Work Text:
Draco would like to say that when Potter barged into his office at nine-thirty in the morning, locked the door, and demanded, “Are you in love with me?”, he sneered back and said something quite clever and cutting along the lines of please, Potter, I know we’re not trying to kill each other anymore but I have the good sense and, more importantly, standards not to throw myself at you or maybe at least I see your ego hasn’t gotten any more tolerable since school.
What he said in reality, though, was, “What? I—what?” He tried again. “Have you gone completely mental?”
Potter, inexplicably enough, beamed at him. It was a nice beam: a little lopsided but in a charming, boyish sort of way. Briefly and hysterically, Draco wondered if he was spending too many hours at the office after all and beginning to hallucinate. “I knew it,” said Potter before Draco could test this hypothesis by passing out or perhaps throwing a desk at him. “God, I could kiss you.” Draco made a small, choked sound, and a still frighteningly euphoric Potter added, “No, wait, I couldn’t!”
“Have you gone completely mental?” Draco repeated. “Have you gotten yourself concussed again? I’m not Granger. I won’t play handler and escort you to St Mungo’s every time you take another hit to the head.”
“Not concussed,” said Potter. “Er, and Hermione couldn’t escort me to St Mungo’s right now anyway. No one could except you, really, but a fat lot of good that would do when the Healers couldn’t help.” He paused. “Aren’t handlers a Muggle thing? Why do you know—”
“Right.” Draco’s hand inched toward his wand: Potter’s madness didn’t seem like a particularly violent strain, but these things were always unpredictable. “I’ll ask you one more time and then I’m stunning you. Have you gone—”
“Not mental, either, I promise.” Potter took a seat on the opposite side of Draco’s desk and distractedly ran a hand through his already ruffled hair. Honestly, if Draco were the saviour of the Wizarding World and also Fleamont Potter’s sodding grandson, he would’ve at least gotten a decent hair potion out of it. “There’s been an incident.”
“Do you fill out your reports like this?” Draco asked. “It’s no wonder you’re the Ministry’s favourite child with that much attention to detail; I can’t believe you haven’t made Head Auror yet.”
“Ha ha,” said Potter flatly. At least this was beginning to feel familiar. “Someone, er—well, I’m sure you’ll be hearing it soon since it’s Potions and all, but—there was a botched love potion someone sent to me.”
So in other words it was a regular Monday morning, Draco didn’t say, because then they’d get into an argument and, loathe as he was to admit it, making sure Potter hadn’t finally gone round the twist was a high priority around here. “And…” he said instead, beckoning for him to continue, and Potter coughed.
“The envelope sort of exploded when I opened it—”
“You just open whatever anyone sends you?” Draco interrupted, and, okay, he’d tried his hardest to avoid an argument, but it was impossible when Potter was patently insane. “Do you not—did you forget the entire thing where the one-one hundredth of the world that’s not mad about you wants your head? Did you forget you are an Auror and all you do is run in with powerful evil wizards who want to torture and kill you—”
“And sometimes a creature,” said Potter, looking wistful. “I wish we got more of the creatures; they’re mostly quite nice.”
“Forget the evil wizards; I am going to kill you,” Draco said, “and then myself, and then neither of us will have to worry about any of this ever again. Doesn’t that sound lovely? It sounds lovely to me.”
Potter (and Draco wasn’t sure whether to be peeved or reluctantly pleased about this) looked like he was trying very hard to stifle a laugh. “Sorry. The envelope exploded when I opened it, so there was no chance of avoiding it, which would’ve been fine because we had an antidote in store, except the effect wasn’t that I’d fall in love with whoever sent it to me. It was that, er.” He began to look a little nervous. “You have to understand I’m only hypothesising.”
“Yes, as I understand it, it’s a bit difficult to do a full investigative inquiry in half an hour,” Draco drawled. “Still, I’m sure an Auror as capable as yourself came up with a solid enough theory; try sharing it.”
A crimson flush was beginning to spread across Potter’s face. Draco would’ve taken the time to be annoyed about how much embarrassment suited him if Potter hadn’t said, “Everyone who looks at me is—they love me.”
Draco blinked: opened his mouth and shut it again. “Have you gone—”
“I swear, Malfoy, if you finish that sentence with ‘mental’ I’m going to shove my wand up your nose.”
“Well, with charm like that,” Draco said, “how could anyone not love you?” Potter just scowled at him like some sort of cave troll, and Draco rolled his eyes. “Listen,” he said, very slowly, “charmless as you may be, everyone’s always loved you. Since literally before you could walk. I don’t know if I have to explain the concept of fame to you at your age, but it’s when—”
“Not like this,” Potter interrupted bitterly. Draco, who all too clearly remembered the throngs of screaming girls in the Quidditch stands and crowded around the Gryffindor table and generally plotting to steal Potter’s golden heart and golden loins even through his own mess of a sixth year, very much wanted to argue otherwise. “Look, if I prove it to you, will you help me?”
Over Draco’s eight years of being Reformed and Good-Hearted and Almost-Noble-ish and also his three years of being the official Aurors’ Potion Consultant, he’d learned that the only thing worse than being on the wrong end of whatever mess Potter had gotten himself into was being on the right end. This was to say that if he knew what was good for him he’d say no, absolutely not, and have fun pretending your million obvious admirers are doing something new and different this time just because you’ve finally noticed them.
