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The lantern is cursed in a way Draco finds thrillingly rare, even after ten years as a curse-breaker.

Most cursed objects are utilitarian in nature—meant for one purpose, and a blunt one at that. Kill or maim or break. Simple objectives, simple curses, though as a rule, Draco doesn’t discount the effectiveness of a neat, elegant curse any more than he would discount the effectiveness of a razor-sharp knife.

This curse—the one on the lantern—is not simple. Complexity sings in the construction. It was embroidered into the brass posts, stitched into the glass, breathed into the wick. Its casting was no act of efficiency.

It was an act of love.

Draco holds the shield around it with just as much care.

Next to him, Harry’s face glows, his eyes a brilliant green in the curse-light. A bead of sweat runs down from the dark curls at his temple, glistening on warm, brown skin for a moment and then disappearing into the collar of his jacket. The show-off casts with both hands. He holds the holly wand for accuracy in his right hand. With his left, he plucks at invisible strings.

Cursed objects such as this one—in the vault underneath the Cortile della Pigna—tend to bond with the objects around them. The air is saturated with devotional magic, which draws its power from repetition and ritual rather than any one individual. As a result, it’s conductive to the magic in the lantern, so Harry has spent the last several hours gathering the curse’s coils into the artefact, lifting each vine from the objects to either side.

Harry leans in, then further in, and Draco’s mouth goes dry. Magic crackles along the ley lines of the casting, throwing up sparks when Harry’s magic strokes along the French knots of the curse. His method is unlike any other curse-breaker Draco has worked with or studied under.

No one else gets close the way Harry does. No one else touches curses with their magic the way Harry does. His curse-breaking is sensual, bordering on taboo, which are not words Draco could have imagined using to describe the work before they started.

Harry’s lips part. The tip of his tongue peeks out. He can’t dance to save his life, but when Harry’s casting, breaking, his entire body involves itself. He stands tall and light on his feet, every bit of him drawn in, caught between the pull of the curse and the push of the instinctive counter.

Tension hums in Draco’s chest. This is the moment he spends his life in constant readiness for. One twitch in the wrong direction, and this curse won’t break

It will grow.

The tell is in the fingers of Harry’s left hand. Draco clocks it before his mind can summon the words—a subtle reach, an open palm.

“Potter.” Draco pitches his voice above the vibrating harmony of the curse. “Do it. Now.”

Harry closes his fist.

Draco closes his eyes.

He has to, because the thrust of Harry’s magic is bright. Blinding. It turns the curse-song back on itself. The notes meet with a thundering crack.

Then Harry is on him, hot mouth, hot hands, hard through his battered Muggle jeans.

“Fuck,” he bites into Draco’s neck. “Fuck. Fuck.”

“Good boy,” Draco says, and Apparates them away.

Thirty-one days into his training as a curse-breaker, Draco finally snaps.

It only takes thirty-one days because he spends twenty-six days trying to ignore the bloody Saviour of the wizarding world, keeping up a constant mental refrain of nothing about him is special, nothing about him is interesting, nothing about him is worth my attention.

On the twenty-seventh day, Draco and Potter get paired up for an exercise. An instructor places a curse on an ancient silver crown—more of a circlet, really. One of them is to shield, the other to break.

Simple.

Only the moment Potter starts casting, he lets out a strained sound, and before Draco can think, Potter slices the crown in two with a wandless Diffindo, turns on his heel, and storms out.

Draco fumes for the rest of the day, his insides scorched with the particular brand of humiliation that only Potter seems to inspire in him. Fine! If Potter wants to show the world he can’t get through a simple training exercise without throwing a wobbly, then by all means. Draco’s happy to be the coolheaded star of the Ministry’s new curse-breaking programme.

On the twenty-eighth day, Potter avoids Draco in class. Perfect! Wonderful. Draco wants nothing to do with him.

The twenty-ninth and thirtieth days pass in a similar fashion, though Draco notices—not because he wants to notice, mind, but because the practical lectures mean they’re all grouped together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and even from the other side of the circle, Draco can hear Potter breathing. Sighing. As if he’s too good to be here with everyone else.

On the thirty-first day, they get paired up again, this time to work on a set of glass phials.

It’s Potter’s turn to shield, and Draco ignores him coldly, setting up his preliminary spells with ruthless efficiency. He’s halfway through breaking the minor curse—third order, Domination school—when Potter’s Protego cracks.

“Sorry,” Potter says, his voice tight and strange. “Sorry. I can’t.”

And then he drops the bloody shield and leaves.

Draco casts his own Protego around the phials, Incendios them to ashes, and sends an emergency broad-spectrum counter-curse over the whole mess.

Then he goes after Potter.

The scent of his magic is in the air, so Draco doesn’t have to waste any energy on a hunt. Potter hasn’t even gone far—just to the men’s on the same floor as the triple-shielded meeting space for the class. His pulse pounds. He’s going to grind his teeth apart.

Draco throws the door open with a vicious slash and slams it shut behind him.

“What in the bloody hell has crawled up your arse, Potter? This isn’t school. Could you stop with your self-righteous bollocks and climb down off your bloody Abraxan? I haven’t done anything to you. If this is about—”

Potter turns around in the middle of Draco’s tirade, and Draco forgets what he’s tirading about.

Because Potter’s face is flushed a deep, deep red, and his horrible green eyes sparkle with embarrassed tears, and he’s got one hand on the zip of his awful Muggle jeans, and he doesn’t let go.

He doesn’t let go because of the bulge under his hand.

“It isn’t you,” Potter bites out, blinking hard. “It’s not. I’m sorry, Malfoy. It’s not.”

Draco crosses the narrow expanse of tile as if he’s under an Imperio powered by his filthiest teenage fantasies.

Potter hangs his head.

They’re almost touching when Draco stops. Almost. The space is as charged as any curse, with any intention.

But there’s no shield around Potter now. Draco’s free to put his hand under Potter’s chin and lift his head.

The naked shame in Potter’s expression takes Draco’s breath away.

He takes it back.

“It turns you on, doesn’t it? The Dark magic.”

Potter’s lower lip quivers. He gives Draco the world’s smallest nod.

“For Merlin’s sake, Potter. You could have lied. You could have said it was the curse-breaking that did it.”

“I could have said it was you. The other thing—that wouldn’t be true.” Potter’s chin presses into Draco’s palm. He wants to hide his face. Draco won’t let him. “Dunno what to do. It’s just—it keeps getting worse.”

“Show me.”

Potter watches him, motionless, for the longest heartbeat of Draco’s life.

Then his hands fly to his zip. He fumbles at the denim and the pants underneath until he’s got his cock in hand, thick, hard, already leaking.

Lovely.

