Chapter 2
He waits in the Quad Yard. It’s normal for his clients to be late. He leaves generous margins around his appointments to account for it. No one from Potter’s group has been late so far, but it doesn’t mean anything. The succession of Potter’s friends in the order of rising importance likewise doesn’t mean anything. There’s no reason to think, no reason whatsoever to hope—
Potter appears from behind the corner and Draco’s heart kicks into a gallop. “Malfoy,” he says, halting a step away and sticking his hands in his pockets. Gods, how he’s grown into his looks. It’s entirely unfair. There’s a poise about him, now. Intervals of good posture. The long lines of his limbs draw the eye up to the striking angles of his face and the black crown of curls on top his head. His chest rises and falls rapidly, as if he’s been running. In the dark, his eyes are bottomless.
“Potter,” Draco replies. Being pathetic, he has practiced pronouncing the name without spitting it out, but the nerves render it all pointless and he watches helplessly as a bit of actual spittle takes flight from his mouth at the plosive.
Potter’s gaze follows it, then locks onto Draco’s mouth as he wets his lips.
“I wondered—” Potter says, just as Draco says, “Is it—” and they fall silent.
Draco clears his throat. Merlin and Morgana, he hasn’t been this nervous since the trial. “Beg your pardon. Go on.”
“I wondered if you have some other kinds. Of weed, I mean. I’m not interested in any of that other stuff you told Ron about. Not yet, at least.”
“Still doesn’t work, then?”
“No. Everyone else loves it, but. Dunno. Maybe another sort will…” He shrugs.
Draco does happen to have some Dutch on him. It arrived that morning. He meant to offer it to the very eager and rather experienced gaggle of Hufflepuff sixth years waiting for him down by the bridge, to see how high a price he might get away with. But he can do that some other day. Saying no to Potter isn’t really an option.
“Can’t hurt to try, I suppose,” he says. “I have two other sorts with me. You can have both, if you want.”
Which is when he’s supposed to mention that the Dutch costs six times as much as the stuff he’s been selling to Potter’s friends so far—and that’s if he makes no profit at all. From the back of his mind, Father’s glare is already burning holes through him. That’s no way to run a business. What if his other clients find out, and refuse to pay what he asks?
But a spark of excitement has lit Potter’s features, reminding Draco so vividly of the way Potter used to be before the war, that his breath hitches, and he says nothing.
Then the spark goes out. “I didn’t bring enough gold,” Potter says.
Draco shrugs. “You can pay me another time.”
“Yeah?” The spark returns, and Draco discovers he’d go to unknown lengths to keep it alive.
“No problem.”
Out of nowhere, Potter breaks into a smile, and it’s like a ray of sunshine peeking from under the clouds on a melancholy autumn afternoon. “Brilliant!”
A hot blush creeps up Draco’s cheeks. He makes a production of searching his pockets to divert Potter’s attention. “So, this one,” he starts, having found the Dutch, “it’s skunk. Might smell a bit strange, but it hits hard. And this—”
“Actually, I was thinking.”
Draco freezes. “Sounds like trouble.”
“Yeah, probably. I, er. D’you wanna come with us? For a smoke? We’ve cleared a room in the Gatehouse and set up anti Filch wards.”
“What about anti Mrs Norris wards?” Draco hears himself say while the white noise of panic engulfs him within. “She can smell it from a mile away, I swear. Caught me in the Forest once. I had to Obliviate her. Have you ever tried to Obliviate a cat, Potter?” Gods, he’s babbling. “They’re incredibly resilient.”
Potter watches him with brows raised over the rims of his glasses, amusement playing around his eyes, and Draco feels so full of hot air it’s a wonder his feet are still on the ground.
“We vanish the smoke,” Potter says. “But, sure. We can ward against the Obliviated cat too, if it’ll put your mind at ease.”
“Good.” Draco nods. He tries to smooth the front of his robes, but his palms are so sweaty they snag on the satin. “Good.”
Potter’s looking at him like they’ve never stood face to face before. “So,” he says. “That mean you’re coming?”
“I have another delivery to make.”
Potter shrugs. “I’ll come with you.”
