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Chapter Text

They’d been dating for three weeks and four days when Draco stopped outside the pub, his cheeks pink with wine and his mouth in a set that was too serious for the way they’d laughed inside. All of them had sat around a table together and Harry had been warmed from the inside out. Sometimes he thought magic itself had drawn them all together with invisible threads. Luna and Hermione and Ron and Blaise and Pansy and Theo and Neville—they all orbited each other, stayed close. They’d drawn Draco in, too.

Draco, who had accepted when Harry screwed up his courage three weeks and four days ago and asked him to have a pint. Draco, who still seemed almost unearthly to Harry, he was so beautiful. Draco, who held himself just a little bit apart.

Harry’s breath puffed white as Draco took out a pair of fine, soft gloves. He pulled them onto long, elegant fingers one by one, as if stalling for time. When he lifted his eyes, they caught on a tree nearby. Harry followed his gaze. The tree had been preserved, its trunk surrounded by concrete but not cut down.

An icicle hung from a branch, stiff and cold, glassy in the warm light from the pub.

“You okay?” Harry asked.

Draco slid his hands into his pockets. He met Harry’s eyes, back straight, chin up, and Harry’s stomach sank. A breakup just before the holidays would hurt. Merlin’s bollocks, it would sting.

“As you know,” Draco began, and Harry’s stomach dropped through the sidewalk to the frozen dirt below. “Both of my parents have passed on.”

Harry nodded, his heart crawling back up into his chest, confused and aching. They’d all attended Narcissa’s funeral the past summer. Draco hadn’t shed a single tear. Lucius had died of a broken heart not long after in Azkaban.

“Er. Yes. Of course.” Very bloody smooth.

Draco studied him. Harry couldn’t tell if it was the wine or something else in Draco’s lovely silver-grey eyes.

“There are certain traditions my mother kept around the holidays.” His tone was stiff and glassy, emotion refracted through it like the icicle. “I would—” Draco put one gloved fist to his mouth. His voice hadn’t broken so much as it had snapped off. “I’d like to continue them, if possible.”

Gods. Why had he said yes to the third pint? His brain felt muddled, the way it always did when he looked at Draco. Muddled and hot and utterly foolish. A crisp winter breeze cooled his cheeks, but Harry wished it was Draco’s hands instead. They weren’t there yet, were they? They weren’t at that point in their—in their dating. Relationship. Whatever it was.

“You’ll want space, then?” Harry tried his best to keep his tone jovial. If Draco needed to be alone at this time of year, then the breakup would hurt less. They could try again later. It wasn’t a death knell.

“No, Potter. I don’t want space.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“I would like you to come home with me. To—to stay with me. Through the holidays.” Draco had gone a furious scarlet, his voice cool as ever. “I realise it’s too early in the—it’s far too much of a leap, in terms of—”

“I thought you were breaking up with me,” Harry blurted. “I’d much rather go to yours. With you. Stay—I would stay. You want me to stay the month?”

Draco’s shoulders sagged, ever so slightly. “If it’s not too much of a bother. The last thing I’d want is to put you out.” He said this last bit with an edge to it that Harry recognised from school. A touch of sarcasm, thrown up as a shield. An old habit.

“I’d love to go with you.” Harry stepped forward, intending to take Draco’s hand. Instead, he found himself walking into Draco’s arms. He found Draco turning, Apparating them both away from the pub. He found Draco taking him home.

Chapter Text

Harry left his office at the DMLE the next day with a strange mix of anticipation and trepidation.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been to the Malfoy Manor, where Draco lived and—when he wanted to—worked. He made specialty potions when the mood struck him, or when the right person asked. Otherwise, he was rich. He was a friend, albeit on the fringes of their group. He was at the pub after work as often as he wasn’t.

Harry thought it over while he walked to the big fireplaces near the entrance of the Ministry for Magic. Both of them had felt the effects of their pub drinks last night. They’d gone upstairs without much discussion. Harry had fumbled for a way to ask about a guest bedroom. He’d been over, but never stayed over. Draco had blushed and sputtered and shoved him through the doorway of his own bedroom.

This morning, he’d been waiting with coffee when Harry came down with his Auror robes transfigured into an outfit that wouldn’t make Muggles take notice.

“I’ll start today,” he said. “I’m a day late. She usually started on the—” Draco had stopped abruptly and looked away. When he looked back, Harry saw he’d shuttered away his emotions behind some inner wall. He’d Occluded, quite easily, Harry thought. He’d tried his best when Snape taught him, but it never came naturally. “My mother started on the first. I’ll start today.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Draco had looked at him, a bit sceptical, but Harry had meant it.

He didn’t know what to expect, and so he didn’t spend much time mulling it over. He simply stepped into the nearest open fireplace, shouted the name of the Malfoy Manor, and let the fire take him there.

Harry stepped out of the grate in a small sitting room off the main foyer. Nothing about it seemed to be different.

“That’s fine,” he said to himself, meaning that, too.

It was a quick stroll over to the door of the sitting room.

One step into the foyer, and his jaw dropped open.

He couldn’t bring himself to close it. Harry was a rising star in the Auror department. He was supposed to be in control of his facial expressions in general, but particularly when he encountered surprising situations.

This—

This was shocking.

The foyer was beautiful. It was transformed from its dark, stately baseline to a wintertime paradise. Cream drapes flowed from the ceilings. Oversized snowflakes sparkled in midair, turning slowly next to floating candles. Green holly wound around the main banister.

Lovely. It was lovely. It looked just like something Draco would do. Elegant and coordinated and perfectly suited to the season.

But Draco wasn’t there.

“Hullo?” he called.

There was no answer but for soft music. Christmas carols, humming just loud enough to give an atmosphere but not to overwhelm.

It was more of the same in the hall. The Manor was large enough that eventually Harry might have to send a patronus to find Draco, but there were a few places he’d check first.

Draco was not in the larger sitting room he preferred to lounge in, or the library. He was not in his father’s old office, where he sometimes went to manage the affairs of the estate.

He was not in the dining room.

Harry heard a noise, however, and followed it.

When he came level with the kitchen door, the sight inside stopped him dead.

Draco had both hands braced on either side of the sink, and Harry knew at once that he was crying.

Sobbing.

Silently.

He’d seen it before, and it made his heart beat in a jagged burst.

“Draco,” he said. A new habit. He’d called him Malfoy for so long that it still felt a little dangerous in his mouth.

Draco whirled around, both hands going to his chest. His face was streaked with tears, face flushed. His expression went stony, but tears still leaked out. “Don’t look,” he said.

“At what?”

“At me. Give me a moment. A sodding moment.”

Harry ignored this and went into the kitchen. The island was strewn with bowls. Three trays of gingerbread rested on the countertops. Two more were balanced on the kitchen table.

“Stop. I never—!” Draco kept both hands to his chest as Harry approached. “I said don’t look at me, Potter. I wasn’t finished. I was going to send an owl. I’m not—”

He stopped speaking when Harry folded his arms around him.

Draco was a bit taller, so it wasn’t quite the enveloping embrace Harry wanted to give, but he’d have to sit down for that.

“There,” Harry said. “I’m not looking at you.”

Draco’s chest heaved. It broke Harry’s heart, the way Draco cried. Completely silent. He wanted to know who’d taught him to do that. Wanted to punch that person, in fact. But he suspected it might have been Lucius Malfoy, who could not be punched from beyond the grave.

Harry breathed in. Breathed out. “The foyer’s a masterpiece,” he mentioned. “I had to drag my jaw off the floor. Utterly stunning.”

“No.” Draco’s voice was thick and pained. “There was supposed to be gingerbread. And I couldn’t—” His chest heaved again, that awful, empty jerk. “I couldn’t remember how she did the icing. We did it together when I was small. And now I can’t remember.”

Harry held him for several long moments. Then he turned his head. “Bibsy,” he said.

The most loyal house-elf Harry had ever met popped into the kitchen. Her eyes went wide at the sight of the two of them. Draco had explained early on that their house-elves had always been salaried. It had not been done behind Lucius’s back. Now there was just the one of him, and he didn’t feel he needed an entire staff. Bibsy was it.

“Can you tell us, Bibsy. When Narcissa—when Mistress Malfoy made gingerbread, how did she make the icing?”

“Oh, Mr Potter, it was with a spell,” Bibsy said, her voice tremulous. She lifted her wand, and a recipe book floated down from a shelf near the wine rack. Bibsy flipped it open to the correct page and offered it to Draco.

“Thank you, Bibsy,” Draco said. He had not stopped crying. “That’s all.”

“Master Draco does not want dinner?”

Draco hesitated. “We’ll have dinner in an hour, if that’s all right.”

“Of course it is, Master Draco.” Bibsy turned and disappeared.

Draco looked down at the book, then down at the floor. “This is—well. This is unacceptable. This is—” He straightened, Harry’s hands still on his shoulders. “You’ll want to go now, I imagine. This isn’t what you want for the holidays.”

“Is that what you think?” Harry asked, gently as he could.

Draco gave him a terse nod.

Harry patted his shoulders. “I think you’d better show me that spell.”

He stood in his Auror robes while Draco taught him the spell, hand over hand, and they used their wands to outline the cookies. Draco was excellent at it. Harry was terrible. In the end, they had a massive bowl of gingerbread cookies. Draco carried it out to the foyer with his head held high and placed it on a table that, Harry saw, had been left cleared for the purpose.

Then he stepped back, next to Harry. “This is how it was supposed to be,” he announced. “What do you think?”

Harry gave the foyer another long look. Every detail filled him with awe, like learning he had magic for the first time. “It’s incredible.”

Draco’s face crumpled.

He didn’t protest in the slightest when Harry pulled him into his arms. He dropped his head onto Harry’s shoulder and allowed himself to be held while he cried.

Several minutes later, he lifted his head, wiped at his eyes, and offered Harry a piece of gingerbread.

“Merlin, it’s good,” Harry said, after the first bite. “Have you tried it?”

“No,” Draco said, sounding rather shocked. “Should I?”

Harry went to the bowl, selected a piece shaped like a bell.

He brought it slowly to Draco’s lips and watched him bite down.

Heat surged through him. Utterly inappropriate heat, given how sad Draco was. His breath stuttered as he watched Draco chew.

Their faces were quite close together by the time he swallowed. They’d shared a few pecks after dates, but Harry thought that if Draco let him, he’d push him to the floor and kiss him all night.

“Dinner,” Draco said softly.

“Right,” Harry said. “Have another bite first.”

Draco did.

Chapter End Notes

Today’s Prompt - Gingerbread in a bowl, looking ever so lovely

Chapter Text

Of all the things he’d done in his life, Draco had never been more embarrassed over anything than he was over the situation with Harry.

While Harry was at work at the DMLE, Draco rattled around the Manor, fixing decorations that had been perfect before, baking new gingerbread to replace the still-warm gingerbread under the bowl’s stasis charm, and arguing with himself while singing along with the carols he’d set to play.

“—boughs of holly,” he sang in the library, adding holly to the bookshelves. Little sprays of bright red berries. “Honestly, what were you thinking? You saw a bloody icicle and decided to ask Potter to move in with you. Move in with you. For Christmas traditions. And now—!”

Now they were sleeping in his bedroom, perfectly chaste, side by side. Harry was a hot, restless sleeper, perpetually turning over, and every time he moved, Draco wanted to kiss him.

Properly kiss him, the way he thought Harry was going to when he’d been eating that damned gingerbread. It had tasted so good, the texture even better than he remembered, the flavour of the icing transcendent.

Or perhaps it had been Harry’s huge, green eyes, locked on his mouth while he ate.

“And after that display—! For the love of Merlin. You are making a fool of yourself,” Draco scolded.

He had lunch, then tea, then tea again. Hot embarrassment went down with the tea, but then it bloomed into an almost giddy anticipation before wilting into cold, aching grief.

Merlin, he missed his mother.

He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of the Manor without her. It was not becoming of a Malfoy, to get all weepy and distraught over the natural order of things, but Draco had never thought that the natural order of things applied to his mother. Narcissa had always been there. They had always been close.

And then she had been gone, and he found himself adrift.

So adrift, in fact, that he had allowed the half-joking, heady way they’d started dating to continue until they were…

Here.

Until Harry’s as coming home to the Manor every night.

For two nights, now, anyway, and Draco felt certain he wouldn’t show for the third. Merlin, why would he, after all Draco’s blubbering last night? After the way he’d said dinner instead of kiss me?

And then…he felt equally certain that Harry would show, and the resulting knot of feelings in his chest would crawl up into his throat, and dread would settle into the pit of his gut. He’d make a fool of himself, all over again. He’d burst into tears over something silly, unable to solve the problem himself, and the whole dreadful cycle would repeat.

“Well.” Draco gathered his coat and scarf from the closet near the heart. “You’ve asked him here for traditions, and that’s what he’ll expect.”

He tugged on his coat, his heart pounding, and wrapped his scarf around his neck. Draco sweated underneath both of them. Merlin, fuck, he wasn’t going to show, and then Draco would be standing here by the Floo in his coat and scarf all by himself. His throat went tight and afraid and he lifted his hands to tear it all off.

Before he could, the fire roared in the grate, turning a bright, cheery green, and Harry stepped out into the sitting room. His eyes, a far more delicate colour than the Floo, far more arresting, went wide. “Er—hello. Hi. Am I in your way?”

“No.” Draco dropped his hands. “No, not at all.”

Harry’s brow furrowed. “I feel like I’m interrupting.”

“I was waiting for you,” Draco said, sharper than he intended. “I was waiting for you for the next—the next tradition.”

Harry’s eyes lit up. For a moment, Draco had the distinct sensation he was being teased, being mocked. But there was no such insincerity in Harry’s expression. He looked, for all the world, the way he had when they were first years, all wide-eyed and enchanted with everything.

A small part of Draco backed away. This—this couldn’t be trusted.

The larger part wanted to hold on for dear life.

Harry was still looking at him, expectant. “What is it?”

“It’s outside.”

Draco turned on his heel and led the way out of the sitting room. He headed briskly toward the back of the Manor. Harry jogged to catch up. To walk at his side. Draco stole a glance at him out of the corner of the eye.

“Any hints?” Harry asked. He caught Draco looking and grinned.

That grin nearly took Draco out at the knees. “It’s a walk.” Gods, he hadn’t meant to sound so flat, but something in him felt small, ugly, stricken. “A walk outside, to see—”

If Harry was put off by his tone, he didn’t show it. His eyes stayed bright as Draco pushed open the door onto the wide back porch and went across to the gardens like the season had personally offended him.

At the entrance to the gardens, Draco stopped and raised his wand.

For a moment, the words stuck in his throat. He could hear his mother saying them.

He found his voice. Murmured a charm.

Stars burst to life over the garden. Stars in white and red and green. Tiny, hovering, a cascade of jewels, each one lit from within.

Harry gasped.

Draco took a few steps forward and raised a hand, dragging his fingers through the stars. They swirled around his fingertips, and then all of them were in motion, making patterns out of which Christmas items appeared, gathered together, dispersed into clouds of glowing lights.

For some reason, Draco had planned to say something disparaging, as if to get ahead of Harry’s disinterest. As if to protect himself from the idea that Harry could think this was silly, and his mother’s traditions had been a joke.

But Harry stared up at them as if he’d never seen something so lovely. The colours reflected in his eyes.

“Here,” Draco said instead. “This way.”

He took Harry to a bench deeper into the gardens, where they could sit and stargaze at his mother’s tradition.

Every time Harry picked out a shape, he pointed. “Did you see that? A candy cane.” Or: “Merlin’s beard, that was a perfect tree!” And once: “Did that present just open?”

Draco sat next to him, painfully aware of the heat of his body and the way their thighs pressed together lightly. Like Harry did not mind the contact. He made no move to push away. His arm brushed Draco’s with every delighted point.

After a while, he dropped his hand. It was a casual movement, yes, but instead of landing on his own thigh, Harry’s palm landed on the back of Draco’s hand. He squeezed at his fingers. Draco couldn’t breathe. They had seen each other two or three times a week for the last three weeks.

This was the first time they’d held hands.

“Did you…” Harry kept his eyes on the stars. “Did you come out here with your mum?”

Draco had been handling it very well, thank you, but his eyes burned abruptly. He sat quite still, blinking, until he felt he could speak. “Yes, every year.”

Harry huffed out a little breath. “I’m so sorry. Y’know. That you couldn’t be with her this year. You must have been looking forward to it.”

“I was,” Draco said.

Harry’s hand went tighter on his. “If—” He swallowed hard enough for Draco to hear it. “If you’d rather not be here with me—if you’ve changed your mind about me being here—I wouldn’t—of course, I wouldn’t take it—”

“I’m mortified,” Draco announced.

A few beats of silence. “What?”

“I made an arse of myself last night. I thought for certain you’d be the one who wanted out.”

“You didn’t, Malfoy,” Harry said. He’d been trying out Draco, now and then, and Draco knew he didn’t intend this Malfoy to distance them. Harry intended, in his way, to show him that he still thought of him as a person unbroken enough to be called by his last name. But then: “You really didn’t, Draco. I don’t want you to think that.”

“I asked you to move in with me for the holidays. You must know, Potter, that is not a rational act.”

Harry shrugged, his fingers lacing through Draco’s in a way that was familiar enough to break Draco’s heart. “You have a bloody massive house. I don’t like to be alone when it’s so cold, either.”

“This isn’t some kind of proposal,” Draco heard himself say. “If I’ve given the impression—we’re still dating.”

He felt, rather than saw, Harry smile. “Not roommates, then?”

“I don’t take roommates,” Draco scoffed. “Ghastly habit for people without any money.”

Harry was quiet for so long that Draco was finally forced to look at him.

He was watching the stars swirling above them, his eyes widening every so often.

They were dating, Draco told himself. Nothing more.

Chapter Text

Draco thought Harry might watch the stars all night.

As it stood, Bibsy was the reason they went in.

After two and a half hours, the house-elf tromped out into the snow in a pair of boots that went up past her knees and told them dinner was ready. And Harry—Harry, who had always looked too thin at school to Draco, had hesitated. Seemed to realise he was holding Draco’s hand in a rather familiar way.

But he didn’t let go.

Not until Draco cleared his throat and said, “Of course, Bibsy, we’ll come in.” He wasn’t going to let Harry starve on account of some Christmas decorations. Still, he saw the downward tilt of Harry’s mouth when they stood up. His hand dropped slowly away from Draco’s.

“They don’t disappear after only one night, Potter.” Draco meant to be light and jovial about this, but it came out rather serious, and anyway, the disappointed line at Harry’s mouth relaxed.

They had a quiet dinner together. Afterward, they sat by the fire until Harry yawned, a large, impolite thing, and Draco insisted they go up to bed.

He did not kiss Harry.

Now, as Harry tossed and turned and made the bed into a furnace, Draco lay very still, regretting it.

He had just begun to doze off despite the constant rustling of the blankets when Harry made a sound that was so strangled, so pained, that Draco thought it couldn’t be real.

Halfway into a dream himself, he tried to turn away from the sound.

It happened again.

Then Harry wasn’t tossing, not anymore, he was bolt upright, scrambling in the covers. He shouted once, wordless, and then: “No.”

Draco sat up, heart racing. “Potter.”

No answer. The frantic search through the sheets continued until Harry whipped around with a cry, his fingers clumsy on the bedside table.

His wand stayed just out of reach, a few inches beyond him.

Draco reached for him, feeling very much like he was reaching into a fire, feeling very much like his heart was going to pound out of his chest, and touched his arm. “Harry.”

Harry’s head swung around, his eyes wide and blind. He was trembling underneath Draco’s hand. Another strangled gasp.

“It’s me.” Merlin, what good would that do? “It’s Draco.” Gods. As if that would help. A former Death Eater, comforting the Boy Who Lived by announcing himself. “You’re at the Manor. You’re having a bit of a dream.”

A nightmare, but who wanted to say that out loud?