“What do I do?” Potter’s desperate. “I’ve got to get through this. I’ve got to. I can’t—there isn’t anything else—”

Draco casts a line of shiny, skin-temperature lube onto the throbbing vein of Potter’s cock. Potter’s mouth drops open. He stares, awed, like Draco’s an angel.

“I’ll have them.” The true miracle—Draco’s light tone. “All those filthy thoughts of yours. You’ll give them to me, and I’ll hold them for you until class is over.”

And then, because they’re here now, and Potter is just obeying him, as if Draco doesn’t have a Mark on his left forearm, as if he really is the answer to all Potter’s prayers, Draco reaches out and brushes Potter’s curls out of his eyes. He lets his fingertips trail ever so slightly over the branching lightning-strike scar that extends down to Potter’s cheekbone.

Potter folds, like he’s not the Saviour. Like he’s been utterly lost. He lets his head fall on Draco’s shoulder and lets out a teary breath.

“Tell me what’s in your head,” Draco says. Potter shudders at the gentle order. “And stroke yourself while you do.”

“Oh, God,” Potter breathes into Draco’s shirt.

Draco puts one hand over Potter’s and squeezes.

They land in the pocket-sized sitting room of a rented flat just outside the Vatican City border. The Holy See is happy to give them access to the Archives, but not to let the Saviour himself sleep within the walls. They’ve accepted eight previous contracts from the Vatican wizards in the last decade, and Draco suspects their resistance is more to do with Draco—Marked, unrepentant—than Harry—marked, also unrepentant, but generally considered to be of good character.

At the moment, he does not care about the Vatican’s prissy politics or any of the noise floating through the open window of the flat—murmurs, mostly, and a wash of hundreds of footsteps.

People are gathering for the Easter Vigil. The stone making up St Peter’s dome catches the colours of the sunset, glowing pink and purple and orange by turns. At nightfall, they’ll light the year’s Paschal candle in the atrium and carry it to the altar. Light into dark, or some such.

None of them know the light is here, with Draco, leaving marks with his teeth and driving his hips—and thus his hard cock—into Draco’s with unholy abandon.

It takes careful hands and more than a little force to wrestle Harry to his knees, one hand circling his neck like a collar.

Harry fights it. He always does. But Draco is ready for the clawing hands and bared teeth. He lets Harry grip his wrist and waits for his next panting breath to slide three fingers into his mouth so far he can’t bite down.

Harry pants around Draco’s fingers, drooling, swallowing, and looks up at him, glasses crooked, body finally stilling.

“There you are,” Draco says.

It will be a one-time thing, the incident in the men’s.

That’s what Draco thinks the moment he walks out, leaving Potter to rearrange his clothes and splash water on his face or whatever it is one does after pumping out a lifetime’s worth of come onto your former school nemesis’s trousers.

He’s not entirely sure this makes them anything other than nemeses. Potter’s been a mess thus far in the training programme—not that Draco paid him any mind, up until recently—full of all the misplaced anger and self-righteousness he’d been swimming in at Hogwarts.

However, perhaps a decent orgasm will calm him enough to get him to stop being an utter twat.

Draco checks his trousers once more for any errant beads of Potter’s spend, ignoring his own erection, and returns to class.

Naturally, Potter does not stop being a twat. He escalates his twattishness until he’s snapping at instructors and lighting desks on fire and generally behaving like a war hero gone post-war villain.

And, naturally, the more Potter escalates, the more Draco finds himself paired with Potter for all manner of exercises, during which Potter is sullen and unhelpful at best or exploding with rage at worst.

For sixteen days, Draco puts up with it, adopting an observant, distant attitude befitting the top student in the programme—himself, of course—which only seems to make Potter more red-faced and glowering.

On the seventeenth day, Potter throws what can only be described as a tantrum outside Borgin and Burkes on Knockturn Alley in the midst of what is supposed to be a simple, straightforward field exercise.

It isn’t simple and straightforward. Draco has caught people staring at him from every dark, cloudy window on the cursed street, and he’s got the hunted, crawling feeling he always had when the Dark Lord was in his house. So when Potter refuses—refuses!—to cast any Revealing Charms near Borgin and Burkes, his voice rising until they can doubtlessly hear him at Hogwarts, Draco takes him by the collar and drags him bodily through an unassuming wooden door in the bricks on the other side of the street.

There, because the passageway behind the door is narrow and because Draco has had his fill of Potter’s nonsense, he backs Potter up against the wall and glares down at him, Potter radiating jittery defiance.

“What are we doing in here?” Potter demands. “What is this?”

“A passageway, you utter twat. And you tell me!”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what we’re doing in here. What the fuck is your problem, Potter? Do you not know how to wank without supervision? Here. I’m watching. Go ahead so we can get through this bloody exercise and you can trot off to be an arsehole in solitude.”

Potter has the bollocks to look offended. “I’m the arsehole?”

“Yes,” Draco hisses. “Are you mad? You’ve been acting like a child since the very first day of this programme. Any chance you’ll stop, or is it what you picture to get yourself off?”

“I don’t get myself off!” Potter shouts back.

Draco slaps both hands over his face, nearly gouging his left eye out in the process. “What?”

“I don’t,” Potter spits, as if he’s not being completely unreasonable. “I don’t get myself off. What does that even make me, if I go home and wank about curses by myself?”

“An adult man with a kink.”

“Ugh!” Potter shouts, and then—from the sound, Draco’s certain, he’s sure—Potter stomps his foot. “This isn’t a kink I can have!”

“Oh, because you’d be the first Saviour in history to have filthy thoughts in the privacy of his own mind? Please. Muggle Jesus didn’t spend all his time with twelve other men because he was pure.”

“Yeah, well, they all liked him, at least!”

“Famously, one of them did not,” Draco says from behind his hands. “From what I’ve heard, it was a kiss and kill situation.”

Potter does not say anything. His silence goes on for so long that Draco uncovers his face and looks.

Potter’s standing at the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, head down.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” Potter snaps, his voice thick and snotty.

It dawns on Draco—slowly, because of the close proximity and Draco’s own erection—that perhaps he has slightly misjudged Potter’s behaviour.

In an homage to maturity, he takes a deep breath and lets it out, then gathers his thoughts.

“There’s no need for all this angst, Potter. I’ve already told you how to deal with your—”

“Do not say kink.”

“—sexual preference. It’s quite simple. You tell me all your most depraved, dirty thoughts and then put them out of your mind so you can focus on receiving a certification. You do need one, don’t you? Or is the Ministry going to pin a medal on your front just for gracing us with your presence?”

“Shut up.”

Draco cups a hand around his ear. “Well? We haven’t got all day.”

Potter picks his head up and stares at him.

“I cannot read your mind, Potter. You’ll have to use a language we’ve got in common.”

“What,” Potter says, after a beat. “Just…say them?”

Draco drops his hand. “What is it that you heard, exactly, in the men’s that day?”