They descend the winding stairs in silence that makes Potter’s unexpected presence ring all the louder. Draco’s knees are wobbly. He holds on to the damp stone balustrade, wondering if Potter can tell.
The Hufflepuffs wait halfway across the bridge, loud and laughing till they see them. Then, there’s a hush. They stare at Potter as if they haven’t seen him in full size only an hour ago at dinner.
“He’s alright,” Draco says, glancing at him over his shoulder as he approaches them.
The Hufflepuffs seem to relax, and one of them, a mousy brunette with a glossy bob that reminds Draco painfully of Pansy, steps forward to join hands with him. He and Potter haven’t done it: all the weed is still with Draco, and all the gold still with Potter. But the thrill of the coveted touch is nothing compared to the prospect of—who knows, possibly an entire hour?—in his company.
“When did that become a thing?” Potter asks as they cross the bridge, leaving the Hufflepuffs behind.
“Hm?”
“The greeting.” Potter sticks his arms out. “With the hands.”
“Oh.” Draco smirks. “Not sure how to say this without sounding like my fifth-year self, but it was my invention.” Then he cringes. Taking all the credit sounds exactly like his fifth-year self. “Well. Astoria helped. A lot. But yeah. You wouldn’t believe how many people I supply. More than enough to establish… a thing,” he finishes lamely.
“Your fifth-year self?”
Draco closes his eyes. What was he thinking? “I’m not that person anymore,” he says, though he knows very well how cheap it sounds. It’s just words, and even he doesn’t entirely believe them yet.
Potter glances at him sideways. “So, you go to the Forest to smoke? On your own?”
“Sometimes. Not in this weather, obviously,” he adds, stepping around a puddle. “But it’s not bad. No one there, except demonic cats.”
“What about the centaurs? And acromantulas?”
“Don’t you worry, Potter. I’m a certified expert at escaping dodgy situations.”
“I’m not worried.”
Draco sighs. “I wasn’t serious.”
Lamplight spills over them when he yanks the door open, revealing a patchy flush on Potter’s cheeks and mild bewilderment in his eyes. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets. They go on in silence.
Something hits the tip of Draco’s ear as they pass a group of seventh-years. He hisses, pinching where it burns. A stinging hex? No. Potter has leaned and caught the projectile: a cherry stone, Flitwick’s favorite prop for teaching basic weather charms to senior classes.
“Idiot,” someone whispers. “That’s Harry Potter!”
“What’s he doing with the Death Eater shitstain?”
“Who cares! You could’ve hit him!”
The whispering fades as they walk away. Neither has even turned to look.
“People giving you a lot of grief?” Potter asks.
Draco shrugs. “As much as you’d expect.” He wonders what Potter would make of Sallow and the Ray brothers. If he’s too pure to even imagine it.
Potter’s been rolling the cherry stone between his fingers, but now his fist closes around it, and when he opens it, there’s a glass marble there, instead. He holds it out for Draco.
Turning it to the light, Draco squints. Is that a… miniature cherry tree inside? Heavy with blossom, all with tiny white petals swirling under it, and grass so fine it looks like velvet swaying in the breeze? His sense of magic tingles with appreciation. It’s some of the most intricate work he’s ever seen, and he’s seen a lot, at Borgin and Burke’s, and in the collections of old families the Malfoys used to socialize with when he was a boy. Everyone knows about Potter’s power. But Draco never suspected him of such… finesse.
Not bothering to hide the awe, he hands the marble back.
“Keep it,” says Potter.
Draco releases a breath he’s been holding far too long in a huff of confounded laughter.
Potter reddens even harder. “Or throw it back at them. I don’t care.”
“No, I’m definitely keeping it.” And he makes a show of sliding the marble carefully into his shirt pocket. “Come on.”
The wards around the Gatehouse are top-notch. Even knowing what to expect, Draco barely senses them: a blink and you’ll miss it quiver. The ruined towers seem dark and dank and deserted. Potter leads him under a broken stone arch and up an uneven spiral staircase, past a junction with a long, narrow passage that ends in moonlit doorways on each side, where one can step out onto the ramparts. They stop in front of a particularly unremarkable and uninteresting door that Draco would’ve passed without a second glance on his own. Potter knocks in a pattern, then opens it. It’s only as firelight flickers from the room ahead, followed by music and voices, that the spell breaks and Draco realizes they have arrived.
