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Chapter Text

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had been friends for nearly 11 years now, and in all that time, he’d been asked by her to keep a secret just three times.

Once, when she’d confessed to kissing Luna Lovegood—a really good Frenching—while drunk at an after-work party, having mistaken her hat-made-of-zinnias for Ron’s shaggy red hair.

Then again, three Christmases ago, when she’d confided that she’d been planning on proposing to Ron at midnight on New Year’s Eve with a rock the size of a Snitch.

And then, tonight, the 7th of June, 2002, an unseasonably warm early summer evening that had lulled Harry into a post-prandial doze as he lounged in his armchair, a copy of More than Just the Broad Strokes: Secrets of the Old Magical Masters sitting open in his lap. Painting was the sort of thing, as he understood it, that you couldn’t really be bad at—but that didn’t mean you were automatically good at it either, and if he was going to be selling his pieces, even for charity, he kind of wanted people paying for them because they actually admired his work and not just because he was him.

He was woken from the aforementioned post-prandial doze by a staccato rapping on his front door jolting him back to consciousness. He blinked, a bit blearily, and tried to put his thoughts in order—because there were all of about three people who had any business being behind that knocking, and none of them had intimated any plans to drop by any time soon.

The rapping was loud and insistent, though, and Harry quickly laid aside More than Just the Broad Strokes, one hand ruffling his hair into a state that didn’t look fresh from a nap and the other reaching to slip his wand into his pocket. Just in case. The property was warded six ways to Sunday, so this was either an impromptu visit from someone who wished him well—or a sneak attack by a very capable someone who didn’t.

Then again, very capable someones not wishing him well generally wouldn’t knock, he supposed, so he told his rusty, malformed Trainee Auror instincts to stand down, took a breath, and pressed down on the handle.

“I took him,” were the breathless first words that came tumbling out of Hermione’s mouth, and there was very little room to wonder who ‘him’ referred to. Her legs shook beneath the weight of the very unconscious (god, he hoped just unconscious), limp body of what looked like Draco-fucking-Malfoy, an arm slung over one of her shoulders as she struggled to support him.

Harry rushed to her side, bracing a shoulder of his own to help her drag Malfoy over the threshold. “You—took him?”

“Stole him, really,” she huffed, and from this angle, Harry could see she was not entirely put together herself. Her bushy brown hair was matted with sweat, and the muscles in her neck were taut and strained. She’d been through something, and it wasn’t over yet.

“You stole him…” Harry shook his head. “Stole…Draco Malfoy? From where?” Hermione looked like she wanted to dump Malfoy’s body into the armchair Harry had just vacated, which was not happening. He instead began angling them toward the hallway, halfway down which was his study-turned-art-studio. There was a sofa there they could Enlarge into something suitable for Malfoy’s lanky form—and more importantly, there was a door they could lock, so when Malfoy inevitably roused (assuming, again, that he was not dead), he wouldn’t be able to get up to much mischief beyond spoiling one of Harry’s fresh canvases.

Hermione’s lips, already thin, pressed into a pinched line, and her gaze went distant. “…Somewhere even he didn’t deserve to be. Somewhere that’ll want him back.”

Harry hadn’t seen her this on-edge since…well, since the war. Countless nights spent huddled in Perkins’s tent, praying their wards held, wondering where Ron was—if he was trying to find them, if he’d been captured, if he was even still alive. The stress and worry had aged her in those months on the run.

But the years since had been filled with enough happiness—or at least enough not-terror—to bring back some of her girlish charm, and she even on occasion found the time to join her Ministry co-workers for drinks after work. Hermione Granger! Stepping out for a pint! Getting drunk enough to mistake the Quibbler’s editor-in-chief for her then-fiancé! Proposing not at midnight on New Year’s Eve but two hours later because she’d been so caught up in a debate with Padma Patil on the medical applications of some exotic branch of magic Harry had never even heard of that she’d completely forgotten to enact the Grand Plan she’d been working on since Eighth Year!

So yeah. It had been a minute, a few million minutes even, since he’d seen her so on-guard, so wracked and haggard, like she’d lived through a dozen more wizarding wars in the time since they’d last spoken.

It was just—their lives, his and Hermione’s and Ron’s, were almost boring these days. Hermione was working in the Office of Magical Justice with the DMLE (though how that had brought her into the orbit of a Death Eater who hadn’t been seen in public in nearly four years was another question entirely), Ron was raking in Galleons by the bucketload as one of the owners of the Wheezes empire (with shops on three continents now and a new one opening on a fourth this autumn), and Harry…

Well, Harry was retired.

Sure, some might think being retired at the ripe old age of twenty-one was a bit absurd, but those folks had likely never lived through a war (two technically, if you counted the tail end of the first one), died, come back to life, and struck down a dark lord. Harry reckoned he’d earned a bit of relaxation, all things considered.

Oh, he’d tried to keep up appearances—and for a while there, at the beginning, it hadn’t been ‘appearances’. He genuinely had wanted to go into Auroring. His life, from the moment he’d set foot in the wizarding world, had been defined by combat in some form or another, so it just felt right that he keep on at what he was reasonably good at: solving mysteries, rallying companions, and emerging victorious in battles of wandwork.

But he hadn’t made it out of basic training before PTSD and issues with obeying authority had him being politely asked to withdraw his application. He’d been furious at first—furious, and more than a little ashamed—but then a dozen drinks, a Sobering Charm, and a long conversation with his best friends had shown him that maybe scarlet robes didn’t really suit him after all, and perhaps he ought to find something he actually wanted to do, not something everyone expected him to do.

So he’d retired, because it was one of the few luxuries he could allow himself. The best thing he could think to do with his free time was whatever the hell he wanted, without worrying if it would make others happy or pay well enough to be worth the effort. He hired an accountant to let his money make money for him and then bought a cosy little cottage hidden away in the countryside (his nearest neighbour was an old Muggle couple who owned the 300 acres he was technically squatting on), warded it to hell and back with Hermione’s help, and quietly faded from public life.

Boredom had been a phantom he’d battled on several occasions—and guilt yet another—but he’d learned that all it took to keep the dark thoughts at bay was a busy mind. In the years since retiring, he’d written a few reasonably successful Muggle children’s books—he’d had a lot of time to fantasise as a child—under the penname Dudley Vernon, and when Hogwarts was in session, he had a standing invitation from McGonagall to help the First-years get their bearings upon a broom. The Headmistress had tried repeatedly to convince Harry to join the staff full time—if not in the Defence Against the Dark Arts post, then at least as Flying Instructor so Madam Hooch could finally retire herself—but he’d declined on every occasion, not quite wishing yet to give up his quiet life in the English countryside.

The recent changing of the seasons had brought a shift in Harry’s mood along with the warming temperature, and he’d lately taken up new hobbies of gardening (he was very bad at it) and painting (he was actually kind of good at it—enough so he was considering the aforementioned charity auction). It wasn’t the sort of thing that was going to wind up in his eventual biography, he suspected, but he was quite all right with the last line of any book written about him being, “And he subsequently led a life of quiet solitude, unbothered and unheard of again.”

But then Hermione had shown up on his doorstep, a very-probably-dead Draco Malfoy in tow, and all hope of a snoozefest of a biography flew right out the window.

“He’s not dead,” Hermione said, only now producing her wand to Levitate Malfoy the final few feet toward the studio sofa. “Not yet. Though he might be, if they find him.”

“They,” Harry said, tone flat, and he shook his head as he Enlarged the sofa. “Are you gonna tell me what the hell’s going on?”

She chewed on her lower lip, and Harry gave her the time it took to deposit Malfoy’s unconscious form on the cushions to collect her thoughts. The Enlarged sofa wasn’t Harry’s finest work—Malfoy was almost swallowed by the now-oversized throw pillows that read Namastay in Bed and Embrace the Chaos—but he was justifiably preoccupied at the moment.

Harry inclined his head toward the sitting room, and Hermione nodded, following him from the studio and locking the door behind her—with two different spells. One to keep the occupant in—and another to keep would-be intruders out. She caught Harry frowning and gave a wincing smile. “Just a precaution.”

“You can’t possibly imagine I’d hurt him—”

“Oh, no! No, of course not—it’s only in case…” She gave a cursory look around the cottage—which was quickly managed, as there were all of three rooms in the whole place—and dropped her voice. “…I think we’ll want tea…”

Harry thought he would be wanting something a hell of a lot stronger than tea, but he had to trust that Hermione of all people would have a good reason—or what she thought was a good reason—for showing up out of the blue, not even a Patronus to warn of her arrival, to dump a Death Eater in Harry’s lap.

He left her to her own devices while he put the kettle on, and out of the corner of his eye, he caught her pacing around the sitting room, casting quietly under her breath what he gathered to be even more wards and security charms. Harry was struck by a wave of unwelcome memory—Apparating in the dead of night or grey of morning, weaving webs of jinxes and charms around their camp-site to deter any passers-by from glancing too hard in their direction, praying the magic held up when Snatchers wandered too close. Hermione didn’t truck too much in paranoia these days—the wards she’d set up around Harry’s property were largely to keep Muggles away, and the Unplottable nature of the location was simply for privacy’s sake.

This…this was real, genuine fear she was labouring under, and Harry wondered now if two different locking spells on the studio door was too lax.

She graciously accepted her cup when Harry returned, waving away the offer of a plate of biscuits to go with it (he left them on the table between them; she’d want them eventually—something to nibble on gave her an excuse to pause to gather her thoughts), and took a long, bracing sip, eyes closed.

“…I haven’t been entirely truthful. With you, or with Ron.”

Harry felt his stomach turn as a jolt of anxiety speared through him. They weren’t the three-peas-in-a-pod they’d once been these days, but they were still them, still Harry-and-Ron-and-Hermione, and the thought that she might have something important she hadn’t felt she could share with them…well, it didn’t fill Harry with warm and fluffy feelings.

“It’s nothing bad,” she hastened to add, perhaps seeing the maelstrom of emotion that had just crossed Harry’s features. “Only…only we aren’t exactly allowed to tell… But now I really must, because—because—” She swallowed, finally reaching for a biscuit, and fixed her watery brown eyes on Harry. “I’m an Unspeakable.”

Harry blinked—then opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. “I thought…but, the Office of Magical Justice…”

Hermione bit into the biscuit, nodding. “It’s a cover, I’m sorry—I did start there, for the first few months, but then I was sort of recruited, or well, I suppose ‘recruited’ isn’t really the right word, they didn’t really give me much of a choice. That is to say, there’s no way I could have turned them down—it was either join the Department of Mysteries or…or just never know.”

She wasn’t making any sense at all—and where was Malfoy’s involvement in all of this? That seemed like the most salient topic right about now. Had he been an Unspeakable too? Was that where he’d been all these years? “Know—what?”

“Oh, Harry, everything! You can’t imagine what sorts of things they do down there! I mean, of course we got that little glimpse back in Fifth Year—but god, there’s so, so much more! Everything esoteric, everything we think of as ineffable, incomprehensible—they actually study. They understand, it’s all the knowledge in all the world, just waiting behind a big black door, and when they said I could walk through it, that I could be part of it, I mean, was I supposed to say ‘no’? How could I?” She sounded a bit manic, like she was trying to justify her own career choice to herself. “And then—and then they asked…if I wanted to join the Transmogrification team.”

Harry wasn’t even going to pretend he knew what that was. “I’m sorry—the what?”

She reached for another biscuit. “The Transmogrification team. It was to be part of the newly established Essence Room. We would focus on existence itself—our bodies, our souls, our thoughts and feelings and how they’re all intertwined. Our team specifically would deal with the human body and all the ways magic can—and can’t—manipulate it. I mean, imagine! Our approach to spellcraft when it comes to our own bodies is so ill-refined. We can tweak the size of our nose or our hair colour with a Glamour, but we can’t regrow limbs, not without a special potion and a long and painful process, and we’re still entirely at the whim of nature when it comes to recovering from illness. We can snuff out a creature’s life with a single word—but we can’t destroy tiny viruses that ravage the body or eliminate rogue clumps of mutated cells that undo us from the inside out. So I thought…” She took a breath, nibbling on her second biscuit. “I thought I could finally make a real, tangible difference. I thought This is what I’m meant to do. The Office of Magical Justice would leave me exposed to human whim, but the DOM…they’re an entirely self-sufficient operation. I could make a difference there…” She warmed her hands on her teacup. “Hubris. As much mine as the Department itself’s.”

Harry let her ramble, still not entirely following the conversation, but his patience was rapidly wearing thin, and he reached forward to place a hand on her knee when she seemed to have lost herself in private recollection. “…Hermione, please. What’s this all got to do with Malfoy?”

“…Right. The Transmogrification team. Word came down from someone…well, someone higher ranked than we were, but that could have been nearly a dozen people. 006 loves to micromanage and has more ideas than sense, but I did hear word that 005 was hoping to get a project rolling that might see them promoted to 004’s old position. And most of our team, well, most of us were just double-digit-ranked, research personnel only—who were we to question project guidelines? Anyway, word came down that we were to focus all of our research efforts on—Animagecraft. They loaded us down with an entire library’s worth of old project files, and honestly, they’d made some fantastic strides. I practically lived at the Ministry for three weeks—told Ron I was going on a team-building retreat to Rome. I must have memorised every spreadsheet and abstract and poster presentation in those files that had anything remotely to do with the DOM’s research on Animagecraft, but…” She swallowed. “The more I read, the more I realised there were…holes. Things missing from the material they’d given us—references in bibliographies that didn’t seem to exist, or authors whose names had been completely wiped from the registry. So…” She bobbed her head. “Me being me, I couldn’t stomach the idea there was more I wasn’t allowed to see, and really, how did they expect us to put our best work forward if we didn’t have access to all available utilities? It would have been wrong for me not to sneak down to the Archives and do a bit of…private research.”

Clearly Hermione had not changed as much in the years since Hogwarts as Harry had imagined, and privately, he smiled to himself.

“And that’s when I found him.” Her voice went small and soft. “Page 223, Volume 7 of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, detailing the life cycle of the Carpathian Blackblood—fitted with an Undetectable Extension Charm that led to a cell, where he was being held under stasis.” She shrugged, half to herself, no longer looking at Harry and gaze gone distant. “I think they’d had him in there since the war. No one saw him after the final battle—I’m pretty sure everyone assumed his folks had sent him abroad so he couldn’t be prosecuted, and I know I never looked into it…” She directed her attention back to Harry now, coming back to herself a bit. “Did you know? Had you heard anything?”

Heard anything? About Malfoy? He shook his head. “No, I…I guess I never gave it much thought. I think I knew they’d rounded up his dad, but I never…”

She nodded sadly at this. “Me neither. But—it was him. He was alive—is alive, but hidden, where no one could have possibly found him. I don’t even know how I did, really…” She rubbed at her eyes, and Harry noticed her teacup was empty. He twitched his wand, directing it to refill itself, and she offered him a grateful little smile. “I read the file they kept on him, tucked into the Index. It was…extensive. He wasn’t the only one they had locked up in the Archives—he was part of a group of Death Eaters the Department of Mysteries had managed to get their hands on in the confusion that followed the end of the war. They’d been…using them. For pretty much any experiments deemed too cruel to use animals with.”

Harry felt his distaste for the Ministry, long dormant since Fudge had been its head, begin to rise again, burning like bile in his throat.

“But in one case, a researcher from the Arcana Room had developed a spell that could reveal what someone would turn into if they were to become an Animagus. And on the surface, that seems like an incredibly useful spell, really. It could save someone the stress of going through the trouble of such a long and complicated process if they knew they might turn into a cockroach or a sloth or something like that. It had fantastic applications—so of course they tested it on the Death Eaters. And Malfoy’s bad luck—or his parents’ staggering foresight—the spell said he’d take the form of a dragon. Evidently the prospect of having him as a puppet was far too tantalising for the Department to turn down, so…” She grimaced. “So they used the Imperius Curse to force him to go through the process.”

“Fuck me…” Harry’s stomach dropped as his mind drifted back to his tutelage under Not-Moody and the stomach-churning sensation of losing himself, control being snatched from him and struggling to wrest it back. But then, the weight of Hermione’s words finally slammed home: “Wait, are you saying Malfoy—that Malfoy, the one sprawled out on my sofa—can turn into a dragon?”

“Not ‘can’,” she corrected. “Has. He had to, to complete the Animagus spell—and it turns out that not a single soul in the entire Department of Mysteries paid attention in their Care of Magical Creatures class, or else they might have remembered that dragons are fantastically resilient against spells and other magical effects. Meaning that as soon as Malfoy was forced to complete the transformation and assumed his new form, he was able to easily shrug off the Imperius Curse they’d placed on him and was finally in control of himself once more.” She sipped her tea primly. “You can likely imagine how he reacted.”

Harry slumped back in his seat, world still tilted a bit on its axis at the notion the wizard laid up in his studio could probably swallow him whole if he so pleased—and Malfoy being Malfoy and Harry being Harry, he probably would please. “I’m guessing it wasn’t a strongly worded Owl to the Minister’s inbox?”

“Not quite. In fact, it was all a bit too much for him—between the trauma of being held under the Imperius Curse for so long and the rage he surely felt on finally being freed, combined with the dragon’s raw, animalistic instincts…well, he went a bit…mad. Berserk. Killed at least twenty Unspeakables before they finally managed to force him back into his human form through sheer overwhelming magical power. Except…”

Mad. Berserk. And she’d brought him to Harry’s doorstep. “Except…?” Harry repeated faintly.

“Except it’s dangerous, forcing an Animagus out of transformation. Especially a new one, one who hasn’t entirely gotten control of their new instincts—or rather who’s let those instincts run wild. In Malfoy’s case…they made him turn back, sure, but it was just his physical form. His mind…his mind was still entirely that of a beast. A wounded animal, confused and frightened and bereft of any rhyme or reason.” She swallowed. “So they forced him into stasis. Until they could figure out how to control him—or else decide he was too much trouble and execute him. They put him under and threw him into a cell, locked within the pages of a book in a library no one knew existed.” She stared down into her cup, reflection rippling over the liquid surface. “And I couldn’t just leave him there, not once I realised what they’d been doing to him—I’m no more his fan than he was mine, and he deserved to answer for all the lives he ruined, either implicitly or explicitly. But this was beyond the pale. So I—I Transmogrified him into a teacup—”

And that threw Harry. “Wh—a teacup?”

“It’s all I’ve been able to manage so far! Transmogrification is terribly difficult! Wizards’ innate magic complicates everything!” She snatched up the entire biscuit tray. “I turned him into a teacup, and—I stole him.” She said it now with conviction, a touch defensive. Like she was standing before the Wizengamot, accounting for her crime. Clearly you could take the girl out of the Office of Magical Justice, but you couldn’t take the Office of Magical Justice out of the girl.

A beat passed as Harry processed everything she’d said and the situation in which Harry had inadvertently found himself through sheer proximity. “…Does anyone else know about this? That he’s here?”

She shook her head, short and sharp. “Ron doesn’t even know I’m an Unspeakable. It’s gutted me, not being able to tell him—I’ve come close so many times, but I didn’t think it mattered. It was just a job. What difference did it make if I was working on Level 2 or Level 9?” She pursed her lips. “I’m going to tell him though—tonight. It’s not safe for him not to know now.”

Harry glanced back toward the studio door—with Malfoy slumbering just on the other side of it. “Why did you bring him here?”

She flinched—and Harry hated that he thought, just a little bit, good. A small, selfish part of him resented her for this. For involving him in whatever nasty business the Department of Mysteries was dabbling in—really, she ought to have known better! She’d been there with the rest of them, she’d seen what they studied, what dark corners of existence they strove to shine a light on. Topics better left ignored—but this was Hermione, and she’d never met a good mystery she hadn’t wanted to see solved, as ravenous for knowledge as any Ravenclaw.

He shouldn’t have been surprised to learn she’d become an Unspeakable. He wasn’t, in fact.

“I was hoping…I was hoping you might look after him. He won’t bother you—I tried everything I could to get him to rouse, but he’s practically dead. I’m sure it’s some sort of curse I just don’t know the counter to. But I can’t hide him at mine and Ron’s—that’s the first place they’ll look, for one, and Ron…well, you know how Ron feels about Malfoy.” Harry didn’t point out she knew how he felt about Malfoy, too, but that hadn’t stopped her from trying to make him Harry’s problem. “Plus, your home’s Unplottable and warded to the teeth. And it won’t be for forever of course—just until I can figure out who’s responsible for this. Despite it all, I really do believe this is the work of a rogue entity. A higher-up probably; the single-digits all tend to give each other wide berths, a sort of ‘you don’t mess with my projects and I won’t mess with yours’ approach. The DOM has quite a bit of latitude, but they aren’t completely unaccountable. The Minister and the DMLE will put a stop to this, I know it.” She fixed her gaze, hopeful now, on Harry. “Please. I didn’t know where else to go. He’s helpless.” She smiled tightly. “And you have a thing for saving people.”

I stole him, she’d said. Not ‘I rescued him’. Because he hadn’t been rescued. Only taken, moved. Freed from his physical bindings—but still mentally a prisoner.

He shook his head. “I don’t like that you’re doing this on your own—these people are dangerous. Surely there’s something more I could be doing than—”

She leaned forward, a hand on his. “This is what I need from you. Sanctuary and grace toward someone who very much doesn’t deserve it. You’re right, these people are dangerous. So I’ve got to be smart. And that means…doing this on my own. Because no offence, and I love you, but subtle you are not, Harry Potter.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off. “I’m not chasing justice on my own—I do have other friends, you know. Trusted confidants who may not know the whole story but who’ll still do me a good turn.”

Harry was still not convinced. “…You’ll tell Ron? Straight away? Maybe you should both come stay up here—we can add on a room, or get a tent like we used when we were hunting Horcruxes.”

Hermione shook her head sadly, though, standing. “We can’t—it’ll raise a dozen alarm bells. I have to act like nothing’s amiss. They’ll find me out eventually—but I can stall for as long as possible, and Ron will help. If he knows what’s good for him.” She pocketed the remaining few biscuits.

Harry saw her to the door. “…What if he wakes up?”

“He won’t.”

“But what if he does? Or if anything else happens?”

Her eyes darted back toward the hallway. “…Send Ron a Patronus with an innocuous message. He’ll know you won’t send one lightly, and he’ll make sure I hear. I’ll contact you back as soon as I can.” She paused, seeming to consider her words—then launched herself at him, wrapping him in a fierce hug. “Thank you,” she whispered tightly. “I knew I could count on you.”

“Well, like you said: I have a thing for saving people.”

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “If nothing else, I’ll check back in at the weekend, all right? Surely you two can’t get up to too much mischief between now and then.”

“Get off my property,” Harry said, shutting the door behind her to force her onto the porch—though he didn’t close it all the way. “…Be careful.”

She nodded, smiling gratefully, and then turned on her heel and was gone with a sharp CRACK.

And suddenly it was just Harry, the too-warm June evening, and an unconscious Draco Malfoy—all alone in his tiny little cottage.

He shuffled his way back to the studio, unlocking the door and slipping inside. Malfoy was still out, chest not even moving to show he was breathing, and Harry still wondered if Hermione hadn’t got it wrong and he was in fact very dead. If Harry’s home started to smell because of this wanker’s rotting corpse, they were going to have words.

But the longer he looked, the more he saw the truth of what Hermione had said: his cheekbones were sharp enough to slice your finger on, and the thin shift he wore hung off him in all the wrong places, like there was next to no meat on him. His white-blond hair was lank and matted, far from the slicked-back coiffure he’d taken such pride in sporting years ago, and his skin had a chalky pastiness to it.

Harry did not feel the same swell of pity as Hermione evidently had, seeing Malfoy brought low like this, but…something did stir inside him, a coiling sense of unease. As bad as Malfoy looked on the outside, he was worse off on the inside. Maybe he was still locked in there, reliving the nightmare that had been his weeks of magical compulsion over and over and over. Harry sometimes thought it was the worst of the Unforgivables—the Cruciatus Curse just hurt, and the Killing Curse just killed you. The Imperius Curse…it took away your agency. Made you a prisoner in your own body—forced you to watch as you did all sorts of things you didn’t want to do, said things you didn’t mean, hurt people you loved. It left the sorts of scars people couldn’t see; sometimes those were worse than the ones they could see.

“…Hermione’ll get you sorted,” he said, his conviction absolutely unfounded—but it was all he could manage just now. He pulled out his wand and tweaked the Growth Spell on the sofa, refining it into something a bit more bed-like, then Summoned a throw from the cupboard and settled it over Malfoy’s form, stopping just shy of tucking him in. It wasn’t as if Malfoy would appreciate these little touches, but it made Harry feel a bit better himself, and he bent down to clap Malfoy on the shoulder, reminding him the toilet was at the end of the hall, and then locked the door behind him once more, retiring at last for the evening.

Chapter Text

When Harry awoke the next morning, he was roused not by the bright, warm sunlight streaming in through his thin bedroom curtains, nor by his garden gnome’s vibrant cursing as he chased off what sounded like a massive slug that had been threatening to topple one of the tomato plants—but to a firm, solid body pressed tight against his own, one arm thrown over Harry’s chest, and soft, tickling breaths washing slowly over his neck with the steady rhythm of deep, comfortable slumber.

Harry’s eyes popped open, and he blinked up at the ceiling once, twice, three times—testing his senses just to be sure he wasn’t imagining the aforementioned firm, solid body, arm over his chest, and soft breathing against his neck.

Nope, it was still there even once the cobwebs of sleep had been swept away, and cocking his head just to the side, careful and cautious, he found his nose pressed against the crown of a head of lank blond hair that smelled rather musty, like it hadn’t been washed in ages.

“What…the FUCK?!”

Harry rolled off the side of the mattress in his best impression of a seasoned Auror dodging a deadly curse, collapsing onto the floor in a pile of limbs and groping desperately for his wand. His mindless flailing knocked his wand from its stand on his bedside table, and it nearly rolled under the bed before he managed to nab it, stumbling to his feet and whirling around as he backed his way out of the room, wand trained on the trespasser in his bed.

A very, very nude and definitely not dead—not even unconscious, not anymore—Draco-fucking-Malfoy.

“Y-you—you—what the fuck are you doing in my bed?” More to the point, what was he doing in his room, even? Hermione had always had better marks than Harry in school, but he’d been pretty sure he could handle a proper locking spell inside his own home. How had Malfoy escaped? When had Malfoy escaped? Hermione had assured him Malfoy had been under so strong a curse even she couldn’t wake him up—and yet, here he was, shifting blearily upright as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and glancing around with a frown as he struggled to get his bearings. Harry stamped a foot, arm thrust forward and wand brandished. “Answer me! What—how did you—fuck.” He wished he’d had the forethought to grab his glasses as well in his mad dash to escape Malfoy’s groping grasp, but he didn’t dare show a hint of weakness, not while Malfoy was sitting there with his everything out, so he’d just have to hope he could hit the broad side of a barn if it came to it.

But Malfoy seemed in no great rush to answer Harry’s question—nor did he seem terribly intimidated by Harry’s wand raised in threat. Quite the contrary, when his eye fell on Harry, he seemed to connect that Harry was in fact no longer curled up next to him and—pouted. It was the only word Harry could summon to describe the expression: he seemed positively put out that he was now alone in Harry’s bed—and he shifted forward onto hands and knees, carefully crawling on shaky limbs towards Harry.

Harry didn’t like that, not one bit. He tightened his grip on his wand. “I—I’m warning you, Malfoy! Stay back!” He didn’t want Malfoy’s bare bum and other assorted nether-regions rubbing all over his freshly laundered sheets, but it was better than the alternative. “I don’t want to have to put you into the wall, but I will, don’t think I won’t. I’m sure your mind’s a bit addled, but I’m willing to bet force is a language you can comprehend even in your current state.” He squinted; it was impossible to tell Malfoy’s expression without his glasses. “…Do you even understand me?”

There was no response—and Malfoy did not heed his warning, still creeping closer as he slid off the bed and onto unsteady feet, and Harry had to grope behind himself with his free hand to open the door. “Dammit, stop! Or—I dunno—heel! Stay? Oh, bollocks.” With a quiet, private apology, because surely Malfoy wasn’t in his right mind, and it felt a bit unfair to put him on his arse first thing in the morning, Harry sliced his wand through the air and delivered a resounding Knockback Jinx—

—which slammed hard into Malfoy’s chest—

—and made contact with a shield of glittering black scales that seemed to absorb the magic before flaking away to nothing, leaving Malfoy entirely unblemished and very much un-Knockedback.

Malfoy paused, glancing down at the spot where the spell had hit him, and brushed away some imagined lint before shrugging to himself and continuing to march on Harry. With each step, his gait grew more assured, and Harry nearly tripped over his own feet as he scrambled backwards, halfway down the hall when Malfoy’s form filled the doorframe. He dared a glance to his side, noting that the door to the studio where Malfoy had been laid up had not been broken down or blasted aside; indeed, at a glance, there seemed to be no sign of any mischief whatsoever, as if Malfoy had just turned the knob and stepped out.

“How the hell did you…” Harry muttered to himself, then quickly fixed his gaze back on Malfoy. It was less than wise to take his attention from what, if Hermione had the right of it, was a very angry, mad dragon in a pasty-faced git’s body—

But Malfoy did not seem to be stalking him, nor did Harry catch any glint of animalistic, predatory hunger in those bright grey eyes. He followed Harry—followed, didn’t chase—at a reasonably sedate pace, matching Harry’s own as he struggled to put distance between himself and Malfoy. It was like Harry was leading him. Curiously, this did not bring any degree of relief to their interactions.

The backs of his thighs bumped up against his armchair, and Harry narrowly avoided toppling backward. This seemed to be the moment Malfoy had been waiting for, as he closed the remaining distance between himself and Harry startlingly quickly. Harry yelped, delivering a reflexive Petrificus Totalus!—but just as Malfoy had quite literally brushed off the Knockback Jinx, so too did the Body-Bind fail to find its mark, slamming up against a carpet of black scales that seemed to manifest over Malfoy’s chest from nothing, dissipating the magic and flaking away into sparkling bits of dust.

Nothing for it, Harry rolled himself backwards and over the armchair and then raced for the kitchen, whirling around once he’d crossed the threshold and shouting, “PROTEGO!”

A translucent cool blue barrier filled the jamb, radiating waves of abjurative magical energy, and Harry sank into one of his dinette chairs, breathing hard. Just beyond the barrier, Malfoy stood disgustingly tall and still distressingly nude, brushing questing fingers over the surface of the barricade and sending magical echoes rippling over it as he stared at it with a curious frown, momentarily distracted from further attempts to accost Harry.

Fuck. Fuck, this was bad. Sure, maybe Malfoy wasn’t so much mad as confused, but that did nothing to mitigate the problem of him now being alive and alert and here, in Harry’s house, with no one around to help manage him. He was, as Hermione had put it, essentially a dragon in a human’s body, and Harry didn’t have a stellar track record when it came to tangling with dragons. Could he Owl Charlie, he wondered? But no, Hermione had sworn him to secrecy, and what advice was Charlie likely to reasonably offer when Harry asked him what he ought to do with a dragon trapped in his sitting room? “Feed it lots of biscuits”?

Malfoy was still fussing with the barrier, and his brows furrowed just a tick, an elegant little divot forming between them as he seemed to focus intently—and Harry watched, dumbfounded, as his fingertips blackened like he’d just dipped them in soot, and his grimy, stubby fingernails began to lengthen, arching into wickedly curved talons. He pawed at the Shield Charm, and to Harry’s horror, managed to work one of his taloned nails in between the microscopic magical threads that kept the barrier sound, tugging at it in an obvious effort to tear through it.

Harry immediately leapt to his feet, waving his hands. “Wh—stop that! Cut it out! No! Er, bad—bad dragon!” God, he felt ridiculous—but Malfoy did at least stop messing with the threads, though his nails remained wicked black talons, tapping absently against the shield. He fixed his attention on Harry once more, and Harry knew he had to hold it, or else Malfoy would go back to attempting to dismantle the Protego—how the hell was he doing that?—and Harry would be on the run again.

He took a tentative step forward, hands raised, though he kept his wand up his sleeve for easy access. “Can you—can you understand me? Can you, like, nod or something? Give me some kind of sign I’m not just talking to myself here?” Alas, there was nothing—only curious eyes tracking him; Harry’s shoulders slumped. “Well shit. What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” He couldn’t stay locked behind the barrier forever—not least of all because, eventually, Malfoy would manage to tear a hole through it and…well, he didn’t want to contemplate what Malfoy might do at that point. Turning into a great fire-breathing beast and eating Harry might be the kindest outcome.

One thing he did know: this was well outside his wheelhouse. It was time to call in Hermione to take care of her little pet project. Harry would help her find somewhere else to hide Malfoy, but he wasn’t staying here.

He summoned his Patronus—and though Malfoy flinched at first when it appeared in a burst of silvery mist, he quickly pressed himself up against the Protego like a kid at Christmas who’d just spotted the new top-of-the-line broomstick floating in the window of Quality Quidditch Supplies, eyeing the stag hungrily. Harry didn’t want to dwell overlong on what that meant, and he promptly sent it on its way, reminding it to seek out Ron and let him know Harry really needed to speak with Hermione, as soon as possible, for Sleeping Beauty was awake.

Malfoy deflated a bit when the Patronus disappeared, off to deliver its message, and Harry grumped, “You’d better not eat my Patronus. You’ll eat people food while you’re here, right? Hey.” He snapped his fingers for Malfoy’s attention, and those sharp, grey eyes were fixed on him once more. “…If I drop this Shield Charm, you aren’t going to, like…invade my very hard-fought personal space, are you?” But Malfoy was tapping insistently against the barrier again, and Harry sighed, manoeuvring around behind one of the chairs and grabbing hold of it, ready to use it to fend off Malfoy’s advances like a liontamer. “…Don’t make me regret this.”

He palmed his wand, and with a quick snapping movement, dispelled the barrier. Malfoy, clearly not expecting this, promptly toppled forward, landing hard on his hands and knees. Harry winced, taking a pre-emptive step back in case Malfoy mistook this for a cruel joke (which, under different circumstances, it could well have been), but Malfoy only groaned pitiably and struggled back to his feet, evidently still unsteady on his atrophied limbs.

“…I would have warned you, but I doubt you’d have understood,” Harry said, and Malfoy shook his head, slowly taking in his new surroundings—and then realised there was nothing stopping him from advancing on Harry again. “Ah-ah-ah,” Harry warned, giving the chair between them a good, threatening shake. “You can stay right where you are.”

This did not seem to translate, for Malfoy continued his approach, and with a soft Fuck of frustration, Harry shoved the chair toward him—

—when a flash of silver caught his eye as a glowing Jack-Russell terrier bounded through the wall and into view. Malfoy was instantly distracted, whirling around with preternatural speed, and with startling reflexes, he pounced on the Patronus as it opened its mouth, Ron’s voice emanating in a clear tone: “Hermione’s at work. I’ll pass on the message, but I doubt she’ll be able to get away before the weekend. Sympathies, mate. I’ve got stocking duty, else I’d help.”

Harry very much doubted Ron’s sympathies were all that sincere—better Harry be stuck with Malfoy in his addled state than him, he was likely thinking. Harry honestly couldn’t blame him. Still, he wished Ron were here for an assortment of reasons, starting with wrangling Malfoy and ending with pouring each other very strong drinks while they commiserated over Hermione keeping such a massive secret from the both of them. It felt like third-year all over again.

Malfoy was now madly stamping on the floor (and causing things to bounce as he did so), evidently attempting to dispel the Patronus, and each blow of his foot through its glittering body sent puffs of silvery magical energy scattering. With its message delivered, the Patronus finally vanished, and Malfoy must have taken this as a sign of a successful eradication on his part, for he puffed out his pale, bony chest with pride and gave a little yip of accomplishment, beaming widely at Harry.

Harry rubbed his face. “…Yeah. Yeah, great job. You sure showed it…” No longer particularly caring if Malfoy assaulted him or not, he slumped into the chair he’d just been brandishing at Malfoy and groaned.

So he was stuck here, until at least the weekend, with a Malfoy who seemed more animal than human and shrugged off spells with nary a second thought—just perfect. Fantastic even. Voldemort would be rolling over in his grave at not getting to do in Harry himself, but at least a Death Eater would land the final blow.

Except—Harry squinted at Malfoy, who was presently stalking the whole ten square metres of the kitchen, presumably searching for more Patronuses horning in on his territory or something, and realised that his left forearm showed no signs of the inky blotch of the Dark Mark. More to the point, now that he actually looked, leaning so far back he nearly fell out of the chair, Malfoy’s chest also no longer bore the horrific silvery scars left over from their brief, doomed interaction in the sixth-floor boys’ bathroom. Every inch of him (and there were several inches of him) seemed fresh and unmarred. His knees didn’t even seem bruised from his earlier tumble.

Harry hung his head. What the hell was he? This wasn’t Animagecraft—it couldn’t be. He’d met a fair few Animagi in his days now, and none of them had ever had their better halves so forcefully manifest while they were human. Sure, sometimes Sirius had watched the squirrels running around the back garden of No. 12 a little too longingly, and Pettigrew, in their very brief interactions, had always seemed a bit hunched, like he didn’t like being so exposed out in the open, but that wasn’t this. That wasn’t having your entire personality (such as it was) shunted aside with an animal plopped down in its place—that wasn’t bits and pieces of said animal manifesting as it pleased, in scaly protective shields and ripping talons and fantastically rapid magical recovery.

A pair of knobby bare feet stepped into his eyeline, wiggling reflexively. Harry froze—he didn’t dare raise his head, wary of what might be sitting just at eye level if he did so.

He placed his hands—carefully, gently, lest Malfoy interpret this as an assault on his person and tear his arms off—on Malfoy’s hips and guided him back as Harry closed his eyes tight and straightened upright. When he dared open them again, he found himself staring, to his consternation, at the bridge of Malfoy’s nose, just below his eyeline. Years of malnutrition and being forced to live in tight quarters had done a number on Harry’s build—why couldn’t the same have held true for Malfoy? Life truly was not fair.

He sighed. “…Right, let’s at least get you some clothes. I can’t deal with you like—this.”

There was just no winning an argument, even against a mute person, when they were nude and you were not. It lent them a kind of paradoxical power, like they were so beyond caring about what they looked like, you couldn’t hope to bother them. Malfoy looked thoroughly unbotherable right about now, and Harry was having none of that.

He made for his wardrobe, digging through the chaos that made up the bottommost drawer until he found the bag he’d thrown Ron’s clothes into after they’d been left behind the previous summer when Ron and Hermione had come up to spend a few weeks just before the back-to-school rush hit the Wheezes shops. He held up a faded orange shirt that proclaimed in loud, bold lettering This Year, For Sure! (it had not, in fact, been that year) and supposed Malfoy was in no position to complain about the colour—or the Cannons.

Getting the shirt on to Malfoy, though, was another matter entirely, as he didn’t seem to understand even the most basic of instructions and fought Harry every time he tried to wrangle the clothing onto him. Eventually, he just resorted to a Placement Charm, praying Malfoy wouldn’t shake this one off too—and for a brief, shining moment, it seemed to work: Malfoy was still naked from the waist down, but everything above-board looked dandy.

Until Malfoy glanced down at himself with a disgusted frown, raised a hand, and unsheathed those nasty talons once more—raking them across his chest and absolutely shredding to ribbons Ron’s poor Cannons 2000 World Cup Run commemorative tee.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t—goddammit—why did you—” Harry buried both hands in his hair and tugged, hard, in frustration. “Why is it you somehow manage to piss me off just as much when you’re a mindless lizard as when you’re a proper human being? Not that you ever were a proper human being, if we’re being honest…”

Perhaps the orange really had still offended him, somewhere deep down. Harry turned back to the wardrobe and began rooting around again, certain there’d been a pair of joggers left behind too—a nice, boring grey colour that would look lovely on Malfoy’s bottom half, covering up his anything and everything. In retrospect, Harry probably should have started there and worked his way up to tee shirts and pullovers.

But when he finally managed to dig out the joggers—he turned around to see Malfoy already clutching in his grasp one of Harry’s older and rattier Weasley jumpers. It had holes under both arms, and the hem was fraying—but he couldn’t bring himself to toss it, convinced that, one of these days, he was going to bring it back to Molly and ask her to Mend it so it could see many more years of service. Sure, he had about ten of these jumpers now, but each one was special—and he very much did not want this one shredded like Ron’s hapless Cannons tee.

“Ah—no, that’s…that one’s mine, if you could…just…” He carefully—ever so carefully—tried to gently tug it from Malfoy’s grasp.

But to his great shock, the talons that had replaced Malfoy’s nails slowly retracted, leaving behind perfectly reasonable (if a bit grimy and ill-serviced) nail beds. Malfoy balled up the jumper—then buried his face in it, taking a great, deep lungful.

Harry grimaced—the jumper was clean, but it had to have been years since it’d last seen a Tergeo, and even from here, he could smell the mustiness roiling off of it. Why Malfoy would want to go and suck in a lungful of that stench was beyond Harry; dragons were weird.

But the weirdness wasn’t over, for now Malfoy was trying to crawl inside the jumper. No—no, he was trying to wear it. Except he was starting with the neck-hole and bollocks he was going to stretch it out beyond Harry’s limited ability to Mend it. He scrambled to help Malfoy orientate himself properly if he was truly bent on wearing the jumper.

“No—no, it goes on this way, from this end. And—yeah, your arms go in—no, not there, there.”

It was a lucky thing Molly knitted her jumpers a few sizes larger than they probably needed to be. Harry had always preferred a looser fit anyway, and once Malfoy had his arms and head in the proper holes, it hung from him decently well.

Malfoy seemed much more satisfied with the jumper than he had the tee, and Harry couldn’t figure if he was just partial to scarlet or if, perhaps, he’d been cold. That tended to happen when you ran around naked, even in mid-June. Malfoy pulled up the cabled collar to cover his nose and gave more testing sniffs, and Harry turned back to the wardrobe, fishing out the joggers he’d dropped in a panic. Top down, bottoms to go.

But Malfoy treated the sensible grey joggers with as much disdain as he had the orange tee, slicing them up six ways to Sunday, and Harry began to form a new hypothesis: Malfoy just wanted to wear his clothes. This theory gained further support when Harry found an old pair of pyjama bottoms he was comfortable never wearing again (he would always know that Malfoy’s bollocks had been rubbing all up against the fabric, even once they’d been thoroughly Scourgified) and Malfoy obediently let Harry show him how to step into them. They rode high, the cuffs barely reaching Malfoy’s ankles, but he didn’t seem to mind this one bit, crouching into a little ball once they’d been tied off and burying his face into his knees, giving another deep, bracing sniff.

Harry amended his earlier thought: Dragons were really, really weird.

He let Malfoy have his moment, then tugged on the jumper to get him back on his feet. “C’mon, up you get. I’m not leaving you in here alone with the rest of my clothes—I don’t wanna know what you’ll do to them. Probably make a nest or something.” Did dragons make nests? He wasn’t keen to find out.

Malfoy complied, shifting uncomfortably close to Harry, and Harry raised his hands, bracing between them to force Malfoy to leave a bit of breathing room. It took a decent shove, but he did allow himself to be pushed back, only frowning in confusion at Harry as he did so, like a toddler who didn’t understand why he couldn’t live twenty-four-seven in his parent’s personal space.

Harry froze, though, with his palms splayed over Malfoy’s chest. The jumper gaped a bit, given how underfed Malfoy was, exposing his collarbone and offering a cheeky peek at a smooth, unblemished pectoral just below it.

Yup, still no criss-crossing web of scars, and it was strange how it unsettled him more that they weren’t there than if they had been. Something else of Malfoy’s that had been stripped away—probably for the better, like the Dark Mark, but there was value in scars. They reminded you of things you were better off not forgetting. Reminded others of things they maybe wanted to forget.

Harry let his hands drop back to his sides, shunting his gaze away from Malfoy’s chest. “…Probably a coward’s way out, but I figure when you can’t understand me is as good a time as any to apologise…” Perhaps he could use this as practise for when he eventually proved himself man enough to say these things to Malfoy’s face. “I—I didn’t know what the curse did. Which is probably all the more reason I shouldn’t have cast it, I guess, but well. In fairness, you were casting an Unforgivable at me, so I was only defending myself. Just—I’m not that kind of person. I wouldn’t have maimed you. Not on purpose. When I thought I’d killed you, I…I don’t think I’d ever been so scared in my entire life. Up to that point, at least. And it was a pretty high bar to clear, me being me. But—I know that curse scars can hurt like a bitch, even after they’ve healed, so…I am sorry. And since you can’t tell me to go fuck myself, I guess I’ll assume you accept my apolo—”

Something brushed against his forehead, and Harry jerked back. “Oi, what’re you doing?” Malfoy had one hand raised, fingers still extended and a searching look in his eyes. Harry knocked his hand away, taking another step back, and reached up to feel—his scar. Malfoy had been touching his scar. “…Don’t do that,” he said. “It’s…weird.”

At length, Malfoy drew his hand back, forming a little ball with his fist, as if to physically keep himself from indulging in any future urges to touch Harry.

The timing was…odd, to say the least, given Harry had just been talking about scars. Did Malfoy understand what he was saying after all? Was he still in there, buried somewhere deep down beneath a dozen layers of animalistic instinct and predatory drive and unfathomable magic?

Well, if he was, that was Hermione’s problem to solve. Harry just had to make it to Saturday, when Hermione would see there was absolutely no way she could possibly ask him to become housemates with the self-same knob who’d made their collective lives living hells, even if he didn’t seem to remember all of that just now. Forgiveness had to be earned, not doled out like Fizzing Whisbees and Sherbet Lemons by a doting Headmaster, so until Malfoy managed a fair enough ‘I’m sorry for being an absolute pillock from the moment we met’, Harry saw no reason to treat him with any more than the most minimal of courtesies—and that didn’t include room and board.

Well, perhaps a bit of board. With Malfoy more or less decent, at least as far as clothing went, Harry decided a spot of breakfast was in order. Perhaps Malfoy was only following after Harry because he was hungry, like a stray animal, and with a decent meal in his belly, he’d find a warm sunbeam to curl up in and trouble Harry no further.

He was able to convince Malfoy to sit at the table and wait (im)patiently for Harry to throw a good English together, and as he stood at the hob, directing the frying pans and cutlery and serving plates, he let his mind wander, contemplating his next move.

Malfoy, for however human he might appear on the outside, presently had the mind and instincts of a very wild, very justifiably angry animal, so it was probably best Harry not go out of his way to tick him off. It sounded like he’d killed more than a few Department of Mysteries employees already (god, had he eaten them?), and though, “Felled by a dragon,” would be a pretty awesome way for that biography of his to end, he was hoping to go out with a bit less of a bang, after all he’d been through.

All he had to do was keep Malfoy from turning into a dragon. That meant no more tossing spells at him willy-nilly; he might interpret it as an attack and defend himself the best way a dragon knew how. Harry didn’t know the spell to force an Animagus back into their human form, so there was no telling how long it lasted. For all he knew, it was still affecting Malfoy even now, and an errant Finite Incantatem might free him, allowing him to assume his proper form once more, and then that would be the last anyone heard of the Boy Who Was Eaten By A Dragon.

Dragons were intelligent, though, at least as far as Charlie told it—like most magical creatures, they had a leg up over mindless, mundane animals. They could learn to recognise friend from foe, or at least who they associated with pleasure and who they associated with pain. All Harry had to do was make sure he stayed on Malfoy’s good side, and everything would be aces.

On the bright side, Malfoy didn’t seem like a traumatised, mad dragon—more like a naughty puppy who hadn’t yet learned to recognise its master and simply needed a bit of training to bring him to heel. Had he been a Crup, Harry might have found his antics endearing; as it was, he was just grateful Malfoy hadn’t tried to piss on anything. Yet.

Not entirely sure how he was meant to entertain Malfoy in their hopefully brief time together, Harry largely left him to his own devices. This, it turned out, was a mistake; had he told Malfoy to go sit in the garden and watch the tomato plants grow, he might have actually done so—but given leave to do whatever he wanted, so long as he wasn’t getting up to any mischief, Malfoy decided that what he wanted to do…was whatever Harry wanted to do.

Malfoy as a human had been a very proud person who liked to surround himself with sycophants and yes-men who would tell him at regular intervals how wonderful, how very clever, how handsome he was. Malfoy as a dragon-in-a-human-body…still craved attention on a level that seemed to border on almost raw biological need.

He clung to Harry’s side as if they had been Epoximise’d together, refusing to let Harry out of his sight, up to and including nearly tearing the bathroom door off its hinges when Harry stepped away to take a piss. Harry’s armchair was no longer his armchair but their armchair once Malfoy tried to curl up alongside Harry, who had been hoping to finish Just the Broad Strokes some time before the turn of the next millennium; in the end, he’d had to Transfigure it into a sofa or else endure Malfoy’s bony arse in his lap. It was thoroughly unnerving, Malfoy being so insistent on his attentions—though when he stopped to think about it, he supposed it wasn’t all that different from how Malfoy had behaved at school. Harry could only hope that Malfoy would take responsibility for his ridiculous actions once he was back in his right mind and not promptly sue Harry for something like ‘illegal manhandling of the Malfoy heir’ (if it wasn’t a law already, he’d probably campaign for it to be one).

The first order of business, he decided, was to set boundaries and teach Malfoy to respect them. If spells weren’t effective in keeping Malfoy in line, after all, Harry was going to have to rely on Malfoy actually being a decent sort and giving Harry his space. And Malfoy did seem to learn quickly enough that Harry’s squeal of protest and voice raised in threat when Malfoy tried to join him in the toilet or the tub meant he was not welcome.

Still, it was one step forward and three steps back when it came to these efforts, and try as he might, Harry could not get Malfoy to sleep through the night on the Enlarged sofa-slash-bed Harry had made for him. Perhaps it was too uncomfortable for His Royal Arseness’s tastes, or perhaps it was something a bit more draconic in nature—they lived in colonies, right? Maybe that was the issue—but Malfoy refused to stay put in the studio, winding up by morning curled up in Harry’s bed once more, hogging the blankets and nestling his face against the nape of Harry’s neck.

For three nights Harry tried to ward him off before, on night four, he was just too exhausted to care any longer. Malfoy at least didn’t snore, and though Harry did not appreciate being ‘snuggled’, least of all by someone who’d called his best friends the worst names imaginable, it was only an indignation he needed to endure for just a couple more days. And so, framing this ‘quirk’ in every draconic reference he could muster (perhaps he was ‘hoarding’ Harry’s blankets—or perhaps he’d imprinted on Harry and was simply playing the lost little gosling to Harry’s great gander), he tamped down the urge to physically kick Malfoy out of his bed and determined to get some shut-eye.

Perhaps most unnerving in their interactions, though, was Malfoy’s inability to speak. Harry supposed it made sense—dragons weren’t known for their loquacious nature, after all—but for one, it just felt wrong sharing space with Malfoy when he wasn’t picking apart Harry’s appearance or ragging on his choice of friends or starting every other sentence with My father will hear about…, and for another, it scared the pants off Harry when Malfoy would just appear behind him, soundlessly and signlessly suddenly there. Malfoy had never been good at sneaking around—it’d been child’s play stalking him back in school, as Harry recalled it—but suddenly it was like he was slipping through shadow, unnoticed and unremarked, until he wanted Harry to see him but never before.

Harry couldn’t do much about that second part other than perhaps tie a bell around Malfoy’s neck (and they weren’t there, not yet), but he reckoned he could try and resolve the first part. He’d taught Teddy to speak, after all (for very loose definitions of ‘speak’ that mostly amounted to the single syllable ha), and Malfoy probably had the mental capacity of a toddler right about now, so it tracked.

It was day 3 when he finally got Malfoy to settle onto the sofa beside him in the sitting room, explaining, “Right, it’s a pain in the arse you not being able to communicate, so we’re gonna try and get you sorted.” Malfoy had shown absolutely no indication he understood this, but Harry was not deterred. If you could teach a Crup to bark on command, surely a dragon-confined-to-human-form was similarly easy to train.

He started with ‘Potter’ first—after all, Malfoy had been spitting his name for nearly a decade, so it should be one of the easiest words for him to reclaim. ‘Should’ being the operative word apparently, because the syllables just got garbled in Malfoy’s mouth whenever he tried (which in itself was progress) to repeat the name. ‘Po-ah’ was close, but it wasn’t quite there.

And then, Harry had an idea, and they tried ‘Harry’ instead—Teddy had taken to it immediately (again, for very loose definitions of ‘taken to it’), so surely even Malfoy could wrap his tongue around it. It took a bit of doing—Malfoy couldn’t get over the R sound, and Harry eventually had to reach for Malfoy’s hand and place it against his throat so he could feel the vibrations as he spoke. Except then Malfoy began leaning entirely too far into Harry’s space, evidently taking this as invitation to touch more, and Harry had to put a stop to that. Eventually Harry accepted success when Malfoy finally managed ‘Arry, for while it wasn’t perfect, neither was Malfoy, so this would have to do.

But teaching Malfoy to say his name, it turned out, had been a terrible mistake.

For one, he would not shut up, now that he’d realized that saying the word turned Harry’s attention his way. Sometimes he would just sit curled up against Harry in the armchair while they—well, Harry—read and say ‘Arry, apropos of absolutely nothing, just so Harry would frown at him. ‘Arry became his ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘I really don’t want to take a bath, though’, and Harry was distressed to find he was learning to interpret the subtle differences in those uses.

The weekend could not come quickly enough.

Hermione came around at long last on Saturday evening.

Harry hadn’t dared send Ron another Patronus, wary of raising suspicion, nor had he received similar in kind—so he’d found himself checking the front steps every few hours, just in case for whatever wild reason Hermione had long since arrived and just been waiting patiently to be invited inside. To no avail, though, and the morning stretched into afternoon as the sun made its way toward the distant horizon and night fell all around them.

He was in the kitchen when she knocked; at his wits’ end with Malfoy harassing him first thing every morning for breakfast, Harry had resolved to teach him how to cook at least something basic. Not anything fancy enough he’d risk burning down the cottage, but surely even he couldn’t screw up a simple egg-and-cheese toastie.

They’d gone through half a dozen eggs and were working on the other half; he didn’t think Malfoy quite understood the concept of gently cracking the egg and was just having fun making a mess. Malfoy had been just about to demolish egg number 8 when he froze, stock still, and drew up tall and straight, seeming to vibrate with a wary alertness.

Harry frowned. “…What? What do you—”

“Harry?” came Hermione’s voice from the entryway, and he opened his mouth to reflexively call back In here!—

—when Malfoy barrelled past him, knocking the rest of the eggs off the counter to smash upon the floor as he raced for the entryway.

Harry had only a moment to react, recognising that perhaps Malfoy did not remember Hermione—or worse, maybe he did—and this didn’t in any way feel like the curious stalking he’d done with Harry that very first morning. This felt angry, and dangerous.

He grabbed the frying pan off the hob and raced after Malfoy, taking the corner at a sprint—and found Malfoy, staring down a very concerned Hermione, who had her wand raised with wide, frightened eyes fixed on Malfoy as he approached her at a careful stalk. His arms were held out from his body, like he meant to rush her at any moment, and the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck lifted as a deep, guttural growl that didn’t sound human at all began to emanate from Malfoy’s chest.

