Chapter Text
Three days after quitting his job, Harry Potter, aged 29 minus a month, moved to Godric’s Hollow.
”Harry, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Hermione had asked, brows furrowed. Lately, she’d been wearing that expression almost as frequently as in the summer of 1998, when Harry had been pondering between finishing his education and taking up the offer to join the Auror class.
”Of course I’m bloody not,” Harry had muttered, quite unlike that time some ten summers away. He’d been so sure, then. “It feels like the right move, so of course I’m not sure.”
“But what will you do?” Hermione had gone on, worried furrow deepening into a frown.
“I don’t know, Hermione,” Harry had sighed, getting a bit frustrated. “Finally read all the books you’ve given me in the last, what, twenty years? Get coffee from that small shop in the corner? Charm the lady that works at the bakery? Go for a pint and get to know the locals? Something normal?”
“I think it’s brilliant,” Ron had informed them both, confident and sunny. Harry was so lucky to have him around.
“Yeah?”
“Well, yeah. For one, there’s bound to be fewer flocking fans around, such a small village and all that. It’ll be like a holiday. You’ve earned a holiday, mate.”
“Yeah,” Harry had agreed, noncommittally. Sure, he hadn’t taken a holiday since joined the Aurors, barring a few individual days off here and there. Like for Ron and Hermione’s wedding. Luna and Ginny’s. George’s 30th birthday; he’d organized an entire festival at the far-off field they sometimes held the Quidditch World Cup games, because of course he had. It had been dedicated to Fred, too, and possibly that should have been heartbreaking and sad, and if anyone else had tried it, it would have been, but somehow George had made the celebration into something that so joyous that even the Prophet couldn’t find anything to critique. Well, anything that might have mattered, anyway.
The point was, Ron had been on him about taking time off for years, and evidently felt like it had finally paid off. But Harry didn’t want a holiday; he wanted a life.
Some couple months later, Harry hadn’t exactly gotten a life. He’d come up with a new routine, yes, but not one he was particularly proud of. He’d gone to the café once, and the clerk had clocked him for The Harry Potter immediately, blushing and staggering so staunchly that Harry had been deeply embarrassed for the both of them. He didn’t go back. The lady at the bakery hadn’t been much better. Harry didn’t even try the pub. He’d briefly considered glamours and Polyjuice, but discarded the idea on the basis that he was supposed to be finding a life here, not hiding. His routine felt a lot like hiding though, if he were to spare a thought on it. Which he rarely did.
He started his mornings by brewing a cup of tea, which always turned out either too strong or too weak. One glorious time it might have actually turned out pretty good, except that at last step the bag had somehow broken apart; stray leaves in the tea didn’t really make the experience all that great. He’d bought a tea strainer that day; there hadn’t been any more accidents involving tearing tea bags, but whatever it was that he’d done with that one cup in terms of flavour eluded him still. Harry reckoned that as far as incapabilities went, not being able to make proper tea was quite insignificant. He refused to acknowledge that brewing tea was, currently, the only thing requiring any sort of skill in his life.
After a disappointing cup of tea, he immersed himself in the books Hermione had gifted him – he’d actually kept to that idea. For most of them, Harry could tell why Hermione had chosen each one – some of them were pretty on the nose, like that one he’d got for his 20th birthday that had seemed like any other fantasy novel but had turned out to touch heavily on the topic of discovering queerness. By 29, Harry was quite comfortable with his multitude of identities, thank you very much, but he thought back to what he’d been like at the crossroads of the millennia, confused and perceptibly alone in his experiences, and vowed to try and read Hermione’s book recommendations in a more timely fashion in the future.
Harry would usually skip lunch, first by accident and then by habit. He’d brew another disappointing cup of tea around noon, then take an accidental nap for one to four hours. By 5 pm, he’d be so hungry he couldn’t bother to do any cooking. He’d quickly learned to stock his fridge and freezer with food that only required an off-handed heating spell. He’d watch tv while he ate, then watch tv until he fell asleep again. He’d wake up somewhere in the AM, move to his bed, and proceed to have nightmares until around 9.
His nightmares had grown up with, no longer being the violent, curses flying, people dying kind of nightmares from his teenage years, from after the war. They’d transformed into something more mellow, soft-paced and languid. Harry didn’t wake up with a start, or a scream, or his heart beating out of his chest. He woke up drained, utterly depleted. Harry was pretty sure his new routine was making it worse.
