A Hag, a Hex, a Tale of Redemption - aibidil - Harry Potter (2024)

Draco was a bad person: to begin with. There was no doubt about that.

He evaded taxes and avoided the homeless on the street. He disrespected his parents' memories and frittered away his money and friendships. He dabbled in Dark Arts and sent anonymous hate messages on the magical internet. He sought out foie gras because he thought food tasted better with a touch of cruelty. He didn't tip waiters. He slept around but accused others of being slu*ts. He cast Scourgify at library books because he was repulsed by common germs, and then he didn't return the books on time. During sex, he bit without asking and left as soon as he org*smed with no thought to the state of his partner's erection. He smoked joints without sharing and hogged all the good flavours of Every Flavour Beans.

He was a bad person.

And what's more, he didn't care. His parents were dead, and the Manor and the bulk of his inheritance had been taken as reparations. His friends had left the country or given up on him, so he was entirely free from the constraining influence of loved ones' judgment. He didn't want relationships (neither friends nor partners), so he didn't care. He didn't have a pet—not even an owl. No one in the world relied on him or expected anything good from him.

Even the Ministry turned a blind eye to his illegal activities. The Wizengamot had found Draco not guilty of crimes against the state, and there had been a public outcry about his acquittal. Four years later, what this meant in practice was that the Ministry did not want to admit they had been wrong. They weren't going to arrest Draco for his minor dabbling in drugs and Dark Arts and illegal Potions ingredients, because it would make them look bad. An arrest would invite Rita Skeeter to say "I told you so!", and no one, not even the Minister, would risk that.

So Draco was entirely at liberty to go through life with neither consequences for bad behaviour, nor enticements for good behaviour.

No one liked him. No one smiled or said "hello" on the street. If he was spotted by someone from Hogwarts, they did not say, "Draco! How've you been?" Bartenders winced when he walked through the door. Parents pulled their children into arm's reach when he came by.

And that was fine by Draco. What did he want with a world that despised him?

On the night our story begins, a new moon in February, Draco was in Diagon's hipster bar drinking a dry martini ("just coat the glass with the vermouth and then Vanish it before you pour the gin in, three co*cktail onions"). He was looking for an easy f*ck and spreading a cloud of disdainful coldness wherever he went.

Draco, despite (or perhaps because of) his reputation, did not suffer from a lack of sexual partners. Granted, he never slept with the same person twice—even if the partner would be willing (unlikely given Draco's general awfulness). Draco wasn't interested. But his I-don't-give-a-damn aura combined with his debauched poshness created an alluring appearance that attracted people of every age, class, sex, and gender. Draco was not particular about who he pulled—well, he was particular, and he would criticise their bodies and their stamina and their hair—so long as he was able to use their bodies efficiently to satisfy his lust.

It is not our place to question why humans are attracted to despicable people such as him; suffice it to say, drawn they were, and he did not find it difficult on this moonless night to find a young man with whom to canoodle. Draco smirked a nasty smirk and pulled the man—let him be a faceless, nameless man, for he is irrelevant to this tale—into the alley outside the bar.

It was raining, which suits the story, and Draco pushed the faceless f*ck against the wet brick, leaning in to claim his pleasure, pressing his body into the man's. Draco concentrated on the swimming sensation in his head and the warmth of lust in his gut, and he ignored everything else, everything real, and tried to convince himself that the only real things in the world were the booziness and the lust.

It had been like this for so many days, for so many nights. Draco leaned in, felt the man's chest, the man's hands on his hips. He angled his head and pressed his mouth to the man's neck, pressed his teeth into the flesh and relished the twitch of the muscles in between his teeth.

But unlike previous days, a vaguely familiar voice yelled, "Oi!"

Draco was flooded with annoyance. Couldn't this person see they were interrupting? He was just getting somewhere sucking on this neck. He whirled around, his face a snarl, and then he froze. "Potter?" he spat.

Potter's eyes widened. "Malfoy—I—sorry. I—I wanted to make sure everything was okay there. It looked like—"

Draco could not believe the audacity. He narrowed his eyes. "It looked like what, exactly?"

Draco hadn't seen Potter in months—maybe years. He looked good, in a self-righteous prick sort of way.

Potter laughed, just a little, but enough to set Draco on fire with hatred. "I thought—I thought you were a vampire. I wanted to make sure everyone was okay."

Draco could feel his bottom lip fall limp with disdain. "You thought I was a vampire?"

Potter held his hands up in a defensive gesture. "You never know what you're going to find in Diagon. You're all…pale, and it really looked like you were biting his neck."

Draco raised an eyebrow despite the fact that he had been biting this person's neck.

"It didn't look very," Potter paused, waving his hand in the air, "consensual."

"I can assure you it was f*cking consensual, Potter. Wasn't it?" Draco turned to his companion, but, with a start, saw he was gone. Apparently being discovered snogging Draco Malfoy in an alleyway by the Saviour of the magical world was too much for that git. Draco sighed.

"Great, Potter. Thanks. I was about to get laid."

Potter appeared alarmingly unconcerned. He rolled his eyes. "I'm sure you'll find someone else."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Are you offering?"

Potter's brows drew together in shock. "What? No!"

Well, at least taunting Potter was still a fun diversion. "Then get the f*ck out of here," Draco growled, flipping him off for good measure.

Potter tilted his head, and it felt like a reprimand. "Lovely, Malfoy. Good to see you've grown up." And with that, Potter left, and it seemed to Draco as Potter walked down the street, the rain parting magically above his head to fall on either side of him, that he took with him the warmth that had been thawing Draco's fingers in the dreary February night.

Draco sighed and leaned against the wall. The same brick that had felt excitingly textured underneath the pads of his fingers a few minutes ago now felt cold, wet, and uncomfortable. He could go back inside, pull another bloke, but that would take time, and more drinks, and he was f*cking annoyed that Potter had messed with his plans.

f*cking Potter. At least some things always stayed the same.

With no noise of warning, a man appeared out of the rainy shadows; he stepped right into Draco's space. Draco looked up from his annoyance to scowl at the man—but it wasn't a man at all.

His skin glowed a faint, sickly green. His eyes were a piercing yellow, and his face was dotted with a hideous array of warts.

A hag.

Draco's immediate impression was that the hag was feral, savage. Draco had been taught his whole life that hag magic was rudimentary at best, but in this moment, Draco's mind screamed danger.

Draco affected a nonchalant sneer and stepped to the side, making to head back to the din and the sweating bodies of the bar. It was a subconscious instinct: move towards other humans.

But the hag smiled and blocked his path. "Draco Malfoy." The name sounded oozy in the hag's mouth.

"What do you want with me?" Draco asked with a caustic voice.

The hag's mouth curled into a fearsome grin. "Much."

Draco's Seeker reflexes, though rusty, told him to fake right (towards the door to the bar) but go left, and he managed to spring out of the hag's reach. He could hear his own breathing as he pushed forward, his feet slamming into the pavement to propel him away.

Rain dripped onto his forehead once he stepped away from where he'd cast a Barrier Charm, and he reached into his sleeve for his wand. But then, his body—treacherous, unwise bag of bones!—froze. He couldn't move a muscle, even to blink. His hand stilled halfway to his wand, his knee hovered preposterously in midair.

The hag appeared in front of Draco's face, and Draco could feel the fear seeping through his body, the sensation made more palpable by his body's stillness. He could still think. He could still see. He could still feel. He just couldn't move.

Accio wand, Draco thought, but nothing happened.

The hag moved closer, and Draco noticed bones jingling around his hideous neck.

"What do I want with you?" the hag taunted. "That's easy, I'd like to eat you. A child like you is a very nutritious meal for the likes of me, indeed. What's that? You would say you're not a child?" He laughed. "Foolish human, failing to recognise the most clear facts about themselves. Did you ever notice, in those sensationalised nursery stories your mummy read, that hags are often used to scare wee children into good behaviour? 'Don't play too close to the river—hags live there and eat little children who wander in.' Silly tales, humans tell, but ah! A kernel of truth, Draco Malfoy—it is in hag nature to seek out human children who behave badly."

Draco wished he could close his eyes. The rain dripped down his forehead, his hair now soaked and hanging in his eyes. Accio wand!

"Why, you ask? It's the way our magic works, you see. If I was to eat a good little boy or girl, the purity of their magic would destroy my own. You, however—you I could eat right now."

The worst part was that Draco's eyes couldn't widen, his throat couldn't swallow—all of his body's fear reflexes were immobilised.

"I am a patient old hag, though, you see," the hideous creature continued. "And you will be even tastier, even more nutritious, even more beneficial to my magic if you're given a chance to change—to become good—and you fail." The hag cackled. "And oh, Draco Malfoy, I am sure you will fail."

Potter, Draco thought, You stupid f*cking prat! Come back here and save me! Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Save people?

Maybe Draco wasn't worth saving anymore.

The hag's terrible grin stretched wider. "Harry Potter, eh? That boy from before? If I ate him, I'd probably die. For sure my magic would be lost. He's good, you see."

And, of course, the key moments of Draco's life always came down to that.

"So what shall it be?" the hag asked, tapping a long, green finger on the side of his nose. "You're far past the point of acts of penance for bad behaviour. How could I test a change of your heart?" A terrifying look of glee crossed the hag's face. "I know." He laughed, the sound echoing into the night. "I know. You think you're a sex god—you think that being able to come to this bar and copulate makes you special, as if it that's not been done by countless others in the history of the world. As if that's not been done by me."

It was just like a hag to put an unwanted image like that in Draco's brain, even at a terrifying time like this.

"Here's your task, Draco Malfoy, and I hope you fail, because you do look delectable." The hag looked up at the sky. "By the vernal equinox, the next new moon, have sex."

Draco stared at the hag, the rain dripping into his mouth and now soaking through his clothes. There must be more.

"Have sex in a relationship of love and mutual consent and enjoyment."

Well, that would be harder. But still, it was doable. Draco was a fabulous actor, after all.

"With Harry Potter."

Draco stared at the hag. A moment passed, and Draco wished he could scream, spit, hex the hag into oblivion.

The hag's terrible grin grew wider until his whole face seemed to grow to accommodate it. "Have sex. It must be an act of love and mutual enjoyment. With Harry Potter. And you cannot tell him about this curse. If you succeed, you will be free. If you fail, at height of the equinox, you will become paralysed, much like this." He gestured at Draco's frozen, useless body. "And then I will eat you, child."

The hag took a breath, yellow eyes sparkling with eager delight, and blew out hard. The hag's breath hit Draco's body with improbable force and Draco was helpless to protect himself from the tingle of unfamiliar magic that settled onto his skin.

"f*ck him," the hag said, "or die." He snapped his fingers, Draco fell to the ground, and the hag disappeared.

The next day, Draco pretended it had been a nightmare. Or at least, he attempted to pretend it had been a nightmare. For when he got out of bed and took a shower and stretched his arms and brushed his hair and still fear clung to his skin like a wet swim suit, he knew it had not been a nightmare.

And when he stood in front of the mirror and noticed a small hexafoil marking—a circle with overlapping arcs inside—on his skin, under his ear, he knew the nightmare was reality.

But though he knew, he did not acknowledge it. He ate his breakfast and went about his day, all the while endeavouring not to think.

The day after that, when Draco awoke and the fear still prickled on his skin and the hexafoil still marked his neck, he burned with anger. He stormed around his flat, breaking things that were satisfying to break, and when those were depleted he cast Reparo so he could break them again, and when that stopped working he went out and bought more breakables. He hexed a bird that got in his way. He set a tree on fire. He screamed at his neighbour.

The day after that, he went to the library; he didn't return to his flat for three days. He spent the nights hiding in the stacks, refusing to allow himself to think about all the common germs surrounding him, and eating food from the magical vending machines. He was an intelligent wizard—surely he could discover something about hags or about hag curses that would allow him to avoid this preposterous fate. First he read about hag history and psychology, trying to determine how to find this hag and convince him to remove the curse. Draco quickly realised that was unlikely to happen—hags never removed curses, and they were also impossible to locate. Then Draco researched the possibility of removing the curse. He read books by Cursebreakers and Healers, and all he found were repeated assertions that there was no known way to remove a hag curse. Then he searched for a loophole, some way to trick the curse into thinking it was fulfilled. Maybe he could find another man named Harry Potter. He looked in the Records of Births, and while there were a number of children with the given names "Harry Potter" none were yet grown men. And the hag had been frustratingly clear in wording the curse. Draco researched whether a love potion could trick the curse, but determined that it wouldn't because a person under the influence of a love potion still retained their original desires underneath the behaviour caused by the potion. The best chance of finding a loophole, Draco thought, was in the lack of specificity of the word "sex," but that didn't help him much, because even if "sex" could mean only a hand job, it still seemed a bit out of reach given that it had to be a loving and consensual hand job with Potter. It was a bust.

The day after that, back at his flat, Draco didn't get out of bed. He stared at the ceiling and thought self-pitying thoughts. He thought Why me and Why this and The world has forsaken me and f*ck hags and he wanked furiously to a fantasy of that hag dying a horrible, painful death and then he thought nothing at all and, in a state of icy numbness, buried his face in his pillow and slept.

The day after that, and not a moment too soon, Draco looked at the calendar. It was the twenty-seventh of February; he'd wasted an entire week. The equinox was in twenty-two days, on the twentieth of March. He had twenty-two days to make Harry Potter fall in love and have sex with him, a task that would not be an easy one—not for him.

Well, he told himself in an unconvincing manner, he wasn't afraid of Potter. He wouldn't condemn himself to death because he was afraid of trying to get in Potter's pants. No, he would not. He could do it. Or at least he could try.

It was Friday; he knew where Potter worked, of course. He would plant himself in a place where he would bump into Potter and he would flirt and turn on his charm and take him out to dinner or something. He needed to release the Snitch if he ever wanted to end the game.

Draco stood outside Ollivander's; Potter was training to be a wandmaker with the batty old man.

Draco had never learned how to apologise for his wartime behaviour (even though, deep down, he knew he owed many people apologies), so since the war he'd systematically avoided them. That was not to say that he continued acting like a Death Eater—no, Draco Malfoy's behaviour was despicable, but it was not like that, not anymore. In those rare moments when his latent conscience whispered in his ear, he put it at ease with rationalisations that at least he wasn't a murderer. At least he didn't want genocide. He treated Muggles the same as anyone else (which was to say, poorly, but equally so). So who cared if he wanted to go around f*cking people and being selfish and treating people badly and not caring about the world? He wasn't doing the really bad stuff, even though he would always be treated as if he was, because that's who he was in everyone's minds. Why bother trying to act good, when no one would ever believe he was capable of it?

Let people think what they wanted about him. He wasn't going to apologise—what good would it do? He simply made every effort to stay far away from the people he'd most harmed. (And, in truth, he made every effort to stay far away from everyone, because he knew he'd harmed them all.)

But somewhere near the top of the lengthy list of People He Would Apologise To If He Dared To Try, somewhere below Albus Dumbledore and Katie Bell but above nearly everyone else, would be Garrick Ollivander and Harry Potter.

Bugger.

Draco leaned against the window of the shop next door Ollivander's, waiting. The sign on the door had flipped to "Closed" about fifteen minutes ago, and Draco didn't take his eyes away, not wanting to miss Potter's departure. Potter might foil his plan by Flooing home. But Harry Potter was the type of person people liked. He, unlike Draco Malfoy, was the type of person who enjoyed small talk with the employees of neighbouring shops, inquiries after the health of sick relatives, petting crups, and all manner of community pabulum. Draco had seen him on the street here plenty of times. The only times Harry Potter winced in discomfort were when someone treated him like a celebrity; and, since he worked here, and chatted with Amelia Fortescue, and bought scones from Booridge's and books from Blott's, he'd long ago ceased to be the Saviour. At least here. At least at most times.

So Draco was fairly sure that he wouldn't Floo home. Harry Potter was about to walk out that door.

And for once in Draco's life, something went according to plan: the door opened with a magical tinkling, and Harry Potter emerged onto the pavement. Potter wore a frumpy coat and jeans, a knitted scarf wrapped around his neck, his hair wild, and Draco had to bite back a curse in his mouth about his annoyance that Potter somehow still managed to look fit.

Draco took a breath, internally harnessed his sex appeal (a practised art), and walked out of the shadows and into Potter's path.

"Potter," he said, and Potter looked up from where he was tapping the door with his wand. He was juggling his wand, a pair of leather gloves, and a tartan rucksack. "Do you need a hand?"

Offers of assistance, of course, were a surefire way to indicate sexual interest.

But Potter rolled his eyes. "What do you want? Are there no necks around for you to cannibalise?"

There was an opening there, but Draco thought it was a little premature to take it. "I was only offering a hand. You look like a—" Draco bit back the offensive comment that wanted to come out of his mouth and ended with, "a person who needs a hand."

"I've got it," Potter said skeptically, but as he attempted to sling the rucksack over his shoulder one of the gloves fell.

Draco launched forward to catch the glove. It was soft, and Draco was surprised that Potter had such nice gloves. He straightened, holding the glove aloft, and flashed a winning smile at Potter.

Potter just stared. "What do you want?"

"Would you care to accompany me to supper?"

Potter's face creased with disbelief. "Um, no."

He began to walk away, but Draco matched his stride. "A drink, then?"

Potter pulled his rucksack strap tighter on his shoulder. "Why?" he asked. "We haven't really talked in years, and last time we did you ended up snarling at me and flipping me off. Why on earth would you want to get a drink with me?"

Draco forced his face to stay casual, because he could not let on that the answer to that question was I will literally die if you don't f*ck me, and invented wildly, "I wanted to apologise for my behaviour towards you last week."

At that, Potter turned to look at him seriously for the first time. Aha, Draco thought. Apologies were the way to Potter's heart.

"And for my behaviour in the war. And for my behaviour towards you and Granger and Weasel in school. For stomping on your face that time."

Potter recoiled, his eyes narrowing in distrust, and damn it, Draco had taken the apology thing a little too far. He needed to keep it believable. f*ck.

"Malfoy, I have no idea what you think you're doing, but I swear to Merlin, I am not in the mood to deal with this today."

"I'm not doing anything," Draco lied. "Did you have a bad day?"

Expressing interest in the mind-numbingly boring details of people's lives was a surefire way to get into their pants.

"Believe it or not," Potter responded, "I don't want to chit chat about my day with you."

Honestly, that f*cking hag—if his target was anyone else, Draco would have a much easier time. But it had to be Harry f*cking Potter. Focus, Draco.

"Do you like working with Ollivander?"

Potter whirled around, coming to a complete stop. "Oh, my god. You're trying to get a story for the paper. Are you working for the Prophet? f*cking hell, Malfoy, are you talking to Skeeter again?"

Well, that hadn't gone well. "What? No! I asked you an inane question about your work. No ulterior motives." Except getting you to fall in love with and f*ck me.

Potter sighed. "I can't—I don't know how to just chat with you. Why are you following me?"

Draco had no idea how to get out of this situation. If he retreated now with no explanation, he'd look completely barmy. But if he stayed, he had no idea what to say.

"I fancy you."

Potter's eyebrows shot up, his mouth fell slack. "You—you fancy me?! How? Why? You don't even know me!"

"So let's get to know each other, then."

It was a tone of voice that would certainly pull at a club, but Potter looked at Draco like he was crazy. And, fair enough—this was crazy.

"Malfoy. No?"

"Was that a question?"

Potter sighed, hoisting the rucksack up on his shoulder. "No, it was not a question. I'm just confused. No, I don't want to get to know you because you claim to suddenly fancy me, the past decade of your behaviour notwithstanding."

Draco ran through all his possible responses—there were, sadly, few. He reached out, grabbed Potter's forearm with desperate fingers. The desperation, at least, was real.

"Look, Potter, I—can I come see you tomorrow? I promise I am not going to sell anything to the papers. Here," he said, holding out his hand, "do an Unbreakable."

"What?" Potter stepped backward. "No way. No Unbreakable. Okay, okay. Fine, yes, you can come see me tomorrow. Christ."

"Are you working?"

"No." Potter sighed. "Can you remember my address? My house is under Fidelius, so I need to tell you."

The world shifted under Draco's feet, just a bit. "You're going to let me into your Fidelius?"

Potter shrugged. "I don't trust you," he said. "But I don't think you're going to hurt me."

Draco's chest constricted. What the f*ck was that supposed to mean? Draco could certainly hurt Potter if he wanted to. "Alright. I won't."

"Harry Potter lives at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place."

Draco nodded.

"See you, Malfoy," Potter said, and Disapparated.

As he stared at the empty space where Potter had been, he thought that it could've been worse.

On the morn, Draco found himself rising from bed with shining Slytherin ambition. He was smart, he was cunning. He'd spent enough time with Potter over the years—he must know a thing or two about the man. It wasn’t as if they were strangers; even if their history was an obstacle, it was also an opportunity, if Draco played his knowledge well.

Which was how Draco Malfoy found himself at Waitrose on a Saturday morning.

The last time Draco had been to a Muggle supermarket…in truth, it was the first time Draco Malfoy had been to a Muggle supermarket, though he would be loathe to admit it. He had his meals delivered by an elf-run meal agency, which was a solution that would have horrified his parents but that was affordable for his post-reparations budget.

Waitrose was bright; that was his first impression. And crowded—there were Muggles everywhere, and Draco wasn't sure he'd ever been in an enclosed space with so many of them. He could feel his skin prickling with discomfort, all his childhood lessons about the dangers of Muggles manifesting in his body's reaction even as he told himself rationally they were not true. He took a deep breath and entered the fray.

Thank Salazar that he didn't need to shop for a week's worth of groceries, because everyone else seemed to be piling their trolleys high with mountains of food. He needed only one thing. Where was the bakery? This place must have a bakery; he'd been informed that supermarkets carried all manner of food items in the same place.

Draco felt anxiety creep up his chest and throat. He was running out of time. He was going to die and he needed every moment he could get to try to prevent that from happening. He couldn't be wasting his minutes wandering around a blasted supermarket.

f*ck it, he had to talk to a Muggle.

He quickly found one who had an apron and did not have a trolley. "Excuse me?" f*ck, this was awkward. "Would you please direct me to the bakery?"

The woman smiled—it took Draco off guard. He hadn't been smiled at, properly smiled at, in, well, years. "Of course. You're going to walk all the way to the back of the aisle and turn left. It's in the rear. You can't miss it."

"Ta," Draco said, nodding his head, and he smiled at her. He couldn't quite help it; it was so unexpected to be smiled at. He turned, feeling unbalanced, and followed her instructions. Aha, there was the bakery, and he felt oddly like a hunter-gatherer wizard of yore.

"Next!" the man behind the counter hollered.

Draco took a deep breath. It was fine. It would be fine. He could do this. It was the only way, wasn't it? It's not as if he could do this in Diagon; he'd not be welcome in Sugarplum's. It was too late to request it from his agency.

"Hullo," Draco said bravely. "May I please have your best treacle tart?"

He Apparated to Potter's front step at eleven o'clock in the morning holding a pink and white checked box that said "Waitrose Treacle Tart."

It felt harder this day than it had the day before—probably because yesterday had gone poorly and Draco only had twenty-one days left. He couldn't afford to keep digging himself into deeper trouble.

What had he learned yesterday? Apologise, but don't over-do it. Treacle tart. He could do this.

He walked up the steps and knocked on the door. What an ugly door knocker.

A moment later, Potter opened the door. He was wearing loose-fitting jeans, a strange Muggle t-shirt with sleeves inexplicably a different colour than the torso, and horrible white socks. "Hi."

"Hello," Draco said, a quiver in his voice betraying his nerves to any attentive listener. He held up the tart. "I've brought treacle tart."

Potter raised an eyebrow. "How did you know it's my favourite?"

"We ate in the same place for six years, Potter," Draco said. "You weren't exactly subtle, shovelling it in your mouth at every available opportunity."

Draco winced internally—sh*t. He was supposed to be winning Potter over, not goading him. His tendency to poke Potter was going to end up killing him.

But Potter, unexpectedly, laughed. "Come in, then."

Draco stepped inside, feeling like he'd taken one step closer to his goal. Not that he had any idea what to do now.

Potter led him through the house to the kitchen and flicked his wand at a kettle. "Plates are in there," he said, pointing.

What atrocious manners; Draco could almost hear his mother tsking.

Draco took two plates from the cabinet and cast Slicing and Levitation Charms to serve the tart while Potter made two mugs of tea.

They sat awkwardly for a moment, then Potter picked up his fork, said, "So tell me why you're doing this," and took a bite of tart. "That thing about you fancying me was bullsh*t."

Draco pushed his many memories of wanking to visions of stupid Harry Potter resolutely out of his mind. That wasn't fancying, anyway.

"I'm trying to…make amends," Draco said, hoping his face looked sincere. He didn't feel sincere.

But Potter gave a short nod. Almost as if it was believable that Draco wanted to change. "Alright," he said, "go ahead."

Draco had no idea what to say next. He had sort of thought that he would say "I want to make amends" and that would be the end. He quickly took a bite of tart to buy some time. Ugh, the tart was a bit cold. He pulled his wand and cast a gentle Warming Charm.

Potter took another bite of his tart, then looked up in surprise. "You warmed my tart."

"Don't read anything into it, Potter," Draco spit. "It needed warming. If we're going to eat insipid supermarket tart, it at least needs warming."

"It's better. Er, thanks."

And somehow Draco had managed to snap at Potter again! This was doomed. Apologise. But believably.

"I'm sorry I fixed the cabinet," Draco blurted.

Potter put down his fork.

"I—there were a lot of times in the war when I didn't have much choice. But I—with he Vanishing Cabinet—I could've allowed myself to fail. I didn't want the Death Eaters in Hogwarts, but I did it anyway. I'm sorry."

Draco's heart was beating at an alarming rate. He wondered if that was believable. He wondered if he believed it.

Potter took a sip of tea. "You know, I don't really blame you for the things that happened in the war."

What?

"I, er, I don't know how to say this without sounding like a creep,” Potter said, running a hand through his hair. “During the war, I sometimes had visions of Voldemort's mind. I saw you, sometimes. I felt bad for you, even then."