“H—Harry…” she started, swallowing thickly. Her wand arm was shaking. “Harry, what’s…”

Malfoy tensed, and Harry, having borne witness to Malfoy’s perceived glorious dispatch of Ron’s Patronus, recognised what was about to happen. He wound up, did his best impression of a Beater, and beaned Malfoy over the back of the head, a bright PING! echoing from the impact. The blow went skating over a bed of protective black scales that manifested in a flash, but it did what Harry had hoped it would and distracted Malfoy, drawing his attention back to Harry.

“Cut that shit out,” Harry said, firmly, one finger raised as he shook it in Malfoy’s face, and Malfoy flinched, glancing back and forth between Harry and Hermione as if to say But! “That’s Hermione, you great tit. The one who rescued your ungrateful arse from going extinct.”

“‘Arry—”

He raised the pan in threat. “Don’t you ‘Arry me!”

“Oh good god, he spoke,” Hermione gasped, wand still raised. “Harry, did he—”

“Nah, that’s all he can say. And he won’t shut up with it.” He prodded Malfoy’s shoulder with the pan. “Get back in the kitchen. You made an enormous mess, and I’ll be damned if I’m cleaning it all up by myself.” Naturally, he intended to just cast a quick Scourgify and be done with it, but he needed a moment for both himself and Hermione to catch their breaths, and he couldn’t do that if there was still a chance Malfoy might try to attack her.

Malfoy gave a last forlorn look at Harry, who shooed him away with the pan, before trudging back into the kitchen like a truculent child, feet dragging the whole way. Harry waited until he could hear the sound of Malfoy at least making some attempt to scrape up the eggs he’d smashed before turning back to Hermione. His heart was still pounding in his chest, and he gave her a quick once-over. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

She swallowed, then shook her head, carefully pocketing her wand with one eye still trained on the doorway leading to the kitchen. “No, he…he mostly just stood there, posturing. And—growling, or whatever that was.” She dared a few steps closer and dropped her voice, as if worried Malfoy might overhear her. “…All right, I really need the quickest rundown you can manage, because this is ever so much more than I expected when Ron told me Malfoy was awake…”

Harry gestured for her to take a seat, electing to stay standing himself just in case Malfoy needed to be run off again. He glanced at the pan still clutched in his grasp; it was dented from where he’d smacked it against Malfoy’s head. God, he was really fucked if Malfoy ever actually needed handling—he hadn’t even flinched when Harry had nearly brained him with a piece of kitchen crockery!

“Start at the top—when did he wake up?”

Harry wiped his face with his free hand. “I don’t—actually know, really. I just woke up, and there he was.”

“There he was—where? You’re saying he’d wandered into your room?”

“Er—yeah.” He didn’t see the relevance of clarifying he’d wandered into Harry’s bed, nor that Harry had by now given up all hope of keeping him out of that bed. “Must’ve happened some time during the night? He was still out of it when I turned in.”

Hermione chewed on a thumbnail in thought. “What triggered it, then, I wonder? I suppose there’s a chance the spell wasn’t on him but rather on the prison they’d confined him to, except I couldn’t get him to wake up for the life of me even once I’d managed to eject him from the cell. You saw as much.” Indeed he had. “All right, that’s something I suppose we’ll just have to dig into at another juncture.”

“And by ‘we’, you mean…”

“Me, obviously.” She gave him a fond little smile. “So, what else? He was speaking earlier—but you said he can’t actually speak, not really?”

“Yeah. I’ve been working with him a bit, treating him like Teddy and trying to help him voice whatever’s going on inside that thick skull of his—it’s clear he kind of understands what I’m saying, or at least the tone I’m using.” Hermione hmmed, casting a glance past Harry to the kitchen. “So I thought if I could get him using even simple phrases, well—I mean, parrots can understand simple conversation, and they teach gorillas sign language, so why couldn’t I teach someone who used to be able to talk to do so again?”

“And how successful have you been?”

“Er, you heard pretty much the sum total of his vocabulary. Just ‘Arry.”

“‘Arry…” Hermione repeated, one brow creeping up into her hairline. “Not ‘Potter’?”

“Hey, it’s not as if I didn’t try—but it sounded like he was trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles, so I compromised.” That brow was still arched, but he moved past it. “And anyway, that’s really not the most important thing.”

Her mien shifted, and she scooted forward, literally on the edge of her seat. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he began, then moved to sit beside her. “I…he’s got this…thing he can do. Like—when he showed up in my room, out of nowhere, I was, I hope you can imagine, understandably startled, so I…I cast a spell at him—” At her aghast expression, likely remembering the last time he’d flippantly cast a spell at Malfoy, he quickly amended, “Nothing deadly! Just a Flipendo, to show him I meant business, since he was looking at me then about how he was looking at you a moment ago—” Not entirely true, but who was keeping track? “But…”

“But?” she prodded when he didn’t continue quickly enough for her satisfaction.

“It just—bounced off of him. It hit him square in the chest, I’m sure of it—” It was hard not to be sure; Malfoy had been starkers at the time. “But then these—these little black scales appeared, out of nowhere, blanketing the bits of him where the spell impacted, and it just fizzled away. He didn’t even flinch.” Hermione’s brows knit in either confusion or concern or some amalgamation of both. “And—and he can turn his fingers into these…these creepy black talons. Hermione—” He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it with a sigh. “I watched him quite literally pick apart a Protego with his bare hands! He just—dug those talons into the barrier until they found purchase and started tearing a hole into it! That’s—I’ve never seen anything like it before!”

Hermione was chewing on that thumbnail again, gaze gone a bit distant with thought. “And he accomplished these feats…when he was threatened? What was the Protego for?”

“Er, well, he was rushing me, and the Flipendo hadn’t done anything, so I kind of walled myself off in the kitchen because he wasn’t listening to reason. If he could understand me at all, which I’m still not sure he can. It stalled him for a few minutes, but given enough time, I’m sure he would’ve ripped the shield to shreds. It wasn’t hurting him, he was just that determined to get through.”

She stood and began pacing, and Harry recognised the tell-tale signs of Hermione hot on a research lead. He’d piqued her interest enough she’d mostly forgotten about nearly being tackled by a mad dragon trapped in a wizard’s body and was now focused on getting to the bottom of this mystery. If anyone could do it, she certainly could.

“I have a theory,” she said, and then quickly amended, “Well, a hypothesis. A working one, and you’re supporting it more and more strongly as this conversation goes on.”

“Wh—so you know why he’s changing all these little bits about himself? Is it a spell, something they cooked up in the Department of Mysteries and used on him, in those nasty experiments you talked about?”

“What? Oh—no, not that. That I haven’t got a clue about. The ‘bits’ that he’s changing about himself sound to me like parts of his draconic form breaking through, a sort of half-baked Animagus transformation. Though in my experience, Animagus transformations have always been a one-and-done thing. I’d need a lot more information and first-hand accounts concerning the stimuli that are causing these fits. It’s like the dragon-y bits of him are still trying to protect his human form despite insufficient impetus to transform completely. But for all I know, this could just be what happens when you screw around with Animagecraft and force it on an unwilling victim; transformations come in fits and spurts—he might not actually be able to become fully dragon again. But—” She waved her hands. “That’s getting entirely too far into the weeds, and I think we’re facing a much more concerning matter right now.”

The hypothesis, then. Harry straightened. “Wh…what is it?”

“Well—” She sat down again, still brimming with nervous energy. “The way he just shrugged off that Stasis Curse once I’d drawn him out of his confinement has been niggling at the back of my mind this whole time… And I think I may have cracked it.”

“All right—so what?”

“Page 223, Volume 7 of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”

“…Pretend I don’t have that particular tome memorised.”

“I don’t either,” Hermione said, lips twisting. “It’s where I found him, remember? The Carpathian Blackblood. It’s not just where they were hiding him—it’s what he is.”

“All right…now pretend I don’t know what that is. A dragon, I’m guessing.”

“Not surprising you haven’t heard of it, they’re extraordinarily rare. Hunted nearly to extinction for their pelts—the next best thing to a Hallow masquerading as an Invisibility Cloak. A garment made of Blackblood hide has a fantastic ability to shift in colour to match its surroundings, a natural camouflage—kind of like a chameleon. It’s where they get their scientific name, Drago chamaeleonis. But…” She began worrying her bottom lip. “That’s not the part that’s concerning.”

Oh, she wasn’t concerned Malfoy could turn into a massive fuck-off dragon that could turn invisible? Well that made one of them.

“See, Blackbloods have another colloquial name as well: Wizard’s Bane. Dragons in general are fairly resilient to magical effects—it takes quite a bit of concerted effort to bring one down. Blackbloods, though, are on an entirely different level. Their breath has strong anti-magic capabilities, causing most magic in the vicinity to go on the fritz, as it were—and, perhaps as you’ve witnessed with Malfoy…they’re able to disentangle magical enchantments. I suspect that being in that stasis bubble may have temporarily frozen those abilities, and then once I brought him out, they began to recharge, like atrophied muscles. When you hit him with that Flipendo, his body reacted as it ought to and attempted to protect him from arcane assault.”

“Arcane assa—I wasn’t assaulting him! I was properly freaking out because there was a naked man in my bed!”

Hermione boggled, blinking. “I—what?”

“Nothing.” Harry shook his head. “Fuck. Fuck—so what, he can just shrug off any magic we throw at him?” And not-magic wasn’t looking too effective either, if Harry’s dented frying pan was anything to go by. “What’re we meant to do if he decides to go berserk again? Hope the new Nimbus line lives up to its claims of being ‘faster than a speeding dragon’?”

“Well, he doesn’t seem capable of transforming back, or else he might’ve already done so when you first cast at him.”

“The ‘if he was going to kill you, he already would have’ argument really isn’t hitting home with me.”

“Well it’s true! And on the off chance he did manage to shift into the dragon again, you can take small comfort in the fact that Blackbloods don’t get terribly large, not as dragons go, at least. They feed pretty much exclusively on other magical creatures—”

“Oh, what, like wizards?”

“—and there’s too few of those around in its native lands to be able to support very large predators, so I expect at best he’ll only be elephant-sized.”

“Only elephant-sized?!” Harry squawked, throwing his hands up and collapsing back into his seat. From the hallway, Malfoy poked his head out of the kitchen and gave a soft, probing ‘Arry? Harry ignored him. “He is gonna eat me.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic. Magical creatures are the dragon’s preferred diet—Malfoy as a human is just that: human. He might still be inclined to hunt magical prey—I’d tell Thom to be on his guard if I were you—but you’re far too large for him to find you remotely appealing.” She sighed. “Gosh, if he really is a Blackblood, I suppose that explains why the Department didn’t just exterminate him when he went ballistic. They put a lot of resources into…cultivating him. He would have been an incredibly useful asset if they could figure out how to bring him to heel: extraordinarily powerful, able to blend in remarkably well for such a massive creature, and virtually immune to all but the most brutal—the most unforgivable—of spells. Fully under their control, he would have been…” She shuddered. “I hesitate to say ‘unstoppable’, because no one’s unstoppable, but…well, I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against him, that’s for certain.” She turned to Harry. “I genuinely don’t think he’s going to harm you, though. He’s tolerated you quite well so far, don’t you think? You get along better now than you did at school, even.”

She had the right of that, at least. “Imagine he got forcibly turned into a dragon and then shunted back into his human body in First Year. We might be best mates by now.” He didn’t want her mistaking him, though. “But—I mean, he can’t stay here, can he? He’s—awake. Aware. Surely you can do something with him now, right? He’s got some mental faculties—maybe enough to answer questions, if you posed them properly? Shouldn’t you take him to the DMLE now?” It truly wasn’t just that Harry didn’t want Malfoy hanging around any longer than was absolutely necessary. It was only, the longer this dragged on, the more dangerous it was for Hermione, who was still going in to work and behaving as if nothing were amiss. She would get found out, eventually, so better she head straight to the authorities and get Malfoy sorted by professionals as soon as seemed feasible.

“…I want to, I do, but—I mean, can you honestly tell me, for 100% sure, that you don’t think this goes beyond the Department of Mysteries? That the likes of Robards—or even Kingsley himself—aren’t involved? I admire Kingsley, and he was an amazing asset during the war, but…he’s Minister now. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions when so much is riding on your position. Even he might have thought…I don’t know, that the ends justified the means? And Robards—maybe he would see this as forcing Malfoy to make amends whether he wanted to or not; he’d certainly be doing the Auror force more good as their attack ‘dog’ than rotting in a cell in Azkaban, after all.” She reached over and gave his hand a squeeze. “…I want to be sure. I want to do this right. It’s too dangerous not to—and I know it’s rotten to ask you to look after him, but you are and ever have been the only person I’d trust to do this. You know how important it is, keeping him secret and safe. And you’d do it knowing he’d never do it for you—because you’re ten times the man he is. Was. Might be again.”

Harry turned his head just to the side, fixing his gaze on Malfoy, who was presently clutching the doorframe leading into the kitchen, halfway out into the hall. He’d been moving towards them about an inch a minute ever since that earlier ‘Arry. Sneaky little shit.

He closed his eyes, massaging his temples. “…And here I thought I might finally get my personal space back…”

“Perhaps you could invest in a few more non-magical locks for the studio door; it should take him at least most of the day to bust through them, and then you can just pretend you’re dog-sitting and the studio’s off-limits until his owners return.”

He wiped a hand over his face, deciding to just have out with it: “He won’t sleep in the studio.”

“He what?”

“He won’t sleep there. Refuses. He won’t sleep anywhere except—” He chickened out, just at the goal post.

“Except?” Hermione prodded, and he heard her shift forward even more, in very real danger of falling out of her seat now.

He took a long, bracing breath—then beckoned Malfoy in, and in aggressively short order, Malfoy had planted himself practically in Harry’s lap, as was typical these days.

“Oh—my,” Hermione said, and though Harry could not see her, eyeline blocked completely by the aforementioned near-lapful of Malfoy, he could hear her brows rising into her hairline.

He tried to shove Malfoy off, and though Malfoy complied reluctantly once Harry raised the pan in threat, it was only to bury himself against Harry’s side, chin resting on Harry’s shoulder and breath tickling Harry’s neck. He shivered. “Yeah.”

Hermione’s brows were doing absolutely wild things right now. “I—why is he—how long has he—” She seemed to be having some manner of a stroke, and she slapped her cheeks, perhaps to reset herself. “I need an explanation.”

“That makes two of us.” He tried to roll the shoulder Malfoy was draped across, but Malfoy refused to be budged this time. “He just—he won’t leave me alone. Seriously, it’s a challenge to get him to give me enough privacy to shit some days. You don’t want to know where I found him the first time I took a shower after he’d woken up.”

“No,” Hermione said, blanching queasily. “I don’t think I do.” She blinked, processing his words carefully. “So—what, he…sleeps in your room?” Harry was not inclined to respond—and like the brightest witch of their age that she was, she put the pieces together, sputtering, “In your bed?!”

“Now—listen, it’s a decent-sized bed, and I make sure there’s a nice pillow barrier between us, but—” He gave another violent shrug that Malfoy ignored. “Look at this! There’s no putting him off! I mean—” He fixed Hermione with a pleading look. “D’you think it’s, like, imprinting or something? ‘Cause I was the first person he saw when he woke up? Or—don’t dragons prefer to congregate in numbers? I’m pretty sure I heard Charlie refer to ‘colonies’ on the reserve a few times.”

Hermione tapped her chin, squinting at Malfoy. “…I suppose it could be an imprinting thing; Norberta thought of Hagrid as her father, because he was the first thing she saw once she hatched, but…well.” She gestured at Malfoy from head to toe. “He’s an adult. And you weren’t the first person he’d seen ever—only the first out of stasis. I don’t really think…” She trailed off, and her mouth formed a little o.

Harry recognised that expression. “What? What is it now?” God, he’d heard enough bad news this evening already—couldn’t she cut him a break?

“I—well, I mean, I might have…another theory.”

Harry swallowed. Her first one had been pretty sound, so that boded well—or ill, perhaps—for this one too. “All right. I’m already sitting down, so.”

“Well, just, it’s very obvious he’s protective of you.”

Protective? He supposed he hadn’t considered it from that perspective. “Oh. Yeah. I guess I can see that. He was about ready to rip your head off earlier—he didn’t recognise you, though, so maybe he thought you meant to do me harm?”

She touched her lip, rubbing. “I…I think it might be a bit more than that.” And now her expression had gone a little funny.

Harry shook his head, not following—and not liking where she was leading. “…Does he think I’m, like, part of his hoard he’s got to guard?” He gave a little laugh, because it sounded preposterous, but he was kind of hoping that was the case. Hoarding he could deal with—imprinting he could deal with. Whatever had made Hermione’s lips turn up like that, he could not.

“Er, I think you’re getting warmer…” she said, and finally taking pity on Harry, she continued, “I think…I think he might be courting you?”

And nope, Harry could not take that. He sprang up immediately, fleeing Malfoy’s insistent groping and placing the sofa between them. “‘Arry?” Malfoy called in soft confusion, and didn’t he realise now was not the time?

“That—no? No! Don’t be ridiculous! He—he can’t be courting me; he hates me!” He waved a hand in Malfoy’s direction. “And he doesn’t even know he’s him!”

“Of course he knows he’s him—he’s simply him, as a dragon for now. He has all the same thoughts and feelings as he did before. Only now they’re filtered through a new lens, one that sifts away all the silly, useless human emotions and leaves behind only base instinct.” She frowned at Malfoy. “Maybe it was never exactly ‘hate’ that he felt for you—maybe it was more that he wanted your…attention? And when you wouldn’t give it to him the way he wanted, by being his friend, he sought it by being horrible to you. Now, he simply doesn’t have the presence of mind to be two-faced about it. He wants your attention, and he’s just going to keep after you until you give it to him.”

Harry had zero intentions of giving Malfoy anything. “I—I can’t have him hanging around like this then! I was just being nice before—now he’s going to think I like him or something!”

“Oh I’m sure he won’t—you aren’t returning his affections in a way he’s satisfied with, it seems, or else he wouldn’t still be seeking them so ardently.” Harry didn’t like any of those words and wished she’d stop using them. At least she hadn’t said Malfoy wanted to— “He’s prime mating age, for a human at least,”—fuck—“so I imagine it’s just hormonal signals getting a bit off-balance. You can just gently put him off, and he should get the message. Even…tually.” She tilted her head, for Malfoy had reached now for one of Harry’s hands, which had been clenching the back of the sofa for dear life, and pressed his forehead against Harry’s knuckles.

Harry jerked his hand back, glaring at her darkly. “Fix this.”

She gave him a soft, understanding smile. “I’m trying to, honest I am.” It was hard to believe her, just now. “We have to do this carefully—which means, necessarily, slowly. And I know you don’t like taking things slow—” Harry opened his mouth to protest, but she pushed through. “—But I also know you realise it’s what has to happen. So just tolerate Malfoy’s inappropriate attentions for just a little bit longer, and I promise I’ll do everything I can to see you never have to deal with him again.” Her expression hardened into something more serious. “Please, Harry,” she begged, taking the same tone she had when she’d shown up, panicked, with an unconscious Malfoy slung over her shoulder. “I can’t do this without you.”

He firmed his jaw, exhaling loudly, just so there was no mistaking how very cross he was with this entire situation. “…Fine,” he bit out. “But I’m serious, I cannot deal with him being so—so clingy. I don’t care if it’s courting or imprinting or just him being a headcase—it’s got to stop.”

She nodded, eye going to Malfoy, who had thrown himself dramatically against the back of the couch, reaching limply for Harry with the most forlorn look on his face. “The simplest way around it—and the quickest way to get him out of your hair altogether—would be to get him to remember who he is. There’s no way Draco Malfoy in his right mind would voluntarily place himself within ten feet of you except to hex you, so that should get him off your back.” At Harry’s queasy expression, she added with a rueful smile, “Metaphorically. And if I can get him to testify in a manner no one could possibly question—as his fully human self, in complete control of his faculties—then we’ll be able to root out the bad actors who did this to him in the first place.” Harry heard the overly hopeful tone in her voice, recognising it well: she wanted to believe, fervently, that this was just a fluke, that someone had gone rogue and enacted these horrors, that the Department of Mysteries itself still had the best of intentions. He let her have her fantasy.

“…Well, all right, that sounds fantastic. Only do you have any idea how to go about that? Can I just whack him hard a few more times and maybe rattle everything back into place? I’m willing to give it a shot, even if you aren’t completely confident.” He held up the frying pan for show.

“Er, no—admirable as I’m sure your intentions are, I don’t think it’s quite that simple.” Of course it wasn’t, just his luck. “See, I think what needs to happen…is his insides need to match his outsides. So to get the human brain back in the human body…” She lifted her brows, waiting for Harry to pick up the thread.

“…Wh—you want him to turn back into the dragon? All the way? The dragon that killed, what, twenty Unspeakables, I think you said?!” He shook his head, baffled. “Why on earth wouldn’t he just go berserk again and eat me?!”

“Well because, as I think we’ve established, he likes you.”

“He doesn’t like me! He doesn’t! And once he’s in a big enough body that I can fit in his mouth comfortably, like a tasty little morsel, suddenly I’m going to become part of that ‘magical creatures’ diet!”

And she had the nerve to roll her eyes. “Oh don’t be dramatic, Harry. He is not going to eat you—but his mental patterns right now are all off-kilter, draconic instincts and urges funnelled into the infinitely complex pathways of the human mind. He’s confused—but if we can get him sorted, able once more to have a proper place to put those emotions, his human psyche should be able to reassert itself naturally.”

“Except then I’ll just be stuck with Draco Malfoy, in a massive fuck-off dragon body that shrugs off spells like nothing. If you think he’d show me an ounce of gratitude, you’re barking.”

She began to gather her things, standing. “Be that as it may, it’s our only option. And from what you’ve said, he already seems inclined to transform parts of himself on a need-to-do basis, so all you’ve got to manage is getting him to shift the whole way. If you want your personal space back and, more to the point, to see justice done, you’ll do your level best to help him remember who he was, one way or another. I have the utmost faith that Malfoy practically living in your skin twenty-four-seven will be more than impetus enough to help you with this task.” She drew herself up. “Now—if you need anything more from me in the immediate future, you can send another message to Ron. Otherwise, I’ll leave you two to get a bit better acquainted.” She let her gaze slide over to Malfoy. “Malfoy. Don’t eat him.”

Malfoy’s ear twitched, and he seemed to sense she was addressing him, but he otherwise didn’t move. It was about par for the course when it came to interactions between him and Hermione, so this was not so very concerning, though Harry would have appreciated at least a nod. Or perhaps a retching noise to suggest he found the notion of tearing Harry limb from limb and picking his teeth with Harry’s femur positively revolting. Just a sign would be nice, is all.

Evidently satisfied she’d done everything she’d come to do, Hermione gave Harry a curt nod and marched out the door, turning into nothingness with a CRACK of Apparition before she’d even cleared the top step.

Harry slumped back into the sofa, and Malfoy, naturally, took this as his cue to get back to the snuggling that had been interrupted by Hermione’s presence and Harry’s crisis of conscience. Harry was too exhausted to fend off the attentions any further tonight and tolerated the invasion of his space with mute fury.

It was going to be a long, long summer.

Chapter Text

After a rough night’s rest—he wasn’t accustomed to sleeping with other people period, much less with someone who wanted to bear-hug him through the night and had to be forcefully fended off—Harry finally roused himself, bleary-eyed and sour-faced, and began to work through the five stages of grief concerning his present situation. There was no getting rid of Malfoy, not for a while, and Harry was too much of a good egg to turn him out as the helpless buffoon he was just now. He would keep Malfoy secret and safe, as Hermione had asked—much more for her sake, though, than for Malfoy’s.

That didn’t mean he had to sit here and just blithely accept the state of things, though. No, Hermione had told him that the sooner Malfoy remembered who he was and was once more in his right mind, the sooner he could testify to what horrors he’d been forced to endure at the hands of the Department of Mysteries. Testimony that would be delivered, he had to hope, far far away from Harry.

So that was Harry’s goal for the foreseeable future: put Malfoy back to rights. Getting him to turn back into the dragon might be the fastest and easiest way, as Hermione told it—but that didn’t mean it was Harry’s only option, and he was all for considering any avenue that didn’t involve helping Malfoy look as nasty and narked off on the outside as he was on the inside.

The question he had to pose to himself first was: what made Malfoy Malfoy?

He had to tamp down the urge to go the obvious route (believing he was better than everyone else, being the ponciest twat it was entirely possible to be, making sure all and sundry knew just how large his trust fund was) and made a concerted effort to dig a bit deeper, get a little philosophical.

Malfoy was a Slytherin, through and through. While Harry didn’t think he was very cunning, he was reasonably clever, if his marks were to be believed, and he was a certain breed of ambitious that involved actively sabotaging others to get ahead. He was proud and hated losing face, especially around those he’d made it his life’s work to shit upon—the less well-off, those whose blood he deemed inferior, and anyone who consorted with such individuals. He wanted to be important—or at least, he wanted to look important. Actually being important would probably be too much effort.

And, from what Harry had seen, he genuinely loved his parents—and they had loved him in return, in their own way. It was that unique sort of loyalty these old pure-blood families seemed steeped in: so long as you acted how you ought to, how your family expected you to, then you were theirs, and they were yours. Malfoy liked belonging. He liked being wanted.

His insistence on Harry’s attentions, now that he considered it, was starting to make a bit more sense.

Well, setting all that aside, really the simplest way to define Malfoy was: a human wizard. And wizards cast magic spells—with their wands.

He was going to teach Malfoy to do magic again, he decided.

In a fantastic bit of serendipity—something he sorely needed right about now—he still had Malfoy’s old wand he’d, er, requisitioned in his and Hermione and Ron’s hasty escape from Malfoy Manor back during the war. It’d arguably done Harry much more good than Malfoy, seeing as he’d used it to vanquish Voldemort and all, so he had never felt all that guilty about taking it, but he did feel a little poorly about keeping it, especially since he’d never known what had become of Malfoy after the dust had settled, and for all he knew, he’d wanted it back. Well, now he could have it, so all was well that ended well.

“Go on,” Harry prodded, holding the wand out hilt-first and gently poking Malfoy with it. “Take it.”

Malfoy did not seem at all inclined to do so.

He’d brought them outside, still well within the wards that surrounded the cottage but far enough away there was little risk of any wildly thrown spells hitting anything important. Malfoy had been only too happy to follow Harry out, revelling in the bright, warm early summer sun beating down on them, head thrown back and overlong hair whipping wildly in the morning breeze.

But now that Harry was holding out his wand for Malfoy to take, he was regarding it with wary mistrust, glancing back and forth between Harry and the wand, as if searching for reassurances it wasn’t going to bite him.

And then, Harry realised maybe he did think it was going to bite him—or rather, curse him. After all, his most recent memories of magic being cast upon him were largely hostile (even Harry wasn’t innocent here), so it stood to reason he would be more than hesitant to take up a wand himself.

“Right, well, I’ll just have it here, when you’re ready for it, all right?” He slipped the wand into his back pocket and drew out his own, placing himself at Malfoy’s side so Malfoy could see any castings from a first-person perspective. “Just—watch me.”

He cast first Lumos, and then a variant that sent the little bead of light dancing from the tip of his wand, like a bright, gleaming Snitch—surely that would tickle something inside Malfoy’s brain—doing a few loop-de-loops until it finally alighted back on his wandtip and was snuffed out. He turned to see how Malfoy felt about that—

—and found him staring. At Harry. From the rapt expression, Harry very much doubted he’d even paid attention to the display. “Wh—not watch me. Watch me cast! I meant you to look at the wand!” God, this was going to take forever. “Here, I’ll do it again, and watch the magic this time. Watch what I do—it’s old hat for you as well, if you can just remember.”

He performed the motions once more, standing at an angle so he could be sure Malfoy was actually watching him cast this time. And Malfoy did watch, though he seemed a little bored. Harry sighed. Time to move on to plan B.

This time, he took Malfoy’s wand and placed it directly in his grip, folding Malfoy’s long, slender fingers over the haft and tightening the grip with his own. His form was shit, worse than even the Muggle-born first-years had been at Hogwarts, and had he been in his right mind, Malfoy would have been horrified at himself, but it would have to do for now.

“I know you obviously can’t speak the incantations, but well, I figure nonverbal magic’s a thing, and you’re, like, supercharged with magic now, right? So it can’t hurt to try.”

“‘Arry,” Malfoy said, and Harry was going to assume that meant Of course, that’s sound logic, and I agree with it completely and will do my very best.

But try as he might, Malfoy’s movements were far too stiff to get the wand waving down properly, and he kept leaning back into Harry’s embrace, which would prompt Harry to hastily shove him away, and then they’d have to start all over again. After nearly an hour, Harry was no closer to getting Malfoy to remember he was a wizard now than when he’d started; in fact, he might have done more harm than good, as every time Harry held out Malfoy’s wand for him to take up once more, Malfoy recoiled and took several steps back, whining ‘Arry in protest.

He was getting frustrated, which was making Malfoy frustrated, and it formed a mutual loop of irritation that just put them both in testier and testier moods.

Eventually, Harry decided enough was enough. He’d pushed Malfoy as far as he could, and no amount of grudgingly offered tactile encouragement was going to get Malfoy to pick up his wand again today.

“All right, all right,” he sighed. “I give in. You win.” He took Malfoy’s wand back from him, slipping it into his back pocket. “At least I didn’t have to wrestle you for it this time. Though I suspect you might have liked it if we had.” He tried not to wonder if that meant Malfoy had liked it a little the last time too. “Come on. Inside. We’ll try an egg toastie again. I’ll try not to dent my frying pan on your head this time.”

But Malfoy wasn’t paying attention to him. He was standing stock straight, with that same wary alertness he’d shown with Hermione, and oh fuck, this wasn’t good, because he was following Malfoy’s eyeline now and noticed Thom, his foul-mouthed, truculent, but hard-working garden gnome, digging around in the potato bed, weeding as he was wont to do.

Malfoy tensed, every muscle going taut, and before Harry could react, like a shot he was off, racing for Thom with preternatural speed.

“Fuck—fuck!” Harry wailed, scrambling for his wand. He couldn’t stop Malfoy, there wasn’t a Body Bind in the world that he wouldn’t just shake off—but he could distract him. Maybe. God, hopefully. He summoned the quickest happy memory he could think of (with apologies, he could only think about the last time he’d cast his Patronus deliberately at Malfoy and scared the pants off of him at Hogwarts), drew his wand through the air, and released the magical buildup with a booming, “Expecto Patronum!”

The silvery stag emerged from the tip of his wand in an elegant leap and went bounding towards Malfoy, cantering into his field of view just before Malfoy looked about ready to literally pounce on poor Thom, who was presently screeching bloody murder in fright. As hoped, the sight of much more impressive prey immediately drew Malfoy’s attention, and he nearly tripped over his own two feet trying to abruptly shift course, hungry gaze fixed on the stag. Harry directed the stag to race away at a gallop, keen to put as much distance between Malfoy and the tasty morsel that was Thom as possible.

But he’d underestimated Malfoy’s ability to bank—as well as his obsession with chasing down Patronuses—and in a few long strides, Malfoy had not only caught up to the stag, he’d popped out those nasty talons from his fingers, black scales racing up his arms, and wound up to tear through the magical energy making up the creature, like a hot knife through butter. He ripped and shredded with a look of such maniacal glee on his face that Harry worried he’d accidentally triggered something (Malfoy was going to eat him, he just knew it!), and once he’d obliterated the Patronus, he turned to Harry, beaming a thousand-watt smile directly in his face.

“‘Arry!” he said in a tone that clearly invited praise, and Harry was taken back to the morning when Malfoy had first woken up and stamped out Ron’s Patronus with vigour, acting as if this were some profound accomplishment worthy of reward.

Harry ordered his breathing to slow and his pulse to stop its racing. Malfoy just really hated Patronuses, that was all. Or maybe he really liked them. Or maybe he just craved destruction, full stop.

But then Malfoy started scanning their surroundings again, turning back to the garden beds, and Harry could tell he was looking for Thom. Nope, they weren’t about to do that again. He snapped his wand through the air, tip flying in rote patterns, and the stag sprang forth into being once more. This time, Harry sent it sprinting in the opposite direction to Malfoy, trying to give it a running start.

Malfoy was on its heels in an instant, racing up behind it before launching himself through it, claws outstretched and expression terrifyingly gleeful.

And then, of course, he tumbled right through it, shredding it into microscopic motes of arcane energy before hitting the ground hard in a pile of limbs. He went tumbling, arse over kettle, until he came to an inelegant and ignominious halt flat on his back, staring up at the sky.

Harry let a beat pass, waiting to see if Malfoy was even still alive, then called, faintly, “Y-you all right there, Malfoy…?”

Malfoy shot up straight, hair matted with grass and bits of leaves, and he brightly answered, “‘Arry!” before struggling to his feet, wobbly and groping for balance but nothing seemingly broken. He turned in place in a sharp circle, head snapping to and fro, and it struck Harry that he was looking for the Patronus still—either not realising he’d destroyed it or eager for another go at it.

Harry cocked his head, curious, and then just for fun, cast it again, sending it cantering back towards the cottage.

Malfoy whipped around, expression open and muscles tense, and then he was rocketing after it again, panting hard but eyes impossibly bright and intent.

The Patronus didn’t stand a chance, and Harry had to cast it three more times before Malfoy finally tired himself out, collapsing onto his knees and then rolling onto his back. His breath came in great, gasping huffs, and Harry couldn’t help the little smile that curled his lips. Malfoy would be appalled at his own behaviour, and that was part of the fun. Besides, at least Malfoy wasn’t bothering him right now—and Thom was still in one piece.

“You know,” Harry said while Malfoy watched the clouds make lazy tracks above them, “You could entertain yourself for hours if you learned to cast a Patronus on your own.” He drew out Malfoy’s wand again, waggling it in invitation. “It’s really not half as difficult as you might think. I mean, even Neville learned to cast one, and as fine a wizard as he might be now, he was never earning top marks in school. You were practically top of the class, though, so surely you could manage it yourself.” He was only half blowing smoke up Malfoy’s arse. It would be like teaching a dog to throw its own stick—a fantastic way to get Malfoy off his back, terrible pun decidedly not intended.

Malfoy didn’t seem entirely intrigued by the idea, but at least he wasn’t actively shying away from his wand this time, and Harry stepped closer, placing it hilt-first in his grasp and sidling around to show him the proper wand movements, as before. This was quite a bit more difficult than a Lumos, but Harry found he was much more motivated to ensure Malfoy actually did this, so it balanced out.

He went slower, found he had more patience, and was gentle in his corrections—and whether because some part of Malfoy genuinely did want to learn to cast this spell for his own amusement or because Harry’s approach this time actually made a difference, the end result was Malfoy did seem to be catching on.

Harry doubted they were really going to manage it (he wasn’t sure Malfoy technically could cast it, dark as his soul probably was…but then again there’d been Umbridge, hadn’t there?), because while he hadn’t found it truly as difficult as the professors and proctors made it out to be, it was far from beginner magic, and if Malfoy couldn’t understand him when he said You just need to think of a really good memory, something that fills you up to the brim with happiness, how could he ever hope to crack it? He was probably just repeating Harry’s wand movements by rote, though at least he was watching Harry’s wand this time and not Harry himself.

There might be nothing more than basic animal sentience stuck inside there, and ‘Arry’ wasn’t even in the same time zone as ‘Expecto Patronum’ as far as incantations went, so for all Harry knew, they were just wasting each other’s time.

But…it felt good, doing something. Teaching someone to unlock a part of themselves they’d forgotten—or never even known. He always had fun when he rounded up the first-years and helped them break that link to the ground and take to the skies. He didn’t want to be a professor, or even a part-time coach-slash-referee, but…there was an undeniable sense of accomplishment when you were part of someone’s learning process. Even if that someone was a foul-mouthed pinch-faced git who’d tried to get you murdered.

He let Malfoy continue thwacking at the air with his wand for a good half hour before finally concluding that, without the incantation, there was just no producing a Patronus. All things considered, though, the attempt had gone better than expected, as Malfoy seemed doggedly committed to getting his own silvery soul animal—a ferret? A peacock? A dragon of his own?—to emerge from the tip of his wand, not showing nearly the same frustrated irritation he had with Lumos.

He was just about to call it an afternoon, perhaps even offer Malfoy one last stab at Harry’s own Patronus as a ‘reward’ for his hard work—

—when Malfoy whipped his wand in a particularly elegant arc, grunting through gritted teeth, and a shimmering silver mist emanated from the tip with a haggard PUFF before being quickly whisked away by the wind.

The air that hung between them still sparkled with lingering rainbow bits of arcane residue, and Harry inhaled sharply before barking, “Holy SHIT!” and rushed on Malfoy, taking him by the shoulders and giving him a shake. “Holy shit! I can’t believe that actually worked!”

Malfoy jerked, startled by Harry’s sudden movement, then relaxed into Harry’s violent shaking and let his chest puff out a bit, as if preening in pride.

This close, Harry thought he could see the teeny-tiniest little hint of a smirk, and suddenly he was transported back to school, Fifth Year with the DA. There was adrenaline flooding his system, sending him shooting into the stratosphere on the kind of glorious high you got from a monumental achievement. Seeing his friends succeed, knowing he was helping keep them safe. Equipping them with spells—with knowledge—that would serve them that year and beyond, in the darkest depths of the war.

And here was Draco Malfoy—or at least a shadow of him—not really quite managing it, but doing a hell of a good job after but a single afternoon of effort, with a wand he hadn’t touched in years and without the grace of four previous years of magical training under his belt.

“‘Arry?” Malfoy said, pulling him from his reverie, lacy white brows lifted in simultaneous expectation and question.

Harry drew back.

This wasn’t the DA. And Malfoy wasn’t his friend.

But then again, not everyone there had been Harry’s friend either—certainly not Marietta Edgecombe, and he would’ve called Zacharias Smith an ‘acquaintance’ at best. They were just people—people who’d wanted to be prepared, because they were scared, and they didn’t know what else to do. So they’d turned to him, because as Hermione had put it, he had a ‘quality’ to him.

Malfoy would’ve never made himself vulnerable like they had, though—would’ve never admitted a weakness. Certainly not to Harry.

So why was he standing here wondering ridiculous things like Would any of this have happened if Malfoy had been a part of the DA, instead of trying to tear it down? or Would any of this have happened if Harry had cast a Shield Charm in that bathroom instead of a spell he’d never heard of from a book he shouldn’t have had?

Harry shook his head; he was lightheaded and daydreaming, that was all. It was well past lunchtime by now, and this bit of success merited a nice plate piled high with sandwiches, he reckoned.

“Good job,” he said stiffly, patting Malfoy on the back once more and taking his wand. “I reckon you can take on one, maybe even two whole baby Dementors by now.”

“‘Arry?”

“Well, yeah, but it was your first time. Lots of blokes have performance anxiety when someone’s watching.”

“‘Arry.”

“Yes, even pure-bloods.” It turned out, conversations with Malfoy were actually really fun when he could only say one word, even if that word was ‘Arry’.

Like that, they fell into a kind of rhythm—a couple of hours practising wandwork and speech training in the morning, getting frustrated and giving up around lunchtime, refuelling, and then spending the rest of the afternoon with Malfoy practically (or sometimes literally) in Harry’s lap while he tried to get work done. Blessedly, Harry’s ‘work’ was nothing pressing, more diversions to pass the time that occasionally happened to bring in some money, but still. It was much easier to do without being attached at the hip to a near-mute knob who seemed to think Harry’s personal space was somehow part of the Malfoy family fortune and therefore rightly his property.

Eventually, Harry managed to convince Malfoy that Thom was not a tasty little bite-sized morsel but in fact a proper member of their not-quite-a-family unit. Now, Malfoy still chased Thom around the garden, but Harry was pretty sure it was just for fun, as he hadn’t once tried to eat Thom on the rare occasions he actually caught him—not even when Thom bit his fingers with his sharp little gnome teeth and screeched, “Emme go! Emme go!”

Beyond that, life with Malfoy was…shockingly mundane. Or at least what passed for mundane when you were Harry Potter. He tried to help Harry out with the gardening (between haring off on ‘hunts’ after Thom), though Harry suspected he mostly just wanted Harry’s company, and half the time Harry had meant to spend planting a new row of beets, he had to stop Malfoy from munching on the more poisonous blossoms being cultivated for aesthetic purposes in the far corner near the front steps. He wasn’t sure if the dragon’s protective measures and healing capabilities might extend to gastrointestinal injury, and he wasn’t keen to find out, as they couldn’t exactly just pop in to St Mungo’s if the worst came to pass.

When showers and midsummer storms kept them cooped up inside, Harry spent his time reclaiming the studio for its intended purpose, pouring himself into his sketches and even managing a few aborted attempts at painting. He’d never felt particularly artistic, but he’d heard this sort of thing was good for you if you were…well, if you’d been through wartime. Harry wasn’t sure if it was helping, but it wasn’t hurting at least, so he kept at it. He would never call himself ‘good’, but as he understood it, if you were creating at all, then that made you an artist, and while it didn’t give him quite the same satisfaction as teaching had, much like writing, it was still nice to have an outlet for things rather than having them rattling about inside his head with nowhere to go.

Malfoy seemed to enjoy these quieter afternoons almost as much as he liked chasing Thom (and occasionally Harry’s Patronus) around the garden, and while Harry worked, he would let himself sprawl out long and lean over the sofa that had been meant to be his bed, napping the day away.

It was during these naps that Harry allowed himself to actually look at Malfoy—any other time and Malfoy would notice and start looking at him, and it was unnerving having those wide, grey eyes boring into his own, so fixated and focused. In these moments, though, he could see how much Malfoy had truly changed since he’d last seen him, tearing across the crumbling remains of the Great Hall to fling himself into his parents’ arms.

He was leaner, no longer quite the toned Seeker he’d once been, but that was to be expected after however many years he’d been locked up in the Department of Mysteries. Harry knew better than many just what a shit diet and living in confinement could do to a boy’s development. His hair was longer, nearly past his shoulders now, but that too was to be expected. Harry didn’t think he quite liked it; it reminded him too much of Lucius, and he had a mind to cut it soon if Malfoy would let him, or at least start tying it back.

And more than anything, he was far too quiet, too composed and calm and just content. All right, maybe ‘quiet’ was a relative term, given he had to hear ‘Arry’ at least twenty times a day. But it was completely different from the Malfoy who never seemed able to shut up, who always had something nasty to say, who couldn’t resist spitting out Potter followed by some low-brow insult he’d probably spent the entire morning dreaming up. This Malfoy seemed settled, like he didn’t really have anything to prove and no particular cares in the world beyond Harry’s attention.

Maybe the old Malfoy only particularly cared about your attention too, an insidious little voice inside his mind (that sounded a lot like Hermione) crooned, and Harry shook his head to dislodge it.

Whatever the old Malfoy’s motivations might have been, the end result was the same: he’d been a vicious, rude, cowardly little shit, and Harry had rightly wanted nothing to do with him. Honestly, he still didn’t want anything to do with him, but if he had to share his company…well, this version of Malfoy was preferable.

Especially when Harry found himself looking up from his work because Malfoy had made some little sound—a snort or grunt in his sleep—and the afternoon light streaming in through the window clouded over with dust hit him just right, lighting up that white-blond hair of his like a halo and limning him in a brilliant glow that nearly took Harry’s breath away. It was moments like this, when he was so soft and vulnerable, shirt rucked up and belly exposed as strands of hair fell over his face, blown about by smooth, even exhalations, that Harry found it most difficult to look at him. It was just hard to remember, was all, that he had at one point been that vicious, rude, cowardly little shit and might very well still be a vicious, rude, cowardly little shit once he had his proper human thoughts back.

He couldn’t get comfortable with this Malfoy—Hermione might have convinced herself that this was really Malfoy, just a part of him they’d never been privy to, but Harry was not so easily lured into complacency. Innocent though he might look, and annoyingly charming though he might behave (leaning heavily into the annoyingly part), Malfoy was still Malfoy underneath it all. Hermione would set him to rights eventually, and these moments would be gone. He’d be Potter, not ‘Arry, and all would be as it ought to be once more.

Malfoy gave another grumbling grunt in his sleep and turned over, curling into a little ball facing Harry. His lids were quivering—he was dreaming. Maybe he was chasing the Patronus even in his sleep—or maybe he was living through old memories. Maybe in his dreams, he was still the same old Malfoy, praying to wake up so he could tell Harry that no, pure-bloods most certainly did not suffer from casting hesitancy.

Harry smiled at the thought—and then frowned at his smile. God. He slapped his cheeks. He needed to get out more.

Maybe he’d spend an extra couple of weeks at Hogwarts this year when he popped in to help the First-years get their flying legs. He clearly needed to be around actual people more—not just Thom and a near-mute amnesiac who thought he was a dragon.

One thing that had not changed, though, in their several weeks together now was their sleeping arrangements. Not that Harry hadn’t tried. At least for the first few weeks. But once it had become clear that one, Malfoy would not be budged by man or magic, and two, that he wasn’t going to actually do anything to Harry, then, well… Harry was going to be unconscious most of the time, so what did it really matter?

If he wanted to wank, well he’d bullied Malfoy into giving him his privacy at least in the toilet, and it wasn’t as if he was bringing anyone home where having another bloke already warming the bed might put a damper on any other plans he might have.

It was not the way he’d expected to be spending his summer, but he could at least say it was more lively than usual, and a sight better than his summers had been the first seventeen or so years of his life. He’d take bunking with Malfoy over cupboards under the stairs any day—well, so long as ‘Malfoy’ meant this version of him and not the aforementioned vicious, rude, cowardly little shit.

Then again, he probably would’ve taken a summer bunking with that Malfoy over one spent locked in the cupboard under the stairs as well. At least he might have enjoyed fresh, silky smooth sheets on his bed each day and Dobby’s cooking.

Thus, the weeks passed in a chaotic whirl—until suddenly it was Harry’s birthday, and he was having a party.

Well, not precisely his birthday, but neither Hermione nor Ron could reasonably get away for an extended evening in the middle of the week, so they agreed to come around the Saturday before. And not precisely a party either, because it would just be the three of them this year—well, four if you counted Malfoy, but they weren’t really counting Malfoy, any more than they were counting Thom. It was difficult to have an away party when Harry couldn’t leave Malfoy all by his lonesome (and he wasn’t bringing him anywhere), and it was impossible to have an at-home party because most of the guests would probably really want to know why Malfoy was there and where he’d been for the past four years. Not exactly conducive to lying low.

But Hermione insisted they have at least a small get-together, because she hadn’t missed one since they’d left school and she wasn’t about to start now—though Harry suspected she had the ulterior motive of wanting to check on Malfoy’s progress, as Ron had refused to let her come visit alone after hearing what’d happened the last time she’d popped in.

Harry took steps to make sure Malfoy was properly prepared for the upcoming festivities this time, drilling into him as they readied the evening’s main course (Hermione and Ron were in charge of dessert). Well, “they” readied—really it was Harry readying things, and then re-readying them after Malfoy tried to help.

“And you met Hermione the once and she wasn’t so bad, right?” Harry said, whisking the eggs as he searched for errant bits of shell that might have made their way in too after Malfoy had thrown half a dozen whole eggs into the bowl at once. “I mean, you’ve met her a lot more than the once, but I’m guessing that’s something else you don’t remember, which is probably for the better. Anyway, she’s not here to take you away—unfortunately—and she’s not here to take me away—unfortunately—so there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist around her, all right? Besides, she’s, er, taken already. So triple no reason for twisting of knickers.”

“‘Arry.”

“Yeah, I know you don’t wear anything—I sleep with you, if you’ll recall. Which it’d be really nice if that’s one concession I could get out of you.”

“‘Arry.”

“I’m sure it’s cooler now, but autumn’s right around the corner for one, and for another, outside of certain special situations, it’s just good manners to wear tops and bottoms to bed when you’re sharing it with someone else.”

“‘Arry?”

“No, I will not elaborate on what ‘certain special situations’ are.”

Malfoy would probably try to Crucio him again if he ever remembered these silly little one-sided conversations they’d had once he was back in his right mind, but that was a problem for Future Harry to deal with.

He wasn’t sure if Malfoy had understood his preamble or not, but if it helped prevent another stand-off in the entryway between Malfoy and either or both Hermione or Ron, then it would be worth the effort.

Six o’clock came soon enough, and as Harry had instructed Hermione to be sure to ring first and then wait to be welcomed inside—just in case—he scurried to the door, instructing Malfoy not to follow, when there came an insistent buzzing at the front door right on schedule.

He pulled the door open and was met with a shower of confetti right to the face, which he batted away with sputtered laughter.

“Happy birthday, mate!” Ron said, rushing him and pulling him into a tight hug; very good thing he’d left Malfoy in the kitchen. “It’s been too damn long.”

“Well popping over to your place is dangerous these days; who knows what new Weasleys’ Wheezes I might wind up inadvertently triggering?”

“Coward,” Ron scoffed, pushing to head past him into the sitting room.

Hermione stepped up next and gave Harry a greeting peck on the cheek—her lips came away with a few errant pieces of confetti stuck to them that she blew off with a loud raspberry. “I tried to tell him not to—imagine if it was Malfoy who’d answered!”

“Precisely why I made doubly sure it was me who did so. Maybe we can stave off any spectacular blow-ups until after we’ve had cake.”

“Molly sends her regards.” She held up a little cake box, wrapped up in a beautiful silver ribbon. “And she wanted it made clear that she really wished she could have been here herself.” She made a very obvious show of trying to peek around Harry. “So…is You-Know-Who the Lesser around?”

“In the kitchen, probably working himself up to ignore my very staunch instructions not to leave until I told him it was all right.”

Hermione nodded. “Well, you’d best go fetch him—he’s going to have to meet us eventually.”

Harry nodded, accepting the cake box from her. “Just remind Ron not to make any sudden movements, yeah?”

“I think he’d welcome the opportunity to be able to fling spells at Malfoy willy-nilly with no consequence, but I’ll let him know.”

Harry did not think there’d be ‘no consequence’, but there was no getting around it any longer. He slipped back into the kitchen after making sure Hermione and Ron were set up nicely in the sitting room and placed the cake box in the Charmed refrigerator.

“‘Arry?” Malfoy said, eye drawn to the refrigerator as he gave a sniff.

“Birthday cake, for dessert.” He took Malfoy by the shoulders and instantly had his attention. “Now, we’re gonna head into the sitting room, and you’re gonna be a proper gentleman, right? Summon up all that pure-blood gentility I’m sure is soaked into your very bones and be on your best behaviour. Ron already doesn’t like you, for very good reasons but unfortunately ones you don’t recall just at the moment, and he’s probably aching for an excuse to have a go at you. And generally Hermione and I would be lining up right behind him, but it’s just no fun if you wouldn’t understand why we’re kicking your arse. So everyone’s gonna practise a bit of restraint tonight, all right?”

And before Malfoy could make some snide comment like ‘Arry or ‘Arry, Harry twisted him around until Malfoy was in front of him and steered him into the sitting room.

He drew up short as soon as he saw Ron, but Harry kept him going with firm pressure on his shoulders, forcing him down into one of the seats opposite Hermione and Ron. He had every confidence that, inside of two minutes, Malfoy would leave this seat and attempt to join Harry in his armchair, but he could at least try and have this one evening to himself. It was (almost) his birthday, after all.

Malfoy’s eye didn’t leave Ron from the moment he stepped into the sitting room, and Ron returned his glare with equal distaste, but in short order, he was distracted by conversation, such that it was now just Malfoy mad-dogging Ron from across the room.

Before Ron could get really teed off, though, Harry pointedly asked Hermione, “So, er, did you want to look over Malfoy before dinner, or after?”

Ron’s frown deepened at this, and Harry panicked, thinking he’d really fucked up, but Hermione, gem that she was, smoothly responded, “Yes, I think before would be best. That way we’ll be able to get right to the presents after dessert, don’t you think, Ron?”

“Huh? Oh.” Ron straightened in his seat when Hermione patted his thigh, perhaps a little more sharply than was called for. “Yeah, I guess so. Probably best to get it over with. Then Malfoy can go sit in Harry’s study or something so he won’t be a bother.”

Harry fought down a frown of his own at the suggestion—he was no more thrilled than Ron that Malfoy would be crashing this intimate little get-together with his best friends, celebrating his birthday, but there was no need to be so rude as to just lock Malfoy in the studio the whole evening, even if that had been possible.

Harry let it go, though, not wanting to start the evening off on a sour note. He turned to Malfoy, leaning over the arm of his chair. “Right, she’s just gonna give you a quick once-over, run some diagnostics and the like. Behave.”

Ron wrinkled his nose as Hermione drew her wand and moved to stand before Malfoy. “You talk to him like he understands you. Isn’t he basically a potato?”

“No,” Hermione answered in his stead, tone suggesting this was not the first time they’d had this conversation. “He’s basically a dragon. And they’re very intelligent creatures.”

“Harry says this one tried to eat a bunch of oleander and hemlock he had growing up the bannister along the front steps. Tell me again how intelligent he is.”

“I’ve seen what you put away, Ron Weasley; you’re in no position to judge another’s dietary choices.” She smiled kindly at Malfoy, taking care to make eye contact and keeping her wand pointed downward in as non-threatening a gesture as she could likely manage. “I’d like to try and cast a few spells on you, if you’ll allow it?” She looked to Harry. “I recognise he probably doesn’t have much control over what spells do and don’t take, but I thought I’d try.”

Harry shrugged. “It can’t hurt. I tried telling him what you’d be doing, but I’m not sure if he understood me or not. Just be careful about it, and I imagine he’ll allow it.” This was already a measurable improvement over their previous interaction, after all.

She nodded, then raised her wand slowly and began casting a series of diagnostic charms. Malfoy flinched at the first casting, and Harry thought he saw a ripple of iridescent black scales flash over the surface of his skin, but then they were gone, and Hermione was smiling to herself, so he supposed it must have taken.

Malfoy was, blessedly, every bit the gentleman Harry had ordered him to be, though every now and then he’d glance Harry’s way, brows knit and one knee bobbing up and down to betray his impatience. Harry just raised a hand to tell him to steady himself, though, and he would calm.

At length, Hermione finished her spellwork, gave Malfoy a pat on the head, and said, “Thank you very much. I’m all finished.” Malfoy seemed to collapse on himself, slumping back into his chair and rubbing his eyes, as if the effort of waiting patiently for a few diagnostic charms to be cast had utterly drained him. Harry snorted softly at the display, and Ron shot him a frown.

“So, anything of note?” Harry asked, not bothering to explain himself to Ron; it had been funny, what was he supposed to do?

Hermione thinned her lips, rejoining Ron on the sofa. “No, not really…which helps absolutely none. I mean, he seems to be in perfect health—though I honestly didn’t need the charms to tell me that. Just looking at him I can see being out here, getting to actually thrive, is doing wonders for him.”

