Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Grimmauld Place is quiet–strangely quiet–when Harry closes the front door behind himself.

He’s home earlier than normal, but that doesn’t explain why the usually chaotic house seems absolutely deserted.

“Hello?” he calls, leaning over the banister and peering up the stairs toward the second floor. “Luna? Blaise?” There’s no response.

The house is so quiet, in fact, that it’s a bit eerie–Harry can hear the ticking of the old grandfather clock on the third floor landing and his own breathing sounds loud in his ears. He slips his denim jacket off and hangs it on the crowded coat rack by the front door, and slides his feet out of his Birkenstocks clogs–he almost kicks them to the side of the foyer, but winces and scoops them up when he remembers Pansy’s latest lecture about unnecessary clutter and tripping hazards.

He stops in the kitchen on his way down to his basement bedroom to grab a pop and a packet of crisps. It’s Neville’s turn to make dinner, so he doesn’t want to completely ruin his appetite, but his morning had been filled with back-to-back site visits and he hadn’t had a chance to stop for lunch.

The basement door creaks closed behind him as he skips down the stairs. He tucks the can of pop under his arm and sticks the crisp packet between his teeth as he grabs his laptop off the floor next to his bed and flops back on his pillows. The enchanted window Hermione had insisted on putting up on his wall is still displaying a peaceful sunrise scene and the twinkly lights strung around the perimeter of the room are morning-dim, so he flicks his wand until the window displays a sunny beach scene and the lights brighten a few levels.

There are already a handful of chat windows with Luna, Pansy, Neville, Blaise, and Draco up when he opens his computer.

Harry takes his own away message down--

and opens up the window he minimized with his bookmarked chat rooms. He clicks through a few, catching up on the messages he’d missed since the previous evening–there’s the beginner guitar players forum that he contributes to frequently; The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that is ostensibly a place for people to share tips and tricks about caring for their bikes but more often devolves into long-winded philosophical discussions; The Closet, a forum for people who need a safe, anonymous space to discuss their exploration of their gender and sexuality. He’s only ever lurked in that last one.

His scrolling is interrupted by the ding of a new IM.

Harry’s heart does a confusing little flip in his chest at the sight of Draco’s username. As far as Harry knows, Draco has hardly had a moment to breathe since he started his community service at St. Mungo’s. When he does get breaks, he usually uses them to shovel canteen food down his throat and put his feet up for five seconds

Harry dashes up the stairs two at a time. He doesn’t find Draco’s keys–generally easy to spot thanks to his bright pink Furby keychain–anywhere in the kitchen, the sitting room, the foyer, or the first floor loo. He continues up the stairs, panting a bit as he finally comes out on the top floor landing where Draco’s bedroom is.

The door is ajar. Harry hesitates before he pushes it open–he’s only been in Draco’s bedroom a handful of times, and most of those were when he helped Draco move in, almost a year ago. The room is dim–the heavy curtains over the window are drawn to block out the late afternoon sunshine. Something about turning on the overhead light seems intrusive, so Harry stands just inside the door for a moment to let his eyes adjust.

He inhales the scent of Draco, so concentrated in his personal, private space. It’s an unmistakable blend of Draco’s crisp-smelling laundry charm, the earthy incense that Draco likes to burn every now and then, the Dewberry body spray he got from The Body Shop, and something warm and enigmatic that Harry could only describe as ‘sleep smell’.

As Harry’s eyes adjust, the blurry blobs of Draco’s belongings solidify into actual objects. His sewing machine is set atop a small table against the right wall, his wardrobe–almost full to bursting–is diagonal by the far window, and his bed is in the center of it all. The sheets are rumpled, and his handmade quilt is piled at the bottom like he’d kicked it off in the middle of the night and hadn’t bothered to straighten it. The walls are covered in Muggle movie posters–he can’t make any of them out in this light, but he remembers most of them from when he helped Draco put them up.

Those are Draco’s things–sewing and movies, just like Harry’s things are music and fixing up Sirius’s bike. Well, those, and complicated technology enchantments like the one Draco had used to not only make their single Muggle landline function in a house as magically saturated as Grimmauld but to also make it so they can all be online on their own computers at once, no matter where they take them. Apparently, he’d learned about the internet in his court-mandated Muggle Sensitivity training and fell in love with the concept of Instant Messaging.

Now, they all IM each other practically more than they speak face-to-face.

Harry squints into the gloom and–there–on Draco’s night stand, a little pink thing that could only be Draco’s keys. He snatches them up and carries them back downstairs with him, setting them in the middle of the dining table so they can’t be missed.

Blaise’s away message disappears, so Harry clicks over to their chat instead.

Harry tips the crisp packet up to shake the crumbs into his mouth before crushing it in his hands and levitating it to the bin by the stairs. He’s about to pick up his guitar to distract himself before everyone gets home when he hears the front door open and shut, followed by the familiar sound of Pansy complaining.

“Look, Lu, I like your father well enough, and I know he means well, but this is absolutely out of the question,” Pansy is saying as Harry peeks his head out of the basement door and into the hall.

“What’d he give you this time?” he asks. Pansy and Luna have a standing lunch date with Luna’s father every two weeks, and they always come home with some bizarre object Xenophilius has convinced himself that they absolutely need.

“I think it’s rather sweet,” Luna says. Her back is to Harry but he can tell that she’s holding something in front of herself. The slightly disgusted scowl on Pansy’s face makes him all the more eager to find out what it is.

“Sweet is not the word I would use for that…creature.”

“Creature…?” Harry steps fully out of the door and follows Luna into the sitting room.

When she returns around he physically recoils. In her arms is the absolute ugliest animal Harry has ever seen. It’s small, and shaped vaguely like a cross between a cat and a bearded dragon. Its mud-colored scales are punctuated by scraggly tufts of grey fur, and its yellowed talons cling to Luna’s arms where she clutches it to her chest.

“Circe’s tits,” Harry breathes as the thing tilts its head and fixes him in its milky gaze, its bulbous eyes rolling in its eye sockets. Its giant, pointed ears swivel on top of its head like miniature satellite dishes. “What the bloody hell is it?”

“Father was uncertain on the pronunciation of the species name, but he assures me that she’s housebroken and good with people!”

“Babe, again, no offense, but your father’s assurances are…suspect.” Pansy meets Harry’s gaze and her scowl deepens. Probably because he is now approaching the creature slowly with his fingers outstretched, ready to pet her.

“She looks like a Kneazel mated with a blast ended skrewt, crossed with some sort of miniature dragon,” Harry says, tentatively stroking a finger down the creature’s back. She’s surprisingly soft, and he can feel her purring underneath his touch.

“I thought it was about time we had a house pet. Father says that having one of her kind in the house protects against meltworm infestations. And she can eat all the spiders–I’ve just been putting them under your stairs, Harry,” Luna says airily as she continues to gaze fondly at the creature.

“Sorry, you’ve been what–” Harry says.

“We cannot keep her. You two know that, right?” Pansy says, settling her hands on her hips.

Harry and Luna turn pleading gazes on her at the same time.

“She’s not so bad,” Harry says.

“She’s quite friendly! And small. Are you suggesting we put her out on the street, alone?” Luna adds, raising her eyebrows up into her fluffy, blond bangs and pouting her lips slightly.

Pansy looks back and forth between the two of them, exasperation settling into her expression. “I hate you both. We will ask the others what they think over dinner. If they also vote no, which they will because they are not complete lunatics like you two, then she goes to the…is there a magical mutants sanctuary somewhere?”

“Thank you, my love,” Luna coos, and presses a kiss to Pansy’s cheek, who blushes, but impressively maneuvers her body so that no other part of her comes near the creature.

“What should we call her?” Harry asks.

“For Salazar’s sake,” Pansy huffs, stomping out of the room and up the stairs.

*

“Harry, don’t move,” Ron says from the middle of the basement stairs, his voice low and full of warning.

Harry freezes, the fingers of his right hand poised over the strings of his guitar, the chord he just played still reverberating in the air. “What?” he whispers, every muscle in his body tensing.

“There’s something on your head,” Ron says, tip-toeing down the rest of the stairs and approaching Harry with his hands outstretched and his eyes wide.

Harry immediately relaxes and strums another chord. “Oh, this is just…well, actually, we haven’t named her yet. But she’s our new house pet!” He reaches a hand up and scratches the top of the creature’s head, smiling when she presses up into the touch.

Ron freezes and straightens up, his head tilting to the side slightly the way it does when he’s puzzling through something. “Are you sure that thing’s a pet and not some poorly transfigured rubbish?”

Harry laughs, and then frowns, “Hey! Don’t be rude. Sure, she’s not exactly cute, but she’s quite lovely. Hm, aren’t you?” he says, turning his nose into her soft flesh as she creeps down from the top of his head and onto his shoulder.

“Where did she even come from?” Ron asks with a slight grimace on his face.

“Xenophilius.”

“Sounds about right,” Ron says with a shrug as he plops down on the bed next to Harry.

“I didn’t know you were coming over,” Harry says, quietly strumming away.

“Blaise owled me from work and invited me.”

When Harry looks over, there’s a blush staining Ron’s freckled cheeks. “Mm, he did, did he?”

“Shut up,” Ron avoids his gaze as his blush deepens. “You know I love Neville’s cooking. That’s all.”

“Mmhm. And you’re sure it has nothing to do with Blaise’s big, big hands and beautiful eyes and…what was it you said?”

“Mate, I swear to god if you don’t stop–”

“Something about his sharp tongue and wanting to find out what it’s really capable of?”

Ron whines and shoves Harry’s shoulder. “I’m never getting drunk around you again. You make me say stupid things!”

Harry giggles and crosses the room, creature firmly in place on his shoulder, to set his guitar safely out of shoving range. “I think you’re perfectly capable of saying stupid things all on your own, bud. In vino veritas, or whatever.”

“Oi! Food!” Neville calls down the stairs. The mouthwatering smell of roasting meat and sauteed onions floats down into the basement, effectively ending their argument.

“Is ‘Mione not coming?” Ron asks as they make their way upstairs. “Figured she’d be around a lot more now that she and Nev are finally dating.”

“I didn’t have a chance to ask her, but she’s been so busy prepping for the start of term in a few weeks so I don’t think she’d come anyways. McGonnagal finally agreed to let her run a separate orientation to Hogwarts for the Muggle-born kids we’ve been working with all summer. You know how she is when she sinks her teeth into a new project.”

“Yeah,” Ron says with a laugh and an affectionate roll of his eyes.

“Ron, could you set the ta– Merlin’s tits, what is that?” Neville says when his eyes land on the creature, happily perched back on Harry’s head.

“Erm–” Harry says, grinning at Neville’s fascinated expression “Well, we’re not really sure, but say hello to our new roommate!”

Neville casts a charm to keep his spoon stirring the sauce simmering on the stove and comes closer to look.

“No. Nope. She is a temporary nuisance at most,” Pansy says, trailing into the kitchen after Luna.

“What? You mean we don’t get to keep her?!” Neville asks sadly. The little thing has stuck out the tip of its tongue and is hesitantly licking at Neville’s fingertips, like it’s sizing him up with its taste buds. He laughs at the sensation. “She’s pretty cool.”

“Cool?! She looks like a hunk of old meat,” Pansy whines.

“Don’t put me off my dinner, Pansy, please,” Ron protests with a disgusted look on his face.

“I’m not the one with a face like a moldy old sock!”

“Eh,” Neville shrugs, “I’ve seen plants ten times as ugly. I think she’s actually quite cute…if you ignore the way her eyes go in two different directions and her fur looks like the algae you find under rocks in polluted rivers.”

Ron makes a gagging noise.

“I needn’t ever bother taking my keys with me, it seems. The front door of this house is just wide open at all times. Anyone could wander in off the street,” Draco grumbles as he walks into the kitchen and sets two bottles of wine down on the dining table.

“Yes, that’s precisely how we got you, isn’t it darling? Little stray who just wandered in out of the cold,” Pansy teases as she attempts to kiss Draco’s cheek in greeting.

“Please, Pans, let me shower first. I was vomited on three separate times today. You don’t want to know what else I had to Scourgify off myself.”

Pansy recoils in disgust and offers her lips to Luna instead, who captures them enthusiastically with her own.

“Glad you weren’t locked out,’ Harry says, a now-familiar fluttery feeling tightening his stomach and making his words come out slightly breathy.

It’s just that Draco looks so cute in his St. Mungo’s uniform, even if it had been puked on three times. He doesn’t wear the fancy, lime green robes that the Healers wear, his uniform something closer to Muggle nurse’s scrubs–a short-sleeved shirt and matching trousers in a shade of blue that just happens to set off his eyes and make his hair practically glow. Harry is certain that the plain, shapeless outfit isn’t flattering at all on most people, but it clings to Draco in all the right places. His ID badge hangs off the hem of his shirt and it makes him look official and important, and Harry quite likes that.

Draco smiles back at him–a warm, genuine thing, nothing like his old, familiar smirk, that still takes Harry by surprise every time–and the butterflies in Harry’s stomach practically explode out of him. “Thanks for finding my keys, I was going absolutely mental looking for them. I was convinced for a while that poor Mr Singh had accidentally swallowed them with his lunch, and then–”

Draco freezes, his wide eyes glued to something over Harry’s right shoulder. Harry turns his head to look, and his nose collides with a mass of scaly fur, knocking his glasses askew.

“Er–right, speaking of strays…”

Draco stares at the thing for a long moment, and then takes a step closer. Harry is worried Draco will hear his heart galloping in his chest, but Draco seems entirely focused on the creature.

“Where did this come from?” Draco looks at Harry briefly, then searches the kitchen until his eyes land on Luna.

“Father,” she says simply, leaning back into Pansy’s embrace, who rolls her eyes and then kisses Luna’s temple.

“Of course,” Draco mumbles under his breath, reaching out a hand toward the creature. It sniffs his fingers hesitantly, and then uncurls itself from Harry’s shoulder to slither-crawl up Draco’s arm. “No one else in this whole world would have one of these except Xenophilius Lovegood.”

“You know what she is?” Neville asks.

Draco blinks around at them. “You don’t?” When everyone just shrugs at him, he straightens his shoulders and puts on his swotty ‘explaining’ face. It’s one of Harry’s particular favorites.

“It’s–she’s–a Chimera. At least, I think so. She’s rather small.”

No one says anything, and Draco huffs. “I swear, you lot. It’s like you all didn’t sit through years’ worth of Care of Magical Creatures classes. Chimera are magical amalgamations of several non-magical animal species. They supposedly first appeared in Ancient Greece, but they used to be relatively common in a number places all over the world–their habitat varies, because they aren’t always composed of the same set of species. No one is sure where exactly they come from, but the going theory is that animal populations experiencing sustained exposure to magic would eventually produce Chimeras. They began to go extinct in the 14th century, when Wixen populations became more and more isolated, and the use of magic became highly regulated and suppressed.”

“Woah,’ Harry breathes, tracking Draco’s fingers as he strokes the Chimera from snout to tail, making her shiver with joy.

“If they’re extinct, how is there one in your kitchen?” Ron asks, waving his wand to send plates and cutlery floating to the table.

“Excellent question, Ronald,” Pansy says, “How in the hell do we have an ancient, extinct, magical creature–and a bloody ugly one, at that–in our kitchen?”

Draco shrugs and wipes a hand down his face. He’s tired, Harry can tell from the shadows under his eyes and the way his shoulders slump now that his lecture is over. “I honestly have no idea. If the theory about their origins is true, then this little love,” he hugs her closer, “came from somewhere that magic is so prevalent in the natural environment that it affected her genetics.”

“You mean, after centuries of Wixen-kind suppressing the natural flow of magic, it’s begun to flourish enough to create Chimera again?” Luna summarizes helpfully.

“The earth is healing,” Neville says earnestly with his hands clasped around a wooden spoon in front of his chest, his eyes sparkling.

Draco shrugs. “I didn’t technically say any of that, but it’s as good a guess as any other, I suppose.”

“No. Absolutely not, no,” Pansy says, stomping over to Draco and glaring at the little creature. “I don’t care if she’s the bloody second-coming of Merlin himself, she is not living in this house.”

