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Halloween is harder than it has ever been.
Harry tucks his knees closer to his chest and pulls the worn paperback novel closer. The dorm room is silent. All four houses are having a party downstairs in the common room tonight, and all four houses have come for the booze. Awfully thoughtful of them, he wanted to say—bit the words back last minute and, when the music and laughter finally became too much, slipped back to his dorm. They deserve a bit of loosening after everything that’s happened, after all.
He cannot stop thinking about his parents.
It has never been like this. Now, the ache hovers like a shadow—light and dark and soft and blinding, morphing alongside the walls in the corridors and between the bedposts on nights he cannot sleep. He had gone back and cleaned up Grimmauld Place over the summer. In a rusted locker in Sirius’ wardrobe he found photos, thick stacks messily piled—some folded at the corners, some faded at the edges, some so blurry when the photo was taken he could barely make out anything. Yet it was unmistakable, the way James ran his hand through his hair while sneaking glances at Lily, the flaming red of Lily’s hair as she threw an arm over Lupin’s shoulders, grin so wide her eyes thinned into a line. Harry took them home and, carefully, placed each and every one of them into the album Hagrid gave him a long, long time ago. Alongside all the other captured, fleeting moments of his father’s and mother’s lives.
He spent hours staring at them. They were so real. Stared at them laughing, running, ruffling each other’s hair. Dancing in front of a marble fountain, hold sure and gentle, twirling so slowly as if they see only each other.
He touched his fingertip to their smiles.
Harry blinks hard and tries to focus on the book.
The door opens with a faint creak. Music floats in, faint and ebullient and messy, snappy beats muffled by laughter. Falls silent as the door shuts it out again.
By the door stands Malfoy, who shuffles in.
“Skipping the party, Potter?”
“I thought it was obvious.”
“Almost. I looked for you.”
Harry blinks. “You did?”
Malfoy shrugs and invites himself to sit on Ron’s bed, bouncing as he falls, feet dangling. He is quieter this year. Muted, almost. Stays to the sides of the corridors and the back corners of the classrooms, chopping up beetle wings and brewing potions alone. Eats porridge at breakfast with his head hung low, spoonful by spoonful.
Harry does not quite know what to do with this version of Malfoy.
“What are you reading?” Malfoy asks. Harry shows him the cover. Malfoy tilts his head and mouths the words.
“The Little Prince,” he says, surprised.
Harry shrugs. “There are pictures in it.”
Malfoy laughs. And Harry does not quite know what to do with this Malfoy, either, cheeks folding in soft lines and the corners of his eyes crinkling. He fidgets with the corner of the page and forces himself to dig back in.
Malfoy rummages through the nightstand between the two beds and, aha!, unearths a wireless. He turns the buttons this way and that, gives it a good shake, bats it around until finally, amidst a vague, grazing noise, soft music starts flowing out. Malfoy places it on the nightstand and, tilting it towards him, catches Harry’s eyes.
Harry darts his gaze back to the book.
“Do you mind?” Malfoy asks.
Harry shakes his head.
The music is slow, a river running and parting by rocks every now and then—gentle, almost, the tune curling at the edges. Harry only vaguely recognizes a couple lines from what music he happens to scrape every now and then and, surprisingly, discovers they are Muggle. Old, but still.
He tries very hard to keep his eyes to the book. Malfoy sits back, yawns—covers his mouth with his hand. Hums along, taps his fingers against the bedding. Every now and then he bobs his head a little too hard and Harry has to stifle his smile, has to bury his face deeper into the book.
Some time into the night, it starts snowing. The first snow of the year has come early. Harry only realizes when he looks up and, exclaiming and climbing onto Ron’s bed to get a better view from the window, he doesn’t notice when his and Malfoy’s shoulders nudge, when they clamber just a little too close.
***
“Oh,” Draco says, enunciating every word, “she is so good.”
Harry shrugs. Tosses another chip into his mouth. “Bet you five gallons she won’t get into semi-finals.”
Draco scowls. He knows she will not get in; he never backs down from a challenge. His grey eyes narrow, machinery spinning and ticking behind.
“You’re on.”
Harry grins. Draco, as always when they watch talent shows, huffs and stomps to the kitchen to make tea.
