Chapter 5
Unseasonable December sun blasts through the window of Draco’s cell. It’s what they call the single dorms allotted to the eighth-years, though it’s only now, with Potter in here, that Draco understands just how apt the uncharitable term is. There’s barely space enough to turn. Having entered first, Potter’s gone ahead to the tiny desk under the window, leaving Draco behind to ponder what’s more awkward: sitting on the low bed or standing next to it like a broken thumb.
He chooses the latter on the grounds of dignity and clasps his hands behind his back. “Thank you,” he says. He feared he’d have to wrestle the words out, but they put up no resistance. “For what you did last night. Or, rather, for what you didn’t do. I, uh.” Gods. Potter’s speech patterns have started rubbing off him. He clears his throat. “I hope you didn’t get in too much trouble.”
Limned with golden light, Potter glances at him over his shoulder with a smirk that has no business being so attractive. “Nah. I mean, I’ll have some detention when the classes start. I had to swear I’d stop smoking on the grounds, and bringing drugs to the school, blah blah. And I’ll have to see Madam Pomfrey about counseling. But otherwise…” he shrugs, returning his attention to the things scattered on Draco’s desk. He picks up and puts down a puffskein-shaped ink blotter, smells the wrinkled apple that’s been biding its time in a dusty corner since November, drags his fingers along the velvet spine of Draco’s journal. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Draco takes half a step forward. “That was some show you put up—” Potter, he would normally append, but it doesn’t feel right anymore. “I was impressed.”
“Heh. Yeah.” Potter has opened the journal and started turning the seemingly empty pages. “I was surprised myself. The only other time I managed to pull off something like that was with the help of Felix Felicis.” Draco can hear rather than see another smirk. “Must’ve been the weed, this time around.”
“About that.” Draco wrings his hands. “I don’t have anything,” he says. “I panicked and got rid of it all.”
“Good.”
Draco wrings his hands harder. “And there won’t be anything for a while. Till I get a chance to go to London and see my supplier in person. Reset the charms and everything.”
This time, when Potter looks at him, there’s no smirk. “I didn’t come here for weed.”
“Oh.” Draco bites his tongue before he asks. Because that would be rude. But also, because his hope has taken flight and he’s afraid the answer will shoot it down. Potter was infuriatingly unreadable when he asked to come up with Draco after lunch. A little flushed, maybe, a little bright-eyed, but both could mean bad things just as well as good. Most likely, Draco told himself over and over as they traversed the castle together in the daylight for the first time, he’s here to make sure Draco won’t go around telling people that he’s gay. Or bi. Or whatever. That he sucked cock with such abandon last night. And not just any cock. A Death Eater cock. That he showed no sign of regretting it; that, in fact, it looked very much like he’d been about to go down on Draco again before Filch and co. ambushed them.
But that was all last night, when they’d still been high. They have never really talked while straight. Their walks hardly counted, what with smoking as the destination. Real life is a separate place with separate rules. Potter doesn’t cry in real life. Probably, he doesn’t suck cock either. Especially not Draco’s.
Apparently riding a completely different train of thought, Potter says, “D’you know who it was?”
“Hm?”
“Stewart said someone reported you.”
“Ah. Yes, I have a pretty good idea.”
“The Hufflepuff who’s been giving your grief.”
It wasn’t a question. Draco squints. “Have you been keeping tabs on me?”
“A bit.” Potter closes the journal, picking up the empty teacup and smelling that, too, while all the blood drains from Draco. How much has Potter seen? Submitting to fists and hexes and… all the rest… wasn’t on Draco’s list of things to be ashamed of, either. Only, somehow, now it is? Because he didn’t think Potter had been paying attention. To all that, to him, to anything, really, outside their evening sessions. But he has?
“You gonna do something about it?” Potter says. “The Hufflepuff, I mean,” he explains when he turns around and sees Draco’s blank expression. “He’s sort of a creep, isn’t he? With the stare, and the gait.” Potter bulges his eyes and rocks his shoulders like a seesaw in an eerily evocative imitation of Sallow. “He might try to set you up again.”
