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“This… this is not Hong Kong,” Harry said.
“No,” agreed Draco, “it’s not.”
Move 1: Four Spaces
In a series of bright colours that defied both pattern and reasonable aesthetics, the line of square tiles stretched out in front of them, marching into the grey. Each the size of a small table, they made a gaudy path that swerved and twisted and looped far beneath them before swinging up in an arc over their heads and meandering off again.
The was nothing else but the void, a stone-coloured emptiness with no echo, no hush. Then there was a sound: a rattle, a clatter. And up the path came a large die, rolling up with jaunty bounces before coming to rest gently against Draco’s knee, a shimmering incandescence blooming out from behind the sharp black dots on all sides.
“It looks like a board game,” Harry said. “Y’know, like Monopoly, or Candyland.”
Draco nodded. “Or like Warlock March, which is more magically apt.”
“Would you believe that it is possible to use a Muggle analogy to describe magical things? You can do it and the world doesn’t even end, not a little bit.”
Draco rolled his eyes. Yes, Harry Potter was brave and loyal and rudely attractive, but it was a miracle that mouth of his had yet to get him killed. “Any tart retorts to help suss out where we are, instead of what this place is like ?”
Harry was in the middle of saying, “Hey, do you think that —” when there was a pop, and a bit of parchment fluttered into Draco’s hands.
This note is for Mister Harry Potter, who recently collected a Portkey for himself and a guest, in the form of a bent spoon. If you are not this person, shame on you for reading someone else’s mail. Pass this note to Mister Potter immediately, please. If you are Mister Potter, hello! Also, please don’t panic.
You see, there may have been a bit of a…mixup in the Portkey we’ve given you. New interns, you know how it is. Anyways, you were given an interdimensional Portkey rather than an international one, and you are likely now located in one of the small pocket dimensions that have been in storage for the Department of Mysteries. Sorry!
For obvious reasons, we’re not coming to retrieve you directly, as that would be absurdly dangerous. However, you should be absolutely fine where you are until Mysteries comes up with a solution — just please don’t eat anything, touch anything, or move anywhere that may or may not appear fatal until that’s sorted.
Best wishes!
Clarence Shippertonsmith, Junior Vice President of Customer Relations, Department of Transportation
The Department of Magical Transportation is here to serve you in all of your travel needs. Please note that agreeing to travel with the Department of Magical Transportation means that the traveller accepts liability for the entirety of their journey. The Department of Magical Transportation is not responsible for any lost luggage, limbs, or life as a result of your travels. Have a safe and enjoyable trip!
“Sorry,” Draco muttered. “ Sorry . Just a ‘sorry’ and a ‘don’t eat anything’.” He looked at Harry. “This is what you get for making the poor desk clerk choose our destination for us.”
“Your fault for not agreeing to go to Fiji,” Harry said, peering over Draco’s shoulder. “It’s odd that he didn’t mention your name. I put it down with mine on all the forms.”
“Maybe they think it’s a clerical error, instead of you naming a Death Eater you’re casually fucking.”
“Ex Death Eater,” Harry said. He pointed down to the tile they were standing on, where START was scripted beneath their feet in glowing letters. “We’re going down this path, right?”
“Well, we obviously can’t stay here,.” Draco said, crumpling up the parchment and tossing it over his shoulder into the void. Then he took a breath and called out, “May I please be presented with the rules of this game, so that I may play it to the best of my ability?”
When Harry raised an eyebrow, Draco shrugged. “It’s always a wise idea to be exceedingly polite to possibly sentient pocket dimensions.”
It must have worked, because with a soft flutter, blue words appeared in front of them:
RULE ONE: Reach the final tile to win
RULE 1: Never leave the tiles
RULE i: Do not step on the orange tiles
RULE The First: Follow the dice
Draco and Harry exchanged a look. “Seems simple enough,” Harry shrugged. “Worryingly cryptic, but simple enough. How do we roll the dice?”
“Die,” Draco said. “When there’s only one, it’s ‘die’ not ‘dice’.”
Harry snorted. “Not the time for your poncy word commandments. If the official blue rules say ‘dice’, then so do I.” He waved. “Hello, dice? Roll, please!”
