Archive of Our Own

The clearing stirs around Harry as the crack of his Apparition fades into the trees. Two blackbirds give high twiddles and flap irritatedly away.

He’s disturbed the dawn chorus. The circle of space in the trees stays quiet for a few beats after the blackbirds are gone, all the skylarks and robins and chiffchaffs clutching their feathers at Harry’s rudeness.

A twinge of guilt flutters in Harry’s chest. It rustles about until it finds the unwieldy mass of his Guilt-with-a-capital-G and tugs. The whole, horrible weight of it drops into his gut.

Everything’s so bloody wrong when he gets like this. 

Sod the new leaves on the trees. The last, stubborn bluebells. The shrill, off-key birdsong can go straight to hell.

Sorry, he thinks at the birds, and sets off along the path through the woods.

The golds and pinks of the sunrise slant through the branches, making a pattern. Harry climbs the light like a ladder. This step here, and here, and here. A fresh, dewy breeze cools his face. He’s still hot from the shower. Harry was in there a half-hour at least. He scrubbed his skin until every inch of the bronzy brown tingled, then followed that up with every Cleansing Charm Harry knows, twice over.

He’s clean, inside and out.

Except for the tension in his back and the dull ache in his jaw and the pinched bands around his lungs.

The path jogs to the right. Harry passes through a ward hanging in the air, alive with silver magic. Quite a bit of Draco’s satisfaction, too, and a lot of his cheek.

Harry’s got no idea what it would feel like to bump into this ward as somebody who wasn’t invited.

Somebody who isn’t Harry.

Probably wouldn’t be a warm welcome with Draco’s sly grin embedded in the casting.

The path spills out into a field with a footpath running through it.

Harry takes a breath and lets it out. He and Draco made the footpath themselves. They’re the only ones who ever walk here.

He’s safe.

His stupid, too-strong feelings get stronger, choking Harry a bit. He itches, like his skin is the wrong size. The dawn is a bloody ridiculous, show-offy spray of peach in the twilight blue, and Harry scowls at the tendrils reaching towards the little cottage with its carefully tended rose garden and its gable roof and its cheery shutters.

Harry goes ’round the side of the cottage, the path there marked out with round stepping stones, stomps onto the porch, and knocks.

The door swings open right away, and there’s Draco, all sharp and beautiful in a charcoal waistcoat over a pristine white shirt and matching trousers and shoes that bloody shine.

“Oh, darling,” he says, and pulls Harry across the threshold, worrying at his face and his hair like he didn’t kiss Harry goodbye at Grimmauld Place an hour ago. “You should have said.”

Harry puts his arms around Draco’s waist and his face in Draco’s shoulder and says nothing. 

He should have said, but he didn’t have to. Draco always knows when this is coming. He knows before Harry knows. That’s just how it is.

Draco holds him, and strokes his hair, and waits.

Harry doesn’t feel himself relaxing. He only knows he has done when Draco curls his hand over Harry’s nape.

“Mon éclair,” he says, tone level, unshakable. “Are you being punished?”

Harry shakes his head into Draco’s shoulder.

“No, I thought not.” Draco works his fingers into Harry’s hair. Merlin’s arse, Harry feels wretched. “Is everything awful, then?”

Harry nods. Everything is awful. So awful.

“All right.” Draco lifts Harry’s head from his shoulder and looks him in the eye. His face glows with twice as much satisfaction as the wards and a sunrise’s worth of confidence. “I’ll help you out of your clothes.”

Harry regains consciousness to the sound of Malfoy shouting.

Not an uncommon sound, three years out of the Ministry’s new curse-breaking programme. Harry’s spent more time listening to Malfoy yell than almost anything else. He’d say Malfoy’s casting was in the number-one spot, but he casts like the charms are threats, low and venomous.

Those charms probably seem like threats.

To the curses.

Malfoy shouts some more. That’s comforting. If he’s shouting, he’s still alive, and whatever curse caught Harry didn’t catch Malfoy, too.

Which Harry would never hear the end of.

If he lived.

Lives?

Lives. Yes. He’ll live. If Malfoy’s shouting, he’ll live.

He can’t quite remember what the curse was. Something on a lantern, Harry thinks, or maybe a crown.

No. Lantern. He’d wanted to touch it. Harry wanted to touch it like he’d wanted to wank in fifth-year. Bloody unbearably. He had the idea it would, er, help. Somehow. Because he felt like utter shit. Jittery and unsettled. Hungover, also.

But Harry didn’t mean to touch it, if he did in fact touch the lantern. Malfoy will no doubt tell him all about how reckless and foolish and self-centred he is, for Merlin’s sake, Potter, have you ever thought about another person once in your Merlin-blessed life, or do you honestly think you’re granted leave to kill us all because you bested one megalomaniac?

Pain stabs through Harry’s wand-arm, which hangs limp off his shoulder and rests heavily on his stomach. He wrenches his eyes open—mistake—and is nearly blinded by the light.

Of…heaven?

Harry doesn’t think so. King’s Cross isn’t nearly so red. That’s Malfoy’s shirt. Is that Malfoy’s blood? No. Definitely Harry’s. Malfoy’s going to be so pissed off. He’s always going on about how charms and fabric definitely don’t get on.

Wait—that isn’t it. They don’t get on indefinitely.

Well, that’s only half Harry’s fault. Malfoy must be the one who decided to carry him like this, with his legs dangling off one of Malfoy’s arms. Harry hasn’t felt this tiny in years.

Sort of amazing, that.

“—right now, I will have the entire institution of St Mungo’s razed to the bloody ground! Weasley!” Malfoy all but shrieks. “Where the bloody hell are you? Show yourself this instant, or I will—”

“What happened?” says Ron, close by. His magic touches Harry like a cool hand on his forehead. Like Madam Pomfrey’s hand on his forehead the first time he went to the hospital wing after Quirrell tried to kill him. Jesus, that hurt. The pain blinded Harry, literally.

Can he see right now?

He can see red on Malfoy’s shirt. Used to be white, that shirt. He can see one button.

The red’s going grey.

Madam Pomfrey’s hand—that was nice.

Malfoy’s voice warps above him. Next to him. In Harry’s ears. In his mind.

Was Ron asking Harry what happened?

He tries to answer and drools a mouthful of blood down his chin.

“See?” Malfoy’s arms get tighter around Harry. “Do something, Weasley, for the love of fucking Merlin! If he dies over this ridiculous—”

“Take me through it,” Ron says.

“It was a—”

Oh, bollocks. Oh, Merlin’s pickles, or whatever it is Malfoy says.

Oh—

Harry’s arm hurts. The curse went up to his shoulder. Almost to his neck.

It’s horrible.

It’s so clear.

Most of Harry’s feelings aren’t. They’re messy and muddled and he can’t make sense of them. They don’t make sense. He’ll be in a rage, seeing literal red, and realise it’s because his shirt is stuck to him in some completely predictable, intolerable way. More than once, Malfoy has forcibly shoved food into Harry’s mouth and held his jaw shut while he sputtered and fumed and chewed and swallowed and felt better the moment the sugar hit his bloodstream.