What he said instead was, “I suppose.”
Potter stood up, took a deep breath, and opened the door. Instantly, Draco heard someone scream, “Make sweet love to me, you beautiful specimen of a man!”
“Harry,” said another beseeching voice, and wait, Draco knew that voice; it was Granger, “be rational. Surely you realise as well as I do by now that we were meant to be together.” Before Draco could even begin to process that, someone conjured what looked like a quiver of roses and shot them toward the two of them, and Potter slammed the door shut. Draco heard them thud dully against the wood one after the other.
“You should probably tell Weasel his wife’s madly in love with you,” he suggested. “Gryffindor chivalry and everything. Though trying to woo her husband’s best friend is rather Slytherin of her; I’m impressed.”
“Don’t call Ron that,” said Potter automatically, and then, darkly, “and I would if he hadn’t written me a sonnet this morning.”
Draco leaned forward, fascinated. “He doesn’t even work here—how’d he do that so fast?” he asked, then: “Wait, no, answer this first. Was it any good?” He paused, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “I always thought he might have a talent for something artsy, you know. He seems like the type. I would’ve told him, but my undying hatred of your ilk took precedence; I’m sure you understand.”
“Dunno, I chucked it in the bin. He’d have hated if I looked at it, er, if he were himself,” Potter answered because he had no sense of humour and could probably barely read. “And he drops in some mornings to get Hermione breakfast; it’s really sweet—look, can we focus?”
Right. The latest Potter problem, which was now the illustrious Draco Malfoy’s job to solve because he’d decided being cowardly and miserable and quite racist was a bit tiring after the war, was that… everyone was in love with him. He’d always had a rather bizarre knack for turning beautiful concepts into nightmares. It drove Draco insane back in school: he was obscenely rich and famous and beloved and handsome to boot and he always seemed so bloody tortured about it. These days it just felt like cosmic justice for having so much, or—on Draco’s more moral, thoughtful days, now that he and Potter had a relationship that was not at all a Friendship but not-not that, and now that he saw how Potter resembled a caged animal on his bad days more than a beautiful fake-tortured git, and also the no parents two friends raised-in-a-cupboard thing—rather sad.
But today was not a moral or thoughtful day, and therefore Draco did not feel inclined to be soft or kind to the man who had quite possibly trapped them both in his office for God knew how long, so he said, “Sometimes I wish you had a brain.”
Potter recoiled. “It’s not my fault.”
“Well, if you didn’t open whatever envelopes happened to fall across your desk,” Draco pointed out reasonably, but he pinched his forehead and reminded himself that he was on a case and he would not be dragged into a distracting argument with a madman. “That’s not what I meant. You said it’s probably when people see you, right? If only there were, oh, I don’t know, a cloak you had that made you less visible, somehow.”
“Oh,” said Potter, and then, much more brightly: “Oh! Brilliant. I’ll just—” And before he finished talking, he’d stolen the broom Draco kept for display on his wall and broken out the window.
Draco stared at the shattered glass and the rain, which had of course started pouring just in time to make its way onto his carpet, and sighed. At least he hadn’t ended up with one of the dull Ministry jobs.
…
Potter returned to Draco’s office under an hour later just as visible and significantly more morose. “Doesn’t work if people can hear me, either,” he reported, setting Draco’s broom on his desk. He was rain-soaked and his shirt was practically translucent, which Draco resolutely did not think about, but his hair now stuck to his head like a drenched cat’s, which Draco found much more fun to focus on. “I asked Robards what my caseload was for the week and he said the only item on the list was to take him out.”
“Maybe he meant for you to kill him.”
“You talk about murder a lot,” said Potter, stripping off his shirt and beginning to wring it out, and not even his drowned-cat hair could cheer Draco up now. “Anyway, he promised to let me ravish him, so I doubt it.”
“Did you want to ravish him?” asked Draco, and his voice came out a bit rougher than he meant it, and when Potter looked at him it was with a mix of bewilderment, fear, and—he wasn’t sure what the third thing was, but he didn’t want to find out. He cleared his throat. “Urgh. Dreadful cold coming on. Perhaps because someone shattered my window and let all the rain in; who’s to say? But if you did want to ravish him…”
“He’s sixty-four.”
“Older men have a certain appeal.”
“Does Robards appeal to you?”
Draco wished Potter weren’t shirtless and dripping so he could clap his shoulder and stare at him seriously. Instead, he folded his hands in his lap and said, “It’s not about me, Potter; it’s about you and your irresistible sexual wiles.”
“I think they’re emotional, too,” Potter muttered, and he was still wringing the damn shirt out like a Muggle instead of just casting a Hot Air charm but if Draco did it he’d make it completely obvious that he couldn’t handle being near Potter’s bare torso without turning into an animal and then Potter would assume he was in deep, potion-induced love with him instead of just a bit pent-up. “The—er, wiles, I mean. And besides, I couldn’t—not while this has any effect; it’s not exactly giving them a choice, is it?”
“Hm,” Draco said. “So if Robards weren’t affected by a reverse love potion, you’d give it a go.”
