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Draco always knew it wasn’t as easy for him as it was for Pansy. That even though he enjoyed wearing dresses and playing makeover with her, he absolutely dreaded the moment their moms would fawn over them and call them “pretty little girls”. That he would stay up all night wishing no one would tell him how he was going to grow into a “beautiful young lady” ever again. Pansy never had these problems. She always absorbed the praise with a smile on her face, always talked about how she couldn't wait to grow, how she couldn't wait for her body to change.
He told her this once, and she just looked at him, not understanding. He was six, and she just became seven, and they were playing in the gardens, Draco’s baby blue summer dress billowing in the wind.
“Don’t you get excited?” Pansy asked. “Growing up is exciting. All these big girls at my mom’s parties look so pretty. I want to be just like them.”
Draco blinked at her. He knew he should feel the same, that he should be just as excited as she was. “Maybe it’s because you’re bigger than me.” He shrugged, imitating nonchalance, even though his mind screamed that this is something he will never want.
Pansy beamed. “I’m sure that’s it! Mother always says girls mature very quickly at this age. You just haven’t started maturing yet because you’re still so little!”
Draco nodded even though the voice inside his head whispered in a malicious little tone you’re never going to want to mature like a girl .
No one called Draco “Draco” until he was nine. Back then, he and Pansy used to play a game when they borrowed names from the constellations and told stories as if the stars were alive. Draco always picked the Draco constellation, the name feeling right on his tongue, his insides feeling lighter every time Pansy called him so.
After a while, Pansy got bored with the game. “I don’t want to play anymore,” she said, sitting on Draco’s bed. “You always pick the same constellation and you always tell the same stories. Every time I come over, this is all you want to play. You don’t talk to me unless I call you Draco.”
Draco shrugged. “I like it. It’s fun, and it’s my house. We’re playing what I want.”
Pansy groaned. “Can I at least be Draco this time? You never let me!”
“No!” Draco said, offended. “Draco’s mine, I’m always Draco.”
“Doesn’t it get boring?”
“No,” Draco said then, like it was obvious. Then with more conviction, “Does it get boring being Pansy?”
Pansy laughed. “That’s not the same thing, silly!”
“It is for me,” Draco whispered.
Pansy’s eyes got big. “What are you trying to say?”
“I want to be called Draco all the time,” he mumbled. “Not just when we play. I want to be called Draco like you’re called Pansy.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I don’t like my name. It’s stupid.”
“It’s beautiful,” Pansy said in response.
Draco grimaced. “It’s girly.”
Pansy huffed, clutching at the folds of her pink princess dress. “What’s wrong with being girly?”
Draco shrugged again. “Nothing. It suits you. It doesn’t suit me. My name doesn’t suit me. Draco does. Draco suits me like Pansy suits you.”
Pansy stared at him. She didn’t understand, Draco knew. But Pansy didn’t have to understand. She just rolled out of bed and put her shoes on. “Alright then,” she turned to him, holding out her hand. “Do you want to play with the dolls, Draco?”
Draco was sure he would have cried tears of happiness just then if Pansy didn’t roll her eyes and dragged him to his toy chest. That night he spilled them out, anyway.
Draco was ten when he told his parents he’s not a girl. They were having dinner and his mother admonished him earlier for playing with his food. But Draco wasn’t hungry. Two weeks ago when he was at Pansy’s, he told her how he hates when people call him “she”. Pansy nodded and listened, just like she always did.
“It’s not that it’s bad to be called “she”. It’s how people say it. They say it in the same way they call me a girl. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Pansy shook her head. “No.”
Draco’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.” He was used to it by that time. He always talked with Pansy about this, about the things that made him feel different, and she never really understood. But even so, she always knew how to make him feel better.
“How do you want to be called then?” Pansy asked him when he didn’t say anything else.
Draco didn’t need time to think. “He. Like Father.” Draco paused and then looked at Pansy.
She hummed, biting her lip. “I want to try something.”
“Ok.” Draco nodded. “What?”
Pansy just stared him in the eye. “I’ve known Draco since we were babies. He was always a little strange. He never liked being called a girl.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve always thought Draco Malfoy was a handsome boy-”
Draco gasped. “Pansy!”
“What?”
“Say that again. Call me a boy.”
Pansy smiled at him. “Sure thing, Draco.”
Now, sitting in front of his parents and telling them these things, all the things that he and Pansy discovered together, he felt stupid instead of hopeful.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Father said, putting his fork down on the table. “This is nonsense. You’re just a child.”
Mother said nothing, just looked at Draco as if urging him to stop talking. Draco turned his head away from her. “It’s not nonsense to me. I want to be called Draco. I want to go to Hogwarts next year and stay with the boys.”
Draco never imagined his Father capable of what he did next. How he grabbed Draco’s arm and dragged him away through the house, Mother pleading behind him, “Let her be, she doesn’t know any better!” all while he was screaming in pain at the force of the grip. Lucius pushed him inside a cupboard, making Draco hit the ground and closed the door behind him a second later.
“Maybe a night here will clear your head.”
Draco cried from behind the door, trying to make sense of anything in that darkness. The space was small, and the air was suffocating.
That night, Mother came down the stairs to get him out. Draco wasn’t asleep even though it was probably really late. He was whimpering next to the door, promises of being good pouring out of his lips even though there was no one on the other side of the door to hear him. But then the door opened suddenly and Draco fell on his back, groaning loudly. Narcissa helped him up and put a hand on his cheek, wiping his tears. “Oh, darling.”
