Work Text:
WILL HE / WON'T SHE
or
THE TRANS CURSE
The year is 2003 and Evanescence’s Bring Me To Life is topping the Muggle charts back to back with Avril Lavigne’s Sk8ter Boi , Justin Timberlake’s Cry Me a River, and The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army . Everybody in the bar is painfully aware of this because the DJ is playing Seven Nation Army for the 3rd time this evening. It is an excellent song, of course, but it has also chased Draco and two of his friends off the dance floor and back into the booth they have claimed for the night.
(If you are wondering how their booth stayed undisturbed and unclaimed by other guests of the establishment, the answer is magic.)
It is maybe a bit rich calling Harry Potter ‘one of Draco’s friends’ but the fact of the matter is that these days they move in the same circles and perhaps more pertinent, they fancy themselves to be adults, able to put behind them pesky things like pranks and war crimes. So they are friends, because acquaintances seems too weak and mortal enemies seems too silly, so friends it is. And here we are, in a Muggle club in Soho, Seven Nation Army being replaced with Crazy In Love . Draco, Pansy, and Harry are sitting down, blue drinks half-drunk in front of them, a single bowl of salt & vinegar crisps between them.
Harry is looking sideways at Draco, probably because Draco is staring very intensely at Harry, and it's a bit weird. (Draco is wondering if he should stop drinking. He should.)
“I was just saying,” Draco says, even though he’d not been saying anything at all, “those glasses almost look good on you.”
“Are you trying to pay me a compliment?” Harry’s mouth curls into an amused smile.
“No.” Draco scoffs. “A backhanded one, maybe.”
Pansy leans over Draco to tug the bowl of crisps closer, but she also tucks herself into Draco’s side a bit more, arm slung possessively around his waist, her crisp-crunching breath too close to his nose for comfort. “Commit to the insult, Draco dear, or don’t do it at all,” she says.
“I’m glad we agree,” Harry says and twinkles at Pansy.
At Pansy? Draco frowns, glancing between them. What is he missing here? Surely Harry isn’t interested in Pansy? She’s not his type. At all . For starters, she’s a lesbian.
“Pleasure.” Pansy crunches right into Draco’s ear.
“Fine, whatever, you look like an impoverished professor of an underfunded English department, there, happy?” Draco nudges Pansy away from him but he doesn’t break eye contact with Harry.
“That’s an insult how?” Harry is smiling. Bastard. Git. Impossible creature.
Draco doesn’t know how to respond to that so he doesn’t.
See, dear reader, there is a problem Draco is having with Harry, which is that he is harbouring an excessively large crush on him. It has been an ongoing problem for a while now—the man is simply impossible to avoid, has somehow become incredibly good looking (Draco remembers their teenage years not with nostalgic fondness but express horror: the grease, the non-existent fashion sense, the bad haircuts), and he keeps doing that thing with his eyes and his mouth which makes it look like he thinks Draco is funny, even if Draco isn’t actually trying to be funny which means Draco is being unintentionally funny, which means Harry is laughing at him, and really, could Draco possibly sink any lower, pining for this guy of all guys?
There is another problem Draco is having with this entire excruciating existential mess of a situation, which is that Harry has a type, and Draco is not that type. Not even close. Draco is so far from being Harry’s type that they could just as well be different species, because Draco isn’t—Draco isn’t trans.
Let’s review Harry’s dating history for our poor protagonist.
First there was Parvati, who Harry took to the Yule Ball that time in fourth year. Parvati has since come out as a demigirl and now uses she/they pronouns—their dating history with Harry amounts to a grand total of a single awkward dance at a Yule Ball during a tournament in which Harry was trying not to get killed, but Draco counts it and so must we.
Then there was Cedric, who Harry didn’t date at all, however Harry’s crush on Cedric was visible from miles away. Cedric was, may his memory be a blessing, a they/he nonbinary person, so that’s another one for the record Draco is keeping.
After Cedric there was Henry Chang, whose name wasn’t Henry at the time—he came out the year after he graduated from Hogwarts as far as Draco knows—and while that courtship didn’t last very long either, this one counts double because Henry is a very skilled Quidditch player.
Edited to add: Cedric was also a very skilled Quidditch player.