Harry’s, like, aware. He knows he’s got feelings. It’s just that they pin themselves to strange places in his body and the wrong things outside him, so he’s got to—

Shake them. To put them in order.

To clarify.

Thin, bright pain slices into his muscles. Into the bone. 

That’s bloody clarifying.

Because there’s the pain—bad, but not the worst Harry’s felt by a large margin.

And there’s Malfoy’s chest. Malfoy’s wet shirt.

Malfoy’s heartbeat.

Malfoy’s arms around Harry.

Malfoy must sit, because Harry thumps down into his lap, his head knocking on Malfoy’s shoulder.

“—broken?” Ron says.

Maybe, Harry tries to say, and coughs up more blood instead.

“Of course I broke it, Weasley!” Malfoy hisses. “Do you think I’d have brought him here while it was active? Do you have some sort of—”

“I get it, mate.” Ron’s tone is gentle, almost laughing. Harry would laugh, too, if his arm didn’t hurt so much. “Just needed to be sure. We could call in—”

“Weasley! I am the Ministry’s top curse-breaker! There is no one you need to call in! But a bit of bandage might not hurt if you could spare it!”

“Healing spells first,” Ron soothes.

“Hurry up, you—”

Harry doesn’t hear the rest. Everything’s taken care of. Nothing he needs to think about. He drifts between two solid points. The pain in his arm. Malfoy’s chest. Perfect balance.

When he’s down to his wedding band, it’s confirmed—Harry’s skin is the thing that doesn’t fit. Too small. Too tight. Pressing in on his ribs. His hips. His shoulder blades.

Harry drinks the water Draco offers—he always has to offer things like this, always, Merlin—in a black mood. He follows Draco to the room at the back of the cottage, teeth gritted. Then he scowls at the dawn-glow heating the windows and the greyish whorls in the hardwood floor until Draco lifts his glasses away.

Everything’s a blur, then. The chair by the window. The counter on one side, with its deep stone sink. On the other, two wooden storage cupboards, each tucked into a corner, a wide bench between for sitting on to tie up boots or slip off wellies, usually. The top edges of the cupboards are lined with coat-hooks. To Harry, they look like shadows of themselves. Draco’s taken down all the coats and put them away.

Harry crosses his arms over his chest and glares silently at Draco’s tall, steady form at the sink. The guilt inside him bristles. He could lose control. He could throw a tantrum. He could—

Draco turns away from the sink and comes to Harry, his features getting clearer as he gets closer. Puts his hand on Harry’s elbow. “Come,” he says.

Harry doesn’t scoff, which would mean speaking, which would mean the tantrum would come out, too. He thinks the corner of Draco’s mouth is turned up just slightly, but doesn’t lean closer to be sure.

The bench is wide enough for four or five people to sit on at once, and its built-in frame—part of the cupboards, or something—is covered in a dark green cushion.

“Hands and knees,” says Draco.

Harry came here for this. They both did. He’s desperate to get his guilt and his mood and this wrong off him. Out of him.

He crosses his arms harder over his chest.

Draco gives Harry’s arm a fond, reassuring rub and slides his hand to Harry’s nape and makes small, soothing nonsense noises while he guides him briskly, but not harshly, onto the bench.

Harry scowls some more while Draco moves about the room. He hates this bench. He hates the perfect give of the cushion under his hands and knees. He hates the stretch of Draco’s waistcoat, moving a bit over his white shirt as he reaches above Harry to hang something from one of the hooks.

He hates Draco’s warm hand between his shoulder blades and his warm fingertips sliding down Harry’s spine. Hates two of Draco’s long fingers settling over his crease, and how hard Harry is for this, how bloody throbbing, when nothing’s even happened yet.

Hates Draco’s quiet ready?

Hates even more the terse nod he gives back.

When Draco’s fingertips circle Harry’s hole, they’re slick with lube—warm, naturally, always warm—and Harry holds his breath, not because it hurts but because he wants to flatten himself on the cushion and rut into it like an animal.

He doesn’t.

He stays there, on his hands and knees, while Draco stands again, then sits, and then there’s the rounded tip of the nozzle at his hole, and there it is, pressing into him, slowly but without stopping, and there it is, snug inside him.

Draco says something—maybe a word, but maybe only a sound—and then there’s water.

It’s only the cold, at first. Only a trickle. But there is more of it, and more, and as the water reaches into Harry, he realises it’s not only cold but prickly and sharp with soap.

And then there’s Draco’s face, close to his, and Draco’s hand in Harry’s hair, and then on his nape.

Just as the first cramp hits, knotting Harry’s stomach around it, Draco’s hand curls around the back of his neck.

“Put your head down, darling,” he says, almost apologetic. “Yes. That’s right.”

“What the fuck?” Harry shouts into Malfoy’s face. Doesn’t come out how he thought it would, all manly and rageful, because Malfoy’s tackled him to the floor of the house on Knockturn Alley, and now the wind’s knocked out of Harry, and Malfoy’s face is no more than three inches from his, so how’s he supposed to breathe? “What the fuck—” he squeaks, and tries to make up for it with a growl that goes nowhere. “What the fuck!”

“Are you mad?” Malfoy says, in the scathing, acid tone Harry had been going for. “Are you out of your bloody mind?”

“I’m doing my job!”

“Your job is not to lick cursed artefacts, Potter. Your job is not to touch them, or stroke them, or cradle them in your arms. Your job is not to sing them a bloody lullaby.”

“I know! I was—”

“Your job is to break curses,” Malfoy hisses into Harry’s face, his eyes like a thundercloud, black and steely and stormy. “You don’t do that by throwing yourself at them. Do you have any idea what that knife would have done to you?”

“Yeah,” Harry lies. He knows it would have cursed him. It’s a knife, so it probably would have cut him as well. But he wasn’t trying to get cursed, or cut.

He wasn’t. He was trying—

He was only trying to—

Malfoy glares at Harry, then pushes himself up—only to drop his full weight on Harry’s gut, driving the breath out of him again. He plants one hand in the centre of Harry’s chest and turns his head on a sharp angle.

“You can’t!” Harry wheezes. “Shield!”

Magic slashes through the air, and the light goes an intense silver. Snow-blindness, Harry thinks nonsensically. He’s not snow-blind, but in this light, Malfoy looks like a winter prince. All the blond goes out of his hair. His skin practically glows.

“Yourself?” Harry forces out, but it’s clear Malfoy is doing it himself—shielding them both and breaking the curse on the knife at the same time in the precise, lethal way he has, which Harry can never manage. He’s got to be inside curses to understand them, his magic in the bindings, kneading them like something doughy. Malfoy hooks his spells into places in the curse frameworks that Harry can’t even see and tugs until the soft underbelly is made stretched and brittle, and then he slices through the core.

A dull thud, a metallic click. The knife, landing in separate pieces. Harry would bet his life that Malfoy cut the hilt off the blade, severing the curse in the process.

Malfoy cancels his shield and turns back into a normal prince, the blond back in his hair and his ears a furious red. He climbs off Harry, straightens his waistcoat, and stalks away.