Around the three-month mark of his new life, he ran out of the books gifted by Hermione. Instead of coming up with a new hobby, he started going through his old schoolbooks, because they were easily available. A History of Magic turned out to be surprisingly interesting if you read it like a novel, without the fear of failed exams. A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration, not so much, though he did experience some aha-moments reading it. He probably retained nothing new on the thousand magical herbs and fungi in his first year Herbology book, because that one he used more as a collection of visual arts than a textbook. And he wasn’t really reading to retain information in the first place; it was just to pass the time. His second-year books were a blast to read; that month Harry made a hefty donation to the Janus Thickey Ward.
All in all, the end of October takes him by surprise.
“There’s a fucking weird protest going on under my window,” Harry says into the floo the moment he’s got Ron’s attention.
“A what?”
“A protest, or a mob, or something.” His hands are wild, trying and failing to help with the explanation. “I don’t know. Hundreds of people, just walking slowly – listen, can you come over?”
Within moments, they’re staring out of Harry’s window, side by side.
“Bloody hell.” Ron sounds exactly as puzzled as Harry feels.
“Right?”
“What do you think they’re doing?”
“I have no bloody clue.”
Then Ron’s silence grows tangibly uncomfortable. Harry turns to look at him suspiciously.
“What?”
“Do you, hmm.” The tips of Ron’s ears turn red as he takes another moment to gather his thoughts. ”Do you reckon they’re queuing up to pay their respects to your parents?”
Harry stares at him, somewhat incapable of comprehending the sentence his best mate has just uttered. “What?”
“You know, the memorial sign.” Both of Ron’s ears are completely red now, and Harry gets the somewhat ill-timed thought of whether it hurts for them to blush so profusely. “It’s at the other end of the main street, isn’t it?”
Harry is so confused it should hurt, too, possibly somewhere around his forehead. The scar, maybe? Or the wrinkles that have, quite unnoticedly, turned permanent. The fact that it doesn’t might be proof that ear-blushing doesn’t either. Though the mechanism of each phenomenon is quite different, so perhaps not. He should ask Ron, some time. Not now, obviously.
“You think they’re, what, pilgriming to the place where my parents died? In mass?”
Ron looks like he’s suddenly expected to perform actual divination. The ears pale a little, which somehow makes Harry feel better. “What’s pilgriming?”
“You know, pilgriming. A, a holy expedition.” Explaining religious practices to a pureblood while thinking of ear-blushing and wrinkle-pain turns out to be a bit too much for Harry, so he takes the easiest way out. “I don’t know, ask Hermione.”
“Right.” Ron’s nod tells Harry that he probably won’t ask Hermione. Harry thinks he probably wouldn’t either.
“Why would they gather like that for the memorial anyway?” he asks, staring out at the crowd again as if looking for proof. Ron’s theory sounds ludicrous, but he does have to admit that the mass in question is indeed moving towards where his cottage lies. The cottage he hasn’t visited once since moving to Godric’s Hollow. Not that he’s avoiding it. He just hasn’t had a chance, yet.
“I don’t know, mate. But it is Halloween.”
Harry’s attention snaps back to his friend. “It’s Halloween?”
Ron’s still looking at the crowd, and by now his ears have stopped being red altogether. Harry thinks maybe they feel cold, afterward. They should feel cold.
“Bloody hell, Harry. How’d you not know it’s Halloween?”
The exasperation in Ron’s voice is quite humbling. Harry is saved from having to come up with an answer that doesn’t reveal him as the apartment-dwelling hermit that he is by Ron himself.
“Is that Malfoy?” he asks, incredulous.
Harry reckons his forehead should definitely start hurting any moment now. The entire forehead, too, and not just the wrinkles. Even if ear-blushing isn’t painful, this level of confusion should be. “What?”
“It’s definitely Malfoy! There, at the door of that pub – well, no, now he’s gone inside.” Ron seems endlessly curious as he turns to look at Harry. “Does he work at the pub?”
Harry is quite busy staring at the pub windows and hoping for laser-vision to think too much ahead. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” asks Ron, incredulous.
It alerts Harry back to his original problem of hiding his budding hermit-ude from his best mate, and he scrambles for words. “I’ve never seen a Malfoy around here.”
Ron doesn’t look convinced. “It was definitely Malfoy, and he didn’t look like he was visiting, either.”
Harry desperately clings on to technicalities, much like each of his hands are clinging to the opposing biceps. “How could you possibly tell if he was visiting or not?”
Ron’s knowing brow-raise tells him the attempt is futile. “Why haven’t you mentioned he’s around?”