“But—I mean, he’s still all dragon inside, near as I can tell. That’s not really thriving.”

“Well, yes, of course—have you been able to make any more progress with teaching him to cast? Really, that he’s been able to manage anything at all with a wand is a feat in and of itself, and probably something I could write a whole paper about…” He imagined he could see her salivating already, which was more than a bit inappropriate, he thought, given the reason Malfoy was in this state to begin with was because of her Department.

“Er, no—still just the silvery mist for the Patronus. I imagine he’s only achieved that much because it’s the one he’s most keen to play around with.”

She shook her head, marvelling at Malfoy, who was presently still slumped at an odd angle in his chair, trying to burrow into the cushions. Clearly he was not thrilled to have company interrupting an evening they’d otherwise have spent reading (well, Harry would be reading; Malfoy would be trying to convince Harry that he was a lap-dragon).

“I suppose all I can suggest then is for you to keep working with him—clearly there’s some part of him still in there, deep down inside, and he seems to understand commands more or less, correct?” Harry nodded. “Then keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working—for very loose definitions of working—and it’s getting him used to the idea of living like a wizard at least.”

“‘S he still sleep with you?” Ron asked, and Hermione pinched him, hard, hissing Ron! “What?!” he squawked, rubbing where she’d pinched. “It’s a perfectly normal question!”

“Hardly!” she bit out, and Harry shrank down a little in his seat. “It’s none of our business.”

“It’s sure as hell our business if Harry’s got Malfoy playing grab-arse with him night and day!”

Harry stood, holding his arms up. “All right, that’s enough discussion of my very weird bedroom habits these days, I think we can all agree?” Hermione gave Ron a look that very clearly said Told you so, and Ron rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. “This is entirely too much talk about Malfoy at what’s meant to be my birthday celebration—think we can get to the part where it’s all about me, me, me?”

“Oh, gosh, of course!” Hermione leapt to her feet, reaching around to take Ron by both hands and pulling him up as well. “No, no you stay here, Harry—you cooked! Ron and I will serve, won’t we?”

“We gotta serve him too?” Ron asked, rolling his eyes in Malfoy’s general direction, and Hermione answered by pinching his nose and pulling him along after her into the kitchen.

While they busied themselves getting plates prepared, Harry shifted his attention over to Malfoy, who was still attempting to burrow into the chair cushions and make himself as small as possible, a sight that left Harry feeling out of sorts. Ron was being Ron, and while he was perfectly entitled to be pissy around Malfoy the Wizard, Harry didn’t reckon it was really fair acting that way around Malfoy the Dragon.

Malfoy was a rather sensitive thing, Harry had learned. Or maybe he’d always known it, in a way—it explained how he’d let every little thing get to him at school. Maybe Harry wasn’t all that much better, but he liked to think he’d matured at least a bit in the years since then. Malfoy, though, had been robbed of the chance to actually become a better person, so here he was, still the same emotionally constipated git he’d been at seventeen all these years later.

“You don’t have to go eat in the studio,” Harry offered. “Ron’s just…he’s been through a lot, with the war and all, and you’re bringing up a lot of bad memories for him, I expect. Plus his wife’s in heaps of trouble largely on account of you—not that you could really help it, but well, the end result is the same. So just try not to let him get to you as much as you used to, and maybe he’ll learn to stop letting you get to him.”

“‘Arry…” came the response, muffled against the upholstery.

“You clearly are letting him get to you. Look at you.”

Malfoy whipped around, frowning, hair a mess and standing all on end where he’d been rubbing it against the fabric. “‘Arry.”

“Well he’s got good reason to dislike you. You were kind of a grade-A arsehole to him before. And yeah, you’ve been decent tonight, but don’t think he’s gonna let six years of insults and cruelty slide just because you didn’t almost throw Hermione into a wall this time.”

“‘Arry.”

“You don’t have to like him. But I do. So you’re gonna do this for me, or it’ll be no Patronuses for a week.” Malfoy wrinkled his nose, crossing his arms in a grandly petulant gesture, and Harry rolled his eyes. “Just try not to be so Malfoy for another couple of hours, and then you can be as much of a little shit as you like to me once we’ve got the place to ourselves again.”

“‘Arry?”

“…Within reason. I’ve got a frying pan and I know how to use it.”

Dinner was delicious—this, according to Hermione and Ron, of course. Harry reckoned he was an okay cook, and Malfoy would eat most anything Harry put in front of him, but whether because it was (almost) his birthday or because they wanted to make up for Ron’s earlier sour comments, both were quite effusive with their compliments on his cooking. The cake as well was definitely one of Molly’s best. Probably nothing was ever going to top the cake shaped like a Snitch he’d gotten for his seventeenth, but this one—a Battenberg in a checkerboard pattern of velvety reds and shimmering golds, topped with a raspberry and lemon drizzle that fizzed and popped in the mouth like champagne—was a very close second.

Harry felt a little guilty as he dug in, though, tasting Molly’s love for him in every bite. Lately, he only managed to get around to the Burrow for major holidays—including his birthday—and now he’d had to cancel that too, all on account of Malfoy and the trouble he brought along with him whether he meant to or not. Worse still, it wasn’t as if they could tell Molly why Harry couldn’t have his usual to-do at her home, so she had to sit there, ignorant, probably thinking Harry hated her or something. Ron had assured him that she did not hate him and understood that he was doing some important Ministry work and would be perfectly fine with a belated party later in the year, but still, the guilt dogged him. “Just be prepared to be well and thoroughly celebrated once this Malfoy business is sorted,” Ron had reminded him over post-cake drinks as they settled in for the gift-giving portion of the evening. “You’ll make her year.”

Ron and Hermione had brought along gifts from several other close friends, but Harry had declined them for now, explaining that he wanted to open them later, once he was able to be properly celebrated like Molly wished. For now, he would just open his gifts from Hermione and Ron, which would be more than enough for him.

The first of his gifts had turned out to be a set of magical paints that, as Hermione explained, could be used to create moving pictures, like the magical portraits that dotted the halls of Hogwarts. “Now you can paint your own Fat Lady to guard your home,” Ron had cracked, and they’d all three of them devolved into giggles, leaving Malfoy alone confused at their hysterics. After that had come a book on common household repair charms that Harry had shown interest in at his last trip to the Burrow—this one a current edition, though, rather than the tattered, hand-me-down tome that had been in the Weasley family for ages, according to Molly.

“Never thought I’d see the day Harry Potter would be asking for a book on repair charms over a new broom or Quidditch gear,” Ron snorted. “Guess that just means you’re getting old, mate.”

“Oh piss off, Mister Almost-Five-Months-My-Senior,” Harry shot back.

“You’d think you’d learn to show me some respect, in that case!” Ron turned to Hermione. “You hear how he speaks to me?”

“No, I try to tune you both out—though I’m not always successful.”

“Oh you’d better get used to these dulcet tones, love,” Ron crooned, leaning so far into her personal space it was near-indecent, and Harry cleared his throat loudly as he nursed his drink. Ron threw him a look over his shoulder, waggling his brows—and then his expression darkened as his gaze drifted to the side, landing on Malfoy. “What’re you looking at?”

Harry followed his eye, finding Malfoy still sat in his little corner chair, legs drawn up and plate empty. Harry hadn’t offered him an after-dinner drink like the others, not entirely sure if alcohol would agree with him in this state. Hermione had agreed it was probably best not to experiment with so many people around.

Malfoy was indeed looking at Hermione and Ron, though, head cocked just a bit and eyes narrowed—not in a nasty way, more…a curious one. Like he was studying them, trying to figure them out. Harry wondered if it meant he was starting to remember them, or at least on the cusp of it.

“Leave him be, Ron,” Hermione said, patting him on the chest in an attempt at mollification. “He just isn’t as good at ignoring you as I’ve gotten, that’s all.”

Ron snorted, though not quite as softly as he probably would have had it just been the three of them. There was a hardness to him tonight, and Harry worried it was going to sour the evening if allowed to go on for much longer.

“So where’s your present for Harry, then?” he asked Malfoy, chin jutted out in defiance.

“Ron,” Hermione hissed, tone suggesting she was through with any coddling and was starting to get well and truly irritated. Harry was a little bit too.

“What?” Ron said, defensive. “He’s been mooching off of Harry for a month and a half now!”

“He’s not mooching off of Harry—”

“He is! Does he pay rent here? Does he help with the housework? Does he compensate Harry in any way whatsoever for being allowed to hide here? Has he even said ‘thank you for not throwing me out on my arse or putting me out of my misery, seeing as I wouldn’t have given you the same courtesy’? No?” He crossed his arms over his chest, settling back against the sofa. “Sounds like he’s mooching to me.”

“Acts done out of the goodness of one’s heart—like Harry taking Malfoy in when he had nowhere else to go—are generally done with no expectation of recompense. Harry agreed to host Malfoy until we got him sorted because he’s a good person, not because he was hoping to dip into the Malfoy family coffers.”

“That.” Ron pointed at her, then shifted his gaze to Harry. “Until you got him sorted. And what have you been able to do, either of you, in all this time? He sits here, not having to apologise or answer for the things he’s done, in blissful ignorance, while the two of you risk your lives to be sure he doesn’t get what’s coming to him. How much longer are you going to let him hang around your necks before you see all that’s gonna happen is he’s gonna drag you two down with him? I mean—” He gestured in Malfoy’s general direction. “He can’t stay like this forever! He needs real medical attention! He needs to be in the Janus Thickey Ward, not the middle of nowhere!”

Hermione’s expression went stony. “You know damn well we can’t take him to St Mungo’s, or else that would’ve been my first stop.”

“I know,” Ron said, and he placed his hands on her shoulders, giving a gentle squeeze. “Just—I’ve accepted Harry’s a lost cause when it comes to saving people. Don’t ask me to accept it with you, too.”

And she melted, brown eyes going soft and shimmery as she brought her hands up to cradle his face. “You’re a very stubborn man, Ron Weasley; I could never make you accept anything. But I would hope you might have more faith in me—in me and Harry.” She looked to Harry with a sad smile. “I know I’ve asked too much of the both of you this time—asked you to keep secrets that might get you hurt or worse, asked you to show kindness to someone who definitely wouldn’t show you the same. But this is the right thing to do—and you’re the only people in the world I can trust.”

“Yeah, now,” Ron said, bitterness seeping into his tone, and Harry knew he was still hurt she’d kept the details of her job from him. Harry was too, if he were being honest, but he wasn’t Hermione’s husband—it was a little different.

She leaned in and pressed her forehead to his. “Fair enough. Then give me more trust than I granted you, just to prove you’re the better person. I know you like feeling superior.”

“I think you’ve got me confused with you.” Ron let his eye slide over to Harry. “…You’re seriously all right with this? Putting up with that, after all the misery he’s brought you?”

Malfoy looked like he’d shrunk two whole sizes. Whether he could actually understand the conversation or had just picked up on the broad strokes thanks to the tones, he seemed to sense that they were talking about him—and they weren’t being kind about it. Harry felt that twinge of guilt spear through him again; it wasn’t Malfoy’s fault things had turned out this way. He was helpless. He needed them—needed them to stand up for him, because no one else would.

And that was the sort of thing you did when your name was Harry Potter.

“…I’ve asked you two to go along with my ridiculousness enough times that I recognise I’m in no position to argue. I’ll let him stay here as long as Hermione needs me to. Unless you’ve got a convenient cupboard under the stairs you can store him in?”

“Like hell he’s setting one foot in my flat—”

“Our flat. Like hell he’s setting one foot in our flat, darling.”

Ron slung an arm around her neck and drew her in to place a big, fat smacking kiss on her forehead. “That’s my girl.”

They passed the rest of the evening in conversation that blessedly had little to do with Draco Malfoy or anyone else who’d made their school lives miserable. Ron had brought along a few new Wheezes prototypes to get their opinions, warning Harry to be on the lookout for variations thereon when he visited Hogwarts in just over a month. Hermione mused that it was probably for the best she was quitting her job soon after all—it wasn’t good for them to both be engaged in careers that put their lives in jeopardy.

Harry found his eye wandering, now and then, back over to Malfoy, still curled up in the chair, quiet and closed off. It felt a little rude, carrying on full conversations without inviting his participation, but really, what could they do? Harry had fun making up Malfoy’s side of their little tête-à-têtes in his head, but he doubted Hermione and Ron would find it similarly thrilling.

Malfoy, though, seemed preoccupied, ignoring the conversation altogether and just watching Ron and Hermione with a quiet sort of pensiveness. His eye lingered overlong when Ron reached for Hermione’s hand to lace their fingers together, or when they would lean into each other, touching in small, intimate ways just to have an excuse to do so, or when they would trade little kisses of gratitude for refilling a glass or fetching the tin of biscuits Harry kept on hand because he knew they were Ron’s favourite Tesco staple. He watched them as if studying them, like bugs under glass—and good, maybe now he’d get the picture they were an exclusive item and stop being so uptight. He didn’t expect Ron and Hermione to come around all that much while Malfoy was his ‘guest’ (Ron much less so than Hermione), but it would be nice not having to worry Malfoy might freak out and tear one of their heads off, quite literally.

Later than was perhaps decent, Ron and Hermione decided to take their leave—well, Ron mostly, as Hermione had drifted off against the arm of the sofa a half hour ago, so it was up to Ron to Apparate them safely home.

“You sure you don’t want me to Side-along you?”

“And leave one of us with Malfoy? I’ll take my chances getting Splinched, if it’s all the same to you.” He pulled Harry into a tight hug. “Hermione wants to check back in after another fortnight, she said. I’m not sure what she thinks she’ll learn in the next two weeks that might magically fix everything, but if there’s anyone who can manage it, I reckon she can.”

Harry nodded, returning the hug, and then watched as Ron scooped Hermione into his arms, winked at Harry, and then twisted on the spot before disappearing with a POP.

He closed his eyes and sighed loudly, then shuffled over to the sofa, face-planting onto it. He loved his friends, really he did, but it had been one of the more exhausting evenings in recent memory. He supposed he’d gotten used to the kind of lazy constance associated with living with this version of Malfoy, who didn’t speak (much) and never back-talked or argued. It had inured him to the frantic pace that most who had more regular contact with the wizarding world were accustomed to.

He needed to see to the dishes. It was quite a bit easier handling everything with magic, but his housework charms were still not quite up to snuff—that was the next book on his list—so his Tergeos tended to leave behind bits of food and residue, meaning that he always wound up having to do things the Muggle way in the end. But it was late, and it was (almost) his birthday, so maybe they could wait until the morning at least…

A warm, insistent weight fell over his back, trying to burrow between Harry’s body and the back cushion of the sofa, and Harry groaned loudly. “Gerroff me…” he grumbled into the cushion his face was presently smashed against.

“‘Arry.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting up.” Malfoy eased off of him—mostly, at least; he continued to list against Harry, trapping him between his body and the arm of the sofa. “C’mon, budge up. I can’t move with you draped over me like that.”

“‘Arry.”

“And I’m tired too—so if you’d budge up, maybe we could go to bed.”

“‘Arry?”

“Wh—absolutely not. I mean, you’re welcome to sleep on the couch if you like—in fact, I insist. But I’m thinking my nice big bed is gonna be a lot more comfortable.” He shrugged in an attempt to shove Malfoy off of him. “And I’d like to head there now, in fact, if you’d mind moving?”

But Malfoy only stared at him, eyes locked on Harry’s, with that same curious expression he’d worn when he’d been watching Hermione and Ron and oh, now was not the time for his mind to start making connections. The last thing he needed was Malfoy realising he was Malfoy right as he was canoodling with Harry on the sofa.

Malfoy’s hand slid over Harry’s, his fingers dipping between Harry’s own as he threaded them together, and then he was burying his face against Harry’s shoulder, breathing in his scent, and oh this was not good.

Malfoy had been watching Hermione and Ron all evening not because he remembered them but because he was learning from them, and Harry had to put a stop to this right away or he was going to be sitting on a nest of eggs within the week.

He carefully manoeuvred himself upright, bracing an elbow against Malfoy to give himself some breathing room as he attempted to disentangle the limbs Malfoy was even now attempting to entwine. “Yeah—no—that’s—we don’t really do that kind of thing, you and me, see? I know your mind’s scrambled six ways to Sunday, but I really can’t have you courting me or whatever it is you’re after. Merlin knows it’s bad enough I let you sleep in the same bed as me and wear my clothes—” It was only through the grace of some higher power that Ron hadn’t noticed the jumper Malfoy was wearing was one of the ones Molly had knit for Harry turned inside out and backwards. “I’d get my head bitten off—literally probably—once you came to your senses if you found out I’d allowed this sort of thing while you were ‘indisposed’. No, no.” He gently pushed Malfoy back and away, rolling off the couch and onto the floor, where he scrambled to his feet and jogged around to the back of the sofa before Malfoy could pull him back down. “Trust me, this is for both our good. You’d thank me, if you’d ever thanked anyone in your life.”

More drastic measures, it would seem, were needed.

Malfoy was, the birthday business put a fine point on it, getting entirely too comfortable with his new state of mind—and that was unacceptable. Hermione had her job, and Harry had his. It was up to him to try and get Malfoy to transform, hoping against hope that the shift would jostle his brain back into its proper compartment, and he’d been far too lax in his efforts thus far. Hogwarts was starting up again in just over a month’s time, and they needed to have a plan to manage Malfoy before Harry was expected on the castle grounds. He wasn’t about to let this git ruin his school year yet again, especially not years after they’d already graduated.

Hermione had weakly suggested that, as a very last resort, they might consider placing Malfoy under another Imperius Curse, like the DOM had before, and forcing the transformation. Unforgivables were Unforgivables for a reason, but perhaps, she mused, the ends might justify the means in this case, and surely Malfoy would thank them if it meant he regained control over his mental faculties quicker.

Harry, however, could not have disagreed with this opinion more if he’d tried. Sure, it might work—but to force someone who’d already been traumatised by a spell to undergo it again, claiming there was no other choice…? Well, Harry hadn’t enjoyed it when he’d been in Malfoy’s shoes, so he had absolutely zero intention of allowing it on his watch.

But short of calling in Dumbledore’s Army for an impromptu reunion to put their wands together and try to force the dragon to transform in order to defend itself in a much more imposing form than the lanky white beanpole that was Malfoy the Wizard, Harry was left with just one other way he could think of to get Malfoy to do what only a proper dragon could do. And it would (unfortunately for Harry) involve taking advantage of his strange obsession with Harry. That, at least, was a ‘the ends justify the means’ scenario Harry could tolerate.

Malfoy never balked at an invitation to join Harry in the garden, always up for an afternoon of chasing Thom through the tomato plants or summarily destroying each and every Patronus Harry sent his way.

Today, though, they were not going to the garden, and Harry was not intending to use his wand for anything more than a Cushion Charm to arrest what was likely to be a very nasty fall if he wasn’t careful.

A fall, because today, they were going flying.

“They” being Harry on his broom—and Malfoy as (hopefully!) a great big fudging dragon blessed once more with the mind and mentality of someone who hated Harry’s guts. Yet another in a long line of brilliant plans from the Chosen One.

The idea was thus: Harry would haul out his Nimbus 2020 from the shed, get a good 60 or 70 feet up, and then…well, taunt Malfoy. He’d shown a remarkably insistent desire bordering on a need to be around Harry, and if he really wanted to continue enjoying that proximity, he’d find a way to do so—that way being to transform and fly up to meet Harry mid-air. Harry had seen drawings of the Blackblood, and it had a very impressive wingspan—he meant to make Malfoy use it now.

Malfoy amiably followed Harry out through the garden, only giving a confused glance back to Thom, who had tossed a grape at Malfoy’s head as he passed and then gone scurrying for his burrow, as they made their way to the shed.

“Leave him—we’ve got other plans today.”

“‘Arry?”

“You’ll see. Only, remember that I’m doing this for your own good and also that I’m stringy and lean and not very tasty. And that I gave you shelter when you needed it. And that I’m the reason you aren’t Voldemort’s bitch right now.”

“‘Arry.”

“You would absolutely have been his bitch. Lucky thing I saved you, yeah? God, your grandchildren are gonna owe me for all the things I’ve done for you at this rate.”

“‘Arry.”

“What? Of course you’ll have grandchildren. That’s what families as old as the sun do, as I hear it. You’ve probably got a fiancée who’s been promised to you since you were four years old or something, out there somewhere wondering where her meal ticket’s disappeared to.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s not Parkinson, is it? You probably don’t have all that wide a field to choose from, but you could stand to have some taste.”

There were no more ‘Arrys, even after a long beat, and Harry turned around to find that Malfoy had stopped walking a good twenty feet back. He backtracked, reaching for Malfoy’s wrist and giving a tug. “What’s wrong? C’mon, the shed’s just beyond that copse around back.”

“‘Arry.” He didn’t budge.

“Wh—come on.” He tightened his grip. “Don’t be an arse, we’ll do Patronus practice later.”

But Malfoy flexed his arm, dragging Harry close, and he nearly tumbled face-first into Malfoy’s chest, catching himself just before they went down in a tangle of limbs together. “What—the hell is your prob—”

“‘Arry.”

He’d ducked his head down, until they were almost nose to nose, and his voice was low, and rough, and harsh.

Harry swallowed—then released his grip on Malfoy’s wrist and took several measured steps back. “…I was only joking. Don’t get the knickers I know you don’t wear in a twist.”

Malfoy, however, did not seem to have found his comments funny in the least. He straightened, shoulders back, and Harry felt the difference of those couple inches’ height between them like a gulf. It wasn’t a threatening posture like he’d adopted with Hermione—at least, Harry didn’t think it was—but he’d thrown aside the gentle little arch to his spine he usually adopted around Harry, as if even those scant inches’ difference between them was too much for him to bear.

Malfoy’s lips were drawn into a tight, thin line, and he stared down his nose at Harry, grey eyes gone stormy dark. Harry summoned every iota of emotional intelligence he had, because he honestly couldn’t figure out what Malfoy’s problem was right now, except that he looked…hurt. He was reminded, uncomfortably, of the way Malfoy’s lip used to give the tiniest little quiver when he was angry, before curling into a nasty snarl, usually accompanied by My father will hear about this! He kept half expecting this Malfoy’s lip to do the same, but it didn’t come—he just stood there, gaze fixed on Harry and uncomfortably quiet and drawn.

“I—I’m sorry. I really only was just joking. If I said something out of line, I apologise. I’m only making conversation, since you aren’t exactly forthcoming.” He then narrowed his eyes in thought and cocked his head. “…Just how much of what I’m saying do you actually understand?”

He’d never honestly given it that much thought before, chalking up Malfoy doing what he asked to things like body language and tone of voice. But this felt…intelligent. And he could hear Hermione’s voice in his head already huffing Well of course it feels intelligent, Harry! Dragons are extremely intelligent magical creatures! But dragons didn’t talk, and dragons didn’t get offended when you (jokingly!) implied they might have had inappropriate relationships with dark lords or be party to a pure-blood inbreeding tradition that went back to the time of the dinosaurs.

Malfoy only shunted his gaze aside, though, and did not seem inclined to answer Harry’s questions. Harry sighed. Maybe that was the problem: he treated Malfoy like a stupid animal, so he behaved like a stupid animal—but he wasn’t stupid, and he wasn’t an animal. He was a perfectly normal (well, perhaps not normal) human being who was just very confused right now, and if Harry wanted him to start acting more human, he needed to treat him as such.

He stepped forward and placed a hand at the base of Malfoy’s neck, giving him a gentle squeeze. “…I was an arse, just now. I reckon you don’t want to think about that time any more than I do, and we’re hardly close enough to be joking about it regardless. I’m dubious you genuinely remember it, but clearly there’s some part of you that couldn’t forget it even if you wanted to, and I’m one of the last people who should be making you relive it when you’re not even in a fit state to understand it. So…I’m sorry.” He drew up, putting his hand out. “We good?”

Malfoy stared at his hand for an uncomfortably long beat, brows knitting together and twitching wildly, and Harry realised what he’d done and quickly jerked his hand back before clenching it into an awkward fist and patting Malfoy on the shoulder. “Right. Can we get on with it now?”

Malfoy shrugged off their little spat as easily as he shrugged off spells, nipping at Harry’s heels as he made once more for the shed. It was dusty and disorganised, but that didn’t mean Harry didn’t know exactly where to find his broomstick. He had an extra Clean Sweep he kept around for Ron when he visited (hey, if he wanted a nicer broom, he was perfectly welcome to bring one along himself; it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford to buy out Clean Sweep as a brand itself, after all), but Malfoy wouldn’t be needing it, not if Harry’s fantastic plan worked out.

He brought them into the wide field around back, to give them some room to work. The Muggle couple who technically owned the land (land that Harry paid them properly to use, even if they didn’t realise it) were far too old to be wandering the massive tract, and for anyone else who came snooping for whatever reason, well that was what all the wards and Repelling Charms were for. Thanks to Hermione’s paranoia, Harry was confident there would be no one to disturb this little experiment—and on the flip side, no one to save Harry, should it all go tits-up.

He mounted his Nimbus 2020, a fine specimen he’d treated himself to a few years back. Since he only flew it a grand total of a few weeks a year these days, it was still in pristine condition, but he would hopefully be putting it through its paces today. Nannying eleven-year-olds taking their first wobbly loops around the inner courtyard of Hogwarts was a sight away from trying to outpace a nearly full-grown dragon in the open air.

Giving a very confused Malfoy an inviting tilt of his head, he kicked off from the ground and almost immediately found himself a good sixty feet up. Malfoy was twisting in circles below him, head thrown back and eyes squinting in the afternoon glare. “‘Arry!” came the predictably plaintive call, and Harry laughed, taking a wide loop around the area. Malfoy continued tracking him, keeping pace with what looked to be great effort and repeating his call of ‘Arry! every thirty or so seconds. It was just a little pathetic, really, and Harry finally took pity.

“What’re you waiting for? You want me? Just fly up here and get me!” He swung his arm through the air in broad invitation. “You know what you have to do—so just give in and do it. I promise you’ll feel better once you have!”

His heart was pounding in his chest, because Malfoy genuinely looked distressed, pacing back and forth and concern that Harry wasn’t coming back down visibly mounting. It was going to happen—weeks of work had led to this moment, and this would finally be over. Sure, Harry might get eaten, but at least he wouldn’t be stuck here, playing nanny to an amnesiac half-dragon-half-wizard who seemed to have difficulty remembering he didn’t really like Harry at all and should therefore probably have strongly negative feelings about sleeping with him.

He wrapped his hands around the shaft of his broom, grip gone white-knuckled, and his every muscle tensed, prepared to shoot off the moment Malfoy transformed and began giving chase. If Malfoy ate him and then decided to go on a monstrous murder spree across the British Isles, Hermione would never let him live it down.

But Harry, being Harry, had always been quite myopic. It was in his genes, literally. So in his eager rush to get Malfoy to finally transform, he’d forgotten that you really had to choose your words very carefully when it came to dealing with Slytherins, even when they didn’t know they were Slytherins. This was Draco Malfoy, even now, and Malfoy was nothing if not resourceful. He took every shitty situation he found himself in and twisted it to suit himself—shown up by your schoolyard rival getting a spot on the Quidditch team before you? Buy your way onto it next season. Ordered to do the impossible and sneak Death Eaters into the school? Pull off an equally impossible repair job on a set of Vanishing Cabinets and let them walk right in.

Present object of your irrational affections took off into the air, leaving you stuck on the ground? Why waste the effort of turning into a whole dragon—when you really only need the wings for now?

It was a good thing Harry had a nice, tight grip on his broom—or else he might have slipped off in shock as Malfoy squared his shoulders, sighted himself against Harry, and arched his back as a pair of massive, black, bat-like wings emerging from either side of his spine, unfurling to catch the breeze. He tottered unsteadily, momentarily caught off-balance by his new limbs, but some ancient, instinctual part of him clearly knew what these were and how to use them, for he quickly caught himself and began beating furiously at the air. With what must have been at least a forty-foot wingspan that dwarfed his human body—god, how big did that mean Malfoy’s actual dragon was?!—he was airborne in but a few short beats and gaining altitude shockingly rapidly.

Harry shook off his stupor, hissing a long string of colourful oaths under his breath, and jerked his broom into a hard bank as he pushed it to its limits. He could hear Malfoy’s boatsail-sized wings beating the air behind him, followed by an unaccountably bright, “‘Arry!”, and he did not want to find out what Malfoy intended to do with him once he caught up. He was already entertaining possibilities in his mind, and most of them involved them both plummeting to their untimely demise.

The sun made the black scales along the veins of the wings spangle in dazzling rainbow hues, and Harry watched them flash by in a blur as he shot past Malfoy, counting on him not being able to bank well, not with wings that size, not on his first time using them. God help him once Malfoy got used to them—but for now, Harry had far more time in the air than Malfoy, wings or no.

His manoeuvrability was the only way he was going to be able to evade Malfoy—and that was what it became: a game of cat and mouse (Seeker and Snitch?) as Harry struggled to stay two steps ahead of Malfoy, hoping and praying he’d exhaust himself and be forced to land before he finally caught Harry. Either that, or he’d realise he couldn’t catch up to Harry like this and might finally complete the transformation.

He didn’t know how Malfoy was managing these feats, changing only bits of himself as he pleased instead of indulging in a smooth, complete shift like all the other Animagus transformations Harry had witnessed thus far. But that was for Hermione to figure out, if she felt like it (and she would definitely feel like it, especially once he told her about this; a defensive response was one thing—a half-shift out of simple wanting to was entirely another). All Harry was concerned with was keeping Malfoy off his tail so that they didn’t both crack their skulls open after a nasty tumble from on high.

But while Harry liked to think he hadn’t let all of his skills on a broom grow rusty over the years, he seemed to have met his match in Malfoy, and though Malfoy never managed to quite catch him, neither did he feel so outpaced by Harry that he felt he needed to draw the rest of the dragon to the surface. He raced after Harry, looking not unlike those Veela he’d seen at the ‘94 World Cup once they’d doffed their angelic mien and gone all talons and teeth and demonic, bat-like wings.

And yet, through it all, Malfoy looked deliriously happy, releasing little whoops of achievement each time he narrowly missed tackling Harry mid-air before a sloth-roll saved him and laughing—cackling—when he caught Harry on a straightaway and began gaining on him with hard pumping beats of those massive wings he was rapidly gaining proficiency with. Eventually, in a fit of desperation and not seeing a way out of this ‘game’ of chase other than to be captured in mid-air or crash into the ground, Harry pulled out his wand and sent a Patronus galloping away from him, down to the ground. He pointed to it, calling back to Malfoy, who was nearly upon him, “Go destroy it, and I’ll come back down!”

Malfoy perked up at this—and then those sharp grey eyes shunted to the side, tracking the Patronus’s path, and he was off after it. He drew his wings in close and rocketed to the ground, like a falcon after quarry, and tackled it as Harry had feared would happen to him, mere feet from the ground. Predictably, Malfoy went tumbling, hitting the grass hard and rolling several times.

“Shit,” Harry hissed, immediately dropping after him. He kept a few simple healing spells on hand, in case any of the First-years took a tumble on their maiden flight, but he didn’t even know if they’d take on Malfoy, who might be physically incapable of being put back to rights with magic.

But Malfoy only came back up, all smiles and bright eyes, breathing in great gasping pants as the silvery remains of the Patronus dissipated around him. Harry hit the ground with both feet, shins groaning, and collapsed forward onto his hands and knees.

“Don’t—don’t—do that,” he huffed. “It’s—dangerous—and I don’t—think I can—heal you. Yeah?” Wincing at a sharp pain in his side, he couldn’t tell if Malfoy had nodded his assent, but he was going to hope he had.

When he finally caught his breath, he realised that Malfoy still had those wings out, angled awkwardly away from his body because they were so damn big they dragged along the ground. Harry carefully manoeuvred around behind him, wondering how they were attached—and found, much like the protective layer of scales that bloomed over him whenever a threat presented itself, they just kind of blended into his clothing. Animagi, as he’d heard it, generally had to train for a bit before they were able to fold their clothing into their transformation so they didn’t burst through their clothes or otherwise lose them entirely every time they shifted. But for Malfoy, it seemed innate.

He shook his head, quietly impressed. “…You’re absolutely wild, you realise that? I mean—” He tugged gently on the membrane of one wing, and Malfoy gave a little twist, pulling it away as he tossed back a frown. Harry held his hands up in apology. “Sorry. But just look at you!”

But Malfoy seemed less interested in himself and more in the broomstick Harry had left lying on the grass while he marvelled at Malfoy’s state. He dropped into a squat, wings out now for balance, and traced a finger along the fine wooden shaft. Harry watched him, trying to gauge his reaction to the broom—was he remembering riding one? Remembering sliding into the stirrups and rocketing into the sky, racing Harry over and under and through the House stands, arrowing after that tiny little glinting bit of glory? Was there enough of Malfoy the Seeker, Malfoy the superior little shit who bought his way onto the team just to show off his family’s fantastic wealth, even though he could’ve easily earned the position through sheer skill alone, still inside there, waiting for Harry to draw him out if given just the right kind of nudge?

He was starting to see the dragon as less a separate creature and more…a shell, protecting Malfoy—both physically and mentally. Shielding him from harm, whether it be dangerous spells that might rend him limb from limb or having to broach his (most definitely unrequited) feelings for someone. His own little cupboard under the stairs—locked in there, either unwilling or unable to escape.

But that meant he was still in there, somewhere, and Harry just had to figure out the key it would take to draw him back out and make him face all those discomforts of life. You couldn’t hide away forever, Harry reasoned, and chose not to do any self-reflecting on what that might say about himself.

If he wanted to try and bring Malfoy the Wizard out of his protective shell, then he needed to play to that part of him. Do something that might jog his memory. And the only thing Harry could think of that he knew about Malfoy the Wizard was that he was competitive—particularly when it came to Harry.

Seeing as he very much had not enjoyed their little game of chase just now, he decided to adopt a different approach and dove back into the shed, returning only a moment later with a little golden ball clutched in his fingers. He tapped it a few times, to be sure the magic was still functioning, and it slowly unfurled its delicate little wings before setting them to buzzing. Harry held on tight, so it couldn’t escape, and showed it to Malfoy, who was very interested in this new object.

“It’s a Snitch—do you remember these? We used to chase after them during Quidditch games. You—versus me. I won all our games, of course—not that you didn’t put up a good fight.”

Malfoy frowned, taking his eyes off the Snitch and fixing Harry with a look as he flexed his wings in a manner that felt just a little bit threatening. “‘Arry.”

“I’m sorry, it’s true. You’re a fine flyer—on and off a broom, it seems—but history has shown that I’m just better than you, full stop. If you’d like to try and break my streak…” He waved the Snitch. “…Then give it your very best shot.”

Malfoy kept his eyes locked on Harry’s, letting his wings spread into a broad canopy, ready to catch the wind and rocket into the sky, Harry knew. Perhaps the taunting had been a bit much—but it was difficult to avoid getting sucked into old habits when standing here facing Malfoy with a Snitch between them. It unlocked something forgotten but familiar in Harry, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

He tore off the threads of memories threatening to wrap around his throat and focused on the Malfoy here before him, who needed his help and might be inclined to actually accept it this time. He was here to jog Malfoy’s memory, not relive old times that were best forgotten.

“I’m going to release it now, but we have to give it a head start, all right? Otherwise it’s not fair.” Malfoy’s only response was to move his gaze back to the Snitch now, where it sharpened with predatory interest, and Harry saw his muscles tense. He got that way around Thom sometimes. Harry just counted his blessings he hadn’t been on the receiving end of it yet.

He held one hand out to stay Malfoy, and with the other, he tossed the Snitch into the air, where its wings immediately began buzzing furiously—and then it zipped off, vanishing from sight. Malfoy’s head whipped around, already searching, but Harry just reminded him, “Steady…give it a moment.” He then stepped away to give Malfoy and his ridiculously large wings plenty of berth, throwing a leg over his broom and preparing to push off. “We go in three…two…one…GO!”

The wall of wind that slammed into Harry from the force of Malfoy taking off nearly sent him tumbling arse over kettle, and he struggled to maintain his grip. By the time his world stopped spinning, his glasses askew, Malfoy was already a tiny speck in his vision—which meant Harry was losing. Well fuck.

With a growl of self-directed frustration, he kicked off and put everything he could into the broom’s speed. He needed altitude if he wanted to spot the Snitch before Malfoy, who might not remember the tell-tale signs to look for when searching for it or the sorts of places it liked to hide. Malfoy, he could see, was now doing massive loops around the property, eyes scanning everything, which meant he hadn’t spotted it yet, so Harry would take every advantage he could.

He spiralled up and up and up until even he began to get a little queasy from the dizzying drop below him and began searching for the tiniest, faintest glint of gold the sunlight might reveal. The Snitch was built for short, frenetic bursts of flight; it would dart off somewhere that seemed safe and hover for thirty or so seconds while it recharged its core—and then it would be off again. The trick was to find it while it was recharging and nab it before it could zip off elsewhere.

Harry was the first to spot it, bobbing up and down in the shade beneath the bowed branches of one of the apple trees that grew wild in copses across these fields, and he immediately made for it. But Malfoy, ever attentive to Harry’s presence, spotted him, and he had nearly closed the distance between himself and Harry with but a few flaps. “It’s cheating if you just follow my lead and don’t try and find it for yourself, you know!”

“‘Arry!”

“It is so!” But he was laughing, even as Malfoy was gaining on him, and he felt the familiar, welcome rush of adrenaline pumping through his system. It wasn’t as scary this time, knowing that Malfoy was only half focused on him and probably wouldn’t drag Harry off his broom if he caught up, at least not so long as he had an eyeline to the Snitch at the same time.

And fine, if Malfoy was going to play dirty, then so would Harry. He reached into his pocket, shook out the lint he found, and dug until his fingers grabbed a Knut. With a surreptitious flick of his wrist, he sent the coin flying, hoping it might catch the sunlight and look, to the untrained (or unfocused, rather) eye, like a Snitch making a run for it.

The ruse worked, and Malfoy folded his wings close and slipped into a steep dive as Harry banked hard around the apple tree, hoping to sneak up on the Snitch unawares.

“‘Arry!” Malfoy called, tone indicating he had caught the decoy Snitch and was not happy, and that meant Harry had only a few seconds to close this. He ducked his head, nearly getting scalped by a low-hanging branch, and then the Snitch was there. It sensed his outstretched hand coming for it and began buzzing its wings to dart away—

—right into Malfoy’s grasp. Fingers tipped with long, nasty talons closed around its frantically beating wings, and Malfoy gracefully alighted on the ground, fist raised high over his head and glaring at Harry. “‘Arry.”

“No, that wasn’t cheating—the coin fell out of my pocket; it’s not my fault you overreacted because you thought it was the Snitch, a mistake you surely wouldn’t have made if you’d actually had your eye on it like you ought to have had. And even if it had been an underhanded move on my part, it was only getting back at you for paying more attention to me than to finding the Snitch yourself.” He landed beside Malfoy, leaning his head against the shaft of his broom and sighing. “And what do you care? You caught it, didn’t you? Happy now?”

Malfoy’s lips twisted, and he regarded the Snitch with a frown—and then handed it to Harry.

“What?”

Malfoy stepped away, giving himself room to take off again, then made a show of readying himself.

“Wh—you want to go again?” He crossed his arms. “Showing me up once wasn’t enough for you?”

Malfoy arched a brow, in a distressingly Malfoy manner that made Harry’s stomach do a little somersault in his midsection. “‘Arry.” He gave a jerk of his head to indicate Harry should really get on with it because they were wasting daylight.

And so, they went again—and again, and again, and one more time after that, and then Harry had to beg off, because even though he wasn’t the one actually doing the flying himself, manoeuvring the broom and keeping his eyes sharp for the Snitch (that he caught more times than Malfoy at least, leaving his pride intact) was taxing, and he wasn’t a teenager anymore.

Malfoy, though, seemed to have energy to spare, so when his eager coaxing failed to get Harry back into the sky, he settled for Harry sending the Snitch up for him, whirling and twisting and banking in the glow of the afternoon sun until it at last began to set and it got too dark for either of them to see the Snitch. They were both of them exhausted but smiling when they dragged themselves back into the cottage, and after a quick meal of leftovers so Harry didn’t have to cook and a scrub down that neither of them enjoyed (Malfoy loathed water and flat-out refused to bathe himself, so if Harry wanted him clean, he had to do it himself, and there were just some things you couldn’t un-see about your schoolyard rival), they collapsed into bed, both nearly asleep before their heads hit their pillows.

Now, whenever the weather wasn’t so terrible they couldn’t go outside at all, Malfoy always wanted to chase the Snitch—he loved hunting it, like he loved hunting Thom and the Patronus, and Harry wondered how much of these urges carried over from Malfoy the Dragon to Malfoy the Wizard. Perhaps that was why he’d been a Seeker in the first place, the drive to hunt literally written in his genes. He’d heard Hermione at one point deriding the practice of jarvey hunts, whereby wizards with entirely too much money flew around chasing jarveys to exhaustion from atop Abraxans. Malfoy probably loved that sort of thing.

But he could not deny that Malfoy’s enthusiasm for hunting the Snitch was catching, and more often than not, Harry couldn’t help being drawn into the action as well. With so few spots for the Snitch to hide out here in the middle of nowhere, the winner was usually decided by who could catch up to it first, and that tended to be Malfoy, but Harry was able to maintain his pride with a few masterful snares of his own.

They found themselves flying farther and farther afield in their makeshift Seekers’ games, and Harry had seen more of the land on which he was squatting in the past week than he had in the past few years, even discovering a very sizeable pond that looked perfectly primed for swimming in. And given it was hot as balls these days and flying was rough work, he took the chance when chasing the Snitch on a straightaway, Malfoy almost literally nipping at his heels, to sloth roll right over the middle of the pond and just drop.

He hit the water with a great KABLOOSH, nearly deafened by the impact, and just hung there in the cool, murky darkness, breath held and eyes closed. He’d never had a proper summer holiday as a child—the closest he’d come was the two weeks when the Dursleys had gone to Euro Disney and left Harry at home, where he’d had the house all to himself and been able to study (if not cast) magic with impunity. But beach getaways and picnics and long, lazy days that seemed to last forever? Those had never been a part of Harry’s youth—not that he’d had all that much of a youth to speak of.

Maybe that was why this summer with Malfoy felt so freeing, in its own way. He had the luxury of not having to work to maintain a comfortable lifestyle, and now he had time to spend with someone who all they wanted to do was just play, every day. To chase phantoms and lie in sunbeams and devour Harry’s mediocre cooking like it was the best thing he’d ever tasted. And sure, maybe he could do without the insistence on sleeping in Harry’s bed or wearing Harry’s clothes, but on the whole…living with Malfoy like this had not been the worst experience of Harry’s life. And a part of him (a very, very small part, a part he was probably going to have to investigate intimately in the future) was going to miss it, just a little bit, once Malfoy got his head sorted.

His lungs began to burn, and Harry was forced to accept that he couldn’t just live forever, here in this comfortable dark void, and would have to surface once more, if only long enough to cast a Bubblehead Charm. He uncurled from the foetal position he’d adopted and began to kick back to the surface.

He breached and began casting around to see where Malfoy had gotten off to. His glasses, though, transfigured into goggles so he wouldn’t lose them in the fields during these Seekers’ games and have to go around Summoning them every five minutes, were useless, covered in water spots as they were now. Still, even straining his ears, he couldn’t hear the tell-tale whomp whomp whomp of those massive wings beating the air, and that sent a tingle of worry though Harry.

“Malfoy?” he called, twisting around and squinting at the shoreline, to see if he’d landed nearby, but there was nothing. Fuck. Malfoy had no idea where it was and wasn’t safe to fly without Harry there to point out where the wards ended, and if Harry didn’t track him down stat, he’d surely find his way to a Muggle locale and wind up on the evening news. He began to swim back to shore, reaching for the wand stowed up his sleeve to Summon his broom from wherever it had landed after he’d jumped off—

—when something grabbed him, wrapped tight around one leg and pulled.

Harry went under immediately, swallowing a mouthful of muck-filled pond water as he screamed in shock, and began thrashing about wildly, groping for the surface. Fuck—fuck. He kicked hard, but whatever had a hold of him only tightened its grip, coiling and drawing him down. His initial panicked thoughts went straight to merfolk and grindylows and all sorts of creepy water-dwelling creatures that lurked in the dark depths, waiting to pull unsuspecting swimmers to their doom. But what if this wasn’t anything magically malicious at all? Were there crocodiles in England? It was just his luck he’d have set up home right next to the only crocodile-infested pond in all the British Isles.

And then, looming from the darkness, came a deathly pale face—that broke into a wide grin, and Harry was immediately released. He broke the surface with a hacking cough, sweeping his arm through the water as he shoved at Malfoy, who surfaced only moments later. “Fuck you! You scared the shit out of me you—!” Something long, dark, and slender snaked around his midsection, drawing him closer, and he made to shove it away in a panic, thinking it a snake. But it wasn’t a snake, it was—it was— Harry recoiled in horror: “Do—you have a fucking tail?”

And of course Malfoy had a tail—he was a dragon. But he wasn’t a dragon right now, and generally one did not expect someone who looked more or less human—save for the wings, which were curiously gone now—to just sprout a tail out of nowhere, much less try to drag you down into the depths below.

At length he was able to wriggle his way out of the tail’s grip, but it was a very near thing—it was strong and heavily muscled, much more prehensile than he’d seen on the creatures at the Triwizard Tournament. Malfoy, for his part, seemed to find the whole situation hilarious, grinning like a fool and tugging at Harry’s legs again when he wasn’t looking. Three times he caught Harry while he was trying to swim back to shore before Harry shook a finger in his face and told him, “That’s not funny; cut it out!”

“‘Arry,” Malfoy snickered—snickered!

“I’ve got water in orifices I forgot existed because of you!” He splashed Malfoy violently. “Anyway I thought you hated water. It’s like pulling teeth to get you to even bathe.”

Malfoy rolled over onto his back, letting his new tail slide sinuously through the water to push him around as he floated, content. Show-off. “‘Arry,” he said, taking far too innocent a tone.

“Bullshit you love baths. Or maybe it’s that you like someone doing all the hard work for you while you sit there and enjoy a nice soak?” Harry rolled his eyes and grumbled beneath his breath, “Probably had the house-elves wank you too…”

Malfoy drew up short, frowning. “‘Arry,” he said, and this time it sounded like a warning as he began making his way back over to Harry.

“All I’m saying is, you could stand to act like a grown-up, instead of getting me to do every little thing for you, sleeping in my bed, pulling childish pranks like nearly drowning me—”

“‘Arry…” Malfoy said, a bit petulantly, and was he pouting?

“You did so almost drown me, and I did not appreciate it, thank you very much.” He slicked his hair back from his face—then sobered. “…We can’t keep doing this.”

Malfoy scanned the skies overhead, squinting in the sunlight. “‘Arry?”

“No, it’s not supposed to rain—I don’t mean this, I mean—” He sighed.

Despite very nearly drowning, despite losing the Snitch more often than he caught it, despite everything since Malfoy had been dropped on his doorstep and brought chaos to Harry’s quiet, country life…

Summer couldn’t last forever, even one that had actually been pretty great by most standards.

And Malfoy’s face fell, contrition washing over his features. “‘A—‘Arry—”

Harry held up a hand. “No. Listen—I don’t have the energy to keep making up what you’re saying. Can’t you just tell me?” He gestured to Malfoy’s waterlogged form. “You can obviously transform bits and bobs with ease—what’s it gonna take to get you to just go all in, so we can get back to our normal lives?”

“‘Arry!” Malfoy was suddenly right there, in his space, hands up like he wanted to grab Harry by the shoulders and give him a shake, but he held back, balling them into fists and punching the water. He opened and closed his mouth several times in succession—like he was trying, really, genuinely trying to say something that wasn’t ‘Arry, but in the end, that was all that came out as his shoulders slumped in defeat: “…‘Arry…” He looked miserable, cheeks flushed and lips quivering, gaze shunted to the side as if it physically pained him to look Harry straight on.

Harry watched him for a long, silent moment. “…I don’t know how to fix you. There’s clearly bits of who you were that you do remember, but it’s not enough. You have a whole life you need to get back to living, a life not dictated by the Department of Mysteries, and I want to help, I really honestly do. Except it feels like you’re still fighting me, because that’s what you do when I try and do anything for you, it seems. When it would be so much easier if you’d just let me be me. I wouldn’t even ask you not to be you. That’s a pretty sweet deal, wouldn’t you say?”

Malfoy swallowed, leaning forward to rest his forehead against Harry’s shoulder. “‘Arry…”

But Harry pulled back, ducking down until he could catch Malfoy’s eye and force his gaze to meet Harry’s whether he wanted to or not. “…You’re still in there, aren’t you? This is just…a trauma response or something. It’s protecting you. But it’s still you, underneath it all.” Malfoy wouldn’t show his face until he either felt comfortable enough—or threatened enough. Harry laid a hand against Malfoy’s jaw, holding him steady so he couldn’t pull away. “Maybe I should be an arse to you. Maybe hating me will bring back all sorts of memories you’ve got locked away inside.” It was a fine idea, Harry thought—except he didn’t really know how to be an arse to someone (even when that someone was a Malfoy) when they weren’t being an arse back to him. It just felt…mean. Maybe Ron would be able to help, if it came to it.

“Don’t you want to be yourself again? I mean, I was never really fond of you—but you certainly seemed to have a high opinion of yourself. I reckon you’d prefer it, being Draco Malfoy proper again.” He gave Malfoy a little shake, a wry grin working its way onto his lips. “I’d sure as hell prefer you being Draco Malfoy proper again, at least.”

And Malfoy swallowed, throat bobbing, as he inhaled sharply—and leaned into Harry’s touch, turning until his lips brushed skin and he gently kissed Harry’s palm.

Harry jerked his hand back, giving a nervous little laugh in an attempt to defuse the tension. “Er—you…you really can’t do that sort of thing, all right? That’s…” He shook his head. “Just—you can’t do that.”

Malfoy hung there in the water, letting Harry paddle back a few body lengths to put some distance between them. “…‘Arry,” he called, melancholy in his voice, and he had absolutely no right looking like a kicked Crup right now, not when Harry was having heart palpitations over here, because there was Malfoy having a confused little crush on him for unfathomable reasons, and then there was Malfoy acting on those feelings in a physical way that Harry was in no way equipped to deal with.

“Just—look, you don’t even like me! The real you, I mean. You might even hate me, in fact! Due to absolutely no wrongdoing on my part near as I can tell, I want made clear. But—” He sighed. “Eventually you’re gonna get your memories back and remember who you are and who I am, and you’ll thank me for this.” His toes finally brushed the marshy bottom of the pond, and he hauled himself out onto the beach, turning back to look at Malfoy, who was still treading water and looking on at Harry in a manner he would not call ‘longingly’. “…It’s just your hormones, y’great tit. Once you get yourself sorted out, you’ll feel better.”

Or at the very least, Harry would.

Chapter Text

For the next week, the atmosphere about Harry’s home took a decided downturn. Malfoy was much quieter than usual, foregoing even his usual blathering of ‘Arry every five minutes for near radio-silence, and while he had not taken to ignoring Harry entirely, he neglected to go out of his way to hang in Harry’s orbit, treating him like the very sun upon whose existence his own was predicated.

Hermione had taken to checking in on a weekly basis since Harry’s birthday dinner. As Harry had no fireplace, and thus no connection to the Floo Network, this meant every Saturday evening, like clockwork, she would Apparate onto his doorstep and politely knock, waiting to be invited inside. Ron had apparently insisted on accompanying Hermione for these visits, clearly still not trusting Malfoy (who for his part was now on very good behaviour when Hermione dropped by), but weekend evenings were precious free time at the Wheezes shop, and with the 1st of September rapidly bearing down upon them, every spare second counted for preparations.

“Wings?” Hermione coughed around a poorly timed sip of her tea, and Harry passed her a tea towel to clean herself up with. She dabbed at her lips. “Seriously?”

Harry nodded around his own sip. “And it wasn’t a spell or any magic I’ve ever heard of—they definitely looked like the…what was he again?”

“A Carpathian Blackblood.”

“That. They looked like wings that would belong to one of those.”

She shifted onto the edge of her seat. “Can he demonstrate?” She turned to Malfoy himself, who was seated in Harry’s armchair, legs drawn up to his chest as he stared blankly out the window into the darkness. Harry wondered if he was actually watching anything or just disinclined to give Hermione his attention. “Malfoy—Draco? Are you able to, er, pop out those wings so I can have a look at them?”

“Oh—no, no, better not,” Harry quickly interjected, shaking his head. “They’re, um, proper dragon-sized when they show up, and I’d rather not have my sitting room destroyed.”

“Oh, goodness…” Hermione brought a hand to her lips. “And a tail too, you said?”

He nodded again. “It’s like—he’s obviously got the know-how still squared away inside, and he can shift bits and pieces of himself with ease, next to no thought put into it whatsoever. Maybe because it’s just his outside shifting to match his inside? But that’s where it stops—just wings, or just a tail, or just scales or talons. He can’t quite seem to get over the hurdle to put them all together and do a proper transformation. I’ve tried everything I can think of to tempt it out of him, but he finds a way around it every time.”

“Hm. Well, no one ever accused him of not being a Slytherin,” she mused, a thin smile on her lips.

“And…and I’m still not sure we should be forcing it on him, either,” he added, just in case she took this as his encouragement they try more morally grey avenues to get Malfoy back to himself; they still weren’t there, not yet. “Just—he’s got to be in there, right? So it’s just a matter of making him remember that. He likes being like this too much to transform on his own—if he could remember who he was, how much he liked being Draco Malfoy, then I’m sure everything would sort itself out.”

“Mm, that presupposes he did like being Draco Malfoy…” Hermione said, quietly enough Harry wondered if she wasn’t simply thinking aloud. What an absurd suggestion; Malfoy had loved being precisely who he was and had never been shy when it came to boasting about it. Like Hermione had said: no one had ever accused him of not being a Slytherin. “And it’s a fine theory—but how exactly do you propose putting it into practice?”

“Well, I was thinking,” Harry shifted forward, elbows on his knees. “Do you think…do you think we could maybe get in contact with his parents? I mean, they know Malfoy better than he knows himself, I’d be willing to bet, and they’d have a vested interest in getting their heir back to himself, I should think.” Hermione’s face fell at the suggestion, but he pressed on: “And I’m sure it’d be difficult if not near impossible—I’m pretty sure I remember his dad getting chucked into Azkaban after the war, though his mum should probably still be kicking around somewhere, maybe holed up in one of the fifty-something homes they likely own in Europe or something? Anyway, I feel like it’s worth a shot, don’t you think? Heck, even just seeing them might be enough to do the job. If it’s Lucius, maybe we could Glamour him or put him under the Invisibility Cloak and try to get visitation permission?”

But Hermione’s expression was still grim, and she was casting nervous sidelong glances at Malfoy too, who had perked up a bit at the mention of his parents and was now regarding the both of them with wary curiosity. She pitched her voice low, though Harry doubted it was soft enough Malfoy couldn’t catch her words if he wanted to. “Harry, that…that’s not possible.”