Harry trembled, silent. Draco braced himself for a scream.

He gasped in a breath instead, his eyes finally settling on Draco’s face, and the air came out of him in a rush that could be a sob. “Oh, God.”

Harry turned away and swung his legs over the side of the bed. His hands rushed through his hair, as wild and unruly as ever, and then he covered his face.

The next sound was a sob.

This had Draco out of the covers and at his side, the fact of their not-relationship be damned. He put an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” he found himself saying. “Just a dream. All over now. I’m here, and I’m awake, so I know it’s over.”

It was not something Draco had ever said to another person, not once in his life. They came so easily because they had been said to him, by his mother. The sound of her voice was soft in his head. As soft as her touch had been when she stroked his hair. Draco’s throat balled up tight, then tighter, the knot going down to his chest.

“Oh, God.” It didn’t seem to be letting up. Harry’s nails dug into his forehead. Draco pulled them away to a string of curses. In the moonlight, Harry’s face shone with tears. He shook harder.

“Let’s take a walk.” Draco stood, pulling Harry off the bed with him. Harry leaned against Draco, shirtless in his pyjama bottoms, still crying. “Come, now. It’s after midnight. I’ll show you something. It was meant for tomorrow, but it is tomorrow, isn’t it?”

He kept up this running dialogue, broken by sobs Harry was attempting to muffle, all the way down to his favourite sitting room. Draco stopped at a table by the window and pulled Harry close, his arm around his waist. The proper thing to do would be to let go.

Draco didn’t.

“It’s—” Harry’s voice was thick with tears and sleep. “It’s a table. What—”

A wave of his want, and the disillusionment charm vanished, revealing what lay beneath.

“Oh,” Harry said. “Oh, that’s—”

He leaned in, tears still running down his cheeks, but the lights from the terrarium village caught in his eyes. Harry lifted the back of his wrist to his face and did his best to swipe at the tears.

It was ineffective.

“A winter village.” Draco kept his arm around Harry’s waist, and they both looked at the scene kept under glass. Snow fell gently on tiny trees. A train ran through a tunnel. Lights in small houses and shops glowed gently. “It’ll start decorating itself for Christmas now that I’ve woken it. A tree in the square, and tinsel, and—”

“That’s lovely,” Harry whispered.

They watched the village together for quite some time. It was spelled for the nighttime, so no one was about, but in the morning, tiny figures would come to skate on the frozen pond. A group of children would ride toy brooms through the street.

Harry did not pull away.

Draco spread his hand over Harry’s back, and Harry sighed, leaning in closer. He had bags under his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry about all this.”

“Is it—” Well, if couldn’t ask now, when could he? “Was it the war?”

Harry rubbed a hand over his face. “No.”

“Ah.”

Another long silence. A streetlamp in the miniature village flickered on.

“I made a mistake,” Harry admitted.

Draco waited. The correct question was likely whether Harry needed to go home. Whether this was the mistake. He couldn’t bring himself to ask it. He rubbed his hand over Harry’s back instead.

“I shouldn’t have become an Auror.”

“What?” That was…not what Draco had expected.”

“I hate it.” Harry’s voice cracked. “Every time a spell comes at me, I think—” He looked harder at the Christmas village, blinking again. “You’ll think I’m a coward.”

“If anyone’s a coward, it isn’t you, Potter.”

“I think—this isn’t worth it,” Harry said. “I think, I don’t want to do this. I just want to go home. I don’t want to watch anymore spells coming at me. I’m—I constantly feel like I’m waiting to die, and I hate it.” He moved closer. Put his face to Draco’s neck. It was an intimate, midnight gesture in the glow of the village, and Draco didn’t shy away. “Let’s go back to bed.”

Chapter Text

Harry woke up the next morning to a blurry teacup hovering in front of his face. His glasses appeared next to them. He took them, blinking and groggy, and put them on his face.

The teacup resolved into a non-blurry object, and so did the man holding it.

“You’re already beautiful,” Harry blurted.

Draco blushed. Merlin. That was the prettiest colour Harry had ever seen, and he’d seen quite a range in his lifetime. “The word you’re looking for his dressed, Potter. Take your tea.”

Harry sat up, accepting the tea. “Dressed and beautiful,” he mumbled into the heat of it.

Draco blushed a deeper shade of red. “For Merlin’s sake. It’s an outfit.”

“It’s a three-piece suit.”

“It’s trousers and a waistcoat. Hardly a three-piece suit.”

But it was, even if it wasn’t the entire thing. Gray, with blue shirtsleeves underneath. It brought out Draco’s eyes. It made him look so perfect and clean and, Merlin, gorgeous that Harry was having a rather uncomfortable reaction under the covers.

“Well, yes.” Draco’s voice went crisp and clear and haughty. “I shouldn’t like to be seen in public looking as if I just rolled out of bed.”

Harry choked on a mouthful of tea. “Public?”

“It’s Saturday!” Draco opened the curtains wider with a flick of his wand. “Did you think we’d stay at the Manor all day.”

“Erm—maybe?”

“We will not be doing that. We are going out. Up now, Potter. You’ve had tea, and now you need to dress. Undoubtedly you’ll require some assistance.”

Harry cracked a smile. “So I don’t look like an ungodly embarrassment next to you?”

“An embarrassment!” Draco crossed his arms over his chest, the gesture so fussy that Harry laughed. “As if you could ever. As if—! The things that come out of your mouth, Potter.”

“So you wouldn’t be embarrassed by me if I got out of bed and came along, just like this.”

“Get out of bed, then, let’s see.”

Harry stuck one leg out from under the covers and hesitated.

“That is not out of the bed, Potter.”

What was the worst that could happen, really? Draco would witness something that was quite bloody out of his control? He’d sobbed in front of him last night. And then, after they’d looked at that lovely winter village under a glass castle of terrariums, he’d spent the rest of the night tucked to Draco’s side as if they weren’t dating, not at all.

He could only hope he looked casual climbing out from under the covers and getting to his feet.

Harry managed it without spilling a drop of tea, then brought the cup to his lips both in triumph and as a way to avoid Draco’s eyes.

He didn’t quite avoid them long enough.

One peek over the rim of the cup, and Harry felt all warm inside. Hot, in fact.

“Bit rude to stare, isn’t it?” he said, mostly into the teacup.

Draco’s eyes snapped to his.

Then they dropped back down to the front of Harry’s pyjamas.

This lasted for several beats, during which Harry sipped tea and tried not to think of taking that—what had he called it?—waistcoat off of Draco. Followed by his shirt. Followed by his trousers, and—

“Merlin.” Draco turned away, a whirlwind again, and pointed his wand at the bathroom door. “We have things to do. Bathe yourself.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do it for me?”

Draco’s knuckles tightened on the doorframe, and his face appeared in the opening, more scarlet than Harry had ever seen it. “Things to do,” he choked, and disappeared.

Two hours later, after Draco had dressed Harry in trousers he said were acceptable and a jumper that had made him blush again, they walked side-by-side down a street of shops in Muggle London as snow fell gently to the sidewalk. The air felt fresh in his lungs. Good.

Draco paused by a shop window and looked in at the decorations. He was the most beautiful thing on the street, in his neat coat, a blue scarf around his neck. Harry went to his side.

“This is one of your traditions? Muggle London?”

“Surprised, Potter?”

Harry thought about it. “…yes?”

Draco’s face did an odd thing. Harry couldn’t quite decide if it was a smile or a downturned mouth. Whether he’d laugh or cry. He reached for Draco’s hand without thinking and took it in his.

“Tell me about it.”

“My mother.” Draco’s throat worked. “My mother liked to come here. She thought the shops were pretty. She liked to look in the windows and try to guess what all the ridiculous Muggle junk was for. Sometimes, she bought ornaments for the tree. No magic, of course, since they were—since they were Muggle ornaments. She would say—” Now a smile did flicker over his face. “Funny, how we all like pretty things on the boughs.”

“I like that,” Harry said, and he meant it.

They stood by the window, looking in. This wasn’t what Harry had expected when they’d started dating. He’d hall thought it would never work. And Draco, at his side in Muggle London, telling him these things? He must be dreaming.

Harry tipped his head back, still holding Draco’s hand, and stuck out his tongue.

A fat snowflake landed on the centre and dissolved.

Draco made a sound next to him, and Harry had just enough time for a glimpse of his face—eyes wide, filled with something he didn’t identify—before Draco put both hands in his coat and shoved him backward across the sidewalk.

They tumbled backward into a red telephone booth, and Harry found himself shoved up against the back of it, strips of wood across his back and Draco’s mouth on his.

Oh, it was good. He opened to the kiss. It was hard not to, because Draco wanted into his mouth. He was not a tentative kisser. He was thorough and competent, his hands coming up to the sides of Harry’s neck. Draco kissed him like kissing him was something he’d studied for all his life, and now the theory was reality, and he was getting top marks.

Harry kissed him back, tasting him, Merlin, he tasted so good. Felt so good. So good so good so good. It rang in his ears until Draco pulled off, his mouth hovering close to Harry’s lips.

“Do that again,” Harry said.

Chapter Text

Draco pulled back another inch to search Harry’s face, and Harry had honestly no idea what he was looking for. All he wanted in the world was to be kissed again, preferably before he could take another breath.

“We’re dating,” Draco said.

“I’m living in your house,” Harry said back.

“You’re driving me mad.” Draco’s hands flexed on his face.

“D’you want me to leave? I can go stand on the sidewalk, if—”

Draco kissed him.

This time, it started out slower, his palms cool and gentle on Harry’s face. This time, there was no shove into the telephone booth. Draco tested his bottom lip. His top lip. He skimmed his tongue inside Harry’s mouth.

He was probably going to die in this telephone booth. It felt that wonderful. Heat and cool mint and snow. And something that tasted like silver, which Harry realised in short order was Draco’s magic. It was always around him, very faintly, but now he could taste it.

Harry’s cock twitched in his pants. Draco made a low noise into his mouth and turned his face, breathing hard. “We are dating, Potter.”

“I mean.” Harry found he had one hand curled around Draco’s wrist, the other at the front of his coat. “Does that mean we have to keep our hands to ourselves?”

“It means…” Draco came back to Harry and brushed his lips to the corner of Harry’s mouth. “I don’t shag people I’m dating.”

“Erm,” Harry said. “You don’t?” His mind was slowed by Draco’s face so close to his. He wanted, so much and on so many levels, that he couldn’t think.

“No.” Draco’s lips met his, but he didn’t press. It felt like a candle had been lit in Harry’s chest. A hundred of them. “I only shag my boyfriends.”

Harry couldn’t help himself. He skimmed his hands up over Draco’s body, on the outside of his grip on Harry’s face, and pushed his fingers through his hair. He had a jumbled joke prepared about how he expected to be hexed for mussing it, but Draco only breathed, the slightest shiver moving through his body.

“What’s your criteria for that, then, Malfoy? We have to date a month first? I have to push you into a telephone booth in Muggle London?”

Draco sobered, and Harry was struck by the sight. By those lovely grey eyes, threaded through with silver, cooling him and heating him at the same time? Merlin. Harry wished he’d been able to ask it in a posh way, like Draco might’ve, or even in a more sincere way. That was the thing. He meant it with all his heart. He wanted to know, more than anything, what it was going to take to be Draco Malfoy’s boyfriend. Setting aside the past conflicts that made this entire thing an almost impossible series of events, he had no idea how to translate the heavy desire in his chest into anything other than a jest.

“The person has to be sure,” Draco said finally. “They have to be absolutely sure.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

“I haven’t given you the talk.”

“Malfoy, what blood talk could you possibly—”

“I was a Death Eater. “The words came out level and rehearsed. “My father was a Death Eater. There’s nowhere we can go in the wizarding world that people won’t know. Anyone I date has to be prepared for the eventuality—”

“Draco,” Harry interrupted. “I know all this. I was there, remember? I was—” Sudden guilt made his voice rough. “I should have done more, once I realised what was going on with you. I’ll always regret that.”

“I can’t change any of it.”

“Right.” Harry took a deep breath. In the telephone booth, he could smell Draco’s skin, clean with a hint of spice, something that reminded him of a forest, maybe, or a garden. A hint of parchment. It made him a bit dizzy. “Right. Okay. Is there more I need to know?”

“No,” Draco said at length. Harry knew, even in his current state, that there was, in fact, more to know about Draco. A lot more.

“My turn, then.”

Draco blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’m the Boy Who Lived. The Chosen One. I have a permanent scar on my forehead, and everyone knows. There’s no where we can go in the wizarding world that people won’t know. You’ll have to be prepared for people asking ridiculous questions and wanting me to sign pieces of parchment and being unbelievably bloody rude and they’ll always be staring at us.”

Harry watched Draco absorb this. The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Staring at…us.”

“Yeah. You’d be doing me a favour, honestly. Everyone would be too distracted by you. They wouldn’t notice me.”

Draco’s face froze. “Because I was a Death Eater.”

“Because you’re gorgeous. I can hardly stop looking at you.”

The third kiss was more like the first. Draco leaned into it with his whole body, pinning Harry to the wall of the telephone booth, searching his mouth as if he could find proof there that Harry really did mean it. As if the hard, heavy length between his legs wasn’t enough evidence. As if the way his hips tilted into Draco’s, practically begging, told him nothing at all.

A sharp rap sounded on the door of the telephone booth.

Draco didn’t stop kissing them.

Whoever it was rapped again.

With a sigh, Draco straightened, and Harry caught his expression as he turned—frosty and imperious and mother of Merlin, he thought that was hot. He mouthed something Harry couldn’t see to the woman standing outside the booth with a sour look on her face. Her eyes wide. Draco took one hand from Harry’s face and gave her a little wave with his fingers.

She scurried away.

“What did you tell her?”

Draco released him, though Harry didn’t want him to, not at all. “I’m afraid I told her to sod off.”

Harry gasped, pretending to be scandalised. “You didn’t.”

“I very much did.” Draco took his arm and pulled them back out onto the sidewalk. They started walking again, Harry feeling loose-limbed and desperate for more kissing. A couple of blocks later, Draco stopped in front of a bookshop. HIs eyes lit up at the shelves inside, crowded with books.

“These are for Muggles, you know.”

“They smell just as good as wizarding books, you know.” Draco raised an eyebrow.

“I do,” Harry said, with a laugh. “I do know that. And I also know—”

“I insist you wait.”

Harry stared at him. “You’re kidding.”

“Twenty-four hours before you give me your decision.” A flicker of fear, of wariness, passed over Draco’s eyes, and Harry absolutely loathed it. Maybe more than he’d loathed Voldemort.

Harry pursed his lips. “Do I have to wait twenty-four hours to kiss you again?”

Draco cleared his throat. “No. No, I don’t think—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Harry kissed him, right there on the sidewalk. When he was good and finished—for the moment, anyway—he took Draco’s gloved hand in his. “The bookstore,” he said. “Take me inside. Tell me all about it.”

Chapter Text

In bed that night, Draco marvelled at Harry’s ability to sprawl out on the bed and fall asleep. It was stunning. Infuriating, actually, that he’d thrown himself onto the pillows and now breathed, deeply and evenly, as if they hadn’t kissed for far too long in a public telephone booth and then Draco had gone ahead and suggested they enter into a relationship.

With a title.

He slipped out of bed sometime after midnight and went down to the sitting room, where he watched the Christmas village twinkle.

“Deck the halls,” he sang softly to himself. “With boughs of holly. I’ve done it now. Worse than having a cry in the sodding kitchen. Worse than choking up every time I mention—” He could not get the word mum out. “Asking him to be my boyfriend. Well—!”

Harry shouldn’t say yes. He’d been about to, outside the bookshop, and Draco had nearly let him, against all his rules.

“They are rules for a reason,” he hissed at the Christmas village, which did not answer.

The reason, of course, was that he was terrified. People said things in the heat of the moment. They did things, then looked at him in the light of day like he was a stranger. It had happened twice before Draco set out the terms.

Merlin, he wanted Harry to say yes.

It went beyond the green eyes and the lean body that had become muscled in a way that Draco wanted to see without clothes. Harry had been angry during the war, and Draco suspected he still was, sometimes. But Draco had also noticed Harry during their very first year at Hogwarts. He had noticed how Harry had looked at everything the way he looked at the stars in the garden—wide eyes, an innocence about him, a longing.

He was desperate to protect that. Bloody foolish. He was Draco Malfoy. Harry was Harry Potter. He was the last person on earth who could protect Harry from anything.

But he wouldn’t mind trying.

Draco paced the sitting room for an hour. Of course he wouldn’t march upstairs and ask Harry what he thought he might decide. Of course he wouldn’t get down on one knee and propose skipping right over all this nonsense to go straight to—

“For Merlin’s sake!” He clutched at his hair. Gazed at the ceiling. Pushed all those thoughts to the back of his mind and locked them neatly away behind a wall that looked like the gates of the Malfoy Manor.

Then he went up to bed at a regal pace and got under the covers next to Harry.

It took another hour to fall asleep. Draco spent most of it running through the spells he knew in alphabetical order, then the constellations, finally drifting off around Orion.

He slept late on Sunday morning. Draco rarely slept late. Rarely slept well at all, really. Harry wasn’t in bed when he roused himself, but there was a note on his pillow.

Come down for breakfast when you’re ready!

The jaunty exclamation mark made Draco blush, then scoff out loud, then blush some more. He could hear it in Harry’s voice.

He did not rush down to breakfast like his giddy, nervous heart wanted to. Instead, he took care choosing his clothes for the day. Comfortable trousers. A shirt that fit him well. Draco considered a waistcoat, then put it back. He took his time in the shower, double-checked himself in the mirror, and went down.

Harry was in the kitchen at the wide wooden table, today’s paper spread out ahead of him, tea steaming at the corner of his place. He looked up when Draco entered, the green of his eyes heart-stopping. A smile broke over his face. “Oh, good morning.”

Draco sat ‘round the corner from him. “You did something to your hair.”

Harry laughed. “Just washed it. Then the usual.” He pushed his hands through it. “Need a trim.”

“I can do it for you,” Draco offered, regretting it the moment the words were out of his mouth. “Later. If you want.”

And if there was no later? What then? Hmm?

“Yeah. That’d be good. Bibsy?”

The house-elf popped into the kitchen, looking happier than Draco had seen her in years. “Are you ready for breakfast, Master Draco?”

“Yes, of course, Bibsy.”

“Very good. Very, very good.” With a broad smile, she started spelling dishes onto the table. A tray of cut fruit. Toast. Eggs. Bacon. A pastry, hot from the oven. For her final touch, a cup of tea appeared in front of Draco. “Anything else, Mister Potter?”

“No, thanks, Bibsy. This looks really good.”

Bibsy tittered at his smile and disappeared.

“She caught me starting on all this.” Harry reached for a slice of bacon and ended up taking two, which he tipped onto his plate. “I was going to make it for you, but she brandished a wooden spoon at me.”

Draco laughed, all his nerves balled in his throat. “I’m afraid I’m not surprised.” He took two slices of toast. Eggs. Mostly, he took fruit. “You were going to cook for me?”

“Yeah?” Harry squinted down at the newspaper. “Nice thing to do if you’re staying at someone’s house, I think.”

“Oh, I—” Draco added a dusting of salt to his eggs and picked up a fork. He could tell at a glance that they were perfect. Just the way he liked them. But what he liked most was Harry at the table nearby. “I didn’t know you cooked.”

“My aunt made me, so I had to learn.” Harry delivered this while he turned to the next page. He took a bite of bacon. “Crispy,” he said, quieter.

Draco had forgotten what he was doing. His fork hovered over the eggs. “Pardon?”

“It’s crispy,” Harry said, waving the bacon.

“No, before that. Your aunt?”

“Oh. She made me make breakfast for the rest of them soon as I could turn on the oven by myself. Handy skill to have, in the end.”

