the pillows, head spinning, skin burning with flush. He closes his eyes.

“Fuck.”

Chapter Text

Ron’s the one who answers the door.

He does it well before Harry even makes it up the garden path.

“Thank Merlin,” he says on a loud breath, audible from the flower patch. “Mate! Where the fuck’ve you been?”

Harry can hear Hermione’s voice coming from inside the house, calling his name. It’s half-drowned out by a series of sharp, excitable barks.

“Ron,” Harry says breathlessly, stomach tugging uncomfortably from the after-effects of his hasty Apparition, lips burning from a kiss just shared.

The ghost of Draco’s fingers tingle against the back of his head where they’d twisted at the roots of his hair.

Fuck.

They kissed.

They kissed, and now Harry’s here, and Draco is all alone in their hotel room, probably swearing at the ceiling, cursing Harry’s name.

Harry’s not sure what happened, but he didn’t hear his phone go all day yesterday, the large string of last night’s and this morning’s messages left unanswered. 

First, from Dean: Are you still okay to get Bark in the morning? Do you want me to meet you here or I could take him to you?

And, Hope everything’s okay mate, haven’t heard from you in a few days. Anyway, see you tomorrow. Lil B’s looking forward to staying with Uncle H!

Then, missed calls. Messages like, Where are you? from Dean, Padma, Ron.

Harry, are you alright? from Hermione.

Ron’s trying to get hold of you but can’t, what’s going on? from Ginny.

More missed calls.

He’d agreed to it at the dinner party. 

When Padma casually mentioned they were going to Porto the week of their anniversary, that they had Bark booked in at the luxury kennels in Potters Bar, Harry had jumped on the chance with, “Why stay at Potters Bar when he can stay with cool Uncle Harry Potter instead?”, and that had been that.

But then the nightclub in Brighton had happened, and Ollie had happened, and Draco had happened, and Draco had kept happening, and he’d—

“—fucking forgot,” Harry breathes, wiping his clammy forehead with the back of his wrist, clumsily closing the gate. “I completely forgot. Are they…?” 

“They left for the airport about an hour ago,” Ron says, holding the front door open for him.

“Shit, and—”

Ron nods. “I told Dean to bring him here until we got hold of you. Glad you’re still alive,” he says dryly.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Harry says. “My phone must’ve lost signal or something, I was up in Yorkshire, reception’s shit up there…”

Bark runs up to him then, closely followed by Hermione, her dark hair pulled in a low bun, dressed for work in a rust-orange trouser suit. “Harry!”

Harry shakes off his rucksack and crouches, scooping Bark up into his arms. Ron and Hermione exchange worried glances, eyeing Harry closely: the state of his hiking gear, the mess of his hair, his flushed face. 

“Don’t worry, I can take him now,” Harry says. “You’re probably late for work…?”

Hermione checks her watch, twisting it around from the inside of her wrist. She raises an eyebrow. “Yes, but—I’m probably fine to hang back for half an hour. I worked late last night.”

“George is opening up this morning,” Ron says. He frowns. “Come in, mate. Grab a cup of tea. Don’t rush off.”

“Oh, I don’t want to impose—” Harry begins, but Hermione doesn’t give him a choice in the matter, her hands clamping down on his shoulders, dragging him inside and steering him into the living room. 

“We need to talk,” she says, sitting him on the squashy red settee by the overflowing book case.

Ron hovers in the doorway. “Harry, mate, do you want to take a shower first, or…”

Hermione cuts him off with a look and a soft but stern, “Not now, Ronald.”

Ron clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, alright,” he says, and he summons their tea tray into the room, waving his wand casually, letting it do its thing as he sits himself down beside Harry on the settee.

Hermione takes the patchwork armchair, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “What’s going on?”

Harry frowns, feeling suddenly defensive, cornered, holding Bark closer against his chest, a squirming security blanket. His heart starts thudding loudly on the back of his tongue. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not like you to forget something like this,” Hermione points out gently. “It’s not like you to not answer your phone for an entire day.”

“That was—I told you,” he says weakly. “I was in Yorkshire… walking… no signal…”

He thinks of Draco staring at him in bed, just moments ago. The intensity of his eyes: grey, stormy.

The way he had licked into Harry’s mouth, the press of his hard, sinewy body against Harry’s—

Harry swallows hard.

“It’s not just about today, though, is it?” Ron asks. “You’ve been acting weird for well over a month now. It feels like we hardly ever see you anymore. When’s the last time you came to the pub with us on a Saturday? When’s the last time you were here, even?”

Bark wriggles free from Harry’s arms then, jumping onto the floor to lie on his back on the rug.

Hermione reaches out, pressing her hand to Harry’s arm. “We just want to make sure everything’s okay. We know it’s hard, with Ginny gone, but she’ll be back before you know it—”

Harry closes his eyes. Presses his hands to his face. He can still smell the countryside on his skin: the fresh air, the grass, last night’s wine, this morning’s careful touches.

“It’s over,” he says into his palms. He wipes them over his face, scrubbing at his cheeks, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. He blinks wet eyes. Ron and Hermione waver in front of him, watery and blurred. “Me and Gin. We’re over.”

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione whispers.

Ron stays stock-still.

Harry pulls in a ragged breath. “We broke up after the wedding. We didn’t want to worry anyone… your mum…” 

Ron swallows audibly. “Fuck, mate.”

“It’s—we’d been on our way out for a while,” Harry admits, his voice coming out shaky, his hands quivering. Hermione finds his fingers, grasping them, scooting onto the floor in front of him on her knees. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he blabbers. “We’re okay. We’re still really good friends but—but—”

—and he can’t tell them. He can’t betray Ginny, but words spill from his mouth anyway, a stuttered, soggy muddle of truth that’s been lying dormant within him for—months? Years? Forever?