“Wh—well, I mean, it might be difficult, but we broke into fucking Gringotts at one point, and that shouldn’t have been possible—”

“I mean they’re dead. The both of them. For—quite some time now.” Her brows knit in concern. “You…you didn’t hear?”

“I…” He shook his head, suddenly lost. “I—no? I mean, how would I have? I haven’t had a subscription to the Prophet since the war ended, so…”

She pursed her lips. “It’s really not good for you, being so cut off from wizarding society like this. I understand you’ve got no interest in politics, but there’s important information out there you’re only getting second-hand access to through either Ron or me. You really should at least subscribe to The Quibbler; Luna’s hired a proper editor now, so it generally gets the broad strokes of major events.” Harry was still trying to process the fact that Malfoy was like him now: an orphan, no family, no one left to seek shelter from. He couldn’t go home now, even if he were to transform right this very second.

“…How?” he asked, gaze gone distant. He couldn’t look at her—and he definitely couldn’t look at Malfoy.

“…Lucius died in prison, I’m not sure from what. I don’t think…I don’t think it was violent, at least, or else I’m sure I would’ve recalled it being sensationalised. And…” She swallowed. “Narcissa passed two winters ago. Ironically, now that I think about it, from dragon pox. She hadn’t been exposed as a child, and it’s apparently much deadlier if you catch it as an adult. I think I read somewhere that your grandparents—your father’s parents, that is—passed from it too, and they’d been getting on in years.” There was a pause, and she added, “…I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t understand what she could be apologising for and lifted his head—to see she was speaking not to Harry now but to Malfoy.

He didn’t look sad, he didn’t look angry, he looked…confused, a kind of searching discomfiture writ across his features, like he knew he ought to be stricken by this news but lacked context for it. Harry didn’t think he’d looked more lost in his whole time since waking from his spell-induced slumber, and his heart gave a sympathetic wrench. Malfoy was going to lose his parents twice—now, and in the eventual future when he was finally able to contextualise it and recognise precisely what this meant. Right now, he probably just felt sad—but at some point, he was going to understand why.

This couldn’t go on.

Harry decided that it was time to step up his game—he wasn’t prepared to resort to Unforgivables (and blessedly, neither was Hermione), but he was willing by now to set aside a few of his morals in the honourable quest to get Malfoy sorted. And he was certain that Malfoy would be equally willing, were he in any position to give his opinion.

Seeing as there was no chance of getting advice on how to communicate with Malfoy and draw out his spirit from Malfoy’s parents, he would have to go to the source directly. And given he could expect no help from Malfoy of the present’s quarter, he was left with little choice but to inquire with Malfoy of the past.

Now, he’d only ever successfully used Legilimency on another person once, and that had mostly been on accident. But he’d been doing quite a bit of reading up on Occlumency and Legilimency since the war had ended, no longer content with his mind being a free-for-all for anyone with an ounce of skill in such magics, so he did have some degree of confidence in his ability to peek into Malfoy’s mind, shattered though it might be, without doing irreparable harm.

So after Hermione had taken her leave and there was only the dark and the quiet and the two of them, Harry sat them down on the sofa, shifting around to face Malfoy, and asked, because no one had ever asked him when they’d gone digging around in his mind, and it had felt like shit. Malfoy probably couldn’t give a fully informed response, but he would still ask, all the same.

“So…there’s a spell I’ve been practising, though I’ve never really cast it properly, and…and I think it might could help me figure out how to bring you back to yourself. But it’s—invasive. And I don’t particularly want to use it on you when you can’t really consent to me doing it, but I honestly think it’ll be worth it. I can pick through your memories, maybe draw out ones that are lying dormant and might spark something. And I know I’m probably the last person on earth you want taking a stroll through your mind, but I’m all you’ve really got right now, so…so would you let me? I swear I won’t speak a word of whatever I might see to another soul. I’d make an Unbreakable Vow if I knew how to do it. Which maybe sounds like overkill, but I just really don’t want you suing me into the poorhouse for this once you’re back to yourself.” He winced, trying to gauge Malfoy’s reaction. “…What do you say?”

And Malfoy, who had been so quiet and withdrawn ever since hearing about his parents, seemed to at last relax before Harry, searching Harry’s face and seeming to find exactly what he wanted. His lips twisted into a soft, wan little smile, and he leaned forward uncomfortably far into Harry’s personal space to rest his forehead against Harry’s, breathing, “‘Arry…”

A spear of guilt lanced through him, seeing how very trusting Malfoy had become around him. He didn’t want to do this—he didn’t want Malfoy letting him do this, not when he couldn’t possibly comprehend the power he was giving Harry over him. Malfoy the Wizard would absolutely loathe Harry having seen so intimate a side to him (and that was saying something, given that Harry regularly saw him in his altogether several times a week), and Harry wouldn’t be able to blame him. He’d feel the same if someone had invaded his privacy like that. But the sooner he got this over with, the sooner they could get back to their respective orbits and attempt to forget they’d ever been caught in this strange relationship.

Hoping in this case that ‘Arry was shorthand for Sure, do your worst, you have my complete and total permission to run wild through my memory banks, he swallowed, clutched his wand tight, and laid the tip against Malfoy’s temple, eyes closed.

“Legilimens.”

He felt himself pitching forward into darkness, falling—tumbling—spiralling down and down and down until he slammed into a hard surface. Struggling to his knees, he cast about and found he was standing in the middle of a rocky nest, a single large obsidian egg at its centre. He could feel an uncomfortable warmth radiating from the egg, and he took a tentative step towards it before cautiously, carefully, pressing his ear against the shell. He could hear muffled sounds within, with a cadence that sounded like speech.

Had he cast the spell incorrectly? This was nothing like his experience had been using Legilimency on Snape. But perhaps this was what it was like inside Malfoy’s mind right now. Here again, the dragon was protecting Malfoy from something, hiding his memories within, until someone desperate enough to try this tactic came along and smashed through his defences.

Harry cast about the nest until he found a sturdy, fist-sized rock and began chipping away at the shell. It was thicker than expected, but he managed to make a dent in it—though when he paused to admire his progress, the shell began stitching itself back together, re-forming and undoing all of his hard work.

“Fuck,” Harry hissed under his breath and grabbed another rock, working the shell with both hands. Bits and pieces of shale and shell went flying, and when Harry had created an opening large enough to work his fingers through, he began trying to pry the shell apart manually. After several long minutes of work—or had it been hours?—he’d finally managed to chip away enough he could crawl inside, and scrambling through as quickly as possible to avoid the shell re-forming around him and trapping him, he dove into the warm, gooey centre of Draco Malfoy’s deepest, darkest memories.

And he saw himself.

He saw himself from across the Great Hall at Hogwarts, reading a letter he’d just received. Before him, on the breakfast table, sat a long parcel wrapped up tightly but not so well as to disguise that it was obviously a broom. This was his Nimbus 2000, Harry recalled, given his cherubic features, his baby fat not having yet sloughed away.

But this wasn’t his memory—it was Malfoy’s. And he could feel, as if it were his own, a rising tide of bitter, seething jealousy choking him. Every time he turned around, it seemed like Potter was enjoying some new manner of favourable treatment, and now he was getting brooms Owl-delivered to him in front of the whole school? After he was meant to have been expelled for flying when he wasn’t allowed? This was rubbish, these teachers—he refused to call them ‘professors’, except perhaps Snape, who at least did not seem to be dazzled by Potter’s peacocking about—weren’t worth two Knuts, and his father would definitely be hearing about this. What good was being on the Board of Governors if you couldn’t put a stop to such rank favouritism? This vainglorious knob had humiliated him on their very first day, and Draco was torn between pure, unadulterated rage and bone-deep sorrow that the academic experience he’d been looking forward to since he was old enough to even say ‘Hogwarts’ had been snatched away from him. Potter hadn’t worked for his célébrité, it’d been handed to him by virtue of being a miserable fucking orphan—whereas Draco had shaken hands and attended events at his father’s side and traded Owl post with the children of Very Important Wizards.

And now Potter was getting brand-new top-of-the-line brooms. At breakfast. For free.

Draco stabbed his scrambled eggs so viciously the table shook.

The vision shifted.

It was dark, and Harry could smell the dank, loamy scent of the Forbidden Forest. He could still remember it well, even without Legilimency. He was plodding along, and that familiar bitterness was coiling acid-sharp in his midsection. He was angry about something—again. He was always angry about something when it came to Potter. The mere sight of his stupid, smirking face sent irritation coursing through his veins, like sandpaper, and he couldn’t calm down. His heart was pounding, even now, because there was Potter plodding along with him. They were meant to be looking for something—some creature that was wandering around, wounded and in need of putting down—and how on earth was this a job for students? But Potter seemed to be almost enjoying it, bold and cool and confident, and Draco couldn’t let this arsehole show him up. Sure, they were all alone, and no one but Potter would know that Draco really didn’t like the dark, didn’t like feeling so small and alone and lost (was that the same knotted tree they’d just passed five minutes ago? Surely not…), but that was almost worse. This whole year had been one fiasco after another, and now it was just Draco and Potter and the gloaming darkness closing in on them and threatening to snuff their feeble little wandlights.

He shifted just a little closer to Potter, who did not seem to have similar issues with the darkness and who also did not seem to be paying much attention to Draco at all. And that suited Draco just fine—really, it honestly did.

The vision shifted again.

It was only thanks to his recently re-honed Seeker’s skills, courtesy of Malfoy, that Harry was able to manage the split-second reaction it took to dodge the jet of blue light that had been aimed right for his head, and then he was whirling around and spitting, “Serpensortia!” which was neither a spell he’d ever cast nor one he’d ever heard of. Except—he had heard it before, now that he thought about it, back in Second Year, when he’d duelled—

Ten feet away from him, just down the duelling strip, stood Potter, looking utterly ridiculous as he gawped stupidly at the massive cobra Draco had just Conjured. How did he like that? It wasn’t even a spell in their curriculum! They wouldn’t study Summons until Third Year, but Draco had been waiting for just such an occasion to show off this new bit of magic he’d learned through self-study over the previous summer holiday. Most people had to actually do fantastic feats if they wanted praise, not have it heaped upon them simply because of happenstance (that Draco privately felt was simply his father covering up for the Dark Lord getting overconfident and winding up the hapless victim of a wizarding infant’s wild magic surge).

But Potter quickly recovered from his boggling when the snake—Summons were so stupid!—flat-out ignored him and turned instead to hiss and spit at one of the gaggle of onlookers present for their duel. Potter swallowed and stomped forward, pointing his wand at the snake, and Draco thought he meant to dispel it—he was certainly welcome to try, this was not Second-year magic—but then he spoke.

The sibilant string of smooth, soft susurrations slipped into Draco’s ear, coiling around his midsection and squeezing from the inside out. The words flowed from Potter’s lips and wrapped themselves around Draco’s throat until he couldn’t breathe, and fuck, what spell was this? What magic was he laying upon Draco? Why was it he couldn’t understand these words and yet he equally couldn’t stop listening?

Fuck—was it Potter? Was he the Heir after all? Suddenly, so much made sense—routing the Dark Lord as a mere child, commanding respect and awe from others (certainly not Draco, who was above that sort of thing and not so easily dazzled), and now speaking in the language of snakes, using the Dark Tongue to enfeeble those around him, rendering them helpless before him.

The twisting, writhing giddy nausea in his midsection continued unabated, and Draco thought, for the first time, that he could see why so many seemed to worship at the altar of Potter. Being around this sort of power was addicting.

The vision shifted again. And again. And again.

These were all visions of Harry—of Harry’s interactions with Draco (Malfoy), from Draco’s (Malfoy’s, dammit!) perspective. He’d been seeking signs of what made Malfoy Malfoy, and flattering as it was, seeing up close and personal just how large a part Harry had played in making him into the man he was today, it wasn’t what he’d been looking for.

He pressed on—he needed more than this, more than just memories of himself through Draco’s (ah fuck, whatever) eyes. He needed something he could latch on to and haul back out, into the world of the living, to make Draco remember why he was the way he was.

Except, with each successive memory thread he followed, he saw more and more of the same: Draco, and Draco’s whole existence, being shaped and moulded by Harry. Draco sought him out if only to slam into him, like a meteor, and in doing so chip away the rough edges of himself into something more…Harry-shaped. He craved Harry’s attention in these interactions, if only so that Harry would tear him down so he could build himself back up in response, stronger for it.

These were the memories the dragon kept locked away, safe so that they couldn’t hurt Draco—but if Harry had truly been so influential an existence for Draco, how was he meant to be himself again if he wasn’t allowed access to these memories? Was that the trick, then? To somehow draw the memories out and force Draco to relive them, to become himself once more, just as he’d done once upon a time?

And why were these memories locked away in the first place? There was obviously still a part of Draco that was drawn to Harry, still sought his attentions and even his approval, and Harry was daily growing dubious that this was any sort of ‘imprinting’ or ‘courting’. No, there was something more to these interactions, there had to be—

The vision shifted again—and this time, Harry wasn’t in it.

He was stalking through the Hogwarts hallways—the fourth floor, he thought perhaps—and it was night. Late at night, so late the torches burning in their sconces were barely more than tiny flickering little motes of light in the darkness. But Draco didn’t have time just now to be frightened (except, maybe just a tiny little niggling bit of discomfort in the back of his mind, easily dismissed)—he had duties.

And those duties were presently coming into play: “Someone’s out well past curfew. Don’t they teach you how to tell time in House Ravenclaw?”

Up ahead, someone gasped, whirling around in the darkness, and then there came a soft Lumos, and a warm, wan glow fell upon both parties. It was…Harry didn’t recognise him, but Draco did. A younger student—a Fourth-year?—Ravenclaw of course, limber and lithe with dark, shaggy hair and glasses that kept sliding down his arched nose until he artfully pushed them back up. The tension in his shoulders relaxed a hair when he caught Draco rounding the corner, and he gracefully slumped against the stone wall behind him.

“Was studying late in the library; just on my way back to the Tower now.”

“Were you? Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the entrance to Ravenclaw Tower on the fifth floor, and not the fourth?” There was a smooth cocksurety to the question that suggested it was not entirely posed in good faith.

“No, no you’re quite right. Just—needed to stop off to use the facilities first.” The boy—Oliver Fontaine, Harry suddenly knew, though he’d never met this boy in his life—knocked on the door just to his right: the boy’s bathroom.

Draco tutted under his breath. “Well, I can understand the pressing need to answer the call of nature, but…really, if you wanted to make sure not to pique the interest of any Prefects doing their rounds, you ought to have availed yourself of the bathrooms in your Tower.” Draco took a measured step forward. “Now I think I might have to dock points…”

“Oh, that…is a shame,” Oliver said, and was it Harry’s imagination, or did he look like he was actually looking forward to losing House points? “I couldn’t wait, honest… We’re already in third place for the House Cup—I couldn’t bear it if I was responsible for knocking us into dead last, over something like…a lack of restraint. Isn’t there…” His lips curled into a devious little one-sided grin. “Isn’t there anything I could do to make it right? I promise if you were to…let it slide…I wouldn’t tell another single soul.”

“And what sort of example would that set?” Draco was suddenly there, right before Oliver, looming tall and lanky as he leaned into Oliver’s space; Oliver, for his part, seemed absolutely delighted by this turn of events, and his breathing picked up as his lips quirked into a full-on smile. “I don’t think letting it slide is an option.”

“I have…other talents, Prefect Malfoy. Surely there’s something in my wheelhouse that might…satisfy?”

Draco’s lips twitched—and then he had Oliver’s body covered with the whole of his own, angling his head to slot their lips together as he pressed Oliver into the cold stone wall. Oliver gave a feeble little grunt of protest, but that was the extent of any such theatre, fisting his hands in the front of Draco’s robes and tugging him closer, mouth opening sweetly for Draco’s tongue as he swallowed down all the little noises it turned out Draco made in intimate moments such as—

Shit, shit. Harry couldn’t watch this—he wouldn’t watch this. He’d gotten lost in the moment, but he still had his head about him, enough to know this went far beyond the bounds of propriety. He couldn’t pretend this was going to help him figure out how to bring Draco—Malfoy—back to himself, and it was none of his business what sorts of—

And then everything went wrong. The visuals blurred, the voices—the sounds—went muffled, beyond recognition. Harry frowned to himself—it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Was it? Before, each memory had just blended into the next, a seamless shift from one impactful thought to another, but Harry could still feel himself in this (inappropriate, inopportune) moment that was flickering, glitching, and then—

It cut out altogether.

He was jerked ahead to another memory, but this one too had that odd warped quality to it, the colours gone off and any sounds too muffled to put together. Before Harry could piece together its contents from context, he was thrust into yet another memory. Now and then, he could catch snatches of conversation—I don’t need your help, I’m not afraid!, I can’t be sure—or would be buffeted by some overwhelming emotion—terror, shame, longing—but there was nothing concrete, nothing he could actually grab hold of and use to anchor himself let alone Malfoy (Draco).

He was getting dizzy, being snatched from one befuddled memory to the next, and he knew he must have screwed up the spell—the sight of Malfoy and Oliver…doing what they’d been about to do…it had shocked him, that must have been it. He’d lost concentration, and now he was trapped in a maelstrom of remembrance. He just needed an anchor, just needed something to—

“Did you do it?”

Harry went sprawling headlong into a new memory—and this one was blessedly stable. It was still, it was quiet, and he could hear everything. He could hear the night breeze whipping at the balcony curtains, he could hear the faint cry of one of the peacocks calling to its mate, he could hear the very distant sound of Aunt Bella’s latest plaything screaming—but drowning it all out was the thundering thudding of his own heartbeat.

Draco was in his bedroom in the Manor, one of the few places he still felt safe, even though deep down he knew it was a cruel façade; he was no safer here than sat in the middle of the parlour when the Dark Lord was in residence. But it felt safer, and sometimes that was enough. Time grew short, though, and he had to start looking after himself; his parents could no longer protect him, and he could no longer in good conscience even allow them to try.

Before him stood a house-elf—she’d been with them for ages, she was a good elf. A loyal elf. And far too devoted to dare try and undermine her masters like Dobby. She was staring up at him with big, watery brown eyes, wringing her bony fingers in nervous habit.

“…Yes, sir.”

Relief twisted his stomach into knots, leaving him light-headed. “Good.” He nodded. “Good. Don’t tell me where it is. Not even if I ask for it. Am I understood?”

The elf began tugging at her ears in distress, but she nodded. “Yes, sir. I shan’t.”

Draco licked his lips, stumbling to the reading chair sat by the open balcony doors. He collapsed into it, head thrown back as he stared up at the ceiling. Hot tears beat at the backs of his eyes, but he refused to let them in. Something crinkled in his hand, and he opened his palm, frowning down at the piece of paper he’d been holding so tightly, the words written on it had almost been rendered illegible by his sweat.

In his own looping scrawl, they read, Mimsy has hidden something for you. You’re better off without it.

Harry was immediately shunted back into himself, and he came to with a deep, painful gasp, blinking rapidly.

“‘Arry?”

Draco’s—Malfoy’s? Yeah, Malfoy’s.—face swam into view, expression steeped in worry as his brows knit blankets between them. He was gently clasping Harry’s shoulders and giving him a little shake, searching Harry’s features. “‘Arry? ‘Arry.”

Harry jerked back, bringing up a hand to ward him off—but this was just Malfoy. Malfoy, the mostly-dragon who could barely remember Harry’s name, much less his own, and who loved to chase garden gnomes and smite Patronuses and was a literal terror in the kitchen. He had never been utterly consumed by a few words of Parseltongue or felt up a Ravenclaw boy in a dark fourth-floor corridor or asked a house-elf to hide something for him whilst living in Voldemort’s headquarters—that had been Draco.

Harry commanded his heart to cease its breakneck pounding, slumping back against the couch in a manner that reminded him, stomach-churningly, of Draco after the elf had told him she’d done whatever it was he’d asked her to do. He closed his eyes, but still the images assaulted his mind, the after-effects of Legilimency they didn’t warn you about. He might’ve been able to stop them with Occlumency, but the effort had exhausted him, and honestly, he deserved it.

“…‘Arry?” Malfoy pressed again, soft but still insistent as he laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“‘M fine. I’m fine, honest. It just…took a lot out of me.” Serpensortia. A brand-new Nimbus 2000. Tiny little pinpricks of light to ward off the monsters lurking in the darkness. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until all he saw when he opened them again were flashing bursts of colour that he blinked away. “It’s a taxing spell—they don’t really tell you that in A Glimpse Through the Mind’s Eye.” Malfoy relaxed a hair, drawing back, but he still looked terribly worried. Harry wondered what he’d looked like during the casting to draw such a strong reaction.

He swallowed. “…Do you…” He took a breath, steadying himself. “Do you know a house-elf named Mimsy? Do you remember her?”

Malfoy’s gaze went distant in thought, and then he frowned, more in melancholy than concern. “‘Arry.”

Well, it had been a long shot. He’d doubted the mere mention of Mimsy would be the key to unlocking Malfoy’s memories, but she’d had something to do with them, of this he was certain. Why else had all of Malfoy’s (Draco’s) memories after the incident with the Ravenclaw boy been muddled and confused until that exchange with Mimsy? What had he asked her to hide from him? And why had he asked her to hide it in the first place?

Despite knowing he probably wouldn’t like what he found, the same part of him that had never let him ignore a good mystery in school still plagued him even as an adult, and so it was with a bit of self-convincing that this would surely help them put Malfoy back to rights that Harry Floo-called one of the few DMLE staffers he still kept in contact with. A fellow trainee from Harry’s aborted attempt to join the Auror Force, Sadie was a Slytherin, true, but she was one of the good ones, he maintained. She subscribed to The Quibbler, after all, and she was capable of taking a joke; this had automatically made her the most appealing Slytherin he’d ever met, and given after all this time he still didn’t know her family name, she was clearly capable of keeping a secret.

He needed someone to find this ‘Mimsy’ for him, and he needed that someone to be all right with keeping quiet about it. Hermione would definitely not have approved of his involving the Ministry at all—would probably have had a stroke if she’d known—but these were desperate times, and Slytherins were a fantastic weapon to have in your arsenal if you wanted to be a bit sly about it. Granted, for all Harry knew, Sadie was an Unspeakable as well, but she wouldn’t know he was trying to find the elf for Malfoy’s sake, and if the Department of Mysteries already knew about Mimsy, well it stood to reason they would’ve tracked down Malfoy by now.

Sadie did her House very proud (Harry decided he’d petition McGonagall for 150 points for Slytherin on her behalf when he returned in the autumn) and managed to not only determine that Mimsy had once—but no longer—worked for the Malfoy family, but after Malfoy’s parents had died (and with Malfoy himself nowhere to be found), she’d been sent to work at St Mungo’s, where she was presently helping keep the Janus Thickey Ward tidy.

For the price of an autographed Snitch for her niece (yup, definitely a Slytherin), Sadie even went so far as to arrange a meeting for Harry, as she was evidently dating a Healer in the Dai Llewellyn Ward. If Harry wanted his answers, this was how he was going to have to come by them.

Malfoy, predictably, was not happy when Harry informed him that he was going to have to leave the cottage—alone—for what could be several hours or perhaps even a day. Predictably, because they’d been sharing the cottage, just the two of them, for over two months now, and not once in all that time had Harry ever needed to leave even to restock his fridge. But he needed to talk to this ‘Mimsy’, and Malfoy definitely couldn’t come with him, so there was no getting around it.

“I’m sorry—honest, I am, but you can’t come with me. I’d bring you along if I could, but you showing your face in public right now would be bad for, like, five different reasons. And I’m doing this for you, besides. I can’t get the information I need if I’m worrying about you getting into trouble while I’m away, so I need you to stay here and just quietly wait for me to get back, all right? Watch the cottage, keep it safe—and if anyone comes by that you don’t recognise, well just—” He made a vague gesture. “Turn into a great big dragon and run them off, yeah?” Best case scenario, he came back to the cottage and all his problems were solved. Perhaps he’d invite Zacharias Smith over for tea while he was out—he’d never liked that guy anyway.

At length (long, long length), he finally managed to convince Malfoy that he wouldn’t get into too much trouble while he was away and would send a Patronus to Malfoy immediately if there were anything wrong or if he wasn’t going to make it back before dinner. He made sure Malfoy had enough food to sate him while he was away—taking care to ensure none of it required using the stove or oven or any other kitchen appliance, magical or otherwise—gave Malfoy a reassuring smile, and then turned in place on the front steps, popping back into existence at the Apparition point on the corner just outside the old, condemned building that had once been Purge and Dowse, Ltd. An odd name for a department store, he’d thought, but perhaps that was why it had been condemned.

None of the Muggles passing by seemed to pay him any mind, so after casting a quick Glamour to be sure none of the wizards inside paid him any mind either, he approached the shop window, tipped a Good morning to the mannequin modelling fall fashions from ten seasons ago, and reported—as Sadie had advised him—that he was here to visit his ailing grandmother on the second floor.

The mannequin inclined its head, and Harry watched as the glass fronting the shop window flickered for a brief moment before vanishing, allowing Harry to climb through.

Despite its dilapidated appearance from the outside, the inside of St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries was bustling. Blessedly, this meant that everyone was too focused on their own business, both visitors and staff alike, to notice or particularly care that Harry appeared to be wearing a hat that wasn’t really there or that his nose seemed about three times too big for his face. Perhaps they thought him a patient and therefore someone else’s problem.

He made his way to the stairwell leading to the second floor, where in precisely five minutes, Mimsy would be turning down the bed in room 213 for a new patient, alone and free to be approached without attracting too much attention.

And like any good house-elf, Mimsy was right on time, humming to herself as she shuffled into the dark, empty room, a bundle of freshly laundered sheets floating behind her on their own. Harry waited to speak up until she’d shut the door behind her and lit the lamps around the room.

“Er, Mimsy?” Mimsy screeched in alarm, and the sheets went flying, and Harry panicked—if she Disapparated or summoned security, there was going to be hell to pay. He quickly doffed his disguise, praying his celebrity would save him in this moment. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you! Please, I’m Harry Potter! I just have a few questions to ask you!” He held his hands up, carefully placing his wand on the bedside table, and gave Mimsy a very wide berth. “I swear, I’m not here to hurt you. I know you’re very good at your job, and I only had a couple of questions about…about a previous position you held.”

Mimsy was breathing heavily, her eyes wide and white. She was clearly still as nervous now as she’d been when she’d worked for the Malfoys, and honestly, he couldn’t blame her. He’d probably have been in a similar state if he’d had to serve that family for however many years she had. She raked him with a nervous gaze, swallowing thickly as she gathered the sheets to her chest, holding them like a shield before her. “Y-You is not being allowed in here, Mr Harry Potter, sir. Mimsy knows all the patients in St Mungo’s, and Harry Potter isn’t being one of them.”

“I—yeah, yeah, I kind of…snuck in, but—please don’t report me! It’s very very important no one know I’m here.”

She ducked her head, averting her gaze. “Then Mimsy will endeavour to forget, but Mr Harry Potter needs to take his leave immediately.”

“Oh, I…” He squared his jaw. He didn’t like taking advantage of house-elves like this, but he needed her cooperation, and so did Malfoy. “I will. I will leave, I promise. After I’ve asked you my questions and you’ve given me your answers. I shouldn’t like to report—anonymously, of course—that you weren’t as helpful as you possibly could be to a visitor to St Mungo’s, yeah?”

Her bat-like ears began drooping, and the bundle of sheets dropped to the floor as she wrang her hands nervously. “I—no, Mimsy’s done a very good job, her supervisor is giving her top marks in her work each reporting period, she’s a good elf, she’s a very good elf—”

“And so you are. Which is why I’ve come to you, because I know that you love helping others. And I’m trying to help someone too. Someone you used to know. Someone I think you cared about, and who…er, respected you at least. In his own way.” Mimsy frowned at him; perhaps he’d gone overboard with the ‘respected’ bit. Nothing he’d seen in Draco’s memories suggested he’d felt anything but blithe tolerance. “Do you…do you remember Draco Malfoy? Do you remember working at Malfoy Manor?”

She seized up, shaking her head. “Oh—no, no Mimsy mustn’t talk ill of her former charges. She would be a very bad house-elf if she did—”

“Indeed, you would! You would! Which is why I’d never ask you to talk ill of them. They aren’t in trouble, not with the law at least, and they aren’t angry with you either, not one bit. They’ve had nothing but praise for the services you provided while you worked for them. But…” He took a careful step forward, sinking to one knee so he was at eye-level with her. “Did you know Draco well?”

She balked at the question. “I…I did know the young master, of course. The mistress assigned me to him after…after his old house-elf abandoned his post.” Dobby, then. “Shameful. Mimsy would never.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. I expect that’s why they spoke so highly of you. Now—Draco asked you to perform tasks for him on occasion didn’t he? Gave you jobs and asked you to see them through? Trusted you with very important errands?”

She nodded tentatively. “As Mimsy has just said, she was assigned to the young master, personally. The mistress told her to see to his every need, and so Mimsy did.”

“Right… And did he—did he ever ask you to…hide something for him?”

She blanched, complexion taking on an odd grey tinge, and she took two steps back as she shook her head. “No—no, Mr Harry Potter needs to be taking his leave now, I think. He said he wanted to ask ‘a few questions’ and Mimsy has answered them. She will now be trying to forget Mr Harry Potter has come here, but he needs to be leaving first, for her to do that.”

“Mimsy—Mimsy, wait—please—” He rushed her, panicking she might just Disapparate, and grabbed her—gently as he could make himself—by the shoulders. “Mimsy, please. I’m here because of him—whatever he asked you to hide, I think he needs it back now. He’s…he’s sick. And I think the cure for him might lie in whatever it was he asked you to hide. Please can’t you tell me? For his sake?”

She searched his features, watery brown eyes roaming his face, but still she balked. “…If Master Draco is ill, he should be coming to St Mungo’s. The wizards here will set him arights, Mimsy is sure of it.”

“I—I know they’ve got the best and brightest on staff here, but…but Draco can’t come in right now. He’s too sick to travel. I promise I’ll put in a request for a home visit, if this doesn’t pan out, but I’d like to try all other available avenues before I take up the precious time of one of the staff here. Don’t you think it’s better they be here to look after the really ill patients who need their help than to travel halfway across the country to see someone who’s not even really sick at all and just needs whatever it was he asked you to hide in order to feel better?”

He was getting desperate; house-elves could be very finicky about their promises, and Mimsy seemed particularly loyal. He respected it, but it was getting in their way just about now.

But Kreacher had taught him, years ago, that sometimes the loyalty of a good house-elf was the most important thing you could have. He licked his lips, taking a breath. “I want to help him—and I know you do too. I know he told you not to tell him where you hid it, whatever he told you to hide, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want you telling anyone. He just knew the knowledge wasn’t safe with himself. Well the time’s come for him to have back whatever this thing is you’ve hidden, only he doesn’t even know how to ask for it. That’s what I’m here for. To make him whole again. Please won’t you help me, Mimsy?”

The tight, tense line across Mimsy’s shoulders, at length, eased, and her throat bobbed as she swallowed. She drew herself up. “…A Pensieve.”

Harry blinked, thrown. “I—I’m sorry?”

“Master Draco was asking Mimsy to hide for him…a Pensieve. Full of memories that Mimsy saw him draw out of his mind with her own eyes. He was telling Mimsy he was better off without them, and that she should hide them for him, and never tell him where.”

Harry’s heart was beating a loud, thundering tattoo that even Mimsy could probably hear. “…Please, where did you hide it?”

Chapter Text

Harry hadn’t set foot on the Malfoy lands in over four years—and the fact that it hadn’t been longer was a crying shame. But here he was, even more heavily Glamoured than before and with wand at the ready, because this was where Mimsy had apparently hidden Malfoy’s Pensieve.

The Manor had absolutely gone to pot, somehow even more dark and dreary now than it had been in its heyday. It was evident that no one had taken up residence in the time since Voldemort had laid claim to it, and the greenery had grown wild, vines snaking up walls and through broken windows and tree roots upsetting the carefully paved walkways that wound around the manor grounds. It looked like it had lain fallow for forty years instead of just four.

But Harry was not here for the Manor. He wasn’t here for the gardens or greenhouses or even what was evidently a regulation-sized Quidditch pitch around the back.

No, today he was here to find the Malfoy family mausoleum.

He had to admit, it had been a pretty good hiding place. No one was likely to just happen upon a Pensieve hidden within, and sheer superstition would make most hesitate to disturb the contents even if they were looking for something. Harry didn’t really want to be poking around inside himself, but he had a mission, and if all went well, Malfoy might be back to himself within the hour even!

Even without Mimsy’s directions, Harry probably wouldn’t have had too difficult a time finding the mausoleum, as it was a rather grand structure and not easily missed. Situated at the east end of the sprawling but overgrown gardens, it sported a marble façade with tall, ionic columns supporting a decorative frieze that wound around the building. An iron gate flanked on either side by a pair of dragon statues carved from limestone was its occupants’ only protection these days, the wards having long failed, and with a quiet Alohomora, Harry found his way inside.

The air hung heavy and close, thick with dust and the stench of long-gone decay. Most of the tombs he passed housed Malfoys from decades, even centuries past, and he had walked some way before the light of his wand illuminated the final resting places of Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy. It was nice, he supposed, that Malfoy’s dad had been allowed to be entombed here, in the family plot, instead of being relegated to the little potter’s field near Azkaban that most inmates eventually found their way to.

He shivered as he passed Malfoy’s parents’ crypt, feeling like the stone busts bearing their likenesses were watching him—and then realised that they were, their cold, dead eyes of stone tracking Harry as he moved through the space, scanning for the crypt he was meant to be looking for. Blessedly, they didn’t seem to be able to speak, like paintings, and he’d never been more grateful for a lack of such magic in his life. He didn’t know what he might say if they asked after Malfoy.

He found the crypt Mimsy had pointed him towards at the very back of the structure: a single bricked-in niche that bore a plaque reading Faithful to the Bitter End. The final resting place of all Malfoy house-elves. Harry grimaced at the epitaph, quickly casting a Diffindo and pausing after a loud CRACK rent the air, listening out for anyone who might have heard it.

When all seemed well, he dug out the pieces of stone until he uncovered the massive urn in which the ashes of all elves who had served the family for dozens of generations had been interred. “…Sorry for the disturbance, I’ll put you back just as soon as I’ve finished my business here.” He then carefully Levitated the urn onto a handsome sarcophagus taking up most of the centre of the room (Armand Malfoy, d. 1068) and peered further into the niche.

And there it was—easily mistaken for another urn but fashioned not from ceramic or marble but instead a granite-like substance that seemed to glitter in Harry’s wandlight. Not trusting his Levitating skills for something this precious, Harry reached in, grasping the Pensieve with both hands, and drew it out. He placed it atop Armand’s sarcophagus as well, then returned the house-elves’ urn to its proper place, sealing it back into its niche and replacing the plaque. Macabre though it struck him to be, it was not his place to disturb the rest of these dead.

With a bracing breath, he turned back to the Pensieve. Taking it in now, he could see it was a plain thing, lacking the inlaid precious gemstones and gaudy inscriptions he’d seen decorate such items advertised in Owl-order magazines. But when he removed the lid, he was met with the familiar sight of the swirling liquid-but-not-quite substance within, threads of memories visible as glowing silver strands. These were Draco’s memories—and soon, they would be Malfoy’s too.

Something within this soup of recollection had been too terrible, or else too important, for Draco to keep locked inside his mind. He’d done all he could to rid himself of these thoughts—ideas, as Hermione told it, were impossible to destroy once they’d been born, so this was probably the next best way to ensure no one could get hold of them and use them against you. What, Harry wondered, had been so bad about them that Draco had gone to such drastic lengths to hide them? What had he not wanted to remember so badly, he’d risked his and his house-elf’s lives to be rid of them?

It would be so easy to just…take a peek. And really, Harry ought to, shouldn’t he? What if it was dangerous for Malfoy to have these memories back? What if Voldemort had somehow placed some sort of magical time bomb within Malfoy’s mind, and once he had these memories restored, it might go off? Sure, he’d never heard of anything like that, but what if? Or they could be evidence of a crime that Draco had been trying to cover up—it wouldn’t be the first time Harry had been right about his sinister ulterior motives, now would it?

That decided it. He would only dip into the memories for a few moments, yes. Just long enough to divine why Draco had relieved himself of them in the first place, and then he’d retreat. It was an invasion of privacy, true, but Malfoy’s life (or at least his quality of life) hung in the balance, and Harry just had to be sure they weren’t about to rush headlong into an aftershock of the last wizarding war. Malfoy had been locked up in the Department of Mysteries for a reason, after all—what if it hadn’t just been a bit of belated revenge on account of him being a Death Eater?

He had to know. He just had to.

And so, with both hands braced on the side of the bowl, he took a deep breath and pitched forward, falling down and down and down…

When his legs hit solid ground, it was dark. Dark, but for the soft flickering of low-lit torches in sconces lining a stone corridor. He was at Hogwarts—on the fourth floor, just outside the boys’ bathroom.

And Malfoy—no, Draco this time—and Oliver were snogging, again. Or wait, not again—this wasn’t a new memory, no, this was an old one. A continuation of the abruptly aborted one he’d fished from Malfoy’s mind using Legilimency. That was why the memory had gone all wrong—Draco had cut it off, purposefully, and placed it into this Pensieve. Whatever happened here, it was important.

Harry had to watch.

And so he did—he took in, up close and in living colour, the raw, animal sight of Draco pressing Oliver into the cold stone façade of the corridor, Oliver drinking him down, swallowing all the little sounds that Draco made. He played with the front of Draco’s robes with expertly nimble fingers, peeling the panels apart and setting to work on Draco’s belt next. The only sounds filling the empty corridor were panting gasps and the soft rustle of clothing and the sharp tinkle of the belt hasp coming unlatched, followed by the pop of smooth metal buttons.

Oliver slid a hand into Draco’s open fly, and Draco seized, lips drawing back to reveal a toothy grin. “Awfully forward of you.”

“I’m a man of few words.” Oliver’s arm flexed, and Draco gave a keening grunt. “Actions speak louder, didn’t you know?”

“Well—if we’re going to be making much noise, perhaps we should repair to more private accommodations.” Draco then grabbed Oliver by the front of his robes and dragged him, bodily, into the bathroom, wordlessly locking the door behind them with a sharp whip of his wand. Distantly, Harry was aware that he didn’t need to look, didn’t have to stand here like a pervert, watching them take their pleasure, but he couldn’t stop, not now. The sight of them disrobing, hair in disarray and lips flushed as they pulled apart only to slam back together again with even more fervour than before, was absolutely mesmerising. He understood even more intimately now how Draco had felt when Harry had spoken Parseltongue at him—it held him, and it would not let him go.

And more so, he could feel it all—this was Draco’s memory, and now it was Harry’s too. He felt the thrill of knowing that there was a not insignificant chance some other Prefect might come along on their rounds and find them, he felt the tightening of his midsection as excitement and arousal began to pool just behind his navel, he felt the urge to press himself up against Oliver’s backside and rut with abandon, until that heady carnal drive within him was finally satisfied.

The latter of these feelings shortly grew too strong to ignore, and Draco grabbed Oliver by the shoulder and shoved him around, pressing him against one of the sinks and forcing his head down, such that all he could see in the mirror was himself, shirt hanging open and strands of blond hair falling from their careful coiffure, arched over some nameless, faceless someone. He buried his fingers in Oliver’s hair, holding him down with one hand while the other reached around to unfasten his trousers.

A fresh spear of arousal struck Harry in the chest—god, he hadn’t gotten off in a long, long while, not with Malfoy around, and sure it was Draco and some random Ravenclaw he was peeping on, but there was something undeniably human about them. He could feel them, feel Draco at least, in this moment, and it was him, knowing what he wanted and taking it, ravishing it, and being wanted equally ardently in return.

Oliver pressed back eagerly against Draco’s crotch, and Draco tightened his grip. “You’ll stay right where I’ve put you. You may get your way in the day to day, but just now, I think you’ll take your cues from me.”

“Yes, sir, Prefect Malfoy,” Oliver snickered, and Draco gave him a little shake.

“And no speaking, I think, unless it’s to shout what an amazing fuck I am. On which note—” He whipped out his wand once more, casting a belated Silencio. “Much better.”

He yanked down Oliver’s trousers and pants just enough to expose his buttocks, pinching the milky white flesh until Oliver cried out, lip curling in satisfaction. Harry heard Draco cast something under his breath but could not quite catch the phrase, but when his fingers slipped down into the dark divot between Oliver’s arse cheeks, he got the general idea.

Draco leaned over Oliver’s back, until his lips were right by Oliver’s ears, and he whispered in a vicious hiss. “Got you right where you were always meant to be, in every sense of the word—under me, at my mercy, no one around to tell you I’m the wrong sort.” He massaged his fingers, and Oliver’s legs spasmed, back arching as he choked down a cry. “Look at you, so pliable, so malleable. You were meant to be a god—I could have made you into one. It should have been you—and me.” Another twist of his fingers, and Oliver was grabbing onto the sink for dear life, practically sobbing as gasps of pleasure erupted from his throat in choked bursts. “It should be you here. It should be you.”

He released his hold on Oliver’s head, laving a long stripe of saliva across his palm, and reached into his own pants to draw out a cock that Harry was distressingly familiar with by now, thanks to Malfoy’s distaste for bathing unless forced into it by Harry himself. It was, he had to admit, an impressive specimen, slim in girth but made up for by a length that allowed it a beautiful arching curve. Against his pale palm, it seemed angrily pink just now and jutted proudly from a thatch of short, wispy curls. He bent just at the knee to slide forward, slipping his prick between Oliver’s thighs until the head bumped against Oliver’s own bollocks.

“Tighten up,” he spat, wrenching his hand until Oliver was nearly clambering up onto the sinks, and his slender thighs pressed together. Draco’s expression hardened, and he exhaled a long, bracing breath, gently patting Oliver’s arse. “Man’s greatest treasure, indeed.”

And then he moved his free hand to hold Oliver by the neck, drew back—and slammed forward, causing the sink to give a groaning shake that was mirrored by Oliver himself. He thrust again, and again, and again, timing each with a twist of his fingers to pleasure Oliver within and without. Harry watched them in a mixture of horror and confusion and bone-deep arousal, Draco’s cries of It should be you here, it should be you echoing in his ears. Draco cocked his head to the side as he picked up the pace, lip curling, and Harry imagined—only imagined—that his stormy-dark gaze crawled its way over time and memory to fall heavy on Harry, each punching, punishing thrust an accusation of Why isn’t this you?

Oliver was babbling streams of nonsense words, slurred sweet-nothings and errant yeses and fucks and moregodmores, but Draco had grown quiet as the grave, face screwed up into some amalgamation of frustration and anger and sweet, sweet release as he poured himself into following the driving rush of ecstasy beginning to coil just at the base of his spine, seeking its inevitable end with a mounting fervour. Harry watched him, in the mirror—it was a vision he had never been meant to see, and mere happenstance had put him here, an unwanted and unwelcome intruder in this intimate moment. These weren’t his emotions, this wasn’t meant for him, but he had seen it all the same. It was his memory now, as much as it was Draco’s and would soon be Malfoy’s.

Draco’s voice cracked, his whole body seized, and he shoved Oliver’s head hard against the mirror, growling as his orgasm washed over him in merciless waves, “Fuck you, Potter…”

Harry felt a shower of ice water fall over him, whisking away in an instant any and all sympathetic arousal building within him.

Oliver shook off Draco’s grip on him, angling his head around to frown at Draco with brows knit in bald confusion. “Wh—what…?”

Draco froze—and he drew back and off of Oliver, straightening. He smoothed down his robes to hide his softening prick and ran a hand through his hair, settling each strand back into place. With each movement, he was putting himself back together, while Oliver was still stood there, arse out and cheeks flushed and shaking his head, utterly befuddled.

Oliver opened his mouth to press Draco for an explanation—and Draco whipped his wand at Oliver’s temple, pressing the tip in viciously. “Obliviate.” Oliver’s gaze went glassy and distant, and Draco drew in close, voice gone soft with threat. “We just had a lovely little wank together. I played with your arse a bit, and we snogged until we got off. But you’ve realised now you’re actually a shit kisser and don’t want to embarrass yourself further by continuing to consort with me. Now put yourself back in order and return to your dormitory. If anyone asks, you stayed late studying in the Library until a Prefect drove you off.”

Oliver nodded, mutely, and reached down to draw up his trousers. Through his reflection in the mirror, Harry could see Draco grimace around a softly bitten out, “Fuck,” and look away.

Fuck, indeed.

Oliver wasn’t the only hapless victim of what Harry was starting to realise was Draco’s dark obsession with him, either—only the first. What followed was a stream of similar interactions, brief erotic stints with dark-haired boys in glasses who seemed to serve little purpose beyond functioning as an outlet for Draco’s twisted fascination with Harry. Always, he Obliviated them after—and never did he bother with the same boy twice. Sometimes he found them at Hogwarts, sometimes he found them at family functions, and even once he pulled one in a dark, grimy corner of Knockturn Alley. He didn’t love them—he didn’t hate them. He just used them to satisfy whatever overwhelming emotion he was wrestling with in the moment (jealousy, shame, sorrow, frustration, terror) and then quickly moved on, covering his tracks so only he knew what had driven him to approach them in the first place. Only he and Harry now, rather.

Harry wondered, briefly, if the Pensieve wasn’t just Draco’s private Potter-related porn stash, a guilty pleasure he hadn’t wanted anyone chancing upon should he find himself subjected to Legilimency, but then the tone of the memories shifted to something darker and more cerebral.

He was stood in a dark corner of an equally dark hallway—Hogwarts again, but not the middle of the night this time at least, not from the sounds of mad scrambling and screams down the corridor. Students were darting by, panic on their faces—faces he knew and recognised. There was Cho Chang, and there was Michael Corner, and there was Alicia Spinnet, and there—

There was him, Harry Potter, and he was racing down the hallway. Harry felt a thrill rush through him, a dark, bitter emotion that he distantly recognised as vindication. So his help wasn’t good enough for Potter? His House’s wasn’t? They wanted to have their secret little meetings under his nose—not even being circumspect about it—and act like it wasn’t his status quo on the line, too, if the Dark Lord came back? His mother was terrified, and his father too, Draco could tell, but it wasn’t as if they could do anything about it. And Draco couldn’t either—but he’d wanted to be asked. To have Potter recognise that he had something to offer, that there was some good he could do (for narrow definitions of ‘good’). Longbottom was good enough for him, Looney Lovegood was good enough, but Draco-fucking-Malfoy? Fuck him.

He whipped his wand around, triumph in his throat, and let his Trip Jinx fly.

Harry’s vision swirled dizzyingly—and then he was in another bathroom, standing in a pool of scarlet while Draco lay dying under him, choking on his own blood. His doppelgänger was in this vision too, and Harry found he wanted to watch this memory even less than he’d wanted to watch Draco and Oliver. Other Harry sank to his knees, panicking No—no, I didn’t—! as he tried to press Draco’s gaping chest wounds closed. Draco could feel life leaving his limbs, snaking its way to his heart, whereupon his labouring lungs would soon fail. His vision was going dark at the edges, until all he could see was Potter’s pale, panicked face, looking everywhere but at Draco, and fuck, couldn’t he have this, just this once? Just here at the end, couldn’t Potter finally fucking look at him? It was better he die now, so he didn’t have to later—so he didn’t have to watch the Dark Lord tear his family apart. At least Potter had made it quick—even if it was starting to sound like he hadn’t meant to. Myrtle was screaming now, bleating like a banshee, and someone would come, someone would ruin his last, final moment.

He tried to move his fingers, tried to reach for Potter, tried to make his lips work, tried to say something—‘thank you’, ‘fuck you’, ‘save me’, ‘I’m glad it was you’—but nothing came. Potter couldn’t hear him now, and he’d never bothered listening before. Why should he? Who would listen to Draco? If you wanted people to listen to you, you generally had to say things worth hearing. You couldn’t build up walls around yourself and complain when people didn’t try to knock them down.

And then Snape was there, knitting his wounds with a spell that sounded like singing, and Draco wanted to laugh.

He couldn’t even die the way he wanted. Of course he couldn’t have Potter.

Harry was jerked violently into another memory, and oh. Oh, he’d been here before—in memory, at least. It was Draco’s room in Malfoy Manor, and through the maelstrom of emotions wracking his body right now, one stood out among the others: panic.

The Dark Lord was coming. He was on his way, streaking through the night at this very moment, and he would be here in minutes, perhaps even seconds. His fury would be unimaginable—but Draco couldn’t help trying to imagine it anyway. He would want someone to blame for Harry Potter escaping them, and he would torture everyone in the Manor until he found an answer that suited him. Not the truth, necessarily—the Dark Lord did not deal in petty truths, not anymore—but he would find someone to blame, someone to take his righteous anger out on.

And that someone, he was certain, would be Draco.

He would order Draco to stand before him, or perhaps put him on his knees, and he would peer into Draco’s soul and see the ugly truth: that his fealty could never be the Dark Lord’s, for it had already been stolen by Potter years ago. He had fought it, had told himself he’d never wanted it, had done all he could to tear Potter down and beat him into a shape Draco might finally recognise wasn’t worth this sick obsession. But in the end, it always came back to him—Harry Potter was and ever would be an irrevocable part of Draco Malfoy’s identity, a comparison, a contrast, his polestar and his death knell.

He hated Potter—gods he hated him. Hated his stupid hair and lopsided grin, hated how easy it was to be friends with him except when it mattered, hated he couldn’t see Draco’s worth, hated he wouldn’t listen to him, hated that he saved everyone—everyone—except Draco, hated he didn’t even try.

The Dark Lord would see his hatred, see how deep and dark it ran, and recognise that it was something else entirely. He would see that Draco sat here some days in his room, leaning against the balcony balustrade and staring out at the far-ranging fields and fell as he indulged in childish fantasy of Potter Apparating at the foot of his bed and holding out his hand, ready to spirit Draco away from all of this. Draco would take it, and Potter would say something roguish like Finally realised you were the right sort after all.

But it had only ever been just that: childish fantasy; deserting would have been his parents’ death sentence. And then Potter had actually shown up, features mutated nearly beyond recognition, but not so much that Draco couldn’t see him. Couldn’t see his maker, couldn’t see his would-be saviour underneath the malformed magic. When Potter had rushed him and grabbed Draco’s wand, the last line of defence Draco had in this place, he’d let it go. That fated moment had finally come, when he could have locked his arms around Potter and twisted into nothingness with deliberation and determination, when he could have saved Potter, and courage had failed him. He’d taken the coward’s way out—and now he and probably his parents were going to pay for it.

But he was a Slytherin. He refused to sit here and weep over the lot he’d been given when there was still breath in his body. Potter would not—could not—save him. So Draco would have to do it himself.

This desperate want for Potter had brought him nothing but misery, and the moment the Dark Lord peered into his mind, he would be bowled over by Draco’s wretched feelings. He would rid himself of them, rip these thoughts and desires from his very mind, and hide them away somewhere the Dark Lord couldn’t root them out. He would find Draco an empty husk, nothing Potter-shaped about him at all.

He drew his wand—his mother’s, really, but his for now. Until Potter deigned to return his to him, if either of them even survived this war. A tiny part of him was glad that Potter would carry a little piece of Draco around with him now—the closest he could have reasonably come to the rescue he longed for.

That was the first memory he removed. And then he removed Oliver Fontaine, and the Bulgarian minister’s son at the Christmas gala the previous year, and the boy who’d been stocking crates in the back room of Mulpepper’s. He removed every idle thought that sprang to mind when he said Harry Potter, until all that was left was quiet, seething anger and a bitter bile that stung his throat.

Mimsy sealed the Pensieve, vanishing with a CRACK to parts unknown and leaving Draco alone in the quiet darkness, waiting for the Dark Lord to arrive with only a crumpled piece of parchment that read You’re better off without it to comfort him.

Harry hauled himself from the swirling milieu of memories with a heaving gasp, stumbling backwards and cracking his head painfully against a heavy vase that held a bouquet of dead, dried flowers. His vision swam, and he sat there on the cold marble floor for several long moments, struggling to reorientate himself. He was Harry Potter—not Draco Malfoy—and he had broken into the Malfoy family mausoleum seeking a Pensieve he’d been certain would be the key to restoring Malfoy’s shattered mind. The jury was still out on whether or not he’d been successful.

Fuck. Oh fuck. Malfoy was in love with him. Or something approaching it. In lust, at least, definitely. It really wasn’t imprinting—it wasn’t even something as prim and proper as courting.

It was the dregs of whatever feelings Draco had had for Harry, still clinging on despite so many formative memories having been cast out.

God. Draco had been absolutely horrible—to Harry, to Harry’s friends, to people who in no way deserved his ire simply because he was too emotionally constipated to be able to parse his feelings in a healthy manner. And sure, Harry was probably the last person on earth who ought to be judging someone for that sort of thing, but still. Who acted like that with someone they supposedly liked? If you could even call it ‘liking’ Harry. Draco at least seemed to understand that there were no simple words like like or love to accurately label whatever twisted feelings he had for Harry.

He’d been horrible, so so horrible—cruel and malicious and vindictive.

And Harry had let him. He’d accepted from day one that Draco Malfoy was the wrong sort, couldn’t be saved, couldn’t be redeemed. So he hadn’t even tried. All Draco had wanted was for Harry to think him worth the effort—and sure, it would have been a lot of effort, but that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? He’d been a spoilt little brat, used to getting his way, so Harry had written him off and never looked back. But Harry wasn’t the same person now that he’d been at eleven, so why should Draco—Malfoy—still be the same too? Why should he have been the same at thirteen? At fifteen? At twenty-two?

His mind drifted back to demonstrating to Malfoy the proper wand movements for a Patronus—the delight on his features when he’d managed even the tiniest sparks, the way he’d leaned into Harry’s space, focused wholly on Harry and on Harry alone.

And then he thought of Draco, waiting in that dark culvert for Harry to rush by, resentful and bitter and convinced that if he wanted Harry’s attention, he had to demand it in the very lowest, meanest way possible, because Harry would never willingly give it to him.

How different might things have been, had Draco been inside the Room of Requirement in that moment…instead of stuck on the outside?

Harry pulled the Pensieve down into his lap, staring at the swirling soup of memories, and did not move for a very long time.

It was well past nightfall, approaching midnight, when Harry finally Apparated back home. His first instinct when he opened the door and called out for Malfoy was to panic—for the sitting room was a wreck. The couch cushions and throw pillows had been ripped open, spilling their fluffy white stuffing everywhere, books had been flung from their shelves, there were deep scratch marks on the table, and the fine tea set, reserved for guests, lay shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor. Harry drew his wand, heart in his throat, and quickly and quietly cast Homenum Revelio, in case whoever had violated his wards and broken into his home were still here.

But the spell returned only a single, soft ping, indicating the presence of another person in the bedroom. Uncertain if this was Malfoy or someone far less welcome, Harry crept down the hallway, berating himself for not having the forethought to bring along his Invisibility Cloak. It’d been quite some time since he’d had cause to sneak about, but there were some skills it just wasn’t wise to let grow rusty when your name was Harry Potter and you were harbouring a fugitive.