The fourth was Ginny, Harry’s longest and most serious relationship to date: they would’ve celebrated their fifth anniversary last month if they hadn’t (apparently mutually) broken up six months prior (not that Draco is keeping tabs) (who are we kidding, of course Draco is keeping tabs). Ginny, everyone knows, is a trans woman, the story having been told and retold ad infinitum: Mrs Weasley had, when her seventh son was born, given up any hope for a girl and had ceased having more children. The day five-year old Ginny had declared herself had been the cause for much celebration in the family, so now Ginny has two birthdays; her natal birthday and her girlday. Incidentally, Ginny’s girlday is next week and Draco has been invited to the party.
(Truth to be told, Draco finds it charming that she celebrates her girlday.)
Oh and, does it need saying that Ginny is also a phenomenal Quidditch player?
Fortunately, Draco is an expert in unrequited love crushes and this too will pass et cetera et cetera, except then Harry and Ginny split up and then Harry started doing that thing with his face, and now Draco’s crush is spinning out of control.
“Hi,” Harry says and Draco nearly jumps out of his skin. Where the fuck did Pansy go? “About that insult—”
“Mmmwe’re not talking about that,” Draco says and tries not to look like he’s intentionally putting space between him and Harry. He fails, because Harry has his arm over the back of the booth, leaning over Draco—sweet heavens, is Harry macho posturing?
Worse, is Draco attracted to the macho posturing?
“I’m sure we can find other things to talk about,” Harry says, leaning in a little closer. His eyes have that intent look in them that Draco remembers disturbingly well from the Quidditch pitch back in the day. Draco finds himself unable to look away from Harry’s eyes, which is why he immediately notices when Harry’s gaze drops to Draco’s mouth .
“No!” Draco squeaks. He scrambles out of the booth. “Have a lovely evening, see you later!”
Just like that, our plucky protagonist has taken himself home to panic in peace and quiet.
—
Draco does an excellent job of avoiding Harry on a day-to-day basis by virtue of their career paths not crossing at all, and so he manages to avoid Harry for a whole week—until Ginny’s girlday party, to which Draco is invited.
Two days before the girlday party, Pansy drops by Draco’s workplace exactly three minutes before his lunch break starts and drags him to the nearest Starbucks. “Draco,” she says, standing in line behind two Muggle girls wearing ugg boots, “I have had a revelation.”
“Can you tell me what it is after I’ve had coffee?” Draco asks. “I want to give you my complete and undivided attention and for that I need coffee.”
“I almost believed that,” Pansy says. “No, listen. I shagged a girl yesterday and her name is Danny and she uses masculine pronouns.” She pauses for effect. “She’s a he/him lesbian .”
“Do you mean he is a he/him lesbian?” Draco asks innocently.
“My God .” Pansy simpers. “Draco, listen. I want to be a he/him lesbian. I want women to look at me and think, what a stud . I want—” Draco has nudged her towards the counter, the two ugg girls have been served. “I’ll have a black coffee and a slice of that decadent chocolate cake over there and he’ll have a macchiato with two pumps of chocolate syrup and a cheese toastie.”
Pansy gets her black coffee and slice of rich chocolate cake, and Draco gets his chocolatey macchiato and cheese toastie.
“My point is,” Pansy continues, “I’d still be a woman, I’d just also be, you know…” she gestures with her fork. “A specific kind of woman.”
Somehow, Draco is sure, this is all Harry’s fault. “Okay,” he says. He sips delicately at the macchiato but burns his tongue anyway.
“Have you ever had a shag so good it changes your whole life?” Pansy’s eyes have taken on a faraway look. “Or just—it wasn’t even the sex , it was great, but sex is sex. Danny was just so… so …”
“Mh,” Draco agrees. He’s moved on from the scalding macchiato to the cheese toastie.
“Do you think I could be a stud?”
“I think you can be whatever you want to be,” Draco says, because it’s true and because he doesn’t really understand what’s going through Pansy’s head.
Pansy is looking at him. “Be honest.”
“I don’t know what to say.” He sips again and this time the macchiato burns a little less. Draco has a vivid cavalcade of images flitting through his brain of Pansy in various dyke-ish outfits and it all looks ridiculous. Pansy has been femme for as long as he’s known her. He frowns. If anyone could pull it off, however, it would be Pansy. “But Pansy. What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I—I’m seeing Danny again.” Her cake fork is hovering in midair, shaking ever so slightly. Pansy sets it down. “I think I’m—”
In love? Draco wants to ask, but doesn’t, because Pansy has that look on her face which means the wrong move will send her running, and Pansy hasn’t had a good thing going for her in a while.
Draco eats his toastie.
Then, because he clearly has a deathwish, he tells Pansy what he thinks happened at the club, and it does the trick to distract her, but also:
“Let me get this straight,” Pansy says, with mostly a straight face. “Your crush came on to you and you fled instead of taking him up on it?”