He’s not sure it matters anymore—

“—but I’m gay. I’m sorry I never said anything before, but it’s true, I am, I’m gay, and… and… I don’t really know what to do, it’s all a bit fucked up really, isn’t it? Because I think I’ve always known and I’m sorry for lying, I’m sorry for not—for not being able to figure it out u-until now…”

“Harry,” Hermione says again, but it’s firmer this time, her hands on Harry’s knees.

There’s another hand on him too, wrapped around his arm, strong and solid: Ron’s.

Harry wipes his face again, his fingers coming away wet. He sucks in a snotty breath through his nose, swallowing back against a sore throat. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again. He pushes his glasses back on, peering at his friends through the splotchy lenses. 

“Don’t be sorry,” Ron says firmly. His blue eyes are wide, soft, sincere. “Don’t be fucking sorry—fuck. You’re…? Really?”

Harry nods. Lets out a slow breath. “Really.” He laughs, once, dry and in disbelief. “It’s actually the first time I’ve said it out loud.”

Hermione is smiling at him, warm, gentle. “How does it feel?”

“Weird,” Harry breathes. “But—good, I think. A bit of a weight off.”

She nods. “Good.” She squeezes his knees. “We love you.” She looks at Ron. “Don’t we, Ron?”

“Fuck, course,” Ron says fiercely.

“I was scared to tell you,” Harry admits.

“Why?” Hermione asks.

“Because of Ginny, because… I don’t know. I didn’t want you to—judge me, or worry about me, or not want to hang out with me anymore—”

“Mate,” Ron says. “Shut the fuck up. After everything we’ve been through together? We’re family, you tosser.” 

Harry laughs: ashamed, relieved, elated. 

“Besides,” Ron adds, holding out a hand. “Charlie? My gay brother? Remember him?”

Harry grins through his tears. “How could I forget?”

Ron groans. “Oh, Merlin.”

Harry and Hermione laugh together, and Hermione squeezes onto the settee on Harry’s other side, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. 

“Just as well we went to Brighton for Nev’s stag, eh?” Ron asks after a while, the three of them huddled together in a quiet, warm hug. “That must’ve been really eye-opening for you… all those glitzy gay bars and whatnot…”

“Er, yeah,” Harry says, clearing his throat, bracing himself. “About that.”

They look at him expectantly. Harry’s heart thuds loudly in his chest.

“I’ve been, er. In Brighton. A lot, these past few weeks. Well, ever since June, actually. That’s where I’ve been most weekends.”

Ron’s brow scrunches upwards. “In Brighton?”

Harry nods. “Yeah. In Brighton. With Draco.”

“With Draco?” Ron asks. “Malfoy? With Draco Malfoy? As in… Draco-Draco Malfoy?”

“How many other Dracos do we know?” Hermione asks him dryly.

Ron shrugs helplessly. “I mean… fuck me? Really? Because… you’ve been staying at his hotel, or…?” 

Harry notes the hopeful lift of his tone.

“We’ve been spending time together.”

Ron’s eyes widen.

“Not like that,” Harry adds hastily. He can tell them about this morning another time. Or, perhaps, never. “No—not like that. We’re friends, he’s been… showing me around town. Introducing me to Brighton and his flatmates and… did you know he’s a ballroom dancer? Like a really good one?”

“What?” Ron asks.

“I can see that,” Hermione says, thoughtful, chin in hand.

“And he loves to read, and he’s so fucking rude, guys, still, but fuck—he’s funny. Like, the funniest fucking person I think I’ve ever met, and he’s really into art, and music, and oysters, and Muggle cinema, and he watches bloody Poirot almost every Sunday night, he’s such a posh twat even though he wears skinny jeans now, and—”

Ron and Hermione look at each other again.

Harry bites his tongue. His shoulders deflate. “Yeah,” he whispers. “And I think I might fancy him a little.” 

“Merlin,” Ron breathes.

“I think I might fancy him a lot, actually,” Harry says, correcting himself.

And we kissed. We kissed so much, but not enough, and—I wish I was kissing him right now.

“He’s changed,” he adds quickly, imploringly. “He really has. He’s—good. He has a good life now, but I know he hasn’t forgotten what he’s done, what he said, he—”

Hermione puts her hand over Harry’s. “Is he important to you?”

Harry nods silently.

“Should we meet him?” she asks, ignoring Ron’s little grunt of dissent. 

“Maybe not right now,” Harry admits. “I kind of left him quickly this morning when I realised I forgot to pick up Bark. I think I’ve probably got some making up to do first.”

Hermione nods, her hand sliding off his arm. “We’ll figure it out.” She checks her watch. “I really do need to get to work,” she says. She leans down, kisses his cheek. “Let’s catch up later? Come over for dinner tonight?”

She leaves through the fireplace. Ron glances at the tea service, then at Harry. 

“So,” Ron says slowly, rubbing his chin. “Have you, er… kissed him yet?”

Harry laughs, relief rushing through his chest like a breath of fresh air.

_____

Fuck Draco im so sorry I ran off so fast earlier, I fucked up w friends n forgot I was supposed 2 pick up Bark from Dean 

anyway I’ll spare you my excuses n just say sorry sorry so sorry are u ok? x

You abandoned me earlier to pick up a dog? 

No! It wasnt like that I swear, I promised Id dog sit for them and it just slipped my mind

all my friends were trying to reach me all day yesterday n I didn’t think to check my phone

I suppose because I was having so much fun w you

Oh really?

Yeah :) Did you get home ok?

Yes, fine, thank you. I missed our promised walk on the moor, though.

Maybe we can go back soon. I loved it there

Me too.

So do you forgive me?

I don’t know. You’ll have to grovel to me in person so I can make my mind up. 

Done. This weekend?

You better beg for my forgiveness, Potter.

Don’t threaten me w a good time :)

_____

Zacharias gets the promotion over Harry.