These words snagged on Draco’s mind. He got the tines of his fork into the eggs, but found he couldn’t lift it. “What do you mean, for the rest of them?”

Harry glanced up, his brow furrowed. “I didn’t eat it?”

“What did you eat?”

“Porridge.” He didn’t hesitate with the answer.

Draco managed three bites of eggs before he put his fork down. “Potter, do you meant to tell me that every morning until—until—”

“Until I went to Hogwarts. Couldn’t cook for them there!” Harry laughed. “But over the summers after that, yeah.”

“You cooked eggs and bacon and toast for other people in your household—”

“Sausages, about half the time.”

“—and then they made you eat porridge?”

“I made that too.” Harry looked at him full on for the first time, his eyes widening. “Are you okay?”

Draco sat very still and tall. His face felt like ice. “Where are these people now?”

“Dunno. I’m sure Dudley’s got a house of his own. Vernon and Petunia probably still live on Privet Drive.”

He got up from his seat and tapped his wand against his thigh. “Quite right, I’m sure. You stay and eat.”

Draco went for the door.

“Where are you going?” Harry’s chair squeaked on the floor. “Malfoy. Draco.” His footsteps hurried, and then Harry caught him around the waist, knocking them both into the wall in his rush. Draco couldn’t get a full breath. His vision had gone red at the edges. Harry’s face swam behind the haze. “Draco,” he said. “Draco.” A hand to his cheek, and then Harry’s lips, close by. His mouth skimmed Draco’s. “Merlin. Where do you think you’re storming off to like that?”

“To kill them.”

Harry made a little noise, almost a laugh, and then he leaned in and kissed Draco. It was a kiss very like Harry himself. Fierce and a little wild. It reminded Draco of a stag, somehow. Of something graceful and powerful charging through a forest.

It cleared the red haze.

Harry teased his bottom lip, then gave him an inch or two to breathe. “Better?”

“That was wrong of them. Bloody wrong, Potter.”

“I know,” Harry said gently. “But you don’t have to worry, okay? It’s all over now. I’m here, with you, and I’m awake, so I know it’s over.”

Draco’s breath caught, several times in a row.

“Don’t kill anyone,” Harry whispered into his mouth. “Stay here with me.”

Draco stayed.

They spent the rest of the morning setting up the tree in the sitting room. A massive thing, spelled into place by Bibsy, whose eyes shone at the sight. She brought up boxes and boxes of decorations from the dungeon storage rooms, and Harry and Draco went through them slowly, discussing each ornament’s placement on the tree. Draco told Harry every story he could remember about each one of them.

“That was from my mum’s mum.” He had his hands in another trunk. Harry was holding a delicate glass piece, charmed to change colours in the light. He felt him move closer and straightened without taking another one. “What is it, Potter?”

He turned around to find Harry had cast a simple timing charm. The numbers hung in the air. Harry watched the seconds turn over to the next minute, then looked Draco in the eye. He took Draco’s wrist in his fingertips and drew his hand closer. Then he dangled the glass ornament above Draco’s palm, and they both watched it twinkle, the glass glowing red, then green, then gold, then silver.

“Almost as beautiful as you,” Harry said. “Not even dark out, and it’s still lovely.”

A piece of his mother was hovering above his hand. His family. Emotion pressed at his breastbone.

“It’s been twenty-four hours,” Harry went on, the colours of the ornament dancing in his eyes.

“Do you have an answer?”

“No, actually, I have a question.”

His heart was going to explode. “Go on.”

“Will you be my boyfriend?” Harry’s eyes met his. “I don’t have any requirement about waiting twenty-four hours, though, so if you—”

“Merlin, yes. Yes.”

Harry dropped the ornament into his palm and folded his hand over it. They held it together, careful as anything, while Harry kissed him over their hands.

Chapter Text

It all felt very new and glittering somehow. Boyfriends. His boyfriend. His boyfriend was Harry Potter. His boyfriend, Harry Potter, was living in his house for the holidays.

They kissed all the way through the rest of decorating the tree. Touched each other. Harry was sweetly tentative about it, given that he’d been sleeping practically on top of Draco since his nightmare. His cheeks flushed every time he tucked a hand into the back pocket of Draco’s trousers. Every time he offered Draco another ornament. Every time he leaned in to brush his lips to Draco’s cheek.

Dinner on the sofa seemed appropriate, given how beautiful the tree was when they were finished. It was a combination of Muggle ornaments and family ornaments and things Draco and his mother had bought on their wintertime shopping trips. Some of them glowed and spun, hovered by magic, and others just shone softly in the boughs.

Harry set his plate aside, and it disappeared with a pop. When it had gone, Harry slipped his hand into Draco’s. He threaded his fingers through Harry’s, and they sat there like that, the air humming with…

Was it happiness? Yes.

Harry let out a little breath. “How many boyfriends have you had, d’you think?”

“Do you mean to ask me how many people I’ve shagged?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Harry said quickly.

“Two,” Draco answered.

Harry did not say anything.

“Potter.”

“Yeah?”

“How many boyfriends have you had?”

A nervous laugh. “Do you mean to ask me how many people I’ve shagged?”

“If you want to tell me, then tell me.”

Harry mumbled something under his breath.

“Pardon?”

“None,” he said, a bit too loud this time. “None. No boyfriends, no—no shagging. No being shagged.” He caught Draco staring almost immediately. “Oh, bollocks, what?”

He could not describe, in any polite sense, the emotion that raged through his body. An intense, powerful excitement. A possessive affirmation. It didn’t matter at all. Draco agreed with Harry on that point. But something in him thrilled at the thought that no one had ever had this before. No one. Not one person.

“I would have guessed otherwise, is all.”

“Well.” Harry swallowed. “Lots of pressure, and all that.”

“For you or for them?”

Harry cringed. “If it went badly, it’d be on the front page of the Prophet. Choose the wrong person once, and it’s over. They already speculate enough. I didn’t want—” He shook his head. “I never wanted anyone enough to risk it.”

“We’re opposites, then. I was a pathetic, desperate fool who would take any amount of affection.”

Those green eyes would be the death of him. “You’ve never seemed desperate to me.”

“Then you weren’t looking very hard, were you?”

“No,” murmured Harry. “Maybe I was distracted by other things.” He swallowed again.

Draco turned Harry’s hand over in his and put his fingertips to Harry’s knuckles. “One thing you must know, Potter, is that I absolutely will not rush you.”

“I might rush myself.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

A line appeared on Harry’s brow. “You…won’t? Not even if I want—not even if you want—”

“Of course I want.” He did. Very much so. “But the both of us have been racing toward things all our lives without our consent, wouldn’t you agree?”

Some tension Draco had not been able to pinpoint released from Harry’s shoulder. “Yes. I suppose I would.”

“There’s time.” The words made Draco’s chest hurt. He wanted to believe them. He wanted them to be true, but they weren’t, not really. It was true right now, but one never knew when it might run out. “Oh,” he said, losing his breath.

Harry was right there, a hand on Draco’s chest, rubbing at the sore spot that had appeared like a bruise. “I’m sorry,” he said, his other hand wrapped around the back of Draco’s neck. “I’m so sorry. I know you miss her.”

“Not now,” he burst out. “I wasn’t going to miss her now.” It was a terrible, clutching thing, his grief. It felt like a knife, or a beating. “I finally have a bloody boyfriend I want to take to bed. Bloody fuck, I should have been able to introduce you.”

“We met,” Harry said. “I met her.”

“Not when—”

“Yes, when,” Harry insisted. “After the war. When I was in Auror training. She came to the DMLE, and I—I handled some things for her. We met. It was pleasant, Draco, it was fine. We were fine. We even got to talk about—you know. We got to talk about that night at Hogwarts. What she did.”

He couldn’t see through tears he refused to let fall. “I should have been able to tell her. About you.”

“I know,” Harry said.

“I hate it.”

“I know.”

That night, Harry didn’t stay on his side of the bed. He pressed close to Draco, slinging an arm over his stomach, and tucked his chin to Draco’s shoulder.

“You didn’t ruin it,” he whispered, after a while. “I can hear you thinking about it.”

“Yes, I did,” Draco whispered back.

“No. You couldn’t.” Harry kissed his cheek, and didn’t pull away, not an inch.

He didn’t toss and turn that night. He just slept, body lazy next to Draco’s and Draco slept too.

The next morning was a different story.

Draco could feel his upset almost before he was awake. Harry glowered about the room, his magic an angry cloud around him. He showered and dressed without saying a word to Draco, then refused breakfast. He gathered his wand, then triple-checked the bedroom for something he swore he was forgetting.

By the time Draco walked him to the Floo, Harry’s hands were shaking.

He stared into the flames, mouth turned down. “I’ve already got a case,” he said, for the fourth time that morning. “I’ve got a case. I’m in the field today.”

Draco took him in, then made a decision. “No, you’re not.”

“Stop it, Malfoy.”

“I shall not.” He took Harry briskly by the arm and led him away from the Floo. Back to the sitting room. He pushed Harry into a chair near the village. Harry’s hands shook harder now, and his breath was shallow. “You are in no state to attend.”

“It’s just worse today,” Harry insisted. “It’s always like this for a few minutes. Just worse today.”

Draco crouched in front of him and put a hand on both his knees. “Look at me.”

Harry’s eyes came to his. “It’s my bloody job.”

“Potter, everything about you says that it is not your bloody job. It might be what you were hired to do, yes, but you know it isn’t right. I simply won’t have it.”

“Who are you to say? Robards is going to be furious. Ron and Blaise—”

“Hear me when I say that I don’t give a whit what any of them think or feel about this. You’re not going. I won’t let you. I will send your letter of resignation myself, if I must.”

“My letter of resignation,” Harry echoed. “Who are you to—”

“Your boyfriend.” A bit of joy came back to Harry’s face, disappearing in a blink. “Oh, what, Potter, you need a ring on your finger in order to let me do this for you? You’re shaking. You look like you might be sick. No job in England—no job in the world is worth this. Bibsy.”

Bibsy popped into the sitting room. “Master Draco?”

“Would you take some tea up to the bedroom?”

“Right away, Master Draco.”

“The bedroom?” Harry was watching Draco like no one had ever suggested such a thing to him before.

“Yes. The bedroom.” Draco took both Harry’s hands in his and pulled him to his feet. “First, we’ll get you out of those things. I will send an owl to the DMLE, or the Ministry, or both. And then you will have tea in bed and a little nap, and we’ll start the day over.”

Harry went along with it, dazed and silent, until Draco had him tucked under the covers with a hot cup of tea. The cup rattled against the saucer for several minutes, until Draco came and put his arm around Harry, drawing him close.

A few more minutes, and Harry tipped his head back against the pillows. He’d closed his eyes, but tears streaked down his cheeks in a slow, steady rhythm.

“Merlin.” Draco wiped at Harry’s face with his sleeve. “You’re going to miss it that much?”

“I’m so relieved,” Harry said, voice choked. “I’m so relieved I don’t have to go.”

Chapter Text

They spent most of the morning in bed, and the afternoon, and it began to seem riotously funny that they weren’t shagging each other. Draco listened to Harry talk about how becoming an Auror had been his dream up until the first day he reported to training. That was when he knew it was a mistake.

“But what were you going to do?” Draco said.

“What was I going to do?”

They both laughed.

Harry told him about the first time a dark wizard had cast a hex at him in the field, and what had he done? He’d frozen! All his training had deserted him, and he’d watched it whirl toward his chest until Blaise pushed him out of the way.

“I could have died!”

“You could have died,” Draco said, quite seriously.

Harry told him how he spent every weekend dreading Monday and trying to pretend even harder that he loved what he did.

“The worst part is, I’m very good at it.”

“What do you mean?” Draco laughed. “You said you nearly got hit with a hex.”

“Yes, but I got better! So I don’t get hit with hexes. But it’s all I think about. When the next one’s going to come. Who I’m going to be looking at when I die. And then I think of Sirius, and that damned veil, and how much I wanted to—”

There were long stretches of silence. More cups of tea.

“And all this crying!” Harry said.

“All the crying!” Draco agreed. “Hopefully we’ll both bloody stop!”

“It looks so pretty on you!”

“Merlin, Potter, it does not.”

“Yes, it does. You look like art. I look like a snotty mess.”

“You are a snotty mess.”

Harry sniffed. Draco charmed his face clean.

“Do we do it now, then?” Harry joked. “Get the shagging over with? It has to be romantic to quit your job and spend all day in bed crying.”

“I can’t believe—!” Draco rolled out of the bed and flipped back the covers, hauling Harry bodily out of it. “No. I will not have this. I will not have us getting the shagging over with. What a wit you have, Potter. What charm. Unbelievable.”

“Where are you dragging us?”

“To the shower.” Draco threw up a hand, and the water turned on. “I am not shagging you in this bed. Not now. We are having a wash, and then we have something to attend downstairs.”

“Stars?” Harry asked, hope rising in his chest, a friendly burst of magic.

“Potter.” Draco’s grey eyes had gone deadly serious. “You know we can look at those stars every night. Don’t you? We can always go see them.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Tonight is something different. And then afterward, we can go look at the stars.”

“I might’ve—I might’ve changed my mind.”

Draco rolled his eyes.

“I might rather look at you.”

He turned a deep red and dragged Harry into the shower with more enthusiasm. This, too, became a hilarious exercise in not shagging each other. Draco kept his eyes glued to Harry’s face as he shed his clothes. “It’s possible I didn’t think this through,” he said, sounding strangled.

“Too late.” Harry turned on the water and got in. He closed his eyes under the hot stream. He could guess well enough how it would go. Draco would refuse to shag him in the shower on the grounds that it was too early, and aside from that, unsafe.

The curtain rustled, and then snicked shut, and Harry opened his eyes.

All his breath rushed out of him.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t like them,” Draco said, looking as if he wanted to put his hands in his pockets. He had no pockets, of course. What he had was a tall, gorgeous body, beginning to glisten in the steam, and a torso cross-crossed with white scars, slightly raised.

Harry stepped toward him, his hand coming up to touch.

And then—

He paused, meeting Draco’s eyes.

“It doesn’t hurt. It’s—it’s fine.” He put his fingers on Harry’s wrist and pulled his hand closer, so that his fingertips brushed over the scars.

“I’m sorry.”

“I deserved it.”

“No,” Harry said. “You didn’t.” He traced one of the scars with a fingertip, then leaned in and kissed it. Draco shivered, stifling a sound, and Harry felt consumed with the idea that it was incomplete, this act. One of the scars, when there were many? No. He wouldn’t leave this unfinished. He repeated the process all over Draco’s torso, and by the time he finished, Draco’s eyes were half-closed. His fingers had tightened on Harry’s wrist.

Harry kissed his collarbone.

“We’re not shagging in the shower,” Draco said, his eyes still closed.

“I thought you’d say that.” Harry backed him against the shower wall and Draco went, a sigh escaping when his spine met tile, and Harry leaned in close, then closer, until their cocks were caught between their bodies.

Merlin. He could pass out from the sheer anticipation. His blood rushed through his veins, superheated somehow, and it seemed to him that the only way to fix it was to kiss Draco, so he did.

Draco came alive under Harry’s mouth, his teeth and tongue engaging, nipping, searching, and Harry took the opportunity to wrap his fist around both of them. Draco gasped.

“I thought—” he began.

“I’ve never shagged,” Harry said into his mouth. “I’ve done other things.”

“You’ve done—this?”

“No,” Harry admitted. “Just imagined it.”

The questions ended when he started moving his hand.

Maybe it wasn’t the most graceful jerk of all time. Harry kept losing his breath. Draco’s hips became so wild that he had to pin him against the wall. And as much as Harry wanted to come, he had a moment of sheer terror just before it happened—this? In front of another person? This?—and Draco noticed. He pulled Harry’s face to his neck just in time for him to lose all sense of everything except for the hot pull of pleasure between them.

Draco followed, and the hum he made lodged somewhere in Harry’s brain. Again, he thought. I want to make him do that again.

He had no idea how long they spent leaning against the wall. Harry didn’t particularly care. His mind turned through a pleasure-loop, which was mainly just an endless repetition of Draco Draco Draco.

“What if we just go back to bed?” he mumbled against Draco’s neck.

“Do not,” Draco said. “Tempt me.”

“I am tempting you, Malfoy. For Merlin’s sake.”

“Things to do,” he insisted. “Come on. Come on. I’ll wash your hair.”

That turned out to be one of the most pleasant things Harry had ever experienced in his life. It felt so good that Draco teased him. “This is quite the performance, Potter.”

“Not a performance,” Harry gasped. “Will you do it again tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to. It’s clear you can’t care for your hair properly.”

Harry flicked water at him, and the shower ended in soap bubbles and Draco pretending to be offended about such childish games.

When they went down, it was full evening, and Harry was not surprised to be led into the sitting room. He followed Draco to the Christmas village.

Draco waited, a small smile on his face, and Harry peered into it.

“Oh! They’re decorating!”

The townspeople, which were mostly charmed shadows, he thought, had come out. A tree was being levitated down the centre of the street. Strings of lights appeared, one by one, on the buildings. People went in and out of a shop, carrying minuscule packages.”

“Something’s not right,” Harry murmured.

He felt Draco tense. “What?”

Harry found Draco’s hand and pulled him close, an arm around his waist, his head on his shoulder. “There. That’s better.”

Chapter Text

Harry slept late, waking to winter light streaming in through the windows.

He was late for work.

Panic clutched at his chest, and Harry threw himself out of the empty bed. He had pyjama trousers on but no shirt, because of course they had not shagged the night before. Of course Draco had kissed him silly and then insisted on going to sleep, insisted on not rushing into things, as if Harry were not already living with him and frankly never intended to leave.

“Draco!” he shouted, thundering through the upstairs hall. His feet clattered down the stairs as he went. A panting fell from the wall, rattled by his magic. “Draco,” he shouted again, at the top of his lungs. Harry raced toward the kitchen, burst inside, and found it empty. He let out a string of curses, yelled Draco’s name again, and whirled around.

Harry ran directly into Draco, knocking his teacup from his hand. It cracked on the floor, tea splashing against his ankle, and grabbed for Draco’s face. His eyes were wide, if a little sceptical. “Potter,” he said. “What in Merlin’s name would make you shout—”

“Did you quit my job?” He didn’t quite mean to shake Draco’s face, but it happened. “Did you send a letter?”

“No.”

“You said you were going to send an owl. You said you were going to—”

“I did send an owl.”

“With a letter of resignation! From my job! To quit my job because—I don’t know why, I should have stopped you, I—”

Draco brushed his hands away, wrapped his hand around the back of Harry’s neck, and kissed him.

It was impossible not to be consumed by it. He always was, wasn’t he? Utterly taken in by the way Draco kissed, like he had practiced for it until he mastered the skill and then used it just the way Harry liked. Like he had been made for Harry, like the world had made him just for Harry. Harry found himself being pushed back and back until Draco hooked a hand under his leg and lifted him up onto the kitchen counter.

Quite on instinct, Harry slung his arms around Draco’s neck and kissed him while he stood between his legs. For his part, Draco didn’t let go. He didn’t back up. His big palms spread over Harry’s back, and he held him close and tight, running his hands up and down, up and down, until Harry finally had to resurface in order to breathe.

He leaned his forehead against Draco’s, panic still ticking near his heart, making his chest feel confined.

“Did you quit my job?” he whispered.

“No,” Draco whispered back. “I did not quit your job for you.”

“What did you—what did you do, then?” Harry found he could not hold this conversation any louder, actually.

“I sent an owl to the Head Auror, just as I said I would. I told him you’d be taking leave until after the holidays.”

“It was just a bad morning.”

“I don’t agree. I suspect, Potter, that you have bad mornings quite like that one more often than you’ve admitted to anyone. And I suspect you’ve had nightmares since you started the job. And I suspect—”

“I have to go back.”