Potter looked at him so incredulously Draco forgot about the no-shirt issue entirely. Then he laughed, quiet and low, and Draco swallowed. “Sure, Malfoy. Got it in one. It’s killing me that I can’t ravish Robards right now.”
“Ah, my emotional deductive skills are unrivalled once again,” Draco said cheerfully, tilting his head back so he looked satisfied and smug and not at all so he could manage to stop ogling Potter’s stupid collarbones. “I should’ve been an Auror or one of those Muggle mind Healers; my talents are wasted here.”
“A psychologist,” said Potter.
“Don’t trick me with your made-up words,” replied Draco. Potter cracked a grin, small and still charmingly crooked. Draco quickly remembered that they had to come up with a plan or he’d be stuck in here with a gorgeous shirtless insane person he couldn’t have sex with forever, and that was a terrible prospect even before he factored in the fact that Potter tended to go a bit stir-crazy when he was bored. “Right. No workarounds, then; I’ll just have to come up with a cure. I don’t suppose you have a sample of the potion?”
“Should still be on my desk,” Potter said, and he wrapped the Cloak around his shoulders, which helped Draco’s urge to climb him like a tree and had the bonus of making him look a bit silly. “Is there anything you wear? Like a cologne that might be making you immune?”
“Just mint deodorant and coconut oil,” said Draco doubtfully, and at Potter’s disbelieving look, he added, “Those of us who were raised with some class were always told that less is more, Potter.” And he hated the expensive colognes his family friends always gifted him for his birthdays, doubly so after half of them got sentenced to life in Azkaban and the scents all got ruined for him regardless. As he tried desperately to focus on Not All That, a thought struck him. “Why were you so sure I’d be immune?”
Potter shrugged, his eyes darting to the ceiling and his mouth twisting into an unhappy shape. He had the worst ability to keep a poker face in the world, Draco thought smugly. He was probably terrible at undercover operations. “You’ve always, er,” he said, and then he did something that might’ve been a shrug, half his bare shoulder peeking out of the Cloak. “Sort of… really hated me. And I know you don’t hate me now—I think—but if anyone would still not love me at a time like this…”
Draco thought back to his snotty eleven-year-old self, who’d gotten so angry he cried when Potter refused to shake his hand, and then to the way his friends back in school had talked about his Potter thing until sixth year—like they’d all read a ‘How to Be an Ally’ pamphlet and were trying to help him come to terms with his burgeoning homosexuality, which didn’t end up being entirely off the mark, especially where Potter was involved.
Of course, that was all in the past and Draco was a very well-adjusted adult who had mostly annoyed and not at all warm-and-fuzzy-and-uncomfortable feelings about the man in front of him, but he suspected that his immunity to the potion was because of precisely the opposite reasoning as Potter’s hypothesis: he’d been in love with him already, and now he was better. Potter vaccine taken. Cured for life.
Wait.
“The Weaslette,” he blurted.
“Don’t call Ginny that,” said Potter automatically, and then he tilted his head. With the drying, wild hair and the spectacles making his huge eyes look even huger, he sort of resembled a stray puppy. Draco was going to hit himself over the head and hope he died if he had one more thought like this. “Wait, what about Ginny?”
“So, well,” said Draco, who now had to share his brilliant idea without revealing that he’d spent most of his school years in embarrassing gay love with him. “It’s about extremes, maybe? So while I really, really, bottom-of-my-heart hated you—and I mean really hated you—”
“I understand you aren’t fond of me,” said Potter, beginning to look a little put-out, his mouth still in that unhappy shape. “Let’s move on now.”
“If you use your finely honed Auror skills for one second, Potter, you’ll observe that I utilised past tense,” Draco said, and Potter brightened. Before his ego could swell to the size of the moon, Draco hastily continued, “Regardless, the Weaslette—fine, Ginny—loved you. A lot, if I remember. Poem-writing love.” He paused. “D’you think it might run in the family?”
“Malfoy.”
“A family of poets,” said Draco dreamily, “awakened by their united love for—what was it she said? Eyes as green as a fresh pickled toad. Oh, it would be so beautiful it’d almost make up for the hair.”
“Malfoy,” Potter said again, though his mouth was twitching into a smile.
Draco waved him off. “Yes, fine. It would be best if we found someone out there who really hated you, but I think for most of them it was an ideological thing, not personal, so it doesn’t count. Harry Potter the concept didn’t douse himself with a love potion this morning; Harry Potter the person did. You should make more enemies.”
“I’ll do my best,” Potter said solemnly, though the way he was swaying eagerly on his feet at the prospect of doing something ruined the effect a little. “For now, though—I’ll grab the potion and you grab Ginny?”
“Your thing sounds much less time-consuming than my thing,” complained Draco, but at Potter’s pleading gaze, he sighed. “I’ll have her back here in a few hours.”
“Thank you.” Potter paused before he unlocked the door, wrapping the Cloak firmly around himself so all that was visible were a pair of green eyes. “And, er, Malfoy. It’s… you’re good to work with.”
Before Draco could say they’d been working together for years now and for an Auror he was awfully slow, Potter pulled the Cloak down so it covered his eyes and left the room. Draco, to his horror, felt himself blushing.
