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The café on Rue de la Paix smelled of burnt sugar and rain-soaked pavement, and Draco (though he didn't think of himself as Draco anymore, just as the English transplant who worked at the bookshop three streets over) had learned to find comfort in small, ordinary things.
The way sunlight caught on the rim of his coffee cup. The sound of French conversations flowing around him. The absence of recognition in every face that passed.
He had been in Paris for five years, though the exact date of his arrival remained fuzzy in his mind, wrapped in the same grey fog that obscured most of his memories from before.
Sometimes he dreamed of cold stone corridors and the smell of something burning (not pleasant like the café's caramelized sugar, but acrid and wrong) and he would wake with his heart pounding, certain he had forgotten something vital.
But then morning would come with its rituals of coffee and bread and the walk to the bookshop where Madame Rousseau never asked about his past, and the panic would recede like tide pulling back from shore.
He knew he had left England. That much was certain, a fact rather than a memory. He knew his French had improved from barely functional to fluent over the years, that he preferred reading to almost anything else, that he had a small flat with windows that overlooked a courtyard where an old woman fed pigeons every morning at eight.
He knew he was twenty-eight years old, that his hair was pale enough to catch sunlight even on overcast days, that strangers sometimes stared at him on the Metro with a look he couldn't quite interpret. Something between curiosity and concern.
What he didn't know was why the sight of certain faces in newspapers made his chest constrict with an emotion that felt like anger wrapped around something more complicated.
Why he avoided reading about England entirely.
Why the few times someone had asked him about home, he'd felt the urge to lie, to say he was from somewhere else entirely, somewhere that didn't leave this sour taste in his mouth.
The not-knowing had become its own kind of comfort. A fresh start, people called it. A new life.
And Draco (no, just Draco, because what was the point of a last name when you were starting over?) had built that life carefully, one day at a time, in a language that wasn't his first and a city that asked nothing of him except that he show up and exist.
~
The memories he did have felt incomplete, like photographs with the edges burned away.
He remembered being angry. So angry the feeling lived in his bones, made his hands shake when he tried to hold still.
He remembered a woman with platinum hair and hollow eyes, a shell of something that had once been whole, and the knowledge that he couldn't save her because he could barely save himself.
He remembered cold (the kind that seeped into marrow and stayed there) and the sensation of being watched, judged, found wanting by eyes that didn't see him as human.
He remembered, with a clarity that seemed cruel given how much else was lost, the face of a boy with messy dark hair and glasses. A boy whose name he couldn't recall but whose presence in his fractured memories felt like a knife pressed against his ribs.
Famous, that boy. Self-righteous. The kind of person who smiled for cameras while Draco's world crumbled into ash and isolation.
He remembered thinking: I cannot do this anymore. I cannot be this person anymore.
And then nothing. A gap where the next part should be, and then waking up on a train to Paris with a ticket in his pocket and a passport that said his name but felt foreign in his hands.
The gaps didn't bother him most days. Sometimes he wondered if he'd wanted to forget, if the erasure was intentional.
But those thoughts felt dangerous, like touching a wound before it had fully healed, so he let them drift away and focused instead on the concrete details of his current existence.
He worked at Rousseau's rare bookshop, a cramped space filled with volumes that smelled of vanilla and decay. He was good at his job (meticulous, careful, able to read multiple languages) and Madame Rousseau paid him enough to afford his small flat and his simple life.
He had acquaintances, people who nodded at him in the café or chatted with him about literature, but no real friends. That suited him. Connection required vulnerability, and Draco had the sense that vulnerability was something he'd learned to avoid.
Five years of this. Five years of deliberate smallness, of a life pared down to its essential components. Five years of not being whoever he'd been before, of not carrying whatever weight had driven him across the Channel with a one-way ticket.
And then Harry Potter walked into Rousseau's bookshop on a Tuesday afternoon, and everything Draco thought he'd left behind came crashing back like a wave he'd been too foolish to see building.
~
He didn't recognize him at first.
The man who pushed through the shop door was just another customer, tall and dark-haired, wearing jeans and a jacket that looked expensive but broken-in.
Handsome in an unpolished way, with strong features and eyes the color of forests in summer.
Draco glanced up from the inventory he was cataloging, offered the polite smile he'd perfected for tourists, and said in English (because the accent was obvious) "May I help you find something?"
The man stopped. Just stopped, completely still in the middle of the shop floor, and stared at Draco with an expression that made something in Draco's chest twist uncomfortably.
"Draco," the man said, and his voice was rough, like he'd swallowed gravel or hadn't spoken in days.
Draco frowned. "I'm sorry, do we know each other?"
It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it immediately from the way the man's face did something complicated. Shock and pain and something that might have been hope, all cycling through in the span of a heartbeat.
"You..." The man took a step closer, and Draco found himself stepping back instinctively, his hip bumping against the desk. "You don't remember me."
"Should I?" Draco kept his voice level, professional, even as his pulse kicked up for reasons he couldn't name. There was something about this man, something that pulled at the edges of his consciousness like a splinter he couldn't quite reach.
The man (whoever he was) ran a hand through his already messy hair, and the gesture tugged at something in Draco's memory even though he was certain he'd never seen it before.
"I'm Harry. Harry Potter. We... we knew each other. In England. Before."
"I don't remember England very well," Draco said carefully. "I've been in Paris for five years. I don't recall much from before that."
Harry Potter (because apparently that was this man's name, though it meant nothing to Draco beyond a vague sense of having heard it somewhere) looked like he'd been struck. "You don't remember anything?"
"Fragments. Nothing coherent." Draco crossed his arms over his chest, a defensive posture he didn't quite understand the need for. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I can help you. If you're looking for a book..."