There was a rattle, and the die tipped and bounced around them, over and under the tiled path and back again. When it stopped, only the upward-facing side lit up: Four.
Harry held out an elbow and winked. “Shall we?”
Draco narrowed his eyes because he wasn’t a damned princess, but he couldn’t just leave the adorable imbecile stuck like that. He took the arm.
They moved on to the first tile after the “Start”, a bright yellow one which bobbed under their feet but steadied enough for them to move to the next one. They hopped over the third tile, orange, in unison before landing on the vivid green fourth tile.
When they settled from the dip of the tile, a blue light wobbled in front of them and formed into a small card.
“Pet all crups that you see ,” Harry read, then shrugged. “I don’t see any crups.”
“Me neither,” Draco said. “And I want to keep moving.” He looked to the die. “May we have our next roll, please?”
Move 2: Six Spaces
There was a kneazle waiting at the next tile they stopped on.
“Do kneazles come in purple?” Harry asked. “Is this something I should know about?”
Draco frowned. “They do. But very rarely. It’s nearly statistically impossible.”
Harry crouched down. “Should we pet it?”
“The card said to pet all crups, not kneazles.”
“It didn’t say not to pet any kneazles.”
They probably shouldn’t. Yet the statistically impossible kneazle looked at Draco with improbable eyes, and it was an opportunity he would never get in his life again.
He knelt down beside Harry.
Move 10: Two Spaces
“Ugh,” Harry said. “There’s so many jellyfish. This stupid thing is taking forever — ow , fuck! — because we keep rolling twos. Hear me, you stupid dice? Can’t you roll us a bigger number?”
The die wiggled and tipped over, so now that side pointing up showed One.
“Please don’t antagonize the medium through which this pocket dimension controls our movement,” Draco sighed, gingerly dodging tentacles.
Move 15: Two Spaces
“The dice likes you more than me,” Harry said. “The blue card says that we get a ’prize’ if we roll a Seven while standing on a white tile, by the way.”
“We can’t roll a Seven, we only have one die,” Draco said. “And the Portkey clerk liked you so much that she landed us in an abandoned pocket dimension because of your flirting!”
“I was being polite!”
“You saunter into the Portkey office, making it abundantly clear that you and I were having an impossible disagreement, then you wink at the poor girl behind the desk and say ‘can you save us, love?’ Disgusting." Draco flung his hands up in the air. “Pulling her while I was right there .”
“You told me you didn’t want me to flirt with you in public,” Harry said. “When we started this. So it wouldn’t give us away.” Draco could feel those stupid green eyes studying his face. He refused to look.
“Another roll, please!” he said instead.
Move 19: Four Spaces
“Of course it’s a blizzard on this tile,” Draco said. “There’s no wind, no humidity, but a fuckton to snow? Absolutely plausible!”
“Don’t be a baby,” Harry rolled his eyes. “You wanted to go to St. Petersburg this weekend, even though it’s November .”
“St. Petersburg has fires and cocoa and excuses to not leave a bedroom for forty-eight hours.”
“The point of a vacation is to get out of —” Harry yanked his fingers through his hair. “Ugh, just, never mind. Roll the dice, please!”
Move 22: One Space
“Think we can jump over it?” Harry asked.
Draco bit his lip. “If we jump over, does that count as landing on it?” He turned to the die. “Can we have another roll, please? So we can not land on the orange tile?”
The die didn’t move.
“It can’t be that bad, right?” Harry asked.
“The game didn’t warn us about those Pygmy Trolls, but did warn us about this.” Draco said. “It can’t be good .”
“Okay,” Harry nodded. “If we can’t roll again until we step on the orange tile, then I’ll just step on it. And you’ll get us a new roll right the fuck away and we’ll just keep going.”
“That’s insane .” Draco stared at Harry, aghast. “Pull your stupid, self-sacrificing Gryffindor head out of your arse immediately.”
“No, listen,” Harry said. “You’re quicker at spells than me, so you should stay safe here while I spring the trap, and then, you can save my arse. Otherwise, we’re stuck here until Mr. Ship-Nitwit-Smith gets around to rescuing us.”