A resigned sigh.
“I honestly didn’t know.”
Harry has half a mind to ask Ron if his forehead-wrinkles ever hurt. Right about now would be in ideal time, too, by the looks of it. Maybe he should start writing down his straying thoughts so that he can remember to come back to them at a time he more likely won’t be accosted of changing the subject. Or would that be considered rude, taking spontaneous notes in the middle of a conversation? Luna wouldn’t mind, at least. Then again, Luna wouldn’t mind straying from the topic in the first place.
“Come off it, mate,” Ron scoffs the way he always has, which is a bit comforting. “This town has like ten houses. There’s one pub. You can’t honestly expect me to believe that.”
“There are at least fifty houses in just the village centre,” Harry starts, because he thinks it’s a really, really important detail that he probably read from one of the magical history books, but when Ron doesn’t appear to appreciate sharing such fascinating knowledge, he quickly continues, “I haven’t really been out that much.”
Ron’s eyes narrow in a bit too Hermione-y way for Harry’s liking. “Why not?”
“I’ve been busy.”
The details of Harry’s sweater are actually quite intriguing. There are at least ten different colours, and one of the yarns used has three of them intertwined. Maybe he should take on yarn-making, next? Or knitting? Or both? See how Molly would like a sweater of her own, or no, maybe two: one that’s made from the softest yarn anyone’s ever dreamed of, and one made with the scratchy one Molly uses that, admittedly, sustains wear and tear quite well. As well as his old Auror robes did, which is quite impressive when you think about it, actually.
“Doing what?” asks Ron, also sounding a bit too much like Hermione. Harry steels himself for impact, dropping the hem of his shirt and raising his eyes to see a very suspicious look on Ron’s face.
“Reading.”
And scratch the previous notes, now would be an excellent time to ask about the possible forehead-pain. There’s no way those wrinkles don’t hurt. If feelings radiated in waves the way heat and light do, Harry would definitely be severely physically incapacitated by the strength of Ron’s incredulity.
“You’ve actually been reading all of these?” because of course, the old textbooks are scattered around the coffee table, and the windowsill, and the small dining table in the corner. They have practically taken over the living room, and buried the, er, the more normal reading material.
“Well, you know,” Harry starts, knowing full well that Ron does not, in fact, know. He didn’t use to, either. “For fun. Not for like studying or anything.” Harry winces at least twice as he says it, closing his eyes in resignation.
Ron snorts loudly enough to sag Harry’s shoulders. “Mate, you sound like ‘Mione. Remember when she called a giant book on alchemy as light reading?”
“Yeah, I heard it.”
“You need to get out of the house more.” Ron’s laughter, at least, is not mean. Because he’s not a mean person. He’s also not one to lecture, which Harry would do well to remember.
It’s very easy to roll his eyes and smile sheepishly, feeling petty and relieved at the same time. “Well, I can’t go now.”
“Why – oh right, the plilgrimmings, or whatever.”
The next day, Harry gets an owl delivery from Ron, containing quite a few more books. “Hermione says hi,” the note says. Harry scoffs, rolls his eyes, and carries the books to his coffee table.
***
It takes a few days for Harry to gather the courage to visit the pub, but he can’t very well talk to Ron again without having checked for the possibility of a nearby Malfoy.
When he does, it turns out Ron was right. It’s definitely Malfoy, in all of his 29-year-old glory. Which is quite glorious indeed, considering Harry immediately clocks at least ten things he has, when asked in the past, listed as being his type. The way his hair is gathered softly into some kind of hidden hairstyle, with a few loose strands curling around his ears. Well, the hair in general; it looks silky smooth and so very soft. And the jawline, god save him, the jaw line, and with the lips, too. The grey of his eyes, piercing in a way that can be felt all the way through Harry’s soul, probably leaving a bleeding hole.
Which is all a bit of a mind-fuck, considering almost all of it is in fact very familiar, so Harry opts to never thinking about it ever in his life. Which probably means he’ll be obsessing about it come nightfall.
“Potter,” says Malfoy, with a tone of voice that’s a lot less prickly than Harry remembers it being when they were in school. A lot less irritating, too. His face is the picture of stoicism, Harry thinks, which is a new development. And also a little counter-argumentative as far as descriptions go, but what can you do. Malfoy just has the air of suffering in silence, currently.
“Malfoy,” says Harry, and is happy to notice that his own tone is quite diplomatic.
“What do you want?” asks Malfoy, except it sounds more like a statement and could possibly be described as a drawl. It’s not supposed to be attractive, of that Harry’s certain. What the hell is happening here?
