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The first time Harry’s throat felt raw and exhausted from laughter after the battle wasn’t at all like he had expected. No matter how blissful the relief was before Hermione, Ron, and he slept the day away in the Gryffindor tower, Harry had felt an unspeakable weight on him. He felt numb, but he knew that there was just so much his mind had to catch up on. He felt the still-gentle embers of panic in the corners of his mind, impending to kindle into Fiendfyre; perhaps not now and not next week, though inevitable it felt. A slumbering feeling of certainty, that whatever the next years might bring, joy and laughter would be reserved for reassuring others rather than for heartfelt belly laughter emanating from deep within his confines.
But how wrong he was, Harry thinks when he remembers the night following the battle. He woke long after darkness had fallen over a castle like a Stasis. The debris and destruction were devoid of screams and spells, making Harry feel like walking a museum. The Great Hall, a crypt for that night, mourned with a peaceful gravity, a hundred stars in their silent vigil above the dead.
He felt like a spectre, roaming the treeless grounds, the deserted streets of Hogsmeade. It was only the train station—of course it was, Harry thinks—that harboured another sleepless soul that night. They were found as though they had been looking for one another; freezing to the ground at the sight of an unmistakable silhouette in the distance, before wordlessly meeting on the platform. They stood there, side by side, faces to the sky.
But how beautiful it was. Perhaps only because, at the time, Harry couldn’t remember the last time that he was just stood there without a place to be, without a quest to fulfil. Just gazing up into the stars, the all-encompassing nothingness with its drawing pretence of immobility spanning above them, around them once they left the dim-lit cobble streets. He remembers thinking how different the actual sky looked from the charmed ceiling in the Great Hall, naught but a snippet, a mockery of framing something that’s meant to be infinite.
Into the night they went in mutual, non-spoken agreement. All that existed was dewy grass catching on ankles, the earthy scent mixing with the last streaks of sulphur and blood wafting over from the castle in the distance, a few towers prominent only with the absence of stars. Harry remembers thinking that, actually, on principle, he ought to have been pissed at Malfoy, annoyed that, somehow, he’s always there. But he wasn’t. Not annoyed, not angry, not happy. He didn’t feel a thing while walking with the bloke who, historically, had the capability of making Harry be livid with a single look or the cadence of his voice. He also remembers thinking that, perhaps, he had really died that morning. Perhaps that’s what it feels like to be a ghost, though why he would have decided to stay for such a life, Harry wasn’t sure. Did he misunderstand his options?
It was after they stood there for a long time that Malfoy broke the silence. “Mars is in Taurus,” he said, but Harry hadn’t expected him to speak, and the succession of sounds made no sense in his mind.
Moving his head to follow Malfoy’s gaze, Harry saw white dots against a black veil. Suddenly the sight reminded Harry of the same sky, a different night, a reflection in unseeing eyes. “What?”
“Mars. In Taurus.”
They both just watched the sky for a moment until Malfoy cast a wordless Lumos, his features emotionless and colourless in the white light. “Determination, but not as brazen and chaotic as it can be. Prudent. Patient. It’s Mars’ most contrasting constellation.” There was a brief silence. “Not that I’d believe any of this Divination rubbish.”
Malfoy turned away after that, the thin light of his wand travelling into the night, leaving Harry behind until he woke from an odd pause of not thinking, not breathing. Then he made his feet move to follow Malfoy through the dew-soaked grass, “Wait,” he said. “Where are you going?”
And Harry remembers the year after that, one year on the day, and how utterly speechless he was to find Malfoy at the low buzz of the Wards bordering the Hogwarts grounds in the dead of night, his cheeks hollow and his sunken eyes like bruises. Even something about his hair didn’t look quite right, and it took Harry several years to understand that Malfoy’s wandlessness due to his probation probably meant that he could not have Apparated there into the middle of the Highlands; that the tremor in his body was probably because he couldn’t cast a Warming Charm, and, back then, Harry hadn’t even spent a single thought to where Malfoy might live with both parents imprisoned and the Manor still confiscated.
Harry feels like an idiot thinking back. His only excuse is that he had probably been a mess himself. But he can’t remember what the time was like for him. Of course, he can recall—he was in Auror training with Ron, both taken directly under Kingsley’s wings—but what it had felt like to be him at the time, Harry has no clue anymore. It’s all a blur of classes, searching for the remaining Death Eaters, and trial after trial, interview after interview after interview . . .
But that night, the first anniversary, Malfoy was there, and Harry remembers every moment even though there wasn’t much to say to one another. It was years later that they—or rather Malfoy—began speaking. Which was annoying because Harry had just found a companionable sort of comfort in the certainty of Draco Malfoy waiting for him just outside of Hogwarts once a year; around a time when it got hard to breath among journos, mourning friends, historians requesting to speak with him, and Robards telling him to take a week off when all he wanted to do was simultaneously drown in work and lock himself away at home, never to come out again.