“I don’t think he was really coming on to me,” Draco argues, weakly, because yeah, he can hear himself, and were their roles reversed he would say ‘that was a daft thing to do you daft thing’.
“That is the daftest thing you’ve done since the toad incident.”
“I was six.” Draco gives up. He has picked the entirely wrong person for this conversation, and why? To avoid talking about Pansy’s gender feelings and possible love feelings? Fuck that. “Let’s circle back to Danny.”
“Don’t change the subject. Draco honestly, why don’t you just go out with him?”
“I can’t—I was probably just seeing things. Had had too much to drink or something. He’s not really into me—he can’t be.”
“But—”
Draco stands up. “Thanks for lunch but I need to get back to work. See you on Saturday? Bye.”
—
Ginny’s girlday party this year is even better than last year’s party, and it’s only a little bit because this year she and Harry aren’t together anymore. Actually, this year, Ginny’s girlday date is Blaise and they look almost sickeningly cute together.
“I’m happy for them,” Harry says, sidling up to Draco, and Draco almost trips over nothing. “Ginny hasn’t looked this happy in a long time.”
“That’s a curious self-own,” Draco says, then nearly bites his tongue.
“Not really. It just didn’t work out with us.” Harry gestures with his glass towards Draco’s almost empty one. “Want another drink?”
Draco would love to reflect back on this evening and be able to say something along the lines of ‘it was a testament to his self-control that he said no and walked away before the trans curse could get to him’ but unfortunately for Draco he has no self-control whatsoever, so what comes out of his mouth next is:
“Why, are you buying?”
Harry’s face splits into a grin. “The drinks are free, but if you want to pretend I am buying, then by all means.”
He’s doing that thing with his face again that makes Draco think he’s laughing at him. Draco considers his almost empty glass. It’d been some kind of vaguely raspberry-flavoured concoction with more vodka than was considered tasteful. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
As if by magic (quite possible, considering) a floating tray passes by, and Harry deftly replaces their glasses with new ones, this time with something orange and bubbly in tall flutes. It’s refreshing and seemingly non-alcoholic.
“Cheers.” Harry inclines his flute towards Draco’s and Draco accepts, clinks.
They stand together, at the edge of the garden tent, in companionable silence. It’s nice. Hanging out with Harry is a lot nicer when Harry isn’t speaking, or looking at him, or doing anything else that causes inconvenient emotions in Draco.
There is another element to the problem our precious protagonist is having with his impossible crush on Harry, which is that everyone around Harry seems to wind up trans at one point or other. Dating history aside, all of Harry’s closest friends are also trans.
Hermione is trans. Luna is trans. Seamus is trans. Dean is trans. Neville is trans. Okay, Ron is cis as far as Draco knows, which makes him the exception that proves the rule. Oliver Wood is trans. Several more Weasleys are trans (Draco has lost track but he’s pretty sure the cool one with the long hair and scars and the earring is some flavour of nonbinary with those xe pronouns). Pansy, though she is Draco’s friend, has become quite friendly with Harry, and now she is making noises about gender, which again just proves that anybody who comes too close to Harry will catch gender at some point. Draco has even heard rumours that Harry’s horrible Muggle cousin is trans. (She is.)
Draco is absolutely, one hundred per cent, certain, that Harry is associated with some kind of trans curse that started with Harry himself and is now spreading to everyone else he comes into contact with, and that is the reason why Draco is never ever going to date Harry, because if he goes near Harry that might change, and Draco doesn’t want that to change because he is not trans.
“So…” Harry says. “How’s work?”
“Work is work.” Draco shrugs. Pansy has finally arrived, hanging off the arm of somebody who looks like a Muggle movie star, from the 50s or something, all slick hair and spiffy Muggle suit.
“Who’s that with Pansy?” Harry sounds appreciative, so Draco glances—and yeah, he looks appreciative as well. Draco is not at all jealous.
“Probably Danny,” Draco answers. “Don’t get your hopes up though, he’s a lesbian.”
“No hopes are up over here. I was just asking.” Harry moves a little closer. “The only person I’m interested in is you.”
Draco goes through the entire spectrum of human emotion in about a quarter second and settles on ‘confused’. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He looks at his flute. Is there alcohol in this after all? He sniffs it.
“No, it does.” Harry says, rather more confidently than Draco appreciates. “I like you. I thought you liked me too. I want to go out with you. What could make more sense than that?”
“I—what?”
