Chapter 3
Is it a coincidence? It could be, but the more Draco thinks about it, turning in his bed that night, the more he fears that it isn’t.
When Father was imprisoned in 1996, Mother brought a stack of old photo albums from the attic to indulge in a spot of sentimentality, and Draco sat with her as she laughed and cried over the captured moments from her and her husband’s youth. There were pictures of Father as a boy no older than Draco, of Grandmother in better health than Draco had ever seen her, of the Manor before the East Wing was built. Of Grandfather in his fifties, with waist-long hair and an arm hooked through the elbow of the Dark Lord while he’d still been human and eerily handsome. Of Mother with her sisters, before Andromeda had been excommunicated, and Bellatrix, arrested. Of the old Black townhouse that Potter now calls home.
And then there was the photo of Sirius Black in his late teens, with his motorcycle, and leather jacket, and pierced ears, standing out from all the rest, an avatar of rebellion. Fascinated, Draco sneaked into Mother’s chambers several times that summer to stare at it. At the dark, wavy hair, the straight lines and elfin angles of the profile, the slight weakness of the chin. At Mother’s eyes, and his own, the color of frost. If not for the complexion, it could’ve been his older brother.
He’d long forgotten about the photo by the time he had his ears pierced. Or so he thought. In hindsight, it must’ve been the memory of it that spurred him on. That inspired him. He had such a clear image of what he wanted, such a specific pattern, he now finds it incredible that he didn’t pause to interrogate it, to ask himself where he had seen it before, or why was it that, after cutting ties with his family and its traditions, he felt that this small, symbolic act, the piercing of his ears, was the height of defiance, the final, triumphant burning of the bridges from which there could be no coming back.
He twists in his sheets and presses his burning face into the cool linen of the pillow. He’s unsure what’s more embarrassing: the fact that he copied Sirius bloody Black, that he had done so unwittingly, or that he managed to mess it up. The other other side, Potter said. That clear image in Draco’s mind had been the mirror reflection of the original.
He fully expects never to hear from Potter’s group again. But then, at breakfast, Astoria arranges another meeting, and it’s Potter again, this time only a few minutes late. And he apologizes. He apologizes to Draco, for making things weird and awkward, and he’ll understand if Draco never wishes to smoke with him again. And then he stands there, with his hands stuck in his pockets and his shoulders hunched so far forward they’re almost touching his chin, and Draco’s teeth click when he realizes his mouth’s been hanging open, and closes it.
“It’s… fine, Potter,” he says. Thank gods, the name comes out alright, this time. Soft, even. So soft, in fact, that he flushes wildly in the dark.
A smile sparkles in Potter’s eyes. “Yeah?”
Draco shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.”
The smile widens. The shoulders drop back, and one hand comes out of the pocket to rake Potter’s hair into an even hotter mess. “I brought your gold.”
“Ah.” Draco clears his throat. He will not renounce the ridiculous profits he can make selling the Dutch just because Potter’s being nice to him. Once was enough. “Good. But if you want more of the same—”
“No, there’s plenty left from last night. Next time, I guess? Just.” The other hand comes out too, then, strangely slow and stiff, and it takes Draco a long, bewildered moment to realize that Potter wants to do the ‘thing with the hands’.
“Right,” he says. He feels strangely slow and stiff himself, stepping forward and extending his arms. Their hands grope under the long sleeves of his robes. He has not once been so clumsy, doing this, so sweatily aware of every square inch of the skin on his palms. The gold slides damp and hot into his left hand, but he has nothing to give in return with his right, and for a few heartbeats, they’re just holding hands.
“Right,” he repeats dumbly as they step back. “So…”
“Come on,” says Potter. “Before Ginny and Luna smoke it all on their own.”
Before he knows it, it has turned into a thing. Almost every evening, Potter shows up to make the exchange. He invites Draco to the session. They walk to the Gatehouse, often by absurdly roundabout paths, in the name of getting some air. The talk, if any, is light. About the classes they have together, and those they don’t, about Quidditch, about the new teachers, the visiting students from Uagadou, the weather.