The kitchen is silent. Pansy whirls around and stares Neville down, clearly expecting his support. He flinches, but then raises his hands in surrender. “Sorry, Pans. I’ve always wanted a house pet.”

“Oh my god. Well, there’s no way Blaise will–”

“No way Blaise will what?” Blaise asks cheerfully as he steps into the kitchen.

They burst into shouts of greeting and congratulations all at once, and Blaise makes a theatrical bow, pretending to flick invisible tuxedo tails out behind himself.

“Blaise, please, tell these wankers that we cannot adopt this…thing.”

Blaise strips off his blazer and loosens his tie. He looks so out of place in office-appropriate clothing, Harry is so used to seeing him in tight, black jeans and shirts, his eyes rimmed with smudged black eyeliner and his ears and face full of glinting jewelry. At least his suit is black, so he doesn’t look totally alien.

“That request worries me in more ways than one,” he sighs, “but to be honest, P, I cannot muster the energy to care about anything that is not a large glass of wine and Neville’s impeccable boeuf bourguignon.” He rounds the table and pulls Neville into a bear hug that squeezes all the breath out of Neville and makes him laugh.

He goes to embrace Draco as well but then stops, his hands on Draco’s shoulders to keep him at arm’s length. “Oh. Yes. I see what you mean.”

“You’re the deciding vote,” Harry pipes up. “If you say no, out she goes. If you say yes, she lives here with the rest of us orphans and outcasts and gets all the weird, scaly belly rubs she can handle.”

“Potter, that’s not fair!” Pansy protests, “Blaise. Look at it.”

“We all know I have no better nature to appeal to, so do calm down, Pansy. What do we gain by keeping it?” He eyes the creature thoughtfully, sticking out an experimental finger for her to sniff.

“Her,” clarifies Luna, ignoring Pansy’s whispered babe!, “and according to Draco, she is a powerful, important, nearly-extinct magical creature that hasn’t been seen in the wild in millenia.”

“We do love a paraphrase in this house,” Draco mumbles. Harry, close enough to hear, fails to fully stifle his laugh, which makes Draco grin at him. Harry can feel his heartbeat in his bellybutton.

“Well, shouldn’t we, I don’t know, give her to someone who knows what to do with such a thing? Surely you know someone, Lunes,” Blaise says, now scratching the creature under her chin. She presses down into the touch and her eyes narrow to contented little slits.

“I think that’s how you all got into this mess,” Ron chimes in from the sidelines. Blaise abandons his inspection of the Chimera and turns all of his attention on Ron, who blushes preemptively.

“I do like a good mess,” Blaise says lowly, practically slinking across the kitchen towards him.

Ron coughs into his fist to try and hide the silly smile taking over his mouth. “So what’s it gonna be? Does she stay or go?”

Everyone’s eyes turn to Blaise.

“Unfortunately for you, Pansy–or, fortunately, It depends how you look at it–I am exactly the type of man who would rather keep a highly rare, probably priceless magical creature all to myself in my home than give it away. It’s also kind of cute, don’t you think? In a very ugly way.”

“Yes!” Neville cheers, taking his apron off and shaking it above his head.

“I hate all of you, I’m moving out,” Pansy says, trying to storm out of the room.

“No you aren’t,” Luna sing-songs, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her in to smother her face with kisses.

“We’re keeping our bedroom door closed–that thing is not sleeping with us,” Pansy grumbles. Luna only chuckles lightly in response.

“What should we call her?” Harry asks, stepping closer to Draco again and keeping his eyes carefully trained on the Chimera’s head, certain that if he makes eye contact with Draco right now he will combust. He’s had a bright, happy smile on his face for the last ten minutes, and the only thing more certain to turn Harry into a pining puddle on the floor quicker than serious, know-it-all Draco is Draco when he’s genuinely pleased.

“Nova. I don’t know Greek, but Nova is Latin for ‘new’. Or, close to it.” Draco’s voice is quiet, but it carries across the crowded room.

“Nova. It’s perfect,” Luna says, squeezing Pansy even tighter.

“Right. So about that wine,” Blaise says, rubbing his hands together and considering the bottles on offer.

“I really am going to shower now,” Draco says, holding Nova out toward Harry for him to take.

“D’you need any help?” Harry asks automatically, his attention torn–always torn–between Draco and the chaos of everyone trying to pour wine and find a seat and fill their plate. “I mean, no, that’s not what I–”

Draco’s eyes go wide, and then he smirks, mischief tangling with flushed bashfulness on his face. “I think I’ll manage. This time.”

Harry stares after him in mortification as he walks smoothly from the room towards the stairs.

*

It’s not long before they’re all lounging around the dining table, quiet and happily full of food and wine. Draco–his hair still golden-damp on the ends from his shower and comfortable in a pair of Blaise’s basketball shorts and one of Pansy’s lavender-colored hoodies–is folded over the table, one hand toying with the stem of his wine glass and the other supporting his head. Nova has curled around the back of his neck and burrowed into his collar. Every now and then he offers her a piece of beef, which she flicks into her mouth with her long, slender tongue, chomping happily with tiny, sharp teeth.

At some point, Ron had thrown his arm across the back of Blaise’s chair, which Blaise had taken as an invitation and had practically crawled into Ron’ lap. Ron seems perfectly comfortable with this development.

“So how was it, then? Is working for Gringotts as mindlessly dull as it seems?” Pansy says, absently curling a strand of Luna’s long hair around her fingers.

Blaise cocks an eyebrow and looks down at the tabletop, a small smile on his face. “Honestly? It’s brilliant.”

No one speaks, so he continues.

“When I was growing up, even at school, I never entertained the idea of a career,” he says, affecting a faux-condescending tone. “You know, because of my family’s wealth and the state of the world–” he waves a hand in the air.

“And then, after the war,” he looks up, meeting Pansy’s eyes, and then lets his gaze settle on Draco who cocks his head to indicate that he’s listening. “I couldn’t fathom being allowed to have something as mundane as a job. I thought…well, we all thought.”

Pansy hums under her breath and reaches out a hand to clasp Blaise’s fingers.

“Yeah, it’s a boring job. But I’m good at it, and I feel…useful. It feels good to go to the same place every day and do something that means something to other people. Even if it’s as invisible and unimportant as accounting.”

“S’not unimportant,” Ron says, taking the top of Blaise’s ear between his thumb and forefinger and rubbing gently. Blaise gazes into Ron’s eyes, a warm, genuine smile blooming on his face.

“What about you, Draco?” Luna asks, leaning around Pansy.

“What about me, what?”

“Your community service is almost up, right?’ Neville says, picking up on Luna’s train of thought. “D’you know what you want to do after?”

“I’m sure you’ll be glad to never have to clean another bed pan again,” Pansy adds, with a shudder. “I don’t know how you’ve lasted this long. And I don’t mean that as an insult, believe it or not. I don’t know how anyone could endure it.”

Harry watches Draco carefully as he considers his friend’s questions and comments. A series of indecipherable expressions flit across his face, and he opens his mouth as if he’s going to respond, but just shrugs instead and lets his eyes fall to the table.

“More wine?” Harry interjects, standing up from the table and drawing everyone’s attention to him. Draco shoots him a grateful look that settles right behind Harry’s rib cage.

“No!” Blaise says forcefully, slipping fully into Ron’s lap to straddle him. Harry giggles as Ron’s cheeks immediately flush bright red. “This is my party and I want to go dancing.”

They all burst into excited chatter–Pansy squealing in delight and Neville muttering under his breath about the last time they went dancing. He’d gotten so drunk that Harry had to accompany him in a Muggle taxi back to Grimmauld–the ride didn’t end well for the taxi’s upholstery or Harry’s wallet.

“Yes? Yes?” Blaise asks eagerly, pointing to each of them in turn. He’s met with excited nods until he reaches Draco.

“I love you, and I am very proud of you, but I feel like I might fall asleep right here.”

“Boo!’ the table shouts collectively. Except for Harry, who is still watching Draco’s face closely.

“Yeah, I–uh–have to get up early for a house call. If I turn up hungover again, ‘Mione might hex me into the middle of next week.” Harry says, feeling Blaise’s attention on him but keeping his eyes on Draco.

“You’re both boring and I despise you,” Blaise says decisively, standing and tugging Ron to his feet and spinning him around.

When Harry does finally look away from Draco, who is watching Blaise and Ron with a tired smile on his face, he meets Pansy’s pointed, knowing gaze. He immediately begins collecting the dirty dishes from the table and deposits them in the sink, unwilling to dissect what her look might mean.

It’s his turn to clean up after dinner, anyways, and by the time he’s filled the sink with soapy water–choosing to do the washing up without magic–the commotion has moved out of the kitchen and upstairs. He can hear jangly pop music coming from Pansy and Luna’s room on the floor above as they get ready, and Ron’s laughter carries softly down the stairs from Blaise’s third-floor bedroom.

Draco hasn’t moved from his chair. His shoulders are slumped and his eyes have gone wide and relaxed, staring blankly at his fingers wrapped around the stem of his wine glass.

“Go to bed,” Harry says over his shoulder.

Draco sucks in a breath and looks up slowly. “What?”

“Go to sleep, you look exhausted,” Harry repeats, wiping his hands on a towel and walking over to take Draco’s empty glass from him.

Draco stands slowly bracing himself with a hand on the table, careful not to jostle Nova, who is sound asleep inside his hood. “Thanks.”

“Mm,” Harry replies absently, dunking the glass into the sink.

“No, I mean, thanks for–”

When Harry turns back around, Draco is toying with the drawstrings of his hoodie, and the highs of his cheeks are slightly pink.

“Just, thanks,” he says, before turning and walking out of the room.

Harry stands very still and listens to Draco’s footsteps ascend the several flights of stairs to his room.

There’s no reason for that to be the interaction to set it off; for this to be the moment that the small, secret thing growing deep inside of Harry should finally burst open inside of him and suck all the oxygen from his lungs. He can’t keep pretending that these feelings mean nothing, anymore.

They have dinner together all the time–sometimes all of them, sometimes only a few of them, and sometimes even just him and Draco. They’ve lived in the same house for nearly a year, have been friends for longer, and hesitant acquaintances before that. There’s not a single thing different about tonight than any other night.

Regardless, Harry is suddenly struggling to catch his breath as he stares at the place Draco had just stood, his chest so full of affection and yearning that he can’t think straight. Maybe it was Draco’s teasing suggestion about showering together, or the secret looks they’d shared while everyone else was arguing, or the way Draco always looks so cozy and content wearing his friends’ baggy clothing. Harry wonders wildly how Draco might look wearing his clothes.

He puts away the now-clean dishes in a daze and hurries back downstairs to his computer. He pulls up the window with ‘The Closet’ message board, starting to type before he can think twice.

He clicks the ‘send’ button quickly to keep himself from deleting the whole message, and pushes his computer down to the end of the bed where he can see if anyone replies before picking up his guitar and settling back down to wait. 

Harry is strumming his way through Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones when his laptop dings. He nearly drops his guitar in his haste to check the notification. 

There are still no responses to his post. He minimizes the window and finds a message from Draco waiting, instead.

Harry can’t think of anything he wants to do more.

Harry freezes. He knows that watching movies in Draco’s room–on the small, old telly that he’d salvaged off the side of the road and tinkered with until he could get it to play VHS tapes–means sitting on Draco’s bed. With Draco. He’s done it before, but there’s always been at least one other person there with them making everything far less awkward–for Harry, at least.

When Harry doesn’t respond immediately, Draco sends–

sleepy :((((

Harry doesn’t bother typing out a response, only pausing to change into his pajamas–a pair of joggers and a threadbare, old Bob Dylan t-shirt Luna had found for him at the charity shop–before hurrying as quickly as his lungs and thighs will carry him up the four flights of stairs to Draco’s bedroom.

Draco is tucked up in bed against a pile of pillows with Nova curled up on his chest when Harry pokes his head around his door. He closes his laptop and carefully leans down to set it on the floor, then wordlessly lifts the other half of the quilt for Harry to crawl under. The room is dark, illuminated only by the glow of the tv–the opening credits of whatever movie Draco has chosen are paused, the screen frozen and blurry.

“Thanks,” Draco says with a sheepish smile, and the single word immediately recalls for Harry all the feelings he’d been flooded with just an hour before in the kitchen. He’s glad for the darkness, otherwise Draco would definitely see the way his cheeks are blazing.

Draco wriggles further down into the bed, making himself comfortable, but Harry remains seated perfectly upright. He’s hyper-aware of Draco lying next to him–the jumble of his limbs underneath the covers; his fingers absently stroking down Nova’s back; the way one of his bare feet almost, almost, touches Harry’s; his grey eyes, wide and bright in the glow of the screen, ticking back and forth as he watches. The blue light coming from the tv makes him look icy and ethereal, like the ghost of a young prince, or something.

Harry wouldn’t be able to relax if someone were holding a wand to his head.

He tries to focus on the action on screen–a beautiful woman is riding in the back of a limousine, and the driver has just pulled a gun on her–but his attention strays to the boy beside him every few seconds.

“How did you know you wanted to work with Hermione? With Muggle-born kids?” Draco says quietly. Harry startles slightly–he was sure Draco was fully absorbed in the film like he usually is.

Harry had never imagined himself doing the kind of work he does now. It was immediately clear to him when the smoke from the Battle cleared that any desire that he had once had to join the Aurors had been extinguished, but as he had never even considered other options, he was at a bit of a loose end.

Then Hermione had started working with the Ministry to build their Muggle-born outreach program and asked for Harry’s input. He’d agreed to help Hermione work out the kinks when it was in the earliest phases of development and then just…hadn’t stopped. Since then, Hermione had been able to formalize the program, hire a handful of employees–Harry included–and expand their operations. Now, she primarily works with older children who are preparing for their first year at Hogwarts, while Harry works mostly with Muggle families of young children who are just starting to display their aptitude for magic. Any time the Ministry is alerted to an instance of underage magic in a Muggle household, Harry is called in.

“I didn’t, at first,” Harry says, shrugging, not sure what kind of answer Draco is looking for.

Draco is quiet for a moment. “I know you like doing it well enough. I don’t think anyone on this planet could make you stick with something you hated.” Draco’s tone is gently teasing, and Harry laughs. “But…is it what you love? I mean, does it make you happy?”

Harry considers the question. “Yeah. It really does. I just remember how scared and confused I was when I started doing accidental magic. Have I ever told you the boa constrictor story?”

Draco shakes his head and gazes up at him with wide eyes. Warmth floods Harry’s chest–he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to being the sole focus of Draco’s attention like this.

“The Dursleys took me to the zoo. Which was already weird, as you know.” He’d told all of his housemates bits and pieces about his horrible childhood, enough that they all generally get the picture. “Well, long story short, I had a conversation with a boa constrictor and then set it loose.”

Draco’s whole body vibrates under the quilt as he laughs. “Oh my gods, of course you did.”

“Hey! I didn’t know until much later that the whole talking to snakes thing was not part of the usual program!” Harry protests, flushing. “The point is, I had no idea what was happening and the Dursleys were their usual, awful selves about it all, and then there was this whole debacle with my letter–or, letters–and a lighthouse, and Hagrid…”

“You’re just going to gloss over that bit?”

“We do not have time for that right now. I'm trying to answer your question.”

“Fine, fine. I’m not going to let that go, though. Continue.”

Harry glares down at him, trying to keep the silly smile off his face. “I know that having someone come in and do what I do now wouldn’t have made the Dursleys any less horrid, or any more accepting of my magic, but…I think it would have helped me feel less alone. There was a brief period of time where I was so worried that I’d been taken from one nightmare scenario only to be dropped right into a new one. I had no idea what to expect.”

Draco is silent.

“I know my whole scenario was far from the norm–in so many ways–but as an adult I can see that I could have used…that I deserved a little more direct help. I like being able to be that for people now. And yeah, most Muggle-born kids are fine, eventually. They have been for centuries with no sort of interventions, but if there’s even one kid out there like me who could use a friendly face, then I’m glad I can be it. If I can help even one family feel a little less…broken. And I like talking to families, especially the kids. It sort of…fills me up?”