“Until class is over,” Potter repeats in a mortifyingly horrible impression of Draco’s accent. Then he looks at the floor.

In a second homage to maturity, Draco does not say, oh, for Merlin’s fucking sake.

“I didn’t mean one singular class. I meant the programme. You needn’t hurt yourself trying to bait me into dealing with you.”

“I’m not.”

Potter is such a liar.

Unless he’s not.

“Potter,” he says conversationally. “How did you get the attention of those Muggles? You know—the ones who raised you.”

“Raised is a pretty generous term,” Potter grumbles. “And I didn’t. Unless—”

The last bit of his sentence is too soft to hear.

“Pardon?”

“Unless I got angry,” Potter shouts.

This should not be Draco’s cross to bear, as it were, though he’s willing to entertain a great many evenings venting about it to Pansy. And, in the spirit of honesty, he’s spent quite a bit of time trying to toss Potter over his shoulder and carry him somewhere they could fight in peace.

Or perhaps do other things.

“Is that part of it, then? Do you like to have a bit of a wobbly? You want me to notice and drag you into a passageway?”

“Yes,” Potter admits, brave as anything.

“Fine.” Draco puts his hand on the wall next to Potter’s head and leans in. “Show me how much you want it, then.”

Potter does.

The moment Draco tries to pull his fingers out of Harry’s mouth, Harry bites.

Not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough that a delicious little stripe of pain digs into the bone above Draco’s knuckles.

Draco might have been born at half-past eleven at night, but it wasn’t last night. Harry’s baiting him, but in cases like these—a long day, deep involvement with the curse, a near-miss—it’s less conscious brattiness than a compulsive need for reassurance.

Reassurance Draco is prepared to provide. He’s still got his off-hand at Harry’s throat, ready to squeeze, and squeeze he does.

Harry gasps, gagging a bit on Draco’s fingers. His pupils blow even wider. They’d already been quite wide, what with the breaking, but the Killing-Curse green thins out. His chin tips up another fraction, and his eyelids flutter, and finally—just when Draco’s going to have to let him breathe—Harry laps at Draco’s fingers with his tongue.

That’s the only apology he’s in any position to give. Draco waits a moment more, then slides his hand from Harry’s neck up to his hair.

“Is that all you’ve got in you?” he asks.

Harry shakes his head.

Draco presses down onto his tongue, and Harry takes his cue to suck, his dark eyes on Draco’s face. 

Of course, Draco is no wide-eyed ingénue. He’s well aware of the glints in Harry’s eyes like the tiny points of flame spreading into the pews from the Paschal candle. Let us lift our eyes to him. The Muggles will be looking at a bronze baldacchino a hundred feet high during the Mass tonight, and beyond it, the Cathedra Petri.

They’ll look, but they won’t see. Not at first. The Mass begins in darkness, so the altar and the throne and Bernini’s Dove of the Holy Spirit will be rendered in shadow. There is nothing to do but wait for them to return. To trust they still exist. Faith, not sight.

Potter has the object permanence of a Flobberworm.

He continues his wobblies all through the rest of the programme. Draco drags him into various storage cupboards in the Ministry training centre three times a week at minimum.

A week before graduation, they sit their final certification exam—in pairs, because apparently Draco is Merlin’s strongest soldier.

They cast Revelio on the door leading into the exam room, and Potter’s shoulders tense.

“Some sort of Floo or something?” he asks.

“I would assume so.”

Potter tries to go first. Draco pushes ahead of him. They both cross the threshold together.

“Sodding fuck,” Potter snaps.

It’s clear they won’t be sitting. The exam room isn’t a room. It’s a hedge maze.

Draco grabs Potter’s shoulder on an instinct his mind takes a few moments to rationalise.

The Triwizard Tournament. Potter falling facedown in the grass on the Quidditch pitch, one arm around the Cup and the other around Cedric Diggory’s body.

“No,” he says, foolishly, then feels Potter’s shoulder heaving under his hand. He’s trying to breathe, and it seems quite difficult. “No—you can’t run off.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Potter says through gritted teeth.

“You can’t Incendio the hedges.”

“Whatever.”

“You can’t.”

“Fine! Let’s just—let’s go.”

The maze is meant as a distraction—that’s clear enough to Draco. They wouldn’t have thought to expect hedges, which might throw some people. Not the top student in the programme and his test-from-Merlin of a partner.

Well—Draco is not thrown by the hedges. He does not like them, but they don’t bother him. He was raised near rather a lot of hedges, and anyway, the protocol remains the same. Reveal. Reduce. Repair.

The first step is always to reveal the presence of curses, preferably from behind the safety of a strong Protego. They take it in turns. Protego. Revelio. Again. Protego. Revelio. Again.

When a curse or cursed object is located, they should reduce the potential for harm during the breaking. Another Protego. An Immobulus, perhaps. If the object is moving, it should be stopped. If the object is making noise, it should be Silenced.

Then—repair. In Draco’s opinion, whomever designed this course should’ve gone with Wreck, but alas, they were not as clever as Draco. Regardless, the theory is sound. Repair encompasses counter-curses, destruction of the cursed object, or, in the rarest cases, through correspondent similarities—changing the curse through additional spells rather than breaking it per se.

It goes about as well as can be expected until they turn a corner and come face-to-face with themselves.

It’s not them, really—it’s a mirror with writing on its gold frame. Suirepus tse douq tucis tse suirefni douq te, suirefni douq tucis tse suirepus tse douQ.

Potter is instantly possessed by his Muggle upbringing and throws a punch. Draco catches his hand before it can touch the glass.

“Reveal, you prat!” he snaps, Potter’s fist pushing hard into his palm. “Don’t touch it with your skin!”

“Revelio,” Potter barks.

The curse twists around the frame of the mirror, then seems to realise it’s been spotted and sinks into the glass.

It takes several minutes for them to get it in sight, and another several to keep it still.

“All right, then.” Draco takes a few deep breaths to steady himself. “It’s not so bad as all that. Simply a—”

Potter lunges at the mirror.

Draco has no idea what he casts, only that he does. He steps between Potter and the mirror just as Potter charges again, knocking into Draco’s chest. He’s got to wrestle him back from the bloody thing, and during the tussle their hips brush together and Potter’s rock-hard because of course he is.

Both fists in Potter’s jacket, Draco shoves with his considerable strength until they’ve got a few metres of breathing room.

“What in Merlin’s sodding name is wrong with you?” he demands, shaking Potter a bit for emphasis. “You can’t fuck a cursed mirror!”

“I don’t want to,” Potter says urgently. “I want to touch it.”

“Are you mad? Have you licked someone’s Imperio? Have you been in bloody class? You can’t touch the mirror! It is cursed!”

“I want to. I’m going to.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not going to let you!”

“Why?”

