Chapter Text
“Draco! Dearest! Would you care to tell me what the bloody hell this is?!”
The call comes from across the house, at least a storey down from where Draco stands fixing himself up in the bathroom mirror, and it stills his hands where they sit on his collar. What have I done? he thinks. He’d thrown out some yoghurt that Harry had insisted he’d eat by the expiration date tomorrow, knowing it was untrue. And then he’d rearranged Harry’s spices alphabetically. Only minorly criminal activity.
“What is it!” he calls back.
“I don’t want to shout! Come down!”
Draco rolls his eyes, grumbling “You started it,” even as he listens, padding down the carpeted stairs. Harry stands in the hallway, an entire dresser drawer in his hands. The sight catches him by surprise and sends his eyebrows up.
“Erm… what?” He points to the drawer.
“It’s empty.”
“I see.”
“Do you know how coveted storage space is in London?”
“You’re a wizard, Harry.”
“It’s the principle!” he argues, disappearing into the bedroom, clearly expecting Draco to follow. He saunters in behind, sits on the bed as he watches him struggle to get the drawer back on its tracks. “I give you a drawer and you put nothing in it!”
“It’s like you asked me to pick a favourite child! I meant to bring some clothes over, honest. I stared at my wardrobe and just couldn’t choose.”
“Not even your pants? Your socks? You couldn’t kill your darlings there?” Harry flops onto the bed and lays his head in Draco’s lap, meeting his gaze sideways. “I’ll come by. I can prioritise my favourite pants and you can just sit and look pretty.”
Draco leans down to kiss Harry’s lips awkwardly, perpendicular. “Can we put this on hold,” he asks sweetly. “Just until after Christmas day?”
“You’re nervous!” Harry intonates.
“Don’t say that all sing-song like you’ve figured me out. I haven’t been hiding it.”
“You’re already in though, yeah? Half of them came to the release.”
He’s not wrong, but he’s avoiding the importance of which half; Draco had let him invite anyone he wished, which had left him with Ron, Ginny, and George in attendance. Harry would have a sound argument if he nervous about seeing Ron today, but he’s not—he’s nervous to invade Molly Weasley’s home.
Quite honestly, he’d been worried about having any Weasleys at the party, imagining that they’d judge him for the posh location and guests, even if an entire evening celebrating Draco’s success was a once-in-a-few-years event. He should have known Pansy would make it a smashing success, enjoyable and messy and the perfect combination of class and fun.
“You just have to show up and look handsome,” she’d told him while organising the Portkey paperwork in his study. He’d listened, and when his own Portkey—all were in the form of Dark Charms and kept as souvenirs, thanks to Pansy’s brilliance—carried him and Harry to the Malfoy chateau night-of, they looked approvingly handsome, like a perfect pair.
This wasn’t arrogance talking—everyone had said so. He could count how many guests had mentioned, in between congratulations, that they were a picture because he’d been counting how many times it made Harry blush.
And of course Narcissa was happy to host, thrilled to put her acreage to use. She spent most of the night conducting the house-elves and sweeping among the upper echelon academic circle he’d politely invited. The longest he spoke to her was during dinner, served under large tents constructed in the expansive land behind the main house and lit warmly with floating candles and fairy lights. They sat in circles of five; Draco, Narcissa, Harry, Blaise, and Pansy.
Draco had sat between Narcissa and Harry, thinking the same table was intimidating enough for a meeting, and though he’d hoped this would go unmentioned, it was almost the first thing out of his mother’s mouth.
“Draco, dear,” she asked with a lifted chin. “How am I supposed to get to know your beau if you’ve sat directly between us like a pebble in my shoe?”
He heard Harry huff a tight little breath to his right—he’d grown to feel appropriately complex emotions for the woman the more Draco had opened up—but Draco just smiled.
“I’m capable of leaning back, Mother. I’d thought Harry would like to sit next to friends he doesn’t see often enough. I’m sure you’ll get to know each other well despite my presence.”
