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When Draco came back to himself, he tried to stretch his body, only to realise that someone was wrapped around him.
It had not been a dream. Potter, no Harry, he had called him Draco after all, so Harry, had stood still so that Draco could lean on him. Harry had said that he would kneel for Draco. Only Draco? The thought jolted him awake, and then before another sudden movement could be made, Draco felt arms around him.
"Draco?" Fuck a hundred werewolves, Harry's scratchy voice groaning his name in half sleep was not on Draco's agenda for the day. It would be ringing in his ears for an eternity now.
"Good morning," Draco said awkwardly after a while. Harry was in a bed with him, where this bed was, Draco was unaware. The air was damp and musty but there weren't a lot of places Harry and Draco could be cuddling together.
Because that is what was happening. Boy Saviour's head was on his shoulders, arms around his waist and legs tangled together. Boy saviour was indeed lacking a growth spurt as he was small and curly, instead of being big and savioury.
He was savoury.Draco had to stop thinking about tasting Harry. Harry, not Potter. Not the orphan boy whom he had teased and bullied. But this, Harry who was shy and Draco had seen. Who rarely spoke out of turn unless it was for the so-called greater good. But Boy Saviour's tongue yesterday was polished silver, as he stood, not holding onto Draco bit presenting himself as a pillar for Draco to lean on. Draco knew because his own was polished the same. Yesterday Harry Potter had not been Harry or Potter. Not the boy he loved and not the boy he loathed.
"Who are you?" Draco spoke a question in existence.
"Do you not know me?" Harry replied, a bit too at ease to be sleepy.
"I know you and I know of you. You were neither. So the question remains."
“I could ask the same of you. You haven’t been yourself for a while.” Answering a question with a half statement and another question. How very not Griffindor. Draco had to swallow all his current thoughts to get some new ones.
“I wasn’t aware that you were an expert on me.” Draco sniffed out, delicately. Just because he was in a boy’s arms did not mean he had forgotten his manners.
“What’s my favourite dessert?” Harry asked, his lips warm over his shirt collar. Draco had no desire to answer such easily asinine questions when he could focus on exactly at what distance heat from Harry’s lips transferred to his own body without touching it, and why it was different to other parts of him touching him.
“Treacle tart. But you prefer chocolate frogs over them as a snack.”
“What’s my favourite colours?” How come his lips when not touching him were warmer through his shirt than his chest that was touching his?
“Black and gold”
“Which subject do I look most forward to?”
“History with Binns so that you can hide behind Granger’s hair and catch some shut-eye. You like charms theory but defence practicals.” Harry could teach Defense in his sixth year if he wanted. He was better than Quirrel and Lockhart. Draco knew he had taught last year, which is why any Griffindors, Ravenclaws and Puffs had even passed their OWLS.
One of Harry’s hands was near the back of his shoulder now, and he slightly arched to have the palm cup the curve of his bone. It was warmer than the shadow on his collar. Scorching almost.
“Not even Ron or Mione would have answered all of them correctly but you did.” Harry was smirking. That was a smirking voice. You didn't grow up Slytherin to not recognize it. Draco wished he could cup that smirk upwards to see, to study it.
“Hmm, well I have never shied from declaring my own brilliance and I do have a functioning pair of eyes.” Draco felt a bit sad, his tongue really did have its own brain. Maybe he could make an appointment for Harry to go to a healer specialising in eyes? Suddenly, the weight on his body, that had grounded him shifted. Harry held himself on an elbow up, a knee next to his waist propelling him to meet Draco’s silver eyes.
“While my eyes aren’t as good as yours, they are capable enough to make observations just as well. If you know all things that no one knows about me, why should I not know things you have never told anyone as well?” Harry asked, looking down at him, and Draco let out an audible gasp. Suddenly, his brain, cotton and Potter sparked alight.
“You see me.” Draco met his eyes. The emerald green that almost felt like a killing curse on its own was a bit dim.