Draco still doesn’t talk for a beat, and then, “You are disgustingly extroverted.”

Harry laughs. “Yeah. I know.”

“Thank you for explaining,” Draco adds, his voice quiet and sincere.

Harry gets the feeling he has more to say. “Is there a reason you asked?”

A long pause. So long, that Harry thinks Draco isn’t going to respond and he tries to turn his attention back to the film.

“I do know what I want,” he says, finally.

“Sorry?” Harry feels like he missed a step.

“After my community service is over.”

“Oh,” Harry says, turning his head to look at Draco properly. He’s still staring towards the tv, but his gaze is soft and unfocused, like his mind isn’t fully present in the room anymore.

“I didn’t want to say before, during dinner, because…well, it’s a bit silly.” He’s twisting a loose thread around his finger so tight the circulation to his fingertip is cut off, turning it alarmingly white.

“Do you want to tell me now?” Harry asks, restraining himself from taking Draco’s hands in his own to stop him from his painful fidgeting.

Draco nods. The sounds of a car crash clatter from the tv. “I think…I want to be a Healer. A proper one.”

Harry waits. He isn’t sure what to say, because there’s nothing silly about that at all. He tells Draco as much.

Draco shrugs. “Maybe not for most people. But for me? I don’t know…”

He sounds so small and insecure that it makes Harry’s chest ache. “You’d make a brilliant Healer,” Harry says, sounding more urgent than he meant to.

Draco laughs, then shrugs again.

“No, really. I mean it. When you took care of me after my top surgery, you were so good. You knew exactly what to do, even though it wasn’t a magical procedure. I was hardly ever in pain, and even the doctor said I was healing unusually quickly!”

“That’s because you always have to be the best at everything, you wanker,” Draco teases, but he’s smiling now and he’s unwound his finger from the thread.

“Git. You can’t win at healing from surgery.”

“I know that, do you know that?” Draco teases again, elbowing Harry gently in the side. The movie continues, unnoticed, in the background. The light shifting across the planes of Draco’s face is a shadowy mimic of the drama playing out on the television.

“I thought you didn’t like working at the hospital very much, though,” Harry says, deciding to navigate the conversation away from the dangerous territory that is a verbal sparring match with Draco Malfoy.

“No,” Draco says simply, and then, “I mean, I know I complain a lot. And anyone who claimed they enjoyed cleaning up people’s sick, or changing soiled sheets for eight straight hours would be either a liar or a lunatic. But…I like working at the hospital in general. I like helping people, and helping them feel better. And…it sort of feels like a way for me to make up for…well, you know.”

“Oh. But, Draco, you don’t have to make up–”

“I know,” he says softly. “But still.”

Harry nods into the darkness. “Yeah.” He’s suddenly so full of words, too full, he can’t make any of them come out of his mouth.

They sit in silence again for a while, neither of them actually watching the film.

“Did you know that Chimeras sort of…choose what sort of creature they become?” Draco is gazing down at the top of Nova’s head, now.

Harry doesn’t bother reminding him that he hadn’t remembered Chimeras had ever existed until a few hours earlier. He just shakes his head, instead.

“It’s more lore than proven fact, but some people claim that right at the beginning, when the new creature is developing in-utero, they’re submerged in a…a soup of magic and DNA and all the other sciency things. The wild magic supposedly allows them to take the most beneficial parts of the other creatures around them and mash them all together.”

Harry gazes down at Nova, too, trying to imagine her floating in a dark, warm pool of glowing magic, gathering together arms and legs and claws and fangs and snapping them onto herself like Lego pieces. “So, she decided to look like this?”

Draco smiles. “I’ve oversimplified. It’s not exactly a conscious decision, but…yes, in a way. There was a moment as she was becoming a…I don’t know, a lizard of some sort, and the magic allowed her to become something more. Something more true.”

Harry slips a finger under one of her little feet and her claws curl gently around it.

After a moment, he says, “Do you think she was scared? Being born into a world where no one looks like her or walks like her or eats the same things. She doesn’t even look like her parents, I bet.”

Draco is silent for a moment. “Maybe. I think that would be rather frightening. I know that it is. But she’s the best possible version of herself, the only one that matters. And now she has us, so she’s not alone.”

Harry swallows past the tightness in his throat. “Yeah. She has us.”

Draco snuggles back down under the quilt, jostling Nova just enough that she lets out a grumpy little squeak.

Harry finally relaxes then, nestling back into the pillows and letting his tense limbs go loose. He tries to follow whatever is left of the movie, but there are new actors being called the same names as other characters from the first part of the film and he’s completely lost.

“What is–” he starts, but is interrupted by Draco’s soft snore.

Draco has fallen asleep with his head resting against Harry’s shoulder so lightly that Harry hadn’t even noticed. Harry stares down at him for a while, his blond eyelashes white against his cheeks in the glow of the tv. A strong urge to touch comes over him–Draco’s skin always looks so soft, and Harry yearns to feel it underneath his fingertips. What he really wants to do is roll over and wrap himself entirely around Draco and remain there like that until the morning.

Instead, he shifts carefully out of the bed. He doesn’t bother to switch the tv off, knowing that will wake Draco up faster than any sudden, loud noise would.

“Are you coming?” he whispers to Nova, who has cracked her yellow eyes open to watch him.

He is answered with a wide yawn that puts all of Nova’s tiny, sharp teeth on display before she tucks her head under one scaly paw and goes back to sleep on top of Draco.

The rest of their roommates must still be out dancing, because the house is quiet as he descends all the way back down to the basement, where he throws himself dramatically onto his bed with a huff.

If Harry wasn’t already entirely gone for Draco, watching his eyes light up as he confided in Harry about his hopes and dreams would have definitely gotten him there.

Not a day goes by that Harry isn’t impressed by how much Draco has changed since the war ended. It was clear the very first time they reunited after everything that he’d taken his court-mandated rehabilitation program seriously, and that he genuinely wanted to be a better person than he was raised to be.

He’s so different from the pugnacious, bigoted boy Harry remembers from school–soft spoken, generous, deeply invested in his own comfort and the comfort of those around him, and beautiful. He’d always been attractive, as far as appearance goes, but there’s something almost unbelievably beautiful–something beyond looks–about him now that he has the freedom and the choice to be the person he really wants to be.

Harry had watched him change–as he suspects he himself did–from an angry, resentful storm cloud of a person to the human embodiment of a sun spot you want to curl up in for a nap. And he’d fallen further in love with him every step of the way.

Harry’s laptop, still open at the end of his bed, blinks to life as he taps the space bar. He opens the message board window again to find that his post has gotten a response.

Harry immediately starts typing a response.

He hits the send button before he crawls under his covers and finally succumbs to sleep.

Harry watches as the little girl levitates her doll across the floor, making it look as if it’s walking all on its own. She looks so content with her casual use of magic here in the safety of her own bedroom–something Harry himself had never gotten to experience. It warms him and makes him ache in equal measure.

“Is it like this for every child, when they…when–” The look on the girl’s mother’s face is a mixture of concern and curiosity as she too watches her daughter’s absentminded, joyful magical display.

“When they experience their first acts of spontaneous magic?” Harry finishes for her–she still seems to be struggling to say the word. Magic. He’s gotten used to filling in the gaps for Muggle families who find themselves with an unexpected wix on their hands.

“Yes and no. It all depends on how the people around them react,” he says, and her worried gaze snaps to his face. He smiles at her reassuringly. “You’ve done the right thing, inviting us–me–here. The most important thing for you to do now is to reassure Charlotte that what she’s experiencing is perfectly normal, and that there’s nothing wrong with her. I’ll leave you with some resources on how to help her control her spontaneous magic, but it’s healthy for her to express it every now and then. Suppressing it can have…unwanted consequences.”

The woman’s frown deepens. “Like what?”

Harry smiles again. “Like I said, you have nothing to worry about. I promise. All of that information will be in the resources I leave you.”

They watch as Charlotte wordlessly changes the color of her dolls’ hair, picking them up to make them swim through the air like birds or mermaids. She’s only recently turned five, younger than Harry was when he first expressed his own magic.

“And for you? Was it like this for you?” the woman asks, and then her eyes go wide. “I’m sorry, is that a very rude question? I didn’t mean–”

Harry raises a hand. “Please, it’s okay. It’s part of the job. It…wasn’t anything like this for me, to be honest. My parents were Wixen, but they died when I was very young. The family I lived with when I was growing up didn’t have magic, and frankly they were quite frightened of it.”

The woman considers him for a moment, her worried expression now limned with familiar pity. “And did they, what did you say, suppress your magic?”

“They tried. Luckily, I had someone–more than one someone–who eventually stepped in to help me.” Harry thinks of Hagrid–his bear hugs and rock cakes and enormous heart–still teaching Care of Magical Creatures after everything.

“So that’s why you do this, now?”

“That’s a large part of it, yes.”

The woman opens her arms as Charlotte bounces over into them, burrowing her face into her mother’s chest. Careful fingers push through Charlotte’s tumble of black curls, protective and loving. “I don’t know what we’d do without you, Mr Potter.”

A bittersweet feeling floods Harry’s chest. This part of making house calls–the eventual acceptance, followed by misplaced gratitude–is the hardest for him. “You would have been just fine.”

He hesitates, and then moved by the way that the woman’s expression softens as Charlotte tilts her head back to look up with wide, brown eyes adds, “In my limited experience, the most important thing for any child–any person–magical or not, is to know that they are loved. Unconditionally. Everything else is just details. I think you two will be alright, no matter what happens.”

Harry hands over a packet of pamphlets to Charlotte’s mother before seeking out the nearest abandoned alleyway and Apparating back to his office. When he opens his laptop, there is a group chat request waiting for him.

Harry laughs to himself as the chat devolves into a flurry of thrilled (Neville) and horrified (Blaise and Pansy) reactions. Draco begs off, complaining that his ‘mandatory half-hour break’ has again been shortened to ten.

Harry clicks over into his chat with Luna only.

Harry smiles. Luna always answers his IMs that way.

Harry’s about to type something else when he notices that his last post on the message board has gotten another response. When he sees the username–the same as the first response–he’s relieved. It’s been a few days, and he’s starting to feel like a bit of an arse for pouring his heart to a complete stranger on the internet only for them to ignore him.

Harry reads and re-reads the message. He racks his brain to try and come up with something he can do for Draco, something important that he would never ask for help with. He can’t think of anything. He clicks over to his chat with Draco, hoping to catch him before his break really ends, but his away message is up.

M0vie_Mag1c: “A man's attitude... a man's attitude goes some ways. The way his life will be. Is that somethin' you agree with?” - The Cowboy :: Mulholland Drive (=_=)

*

After he drops his summary of his visit with Charlotte and her mother off with Hermione at the Ministry, Harry decides to walk to the pet shop instead of Apparating. His mind is still spinning in all directions, trying to figure out what he could possibly do or get for Draco that he doesn’t already have–something that could possibly show Draco how Harry feels for him without him having to say it out loud.

“Hallo! Can I help you find something?” the person behind the counter in the pet shop calls as soon as Harry steps through the door. It’s at this precise moment that Harry realizes Luna didn’t tell him exactly what she was planning to get, and he has no idea what sort of things an ancient, magical creature might need.

“Er…” he says, looking around, bewildered.

The person comes around the counter toward him. “How about we start with this–what kind of animal have you got?”

“Er…” Harry says again. “Well, a garden snake.”

“Oh! Our reptiles and amphibians section is just over here–”

“And a bat. Not really sure what kind? But, probably the normal one?”

“Oh…” the employee hesitates, taken aback.

“Um. And a cat?”

The employee stares at him for a beat, and then says, “Quite a menagerie you’ve got there. Are you in animal rehabilitation?”

“Something like that…” Harry scratches the back of his head with one hand and shrugs.

“Right. Okay,” the employee says gamely. “If you’re just looking for essentials, you’ll need food, a place for each of your critters to sleep–a tank for the snake, and a litter box for the cat. And water dispensers, of course.”

“Bloody hell,” Harry murmurs under his breath. He is suddenly regretting his offer to help.

Thirty minutes later, Harry steps out of the shop laden with bags and balancing a plastic litter box–also full of things–in both hands. Since he isn’t certain what food Nova would like best, he purchased the bag full of freeze dried mice, the box of live crickets that is chirping loudly and vibrating slightly in the litter box, and the pack of tinned cat food that the shop employee recommended to him.

In his bags are also a kit to assemble a wooden bat house, a blue, fluffy cat bed, and a heat lamp to keep cold blooded creatures warm. He’d lied and said that he already had a tank for a snake–from what little he’s seen he doesn’t really think Nova would appreciate being closed up and gawked at, and he isn’t sure how her wings would work out in such a small space. He was also unable to resist throwing a few cat toys onto the pile of stuff–a little taco that crinkles when he squeezes it, a plastic ball with a jingle bell inside, and a rainbow feather on the end of a long stick. He has no idea whether Chimeras like to play, but the toys are cute, and the idea of bringing Nova a treat makes him smile.

When he gets home, he dumps all of the things onto the kitchen table and takes the cat bed into the sitting room. He’s in the middle of lighting a fire and arranging the bed next to the hearth when Luna comes bouncing down the stairs.

“Oh, Harry! Thank you!”

“It’s no problem–” He freezes. Nova is perched on the top of Luna’s head with her hairy, scaly tail curled down over Luna’s shoulder, her wings–leathery and soft-looking–flapping slightly at her sides. She’s already almost twice as big as she was when Luna first brought her home, only a few days ago. She looks like a gargoyle that has come to life. “Merlin,” he breathes.

“Did you have any problem at the pet shop?”

“Uh, no…” Harry says hesitantly as he watches Luna coax Nova down off her head. Nova flaps her wings impotently as she goes–they’re just big and strong enough that they slow her fall to the ground, but not quite developed enough to keep her airborne. She slinks over toward him, her gait is somewhere between a slither and a prowl, and sniffs affectionately at his outstretched hand. He laughs when she headbutts his palm, just like a kitten seeking pats.

“I wasn’t sure what food to get her, so I got a few different kinds. But I figured we shouldn’t keep feeding her table scraps and letting her hunt insects in the back garden.”

Nova inspects the cat bed, sniffing and pawing at it with a long-clawed foot, before she steps into it, spins in a circle a few times, and then curls up into a little donut right in the middle. The warmth from the fire must feel nice on her cold skin, even if her mottled fur is starting to grow in more evenly.

“She really is lovely, isn’t she?” Luna asks in her bright, airy way.

“Yeah, she is,” Harry responds, reaching out to run his thumb back over Nova’s head, between her eyes, and delighting in the way her bat-like ears flex and fold out of the way. “She’s gotten so big already!”

“Well, Draco did say that Chimeras tend to grow where there is a great deal of magic in the environment. This house is pretty magical,” Luna responds, matter of factly.

Harry sits back on his heels and settles his chin on his crossed arms as he gazes down at the weird little creature that has wormed her way into their lives. “You mean because this house has belonged to pureblood wixen families for centuries?”

Luna looks at him for a long moment, and then looks back at Nova. “That might be part of it.”

Harry just shakes his head fondly, familiar by now with Luna’s cryptic way of talking around her point.

The front door opens with a clatter and the sound of Pansy and Draco arguing fills the foyer and floats down the hall to the sitting room.

“I’m just saying, Draco, that you’ll never know if you don’t bloody do something about it.” Pansy hisses.

“Maybe I’m not meant to know!” Draco retorts tightly. “Maybe knowing would just muck everything–oh.” He slams to a stop in the sitting room doorway when he notices Harry and Luna crouched on the carpet. He’s in his uniform again and socked feet, his comfortable work shoes clutched against his chest.

“Know what?” Luna asks innocently.

Harry has to look away as Draco’s cheeks go pretty pink.

“Didn’t think anyone would be home,” he mutters instead of answering Luna’s question.

Pansy rolls her eyes and pushes past Draco to plant a kiss on the top of her girlfriend’s head. “Draco was just saying he’s been thinking about dying his hair pink.”