Instead of dwelling on it, he grabbed his broom off his desk and launched himself out the window, shattering it for the second time today.
…
Despite all the fuss Draco put up about the Weaslette—she was a ginger and a Gryffindor, after all—he quite liked Ginny. Unlike the rest of the Weasleys, she had an impressive mean streak that didn’t cause her to do insane things like shoving teenagers into Vanishing Cabinets, and she was funny and smart and a Quidditch champion besides. Not to mention ever since she and Potter broke up just two years out from the war, she’d been one of the only people in the world who wasn’t afraid to make fun of him, and Draco could always appreciate that in a woman.
What this meant was that his showing up at the Harpies practice pitch on a Monday morning wasn’t rare enough of an occurrence to raise any eyebrows, which was good because he didn’t particularly want to get his teeth kicked in by the security out front and not so good because once Ginny figured out this wasn’t a social visit but rather about figuring out if she, too, was immune to Pottermania this time around, she’d maybe hex him.
“Ginevra,” he proclaimed, spreading his arms wide and looking up at the hoops, where Ginny was currently doing some very flashy scoring. “Light of my life. Juliet to my Romeo. Spare moment to talk to a fan?”
“Stop implying I’d kill myself for you, Draco,” Ginny yelled back like she always did. Still, she landed a moment later, hopping off her broom and untying her hair so it fell in artfully windswept waves down her back. Potter always did have unfairly good luck with women, Draco thought. Ginny, Cho Chang, Parvati Patil that one time, the cute second-floor receptionist who’d ended up being a Potter groupie with a cunning plan… if Draco didn’t know better, he’d have suggested the existence of a reverse love potion long ago, but alas, these things could apparently be chalked up to fame, money, and good looks.
Except two of three—three of three in particular circles—were traits which Draco possessed, mind, and yet the only beautiful woman who’d ever gone to great lengths for his love was Pansy and she’d later confessed that was mostly because her mother wanted her to marry up.
God, the world was a miserable place.
“I have a favour to ask you,” he said aloud. “Or, well. I suppose Potter and I have a favour to ask you.”
“Does he want my broom again?” Ginny asked, then, eyeing him suspiciously: “Or do you want my broom again and you’re just tricking me by using Harry’s name? Either way, the answer is no.”
“No broom,” said Draco, holding up his own. “The idiot’s gotten himself doused in love potion.”
“No.”
“Except it makes everyone who looks at him or hears him or—interacts with him, generally, I’m assuming—fall in love with him—”
“Absolutely not, Draco, I’m serious—”
“And Granger’s gone mad and your brother’s writing sonnets and Robards offered to let Potter ravish him and I’m the only sane person left in the Ministry, Ginny, please,” said Draco, clasping her hands. “If you start—if you even look at him the wrong way, I’ll fly you back out here before he can blink, but you might be one of the only people who’s immune, and you know how cagey he gets; he needs a friend.”
She rolled her shoulder back, frowning. “How come you’re immune?”
“Oh, you know,” he said vaguely. “Extremes. Nobody’s hated him as much as I have. Except maybe Professor Snape and the Dark—and Voldemort, but obviously neither of them is an option.”
“Doesn’t seem right,” she murmured, her brows furrowed, and Draco threw an arm around her to distract her.
“Who’s the Potions expert here?” he asked. “These things don’t always make sense to laymen. Don’t worry too much about it. Are you in or do I have to kidnap you?”
Ginny reached up to cuff him over the head. “Don’t talk about kidnapping me in front of my security; you can hardly help the poor dolt from a holding cell,” she chastised. She clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Fine, but if it doesn’t work you have to get me out of there before I say anything embarrassing. Did Ron really write a sonnet?”
“Would I ever lie?” he asked. She threw him an unimpressed look. “Okay, fair, but Potter told me and I sincerely doubt he’d lie about it. Refused to read it, though. He’s got a terribly Gryffindorish sense of honour, that one; it’ll ruin him.”
“That one’s not a Gryffindor thing. It’s all him,” said Ginny glumly, though Draco wasn’t sure whether it was out of sympathy for poor Potter, who couldn’t seem to understand the joy of gleefully humiliating a close friend, or because she was forced to clamber onto his broom, which was well under professional standards but also the only one out of the two of theirs capable of getting through Ministry wards. “Let’s go, then. No time to waste.”
“If I didn’t suffer from a terrible allergy to redheads, I’d ask for your hand in marriage,” said Draco very seriously just to make Ginny laugh, and then they were off.
By the time they landed back in Draco’s office, he was beginning to feel hopeful: he was sure he hadn’t misread his immunity; he knew Granger enjoyed a good mint gum and he wasn’t the only second-floor employee to have coconut-scented anything, so the only unique thing about him was, well, the whole used-to-be-in-love-with-Potter thing, and Ginny had probably been way more in love with Potter than he ever was on account of actually getting to date him for a good few years. (Though he’d always assumed that Potter, Weasley, and Granger were off having noble threesomes and otherwise exploring polyamory the year everything had been wrong, so this was a correction he wasn’t sure how to take.)