MacCrum sits them down in his office to break the news that Thursday morning, the same morning the coffee machine in the break room explodes, the same morning the brief spell of good weather breaks and London is awash with muggy summer showers again.

Zacharias’s smugness is so barely contained he may as well leap out of his chair and point a finger in Harry’s face while crooning The Winner Takes It All.

Harry can’t really bring himself to care.

“Well?” MacCrum asks them, steepling his fingers, glancing between them. “Any questions? Anything you want to say…?”

He looks at Harry.

Harry raises a hand.

MacCrum clears his throat. Points at him. “Go for it.”

“Yeah, so—what’s the procedure for handing in my notice?”

MacCrum blinks. Zacharias stares at him.

“Beg pardon?” MacCrum asks.

“My notice?” Harry asks. “To leave? Because I want to leave. I quit. Is that how it goes? Is that all I have to say? I’ve never left a job before, so I don’t know—”

“Potter,” Zacharias hisses.

Harry stands, the legs of his chair squeaking against the hard wooden flooring. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave right now,” he says in response to MacCrum’s panicked, gormless stare. “But—just let me know? Because I don’t want to be here anymore. This job really isn’t for me. I don’t think it ever was.” He pulls in a breath. “Thanks for the opportunity, though. And good luck,” he tells Zacharias, backing out the door, turning quickly on his heel, grinning to himself as he glides through the corridor feeling about fifty pounds lighter.

_____

Guess what?

You were dropped on your head as a baby?

I apologise. That was a very tasteless joke, given your childhood. I take it back.

No u don’t, u utter twat

Hm, no, you’re right. You can keep it. Go on then, what?

  I just quit my mother flipping job that’s what

Did you really? 

I did

Good for you, Potter. What are you going to do now?

Fuck knows. Rest for a bit? Look after my plants? Find some dogs to walk?

Very wise, build up your portfolio. 

Potter, actually, before you do any of that - can I ask a favour?

U can

I’ve decided I’d like to see my friends. Perhaps just Pansy, to begin with. And Theo. Can you find out if they’re able to come to Brighton this weekend? With you, I mean. 

I need you there.

Really?

I mean - yeah. Of course. Don’t worry I’ll sort it out for u

See u on Saturday x

_____

“So,” Harry says, running a hand through his damp curls, pulling his glasses off to wipe them on the thigh of his jeans. “How’d you get here?”

They’re in the Grand. The place where it all started.

Late summer rain pelts the terrace’s glass roof, running down the windows, blurring the seafront into a sea of greys and dark blues. The Victorian tea room, by contrast, is warm, dry, elegant. Palm plants and white tablecloths, crystal glasses and shiny silver teapots.

Harry has ditched the shorts and t-shirt for a pair of smarter black jeans and the same maroon shirt he donned the second night of Neville’s stag do. Draco’s gifted leather jacket hangs on the back of his chair.

Across from him, Theo wears a smart linen suit, cream, perfectly pressed. His dark hair is slicked back, his designer stubble shadowed, well tamed. He’s pinching the handle of his tiny espresso cup, eyeing Harry tiredly, whilst Pansy, sitting beside him, looks far more suspicious, looking at Harry down her short nose, clutching her little black handbag against her lap. Her hair is long, black and thick and shiny, her fringe immaculate, her cashmere jumper the same shade of emerald as the room’s plush velvet chairs.

Harry has made every effort to look nice for their meeting, but he still feels like a total slob in comparison to his newfound Slytherin companions.

Pansy lifts a hand, lightly pressing her fingertips to her temple, tilting her head out of the way of any potential eavesdroppers. “Portkey,” she whispers.

“Ah, yeah,” Harry says, glancing at the entrance, willing Draco to materialise. He’s already twenty minutes late. “Makes sense…”

She nods, patting down her hair, touching the stem of her water glass.

“From France?” Harry asks after a beat, but Pansy is saved from the torture of answering any more inane questions—from Harry, at least—when Draco finally, finally sweeps into the room, blond hair darkened  slightly by the rain. 

He’s had it cut. It no longer falls around his jaw and throat, but instead he resembles the Draco Harry knows much better from school: shorter back and sides, length on top that would casually curtain his face a bit more if it weren’t damp. 

Draco would look smart dressed in a bin bag, but somehow, today, he looks smarter. Sharper. Consciously elegant, in a loose white shirt and beige trousers.

Still, Harry is happy to see the proud, silvery wink of his hoop as he gets closer to the table, the way it shines from his lobe.

Pansy is first to stand, her chair legs scraping against the floor. She stares at Draco, and Draco stares back, his gaze occasionally flitting to Theo, who slowly stands with one hand tucked into his pocket.

Consciously casual.

Draco clears his throat, maintaining some distance. “You look stunning,” he says to Pansy, cool, bored, eyes wandering to the middle-distance.

“So do you,” Pansy replies, just as aloof.

No fierce hugs. No tears. 

Not exactly the reunion Harry had been hoping for, but—maybe they just need time to warm up.

Theo looks at him. “You can go now, Potter.”

“But—”

“No,” Draco says, pulling out the chair beside Harry and shaking out a napkin. His fingers are trembling. He sits, dragging the chair closer to the table, and, slowly, Pansy and Theo follow his lead, plonking their bottoms back on their seats.

They exchange a glance.

Harry turns to Draco. “I can go,” he says quietly. “It’s no problem.”

“No,” Draco says again. He drags an empty glass towards himself. He stares at Harry, hard. “Not yet.”

Harry nods silently, heart pattering in his chest. He hasn’t seen Draco since that morning in bed in Haworth, and his lips tingle from the memory of it, from Draco’s warm breath ghosting into his mouth, from the heat of his sleepy body arching up against his own.

Harry blushes, and pours Draco a cup of tea.

Theo stares at him, nostrils flaring.

