Ground Control

Penniless after leaving his family, Draco turns to smuggling to make ends meet. Harry buys weed from him, but can’t get high. That’s how it starts, anyway.

This story began as one of the several WIPs that have been marinating in the back of my mind for a very long time and it was in danger of never getting fully written. Many thanks to Poppy and to the organizers of the Santa is Coming trans charity event in the Drarry Pit for inspiring me to finish it! I ended up falling in love with it, and with our boys, all over again, and I hope you will, too. 🥰

Read here, or on AO3.

Ground Control

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.”

Ground Control

Chapter 4

Draco’s still grinning like an idiot hours later. He hums Space Oddity on the way to the showers, his pajamas and dressing gown slung over his shoulder and his head so high up in the clouds that he makes nothing of the way the shadows shift under his feet till someone clasps his shoulders from behind.

He jumps and spins. The pouch with his toiletries hits the floor with a dull thud and the garments slide down, getting underfoot as he assumes a dueling stance on reflex, wand in hand.

“Whoa!” cries Benjamin Sallow, staggering back with his hands in the air.

Ground Control

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.

Ground Control

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.

Ground Control

Chapter 1

One morning at breakfast, Astoria Greengrass crosses the lifeless ocean dividing the half-empty Slytherin table into Draco’s island, where he sits alone, and the continent, where everyone else is. She takes the seat across from him and without any preamble, recites: “Luna Lovegood told me that Ginny Weasley told her that Hermione Granger told her that Harry Potter wants to buy some goods from you.”

Draco only looks up at Astoria when she drops Potter’s name. The goods, of course, require no explanation. Smuggling contraband into the school is the only meager social capital in Draco’s possession; and, loath as he might be to admit it, his only source of real capital as well. He is the de facto successor of the Weasley twins. Unlike them, however, he will happily smuggle anything, from jokes and pranks to booze, age-restricted potions, adult literature, memory vials and—his most sought-after merchandise—Muggle drugs.