Among Potter’s friends, Draco rarely speaks unless he’s addressed. Not out of any real discomfort; the barbs thrown at him are mostly harmless and easily deflected by humor. But one of the things he learned in the year of cohabitation with the Dark Lord and his vile retinue, is that observation is often preferable to participation. By the third time, he’s certain that Potter has brought him into his circle to address the imbalance of being single in the company of two couples. Likely, Draco tells himself, there have been others before him. Even more likely, he’ll be replaced with someone more suitable as soon as the novelty wears off. But as the weeks pass and rains turn to snow, the unflappable idiot of an optimist inside him allows himself to hope. To dream. To desire.
He’s not the only one. She-Weasley’s shameless snogging with Lovegood, which seems to be a staple of their sessions, is both highly performative and embarrassingly ineffective. Granger’s the only one to ever react to it, with eye rolls and sighs of irritation. He-Wealsey ignores them, and Potter seems blissfully oblivious. Lovegood seems oblivious too, at first. But after a while, Draco concludes she’s simply not bothered.
Meanwhile, Granger and he-Weasley take pains to avoid overt displays of anything but friendly affection when Potter can see them. Which is just as embarrassing and ineffective. It makes Potter feel like more of a third wheel, not less. It makes him feel excluded. Draco sees it with a cutting clarity, but somehow, Potter’s best friends don’t.
They roll, they smoke, they get high. Potter loosens up. He talks, he laughs, he dances, he glows. He gets handsy with Draco. It’s the hair after the ears, then the beauty mark on Draco’s left cheek, then his fingernails, then his two days worth of invisible stubble. One time, he is somehow tricked into untucking his shirt and showing everyone the small rising sun tattooed just above the line of his pubic hair and Potter gets handsy with that, too.
Sooner or later, though, something happens to remind Potter of the numerous tragedies of his past. Someone mentions the war, the Dark Lord, the Carrows, Hagrid, Dumbledore, Muggle London, dementors, werewolves, parents, godparents, Snape, pensieves, the Astronomy Tower, this year’s Triwizard Tournament at Beauxbatons, unicorns, Lupin, Azkaban, house elves, Ministry, 12 Grimmauld Place, Moaning Myrtle, hippogriffs—really, it could be anything—and he starts crying.
The first few times, after that initial shock, his friends tried to stop him: to comfort him, to reason with him, to divert him. They made Draco bring different sorts of weed. They tried smoking elsewhere. They tried feeding Potter sweets and hiding the beer. On one memorable occasion, they tried confiscating Potter’s wand, to test Lovegood’s theory that it amplified some unwelcome resonance between his magic and the humors in the weed.
None of it worked, of course. But they would’ve kept trying if Potter didn’t end up telling them to fuck right off and let him fucking cry if he fucking felt like it, for fuck’s sake. Draco had never wanted to kiss his spiteful mouth quite so badly as then.
Sometimes, Potter talks about it. Explains what set him off, which particular wound that had never healed has opened this time. There are many. His friends seem to know about most. No one ever asks any questions, and Draco doesn’t either, even when they start spiraling around his skull like vultures. Is it normal for Muggles to keep their children in cupboards and treat them like house elves? Why did Dumbledore leave Potter in their care to begin with? How old is Hagrid, to have studied with the Dark Lord, and Draco’s grandfather? What’s a Horcrux? Why does Potter tolerate Kreacher, knowing how he contributed to the death of Sirius Black? What happened to Potter’s beautiful snowy owl? How wealthy is he, exactly? Did he truly… die?
Other times, he is silent, staring into the fire while the others fool around, and Draco alone watches his profile, the glint of moisture on his cheeks, the gathering of teardrops at the bottom of his chin, where they cling, tantalizing, before they fall off like overripe fruit to splatter on barren stone.