"I'm not looking for a book." Harry's voice was quiet but intense, his green eyes fixed on Draco's face like he was trying to memorize every detail. "I've been looking for you. For years I've been looking for you."
The shop suddenly felt too small, the air too close. Draco's hands were trembling slightly, and he curled them into fists to hide it. "I don't understand. Why would you be looking for me?"
"Because you disappeared." Harry took another step forward, slower this time, like he was approaching something easily startled. "After the... after everything ended, you just vanished. No one knew where you'd gone. Your mother wouldn't say, even when I..."
He stopped himself, shook his head, laughing bitterly. "I've been searching. And now I've found you, and you don't even know who I am."
There was something in his voice that tightened Draco's throat. Grief, maybe. Or longing. Something raw and unguarded that should have pulled Draco's eyes away, but he couldn't seem to manage it.
"I'm sorry," Draco said again, and meant it. "But I'm not whoever you think I am. Not anymore."
"Yes, you are." Harry's certainty was maddening. "You're Draco Malfoy, and we were..." He paused, seemed to reconsider. "We knew each other. For a long time. And I just... I need you to remember."
Malfoy. The name echoed in Draco's head, and for a moment something flickered. Stone corridors, the smell of apples and smoke, a voice saying his name with venom. But then it was gone, leaving only the ghost of a headache behind his eyes.
"I don't," he said quietly. "I don't remember. And I don't know if I want to."
The truth of that statement surprised him. But standing there in Madame Rousseau's bookshop, looking at this stranger with his familiar gestures and his wounded eyes, Draco realized that part of him was terrified of what remembering might mean. That whatever he'd left behind in England had been painful enough to make him forget it entirely.
Harry Potter looked at him for a long moment, and Draco had the unsettling sense of being seen (truly seen) for the first time in five years.
"Okay," Harry said finally. "Okay. I understand. But I'm not leaving Paris. Not yet. So maybe... maybe we could just talk? Start over?"
Draco should have said no. Should have told this stranger to leave, to stop looking at him like he was both a ghost and a miracle, to take his intensity and his searching eyes somewhere else.
Instead, he heard himself say, "There's a café around the corner. I finish in an hour."
And Harry Potter smiled (small and tentative and somehow heartbreaking) and said, "I'll wait."
~
The café around the corner turned out to be the same one where Draco got his morning coffee, which felt both inevitable and vaguely intrusive. As if Harry Potter was going to reshape even this small part of Draco's carefully constructed life just by existing in it.
They didn't speak on the walk over. Harry kept his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the evening chill, and Draco found himself hyper-aware of the distance between them. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that he could smell Harry's cologne again. That woody, warm scent that had pulled at something in Draco earlier.
The café was nearly empty at this hour, just a few students hunched over laptops and an elderly couple sharing a pastry by the window. Draco's usual table in the back corner was free, and he headed for it automatically before remembering he wasn't alone.
"Here okay?" he asked, and Harry nodded, pulling out a chair.
They ordered in French. Draco watched Harry stumble through requesting an espresso, his accent atrocious but his determination endearing in a way that pulled Draco in two directions at once. Help him. Retreat from him. He ordered his usual café crème and immediately wondered if that revealed too much. If Harry would file away that detail like he was building a case.
When the barista left, silence settled between them like snow.
"So," Harry said finally.
"So," Draco echoed.
Harry ran a hand through his hair and laughed, but it came out strained. "I rehearsed this. In my head. What I'd say when I found you. And now I'm completely blank."
"You could start with how you found me," Draco suggested. "Paris is a big city."
"Luck, mostly." Harry's smile was self-deprecating. "And stubbornness. I checked every English-language bookshop in the city before I found Rousseau's. You're the forty-third rare book dealer I've visited in the past six months."
Forty-three. The number was staggering. Draco wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, grateful for something to do with them. "That's... persistent."
"I can be, when it matters."
"And I matter?" Draco kept his voice neutral, but knots in his stomach pulled tight. "Why?"
Harry opened his mouth, closed it again. Seemed to reconsider whatever he'd been about to say. "We have history. And I'm not good at letting things go unresolved."
It was carefully vague. Draco appreciated that, even as part of him wanted to push for more.
"What kind of history?" he asked instead.
"The complicated kind." Harry took a sip of his espresso, grimaced at the bitterness. "We knew each other for years. Went to the same school. We weren't... friends. But we weren't strangers either."
"Enemies?" Draco suggested, and watched Harry's expression do something complicated.
"Sometimes. But that's not—" He stopped, shook his head. "I don't want to tell you who you were. I want you to tell me who you are now."
The deflection was obvious, but Draco found he didn't mind. There was something almost considerate about it. About Harry's refusal to weigh this conversation with the past Draco couldn't remember.
"There's not much to tell," Draco said. "I work at a bookshop. I live alone. I read a lot. I take the same route to work every day and order the same coffee every morning. It's not very interesting."
"It sounds peaceful," Harry said quietly.
"It is." Draco paused. "Most of the time."
"And the rest of the time?"
Draco considered lying. Considered keeping his walls up, maintaining the careful distance he'd cultivated for five years. But there was something about Harry's eyes. Something that pulled honesty from him like a confession.
"Lonely," he admitted. "The rest of the time it's lonely."
Harry's expression softened into something that looked like understanding. "Yeah. I get that."
"Do you?" Draco challenged. "You don't strike me as someone who spends a lot of time alone."
"I'm alone in crowds all the time." Harry shrugged. "It's different, but not better."
There was weight behind those words. Unbearably painful that Harry was trying to hide behind casualness. Draco recognized it because he'd spent five years doing the same thing.
They fell into silence, but it was less awkward now. Almost comfortable.