“A pint, please.” He can’t help the cheeky grin that fights for the control of his cheeks. “Whatever’s on the tap.”
Malfoy looks like he just barely retains from rolling his eyes – that’s the stoicism at work, again – but nods curtly and busies himself with the pint. “I meant, what are you doing here?” he asks with forced patience as he’s waiting for the glass to fill.
Harry licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry despite having expected the line of questioning. “I live here.”
The way Malfoy narrows his eyes is so far removed from the way Hermione does that it should not remind Harry of her (or Ron) at all, and yet the comparison comes to mind.
“Since when?” Malfoy asks, understandably suspicious.
Harry waves his hand dismissively as if he’s not nervous at all. Maybe he can fake it to existence. “End of June, something like that.”
The brief silence is perhaps a bit stifling. If it were possible for Malfoy to narrow his eyes more while still keeping them open, he probably would. Instead, he hands over the pint.
“You’ve lived here for four months?”
Harry forces his flailing hand to grab at the glass in hopes of somehow grounding himself. It’s doesn’t necessarily work. “Yes. Do I get to ask any questions?” He tries to sound cheeky, but thinks it doesn’t really come off right.
Malfoy’s lip twitches. Harry doesn’t know what it means, except that it does not look like it was twitching to smile. More like he’s supressing a snarl.
The “No” is short and conclusive. “How come you’ve lived here for four months,” Malfoy drawls on, and fuck, why’s it doing things to Harry? “and this is the first time you’re here?”
Harry’s more put out by his own reaction to Malfoy, than to what he says, there’s no denying that. Self-awareness doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. “How would you know?” he retorts quite a bit more sharply than he would have liked. “You can’t possibly know I haven’t come here when you’re out,” he tries again, more calmly. “Or wearing glamours.”
Malfoy’s cocked eyebrow does nothing to calm Harry down further – in fact, it does the opposite.
“Have you?”
“Well, no.” Harry’s ears heat significantly. It doesn’t, in fact, hurt, but maybe he’s just not quite there yet. “But I could have.” The petulance is really quite embarrassing.
The lip-twitching is back on the table, apparently. It still doesn’t look like a smile. “So why are you here now?”
“Fancied a pint.” The cheeky grin feels so forced that Harry decides to drop it off, consciously.
“And,” he braces on as if everything about this isn’t going against all the plans Harry came up with, “and I saw you. Well, Ron saw you, really. I wanted to check.”
By the time Harry finishes his sentence he knows he’s frowning, so he takes a sip of his beer in an effort to wipe it off, or at least hide it.
Malfoy turns his eyes away from Harry, which reveals to be very beneficial for Harry’s nervous system. He takes another gulp of his beer just as Malfoy speaks again.
“Worried I’m up to something?”
The sound Harry makes is probably supposed to be a coherent exclamation, perhaps a what? or a sorry?, perhaps even a pardon? – well, maybe not that – but it ends up being mostly beer.
“No,” Harry eventually gets out, furiously wiping at the counter with his shirt sleeves. Malfoy shoves a rag at him, with what is definitely a smirk. A very, very pretty smirk, if also a very infuriating one. “It’s not like that. I don’t work for the Aurors anymore.”
The blasted, disorienting eyes are focused on Harry again, and it’s honestly not helping with whatever he was trying to accomplish.
“Private investigating, then?” Malfoy asks, tone as sharp as his gaze. So sharp in fact that it does incapacitate Harry a little bit. It’s dizzying, being at the focus point of such attention.
“No –“
“Then what is it, Potter?”
The words are uttered in the exact tone Harry remembers from their school years, all clipped and sneering. It’s, finally, what brings Harry back down to Earth, to England, to Godrick’s Hollow. To a reality where he’s not a blushing schoolboy staring at someone who looks like a statue of an angel.
“I told you,” Harry snaps back, in a tone Malfoy probably remembers, too. “I live here.”
Whatever it is that Malfoy sees or hears in Harry seems to placate him, because his posture visibly changes. Saying that he relaxes would be going too far, but it does turn into something less frigid, before he throws the abandoned rag over his shoulder and saunters away from the counter.
Harry can’t for the life of him come up with anything else to say, so he finishes his drink and shies back to his apartment to over-analyse every detail of the conversation. Maybe fantasize a few different ways it could have gone. Yes, he’s mature enough to admit to it. Malfoy’s definitely his entire type. What a bloody identity-defining revelation; Ron shall never find out.