Draco's eyes widened. No, f*ck, no, not pity. No. f*ck.

"So I can honestly say," Potter continued, "that I forgive you for the cabinet. I can forgive your actions during the war. I saw you at the Manor that time—I've never seen you look so miserable. But Malfoy, I can't forgive your beliefs that easily."

Draco's throat felt so tight, he thought he might choke.

Potter fiddled with his fork. "I don't know what you want from me. If you just want to hear me say I forgive you for the war, well, I forgive you. If you want like, amends amends, I don't know. If you want like, full absolution…f*ck, Malfoy. I'm not a clergyman. I'd have to know you're not a bigot. I'd have to see you do good things. I'd have to see you apologise to Hermione for all those times you called her the m-word."

This was too real. Somehow, Draco had thought he could just act out an apology to start winning Potter over, but this didn't feel like acting, and Potter's words sliced through his armour, and they hurt. They hurt because Draco knew he could never get full absolution. He'd never even dared hope for partial absolution.

He had to get out of there. Quit while he was ahead, it was only practical. This had gone okay, so he needed to leave. It wasn't running away—not at all.

"I have to go," Draco said, standing.

Unless Draco was mistaken, Potter looked disappointed. Had he actually expected Draco to launch in on an explanation about how he'd overcome all his past prejudices?

"I mean, yes," Draco said. "Sure. I will show you that I've changed. But right now I need to go."

Potter stood up. "Alright? You’re leaving. Okay. Thanks for the treacle tart."

Draco couldn't leave without an excuse to see Potter again. Baked goods wouldn't work a second time. Well, maybe they would—Potter was awfully fond of treacle tart. But in any case, Draco needed to be smart about this. What excuse could he use to see him again? He should've thought this through.

"Potter, want to go flying tomorrow?"

Potter smiled incredulously. "Flying?"

"Yes, well, I haven't been flying in awhile. Not since school, really. And I—"

"Alright," Potter said.

Draco hadn't expected him to relent so quickly. He wasn't sure if Potter was desperate for a fly, or if Potter was now convinced that Draco was on a quest for absolution and that Potter somehow felt obligated to help Draco save himself. Potter had always had a bit of a saving-people thing, hadn't he?

And Draco was on a quest to save himself, even if his motives were less pure than all that. So perhaps Potter's energies were not misplaced.

"Two o'clock at the local pitch in Highbury? Near Highbury fields?" Potter asked.

"See you then," Draco said, and fled, wondering whether Potter’s eyes were on his back. They were.

Draco stood at the entrance to the local pitch; his demeanour screamed impatience, for it was 2:01, and Potter was late.

Draco hated the local Quidditch pitch. It was full of disconcerting people and brought to mind Lucius's old rants about the hoi polloi. There was litter and magical graffiti and the people there wore joggers and you had to sign in on a parchment at the front desk and it was first-come-first-served and sometimes people played rap music.

He tried to ignore it.

Flying was a good idea, though—he wouldn't have to talk much to Potter; he could just fly and maybe let Potter win the game, and slowly get Potter used to having him around. Talking was dangerous. He needed more time to figure Potter out before he would be able to talk without saying something stupid that made Potter respond with pity eyes and war stories.

Pity eyes and war stories were not the goal. Pity eyes and war stories would not get him f*cked.

A voice called, "Hey!" and Draco looked up to see Potter approaching, carrying one of those broom bags that disguised the broom as a Muggle yoga mat. "Where's your broom?"

Draco's shoulders tightened. "I don't have one anymore. They rent them, yeah?"

"Yeah," Potter said, pushing the door open. "You should've told me; I have extras."

Draco wanted to roll his eyes—of course Potter had extras. Draco's broom had been in the Manor when it was confiscated. He followed Potter into the office.

Potter signed their names on the parchment while Draco paid five Sickles to rent a broom.

"Pitch 5 is available, Mr Potter," the witch behind the desk informed Potter. "If you don't need a pitch with hoops."

"Perfect," Potter said with an easy smile. "We're just playing a Seekers' game."

"Two-hour time limit if anyone's waiting," the witch informed, and Potter nodded.

Potter stood next to Draco while he waited for the witch to bring over his rental broom. It was awkward and silent for a few moments, and then the witch came over with an old Firebolt. Not bad for a rental broom. She placed it on the counter, and Draco took out his wand to cast a Sanitisation Charm at it.

"Are you sanitising your broom?" Potter asked, his tone somewhere between amusem*nt and disdain.

"Yes," Draco said, refusing to let Potter rattle him. It was a reasonable thing to do. "I don't want to catch an illness."

"You do know poverty isn't contagious, right?"

Draco turned a quelling expression on Potter, but Potter was joking. What an arse.

"Well, dragon pox is contagious." The broom clean, Draco picked it up and headed in the direction indicated by a sign that said, "Pitches 1–5."

Potter snorted and followed.

They walked through the door labelled "Five" into a magically enlarged space—not large enough for a full game, but perfect for flying drills or a Seekers' game. It was not nice. At a private club, the ceiling would be charmed to look like the sky, the air would be charmed breezy, and it would smell better. But this would suffice.

Potter put his bag down and when he unzipped it the yoga-mat illusion dropped, abruptly revealing a broom in a long bag. He unzipped his hoodie, and Draco needed to distract himself because Potter looked unfairly good in that tight t-shirt.

"Do you fly often?" Draco asked, wishing he could've thought of something better to say.

Potter frowned. "Not as often as I'd like. Ron's always exhausted from Auror training, so he never feels like flying when he's got time off. And George doesn't like to fly anymore. Ginny could never come here, she'd be swarmed, but we fly sometimes at the Burrow. I play with Dean sometimes, but he and Seamus are often in America now because Dean's teaching art over there." Potter shrugged.

"You must spend more time with Ollivander than anyone else, these days," Draco replied, trying not to get caught up on the fact that Harry Potter, of all people, couldn't find anyone to go flying with him.

Potter huffed out a small chuckle, reaching into his bag for a water bottle. The water bottle said "Gryffindor Quidditch Captain 1996–1997."

"Yeah, I suppose I do," he said and then took a sip from the bottle.

"Nice water bottle," Draco said, unable to stop himself from teasing Potter. It was too ingrained to stop, really. "Do you often flaunt your school achievements? Is there a point at which that becomes a bit pitiful and washed up?"

"Malfoy," Potter said with a raised brow, "if I am flaunting the fact that I was Quidditch captain for my house team, I think I'm good. It's not like I'm walking around wearing a t-shirt that says 'I killed Voldemort when I was seventeen.'"

"Did you kill him, exactly?" Draco asked before he could remind himself that this was probably not the type of discussion that won hearts. "Or did you merely allow him to kill himself?"

Potter stared at him for a long moment and Draco felt the hag curse press in on him like a death sentence, but then Potter burst into loud laughter.

"You know," Potter said, "one time I slept with Flint, and I can tell you that he still wears his Slytherin Captain t-shirt. It doesn't even still fit him."

"You slept with Flint?" Draco's voice came out like a hiss.

Potter shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, just the once. He's kind of an arsehole, isn't he? It was stupid of me, really. But he's the type of bloke who peaked at school."

"You slept with Flint?"

"Why?" Potter asked, confused. "Have you?"

Well, Draco had slept with Flint. But that wasn't the point. "No. I mean, yes. But you did?"

Potter hoisted his broom up over his shoulder and said with frustration, "Why the f*ck can't I, if you did?"

Draco gaped. "Because you're good."

"Uh, well, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'm pretty sure sleeping with someone doesn't affect your goodness. Unless you're like, raping them. Or contributing to the org*sm gap."

"What the f*ck is the org*sm gap?"

"Oh. Er, it's a thing. Hermione. Well, okay, so, blokes almost always org*sm when they have sex, but straight women only org*sm like sixty percent of the time."

"Huh?" Draco said. "Why?"

Potter shrugged. "Because straight men are lazy? Or untalented? I don't know."

"Potter, do you have sex with women?"

He shrugged again. "Yeah. I'm bi." Then he suddenly looked defensive. "I always make sure they come!"

Draco hummed. "But women fake it, Potter. How do you know?"

"They fake it because they're socialised to—you know what, no. If you want to have that argument you can do it directly with Hermione, I'm not going proxy that."

Draco grinned, then remembered what they were talking about. "I cannot believe you f*cked Flint. He is such a bellend."

"Maybe I like bellends," Potter said, and then he grabbed a Snitch from his bag, straddled his broom, and was off.

Draco blinked—maybe there was a sliver of hope for him, after all—and followed Potter into the air. It was strange, flying again, being in the air with no one but Potter. Potter had always looked so at home in the air, and that, at least, hadn't changed.

Potter held up the Snitch. It was glittery purple. "Are you ready?"

"Why do you have a purple Snitch?"

"Why not?" he asked, and released the Snitch.

"How long are we waiting?" Draco asked, hovering in the air almost close enough to touch Potter's leg with his foot.

"How long do you want to wait?" Potter asked, and Draco's gaze fell on his muscular forearms grasping the broom, and suddenly Draco was overwhelmed with a powerful urge to kiss him. What the f*ck? He wasn't supposed to want to kiss Potter. Draco wondered whether the hag curse was screwing with his brain; he'd thought the one thing he'd managed to avoid was a lust compulsion.

Draco, in his haste to get away, didn't answer, but flew away, wind whipping his hair into his eyes, looking for the purple Snitch despite Potter having not said go. Potter cursed behind him and Draco grinned. Perhaps he shouldn't have been enjoying narking off Potter, but it felt right in a way most things no longer did.

Time flew. Twice they raced to the Snitch and the tricky little bugger managed to jet away as they knocked elbows and flattened their bodies against their brooms.

"This isn't a beginner Snitch!" Draco hollered at one point, and Potter swivelled on his broom and grinned.

"No, it's not!"

"But it's purple!"

"Don't underestimate things because of their appearance!" Potter shouted back with a grin. Potter turned then, darting off in the other direction and performing a barrel roll, and Draco was surprised at how Potter could seem so happy from something so simple. He wondered if this was his first time seeing Potter relax—maybe the key was getting Potter on even ground (or even sky, really), not accosting him at his work or with tarts.

And then Draco saw it, a speck of purple, and he shot forward on his rented broom, wind whipping, and he had it. He caught the Snitch.

f*ck! His plan had been to let Potter win. He stared at the delicate purple wings, fluttering uselessly in his hand. He had finally caught the Snitch against Harry Potter.

"You absolute f*cker!" Potter called, but he was laughing. He zoomed up next to Draco and came to a stop. "I wasn't looking."

"I know," Draco gloated, unable to stop himself. "That's why I won."

Potter groaned, but it was good-natured. He held his hand out, his broom hovering in the air. "Good game, Malfoy," he said.

Draco wasn't sure if it was the conciliatory sportsmanship or the tight t-shirt or the fact that Potter was offering his hand, but Draco's breath caught in his chest as he reached forward to shake the outstretched hand.

Draco awoke the next morning, his brain swimming with images of broomsticks and colourful Snitches and strong hands.

He felt his whole life was a dream now; it was hard to separate his dreams from his waking life, and his pre-curse life was starting to feel like a distant memory. He shook his head.

Potter would be working today. Draco had to get up. He had to find the energy to win him over, to trick Potter into loving him.

Draco laughed. What a preposterous proposition.

Then again, had there ever been a time when his life wasn't preposterous? In a way, it was nice to have it obviously, unequivocally preposterous, for once. At least he had a purpose.

Draco got out of bed and stared into his ornate mirror. "A Glamour for the dark circles, I'd say," the mirror offered.

Draco sighed. "I'm trying to impress a man who dresses like a Muggle and casts spells like Merlin. I have no idea what look to go for."

The mirror hummed. "Perhaps a haircut."

Three hours later, Draco Apparated to Diagon feeling like a moron. He'd gone to a posh Muggle hair salon and told them he needed a new look and to impress someone, and they'd given him a "buzzcut."

He was extremely proud of himself for not hexing the stylist when he’d pulled out a loud, menacing, hand-held machine.

The stylist told Draco he looked "striking."

Draco felt like an idiot. He walked into Ollivander's anyway.

As soon as he stepped inside, he felt himself wrapped in old magic. It made his fingers itch.

The place was shadowy and narrow, boxes everywhere, and Draco took a deep breath.

"Draco Malfoy," that soft, whiskery voice said, and fear gripped Draco. He had sworn he'd never come back in here. He'd had a new wand made in France. Ollivander continued, "I was wondering when I'd see you again."

"Mr Ollivander," Draco said, inclining his head.

"Ten inches, hawthorn wood, unicorn hair core," the old man said, coming out from behind the counter, his large eyes shining behind his spectacles. "Reasonably pliant."

Draco tried to ignore the crushing sensation on his chest. "Yes." It was a bit tedious, talking to this man, really.

"That wand defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named." Mr Ollivander stared at him.

"Indeed," Draco responded, and he wanted to run. He wanted to run away, but he had to get to Potter. "I have a new wand now, but that's not what brings me here today."

Ollivander stepped closer, tilted his head. "You're here for Harry Potter."

Draco swallowed. "Yes."

The old man hummed thoughtfully. "On a quest for change, we must open our eyes, Mr Malfoy. To become good, we must welcome goodness." He pointed a wizened finger through a door in the rear of the tiny shop.

"Thank you," Draco said, not having anything else to say. He walked quickly past the old man, the dust from the shop swirling in the light coming through the front windows.

He opened the door and stopped. Potter was there, at a table, a pair of complicated goggles on his head. His hair stuck up around the goggles. The table was covered with wood, and Potter was casting at a large piece of wood. The wood glowed green, and Potter inspected it, reaching up to adjust something on the goggles. Then he looked up.

"Malfoy," Potter said, and then he seemed to register the hair, which Draco had nearly forgotten about. "You've shaved your head. Why have you shaved your head?!"

His eyes were wide, and the goggles and his glasses rendered the wide-eyed look a bit frightening.

"It's not shaved," Draco corrected pointlessly. "I still have hair. It's a buzzcut."

Potter walked over, pushing the goggles up onto the top of his head. His face conveyed pure amusem*nt. "But why?" he asked. "I never see pure-bloods with buzzcuts. It's a Muggle haircut, really. You need to use those Muggle clippers."

"Yes, well," Draco said. He had not thought this through at all.

Potter's hand was halfway raised before he said, "Can I touch it?"

Oh, Merlin's pants. Okay. Well, that was good. That was a step in the right direction. Nevermind that Draco didn't want anyone touching his f*cking head, and he wasn't used to how it felt yet himself, and he had enough training in manners that he wasn't going to walk around in public rubbing his own f*cking head.

"Sure," Draco croaked.

Potter reached his hand up and ran it over Draco's shorn hair. Potter's lips quirked into a smile, and shivering tingles bloomed down Draco's spine. Oh. Wow. Potter was touching him like—had anyone ever touched him like that? Potter’s hand stroked his hair longer than Draco felt was strictly necessary, and the intimacy of it made Draco’s breath catch.

"I think you're barmy," Potter announced, eyes wide, removing his hand.

Draco couldn't say anything.

"I mean, it looks good, though. Just doesn't look Malfoyish. It makes your hair look darker, too. I’m used to you being all, you know, white-blond."

“Well,” Draco said, “blond hair usually gets darker as people get older. Surely you must have noticed that.”

“Yeah,” Potter replied, “but not Malfoy blond. Look at your dad!”

Draco raised an eyebrow. “You think my father’s hair was that colour naturally?”

Potter’s face reflected surprise and after a moment he burst into a loud laugh. They were still standing so close, and Potter's gaze quirked to Draco's neck, and crap, that meant he had seen the mark. "You have a tattoo?" Potter leaned closer to look, and Draco could smell him. Oh, Circe. Potter smelled like wood.

"It's a—" What the f*ck could he say the curse mark was? "It's a rune."

Potter took a step back. "Well. You certainly don't look like your father."

Draco laughed, he actually laughed because sweet Merlin, he didn't. Lucius would hate everything about how Draco currently looked, but Lucius wasn't here. "Yes, I'd say not."

"What are you doing here?" Potter asked.

"I brought some lunch," Draco said, feeling like he was coming on way too strong—but what was he supposed to do? He couldn't take his time.

"You brought me lunch," Potter deadpanned. "With a buzzcut."

"Well, the buzzcut isn't for you." That was a lie. "The lunch is."

"Alright," Potter said incredulously. "Draco Malfoy with a buzzcut brought me lunch. Alright." He pulled off the goggles and put them on the table. "Do you ever just feel like you're losing the plot?"

Draco smiled. "Yes." That was not a lie.

Potter walked towards the side of the room and sat cross-legged on the floor. "I'm not clearing off that table. So."

Okay, fine. This was fine. Draco could eat—on the floor. He could eat on the floor. He could definitely eat on the floor. He swallowed his revulsion and sat.

Draco held out a bag of takeaway, and Harry began to unpack it.

"Do you get used to the magic in here, being around it a lot?"

Potter pulled out a sandwich. "A little. But honestly, not really. It's crazy to be around so many magical conduits all the time. When I first started working here I kept having flares of accidental magic."

"Is that normal?" Draco asked. He knew it was not.

Potter shrugged. "Not really. Turns out I have a lot of magic."

Draco burst into laughter—he couldn't help it. Potter was so acutely ridiculous. "Turns out."

Potter grinned; he didn't seem embarrassed. Draco wondered if he was this honest with everyone, or if their history was somehow part of it.

"Why are you pretending to woo me?" Potter said, and took a bite of sandwich.

"I'm not," Draco said.

Potter tilted his head. "You're not pretending or you're not wooing me?"

There was no way Draco could answer that question. "What do you think?"

"I haven't decided yet," Potter said, and his green eyes bore into Draco's soul.

On the morrow, Draco awoke feeling angry that he was in the position of having to fall in love with Harry Potter. What if he didn't want to fall in love with Harry Potter? What kind of bullsh*t was this, anyway? He thought he'd escaped the clutches of forced love when his parents died. And when he came out of the closet. And yet, here he was.

Somehow, until now, he'd only thought about the fact that he had to get Potter to fall in love with him, but now, for some reason, he was thinking about the fact that he had to fall in love with Potter.

He didn't want to fall in love with Potter. He supposed he'd happily f*ck him—who wouldn't? Wank over him—sure, he'd done that plenty of times. (Again, who hadn't?) But fall in love? Bloody buggering hell.

But the question he faced was, what did he want to avoid more: death or loving Potter?

Being around Potter was like staring at the sun; Draco started to feel uncomfortable within seconds. And yet, there was that draw. He could barely imagine what being in love with Potter would be like. Burning, he supposed, if he wanted to stretch his metaphor.

But Draco didn't want to die. He walked to the post office and sent Potter an owl asking if they could see each other that evening. Then he attempted to distract himself with reading, but nothing could keep his interest. Who wanted to read about ancient blood magic rituals (usually this was his preferred magazine) when faced with nearly certain death?

Before long, a barn owl rapped at Draco's window, and he untied the letter.

Malfoy, I can't get together tonight because I already have plans to eat at Ron and Hermione's. They said you're welcome to come, if you like. If you want to come, meet me at my place at 7 and we can go together. -H.P.

After screaming a few choice obscenities at the hag, Draco considered his options. If he didn't go, he'd be admitting that he was avoiding Ron and Hermione, which would be terribly unstrategic because they were Potter's closest friends and because it would make it seem like he refused to cavort with a Muggleborn.

He had to go. f*ck this all to hell.

Potter, I'll see you at 7. -D.M.

That evening, Draco stared at himself in the mirror. He looked so different. With his hair so short, there was nothing to hide behind. And then there was the curse mark, which made him look like the type of person who would choose to get a tattoo in a conspicuous place. He looked like a different person. He ran his hand over his hair, trying to feel what Potter would've felt yesterday.

"It looks good," the mirror offered.

Draco humphed.

"It does." When Draco didn't answer, the mirror continued, "Where are you going?"

"Dinner party at the house of people who hate me."

"Expected attire?"

Draco sighed. "Casual. Muggle."

The mirror tsked. "You know, you're going to have to wear jeans."

"Thank you," Draco hissed. "I'd figured that out on my own."

"I have a further suggestion," the cheeky mirror said. "Only if you want to hear it, of course."

At exactly seven o'clock, as was befitting Malfoy punctuality, Draco arrived on Potter's front step and knocked on the door.

Potter opened the door, and then his mouth dropped. It visibly dropped. Draco needed to thank his stupid mirror.

"You're wearing red."

Draco grinned. Or at least, he hoped it came out as a grin and not a grimace. "What's wrong with red?"

"N—nothing. You're wearing red and you're wearing jeans. You're wearing jeans with wizarding shoes."

"Am I dressed improperly?" Draco asked. "I can pop back home and change."

Harry reached out and grabbed Draco's wrist, pulling him inside. "No. You look good. It's just—red. And jeans."

Draco tried to keep a smirk off his face. "I'm not accustomed to these Muggle trousers, Potter. Can you tell me if they fit properly?" He spun around, sticking his arse backward with flair and a pause, and then turned the rest of the circle. "Well?"

Potter was staring. The jeans were actually quite baggy, which the mirror assured him was the style, but apparently it had worked anyway. He certainly felt ridiculous, and he vaguely hoped that the hag was happy with his utter debasem*nt.

"They look good," Potter said.

Draco knew that he wasn't the best looking wizard. He was too pointy. But his arse was not too pointy, praise Merlin, and he was a bit taken aback to realise that Potter found him attractive.

"Great,” Draco said. “So is it time to go?"

"Er, yes. Let me just grab the salad I made."

"You made a salad to take to dinner?"

"Yeah," Potter said. "We all chip in, you know? That way it's not too much work for any one person."

Draco would never get used to these strange Gryffindor customs. Potter returned holding a wooden bowl and a small glass pitcher.

"What's that?" Draco asked.

"Oh, Ron and I are obsessed with salad dressing made with blue cheese."

Draco looked confused.

"Hermione says that she's not taking part in mixing cheese with sour cream and calling it a salad dressing. So I made it."

No, Draco was never going to figure him out.

Potter walked towards his fireplace and took a handful of Floo powder. "You want me to go first? Their house is called The Library."

"Granger won that argument?"

"Thank Merlin," Harry said. "Ron wanted to call it Chudley's Cabin." He threw a handful of powder into the flames, and in a moment Draco found himself alone in Potter's house, about to Floo to a place that felt like the lion's den.

He stepped in the flames. "The Library." He spun and was spit out into a cluttered sitting room. Potter was brushing ashes off his clothes like a Muggle, and Draco huffed as he pulled his wand and Vanished the ashes from them both and the floor. When he looked up, Potter, Weasley, and Granger were all staring at him strangely.

"Hello," Draco said, feeling profoundly out of place, and held his hand out to Granger, who was closer and who, moreover, seemed the less dangerous of the two. "Thank you for inviting me to your home."

Granger shook his hand, a curious expression on her face. She looked older; she'd grown into her teeth and her hair. She had curvy hips and was wearing a casual dress that looked comfortable and smart. "Malfoy," she said. "It's good of you to come."

Draco swallowed. He was frankly terrified that she and Weasley would somehow seal the fate of his death. He nodded at her and turned to Weasley, who was an unfortunate three or four inches taller than Draco and covered with more freckles even than Draco remembered—and Draco had remembered a lot of freckles.

"Malfoy," Weasley said, and held out his hand.

Draco shook his hand and hoped they could immediately move past these awkward greetings. "Weasley."

"We're both Granger-Weasley now," Weasley said.

Of course they f*cking were.

Potter saved him, as was his wont. "Malfoy and I went flying yesterday."

"Really?" Granger asked in a low voice, raising one of her dark brows at Potter.

"I'm trying to make amends," Draco decided to say, as it was the only way to explain this ridiculous situation.

Granger took a long look at his hair, then announced, "Alright." She touched Potter's elbow. "Harry, can you bring that into the kitchen? I'm heating up the food Ron made earlier."

Potter left the room, and Draco found himself alone with Ronald Granger-Weasley. Say something polite! "This is a lovely house," Draco said, which was a lie because the house was small and crowded with stuff, and the walls were barely visible behind the stacks of books and frames of art and photos, and there was orange cat hair everywhere. A pair of gold frames over the mantel held embroidered, colourful art, one a modern-looking dog, and the other a modern-looking otter.

"Are you trying to hurt him?" Weasley asked without preamble.

"What? No!" Draco said. He exhaled. "I mean, I can understand why it would seem that way. But I'm not."

"So you're trying to get in his pants, then?"

Draco huffed a laugh that he hoped sounded incredulous. "Why would you say that?"

"Well, Harry told me you said you fancied him. But even if he hadn’t. You show up at his work, and at his house, and you two go flying, and then you show up," Weasley waved his long arm in the direction of Draco's hair. "With this haircut and wearing bloody Gryffindor red."

"So Potter does like men in red?" Probably Draco should've been more circ*mspect.

"I have no f*cking clue what Harry sees in the men he's attracted to." And with that, Weasley turned around and headed for the kitchen.

Well. Draco followed him through the corridor and into a small but tidy kitchen. Granger was pulling out plates, and Potter was standing at the round wooden kitchen table placing a vase in the centre.

"Oh, Malfoy," Potter said, pulling his wand. "House rules—everyone who eats has to Conjure a flower." He pointed at the vase and whispered, "Orchideous." A stem of larkspur landed in the vase.

Granger set the plates down and pointed her wand; a gladiolus appeared. She turned to Draco with an expectant eye, as if his reaction to this flower tradition would tell her something significant about him. He refused to let her gaze make him nervous—he pulled his wand and cast. A pretty deep purple flower landed next to Granger's.

"Anemone," Granger said. "Interesting. Come on, Ron."

Weasley waved his wand and a sunflower completed the bouquet. They all sat, and Draco took the fourth place at the table, feeling like he did not belong.

"So," Granger said, serving salad onto her plate. "What are you up to these days, Malfoy?"

They all knew what he was doing these days; he was in the tabloids constantly. But apparently they were going to pretend otherwise. Alright.