"Can I ask you something?" Draco said eventually.
"Anything."
"How long are you staying in Paris?"
Harry's jaw tightened. "I don't know yet. My hotel's booked for two weeks, but I can extend it if I need to."
"And then what?"
"And then..." Harry met his eyes directly. "I don't know. I came here to find you. I didn't think much past that."
It should have been unsettling. Instead, Draco felt something flutter in his chest. Very dangerous and warm.
"You didn't think I'd want to see you," Draco observed.
"I thought you might slam the door in my face, actually." Harry's smile was crooked. "This is better than I expected."
"This is me sitting across from you in a café saying approximately ten words."
"Like I said. Better than expected."
Draco found himself smiling. "Your expectations must have been very low."
"You have no idea."
They talked for another half hour. Careful topics, neutral ground. Harry told him about his hotel near the Marais, about getting lost in the Metro, about the café he'd found that made terrible coffee but had the best view of Notre-Dame. Draco talked about the bookshop, about Madame Rousseau's temperamental cat, about the old woman who fed pigeons in his courtyard every morning at eight.
It was surface-level conversation, the kind you'd have with a colleague or a distant acquaintance. But beneath it, Draco could feel something else building. A current of awareness, of attention, of possibility.
When Harry's espresso was long empty and Draco's café crème had gone cold, Harry cleared his throat.
"Can I—" He paused, seemed to gather courage. "Can I see you again? Tomorrow, maybe? Or whenever you're free."
Draco should say no. Must protect the life he'd built, the peace he'd found. And recognize this for what it was: a threat to everything he'd constructed in the absence of memory.
"Tomorrow," he heard himself say. "Same time?"
The smile that broke across Harry's face was incandescent.
They left together, stepping out into the cold Paris night. Harry walked him to his building without being asked, keeping a careful distance that somehow felt more intimate than touching.
"Thank you," Harry said at the door. "For giving me a chance."
"I haven't given you anything yet," Draco replied, but it came out softer than he intended.
"You sat with me. You talked to me. You're letting me come back tomorrow." Harry's voice was rough. "That's more than I thought I'd get."
Draco wanted to ask what Harry had expected. Wanted to ask what had happened between them that made Harry search for him all these years. Wanted to ask a thousand questions that felt too dangerous for this fragile thing between them.
Instead, he said, "Goodnight, Harry."
Harry's expression twisted with an complicated emotion at the sound of his name. "Goodnight, Draco."
Draco watched him walk away, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold. And for the first time in five years, he felt something other than the careful numbness he'd cultivated.
He felt curious. Hopeful.
Terrified.
~
They met at the café three times before Draco let himself admit he was looking forward to it.
Harry came back the next day, and the day after that, always appearing at the bookshop just before closing, always asking if Draco had time to talk. And Draco, for reasons he couldn't fully articulate, kept saying yes.
They talked about Paris and books, which Draco could discuss endlessly without straying into dangerous territory. Harry was careful, Draco noticed. He didn't push, didn't try to fill in the gaps in Draco's memory with stories that might overwhelm.
But there were moments when Harry would say something (a turn of phrase, a particular way of tilting his head) and Draco would feel that strange pull again, like a hook behind his sternum tugging him toward something just out of reach.
On the third evening, Harry asked about the bookshop. About what Draco liked most about his work. And Draco found himself talking about the quiet satisfaction of matching readers with the perfect book, the smell of old paper and leather bindings, the way Madame Rousseau's cat would curl up in patches of sunlight.
Small things. Safe things.
But Harry listened like every word mattered, and Draco realized he'd never had someone pay attention like this. Like he was interesting just for existing.
It felt like a dangerous offer. Like opening a door Draco had spent five years keeping locked.
But there was something about Harry Potter. The way he looked at Draco like he mattered, like he was worth searching for across countries and years. It pulled at Draco. Made him want to be reckless.
Draco wanted to be reckless.
"Okay," he said. "Okay."
~
Harry started showing up at the bookshop every day.
He'd browse the shelves while Draco worked, sometimes asking questions about rare editions or translations, sometimes just reading quietly in the corner armchair that usually went unused. Madame Rousseau raised an eyebrow the second time he appeared, gave Draco a knowing look that made his cheeks warm, but said nothing.
They fell into a rhythm. Coffee after work, sometimes dinner at small restaurants where the lighting was low and conversation flowed easier than Draco expected.
Harry talked about his work (something vague about security consulting that Draco suspected wasn't the full truth) and his life in London, carefully edited to avoid references to their shared past. Draco talked about Paris, about the books he loved, about the quiet life he'd built.
And if sometimes Harry looked at him with something that felt like longing, something that warmed Draco's skin and caught his breath, well.
Draco was learning to ignore that. Or trying to.
The problem was that he didn't want to ignore it.
Harry Potter was handsome. More than handsome. Magnetic in a way that had nothing to do with conventional attractiveness and everything to do with the way he listened when Draco spoke, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled, the way his hands moved when he was passionate about something.
Draco found himself watching those hands, wondering what they'd feel like on his skin, and then immediately feeling foolish for the thought.
This wasn't him. Draco didn't do this. Didn't let people in, didn't feel this pull toward anyone, had spent five years carefully not connecting to anyone beyond the superficial.
But Harry pulled at him. Wanted to try. Wanted to be reckless in ways that terrified him.
"Tell me something true," Harry said one evening, three weeks after he'd first walked into the bookshop. They were in Draco's flat. Harry had walked him home, and somehow they'd ended up here, drinking wine on Draco's small balcony while Paris glittered below them.
"Something true?" Draco echoed.
"Something you've never told anyone else. Since you've been here." Harry's eyes were dark in the limited light, serious and searching.
