Chapter Text
Harry cannot get Draco Malfoy out of his head. This isn’t a new problem so much as the surfacing of a very old problem that he thought he grew past after his sixth year at Hogwarts. Every moment where he has time to think to himself, it’s always Malfoy that takes up the free space in his mind where actual coherent thoughts should be. He couldn’t stop thinking about him in that parlor room. Specifically, he couldn’t erase the image of Malfoy perched on that awful stool with his blank eyes on the floor and blood dripping out of his nose and over his lip without him doing a thing to stop it.
Or the way his hands– Malfoy’s pale, graceful hands held tight to that malevolent jar despite his momentary absence. Harry knelt on the floor in front of him for what felt like hours before he came back to himself. He finds himself wondering if this always happens when Malfoy does that fascinating spell or if the parlor incident was merely an odd reaction of some kind. Malfoy didn’t seem bothered by what happened to him in the slightest, but if there’s anything Harry learned from following him around all of sixth year, it’s that Malfoy is good at hiding what’s actually going on with him by piling a bunch of other shit on to disguise it.
It’s why Harry decides to take a half-day on a random Friday when his boss offers it.. In theory, he wanted to go home to see exactly what it was Teddy and Malfoy got up to when they weren't horseback riding or cooking. He’d wanted (in theory, of course) to spend time with both of them. He wanted to actually take a walk around Islington and perhaps stop for ice cream.
But Malfoy and Teddy aren’t home when he apparates back to 12 Grimmauld Place. He knows they’re not because Berg is still in the living room. Malfoy keeps him there with a few wards on the doorways so the poor cat doesn’t get lost in the house while everyone is gone.
Upon Harry’s arrival, Berg yowls fiercely from his spot on the couch, showing off both of his snaggled canines.
“There there, Bergie,” Harry soothes, toeing his boots off by the door before stepping over to the cat and scratching him between the ears, “It’s just me.”
Berg purrs beneath his hand, shoving his entire raggedy face into Harry’s palm. He’s not exactly a cute cat or even one that Harry could see Malfoy owning. His overcoat is grown out in a way that makes him look like roadkill and his fur grows over his empty eye sockets in a rather strange way that reminds Harry of felt puppets. But he’s a very sweet cat. The best cat, Malfoy said so.
Harry plonks himself on the couch and decides to wait there until they get back home. He ends up sitting for about an hour and a half petting and playing with Berg in his arms. When Teddy kicks open the front door, Harry’s cuddling Berg in his arms like a baby.
“Harry!” Teddy squeals, throwing himself onto the couch. “You’re home so early!”
“Yeah,” Harry rubs his knuckles against the top of Teddy’s head, “I thought I’d catch you two at home. Guess I was too late.”
Teddy wraps both of his arms around Harry’s forearm and stays there mushing his cheek against the rest of Harry’s arm like he’s trying to become one with Harry’s body. Little parasite…
“We were doing the shopping,” Malfoy cuts in, strutting his way through the living room in pursuit of the kitchen. He’s wearing a pair of sunglasses that make him look bug eyed and quite terrifying, but it’s his ensemble that catches most of Harry’s attention. The weather’s only gotten hotter, and subsequently, Malfoy’s outfits have gotten odder. Today he’s in an old band t-shirt with cut off sleeves and black jeans that end in a cuff that cuts off just above his ankles, exposing both the pale of his arms and the near luminescence of his exposed ankles.
Harry follows Malfoy’s legs with his eyes until he disappears into the kitchen.
“Draco has a date,” Teddy says with a mischievous grin.
“What!?”
“It’s hardly a date!” Calls Malfoy, ducking his head back into the living room to tilt his sunnies down to glare fiercely at Teddy. Teddy merely laughs at him, “It’s just dinner.”
“With who?” Harry asks.
“Oh, just the man at the cafe…” mutters Teddy, his grin turning absolutely feral.
Malfoy’s glare turns chilly. Teddy grins until Harry pokes him in the cheek and says, “Oi, stop that, your face will get stuck like that some day.”
Teddy stops smiling in favor of sliding back off Harry’s arm to bolt up to the bathroom.
