Archive of Our Own ^beta

August 31, 2017

"Well,” Astoria says, her voice bright, tinny, and wry through the phone speaker, “it’s spring again at the Manor of Mild Regrets.”

The screen is propped against the soap dish, balanced precariously on a sloped bit of enamel lip on the edge of the sink. Draco watches her face flicker in the low blue light of the bath. It’s not live, of course, but in fact one of the earlier episodes that had propelled them to fame as renovation show personalities. 

He remembered everything. 

The daffodils had come up crooked that year. Brave, disoriented. She said they looked like hungover debutantes. He’d laughed, genuinely, and she’d grinned at the sound and kept narrating.

“The conservatory leaks. The floo in the west corridor still belches soot. And I found a ghoul in the linen press yesterday, although he may have been here longer—I’m choosing not to be cross about it.

My husband, Draco—indoorsy, pale, stubbornly devoted to crumbling infrastructure—is refusing to re-charm the radiators until he’s ‘certain the spell schema is stable.’ Which is, of course, a lie.”

In the background of the video, you can hear Scorpius. He’s still small, shouting about frogs. Somewhere in the garden, probably weaponizing a stick.

It plays on. The lighting’s too dim, and Astoria’s hair is half-pinned and falling down one side of her face. She looks beautiful. She looks tired. 

Most of all, she looks alive.

Draco closes his eyes and listens.

The towel warmer clicks faintly as it resets its timer. The bathtub behind him is cold porcelain, and he can feel the chill through his jumper. A line of steam curls from the charm on his tea, but he hasn’t touched it. He’s been sitting here for the better part of an hour.

The Manor, so-called, is not the ancestral Malfoy estate. That monolith had been surrendered to the Ministry in the aftermath—stripped of its protections, its portraits, and its political weight. This house, the one Astoria chose, is something else entirely: a crumbling Jacobean ramble with uneven staircases, fourteen fireplaces (five functional), and what the solicitor had described, in a burst of professional optimism, as “maturely haunted.”

Draco had always thought it looked like a wizarding retirement home with a drinking problem.

Astoria adored it.

Now the house is quiet. Still vast, still elegant in its stern, expensive way, but quiet in that awful, padded sort of silence that comes with living alone in too many rooms.

Scorpius leaves tomorrow.

There is no nanny anymore, no tutors tutting through breakfast, no half-built arithmancy games spread out on the sitting room floor. The owl that delivered the Hogwarts list last month knocked over the vase in the entry hall, and no one even shouted. It just shattered and sat there. Draco stepped around it twice before vanishing the mess.

None of the restoration work Astoria had been so diligently documenting (she left half-spelled cornicing, the unfinished fresco in the stairwell, her beloved but eternally temperamental wallpaper mural) had progressed since her death. The spellbooks are still stacked on the hallway console where she left them. Her wand is still tucked into the top drawer of the dining room sideboard, along with a roll of notes about the upstairs gallery and a half-used pot of gilding wax that smells faintly of rosemary.

He hasn’t touched a thing.

But he’s going to. 

He’s made a list. A proper schedule, even. He’s going to begin next week, after Scorpius is at Hogwarts, after the packing is done and the goodbyes are said and the silence is official.

Then he’ll start.

He scrolls forward to the last few videos available on WixenTube, leading up to her death. He chooses one at random, and taps it. 

Astoria’s warm nearly-Scottish accent sings out into the echo of the front hall bath. 

“We have, on the docket: one half-stripped wall in the music room, one entirely unstripped hallway in the east wing, and the slow, inevitable defeat of this particular shade of limewash, which will not be missed.

Also on the docket: Scorpius’s Hogwarts letter arrived this morning. Which he immediately dropped in the pond.”

He closes his eyes at the sound of her voice saying it. Not because it hurts, of course it hurts, but it’s been a year, and it’s become a habit. 

“More soon ,” she says, and smiles—not at the camera, but at him, behind it. “ Assuming I survive the next round of pre-teen duelling and damp. Until then, keep your spells stable and your jam shelf stocked.”

The video ends. The screen goes dark. The bathroom, dim and tiled and too perfectly clean, receives the silence like an offering.

Draco doesn’t move.

The faint hum of the towel rack continues behind him, steady as breath. A beetle clicks somewhere between the wall tiles. Outside the frosted window, wind brushes across the high hedges with a sound like someone trying not to cry.

He realizes that the sound is him trying not to cry. 

Dear Salazar, he can’t be whimpering in the bathroom. 

He holds still. He tells himself he’s fine. He has always been good at grief in small, manageable doses. As long as it could be folded neatly and stored where it can’t cause damage. But something about the quiet tonight is unmanageable. Something about her voice, the offhand way she’d said “more soon,” as if there would always be another video. Another spring. Another mess to narrate with charm.

His chest gives once. Sharp. And then again, but worse. It doesn’t shudder so much as cave in, like a ward collapsing under pressure.

He drops his head to his knees and lets it come.

He cries like a helpless unspooling. It is soundless at first, and then not. It becomes a rough, ruined kind of crying, the kind that leaves no air behind it. His shoulders curl in. His hands shake. 

There is something deeply tragic about being reduced to a whimpering mess on the floor.

He tries to stop. He really does, but his body isn’t listening. It’s moving through something old, something physical, something he’s kept beneath so many layers of composure that now it has nowhere else to go. He breathes like someone’s holding him underwater. His face is wet. His throat is raw. His tea has gone cold.

This is not the first time. 

He thinks idly, through wracking sobs, that it’s the first time in this bathroom, though. 

Eventually, the worst of it passes. It always does. He straightens slowly. Presses the heel of his hand beneath each eye. Finds the handkerchief in his pocket. Uses it.

He sits until the towel warmer clicks on behind him again. 

Astoria has been gone for one year, and tomorrow, Scorpius leaves too.

The Manor is holding its breath.

And Draco, as ever, is the one left behind.

September 1, 2017

They’re early. Draco always is.

The Portkey Station at Hogsmeade is quiet in the way that always reminds him of a snow globe: sealed, faintly magical, sound carrying strangely through the high-arched rafters and smooth black stone floors. Built after the war as a fallback for international travel, it now serves mostly as a private alternative to the chaos of Diagon Alley.

Draco prefers it. Less shouting, and best of all, no press.

They stand near Gate 3, beside a glowing brass rail marked Hogwarts Express Departures – School Year Portkeys Only. The platform itself is just a wide circle of magically cooled stone, ringed by low benches and flanked by a travel official in navy robes who keeps glancing at his clipboard and frowning.

Scorpius is sitting cross-legged on his trunk, flipping through A Beginner’s Guide to Magical Contracts. His robes are pressed, his shoes enchanted to shine themselves every ten minutes, and his hair already ruined by the wind. He looks like Astoria; more every year.

Draco, beside him, hasn’t spoken in ten minutes. He holds a cup of coffee he no longer wants and pretends to read the side of the sugar packet.

Hearing the scuffle of shoes behind him, coming down the gangway, and he knows who it is before the voice comes. Only so many other families have a child headed to Hogwarts from Hogsmeade.

“Morning,” Harry says, just over his shoulder.

Draco turns. “Potter.”

Harry adjusts his grip on Albus’s trolley with a grimace. He’s overpacked, clearly, or refused help. Draco watches the boy dart toward Scorpius, already laughing. The boys collide into a hug that turns into a shoulder-check and dissolves into grinning chaos.

“They’ll be insufferable together,” Draco says.

James slouches into the circle behind his brother and father, looking every inch as cool as Draco and Harry were at fifteen, that is to say, not cool at all, and decidedly spotty. 

“I hope so,” Harry replies. “It’s a good sign.”

Draco studies him as he adjusts Albus’s trunk again, since Harry can’t see him looking. 

He doesn’t really see Potter anymore, not the way he used to. They cross paths often enough at Hogwarts events, Ministry panels, alumni galas with too much wine and not enough seating, and Draco’s long since stopped checking for signs of decline. They both look older. Of course they do. They’ve aged side by side, whether they meant to or not.

But every now and then (like now) Draco glances up and catches himself looking for a boy who isn’t there. The gangly limbs, the cracked glasses, the stupid hair, the stupid face.

Gone.

And in his place, Potter. Solid. Present. A man who fills space like he’s used to battlefields. The streaks of grey in his hair aren’t dramatic, or even that pronounced. His shoulders are broader than they have any right to be, and his clothes are plain but well-fitted. His sleeves are pushed up just far enough to show strong forearms, freckled and sun-warmed, wand hand steady as ever.

The boy is gone. The man has been there for years. And somehow Draco is only just catching up.

“No Lily?” he asks, lightly.

Harry shrugs. “She said goodbye at home. Didn’t want to cry in public.”

Draco nods. He can respect that.

The Ministry official steps forward with a polite cough. “Students, trunks, and familiars inside the ring, please. Portkey will activate in three minutes.”

Scorpius springs up, dragging his trunk behind him. Albus follows. They move in tandem, practically vibrating with excitement. James rolls his eyes, and barely puts down his mobile. 

Draco folds his arms. “We do realise they’re going to London just to take a train back here?”

Harry sighs. “I’ve tried to explain that it’s a ceremonial tradition, not a transit solution.”

“They could walk. You can see the Astronomy Tower from the garden.”

“They don’t care,” Harry says, watching the boys jostle each other at the edge of the ring. “To them it’s an adventure”

Draco shakes his head. “Ritual idiocy.”

“They’ll remember it forever.”

Draco doesn’t reply to that, but he doesn’t argue either. He broke Harry’s nose on the Hogwarts Express and it’s a chief happy memory when he conjures a patronus. 

The boys turn toward them.

“You’re coming, right?” Albus calls. “Just this once?”

Scorpius gives Draco a glance, with a question. Harry answers for them both. “Just this once.”

“Next year you can go alone,” Draco says. “And you can haul your own trunk.”

Scorpius groans. “You always say that.”

“This time I mean it.”

The five of them crowd close with all three trunks, one owl cage, five hands on the shining brass ring at the centre.

“Ready?” the Ministry official says, eyeing his clipboard. “Departure in five—”

The boys are laughing again. James mutters something, and Albus elbows him. The stone beneath their feet glows faintly. Magic prickles at the backs of their necks.

“—four, three—”

Draco catches Harry’s eye, just for a moment. Not quite a smile. Not quite not.

“Two, one—”

And they vanish.

They land hard in the arrival chamber beneath King’s Cross.

Scorpius whoops, dragging Albus toward the staircase. “Come on! We have to get a good compartment— Dad said most of them smell like old socks!”

Draco mutters something about broken tailbones. Harry laughs and follows, pausing only to lift Albus’s trunk again when it jams in the stair rail. He lifts it in one motion and carries it like it weighs nothing. It’s not a performance, and he doesn't make a sound. He lifts it with a practised ease that Draco pretends not to watch, and curses the workouts that aurors engage in. 

He smells like wind and parchment and something lightly woodsy, which is probably just whatever conditioning charm he uses on his hair, but it doesn’t stop Draco from fixating on it. What does wind even smell like? His glasses are crooked. His hair is tousled in a way that might be from the portkey, or might be just... Harry.

He turns away quickly. Focuses on the train. On the curve of steam lifting from the rails. On the two boys laughing as they disappear into the throng.

They emerge onto Platform 9¾ just as the scarlet engine lets out a high, theatrical hiss. The air smells like coal smoke and buttered toast, thick with the sound of all the shouts, goodbyes, and fluttering owls.

Scorpius turns and hugs Draco hard, chin jamming into his collarbone. He must be taking after Astoria’s side of the family; when did he get so tall? “I’ll write,” he says. “I mean it.”

Draco grips him tighter than he means to. “Every Sunday,” he says. “Even if nothing happens.”

Scorpius grins and waves before yanking Albus toward the train.

They board together without looking back.

The whistle shrieks.

Draco exhales long and slow, and steps back from the edge.

Harry moves to stand beside him.

“Do you remember,” Draco says, “how ridiculous we thought this was, back at the Portkey Station?”

“I do.”

They watch the train start to move.

The boys’ compartment flickers past, their two faces at the glass, shouting, laughing, blurred by motion.

Harry laughs under his breath.

The train curves out of sight.

Harry glances over. “They’ll be fine.”

Draco nods. “I know.”

But he doesn’t leave. And neither does Harry.

Not yet.

2010

The pool was built inside what had once been a glass-roofed conservatory. 

Climbing vines now trailed from the enchanted ceiling like drapery, their tendrils glowing faintly gold in places where sunlight filtered through. Dozens of delicate lanterns floated above the water—some with petals like rose blossoms, others shaped like sea creatures or calla lilies gone a bit mad. The lighting changed with the hour, enchanted to follow a springtime dusk cycle, and the air itself smelled of crushed mint, warm tiles, and honeysuckle.

It had been a ruin when they found it. Then, the building was just an overgrown wreck at the very back of the estate, but Astoria had seen the bones of it, and Draco couldn’t help wanting to give her what she imagined. They did the work together, first relocating it to the back of the house, and connecting it with a corridor, and then the extensive decorative changes. 

The pool floor was a mosaic of deep green and black tiles, shifting in tone as the water moved. The edge was wide and softened with padded benches and charmed plants that released a subtle mist. The whole room felt alive. Everything had been spelled to feel like a tropical dusk and it was humid, glowing, and safe.

Scorpius hurled himself in the second the wards dropped.

Float charms bloomed at his shoulders and wrists, bouncing slightly as he shrieked something about sea dragons and tried to ride his own ripple wake. His limbs were flailing, his hair was plastered to his forehead, and he never looked as delighted as he did in the pool. 

Astoria laughed and followed him in with a smooth, practiced plunge. She surfaced in a cloud of citrus steam, hair pinned up, rings banished away to her bedside table, trailed by two enchanted toys shaped like otters.

This morning, like every Tuesday morning, was Hogsmeade Village Association Swim Lessons Morning. 

There were three other mothers already present, standing barefoot at the far edge of the pool. One was casting cooling charms into a thermos, another was adjusting her toddler’s arm float, and the third was trying to coax her child off a chaise lounge with the promise of a biscuit and a dragon sticker. All of them smiled when Astoria dove in after her son.

A red-haired young woman in a yellow swimming costume waded over to Scorpius with practiced calm.

“Hi there Scorpius!” she called, voice bright. “Excellent jumping form. Very aggressive!”

Scorpius screamed joyfully in reply.

This was Laurel, the instructor. Round-cheeked, twentysomething, former Hufflepuff prefect, deeply unbothered by chaos. She carried a wand in one hand and in the other, she had already magicked a plush selkie into existence for one wailing toddler on the stairs.

Astoria beamed from the middle of the pool. “She’s the best,” she called loudly to the other mums, water dripping from her chin. “Laurel trained under the Mermish Inclusion Act. Total prodigy. The Ministry tried to hire her, but she said she liked children more than policy.”

Ginny and Harry arrived slightly behind schedule, shoes in one hand, a canvas bag in the other, looking a bit like they weren’t entirely sure they were welcome. 

Across the room, Draco stood near a stone bench with a clipboard and a formal posture that suggested he might be here to assess insurance risk, not observe toddler mayhem. He was wearing shoes. His shirt cuffs were buttoned. His wand was holstered high and tight against his ribs like he expected to duel at any time.

Harry, instructed earlier by Ginny to “be normal,” raised a tentative hand in greeting.

Draco gave a nod that was both brief and exquisitely neutral.

Astoria surfaced at the edge of the pool between them. “Harry, Ginny,” she said, brightly. “Perfect timing. We’ve just reached the point where someone always cries.”

A sharp wail rang out from the shallow steps.

“One of the Henrys,” Astoria added, unbothered.

Laurel moved quickly, gathering the shrieking child into her arms and conjuring a singing turtle puppet. The noise dropped off immediately.

Ginny pulled her top from her chest, sweating already, and raised a brow. “Is it always this warm?”

Astoria, already drifting toward the middle again, grinned. “Oh, practically soup. Children lose heat faster than adults, and frankly, I’d rather overdo it than risk a chill.”

Scorpius chose that moment to dive toward the deep end and attempt to shout a squid into existence.

“That one’s mine,” Astoria added, lazily. “He’s feeling theatrical.”

Albus, meanwhile, stood at the water’s edge, watching with enormous eyes.

“It’s safe,” Ginny murmured, crouching beside him. “See the wards? They’ll catch you.”

He nodded but didn’t move.

“Hi there!” Laurel called, catching his eye. “You’re Albus, right? You’ve got a great splashing arm. Want to show me how it works?”

She didn’t push. Just hovered, smiling, until Albus eased forward and dipped a toe, then both feet. Ginny stayed beside him as he slid in, slow but determined.

Within seconds, he and Scorpius were shoulder to shoulder, yelling gleefully about krakens and forming an impromptu aquatic alliance.

Astoria, delighted, swam past again and called, “That one’s yours, then? Splashy elbows?”

Ginny gave a short laugh. “That’s him.”

“Excellent splashing,” Astoria said, waving a damp hand. “Very assertive.”

Harry laughed. “Looks like you’ve got a whole system.”

“I do.” Astoria rolled onto her back and floated effortlessly. “It’s held together with bribery, flattery, and a massive supply of oat biscuits.”

Ginny, watching Albus loosen up beside Scorpius, smiled. “I should’ve brought Lily. She’d have loved this.”

“She’s two,” Harry said.

“So? That one’s practically foaming at the mouth.” She nodded toward Scorpius, who was now yelling directly at the drain.

Harry glanced at Draco. “Your son’s very confident.”

Draco didn’t smile, exactly, but there was something faint and fond about the way he looked at the pool. “He’s always been like that. Wants to know everything. Wants to do it all himself.”

Harry nodded. “Sounds familiar.”

Draco tilted his head slightly. “Does it?”

“That’s Hermione,” Harry said. “She was like that.”

Draco’s expression shifted—just slightly—into something unreadable. “Ah.”

Silence again. 

“So,” Harry tried, “you built this?”

Draco nodded. “Well. Not physically. We hired a team. But the spellwork is mine. Astoria manages the programming.”

“She did great,” Harry said, meaning it.

He looked around at the tiled floor, the enchanted vines, the soft, filtered light, the preschoolers yelling gleefully into the water. It was warm. It was beautiful. It was... not what he would have expected from a Malfoy.

And it was, unmistakably, hers.

“She’s good at this,” he added.

“Yes,” Draco said, still watching the pool. “She’s very good at many things.”

Harry turned back to him. “You don’t swim?”

“Not during lessons.”

“Why not?”

Draco blinked as if he’d been asked why he didn’t wear his formal dress robes to breakfast. “Someone needs to monitor the safety wards. And maintain the room temperature. And update the logbook. And—”

“Right,” Harry cut in, holding up a hand. “Okay. Got it.”

A beat.

“You’re wearing shoes,” Harry added, after a moment.

Draco didn’t look at him. “Yes.”

At the end of the lesson Ginny accepted a flask of something Astoria called “fruity fuckery,” and the two of them were deep in conversation before Harry even made it across the room.

Albus sat wrapped in a towel on Ginny’s lap, pink-cheeked and babbling. Scorpius sat beside him with both legs in one of his mother’s slippers, looking pleased with himself. Laurel was crouched nearby, conjuring stickers for a grumpy toddler and answering someone’s question about waterproof warding.

“She’s great,” Ginny said with a nod toward Laurel, “but this place—this is incredible.”

Astoria smiled modestly. “Oh, it was a ruin when we moved in. We kept the stone but rebuilt the rest. Draco did the architectural charmwork. I did the practical bits—temperature regulation, changing stalls, anti-slippage hexes. The water memory enchantments were a nightmare.”

“Worth it,” Ginny said, already settled on a bench, her curls damp and her feet bare. “This doesn’t feel like a swim lesson. It feels like—what’s the word. Like another world, but with splashing.”

Astoria laughed. “That’s the goal.”

“I’d come every week.”

“You’re invited.”

And just like that, it was decided. 

The Potters and the Malfoys were to be friends. 

Nearby, Draco made a subtle mark in the lesson log and adjusted the temperature matrix by half a degree. Harry watched him for a moment, towel around his shoulders, trying to think of something normal to say.

“You really keep a logbook?”

Draco glanced up. “Of course.”

“For swim lessons?”

“For magical swim lessons. With minors. And unlicensed adults. In an enchanted structure that produces its own weather.”

“Fair enough.”

A small beat passed.

“You going to write me up?” Harry asked.

Draco glanced at Harry’s bare feet. Then, finally, smiled. Just a little. “Not this time.”

September 3, 2017

Harry gets home from the shop and finds Lily’s shoes in the middle of the hall, the cat asleep on the counter, and a note on the fridge pinned with a Skiving Snackbox magnet:

Library. Don’t eat the last éclair. I’m saving it. Also, don’t text me about dinner. I’ll eat at Marigold’s.

He sets the groceries on the kitchen table, which seems to be a little sticky from something jam-like, and starts putting things away. It’s too warm for September. The house has that late-afternoon quiet that isn’t really silence, just absence. There are socks on the banister. A broom leaning against the back door. A pile of clean laundry in a basket on the stairs that no one’s bothered to move.

It’s not big, but it’s enough. A room for him, one for Lily, a third that floats between James and Albus and storage depending on who’s home and how recently they left for school. The garden’s mostly weeds, but the wards are solid, and the upstairs windows get morning light. He likes it.

He’s had Lily full-time since the spring. Ginny’s career takes her all over with coaching consults, league interviews, half a dozen World Cup committees, and it seems to be working better this way. They’d tried to split everything evenly, but the math only held up for so long.