“The way you see me,” Harry said, a bit of blood colouring his cheeks, and Draco, whose arms were no longer trapped reached up to cup one of them. Harry’s eyes fixed on the mark on his arm at the movement and stayed there. He leaned into the palm, but moved above him, until he was sitting on his haunches next to him, and pulled Draco up into a sitting position as well.
“The mark has to go before anything else happens. Do you have any plans for the Spring break?” Harry asked and Draco was reminded at once of his duties and obligations as a death eater.
“I am to stay here, away from the manor until I am successful in killing the headmaster. If not, my mother will face some consequences.” They were no longer Harry and Draco but Deatheater and Boy Saviour.
“Well, I will talk to Sirius about a possible Black abduction. He has some experience there.” Potter shrugged before grabbing Draco’s marked arm. While he continued to trace it with the tips of his fingers, a sensation, Draco was just too happy to ignore, consequences and implications both, he looked around. They were in something like a chamber, with a giant stone statue of a familiar man facing him. The bed they were on seemed very out of place in the damp chamber and Draco noticed towering pillars with snake carvings on both sides.
“Harry, were we cuddling in Salazar Slytherin’s chamber?” Draco asked suddenly franatic. He had never outrightly declined the rumours of being Slytherin’s heir but that was more because of the prestige, rather than any actual knowledge of what the title entailed. “
"Yeah, it is accessible from the second-floor bathroom, and I wanted a place where no one would disturb us. Only Parselmouths can get in here.” Harry seemed to still be busy hissing at his arm, and latent fear of a giant basilisk who killed Myrtle distracted him from forming an opinion regarding the attractiveness of Parselmouth. He liked it.
“What about the giant petrifying Basillik?” Draco asked, scared. A summer with Nagini as a housemate put a healthy amount of fear of snakes in you, no matter which house you were in.
“She’s behind us. I blinded her so she can't petrify you.” Harry was not focused on him, or he was but just on his arm.
“You blinded the great Basilik so that we could cuddle in front of a statue of Salazar Slytherin?” Draco felt a vein might pop in his forehead. He felt more like himself than he had in a while. What sort of idiotic creature was hissing at his arm?
“Draco” Harry whined. HE WHINED.
“I blinded it in the second year, and I brought you here to study the mark. While he was marking you, were there any real snakes sacrificed? If he did then it would be harder to disable without him knowing.”
“No there were no snakes. I was delirious from a longer-than-usual exposure to Aunt Bella’s delightful company. He just hissed and then it hurt, and it felt like a part of me was smothered, like proximity with dementors. It had been like that until you magically overpowered me in the bathroom.” Draco spoke out evenly, enunciating each word properly. The memory of being branded by the Dark Lord was amongst some of his worst moments. Until his fourth year, he had a lovely childhood but the moment the dark lord had risen again, it seemed that Draco’s life had splintered into a before and after. Now, his father, the most efficient man he knew, was in prison, and his mother, who had never compromised on anything, was nothing better than a hostage, safe only because her crazy elder sister dotted on her. He shuddered to think of what it would be for his mother to live with the dark lord and his death eaters without Aunt Bella’s protection. Voldemort might have been the strongest wizard, but even he would sweat through to defeat his aunt on a good day.
Green eyes met grey ones again, an understanding of words both spoken and not passing through. Draco exhaled, closing his eyes for a moment to centre himself again, before meeting the boy in front of him head-on, with a small Malfoy-trademarked smirk. Harry was smiling at him, bigger than he had this past year, before he yanked Draco’s arm closer, Draco would have to straddle him to sit comfily again when Harry hissed again, and he felt a jolt. The snake and skull mark on his arm, one that he tried his best to avoid looking at moving. The snake seemed to turn back towards the mouth of the skull it came from, erasing its path as it left until only the skull remained. Draco could only see fascinated as the skull pumped, and the snake’s head tried to make its way through either of the eye sockets before coiling out of the mouth again, and around the skull, in a more compact manner than the dark mark. Harry’s grin had faded and he hissed again, this time the skull moved as if following the shaking of the snake’s tail before resting again.