Harry lies there for a few seconds, his heart going and a strange heat in his cheeks, then scrambles to his feet and follows. “Malfoy, stop,” he calls. “Wait for me.”

Harry’s so full.

Full to bursting, full to—he can’t think. Another cramp snarls in his gut, and he presses his cheek to the cushion, his mouth open, panting.

He must look—

He can’t think of how he looks. Not with the tight, twisting pain in him. The water rounding his belly.

Draco runs his smooth, warm hand down Harry’s spine to his arse. “Hold tight. Only for a moment. There.”

He slips the nozzle out. 

Harry gasps in a breath and holds it, every muscle of his body clenched, until Draco presses something larger to his opening. Harry splays his hands wide on the cushion. It’s impossible. He’s never going to be able to relax enough for Draco to get the plug in. Never. Never.

Then Draco’s hand is there on his lower back, and if Harry holds on tight enough to the green buttons that sit at the cross of every diamond on the cushion, then he can just—barely—

The plug feels massive as it slides in. Harry’s sure it won’t fit. Not with all the water.

But then—

Yes. It does. Harry lets out a long, relieved breath, only for his next inhale to set off another cramp.

“—minutes,” Draco says above him, and something else. Harry doesn’t know what. The next word he hears is outside.

Draco walks him out with an arm around Harry’s back, taking most of Harry’s weight and murmuring that’s it, one more step, one more, darling, another, yes, you can until they’re out on the garden porch.

Sweat rolls down Harry’s back as Draco helps him down the single step to the grass. Harry folds, his knees hitting the wood. Draco sits just in time for Harry’s forehead to meet his thigh. One hand goes to the back of Harry’s head and down, rubbing over his neck, his shoulders. Draco’s other hand finds his chin and lifts Harry’s face, positioning him so Draco can put two of his fingers at Harry’s lips.

He opens his mouth and sucks them in, hard, cramp after cramp seizing him and letting go, seizing, letting go. Harry tries to release some of the pressure with sounds, but his voice is stuck in his throat. It’s not bad enough yet. Not bad enough to make a noise. Too bad to make a noise? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

Harry knows Draco’s hands are good. Gentle on his body, just like his voice, which comes to Harry like sun through clouds. Doing very well and so very much and five more minutes.

Draco passes some of the time by making Harry drink more sips of water.

Four minutes.

Three.

Two.

And then Draco pulls him up. Harry knocks his face into Draco’s neck. Tightens his fists on Draco’s waistcoat. Pants ah ah ah into his skin. His body clings to the plug. Doesn’t want to let it go. Draco doesn’t take no for an answer, and then it’s gone, and on his knees like this, upright, the pressure of the water in him is so intense he can’t breathe, oh, Jesus, oh, fucking fuck-Merlin, oh, he can’t do anything about it. Harry’s muscles lock down around it, squeezing into another sharp cramp, and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t even say it, can only make frantic voiceless ah ah ahs until Draco puts one arm around Harry’s waist and holds him there, still.

“Nothing to choose, my love,” Draco says. “It’s all right.”

Then he reaches his other hand to Harry’s belly, spreads his fingers, and pushes.

The nearby door rattles, the thud thud thud of Malfoy’s fist echoing through the metal and also through Harry’s skull and eyes. He blinks, trying to steady his vision and bring some part of the Gringotts vault—the stone walls, the polished floor—into focus. Doesn’t work.

“Open the bloody door, Potter!” Malfoy’s voice is muffled by the door, but even six inches of metal isn’t enough to dull how pissed off he is, and he doesn’t even know about the blood. “What the bloody hell were you thinking? Have you any sense at all in your imitation of a mind? Have you—”

“I can’t,” Harry calls back. “I can’t open it.”

Another thud. “Why not?”

Because there’s a lot of blood. His heart pumps and pumps, and it’s shoving all Harry’s blood to the outside of him.

Harry thought the curse only nicked him. He’d turned ’round because the door shut when it wasn’t supposed to, with Malfoy on the other side. The curse-wound started near his throat and spiraled around his arm, then skipped down to his thigh. Now it’s around his left ankle, and—yeah. It’s spiraling back up. The left leg of his jeans is all red. Some of the blood drips off his fingertips and onto the floor of the vault. 

This is probably because of that incident with the knife, which Harry didn’t even touch. Not that it matters. Life has never cared whether Harry actually did the thing he’s being punished for.

It really hurts. 

“I’m sorry.” His voice wobbles a bit. Goosebumps pull at the hairs on his nape. Harry hunches his shoulders, bracing for…something. “Don’t be angry.”

Three more thuds in quick succession, followed by a pause.

Is Malfoy leaving him? Is he leaving Harry in the vault? Has he finally had enough?

But then there’s a click, like Malfoy’s wand tapping against metal.

“Potter,” Malfoy says, soft and clear. “I’m not angry. Why can’t you open the door?”

“Dunno how. Can’t—” He takes a breath. The air goes right through him. It doesn’t stay where it’s supposed to. Is he passing out? “Can’t remember.”

“Come over to the door,” says Malfoy. “Are you facing the vault door, Potter?”

Harry staggers closer to the door. “Yeah.”

“Do you see the rune on the lefthand side? It’s in the shape of a flag.”

“I—” He tries. He really tries. “I think it’s a flag? But it looks like squiggles. I can’t tell if it’s a flag. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“No, sweetheart, it’s all right. Can you lift your hand?”

“Er…I dunno. I’m sorry.”

“Try for me, would you? All you need to do is put your hand on that rune, and the door will open.”

“Oh—okay. Right. I’ll try.” Harry’s arm is so heavy. He has to use his right hand to drag his wrist up through the air until he can flop his palm against the rune.

The door opens with a crack. A bird soars into the vault in a blurry, majestic stream of white and grey. It’s so fast Harry’s eyes can’t track it. His knees buckle. Harry expects to hit the floor, but an arm goes around his waist, and he tilts gently into Malfoy.

Oh. Must be Malfoy’s arm.

Feels good.

He lays his head carefully on Malfoy’s shoulder.

Feels even better.

Malfoy’s casting, incantations clipping against Harry’s cheek like little kisses. Harry’s pretty sure he’s blacking out. His shoes squeak on the floor—Malfoy must be turning them. Can’t be Harry.

Something snaps. The pain lets off a bit. Blood gushes wetly down Harry’s leg.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“It’s all right,” Malfoy says in the same calm, even voice. “Stay awake, Potter. Stay—”

Inside feels dark. Wasn’t very bright out—too early for that—but crossing the threshold is like walking into a blurry cave. A nice one. Harry lets Draco lead him. He would even if his knees weren’t jelly and he wasn’t floating. In his body? In his head?

Both.

Draco holds him close by the sink. Harry drinks until the glass in Draco’s hand is empty.

“Over the chair,” says Draco, who is the only clear thing. He says the words, then shows Harry what he means with his hands.

The back of the chair is wide and overstuffed, firm underneath Harry’s empty belly. He discovers he’s shaking when he gets his forearms onto the seat. Discovers he’s up on tiptoe, tense all the way to the balls of his feet.

