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Draco’s sitting outside a pub Harry frequents after Auror training. His long blond hair is matted with blood and his split lip is sluggishly dripping blood onto torn gray slacks. Even like this he’s beautiful and it takes a second for Harry to slow his breathing down and quell the tickle in his throat. Harry steps up, thrusting a hand down in front of Draco.
Sharp gray eyes snap up to lock gazes with him and it feels as if the breath has been knocked out of him. He barely manages to hold back the cough. They’re only twenty but the world had not been kind to Draco after the war. His face, once porcelain pale and unblemished is mottled with bruises and scars. The skin around his eyes is dark and a bit sunken from lack of sleep. But those eyes are the same. Sharp and bright and full of so much promise.
“Sure you want to be seen fraternizing with the enemy, Auror?” Draco sneers around his swollen lip, but it comes out weak and he knows it.
His hand lifts from where it rests on the dirty ground, dried blood across his split knuckles. Harry takes it in his without hesitation, pulling Draco up hard enough that the man stumbles into him. He’s lighter than expected, Harry thinks.
“Come home with me.” Harry asks, already heading up the street to a public floo.
Draco’s hand tightens in his, pulling Harry back toward him. His other hand wrapping firmly around his back. His gray eyes take on a dangerous gleam in the moonlight.
“Ohh I wouldn’t have taken you for the type Potter. Buying a night with an infamous death eater, bringing him home right under your wife’s nose. Not so saintly now the war’s done are you, hmm?”
He’s speaking against Harry’s jaw now, nipping sharply with his uninjured hand wrapping itself in the loose tie still hanging from the Auror’s neck. When he pulls back a bit, Harry looks dazed. He seems to snap out of it all at once, choking, stepping back but never letting go of his grip on his former schoolmate.
“We aren’t together anymore.” Harry rasps, shuffling his feet a bit over the uneven cobblestone. He coughs hard into his hand, and hopes Draco doesn’t notice the single red-speckled bud that rests in his palm when he shoves it into his pocket.
“Pardon?” Draco says, forgetting to be snarky in his exhaust and confusion .
“Gin and me. We, ah... haven’t been together for a while now. No one really knows, other than family. So it would just be us.” Harry finally meets his eyes, watching Draco carefully. It’s a risk to tell him, he knows, but Harry hopes it will be enough to get the other man to trust him a little.
Dark eyebrows shoot up into blond fringe.
“I could sell that story to the Prophet, you know.”
“I know.” Harry tugs them forward again as he speaks.
“I won’t give you anything for free. Just because you testified to reduce my sentence, it doesn’t mean I owe you now.”
“I’m not asking for anything. Look, you’re a bloody mess. Literally, I should add. You need a hot bath and a good meal and a soft bed. I happen to have a lovely bath, food enough for weeks, and more than enough space to accommodate you. But if I’m inhibiting your ability to get work, I’ll pay you to stay. As long as you want.”
Draco halts them just inside the deserted shop, a few feet short of the 24 hour floo, glaring at Harry then.
“I don’t want your pity Potter!“ He spits out, sounding much as he had when they were children.
“And you don’t have it.” Harry bites back, coughing roughly and shoving his hand into his pocket again.
“So you’re taking a death eater, one who just propositioned you and threatened to tell the prophet about your failed marriage, to your empty home out of the goodness of your heart? You’re either lying or you really are a Saint, Potter.”
“It’s Harry. And I’m not.” He grabs a handful of floo powder and passes the bowl to Draco.
“Wait a bit before you go. I have to go first, let down the wards.” He steps into the floo then.
“12 Grimmauld Place.” Floo powder slams down and ignites, Harry disappearing behind it.
When the flames clear, the floo is empty and Draco is left in the dark of the shop, alone again. He’s ready to turn back, walk out into the chill of the night air when something catches his eye.
A small white petal, ruffled gently and smelling sweet when he lifts it to his face. A flower petal, speckled with blood. He rubs his thumb over the delicately perfumed thing again. Harry was suffering with Hanahaki.
He’d assumed the mouthfuls of petals Harry had been coughing up were for his his wife. And they still might be. But Draco couldn’t seem to stop the hope that seemed to bloom in his chest, though free from the tickling ache of flowers taking root in his chest.
In the floo a tiny bud rests in the ash, slightly charred on the outside. Draco scrambles for his wand and mutters an incantation. He watches it bloom in horror and awe. He grabs another handful of floo powder, stepping in and saying the address before disappearing into flame.
In the floo, resting gently over the ash is a perfectly bloomed gardenia.
Draco’s favorite flower.