This hope evaporated as soon as he saw Potter standing there with his shirt thankfully on his body now but still a size too small and looking painfully optimistic, half a smile gracing his face and his eyes sort of—gorgeous and sparkly and very green—and heard Ginny whisper: “Oh.”
“Experiment failed,” Draco reported, covering her mouth before she could begin talking about fresh pickled toads. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”
“I think I know why you’re immune,” Ginny announced as they landed back on the pitch, which was lucky because Draco had frankly no idea where to go from here and was, for the third time today, considering banging his head on something very solid and passing out until it was all over.
“Do share.”
“You’re still in love with him,” said Ginny, and he made a horribly undignified spluttering noise that caused him to begin coughing madly. She thumped his back until he started breathing again. “Come on; it can’t be that much of a surprise.”
“I wasn’t even—I said extremes,” babbled Draco, stumbling back to the stands and collapsing onto them, “not just extreme love; in fact, I think I clarified that it was extreme hatred, and anyway only one of us wrote horrid poetry about his beautiful eyes so there.”
“When I was eleven.” Ginny took a seat next to him. “I haven’t thought about his beautiful eyes in six years. And the whole school knew you had a ridiculous crush on him; you were just weird about it because you were a maladjusted little git.”
Draco scowled at the goalposts. The sky was clear and sunny like it had been ever since Potter’s return, which meant even the weather was part of a conspiracy to make him look as good as possible. “Maybe back then,” he said aloud, because fine, yes, everyone except a conveniently and frustratingly stupid Potter probably had known and there was no point pretending otherwise. “Not now, though, he’s—and I’m—we’re adults.” Even as he said it, he knew how stupid he sounded, so he added, “Don’t say anything.”
“It’s all right to be in love with him,” said Ginny, because for all her good traits she was still a Gryffindor and therefore still terminally incapable of following directions. “He’s lovable. I would know.”
“Not in love with him,” Draco said. The rest wasn’t worth responding to: obviously, Potter was lovable. Even without the fame and money and good looks, he was surprisingly sharp and earnest and his bird’s-nest hair was even endearing in a poor lost soul kind of way. The only reason the whole world wasn’t in love with him—well, usually—was because they were scared of him, but Draco had literally gotten sliced open by him in sixth year and turned out fine, so his suicidal Auror tendencies and weird intense stare and general ex-war weapon aura sort of paled in comparison.
“Draco.”
“Even if I were,” continued Draco, “it’s—that’s hardly going to help me find a cure, is it? It just blocks off a few variables I wasn’t going to test regardless. So. Thanks, you’ve been completely unhelpful and I hope you lose your next game.” He paused. “No, I don’t. But I have to go or Potter will start moping and my office will be burnt to a crisp by the time I get there, so if you’ll excuse me.”
“You should tell him,” called Ginny as he took off. “I think he’d…” But the rest of her sentence was drowned out by the wind, and Draco didn’t want to hear it, anyway.
…
The problem with Gryffindors—one of the many problems with Gryffindors—was that like Hufflepuffs, they were idiots who had stupid ideas. Unlike Hufflepuffs, though, they were confident enough about all the nonsense they said that it had a way of worming into even an unusually intelligent, perfectly sound-of-mind Slytherin’s head, haunting him while he tried to come up with a cure for Harry Potter’s latest wild adventure.
“D’you need me to gather ingredients?” Potter asked as they entered the lab. He had to speak in a low murmur even when wearing the Invisibility Cloak so fellow Ministry employees wouldn’t break into a mad rampage at the sound of his voice, but what that meant was that he had to practically stick himself against Draco, his breath coming warm even through the cloak and tickling Draco’s cheek.
“When I know what ingredients we need, I’ll ask you,” Draco said, locking the door and then casting two extra charms on it for good measure. “If they’re insanely rare and you have to slay a dragon or something to get to them, but we should be fine.”
Potter shrugged off the Cloak, tapping his shoe against the floor restlessly. “Maybe I can help brew, then,” he suggested, and he frowned when Draco laughed.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” said Draco. “You can be the most talented at everything else in the world, but the only time you made a decent Potion was when you were stealing Professor Snape’s notes. Lab assistant, you are not. Now go sit in the corner while I show off my genius.”
“I got an E on my Potions OWL.”
“What about your NEWT?”
Potter looked shifty. “Er, I never exactly took it, but—”
“In the corner,” said Draco again, pointing, but Potter (the sodding Gryffindor couldn’t even take orders in Draco’s lab) didn’t move.
“Just let me watch,” he begged. “Please, Malfoy, I’m bored.”
“What do you do on paperwork days?” asked Draco, who was quickly becoming fascinated with the depths of Potter’s insanity in a watching-a-broom-explosion kind of way. “Do you just waste away and die if you don’t get to go on some grand escapade for three hours? How’d Granger put up with you for so long?”
“She likes the paperwork,” mumbled Potter, “and I don’t do a lot of it here, anyway. Robards said my handwriting is disgusting and I keep, um, doing things that are mildly illegal, so it’s not worth sorting it all out.”