The bedroom door was ajar, and Harry held his breath, easing it open from afar with a soft, “Aberto.”

He sagged against the doorjamb when he saw who was responsible for the state of the cottage: there was Malfoy, curled into a tight ball and nesting in a pile of Harry’s clothes. He at first seemed to be dozing, but at Harry’s appearance, he immediately shot to attention, crawling across the bed and rushing Harry with preternatural speed. Harry panicked, fearing he’d been mistaken for an intruder and was about to find himself in the same state as the throw pillows, but Malfoy only wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck and squeezed tight, burying his face in the crook of Harry’s neck and breathing deeply.

Harry took a beat and then began patting Malfoy’s back gamely, sighing. It seemed all the chaos had only been the result of Malfoy being worried, driven practically mad with how long Harry had been gone, evidently, and taking it out on the cottage. Harry supposed he ought to be grateful he hadn’t ruined the bones of the place—pillow cases and tea sets could be Mended easily enough, putting a whole house back together was a sight more difficult. And, in all fairness, he hadn’t left the premises it seemed, just like Harry had asked.

“It’s all right. I’m back. I’m sorry I was away for so long—I won’t do it again.”

“‘Arry…” was the burbled reply, muffled by his shirt.

“I did tell you I’d be back, didn’t I? When have I ever lied to you?”

“‘Arry.”

“Well, that was what we call a ‘white lie’. And you can’t tell me you genuinely thought I’d only make you take a bath once and never again? You’re a Slytherin, you lot are supposed to be reasonably clever.”

Malfoy breathed him in deep, the rush of breath over the sensitive skin at the spot where Harry’s neck blended into his shoulder tickling. “‘Arry…” Malfoy whined, and then he was backing Harry up against the bedroom wall, and Harry’s heart skipped an uncomfortable beat, suddenly reminded of Draco and Oliver and the fourth-floor bathroom.

He carefully but firmly disentangled them, head bowed so he wasn’t looking Malfoy in the eye. He placed his hands on Malfoy’s shoulders and gave a companionable squeeze. “…It’s been a long day. Why don’t we just call it, and you can help me clean up your mess in the morning, yeah?” He didn’t wait for the responding ‘Arry, only brushed past Malfoy to begin dismantling the nest he’d made of Harry’s clothes so he could put this day behind him.

With the covers drawn, he could feel Malfoy sidling up as close behind Harry as he was generally allowed, testament to how shaken he still was by Harry’s long absence. Clearly some part of him was still terrified of Harry rejecting him, abandoning him, and mere proximity would not assuage these fears. But Harry wasn’t really prepared to offer anything more, not just now, so he rolled over, facing Malfoy this time, and told him, “Close your eyes. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

Malfoy seemed to search his face, and evidently satisfied with what he found, he did close his eyes.

Harry reached for his wand, prepared to snuff the lights altogether—and then decided to keep them low. Just in case Malfoy, like Draco, was still a little bit afraid of the dark.

Chapter Text

He should never have looked into that Pensieve.

At worst, he should have given the memories back to Malfoy straightaway, heedless of their contents, and at best, he should have left the Pensieve to rot in the mausoleum. Draco had rid himself of the memories for a reason—and probably a good one, at least at the time—which meant he didn’t want them back, even if he maybe needed them.

But Harry, never able to resist the urge to poke his nose in places it didn’t belong and who seemed to have learned nothing in all his twenty-two years upon this earth, had ignored all the warning signs and dived right in. And now, because of yet another in a long line of his monumentally stupid decisions, he was cursed.

Every time he looked at Malfoy now, he saw Draco—bitter, angry, alone, longing to be rescued by Harry and hating himself for it. Malfoy’s mischievous little grins were Draco’s superior smirks, his nigh-endearing stubbornness was Draco’s bull-headed audacity—Malfoy was little more than a constant reminder now of all the ways Harry had failed Draco, whether he meant to or not. He told himself it hadn’t been his place to save Draco—that if Draco had wanted to be saved so badly, then he had been perfectly capable of setting aside his ridiculously cumbersome pride and asking for Harry’s hand instead of demanding it. And that was true, but so too was the fact that people shouldn’t have to earn your compassion. Especially once you knew how desperately they craved it.

And then there were the private, quiet moments. Moments when Malfoy was napping on the sofa in Harry’s studio, or when he was racing for the Snitch, backlit by the gleaming rays of the afternoon sun, or when he would sit with his long legs crossed in the tub, head tilted back and eyes crinkled shut as he waited impatiently for Harry to rinse the Ever-bubble Soap from his hair. Moments when Malfoy was otherwise unawares, and Harry would retreat into himself and relive those dark, disturbing visions of Draco coupling with boys who all looked like Harry, calling out Harry’s name in ecstasy before forcing them to forget his wretched moment of weakness.

All of this, these memories that weren’t his and were never meant for him, served but a single purpose for Harry: bringing into stark reality everything that had been stripped away from Draco, leaving behind only Malfoy.

He liked Malfoy, he genuinely did—he had a quirky personality that, once you learned to navigate it, was reasonably easy to read, and he smiled. A lot. A bright, blinding thing that could knock you on your arse if you weren’t expecting it (and Harry generally was not expecting it, even after nearly three months).

It was just, sometimes—sometimes now Harry caught himself wishing that that smile would twist into a snarling sneer. Sometimes when Malfoy would say ‘Arry, Harry kind of wanted to hear Potter instead, spat with such loathing he found himself drenched in saliva.

Malfoy was sweet and funny (usually without meaning to be) and he actually liked Harry back.

But Harry didn’t think he wanted to be liked. Not by someone wearing Draco’s face.

He kind of…wanted that nameless, formless thing that Draco had cut out of himself. He knew that thing now, had lived it on both ends, and he was realising that Malfoy was nice, but Draco wasn’t, and that was all wrong. This wasn’t how it was meant to be, this wasn’t how Draco was meant to be. If Draco had wanted to be sweet and funny and to like Harry, he could have been—but he hadn’t wanted that. He’d just wanted to be seen and heard and saved just how he was. For Harry to want him just how he was.

And Harry, god help him, wanted him—just how he was.

All right, maybe not that sort of wanting—while he would not deny that part of the reason he’d tarried so long in the mausoleum had been to wait for the tightness in his pants to abate, it really wasn’t like that. It was just—just—

He wanted a second chance. He wanted Draco as Draco, all spitting venom and casually slung slurs and oh there’d been that one time he’d nearly killed Ron. He wanted Draco with all his flaws and general horribleness, and he wanted to show him that that didn’t mean he wasn’t worth Harry’s attention, that Harry could and would still save him, even with all of that, not because he deserved it but because he didn’t, and everyone needed a little miracle in their lives, now and then. Draco had wanted Harry to be his miracle, had wanted him to show up in impossible places and do impossible things, because he just thought that much of Harry—but Harry had never thought of him that way back.

He wanted to now, though. He wanted to see that snarling sneer and hear his name viciously spat in his face—he wanted to feel that white-hot flash of irritation when that drawl hit his ears. He wanted to know that the war had taken a lot of things from them, but it hadn’t taken that too. He wanted to be hated so hard it came full circle, back around to love, but mirrored as a needy and obsessive desire. Only one person had ever offered him that.

Except knowing what he wanted and knowing how to go about getting it—or if he would even be allowed it—were two different things. After all, there was little Draco delighted in more than not giving Harry what he wanted. Still, Harry knew he had to try—had to offer his hand. He hadn’t been able to save Draco at Hogwarts, and he hadn’t been able to save him during the war, but he could stand here now and give Draco, for once, his full and undivided attention.

What Draco chose to do with it was entirely up to him.

He should never have looked into that Pensieve—but there were no more Time Turners, and unless he wanted to try ripping these thoughts and memories out of his own head now, he was stuck with them. He couldn’t un-learn Draco’s ugly truths, even if they tainted his time with Malfoy.

And Malfoy, for his part, seemed to sense that something was off, that things between himself and Harry now weren’t quite what they’d been before. He was more needy and fussy now, refusing to leave Harry’s side and always trying to wheedle Harry into a Seeker’s game or dip in the pond, even doing a bit of weeding in the garden.

But summer was coming to an end, and with it, this precious moment where every day felt like both an eternity and a nanosecond. An intaken breath, burning to be exhaled. He couldn’t keep Malfoy like this forever—and he didn’t want to. But still Draco would not come out. Harry hadn’t helped him at all in the end—only made him feel more comfortable in his new cage. He couldn’t help feeling like all this time together, all this effort, and he’d only made things worse.

Some saviour, he thought to himself—and in his mind, he heard it in Draco’s voice.

“‘Arry?”

Harry jolted, startled from his thoughts, and cocked his head to the side. Just beyond the little barrier of pillows between them, he could make out the faint outline of Malfoy, watching him, eyes reflecting the dim, low glow of the Lumos Harry kept activated throughout the night of late.

He shifted over onto his side. “…I’m sorry.”

Malfoy’s lacy white brows knit together. “‘Arry?”

“Maybe if I’d listened, before, even tried, maybe you wouldn’t be like this. Maybe you never would’ve felt like the only way out was to rip out a piece of yourself, just because it happened to be shaped like me. I want to say I was young and stupid, and I was young and stupid, but that’s really no excuse, is it? I found the time to try and save everyone else, but I didn’t even look at you. Your horrible, shitty personality had nothing to do with the kind of person I ought to have been—so I’m sorry. For never speaking to you, never listening, never—trying to be the bigger person. Living down to your very low opinion of me. But—” He licked his lips and scooted forward, pulling down the pillow barrier. “But I’m ready to now, honest I am—I’m sorry it took so long, but I’m ready. I’m ready to be the person you wanted me to be so badly, yeah? Just—you just need to come back, is all. You need to be you again. Because we can’t have a proper conversation when all you can say is ‘Arry’. So just come back? I’ll listen, and we’ll talk. I’ll take your hand this time. Just—say Potter. Please.”

Malfoy’s eyes were wide and white now, and Harry could tell, even if Malfoy couldn’t entirely understand him, that Harry was frightening him. He was frightening himself a little too, because it had all suddenly become too much. He just needed to know he hadn’t fucked up again, that there was still a way he could save Draco, and he’d tried everything else except an apology, so maybe this was it? Maybe this was what Draco needed to hear, to free himself from where he lay trapped in an impenetrable shell somewhere deep down inside Malfoy.

But then Malfoy’s lips twisted in frustration, and all that came out was a warbling, forlorn, “‘Arry…”

Harry’s heart sank. He could feel Malfoy trying, really trying—straining to give Harry what he wanted, but it was futile. Harry didn’t want what Malfoy could give him—it had to be Draco. And Harry couldn’t figure out how to save him this time. That had been all Draco had ever really wanted—and yet Harry couldn’t do the one thing he was supposed to be good at. Some saviour, came Draco’s jeering taunt again.

He reached out and laid a hand against Malfoy’s jaw, feeling the soft downy hair that somehow never turned into stubble, not in over two months. “…You wanted to be with me so badly you had to rip the memories out of your head so no one ever found out—and now that I’m finally here, practically begging you to face me like a proper wizard, you refuse me? Too busy hiding behind animal instinct to gloat at me like a proper Slytherin?”

Malfoy had no response to this other than to lean into Harry’s palm, nuzzling it, and Harry gave him a good-natured shove, rolling back over again. Clearly it was going to take more than House-related jabs to draw Draco out, and he was rapidly running out of ideas.

He could feel Malfoy behind him, scooting a little bit closer now that the pillow barrier had been sundered. “‘Arry…”

“Yeah…I know you’re trying. I’m trying too. But short of forcing it, I’m not sure how to draw him out.” Idle recollections of fairy tales and sleeping princesses roused by a kiss from their beau floated through his mind, and he physically batted them away. No, decidedly that was not happening—at least not until it was truly the last resort.

But his thoughts remained scattered, even in his waking hours, and he’d exhausted every avenue he had. He’d tried jogging Malfoy’s mind with spellwork, tried reminding him of the joys of Quidditch, he’d tried being mean to him, he’d tried being kind to him. He’d tried spooking him into transforming, he’d tried coaxing him into transforming. The dragon seemed perfectly happy as it was, and Draco, wherever he was, evidently did not want to face Harry again after working so hard to erase him from his life.

The only person refusing to accept reality was, it seemed, Harry.

“Taters pluckin’ time, Pottah,” came a gruff voice the next morning, and something sharp poked Harry’s nose.

Harry wrinkled his nose, grunting, and tried to roll over, but then something bit his earlobe, and he batted it away angrily. “What the—cut that out, Thom!”

Thom cackled wildly, nimbly dodging Harry’s swipe. “And tomaters! Pluckin’ time! Lessgo!”

Harry groaned and rubbed the heels of his hands in his eyes. Pluckin’ time. Ah, shit—right. It was a week ‘til Hogwarts started, which meant he needed to get his garden sorted or the newly ripe veggies would all have gone to pot by the time he returned from training the First-years. Thom had a pretty good idea when it was time to get to harvesting, and if Harry didn’t start on it today, he wouldn’t be allowed a wink of sleep.

He shifted over and noticed only now that he was alone in bed. Not unheard of, but particularly curious these days, as Malfoy had been loath to even let Harry piss by himself. “Malfoy?” he called, but there was no response.

Harry told his heart to stop attempting to climb into his throat—Malfoy had probably gotten hungry waiting for Harry to wake and was just in the kitchen, probably about to burn down the cottage but in no real danger. And it was this fear of his home going up in flames and not any concern for Malfoy’s person that had Harry quickly snatching up his wand and creeping down the hall with strict instructions to Thom to wait in the garden until Harry told him it was safe to come back inside (“Not a house-elf! Not comin’ back! Not fer a million taters!”).

He listened out for any sounds of distress or at least clattering cutlery, but he only caught a soft sort of muffled moaning coming from the sitting room. He raised his wand, a classic Expelliarmus on his lips (hey, if it wasn’t broke, he wasn’t going to try fixing it), and held his breath—

—and rounded the corner to see Malfoy, wand out, concentrating very hard on a replica Snitch that doubled as a desk clock. It usually sat on Harry’s sitting room bookcase, and it had taken a week to convince Malfoy that it was not in fact a real Snitch, and there would be no praise forthcoming should he “catch” it.

Harry froze, not wanting to interrupt the moment, and watched as Malfoy raised his wand, whipping it through the air in what must have been practised movements, and mumbled in a garbled attempt at speech, “‘Arrum Osaaa!”

The Snitch-clock, of course, did not move, but this did not seem to dissuade Malfoy from trying again. More wand-whipping, more marble-mouthed attempts at casting, and Harry watched him try the spell three more times before he realised Malfoy was attempting a Levitation Charm. Even from this distance, Harry could see he had dark circles under his eyes, standing out stark against his pallid complexion; Malfoy had been out here, possibly all night, trying—and failing it seemed—to get his magic back. Not because he particularly wanted it himself—or else he likely would have waited for Harry’s help during their usual tutoring session—but because he knew Harry wanted it for him. Even if he didn’t really understand why.

Harry’s heart clenched, and he listed against the doorjamb. “It’s ‘Wingardium levi-oh-sa’, not ‘levio-sa’.”

Malfoy straightened at Harry’s appearance—then frowned, wand raised. “…Arrum osaaa?”

Harry snickered, covering his mouth so as not to seem like a total prick. “…Yeah, close enough.” He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “C’mon, take a break and let’s get breakfast. We can try again this afternoon, how about it?”

Malfoy wasn’t Draco, but that wasn’t his fault—and if he could continue trying to solve this problem, even against seemingly overwhelming odds, then Harry supposed he could too.

Thom did not allow them too much peace for breakfast, shooing Harry out the door and into the garden before he’d even had a chance to shove his last piece of toast into his mouth. Malfoy made a wild grab for him when he hopped up onto the table, but he was still too nimble and deftly dodged out of the way. Their game of cat and mouse continued through the sitting room and into the garden, and Harry left them to it while he sat about yanking up tubers by the root and plucking tomatoes from their vines.

They mostly stayed out of Harry’s way—which Harry was just fine with—until Malfoy managed to grab Thom by the boot and Thom screeched bloody murder and bit down on Malfoy’s finger. Malfoy whipped his hand back with a yowl (more of surprise than actual pain), and Thom—still attached by the teeth—went sailing in Harry’s direction. He grabbed hold of a hunk of Harry’s hair as he passed overhead, and before Harry could grab him and yank him off, Malfoy spotted him and sprang into a charge.

“Wai—no—Malf—”

Harry learned the hard way it was not wise to come between a dragon and its prey, and Malfoy leapt, whole body tensing, right for Harry, slamming into his shoulders and tackling him to the ground. Harry’s vision swam, and distantly he heard Thom cackling as he darted off, deeper into the garden rows where Malfoy would have to root him out.

“‘Arry…” Malfoy grunted in frustration, and Harry patted him gamely.

“Yeah, yeah… You’ll get him next time, for sure.” He gave Malfoy a weak shove. “Now getoffa me, you’re far from the thin little waif you were when you first got here.” Harry struggled upright—but Malfoy shoved him back down by the shoulders. “Oi, lemme up.”

“‘Arry,” Malfoy said, matter-of-factly.

“I’m not gonna make you, I’m telling you to.” He shoved Malfoy again, harder this time. “Let me up.”

“‘Arry~” was the sing-song reply that stank of abject refusal, and Harry was starting to get irritated. He began to genuinely struggle, and Malfoy mounted him full-body, arse on Harry’s legs so he couldn’t move them, and grabbing for Harry’s flailing arms that were still trying to find enough purchase to haul Malfoy off of him.

They wrestled back and forth like this, neither managing to gain the upper hand over the other—until a deftly dodged strike allowed Malfoy to pin both of Harry’s hands at the wrist with one of his own. He arched over Harry, holding him fast, and with his free hand pushed his now-shoulder-length hair over one ear, smirking—sneering—down at Harry in bald triumph. His brows quirked. “‘Arry…”

And Harry was smacked in the face with a memory like a rogue Bludger, mind reeling from the impact: Malfoy—no, Draco, a wide grin on his lips and leaning in close after having smashed his polished loafer into Harry’s nose to whisper, “See you around, Potter…”

It was Draco.

All along, it had been Draco. There was no Malfoy—it had all been Draco. It had been Draco when he’d been rude to Hermione and Ron and Draco when he’d raced Harry for the Snitch (and complained of being cheated from its capture) and Draco when he’d fought dirty and nearly drowned Harry in the pond and Draco in every little thing he’d done, aching for Harry’s attention whole and unadulterated. Malfoy didn’t exist—it was all just Draco, distilled down to his bare essence: competition and jealousy and pride and Harry.

He’d been here this whole time—and Harry hadn’t seen it. Because he’d never really looked, convincing himself that Malfoy was Malfoy and Draco was Draco and if he wanted one then he had to give up the other but that wasn’t how it had to be at all. It was all the same person, wanting to be around Harry, to have Harry’s attention and warmth, to tease him and be teased by him, to argue with him and make up with him. To be saved by him.

All Malfoy had ever bothered learning to really say was ‘Arry, because that was all he’d ever wanted. And it was all Draco had ever really wanted too. And even after stripping away everything else, even after having his thoughts and feelings diluted into base animal instinct, he’d still been left with a Harry-shaped hole and an innate desire to fill it.

The sun was slowly making its way to the western horizon, and the light hit Malfoy (Draco) just right, limning him in warm amber tones, like in the studio that day, and that wicked smirk had softened, gone a little bemused, probably because Harry was gawping at him and he couldn’t understand why. He was thoroughly distracted from the hunt now, Thom a long-distant memory, and Harry thought for a wild, panicked moment, when Draco cocked his head and narrowed his eyes in studious contemplation, that he was going to try and kiss Harry…

…And Harry wasn’t sure he would stop him this time.

He froze—stiff and unyielding. It wasn’t that he couldn’t move—he could, he just…wasn’t. Maybe it would break the spell—maybe it would break Harry. He could hear his heart pounding a mad, racing tattoo in his chest, and Draco probably could hear it too.

Draco opened his mouth, another ‘Arry… on his lips—

—and then he tensed, head snapping up with lightning reflexes as he scanned the area, grey eyes sharp and searching. The soft yearning on his features had been wiped away, replaced by a hunted expression, and he pulled off of Harry to spring to his feet.

Harry struggled up onto his elbows, voice cracking from his heart throbbing madly in his throat: “Wh—what’s wrong? What is it?”

Draco’s only response was a sharp hiss of admonition, and he released a full-body shiver as a sheen of glossy black scales rippled over his body, caught the light in a flash, and then silvered over, turning him almost invisible, like a shattered mirror.

“Holy f—” Harry breathed, scrambling to his feet. Hermione had told him that Blackbloods could do this sort of thing, but never in the weeks now they’d spent together had Harry actually seen it happen, even after the wings and tail and all that business. He could still see Draco, if he focused, so it wasn’t quite as neat a disappearing act as Harry’s Invisibility Cloak provided, but it was still very convincing, especially from afar.

And then he remembered it was meant to be not just impressive but a defensive tactic—and now he was wondering what Draco thought he needed to defend himself from. Harry was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he didn’t have his wand on him right now. He slowly cocked his head to the side, scanning the beds for Thom—maybe he could bribe Thom to fetch it for him, he was certain he’d left it on the little table next to his armchai—

“‘ARRY!”

Draco tackled him again, this time with none of the earlier playfulness, and Harry felt his shoulder wrench as he went down under the full force of Draco’s body colliding with his. Well, at least it wasn’t his casting arm. He blinked the stars from his eyes and realised Draco was visible again now, one shoulder exposed and skin sizzling and popping where it seemed he’d taken the brunt of what looked like a very nasty Curse. Harry blanched in horror—but where he expected to see mutilated skin, instead he saw only smooth black scales shimmering in rainbow hues where they caught the dying sunlight, flaking away to reveal unblemished pale flesh beneath.

But he had only a brief moment to appreciate this feat of magibiology—dragons really were fantastic beasts—before several more curses came flying at them, all from different directions. Draco grabbed him in a bear hug, shielding Harry bodily, and Harry was man enough to appreciate it, even if he did feel a bit like a coward, quite literally hiding behind Draco as spellfire wracked his form. But he had no wand in hand to deflect the spells, and the Blackblood’s naturally magic-resistant hide was providing an up-close and personal demonstration as to why this species had been hunted nearly to extinction. Harry thought if he survived this encounter, he might have to establish a charity dedicated to restoring their numbers.

But Harry, being Harry, could not stand idly by while someone else did the saving—that just wasn’t his style—and when he spotted Thom cowering beneath one of the flowering bushes, he called out, “Thom! My wand! It’s on the table by my armchair! Get it, and you can have your pick of the summer tomatoes!”

Thom straightened, poking his long nose out from under the bush. “Not a pickens! All ‘em! An’na taters too!”

A streak of blue-green spellfire arced so close to him, he thought he smelled burnt hair, and demolished the flower beds in a spray of greenery and loamy soil. “Nonono—THOM!” Harry lunged for the beds, breaking Draco’s grasp—

“Defodio!” someone snarled, and white-hot pain sliced through Harry’s abdomen, a great gout of blood spurting out from his stomach to paint the grass scarlet. Before he could even process what had just happened, vision swimming, someone else shouted, “Incarcerous!” and he found his legs jerked from under him as a long tendril of magic wrapped itself around him and began dragging him away.

“‘ARRY!” Draco shrieked, and then everything went dark as a roiling black cloud of choking smoke engulfed the both of them, the product of a well-timed casting of Fumos. Whoever this was, they were trying to separate them, trying to corner Draco, trying to pin him down—

And they were about to learn that this had been a very, very bad idea.

Through the swirling smoke and bits of plant matter and soil still raining down upon him as he was dragged along the ground by the Incarcerous, Harry heard what was in that moment the most beautiful sound to ever touch his ears: a gloriously animalistic roar entwined with a human scream of rage that could probably have been heard clear to London. He didn’t care about the stabbing pain in his midsection or the fact his glasses were barely hanging on by a thread—all that mattered was the way his very bones rumbled beneath the bassy boom echoing all around them.

On the bright side, it turned out that their theory about placing Harry in mortal danger being a viable trigger for a transformation had, in fact, been spot on. On the dark side, that meant he was in mortal danger, sans wand, wounded, and a threat to virtually no one unless he mastered wandless magic in the next five seconds.

He dug his fingers into the soft ground gouged out by spellfire and tried to shake off the Incarcerous—but a pair of burly arms slipped under his own, hauling him up and holding him fast as he struggled, unable to kick or hit or even scream when his captor slapped a meaty hand over his mouth. “Got the boy!” a gruff voice called, and Harry felt a new flash of irritation spear through him—he hadn’t been called the boy in a long time, and it did not bring up happy memories.

Something tugged at his trouser leg, and he strained to crane his neck to see what it was, but then there was a thin, stiff length of wood being pressed into his palm, and Harry’s heart lifted. Abruptly, the hand that was clamped over Harry’s mouth pulled away as his captor released a loud, yowling screech, and for the second time inside of ten minutes, Thom—Thom!—went flying as he was slapped away after delivering a vicious bite. Harry used the timely distraction to duck down, free himself from the Incarcerous, and dive into a roll as Thom spun away into the air, yelling back, “Taters, Pottah! Taters and tomaters! Thom won’t be forgettin’!”

Harry clutched his wand tight to his chest and was back on his feet before he’d stopped rolling. His stomach seized painfully with the movement, and he clamped a hand over his wound, blanching at how much red it came away with. God, this was not good—not good at all, and he hadn’t cast field healing charms in years. In the back of his mind, he heard Mad-Eye Moody snarling Constant vigilance! Yeah, well, excuse him for trying to move past all his trauma!

A gusting gale whipped up, though, and the smoke from the earlier Fumos began to dissipate—dispelled, he realised, not by magic but by the beating of two boatsail-sized wings hanging off the back of a massive fuck-off black dragon, covered in scales that shimmered in sickly rainbow hues, like an oil slick. Easily long enough tip to tail to encircle Harry’s mean little cottage, Harry marvelled that the pictures Hermione had shared did not do the Carpathian Blackblood one ounce of justice, and it was very much not the size of an elephant.

Stupidly, his first thought was God I wish I had my paints.

His second thought, though, was more appropriate: He transformed! He’d transformed—and that meant (hopefully?) that everything was back to rights. At least, that was what Hermione had said would happen, wasn’t it? That putting the proper brain back in the proper body ought to allow Draco’s humanity to reassert itself, no longer shunted aside by the dragon’s instincts and drives?

Still, it was difficult to imagine that there was a real human brain behind this magnificent creature standing before him now, because it was looking very much like it wanted to eat the first thing that moved. Harry decided he’d let someone else test that hypothesis.

“Ah, fuck!” someone groaned from behind Harry, and he whipped around to see a figure clad in all-black robes and a faceless white mask with just a single slit where the eyes were meant to be. “Stun it!” the figure called out, wand raised. “STUN IT! NOW!”

“Y’can’t stun a dragon!” came another voice—another black-robed figure in a white mask, impossible to identify.

“You got any better ideas?! I told you to focus him down! The boy—”

“PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!” Harry roared, deciding that identifying these arseholes could wait until after they’d been knocked out (or dispatched by other means, Harry wasn’t feeling particularly picky just now). He was really getting tired of being called the boy. “The boy” had struck down Voldemort—and okay, he’d done it with Expelliarmus, but he’d also almost been an Auror kind of, so he did still have some skills.

The burly one who’d been man-handling him went down like a sack of cement, and Harry felt accomplishment thrill through him. Yup, he still had it, where ‘it’ was ‘basic skills in casting he’d learned in First Year’.

His internal gloating was cut short, though, when something snaked around his ankles, tightening vise-like, and before he could think Oh fuck not again— he found himself hoisted into the air and deposited, most ungracefully, onto the smooth, scaly back of the aforementioned massive fuck-off black dragon. The prehensile tail uncoiled from around Harry’s ankles, nudging his bum to ensure he didn’t slide off, and Harry scrambled up between the wings, launching himself at the creature’s neck and grabbing on tight.

Harry had surmised by now that this was some manner of task force sent by the Department of Mysteries—which meant they knew who and what Draco was and probably who and what Harry was, too. Clearly they didn’t think much of Harry, but they’d come more or less prepared to deal with Draco, and there were enough of them to give Draco difficulties even without a passenger. With Harry clinging to his back, it wasn’t going to be anything even approaching a fair fight.

He’d heard Charlie talk before about how they kept the dragons in the reserve under control when they got too rowdy or devolved into fights, and while Draco’s particular species might have even more fantastic magical resistance than most, he was clearly not entirely immune to it, as evidenced by the fact these people had managed to bring him down once already. If they lobbed enough concentrated spells at him, he would go down again, eventually.

“You can’t let them gang up on you—between them, they’ve got enough magic to down you!”

Draco snorted derisively at this and squared himself, clearly angling for a fight, and while Harry couldn’t blame the urge, they needed to be smart just now. He genuinely hoped the mind steering this beast’s actions was a cold and calculating Slytherin one and not sheer animal instinct.

With nary a backwards glance to be sure Harry had a secure grip, Draco spread those massive wings Harry had only appreciated from afar until now and powered into the air, gaining altitude as quickly as possible. Harry yelped as inertia had him tumbling backwards, his slick, bloody grip on Draco’s neck slipping, but he caught himself with a hastily cast Colocorpus to keep himself stuck to Draco’s back.

But just as the dragon was able to shake off even the nastiest of curses and hexes, so too was the arcane energy from Harry’s spell scattered, and his stomach flew into his throat as he pitched backwards. He groped for purchase wherever he could, barely managing to grab onto a toe, and Draco snorted in irritation before his tail whipped around and hoisted Harry up once more, depositing him safely onto his back as he continued to climb.

Harry made sure his grip was as secure as he could make it this time, wedging his foot in the little divot where wing met body. He allowed himself a brief, bracing breath. All they had to do was circle the site long enough to come up with a plan; if their assailants had no means of taking to the air themselves, then they could hold the high ground.

But alas, their assailants did seem to have a means of taking to the air themselves, for they all of them—five from what Harry could make out, though that didn’t mean there weren’t more—deftly produced broomsticks from pocket dimensions, mounted up, and kicked off after their quarry.

Draco broke into a dive, evidently thinking to outmanoeuvre the Unspeakables, and Harry wanted to take another frying pan to his head, because had he learned nothing from their Seekers’ games? He was easily ten times larger now than before and that meant ten times less able to easily bank or perform a switchback or do anything more than maybe outfly the wizards on their literal tail.

More to the point, if they were going to be dodging spells—and Harry could already see their pursuers readying their wands, so they were definitely going to be dodging spells—then things were going to get very tricky for Harry very quickly. It was like the escape from Gringotts but so much worse, and he couldn’t possibly hold on forever if Draco was going to be doing his very best impression of a Snitch.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the lift, but I think I’ll make my own way down, if you don’t mind,” Harry said, snapping his wand through the air and shouting, “Accio Nimbus 2020!”

Below, Harry heard rather than saw his broomstick come crashing through the shed door and screaming through the air, racing for Draco like a javelin. Harry levered himself up and, praying he timed his jump right, pushed off of Draco’s back to leap through the air and make a wild grab for the broom shaft. Draco screeched in horror when he thought Harry had fallen, tail whipping around to grab him, but Harry managed the hand-off and hauled himself up and over the broom to get properly seated, pulling into a steep ascent that took him away from Draco. Once well clear of him, he began to bank widely and scanned their pursuers to see who looked like the easiest to pick off.

On realising Harry was not in fact plummeting to his death, Draco allowed himself to re-focus on the task at hand, and he became that much more cavalier in his movements now that he no longer had to worry about the safety of a passenger whose neck he did not want to see broken. He mirrored Harry’s movements as best he could, and together they banked around in a pincer formation. Their pursuers did not, however, seem to care that much about Harry beyond keeping him from interfering with what appeared to be their ultimate goal: knocking out Draco and, presumably, hauling him back to London to chuck into an even deeper and darker cell this time. They parried Harry’s spells with shields of their own, though he did manage to catch one of them with a Hurling Hex, grimacing when the resounding THUD of their body hitting the earth was audible even from on high.

Draco, while not nearly as graceful as Harry was in the air and much more accustomed to fleeing than fighting back, was not helpless, and it turned out that flying through an anti-magic vapour cloud exhaled by a Carpathian Blackblood was not something most brooms had been warded against and tended to deactivate any charms embedded in the wood, sending the hapless riders plummeting. Two of the Unspeakables managed to get their brooms under control again before hitting the ground—the other two did not.

One of the remaining pair cut away from the field of combat and disappeared from Harry’s sight—he didn’t like that at all. “You take care of that one,” he called to Draco, nodding to the other Unspeakable, who had just re-pocketed their broom in midair before transforming into a falcon and beating a hasty retreat southward. Clever. Clearly the Department of Mysteries had a vested interest in Animagi. “I’ll go find our final guest and see if I can’t invite them in for tea!”

Draco barked sharply at him, probably something along the lines of The fuck you will! but Harry was already leaning into a dive. They needed one of these arseholes alive—needed to find out if there were more of them coming, and more importantly, how they’d found Harry’s home in the first place. Hermione and Ron were the only other living souls who knew where he’d set himself up, and there was no way they’d given up that information willingly.

He zipped around the property, head down and eyes scanning for signs of their wayward Unspeakable, but they were proving as difficult to pin down as a Snitch. He was just about to circle around back to Draco to be sure he’d at least caught the Animagus attempting to flee—

—when a snarled Stupefy! slammed into him from behind, and he hurtled to the ground in a pile of limbs, the wind completely knocked out of him. Distantly, he was aware of Draco shrieking, his bone-juddering roar likely audible for miles. There would be investigations in the coming days, bobbies and tourists and cryptid hunters alike, all tromping through the McEachrans’ property searching for what could possibly have made such a wretched, sorrowful sound.

Harry’s vision swam, tunnelling through a blurry black field, and his ears were ringing—he couldn’t focus, couldn’t see what Draco was doing to the Unspeakable who’d Stunned him, but he could not block out the screams, and he vaguely recalled Hermione talking about how Blackbloods fed on magical creatures and their energies—at which point he decided he didn’t want to know what had become of the Unspeakable and gave himself over to the encroaching darkness.

Chapter Text

At length—maybe seconds later, maybe hours—there was movement in the nearby brush, and Harry struggled to roll over onto his side, just in case the falcon Animagus had swooped back around for another go. He didn’t know where his wand was—that was probably not good—and he couldn’t feel his casting arm, but he was hoping that was just because he’d been lying on it awkwardly and all would be set aright once he’d gotten feeling back into it. He didn’t know how to mend bones—after the Lockhart fiasco, he’d decided to have professionals tend to those sorts of injuries going forward—and he doubted Draco did either. Assuming he was Draco. God, it was dark now, and if the dragon had decided to just fuck off and go terrorise a Muggle village like the great wyrms of old, he was—

“‘Arry! ‘Arry! Fffff—uck it all, P-Potter! Shit—” Someone grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, hauling him into a seated position, and his stomach wrenched, causing him to cry out in pain. “Fuck—fuck! Get your shit together. Don’t think just because you spent the last two and a half months nursing me back to health that I’m in any way inclined to return the favour!” Animal panic gave Draco’s voice an unmistakable quaver that sounded almost like he was on the verge of tears, but that was ridiculous.

Wait.

Consciousness came back to Harry in a rush, and his eyes shot open as he groped for the front of Draco’s shirt, balling his fists in the fabric as he held on for dear life. He was still wearing the same old Gryffindor Quidditch Team jersey that Malfoy had been wearing—god, had it even been a half an hour ago?

“You—” He was breathing hard, and his mouth was dry. “Are you Draco? Or—Malfoy?” What a ridiculous question—he was speaking, full sentences. And ragging on Harry. This wasn’t Malfoy.

Draco seemed to have much the same opinion on the absurd quality of the question: “I—what?” His face scrunched up in confusion, and his hair was all rumpled, his own breath coming in great panting gasps. “What?”

But Harry didn’t have time for guessing, he had to know—he couldn’t bear it, if he was wrong. “Are you you, or him?”

Draco was shaking his head though. “I—have no idea how to answer that. Fuck, you’re concussed. Or else your brains have been completely scrambled. Not that most would notice, but I’ve a sharp eye.”

It helped that Harry had no idea how Draco should answer either. Well shit, he’d have to figure it out himself. He reached a shaky hand up and cupped Draco’s jaw like he had the night before—and this time, Draco did not lean into it, though neither did he pull away. “…You’re you?”

Draco tensed his jaw—then gently drew Harry’s hand back down to his side, a pink tongue darting out to wet his lips. He ducked his head. “…As much as I ever was, I fear.”

“Prove it.”

Draco’s head snapped back up, expression bewildered, and he blinked rapidly. “I…” He wrinkled his nose in consternation, then took a breath. “…Your nose mended crooked from where I stamped on it in Sixth Year and now your glasses sit cock-eyed.”

Harry’s hand went immediately to his nose now, feeling for the shape of it. “They do not! Shut up, do they?!” And then he was smiling—and laughing, and oh that hurt, that hurt a lot. He doubled over, causing Draco to release a new string of oaths, panic thick in his voice.

“Don’t do that, you absolute nitwit! Oh fuck, you’re going to bleed out, and won’t that be a fine turn of the tables? I didn’t even get the pleasure of doing it myself.” He cast about, eyes wide and white, then turned back to Harry, head ducked close. “Can you stand? Don’t answer that—you’re going to have to. We’re sitting peacocks out here in the open should any more ‘guests’ come calling…”

“Sitting ducks…” Draco wasn’t making any sense, but that could have been the blood loss.

“Ducks? Why would anyone curse ducks? It’s the fucking peacocks that go around shitting on anything that’ll sit still long enough. Up—or I’ll Levitate you back inside myself if I have to.” He slid a shoulder under one of Harry’s arms, helping him to his feet, and Harry was reminded of that first night, when Hermione had shown up on his doorstep, her shoulder under Draco’s. He wondered if Draco remembered that now, too.

“Where are the others?” he asked, squinting. His glasses had gone flying when he’d taken his tumble, and everything beyond Draco’s face, inches from his own, was now rendered in a soft blur. “There was a—a bird…”

“I took care of them.”

“But—if they get away, they could—”

“I took care of them,” Draco said, very deliberate, jaw tense and gaze fixed straight ahead. “Now walk. Your wards are stronger inside the cottage than out—probably why they waited to jump us.”

Harry frowned up at him. “Wh—how’d you know about my wards?”

And Draco let his gaze slide over to Harry’s. His eyes were little more than faint pinpricks of light in the wan illumination cast by the Ever-burning Lanterns floating around the garden. “You told me.”

Harry swallowed. “…You remember that?”

Draco shifted his gaze ahead again, stalking forward and dragging Harry along with him. “…I remember everything.”

Harry’s stomach gave another wrench, and it wasn’t because of his wound this time.

“Those were Unspeakables,” Draco said, shouldering his way inside the cottage. He was breathing heavily from the effort of dragging Harry up the steps, and Harry half wanted to tell him to just cast Levicorpus and be done with it. “How the hell did they find us? You won’t even let your gaggle of Weasleys know where you’re shacking up.”

“I don’t know. It’s only Hermione and Ron who know the coordinates—something must’ve happened to them. They’d never give it up willingly, not even under torture, I’m positive.”

“There are other ways of extracting information than base torture…” Draco said darkly, and Harry decided he couldn’t think about that right now.

“I have to know—there might be more coming. It might not even be safe to be here at all n—fuck.” He seized when his foot caught on the threshold, nearly sending him to his knees and wrenching the muscles over his stomach.

Draco was immediately there, supporting him and hauling him back up. “And what—you’re going to just pop in to their flat, in your condition? Forget your fan club, you need a Healer. St Mungo’s. They’ve probably got a bed reserved for you and everything.”

Harry shook his head. That wasn’t an option, for a dozen different reasons. “I couldn’t Apparate as far as London in one go even if I wanted to—and besides, I can’t leave you here alone. Unless you’re offering to Side-along me?” He still had no intention of going to St Mungo’s over Hermione and Ron’s place, but at least there were options if Draco had his full capabilities once more.

Draco looked stricken, though, features screwing up in frustration. “I…I don’t think I—and I don’t even know where we are, let alone how far—fuck!”

Harry’s chest clenched—this was well and truly Draco, all traces of the affable Malfoy subsumed by the prickly personality Harry had endured for nearly seven years. This was Draco, who hated to admit when he couldn’t do something and more so hated to admit when he couldn’t do something in front of Harry Potter. He didn’t want to seem weak, no matter that he had a perfectly good excuse for it. Harry probably would have been pressed to Apparate five feet if he’d gone without casting—without even knowing who he was—a whole summer, let alone as long as it’d probably been for Draco.

Draco didn’t remember why such weakness in front of Harry galled him quite so much—but Harry did.

“I don’t know if you noticed, but you just expended rather a lot of energy just now—and it makes more sense to conserve what you’ve got left than to press on and probably Splinch both ourselves.” He patted himself down with one hand. “Fuck, my wand…”

“Oh.” Draco reached into his back pocket, palming the bit of holly and pressing it into Harry’s grasp. “Thom found it under the rose bush. He seems to think this means he gets doubly compensated, just so you’re aware. I wouldn’t expect to be eating any dishes involving tomatoes or potatoes for the next two planting seasons at least.”

“Worth it,” Harry sighed, then eased off Draco to try and stand on his own two feet. He managed it, but barely, and Draco still had a proprietary arm around his midsection that he decided he was all right with. “Expecto Patronum!”

The stag materialised from the tip of his wand and trotted around the sitting room before coming to stand dutifully before Harry. “Tell Hermione we’ve been attacked and that I need to know she and Ron are okay. We’re staying put for now, but if we need to seek shelter elsewhere, please let us know as soon as possible.” He then flicked his wand, sending the stag off to deliver its message. It was a fine enough compromise for now—but as soon as he’d rested a few hours, they were going to London, even if he had to Spellotape his gaping stomach wound closed himself.

He noticed Draco watching the Patronus gallop away, an odd sort of longing on his features—and Harry smiled. “Thanks for not destroying it. Maybe you can have a go at Hermione’s or Ron’s when they respond.”

Draco’s cheeks flushed brightly. “I—don’t be ridiculous.” He cut Harry a sharp look. “I’m not an animal.”

“I know,” Harry said. “I’m glad.”

They bypassed the sitting room and Harry’s comfortable armchair to help Harry hobble directly to the bedroom (“I worry once I’m down, I won’t be getting back up for a while.”). Draco eased him onto the mattress, helping Harry divest himself of the bloody, shredded mess that had once been one of his favourite button-ups (it had an owl stitched into the chest pocket that would occasionally pop its head up out of the pocket and hoot at passers-by).

Draco managed a fair Ferula that neatly knitted the flesh over Harry’s stomach together again, though he had no magic that could ease the pain, nor would it heal any internal injuries. Harry’s medicinal cupboard, too, was bare of anything approaching a Healing Potion or even a Blood-replenishing Potion. “You’re fucked if you really do have a concussion and fall asleep, you realise that?” Draco said, that quaver back in his voice that said he was very frightened and vulnerable enough to show it just now.

“I’ll be fine,” Harry said, with absolutely no reason to believe he would be. “I’m very hard to kill, you’ll remember.”

“Unfortunately…” Draco sighed, then shook his head. “Let it be on your head, then. You’re not my problem.” He then eased off the edge of the mattress where he’d settled to mend Harry’s visible wounds and slipped his wand into his back pocket, shuffling from the room.

Harry snapped a hand out to stay Draco, grabbing the hem of his old Quidditch jersey. “Wha—where are you going?”

Draco frowned down at the hand that was clutching at him and carefully but firmly removed it from his person. “I assumed…you were about to try and fall asleep and likely slip into a coma, leaving me in the middle of nowhere with naught but my wits to defend myself?”

“Oh.” He was leaving Harry to rest—alone. As was normal. And Harry knew that—he did. He wasn’t concussed (he didn’t think, at least), and his brains hadn’t been scrambled, it was only—he’d gotten used to sharing his bed with Malfoy. So used to it, it felt almost strange to fall asleep alone, without the soft, even breathing of another person at your back to send you off. “Right, yeah, of course. Sorry. But—I mean, I don’t really have a guest room. And it’s not like you haven’t been sleeping with me the entire time alr—”

“Do not finish that sentence,” Draco interrupted, voice sharp as a knife’s edge. “I’m not your fucking Crup you invite into your bed to keep your toes warm. I’m not sleeping in here—I shouldn’t have done so in the first place. I’ll just—” He gestured vaguely toward the hallway. “I’ll Transfigure the sofa in your studio. Trust it won’t tax my reserves, despite all that energy I just expended.” The snide tone he took said he was very much aware that Harry had been patronising him before and did not appreciate it.

Draco slammed the door behind himself as he stomped out, and Harry lay there, in the quiet darkness, staring up at the ceiling for several long minutes after.

All that time he’d spent living Draco’s memories, and he still hadn’t managed to figure him out. He hadn’t seemed so very complicated, but clearly he was more complex than Harry was giving him credit for. Maybe he’d never figure it out. Maybe there was no real way to ask someone to platonically (platonically? Platonically.) sleep in your bed with you.

He strained his ears to try and hear what Draco was doing—if he’d really gone to bed down in the studio, or if he’d collapsed into Harry’s armchair, or even if he’d headed to the kitchen to make the dinner they’d wound up skipping on account of fighting for their lives.

God. Draco was back. Except he’d never left, he’d just been forced through a strainer that filtered out all the bitterness and pettiness and preoccupation with status and image, leaving behind his base elements: a curious, mischievous creature who was still unaccountably jealous and accountably self-confident and completely and utterly obsessed with Harry Potter. But filtering all that away had sanded down the edges that made him interesting, that made getting to know him a challenge, and before, Harry hadn’t thought him worth the effort, but now…

Well, Draco had probably eaten someone for Harry. That merited at least a second chance.

Sleep was no friend of his tonight, but he did at least try to rest, closing his eyes and forcing his breathing to even. But most every bone in his body hurt right about now, and his mind was still racing, worry mounting with each ominous tick of the grandfather clock in the corner. Why hadn’t Hermione or Ron sent a Patronus back, letting him know what had happened? Because they’re dead, an unhelpful insidious little voice crooned in his ear, and he struggled to shrug it off.

When this, too, proved unsuccessful, he decided he needed a nice cup of tea. Or maybe a whole pot. A spot of chamomile with a splash of milk had worked wonders bordering on magic in the past—perhaps it would be similarly effective in settling his nerves tonight as well.

He eased off the bed, Transfiguring his wand into a cane, and hobbled for the door, opening it slowly in case Draco was already asleep. He didn’t want to endure another ten rounds of Get your arse back in that bed and rest or I’ll put you in a Body-Bind and send you there myself. Only a couple of hours he’d been back and already Harry was kind of missing ‘Arry.

The door to the studio was open, though, and Harry paused in the hallway as he passed, peeking in—and saw Draco, sitting on the sofa, hunched forward with his head in his hands and wand on the table before him.

Harry swallowed—then knocked softly on the door to draw his attention. Draco startled, shooting up straight as one hand reached for his wand. He relaxed—though only a tic—when he saw Harry, standing outlined by the light from the hallway and casting a long shadow over the bookshelves.

“Fuck. Speak up if you’re going to sneak up on someone. I’m understandably a bit on-edge just about now—I could have exploded you before you even opened your mouth.”

“Dubious. I won all our duels. I reckon I could’ve taken you.”

“You terrified me you’d gone mad when you started speaking to snakes the first time”—Harry and Draco clearly remembered this encounter very differently, but Harry did have the advantage of having recently relived it—“you flayed me alive with an illegal spell the second time”—all right, he had a point—“and you caught me off-guard when you physically tackled me the third time. None of those ought to count as a ‘win’.” Draco rubbed his hands over his face. “Is—what are you doing in here? Is something wrong?”

“No,” Harry said. “…And yes.” He shuffled inside, nudging Draco’s foot with his own until he shifted over to make room on the little sofa-that-was-still-a-sofa-and-not-a-bed, then settled down. He took note of the fact that Draco was still wearing his trousers—as well as Harry’s Quidditch jersey. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Draco made a face. “These cushions feel like they’re stuffed with gravel. I can’t believe you were going to make me sleep here.”

“I recall you finding them comfortable enough to nap on while I sketched. Or was my company simply worth the crick in your neck?” Draco shot him a dark glare, and Harry reminded himself such topics were not fair game. Not yet at least. He leaned forward, an elbow resting on one knee and head supported in his palm. “You were really in there, the whole time, weren’t you?” Draco crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to look Harry in the eye. “Sometimes…sometimes I thought I could see—”

Draco scoffed and stood, pushing past the leg Harry stretched out to block him, and Harry realised there wasn’t going to be any going about this gently. Draco didn’t respond well to that sort of thing—not if your name was Harry Potter, at least. He only recognised force—being penned in with no choice but to listen. You couldn’t give him a choice—he always chose poorly.

Harry was reminded of the thick-shelled egg he’d found when he’d dived into Draco’s—Malfoy’s—mind with Legilimency. You had to be dedicated enough to chip through it if you wanted to engage with the actual person beneath all the bitter bravado.

“I told you I was ready to listen.” Draco froze—then clenched a fist, and Harry continued in a rush in case Draco was just about to deck him. “All you ever wanted was for me to just listen to you, to give a shit about you, but you were an arsehole, and so was I, so it never happened. And maybe you’re still an arsehole, but I’m trying to not be—or at least to be less of one. So sit back down on my actually very comfortable sofa, thank-you-very-much, and talk to me. Tell me all the things you wanted to but I wasn’t ready for.”

“…Don’t make me do this.”

“…I won’t. But we can’t stay like this. And we can’t go back to that.” Harry wouldn’t; he refused. “I promise, I won’t laugh—I won’t be a smartarse, and I won’t make fun of you.”

And Draco laughed, slumping back onto the sofa and throwing his head back. His throat formed a delicate arch, bobbing as he swallowed. “…God, I wish you would. At least I’d know what to do with that. At least that’s…familiar.” Harry could sympathise with not knowing how to approach someone you thought you had pegged only to find they were nothing like you expected. “I don’t know—I don’t know how to talk to you. It felt so simple before—I knew just what to say, and you knew just what I was saying. I don’t know how you did, but you did. Or maybe I didn’t know what I was saying until you told me.” He firmed his jaw. “…Just because you’re ready to listen doesn’t mean I’m ready to talk.”

Harry drew his legs up, shuffling further down the sofa to give Draco the space he seemed to be in desperate want of right about now. “Don’t—think of me as me, then. Pretend we’re friends. Pretend I’m someone you don’t hate. Pretend you maybe even like me.”

Draco shunted his gaze Harry’s way, eyes hooded and so dark Harry could only see tiny pinpricks of reflected light looking back. “…I don’t know if I can do that.”

And Harry heard it in every way it was meant—Draco might not have those memories, but Harry certainly did—and he swallowed thickly. “Well—try anyway. Sometimes that’s the best we can do, and who’ve you got to impress, besides?”

Draco leaned forward again, back hunched and elbows resting on his knees. “…Why did you do it? I know Granger asked you to, but…I won’t pretend I was ever anything but horrible to you. The last time you tried to save me, I made you regret it.”

Harry had to laugh at this, a dry huffy thing without much mirth. “No, you didn’t. Not that you didn’t try. And what was I supposed to do? Tell her no? To put you back where she found you?” He began picking at a nail that had chipped in the earlier fight. “…At first, I did it because I mostly felt sorry for you. You’d made some shite decisions, but certainly nothing that deserved what’d been done to you. You needed my help—so I gave it, end of transaction.”

There was a long, quiet beat. “…And then?”

“And then…” Harry shrugged to himself. “And then I did it for…for other reasons.” He could feel Draco scrutinising him, picking him apart, which fine, he was welcome to try. Not once in all those memories had he ever seen Draco demonstrate any skill with Legilimency, so Harry trusted his thoughts were his own to muddle over.

“…How you’ve survived to the age you are truly baffles me. I’d say your bleeding heart is going to get you killed one day, but you keep defying me.”

Harry scoffed, one brow arched. “What, you’re saying you wouldn’t have done the same, if it was me who showed up on your doorstep needing saving?” He squared his jaw. “Because you and I both know that already happened—as well as how it ended.” And Harry also knew, even if Draco didn’t, that Draco had also done it for reasons entirely separate from feeling sorry for Harry.

Draco gave a gruff, rasping laugh. “Right. So this was, what? Balancing the scales?”

Harry leaned forward. “It was me, saving you. And finally doing it right. I don’t help people because I want something in return or to repay favours. I help them because their well-being means something to me.” And Draco had nothing smart or acrid to snap back with this time, so Harry pressed on. “My turn now. Why did you do it?” Draco’s expression waxed confused, and Harry gently cleared his throat. “Hermione said…that it was just instinct, hormones and imprinting or some such. She called it ‘courting’—”

“That—is absolute hogwash—” Draco huffed, and in the low lamplight, Harry could see that even his ears were turning pink.

“Then what was it, if not that? I’m prepared to accept that some of the things he did weren’t necessarily things you’d ever do yourself—I don’t actually think that Draco Malfoy likes to chase garden gnomes for fun at the weekends—I’m just…” He took a bracing breath. “…I’m trying to figure out where he ends and you begin. And how much of him is still in there, or how much of you was ever in him.” When Draco still balked, casting about the studio for anything else to look at but Harry, he continued, “I saw you, in so many little things. I didn’t even realise I was looking for you, but I guess I was. But I can’t tell if it was really you, or if I just wanted it to be you.”

Draco was shaking his head. “Don’t ask that—please.”

But Harry was through being polite.

“I need to know—was it just him? Or was it you? I’ve never been nice to you before and I’m not about to start now. I’ve dealt with you saying nothing but ‘Arry’ for two months. I will have my answers now that you can actually string together a sentence. So use those bollocks I know you’ve got—because god help me I’ve seen them—and talk.”

Draco seemed to be having a stroke before Harry’s very eyes, twitching and grunting and looking at once both offended and ashamed. Eventually, though, he managed to steel himself and snarled, “Why? Why the fuck would you even care? Why do you want to listen now of all times, when I haven’t got anything interesting to say?”

“…Because I think you do have something interesting to say. Which should tell you why the fuck I even care.”

Draco’s face twisted into a pathetic grimace. “I don’t know what to say.”

“The truth’s a good place to start.”

And he scoffed, a harsh barking thing. “Fuck that. I know you’re no Ravenclaw, but surely some things don’t need to be spelled out.”

“This does,” Harry said. He leaned forward, heedless of the stab of pain that ripped through his abdomen when he moved. “For me, it does.”

“Well,” Draco said, waspish, “we can’t always get what we want, can we?”

And Harry swallowed, summoning the whole of his Gryffindor courage, long laid in storage and gathering dust: “…What if you could?”