“No, I–oh.” He starts until Pansy sends him a cryptic, meaningful look. “I mean, yeah. Just…thinking about it.” Draco mumbles.

“Oh you definitely should!” Luna enthuses, “you could do it the same shade your cheeks turn when you’re embarrassed.” She points right at his flushed face, making it go even pinker.

“Can you do that if you’re working at the hospital?” Harry asks, feeling distinctly like he’s missed something crucial.

“Um. No, probably not. So, I guess that’s that then,” Draco says, sounding relieved. “Um. I’m hungry,” he trails off as he shuffles away down the hallway toward the kitchen.

“She is looking decidedly less insect-like,” Pansy says, and it takes Harry a moment to realize she’s shifted her focus to Nova.

“Oh, yes!” Luna enthuses. “Wait til you see her try to fly, it’s beautiful!”

Pansy shivers. “Mad. All of you,” she says under her breath before leaving to follow Draco to the kitchen and dragging a reluctant Luna behind her.

When Harry finally joins them, after all of Nova’s new toys and food have been put away, they’ve arranged themselves on a blanket in the back garden. Draco had not only scavenged a snack for himself, but had sliced some fruit and cheese and dug out the best biscuits from the back of the cupboard where Neville tries to hide them.

Harry leaves the back door cracked open in case Nova decides to slither out, and eventually, she does, stealing a grape from the plate in the center of the blanket and replacing it with her toy taco, and then curling contentedly in Draco’s lap as she chews.

When Harry lowers himself down onto the blanket, Luna holds out a slice of peach for him to eat from her hand, and he laughs when the sticky juice trickles down his chin and onto his chest.

“Get yourself together, Potter,” Draco says, but he’s smiling too, a bright thing that goes all the way up to his eyes.

Harry reaches out his hand, smirking, his fingers stretching threateningly toward Draco’s cheek. Draco shrieks indignantly and catches Harry’s fingers with his own, scowling at the stickiness and dropping Harry’s hand in faux-disgust.

Harry’s eyes unconsciously follow the tips of Draco’s fingers as he brings them to his lips, and his breath catches in his chest when Draco’s mouth opens and he slips them inside. Harry can see Draco’s tongue swirling around his fingers, and he nearly makes a sound when Draco hollows his cheeks and sucks.

When he finally looks up, his gaze is caught by Draco’s eyes that are glued, wide and unblinking, to his heated face.

Pansy clears her throat.

Harry looks away quickly, and busies himself with compiling a little cracker-cheese-fruit sandwich and stuffing it into his mouth in one go.

“So,” Pansy says, drawing out the sound. “How’s my new dress coming, Dray? I’d like to be able to take it on holiday with me.”

“Oh, uh. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I don’t think it’ll be done in time. My sewing machine has been on the blink and I don’t know how to fix it. Sorry, pans.”

“Can’t you just get a new one?” Luna asks. “You’ve had that one for ages, and it was second hand, right?”

Nova crawls out of Draco’s lap, arches her back up in a big stretch, and then slinks away into the grass. Her wings stretch and flap as she goes, making soft, leathery sounds. Draco watches her as he answers. “I suppose I could get a new one, but it took me ages to get the charms right so that the one I have will work in this magical monstrosity of a house. I still think the dress wouldn’t be done by the time I get a new one set up.”

Draco looks disappointed, almost sad. Harry knows how much he loves making clothes for himself and his friends–he spends hours closed up in his room on his days off with a movie on in the background as he works out new patterns and cuts fabric. The click-clack of his machine is so normal in their shared home that Harry’s stopped being able to hear it, like white noise. The majority of the clothes in Draco’s wardrobe are things he’s made, and they all have one or two of his early experiments hanging in their closets.

His sewing machine had been one of the only things he’d brought with him when he moved in. Harry remembers how overjoyed Draco had been the day he’d gotten all the charms right to make it work in Grimmauld Place.

“And you’re really fond of your old one, aren’t you?” Harry says slowly, almost to himself, as an idea dawns on him.

“Yeah. It was the first thing I bought all by myself with Muggle money.” He shrugs, “It’s stupid. I should just get a new one.”

Harry watches a small, resigned smile blossom on Draco’s lips and feels the idea crystallize into determination in his stomach.

“No!” Harry blurts. “I mean, no. That’s not supid.”

Draco gazes at him for a moment, and his smile shifts into something smaller, more private. Just for Harry.

“Well,” Pansy interrupts again after a long silence, “either way, I need to be the best looking wix in all of Paris, so if you can’t get your machine working again I suppose I’ll just be forced to drag you shopping with me.”

Draco laughs and shakes his head, putting the back of his hand to his forehead like he might faint, “Noooo, please, I beg of you! Spare me!”

Pansy flicks a grape at him that hits him square in the forehead. “Some best friend you are!”

Draco picks up the grape and tosses it back at her. She gasps when it hits her cheek and falls into her lap, and her expression turns murderous.

“Draco Malfoy, I swear–” Her hand is suddenly full of cheese cubes and her arm is cocked back, and Harry is certain they’re about to have a full on food fight right here in the garden when Nova squawks, leaps up into the air, and flutters gracefully down into the middle of the chaos.

Pansy makes a weird, startled noise and drops her fistfull of cheese.

“Look at you!” Draco says delightedly, picking Nova up and tickling her under her wings as she preens and flutters them delightedly. “Can you do it again?” he asks, leaping to his feet and carrying Nova out into the grass.

They spend the next couple of hours trying to teach Nova to fly properly in the waning sunlight. At some point, Blaise joins them with a bottle of wine, and then Neville bustles into the garden, his arms full with a tray of wriggling, bright orange seedlings that he sets off to one side.

By the time the sun goes fully down and the garden lights begin to blink on, Nova has managed to take off from the ground and flap her way clumsily up to a branch in the apple tree all on her own. Their cheers when she lands with a little chirp are nearly deafening–even Pansy has a proud little smile on her face. They’re all a little tipsy, and the night is warm and breezy, and Harry doesn’t remember ever being so happy in his life.

He turns his attention to Draco, as he always does eventually. Draco’s legs are pulled up to his chest and he’s wrapped his arms around them. His chin is resting on one of his knees, and there’s a tired little smile on his face as he watches his friends laugh and tease one another.

If this is all he is ever allowed to have–Draco relaxed and easy like this, nearby but just out of reach, happy and comfortable in the company of their friends–it will be enough. If all he can ever do is show Draco how important and loved he is, then it will be enough. He doesn’t need anything more, even if he wants it.

He makes a mental note to ask the motorcycle maintenance forum if anyone knows anything about fixing broken sewing machines.

It turns out sewing machine maintenance is hardly anything like motorcycle maintenance.

Yes, there are gears and screws and even a little grease, and yes the tools are basically the same, if not proportionally smaller. But everything is just a little too different. When he’s working on Sirius’s bike he has to put his shoulder behind everything, he can use force and not worry about his hand slipping and destroying the whole engine. Parts can be easily replaced after a quick trip to the car parts store. He doesn’t even know where he would go about purchasing replacement sewing machine parts, let alone which ones he might need.

All the little bits inside the machine seem so delicate–little wheels and thin rods and plastic cuffs screwed shut to keep everything together. And that’s not even accounting for the little computery bits and wires that make the digital machine go–something Harry has virtually no experience with.

He’s so worried that his big, clumsy fingers are going to mess everything up. He’s not even sure that the problem is mechanical and not magical. Nevertheless, he’s here in Draco’s bedroom with the front panel of the machine lying on the floor next to him, a handful of little spanners and screwdrivers scattered over Draco’s sewing table, and enough determination to keep him from giving up.

Every now and then Nova, who alternates between crouching on the top of his head and perching on top of one of the posts of Draco’s bed to watch him, will make a disapproving sound and flutter down to the sewing table to nudge some tool or other towards Harry’s hands. She’s nearly always right in her assessment.

“Maybe you should be doing this,” Harry murmurs, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead as he takes a pair of tiny pliers from between her teeth. She grumbles in response and crawls back up Harry’s arm to curl around the back of his neck and watch.

Finally, after literal hours of tinkering, Harry locates what he is sure is the world’s tiniest wheel that has slipped off of the world’s tiniest little pin and bent in half. He can see how it connects one important part of the threading mechanism to another, so he casts a quick Reparo and carefully puts it all back in the right order.

He’s just slipping the front panel back onto the machine when Draco steps into the room.

Harry freezes. He’d hoped to finish the repair and disappear before Draco got home from work, but he’d lost track of time.

“What are you doing?” Draco asks. He doesn’t sound angry or upset, just curious. He comes to stand next to Harry, and Harry watches the pieces slot into place in his mind as he takes in Harry’s grease-streaked face and handful of tools. “Harry?”

“Um, well. I thought, ‘I know how to fix a motorcycle, so how hard could a sewing machine be’?” He laughs, and it comes out high and weird.

Draco opens one of the drawers of his sewing table and takes out a bobbin loaded with baby pink thread, his brow furrowed a little and his mouth twisted up. Harry steps aside as he sits down and starts to thread the machine.

“Well, it turns out, pretty hard,” Harry continues. Draco’s silence is very worrying, and Harry can’t stop babbling. “I mean, have you seen the inside of that thing?! Everything is tiny and breakable and, oh my god, I was super careful I promise!” Fuck. He’s doing a horrible job of explaining himself.

Draco digs around in the basket of scrap material on the floor next to the table and pulls out a square of blue gingham.

“But I–I found something that had broken. I mean, you don’t need to be a sewing machine expert to know that things aren’t supposed to be all bent and disconnected, and–”

Draco lines the fabric up by the needle and then presses his foot carefully down on the peddle. Harry holds his breath.

The room is filled with a gentle whirring sound as a perfect line of baby pink stitches trails after Draco’s fingertips as he feeds the fabric through the machine.

“Oh, thank Merlin,” Harry mutters under his breath, relief flooding his body. At least he hadn’t made everything worse.

Draco still doesn’t say anything as he clips the thread and holds the square of fabric up to inspect the stitches. His eyebrows are furrowed, and he looks…Harry can’t tell what the expression on his face is meant to signal. Concern? Anger? Confusion?

Maybe he’s mad that Harry touched his machine without asking, even if it is fixed. Or maybe he’s just upset that Harry entered his room without his permission. The house rule is that they all stay out of each other’s spaces unless invited in, and Harry had definitely not been invited this time.

“Draco, I’m sorry I barged in, I just thought–”

“Why?” Draco interrupts, his gaze still trained on the line of pink stitches. He runs a fingertip over them carefully.

Harry blinks. What does he mean, why? “I know how upset you were that your sewing machine had broken, and you said you didn’t want to get a new one. I know how important it is to you. I just…wanted to fix it for you, if I could.”

When Draco finally glances up at Harry, the look on his face is even more indecipherable. He’s sucked his lower lip into his mouth which is all twisted up, and his eyebrows are tilted up above his wide eyes.

“Thank you,” he whispers to his hands which are curled in his lap around the gingham fabric. “I– Yeah. Thanks, Harry.”

Harry is still not entirely sure if he’d done the right thing or not, despite Draco’s thanks. He feels like he should apologize again–he wants to kick himself for putting that broken expression on Draco’s face. He should have just asked first.

“It was no problem,” he says awkwardly. “I, um, should probably go.”

Draco nods silently, his attention fully on the repaired machine.

Harry turns back as he descends the staircase to see Draco with one hand on his sewing table, the square of fabric pressed against his lips with the other.

Nova trails after Harry–half waddling, half flying–as he makes his way down to his bedroom. He flops down on his stomach and props his head on his folded arms, replaying the conversation and trying to make sense of Draco’s unexpected response. He feels little claws dig into his back as Nova crawls up on top of him and starts to spin in circles, trying to find a comfortable position to nap in. Her weight and warmth are comforting and help quiet some of the anxious thoughts swirling in his head.

He replaces his arms with a pillow and pulls his laptop towards himself. It takes him a minute to find the right thread in ‘The Closet’ forum, where he’s been exchanging messages with the other anonymous, lovesick sap and re-reads their last post.

‘But I bet it’s really meaningful for him when people do notice and do something kind for him, especially if they don’t usually,’ they had said. He types out a response.

Before he can close his laptop again, an IM window on his desktop starts blinking.

Worry twists Harry’s stomach.

The knot in Harry’s stomach untangles some.

Harry huffs indignantly and closes his laptop with a loud click. He turns over as carefully as possible, dislodging Nova and then scooping her right back up to settle her on his chest instead.

Her fur looks so much better than it did the day Luna brought her home–it’s thicker and shinier where it sprouts from around her scales–and her scales, too, have changed from a dull, muddy brown to an almost iridescent green. When he first met her, she was mostly reptile–long and sinewy and a bit off putting, but her mammalian features are starting to become more prominent. For one, she’s no longer cold blooded and radiates warmth like a little space heater. Her snout has gotten less pointed, and she’s started to sprout long, silky whiskers around her snake-like nose holes that twitch when she’s dreaming.

She startles slightly from sleep and starts to lick herself enthusiastically with her long, forked tongue, and Harry laughs at the little snuffling noises she makes. He strokes a hand down her back and she arches into the touch, purring contentedly.

“A little love and care does everyone good, hm?”

His computer pings again. There’s already a response to his message board post.

He really, really hopes his online confidant is right.

Harry had spent his evening down in his bedroom with Hermione going over a packet of materials for a big meeting with the Hogwarts board the next morning. He’s just finished putting away their dishes from their working dinner when Neville pops his head into the kitchen.

“Hey! Got a fire going in the back. You two want to come sit for a while?”

Harry turns and glances out of the kitchen window and sees a small fire glowing brightly in their fire pit. Pansy and Blaise are already sitting next to it–Blaise in a conjured arm chair and Pansy perched on his lap talking animatedly and pointing an accusatory finger at Ron, who is sprawled on a log just beside them with a pleased grin on his face. Harry had been so wrapped up in his work he didn’t even realize Ron was here.

Harry is exhausted and drained, and the thought of warming himself by Neville’s friendly little magical flames in the company of the people he likes best sounds like exactly what he needs to recharge his battery right now.

“Sure,” he says, watching Blaise wrestle Pansy off his lap and onto the ground, where she pouts exaggeratedly before breaking into laughter.

“Ooh, yes, please!” Hermione responds, taking Neville’s hand, squeezing it, and then dropping it again. “I’ll help Harry finish the washing up and then we’ll be out?”

“‘Kay,” Neville says, a lopsided grin on his blushing face, before leaving them alone again.

“Hey, ‘Mione?” Harry says hesitantly. There’s a question he wants to ask, but he’s suddenly feeling nervous.

“Hm?” She takes a damp plate from his hands and casts a drying spell at it before putting it on the stack with the others.

“How…did you and Neville figure out that…you know, that you like each other?” He keeps his eyes resolutely trained on his own hands.

Hermione hums contemplatively, and then turns around to lean back against the counter. “Well, you know it takes me quite a long time to develop feelings like that for anybody. I think just staying friends with Neville over the years, getting to know him better, allowed my feelings to grow and change naturally. Back in school, I never realized how much we have in common–he’s so passionate about the things he loves. So smart. It was sort of inevitable that eventually friendship turned into something more for me. For both of us.”

“So…you just woke up one day and you both suddenly knew that your relationship was more than just friendship? And that was that?”

Hermione considers him for a moment, and he tries not to squirm under her sharp, analytical gaze. “Of course not. We had to talk about it, it’s not like either of us can read minds.”

Harry huffs and rolls his eyes as he dries his hands. “Okay, I guess what I’m asking is how did you tell him. What did you say?”

“Oh,” Hermione says, folding her arms over her chest. “Well, I asked him over for tea and I said ‘Neville, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, but I need to tell you that I’ve developed a bit of a crush on you. I don’t expect anything from you, you don’t have to respond right now, and I hope we can continue to be friends if you don’t feel the same way’.”

“Of course you remember it word-for-word,” Harry says, giggling. “What did he say?”

“He asked for some time to think about it, but when we saw each other again he told me he’d been feeling the same way for a while. He didn’t respond right away because he needed some time to process his thoughts.”

