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Draco Malfoy was long past wanting Harry Potter dead. In fact, Potter being alive was, more often than not, a matter of ongoing satisfaction to Draco, bearing in mind that Potter had saved his life on more than one occasion, and was, it transpired, a more than tolerable colleague and roommate. In fact, Draco could think of no one he’d prefer to be at the wrong end of a bottle of Firewhiskey with, when all was said and done. And of course, there was the appalling but unavoidable fact that Draco had been fairly helplessly in love with Potter for a few years now, and there didn’t seem to be much of a way around that, except to grit his teeth and hope that no one (especially Potter) would notice the whole loving-Potter-and-wanting-to-keep-him-alive thing.
That said, Draco couldn’t help but ponder on the fact that, had Voldemort been less prone to monologuing, and more nifty with his dodges (I mean, honestly, Potter - Expelliarmus?), then at least Draco wouldn’t be stuck in his current predicament. Because yes, there would probably have been an excess of torture, depravity, and a short miserable lifetime of servitude under the iron fist of a megalomaniacal dictator. But at least Draco wouldn’t now be hidden in Harry Potter’s wardrobe cursing every bad decision that lead him to the ignominious position of watching through a crack in the wardrobe door as a mostly-naked Harry Potter jerked himself off in what seemed to Draco (and his cock, which was throbbing piteously in his form-fitting training breeches) to be an unnecessarily showy wank for a man who believed himself to be alone.
Really, Draco thought, it was Croker’s fault. Draco had been doing fine in Advanced Unspeakable training. There was a lot of swanning about the Continent on undercover jobs - perfect - and quite a bit of striding menacingly around the Ministry of Magic, with his robes swirling around him in a mysterious fashion (and really, Draco thought, if Snape had taught his Slytherins anything, it was the value of a really good Billowing charm). Not to mention the fact that the Advanced Unspeakable programme had jurisdiction over all the most dangerous assignments, which meant that Draco ended up foiling a significant amount of potentially catastrophic plots, neutralising some of the more distasteful perpetrators, and (despite regular near-death experiences) ended up saving countless civilian lives. It was a living anyway, and Draco supposed that it went some way towards making up for his misspent youth (if by misspent you meant being a racist attempted murderer with an unfortunate tendency towards committing grievous bodily harm).
But was bloody Croker happy to let Draco continue happily on with his intimidation of the admin staff, and reckless disregard for his own safety in the service of others? No, he bloody was not. Instead, he had the bright idea that his Unspeakables should be teamed up with their counterparts in the elite Auror division - some rot about their respective skill-sets being complementary, and filling gaps in each other’s training. One assessment training session later, and there was never really any question about who Draco would be paired with. He and Potter between them had laid the entire rest of the squad low in under five minutes. It was just Draco’s bloody luck that Potter would turn out to be an even stronger magical empath than Draco, and that their magic was so perfectly in communion that, when Potter cast, Draco could feel the pull of it beneath his skin, directing him. The department's research team- vaguely baffled but refusing to admit it - reckoned that it had something to do with the way they each had carried some of Voldemort’s essence in their blood. Draco didn’t care either way, as long as he and Potter always won - and they always won.
Four years on, and they had by far the most comprehensive clearance rate of any team in the division. They had also, rather horribly, become best friends in the process.
The trouble was, Potter was actually rather endearing once you got past the insufferably noble Gryffindorishness, and his compulsive need to help people. He was straightforward to the point of rudeness, with a sort of zealous singlemindedness that meant he basically ignored everyone that wasn’t directly connected with whatever he was thinking about at the time (a source of endless amusement to Draco, seeing Potter turn his cool, disapproving gaze on some earnest Hufflepuff who disturbed him by trying to collate missing paperwork or smooth over some Potter/ Malfoy-induced PR nightmare). Potter was utterly incapable of processing his emotions - a legacy of the crippling trauma visited upon him as a child, Draco assumed - and invariably resorted to blowing things up or getting riotously drunk whenever he was in danger of having feelings about anything (an approach Draco wholeheartedly endorsed, given his own stellar record of emotional maturity and healthy interpersonal skills, now let’s not mention the Potter Stinks badges again please). Potter had a very robust distrust of authority figures, and was infinitely amenable to using his Saviour status to ride roughshod over protocol. Tick, tick, and tick. Draco was more than happy to tag along gleefully while Potter listened to the clamour of all the people so determined to give their input to the Saviour of the Wizarding World, and then blithely ignored them and did whatever he wanted himself. Really, they were lucky that Potter was essentially so good, because that sort of casual lawlessness could only have lead to trouble in the wrong hands.
But more than anything, it was very hard to hate someone when you could feel the beguiling power of their magic pulsing with your own heartbeat; when the tendrils of their magic licked at your skin and crackled through the palms of your hands; when your very bones throbbed with the wild excess of their power.