Once Malfoy started speaking, he apparently couldn’t bring himself to stop. Would one have asked Harry what he had expected Draco Malfoy to say to him—ex-foe, still former bully, then reticent kindred spirit—it would have been something nice and inconsequential. How are you? Do you have trouble sleeping too? Just three, two, one more year until my probation is over. Thanks for not reporting the Seeing Skull you found when your team searched the Manor.
What he didn’t expect it to be was his sneer returning, and the caustic citation of Harry’s latest escapades as proclaimed in the Prophet whipping from his tongue like curses. But that was precisely what Harry got from Malfoy.
“How proud wizarding Britain must be of their precious Potter,” Malfoy spit out Harry’s name like an insult, eyes twisted with hatred that, Harry now understands, was never directed at him. With a stuck-up nose and appraising eyes, voice as caustic as bile, Malfoy drawled, “Not on duty tonight, Auror Potter? How fortunate for me—and for possible felons, too, seeing that the last one ended up in St Mungo’s for a month.” And, “Punching Robards like a Muggle, Potter? I’ve always known you to be oafish brute, but even for you that’s a new low.” It wasn’t until the year that Harry was greeted with a look of disgust and the words, “Fucking around in clubs like a pervert, are we, Potter? When will we find the Saviour taking it up the arse against a wall in a dark alley on the front page?” that they duelled each other. Unblinking glares, a merciless succession of spells, no shields, and it ended almost, almost, bloody.
Sometimes Harry could barely keep himself from Disapparating right on the spot. In fact, Harry would have stopped coming altogether if it weren’t for the Draco Malfoy, he’d get a glimpse of once Malfoy ran out of scathing remarks, apparently unable to stop himself until he was finished recalling the news reports.
And it turned out to be all worth it. Standing there once every year, standing on the same spot that might have been completely unmemorable to a stranger; merely the hint of a trail that crossed the dark greens and violets that would cover the lands if they met by day. Bracing himself for whichever shade of Draco Malfoy he’d get that night, surrounded by heathland between hills and hills, the hint of peaked towers somewhere in the distance. Harry recalls the smells of an earlier rain and soil, a stark contrast to the Auror Office he had left for the last time that day. He recalls thinking that the nervousness sparking in his guts possibly meant that he cared for Malfoy’s opinion on him.
That night was as much of an emotional rollercoaster as the night of the battle. He’d come to leave and leave he did, only that he became they.
Harry takes a deep drag of the Scandinavian night air, so deep that it stings in his lungs.
His fingers are pinching the key, tucked into the lock to their apartment building. It’s tall and nondescript, flats occupied by students of this medium sized university town in Sweden. It’s busy, sometimes loud, and both blissfully anonymous and friendly greetings in the corridor all at once.
A faint hint of a bass accompanies Harry’s lift ride. He watches the digits of the display climb from zero to seven. Draco was right, Harry thinks, about moving to a small town, busy with people starting their lives and cafés occupied by spectacled eggheads clad in tweed jackets. It’s better than the literal cabin in the woods they had before, secluded from the world, just the two of them. Harry doesn’t like the fact that it was too much, too intense. He wanted Draco to want nothing but him.
When he unlocks the door to their dark flat, his gaze goes straight from the little vestibule across the hall, through the combined kitchen and living area, all the way to the window front and their little balcony where Draco is standing, back to Harry, face to the sky. It’s this view that they fell in love with when they first set foot in this flat a few months ago; you come in and you see just as much of your home as you see a framed snippet of today’s sky.
Harry closes the door behind him with a thud, and Draco turns around at the sound, smiling and taking a sip from a tumbler in his hand. His face is shadowed, caught between the faint light of a delicate chain of fairy lights on their balcony and the thick darkness behind him. On his way to his husband, Harry grabs a knitted blanket from the settee, eyes on Draco who turns to lean back against the balustrade instead, seeing Harry instead of looking out into the night. Harry steps onto the balcony, into the cold air, and he wraps the blanket around Draco, only clad in a thin, long-sleeved shirt and pyjama bottoms. To his surprise, Harry feels Warming Charms radiating from Draco, and he feels unsure of why he thought Draco would freeze himself to death out here.
“Forgot that we’re wizards?” Draco says, running a tender hand through Harry’s hair, fixing his fringe by sweeping it backwards.
“It’s more comfortable,” Harry replies, placing his hands to either side of Draco on the balustrade, leaning in to steal a quick kiss.
Draco hums softly in agreement. They just stand there, wrapped around each other and into the woollen blanket, Draco’s lips resting against Harry’s forehead. After a moment, Draco says, “Love didn’t save us in the end, did it?” He takes a sip of his whisky, redolent of oak and caramel, hiding a mirthless smile that Harry knows is there.
He knows what he means. But he doesn’t like Draco to be this cryptic, not when it comes to them. “What do you mean, love?”
Draco’s smile grows bigger and somehow sadder. He crosses his arms in front of his chest, swirling the liquid that gleams like amber where the light catches the thick bottom of the glass. “You left.” A small pause. “And I drink.”