“Yes, I expect we will,” she said warmly in return, swirling the wine in her glass by her nose and setting it back down with a frown. “I’ve heard diverse things about you, Harry—good and bad—and it’ll be a delight to put some of them to rest. To discover this relationship through a Daily Prophet headline was crass, of course, but—“
“Mrs Malfoy, you know, I spoke to your decorator when planning the décor for tonight’s event,” Pansy said then, bubbly and smiley. “He spoke highly of your eye for design.” He could’ve kissed her.
“I could snog her right now, I swear,” Harry whispered in his ear. “Interrupting your mum makes her look rather dazzling, don’t you think?”
Draco laughed aloud, letting his hand that had been resting on the back of Harry’s chair rise to sit on the back of his neck for a moment. “She does have a true calling for manipulating social situations. Don’t worry—once dinner’s over and the dancing has started, Mum will make herself scarce.”
“Yeah, her and you both,” Harry teased. “After your speech, of course.”
“Right, she would never miss that.”
“Did you remember to add her name in?”
“Yes, I added her name in.”
The rest of dinner went easily enough. There wasn’t much Harry could say that didn’t receive a pejorative hum from Narcissa—(“Actually, Mrs Malfoy, I left the Auror Department at the beginning of November, I reckoned you’d seen it in the papers.” “I did see the papers, I suppose I ‘reckoned’ it was a joke that you’d resigned to teach wizards to… brawl.”)—but Blaise knew how to charm the Malfoy matriarch and did well to pick up the conversation whenever it grew cold.
Once or twice, Harry gave him extremely apologetic eye contact, and he did his best to convey that he doesn’t care. That someone who checks every box in Narcissa Malfoy’s list of qualities for a perfect son-in-law would be someone he doesn’t wish to be with.
Being the centre of attention was another unfortunate byproduct of the night—he’d had gatherings for the last two releases, but none of them had reached this size. This was for several unavoidable reasons; Pansy had claimed control over this launch before his Arithmancy for Charm Creation dinner had even ended, Harry had never been invited or brought along an entirely new sector of schoolmates, and his book had never experienced such a wide first release. All of which led to a glamorous event of a size he’d been unprepared for.
Fellow authors, Marta’s publishing friends, curse specialists, Hogwarts alumni, Flitwick, even new Head Auror Marinella all keenly approached him with an uncanny timeliness for any free moment in which he tried to move to the bar or the lavatory or back to his table. For a while, Harry was on his arm to deflect some of the attention and answer his own set of questions, but Draco caught him glancing repeatedly towards the Weasley table and sent him off, leaving himself alone to make nice. He didn’t find any of his friends again until he heard Pansy’s voice a while later, projected over the crowd, beckoning him up in front of the party.
Public speaking had always seemed like a strange place to get personal to Draco, so once he’d joined her and graciously listened to her introduce him, he stayed stiff with formality. He thanked Marta with a wave to where she stood with the publishing crowd, thanked his mum and Pansy and Blaise, thanked everyone for coming, the house-elves for serving, all the while still searching for Harry’s head and failing miserably in the sea of faces.
The week before, when he’d been procrastinating his speech and staring at the blank paper, Harry had jokingly called from the kitchen, “You know, I think it counts as name-dropping to acknowledge me in your speech—I’d just steer clear entirely.”
He’d been kidding, but Draco thought there was a hint of genuine coyness hidden in the joke’s origins. So that night, eyes scanning quickly on stage, finally spotting him sandwiched in a blob of red hair at the back of the tent seemed like an attempt at camouflage.
It was unfortunate for him that Draco does as he pleases.