And honestly, Potter was bloody useless at the day-to-day stuff of being a normal human being, too, so really it was lucky for him that Draco was around. Granger and Weasley were still on the scene, of course, but between raising their ginger sprogs (Weasley) and running the fucking Wizengamot (Granger), they were too preoccupied to help mitigate the disaster that was Harry Potter trying to navigate the world. Well, Draco was used to hopeless cases - he had gotten Crabbe and Goyle through six years at Hogwarts after all (though he had failed Crabbe rather spectacularly in the end, his treacherous brain never failed to remind him). He wasn’t going to let Harry Potter down. He was there to stop Potter blowing too much of his fortune on high-end Muggle clothes, though he positively encouraged the sky-blue Burberry raincoat (he was sensible, not blind, and Potter was bloody edible in that coat. Really, Draco was just being selfless and doing the world a favour by allowing Potter to buy it), and that red velvet Lacroix suit was an investment piece. He was there every Hallowe’en, to get Potter drunk enough to cry and to keep a good Shield charm up around the worst of Potter’s explosions. And since they had become roommates - another of bloody Croker’s bright ideas - he was there for the worst of the nightmares. But then, Potter was there for the worst of Draco’s nightmares too. He was happy to be stupendously rude to Draco’s dad, which meant Sunday lunch was often cut blissfully short. He utterly refused every promotion offered to him unless Draco’s pay and position matched his own. And there was the small matter of Potter having saved Draco from the very worst (and almost final) of his near-death experiences. When he thinks about it - though he does his best not to think about it - he can still smell the sweet, dry fug of the crypt, feel the cool, unyielding stone growing tacky with the blood from his raw fingertips. Nothing would ever feel as good again as the caress of Potter’s shield charm around him, when Potter blasted that crypt into smithereens.
Draco didn’t believe in soulmates, but Harry Potter was the closest thing he had to one, so he was just going to keep pushing those inconvenient loving thoughts aside until one day he could learn how to get rid of them for good.
Lust was another problem entirely. Draco was pretty sure that Potter knew he fancied him - well, pretty much the whole world did, so why not Draco? Potter was objectively fit as fuck - still lean, still intense, and eye-to-eye with Draco at just over 6ft. His hair was a disaster, and he wore his grubby old trainers with everything, but he must have known he was delicious with the bright plumage of his fabulous Muggle wardrobe, the blaze of his green eyes, and the frenetic pulse of his magic. Draco wasn’t entirely sure that the feeling wasn’t mutual, actually. There had been that one night, both of them so very drunk - too drunk to throw up their privacy charms. Draco knew Potter wanked before going to sleep every night, but it wasn’t until that night that Potter told him why - told him about going into the Forest, about how he needed to feel as alive as he could, about how the feel of himself under his own palm reminded him that he could keep going forward.
Draco had been curled on his side, watching Potter from his own bed, riveted by the small, jerky movements he could just about make out in the odd half-light of Potter’s Lumos, struck dumb by the breathy sound of Potter’s voice, and pinned in place by Potter’s eyes on him as he gasped and shuddered to his orgasm. When Potter threw back his covers and walked towards Draco’s bed, for one moment Draco had been entirely sure that Potter was going to climb into the bed with him and touch him and kiss him, and Draco was entirely sure that he was going to let him. At the last minute, Potter’s face had shuttered and his magic had skittered, panicking, over Draco’s skin, and he had diverted to the bathroom, muttering about getting cleaned up. Draco had touched himself furiously, came hard all over his own stomach after about four strokes, and had forced himself to feign sleep when Potter returned.
Because it wasn’t about sex for him, after all. He thought they could both come back from it if it was just sex. They were both fairly committed to discreet one-night stands, after all. Not whole-night stands, mind you - after he had stayed out all night a few times, Draco noticed that the next day Potter was always pale and bruised-looking, his magic more sluggish and hesitant than normal. And the two times that Potter hadn’t come home, Draco had managed to work himself into such a fever of jealous rage that he had actually put them in danger at work the next day. They were more careful with each other after that - they never spoke about it, but every morning when he woke up, Potter was there in the next bed, his breathing even and face relaxed in sleep. No, it wasn’t just sex, more’s the pity. They never even touched each other deliberately, and on the rare occasions that they accidentally touched Draco could remember each searing brush of skin on skin with a blazing clarity. Now that he was being honest, Draco could admit that he was worried that if he let himself touch at all, he would just bury his face in the smoothest and most lickable-looking part of Potter’s body, the dip where his collar bone met his shoulder, and that he would just try to stay there forever. And at that point the jig would be up, and Potter would know the most horrible and tenderest of Draco’s secrets, and he would be appalled and would take himself and his magic away and Draco would be left Potter-less. Draco knew he was the only person in Potter’s life who didn’t ask too much of him, and he promised himself that he never would.