It wasn’t a bad plan, and Draco didn’t have a better one, but he didn’t like it.
“Fine ,” he clipped out.
“Great,” Harry said, bracing himself.
“Wait,” Draco ran his fingers up Harry’s jaw, pulling him around for a kiss. He meant for it to be deep and dirty, but it was somehow still chaste for all its aggressiveness. “Do not die. Do not.”
Harry grinned. “I knew you cared.”
Draco pulled back and very nearly shoved Harry onto the stupid orange tile right then.
Harry tentatively reached out and tapped the orange tile with his toe. Nothing happened.
“Is that enough for me to get a new roll, please?” Harry asked.
The die stayed put.
Harry sighed and tapped his whole foot on the tile this time, yanking it back immediately. When nothing happened again, Harry looked at Draco, licked his lips, straightened up, and stepped fully onto the orange tile.
Draco watched as Harry walked across the tile and thumped into some kind of invisible barrier on the far side. But otherwise, nothing.
“Can I please have a new roll? Please ?” Draco called out, half-a-beat faster than calm.
The die wiggled, started to bounce, and Harry said: “Hey, I think that magic wall is gon —”
And the orange tile disappeared beneath Harry’s feet completely, leaving only an empty grey void beneath him.
Draco yelled louder than Harry did, lunging as Harry scrabbled for a grip on the white tile past the chasm. The Wingardium Leviosa was out of his wand before Draco was really aware of it, and Harry floated up and out of danger, settled safely on the other side before Draco could pull a new breath of air into his lungs.
Harry grinned across at him. “Looks like the dice rolled a Three. Mind the gap.”
Draco suddenly spun around on his heel, overwhelmed with the desperate need to face away from Harry, and Harry’s grin, and the hole that nearly stole Harry away.
“Draco?” Harry said from behind him.
Draco needed to focus on his breathing. On the pressing pain that squeezed against his sternum. He couldn’t care this much about what happens to Harry, shouldn’t care. That’s not what they had. They didn’t have a caring thing, they had a sex thing, and sometimes an eat-takeaway-on-the-sofa thing.
“Draco?” Harry said again, uneasy.
Draco took a breath, spun back to face Harry, and easily hopped over the hole into nothingness to land on the white tile. He moved across two more tiles, stopping at what he saw.
“Teddy bears?” A whole pile of them, in a mound that went up to Draco’s thighs.
“Well, that’s much better than the orange tile,” Harry said, and plopped face-first right into them.
Draco sighed, and decided that maybe he needed a bit of a rest as well.
Move 23: Three Spaces
They were still lying on the teddy bears when the parchment popped into existence above them. With a groan, Draco reached for it.
Hello Mr. Harry Potter! Also, greetings, Draco Malfoy. I was unaware that Mr. Malfoy was your guest — I hadn’t heard in the news anywhere that you were keeping such…interesting company! I’m sure there is a very understandable, work-related reason for your association. Nevertheless, I hope you are enjoying your trip, such as it is.
Actually, about that. The people down in the Department of Mysteries have been QUITE unhelpful in resolving this minor Portkey situation. It was all ‘gross absence of care’ this, and ‘what kind of incompetent are you’ that. What’s important is that the Department of Magical Transportation was absolutely correct in not attempting to retrieve you, for safety reasons, but we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause.
The witch from Mysteries did say there was an automatic return Portkey at somewhere she called the ‘final tile’ — she also does not have the properly filled paperwork for this Portkey, so I’m sure we can all see exactly how trustworthy she is. However, she says something about the probability of you surviving being ‘an ice cube’s chance in a dragon belly’, as if this were somehow my fault.
I have every confidence in your ability to safely return! Until then, though, my lawyers would like you to please fill in the attached parchment for us, and specifically the section titled ‘Contractual Consent to Circumvent Court’. It’s nothing important enough to read through — just please sign the bottom so that we have the paperwork in order.
Cheerio,
Clarence Shippertonsmith, Junior Vice President of Customer Relations, Department of Transportation
The Department of Magical Transportation is currently unavailable for comment regarding any incident(s) involving the Saviour of the Wizarding World. The Department of Magical Transportation will, however, aim to respond in a timely fashion to any questions received by owl post, provided that such a post is actually received and not accidentally incinerated in transit. The Department of Magical Transportation looks forward to you considering us for your future travel plans!