“And I suspect that you haven’t taken any substantive amount of time off since you started, perhaps in a misguided attempt to prove that you do, in fact, love this job that you hate, and that is hurting you. So I decided that enough is quite enough, Potter, and you will be on leave until after the New Year, at which time you may decide whether you want to return or not.”

Harry dropped his head to Draco’s shoulder and groaned. “I’m supposed to be here for you. Not the other way around.”

“You are here to enjoy Christmas traditions.”

“Oh, yeah? That why you’re my boyfriend now?”

Draco huffed. “I wouldn’t have invited you if I didn’t like you.”

“Like me?” Harry picked up his head and looked into Draco’s eyes. “You like me? The way you were in the shower yesterday didn’t seem to be—”

Draco kissed him, hard, in a way that was clearly meant to shut him up.

He allowed himself to be quite shut up until Draco sent him upstairs to change and summoned Bibsy to start on breakfast while he cleaned up the broken teacup and spilled tea.

They ate at the kitchen table, Harry marvelling at the thought of—what was it? Nearly a month off. It was a great weight off his shoulders.

Draco, however, got quieter as they ate.

Afterward, Harry gamely stood up from the table. “Tell me what’s next, Malfoy, I’d love to know.”

The small hesitation before Draco stood made Harry nervous. Not that he wouldn’t enjoy the tradition, just that sadness seemed to have crept in again.

They went to another room in the Manor. Draco took a deep breath and turned the knob, opening the door on a neat room flooded with natural light. It held a wide table and shelves on the walls, some of them with drawers.

Draco pulled one of them open to reveal spools of craft string and thin wooden snowflakes and bells and any number of supplies for—

“We would make ornaments,” he said. “One each year, because it was—I don’t know. Because it was something to do. My father didn’t make them with us. He said it was beneath him, which is bollocks. He wouldn’t have been good at it, so he avoided it. But the point wasn’t to get top marks in ornament-making, for Merlin’s sake, it was—”

He took a sharp breath and turned away, body twisting, and then both hands came up to cover his face. It nearly killed Harry to watch this, to see it, but maybe if he waited—

Sod waiting, honestly. It was overrated.

He put a hand on Draco’s shoulder, and Draco burst into sobs. Soundless ones, which was even worse, his chest containing all of it.

Harry turned him, gathered him up, and let him cry.

“I miss her,” Draco said, miserable, unable to catch his breath.

“I know.”

“I didn’t realise it would be worse in the winter. I thought it was supposed to get easier, not—”

“I know,” Harry said again. “It doesn’t. You miss them just as much.”

“I’m so—angry—angry that I can’t stop this nonsense—”

“We’ll just wait it out.” He took one deep breath, then another, and felt Draco try the same. “Apparently my boyfriend got me a month’s worth of holiday, so there’s nothing on my schedule.”

It took half an hour, which Draco was not happy about, and which Harry didn’t mind, not at all. Then they sat together in what Narcissa had called her sewing room, even though she’d never sewed a stitch in her life, and made ornaments together until lunch.

Chapter Text

It simply didn’t seem right to dive into more sexual activities—fine, the shagging—after Draco had cried all over his shirt. There was plenty more for them to do, anyway, while they sorted out the rather abrupt transition to boyfriends from dating.

The kissing, for one.

Draco loved kissing Harry. Loved it in a fervent, almost feverish way, which was lucky, because Harry seemed quite feverish for him. His body would literally heat when they kissed, and though Draco very much looked forward to shagging, he wanted to savour this, too.

Nevertheless, they’d ended up rutting through their clothes last night, a shuddering, embarrassing thing that they’d had to charm off their pyjamas afterward and that Harry did not seem mortified by in the least.

The next day, Harry demanded to be given a full tour of the Manor—since I’m staying the rest of my holiday, don’t you agree?—and Draco had agreed, and he had given him the tour.

Harry’s eyes went huge when they came upon the broom closet at the back of the Manor, near the doors to the gardens.

“Oh, go on,” Draco said, rolling his eyes.

Harry all but ran out the door.

Draco had intended on a statelier watch from the window, but he found himself grabbing for a broom, any broom, and chasing Harry out and up into the air above the Manor.

When was the last time he’d done this? He couldn’t remember, and couldn’t remember why he’d ever stopped. Draco loved flying in a similar way to how he loved kissing Harry, and nothing, nothing compared to this—the freezing cold air rushing by him, his home down below, cloudy sky splitting to reveal cracks of blue.

Harry whooped, doing a loop-de-loop that brought him very very close to Draco.

“Look at you!” Harry shouted.

“What about me?”

“You look good!”

They raced in a wide loop. The Manor’s grounds were larger than most people realised, and Draco was grateful for it. Sometimes, he craved that empty space around him. He wanted the world at a distance. His world was in here.

“I felt dead!” He shouted at Harry as they curved around each other, up, and then down, and then up, and then down.

“When?” Harry asked.

“When my parents died,” Draco said. “I felt dead, too.”

“What about now?” Harry spun close and knocked their elbows together.

“Alive,” Draco said. When Harry was with him, he felt alive.

They flew until their hands froze. Until Draco had no choice but to scold Harry for coming out without at hat. Harry laughed and sped toward the ground, and of course Draco gave chase. Harry pulled up, did a loop, a challenge in his green eyes.

He couldn’t say what happened when they touched down, only that they tumbled into the snow, Harry on top of him, and his heart pounded with exhilaration even as he complained about his clothes getting soaked through and this bitter cold Harry, how dare you, even as Harry licked his complaints out of his mouth.

They went inside for a shower, and this time, Draco was the one with his hand wrapped around the both of them. Harry came while he begged Draco to actually shag him, please, today, please, he couldn’t wait any longer, and something about that was so delicious that Draco came, too, while he told Harry no, you’ll have to wait, you simply have to wait. You will, for me, won’t you? For me? And that had undone Harry completely, made him into a babbling mess who could only be revived by kisses, and so it was another hour before they went down to the kitchen again.

Harry sat up on the kitchen counter while Draco moved around, summoning various things with his wand. He had no choice—really, it was as if he had no choice, he wanted to be close so much—but to slip between Harry’s legs every so often to kiss him.

“Let me in on it, Draco,” Harry said. “What are you making?”

He’d said it before, but the way Draco’s name rolled off Harry’s tongue now did something wonderful to his chest. “Mulled wine.”

Pot on the stove, he called for Bibsy, then sent her off for a bottle of his mother’s favourite red. She popped in with it a minute later, and he stood next to Harry to slice the oranges that would go in with it.

Harry touched his knuckles while he cut, not pressing hard enough to change his grip. “Your mother’s recipe?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t hers to begin with. In her family, perhaps? I’m not sure she even remembered, because the story changed every time she told me about it. This time of year—” He felt that familiar ache in his throat, in his chest, the hot burn of tears behind his eyes. But he closed them, breathed in. Let it out. With great effort, he focused on the way he’d felt watching her do this. He’d been content, if not happy. Draco opened his eyes again. “This time of year was one of the only times she came to the kitchen, and it was for these kinds of things. Otherwise, she let the house-elves handle the cooking.”

“Tell me something else about her.” Harry swung his feet a little, tone thoughtful.

“When I was small, she would let me read in bed with her on Saturday morning.” This, too, required quite a bit of deep breathing to get through without dissolving into tears.

“That sounds nice.”

“Oh, come off it, Potter, you barely read.”

Harry snorted, then laughed. “I would if someone gave me a good book.”

“I have hundreds of good books. You need only ask. Or, better yet, go to the shelf. The book chooses the wizard, don’t you agree?”

Harry hummed. “I think the wizard chooses the wizard. And then the wizard with hundreds of books can choose the one he wants me to read most.”

Draco blushed, though he didn’t know why. “Don’t tease, Potter, I—”

“On one condition.”

He looked up from the mulled wine, his hand hovering, ready to add spices. “Do tell. What would that condition be?”

“That you let me lay in bed with you while I read it.”

“I accept.” Draco said this in the most gracious, pompous way he knew, and Harry laughed again.

“I mean it.”

Draco stepped over between his knees and kissed him. “I mean it too, Potter.”

“Mmm. Try again.”

His heart thudded. “I mean it too, Harry.”

“That was so lovely,” Harry whispered. “When are you going to shag me?”

“Oh, poor thing. You’ll have to wait.” Harry made a soft, needy noise that had Draco on the verge of hauling him to the floor. “Won’t you? For me?”

“Yes,” Harry whispered. “I will.”

Chapter Text

The next night they went back to the gardens.

All the stars appeared in the air above them the moment they stepped close enough. They felt, honest to Merlin, like they were all gathered up inside his chest, twinkling there in the bitter cold. Draco, fussy, cast more warming spells over their clothes.

This time, they passed the bench where they’d sat before and moved deeper in along winding paths that took them to—

“How rich are you?” Harry asked, marvelling.

“Bit gauche to be so direct about money, Potter.”

Harry squeezed his hand. “I don’t care.”

“It’s fountains. They tell you very little about the size of my vaults at Gringotts.”

Harry gave Draco huge eyes, which always made Draco laugh. The sound of it was like another star in his chest, hovering very close to his heart.

“Very rich,” Draco said, squeezing his hand back. “Do you like it?”

In response, Harry dragged him forward to the edge of one of the fountains and stuck his hand into the stream of light bursting out of its fixtures. It felt fizzy, like champagne, but still dry somehow. He turned his hand this way and that, watching the light dance from fountain to fountain over hedges wrapped for the winter and dusted with snow. Draco waved his wand, and the stars were there, too.

“Sit.” Draco pushed him to the edge of the fountain. Harry tried to pull him down, too, but Draco released his hand and stood between his thighs, both palms on his face.

One kiss had Harry warm.

The next had him hot.

The third, which was torturously soft, had him whining into Draco’s mouth.

“So impatient,” Draco murmured, and Harry grabbed for his hips. It took all of his effort not to dig his fingers in. He wanted Draco closer. He wanted to shag. And of course he would play along with Draco’s waiting game. He would wake up in the night so hard he couldn’t breathe, if that’s what Draco wanted. He’d enjoy every moment of the delicious agony of not being shagged by him yet.

But he wanted.

He wanted.

He found it so hot to want Draco. So wonderful.

Draco broke the kiss and tipped Harry’s back so all he could see was stars and the golden light of the fountain. Yet another warming charm wrapped around him, holding close. Draco moved between his thighs. Palms came to rest just above his knees. Harry couldn’t breathe.

“What if I did this? While you were waiting, of course,” Draco mused, palms sliding up toward Harry’s hips. They paused a few inches from the crease of his legs.

“Mm.” He understood that he was supposed to look up at the stars, so he did. “Yes. Yes.”

“Goodness. He says yes,” Draco said, almost to himself. “A hand on Harry’s belt. “What about this?”

“Yes, that, too.”

The belt clinked open.

“And if I opened your trousers…”

“Yes.”

“You’d be very patient and wait, like I’ve told you?”

“Merlin, yes, for fuck’s sake, Draco—”

His trousers came open under Draco’s clever hands, and despite the clear, cold temperature of the night air, it only made him hotter. And harder. Draco made an approving noise and tugged down his pants. Took him in hand. Harry was already leaking. His hands curved around the edge of the fountain and he held on, trembling, as Draco gave him a few introductory strokes. He wasn’t shy about it, which came as no surprise—he wasn’t shy about kissing, either. He wasn’t shy about teasing Harry with the promise of his first-ever shag. He wasn’t shy about—

“Poor thing,” said Draco, and then his lips met the head of Harry’s cock.

He gasped. The kiss had been soft, but not shy, and Draco had not stopped kissing, his tongue darting out to draw cool paths around Harry’s tip. His thighs shook. He could not keep his feet on the ground, but he wouldn’t get up—he was sure that wouldn’t count as being very patient. So he lifted his heels. Let his toes dig in.

The seconds stretched out. He had no idea how many of them passed with Draco kissing his cock like this before he burst out begging: “Please, please, Draco, please.”

His lips lifted away, and Harry could sob, he could. “Please what, darling?”

Harry couldn’t pull in a breath. His lungs had stopped working. His voice. He was nothing but silver-threaded want, Draco’s touch on his skin, the fountain, the stars, the stars.

Darling.

“Darling,” Draco said again, and a sound Harry never thought he’d make fought its way out of Harry’s mouth. “You quite like that, don’t you? It makes you jump in my hand. There are other things I could call you. We could try all of them. Tell me what you want, darling. All you have to do is say it. I’ve got the rest.”

Well, yes, he literally had Harry’s cock in his hand, but more than that, he had Harry’s heart in his pocket.

“Your mouth,” Harry managed. “Please. I’ll wait for the rest. I’ll wait. I’ll wait.” His heels came up again. Harry tried his best not to roll his hips until he got into Draco’s mouth all by himself.

“I love when you say things like that.”

Harry had just enough time to wonder why before Draco’s mouth closed over him in earnest, and then he was lost.

Draco was not shy about this, either. At first, Harry was so overwhelmed by the sensation that all he could think was top marks, top marks, which made no sense. Of course Draco could get top marks in everything he ever did. But it felt different. Set apart for him. Like Draco was only this enthusiastic for him. And Merlin, he was enthusiastic. He sucked Harry like making him come would be his life’s greatest accomplishment. He licked him like he’d never tasted anything better. Touched him, too, reaching between Harry’s legs to stroke a place that nearly made Harry tumble backward into the fountain. It wasn’t even water. Would he be covered in gold? Drown that way, with his cock in Draco’s mouth? Maybe. Maybe.

Draco slowed, hollowing his cheeks, and Harry could feel the onrush of pleasure beginning at the core of his spine. It felt like it came from his magic itself, like his orgasm would be so powerful that it could stop his heart. Or start it again.

But…

It hit some hidden boundary. Some line he wouldn’t let himself cross.

He wasn’t sure what he said to Draco, if it was words at all, his toes straining against the ground, thighs burning from how hard they shook.

Draco nudged his thighs another inch apart, cupped a hand around Harry’s bollocks, and lifted off to say: “No more waiting, darling. Come. Let me see.”

When his mouth met Harry again he exploded. The stars blurred together above him, then winked out. He felt Draco’s swallows. The flat of his tongue, lapping over him.

He came to with Draco on his feet, coaxing his head forward so his forehead rested against Draco’s hip. Harry stayed there for quite some time, breathing, answering Draco’s questions, which mainly seemed to boil down to all right, darling?

The diamond stars hung over them, waiting. Patient.

Until the heat of Draco against him started another surge of pure want in Harry, and he fell to his knees at Draco’s feet, his hands on his belt. No words came to him, but his plea must have been in his face, because Draco looked down at him with dark eyes and flushed cheeks and said yes, yes.

He was so composed that Harry wanted to make him wild, and he threw himself into the project, taking Draco as far down his throat as he could, trying every combination of tongue and pressure and stroke. It was only at the end that Draco’s hands tangled in his hair and he seemed quite unaware of how hard he was thrusting down Harry’s throat.

Harry wanted to do that again, too.

Draco sat down hard next to him, his closed dishevelled, and summoned blanket after blanket until they were wrapped by five of them in addition to the heating charms. Harry let his head rest on Draco’s shoulder and watched the fountain. Watched the stars while their breathing settled.

Minutes went by.

“Does this mean you’re going to shag me soon, or—”

Draco turned his head and kissed Harry’s temple. “Wait.”

“I will.”

Draco held him closer, eyes on the stars.

Chapter Text

They’d had a perfectly lovely evening by the fountain, and while it had not been enough—not nearly enough, thank you very much—Harry had only kissed Draco, and put his head on his shoulder, and gone to sleep once it was late enough.

He’d stopped most of his tossing and turning. Instead, he slept like he’d been exhausted for years but hadn’t known it.

Draco couldn’t sleep.

A dreadful feeling settled in his belly, weighing him down. It wasn’t about Harry. He didn’t think it was about Harry.

Maybe it was a little about Harry.

Not Harry the person. Not at all. He wanted Harry in his bed, and in his house, more desperately than he’d ever wanted anything, and now he had it. Going to the pub with Harry had had been easy once he’d got over himself. Asking him to stay at the Manor for the holidays had made him sick with anxiety while all their friends got drunk and enjoyed each other.

Harry’s answer, however, had been…easy. He hadn’t agonized over it. He’d just said yes. That, Draco had learned, was the kind of person Harry actually was. Perhaps he was a bit more reserved about it at the pub. That unreserved delight on his face…

That had been just for Draco.

He was pretty sure it was just for him.

But…

Harry still slept, his breathing deep and even, when Draco threw himself out of the bed. Merlin. He’d have liked a bit of a lie-in, too, but his legs were restless, his stomach pinched.

He ignored the small voice that told him it would be better if he simply woke Harry up and told him that something was wrong.

That voice, after all, was much quieter than the one that sternly reminded him to keep his emotions in check. He hadn’t been doing much of that since Harry arrived at the Manor. Lucius had been wrong about a great many things, honestly, but he wasn’t completely wrong about huge emotional displays. They exhausted everyone. Harry was already tired.

Draco would be fine.

He showered and dressed and found himself moving on to the next item in his list of Christmas traditions. There was no physical list, unless you counted the scrap of parchment he’d taken frantic notes on after his mother’s funeral, trying to remember everything and likely failing.

He didn’t need notes to remember this bit.

His stomach knotted up as he moved toward the back of the house, where his mother’s suite had been. A spacious bedroom. A little sitting room attacked. A loo and a separate bathing room with a wide tub Narcissa had loved.

His feet got heavier with every step. Or was it his whole body?

Draco paused, patting his wand to reassure himself it was still there. A curse, perhaps. That would cause this feeling.

He cast a few basic spells to look for curses and found none. Draco was no Auror, but he’d learned plenty during the war and done research after. He wasn’t going to be caught off-guard again.

Except by Harry Potter. Draco had expected to be attracted to him, the way he always had been. He hadn’t expected for Harry to look back at him with curiosity instead of old hatred.

Draco stopped outside the door to Narcissa’s rooms, stomach ready to upend itself on the floor.

It was another part of her traditions. That was all. There was no reason for sweat to have gathered under his collar.

One more deep breath, and he opened the door and went in.

It was just how she’d left it. Bed neatly made—not by her, of course, by Bibsy, who Draco suspected had been remaking it every week. The air smelled still, but not stale. There was no ghost, no shade, no lingering tinge of a magical core burning out.

There wouldn’t be, he supposed. She hadn’t died in her bedroom. Narcissa Malfoy had died in her rose garden. Her mind was more fragile, after the war. Her memories slightly less stable. He hadn’t known it had extended to the physical makeup of her brain, but apparently it had, according to the mediwizard who had come to the Manor after Bibsy discovered her body. A stroke, he said. It’s possible there was some magical influence, but we’ll never know.

Draco would never know.

He went through, ignoring her writing desk with the parchments still laid out, and her quills. What he was looking for was kept in the closet.

On the first step over the threshold, his chest caved in.

Her room had smelled clean, if empty, but the closet smelled like nothing.

All of her clothes were here, but all he smelled was cloth and preservation spells. No hint of roses. No hint of her at all.

What had she smelled like?

He couldn’t remember.

Draco flung himself across the closet, burying his face in the first robes he could reach, but she wasn’t there no matter how deeply he breathed.

They came down from their hangers with a tearing sound. Robe after robe. Dress after dress. Piece after piece. He pulled and pulled, careless, furious, until he was standing in a sea of fabric that would never be worn again.

“To hell with this. Absolutely fuck this,” he shouted at the clothes. “Fuck you.”

With his wand he jerked open the cabinet with her silly bloody tree.

The pink tree had been spelled for storage and his fist closed around it too hard, snapping one of the branches.

He stormed back out into her bedroom. She’d kept this tree on a credenza with an attached mirror, and he swung it at the shelf. The hard base cracked the mirror.

“Good!” he shouted. “Bloody perfect!”

Draco aimed his wand at the little tree with its ridiculous base that had shattered his mother’s mirror and said the charm to expand it to its regular size.