Draco gaped. “You are so lucky you saved the world that one time,” he said as he extracted the envelope from its sealing, dipping it into various solutions and marking down what ingredients it tested positive for. “Everyone lets you do whatever you want. You could become a dictator, you know. Or you could at least become a figurehead and let me do the dictating.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” said Potter, grinning. He smiled so much, and this was even when he was ostensibly quite unhappy. Draco once again found himself wondering how the whole world hadn’t fallen in love with him before today.
“See that you do,” he said aloud, peering at the ingredients list: it looked like the culprit had gone and used Adder eggs instead of Ashwinder eggs and knock-off pearl dust, both of which screwed up the entire operation. Honestly, it was like nobody understood that you couldn’t substitute anything for anything. “Well, lucky you; this is an easy fix.”
Potter perked up. “It is?”
“A first year could brew the cure; it’ll just take a few days to ferment,” Draco confirmed, and then, magnanimously, he added, “so you can help me if you’d like.”
“Oh, if I’d like,” said Potter sarcastically, but he was practically bouncing with excitement.
“Fetch me the extract of Gurdyroot and chop me some Flobberworms, errand boy,” Draco ordered, and Potter saluted before they split paths to gather ingredients.
It was both calming and disconcerting to brew with Potter: most of Draco’s memories of Potions with him back in school involved failed sabotage or, occasionally, succeeded sabotage that Potter didn’t even notice because he was too busy planning one quest or another or dramatically moping about the place. He wasn’t gifted—even at Hogwarts he barely crossed the line into above-average, and he’d gotten rusty since then—but he was quick, chopping up and grinding and peeling ingredients at a rate Draco found a bit astounding.
“In another life you would have been a good assistant,” he allowed as he sprinkled in the last of the Gurdyroot and delicately placed the cauldron on a high shelf to ferment. “Never a Potions master, of course, but you’re not so dreadful at the easy work.”
“You have always been so incredibly annoying,” said Potter companionably, reaching around Draco to grab a mortar and pestle. Draco turned around to argue with him, which ended up being sort of a spectacularly bad decision because suddenly they were barely two inches apart, Potter’s arms caging him in, the table digging into his back. If Draco leaned in just a little he could taste his mouth. If Draco leaned back their hips would be pressed against each other’s. If he stayed still—
Potter’s eyes were wide and all-pupil. They darted from Draco’s mouth to his throat and then back again. “I,” he said, his voice shaky, and Draco decided he didn’t want to hear the rest of it, so he reached blindly for Potter’s hair and closed the distance between them.
Potter groaned into his mouth instantly, curving over Draco and wrapping an arm around his waist, pulling him in so they were pressed against each other, and if Draco didn’t get his shirt off in the next two seconds he was going to explode—
Before he could so much as reach for the hem, Potter pulled away, blinking rapidly. “I’m so sorry,” he said. His face was crumpled into a frown and somehow it still suited him. “I didn’t—I’m sorry.”
“What?” asked Draco fuzzily. The events of the day caught up with him. “Oh, fuck,” he said, because now he’d have to explain that he wasn’t potion-mad; he was just regular mad, and that would be so embarrassing he might as well die, but he didn’t even have a chance because Potter was backing away, horrified.
“I should go; I’m sorry—I—you said it takes three days to ferment, right? I’ll be back then.”
“Don’t be all noble about this; it makes me sick.”
“I don’t—” Potter made a wretched noise. “Thank you for pretending to be immune all day; you didn’t have to—I don’t even understand how you did that, or maybe if the immunity finally wore off or something—and thank you for brewing this for me, and thank you for keeping me company, but I—I’m so sorry. I took advantage—I could’ve—I’m so sorry.”
“Potter, listen to me,” said Draco, but Potter just screwed his eyes shut and closed the door and left Draco alone swearing at a table like a complete lunatic.
…
There were positives and negatives to a situation like this, Draco decided. Positive: Potter was probably very into him, which could be excellent blackmail material. Negative: Draco was unfortunately definitely still into Potter in what looked like a substantial and possibly life-changing way, so that cancelled out the blackmail thing. Positive: Draco was attractive enough to bewitch the most beloved man in the Wizarding World despite having spent the first seven years of their acquaintance being rather horrid and also making endless and elaborate attempts to ruin his life, so that was an ego boost. Negative: it was quickly looking like Potter may never speak to him again, which made reaping the benefits of this quite difficult.
The potion wore off with a whimper rather than a bang. Draco only found out because Weasley came skulking into his office and asked if he’d, er, seen any sonnets by anyone about anyone in particular.
“Oh, yes,” lied Draco brightly. “As I remember it, your sister was also quite taken by his eyes. Something to bond over at the next Christmas dinner, hm?”
“You’re such a git,” Weasley said with feeling, which meant Draco was dead-on about the eyes and possibly a Seer. (Or just someone with functioning sight who was aware that Potter’s eyes were easily a top three feature of his. Still.)
“Though she’s much more clever than you,” Draco continued, tapping his chin. “There’s a reason nobody talks about the famous Weasley wit, you know. She’s a proper soldier for being so funny and beautiful while coming from a family like yours.”
Weasley closed his eyes, muttered something that sounded suspiciously like don’t kill him don’t kill him don’t kill him, and opened them again. “Harry wanted to thank you for the potion,” he said, his teeth gritted. “And all the help. And everything.”