Draco read it and silently passed it over to Harry.
“This is why I didn’t want Fiji,” Draco said. “Or Paris or New York. They’re very public places to be seen with ‘interesting company’ like me.”
Harry looked over. “Maybe I like your ‘interesting company’. Maybe I don’t really care anymore if my reputation is ruined.”
Ruined. The pressure against Draco’s sternum squeezed in. He sat up.
“Roll the die, please,” Draco said, tired.
Move 26: Five Spaces
There was music playing when they got to this square.
“Hey, it’s the song Hufflepuffs have to sing to get into their dorms!” Harry said.
“How would you even know they way Hufflepuffs enter their dorms?”
“Er,” Harry said. “I had that thing with Malcolm Preece in Eighth year. You know, the Hufflepuff seeker?”
“Right,” Draco said, and his voice was perfectly level, perfectly calm. “How could I forget? The Prophet wrote all about him, how he was such a good boy for the Boy Who Lived.”
“Draco,” Harry said. “I haven’t even talked to Malcolm in years. We’re not —”
“Roll the die, please!” Draco called.
Move 31: One Space
“Oh, there’s the crup.”
“…How do we pet a crup on fire?”
“Quickly,” Harry said.
Move 45: Four Spaces
“What do you have against Mikhail Koposnikov?” Harry demanded.
“Oh, you mean other than the fact that he claims to be the best Chaser in the league, even though his left turns are always sloppy when he flies defence? Or how he practically salivates over you whenever he’s at your charity events?”
“Calling it salivating is a bit much,” Harry said, still brushing off the glitter from the last tile.
“Two weeks ago he asked you nine times if you’d like to ‘ride his broom’.”
“I’m pretty certain he meant his actual broom, there.”
“I don’t care,” Draco snapped. “He has a reputation for being immature with his money and his sexual conquests and his attire. Yet, somehow, it’s a reputation that’s still unimpeachable. No one he fucks is ever mourned for being with ‘the wrong sort’. I don’t care.”
“It sounds a bit like you care a lot.”
That was when the musical instruments started falling on the tile.
Move 49: Six Spaces
“Add one to your next roll .” Draco looked up. “May I have that roll, please?”
The die wiggled, and hopped into a tumbling roll that landed on Six.
“Hey! If you add one, we’ve rolled a seven!” Harry grinned. “And we’re on a white tile. I wonder what our prize is?”
He hadn’t even finished talking when there was a sudden woosh of sound to their left. One by one, tiles slid through the grey and settled into a new path that branched out from the white tile they were on. It stretched all the way out to a faraway tile that glowed with faint blue letters: FINISH .
Waiting on the path was a black cube, squirming with excitement, flashing bright white dots on all sides.
“It’s another dice!” Harry whooped.
“It’s a shortcut,” Draco said, stunned. “There are still about 80 or 90 tiles to go, but the end is in sight.”
“Brilliant,” Harry grinned. “Now that we have a shortcut and an extra dice, we’ll be home in no time and things can go back to the way they were!”
Harry reached for Draco’s hand, and Draco just let his fingers get pulled into the grip. The pressure on his sternum had swelled into a churning in his belly as well, and Draco’s heart refused to pinpoint why.
“Hey,” Harry said. “You don’t suppose this is some kind of trick, right? A whole path full of orange tiles.”
“No, look,” Draco said, pulling his hand from Harry’s to point. Both dice, white and black, had gone bouncing down the new path, looping over and around. “Rule the first: follow the dice.”
Move 50: Seven Spaces
“Hey, where do you want to go after this?” Harry asked. “I’m feeling like I can be convinced of a secluded weekend in St. Petersburg after all.”
“Let’s just finish this and leave,” Draco said, sharp. He waved away the green and black fireflies floating around him. “We’ll get back to the Ministry, mollify Shippertonsmith, and get back to our lives.”
Harry blinked. “You don’t want to go do our vacation after this?”