“Brighton, Draco?” Pansy finally asks. “With—” She looks over her shoulder. The table behind them hosts a group of middle aged women in flowery summer dresses, chatting away to each other about how terrible the weather is. “Really?”

Harry subtly casts a bubble around them to quiet the noise, to keep their own conversations private.

“Muggles?” Pansy asks when she cottons on. “I mean—I don’t have a problem with Muggles—”

Draco snorts.

“—not anymore,” she adds sheepishly. “But this—this is so unlike you, it’s so… I didn’t think you’d settle somewhere with… a pleasure pier and… seagulls. It’s so—”

“Tacky?” Draco offers. He smiles, sharp and shark-like. “Gay? Au contraire, darling, I love it.”

She narrows her eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you think I’d do, Pans? Steal from my parents and run off to the Riviera?”

Harry starts at that, glancing between Pansy’s sudden, sharp blush and Draco’s cruel little smirk.

But then Theo cuts in with a firm, “Hey,” and, “Let’s not, alright? We’re all adults here.”

Pansy looks at her nails. She pushes out her lower lip, just slightly. “We all did what we had to do.”

“Exactly,” Draco says. “But I didn’t just do what I had to do, I did what I wanted.”

“And what do you do, exactly?” Theo asks him. “Here, I mean? How do you survive?”

Draco hesitates for the first time since their conversation started. “I work here,” he says. “In this hotel, on reception.”

Pansy’s jaw drops. Theo blinks.

“Oh, Draco,” Pansy whispers, shocked, mournful, and Harry’s a bit annoyed at that actually, because Draco not exactly loving his job is one thing, but someone else looking down on it or feeling sorry for him is another. It’s not right. 

“Why?” Theo says, flabbergasted. “You could do so much more—”

“He’s really good at it actually,” Harry says, frowning. “And he’s got friends here, who respect him, and who know him and treat him the way he deserves to be treated. And he has regular customers who come to stay here again and again because of how much they love him, do you know how important that is? Like, in your posh, stuck-up little existence? Do you even realise—”

“Alright, Potter,” Draco murmurs. He puts a hand on Harry’s leg. Two spots of colour bloom high on his cheeks. “Harry. It’s alright.”

Harry nods, his vim evaporating under the softness of Draco’s gaze.

“Maybe I could talk to them on my own, now?” Draco suggests. His fingers squeeze over Harry’s thigh. 

Harry can feel Theo’s intense gaze on him again, vexed and burning. Jealous. 

“Okay. Yeah, alright,” Harry says. “I’ll—uh. I’ll go wait outside.”

“It’s raining,” Draco points out. 

“It’s alright, I’ve got a brolly,” Harry says, and with that, he pulls on his jacket, nods at Pansy and Theo, and he leaves the terrace, picking up his wet umbrella from the stand on his way out.

He finds a spot on the promenade across from the hotel, ducking under the shield of his umbrella, leaning against the blue railings. He pats at the newly acquired bulge in the pocket of his jacket, frowning, and when he goes digging inside he laughs, pulling out a battered packet of Silk Cut. Inside, Draco’s plastic blue lighter.

He smokes through three cigarettes, nervous and soggy, eyes on the hotel for what feels like hours but is only half of one when Draco finally emerges, umbrella-less, tall and smart in his nice clothes, his long legs carrying him in a quick jog across the empty road.

Harry lifts his umbrella to accommodate him, and Draco hovers in front of him, suddenly unsure. 

He ducks, eventually, and presses a soft kiss to Harry’s lips. 

Harry’s stomach swoops.

“Thank you,” Draco murmurs. “For doing that.” He wipes a hand over his wet face.

“I hope it wasn’t too torturous.”

“I’ve been through worse.”

“So,” Harry says, tossing his current cigarette to the ground, where it rolls into the drain with a rush of water. “What now?”

“We’re going to meet again. Make something… regular of it,” Draco says, coming in closer, crouching beneath the umbrella enough to settle himself back against the railing along Harry’s side. “Try to repair some of what we’ve lost.”

“Sounds good, Draco.”

Draco hums. Nods. “It’ll take time. A lot of time.”

“But it’ll be worth it.” Harry bites his lip. “I like your hair.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I mean, you could shave it all off and you’d still look really good.”

“I can’t believe I did this for them.”

“It means you care. It means you still care.”

Draco nods silently. Then asks, “Can I see where you live?” His grey eyes, swimming like the choppy sea behind their backs, search Harry’s face. “I’d like to see where you live.”

_____

“There’s a flower market here, on Sundays,” Harry says, pointing at the empty road. They’ve just stepped out of the car park, Harry’s skin still tingling from the Side-Along and the pressure of Draco’s arm around his own. It’s not raining in London like it is down in Brighton, but the dark clouds approaching overhead bring with them the promise of heavy evening showers. “It’s really lovely. The whole road is full of tables and stalls, every kind of flower and plant you could imagine… and it smells really great, too…”

He’s babbling. He can’t help it. His palms are sweating too.

But Draco nods along generously, looking at everything Harry points out, from his favourite pub to the best coffee places, the small park crowded with cheerful green trees and a community garden.

They stop at another pub Harry likes, at the bottom of the park, where the road stretches further down into Shoreditch and the skyline of the city is just visible through the hazy clouds. Inside, it’s all raw wooden floors and teal-green walls covered in mismatched art and vintage mirrors, stools with their leather covers peeling off, tables flanked by benches that look like ripped-out church pews. An upright piano is shoved against the wall by the loos, and there’s a scraggly white dog sitting with its owner around the bar.

Draco smiles at him, and dryly, he says, “I can see why you like it here.”

They order wine to take the edge off, settling at a small, empty table by the window, and as Draco sips slowly at his glass, looking at Harry intensely over the top of it, Harry blurts,

“I like you.”

Draco swallows, slowly setting his wine back down.