"I've been thinking about my life," Draco said, and that wasn't a lie. "Doing research. Trying to figure out how to do something different in life."

Granger frowned, but then she nodded.

"I've also been up to beating Potter to the Snitch," Draco added, and grinned across the table.

Potter rolled his eyes. "That was pure luck." But he grinned back.

Awaking in the middle of a nightmare filled with Weasley's scrutinising eyes and the ghost of Granger's war-time screams, Draco jolted upright. His heart raced. Sweat coated his skin. He dragged a hand over his hair and jumped when he felt the short spiky-softness.

Nothing was alright. Nothing was normal. He couldn't ignore the things he needed to ignore, because all his carefully crafted defence mechanisms were being torn down by dealing with this curse.

Winning Potter meant winning Potter's friends. Draco was going to have to apologise to Granger. Granger would report back to Potter and it would improve Potter's opinion of Draco.

If it stopped these nightmares, all the better.

And, thusly, Draco found himself on a Wednesday heading for Granger's office. He didn't fancy apologising to Granger whilst Weasley looked on with knowing eyes, so it would probably be best at work. And in a public place.

Granger worked in the Ministry, of course, and Draco despised going to the Ministry. The Ministry meant suspicious eyes and contemptuous glares and horrible, suffocating reminders of Lucius and the war.

He went anyway.

He stepped out of the phone booth and into the Atrium wearing a badge that read Draco Malfoy, Overdue Atonement with Hermione Granger-Weasley. Cheeky f*cking sentient phone booth. He walked quickly towards the lifts, resolutely not making eye contact with anyone. In the lift, he looked at his shoes. It was a style of shoe that Lucius had insisted upon, with a sort of tapering toe and a buckle. f*cking hell, but Draco didn't want these shoes anymore. What was wrong with him? The lift dinged (“Level four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, incorporating Beast, Being, and Spirit Divisions, Goblin Liaison Office, and Pest Advisory Bureau") and Draco walked out.

It didn't take long to find the door labelled Hermione Granger-Weasley, and Draco took a deep breath and knocked.

"Come in!" her voice called, and Draco opened the door.

She was surrounded by a sea of papers—parchments floated in the air all around her head. The papers parted, allowing her to look through, and her eyebrows flew up. "Malfoy."

"Hello," Draco said. "May I sit?"

"Of course," she said, and with a wave of her wand all of the papers landed in a neat stack on the corner of her desk.

"Thank you for supper last night." This was f*cking awkward.

"My pleasure," she said, and folded her hands on the desk. She gave him a look that indicated she was waiting to hear what he had to say.

"I—Potter might have mentioned to you that I am trying to make amends." Draco looked up, but she didn't say anything. "I know it's been a long time. But I was an arse to you. I'm sorry for calling you names and treating you poorly and I'm sorry you got tortured in my house." She kept looking at him, so he kept talking. "I never wanted to watch you get Crucioed. I never wanted to watch anyone get hurt."

"You know," Granger said thoughtfully, "I never blamed you for that. Bellatrix was insane."

"Yes, she was." Draco wildly tried to calculate what else he should say to get on Granger's good side.

"I forgave you for calling me a mudblood a long time ago," Granger said, and Draco sucked in a breath—he had never really expected to hear her say that. "We were young. People do stupid things when they're young."

Draco opened his mouth, but then couldn't think of anything to say, and closed it again.

"The only thing that matters for your amends is how you act now. Not that you owe me anything, anyway. I'm perfectly happy without your apology. Did you see a Mindhealer?"

"What?" Draco asked, not following.

"After the war, did you see a Mindhealer?"

Draco shook his head.

She hummed. "I did. I made Harry and Ron go a bit, too, but they weren't invested in it. Anyway, I am responsible for my own recovery, for my own happiness, right? I couldn't sit around waiting for apologies from anyone, including you. You move on by forgiving, but forgiving doesn't mean condoning. The Mindhealer said that I should forgive people for what happened, but that didn't mean condoning their behaviour, it just meant that I wasn't going to allow it to weigh on me anymore. Does that make sense?"

Draco nodded, but no. It didn't make sense.

"Anyway, I forgave you a long time ago. I forgave Voldemort and Bellatrix and everyone else, too. None of what happened is okay. But it doesn't weigh on me anymore."

"Is," Draco began, unsure how to ask what he wanted to. "Is Harry as well-adjusted about all of this as you are?"

Granger gave him a searching look. "No. But he had a much harder time of it than I did, wouldn't you say? He's mostly okay, but you know what? You'll have to ask him yourself."

"Alright," Draco answered, feeling a bit Gryffindorish. "I will."

"Hey, Draco? Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," he said, "though I might not answer."

She cracked a smile. "That's your prerogative. You like him, don't you? I mean, you don't just want to f*ck him."

He stared at her. "I—I don't know."

She nodded, and it set Draco on edge because it seemed understanding, and understanding was only a tiny step away from pity. "Just—"

"Are you going to threaten me about how I'm not allowed to hurt him?"

She raised an eyebrow. "No. You know I'd kill you if you did that." Somehow, he didn't think she was joking. She continued, "Just, Harry is lonelier than he lets on."

He nodded. "Thanks, Granger," and stood to leave.

"Hermione," she corrected.

"Thanks, Hermione." And he fled, his eagerness to escape the Ministry easily discerned by all who watched him walk swiftly from the building.

Draco woke to a clock chime that threatened to rip his skull in half.

Perhaps he should not have got drunk on Goblin gin after his chat with Granger. He needed his wits about him, he needed to see Potter, but all he wanted to do was press his face in a pillow and groan.

Granger and Potter both claimed to have forgiven him for his actions in the war, but implicit in that was that they wouldn't continue to overlook more bad behaviour. Whatever their subjective Gryffindor Saviourish definition of "bad" was. So Draco needed to convince them that he was good.

It was, indeed, laughable.

But if he was going to try, he should show Harry that he wasn't prejudiced against Muggles—that was the biggest hurdle.

The day before, Draco hadn't seen Harry at all, busy as he had been apologising to Granger and getting pissed, so there was no time to lose. It was Thursday, so he should plan to see Potter after work.

Granger said Potter was lonely. And Potter certainly didn't lack for friends or for people fawning over him, so it followed that what he must lack is people who would treat him like him and not like the Saviour. Well, Draco could do that.

Scarhead, Come to my flat after work? I have something to show you. -D.M.

Draco scrawled his address at the bottom of the parchment before sealing it. Then he dressed quickly and rushed out the door for the post office and some Muggle shopping.

That evening, at half past six, Draco stood in his flat, uncertain. Should he make it look nice? No one ever came to his flat. It was always a f*cking mess because he had no idea how to keep a place clean without a house-elf. He settled on picking up the most obvious of the messes but leaving the place a bit untidy, as that was more authentic and would appeal to Potter's internal chaos.

When a knock sounded on the door, Draco bounded over and opened it. Potter had that end-of-day exhaustion about him, but he still looked amazing in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with a short-sleeved t-shirt layered inexplicably on top of it. He carried his work robes slung over his arm, and he looked curious.

"Come in," Draco said, wondering how long until Potter noticed his—

"Are you wearing Converse?" Potter exclaimed, laughing. "Holy sh*t, Malfoy, I've never seen you wearing Muggle shoes before. Even the other day, in those jeans, you had on those—"

"Yes, yes," Draco said, secretly pleased but also horribly embarrassed. "I had to get new shoes because the wizarding ones don't match my new hair."

Potter laughed and threw his robes and rucksack on the floor by the door. "So what did you have to show me?" he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"Ah, come look," Draco said. "I've been to Currys." Potter followed him into his sitting room where an enormous box read "43-inch Pioneer Elite PRO-920HD."

"You bought a television?" Potter asked, a bit stupidly in Draco's opinion.

"A plasma screen," Draco said. "The employee assured me it is top of the line. And a DVD player. I was hoping you would help me set them up."

Potter turned to him with wide green eyes. "You bought a plasma screen television. And a DVD player."

Draco did his best to look alluring, or confident, or something that wasn't how he felt, which was wrong-footed. "Yes. I thought we could watch a film."

"A film," Potter echoed.

"Yes. I asked the employee what the best movie ever made was and he gave me these." Draco held out two small boxes still in their plastic packaging.

"The Matrix and Citizen Kane?"

"Yes, do you know them?"

Potter burst into laughter and then walked into the sitting room and sat on the floor, ripping at the cardboard with his hands. Draco took a breath, trying not to get frustrated at the fact that not only was Potter not acting like a wizard, he was acting like a Muggle who didn't even understand how to use simple tools like a knife. Draco sat next to him.

"They're usually pretty easy to set up, if you have the magic converter kit. Did you get that?"

"Yes, it's over here." Draco pushed his shame out of his mind; he knew what Lucius would've said if he'd seen Draco going into those stores to buy these items.

An hour later they sat, for some reason still on the floor, eating takeaway and watching a man named Neo.

"I don't understand," Draco said. "Do Muggles know how to bend metal with their minds? Because I thought that sort of thing was strictly forbidden by the Statute."

"They're imagining it," Potter explained, leaning back against the sofa, his shoulder touching Draco's arm. "They're telling it as a story they believe could never happen."

"I don't understand," Draco said again. "Do Muggles think that magic involves growing people in pods?"

"No, they don't think it's real," Potter answered. "Well, actually, I don't know. It kinda seems like the type of movie Muggles would watch high and think was real."

"We should get high," Draco said, and Potter raised his eyebrows.

"We should get high? Are you insane?" Potter asked.

"We really, really should," and Draco was grinning, because he had some really good marijuana-gillyweed hybrid and he really wanted to see Harry Potter high.

"You want to get high," Potter said evenly, "and watch The Matrix."

"Yes," Draco said, worried that Potter was about to get angry for some reason. Leave it to a Gryffindor to get self-righteous.

But Potter grinned. "Okay."

Thirty minutes later, Draco passed the joint to Potter and said, "This movie is genius, Potter. Genius."

"I know, right?!" Potter agreed. "It's so deep."

"And Neo is fit," Draco said. "You know, you're pretty much like Neo."

"Fit?" Potter said with a grin, passing the joint back to Draco.

Draco roughly shoved his shoulder into Potter's. "This whole not a part of the world, called into the world, Chosen One thing."

"And fit," Potter added. "But if I'm Neo, who's Trinity? Morpheus is Dumbledore."

Draco sighed. "So I'm Cypher, aren't I."

"You're much more fit than Cypher," Potter said.

Salazar's shorts! Circe and Cassandra! Stay calm, Draco.

"Though he does have a shaved head," Potter continues, looking at Draco's hair.

"First of all, my head isn't shaved and I would never wear a goatee. Second of all, the man is a f*cking traitor who wants to eat delusional steak despite the world going to sh*t, and you say the way I'm different than him is that I'm better looking?"

"It's true," Potter said, and started to chuckle.

Draco stared at him for a long moment, and then they both dissolved into laughter.

The entirety of the next morning was passed by Draco trying to figure out what he should do next to make Potter fall in love with him. He thought that the plasma screen and The Matrix had been a good start, but it was difficult to say with Potter.

Potter didn't like flashy things; courting-standard flowers or chocolates would surely be a bust. He wasn't impressed with shows of wealth (not that Draco had much left, anyway), and no one could impress Potter with a show of magical skill.

Potter seemed to like…banter. Draco needed to convince him to spend time together, it seemed—it didn't matter what they did. Problem was, it seemed a bit pathetic to invite him over to watch telly for the second day in a row. Coming up with excuses was getting tedious. He wished he could just write Potter a note that said Hey Potter, come over and I'll suck your dick.

Honestly, it'd probably work. Potter was human, after all.

If the goal was getting Potter's dick in his mouth, it would be more straightforward. This whole sex-with-love thing was a can of flobberworms.

After a few hours of indecision, Draco decided his strategy today would be randomness: if he hit Potter with something completely out of the blue, Potter would be too curious and bemused to dwell on the fact that Draco was, strangely and without satisfactory explanation, stalking him.

Potter, My landlord tells me I need to call a magical "plummer," but I can't figure out who sells plums, especially this time of year. Can you please stop by after work and help me figure this out? -D.M.

Draco wouldn't demean himself like this every day, but he'd do it once.

That evening, Draco wore the jeans and an old t-shirt he found in his wardrobe. When he heard a knock at the door, he went to answer it feeling smug—he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and he had a buzzcut.

When he opened the door, he was not prepared to see Harry Potter with a smirk on his face holding a giant basket of plums.

"Potter—" Draco had no idea what to say. He'd been out-played.

"Fresh plums, dried plums—great for regularity—plum chutney, sugar plums." Potter flashed a saucy grin and thrust the basket towards Draco.

Draco, helpless to prevent the influx of plums, grasped the basket. "I am looking for a plumber."

"Yes, are you having trouble with your pipes?" Potter asked, and mother of Merlin, was that an innuendo?

"Yes," Draco said, "The sink in the—"

"Do you need me to lay some pipe for you?"

And that was definitely innuendo! Wasn't it? "I—"

Potter stepped inside, and then promptly burst out laughing. "Please tell me that letter was a joke, because if you honestly wanted to know where to find a plum seller because you were having a sink problem, I don't think you can be helped."

Draco tried to laugh, but he was sure his face looked a bit unnerved.

"Draco, if you want to hang out, you can just ask," Potter said, kicking off his trainers and leaving them by the door.

"Right," Draco said, though everything felt wrong. He was holding a basket of plums and Potter had just called him 'Draco.' "Of course. But if I'd done that, we would be without plums."

"That's true," Potter said, snagging a plum and sitting at the table. He bit into it, and a rivulet of juice dripped down his chin.

"Did you know that there's a charm to keep the juice of juicy fruits from dripping like that?" Draco asked, hoping his desperation not to see juice trickling down Potter's scratchy-looking chin was not obvious. Draco really wanted to lick the juice off, and wondered again whether the curse was f*cking with his libido. He placed the basket on the table and sat next to Potter.

Draco selected a plum and waved his wand. "Auget Superficiem Tensio." He bit into the plum and smirked at Potter as the juice clung to the plum's flesh and he chewed his bite with a markedly dry chin.

"Very impressive," Potter said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "But isn't being sticky like, part of the plum experience? Is it even eating a plum if you don't end up sticky?"

"Have you been smoking again?" Draco asked with a raised brow.

Potter laughed, and Merlin, Draco really liked making Potter laugh. It was intoxicating—at least as good as making him scowl.

"How is Ollivander?" Draco inquired, and it felt like inane small talk but he couldn't very well keep prattling on about plums.

"He's fine," Potter answered with juicy lips.

"Do you ever get used to his…demeanour?"

Potter chuckled. "Well. I suppose I've gotten used to it a bit, but it doesn't really get any less creepy. He's brilliant, of course. He has that sort of Ravenclawish calculating thing. In the war I couldn't figure out if he was good or bad, but now I realise it's because he's like, mentally tabulating figures to try to figure out the best course of action. Or like, he's looking down on everything from above, but doesn't see himself as part of it."

That was actually fairly perceptive; perhaps Draco needed to reassess Potter's intelligence. "Hmm," Draco said. "So basically, he's your opposite. Because you have clear ideas of good and bad and you are always in the middle of everything."

Potter raised his eyebrows. "I really don't have clear ideas of good and bad; how could I, after all the sh*t we lived through? The world is shades of grey, eh?"

"Are you good at it?" Draco asked, and probably that was an offensive thing to ask.

"At what?"

"Wandcraft."

"Oh," Potter said, looking at the plum. "Yeah, I'm pretty good. I still have a lot to learn, but it's fascinating stuff, and it's a good way to channel my magic, and I get to work with my hands. I've been trying to figure out whether there's a way to optimise wands for magical people who have non-wizard blood."

What the f*ck! Draco felt his shoulders tense. A vision of a hag ruining his life swam in front of his eyes, followed by a vision of Greyback running his filthy claw-like finger down sixteen-year-old Draco's arm. His body prickled with disgust and fear. Potter wanted to optimise their magic with wands?!

He took a breath, tried not to jump to conclusions. "What do you mean?"

Potter was still biting that stupid plum. He swallowed, then said, "Well, like for werewolves, for example. Lycanthropy affects the magical core, and some werewolves' wands stop working when they're bitten. Mr Ollivander has had to sell new wands, especially after the war with all the people who were bitten in battle. But it seems to me that if we can figure out exactly how their magical core changes, we can make wands optimised for use by werewolves."

Draco's face curled into a sneer; he couldn't have stopped it if he’d wanted to. "So you want to optimise the magic of non-humans who threaten the lives of wizards."

Potter's face flashed shock, then anger. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"You're suddenly going to start parroting things your father used to say?"

"I'm not parroting!" f*cking hell, but that made Draco mad. He hadn't even thought of his father's diatribes against non-humans—Draco didn't need to recall abstract lessons because he could still taste the fear of the danger he’d experienced firsthand. Leave it to Potter to say something so patronising. "You're going to arm people who consider us the enemy!"

Potter exploded out of his chair, the plum falling onto the table. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare say a bad word about werewolves! There are good and bad in every species, Draco, you should know that better than anyone. Remus died for the cause, while your father stood on the side and let it all happen."

Potter grabbed his wand, flicked it at his trainers, which appeared on his feet, walked out without another word, and slammed the door behind him.

Draco's skin flamed with anger and disappointment. He could feel the hag curse closing in on him—it felt like impending death. He turned around and, in a fury, Vanished the plums.

The next day, Draco very nearly did not get out of bed.

His brain swirled with the inevitability of his death. It was hopeless. And what was more, it had always felt hopeless, even before the hag curse, which was why he hadn't ever let himself hope. Hope was a dangerous thing; hope meant dashed dreams and disappointment.

And he knew better than to have let even the tiniest sliver of hope in. He was Draco Malfoy, after all. His entire life since the war had been an exercise in not hoping.

But somewhere along the line, while Conjuring flowers or watching The Matrix, hope had snuck in past all his carefully constructed defences.

Hope could go f*ck itself. Draco wasn't going to make that mistake again. But he wasn't going to give up. No, he was a Malfoy; he was not going to allow himself to die without fighting. But he could fight without hope—he could fight with detachment, unencumbered by it.

But there was no way he could see Potter today. He was too angry, too upset, too defensive. Draco wouldn't let Potter make him feel like a bad person for what he'd said. It was true. Draco wasn't advocating genocide or even legal subjugation of half-breeds. The only thing he'd said was that they didn't need any additional wizarding assistance in harnessing their magic. A measured, rational thing to say, if you asked Draco. Potter would probably want Draco to apologise, and that was not happening. He had nothing to apologise for. If anything, Potter should apologise for overreacting.

He got out of bed with the conviction that he needed to do something that would be fighting for his life but would not involve seeing Potter. Since his entire life hinged on Potter, that was not an easy task, but he eventually decided he could continue his tour of apologies. He put on his most respectable daytime robes and headed off to see Mr Ollivander.

He would just leave if Potter was in the front of the shop. That's what he'd do. But when he opened the door, it was only the old man, shuffling and poking around.

"Ah, Mr Malfoy," Ollivander said, looking up with wide eyes. "I thought I might see you today."

Draco suppressed an eye roll—sometimes Ollivander was worse than Trelawney.

"Are you here to see our young Mr Potter?"

"No," Draco answered, and it came out too quickly.

Ollivander raised a white eyebrow. "Ah. Ahh. Well then, how can I help you?"

"I wanted to apologise to you for your captivity in my home during the war. I know it was not an easy time for you, and I am sorry for my part in it."

It was a sh*t apology, really. But Draco didn't know what else to say. A long moment passed in silence.

"Let me ask you something, my boy," Ollivander said. "Were any of us free, in the war?"

"No," Draco answered. That was an easy enough question.

"Indeed," the old man whispered. "Those of us who were imprisoned—who were physically unfree—had certain advantages."

"Advantages."

"I can't blame myself, you see." The old man squinted his eyes and pointed a finger towards the back room. "Most people would say that Harry Potter made good choices during the war. But he still questions his choices. Could he have made better choices? Most likely."

It took every ounce of Draco's training not to fidget under that gaze.

Ollivander leaned forward. "I reckon you blame yourself, too. When you let yourself think about it, that is. But we were none of us free. You remember that, Mr Malfoy."

"I'm sorry, nonetheless," Draco reiterated. "I could have…brought you food, healed your wounds."

Ollivander smiled, and it looked sad and wise. "Perhaps," he said. "Or perhaps you would've been caught and tortured. There's not one of us who couldn't have acted better. I do not blame you."

Draco nodded, unable to think of anything to say. He turned to go, and heard Ollivander say, "Mr Malfoy." Draco turned to look at him. "You're free now. If you can see it."

Draco nodded and fled the shop. Could that man be any creepier?

And what a joke. Draco had never been less free.

Draco sat at his table in a silk wizarding night shirt and a pair of Muggle boxers, eating breakfast and feeling sorry for himself.

He knew not what to do next. He didn't want to have to listen to people like Ollivander spout nonsense at him. He needed to find a way to apologise to Potter—again—because if he didn't, he would be dead in thirteen days. And also because he kind of missed the prat, with his laughter and his bad innuendo and his plums.

But how could he apologise? He didn't feel contrite at all. He felt a bit let down—he'd hoped that Potter wouldn't immediately think ill of him, after the time they'd spent together.

Potter would always think ill of him, though—how could Draco think he deserved the benefit of the doubt?

Draco popped a grape in his mouth forlornly and looked up when he heard a knock at the door.

It had to be Mrs Boddinham from down the hall—she was forever knocking for some reason or another. Draco cast a charm that would make a person standing in the corridor think he was wearing robes, and opened the door.

It was Potter.

"Hi," Potter said.

"Hello," Draco said, in a shocked stupor. Well, good. Yes. This was exactly his plan, wasn't it? To see Potter again. This was good.

"Can I come in?"

Draco still hadn't got over the shock of seeing him there. "Alright," he said, and held the door open for Potter to come inside.

When Potter stepped over the threshold, his eyes widened, and Draco realised that Potter was seeing his night clothes now that he'd come inside.

Potter's cheeks reddened and his eyes snapped back to Draco's face. "I was really upset yesterday."

"Me too." Draco told his body to stop being angry, he told his mouth not to speak with contempt, but he couldn't do it. He was still too upset.

Potter sighed, his hand raising to his hair. "I went to see Hermione."

"That's what you always do, isn't it?" Draco said, and he could hear the cool haughtiness of his tone. "When you don't know what to do."

Potter frowned. "Well, yes."

Draco was unaccountably charmed by the way Potter could admit that.

"She's my best friend. But anyway, I'm still upset about what you said. But I think—I think it's possible that I was projecting."

"You think it's possible that what?" Draco asked, bewildered.

"Just that—It's possible I wasn't actually giving you a chance to talk. And I feel guilty now, even though I also still feel upset, and I am trying to do the right thing and come talk about it. Like a grown-up."

The genuine look on Potter's face combined with his outrageous honesty made Draco's stomach squirm. This was it—this was why the hag said he would die if he ate Potter. Potter was good. Not perfect, not flawless, just good.

Draco had to play this right. "It's possible I did the same thing."

The corner of Potter's mouth quirked up. "Should we try to talk about it, or do you want to deal with it like we would've in school?"

"Do you mean stalking each other around a castle, scheduling midnight duels, or nearly killing each other in a bathroom?" Draco asked, and then winced, worried that Potter would take offence.

But Potter's mouth quirked even closer to a smile. "You stalked me?"

Had he said that? He huffed a breath. "Not even once. Did you stalk me?"

Potter smiled. "Never. Can we sit?"

"Sure," Draco said. "I was just eating. Would you like some breakfast?"

Potter's eyes dropped down to Draco's clothes, and Draco tried to ignore the embarrassment creeping up his spine. "You can get dressed, if you want. I don't mind waiting."

But when Potter looked back up at Draco's face, he looked distracted. He looked—dare Draco hope?—lusty. And, well, Draco wasn't going to fritter away this opportunity.

"No, I'm quite comfortable, thanks."

Potter blinked. "Alright." He walked to the table and sat. "I've already eaten."

"You can have some fruit, if you like," Draco offered. "Though I will admit to having Vanished the plums."

Potter smiled with amusem*nt. "The plums were good."

"We'll have to get more," Draco said.

"Yeah," Potter said, and took a grape. "Anyway, so, I know you're right that sometimes non-humans use magic in ways that harm people. And I don't want to deny that. But, people with 100% human blood hurt other humans, too, Draco. All the time. There's no way to make a law that would keep magic from bad people. It's just not possible."

Draco sighed. "Yes, fine. Okay. I can agree with that. But it's real—the threat."

Potter gave him an inscrutable look. "Did you—did you want to talk about anything? It just seems like maybe you're thinking of something in particular."

Draco's throat clenched. Potter was offering to talk to him about his—about his demons. He didn't want to talk to Potter about his demons. Looking at his hands, he said, "Greyback was—awful."

"Yes," Potter agreed, and then in a softer voice, "He'll never get out of Azkaban."

"I know."

Suddenly a sturdy hand covered his. It looked bizarre, Potter's hand on top of his. It looked out of place and his darker skin made Draco's look translucent, like he was going to wash away.

"Hey," Potter said, and Draco looked up. Draco's chest tightened when he realised that Potter's face was pitying. "It's okay to not be over it."

"I know not all werewolves are like Greyback," Draco said with a note of defensiveness. He didn't want to look stupid.

"I know," Potter said. “But like, think of Teddy Lupin. He’s your cousin. I mean, he’s my godson. He’s turning five soon. He could be really hurt by restrictions against werewolves, even though he doesn’t have lycanthropy. You can’t just—generalise.”

Draco sighed. He knew vaguely of the Lupin child’s existence, and he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by Potter’s involvement with him. “I know. But I still think that the optimised wands are a bad idea," Draco said, his voice challenging and rough, as he waited to see what Potter would say to that. "I'm still an arse, you know. I'm never going to be like, a fluffy bunny or something."

But Potter didn't move his hand. He sighed. "None of this stuff is clear. It's sh*t. I think people would be less likely to do bad things if they lived in a society that accepted them as full people, you know?"