She tried to urge him back to his room, but Draco was pinned in place, crying in the folds of his mother’s nightdress. And then Father came down, and he pushed Mother out of the way and he shoved Draco back in the cupboard, despite the child’s screaming and the mother’s pleas.
Draco didn’t sleep at all that night. He spent all of that time looking at the door, waiting to see if his mother was going to come again. Knowing she won’t.
The next time the door opened it was morning and Father was standing in the frame. He walked in the small space and hugged a whimpering Draco. “There, there. It’s going to be alright, son.”
Draco looked up at his father, blinking away the tears in his eyes. “Son?”
His father nodded.
It was years later that Draco understood that Lucius accepted Draco’s identity not because he cared but because his mother convinced him he could profit out of it. Having a son meant the family name could go on. It meant a Malfoy taking over the family estate. But right there, in that moment, with his father cradling him and calling him “son”, Draco didn’t care for a reason. He was just happy Father understood.
The first few years at Hogwarts it was easy. His letter was addressed to him, to Draco, and he cut his hair short and had his mother buy him new clothes before first year started.
He never told any of the boys he was different from them. No one knew except Pansy, and she always managed to make him feel better when he thought one of his dorm mates might have known his secret.
“That’s ridiculous,” Pansy would say to him when they were sitting together in the common room. “They’re way too thick to figure it out.”
When Draco was thirteen, his chest started getting bigger. He watched with dread as it grew, how it became more and more noticeable under his shirts.
He began to bandage it, asking Pansy for help, squeezing himself until his chest looked flat under his shirt and breathing became painful.
"Draco, I think that's enough," Pansy would say in the mornings, when everyone would leave and she and Draco were left alone in the boys' dormitory.
"No," Draco would say then, holding the roll of bandage over his chest. "One more."
"It’s flat."
"One more."
Pansy would just shake her head and take the roll from his hand. "Alright."
It became harder and harder for Draco to play Quidditch. It was hard to breathe in the air, his chest constricting painfully every time he took a turn with his broom. Sometimes it was hard not to pass out.
Pansy would search him after his games, after his practice, dragging him back to the dungeons as soon as she found him. "We're taking those off." She would say, leaving no room for comments. And still, Draco tried.
"I'm fine."
Pansy’s eyes would get murderous when he said that. "You looked like you were going to fall off your broom, you idiot."
By sixth year, Draco gave up on Quidditch all together. That year it was harder to breathe for an entirely different reason.
When the voices of his dorm mates started to deepen, Draco started to train his own. He took time in the bathroom every morning for it, even asked Pansy to help him, using spells they found in the library books.
Sometimes he felt confident in his voice, thinking it sounded almost as deep as the rest of the boys.
And other times, like when he got into an argument with Potter and his friends, he felt ashamed when his voice rose to his normal tune and Weasley laughed, saying his own sister had a voice deeper than his.
"I'll kill him," Pansy said that day, rubbing circles into Draco’s back.
Draco didn’t feel like going to dinner and Pansy, as the good friend she was, didn't go either.
"It’s fine, Pansy," Draco mumbled in his pillow.
"It’s really not."
That night neither Draco nor Pansy slept. They stayed up all night, Draco’s curtains pulled tight, a silencing charm in place, and Draco worked on his voice until his throat felt sore from all the new spells they tried.
When he was fourteen, Draco got his first period. He felt so bad he couldn't even get out of bed and when Pansy came to check on him later, she found him sniffling in his pillow.
"I'm never going to be like them," he said, pulling his blankets off and letting Pansy see his blood stained covers.
"No, you won't," Pansy said after a moment of silence, then left. She came back a minute later holding a box of tampons. "You're better than all of them."
Slowly, with understanding, she got Draco out of bed and convinced him to take a shower. She vanished his bed covers, searching for a house-elf to ask for some new ones. Then when Draco came back to his dorm, she tucked him in his bed and kissed his cheek.
"You're ridiculous, Pansy," he said, even as he tugged her hand, urging her to sleep under the covers next to him.
Pansy laughed. "I'm being nice to you because it's your first time, but if you start bitching, I'm going to leave."
Draco smiled in his pillows. "Don't leave."
"I won't," she said, lifting the covers to sit next to Draco on the bed. "I won't."
Besides Pansy, the only other person Draco considered a friend was Blaise Zabini. He was quiet in the beginning, calculated, and he and Draco ended up hanging out mostly at Pansy's insistence.
"You need more friends," Pansy said to him once.
They were in the library going over their Transfiguration essays. "I have plenty of friends."
Pansy scoffed. "Not really. Not close ones." She jotted a few lines down on her parchment. "You should befriend Zabini. He's loyal, and he's good company once you get to know him."
Draco didn’t look up from his essay. "I'm good."
Pansy frowned at him and took his hand. "I know why you don't want to get close to anyone. But that doesn't mean it's not stupid."
Draco just stared at their joined hands and shrugged. He didn't like proving Pansy right. "Fine, do what you will. It's not like you ever listen."
The next Hogsmeade weekend, Pansy arranged an outing for the three of them. And while coming back up the road to the castle gates with Blaise in between them, laughing loudly, Draco realised that getting close to others might not be so bad.