Draco considered lying. But the wine had loosened his tongue, and there was something about the darkness that felt safe. Confessional.
"I'm lonely," he said quietly. "I've been lonely for five years, and I didn't realize it until you showed up."
Harry was quiet for a moment. Then: "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It was my choice. Whatever I left behind, I left it for a reason."
"And if I told you the reason wasn't good enough? That you deserved better than exile and loneliness?"
Draco laughed, but it came out bitter. "You don't know me well enough to say that."
"I know you better than you think," Harry said, and there was such certainty in his voice that Draco had to look away.
They sat in silence for a while. Draco watched the lights of Paris through the balcony railing, aware of Harry beside him in a way that made his skin feel too sensitive.
"Can I tell you something?" Harry said finally, very softly. "Something true?"
"Yes."
Harry was quiet for a long moment. When Draco glanced over, Harry was staring down at his wine glass, jaw tight like he was fighting with himself.
"I shouldn't," Harry said. "You asked me not to force memories on you, and this might—"
"Harry." Draco turned to face him fully. "Whatever you're trying to say, just say it."
Harry took a breath. Let it out slowly. "I haven't stopped thinking about you since the day I saw you in that courtroom."
The world seemed to tilt slightly. "Courtroom," Draco repeated.
"After the war ended. You were on trial." Harry's voice was careful, like he was walking through a minefield. "They wanted to send you to prison. A lot of people were calling for it. And you stood there, and you looked..."
He paused, searching for words, and Draco could see the memory playing behind his eyes.
"You looked like you were drowning, and everyone was just watching. Like they'd already decided what you were, and nothing you said would matter. And I couldn't—" Harry's hands clenched on the railing. "I couldn't stand it. So I testified for you."
Draco's chest felt tight. "You testified for me."
"Yes. Even though my friends said I was mad. Even though you looked at me afterward like you hated me for it." Harry's smile was sad. "You did hate me for it, actually."
"Why would I hate you for keeping me out of prison?"
"Because you didn't want my pity." Harry's voice was quiet. "Because accepting help from me meant admitting you needed it. Because—"
A flash of memory. Sharp and sudden. A courtroom. A sea of faces. A boy with dark hair standing at a podium, his voice steady as he spoke words that Draco couldn't quite hear. The feeling of fury and humiliation and unwanted gratitude all tangled together until he couldn't breathe.
Draco's hands were shaking. He set down his wine glass before he could drop it.
"You..." His voice came out rough. "You testified for me?"
"You remember." Harry's voice was careful, hopeful.
"Just that. Just... standing there. Fragments of you for helping me." Draco pressed his palm against his forehead, trying to will the memory into more detail, but it stayed fragmentary. Incomplete.
"You had every right to hate me," Harry said quietly. "I was part of the reason you were there in the first place."
"I don't understand."
"No. You wouldn't." Harry reached out, hesitated, then let his hand drop. "And maybe that's better. Maybe you're better off without all of it."
Draco looked at him (really looked at him) and saw the weight Harry was carrying. Whatever their history was, it lived in him like something heavy and unresolved.
"Kiss me," Draco said.
Harry went still. "What?"
"Kiss me."
The wine had loosened something in him. Or maybe it was the loneliness he'd finally named. Or maybe it was just Harry himself. This man who'd searched for him for years, who looked at him like he was worth finding.
"I want you to kiss me."
"Draco..."
"Don't tell me it's a bad idea. I know it's a bad idea. Just... please."
For a moment, Harry just stared at him. Then he leaned in, slowly enough that Draco could have pulled back, could have changed his mind. But Draco didn't move. He waited, breath caught in his throat, until Harry's lips touched his.
It was gentle at first. Tentative. Like Harry was afraid Draco might shatter.
But Draco made a soft sound (need and frustration and want all tangled together) and something in Harry seemed to break. He kissed Draco harder, one hand coming up to cup the back of Draco's neck, and Draco opened for him, let him in, felt something in his chest crack open like a door that had been sealed for too long.
They stumbled inside, wine forgotten on the balcony, hands fumbling with buttons and zippers and the barriers of clothing that seemed suddenly unbearable.
Draco had never done this (not with a man, not like this, desperate and clumsy and real) but his body seemed to know what to do even as his mind spun with the newness of it all. Harry's hands were everywhere, pulling at Draco's shirt, sliding it off his shoulders, and Draco found himself doing the same, tugging at Harry's jacket, his buttons, until they were both half-dressed and breathing hard.
"Wait," Harry said suddenly, pulling back. His lips were red, his pupils blown wide, and Draco felt a flicker of panic.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." Harry's hands came up to frame Draco's face, thumbs stroking along his cheekbones. "I just... I need to know this is what you want. Not the wine talking. Not loneliness. You."
Draco's hands were shaking. "I want this. I want you."
"You've never..." Harry trailed off, searching Draco's face.
"Not with a man. Not like this." Draco felt heat crawl up his neck. "Is that a problem?"
"No. god, no." Harry kissed him again, softer this time. "I just need to know if you're sure. Because I..." He stopped, swallowed hard. "I've wanted this for a long time. And if we do this, I need it to mean something. I need you to want it too."
The vulnerability in Harry's voice cracked open Draco's chest and he was bleeding. He'd never seen someone so clearly wanting something while simultaneously offering to walk away from it.
"I'm sure," Draco said quietly. "I'm terrified, but I'm sure."
Harry's smile was brilliant and brief before he was kissing Draco again, backing him toward the bedroom, hands gentle but insistent. They shed the rest of their clothes between kisses, and when Draco found himself pressed back against his bed, Harry's weight settling over him, he felt his breath catch.