Draco strokes Harry’s back. He puts both hands on Harry’s hips and holds him there, his palms warm. For some time—Harry has no idea how long—all Draco does is praise him. Harry’s too focused on his touch to hear what he’s saying, but he doesn’t need the words to make sense. He can tell from Draco’s tone.

“That’s right,” says Draco, sometime later. One of his hands is steady on Harry’s lower back. “Let your heels touch the floor. Yes, just so. They’ll need to be wider, my darling.”

Harry knows he’s still when Draco says ah—I see you’re ready.

Then it’s very quiet. Even Harry’s heart isn’t beating so hard. He gives up all his weight to the chair, and Draco’s hand slides down to Harry’s arse and spreads him open. Something wet and cool brushes his hole.

“Just like that.” Draco’s voice is above him. Behind him. “Stay as you are. Of course you remember. You’re such a good boy.”

He keeps this up as he presses whatever it is inside Harry.

The burn starts right away.

Ginger.

Harry breathes out, concentrating. Easier now that they’ve got started. He does not resist. Does not want to. Notices, from somewhere very far away or somewhere very deep inside him, that the ginger is thicker this time. Longer. It goes in and in and in. The burn goes in and in and in until he’s got to do something about it, so he opens his mouth and pants, the same little ah ah ahs as before.

Then the ginger stops, huge and fiery inside Harry. Draco’s hand returns to his lower back. His fingers stay on the ginger, adding pressure.

“Squeeze,” Draco says.

Harry does. He clenches hard, knowing what it’ll do, and it does, it does. The burn licks into a blaze. So hot. So good. So much.

“Ah,” he manages. “Ahhhh.”

“Good.” Draco sounds so pleased. “Good. Let go, perfect boy.”

The ginger slides out of Harry slowly.

Slowly.

Just when it’s almost out, it stops—

And then it’s pressing in again. Hot. Burning.

“That’s right,” says Draco. “Good.”

They are literally on the pavement at a warehouse in a dodgy part of Brixton, wards set to keep passers-by from wandering inside, ready to get started, when Malfoy looks Harry up and down and says no.

“No?” Harry stops fiddling with one of the buttons on his jacket and stares at Malfoy. “No buttons?”

“No. We’re not going in.”

Harry’s mouth falls open. He snaps it shut. “Malfoy, what in the bloody—”

But Malfoy is already casting. More wards. A Stasis Charm. A Protego.

“Malfoy!” Harry shouts.

Malfoy finishes casting and slips his wand into his holster, a neat little trick that always looks better when he does it. Then he reaches for Harry.

“No!” He jumps back, but Malfoy leaps, and then their Ministry-issued Portkey whisks them through the air. They land in a secure room on Level Two, where the DMLE has begrudgingly made space for Ministry curse-breakers.

Harry wrenches himself away the second he has enough balance, turns his back on Malfoy, and storms out.

His jaw hurts, and hurts more, but he keeps his teeth crushed tight together. If Harry opens his mouth—if he says one more word—he’ll scream, and he’ll keep screaming, and then he doesn’t know what will happen but he knows it won’t be good.

And it’s already pretty bloody horrible, considering Malfoy’s just refused to work with him. Considering Malfoy took them back to the Ministry. Considering there’s only one reason Harry can think of for taking them back to the cursed fucking Ministry, and that’s to ask for another partner.

Every door flings itself open in front of Harry as he goes. The lift drops him like a stone to the Ministry atrium. Next thing he knows, he’s outside, stomping along the pavement and wanting to drive his fist into the nearest brick wall.

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

He doesn’t.

Harry steps into a furious turn at the closest Apparition point. He’s on Knockturn Alley in a heartbeat. The pub he wants is well-known at the Ministry, as in everybody bloody knows about it and nobody ever says its name, ever, they just raise their eyebrows in this certain way, because Aurors like hunting down Dark wizards but they love a bit of violence to take the edge off after a long shift being the bloody faces of bloody justice.

From the outside, the pub looks abandoned. No lights. Boarded-up windows. A torn sign on the door that reads CONDEMNED.

Inside, it’s crowded with bodies, wall-to-wall, and every single one of them is yelling.

Harry shoves his way between two blokes. Shoves again. Lets them jostle him, and elbow him, and step on his toes. He bloody hates it, hates hates hates being touched by all these strangers, but at least he can feel where he is.

He hasn’t got to the bloke with the quill to put his name in for a fight when somebody grabs his wrist.

Harry whips around—now he’ll scream—and it’s not a random bloody stranger who’s got him, it’s Malfoy. He’s still in the middle of the crush. Tall and beautiful and perfectly bloody unbothered. Nobody touches him, but he touches Harry like he has—

Like he has any bloody right—

Malfoy looks Harry dead in the eyes. “No.”

The fresh ginger is cold, which is the first thing Harry notices about it. The second—it’s a rounder plug. Thicker. He doesn’t have to clench to feel it. Everywhere inside of him is hot, except for the new ginger. Feels like ice, if ice could be on fire.

Harry pants and pants and pants, following the circles Draco’s tracing on his arse, relaxing as much as he can into the burn. Oh, Merlin’s hell, it hurts. The rest of Harry doesn’t hurt at all. It’s purposeful. He knows that. Draco’s letting him feel it because that way—

That way—

“Is it awful, mon éclair?” asks Draco.

Harry turns his face into his arms and lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a moan and a howl. He barely notices the twinge in his bladder.

“Poor thing.” Draco runs the flat of his hand under the curve of his arse, one cheek, then the other, and then his other hand is on the small of Harry’s back. “It will be better soon. I promise.”

Draco’s hand meets Harry’s arse with a crack. The sting waits for a second, like it’s holding it’s breath, then lights into him like a flame, catching just as Draco lands a second blow.

“Ah, fuck,” Harry says. “Fuck. Fuck!”

“Good boy,” says Draco, and brings his hand down again.

Again.

Again.

“No?” Harry shrieks. It’s not out of place in a pub like this. Everybody’s at top volume.

“No,” Malfoy repeats. “If you want someone to—”

Harry’s so angry he doesn’t need to turn to Apparate them. He just yanks on his magic, and it yanks back, and they come out of the pinch in the sitting room at Grimmauld.

“—hurt you,” Malfoy continues, like he didn’t even bloody notice the change in location, “then ask, Potter. Don’t go to that pub.”

“Ask?” Harry shouts. He was right. Now he’s started, he can’t stop. “Who should I ask, Malfoy? You?”

“Yes.”

Harry is going insane. “You? You? We’re not even partners anymore! You took us back to the Ministry! All you’ve said all bloody night is no, so I don’t know where you get off—”

“You,” says Malfoy, his fingers still tight around Harry’s wrist, “are hungry. You are overtired. And if those things weren’t enough—and make no mistake, Potter, they are—you’re having one of your days, and I will—”

“My da—”

Malfoy pulls before Harry can finish saying days. It’s nothing. A tug, maybe, if that. But Harry blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, he’s inches from Malfoy’s face, Malfoy’s eyes on his, flashing like sunlight on a sword.