Draco shrugged. “It’s not like we agreed about where to go in the first place. And if it’s just sex, we can just fall back on our system: you Floo when you’re free, and I’ll come. Roll the dice, please.”
Frowning, silent, Harry followed a few tiles behind.
Move 64: Nine Spaces
“Draco,” Harry said, “What are the odds of an ice cubes’ chance in a dragon’s belly?”
It was the first thing Harry had said in a while, interrupting the quiet of the grey. Draco debated not answering, but he had never once succeeded in denying Harry before now.
“Roughly 6.6 divided by 10 to the power of 34,” Draco said. “Muggles call it Planck’s Constant, but Wizards have been using ice in fire lizards as a measure of magical probability for millennia. Why?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Harry said. “It’s just, how close are those odds to the odds of a purple kneazle being born? Or a Pygmy troll? Or this two-headed peacock? They’re all possible, but really improbable, right? And yet we keep running into them.”
“They’re improbable,” Draco whispered. “That’s it . It’s probability magic!”
“What, like Arithmancy?”
“Yes! In 500AD, Aryabhata theorized the use of differential magi-calculus in chaos theory to invert universal probabilities! In a closed system, highly improbable occurrences become more frequent, and things that are statistically likely become virtually impossible! This is the closed system. Someone made it!”
Harry shook his head. “Okay, I sort of get that: rare things will happen a lot, and common things won’t really happen. How does that help us?”
“Like this,” Draco said, and shouted “Equata Scriptum!” The equation he scribbled with the tip of his wand was one he hadn’t seen since Eighth year, but had been so drilled into him for exams that he could say it in his sleep. “I can make a bubble of probability negation within the closed system, and give everything the same probability. Inside the bubble, we can tweak probabilities in our favour using a focus like…” Draco looked around to where the void was empty of everything except for the tiles and the dice. “Like the dice! Harry, come here.”
He wrapped the equation in an iridescent sphere around Harry and the wiggling black die, then made another for himself and the white one. “Right then. Dice, could you please give us a roll for a tile full of very safe things. Pillows, perhaps?”
The dice bounced, rolled, and landed on a total of Ten.
Move 65: Ten Spaces
“Do you think this’ll work?” Harry asked, as they walked along the tiles.
Draco sighed. “Between you and me? No, I have no idea. But if this works, we’re telling everyone I had absolute confidence.”
“Don’t worry,” Harry said. “I’ve got absolute confidence in you,” and he winked.
Draco swallowed down a sigh at the ache. Harry was just so easy to love. He had known going in, even as Harry talked about liking the idea of a secret relationship out of the public eye. Even as Harry talked about keeping things casual, with no attachments, no consequences.
“As you should,” Draco said, even though his heart wasn’t really in it. He stepped onto the tenth tile.
There was a pile of pillows waiting.
Move 71: Five Spaces
“Draco, you’re bloody brilliant,” Harry said, and popped the last of a treacle tart into his mouth. “The perfect man. Can we bring this probability thing on vacation with us?
Draco blinked. “I thought we weren’t going on vacation after this.”
“I mean, you said that, but I thought you were in a snit,” Harry said. “Are you serious? Why wouldn’t we go?”
“Because, as you so succinctly put it, I’d ruin your reputation,” Draco said. How was Harry not catching onto this? “By now the whole Ministry and at least half the press knows it’s me you’re stuck with here. Your only hope when we get out of here is to tell everyone I’ve tricked you with my Death Eater ways into keeping me company. Or just use your favourite line when people see us: it’s a coincidence! We just ran into each other!”
“Ex Death Eater,” Harry said. “We both know you’re not one any more.”
“No one else does!” Draco snapped. “Because people cross the street to avoid me! There’s a public list of shops that won’t sell to me! I’m a perfect secret fuck for you because the only job I can have is in my basement potions lab! You’re the person everyone talks about, but not the way they talk about me.”
“Then maybe,” Harry said. “Maybe we let them talk? It’ll be loud for a while, but it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I’m not going to let you saddle yourself with the black mark of being with a Death Eater,” Draco swallowed. He wanted to snarl, to snap, not sputter. “It’d stay with you forever, long after you’re done with me.”
“Done with you?” Harry said. “What makes you think I’m done with you?”
