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“Here,” Pansy said, handing it to him. Harry looked down at the vial suspiciously. It glinted in the light, little bits of gold in a clear liquid. It didn’t look dangerous. He squinted at her.
“What is it?”
“Merlin, you are drunk,” she said, giggling a little. They were leaned up against the conjured couches in the common room, a drunk mess of all the eighth years piled on top of and around each other, all a little too comfortable in the dozy heat of it. Someone had cajoled the elves into bringing up a tray of snacks, little things, finger sandwiches with cucumber and a sticky trifle in tiny cups and treacle tarts the size of his palm. He held one in front of him, looking between the proffered vial and the tart in his hand.
Pansy rolled her eyes and pressed the vial into his other hand. “Drink it,” she said, leaning in. Her perfume was heady, something floral and dense, and he wrinkled his nose and leaned back.
“What is it?”
“Come on,” she coaxed, “one sip.”
Harry rolled his eyes, holding it awkwardly now in his left hand. She’d uncapped it, and there was a faint cinnamon scent coming from the bottle. “It’s not Veritaserum or anything, is it?”
“No,” she teased, drawing out the vowel. “It’s for later. Just drink.”
Harry gave up. The room was warm and the company on the other side of the room looked promisingly better, and all he had to do was –
He took a sip, letting it sit on his tongue as he watched her. She didn’t look immediately suspicious or triumphant so he swallowed.
“Better,” she said, and snagged it back from his hand, on her way to harass someone else.
He’d almost forgotten about it by the time they formed a loose circle in the center of the room, the tables pushed up against the walls and a conjured rug plush under his fingertips. He stretched out lazy, his head in Hermione’s lap, one hand teasing the bristles of the carpet between the pads of his fingers. Ron was on her other side, their hands clasped together between them, Hermione’s head turned and their lips pressed together.
He wondered at the sight they made, what the others thought of it. The casual intimacy of it, the three of them so close. Ron and Hermione always together, Harry a steady presence at their side, the three of them always touching in some way, forever reaching out with grasping hands as though to reassure each other that yes, they were there, they had made it.
Eighth year had been a surprise. Not a requirement; any of them could have waltzed into a waiting position, but Harry felt he’d earned it. The subtle routine of Hogwarts, lacking the annual threat. The greatest threat he’d faced so far was the overly insistent invitations from Pansy every Friday night. For social cohesion, she’d declared on the first one. To celebrate surviving, she’d said at the second. So we can all get drunk together, she’d finally admitted by the third. The invitations were charmed little bits of folded paper, a spell he suspected she’d picked up from Draco, and they fluttered around his head until he finally sent back her required RSVP.
He’d moved on to something dense and sweet, a heady liquor that clung to the sides of his cup and left his head faintly fuzzy. He stretched out further, his legs almost at full length.
The rest of the room looked as alcohol-soaked as he felt, all of them tumbled around in various states. Draco was across the circle from him, shining like a sickle in the firelight. It played across his high cheekbones, lighting him up in shifting hues of gold and silver. Harry’d come to terms with it, after the first few weeks, when Malfoy had become Draco over a stumbling, awkward apology and they’d looked at each other, both too tired for enmity and slunk apart again.
He hadn’t minded the shift really, not until he’d looked over one day and seen Draco laughing at the front of the Potions classroom, his clever fingers clasped around the wooden hilt of a knife, and realized that oh, that was something. He hadn’t stopped looking since. Little glances in classrooms, longer, lingering ones when they found themselves, like now, on opposite sides of a room, both a little too drunk to stop themselves from looking, not quite drunk enough to do anything about it.
“Pay attention,” Pansy singsonged, wobbling slightly as she pushed herself into the center of the circle. Harry got the sense it wasn’t the first time she’d said it, and he shifted slightly, turning on one shoulder, Hermione’s fingers still in his hair.
He looked up at her, a question on his lips, but her attention was fully on Ron, so he sighed and settled back to watch Pansy. She’d grown her hair out, and it was pulled up into a high ponytail which swished around her face as she took an appraising glance around the group. Satisfied that at least most of them were looking at her, she raised one hand, a familiar vial held firmly between her fingers.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said, stumbling slightly over the words but catching herself and slipping back into the careful, cultured tones of a party host. “Tonight has been a delight and we celebrate the unity and house togetherness and survival and all of that rot, but there’s one very important thing left to do tonight.”
She grinned, and there was menace behind her smile. “You’ve all,” she glanced behind herself at where Hannah saluted her with a glass of a clear liquid that Harry suspected was water. Hannah had always had more sense than the rest of them. “Almost all,” Pansy amended, “had a sip of a particular potion. Very rare, very expensive, all that fun stuff. You’re welcome, I’ll be doing a collection later so all of you free-loaders can pay me back for it.”