Their shared flat is a lot of things. Bets are one; watching the television barefoot on the couch is another. Bit by bit, Harry learns they are both creatures of habit. Draco buys the same brand of orange marmalade, cuts his toast in halves, makes his coffee a little burnt because he always pushes the buttons too early. Wears dark green if it is cloudy. Takes his showers in the evenings as Harry cooks dinner.
Sings in the shower.
It is so unexpectedly intimate that Harry doesn’t quite know what to do with it. He grows clumsy, working in the kitchen: his elbows bump into the pots when he stirs, he chops the carrots slightly canted, his hand slips from the cabinet door when he reaches for the spices. Draco’s voice floats through the corridors, dampened by the shower and the walls. Soft, vague, a blend of notes.
Harry wonders if Draco knows the walls are not sound-proof. He’s had half a mind to tell him about it, if only to be fair.
Then he thinks about what will happen to him if Draco frankly did not know, and then—for better or worse—if Draco did know, and he gives up on the idea.
From the kitchen come the sounds of making tea: kettle clanking, cabinet doors opening and closing, tap running. Harry turns off the television and turns on the wireless instead. Screws the buttons this way and that, looking for the station Draco listens to; finds it, hugs it to his belly. The song comes out muffled. Harry laughs.
“What’s making you so happy?” Draco asks, coming out of the kitchen with two piping mugs of tea. He sighs when he sees the wireless smothered against Harry’s belly. “You are a child.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Elvis comes on. Draco shushes him with more drama than necessary and closes his eyes, starts swaying his hips. The two mugs of tea bob in his hands, threatening to spill.
Harry smiles. “You’re going to spill the tea.”
“I am not. I’ve had practice.”
Harry laughs. Pushes himself up, takes the mugs from Draco and places them on the table. Places, playfully, his hands on Draco’s hips. Draco slaps his left and brings it to his shoulder.
“Proper posture, Potter —oh, oh wait I have an idea.” He pulls Harry closer, urges Harry to step onto his feet and, after Harry bewilderingly wraps his arms around him, does the same in return. “Good.”
Harry fails, utterly, to see how this is good. Their chests are pressed flush. Draco’s warm breath grazes the tip of his ear. “This is proper posture?”
“Well—no, of course not. It’s something I’ve seen from the movies, the Muggle ones, where the couple dances in their messy garage or living room or barn or…or whatever. Is it not?”
Harry lets out a laugh. “I didn’t know we were a couple.”
Draco laughs, startled. “We could be.”
Harry flushes, his tongue tied. So they rock, feet lifting in synch: one, the other, one, the other. The rhythm of waves lapping ashore, rising and dipping. Draco moves them in a slow circle, and their cluttering flat slowly comes into view: the mugs on the table, the bookshelf, the coats they hung over the rack, the potted plants on the windowsill. The socks Draco hurled overhead minutes ago, lying flat on the floor six feet apart from each other.
Draco is warm in his arms.
Thin, bony—as he always has been, as Harry always has known him—yet in his arms, he is warmer than Harry has ever realized. Harry’s throat dries. His mouth opens—
“We’re like penguins,” is what comes out, a hoarse mumble. Draco pauses before chuckling.
“We are,” he replies, a light hum.
***
The room is dark. Still shaking from rage, Harry forces himself to inhale. Exhale.
Inhale again.
His ears are still ringing from when Draco slammed the door and Disapparated with a deafening crack. This is all they seem to do, these days: argue, scream things they don’t mean, Draco disappears overnight and Harry lies on his side of the bed staring, staring, staring into the dark abyss even though all he wants is to sleep. Kiss with their eyes averted, things heat up and turn frantic and he loses his head, again, pressing Draco against the couch with half-closed eyes, it doesn’t even matter just—ah—
So much for dating.
Harry rubs his face and digs the heel of his palms into his eyes.
They were sitting on the couch, ankles twined. They were listening to the wireless. Were laughing about the plants they bought, the tiny succulent that never seems to get enough water. The wireless is playing in the empty living room still, soft notes flimsy, floating through the air like the shadows of a ghost. The lyrics still gentle, all blending vaguely into an attenuated syllable.
What has gone wrong?
***
“I’m sorry.”