After that day, it was easy for the three of them to be friends. Blaise wasn't noisy, and he respected boundaries, so he always gave Draco space when he asked for it. He was loyal, just like Pansy said, and after you got to know him, after you broke through the quietness of his exterior, Blaise turned out to be incredibly talkative and funny.
Draco almost though he was going to lose all this at the beginning of fifth year, when after a particularly exhausting Quidditch game that left Draco feeling dizzy and barely able to breathe, Pansy dragged him back to his dorm to take down his bandages and Blaise walked in on them.
Draco quickly hid his chest and Pansy had her wand out, ready to hit him with a nasty hex if he took one wrong step.
Blaise arched his eyebrow. Draco blushed, feeling exposed, and pulled his cover over his naked chest. "I can explain!"
Blaise sat down on his bed, pulling one leg over the other. "Explain then."
With the covers still pulled tight over his form, his knuckles white, Draco tried to explain to Blaise, tried to make him understand all the feelings swarming inside his being. When he finished, Blaise did nothing more than simply shrug. "If I can keep my mother’s secrets, I can keep yours." And then after a pause: "So you two aren't shagging?"
Draco and Pansy looked at one another before falling down onto the bed, laughing, and in that moment Draco didn’t care that the covers were pulled low and that Blaise could see his breasts through the last layer of bandages Pansy still had to cut.
Blaise's and Draco's friendship only grew stronger after that. And then as they started spending more time alone, as they stayed up at night, their fingers brushing, their tights pressed to one another, it became something more.
Blaise was Draco’s first kiss. He expected it to feel wrong in the same way everything about him always did, but instead it felt so utterly impossibly right Draco almost couldn't believe it.
Everything felt right with Blaise. They stayed up at night and laughed and kissed and then they would kiss some more in the morning. They would kiss in the Quidditch locker rooms after Draco’s games or in the most dark corners of the library, or in the common rooms when it was so late only the two of them and Pansy were there.
Blaise was Draco’s first in a lot of ways. His first kiss, his first love, the first person to ever share his body with. And when he made love with Blaise, his body never felt wrong, it never felt like a prison, it couldn't with the way Blaise was kissing and caressing it like it was something precious, something worth being worshipped.
Draco told this to him once, on their last day of their fifth year, when they were sitting in the dark of their dorm on Blaise's bed, the curtains pulled. Blaise laughed and kissed his palm. "You deserve to be worshipped, Draco," He said, pressing fluttering kisses up his arm. "You're beautiful."
That summer Draco didn’t feel beautiful living in a house full of Death Eaters. He felt wrong and dirty, and the thought of being exposed made him feel sick to the stomach. He stayed up every night thinking of what Greyback would say, of what the Dark Lord would do. Draco was extra careful that summer, making sure his voice was even deeper than usual, making sure his bandages were so tight his vision darkened.
The days of that summer which he got to spend with Blaise and Pansy were the only days in which he felt like himself at all.
Draco broke up with Blaise two weeks after sixth year started.
"I don't get it," Blaise said, making a move to grab Draco’s hand but then deciding otherwise. His hand hung awkwardly in front of him as he spoke. "Aren't we happy? I thought you were happy."
Draco swallowed. "We were. I was." He scratched his left arm, right where he knew his Dark Mark was. "It’s complicated."
"Complicated," Blaise repeated like he was testing the word out. He glanced at Draco’s arm. "If this is about the thing-"
"Blaise-"
"I can help-"
"You won't," Draco said, with as much conviction as he could muster. "You won't."
Blaise exhaled, but said nothing more.
"When I'm done, I will not be coming back to Hogwarts anyway, and you know it."
"Bigger and better things and all that, I get it," Blaise said, coldly, not looking at him. "I thought at least you'll include me in your future."
Draco shrugged and walked away, not wanting to see that look on Blaise's face anymore, not wanting to fuss over the fact that he put it there.
He had a plan, a mission. The Dark Lord assigned it to him personally. He couldn't afford Blaise getting in the way. He couldn't afford Blaise getting hurt .
Draco will always remember how the bathroom floor was cold and his blood was warm and how there was only one thought running through his mind. He knows .
As he sat there waiting to die, Potter fumbling over his form, mumbling things he didn't understand, his ears ringing, all he could do was scramble his hands to his chest to make Potter not see .
Then Severus came in and he murmured a spell that made Draco’s skin mend back together and he wiped the blood off his cheek and lifted him up.
He was in a haze, on the verge of drifting to unconsciousness, when the words "hospital wing" reached his ears and he croaked a weak "no", so weak he was afraid no one heard him.
Severus was hauling him down the stairs when Draco regained his voice enough to croak out "No hospital wing…"
Severus looked at Draco’s chest, at the obvious outline of his breasts, at the ripped and bloodied bandages trailing behind him. "Mr. Malfoy, if this is about your condition-"
Draco tried to stop Snape from going forward and ended up almost throwing himself to the ground.
"Careful," said Severus.
"No hospital wing," Draco croaked again and groaned when he touched his cheek and felt the pulsing wound there. "You have dittany in your office."
Severus cursed under his breath, but he took Draco to his office and he searched for the little bit of dittany he kept there, trying to heal Draco’s wounds as best as he could.
"Theo told me you threatened Potter in the Great Hall," Draco said, sitting on his bed with no shirt on, Pansy tracing her fingers on the lines of his fresh scars.