“I like you so much that it’s kind of driving me barmy,” Harry goes on. He presses a fingertip to the old and worn beermat beneath his glass, scraping his nail nervously against the furred edge. “Only, I think you might like me too. I think you might feel the same. And it’s not just about wanting to kiss you and—other things. Because god, I really want those other things, like you wouldn’t even believe,” he admits, glancing around furtively before meeting the intensity of Draco’s gaze again. “But it’s about wanting to kiss you, you know. On the regular.” He clears his throat, cheeks burning under Draco’s stare. “Kiss you in bed. Kiss you while holding your hand on the prom, kiss you better when you’re feeling shit, kiss you when you say something mean or shitty the way you do when you’re trying to cover up your feelings which is like, all the time, by the way—”

Draco scoffs, looking down into his drink, his cheeks pink once more—

“—and I know you said you aren’t a relationship kind of person, and to be honest with you, I’m not sure I’m ready for anything totally full-on right now, but—all I know is that, I like you a lot. And you like me. So,” he pulls in a breath, ending his speech, profoundly, with a deeply sighed, “Yeah.”

Draco looks at him. He’s quiet, for a long time he’s quiet, just staring, and Harry can’t take it anymore, so he asks, impatiently,

“So er, what do you think?”

Draco clears his throat. “Yes,” he finally says, and Harry’s chest fills with an intense rush of happiness, satisfaction, and a new kind of jitteriness he doesn’t really know what to do with.

“I have… realised,” Draco says slowly, his own fingers nervously touching the stem of his glass, twisting around and around and around, “for a while now, that my… lusty crush on the Boy Who Lived means a bit more to me than simply wanting to lick your scar and take your clothes off to satisfy my inner teenaged self.”

Harry chokes on a laugh.

Draco shrugs, smiling a bit. “I enjoy your stupid love of dogs and plants and hiking and bloody… flowers.” He sighs. “And while your impulsiveness puts me a little on edge, I—really like how curious you are. By everything. I’ve always sort of been envious of that.”

“But it’s not about envy anymore, is it?” Harry says quietly, itching to reach out, to lace their fingers together across the table.

“No,” Draco hums. “No, it’s not about envy at all.” 

_____

They leave after the one drink. 

Harry digs out his keys, guiding Draco into his flat on the corner, leading him past the crowd of bikes and potted plants on the stairwell to his front door.

Inside, Harry shucks his jacket, wiping his sweaty palms against his shirt, and when Draco excuses himself to use the loo, Harry quickly rearranges the plants in the living room and clears away the empty cereal box from the kitchen counter. 

The flat looks a little different to how it did a few months back. He’s still holding onto most of the furniture, but he’s added a few new pieces: second hand Ercol chairs from the vintage furniture place up on Stoke Newington Church Street, more plants, vases of flowers, new artwork for the walls.

The owl ornament from Brighton takes pride of place on the kitchen windowsill.

“Cup of tea?” Harry asks when Draco reappears from the loo, shoes missing, hair finger-combed off his face. His socks are bright orange. 

“Harry,” Draco says. He points a thumb over his shoulder. “Why do you have a photograph of a dog hanging on the back of your lavatory door?”

Harry grins. “That’s Bark. Isn’t he cute?”

Draco snorts. “You’re unhinged.” 

His shirt is still wet in patches, sheer, sticking to his skin. He comes closer, rounding the kitchen island to stand in front of Harry.

They hover in front of each other for about half a second. Harry’s gaze flits to Draco’s shirt, then his mouth. 

Behind Draco, outside the window, the sky swims with grey clouds, the lightest spittle of rain decorating the glass. He takes Harry’s chin in hand.

Mouth inches from Harry’s, Draco peers into Harry’s eyes. His gaze drops to Harry’s lips.

“What do you want?” he asks. His breath smells of red wine and peppermint mouthwash, the same Harry keeps in his bathroom cabinet. It's warm, and its brush against Harry’s mouth sends a shiver of heat through Harry’s core.

“Everything,” Harry admits, closing his eyes to picture it: Draco, naked in the art studio. Draco, naked in Harry’s kitchen, on his couch, in his bed. Flushed and aroused and begging. Flushed and aroused and demanding. Draco kisses him then, and Harry arches into it, hot and open, murmuring, “Everything,” into his mouth, into his kiss.

They crash together through Harry’s bedroom door, and when Harry presses Draco to the edge of his bed, poised to tip him onto it, he pants, “I’m nervous,” pulling back an inch to look at Draco’s face, holding onto his arms for balance. 

Rain pounds heavier against the windows, bouncing off the outside frames. Thunder rolls in the distance.

Draco’s sharp Adam’s apple bobs up and down the long column of his flushed throat. “Me too,” he says. He licks his lips. Searches Harry’s face. “Have you thought about what you’d like to do? How you’d like to do it…?”

“Oh,” Harry says, blushing, smiling sheepishly. “Yeah. I mean, I might have consulted a few videos.”

Draco chuckles, surprised but warm. “You’ve been watching gay porn?”

Harry grins. “For educational purposes. It’s all very enlightening. Now I know what a bear is. And that I’m not one.”

Draco hums, looking him up and down. “Not that I subscribe to stereotypes but, no…” His gaze is sharp, appreciative. “You’re definitely more of an otter.”

They kiss again, hands all over each other, and Draco is the one to twist away this time, panting against Harry’s cheek. “Harry,” he gasps. “The question…?”

“Right,” Harry groans. “Yeah, right, er… well, everything, is the answer.”

“We can’t do everything in one night.”

“We could try.”

Draco laughs, pressing his face against Harry’s neck. He nips at Harry’s lobe. “How about we start with me sucking your cock?”

Harry shudders, because—yes, he would very much like that, tonight, every night if he can get away with it.

The promise of right now has him scooting back onto the bed, has them both shedding their clothes, and for the first time in his life Harry is naked with another man and it feels right, it feels honest, it feels so fucking good that he’s genuinely terrified he’s going to come too soon and ruin this for both of them.