Draco straightened—and then he looked terrified, jaw tense and nostrils flaring. “…Don’t—”

“Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t!” Draco shouted, loud enough it echoed a bit in the open space, and he seemed to collapse in on himself, head in his hands. “I never would have. I never would have, because I’m too much of a fucking coward. So—go on.” He waved a hand, gesturing a bit manically now as his emotions mounted. “Listen all you want! I’m not going to say it. I can’t.” He grabbed one of the throw pillows from the sofa and threw it across the room, where it collided with a bookshelf with a soft whump. He’d always had a flair for the dramatic, and Harry had to admit he’d kind of missed it, at least when it manifested in benign, silly ways like this.

Harry nodded—then licked his lips. “…Fine. Then I’ll be brave for you.”

Draco’s head shot up, confusion scrawled over his features—and he found himself at just the right height and just the right angle for Harry to lean in and do what Malfoy had been trying to do probably from day one but what Draco seemed inexplicably terrified to even consider.

It was a gentle, testing thing—it generally wasn’t polite to kiss someone without their leave, or at least without giving them ample time to demonstrate their generous acceptance of the gesture or else clock you across the jaw for the cheek, but Harry had been about as polite as he could stomach the past two and a half months, so if Draco wanted to break his nose again, well, he was welcome to it.

Draco did not break his nose again, though—he seemed at first too shocked to do anything but inhale sharply as Harry covered his lips with his own, gently swiping his tongue against the seam of Draco’s lips and darting in when he gasped in response. But Draco was sharp, a quick study, always had been, and he seemed to catch on pretty quick what Harry was getting at—

—and then he had both hands on Harry’s jaw, holding him in place as he practically mauled Harry’s face, trying and nearly succeeding in inhaling Harry’s tongue. There was no shame—or if there was, it had been entirely subsumed by the whipcrack SNAP of years of restraint finally giving way as Draco allowed himself, for the first time, to demand of Harry everything he wanted.

And he wanted, it seemed, rather a lot.

He shifted around, drawing his legs under him, and eased up enough he had leverage to start urging Harry down, onto his back. Whether a conscious or unconscious effort, he was pretty good at it (and Harry supposed he ought to be; he’d seen Draco pull this move before in the Pensieve memories) and did not let this sly manoeuvre interrupt his frankly breathtaking snogging prowess. Harry had never been kissed senseless—but he worried he was about to be, as all thought and common sense were rapidly being filtered out of his mind in favour of oh fuck and fuck yes and assorted other oaths of pleasure.

There was a deep, guttural growl building in Draco’s throat, and Harry wondered, distantly and dreamily, if this was prelude to a transformation, if he was just going to explode into the dragon, right on top of Harry. What a way for his eventual biography to end: crushed in flagrante delicto with and by a dragon. He wasn’t entirely sure how much control Draco had over himself just now and didn’t want to find out the hard way what other sorts of things might trigger a transformation besides mortal peril.

Draco seemed lost in the moment, though, and Harry’s thoughts were a cloudy, muddled mess as well—such that it was only when Draco arched over him and placed a hand on his chest, pressing him down all the way onto his back, that Harry remembered oh right, he had a pretty massive abdominal wound that had only been superficially healed, and Draco had his knee shoved right against it—

“Shhhhit!” Harry cried, doubling into a foetal position as a fresh stab of pain wrenched through him, immediately whisking away the fog of arousal that had begun to creep into his mind.

Draco jerked back like he’d been slapped, immediately contrite when he realised what had prompted Harry’s pained yelp. His face was mottled with altering patches of sheet-white worry and pink arousal. “Wh—shit. Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” He scrambled back to the other end of the sofa, covering his face as he collapsed back against the opposite arm, quite as far from Harry as it was possible to be without actually leaving the room. “Fuck…”

Harry waited until he could breathe again through the pain and the room stopped its spinning, but he didn’t dare sit up, fearful of a wave of pain-induced nausea that would surely overwhelm him if he even thought about it. Through strained gasps, he said, “…So definitely…not…imprinting…”

“What’s your excuse, then?” Draco growled miserably. “Mute half-wits turn you on or something?” He then gave a derisive little snort that snagged in his throat. “Fuck. I didn’t even know you were bent. I could’ve retired at fifteen selling that to the Prophet.”

Harry didn’t know he was bent either—he hadn’t really given it enough thought to have an opinion either way. Maybe it was just Draco—or maybe he had a thing for people who drove him crazy. It might have explained Ginny. “Obsessed as you were with me, you’d think you’d have noticed if I was.”

“I wasn’t obsessed with you! Trust you to still have an unaccountably high opinion of yourself.”

And oh, right. He’d ripped those memories from his mind, hadn’t he? That was kind of unfair, now that Harry thought about it; how were you supposed to win an argument against someone when they genuinely couldn’t remember how very wrong they were? You didn’t win, evidently.

Harry eased—very, very carefully—back up, supporting himself against the arm of the sofa. “My mistake,” he said. “But if not a childhood obsession, then might I inquire as to what prompted this change of heart?”

“One,” Draco huffed, “I believe I told you I was not going to speak about it. And two—” He waved a hand in Harry’s direction. “You kissed me, not the other way around.”

“Mm, a little bit the other way around.” He could still feel the searing heat of Draco’s fingers along his jaw and around his neck. Did he have bruises? God, he’d never had so much as a love bite, and now he might have bruises on his neck from an amorous encounter. This had been some summer. “And don’t act like the other you didn’t try. I put him off, ‘cause I’m a gentleman like that, but still.”

Draco bolted upright, snarling, “That—was not me—”

“But it was.” Harry regretted he couldn’t impress his meaning upon Draco with the same physicality, so he had to let his words do the talking for him. That generally didn’t work out too well, but it would have to do just this once. “Some part of you, at least. Maybe not a part you necessarily wanted to acknowledge, for whatever reason. And maybe not a part you ever would have shared with me, not even at wandpoint. But it felt real, to me. Are you really going to tell me that nothing—nothing—of him is still in there, a part of you?”

Draco’s features twisted. “I told you that wasn’t me—”

“You keep saying that, but—”

“No. Listen to me. You wanted me to talk, so I am. That—him—that wasn’t me. Whatever he was? Whatever you—whatever you found fond about him? It’s gone.” He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it. “I’m me, the only me I’ve ever been.”

Harry lifted a brow. “And how do you know what I found ‘fond’ about him?” He snorted softly. “You said yourself you didn’t even know I was maybe-I’m-not-sure bent in school. How do you know what I find appealing at all? I mean—I took Parvati Patil to the Yule Ball in Fourth Year and dated Ginny Weasley for like six weeks. I defy you to draw any conclusions about my preferences based on my dating history beyond ‘maybe has a thing for Gryffindor women’.” He paused, raking his gaze over Draco, who was still drawn in on himself, like he was worried if he didn’t keep all his limbs to himself, he might be inclined to assault Harry again. “And I know you’re still you.”

Draco’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “I don’t think you do. Or you wouldn’t be—” He seemed to struggle with his words. “—Doing that sort of thing. With me.” He shook a finger at Harry. "We aren’t friends. I don’t like you—”

“You like me a little.”

“I want to shove my tongue down your throat and rut against you until I can’t remember my own name. I don’t like you.”

And Harry’s stomach gave another wrenching twist, though this time it was not in the least bit uncomfortable. His heart was beating with an absurd tempo that left him feeling light-headed. “And what if I like you?”

“…Then you really are concussed. I’m not him.”

“So you’ve said. But I don’t like him.”

Draco huffed, “You almost kissed him. Hell of a way to show it.”

And Harry, despite everything, was thrown by the realisation of just how much Draco really did remember from his time as ‘Malfoy’. “…Well, technically, he almost kissed me. And I did kiss you.” He shook his head. “You’re so hung up on you versus him—”

“Because you are!”

“I was. Was being the operative word. But then you kissed me back. So I think I’ve made my peace with it. I know who you are. I know what you’ve done. And I know that you do like me. You’re just scared I might like you back.”

Draco’s nose wrinkled in a way Harry definitely did not find endearing at all. “And why on earth would that scare me?” It was a bold question for someone who’d only moments ago admitted to being a coward.

Harry eased up onto his elbows—hardly the most elegant of poses, but he wanted to look Draco in the eye when he said this. “Because anyone would be—once you’ve finally got something you’ve always wanted, there’s every chance in the world you could lose it. I get it.” Draco looked like he wanted to protest that Harry was not something he had ‘always wanted’, but instead he shunted his gaze off to the side. Coward, indeed. “But this won’t work if you can’t summon the tiniest shred of faith and let me in.”

“…Why on earth would you want it to work?” Draco asked, understandably bitter, as Harry had shown zero prior inclination to want anything to do with Draco beyond to kick his arse in Quidditch.

Draco, however, had not realised in the past forty-eight hours that someone had wanted him so badly they’d scrambled their own brains to get rid of the feelings. Finding out you were someone’s actual obsession made you view certain past interactions in a new light, and while there were a mountain of issues they would need to address before they could be anything approaching amiable, certain parts of Harry were prepared to set aside those issues in favour of testing their compatibility in other areas first.

“Because,” he said, “it’s been a few years since I made a bad decision I’ll live to regret, and I’m about overdue. And—also because that bit about your tongue getting shoved down my throat and rutting against me until you couldn’t remember your own name sounded kind of interesting.”

Draco released a stuttering exhalation—and then in one entirely too smooth motion and with startling care to avoid kneeing Harry anywhere sensitive, Draco was on him, snaking up and over his chest to cover Harry’s mouth with his own. It was not the frenetic meeting of bodies from only moments earlier, it had purpose and a dark, driving intent. Draco swallowed every little sound he drew from Harry who could not help remembering the wayward Oliver Fontaine and his schoolboy crush on someone who had only used him to fill a need. It felt like a need again now—and Harry had no intentions of being another Oliver, here only to fail to live up to whatever fantasy Draco had nursed all these long years.

He drew back, pressing himself further into the sofa cushions, and placed his hands on Draco’s shoulders. Their foreheads rested together, a thread of spittle hanging between them as they huffed and puffed, open-mouthed.

“…Don’t Obliviate me,” he said, soft and desperate.

“What?” Draco asked, lacy white brows knitting together in bald confusion. “What?”

“Just—promise you won’t. Please.”

And whether because he had matured in the years since his liaisons with Oliver and his ilk or because he’d simply forgotten how to Obliviate someone, Draco cocked his head to the side and whispered against Harry’s lips, “…Trust the only way you’ll be forgetting this is through massive brain damage. Let’s hope you don’t have a concussion.”

With one hand, he cradled Harry’s jaw, tipping it up at just the right angle so Harry wasn’t risking a neck cramp from the strain as they kissed. With his other, he reached between them and gently—so gently, overly conscious now of Harry’s stomach wound but clearly not concerned enough he was going to stop, which Harry was all right with, for now at least—eased Harry’s legs apart enough he could comfortably settle between them. Harry didn’t think he’d ever felt so exposed, even though they were both still in their bottoms, and if they kept up this tempo, there was shortly going to be little left to the imagination, boxers (in Harry’s case) or no (in Draco’s).

“Hex me if I hurt you,” Draco breathed, lips brushing Harry’s own as he spoke.

Harry did not remind him that things hadn’t worked out so well for Draco the last time he’d done that.

He tucked one hand under Harry’s thigh, holding it out of the way so he didn’t jostle Harry too badly, and as he dipped his tongue into Harry’s mouth, suckling on Harry’s top lip for only a moment before diving back in, he executed a slow, purposeful roll of his hips. He’d angled himself and Harry just so, and Harry gave an audible choking gasp, back arching off the cushions, when he felt it—the warm, heavy length of Draco’s shaft, filling his trousers and nestled snugly against Harry’s as he drew it up and up and up, forward until their bollocks brushed. He held there until Harry collapsed back, and then he drew back down and Harry had to experience it all again but in reverse.

He repeated the movement a second time, and then a third, and then a fourth, and that was about when Harry lost count, prick gone hard as a rock and nerves on fire as Draco pushed him to the edge before drawing him back down. The thin material of their trousers wasn’t much, but it was enough—enough to make Harry wish it weren’t there, and he caught himself groping for his wand until Draco noticed and stayed his hand.

“I told you to Hex me if I was hurting you,” he panted. “Not if I’m not getting you off quick enough for your satisfaction.”

“Same…fuckin’…difference…”

“Oh, I beg to differ, Potter.”

And fuck, the sound of his name—that name on those lips, but for him this time and not for Oliver or the Bulgarian minister’s son or the stocker at Mulpepper’s or anyone else. He brought his arms up around Draco’s neck and drew him close. Draco’s irises were wide and dark, nearly deep enough to swallow Harry whole.

“Maybe beg some more and I’ll get off quicker…” he breathed against Draco’s lips, and Draco whispered an oath under his breath and pressed his hips against Harry’s—hard—crushing their mouths together.

Gone was the slow, tantric rocking of hips—Draco still took great care to ensure he didn’t undo all the hard work he’d done mending Harry’s wound, but he finally gave himself over to his own pleasure instead of drawing out the encounter just to see Harry squirm. Harry just held on for dear life, all thought and sensation boiling down to his own prick and Draco’s and the thin, rough fabric between them as friction and heat and pressure brought them closer and closer to the edge. He could feel a wet spot forming between them, though it was unclear if it was his slick or Draco’s or maybe both their pricks leaking and weeping and begging to be taken over that glorious peak.

Draco was grunting roughly into his mouth, sharp, barking groans that sounded just animalistic enough to make Harry wonder if there wasn’t a little bit of Malfoy still in there, stalking the dark corners of Draco’s mind, hungry and desperate to have Harry all to himself. Harry didn’t expect Draco to be much more inclined to share than Malfoy, but at least he might hide it better. Then again, seven years of being a pissy, moody little shitstain who thought the way to a man’s heart was through humiliating him and his friends and touting a fanatic’s racist agenda said otherwise.

And then Draco shifted, just a hair, pressing their pricks together, from root to tip, and Draco rocked with whole-body motions against Harry. He pulled back, spine arched into a beautiful curve, and clutched the back of the sofa with one white-knuckled hand while the other grabbed both their pricks through the thin material of their bottoms and began pumping. He thrust his hips in time with Draco’s gentle massaging squeezes, and Harry saw stars, head snapping back and slamming against the arm of the sofa.

The shock of the impact demolished what little restraint he’d been able to cobble together, and his hips gave a wobbling shudder against Draco’s as he released a strangled, grunting cry. He could feel his prick twitching, still trapped in Draco’s grip, and Draco continued to ride him mercilessly and now with mounting urgency. Harry lay there and let it happen, blissed out and bleary, until at some point—between the orgasm and possible concussion, he’d lost all concept of time—Draco too shuddered atop him and spilled into his own trousers with a final grunting groan.

They lay together, boneless and trembling, for several long moments, the space between them filled now with only panting huffs and keening whimpers. Nothing hurt just now—but Harry knew it was coming, and it’d be worse than before. He wanted to just pass out—you couldn’t feel like you’d just been sliced in half if you were unconscious, after all, and he was all right leaving all his internal bleeding for Tomorrow Harry to deal with.

At length, Draco shuffled off of Harry, collapsing back against the opposite arm of the sofa with legs splayed scandalously wide. Harry kind of wanted to take a peek—he’d always tried to keep his eyes averted when he’d bathed Malfoy or helped him change clothes, but he felt entitled to an appreciative appraisal now. Pricks had never really interested him much beyond pubertal curiosity (and that’d been mostly directed at his own), but this one was attached to Draco and that changed things a bit. He wondered if he’d be allowed to touch it, eventually. See all the ways Draco twitched and twisted when he did so.

“That certainly didn’t take long,” Draco rasped, a gruff sneering chuckle catching in his throat, and Harry could feel those sharp grey eyes crawl over him. “And here I was expecting a bit more of a show from our vaunted Saviour.”

Harry tried to show him a couple of fingers, but his arms were presently devoid of any bones, so it didn’t really work. “It’s been a while, cut me some slack. I couldn’t exactly nip off to the loo for a quick wank when someone wouldn’t give me an ounce of privacy.”

“I’ll have you know I haven’t had my cock touched in—what year is it?”

“Er, 2002?”

“Fuck.” Draco stared up at the ceiling, not bothering to finish his sentence, and Harry supposed that meant he was in no position to be complaining about lengthy spans between orgasms.

A chill began to settle in, mostly on account of his wet boxers, and Harry reached for Draco’s wand on the table. If Draco objected to this, he didn’t bother speaking up, so Harry was going to assume it was all right. He cast a quick Freshening Charm over his midsection, then pointed to the sofa and expanded its dimensions to something a bit more suitable for two nearly grown men. One way or another, it seemed, he was going to be sharing a bed with Draco Malfoy, so he decided to just accept it and move on with his life.

Draco snatched his wand back from Harry once he’d finished adjusting the sofa, casting his own Freshening Charm before placing his wand back on the table—this time, well outside of Harry’s easy reach.

There was no pillow barrier tonight; it seemed silly, after what they’d just done, and besides that it was unnecessary, as Draco did not seem nearly as inclined to cuddle with Harry as Malfoy had been. Still, Draco did draw up close beside him, his form a comfortable warmth sharing Harry’s pillow. Without his glasses, it was impossible to make out Draco as more than the faintest of outlines in the wan moonlight filtering in through the curtained windows, but he could tell that Draco was watching him, still and quiet.

“…We should probably talk about this at some point,” Harry said, voice soft and rumbly with drowsiness.

“Or we could just keep doing this and never fuck it up with things like sharing and feelings. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the option that leads to more orgasms, so it’s got my vote.”

“Hey, mine might lead to orgasms too, you know.” He took a long, deep breath, exhaling slowly and trying to relax all the muscles in his body as he did so. “I liked it.”

He couldn’t really see it, but he was pretty sure Draco was rolling his eyes. “Of course you did, I’m fantastic at it.”

And now Harry was rolling his eyes. “How did I ever manage to forget how humble you are? Modesty, thy name is Malfoy.”

“And what have I got to be modest about? Pride is right there in my House motto.”

“…Yeah,” Harry said, and then, risking no more of the aforementioned orgasms, he added, “So’s ‘self-preservation.’”

Draco’s voice was icy. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means—” Harry eased up onto one elbow. “It means I do think we should talk about it. Doesn’t have to be now. In fact I’d very much like it to not be now. But I’m not done listening to you yet, and I think you still have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it.”

Draco shifted upright, drawing his legs to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He stared ahead into the darkness at nothing. Harry despaired he’d overstepped his boundaries—they weren’t friends, as Draco said, and they weren’t nearly close enough (orgasms notwithstanding) to be having this sort of conversation. Not for someone like Draco, who even within the confines of his own mind kept himself locked away behind a nearly (only nearly) impenetrable shell.

But at length, he finally said: “…I’m a chore. I well know it. You’ve just keenly demonstrated you’d rather take what you want instead of waiting to be offered it freely by very generous parties. You’ll lose what precious little patience you may have kindled for me—I won’t be worth the effort.” He shook his head. “You’ve seen me on my very best behaviour. I’m no prize.”

“I know.”

And he could hear Draco frowning down at him. “…You’re supposed to say something like Oh that’s not true. It’s very rude to agree with me when I’m busy self-flagellating, you know.”

“Well, are you going to make a habit of self-flagellating?”

“Good gad, it’s like you don’t know me at all.”

And Harry had to laugh, mostly because he was still feeling a bit light-headed from the twin assaults of orgasm and blood loss. He squinted through the darkness at Draco, knocking their knees together. “Why not let me decide if you’re worth the effort or not?”

“Because you’ve a habit of making terrible decisions—I believe you said so yourself. You can’t be trusted.”

“All right, I suppose you’ve got a point, but…” He sighed. “There are some risks worth taking. It doesn’t always have to be the easy way out.” And before Draco could take it in entirely the wrong way, he added, “I’m no prize myself. I think the fact that I’ve only ever dated Parvati and Ginny in twenty-two years upon this earth ought to prove that. I’m the Saviour of the Wizarding World—I ought to be drowning in my preferred brand of genitalia.”

There was a heavy silence, and then: “…Just because few have bothered to appreciate you doesn’t mean you’re no prize.”

“…Advice taken, and returned.” He reached across the pillow, playing with the hem of Draco’s jersey; he was never going to be able to wear it again now, not without thinking of Draco in it. “Do you at least imagine I can make you happy?”

It was a fair question, he thought—after all the misery he’d brought Draco, intentionally and otherwise, it wouldn’t be right to make this all about his impulsive desires while ignoring Draco’s own thoughts and feelings. Ignoring Draco’s own thoughts and feelings was what had gotten them into this predicament in the first place.

“Gods no,” Draco laughed, without an ounce of good humour. “But I’ve turned self-destruction into an art form, so why should I let that stop me from doing anything?”

“Draco,” Harry said, leaning into his space. “I’m listening.”

Draco swallowed thickly, throat bobbing, and when he inhaled, it came with a little gasp. “…I honestly don’t know. I’m terrified you’ll break me—or end me some other way. But for whatever reason I can’t not want to be with you—to stand in your orbit. Gods help me, I’ve tried.”

And Harry knew, perhaps more than Draco, how true that was.

He reached for Draco’s hand, drawing it to his lips and inhaling his scent. He still smelled like the garden, loamy and fresh. They both of them needed baths. “…If I break you, I promise I’ll help put you back together, and you’ll be stronger for it.” He smiled as he kissed Draco’s knuckles. “I’m good at that sort of thing.”

“…Fuck you, Potter.” Draco twisted, pulling his arm away and rolling over so he was nearly straddling Harry. He leaned down to capture Harry’s lips again, wringing a rough, heated kiss from him that nearly drew him up and off the sofa-slash-bed, and they did not manage to fall asleep for quite a while.

Chapter Text

Still, they did eventually drift off, sheer exhaustion dragging the both of them kicking and screaming into unconsciousness, and when Harry roused to a soft, silver glow twinkling insistently before him, he surmised it had been several hours since he’d fallen asleep.

His Patronus had returned. In the end, it seemed, it had not managed to deliver its message. He gently jostled Draco’s shoulder who protested groggily at first and then shot upright when he saw the Patronus.

“Wh—whose is that?”

“Mine.”

“It…came back? Do they do that?”

“…Not usually, no.” He frowned to himself. “…Have you tried casting yours again, now you can actually speak the incantation?”

Draco blanched. “…Of course not. Think I had the time, between getting you off and spilling the contents of my soul at your repeated insistence?”

They had been a bit preoccupied, he supposed. “…Well, you should. Try, that is.”

“What does it mean when it comes back like that?” Draco said, diverting Harry’s attention back to the matter at hand. He supposed further casting practice could wait until they’d rescued Hermione or Ron or both from whatever had made it so even a Patronus couldn’t find them.

There was no way Hermione wouldn’t have sent at least some sort of response if she’d at all been able to, and the fact Ron hadn’t sent a Patronus of his own in her stead was equally troubling. Harry shook his head. “Nothing good. I have to go to their place and find out what’s wrong—”

“You have to go?” Draco snarled. “You’re clearly still suffering from blood loss because it sounded like you said you meant to go alone.”

“I—” Harry pursed his lips. “I mean, it’s not your problem—and it’s dangerous for you to go besides.”

“And it’s not dangerous for you to go?”

“I mean you might get spotted, and the person who broke you out of the Ministry the first time seems indisposed at best and kidnapped at worst!”

Draco pushed himself up and off the sofa, already tugging Harry’s jersey off and slipping his fingers under the hem of his trousers, hopefully intent on donning a fresh pair (perhaps, hope sprang eternal, even a pair of briefs this time!). “Then it sounds like we really ought to make sure she’s in one piece, doesn’t it?” He snapped a finger in Harry’s direction. “On your feet. I can either go with you now or follow on my own once you’re out of sight. Pick your poison.”

And Harry, recognising a losing battle when he saw one, carefully eased onto his feet, wincing as he did so. His stomach didn’t hurt quite as bad as it had a few hours ago, but Harry wasn’t going to assume that was necessarily a good sign. “God, I ache all over…”

Draco swallowed, giving him a once-over. “…Good aches, or bad?”

Harry shrugged. “Bit of column A, bit of column B…”

“…I suppose I’m responsible for both, in which case.”

“Just make sure nothing heals crooked this time, and we’ll call it even.”

They quickly changed into fresh clothes (“Gods, we really must get you to a tailor if I’m going to be wearing your clothes—look at these rags…” “You know, you can buy your own clothes once we’ve cleared your name and gotten your accounts restored.” “Yes, I can. What of it?”), and after checking to be sure Thom had survived the attack more or less unscathed and leaving the garden to him, with promises he could keep anything he could harvest himself, Harry looped his arm through Draco’s, hauled him close, and twisted on his heel into nothingness.

Apparating wasn’t fun even when one was in perfect health—it was less fun when you’d been gravely wounded only a few hours before and even less fun when you were trying to Side-along someone. But they had little choice—Draco didn’t know where they were going, and Harry didn’t want to risk being Splinched by Draco’s first time attempting to Apparate long-distance in, well, forever really.

It was a miracle they made it at all, and in one piece even, so he didn’t feel so terribly embarrassed when he sank to his knees on arrival and heaved the meagre contents of his stomach nearly onto Draco’s shoes. For what it was worth, Draco seemed more horrified than disgusted, hauling Harry back up and grabbing him tight by both shoulders as he shook him and said, “Fuck this—we’re close enough to St Mungo’s now I can manage it. Grab my arm—”

Harry pulled away and fell against one of the fancy faux columns lining the front stoop of Hermione and Ron’s building. “I’m not dying—that just took a bit out of me. If nothing else, Hermione will have a fully stocked medicine cabinet—including Pain-relief and Blood-replenishing Potions. More than enough to keep me going until I’m sure they’re safe.”

“Oh, fantastic—a quick nip and you’ll be aces, I’m sure!”

“I’m not going to rest until we’ve found them, all right?” Harry glared at Draco. “…She would do the same for you—did, even.”

Draco’s face twisted, and he hissed, “Don’t think I fucking know that?” He began pacing, covering his face with his hands to muffle the scream of frustration he released. He then brought his hands away, evidently through with his tantrum, and grabbed Harry roughly by the bicep, dragging him along. “Let’s go. You’re about to keel over on the pavement.”

Harry allowed the rough treatment; it was a compromise that Draco hadn’t spirited him away to St Mungo’s involuntarily, he supposed.

They found the front door to Hermione and Ron’s flat already open, itself a worrisome sign, and both Harry and Draco readied their wands as they stepped inside.

The place was a disaster, dark scars along the walls and furniture in pieces evidence that a wandfight had ensued, though it was impossible to tell how recently or the outcome. As they carefully picked through the rubble, Harry’s regret over every minute—every second—spent not trying to get here, or at least to get in contact with Hermione or Ron, mounted.

Draco, either sensing Harry’s emotions innately or just noting the white-knuckled grip he had on his wand, laid a hand on his shoulder and forced Harry’s eye to meet his own. “You can’t save everyone—you can’t. You’re just one miserable, ridiculously starry-eyed human with an affinity for shrugging off the most deadly of curses but surprisingly susceptible to bog-standard hexes designed to put your insides on your outside. If you’d tried to Apparate here hours ago, when it might have been useful, you’d have taken two steps and then collapsed on the pavement, your efforts utterly useless. Best case scenario, you’d pass out until someone strolled by and found your unconscious body—worst case, whoever did this to Granger’s home would’ve done the same to you.”

“Don’t think I fucking know that?” Harry said, turning Draco’s words back on himself with smarmy bitterness. “Doesn’t make it feel any better.”

“No,” Draco said. “It doesn’t, does it?”

Before bothering to venture further, Harry cast Homenum Revelio and finally confirmed that there was indeed no one here but the two of them. Potions, too, were in short supply, virtually everything in the flat having been smashed to bits, and Harry suggested they head to the Burrow next—Molly and Arthur might know what had happened, and if nothing else, they deserved to know that their son and daughter-in-law were missing. Draco only agreed to the detour if Harry allowed him to do the Apparating this time, which after careful instruction (“It’s in Devon—on the outskirts of a town called Ottery St Catchpole.” Draco frowned: “…Near the Lovegoods’ place?” Harry did not ask how Draco knew where the Lovegoods’ place was.), Harry was more than glad to do.

It was still dark when they popped back into existence at the Burrow’s front gate, and the house loomed before them, tall and rickety and its many awnings creaking in the night breeze. There were no lights on, but this was hardly surprising given the hour, and after waiting for the world to stop spinning from the nearly back-to-back Apparating, Harry hobbled to the front door and rapped loudly on it, announcing himself vocally in case the occupants were in hiding.

When after several long minutes there came no response, Harry tried the door—it was locked, which was something of a relief.

“Well?” Draco asked. “Are we going to stand around out here with our pricks in our hands, or are we going to raid their medicine cabinet while you decide what you want to do next?” He didn’t bother waiting for Harry to answer, only cast a quick Alohomora and pressed past Harry into the sitting room. “Where would their potions stores be? Never you mind, I’ll find them.”

Harry was less interested in trying to remember where Molly kept her Sleeping Draughts and Blemish Blitzer than finding where Molly was period, as the Burrow was as empty as Ron and Hermione’s place had been—although at least there were no signs here of foul play. He hoped that meant there was a very good explanation for the state of things and cast another Patronus, directing this one to find Molly and to let her know that he was at the Burrow, having just come from Ron and Hermione’s flat, which was in a horrible state.

Draco swanned back into the sitting room, arms full of potions vials, just as the stag went galloping off. He nodded to the family dinner table, directing Harry to a chair. “Pull up a seat. These ones”—He placed three bottles before Harry—“must be consumed on their own. The rest can be mixed so you can down them all at once.” He snapped his wand to one of the cabinets, Summoning a tumbler into his hand, and began uncorking vials and dumping their contents into the glass. “Far from a substitute for a proper visit to St Mungo’s, but you won’t at least be collapsing in on yourself every time I turn around.”

Harry checked the labels as he knocked back each vial, disappointed but not really surprised to find none were Felix Felicis. If he could ever use any liquid luck, it was about now.

It did not take nearly as long for a response to his Patronus to arrive this time as it had before—though it came in the form of Arthur Weasley himself Apparating into the kitchen with a frantic, “Harry? Harry!”

“Arthur? In the dining room!” Harry leapt to his feet, feeling suddenly leagues better than he had five minutes ago, though it was unclear if this was the fast-acting work of the potions he’d been rapidly putting away or sheer relief at seeing a friendly face on this particularly harrowing night.

Arthur practically launched himself through the open doorway between the kitchen and dining area—and then pulled up short, blanching when he caught sight of Draco standing at Harry’s side. “Good gracious, is that Lucius Malfoy’s boy?” He gave Draco a quick once-over, blinking rapidly, and Harry couldn’t blame him for his befuddlement, as Draco was presently wearing another of Harry’s old Weasley jumpers. The emerald fabric suited him nicely, but it was clearly not a sight Arthur had been prepared for.

Recalling only now that the last time Arthur had seen Draco, or any Malfoy, had probably been during the Battle of Hogwarts or perhaps during re-sentencing after the war, Harry cut in quickly. “He’s with me—it’s complicated. Have you seen what’s happened to Ron and Hermione’s place? Do you know where they are? We just came from there—it’s a wreck!”

Arthur regarded Draco warily but then seemed to succumb to what was clearly a great deal of exhaustion weighing on him as he slumped into one of the empty dining room table chairs. He scrubbed a hand through his thinning hair, expression grim. “We got woken a few hours ago—by Hermione’s Patronus. Seemed she’d set a trigger for it. It told us if we received its message, it meant something had happened to her and probably Ron too, and we ought to go check on them immediately. Well, we did—and found the flat in the state you saw. Ron was there—unconscious—but Hermione…she was gone. No signs of where she might have gone or who’d taken her, if anyone. Ron hasn’t woken up yet, so we haven’t been able to get any information from him either. He’s at St Mungo’s, with Molly.”

“At least some people still seem to know a hospital’s the proper place to go when you’re deathly injured…” Draco muttered under his breath, and Arthur cut him a suspicious frown.

“How did you know to go to their place?” Arthur asked Harry, though still half-focused on Draco. “Did she rig a Patronus to contact you as well? She’s always been such a clever thing.”

“Not quite—we were attacked too. Probably by the same people who took Hermione.”

Arthur straightened, pushing his glasses up as they slid down his nose. “Wh—you saw them? What sort of villains would do such a thing? Not—not Death Eaters?”

Draco tensed next to Harry but otherwise gave no outward sign he’d been affected by what sounded at first blush like idle suspicion but which Harry suspected had been rather pointedly posed. From the corner of his eye, Harry could see Draco starting to get back that guilty hunch he’d had during his trial and all the post-war drama, a simple line of questioning undoing all the confidence he’d gained while his better half had been doing the driving. He didn’t like it at all—proud, cocky arsehole though Draco was, it was an indelible part of his persona, and Harry had spent too long trying to get him back to himself to let it all be undone so easily.

“No—at least I don’t think so. They all wore masks, but not like the Death Eaters’. Blank white ones, with little slits for eyes.”

Arthur’s mien went frosty. “…Those are Unspeakables,” he said, confirming Harry’s worst suspicions. “But—why on earth would they want to hurt our Ron and Hermione? I don’t think either of them have ever even spoken with an Unspeakable, let alone done anything to invite their wrath like this. If, god forbid, either of them were wrapped up in anything nefarious, then surely Aurors would’ve been sent in!”

Hermione’s insistence on keeping her career a secret had come back to bite her again. Harry wished he had something stronger than a half-empty bottle of Pepper-up to nurse just now. “She…Hermione’s an Unspeakable herself. She did something…that she knew they wouldn’t like and tried to hide it from them. She’d been hoping they’d never figure it out, but…” He shrugged. “Clearly she was prepared for any eventuality, and it’s caught up with her, with Ron in the crossfire.”

Arthur seemed to age ten years in an instant. “Our Hermione…an Unspeakable…”

Harry nodded. “…Which makes me think they’ve got her in the Department of Mysteries now. Probably buried in one of their deepest, darkest vaults where they’re convinced she’ll never be found.” Not that Harry intended to let her stay there—not while he still had breath in his lungs, even if that breath was still a bit laboured and pained. “We’re going to get her back. Draco and me.” Arthur’s frown deepened, and he opened his mouth like he wanted to protest. Harry didn’t give him the chance. “You should get back to Molly and Ron—the Unspeakables might try to finish what they started. I’ll be in touch again as soon as we’ve rescued Hermione.”

Arthur did not look like he quite agreed with this plan, but eventually he nodded, a wry smile on his lips. “…Be careful, then. I can’t rightly tell you to stay put anymore, but you can at least promise me you’ll try to stay out of trouble, can’t you?”

Harry returned the smile that was not really a smile. “…I could. But it might be a lie.”

And Arthur chuckled softly, shrugging. “Well. I can’t say I didn’t try.” He then shifted his eye to Draco, pursing his lips. “…So you’re going with him, then? After our Hermione?” Draco gave a start, clearly not expecting to be addressed, and then gave a little nod. Arthur returned it. “Good luck then, I suppose. Look after Harry. He has a hard time looking after himself.”

Draco had the nerve to snort at this, cutting Harry a look. “On that much we can agree.” He was getting entirely too comfortable with these sorts of remarks, and Harry wasn’t sure he liked that.

Arthur slipped a hand into his pocket and palmed a small badge, placing it in Harry’s hand and wrapping his fingers around it. “That’s my Ministry badge, lets me through the wards so I can Apparate into and out of the Atrium. It should still work, even though it’s well after hours. Er—” He gave a wincing apologetic smile. “I’ve only got the one, I’m afraid. And I’m not sure the entrance via the toilets will be open at this time of night.”

Harry accepted the badge, pasting on a smile. “Thank you. We’ll figure out a way around it, I’m sure. You’ve done more than enough—if anyone asks, I stole it from your bedside table while you were looking after Ron.”

Arthur nodded, then pulled Harry into a crushing hug. “…Be safe, Harry. Please.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, voice tight. “I always manage to scrape by somehow.”

“That you do,” Arthur sighed, then released him. “…Good luck.” And with a tipped nod, he twisted in place and disappeared with a sharp CRACK.

“I’d love to hear what this way around the Ministry’s likely very substantial abjurative wards is that you clearly have in mind,” Draco said, sliding into the chair Arthur had just vacated and throwing one leg over the other.

“Well,” Harry said, whisking away the empty potion vials with a quiet Evanesco, “I was kind of banking on your abilities—well, the dragon’s abilities—to continue doing what they’ve done this whole time with Malfoy and keep on protecting you. Like by, say, keeping you from being affected by wards that might otherwise try to expel you should you attempt to Apparate through them.” He lifted his brows hopefully.

“…I have no idea how to use that ability though.”

“I don’t think it actually matters? Every time the dragon did anything fantastic to protect itself before, it seemed like it happened just instinctively? Like when I beaned you over the head with my frying pan.”

Draco frowned. “I don’t remember being beaned over the head with a frying pan.”

“Yeah, mostly ‘cause you—or him—manifested this scaly shield and the thing bounced right off. You were a terror to keep in line.”

“…That still doesn’t sound like it’s anything I can control.”

“And like I said—maybe that won’t matter. Maybe it’s just you, exerting your force of will and pushing yourself into the space you want to be.” He jutted his chin out in challenge. “Marching in somewhere and acting like you own the place seems like a favourite pastime of yours, if we’re being honest.”

“Oh, are we being honest? I do have a few more truths ready now if you’re inclined to listen.”

“I am inclined,” Harry said. “…But later. We have to do this—or I have to at least. If you aren’t feeling up to it—”

“Oh fuck off. I never said that. But for the first time in my life I find myself agreeing with a Weasley: you have a very hard time looking out for yourself.” His expression softened into something unreadable. “You’re going to get yourself killed. And I’m going to die trying to stop it from happening.”

Harry leaned forward, cupping his jaw. “Yeah, I probably am. And yeah, you might.” Draco inhaled sharply but did not jerk away. “But this is who I am. You want me to accept you for you? You’ve gotta be prepared to accept me for me. I don’t have a death wish—I have an ‘I want to keep everyone I love alive’ wish.”

“That’s not possible, and you more than anyone should well know it.”

Harry shrugged. “And that’s why they put me in Gryffindor. Because I’m a stubborn bleeding heart who’ll run into Fiendfyre to save others.” He pressed a soft kiss to Draco’s lips, lingering for a moment and whispering, “And that’s why I need a cold-hearted bastard to pull me back out, even if it means he gets burned himself.” He fixed Draco with a long look. “You can stay behind, if you want,” he said, and felt the way Draco’s jaw tensed, almost heard the grinding of his teeth—because he didn’t want to keep being given outs, he wanted to be wanted. Harry was getting good at reading him, he thought. “…But please don’t. Please come with me. Please help me save her. I want you to come, even if you shouldn’t.”

Draco exhaled a long, stuttering breath—then looked away, rolling his eyes, and reached into his pocket to palm a red vial. “The last bottle of Blood-replenishing Potion your Weasleys had in stock. I expect I’ll need it for when I inevitably wind up Splinched.”

There was no time to waste—the longer they waited, the more time the Unspeakables had to bundle Hermione away somewhere they might never find her. Really, there was no guarantee she was even in the Department of Mysteries. But it was their best lead, and even if she wasn’t being held there, it was more than likely they’d find someone who knew where he was being held.

Harry drew out his Invisibility Cloak. He hadn’t worn it in years, and it was nearly too small for even one person now. There was no way it would be able to disguise two, especially since he couldn’t Disillusion Draco’s ankles the way he could his own, as the Blackblood seemed to refuse to allow most foreign magics to be worked upon it.

“Do you think you could turn yourself invisible again, like you did before? When you went all—” Harry waved his hands over himself. “Shimmery.”

Draco grimaced. “I told you, that was instinct.”

“Well at least try it. Or else you’re going to give the night security quite the shock.” He took Draco by the shoulders. “Just—think really hard about not wanting to be perceived. It’s your life on the line if you get caught, and I’m not sure breaking you out of prison a second time would be nearly as successful as the first.” Draco rolled his eyes—and then closed them, taking deep, even breaths. “Your magic wants to protect you. I’ve seen it. And it’s yours—you can make it do whatever the hell you want it to. You made it give you wings, you made it give you a tail. Hermione said she’d never seen or even read about anything like that before—you’re fucking amazing.” He gently shoved Draco away. “Now get lost.”

Draco showed him two fingers, eyes still closed, and continued his slow, even inhalations and exhalations, each breath deeper than the last as he seemed to strain to centre himself. This wasn’t Dumbledore’s Army, and they weren’t in the Room of Requirement, but Harry still felt that familiar thrum of pride ripple through him as he helped connect someone more deeply with their magic, to harness it in a new way and make it their own, to protect themselves and the people they cared about.

God, that feeling never got old, even years out. One of these days, McGonagall was going to ask him to take a position on the teaching staff, and he was finally going to say yes.

Something sparkled out of the corner of his eye, and his attention snapped to Draco’s hand, where a patch of skin seemed to silver over—then shatter. And then another patch on the opposite forearm—and then a patch on his cheek, and over his chest and down the front of one thigh, until the magic suddenly cascaded around him, a silver shower that shattered and fractalised until Draco was covered in millions of tiny little mirror-like scales that seemed to warp the soft sitting room light around him, rendering him nigh-invisible.

Harry took a circuit of him, ensuring he was completely covered. It wouldn’t hold up at close quarters, not if they knew what they were looking for and the lighting sufficient, but it would probably be good enough for their present purposes, and Harry held a hand out. “Your Apparition or mine?”

“If I so much as think about casting anything right now, I’ll drop this,” Draco bit out, grabbing Harry’s hand in a death grip. It felt cool and scaly, like holding the claw of a lizard—or a dragon, he supposed. “Let’s get this over with. I’m not sure how long I can hold it consciously.”

Harry nodded, draped his Invisibility Cloak over his head, closed his eyes, and thought of the Apparition points in the Atrium.

When he popped back into existence, he was in a vast, dimly lit room with high glass ceilings showing Conjured vistas of the heavens above. It was quiet but not silent—between the faint whistling of the nightwatch-wizard at the opposite end of the room making his rounds, the tinkling splash of water from the Fountain of Magical Brethren, and the distant rumble of the Muggle Underground, there was enough noise to disguise Harry’s and Draco’s abrupt arrival.

He could still feel the cool grip of Malfoy’s hand in his own—and prayed desperately it was not just his hand. “…Are you Splinched?” he asked in a soft whisper, straining to make out the mirror-like shattered glass effect that might betray Draco’s position. In this light, it was quite difficult to tell, which boded well for their upcoming endeavour.

“No,” Draco bit out, tone strained, “but this is quite difficult to maintain, so can we please get ourselves some privacy so I can release it?”

“This way,” Harry murmured, and as a pair they crept toward the bank of lifts. Checking the nightwatch-wizard was still a good distance away—he seemed to be eyeing the list of specials displayed in the window of Ministry Munchies at the moment—Harry directed them into the stairwell just to the right of the lifts, and down they padded to the landing of Level 9, where Harry finally felt safe to doff the Cloak while Draco shimmered back into view, giving an exaggerated shudder and massaging his neck. “All right there?”

Draco grimaced but nodded. “I’ll have a hell of a headache come morning, but I’ll live.”

And that was good enough for Harry, who tucked the Cloak away, pulled out his wand, and stared down the long, black-tiled hallway.

He hadn’t been here since Fifth Year—and he didn’t have the fondest of memories from that time. The blue-white torches still flickered in their sconces, no windows or other exits to speak of save the unimposing black door situated at the end. He could still hear the soft slap of his trainers against the tile as he and his friends raced ahead, intent on rescue. It was kind of funny: he could be rushing in to save someone who wasn’t actually here all over again—all the Occlumency training in the world wasn’t enough to counter sheer brash impulsiveness, and Harry had that in spades.

Draco bumped his shoulder roughly, marching past Harry and down the hallway, hand already reaching for the doorknob. His cool, calculated approach to the matter, unbothered by past mistakes, bolstered Harry’s resolve, and he jogged ahead, hot on Draco’s heels.

Pressing through the doorway, they found themselves spat out into the entry chamber, a room tiled in the same shiny black bricks as the hallway leading here with a banquet of doors revolving around them in a dizzying display designed to disorientate, so you couldn’t tell where you’d come from or where you were going.

“Fuck, I forgot how much I hated this room,” Harry muttered under his breath. When the spinning finally stopped, he tried counting the number of doors and found where before there had been twelve, now there were an ominous thirteen. The new door, he suspected, led to the area of the Department where the Essence Team did their work researching Transmogrification. Had that been where Draco had been held? Hermione had said she’d found him in the ‘Archives’—were those Essence archives, or did one of these other doors lead to rows and rows of long, dark corridors housing the worst of the worst (or else the unluckiest of the unluckiest)?

Well, it really didn’t matter—what mattered now was finding where they were keeping Hermione. And their best bet would be, it seemed, whichever of these doors led to the Essence Room. They didn’t have time to try all the different doors, though, and what if they opened one and there was a Ministry employee standing right on the other side, ready to sound an alarm that there were intru—

“That one,” Draco said, and Harry’s head snapped in his direction. Draco was pointing to the door just opposite where they were presently facing, a curiously focused expression on his features.

Harry hadn’t even mentioned his hypothesis, so Draco’s conviction was frankly baffling. “Er, how do you know? Do you remember coming through the first time? Or when Hermione busted you out?” Hadn’t Draco been a teacup at the time?

Draco shook his head, gaze narrowing as if he were trying to focus on something far away and having difficulty making it out. “I don’t know, it’s just…it feels like that one.”

And oh. Perhaps the disorientating magic of the room wasn’t working on the Blackblood-y bits of Draco. The doors were, after all, merely thresholds to magically expanded spaces beyond—creatures with more refined senses, or else those whose nature inured them to many magical effects, might not be confused by the magical flimflam used to keep humans guessing.

Well, it was as good a place to start as any. “I think we’ll need to try a stealthy approach again going forward, in that case. I don’t imagine we’ll be able to evade detection forever, but the longer we can stave it off, the better. Are you up for it?” It was more a question of courtesy than genuine curiosity, as they didn’t really have a choice. They couldn’t afford to be caught down here, especially without Hermione to shield them—Unspeakables were, they had learned the hard way, very protective of their secrets, and Harry doubted his fame would save him from a cell or worse.

“No. But that’s never stopped you from charging into a situation, so why let it stop me?”

“Har har.” And because it was about to become very relevant, he asked, “…How likely do you think you’ll be able to go fully dragon again? You know, just in case we happen to need something big and scary with fantastic magical resistance?” It was some comfort, knowing Draco might be able to eat anything that would threaten their lives.

“How likely?” Draco scoffed. “I’m barely keeping it contained as it is—I’ve been on a hair trigger since you collapsed outside Weasley and Granger’s building. Trust it won’t be a problem, especially not if you do anything you. In which case I can’t be held responsible for the beast’s actions.”

“How romantic.”

Draco ignored the jab and gave an exaggerated shudder as he once again shimmered from view. Harry pulled the Cloak up over his head and let Draco lead the way, focusing with all his might on the faint crystalline outline marching just a few feet in front of him. Draco was much more resilient than Harry to assault should anyone manage to spot him, and more to the point, he seemed to have a far better sense than Harry of how to navigate down here. Maybe some part of him did remember being busted out by Hermione, teacup though he’d been—or maybe it was just bits of the Blackblood burbling to the surface, hunting its quarry and intent on not being bamboozled by any wards or tricks the Unspeakables might have placed around their Department.

The Essence Room was, Harry noted, much more lively for this time of night than expected. Perhaps the dubious nature of their work meant the Unspeakables kept odd hours. The lamps burned much brighter here, producing almost daylight-level luminescence, and they had to dodge several Unspeakables in their disturbing featureless masks, though they all seem too focused on whatever activities they were rushing to or from to notice when they brushed against the hem of the Cloak or stepped on one of Draco’s toes. None of them were expecting an infiltration, after all, so they had their guard down. More luck that couldn’t last long, but Harry would take what they could get.

Nowhere in any of the winding corridors they jogged down, though, did Harry or Draco find any rooms that looked like prisons or even the ‘Archives’ where Draco had been trapped. That wasn’t to say they came across nothing of note; every now and then, Draco would stop before one of the dozens of simple, unassuming doors devoid of nameplates or numbers and place a hand on the frame, at which point the door would dissolve into nothingness, revealing freakish horrible sights—magical mad laboratories with cages full of mutated creatures with too many heads or limbs or with bodies melded together in some horrific amalgamation of the components. Transmogrification involved magical manipulation of living bodies—but the Department of Mysteries seemed just as happy to work with dead ones as well.

Harry stopped short when Draco unveiled a room with a stasis field over a vivisected creature that looked like a merfolk with legs—which you might think would look human but decidedly did not. Harry recalled meeting the curious, private creatures when he’d dived down beneath the waters of the Black Lake in search of Ron, and a shiver ran down his spine. They’d done nothing, absolutely nothing to merit such experimentation.

He’d always known the Department of Mysteries operated outside the laws of society, but this was beyond the pale.

He could feel cold fury radiating off of Draco in waves—but after a moment’s consideration of the scene, Draco moved on.

That made one of them—and Harry snapped a hand out. “Wait—we can’t just leave it—”

“Save your righteous anger for rescuing Granger. There’s nothing we can do for that sad creature now that won’t rouse suspicion.”

They could kill it, Harry didn’t say. At least that might be a mercy, instead of it being held there in stasis, flayed open and helpless, until the Unspeakables that had been experimenting on it returned. “This can’t possibly be allowed—they…the Minister can’t know about this, Kingsley would never—”

“What did I just say about your righteous anger?” Draco huffed, shoving past him with a rough shoulder check that Harry doubted was simply because he couldn’t rightly see where Harry was. “One miracle at a time, Potter.”

Harry had expected him to say something snide along the lines of Of course he knows about it or accuse Harry of always wanting to see the best in people and refusing to accept the ugly truth. It wasn’t clear if Draco agreed with him or if he was just humouring Harry. Honestly, the comment had been a gut reaction, and at this point, Harry wasn’t entirely sure he believed his own protestations himself.

Kingsley was a good man—but he was only one man, and according to Hermione, the Department of Mysteries had staggeringly wide latitude in being allowed to manage itself as it pleased. But a chain was only as strong as its weakest link, and surely not everyone down here agreed with or even knew of the Department’s heinous acts, right? There had to be more Hermiones out there. Harry had to believe there were.

But Draco was right: they had to focus on the task before them. Saving Hermione would be difficult enough, if not impossible—if they were able to gather enough evidence between them to shut down the Department of Mysteries (or at least the Essence Room), all of these horrors might be put to rights in the doing.

It’d been smart, bringing a Slytherin along for the ride, and Harry wondered distantly how differently his last visit to the Department of Mysteries might have played out if he’d had Draco’s ill-tempered but very good advice to fall back on.

Draco drew up short as they bustled down the hallway, though, and Harry nearly barrelled into him when he pressed himself flat against a wall at a crosspoint, as a pair of Unspeakables passed right in front of them. They were deep in conversation and didn’t seem to notice Harry or Draco, one breathlessly trying to relate information while the other harassed them to Spit it out!

“—st contact with Strike Team Zeta, so of course we sent an infiltration team in to find out what had happened, and—they were all dead. Most of them in—in pieces. And Harry Potter was missing too. The infiltration team searched the grounds and the local vicinity but turned up nothing, and—” Draco began trailing after them, and Harry followed, taking care to make sure his trainers made as little sound as possible on the polished brick floor. The breathless Unspeakable dropped their voice and leaned in closer, words coming in a panicked whisper now, “This is getting entirely out of hand! We aren’t equipped to handle this! The creature could be out there, terrorising the countryside even as we speak! I mean—who knows what it’s done with Potter, and he felled You-Know-Who!”

The other Unspeakable scoffed, and Harry got the feeling this one held a much higher rank than the other, given their carriage and lazy, derisive tone. “Don’t be absurd. If the beast were on the loose and causing havoc, we’d have heard about it through Muggle news reports. More than likely it suffered serious injury from members of Strike Team Zeta and is in hiding, licking its wounds. We’ll have 383 press our guest with a bit more force. I’m certain she’s got some idea of where the creature’s fled to, if she hasn’t somehow hidden it herself. As for Potter—possibly it’s eaten him, which would honestly be the first stroke of luck we’ve had this whole time. One less mess to clean up, if you ask me.” The Unspeakable sighed. “Send Strike Team Yota to watch Malfoy Manor. And notify our Paris liaison as well—I recall the Malfoys had a château in the French countryside; the creature might make for it instinctively.”

The breathless Unspeakable had a Quick-Quotes Quill scribbling out the instructions, and when their companion gave a gesture that clearly said Well? Off with you!, they scurried away down a side corridor, robes flapping madly behind them.

Draco moved after the remaining Unspeakable when they continued down the hallway, likely sensing as Harry was that this was a superior. Clearly this person was intimately familiar with Draco’s case (and not nearly distraught enough over Harry’s probable demise—he was the Saviour of the Wizarding World, dammit!), and there was every chance that the aforementioned ‘guest’ was Hermione. Harry hoped that wherever they were off to, they might arrive quick, as even through the magical disguise, he could see the stress of having to keep up the pseudo-invisibility was taking its toll on Draco.

After another five minutes’ walk through winding, maze-like passageways, the Unspeakable stopped before a door bearing a plate that read only 005. Harry thought they might knock—but clearly this was their own office, for they tapped their wand on the jamb, and the door dissolved into a shimmering cloud, allowing the Unspeakable to march inside. Harry and Draco had only a few seconds to follow close behind before the door re-materialised, trapping them in the room with, presumably, 005 themselves. He was certain that number meant something pertinent, but he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it mentioned before.

005 moved to their bookshelf, scanning its contents, and Harry pressed himself against the far wall, letting his eye rove about the room. There wasn’t much in the way of decoration, likely to help maintain the air of anonymity these Unspeakables prided themselves on.

Draco, though, seemed much more adventurous—or rather, much more stupid—for he moved with the deadly silence of a predator on the hunt around behind 005’s desk and began picking through their personal affects. 005 was still frowning at a journal they had selected from the bookshelf, palming a notepad and scribbling something in it, and so did not see Draco pick up a picture frame and study it closely before turning it so Harry could make out the photograph as well: a man and a woman, arms slung around each other’s necks and grinning brightly at the photographer from inside a Muggle automobile. The picture did not move as magical portraits did.

Harry shifted his eye to the bookshelf, opposite the end where 005 was returning the journal to its shelf and turning just in time to miss Draco replace the picture frame as he slipped out of the way. Tucked in the corner, lying flat on top of several properly shelved Hogwarts textbooks, was a tattered, slim book bearing a spine reading Whitehall Primary School Leavers Book 1969.

Harry imagined Draco was drawing the same conclusions he was right about now: 005 was probably Muggleborn, which painted their interest in hunting down Draco to subject him to inhumane torture in rather a new and unfavourable light. Harry wasn’t relishing the diatribe he’d likely have to hear once they had privacy enough to discuss this turn.

005 sank into the chair at their desk and scooted forward, reaching for a smooth black stone next to an inkwell. If they noticed their picture frame had been moved, it was impossible to tell beneath their mask. They brought the stone close to their mask and spoke: “005 summoning 383 to office. Attendance expected promptly.”