“Typical Neville.”

Hermione smiles fondly. “Yeah, I like that about him. I hardly think before I speak most times. He’s so thoughtful and careful with his words, it’s helped me slow down a little.”

“So…you don’t regret it? Telling him you’d developed romantic feelings?”

Hermione shakes her head, her braids swinging around her shoulders. “Not at all. I was nervous, of course, but by the time I told him I was confident enough in our friendship that I knew telling him wouldn’t mess things up. I knew that even if he didn’t share my feelings, things might be awkward for a bit but eventually we could move past it. And of course, he does feel the same way, and we’re both really happy now.”

Harry takes a deep breath and lets it woosh out of him. “Yeah. I’m happy for you.”

Hermione looks at him again with the look she uses when she’s working through a particularly challenging puzzle. “Is there a reason you’re asking?”

He considers being honest for a moment, for admitting that he’s head over heels for Draco and has been for ages and that he has no idea how to handle it. But that would require him to also admit that he doesn’t know if their friendship is strong enough to weather the inevitable storm of weirdness that Harry’s confession will create if Draco doesn’t feel the same, and that hurts.

“No…just curious,” he says instead, already making his way toward the back garden.

He doesn’t miss the suspicious look on Hermione’s face as he goes.

“Hey, Harry, can you bring your guitar?” Neville shouts as he’s halfway out the door. Harry dashes back downstairs to grab it, tugging on his denim jacket before he joins everyone outside.

“Hey, mate!” he says, sitting down on the log next to Ron, who immediately pulls him into a side hug, and setting his guitar safely to one side. “Sorry, didn’t know you were coming ‘round!”

“As you shouldn’t, Potter,” Blaise says imperiously, lounging insouciantly and pretending to smoke his wand like a pipe. “Ronald no longer belongs to you, I have claimed him.”

Ron blushes and shakes his head, but he reaches out a hand that Blaise grasps eagerly, threading their fingers together. Pansy scowls at them from where she’s moved to the opposite side of the fire.

The sight of his dearest friend so happy and obviously in love warms Harry from the inside out. “Thank god, I’ve been waiting years for someone to take this problem off my hands,” he teases, knocking Ron with his shoulder.

“Oi!” Ron says, releasing Blaise’s hand and wrapping his arms tightly around Harry’s shoulders. “You love me, you annoying git.”

Harry giggles and tries to push him off. “Do not! Hate you actually, good riddance!”

Ron only holds on tighter, and their combined thrashing sends them toppling backwards off the log and into the damp grass. Even then, Ron doesn’t let go.

“Get off me you bully!” Harry protests around his giggles.

“Yes, do get off him, Weasley,” Draco drawls teasingly from the doorway. “I’ve dealt with enough injuries today, I don’t want to have to escort you both to the Mungo’s burn ward.”

Harry’s giggles die in his throat and his gaze snaps to Draco’s face. It’s been over a week and they haven’t really talked since the sewing machine incident, as Harry is starting to think about it. Harry’s been busy helping Hermione put the finishing touches on the Hogwarts Muggle Born orientation program, and Draco’s schedule at the hospital changed so that they’re hardly ever home at the same time.

Every now and then, they cross paths in the kitchen as one of them is coming home and the other is leaving, but the timing never feels right for Harry to ask if Draco is upset with him. He doesn’t seem terribly upset–he still smiles at Harry whenever they make eye contact, politely asks him how his day was, or asks Harry if he’d like him to leave the kettle on. But there’s definitely something a bit awkward between them, now. There’s a new tension in the air whenever they’re in the same room, especially when they’re in the same room alone together.

“I’ve found Draco!” Luna sing-songs, stepping out of the house around Draco and pulling him by their conjoined hands out into the back garden. She leads him over to the bench on the far side of the fire pit and pulls him down. He goes easily, clearly too tired to resist. Hermione trails out behind them with a tray of snacks that she passes around before snuggling into Neville’s side.

Nova flits out of the open door and does a few tight circles over the fire before lowering herself down onto the back of Blaise’s chair. Her wings are already much stronger–most of the time now she forgoes walking for flying, and it isn’t unusual to find her dangling upside down from light fixtures or banisters as she grooms herself with her long tongue.

“I thought you were working tonight,” Harry says, confused.

“They sent me home,” Draco says with a shrug. “Said they had enough hands for the evening. I’ve worked the most hours over the last fortnight so it was my turn for a break, I guess.”

“You need it,” Pansy chimes in. “You look like death warmed over.”

Draco rolls his eyes and stifles a smile. “Mm, being around you is so lovely, Pansy.”

“I know,” she says happily, examining her cuticles.

Harry watches Draco as closely as he can without being obvious as they all swap stories about their weeks. Blaise fills them in about the latest Gringotts office scandal that he very clearly had a hand in orchestrating, Ron talks animatedly about the new Wheezes product he’s developing with George, and Hermione tells them all about the plans for the Muggle Born orientation, which launches them into a spirited debate about exactly which aspects of the Wixen World new Muggle Born students need to learn about. Ron is insistent that a course on recognizing Bertie Bott’s Beans flavors be included.

Through it all, Draco just seems tired and content to sit quietly. He laughs at Blaise and Ron’s teasing banter, smiles knowingly when Pansy launches into a tirade about one of her coworkers, and furrows his brow seriously when Luna begins talking about the anti-logging demonstration she and Rolph are planning to protest the illegal destruction of ancient woodland fae settlements. He seems…normal. Neither particularly happy nor sad.

Except Harry can’t help but notice that Draco never quite meets his gaze. Worry and self-consciousness twists his stomach. Could Draco really be that upset?

They’ve been sitting in warm silence for a while when Neville says, “Play something, Harry.”

Harry nods and picks up his guitar, strumming it a few times to make sure it’s tuned correctly.

“Any requests?” he asks.

Luna hums thoughtfully. “A love song.” She scooches even closer to Pansy and plants a wet kiss on her cheek. Pansy smiles.

Harry grins at them and flips through his mental catalog of the songs he’s memorized.

He strums through the opening chords of the first one that comes to mind. It’s a slow, meandering sort of song, a perfect accompaniment to the low crackling of the fire and the stars glowing hazily overhead.

“Did I drive you away?” he sings softly, “I know what you’ll say, you’ll say ooh, sing one we know.”

Across the fire, Luna sighs and Pansy leans into her, letting her head fall onto Luna’s shoulder. Ron shifts to sit on the ground between Blaise’s legs, who leans forward and buries his fingers in Ron’s messy red hair. Neville scoops Nova up in his arms and presses his face into her warm skin, and Hermione scratches her head idly.

“But I promise you this, I’ll always look out for you,” Harry sings. Without really meaning to, he rests his gaze on Draco. When they make eye contact, Draco looks quickly away, but Harry keeps his eyes there on Draco’s pretty, fire-flushed face. A moment later, Draco looks back at him.

“Yeah, that’s what I’ll do,” Harry sings without blinking. Draco’s eyes widen.

He hums through the instrumental break, looking down at his own fingers as he strums. The air around him suddenly feels charged, like there’s a buildup of static electricity. Like anticipation.

When he looks back up, Draco has drawn one leg up to his chest and is gazing at Harry over his knee. His cheeks have gone even pinker and he’s pulled the sleeves of his jumper down over his fists.

Harry doesn’t look anywhere else when he sings the next line. It’s like everyone else has disappeared and it’s just him and Draco sitting on opposite sides of the fire. A tendril of smoke wafts into his eyes, but he blinks through the stinging tears because he needs Draco to know this.

“My heart is yours, it’s you that I hold on to. Yeah that’s what I do.”

His voice wavers as his heart beats hard in his chest. If this is the only chance he’ll get to say it to Draco so plainly, if he has to pretend it’s just a song and nothing else, then so be it. But he’s going to make sure Draco hears him.

“I know I was wrong, but I won’t let you down. Ooh, yeah I will, yeah I will. Yes I will, yeah I will.”

He has to hum through the rest of the song because the way Draco is looking at him now–head tilted slightly and a shy, lopsided little smile on his face–has stolen his words. He doesn’t remember if there are any more lyrics to the song. He’s not even sure if he’s playing the right chords. But it doesn’t matter.

The song ends and Luna claps gently, her arms wrapped around Pansy. Neville says, “Brilliant, Harry,” and Blaise hums approvingly, swaying Ron slowly from side to side. Harry finally looks away from Draco and shrugs self-consciously. He doesn’t play for other people often, even if he enjoys it, and the praise makes him flush in pleased embarrassment.

He continues to strum quietly as the conversation picks back up, the atmosphere decidedly more subdued and serious now. He listens quietly as Neville talks about his last visit to see his grandmother at St. Mungo’s–Harry knows that Neville still feels guilty about leaving her there even if she is getting the care she needs.

They do this, sometimes, when the mood is right–talk about family. Every single one of them has a complicated relationship with the people who raised them. Even Ron.

Blaise’s mother–with whom he’d never been close–had practically abandoned him after he came of age, moving halfway around the world with some new husband or other. He jokes about it, but Harry knows it’s a sore spot for him. He’s one of the most self-sufficient people Harry has ever met, but his independence is hard won, and he’s the first person to admit that it becomes more of a hindrance to him than a benefit sometimes.

Xenophilius had begun to develop signs of early-onset dementia just after the war and had to be moved to a community for aging wix. Luna visits him as often as she can, but it takes him longer and longer to recognize her each time. In typical Luna fashion, she’s very open about how hard it’s been for her and how sad she feels when her father thinks she’s a stranger. Harry is grateful for her vulnerability because it helps them all be a little more honest about their feelings.

Pansy had completely cut her family off after the war when, despite numerous public statements to the contrary and performative acts of reconciliation, they steadfastly maintained their commitment to pureblood supremacy in private and expected Pansy to fall in line. Harry had come across her working in a Muggle coffee shop near Diagon, struggling to make ends meet, and didn’t have to think twice before he offered her a room in Grimmauld Place for free.

And then there’s Draco.

Harry likes to believe that there was a time in Draco’s life when his mother and father loved him unconditionally, uncomplicatedly, but the more he learns about Draco’s childhood the harder it gets.

For a long time, Harry assumed that neglect looked like lack–he’d never had clothes that fit properly, never had enough food, and had so few things that really belonged to him. He certainly wasn’t treated with any tenderness, and any attention he was given was negative. Then he really started to get to know Draco, and he learned that neglect can happen in abundance, too. Draco had everything he could ever want–and then some–when he was growing up, and his parents certainly cared about him in their way. But Draco’s life had always been one of expectations and contingencies–his worth was determined by the value he added, his ability to uphold the Malfoy family reputation. Not just from the fact of his existence.

That makes the person Draco has become–kind, thoughtful, caring, deeply emotional if not self-consciously reserved–even more surprising. It’s like he’s trying to make up for everything he deserved but was never allowed. It’s part of what draws Harry to him–he has a strong desire to show Draco that yes–he deserves to be loved just because he is. He can make mistakes and have desires and change his mind and be the person he wants to be and he is still worthy.

He feels that way about all of his roommates, to varying degrees, and it’s not lost on him that they’re all trying their best to be the family they never had.

He watches Draco blink sleepily and hide a yawn behind his sleeve. The conversation is finally winding down, and slowly, his roommates begin to peel off for bed. But Harry stays, not quite ready to go in yet.

Eventually, it’s just him and Draco, looking at one another across the dying fire. Nova has curled into a little ball in the middle of the cushion of Blaise’s conjured chair and is snoring lightly.

Draco opens his mouth then closes it again. He shifts on the bench until he’s sitting up straight, his hands resting on his knees. Harry unconsciously mirrors his position, worry creeping into his chest at the serious look on Draco’s face.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says.

“For what?” Harry racks his brain trying to remember anything Draco might have done that requires an apology.

“For not thanking you properly for fixing my sewing machine,” he says.

Harry sighs in relief. “Oh, what do you mean? You did! It was no big deal.”

“No,” Draco says, urgency tightening his voice. “I mean, I know I said thank you but…it is a big deal, Harry.”

Harry sets his guitar down and looks back at Draco, patiently watching him work out what he’s trying to say.

“I just…sewing isn’t just a dumb hobby for me–”

“I know that,” Harry interrupts. It hurts that Draco might believe he feels that way.

“No, just–” Draco sighs and closes his eyes.

“Sorry,” Harry mutters. “I’m listening.”

Draco opens his eyes again. “I know it’s probably…dramatic, but when I finally left the Manor and I was really, truly on my own, I wanted to learn how to exist all by myself. I had some money left over in our family vault but I didn’t want to need it. I wanted to be able to make my own life into what I wanted it to be with my own two hands. Learning how to sew my own clothes and quilts and whatever…it felt like freedom to me. And it makes me happy. And that’s important.” He says the last bit like he’s trying to convince himself.

“That’s important,” Harry repeats firmly. “That isn’t dramatic, Draco. That makes so much sense.”

Draco nods. “So when my machine broke, I felt–and this is dramatic so don’t even try to say otherwise, just let me have this–I felt like I’d lost a limb.” He’s smiling again. “You fixing it for me…it feels a little like you healed me.”

That hits Harry right in his sternum. His chest feels tight with emotion, and he has to look away from Draco’s earnest face glowing warm across the fire from him.

“Good. That’s good. I mean, I didn’t do anything special, or–”

“Harry,” Draco says softly.

Harry looks up and finally meets his gaze. He nods, and then shrugs. “I just…hated that you were sad. So I fixed it.”

Draco laughs softly. “You always do.”

The words ‘because I’m in love with you’ are suddenly dangerously close to the tip of Harry’s tongue. He bites down on it, trying hard to keep them from flying out. He can’t just say it out of nowhere like this, not when they’re both so tired and Draco has just finished saying something like that to him. He isn’t ready, and he hasn’t even begun to prepare Draco to hear those words from his mouth.

Another part of him recognizes that he won’t have an opportunity like this again any time soon, just him and Draco talking like this without any of their housemates intruding. Draco has just allowed Harry into an important, private part of himself, has trusted Harry to be close to him and to take care, and he desperately wants to offer Draco the same chance.

Instead, he just stares like an idiot as Draco stands, stretches his arms far above his head, and makes his way around the fire toward the back door.

“Goodnight, Harry,” he says softly, smiling.

“‘Night,” Harry manages around his heart caught in his throat.

“Ow! Fuck,” Harry groans, rubbing the back of his head as he braces himself with a hands on his knee. He’d bent down to retrieve a lug nut that rolled under the front tire of Sirius’s bike and hit his head on the handlebar on his way back up.

“My goodness, language, Potter,” Draco drawls.

Harry blinks away the spots in his vision to find Draco leaning against one side of the open shed doorway, one foot crossed over the other and his hands in his pockets. It must be his day off, because he’s not wearing his hospital uniform. Instead, he’s got on a long-sleeved black-and-white striped shirt underneath a pair of black overalls with the legs cuffed, showing off a pair of colorful socks that disappear into his big, black Dr. Martens. His hair–usually tied back in a neat little bun for work–hangs loose around his face and chin.

Harry forgets how to speak for a moment, until Nova swoops into the shed with a happy screech and hangs upside down from one of the rafters just above his head. He laughs and reaches up, scratching her soft belly gently.

“All this motorcycle business is turning you into such a barbarian!” Draco teases, stepping out of the sunshine and into the shadows. His gaze trails over Harry’s bare shoulders, exposed by the thin, white vest he’s wearing, and down his arm to the heavy spanner that he’s holding in one hand.

Harry adjusts his grip, his face heating, and clears his throat. “Sorry, you just…took me by surprise. Have you ever actually been in here before?”

Draco makes an offended sound and frowns. “Of course I have. Once. Maybe.”

“Uh huh,” Harry says, laughing. “Are you lost?”

Draco hoists himself up onto the work bench along the far wall, wiping his hands primly on the legs of his overalls and letting his feet swing. “Possibly. Or, possibly I just wanted to see what you really do in here all the time, all by yourself. You could be brewing Felix Felicis to sell on the black market for all I know.”