Draco didn't say anything.

"But like, I can't prove that. Maybe we can just agree that it's messy and end this discussion like Ravenclaws."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Like Ravenclaws? We are not Ravenclaws. You are possibly the least Ravenclaw person I've ever met."

"We need data," Potter said with a smirk. "If we make optimised wands and there's an increase in attacks, then we reassess, you know?"

"You're ridiculous," Draco said. "I can't believe you even know what data means."

"Put some clothes on," Potter said. "Then we can watch Citizen Kane."

Draco strolled out of his flat with a spring in his step. He was thrilled that he did not need to come up with an excuse to see Potter today, because Potter had told him to stop by Ollivander's in the afternoon. Potter wanted to make Draco a new wand.

Potter wanted to make Draco a new wand.

Potter said that French wands lacked cohesion and core stability and that Draco needed a genuine Ollivander wand. Potter said "wand cohesion" and "core stability" like he actually knew what he was talking about, which Draco could admit he found a bit hot.

Draco pulled open the door to Ollivander's, resolutely refused to let the old man's breathy, "Mr Malfoy again, so soon" distract him, muttered a hasty excuse, and walked into the back room.

Potter was wearing the ridiculous goggles again, and a dragonhide apron. The table in front of him was covered in unicorn hair.

"Hi," Draco said, and Potter looked up.

"You came! Come look at these unicorn hairs." Potter leaned over the table. Draco approached cautiously, not wanting to inadvertently get in the way. "Do you feel it?" Potter asked, raising his hand above the table, hovering a few inches above the hairs.

Draco raised his hand to mimic Potter's, and he could feel it—small pulses of magical energy were coming off the hairs.

"Amazing, right?" Potter said. "A lot of people can't feel it, but you can, right?"

"Yes," Draco said. "I can almost feel my magic reaching out, wanting to absorb it."

Potter smiled. "Oh, yeah. Don't, please. They're expensive and need to be kept unblemished. But yeah, they're almost magnetic, aren't they?"

Draco found himself mesmerised by the shimmering hairs. "Can I touch one? I'll pay for it, if you want."

Potter's eyes flitted to the door, but then he smirked, waved his wand, and a single strand rose into the air. Draco grabbed it with delicate fingers. It was coarser than a human hair, and it shone. He tugged it experimentally; it was strong. He tugged it harder, and smiled. When he looked up, Potter was watching him.

"Check this out," Potter said, "Give me your finger."

Well, it wasn't the exact way Draco had been planning to hear Potter say those words. But it would do for now. Draco smirked and stuck his index finger towards Potter.

Potter grasped Draco's hand with his left hand and wrapped the unicorn hair snugly around his finger in a spiral.

"Close your eyes," Potter said, and Draco complied.

The slight magic of the unicorn hair circled his finger like a swirling vortex. "It feels stronger," Draco said.

"Yeah! Right?!" Potter enthused. "So magic is a kind of energy, yeah?"

"Yes," Draco said, opening his eyes, and he wasn't sure if it was that Potter was so excited, or that he was being smart, or the whirlpool of magical energy around his own finger, but Draco wanted to kiss him.

"Right so, I think it's like this thing that Muggles do where they make magnets out of wire by making a coil. The coil makes a magnetic field. I am still trying to figure it out. Honestly my brain is not the theoretical type, but I think that coiling the conduit makes a field of magic."

Draco had no idea what to do, because he was pretty sure if he moved the only thing his body would agree to would be leaning forward to press his lips against Potter's. Holy buggering Merlin, Draco wanted him.

"Draco? Maybe you want to help. You have more of a theoretical mind, don't you? We’d make a good team."

"Huh?” Draco asked, coming back to reality. “Yes, I guess I do. It's been a long time since I did research, though."

"Yeah, but you'd be a natural," Potter said, pulling the hair from around Draco's finger and rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. "Unicorn hair cores make super consistent magic. I'm sure you know that. But they're not the most powerful. I bet if we come up with a way to coil it, we could magnify the power even as we keep the consistency."

"That's—that's amazing," Draco said, and he felt like all of his careful stratagems were falling away. He was supposed to be winning Potter's love, and somehow he was standing there losing himself in excited green eyes, and Draco had no idea what to do. He needed to get back in control of the situation.

"Your old wand was unicorn hair, right?" Potter said.

"Yes."

"I suspect you might do better with a phoenix feather now," Potter said, co*cking his head to the side. "Course, how you react to any constituent piece of a wand isn't necessarily a sign of which finished wand will choose you. But I've had good luck making custom wands for people."

Potter walked over to a cabinet and waved his hand to open the door. It was just Alohom*ora; Draco refused to be impressed by the wandless spell. "We have a few phoenix feathers. They are much harder to come by than unicorn hair and dragon heartstring. Here, put out your hand."

Draco raised his hand in a stop motion, but Potter grabbed his wrist. "No, like this," and turned Draco’s palm to face the ceiling. "Try to concentrate your magic in your hand, like you were going to attempt a wandless spell, but don't release the magic."

As if Draco knew how to do wandless magic.

Potter Levitated three phoenix feathers into the air above Draco's hand, and they floated around a bit, until one of the feathers nudged closer and began to glimmer. "Look," Potter whispered. "It's responding to your magic."

Draco glanced at the feather, and it was beautiful, red and orange, shimmering with the force of Draco's magic, but Draco's gaze was drawn back to Harry.

"We found your feather," Harry said, smiling.

Draco dreamt of burning.

When he awoke, he got out of bed with a vague plan to go find a Muggle library to research electromagnets.

As he was eating breakfast, Potter’s barn owl tapped on the window, which was a surprise. Draco'd been hoping to contact Potter later with impressive information about electromagnetic coils, but he hadn't expected Potter to contact him first.

Draco, Want to go to the club with me tonight? -H.P.

Draco blinked. The club—right, okay. That was fine. That was good. Perfectly according to plan. Anyway, clubs were Draco's home turf; he would have a huge advantage, and he certainly knew how to pull a bloke at a club. It hit him with a start that he hadn't been out or had sex in weeks—not since he was hit with the curse. He hadn't even thought about it, even though it was the longest he'd gone without in ages.

He grabbed a quill and wrote back his agreement.

It seemed that Potter liked him, which was such an insane sentiment that Draco almost didn’t know what to do with it. He was used to people wanting to f*ck him, and beyond that he was used to people giving him contemptuous looks. He wasn’t used to people getting to know him, wanting to spend time with him, liking him. A little voice in the back of his head whispered It won’t be enough, it won’t be enough.

That night, Draco Apparated to Potter's house dressed for a club but holding a bunch of notes on electromagnets.

When Potter opened the door, he smiled. He looked actually happy to see Draco, which still seemed odd. "You wore your new shoes."

"Well, yes," Draco said, and then with a pointed look at Potter's ratty shoes, added, "You did not."

Potter rolled his eyes amiably and invited Draco in. He was wearing a black t-shirt and a pair of jeans, and he was bloody distracting. "What are those papers?" Potter asked.

"Oh. I did some research on electromagnets for you. I think you're right that it's similar, though we'll need to do some experiments, and it's possible that you may need to coil the conduit in opposite directions for right-handed versus left-handed wizards because the direction of the coil can change the direction of the magic field, if it's the same as with magnetic field directionality, which I would guess it is."

"Really?" Potter said, and his eyes lit up. "That's amazing! Great for business, too; Ollivander will be thrilled. Everyone would want a new wand. You can help me test them, too, since you're left-handed."

Draco smiled. "Yeah. I'll help. What does Ollivander think of your coil idea?"

"Er, he's open to innovation but very skeptical about whether my ideas will be improvements," Potter said, throwing the papers on a side table. "He's a Ravenclaw, right? So, data. Also, he's old, so even though he pretends all he cares about is making the best wands, he's set in his ways." He shrugged. "I'll just have to convince him. Are you ready to go?"

Draco nodded and asked, "Which club do you want to go to?"

"I was hoping we could go to a Muggle club. I hate being recognised—I never enjoy myself."

"That's fine," Draco said. And then, because he could never keep his mouth shut around Potter, he asked, "Do you always go clubbing on Tuesdays?"

Potter smiled. "Actually, yeah. Well, I mean, not every Tuesday. But if I'm going to go out I usually go early in the week because I hate the weekend crowds. Ron and Hermione never want to go out on weeknights, though, because of work, so I figured you're my chance."

Draco nearly had to close his eyes with the force of those words hitting him. You're my chance, you're my chance.

"Alright then," Draco choked out. "Lead the way."

Harry stepped into Draco's space and grabbed his forearm. "Can I Side-Along you?"

Draco's heart was beating somewhere in his throat. "Sure."

Potter spun, and Draco felt the crush of Apparition before they landed in a wet alleyway. Moonlight reflected off the puddles on the pavement, and Draco was unhappily reminded of his looming deadline—as the moon waned, so did his chances.

He pushed those thoughts out of his mind, which was easy enough to do with Potter's fingers on his arm. Potter slid his fingers down past Draco's wrist until he was tugging on Draco's hand. "Come on," he said, and Draco followed.

Potter had brought them to a loud, Muggle club filled with men in tight clothes. The walls were covered with some sort of neon paint, and the music blared, "La la-la la la, warm it up, lala-lalala, the boys are waiting, my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard."

"What the hell is this music?" Draco hollered, leaning in towards Potter's ear.

"What, Draco, don't you like it?" he called back, green eyes glittering with amusem*nt. He started to sing along, his lips pressed up to Draco's ear. "My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard, and they’re like, it’s better than yours," Harry sang, and then he dissolved in laughter.

"What the f*ck is that supposed to mean?" Draco asked, and Harry laughed harder and pulled him to the bar. "What do you want?"

A million answers to that question swirled through Draco's head, but he said, "Gin and tonic."

"Two gin and tonics," Harry hollered at the bartender over the music, and before long they were sipping their drinks and watching the throng of bodies. It was electric, and Draco was reminded of the feeling of Potter’s workspace covered in unicorn hairs. It was vibrations from the music and sweaty, joyful bodies, and the smells of sweat and booze. The effect of it all made Draco’s head spin.

Draco put his empty glass on the bar. "Let's dance!" he screamed into Harry's ear. The music had changed while they drank, and now it was a man's voice saying, "And we bout to get our head sprung."

Draco would never understand Muggles.

Harry nodded and walked onto the dance floor. When they found an available spot in the sea of bodies, Harry yelled, "Just warning you—I'm a terrible dancer."

Draco grinned. Of course Harry was a terrible dancer. "I would've expected no less!" Draco called back, and someone bounced into Harry's back, pushing him into Draco, but instead of pulling away Harry let his arms come around Draco's neck. Draco's heart beat rapidly, or maybe that was the music.

("The part that hurts me, is when they try to work me, But I could never let ya jerk me, Steady sticking to the wall, give it up.")

Draco began to dance, allowing his body to find the rhythm and to enjoy the feel of Harry's body against his without thinking about it too much.

"Harry," Draco screamed into Harry's ear. "What in Merlin's name is that footwear? Is she wearing slippers?"

Harry turned his head to look at a woman's shoes, and when he turned back around he started to laugh. "They're called Uggs. I don't know. Don't ask me to explain."

"Do they seem like the type of shoes you would wear with such a short skirt?" Draco yelled.

Harry laughed again. "No, they do not. But I probably wouldn't wear the short skirt, either."

Well. No. Draco's mind wasn't going there.

Then Harry started to dance in earnest, moving his hips and laughing, making fun of the music and singing the parts he knew the words to. It was bizarre, like an out-of-body experience, and if Draco hadn't known that all he'd had was one gin, he would've believed that Harry’d been slipped some Potions.

A strangely electronic beat began to shake the room, and an otherworldly, non-human voice screeched, "I'm on a mission, Let me take you back and forth, I got a jam that's gonna make you scream for more."

"This music is insane!" Draco said, reaching his hands boldly around to grasp Harry's back. Harry felt lean and not particularly muscled under Draco's hands, but so palpably real.

Harry laughed, and he looked like he was actually having fun—like he wanted to be there, on this sweaty dance floor, laughing with Draco. He brought his mouth to Draco's ear, his lips tickling the short hairs at Draco's temple, and intoned along with the music in a silly, robotic voice, "Let's rock, I wanna rock your body rock."

Draco looked into Harry's ridiculous, joyful eyes—and when had he become "Harry" and not "Potter," anyway?—and the lust in Draco's gut and the magic surrounding their bodies and the pleasant head-buzziness of the alcohol all faded at once, as his body was overtaken by a single, different emotion: fear.

He stared at Harry, and the realisation that he was completely, utterly in love with Harry Potter hit him like a Reducto.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked with a smile. Draco couldn't hear his voice, but he could read the words on Harry's lips.

Harry liked him, that much was clear—Harry was looking at him with lust in his eyes. But it could never be enough, could it?

"No," Draco hollered, and started to walk away. He should stay. He should win Harry. He should convince him to go home and f*ck. But he couldn't, because he was paralysed with fear and vulnerability and he thought he might vomit all over his new canvas trainers. "I don't feel well. I need to go home."

Harry's face morphed into concern. "Can I help?" he yelled.

"No," Draco said, and walked away. Harry couldn't help; Harry was the only one who could help. No one could help.

Draco wasn't sure if he thought he was doomed, or if this was the first moment since the curse that he thought there was even a small chance that he might live. Probably both.

Draco, conscious of feeling numb, sat on the floor of his shower and let the hot water pound onto his scalp. It felt strange hitting his new haircut, the short hairs not doing anything to impede the flow of water straight into his eyes.

How was he going to do this?

There was a chance—a slight chance—he would not die in ten days. But Draco wasn't sure what was more foreboding: being in love with Harry or being faced with death.

He stayed in the shower until the Heating Charms wore off and he had to to grab his wand to charm the water back hot.

Draco was scared, and he didn't want to be scared. He knew how to handle this, at least minimally, when it was about coming up with a plan and executing it. Of course, it would never have worked so long as it had continued that way, because he had to be in love himself to break the curse. Draco'd been treating it like a game, even though on some level he knew it wasn't a game, and he didn't know how to do this if he couldn't treat it like a game.

f*ck.

He shouldn't have run away last night! He was an absolute moron! He should've stayed and let Harry's arms continue to snake around his neck, let Harry's chest bump into his, let Harry sing terrible lyrics in his ear.

Draco couldn't waste any more time. He was going to have to find a way to see Potter today. His body's self-defence instincts, which were screaming to stay away from Potter, needed to be ignored, because seeing Harry was his only chance.

After much longer than was strictly necessary or environmentalist, Draco shut off the water. One nice thing about the buzzcut was that he could use a Drying Charm after a shower—Drying Charms had made his longer hair floof, but that was no longer a problem. And Drying Charms were excellent for his sensitive skin, which didn't respond well to vigorous towelling.

He walked naked towards his bedroom, but stopped short when he saw Harry's owl waiting patiently at the window. Draco let the little guy—whose name he'd incredulously learned was 'Pellet'—in and untied the letter.

His heart beat rapidly as he opened the letter, and Draco turned to the owl and said, "Don't ever fall in love, Pellet. It is a grim reality."

Pellet gave Draco's hand a gentle nudge. Draco took the hint and opened the letter.

Draco, Are you alright? You left so suddenly last night. I wanted to make sure I hadn't said something wrong. Or if you're sick? I have a bunch of homemade broth under a Preservation Charm—don't ask, Luna keeps telling me I need to heal my microbiome—if you want some. -Harry

Okay. Alright, this was fine. Harry wanted to give him soup. This was Draco's plan all along, wasn't it?

Pellet hooted in what Draco thought was an encouraging sort of way. Draco waved his wand to Summon a biscuit from the kitchen for the little bugger. Pellet accepted the treat gratefully, and Draco grabbed a quill and wrote back.

I'm alright. Wasn't feeling well, but I'm good now. You mentioned you get off early on Wednesdays, right? Want to meet me this afternoon? We can Apparate to Wiltshire and amble about. Dress for the outdoors. -Draco P.S. Does Pellet have any dietary restrictions?

Draco tied the letter to Pellet and sent him off with a little pat, then headed to his bedroom to dress.

Before long, there was a tapping at this window, and he went over, now with trousers, to let Pellet in again.

Draco, Sounds good. Will we be murdering any fowl, clay or otherwise, on this amble? Shall I bring my shotgun?

Just kidding. I'll meet you when I get off at 2. -Harry

P.S. Pellet follows the South Beach Diet. Just kidding. He's an owl. You can give him whatever.

Draco felt his mouth curl up into a smile despite Harry's use of "just kidding" twice in a three-line letter.

A few minutes after two, there was a knock at the door, and Draco took a deep breath and opened the door. Harry stood there in an unusual assortment of clothes. He looked good, of course, and Draco tried to swallow away his nerves.

"What are you wearing?" Draco asked.

Harry looked down. "Hiking clothes. You said we were going outside." He was wearing a pair of trousers that looked oddly water repellent, a t-shirt and hoodie, and a pair of rugged boots. It all appeared well worn, and Draco absorbed the fact that Harry Potter was apparently a hiker.

"What are you wearing?" Harry returned.

Draco smirked. "Have you never seen country wizarding apparel before, Potter?"

"Are those tweed robes?" Harry reached out to touch Draco's arm, seemingly incredulous about the garment.

"Of course," Draco said. "What else would a country wizard wear outdoors?"

Harry looked like he was going to say something, but thought better of it and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Alright. Let's go, then."

"May I Side-Along you?" Draco asked.

Harry didn't answer, but reached over and threaded his finger's tightly through Draco's. Okay, well. That was fine. That was good. That was fine and good.

Draco turned, squeezing them through space and landing on a breezy, green hill. Daffodils bloomed all around, heralding the coming spring.

Harry held onto his hand for about five seconds longer than Draco would've thought normal, which made his heart thump. Then Harry let go and looked around, the wind whipping his hair.

"Where are we?" Harry asked. "It's beautiful."

It was beautiful. There were sheep in the distance, and the air smelled just the way air should smell. Draco breathed in, closing his eyes for a moment. That smell.

"Wiltshire," Draco said.

Harry nodded. "Are we on the grounds of the Manor?"

Draco shook his head. "No, I am very clearly prohibited from setting foot on the grounds of the Manor. We're not far from Westbury."

To his credit, Potter didn't press the issue, but just started walking. "Do you miss them?" he asked after a minute of silence. "I mean, I know what it's like to not have parents. But I don't know what it's like to lose them. Or, I suppose I did when I was one, but I really don't remember."

Draco stood up straighter, adjusting the rough woolen fabric of his robe. "I miss them."

Harry nodded.

"I miss them, and also I f*cking hate my father."

Harry turned with surprised eyes.

"But I still miss them. It's strange, to not have anyone expecting greatness of me. I don't know, but it's almost like you don't realise how much of your life was about pleasing them, until they're gone. I sometimes feel…untethered."

Harry reached down to zip his cotton hoodie, and Draco thought that Harry should've known to wear wool. "I don't remember my parents at all," he said. "And I still worry about not disappointing them."

Draco raised a disbelieving brow. "There's no way you could disappoint anyone."

Harry smiled, but it looked almost sad. "I disappoint plenty of people. And how can I know? I don't know what they would've valued most from me. Maybe they'd be disappointed that I am lonely and still can't just move on from the war like everyone else seems to be able to do."

"I'm sure they wouldn't be disappointed," Draco said, and he wasn't sure if it was the wind but it sounded like a whisper.

Harry smiled, but then seemed keen to change the subject. "Look at all these daffodils. I can't wait for spring."

Draco's throat clenched. Spring.

"Have you ever been to Stonehenge on a solstice or equinox?" Harry asked. "I've heard it's incredible."

"It is," Draco said. "Mother took me a few times, though in truth she didn't approve of the Muggle pagans and the hippies."

"The vernal equinox is coming up, isn't it?" Harry asked. "We should go! I want to see the wizards drinking restorative dandelion potions at sunrise. Did your mother think the stuff about how it cleanses negative magical energy was nonsense?"

Draco couldn't help but smile at Harry's enthusiasm, even as his stomach clenched with anxiety at the topic.

"The dandelion potions taste like arse, but it's not nonsense. Mother didn't think it was, anyway. Father was a bit of an indoors type."

Harry laughed. "So can we go?"

"Sure," Draco said, and felt proud when he managed to get the word out.

"Do you miss living out here?" Harry asked, looking around.

"Yes." The wind hit his face, and Draco considered the fact that his haircut was exceedingly practical for this sort of weather.

"Why did you move to London?" Harry asked. "I mean, you don't really seem the London type."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"

"Just, you're the epitome of the country gentlewizard, no?"

Draco huffed a laugh. "Yes, well. I'd love to live here, but not alone. It would be unbearably lonely, don't you think? Better to be near Diagon."

Harry looked out over the hills. "Yeah. I know exactly what you mean."

"You think you'll stay in Grimmauld Place forever?"

"Nah," Harry said. "It's a sh*t house. I mean, sorry, I know it's the Black house. I probably won't sell it, because of Sirius and everything, and I doubt I'd ever live elsewhere in London just because I'm lazy, but I'd like to live somewhere else, eventually."

"Because you like hiking," Draco said in an amused tone.

Harry shrugged with a smile. "Well, yeah."

"I'll say, though, if you ever move out here," Draco said with a grin, "we'll have to get you some proper tweed. Maybe a cap."

Harry gave him an exasperated look. "You're not getting me in tweed."

Draco dreamt of daffodils about to bloom and awoke feeling like he was on a threshold, but he didn't know how to get over it.

There'd been a moment the day before, in Wiltshire, when Draco thought he could probably have kissed Harry. That is, he thought that Harry wouldn't have pushed him away.

But this thing was difficult. He wasn't just trying to get a snog, or to get f*cked. He had one chance here, and he had to not bollocks it up.

On the other hand, time was running out. Draco hopped out of bed, took a fast shower (still not used to his hair), and Apparated to Diagon.

As he walked into Ollivander's, he thought that Harry was right—one didn't exactly get used to the magic in the air, but one's body at least seemed ready for it.

One did not, however, get used to the bizarre old man.

"Hello again, Mr Malfoy." The voice came out in a prickly wheeze.

"Mr Ollivander," Draco said, making to continue into the back room.

"Mr Potter is off sourcing dragon heartstrings."

Draco stopped. That sounded dangerous. That sounded—

"No need to worry, my boy," the old man said, "he's perfectly safe. Got a Floo call from MacFusty this morning that one of the elderly dragons passed on, and Harry got a Portkey to retrieve the heartstrings. They're much more powerful if you get them straight away, you see."

Draco took a step back. "Ah. Yes, of course," he said, although he didn't actually know a damn thing about dragon heartstrings other than that they came from dragons.

"A Hebridean Black," Ollivander continued. "Should make some nice wands. Hebridean Black heartstrings make powerful wands, indeed." He chuckled in a self-satisfied way that struck Draco as foreboding.

"I'll just be going, then," Draco said. "Perhaps you could let him know I stopped by?"

"Of course," the old man said, but then he didn't let Draco leave. "I've lived a long time," he continued—and oh, wonderful, just what Draco wanted, another lecture from someone old and wise about how he should live his f*cking life—"and I do not believe that age brings wisdom, with the exception of one insight."

"What's that?" Draco asked, figuring if he didn't answer he'd never get out of there.

"When death is closer to hand," he said, "a wizard can see more clearly what's important in life. We can prioritise. When we're young…" He trailed off, then turned his unnerving blue eyes on Draco. "It's harder to know what's important. So if you permit an old man to distribute unsolicited advice, you'll allow me to say, tell him!"

Draco's eyes widened.

"Harry is a good boy," Ollivander said, and the old man looked fond. "I never married, you see, or had children. I'm just a lonely old man with my work. Harry is a good boy. But he's lonely. Don't be like me, Mr Malfoy."

Draco took a step backward, knocking awkwardly into a stack of wand boxes. "Yes, of course, well. I'll just be going."

Draco walked out of the shop. Even Ollivander recognised Harry’s loneliness and thought Harry deserved more. Harry did deserve more; Draco wanted Harry to be happy. Draco just didn’t know how he could be the one to do it.

He didn't want to run anymore, but he didn't know what to do with himself if Harry was in the Hebrides. What did he used to do with himself?

He went home to watch his new telly.

The night before, Harry had sent Draco an owl letting him know he'd arrived home safe with a stock of Hebridean Black heartstrings. But it was late when Pellet arrived, too late to talk or to get together, and Draco had fallen asleep cursing a completely wasted day.

Today, he brimmed with motivation and enthusiasm—he would, indeed, make progress with Potter. He needed to. He selected some Muggle clothes and went to Ollivander's.

When he walked in, Mr Ollivander winked his twinkling eyes, and Draco pretended that was encouraging, not creepy, and walked into the back room.

"Good morning, Harry," he said, when faced with Harry wearing that dragonhide apron, hands on his hips, staring at a bunch of dragon heartstrings.

"Hey!" Harry said, looking up.

"How was the reserve?"

"It was amazing. The Hebridean Blacks are insane, have you ever seen one? I mean, the one I saw close up was dead, but they're still incredible. The dragonologist was harvesting its hide, blood, claws, liver—you know, all the useful bits. There were some Potioneers there looked like Christmas came early. The dragon had lived a long life, too."

Draco smiled. He couldn't help it, Harry was endearingly excited about a dead dragon.

"All the useful bits, eh?"

Harry grinned. "Come look."

In front of him were an array of long strings that were whitish and floppy and looked actually quite gross.

"That's foul," Draco said.

"Yeah, it's nasty, isn't it?" Harry didn't seem repulsed by the innards, though. "Did you know that Muggle healers cut people open and like, stick their hands into their bodies to try to fix medical problems?"

"I'm sorry, what? You're having me on. Muggles aren't barbarians."

Harry looked up, a wide smile on his face. "No, no they're not. But they don't have magic to fix health problems, and so sometimes they need to like, go in."

Draco shuddered. "I would not want anyone to 'go in' me."

Harry raised his eyebrow in a suggestive leer, and Draco blanched. "That is not what I meant, Potter!"