"You should have gone to the infirmary," she replied instead, as if she didn't hear him.
Draco huffed. "I'm fine, it's just some scars."
"Just some-!" Pansy started, affronted. "Look at you! You're covered in them."
"Professor Snape didn't have enough dittany. He started with the wounds of my face and then went down," Draco said, shrugging and then wincing. He had a scar on his shoulder and it still hurt when he moved it too much.
Pansy put her head on Draco’s stomach. "He almost killed you," she whispered.
Draco laughed, and Pansy looked up at him, offended. "Is it fucked up that I sort of hoped he chopped them off?" He asked, putting one of his hands on his breasts.
Pansy patted it away. "Yes," she said, not looking at him. Her breath brushed over Draco’s skin, making him shiver. "If you want to get rid of them, we're going to find a way. Just don't go around hopping for Potter to mutilate you."
"It was a joke, Pansy," Draco replied. "It wasn't a very good one, sorry."
"Not your best," Pansy mumbled into his skin. Then lifting her chin up, "Have you talked with Blaise?"
"He's been avoiding me."
Pansy smacked his side lightly, and Draco winced. "He's hurt, you know? You're an idiot for dumping him."
"I know."
Draco didn’t come back for his seventh year. He stayed at the Manor, helping his aunt, pretending like him and his parents weren't prisoners in their own home.
He did the same things he's done a summer ago, deepening his voice a little more, tightening his bandages a little harder, pretending he had a beard to shave in the morning, a flat chest to grow hair on. He did all of this and more, always being careful, always jumping every time Greyback sat too close to him, afraid he could smell the things that made him different.
Sometimes he thought he caught his Aunt Bella looking at him, staring a little too long at his chest, or at his hands, or at his hips, but she never said anything, just smiled at him in that way of hers that made Draco’s insides shiver.
He missed Pansy more than anything during that time, missed her jokes and her meanness and her love. He missed the way she always knew what to say, even if she didn't always understand how he felt.
He wondered what she would think of him if she could see him, if she could know how much he missed being a kid and sitting in his room playing makeover with her. Back when the prospect of war wasn't real to them, when it all still felt like a game.
Draco heard a woman scream in pain down the hall and shuddered, hugging his bandaged chest, feeling his ribs hurt. It didn't feel like a game now.
After the war, Draco wasn’t sentenced to Azkaban, thanks to Potter speaking at his trial, but he still had to stay in a Ministry cell before his hearing. An Auror threw him a rugged piece of clothing that first day, an old white robe, prisoner's uniform, and told him to put it on.
Draco hesitated, but the man never left, so slowly he started taking his robes off. He could feel the man's eyes lingering on his bandages, the confusion and then the understanding, and saw how he hid his smirk behind his palm.
Draco huffed at him and threw his old robes in his direction. The man pushed the pile of clothing with his foot, his smirk still in place.
Draco knew he was going to tell this to the other Aurors, that they're all going to laugh about it terribly but that they're never going to sell this to The Prophet, especially with Potters new rules about tolerance. It was a slight comfort knowing that, and so Draco straightened his back, making sure the Auror got a good look at him. I'm not ashamed of who I am , he thought. I'm not ashamed of what makes me special. Not anymore .
Going back for eight year was an experience, that much Draco could already tell. He'd been under house arrest for the entire summer and when he went to buy the books necessary for his school year, he had an Auror assigned with him.
He ran into Potter that day and he nodded in greeting but Potter just looked at him and turned his head, walking back after his friends and Draco was again hit with that feeling that Potter knows , that he knows and that he finds it disgusting.
And even though Draco had decided that summer to simply not care, he decided that there was nothing wrong with him and that Pansy and Blaise and his mother were right when they said he was beautiful, it still hurt to imagine that the Chosen One might find him anything less than worthy of his attention.
But Draco didn’t look after Potter. He didn't hope for another glance because if the Boy Who Lived thought of him as less that wasn't Draco’s problem and so he strode over to Twilfitt and Tatting's, Auror following him close behind, and ordered a set of dresses for himself.
When he told his mother that he wanted to wear dresses again, she was confused. "Does this mean…?" She started, then stopped herself. "Are you not still-"
"No," He said, knowing already what she wanted to say, but didn't have the courage to. "I'm still a boy. I'll always be one." Draco played with the food on his plate before setting his fork down. "I never minded the dresses and the makeup. I only minded what people assumed of me because of them."
His mother smiled and, abandoning her barely touched plate, she came next to her son. She put her hand in his hair, the way she did when he was little, and she smiled down at him. "Would you like to try some of my old dresses, darling?" Draco beamed at her and took her hand as she guided him up to her room.
Draco vaguely wondered what the Aurors thought of him when they saw him one day in his manly robes the outline of his chest visible through the material, only to see him the next day his chest flat and bandaged, walking around the gardens in his mother's old robes which had to be magically shrunken.
But with that also came the knowledge that he didn't much care what they thought, that after eighteen years of being the perfect daughter and later, the perfect son, he was content to just be himself, to explore himself in ways he never dared too before.
He wore feminine robes that day on Platform 9¾ and when Pansy saw him through the crowd, she ran to him, her arms wide open and she clutched at his robes so tight, like she was afraid he would vanish if she let go.
Draco laughed, taking in the faint smell of her perfume, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. "I missed you too, Pansy."