He pulls a bottle of tonic water from the bag and nudges aside the mail to make space. That’s when he sees the envelope.

It’s slightly damp, ink smudged just at the corner, addressed in Albus’s too-careful script. The kind of neat that comes from the fear of being misunderstood.

Harry opens it and reads:

Dad—
I forgot my transfiguration chart at Scorpius’s. It’s the new one with the updated reversals. Can you go get it? I need it by Monday.

Tell him thanks. Or don’t. I’ll write.

Also, you can have the biscuits in my top drawer if you want. They’ll go stale.

–A

That’s it.

No sign-off. No “love you.” Just a dash and an initial. He imagines Scorpius beside him, probably suggesting the biscuit part. It sounds like him.

He reads it again, then folds the paper and slides it into his jacket pocket.

He hasn’t been to the Malfoys’ in over a year.

Not since the funeral.

That day had been oddly warm, too. The room smelled like lilies and magic, and soft, expensive grief, and Ginny had worn a black dress and said nothing the entire walk there. They hadn’t told anyone about the divorce yet. They were still pretending they were working things out. Trying to be kind. Trying to finish gracefully.

Ginny hadn’t hated him. She just didn’t want to live in a house where they passed each other like colleagues. She hadn’t said it that way, of course, but she hadn’t needed to.

And Astoria—Astoria had always belonged more to Ginny than to him. Ginny never said it outright, but Harry always suspected there was a kind of love there she couldn’t name until it was too late. She’d grieved hard, and not cleanly. And Harry, standing next to her, hadn’t known where to put his hands.

Astoria had been sharp, beautiful, unsettlingly self-assured. She was kind to him, sure, but not close, not really. He’d cared, but he’d still felt like a guest in her beautiful life. 

Draco had been all hollow control. Standing next to Scorpius in that dark coat, jaw tight, eyes like polished glass. Harry didn’t see him cry, or actually speak to anyone. He’d just stood there, one hand on his son’s shoulder like the act alone might keep them both from falling.

Harry had offered condolences. Draco had nodded. They hadn’t spoken since.

There was no reason to go back, it felt like. The boys kept in touch on their own now that they were eleven. They Portkeyed to Molly’s house together, sent owls, and shared broom magazines. The friendship thrived without either of their fathers getting involved.

But now, this.

A chart. A mundane excuse. A practical reason. And apparently, that’s all it takes.

Harry grabs his jacket, leaves the tonic water on the counter with the stack of mail, and walks out the door before he can think too hard about what he’s doing.

The walk is longer than he remembers. Uphill, of course. 

The path curves around the Black Lake, past the village’s edge and into a woodland that doesn’t quite have the densely packed growth of the Forbidden Forest. 

By the time the house comes into view, Harry’s mildly out of breath and slightly annoyed about it.

It’s still ridiculous.

Not Malfoy Manor ridiculous, of course. There were no marble floors or ancestral portraits whispering bloodlines, but it was still grand in that brooding, storybook way. It had a handsome gabled roof, with ivy-covered stone, and a lawn so perfectly green it probably requires thrice daily watering. It looks like it should have a tragic widow sweeping across a balcony, or at the very least a ghost dog in the orchard.

Harry guessed Malfoy was the tragic widow now. 

Astoria used to call it the manor of mild regret, and honestly, that might’ve been generous. It was more of a Jacobean ramble than a proper manor, like someone tried to build a castle and then got bored halfway through and added a conservatory for flair.

Harry slows down as he hits the gravel, partly because it crunches too loudly under his boots, partly because—well. He hasn’t been there since the funeral.

He’s never really known what to do with this place. It’s not grand enough to hate. Not warm enough to love. Just… here. 

He squints up at it.

If he walked ten minutes farther down the slope, followed the treeline, he could probably see the towers at Hogwarts. Sometimes, when the light hits right, he thinks he can spot the Astronomy Tower from a ridge near the boundary charm. He tells himself he doesn’t walk that way just to check if his kids’ windows are lit. He definitely doesn’t say it out loud.

He adjusts his satchel, scuffs some gravel off his boot, and heads to the door.

The knocker is a wrought iron dragon. Of course it is.

He considers knocking twice just to be annoying, but settles for one good thud. The sound echoes in that fancy, judgy way rich doorways always manage.

After a moment, the door swings open.

2012

It started with swim lessons.

Then came the book club, which was Astoria’s idea, of course. She looped in Ginny first, then Daphne, and from there it spiralled: Hermione, Padma, even Luna for a brief stretch before she left for her fieldwork in Greenland. They met on Thursdays at first, then Sundays, then eventually gave up on reading altogether and just shared wine and gossip while the children built elaborate pillow forts upstairs.

The dinners came later, and organically. A few shared meals after swim lessons, one impromptu birthday gathering, then a Wednesday where no one wanted to leave and Draco, of all people, had thrown together a second dessert and two more wine pairings with a quietly muttered fine, then . After that, it just... kept happening.

Wednesday nights at the Manor of Mild Regrets.

That particular Wednesday night, the children were asleep upstairs having a sleepover—Albus and Scorpius curled into opposite ends of a quilted nest, James pretending he wasn’t part of it, and Lily snuggled into Scorpius’s old tent in the corner with a lantern as a nightlight. Downstairs, the adults lingered. Dessert had turned to wine, and wine had turned to soft, golden quiet.

Astoria was laughing with her head tilted back, bare feet tucked under her on the bench seat. Ginny leaned close to her, murmuring something that made her grin widen. Daphne and Blaise were midway through a long, familiar argument about Ministry incompetence and whether the Floo Network should be nationalised. 

Harry had lost track of the thread some time ago. He was nursing the last inch of wine in his glass and watching candlelight play against the old brass knobs on the sideboard.

Across the table, Draco caught his eye.

His face was relaxed in the flickering glow, sharper than it used to be, a little older, but softer too. Less guarded, at least here, at this table, in this strange and perfect pocket of peace they’d built without quite meaning to.

Harry looked away first.

Astoria stood to fetch another bottle, brushing her fingers across the back of Draco’s neck as she passed. He didn’t react, and just reached up and touched her wrist for a breath before letting go.

No one mentioned the war anymore.

They didn’t need to.

Somehow, this absurd little patchwork of former enemies, accidental friends, and children upstairs dreaming of krakens felt like enough.

Not magic, exactly, but something very close.

The evening had thinned out the way all good ones did: gradually, like the air slowly leaving a room.

Blaise had made a show of yawning and kissing everyone twice on the cheek before Disapparating from the garden steps, his voice still echoing through the hedge. Daphne lingered just long enough to compliment the pudding and press her wineglass into Astoria’s hands, muttering something about needing to get up early for a dress fitting.

Now, only Harry, Ginny, and Draco remained, gathered near the bottom of the staircase with the house slowly dimming around them, charmed lights retreating into sconces, music having faded ten minutes ago without anyone noticing.

Harry rubbed the back of his neck and reached for his coat. “Lily’s going to hex me if I don’t bring back her car.”

Ginny gave him a look, somewhere between amusement and resignation. “The pink one?”

“With pegasus wings.”

Draco glanced up from where he was collecting empty glasses. “I saw it earlier—pool room, under the bench.”

“I told her I’d check.”

Ginny rolled her eyes, already pulling her hair into a lazy knot. “I’ll walk. Meet me at home?”

Harry looked over, eyebrows raised. “You sure?”

“Please. I think I’ll stay and help Astoria clean up. It’ll take ages and you might as well go back without me”

“Fair,” he said, realizing that it would be just another night where they went to bed separately. Harry watched her slip down the hall, and smile brilliantly as she opened the door to the kitchen and golden light spilled out. 

Draco straightened, watching them the same way. “Come on, then. I’ll unlock it.”

The back hallway was quiet, lined with shuttered windows and paneled walls. The sconces had dimmed automatically, casting a low gold wash across the stone floor.

Harry trailed a step behind Draco, who moved without speaking, wand tucked behind one ear like he’d forgotten it was there.

“She’s really into that car,” Harry offered, mostly to fill the space.

“Mm.” Draco didn’t turn around. “I remember. She brought it to Astoria’s birthday lunch and insisted it was ‘part of the family.’”

“She introduced it to the owl.”

“The owl liked it,” Draco said, as if this settled something.

Their footsteps echoed faintly. It felt oddly like sneaking around after curfew.

Draco stopped at the end of the corridor and pressed his hand to the carved wood door. A soft click, and it opened.

Warm air greeted them, touched with cedar and steam, a charm-layered humidity that never quite crossed into uncomfortable. The light inside was soft and greenish-gold, pulsing gently like the memory of twilight.

The pool stretched out before them, still and perfect, the surface faintly shimmering with color.

“There,” Draco said, nodding toward the bench along the far wall.

Harry crossed the room. The pink car lay on its side, one wing bent a bit, nestled up against the base of the bench like it had been put down carefully and forgotten.

“Got it,” he said, crouching to pick it up. “Disaster averted.”

When he turned, Draco was watching the water. 

Harry turned the toy car over in his hands, checking the wings, then glanced back at the water. The light shimmered over it in soft layers with green giving way to amber, then melting into a kind of bruised violet that made the entire space feel suspended, hushed.

“This looks great, by the way,” he said. “Ginny mentioned Astoria did a new video—lighting redesign or something?”

Draco didn’t look away from the pool. “Yes. We filmed it two weeks ago. She wanted to highlight the layering sequence.”

“It shows,” Harry said, stepping closer. “Looks like dusk in here. Sort of... outside time.”

Draco gave a short nod. “That was the brief. She didn’t want candlelight. Or torches. She said everything warm ends up looking orange. She wanted air —what it feels like to walk outside just before it gets cold.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “And you translated that into... this?”

“I translated that into a fifteen-point lighting grid with synchronized charmwork keyed to time, temperature, and water depth,” Draco said, tone clipped. “But yes.”

Harry blinked. “Right.” He pocketed the toy car. “Well. You nailed it.”

That earned him a glance, brief and sidelong, but real.

Draco hesitated. Then nodded toward the far bench. “I keep the good scotch Astoria’s not allowed to turn into Old Fashioneds in here.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “In all this humidity?”

“Don’t be absurd. It’s in a cabinet.”

“What cabinet?”

Draco walked ahead and pressed his hand to the center slat of the bench. A section slid open with a soft click , revealing a narrow shelf inside.

Harry stared. “That’s a bench .”

“It’s also a cabinet,” Draco said, retrieving a bottle and two glasses. “You’ve sat on it dozens of times.”

“I feel betrayed.”

“That’s because you weren’t paying attention.”

Harry watched him pour, then leaned back against the warm tile with a grin. “That could be its own episode.”

Draco glanced sideways. “Don’t.”

Harry ignored him, shifting into a pitch-perfect imitation of Astoria’s wry narration: “It’s midsummer at the Manor of Mild Regrets. The wisteria has strangled the western trellis, the greenhouse ventilation charm predates the Statute of Secrecy, and the third-best peacock has taken up screaming precisely fifteen minutes before dawn.”

Draco exhaled sharply through his nose, which Harry took as a laugh.

Still in character, Harry added, “My husband, Draco—ornamental, exacting, possessed of no fewer than three wand holsters—has refused to adjust the airflow until he’s completed a ‘review of legacy spellwork,’ which, loosely translated, means: I forgot, and now I’m doubling down.”

Draco held a bottle up to the light, and muttered, “You’re banned.”

“If you’ve ever thought, this spa bench could double as a vault for my emotional repression and mid-tier single malts, you’re not alone.”

“Mid-tier?! I’m revoking your access to the channel.”

Harry laughed. “Too late. I’m subscribed. I even commented once. ‘Nice grout lines.’ That was me.”

Draco poured without looking up. “Of course it was.”

He handed Harry a glass, their fingers brushing. Draco’s jaw flexed almost imperceptibly, like the contact had startled something he refused to acknowledge. Harry didn’t notice, or he noticed and pretended not to.

He took the glass, sat down again on the bench with a quiet sigh. “I still can’t believe that thing’s a cabinet.”

“It’s practical,” Draco muttered.

“It’s neurotic,” Harry countered, sipping. “And kind of brilliant.”

The water shifted beside them, violet blooming slow across the tile.

Harry let his eyes drift upward, watching the light scatter along the ceiling. “So how’d you actually do this, then?”

Draco didn’t answer right away. He took a measured sip, set his glass down on the bench, and pressed his fingers lightly to his temple, like the act of explaining something simple was somehow irritating.

“Charm layering,” he said eventually. “Ambient light tracking. Fixed-point reflection schema mapped to tile density.”

Harry blinked. “You sound like a textbook.”

“You asked.”

“I didn’t ask for a lecture, I asked how you did it.” He tilted his head. “As in, why would anyone spend this much time on a pool room?”

Draco’s expression flickered.

Harry leaned back, watching him sideways. “You really are obsessive, you know.”

“I’m thorough.”

“You’re clinically allergic to simplicity.”

“That’s not a condition,” Draco said flatly.

Harry raised his glass. “You’d be the first to get diagnosed.”

Draco made a faint, dismissive sound. Not quite a laugh.

Harry let the quiet stretch, then said less flippant this time, more curious, “So this is what you do when you’re left alone in a room?”

Draco didn’t look at him. Just watched the light catch in the pool. “I suppose,” he said finally, clipped. “It gives me something to make sense of.”

Harry let that hang in the air between them. For once, Harry didn’t push, and he sat with it, turning the words over.

Harry watched the light ripple across the water. “Were you always this obsessive?”

Draco didn’t look at him. “About some things. Not everything.”

Harry took another sip. “What changed?”

Draco shrugged. “Not sure.”

Harry glanced over. “Seriously?”

A pause. Then: “Had a kid. Got bored. Pick one.”

Harry huffed a laugh. “That your official statement?”

“It’s a pool room, Potter. Not a memoir.”

They lapsed into silence again. Not quite comfortable, but familiar.

“Still,” Harry said, quieter now. “It’s good. You made something good.”

Draco’s jaw shifted.

“Suppose,” he said. “It was all Astoria’s vision.”

Harry nodded, let the silence stretch. Then, carefully: “How is she?”

Draco didn’t answer right away.

“Good days and bad,” he said finally. His voice wasn’t exactly tight, but it changed.

Harry hesitated. “She looks—she always looks—”

“She keeps going,” Draco said, almost to himself. “That’s the thing. She just... keeps going.”

He tipped back the rest of his whisky, and set the glass on the bench. A flick of his wand, and it vanished, clean and soft as a sigh.

Then he stood. 

“I should get back.”

Harry blinked. “Of course. Yeah.”

Draco looked toward the door. Then back at the pool, once. The light was fading into blue again, slow and even.

Harry blinked. “What, no after-dinner Armagnac hidden in the ferns?”

“Tell Lily her car’s in one piece,” he said, his mouth quirking as he ignored the rib. 

Harry smiled. “I’ll tell her it was recovered under suspicious circumstances.”

That got him a small, real sound. Not quite a laugh, but something like it. They walked out, and the cool of the hallway chilled Harry right to the bone. Draco warded the door again, and walked him back to the front. The house was quiet now, and dark. 

“Have a nice night, Malfoy,” Harry said, hand on the door knob. “Thanks for… all that.” 

Draco inclined his head, in the old way. “Have a pleasant walk.” 

Harry smiled, and opened the door. A fresh summer Scottish breeze ruffled his hair. “You know, I think I will.” 

September 3, 2017

Draco stands barefoot in the doorframe, sleeves shoved up, jumper threadbare at the cuffs. 

His hair is shorter than it used to be. It is clipped close at the sides, longer on top, still damp and sticking up at the crown like he forgot to dry it properly. His face is sharper now, lean and angular, with pale stubble cutting across his jaw and a faint line etched between his brows. There’s something tighter about him, around the mouth, the eyes, but not closed off. Just... quieter. Older, Harry thinks. His frame has filled out in the shoulders, chest broader than Harry remembers, posture relaxed but still upright in that aristocratic way, like his spine never got the memo about the war ending. His collarbones show faintly through the stretched neck of his jumper. One hand is smudged with ink; his wand’s tucked behind his ear like he meant to use it and forgot.

Harry takes all of this in without meaning to.

Draco stares at him. 

Harry lifts a hand. “Hi. I come bearing bureaucracy.”

Draco blinks once. “Potter.”

Harry waves the letter. “Chart crisis. Albus forgot it. He’s convinced it’s the only thing standing between him and academic ruin.”

Draco sighs like this confirms several personal theories about Gryffindors.

“I think it’s on the bookshelf in the music room,” he says, stepping back. “Or possibly wedged under the cat. Come in.”

Harry steps over the threshold, ignoring how much nicer it smells in here than his own place. Something expensive and faintly herbal, like whatever a linen cupboard would smell like if it had a trust fund.

He glances at Draco’s feet. “Bold move, the no-shoes thing. Trying to intimidate me with domestic confidence?”

Draco raises an eyebrow. “It’s called being comfortable in one’s own home.”

Harry snorts. “Must be nice.”

The hallway smells faintly of lavender polish and some kind of spellwork Harry can’t place, and now he’s trying to. It’s something layered and warm, like charmed parchment and dried citrus peel. The walls are hung with a mix of old paintings and newer family pictures in frames, some of them architectural renderings and hand-inked maps. Not a single ancestral portrait.

Draco leads the way without comment, wand still tucked behind his ear like an afterthought. His footsteps are nearly silent on the stone floor, without shoes. Harry’s boots, by contrast, sound like a herd of centaurs attempting stealth.

They pass a breakfast room, a music parlour, a sitting room with a hearth the size of a Floo portal and a basket full of charmed knitting that clicks aggressively to itself.

Harry keeps waiting for something awkward to happen. The silence is a bit too heavy, and he wonders if he should give some mention of Astoria, but nothing comes. Just quiet and the scrape of his boots and the faint creak of pipes that probably need tending to.

Draco stops outside a narrow door and nudges it open. “He was in here last. Albus, that is. I think they were finishing transfiguration notes while Scorpius packed.”

Harry steps into the study.

It’s smaller than he expects. It’s wood-paneled, warm, and a little dusty. There’s a desk by the window, parchment in neat stacks, a green-shaded lamp that hums faintly with an energy-saving charm. A teacup sits on the sill with a dried lavender bloom curled inside.

There are no house-elves with floating trays. They aren’t out of the room either because there are no sounds of anyone setting tea. Just the two of them. 

Harry crouches beside the desk.

“There’s probably a stack,” Draco says, from behind him. “Or it could be wedged. He has terrible filing instincts.”

Harry checks the side first, nothing. Then the floor.

There it is, just under the desk leg. Folded into a fat square beneath a striped sock and a half-crushed school jumper. He tugs them all free. Something rattles.

Glasses. Round, glittery, cracked across one lens. They sparkle faintly with charm residue and bear a faintly bent sticker that reads The Quibbler—Deluxe Edition.

Harry lifts them. “Scorpius?”

Draco nods. “Phase. He wore them for a week and tried to convince the owl he could see thestrals.”

Harry grins and sets them on the desk beside the parchment. “Could’ve been worse.”

“It was,” Draco says. “He tried to bedazzle my wand holster.”

Harry smooths the chart open. It’s annotated in two colours: Albus’s looping ink and Scorpius’s blocky capitals. There’s a steaming mug doodled in the corner with study fuel written above it, and a tiny lightning bolt.

Harry pretends not to notice.

He straightens up, brushing dust off his knees. “Found it.”

Draco leans in the doorway, arms crossed. “Tell him he left his socks, too. I’m sending them in a containment bag.”

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Heartless.”

“They were enchanted to sing about mandrakes.”

“…Fair.”

They don’t leave the room right away.

Draco doesn’t ask why Harry stays a little longer. Harry doesn’t ask who empties the teacups, or why the desk drawer is cracked open just enough to show stationery embossed with A. G. M. They just stand there, surrounded by a stillness that’s almost too polite.

Finally, Harry nods toward the door. “I should go.”

Draco doesn’t stop him, but he doesn’t move, either.

“Thanks,” Harry says, holding up the chart. “Mission accomplished.”

Draco’s mouth twitches. “Tell Albus if he forgets anything else, he can come get it himself.”

Harry’s halfway down the hall when Draco adds, almost like it’s nothing, “You could stay. For tea. If you wanted.”

He says it too evenly, like he’s said it before and like he expects the answer to be no.

Harry pauses, the weight of the chart shifting in his hand. He doesn’t turn around. “You actually have tea?”

A beat.

“I have excellent tea,” Draco replies.

Harry exhales through his nose. “Alright then. Just one cup.”

Harry follows Draco down a narrow hall and through a set of weathered French doors.

The kitchen surprises him.

Not because it’s grand. There’s absolutely nothing grand about it. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The room is light, and airy, and seems rather elegant, but Harry doesn’t have the interior design knowledge to know why. There are open shelves lined with pale ceramics, and a deep copper farmhouse sink. There are pots that actually look like they are used regularly hanging over a dark green enameled stove that hums with a low, familiar charm. The floor is tiled in light blue and cream, and there is wear in the checkered pattern where people actually stand and work. There’s a small, scrubbed wood table near the window with just three chairs and a teapot in a knitted cozy.

Harry has never been in here. Not once.

At all of Astoria’s dinners, he was always in the dining room, or the sitting room where everyone gathered after for wine and games and quiet gossip. This space had been invisible and private.

Now it feels like the center of the house.

Draco gestures toward the table. “Milk?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Harry says, still half-distracted, taking in the light, the copper pots, the ridiculous charm of it all. “I always figured you’d have some kind of house-elf barista by now.”

