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It doesn’t happen the first time they end up together, tumbling into bed at the end of the night half-drunk and grasping for each other in the alley behind the Leaky, or the second or the fifth. They gravitate to each other like stars, winding up at the same pubs and bars again and again. Their eyes meet and then they’re sneaking away without saying goodbye, staggering their exits and crashing together just past the door. It’s a hand in hair and bodies twisting just so. They always go to Draco’s, and Harry always slips away before the sun rises.
It might be the tenth time, or the twentieth. He stopped counting after the third, numbers meaningless in the face of the last time this will happen and no more of this, Potter. But Harry falls asleep anyway, all the fight wrung out of him by elegant fingers and an aristocratic sneer, and he wakes up disoriented in an unfamiliar bedroom with a thin beam of golden light spilling across his face.
It’s not that the room is unfamiliar, really. He knows it well by this point. He could stumble across to the hall door in the dark, could reach for the little jar in the side table blindfolded. Has done both of these things, in fact. He’s never seen it in the daylight before.
The sheets are green. He knew that, but they’re a light sage green, not the deep emerald that they look in the dark, and the paintings on the walls don’t move without the flicker of candle light. The dresser is white, and for some reason that’s the most startling detail of all.
He brushes his hair out of his face and groans, reaching blindly for his glasses. Walk of shame it is, he thinks, pulling on his trousers, the scarlet button-up that Draco had spent so long removing the night before, unhooking the buttons one by one in a line down his chest. He does them up slowly, dreading what waits beyond the bedroom door.
Draco apparates them in together; Harry walks out alone. It’s the same every time. He’s not cued to the wards. He wouldn’t expect to be. This is the last time they’ll do this, after all. If they keep at it someone’s going to notice, and neither of them want the attention that comes with it. So he pulls on his socks and carries his shoes, opens the door, and treads carefully down the stairs.
He’s never really gotten a look at the rest of the place, either. He knows it’s a townhouse, two levels, a few rooms, but he’s only ever seen it by the dim light of his wand when everything has been gray and shadows. He’s always been focused on the door. So he’s surprised to find that the main room just off the stairs hosts a piano.
It’s too large for the space, taking up most of the room. It’s supposed to be a dining room, he thinks, but there are no tables or chairs. Just that piano, gleaming black. And Draco, gleaming gold.
The sun spills over him through an open window, gauzy curtains pulled back to let the light through. It plays through his hair and it almost glitters in that early morning sun, a white-blond curtain that hangs across his face. He doesn’t look up.
Harry pauses by the door, one hand already reaching for the latch. Draco is playing something, and Harry can hear the edge of it through the muffling charm that surrounds the room. Involuntarily, he drops his hand and steps closer, through that telltale prickle and into a rush of sound. It envelops him, and for a long, long moment there is nothing but him and Draco and the music that he coaxes from keys and strings.
All at once, Draco notices him. He jerks away, his hands dropping to his sides. “Sorry,” he mutters, embarrassed. “Did I wake you?”
“No, I-” Harry doesn’t know what to say here. What do you say in the morning? He’s never known. He settles for “I have to go,” and he goes, darting out the front door in a rush.
Harry is vaguely aware that music exists. It’s there, in the world. Christmas carols around the holidays, Celestina Warbeck on Molly’s records, the background hum in the Ministry elevators. He’s never really thought about it before. He wants to hear that tune again.
In the end, he goes to Hermione. She knows things. He finds her in her office, a neat little space in Resources which she has filled with stacks of paperwork and official petitions. She’s shaking the last bits of red ink out of a pot when he arrives.
“Classical?” she asks, a quizzical look on her face. “Of course I can try, but there are a lot of possibilities. Do you have a recording?”
Harry doesn’t, of course. He tries to hum a few notes and realizes immediately that it’s a lost cause. He falters. Hermione sighs.
“It’s not quite a Ministry-approved usage, but I’ve got a pensieve here. You could show me that way.”
“No, I-” Harry says, for the second time that day. He thinks about it for a moment. There’s not really any other option, actually. He’s self-aware enough to know that he’ll never figure it out on his own, even if he goes to that little record shop down the way from his flat and buys every classical piece they own. “Yeah, all right,” he says, reversing course. He pulls out his wand and presses it to his own temple, watching the damning white strands wind their way around it.