One night, he stares at Draco instead, when it starts. Guided by the peculiar, Legilimency-like intuition of being high together, Draco sits still and silent, staring back, though every particle of him itches to ask: what is it this time? It’s me, isn’t it? Something I did to you. Some way I wounded you. You do know I lived for it, Potter, don’t you? You can’t have forgotten. I hated you. Truly. Fully. But in the end, it was you who wounded me. And I don’t mean the faded scars of your rage I bear on my chest. You wounded my heart, with your tears, your smiles, your questing fingers and searching eyes. So have at it. Twist and turn. Take your vengeance. You can’t get back at all the great, dead men who played us like chess pieces, but you can get back at me. Go. Have at it.
Potter leans in, and for a moment, Draco thinks he’ll hit him. He thinks he’s heard every single word of his stupid prayer and decided to take Draco up on the offer. But his thumb is feather-light, swiping up Draco’s cheek—and then he sticks it in his mouth and sucks it clean. Confused, Draco lifts his own hand to follow the tingling trail of the touch, and ah. He’s crying, too.
Potter stays at Hogwarts for Christmas.
“Why aren’t you with the Weasleys?” Draco asks as they walk out together after dinner.
“It’s complicated.” The new snow crunches crisply under their boots. Just as Draco sighs, shaking his head at himself for even trying, Potter goes on. “Ginny hasn’t told her mum and dad about Luna. Or about me. They know we’re not together anymore, but I think they’re still hoping? Because we broke up once before and got together again. And I think maybe… she’s still hoping too. Which.” He digs his hands deeper in his pockets and falls silent again.
So, Draco thinks. Potter isn’t quite as oblivious after all.
“And then there’s also Fred. He was just. This huge personality, you know? And the hole that’s left where he used to be—like, in their lives, in their family—it’s just so large that.” He shakes his head. “And they kinda expect me to fill it?” He laughs. “Or maybe they don’t, I don’t know. But it feels like it. And I just.” He shakes his head some more.
“I see,” Draco murmurs.
The Gatehouse is straight ahead, but they turn left. “What about you?” asks Potter, glancing at him. “Why aren’t you with your mum?”
Draco laughs. “It’s complicated.”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe not, I don’t know.” He pulls the cold, dry air deep into his lungs. He’s never said it aloud, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts. “Mother… always takes his side.”
“Your dad’s?”
Draco nods. “Now more than ever. And what he wants is for me to marry.” He laughs, though his throat’s trying to close up around the ache. “Into a nice pureblood family, preferably a solvent one, bonus points for untarnished reputation. Raise another Malfoy to carry on the line. Be what I was bred to be.”
“But you’re not that person anymore.”
When Draco glances at him, he finds a cautious little smile, and returns it.
“So… you’re not on speaking terms, or…?”
“Something like that.” Draco clears his throat. “I basically ran from home.”
“Did your mum burn your name off the family tree?”
“No. Father did, when I told him where he can put his plans for my future.”
“I would’ve paid good money to see that.”
“The next time I get disowned, I’ll make sure you’re invited to the show.”
Potter’s soft laughter fills Draco’s chest with warmth.
They go on in silence. When Potter takes the turn for the stone bridge instead of circling back around the castle, Draco follows, quietly vibrating with hope. He lights a Lumos as the barely visible path takes them under the skeletal, snow-shrouded trees of the Forbidden Forest, and Potter falls in step next to him. There’s no need to speak. He knows where Potter wants to go.
Draco’s hiding place is a small clearing just off the path. Normally, it takes all of ten minutes to reach it from the bridge, but thanks to the snow, it turns into a half an hour’s walk. A large fallen trunk is where he used to sit while the weather was fair, in the middle of a dense garland of bushes that would make the spot obscure, if they had any leaves. Everything is covered with fresh, fluffy snow.
Draco reaches inside his pocket, but Potter stays his hand. “Let me.” He waves his wand like a painter laying the first broad strokes onto a bare canvas, and the place comes to life. Literally.
