Work Text:
"Boy wonder."
"Daddy's boy."
"Auror."
"Councillor."
"Golden trio."
"Silver trio."
Draco's nose finally wrinkled and Harry burst out laughing.
"Do they really—"
"Unfortunately, yes."
Draco took a swig from his bottle of iced tea, as though it was a beer, which made Harry laugh again, much to Draco's immediate ire.
"I suppose it's not the worst thing they could call us," mused Pansy to their right.
"I am not sure that is true," Draco replied.
They all giggled into the silence of the cool evening for a moment before falling into an odd, companionable silence. Draco mused at how strange that was, but only for a moment before sighing and taking another sip of his not-drink. He’d been off for two hours and twelve minutes and should have at least three drinks in him by now; the thought made him giggle again, and the other two turned to face him.
“Just trying to decide if I might have some slightly problematic habits,” he said by way of explanation.
It was disconcerting when the other two burst into renewed rounds of laughter. He’d have been offended if he hadn’t been so happy.
"Pansy, didn't you have essential papers to attend to?" Harry asked. His tone was gentle but the sentence was abrupt and made her scowl mockingly.
She did. She'd made them promise to remind her. Selfishly, he'd been waiting for it to be an appropriate time for someone to do just that. Draco was a little bemused that it had actually been Harry in the end; clearly, he wasn’t the only one feeling the weight of the evening in a strange, groaning voice that pressed down on them like a curled monster. Something, Draco reasoned, was Happening.
Pansy sighed and leaned heavily on the ledge for a moment. Draco saw Harry tense. The stone ledge was the only thing that separated the three of them from roof-born death and he didn’t like it when they tested it. Pansy chuckled, stubbed out her cigarette, and pushed herself back to standing.
"Alas," she declared, melodrama etching into her eyes as she bowed dramatically. "The boy wonder is correct. I leave you to your lavish, languid evening, my lieges."
She slapped Draco on the bottom, a highly inappropriate action that made Draco chuckle and Harry blush.
"Draco," Harry began.
"Cheating," he interrupted. "That one is just my name."
"My favourite one," Harry said, hesitantly. "To be honest with you."
Draco actually chose to gag, making Harry chuckle as he offered the neck of his bottle for a clink.
"Alright," Draco declared, acquiescing. "Get it over with."
"What?" Harry replied, confused. "Get what over with."
"Whatever sappy speech you've been rehearsing in your bathroom mirror. It's all over your face."
"I do not have a sappy speech!" Harry protested.
"Then we'll both be disappointed. I get appointed finally and you've got no snappy retort? No witty banter? Not even one badly timed Slytherin joke? That's just embarrassing," Draco teased, checking Harry's shoulder gently. "Our coworkers will be extremely upset."
“Our coworkers are hardly the ones I am trying to—” Harry began.
He cut himself off suddenly, the red returning to his cheeks. It was not related to the cold, Draco was sure, and it made him sober suddenly. He hadn’t really realised, until this exact moment, but Harry was being serious. There was a real reason they were on this rooftop.
“Fuck. You’re quitting, aren’t you?” Draco declared. “That’s why you wanted me on the roof. So no one else heard. You’re leaving. When? How long do I have to find a replacement? Can you give me two weeks?”
Harry’s head cocked to one side, a small grin on his face as confusion took over. The result was that he looked exactly like a puppy and the advantage he had at that moment felt unfair.
“What are you on about,” he muttered, “two weeks? Draco, I’m not quitting. Do you even…wait, would replacing me even be your job?”
Draco contemplated for a moment. “D’you know, I have no idea. Guess I should figure that out before I start on Monday. I’m not in charge of you, so maybe not.”
Harry smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Yes. Exactly. That’s…You aren’t in charge of me. And honestly, Draco? That’s why we’re on the roof.”
“What?”
“You aren’t in charge of me. We aren’t coworkers anymore. You don’t have to share office space with me anymore.”
Draco shrugged. “All truth. What will you do with this newfound freedom, Auror Potter?”
Harry, apparently perturbed, turned back to the cityscape; bathed in the early evening sunset, his golden skin glowed and his hair was cast with a reddish brown that was invisible in the dingy light of the Ministry most of the time.
It was supremely unfair, this man’s beauty; Draco thought this at least five times a day. No one he interacted with on a daily basis should be allowed to be this lovely, particularly not this man, whose history with Draco was complex and sordid and very broken. Harry, Draco reasoned, should not be allowed to be beautiful. It wasn’t even an ostentatious sort of beauty; Harry Potter wasn’t hot, he wasn’t attractive, and he wasn’t fit. He didn’t have that pompous aristocratic bone structure that made people fawn over him from a distance and act cooly toward him when they were with him. He was just…kind and gentle, made of softness without being soft. Patient and yet powerful. He was a study in contradictory loveliness and it simply wasn’t fair.