Draco yanks Potter upright. He’d started to lean around him as if he could make a hasty escape like that. Potter’s flushed, replacing the ashen pallor he’d got when they entered the maze, and the whites of his eyes are enormous.

“If you touch that bloody mirror,” Draco says, “we’ll both fail out. And then I will be stuck with your infuriating arse for another six months.”

Potter lunges again.

Draco pushes back with such force that they both fall to the ground, Draco landing atop Potter in a highly indecorous position.

“Stop it!” he bawls into Potter’s face. “I’m the top student in the programme!”

“And I’m the fuck-up with a curse kink!” Potter howls back. “I don’t know what to do if you leave!”

Draco falls onto Potter and bangs his head against the grass next to Potter.

Then he picks himself back up and looks into Potter’s horrifically lovely green eyes.

“There isn’t anywhere else for me to go. Haven’t you worked that out?”

“Worked what out?”

“I like watching you wank about curses, you tosser. I’m invested in your kink. I barely even hate you anymore. And, as I said, I’m the top student in this—”

“I heard that part already.”

“I’m the top student. Which means—and follow me closely here, Potter, we haven’t got all day—no one else is even remotely prepared to stay with you.”

“Are you going to, then?”

“Am I going to what?”

“Stay with me.”

Draco does not know any other way to communicate with Potter other than to kiss him. As time is of the essence, he does not hesitate.

Potter’s hands come to his waist. He clutches at Draco, needy, wild, and opens his mouth to be kissed like he’s never had it like this.

He hasn’t, of course. Draco is a rather accomplished kisser.

But this is their certification exam. It’s not the place for a romantic interlude.

Draco wrenches himself away from the kiss before it gets away from him.

“How long do you think you’ll do this?”

“Kiss you?” Potter asks, like a fool.

“Lose your blessed mind over eventualities you’ve invented entirely on your own.”

Potter shrugs, his face open and too vulnerable to bear. “Forever, probably. Ron says I have abandonment issues.”

“Oh, honestly, Potter. If I was going to abandon you, I’d have done it in the men’s, not watched you bring yourself off.”

“You could’ve helped,” Potter mumbles under his breath.

Draco gets his hand under Potter’s chin and tips his face up. “I did help.”

Potter’s flush deepens. “Memory’s a bit hazy. Maybe you could, er, remind me.”

He manages to climb off Potter in a relatively graceful fashion. “Get up.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to break the curse on the mirror, and if you’re very good, I’ll let you come afterwards.”

“Yeah?” Potter asks, still on the ground.

Draco looks down at him. “Yes.”

Harry hasn’t gone under the way he normally would, which is apparent to Draco while Harry is still on his knees. He’s doing his level best to suck Draco’s fingers—and his work is admirable, after a long day in the Vatican vault—but his eyes stay too focused. Too sharp.

So when he bites Draco’s fingers again, he’s more than prepared. Draco pushes his fingers into Harry’s mouth to stop him actually closing his teeth and hauls him to his feet. The nearest stretch of empty wall will do for his purposes.

He doesn’t throw Harry against it—such a loss of control would not be befitting the Ministry’s top curse-breaker or Harry’s husband. He tosses Harry against the wall with enough strength to let him get a sense of momentum but not so much that he hits his head.

Harry puts up a bit of a struggle, as per. He’s casting without knowing it, little wandless prickles meant to bait Draco. They’ve been together too long for him to be taken off-guard, but the spells sting, particularly when they land near his Mark. It’s not Draco’s favourite sensation, and he lets a bit of his irritation show, mainly because—though they both know what this is—it gives Harry tacit permission to let go.

He can’t, of course. Not all at once. An escalation, first—fingernails and teeth and a foot between Draco’s on the floor—followed by more struggle. In all their years together, Harry has never once mentioned that Draco’s methods of taking him down are the same ones he uses in the field. Strange, that, since Harry so often thinks of himself as a curse.

It’s full dark above the dome when Harry gives in, slouching against the wall and looking up at Draco. Draco’s taken his clothes piece by piece, but kept his own. His arms burn with the effort of keeping Harry pinned. Harry’s head falls back against the plaster with a gentle thud.

This time, when Draco chokes him, he does it slowly, his face close enough to Harry’s that Harry can see him without his glasses. He takes note of Harry’s expanding pupils and his tiny, helpless gasps, and toys with letting him breathe in small increments until he’s got Harry where he wants him—gaze slightly unfocused, the muscles around his eyes relaxed.

Draco gives him a few moments to breathe normally, keeping his hand on Harry’s throat as a reminder of his place in this. In the flat. In their lives.

Then he leans in until his breath touches Harry’s lips. “I’m waiting.”

What happens with the necklace is Draco’s fault.

It’s late at night, which isn’t uncommon for curse-breaking, as that’s when it’s quietest, and when there are fewer people about. Unfortunately, three years out of training, Draco’s intimately aware that it’s Potter’s worst time. Not for curse-breaking, but for what Weasley calls Potter’s left-behind wobblies, which is an absolutely mental description.

Accurate, though.

The wizard who owned the house on the far side of Knockturn is dead, but his old, lonely magic is all about the place. Potter pretends not to notice, then gets testier the longer they spend working their way through a curio cabinet stuffed with Dark artefacts.

It’s Draco’s turn to shield when Potter Levitates the necklace out of the cabinet. Draco doesn’t comment when Potter runs through his usual routine, pushing his magic in front of him until he’s got the whole bloody necklace wrapped in it, feeling around for the bindings between curse and chain.

After this, they’ll have to let the backup team have a go. It’s been too long. Potter’s not losing focus. It’s the opposite problem, actually. He’s getting so close to the artefacts, magic-wise, that Draco has half a mind to sit him down for a remedial course in not dying like a fool.

That’s never been Potter’s kink, though. He bloody loves trying to die.

He loves it even more when Draco stops him.

For his part, Draco loves knowing that Harry’s word is Snatchers and that he’s always on the verge of an orgasm just from being near Draco, not to mention his feelings about curses.

Potter’s loosened up a bit since training, no thanks to Draco. Well—thanks to Draco, because Draco is the only person on the face of the earth who dares to take the piss. But no thanks to Draco, who stared at him with barely disguised confusion the first time Potter cast with both hands. Potter had lit the artefact on fire to avoid finishing the breaking, and Draco had had no choice but to apologise. Since then, he has maintained his silence when Potter is getting up close and personal with curses.

So he doesn’t say anything while the necklace is dangling in midair, shining in the light of his Lumos.

It happens so fast that Draco doesn’t see it. Or—he sees, but he doesn’t understand it until several beats later. One moment, Potter’s standing there with his hands out. The next, the curse is multiplying in great dark bands of magic, and Potter looks for all the world like he might stick his bare hand into the fray. Utterly entranced.