It wouldn’t be incorrect to say that Draco nearly flings himself at Harry right then and there, propriety be damned, ready and willing to finally live out the conclusion of his daydreams. It also wouldn’t be incorrect to say that faced with this very real possibility, Draco is seized with a wild panic. “I can’t,” he finally stammers. “You—no.”
For the second time in as many weeks, Draco flees.
—
“Draco, darling, if you’re going to puke can you do it away from my shoes?” Pansy’s voice is both faraway and startlingly close.
“I’m not going to puke,” Draco lies, fighting the queasiness back. It’s very difficult, but Danny is rubbing his back (strange, for a person Draco met for the first time that very evening) and it’s helping. “I want to go home.”
“You’re in no fit state to floo or apparate. Honestly Draco, what…” She sighs, frustrated. “ I can’t take you home.”
Draco thinks he should just lie down right here and figure out how to get home in the morning. It may be the smartest thought he's had all evening.
“I’ll take him home,” somebody who sounds extremely a lot like Harry says, and Draco jerks his head up from where it was between his knees.
“I’m not going home with you.”
“I said I’d take you home, not that I’m taking you home,” Harry says, and Draco is pretty sure it’s the same thing. “To your house,” Harry clarifies. “Not mine.”
“You’re not staying over.”
“Is he actually drunk?” Harry asks Pansy.
“His parents forced him to take elocution lessons from age four to sixteen,” says Pansy, the traitor. She gestures. “The side effect of which is, he’s terrifyingly articulate even when seventeen sheets to the wind.”
“I’m not articulate, I’m annoyed.” Draco attempts to stand and fails. Harry and Pansy’s girlfriend catch him.
“Right. Let’s get you home.”
“Why…” Draco gives up and lets Harry drag him outside.
“You don’t have to like me, or go out with me,” Harry says. “But you don’t have to be a dick about it. We’re apparating in two. Don’t puke into the void, it will not go well for you.”
Draco does not puke into the void and counts it a victory, but since it’s a very narrow escape he doesn’t deem it safe to open his mouth at all. So when they arrive he clings to Harry’s arm, face scrunched with the effort of not speaking (more like, not puking). Harry is patting Draco’s robe down for something. “Could you just—damn it, where are your keys?”
Queasiness all but forgotten: “I’m not telling you .”
“Fine,” Harry snaps, and Draco feels a second pull of apparition. This time when they arrive he collapses to the ground, heaving. Somehow the second apparition got rid of the nausea and instead he feels hollowed out. Did he throw up in the void?
“What,” Draco mumbles.
“Time to get you to bed,” Harry says, and hauls him up.
—
Draco wakes up to the sound of a shower running. He has the sun in his face and when he attempts to roll out of bed, he misjudges and crashes to the floor, taking another piece of furniture down with him.
It’s a coffee table.
He slept on a sofa that is distinctly not his sofa. As he stares at the overturned coffee table as if staring at it would make it right itself, hasty steps approach the room and then—Harry appears, dripping wet and with a towel around his waist.
Harry takes in the scene—Draco, on the floor. The coffee table, overturned (broken). The sofa, slept on. Then he sags. “Are you okay?”
“I—” Draco blinks, unable to take his eyes off Harry’s naked and glistening torso. His top surgery scars somehow make his pecs look even more defined, as if they needed more definition. Droplets of water roll down his chest, his tummy (are those abs? ), and disappear into the towel. “Do you work out or something?”
To Draco’s surprise, Harry blushes scarlet. “You haven’t injured yourself, then. I’ll be right back.”
Draco, not known for making wise decisions or having well-developed coping skills, chooses to lie down in the wreckage of the coffee table. He’s still lying there when Harry comes back, dressed this time, in Muggle clothes. His hair is no longer dripping, just damp and curling at the edges.
It is unfair how attractive he is.
“Why do you want to go out with me? ” is what comes out of Draco’s mouth. “Are you trying to make me trans or something?”
For once, Harry doesn’t look like he’s laughing at Draco. He looks—he’s the perfect picture of confusion, the way his mouth is opening and closing. “ What? ”
“It’s like you have a trans curse or something,” Draco explains. He’s still lying on the floor. “Everybody you’ve dated is trans or has come out as trans since, and I just—”
“Are you serious? Actually serious ?”
Draco can’t tell if Harry is angry or just a different flavour of confused. “The only person you’ve dated seriously is a trans girl and I don’t want to be a girl.”
“...then…don’t???”
“What, don’t date you?” Draco finally drags himself up to a sitting position, and then to his feet. He winces. Just how much did he drink last night? And how is it that he wound up in the home of the one person he’d been trying to avoid?