“Is that so?” Draco aimed for icy and uninterested, but judging by how Weasley’s eyebrows flew up beneath his bangs, he’d somewhat missed the mark. “Well, he could always thank me himself instead of sending a minion.”
Surprisingly, Weasley snorted. “Tried telling him that; he wouldn’t,” he said. “Not like I’d be talking to you if he didn’t beg me.” He eyed Draco mistrustfully, which Draco thought was entirely unfair, but he couldn’t focus on it: his mind was rather unhelpfully stuck on the image of Potter begging Weasley of all people to talk to Draco because he wanted to avoid him that badly. “He says he’s the one who fucked up, but I reckon he didn’t.”
“Right, because the Chosen One could never make a mistake,” Draco said mostly just to be difficult—something about Weasley’s strain of Pottermania had always gotten on his nerves worse than the others. Maybe because they’d never worked together. Maybe because he was a ginger but not beautiful enough to make up for it. Maybe because Draco had spent the last near-decade convinced he and Potter and Granger had all spent a whole year having world-saving sex in the woods. He wouldn’t examine it too closely.
“Because you wouldn’t be asking to see him if he fucked up.” Weasley shrugged. “At least that’s what I think, but I dunno. Just thought you should know.”
“Well, I didn’t,” snapped Draco, who was in fact formulating a fix-the-thing-with-Potter plan as they spoke. “You’ve always been my least favourite minion.”
“You’ve always been one of my least favourite people,” Weasley replied. “On the planet.”
“What was it I said about famous Weasley wit?” Draco asked, and Weasley made a rude gesture before walking out.
Four haphazardly drawn-up schemes later, Draco concluded that because Potter was uniquely oblivious when it came to these things and also seemingly wracked by righteous guilt over a kiss, for God’s sake, the only way to make this work was via direct approach. With this in mind, he strode over to the Aurors’ office, flung open the door, and promptly regretted both these actions when every single Auror turned to stare at him except Potter, who was muttering to himself while scrawling down something in what looked like a strange, never-before-seen script, but was more likely and horrifyingly English.
“Official Consultant business,” said Draco. “Don’t pay me any mind. Auror Potter, please accompany me to my office immediately.”
Potter’s face was sallow and drawn. Draco tried to smile at him to fix it, but that seemed to make him even more uneasy, the papers crumpling in his hand altogether. “Bugger,” he muttered, and then he turned to Draco, clear-eyed. “Right. Okay.”
“Was that,” said Draco as they closed the door behind them, “at all important? Did I ruin a case? Will I be thrown into Azkaban?”
“Just paperwork,” Potter answered with a shrug. “Er, after we—” He flushed and cleared his throat. “After that conversation the other day, I thought I’d give it another try, but I’m still no good.”
“There, there.” Draco patted Potter’s back sympathetically and pretended he didn’t notice how Potter froze for just a moment as soon as they touched. “We can’t all have the brains. Your brute force is very useful in certain cases, I’m sure.”
“I won Most Valuable Auror last year,” said Potter a bit sullenly, which Draco almost said he knew because he was there, idiot, and he won because of a case they’d both cracked, but then they were alone in his office and he remembered there were more important things to work out first. Potter seemed to remember, too, because he straightened up and cleared his throat. “I’m really—”
“Do not say ‘sorry’ or I’ll hex you,” Draco warned. Potter’s mouth snapped shut. “I was immune, first of all, which is a conclusion your brilliant deductive skills should have led you to because I never talked about wanting to make beautiful little Potter-babies or have you ravish me over a desk like everyone else.”
“You kissed me.”
“Your face was right there,” Draco shot back, which he realised wasn’t helping his case. He glanced out the window and then back at Potter, whose expression was all weird and crumpled and still gorgeous again. “And besides, I still—I still want to, really, and nobody else does anymore, so obviously it wasn’t the potion.”
Potter’s eyes met his. His lips were parted. “You don’t mean that,” he said, his voice low.
“Yes, Potter, because I’ve always been the type to lie and spare your feelings.” Draco scoffed. “This is why I’d be the Muggle mind Healer and not you; you’ve never understood people.”
“Psychologist.”
“Bless you,” said Draco, and Potter smiled at that, which was a small step. “I understand,” he continued, “if you weren’t… if it was a heat of the moment thing, in which case I’d like for us both to entirely forget this conversation happened as soon as you leave and I will be asking Granger to Obliviate us. But if it’s just that you feel guilty, then—then stop being so noble for two seconds and do something.”
“You’re serious,” said Potter, the thick-headed git, and before Draco could say fucking obviously, he was crowding Draco back against his desk, lifting him onto it and latching onto his throat. Draco’s papers were everywhere and he’d have to redo all the paperwork about the stupid potion and it wasn’t even like he could force Potter to do it instead because the man couldn’t write, but then Potter’s teeth scraped against the line of his jaw and he decided to stop worrying about it for now.
“Real man of action,” he said, his voice coming out breathier than he wanted, and Potter laughed.