“A date?” Harry tries again, desperate for an actual answer now that little ears aren’t on the premises. The fact that it’s with a man doesn’t surprise him in the slightest. No one knew for sure whether or not Malfoy was queer or not back in school. There’d been debates in the Gryffindor tower, several unsavory things said, and a lot of rude gestures among the boys in his year.
Harry remembered ignoring them while he watched Malfoy’s name moving around on the Marauder's Map. He didn’t have time to speculate on who Malfoy chose to shag or not shag in school because he happened to be a bit busy with the whole defeating Voldemort thing. Harry himself didn’t realize he liked men until he spent the summer before he became an auror with Charlie Weasley learning how to manage Icelandic Frost Dragons in Raufarhöfn. He hasn’t told Ron exactly what he did other than learning about dragons and he’s still banking on the fact that Charlie hasn’t told him either.
They will probably keep what happened that summer between themselves, which suits Harry just fine because he’s not sure how on Earth he can look Molly in the eyes and tell her he slept with her second oldest. He’s still not sure how he’s going to tell her that one Draco Malfoy has been living with him for nearly the whole summer and will probably remain living with him for…
Forever, if Teddy gets a say in it.
Probably forever, if Harry got a say in it.
Malfoy pinches the bridge of his nose, “It’s just dinner with someone we bumped into at a cafe, it’s not a proper date or anything like that.”
“Sounds like a dinner date to me.”
“Please it’s just–,” he pauses, considering his words. Then, he laughs softly, “Oh, I suppose it must be a dinner date. I forget that these things are allowed to be informal here.”
“Here?”
Malfoy gestures to the windows and the door with wild hands, his sunnies making him look a bit batty due to how large they are on his face. Harry can’t help but smile at the ridiculousness of him. When did Malfoy become ridiculous or rather… had he always been and Harry only noticed when he was being extra ridiculous? Sometimes Harry thought his ridiculousness was just a show for Teddy’s sake, but he’s beginning to understand that ridiculous is as much a part of Malfoy’s nature as being an absolute ponce is.
“In the muggle world, it’s so,” he laughs again, a bit of a strangled noise that sounds like a crow caught mid caw, “Informal, I suppose. No chaperones, no first meetings, just–”
“Dinner with a man?” Harry offers.
“Exactly. But he is a doctor, you know,” Malfoy takes his sunnies off and uses them to point at Harry, “I like men who provide for themselves.”
Harry raises his free hand in surrender because Berg is still shoving his entire face into the center of his palm. “I’m not knocking your taste. How long will you be out, though?” Although it is a bit funny that Malfoy, who only recently learned about tetanus, will be going on a date with a doctor. A regular one. A man with an actual degree and a practice. Someone who probably has no clue about the Wizarding World or magic at all. Harry’s eyes drift to the faded dark mark on Malfoy’s arm. Will he tell him?
“Why do you need to know? Are you asking me to come back here when my date is finished?” Malfoy narrows his brows at him, folding his arms over his chest defensively as he shifts his weight onto one leg. Harry looks at his face so he stops looking at the rest of his body.
Nodding calmly, he says, “If he’s in Islington, it’d be safer to come back here than to try apparating to Parkinson’s. Teddy would lose it if you got splinched because you tried to apparate while drunk.”
Malfoy sucks in a sharp breath, “Fair point, I suppose. I guess I’ll be back around midnight. Are you giving me a curfew, Potter?”
“No!” Harry blusters, “You’re an adult who can, hopefully, make wise decisions regarding when to come home. I’d just prefer that you don’t bring your doctor-man to the house.” Now that he’s aware of the genuinely sinister energy 12 Grimmauld Place holds, he sincerely doesn’t want a regular person to walk into the house and drop dead or something. Or worse– the house might genuinely curse a muggle unprovoked. Walburga and Orion Black seemed like they were very odd, very bigoted people and there’s just too much Harry doesn’t know about the house to feel comfortable letting a muggle in.
That, and he’d rather not meet Malfoy’s doctor-date.