It grew, sideways on the table.

“What the bloody hell is that?” he shouted, mainly to himself. “Look at that thing. Did she like this? Did you like this, mum, this bloody tree?”

The tree kept growing. He knew he should stop. He didn’t.

He made it larger, and larger, until finally it rolled off the table with a heavy thud, crushing some of its pink ornaments.

The snap of the ornaments snapped something in him, too.

His magic felt like fire, burning in his veins and out through wand, and the next few ornaments exploded. Those pink, foolish things. The silver ones next. Perhaps he was screaming something. He couldn’t hear over the rush of rage, or blood, or grief in his ears.

The tree broke into pieces, pink branches scattering, and he went for the credenza nest. Draco shattered the rest of the mirror. One of the shards flew into the room and cut a line of pain across his cheek.

This burst of magic seemed almost entirely apart from his wand. Out of his control. He wanted the whole Manor in ashes. Everything in ashes. The bed tore itself apart, feathers flying.

One of the windows, then the next, then the third. Cold air blew in. So bloody bitter. He hated it so much. He hated everything so much.

Draco whirled to destroy something else, anything else, and found Harry standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets.

Every cell in his body wanted to rush to him, to cling to him, to beg him for a way out of this, but mortified anguished pushed that urge below the surface of his rage.

“Get out.” A shout. A scream? He saw the words hit Harry, who flinched. Draco couldn’t stop. “Get out. Leave.”

Harry’s hands came up, palms out. Draco didn’t hear if he spoke. His own pulse was far too loud.

There was no sound when Harry stepped out of the doorway and disappeared.

“No,” Draco said. That wasn’t what he wanted. “No, no.” He sank down on destroyed bedclothes and covered his face with his hands. Feathers landed on his hair, his shoulders, light as air.

There was no sound when he cried.

There never was.

Chapter Text

What was he supposed to do now?

He’d thrown Harry out. Told him to leave. Hurt him, obviously, and now he would be alone again.

It did not surprise Draco. This was how things went. The world was bloody painful. He did his best not to be hurt by it, but eventually he always hurt it back.

It was two hours before he could stand. His head ached. He’d lost his wand in the pile of blankets, and it took him a moment to dig it out again.

For Merlin’s sake. He had done harder things in his life than face an empty house. This wouldn’t even be the first time the manor seemed enormous and cold around him. When everyone had gone after his mother’s funeral, it felt like the dead of winter inside.

His legs ached, too. His abs. Everything. The trip to the stairs took an age. He half-wanted to go back to his bedroom and go to sleep, but that would only mean he’d have to face Harry’s absence.

The Christmas music became more audible as he descended the stairs. Merlin, he hated the sound—at this moment, he loathed it. He left it on anyway.

Something clanked in the kitchen.

It was a soft, distant sound. Bibsy making breakfast, probably. Or lunch.

He didn’t care. He didn’t want to eat.

Draco followed the sound so he could tell Bibsy not to waste his time.

But when he put his hand on the doorframe and hauled himself inside, already intending to lay down on the nearest piece of furniture he could find other than his cold, empty bed, it wasn’t Bibsy standing at the stove.

It was Harry.

He was humming along, very softly, with the Christmas carol that was playing—Do You Hear What I Hear?—and Draco was suddenly, desperately glad he hadn’t turned it off. Harry stirred something in a pot on one of the burners.

“You didn’t leave,” Draco said.

Harry turned, looking over his shoulder at him, and smiled, green eyes lighting up at the sight of Draco. He loved that smile. Loved it. And didn’t understand how Harry could smile at him like that when he was a dishevelled, blotchy mess who had thrown him out of the room.

“Come here,” Harry said, and turned back to the stove.

Draco went.

When he got close enough, Harry reached out without looking. It was a tiny thing, but Harry’s hand slid exactly around his wrist, then his elbow, then his shoulder and pulled him in. Draco put his face to the curve of Harry’s neck and slung his arms around Harry’s waist. It shouldn’t have worked. Draco was a bit taller, and it should be impossible to feel so sheltered.

And yet.

It wasn’t.

Harry shifted him to look into his face, then dropped the spoon. He whisked his wand from the countertop and cast a healing charm at Draco’s cheek. The next moment, the spoon was back in his hand, and Draco’s face was at the curve of Harry’s neck.

Draco tried again. “Why are you still here?”

“Merlin, Malfoy. You still think everyone’s going to do what you say just because you have a bank vault the size of the continent, don’t you?”

Draco huffed into Harry’s neck. “I thought you left.”

“Do you honestly think I’d have walked out when you were in that state?”

Harry put down the wooden spoon and reached for something. Draco was completely taken by the way he did this, by the feel of it under his arms. By the fact that he didn’t feel any need to look. Harry picked up the spoon again.

“I would’ve left.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

He considered it. If Harry was that angry, he would have brought down the house. And still. “No. I wouldn’t have.”

Harry started humming again, and Draco stood there, listening.

“I don’t know how you stand it,” he said, after a bit.

“Stand what?”

“Losing them. Anyone. Your parents. Everyone we—” Harry hugged him tighter. “Everyone we killed. Everyone you tried to save and couldn’t.”

“You’re not the first person to take apart a blameless object, Draco. And you’d have to ask Hermione and Ron, but I’m sure I’ve said worse than get out to them. More than once. I was a nightmare after the war.”

“I doubt that.”

“That was before all the Auror training and pub nights. You weren’t there yet. Hermione would probably swear up and down that it was nothing, and she’d be lying through her teeth.”

“But I—”

“And I would be lying through my teeth if I told you she never lost it, either.”

“Not Granger.”

“Yes, Granger. It just wasn’t a pink Christmas tree and a bedroom.”

Curiosity got the better of him. “What was it?”

“A completely innocent settee at Grimmauld Place and about half the ceiling tiles.”

“I broke all the windows.”

“I’ll help you fix the windows.”

“I ruined the bed as well.” Perhaps he’d just stay like this forever.

“Nothing that can’t be put back.”

“I shouted at you.”

“Not the first time for that, either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Harry kissed the top of Draco’s head, another thing that should have been absolutely, completely impossible. “You’re here to shout at me, for one thing. Lots of people aren’t. And you felt you could shout at me, which is an honour.”

“Merlin, Potter.”

“It’s not that I love shouting, generally, but you have to understand, nobody but Ron and Hermione ever shout at me. They’re too scared. Because.” Harry dropped his voice to a dramatic whisper. “I’m the Chosen One.”

Draco sniffed. “You’re my boyfriend. I’m not afraid of you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I was only afraid you’d gone.”

Harry was quiet a moment, as if something had just occurred to him. “Let me see. No—I’m still here.”

“What are you making?”

“Cocoa.”

He couldn’t stop the groan that came out of his mouth. “Harry, you don’t have to make cocoa by hand. Bibsy can do it with magic.”

“My way is better.”

Harry put down the spoon, picked up his wand, and before Draco could blink he’d charmed two mugs onto the countertop and poured the cocoa into it.

Then Harry folded both arms around him. “Now. Two choices. I can put the bedroom back to rights, or we can do it together.”

Draco hadn’t planned to go back to the bedroom ever in his life, but with Harry’s arms around him, it didn’t seem so daunting. “Together.”

“Right.” Harry turned, the movement sharper than when he was stirring the cocoa on the stove, and they landed outside Narcissa’s bedroom.

Harry strode in through the open door, Draco following him.

“Merlin,” he said. “This is a travesty. I don’t know what I was thinking. Just—let me, and I’ll—”

Naturally, Harry already had his wand out. He’d already chosen a place in the middle of the room. A hum rose in the air, reminding Draco of sunshine and lightning. Pieces of glass lifted from the floor. Feathers. The cracked remnants of ornaments. The tree tipped up right in its spot on the carpet, the decorations flying back onto the branches. Draco’s ears popped.

It was no more than forty-five seconds before the room was exactly as it was when he’d first walked in. The only difference was that the pink tree was on the credenza at its non-storage size.

Harry cocked his head to the side. “I think I got everything in the closet, too.”

“How did you do that?” Draco would have had to go around the room section by section.

A shrug. “Practice.”

Harry’s grin, private and pleased, nearly undid him. “On the settee?”

“Yeah. That, and I saw Dumbledore do it one.” His smile softened. “What happened, anyway?”

Draco’s throat squeezed shut, but he forced past it. “I went into her closet and none of the clothes smelled like her. And now I can’t remember it at all.”

Harry peered at him. “I bet…” He closed his eyes for a few seconds, thinking. “I bet she smelled like roses.”

“No, that’s not right. Not just roses. Sunny ones,” Draco said. “Summer ones. Like blooms that had been in the sun, only much lighter, and soft.”

Harry came to him and took his hand, that pleased, quiet smile back on his face. “Got it now?”

His relief could have swallowed him whole. “You’re magic, you know that, Potter?”

“Funny enough, I do!” Harry took them back to the kitchen, gathered the mugs, and led Draco out with such confidence that Draco went along without questioning it. He let Harry dress him in his coat and scarf, and didn’t say a word until Harry was about to throw the Floo powder into the fireplace.

“Wait—where are we going with cocoa?”

Harry took him by the arm and dragged him bodily into the flames. “Hogsmeade!” he shouted.

They whirled through flames and grates, landing in the fireplace at the back of the Three Broomsticks. Obviously, Harry had thought ahead, because he took them out through a door nearby and into the street.

It was gorgeous. Snow fell in fat flakes. All the shops looked warm and welcoming.

Harry took Draco’s hand in his.

“People know us here,” Draco said, only half-caring. “Someone might see.”

“Good,” Harry said. “I hope they do.”

Chapter Text

Harry was tired after they got back from Hogsmeade. It wasn’t entirely surprising. He’d been tired since Cedric had died in front of him during the Triwizard tournament, which he did not want to think about. He was rubbish at Occlumency, but still, he tried to turn his thoughts away from the subject.

Which only left him thinking about Draco.

He usually slept on his side of the bed, all neat and proper. Harry could never manage to do that. The urge to fling himself out over the available space—and over Draco—was too strong. His muscles wanted to move, even in the middle of the night. It took less readjusting since Draco had arranged for his leave, he supposed.

Tonight, Draco was the one who curled into Harry like he was hiding. Harry had never seen him fall asleep so fast. Also not surprising, since he’d used a great deal of magic destroying his mother’s bedroom. Harry had felt it from all the way downstairs. It was like a silver river breaking its banks. And, he guessed, a pink Christmas tree, as well as a mirror, a credenza, a bed, and several windows.

Merlin, Harry wanted to shag him. Or be shagged by him. He’d take either one, at this point.

Not in an inappropriate way. In a good way. He saw how Draco’s face flushed and relaxed after they kissed, and he knew, he just knew, that sex would be bloody amazing. If Draco were really so hesitant about shagging him, then he could do the shagging himself. He could. There was no reason he couldn’t.

But then the idea of waiting for Draco, not because there was any rule against it but because Draco had told him to wait, was so hot, so bloody hot, that Harry wanted it to drag out as long as possible. If Draco liked it, he’d wait forever. Probably he’d explode by then, but it would be worth it.

Except… there was something about it, that waiting. Something that wasn’t only hot in a way that made Harry painfully hard just to think about.

What was it?

“Draco.”

Draco stirred at the sound of his name, but didn’t wake. He pressed his face closer into the side of Harry’s neck.

“Draco, I want…”

He wanted to talk. He wanted to ask him the question while it was dark, while neither of them had to look at one another. Is this a game to make me hot, or is there something underneath that I’m not seeing, some fear you won’t tell me about, something you won’t say?

Draco’s sleep-heavy body against his was warm and languid and safe, and it made his eyelids flutter, then fall.

“Draco,” he tried, one more time. There was no use in waiting to ask, really, even if they played this game to the last day, when all the traditions were done, when it the very end, the very end, the very end—

Until the very end, his father said, voice clear and steady in his ear, and Harry was suffused with dread.

No, not this.

Please, not this.

“No,” he answered. “I’m not dying again. I don’t want to die again.”

“We are part of you.” Sirius, as if he hadn’t heard. “Invisible to anyone else.”

Harry looked at his mother. She’d never looked so young to him before, but now she did. Lily Potter looked terribly young, and the sheen of years in her eyes—what was that? Pride? He didn’t want to do this.

“Stay close to me,” he said, though they weren’t the right words, and it was like the last day he’d graduated from Auror training, like the day he signed up for the training in the first place, swept there by some current he hadn’t been able to stop. His legs carried him toward Voldemort and his crowd of black-cloaked Death Eaters, all of them laughing, and no matter how hard he tried to turn away, he couldn’t, he couldn’t.

His heart hammered. His mouth went dry. Merlin, no, not again, because he’d done this before. He had. There was no need to die again.

“Draco.” The name came out feeble, a broken whisper against whatever bond made him walk to his death. Harry searched the Death Eaters. One glimpse of white-blond hair, and maybe he’d have a bloody chance, maybe Draco could do something. Voldemort only wanted him to die. Draco might want him to die, too, but there wasn’t least a chance… “Draco, please.”

None of the Death Eaters lifted their heads. He couldn’t see Draco’s eyes, or his hair, couldn’t see him in the crowd. Laughter rang in his ears. He couldn’t hear his mother anymore. He’d told them to stay close, and where the hell were they now? Voldemort lifted his wand, a ghastly smile on his face.

Someone ran into him, a chest to his back, but he couldn’t move. Arms around the front of his chest. It was the strangest feeling, like that someone had bumped into his mind and not his body.

The words were forming on Voldemort’s lips, the killing curse, the laughter rose to a fever pitch, and Harry’s fear and frustration tore out of him in a scream.

Green hurtled through the air at him, too fast to dodge, he was stuck to the ground, stuck, dying again, Merlin fuck it all, but the person holding him turned. Sharp, but graceful.

Dark woods spun away, and Harry landed in a dining room. It was set for a dinner party. Gleaming china and silver, soft music in the air, and someone was holding his hand—

Draco was holding his hand.

“Come this way,” Draco said.

“What is this?”

“A dream.”

Harry’s heart raced, cold adrenaline following each beat. “It’s not real?”

“This is real enough. It’s how the table looks before the ball.”

“What ball?”

Draco led him around the table as serving dishes appeared. Roast chicken and Christmas pudding and green beans swimming in butter. “The Christmas ball. My mother hosted one every year when I was growing up. Look.”

He pushed open a door, and Harry recognised the ballroom at the Malfoy Manor, alive with people in dress robes, the whole room glittering with magic and happiness. “How are you doing this?”

Draco lifted Harry’s hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles. “Carefully, Potter.”

“Why?”

They’d walked into the middle of a dance floor, and Draco’s hand found his waist. They turned again, Harry following Draco’s lead. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t an awkward, tripping mess. “This way.” Draco stepped and turned, stepped and turned. The ball flickered, dark pressing in, but it was a soft darkness, it was soft, it was all right. “This way. Harry. Wake up. Come this way. It’s all right.”

He opened his eyes to the glow of a candle caught in Draco’s silver eyes. Harry hadn’t fallen asleep this way, looking up at Draco. He certainly hadn’t fallen asleep with his wand clenched in his hand. And he had not fallen asleep on the floor.

“There you are.” Draco stroked his hair away from his face, and Harry sucked in a breath. “There. See? It was just a dream. And I’m awake, so I know it’s over.”

Harry sat up and immediately regretted it. His head landed on Draco’s shoulder. He dropped his wand. Didn’t need it after all. “You were in my dream.”

Draco let out a little breath. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not sorry.” Curious, though. “How did you do it?”

A tiny, half-embarrassed shrug. “Your mind was wide open, so I…stepped in.”

“You did not step in, Draco, you jumped. I felt you.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No.” Harry picked up his head from Draco’s shoulder and found his eyes in the dim light. “A Christmas ball?”

Draco shook his head. “All I could think of, in the moment.”

“Think of for what?”

“Some kind of…distraction. Transition.”

Harry groaned. “Was I screaming?”

“Yes, quite a lot.”

“Usually I wake up screaming.”

“Yes, well.”

“Yes, well,” Harry echoed. “Your mother had a ball every year?”

“She did.”

“So you’re planning one, then?”

Draco got to his feet and lifted Harry off the floor. “Come to bed.”

He felt wrung-out by the nightmare and didn’t argue. Harry tucked himself close to Draco and let him pull the covers over the both of them. “Will I need dress robes?” Harry mumbled into Draco’s chest.

“Go to sleep.”

Chapter Text

Time was rushing toward Christmas, speeding through the short days, the long nights. Harry watched the charmed villagers in the magic village decorate the town. He watched jewelled stars spin over the gardens at the Manor. Mostly, he watched Draco, who watched him back when they weren’t kissing each other like they’d soon be out of time.

One afternoon, Draco nearly killed him.

All he was doing was drinking tea. Lifting the delicate china to his lips. Sipping. Lowering it. Harry thought he’d burst into flame. Or perhaps set the Manor on fire.

In the end, he leapt up from his seat at the table and took Draco by the arm.

“My tea!” Draco sputtered.

Harry took the cup out of his hand and set it on the table. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

He bundled them into coats and scarves and outside, too riled to use the Floo.

“Potter.” Draco tugged at his hand as Harry jogged across crisp snow. He needed to get outside the wards before he could Disapparate. “Harry.”

The gates opened as they approached, and Harry pulled him outside, the magic of the wards vibrating as they went through. Then he threw his arms around Draco and turned.

They landed in a little-used side street. City noises rushed in. Tires on slush. A man, calling to someone else. A speaker turned up high. Draco backed him against a cold brick wall, eyes searching Harry’s face.

“What on earth,” Draco said. “Was that for?”

“You wanted to wait.”

Draco’s brow furrowed. “And?”

“And if I had to watch you drink one more sip of tea, I was going to take you to the floor and—and—”

A slow blush spread across Draco’s cheeks, even as his eyes darkened, glittered. “And what?”

“Disobey you,” Harry said, and watched the darkness expand in Draco’s eyes. “Rush you. Insist. On shagging. Right then. And that’s not the game we’re playing.”

“What game are we playing, then, Potter?”

“The one where I suffer until you finally let me feel good.”

Draco let out a harsh breath. “Merlin. You’re going to bring me to—” He cast around, looking for landmarks. “Muggle London to tell me this? You wanted to convey this information in an alley?”

“Not quite.”

“Where, then?”

Harry leaned in and kissed him, and Draco’s hands slid up the sides of his neck to curl into his hair, and bloody hell. They were going to end up right back at the Manor with a hundred unanswered questions and aching cocks, at this rate. Draco’s tongue felt so good against his. The weight of his body felt so good, even leaning up against frigid brick. Harry broke the kiss and gasped for breath. “Here.”

He took Draco’s hand and tugged them out of the side street—it was hardly an alley, Merlin—and onto the main thoroughfare.

Draco blinked. “A Muggle department store?”

“Well spotted.” Harry didn’t bother questioning his decision. He simply dragged Draco down the street and in through the front doors.

“Merlin,” Draco whispered.

It was then and only then that Harry had second thoughts. Draco didn’t need a Muggle department store, not for anything. “You’re right. Let’s leave. This was a foolish idea, and—”

He didn’t get to finish before Draco was dragging him further in, his face alight.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this place before?”

“Because it was a secret.”

They passed three huge Christmas trees, all of them in coordinated gold and white, and past a perfume counter. Draco pushed him to the right, and Harry stumbled into a room done up in dark green velvet, lights shining down on recessed display cases in the walls. It was just like Draco to choose a room like this, Slytherin that he was.

Draco slid his hands to Harry’s face. “This shop is absolutely filled with people, Potter. It’s not a secret.”

“A secret for me.” Harry’s cheeks went hot. “I found it after the war. I like—liked to come here, at Christmas.”

Gray eyes studied his. “By yourself?”

“I don’t belong in a luxury department store.”

Draco sobered. “Is that what you think?”