“Potter,” he utters against his better judgment. “Are you sure it’s—”
“Yeah,” Potter says, without pausing to think about it. But he stops at the threshold. “I mean, if you’re uncomfortable… but no one here’s gonna give you a hard time.”
His own comfort, or the lack thereof, couldn’t be farther from what Draco meant by his question. Potter’s friends are welcome to give him a hard time. Living with the Dark Lord for nigh a year made him quite resilient to the sort of naive abuse that can be expected from most students. Things that would’ve made him froth at the mouth three years back barely register these days. And he doesn’t believe Potter would allow his friends to do anything truly harmful.
Draco’s concern is rather that his being there would spoil their fun. Because then, they might not want to do business with him again. He never smokes, drinks or takes anything with any of his clients. It’s a rule he’s only breaking now because it’s bloody Potter asking.
The chamber they enter is about the size of a small classroom and mostly empty. A fire spits and crackles from a hodgepodge circle of broken masonry, wafting smoke straight up into the ceiling where it’s swallowed up by a vanishing charm. Narrow, north-facing windows shimmer with charms of their own: Impervious and heavy Disillusionment. The inane music blaring from the wireless echoes off the bare stone walls like in a cathedral. Several large cushions and a mattress piled with an assortment of mismatched pillows and moth-eaten blankets pilfered from who knows where are the only furniture. She-Weasley and Lovegood wallow in the nest, too busy snogging to look up until the conversation between Granger and he-Weasley, who are seated by the fire, abruptly stops.
Draco plants his feet and lifts his chin against the weight of their collective scrutiny. He meets everyone’s eyes in turn—except Lovegood’s, though not for the lack of trying on his part—and gets something like a half-smile from Granger, and something like a half-frown from he-Weasley in return.
“Draco’s got something new for us tonight,” Potter says, and all eyes turn to him, Draco’s included. He can’t be entirely sure, but he’d bet a full week’s earnings that he’d never heard his given name from Potter’s mouth before.
“Nice,” says she-Weasley. She and Lovegood have untangled enough to sit up, looking thoroughly debauched.
“So, Malfoy,” says Potter once they’re sat on the cushions, cross-legged with their knees touching, like there’s nothing unusual about any of it. Draco lifts an eyebrow at the reversal to his family name. “Let’s see that—what was it? Stink of yours?”
He-Weasley snorts, but the others seem too curious about Draco’s reaction to laugh. “Skunk,” he corrects with a dutiful little smile. He clears his throat. “Should’ve seen that coming.”
“Four years, I’ve waited,” says Potter, grinning.
“It does fairly stink.” Draco brings forth the baggie, tears it open, then passes a nearly black, sticky chunk of the stuff to Potter, who winces when he smells it. “But it’s stronger than anything I’ve tried so far.”
“It’s not about the potency,” says Granger. “It’s about developing a certain kind of receptors in your brain.”
“She always finds the nicest ways to say I’m thick,” Potter translates to Draco.
Granger blows a raspberry.
“The way I understand it,” says Lovegood, languidly arranging the props from her kit in front of her, “it’s all in the balance of the five humors. Serenity, dread, euphoria, focus, and sloth.”
“Sloth,” he-Weasley repeats, chuckling, and Draco detects the peculiar pre-session excitement that’s almost a high in its own right, rising among the small congregation.
“I think that’s rather apt, Luna,” says Granger, smiling stiffly enough to leave no one in doubt about what she really thinks of the theory.
For a while, everyone watches Lovegood’s long, translucent fingers as she deftly rolls a large spliff.
“What if I never develop those brain receptors?” says Potter.
“You will,” Draco says in time with Granger, and their eyes meet over the fire, surprised.
Potter snorts. “If you say so.”
“Well,” says he-Weasley as Lovegood wets the spliff with the tip of her tongue. “We’ll see what Malfoy’s stink can do for you in about five minutes, won’t we?”
“You should make a badge, Weasley,” says Draco.