Those glinting silver eyes of his roll theatrically in their sockets as Malfoy turns, hand propped on his hip, chin to the air as he flips some of his hair over his shoulder. The same haughty Malfoy Harry remembers from school. He finds that he missed him in a strange way; that egotistical little preteen with his terribly slicked back hair and mouth full of poison words. Did Harry miss that? Surely not. He doesn’t miss the awful child Malfoy had been. But part of him misses this. The ponce– the attitude. It’s easier to look at him dead on when the image of Malfoy dead-eyed on a weaving stool is replaced by Malfoy with his stupid bug-eyed sunglasses and the band t-shirt he got from Merlin knows where.
“I remember your rules, Potter. Besides, I’m a proper gentleman, I don’t fuck on the first date.”
Heat rushes to Harry’s face, “I didn’t say–!”
“Ah-ah, I knew what you meant. Been there, done that Potter. Do you really think me so low as to bring a man into the house while Teddy’s home? No way. I was raised with very high, very refined pureblood values. I’ll be lucky if I dare to hold his hand over the table tonight. What takeaway are you doing tonight, by the way?”
Harry takes his glasses off so he can scrub at his eyes with the heel of his palms. He’d forgotten what it was like to talk to Malfoy sometimes; the knife point of instability that frequently razored through his sentences to remind him exactly who he’s talking to. For a brief moment, he understands his hesitancy to see him become Teddy’s nanny. A prickle of fear jolts through him at the idea of Teddy learning how to wield that razor through his words. What would Harry do with that?
When he blinks the black splotches out of his vision, Malfoy is still standing there awaiting an answer.
“Probably Chinese.” Teddy’s been on a rather big eggroll kick lately. Harry looks over his shoulder to peer up the stairs to try and find him just in time to hear the upstairs toilet flush and the rest of the pipes squeal with the rush of water.
Malfoy wrinkles his nose, “Enjoy, I’m officially off the clock now. Bye, Potter.” and with that he vanishes up the stairs. Harry tries not to think about the fact that he’s preparing for a date. A date with a man. A doctor. The strange heat threatening to strangle him certainly isn’t jealousy over a bloke he hasn’t meant and he certainly isn’t jealous of the fact that Malfoy is going on a date with him. That’d just be ridiculous. Harry hasn’t been ridiculous in a very long time. He doesn’t plan to start now.
After getting Teddy to bed and seeing Malfoy off, Harry plonks himself down on the sofa with a book, taking Berg into his lap as he does so. The cat purrs like a car engine against his stomach, bashing his skull between Harry’s ribs like he wants to be a part of him instead of on top of him. Harry tells himself that he isn’t waiting up for Malfoy; he’s just reading on the couch. This is a normal thing that normal people typically do in the evenings instead of falling into sleep the moment his head hits his mattress.
Isn’t winding down good for the body? He doesn’t feel very good. Every bump and creak of the house puts his teeth on edge. There’s a grandfather clock ticking away somewhere and Harry finds himself listening to the constant tick-tock, tick-tock instead of reading the words on the page.
He doesn’t give up per se, but he begins letting his mind wander as his eyes glaze through the novel, skipping entire paragraphs and loping over chapters without registering a single letter. His mind keeps jumping back to Malfoy sitting in the dark of that parlor room with his eyes elsewhere and empty. Harry sees the stray hairs falling over his face, the sharp bones of his knuckles, the slight part of his lips as he stared at nothing. Strange how that very same man is going on a date right now. Part of Harry hopes it doesn’t go well.
That lone thought slams him back into reality. What the hell is he thinking? He should want Malfoy’s date to go well, shouldn’t he? That’d be the kind of thing he’d wish for Neville or Ginny or any of his friends, really. Harry lays his book down on his knee and stares down at the striped pattern on Berg’s forehead. Maybe it’d be fair to hope it doesn’t go well because there’s no way a regular doctor and Malfoy could work. There’d be things about both of their lives that the other simply wouldn’t be able to understand. Malfoy wouldn’t be able to bring him home to meet his parents or his friends, really. It’d be lonely, wouldn’t it? Dating a man you can only share parts of your life with. He’s sure the doctor-man would get tired of Malfoy’s odd questions that should be answered by general common sense or any awareness of the way the human body actually works. Tetanus, he’d only recently learned about tetanus. What else doesn’t Malfoy know about in regards to the human body and the many illnesses it can contract?