Draco flicks his wand, levitating two cups from a high shelf. “I did. Briefly.”

“And now?”

“Now I make tea.”

He pours with the kind of precise, almost ceremonial care that makes Harry suspect he’s doing it wrong at home. The scent curls upward and it is rich and floral, sharp at the edges. Something far too posh for Harry’s cupboard.

“What is this?” he asks, nose twitching toward the pot. “Looks fancy.”

Draco lifts the lid and flashes the tag. “PG Tips,” he says dryly. “I’m not that pretentious.”

Harry snorts. “Could’ve fooled me.”

Draco sets the pot down and finally takes the seat across from him. His movements are neat but not tight. 

“Ginny?” Draco asks, with studied neutrality.

Harry shrugs. “Doing well. Still travelling a lot. She’s in Montreal at the moment. Something about a Quidditch documentary. I think she’s narrating it.”

Draco nods. “Sounds like her.”

“Lily’s with me full-time until she goes to school in two years.”

A small pause.

Draco doesn’t say I’m sorry. He doesn’t say that sounds hard . Just: “And the boys?”

“Happiest I’ve seen them in years,” Harry says, honestly. “School is good for Albus.”

“Yes,” Draco murmurs. “Same for Scorpius.”

They sit in a quiet stretch for a moment, steam curling between them.

Then: “So. You’re Head Auror now.”

Harry looks up. “How do you know that?”

Draco lifts one shoulder. “I read things.”

“You read The Prophet ?”

“I read The Journal, actually. The Prophet’s riddled with errors.”

Harry snorts into his tea.

Draco raises an eyebrow. “Surprised?”

“A little.” He sets his cup down. “It’s not exactly thrilling, to be honest. Mostly desk work. Reports. Committee briefings. Half the job is mediating budget squabbles between Legal and MLE.”

“You always did like a good authority figure to argue with.”

Harry grins. “Yeah, well. Kingsley retired. I had to get creative.”

That earns a small, real smile from Draco. He sips his tea.

“And you?” Harry asks. “What are you doing these days? Since the—” He breaks off, then gestures vaguely. “You know. Since the channel.”

Draco doesn’t answer right away.

Harry doesn’t fill the silence.

Eventually, Draco says, “Mostly wrangling Scorpius.”

“And the house?”

Draco nods. “The house.”

A pause.

“No more videos?”

Draco’s mouth twitches. “Not recently.”

“They were good,” Harry says. “Astoria was—she was brilliant on camera.”

“She was brilliant everywhere,” Draco says quietly. Then, after a beat: “But yes. She had a gift.”

Harry looks down at his tea. It’s gone cool.

“She said once that the trick to filming charmwork was to show just enough of the spell so the viewer thought they could do it. And just enough of you to make them want to watch anyway.”

“She said that?”

Draco nods. “Repeatedly.”

Harry smiles, faintly. “Sounds about right.”

They fall into silence again, but this one feels easier. Shared. Like a knot that’s been loosened just a bit.

Draco stands. “Another cup?”

Harry considers. Then, quietly: “Yeah. I think I’ve got time.”

Harry sets his cup down, empty now, and leans back in his chair and lets Draco pour him another. 

From this angle, he can just see into the dining room through the doorway to his left. The long table’s still there—same dark wood, same mismatched chairs they used to drag around after dinner for charades or cards or whatever nonsense Blaise had brought that week. A stack of spellbound napkin rings sits on the sideboard, blinking idly. One winks at him.

The house is smaller than he remembered. Not in a bad way, really. It just seems less vast. 

Harry clears his throat. “You really don’t have an elf anymore?”

“No.”

“Sacked them all in a fit of post-war moral clarity?”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Astoria wanted privacy. I kept it that way.”

Harry doesn’t argue. Just nods and glances around again.

The place is clean, well-worn in a few corners, and surprisingly real. If someone had told him ten years ago that Draco Malfoy would live in a country house with a checkered kitchen floor and open shelving, he’d have laughed them off the street.

“You still run your parents’ estate, then?” he asks, turning back to the table.

Draco returns, drying his hands on a faded linen towel. “Sort of. There’s not much left to run. Couple of holding companies, a few properties. The family business was mostly show by the time I inherited it.”

He sits down slowly, fingers resting against his mug. “I do what needs doing. Taxes. Board votes. Maintenance charms. That sort of thing.”

Harry studies him. “That doesn’t sound like it takes up much of your time.”

“It doesn’t.”

They sit with that for a second.

Draco doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

Harry tilts his head. “So what are you going to do now?”

Draco hesitates.

That hesitation says more than he probably means it to.

He doesn’t know.

Harry lets the quiet sit, then shrugs. “Well. You’ve time to figure it out.”

Draco raises an eyebrow.

“I mean it,” Harry says. “Ron left the Auror Office last year. Gave up the badge and everything. Said he didn’t want to spend the next twenty years filling out forms.”

Draco looks faintly horrified. “What’s he doing now?”

“Working with George,” Harry says, grinning. “At the shop.”

Draco blinks. “Weasley is a joke merchant?”

“He’s bloody good at it, actually. You should see their new range—exploding snow globes and self-heating tea cosies.”

Draco lifts his mug. “How very... enterprising.”

“And Hannah Abbott left the Leaky a few years back. Finished healer-sister training last spring.”

“You’re making this up.”

“I’m not,” Harry laughs. “She’s stationed at St Mungo’s now. Paediatrics, I think.”

Draco frowns slightly. “She always did have good bedside manner.”

“Exactly,” Harry says, leaning forward. “You can change whenever you want. Doesn’t matter what your parents expected, or what you did at eighteen, or what you didn’t do. Doesn’t matter if you start late.”

Draco doesn’t answer. Just studies the steam rising from his tea like it might offer up a prophecy if he stares long enough.

Harry lets the silence stretch.

Then: “You could always go back to the channel.”

Draco huffs a quiet laugh. “What, alone? I don’t think anyone wants to watch me charm cabinets and talk about grout.”

“I think they’d be surprised.”

“I think you’re mad.”

“Could be both.”

Draco rises first, gathering their cups. He doesn’t summon the sponge. Doesn’t flick his wand. Just turns to the sink and starts washing up by hand, sleeves pushed back to his forearms.

Harry leans against the table, arms folded, watching steam curl off the pot.

“I heard Puddlemere’s keeper retired,” he says casually.

Draco hums. “Finally. Should’ve gone two seasons ago. Reaction time like a stunned flobberworm.”

Harry snorts. “Who’re they putting in?”

“Some lad from the Wasps’ under-18s. Small, but fast. Reflexes like you wouldn’t believe.”

“You sound like you’ve been scouting him.”

“I read,” Draco says, rinsing a teacup with surgical precision. “And I care about standards.”

Harry grins, then quiets. He watches the way Draco’s hands move. They are steady, efficient, and careful.

The house creaks around them. The pipes groan faintly behind the walls.

The conversation winds down. The laughter slips away.

Draco dries the final mug and sets it upside down to drain. He doesn’t turn around.

Harry shifts his weight, but doesn’t move toward the door.

They stand like that for a moment, one facing the sink, one facing the table. They both realize that it’s both not quite awkward and not quite easy. Something warmer than politeness. Something softer than obligation.

Harry glances toward the hallway.

He should go.

Draco still hasn’t said it.

Neither does he.

Finally, Harry nods. “I should go.”

Neither of them move right away.

Then Draco turns, too abruptly. “You’ll tell Albus you found the chart?”

“I will.”

“And the socks?”

Harry smirks. “Not unless he asks.”

Draco follows him to the door, but doesn’t open it.

Harry turns, hand on the latch. “Thanks for the tea.”

Draco nods. “Anytime.”

And, for once, he sounds like he means it.

October 5, 2017

The wind has changed.

October in Scotland means damp leaves underfoot and woodsmoke in the air. It is cool, but not bitter yet. Its the kind of cold that lives in your sleeves and doesn’t leave until midday. Harry had come down to the village for groceries—milk, jam, whatever else Lily had decided they were out of—and was halfway past the apothecary when he nearly ran straight into Malfoy.

“Oh—sorry,” he says, stepping back.

Draco had been coming from the opposite direction, coat open over a navy jumper, a grey scarf loose around his neck. His hair is wind-tossed, and Harry doesn’t think he’s had it cut since he saw him the month before. A paper parcel is tucked under of Draco’s arm.

He looks at Harry like someone remembering a name mid-dream. “Potter.”

Harry shifts his bag higher. “Didn’t expect to see you in the village.”

“Needed ink,” Draco replies. “And bread.”

Harry glances down at the other parcels in Draco’s arms. “Let me guess… you’re getting sourdough.”

“Obviously.”

Harry huffs a faint laugh.

They stand there for a moment. Not awkward, but off-balance—like they haven’t figured out how to talk without a group between them.

“How’s Scorpius?” Harry asks finally. “Albus says he’s doing well, but he doesn’t write much.”

Draco’s shoulders ease, just slightly. “He’s fine. Got a Merit in Charms last week and refuses to talk about it.”

Harry smiles. “That tracks.”

“He and Albus are working on something together. Some kind of transfiguration sketchbook. I don’t ask.”

Harry nods. “Probably for the best.”

A beat passes. Draco glances past him, toward the end of the lane.

“I should—” he starts, but doesn’t finish the thought.

Harry nods again. “Right. I won’t keep you.”

But neither of them move.

The wind stirs again, sending a dry leaf skittering down the cobblestones between them.

Draco clears his throat. “How’s Lily?”

“Opinionated,” Harry says. “She’s decided she needs her own tea kettle now. Says mine doesn’t do it right.”

“She sounds terrifying.”

“She’s nine.”

“Exactly.”

A flicker of something passes between them. It’s not quite warmth.

Then Draco says, quieter, “I was just heading to the bakery. They’ve got those rolls Albus likes—the little ones with the fig jam that he inhales when he’s at mine. I’ll send some along.”

Harry blinks. “That’s… you don’t have to do that.”

“I’ll include enough for James, too,” Draco replies, already turning slightly. “No sense triggering sibling rage.”

Harry smiles, surprised. “That’s generous.”

Draco shrugs, like it wasn’t.

Harry shrugs back. “Tell Albus to write his old dad. Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

Draco nods once. “I will.”

Then he turns and walks on, the wind tugging at the hem of his coat.

Draco is in the lower garden when the owl arrives, sleeves already pushed back, gloves damp, the crate of bulbs sitting just within reach on the edge of the stone path. The morning is cold, but clear, and he’s been out for over an hour by now, clearing what’s left of the summer beds, turning the soil, ticking things off a list no one else has seen. 

Allium. Ranunculus. Iris.

It isn’t about planning anymore, or content, or appearances. He’s not doing it for Scorpius, or for the illusion of upkeep, or even for Astoria, though she would’ve approved. He just wants the place to look right. Or maybe he wants to feel the rhythm of something that keeps going. If it blooms in spring, fine. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

The owl lands without ceremony on the low wall, ruffling its feathers against the cold. Draco doesn’t look up right away as he’s halfway through a line of bulbs and doesn’t see the point in breaking stride. But when he does stand, stretching out one knee with a grimace, he takes the envelope with his bare hand and opens it without going inside.

It’s a short note, in Harry’s familiar, unpolished scrawl. 

He reads it once, standing there with one glove off, and then again, brow furrowing slightly at the only few lines.

Albus and James say thank you. Apparently they arrived still warm. Lily is beside herself with jealousy and I’ve had to restock fig buns twice to make up for it. You didn’t have to do that, but thank you.

It wasn’t anything, really. Just something to do. Something simple and specific, the sort of gesture that makes other people feel something even when you don’t feel anything at all. Still, he folds the note carefully, more neatly than it needs to be, and tucks it into his coat pocket like it might be useful to have later.

Then he crouches again and goes back to the irises, the last crate of the day, working without hurrying now, planting each bulb just deep enough, spaced the way she taught him even though no one is going to check.

He doesn’t dwell on the letter, or the impulse that led to the parcel, or the fact that, for the first time in weeks, the work doesn’t feel like killing time.

It’s just the garden. And it’s nearly done.

The giant eagle owl arrives mid-morning. Harry’s at the kitchen table, half-dressed, trying to sort out paperwork from three departments while Lily reads aloud from Witch Weekly Junior like it’s breaking news.

She’s barefoot, still in her dressing gown, her dark hair tied up in two buns she did herself. There’s glitter on one of her cheeks and jam on the other. Her nails are painted in alternating shades of gold and navy, slightly chipped. She’s halfway between a child and whatever comes next, all elbows and fierce opinions and sudden silence when she thinks she’s being watched.

There’s a tap at the window. The owl staring in is sleek, gray, and very clearly expensive. It looks annoyed to be here.

It drops the parcel on the table without ceremony and takes off again, like it has better places to be.

Lily lunges for it. “Is that for me?”

Harry checks the label. “Looks like it.”

Across the top, in thin, angular handwriting: Miss Lily Potter.

She tears it open with immediate interest, shoving aside his paperwork and scattering biscuit crumbs across a memo from Magical Law Enforcement.

Inside: a still-warm bundle of croissants, a cinnamon twist, and three iced biscuits shaped like stars.

Also: a napkin. Folded with ridiculous precision.

Harry pulls a small square of parchment from the bottom of the box.

Apologies for the oversight.
—D.M.

That’s all it says.

No sign-off. No explanation. No reference to the previous letter.

Harry blinks at it. Then sets it down beside his coffee.

Lily, already halfway through the cinnamon twist, looks up. “Who sent it?”

“Malfoy.”

She considers this for exactly one bite. “Tell him the cinnamon one is the best I’ve ever had.”

Harry nods, mostly to himself. “Right. I’ll pass it on.”

But he doesn’t fold the note, and he doesn’t throw it out.

He leaves it where it is, staring at him, while Lily eats every last crumb and the kitchen fills with the smell of warm sugar and fresh pastry.

It’s late October when they see each other again.

Hogsmeade is quieter now. Half the trees stripped bare with the wind coming in colder and sharper off the hills. Harry steps out of the Healer’s office with a slight wince, one hand pressed low against his hip like he’s trying not to show it’s still bothering him.

He’s barely made it halfway down the steps when someone says, dryly:

“Either the Ministry’s new training protocol includes hexing the joints, or you’ve just failed spectacularly at a lunge.”

Harry looks up.

Draco’s standing a few feet away, one hand on the handle of the apothecary door, the other holding a parchment slip. A prescription, probably. His hair’s ruffled from the wind. 

Harry exhales. “Fitness test. Apparently I’m not twenty-five anymore.”

Draco looks him over. “And they let you leave like that?”

“I passed,” Harry says, a little too defensively.

“With what, a limp and a liability waiver?”

Harry huffs a breath. It sounds amused, maybe. Maybe not. “They told me to do physical therapy. Gentle motion. Low-impact exercise. Something about ‘rebuilding integrity in the joint.’”

Draco raises an eyebrow. “And you’re going to do that?”

Harry shrugs. “I suppose I always thought that magic would fix all injuries. They regrew my whole arm once.”

There’s a pause. The wind picks up. A handful of dead leaves scuttle across the stone between them.

Then Draco says, offhand (too offhand) “My pool’s open, for some aquatic exercise.”

Harry blinks. “Sorry?”

“No one uses it this time of year.”

“You’re offering me your pool.”

Draco shrugs again, but it’s sharper this time. “Unless you prefer the hospital’s communal bath and a clipboard-wielding Healer shouting counts at you.”

Harry watches him. “You don’t have to—”

“I didn’t say I had to.” Draco’s already turning toward the apothecary door again. “Just thought I’d mention it.”

Harry doesn’t answer right away.

Then: “Do I need a note from my supervisor?”

Draco pauses just long enough to be annoyed. “Just bring your hip.”

And then he’s gone inside, the bell above the apothecary door chiming once before the street goes quiet again.

Harry stands there another few seconds, hand still on his coat, the wind tugging at the hem like it’s waiting for him to follow.

The walk up to the Malfoys’ two days later takes longer than Harry wants it to.

The hill isn’t steep, but it drags at his hip, which is tight through the joint, then sharp, then back to tight again. He tells himself it’s better than last week. Tells himself it means he’s healing. That if he can make it up to the Malfoy place without swearing out loud, he’s probably not going to need another round of whatever spell the Healer offered last time that left him nauseous for three hours.

By the time he reaches the gate, he’s sweating lightly under his coat, and his shoulder’s starting to ache from the strap of his bag.

He stops at the top of the path. Catches his breath.

The front garden looks… different.

It’s not cleaned up, exactly. Not formally. But someone’s clearly done the work. The bramble under the hedgerow is gone. The stone path’s been swept. The rosemary is still leggy, but the borders are clipped. Someone has cared .

Harry shifts the bag on his shoulder again and knocks.

The door opens after only a few seconds.

Draco’s wearing paint-covered clothes. It’s just an old shirt and worn track trousers, sleeves shoved up, and there is a long streak of green-blue paint down one forearm like he leaned into a wall and forgot. There’s a smudge near his temple, too, just beneath his hairline.

They look at each other for a beat.

“You’re early,” Draco says.

“You’re painting,” Harry says.

Draco lifts the arm with the paint smear and inspects it like it just now occurred to him. “Apparently.”

“What is that, teal?”

Draco glances at his sleeve. “Technically, it’s ‘Kelpie Breath.’”

Harry stares. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I were.”

There’s a pause. The wind picks up behind Harry, brushing dry leaves past the steps.

He nods toward the house. “The pool offer still open?”

Draco steps aside. “Assuming you promise not to drown.”

Harry limps past him, shifting the bag again. “No promises. I came alone.”

Draco closes the door behind them. “If you die, I’m telling everyone it was during an experimental cannonball.”

“I’m flattered you think I could get that much lift.”

They head down the corridor together. The sconces are low, the light ahead already warming to that soft green-and-gold glow that lives only in the pool room. Draco walks like he doesn’t notice the paint still drying on his sleeve. Harry walks like he’s determined not to show the limp unless it gets worse.

At the pool room door, Draco pauses, one hand on the handle.

“Do you need a spotter?”

Harry eyes him. “You offering to hold my towel?”

Draco just lifts the corner of his mouth. “I’m offering not to report your form to the Ministry.”

Harry chuckles. “I’m forever in your debt, I’m sure.”

Draco thinks back to what he was doing before the knock. 

The roller squeaked again. Draco ignored it.

He adjusted his grip, reached the edge of the wall, and brushed the paint just shy of the trim. The light in the dining room had shifted. The early autumn sun was coming in low through the glass, catching on wet paint and making it look more turquoise than it actually was. He’d fix the inconsistencies later. Or not.

“You always said I made everything colder,” he muttered, not quite to the room. “That I picked house colours like I was furnishing a crypt.”

He stepped back, checking the corner. It would need another coat.

“You wanted warmth. You said the room needed softening.” His tone sharpened around the last word, like it left a bad taste. “You said I was afraid of colour. I said you had no restraint.”

He could hear her laugh in his head, not warm exactly, but real.

He hated that it was fading.

“I told you that yellow would go green in shadow,” he went on, rolling another strip of paint along the wall. “And it did. It looked like an infected bruise for two years and you still insisted it was cheerful.”

He swapped hands. His shoulder was starting to ache.

“I’m not doing this because you’re gone,” he said, aiming the roller at a blotchy corner. “I’m doing it because you’re not here to argue about it.”

No answer. There never was. Not anymore.

He pressed too hard on the next stroke and paint bled into the skirting.

“You’d call this vindictive.”

He leaned forward, inspecting the damage, and wiped the excess off with his sleeve.

“You’d be right.”

He crossed the room to the tray, dipped the roller again, and looked up toward the ceiling. “I’m not filming this, by the way. No time lapse. No music. No voiceover.”

He paused. Considered.

“Although if you ever tell anyone I bought this colour because it was in Which Wand Interiors, I will summon you back and bind you to the pantry.”

Still nothing. Just the hiss of paint over plaster and the faint tick of the cooling radiator behind him.

He looked toward the far chair, still covered in a drop cloth, and blinked, just once, as if something might shift. It didn’t.

“I liked the pantry door better when it squeaked.”

Then came the knock.

Draco unwards the door to the pool without comment, a long-since superfluous spell now that Scorpius can swim like a merman.

The warmth hits immediately and it is soft, damp, and familiar. The scent charm pulses faintly with cedar and clean stone. He likes it better than the honeysuckle Astoria preferred. This is progress. 

Potter steps in first, slower than usual, but without hesitation.

“It looks the same,” he says.

Draco follows him in. “Did you expect it to be covered in dust or something?”

“It was—” Potter stops. “Well.”

Draco smiles, just slightly, and rakes a hand through his hair. “It was Astoria’s, yeah. But it’s not like I was going to stop using it because she’s gone.”

Potter drops his bag beside the bench, the one with the hidden whiskey, and starts unbuttoning his cuffs.

“You don’t need to supervise me,” he says.

“I’m not.”

Potter stretches his leg in front of him and pulls his shirt off. “Painting’s hard work. You could justify a swim.”

Draco raises an eyebrow at him, rather carefully not looking at his pecs. “You inviting me, Potter?”

Potter doesn’t look up. “Didn’t realise I needed to.”

Draco considers that. Shrugs. “Fine.”

He peels off his shirt, scrapes a dried line of paint off his wrist with his fingernail, and heads to the opposite side of the pool. He opens the closet concealed in the old tree trunk, which was Astoria’s idea, naturally, and swaps joggers for swimwear seamlessly and magically.