Draco whips his Protego over Potter, cutting off his connection to the curse, then pulls. It’s not a spell anyone taught him at Hogwarts or during training and does not have an incantation. A calling, Draco supposes. Draco calls to the curse with his magic, and it comes, stretching itself towards him so that all the component pieces are slightly separated. It buys him a second or two to look, to think, because the magic’s got to travel further between the anchor points and relearn the ley lines.

It shudders, beginning to compress itself, and Potter loses his mind.

Draco fends him off with one hand. He can’t look away from the necklace—that’s asking for a curse-wound—and Potter is hell-bent on making a human shield of himself as if Draco isn’t the Ministry’s top curse-breaker. The necklace screams towards Draco. Potter screams something at his side.

It’s all right, Draco wants to say, but can’t, because his incantations must come first. That’s the trade-off if one is going to break in close proximity to one’s person. It probably bothers him less than other people because he spent some of his formative years in close proximity to several living curses. During that time, it was safer to have them where Draco could see them. Reach them, if necessary.

He would prefer not to have the necklace six inches from his nose, of course, but one can’t always have what they want. Draco casts crosswise through the curse framework, then twists.

The necklace falls to the floor with a dull clang, both the curse and the clasp broken.

When Draco turns, Potter’s not there.

“Potter,” he shouts.

There is no answer.

Draco casts a Stasis Charm over the entirety of the curio cabinet, then goes looking for Potter.

He finds him some three minutes later, his entire body wedged between the sitting room sofa and the wall, his face in his knees and his hands over his head.

Draco sits on the floor in front of him and catches his breath. Potter does not move.

“There are two of us for a reason,” Draco says, when it’s clear Potter’s not going to be the one to start the conversation. “It’s so there’s someone to save you if you fuck up.”

“What about you?” Potter says into his knees.

“I’m the Ministry’s top curse-breaker.”

“It almost got you.”

“No, it didn’t. The artefact came near. It didn’t do any harm.”

“I did. I made it do that.”

“Did you?”

Potter lifts his head and stares, red-eyed and miserable, at Draco. “Yeah. I wanted it. So it came. A curse. Came at you. Because I wanted it.”

“You don’t think I’m the Ministry’s top curse-breaker, do you, Potter?”

“This isn’t funny.”

“What do you think happens when you call the magic of a curse? The artefact is liable to come along, too. I knew that when I called it.”

Potter’s expression falls into sheer confusion. “What?”

Draco looks around. Perhaps there’s an audience somewhere, and that’s why Potter’s being like this. “Did you not attend the same training programme as I did? Was it all an exceptionally detailed hallucination?”

“Yeah, but—”

“I am the Ministry’s top curse-breaker. I’m especially good at proximate curses.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not scared of them. You didn’t see me running off to the men’s.”

“That’s not why I—”

“I’m not scared of you, either, as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to know.”

Potter’s eyes well up with tears. “But I wanted—”

“I know.”

“It felt so good,” Potter whispers, and then he really does cry, and Draco is forced to manoeuvre him out of his hidey-hole by the sofa and hold him and stroke his hair lest Potter have a complete nervous breakdown.

“Tell me everything,” Draco says, and means it.

Harry’s resolve doesn’t break. It melts.

He leans into Draco’s hand. Swallows. Lets out a shuddering breath.

“I fucked it up,” he says in an urgent rush. “I totally—I wanted it. It was just—all of it got so warm when it was together, and I just wanted to be—be in it. The whole place could’ve gone, and it was all because I couldn’t think straight. I wanted—I wanted. I wanted it.”

“What did you want it for?”

A shiver moves through Harry from the top of his head on down, passing through Draco’s grip on his throat as it goes. “Wanted to feel more of it. Those sorts of curses are always good. They’re—they’re soft.”

“And they make you hard.”

“Yeah,” Harry admits, a quaver in his voice.

“Is it wrong to get hard for curses?”

“No,” Harry answers automatically, but his voice goes whisper-thin.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s not wrong to get hard for curses.” A bit louder. A bit more confident. He should be—they’ve practised this for years. “But it is wrong to—”

Draco stops him with a squeeze around his throat. “I’m going to ask you a question. Think carefully before you answer. What happened when you wanted the curse?”

“I—” Harry searches Draco’s face. The Lumos Draco set in a stained-glass vase on the sitting room table casts blues and greens and golds into his eyes. “I reached.”

“Did you touch?”

Harry shakes his head almost violently.

“Of course you didn’t. Why not?”

“Because you were there. But what if—”

Draco stops him again. Harry closes his eyes and waits to breathe, his body relaxing into Draco’s hold.

A voice echoes along the street and breezes in through the open window. The Pope is blessing the new fire in the atrium of St Peter’s. From the Square, the gathered crowd can’t see the embers, or the wick on the Paschal candle catching the flame. They can certainly feel the flare in the devotional magic, though they’ll call it the presence of God. They’ll call it faith.

“There is no what if,” he says, just as he has a hundred times before. “You’ll never meet a world where I let you go into some den of priestly iniquity to break curses alone. I am still—”

“Draco…”

“I am still the Ministry’s top curse-breaker, and it would take more than a lantern to stop me keeping you safe.”

“I could’ve got out of control.”

“Oh?”

Harry makes a sound in the back of his throat.

“Answer me.”

“No,” he gasps, a single tear catching the light on his cheek. “I couldn’t have got out of control.”

“Why not, darling?”

“Because that’s yours.”

“That’s right,” Draco says, and licks the tear away.

It takes Draco another two years to coax apart Potter’s ley lines and French knots. As Draco has always known, the Chosen One is a shambles—a child soldier raised in a morass of confusion and incompetence and, of course, the bloody war. He’s got far too much magic and a nervous system that has to be press-ganged into reluctant service. He apparently died in the Forest, and that wasn’t any sort of exaggeration.

And that’s to say nothing of the Muggles.

Draco has never hated Muggles the way his father seemed to. In his adulthood, it became clear to Draco that this hatred was a flimsy disguise for fear, which is perhaps why it never made much sense to child-Draco. There had been an obvious contradiction—if Muggles were so powerless as to be rendered unintelligent, what was the point of fixating on them? Some of it could be chalked up to generational pure-blood prejudices, but not all of it.

He does hate specific Muggles, however, because although Potter is embarrassingly awful at pattern recognition, Draco is not. And Potter—while mercurial and impulsive from moment to moment—is nothing if not predictable on a slightly larger time scale.

Like clockwork, Potter gets sullen and unhelpful the first week of May. He becomes an utter wanker towards the end of every June. He resigns his position as curse-breaker every 15 October, seems to recover, then fucks off and participates in illicit dragon races every 31 October.

Draco resorts to storming into the St Mungo’s A&E to demand answers from Weasley, who for reasons passing understanding is a decently good Healer there. The first time Draco does it, he’s dragging Potter—burned all down one arm, the prat—with him.