"You're shaking," Harry murmured against his throat.
"Nervous," Draco admitted.
"We can stop. Anytime you want, we can stop."
"I don't want to stop." Draco slid his hands into Harry's hair, pulled him down for another kiss. "I just... I don't know what I'm doing."
"That's okay." Harry kissed along his jaw, down his neck. "Just tell me what feels good."
And he did. Harry took his time, mapping Draco's body with his hands and mouth like he was memorizing something precious. He found places that pulled sounds from Draco—gasps, arches into the touch, forgetting to be self-conscious about the noises he was making.
When Harry's hand wrapped around him, Draco nearly came undone right there.
"Fuck," he gasped, hips jerking up involuntarily.
"Good?" Harry asked, voice rough.
"Yes. Fuck, yes."
Harry worked him slowly, building pleasure in waves that left Draco trembling. Then he pulled back slightly, reaching for his wand on the nightstand.
"What are you...?" Draco started.
"Accio," Harry murmured, and a small vial flew from his jacket pocket across the room into his waiting hand. He set his wand aside and uncorked the vial, warming the contents between his palms.
Draco felt his face heat. "You really did come prepared."
"I hoped," Harry smirked again, meeting his eyes. "But I would have walked away if you'd asked."
When Harry's slick fingers pressed carefully between his legs, Draco tensed.
"Breathe," Harry murmured. "Just breathe. I've got you."
Draco tried to relax, focused on Harry's voice, the warmth of his body, the way he was being so careful. It felt strange at first, intrusive, but Harry was patient, kissing him through it, murmuring reassurances, and slowly the strangeness gave way to something else.
"Okay?" Harry asked, watching his face.
"Yeah. I think... yeah."
Harry added another finger, working him open with maddening slowness, and Draco felt pleasure begin to build alongside the stretch. When Harry's fingers found something inside him that made sparks shoot up his spine, Draco cried out, fingers digging into Harry's shoulders.
"There," Harry said softly, doing it again. "That's good, isn't it?"
"Don't stop," Draco managed. "Please don't stop."
But Harry did stop, pulling his hand away, and Draco made a sound of protest that died when he saw Harry reaching for his discarded jeans, pulling out a condom from his wallet.
He slicked his fingers again from the vial, worked Draco open more, until Draco was writhing beneath him, desperate and aching and ready. When Harry finally withdrew his fingers and rolled on the condom, Draco felt his heart hammering against his ribs.
He couldn't help but look down between them, and his breath caught. Harry was hard and flushed, bigger than Draco had expected, and for a moment panic fluttered in his chest because that was supposed to fit inside him, and suddenly all the careful preparation felt insufficient.
Harry must have seen something in his face because he immediately stilled, one hand coming up to cup Draco's cheek.
"Hey," he said softly. "We can stop. We don't have to—"
"No." Draco shook his head, swallowing hard. "I want this. I'm just... nervous."
"That's okay. Being nervous is okay." Harry pressed a kiss to his forehead, then his nose, then his lips. "We'll go slow. And if it's too much, you tell me. Okay?"
"Okay."
Harry positioned himself carefully, the blunt head of his cock pressing against Draco, slick and warm and impossibly intimidating. Draco forced himself to breathe, to trust, to open.
"Look at me," Harry said, positioning himself. "I need you to look at me."
Draco met his eyes. Those green eyes that saw too much. That exposed him and cherished him all at once.
"Stop me if you need to," Harry said quietly. "Any time. I mean it."
Draco nodded, throat too tight for words.
Harry pushed forward slowly, carefully, and Draco felt the burn and stretch of it, felt his body resist and then yield. It hurt. It did hurt, more than he'd expected, and he must have made a sound because Harry stilled immediately.
"Draco," Harry murmured, one hand coming up to cup Draco's face. "Just breathe through it. It gets better."
Draco focused on breathing, on Harry's thumb stroking his cheekbone, on the way Harry was trembling with the effort of holding still. Slowly, the sharp edge of pain began to dull, and Draco shifted his hips experimentally.
"Okay," he said. "You can... you can move."
Harry moved with agonizing slowness, pulling out and pushing back in, setting a gentle rhythm that gradually built into something deeper. And he'd been right—it did get better. The burn faded into a different kind of pressure, a fullness that overwhelmed Draco in the best possible way.
Harry was everywhere. His hands, his mouth, the solid weight of him pressing Draco into the mattress like an anchor. Draco heard himself making sounds he didn't recognize, felt pleasure build in waves that left him shaking. Harry adjusted his angle and suddenly hit that spot inside him again, and Draco arched up with a broken cry.
"There?" Harry asked, breathless.
"Yes. God, yes, there."
Harry kept hitting it, kept moving with steady purpose, and Draco felt himself unraveling. It was too much and not enough, overwhelming and necessary, and through it all Harry watched him, seeing him in a way that felt both terrifying and necessary.
When Harry's hand wrapped around him again, stroking in time with his thrusts, Draco came apart with Harry's name on his lips, pleasure crashing through him in waves that left him boneless and shaking.
Harry followed soon after, burying his face in Draco's neck, trembling through his release.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in Draco's too-small bed, sweat cooling on their skin. Harry pulled out carefully, disposed of the condom, and gathered Draco close again.
"You okay?" Harry asked quietly.
Draco became aware of his body in stages. The pleasant ache between his legs. The unfamiliar soreness in muscles he hadn't known he had. The feeling of being thoroughly undone, exposed in ways that had nothing to do with the absence of clothing.
He felt perfect.
"Yeah," he gasped. "I'm more than okay."
Harry pressed a kiss to his temple. "You were amazing."
"I didn't do anything."
"You trusted me." Harry's voice was rough with emotion. "That's everything."