“What’s it do?” Dean called out, and Pansy’s face twisted, annoyed at being hurried along.
“Soulmates,” she snapped at him. She paused, smoothing out her skirt, and Harry had a brief spike of trepidation. “You kiss, you find out if someone is your soulmate. Ta da,” she said, wiggling her fingers slightly and giggling as she took in the range of expressions around the room, Seamus intrigued and darting careful glances over at Dean, Draco looking panicked behind her.
“Oh,” said Hermione, her voice soft and quiet above Harry. She lifted her fingers from his hair and raised her hand as though she was waiting to be called on in class. Harry blinked up at her. “Is that what,” she gestured, trying to indicate something with a twist of her wrist.
“Oh, spectacular,” Pansy said, gleeful. “Thank you for demonstrating, Granger. I wish you and Weasley many fat, red-headed children.” She marched over and grabbed Hermione’s hand, showing it off in her best impression of Flitwick’s high, light voice. “The red band,” she said, gesturing, “shows they’re meant to be. Gross, yes, but also,” she shrugged. “A bit lovely. Maybe.”
The circle condensed somewhat, everyone inching in to within stretching distance of the empty bottle that Pansy had left between them. Harry bit at his lip, watching it. It wasn’t in itself a threat. He didn’t think he’d have a soulmate at Hogwarts. He wasn’t his friends, circling each other for the better part of seven years, so clearly meant for each other that they’d barely been phased by the announcement. They were huddled together now, cuddled up on an overstuffed armchair to watch the proceedings. Exempt, Pansy had allowed, by virtue of being a known variable.
Ernie, it turned out, was not soulmates with Nott. Nott was not soulmates with Zabini. Zabini made a face and exchanged a glancing peck with Susan Bones, who in turn spun on Dean and the two rolled their eyes and kissed lightly, a bare touch between them, and held up bare hands, unmarred by red. Dean looked down at the bottle appraisingly and set it down on the ground, the neck of it pointed directly at Seamus, who flushed red but pushed out his chest, half dare, half invitation.
“Not meant to be then,” he said, a little breathless as they parted and no red appeared.
Seamus shrugged. “Maybe we just need to warm up to it?” And then the circle was down by two.
Pansy watched the door close behind them in something like aggravation, and smacked the bottle into Draco’s hand with something muttered that Harry couldn’t hear, and flounced off to sit in Neville’s lap, who blinked at her in confusion but wound a cautious arm around her waist.
It wasn’t really a surprise, he thought, as the bottle spun to a stop in front of him. He felt all at once muddled and aware, a fizzing spark in his veins as Draco watched him from across the circle. One silver eyebrow raised in question. Harry nodded, and Draco pushed himself to his knees, crawling across the intervening space. Leonine, Harry thought, remembering the word in some far-flung corner of his brain, the part not caught up entirely with the sight of Draco Malfoy on hands and knees before him, the feel of a hand on his chin.
“Alright, Potter?” Draco asked, his fingers tracing the line of Harry’s jaw. Harry shivered, his eyes darting between Draco’s eyes and his mouth and the crowd around them. “Don’t look at them,” Draco said, and Harry’s gaze fixed on silver eyes that glinted in the light, the faint fringe of lashes around them.
“Yeah,” Harry said, only half hearing the word come out of his mouth. “Alright.”
Draco’s smile quirked, something sincere in the tilt of it, and Harry had a sudden thought that perhaps this wasn’t entirely a disaster, if Draco Malfoy could look at him like that. He let his head tip back, Draco’s hand cupping the back of his head, and then there were lips on his, warm and slightly chapped. Draco tasted like gin, bitter and light, and Harry drank it in, his mouth parting involuntarily at the touch of a tongue against his lips, and he was vaguely aware of the deep, soft moan that slipped out of him, the warm feel of a hand on his hip.
He blinked upward, surprised to find himself laid on his back, Draco’s knee between his thighs, Harry’s hands clutched at the collar of his shirt. He heard Pansy’s whistle, a sharp sound that cut through the hazy fog between them. They pushed upright, and Harry could feel the hot flush of his cheeks, see the same pink as it settled across Draco’s throat and chest. They sat slightly apart, close enough that Harry could feel the heat of him, and his eyes darted away, looking anywhere else.
“Harry,” Draco said, his voice strained, and Harry jerked slightly, shocked. He’d never heard his first name out of Draco’s mouth before. Even after Draco had become Draco, he’d remained Potter.
“Harry,” Draco said again, and then there was a hand on his own, pulling it up between them. The room exploded into a susurrus of agitated whispers, shocked voices and murmured astonishment, but Harry barely heard them.
“Oh,” he said, smiling, a warm, pleased feeling bubbling up in his chest and settling around his heart, as he turned his hand. There, around the ring finger of his hand, a tiny red band.