Yes, of course it was. He’d grown up in a cupboard, for Merlin’s sake. Harrod’s had always seemed so far out of reach as to be on the bloody moon. “I only meant to…to try it out.”

“To try what out, Harry?”

“Being around nice things.”

Was this what being boyfriends was all about? Trading off being unbearably horny and embarrassed every other moment?

Draco’s eyes trailed down to Harry’s lips. “You are a nice thing, Potter.”

Harry made a sound in the back of his throat. He wasn’t quite sure what he was asking for.

Draco leaned in. Kissed the side of his neck. Sent a shiver down Harry’s arm, all the way to his fingertips. “You are a nice thing, darling.”

That was it. Draco was going to murder. Death by darling. Harry did not notice that his eyes had very nearly rolled back in his head until Draco laughed, the sound low and lovely.

Harry squeezed his eyes closed. “I brought you here. I told you a secret. Now you tell me one.”

“I liked being in your head.”

It didn’t seem like much of a secret, since Draco hadn’t hesitated at all, but when Harry opened his eyes, he saw that it was. Draco wore an expression that was so unguarded it took his breath away.

Harry swallowed. “You were in the forest. Nobody wants to be there.”

“I’d much rather be there with you than shut out entirely. I’d much rather take you to a dinner party before a ball than listen to you ask for help and do nothing.”

He was sure his entire body was blushing. “We are in a department store, Draco.”

“You brought me here, darling.”

You brought me to your house, Harry wanted to say, though it wasn’t really an argument. It was just that his heart was the size of his chest, it was just that this waiting was the sexiest, scariest game he’d ever played, it was just that the holidays would be over soon, and then?

Then.

Draco might want him to leave, but he didn’t want to go, and they hadn’t even shagged, and Merlin, what had he meant? Sometimes, even Harry wished he could be in someone else’s head, and now Draco had come into his dream…

“What else did you see while you were in there?”

“Nothing but the dream,” Draco promised. “I only wanted to get you out. Oh, don’t tell me you’re disappointed I didn’t go rummaging through your thoughts.”

Harry didn’t bother to fix his pout. “I have better thoughts than about bloody Voldemort. I’d rather you saw those.”

“Oh, no. I don’t intend to do that again. Not unless you’re screaming in the middle of the night and can’t invite me in.”

“Why not?”

Draco laughed again. “It’s not my favourite thing to do.”

“Because?”

“Because my aunt Bella taught me how to do it.”

Harry cursed under his breath. “She didn’t teach you how to do that. Bellatrix Lestrange never taught you to go into someone’s nightmare and turn it into a dream.”

“No. You did.”

“I did not.”

Draco’s hands moved over his jaw, his neck. “I wanted to do it for you, so I did.”

This statement seemed weighted, heavy with meaning, and once again Harry felt foolish, small, lovesick. “This can’t be turning out how you thought. You wanted Christmas traditions, not…not department stores and nightmares and talking about bloody Bellatrix.”

“How did you think it would turn out?” Draco mused, his thumbs tracing a path over Harry’s cheeks. “When you asked me to the pub for a pint?”

“I thought you’d say no.”

“I thought you’d say no, too.”

“But I said yes, and I’ve made it all about me, and my bloody past, and my bloody nightmares, and—”

“And you’d rather we spent our time weeping all over each other instead?”

“I told you. You look pretty when you cry. I don’t mind if you weep all over me.”

“I don’t mind the crying, either.”

“But you do mind the shagging,” Harry pointed out, and was instantly rewarded with a slow, hot smile from Draco. “This waiting. It’s not just a game.” A flicker of trepidation in silver eyes. “I knew it. I knew it wasn’t. Tell me what it is.”

Draco tipped his head, his breath skating over Harry’s neck. “Show me everything you love in this wonderful Muggle department store.”

Harry put a hand on Draco’s chest and tapped, twice.

They did not leave the green room for quite some time.

Chapter Text

Draco had not spent so much time snogging in public ever in his life.

Pureblood parties, yes. Hidden alcoves at Hogwarts, yes. Department stores? Muggle department stores? No.

And yet he found he could not stop. Every piece of velvet-covered furniture was an opportunity to sit down and pull Harry close, to debate the merits of this ottoman or that, and to taste him again while his heart tried to throw itself out of his chest.

Harry kept trying to ask him about the waiting game.

Draco answered with kisses, which invariably left Harry panting and pink-cheeked, wanting more.

They looked at fine china displays and gift-wrapping stations and ornaments that cost a hundred pounds. Draco kissed Harry slowly behind a tree that was at least fourteen feet tall. They lingered for fifteen minutes over a jewellery case with men’s rings, both of them pretending not to think anything of it.

He was sure they’d looked at every object in the shop—and it was wonderful, he’d meant that—when the outdoors called, and they went out onto the sidewalk hand in hand. Harry chose a direction seemingly at random, and Draco followed.

Snow landed in Harry’s dark hair and melted away. His cheeks pinked again in the cold. Draco couldn’t tell if it was magic or desire that hung so heavily around Harry as they walked. It was likely both. It hummed in the air around them as they left the main street, following block after block until they reached a neighbourhood with lampposts curving gently over them.

In one of the beams of light, a soft gold against the darkening evening, Harry stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Harry.”

He turned toward Draco’s voices as if he’d been deep in thought for years and had just now come to a conclusion. Green eyes shone in that light, and Draco’s breath caught. Would it be so wrong to look at that colour for the rest of his life? Would it be so wrong?

“Have the ball.”

A soul-deep groan came out of him. “Harry, that was not—that was not my tradition. It was my mother’s, and she stopped years ago, she—”

“Did she stop because she wanted to or did she stop because of the war?”

He couldn’t help the memories that flashed through his mind every time it came up. Standing in that forest in Harry’s dream had been a gift, and a curse. It had brought all of it back. The huge, heavy snake slithering along the hallways of the Manor. His mother’s pale face. The creature that wanted to be a man holding court in the dining room.

“The war,” he admitted. “She was never the same, after.”

Harry waited, his lips shut tight, and Draco recognised this for what passed as patience in Harry James Potter. The tight, compressed feeling returned to Draco’s chest. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to do grief and sadness and being bereft. He didn’t want to do things that were unbefitting of a Malfoy, even if he knew they were right.

It took a real effort to lower that particular shield. He’d been carrying it for as long as he could remember. But what was the point of all this, if not to put it down? What was the use in being boyfriends if he couldn’t?

“Her mind was…weakened. The Dark—Voldemort used her to motivate me. Not that it worked. Not that I bloody succeeded at anything he wanted, Merlin, I didn’t want to do any of those things. And after, she wasn’t—her memories would slip away from her. I thought it was magic. I didn’t think it was her brain until she died.”

Harry made a soft sound.

“I wasn’t there. Did you know that? I wasn’t there when she died.” Panic rose, because he didn’t want to talk about this, he did not, he did not. “I was shopping. I was shopping. I was buying carrots when it happened. The Manor recorded the time. Can you bloody believe that? Carrots.”

Wonderful. Excellent. He couldn’t stop talking.

“Bibsy found her in the garden. She died with her bloody roses, alone.”

“Draco, you couldn’t have known—”

“She knew no one would come to a bloody Christmas ball at the Malfoy sodding Manor, Harry. She knew she’d be alone. She was so afraid of being alone. She must have been terrified. It must have hurt—”

He was going to lose his mind on a sidewalk, of all places! In the snow! Draco’s fingertips had gone numb, and his lips, and the only part of this that wasn’t a complete disaster was the fact that he hadn’t started sobbing yet.

“It must have hurt.” Merlin’s bollocks, he couldn’t bear it. “I wasn’t there.”

Harry’s arms folded around him. He hadn’t seen Harry move, but he wasn’t surprised by it. He was relieved. Exhausted, and relieved. “It didn’t hurt.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can, actually. I’ve died before.”

Cold flitted through Draco’s gut. “No, you didn’t. It was a trick. You were alive when she found you.”

“Yes, because I came back.”

Draco pushed against him just enough to see Harry’s face. He was serious. “Came back from where?”

“Looked like King’s Cross Station, only empty. And very…white. It didn’t hurt at all. I didn’t feel a thing, really.”

“There was no killing curse for my mother.”

Harry’s thumb skimmed Draco’s cheekbone, and Merlin damn it, he was crying. Again. It was the worst kind, too, the kind he wasn’t aware of, and couldn’t control. “Bibsy found her?”

“And called for me, and of course I came, and I saw—I saw—”

“What did she look like?” The gentlest, most cutting question.

“Like she was sleeping,” Draco whispered. “Like if I shook her, she’d wake up. But she didn’t wake up.”

This was, perhaps, the detail he was most embarrassed about—he had shaken her, even after he knew she was dead. Nothing disturbed the peaceful expression on Narcissa’s face. Not even Draco shouting for her, then screaming, then sobbing.

“I don’t think it hurt, if she looked like that.”

“I’ll never know.”

Harry took a breath and straightened up. “You know other things.”

“I don’t know bloody anything.”

“You know she didn’t like to be alone. You know she had a ball every year. You probably loved them, too.” Harry’s fingertips brushed over Draco’s scarf. “You’ve always liked fancy clothes.”

What he has always loved, actually, is the sound of other people laughing. The warm feeling when the party has gone bright and loose, and everyone is enjoying each other.

“If I threw a ball, no one would come.”

Harry pursed his lips. “What else is left?”

“What?”

“What other traditions? What else is left, aside from the ball?”

Nothing. Nothing. “Gifts on Christmas morning. Christmas dinner.”

“Then you can’t skip one!” Harry sounded so resolute, so offended at the idea of skipping one of Narcissa Malfoy’s traditions, that it lifted some of the fear and grief off his chest.

But then it returned.

It always did.

Draco took Harry’s face in his hands. “No one will come.”

“Not with that attitude,” Harry said, his face slightly squashed in Draco’s hands. “And you’re forgetting an important detail.”

He couldn’t help the scoff that came out of his mouth. “What details would you know about throwing a ball?”

One of Harry’s hands curled around Draco’s wrist and brought his hand to his lips. Harry kissed his palm with his eyes on Draco’s. He couldn’t feel the cold, through all that heat. “Are we boyfriends or not?”

“Yes.” It was a little tetchier than he’d intended. “Of course we are. I’ve just kissed you on at least sixty different sofas in a department store.”

“Then it’s not you throwing a ball, is it? It’s us. And bloody everyone will want to see that.”

Chapter Text

Draco had been many things in his life: a Death Eater, a bully, a Malfoy.

He had never been the subject of one of Harry’s crusades.

That wasn’t precisely true, he supposed. There had been sixth year, when he caught Harry watching him constantly. That had probably been about the Death Eater business, anyway.

This was about Draco.

They returned to the Manor, and as soon as they stepped through the front doors, Harry gave Draco a determined shove.

“Honestly!” Draco went back for him, yanked him in for a kiss. “Shoving me, as if this isn’t my own home—”

“Get out of here,” Harry said against his mouth. “I have things to do, and so do you.”

“What things?”

“Never you mind.”

“Never I mind. Never in my life have I—”

“Bibsy!” Harry called, his fists in Draco’s jacket.

Bibsy popped into the foyer. “Is there something the matter, Harry Potter?”

“Draco needs help.”

The house-elf came forward, her eyes bright. “I am here.”

“He’s planning a party. I imagine we’ll use the ballroom, and the dining room, wherever else you can think of for a Christmas ball.”

“A Christmas ball,” Bibsy squeaked, her high-pitched cry echoing off the ceiling. “Harry Potter, for when?”

“For tomorrow.”

Draco gasped. Bibsy gasped louder.

“No bloody way.” Draco was still standing quite close to Harry, so close he could kiss him again, and the energy radiating off of him was enough to make a man tipsy, to make him drunk. “That isn’t enough time, Potter. Not for a proper—”

“Tomorrow.” Harry was so firm, so determined, that Draco shivered. He was so hot and pliant for Draco when they kissed. His green eyes went so wide and pleading. Now it was as if a magic storm had landed in the large foyer and had taken up all the space. “The two of you had better get started.”

He released Draco’s jacket, and in a terrible twist of fate, all Draco wanted was to pin him to the bed and shag him. Any furniture, actually. The floor would do.

“Harry Potter,” Bibsy cried. “Harry Potter, how many guests?”

Harry waved a dismissive hand in the air. “No idea, Bibsy, so sorry to say.”

Then he strode into the sitting room and shut the door behind him.

“You can use any fireplace,” Draco called after him. “You can—”

“No time!” Bibsy said, grabbing for his hand and yanking with surprising strength. “No time, no time, no time.”

Those words echoed in Draco’s ears for the next three hours. Bibsy was a whirlwind of an elf, creating a cloud of flour in the kitchen, filling the air with the sweet magic of cooking spells and charms to keep the food. At intervals, she left Draco tending all of this various magic, which felt good. It felt right, to be planning something like this.

It felt terrifying.

The first Christmas after the war, it had been Draco and his mother, since his father was in Azkaban, and both of them had gone gamely along with all the traditions, though they rang a little hollow in the echoing mansion. Narcissa had broken down halfway through December and Draco had spent a full week at her bedside.

“He’s gone,” he would tell her, every time she woke up. “I promise, he’s gone, and I’m awake, so I know it’s over.”

At least these spells were old hat. He’d spent the last six months saving food he found he was no longer hungry for, cooking half-heartedly for something to do until Bibsy ran him out of the kitchen. Draco had brought home more meals than he could count from pub nights that sat under warming spells on the countertop until Bibsy quietly cleared them away.

All this emotion was doing something to the foundation of him. Cracking it, perhaps. Shaking it. He had gone from telling Harry Potter his worst secret on a sidewalk in the snow to party planning.

Unless he’d been Obliviated. That would explain the loop-de-loop his heart kept doing. Up and down and up again. Back around, into the depths, then soaring.

He felt Harry come into the kitchen, his magic mixing with the spells in the air, and then his chin met Draco’s shoulder. Draco turned his face into the touch and found Harry’s lips waiting there to meet him. “We should have a chat,” he murmured, after the kiss settled.

“About what?” Harry tasted like snow and magic and—what was that? Sunrise, perhaps, if the sunrise had a taste.

“How strange this is.”

“Compared to what, exactly?” Harry laughed. “This isn’t strange, this is…nice. You are a nice thing, Draco.”

“Good to know I’m better than a department store.”

Harry’s hands slid around his waist. “Come see what Bibsy did to the foyer.”

He checked all the spells one more time and let Harry tug him out to the foyer.

“What she’s still doing,” Draco said.

The house-elf moved so fast she was practically a blur. Draco’s decorations remained in place, but they’d been enhanced somehow. The space seemed brighter. She flew around the base of the enormous Christmas tree, spelling gift boxes into place.

“Bibsy, could I—”

“Stay back, Master Draco.” She paused in her whirlwind. “Do not come closer. I have this well in hand.”

“We’ll be upstairs if you need us, Bibsy.” Harry backed toward the grand staircase with both his hands in the air. “Anything you need, okay?”

Bibsy gave him a terse not and became a blur again.

Harry led Draco upstairs and into the bedroom they’d been sleeping in, but not shagging in, all this time. What was he, a guest in his own home? He felt like one, nervous and excited and what was this? Honestly! He’d been the one in charge, the one leading, and now Harry was gently shutting the bedroom door behind them, gently backing Draco up against that door, gently leaning his forearms on either side of Draco’s head…

“Hello,” said Harry.

Draco found he couldn’t quite breathe, didn’t quite care. “Hello, darling.”

An adorable frown curved Harry’s lips. “I love when you call me that.”

“I love—” You. Absurd. They were dating. Boyfriends, he meant. In love? Yes. No! “Having you here.”

“Yes, about that.”

“Do not say you’re leaving, I will perish where we stand.”

Harry kissed the line of his jaw. “I’m not leaving. I’m making a request.”

It didn’t feel much like a request, with Harry caging him like this. “Is that what it is?” Draco turned his head and kissed Harry’s wrist, an inch of it exposed by the sleeve of his jumper.

“I want you to tell me something.”

“Then you’d better hurry up and ask, Potter, because—”

Harry glanced down between them. “All your blood has gone elsewhere?”

“Indeed.”

Green eyes searched his face again. A kiss brushed across his lips. Oh, what game had he ever been playing? How had he kept it to this, and wanks in the shower, this entire bloody time?

“Why are you afraid to shag me?”

Denial was fastest, but Draco found he couldn’t say the words. The waiting game—it was hot. The way Harry responded to it was hot. It wouldn’t be truthful to say he hadn’t loved having his cock down Harry’s throat.

It’s a game. He wanted to say it.

Couldn’t.

Instead, what came out was: “It’ll be the end.”

A high point before a swift drop. Buying carrots at the shop for his mother, only to be yanked back to the Manor by his own signet ring, summoned by a distraught Bibsy. His mother, lying in the grass, asleep.

Not asleep. Dead.

Confusion furrowed Harry’s brow. “It’s not the end of the holidays yet.”

“No. The end.”

Understanding bloomed. When Harry spoke, it was without a hint of humour, or judgment. “You think I’ll die if we shag?”

“You’ll die. Or you’ll leave. Or it’ll all fall apart. That’s what happened, when things are good.” Always. Always. He’d met a boy in Madame Malkin’s, and that boy had rejected him out of hand, for good reason. He’d done so bloody well in school, and it hadn’t been enough. He thought he’d escaped with his life, and then Voldemort moved into the Manor with all this Death Eaters, and Draco had been one of them, the worst of them. “It was the day after my birthday. She was hungry. She hadn’t wanted to eat, and she was finally hungry, so I went—so I—”

A hand at his cheek. Harry’s eyes on his. Draco expected that’s not going to happen. He expected you know that’s just your fear, don’t you?

“We don’t have to do it, then.”

“Harry—”

“I mean it.” Harry’s other hand came to his face, and he was no longer caged, simply held. “I absolutely bloody mean it.”

“That just means—that means, Potter, that you think this is temporary. We’re holiday boyfriends, not real—”

“I’m not afraid to die without shagging, Draco. I’ve done it before.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do.”

He saw that truth in Harry’s eyes, bright as anything. “That’s not right,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t die without shagging because I think you’ll die. Or break up with me.”

“Well, I don’t want to shag anyone else. And if you’re dreading it, then we don’t—”

“I’m not dreading the shagging, Harry, for Merlin’s sake. I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to die, I don’t want the holidays to be over, I don’t want the new year to ever come—”

“I am not leaving!”

“But you might!”

“But the roof might cave in! The sun might burn out! The Dark Lord could return! I killed him myself, but it’s always a possibility! If any of those things happen, I’ll still be right here, in this house, unless you want to leave.”

“Where would I go?”

Harry sighed, tipping his head back. He brought it forward again and met Draco’s eyes. “Anywhere in the world. Anywhere you wanted to go.”

“I haven’t even thought—”

“As long as I can go with you.”

“You don’t even know what you’re asking—”

“I’m asking for more than a holiday. I’m asking for more than a month. I want to know everything about you. I want to know all of your mother’s Christmas traditions and everything that keeps you up at night and everything that makes you excited to wake up in the morning. I asked you to have a pint because I wanted to talk to you, and I came here because I wanted to be with you, and I will want that whether we shag or not, because that’s what I’ve always wanted, even when I thought I hated you—”

“Harry—”

“And I do not hate you, I don’t know how to make that any clearer. I want to be with you so badly that I’ve spent all this time trying not to tackle you even though I don’t know what I’m bloody doing and you’ll probably laugh—”

“Darling—”

“So if you’re serious, then I don’t care, I really don’t, it’s nothing to me, if I can just stay with you—”

“Play with me.”

Harry startled at Draco’s tone, his grip on his face tightening. “What?”

“I’m scared to death, Potter. Of anything good. And you just—you keep on living, even when it’s a nightmare, you just keep going. You played Quidditch while the Dark Lord returned, for Merlin’s sake. Play with me. Make it a game. It wasn’t a game, not really. You knew that. Now I’ve told you. Make it one. Make it a game again. Please.”