Draco stares at a spot on the pillow. The bedroom is dark; shadows overlap and orchestrate over the corners, the walls, over Draco’s face. Harry cannot see him very clearly. Just the soft touches of lines, an idea, a stroke of a charcoal art. The sharp angles of his face smudged.
The syllables on his tongue feel hoarse, scratchy. Too loud. He swallows. The bed is too large for him to reach out—he could never touch Draco, he is too far away—yet relentless waves push them forward, closer, closer—
Harry can’t help but touch Draco’s face. Hesitatingly, almost gingerly he strokes, cups his cheek. Draco lets out a shuddery breath.
“I’m sorry,” Harry whispers again. Strokes the plains of his cheeks, the soft skin under his eyes. “You’re not your father. I promise. Look at you.” Swallows, “Look at us.”
Draco laughs, shaky. “You’re being contrary.”
“I was wrong. I…I wasn’t thinking.” Harry runs his hand through Draco’s hair. Just the tips of his fingers—like pushing a boat into sea, slow and wobbly. Draco closes his eyes. Harry does it again, and again—pauses at the warmth of Draco’s nape, cups his head. “I don’t think, remember?”
Draco laughs. Turns his head, mumbles, “Whatever, Potter,” voice buried into the thin skin at Harry’s wrist—lips brushing. Shuffles closer, curls up against him. His body thin and bony but warm under the sheets, close enough to feel.
Harry strokes his hair until they fall asleep.
***
The kitchen is dim.
Everything looks so strange at the hour before dawn—neither night nor day, the sky lit grey at the corners, the thin veil of night lifting and blending into the first beams of dawn. Grey shadows cover the smooth marble surface of the kitchen isle, the wooden floor, the amber tree rings stretched long on the cabinets. The glass of water sitting between them, droplets slipping along a messy trail on the inside.
Harry dozes off, catches himself, and wakes up again.
Beside him, Draco stares ahead. He never says a word after nightmares. Instead he shuffles out of bed and, after burying his face into his hands for a moment, leaves their bedroom with soft and exhausted footsteps.
He doesn’t want to wake Harry, but the truth is Harry is never asleep, not in those moments. He wonders if Draco has learned already.
Stifles a yawn. Rubs his eyes.
“Go back to bed.”
Harry doesn’t catch it immediately. When he does, he turns. Draco is staring at the floor.
“Go back to bed,” he says again, voice hoarse. “You’re tired.”
“So are you.”
“No shite.” Draco laughs, rubs his eyes. Buries his face into the nook of his folded arms atop his knees. “God.”
The nightmares still ghost behind his eyelids. They ghost behind every one of theirs.
Harry sighs and, with a huff, pushes himself up. Ambles into the living room, searches for the wireless. Finds it under the arm of the couch, screws the buttons this way and that until soft music floats amidst squiggly noises, a flow of stream after a rocky journey. He ambles back to the kitchen. Draco looks up with exhausted eyes.
Harry shrugs.
The song ends. The wireless hums, and then out flows the familiar tune, the familiar lyrics. Harry smiles. Draco’s lips curl, too, the ghost of a smile.
“May I?” Harry jests, holding out a hand. Draco takes it and hauls himself up. They slot against each other like intricate machinery inside a grandfather clock: arms wrapped around each other, hands placed on the dip above their hips. Harry holds him carefully, lightly, because Draco could never stand a touch on night like these, but Draco simply leans his weight against Harry, like a sigh.
Harry strokes the small of his back.
They sway. Feet lifting, crossing between the lines parting shadow and light—dancing across a kaleidoscope, a hundred shades of grey. Harry hums along, broken and off-key. Draco rests his cheek against Harry’s and then buries his face into Harry’s hair altogether.
Harry hums on.
***
This is how Draco finds him: flushed, the collar of his robes undone, sleeves rolled to his elbows. A foolish grin on his face, watching from behind the draping vines the baubles of lights floating, their friends laughing and dancing. He sees Draco from twenty steps away and grins some more.
“You’ve got no manners,” Draco says, and then buttons his collar back up one by one. His knuckles graze Harry’s neck. Harry watches him, swaying a bit and smiling loosely.
“Give me a kiss,” he says.
Draco flushes. Finishing with the collar, he pats it lightly then reaches for Harry’s sleeves still. Harry takes his hand, twirls him—Draco gasps—and then dips him, grinning. Draco is stunned before he laughs, bright and loud.