Pansy let go of him and kissed him on the mouth loud and quick. "You're such a fucker," she said, laughing too. Then she took a look at his clothes and smiled. "Someone is looking handsome today."
"Got to win Blaise back, haven't I?"
Pansy hit him on the shoulder. "That's my boy."
When they turned their heads looking for other Slytherins, they saw Potter looking at them over the mop of Granger's hair. Draco sneered and Potter turned his head quickly.
"What's up with him?" Pansy asked, holding Draco’s hand.
"Fuck if I know," Draco said, walking towards the train. "All that Chosen One business must have messed up his brain."
Pansy laughed. "You never used to swear." She opened an empty compartment and walked in, lounging on one of the benches, her knickers visible to anyone deciding to pass the hallway. Draco quickly shut the door behind him.
He rolled his eyes and threw her legs off the bench, plopping his head into her lap. He arranged the folds of his robes, tucking them in between his knees to make sure he was covered. "I've been locked up, Pansy. I had to become tough."
Pansy pulled on his hair. "You've been locked in a Ministry cell for like two days, Draco."
"Yes, well-"
Suddenly, the door to the compartment opened, and Granger's head came into view. "I think all the others are full Har–oh." She turned back and whispered something to the little mops of ginger and raven hair, then slipped her head back in the compartment again. "Is that bench free?"
Pansy looked down and Draco looked up at her until the two of them simply turned their stares to Granger and nodded, slightly.
Granger smiled at them, forced, and then slipped inside, dragging Weasley and Potter after. They took a seat on the opposite bench while Weasley kept murmuring about how "Told you we should have got on the train earlier…"
No one said anything the entire ride and eventually Weasley and Granger fell asleep, her head sitting on her boyfriend's shoulder. Potter didn’t fall asleep though, just stood and stared at Pansy and Draco the whole way until Draco got so fed up he rose from his place and went to the bathroom and sat there until the train stopped.
When they got back to Hogwarts, Headmistress McGonagall informed them of the new eight year common rooms and the list of assigned dorm mates. Draco was assigned with Potter and Weasley, and he silently cursed the old woman for ruining his plans of sharing a dorm with just Blaise.
That first night, though, Draco was sitting in front of the fire of the common room when Blaise sat down next to him. The common room was mostly empty except for a few Ravenclaws sitting in the back chairs, reading.
"You look well," Blaise said, smiling at Draco.
This is it, Draco thought. Now I get to fix my mistake . "Thanks. You look...good," Draco said, feeling his cheeks heat up. He coughed in the silence when Blaise didn't respond. "So-"
"I'm seeing Nott," Blaise blurted out suddenly, gripping his front robes.
Draco’s smile faded, and a lump settled in his throat. "Oh," he said, trying not to let on how much everything actually hurt. "That's good. I'm- I'm happy for you."
"Draco," Blaise started, but Draco didn’t let him finish. He was babbling, he knew he was, but he didn't have it in himself to stop.
"We can still be friends. This doesn't have to change anything, right?" Draco asked, pleading. "We can still hang out."
"Of course," Blaise said, like that wasn't even up for debate. "Of course we're still friends, Draco. I still care about you." He paused. “Even though you were a dick in sixth year.”
Draco nodded. "I care about you too," he said, a lot softer than he would have liked, and then bit his tongue.
Blaise smiled, painfully. "You'll find someone."
Draco snorted at that. "Doubt it."
Blaise laughed. "I mean it, you idiot. I meant everything I said to you when we were together. You're beautiful inside and out, no matter what others might think."
Draco looked Blaise in the eye and smiled with the corner of his mouth. "I know."
Pansy bursted into Draco’s dorm two days later, waking him up and startling a half naked Weasley. He scrambled with his shirt, pulling it on quickly, and glared. Pansy brushed him off. "Calm down, I'm not interested in Weasleys."
Draco couldn't help the smirk creeping up on his face. "Not the first six, anyway."
Pansy slapped him over the head. "You're a horrible little creature, Draco Malfoy." She huffed. "I was going to give you exquisite news, but now I think I'm just going to leave."
Draco laughed and grabbed for her hand, making sure his covers were still hiding his chest from Weasley. He was planning on telling him, just didn't figure out how yet. "What is it?"
"I think you should talk with Padma Patil," Pansy responded, a sparkle in her eye. "I think you'll find you have quite a lot in common."
Draco frowned at her, but Pansy just smiled and left, so that day after dinner Draco went to Padma and asked if they could talk. It turned out Padma was also born into a life she didn't want, into a role she didn't fit and she spent her whole life making everyone around her see her for who she really was.
"You're not alone, Malfoy," Padma said, smiling at him in a way no one other than his Slytherin friends and his mother did. "There's nothing wrong with being trans."
Draco has never heard that word before and yet he felt like he always knew it, like it was always a part of him and his identity. He cried when Padma explained it to him, when she told him just how many people were out there with the same struggles as him.
He never realised how utterly alone he felt until that moment, and was forever grateful for having a friend as good and true as Pansy.
Padma Patil made for good company. She forgave Draco for his part in the war, and she never blamed Pansy for wanting to offer Potter to the Dark Lord that fateful night. "You just said what everyone else was thinking. I don’t think that's reason to hate you."
Two weeks after forming their friendship, a packet came to Draco during breakfast.