“I’ll compose a song!”
“Ah, yes.” Draco watches he-Weasley hold his wand to the spliff to spark it, and Lovegood take the first, long drag. “Poetry has its charms, but costumes and accessories are more my thing.”
“And dramatic readings from the newspapers,” Potter points out. When Draco glances at him, there’s a teasing smirk on his face. “You should consider a career in the theater.”
“Or in the circus,” says she-Weasley. There’s a teasing smirk on her face, too, but it’s a different kind of smirk, and a different kind of teasing, and Draco stays quiet after that.
He observes. Lovegood is the most experienced smoker of the group. She-Weasley, the most eager. She coughs when she tries to take it directly to the chest, but it doesn’t deter her. Granger holds the spliff like a cigarette and takes small sips.
When it’s Potter’s turn, he looks at Draco askance. For instruction? For approval? Hoping he has read the room correctly, Draco says, “Try to inhale directly. Don’t hold it in your mouth.” Then he mimes the pull with his lips.
Potter launches into a coughing fit, holding the spliff out for Draco. “Christ. What is this stuff?”
“Gently,” Draco says. “Like this,” and he holds the tip a quarter inch from his lips as he takes a drag. Warmth rises to his cheeks. Potter’s stare is a tangible pressure on his mouth, both firm and soft, like the crown of a stiff cock. He hands the spliff back. “Try again.”
No one objects. Potter copies him, and does a fairly good job of it, holding the tip away from his lips. This time, he doesn’t cough. The others clap when he flashes a toothy, triumphant grin at them.
Draco takes another pull, and then it’s he-Weasley’s turn, and the circle closes with Lovegood. “Draco,” she croaks, holding her breath. He looks up even though he knows better, and gets yet another kick of rejection from her insistent and incredibly consistent avoidance of eye contact. “Could you give Harry a blow-back?”
He blinks. “Beg your pardon?”
“She means, a shotgun,” says she-Weasley. An odd look passes between the two of them. Something accusatory on she-Weasley’s end, and something apologetic on Lovegood’s.
Yet, despite sensing trouble, he replies, “Ah.” Because, he can’t say no to that, can he?
“None of us know how to do it,” Lovegood explains, more to she-Weasley than to Draco, by the look of it. “And it might help Harry.”
“What’s a shotgun?” asks Potter.
“It’s um,” Granger starts, then stops. An odd look passes between her and he-Weasley now, over the fire. A silent plea answered with a shrug.
“What?” says Potter, catching onto the weird tension.
“It’s like a kiss,” she-Weasley declares.
Draco laughs. “No.”
“No?”
“Why can’t you just tell me what it is?” Potter insists, and then everyone is talking at once.
Until Granger’s voice rises above the din. “I’d like one, please.”
There’s a stunned silence. The spliff is with her, though, and she reaches over Potter to give it to Draco. Who, technically, hasn’t agreed to anything. But as he takes it, Granger gets on her hands and knees over Potter’s lap, forcing him to lean back, and Draco doesn’t give himself time to think about it. He takes a long drag, puts the business end of the spliff in his mouth, and presses his chest against Potter’s shoulder to reach Granger’s determined face. Obviously, she knows what to expect, because she keeps a respectful distance and only takes a modest little puff. And the whole while, Potter’s breath streams right into Draco’s cheek, hot and moist and fast.
Granger chokes, but manages to hold it in long enough not to spray Draco’s face. They return to their seats. Draco can only hope he isn’t as flushed as she is.
She-Weasley is the first to speak. “See?”
“Er,” Potter says, adjusting his glasses. He’s red in the face, too. “Yeah. Sure,” he tells Draco. “I mean, I wanna try. If you, er.”
Draco takes another good hit and puts the spliff between his teeth once more, beckoning Potter closer. He comes… much closer than Granger. Not close enough for their lips to touch, but their noses do, and then Potter’s stupid, jewel-like eyes rise in the middle of it, and Draco can’t help but look up too, and that’s when he knows exactly what he’s in for, but he doesn’t flinch even when Potter coughs a cloud of smoke into his face. He’s too busy committing to memory the way Potter’s pupils widened, like a cat’s.