“You don’t even know how to dance!”
Harry smiles. “Teach me.”
“I have tried, relentlessly, for many years. To no avail.”
“Keep trying,” Harry whispers. “You have so many more.”
Draco’s smile softens. Reaching up, he touches Harry’s cheek. “So many more.”
Harry is going to lean down and kiss him. He is. He just wants a moment longer of this: of Draco’s bright grey eyes, of his cheeks folding with his faint smile. There is none of the uncertainty that so often marks Draco’s face. No doubt, no quiet fear, no strained smile for reassurance. Only the curve Harry has come to know so well, the soft lips.
“Harry.” Nervous.
“Hmm?”
“Do you remember what you said that day? The day—you know, we were watching the television, the show, I think, and it finished and the girl didn’t win and—”
“Whoa, slow down.” A laugh. “Uh, before we started dating?”
“…yes.”
“Yeah, I think so. Wait, what was your question?—Stop it, ouch, hey!” Another laugh. Draco huffs. “Oh, wait, wait. We were dancing on each other’s feet, weren’t we? Uh…something about penguins?”
“…yes.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“Penguins mate for life.”
Harry’s smile freezes. He stares at Draco. His pulse pounds in his ears.
“Draco—”
Draco, furiously flushed down his neck, kneels.
Tears blur Harry’s eyes.
Familiar music, gentle and slow. Draco’s finger is still on his cheek, grey eyes bright.
Harry leans down and kisses him.
***
“Ha!” Draco shouts, “I win!”
Harry groans. Draco drags him to their bedroom, ignoring Harry’s yelps all the way; stumble in front of the dressing mirror and bends Harry’s head this way and that, trying to get a better angle. “Can you see?”
The wireless is still singing, music muffled through the walls. The lyrics float across the corridors, one note fading into the next.
“No, you dolt—” Harry yelps again—“Apparently it’s on the back of my head!”
Draco pauses. “Do you mind?”
Harry huffs and, after a moment, shakes his head. Draco gently cradles his head, tilts it a little sideways, and tugs off a strand of hair. It is undoubtedly silver. Harry huffs again.
Draco grins. “You have to do laundry for a month.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “Are you sure you didn’t charm it? Transfigure a toothpick? Steal it from someone else?”
Draco makes an indignant noise. “Of course I didn’t, where is your Gryffindor honor?”
“Shouldn’t have danced with you,” Harry mutters. “Shouldn’t have danced with you today at all.” They have taken up to dancing every now and then when the song comes on the wireless, more often than not ending with them tripping over each other’s feet and falling onto the couch, or crashing into the tea cabinet, or falling onto the floor atop each other, laughing and wincing and rubbing their bums. In the safety of their own flat, they can be as silly as they want. Whenever Elvis comes onto the wireless when they are in bed, Harry sings along with an improvised microphone, putting his face close to Draco’s—badly out of tune and over-enunciating each word. Draco laughs and throws his arms over his face, embarrassed.
“Oh, darling,” Draco says, pleased, and with a swift motion he pulls a grumbling Harry close and sways them right back onto the beat. “You love it when we dance.”
***
The night is quiet, like all summer nights at the countryside are: the soft hum of cicadas, the running of rivulets, the rustle of breezes through sweet meadow grass. Ron and Hermione have chosen nicely where their cottage would be. Sometimes Harry and Draco stay, just to forget about the city for a couple days. Get to bed early and let the soft sounds fill in, the summer air warm against their skins. The shuffle of covers just a turn amidst a dream.
Except they had a fancy dinner tonight—alfresco, candle light floating in the air, bubbled champagne for adults and bubbled cider for kids, which got Rose and Huge screaming and flapping their arms about in delight. Hermione tried to calm them, Ron wasn’t helping, and at last the children and the dogs were let loose into the vast hills expanding all the way from behind the cottage to the sea—corgis barfing, children screeching, Hermione yelling at them to keep down the noise and Ron howling with laughter, somehow louder than them all.
“They’re insane,” Draco mutters.
Harry laughs. “Have you seen us in our teens? We were worse.”
Draco scowls. He now loathes any mentioning of age; the growing wrinkles on his face are reminders enough. They are swaying, gently, lightly, as if they are not swaying at all. From inside the cottage floats soft music, wafting in the warm air, dipping between meadow grasses.