None of which really explained why Draco was stuck in a wardrobe with a raging hard-on, though, and he reminded himself that Saul Croker was long overdue one of his and Potter’s carefully crafted funding applications (which, once Croker had waded through about fifteen pages of painstakingly dry application forms, along with supporting documentation and colleague testimonies, invariably just implied, “We want lots of money to basically blow shit up in the name of training, and we’re going to get it because one of us saved the world that time”). The increase in Croker’s blood pressure should be punishment enough for him having landed Draco in the soup like this.
Part of Croker’s progressive thinking was that his teams partake in regular upskilling exercises, because continued learning in the workforce leads to an upgrade in skill levels and ensures that everyone is able to adapt to changing work and life demands, apparently. He had a bee in his bonnet about the Unspeakables’ abilities in Stealth and Tracking, and persistently refused to listen to Draco’s impassioned and longwinded speeches about how he would never need to practice S&T because his partner had the only fucking invisibility cloak in the world. Potter, of course, had advanced auror-level training in S&T and so it was only Draco who was forced to do the stupid retrieval exercise.
Thus, last week had seen Draco hand over one of his hankies to Potter, who promptly winked at him (winked!) and stuffed the hanky into the tiny coin pocket of his slim-cut tartan trousers. “Good luck sneaking that back without me noticing, Malfoy,” he said cheerfully. Well, that was a challenge if ever Draco had heard one, all the more so because Draco knew he couldn’t actually use any magic in the retrieval process because Harry would be able to smell it, or taste it, or use whatever creepy sense reaction he had to magic, the weirdo.
It was a masterful plan - elaborate in the planning, though simple in the execution. And what a stroke of luck that Pansy and Charlie were actually back from Romania, and Pansy could turn up in her wide-brimmed hat and white sundress and very loudly and ostentatiously pretend to drag Draco off to Scarborough for the day. Charlie couldn’t be trusted with the charade, of course, but he was a Gryffindor in love with a Slytherin, and thus was easily persuaded to bring Potter out for a catch-up drink. There was more than enough time for Draco to sneak back to their room, do a gleeful, self-satisfied cackle while rubbing his hands together at his own cleverness, and then simply hide in Potter’s wardrobe. The plan had been impeccably constructed - he had chosen Potter’s wardrobe because it was where Potter kept all his wizarding gear, and he only pulled that out for big events like the Ministry Christmas party or the annual Hogwarts War Memorial ceremony. Come to think of it, Draco was pretty sure he could still smell the rum he and Potter had spilled all over Potter’s best dress robes while drunkenly climbing out of the bathroom window at Malfoy Manor last New Year’s Eve.
Earlier in the week, Draco had applied some minor but long-lasting Notice-Me-Nots on the wardrobe door, meaning he could keep it ajar without alerting Potter through the use of fresh spells. He knew that Potter always went for a shower after a session at the Three Mages, so the plan was to watch and wait for Potter to come in, and when he unsuspectingly left his bloody trousers on the floor while he showered, Draco could lift the hanky, beat a hasty retreat, and then smugly return as the conquering hero after a celebratory drink with Pans. That would show bloody Potter, and bloody Croker too for that matter. It really had been the perfect plan, thought Draco mournfully. Who could have predicted that Potter was a sexual deviant who, instead of simply popping into the shower like a normal person, would decide to indulge in a leisurely and very loud wank? And on Draco’s bed, at that? Rude, he’d call it.
It had all seemed to be going well at first. He was perched on a pile of Potter’s old Weasley jumpers, and was decidedly comfortable aside from the fact that everything smelled rather disturbingly of Potter. Potter had come crashing in, had taken down their elaborate wards (their room was about as impenetrable as Azkaban, because Potter’s paranoid as fuck and with good reason, going by how many times people had tried to kill one or both of them). As the wards wavered and dropped around him, Potter closed his eyes and just stood there, inhaling deeply. Draco rolled his eyes, knowing it was his residual magic Potter was smelling. And it was nice, to be able to just watch Potter for once. Usually, Draco was pretty careful not to look too hard at him, afraid that every dreadful, fond, tender thought would be written all over his face for Potter to read. Even now, sequestered in his little cupboard, he was grinning affectionately at the very sight of Potter. Potter meanwhile was just standing in the middle of their room, eyes fluttering shut, chest rising and falling rapidly.
Suddenly, he straightened up and began to undress himself. And really, Draco wondered, where was the harm in him just having a look? It’s not as if it was anything he’d never seen before, of course. It was different, though, to really get to watch - to get to catalogue the shift and slide of muscles; to get to see the play of light and shade over the hollow of a hipbone; to get the shockingly intimate glimpse of an inky tuft of underarm hair as Potter struggled out of his t-shirt.