It isn’t just warm inside the bubble he spells around them. It’s… summer. Lush ferns and large-leafed herbs sprout and unfurl from the frozen ground, the bare branches above lean under the weight of foliage and fruit, fresh moss blooms into a deep, soft carpet under their feet while meadow flowers open in verdant patches of grass. A school of dazzledots, attracted by the buzz of magic, swirls at the outskirts of Draco’s Lumos, illuminating the pristine snow outside the oasis with a warm, fluttering glow. It’s beautiful.
Straddling the fallen trunk, they roll and smoke.
“Can you, er,” says Potter about halfway through the spliff, then goes silent and pink in the face. Draco’s come to know him well enough to wait for the rest without interrupting. It’s his turn to smoke anyway. “Do the, er. Thing. With the, er.” Potter mimes the reversing of the spliff.
“Give you a shotgun?”
“Yeah.” Potter laughs. “That. I couldn’t remember what it’s called.”
“Sure,” Draco says, easy and aloof, like his heart hasn’t started drumming. He takes a long drag, then carefully bites the end, and leans forward. Potter doesn’t exactly hesitate, but Draco takes him by the chin anyway. To pull him closer and keep him in place as he seals the tip with his lips and breathes out. Potter’s eyes lock onto the thick, white plume of smoke as he starts to pull it in. But then he lifts them, giving Draco a kick of excitement so exquisite he almost swallows the spliff. And it’s not the end of it, either. Potter… angles his face. And Draco, compelled as always to take the challenge, brings him across that final half an inch.
It’s not a kiss. But it is a most definite touching of the lips, and fuck him sideways, Draco has to back away or risk inhaling the spliff. His cheeks are on fire. And Potter, fucking Potter, sits there holding his breath with a smug little smirk, like he’s caught the bloody Snitch. Again.
“Your turn,” says Draco, because he knows Potter suffers from the same compulsion. He knocks the ash off, testing the weight of the cherry, because he needs some excuse to break eye contact before he combusts.
“I’ve never done it.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
“You’ll have to show me.”
“Just keep your tongue down and hold it straight between your teeth. It’ll feel hot on the roof of your mouth, but it won’t burn you. Yeah, like that. But you need to have a pull first.”
“Right,” says Potter, taking the spliff out of his mouth. He laughs. “Christ. I’m high already.”
Draco’s conducts a quick review of his faculties and concludes that yes, he is, too. This last batch of the Sicilian is something else. He’ll have to ask Leo for more. “Come on.”
“Alright. But it’s your fault if I fuck it up.” He takes a good drag, then, and puts the spliff in his mouth. Draco leans in. Delightfully, Potter’s fingers come up to his chin to guide him. No hesitation, this time. Their eyes lock, they tilt their heads, and then their lips lock too. Too excited to get a proper lungful, Draco chokes, because he’s an idiot, and only realizes that his hands have been resting on Potter knees the entire time when they’ve pulled well away.
“Alright, Malfoy?” Potter teases.
“Piss off.”
At least Potter’s just as flushed as he. Is it his imagination, or has it become genuinely hot inside the bubble? He shrugs off his cloak and the rattling inside the pocket reminds him.
“What have you got there?” says Potter.
Draco takes the spliff from him and hands him the muggle music player he asked Leo to send him with the last shipment. “Can you make this work?”
“Maybe.” Potter turns it around, squinting at the tiny print in the low light. “Might break it, though.”
Holding his breath, Draco croaks, “Risk it,” with a lofty shrug. For most of his life, the fifty galleons he’ll owe Leo in such an event was well and truly nothing; it’s not hard to act like he doesn’t care. The spliff’s at an end, and he stubs it out. He’s high as a kite.
“You know you’ll need earbuds or something? This isn’t like the wireless.”
“Yeah.” Draco pulls the earbuds from the other pocket of his cloak and dangles them at Potter victoriously.
For a moment, Potter looks suitably surprised, but then he shakes his wand out of his sleeve without further ado. There’s a pulse of magic, a curious whiff of cedarwood and lime, and the front of the player comes to life with its uninformative cruciform song number.