“Mrow,” says Berg.
“Yeah, I hear you there,” says Harry, stroking Berg between his ears. He stays on the couch longer than is probably necessary. The book never gets picked back up. Harry stares at the wall across from him in deep contemplation. The jacquard wallpaper really is ugly but he’s not sure what else he’d put on the wall if not the ugly wallpaper. He’s never had a place of his own to decorate properly and his attempts to make 12 Grimmauld Place feel more like the burrow look out of place. Quidditch Posters just look plain tacky when pinned up over fancy, outdated wallpaper. Petunia Dursley wasn’t exactly known for her interior decorating either.
So out goes striped wallpaper, floral wallpaper, and he’d do well to replace the checkerboard floating with something nicer. Tile, maybe? Harry doesn’t know anything about interior design. He hardly knows how to imagine a place he’d like to live in.
But he knows the kind of place he wants Teddy to live in. Warm, inviting. A safe place to grow and learn without the pressure Harry was raised under to maintain the household chores. Magic is good for that, at least. Although he’s never felt like magic gets things clean enough. Maybe 12 Grimmauld Place is forever tainted and dirty from oh– what did Malfoy call it? Multiple generations of a viscous bloodline living under one roof? Yeah. That.
Harry snaps out of his thoughts a second time when the front door creaks open then snaps shut by someone trying to be quiet.
Malfoy walks into the living room with his collar unbuttoned enough to expose the sharp bow of his clavicle and a dark bruise against his neck– hickey, Harry’s brain supplies. The doctor left a hickey on the pale column of Malfoy’s throat. Harry watches him over the rim of his glasses. It’s obvious Malfoy is drunk. He sort of stumbles over his own two feet like a newborn deer before using the wall to pick himself back up. He scowls down at his boots like it’s they’re fault he nearly tripped.
Harry sits up, “Did you have fun?”
Malfoy nearly jumps, clapping a hand over his mouth and hissing, “Potter, what the fuck is wrong with you– sitting in the dark like a… like a. Oh I don’t even have the word, damn it all!” He says all of this through his hand as if to keep himself quiet. Harry can’t help but smile at him.
“Did you have fun?” He asks again, genuinely curious.
“Were you waiting up for me?” Malfoy asks instead of answering him. His voice goes high and reedy as he stares down at him, one brow quirked almost comically.
Harry shrugs, “I wanted to make sure you got home in one piece.” Which is the truth, mostly. He doesn’t mention the paranoia Hermione swears up and down he’s had since the war ended. Sometimes, if he hasn’t seen somebody in a while, he gets so afraid they’ve died that he has to apparate to them right away to ensure they’re alive with his own two eyes. Granted, he hasn’t done that in quite some time and the last person he did it too was Ron– which is different.
And what a strange thing to say out loud. Home. He’d said that when he showed Malfoy 12 Grimmauld Place for the first time. Home for now. Home for now includes a place with Malfoy in it, which feels bizarre to Harry because they don’t really spend that much time together. They eat dinners together because Malfoy makes them eat as a family but that’s it, really. How strange that he could become so used to this minute shred of Malfoy’s presence in his life. How odd that he wishes for more of it.
Odd, the way Malfoy uncovers his mouth to reveal a genuine smile as he traipses over to the couch, throwing himself down like he’s nothing more than a ragdoll. He draws his knees up into himself and unlaces his boots one after the other, letting them hit the floor with two hushed bangs that make Harry’s hair stand a bit on end.
“I had fun,” he says in a rather quiet voice, “I think you’d like him, actually.”
Berg, the traitor, abandons Harry in favor of settling himself in Malfoy’s lap. Malfoy takes the big cat into his arms and cradles him like a baby, running his fingers through the soft down of his belly fur as he begins humming to him.
“Well,” says Harry, sitting up just a bit more so he’s not eye level with Malfoy’s clavicle. “How did it go?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Harry thinks about what Draco said about Spider, the cool way he informed Harry that he’d held a horse while she died in his arms. He can’t really imagine a four to five year old Malfoy holding a seizing horse. Maybe he’d made it up, but something deep in Harry’s heart knew he wasn’t lying about it.