“Finally,” he says. “I hope you all will forgive me for impressing a moment of sentimentality onto this evening, but anyone who’s read the inscription or the preface of Dark Charms knows that there’s one more person to acknowledge before I leave you to dancing…”
Harry caught his gaze, shaking his head minutely even as his lips curled up. Ron put a hand on his back, thrusting him in front of the Weasleys and fully into Draco’s view. He looked impeccable. Tragically handsome. It should’ve ruined him, that beauty, made him incapable of continuing but somehow it bolstered him instead. He held those green eyes firmly as he pressed on.
“An emphatic last thank you is warranted for Harry Potter—the greatest friend I never expected, a patient co-collaborator, my north star.” He matched Harry’s grin, clasping his hands together. “So with that, Portkeys are available to London every quarter hour until eleven and Miss Parkinson would kill me if I didn’t advertise her special themed cocktail for the evening, so make sure to grab a Dark-Charmed & Stormy from the bar… Let the fun commence!”
Freed, he headed instantly towards the Weasley clan as the band started back up, where Harry stood waiting next to Hermione, face turned into an emotional frown. Draco hunched, linking his arms under Harry’s armpits, and hugged tightly, lifting an inch or so.
“You sappy bloke,” said Harry as he let go.
Draco hadn’t said ‘I love you’ exactly, but they both know he’s said it. He’d said it on stage that night, in a way. He’d said it in the preface, too. And he’d said it so clearly in the dedication that Harry had grown silent for a worryingly long time. Draco presented the real editor’s copy excitedly when he’d arrived at his door for dinner one evening, watched him inspect the cover and the back before flipping to the inscription and freezing completely:
'For the man I dream of in the Lakeland Fells, the north star I migrate towards, my place in the family of things.'
“Oh, Draco…” Harry had sighed. That’s all he’d managed for thirty seconds or so—oh, Draco—his tone so complexly expressive that Draco couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad or embarrassed or found it corny until he pulled him into one of the best kisses of his life.
There were many ways, Draco had discovered, to tell someone you love them without so many words.
Speech done, they all danced, even the guest of honour. First in a huge circle of Weasleys-plus-Luna and Slytherins to loud band music, then slow in pairs, then, as the crowd dwindled to only the closest invitees and the hour grew late, unabashedly.
He remembers sweeping Ginny into a waltz, turning to see Blaise and Ron doing the same while Harry and Pansy cackled like a couple of stumbling fools. He remembers dancing hot and close to Harry, remembers laying on the grass with Blaise and Hermione drunkenly discussing Wizarding Europe’s inefficiency at decolonising History of Magic education, remembers Pansy and Luna hiking up their dresses and racing across the grounds, remembers Luna reading his palm.
Truthfully, he doesn’t remember much more. They all missed their Portkeys, but there were enough guest rooms at the chateau for them to each have two, and so he woke up tangled in Harry in France the next morning. Something had drawn him from his slumber sickeningly early, a knock at the door, and he pulled a blanket around his shoulders as he opened it.
“Tea,” said the house-elf, presenting a platter complete with cups and milk and sugar cubes and Draco’s missing trousers, perfectly folded. “Cadry thought Master might want his slacks from the library before Mistress tidies.”
“Thank you, er… Cadry,” Draco mumbled, his arms emerging from within the blanket to take the platter. When he turned to the bed Harry was sitting up, wild with bedhead and face pink with restrained laughter. He hadn't heard the end of it for weeks.
And so yes, this is all to say that he certainly feels rather comfortable with Ron and Hermione and even Ginny by now—none of which, unfortunately, lowers the specific anxiety he feels for entering the Weasley sanctum itself.
“The half that came to the release party isn’t the half I’m concerned about,” he tries to explain.
“Alright, well… if it eases your fears, Molly’s made you a jumper. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
Harry watches his face when he says this as though it’s a life-changing announcement. He pieces through the information on hand, trying to affect the proper reaction.
“A jumper… no way…” he tries.
Harry frowns up at him. “Only family gets jumpers.”
Family. Sweet Circe. As if that was supposed to lessen his anxiety.
“You’ve faced much worse. You have all the gifts you need?”