Draco thought about that. About trust, about letting someone see you at your most vulnerable. About taking a risk on something that felt both dangerous and inevitable.
This is going to ruin me, he thought.
But he couldn't bring himself to care.
~
He woke to sunlight and the smell of coffee, and for a moment everything was soft and simple. Harry was in his kitchen, making breakfast, and Draco could hear him humming something under his breath.
Then the memories started.
They came in flashes at first. A manor with white peacocks. A dark-haired woman teaching him to dance. The weight of something on his forearm that burned and burned and wouldn't stop. A boy's face (Harry's face) younger and frightened, in a bathroom with water everywhere and blood on the floor.
Oh god.
Draco sat up too fast, the room spinning. More memories crashed in, relentless and sharp. His father's voice, cold and cutting. The feeling of being watched, always watched, by a face that wasn't quite human. Dark robes and darker magic, and the knowledge that he was drowning, had been drowning for years, and no one was going to save him.
The courtroom. Harry Potter standing at the podium, speaking words that meant Draco wouldn't go to Azkaban. The fury he'd felt, the humiliation of being pitied by the Boy Who Lived, the self-righteous git who'd saved the world and apparently thought he needed to save Draco too.
I don't need your pity, he'd thought, glaring at Harry across the courtroom. I don't need anything from you.
He remembered leaving England. Remembered his mother's hollow eyes and his father locked away and the wizarding world that treated him like a monster wearing a human face.
Remembered thinking he couldn't survive it. Couldn't survive being Draco Malfoy, Death Eater's son, marked and ruined and hated.
Remembered performing the charm. The wand movement. The words. The intention to forget everything, to start over, to be someone else.
Not knowing it was temporary. Not understanding that buried memories could resurface like corpses in shallow graves.
And Harry. Harry, who had just spent the night in Draco's bed. Harry, who had been inside him, who had kissed him like he was precious, who had looked at Draco with something that might have been love.
Harry Potter, who Draco had spent years hating. Who represented everything Draco had been trying to escape.
Who had just fucked him.
The bedroom door opened, and Harry walked in with two cups of coffee, smiling in a way that hurt. So open. So unguarded. So hopeful.
"Get out," Draco spat.
Harry stopped. The smile faded. "What?"
"Get. Out." Draco's voice was shaking, his whole body trembling with a rage that felt volcanic. "Get out of my flat. Now."
"Draco..."
"Don't call me that!" He was shouting now, didn't care if the neighbors heard. "Don't you dare call me that. You... you knew. You knew who I was, you knew I didn't remember, and you... we..."
Understanding dawned on Harry's face, followed immediately by panic. "You remember."
"Yes, I fucking remember!" Draco grabbed the nearest thing (a book) and threw it. Harry dodged, barely, and the book hit the wall with a sound like a gunshot.
"I remember fragments of all of it. The war, the trial, your testimony that I never asked for, the way everyone looked at me like I was something to be pitied or punished. I remember leaving England because I couldn't breathe there anymore. And I remember you, Potter, standing there in that courtroom like some kind of savior, and I remember hating you for it."
"I was trying to help..."
"I didn't want your help! I wanted to be left alone! And instead you..." His voice broke. "You came here. You found me. You made me..."
He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't name what Harry had done to him. What Harry had pulled from him.
Harry set down the coffee cups carefully, his hands steady even though his eyes were devastated. "I didn't sleep with you to manipulate you. I didn't... that wasn't..."
"Then why?" Draco demanded. "Why did you do it? Was it curiosity? Did you want to know what it would be like to fuck your enemy?"
"You're not my enemy." Harry's voice was quiet but firm. "You haven't been for a long time."
"Then what am I to you?" Draco's hands were fists at his sides, nails digging into his palms. "What the hell am I to you, Potter?"
Harry looked at him for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was raw. "You're the person I've been in love with for ten years. You're the person I testified for because the thought of you in Azkaban made me sick. You're the person whose disappearance haunted me for three years until I finally found you. And you're the person I spent last night with because you asked me to, and because I wanted you, and because I thought..."
He stopped, swallowed hard. "I thought maybe this was finally our chance. To start over. To be something other than what the war made us."
The words hit Draco like a physical blow. Ten years. Harry had been in love with him for ten years.
It didn't matter. It couldn't matter.
"Get out," Draco said again, but quieter this time. "Please. Just get out."
Harry stood there for another moment, and Draco could see him warring with himself. The urge to fight, to argue, to refuse. But then something in his expression shifted into resignation, and he nodded once.
"Okay," he said softly. "Okay. I'll go."
Part of Draco hated himself for making Harry feel so small and sad. He swallowed a sob and waited for Harry to leave.
He collected his clothes from where they'd been scattered across the floor, dressed in silence while Draco watched with his arms wrapped around himself like he could hold the pieces together through sheer force of will. At the door, Harry paused.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. For not telling you who you were. For letting last night happen when you didn't have all the information. I'm sorry."
Draco didn't respond. Couldn't.
Please don't go
Harry left, and Draco stood in his empty flat, surrounded by the wreckage of a peace he'd spent five years building, and felt like he was drowning all over again.
~
Harry Potter did not, as Draco had hoped, leave Paris.
Instead, he seemed to be everywhere.
Draco saw him at the café where he usually got his morning coffee. At the bookstore where he sometimes browsed on his lunch break. Outside Rousseau's shop, not trying to come in but just... there, watching through the window like a ghost who couldn't quite manage to cross over.
It was infuriating. Unbearable.
Draco wanted to scream.
The hickeys on his neck had faded from purple to a mottled yellow-green, and every time Draco caught sight of them in the mirror he felt something twist in his chest. Shame and anger and (worse) a traitorous flicker of want.