“The mark is disabled but the snake needs an object to grab onto. I think I have an idea, but it would require us both to be outside Hogwarts. Would you come home with me for the break?” Harry asked, earnestly, boyishly, and Draco could only nod. The break started tomorrow, and he knew that some of his classmates were taking the train today.
“I can’t be seen on the train, and no one should know that I have left,” Draco whispered, eyes still on the dark mark. He turned around slightly behind him, realising that there was indeed a large dead Basilik behind him.
“Harry!” he could hear himself exclaiming louder than would have been proper. “There’s a giant dead basilik!” he almost laughed getting out of the bed, approaching the magically preserved creature.
“Yeah, I know.”
“The amount of potion ingredients it could supply would even make Severus smile” He exclaimed, before looking at the admittedly scary but intriguing face. One of the Basilisk fangs was missing.
“Did someone steal a fang? They are priceless and have the highest potency of any poison known. It could even kill the dark lord.” Draco wished he had his potions kit. Or rather, he wished he could preserve the entire Basilik and take it to study.
“It did,” Harry replied softly as if his brain was elsewhere. Draco turned to face him.
“Kill the dark lord?” Draco questioned. He didn’t know the details regarding the end of the second year, except it had something to do with the Weaselete.
“There was a part of Voldemort, like a part of his soul when he was younger in a diary that took over Ginny and made her open the chamber in the second year. I used the fang to stab the diary. He went by Tom Riddle when he created the diary. Do you think stabbing Voldemort with a fang would kill him now?” Harry was next to him, rubbing his forearm where there was a scar. Suddenly, a thought and an afterthought came into Draco’s mind. The realisation had him sitting on the ground, not as elegant as he usually would have been.
“It bit you, on your arm. You could have died.” Draco spelt out, looking to see at Harry’s, the boy saviour’s face. He just blinked in agreement.
“Are you immortal? How did you survive?” He knew before him was the boy who lived, but what all had he lived through? Harry was chuckling, chuckling as if Slytherin’s basilik biting you was an everyday occurrence.
“Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes cried over the wound. It saved me.”
“Basilisk venom and phoenix tears, this is in addition to the unicorn blood you were exposed to in our first year. Harry, do you know how potent the magical properties of these substances are? You should submit yourself to a blood test in Gringotts just to see if you’re not carrying a blood parasite. They could cause the horrible headaches you get you know. Otherwise, a drop of a phoenix tear should have healed your scar as well.” Draco felt like himself again.
“Ugh, okay, I can do that over the spring break. Do you want the body of the Basilik for potions or something? I think we can have a house elf store it in one of the rooms at Grimmauld Place. You can prod around for all of the spring break.” A very sudden realisation, that Harry was again the Saviour and the wizarding world’s hero hit him.
“You know, the offering of the body of any magical being is seen as the intention to court exclusively in the Olde ways. A lot of what Granger calls pureblood bigotry is just a preference of pureblood culture practices.” Draco spoke, while mentally recalling a book listing all the properties of a great Basilik. That it would be Slytherin’s own would just amplify them.
“What would the offering of a Great Basilik belonging to Salazar Slytherin mean, according to the Olde ways then?” Harry, silver-tongued Harry kneaded their fingers together, a slow thrum of magic coming through that felt similar to tasting droplets of Elfin wine once when he was a child.
"You may have the right to name our firstborn as a Potter Heir, and our secondborn will be the Malfoy Heir.” Draco was looking up, noticing the patterns that the snakes formed on the roof of the chamber, trying his best to thaw the flow of blood to his cheeks. He had inherited the famous Rosier skin from his maternal grandmother. His own mother blushed at every smile his father offered her.
“Oh,” Harry said. “Oh, umm okay.”