“Yes, I’ve got everything I need,” he says, a hand running through the other man’s hair. It’s gotten long again, and he’s been trying to find a way to say he’d loved it short just as much. “Now who’s worried.”
“Still you.”
He pops up and kisses Draco’s cheek before moving back to the dresser, where he must’ve been deciding what to wear before he distracted himself with an empty drawer. Draco could tell him right now, he’d choose jeans and a polo, probably that blue and green striped one he loves. He leans back on his arms and watches, head tilted.
“Hey, do you think this stripey polo goes with jeans?” Harry asks after a moment, holding it up as if everything doesn’t go with jeans.
*****
Harry had spoken about the Burrow often; how it felt like home, in the most cramped, lived-in way, and he gets it now, walking up to the tall structure together. It’s perfectly imperfect, in the same way he’s come to view the family that inhabits it. There are Weasleys outside and in, around the side of the house, too, accompanied by the sounds of mixed chatter and a Christmas album, and he vaguely wonders just how blissfully long he’ll get with Harry at his side before he’s inevitably abandoned.
Less time than he expected, once Teddy spots them from a bench overlooking the front walk. His hair is half green and half red and he sprints excitedly towards them, arms outstretched. Harry drops Draco’s hand and kneels, holding his arms wide to catch Teddy in a tight hug.
“Happy Christmas!” Harry laughs.
“Happy Christmas! Happy Christmas, Draco!”
“Oh, Happy Christmas, Teddy,” he offers. “Doing well?”
“Just splendid, sir,” Teddy says, hair flashing blonde as he offers a deep bow.
“Is he going to do that every time we see each other?”
Harry winks. “I hope so.” Then, attached at the wrist to Teddy, he’s carried off, and Draco’s standing alone ten paces from the door with more gifts than he can carry alone.
That absolute prat, he thinks. Didn’t even get me through the door.
On the edge of the grass, though, he can see Harry trying to levitate just Teddy’s shoes and take him with them, and it’s too endearing to interrupt so he stands for a moment with his fists in his pockets, trying to pick Ron or Hermione or Dromeda out from the crowd outside.
“Draco Malfoy!” He freezes. “Did Harry leave you on your own before he’d even gotten you through a round of introductions? Isn’t he a rude one.” Molly Weasley is walking towards him even as she beckons him forward with her hands. She’s smiling, which is nice, and she’s already insulted Harry, which is nice, too.
“He did, yes.”
“Come on, then! Shall I scold him or do them myself?”
Draco looks to Harry and Teddy. “Better leave him to it,” he suggests as she pulls him into a hug.
“It’s so nice to see you, dear. In the new millennium, at least! Ron’s said much about you two—you bring a different side of Harry, out, I hear. I didn’t know there were any left.”
He laughs breathily, trying to appear as friendly as he wants to be. “I couldn’t speak to that. He’s great, er… He talks about you often; I suppose I should thank you for making him the man he is.”
When she releases him from her bosom, her eyes are shiny. “Oh dear, I told Arthur I would make it a single Christmas day through without getting emotional, but here you go, and we’ve not even had dinner yet,” she says. “Come, come, I’ve told Bill you’re coming—he was asking after you last night, Ron and Hermione’s Christmas Eve dinner—but we’ll be intercepted a dozen times before we find him and Fleur.”
They are indeed interrupted—Ron and Hermione being the first to greet them, thankfully, and they take over for the rest of the introductions to let Molly get back to her hostess tasks at hand.
Ginny looks very excited to see him, and not a moment of the interaction insinuates that they’re an ex and current partner to the same man. He meets George’s wife, or rather re-meets, because somehow Harry had never mentioned it was Angelina Johnson. They’re equally surprised to see each other, and the greetings are short but nice enough. It seems, as Draco moves through the house, his invite in itself is enough a sign of approval to be warmly welcomed.
“Where’d Harry run off to so quickly?” Ron asks when they’ve made it through half the guests. “This isn’t my job.”