“I will not watch you bleed out again. I will not. You can lie to yourself about the state you’re in, but you cannot lie to me, and I will not stand by and let you hurt yourself.”

Harry is speechless. This feeling is—this feeling is like nothing he’s ever felt. He’s never been so bloody offended in his life, and Malfoy has said things about his parents before. His dead parents.

“I don’t,” he finally forces out. “I don’t do it on purpose. I’ve never done it on purpose.”

Malfoy narrows his eyes.

“The pub was different. That was—I wasn’t trying to—that’s not what I was—”

“I am not leaving you.” Every word out of Malfoy’s mouth is a razor. He’s so close. So quiet. “I am staying with you. Here’s what we’re going to do, Potter. You will eat. Drink some tea, if you fancy it.”

“But—”

“When you’re finished, you’ll take down your jeans and pants and bend over my lap. I will hold you there and spank you until you tell me it hurts, after which—”

The sound that comes out of Harry’s mouth starts out as pure shock and indignation, but it changes into something else entirely. He has never been so aware of his own cock before. His battered, worn-in jeans are a cage.

“—after which I will continue until you’ve had enough. And then I shall wipe away all your tears and pet you until you are prepared to resume the assignment.”

“Assignment?” Harry’s mind scrambles to sort through everything Malfoy’s just said. “You didn’t put in for a transfer? We’re still partners?”

Malfoy leans in another inch. “Yes.”

Now Harry’s on fire.

Inside. Outside. His arse burns everywhere. Deeper on the inside, wider on the outside. Draco runs his hand across the hot, stinging flesh, over and over. He’s using his good boy tone again. The words will come back. They always do. Harry waits for them. Breathes.

“—pleased,” Draco is saying when the rushing in his ears quiets. “Not much longer here, my love. I know your knees are tired. Now—help me with the ginger.”

Harry whines, louder and more pathetic than he meant. His bladder protests. The chair is supportive underneath him, still doing its job, but Harry’s getting fuller and heavier by the minute.

“Shh,” says Draco, his fingers circling Harry’s hole, and the plug. “Take your time. There’s no hurry.”

Harry stretches his wrists. Digs his fingers into the cushion underneath him. Makes some sounds he barely recognises. Goes up on tiptoe, then lowers his heels. Draco stands close, his trousers brushing against Harry’s bare leg, and that feels so good that Harry goes on tiptoe again. The ginger moves inside him, hot hot hot, and Harry’s nearly there—nearly to that place where everything’s settled, everything’s right—so he holds his breath and bears down.

“Oh, lovely,” Draco says as the ginger slips out of Harry in one more burst of flame. Harry feels the breath of Draco’s magic against his arse as he Vanishes it. “Good boy. There. That’s it.”

He falls back onto the chair, doing his best to relax. Draco murmurs an incantation, his fingertips pressing lightly into Harry’s spine.

Harry breathes in as long as he can, then lets it out slow.

Draco flattens his hand on Harry’s back, and the next touch is cool and smooth on Harry’s arse. That is the only paddle Draco ever uses on him. It’s a thin layer of ash wood covered in dragonhide, and Draco made it himself.

Harry breathes again, then plants his feet on the floor. Bends his knees a bit.

“There,” Draco says. “Just as you are.”

He lands each stroke on Harry’s sit-spots, alternating between cheeks, perfectly precise. It’s a deep pain, but fiery, too—like coals pressed into his skin. Harry hears himself shouting, half-begging—plea—oh—pl—ahh—God—please—even after Draco has stopped. Even after Draco just touches him, fingertips over the hot stripes at the tops of Harry’s thighs.

“Shh.” Just that, for a while. “Shh. I know, darling. Shh.”

Harry kicks one foot back, then the other.

“Not yet.” Draco’s hand leaves his lower back. His fingers skim Harry’s crease. Harry takes the cue to put his heels down, and then, when Draco strokes the inside of his thigh, to spread his legs a bit wider. “Still, now, darling. Still. Shh.”

He makes a circle of his fingers and coaxes Harry’s bollocks out of the shelter of his thighs. Draco runs the pad of his thumb over one of them in a gentle little circle, then adjusts his grip, tugging them out just a bit more.

“Breathe out, mon éclair.”

Harry does.

Then the paddle comes down.

Harry doesn’t have days. He doesn’t even know what Malfoy means by that. Harry’s normal. He’s just a normal bloke who has normal feelings, and if they get into weird places in his head and occasionally make him have a fit, then that’s probably what happens to everyone.

Though Harry will admit that after Malfoy follows through on his promise—every bit of it, even the petting, which was more cradling while stroking Harry’s hair—he does notice…

Harry notices.

He doesn’t understand, not totally, because he’s still surprised every time Malfoy looks at Harry before they’re in casting distance of a cursed artefact and shakes his head.

But he does start to notice, like, connections between the things that bother him, which have always seemed completely random to Harry and everybody else.

Like—

On department-wide training days, when they have to sit through long technical presentations and listen to everybody else chattering away, Harry leaves with a sour pit in his stomach. 

And that’s not such a big deal. Or it wouldn’t be, if that was where it ended.

But innocuous things like that—which Harry should be able to handle, he should be fine—put him off everything he can think to eat, so he skips dinner and goes to bed early.

Which means he’s hungry when he wakes up, and feeling quite surly, and there’s nothing in the world he wants to have to chew. And the emptiness in his stomach feels like a cupboard, or a tent in the Forest of Dean. And he wants to fill it—has to fill it—but he hates having to eat, hates it, and it’s never long before somebody walks by with a camera or there’s a bloke on the pavement with a jacket like the one Sirius had when he fell through the Veil, and that feeling is so massive, and Harry is so small and useless, he’s so annoying, he’s so ungrateful, just an angry, helpless prick who should know better by now.

And Malfoy—

Saw that.

Sees that.

About Harry.

And Harry wants this job, and he wants to be partners with Malfoy, and he loves how he feels after Malfoy turns his arse hot and aching and throbbing with his heartbeat and—and holds him, and shushes him, and his hands are so soft—

So.

It’s not embarrassing.

It’s for work.

About two months into this…arrangement, they go to an estate in Sussex after the Aurors have done with it. Their shoes crunch on the drive leading to the manor house. Malfoy tosses spells ahead of them, lighting the sconces on either side of the double doors. He opens the doors, too, then starts in on long-range curse-detection charms that fly out of the tip of his wand like hummingbirds and return to him in various colours. They hover at his eye-line, reds and blues and golds catching in his hair.

“First floor,” Malfoy says, and undoes one of the buckles on his holster with his off-hand. Jealousy shoots through Harry like a curse. Why can’t he do things with his off-hand? It’s not fair.

He follows Malfoy into the manor house with his teeth gritted. Malfoy’s casting—Lumos, Lumos, Lumos—so the sconces won’t be worthless. Every light they pass gives Malfoy a halo.