“Why?” he says, once Potter is sufficiently sedated.

“Parents,” Weasley answers. “If you’re going to stick around—”

“Fuck you very much, Weasley.”

Weasley rolls his eyes. “You can’t stop him. Best bet is to be there when he’s done.”

The next year, Draco storms into the St Mungo’s A&E alone and yells for Weasley until he appears, then shoves Potter’s letter of resignation into his face. “What the bloody hell, Weasley?”

“Sorry, mate. That one’s on me. Walked away from the Horcrux hunt.”

Draco hexes him instinctively. Weasley blocks the hex with a shockingly strong Protego. “I came back. Don’t be a twat about it, Malfoy.”

The following May, Potter instigates a Hogwarts-sized row while they’re actively engaged in curse-breaking and also resigns his position. Draco’s vision is red with rage and hurt when he pushes through the doors into the St Mungo’s A&E.

Weasley’s waiting for him. He ushers Draco into some room with an apologetic expression on his face.

“What did you do?” Draco nearly shouts.

“May’s bad,” Weasley says. “Hermione got Petrified in May. The Battle was right at the beginning of May. And…” He looks meaningfully at Draco.

Draco makes a spit it out, you freckled prat gesture.

Weasley looks at him even more meaningfully.

“May was you,” Weasley says, with a tap on Draco’s chest. His fingers happen to land directly on top of one of Draco’s scars.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake.”

“I’m only the messenger.”

“Sod off,” Draco snaps. “I’ve always hated you, Weasley. And thank you. Now get out.”

“I work here.” Weasley’s eyes sparkle like he’s going to laugh.

“Ugh,” Draco says, and storms back out. He storms all the way to Potter’s ridiculous house—which is technically Draco’s house, as Potter is not a son of the House of Black. He barges through the wards, then through the front door, and finally up several flights of stairs to where Potter is lying pitifully in some bed or other. He scrambles upright, half-dressed and horribly fit—why is he always shimmering like that, Merlin, it should be illegal—and stands just before Draco reaches him.

Draco pushes his shoulders so Potter falls back onto the bed, then looms over him.

“One or the other,” he says levelly. “The Battle, or Granger.”

“Er…what?”

“Choose,” Draco says. “You cannot resign every fucking May and October because you cursed me once in a bathroom a hundred years ago, so it’s got to be one of the others.”

“It wasn’t a hundred—”

“It’s over. I cursed you first.”

“No. You, like, tried to curse me, but you didn’t really—”

“It was mutual animosity,” Draco says loudly. “And that is over now, in case you’ve failed to notice.”

Potter raises his eyebrows. His face is deeply flushed, and his eyes are a bit red, as if he’s been crying in secret again. His lower lip quivers.

“I’m so horribly gone for you.” That’s not what Draco meant to say, but as a Malfoy, he has finely honed his emergency conversational skills. “It’s awful. Not a sodding moment goes by that I don’t think about your—” Draco gestures dismissively at Potter’s face. “Your whole thing. I’m not going anywhere.”

Potter stares at him, looking exceptionally vulnerable and young.

“But you can’t keep running away.”

Potter points to his chest.

“Yes, you. You keep trying to quit, and it’s intolerable. Take leave, if you must. Tell me you need to spend an afternoon getting sucked to within an inch of your life. I will keep coming after you, but it is tedious, and I would much rather be tested in some other manner.”

“Okay,” says Potter.

That June, on assignment in Wales, Potter has a screaming night terror that lasts several hours and ends with him sicking up in the grass outside the cottage the Ministry let for them. Draco sends an urgent owl to London. He’s sat on the floor with Potter when Weasley Apparates into the front garden with a crack.

He casts a Diagnostic Charm on Potter, then a few other spells, then hands over several potion phials, rattling off instructions to Draco in reassuring tones. Draco memorises them through a pounding headache.

“What’s this one, then? The end of June.”

Weasley sits back on the rug and clasps his hands, watching Potter with a soft expression.

“Sirius,” he says, after a minute or two of silence. “And he had to go back to Little Whinging.”

“With his Muggle relatives,” Draco supplies, mostly to have something to say.

“Yeah.” Weasley sighs. “He didn’t have a bedroom till just before first-year. Has he told you that yet?”

“What, because they weren’t well-off?”

“No. No, that wasn’t it.”

Afterwards, Draco can’t recall what Weasley said. Not exactly. He knows the words were simple, but difficult to understand on account of his immediate, helpless fury. Weasley stays in Wales for several hours longer than he should to talk Draco out of committing between one and three murders or perhaps more. He would bring Dumbledore back from the grave and murder him successfully this time, because he’d known, of course—wizards like Dumbledore always knew, and Draco nearly has a stroke about the sheer injustice of the entire arrangement.

He’s almost surprised to find himself appalled at injustice—particularly in the form of anyone’s treatment of Potter—but he can’t quite muster the appropriate shock. The subtler, warmer nuances of his feelings for Potter have woven themselves in over time, so gently Draco hadn’t known the metaphorical tapestry of his soul had changed at all.

“There’s no going back,” Weasley tells him as the sun is coming up. “Only forwards, yeah?”

Draco hasn’t the energy to decide what Weasley’s trying to say.

An hour or so later, Potter stirs in Draco’s arms. Draco strokes his curls off his forehead and watches him wake until Potter opens his eyes and looks into Draco’s.

“Harry, darling,” Draco says, and rests his hand on Harry’s cheek. “There you are.”

Once he’s worked himself up to it, Harry doesn’t stop talking. He gasps out an awestruck recounting of the changes in the curse’s texture as it bonded with other artefacts kept nearby in the vault. His eyes fill with tears when he describes the well-worn softness of the magic underneath his fingers when he lifted each reaching tendril and brought it home to the brass heart of the lantern. Harry’s so lost in throes of his confession that he forgets to fight and bends over the kitchen table like a lamb.

He shivers under Draco’s spells, his toes curling on the floor.

“All the church magic.” Harry’s voice trembles. Draco strokes his hair while he Levitates a hand of ginger out of the antique Muggle refrigerator and sets it spinning in the air at eye-level, carving it into the shape he wants with a few wordless charms. “I felt all of it. There was so much, Draco. Years and years.”

“That’s why they call it devotional magic, mon éclair. Reach back and hold yourself open.”

Harry whines, almost absentminded, and does as Draco asked.

He’s got no idea how beautiful he is like this, his filthy thoughts and his body offered up, cock hard between his slightly spread thighs, the very picture of devotion. He’s got no idea that he’s describing himself—years of returning to a ritual he doesn’t always understand. Years of begging on his knees. Years of reaching through the darkened glass of magic to find its light.

“Felt so good,” Harry murmurs. “You felt so good.”