“I had more manners when I was five than all of them combined,” Draco continues. Harry chuckles and kisses his cheek.
“Just focus on our feet, love.”
They hardly need to. The movement flows between them, every step fitting like an old leather watch fitting against a wrist, smooth and worn and indented at all the right places. Harry leans his head against Draco’s shoulder. He used to resent their height difference, but now he is simply grateful for any chance to use Draco’s shoulder as head rest.
He never thought he’d live to see any of it. It is still too large for him, sometimes, this happiness flooding him as suddenly and tenderly as waves at bay. He could never have imagined, living in a dark, dusty cupboard under the stairs all those years ago, whispering to spiders, all alone. He could never—
Gently, Draco cradles his head and presses it close. Harry buries his face into Draco’s shoulder, blinking furiously.
“It’s okay, love,” Draco whispers. Presses a kiss into his hair. “It’s okay.”
Harry holds Draco tighter. Far down, a corgi barks, Rose and Hugo’s laughter echoing across the fields.
***
He closes his eyes in the afternoon sun.
Autumn has arrived. The air cools with each passing day whenever he takes walks; in the mornings, in the evenings, his coat billowing in the wind. But here, inside their house, it is still warm. The wooden beams harbor the lingering warmth of summer, exhaling softly, a cocoon of warmth.
Beside him, Draco turns a page of his book.
Quite early on, just after they bought the house in preparation for retirement, they had decided that the armchairs were to sit side by side by the large windows in the living room. And this is where they sit now. Sunlight streams in from the glass panes, baking the overstuffed cushions so warm that, almost too easily, one drifts off without even realizing.
Draco steals his armchair every two days. And then he complains loudly when Harry in turn settles on his, scurrying back to his own and muttering under his breath.
Draco complains a lot these days.
It’s his knees, mostly. But Harry also likes to think that, deep inside his husband, there lives a melodramatic Draco demanding attention that never really went away.
Beside him, Draco turns another page. His reading glasses, which he got after a year and a half of stubborn protesting, sit at the bottom of his nose. The thin silver frame catches the sunlight and twinkles.
Suddenly, without taking his eyes off the book, Draco mutters, “Focus, Potter.”
“You’re a Potter, too.”
“You and your hilarious jokes.” Draco rolls his eyes. “Ha, ha, ha.”
“The glasses look good on you.”
“So I’ve heard.”
But Harry knows that Draco listens, remembers, and holds the little pockets of memories he’s collected close to himself when he is alone. Outside, their garden is a messy, darling array of flaming colors: orange blending into crimson blending into gold, waves and waves of thick foliage rising and dipping in the wind. It warms Harry’s heart, looking at their garden. Looking at the tall trees and the blooming flowers, the grandeur they’d nurtured in its most splendid right before it dims and rests for winter.
The wireless hums, a comfortable silence between songs. Then the familiar tune comes, gentle and dear.
Wise men says…
Harry leans over and touches Draco’s hand. Draco is already smiling. Harry brings his hand close to his lips, kisses his knuckles.
“We’re too old for this,” Draco says, even though he has said this a thousand times already, even though he is already standing up.
Only fools rush in…
Slowly and carefully, the way old men do, they wrap their arms around each other and thread their fingers. Draco’s hand gentle at his shoulder, a familiar touch. They know how much to bend their elbows, how close to hold the other’s waist, know when to lift their feet so they don’t step on each other. Know how much to twirl so they still stay in each other’s arms.
Darling, so it goes…
Draco is smiling. Faintly, his cheeks folding along the lines carved into soft skin. He is no longer the man he used to look when he was thirty. His hair thin and silvery, no longer the buttery blond it used to be—
But his eyes.
They are still the same eyes Harry had looked into thirty, fifty, seventy years ago: the grey of the soft feathers of a dove, of a sky moments before dawn. An eternity of its own in this brief, capricious world. In the sunlight they melt into pools of silver, twinkling with mirth.
Some things are meant to be…
“Oh, love,” Draco whispers. “We’re so old.”
Harry laughs. Leans his head on Draco’s shoulder, closes his eyes with a smile.
Take my hand, take my whole life, too…
For I can’t help falling in love with you