Everyone bursts out laughing.
“Would you like something to drink?” says Lovegood, clearly addressing Draco, though her eyes are locked on something several inches to the left of eye-contact. “There’s pumpkin juice in the ice-box.”
“How could I refuse such a rare delicacy?” Draco answers, curious about this ‘ice-box’. It couldn’t be a Muggle refrigerator, could it? There’s no electricity anywhere near Hogwarts.
“Would you like some, Harry?”
“Beer for me, please,” Potter says. Sensing Draco’s betrayed glare, the bastard winks at him.
But his attention is soon captured by the unmistakable sound of fridge door opening. And indeed: there, in a dark corner, stands a stocky, ancient-looking specimen, bathing Lovegood in a frosty glow while she ponders its contents.
“Stout or lager?” she asks.
“Stout!”
“If I didn’t know better,” says Draco carefully, “I’d think that’s a working Muggle refrigerator.”
“It is,” Granger says.
“How does a poncy twat like you know about Muggle refrigerators?” says she-Weasley.
Draco ignores her, addressing Granger instead. “How did you get it to work?”
“We’ve got a converter.”
“A… magic to electricity converter?”
She nods with a bright little smile.
“Did you make it?”
Granger shakes her head, then juts her chin to Draco’s right, where Potter sits watching the exchange with amusement.
“You?” Draco says and regrets it at once, as all his dumb incredulity gets broadcast as clear as the moon on a cloudless night.
“He’s smarter than he looks, you know,” says he-Weasley.
“While you look smarter than you are, which isn’t very much at all,” says she-Weasley, and everyone laughs, while Draco’s cheeks burn.
Lovegood has returned with a beer can and an icy glass of pumpkin juice. “Thanks,” Draco says. She smiles at whatever’s sitting on his left shoulder.
“Didn’t think it was possible,” Draco murmurs a bit later, poking the contraption with his wand.
“Took me the whole summer to figure it out,” says Potter. “Couldn’t have done it on my own, of course. I had loads of help from Arthur Weasley and Professor Stewart. He’s got an engineering degree from a Muggle university, did you know? Anyway. Don’t let them fool you,” and he gestures at the rest of the room. “I’m not half as smart as this makes me look, I promise.”
“You needn’t worry, Potter. Your reputation of being a dumb jock is perfectly safe with me.”
He freezes, realizing seconds too late what he said, what he sounded like, but Potter… Potter laughs. “Yeah.”
Draco’s heart pounds in the silence. “Does it draw on the magic of the castle?”
“Nah. Couldn’t coax it into it.”
“So, whose magic does it use?”
Potter shrugs. “We all contribute. Put your wand in that little hole—yeah, like that—and say, Alimentum. If you wanna feed it, I mean.”
Draco repeats the incantation and feels a gentle whiff of magic leave him, like a sigh. The fridge purrs on contentedly.
“It likes you,” Potter says. “It gives Ron a zap every time he tries it.” He bursts into giggles, and after a moment, so does Draco.
“What are we laughing at?” Tears sparkle from the corners of Potter’s eyes. “That so wasn’t funny.”
“No,” Draco agrees. But that just makes him laugh harder.
“So why are we laughing?”
“Because we’re high?”
“We are?”
“I sure am.”
Potter blinks, his wild gaze turning inwards. “Oh my god,” he whispers. “I think you’re right. Draco!” And he shakes Draco by the shoulders. “I think I feel it!”
The others are feeling it too. She-Weasley’s hopping on her tiptoes, humming something entirely unrelated to the music on the wireless and showering the cushions around her with sparks. Lovegood, still seated, is performing some slow, intricate dance with her long, wispy arms. Draco squints. They’re bending in ways they shouldn’t. Granger’s hair has come to life, curling and twisting away from her head like curious vines stretching towards the sun. He-Weasley is guffawing over something someone said.
“Wow,” says Potter, and Draco’s scattered attention is drawn to him like iron shavings to a magnet. Potter’s eyes are huge and luminous, teeming with life and magic, and they’re trained on Draco with all the intensity, but none of the animosity, of their old rivalry. “You’re glowing.”