To her credit, Hermione doesn’t comment on the circumstances that led to the memory. Harry doesn’t hide his anxiety well, and Hermione has had years to learn how to tiptoe around the edges of it. They stand together in Draco’s home, watching him play, fingers dancing along keys, unaware of their combined presence.
“It’s Rachmaninov,” she says, after a moment. “That’s a challenge. He must have long fingers.”
Harry can feel the flush rising in his chest and across his face. Don’t look at me, he thinks. Watch him. Don’t look at me. Hermione looks at him.
“It’s in D,” she adds, smirking.
“Please stop,” Harry says, covering his face with his hand.
The bar is loud and crowded and despite that they spot each other immediately. Harry’s meant to be meeting a group from work, and he can see them squashed around a booth on the other end of the room. He sidles up to the bar, orders a gin and tonic. He hates the taste of gin, but he’s seen Draco drinking them before. He’s barely paid before there’s another presence warm at his side, slender shoulders brushing against his own.
“Shall we get out of here?” Draco asks, so close that Harry can feel his breath on his ear.
Harry shoots a glance at the table across the room. None of them have even noticed he’s arrived. “Yeah, all right then,” he says, following Draco to the exit. His drink sits, untouched, on the bar top.
It’s Liszt the next morning, Schumann the one after that, then Mendelssohn. Harry can’t identify a single one of them, and Hermione’s office is now an unofficial part of his route home.
“I’m learning more about your sex life than I care to know,” she says, with a sidelong glance at him. Draco is playing in the pensieve memory again, fingers slipping in a smooth glissando along the piano keys. He glances up at memory-Harry, smiles gently, and continues playing. Harry had leaned against the wall to watch and Draco had let him.
“It’s just music,” Harry responds defensively, his arms crossing over his chest. Memory-Harry has his thumbs tucked in his pockets, his eyes drifting slightly closed as he listens.
“There’s rope burn on your wrists.” Harry hides his arms behind his back reflexively. “Not those ones,” she says, rolling her eyes. She points to the memory version of himself. Sure enough, there it is in faint imprints.
“There was a case,” he tries.
“Nope,” she cuts him off. “Look, there’s a theme to it. I’ll give you a list. You listen, you recognize something, he’s impressed, I give a speech at the wedding.”
Harry flushes deeply. He’s sure he’s still red when he walks out of her office clutching a piece of parchment, though the color has faded by the time he hands it to the owner of the record shop and buys everything he recommends.
Harry spends a week in his flat staring at the ceiling and trying to commit music to memory. He’s never done homework to flirt before. He’s not sure if he likes it.
Hermione is a genius, he thinks, as he walks down the stairs again. They’ve become familiar in the light, and he skips the creaky third step. He doesn’t pause at the door this time, or lean against the wall. He walks over and sits next to Draco on the wooden bench, careful not to jostle him with the motion.
Draco turns his head to look him. His fingers never stop moving and the sound fills the room, closing around them. It flows over him, pulling him in like a vise around his chest.
“It’s lovely,” Harry says. His heart is thrumming in time.
This is new. They don’t talk in the mornings. Draco plays. Harry watches. Sometimes there’s an awkward stammer. Once, a repeat of the night before. Never conversation.
Draco smiles, something sure and sweet that Harry’s not sure he’s ever seen before. “It’s-”
“Saint-Saëns,” Harry interrupts, eager to show off.
Draco’s fingers falter on the keys for just a moment, then pick up again. He smiles again, something knowing behind his eyes. “It is.”
“You have a thing for the Romantics,” Harry says.
“It only makes sense,” Draco says, his eyes back on the keys. “I’m a bit of a romantic myself.” His fingers still. It’s not the end of the piece, but he’s turning and his hand is coming up to cup Harry’s cheek. His gray eyes are dark, and there’s a question in his face.
Harry leans in to kiss him. It’s another first. His hand comes up to cover Draco’s and holds it close.
“Chopin next time?” Draco asks, and there’s so much possibility in that question that Harry can barely breathe under the weight of it, under the sudden surety of a next time and a next, flowing out in front of them in a wave of endless days. Sun-drenched mornings and lilting nights and all the hours in between.