He was down to his pants, now, an ostentatious pair of silky, bottle-green boxers (the twat). Draco felt himself going a little dry-mouthed at the sight of Potter so unguarded, and tried to use his sense of imminent triumph to push aside the wave of hungry want that hit him. Any minute now, Potter would grab his towel and head for the bathroom, and Draco would be retrieving his hanky undetected. Sweet victory!
It was always a mistake to get too cocky too quickly, Draco reflected glumly, at this was the point at which everything went tits up (literally, going by Potter’s peaked nipples). Potter was moving around the room, the thrum of his magic seeming subdued. He passed Draco’s bed and stood looking down at it with an odd, unreadable expression on his face. Slowly, hesitantly, he lowered himself onto the bed, and just sat for a moment, before lying back against Draco’s pillow and shutting his eyes again. And this was much too close to Draco’s fantasies - Potter, nearly naked and sprawled wantonly across Draco’s bed.
With a slow inhale that was very almost a gasp, Potter began a slow drag across his crotch with the heel of his hand. He was not rushing, but within a few minutes his hips were rocking unsteadily upwards, and he was properly palming himself through his underwear. He was completely hard now, the full length of him straining against the fabric.
When Potter spoke to perform a lubricating spell, his voice was so low and broken-sounding that Draco’s hips jerked forward of their own accord, and he felt a rush of desire so solid and all-encompassing that he had to bite down on his forearm to stop his groan. Potter was still wearing his pants, but he had pushed his hand down inside them to grab his cock. He was impeded by the waistband, but there was something devastatingly erotic about the jerky, half-cut off movement of his arm as he fucked up into his fist. He was getting himself really wet now, and the muffled squelch of his lube-slick hand was driving Draco crazy.
Draco was so hard himself that it was almost painful, and he had given up on any course of action that didn’t involve rutting up against the unsatisfactory friction of his own cupped and trembling hand. He almost missed Potter’s bitten-off murmur of “Malfoy” over the thump of his own heartbeat, but when he registered the sound it hit him like the shock of a Sobering charm.
Because of course, Potter had known he was here all along. Potter had used his freakishly sensitive magical radar and had traced Draco to his stupid wardrobe and had guessed at his plan. And then he had decided to put on a show, to take the piss out of Draco and see how far he could push him before he revealed himself. Potter wasn’t exactly known for his temperate, rational nature, after all.
The sting of humiliation was so sharp that Draco was moving before he could think too much about it, and when he stepped out of the wardrobe he could feel the roiling thrust of his magic pushing out towards Potter. Potter was staring at him, and something was definitely very off about the situation, because his face was blanched with shock and something that looked very like the same humiliation that Draco was feeling. He was trying to scramble upright but had obviously been right on the edge when Draco decided to make his dramatic entrance, because with a low groan that was part relief and part mortification, he began to come under Draco’s horrified gaze. Draco could see his cock pulsing through his underwear, could watch the wet patch spreading and darkening across the fabric. Potter buried his face in his hands even as his hips continued to jerk and the muscles of his stomach rippled and shuddered, and Draco could see the flush of embarrassment travelling up from his chest.
“Quite the show, Potter. How did you know I was there?”
Even to his own ears, Draco’s words seemed hollow, especially considering that Potter seemed genuinely shocked and distressed at seeing him.
“Malfoy, I swear to you - I would never...have never...I didn’t know you were there. It’s just that I could still smell your magic and it was driving me crazy, and I just wanted to pretend- for a minute, I just wanted…”
He trailed off, the desperation in his voice mirrored in his expression.
“Please, don’t leave me. This, what we have - it works. Please, don’t give it up because of me and any of my stupid bastarding feelings. I can stop, I promise. You’d never have known, I’d never have risked you.”
Draco wondered how he could possibly have missed this, how in every minute that he’d spent obsessing over making Harry Potter’s life better, he could have been blind to what Potter had wanted all along.
He was by the bed in three strides, and forced Potter's chin up so that he had to look at Draco. Their eyes met and he felt the tentative coil of Potter’s familiar magic, and then he just...let it all out. Every ounce of fondness and respect and admiration and love that he had tamped down and kept hidden, every sad, flightless dream and hope that he had harboured - he just let them show. Harry’s eyes widened, the disappointment and embarrassment on his face flattening out into something wary and uncertain, before he lit up with a pure and uncomplicated joy. The blaze of his magic, exuberant and adoring, flared around Draco, and he basked in it.
“Come on, Potter. Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, and he dropped to his knees. After all, taking care of Harry Potter was what he did best.