But Draco is as patient as he is liberal with his kisses, with his touches, stopping when Harry pants it’s too much or to “wait, wait”, clinging to Draco’s arms, their hips moving together in slow, sensuous tandem, Draco’s cock dragging across Harry’s thigh, sticky and warm and hard, Harry’s cock throbbing, dribbling where it presses against Draco’s sharp hip. 

Draco’s whole body is firm, solid; sinewy and slim, hard-edged and unmistakably male. His skin by contrast is soft, warm; salty where Harry tastes it: his neck, his ear, the point of his scarred chin. 

They begin to move again when Harry catches his breath, riding the spaces between each other’s thighs, moaning into each other’s mouths, palms pressing against backs, sides, shoulders, elbows, throats, thighs. When Harry thinks he’s going to come again and pants as much against Draco’s ear, Draco responds by repositioning himself between Harry’s legs, kneeling over him, tilting his head and spitting, long and slow, onto the head of Harry’s twitching cock.

As if pulled by a string from the centre of his chest, Harry bucks upward, letting out a singularly mortifying sound from the back of his throat.

Hands find Draco’s head, his gleaming hair, pushing down, slipping through the strands as Draco sucks him with expert licks and kisses, fingers stroking the parts of Harry his lips can’t quite reach. 

Harry doesn’t last long, coming messily against Draco’s mouth, hips twitching, toes curling, one leg tossed over the bend of Draco’s elbow. He’s sweaty and sticky and hot, spit-wet, skin tingling, head spinning. Draco arches up for another kiss, Harry eating his own taste from his tongue, groaning, pulling Draco’s hair again, satisfaction settling deep in his chest at Draco’s replying moans.

“Sorry,” he mutters between kisses, and Draco laughs, their warm breath mingling. 

“Sorry for what?”

“For coming so fast.”

Draco hums, brushing their lips together, their noses, licking at Harry’s tongue. 

“Just means I get to make you come again.”

He plays with Harry for a while, teasing his sensitive, half-hard dick with gentle touches, rolling his balls, rubbing dry fingertips over Harry’s taint while they watch together as Harry’s body responds steadily, willingly. 

“Do you want to fuck me?” Draco asks him at some point, pressing the words hotly against Harry’s cheek, scraping his teeth gently along Harry’s jaw.

Mindless, Harry nods, toes curled into the messy, sex-rucked bedding.

They start with Draco on top after opening up the new bottle of Durex lube from Harry’s bedside drawer—“perfect glide,” Draco had read off the label with a smirk, before showing Harry how to finger him, lying on his back with his legs open, giggling softly against Harry’s lips as Harry babbled his way through the whole thing, shutting him up with hot kisses when Harry kept asking him if he was alright—Draco rolling a condom onto Harry’s prick, straddling Harry’s hips, using his fingers to guide himself down in a slow, mind-blowing swallow of tight heat.

The bed rocks with their movements; Draco’s hand is wrapped around the headboard, Harry’s hands are on Draco’s waist. After a few minutes of Harry struggling to thrust up harder because the mattress is a bit too soft though, they switch positions, Draco rolling onto his elbows and knees, Harry slipping one foot onto the floor for better purchase.

“Fuck, yes,” Draco gasps, pushing back against him after Harry lines himself up to thrust back in, picking up the same desperate rhythm they started, chasing his second orgasm, desperate to fuck Draco’s first right out of him.

Palms grip hips hard, fingers find gleaming blond hair once more, moans and gasps fill the room and rain splashes, falls hard outside, the light inside Harry’s bedroom turning a murky, gloomy grey. 

Draco comes in long, messy spurts, back arching, cock in hand. He laughs breathlessly, muscles spasming all around Harry’s prick, and that’s all it takes, in the end. 

It’s all it takes as Harry drapes himself over Draco’s sweaty back, as he chases the stars cascading across the back of his eyelids, his orgasm laced with laughter and elation and rightness, the scent of citrus and smoke deep in his lungs.

_____

“Gosh, it really is coming down now, isn’t it?”

“Good golly gosh,” Harry teases, twisting around to punch the pillow behind him into an acceptable fluffiness, scooting back to sit against the head of the bed. “It’s positively pissing down cats and dogs, old chum.”

There’s something about doing something incredibly satisfying—like having sex with a man for the first time, like having sex with Draco Malfoy—that turns Harry into a giddy little shit. He knows this.

He doesn’t care.

Draco narrows his eyes. “Don’t make me break up with you after less than an hour together, Potter.”

They’re taking a tea break. 

Draco had offered to do the honours, rolling out of bed, the sheets cascading off his beautiful naked body, falling away as he padded carefully out of the room and returned some ten minutes later with two steaming mugs of milky tea.

He’s holding both in his hands now, glancing around Harry’s bedroom properly, peering at the artwork on the walls, at the items on the shelves, at the row of plants on the windowsill fogged up by the summer shower. 

Harry arranges himself on the bed, slotting a hand casually behind his head, admiring all the lines of Draco as he moves around without any shame or embarrassment of his body.

“Are we together, then?”

Draco throws him a dry look. “Are you really asking that after your big speech and everything that’s just happened between us?”

“I thought you weren’t a ‘together’ kind of person,” Harry says.

Draco deposits one mug onto the bedside table close to Harry’s elbow, bending forward slightly to do so. He straightens, cupping his own mug in both hands, and he stares out the window thoughtfully, barely hiding a small smile. “We’ll see how it goes.”

“Hey, Draco?”

Draco sighs. “Harry?”

Harry grins. Giggles. “You’ve got a really nice-looking willy.”

“Jesus Merlin,” Draco splutters, laughing. “You need to work on your dirty talk.”