Realising, perhaps belatedly, that Harry was sort of annoyed with him, he stood a bit straighter.
Characteristically blunt, Draco cleared his throat. “I can’t help but feel like you’re a bit angry at me for taking this job, Potter. I promised you I would find someone reasonable to replace me. You’d think you’d be… I dunno. Happy.”
“I am happy.”
“You’re face suggests otherwise,” Draco snorted.
“I’m very stupid, you know,” Harry exhaled, annoyance clear as he shoved his curls back off his face with an impatient hand.
“I’m aware,” Draco replied crisply. “Going to tell me why this time?”
“I thought this was going to be easier,” Harry muttered. “Pansy said it would be too. But I’m not sure why either of us thought that, given that it’s you. She suggested I wouldn’t even really have to say anything. ‘Just point it out’, she said. ‘Tell him you don’t work together anymore, and he’ll work it out’. Maybe I said it wrong.”
Harry pushed himself off the ledge again and turned to face Draco, who was still standing at full attention, confused and frankly, getting more uncomfortable by the second.
“Draco, you’ve finally been appointed as a councillor,” Harry restarted. “You’ve deserved it for about five years, so I’m very, very happy for you. It’s the kind of promotion that we all fought for. The kind of balance of power that I have always known was possible. I’m so grateful that I got to know you before you were there; you’re strong and direct, you’re patient when needed and action-filled when the situation requires action. You’ll be brilliant.”
“There’s the speech,” Draco interrupted, smiling despite himself.
“But Draco, this promotion also means we. Don’t. Work. Together. You have your own office. It’s not connected to the department.”
“I know, but I don’t understand why that has made you annoyed with me. You knew that—”
“Sod it,” Harry exclaimed, taking a step forward until he was in Draco’s personal space.
“Stop me if you want me to stop,” Harry breathed, reaching out and tucking Draco’s hair back behind his ear. “But I’ve never been great at talking. More of a doer, you see. Great in the field, lousy at department meetings. You’ve always said. It’s why it’s a very, very good thing that you are not my boss any more.”
And Draco, who had never really been great at doing things, realising what he was being asked to do, or really even sorting out what the first step was, finally caught on. He finally understood what Harry, who was being uncharacteristically loquacious, was actually trying to say.
“Oh thank fuck,” Draco whispered, taking his own step forward. “I thought it was just me. I thought I’d created my very own Victorian romance nightmare, pining over lost love and furtive glances.”
“There’s so much more than that. There are also the extremely illicit dreams and the inappropriately timed lust,” Harry added, closing the gap between their bodies and looking down at Draco’s mouth. His face was so close, so very…available.
“You have red in your hair,” Draco said dumbly. Harry smirked and tilted his head. “You do. It makes it hard to notice much else once you know.”
“The skin on your forearms is basically see-through, so I know what you mean.”
“They’ll hate this.”
“They will, Councillor. They certainly will.”
Harry leaned in then and kissed Draco softly. The stories had always been told about them, not by them; the names always came from other people, never their own lips. The history barely belonged to them. This, though, Draco reasoned, they would own. The softness and the subtle glances would be theirs to jealously guard. They got to decide how quickly this conversation left the safety of the nighttime rooftop. They were in charge of how much other people got to see inside their carapace, how many people they let into this liminal space. Draco pressed forward, holding Harry by the back even as their lips detached. A lingering sort of rightness settled into the space between their breaths and Harry, in the soft light, smiled. The kind of smile that jolted through him and lit up his entire face, his entire body.
“There. Now we have finished all official duties of transition, Auror Potter,” Draco said. “This was slightly less…traditional than most hand-overs but. I feel confident in your abilities.”
“What are you on about, you bizarre man?” Harry asked, pulling back only far enough to question Draco.
“You’re Head of the Auror department now. The office is small and honestly, smells like pixie farts, but you get used to it. The paperwork is insurmountable. Hire an assistant you trust as soon as is fucking possible. In every other way, though, the job is perfect and was made for you. No one will ever be able to say it wasn’t.”
“You can’t kiss me and then give me a job,” Harry chuckled, carding his fingers through the hair at Draco’s neck. “What will people say?”
“Are you declining?”
“I…didn’t say that.”
Draco laughed and kissed Harry again.
“Good,” he muttered against warm lips. “Wonderboy.”
“Councillor.”