“I can take care of myself, Potter.” Only he fails to pop the P, and the whole thing comes out breathless instead of cutting.
“Yeah, but.” Potter shrugs sheepishly. To Draco’s horror, it looks like he might insist. Offer to help, and wouldn’t that be the pinnacle of irony? But he must’ve come to know Draco a little too, because in the end, he deflates. “Okay. I’ll stay out of it. If push comes to shove, though—you do have friends now. You know that, right?”
“Friends,” Draco repeat numbly.
“Yeah.” Oblivious, Potter keeps staring for a few seconds before it dawns on him, what he just said, and his face rearranges itself. “I mean—I don’t mean we’re friends—I mean, we are, but that’s not what I was—oh my god.” He covers his face and laughs.
Good thing, too, because it gives Draco a moment to collect his scattered wits. But then the moment stretches a bit too long. He takes a reluctant step forward. “Ground control to Major Tom,” he sings under his breath.
Potter looks up. “Huh?”
“Merlin. I thought you were crying.”
“Huh.” He inspects his fingers. Rubs them. Laughs some more, but it’s shaky. “Christ, I can’t even tell anymore. How fucked up is that?”
“You might be having a flashback.” That would explain it. This bewildering intrusion of their companionship, friendship or courtship into the real life.
“A flashback?”
“It’s when you feel high the day after smoking.”
It’s also an out. All Potter needs to do is say, yeah, that must be it, and they will revert to how things had been before last night.
“Er. No?” Potter pushes his glasses up. “It’s another term from Muggle psychology. For overwhelming memories that you can’t tell apart from reality.”
Ever heard of PTSD?
“I didn’t know that,” Draco says cautiously. “But it sounds like the same thing?”
Potter’s gaze turns inwards as he thinks about it. “Like… you remember the feeling of being high so vividly, you actually feel like you’re high again? Makes sense, I guess.”
Unable to remember why he chose to stand by the bed rather than sit on it, Draco toes off his shoes and settles crosslegged at the foot. He pats the duvet, and Potter, who was about to reach for the chair, grins and follows his example.
“I have memories like that, too,” Draco says. He can smell Potter’s strawberry shampoo. “They don’t… chase me the whole time like hyenas, but… A couple weeks before I came to Hogwarts, Leo dropped a canister of oil and it spilled on the fire under his cauldron. The flame leaped up—definitely high enough to singe his lashes and eyebrows—but what I saw was… A creature? Filling the whole workshop all the way to the ceiling, and.” Potter puts a hot palm over Draco’s forearm. “I don’t even know what happened after that. Apparently, I curled up in a corner and wouldn’t move or speak for fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah,” Potter murmurs. His hand is sweaty enough for Draco to feel the moisture through his shirt. “I haven’t climbed to the seventh floor once, since…”
“I have to. For Astronomy.”
“Did you go inside?”
Draco shakes his head. “Won’t open. But the wall is warm. Like a chimney.” He shudders, and Potter’s hand tightens around his wrist.
They’re silent a while. It’s a restful silence, like on their walks. Only now, they’re close enough to kiss. The hand that gripped Draco’s forearm, then wrist, has graduated to tracing the lines on his palm. Potter used to take Divination. Perhaps he can see the future in there. The network of possible paths that Draco glimpsed last night for a sweet moment before a thick fog settled back over everything out of arm’s reach. He looks up. Potter’s eyes sparkle, then slide down onto Draco’s mouth. And, Merlin. For all the boys and men he’s had sex with, he’s never experienced anything as erotic as this moment of calm intimacy. Not even tonguing his own seed into Potter’s mouth last night came close. Because there’s no cushioning charm of being stoned here. Of fooling around. Of throwing out and taking on childish challenges. This is for real. They hover just at the threshold of touch, breathing each other’s air, and are these pangs inside him what Potter meant when he spoke of butterflies? It feels like free fall.