“I thought—I was sure you’d never speak to me again.” He nipped at Draco’s throat and then soothed the bruise with his tongue when Draco let out an embarrassing whine. “I was so—I thought—”
Draco wrapped his legs around Potter’s waist and pulled him closer until they were pressed against each other, until there wasn’t a bare inch of space between them and he could feel Potter’s cock hardening against his trousers. “I’ve wanted this,” he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth in a rush as he took Potter’s stupid glasses out and threw them onto his chair, “since forever, probably, so you really put a damper on things when you—”
“Oh, sorry I didn’t want to take advantage of you when you were afflicted by—”
“I obviously wasn’t afflicted by anything, you bloody idiot,” Draco snapped, except it came out as more of a pant, and Potter clearly wasn’t too hurt by the insult because he just curved up and kissed Draco properly this time, making a muffled noise into his mouth, resting a hand against the back of his head and clumsily tugging at his hair.
Draco ground forward, letting out a small noise when Potter moaned properly this time, his hands fumbling for Draco’s zipper as Draco’s hands fumbled for his and then Potter was saying, “Wait, wait,” and Draco was momentarily very afraid that somehow he’d misread this situation and not realised it until his dick was out, but then Potter added, “D’you—would you—I want to fuck you, and I—”
“Yes,” Draco gasped, fumbling blindly for the drawer and pulling out a small container.
Potter squinted at it. “You have lube in your office?”
“It’s coconut oil, Potter, and it’s good for your skin,” said Draco. “Learn to read, please.”
“It’s not even labelled.”
“If you don’t start touching me again in five seconds I’m pulling my pants back up,” Draco warned, and Potter snorted and dipped his fingers into the oil. He had long fingers, calloused and scarred, his knuckles dark, and they looked—good. This was a strange moment to get shy about it. Impeccable timing had never been among Draco’s talents. To avoid looking at them and doing something insane like complimenting him, he pulled Potter into another kiss, slow and soft this time, his thumb running over Potter’s cheekbone and his mouth stretching into a pleased smile when Potter trembled against him.
He pulled back only to give Potter better access to him, but that didn’t do much, because Potter just bent over him, laying him flat against the desk and carefully sliding one finger inside and then two as he murmured ridiculous things into the curve of Draco’s neck like wanted this for so long, wanted you, never thought you’d want me , which was of course indicative of his lacking Gryffindor intelligence because Draco was the one who’d apparently spent two-thirds of his life in love, so how in the world could Potter have thought anything was one-sided, that anything was off the table—
“God,” said Potter, and then, eloquently, “Christ.”
Draco would love to tell his fifteen-year-old self about this, like, congratulations, you get to fuck Harry Potter someday and he has the vocabulary of a caveman; it’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of, but he supposed he didn’t have the upper hand here: the extent of his romantic and disarming vocabulary was, “Come on, faster, faster, I can take it, please.”
“Yeah?” Potter asked, his voice low. “You sure?”
“Harry, please,” repeated Draco, choked and desperate, and Harry swore quietly before replacing his fingers with his cock.
It had been a while, and Harry’s size was as unfairly impressive as the rest of him, so the stretch burned for a little—but even if he wanted to, he could hardly focus on the pain when Harry was kissing him again so sweetly it made Draco’s heart ache instead. “You have no idea,” said Harry, “how much I’ve wanted,” and Draco was beginning to suspect this was true because his idea of how much Harry wanted was zero, zero desire for Draco, and if he’d only known—if he’d only known—
When Harry bottomed out they both shuddered with it. Harry stayed still for a moment and just mouthed down his throat, down his chest, his tongue arcing across both Draco’s nipples until Draco was begging him to please just fucking get on with it, and then he pulled out and rocked back in, building a rhythm until he was snapping his hips, until all Draco could do was gasp and whine and take it.
Neither of them lasted long; Draco spilt all over Harry’s hand with a wordless shout and Harry pulled out and came on his stomach in return. A minute and two thorough Cleaning charms later Draco took a second to be very grateful the offices here were soundproofed, and then another to think that perhaps it would be a little suspicious if Harry walked out of here with his robe undone, his trousers rumpled and his hair even more untidy than usual.
“Oh,” said Harry when he brought this up. “Don’t worry about it; they’ll just think we got into a fight.”
“Getting into fights with colleagues often?” Draco asked as he pulled on his own clothes, and then Harry just said er and Draco decided he would figure out exactly what was wrong with him when he was less sated and disgustingly happy.
“The other day,” Harry said. “When you asked why I’d assumed you were immune. It was—” He ducked his head, his expression soft and uncertain, his smile a shadow of a thing, so slight Draco would’ve thought he’d imagined it if he didn’t know exactly where to look. “It was a little bit because of the hatred thing, but mostly it was because—well, I thought, who’s the only person I’d want this to work on even for a second? And then I figured with my luck, that’s probably the only person who was immune.”
“Poor tragic Potter,” murmured Draco, and Harry grinned in earnest now. “Ginny said it probably only didn’t work on me because I was—um, sort of already in love with you. So.”
He realised this was definitely too intense of a thing to say to a man he’d only slept with once, but for the first time, he found himself lucky that Harry was an insane person because he looked delighted at this revelation. “Good,” he said, “makes things easier for me, then,” and before Draco could make a crack about most things being easy for him, Harry leaned in and kissed him again and he decided he could let just the one jibe go for now.