Because his body remembered Harry's hands, Harry's mouth, the way it had felt to be touched like he was something precious.
His body was a betrayer. His mind knew better.
The memories were fully back now, returned with the kind of clarity that hurt. That wished for the fog again. He remembered Hogwarts (the rivalry, the hexes, the constant antagonism that had defined their school years). He remembered the war, the way fear had turned everything into survival and nothing else mattered except making it to the next day.
He remembered the trial, Harry's unexpected testimony, the way Draco had wanted to both thank him and curse him for the pity implicit in his words.
He remembered, with painful detail, the aftermath. The way the wizarding world had forgiven Harry everything and Draco nothing. The way people crossed the street to avoid him. The way his mother had retreated into herself until she was barely there, a shell going through motions.
The way his father's imprisonment had somehow made everything worse. As if Lucius Malfoy's absence was more damning than his presence had ever been.
He remembered the day he'd decided to leave. Packing a bag with Muggle clothes, buying a ticket to Paris with Muggle money, walking away from magic entirely because it had never brought him anything but pain.
And he remembered the memory charm. The desperate, stupid decision to erase it all, to give himself a fresh start.
What he hadn't remembered, what he was only piecing together now from fragments and feelings, was that he'd been falling apart. That the loneliness and the judgment had been crushing him.
That he'd thought (genuinely thought) that forgetting was the only way to survive.
He'd been wrong. Forgetting hadn't fixed anything. It had just postponed the reckoning.
~
Harry had been there every day for five days. Across the street, leaning against lampposts, pretending to read newspapers, always watching. On the fifth day, Draco snapped.
He stormed out of Rousseau's after closing, marched up to where Harry was leaning against a lamppost across the street, and grabbed him by the front of his jacket.
"What the hell are you doing?" Draco demanded.
Harry didn't look surprised. Didn't try to pull away. Just met Draco's eyes steadily and said, "Waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"For you to talk to me. For you to stop running. For you to..." He stopped himself, shook his head. "I don't know. For whatever comes next."
Draco wanted to shake him. Wanted to kiss him. Wanted to scream at him until he left and never came back. Instead he just stood there, fists curled in Harry's jacket, breathing hard.
"I can't do this," Draco said finally. "I can't... I don't know how to be around you. Everything's confusing and I'm angry and I don't have a wand so I can't even fix these fucking..." He gestured vaguely at his neck, where the hickeys had finally faded to barely-there shadows but still tingled when he touched them.
Something flickered in Harry's eyes. Guilt, maybe. Or regret.
"I can fix them," he said quietly. "If you want. I have my wand."
"I don't want anything from you."
"I know. But the offer stands anyway."
They stood there for a long moment, Draco still gripping Harry's jacket, Harry still looking at him with those impossible green eyes that saw too much.
"Why won't you just leave?" Draco asked, and hated how his voice cracked on the words.
"I spent years looking for you." Harry's voice was quiet, careful. "You matter to me. And I think... I think you might need someone right now, even if you won't admit it." He paused, meeting Draco's eyes. "I'm not very good at giving up on people I care about."
"You shouldn't care about me. I'm not... I'm not worth this."
Harry's expression did something complicated. "See, that's exactly why I can't leave. Because you actually believe that."
Draco let go of his jacket, stepped back. His hands were shaking. "I kicked you out. After we... I threw you out of my flat."
"You did."
"And you're not angry?"
"I'm angry at myself," Harry said quietly. "For not being more honest with you from the start. For letting things progress the way they did without making sure you understood who we were to each other. But angry at you? No. You had every right to react the way you did."
"Stop being so fucking reasonable," Draco snapped. "Stop making it so hard to hate you."
"I don't want you to hate me." Harry took a careful step closer. "I never wanted that. Even when we were enemies, even when hating each other was the easiest thing in the world, I never wanted it."
"Then what do you want?"
The question hung between them, weighted with everything they'd been and might become.
Harry was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was rough with honesty. "I want you to let me in. I want to help you remember that you're more than what the war made you. I want to show you that the life you've built here (quiet and safe and alone) doesn't have to be the only option."
He paused. "And I want you to kiss me again. But only if you actually want to. Only if you're choosing me, not just the idea of me."
Draco's breath caught. His body was trembling, caught between the urge to run and the urge to close the distance between them and...
"I don't have a wand," he said instead, because it was easier than addressing the rest of it. "I destroyed mine before I left England. I couldn't stand looking at it."
Understanding dawned in Harry's eyes. "You've been wandless for five years."
"I haven't needed one. Magic just... it reminded me of everything I wanted to forget."
"And now?"
"Now I remember it all anyway." Draco laughed, but it came out bitter. "The charm was temporary. I didn't know that. I thought I'd bought myself a lifetime of peace, but all I got was five years."
"Was it peaceful?" Harry asked. "Those five years?"
Draco considered the question. Thought about his small flat, his job at the bookshop, the carefully constructed routines that had filled his days. Thought about the loneliness he'd only named when Harry had shown up.
The loneliness that was less now. Less because of Harry.
"No," he admitted. "Not really. But it was better than drowning."
"What if there's a third option?" Harry's voice was quiet, hopeful. "What if you don't have to choose between drowning and isolation? What if you could just... live?"
"I don't know how to do that."
"Then let me help you figure it out."
Draco looked at him. This man who'd searched for him across countries and years, who'd testified for him when no one else would, who'd looked at Draco in a courtroom and apparently decided he was worth saving even when Draco hadn't believed it himself.
This man who'd spent the night in Draco's bed. Who had pulled things from Draco he'd never let himself feel before.