Draco swallows his heart back into his chest. “Happens,” he says.
“Am I glowing?”
Draco gives him an assessing look. “A little. Around the edges.” He makes a gesture describing the line of Potter’s arm without touching him. His own glow is silvery blue; Potter’s is, unsurprisingly, a golden orange. Where their auras meet, tiny motes of light detach and twinkle like fireflies as they float off and go out.
“Oh my god,” Potter repeats, raising a hand to trace Draco’s glow with mirrored movement. It would feel amazing to touch right now, but Draco’s afraid to try.
Potter isn’t.
Draco just barely keeps himself from flinching when Potter reaches for his face. No—not his face. His ear? Potter has taken hold of Draco’s left earlobe, sending a cascade of sensation through him that reaches his toes and makes them curl. Potter feels it too, if his stricken expression is anything to go by. A small cloud of glow motes rises from the point of contact as he gently kneads the fleshy fold.
“It’s pierced?” Potter whispers, as if he’s never seen such a thing before.
Draco lifts an eyebrow and pushes the hair falling over his face behind his right ear, where he’s got an array of three little rings and two silver beads.
Potter’s eyes grow round like saucers.
And then they fill with tears.
It’s so sudden—it’s so weird—that Draco almost rubs his own eyes, dry and sticky, to make sure he isn’t seeing things that aren’t there. But no. Genuine, heavy, fat-bellied tears are streaming down Potter’s cheeks, and that’s not even the worst of it. His lip is trembling. His brows are knitted in that unmistakable way. And when he gasps for air, it sounds an awful lot like a sob.
“Potter?”
“Oh my god,” Potter utters. He lifts a hand to the base of his throat and a pang of fear courses through Draco, its edge sharpened by the high into something dangerous.
“What is it? Potter? Are you alright?”
“Yes? No, I—” His face crumples and he hides it, pushing his hands under his glasses, as a string of soft little sobs shakes his shoulders.
“Harry?” says Granger.
Draco steps away from him. “I didn’t do anything,” he blurts out. Stupid, stupid! It’s practically an admission of guilt, and Merlin, how the fuck is he so high? What the fuck is going on? Why is his heart hammering like he’s been sprinting?
In the blink of an eye, they’re all crowding around Potter, gaping fright and triage questions, a living shield between him and Draco, who’s surely to blame. They all think so! Even he thinks so. It’s the weed, the fucking Dutch, it’s giving Potter a bad trip and now none of them will ever want to buy from Draco again, talk to him again, let alone allow him into Potter’s presence again. What was he thinking, coming here? Letting Looney fucking Lovegood roll? She put the entire baggie in, didn’t she? She must’ve, for how the world is spinning in Draco’s head, not the slow march of the tides, but the senseless chaos of the hurricane, breaking everything in its path and hurling sharp objects into the fray, splintered wood and glass and steel, the blood and the salt and the peeling skin—
“I’m fine!”
Potter’s cry echoes in the sudden and complete silence.
“Christ!” He elbows out of the circle of his friends and—incredibly—walks over to where Draco’s retreated, halfway to the door and about to bolt for it. “I’m fine,” he repeats in a shaky voice. His glasses dangle from his hand as he uses the back of it to wipe his face. “I’m just… sad, alright?”
They all stare at his back, petrified. Draco’s the only one in front of him, facing him, witnessing him as he presses his eyes with the heels of his palms. “It’s the earrings,” he mutters, and perhaps it’s just wishful thinking, but to Draco it seems like no one else was meant to hear it. “The bloody earrings,” and Potter sobs. “It’s how he wore them, too. Three hoops and two studs, and a single drop on the other side. The other other side.” Snot bubbles out of his nose when he laughs. “You know what I mean.”
Defrosted by manners drilled into him since he was two, Draco pulls a kerchief out of his pocket and steps forward, holding it out.
“Thanks,” Potter mutters. He blows his nose—it’s a handful, no exaggeration—then lifts his wet, bloodshot eyes at Draco, and attempts a smile that dissolves into a grimace. “Sirius,” he says, and begins to weep in earnest.
Draco blinks a few times, astonished. Then he says, “Ah.”