“Teddy,” Draco just has to say and he nods.
When they find Andromeda she wraps him in his third hug of the day and asks after his mother with genuine interest. They’d spent Christmas Eve together, he explains, leaving out the bit about her visiting Lucius on Christmas Day. His mother hadn’t seemed to understand why he would choose the Burrow and Harry’s family over such a thrilling trip—even when his most recent brush with death had been a result of his father’s actions.
And Bill Weasley, who finally tracks him down in the living room, is a man Draco could get along quite well with. A reminder that partisan divides have deprived him of several interesting friendships in life up until now. He’s tall and handsome, with the expected Weasley-red hair and a gnarly scar to boot. There’s no point in not appreciating his appearance, considering Harry had already admitted to him being an early fascination—one he should have clocked sooner during his journey of self-discovery.
Sitting with Bill and Fleur is the first moment that he manages to feel comfortable in the home without Harry by his side. They speak enthusiastically about curse breaking and Draco’s books, which he’s a tad self-conscious to find out Bill’s read. Fleur, like Harry, has picked up on enough curse-related talk through osmosis to happily join in, too, and once she hears that his mother’s living in France she requests a language switch to help Bill brush up.
“No one helps me practice with him,” she tells him in her native tongue. “I want Victoire to speak it just as easily as English.”
He hadn’t known about their daughter, either. He’ll have to scold Harry later for his terrible briefing skills. He twists on the couch to look around. “Which one is Victoire?”
“The one following Teddy’s every move,” Bill points out.
Draco follows his finger to see her at the tail end of a chase out the window; Victoire following Teddy, Teddy following Harry, Harry following Rose, whose short legs were slowing the entire chase to a crawl.
“He is good with kids,” Fleur says. “She is always so happy to see him.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
Draco feels a thrill of belonging pass through him, even after they leave to mingle some more, and he stays in his seat taking a quiet moment for himself once they’ve gone. He’s still sitting, eyes scrutinising the busy walls and a very strange clock that he at once is dying to analyse for similar location tracking capabilities to Sirius’ necklace, when Hermione sits down beside him.
“You know what I love best about Christmas Day?” she prompts, crossing her legs and leaning back casually.
“What?”
“Rose sleeps like the dead when we get home.”
He laughs. “I saw her running out there.”
“Ah, the cousins,” Hermione says, sweeping a dark curl from her face. “I try not to think about how much less they’ll all see each other when Teddy and Victoire start us on a new round of Hogwarts students.”
“That school’s been Weasley-less long enough.”
“Do you ever think about teaching, Draco?”
He’s surprised by the question. “Oh. Never seriously. I wouldn’t want to leave London, I don’t think.”
“Me neither,” she muses, shaking her head. He doesn’t ask if she’s received offers, too; he’d always just assumed as much.
“You might convince me to be a guest lec—“
“DINNERRRRRR!” Teddy shouts, running by.
“DINNERRRRR!” Victoire echoes on his heels.
“I’m not going to shout. I think you've got the message.”
Harry appears from the same entranceway the kids had run through. There’s grass in his hair and Draco thinks he’s likely unaware. He approaches with his hands held out and so Draco takes them, letting himself be pulled to his feet and in by the waist.
“I abandoned you,” Harry says.
“I know my place,” he responds, picking the nature out of his curls. “Third to none, second to Teddy.”
Harry laughs, but seems to feel him grow rigid when he tries to look up for a kiss. He lets Draco go with nothing but kindly understanding. “Crowded place, I get it,” he says patiently. “Word is dinner’s ready. Shall we?”
Draco follows Harry and Hermione to the table, more relaxed in the other man’s company once again, and as the meal begins he finds himself growing increasingly comfortable… dare he say happy. His place has been chosen carefully; Harry to his left, alongside Teddy and Dromeda, Hermione to his right with Ron and Rose, and Bill and Fleur across from him.