Harry leaned in, very slow, very close, and darted his tongue out to lick Draco’s bottom lip. “When are you going to shag me?”

Just like that, the universe shifted, and it could be a game. A peak they’d ascend together. Perhaps they’d never come down.

“When you can’t wait any longer.”

Harry’s eyes flashed with the challenge. “Can I touch you?”

“You’re touching me right now.”

Harry got to his knees. “Can I taste you?”

“Is that going to make you want me faster?”

“We’ll see.”

Chapter Text

I can wait became Harry’s new favourite phrase.

He said it on his knees, with Draco’s back against his bedroom door, his own cock leaking into his trousers.

He said it with both fists in the sheets, Draco’s mouth hot on his shaft, his hips going wild.

He said it the next morning in the shower, with Draco sliding two fingers down his spine, down and down and down until they skimmed his hole. He said it coming onto the tile, Draco’s fist wrapped around him. He said it with Draco’s teeth in the curve of his shoulder.

“I can wait,” he said, five minutes before the guests were due to arrive.

“Good.” Draco was fussing in front of the mirror, doing up the buttons of his waistcoat. “You’ll have to. People will be arriving in fifteen minutes.”

“The invitations said eight.”

Draco shot him a look of pure exasperation. “No one will be here right at eight.”

This was true, in a sense. Pansy Parkinson rushed through the front doors of the Manor at three minutes after eight and threw her arms around Draco’s neck. “Thank Merlin,” Harry heard, from what he thought was a polite distance across the foyer. “I thought you’d stay in here forever. I thought you’d waste away, and then—”

“I didn’t waste away.”

“And then Harry Potter said you were throwing a Christmas ball, and I thought maybe you’d lost it, maybe you’d both lost it—”

Blaise Zabini was next, with Theo Nott, and it was like a dam had burst. The little Slytherin clutch, plus Harry, in the middle of the foyer was deluged with Gryffindors, including Hermione and Ron and Luna and then the circle expanded until Draco was giving him huge eyes with every new person that came through the door.

Bibsy was beside herself.

She wouldn’t wade into the crowd, but hovered near the tree, spelling new gifts into existence.

The Minister for Magic arrived, with half the Ministry and almost every Auror that had ever been friendly with Harry.

Most of their pub friends, of course with butterbeer and Firewhisky.

At Harry’s insistent begging, Draco had cast the jewelled stars over the ballroom, and they glittered above a crowd that was working hard against the cooling charms of the room, dancing and drinking and laughing.

Harry was on his way to Ron and Hermione when Draco hooked a hand into his elbow and pushed him into an alcove he hadn’t noticed before.

Was it Harry’s breath that caught, or his heart? Draco was a bloody vision with the party behind him. The lights danced in his hair, and in the half-shadow, all the fine, beautiful lines of his face were in stark relief.

“How,” he said, his breath ghosting across Harry’s mouth, “did you manage to invite three hundred people?”

“I probably invited more.”

“How?”

“Open invitation.”

Draco’s head fell back. “You issued an open invitation to my home for a Christmas ball?”

“Erm.” Harry fought the urge to lick Draco’s neck. “Yeah.”

Silver eyes landed on his again. “What did you say, exactly?”

“Does it matter?”

“Harry.” If Draco was trying to sound menacing, it nearly worked.

“I told them what I told you. That my boyfriend and I were hosting a Christmas ball at the Malfoy Manor, and they should feel free to bring friends.”

“Bibsy is going to quit.”

“I’ll make it up to Bibsy.”

Draco hummed, leaning in, doing an infuriating thing that Harry happened to love. His lips were an inch from Harry’s skin, less than an inch, but he only let him feel the heat. He didn’t touch. “How will you make it up to me?”

“You’re not happy?”

“I am so bloody happy, darling. But you…” One of Draco’s hands slid down the front of his jacket to the front of Harry’s trousers. “You are decidedly not happy.”

Well, of course he was hard, and of course he had been all evening. Draco was wearing a Muggle suit so lovely it had to have been made by a wix. His palm against Harry’s shaft, even through the fabric, made him a little dizzy. “I’m perfectly happy.”

“Are you?”

“I can wait.”

Those words did something to Draco. They darkened his eyes. Sent a flush to his cheeks. Made him inhale, sharply, every time.

All those things, Harry was certain he knew.

What he probably didn’t know was that there was an echo in his magic. A kind of soft relief. He’d said it fifty times, maybe more, over the last day, and it happened every time. Draco touched him every time. Usually he kissed him, Draco’s mouth on his, his hands roaming over Harry’s body.

This time, he leaned in, but the kiss was light, over in a heartbeat. “How long?”

He’d insisted on making it a game again, but this question seemed refracted into so many meanings that Harry’s head swam. He leaned in closer and breathed in the clean scent of his boyfriend’s skin.

“I could wait forever for you,” he said. “I would. Wait forever, I mean. I don’t want to wait for anyone else.” Draco ran his palm over Harry’s cock, and his vision darkened. “And Merlin, fuck, I can’t wait another second.”

Draco hummed, considering. “Why is that, Potter? Tired of waiting?”

“Tired of not being yours.”

Draco went still. “You’re my boyfriend.”

“I want to be yours in every way.”

“Blowjobs count as sex, Harry,” Draco intoned. “You’re not completely untouched, however much—”

“No, I want you to shag me.”

It was at that moment that the music dipped between songs. Over Draco’s shoulder, Harry saw Ron’s eyebrows disappear into his hair and Hermione turn away, her shoulders shaking.

The music started again.

“I don’t care,” Harry said, just as loudly. “I do want you to shag me. I’m still willing to wait for as long as you want this game to last, even if that’s the rest of our Merlin-forsaken lives, but I do want it.”

Blaise Zabini whooped from somewhere in the crowd. Whether that was related to what Harry said, he couldn’t tell.

Draco’s eyes raked over him. “What else do you want?”

It was possible Harry had never been so sober in his life—there hadn’t been time to drink, not with greeting the people who kept on coming. Maybe it was the heat of the room that made him feel drunk. Maybe it was just Draco. “I want to stay here with you, after the holiday. Or wherever you are. Actually, I don’t think you should live here.”

Draco arched an eyebrow. “You don’t think I should keep my ancestral home?”

“Oh, Merlin, keep the bloody thing. I don’t think you should live here. For a while, anyway. It makes you sad. And you can be sad anywhere. You can be sad in Paris.”

“Is that where you want to go?”

“I’ve never been, so, maybe.”

Draco’s eyes narrowed. “Where have you been?”

“Privet Drive. Hogwarts. The DMLE…”

“If you say you’ve only been out on cases and to this manor—”

“It would be true.”

The pause between them was filled in by laughter. Warm, heated laughter, and people celebrating the holiday. “That would make us more than boyfriends,” Draco offered, tone careful.

“Okay. Yes.”

His eyes went wide, sparkling with silver. “You may not decide this instant. You have to decide—”

“In twenty-four hours?”

“After we’ve shagged.”

“Are we finally going to?” Harry didn’t know he was hauling Draco in by his jacket until their faces were inches apart.

“If you can wait…” Draco squeezed him through his trousers, and Harry’s knees nearly gave out. “A little longer.”

Chapter Text

The joke was on Draco, because all his wanting came over him at once. It threatened to tear him in two. The people filling the Manor, the voices everywhere, warm and alive and here for him—Draco wanted that. He wanted it so much that he had been prepared to deny himself forever to avoid not getting it.

But he wanted Harry more.

And he knew—he knew—that it would make no difference if he waited. Harry was already the bright, lovely thing in Draco’s life, and if admitting it would be the end of it all, then—

Then it was as good as ended already.

Because Draco—

He put his arms around Harry and turned them both into a desperate Apparition, landing a moment later on the floor of Draco’s bedroom.

Then Harry was on him, hot mouth, hotter hands, and Draco’s heart pounded so hard that he went lightheaded and foolish.

He had been in control, before. Needed to be in control now. So he steered them towards the bed, both of them tearing at any clothing they could reach. Draco revealed Harry to him piece by piece. The lean muscles of his abs. His wiry thighs.

His thick, heavy cock.

They were both naked, Harry’s glasses somewhere else, when Harry put his hands on Draco’s face and stopped them at the edge of the bed, breathing hard, his eyes closed.

“You’ve got to be joking.” Draco only discovered how hard he was shaking when he spoke, and his voice trembled with him. “What are you doing?”

“Wait,” Harry breathed. “Wait, wait.”

“Why?”

“Listen. We really, really don’t have to. This isn’t about, like, our dicks.”

“What?”

“I just want to be close to you.” Harry opened his eyes. Something twinkled in the green. “I just want to be close to you. And if I’ve made it seem like I’m incurably horny, or if all I want is—”

“I know that’s not all you want!” Draco’s emotions surged up in him, stronger and clearer than they had been since his mother died. “I know that. If that was all you wanted, you’d have gone home days and days ago. You never would have stayed after I—” Destroyed a room over nothing. Screamed at you. Told you to get out. “You never would have stayed. Do you think this is all I want of you?”

Harry shook his head. “No. I know it’s not. I just—”

“I want to be close to you also, Potter. And I’m—of course I’m terrified. Everything always goes wrong. Everything always ends, in some way or another, and I can never—I can’t predict it. No matter what I do. I’m not a Seer. But I still want you. I still want to be as close to you as I can bloody get. So it’s worth being terrified. Do you understand?”

Draco was shouting, by the end. His sense of propriety had long since fled, and he was left with nothing but wild, reckless bravery.

Harry studied his face for a heartbeat that seemed to last a lifetime.

Then he leaned in and kissed Draco.

It was the same as the other times they’d kissed. It was nothing like the other times. It started slow, as if Harry was trying to savour it, and Draco knew that feeling intimately. So bloody intimately. He’d been trying to do the same thing, and he did it again, letting his fear fade under the sensation of Harry’s mouth on his.

It seemed to him that there was nothing but Harry. Nothing but his body, and the small sounds in the back of his throat, and his hands, dropping from Draco’s face to explore the rest of him. Draco thought Harry might pause at the scars—might want to address it again—but instead he only touched them, as if they were any other part of Draco, as if the violence that made them had been firmly laid to rest.

Then his hand circled Draco’s cock, and time went liquid. They were standing, then on the bed. The blankets were neat, then crumpling under Draco’s fist. He thought he’d drown in the wet heat of Harry’s mouth, then found himself leaning over Harry, trailing kisses down his spine, his fingers slick with Conjured lube.

“Please shag me,” Harry said, desperate, and touching him took all of Draco’s attention. He fell into it, memorising every movement Harry made under his fingers. Memorising the way he whined for him, impatient, trying to fuck himself on Draco’s fingers well before he was ready. It took forever. It took no time at all.

And then Draco was notched to Harry’s hole, Harry underneath him making the prettiest sounds Draco had ever heard.

And then Draco was pushing inside him, Harry tight and hot around him, waiting and stroking his back, trembling, trembling.

And then they were closer than they’d ever been.

It was a vise of pleasure. Heat and skin. All Draco’s muscles alive and working. Harry asked him something, and Draco answered yes, yes, of course, anything, and then Harry was moving Draco’s hand so it could wrap around his cock, so he could stroke him until he came, until the force of his orgasm grabbed Draco and pulled him over, too.

Harry chatted, afterwards. He wouldn’t stop talking, pressed tight to Draco’s side, and Draco stared up at the ceiling, buzzing with pleasure.

“—hear me?” Harry said.

“What?”

“Can you hear me?” Harry laughed. “You seem out of it.”

“Good,” Draco said, then had to search his mind for more words. “So good.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Harry promised, and kissed Draco’s cheek. “I hope you know that.”

“Of course I do.”

“Draco?”

The loud hum that must be his blood, or his magic, subsided a bit. The sounds of the party floated up from beneath them. “Yes?”

“Why is there pudding in here?”

“What?”

“Pudding.” Harry pointed, so Draco lifted his head to see. “There’s pudding in here. It’s on fire.”

A Christmas pudding had indeed been delivered by magic to the table by the window. It was perched on a silver serving dish and a flame spouted from the top.

“It’s supposed to be on fire,” Draco said, and let his head fall back to the pillow. “It’s Christmas pudding.”

“Okay,” Harry said, and let his head rest on Draco’s chest. “Do you want to go back to your party?”

“Your party.”

“Our party.”

Draco closed his eyes. “Not yet. Give me a little while longer.”

Chapter Text

Harry was getting the impression that Draco did not want to go back to the party.

They stayed in bed for five more minutes, and then another five, and honestly—Harry was going to be happy just listening to the joy down below them. The Manor would be able to make it quieter, if Draco really wanted to sleep.

Harry wasn’t sure he could sleep. He’d sort of expected that he’d be in dreamland already, given everything he’s heard about shagging. Instead of being half-asleep, though, Harry was buzzing with energy.

All he wanted in the world was to be with Draco. Maybe it was a bit too much. Harry didn’t know. But he did know that Draco was terrified of shagging because he thought it meant they’d break up or something, so Harry’s new top priority is making sure Draco knows it’s going to be okay.

Then Draco sat up, his eyes glittering in the light from the fire—and the light from the smaller fire, since the Christmas pudding was still aflame on the table.

“It’s going to be fine,” he announced, sounding desperately relieved.

“Yeah?”

“Yes, of course it is.”

“Right, of course! Er—”

Draco leapt out of the bed. Harry, who had no idea what was going on, propped himself up on one elbow and watched Draco Summon his clothes, then start to spell them onto his body.

He threw a look at Harry over his shoulder. “Get up, Potter!”

“Okay, okay!” Harry got up and began the search for his own clothes. They’d got surprisingly scattered in the frenzy after they’d touched down. “Are we going somewhere special?”

Draco stared at him, wide-eyed, as he did up the clasps of his outer robes. “Potter. You invited all of England to this gathering. I am not leaving the Manor undefended.”

“Undefended? What do you think they’re going to do?”

“Merlin knows!” Draco laughed, and Harry felt a bit like he’d fallen off a broom. The laugh was a lovely sound, but it was also a sure sign of Draco’s jitters. That couldn’t be good for a party, could it?

He abandons getting dressed, then crosses to Draco and takes his face in his hands.

“Are you okay?”

Draco nods solemnly, his cheeks still flushed from their very recent shag.

“Are you sure you’re okay? It won’t hurt anything if we wait five more minutes.”

Uncertaintly flickers across Draco’s eyes, but he lifts his chin. “I’m sure.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. I mean—a party is going to keep happening, but nothing bad’s going to happen. It’s all going to be good.”

“Not if you go downstairs half-naked.”

“Why wouldn’t that be good?”

Draco kissed him, fierce and hot, then dressed Harry in a few flicks of his wand.

Downstairs, the party had progressed. There were a lot of people, but they kept finding friends. Every Slytherin they came across hugged Draco tight and whispered things into his ear like they were in real danger of losing him.

They were, Harry realised. They thought he’d never invite them in again. And Draco was at his best when he was surrounded with people.

The Manor had been pretty empty with just the two of them. Harry hadn’t cared, obviously. He wasn’t about to demand that Draco have people to his house when he was trying to get through his first Yule season without his mother.

But with so many voices all around them—so many people—it was clear to Harry that the solitude was hurting Draco more than it was protecting him.

They would have to do something else, after this. Not, like, immediately after—Harry thought Draco would want to sleep for a day or two. Or maybe shag for a day or two. But sometime in the New Year.

A giddy shiver went through Harry. The new year. When the next year came, they could stay together…and they could go anywhere.

Harry could go anywhere.

The wizarding world had felt small for a while. Almost stifling. It had somehow become a place he was trapped in rather than escaping to, and that couldn’t be his life. It just couldn’t be.

They ended up the sitting room—made enormous by the Manor for the party—in a circle of Slytherins and Gryffindors. Harry’s face was warm from champagne and the sound of Draco laughing.

“Haven’t they any sense of decorum?” he said, his shoulders still shaking. “Hardly appropriate.”

“Since when do we consider the truth inappropriate?” Blaise said, looking seriously at Draco. “Honesty is a virtue.”

Harry had no idea what they were talking about. He had been watching everyone else enjoy each other. He had been daydreaming—party-dreaming?—about what they would do when this year ended and another one began. It was like looking through an open door. The world was just there, on the other side, and it was waiting for them.

“What?” Harry said. “What are we being honest about?”

“Show him.” Draco put an arm around Harry’s shoulders.

“Here? At an event such as this one? I don’t know if—”

“Show him, Blaise!”

Blaise took something out of his pocket and handed it to Harry. It was a Muggle Christmas card with three stockings on it. Below, it read I like my stockings how I like my men: well hung.

Harry giggled in spite of himself. “Who gave you this?”

“The old wix with the flat down the hall from mine,” Blaise said. “Truly, I do appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think she realised it was a double entendre.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Harry agreed, and handed the card back.

Theo Nott tapped Blaise on the shoulder, and Draco turned to kiss Harry’s cheek. “Well, Potter? How do you like your men?”

“I like them to be you. I want you to be…you. With me. For the rest of our lives.”

“Are you proposing?”

Draco was joking.

Harry understood in that moment that he was not.

“Yes. Actually—yes. I am.”

“All right,” Draco said, a smile blooming on his face. “I accept.”

Chapter Text

They were watching the sunrise from the bedroom window when something occurred to Draco.

“That wasn’t Christmas.”

Harry stirred next to him, lifting his head off Draco’s shoulder. “Did you think it was?”

“No, of course not.” The light outside tiptoed over the snow-covered Manor grounds as if the sun was rising for the very first time. “I meant—it was the solstice yesterday.”

“Oh.” Harry yawns. “Right. The solstice. When it’s really dark.”

“When it’s the shortest day of the year, Potter.”

“S’what I said.” Harry rubbed his eyes, then Summoned his glasses, blinking slowly. “We should go to bed.”

“We should’ve gone to bed hours ago.”

Harry laughed. “That’s what I said. But you said we couldn’t.”

“We were hosting the party.”

“We were snogging.”

“It’s perfectly possible to do both at once.”

“Oh, but not three things? We couldn’t have had a nap?”

Draco kissed him. There was something rising in him like the sun, and more than a little champagne still swimming gamely around in his veins, and every idea he had was like a droplet of clear, fresh rain. His mind had been muddied with grief for months. It wasn’t clean yet, and hopefully wouldn’t ever be free of how he felt about losing his mother, but the horrid circling thoughts that had dragged him down were washing away.

Nothing made Draco more certain about—

About everything than kissing Harry did.

He tasted sweet and minty, and his lips were soft in contrast to the stubble beginning to roughen his chin.

Draco sat up and looked into Harry’s eyes, waiting a few moments for the lightheadedness to pass. That was because he’d been up all night, talking to everyone he’d missed, and understanding—

Well. He wasn’t going to be able to explain. Not until he’d had some sleep.

“Did you mean it?” Draco asked. “Or did you drink too much champagne?”

“Did I mean to propose to you?”

“Yes.”

Harry narrowed his eyes as if he had to think about it. “Dunno if that’s what I meant to do when I started talking, but it’s what I meant to do when I finished.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“You said yes.” The green in Harry’s eyes was brighter by the moment as the light stretched in through the bedroom windows. “Did you mean that?”

“Yes. Also, I want to get married before we go to sleep.”

Harry’s eyes went enormously wide. He blinked once, then twice, then frowned. “Is this a dream? Am I dreaming?”

“No. You haven’t gone to sleep yet.”

“…you don’t want to wait?” The frown gave way to bafflement. “You don’t want to plan, like, a huge—” Harry waved his hand in a circle. “Thing? A huge wedding?”

“I do. Of course I want guests. But we can do that later.”

“Can we? Because that’s sort of the thing with weddings. You’re meant to get married at the wedding so people can see—”

Draco got up, pulling Harry with him. “Of course I want everyone to see that we’re—of course I do. But I don’t want to wait any longer. For anything.”