Harry held up a hand in a defensive gesture; he was wearing plastic gloves. "I'm not judging your sex position preferences," Harry teased.

Merlin, f*ck. Was Draco meant to respond to that? He thought wildly that it was actually the exact type of thing that people usually told prospective partners. But it didn't feel right to do it in the context of discussing Muggle body-cavity spelunking or whatever the f*ck Harry was talking about.

"What do you do with them now?" Draco asked, deciding to change the subject.

"We need to put them under Preservation and Stasis Charms for storage," Harry said. "Want to help?"

"Will Ollivander mind?" Draco asked, looking over his shoulder and not wanting to risk getting a vaguely menacing lecture.

"Nah," Harry said. "He hates busywork. He'd much rather be in the front of the shop—he has a flair for the dramatic."

Draco snorted. "You don't say. Alright," he said, "what do we do?"

Harry showed him how to prepare the heartstrings for storage, and Draco got to work. Each heartstring had to be separated, and each charm cast individually, so he and Harry worked in amiable silence for awhile.

It had been a long time since Draco had felt useful. In school, he had enjoyed magic for the sake of magic—learning new charms, figuring out puzzles. But he couldn't get hired, not now. He knew that the tabloids often painted him as some sort of layabout, but it wasn't because he wanted to do nothing (even if he'd convinced himself that he wanted to do nothing because it was easier to deal with if it felt like a choice). No one would hire him. The war reparations had left him with precisely enough money to live on. On his pessimistic days, Draco thought that the Ministry had purposely left him a calculated amount—enough so that he wouldn't have to interact with society through work or the dole, but not enough so that he could do much beyond basic living. Perfectly calibrated to drive him crazy, really.

But now, with a task, working with Harry, he felt useful. He felt capable. Merlin, it had been so long since he'd actually used his brain.

Harry got all the heartstrings stored and labeled (Hebridean Black Heartstrings, 11 March 2004), then turned to Draco with excitement. "Can we work on your wand?"

Draco's chest felt expansive, almost like he'd been hit with an Inflation Charm, and without any guile or motive, he laughed and said, "Are you trying to flirt with me?"

Harry's eyes widened in response to Draco's words, but he laughed. "I was not! I wasn't trying to, anyway. I hear tell I'm awful at flirting."

Draco smiled. "Yes, we can work on my wand. How do you decide what wood to combine with the core?"

"Ah, well. We can test the woods for interaction with your magic, too, but wand woods don't react as conspicuously with magic as the cores do. Want to come see the wood?"

"What was that sex joke they kept saying in that show we were watching the other day?" Draco asked, wracking his brain because this was the perfect time to say it.

Harry's mouth quirked into an amused smirk. "'That's what she said'?"

"Yes! That's it," Draco said. "Say it again."

Harry's smile widened. "Want to come see the wood?"

"That's what she said!"

Harry burst into laughter. "Shouldn't that be 'That's what he said'?"

Draco hummed. "Why do they say 'she' in that, anyway? Seems like some sort of anti-woman tripe, to me."

Harry's smile widened. "And heteronormative, too."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You spend too much time around Granger, don't you?"

"What makes you think I learn concepts only from Hermione? I'm the one who's queer, not Hermione. Well, I mean, as far as I know. I suppose she could realise she's queer at some point—I wouldn't want to rule that out."

"So you're saying you didn't learn the word 'heteronormative' from Granger?"

"It's Granger-Weasley. And, no. I didn't; I read it about it. Although—" he paused. "She did buy me the book."

Draco laughed. "Let's go look at your wood, then."

Harry grinned and led Draco through a door into a part of the shop he'd never been into before. It looked almost like a woodworking shop, with piles of sorted wood covering all the walls. It was a fairly small room, and in the middle was a table with a magical saw on it.

"This is a lot of wood," Draco said, looking around the room and breathing in the forest smell of it.

"That's what she said," Harry whispered.

Draco fixed him with a glare, but when Harry winked, Draco burst out laughing. It should've been sexy—if you had asked Draco what his reaction would be to Harry winking, he would've said his knees would buckle or he'd keel over or be rendered speechless—but instead, Harry looked utterly ridiculous. It could barely even be classified as a wink.

Through his laughter, Draco asked, "Do you call that a wink? It looked like some sort of facial spasm."

Harry knocked Draco with his elbow. "We have forty-one types of wood in stock right now. Do not say 'that's what she said.'"

Draco mimed spelling his lips shut.

"Usually if you handle the wood, you'll feel a faint tingling—don't say it!"

Draco pointedly pressed his lips shut.

"It doesn't feel like much—" Harry began.

"THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID!" Draco interrupted, and then dissolved into peals of laughter.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Are you quite finished? I thought you wanted to do this." When Draco took a deep breath and comported himself, Harry continued, "It doesn't feel like much, not like the cores do. But you should be able to feel a bit—I think you're fairly attuned to magic."

"So what?" Draco clarified, "I just walk around and hold each of the types of wood?"

Harry's face displayed a one-second-long internal conflict, then he whispered, "That's what she said."

"Are you kidding me right now?” Draco asked, raising one eyebrow. “After telling me not to?"

Harry cackled. "You can either go through them one-by-one or you can walk around and see if you're drawn to any of them or you can try the woods that you know you've responded well to before—that's what she said—like you could check the hawthorn first, if you want. I can keep track no matter what order you test them."

Draco couldn't tell the difference between the types of wood. "Which is the hawthorn?"

Harry pointed, and Draco walked to it, wrapped his hand around the unfinished bark. He felt the tiniest bit of magic, but if he was right, it felt like a baseline. He shook his head.

"What's your current wand?" Harry asked.

"Sycamore," Draco answered.

Harry looked thoughtful, but said nothing. He pointed to the sycamore stock.

Draco leaned down and grasped a piece of sycamore, but he felt nothing much and shook his head again.

"Well," Harry said, "try the others."

Draco looked at the piles of wood, held in place by magic in vertical stacks. The sycamore was near the floor, but above it, hovering at chest-height, was a stack of dark wood. He wrapped his fingers around it.

"Ebony," Harry said.

Nothing.

He tested holly, walnut, and spruce, but none of them seemed to do anything. He was starting to worry that none of the wand woods would have any effect.

He wrapped his fingers around a piece of one of the next types, and stopped. It didn't feel extreme, or flashy, but he could feel quite clearly a tingling in his palm, like tiny, almost imperceptible sparks up his wrist.

"This one," Draco said. "What is it?"

"No way," Harry replied, green eyes shining with awe. "Really? It's beech."

"It feels like," Draco closed his eyes. "Like a warm burst of light. It feels like—"

But then Draco stopped short, opened his eyes, dropped the wood, because he suddenly had an armful of Harry Potter. Harry Potter right in his space, Harry Potter's hands in Draco's hair, Harry Potter's chest pressing into Draco's and pushing him back gently into the wood.

Harry looked right into Draco's eyes and said, "Can I kiss you?"

Draco didn't need to be asked, really—Harry could've done anything and Draco would've been game—but there was something really incredibly hot about the fact that Harry was making the move, that Harry wanted him, that Harry wanted to know that Draco wanted him, too.

Draco hadn't thought that it would go this way, if it ever got this far.

Draco reached nearly shaking hands up to Harry's face and answered by pressing his lips to Harry's.

Harry leaned into it, and Draco wanted to soak up his heat and light and goodness, but all he could do was kiss back. Harry's hand on Draco's hair caused a cascade of tingles to erupt down Draco's spine, and Draco opened his mouth wider.

Draco couldn't believe it: Harry was kissing him. They were kissing each other.

After a minute, Harry pulled away, pressed a quick peck to the corner of Draco's mouth, then stepped back. "Beech."

"What's the deal with beech?" Draco asked, breathless. "I should've said I liked beech earlier, if this is your reaction."

Harry grinned. "Beech. Beech wood requires a wizard with wisdom, experience, and understanding. Beech wood performs poorly for the narrow-minded and intolerant."

Draco smiled. "Wisdom, experience, and understanding. Sounds like me."

"You've changed," Harry said, and he sounded exuberant. He sounded vindicated. "I knew it."

Suddenly Draco's euphoria came crashing down. No, f*ck. All his feelings of inflation, of expansiveness, came crushing in. Because Draco was lying. Here he was, holding this beautiful human with his hands, his lips still tingling from being kissed, and he was lying. It was a lie.

Harry deserved better than Draco. Harry believed Draco had changed! And all the while, Draco was doing what he'd always done—look out for himself and his own self-interest at the expense of others.

f*ck.

"Beech," Draco said with no warmth in his voice. "Excellent. I have to go." He tried to smile.

Harry's face fell when he realised Draco was leaving; he looked like he’d been deflated, which made Draco feel even worse. "Oh,” Harry said. “Er, okay. Can I see you tomorrow?"

"Sure," Draco said, because he was exactly that arsehole who acted out of selfishness with no thought of others' feelings. "Would you like to go out to dinner?"

"Yes," Harry said, and smiled. "It's a date."

f*ck.

One week remained on the countdown of Draco’s life. But Harry had kissed him and suddenly one week seemed like maybe it could possibly be enough time.

As long as Draco resolutely pushed all guilt and guilt-related emotions out of his brain. He could deal with the guilt if he were still alive on the twenty-first of March.

They decided via owl to go to a Muggle restaurant, since neither of them fancied waking up to their photo on the front page of the Sunday Prophet. Which meant Draco needed respectable Muggle clothes. A suit? He honestly didn't know.

He wasn't set to meet Harry until seven o'clock, so he decided to throw all his Muggle aversions to the crups and head to Oxford Street. He would let some Muggle dress him. Lucius was probably rolling in his grave, but good.

He walked out an hour later (a woman named Taylor had complimented his cheekbones—it was all very surreal), wearing a pair of black trousers and shoes and a blue cashmere jumper. He looked good, he supposed, and Taylor had asked him if he was going on a date, and when he said yes she'd spritzed him with some kind of cologne.

If he lived, he'd have to find her and thank her.

Draco found an alley and Apparated to Potter's. He took a deep breath and knocked.

A moment later, Harry answered the door. He was wearing jeans, but he'd put on shoes that weren't trainers (honestly, Draco was shocked Harry owned anything other than those trainers) and a black dress shirt. He looked good, though that was not a surprise.

"Hi," Harry said, his face twisting into a nervous grin.

"Hello," Draco said, wondering what the behavioural expectation was here. They'd kissed the day before; was he meant to do it again? He'd never been with anyone before. He was totally out of his element. If he were f*cking Potter once in an alley and never seeing him again, Draco would be much more composed.

Harry reached forward and grabbed Draco's new jumper, pulled him closer, and kissed him. Well, that answered that question. The kiss felt electric, and suddenly Draco was warm despite the chill in the March air. Harry pulled back, grinning even wider, and said, "Hey."

"Are you able to kiss me without wrinkling my cashmere?" Draco asked, trying to raise his eyebrow because he knew that would make Harry laugh, but he wasn't sure he managed to do anything but smile like a lovesick puppy.

Harry laughed, held his hands out to the side, and leaned back in, capturing Draco's mouth, his tongue briefly entering Draco's mouth, and sweet Merlin, they were going to have to stop snogging on the front step if Harry wanted to make it to dinner. Draco pulled back, amused, and Harry grinned.

Draco laughed, trying to wrap his head around this. "Are we going to dinner, then?"

"Yes," Harry said, stepping fully outside and spelling his door shut. "I was thinking Italian?"

"Sure," Draco said. "Walking or Apparating? Or taking the tube, I suppose, is also an option."

Harry said, "Let's walk."

It was chilly, but that spring-type of chilly where the air felt warmer than it had been and so it seemed warm even though it wasn't.

"Have you—" Draco started, but then didn't know how to finish what he was asking. "Have you had relationships before?"

"You mean, besides Ginny?"

"Yes."

"Well, Ginny and I got back together after the war, but it only lasted a few months. We were a disaster, honestly."

"Why?" Draco asked, and he surprised himself by being honestly curious.

"I think she needed someone less broken," Harry said. "And I needed someone—I don't know. Possibly two fiery Gryffindors is too much for a relationship. I sometimes get angry and she does too and it was like, a lot of yelling. She's independent, she wanted to be off flying or whatever and I wanted her around. She thought I was stifling her, but I just wanted someone to hang with. I don't know. I think she didn't really want a relationship with anyone back then. And I think I was…trying to use her to distract myself from things? I don't know. It was complicated."

"Do you still see her?"

Harry hummed. "Of course. I see her every Sunday, unless she's out of town with the Harpies. We're better as friends. You know, I think she's going out with Zabini now. I'm not sure how serious it is."

"Blaise?" Draco asked, surprised. "I didn't know he was even back in England."

Harry shrugged. It seemed like he didn't know anything else about it.

"So, since then…" Draco felt a bit like a prat for asking, but he really wanted to know.

"Oh. I was with Justin Finch-Fletchley for awhile."

Draco stopped walking. "The Hufflepuff?"

Harry grinned. "Yeah."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No. It really was pretty awful, though. He's boring as hell."

"Can't say I'm surprised," Draco answered, figuring he had the upper hand here: Draco Malfoy was many things, but not boring.

Harry turned to Draco. "Do you ever think that most people are just really f*cking boring?"

Draco had no idea how to answer that—how Harry would want him to answer it.

"I mean, I don't think my friends are boring," Harry clarified. "Or, well, I suppose they are, but it doesn't bother me. But then I go out with people and I just want to gouge my eyes out because these people are just so boring."

Draco laughed.

"I'm serious!" Harry said. "I was with this witch named Angelica for awhile, and she seemed perfect for me, but then one time we were having dinner and I realised she'd been talking about the Galleon exchange rate for thirty minutes and I just had to leave."

"I agree that most people are horribly boring," Draco said. "One reason I don't have relationships. The other being that no one would go out with me. I mean, a shag is one thing, but actually being with a Death Eater is another thing entirely."

Harry turned to him. "What do you mean you don't have relationships?"

Oh. "I just mean, I haven't had a serious thing with anyone. Not since school. And even then…"

"Too busy getting your face in the papers as society's favourite manwhor*?" Harry looked like he was trying to joke about it.

"Not for the last couple weeks," Draco said, and it wasn't a lie.

Harry shoved his hands in his pockets. "Yeah. Well, I've been single for awhile—a year?"

Draco couldn't help but smile. "Is this the part where we reveal all the details of our torrid pasts?"

Harry turned to him with an amused smirk. "I really don't need to hear about the thousands of people you've slept with. I mean, I've had sex with people, too. But like, the important stuff, yeah?"

"Surely it hasn't been thousands," Draco said, which earned him a glare. He smirked in return.

"Er, about that," Harry said, looking suddenly and terrifyingly Gryffindor. "Can I ask you an awkward question?"

"You may," Draco said, bracing himself for whatever preposterous thing Harry was about to say.

"Have you been tested for STIs?"

Draco allowed himself one moment to recover from being asked that question. No one had ever asked him that before.

Draco smiled a slow smile. "Are you saying you want to get in my pants, Potter?"

Harry rolled his eyes and elbowed Draco. "Like you haven't been trying to get in mine. Like I didn't just snog you on my front step."

"I haven't been tested in awhile," Draco admitted. "Of course, I am diligent about Protection and Contraceptive Charms. Shall I get tested?"

Harry's cheeks were endearingly red. "Yes," he said. "I'll get tested, too."

The idea that the Saviour might somehow infect Draco was so outlandish that Draco very nearly guffawed, though he held it in through sheer force of will. It was all a bit overwhelming. No one had ever planned to have sex with Draco before. Premeditated sex? Good Merlin.

"Good plan," Draco said, feeling like a moron. "So, I'll do that tomorrow."

"Here's the restaurant," Harry said, and opened the door, which read Osteria Tufo.

The floor was a striking black and white checkered pattern, and small tables covered with white paper made a grid. The back wall was covered with bottles of wine, and the front windowsill was filled with pot plants.

They were shown to a table, and Draco immediately picked up the wine menu. Italian food—maybe a nice Montefalco Sagrantino? Draco looked up at Harry, who was reading his menu. Harry probably did not have a taste for wine high in tannins. Draco sighed, though he managed to keep it internal (which was less satisfying). He supposed he could tolerate a Merlot, for Harry's sake.

When the waiter came, Draco ordered the bottle of wine. The waiter nodded and walked away, leaving a gaping Harry, who said, "You're not even going to ask if I want wine? Or if I like that wine?"

Draco blinked. "Do you really think you can choose wine?"

"What if I don't like wine?" Harry raised one eyebrow.

"Do you like wine?" Draco asked.

"Yes," he confirmed. "But like, you could ask?"

This was strange. Draco felt like he'd been admonished, but Harry didn't seem upset. Oh, Draco realised. Harry was trying to tell Draco that he'd prefer if Draco would do it differently the next time. Because, apparently, he wanted there to be a next time.

"Alright," Draco said. "Next time I'll ask you if you prefer the Montefalco Sagrantino or the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Don't f*ck with me, Draco. You know very well I have no idea. Just ask me if I feel like wine. If I want white or red."

"Oh—okay," Draco answered, and it felt strange to have someone call him out on bad behaviour without anger but with the expectation that he would act better in the future.

The waiter returned with the wine and poured a taste into Draco's glass. Draco picked it up, swirled, smelled, tasted. "That will do," he announced.

Harry looked like he was attempting not to laugh.

Draco ignored Harry in favour of discreetly pulling his wand and casting a Decanting Spell at the wine as the waiter poured. They placed their orders (Draco ordered "the Polipetti Olive e Capperi followed by the Tagliolini agli spinaci con vongole"; Harry ordered "the tortellini and the fillet").

When the waiter wandered off with a pretentious nod, Harry hissed, "You are terrible! What the hell! Did you cast a charm at the wine? And 'That will do'? You sound like…like…worse than Justin Finch-Fletchley, I'll tell you that. And that is saying something."

"You take that back," Draco said, aghast.

Harry raised his eyebrows and shook his head. He seemed amused, the bastard. Harry raised his glass and Draco clinked it, taking a sip.

"Why do you want to go out to supper with me, anyway?" Draco asked, not even bothering to pretend that it was a joke and that he didn't want to know the answer. "Because you could just go out with Weasley if you wanted a pint and chips."

Harry laughed. "You're such an arse. You know, Ron's favourite food isn't chips. It's his sister-in-law's bouillabaisse. And I don't think that's only because Ron is a little strange around Fleur because she's part-Veela."

Draco stared at him, because Harry must stumble upon a point eventually, if given enough time.

"I don't mind that you're pretentious about wine," Harry finally said with a half-smile. "I just want to make fun of you for it."

The dinner passed pleasantly, if a bit stilted at times, and to Draco's surprise it was Harry who mostly carried the conversation, talking about Ollivander and wandcraft and wandlore. It made Draco think that he needed to do more, because there was nothing to talk about if one's life was as boring as Draco's.

"May I ask you a question?" Draco asked, feeling unaccountably bold.

Harry looked up from his steak, which looked to have a very nice pepper sauce on it. Draco wished they were at the point in a relationship where he could ask for a bite. "Sure," Harry said.

"Are you happy?" Draco asked, looking into those bright green eyes. "I mean, after the war—it's been a bit sh*t. I just, wonder sometimes. If you're happy."

Harry's gaze was intense. "Well," Harry said. "I—I'm not sure how to answer that. Yeah, course I'm happy. Happy enough, you know? I like my work. I love my friends."

"I don't want to list all the things that might make you unhappy," Draco said, "because that seems like bad form on a date. But there's a lot of bad stuff."

Harry shrugged, picked up his knife to cut his meat. "I've been lonely, I think. No one wants me for me, you know? They want me for the famous person. And they have high expectations of me that I could never meet. It's not great, really. I'm just Harry."

Draco's stomach clenched at "no one wants me for me" because Draco was just another in a long line, wasn't he? Wanting Harry because of the curse. But at the same time, he knew that he did want Harry for Harry, beyond the curse, beyond the hag. And he wanted Harry, not the war hero.

Draco could do nothing but nod.

When the waiter brought the bill, Draco worried briefly about who should pay. But Harry said, "Split it, yeah? Do you have Muggle money with you?" Draco had never really split a bill before—he'd paid, he'd let others pay—but he nodded yes.

Harry reached into his pocket and rummaged around for his money, placing the pounds on the table. (Draco noticed that Harry had an Extension Charm on his pockets—a brilliant solution, really, to Muggle clothing's absolutely inadequate pocket space.) Draco, who was much less well-off than Harry these days, but who was nonetheless blowing through his money because he needed to do everything he could to survive and he could worry about money if he was still alive in a week, contributed pounds to cover his half.

The waiter came and took their money, returning a minute later with a few coins of change. Harry reached into his pocket again, and for the life of him, Draco couldn't figure out what Harry was doing. After a moment, Harry pulled out a ten pound note and placed it on the table. Oh, Harry was tipping.

Harry glanced at him with expectation.

Harry wanted Draco to contribute to this Muggle waiter's tip.

Draco almost never tipped. It wasn't that Draco wanted to hurt waiters. But more that, if Draco was miserable and the world was awful, why should it be Draco's responsibility to make up the difference? All of his money had been taken for reparations—why should he have to pay extra money to a waiter for doing their job?

But in that moment, he had no choice. Harry expected him to split the tip, and Draco took a note from his pocket and complied. Harry smiled.

Draco stared at the money and reflected that the curse had forced to do so many things he wouldn't normally do. The hag was craftier than he'd originally realised.

Draco could have Apparated directly to Harry's front step, but he decided that he wanted to clear his head on a walk. In his pocket was a parchment from St Mungo's certifying that Draco was clean as a Scourgify. Well, in terms of sexually transmitted infections, anyway.

The Healer had raised an eyebrow when she had seen Draco Malfoy in her examination room. "I'd like to be tested for STIs," he'd managed to say without his voice wavering too much. "I don't have any symptoms," he added, "just want to check." Her face changed into one of bureaucratic approval, and with a nod she commenced her panel of tests.

While Draco sat in the exam room, his mind whirled with anxiety about the curse. Would the Healer be able to find the hag curse? What if he had an STI? He really was always careful about Protection Charms, and he didn't usually f*ck Muggles, but when he did, he always used condoms. The idea that he, Draco Malfoy, would take risks with Muggle sex diseases was laughable. Lucius Malfoy had been awful in a number of ways, but his desire for pure blood extended to lecturing Draco about safe sex—of course, he only did it to make sure that Draco's sexual experiences did not ever result in impure blood in Draco or in any hypothetical offspring. Draco'd even received lectures about the off-chance of male pregnancy—and that had been without his parents even knowing he was gay.

Of course, there were no absolutes. Infections and magic would find a way—Draco knew that. And because sem*n contained traces of a person's magic, it was possible to spread all sorts of diseases through sex. Not to mention the horrifying Muggle ones, as well. What if Draco had syphilis or gonorrhoea or AIDS? (He was pretty sure that was sexually transmitted and f*cking terrifying based on newspaper headlines in Muggle newsstands.)

What if he had one of these diseases, and couldn't tell Harry that he was clean, and the question of whether he would die of the hag curse came down to the speed of treatment of an STI? That would be just his f*cking luck.

"You're all clean," the Healer had said with a smile, and she had handed Draco a paper to that effect. Draco had grinned.

But now, walking to Harry's house (Harry had said to come over anytime after six, because he'd be spending the afternoon at the Burrow), Draco could only think that he was doomed.

He loved Harry, he knew that. And Harry liked him, at least a bit. But that wasn't what the hag had said. The curse would be broken if he had sex with Harry and they both consented and they were both in love and they both enjoyed it.

It was a lot of "ands."

And how on earth was Draco supposed to get Harry to love him so quickly? Love! Draco would need a lifetime to get someone to love him.

So while he had made a lot of progress—more, perhaps, than he'd ever dared hope—it wouldn't be enough. He knew it wouldn't be enough.

He stopped, because he'd arrived in front of Harry's house. He'd arrived in front of Harry's house holding a paper that said he was safe to have sex with. f*ck if that wasn't awkward.

He knocked, his stomach in knots, his legs barely agreeing to take steps towards the door.

Harry pulled the door open with a wide grin on his face. "I have something to show you."

Draco stepped inside. "Okay?"

Harry pulled out a paper and waved it in front of Draco's eyes. Harry was moving it around too much, but Draco could tell it looked like the one in his pocket. Draco pulled his out and handed it over.

The paper in front of his face read that Harry Potter was free from sexually transmitted infections, and Draco had never been less surprised in his life.

"Have I been responsible enough?" Harry asked, and his voice was a bit breathless.

Draco raised his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I waited to make sure you weren't still acting like a Death Eater," Harry held up his hand to illustrate his list, "I waited to make sure you actually liked me, I gave you space when you were freaking out, we got to know each other, we had an argument and discussed it like adults, we're not drunk or high, we got tested. So I feel like I've done the right thing, here, with us. But you've seemed kind of skittish about us, and I'm not judging you! I get it, but like. Are we good?"

Draco's eyebrows flew up. "You've wanted to f*ck for awhile?"

Harry leaned in, a smirk on his face. "f*cking duh. How could you have not realised that?"

Because I got distracted by trying to make you love me, Draco thought.

When Draco didn't answer, Harry elaborated. "I mean, I didn't want to f*ck at first. I was too skeptical of what you were up to and I needed to see you weren't a total arse anymore. But like, since we went flying, probably."

"But you must like me more now than you did then," Draco blurted, and that was the worry, wasn't it? That Harry had decided Draco had changed just enough to have sex with, and that that was all it'd ever be for Harry.

But Harry smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Draco swallowed. Alright. This was it, then. "Yes, we're good." And Harry was looking at him with such want that Draco decided to allow himself to believe, for a least a few seconds, that the want was for him and not just sex. With that, Draco dropped the paper and grabbed Harry's hips, pulling him closer and pressing their lips together with desperation. The kiss felt like fire, and Draco pulled back a bit to say, "f*ck, Potter. I want you." That wasn't a lie at all.

Harry smiled a blinding smile and leaned in to whisper in Draco's ear, "I want you, too."