"Binders," Padma said next to him. "Pansy said you bandage your chest. Don't do that anymore, you could seriously damage yourself."
Draco nodded and took the package to his dorm, ripping off his bandages and putting on a cream coloured binder. It hugged his form nicely, flattening his chest in just the right way and he took a big breath, surprised by his own capacity to breathe much more freely than before.
Later, when he saw Padma sitting at one of the common room tables with her sister, he didn't care he was making a scene when he lounged on her and hugged her, mumbling in her chest how "you're the best, this is the best, I don’t know how to thank you enough." Padma laughed and patted his hair like he was a child. "Better than breaking your ribs, eh? Just take it off after eight hours or so and definitely don't sleep in them."
Malfoy nodded, his head still buried in Padma's chest, even as her sister stared at the two of them.
Turns out Potter didn’t know . Draco was sitting on his bed holding out one of the binders Padma bought for him, so that Weasley could inspect it when Potter walked in with his Firebolt over his shoulder.
"What the–" he said, before he stepped closer and saw what Draco was holding. "Is that yours?"
Draco nodded.
"Are you–"
"Yes," Draco replied, confused. "Didn't you know?"
"Why should I know?"
Draco blinked up at him from his bed like he was stupid. "Sixth year. Bathroom."
Potter turned pale suddenly, his eyes going wild. "I didn’t–I mean I wasn't–" He coughed. "I didn’t notice," he muttered after a while.
Draco looked up at him. "Oh." He smiled. "I thought you knew and hated me for it."
Potter looked confused. "Why would I hate you? I don't hate Luna, or Padma, or...I don't hate you."
Draco felt himself blushing. "Oh."
"I didn’t like you back then because you were a git and I didn't talk to you because I was ashamed, but I never hated you for being trans . That's just stupid. How could I make fun of you for it, then go hang out with Luna and say I support her?"
Draco didn’t really know what to say. Then: "I didn’t know Lovegood is trans."
"She is," Harry said, not looking Draco in the eye.
Draco nodded and thought of all his interactions with her at the Manor. How she would say things Draco didn’t understand but that now, after acquiring this new piece of information, lighted the insides of Draco’s mind like a torch.
Weasley cleared his throat on the bed, and Draco jumped. He forgot he was there. "Speaking off," Weasley started, scratching the back of his neck. "Sorry about all those times I called you a girl. It must have felt shitty."
Draco shrugged and put his binder aside on the pillow. “You didn’t know,” he said, and then he smirked to lighten up the mood. “Besides, using ‘girl’ as an insult is so… old fashioned. Pansy could break your back in a matter of seconds and still sport a perfect manicure. Your sister wouldn't even need to worry about the nails.”
Weasley laughed loudly. "Still," he insisted, suddenly very serious again, "Harry's right. I can't just say I'm an ally, then say stuff like that to you, even if I didn't know. You might have been the biggest prat on the planet, and I'm still half convinced you are, but that's not 'cuz you're trans. That's just what you are. An arse."
Draco laughed loudly at that, flopping back on his pillows. Both Weasley and Potter looked at him like he was insane, but at that moment Draco didn’t really care.
From that moment on, Potter took it upon himself to tell Draco exactly how masculine he was.
"You don't have to keep doing that," Draco said one night, when they were sitting in the common room, after Potter declared how masculine his hands looked on the folds of his dress.
They came out for a game of chess, but then Weasley and Granger got distracted with one another, so the game was left unfinished and he and Potter were left trying to make conversation.
"What?"
"You don't have to keep telling me how masculine I am," Draco said, putting his hand in front of his face to admire his nail polish. "I'm not masculine. I'm not a ‘macho man’ like you or Weasley." Potter laughed shortly at that, and Draco went on. "I like to wear dresses every once in a while and I ask Pansy to do my nails on the weekends and you wouldn't catch me dead using 3 in 1 shampoo. I'm a pretty feminine man, but that doesn't make me any less of one. It just makes me less smelly."
"I don't smell," Potter said, defensive.
Draco wrinkled his nose. "I didn’t say you did, Potter. If that's what you got out of it well..."
Potter laughed. "You're so full of shit!"
Draco laughed too, but after a while it turned soft and quiet and when Draco turned back to look at Potter, he caught him staring.
"I still think you're masculine," Harry said. "Just in your own way. You're very brave like that."
"I'm not brave," Draco whispered.
Harry frowned. "Maybe you weren't brave when a thousand dark wizards lived in your home, bid deal," he said, and Draco jumped at that. "You're still brave in the little things. In the way you dress and in the way you talk. You know who you are and you let people see it. I think that's a lot braver."
Draco smiled, softly. "That doesn’t mean I'm masculine, though. Bravery isn't masculine. Would you call Granger that?"
Potter chuckled, and something in Draco’s stomach flipped. He swallowed.
"No, I suppose I wouldn't," Potter said. Draco nodded and was prepared to head back to their dorm when Potter touched his shoulder, making him turn back to him. There was a light in Potter's eyes, a playful smirk on his face. "But I can still call you handsome, right?" Potter asked.
Draco felt his cheeks burn under the intensity of Potter's stare and turned his head. "Yeah that's...yeah...you do that."
Draco could feel Potter's grin. "Good."
"Okay, okay, my turn," Draco slurred, sitting on the floor of their dorm, a bottle of firewhisky sitting between him and Potter. "Why… Why did you ignore me?"