Harry laughs out loud. “We both know I don’t have the potions skills to do that.”

Draco giggles behind his hand, “Yes. We do.”

Harry shrugs and waves the spanner around. “I just…mess around with the bike. Sorry I’m not more interesting.”

Draco picks up a hammer lying next to him on the bench and swings it experimentally. Harry laughs again when he underestimates the heft of it and knocks it into his shoulder with a wince. “Don’t laugh. I’m not built for this like you are.” He flushes, embarrassed.

“I think you’re built just fine,” Harry says before he can think twice.

Draco cocks an eyebrow, but the flush in his face deepens and he looks away from Harry’s gaze.

“Um,” Harry says, before Draco can retort. “Did you need something specific?”

Draco shrugs, setting the hammer down again with a thunk. “I just…wanted to hang out.” He suddenly looks uncertain and nervous. “I really don’t know what you get up to out here and I’m curious. Is…that okay?”

A little thrill shoots through Harry. No one ever asks him about the bike or what he’s doing to it. They mostly just leave him alone and stay out of the shed. “Yeah!” he says brightly, and then coughs. “I mean, yeah, fine with me,” he says again, his voice more controlled. “You’ll probably get bored, though.”

“Well, you’ll have to make sure you’re entertaining, then, won’t you?” Draco retorts.

Harry shakes his head and leans down to put the runaway lug nut back where it goes and tighten it into place.

“So, what are you doing now?” Draco asks, peering over his shoulder.

“I am putting this back where it goes.”

“Why did you take it off?”

“Because I needed to remove it, and all these other ones, so I could take off this part, here–”

“Why did you need to take that off?”

“Are you going to ask me why I’m doing every single thing I do?” Harry asks, feigning exasperation. He’s actually secretly elated that Draco is here and asking so many questions.

“Maybe if you’d just tell me I wouldn’t have to ask!” Draco says with a huff.

Harry laughs. “Okay, okay. Fine. The bike is in pretty good shape, considering how old it is and what it’s been put through. And I try to keep it tuned up as much as possible, so I’m not fixing anything. Just giving it a little routine maintenance. All of this is the engine–” he pats the main body of the bike. “I replaced the transmission not long ago, so that bit runs great, but the oil regulator has been giving me some trouble recently.”

He starts to unscrew and shift parts around until a little valve becomes visible. “This bit is important because it helps regulate the flow of motor oil into all the different moving parts of the engine. If it doesn’t do its job, then the whole engine can overheat and things start to break really quickly and…basically it would be a catastrophe. The engine needs to maintain a proper level of lubrication to–”

Draco snorts.

“Don’t,” Harry says warningly, trying to stifle a laugh. “Anyways, I ordered a couple replacement bits and they arrived today, so I just finished putting them on. Here–” he points to a thick rubber band, “and here.”

When he looks back up, Draco is looking at him like he’s grown a second head. “What?!”

“Nothing, just– When did you learn all this?”

Harry shrugs. “I’ve picked it up over the years. It’s not, you know, complicated or anything. Once you learn where something is and how it’s supposed to work, it’s not hard to keep everything in good shape.”

Draco falls silent again as Harry puts everything back the way it’s supposed to go and checks on a few other parts.

“Were you always into motorbikes?” Draco asks, after a while.

“No,” Harry says absently, focused on trying to get a small washer back onto a smaller bolt. “I had never been on one until I rode this one with Hagrid. I never really thought of myself as like, a motorcycle guy, or whatever. Still don’t.”

“But you take such good care of this one.”

Harry sits back on his heels and looks up at Draco. “It was Sirius’s.”

Draco blinks at him, and then frowns, his shoulders tense. “Right. I…knew that. Sorry, I didn’t mean–”

“No, Draco, it’s fine! Really.”

He visibly relaxes, so Harry keeps talking. “Hagrid gave it to me just after the war, he said it felt wrong for him to keep it and that I should have it, even though I didn’t know the first thing about motorbikes. I stashed it out here and didn’t look at it again for a while, but then Arthur gave me a book about engine repair for Christmas one year and I figured it was time I learned how to take care of it.”

Draco’s head is tilted to the side, like it always is when he’s listening carefully. “Because it was Sirius’s?”

Harry stands and leans against the workbench next to Draco. “Yeah. Mostly. I started to feel really guilty that I was basically leaving it out here to rust. It was one of his most prized possessions. I felt like I was letting him down by not keeping it up and using it.”

“I’m sure he wouldn’t have felt that way,” Draco says softly.

Harry shrugs. “Maybe not. Either way, I’m glad I learned. It’s a super cool bike, it deserves to be well treated. And I like working on it. I like that everything has a place and a function and none of the other bits work right if something is missing. It just…makes sense. Did you know that it flies?”

Draco makes a curious little noise. “What do you mean, flies? Like…goes really fast?”

Harry turns to him, a mischievous grin twisting his mouth. He loves telling people this. “No, I mean that Sirius imbued it with charms and a mechanism that makes it fly. In the air.”

Draco’s eyes go wide, and he grins. “No way. Gods, that man was an evil genius. I wish I’d known him.” He slaps a hand over his mouth and shakes his head. “Sorry–”

Harry shakes his head and twists a dirty old shop towel in his hands, trying to wipe off the last of the grease before he has to resort to a cleaning charm. “No. I wish you had too. I think…I think he would have liked you. A lot.”

“Yeah?” Draco looks so worried and hesitant. “Even with all the…Voldemort stuff?”

Harry laughs loudly. “The Voldemort stuff. Yeah. He, uh, understood better than anyone that the world isn’t black-and-white. He lived most of his life in shades of grey. I think he’d be proud of you. I know he would be, actually. I am.”

A deep flush creeps up Draco’s throat into his cheeks and all the way to the tips of his ears. He looks away from Harry’s gaze, and Harry is seized by the urge to reach out and grab his chin, to pull his face back around so he can better watch the flustered delight pass over him. But the thought of getting grease and dirt all over Draco’s lovely skin stops him.

“Want to take it for a spin?” Harry asks, to break the suddenly tense silence.

Draco’s head snaps around. “What?”

Harry nods his head toward the bike. “I need to take it out to make sure everything is working as it should. It’s been a while since I went for a ride, anyways. Want to come with me?”

Draco eyes the bike excitedly, but he presses his lips together almost like he’s afraid to admit that he wants to say yes, but then he meets Harry’s gaze and nods his head emphatically.

“Okay, great,” Harry says, a grin sneaking onto his face. “I’ve got an extra helmet.”

He tugs on his leather riding jacket over his vest and zips it up, and tosses Draco the spare helmet, instructing him to pull it tight under his chin. He pulls his own helmet on, and flips open the visor up so he can see in the dim light of the shed.

He swings a leg over the bike and kicks it to life. It rumbles loudly in the enclosed space, and Harry laughs when Draco jumps at the sound. Nova startles awake and flails in surprise, her ever-growing wings knocking things down from the ceiling and nearly getting caught in the doorway as she wings her way out toward the house. Her hackles are raised, and the fur along her scaly tail is puffed up. Harry can just see the end of her tail as she slithers in through Luna and Pansy’s open window–hopefully they can soothe her.

“Come on,” he shouts over the roar, gesturing for Draco to climb onto the bike as well.

Draco throws his leg over the seat and yelps when Harry reaches back and gently tugs him closer by his elbow.

“You’re going to have to hold on!” He says loudly, gesturing to Draco’s hands and then around his own waist.

Draco’s hands hover for a moment, and then they slip delicately around Harry’s waist. His grip is loose, like he’s afraid of holding Harry too hard. But then Harry revs the engine, and Draco’s arms instinctively tighten.

“If we crash I’m going to kill you, Potter!” He yells into Harry’s ear.

Instead of responding, Harry walks the bike forward, lets off the clutch, and eases them around the house and out into Grimmauld Place. Draco’s nervous grip loosens slightly as he gets comfortable to the sensation of being on the back of a motorbike, and after a while Harry can feel him anticipating the turns, moving his weight around more naturally.

It’s nice.

It’s way better than nice, Harry thinks, to have someone on the bike with him like this. To feel Draco’s solid weight against his back, and his firm grip around his waist. He can feel all the places that they’re pressed together–Draco’s thighs spread along his own; Draco’s chin resting on his shoulder. He has to concentrate very hard on the road in front of them to keep from driving right off of it.

Finally, after driving on the tarmac for a while, they leave the city proper. Harry takes a few inconspicuous turns he’s become familiar with and when they’re finally out of view of any houses he engages the invisibility mechanism.

“I’m going to take it up now!” He shouts back over his shoulder.

“What?” Draco yells back.

Harry takes one hand off the handlebar and points up into the air. Draco’s arms tighten around him, but then he nods.

Harry presses the button next to the clutch and feels the wheels lift off of the ground. The sensation never gets old–a swoopy feeling in the pit of his stomach that makes him feel giddy and light headed. The feeling is magnified by Draco’s delighted laughter in his ear and the way his hands grip into Harry’s sides.

“Holy shit,” he yells, loud enough for Harry to hear.

“I know!” Harry yells back.

They fly around over the countryside until the sun starts to sink below the horizon and Harry’s body starts to ache. He sets them down on an empty road not too far out of town and makes his way back to Grimmauld Place, where he carefully negotiates the bike back into the shed.

His ears are still ringing from the rumble of the engine and the roaring wind as he hauls himself unsteadily off the bike and tugs off his helmet. When he turns around, Draco is leaning back against the bike, his helmet clutched against his chest, with the biggest grin Harry has ever seen on his face. He can’t help but grin back.

“Sirius fucking Black,” Draco says, breathlessly.

Harry laughs. “Sirius fucking Black.”

Draco hands him the spare helmet and then makes his way on shaky legs out into the back garden. Harry watches him collapse onto his back in the cool grass, his arms and legs splayed wide and his eyes closed. He closes up the shed and then sinks down onto the grass right next to him.

“So, you liked it, then?” he asks.

“Eh,” Draco says with a shrug, and then he bursts into giggles. “I can’t believe you’ve been keeping that from me this whole time.”

“I haven’t been keeping it from you!” Harry protests. “I just didn’t know if you’d be interested.”

Draco opens his eyes and lets his head fall to the side, one eyebrow cocked skeptically.

“Okay, okay. Well, I’m sorry I didn’t ask sooner.”

Draco sighs and settles his hands on his belly. “It’s okay. That more than made up for the oversight.”

“Gee, thanks,” Harry says.

They’re silent for a moment, staring up at the few stars they can see through the city haze.

“But really, thank you,” Harry says quietly. He feels too big for his skin, all of a sudden, his heart pounding like he might still be on the back of the bike, hurtling through space.

Draco looks at him again, his eyes full of some emotion that Harry can’t quite place. “You’re welcome. Thanks for teaching me all about motorbikes,” he says.

“I taught you like, one thing.”

Draco rolls his eyes, smiling. “Thank you for teaching me like, one thing about motorbikes,” he deadpans.

“Guess you’ll just have to come back for lesson number two,” Harry says, trying hard to keep the hopeful uncertainty from his voice.

“Guess so,” Draco replies, his smile tilting up on one side.

Draco turns his gaze back to the sky. Harry can’t look anywhere but at Draco.

“I’ve…had a thought,” Draco says hesitantly after a while. The night air is late-summer warm and the garden is full of the sound of insects and tree frogs humming musically in the bushes.

“Hm?”

“Do you remember that conversation we had when we watched Mulholland Drive?”

Harry doesn’t have any memory of watching anything called Mulholland Drive. He sort of nods and shakes his head at the same time.

Draco rolls eyes. “When I told you about wanting to be a Healer?”

That Harry remembers vividly. “Oh, yeah. Did you change your mind?”

“No,” Draco says, “actually, quite the opposite. I think I’ve decided what I want my specialty to be. You don’t really decide until your second year of training, and you have to rotate through all the wards, but…I know.” Harry can almost see the stars reflected in his bright eyes.

“Yeah?” Harry says, “That’s great, what is it?”

“Promise you won’t…I don’t know, say anything.”

Harry is silent until Draco looks over and rolls his eyes again. “You’re a menace.”

Harry laughs. “You like it.”

“Ugh. Well, when we were talking, you brought up your top surgery,” Draco says hesitantly. Harry nods in acknowledgement. “I guess…I saw how hard that was on you,” the words spill out of him. “The fact that you had to undergo a Muggle procedure with hardly any magical assistance. And…well, when you mentioned it again, it got me thinking.”

Harry nods again, very much wanting Draco to continue.

“I–I’ve wanted to do it myself for years, but I’ve just been…scared, I guess. Or just apprehensive. Even though you were totally fine and people undergo the procedure all the time… I don’t know. And I don’t really know the first thing about navigating the Muggle health care system…”

Harry doesn’t make a sound, even though he has about a million thoughts and questions. Draco rarely talks about his own transition–he’d revealed a bit about it to Harry after Harry’s surgery, when he was going out of his mind with boredom and begged Draco to talk to him about something, anything at all.

All Harry knows is that Draco had never felt free to be his true self until his parents were out of the picture–Lucius in Azkaban and Narcissa in exile in France. He’d gone through the most emotionally taxing parts of his transition all alone at the Manor, but he hadn’t had access to any kind of gender affirming medical care until his house arrest was up. He’d talked about his transition like it was just another necessary part of his rehabilitation–shedding all the parts of himself that no longer served him, that were never right to begin with, and finding new ones. Harry hadn’t pressed Draco for more details.

Draco’s voice is impassioned when he speaks again and he turns his focus on Harry, his gaze sharp and glinting in the low light spilling out of the kitchen windows. “I just think it’s almost criminal that we’ve figured out so much about how to heal people using magic, but there’s no real Wixen equivalent to Muggle gender affirming healthcare. There are no trained professionals or counselors to talk us through the options, you know? Maybe I wouldn’t be so scared, if… And surgery without magic is so hard on a person’s body, even if you have all the magic in the world to ease your pain afterwards.”

“There are hormone potions,” Harry says dumbly. He knows Draco knows that, since they’ve gotten into the habit of taking theirs together in the kitchen at the same time every month.

“Well, yeah,” Draco says, shifting onto his side and propping his head up in his hand. “But not every trans person wants to take them, you know? If you go to St. Mungo’s now and tell the doctor that you’re trans and curious about transitioning, that’s what you’ll get–a prescription for one of two hormone potions and that’s it. And maybe it’s good that accessing them is so much easier than in the Muggle world, but our knowledge of dosages and how they interact with other potions is so minimal! Healers aren’t aware of all the options for their trans patients, and no one is actively trying to develop new treatments or procedures or anything!”

Harry’s throat feels tight with some nameless emotion as he watches Draco’s eyes glitter and his chest rise and fall with his excited breathing. “So, you’re going to develop them,” Harry says. It’s not a question, because he knows that if Draco puts his mind to it, he will.

Draco dops his gaze to the ground and shrugs. “I’d like to try. I…I think I could do something to make things better. I just–want the opportunity to try.” When he looks up again his face is set in a hard, determined expression.

“Draco, that’s incredible. You absolutely could do it! You can do anything!” Harry enthuses. There’s a fluttery feeling in his stomach, a giddy joy that suddenly fills his chest with warmth. Draco smiles–big and genuine, and ducks his head.

“What do we need to do?” Harry asks firmly. He’s never flexed his war hero status, always embarrassed by the speed with which people will bend rules and make exceptions for him, but he’s ready to march right into the director’s office at St. Mungo’s if necessary and demand that Draco be offered a position.

“Nothing yet.” Draco looks at him for a long moment with a soft, earnest expression on his face, before dropping back onto his back with a sigh. “I just…wanted to tell someone. I wanted to tell you.” Then he smirks. “But eventually I,” he says, drawing the sound out long, “need to start studying. My N.E.W.T.s were good enough to qualify, and I think my community service can count as practical experience. It bloody well better. I just need to pass the Healer’s examination, and if I do well enough I’ll be able to apply for a trainee position at the hospital.”

“Oh, right. Easy,” Harry jokes.

Harry follows as Draco pushes himself up onto his feet. He lets out an enormous yawn and stretches his arms above his head, then lets them fall tiredly back to his sides.