When he turns back around, Potter’s already rolling his shoulders, easing into motion.

The water is warm. Not hot, just enough to melt the edge off his shoulders as Draco steps down into it.

Potter’s already waist-deep on the other side, hands skimming across the surface like he’s not sure if he’s stretching or stalling. His hair’s damp at the edges, but he hasn’t ducked under yet. He looks up when Draco sinks in.

Draco doesn’t say anything. He adjusts the fit of his shorts, a habit, not a necessity, and pushes off the wall with a smooth glide that cuts halfway across the pool.

When he surfaces, Potter’s still standing there.

“What?” Draco asks, brushing the water back from his face.

Potter shakes his head. “Nothing. Just—didn’t expect you to actually swim.”

Draco narrows his eyes. “You think I maintain this just for the aesthetic?”

“I assumed you paid someone to.”

“I am someone,” Draco mutters, kicking backward into a slow backstroke. “Get in or get out, Potter. You’re looming.”

That earns a quiet huff. Then, Potter sinks the rest of the way in, with that sharp intake of breath people always make right before their shoulders hit the water.

He exhales. Rolls his neck.

They don’t talk for a bit after that.

Draco does a slow lap, steady and even. Potter stays mostly near the shallows, testing the joint, pushing off lightly with his good leg and floating along the edge.

It’s not graceful, but it’s not bad, either.

When they pass each other near the middle, Potter says, “Do you do this every day?”

“Not when I’m painting.”

“So no.”

Draco kicks forward again. “Rude.”

Harry drifts near the edge, keeping the weight off his hip, moving just enough to stay loose. His eyes follow the ripple Draco leaves behind as he cuts a clean line across the pool. He is efficient, elegant, and practiced.

He hadn’t known Draco swam like that.

Draco hadn’t swum at all, not during the lessons. Astoria had always been the one in the pool: laughing, calling corrections, walking the length of the tiles with a towel slung over her shoulder and hair that dried into soft curls by dinner. She’d been confident in the water. Sharp and gentle, somehow both.

Harry had noticed, back then. Of course he had. So had Ginny, though not quite in the same way.

But Draco… he’d stayed dry. Towels over his arm, sunglasses on, content to spectate. He'd sit on the bench with a drink and a book, barely glancing up unless Scorpius called his name.

This is different.

Now Draco’s cutting slow, even strokes across the far lane, water sliding clean off his back, the muscles along his shoulders flexing every time he reaches.

He’s leaner than Harry remembered. Not thin, just refined down to something quieter. Narrow hips, pale skin, scars he doesn’t explain. Scars he might be responsible for. His hair’s shorter now, no gel, curling slightly at the ends. It makes him look younger.

Harry turns away, blinking hard.

He focuses on his leg, and moves through another round of stretches. He counts quietly in his head.

When he finally glances back, Draco is treading water in the deep end, gaze slightly distant, like he’s not really seeing anything in front of him.

Harry swims a few paces closer and says, casual as he can manage, “You always this elegant, or is it just the kelpie paint fumes?”

Draco snorts. “You’re just mad I didn’t drown.”

Harry shrugs. “A little.”

They drift a moment longer, not quite next to each other, not quite far apart.

“I’m still wrapping my head around you owning swimwear,” Harry says.

Draco raises a brow. “It’s called planning, Potter. You should try it sometime.”

“Does it come with a wand holster?”

“Custom loop, left hip.”

Harry laughs, short and low. The water shifts against his ribs. “You didn’t swim with the kids.”

Draco doesn’t answer right away.

Then: “I didn’t like being wet in front of people.”

Harry tilts his head. “What, emotionally?”

Draco exhales through his nose. “Funny.”

“I meant it.”

“I know.” A pause. Then: “I was too self-conscious.”

Harry blinks. “Seriously?”

Draco gives him a look. “Just because you grew up feral doesn’t mean the rest of us were comfortable being looked at.”

“That’s rich, coming from you. You used to do up your tie like it was a cry for attention.”

Draco smirks, but it doesn’t last.

Harry doesn’t know why he says it—maybe it’s the steam or the stillness or the fact that he’s got no one else to talk to who understands what this house was—but he finds himself asking, “Is it different now?”

Draco doesn’t look at him. “No one’s looking.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

The water settles between them. Quieter now. Heavier.

Harry shifts slightly, reaching back for the ledge behind him and trying to stretch the joint through the outer rotation the Healer demonstrated: left ankle across right knee, push the thigh out, hold it there. It had looked easy when someone else was doing it.

It’s not easy.

He breathes through it. Tries again. Hisses through his teeth.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Draco says flatly.

Harry looks up. “You a certified pool therapist now?”

“I read the pamphlet.”

“Oh, well—by all means.”

Draco swims a little closer, not quite near enough to touch, but close enough that Harry feels the shift in current. His eyes track the movement, calm and critical.

“Your knee’s too far forward,” Draco says. “You’re loading the joint instead of opening it.”

Harry resists the urge to say thank you, Professor. He adjusts the angle. Still tight.

Draco sighs. “Here.”

He closes the distance, slowly and deliberately, and places one hand just above Harry’s knee.

Harry goes still.

Draco presses, gently. His palm is warm even through the water. The stretch deepens, not sharply, but enough that Harry feels it all the way through his hip.

“Breathe,” Draco says.

Harry exhales. Doesn’t move.

Neither does Draco.

They stay like that for a beat too long. Then another.

Draco’s thumb shifts slightly against his skin, almost absently. Not a rub, not intentional. It is contact, and it sings through Harry’s leg, down to his foot, up to his—

Draco’s hand stays steady just above Harry’s knee, guiding the angle of the stretch.

“You’ve done this before,” Harry says, not quite a question.

Draco doesn’t look up. “Cruciatus leaves its mark.”

Harry blinks. “Your shoulder?”

“And both hips. Nerve damage. Took years.”

Harry watches him. Watches the calm, practiced way he moves. There’s nothing showy, nothing wasted.

“You never mentioned.”

Draco shrugs, and that shrug alone says why would I.

The pressure shifts, just slightly. “Push into it,” he says. “Don’t collapse the core.”

Harry obeys. Breathes through the burn which he isn’t sure whether it’s from proximity or injury.

The stretch deepens again, and not because Draco says anything this time, but because Harry tilts his hips just slightly into the pressure.

Draco’s thumb brushes once more against his skin. Still not intentional. Still not not .

They don’t speak.

The room is still except for the sound of the water lapping gently against the tile, and the faint echo of their breath, and Harry’s heart, suddenly louder in his ears than it should be.

Draco shifts his weight in the water. Not away.

Harry doesn’t look at him. Keeps his gaze fixed on the tiles across the pool. Not because he’s embarrassed, but because looking would break the spell. Or make it worse. Or better.

He doesn’t know.

He lets Draco’s hand stay.

He thinks, fleeting and unbidden, that maybe all those years of obsessive attention weren’t only about resentment, or rivalry, or whatever they both called it back then to keep the shape of it neat.

Because what else is it, really, to watch someone that closely? To follow their every move, catalogue every smirk and shoulder tilt and flick of a wand, just to have something to feel when nothing else cut through?

He thinks, with maybe more clarity than he’s ever thought of Draco, that maybe having an arch-nemesis was the most homoerotic thing he ever did.

And Draco’s still here, palm steady, thumb resting at the inside edge of his thigh, pretending like it means nothing.

Harry closes his eyes. Just for a second.

That was a bad choice. The nose he makes isn’t a moan (Thank Godric), but that silver lining doesn’t last long. It morphs, quickly, into a whimper. 

The stretch starts to blur, and burn shifts to something else entirely at a speed that was not yet comprehended. Harry feels it building in the low drag of heat down his spine, in the sudden too-much awareness of where Draco’s hand still rests, in the slow realisation that this is not going to pass unnoticed if he doesn’t do something fast.

He shifts again. Subtle. Doesn’t help.

He clears his throat. “You—uh—can let go now.”

Draco lifts his hand, finally, but not before his eyes flick lower, then right back up.

And oh, fuck.

A beat passes. Harry looks anywhere but at him.

Then Draco says, tone bone-dry: “Should I be flattered, Potter?”

Harry exhales through his nose. “No.”

Draco starts to turn. “You’re right. It’s probably just the endorphins.”

“I hate you.”

Draco hums. “So you’ve always said.”

Harry drags both hands over his face. “Do me a favour and never mention this again.”

Draco pauses at the edge of the pool. “Done.”

Then, just as Harry thinks it’s over:

“But I will be redoing the towel inventory before you leave.”

Harry flips him off.

Draco, infuriatingly, smiles and swims away. “Can I get you a drink? A cold shower?”

Draco hauls himself out of the pool with too much grace. Harry tracks the movement despite himself and stares at Draco’s sharp shoulders, clean line of his waist, with the water sliding down his back in deliberate, architectural ways. 

It’s rude, frankly.

Then Draco pads barefoot to the opposite end of the pool deck and presses a hand to a knot in another tree trunk.  Not the whiskey bench, he realizes. 

Inside is a chilled compartment, shelves cut into the bark like honeycomb. Draco doesn’t even hesitate at the ingenuity, and just pulls out two tumblers, already sweating with condensation, and sets them on the ledge.

He pours from a carafe. The drink is pale green and cloudy, with flecks of lime and sugar resting at the bottom.

“Caipirinha,” Draco says, not looking up. “Don’t get excited, I’ve premade them.”

Harry pushes himself out of the water more slowly, towel slung over one shoulder. “Not the good whiskey?”

Draco gives him a look. “You’re not getting the good whiskey again.”

Harry accepts the glass, lifts it, sips.

Bright, tart, just the right amount of sugar. Cold enough to bite. He exhales. “Okay, I take it back. I’m a little excited.”

They sit in silence for a while, towels low around their waists, skin still damp, drinks sweating quietly between them on the ledge. The air has gone soft with steam, the pool behind them silent now, all the movement drawn to this stillness between them. Harry tells himself he’s just catching his breath, just letting the water settle in his joints. But his pulse is still fast. His fingers still curl a little too tightly around the glass.

He’s not looking at Draco.

He’s absolutely looking at Draco.

Draco’s legs are stretched out in front of him, long and pale and somehow both sharp and elegant in the dim light. His towel clings just enough to hint at the line of his hips, and his chest rises and falls with the kind of infuriating ease Harry has always, always resented. He sits like he’s got nothing to prove. Like being looked at was always part of the equation.

Draco doesn’t look over when he speaks. He just says it: plain, direct, like they’ve been circling it long enough.

“So. You like men, then.”

Harry freezes. For a second, it feels like the breath goes out of the room.

He doesn’t answer immediately.

Draco takes a slow sip of his drink and continues, tone maddeningly casual. “I mean, I’ve had suspicions since Hogwarts, but the poolside hard-on really sealed the deal.”

Harry groans, dragging a hand over his face. “ Godric . Subtle.”

Draco finally glances over, one brow raised, like this is all just vaguely interesting data. “Am I wrong?”

Harry exhales, lets his head tip back slightly. “No.”

Draco nods once, not smug, not surprised. Just satisfied. “Good.”

A pause settles between them.

Harry lifts his glass, swirls the last of the ice. “Took you long enough to ask.”

Draco shrugs, languid, self-assured. “I didn’t want to interrupt your journey.”

Harry side-eyes him. “Are you always like this?”

Draco meets his eyes over the rim of his glass and says, entirely without shame, “Potter. I’m being nice. ”

And somehow, infuriatingly, he is. That might be the worst part.

2014

Draco looked almost startled when he opened the door, sleeves rolled, bare feet.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, voice lower than usual. “Astoria meant to owl. Scorpius is ill. We forgot.”

Harry shifted the bag on his shoulder, the weight of three towels and a trio of water bottles cutting into his shoulder. “You don’t need to apologize. They were dressed before breakfast. There was no stopping it”

James made a noise like a war cry and tore past them into the hall. Albus followed in quick, careful steps, clutching the biscuit tin like a diplomatic offering. Lily darted straight for the staircase before Harry caught her hood and turned her firmly toward the pool corridor. She twisted away with a scowl and marched ahead, sticky fingers already reaching for the paneling.

By the time Harry stepped inside, the children had vanished in a storm of towels and bare feet.

“But, of course, please use the pool anyhow.” Draco’s shoulders eased, just slightly. He moved aside. “Come in.”

The pool was already warm, mist curling low across the tiles, lanterns glowing in their slow midday cycle. James cannonballed into the deep end with an operatic splash; Albus sat on the edge first, lowered himself in like a pilgrim entering holy water. Lily hurled both sandals in, shrieked with delight when one floated and the other sank, then plunged after them with no hesitation.

“At least they know where everything is,” Harry said, watching her climb back out and immediately shake chlorinated water all over the floor.

“They’ve made themselves at home,” Draco replied, faintly dry. He conjured a tray with a flick of his hand, set down a sweating jug of pale lemonade, two glasses. “Astoria’s upstairs with Scorpius. I can at least offer you this.”

Harry took the glass, their fingers grazing as he did. It was brief, but Draco wondered if it was not entirely accidental. 

They sat at the long bench along the far wall: the whiskey bench. Astoria’s joke and Draco’s refuge. 

Harry leaned back with easy familiarity, glass balanced in one hand, the other stretched along the top rail of the bench. His arm spanned behind Draco, casual on the surface, though the breadth of it marked the space between them.

Draco did not mirror him. He sat forward instead, elbows resting lightly on his knees, glass held by the rim as though he’d forgotten it was there. The posture made a deliberate line of distance, though not enough to disguise the nearness of Harry’s arm at his back.

The difference between them, one with ease and the other with restraint, was almost artistic. Harry had taken possession of the bench, settling into its warmth as if he belonged there; Draco perched on it like he could rise at any moment. The spellwork beneath thrummed faintly, filling the silence with a vibration that lived somewhere between comfort and threat.

Over the water, James let out a victory cry. Lily shrieked in retaliation. Albus splashed so hard the lanterns above flickered, scattering gold light across the tile.

Harry’s fingers curled lazily against the top rail, just at Draco’s shoulder height. Not touching, but close enough that a hum of magic seemed to collect there, bright and warm.

“They’re having the time of their lives,” Harry said.

Draco nodded once. “They usually do.”

“It’s nothing like when we were their age.”

Draco tilted his head, watching James climb onto the float charm only to be toppled off by Lily’s feral enthusiasm. “We had a pool.”

Harry gave him a sidelong look. “Of course you did.”

“Several, actually, but, no,” Draco said quietly. “It wasn’t this.”

The children shrieked again. James surfaced, laughing. Albus clung to the side, hair plastered down, glasses fogged. Lily sat astride a pool noodle like a conquering general.

“This?” 

Draco gestured faintly toward the chaos of children shrieking, lanterns bobbing overhead, water cascading against the tiles in harmless waves. “Unstructured. No staff. No etiquette.”

“Sounds terrible,” Harry grinned into his glass. “They’ll remember it forever.”

Draco didn’t answer that, just sipped again, eyes on the water.

For a while they sat in silence, listening to the echo of children’s laughter ricochet off the enchanted ceiling. The mist shifted as the humidity charms recalibrated, cool against Harry’s arm where the fabric of his sleeve clung damply. He leaned to the side to set his empty glass down on the low table beside him, and when he stretched, his hand skimmed lightly against the side of Draco’s neck.

It was nothing. Nothing at all. Just Harry’s bare fingers, cooler than the air, the barest graze of knuckles along the line just under his ear. But Draco froze.

Harry withdrew his hand at once, as if the contact had been incidental, but the feeling caught and held. Draco’s jaw had gone tight, eyes fixed on the far end of the pool where James was attempting to ride a float like a broom. Lily shrieked her disapproval, the sound muffled by mist and distance.

The light above them shifted into a deeper gold, pulsing faintly, and Harry saw it catch in Draco’s profile, sharp at the cheekbone, softened at the mouth. He hadn’t moved.

Neither spoke. The silence stretched.

Harry exhaled slowly, meant to be quiet, meant to be nothing, but Draco’s gaze flicked toward him at the sound. Brief, cutting. For the space of a breath, Harry had the sense that if he reached again, deliberately this time, Draco would let him.

He didn’t.

Instead Draco picked up his glass and drank, the gesture deliberate, casual, final. He set it back down with care, as though that might account for what had happened, and for what had not.

“Albus is going to fog his lenses straight off his face,” Draco said, voice even again.

Harry followed his gaze. Albus was pushing water out of his eyes with both hands, laughing, oblivious.

“Yes,” Harry said. His voice was steady, but he could feel the ghost of contact still at his fingertips. “I’ll reapply the humidity charm when we go.”

Draco reached for the lemonade jug, refilled Harry’s glass with quiet precision, and then held it out. The gesture was neat, solicitous, almost too careful.

Harry took it back, his fingers brushing only the cool rim this time, not Draco’s hand, not his neck. The absence landed harder than the touch had.

First Week of November 2017

Only a week later and the air has turned sharp. The slope up to the Malfoy’s crunches faintly under Harry’s boots, frost edging the greenery along the path, the light already thinning into that colourless grey that means autumn has arrived whether anyone is ready for it or not. His hip twinges with each step but not enough to stop him. Its better. Still stiff, still nagging, but better.

He tells himself its good to stretch it. That the walk will help. That he ought to return and clear the air. What he does not tell himself, but cannot quite avoid thinking anyway, is whether Malfoy will open the door for him at all after the… incident. Boner problem. Whatever one calls it at nearly forty, when one ought to be past such things.

Draco does open the door. He leans against the frame, not surprised, not flustered, wearing a soft yellow flannel shirt and sweatpants that look both comfortable and lived in. His hair is damp at the edges, as if he has just showered, and his wand is nowhere in sight.

“I apologize for the undress,” Draco says dryly. “But you didn’t write ahead. I was doing correspondence for my parents’ estate. Hardly suitable attire for visitors.”

Harry looks him up and down and lets his mouth twitch. 

“Just making sure you hadn’t drowned in paint fumes,” Harry replies.

The corner of Draco’s mouth flickers, almost a smile, before he steps back to let him in.

The silence of the house is immediate. No thud of children charging down the corridor, no Scorpius yelling at Albus, no Lily tugging at his sleeve and demanding pastries. Just the faint hum of wards and the muffled snap of fire somewhere deep in the house.

Harry glances around. “It’s quiet.”

“Blissful, isn’t it?” Draco says, though his voice carries the faintest hesitation. “Or unnerving. Depends on your constitution.”

They don’t linger in the hall. Draco turns, bare feet soundless on the stone, and Harry follows. At the pool door, Draco unwards it with a flick and the warmth hits at once: damp, cedar, clean stone. Routine, practiced, and with no ceremony at all.

Harry notices him pause, and Draco adds another twist to the spellwork, and the steam thickens, warmer than usual. 

“You just change the water temperature whenever you like?”

“It helps,” Draco says without looking at him. “Hot water made the stretches bearable during physical therapy. Easier to move without tearing anything.”

Harry arches a brow. “So you’re fussing over me now?”

“I’m being practical.” Draco’s tone is clipped. “But if you’d rather limp around the pool for appearance’s sake, be my guest.”

Harry huffs a laugh, stepping through into the mist. It smells like home now.

He drops his bag by the whiskey bench and starts on his cuffs. “You don’t need to supervise me.”

“I’m not,” Draco says, though he’s standing like a lifeguard about to write a citation.

Harry pulls his shirt over his head, folds it in half. “Painting’s hard work. You could justify a swim.”

Draco raises a brow, unabashedly looking at Potter’s chest. “You inviting me, Potter?”

“Didn’t realise I needed to.”

That earns him silence. Draco peels off his flannel and sweatpants, vanishes them with a flick, and replaces them with swimwear. He is at the pool’s edge before Harry has wrestled his trousers past his bad hip. By the time Harry limps to the rail, Draco is already in, gliding halfway across with clean, infuriating strokes.

He surfaces and pushes his hair back, faintly smug.

Harry snorts. “You think I came here just to watch you show off?”

“Obviously.”

Harry steps in, sighing as the water closes over his hip. “You swim like you’re auditioning for the Olympics.”

Draco shrugs, already coasting toward the deep end. “And you float like the door at the end of  Titanic. We all have our talents.”

Harry pushes off the wall, graceless but determined. The water does half the work.

The pool isn’t bath temperature, but it’s close. Warm enough that Harry feels the ache in his hip begin to loosen the moment he settles into the water. He floats for a while, then turns toward the shallows and starts the stretches the Healer drilled into him — slow rotations, cautious pulls, testing the joint.

Draco drifts nearby, cutting smooth lengths of the lane, never quite showing off, though he doesn’t have to. He is efficient, practiced, each stroke clean as though the water itself expects it of him. The overhead light turns his shoulders pale and sharp, scars catching faintly in the glow — one curving across his collarbone, another at his hip where the water breaks around him.

“You’re crooked,” Draco says at last, treading water a few feet away. “You’re loading the right side instead of opening it.”

Harry exhales, adjusts his stance, and mutters, “Always so generous with compliments.”

“I’m generous enough to correct you,” Draco replies, dry. “If I let you go on like that, you’ll undo the Healer’s work and then I’ll have to listen to you whinge about it.”

Harry shakes his head, keeps moving through the motions anyway. The warmth holds him steady, eases the pull across his thigh. He drifts a little, shoulder brushing Draco’s when their orbits overlap.

“It’s strange,” Harry says after a while, voice low. “How easy this feels now.”

Draco tilts his head, almost amused. “It’s the water. It makes everything easier.”