“Excellent,” Draco says, taking the thing from Potter’s unresisting hands. He plugs in the earbuds, puts one of them in his right ear, then begins the frustrating toil of locating the song he wants to play for Potter. “Have you heard of David Bowie?”
“Er. Yeah. But I don’t know his music or anything.”
“Do you know what an astronaut is?”
Potter laughs. “What is this? A surprise Muggle Studies quiz?”
Draco rolls his eyes so hard they hurt. “Just answer me, Potter.”
“Yes, I know what an astronaut is. Do you?”
“So,” Draco announces, ignoring him. “There’s this song that I’ve been thinking about since…” He glances up. “Stop laughing, you dolt. I’m trying to tell you something serious here.” Which, of course, only makes Potter laugh even harder. “It reminds me of you. Or, well, you reminded me of it, when I learned that…”
Potter isn’t laughing anymore, though there’s still plenty of mirth around his eyes and mouth.
“And either you won’t get it at all, and I’ll look like a complete idiot,” Draco says. Can Potter hear the throb of his heartbeat? See it pulsing in his throat? “Or you will get it, but then it might…”
“Trigger me,” Potter says.
Draco grimaces. “And then I’ll look like a prick.”
“You are a prick.”
“Yes, but ideally, only when I mean to be.”
“But now you don’t. Got it.”
Draco stares at him insistently till he stops laughing, or as close to it as he’s able.
“Eh,” Potter sighs at last. “Something’s gonna trigger me sooner or later. Might as well get it over with.”
“Alright.” Draco gives him the other earbud.
“Hit me.”
All nerves, Draco hits the play button, and observes. Potter’s gaze, focused inwards through the opening guitar chords, shoots up at Major Tom, then slides onto Draco’s lips as he whispers along with the countdown. Gods, he loves this song. He has heard it so many times he could well have given Potter both earbuds and hummed along for himself. And it hits so much harder when he’s high. Fuck. He snorts. Tears are pooling in his eyes. Potter catches it, wide-eyed himself, and in that moment Draco’s sure Potter knows exactly what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, that he gets it, from the seed to the stem to the flower and the fruit, stardust in full bloom, dancing, bending to the gravity between them.
He can tell precisely when it happens. He screams within because he knew it, he knew the exact verse that would do it. Potter lets out a small, pained sigh and closes his eyes. His long lashes are wet with tears.
“So, er,” he says once it’s over, in a deepened voice that no longer sounds strange at all. “What. Like… he dies?”
A tear rolls down his nose, clinging to the tip. Carried by the certainty that he can do no wrong, Draco brushes it off, then licks his finger. “Not… exactly.”
Potter looks at him sharply.
“There’s something like a sequel.”
“Let’s hear it.”
It’s a while before Draco finds Ashes to Ashes—and then, because he’s jittery with the high and the nerves and the intractable, hopeful delight—he misses it, and has to cycle through all the other ones again.
“Where’d you get that, anyway?” Potter asks. He didn’t weep, this time, not really, but his nose is full, and he keeps sniffling.
Draco gives him a kerchief. He’s been carrying a few extra ones since that first time, just in case, and they have all came in handy. “A… friend. He’s a… Squib. Is that offensive? I don’t know another word for it.”
“Don’t think so. How’d you meet him?”
“At work.”
“Like a summer job? What did you do?”
Draco shakes his head, refusing to look up. If he mentions Borgin and Burke’s, Potter will shut down like a clam. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” Then, four heartbeats and two button-presses later, “And, what? You like David Bowie? You know, you look like him a bit.”
Draco’s face heats up. “Don’t be absurd.”
“You totally do. There’s this video—you know what a video is? Where his hair looks exactly like your fifth-year hair.” Potter’s voice softens, and then his fingers are smoothing Draco’s hair behind his ear. Gently. Counting the earrings. Lingering at the corner of Draco’s jawbone. It’s no surprise, but it has a new significance, now that they’re alone. Now that they practically kissed?