On the first floor, Malfoy casts another rainbow of spells. He strides to a door on the left, opens it, and goes through. It’s one of those big old manors that has rooms instead of hallways. Malfoy stitches his way through them—Revelio, Finite, Revelio, Finite—and he’ll keep going until they get to the mirror. It’s Malfoy’s turn to break, so he’ll do the same thing again, only after Revelio it’ll be four or five incantations in a row, all of them going in like needles, all the way ’round, and he’ll pull the curse out and out and out until the moment arrives when he sends a final spell twisting in through the centre or spiraling in from an edge and shatters the whole thing in one go.

Harry reaches for Malfoy’s elbow before he knows what he’s doing.

Malfoy turns. Looks. “What is it?”

“I—” Harry has never asked before. He lets Malfoy tell him when it’s time. He’s not even sure it is. He’s—he’s— “My—teeth? My teeth. Hurt. No.” Harry shakes his head to emphasise the point. “No.”

Malfoy blinks. For an instant, Harry thinks he’s lost it. He’s made it all up in his head. He’s got this so, so wrong.

And then Malfoy smiles, slow and bright.

After, he’s quick. It’s his hand on Harry’s elbow, and Malfoy steers him back through two other rooms. He stitches them into the third—both doors closed, both doors warded, both doors Muffled—and Banishes Harry’s clothes like he’s been practicing. He tucks Harry’s glasses into his pocket like he owns those, too.

He’s got Harry on all fours on a clean, plush rug with an added Cushioning Charm inside a minute. Then Malfoy goes down on one knee, right there in his dark curse-breaker’s jacket, open for easy access to his holster, and takes something out of his pocket. Two charms later, he’s un-Shrunk it.

That’s when Harry learns what a humbler is, and how it feels when Malfoy’s fastened it around his sac.

Malfoy guides Harry’s head to the floor, then sits close, his grip firm on Harry’s waist.

“What’s your word, Potter?”

“Snatchers,” Harry answers, his heart in his throat.

About ten seconds after that, Harry learns what it feels like when Malfoy spanks his bollocks.

Harry has no idea what sorts of sounds he makes. He can’t hear over—over all of it. The shocking, delicate pain. The heat of Malfoy’s body. Malfoy’s voice, which is mainly a vibration. Harry has no thoughts, only ah ah ah. 

Then Malfoy stops. Harry trembles all over. Each carpet fibre brushes his cheek in a slightly different direction. His fists are clenched in silk or something. Malfoy’s solid next to him. Over him. Oh, God, Harry’s never been this hard. His cock isn’t big enough for all that blood. Merlin’s pickles. Fuck. What now? What next? Does he stay here forever? Does he—

Malfoy cups his hand over Harry’s bollocks—soft, gentle, warm. “That’s right,” he says. “Shh.”

Harry can’t move, so he braces himself hard on the rug and just takes it—a wave of pleasure. A wall. It’s tremendous, tidal, and there’s really no resisting.

He comes all over the rug, sobbing his heart out.

Harry floats back into his body sometime later. His body is in Malfoy’s arms, wrapped in a blanket and a Warming Charm.

Malfoy brushes Harry’s tears away with his knuckle. “Better?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Harry answers.

“Oh, God,” Harry whispers. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple. “Oh, God. Merlin’s pants pickles. Fuck.”

“You’ve done so well, my darling.”

“Ah,” Harry breathes. Every time air enters his lungs, it presses on his bladder, and he can’t—he can’t—he can’t take it anymore. He can’t. He doesn’t know how he made it to the corner. Draco spelled Harry’s pants back on and brought him here, step by aching step, Harry gripping his cock with both hands, his legs crossed as tight as he could get them.

And now—

Now he’s here, a wall at either arm and Draco blocking him in. He’s so—so lovely and tall and his clothes are still so—so crisp, and Harry can’t.

“I,” he manages. “I can’t.”

“Mmm.” Draco strokes Harry’s face. He untwists tangles in Harry’s hair. He finds the corner of Harry’s mouth with the pad of his thumb. He leans in a bit more. “I know it feels that way.”

Harry shudders, trying to melt his entire body into the corner. His thighs burn. He can’t keep them closed much longer. But he has to. He has to. He can’t get Draco dirty.

He’s starting to leak. Has been leaking.

Harry lets his head fall back. “Can’t.”

“You must.”

He heaves in a breath, his need twisting at him, squeezing, and something gives way like Draco stretched it all out and swished his wand and snapped it in two.

“I can’t.” Harry’s voice goes high and desperate. He’s got no control left. None. None. “Daddy,” he gasps. “I can’t.”

Draco can’t actually get taller in the space of a second, but it feels like he does. He presses in, taking all the rest of Harry’s space. Harry’s nose brushes his waistcoat. “It’s all right. Put your arms around my neck.”

A sort of blubbering whine forces its way out of Harry. Draco works his hands between Harry’s arms and his hips. “Put your arms around Daddy’s neck.”

Harry lets go of his prick, and his lungs go mad. He throws his arms around Draco’s neck and buries his face in his shoulder. It takes everything he’s got, so he can’t stop a single thing coming out of his mouth. “Oh, God, don’t be angry, please, please, I can’t, I can’t.”

“Shh. Open your thighs.” Draco’s knee nudges at Harry’s crossed legs.

“No, oh, please, please—”

“Yes,” says Draco, and slides his hands to the curves of Harry’s arse, still tender from the paddle. “Up. There’s a good boy.”

Harry isn’t, can’t be, but the words unlock another part of him. He lets his legs fall open. He lets Draco lift him forwards and up onto his tiptoes, lets Draco slide his thigh between his legs, lets Draco take all his weight.

“Heavy,” Harry pants into Draco’s shoulder. “Heavy. Scared—I’m scared, I’m scared, don’t be angry, don’t—ah—ah—”

The first splash is small, more of a trickle, but the rest is a rush. Harry’s pants offer practically no resistance. He can feel all of it, warm and wet underneath him, on Draco’s trousers, on Draco, running down his legs, everywhere, everywhere. Harry chokes and gasps and babbles, clinging to Draco, his limbs useless, and Draco stays exactly where he is, not moving at all except to turn slightly, easing Harry this way and that on his thigh.

“Sweet boy,” he murmurs in Harry’s ear. “Just so. That’s right. Let it all out. Good.”

It’s for work.

All the things Harry and Malfoy do together—they’re for work. They’re for the job. Harry’s not about to waste a year in training and almost four as partners on his stupid feelings, and more than that, he’s not about to waste almost five years of Malfoy’s life by refusing to solve the problem.

It’s not as if Harry needs it all the time. It’s not as if every day is one of his days. It only gets bad sometimes, and then Malfoy does what he does, and Harry…does what he does, and then he’s fine. They’re both fine.

Except then October comes ’round, like it tends to do every year, and Harry can’t quite shake the sense that he’s…wrong. Off-balance. Everything bothers him. He writes to his solicitor to put Grimmauld Place up for sale three times in the first two weeks and has to write three times to take it back. He knocks over his glass at brunch at the Burrow one Sunday—a matter of, like, three charms maximum. The spilled pumpkin juice is clean and dry in a flick of Molly’s wand, but Harry can’t stop shouting and blaming and throwing a wobbly, so Ron takes him outside under the pretense of looking for gnomes and walks him about the garden until he can breathe. He drops his glasses one morning and steps on them by accident and can’t think of a single spell, can’t think of anything, so he barges into Level Nine and causes a massive scene as he searches bitterly for Hermione, blind and snapping at everyone he comes across, and feels absolutely mad once she’s fixed them.