“Not yet,” Draco said, “but eventually. The thrill of illicitness will wane and the temptation of a respectable partner will bloom and you’ll finally acknowledge that Draco Malfoy is not good for Harry Potter. And then you’ll go.” He shook his head at Harry’s stunned face. “Can I have a roll, please?”
Move 72: Eleven Spaces
“Draco, stop. Listen,” Harry demanded. Draco didn’t answer and stomped ahead, trying to ignore him. “I wanted things casual when we started a year ago, yeah. But we don’t have to keep it that way. It’s not like I’m sleeping with anyone else. We eat together and hang out all the time anyways. It’s not like much would change, so why don’t we see where it goes?”
Draco wanted to stop. He wanted to see where it went. But it was pretty clear that Draco wanted it to go so much further than Harry did. Draco wanted everything to change. He kept walking.
“Rousingly romantic, thank you. Yet you always say no when reporters ask if you’re seeing someone.” Draco growled, jumping over the orange tile. “You say you’re ‘waiting until it feels right’, and so everyone throws themselves at you, desperate to show how right and good they are for the Saviour. And I just wait, pathetically in love with you, but left with closed doors, and secret rendezvous, and whatever bones you throw me!”
“You love me?”
Draco froze, then spun around.
From three tiles away, Harry took a step forward and paused, opening his mouth to say something, but then the orange space beneath his feet gave way, letting Harry and his black die drop into the void with a yell.
Move 94: Three Spaces
Draco sat two tiles away from the FINISH , drinking.
He had asked his die to get him to a tile with booze, good booze, and he was not disappointed.
Well. He had ruined his only chance at excellent sex by falling in fucking love, and then falling into a fucking pocket dimension, where he watched the man he loved fall into endless fucking nothingness. There was plenty to be disappointed about.
Draco took another drink.
Once he got back, and it was clear that Harry was gone, they’d probably toss him in Azkaban. The Aurors had already spent years looking for a good excuse, anyways. Maybe Draco could just provoke a Dementor into sucking out his soul. Then he’d be fine, because nothing would ever hurt again.
The bottle was empty, so Draco hurled it into the void and let his head drop to his knees, since the tears weren’t really stopping anymore.
“So. What d’you think the odds are of Draco Malfoy taking back a right pillock who never truly appreciated him?”
Draco was hearing things, apparently. Inebriation hallucination.
“Draco?”
An annoying hallucination that wouldn't leave him alone. He was keeping his head down.
It was the sound that did it. The hard rattle of two dice knocking into each other. Two.
Draco looked up as the gust of wind nudged his shins.
And there Harry was, on a broom, looking like every longing dream Draco’s had since Fifth Year.
“I think the odds of me surviving a fall into the big emptiness were really, really slim,” Harry said. “So naturally, surviving was unavoidable.”
“You found a space with brooms,” Draco said with a laugh. His eyes were disgusting, and he had spilled some whiskey on his pants, but Harry was alive .
“Yeah! I didn’t really master the dice until after I landed on a space full of bobtuber puss, so things are a bit, er, slimy.” Harry took a breath. “Which I think I deserve, for the dick things I did. I shouldn’t have kept you a secret from everybody. I shouldn’t have ever done anything that’d make you think you weren’t good enough for me. But I did. Even though you’re smart, and generous, and damn funny, and I’m sorry. Because I think I love you too, and I think I ought to be doing whatever I can to deserve your love for me. Starting, probably, with telling every news outlet I can about how I’ll be with you as long as you’ll have me. And that they can fuck right off if they don’t like it.”
Draco sniffled. “Did you practice that?”
“Yeah. It was a really long flight up from the space I was on.” Harry paused, then reached out a hand. “Wanna ride on here with me? I think I can see the trophy on the final space, and it looks like the Portkey out of here. We can just swoop down and get it.”
Draco paused. He wanted, he wanted. “Do you really mean what you said?” he asked.
“I really, really, do,” Harry said.
Draco reached for his hand.
*
Dear Mr. Clarence Shippertonsmith,
We saved ourselves, thanks. The Department of Magical Transportation can go fuck itself.
HP + DM