‘Promptly’ turned out to be a good ten minutes later, and Harry prayed Draco’s focus held out, for 005 entertained no other visitors in the meantime, which meant there was no chance for Harry and Draco to make their escape without calling attention to themselves.

At length, though, 383 finally lumbered their way into 005’s office—‘lumbered’ because they looked like they were probably kin to Goyle. Or Hagrid. Or some other giant-adjacent family. 005 offered them a seat, though this seemed purely a formality, for Harry didn’t doubt 383 would’ve destroyed any furniture they tried to squeeze their oversized frame into.

“How goes your interrogation of 072?”

“About as well as it was an hour ago when you last asked me.” They crossed their meaty arms over their chest. “She ain’t gonna budge unless you give me leave to be more persuasive.”

Harry thought he could hear 005’s lips pursing behind the mask. “…Our schedule’s just tightened, and it’s become that much more important we bring Project Bane back under the Department’s control. You have authority to use non-lethal means to extract whatever information you can from 072 concerning the beast’s whereabouts. You are to contact me directly the moment you discover anything that might be of use in tracking it down. I shall expect hourly check-ins from you—if you are even one minute late, I’ll assume you’re incapable of completing the task yourself and relieve you of your duties.”

“Oh, no worries there, Director.” 383 began rubbing their hands together in eager expectation. “You’ll get your answers. It’ll be my absolute pleasure to teach that Mudblood some manners.”

005’s wand whipped through the air, faster than Harry could track, and a bright red line opened up along 383’s bicep, blood oozing faintly from the fresh gash. 005 leaned over their desk, and even under the expressionless mask, it was easy to tell they were furious. “…I’d watch my tongue if I were you, 383. Unless you’re keen to take early retirement like 311.”

383 shrank a bit, shielding their shoulder from 005 in case they lashed out again, and grumbled a stiff apology. “…Won’t happen again.”

“It had better not, or the next lash may strike something more sensitive.” 005 pointed to the door. “Get out. Get me results.”

383 ducked their head, all but scurrying from the office, and Harry and Draco stayed hot on their heels to take advantage of the door to 005’s office being open once more. There was little doubt in Harry’s mind—or Draco’s it looked like—that 072 was Hermione, and it sounded like she’d already been through the wringer being ‘interrogated’ by the Unspeakables. Harry didn’t want to consider what 383 thought was more ‘persuasive’ than they’d already been, and he didn’t want to find out either. This was likely their one chance to spring her and beat a hasty-but-stealthy retreat.

383 plodded down several corridors and one dank flight of stairs to an area of the Department that was somehow even less inviting than the labs and their cavalcade of mutated horrors had been. The walls on either side were clearly cells, though blessedly most seemed empty at the moment. Given how the Department of Mysteries operated outside the rule of law, Harry doubted anyone locked up here truly deserved it, or else they’d be in Azkaban under Auror watch. This was where you locked up people you didn’t want the public knowing were locked up.

At the end of one of the long cell-lined hallways stood another door, unremarkable from the outside, but when 383 tapped their wand against the jamb, as had happened with 005’s office, the door dissolved, revealing an open archway, and beyond, a massive room, utilitarian in design and completely empty save for a single chair.

A single chair with a woman sitting in it.

There were no chains, no bars, no restraints, and the woman sat unmoving, pitched forward so that her face was obscured by a mass of messy, lank brown hair.

Hermione looked like she’d been through hell and back, and Harry’s heart clenched—but he held himself. They couldn’t go charging in, not this time. These arseholes had taken down Draco while he was fully dragon, and they’d gotten Hermione despite her being more than ready for them. 383 didn’t seem like the sharpest pin in the cushion, but they could probably tank a jinx or two and come back swinging.

383 began slapping their wand against their palm, pointing it at Hermione: “Finite Incantatem.” The only sign any spell upon her had been removed was a languid slump to her shoulders, her head lolling to one side. “Rise and shine, Mudblood. Got a few new questions for you from the higher-ups.”

Hermione stirred to life at this, tilting her head just enough so she could fix her eye on 383. When she spoke, her voice was raspy and haggard: “W-water…please…”

“Oh!” 383 threw their hands into the air. “My most sincere apologies, Mudblood. Did those pillocks not tend to your needs while I was away? I’ll hang ‘em by their toenails for that, they ought to know better than to treat our guests with such neglect. No, no. Can’t have that—here, allow me.” He pointed his wand between her eyes. “Aguamenti.” A high-pressure stream of water erupted from the tip, slamming into Hermione’s forehead and sending her neck snapping back. Harry had to bite his hand to keep from crying out in sympathy as she struggled to catch her breath beneath the pelting stream.

383 quickly tired of such sport, though, and Harry knew there was an Unforgivable or three waiting just behind their lips, eager to be released. “Now, in reference to our previous conversation—you do remember our previous conversation, don’t you, Mudblood? I’m sure you do, I know you’re smarter than you look. The higher-ups are wondering if you’re prepared to share any further information on Project Bane at this time? Such as the creature’s current whereabouts? We know it’s not at Potter’s place anymore—where’ve you sent it? Are you able to track it? Now would be a grand time to share, if so. What’re you planning on doing with the creature? Got any more accomplices beyond Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter?”

The questions came in rapid sequence, delivered with a tone so banal it was hard to imagine 383 actually cared what Hermione had to say. 005 had only given them instructions to interrogate Hermione—there’d been nothing said about actually getting workable information from her. 005 probably knew there was no point in torturing Hermione—she wasn’t likely to crack; at this point, it was just torture for torture’s sake.

383 evidently agreed, cackling darkly under their mask. “Well, Mudblood, it appears we’re at an impasse. Let’s try an attitude adjustment: Crucio.”

Harry had to bite his palm not to cry out in protest—he’d never had to watch Hermione being tortured before. He’d heard it, and that had been bad enough. Having been on the receiving end of a Cruciatus Curse himself before, he knew there was no pain on earth like it. It was a dull ache, it was a searing burn, it was like electricity frying your veins, and you never stopped feeling it. There was never any point where your brain decided Hey this is enough pain, let’s just shut down for a few here and take a breather.

Hermione twitched and spasmed, screeching in agony as 383 gleefully orchestrated her torture like a Maestro at the symphony. Harry’s ears started ringing, and all the sounds around him faded into a dull, background drone. He had to strike now, while 383 was distracted—he couldn’t just stand here waiting for an opening that would never come. He had to see, had to think, had to do someth—

“What the—huh?” 383 smacked their wand against their palm and whipped it through the air a few times, confusion evident. With the brief reprieve, Hermione slumped forward, chest heaving as she took in breaths with laboured gasps, her screams still echoing off the tall walls around them. 383 cocked their head, regarding their wand, then pointed it at Hermione again—“Crucio,” they snarled, but the spell seemed to fizzle out, impotent, before it even reached Hermione.

Harry allowed himself to gawk for only a moment, then licked his lips and whispered, “Draco, Draco we’ve got to—” He reached out to where Draco had been—but found only air. Draco was gone.

But then he squinted, rubbing at his eyes and adjusting his glasses, because now that he actually knew what to look for, it was clear that no, Draco was not gone. He was right there, standing like a human—well, mostly human—shield between 383 and Hermione. There was nothing wrong with 383’s wand—the arcane energy had simply been rendered inert before it could reach its target as it collided with Draco’s fantastic anti-magic scale-suit.

Before Harry could let himself get lost too deeply in marvelling at Draco’s clever move, excitement for a counteroffensive welling up within him, Draco let his camouflage flake away, silvery scales scattering to reveal Draco’s smooth, unblemished face—and Harry had only a moment to appreciate the dark fury etched in elegant lines across his features before his nose stretched out into a nasty black muzzle filled with a hundred razor-sharp teeth. His neck snaked out from his shoulders, and his torso bulked up into a long, sinewy body that nearly filled the entire room once his wings arched up and up and up and then out, shading Hermione from view and curling around her protectively.

Oh fuck, Harry hadn’t quite thought they’d go this far, but perhaps he could take advantage of 383’s shock—he’d already dropped his wand, frozen in fear at the sight unfolding before him, so pants pissing was likely not far behind. Harry whipped off the Cloak, balling it up in one hand, and pointed his wand at 383. “Petrificus To—”

A bone-juddering roar that ended in a strident shriek ripped through the room and out the door, down the corridor, rattling the bars on the cells and echoing off the walls for several long seconds after—and suddenly they were on a very tight timer. It was a little bit ironic; for once, Harry wasn’t the one who’d endangered all their lives by acting impulsively. At least this way he wouldn’t have to endure any lectures—assuming, of course, that they survived this.

Draco lunged at 383, jaws snapping inches from his face, and 383 jerked backward, tripping over his own legs and tumbling to the ground in a pile of limbs as he scrambled for the door. Harry fought down the urge to just let Draco eat him, snarling, “Petrificus Totalus!” to freeze him in his tracks, with a, “Stupefy!” on top for good measure.

He snatched up 383’s wand, shaking a finger in Draco’s stupid scaly face. “You great tit! I hope you’re happy with yourself! We’re gonna have Unspeakables swarming us within seconds now!”

Draco rolled his big black eyes, swinging his trunk-sized head around in Hermione’s direction and sending a soft rush of breath over her. Her body slumped to the floor, no longer held in place by whatever magic had been set into the chair. Harry lunged forward to catch her before she hit her head as Draco shrank back down into something a bit more manageable, levering a shoulder under the opposite arm to Harry to help haul Hermione to her feet.

“Well pardon the fuck out of me,” Draco hissed, cheeks heating. “Some of us are rather new to the saving people business! Ought I to have waited patiently like you seemed content to do?”

“W—of course not, and I mean, that was fantastic, stepping in to stop him casting and all, but you didn’t have to transform and announce our presence to the entire Ministry!”

Draco’s blush darkened, and he grimaced. “…I did have to, actually.” He then began stalking forward, dragging Hermione along and leaving Harry to nearly trip over his own feet as he rushed to keep up, helping shoulder the load.

“…What do you me—”

“I told you being here sapped my focus—and that I couldn’t be held responsible for the beast’s actions. It’s not my fault it’s taken after your saviour complex!” He shuddered. “It—felt like it was about to burst out of me, just tear me apart trying to get out if I didn’t let it out. I don’t think it likes being here any more than I do, so if it’s all the same to you, I’d really like to get out of here now.”

A task that was easier said than done. Harry could sympathise with Draco now, recognising that—at least as far as he felt—the transformation had been unavoidable, a subconscious self-defence mechanism. But they were going to have a much more difficult time of escaping than they had getting in. Helping matters none was the fact that Hermione was battered and bruised and not even conscious, as far as Harry could tell, so they couldn’t even count on her help navigating the bowels of the Department of Mysteries.

“Well, I hope you were paying more attention than I was on the walk down here…” he muttered, half to himself and half petulantly to Draco as he secured his hold on Hermione and began dragging her unconscious body forward. They’d get as far as they could, and if they ran into trouble along the way, they’d just have to set Hermione aside, throw the Invisibility Cloak over her, and pray she didn’t get caught in the crossfire.

Draco had not, it turned out, been paying any more attention than Harry had while they’d followed 383 through the maze of hallways and stairwells, and after their third time getting so turned around they wound up almost back where they’d started, Harry had to call a time-out while they made an actual plan that might see them out of this place alive.

“What if we took an Unspeakable hostage?”

Draco blanched. “That’s your first suggestion?”

“As if you weren’t considering it yourself!”

“Well of course I was considering it—but you’re the one who just threw it out there before literally anything else!”

“I’m desperate! Don’t tell me you aren’t too.” He began pacing, taking care to step lithely over Hermione’s body, where they’d gently laid her out while they rested their muscles. “Fine—fine, we’ll put a pin in that one. What about—Apparition? I mean, sure it’s supposed to be impossible, but you already broke through the wards once. Could you manage it again, do you think?” He pointed to Hermione. “You could Side-along her with you, maybe head to the Wheezes shop? Ron keeps a spare key in the Mimbulus mimbletonia pot around the side of the building. Take care not to get any Stinksap on you, though—absolutely rancid.”

“Take care not to—” He leaned in close, forcing Harry’s back to the wall, and dropped his voice into a threatening hiss. “You’re barking if you think I could leave you here even if I wanted to! And I very much am starting to want to!”

Fuck it all, they were getting nowhere fast, and that there weren’t already dozens of Unspeakables converging on their position was a miracle.

Which of course was right about when they caught the sound of boots clomping down the hallway, coming at a rapid pace. “Shit, help me hide her in there,” Harry said, nodding to a small room off the main corridor. It had no door, but it was dark, and if no one saw them slip inside, they might escape notice—at least for a few more precious moments while they devised a plan.

They quickly carried Hermione’s still-unconscious body into the side room, covering her with the Invisibility Cloak while they pressed themselves up against the wall and held their breath. A team of five Unspeakables jogged past, all of them bearing a strong resemblance to 383. The goon squad, then—or one of several, more likely. Harry waited until the rumbling footsteps faded down the hallway. “Okay, how about this? We leave Hermione here for now, under the Cloak, and then you and I can sneak up behind those Unspeakables and take them out. And—by ‘take them out’ I mean stun them, or put them in a Body Bind or something. Not, y’know, eat them.”

“Eat them?!” Draco hissed in strident horror. “Why on earth would you think I’d eat them?!”

“No reason,” Harry said, too quickly to be believable and not at all thinking about how he’d lived in fear for a good month-plus that Malfoy might do just that to him. “Anyway, I think between the two of us, we should be able to—”

“Take them, yes, so you so boldly claimed. But in case it’s escaped your notice, I haven’t so much as touched a wand in nearly five years, and you flunked Auror school!”

“I didn’t flunk,” Harry protested hotly. “I declined to continue. And why am I the one coming up with all the plans only for you to shoot them down? You try suggesting something, Mr I Think I’ll Just Let Off A Good Roar In The Middle Of Our Stealth Mission For Shits And Giggles!”

“My god,” Hermione groaned, voice still raspy from all the screaming, “It’s like being back at Hogwarts again… I half want to be put back in that torture chamber. At least 383 had the good manners to Crucio me quietly…”

“You’re awake!” Harry sank to his knees by her side, gently moving her hair away from her face. She winced when he brushed a blooming bruise on her cheek. “Fuck, I’m sorry we took so long. We didn’t know where you’d been taken at first; this place is a literal maze.” He pressed 383’s wand into her hand. They weren’t much better now than they had been thirty seconds ago, but it felt good having someone to lead them who at least had some understanding of the layout of this place. He hoped. “Can you stand?”

He didn’t wait for her to respond, bracing himself to help her to her feet when she seemed to struggle to do so on her own. He turned to Draco to snap at him to help—

—when he was bodily shoved out of the way as Draco practically tackled Hermione, and for a panicked moment, Harry despaired he meant to do her some mischief, hurt her or lay into her with some stupid racist diatribe he’d been authoring in his head since the moment he’d come back to himself.

But instead, he nearly slammed her into the wall with the force of his hug, arms coming up around her neck, cushioned by her wild, bushy hair standing on end. He buried his face in the curly brown locks and murmured, voice thick with emotion, “Thank you.”

He held her there for a moment, and Hermione’s eyes, wide and white, softened as she brought her arms up to gingerly pat him on the back. “…You’re very welcome.”

And then Draco was shoving her away, a bit too roughly for Harry’s satisfaction, and scrambling back to stand beside Harry, smoothing down the Weasley jumper he was wearing and crossing his arms over his chest in a vain effort to hide the big “H” knitted into it. He poked his head out the door, feigning interest in checking for more Unspeakables charging down the corridor—and then seeming to actually be checking for them.

Hermione watched him, a little fond; Harry let him be weird if he wanted to—they had more important matters to attend to. “Right. There don’t happen to be any super-secret escape tunnels out of here that only you and maybe, like, two other people know about, both of whom are presently out of the country?” She grimaced and shook her head. “Yeah, didn’t figure…”

“How on earth did you even get down here? Wait, no, that’s a question for another time…” She seemed to re-register that it was Draco standing here with them—Draco, who was not Malfoy, and who had a nasty tongue on him that could do more (much more) than just babble ‘Arry incessantly. “…Lots of questions for another time.” She gave 383’s wand a testing flick, seemingly satisfied with the little sparks it gave off. “There’s just the one way in and out—and I can’t imagine it’ll be an easy task getting there.” She screwed up her features, confused, and asked Draco, “…I got smacked around quite a bit, so I can’t tell if I hallucinated it or not, but did you actually turn into a dragon and release a bellowing roar that probably put the entire Ministry, forget just this Department, on alert?”

Draco shuffled his feet and shrugged. “Might have.”

She massaged her temples. “Fantastic. I was afraid escaping might have been too easy; now we’ve got a proper challenge on our hands.”

Harry sympathised, but arguing about it wouldn’t help present circumstances. “Draco managed to force his way through the wards keeping out anyone without a Ministry badge on the way here—we Apparated in via the Atrium, and I had Arthur’s badge on me, but Draco had to get more, y’know, creative.” He lifted his brows hopefully. “You think there’s any chance he could make it back out, even from down here? I know the Ministry makes it so the average witch or wizard wouldn’t have a chance in hell of circumventing the wards, but Draco’s managed some pretty fantastic feats with the Blackblood’s whole anti-magic thing.”

A strange mixture of puffing pride and abject fury flashed over Draco’s features. “I told you: I’m not leaving you down here—”

“Calm down, I’m not saying you should—you’ve got two arms; I’d go with you, of course. And maybe now that Hermione’s actually conscious, she’s got some idea if that’d even be something we could attempt?” He turned to Hermione. “What do you think? I know Side-alonging more than one person can be pretty taxing, but if it’s our only choice…” He let the comment hang, hoping she’d snatch it up and tie it off neatly.

Alas, she began nibbling on a fingernail, a habit she adopted when faced with a problem without an immediately obvious solution. “I—I don’t know, honestly. I’ve only seen him—you, sorry, Draco—demonstrate these manifestations of the dragon’s abilities while in human form, what, a few times at best? Mostly when Harry was trying to knock you over the head with a frying pan. The point is, I’ve got no idea what you are and aren’t capable of.” She frowned at Draco, brows furrowed. “…Do you?”

Draco’s lips thinned into a tight line, and he did not respond. Which was his prerogative, but they really didn’t have the luxury of downplaying Draco’s oodles of confidence right about now. “Well I’ve seen it, and he made it into the Ministry fine, so it stands to reason he could get us out of here fine too.”

“He’s standing right here, you know,” Draco spat. “And he’s telling you it’s too risky. You Side-alonged me in, tearing through the wards was probably just my body’s natural reaction to trying not to get Splinched.”

“More risky than waiting for a horde of Unspeakables to descend upon us? We have to at least try, don’t we?” He turned to Hermione. “Can you think of any other way that doesn’t involve, I dunno, trying to take on the entire Department of Mysteries and maybe the Ministry itself?”

She worried her lip, glancing back and forth between Harry and Draco. “I mean, how confident are you that you can actually manage this?”

“Not at all,” Draco said flatly, and Harry added generously, “But you did it before…”

Hermione shook her head. “That only proves it can be done, not that it can be done consistently, and I’m inclined to give more weight to the opinion of the person who’d actually be doing the Apparating.”

“At least someone’s been paying attention,” Draco snarled, pacing nervously around the very small room. “So much for ‘I’ll listen’, eh?”

Harry’s cheeks heated, and he refused to acknowledge Draco’s comment. “Well—fine. All right. What about—what about turning us into teacups?”

“Transmogrification?”

“Yeah, that. Could you do like you did to smuggle Draco out in the first place? Doesn’t have to be teacups—I think I’d make a pretty good quill.”

Her features scrunched up into a grimace. “I’d rather not place all our lives in jeopardy practising very experimental magic I’ve only been studying for a few weeks total. Your confidence in me is inspiring and appreciated, but I’m probably the Department’s most wanted witch now, and even with your Invisibility Cloak, there’s every chance I’d still be discovered now that it sounds like they’re doing strict sweeps of the facility looking for us. If I got caught, you two would be helpless. Plus I’ve no idea what happens to a Transmogrified person who gets broken, and I’d rather not find out the hard way.”

“Nor would I,” Draco said. “It’s a miracle I survived intact the first time. Let someone else be your magiscience project. I’ve been experimented on enough to last ten lifetimes.”

Harry threw up his hands. “So—what do we do? We’re trapped here, and eventually they’re gonna actually look in this room and find us.”

“I suggest we don’t be here. I suggest we just get the fuck out—” Draco jerked a thumb at the doorway. “The old-fashioned way.”

Hermione shrugged, apparently in agreement with the ludicrous proposition. “It’s what we always do when we break into the Department of Mysteries. Why mess with a good thing?”

Harry boggled at Draco—Hermione he could understand, she’d just been tortured and clearly wasn’t in her right mind, but since when had Draco been one to rush headlong into danger? “Are you mad? You want to—what, take on the entire fucking Ministry?”

“No, I very much do not want to—they’ll be expecting it for one, so we won’t even have the element of surprise, and for another, they probably outnumber us a hundred to one.” He began tugging at the collar of his jumper, fanning himself. “But this thing’s itching for a fight, and I’m inclined to let it.”

Oh. This was about the ‘beast’ then—which meant Draco might well be forcing himself into a situation he was neither prepared for nor actually up to. Harry stepped in close. “You don’t have to do this. We can find another way—”

Draco’s head snapped around until he was almost nose to nose with Harry, grey eyes steely and flashing. “Do not patronise me. I may not have your urge to fling myself into danger’s open maw at every opportunity, and no one would ever accuse me of being brave, thank all above and below, but it strikes me that there’s one thing this creature’s actually good for, and that’s keeping me and mine alive. So stand back and let it.”

Harry squared his jaw, exhaling sharply. “So I’m just supposed to shoo you on ahead of us to take whatever curses and hexes and jinxes the DOM decides to throw our way? And hope you can shake them off?”

“I know you like to play the hero, and I’m sorry I’m stealing your bag, but needs must.”

Harry shook his head; nothing about this sat right with him, but Malfoy had been very stubborn, and Draco was no different. If Harry didn’t let him try and be the big damn hero like he was working himself up to, he’d probably step on Harry, maybe eat his glasses so he couldn’t see the Unspeakables coming and had to rely on Draco for protection. Harry wondered how much of this was Draco and how much of it was the remnants of Malfoy still clinging on, hell-bent on literally shielding Harry from harm. He was going to get himself killed like this—and there wasn’t a damn thing Harry could do about it.

He thought of Draco, spitting at him You’re going to get yourself killed. And I’m going to die trying to stop it from happening.

But if he’d learned nothing over their years antagonising one another, surely it was that being Harry Potter’s friend (or whatever they were) was hazardous to your health. It was Draco’s decision to make, not Harry’s, and the best thing he could do in this situation was to cover their rear. He palmed his wand, extending a hand to the door invitingly. “Then lead on, O Great Wyrm. We are but peasants under your sheltering wing.”

Draco lifted a brow. “Great Wyrm. I do like the sound of that.” And before Harry could ask him again if he was really, really sure about this, Draco pointed to Hermione, snapping his fingers. “Middle of the pack, Granger. I’ve got fuck-all idea where the hell we’re going, and if you go down, then we’re royally fucked.”

Hermione frowned but did as commanded, shuffling to place herself between Harry and Draco and muttering just so Harry could hear, “I think I miss the other one…”

And Harry could honestly still say, despite it all, that he did not.

He tightened his grip on his wand, made sure he had a good eye on their rear, and let Draco indulge his better half—even if it killed him.

Chapter Text

Harry didn’t like one bit that Draco had chosen now of all moments to suddenly develop his own saviour complex—but he had to admit, the sight of Draco charging down the labyrinthine hallways of the Essence Room, taking spellfire in every colour of the rainbow straight to the chest and having it cascade off a shimmering shield of black scales while he returned his own snarled Confringos and Stupefys, was kind of thrilling.

He hadn’t seen Draco actually duel since Second Year (well, arguably, he’d seen him duel just a few days prior, in that very same Pensieve memory), and they’d neither of them been terribly good back then, but this was a different beast altogether. Draco was, as professed, out of practice, but what he lacked in finesse, he made up for with sheer raw power.

It was like he was channelling every spell he was hit with back into his own arcane well, bolstering his own magic with that of the Unspeakables rallying against them as they charged forward. Harry wondered just how much of the Blackblood’s abilities he’d actually be able to harness, if he really tried—and he suspected Hermione, who was all but openly gaping at his prowess, was wondering the same. No wonder the Department of Mysteries was so eager to get him back under their thumb; with proper training (and under the heavy yoke of an Imperius Curse), he stood to be quite the force to be reckoned with indeed.

It did not take the Unspeakables long, however, to realise that their spells weren’t doing all that much to Draco, especially given they didn’t seem to be allowed to use anything truly deadly so as not to ruin their investment in ‘Project Bane’. But the burlier ones sent into the fray seemed to understand that raw muscle and fists were actually more effective than magic in this case, and the tide rapidly turned in their favour.

They had finally managed to reach the laboratory level with its horrific cavalcade of mutated and malformed experiments, when Draco turned to Hermione, shoved her forward in his place, and shouted to the both of them, “Cover me!”

Hermione had only a split second to yelp, “Protego!” before her head was nearly taken off by an errant curse flung her way, and Harry called after Draco’s retreating figure, “What the—get back here you idiot!” But alas, the idiot was gone, ducking into one of the labs and leaving Harry and Hermione to face down a dozen Unspeakables with more on the way.

“I’ve gotta say, I really don’t think this is a healthy work environment for you,” Harry huffed, casting a Stickfast Hex on the shoes of the nearest Unspeakable, forcing those charging up behind them to either shimmy around them in the narrow hallway or collide with them in a heap of humanity. “I’d start looking for a new gig if I were you.”

“You know, I think I quite agree.” She conjured a bunch of wizard crackers in the centre of the approaching horde, and the blast sent a shockwave echoing in all directions. “I’m thinking of pursuing a career in a field that’s a bit less dangerous—like Erumpent husbandry or Venomous Tentacula farming.”

“Sounds promising, but I’m not sure you could secure a refer—what the bloody hell?”

What looked like a bird of some sort swooped through his legs, nearly knocking him off his feet and squawking loudly. Its strident screech made Harry wince, along with all the Unspeakables, and then there came the sound of soft pattering wingbeats. Harry turned just in time to duck before a dozen more of the weird birds rushed by in a flurry of rainbow-hued plumage, and the corridor was filled with their irritating twittering calls that seemed to crawl inside the ear canal and beat incessantly against the eardrums.

“Fwoopers!” Hermione shouted, hands clamped over her ears. “Don’t listen to them! You’ll go mad!”

“What?” Harry shouted back, and she mimed for him to cover his ears as well.

On the tails of the Fwoopers came a massive snake with far more heads than was appropriate, and Harry plastered himself against the wall, hoping it might find the burly Unspeakables on the front line more appealing targets than Harry’s very stringy build. He closed his eyes tight, in case this was some sort of mutant Basilisk, and screamed when something grabbed his shirt collar. “Hermione! Run! Get out, now!”

“Take your own damn advice,” Draco hissed, shoving Harry forward by the collar. “And open your eyes, there’s Clabbert pus all over the place now, and it’ll eat through anything it touches.”

Harry blinked, glancing around—it was utter chaos, Draco having evidently set free every successful (and unsuccessful) experiment he could find as a distraction to clear the path for them. And it was working—a horde of little flying creatures that looked like Doxies crossed with Pixies were tearing out the hair of one unfortunate Unspeakable, while another lay unconscious on the floor as a sinister, black-skinned humanoid creature with eyes like glowing coals crawled over them, unhinging its jaw and opening its mouth impossibly wide over the Unspeakable’s head. The Fwoopers had left behind a shower of feathers in all different colours, and the tiled floor was, indeed, pockmarked with sizzling little droplets of a mysterious goo that smelled like pine sap.

“You’re absolutely mad!” Harry marvelled, a tiny bit terrified they’d just made things even worse.

“I told you, I can’t be held responsible for the beast’s actions. Granger? Granger!”

Hermione squeaked a response from the other side of some creature that looked like an Erumpent crossed with a Flitterbloom (or maybe a Devil’s Snare, Harry hadn’t gotten best marks in Herbology, and he did not want to check the massive beast too closely to find out), one hand waving in the air for their attention. “Fantastic idea, Draco—it’s bought us a little time at least.”

“Pleased you approve,” Draco said, waspish with stress. “Shall we take that precious time we’ve earned and get the fuck out of here?”

Harry was more than all right with that, and as a trio, they raced through the newly cleared hallways, dodging puddles of Clabbert pus as they went. They reached a t-junction, though, and distant screams could be heard down all directions, making it difficult to determine which way they ought to head next. Harry turned to Hermione. “Which way n—”

But Hermione was not there. Harry whirled around, scanning the hallway behind them—and found her stood before a doorway, chewing on a nail and looking like she was very much considering going through said doorway. Harry jogged back to meet her while Draco hissed Potter, get your bony arse back here! He was one to talk. “What’s wrong? Is that the way out?”

“I—no, it’s not, not really but—” She sighed, and it came out a half-growl-half-huff as she began stomping up the stairs. “We have to.”

“Have to—have to what?!” Harry looked back at Draco, helpless, then turned to call after Hermione. “What are you doing?!”

She stopped halfway up the staircase. “If we don’t get something on these people, they’ll just keep coming after us. Me to kill, and Draco to capture. We need something that can shut this whole endeavour down—and we need to get it now, before they have a chance to destroy anything incriminating.”

Harry gestured back to Draco. “We’ve got a whole human being! Someone who can testify what’s been done down here. And you too!”

Hermione shook her head. “You think anyone will listen to—” She dropped her voice. “To a Death Eater? You think they’ll listen to someone who helped a Death Eater? I love that you have so much faith in the good of society, but having worked here, been a part of all of this, I know we need something iron-clad. It can’t just be testimony—we need actual evidence.” She inclined her head up the stairs. “005’s office is just this way—the Archives will be guarded more securely than the Philosopher’s Stone was, but no one would dare defile a Director’s private space.”

Harry groaned, turning back to Draco. “She says we—”

“I fucking heard,” Draco growled, grabbing Harry roughly by the shoulders and shoving him towards the staircase. “At this rate I might eat someone after all.”

Hermione led the way from the front this time, hobbling as fast as she could on what had to be heavily battered legs; he was pretty sure he’d heard her seal a fracture earlier. He wondered what she knew about stemming internal bleeding. They were both of them going to wind up next to Ron at St Mungo’s before this was all said and done.

But when Hermione drew up short, it was before an open archway—the door had already been dissolved, and the nameplate was blank. Inside was an empty room, four grey walls and nothing else. “…No, no it was here, I’m certain of it.”

“Are…are you sure?” Harry glanced around; the chaos had not reached this level yet, it seemed, and they were all alone. “I mean, all these doors look the same, maybe you just got turned around—”

“I know it’s here! I know it is!” Her voice was getting strident and choked, and Harry sympathised, he did, but they couldn’t afford to get worked up like this right now.

“I believe you—I do. But we don’t have time to figure out what’s happened, we’ll have to take our chances escaping for now and live to fight another day. I can call in every favour I’m owed—”

“No one owes you any favours…” She burbled, shoving her hair back from her face. “They’re just nice to you because you’re you and everyone wants to be able to tell their friends at pub night that they did something for the Boy Who Lived.”

Harry frowned; that was probably true, but she didn’t have to come out and say it. Hermione was having about the worst day it was possible to have, though, so he decided to cut her some slack. “…Then I’ll give another few people a fantastic pub night tale, either way we’ll make it work. Let’s just go. We’re tempting fate as it is—you can’t make an office appear out of thin air, so if 005’s hidden it or covered their tracks somehow, then there’s—”

“Oh fuck!” Hermione yelped, hand going to her mouth. “Fuck!” And it sounded like a good ‘fuck’, so Harry raised his brows as if to say Well? She gave a little jump, twirled around, and whipped her wand through the air: “Appare Vestigium!”

A shimmering bubble of magic emanated from the tip of her wand, expanding out around her and bringing into definition the thin, sparkling outline of 005’s office, just barely visible, like a ghost of what had once been.

“Look!” Hermione shouted, delighted, and pointed at the floor. Outlined in a similar ghostly sparkle was a set of footprints, leading out the door and down the hallway. “Ooh, they’re heading for the entrance—come on, maybe we can still catch them if all those experimental horrors Draco set loose have held them up. Damn, if they make it out of the Ministry, there’s next to no chance we’ll be able to find them and shake them down for evidence.”

“Then that sounds to me like we need to make sure they don’t make it out of the Ministry.”

“Does this mean we can finally get the fuck out of here?” Draco called impatiently from the hallway, rapping the hilt of his wand against the doorjamb for their attention. “I’m seriously about to start eating people, and I can’t promise it won’t be either of you!”

Harry darted past him, tugging on his elbow. “You wouldn’t eat me. You like me.”

“I believe we’ve been over this before and concluded that I don’t like you.”

“Yeah, well, we can revisit that once we’ve finished our business here.”

The horde of horrors had helpfully scoured the halls clean of any more Unspeakables for them, such that they met no further challenge on their way back to the entrance room. Following 005’s magically enhanced tracks, it was no difficult task to make their escape this time, and they found themselves spat out into the long, dark hallway leading back to the main lift. The bluebell flames flickered in their sconces, throwing cool shadows along the walls, and as the door to the Department of Mysteries shut behind them, the cries and wails from either the Unspeakables or the sad creatures forced to endure their experimentation (or both) faded away—such that the only sound reaching their ears now was the faint mechanical whirring of the lift itself.

Someone was already inside—and on their way back up to the Atrium.

“Shit,” Hermione spat, pointing to the fading tracks. “It’s 005. We’ve just missed them. We’ll have to take the stairs!”

“I think I’ll take the lift all the same and meet you up there,” Draco said darkly, marching toward the latticework doors and already beginning to bulk out into the dragon.

“Shit—stairs, now!” Harry grabbed Hermione’s hand and jerked her forward—the last thing they needed was to get this far only to be crushed to death by a pissed-off Animagus in mid-transformation. The echo of scraping metal and stone being crushed beneath nasty, ripping claws followed them up the empty stairwell as Draco forced himself into the lift shaft and began climbing.

By the time they jogged panting from the stairwell, the Atrium was in an even more chaotic state than the Department of Mysteries had been. The lanterns had been fired, casting the space in a warm, friendly glow that seemed more akin to a busy weekday morning than what was still the dead of night, and there were already a dozen or more Unspeakables rushing for the Apparition Zone and disappearing with loud CRACKs that echoed around the hall. The nightwatch-wizard was whipping his wand frantically, calling up silvery border collies and urging them to go fetch his superior because, “There’s a fudging dragon attacking the Ministry and I sure as hell don’t get paid enough to slay it!” This, as Draco was clambering his way up through the lift shaft, bellowing in fury, and 005 was struggling to escape the lift before it had properly stopped at Level 8, scrabbling their way through the halfway-open lift doors. Their featureless Unspeakable mask had been lost in the confusion, and their wide-eyed panic was now writ large for all to see.

Draco released a roar of heady accomplishment as he finally burst through into the Atrium proper, hurling 005 into a red-and-white-striped push cart advertising a selection of 1001 ice cream flavours as he clawed his way out onto the polished marble floor. Several of the fleeing Unspeakables had summoned courage enough to turn back and brandish their wands in a feeble attempt to protect 005 from the massive creature that had just crawled up from the lift shaft and was presently attempting to knock them down like bowling pins with its lashing tail, which gave Harry and Hermione cover to attempt to apprehend 005 before they made it to the Apparition Zone.

005 had not risen to the rank they held in the Department of Mysteries by being stupid, though, and perhaps wisely recognising that they could not hope to take on a Carpathian Blackblood themselves, not even with several of their Department members attempting to provide aid, they quietly slipped into a darkened culvert and began attempting to Disillusion themselves.

Of course; they were a high-ranking Ministry employee. They had no reason to run, especially since Hermione had no evidence proving their involvement in anything untoward, and Draco was Draco, so who was going to take his word over a Department head’s? They didn’t need to escape, they just needed to wait long enough for Draco to be brought down and Harry and Hermione rounded up for questioning about the state of the Department of Mysteries, and then it would be their word against 005’s and the entire rest of the Department’s.

“…You’re right, you definitely need that evidence,” Harry said darkly. “Are you prepared to get your hands dirty if it comes to it, though?”

Hermione set her expression to one of grim determination. “No. But I’ve done rather a lot over the years I wasn’t prepared for, and a good portion of it was things I would never have thought myself capable of, for better or worse. That bitch fucked with my family, though.” Harry lifted a brow at her language. “And that’s just not done.”

They left Draco to handle the riff-raff, fanning out to flank 005. Harry hadn’t had a proper duel since Voldemort, now that he thought about it, and he probably could’ve gone the rest of his life never squaring off against a “villain” in that manner again, but here he was.

“There’s nowhere left to run, 005,” Hermione called out, and from their culvert, 005 jolted, realising only now they’d been made. “You’ve got two well-trained wizards on either side of you, a rather sizeable dragon who’d very much like to make your formal acquaintance, and a good hundred feet of open space between you and your only route out of here. You’re welcome to make a run for it, if you’ve decided hiding probably won’t work out for you, but my friend and I both have pretty good aim, and that dragon’s hungry.” She levelled her wand at 005. “Would you like to surrender quietly, or should we see who’s a quicker draw?”

005 released a bracing huff. “Always were too clever for your own good. I had high hopes for you, 072. You could have been a fine example for the Department—why you would throw away a promising career to save that is beyond me. He and his ilk would have slaughtered you given half a chance.”

“He and his ilk tried—and it didn’t take. Sinking to their level doesn’t prove we’re better than them—it only proves we’re no better than them. And don’t lecture me about having high hopes—I genuinely thought we were doing something in Essence, something that would change the world—”

“Oh, we were. A change you clearly didn’t have the stomach to see through. Countless man-hours of research, ruined because you couldn’t stand by and quietly watch as we were far kinder to that miserable little cretin and his friends than they were to me and mine.”

“Revenge is no excuse for torturing someone—” Harry started, and 005 cackled.

“Oh that is rich coming from you, Harry Potter.” And Harry flushed, because all right, they kind of had a point. “And apropos of your earlier offer, 072: I think I’d like to see who’s a quicker draw, after all.”

They snapped their wand in a flourishing movement, and Harry and Hermione both threw up Shield Charms—but 005 wasn’t casting at them, they were casting at the floor, which began crumbling away beneath their feet as 005 laid into it with a bellowed, “Defodio!”

Harry dived off to the side as a plume of dust and debris went up, and spells began to be traded rapidfire amidst the chaos.

He couldn’t see shit through the smoke, though, and didn’t want to fling spells about willy-nilly, wary of hitting Hermione. He wadded up the Invisibility Cloak, covering his nose and mouth so he didn’t inhale too much of the dust, and took a beat to reflect on the fact that he was using one of the vaunted Hallows as a glorified air filter. It felt like using the Elder Wand to dislodge a stubborn drain clog.

Through sheer luck, he managed to find the Fountain of Magical Brethren in the smoke and huddled behind it—where he found the nightwatch-wizard already pinned down and weeping with relief at Harry’s appearance. “Wh—what’s going on?! This is only my third night on the job! I haven’t even gotten my first paycheque yet! Is it always like this?!”

“I mean, honestly, it’s kinda been like this both times I’ve visited so…” The poor wizard blanched and then slipped into a dead faint. Good. One less innocent bystander to worry about getting caught in any crossfire.

From across the Atrium, Draco released a roar of frustration, and Harry heard the tell-tale whomp whomp whomp of him beating the air with his boatsail-sized wings. He grabbed tight to the fountain’s edge, bracing for the gale-force gusts coming his way, and sighed in relief as the air cleared—revealing Hermione and 005 in the midst of a nasty back-and-forth that looked like it could go either way.

Harry scrambled around the massive hole in the Atrium floor, wand in hand and ready to provide backup, and Draco, who seemed to have either eaten or otherwise dispatched the Unspeakables who’d been harassing him, began scrabbling across the polished tile to do the same, claws clacking brightly on the marble. 005 tossed an Expulso Harry’s way to ward him off, but it flew wide and exploded the head of the fountain’s centaur sculpture. Draco shrieked in fury at the gall and flared his wings wide, their span so great they easily covered both Hermione and Harry once he’d drawn close enough. He bared his fangs in threat, but 005 did not seem intimidated in the least.

Hermione pushed her hair back from her face as the three of them converged on 005. She rubbed at her cheek, smearing a streak of blood that had been trickling down from a cut across her temple, then drew herself up tall, wand brandished. “…I’ll ask again, one last time: will you lay down your wand and yield—or will you have us take it from you by force?”

This close, Harry thought 005 looked like they could be someone’s grandmother. They looked older than Andromeda, even, and more the type to ask if you took two lumps of sugar or three with your tea rather than to be directing burly thugs to use Unforgivables on their own subordinates. Harry wondered if they had children—or grandchildren. Maybe they did—or had, and that was the entire point of this sick business. Years later, and still they were left dealing with the repercussions of that fucking pointless war.

005 eyed them all in sequence—with Draco earning the darkest glare of them all. Harry felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Animals were at their most dangerous when cornered, and humans were no exception. He tightened his grip on his wand, feeling a spike of adrenaline flood his bloodstream and setting his heart to thrumming in his chest. This person had tortured Draco for reasons Harry could kind of understand and Hermione for reasons he couldn’t—and they clearly still believed, perhaps with well-founded faith, that they would come out the other end of this smelling of roses.

005’s thin lips twisted into a toothy smile. “…Unfortunately for you, 072, we just learned only moments ago that I’m a quicker draw than you.”

Harry was ready for it, Expelliarmus on his lips, but he’d been expecting 005 to strike at Hermione, and suddenly their casting arm wasn’t where he’d thought it would be, swinging wide overhead as an arc of sickly green magic whipped out and struck Draco square in his heavily armoured chest, the dragon’s screeching roar mingling with the echoed cry of Avada Kedavra!

Time slowed to a syrupy crawl.

Hermione shrieked in horror, casting a reflexive Body Bind on 005 and sending them to their knees, where they toppled onto one shoulder, face pressed into the cold marble tile. Their grin of triumph was frozen on their features as their eyes, unblinking, took in the terror they’d just wrought.

Draco reared up onto his hind legs and seemed to freeze in place, wings spread impossibly wide, and Harry thought for one brief, glimmering moment that the dragon had shrugged this off, too, fucking Wizard’s Bane indeed!

And then everything went limp, and Draco staggered in place before falling, so so slowly, slamming into the Fountain of Magical Brethren as the flooring shook under the massive weight of his body slumping to the ground, unmoving.

Time unstuck itself—and then Harry was running, at breakneck speed, trainers slapping against the dust- and debris-covered flooring as he scrambled to Draco’s side. He was already casting Rennervate before he was even in range, heart in his throat and fucking up the verbal components. The creature’s body was still—too still, but that didn’t mean anything. Of course a curse of that magnitude would knock the wind out of him, of course it would—but it had taken the combined forces of most of the Department of Mysteries just to put him under stasis before. It would take more, so much more, than one offhand Unforgivable from a bitter old witch to bring him down for good.

And he made sure Draco heard this, voice quavering as he continued to cast a litany of spells between lectures at the cold, dead carcass lying before him that was not cold or dead or a carcass. “I wasted my entire fucking summer putting you back to rights you literal knob, so wake the fuck up and give me back my fucking Weasley jumper.” He gave the dragon’s soft belly an angry kick and screamed. “Wake up! What good’s your stupid ‘magical resistance’ if you can’t shrug off one measly little Killing Curse, huh? I mean, I did it twice! So wake your lazy fucking arse up—” He sank to his knees and began shaking one of Draco’s massive front limbs, now limp in death—

—and to his horror, the movement caused a handful of scales to slough off. He stared at his palms and the dull black scales stuck to them, no longer shimmering with that opalescent oil-slick sheen, and shook them violently, causing the scales to flutter to the ground. He sprang to his feet, taking several staggering steps back and shaking his head. This wasn’t real, this wasn’t happening—he’d gotten concussed in the fight earlier, and he’d fallen unconscious. Draco had taken him to St Mungo’s against his better judgement, and now the Healers had forced some vile but effective potion down his throat that would leave him feeling right as rain come morning, but not before he’d had to struggle through a series of ever-darker nightmares where he tried to save Draco one more time and failed.

A breeze he could not feel but could see the effects of began whispering through the Atrium, whisking away the dust and smoke still hanging in the air and whipping the scales that had fallen from Harry’s hands into little funnels. Harry stared ahead, numb, and felt his eyes grow hot as everything took on a soft blur. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like, losing a friend (“We aren’t friends!”), and worse, he’d almost forgotten what it felt like losing them when it was all your fault (“You can’t save everyone.”). It was kind of funny, when you thought about it: he had one spell he was known for. And the one time (well, all right, second time) it had mattered, he hadn’t been able to pull it off.

Draco, at least, would have found it funny. If it hadn’t been what’d gotten him killed.

The breeze was strengthening, beginning to whip at Harry’s hair, and he glanced around, unsure of where it had even come from. Countermeasures of some sort from the Ministry, perhaps? Too little, too late if so.

More scales began to flake away from the dragon’s corpse, skittering around the Atrium like dead leaves on the wind, and then whole patches were being ripped off, and Harry’s heart clenched. “Don’t—fucking do this—” he growled, frustration choking him. He clenched his wand white-knuckled tight and stepped close, but he didn’t know what he thought he could do—he wanted to cover the body, do something until this wind died down. Give this miserable sod some fucking decency in death at least. The Atmospheric Charms always seemed to be on the fritz here, and he recalled there being a spell that could restore them, but the incantation was about the furthest thing from his mind in this moment.

But more and more scales continued to either flake away or dissolve into dust and debris, and Harry reached down to gather as many as he could—there wouldn’t be anything left to bury at this rate, and why had Draco chosen now of all times to grow a spine? He wasn’t a Gryffindor—he was a slimy little snake who cowered in the shadows while people with bigger hearts and smaller brains than him risked their lives for him. This was what you got reduced to when you tried to be something you weren’t: a lumpy sack of meat lying cold on the floor.

An errant scale flew into his mouth, and he spat it out—but then another smacked him in the forehead, and another hit his cheek, and then there was a veritable torrent of them whirling around him, pelting him from all sides and lodging themselves in his hair and the folds of his clothes and all sorts of places scales were neither needed nor wanted. He batted them away furiously, shaking his head until they fell around him in a shower of little black flakes—

—and when he was able to open his eyes again, he saw that the dragon’s carcass had been stripped away by the whipping wind, reduced to a pitiful shell that lay cracked open and empty like a chrysalis.

No guts, no innards, no bones or blood or muscle, only…

Only a human body, curled up atop a nest of black scales that clashed fiercely with his white-blond hair and emerald Weasley jumper.

Breathing.

Harry let out a sound he’d never heard himself make before—hadn’t thought he could make, honestly—and rushed to Draco’s side, forgoing all care and gentleness for someone who it seemed had just come back from the dead and instead shaking his shoulders violently. “Draco? Draco!” He pressed his ear to Draco’s chest, just in case he’d imagined the gentle up-and-down. There was a faint but definite badump…badump…badump that Harry could have listened to for hours. He drew back and gave Draco a light slap on the cheek. “Wake up, O Great Wyrm. If I’m not getting any sleep tonight, you aren’t either.”

Draco grimaced, features scrunching up into a hideous visage, and Harry didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful to see someone look so ugly. He twisted his head away. “That’s physical assault. I’m filing charges.”

“They’d never convict me, I’m Harry-fucking-Potter.”

“Ugh,” Draco said, and Harry wasn’t entirely sure which part of the interaction it was directed toward. “What the hell happened? I feel like I got run over by a herd of hippogriffs…” He braced a hand against his forehead and winced. “Gads, my skull feels like it’s about to split open.”

“Welcome to my world,” Harry chuckled, throat still a bit tight. “And it was nothing, really.” He shrugged. “I mean. You may have just taken a Killing Curse to the chest and shrugged it off. But—you know, other than that. Nothing of note.”

Draco blinked at him with wide grey eyes for several long seconds—then closed them again and exhaled slowly. “Oh, is that all?” He leaned forward, shifting his legs under him, clearly intent on getting to his feet. Harry tried to help him, but Draco batted his hand away—and then made a hasty grab for him again when he wobbled unsteadily and his ankles buckled under him. “I thought I’d done something amazing.”

Harry thought he had too—but it wasn’t a good idea to puff a Slytherin up too much, so he said instead, “Afraid it was just the Blackblood being the fantastic magical creature that it is. I don’t think you get to take credit for it.”

“Well it’s my genes that made me turn into the damn thing in the first place—I ought to get some credit.” He let Harry fit his shoulder under Draco’s arm as they hobbled as a pair over to where Hermione had positioned herself at a respectful distance watching over the frozen 005, perhaps thinking it wasn’t her place to intrude on Harry while he mourned. A dark part of him agreed. She’d been able to save him—Harry hadn’t.

“Shouldn’t your parents get the credit, in that case?”

“And as their sole heir, I shall accept all credit on their behalf, do you know nothing of wizarding beneficiary law?” He leaned into Harry, stumbling a bit drunkenly over his own feet. “…I was hoping they might start calling me ‘The Dragon Who Lived’. You know, maybe start my own little fanatical cult following. It’s always been a dream of mine.”

“Oh, so you were just jealous of me in school, then? You didn’t think I didn’t deserve the attention—you just wanted it for yourself.”

“Good gad, man, it took you eleven years to figure that out? I know you’re no Ravenclaw, but still.” He used Harry’s shoulder to lever himself up to stand a bit straighter, and Harry saw why—they weren’t alone in the Atrium anymore. Others—others who were not Unspeakables—were starting to arrive. Soon, some of them would stop simply gawping at the destruction and work up the courage to confront them about the state of the place. “First the Cruciatus Curse—and now the Killing Curse. Hmm. That’s two Unforgivables I’ve shaken off now.”

“Maybe someday you’ll make it a trifecta so you never have to worry about this bullshit happening again.”

Draco had nothing to say to that, though, only gave a mock bow to Hermione when they drew close enough to speak. “Please, hold your applause—it’s gauche in public.”

Her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears, and she smiled. “I’m very glad to see you’re still around to engage in such witty repartee.”

“Well, for my next act, I think I’d like to disappear—” He cast a furtive glance to someone who looked very much like an Auror who’d been rousted from his bed before the crack of dawn and was presently marching their way. “Will that be a problem?” 005’s paralysed body lay near the pit they’d carved into the Atrium’s floor. Harry kind of wanted to kick them into it—he might have, if Hermione hadn’t been there. Draco, he firmly believed, would have asked to help.

Hermione reached into her pocket, palming a glowing glass orb. She gave it a little shake, and a silvery liquid sloshed around inside. “Pocket Pensieve. I reckon there’s enough juicy memories stored in here to set a few things right. And…” She too had spotted the sleep-deprived Auror who was waving them down now. “Perhaps it’s for the best we head back to Harry’s cottage for the evening—morning—whatever it is and turn ourselves in later.”

Harry quite agreed with that idea—and as a unit, they quickly made their way, dragging Draco between them, to the Apparition Zone and disappeared with a CRACK.

When they popped back into being in the middle of Harry’s sitting room, he immediately moved to get Draco settled in the armchair, which he would admit was much more comfortable than the guest sofa. He was considering fetching a blanket when Hermione placed a hand on Harry’s arm. “Ron?”

Oh. Fuck, he’d nearly forgotten. “He’s all right—or at least, I think he is. He’s at St Mungo’s—Molly and Arthur were with him, last I heard. I think he was unconscious, but Arthur seemed to think the Healers would be able to put him to rights. We didn’t really have time to check on him personally…”

“No, no—I rather appreciate you coming to find me directly instead of popping by to deliver a get-well-soon bouquet to my husband.” She wiped a hand over her face. “I should go see him, though. Start planning how we’re going to deal with—well, everything. Oh.” She palmed the pocket Pensieve and passed it to Harry. “You should hold on to this. It might be all that stands between us and a dank cell in Azkaban.”

“Maybe they’ll name a wing after my family,” Draco muttered, eyes closed and head resting against the tall, plushly upholstered back of the armchair.

Harry pocketed the orb. “Yeah, I’ll keep it safe.” He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna pick through my drinks cabinet and see if I can’t fix him something strong enough to kill him this time. Would you like anything?”

“Well, if I’m going to get alcohol poisoning, it’s a good thing my next stop is a hospital. Sure.”

“I prefer liqueurs if you’ve got any banging around in there,” Draco called after them, and Harry ignored him. Wanker.

He didn’t go right for the liquor cabinet, though, stopping at the kitchen table to sink into one of the not-very-comfortable seats to really catch his breath for the first time since they’d been jumped in the garden the previous afternoon. Hermione joined him, letting her head fall forward to rest on the table, cocked to the side so she could see him. She smiled softly. “Well, that’s two for two in ‘breaking into the Department of Mysteries and then breaking out of it’. Shall we try making it an annual thing? Get the old gang back together, take turns getting captured and needing rescuing?”

Harry snorted softly. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d like to go at least another seven years before we try again.” He pushed his glasses up to rub at his eyes; he was remembering now that neither he nor Draco had gotten any proper sleep in the past twenty-four hours, and it was starting to catch up to him now. “At least no one died this time.”

Hermione’s expression fell, her lower lip beginning to quiver, and Harry felt immediately contrite. Before he could apologise for the remark, not having meant it in quite the way she seemed to have taken it, she reached forward to place her hands over his own, whispering, “I am so sorry, Harry. I never should have brought him to you. I mean—of course I don’t regret what I did, but…” She shook her head. “I should have found somewhere else to hide him. Probably should have gone to Kingsley or someone else in the Order, someone I could trust to do the right thing—not that I couldn’t trust you to do the right thing! I just—” She buried her head in her hands. “…I’m so, so sorry for getting you caught up in all this.”

“‘Caught up in all this’?” Harry poked her gently. “You think I’d have any right to complain, after all the shit I got you and Ron caught up in over the years?”

“We agreed to be caught up in it, though,” she sniffed.

“And so did I. I’m a grown-arse wizard, I can make my own very bad decisions, thank-you-very-much. And as for whether or not you should have brought him here—of course you should’ve. Only you also should’ve brought yourself and Ron along as well. Would’ve been like hunting Horcruxes all over again—just with a very odd tagalong, and probably better food this time.”

She gave a warbling little chuckle, sniffing. “Much as I enjoy your company, I recall it being very cramped quarters in that tent, and your cottage isn’t any bigger. Can you imagine what a horror Ron would be if he’d had to spend every waking moment the past two months around Draco? Or what a horror Draco would have been having to spend every waking moment around Ron?” She leaned back in her chair, shaking her head in admiration. “I’m shocked you managed it yourself, given your history—especially now that it seems he’s…well, more or less back to normal.” She cast a glance back toward the living room, and Harry followed it—but Draco was still dozing in the armchair it seemed. “…How long has he been like that?”