Draco looks uncertain, all of a sudden, like there’s something else he needs to say. Harry looks at him expectantly, his breath caught in his chest.

“Thanks, Harry. For always listening. Goodnight.” Draco’s voice is quiet.

Harry blinks at him. “Yeah, ‘course. ‘Night.”

Harry’s head is buzzing as he trails downstairs to his bedroom. There’s no way he’s going to be able to sleep now, not with Draco’s soft goodnight ringing in his ears and the feeling of Draco’s arms around his waist still vivid in his mind.

He opens his laptop and scrolls through his bookmarked forums for a bit until he notices that the previous message his new internet “friend” left has been altered.

Harry types out his response.

Harry is momentarily spared from his too-big feelings by the first-ever Hogwarts First Year Muggle-Born Orientation Week. The project is Hermione’s baby, but she’d requested all hands on deck. Having no excuse not to, and feeling honestly quite excited about it, Harry had enthusiastically volunteered to help out on-site.

This meant he would be staying at the castle for over a week–two days on either end for preparation and debrief with Hermione, the other volunteers, and the Hogwarts faculty, and five days of orientation activities. The days are so packed with workshops and activities that Harry doesn’t have much energy to do anything besides fall into bed every night as soon as he gets back to his room.

On the fourth night, he’s lying face down on top of his bed when his laptop, sitting idle on the floor next to his nightstand, chimes. When he taps the spacebar and the screen comes to life, he sees a group message invitation waiting for him.

He stares at Draco’s last message with a small smile on his face for a while before his screen goes black and he finally lets his tired eyes close.

*

Maybe it’s being back at the castle for an extended period of time and sleeping in an empty Gryffindor dorm room, or maybe it’s just the long days and lack of sufficient sleep, but on the final night of orientation week, Harry wakes from a vivid nightmare for the first time in years.

He’s covered in cold sweat and his chest is heaving, and it takes him a minute to remember where he is. When he closes his eyes again, images of exploding stone walls and a giant, slithering snake flash through his mind.

He immediately gives up any hope for going back to sleep, so he opens his computer instead.

The first thing he notices is that he’s received a new reply to his thread in ‘The Closet’.

Harry thinks for a minute, and then–

His message receives a response almost immediately.

That makes Harry pause. He’d been telling himself that he just didn’t want to mess up the good, careful, friendly relationship he and Draco have worked so hard to build. And that’s definitely true, but…maybe that isn’t the whole truth of his hesitancy.

To his surprise, Draco’s away message isn’t up when he minimizes the page.

I had a nightmare for the first time in forever, he types. He deletes half of the sentence, but then changes his mind.

Harry sighs. It’s like Draco understands exactly how he feels without him having to explain himself.

There’s a pause, in which Harry is certain Draco will beg off and make some excuse, but then another message comes through and Harry’s stomach does a little somersault.

Harry sits up straight against his pillows and starts typing furiously.

Harry takes a deep breath and shakes out his hands which are, admittedly, starting to cramp.

Draco doesn’t respond immediately, and Harry frantically starts trying to come up with a way to play the question off.

There’s another long pause, and panic starts to build in Harry’s chest.

It takes him a long time to fall back asleep after he puts his laptop away, but not because his nightmare is still lingering. The butterflies in his stomach refuse to settle down, and snake_oil’s words repeat in his mind: it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that he shares your feelings.

Harry has been digging through his closet for nearly an hour trying to find something suitable to wear to Draco’s open house. They’re meant to leave in twenty minutes, and everything he puts on is either too tight or too loose in all the wrong places, and his frustration is starting to turn into panicked hopelessness.

There’s a gentle tap on his door, and he wheels around to find Draco standing nervously in the doorway clutching something to his chest.

“Sorry, I’ll be ready in a minute I just can’t find–” he says breathlessly. He’s got an old button-down shirt on and half-fastened, and a pair of trousers that Molly had given him ages ago that he can’t quite button around his hips.

He doesn’t want to let Draco down, but his body has suddenly started to feel all wrong and nothing he’s put on it makes it feel any better and his chest is starting to get all tight with anxiety. He knows his discomfort is splashed all across his face, and he tries to school his expression into something neutral and normal. Tonight is about Draco, it doesn’t matter what Harry is wearing or how he feels in it.

“Are you okay?” Draco asks. His brow is furrowed as he steps into Harry’s bedroom.

“I just–” Harry says, his hands full of clothes that he’s put on and taken off probably five times now. He shrugs helplessly and a little, high-pitched laugh escapes him.

Draco nods. “Mm. Been there,” he says gently. “I uh, made you something that might help? I should have given it to you sooner, but I didn’t know if you’d like it, and–and if you hate it…” He holds out the bundle that he’s clutching.

Harry drops the rejected items that he’s holding and unfolds the clothes Draco has handed him instead: a pair of trousers and a jacket made from a lovely, silky lavender fabric. There’s a shirt folded between them in a much lighter shade of purple, nearly white. He stares down at them, letting them slip through his fingers.

He looks up at Draco questioningly.

“You just…you mentioned that you didn’t have any formal clothes that fit you anymore. And you said you liked my lavender jumpsuit. And I’m realizing now that you were probably joking so you definitely don’t have to wear it! I can help you choose something else, or–”

“They’re beautiful,” Harry says, holding the trousers up against his body. He won’t know until he puts them on but they look like they’ll fit perfectly.

Draco flushes and shrugs. “I did my best to guess your measurements, and I wove some charms into the seams that will allow each piece to expand or contract slightly to fit you better, but if you hate the way they make you feel I promise I won’t be offended. I’m no expert, I still have a lot to learn about tailoring, and–”

“I love them, thank you,” Harry gushes.

Draco’s blush deepens, and he shuffles his feet. “Okay, well, try them on first, idiot,” he mumbles.

Harry laughs and rolls his eyes. “I’ll meet you upstairs.”

As soon as Draco leaves, Harry strips off the ill-fitting things he’s already got on and starts to pull on the lavender suit. He was right–the trousers not only fit perfectly around his hips and thighs but they look great. Slim fitting and pleated in a flattering way that he knows is deceptively simple looking. Draco must have been working on them for ages to get it right.

The shirt and jacket fit perfectly too. Usually, jackets made for women accentuate his waist in a way that makes him uncomfortable, but the arms and shoulders of men’s jackets are too broad and hang weirdly on his narrower frame. This one fits him like a glove.

He tucks his shirt into the trousers and turns in a circle, looking himself over in his full-length mirror.

He looks good.

The lavender of the fabric sets off his tan skin beautifully, and makes his eyes look impossibly green. He loves the contrast between the delicate, feminine color and the sharp, angular tailoring Draco has done.

He feels good. The panic he’d been fighting back begins to ebb away and the tightness in his chest eases. He can do this, he can be there for Draco.

He hurries to pull on his dress shoes and shove his wand into his pocket before rushing downstairs.

Draco is waiting for him by the front door wearing a suit similar to Harry’s, except his is a beautiful midnight blue color with gold accents, and he’s wearing a skinny, midnight blue tie. He looks beautiful with his hair combed loosely away from his face, and Harry nearly misses a step when he notices that Draco is wearing a pair of tiny golden hoops in his ears.

When Harry stumbles clumsily into the foyer, Draco looks up at him, his eyes going wide and his mouth falling open slightly. They stand there for a moment, staring wordlessly at one another.

“Do they fit? Do you like them alright?” Draco asks finally, his eyes scanning Harry from the top of his head to his toes.

Harry pushes a nervous hand back through his curls, trying to keep them tidy. “Are you kidding? I think these are the nicest clothes I’ve ever worn!” he says emphatically.

Draco doesn’t smile, but his cheeks go slightly red. “Are you sure–”

Harry falters. “Why? Do I look bad in them, or something? I can change, but I don’t want you to be late…”

Draco scoffs. “Bad? Harry, you look…” He swallows and closes his eyes for a beat. “You look really good. And I’m n-not saying that just because I made that suit, I mean. You just. Look nice.”

Harry feels himself blush and tries unsuccessfully to bite down on a smile. “Thanks. You look really nice, too.” His voice comes out quieter than he intended.

There’s a beat of silence where neither of them says anything.

Harry clears his throat. “So, should we go? Or…there’s still time for me to run downstairs for my fake moustache…”

Draco grins. “Shut up. Oh, I almost forgot.”

He holds up a square of fabric–shiny cream silk with a print of lavender blossoms on it–and tucks it neatly into Harry’s breast pocket.

“There. Perfect,” he says, patting it down so it lays neatly.

Harry can feel the warmth of his palm through his new suit like Draco has laid his hand right on Harry’s bare skin.

*

Most of the ‘open house’ is just listening to administrators and faculty involved in the St. Mungo’s Healer training program drone on about acceptance rates and qualifications and specializations and possible career trajectories.

“Sorry this is so boring,” Draco whispers to Harry as one speaker leaves the raised platform at the end of the ballroom and another takes their place.

Harry shrugs and snags another intricate little hors d'oeuvre from a passing tray and pops it into his mouth with a smile. Draco tries not to smile.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the last speaker steps down and a string quartet takes the stage instead. They start to play a soft, lilting classical piece as the room breaks into murmured conversation and people start to mill about around them.

“Is that it?” Harry asks, confused.

“Merlin, no,” Draco replies, “the real fun is only beginning. Now…we network.” He shivers dramatically.

Harry laughs, but then Draco’s expression goes very serious. “That’s the head of the patient and family outreach department,” he says under his breath and nodding toward an older woman dressed in sophisticated grey robes. He buttons his jacket with fumbling fingers and bares his teeth at Harry. “Do I have anything in my teeth?”

Harry grimaces. “Er, no. Just…calm down. You’re going to be fine. I’ll wait right here, go talk to her.”

Draco takes a deep breath in and then lets it out, spins on his heel, and then walks purposefully towards the woman who has just, conveniently, become disengaged from another conversation. Harry watches as Draco steps confidently up to her and sticks out his hand, presumably introducing himself. Warm pride and affection spills over inside of Harry when the witch breaks into a smile and nods, laughing gently at something Draco has said.

He rocks back on his heels and stuff his hands into his pocket, looking around for another floating tray of snacks or drinks, not entirely sure what he should do with himself now.

“I say, is that Harry Potter?”

Harry spins around and finds himself face-to-face with a very old wizard, hunched over an ornately carved cane and peering up at him with rheumy eyes.

“Er…”

“Oh yes, I would recognize you anywhere my boy! Lenard Harpis, I’m the director of this hospital. I daresay we’ve crossed paths a few times, hm?”

Harry has never seen this wizard in his life.

“Er, right. Mr Harpis, lovely to see you again.” He peers over the wizard’s balding head and sees Draco now surrounded by three more official-looking wix, caught up in an animated conversation.

“You’re not here because you’re interested in a place in our training program, surely.” Harpis continues. “Just send me an owl and I’ll add your name to the roster for the upcoming session! We would be honored to have you!”

Harry tries not to scowl at the stooped old man. He never likes it when people say things like that, but he feels particularly frustrated at the suggestion knowing how nervous Draco was to come to the event tonight and how worried he is that he’ll be denied a place in the program because of his last name alone.

“No, sir. Sorry to disappoint, but I’m just here to support a friend. You don’t want me working in your hospital, I assure you.”

“A friend, you say?” Harpis asks, peering around Harry as though he’s hiding someone behind him.

“Yeah, uh…” Harry promised Draco he’d be on his best behavior, but surely just telling this man that he’d accompanied Draco tonight wouldn’t be crossing any boundaries. “Do you know Draco Malfoy? He’s actually been working here for the last couple of years.”

Harpis gazes at him blankly, an unhappy little frown on his face. “Malfoy? Why do you ask?”

“He’s…my friend? The one I’m here to support? He’s going to apply for the training program.”

Harpis’s expression doesn’t change. “Come again? I don’t think I heard you my boy, I thought you just said that Draco Malfoy is going to apply to the training program at my hospital.”

Harry freezes. He’s not naive, not after everything he’s lived through. He knows that despite what he’d said, Draco was always going to face prejudice and descrimination when he finished his community service and tried to start over again–here at the hospital or anywhere else. He just didn’t expect it to be so blatant, to come warbling so easily out of this small wizard’s wrinkled face.

“He is,” he says as calmly as he can, holding Harpis’s gaze.

Harpis scoffs and wipes a crepe-paper hand over his mouth. “I-I think not,” he blubbers, shaking his head. “He needn’t waste his time! Or mine, for that matter. You think I would put my patients at risk by allowing a Death Eater into their rooms? And the PR nightmare this would cause…”

Anger floods Harry’s body, hot and fierce. “PR Nightmare?” he repeats, trying to keep his voice under control. “And he’s not a Death Eater. He’s one of the smartest and most dedicated people I’ve ever met.”

“Be that as it may, Mr Potter, you would do well to inform Mr Malfoy that he can keep his application. We won’t look at it.” Harpis says it dismissively, as though he’s telling Harry the score to the latest Quidditch match. Then, having clearly decided that their exchange is over, he turns on shaky legs to go.

“Stop,” Harry says. “Do you know anything about Draco? Have you ever even spoken to him?!”

Harpis spins back around, the expression on his face one of annoyed offense. “I certainly have not, and to be quite honest Mr Potter I am astounded that you have!”

Harry sucks a breath in through his nose. He knows this is exactly the kind of thing Draco wouldn’t want him to do. He knows he shouldn’t make a scene, or say something he’s going to regret. But he can’t let this entitled old arsehole say something like that and just…walk away. He can’t let this man talk about Draco like that. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right.

“No. Of course you haven’t met him,” he says, stepping closer to Harpis, his voice restrained to a rasping whisper. “Because if you had you would be begging him to apply to your program. How out of touch are you? Do you know what goes on in your hospital every day? Because he’s been doing his community service here for two years. Two years! He’s already been in your patients’ rooms, and their experience here has been better for it!”

His voice is getting louder, but he can’t stop it, now. Harpis’s watery eyes have gone huge and his mouth has fallen open slightly.

“So, what, he’s good enough to clean up all your messes but the instant he tries to do something to make this place better, tries to make himself better, he’s suddenly not good enough?!”

“Well, I-I say, Mr Potter, I–” Harpis stutters, glancing around at the people who have now turned their full attention to Harry, his hands clenched into fists at his sides as he speaks.

“Do you have any idea what he wants to do? Something you and your whole hospital full of Healers can’t. Or won’t. He wants to make sure that every wix, young or old, has the kind of thoughtful, compassionate gender affirming care that they deserve!”

Harpis’s mouth snaps shut and his lips quiver with anger. “Well, if that is the case then my former recommendation stands. We have neither the capacity nor the interest here for encouraging that kind of practice. It’s simply not needed.”

And that…that is the final straw for Harry. “Not needed?! Mr Harpis, since you seem to know me so well, you must know that I’m trans.”

He watches a range of emotions pass over Harpis’s face–confusion, disbelief, embarrassment, confusion again. “Well, I don’t see what–”

“So believe me when I tell you, sir, that your hospital is woefully in need of the kind of practice Draco wants to develop. And if you don’t even give him the chance to apply, then I feel sorry for you, and for this hospital. But mostly for all the people who will come here looking for help, only to be disappointed and turned away.”

Blood is rushing in Harry’s ears and his chest is heaving. Harpis takes one hesitant step backward, and then another, and then spins on his heel and teeters away quickly before Harry can begin shouting at him again.

The crowd around Harry has gone silent, everyone staring at him in wonder. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and turns around, trying to get his bearings again.

“Harry, what did you just do?”

Draco is standing behind him, his face pale and his eyes wide.

“Draco, I–”

Draco steps close and grabs him by the bicep. Hard. “Outside. Now,” he hisses, steering Harry toward the big double doors they came in through and not letting go until they’re standing outside the hospital in the warm night air.

“Draco, I’m so sorry, but you didn’t hear–”

“I heard,” he says flatly. He looks…not exactly furious. Hurt, maybe. Disappointed.

“Then you know–”

“What? That you just embarrassed me in a room full of people I’ve been trying for years to impress?”