His jaw hurts. His back hurts. His heart aches.

None of that is related to work, so Harry doesn’t bother Malfoy. He takes up running, early in the morning or late at night, and never thinks of anyone who died for him or because of him at all.

They’re off on Hallowe’en. Harry rattles around Grimmauld Place. He could go to St Mungo’s and hang about until Ron’s got a spare minute. He could go to the Ministry and demand an emergency Portkey to Australia, where Hermione went on a research trip the day before yesterday.

When the call for a single curse-breaker comes through on Harry’s badge, he leaps on it from across the sitting room. He’ll go. He’ll totally go. Yes, he’s available. Completely. Yes.

He gets dressed in his good jeans—the ones with only one hole—and his curse-breaking jacket, then goes to Gringotts. One of the goblins tells him about the vault retrieval. Routine, except for one of the artefacts.

“Cursed,” the goblin says, and pushes an iron box into Harry’s hands. “Our client did not wish to retain the artefact, but expressed a preference for having it handled as quickly as possible. As all our curse-breakers are presently in the field, I thought it best—”

“Right, yeah,” says Harry. He puts an extra Stasis Charm on the box, Shrinks it, and tucks it into his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”

The goblin hands over a packet of parchments, and then Harry’s on his way. He’ll take the box to the office so the trainees can practice on a genuine artefact. The curse can’t be that bad, if the goblins didn’t think it was worth bringing one of their own breakers in.

But now that Harry’s out, with the wind whipping in his hair and the cold under his collar and the scent of wet, dead leaves all over, he doesn’t want to make a stop at the Ministry. He just wants to go home.

He’ll turn the box in tomorrow.

He will turn the box in tomorrow.

He will not open it.

That is not why he brought it with him.

He is not trying to get cursed.

Obviously.

Grimmauld’s front entrance opens wide the second he’s past the wards. Harry goes up the front steps two at a time, jumps over the threshold, and slams the door behind him, only to screech to a halt in his own foyer.

Malfoy’s on the bottom step of the staircase, arms crossed over his chest, his hip leaned against the banister like he’s waiting for Harry after class.

Harry’s entire soul curls up. His shoulders start to go with it, but he pulls them back. Too far. Harry tries to recover by slouching. That doesn’t work, either. He’s just got to…stand there.

What does he say?

Harry opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

Malfoy watches him.

He’s got another halo from the wall sconces.

After a long, heavy minute, Malfoy holds out his hand.

Harry can’t lie to Malfoy. Not now. Not now that he’s caught. He digs his hand into his pocket, lifts out the box, and drops it into Malfoy’s palm.

Malfoy takes out his wand and un-Shrinks the box, then casts a lattice of spells over the outside. He opens it with another charm and peers inside, then casts again—a smaller net for a smaller artefact. The last charm is a measured downward cut, and the artefact clinks in the box. Malfoy re-seals it, neutralises the box itself, and Banishes it.

Then he steps down, into Harry’s space, and looks him in the eye.

“Do you have any idea what that artefact would have done to you?” he asks, calm. Hushed.

“No,” Harry admits.

“Does it make a difference?”

“I—” I wasn’t going to touch it. That’s the answer Harry should give. He really wasn’t. Not on purpose. “I just wanted it—” He taps at his chest. Harry doesn’t have the words to describe what’s in his chest. And outside of his chest. What’s so huge and formless that he can’t get away, or swallow it all. “To be something that made sense.”

“What about the rest?”

“The rest of what?”

“Once you’d got the pain where you wanted it, who was going to wipe your tears and pet you until you felt better?”

Harry can hardly breathe. He tries for a sentence, then settles for a word. “You?”

Malfoy opens his arms.

Harry tilts into them, not at all gently, and grabs for anything he can reach. Malfoy’s clothes. His waist. Anything. Anything.

Malfoy’s arms fold around him, tight enough to keep Harry together. “Yes,” he says into Harry’s hair. “Yes.”

Harry doesn’t hate the green cushion on the bench anymore. It’s a lovely, reliable cushion, and he’s never liked a cushion more than he likes this one. It’s got to be the buttons. Harry gazes at one of the fabric-covered buttons, there in the hollow of its cross, and reaches over to drag the tip of his finger around it.

The cushion dips next to him, and Draco runs his hand down Harry’s spine. Feels very similar to his magic. Well—not as cool and silvery and sweet. So maybe not the same at all. But it’s still Draco. So that’s the same. That’s always the same.

“Have you made sense of it, mon éclair?” Draco circles the ridges of Harry’s spine one at a time, paying equal attention to each one.

“Felt bad,” says Harry instantly, because Draco’s got him in this place where there’s no distance between Harry’s thoughts and his mouth. “Felt—felt—guilty. For being alive when everyone else is dead. And I miss being in school. But not the war. And not the dragons. And I don’t want that bread with the herbs or whatever. Anymore. I’ve had enough of it. I want the normal bread. I want the normal bread back.”

“You shall have it. What else?”

“I love you.” A shiver rocks through Harry, settling some of his muscles but not all of them.

Draco bends to kiss Harry’s cheek. “I love you.” Then he turns to face Harry’s feet and pats his arse. “I need your hands here.”

Harry rests his cheek on the cushion and shuffles his shoulders, then reaches back and spreads himself open. Draco readjusts Harry’s hands a bit, then pets Harry’s hole until he relaxes. Harry pants, his nerves lighting up again. They hum, waiting, waiting.

“Nearly done,” Draco murmurs. “You must stay quite still, my darling.”

“Yeah. I will. Yes.”

The wooden spoon is warmer than the paddle, and rounded, and Draco skims it over Harry’s hole and lets it rest there a few seconds.

Harry stays quite still.

“Good,” says Draco, and lifts the spoon. It doesn’t come down with a lot of force, ever. Draco is more precise with this than he is with curse-breaking. The hits get just a bit harder, then just a bit more, in such tiny increments that Harry can stay still, can stay in it, can offer himself completely, because everything about this—the spoon, the timing, how his body feels—has been shaped by Draco, built carefully to this moment. “That’s it,” Draco says, the pain radiating out from Harry’s hole but centred there, just there. “That’s right. Perfect. Don’t stop.”

Harry doesn’t know what he’s supposed to keep doing until he realises he’s talking. And panting. And making a general racket. Draco does not make a racket, but he doesn’t stop, either.

The sensation gets deeper, hotter, wider, racing through Harry’s nerves and around, again and again and again.

“Oh, God, fuck fuck fuck, oh—Draco, hurts, ow—I want—I want—please—hurts—half—you—please, Draco, please, Draco, please—”

Harry hears himself say it. The words fall behind him, and he replaces them with more, and when they blur into sounds again, the spoon stops coming down.