Merlin f*cking Circe and Cassandra. Draco could actually feel the blood rushing away from his head.

Harry leaned in to suck at Draco's neck, and it felt so good, even as Draco was reminded of the first time he saw Harry a few weeks ago in that alley when his mouth was on some other neck. Draco pushed those thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on Harry's mouth, Harry's hands, Harry pushing him up against the wall in the hallway of his house, Harry's—yes, that was Harry's dick pressing into his leg. Draco had to concentrate on breathing.

Harry reached down to the hem of Draco's shirt and tugged it upwards; Draco raised his arms, letting Harry pull his shirt over his head. Harry was looking at him with intensity, and Merlin, no one had ever looked at Draco quite like that.

"You're so f*cking fit," Harry said.

Draco huffed a laugh. "I am not." Draco knew he was attractive in some ways, but he wasn't attractive in a way that could merit the look on Harry's face.

"You really, really are," Harry said, pulling his own t-shirt off, knocking his glasses askew, and leaning back in for a kiss.

Draco held a hand out, pushing Harry away from him. Harry shot him a questioning look, and Draco smirked. "I just wanted to get a chance to look at you."

Harry laughed, but pushed forward. "f*ck that, you can look later."

"Bed?" Draco asked, surprised his mouth could make words with Harry's hand on his torso and mouth on his neck like that.

"Mmm," Harry said, "upstairs." Harry grabbed his hand and pulled him up the flight of stairs. Draco tripped on a step, which led them to both laugh incredulously as they tumbled onto Harry's bed, Harry falling backward and Draco landing on top of him.

Horizontal was good. f*ck. Draco let his weight fall on Harry's body, his forearms bracing himself around Harry's head. Harry moaned, pressed his hips up. Draco leaned in to kiss him, pressed kisses up the side of Harry's cheek, which was covered in a scratchy layer of stubble.

"Too many clothes," Harry breathed, taking off his glasses and reaching to place them on the bedside table. His hands were hot on Draco's back, touching everywhere they could reach from neck to arse.

"What do you want?" Draco asked, leaning in to capture Harry's mouth again.

Harry tilted his head back, and Draco was struck with the fact that Harry seemed really into this. As if he were overcome with pleasure. As if he weren’t just doing this. "I want to take our trousers off," Harry said.

Draco laughed and sat up on his heels, unfastening his jeans. He stepped off the bed to pull them off, taking his pants along with them and kicking them onto the floor.

Harry leaned up on his elbows to watch Draco. "f*ck," he said.

Draco grinned and leaned forward to unbutton Harry's jeans, which was difficult given the flipped orientation, but he persevered and grabbed the waist, tugging it down over the swell of Harry's incredible arse.

"Boxers too," Harry said, and Draco felt like his heart might pound out of his chest. Harry was telling him to take off his boxers. Draco grabbed Harry's boxers and pulled them down too, his eyes finding Harry's as he pulled them all the way off.

"You can look," Harry whispered, a smirk on his face.

Draco hadn't realised he was waiting to hear that, and then looked at Harry's body with greedy eyes. Harry was gorgeous. His legs strong, covered in hair, his co*ck bobbing away from his body, his stomach soft and flat. Draco wanted to lick him, and with a start, he realised he could, and kneeled on the floor, leaning forward to press a kiss to Harry's thigh. "Can I—"

"Yes," Harry hissed, and Draco grabbed the base of Harry's co*ck and took it in his mouth without any fussing about. Draco could feel Harry's legs tense under his arms and he felt heady with the knowledge that he was making Harry feel good. Draco moved his fist in time with his mouth, swirling his tongue and bobbing his head, and drank in the sounds Harry made, which ranged from moans to babbling "that's so good that's so good keep doing that."

Just as Draco's jaw was starting to ache and he remembered why he didn't actually enjoy the execution of blowj*bs as much as he enjoyed the idea of them, Harry's hand pushed his head away.

"Stop," Harry said, and Draco pulled off with a ridiculous slurping noise.

He grinned up at Harry. "What?"

Harry tugged on Draco's shoulder, and Draco allowed Harry to pull him back up. "Don't want to come like that," Harry whispered, leaning in to kiss Draco again.

"I didn't want you to, either," Draco said with a smirk, and moaned when Harry grabbed his arse, bringing their co*cks together. "f*ck."

"What do you want?" Harry asked, thrusting his hips up, which felt so good.

"Ah," Draco said, "er, I—I. Not choosy."

Harry kissed him again, and after a minute he pulled away to say, with a serious face and lust-filled eyes, "I want you to f*ck me."

Well. Okay. Draco could certainly do that.

"Mmmm," Draco moaned incoherently but in what he hoped was an affirmative timbre. "Lube?"

Harry reached his hand out and a bottle flew across the room to his hand.

"f*ck, Harry. You realise you kill me with all the casual wandless magic."

Harry laughed, then leaned forward and said, “Crap, where’s my wand? I need to practise this spell wandless.”

Draco passed his wand over, and surprised himself with his willingness to let someone else use it. Of course, it wasn’t just anyone, it was Harry.

Harry waved the wand at Draco, muttering, “Conscidisti unguis.” Draco felt a wave of magic land on his hands, and when he looked down, he saw that Harry’s Nail-Trimming Charm had cut his nails neatly and smoothly. Then, in a voice that was entirely too filthy to belong to Harry Potter, he said, "Put your fingers in my arse, Draco."

"Merlin," Draco said, laughing breathlessly as he lubed his fingers and Harry’s rim and pressed a finger inside.

"Ngghhh," Harry moaned, and Draco smirked, moving his finger and kissing Harry again. He could kiss Harry forever, really, relishing the way their lips felt together, the way Harry's stubble scratched his cheek, the way Harry moved against him.

Suddenly Draco really couldn't wait anymore. He slid another finger in, impatient. He had no idea how long it'd last been since Harry did this. "Is this good? Do you want me to keep—"

"Yeah, it's enough, come on, come on."

Draco sat back on his heels, pulling his fingers out and reaching his clean hand around to search for his wand. He found it on the bed near Harry's head and asked, "Protection Charms? Or, I have condoms from the Healer at St Mungo's today. She was very enthusiastic about me using them with Muggles."

Harry said, "Charms," and then, "wait, what Muggles?"

Draco cast the series of charms, the feeling of the magic settling over his body, and said, "Don't worry. I'm not planning on f*cking any Muggles."

Potter gave him a strange look. "Good."

"I'm just saying, that's why she gave me condoms." How had this suddenly become so awkward?

"If we're going to do this," Harry said, naked, his hand on his co*ck, "I don't want us to do it with other people. I guess I should've said that out loud earlier, but it seemed kind of implied."

Draco leaned forward. "Why would I want other people if I can have you?"

Harry's face split into a slow, heated smile. "So stick it in, then."

"Who am I to deny a request like that?" Draco asked, smearing more lube on himself. "You okay to do it like this?" He gestured at Harry's position laying flat on the bed.

Harry nodded, scrunched his bottom lower, and pulled his legs up. Draco thought he might die from the sight.

"Come on," Harry goaded with a smirk.

Draco lined himself up and pressed inside. Harry moaned, but it didn't sound like a hurt moan, and Draco thrust in slowly, relishing the tight heat of Harry.

"You feel amazing," Draco said in a breathy voice.

Harry's eyes fluttered closed. "You do, too. Come on!"

"You're pretty demanding," Draco said with a smile, pressing forward again until he was all the way inside.

Harry laughed, eyes still closed. "I'm willing to bet that when we do this the other way round, you'll be just as demanding." His eyes flew open. "I mean, not to assume that you'd—"

But Draco grinned. "I would. We will." Then Draco needed to actually get on with the f*cking and stop their laughing. "Can we banter after we're done here, or do you want to—"

"For f*ck's sake, Draco, yes! Go, f*ck me."

Draco lowered his torso down so he could kiss Harry, then thrust, earning a moan from Harry and a feeling of intense pleasure that ran up his spine. "f*ck," Draco whispered, setting up a rhythm.

"Yes, so good," Harry mumbled.

"Should I try to change the angle?" Draco breathed, his head falling onto Harry's shoulder.

Harry made a disagreeing noise. "No, no, don't stop, mmmmm."

Draco raised his mouth to kiss Harry again, and moved a hand lower to grab at Harry's arse. It was all too much: Harry's wet mouth biting at his lip, his scratchy face on Draco’s cheek; Harry's hand trailing up and down his back; the incredible feeling of being inside Harry. He was actually doing it. He was actually f*cking Harry Potter.

The thought made guilt and fear creep into his head a tiny bit, but then Harry reached his hand around and grabbed Draco’s arse, pushed his fingers against Draco's rim, and holy f*ck that felt good. Draco reached his hand that wasn't bracing himself between their bodies so he could touch Harry's co*ck, which made Harry whisper, "yes yes yes like that," and the entire world was lost in a haze of pleasure and heat and the slapping of skin and Harry's fingers and body and lips.

"I'm so close," Harry whispered, and it felt like a challenge. Draco tightened his grasp on Harry's co*ck and pressed inside farther, faster. With a groan, Harry came, and Draco, continuing to move his hand until Harry was through, revelled in the feeling of having made Harry lose control, of having made Harry feel good.

Harry took a deep breath. "My face is tingling," he said, which Draco found horribly adorable. Then Harry pushed at Draco's torso, dislodging Draco's co*ck from his body. "Your turn. What do you want me to do?"

Merlin, that was quite a question.

"Can I f*ck your thighs?"

"Course," Harry said. He grabbed the lube, spread some between his thighs, and rolled over.

Draco reeled at the casual "of course," then pressed his co*ck between Harry's thighs. Merlin, everything about Harry felt good. Harry squeezed his thighs together, which Draco supposed he should have expected but he hadn't and f*ck that was hot. It didn't take long, only a few thrusts and Harry whispering, "you are so fit, f*ck, Draco, yes," before Draco was coming all over Harry's legs.

"Merlin," Draco breathed, flopping forward onto Harry.

Harry, who'd had longer to recover, laughed and reached his arm around to grab Draco’s hand. They lay in silence for a few moments, the sound of their breathing filling the room.

"I need to wash my hands," Draco mumbled into Harry's back, even though he really didn't want to get up.

Harry waved his hand, and Draco felt the prickle of a Scourgify settle over his skin.

"I had my fingers in your arse," Draco said, getting up. "I still need to wash my hands."

Harry rolled over and smiled. "Fine. And you said I'm the demanding one. Go wash your hands and then come back."

Draco looked around. It was the first time he'd been in Harry's bedroom, and he hadn't been paying attention when they'd come in. He spotted the door to the loo and walked in to wash, squirting some soap on his hands. He looked up into the mirror, his eye drawn to the way that his neck and torso were red from being grabbed and rubbed. There was a hickey on his neck and stubble burn on his cheek.

And there—when he turned his face—was the hexafoil curse mark.

Draco lay in bed, but sleep would not come. At his side, Harry slept peacefully, his arm thrown over Draco's torso, his legs tangled in between Draco's.

The curse was not broken.

They'd had sex, of that Draco was sure. There was no possible way that what they'd just done didn't count as sex, even if one employed the narrowest definition of "sex." There'd been oral, anal, and non-penetrative sex.

They’d certainly both enjoyed themselves, and it had been consensual. Harry and Draco had both been exemplars of the enthusiastic yes. Even after Draco replayed every moment in his mind, he couldn't point to a single thing they'd done that hadn't been perfectly consensual. Even if one used the strictest, most idealistic definition of consent—they had both been completely sober, they'd given permission aloud, they'd asked, they'd answered. No hag magic could interpret what they'd just done as non-consensual.

And Draco loved Harry. As Draco looked down at Harry's sleeping face, the way his dark eyelashes rested against his cheeks, his wild hair, the slight rise and fall of his torso, Draco's chest constricted—yes, Draco loved Harry. There was no doubt about that.

Which meant there was only one possible explanation as to why the hexafoil mark was still on Draco’s neck: Harry didn't love him.

Draco tried not to let it hurt. They'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks. It was reasonable that Harry didn't love him. It might take longer for Harry to fall in love with someone. It might take longer for Harry to fall in love with him.

Or it might be impossible for Harry to fall in love with Draco at all.

Draco had the strangest feeling: completely numb and empty—because he had no idea what to do now to try to keep himself alive—and at the same time, exhilarated and alive—because he had Harry sleeping on him and Harry didn't want them to see other people and Harry asked Draco to f*ck him and said "of course" to sex requests.

And it hadn't been just sex for Harry. No one would go to so much trouble for just sex. There'd been planning and thought and Harry said he'd considered whether he was being responsible about all of it.

Draco scrunched himself farther down on the bed, moving into Harry's warmth.

There was nothing more he could do about the curse, really. Nothing except stay here with Harry and love him and hope that it would somehow be enough, that Harry would somehow come to love him in time.

Because he could accept, now, that he was filled with hope. He wanted to live. He wanted a future. He wanted to be better, to be good enough for Harry. Even if hope was going to screw him in the end.

Harry stirred in his sleep and pulled Draco closer. Draco allowed himself to melt into the feeling. It was so different than anything he'd ever experienced. He'd never wanted to cuddle with the people he had sex with. He would surely have scoffed at the very existence of cuddling. But here he was, relishing Harry's warmth, inching closer rather than farther away. And it felt good, and Draco let it feel good.

He couldn't control the curse. But if his best chance for survival was to let himself love Harry, he could do that. That wouldn't be difficult at all.

Draco fell asleep clutching Harry.

Draco awoke to awareness of another person. His muscles clenched before he realised that it was Harry, and then relaxed again. Harry was pressing kisses to his face, turning his head to the side, kissing right under his ear—

Draco jolted upright.

"Good morning," Harry said, a bemused look on his face. "Did I scare you? With kisses?"

Draco took a deep breath to calm the irrational fear that had bubbled up when Harry kissed the curse mark. "Yes, the Saviour's kisses are menacing. You should add them to your arsenal: kisses and Expelliarmus."

"Har, har," Harry deadpanned, but his eyes glittered with amusem*nt. He reached a finger out to touch the mark on Draco's neck. "Why'd you get a Muggle tattoo? What does it mean?"

"It—" Draco didn't want to lie. He could invent some story about the history of hexafoils and how they were used to ward off evil spirits, but that would be a lie. "It is a reminder to be a better person." That was not a lie, even if it was only a partial truth.

Harry leaned forward and pressed his lips to the spot where the mark was. Draco wished he wouldn't.

"I like this mark better," Draco said, pointing to the base of his neck on the other side, roughly where Harry had left a hickey the night before.

Harry looked and laughed. "Oh. Sorry about that."

Draco smiled and raised one brow. "Don't apologise. Do it again."

Harry rolled on top of Draco, and Merlin, Draco would never get tired of that.

"Yeah?" Harry asked, and then nuzzled his face to Draco's neck, pressing kisses along the collarbone and sucking on his pulse point.

Draco's head fell back. Was it normal to feel like you couldn't live without another person, even though it had only been a few weeks? Then Draco remembered that he actually, truly, could not continue to live without Harry, and that abruptly stopped the blossoming of his erection.

But Harry's ministrations were too good to be overpowered by a vague sense of guilt, and soon they were trading sloppy kisses and grasping for each other's co*cks. Harry moaned encouragement into Draco's ear, and it felt so good, and it felt so good because it was Harry, and before Draco knew what was happening he was spilling all over Harry's hand, and then Harry followed suit, and they lay panting in each other's arms.

After a minute, Harry waved his hand and Draco's skin tingled with the Scourgify. Then Harry scooted down and crossed his arms on Draco stomach, propping up his head.

"Thanks," Draco breathed.

Harry reached a hand out and ran it over Draco’s short hair, then moved it down to touch the mark on Draco’s neck. "I've been wanting to get a tattoo, you know,” Harry mused.

"Really?" Draco asked, trying not to flinch at Harry touching the curse mark. He wasn't sure that Harry was really the tattoo type.

"Yeah, I dunno. I just don't want to be what people expect of me."

"So you should get 'Not Your Saviour' tattooed on your forehead or something."

Harry laughed, which made Draco grin.

"Nah, I don't want the tattoo to be for other people. I don't know what I want to get, though. I thought about a phoenix, because, you know, the Order, but also the whole being reborn thing."

"Are we talking metaphorical rebirth?" Draco asked, leaning up on his elbows.

"Well, sure. But I did actually die. In the Forest."

Draco reached out to grab at Harry's shoulders without even thinking about whether that was the appropriate thing to do when your sort-of-boyfriend-who-wants-to-be-exclusive tells you he once died. Draco hugged him.

"Mphh," Harry said. "It's alright. I've had a long time to come to terms with it."

"I haven't," Draco replied tersely. After a moment, he added, "I'll never forget what it felt like when Hagrid walked out of the Forest carrying your body."

"How did it feel?" Harry asked in a quiet voice.

"Felt like the world was over," Draco said, and that was the truth. "People don't—people don't know that about you."

"That I died?" Harry said. "No. People know enough about me. They don't need to know that."

Draco felt like he was going to cry from the horror of what would've happened if Harry had died for good that day. But he didn't want to make Harry talk about it, so what he said aloud was, "Can you imagine? People would've started a religion about you."

Harry snorted, his face buried in Draco's neck, Draco still hugging him tight.

"Yeah so, I kind of want a phoenix, but it feels like it would be cliché. Or people who saw it would think it was cliché. I don't want people to know what it means." Harry rolled off of Draco to lay beside him.

"I thought of getting something for my parents," Harry said. "But I don't know what. I don't want to be like one of those burly Muggles who gets a tattooed heart that says 'Mum' in the middle. And then I always start thinking that if I get one thing about a person I love who’s dead, I’ll have to get something for all of them, and it’s just a little overwhelming."

Draco smiled and grabbed Harry's hand, threading their fingers together. "You could get a tattoo about wands, instead," Draco observed. "Make it about you. Like one of the cores: a dragon, a unicorn, a phoenix. Or a holly tree."

Harry grinned. "You know, I've thought about getting holly before. I kind of love that idea."

"I've thought about getting something for my mother,” Draco said, “but I'm not sure what, either."

Harry didn't say anything, but he squeezed Draco's hand.

"I miss her," Draco said.

Harry rolled onto his side, facing Draco. "She loved you."

"I know." They still hadn't really talked about the war. It suddenly seemed big—they needed to talk about the war, because Draco didn't want it to be a thing hanging in the air between them. He looked into Harry's green eyes. "I'm so, so sorry about what I did in the war. I would give anything to go back and do it differently."

Harry gave him a sad smile. "It doesn't do any good to think about going back, you know."

"Is that what Hermione's therapist told you?" Draco asked.

"How do you—Hermione told you about that?" Harry sighed. "Yeah, pretty much. I used to spend way too much time thinking about all the things I could've done differently. How I could've saved Sirius. I used to drive myself crazy thinking of how I could've saved Sirius."

Draco put a hand on Harry's hip. "How would you have saved him?"

"I would've learned Occlumency when Dumbledore told me it was the most important thing I could do for the war effort. That's all it would've taken, really." Harry looked straight into Draco's eyes. "How would you have saved yourself?"

Draco laughed without any mirth. "How far back do I go? If I go back to the first time we met, I don't let myself act like an arse. Think that would work? If I go back to sixth year, I join the Order and let Dumbledore protect my mother."

"It's easy with the advantage of hindsight," Harry sighed, pulling Draco towards him until their chests bumped. For a few minutes, they did nothing but hold each other and breathe in each other's smells.

“Are you ever going to tell me the real reason why you suddenly started stalking me?” Harry asked, his voice quiet and his arms still tight.

“Yes,” Draco managed to whisper, “but I can’t yet.”

"Alright,” Harry conceded, and Draco was overcome with a feeling of gratitude that Harry never seemed to push him, at least not about this sort of thing. “I have to go to work," Harry said.

Draco wished he could tell Harry to stay home, not to go to work, because he had five days left to live and he didn't want to waste any of them. But he still had that tenuous hope that somehow he'd beat the curse—no longer was he pretending apathy or detachment—and if he told Harry, he'd be condemning himself.

"Alright," Draco said. "Hey. You want to go get tattoos when you're done?"

Draco didn’t know what had got into him. Apparently imminent death gave one strange and bold ideas.

Harry pulled away so he could look at Draco's face. He looked different without his glasses—softer, somehow. Not like the version of himself that was always printed in the papers. Harry grinned. "You want to go get tattoos with me?"

"Yes," Draco said. "Muggle tattoos. Because we don't want to do what's expected."

Harry laughed. "Okay. Why the hell not? I get off at five. Do you want to meet me at Ollivander's?"

"Sure," Draco agreed, running his hand up Harry's back. He wanted to keep touching Harry—he wanted it with an intensity that was a bit frightening. “So today while you’re at work we decide what tattoos we want.” Harry nodded, and let Draco scratch his back for a minute.

"Hey," Harry said, kicking his foot into Draco's shin. "I like waking up with you."

Draco's heart clenched, but he refused to allow his face to look sappy. He grinned. "Everyone likes a morning hand job, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, sure. That part was good. But I mean, I like waking up with you."

Draco could not find words. He kissed him.

At five o'clock, precisely the time when Harry was set to finish the day’s work, Draco walked into Ollivander's. The old man beamed at him. Without any preamble, Ollivander said, "You're getting close, my boy."

Draco tried to smile, but he could feel that it was more a grimace. "I'm just—I'll go see Harry now."

Ollivander smiled. "Do not allow the weed of discouragement to take root in your soil, Mr Malfoy."

What a f*cking weirdo. "Yes, very good advice, sir," Draco said, walking through the door.

In the back, Harry was cleaning up the day's materials. The goggles were in place on a shelf, but he was still wearing the dragonhide apron.

"Do you know how fit you look in that ridiculous get-up?" Draco asked loudly.

Harry spun around, and when he saw Draco his face split into a brilliant smile. "Draco!" He looked down at the apron and laughed. "I do not."

"You do, too," Draco said, walking forward and grabbing Harry's face. When they kissed, it felt like his whole body eased a bit after a day of tension.

"I missed you," Harry said, and then he launched into an explanation of a preliminary experiment he'd done with coiling unicorn hair, and Draco was overcome with how much he wanted to listen to Harry talk forever. Harry wasn't boring. Harry was smart and interesting and funny and challenging and f*ck, Draco loved him.

"That sounds like a good start to figuring it out, though," Draco said when he was through. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah," Harry said, taking off the apron and sending it through the air to a hook on the wall. "I figured out where we can go—Luna told me where she got her snorkack tattoo. We can walk."

"Alright," Draco said, following Harry out of the shop. They waved goodbye to Mr Ollivander, and as they entered the street, Draco realised this was the first time they had been together amongst the wizarding public. People were looking.

"Ignore them," Harry whispered.

"Right," Draco said. "So what happened when you tried coiling the hair?"

Harry sighed. "I don't know how to coil it. I mean, what should I coil it around? The material inside the coil will surely affect the magical field."

"Maybe there's a charm to coil something around nothing," Draco offered. "Or maybe you can take a few unicorn hairs and twist them together?"

"That's worth a try," Harry said, perking up.

"We'll figure it out," Draco said, and they reached the Leaky Cauldron. "Do you—do you want to be seen with me? Because we could walk through separately, if you want."

Harry raised his eyebrows and gave him a disbelieving look. "Do you actually think I would let you f*ck me last night, and tell you I didn't want you hooking up with anyone else, and then be embarrassed to be seen walking with you in public? Don't you know me at all?"

Draco opened his mouth like a flobberworm.

"Don't you know what a rulebreaker I am?" Harry asked, and winked.

Draco felt warm inside—Harry didn't mind being seen with him—and laughed. He opened the door to the Leaky. "Harry, you really need to stop winking. It is absolutely the worst thing I've ever seen. You look like you've been hit with an Fasciculation Charm."

Harry laughed with him and they walked quickly through the Leaky, resolutely ignoring the stares and whispers that followed them.

Once in Muggle London, Harry looked up at the street signs for a moment before deciding they needed to turn right. "It's not far," he said.

"Do you think Ollivander will retire soon?" Draco asked.

"Well," Harry answered, "fairly soon, yes. But he's still got some years left in him, I think. Which is good because I don't even know close to enough to take over for him yet. If he left now, I'd flounder."

"Do you think you'll like running it?" Draco asked. "I mean, you obviously love making wands. Do you think you'll like working the front of the shop, too?"

Harry turned to face him. "What are you asking?"

Draco raised his eyebrows. "Only what I said. What do you think I'm asking?"

"Sounds like you're asking if you can work at the shop with me."

"What! No. I wasn't thinking that."

Harry smiled. "It's not a bad idea, honestly. You're more extroverted than I am."

Draco couldn't allow his brain to process that. If he were still alive on Sunday, he could then consider the fact that Harry seemed to be suggesting letting Draco work with him in some hypothetical future. Draco had spent so long with no hope of ever having meaningful work, much less meaningful work with Harry.

"Ah, this is it," Harry said, pointing up at a sign that read King's Cross Tattoo Parlour. A neon sign in the window glowed, "WALK-INS WELCOME."

"Are we really doing this?" Draco asked.

"Yep," Harry said with a grin, opening the door. “I mean, if you’re sure.”

Draco walked through and felt Harry's hand on his back as they walked inside. “I’m sure.”

A woman with purple hair and innumerable tattoos greeted them. "Hey," she said, "how can I help you?"

"Do you have any availability for a walk-in?" Harry asked.

"Two walk-ins," Draco added with a smile.

Purple Hair smiled. "Yeah, we can squeeze you in. It's dead today. What do you want to get?"

Harry reached into his pocket, looking for something, so Draco spoke first. "A flower. A narcissus."

"Sweet," Purple Hair said. She grabbed a book and flipped to a page of flower tattoo designs. She turned the page. "Narcissus," she said, pointing. “You thinking black or color?”

Draco looked. It was a beautiful, simple black and white rendering of the flower. "Perfect," he said. “Black.”

"Cool," she said, "Raz is amazing at flowers. He should be free," she glanced at the clock, "in ten minutes or so. Where do you want it?"

"Right forearm," he said.