Molly Weasley is a terrific cook, the food warm and filling and seconds are unquestionable. Fleur speaks to him in French, mostly for the look of frustration on Harry’s face, and they entertain themselves by pointing suspiciously in his direction and laughing as if at his expense. In actuality, he gets her recommendation of a wonderful little wizarding bookshop she never skips on a day trip to Paris.
“It’s not my fault there’s no one here to speak Parseltongue to,” Harry sulks.
“I think, historically, it is your fault that no other famous Parseltongues could be here today,” says Ron.
The kids get to the crackers first, but they all take part, even Draco, reaching across to pull one with Bill and losing. He makes a point of being a good loser, and Harry valiantly offers up his paper crown.
“It’s your colour anyway,” he says, placing it carefully and sweeping the hair behind his ear so gently that it tickles. “Dashing.”
When they begin to exchange gifts and Draco’s pile continues to grow significantly past his estimations, he’s stunned. There are presents stacked at his place from Harry and Ron and Hermione, but also one from Bill and Fleur. It’s an out-of-publication book on Numerology in its original French, and they wave off his profuse apologies for the lack of reciprocation.
“Nobody here is counting gifts, goose,” Harry murmurs. “They just want you to feel welcome.”
He wishes this made it any easier to accept a deep green jumper with a D on it from Molly—hand-knitted. He pulls it on over his shirt when he watches Harry do the same. Hermione and Ron’s gift leaves him speechless long enough for Ron to begin looking concerned and ask Hermione if it was too far.
“Harry said it was funny,” she whispers back.
“No. I love it,” Draco stammers. “Magnificent.”
In his hands is a framed copy of a Daily Prophet from months ago, cropped to just show the banner and the above-the-fold headline. It’s been re-charmed to only show the letters of the original title necessary to say ‘MALFOY WITH POTTER—FAIR’. And beneath it, a photo he’s become well-acquainted with, of him and Harry kissing on the bridge, backgrounded by mountains and autumn forestry.
“Ron likes to commemorate people’s first major inclusion in Harry’s ongoing press confrontations,” says Hermione.
He grins. “I love it. Thank you.” Harry’s gallery wall had made the move to Grimmauld Place and he can already imagine this joining the ranks. His first contribution.
He thinks the most enjoyable bit might be watching Harry watch others open his gifts. There’s a bright light to his face as he waits not for his own praise but for their expressions upon reception. It makes it all the more emboldening when Harry looks almost jealously impressed to see Teddy open Draco’s gift—a case with a full set of Quidditch balls.
“We have to play!” Teddy says to Harry immediately, eagerly attempting to unlock the Bludger as every adult on their half of the table reaches out in panic at once. He raises his hands in surrender, moving on instantly with a grin towards them both. “I brought my broom.”
“You brought your broom to Christmas dinner?” asks Ron.
Andromeda sighs. “And yes, I did tell him it would be dark out.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t think to bring a broom,” Harry adds, setting aside a charmed stopwatch from Hermione that he’d been playing with.
Draco clears his throat, feeling the moment has arrived. “Actually, if you’ll excuse me… I hid your gift because I didn’t wrap it.”
He stands and squeezes past Harry, who’s looking up at him with sudden wide-eyed excitement. “Should I come with you?”
“Oh, er, I don’t know, should you?”
“Draco, if he doesn’t open this mystery definitely-a-broom gift at the table, we’ll be angry,” Ron says. Teddy nods fervently.
“Alright, alright.”
He walks quickly back to the front door and the disillusioned item he’d left just outside, then returns with the spell broken and hands the broom over unceremoniously. Harry takes it fully ceremoniously, holding it out flat on his hands like it’s the Sword of Gryffindor, mouth agape, stroking the soft wood grain of the Indian rosewood.
“Draco, you didn’t,” he breathes, tracing the Hindi broom name with his fingers. He looks up at Ron and Hermione. “It’s—I saw this broom in Delhi.”