“No–” Harry pauses, and the reality of what he’s just done really sinks in. He was supposed to support Draco, not…whatever this is. His shoulder slump and he shakes his head. “Fuck, Draco–”

“You couldn’t just let me do this. You had to step in and throw your stupid Chosen One weight around? Do you not think I’m capable of doing this by myself, or something?”

“Draco, no, of course I think you’re capable! He was just saying all these things about you–things that aren’t true, or fair, and I tried to correct him politely but he wouldn’t listen, and then–”

Draco scoffs and throws up his hands. “Of course he wouldn’t listen! Lenard Harpis is nearly older than Merlin! He’s a stubborn old cow who’s set in his ways, and everyone knows that! He was never and will never be willing to give me a place here!”

Harry blinks. “Then why…”

“Because it doesn’t matter what he is or isn’t willing to do. He has no control over the training program! Lucky for you,” Draco shouts.

Harry exhales heavily and sinks onto a bench, letting his head fall into his hands. “Oh, thank Godric.”

Draco sinks down next to him. The silence that settles over them is tense, the night air still and expectant around them. Harry wants to say something, to apologize again or explain himself, but he has a feeling that won’t make this any better.

Draco sighs and lets his head fall back. “You’re such an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighs, pressing his thumbs into his eye sockets and pinching the bridge of his nose, knocking his glasses askew. “I’m just so sorry. I know how badly you want this and I’ve gone and mucked it all up. And…” Cold realization passes over him, “I told everyone what you want to specialize in, you said you didn’t want anyone to know…god, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, that was a bit of a dick move, honestly. Why?” Draco says after a moment, his voice is small and tired. “Why did you say all those things?”

Harry shrugs. “Because none of what he was saying is true, and it’s not right for them to deny people a fair chance. And..and he didn’t even know you’d been working here for two years!”

“People are arseholes all the time, Harry,” Draco says. “To me, specifically! You don’t have to go around shouting them down in the middle of a crowded ballroom!”

“No, but,” Harry shakes his head. He was being an unmitigated arsehole about you and it made me so angry, he wants to say. You don’t deserve to be treated like that, you’re too good, he wants to say.

“But what?”

Harry doesn’t know what he really wants to say. Months of confused feelings and a desperate desire for Draco to know how important he is, how much Harry needs him, are pressing against the back of Harry’s eyeballs. All his words are getting tangled up inside him. He wants to explain himself to Draco, to ask how he can help fix this, to crack a joke about Obliviating the entire hospital. Instead, he turns to Draco and looks right into his beseeching, silver eyes and says–

“But I’m in love with you.”

This time, the silence is loud. Harry clamps a hand over his mouth, as if he can force the words back down, but of course he can’t.

Draco’s eyes widen and his lips part around a silent ‘oh’. His cheeks flush slowly, pretty pink creeping up his throat and over his face, making his eyes shine.

Harry’s head starts to shake–weak, false denial moving him without his permission. “I mean–” he mumbles into his palm.

Draco opens his mouth to respond and every hair on Harry’s body stands on end.

Suddenly, a ghostly white little dog comes bounding up to them and starts to speak in Ron’s voice. He sounds panicked.

“Harry, get home quickly! Something has happened with Nova, Luna is hurt!”

Ron’s terrier patronus disappears and Harry stares at the place it just was for a long moment.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Draco growls, tugging Harry to his feet by his elbow. “Hold on,” he says before he twists on the spot and Disapparates them both.

*

The house is worryingly quiet when they come stumbling through the front door.

“Ron?!” Harry calls, jogging down the hallway and sticking his head into the sitting room, then the kitchen. “Luna!”

“Harry, up here,” Draco calls from halfway up the stairs.

They find Ron, Blaise, Pansy, and Luna on the landing outside the attic door. Harry looks them over frantically, searching for signs of blood or injury, but everyone seems to be in one piece for the moment.

“What happened?” Harry pants, trying to catch his breath.

Luna, who until now has had her face pressed into Pansy’s shoulder, turns around. There are tears rolling down her cheeks. Her arm is clutched to her chest and wrapped in what looks like an old t-shirt.

“It wasn’t,” she says with a hiccup, “her fault.”

“Luna, what happened?” Draco repeats, taking her arm gingerly and starting to unwrap the makeshift bandage. Harry winces when the fabric falls away to reveal a mouth-shaped crescent of puncture wounds, shiny with blood. Now that he’s looking more closely, he can see that Luna’s hands and one of her cheeks are scratched and swollen. “Wait here, I’ll get the first aid kit.”

“We were playing in the back garden–she’s gotten so big so quickly–and I was throwing those frozen mice up in the air for her to catch as she flew. It was so cute, but then something happened. I think she might have gotten scared or startled, and the next think I knew she’d bitten me and I was bleeding, and–”

“Oh, Lune, I’m so sorry. Are you alright now, should we take you to the hospital?”

Draco reappears with a box full of bandages and salves and potions. “These all look like minor abrasions,” he says, tugging his tie and jacket off and rolling his sleeves up. He urges Luna to sit down on the floor and kneels next to her. “Are you feeling lightheaded? Does your chest or throat feel tight? Anything?”

“No,” Luna says, wiping her face with her uninjured hand. “No, the scratches sting a bit, but that’s all.”

“Good, it doesn’t sound like her bite is venomous, but you should take this general poison antidote just in case.” He breaks the seal on a little vial and hands it to her, watching her drink it down.

“Where is Nova now?” Harry asks Blaise as he watches Draco clean and properly bandage Luna’s wounds, speaking quietly to her the whole time.

“I think she realized what she’d done as soon as she’d done it, she looked really…can animals look apologetic? Anyways, Ron and I were able to coax her up here into the attic for the time being.”

Harry nods. “Okay. I’m going to go in there and see if she’s alright, will you bring me some food and water from the kitchen?”

“Yeah, sure, mate,” Ron says, already turning toward the stairs.

Harry cracks open the door to the attic, slips inside, and then shuts it behind himself. At first, when he casts a lumos that he sends floating up to the ceiling, the room looks empty.

“Nova? It’s me, Harry. Can you come out?”

He hears a rustling in one corner, but the Chimera doesn’t appear. The door opens and closes as Ron deposits the food and water Harry had requested.

“I’ve got some food for you, I’m sure you’re hungry, love. It’s alright, you can come out.”

Her long talons click on the wood floor as she slinks out from behind a stack of boxes. Her wings flex and fold on her back, and she snuffles as she goes, no doubt trying to suss out Harry’s mood.

She looks almost nothing like she did when Luna and Pansy had first brought her home–a scraggly, unidentifiable little ball of fluff and scales. She’s almost twice as big as a house cat now, and her wings are nearly six feet across when they’re fully expanded. Her fur, once grey and tufted, is now sleek and shiny black. It shifts like an oil slick over the layer of iridescent scales underneath. Her snake-like head has grown so that her big bat ears are more in proportion, and they swivel about as she gets her bearings.

“There she is,” Harry coos, pushing the bowls of water and food towards the creature and sitting back on his heels. Her long tongue flicks out and scoops up a piece of chicken, then flicks it back into her open mouth. Her razor-sharp teeth glint in the eerie light of the Lumos as she chews.

Harry sighs. “I think it might be time we find you a new home.”

Nova makes a keening little chirrup and slithers closer to him, nudging her head into his arm until he strokes a hand over her back.

“I know. But I think you might have outgrown us. Who knows how much larger you’re going to get! You need space and people who can properly look after you.” An idea occurs to him as soon as the words are out of his mouth and he jumps to his feet.

“How is she? Are you alright?” Pansy rushes out when Harry reemerges.

“Everything’s alright. I think Luna’s right, though. I think she just got spooked. I need to send a letter, but I’ll be right back.”

He bounds down the stairs as quickly as he can and hunts around his room for a piece of paper and a pen.

He meets Ron halfway back up the stairs to the attic and thrusts the letter into his chest. “Can you owl this to Hagrid as soon as possible?”

Ron looks at the letter in confusion for a moment, and then realization dawns on his face. “Oh, yeah! Yeah, I’ll be right back!” He skirts around Harry and down the rest of the stairs.

As he makes his way back up toward the attic, he hears voices coming from Pansy and Luna’s bedroom. Draco must have ordered that she rest.

“I guess you were right about Nova, after all,” Luna’s gentle voice says.

“Oh, no, love,” Pansy soothes. “She’s really an incredible creature. And I guess…I guess you could say I don’t entirely loathe her. It’s just that none of us had any idea what we were getting into, yeah?”

There’s a pause, and then Luna says, “Thank you, Pansy. I love you.”

A cold, anxious feeling drips into Harry’s stomach at the words. In his panic he’d managed to forget that he’d practically shouted his feelings at Draco. He’s torn between going to find him immediately and packing up his things, faking his own death, and moving to another country.

He decides that for now, escaping to the attic with Nova might be the better option. But when he pushes open the door again, he’s met by two sets of eyes, one gold and one silver.

“I-I can go,” he says hesitating in the doorway.

“No,” Draco blurts. “No, you can stay.” He’s still in his nice trousers sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor with Nova’s head in his lap. Harry takes off his own jack and carefully folds it on top of an old piece of furniture before he sits down too, next to Draco but far enough that their knees aren’t touching.

“Ron said you owled Hagrid,” Draco says after a quiet moment.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I don’t think this is the best place for her. Even if we love her.”

Draco nods and runs his thumb back and forth over the space between Nova’s eyes. “You’re right. She’s outgrown us,” he says with a shrug. “I had no idea Chimeras matured so quickly. God, we really are a bunch of idiots. We should have handed her over immediately.”

Harry chuckles, and a little bit of the tension in his chest eases. “Maybe. Luna said this house is just so full of ancient magic that it probably…helped her along a bit.”

“I suppose that makes some sense,” Draco says evenly.

“I didn’t really ruin your chances at the training program, did I?” Harry asks.

Draco takes a deep breath, lets it out. “No. I think I managed to get you out of there before you fully detonated.” There’s a small smile on his face.

Harry breathes a sigh of relief. “Ok, good. Because I think you really are born to do it. I mean, the way you knew just how to take care of Luna tonight? You’re so calm under pressure.”

Draco shrugs. “I’ve just gotten used to being under pressure, I guess. And if I were squeamish around blood I’d have been done for ages ago.”

Harry’s chest aches. Nova makes a little grumbling noise and shuffles further into Draco’s lap before falling asleep again.

They’re quiet for a long time, both of them watching Nova’s back rise and fall with her gentle breathing. Draco continues to pet her on the top of her head, down her back, between her wings.

“Harry–”

“Wait,” he interrupts. “Can I say something first?”

Draco nods.

Harry tries to remember what Hermione had said, the words she’d used when she’d admitted her feelings for Neville. “I have…developed feelings for you. What I mean is, I have feelings for you that are more than just friendship. And…oh god, this is going so horribly–”

“Harry–”

He rises up into his knees and sits back on his heels, waving his hands in front of himself to emphasize his point. “No. I mean, Yes. I have feelings for you, and I understand if you don’t share those feelings. I don’t, um, expect you to respond right now. I just hope that we can still be friends.”

Draco blinks back at him with wide eyes.

“The thing is,” he says, because in the end he isn’t Hermione and he can’t contain years of pining in three neat, little sentences. “I’ve been feeling this way for a long time, and I wasn’t ever going to say anything because there’s no way you think of me as anything more than a friend. And that’s fine! Really, I’m–I’m happy that I get that much! And the last thing I want is to make you feel uncomfortable and to ruin our friendship. But then I met this person online and they’ve been telling me all these things, encouraging me to show you how I feel and making me believe you might l-love me, too, and–”

Harry!” Draco shouts, making him finally fall silent. “Did you say…you met someone online who told you to confess your feelings for me?”

Harry flushes, embarrassed. “Yeah. It’s probably stupid. I just…couldn’t ask any of our friends, because I didn’t want them to know. And I’ve been following this message board called ‘The Closet’ for a while, a community for queer people I guess and–”

“Shut up,” Draco says, his voice flat.

“Sorry,” Harry mumbles.

“No, Harry, shut up,” Draco says again, but his voice cracks, and then his shoulders are shaking and Harry thinks he must be so angry that he’s crying. But then–

“Are you…are you laughing?” Harry asks, because he is. He’s laughing so hard he can barely breathe. He’s clutching his chest and trying unsuccessfully not to disturb Nova.

He gasps. “Oh my god. You’re Marauder5?!”

The world feels like it shifts a little underneath Harry. “Come again?”

Draco flops back onto his back and presses his hands to his face. “This is unbelievable.”

“What?! What’s unbelievable??” Harry crawls on his hands and knees until he’s kneeling right by Draco’s shoulder. Draco peeks up at him through his fingers.

“I’m snake_oil.”

It takes Harry a long moment to process that. “How did you know about…what do you mean, you’re…you’re snake_oil?! I’ve been talking to you all this time?!”

Draco is grinning. “Looks like it.”

The wind whooshes out of Harry and he topples down onto his back, right next to Draco. His heart is pounding and his extremities feel kind of numb, and he thinks that maybe, somewhere along the way, he’d fallen into a black hole to another dimension or something.

The full meaning of this revelation hits him all of a sudden. “So that means, all those things I said, you…”

“Yep,” Draco says, popping the ‘p’.

Harry covers his eyes. “Oh god. Oh my god.”

“But it also means,” Draco says. When Harry lets his hands drop he finds that Draco has lifted himself up on one elbow and is looking down at him. His eyes are ticking back and forth over Harry’s face, the highs of his cheeks are pink, and there’s a little smile on his lips. Harry’s face heats all over again, and he stares up into Draco’s lovely eyes. “That you already know how I feel.”

snake_oil’s messages float through his mind.

I’ve been in love with my now-roommate for…a decade?

That’s why I think we would never work. I’m…nothing like him.

He makes me feel normal…

The unfortunate thing about it all is that all of this has only made me fall more hopelessly in love with him.

“You…” he breathes, excited, disbelieving joy billing up inside of him. “You love me back.”

Draco rolls his eyes, but even in the weak light of the Lumos, Harry can see that he’s trying to suppress a grin.

“Oh my god. You do feel the same way!”

Harry moves to sit up, but Draco stops him with a hand to his chest. And then Draco is leaning down, and then they’re–

Kissing.

Draco is kissing him, so softly and carefully that Harry can’t breathe. He doesn’t move a muscle, terrified that if he does he’ll break whatever bizarre spell has been cast upon them and the moment will end.

“I do,” Draco whispers, pulling away only far enough to say the words against Harry’s lips, and then kisses him again.

*

“Maybe we were wrong,” Luna says, holding her wounded arm carefully against her chest. “Maybe we just need to add an extension charm to the garden, or–”

“NO!” Blaise, Pansy, Draco and Ron all shout in unison.

They’re gathered around Hagrid as he coaxes Nova into a large crate lined with soft-looking cushions. Of course he’d been more than happy to take the Chimera off of their hands and introduce her to an environment much more suited to her.

“Aw, cheer up, Luna!” he booms. “She’s going to have so much room to fly around now, all the wee rodents she could ever want to hunt, and plenty of other creatures to play with. I’ve never seen anything like her in all my years at Hogwarts, but I reckon if she’s going to come across another of her kind, the Forbidden Forest is the place to do it.”

Luna smiles and wipes her teary eyes as she leans into Pansy’s arms. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Nova chirps happily when Hagrid finally gets her settled in the crate and tosses her a dead muskrat to munch on. Like most weird and magical creatures, she’d taken to Hagrid right away.

“It’s a little sad to see her go, though,” Harry says, threading his fingers between Draco’s and pulling him closer.

Draco cuts a look at him out of the corner of his eye, but then he smiles. “Can we come visit her, Hagrid?”

“‘Course you can!” Hagrid says, “You’re welcome any time!”

“Mm, No. I think I’ll pass.” Pansy says, leading them all back into the house as Hagrid’s portkey begins to glow.

She stops in front of Harry and Draco and lets her gaze fall to their joined hands. “At least one good thing came out of all of this,” she says with a mischievous smile on her face.