Fuck. Draco almost skips it again. “It’s the one for this song. Listen.”
They do.
“I don’t get it,” Potter says when it’s over. He didn’t cry, but he looks fragile.
“The way I understand it,” Draco says, “he’s this… hero figure. Or that’s how the world sees him. But underneath it all, he’s just a… bloke. Who’s been asked to do something impossible, and then abandoned. And years later, they expect him to smile for the cameras and tell everyone he’s happy, so that they can feel good about themselves, while he’s really—”
“A junkie.”
Draco falls silent, struggling to hold the growing weight of Potter’s gaze.
“And you think that’s… me?”
“You’re not a junkie, Potter.”
“Yet.”
At which they inexplicably start giggling, and then laughing, and when Potter wipes his eyes under his glasses, it’s unclear what brought out the tears: sorrow, or joy.
“Fuck,” he croaks. “Roll us another, will you?”
“You get the water, then.”
They set to work, even though Potter’s still wiping his eyes and his nose with Draco’s kerchief. He breaks two pieces of bark from the trunk and transfigures them to simple cups, then fills them with water from his wand.
“So,” Draco says, eyes down on his hands, “what’s the verdict?”
“Hm?”
“Am I a prick for exposing you to this triggering content.”
Potter snorts. “Nah. I think you’re the only one who gets it, really. When I er. Cry,” he laughs nervously, “it’s not because I feel bad? I feel great! It’s great to be able to cry. D’you know I couldn’t cry? As a kid? And later. When Cedric died.” There’s a pause, and Draco glances up to find Potter pushing his fingers under his glasses. “Christ. We were, what? Thirteen?”
“Fourteen,” Draco says quietly.
“Fourteen. And I wanted to cry. I felt like I would explode with all the… But I couldn’t! Like, I’d sit sometimes and make myself think about it and try to be sad, and nothing. And then, when Sirius died, I felt like a monster. Because even then… You’ll laugh, but it was one of my greatest fears while we were out hunting for Horcruxes. That something would happen to Ron or Hermione and that I wouldn’t be able to cry.” He laughs, though tears are still streaming down his cheeks. “You know?”
“It was… the other way around with me,” Draco says. He’s taking his time with the spliff, crumbling the sticky mass of the dried flower into a dust much finer than it needs to be. “I had no trouble crying before…” He leaves that hanging, trusting Potter to leave it too. “But now…” He shakes his head.
“What would you like to cry about?”
“What a question.” Their eyes meet and they laugh. Then Draco clears his throat and forces himself to stop clowning. “Vince? It was pretty much your nightmare scenario at his funeral. They buried an empty casket. His mother… she tried to throw herself into the grave. We had to hold her back. Even Greg wept. It was… You cry like a girl, Potter, and I mean it as a compliment. He wailed like a wounded beast. And I… I just stood there, utterly unable to—”
“Feel anything,” Potter says in almost a whisper.
Draco’s heart is drumming. He nods.
“It was like that for me over the summer. With Ginny. I’d sit with her, literally counting my blessings: that we’re alive, that we’re safe, that we’re in love—and I couldn’t feel a thing. No joy, no grief, no… butterflies. Just this… void. Nothing. I was afraid I’d never feel anything again. Till this.” He sniffles, and laughs, pointing at Draco’s hands.
Draco takes a gulp of water, then wets the spliff with the tip of his tongue, watching Potter’s eyes track the motion. “That why you broke up?”
“That and er.” More nervous laughter. “Turns out, she’s into girls more than I am.”
“Ah,” Draco says, looking Potter in the eye as he lights up. He takes a few light pulls, then hands it over.
“Er. You’re gay, right?”
Draco holds his breath, enjoying the swell of dramatic tension, and only lets it out when Potter’s expression turns more than halfway to debilitating mortification. Then he smirks. “Figured that one out all on your own?”
Too busy having a drag, Potter flips him off. And yet. They’re both… smiling.