“I never said you can’t drink.”
“Well, I said I wouldn’t. Not after a row anyway.”
“It’s . . .” Harry lapses into silence for a moment, trailing the juts of Draco’s spine with two fingers and stepping even closer until Draco’s arms deny him from crawling into his skin like Harry often wishes he could. “It wasn’t bad.”
Draco scoffs, but only lazily.
“We don’t mean what we say when we’re fighting,” Harry tries.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t say it then,” Draco says coolly.
Harry is silent for a moment. He steals a sip of Draco’s whisky, relishing the smooth taste for a moment on his tongue before swallowing it. They hardly ever fight. In fact, Draco hardly reacts these days when Harry happens to lash out at him, annoyed at himself or Draco or at nothing in particular. And sometimes it drives Harry mad that he could land blow after blow without sparking any sign of resistance in Draco, until Harry feels alone and guilty.
Until Harry remembers Draco’s scathing comments every second of May, solicitude that Harry mistook for insults, and he now fears what the lack of them might mean. It was because the Prophet articles were all he had of Harry, Draco had explained once, their naked bodies merged into one. It was all he had all these years, miserably in love and desperate to be the one to heal Harry.
But when Draco does fight, he makes sure to hit where it hurts, managing to make Harry feel like the most despicable scum. It doesn’t help that, in Draco’s eyes, the only thing worse than Harry is Draco himself; Draco alway makes sure to let him know. Harry wonders how many of Draco’s bitter words hold at least a little bit of truth.
“If it were that easy, right?” Harry says softly.
“Perhaps it should be.”
In fear of starting an argument that would only lead to Draco being quiet and too-agreeable for the remainder of the night, Harry tries to get away with silence. Draco downs his drink, eyes fixated unseeingly somewhere behind Harry.
Harry takes the empty glass out of Draco’s hands and puts it down on a table behind him, a soft noise of glass on wood interrupting the quiet, muffled sounds of their neighbours that Harry had already grown too familiar with to hear them most of the time.
“You aren’t happy,” Draco points out as though the realisation dawned on him just now, and Harry wonders what’s so different tonight that Draco would say such a thing, and what he’d done to give him that impression. “I thought I could . . .”
“Draco, darling,” Harry tries, running a hand through Draco’s hair that comes to rest in his nape. “We had a fight, it’s no big deal.”
“But you left.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you that if there’s one thing I cannot deal with it’s-“ Draco stops speaking, pursing his lips shut tightly and swallowing a few times in quick succession. “I always think you might not . . . return.”
Harry pushes closer until Draco relents, unfolding his arms and wrapping them around Harry together with the blanket that’s still draped over his bony shoulders. Harry hugs him close, breathing in the scent below Draco’s ear that’s so unmistakably him, familiar and never enough; finding the safety of Draco’s body heat. A frisson of relief washes over Harry as he feels Draco’s tension thaw away, their bodies slack against the railing. “I’d never leave you,” Harry murmurs into Draco’s air, holding him through a shudder. “It’s only us. Forever. I’m not going anywhere.”
He feels Draco nod and tighten his grip around him. Harry thinks that, perhaps, Draco might be right. The night they left Britain for good, it felt like falling in love for the first time. It felt both like running into the great unknown and coming home to something that could’ve started years ago. They were naïve to think that just being together—from now until forever; there’s no going back if I’m coming with you, Draco had said—would free them of their ghosts. Long lost ties to their past aren’t real here in their new home that is not the cabin, not the flat, but just being with each other—those memories, they only exist in your mind, they keep on reminding one another. Sometimes Harry wishes they were better for each other; that they’d work in another way than secluded from everything they’ve ever known. But it’s easier not to think about the past. Only when the thoughts make themselves inevitable in dreams, angry shouts, and bitter tears.
“You are everything I need,” Draco says, and Harry kisses him.
“Perhaps we should go out,” Harry suggests because he misses Draco’s smile. “The night is clear—cold though it is. But I happen to know a certain someone who’s very adept with Warming Charms.”
Harry gets a peck on his cheek then his lips. “On a proper make-up date, hm?”
“It really wasn’t that bad,” Harry reassures him, not sure whether it’s true. But it doesn’t matter when Draco nods—maybe agreeing to the broom ride, maybe letting go of the rotten words they had for each other a few hours ago,—his eyes endlessly fond in the dim light, and Harry falls in love anew. The feeling perfuses his whole body, rendering his features earnest and his heartbeat skittish and fluttery like a young bird’s first flight as they kiss under starless skies like it was the first and the last time.
When they kick off into the night, it all melts together. The years, the differences, the silence. Their pasts and futures. They are one. They are two boys. White knuckles on broomsticks, a waft catching in billowing robes. They are wind-swept hair and irresistible smiles, giving chase, chase, chase, until acquiescing in being caught.
The kissing, the touches, the sex—it all follows as an afterthought, easy and inevitable.
It’s a game, and they both know how to play it. How to be weightless in between stars and laughter, and how to pretend that this night will never end.