Thankfully the stammering restored the proper functioning of his heart, blood and brain.
“Yes, but of course you are not aware of our traditions. I do wonder about the state of the Potter estate, it has stood empty for almost twenty years now.” The patented Draco Malfoy sneer was back, and he looked at Potter again, making sure he saw it, reacted to it, and flinched from it. Let go of his hands.
No Malfoy would be shunned like this. Even if he was marked by a lunatic, he was the best the wizarding world had to offer. The dark lord had chosen his family manor to stay in. Malfoy’s were the best. And no upstart prophesied saviour was going to change it, no matter how pretty his eyes were, or how powerful his magic was. Draco would kneel, because to kneel was to survive and ensure he did his duty to his family, by not dying at the hands of either side. But he would be kneeling for the Savior, to survive, and not Harry Potter, the boy with no appreciation of his culture, ancestry, blood, life or even hair.
Instead of any of his usual responses to his sneer, Harry clutched his hold on to him tighter, and raised their joined palms, bringing it up to his mouth, dropping a soft kiss to his ring finger, where the Malfoy Heirship ring sat.
“Will you ? Accept it I mean. We can discuss children after Voldemort is dead, but will you still accept it?” Potter, no Harry was looking at him and Draco wondered if the news had been wrong. Maybe the Dark Lord’s unforgivable had not hit his scarred forehead but was contained in the glimmering green of his eyes. Draco felt petrified himself.
“Are you certain? This is important. More important than the war, if we survive it.” Draco’s voice had deflected back to perfectly enunciated syllables even if the tone itself was a bit more whiny, breathy he would prefer, breathy.
“Yes, of course. Did you not hear me say how I was equally obsessed with you.” Harry was whinier, he won.
“You never said those words, you implied that I held your eyes. And you could never be as obsessed with me as I was with you. You’d never get any of the world-saving done. You killed a Basilik in your second year. I was reading up on which of your ancestors introduced the untameable curl to the black hair.” Draco might have sputtered that out because he had never admitted that before. “It was your great grandmother, Dorea Potter, nee Black. Aunt Bella had a similar problem.” Draco’s mouth was moving on its own. Was this borne by a compulsion to Potter’s avada eyes? Was he casting Imperious wordlessly, or had all the magical components in his blood made his very presence to exude Verisatrium? Draco wondered if his sweat tasted divine like amortentia.
“I thought that no one would be capable of being Slytherin’s heir except you, and I poly-juiced into Goyle to sneak into the Dungeons and spy on you. I have a map that shows where anyone is on Hogwarts and I look at it every hour, searching for you.” Harry, truly in a shameless manner that had to be attributed to his House was saying this shamelessly to the extent even Draco felt embarrassment for him.
“Merlin, Potter. If you had polyjuiced into Nott or Zabini, you might have even gotten some of the good stuff out. I never dare to put out too many thoughts near Goyle or Crabbe lest their brains explode.” Draco exclaimed and then refocused. He had to give a good talking down to the boy saviour for entering the dungeons, maybe he would take away some points from Gryffindor.
“Draco,” Harry was intentionally whining his name in a way that did things to Draco’s skin and made his breathing flounder.
“Yes, Harry?” Draco was imperioused, he was certain.
“Will you accept the body of Slytherin’s Basilisk that I killed as a symbol that I am obsessed with you, and after freeing your arm, and parents from Voldemort, will be arguing about Olde ways and propriety and the names of our future children?” One, only one of Draco’s knees might have buckled, and Harry’s broad arms might have encircled his lankier frame.
“Until I am marked his, I can not be yours, but I accept, only on the condition that you let me try and comb your hair,” Draco uttered, the feeling of magic, a vow between them taking place. It was in place if not dormant until Draco was marked. But the tightening of Harry’s eyes, as pure intent showed through consoled Draco that he would not be marked at least by a maniacal old wizard for long.
"I accept."