Harry huffs. “That what you’re blaming the poolside hard-on on?”

Draco doesn’t flinch. “Among other things.”

Harry laughs, short and low, and the sound echoes more than it should. It leaves a quiet in its wake that feels deliberate, as if they’ve both chosen not to break it.

Harry exhales. “You’re not going to pretend it didn’t happen, then.”

Draco’s mouth curls. “The hard-on?”

Harry snorts. “Yes, Malfoy. The hard-on.”

“I could,” Draco says, calm, “but denial has never been your strength.”

Harry turns his head, water lapping against his shoulder. “And yours?”

“Exemplary,” Draco answers, perfectly even. “But even I have limits.”

Harry huffs, half a laugh, half a sigh. “So what, then. You’ve been thinking about it for a week, waiting to bring it up?”

“You’re the one who came back,” Draco says, and his tone is light, but the words land heavier than they should.

Harry goes quiet, watching the ripples stretch between them. “I guess I did.”

“But, yes, Potter, of course I noticed.” Draco’s gaze flicks down and back up, casual as a diagnosis. “I was the one who pointed it out, wasn’t I?”

There’s no heat in his voice, no smirk. 

Harry swallows, lets the silence pool again, then mutters, “Suppose we’ve both thought about it before.”

Draco’s answer is immediate, bone-dry. “Suppose we have.”

Harry floats closer, not quite deliberate. “How long, then?”

Draco doesn’t look away. “For a really long time, Potter. Since before the children. Since before the pool. For longer than I’d ever admit in decent company.”

Harry laughs, short and incredulous. “You’re serious.”

“Always.” Draco tips his chin, lets the water push him a little nearer. “Oh, and Astoria knew. Of course she did.”

Harry blinks. “She—what?”

Draco’s mouth curves, faintly. “She once told me to stop pretending I didn’t look every time you walked in a room. I told her that was sentimental nonsense. ”

Harry swallows. His pulse skips. “And Ginny? Do you think she–”

Draco tilts his head, gaze cutting sideways. “Ginny didn’t notice. She was too busy—well.” He pauses, the smirk back now, sharper at the edge. “Too busy being hopelessly in love with my wife, I think.”

The water shifts between them, heavy with silence and the faint slap of ripples against the tiles.

Harry stares. “You can’t just—say that like it’s obvious.”

“It was obvious,” Draco says, voice flat. “Astoria never minded. She rather liked the attention.”

It went unsaid between them that things were different now. Astoria was dead, Ginny was grieving her in her own way, and somehow it left Harry and Draco here, alone. Not as stand-ins, just the two of them. And Harry knew, plain as anything, that he’d wanted Draco for years.

January 2016

Astoria had gone up early, pleading a headache after pudding, though everyone knew it was only half true. She tired faster now. The Wednesdays had been her invention, and she refused to let them slip, even if it meant excusing herself before the last bottle was finished.

When Draco came in, the bedroom was dim, only the bedside lamps lit, one low and golden, the other still burning brighter than necessary. Ginny Weasley sat in the chair beside the bed, shoes off, her legs drawn up carelessly like it was her own room. There were two half-empty glasses of wine on the table between them.

Astoria was propped against pillows, her dark hair loose around her shoulders, pale but still radiant. She had changed into one of her silk gowns, lavender, the sort of thing that caught light and made her look luminous no matter how tired she felt.

Ginny rose when Draco entered, smoothing her skirt with one hand. “I should go,” she said, voice too light, too quick. She glanced at Astoria, then back at Draco, then managed something like a smile. “Goodnight.”

Astoria reached out lazily and caught her wrist. “You don’t have to—”

But Ginny shook her head, gently disentangling herself. “It’s late. I’ll see you next week.”

Draco held the door for her without a word, and she slipped past him, brushing his sleeve in that absent way people did when they were trying not to linger.

When he closed the door, Astoria was still watching the space where she had gone, her expression somewhere between fond and amused. “She really is hopeless,” she murmured, turning back to plump a pillow behind her back.

Draco loosened his tie, crossed the room. “About what?”

Astoria gave him a look, the kind that made him feel like a schoolboy. “About me, darling. Try to keep up.”

Draco set his cufflinks on the dresser. “You’re telling me Weasley—”

“Ginny,” she corrected softly. “Yes. You truly hadn’t noticed?”

Draco sat on the edge of the bed, his hand smoothing the coverlet without thought. “She’s married.”

“So am I,” Astoria said, eyes bright with mischief. “Marriage doesn’t inoculate against wanting.”

Draco made a faint noise, disbelieving. “You’re imagining it.”

Astoria laughed, low and soft, and rested her head back against the pillows. “I’m many things, love, but delusional isn’t one of them.”

She reached for her glass, drank, then caught his eye over the rim. “Besides,” she added, smile curling, “I’m hardly the only one who attracts unwise attention at these dinners.”

Draco froze, just briefly. “What do you mean.”

Astoria set her glass down, fingers brushing his knee as she shifted closer. “For a clever man, you’ve been spectacularly obvious about Harry for years. I think Blaise has a running bet on when you’ll finally do something about it. I know you’ll wait until I’ve gone, even if I would have liked to have watched, but maybe Harry is shy or—”

Draco swallowed, too sharply. “That isn’t—”

She leaned in, kissed his temple, murmured against his skin, “It doesn’t bother me.”

He closed his eyes. “Astoria.”

“No, really,” she said, softer now, curling into the pillows. “You could deny it if you liked, but it wouldn’t make it less true.”

He didn’t answer. He reached up and turned down her brighter lamp instead, leaving the room in a warm haze of low gold and quiet.

Draco exhaled through his nose, loosening the last button at his wrist. “You speak as if you’re dying tomorrow.”

Her smile was faint, amused. “I’m not. You’d like me to say I’ll live forever?”

“I’d like you not to hand me a map of my life without you,” he snapped, sharper than he meant. His voice hung too loudly in the quiet room.

Astoria tilted her head against the pillow, unruffled. “It isn’t a map. It’s an observation. You’re drawn to him. He’s drawn to you. Why should we pretend otherwise?”

Draco looked away, pressed his palm flat to the coverlet like he was anchoring himself. “Because it sounds like a benediction. Like permission. And I don’t want your permission.”

Her laugh was small and cutting. “Darling, you’ve wanted my permission for everything since the day we met.”

He went still.

She reached for his hand, found it, threaded her fingers through his. Her grip was light but certain. “You don’t like me talking about after,” she said gently. “I know. But after will come, whether you prepare for it or not. And I’d rather it come with honesty between us.”

Draco swallowed hard, jaw tight. “I don’t want Potter.”

Astoria smiled again, wicked and fond. “Liar.”

He was a liar, and that night, he pressed his face into his wife’s neck, and he cried as if she had already gone, and grieving her in real time with her hands in his hair and chest rising and falling under his cheek was possibly worse than grieving without her. 

2017

The past stays upstairs with the ghosts and the books. Down here it’s simpler: warm water, lantern light, and the uncomfortable fact that they’ve ended up far too close for pretense. They’ve drifted toward the deep end without meaning to. The tiles at Harry’s back are cool and slick, steadying him while the water presses heat into his ribs.

It’s nearly three, Harry guesses. Lily won’t be back from Gobstones until after five. They’ve got time. Not forever, but enough.

Draco lingers a few feet away, hair damp, expression smooth as if this were just another Wednesday. He looks better like this, water softening every edge, scars and muscle showing where the ripples catch the light. Harry tries not to stare, fails immediately.

Then, he thinks briefly of Ginny’s laugh in this room, of Astoria’s voice carrying over the water, but the memory doesn’t sting the way it used to. It feels distant now, folded away, like an earlier chapter.

Draco, for his part, is very aware of being looked at. He keeps his posture loose, unbothered, but the anticipation runs sharp under the surface. Potter came back. Potter is still here, drifting nearer, and Draco has stopped inventing reasons to call it anything other than what it is.

But he feels every inch of it. He feels the heat, the proximity, Potter’s eyes. He tells himself it’s nothing, that he’s endured worse scrutiny, that he’s long since stopped caring who stares. Still, the back of his neck prickles, and he thinks, with irritation at himself, that he must look ridiculous for letting it matter. He doesn’t move away.

Harry breaks first and exhales, voice low. “If I move any closer, we’re not going to be able to pretend it’s the water.”

Draco doesn’t look away. “Pretend, then. You’ve always been good at it.”

There’s the faintest curl at his mouth, sharp as a blade. “You’ve been staring at my lips for ten minutes.”

Harry exhales, steady but not steady enough. “So stop me.”

“Not a chance.” Draco’s tone is dry, level, but inside he feels himself unravel, thread by thread.

The silence stretches. Then Harry says it, blunt as a hex: “I really want to kiss you.”

Draco doesn’t answer. 

Harry leans in, lips brushing once, barely there.

“Your eyes are ridiculous,” Harry blurts, voice gone hoarse. “They’re unfair.”

Draco’s reply is clipped, almost cold. “So look somewhere else.” But he doesn’t move.

Harry steadies himself with one hand on the wall, pushes closer again. This time he kisses him properly, firm and lingering, water rocking against their ribs, steam curling between their mouths.

“I want to keep doing that,” Harry says against his lips.

Draco swallows, nods once, water running down his face. “Then do it.”

Harry does, and Draco meets him in full this time, mouth parting, kiss deepening until there’s nothing casual left. The pool holds them together, chests bumping, steam clinging to skin, the water itself conspiring to press them closer. Draco kisses back, desperate on the inside, dry and biting on the outside, teeth dragging once across Harry’s lip before he pulls away.

Water slides between them again, filling the silence. They’re breathing hard, but Draco smooths his hair like nothing has happened, turning away toward the wall.

“So it wasn’t the water,” Harry says quietly.

Draco glances back, voice flat. “It was never the water.”

He pushes off, swimming away.

Harry’s hand locks around Draco’s ankle under the water, quick as a flash. For a heartbeat Draco goes still, and then he twists, fast, and the next thing Harry knows, his back hits the pool wall with a thud that sends ripples racing outward. The shock of stone against his spine, water slamming up around them, and then Draco’s mouth is on his.

It is nothing like the measured kisses before. This one is brutal, hungry, teeth and lips colliding in heat. Water floods in at the corners of Harry’s mouth as Draco presses harder, drives him half under. The world shrinks to pressure and heat, to the drag of fingers curling hard at his shoulder, to the surge of current that feels like it’s trying to drag them both under together.

They sink, sliding lower, the buoyancy fighting them even as their bodies cling tight. The pool muffles everything and the sounds become a rush, light blurs to gold through rippling surface. Harry opens his eyes underwater for a second, just enough to see the ghostly flare of Draco’s pale face, the silver-grey gleam even here, distorted and inhumanly beautiful.

They break apart only long enough for a gasp of air before Draco pulls him under again. Harry laughs into the kiss, a wild desperate sound, bubbles rising between them, and Draco swallows it down like he’s starved.

The water cradles, drags, conspires, wrapping them in heat, rocking them into each other. By the time they surface for real, gasping, hair plastered, mouths still inches apart, they are wrecked, raw, and holding too tightly to let go.

They break apart in the water, mouths swollen, shoulders bumping in the current. Steam curls around them, and Draco steadies himself with a hand on the tiles. His voice comes out low, clipped but steady.

“This isn’t practical. We’ll drown.”

Harry laughs, still breathless. “Not the worst way to go.”

Draco tips his head, exhales sharp through his nose. “Come out with me.”

It lands like an invitation, not a demand. Harry nods. “Alright.”

They climb the steps together, water sliding down their arms in thin lines, dripping off their chins and elbows. Harry pushes his glasses back up his nose, useless with the fog blooming across the lenses, and wipes at them with the heel of his hand. Draco, as always, looks irritatingly composed, pale skin lit with steam, hair pushed back damp but orderly.

For a moment they just stand there, heat from the pool giving way to the cooler air of the room. Harry’s pulse is still too fast, his chest rising and falling harder than it should, but he doesn’t step back. Neither does Malfoy.

Then Draco clears his throat, low. “Let me dry you.”

Harry blinks, caught off guard by the simplicity of it. “That’s very solicitous of you, Malfoy.”

Draco lifts a brow, already reaching for a towel, charm warming it in a quick sweep. “I’d rather not have you slip on the tiles and leave me explaining to the Prophet why their beloved savior broke his neck on my pool deco.”

Harry huffs a laugh. “That your excuse?”

“Take it or leave it.” Draco’s tone is dry, but his eyes linger. 

Harry nods

Draco sets the towel over Harry’s shoulders and starts rubbing him down, slow enough to be deliberate, thorough enough to be irritating. 

“You’re hopeless,” he mutters, brushing at Harry’s hairline before moving down his arm. “Did you even bring a spare shirt?”

Harry snorts, though his chest is tight for entirely different reasons. “Didn’t realise I needed a keeper.”

“Apparently you do.” Draco flicks the towel against his ribs, sharp enough to make Harry grunt. But even then, even with the bite in his tone, the touch lingers warm and close. 

Harry realises it’s that part — the nearness, the attention, the caring — that he’s missed more than anything else. Not the sex, and not hunger, but the act of being touched, tended to, without needing to ask.

Draco folds Harry’s towel neatly, sets it aside, and with a flick of his wand summons another from the rack. He runs it over his own shoulders and hair in practiced rhythm. When he’s finished, he tosses it onto the bench, crosses to the opposite wall, and presses his palm to the carved knot in the stone. The mechanism stirs, and a hidden daybed slides out, linens unfolding into place with quiet precision.

“Practical magic,” Draco says, like it’s nothing. 

They settle onto the daybed, the linens cool against warm skin. Draco stretches out like this is routine, one arm folded behind his head. Harry, less graceful, drops onto his back with a grunt.

“You’ve hidden whiskey in one bench and a bed in the other,” Harry says. “What’s next, Malfoy, a bloody kitchenette behind the wall tiles?”

Draco doesn’t open his eyes. “The humidity would curdle the milk.”

Harry laughs, short and low. “Last time you served caipirinhas. What’s on the menu tonight?”

Draco tilts his head, finally looking over. “You’re still here, Potter. Isn’t that enough?”

Harry swallows, throat dry, and says, quieter, “Apparently.”

Harry turns on his side, close enough that their knees brush, and this time neither of them shifts away.

The kiss comes slower, exploratory. Testing. Harry tastes faint citrus on Draco’s mouth and smiles against it. Draco hums, low in his chest, and lets Harry pull him closer.

Hands follow after, deliberate and steady: Harry’s palm at Draco’s ribs, Draco’s fingers brushing the damp edge of Harry’s waistband. A shirt peeled off, then another. Towels pushed aside. They take their time, half-laughing, half-breathless, undressing each other as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Practical,” Draco mutters, voice thin, when Harry tugs his swim shorts down with a grin. “They were getting everything damp.”

“Inevitable,” Harry answers, kissing him again before Draco can argue.

The kiss breaks only when Harry shifts, rolling onto his side and pressing Draco back against the pillows. Draco doesn’t resist; his knees part automatically, long legs tangling with Harry’s, damp skin sliding.

Harry’s hand skims down his ribs, over his stomach, lower still. He closes around him in one smooth grip, thumb dragging across the head. Draco exhales sharply, a sound caught halfway between annoyance and surrender.

“Godric,” Harry mutters, kissing the corner of his mouth. “You feel—”

“Obvious,” Draco interrupts, his voice thin. He bites at Harry’s jaw, not quite gentle. “And you’ve been imagining it long enough.”

Harry laughs, low and broken. He tightens his fist, stroking with steady pressure, and Draco’s breath stutters against his neck. Harry watches Draco’s face, greedy for it, memorising the way his eyes flicker shut when the rhythm evens out.

Then Draco moves, refusing to be undone alone. His hand slips between them, cool from the evaporating water, curling around Harry with the same brutal efficiency he gives everything else. Harry jolts at the first stroke, hips bucking, mouth falling open against Draco’s shoulder.

“Fuck—”

“Language,” Draco says, breathless, smirk undone by the way Harry’s wrist twists on the next pull.

The pace builds fast, messy, both of them shifting for leverage, kissing when they can, gasping when they can’t. Harry works him hard, dragging up and down, every movement slicker with precome. Draco keeps up, matching stroke for stroke, his grip firm enough to make Harry see white at the edges.

They come up onto their knees, pressed together, and Harry shifts, his free hand sliding lower, and without a word he casts the charm. The slick spreads warm and sudden between them, perfect and frictionless. Draco chokes on a sound, not quite a gasp, not quite a groan but pitched high enough to betray him.

“Fuck,” he mutters, too late, pressing his forehead to Harry’s temple. But when Harry tightens his grip and drags again, the noise comes back, a ragged little whimper that makes Harry grin into the kiss.

“Not very Slytherin of you,” Harry murmurs against his mouth, picking up the pace.

“Shut—ah—” Draco bites down on his lip, but the sound still escapes. His hand works faster in retaliation, slick now, pulling Harry with him stroke for stroke. Their hips rock forward in messy counterpoint, the rhythm collapsing into gasps and wet sounds between them.

Another whimper slips free when Harry twists his wrist just so, and Harry swallows it in a kiss, greedy. He wants to drag every sound out of him, wants to hear Malfoy unravel.

“Still think it’s adequate?” Harry huffs, breathless, lips at his ear.

Draco’s laugh is wrecked, shaky, dissolving into another helpless noise when Harry’s thumb slides over the head. His eyes are squeezed shut, jaw locked, but the noises keep breaking loose, soft and desperate despite the way he tries to smother them.

“Fuck—Potter—” His voice cracks this time, and it’s closer to a plea than he’s ever allowed.

Harry strokes harder, faster, hips jerking into Draco’s fist in answer. The two of them collapse against each other, shoulders slipping, mouths still finding one another between the sharp gasps and the helpless, muffled whimpers Draco can’t stop making.

It’s a wreck by the time it breaks with Harry groaning into Draco’s mouth as he comes hard, spilling over Draco’s knuckles, his hand still working Draco through it. Draco follows almost immediately, shuddering violently, burying his face against Harry’s shoulder as another whimper tears loose, sharp and raw, when Harry doesn’t stop stroking him through the finish.

They slump together, still kneeling, still tangled, hands wet and bodies slick, steam curling heavy in the air around them. Draco’s breath is wrecked, uneven. Harry’s smile is smug, satisfied, though his chest heaves just as hard.

Harry presses his lips to Draco’s temple, murmuring, “That didn’t sound very practical.”

Draco lets out one more ragged breath and mutters, voice rough, “Inevitable.”

Then Harry lets out a low, shaky laugh. “That was… better than I expected.”

Draco turns his head, eyes half-lidded, voice hoarse. “High praise. I’ll be sure to inscribe it on my tomb.”

Harry grins, lazy and tired. “That was nice.”

“Nice,” Draco repeats like it’s an insult, but his mouth betrays him with the faintest curl.

Harry shifts, shoulder brushing his. “I’d like to do it again.”

Draco exhales through his nose, as if unimpressed, though his chest is still rising too fast. “You’re insufferable.”

Harry hums. “That wasn’t a no.”

It isn’t, and Draco doesn’t give him one.

The next morning, Draco sits at the desk in his study with his renovation ledger spread in front of him, Astoria’s notes still tucked into the margins like quiet instructions from another life.

He tries to concentrate. Seal the south chimney before the frost. Repaint the stairwell ceiling. Replace the cracked entry tiles. He forces himself down the list, neat checkmarks, deliberate strokes of the quill.

But his wrist pauses too long on the page. His mind drifts to the sound of water lapping in the pool, the sharp taste of Potter’s mouth still on his tongue, the way Potter’s laugh had caught against his lips.

He exhales, sharp, and refocuses. Refinish gallery floorboards before Christmas. Reinforce east wing pest wards. Fix the bloody squeak in the green room hinge.

Quill scratches. His hand stills again. He closes his eyes, presses his thumbs to his temple.s It’s useless.

Eventually, he sets the ledger aside, pulls fresh parchment toward him, and writes with the same dry economy as he had on the lists:

Potter,
Not to be pathetic about this, but I really can’t stop thinking about yesterday. Dinner, with me, at a time of your choosing. If you like, I’ll consider wanking you off again. I clearly do not have anything better to do.
D.L.M.

He hesitates, then flicks his wand over the parchment, weaving a subtle ward so that anyone underage, or anyone else visiting the Potter household, will see nothing more interesting than a shopping list for mustard and milk. Only Harry will read the truth.

Draco ties it off, seals it, and sets it out for the owl before he can decide otherwise.

Dinner ends up being on a Thursday night. First it was going to be Friday, but, as Potter explained, Lily’s Gobstones club tournament went well that week, and they’d play in some kind of finals game the next week, on their Friday. So Thursday it was, although, as Draco had written, it wasn’t like he had much going on to conflict with Potter’s schedule. 

By Thursday evening Harry has stopped lying to himself. It isn’t “just dinner.” It’s a date. A date that’s almost certainly going to end with sex, and that thought alone has him standing over his bed like a hopeless teenager again, four shirts already rejected.

The black jumper makes him look like he’s going to a funeral. The white collared shirt is worse, starched and severe, like he’s about to give testimony. The soft grey one (the one Ginny used to like— does she still like it? Did she stop?) he stuffs into the bottom of the drawer with something close to panic. Absolutely not.

He stares at the remaining pile, drags a hand through his hair. What do you wear when you’re going to Malfoy’s house, when Malfoy has written you a letter that practically says come fuck me over roast chicken?