But Harry is still laughing, uncontrollably, and Draco joins in through sips of tea, his shoulders shaking, the silhouette of him growing darker against the window as the storm draws closer.

Eventually, he sets his cup down on the table on the other side of the bed, crawling on top of Harry, taking his wrists, pushing them onto the pillows on either side of Harry’s head.

He kisses him, soft and slow.

“You like my cock?” he whispers, eyes bright.

Harry’s stomach swoops, his dick weakly twitching with renewed interest. He can feel Draco’s erection too, growing against the inside of his thigh. 

Draco rubs his thumbs over the insides of Harry’s wrists.

Harry nods. “I’d like you to fuck me.” He swallows. “I’d really like you to fuck me.”

Draco lets go of Harry’s wrists. Plucks his glasses off his nose. “Can you see?”

Harry laughs. “A bit. Hold on.”

He summons his wand, casting the sight spell he uses for some nights out, for some Ministry events when he wants to look a bit smarter without them. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do.

“Can we do it like this?” Draco murmurs, pushing Harry’s hair back from his forehead, brushing a thumb across the spidered scar tissue trailing up into Harry’s hairline. 

“Yeah,” Harry murmurs, his smile slipping from his lips, his chest twitching with warmth, with nerves, with want.

Draco is moving, minutely, pressing his hip against Harry’s, and Harry realises then that his thighs have fallen open, that they’re opening wider the more and more Draco moves against him in a slow, simulated fuck.

He grips Draco’s back, encouraging it, chasing his mouth for a breathy kiss.

“Hold on,” Draco whispers, laughing again, battling with Harry’s curls as they keep falling into his eyes. He lets go, twisting around to grab the lube and condoms where they left them on the sheets. “Just—you know. Be sensible, Potter,” he says all no-nonsense, his pink cheeks belying his seriousness. “Tell me to stop if it feels horrible.”

“I’m sure it won’t.”

“Don’t speak too soon.”

Draco rubs curiously wet but warm fingers against him, slipping over his balls, brushing against that tight whorl of skin behind them. It feels odd, but not completely awful, and when Draco starts pushing inside, Harry winces against the pressure of it.

“Don’t hold your breath, idiot,” Draco whispers.

Harry lets go in a whoosh. Draco’s finger sinks in to the last knuckle, curls, and Harry arches off the bed with a loud, surprised shout.

Draco groans, curling his finger again. “There? Do you like it there, darling?”

“Fucking hell,” Harry pants, warmth curling around his guts, drawing in to that one, singular point. 

“Lift your leg.”

“Eh? What?” Harry’s head is in the clouds. Full of cotton. Floating.

“Your leg. Here,” Draco murmurs, taking Harry’s hand, hooking it under one knee and encouraging him to keep it in place, close to his chest. “Like that.”

“Oh fuck yeah.” Harry bucks against Draco’s fingers as they pump into him, slow, precise, and when Draco asks him if he’s okay, if he thinks he’s ready for more, he nods, desperate, fingers aching where they hold his leg up.

He listens to the distant rustle of foil, the snap of rubber, and when he feels Draco’s cockhead nudge against his hole, he starts a bit, clinging to Draco’s arm.

“It’s okay,” Draco says. “It’ll feel… not so good at first. But just breathe. Okay? And keep telling me how you feel.”

“I want it,” Harry says, and it’s true, but he’s still wincing, he’s still moaning in discomfort against the initial burn of the tip of Draco’s cock squeezing inside him, pushing in slow until something gives and he’s halfway in.

“Fuck,” Harry gasps at the same time Draco swears and drops his head, sweaty blond hair falling into his eyes.

“Fuck, you can move,” Harry says tightly, and Draco does.

Harry lets go of his leg, clings to Draco’s arms instead, and as they start rocking together, the burning pressure melts away, turning something hotter, a slow build of pleasure Harry starts to feel all the way to his toes.

He lifts his head. Looks down between his legs. Draco’s thrusting hips. His own half-hard cock, dribbling against his hairy stomach.

He groans, dropping his head back against the pillows, and Draco kisses him, stroking his hair, uttering filth into his mouth.

When Harry comes for the third time that night, it’s with Draco’s name on his lips, it’s with Draco spent but moving slowly between Harry’s legs, it’s with his arm squeezed between their bodies, stroking Harry with a firm, wet fist. 

After, they collapse together, Harry’s muscles cramping, singing, his body covered in sweat, the ache between his legs sweet.

“Stay the night?” he whispers into Draco’s hair, and Draco nods, wrapping himself around Harry from behind, chest to back, thigh to thigh, ankles tangled together in the sheets.

_____

“For a rich man, your breakfast choices are woeful,” Draco announces, returning to the bedroom with the cafetière and a plate of toast.

“That’s posh bread!” Harry protests, pulling himself to sit up a bit more against the pillows, the duvet tenting over his knees, offering a perfect platform for the plate. “It’s from Sainsbury’s bakery!”

Draco chuckles, handing Harry the plate and the cafetière and disappearing again to grab the cups from the kitchen. 

He’s in his pants, which is a shame.

“We could go out and grab a proper brunch? There’s some really nice places along the market,” Harry says, nabbing a piece of toast—cut into neat triangles—and biting into it. 

Outside the window, the sun is hazy behind wispy clouds, the smell of petrichor wafting into the room with the light breeze. Draco opened it when they woke up that morning, tangled around each other, naked and too warm. When Draco returned to bed, half-awake and muss-haired, Harry had rolled him onto his back and kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him, and they spent the next few waking hours catching up on some of the ‘everything’ Harry had wanted last night: Draco, carefully fingering Harry into a drawn-out, mind-bending orgasm before turning him onto his stomach to bury his face between his cheeks, eating him out long and slow until he had Harry begging to get fucked again; Harry, getting on his knees in the shower after the fact and giving his first ever blow job, relishing in the tug of Draco’s fingers in his hair and the sounds he’d made as Harry got him off with sloppy, enthusiastic sucks.