"What about you?" she said, looking at Harry, but Harry was looking at Draco.

"Right forearm?" Harry said.

"Yeah," Draco said, knowing that Harry was thinking about his left forearm.

Harry snapped out of it and looked back at Purple Hair. "I want a sprig of holly. Black ink. I brought a drawing of what I'm thinking of." Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper with a simple botanical illustration of holly on it. Quieter, he said, “I owled Dean for an emergency drawing. It’s good, yeah?”

Draco nodded.

"Cool," Purple Hair said. "Where do you want it?"

"On my ribcage."

The idea of Harry with a holly tattoo on his ribcage was not a bad idea at all.

"Alright, Katherine should be out in a minute."

Before long, a Muggle named Raz was leading Draco to a chair and talking placement, size of the tattoo, and cost. Draco answered his questions and agreed to the cost, his eyes flicking to Harry, who was chatting with a woman.

"Sounds good," Harry's tattoo artist said after she’d finished sketching a copy of Dean’s holly drawing. "Take your shirt off. You want me to close the curtain?"

"Nah, it's fine," Harry said, pulling his shirt off and grinning at Draco.

Raz looked over his shoulder, following Draco's gaze. "Are you going to be able to sit still if you're watching him?" he asked, a smirk on his face.

Draco was getting used to Muggles—it didn't even occur to him to recoil or get annoyed, he laughed and held out his arm so Raz could get the area prepared.

"Draco," Harry called from where he was reclined and shirtless on a table, and Draco looked over to see him mouth, "Do you want a Numbing Charm?"

Draco smiled and shook his head. There was no way he was letting Harry break the Statute because of a little pain. Draco could take pain. There was no way this would hurt like the Dark Mark had hurt.

Draco watched Harry throughout the process of Raz working on his flower. It was painful, but not bad. Draco had become expert at ignoring pain a long time ago.

He hadn't said anything to Harry about it, but he chose the narcissus flower to represent two things: his mother, of course, but also, spring. If he lived through the vernal equinox, it would be a new chance at life, just like the coming blooms. If he didn't—well. These last few weeks were kind of like a bloom in themselves, and he'd have to be satisfied with that.

It was strange to watch a Muggle woman touching Harry's torso. It was strange to see a tiny crease of pain on Harry's forehead. Draco wondered if he'd cast the Numbing Charm at himself. Probably not, knowing Harry.

Harry'd been through his share of pain, too. He probably knew how to deal with it better than even Draco did.

Draco's narcissus was done after an hour—it was a gorgeous line art, an intricate narcissus flower. He couldn't stop staring at it. His pale skin was red all around it, but he could tell already that he loved it.

"Let me see it next to your other one," Raz said, pulling out a small silver machine that said, inexplicably, "Canon Digital Elph."

"What?" Draco asked.

"Your other arm," Raz said.

Oh. This Muggle tattoo artist thought Draco had chosen to get a skull and snake tattooed on his left arm. Draco didn't think much about the Dark Mark, anymore. It was just… there. Draco held out his two arms, palms up, and he couldn't help but smile. The contrast was stark, and Draco couldn't think of anything better than that. Now he had a mark on his skin that he’d actually chosen.

Raz pressed a button on his Elph (oh, it was a camera) and said with a grin, "They look wicked together." Raz put down the camera and set to bandaging Draco’s arm and giving him instructions to care for it.

Harry's tattoo was going to take longer, since it was bigger, though Draco's had been more intricate, so Raz told him it shouldn't be too much longer.

"You want a magazine while you wait for him?" Raz asked, and pointed to a stack. Draco thanked him and sat in a seat, pretending to read about Muggle fashion but really watching Harry over the top of the magazine.

Now that he was just sitting around, Draco noticed the music that was playing over the speakers.

("Gold teeth and a curse for this town, were all in my mouth, only I don't know how they got out, dear.)

Draco's eyes watched as Harry kept his torso remarkably still under Katherine's gloved hands.

"What's this song?" Draco asked Raz.

"The bloody Shins again. People are a bit crazy for them, eh? You want me to change it?"

"No," Draco said.

("New slang when you notice the stripes, The dirt in your fries, Hope it's right when you die, Old and bony.")

He closed his eyes and listened to the Muggle music, waiting for Harry.

Two hours later, by which point Harry had paid for their tattoos (Draco's eyes had widened as he imagined his Gringott's account emptying when he paid Harry back) and they had grabbed a quick meal at Nando's, Harry ventured, "Do you want to come over to mine again? I mean, you don't have to but—"

"Yes," Draco answered. "Obviously."

They kissed on the front step, which made Harry fumble with his wand at the door. When they got inside, Draco grabbed the hem of Harry's shirt and looked to him for permission. Harry nodded, and Draco pulled it off, looking at the bandage on Harry’s ribs.

"I saw it at the tattoo shop," Draco said, "but I felt like I couldn't really look the way I wanted to look with our pals Raz and Katherine there."

“Hold on,” Harry said, walking to the bookshelf in the sitting room. He scanned the titles and pulled out a book called Practical Application of Healing Magic: A Guide for Every Wizarding Home! Harry flipped to the index, running his fingers down the list. “Aha! Tattoos.” He opened the book to the relevant page and read. “Episkey works to avoid scabbing, won’t mess with the ink. Sweet. You ready?”

Draco pulled the bandage off his arm. Harry leaned over, inspecting it, and smiled. He pointed his wand and said, “Episkey,” and the redness and heat of the skin immediately cleared.

“Your turn,” Draco said. “You want help?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, picking up his arms to give Draco access.

Draco reached gentle fingers to Harry’s skin, pulling at the edge of the bandage. Harry's skin wasn't nearly as red as Draco's had been, the advantage of less sensitive skin. Draco pulled his wand. “Episkey.” He watched as the redness cleared and the holly tattoo settled into looking like it had always been a part of Harry’s skin.

"Come over here so I can look in the mirror," Harry said, and they walked across the room to where an ugly old mirror hung. Draco stood behind him and they looked at Harry's reflection.

The holly branch curled around the side of his ribcage, mostly visible from the front but there was a part under his arm that could only be seen from a different angle. It looked amazing. Sparse little berries and prickly leaves dotted the branch, and somehow it fit Harry perfectly.

"Do you like it?" Draco asked.

"Yeah," Harry said, with a smile. "It's like an homage to my wand, and my craft, and my magic. I love it."

"I love it, too," Draco said, snaking his arms around Harry's middle, taking care to touch below the tattoo.

Harry grinned and grabbed Draco's right arm from his waist and turned it up to see Draco's narcissus tattoo. "I love yours, too. Have I told you I find your forearms very distracting? I mean, just in general. You have really sexy forearms. Not that I’m attracted to the Dark Mark, it’s like, despite the Dark Mark. But your arms in general. You have perfectly muscled arms.” Harry brought his gaze up to meet Draco’s incredulous eyes in the mirror. Draco watched as a deep blush spread over Harry’s face. “I mean, I’m not going to apologise for saying that even though I feel like a moron right now. You have really nice arms.”

Draco laughed. “Thanks. You’re blushing.”

“Whatever,” Harry said. “Anyway. I love the way it looks. He did such a good job, too. Look at the way it looks like it’s blooming. I can't wait for it to be properly spring."

Draco's face must have fallen, despite himself, because Harry said, "Draco? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

The look on Harry's face suggested that Harry knew that was crap, but he didn't say anything.

"How badly did it hurt? Does it still?" Draco asked. "Yours is bigger than mine."

"That's what he said."

Draco raised an eyebrow.

"It wasn’t too bad," Harry said. "Why? Does yours hurt still?"

"No," Draco said, breathing in Harry's scent. He always smelled like wood—Draco wondered if it was from his soap or his work. "I was wondering if it was going to prevent us from having sex." He grinned at Harry in the mirror.

Harry looked away from their reflections, craning his neck to look at Draco. "I think even if they still hurt, we could manage. We're both very creative people when motivated, don't you think?"

"Mmmm," Draco said. "I was hoping you could f*ck me this time."

Harry smiled. "I can definitely manage that."

"Probably I should be on my hands and knees," Draco said in a low voice. "So your torso won't be bothered."

Harry groaned. "You're trying to kill me, talking like this, aren't you?"

Draco kissed his neck. "Definitely not. What use would you be to me, then?"

Harry laughed, his eyes twinkling.

Draco, in a sudden panic, awoke with a wheezing inhale. For a frightening second, he thought he was experiencing sleep paralysis, but his body thankfully snapped into motion.

Harry shifted in sleep and pulled Draco closer to him. The warmth and touch helped Draco start to relax from the adrenaline rush, but still his heart pounded.

They'd fallen asleep easily. After Harry, true to his word, f*cked Draco from behind, they had stumbled around Harry's room in a haze, finding sleep clothes, casting Tooth-Cleaning Charms.

As he'd tugged on one of Harry's spare shirts in front of the mirror, Draco saw the hexafoil mark still on his neck. But he'd been consumed with exhaustion and the excitement of the day, and they'd fallen asleep before he could worry much about it.

But now, awake in the dark, Draco couldn't stop thinking about it.

Harry had spent all day making eyes at him. Harry had woken him up with sloppy kisses and told him secrets about the war. Harry had whispered, "I like waking up with you" and stuck his tongue out at Draco while getting a tattoo.

Seriously, how picky was this hag curse going to be about the "in love" bit? All of this with Harry had to count for something, didn't it?

And they'd now had sex the other way around, too—not that Draco thought that bit would change the calculus of the curse at all. But Harry had come while buried deep inside Draco, so if there was some sort of bizarre hag convention defining sex as completion while penetrating, even that had been accomplished.

Harry had wanted to have sex, had agreed to have sex, had said out loud during sex what he wanted. If that wasn’t consent!

f*ck, Draco was missing something.

And then it hit him, with a force that almost had him scrambling out of the bed and away from Harry's warm embrace.

It was the lie. It was the deceit.

Harry's love and consent didn't count—couldn't count—because they were founded on a lie. Harry didn't know the truth. Draco was using Harry—even though Draco also loved him—and Harry didn't know!

That f*cking hag had set Draco in the middle of a trap. If Draco told Harry the truth, he would break the terms of the curse and die. If he didn't tell Harry the truth, Harry wasn't in a position to offer up genuine love or consent. Harry couldn't consent to an act that he didn't know the details about—Draco using sex to stop the curse.

In either case, Draco was going to die.

For the first time since he'd been cursed—for the first time in years? Since his mother's death?—the tears came. The tears fell, and Draco didn't even try to stop them, because he finally, finally had something to fight for, and it had all been a trick.

If that f*cking hag had come along and just killed him, he would've been sad and angry in the moments before his death. Sure. A life cut short, and all that. But he wouldn't have been grasping on to life with every fibre of his being.

Instead, the hag had set him up to hope, to put himself out there, to change, to fall in love, only to take it all away.

Draco had spent so long refusing to try at anything in life under the misguided belief that it would somehow protect him. If he didn't try, he couldn't fail. If he didn't hope, he couldn't be disappointed. If he'd been killed, back then, it wouldn't have reached his heart. He would've been able to sneer in the moment before death, "Ah, yes, I knew this was coming, look how smart I was to stay cynical."

But this! He'd let his heart open up for the first time in years—since before the war, surely, maybe since he was still young enough to sit on his mother's lap—and it hurt.

In this moment, in the dark, with Harry's arm on his torso, the hag curse was the worst destiny Draco could think of. Worse than Cruciatus and Imperius; worse even than Avada Kedavra. Worse than all the barmy and terrifying ways that Muggles found to torture each other.

He was doomed to die, right as he realised he wanted to live. He reached his fingers to the bedside table, grabbed his wand, and cast a Silencio at his face. He held Harry like an anchor as he let the tears and the sadness flood his body.

When Draco came to, light streamed through the windows of Harry's bedroom. His face felt puffed up from his nighttime discomposure, but he felt calmer. At least he knew now what was going on.

Harry wasn't in the bed. Draco propped himself on an elbow. "Harry?"

Harry's smiling face appeared around the door to the loo. "Morning!"

"Hullo," Draco mumbled, still half asleep.

"I have to go to work," Harry said, glancing at the clock on the wall. "sh*t, I'm already going to be late. It's hard to get out of bed when you're in it." He smiled.

Draco's breath caught in his throat. How was he supposed to get through these next few days if Harry kept saying sh*t like that?

"Do you have plans today?" Harry asked, pulling a jumper from his wardrobe.

"I was thinking of going to the library," Draco said, rubbing his face with his hand. "Want me to look up anything for you while I'm there? Coiling charms?"

"Would you?" Harry asked, his face brightening. He kneeled on the bed and crawled over to Draco, pressing a kiss to Draco's lips. "That'd be amazing."

"It's no problem."

"Oh," Harry said, "You should also look up about the equinox at Stonehenge, if you still want to go. I don't know what time we're supposed to be there, or whatever. What we're supposed to bring if we want to do the magical rituals."

I'll be dead. "Okay."

"Do you want to hang out after I get off work?" Harry asked. "I mean, I know we've been together a lot and I understand if you want to have some—"

Draco grinned. "Yes, I want to see you after work. By the way, Harry, I want to spend every minute with you, so don't feel bad about asking."

Harry's eyes widened slightly behind his glasses. "Oh. Okay, then." He looked happy. "I'll meet you here?"

"I'll be here," Draco said. Once Harry was gone, Draco pressed his face into Harry's pillow and wondered how he would survive until Saturday.

Draco, in a state of agitation, paced Harry's sitting room, waiting for him to get home.

He'd spent the day researching at the library. He'd found some good information about coil magic, and Stonehenge at the equinox, and then he'd plunged himself into Muggle feminist books about consent. He was certain now that he was doomed—there was no way that a relationship founded on deceit, on tricking Harry into falling in love and having sex—could be consensual. Not in the way that counted, and magic would not heed rationalisations.

He'd also stopped at the apothecary and bought ingredients to make a potion that would stop his heart. No way was Draco letting that hag get his body, even if the loathsome creature would manage to take Draco's life.

He wanted to tell Harry the truth. The lies weighed on him like chains, and he felt guilty. He simply didn't want to have secrets from Harry. Harry was open and honest and understanding, and Draco found himself wanting to reciprocate in kind.

In the beginning, the fact that the curse made him lie didn't bother Draco at all. But by this point, the lies were eating him up. He had to tell Harry. And since Draco knew he was going to die anyway, there was no reason now not to come clean.

The Floo roared, and Harry stepped through. "Hey!" he said, a wide smile on his face. "Guess what? I got the beech wood ready for your wand today. We can probably finish it tomorrow, if you want to come to the shop."

"Oh," Draco said, having completely forgotten about the new wand. "Sure."

Harry pulled off his rucksack and Levitated it to a cupboard. "How was the library?"

"Good," Draco said. "I found some interesting information about coils and Stonehenge. I took notes for you. There are a few spells that might work to stabilise the unicorn hair in a coil. We'll need to experiment with different coil diameters, I think."

"Oh, great. We can experiment tomorrow if we finish your wand quickly. What do you feel like doing tonight?"

"Can we go to Stonehenge?" Draco asked, and Harry gave him a strange look. "I know we're going Saturday, but I really want to go tonight."

He wanted to see Wiltshire one more time. He wanted to tell Harry the truth somewhere else. He wanted to feel the prickle of ancient magic. He wanted Harry to get his trip to Stonehenge with Draco, even if it couldn't be on the equinox.

"Okay," Harry agreed, though Draco could tell he was a bit confused.

"If we go right now, we can see the sunset," Draco said. "If you're not too hungry."

"Let's go. I don't have any tweed for you, though."

Draco smirked. "I stopped home and got my own. You'd better wear something warmer than a hoodie this time. In fact, I think you'd look fetching in a tweed cap."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'll go get my coat."

Ten minutes later, they Apparated to a hidden spot near Stonehenge. Harry looked around, his green eyes wide, taking everything in. Draco grabbed his hand, and they walked towards the towering stones. As they got closer, the magic got stronger and stronger.

"Wow," Harry said, the wind whipping his hair. "I'm used to being around a lot of magic, you know, with work and all, but—" He stopped, closed his eyes, his face smiling as the wind hit it. "This is totally different, isn't it?"

"Yes. I think it's the difference between natural magic and magic that's been harnessed by people. They have different qualities."

Harry turned and grinned. "It makes me feel alive." He grabbed Draco's face and kissed him.

Tell him, tell him, tell him, tell him.

"Harry," Draco said, pulling away, those eyes piercing him. "I have to tell you something."

The sun had dipped below the horizon, painting the stones and the sky with gorgeous pink and orange tones that seemed totally at odds with what Draco needed to say.

Harry's face became immediately concerned. "What is it? Are you okay?"

Draco hesitated. He didn't know quite how to say I spent the last two and a half weeks trying to get you to love and f*ck me and now I'm going to die and leave you behind and it's going to hurt you and I feel like my guts are being pulled out through my sinuses while I'm being Crucioed, that's how much it hurts.

"Hey," Harry said, reaching a hand out to hold the side of Draco's head, his thumb in front of Draco's ear, the fingers behind it. "Whatever it is, we'll figure it out. Together, we're a force to be reckoned with, yeah?"

A wave of nausea swept over Draco. If he told Harry, Harry would spend the next three days trying to figure out how to break the curse. He wouldn't listen to reason, he wouldn't take no for an answer. He wouldn't believe that Draco's research had been thorough. Harry would do something utterly idiotic. It would fill the next three days with pain and misery and heartbreak, when all Draco wanted from his last days was to lay in bed with Harry and talk about wand cores and watch awful Muggle films.

And beyond that—if he told Harry, he'd be definitively failing the demands of the curse. Would the hag come and take him early? No. No. Draco wasn't ready yet. He was supposed to have three more days with Harry.

"Draco?" Harry prodded, his thumb stroking Draco's temple.

Draco reached forward and wrapped his arms around Harry's shoulders, pulling him close and hugging him tight. "I can't tell you yet. I'm so sorry."

Harry hugged back.

Draco had no idea what Harry thought Draco was upset by, what Draco was refusing to tell him. Harry probably thought it was about the war, or something. But Harry seemed to understand that Draco needed space. Harry understood, because he'd needed space so many times in his life and been denied it.

Draco held Harry tightly, their cheeks pressed together, and looked over Harry's shoulder at the silhouette of Stonehenge in the setting sun.

They’d agreed before Harry left for work that Draco would meet him at Ollivander's after lunch, for Harry wanted to finish making Draco's new wand.

Draco felt a sense of lightness, which was strange given that he was set to die in three days’ time and that he still felt a vague sense of guilt for not telling Harry what was going on. But he wasn't using Harry anymore. Everything he did for Harry now was real. Draco knew he would die, so every touch, every smile, every word had no purpose other than to feel, to express joy, to communicate.

No ulterior motives.

It was fantastic, and it made Draco's mind reel to think that there were people who walked around with this sort of guileless joy and freedom all the time. He wondered if they appreciated it.

He opened the door to Ollivander's.

"Ah, young Mr Malfoy!" Ollivander proclaimed. "Back again, and unless I'm mistaken," he paused dramatically, "I daresay you've found what you were looking for." He leaned forward, peering at Draco's eyes. "Mhmm," he hummed, and gave a definitive nod.

Impulsively, Draco reached forward and pulled the barmy old man into a hug. "Thank you."

Mr Ollivander stepped back with a look of surprise. "Well, of course, of course. Harry's in the back."

Draco couldn't believe he'd just done that—was he that desperate for a parental figure? Or was this some sort of death-bed insanity? He smiled, decided he didn't care, and walked into the back room.

Harry had his hands on his hips, the goggles and apron on, looking at the materials on the work table. Draco felt like he might keel over from the force of his affection.

Harry looked up. "You're here!"

Draco smiled.

"Hey, I got you something." Harry walked over to the cupboard and pulled out an apron. It looked like Harry's, only it was dark green. "I got you your own dragonhide apron. Since you're going to be helping me with my experiments and everything. I thought you'd like the Welsh Green skin, you know, because once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin." He was grinning.

Draco was completely overwhelmed by the gesture. He figured he wasn't really to blame for being emotional, given the circ*mstances. "Thank you," he choked out.

Harry's brow crinkled. "Yeah, no problem. Alright come over here. I cut a few different rough wands from the beech. It's possible that one of them will respond to you more than the others. Can you test them?"

Draco approached the table, and looked down at four different pieces of wood. They were unfinished, not sanded, not polished. He was unaccountably warmed by the thought of Harry doing this for him. He felt Harry come up behind him, pressing his front into Draco's back.

"Do you want to distract me? Or do you want me to test the wood?"

"That's what she said," Harry whispered with glee, rising on his toes to peer over Draco's shoulder.

Draco tried to ignore the warm press of Harry's body. He picked up the first piece of wood, weighed it in his hands. Again, he felt that faint warmth of magic buzzing. He picked up the next in his right hand and closed his eyes. They felt roughly the same, but the one in his right hand felt a bit stronger.

"What do you feel?" Harry asked, nuzzling his nose behind Draco's ear.

"If you keep doing that, I'm not going to be able to feel this low-level magical energy at all." He looked at the wood in his hands. "Does dominant hand change the feeling of the magic at all, or can I just take whichever feels stronger?"

"It shouldn't affect it," Harry said, kissing along Draco's neck.

"You are at work," Draco hissed, though in truth he loved every second of it and wasn't sure why he was pretending to care about Harry's professionalism. Harry didn't stop, and Draco put down the wood in his left hand and picked up the next. They felt about the same. He picked up the fourth, comparing the pieces.

Harry bit his neck.

"For the love of Merlin, Harry, you need to stop unless you're ready to leave."

Harry laughed.

Draco tried to pay attention to the wand wood. "I think this one," he said, holding it out to Harry.

Harry snapped back into work mode. "Great," he said. "Okay, so we have your feather and the wood. Have you ever watched a wand come together?"

"No," Draco said, turning to watch.

"It's brilliant," Harry said. "First I need to make a tiny channel in the middle of the wood. The hard part is making it really narrow, because if there's extra space between the core and the wood, it won't work well. And you can't use magic because it interferes with the inherent magic of the wood." He pulled out a drill with a long, thin bit, angled it just so over one end of the wood, and precisely slid the whirring machine into the wood.

When he finished, he held it up to show Draco. A tiny hole was bored through the wood.

"How are you going to get the feather in there?" Draco asked, looking up. "The hole is surely too small."

Harry's face creased with amusem*nt and Draco saw it coming, but it was too late. "That's what she said."

Draco burst into laughter. "For the love of Merlin, Harry, you need to stop."

"Sorry, sorry, it's just once you start you can't stop. Anyway, you can use magic for the rest." Harry picked up his wand and the phoenix feather floated off the table. Harry's nose crinkled in concentration, and the barbs of the feather squeezed themselves in to the shaft as it pressed inside the beech wood.

Draco had no idea what spells Harry was using. It was all very impressive.

"Now I'm just going to hit it with a spell that will help the core integrate with the wood," Harry said, casting again, and the wood glowed faintly. "I still need to attach the wood for the handle and sand it and everything, but wave it! See if it works for you!"

Harry handed the unfinished wand to Draco, and Draco gave it a swish. A shower of purple sparks flew from the end, blinding in their intensity.

Draco laughed, joy bubbling up in his chest. It felt like his magic had found a home.

Harry clapped his hands together. "Yes! That's incredible! It—"

Draco dropped the wand onto the table, pulled Harry's goggles off his head, and kissed him —earning a "Mppghhh!" of surprise before Harry started kissing him back—he leaned to kiss Harry's neck, he reached behind to touch Harry's back, he pulled their bodies flush together. He leaned back up to kiss Harry deeply again.

Harry laughed, breathless, and said, "What's got into you?"

"You," Draco said with a smile, and pushed Harry against the table. "Can we go? If the answer is no, can we have sex in the loo?"

Harry laughed, his head falling back to expose his perfect neck, which Draco leaned to kiss again. "Yeah, we can go,” Harry breathed. “I get off early on Wednesdays. Let's go. I can—nnghhh—I can clean this stuff up tomorrow."

"Afterward," Draco said, tugging Harry's hand to the Floo, "do you want to go flying, or do you want to watch another film?"

"Don't care," Harry said with a grin, and neither did Draco.

Harry was at work, and Draco found himself consumed with the oddest assortment of feelings: among them acceptance (for he knew there was nothing more to be done, nothing that could save his life), joy (for he'd never been happier than he'd been these last days with Harry), and guilt (for he would be gone, and he didn't want to think about how that would make Harry feel).

And Draco wouldn't even be there to explain. Harry would question whether any of it had been real. He would be grieving and he would be confused and he would be upset.

Harry’s certain pain was Draco’s only regret.

Draco sat down at the desk in Harry's office, which seemed to be used primarily for the storage of Quidditch gear and cardboard boxes. The desk was old, the wood carved in the shape of demons of some kind, and he had a strange image of his Black relatives sitting here, writing correspondence, acting like the fussy pure-bloods they were. It made Draco smile to think about that same desk owned by Harry, a cardboard box teetering on the corner that read, "sh*t FROM THE MOVE FROM THE BURROW" in marker.

Draco opened the desk and pulled out a piece of parchment. It looked like it may have been sitting in that drawer for a hundred years, given the dust, and he rummaged around for a quill, until he decided there was no usable ink to be found. He found a Muggle pen and took a deep breath, preparing himself for the worst letter he'd ever have to write.

Dear Harry,

I don't know how to say this, so I'm going to listen to the advice on that horrible t-shirt you were wearing last night and "just do it."

Remember that night when you interrupted me snogging someone in an alley? And you said you thought I was a vampire? (Did you actually think I was a vampire?) After you left, I was attacked by a hag.

That sounds like a euphemism.

In any case, I was paralysed and this sickening creature came up and told me that I was a bad person and that hags feed off bad humans. But for whatever reason, he said he would give me a chance to prove that I could be better. He said I needed to f*ck Harry Potter, and that we needed to be in love and the sex had to be consensual, and I wasn't allowed to tell you about the curse. If I didn't do it by the vernal equinox, I would die. Since the encounter, I've had that hexafoil mark on my neck.