Hermione would tell him to keep it simple, but he can’t Floo her, not about this. He can already imagine the way she’d arch her brow. He can hear her voice: Since when do you care what Malfoy thinks of your shirts, Harry? Hermione was never fashionable anyway. Who he needed was Astoria. Can’t do that either. 

He settles on navy, soft from wear, sleeves he can roll. He puts a tweed jacket on. Takes it off. Carries it with him. Deliberate without being desperate. He doesn’t want to look like he tried too hard. He doesn’t want to look like he didn’t try at all.

The mirror doesn’t lie: he looks like a man on his way to a date. A man who knows full well that it’s not going to stop at dessert.

His pulse hammers.

Outside the air is colder than he’d braced for, the kind that settles quick in the bones once the sun’s gone. He lasts halfway up the slope before cursing under his breath and shrugging into the jacket he swore he wouldn’t wear. The wool itches at his neck, and the fit feels wrong, too stiff, too much like a concession. He yanks the lapel straight and mutters, “Brilliant, Potter. Real dignified.”

The path curves up through the trees, gravel crunching under his boots. The house comes into view at the ridge, lantern light in the lower windows, smoke curling steady from one chimney. It looks deliberate, ready, like someone has staged it. Which, of course, Malfoy has.

By the time Harry reaches the steps his hands are too cold, and his pulse too quick. He knocks once, firm, and barely has time to shift the bag with the bread in it from one arm to the other before the door swings open.

Draco fills the frame.

He doesn’t look anything like he did last time. Instead of a flannel and sweat pants, he’s in charcoal trousers, pressed and narrow, with a shirt of palest blue, open at the throat, sleeves rolled with careful precision. His hair is shorter now, boyishly loose instead of rigidly styled, falling just enough out of place to make him look younger again. The rest of him is immaculate, but the softened hair throws the whole picture off balance in a way Harry can’t stop staring at. 

Harry’s stomach twists. He remembers the sound Draco made last time, the soft little whimper he hadn’t meant to let slip. Pathetic as it is, Harry hopes to hear it again. He hates himself a bit for it.

He leans one hand against the doorframe, as though this is nothing, and says, voice mild, “Potter.”

Harry swallows. “Malfoy.”

Draco had finished painting the dining room since last time Harry was there, dusty pale green, rich and glossy so the candlelight moved over it like water. The table was set like a showpiece, silver lined up, glasses polished, not a detail missed.

A single bottle of red is already open, one glass half-drunk. Harry clocks it instantly.

“You started without me?” he asks, sliding into the chair Draco gestures toward.

Draco doesn’t look remotely sorry. “You were late.”

“I was five minutes early.”

“Then you’re slipping.” Draco takes another sip, like that settles it.

Harry grins, oddly satisfied. Draco Malfoy, already drinking. He can’t be sure, but it feels like nerves. And if he is the cause of them, if Malfoy has poured himself a glass just to smooth the edge, Harry finds that perversely thrilling.

Harry takes it all in, and barks a laugh. “I can’t believe you did all this. Malfoy, you know I was going to fuck you anyway.”

Draco pauses mid-adjustment on a fork. His eyes cut up, sharp, amused, and maybe a little offended. “Trust you to take the romance out of interior design.”

Harry shrugs, unrepentant. “I just think it’s funny. You’re in here lighting candles like it’s a bloody proposal and I was ready to climb you over takeaway.”

Draco snorts. “You will not be climbing me over anything. This rug is antique.”

“See, this is why I like you.” Harry reaches for the bottle and pours himself a glass, gesturing toward the room with it. “You do all this ridiculous effort just to pretend you don’t care if I come or not.”

“I don’t,” Draco says smoothly, returning to the place settings. “I simply have standards.”

Harry smiles into his wine. “Sure you do.”

There is a beat. Draco sets the last fork in place, adjusts it a millimeter to the left, then stills his hand. He looks up, expression unreadable, and Harry knows the moment has shifted.

“You look good,” Draco says, quietly. “That’s all.”

Harry’s mouth goes a little dry. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” he replies stanchly. “Though I’d advise you not to spill on the linen. It’s Irish.”

“Of course it is.”

Harry watches him a moment longer. Then, he sets down his glass, pushes back his chair, and stands.

Draco’s eyes follow him, unreadable but steady.

Harry doesn’t go far, just circles the table and when he reaches Draco’s side, he pauses, one hand braced lightly on the back of the chair.

“Is this Irish too?” he asks, tone mild.

“The chair?” Draco looks up at him. “No, you Philistine, it’s Chippendale, what a stupid—”

Harry bends at the waist, leans down, and kisses him.

It isn’t rushed. Draco’s mouth is warm, his breath catches on an exhale, and for one beat he doesn’t move. Then he angles up, hand catching Harry’s wrist, and kisses him back.

By the time Harry pulls away, Draco’s expression has shifted, mouth slightly parted, the wine on his lips sweeter than it had tasted in the glass.

“Still don’t think you needed the candles,” Harry murmurs.

Draco gives a quiet scoff. “You’re insufferable.”

But he looks pleased. And he doesn’t let go of Harry’s wrist until he pulls back and murmurs, “Sit, before I ruin my own starter course.”

Harry, pleased to the point of smugness, obeys.

The soup that Draco brings in from the kitchen is parsnip and cardamom, rich and pale, with toasted fennel oil swirled over top.

“You really did the whole menu?” Harry asks, taking another spoonful.

Draco’s expression makes it clear the question offends him on a moral level. “Of course I did.”

“Not even dessert from a bakery?”

Draco gives him a flat look. “Do I seem like someone who serves other people’s pastry?”

Harry smirks. “You seem like someone who intimidates his fishmonger.”

“Good,” Draco says crisply. “That’s where the halibut came from.”

Which arrives next, pan-seared with some kind of herbed crust, plated with blood orange segments and sautéed chicory. Draco carries it in on a silver chafing dish and removes the matching silver dome with a flourish. He serves it, and watches for Harry’s reaction. He leans back after the first bite and gives a low whistle.

“You’re absurd,” he says. “This is—insane. Did you always cook like this?”

“No,” Draco says. “I learned.”

“Out of spite?”

Draco takes a sip of wine, looking ridiculously pleased with himself. “What else?”

Harry doesn’t say a word through the rest of the course, just soaks up every bit of sauce and makes quiet sounds of approval.

“I got cleared this week,” he says, once his plate is mostly clear.

Draco glances up.

“Back into the field. No more paperwork hell.”

“Congratulations,” Draco says, measured. “I assume you’re pleased.”

“I thought I would be,” Harry says. “And I am. But I keep waiting to feel more relief than I do.”

Draco arches a brow. “You wanted a parade?”

“No,” Harry says, shaking his head. “Just—I thought going back would feel like… forward. But I don’t think I moved much at all. You know?”

Draco pauses, considers, and nods once. “I do.”

Dessert comes next, and this seems to be what Malfoy is most tickled with. He presents it with even more of a flourish than he had the previous courses, setting the plate down with an air of theatrical gravity and just the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth.

“Poached pear,” he says, as if announcing a title. “With dark chocolate ganache and preserved ginger.”

Harry blinks. “You poached a pear?”

Draco, smug, takes his seat again. “Of course I did.”

“From scratch?”

“I didn’t summon it from a hedge, Potter.”

Harry looks down at the plate. The pear is sliced and fanned out, the chocolate glossed and rich beneath it, ginger curls sugared and glinting at the edge. “You made it look like an artifact.”

“Don’t ruin it by talking.”

Harry takes a bite. He stops talking.

It is outrageous. Silken and sharp, soft with just enough bite left in the fruit, the bitter chocolate cutting against the syrup and heat of the ginger. He closes his eyes, chews slowly, and exhales through his nose.

Draco, watching him, looks indecently smug.

“Fuck’s sake,” Harry mutters, after the third bite. “You’ve been holding out.”

“I’m not in the habit of poaching pears for casual acquaintances.”

“I’m not casual.”

“No,” Draco says mildly, “you’re absolutely not.”

They eat in companionable silence for a few minutes, devouring the dessert. Harry pauses once to take a sip of wine, watching Draco across the table.

“So,” he says, almost casually, “you’ve moved to cookery now that the renovations are done?”

Draco dabs at his mouth with his napkin. “Nearly done.”

“Yeah? It looks… pretty perfect in here, and I don’t like to compliment you.”

“Mmh. Just the upstairs guest bath, the crawlspace storage charm, and that bit of woodworm in the east hall wainscot. I’ll finish it by the holidays.”

Harry leans back in his chair. “And then?”

Draco glances up, brow arched. “Then it’s done.”

“No, I mean—what happens after?”

Draco sets his fork down. “You think I can’t sit still unless I’ve got something to restore?”

“You tell me.”

A beat.

Then Draco says, lightly, “You’re terribly nosy.”

“And you’re terribly avoidant.”

That earns a faint scoff, but Draco doesn’t argue. He refills both their wine glasses instead.

Harry watches him do it, then asks, softer this time, “You really think you’ll be fine once the list is done?”

Draco doesn’t look up right away. When he does, his expression is unreadable. “I think I’ll find out.”

“I’ve got a bit of dodgy ductwork in my attic you could help with,” Potter offers, tracing a finger around the rim of his wine glass, looking up at Draco over the top of his glasses.

Draco’s mouth twitches, caught between disdain and something softer. “Charming,” he says dryly. “A date with your rafters.”

Harry huffs a laugh, but he doesn’t look away. His finger keeps circling the glass, slow, deliberate, as though it gives his hands somewhere to go while the rest of him feels too exposed.

Draco notices. Of course he notices. He lifts his own glass, studying Harry over the rim, pale eyes sharp in the candlelight. “You really do have a talent for lowering the tone.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, voice low. “I also have a talent for blurting things out.”

Draco sets his glass down with a soft click. “Such as?”

Harry doesn’t mean to, but it slips out, the truth spilling between them before he can snatch it back. “That I like you, Malfoy.”

The silence after is brutal. Draco freezes, glass halfway to his mouth, and lowers it again with a deliberate care that makes Harry’s stomach flip.

“You absolute menace,” Draco says finally, voice cutting. “You sit there in my dining room, drinking my wine, eating my pears, and then you say that.”

Harry swallows. “It’s not a crime.”

“It should be.” Draco’s eyes are sharp, but his mouth betrays him, twitching at the corner like he’s fighting himself. He sets his napkin down too neatly, fingers smoothing the fabric flat. “I don’t want to like you, Potter. It’s vulgar.”

Harry grins, can’t help it. “But you do.”

Draco exhales through his nose, sharp, annoyed, and for a moment it looks like he’ll deny it. Then he says, almost spitting the words, “Reluctantly. Against my better judgment. Probably because of the hand job.”

Harry barks a laugh, startled and delighted. “That was a good one.”

“Don’t get cocky.” Draco lifts his glass again, finally drinks, as if that will wash the admission back down. “This is going to be a disaster.”

“Yeah,” Harry says, still smiling. “But you’ll like it.”

Draco sets his glass down with a sharp little click, and the faintest, reluctant flush has crept across his cheekbones. “I made a second dessert,” he says suddenly.

Harry blinks. “You what?”

“In case you didn’t like the pear.” Draco gestures toward the untouched silver dome on the sideboard, his tone brisk, almost haughty. “It’s an apple tart. I refuse to be accused of poor planning.”

Harry stares at him, then breaks into a grin. “That’s how I know you like me.”

Draco scoffs, eyes narrowing. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No, really,” Harry presses, leaning forward now, grin widening. “You thought about it, worried I might not like the first one, so you made me another. That’s not standards, Malfoy. That’s you caring what I think.”

Draco exhales hard through his nose, the sound sharp with annoyance. His gaze fixes on Harry’s, cold and deliberate. Then he says, biting out each word, “No, Potter. You know I like you because I jerked you off.” His mouth curves into the faintest, most dangerous smile. “And I want to do it again.”

The silence after stretches, thick as the candlelight between them.

Harry swallows, his grin turning feral. “You should’ve led with that.”

The quiet holds, taut as wire. Draco leans back in his chair, every inch of him composed except for the flush across his cheekbones. “This time, Potter,” he says, voice pitched low, deliberate, “I want you in my mouth.”

Harry doesn’t laugh, doesn’t deflect. He just looks at him, eyes dark, lips parted, and the heat that surges between them is almost unbearable. Draco feels it like a hand closing around his throat.

Then, too quickly, his mind betrays him. The image of his bedroom’s lamplight and sheets still infused with the ghost of Astoria’s perfume, flashes sharp and cruel. The thought of crossing that threshold with Potter makes his chest seize. He cannot. Not there. Not ever.

Harry’s gaze doesn’t waver. His hand comes down on the table, close enough that Draco can feel the warmth of it. “You should know,” Harry says, voice low but steady, “I’ve always fantasized about you on the sofa in your sitting room, where we used to hang out after dinner. I always was watching you, thinking about you. On your knees. With my cock in your mouth.”

Draco’s breath falters. He hates how the words lance through him, how they make his pulse kick and his mouth go dry.

Then Harry extends his hand, palm open, waiting. “Come on.”

It’s absurdly simple, that invitation, but Draco feels the charge of it like a current. He stares a beat too long, then takes Potter’s hand. The grip is firm, hot, grounding. Harry’s thumb brushes over his knuckles, deliberate.

The steadiness in Harry’s voice, the absolute lack of hesitation, it cuts through every defense Draco has left. He rises, caught in the pull, and this time neither resists.

“I take it you don’t want any apple tart—” Draco murmurs, and Harry crashes his lisps into his, hard and serious. 

“No,” Harry whispers into his mouth, “I don’t want any fucking apple tart.”

It’s a messy kiss, teeth clashing, Draco’s hand fisted tight in Harry’s shirt like he’s trying to throttle him and drag him closer all at once. Harry groans into his mouth, and the sound goes straight down Draco’s spine, heat unspooling.

Harry breaks the kiss only to breathe, forehead pressed to Draco’s. “Sofa,” he mutters, voice rough.

Draco manages a scoff, though his pulse is pounding. “You’re obsessed.”

“Years,” Harry growls, tugging at his hand again, leading him out of the dining room. “I’ve been thinking about it for years.”

The sitting room is dim, lamplight soft against the shelves, the sofa sprawling like an invitation. Draco tries to regain composure, to say something cutting, but Harry pushes him down before he can marshal the words.

Draco lands with a graceless little huff, glaring up. “Philistine.”

Harry grins, straddling his knees. “That’s the second time you’ve called me that tonight. You must be running out of insults.”

Draco smooths the lapel of his shirt as though the situation were civilized. “You’re making it difficult. There are only so many ways to call someone tragically predictable.”

Harry leans down, brushing his lips over Draco’s jaw, hot and unrelenting. “Predictable, huh?” His hand slides over Draco’s chest, lingering there with quiet possession. “Still think that when I’ve got you under me?”

Draco’s breath stutters, but he refuses to give ground. “I’ll reserve judgment until the demonstration.”

Harry laughs against his throat, low and wrecked, before kissing him again, slower this time, deliberate, as though he means to savor every inch. Draco hates how much he leans into it, hates even more the way Harry kisses like he has nowhere better to be.

“Fuck,” Harry whispers between kisses. “You taste like pears and wine.”

Draco arches a brow, smirking even as his pulse races. “I’d have plated you some more if I knew you were so eager.”

“You did.” Harry nips at his lower lip, eyes gone dark. “You just didn’t expect me to lick it off you.”

Harry kisses him like he means to pin him there forever, rough and steady, until Draco pulls back with a sharp breath. His mouth is flushed, eyes narrowed, and he glances deliberately at the sofa.

“I thought,” Draco says, voice smooth but ragged at the edges, “I was supposed to be the one servicing you in this little scenario of yours.”

Harry grins, wrecked already, tugging at Draco’s collar to drag him closer again. “You weren’t moving fast enough.”

That earns him a dangerous look. Draco surges forward, and suddenly they’re grappling, teeth knocking, hands shoving. They tumble off the sofa in a tangle, hitting the rug with a thud. Harry laughs against Draco’s mouth, half feral, half delighted, but Draco’s already bracing a hand against his chest, pinning him down.

They wrestle like it matters, Harry rolling, trying to flip him, and this time he manages it. He braces hard, shoulder driving, and suddenly Draco’s the one flat on his back, a startled sound caught in his throat as Harry pins him down. Harry’s weight is solid over him, breath ragged, grin feral.

“Got you,” Harry pants, triumphant.

Draco glares up at him, pale hair mussed, chest rising and falling fast. His knee shifts, testing the hold, but Harry presses him harder into the rug, refusing to budge.

“You let me,” Harry pants, grinning up at him, hair wild. “You bloody let me win.”

Draco’s answering smirk is pure sin. “Of course I did. And now you’re going back on the sofa, where you belong.”

He hauls Harry up with surprising strength, pushes him down onto the cushions again, spreads his legs open with a press of his hands on Harry’s knees. Harry’s chest heaves, his grin fading into something darker, needier.

Draco doesn’t hesitate. He sinks to his knees on the rug, smooth as though he’s been planning this all along, and looks up at Harry with a wicked glint. His hands go to Harry’s belt, deft and unhurried, tugging it loose, working open the buttons one by one. The sound of the zipper sliding down in the quiet room makes Harry’s breath catch.

Draco eases him free, fingers brushing deliberately, knuckles grazing the sharp line of Harry’s hip. He takes a moment, of course he does, stroking once, thumb dragging over the flushed head, his expression dark with interest.

“Merlin,” Draco murmurs, voice low, reverent in spite of himself. “You’re—obscene.”

Harry lets out a strangled laugh, half-gone already. “Complaining?”

Draco smirks up at him, lips parting. “Hardly. Your cock is incredible”

Then his hands tighten on Harry’s hips, tugging him forward, and his mouth is hot and sure around him before Harry can get out so much as a curse.

Harry’s head falls back hard against the sofa. His fingers clutch the upholstery, knuckles white, as a broken groan spills out of him. “Fuck—Draco.”

Draco hums low around him, smug, relentless, every bit of control wrestled back into his own hands, and Harry melts, exactly as expected.

It takes Draco a second to register it. Not Malfoy. Not Potter. Draco.

He pulls off with a wet drag, saliva slicking his lower lip, his chin shining. His hand doesn’t leave Harry’s cock, though, he wraps his fingers around the base and gives a steady pump, smirking up at him.

“Well, well,” he drawls, voice silk over steel. “Potter calling me by my given name. How sentimental.”

Harry’s eyes flutter open, already wrecked, staring down at him. “Shut up.”

Draco strokes him slower, thumb circling lazily under the head, gaze sharp and mocking. “What’s next? Breathless declarations? A confession of undying love?”

Harry groans, hips jerking helplessly into Draco’s fist. “I said shut up.”

Draco’s smile widens, cruel and delighted. “You’ll have to gag me again, then.” His tongue flicks out, catching the bead of precum gathering at the tip. “Lucky for you, I don’t mind.”

Harry groans, hips twitching into Draco’s hand, but Draco just tightens his grip and slows the stroke, maddeningly deliberate.

“Pathetic,” Draco murmurs, thumb sliding over the head, smearing pre-come with a studied flick. “Already this close, and I’ve barely started.”

Harry fists the cushions, knuckles straining white. “You’re killing me.”

“On the contrary.” Draco’s tone is cool, amused. “I’m keeping you alive. Drawing it out. Making you ache for it.” He twists at the base, then eases up, dragging the tip against his tongue without taking him back in. “And Salazar, do you ache, Potter.”

Harry’s breath shudders, his body arching up off the sofa like he can’t stop himself. “Fuck—please—”

Draco laughs under his breath, a soft, cruel sound, and deliberately pulls back just as Harry thrusts. His hand stays firm, stroking slow, just enough to keep him teetering. “Look at you,” Draco says, smirk wicked, eyes bright with triumph. “Begging already. You must want me terribly.”

Harry drops his head back, groaning, hair sticking damp against his temple. “I do. Gods, I do—”

The admission makes Draco’s hand still for a beat. His smile sharpens, dangerous. He leans up, lips brushing the inside of Harry’s thigh, and whispers, “Good. I want you wild for it.”

Then he squeezes, slow and tight, enough to make Harry curse and writhe, chasing release Draco refuses to give.

Draco keeps him right there, strung taut, his hand stroking slow and merciless. Harry’s eyes squeeze shut, every breath a ragged plea.

“You know what I think, Potter?” Draco murmurs, lips brushing the slick head before pulling back again, voice sharp. “I think you want to bottom for me. I think you’ve been dreaming about it—me, splitting you open, making you take it.”

Harry lets out a broken sound, more whimper than word. His cock twitches hard in Draco’s fist, a strangled cry tearing loose before he can bite it back.

Draco’s eyes go sharp, greedy, delighted. “Oh,” he purrs, smirk widening. “Is that a yes?”

Harry’s too far gone to answer, chest heaving, sweat damp at his hairline. The sound alone—the desperate choke of it—says everything.

Draco takes it as invitation. His free hand slips lower, between Harry’s thighs, slick fingers pressing in where Harry’s never wanted anyone else. He circles once, teasing, then pushes slow, deliberate, watching Harry’s whole body jolt.

Harry gasps, knuckles white against the sofa, thighs falling wider under Draco’s hands. “Fuck—oh, fuck—”

Draco’s smirk turns viciously pleased. “That’s it. Good boy.”

He strokes Harry’s cock with one hand, works his finger deeper with the other, savoring every wrecked sound, every twitch of Harry’s body under his control.