His excited eyes follow Draco’s face in astonishment as he sits back down and he shakes his head in disbelief, so clearly wanting to kiss him and resisting for Draco’s comfort.
“I did okay?” he asks softly.
“You did amazing. I—How did you get it?”
It was loads of work, involving a miscommunication with an Indian shipper when it wasn’t clear that he wanted the exact broom from the small shop they visited in New Delhi, then customs, registering a foreign broom with the Ministry, and hiding it from Harry for weeks. He squeezes Harry’s leg under the table. “It was nothing.”
“My turn,” Harry says then, impatiently placing a wrapped box in front of him. He unwraps it delicately along the glued seam, revealing a beautiful chestnut box, perfectly proportioned for the size of parchment he uses for his writing, with a small hinged compartment in the side for an ink well and multiple quills. His initials are engraved on the outside.
It’s baffling to him that Harry’s had this for so long, since that day in September. That though so much has changed, it’s still a perfect choice.
“Harry, it’s beautiful,” he gushes, tracing the glossy wood of the box and then the velvet interior. “I can’t wait to fill it.”
“Don’t you want to open the side compartment?”
“For the ink and pens, yes, perfect. And it’s so portable—what… Harry…” He holds up a key. “What’s this?”
“Harry finally got Draco a key to Grimmauld Place!” Ron suggests.
Harry glares around their side of the table at him. “No, this is a key to Draco’s own place—well, not-not the flat, I—it’s a cabin. Outside Rydal. The Lakes. I reckoned for writing retreats, getting away when you need a change of pace… do you… like it?”
Draco is staring unblinkingly at the key in his hand.
“Uncle Harry bought a cabin!” Teddy announces loudly.
“Merlin’s saggy—” Hermione elbows Ron before he can finish the thought, though she looks equally stunned.
It’s a grand gesture, and Harry’s face is reddening appropriately under the attention. Draco reaches out, snapped from his shock, holds Harry’s gaze and hands, speaking quietly as if they’re the only ones in the room.
“Of course I like it. I… I have no words. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, I…” He kisses Harry quickly but affectionately, despite the watching eyes. “Harry, oh my god, I don’t even know how to thank you.”
*****
“Thank you,” Draco sighs, taking the broom out of Harry’s hands the second they get through the door of Grimmauld Place that night. He sets it with the bag they’d brought home, full of gifts and sweets.
“Thank you, thank you.” He grasps Harry by the jumper and kisses him firmly, passionately, hands pulling at the edge of his top as if its very presence is abominable and shimmying it over his head, jostling his glasses. He takes Harry’s wrist and pulls him quickly to the bedroom.
“Thank you,” he says when his mouth leaves Harry’s long enough to pull his own jumper off. “Thank—“
“Quick writing lesson for you,” Harry says breathlessly at the foot of the bed, his hands fussing with Draco’s belt. “Show not tell.”
Draco does both, incapable of shutting up, and afterwards Harry props himself up over Draco, one arm on either side of his head, and stares down at him with a lopsided smile.
“Have I told you you’re brilliant lately?” he asks. The necklace dangles almost into Draco’s face, glinting warmly against his tan skin and he reaches up instead of answering, draws a finger along his clavicle, past the dip in his neck. He wonders how long he’ll spend in thankful awe for the turn his life has taken, the bizarreness that’s led him here; sleepily satisfied in Harry’s bed at Grimmauld Place, with no time constraint on how long he can stare.
He cups his hand under the swinging charm and holds it up flat against Harry’s chest, feels the fighting heartbeats.
“Just checking,” he says.
Harry lowers himself leisurely like a push-up and kisses him slow. “That you have a heartbeat or that I love you?”
“Equally important.”
“Did you have a good Christmas?”
“I had the best Christmas,” Draco says. He holds Harry’s arms and hooks his right leg, twisting on top of him with a wrestler’s speed and a suddenness that leaves Harry grinning wide-eyed. “But I’m busy tomorrow so don’t ask me to find any Boxing Day sales.”