“You kinda ran ahead of me last night,” Potter says softly. He looks down at their joined hands. “Obviously, I wanted it. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t been on my mind. And not just the er. Gay stuff. But also… you.” He swallows, and Draco swallows too. “And I had a great time, but…”
Draco closes his hand around Potter’s, trying to steel himself for the inevitable.
“I’m just… in a bit of a weird place right now. How did that song go? Strung out in heaven’s high—” and though he feels like he’s been punched in the gut, Draco joins him for “—hitting an all time low.” They go on to sing the motif too, with, na—na, na—na, na-na-na, shockingly on key and on beat, as if they’ve been doing this for years. Startled, they laugh, bright and bubbly, looking in each other’s eyes.
“It’s alright, Potter,” Draco forces himself to say, then tuts. “Harry. We can be—” and there he goes breathless again, even though he just took air not a second ago “—friends. If that’s what you want.”
“Wait.” Potter sits back, and their hands come apart. He shakes his head like a wet dog. “What?”
“Isn’t that what you were saying? How you had a great time, but…”
“No! I mean, yes, I had a great time, but that’s not where I was going with it at all.”
“No?”
“I was going to say that—because of all that stuff—being in a weird place and all…” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t think I can deal with uncertainty right now. So, er. I was gonna ask straight out. What… that was, last night. Like, for you. Was it just a hookup?”
This roller coaster of a conversation has taken one vertical loop too many. As the breath that’s been stuck in Draco’s chest rushes out with relieved laughter, he feels himself fraying around the edges. “Wow, and there I thought I made myself crystal clear. No,” he enunciates when Potter just keeps staring expectantly. “No, it wasn’t just a hookup. Merlin. How many times do you need to be told you’re special?”
Potter frowns. “I don’t need to be told I’m special.” He pushes his fingers inside Draco’s cuff, thumb pressing the pulse point. “Just that I’m special”—he glances up—“to you. Which brings us to the subject of the er. Random blokes.”
“What about them?”
“Well, if we’re gonna—I don’t think I can—like, if you want us to—oh, for fuck’s sake. You know what I mean. Stop laughing.”
“I’m not—I’m sorry—I’ll stop.” But he can’t. It’s the kind of laughter that gets out of hand and turns to sobs almost at once, and it would seem that Potter has rubbed off him in that sense too. Draco presses his eyes with the heels of his palms, waiting for the hysteria to recede.
Then Potter sings, “This is Major Tom to Ground Control,” and they both dissolve in laughter.
It’s only later, after they’ve been lying side by side a while, staring at the cobwebs in the recesses of the ceiling and… talking, about the other songs Draco asked Leo to put on the music player, and Potter’s plans to install a television in the Gatehouse, and the bruise on Draco’s hand where the chip of goblin silver was still embedded in his flesh, and the feral kneazle that haunts the garden of 12 Grimmauld Place, that Draco feels calm enough to prop himself up on an elbow over Potter, look in his eyes, and whisper a promise.
Potter smiles at him then, more fully than ever before. He is radiant, and Draco’s so in love he can hardly breathe for it.
In the days, weeks and months to come, that feeling will become familiar, even though he’ll never get completely used to it: of growing ever larger within to accommodate the blooming of all these new emotions. And later, Harry will tell him that he felt the same at the time: like learning, from scratch, how to be human.
On his birthday, Draco swallows his pride and buys some weed from the Ray brothers.
They started selling goods of their own back in February, forcing Draco to lower his prices, and everything went downhill from there. Spring failed to bring the expected rise in demand. To the contrary. What he’d used to sell in a day tarried in the stash for weeks. And then, to put the last nail in the coffin, Leo sent his goodbye note.
“Borgin’s fallen ill”, it said in a somewhat shaky hand. “He’s got no one. If/when he dies, the shop will be… mine.” This was followed by a tiny illustration of comically wide eyes: terrified, excited, or both. “Either way, I have to work the front now, and do the books and everything. No time to brew, let alone anything more. I’ve quit smoking, too. I’m sorry, Draco. You’ll have to find another supplier.”
And if not for Harry and his merry band, Draco might’ve. But he never did.