Then Draco’s moving, shifting, putting both hands over Harry’s, holding him open, and then Draco’s breath is warm on Harry’s hole, and then he presses his lips to the throbbing flesh and licks over it with his hot wet tongue and Harry falls apart.

He half-collapses onto the bench, hips tilted up by Draco’s hands, and sobs.

It all comes out of him—the guilt, and the grief, and his irritation about the bread, and feeling so wrong, and he lets it go while Draco licks healing charms into his poor, aching hole and kisses more charms into his skin after that, and soon there’s no pain at all, only a pleasure so vast Harry can’t tell where he ends and it begins, and Draco does this and does this until Harry sobs out something that means please fuck me, please be inside me, please, or I’ll die, I’ll die, and Draco doesn’t do it, no—he keeps licking Harry until he cries more fat tears into the cushion, and then Draco makes him drip with warm lube and stretches him slowly, one finger at a time, until finally he turns Harry over onto his back and settles between his thighs and pushes himself inside, their arms all tangled around each other, holding tight.

“Don’t go,” Harry hears himself say. “Don’t. Please. Stay. Wait for me.”

Draco leans down and kisses him, so softly it would be sort of chaste if Draco wasn’t buried in Harry to the hilt, and the gentleness of it takes him right over the edge. The moment Harry’s release hits Draco’s chest, he fills Harry with his own heat, and Harry can’t bear the thought of it ending, ever, ever, so he digs his fingers into Draco’s back.

He’s not sure how long they stay like that.

A long time.

Never long enough.

Malfoy won’t leave Harry alone.

He sleeps in Harry’s bed that night, and the night after, then flatly refuses to go home.

“It’s against Ministry policy,” says Harry one night, tired, half-asleep. Harry had sucked Malfoy’s cock until Malfoy came down his throat, then bent over his lap and let Malfoy spank him until he came untouched, all over Malfoy’s leg.

Malfoy pulls Harry closer to his side. “I don’t care.”

They continue on with their lives, then, but they also live together. Harry doesn’t notice Malfoy’s prodding at first. It sounds like everything else Malfoy says, only Do you honestly think you’re granted leave to kill us all because you bested one megalomaniac? becomes Is it really your chest that’s bothering you, or is it somewhere else? Somewhere else in your body, Potter. No, it is not the emptiness of your Merlin-blessed arsehole I’m referring to, but if you insist—

Harry ignores about half these prompts. He doesn’t know how to describe what he feels in his body. That’s different every time. But Malfoy keeps asking, and keeps asking, and keeps asking, and eventually Harry finds that he does have answers, sort of.

“Er…” He hasn’t been able to relax all day, hasn’t been able to settle, and they’re supposed to be sorting through the heirlooms that have collected at Grimmauld so they can redecorate or something. And now Malfoy’s watching him with a look in his eyes that says he already knows what Harry’s problem is, but he’s having a bit of a teaching moment. “It’s my jeans.”

The hole has become too large, slipping off Harry’s knee in a way that pulls threads across his shin, and he can’t bloody stand it.

He spends hours one night searching for a specific jumper—green, with a white H on the front—and when Malfoy says he should come to bed and look in the morning, Harry throws an enormous wobbly that ends in him shouting I want my parents to be alive, I can’t find them, I can’t lose this jumper, too.

They discover there are things Harry wants to say, but only sometimes, and not at home, so they buy a little cottage in the country that only the two of them know about. Certain things stay there. Everything else finds a place at Grimmauld.

Five months after Malfoy moves in without asking, Harry feels so wretched that Malfoy drags him up to the bedroom and pins Harry over his lap.

That’s when Harry learns what it feels like to have a plug made of freshly carved ginger pushed firmly into his hole.

“I’m scared you’ll get angry and leave me,” Harry says, several hours later. He got his head on Malfoy’s chest, the rest of his body close as he can get.

“Angry?”

Harry thinks about it. “Sick of me.”

“That’s absurd. I’m too in love with you.”

“Wh—at?” Harry chokes mid-word and has to cough until his airway is cleared. “But I—I’m—I love? You. I’m in love with you. Also. But Malfoy, I’m not—”

Malfoy reaches to the bedside table. “No more of that. It’s Draco, for Merlin’s sake.”

“Draco—why? Er—it’s your name, but—”

“I’m in love with you.” Draco opens his hand. There’s a ring in his palm. “And we’re going to be married.”

“Yes?” Harry squeaks.

Draco tips Harry’s chin up so their eyes meet. Harry’s never seen him look more sure of himself, and he’s seen Draco look plenty sure of himself over the years. “Yes.”

The rest of the day is long and lazy. Draco takes Harry into the bath and lingers over the potions and flannels, letting Harry float for at least an hour. He Summons Harry’s favourite pants and vest, dries him off, and wraps him in an outrageous amount of blankets. 

They migrate to the sofa, where Harry curls next to Draco and spends the late afternoon staring blissfully into space, eating whatever Draco feeds him, and listening to Draco read a journal article on curse-breaking theory aloud like it’s a soothing bedtime story.

Harry sleeps through the night, deep and dreamless.

In the morning, he slides down the sheets and rubs his lips along Draco’s soft, adorable cock until it perks up, then takes it into his mouth and sucks him until Draco’s cursing in a posh Merlin’s pickles way and clutching at the sheets, so Harry takes the opportunity to hike Draco’s legs up and lick him in more places, and it all goes very well until Harry’s mind splits apart from the sounds Draco’s making, and he is reduced to begging, begging, to be allowed to fuck him.

Which Draco allows.

He drags Harry over him, wraps his hand around Harry’s nape, and pulls him close. 

“Slowly,” he orders, and Harry’s arms shake, his legs shake, his arse shakes from trying to do what Draco says. He pushes inside him at a glacial speed, watching for every quick inhale, every parting of his lips. “Good. Deeper. Yes. Ah—Merlin’s tit. Harder. Yes. Harder. Good—ah.”

Harry’s never seen anything prettier than Draco when he comes. 

“Pink,” Harry manages to say, then comes himself, spilling inside Draco like he didn’t spurt out his soul just last night.

In the shower, Draco makes a point of looking Harry over—every inch of him—and pronounces him criminally fit.

The birds chat at full volume when they leave at midmorning, strolling down the path, hands linked. They’ve a lunch to go to with Blaise and Hermione. Ron and Pansy are coming, too. Harry would’ve been horrible company if they hadn’t come.

At the clearing, Harry pulls Draco close, hands on his waist, and Draco studies him again, his hands on Harry’s face.

“Better?” he asks.

Harry smiles at Draco’s serious little pout. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

Draco leans in for a kiss, and Harry opens for it, shutting out the green clearing and the dappled light and Draco. He’ll be there when Harry opens his eyes. He always is. 

Draco’s mouth is still on Harry’s when Harry turns, whirling them away. 

The birds don’t notice they’ve gone, or else they’re confident they’ll be back. Two skylarks circle the trees, twittering at one another. Their song doubles, then triples, rising to the treetops and drifting down to cover the clearing, leaving no empty space.