Draco brushes his fingertips down Harry’s spine to his crease, and then he notches the ginger to Harry’s hole.

“Take it in,” Draco says softly.

Harry bears down. Accepts with a groan. Draco touches both Harry’s hands in turn, and Harry grasps the opposite end of the table.

“Tighten,” he says, and Harry does with a quiet mmm.

“Again.”

“Oh.”

“Again.” Draco traces a finger around the base of the plug he made. It won’t stay cold for long inside Harry. It’s not meant to.

“Oh, God,” Harry says. “Oh, fuck. Please.”

Weasley is correct, to Draco’s intense irritation. He was there for what was, essentially, Harry’s construction. His making. It will never sit well with Draco that he was there, too, only Harry was just out of his reach. He was obscured by the utter nonsense that consumed their school years. They’re alike in that way. Draco was also obscured from himself.

But Weasley is also incorrect, to Draco’s intense delight. The best bet isn’t to be there when Harry’s done. The best bet is to call for him well in advance of his wobblies.

Harry reaches. That’s what he does. And in the absence of a call, he’ll throw himself about until he finds one.

Draco does not have to make himself attractive to Harry. He’s always been attractive to Harry, though not always in the ways he preferred.

What he has to do is make himself open. Draco doesn’t hide the parts of him that other people might consider forbidden, or illicit. He takes Harry to rooms in the Manor that can only be opened by those with the blood of the line and lets Harry touch as many of the artefacts as he wants. He throws open the doors to the library and puts books in Harry’s hands that would give Madam Pince fits.

He rolls up his sleeves.

One winter evening, Harry sits next to him on a sofa at Grimmauld Place, tracing his Mark with the soft pads of his fingers, studying it without self-consciousness, as he does only in front of Draco. The fire crackles merrily in the hearth. It’s quite warm for such a bitter night, and Draco finds himself drifting in memories.

“Does it make you hard?” he hears himself ask, his tone carefully neutral. Draco has purposefully not allowed himself to dwell on the obvious similarities between himself and curses, but now the fear sweeps over him all at once, stored up since training.

“You make me hard.” Harry squirms slightly on the cushion. “But it’s not like—I don’t think of you like that.”

“How do you think of me?”

Harry covers Draco’s Mark with his hand. “Safe.”

Draco gets a genuine moan out of Harry when he pulls him upright, the ginger still inside him, and kisses him to the bedroom. It’s hardly separate from the sitting room in a flat of this size, but a threshold is a threshold, and if Harry wants one between them and the world, then a threshold he shall have.

Of the two of them, Draco has spent much more time than Harry on the theoretical underpinnings of curse-breaking as befits the Ministry’s top curse-breaker and also as befits any member of a collaborative partnership with Harry. A joke, a joke. Another wix can take Draco’s place over his dead or undead body.

His fervent loyalties aside, it benefits both of them for such knowledge to be in their combined possession. Harry knows more than anyone—except Draco—about the nature of curses and counter-curses and the ways they interact with each other and the world, but if asked to explain it to a layperson, he says things like er…there are knots or some parts twist more than others, sort of or dunno, it’s, like, curses. Harry has refused to break in front of anyone other than Draco since they left training, so if there’s a report to be made or an explanation to be given, Draco takes the lead.

But work is his smallest motivation for becoming so well-educated on the topic. What drives Draco beyond mastery is—always—Harry. It would be breathtakingly irresponsible to let Harry reach his magic into various and sundry curses without knowing exactly how to bring him out again.

It’s straightforward, but not simple. A call, illuminated with trust. Draco’s used to holding that confidence for both of them. Not that Harry cares, but thresholds—particularly the simplest, most physical sorts—do make a difference, magically, and they make a difference to Harry, especially when they clearly delineate the kitchen. It took years and years for Harry to let himself relax in any kitchen other than the one at Grimmauld Place.

Harry’s in a threshold himself. The lantern’s curse still shines. Harry didn’t touch it with his hands, but he touched it with his magic, and all magic leaves traces.

If asked, Draco wouldn’t reveal, even on pain of the Cruciatus, that the traces tend to pool in Harry’s palms as if he’d held the artefact like a rosary.

He bends over a high-backed chair in the bedroom in this liminal state, his magic heating the air around his skin.

“Oh, please,” Harry says.

Draco shushes him and runs his hand over the curve of Harry’s arse. The illicit pleasure of curse-magic is balanced by other illicit pleasures. Draco reaches between Harry’s legs and gives him a stroke.

“It makes you so hard,” he comments, his front flushing with Draco’s own illicit pleasure. He hadn’t been raised to summon people and things to himself for anything other than his personal desires. But then—his father hadn’t understood devotion the way Draco understands it any more than he understood his fear of Muggles. He and Harry are mirror images of themselves in these moments. Draco’s the one who reaches. Harry’s the one who calls.

Or perhaps they’re always doing both.

“Are you ready?” Draco asks, his hand still around Harry’s shaft.

“Yes,” Harry says. “Yes. Yes.”

He keeps saying it as Draco brings his hand down on Harry’s arse. Draco doesn’t stop until Harry can’t say it anymore. Yes. Yes. Yes. 

“I hate it here,” Harry says in the middle of May. They’d got back from an assignment in France at half three in the morning. More artefacts had been unearthed at Notre Dame, and the Muggles just kept digging while Harry exhausted himself breaking and Draco exhausted himself fucking Harry senseless afterwards. He’s only up this early because he heard Harry’s footsteps in the hall and poured himself out of whatever bed he’d collapsed into. Somehow, they’d ended up in the kitchen, Draco squinting at the tea in front of him and Harry, shirtless, waiting for more toast to pop.

Draco squints at Harry instead. “This is your house.”

“I know.” The toast leaps up in the toaster. Harry waves it to a plate wandlessly, because of course he does, and wiggles his fingers until a butter knife arrives to do its duty. “And I hate it.”

“Why are you still here, then?”

“Because Sirius gave it to me.” Harry frowns at the toast. “He also hated it. Because his mum was—” He waves his hand in the air in a gesture that means absolutely nothing to Draco. “Y’know. She was—whatever.”

“A bit of a screeching hag?”

Harry’s eyes get wide. “Yeah, I guess. If her painting was anything to go by. Wasn’t that, like, your grandmother?”

“My great-aunt. You hate it here? I find that shocking, Potter. You can’t flip a Galleon without hitting a curse remnant.”

“No.” Harry wrinkles his nose. “But they’re not the good kind. They’re too—”

“Complex? Elegant? Intricate?”

“Familiar.”

Draco blinks. “What?”

“I just…know the magic. I don’t mind Sirius’s magic, but he was going to be my godfather. He was, I mean. He was my godfather.”

“Everyone wanks to their godfathers, Potter.”