Now that he’s not selling anymore, and they’re the ones at risk of being ratted out, the Ray brothers have stopped pestering him. Pretty much everyone has stopped pestering him. Sallow overdosed on Dreamless Sleep (thankfully, someone else had sold it to him), and after two weeks in a coma and another four of rehab in the Janus Thickey Ward, decided he’d finish his education next year. The snide comments and the occasional cherry stone attack still occur, but hardly count. Draco brings the cherry stones to Harry, who turns them into beautiful glass marbles, each with a different species of blossoming tree inside. Apart from the cherry, Draco has collected a redbud tree, a crape myrtle tree, a rosy trumpet tree, a chestnut tree, an elderberry tree, a lilac tree, a purple glory tree, a magnolia tree, a wisteria tree, a pomegranate tree and a maple tree. He keeps them in a small jewelry box, well padded with deep green velvet, and the Malfoy he was bred to be can’t help but think that, some day, they’ll be worth a fortune.
Harry had big plans for the day, but only the part with sleeping in is on schedule. Their lunch reservation is lost to slow, lazy lovemaking that keeps them in bed well into the afternoon and makes the air in Harry’s cell brittle with the clashing odors of their cleansing charms: Harry with mint and eucalyptus, Draco with lime and pine. By the time Kreacher serves them sandwiches, pumpkin juice, and a single cupcake, storm clouds have turned the day to twilight. So much for flying the new obstacle course. They resume their lovemaking while the distant rumbling rolls closer and escalates to a deafening rattle of Snitch-sized hail. When the bell rings for dinner, and it hasn’t stopped pouring, they give up on the Forest pilgrimage too, and go directly to the Gatehouse.
Muggle hits blare from the television. Draco lifts an eyebrow at the unusually good reception, then notices someone’s wand has been spellotaped onto the antenna. It’s been a couple weeks since he’s been here, what with the breakneck pace of the NEWT revisions and the unfaltering, insatiable sex drive rendering both him and Harry unfit for company most of the time. There’s an armchair by the fire, now, next to the lumpy sofa with a broken spring that the others had hauled from gods know where over Easter holidays. The mattress has seen a dramatic improvement since Granger and Weasley discovered its allure; it’s been extended, and cleansed, and repaired, so that the noises it makes can no longer be heard all the way from the castle when everyone invariably forgets to refresh the silencing charms on the windows. The two of them are on it now, surrounded with books and papers. Weasley looks about to burst to tears of relief when he sees Harry and Draco come in.
“Have you brought something nice?” says she-Weasley. She’s sprawled on the sofa with her head in Lovegood’s lap, having her hair braided.
“We brought something,” Draco replies. In the second of divided attention it takes him to do it, Harry makes a run for the armchair. The prat! Draco manages to grab a handful of his shirt, catch up, and tackle him, but he plants his arse in the seat first and brays out a victorious laugh.
Draco slumps till his robes pool on the floor in a show of defeat, which makes Harry laugh all the louder, all according to plan. Even the Weasleys chuckle. But when he tosses the baggie in the direction of the sofa, it’s expertly tossed right back, hitting him in the forehead for good measure. “The loser rolls,” she-Weasley announces.
With a sigh, he settles on a cushion between Harry’s knees. It’s not a bad place to be. Harry has grown no less handsy now that they’re together. Within a minute, he’s kneading Draco’s neck and shoulders, running his fingers up and down the fresh undercut at the back of Draco’s head, playing with his earrings. He bends down to peer at Draco’s hands and the absolute artistry of the L-plate in the making, and brushes his warm lips over Draco’s ear. When Draco smiles, he feels Harry’s answering smile on his skin.
“Give me a shot,” Harry says after the spliff has made two rounds.
It’s been a while, and a pleasant little thrill runs through Draco as he pulls Harry closer; never mind that they fucked, pouring their souls into one another’s eyes, not two hours ago. When it’s done, he hands the spliff over and kisses Harry till he runs out of air and bursts out laughing.
The weed isn’t bad. A bit lackluster on the side of the scent and taste, but it hits fast and makes them all giggly and mellow.