Potter laughed. "I'm not ignoring you."
"Not now. I mean, before." Draco swallowed. "In Diagon Alley. At the train station. You were all weird then."
"Oh."
Draco thought Potter wasn't going to answer, not with the silence stretching around them and pulling on them like a cord. He cleared his throat, ready to ask another question, when Potter took a deep breath.
"I was ashamed. I was sorry. I almost killed you then."
"You saved my life," Draco said, like it was obvious that this alone was enough of a reason for Potter to forget the bathroom incident.
"After I almost ended it a year before!" Potter shouted and Draco flinched. Potter buried his face in his hands. "Sorry, sorry, I mean… I didn't have time to think about it during the war but then after… then it was just after, just grief and pain and waiting . I woke up in sweats, thinking of the way you bleed. And when I saw you… when you were in Diagon Alley you were wearing this-this dress, and it didn't fit you quite right and it hanged off your shoulder and I could see your scar and I knew I was the one who gave it to you and I just… I just couldn't look at you." Potter clenched his hands on his shoulders, hugging himself tightly. "I didn’t know what the spell did. If I knew I would have never–I wouldn't have–Not you."
Draco nodded. "If it's any consolation, I forgive you."
Potter stared at him. "Why?"
Draco shrugged and he could feel Potter's eyes on his exposed shoulder, could feel him looking at his scar. He was wearing a nightgown with no binder on and Potter spent a great deal of that night staring at him. "Because you just said it. It was an accident. Those happen."
Potter took a hearty swing of the firewhisky. "You're too good sometimes, you know?"
Draco laughed and took the bottle from Potter. "I'm not good."
"You sort of are. Now, at least," Potter said, staring at Draco’s face. Draco could swear Potter wanted to kiss him just then and found that he wouldn't have minded, not one bit, but then Potter looked down at Draco’s manicured hands and turned his head away. "Anyway, it's my turn."
Draco looked at Potter, at the green of his eyes, at the side of his jaw and tried to will him to go back, to turn his head and look at him again. But when he didn’t, Draco just took a swing at the bottle and smiled. "Ask away."
"I'll ask 'Mione if she has some," Weasley said, and then he was out the door.
Draco thought he could never be more humiliated than this. He was sitting in his bed, groaning, feeling the blood making his thighs sticky. He forgot about his period, just like he always did, and when he looked in his trunk that morning, he realised he didn't have any more tampons.
"Is this how it always is?" Potter asked, tracing soothing circles on his back.
"Yes," Draco said, feeling himself relaxing. “I would battle a Dark Lord over this any day.”
Potter chuckled. "You know, this explains a lot."
Draco raised his head, his hair falling in his eyes. He huffed, clearing it away. "Explains what?"
Potter laughed. "You were always very moody when we were younger, but there were just some days where you were…. insufferable."
Draco laughed and hit Potter with a pillow over the head, and losing his balance, he fell right over Draco, trapping him under him.
They were still laughing when Pansy walked in, Weasley following shortly after, a box of tampons in her hand. "Interrupting something?" She asked, and she arched an eyebrow.
Potter got up from the bed like he's been burned. "No, we weren't–I was just…"
Pansy ignored him and went round to Draco. "You ought to start keeping track of it."
"I don't want to keep track," Draco said, sitting up on his pillows and taking the box. "It makes me feel like shit. That's why I have you for it, don't I?"
Pansy’s face turned utterly guilty. "I was busy. Padma and I started hanging out and then..."
Draco shoot her a smile, to show that he wasn't mad. "I know." Then turning to Potter, still hovering over his bed. "Could you and Weasley just…"
Potter jumped like he just woke up from a dream. "Yeah, yeah, sure–I just...yeah."
When they were out the door and Draco got up to change, Pansy told him while fussing over his bed covers, "Well, someone has the hots for you."
Draco shook his head. "You're seeing things, Pansy."
"Yeah," she replied. "I see the Chosen One fancies you and I think you fancy him back."
Draco felt his cheeks grow red. "I think you're becoming an old bint, Pansy. Dangerous thoughts you're having there."
Pansy shook her head and muttered "idiot" but otherwise left it alone as she bent over Draco’s trunk and threw him a pair of boxers and his favourite binder.
Draco was grateful for the silence, and for the fact that her back was turned and she couldn't see him furiously patting his cheeks, willing the flush to go away.
Five months and a half into the year, Draco came into the common room sitting on Padma's back and screamed, "Guess who's gonna grow a beard, bitches?"
The few Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs in the common room at the moment didn’t even turn to the door, already used to Draco’s antics. But the Slytherins, and Potter and his friends came over with curious expressions on their faces.
"What are you talking about?" Pansy asked.
Draco jumped off Padma's form and started walking to the couches next to the fire, a pleased smile on his face when everyone followed him. He sat down at the end of the couch and even as the two Hufflepuff girls sitting at the other end of it got up and left, Draco’s smile was still in place, his euphoria too big to be contained.
"So you know how I've been going to this doctor Padma told me about for a while now, right?"
"The Squib?" Theo asked and Draco nodded.
"Right, so she said I could start taking testosterone, and that's going to make my voice deeper and I'm going to be able to grow a beard and stuff. "
"You're not growing a beard," Pansy said, scrunching her nose.
"I'm not gonna do it, Pansy. It's the fact that soon it's going to be an option," Draco said, beaming.