Harry looked young, suddenly—surprised, as if he hadn’t been the one to say actually, yes when Draco teased him about a proposal. “But—are you sure? Because—”

“I’m as sure as I was last night. And I’m not—no. I’m not waiting. This is the first day after the solstice.” It had never meant much to Draco before. He couldn’t say why, exactly, it mattered now, except that he was watching the rest of his life start with the sunrise. He was looking out at a living world and not a dead one. “I will wait, if your heart is set on a ceremony with—”

“Do we need them? People to watch?” Harry took Draco’s hand. The sensation when their bare hands touched was like getting struck by lightning. Or getting nearly struck by lightning. All the power amassed in a bolt, touching down so near that Draco would never be able to forget the feeling. “Or can we do it alone?”

“The Manor can anchor the bond.”

Harry’s eyes lit up. Draco did not think they could be more vivid, but they could. “Where do we go?”

Downstairs, first of all. They moved quietly through the Manor. Most of the guests had gone home between midnight and dawn, but quite a few of their friends had stayed. Merlin knew the Manor was big enough. By the time they went outside into the nearest formal gardens, Harry was holding his breath to keep from laughing out loud.

“Here?” he asked, and squeezed Draco’s hand.

“No. I’ll take us.”

It was not advisable to Apparate in anything less than a person’s most alert state, but despite having been up all night, Draco had never felt more awake. None of his worst memories could get anywhere close to the forefront of his mind. The holly tree was just there, and then they were standing in the snow next to the dark green of the branches and the cheery bright berries.

Harry let out a shocked ah and stepped on Draco’s feet.

Draco, who had been holding him already for the Apparition, drew him in closer. “You don’t have shoes on!”

“I thought we were only going to the garden!”

“The garden is covered in snow, Potter! Why didn’t you stop for shoes?”

“You said you didn’t want to wait! I don’t need shoes! I can live without shoes! Are we getting married next to a holly tree?” Harry’s teeth were already beginning to chatter. The sunrise was giving the sky its best, but it couldn’t compete with the cold. It had been the longest night of the year, hadn’t it?

“Yes. That’s exactly what we’re doing.” Draco kept one arm around Harry and took out his wand. He did not remember the incantations his mother had taught him. Really, he should’ve memorised them at the time, but it had been summer, and they had been in her rose garden, and the roses had seemed important, not the charm he could use in the event he needed a hasty wedding ceremony.

Lucky for both of them, the charm did not strictly need incantations. It rested mostly upon the intent of the caster, and Draco’s strongest, most forceful intent was to create a marriage bond between himself and Harry.

The house magic came when Draco called.

Harry threw his arms around Draco’s neck, laughing, and Draco held him tighter. He’d called a thousand years worth of family magic to bond them. Its response was, Draco thought, quite like a thousand years of weddings. It was a high, ringing sound that felt familiar and new at once. Harry turned his head and kissed Draco’s cheek. He could feel Harry laughing, but couldn’t hear him—the magic’s song rushed between them, drowning everything else out.

Draco couldn’t tell how long it took for the magic to circle around them and fade back into the earth, or the house—wherever it had come from—leaving the bond behind.

When it quieted, he found that Harry was still talking.

“—love you,” he was saying. “Draco. I love you.”

Chapter Text

“Wake up, Potter. We haven’t much time.”

Draco sounded so urgent that Harry pushed himself upright too fast and almost fell off the side of the bed, groggy, his heart racing. “Wha?”

“Come on!” Draco pulled him up to his feet. “We’ve not got much time!”

“For what? When—when is it?”

“Nearly noon.”

Harry was completely and utterly disoriented. Well—not completely. This was Draco’s bedroom. Harry was in it, because they were husbands.

“Did we get married by a holly tree? Was that real?”

“Yes.” Draco beamed at him, then put his hand under Harry’s elbow and walked him towards the bathroom. “Into the shower with you, husband.”

“We didn’t have any rings,” Harry managed to say, but then he was underneath the stream of water and Draco was Levitating a phial of hair potion into his hands, so they clearly weren’t going to discuss the lack of rings.

Harry didn’t need a ring, anyway. He could feel the bond inside him, which was much more palpable and glittery and shining than any ring could possibly be. If Draco wanted to wear rings, Harry would wear one. Obviously! But he didn’t need one to be married.

Not for the first time in Harry’s life, things had escalated ridiculously quickly.

Although, if he thought about it, he’d been staying at Draco’s house for the better part of a month, and it wasn’t like anything between them had ever been slow.

Harry got out of the shower, stood still while Draco tossed clothes at him, and let himself be pulled through an upstairs Floo to—

“The Leaky Cauldron?” Harry gasped.

Draco gave him a look. “Yes? Where else?”

“Literally anywhere else? I thought you didn’t want—”

Draco leaned very close to Harry’s face, and at that range, his beauty immediately stripped all the thoughts from Harry’s mind. “There is another tradition, Potter. It’s—”

“Gifts under the tree. But there are already gifts under the tree. We don’t—”

“Those were guest-gifts. For the guests. If there are to be gifts under the tree for us, then someone will have to buy them. We will have to buy them. And there’s not much time left. So we’re going to go shopping for Christmas gifts.” Draco got more and more serious as he spoke until it sort of felt like he was telling Harry they were going to war. “Here,” Draco finished. “We’re going to buy them here.”

“Not at the Leaky,” Harry said.

Draco, who must really be in love with Harry, did not roll his eyes. “Diagon Alley.”

Harry’s brain, which was miraculously un-hungover, took a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. Draco was nervous. He’d brought Harry here in a rush because he thought he might not be able to follow through. Or he thought Harry wouldn’t want to follow through.

Draco was also being very brave.

So Harry took Draco’s face in his hands and kissed him. Draco relaxed into it. Harry didn’t mean to lose himself in the kiss, but he did.

A loud clanging interrupted them. It was Tom the bartender, banging two pots together. Then he whistled, and Draco went as red as a holly berry.

“Hi, Tom.” Harry waved at him as they went out. “Happy Christmas.”

“Looks like you’re already having one,” Tom called.

“I am,” Harry told Draco as the bricks leading to Diagon opened up ahead of them. They stepped through. “Also, everyone already saw us at the party. This is just, like, the general public.”

Draco put his hand in Harry’s and held on tight. “Yes. And in general, they’re not fond of—”

“I’ll hex anyone who says anything,” Harry said brightly.

“You’re not going to see them.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re splitting up.” Draco leaned in and kissed Harry’s cheek, then dropped his hand with a resolute expression. “You can’t see what I’m getting for you.”

“But—”

“Twenty minutes,” Draco said. “That’s all the time you have. Meet back here.”

“But I dunno what—”

“Ready?” Draco intoned. “Set. Go.”

He darted off unfairly quickly, and Harry instinctively ran in the opposite direction and collided with the wall leading to the Leaky Cauldron.

“Bollocks,” he hissed, and spun around again.

Mid-sprint, he cast a Patronus.

The stag leapt out from the tip of his wand. “Get Ron,” Harry wheezed. “And Hermione. Fast.”

Harry swung himself into the first shop that caught his eye and purchased the newest, most expensive broom they had for sale. He Shrunk it—carefully—and put the bag into his pocket, then sprinted back out onto the pavement.

Ron caught him by the elbow. “Mate.”

“I got married,” Harry said in a rush. “This morning. To Draco. So, like—”

Harry’s words were choked off by Hermione’s tight, intense hug. “Oh, I knew it! All the house magic—Harry, you should have been there!”

“I was,” he manages to say.

“No, in the house! It was—”

“Hermione, let him breathe!” Ron pulled her arms away from Harry’s neck. “Congratulations, mate. Everything else okay?”

“I need a ring,” Harry said. “A good one. Fast.”

Hermione and Ron both had opinions on the jewellery stores on Diagon Alley, and they spent thirty seconds arguing. They resorted to a game of stone, parchment, Diffindo, which Ron won, and the three of them set off for his chosen shop.

“How d’you know about this?” Harry asked as they jogged down Diagon Alley.

“Percy,” Ron answered. “He’s always been mental about jewellery shops.”

Had he been? Harry didn’t care.

They went into a shop with a kindly old man behind the counter, and Ron and Hermione split off. Within seconds, they’d corralled the shop’s owner into choosing three rings in the sort of high-speed conversation Harry could barely follow but trusted to work out in his favour.

The rings were on a tray covered with black velvet.

The choice was obvious.

It was simple, and silver, and shone like their marriage bond.

“That one,” Harry said, and thought he’d burst from joy.

They went back outside.

Harry cast a Tempus. He had two minutes to get back to the meeting point.

“Party,” he said. “Manor? Something. For Christmas. Not everybody this time. Just, like—you know. Can you tell people?”

Ron nodded solemnly. “‘Course we can, mate.”

Hermione wrapped Harry’s neck in another suffocating hug. “We missed you.”

“I’ve been here,” he said, though he knew she was right. He’d sort of disappeared for a week or two. But it was worth it. Draco needed him. And Harry had needed to disappear. He just hadn’t known it. “I’m not going anywhere,” Harry promised. “Well. Unless Draco wants to.”

“Oooh, where?” Hermione said, leaning back to look up at him. “Because there are so many interesting—”

“Let’s go tell everyone about the party!” Ron said, and took Hermione’s arm. “Sounds like we haven’t got much time!”

Harry spent the final minute of whatever mad game this was sprinting back towards the Leaky. He remembered he was a wizard too late to Apparate and jogged to a halt, out of breath.

Draco was there waiting for him, smiling that enormous, brilliant smile of his.

“Home?” he asked Harry.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Yes.”

Chapter Text

“Are you mad?” Pansy asked, her wine sloshing precariously in her glass. “You got married at dawn and didn’t bother to wake me up?”

“Oh, leave him alone, Pans. This is the most normal thing he’s done all year.”

Draco did not bother sitting up from his position on the sofa. The Manor had redecorated the sitting room, sweeping away the detritus from last night’s party and making everything slightly softer. Deep greens and reds abounded. And Harry—his husband—had apparently had a little panic over Christmas celebrations and sent Granger and Weasley ahead to tell their closest friends to stay.

They would have stayed anyway. Draco is sure of that.

Well—they might have stayed. He had been harbouring a secret fear that he’d kept them all at too great a distance in his grief, and the party hadn’t been enough to convince him.

This, though? Christmas Eve in his sitting room, with a ridiculous group of Slytherins and Gryffindors—and Luna Lovegood and a Hufflepuff whose name escaped Draco after one glass of champagne—that was enough.

There was an enormous stack of Christmas crackers on the side table, and people kept wandering over to open them. Weasley wore a paper crown three feet tall. Seamus Finnigan—when did he get there?—had sparkling rings on all ten of his fingers. An entire wizard chess set sprang out of one of the crackers, and Dean Thomas and Gregory Goyle were embroiled in what appeared to be a rather solemn game. Both of them had floppy green hats on, each decorated with a tinkling bell.

Harry and Granger went to the table of Christmas crackers, heads leaned close together. The marriage bond fizzed inside Draco like the loveliest champagne he’d ever had. Better, actually, because it didn’t make him feel separated from the world. It made him feel firmly grounded. Like he was supposed to be here.

“You’re invited to the reception.” Draco found Pansy’s hand and squeezed it.

“Fine,” she sniffed. “But I was looking forward to being your best witch.”

“You’re still my best witch,” Draco said.

“Tell us about it again. He was standing on your shoes?”

“If that isn’t a sign he’s gone for you, I don’t know what is,” said Blaise.

Over by the Christmas crackers, Harry and Granger had progressed from a whispered conversation to one that was…not whispered.

“It’s all right, Harry!” Granger was saying. “Just do it. You won’t be able to sleep, otherwise, and you know how you get when you don’t—”

“Hermione!”

“I’m supporting you!” Granger said, her voice low but so pointed that it cut through the voices of everyone gathered in the sitting room. “And he loves you. He’s going to love—”

“Shh.”

“Come on. Come on, Harry. Let’s go together.”

Granger took Harry by the arm. Weasley looked around from his spot at the table with all the food as if he’d sensed the shift in the air, then crossed the sitting room to join Harry and Granger. They walked on either side of him.

Draco sat up at that. It was very like a traditional wedding ceremony. He couldn’t just sit there, so he scrambled to his feet. Pansy leapt up next to him and put her arm through his.

“Hello, Potter!” she cried. “What have you got there?”

“A gift,” he said, his face flushing a deep red.

“What sorts of intentions do you have for our Draco with this gift?”

“Pansy,” Draco murmured.

“Well,” Harry said, lifting his chin. “I love him. Not that you could stop me. Since we’re already married.” And then, as if he thought no one could see, he stuck his tongue out at Pansy.

Pansy stuck her tongue out at Potter.

Blaise clapped his hands. “Let’s not forget it’s Christmas Eve.”

Draco could tell, from how Pansy’s arm had tightened around his, that she was very much enjoying antagonising Harry. Was this his future? His friends antagonising his husband?

Although—his husband had started it.

“Show him, Harry,” Granger said, and patted Harry’s arm.

Harry took a box out of his pocket and stepped closer to Draco. “I got this for you,” he said softly. “I remembered when we were looking at rings before, and I know we don’t need them, but, like, I want everyone to know I gave you one. If you don’t—”

Granger shook Harry’s arm, and he pinched his lips shut for a few heartbeats.

“Here,” he said finally, and held out the box.

Draco opened it.

It was silver and shiny and new, and Draco loved it instantly.

“I’m sorry it’s not, like, an antique,” Harry said in a rush.

“Harry,” Granger scolded.

“I love it. Harry, I—I love it.” It was Draco’s. Only Draco’s. It had none of the past clinging to it. It was made of hope and anticipation. Or perhaps that was the champagne.

No, it was Harry.

There was nothing to do but kiss him, so Draco did. Harry’s hands came to his waist and pulled him in closer. The marriage bond jangled like a thousand bells, taking Draco’s breath away.

“You’ll drown him with all this snagging!” Pansy said at his side, and Draco laughed, then heaved in an enormous breath. “Merlin, Potter. You can’t kiss him until he suffocates!”

“Didn’t,” Harry said, and took the box back from Draco. He put the ring on Draco’s finger, and it sized itself with a happy little tug of magic. Harry beamed at the silver glinting on Draco’s skin. “That’s nice.”

“It would be nicer if we both had one,” Draco said, and took a very similar box from his own pocket.

Harry’s eyes went wide and pleased. “For me?”

“For you.”

Draco opened the box for him and slipped the gold band on Harry’s finger. “I’m sorry it’s not an antique,” he said as the ring warmed, fitting itself to Harry. “It’s quite new, actually. It was only made this afternoon.”

“We only had twenty minutes!”

“I was motivated.”

“I think now’s when you’re supposed to kiss,” Ron said, his crown tilting wildly.

Draco hadn’t noticed the rest of the party—all their friends—gathering closer. They were all watching. They would all see him with Harry. They’d know.

It would be wonderful.

So Draco threw his arms around Harry’s neck and kissed him.

When all their friends cheered, it sounded like wedding magic.

Chapter Text

On Christmas morning, Harry woke up slowly.

Pale light filtered in through the windows of Draco’s bedroom. It touched everything gently, like snow. Harry watched as it crept across the bed, lighting his body under the covers.

Draco slept deeply, one arm thrown over Harry’s waist and one arm hooked over his shin.

It wouldn’t be so bad to spend the rest of his life like this.

Harry knew he would.

Not only in the winter, obviously, but all throughout the year. This, here, with Draco—that was what would anchor his days, instead of his job. He wouldn’t spend so much time trying to push his fears somewhere he couldn’t see, or feel.

Harry pursed his lips. It would be better if his fears would just go away, but he supposed that was the sort of thing you just had to live with.

Living with it seemed like a much nicer prospect with the marriage bond chiming away in his chest. Even if it happened again—the panic, the horrible dread, the sick-to-his-stomach feeling—he’d still have the bond, and Draco.

Their friends were still in the Manor. He could feel their magic, resting quietly below them. It was good to know they were there.

But it was also good to know they would be there. Not in the Manor, or even in London, but there for them. Wherever he and Draco went. Harry had felt, more than a few times, like his own worries would take him away from his friends eventually.

Not anymore.

Harry relaxed into his thoughts. Draco had made it seem like Harry was doing him a favour with all his Christmas traditions, but it was the other way around, wasn’t it? Or—they were both doing each other favours. They were both saving each other, which is how it should have been all along.

Well—they were here now, and Harry was going to keep every single moment tucked away in his heart, or whatever it was people did when they were alive and in love and happy on Christmas morning.

Harry was alive and in love and happy.

Draco stirred on his shoulder. “Mm,” he said.

“Hi,” Harry answered. “Are you awake?”

“No,” said Draco, and went back to sleep.

Harry drifted like this for another hour or so, rubbing Draco’s back. Eventually, Draco did blink himself awake and kissed Harry’s cheek. Draco’s magic brushed against Harry’s skin when he cast a wandless Freshening Charm, which was just powerful enough to reach Harry’s mouth, too. It tasted minty and delicate and wonderful.

“Hi,” Harry said again.

“You could’ve woken me,” Draco yawned. “I would’ve gotten up.”

“You were sleeping. Nobody else is up yet, anyway.”

“You’re up.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

Draco tensed beside him, just a little. “About what?”

“About what we should do in the new year.”

“What we should do?”

“I’m not going back to the DMLE,” Harry mused. The room around them was pleasantly blurred without his glasses. He could imagine they were anywhere, really. If he was honest with himself, the location didn’t matter as much as Draco did. Harry could be happy anywhere in the world as long as he was with Draco. “We could, like…travel. See…sights. Visit…different places.”

“Yes, that is what traveling usually means.”

“We don’t have to,” Harry said quickly. “If you don’t want to. It was only an idea.”

Draco was quiet for a little while.

“It wouldn’t be running away,” he said finally, his hand coming to rest near Harry’s heart. “It would be…traveling.”

“Yes, that is what traveling usually means,” Harry teased. “I mean it, though. I’m not running away from anything. At least not now. Are you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Draco. “No, I—you know, my mother loved traveling.”

“Did she?”

“Oh, yes. She loved to be a tourist. She said…she didn’t have to pretend to be someone else when she was travelling. She could be herself, but she was free, because nobody knew who she was.”

“Is that what you want to do? Go somewhere that nobody knows you?”

“No. I want to go somewhere you know me. You’re the only one who matters.”

Harry shook his head. “All our friends would disagree with that.”

“You’re the one who matters most,” Draco said, and kissed his cheek again. “And if you wanted, we could invite some people along. We could…keep this.”

“This feeling, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I could do that,” Harry said, the marriage bond dancing in his chest. “I could give that to you. I know our friends would come. I bet if we went downstairs right now, Hermione and Pansy would have it planned out within the hour.”

“I don’t want to go downstairs.”

“You don’t?”

Draco rolled over on top of him. His silver-grey eyes sparkled. His cheeks were a lovely pink. “Not yet. But once we do, I would like to see what Granger could plan. Between her and Pansy—”

“It’ll be mental.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be mental.”

“And you’d go along with it?” Harry ran his fingers through Draco’s hair. That’s all it took to smooth out the worst of his bedhead. A flicker of envy spiralled along the bond and disappeared. Harry’s hair would never. “You’d go along with some mental holiday plan? It could take up a lot of time, you know.”

“I would indeed go along with it.” Draco’s eyes went hot and dark. “If I have an hour or two to prepare.”

“By prepare, do you mean—”

“Shag,” Draco said. “I want to shag. And kiss. For at least an hour. Then I’ll be hungry. Then I might want to nap, but odds are very good that I’ll be ready to pack and fly off into the great, wide—”

Harry pulled him down into a kiss. He very nearly lost himself in it when Draco said something into his mouth.

“What?”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

Harry got himself together—just barely—and looked deeply into Draco’s eyes. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

Draco smiled. “World.”