This man who was standing here, day after day, waiting for Draco to decide what came next.
"I'm still angry," Draco said finally.
He really wasn't
"I know." Harry was smiling now.
Draco wanted to bite those lips and kiss him.
"And I don't trust you."
"I know that too."
"And I don't... I don't know if I can be what you think I am. What you want me to be."
Harry's smile dimmed with sadness and understanding. "I don't want you to be anything except yourself. Whoever that is. Even if you're still figuring it out."
Draco closed his eyes. Took a breath. Made a decision that felt both terrifying and inevitable.
"Coffee," he said. "Tomorrow. The café on Rue de la Paix. Seven AM."
When he opened his eyes, Harry was smiling properly now, and Draco felt the heaviness shift inside him. He felt lighter than he had been in years.
"I'll be there," Harry said.
Draco nodded once, then turned and walked away before he could change his mind. But he could feel Harry watching him go, and the weight of that attention felt less like judgment and more like possibility.
~
They started over slowly.
Coffee in the mornings became coffee in the evenings became dinners that stretched into late-night conversations. Harry told Draco stories about their past (not to force memories but to fill in gaps, to give context to the fragments Draco was still piecing together).
And Draco told Harry about Paris, about the person he'd become in the absence of magic and memory.
They didn't sleep together again. Not yet. Draco needed time, needed to know that this thing between them was real and not just the echo of who they'd been or the fantasy of who they might become. Harry understood. Harry was patient in a way that hurt. That ached.
Slowly, Draco started to remember more. Not just the bad things (though those remained vivid and sharp) but other moments too.
The way Harry had looked at him sometimes, across the Great Hall or in the corridors, with an intensity that Draco had mistaken for hatred but might have been something more complicated. The way they'd circled each other for years, locked in a dance that neither of them had fully understood.
"I think I hated you because you were free," Draco admitted one evening, six weeks after Harry had first walked into the bookshop. They were on Draco's balcony again, but sober this time, clear-headed. "You got to choose. Who to be, what to fight for. And I never had that. Every choice was already made for me before I was old enough to understand what choosing even meant."
Harry was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry."
Harry shouldn't be sorry for that.
"Don't be. It wasn't your fault."
"Wasn't it, though?" Harry's voice was rough. "I could have tried to understand you. Could have seen past the easy labels. But I didn't. I just accepted that you were the villain and I was the hero, and I never questioned it until it was almost too late."
"When did you question it?"
"The bathroom. Sixth year." Harry's hands were clenched on the balcony railing. "I used a spell I didn't understand, and you almost died, and I saw..." He stopped, swallowed hard. "I saw that you were terrified. That you'd been terrified for a long time. And I realized I didn't actually know you at all."
Draco remembered the bathroom. Remembered the water and the blood and the way Harry had looked at him. Not with hatred but with horror and something that might have been recognition.
"I was terrified," Draco whispered quietly. "All the time. Of failing, of succeeding, of what would happen to my family if I didn't do what He wanted. I was sixteen and I was drowning and nobody could save me because saving me would have meant destroying everything I was trying to protect."
"I wish I'd tried, Draco, that has been my deepest regret."
"It wouldn't have worked. I wouldn't have let you."
They stood in silence for a while, watching Paris glow in the darkness.
"I got a new wand," Draco said eventually.
Harry turned to look at him, surprised. "You did?"
"Last week. There's a wandmaker in the 6th arrondissement. French tradition, different from Ollivander's, but... it chose me. Or I chose it. However it works." He pulled it from his pocket, a slender thing of apple wood that felt right in his hand in a way his old wand never had.
"Have you used it?"
"Small things. Repairs. Cleaning charms." Draco hesitated. "It feels different. Like I'm different."
"You are different. You're not the person you were at seventeen, forced into choices you never wanted to make."
"Neither are you."
Harry smiled slightly. "No. I'm not."
Draco turned the wand in his fingers, feeling the grain of the wood, the potential it represented. Magic again. The part of himself he'd tried to excise, returning.
"I'm still figuring out who I am," he said. "With all the memories back. With magic again. With..." He gestured between them, unable to name it.
"That's okay," Harry said. "I'll wait."
"You've been waiting for ten years, apparently."
"What's a little longer?"
Draco laughed, and it came out less bitter than usual. "You're ridiculous."
"You've mentioned."
They lapsed into comfortable silence again, and Draco thought about the man he'd been (the boy, really, drowning in expectations and fear) and the man he was now, still figuring out how to swim.
Thought about Harry, who'd somehow become both an anchor and a lifeline, who'd searched for him and waited for him and believed in him even when Draco couldn't believe in himself.
"Ask me again," Draco said quietly.
"Ask you what?"
"What I asked me that night. On this balcony. Before everything went to hell."
Harry went very still. Then, carefully: "Can I kiss you?"
Draco turned to face him fully, and this time when he answered, it wasn't the wine talking or the loneliness or the desperate need to feel something other than grief. This time it was a choice. Clear-eyed and intentional and his.
"Yes."
Harry crossed the distance between them slowly, giving Draco time to change his mind. But Draco didn't want to change his mind. He wanted this. Wanted Harry's hands in his hair and Harry's mouth on his. Wanted the way being close to Harry felt. Like maybe drowning wasn't the only option after all.
When Harry kissed him, it felt like remembering and discovering all at once. Like coming home to a place he'd never been. Like starting over with the weight of history behind them and the possibility of something new ahead.
They broke apart eventually, breathless and smiling, and Draco thought: This might be okay. We might be okay.
"Stay," he said, and it came out like a question and a plea and a hope all tangled together.
Harry's smile was answer enough. But he said it anyway: "I'm not going anywhere."
And this time, Draco believed him.