“That too if you don’t want to but you know that if you don’t want to be a girl then you’re not a girl, right?” Harry gestures. “Right?”
“Yes, but—”
“Also there is no such thing as a trans curse ? What the hell , Draco?” The look on Harry’s face has transitioned from confused to hurt.
“You’ve never dated anyone cis before,” Draco points out, feeling like a dick. “I thought you were—I don’t know—I thought you’d never—” He pauses to collect his thoughts (harder than it has any right to be, Draco’s brain is mushy and he feels like he needs to inject coffee directly into his bloodstream to unmush). He takes a deep breath. “I have a massive fucking crush on you.” Wait—
“You—” Harry shakes his head in what looks a lot like disbelief. “I need coffee.”
“Make that two.” Draco rubs his face. He should go home, he should make an attempt to become human again before continuing this mess of a conversation, but…he doesn’t want to go. “Can I use your shower?”
Harry doesn’t answer right away. “Yeah,” he eventually says, and shows Draco the bathroom.
—
Draco has on a pair of soft trousers and a soft tshirt not unlike the ones Harry has on. He feels clean, less scrambled, and a little bit like he’s wearing a hug that smells like Harry. He even brushed his teeth using a bit of Harry’s toothpaste and a spell.
None of that compares to the breakfast Harry cooked up while Draco showered.
“Sit, eat,” Harry says and gets a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. There’s already coffee on the table, and judging by the volume left in the carafe, Harry is two cups in. (And really, who blames him?)
“Thank you.” Draco sits gingerly, afraid to upset the delicate balance in the kitchen. He tucks in. He even pours himself some of Harry’s coffee even though there’s no sugar and milk on the table. All things considered, Draco reckons asking for milk and sugar would make him look like an entitled asshole. (He's not wrong.)
“So, about this ‘trans curse’ thing.”
Draco nearly chokes on fried potatoes. “Uh.” He hastily washes the potatoes down with a sip of bitter black coffee. “Uhm, so.”
Harry waits, eyebrow raised.
“Right.” Draco clears his throat. Staring at his plate, he starts talking and doesn’t stop until he’s explained the whole, ludicrous, theory.
“Let me get this straight,” Harry says, when Draco has finished. “One, you thought I had trans cooties and that the fact I’m into you was going to make you trans, and two, you thought I wasn’t into you at all because you’re cis.”
Put like that, Draco can see it doesn’t make any sense.
“It doesn’t make any sense!” Harry splutters. “It—how—those are two completely different things!”
“I know ,” Draco says, burying his face in his hands.
“I thought your problem was that I am trans,” Harry says, “you know, the usual transphobic bullshit some cis gay men give me.”
“No!” Draco looks up, horrified. “That wasn’t—it didn’t occur to me—I’m sorry!”
“Merlin’s bloody socks,” Harry says, leaning back in his chair. He looks up at the ceiling as if it is going to impart some wisdom or other. “I’m in love with an idiot.”
Draco’s heart flips and this is it, he has had enough of this emotional rollercoaster and it’s time to get off it. So our little idiot of a protagonist decides to do the least stupid thing he can think of: he stands up.
He freezes. Harry looks at him. Draco looks back. The rollercoaster is back in action.
“This idiot would very much like to kiss you,” Draco says and if there’s a hint of trepidation in his voice then he will own up to it because at this point he has no choice not to. “Uhm. If that’s okay.”
The speed with which Harry gets up and rounds the table to reach Draco nearly bowls Draco over, but it doesn’t matter because Harry is kissing him. Harry is kissing him and Draco is kissing him back and the trans curse doesn’t matter, Draco is going to do this for the rest of his life if he can help it.
“You know,” Harry says, at a point when their breakfast has probably turned cold, “it’s just a coincidence that I know so many trans people, right?”
It doesn’t feel like a coincidence, the way they all flock to him, the way somebody else turns up with gender after meeting Harry, but Draco wisely keeps his mouth shut. It’s not about that. “I know.”
“It’s community,” Harry then says. “We stick together.”
“I know.”
“Besides, I didn’t come out until I was a teenager,” he points out. “If anybody should be considered ground zero of this stupid trans curse, it’s Ginny.”
“Oh God, please ,” Draco whines, dropping his head onto Harry’s shoulder. “You are never going to let me live this down are you?”
“Nope.” Harry laughs and nuzzles his cheek until Draco is smiling and then they’re both laughing. “Never .”
FIN.