In retrospect, I think it was all a bunch of crap—a trap. But maybe not, who knows.

At first, I thought it was impossible. I could never make you love me. But I wanted to at least try. Slytherin self-preservation, or something. I lied through my teeth at you, then, all the time. But there was also truth in what I ended up saying, so I don't want you to question it all. What I said about the Vanishing Cabinet was true, e.g.—I didn't just say that, even if my reason for saying it in the first place was a self-interested one.

But I did fall in love with you. I suppose that shouldn't have come as a surprise, but it did. You're surprising, because you're everything I ever wanted or needed, and I didn't think anyone like that existed. I had given up.

I had given up on everything, after my parents died. But the ironic thing about this blasted curse is that I started caring again. I started to try and to hope. A month ago, I didn't care. I didn't want anything in life, I just wanted to get drunk and f*ck someone and act like an arsehole so that I could treat the world as poorly as it'd treated me.

But Harry, now I want so many things. I want to wake up with you. I want to go flying. I want to see you in those outlandish goggles. I want to work at Ollivander's with you. I want to get to know your barmy Gryffindor friends. I want to figure out the coils. I want to watch The Matrix Reloaded (but not the third one, if it's as bad as you heard). I want to get back in touch with Blaise, if he's back in England and with Ginny Weasley. I want to go back to that club with you when I'm not having a freakout about everything. I want to buy you tweed robes at Christmas, just to see the look on your face. I want to buy plums and hide them in the kitchen to make you laugh. I want to go to the equinox at Stonehenge. I want to see the Spring.

But I can't. I really thought the mark would be gone after that first time we had sex. Then I thought maybe you didn't love me, at least not as much as I love you. But—it seems like you do. I think the curse is still here because I've lied to you, because none of our relationship is free from this foundation of deceit.

I could tell you now, I suppose. (It's Thursday.) But I don't know what would happen if I violated the terms of the curse like that, and I don't want to lose these last couple of days (that's selfish of me, and I own it) or for our last minutes together to be marred by your signature Harry Potter wrath. (Your signature wrath is sexy, don't get me wrong, but still.)

I don't really know what else to say. I love you, and I'm so sorry that I'm leaving you behind. You're incredible. I mean that. Really incredible—you're smart and kind and funny and you're so much more than what everyone else wants you to be. I hope you find someone else who sees that.

I'm going to pretend I didn't just see red while writing that. Because I mean it.

Will you finish off my wand?

That's what he said.

I love you. -Draco

Draco stared at the letter for a long time. Then he rolled it up and went to find Pellet. He headed for the sitting room, where Pellet had a top-of-the-line, enormous owl cage. (Harry'd told him the cage was called "the Silverado" and had to be special ordered by the Magical Menagerie.) The Silverado was empty, though. Pellet had gone out for a fly.

Draco sat on the sofa to wait, his fingers shaking a tiny bit. He flicked his wand at the gramophone that stood in the corner, glancing at the album sitting next to it; it was yellow and had a black bird tangled in a red string on the cover.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

("If you feel discouraged, When there's a lack of colour here, Please don't worry lover, It's really bursting at the seams, From absorbing everything.")

Draco allowed a tear to slide out of his eye.

("This is fact, not fiction, For the first time in years.")

A flapping of wings and a squeeze of talons on his arm startled Draco out of his despair. Pellet had landed on his arm and pecked gently at Draco's hand.

He'd become fond of the little owl, and reached out to pet his head. "Pellet, I need you to listen carefully. You're a very smart owl. Please take this letter and deliver it to Harry on Saturday. Not before."

Pellet inclined his head.

"Yes, I know, I'm asking you to deliver a letter to the place where you received it. But you'll have to trust me on this, alright?"

Pellet pecked Draco's arm in an encouraging way, and Draco allowed himself to take comfort in the companionship of a bird.

Draco made waffles.

Draco had no idea how to make waffles, but he found a book called The Joy of Cooking in Harry's cabinet and was covered in flour and casting charms at a waffle iron by the time Harry came downstairs.

Draco convinced Harry to stay home from work.

Draco convinced him by manipulating him with vaguely threatening and guilt-inducing statements. It was for Harry's own good, really, and Ollivander could do without Harry for a day.

They went flying.

It was strange without his hair flying into his eyes, and Draco laughed as he thought about how much he'd ended up loving his Muggle haircut. Harry caught the Snitch this time, and it was brilliant to be evenly matched.

Draco took Harry to a French bakery.

He ate pain au chocolat despite Harry's "Didn't you just eat a bunch of waffles? Shouldn't we get some protein? Or, like, a vegetable, maybe?" They got hot cocoa and Draco ordered extra whipped cream. Harry licked cream off Draco's lips.

Draco Side-Alonged Harry to a hiking trail.

He pulled Harry's Shrunken hiking boots out of his jeans' pocket and grinned at Harry's bemused expression. "You like to hike," Draco said. "Well, yeah," Harry said. "But how'd you know?" Draco shrugged and said, "I paid attention." They found early wildflowers and saw a turtle and a woodpecker.

They talked.

Draco asked questions about everything he could ever want to know about Harry. He asked about what Harry had done after the war, what his friends were up to, how he decided to work for Ollivander, and about Harry's godson who was Draco's first cousin once removed. Draco didn't really want to talk about himself, but Harry asked questions with interest and Draco answered, finding that he could even enjoy that, with Harry.

They had sex.

Draco pulled Harry's shirt off and spent an unreasonably long time pressing kisses to Harry's holly tattoo, which made Harry ticklish. Draco ran his tongue around Harry's nipples and kissed him and couldn't stop kissing him because it was the last time, really, and who was Draco to ever stop kissing Harry, if it were in his power? So they managed to wiggle out of their trousers and pants while connected at the mouth, and Harry rolled them over and ran his fingers over Draco's short hair, scratching at his scalp, and they thrust against each other, co*cks rubbing together, moans falling out of their mouths, biting of lips and grabbing of hands, until they came, one after the other. Harry waved his hand to clean them up, and Draco never wanted to leave the bed.

Draco cried.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked, alarmed. "I love you," Draco said. Harry's eyes widened. Then he smiled and kicked Draco in the shin. "I love you, too, you prat. But why are you crying?" Draco realised he could probably say it now, if he wanted—this was his chance. But the words caught in Draco's throat, and Harry pulled him into an embrace.

They fell asleep.

Harry's breathing evened out first. Draco craned his head to watch him. He let his love for Harry fill him up. He thought about how he was going to have to leave first thing in the morning. He'd wake up and leave before Harry woke up. Anything else would be too painful. They had planned to Apparate to Stonehenge at half past six, so they could be there for the equinox, which would occur at exactly 6:49 am. Draco just had to leave before Harry's wand alarm went off at 6:15. ("We don't need much time to get dressed," Harry had said with a stretch before he fell asleep.) Draco had the potion that would stop his heart in his robe pocket. All according to plan. Draco rolled onto his side behind Harry, wrapped his arm and body around him, and fell asleep with a sense of gratitude.

Draco roused from his slumber to a tapping noise, and wondered if he were dead. He was supposed to wake to his wand vibrating next to him, not to a tapping noise. Maybe the hag had got him while he slept.

But then he felt a warm body in front of him shift and groan. "What the f*ck," Harry said, sitting up.

Draco blinked his eyes open. The just-rising sun was starting to chase away the darkness in Harry's bedroom.

"Is that an owl?" Harry said, rubbing his face. "f*cking hell." Harry grabbed his glasses and wand from the bedside table, put the glasses on, and cast a Tempus, which showed it was 6:04 am. Draco had set his wand to vibrate at 6:05.

Harry turned to look at Draco, and his eyes scrunched in confusion. Harry reached out, turning Draco's head with his hand on Draco's chin. "That's weird. Your hexafoil tattoo is gone. What the f*ck, Draco? Was it a temporary tattoo? Did you try to trick me into thinking you were a badass with a temporary tattoo?" Harry was grinning now.

Draco shot up in bed. "What?" His hand flew up to his neck.

"It's completely gone," Harry said with a yawn.

Draco jumped out of bed and ran into the loo to look in the mirror. Sure enough, the curse mark was gone. It was gone. What the f*ck? How? Draco stared at the spot where the mark had been. He rubbed it with his finger, as if that would do anything. It was like it had never been there. He'd never seen himself with the buzzcut without the hexafoil mark, and the whole reflection was more than a bit startling.

After a few moments of staring at his reflection, Draco went back into the bedroom to see Pellet sitting on Harry's shoulder and Harry holding an unrolled parchment.

"Ahhh! No. No no no no." Draco ran across the room and grabbed Harry's wrist.

Harry's face was deadly serious. It was his war face. "I already read too much. Let me finish."

Draco's entire body flooded with fear. Harry was never meant to read this letter if Draco were alive! It was wrong! It would be a disaster!

"Please stop reading and let me say it out loud," Draco said.

"Shhhh," Harry hissed, eyes on the parchment.

Draco started to pace the room, fear coursing through his veins. What if Harry didn't understand? What if Harry didn't forgive him? Suddenly all the things that Draco had been shoving into a box of "I'll worry about that if I'm still alive after the equinox" seemed enormous, insurmountable.

Draco glanced at Harry. A moment ago, Harry'd been adorably sleep-rumpled, his eyes squinting, his hair wild. He was wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms and no shirt, and his holly tattoo stood out on his torso in a way that only something new could—Draco's eyes didn't yet expect to see it. Draco wasn't sure his eyes really yet expected to see Harry at all.

But now Harry's face was furious, the tips of his ears were red, his shoulders tense.

Draco wanted to go back to how Harry looked a couple minutes ago.

Harry looked up from the letter. "What the f*ck, Draco! What the actual f*ck!"

"I didn't mean to—"

"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter what you meant to do, does it?" Harry yelled, throwing one arm in the air. "How could you use me like that?!"

Draco opened his mouth, shut it again. He wasn't used to disappointing people anymore. He'd forgotten how much it hurt.

Now Harry was the one pacing. "My whole f*cking life, Draco, my whole f*cking life, all people do is use me. Voldemort killed my parents because of a prophecy about me. Dumbledore abandoned me to a traumatic household because that was the best thing for the war effort. Everyone, everywhere, always lied to me and used me!"

Draco could feel his eyes widening, horrified at having made Harry feel this way. Through the window, the rising sun shone in, hitting Harry's shoulder.

"Everyone! And you know what I did? I did what I had to, because I didn't have a choice! I saved the world! I let them treat me like a lamb raised for slaughter! I stood there and let Voldemort kill me, without even trying to protect myself! Because other people needed to use me to save the world."

The look he gave Draco was terrifying in its disdain. "I am over all that. Really, I am. But how am I supposed to trust people?" Harry sat down on the edge of the bed, his face still fuming, but some of his intensity having turned to something that looked like sadness. "I thought—I thought for once, for f*cking once, I had found someone who got it. Someone who understood what it was like to be used and who wouldn't do it to me." Harry looked up at Draco with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Don't you remember what it was like to be used, Draco?"

"Of f*cking course I do, Harry!" Draco burst. He'd tried to keep his cool, because he knew that he really had treated Harry like sh*t. But he hadn't wanted to do that to Harry. "What would you have had me do, then? Just offer myself up to a hag as a tasty supper?!"

"You should've, I don't know, gone to St Mungo's!"

"So help me Merlin," Draco hissed, well and angry now, "if you start telling me what I should've done without having any understanding of what I did or what I was going through, I will—"

"You'll what, exactly?" Harry said, his face dripping with sarcasm, which wasn't a typical look for him. "You'll trick me into f*cking you?"

"How could I possibly f*cking trick you into f*cking me?" Draco challenged. "Harry, you literally do nothing ever unless you want to do it! I lied to you as little as possible. I mean, sure, I lied a bit, especially in the beginning. But how could I not?"

"You never would've pursued me if it wasn't for some stupid curse!" Harry said, and he looked so hurt. "You didn't want me at all!"

"Back then?" Draco said. "No! No, I didn't! I was also a f*cking wreck in every way possible, if you hadn't noticed. This f*cking curse has somehow, stupidly, ridiculously, helped me realise that I needed to get my life back on track!"

Harry pressed his jaws together for a moment, the sun now shining on his face, then sneered, "Happy to have been of service."

Suddenly, there was a loud pop!

Draco felt his body freeze in place, and oh no oh no oh no he'd thought he was free of the clutches of this hag!

Harry, on the bed, was also paralysed, his hand in the air from where he had been making a faux-gracious bowing gesture. His eyes were wide behind his glasses.

Between them stood the hag.

He was as hideous as Draco remembered, his skin a sickly green, covered in warts and boils. He was, if possible, even more revolting in the light of day than he had been in the rainy alleyway.

"My, my, my," the hag said, looking between them.

If the hag tried to eat him and Harry both, Draco thought wildly, and Draco somehow managed to get out of this, he'd spend the rest of his f*cking life fighting to take all power away from non-human magical creatures. f*ck whatever was politically correct. f*ck Harry's progressivism. f*ck those f*cking hags!

"I didn't think you would succeed, Draco Malfoy," the hag said in an eldritch, sing-song voice. "So imagine my surprise that you and Harry Potter are in love." The hag spit the word 'love' like it was something nasty. "That you've become a demonstrably better person. Maybe not good," here the hag looked at Harry, "but better. You've broken the curse."

Accio wand accio wand accio wand.

Harry's frozen expression of shock was doing terrible things to Draco's insides. He had to protect Harry. Not Harry. Anything but Harry. Draco would gladly have died in that moment, if it meant that Harry could walk away, be spared from experiencing this type of pain.

"You care," the hag said, his voice rising terribly high. "Even now, the only thing you care about is protecting him." The hag sighed dramatically. "So much for my feast."

The bones hanging around the hag's neck jingled, and his yellow-eyed gaze landed on Harry.

Not Harry not Harry not Harry not Harry.

"You're wondering how the curse was broken," the hag said, leaning in close to Harry's unnaturally still face.

Harry almost never sat still. He twiddled his fingers, he tapped his foot, he laughed, he smiled, he frowned, he scrunched his nose in concentration. He did not, ever, sit still, and Draco's stomach felt like it was going to explode with watching it.

The hag pointed his green finger behind him at Draco as he kept his eyes on Harry. "He gave up. He thought he was going to die. And yet, he kept loving you. He stayed with you, for no reason but that he wanted to, and because you wanted him back. He wrote you a letter, revealing the truth, so that there would be no lies between you after his death. Of course, you, Harry, did not consent to the entire relationship, which was still based on untruths, as the argument I just interrupted proves, but you could narrowly consent to sex that Draco participated in freely and with no hidden motives, since you wanted him, too. For last night, Draco was resigned to his fate; his desire for you was all his own, unmotivated by the outcome of the curse, so the curse no longer factored in at all. Only then could your coupling," the hag grinned despicably, "reflect true consent. Only then could you break the curse."

What the f*ck.

The hag abruptly turned around to face Draco. "Ah, yes. A bit of a paradox, isn't it? That the curse could only be broken when the curse was no longer a factor in the act." He laughed, and the sound made fear trickle down Draco's back. "Ingenious of me, really. If you were trying to break the curse, you couldn't be acting out of free will. If you were trying to break the curse, Harry Potter here couldn't consent to the act with complete information. But, alas." He sighed again. "If you weren't trying to break the curse, you could."

Draco looked at Harry. He didn't want to look at this hag anymore. He only cared about Harry.

"Pitiably, I will leave you to it," the hag sneered. "Although, Draco Malfoy, I can promise you that if you go back to your old ways—" the hag paused to give an alarming grin, "I will eat you on the spot. Your corrupted magic would be so healthy for me, I'd probably live an extra ten years. Let that be a warning," he proclaimed, and with a snap of his fingers, he was gone.

As soon as his muscles were released from the paralysis, Draco fell to the floor. When he looked up, Harry had slumped off the bed onto the floor. His eyes were wide with shock.

For a moment, they just looked at each other. Then Harry mumbled, "f*ck!" and sprinted across the room, dropped to his knees, and pressed Draco into a crushing hug.

Draco heaved a noise that was either a sob or a laugh—maybe it was both—into Harry's hair.

Then Harry pulled back and crossed his arms over his chest. "You almost died! And you didn't tell me! You were going to let me find out with a f*cking letter!"

Draco didn't really know how to answer that, so he tugged Harry back into the hug.

"The only thing that bothered me, at the end, was how much it'd hurt you," Draco whispered. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I lied, that I had bad motivations at first."

Harry sighed, and the breath hit Draco's ear. "Finding a way to save your life wasn't exactly a 'bad' motivation. I'm sorry I took it so badly."

Draco hugged him tighter. "I would've expected nothing less, honestly." Then, in a quieter voice, he said, "I don't ever want to use you. I want you to be just Harry."

Harry sucked in a shaky breath. "I know," Harry said, pulling back so they could look at each other. "I could tell. You—you paid attention. You saw me, not the Saviour bullsh*t."

Draco reached up his hand and rubbed his thumb across Harry's cheekbone. "It's so f*cking scary to love someone."

Harry's mouth quirked into the lopsided smile that always made Draco's breath catch in his throat. "I'm not scary."

"Well," Draco said, smiling back, "yes, you bloody well are. You killed Voldemort. You should've seen your face before. But also, it's not you I'm scared of. It's losing you. It makes me feel like my vulnerability has increased tenfold."

"I know what you mean," Harry answered. “Hey. Why me?”

“What do you mean?” Draco asked.

“Why did the hag curse you to have to f*ck me?”

“Oh,” Draco said. “I’m not sure exactly. I was thinking about you; I was hoping you’d come back and save me. He said you were good, so it was supposed to be a challenge or some rot.”

Harry gave a wry smile. “I’m not really interested in saving you unless we’re going to pretend to be really sappy and talk about us saving each other.”

Draco stared at him.

"Can I kiss you now?" Harry whispered.

Draco smiled. "You can always kiss me."

Harry put a hand behind Draco's neck and pulled him close, their lips finding each other’s like they'd been kissing for their whole lives.

All the vindictiveness Draco used to feel had seeped away in the preceding weeks. But now, beyond that, all the fear that he'd felt from the hag curse was gone, too, and all the worry that Harry didn't love him back, that Harry wouldn't be able to forgive him, all the guilt about the lies and the deceit—they were all gone. Instead, with Harry pushing their bodies and lips together, all Draco could feel was joy and hope bubbling in his chest like a merry cauldron.

After a minute, Harry pulled away with a smile. "Did you actually end a letter explaining your death and saying goodbye with 'that's what she said'?"

Draco huffed a laugh. "I think I used the male pronoun, as a point of fact."

"You are so completely ridiculous," Harry said.

"I wanted to make you laugh," Draco said. "Turns out, I really like making you laugh."

Harry shook his head with a bemused smile, and he looked pleased. Then he turned to look out the window. "We missed the equinox."

"We haven’t missed all the festivities; we can go now," Draco said, threading his fingers through Harry's. "I'm sure people will be there celebrating all day. We can drink the dandelion potions and welcome the new astrological year."

Harry leaned forward, pressing a kiss to Draco's lips. "Yes. Yeah. Let's go."

Draco clutched Harry's hand as they emerged from the press of Apparition to land on dewy grass.

The quiet noise of sleepy voices and footsteps filled the air, the dark sky showing just the tiniest hint of the coming day.

"How gross do you think this rosemary and St John's Wort potion is going to be?" Harry asked, dropping Draco's hand and eyeing the flask in his other hand.

"At least as gross as the dandelion one," Draco said.

"You want to bet on whether Ron will chunder when he tries to drink it?" Harry asked, and then yawned.

Draco snorted. "He'll hold it down. The man ate the entire serving of Blaise's unidentifiable meat the other day."

Harry wrinkled his nose. "Don't remind me about that. I haven't even had any coffee and it's half past four in the morning, I can't be thinking about that dinner."

"Look," Draco said, pointing to the towering stones ahead of them, where a crowd of people were gathering around in reverence. Many of the Muggles were dressed in long white robes, which made it impossible to tell Muggles and magical people apart. He and Harry looked far more Muggle than the Druids.

Harry smiled. "Do you think the Muggles feel the magic?"

"You know," Draco said, "I think they can."

Draco's back pocket buzzed, and he pulled out his Razr. Harry was hopeless at answering his mobile, so everyone had taken to texting Draco. As he flipped it open, he said, "Text from Ginny." Draco looked up and pointed, squinting his eyes to try to make out faces among the dark shapes of people milling about. "They should be over there, I think."

Harry headed in the direction of Draco's finger. "Look at those trees," Harry said. "I wonder if they'd make good wand wood, coming from a place with so much natural magic."

"I'm not sure we're technically allowed to take wood from here," Draco observed, "since this is a World Heritage Site."

Harry sighed.

"We should do it anyway, of course," Draco continued. "For research."

Harry grinned. "For research. Of course."

"I was reading that old wandlore book I found, and there's some evidence that ancient wandcraft was fixated on using materials from magical sites. But they didn't have the same techniques we have today, and I'm not sure the most magical wood in the world could've saved them from their core instability."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, "or their terrible core materials, either. I wonder how this wood would work with the coiled core. I bet it'd be wicked. Think we can score some wood before we leave?"

"Of course," Draco said with a grin. "Also, that's what he said."

Harry laughed, and the sound was loud amongst the hushed and reverent crowd. "What time are we meeting that estate agent?"

Draco yawned, pressing a hand over his mouth. "Ten."

"Do you really think we can build a magical house from scratch?" Harry asked, raising his hand to wave to Ginny, who he’d just spotted up ahead.

Draco reached over to thread their fingers together. "I think we can do anything, obviously."

Ginny ran towards them wearing a crown of greenery with a giant pink flower on one side of her head. She didn't even seem tired—she never seemed tired. Draco found it somewhat mind-boggling.

"Good morning!" she said, and reached up to place a flower crown on first Harry's, then Draco's head.

"Thanks Gin," Harry said with a smile, turning to look at Draco. "You look good in flowers," he said.

"You think he looks good in anything," Ginny said, turning to walk back to Blaise, who was leaning over to touch his toes.

"Or in nothing," Harry added cheerfully, and Ginny snorted.

Harry's crown was a string of daisies, and Draco was overcome with a wave of affection. He'd got used to that—waves of affection, all the time. It was his normal now, and he hadn't stopped being a bit in awe of his life.

Blaise stood up and, when he saw them, came over to slap Draco on the back. He was wearing a crown of larkspur. "Happy summer, old man!" he enthused.

Draco had friends again. Real friends, not sycophants. Maybe it was the first time.

"Did you bring food?" Blaise asked. "Ron and Hermione are supposed to be bringing muffins, and we brought fruit."

Harry winced. "It's my fault—I forgot to go shopping. We brought Every Flavour Beans."

"You brought candy to a four am gathering?" Ginny asked, amused.

Draco pulled the box out of his pocket. "Do you want some, or not?"

Ginny shrugged. "Sure." She held out her hand, and Draco poured some into her palm, hoping that she didn't get all of the liquorice flavoured ones.

"You ready?" Blaise asked Ginny, and she nodded. They both reached their hands up towards the sky, then folded their bodies down, touching their toes. Draco wondered if they’d charmed their flower crowns not to fall off.

"What the f*ck are they doing?" Draco whispered.

"Sun salutations, I think," Harry whispered back. "Ginny said something about how they have plans to do 108 sun salutations today."

"They're mental," Draco said.

"Yep," Harry said, holding his hand out for some beans. Draco tried to find some watermelon beans to give to Harry, but he could never quite tell the difference between the watermelon and the chilli powder flavours.

As Harry began to fan his mouth—chilli powder, after all—Ron ran up behind him, wrapping him in a surprise hug from behind. Harry laughed, reaching his hand up to squeeze Ron's arms. "Morning," Harry said. “Ginny made you flower crowns.”

"We brought muffins!" Ron announced, grabbing a sunflower crown and placing it on his head, then passing the last crown, which was white Camellia, to Hermione. "What the bloody hell are they doing?" he asked, gesturing at his sister.

Blaise and Ginny were in the warrior position.

Hermione came to stand next to Draco. "Good morning," she said, wrapping her arms across her chest and yawning.

"Happy solstice," Draco said.

"Harry told me you're off to look at land after this," she said to Draco, hanging back from the antics of Ron trying to join in with Ginny and Blaise.

"Yes," Draco said. "I don't know if we'll find anything good."

"You two are really going to try to build a house together?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "We're not going to try. We're going to do it." He smiled.

She laughed. "I don't doubt you. I worry you might kill each other, though. It's hard to work with your partner sometimes."

"I'm not worried," Draco said, watching Harry laugh at Ron, who had fallen on his arse.

"Oh! I forgot. I found an interesting rare book on wandlore at an estate sale last week. You can get it when you come to dinner Tuesday."

Draco's interest was piqued. "Is it an Arturo Cephalopos?"

Hermione smiled. "Perhaps."

Draco laughed and clapped his hands together once. "You better not be joking, because now I am extremely excited."

"It is a Cephalopos," she said, smiling.

Draco held out the box of Every Flavour Beans. "You may have as many as you want, Hermione, if you found a Cephalopos." She laughed.

Harry called, "It’s time—look!”

Hermione went to get one of Ron's muffins, and Harry came to stand next to Draco. Draco slung an arm around Harry's shoulders and leaned into his warmth.

The sun rose, orange-yellow light hitting the stones, bursting through the Heel Stone. The thousands of people gathered stopped as one to watch. The Druids had their hands pressed together in front of their chests.

"Happy summer, Draco," Harry whispered, and the earth magic of the place swirled around them.

Draco leaned over to kiss Harry's cheek. He closed his eyes and let the sun hit his face.

He'd had no further intercourse with hags, and had endeavoured to act in ways that befitted a second chance at life—in ways worthy of Harry and of himself. He was not perfect—no one was. Sometimes people laughed at his change in demeanour, or threw him skeptical glances on the street, but Draco paid them little heed. He did good, useful deeds and enjoyed life far more than he'd once thought possible: and that was quite enough for him.

"Happy summer, Harry," Draco said, smiling into the rising sun.