So Harry decides not to lie either.
“I do. My dating life is a drag, I live vicariously through the tales of others. Hit me with it. Was he good? Funny?”
“Oh fuck off, Potter, you could have the whole pick of the wizarding world if you wanted,” Malfoy squints at him mischeviously, nudging his knee with his ankle. Harry finds himself grinning back, shrugging, then turning the conversation back to Malfoy.
“What’s his name?”
Malfoy tidies his hair, “His name is Oscar and he’s funny like… Oh, I don’t know,” he laughs breathlessly, his cheeks turning to swathes of blotchy pink, “Kind of how you’re funny.”
Harry’s mouth goes dry. He barks out an awkward laugh and shakes his head, “I’m not funny.”
“Hm,” he hums, “But you are to me. In a thick headed way, of course but you’re funny when you don’t mean to be. Shitting Salazar, I'm really drunk.”
“I can tell.”
All at once Malfoy lights up. He sits completely straight, nearly sending Berg tumbling off his lap in the process as he leans forward and lays his hands on Harry’s knees. Harry, for the record, definitely does not flinch at the sudden physical contact nor does he let out an embarrassing yelp of surprise.
“Goodnight, Potter,” he coos, rising to his feet and taking his cat with him. Harry doesn’t move for a long moment. He can’t think past the feeling of Malfoy’s hands on his knees, the cool chill of his fingers, the suddenness of his touch.
Oscar lasts beyond the first date. Harry hasn’t met the man at all, which is beginning to bug him endlessly as Malfoy has a habit of dropping fun facts about him when Harry least expects it. Really, he’s sort of going mad over the whole thing. Maybe he’d care less if he could actually lay eyes on the fucker, but Malfoy keeps his personal life and his work life severely separate from the other.
Which is how Harry ends up dumping all of this onto Hermione during their usual Wednesday lunch. A scheduled event Hermione put on his schedule after he attempted to self isolate last year. In his defense, he didn’t know that his house was literally poisoning him, something he also hasn’t told her because honestly, he plain doesn’t know how and he’d much rather talk about the mystery of Oscar the doctor than 12 Grimmauld Place.
“It’s just,” Harry rolls his eyes and takes a sip of butterbeer to calm himself. The Leaky Cauldron is absolutely packed at this time of day. They’re sitting in their usual booth nipped away in the back corner where wizards can’t run up and thank him for saving the world. It gets old and means heaps less coming from people who lost nothing. “Odd, you know.”
“What, Malfoy being queer?” Hermione raises a brow at him.
“Obviously not,” says Harry. “I don’t care that he’s– you know, that’s not my business.” What he never plans on telling Hermione is that he likes men too. It’s not a conversation he can see going down well with her. Not that she’s homophobic or anything like that. Well, as far as Harry knows she isn’t. He’s pretty sure she does a monthly dinner with Dean and Seamus. But Harry has a feeling that if he tells her, she’ll tell Ron, and he’s been trying to figure out how to tell Ron for years but it just hasn’t happened yet.
It’s kind of hard to given that Harry kind of sort of shagged his older brother for nearly a whole summer. There’s some things that your friends just shouldn’t know.
He continues, “But what if something happens?”
“Yes, the elusively vague
something.
”
Harry sighs, “Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“I really, really don’t, Harry.”
“Teddy really likes him, is what I mean.”
Hermione’s brows scrunch, “Does he? I honestly can’t believe you trust him to take care of Teddy all day.”
The slight to his judgment isn’t lost on him, but he lets the comment go in one ear and out the other. Hermione’s always been this way about Harry’s judgment and to be fair, he knows his sense of things tends to trend away from what’s actually good or bad. But she doesn’t see the way Malfoy interacts with Teddy. She doesn’t understand that Malfoy is good for him.
So, he tries to tell her, “He and Teddy get on really well. Teddy’s been a lot… calmer since Malfoy came into the picture, honestly. He used to get these tantrums, you know? They don’t really happen that often anymore. Teddy seems a lot happier than he did before.”
Hermione sighs, “If you say so.”
“I am. You and Ron should come over and have dinner with us sometime so you can see.”
She smiles tightly, “Right, I’ll ask him about that.”