Draco hums, licking raspberry jam off his thumb. “We could.” He squints out the window, his expression turning regretful. “I’ve got work later.”

Harry finds his other hand, lacing their fingers together. Squeezing. “That’s okay,” he says. “We can do something again when you’re off. I’m unemployed, remember?” He grins.

Draco snorts, untangling his hand from Harry’s and brushing Harry’s fringe back instead, his fingers lingering there, his thumb brushing along Harry’s scar.

“What I mean is,” Harry says, following Draco’s movements and going a little cross-eyed in the process. “I’m yours whenever you want me.”

Draco smirks. “Is that a fact?”

“Well, yeah, it actually is,” Harry says, grinning. “Oh, actually,” he says, setting their empty plate aside. “I go to Andi and Teddy’s every Friday after work for dinner. Well, I usually do, I’ve not been great at it these past few weeks. Been a bit distracted.”

Draco’s eyes are bright.

“D’you… want to maybe come with? Perhaps next week? Or the week after?”

It’s Draco who finds Harry’s hand this time. He brings it close to his mouth. Kisses the back of Harry’s knuckles.

“Just whenever you’re ready,” Harry adds quickly, conscious of his every breath, of Draco’s every breath. “I think you’d love Norfolk.”

“I’ll let you know,” Draco says, and it’s not a definite yes, but it’s not a definite no either. It’s serious, and a promise, and Harry’s happy with that. Thrilled, even.

He kisses Draco, soft and lingering. “Do you think one day you’ll get your bookshop? Or your cinema?” He wants to say: I want to give you that. I could give you that. Let me give you that, but he doesn’t, because they promised each other they’d take this slow, and Harry will move in mere millimetres if it means getting to keep Draco like this. “And I’ll get to walk dogs?” He tilts his head back on the pillows, smiling wistfully. “We could have that. One day. No like, rush or anything.”

Draco lets out a soft huff of breath through his nose. He chews the toast still clasped in his fingers, thoughtful and slow. “It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?”

Chapter Text

“Saved a bit for you.”

Draco looks up from the proffered plate of iced lemon birthday cake—Edward’s favourite— hastily shoving his cigarettes back into his pocket.

“Oh, don’t worry, your not-so-secret secret’s safe with me.”

Ginny plops down into the empty garden chair beside him, twisting around to look over the row of hedges where the garden party is still very much in full swing. Draco can hear Harry’s voice, mingled in with all the chatter and laughter: his distinct, scratchy chuckle and howling belly-laugh.

In front of them, the hills lead down to Norfolk’s shoreline, the sun twinkling happily above the calm water.

“I’m happy to stick to one vice today,” he says, plucking the fork from the plate and slicing into the cake, icing-side first.

She rolls her eyes at him, folding one leg over the other, idly kicking her foot in the air. Like Harry, she has absolutely no idea how to sit still for more than a few minutes. The pair of them are insufferable together.

“Enjoying the party?” she asks.

Draco hums around a mouthful of cake, covering his mouth with the side of his hand. “Hm—yes.” He squints, swallows, eyeing her cautiously.

Family gatherings are starting to feel less like he’s being ganged up on by the entire Weasley clan—mostly due to their sheer size alone—but Ginny’s an unpredictable one. Impatient. Outspoken. Shrewd.

Draco will never say this out loud, but he’s rather glad she and her girlfriend live in Australia. He doesn’t think he’d be able to entertain her penchant for calling him out on his chronic avoidant bullshit on any sort of regular basis.

“Didn’t see you taking part in pass the parcel,” she says.

“I’m not twelve!”

“Neither’s Harry and he was enjoying himself.”

“He’s mentally twelve.”

Ginny grins. “Very good.”

They nod at each other.

Their camaraderie in gently poking fun at Harry—they’ve got that, at least. 

Harry, who is now Draco’s boyfriend. 

Harry, who Draco has wanted forever, who is now Draco’s in a multitude of ways, so many ways, ways that Draco hadn’t even dreamt of as a boy or as a man, ways that have surprised and delighted and exhausted and thrilled him, ways that have driven him mad with happiness, with frustration, with joy, with an aching, all encompassing fear that will sometimes keep him awake at night, a fear of losing this thing that has come to mean so much more to Draco than anything else in his life ever has.

Ginny reaches for his shirt pocket, wriggling out his pack of cigarettes while he finishes the cake.

“Oi, you cheeky sausage,” Harry says, approaching them from behind the hedges, his hands on his hips. He points at Ginny. “Since when do you smoke?”

“He’ll make a great dad one day,” Ginny says, pointing back at Harry then turning her hand until she’s flipping him the bird.

“Don’t give him ideas,” Draco says dryly, his heart doing somersaults in his chest. “He’s already begging me to jointly adopt a dog.”

“Where would it live?” Draco had asked him over the phone the other night, walking up the hill from work to the pink house in Hanover.

“Joint custody,” Harry had said, his voice thick, like he was eating something.

“But we’re not divorced.”

“Then we’ll just have to live together, won’t we?”

Draco had nearly dropped his phone onto the road, and Harry had laughed down the line at him, telling him to calm down, that he’s not asking him that. Yet.

And Draco had spent the rest of the night randomly smiling to himself, wondering: Brighton or London? Or neither?

Harry leans over them, pressing a quick kiss to Draco’s lips, then another. “Alright, you,” he says, holding out his hand. “You promised me a dance earlier. Don’t think you’re getting out of it, hiding back here. Andi’s getting her records out.”

Draco snorts. Sets the plate down. Allows himself to be dragged to his feet.

“Come on,” Harry murmurs, smiling: dimples, joy, sunshine, the sea behind him sparkling, Norfolk’s shore the perfect picture of spring, with its grassy hills and blossoming  pink thrift and squill. “Everyone’s waiting.”