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Harry glanced at his watch and sighed; only ten minutes had passed since the start of his patrol shift. It was New Year’s Eve and midnight was still hours away.
Years of attending parties without someone special to kiss at midnight had soured him on the holiday. Volunteering to work for the evening provided him with an acceptable excuse for his meddling friends, and one he’d thought quite clever until right about now. As Deputy Head Auror, it had been quite a while since he’d last patrolled Diagon Alley; perhaps if he hadn’t forgotten the simultaneous monotony and frustration, he would have rethought his decision.
Fortunately, it was shaping up to be a relatively quiet shift. He’d sent a few wizards back to the Ministry for a SoberUp! potion and a cooling off period — pretty typical for any evening. He had scolded a gang of teenagers for setting off a Wheeze too close to a storefront, but ultimately let them all go with a warning.
“Mate, you don’t want to do that,” he warned a wizard he didn’t recognize, who was teetering outside of a pub, a broomstick in his hand. “You’re clearly drunk, and flying under the influence comes with some hefty punishments, including confiscation of the broom. Is that the newest Nimbus?”
The wizard nodded and started hiccoughing.
“Why don’t I go ahead and hail the Knight Bus, huh?”
After the Knight Bus drove off, the wizard and his Nimbus safely aboard, Harry checked the time again. 11:30. He was aching for a tumbler of scotch and the quiet warmth of his sitting room. The streets were growing steadily more raucous, and Harry knew it was time to start choosing his battles. It was New Year’s Eve, after all; a little fun didn’t usually hurt anyone.
Just as this thought crossed Harry’s mind, someone careened into his back with enough velocity to knock him to the ground. With practiced agility, Harry caught himself and rolled, pulling the culprit underneath him. A familiar face grinned back up at him from the street.
“Draco,” Harry growled.
“Potter, fancy meeting you here,” Draco slurred, clearly pissed and quite pleased with himself.
Harry stood, dragging the dead weight of Draco’s body up with him.
“My Saviour ,” Draco giggled, unsteady on his feet. He attempted to bat playfully at Harry’s chest, but toppled forward into Harry’s arms instead.
Cheers rang up around them. Harry could see some of their friends — all at varying levels of intoxication — gathered around, having spilled out from The Dragon’s Den moments before. “Get it, Harry,” Blaise whooped.
Harry rolled his eyes. Draco’s face was inches away from his own, his pupils blown unnaturally wide.
“Draco, are you… are you high?” Harry asked, surprised. Draco could drink with the best of them, but Harry had never known him to dabble in Muggle drugs.
“Deputy Auror Potter!” Draco exclaimed, swaying a bit in Harry’s arms. “Didn’t you know? Your pupils dilate by 45% when you see someone you love.”
“Swot!” Theo called out from somewhere behind Harry.
Harry chuckled nervously. “Very funny, Draco.”
“No, it’s real , I swear,” Draco insisted. “Run your diaspora— dilation— dictation…”
“My diagnostic spell?” Harry smiled in spite of himself. He kept trying to set Draco upright, but the man was like putty in his arms, leaning into him with full force.
“Yes!”
Since both of his hands were occupied — and because this lot was already well aware of his magical abilities — Harry whispered the spell for drug testing. A wisp of magic left his wand from where it sat in his leg holster and wrapped around Draco, turning green before fading into nothing.
“See?” Draco giggled. “I’m not high, I just love you.”
Harry was thankful for the cover of darkness as he felt a flush run from the tips of his cold ears all the way down underneath the collar of his Auror uniform. He physically picked up Draco and set him next to Blaise, who wrapped his arm around Draco to steady him.
“I’m sure you do, Draco. Now, off with all of you, I have other hooligans to deal with.”
The crowd of friends struggled off again, Pansy and Greg singing “Auld Lang Syne” surprisingly in-tune. Draco glimpsed over his shoulder and winked back at Harry.
“Love you, Potter!” he cried, to the amusement of, well, everyone else in the street.
Harry sighed and set off in the other direction. The streets actually seemed to be quieting down as midnight approached. From above him, the din of rooftop gatherings rang out, punctuated by the whizzes and bangs of fireworks being set off prematurely.
He shuffled a few people along half-heartedly. He was already thinking about his warm bed and the long lie-in he had planned for the morning.
“Three minutes,” he heard someone yell above him, followed by a chorus of cheers.
Harry had made it back to the large intersection where Diagon and Vertic Alleys met, where he knew he’d have a good view of some of the fireworks overhead. Behind him, he heard a pair of footsteps approaching and turned quickly, his Auror senses on high alert.
But his concern faded quickly to relief. “Draco,” he sighed. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Left them at the pub,” Draco said, his enunciation much crisper than it had been 30 minutes prior.
“And… what are you doing here?”
“Well, when I sat down at the bar and realized that I’d confessed my love for you, I felt a bit silly—”
Harry scoffed. “No, don’t worry about that, it’s nothing, I know you were dr—”
“It’s true.” Draco interrupted him, taking a step closer, edging into Harry’s personal space. “Has been for a while now.”
Harry inhaled sharply, shocked to hear that his feelings for Draco were reciprocated.
Draco continued. “I took a sobering potion and came back out to find you.”
Overhead, people gathered on the rooftops began to count down to midnight. “ Ten, nine, eight…”
“To find me,” Harry repeated.
“Seven, six, five…”
“To find you. So I could do this.”
As the last few seconds of the year ticked away, Harry found himself again with an armful of Draco. This time, though, he was pressing his cold, chapped lips against Harry’s own.
Above the cacophony of fireworks and cheers, Draco whispered, “Happy New Year’s, Harry.”
Instead of responding, Harry leaned back in and kissed him, happiness warming him from the inside out. They stood there for a moment, smiling into each new kiss.
“Deputy Head Auror Potter, how unprofessional of you to be snogging while on duty,” Draco drawled, leaving light, breathy kisses just above the high collar of his uniform.
“I’m actually,” he coughed, as Draco sucked at his pulse point suddenly, “off duty as of about one minute ago. Just have to check in with the Deputy Head Auror before I go home — oh wait, that’s me.”
Draco pulled back, his sharp cheeks tinged with red from the wind and the cold. Harry watched a visible shiver overtake his entire body. “Should we go back to the pub, find everyone?” he asked, wanting to get Draco somewhere warm.
“I’d rather not,” Draco said, raising his signature eyebrow.
Harry grinned. “Or… back to mine, perhaps?”
Draco’s eyes turned heated, a devilish smirk pulling up one corner of his mouth. “That sounds much better.”
He pinned Harry with a stare. “Why, Harry, are you high? Your pupils seem to be a bit dilated,” he said.
“That’s enough out of you,” Harry laughed. “Now hold on,” he ordered, wrapping his arms around Draco’s waist and pulling him in for a deep kiss, using the small part of his brain that was still functioning to apparate them away.