“Like—what? Like himself?” She nodded. “Yesterday afternoon. We were out in the garden—though there isn’t much of one left now—and we got jumped by a bunch of Unspeakables. I guess it was a big enough threat the dragon bits of him finally decided it was time to go all in, and he transformed fully—and then absolutely massacred them.” Hermione blanched, and he quickly corrected, “Exaggeration. But not by much. You should’ve seen him—he didn’t really get to strut his stuff at the Ministry, but out here, fields and open air as far as the eye can see?” He nodded to himself. “I could see why they called them ‘Wizard’s Bane’. He was fucking terrifying—but don’t tell him I said that.”

She gave him a queer look, one bushy brow arching. “…Harry Potter, are you fond of him?”

He straightened. “What? I mean—of course? It’s not so strange, is it? I’ve gotten used to him, certainly, and he’s not been horrible, which is saying something for him. He’s been…” He shrugged. “Decent, even. Almost nice—but don’t tell him I said that either. In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard him utter a single slur since he started talking again, so—you know.” He gave a little fist pump. “Progress.”

“Right…” she drawled, nodding slowly. “Well, regardless, I do think you ought to come to St Mungo’s with me to get checked out while I see to Ron.”

“Eh?” Oh—right. Actually, now that he considered it, it wasn’t a bad idea at all. The potions he’d guzzled at the Burrow were starting to wear off, leaving him feeling achy and queasy.

“Yes—see, you’ve got a massive bruise just there on your neck.” She reached forward and poked a sensitive spot over his jugular where Draco had paid particularly avid attentions earlier.

He slapped a hand over the spot, scooting back away from her, and began stammering, “Er—I mean, I think that was from an Unspeakable.”

“I’d say something very unspeakable.” She crossed her arms, lips pursed, and flicked her gaze again toward the sitting room to check that Draco wasn’t paying them any mind. “Please tell me you did at least wait until he could speak again? I mean, I know he was very…forward…with you, but it strikes me as more than a little unethical to—”

“God!” Harry hissed, leaning forward. “Yes. Of course! Give me some credit! We were—just, emotions were, you know, running high after the attack, and…” He trailed off, not wanting to get into the particulars with her in the middle of his kitchen. Or anywhere, for that matter. Hermione was smiling, though, a soft little knowing thing that he wasn’t sure he liked. “…That doesn’t weird you out?”

She bobbed her head, scrunching up her features in thought. “Yes…but also no, not really.” At Harry’s bald confusion, she continued, “Just, you two have always had a—a way about each other. You couldn’t not be baited by each other, couldn’t not let each other really get under your skin. I mean, Sixth Year you all but stalked him—”

“I—did not! He was up—”

“Up to something, yes, so you said.” He didn’t like her tone—Draco had been up to something, and Ron had very nearly paid the ultimate price for his desperation. “But the way you went about it was very…” She sighed. “Circumspect, we’ll say. Like it was your solemn duty to see he made no mischief. You didn’t talk to him, you didn’t leave it to any of the professors to handle—you made him your business. With everything you had to deal with, you still let him get to you. So no.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t ‘weird me out’. Honestly it’s felt kind of inevitable.”

Inevitable sounded a lot like fated, and that was getting a bit too much for Harry’s already sensitive stomach. “I—fail to see how my investigating him for attempted murder in any way meant we’d wind up—” He pointed at his neck, and Hermione flushed.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that—more like…there was always a charged energy between you that was bound to undergo some kind of a reaction. I always thought that once we left school and he got out from under his parents’ influence, you might find you actually got along. I mean, you’ve got quite a bit in common, you have to admit: you both like Quidditch, you’re both Seekers, you both come from money—after a fashion—and…” She frowned to herself. “All right, maybe that’s it. The point is, you felt more strongly about him than about pretty much anyone else in that school, and he went out of his way to make your life in particular a living hell. I’m not saying you were made for each other, but there were clearly some issues that needed resolving, and, well, I suppose this was one way to go about it.”

Harry groaned. “He doesn’t even like me—he’s said as much, and honestly, I’m inclined to believe him.”

Hermione cleared her throat delicately. “Liking someone isn’t always a prerequisite for—well. And in his particular case, I suspect that his Animagus form’s overwhelming instincts turned the very complicated feelings he had for you into very simple ones. And now that he’s back to himself, he has to figure out how to complicate those feelings again—or if he even wants to. But those feelings were always there, Harry. He didn’t lose his memory or gain any new ones through this whole fiasco—he just learned a few perhaps uncomfortable truths about himself.” She twisted her lips into a wry grin. “And unfortunately for you, though, you can’t just turn into an animal to uncomplicate your feelings. Those you’ll have to figure out on your own.”

Yeah, Harry had been afraid of that. He let his forehead fall against the table, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly while Hermione patted him gently on the back.

From the sitting room, Draco called with a waspish tone, “Are you two quite done talking about me, or shall I go take a turn about what’s left of the garden and see if Thom’s left us any tomatoes?”

Foregoing the drink after all, Hermione headed off to St Mungo’s to check on Ron, though not before leaving Harry with a tight hug and, after a moment’s consideration, Draco with an even tighter one. Draco froze at first, but when it became obvious she wasn’t going to let go until he returned it, he gingerly patted her back, grumbling, “Unhand me, or I’ll tell Weasley you did this.”

She rolled her eyes. “You already escaped death once today—so keen to try it again, are we?” She then waved her fingers at Harry. “I’ll send a Patronus once I’ve got word on Ron’s condition. I noticed the wards were down outside, too, so reset them when you can, all right? And stay put until you hear from me or Ron. I’m still not 100% sure how the Unspeakables found you all the way out here, since I’m sure Ron would never have given you up, so there’s a non-zero chance you might find yourselves facing another Strike Team if 005’s able to talk her way out of Auror custody quickly enough.”

Harry bid her farewell—Draco, pointedly, did not—and then she disappeared with a bright CRACK, and it was just the two of them once more.

Outside, over the rolling hills surrounding Harry’s cottage, the sun was beginning to rise. The past twenty-four hours had felt like twenty-four years, and there was nothing Harry wanted to do more right now than to stumble into his room, faceplant onto his bed, and not wake up until he had to either eat or piss or both.

But sleep was a luxury he couldn’t yet allow himself—not before he had a very uncomfortable but necessary conversation with his erstwhile houseguest and occasional wanking partner.

“It’s not very polite to eavesdrop on people, you know,” Harry said, turning to Draco, who was presently curled up in his armchair and nursing the tumbler of Blishen’s—unfortunately the only spirit on hand—that Harry had poured for him.

“It’s also not very polite to talk about people behind their backs.” Draco fixed Harry with a pointed look. “Any other witty hypocrisies you’d like to drop in my lap?”

“I wasn’t talking behind your back—”

“Well you certainly weren’t doing it to my face.”

Harry sighed and settled onto the couch, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Fine. Then I’ll talk to your face.” Draco sank back into the armchair, losing his edge, and let his gaze wander away from the conversation—it seemed he wanted to have it about as much as Harry. Too fucking bad for the both of them.

“…I thought you’d died.”

Draco’s attention snapped back to Harry, grey eyes wide and searching.

“I saw that curse hit you—hit the dragon—and all I could think was the one thing I’m supposed to be good at is saving people, and you were somewhere you weren’t meant to be, taking that curse, because of me. The last time I broke into the Department of Mysteries, someone I loved died. And it was because of me that time, too. So all I could think was: Fuck. Not again.” He wiped a hand over his face. “I’m just really—really fucking tired…of getting attached to people and then having them taken away from me.”

There was a long beat of silence, and then Draco said, in a forcibly superior voice, “So don’t get attached. Problem solved.”

Harry locked eyes with him. “You first.”

“…Unlike some people in this conversation, I can assure you, I have no problem separating my wants from my needs.”

“Yeah? Then what the hell were you doing in the Ministry? Paying back Hermione for busting you out in the first place?”

“Sounds like a reasonable explanation for an otherwise uncharacteristic act to me.” And then he squared his shoulders and threw one leg over the other. “See—I know what you're thinking.” Harry waited to be regaled—it would certainly be news to him. “You think I've undergone…well, not a change of heart—because you probably don't think I have one—but some wild transformation, and I don't mean the Animagus one. You think some bit of you has rubbed off on me—and not in the fun way—over these past few months as you mollycoddled me back to good health while I searched for my lost gobstones, such that now I’m a new man, a better man. Better than that shitstain you went to school with, right? I don’t have Mummy and Daddy telling me what to think and who to consort with any more, I’m wearing Weasley jumpers and Cannons tees, why, I even hugged Granger!” He leaned forward, uncrossing his legs and lacing his fingers together. “I recognise you don’t subscribe to the Prophet these days, so I’ll give you a news flash, just for free, because I’m feeling generous: I am not a different person. I’m presently a victim of circumstances, and very soon, the trauma will fade, and I’ll go back to being the bitter little pissant who drove you mad and called your friends names and stamped on your face such that yes, my dear Potter, your nose did mend crooked.” Harry reflexively felt the bridge of his nose and hated himself for it. “Listen to me all you like, it’s still going to be the same damn song.”

Harry waited, until it sounded like he’d said his piece, and then it was his turn. “And what about me?”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “What about you?”

“Have I changed at all? Am I still the same self-aggrandising pretentious prick you went to school with? Is there nothing about me you find at all…interesting, we’ll say?” It was a safe choice of words, he felt. “Because I think I’ve changed. In lots of ways—some you haven’t even seen yet. All you know is ‘Arry. You don’t know me, not from a few scant weeks sharing space. And maybe you don’t want to get to know me—it’s a chore, revising your image of someone, especially after this much time. But I can say with a fairly strong sense of certainty that Hogwarts you would never have put me on my back and rubbed off on me ‘til he messed his pants.”

Draco’s expression warred between gobsmacked shame and a superior sneer. “No? Think you know Hogwarts me so well, do you? I can’t say I would’ve been anywhere near the gentleman I was last night, but I might have given you a turn, if you’d offered—”

“No,” Harry said, firmly. “I do know. You never would have. Ever.”

And Draco shifted uncomfortably in the face of Harry’s rock-solid conviction—but he quickly rallied. “I fail to see the point of this exercise.”

“The point is that you can claim nothing’s changed, that I shouldn’t expect some revolutionary shift in our relationship just because we had a nice little wank together, and I don’t expect some revolutionary shift in our relationship because of that. I expect it because it’s already happened.” And Draco gave him the nastiest look, but Harry pressed on. “You do like me. And you hate that you do, almost as much as you hate that I might like you back.” He leaned in. “How likeable you are has no bearing on how much I like you, I’m sorry to have to inform you.”

Draco was breathing very loudly by this point, and he looked furious. Good. He tended to let the truth slip out when he got emotional.

“And I’m sorry to have to inform you that you liking me has no bearing on me liking you. I’d have thought the past eleven years, or at least the pertinent seven, might have taught you as much. You don’t know me—you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

And then Harry heard himself, his own words echoing behind Draco’s: I’m just really fucking tired of getting attached to people and then having them taken away from me.

Maybe Hermione was right. Maybe they did have a lot in common.

Harry glanced around the sitting room. “What’s today’s date?”

Draco blinked, very loudly. “What?”

Harry moved to the little side table next to the armchair, rifling through its drawer looking for his scheduling book—which he found and then began flipping through. “Ah. The 27th of August.” He snapped the book shut again, tossing it back into the drawer. “One year.”

Draco continued to boggle—then narrowed his gaze in suspicion. “…Fuck, we need to get you to St Mungo’s—what are we doing here? Come on.” He leapt to his feet, grabbing Harry roughly by the bicep and beginning to turn in place.

Harry snatched his arm from Draco’s grasp, though. “You think that once you’ve caught your breath and the excitement has died down, everything you’ve experienced these past few months will wash off and you’ll go back to being the person you were before, such that I’ll find you just as horrid now as I did back in school. Me? I think that won’t happen. So I’ll give you a year.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And we’ll come back here, next August 27th, and see if it’s true. See if you really don’t like me and never could and if the person I thought I fancied ever even existed. That way we’ll both be safe. No attachments.”

Draco recoiled, stepping around to place the armchair between them, as if he thought Harry’s ridiculousness was infectious. “Don’t be absurd. I’m not going to sit around with my thumbs up my arse waiting for you—”

“I’m not saying you should. I will—because honestly I’ve got no better prospects at the moment, and some recent incidents have gotten me curious about the concept of fingers up arses—but I’m not saying you have to. I’m just asking you to come back here, August the 27th, 2003, and tell me I was wrong. I mean, if nothing else, it ought to be worth the trip for that alone—you like telling me I was wrong about things.”

And Draco pursed his lips—but did not immediately shoot down the idea, which Harry thought was progress.

After a long beat, he said, “I don’t like Muggles.”

“…All right.”

“They’re silly at best and dangerous at worst, and nothing good has ever come from wizards fraternising with them.”

Oh, were they going to have this conversation now? Harry would have rather gone back for round two with the last one, honestly. He released a long, frustrated sigh. “Except it was a Muggleborn who rescued you from the deepest, darkest pit known to wizarding kind.”

“After another one put me there!”

“Can you blame them?” Harry said, a bit too pithily, and Draco’s face went white with rage, a vein standing out in his temple.

“Are you suggesting I deserved—”

“Fuck no, of course not.” He refused to let Draco’s anger begin building until they either or both said something they would regret. They’d come too far to undo it all in a moment of incensed emotion. “…I am suggesting, though, that hating someone only leads to more hate. Pain to more pain. It’s got to stop somewhere.” He stepped closer, keeping the back of the armchair between them as Draco treated it like a security blanket. “…I’m not saying you’ve got to become Muggle Lover #1. But maybe it doesn’t have to be your whole personality.”

Draco’s lip curled. “It’s not my whole personality.”

“Uh, it was, like, 90% of your personality at school. At school. Maybe now…” He shrugged. “You just focus on the other 10% for a while.” He forced Draco’s eyes to meet his own, instead of letting them wander the room as they were wont to do when Harry was winning an argument. “You said I don’t know you—I think you don’t know yourself. You haven’t gotten to be Draco Malfoy in four years now. You think you haven’t changed—I think you have, a bit at least. Maybe just take some time to do a little soul-searching.”

Draco sank back down into the armchair in an elegant heap. “…A year, was it?”

Harry leaned over the back, poking the little whorl on the top of Draco’s head. “…If that’s what you need.”

Draco’s shoulders relaxed, just a tic—Harry wasn’t sure what that meant. He tilted his head up, frowning at Harry. “And if I find I’m still me?”

Harry sighed, collapsing over the back of the chair. “You’ll always be you. There’s no ‘still’ about it. You’re as much you now as Malfoy was you and you at Hogwarts was you.”

“Says the man whose first words to me after my mind got unscrambled were ‘Are you you, or are you him?’”

Harry propped his head up in his palm, elbow resting along the chair back. He poked at the whorl of hair again, and this time Draco caught his finger, tightening his grip in threat. “Hallucinations, from massive blood loss. I’m feeling much better now.” Harry pulled his finger back. “I just think you’ll find there’s more sides to you than you might have thought.” He straightened. “And speaking of which…”

Draco twisted around to watch him leave the room, heading for the bedroom—and the little box he’d hidden on the top shelf of his wardrobe. He pulled the box out, setting it on his bed, and removed the lid as Draco came up behind him, craning his head to see what he was getting into.

Harry lifted the bowl ever so carefully, and held it out for Draco to take—but he recoiled, taking a step back and glaring at the thing as if it meant to do him grievous harm. “What the hell is that?”

“A Pensieve,” Harry said.

“I know a fucking Pensieve when I see one—I asked what the hell is that?” He leaned over to peek inside the box, perhaps searching for an instruction manual or gift card. “Where did you get it?”

Harry swallowed. “Malfoy Manor.”

Draco’s eyes snapped to Harry’s. “…What the hell are you doing with a Pensieve from Malfoy Manor?” Harry could see him searching, just behind those sharp grey eyes, for any recollection of having owned a Pensieve himself and coming up empty. He probably thought it belonged to his parents.

“I was collecting it to return to its owner.” He held it out to Draco again. “It’s yours.”

Draco shook his head. “I don’t own a Pensieve—that’s not mine.”

“It is. You only don’t remember it.” Harry looked down at it, admiring the simple, clean lines. It didn’t look like something Draco Malfoy would own, admittedly. “I will confess, I had a peek at the memories inside it—I thought they might help bring you back to your senses, that maybe there was something in here that might constitute a sufficient jolt your humanity would just slip right back to the forefront and everything would be set aright.”

Draco still hung back, giving Harry a healthy berth. “…And?”

Harry sighed, shaking his head. “No, not really. But they’re still your memories. You ought to at least be allowed to decide if you want them back or not.”

“Why would I want them back? Pensieves are for storing memories you’ve got—not ones you haven’t got. I’ve never owned a Pensieve in my life.”

“You did, though. Mimsy told me you asked her to hide it for you.” Draco mouthed Mimsy to himself, frowning. “And then you made it so you forgot you’d done so.”

“…Why…why would I…” And Draco’s confusion, writ keenly over his features, was stained with a hint of worry now. “Why would I do that?”

“…I don’t know,” Harry said, and it must not have been very convincingly, for Draco cut him a sharp glare.

“Bullshit you don’t know. Tell me.”

“I don’t! Genuinely, I don’t know.”

“But you think you do. You’re giving me them back now—why?”

Harry hedged. “Because—because they’re your memories. You should be in charge of your own mind—and whether that involves accepting these memories or rejecting them should be up to you too.”

Draco stared at the Pensieve for a long moment—then shook his head. “No. No, I don’t want them. Clearly I didn’t think I needed them, if I ripped them out and had a house-elf hide them from me.”

“Or,” Harry countered, wanting to ensure Draco made as informed a decision as possible, “maybe they meant so much to you, you didn’t want to risk being caught with them.”

Draco’s gaze narrowed. “Caught with them? When did I create this Pensieve?” He took a step closer, eyeing Harry suspiciously. “…Do you want me to have them back?”

“I want you to be you. Whatever version of you it is that you feel most comfortable with. If you think you shouldn’t have these memories, then that’s all right—and if you think you should have them back, then that’s all right too.”

“Even if it changes who I am?”

Harry wanted to bang his head against one of his bedposts. “I told you, you’ll always be you. There are—immutable parts of ourselves that just are. Things that are ingrained within us that split personalities and memory loss can’t change. I genuinely do not believe that these memories will change who you are.”

Draco studied Harry carefully—then drew back. “…Then I don’t want them.”

“You don’t?” Harry had to admit, he hadn’t been expecting that decision after his little speech.

Draco crossed his arms. “So you do want me to have them. Why?”

“No, just—I thought you would. Want them, I mean.” He set the Pensieve back down in its box, fidgeting with the lid. “I thought you wouldn’t be able to stand not knowing what was in them.”

“What is in them, then?”

“…I don’t want to tell you—it should be your decision.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “And so it shall be—as soon as you tell me what’s in the memories.”

Harry rolled eyes right back. “Like you said—you removed them for a reason. Telling you what’s in them before you decide if you want them or not defeats the purpose!”

“They’re my fucking memories that you spied on quite without my permission!”

“To try and help sort you out! God, I know I shouldn’t have looked! Believe me, if I could un-see what was in those memories, I would! I felt terrible watching—”

“Felt terrible watching what?” Draco rounded on him, backing Harry up against the wardrobe. “If they’re so horrible, whatever’s in those memories, I deserve to know before I inflict them upon myself. I’m gathering from context and your absurd reaction they’re from the depths of the war—did I kill someone? Did I kill someone you love?” He took a shuddering breath. “…Did I kill someone I love?”

God, Draco was going to convince himself of every horrible potentiality his vivid imagination could possibly concoct if Harry didn’t say something. He sighed, exhaling loudly. “They’re—you figuring some things out about yourself. And you didn’t really seem to like it. You might…” He grimaced. “You might be—embarrassed. Not because you ought to be, mind, but well.”

“Well?”

“…Because most people don’t like to see themselves being vulnerable. And I expect you’re no exception.”

Draco drew back, frowning at himself and blinking as he processed Harry’s words. Then he shook his head. “…No. I’m not.” He stepped away, standing in the doorway, and braced a hand on the jamb.

Harry’s lips tightened into a thin line. He shouldn’t have said anything. “…What do you want me to do with them, then? I don’t think you can actually destroy thoughts—I expect it’s why you had Mimsy hide them in the first place, so I can’t get rid of them, but…” He could put them back, he supposed, though he didn’t relish the idea of another romp through the Malfoy family mausoleum in the middle of summer.

“…I don’t care. I don’t want them, I—” He made a fist. “I don’t need them—I feel perfectly myself without them, and if they’re as horrible as you make them out to be—”

“I’m sorry, honest I am—I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just they’re private, they’re yours, and I shouldn’t have—”

But Draco was waving him off dismissively. “I don’t care. I don’t. I obviously put them away for what I’m sure were at the time sound reasons, and I’ve made it this far in life without them, so clearly they weren’t all that important in the long run.” He swallowed, throat bobbing, and ducked his head. “And you’ve seen them, so…” He leaned against the jamb. “So at least you’ll remember them. You’ll know what’s in them, in case I ever get the daft idea I want to see them.” He lifted his eyes to Harry. “…Will you hold on to them for me? Just in case.”

Harry placed the lid back on the box, then returned the Pensieve to the top shelf of his wardrobe. He settled his hand at the small of Draco’s back and guided him back into the sitting room. “Of course. That’s what saviours do.”

Chapter Text

In the end, it didn’t take a year.

Ron was back home within a week—though not before September the 1st, so Harry sent apologies ahead to McGonagall explaining that he would be tardy for the semester start but available to ensure the First-years were zipping around and ready to start being plucked from obscurity by their Heads of House for early placement on their House Quidditch teams by the end of the first week of school.

As the Healers put it, Ron had suffered psychic damage as the unfortunate victim of someone using Legilimency on him to prise sensitive information from his mind that he wasn’t otherwise willing or able to share. This, Harry surmised, had been how the Unspeakables had learned of the cottage’s location, and Ron felt absolutely stricken that he’d been the unwitting reason Harry and Draco’s location had gotten out.

It had taken the combined efforts of both Harry and Hermione to reassure him that the events had been in no way his fault, and in the future, Harry resolved to place an actual Fidelius on his home if he really didn’t want anyone finding it. “Good,” Ron had said, unduly giddy at the prospect, “They’ll have to kill me next time before I spill!”

Thanks to the pocket Pensieve memories and Hermione’s—and even, as Harry heard it, Draco’s—official statements, the Essence Room was eliminated. Its research teams were disbanded, and its head—005 a.k.a. Hortensia Vogelbaum, a Muggleborn witch who had been (perhaps understandably, from certain perspectives) only too delighted to exact a bit of extrajudicial justice using Death Eaters in her experiments—was presently occupying a cell in Azkaban awaiting trial come the new year when the Wizengamot reconvened.

Hermione admitted to being disappointed it had come to this, realising that the Department of Mysteries had been more interested in building an army of magical creatures that ought not to exist than in implementing Transmogrification for more benign uses, like learning to help humans regrow limbs and perhaps even fight cancer. Still, she took the downfall of the DOM in stride and resolved to focus her talents elsewhere—and as of her last Owl, she was about to interview for a research position at St Mungo’s, who were very interested in the medicinal applications of Transmogrification. Draco, she reported, had even agreed to help ‘within reason’ (“He refused to quote ‘be my magiscience project’. As if he’s got better things to do than sit on his arse and watch the paint dry while they restore the Manor!”)

And as for Draco—well, his record was finally expunged, the Ministry agreeing to sweep under the rug any crimes he might or might not have committed under duress during the war provided he also agreed not to press charges for four-plus years of unlawful detainment, and he was allowed to return to Malfoy Manor, with full ownership restored and a mountain of repairs to enact. Hermione had apparently considered offering to let Draco stay in their spare room while Manor restorations were ongoing, but Ron had vowed to see if a second Killing Curse wouldn’t stick this time if Draco got within fifty feet of him, so apparently Draco had taken up temporary residence in the mother-in-law suite on the Zabini property somewhere in Brighton.

Which left Harry at Hogwarts, where he had found himself every September for several years now. He could not be acknowledged for his role in bringing justice to the Department of Mysteries, of course, but what did he need another Order of Merlin, First Class for anyway? It was enough most days that he had his Nimbus 2020, a bright blue open sky, and a free afternoon. A First-year broke both legs the first day of Flying Classes, McGonagall tried for the fourth year in a row to convince Harry to take up a staff position permanently, and the dungeons flooded when the glass wall in the Slytherin Common Room sprang a leak, so Harry helped the students decorate the Room of Requirement until repairs could be made.

He was happy, he was fulfilled, and he didn’t think (too much) about Draco at all (at least in his waking hours) for three whole months.

And then, one chilly winter morning in December, the last day before the Christmas holidays started for Hogwarts students—which meant the last day Harry had to be in residence—Harry awoke in his warm bed under a mountain of blankets in the spare room he was presently renting from Aberforth above the Hog’s Head to a little silver stoat doing a very impressive war dance on his chest and drawling in Draco’s superior tone, “I’m in your sitting room and you aren’t. Fix that.”

Harry didn’t bother dressing, Apparating direct from his bed back to the cottage, where he found Draco sat in Harry’s armchair, looking very fashionable in an all-charcoal suit over a black dress shirt, sipping a cup of coffee and placidly flipping through one of Harry’s children’s books (“Thom the Gnome Makes a Friend”).

“It’s not August the 27th,” Harry said, a bit breathy with excitement and smiling far too toothily for someone who probably wanted to avoid coming off too strongly. Bit late for that, though.

“Did you know you aren’t wearing any clothes?” Draco asked, still studying the book and nursing his coffee. Thom the Gnome—the book character, not the git who lived in Harry’s garden—was presently learning a valuable lesson on not making snap judgements about others as he took tea with a smart-mouthed Jarvey named Jimothy.

“I’ve got pants on,” Harry protested weakly. These ones even had barely any holes in them.

“So you do. Let’s rectify that.”

He snapped the book shut and was on his feet with that breathtaking preternatural speed Malfoy had demonstrated in rare moments where instinct took over and a feral drive pushed him to take what he wanted without asking nicely. Harry wished that sort of thing didn’t make his cock half as hard as it did in retrospect, but here he was, getting walked-slash-shoved back onto his own couch, where the backs of his knees hit the edge of the cushions and he went down.

“Oh,” was all he got out before Draco took one knee in each hand and shoved them apart, sinking into the conveniently Draco-shaped space between them.

“Now, I recognise this might not be the fellatio you’re accustomed to, but you’ll quickly learn that men are much better at sucking someone off than women. This is because women—at least generally—are not endowed with cocks of their own, so they can’t rightly tell if their technique is crupshit horrible or the best thing since wool socks. Me, though? I know just what makes a prick rise to the occasion, as I’ve got a handsome specimen of my own down there—play your cards right and maybe you’ll get to see it again some day—so I think you’ll find that the skills I bring to the metaphorical table are quite substantial and ought to weigh heavily in my favour when certain considerations are being made.”

Harry let his head fall back against the cushions. “I think I liked you better when all you could say was ‘Arry’.” He wriggled in place, sliding further down and spreading his legs wider. “Think we might could get on with it? I haven’t had breakfast yet, is all.”

“You jest—but this is vital information I’m sharing with you, out of the goodness of my own heart.”

“Mm. Does that mean you’ve decided you are good, then?”

Draco propped his elbows up on Harry’s thighs. “It means that should Harry Potter be planning to spend his Christmas holiday with the Weasleys, as I have it on very good authority he does most every year, he should remember that darling though she may seem with her ghastly red hair and smattering of freckles and pert, pink rosebud lips, and fond though your times together might have been, Girl Weasley will never—ever—suck your cock as expertly as I’m about to. So some leeway concerning aspects of my personality you may find…difficult—perish the thought—would not go amiss, all the benefits of my warming your bed being considered.”

Harry straightened, frowning down at Draco. “Wait, do—do you think I’m going to get back together with Ginny over the holiday? Is that why you ambushed me—well, tried to at least—in my own home at the arsecrack of dawn?”

“I suggested no such thing. I simply offered an unbiased review of the top-rate services I have on offer in comparison to the primitive fumblings you’re likely to have to endure at the literal hands of the less-experienced.”

“…Listen, it’s too early for this. I’m not sure if you’re here to suck me off or to lecture me.”

“My good man, I’m here to do both, pay attention.”

“Well all I’ve gotten so far is the lecture, so it’s difficult to tell.” He settled back down, lips twisting into a faint little smile, because it was a very tiny bit endearing, Draco being so earnest instead of prickly and bitter. He could get used to this—though he probably shouldn’t. “…And Ginny’s seeing someone already, or didn’t your very good authority tell you that?”

“Fucking Weasley…” Draco ground out under his breath.

“Mmhmm. But—all the same, I reckon you do make a good point. I’ve never been blown by a bloke, and you have every opportunity now to ruin me for all others, male and female.”

Draco rested his chin on Harry’s thigh, nose wrinkling. “…Have you been blown by anyone?”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “I mean—maybe I don’t have as much experience as you, but…”

“Do you have any experience? At all? Like, even with women?”

“I—have some experience.” Sure, maybe all that experience had been within the confines of a fantasieve he’d mistakenly been delivered via Owl order instead of the new four-top of dishware he’d actually purchased, but it still counted, he thought.

Draco made a face. “Oh good. That fills me with so much confidence.”

“I’ll fill you with something,” Harry muttered darkly under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he covered quickly, waving at Draco. “Anyway, were you gonna—you know?”

“Mm, well I don’t know now. The idea I might ruin you does hold a certain allure. But you also won’t be able to appreciate all the absolutely amazing things I’m able to do with my tongue or how hard I worked to tame my gag reflex.”

Harry swallowed thickly and spread his legs a teeny-tiny bit wider still. “…Yeah, probably not. But I for sure will after repeat performances.”

“Repeat performances? You’re under the impression this isn’t simply an early Christmas present? A ‘thank you for not throwing me out on my arse despite knowing I would absolutely not have done the same for you’?”

Harry waggled his brows. “Hey, what memory did you wind up using for your Patronus?”

And Draco snorted, a terribly inelegant thing that suited him tremendously. “I’m not telling you.”

“Was it about me? Is that why I’m getting an early Christmas present, a ‘thank you for not throwing me out on my arse despite knowing I would absolutely not have done the same for you’?”

“Why on earth would you think anything involving you would be a happy memory for me?” Draco said, words entirely belied by the ghost of a smile curling at his lips. “Fuck you, let’s get this over with.” He snapped his fingers, his wand instantly appearing in his casting hand, and slashed it through the air—and Harry’s pants vanished with a pop! leaving him sitting arse-naked on his couch.

He yelped and immediately reached for a throw pillow, placing it over his lap. “What the hell?!”

“I’d remove that unless you want it Vanished, too.” Draco raised his wand in threat, and Harry chucked the pillow at his head. It collided with a whomp, hitting a black scaly shield that rippled over his person and then disappeared just as quickly as it had manifested. “That was rude—and stupid, assaulting someone who’s about to put your prick in their mouth.” He snapped his jaws. “Maybe I have got a taste for man-flesh after all.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Harry grumbled, bringing an arm up to cover his eyes—it’d been one thing to rut against each other in the darkness, it was another to sit here in the bright light of day with your altogether hanging out, having a conversation.

“That’s the best thing to threaten someone with. Pricks and carrots and all that.”

“Pretty sure it’s sticks and carrots.”

“Why would anyone fellate a stick? You’d get splinters.” Silence fell between them—and then a hand was drawing his arm back down. “Don’t do that.”

Harry blinked, wincing. “Wh—leggo.” He jerked his arm back, but Draco held fast. “What’s your problem?”

“What’s your problem?” Draco was frowning at him and not in the playful little pouty way he had been, which Harry had also not found fond at all. “What are you doing? Don’t cover your face.”

“Shove off, I’ll cover my face if I want to—”

Draco stood up, leaning fully into Harry’s space, noses almost brushing. “…Don’t. Don’t look away.”

And he looked so earnest, so desperate—this meant something to him. It wasn’t a matter of pride or shame, and Harry remembered Draco in the memories, so caught up in self-hatred, unable to let anyone know the secret, shameful things he felt for people he wasn’t allowed to feel them for and the lengths to which he’d gone to make sure no one ever knew. And here was Draco again, asking Harry not to try and ignore or forget who was doing this to him. He’d come full circle. The least Harry could do was indulge him.

“…Then give me something to look at.”

A low, rasping growl began to well up from deep in Draco’s chest, and he crushed his mouth against Harry’s, the force nearly putting him through the couch. Harry quickly brought his hands up, cupping the base of Draco’s skull as he held on tight, gentling Draco’s attentions, but only a touch—just enough he could really enjoy it, more heated coupling than frantic, desperate groping.

They kissed and loved each other’s tongues with a hard insistence until Draco finally—finally—drew back and pressed a last kiss to the corner of his lips and began working his way downward. He licked the vee of Harry’s neck, tweaked a nipple gently between his teeth on the way down, and breathed in deep at Harry’s navel, running his fingers through the thick thatch of hair snaking downward. He was back on his knees now, and he grabbed hold of Harry’s hips like a pair of handlebars he was about to ride.

He looked up and over Harry’s belly and chest, gaze hooded from this angle, dark and stormy. “Shall I?”

Harry licked his lips and nodded, a little too energetically for his pride, and Draco chuckled against his heated skin, not a cruel thing—only amused, like he found Harry’s reactions genuinely fond. He really, honestly wondered what Draco had learned about himself in these three months that had him acting like this—spontaneous, adventurous, actually hopeful. Had he looked at the Pensieve memories after all? Certainly not—they wouldn’t have brought this out of him.

Maybe Hermione had just punched some sense into him again, like in Third Year.

Speaking of which, Harry recalled there being some saying about hippogriffs’ mouths and not looking in them, so instead, he looked at Draco.

Draco drew in a deep breath, exhaling along the shaft as he began to work it, slowly and gently and with a loving care Harry doubted he’d ever shown anything else in his life except maybe his own prick. He didn’t lick it, not just yet—he seemed to be studying it for the moment, with an admiring eye that Harry was too turned on to be embarrassed by right now.

“If I’d known you had this trapped inside those tight Quidditch leathers, I might have tried this back in school.”

Harry chuckled gruffly—having witnessed those Pensieve memories first-hand, he very much doubted that, pleased though he was with the compliment. “I probably could’ve used it—I was carrying quite a bit of stress back then.”

“Weren’t we all?” Draco said, though even he seemed to realise Harry’s struggles had probably outweighed his own, at least barring their final two years of schooling. “Perhaps we could have…helped each other out.”

“Pretty sure if I’d tried to even talk to you, let alone touch your prick, you’d have Hexed me sideways.”

“Mm, true, because I would’ve been convinced you’d been exposed to a Fwooper and were tragically and irreparably deranged.” He gave a teasing, appreciative squeeze. “Trust I would have properly mourned the loss of this impressive specimen, though.”

And though Draco made these remarks in jest, Harry was not yet so blitzed on arousal that he could not detect the faint hint of longing in his words—as if some part of him yet remembered how desperately he’d wanted to be Harry’s friend, longed for Harry’s protection, ached for Harry to just give one single fuck about him.

Harry took a haggard breath, rubbing Draco’s shoulder with the inside of one thigh. “Sounds like we’ve got, what—ten years? Of fooling around like teenagers to make up for.”

Draco’s lips curled up at the corners. “…Quite. We ought to get started right away.”

Harry had to admit, despite never having received a blowjob before in his life, he was pretty damn sure that Draco’s boasts of a particular prowess with the act were well founded. He seemed in no short supply of saliva, which he laved along the shaft of Harry’s prick before kissing the tip until it flared red and peeked up from its hood. The tight channel of his fist was slick and hot as he shoved Harry’s prick through it, refusing to take him fully into his mouth to test that gag reflex he’d claimed he’d tamed, instead treating the head with his undivided attention.

Harry slumped down against the back of the couch, legs spread uncomfortably wide, and watched as Draco’s pink tongue swirled around the tip, head cocked to one side and white-blond hair, trimmed a bit now such that it hung just past his nape and artfully tousled, falling in a curtain over his eyes and nose and cheeks. Through the swinging locks, he caught tantalising glimpses of Draco’s sharp eyes, locked on Harry’s and pulling him in like a siren’s call.

And then Draco straightened, pushed his hair back, and pressed a kiss to the slit of Harry’s crown, lips widening around it, impossibly tight and warm and wet, and he began to swallow Harry downdowndown until he felt himself brush up against the back of Draco’s throat and his hips spasmed, lifting off the couch.

Draco had honed those Seeker reflexes back into prime condition, though, and his hands snapped to Harry’s hips, holding him in place as Draco worked his throat. Harry released a pained grunt as stars flashed in his eyes, and his breath came in great heaving pants. He imagined he could see the outline of his prick where jaw met throat, and it was quite the hottest thing he thought he’d ever witnessed in his life—Draco’s throat convulsing around him, the ever-faint threat of Draco’s teeth brushing along his hard, hot shaft, and the insistent press of Draco’s fingers over the joint where thigh melded into torso, sure to leave marks once this was over.

And it was stacking up to be over shamefully quickly. Maybe Draco would take it as a compliment—or maybe he’d be delighted to have an excuse to jeer at Harry for his short fuse. Wanker had probably been getting himself off three times a day the past few months just to build up his tolerance so he’d have one more thing to lord over Harry when they found their way back to one another.

Fuck, Draco was here. It wasn’t August the 27th—it was December the 20th, he was warm and naked in his cottage, and Draco-fucking-Malfoy was swallowing his cock in a most excellent fashion that Harry really wished he were skilled enough to reciprocate. Draco probably wasn’t expecting anything in return—but it was always fun to surprise him. To see unabashed delight flash across his features, before it was whisked away under the expertly tailored mask he always kept in place. Malfoy had been fun, which meant Draco could be too—and Harry was all right if he was only fun around Harry. He just wanted Draco to know he was safe. He was someone Draco could lean on and put his faith in and bare his heart before, and Harry wouldn’t—would try not to—betray it.

“Please…” he begged, voice gruff and husky with a mixture of morning bleariness and edge-of-glory arousal. “Fuck, Draco, please…”

Draco hummed something in response and sent electricity jolting through Harry’s cock and up his spine to the pleasure centre of his brain. He slammed his legs shut, locking Draco in place, and grabbed the back of his head. He didn’t want to spill in Draco’s mouth—that much he knew was something you didn’t do without asking—but if Draco didn’t get off of him right the fuck now, he was going to all the same. “Fuck—fuck, lemme go, lemme go, shit, I’m gonna—”

But Draco braced himself, held Harry down, and swallowed—

And Harry saw white, back arching off the couch as his bollocks drew up tight under him, like hard little walnuts, and forced their contents down his prick to shoot in great dribbling spurts against the back of Draco’s throat. He shuddered once, twice, three times before he held there, locked in place, until a final wave of relief washed over him and sent him slumping back down against the couch. Draco followed him down, still swallowing, one hand on Harry’s still-hard prick and the other holding his hair back, tucked behind one ear. His eyes were closed now, brows knit—in discomfort or concentration, Harry couldn’t tell, and he didn’t have the energy to shove Draco off anymore. If he’d hurt Draco, well Draco was a grown-arse wizard and could well let him know.

Draco continued to hold him down, though, suckling on Harry’s prick until he’d wrung just about every drop of spunk that had been building up in Harry’s bollocks for, well, not three months—but at least a good week. He was only human, after all, and he had a very good imagination these days, even if he usually wound up thinking of encounters on Enlarged sofas in darkened studios at midnight while recovering from abdominal trauma.

At length, Draco drew off him, delivering a final smacking kiss to the inflamed head of Harry’s prick and wiping a delicate finger over his lips. His cheeks were flushed a deep cherry red, and his lips were puffy and pink. When he cleared his throat and spoke, there was a faint rasp in his voice now that Harry knew he was responsible for, and it did things to him that registered as a coiling, smouldering something just behind his navel. He wasn’t fifteen anymore, but he was still pretty proud of his refractory period. Maybe he could surprise Draco yet.

“That took longer than expected.”

“‘S that a compliment for me or self-directed criticism?”

Draco draped himself over Harry’s thigh, arms crossed lazily under his chin. “Bit of column A, bit of column B.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I was trying not to pop.” He laid a hand over his stomach, stroking the sensitive muscles. “You just looked so nice down there. Didn’t want it to end.”

“I believe the object is for it to end.” Draco let a hand drop down between his own legs, lids fluttering shut as he massaged himself through his trousers. It seemed a shame to ruin them, as they looked like they cost a pretty Knut, and Harry didn’t know how much the restoration of Malfoy Manor was costing Draco. “Doesn’t mean we can’t go again.”

Harry licked his lips. “…Need some help there?”

Draco’s gaze swept up to meet Harry’s, a lacy white brow arching. “Are you offering?”

“Well,” Harry hedged. “I…dunno that you’d much appreciate my own attempts at whatever magic you just worked on me—but I’ve pulled off a prick or two in my time.”

“And how many of those pricks you pulled off were your own?”

“…Most of ‘em.” Draco’s other brow joined the first. “…All of ‘em. But I never heard any complaints from myself.”

Draco’s lips twisted into a ghost of a smile. “…Put your hand here.” He patted Harry’s thigh. “Palm up.”

Harry frowned but did as ordered—and then he frowned even harder when Draco hacked up a dollop of spit into it. “Wh—gross!” he cried, trying to wipe his hand on Draco’s very nice suit. That would show him.

But Draco grabbed his wrist and held him in place. “Make a channel. Not too loose—but not too tight either.”

And oh, Harry saw what he was about now. He nodded, angling his wrist down a bit so Draco could slide in and seat himself easily.

Draco shrugged out of his jacket, draping it carefully across the back of Harry’s armchair so as not to get it wrinkled, and then off came his waistcoat and dress shirt, until he was just standing in his fancy trousers and polished loafers. “I’ve still got your Weasley jumper, you know,” he said as he unclasped his belt. “Would you like it back?”

Harry chuckled, a bit loopy. “Don’t need to wear my clothes anymore?”

“Never did.” He whipped the belt off and began picking at the buttons on his fly now. “The creature just liked your scent. It made it feel safe—and wanted.”

Harry swallowed. “Y-yeah?”

Draco nodded. “…I’ve learned, though, that I needn’t endure your ratty old Quidditch jerseys and pyjama shirts just to smell like you.” He swiped at a wet spot on his cheek—then licked his fingers, tugging down the hem of his briefs with the other hand and drawing out his hard, wanting prick. The angry red colour contrasted beautifully with his pale complexion as he stroked himself gently, tugging the hood up over the head and back down again. He stepped closer, eyes locked on Harry’s. “…May I?”

“…Fuck yeah.”

More appropriate permission had never been granted. Draco took him by the wrist, straddled his thigh, and pressed the tip of his cock to the channel Harry had made of his fist, pushing in slowly and clamping his hand over Harry’s to show him the pressure he craved. Harry caught on quick, and shortly Draco had his back arched, hands resting on his hips, as he pumped into Harry’s fist, down to the root, and then slowly drew back out again. It was an odd feeling, pulling someone else off—there was no tactile feedback to key off of, no way to know if his grip was too tight or too loose or too dry but to watch the emotions flitting over Draco’s face. So he watched, really looked, studied the quiver to his lip, the hitch in his breath, and flare of his nostrils, and learned Draco liked it a little loose going in but really fucking tight going out. He wanted to be gripped and held, and he made such noises when Harry swiped his thumb over the tip when he pulled all the way out, punching back in with a punishing grunt.

“Harder,” Harry said, bringing his other arm up to grab Draco by the back of his neck and draw him down. “I won’t break.”

“I do like a challenge.”

“Fuck me.” He squeezed Draco just shy of painfully to press home his point. “I’ll watch.”

“Ffffff—uck,” Draco hissed, pressing his forehead to Harry’s and bringing both hands up to brace against the back of the couch as he began pumping his hips harder and faster with a punching intensity. The couch wobbled with each thrust, and Draco’s panting breaths rushed over Harry’s lips, fogging his glasses. All his senses were filled with Draco—the sound of his bollocks slapping against Harry’s thigh, the lingering scent of mint on his breath before Harry had ruined it with his release, the sliding warmth of spit mixing with slick in the tight channel he’d made with his fist for Draco to drive into, and Draco’s pale features, screwed up with want and need and abandon, pink splotches blooming across a field of white.

“We should do this proper some time,” Harry whispered into his ear. “I can’t imagine how it’d be better than this, but I reckon it’s gotta be.”

Draco’s thrusts came faster and more frantic, all tempo lost as he gave himself over to sheer instinct and desire. Harry could see his thighs flexing even through the trouser material, pulled tight across his muscles. “F—fuck, fuck, ‘Arry, I’m—”

Harry tweaked his wrist, tightening his grip when Draco tried to pull out for one final punching thrust. He cried out, swallowing the sound until all that came out was a soft, choked whine, and Harry felt warm wetness spill over his fingers. Draco pushed against him, legs shaking, pushing and pushing and pushing, like he was trying to crawl inside Harry’s grip and pressed himself as deep as he possibly could before sagging, spent, on top of Harry.

Several long moments passed where the only sounds that hung between them were the soft tick tick tick of the clock on the wall and their slowing, dying exhalations.

Harry was the first to speak, because he was the one furthest out from his last orgasm and had (most of) his senses back by now. “Still don’t like me, then?”

“…I’m about to make a terrible decision. So I came to the authority on such matters.” Draco rolled off of him, collapsing back against the couch next to Harry with his cock still hanging out of his trousers. He hadn’t even taken them off—it felt a bit scandalous.

“Well. A bit late for that, I think.”

“Oh no.” Draco waved his wand over Harry’s hand, Vanishing the remnants of their activities. “That wasn’t the terrible decision. That was a very, very good one, in fact.”

“Ah,” Harry said, because it seemed the polite thing to say when someone had sucked you off so nicely and then given you a peep show after.

Draco pushed his hair back from his face, where it had started to fall in errant strands again. “…I still don’t think I’ve changed. But I’ve missed arguing about it with you. If nothing else, it’s an endless source of entertainment.”

Well, if he’d missed arguing about it, Harry supposed that was his cue. “…You’ll recall the crux of those arguments was that I agreed you hadn’t changed—I just thought there were sides to you that you either hadn’t recognised or…”

“Or?” Draco was looking at him very shrewdly, and Harry suspected he ought to choose his words carefully, especially since his sensitive bits were still on full display.

“…Or that you maybe didn’t want to recognise. For reasons.”

“Those reasons being?” His tone was light and airy, which was the most dangerous tone Draco could take, Harry had learned in their brief time together.

Well, those reasons being found in the Pensieve, he didn’t say, because that was a whole different argument altogether. “Those reasons being your own to divine. I don’t think my laying them out for you will endear me to you in any way, and I’d rather not immediately take any potential for further congress off the table, if it’s all the same to you.”

Draco made a face, but he didn’t dismiss the notion—maybe he didn’t want to get into anything that might take any potential for further congress off the table either. He crossed his arms over his chest and exhaled loudly. “…So what does that mean? I’m a Slytherin, I’m meant to be circumspect—you’re supposed to have all the subtlety of an Erumpent in heat.”

Harry snorted softly, listing to the side so their shoulders were pressed together. Draco’s skin was still heated, like a warm coal fire he could snuggle up against to stave off the chill beating against the thin cottage windows in blustery snowflake-laden gusts. Very shortly, even with the cottage’s Atmospheric Charms in fine working order, it was going to feel far too cold to be sitting around starkers.

“…I don’t really know you. Not who you really are, all the facets and aspects and nooks and crannies. I’ve gotten to see you as a mean little shit in school and as a sorry, insufferable sod stuck under Voldemort’s thumb, and even as a confused sort-of-amnesiac who could only say my name. Everything else—and I do believe there is more—well…a handful of days isn’t enough to take it all in. But—” Draco had turned away, feigning interest in the rest of the room while Harry recited what he probably felt was his laundry list of mistakes. Harry shifted around to face him. “I do want to. I keep getting these—these tantalising little glimpses of someone I really get on with, someone I think I could…I dunno. Be with. And it’s not enough. I want more.”

There was a long, quiet beat, and then Draco said, “Why?”

“Why?”

“Why now? You’re curious? Or maybe just horny? Now that I’m no longer a mean little shit, now that I’m not insufferable—”

“Hey, I never said you weren’t still a mean little shit or insufferable.”

But Draco was on a roll now. “—You suddenly want to get to know me? Because maybe now I’m worth getting to know?”

God, definitely not insufferable—and Harry was reminded of Draco in the Pensieve memories, wishing and wanting for Harry to think him worthy. That was all Draco had ever wanted—for Harry to like him and to want him. He was just absolute shit at showing it—or at allowing himself to be likeable or wantable at all.

And Harry decided that now it was time for some tough love. “You know what? Yeah. Yeah, you want to put it like that? Sure. Now you are worth getting to know. Not because of any imagined value you might think I place on you—but because now it seems like you might actually let me.” Draco blinked at him, gobsmacked, and Harry barrelled through, because there was every chance this might be the last conversation they ever had. “You didn’t have a nice word one for me back at school—and I was eleven when I first met you, so what was I supposed to think? That you just had a crusty outer shell, but if I really worked at you, I could get to the gooey bits inside and then we’d be best mates? I was supposed to pick you, over someone who actually showed he was interested in me and liked being around me? You can’t play hard to get and then whine when I can’t actually get you!”

“I—was not playing hard to get—”

And of course that would be the bit he latched on to. Harry scoffed. “No, you were just being a shitty little eleven-year-old. And then a shitty little twelve-year-old. And then a shitty little thirteen-year-old, and so on and so forth. And I’m not saying I was a class act either—trust I’ve had several months now to reflect on…on how I might have behaved differently in the past and how I ought to behave differently going forward. But—god. I know one of the great joys in your life is not letting me have my way and making me miserable, but we can’t do this—we can’t both of us be eleven-year-olds again who keep making the same mistakes instead of acting our age and owning up to what we want.”

“And you know what I want?” Draco said, feigning challenge—but Harry could hear, under it all, that he was begging for Harry to tell him, so it wouldn’t feel like giving in and admitting it.

But if Draco wanted to know what was in those Pensieve memories, he could fucking well take a swan dive into them when he was good and ready. Harry wasn’t going to spoil that revelation for him, not for all the blowjobs in the world.

“…You’re the one who likes to lecture people while their cocks are hanging out, not me. I know what I want, though: I want to stop wondering what I could have had, all these years, if I’d taken your hand. I want to know who we might be now. I can’t change the past, but I can change the future. So if you want to be in that future, with me, then cut shitty little eleven-year-old me some slack. You don’t want me imagining you’re Malfoy—so stop imagining I’m him. I’m the one who’s sitting here, staining my couch with my arse sweat while simultaneously freezing my bollocks off ‘cause it’s nearly mid-winter and Charms only do so much, asking you to please, maybe…” He lifted his brows hopefully. “…Consider dating me?”

Draco looked away again, shifting uncomfortably. Probably because he was now suddenly conscious he was freezing his bollocks off too. “…You don’t even like me,” he said, petulant as ever, and this was progress, because at least he’d given up claiming he didn’t like Harry.

Harry shrugged. “I like you a little. Dating someone does generally have the prerequisite of thinking they’re all right. I figure I like you enough, for now.”

“Debatable.”

Harry narrowed his eyes—were they just going to go around in circles on this all morning? “That I like you?”

And Draco let his head loll back against the couch. “That you like me enough.” He cocked his head to the side, suddenly pensive, and Harry heard the shift in his tone. “We’ll fuck this up,” he said, the same way he’d confessed to being terrified Harry would end him, and Harry’s heart clenched. He tried not to think about the Blackblood screeching in terror as the Killing Curse struck it in the chest and sent it toppling to the ground in a cold, dead heap of flesh. He wasn’t successful.

And yet Draco had beaten back that fear and shown up in Harry’s sitting room on December the 20th—not August the 27th—all the same. Harry had nearly killed him, and still he’d come back. We’ll fuck this up was not a wild prediction but a foregone conclusion. That didn’t mean there was no coming back from it. Between them, they’d shrugged off a half-dozen Unforgivables. Harry didn’t think there was any word for them but Power Couple.

Harry nodded. “Mm, probably. I foresee two, maybe three spectacular, blow-out breakups.”

Draco shifted to lean further into Harry, resting his head on Harry’s shoulder—it felt like a test, like if Harry moved a muscle, Draco would unsheathe those nasty talons and rake him across the face. He held his breath, and Draco sighed. “Can one of them be at a gala? I’ve always dreamed of having a glorious row in the middle of the dance floor and then throwing champagne in my partner’s face and storming out in a scandalous display sure to make headlines the next day.”

Harry noodled on this for a moment. “You know, I think the Ministry has a Christmas charity to-do each year. I don’t generally go—but I could make an exception this year if I could be promised a ‘scandalous display’ by my date.”

“I think half the population still thinks I’m dead—it would be quite the scene.”

“Could we at least get one dance in?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely not. I saw you at the Yule Ball.”

Harry opened his mouth to protest this and claim he was a much better dancer now than he had been at fourteen, but it would be a lie, so he decided against it. “…Are we really gonna do this?”

He couldn’t see Draco’s face, but the silence that settled between them spoke volumes. “…Shall I come back on the 27th of August instead? If you think I haven’t given this as-already-mentioned terrible decision due consideration?” He twisted around, expression fierce, and leaned into Harry’s space. “Turns out I do know myself—and I do know what I want after all.” And then his expression softened, breath coming in a sort of stuttering sigh, as he laid a hand against Harry’s cheek. “…I just want you.”

Simple, and elegant, yet so full of drama—like Draco himself. Harry leaned into the caress. “I can’t promise you anything. Except that I really do want to try. To get to know you—and to let you get to know me.”

Draco’s lips thinned. “…And what if I don’t want to get to know you? What if I just want to warm your bed and suck your prick and have you inside and out and every which way between? What if I don’t want to know what I could have had, all these years, if I hadn’t been a shitty little eleven-year-old?”

Draco, Harry had learned, was never asking what it sounded like he was asking. He didn’t want to just sleep with Harry on occasion and then to fall into their separate orbits, coming together only in fantastic, spontaneous collisions that few but the most brilliant astronomers could predict. He was just scared that that was all he could handle—or that eventually, it would be all Harry could give him.

Draco wasn’t scared of Harry breaking him—he was scared of him breaking himself. He’d made mistake after mistake after mistake in life, and from his perspective, Harry had always made the right choices. He didn’t dare ask for more than what Harry could offer, because then he wasn’t getting his hopes up. He still needed Harry to be the brave one. And well, Harry had saved Draco once. He could damn well do it again.

Harry smiled, nodding placidly. “…Then I can keep that too, safe like the Pensieve memories, for whenever you’re ready. If you ever are.”

Draco grimaced, a strange, twisted expression that seemed at once both sad and happy. “Why do you always have to be the fucking hero? And say the absolutely most perfect thing? I fucking hate you.” He launched himself into a kiss, deep and searing and filled with a decade’s worth of want. “I’ve never hated anyone the way I hate you.”

And Harry kissed him back, the chill in his bones rapidly being chased away by the warmth of their bodies coming together. Draco Malfoy hated him. All was right with the world again.