Harry scowls. “What d’you mean, busy?”
“I have to go through my wardrobe… pick out some items for my boyfriend’s house so I can stay over more often.”
His mouth quirks up as Draco talks, hands running down his hips distractedly. “Is that so?”
“Yes, well I wouldn’t want him to get the idea that I have anywhere better to be than right… here.” He lays down next to Harry and throws an arm and a leg over him. “Pull that blanket up.”
“Bossy,” he grumbles as he does so, tucking it up around Draco’s shoulders.
They lay contently against each other in sleepy silence, Draco wondering how soon is too soon to go see the cabin. He closes his eyes, and pictures it in the summer; the hikes they can go on, the lazy afternoons and the weekend trips he can take on a whim when he needs a new window to look out. He’s surprised when his thoughts drift further, to maybe five years from now, and then even further, perhaps a winter holiday, with more than two stockings under the mantle.
“That cabin is ours forever?” he mumbles.
“Until the end of time.”
“Cool.”
Harry’s chest shakes with a laugh. “Yes… cool.” He moves impossibly closer to Draco, wrapping his arms tight and exhales deeply. It sounds centring. “Just imagine if we’d fought this.”
“We did fight this,” Draco says, shifting so that he’s eye-to-eye with Harry, their noses almost touching.
“Well I’m glad we stopped. Isn’t it terrible to imagine?”
“Then don’t imagine it.”
“I can’t help it,” Harry groans. “I just keep thinking… I had this dream—“
“Oh joy,” Draco mutters. While Harry’s nightmares have continued to slowly depreciate, especially with the intermittent use of Draco’s own Dreamless Sleep brew, they’ve been replaced with vivid dreams. Too often, Draco’s been woken to claims of things he did in Harry’s nighttime imaginings that require real-world assurances.
“No, listen. It was nine, ten years from now, yeah? But we’d never made up, so… I spotted you across the Hogwarts platform and all we did was give each other polite nods.”
“Not polite acknowledgement! Break out the Dreamless Sleep.”
Harry presses his forehead to Draco’s, eyes crossing as he stares intently. “Shush. It was terrible. We just saw each other across the way, you with your wife, me with mine, making eyes like all was well. Like… there wasn’t something between us that would die unacknowledged.”
“That does sound a little miserable.”
“Of course it is, I married a woman.”
“Well, who did I marry in this dream? Some tall blonde Veela that’s made all the parents jealous?” he asks, wiggling his eyebrows.
“Astoria Greengrass.”
“Greengrass?” Draco scoffs. “Not on your life.”
Harry pokes his side. “The point is, you’re not allowed to go. If you leave me, I’ll… I’ll chain you to the bed. I don’t know how I’d live without you, now that I don’t have to. I just—I can’t believe I’d lived any other way.”
“I know, I agree. But unlike my gloomy beau, I try very hard not to imagine what would’ve happened if I’d continued not knowing you.”
His brows furrow deep. “I can’t help it.”
“Help it!” Draco says. “All is well, but it won’t be if you don’t stop picturing me standing all bothered making eyes at you beside Greengrass when I’m here making eyes at you right now.”
He narrows his eyes challengingly and Harry narrows them back, grey meeting green, soul meeting soul. He can see the brazenness leave Harry, watches his face soften into an easy smile before leaning in, capturing his lips soft and tender.
“If all is well,” Harry purrs against his mouth. “Then you’ll have a good explanation for why my yoghurts have disappeared from the fridge.”
“I have binned the yoghurts that were in the icebox,” Draco recites. “Forgive me, they were old, so mouldy and so expired.”
Harry huffs. “And I’m sure you have an equally poetic excuse for ruining those carefully organised spices?”
Draco sneaks a hand up his side in deflection, close and warm and when it threads into Harry’s hair, he uses it to pull him back into a kiss. Having the right words, after all, is not nearly as precious as having each other.