Harry chokes, then has a coughing fit, then wheezes himself back to the land of the living. “God—you’re so weird. Why would you wank to your own—”

“Perhaps you do if he was particularly good at curses and inherited the Black family good looks. I don’t know! I’m being non-judgmental. I’m being understanding, darling.”

Harry turns red from the top of his forehead to the waistband of his joggers. It’s like watching roses bloom across the bronze of his skin. “That’s the second time you’ve said that.”

“Are you counting?”

“Yeah.”

Never mind that Draco was counting, too.

He’s starting to feel a bit delirious, but that might be the obscene hour. Draco gives Harry a once-over and discovers there’s quite a bit to know just from looking. There’s the curse-scar he covers with his off-hand when he has a nightmare. There’s another curse-scar—I must not tell lies. Odd, that. A more appropriate concept would be I must not act recklessly or I must not leap into the path of certain harm or I must not assume Draco Malfoy will leave me.

Ah, well.

Draco bravely swallows some tea and puts his cup back down on the kitchen island. “Let’s hear it, then. All your shameful secrets. We’ll never get through the day, otherwise.”

Harry chews his lip. “I don’t think it’s, like, shameful.”

Draco studies him again. “Yes, you do. You’ve gone purple.”

“That’s because—” Harry flicks his eyes towards the ceiling. “Because I’m nervous, you git.”

“Scared, Potter?” Draco teases.

“Literally yes.”

“Out with it, then. It can’t be worse than wanking over Dark magic.”

“Shut up.”

“I really won’t. You should know that by now.”

“Fine.” Harry takes something out of the pocket of his joggers and throws it at Draco. He catches it with finely honed Seeker’s reflexes, drops it onto the island, and takes out his wand in one movement. Then he casts habitual revealing spells all over the little black box. “Are you serious? You really think I’d lob a cursed artefact at you?”

“I know you’d lob a curse at me,” Draco answers, his eyes on the charms. He is not going to die from curse exposure after three straight weeks of dealing with French Catholic wizards and about a hundred ancient artefacts. “What is this?”

“With boxes, you usually have to open them to know what’s inside.”

Draco glares flatly at Harry and opens the box at the same time, so then he’s got to look down to see what it is.

“This is a ring,” he says, like a fool.

“Yeah. Er…it’s sort of an heirloom.”

“What did I say about Dark—”

“It’s not cursed! Merlin’s bollocks. You just checked it over. It’s not, like, a thousand years old or whatever pure-bloods usually do. It’s…more recent than that.”

“How recent?” Draco turns the box this way and that. The silver band gleams in the light.

“Like…from 1996.”

Draco stares at Harry. “What?”

“The year was nineteen-ninety—”

“Whose was this?”

“It wasn’t anybody’s.” Harry sounds almost defensive. “It wasn’t—I found it in Sirius’s things. But I don’t think he had a chance to, er. Offer it. To the person he wanted to give it to. And we just saw a lot of bones, so…”

“Please, Potter, I am begging you. Please tell me you don’t have a thing for skulls.”

“I don’t have a thing for skulls, for fuck’s sake. I have a thing for you. The bones just made me think about—” Harry picks up a spatula and waves it about for no reason. Draco loves him wildly. “Time. And those sorts of things.” He heaves a great sigh, dropping the spatula. “I’m in love with you. And I hate it here. I want to live with you. And there’s, like, a bunch of new research on marriage bonds, and, like, other spells—”

“You read? You read a research parchment? For me?”

Harry rolls his eyes. “Yeah, because I knew you’d bring it up. And I love you. So can we move in together? I guess if you don’t want to get married, we don’t have to, but I really feel like you’re going to—”

Draco leaps across the table, knocking his tea over as he goes, and all but tackles Harry to the floor. “It turns you on, doesn’t it? The thought of marrying me.”

Harry smiles. “Yeah.”

A kiss is the strongest yes Draco can give. He gives it until he’s out of breath, then gives it some more.

Harry’s panting by the time Draco has turned his arse a satisfying shade of red. Draco takes great pleasure in relieving himself of his clothes. He relieves Harry of the ginger and soothes the sting left behind, then takes even greater pleasure in spreading Harry out on the bed and licking him until he begs to come in words that barely count as coherent.

Draco doesn’t let him. He turns Harry into a further mess with an indecent amount of Conjured lube and two, then three, then four fingers, then climbs over him and pins him down while he pushes in with painstaking care.

Harry’s tight and grasping around him and searches for Draco’s hands until their fingers are knitted together on the sheets.

“God,” Harry gasps. “God.”

Draco kisses the nape of his neck and settles into a rhythm. A slow one, at first, then faster and harder, then slow again, dragging it out until Harry weeps from pleasure and frustration. This is not because Draco is actually cruel, but because the tears are a sure sign that he’s let go of all the curse-magic he brought out of the vault.

“There you are,” Draco says, and squeezes his hands.

Harry comes like he’s never come in his life—frenzied and clenching and absolutely magnificent—and collapses onto his front to let Draco fuck him through his own release.

As usual, it takes a few moments for his senses to return. The bedroom is a quiet sanctuary, but the street around them is filled with echoed whispers and the murmurs of a waiting crowd.

Harry lies on the pillows facing Draco, his hands opening and closing with the aftershocks, his breathing even.

Draco strokes his hair.

Something shifts—the crowd, perhaps—and the next moment, the bells at St Peter’s ring.

Harry opens his mouth on an inhale, and Draco watches goosebumps prickle all down his back. “Wazzat?”

The bells keep ringing. Draco lets the vibrations sink in a little further. “It’s the plenum.”

“The what?”

“All six bells at the basilica.” Draco kisses Harry’s temple. “They only ring the full complement at certain times of the year.”

“Jesus.” Harry’s waking under Draco’s palm, his hips rolling onto the sheets. “No bloody wonder. That’s—that’s so much magic. Do they even—” He hisses. “Do they even know?”

“They must,” Draco says. “The Vatican wizards, at any rate.”

“And they still do it?”

“It’s Easter Sunday, Potter. The rock is away from the tomb. Muggle Jesus is risen.” Harry lifts his head in a silent question, and Draco kisses him. An easy answer. “The dark is leaving. The light is coming back. So on. So forth.”

“Still dark,” Harry mumbles.

“Well. You’ve got to believe the sun will rise.”

“I believe you.” Harry rolls over onto his back. He is, miraculously, hard once again. “Tell me everything about it. Please? Holy fuck, that feels good.”

“Once, there was Dark,” Draco intones, and swings his leg over Harry’s hip. “Then, later, there was light. They both wanked about each other more than was perhaps necessary. Also, I love you.”

Harry laughs and pulls him in for a filthy kiss.

Out in the night, the bells ring. Voices rise on the breeze, singing. 

Draco holds the light in his hands. In the morning, he’ll carry him home.