“Oh,” says Lovegood. “Draco, that’s a beautiful earring!”
He beams at her, though she still won’t look him in the eye. Of all the bullying and self-inflicted sexual abuse he’s endured over the last year, between the barbs thrown at him by the Weasleys and the occasional stab under the ribs from Harry and Granger, Lovegood’s gentle punishment has been the most difficult to bear. But now, as she stares at the canine fang drop dangling from his left ear, he has a sudden suspicion that it’s what she’s been looking at all this time, even though Harry only gave it to him today. A chill goes down his spine.
Granger, who’s gone back to her reading, looks up, squints, and crawls to the edge of the mattress. Then her eyes grow wide. “Harry,” she says. “Is that…?”
“Yeah.” Though Draco can’t see him, he can hear the smile in his voice, gone all soft and shy. And now everyone is gawking.
“What?” says he-Weasley.
“It belonged to Sirius,” Granger explains.
“You found it in the townhouse?” says she-Weasley.
Harry and Draco had gone there together for Easter, but amidst Kreacher’s toxic mumblings, the shocking filth of great-aunt Walburga’s wails, and boggarts in literally every closet, cabinet and cupboard, the shared excitement over playing house for a whole week quickly turned sour. “I found a dozen,” Harry says. “All different animals, I think. Fox, wolf, bear. He was really into fangs. But this is the one I remember. The one he wore that Christmas.”
A hush falls. Draco turns for a glance. Harry no longer cries every time they smoke. Nowadays it happens more often when they don’t. In the night, when he starts from a nightmare and Draco makes him recount it out loud. After the stupid fights the two of them get into at least once a week over the most inane nonsense imaginable, from buttons vs zippers to Kestrels vs Magpies to mashed peas vs mashed potatoes, where either might take one side today and the other tomorrow, so long as they get to glare and snap at each other, and every now and then, use their fists, too. When the Merlin/Arthur romance novels Draco’s been reading for Harry aloud on the weekends dive into the ever murkier depths of angst. During an intense orgasm, like earlier today.
His eyes remain dry now, and after a beat, he smiles again, Draco’s earlobe between his fingertips. “It’s only fitting it goes to another rebellious descendant of the ancient and noble house Black.”
Heat blooms in Draco’s cheeks. He has not earned this. Not by a long shot. His late cousin had fought two wars against the Dark Lord and the purist ideology he represented, and died doing it. And what has Draco done? Boo-hoo, he lied to the Dark Lord, and wow, he gave his wand to Harry, and oooh, he stayed the hands of his former friends when they had the chance to do some real damage. Pfft. The only truly courageous deed he can fully take credit for was coming out to his parents and suffering the consequences with his head held high. It’s laughable.
“Hey,” says Harry, and his hand moves to grip Draco’s shoulder. They’ve already had this conversation. He said Draco should keep the earring even if it weighs more than he thinks he can bear. That it’s not about what he deserves or doesn’t deserve, but about acceptance and gratitude. Draco cried. And fuck him sideways, he’s about to cry again.
“D’awwww,” says she-Weasley, then, “Ouch!” when Lovegood pulls her hair in an uncharacteristic display of punitive justice.
Harry makes their announcement that evening: that they will both be taking a gap year, to travel together and figure out what they want from their future. Granger works very hard to keep her many, many concerns about it to herself. He-Weasley pretends to be sad while in fact looking rather chuffed, as Draco knew he would be, with the pressure of competing with Harry through the Auror training program taken off his wide shoulders. She-Weasley goes pale and thoughtful at first, then drunk and loud later. Lovegood says she’s seen it all in the tea leaves already: a piece of luggage lost in a portkey office; an unexpected meeting in front of a cathedral; a dark artifact among the trinkets in a Muggle flea market; a flight on a magic carpet; sunburn and freckles; a panic attack on a boat at sunset; something round and gold.
“The Snitch,” says she-Weasley.
“A galleon,” says Granger.
“The Auror badge,” says he-Weasley.
Draco looks up just in time to catch the spark in Harry’s eyes.