He knows what the answer will probably be. Are you mad, dinner with Malfoy? Have you finally lost it? Harry won’t hold his breath. It’ll be their loss if they don’t end up coming by some day because the truth is, Malfoy is a scarily good cook. Harry hasn’t eaten so well since Hogwarts.
“It’s strange to hear you talking about him again. I keep getting deja-vu. Sixth year was,” she smooths a curl behind her ear, “It feels like forever ago, doesn’t it?”
Sixth year was forever ago. It’s a year Harry wishes he could forget. When he remembers Sixth year all that bursts through his mind is the bathroom floor covered in Malfoy’s blood; Malfoy bleeding out on the ground because of the spell Harry cast. He had never wanted to hurt him.
But he had.
Oscar’s probably seen the scars, Harry realizes. His stomach lurches with upset. How would Malfoy explain those? The Dark Mark is surely easier to explain away as teenage foolishness. But scars? Harry brings his fingers to his forehead, feeling over the raised forks of his lightning scar.
“Is it hurting?” Hermione asks, anxiety coloring her tone.
“No,” he shakes his head, “I’m just… thinking.”
“I thought I could smell smoke.”
Harry kicks her ankle from under the table. Hermione kicks him back twice as hard.
He comes home to an epic scene in the kitchen. Teddy sitting on the counter with pink frosting and crumbs smeared across his face and Malfoy leaning on the opposite counter stabbing a fork into a half-eaten slice of what looked to Harry like chocolate cake with strawberry frosting.
“What are you two doing?” Harry asks, standing awkwardly in the kitchen.
“Eating our feelings,” Teddy shouts, sending crumbs flying. Malfoy whirls around to expertly wipe his face off with a napkin.
“Er, why?”
Malfoy points his fork at him, “Oscar is a clown.”
“That bad, huh?” Harry has to ignore the relief soaring through his body. He feels like he could run a bloody marathon without so much as having to stop for breath. The urge to leap into the air and kick his heels into the air is not lost upon him, but he remains firmly rooted on the tile floor, leaning casually against the doorframe as to not show his excitement.
“A literal clown, Potter. He quit his job to start clown college.”
“I see we’re feeling very creative today–”
Malfoy glares at him like he wants Harry to die on the spot, “Potter. He had the red nose and everything.”
“I thought you liked a man that supported himself.”
“I have standards,” he says cooly, “Very high ones. I require that I must be the funny one in the relationship and I am not competing with a man wearing face paint and parachute trousers. Not. Bloody. Happening.”
“It’s a shame,” Teddy says morosely with a little shake of his head, much too serious sounding for a four year old. “Men these days, they’re terrible.”
Harry chokes trying not to laugh. He coughs into his fist and thumps his chest.
“Exactly,” Malfoy agrees. “I want you to remember this day, Teddy. Remember that men are very very terrible and that you shouldn’t waste your time with them.”
Teddy gives a thumbs up and takes a bite from the cake. He’ll be hopped up from the sugar for at least three hours before he crashes, Harry reckons. But he’s not the nanny, so he doesn’t point this out. Surely Malfoy knows enough about children to know about the nature of sugar highs and the resounding crash to follow.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” Harry tells him. “It seemed like you really liked him.”
“Save your condolences Potter, I can tell that you’re trying not to smile.
Harry smiles quite guiltily, “Sorry.”
“You never even met him! Stop looking so pleased. Can’t you see I’m utterly heartbroken?”
“Yes, I can tell that you are absolutely destroyed by this recent turn of events. However will the great Draco Malfoy cope? May I have some cake?”
Malfoy pushes the plate to him. Harry accios a fork from the drawer and takes a bite. The frosting is smooth and perfect but the cake itself is just a little too rich for him, which is saying a lot considering his favored dessert. He can’t imagine the cake being palatable to Malfoy whatsoever. Harry licks some frosting from the corner of his mouth and shivers.
“Too sweet for you, Potter?”
“A bit sickly, yeah?”
“Hm, hear that Teddy? More for us!” Malfoy declares, swinging his fork through the air like a king with a scepter.
Teddy cheers and turns his hair the exact color of the strawberry frosting before taking a large, victorious bite.