Potter sat on the couch next to him and put his hand on his shoulder, squeezing. "That's great, Malfoy. I don't think I've ever seen you this happy."
Draco looked at him and then looked at all the people surrounding him and being happy for him, at all the unlikely friendships he's made. He looked at Blaise, smiling at him and nodding, and then he looked at the little slip of paper from his doctor. "I don't think I've ever been this happy," Draco said, and then he felt his cheeks get wet with tears.
It wasn't long after that when Draco and Harry kissed. It was a surprise for Draco when he realised Potter had stopped being Potter for a while now, that he was Harry, just Harry.
And Harry made him feel things, things he hadn't felt since Blaise, since the two of them had a messy first kiss under the sheets of Draco’s old bed in Slytherin.
Harry sat next to Draco in classes, and at breakfast and they went to the library together every day. Harry bought Draco chocolates when they went to Hogsmeade because "I know you can't resist sweets." And Harry listened to Draco when he woke up from a nightmare, rubbed circles on his back until he felt safe and tired and he fell asleep mumbling of nonsense.
"Are you and Parkinson not dating anymore?" Harry asked conversationally one morning, while Draco was in the bathroom combining his hair.
Draco frowned and came out of the bathroom, leaning on the frame. "What are you on about? Pansy and I never dated."
"Are you sure?"
Draco laughed. "Yes, Potter, I'm sure. I think I would have noticed."
"But I saw you kiss," Harry insisted from his place on the floor. He had a set of exploding snaps ready and was waiting for Draco to join him.
Draco raised his eyebrow, and Harry blushed. "I mean, I saw you at King's Cross Station. She… umm… she kissed you."
Harry hugged his knees on the floor, and Draco burst out laughing. "Oh, that! She just really missed me," he shrugged. "We do that sometimes."
"Kiss on the mouth platonically?" Harry asked.
"Yeah," said Draco.
Harry looked unconvinced. "Who kisses people on the mouth platonically?"
Draco groaned. "For Merlin's sake, Potter, she's a lesbian."
"Oh," mumbled Harry. And then more cheerful. "Oh!"
"Yes," said Draco, smirking. "And for the record, I'm more into men, myself."
"You're…" Harry said and his cheeks got pink. "Oh…"
Draco felt incredibly bold in that moment, believing everything Pansy and Blaise ever told him about Harry's crush. Believed in all of those moments between the two of them when Harry looked like he was about to kiss him. Believed that he wanted to .
He sat down on the floor next to him and pulled the game to the side. He leaned his head in Harry's way. "So I'm available if you…"
Harry was so close to him their breaths were mingling with one another. Draco had to cross his eyes to make out Harry's face. He got even closer. "Can I kiss you?" Harry asked and when Draco nodded, he did just that.
Draco didn’t know how long they were snogging on the floor but it was long enough for Weasley and Granger to come in, snogging as well, and almost trip on them.
"Careful!" Draco squeaked and dragged his hand from under Weasley's shoe.
Weasley looked down at the two of them, frowning. "There are perfectly good beds in this dorm. Why are you on the floor?"
Harry shrugged. "We were supposed to play exploding snaps."
"I see that went well," Granger said, and then she plopped on the bed, dragging her boyfriend after her.
"You know, I was expecting maybe a little more resistance," said Draco. "The two of you should be more opposed to this."
Everyone looked at Draco and laughed. "Mate, you're like a kitten," Weasley replied. "We give you something fun to play with and you purr. You wouldn't be able to hurt Harry even if you tried."
Draco huffed his chest, offended. "I might!"
Granger's eyes turned soft. "You won't."
Draco smiled up at her and buried his face in Harry's neck. "I won't."
Blaise might have been Draco’s first, but Harry was his last and for him that was all that mattered. Blaise loved him when he barely loved himself, taught him to love his body in ways he never did before, taught him to see the beauty in himself.
Harry did the same things in a way, but it was different now, when Draco knew his body was beautiful, when he knew he deserved to be loved. It was reassuring, a comfort, like a soothing memory, waking up in Harry Potter's arms and knowing you are enough .
Blaise touched Draco’s chest when his body still was a minefield for him, something he didn't want to see, something he didn't want to appreciate. He was ashamed of it then, ashamed of all of it, and Blaise tried to make him understand, tried to give him all the love he could muster, tried to make him feel beautiful. He used to hold Draco in his arms and kiss his smooth and unblemished skin and praise him until Draco cried happy tears.
Now Harry was rubbing his thumbs over Draco’s scars, the ones he put on his body, and the new ones too, the ones he got after his surgery. He spread his palms over Draco’s flat chest and kissed every single imperfection, every single bump and scar that made Draco who he was today. And with every scar he mumbled words of praise and called him "brave you're so brave, oh god Draco you're so beautiful, you're so perfect, I love you." And Draco would kiss the top of his head and he would drag him up and tell him he loves him too.
And then later at night Harry would hold him to his chest and kiss the back of his neck. "You're so handsome," he would say, and Draco would laugh.
"If you think you can trick me into going for another round, you're wrong." And then turning his body in Harry's arms so he could face him: "I'll consider it if you take me flying tomorrow, though."
Harry would laugh then, small and quiet, and it would break into a yawn in the middle. "That's my man," he would mumble into Draco’s hair and then he would fall asleep snoring softly.
Yes, Draco would think in those moments, that's your man .