Draco makes a sharp, efficient flick with his wand, and Harry’s trousers vanish in an instant, leaving him bare and flushed under the low light. He doesn’t give Harry a chance to be embarrassed, not that Potter looks it—he’s too far gone, cock hard and leaking in Draco’s fist, thighs already trembling.

Harry pants, breathless, “That’s hot.”

Draco doesn’t bother with a retort. He just bends back down, takes Harry into his mouth again, hot and slick and devastating. His tongue drags along the underside, savoring the taste, while his free hand slides lower, fingers pressing at Harry’s arse.

Harry groans, long and wrecked, and spreads his legs wider without shame, heels digging into the sofa cushions for leverage. “More,” he gasps, head thrown back. “God, Draco—more—”

Draco hums around his cock, smug and merciless, and pushes his fingers deeper, stretching Harry slow, deliberate, knuckles curling just enough to make him cry out.

Harry’s hips buck, chasing it, pressing down on Draco’s hand like he’s desperate to take every inch. His voice breaks, high and unguarded, moaning Draco’s name over and over, the sound wrecked and shameless.

“Look at you,” Draco saya savagely, pulling off for a moment to let his eyes burn up the length of Harry’s body. “Potter, falling apart like a slut on my fingers.”

And Harry only proves him right, shoving down harder, cock twitching on Draco’s tongue, undone and begging for more.

Harry’s legs are trembling, spread wide on the sofa, his cock sliding wet across Draco’s tongue while Draco’s fingers work him open, slow and merciless. Every thrust of Draco’s hand makes Harry jolt, every curl inside him tears another sound from his throat.

“Please,” Harry gasps, head thrown back, sweat shining at his temple. “Draco—fuck—please—”

Draco pulls off his cock with a wet pop, lips shining, his hand still buried deep and twisting inside Harry. “Please what?” he purrs, cruelly soft. “Use your words, Potter.”

Harry whimpers, tries to grind down, but Draco’s grip on his hip keeps him pinned. “I need it,” he chokes, voice wrecked, raw. “Need you—need you to fuck me—please, Draco—”

Draco’s smirk is all sharp teeth, his chest tight with triumph and something darker, something dangerously close to want. He strokes Harry once, slow and steady, fingers pressing deeper.

“That’s better,” he murmurs. “Begging suits you.”

Harry shudders, eyes screwed shut, and moans his name again, desperate and unguarded, the sound breaking apart into something close to a sob.

Harry is already shaking apart, spread open under him, cock wet against Draco’s tongue, body clenching greedily around his fingers. The begging spills out of him ragged, half-sobbed. “Please, Draco—need you—fuck me, please—”

Draco pulls back just enough to look at him, lips slick, eyes sharp as blades. His hand doesn’t stop working Harry open, fingers curling deliberately, but his voice is smooth and merciless. “Again.”

Harry groans, twisting against the sofa cushions, trying to chase more friction. “Please—”

Draco’s free hand goes to his own buttons, sliding them loose with infuriating calm. “Not good enough. Say it.”

Harry cracks his eyes open, pupils blown, staring up at him like he’ll die without this. “Please, Draco. Please fuck me.”

Draco shrugs out of his jacket, lets it fall carelessly to the rug, then flicks open his shirt buttons. He leans forward, teeth catching the edge of Harry’s collar, and tugs Harry’s shirt down off one shoulder, then the other, until the fabric is nothing but a heap between them.

“This one?” Draco murmurs, fingers dragging over the discarded shirt, recognizing it instantly. “You chose this for tonight, didn’t you?”

Harry’s chest heaves, bare and flushed, his cock twitching helplessly. “Yeah,” he pants, unashamed. “For you.”

Draco smirks, stripping the shirt all the way off and tossing it aside with his own. His trousers follow in a practiced slide, leaving him lean and pale in the candlelight. Draco braces one hand on Harry’s chest, and put his fingers inside him again, slick and buried deep where Harry’s body pulses around him, and leans in close.

“Say it again,” Draco whispers, cruel and thrilled. “Beg me properly while I take what’s mine.”

Harry’s chest heaves under Draco’s hand, every muscle strung tight. His voice comes ragged, ruined, the last of his pride burned out of him. “Please, Draco. Please, I need you—inside me—fuck, I need it—”

Draco exhales through his nose, sharp and satisfied, as though the begging itself has undone him. He pulls his fingers free, slick and shining, and Harry whimpers at the sudden emptiness.

“Greedy,” Draco murmurs, stripping off the last of his clothes in one fluid motion. His cock is flushed, heavy, leaking—and Harry stares like he’s starving, lips parted, eyes wide and wrecked.

Draco climbs onto the sofa, knees bracketing Harry’s thighs, one hand guiding himself as the other presses firm against Harry’s hip, pinning him in place. He drags the blunt head down over Harry’s stretched rim, smearing him slick, teasing.

Harry cries out, body arching up, hands clawing at Draco’s shoulders. “Please, Draco, don’t—don’t tease, I can’t—”

Draco smirks, cruel and unbearably pleased. “Oh, you can. And you will. But—” He lines himself up, the pressure sudden, real, inexorable. “Since you begged so sweetly—”

He pushes, just the head breaching, and Harry keens, a broken sound, thighs spreading wider, desperate to take him all.

“Fuck—yes—” Harry gasps, head snapping back against the cushions. “Please, Draco, please—”

Draco’s eyes flutter shut, a groan tearing out of him despite every ounce of control. He presses forward, slow, deliberate, until Harry’s body clenches tight around him and they’re both trembling with it.

Draco sinks in by degrees, every inch deliberate. His grip on Harry’s hip is iron, holding him down, forcing him to take it at Draco’s pace. It’s been too long, almost a year and a half since he’s been inside anyone, and he refuses to rush, not when the heat of Potter’s body closes around him like this, not when he can savor every second.

Harry whines, low and guttural, trying to rock up, to force more. “Please, Draco—fuck, harder—”

“No,” Draco grits, eyes screwed shut for a moment as he pushes deeper, slow enough to feel every clench, every shudder. “I’m not wasting this on a quick fuck. You’ll take it the way I like.”

Harry whimpers, wrecked, his hands scrabbling at Draco’s shoulders as though he can drag him in faster. “I can’t—fuck—I need—”

“You can,” Draco snarls, though his voice breaks on a groan, pleasure hitting too sharp. He pulls almost all the way out, then pushes back in, languid and punishingly slow, making Harry feel the drag of every inch. “You’re going to lie there and let me use you. That’s what you begged for.”

Harry cries out, high and involuntary, his cock jerking against his stomach, wet and flushed. “Draco—please—please—”

Draco opens his eyes, drinking in the sight of him ruined, spread wide, trembling under every unhurried thrust. The power of it makes his chest tighten, makes his control all the sweeter.

“Salazar,” he groans, grinding in deep and holding there, savoring the way Harry clenches around him. “You feel obscene. Perfect. And you’re mine until I’m finished.”

Harry whimpers at that, desperate, writhing under him, begging for more even as Draco keeps him exactly where he wants him, helpless and undone, forced to endure the slow, selfish rhythm of a man who’s been waiting far too long.

Draco holds steady, hips grinding slow and deep, savoring every clench of Harry’s body around him. He’s set on this pace: selfish, deliberate, drawing it out until Potter’s begging himself hoarse.

But then Harry gasps, head rolling against the cushions, voice raw and cracked. “It’s been ages for me too—fuck, Draco—there’s been no one—no one—”

Draco falters. His hips stutter, the next thrust sharper than he meant, buried deeper. His breath catches in his throat, and for a moment he’s gone still, staring down at Harry like he’s just been gutted.

“No one?” Draco hears himself rasp, disbelieving.

Harry drags his gaze up, glassy and unguarded, hands clutching Draco’s shoulders. “No one. Just you. Just this.”

Something inside Draco twists viciously, shredding through the last threads of composure. All the years of restraint, of careful control, of fucking no one because it was easier to want nothing than to want and be denied, it all snaps.

He drives forward hard, a broken groan ripping out of him, hips slamming into Harry’s with reckless need. “Fuck—Potter—”

Harry cries out, clutching at him, wrapping his legs higher around Draco’s waist, urging him deeper. “Yes—fuck—harder—please—”

Draco can’t stop now, can’t hold back. Every thrust is rougher, hungrier, his mouth hot against Harry’s throat as he growls, “Mine. You hear me? You’ve always been mine.”

Harry whimpers his name again, broken, wild, and Draco fucks him like he’s trying to make up for all the years they both went without.

Harry is still trembling, come slick between them, body clenching in sharp little aftershocks around Draco’s cock. Draco keeps thrusting through it, teeth gritted, every movement dragging tight and unbearable. He should pull back, give Potter a moment to recover, but Harry doesn’t want recovery.

“Don’t stop,” Harry gasps, voice wrecked, eyes half-lidded but blazing. His legs tighten around Draco’s waist, heels digging in, holding him close. “Please, Draco—fuck—don’t stop—fill me, I want it—”

Draco groans, the sound breaking in his chest. He’s already too close, undone by the sight of Harry still begging, still open, slick and ruined but desperate for more.

“Merlin, Potter—” Draco’s voice cracks, hips snapping harder now, frantic. His hand fists into the fabric of the sofa beside Harry’s head as he drives deep, every thrust rougher, needier.

“Yes,” Harry moans, clutching him tight. “Come in me, Draco. Fill my hole—please, I need it—”

The plea tears the last of Draco’s control apart. His whole body seizes, hips grinding in to the hilt as he spills, hot and thick, buried deep inside Harry. He groans Harry’s name against his throat, shuddering with each pulse of release, and Harry clings to him like he’ll never let go.

For a long moment, all Draco can hear is their ragged breathing, the wet, obscene sound of him still inside, the faint tremor of Harry’s body milking every drop.

“Fuck,” Draco whispers, voice hoarse, forehead pressed to Harry’s temple. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

Harry, still panting, laughs weakly into his ear. “Worth it.”

In the next weeks they fall into something dangerously like a rhythm. They meet three times in a row\, always at Draco’s: once in the middle of a lunch hour, Potter still dusted with Floo ash, where they end up half-undressed and panting on the rug before Draco has even shut the grate; twice more in the evenings, their bodies tangling over the sofa, the low table, whatever surface is closest. It is chaotic and urgent and, in its way, intoxicating. But each night ends the same, with Draco steering Harry away from the staircase, away from the bedroom he cannot yet bear to open to him. By the third evening, with Harry dozing against his shoulder, Draco admits to himself that the situation has become untenable. Something will have to change.

By the first of December, Draco’s decision is made almost without fanfare. He has ticked off each room as if repairing them could repair him. Each stroke of paint, each vanished stain, each straightened hinge has been a way to put himself in order, as though the structure of the house might hold his own faltering shape.

And then there is Potter, still.

What began as scattered owls about films (Potter recommending some loud American franchise, Draco replying with dismissive corrections) has become something more consuming. They trade lists now, and commentary. Half the time Potter forgets the name of the director, and Draco pretends he is appalled. In truth, he looks forward to the next note, waits for the flutter of wings at his window like it means something more.

Talks about food are the same. Potter scribbles quick, untidy recipes for the sort of meals one can make in half an hour, always with ingredients bought on the way home. Draco replies with menus that span pages, annotated with substitutions and wine pairings, sometimes accompanied by jars of preserves or parcels of spice. Potter complains, but the jars always come back empty.

Some days they exchange rapid owls, so often that they resort to tossing notes through the floo and scraps of parchment litter Draco’s desk until it looks as though he is drafting a treatise rather than carrying on a correspondence. It is absurd, and yet there is a strange warmth to it. It’s a sort of settling, as if a rhythm has been found.

After the three reckless visits have themselves into memory, something gentler takes hold. They stop pretending every meeting has to end with a bed, or in their case, a sofa, and instead fall into the quieter shape of habit. Harry comes by in the in-between hours, that span after he leaves the Ministry but before Lily is finished with her after-school club or has vanished to a friend’s house. Sometimes they share a drink in the kitchen, sometimes they sit out by the lake and say very little at all. It isn’t less, exactly, but different: a companionship that creeps in where urgency once lived, the pleasure of finding each other not in secret trysts, but in the easy rhythm of ordinary time.

He knows there is one thing left to do before the list is complete. The thought has been circling him for weeks, edging closer with every owl, every evening Potter spends in his sitting room as though he belongs there. 

The master bedroom. He has steered Potter past it each time he visits, with the ease of a man practiced in avoidance.

He can’t in good conscience take Potter to a guest room. Potter… deserves more than that. He deserves more than an impersonal fuck in a guest bedroom. Despite Draco’s best intentions, Potter is starting to worm his little bespeckled head into Draco’s, well, if not heart, at least pants. 

So Draco does what he does best: he sets up the camera. The tripod goes in the hall outside the door, angled carefully so the light falls just so. He fusses with the frame, charms the lens clean, checks the audio levels twice. The rituals are grounding, and he needs grounding, because the thought of actually walking into that room to start a renovation on it without the camera running makes his throat close.

It feels like he owes Astoria the recording.

The first take falls apart immediately; his voice catches before he can get through the words “master suite.” He hates himself for it, hates the weakness of being seen, even if the only one watching is a future version of himself who might have the nerve to edit this into something coherent.

The words snag in his throat. He stops the recording. Starts again. Three tries this time before he gets through the first sentence without choking. The next one, he cries openly, face blotched and wet. By the fifth, his voice is flat, the grief tucked under ice. He will edit that one later. But the raw ones will remain in the memory card, damning.

After the intro, he’s on his own though. 

The camera blinks red from the dresser, steady and unblinking. Draco stands in the doorway like a man at the edge of a battlefield, wand heavy at his side. 

“Hello, love,” he says to the lens, voice already unsteady. “I should have done this sooner.”

He begins with the bed. His wand flick is sharp, and the posts snap clean from the frame. No one else is here to do the work, as he knows it should be. It is his hands that drag the pieces down the hall. His palms burn, his back screams, but he refuses to stop. Sweat runs down his spine, soaking his shirt, salt stinging his eyes. Each trip out of the room feels like lowering her into the ground again.

The armoire follows, the dressing table, the bench. Each is levitated gently, carefully, every order sharp but reverent. 

“They’re getting donated,” he says to the camera. “You’d hex me if I destroyed them. Waste was the only sin you couldn’t abide.”

The linens are worst. He opens the drawers, and the scent rushes out—lavender, lemon oil, the faint musk of her skin in the fabric. His knees give way, and he sinks to the floor, clutching fistfuls of silk to his face.

“You bought this one in Milan,” he whispers, voice breaking. “This in Bruges. You wouldn’t stop bargaining with that dreadful wizard until you got the price down.” His chest shakes; tears blot the embroidery. “I remember every single one. And I—” His voice fractures into a sob. “I can’t keep them here.”

Still, he folds each piece with meticulous care, hands trembling but precise, and seals them into cedar chests with preservation charms. The drawers close with brutal finality.

The walls come next. He moves them by hand, wand drawing lines in the plaster, every adjustment echoing like a crack of bone. Dust coats his hair and his lashes, the sting of lime biting his throat. He coughs until he’s dizzy, but he keeps going, pushing the walls outward, forcing space into a house that resists him. He carves a window where there was none. The first rush of cold air nearly doubles him over. She would have hated how blindingly bright it was, but he loved the new, fuller view of the lake. 

The guilt is instant. He whispers hoarsely, “It isn’t for you. It’s for me. For what comes after.”

The bathroom takes him three days. He chisels out marble tile until his hands blister, blood welling where the stone splits skin. 

Her perfumes still wait on the shelf, a neat row of glass vials: rosewater, vetiver, bergamot. He unscrews each cap, breathes them in one final time, and packs them in boxes, labeling each bottle with a preservation charm before tucking it away in a preserving chest. He sets the last one in as though it might shatter his heart.

“I remember the way you wore every single one,” he murmurs, voice low. “I’ll keep them safe. But not here.”

The bedroom is bright, bare, almost foreign, as though it belongs to someone else entirely. It does belong to someone else entirely. 

Draco sits on the floor where the bed once stood, dust clinging to his skin, hands shredded, shirt soaked through with sweat. He looks at the camera, eyes swollen and red.

“I love you,” he rasps. “I love you still. But I can’t keep Harry in a guest room. And I can’t keep sleeping beside your ghost.”

He lets the camera keep rolling long after he falls silent. It captures him curled against the skirting board, shoulders shaking, the new window pouring cruel sunset across the wreckage.

The next morning, he is ready to rebuild. 

The light from the new window wakes him. He hasn’t slept, only drifted for an hour or two at a time against the wall, too sore and too wrung out to move. His body protests as he stands, shoulders stiff, palms scraped raw. He makes a pot of tea, drinks it black and scalding, and begins again.

This part is different. Not demolition, not mourning. Rebuilding.

He starts with the walls, smoothing plaster until the seams of the magic vanish, polishing the surfaces until they gleam pale and clean. He charms the paint a muted green, far softer than Slytherin, brighter than he expected himself to choose. He glances at the camera, lips quirking. “Yes, I know. Predictable. But at least I didn’t do silver trim.”

The floors he scours until the oak lightens to honey. He lays rugs in shades of cream and grey, nothing dramatic. The bed is new ase well and iron framed. “No lace, no brocade, no posts to polish,” he mutters as he works. “I’m sure you’d hate it. But you don’t have to sleep in it.”

Shelves go up, filled this time with his books, not hers: architecture, magical theory, even the Muggle cinema volumes Potter insisted he read. He never loved all of his books in the library, across the house. Now, his favorites would be with him, at any time. 

The bathroom takes shape a bit more slowly. There are more pieces in there. He has stripped away the black-and-gold marble, charm by charm, until the walls are ready to be replaced with a gleaming pale stone. The gilded taps are unscrewed and set carefully aside; brushed silver takes their place. The light is softer now, less theatrical, and more livable.

With the shelf is empty, he replaces the perfumes with a single jar—a thick glass vial of fennel oil. Its scent rises sharp and green, a little sweet, almost medicinal. He watches the liquid catch the light, lips curving faintly.

“You’d hate this,” he says, glancing at the camera. “Too clean, too sharp. Not romantic in the slightest. But I like it. I like the bite of it in the air. Reminds me of cooking with you, and of my hands that still smelled of fennel when I came in from the garden, and you laughed that I’d never scrub it off because I kept smelling it. Now I keep it here on purpose. My little spiteful victory.”

He sets the jar on the shelf, alone in the space she once crowded with fragrance, and steps back. The bathroom smells new, stripped of roses and musk, grounded instead in something sharper. His choice. His room.

By the end of the week, the suite is spare but new. Still aching with what it used to be, but undeniably his.

Draco sets the camera on the sill and sits at the edge of the bed. His shirt is open at the throat, his hair still dusted faintly with plaster. He looks tired, but lighter.

“Well,” he says, voice rough but almost amused, “it’s done. A triumph. Very masculine, very un-you. I imagine you’d call it bleak. Potter will probably call it lovely, the idiot.” He huffs a laugh, rubbing a hand over his face. “But I think—I think I’m ready to let him upstairs.”

It creeps up on Harry slowly, the way Malfoy has. Not a lightning strike, not a grand revelation, but the steady accumulation of small things until Harry looks up one evening and realizes he’s in trouble.

The owls come first. At the beginning they were harmless: a recipe, a note about a film, a quick reply scribbled between memos at work. Now they stack in drifts on his desk, margins crowded with arguments about subtitling and substitutions, the sharp slope of Malfoy’s handwriting threaded through his days. Sometimes it’s ten letters in an afternoon, each one answered before the ink on the last is dry. Harry tells himself it’s a distraction. He doesn’t bother pretending it isn’t a pleasure.

When he does Floo over, the house is always warm, firelight flickering against pale stone, and Malfoy is waiting with shirt sleeves rolled, hair mussed, a glass of wine already poured as though he knew Harry would come. They argue, they laugh, they lapse into silences that feel too charged to be comfortable but too easy to resist. Harry catches himself watching him when he shouldn’t: the deliberate way he plates food, the amused twitch at the corner of his mouth when Harry gets under his skin. It’s not infatuation, Harry realizes with something close to dread. It’s worse. It’s steadier.

Most nights, he can’t go. Work eats up the hours, and Lily is at home, bright and busy and his. But when Ginny comes back for two weeks at the holidays and Lily insists on staying at hers, Harry finds himself more grateful than he wants to admit.

He packs her bag, tucks in her scarf, listens to her chatter about skating rinks and gingerbread, and hugs her before she vanishes into the Floo. Ginny gives him a polite smile and the house goes quiet.

Usually that silence sinks into him like a stone. This time, it feels like air.

Harry doesn’t hesitate. He reaches for his coat, the thought of Malfoy pulling at him across the valley: the wine, the fire, the sharp mouth that never quite matches the softness in his eyes.

For the first time in years, Harry leaves his house with something dangerously like anticipation.

The night is sharp with cold, Harry’s breath fogging in front of him as he crosses the valley. The takeaway bag warms his hand, fragrant with spice and oil, absurdly comforting against the bite of the wind.

Malfoy opens the door before Harry can knock. He flicks a smile, but his eyes flick to the bag first.

“Tell me you had the sense to avoid coriander,” he says, a little too fast.

Harry brushes past him into the hall, the glow of lamplight soaking into his bones. “Ordered what I wanted,” he replies, grinning. “You can pick it out if you’re that fussy.”

Draco takes the bag with a put-upon sniff, carrying it through to the kitchen. He sets it down with more precision than takeaway deserves, lining up the cartons, unfolding the paper bags like they’re artifacts.

Harry shrugs out of his coat, leaning against the counter as he watches. The fussing is familiar by now, but tonight there’s something sharper beneath it. Draco’s movements are too careful, his shoulders too tight.

Harry narrows his eyes. “You’re jumpy.”

Draco doesn’t look up. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You are,” Harry says, amused but not letting it go. “Merlin, you’re acting like we’re hosting a state dinner. It’s just paad thai.”

That earns him only a sharper flick of a napkin being laid flat, but it’s enough to confirm it. Malfoy is nervous.

Harry watches him fuss with the cartons for a moment longer, the sharp angles of his movements, the way he smooths an already perfect napkin flat against the counter. Then Harry says, lightly but pointed, “You’re twitchy. What’s wrong?”

Draco scoffs, too quick. “Nothing.”

Harry raises a brow. “Malfoy.”

The napkin stills under Draco’s hand. For a long beat he doesn’t look up, and when he does, the words come out in a rush, sharper than he intended. “The bedroom’s done.”

Harry blinks. Of all the possibilities, he hadn’t expected that. Then his mouth quirks, steady. “Yeah? I was starting to wonder when we’d ever get around to using a bed.”

Draco makes a startled sound, and the tension snaps just enough to let him breathe. He shakes his head, the corner of his mouth tugging up in reluctant amusement.

They carry the cartons through to the table, steam rising as Draco dishes everything out with unnecessary care. Harry makes a joke about portion sizes, about how Draco serves takeaway with serving spoons like they’re at a restaurant. Draco rolls his eyes, mutters something about standards, but the edge is gone and it’s softer now, almost fond.

They eat. Conversation comes and goes, light jabs about Harry’s appalling chopstick technique, Harry teasing Draco for picking every last shred of coriander out of the noodles. It’s easy, comfortable, but beneath it Harry can feel the drag of something unsaid.

Draco doesn’t rush. He eats with the same deliberation he brings to everything, yet Harry can see him turning something over behind his eyes, every measured movement betraying the thought he hasn’t spoken yet.

Harry lets him have the silence, even as it builds between them, heavy with anticipation.

When the table is cleared and every container charmed shut, Draco finally straightens, palms braced against the counter as though he’s holding himself steady. Then he says, too casually, “Come on.”

He leads Harry up the stairs. The house is silent but for the faint creak of the banister under Harry’s hand. At the end of the hall Draco stops, his back very straight, one hand resting on a door handle polished to a shine.

He hesitates there. Harry can see it in the set of his shoulders, the catch in his breath before he speaks.

“There’s… one last video from Astoria.” The words are quiet, uneven, as though they cost him.

May 2016

Eighteen months ago his hand had been on this same door knob, a glass of sherry balanced carefully in his other hand. She’d insisted that if dying meant anything, it meant she could have wine at two in the afternoon. He had lingered there, the smell of lavender sachets bleeding into the sharper tang of blood purifying potions that clung to the corridor. When he pushed inside, the light was filtered thin through the curtains, catching on dust motes that hovered in the stillness.

Astoria was propped on pillows, wearing a loose silk dressing gown, the pale blue one patterned with climbing roses. Her hair had been brushed and fell neat to her shoulders, though a few strands had stuck where her skin was damp at the temple. On the coverlet she had arranged her little kingdom of objects: a slim flash drive laying on top of her macbook, a leather-bound journal open to half a page of slanted notes, and a scattering of things to keep her hands busy. A dog-eared novel she had always meant to read but now pronounced dull. A crossword half-finished. A handkerchief embroidered with a row of violets. The smell of her perfume, mixed rose and citrus, still clung to her skin. She was pale, yes, but her eyes were alive, bright, sharper than his own reflection in the mirror.

He thought, then as now, that she was beautiful. Not in spite of it, but with it: beautiful because she carried the end the way she had carried everything else with precision, wit, and a kind of grace that made his own heart stumble.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Draco said as he pushed the door open, a glass of sherry balanced carefully in his hand. “You’ll ruin your reputation.”

She looked at him, lips twitching. “I’m dying, Draco. If I want sherry at two, I’ll have it.”

He set the glass on the table and lowered himself to the edge of the mattress. “You can have whatever you like.”

“Finally,” she said, smiling faintly, “some sense.”

He reached for her hand. It was light and fragile with bones sharp beneath the skin. He pressed it between both of his, desperate to give it weight. Fiercely, he thought he loved her with every beat of his heart, and that he would never stop, not even when her hand was gone from his.

She lifted the sherry, sipped carefully, then sighed. “Well,” she said. “I made my last renovation joke. But it wasn’t about the house. It was about your life. I’ve made a little video for you, for later. For after. ”

He tried for a scoff but it came brittle. “You’re not funny.”

“I am,” she murmured. “You’ll see.”

“I don’t want to,” he said, softer, voice pulling apart at the seams.

She squeezed his fingers with what strength she had. “You don’t have to want to. Just don’t leave things half-finished.” Her gaze flicked to the flash drive on the bedspread, then back to him. “That’s why I made it.”

He bent quickly, pressing his nose into her hair. Lavender, citrus, the faint tang of fever. He wrapped his arms around her narrow shoulders, desperate to hold her steady against the inevitability pressing in on them.

Her free hand moved, weak but steady, smoothing the back of his head. “Promise me,” she said, her voice even, practical, as though she were reminding him to pay a bill or polish the wainscotting. “When the time is right, you’ll watch it. You’ll know.”

He clung tighter, silent. He could not promise. Not then. Not while her heartbeat still fluttered against his chest. He thought only of how little weight she had left, how shallow her breath had grown, how this might be the last time he could bury his face in her hair. 

She was ready. He never would be. And that, he realized, was the cruelty of it.

2017

Harry doesn’t falter. He steps up beside him, close enough their arms brush. “I can watch it with you,” he says gently. “If you want.”

Draco did want, and says as much, quietly. 

He shows Harry around first, as if to delay the inevitable. He gestures toward the curtains, the new rug, the crisp bedspread with its exact corners, the adjoining bath gleaming with new tile. Harry trails him through it all, impressed despite himself. 

“You’ve outdone yourself,” he says, and means it.

Draco only inclines his head.

They sit side by side on the edge of the bed, the laptop waiting on the bedside table. For a long moment, Draco just stares at the black screen. His hand twitches once on his knee before Harry reaches for it, steady and certain, and doesn't let go.

When the video began, the room filled with Astoria’s voice. She appeared luminous, calm, sitting upright in her pale silk dressing gown, the faintest smile on her lips.

“Well,” she said, dry amusement in her tone, “if you’re watching this, it means I’ve run out of time. And knowing you, Draco, you probably just went downstairs to fetch me a particular bottle of sherry—no, not that one, the other one, you know which. So let’s hope he’s chosen correctly.”

Draco’s breath hitched; Harry’s grip on his hand tightened.

She smiled faintly, eyes bright.

“First things first. Pay the greenhouse ward renewal, Draco. You always forget, and the bloody thing nearly collapsed last year. The roof still needs patching in the east corridor and you’ve been ignoring that draft since spring. And don’t think I don’t know you’ve been putting off sorting the Greengrass accounts. That ledger on my desk? Finish it. For once in your life, finish it.”

Her gaze softened, though her voice stayed firm.

“Second: be kind to yourself, even when you don’t feel like you deserve it. Especially then. You’re very good at carrying guilt until it hardens into armour, but armour weighs you down. You need to learn when to set it aside.”

She paused, and when she looked back at the lens her expression had changed.

“And while I’m at it, let me say this clearly: you are a good man, Draco. A good father. You’ve been steady where others would have faltered. You’ve carried more responsibility than most people could bear, and you’ve done it with grace, even when you convinced yourself you hadn’t. I loved watching you with our son. You’re patient, ridiculous, firm when you had to be. He will always know he was loved, because of you. I’ll be a fond memory, but you will be the reality of his life.”

Her mouth quirked, amusement sparking even here. “And since no one else will say it in quite these words, I adored being married to you. You gave oral like no one else ever could. I wonder if I’ve already had it for the last time… or if I can wheedle one more before I go.” Her laugh was soft, threaded with mischief. “If I can’t, then so be it. It was a hell of a run.”

Draco makes a sound and bends forward, elbow braced hard to his knee. He drags his free hand over his face, brittle composure collapsing at last. Harry feels the grip on his fingers tighten until it hurts, and he lets it, anchoring him.

“You see?” Astoria was saying, luminous, calm, her voice drifting through the room as though she hadn’t just gutted him. “Even now, I can make you blush.”

Draco gives a strangled laugh, hoarse and unwilling. Harry reaches across with his other hand, smoothing it over Draco’s back, steadying him against the shudder in his chest.

“Don’t leave your life half-finished. Don’t retreat into silence. Keep moving forward, even if it feels impossible. Especially then. And for Merlin’s sake, don’t waste all your years rattling around this house alone. You’re not built for solitude, no matter how convincingly you pretend.”

She exhaled, gaze steady.

“I don’t want you moping in libraries or hiding in the garden. I want you living. Hosting dinners, drinking too much wine, laughing at bad jokes, arguing with someone who will argue back. That’s the life I want for you. And if you doubt me, remember: I was never wrong about you.”

And finally, the flicker of that wicked smile again.

“And one last thing. I wonder if Harry is sitting there with you. If he is—hello, Harry. I mean this kindly, but also firmly: if you ever hurt him, I will find a way to haunt you. Don’t test me.”

The smile widened just enough to flash. “Consider yourself warned.”

“The point is, Draco,” she finished. “I have loved you beyond all reason, and I am a better woman because I have known you. You have made my life what it was, and I loved my life. There is no one, in no other universe, that I would have rather lived it with. I would choose dying now, at thirty-five, with the life we’ve had together, than any other option, because I couldn’t choose the life we just had together.”

She sighed. Took a deep breath. “Anyway, I think I hear you on the stairs. I love you, Draco. Take care of yourself, and Scorpius–”

Astoria broke a little there, and Draco broke with her. 

“--I can’t talk about Scorpius. I thought I’d be able to, but it’s just– it’s too much. I’m sorry, I wish I could,” she sniffed. “Take care of eachother. I love you, always.”

The screen goes dark, and Draco closes his eyes, falling limp against Harry’s shoulder, For a heartbeat he just sits there, stiff-backed, palms pressed to his knees. Then it breaks out of him all at once with a sound torn from somewhere deep, jagged and raw.

Harry startles, not at the crying itself but at the violence of it. He’s seen Draco hold himself together through worse, seen him wear composure like armour until it cut into him. This isn’t that. This is Draco breaking open, sobbing in great, ragged gasps that shake through his whole body.

Harry moves without thinking, sliding closer, arm braced across his back. His hand runs steady over tense shoulders, down to the sharp line of Draco’s spine. He murmurs nothing at first, just offers the weight of his body, the solidness of being there.

Draco clutches at him suddenly, fists curling into his shirt, and folds against his chest. His face presses into Harry like he can’t stop himself, sobs muffled in fabric. Harry holds on, firm, chin lowering to Draco’s hair. He breathes him and calms at Harry’s unique scent that’s something human and unbearably alive.

“Fuck,” Draco chokes out between sobs. “I can’t—she—Merlin—” The words collapse under the weight of it, spilling into Harry’s shirt as nothing but sound.

Harry lets him. He doesn’t try to answer, doesn’t reach for sense where there isn’t any. He just holds, anchoring him, rubbing slow circles into his back. He thinks about how rare it is to be trusted with someone at their most unguarded. How devastating it feels, and how much he wants to be steady enough to support him.

The sobs finally hitch, stumble. Draco stills all at once, as if realizing what he’s done, who he’s pressed himself against. Harry feels the rigid set of his body, the shame bristling under his skin.

“Shit,” Draco whispers, starting to pull away.

Harry tightens his grip, not letting him. “Hey. It’s alright.” His voice stays low, even, more certain than he feels. “You think I didn’t know you could cry?”

Draco huffs, broken, the sound caught somewhere between a laugh and another sob.

Harry tips his head down, thumb brushing along Draco’s temple. “Stay,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”

And slowly, trembling, Draco does.

After a long moment Draco mutters, voice muffled against Harry’s chest, “Merlin. What a picture. Sobbing on a new boyfriend about the wife I’ll never stop loving.” His laugh breaks sharp in his throat, edged with shame.

Harry stills him with a hand sliding up the back of his neck. “Good,” he says simply. “Don’t stop.”

Draco lifts his head a fraction, eyes wet, brow furrowed. “Good?”

Harry meets his gaze, steady. “It means you know how to love like that. Why would I ever want you to lose it?”

Draco swallows hard, searching his face, like he’s waiting for Harry to flinch. But Harry doesn’t. He only squeezes the back of Draco’s neck, firm, grounding, as if to say: Astoria can stay. There’s room.

Draco swallows hard, eyes darting over Harry’s face, searching for some crack in the calm. He looks wrecked with wet lashes, colour high in his cheeks, shoulders stiff like he’s bracing for rejection.

Harry doesn’t move, doesn’t press. He only keeps his hand at the back of Draco’s neck, thumb brushing slow against his skin, steady as stone.

Something in Draco caves. He leans in, sudden but not rough, mouth catching Harry’s like it’s the only way to silence the storm inside him. His breath hitches against Harry’s lips, salt still on his tongue.

Harry stays still, patient, letting Draco set the pace. His only movement is the slight tilt of his head, the answering press of his mouth: a quiet yes, nothing more.

Draco pulls back an inch, eyes blazing, uncertain. Harry holds his gaze, steady. No flinch, no doubt.

So Draco kisses him again, harder this time, like a man testing whether he’s allowed.

Harry lets him.

It’s probably not good grieving practice to crave being inside someone else minutes after watching the last video from your dead wife. Draco knows that. He knows it’s warped, indecent, the kind of thing that should make him recoil.

But it’s him. And it’s Harry. And suddenly all he can think about is shutting out the echo of her voice with something immediate, something hot and living.

He kisses Harry again, harder, teeth catching, hands fisting in his shirt like he can’t bear the space between them.

Harry lets him push, lets him take, patient even now. He doesn’t fight for control, doesn’t demand more than Draco is ready to give. He stays steady, solid, a body and a presence that Draco can climb into if he needs to.

Draco breaks the kiss only to drag in a breath, raw. “I can’t stop wanting—” His voice cracks, bitter laugh spilling after. “Merlin, I should. Wanting you, loving her.”

Harry doesn’t answer, just holds his gaze, steady.

Draco huffs, the sound jagged. “You know, I’ve been told I give good head. You have it on authority from the first wife.”

Harry blinks, startled, then lets out a laugh he can’t quite stop. “Oh? You’re looking to have second wife?”

Draco arches a brow, clinging to the edge of humor because it’s safer than the ache in his chest.. “No. I’m looking to give head.”

The laughter between them catches, sharp and frayed, before it drops into something heavier. Harry exhales, his mouth curving but his eyes dark. “Then don’t let me stop you.”

For the first time since the video ended, Draco actually laughs — wrecked, unsteady, but real. It tips him forward again, kissing Harry like the laugh itself might devour him, like he has to burn it off before he collapses completely.

The kiss turns rough, Draco’s hands pulling at Harry’s shirt, dragging him closer, closer still. His laugh breaks into a sound more like a groan as he mouths along Harry’s jaw, down his throat, desperate for something hot and immediate to silence the echo still ringing in his chest.

Harry lets him, steady as before, his hands gentle where Draco’s are frantic. He doesn’t pull, doesn’t press, only anchors, giving Draco space to take what he needs.

When Draco drops to his knees at the edge of the bed, there’s no hesitation. His hands fumble at Harry’s waistband, sharp breath catching like he’s about to laugh again, except it breaks on a sob instead.

Harry reaches down, brushes his knuckles against Draco’s damp temple. “Hey,” he murmurs, steady as ever, holding on to the last edge of control. “You don’t have to.”

Draco looks up, eyes wet, mouth twisted. “I do,” he says, voice hoarse. “Let me.” 

Clothes are shed in uneven layers, not torn away but eased off between kisses, the kind of fumbling that feels like permission rather than frenzy. The bed is still stiff with new linens, the room too bright, but none of it matters when Draco lowers Harry back against the coverlet and follows him down, their bodies aligning with a tenderness that surprises them both.

For the first time that night it isn’t about silencing ghosts. It’s about touching, about learning the shape of each other with patience and reverence. Harry’s hands are everywhere. They are steady on Draco’s back, sliding through his hair, and Draco gives himself over to it, to him, to the simple fact of being wanted and met with gentleness.

They move together like men who have both gone too long without this kind of closeness, without being touched with care. Every kiss is lingering, every breath shared, every thrust slow, grounding, deliberate. Not to erase what came before, but to honor it. To carry it forward.

And when release finally takes them, it feels less like breaking and more like being remade.

The fire has burned low, leaving only a muted glow that paints the room in shades of ember and ash. They lay half-turned toward each other, the sheets twisted and warm, breath still uneven but softening into the rhythm of night. Neither reach for a wand to restore the light. The dark feels protective, like a promise not to press too far.

The sheets ate too hot, too tangled, and neither of them bother to fix them. Harry shifts, elbow bumping Draco’s ribs.

“Scorpius will be back in a few days and we won’t be able to be so loud,” Harry says into the dark. “And Albus and James too.”

Draco groans softly. “And Lily.”

Harry smiles into the pillow. “You’ll survive.”

Draco turns his head. “You realize, if we tell them, Scorpius and Albus will immediately start campaigning to move in together.”

Harry laughs, quiet and warm. “They’ll probably draw up a schedule.”

“Colour-coded,” Draco mutters. “Coordinated stationery.”

“They’ll wear us down.”

“Absolutely not,” Draco says firmly, though his voice softens almost at once. “I’ve only just gotten used to one child leaving socks under my furniture. I refuse to quadruple the number.”

Harry chuckles. “So we’re agreed, then. Too many socks. Can’t have that.”

Draco lets the silence stretch, then adds, “But we’ll have to tell them. Eventually.”

Harry nodds against the pillow. “Yeah. Eventually.”

Draco exhales. “Scorpius will feign horror and then immediately start drafting blueprints for shared quarters. Albus will bring a clipboard.”

Harry grins. “And a quill behind his ear.”

Draco scowls into the dark. “They’ll call it a ‘domestic alliance.’ I can see it already.”

Harry laughs harder, shoulders shaking. “And James will say absolutely not, but be glad to not share a bedroom with Albie, and Lily will be elated to have full use of the pool.”

“Merlin save me,” Draco mutters. “I’ll be living in a boarding house before I know it.”

Harry nudges his foot under the covers. “Could be worse.”

“It is worse,” Draco says, but his voice falters, just enough. He presses a hand over his eyes. “You’re insufferable. And what’s worse—” He stops, groans into his palm. “I think I’m actually falling in love with you, which is—frankly—unacceptable.”

Harry goes still for a moment, then smiles into the pillow. “That does sound inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient?” Draco drops his hand, glaring at him in the dark. “It’s catastrophic. You laugh too much, you put too much sugar in your tea, and you will make my son think pyjamas are appropriate dinner attire.”

Harry can’t help grinning, wide and stupid. “And yet…”

Draco sighs, long and dramatic, turning onto his back like a man defeated. “And yet.”

Harry shifts onto his elbow, watching him through the dark. “You know,” he says slowly, “if you think you’ve cornered the market on catastrophic feelings, you’re wrong.”

Draco turns his head, suspicious. “Oh?”

Harry scratches absently at his jaw. “Yeah. Because I’m already in love with you.”

The room goes very still.

Draco stares. “That’s—that’s completely irresponsible.”

Harry laughs softly. “Probably.”

“Utterly reckless. No consideration for the consequences.”

“Consequences?”

“Yes!” Draco pushes himself up on one elbow, glaring in earnest now. “You can’t just say something like that when our sons are almost certainly going to be plotting a coup to get adjoining rooms and joint meals and Merlin knows what else. It encourages them.”

Harry’s grin is unrepentant, wide even in the half-light. “Then let them be encouraged.”

Draco groans, dragging a hand over his face. “You’re impossible.”

“And you like me anyway. Love me?”

“Unfortunately.” Draco flops back onto the pillow, arm thrown over his eyes. “Unfortunately, I do.”

Harry eases down beside him again, close enough their shoulders brush. “Good. Makes two of us.”

For a moment they lie in silence, breaths evening out, the weight of the words settling between them. From downstairs, the old clock in the hall begins to chime midnight, slow and deliberate, each note carrying up through the quiet.

Draco lowers his arm, turning his head. Harry’s watching him, his expression softer than Draco can stand.

“Don’t,” Draco murmurs.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t look at me like that. Like it’s simple.”

Harry smiles faintly. “It is, though.”

Draco exhales, long and shaky, but he doesn’t argue. He shifts closer instead, letting his forehead rest against Harry’s temple. The clock finishes its toll, and the house falls quiet again, save for the small sounds of their breathing, steadying in tandem.

Draco shifts again, enough that his nose brushes Harry’s hair. It smells faintly of wood smoke, of soap, of something warm. He thinks about moving away, about reasserting the space between them, but doesn’t.

Harry’s hand finds his under the sheets, casually and heavy with sleepiness. Draco doesn’t pull back. Their fingers stay linked, loose and unthinking.

The fire cracks, the last ember giving way. The house settles into its nighttime quiet.

Draco closes his eyes, and Harry does too, neither of them saying goodnight, as if the word might break whatever has just begun.

Sleep takes them like that: side by side, tangled, still unsure, but closer than either thought they’d ever allow.