***
When Harry goes to the pub the next time, Malfoy continues the conversation as if it’s been a few minutes rather than entire days.
“So, what have you been doing in the four months you claim to have been living here?” he asks, sounding suspiciously polite. The stoicism is back on the table, it seems.
“I have been living here,” Harry emphasizes, not that he thinks it’ll make a difference. “And I’ve been reading.”
That one cocked eyebrow is also back to wreaking havoc at Harry’s general lung area.
“Reading?” and now that’s a drawl, alright. It’s very haughty, which should not be a turn on, and what the hell is wrong with Harry? Evidently the way he’s been going about this hasn’t helped at all. Might have made it worse, actually. Which he could have guessed, probably, if he’d stopped to think about it.
“I can read, Malfoy.”
“Wouldn’t have guessed.”
And perhaps that twitch is a ghost of a smile, after all? At least this once? Harry can’t think of anything else that would fit here, because nothing about the tone is malignant enough. Which, was it always so? Surely not.
Harry doesn’t get a chance for a comeback, even if he could have thought of one, because Malfoy is being called over by a customer in the corner table.
***
“What have you been reading?” Malfoy asks the next day, as he hands over the steak and ale pie Harry opted for that night. He’s pretty sure his mental health doesn’t allow for drinking beer every night without consequences, and besides, the smell of food in the pub is heavenly. And he’s entirely sick of the heat-quick meals.
Except that Harry doesn’t quite catch the question, seeing as Malfoy has his shirt sleeves rolled up in a way that displays not only his multiple tattoos but also the way his forearm muscles tense and relax as he handles the tiny pie dish. It’s quite distracting. There are dragons – of course there are – and constellations and flowers and Harry really wants to know what the text on his right inner arm reads.
He eventually clocks into the reality that he missed something, because Malfoy continues to stare at him. It’s unbothered, like he’s used to being stared at. Which he probably is, being so bloody attractive.
“What?” he asks, very level-headedly. Certainly. Undoubtedly. Successfully.
The twitch at the corner of the mouth is definitely starting to look a bit like amusement, isn’t it?
“What’s the most recent book you’ve read?”
“Oh,” and Harry considers altering the truth slightly, because he knows just how far-fetched the reality sounds. But no. “Advanced Rune Translation.”
And expectedly, Malfoy doesn’t believe him. But also, how does he, exactly, look so sophisticated and regal whilst wearing a food-stained apron and tattoos? And also, how is the apron food-stained but the dress shirt is as crispy and clean as if Malfoy’s only just put it on? Or not only just, on second glance it’s actually a bit wrinkled, very enticingly so, at a few strategic places, accentuating the arms and the shoulders quite unnecessarily.
“Why would you be reading NEWT-level textbooks for a class you didn’t even take?”
Harry is also immediately certain that Malfoy’s forehead never hurts from confusion, or any other emotion for that matter. He manages to deliver such clear emotion with such minimal changes in his expression. It’s obsession-inducing. Damn.
“I ran out of books.”.
“You ran out of books.”
“I ran out of books,” Harry repeats, a smile threatening to ghost at his corners. “Is it my turn to ask questions yet?”
Malfoy looks at him for a long moment, with an expression that reveals absolutely nothing, except maybe scepticism. That, too, is obsession-inducing.
“Fine.”
The smile Harry’s been fighting breaks out earnestly. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
And if that tone isn’t laced with the tiniest layer of humour, then Harry knows nothing.
He rolls his eyes. “Obviously. Why here?”
“None of your business.”
And with the briefest, the most infuriatingly attractive of smirks, Malfoy strides away, leaving Harry to count the pieces of his shattered sanity.
“Right.”
***
“Why do you have a shelf full of Quibblers?” asks Harry one time, somewhere around the beginning of December. He’d noticed them the last time he was at the pub, which would have been the previous day, because Malfoy wasn’t paying him enough attention and Harry had thus time and opportunity to pay his own on other things. Which is a bit telling, and Harry’s quite aware of it, thank you very much.
That was also the day that Harry finally took in the pub’s interior in general. It’s quite nice and cozy, lit dimly with floating candles, much like the ones in the Great Hall, except these run among the walls in a thin, haphazard line. The walls are decorated with what looks like old posters, possibly of gigs held in the pub in the past decades, framed with modern-looking, minimalist, perhaps wooden wire-things. Or something, Harry’s not that knowledgeable on the topic of picture frames. Harry also doesn’t recognize most of bands in the posters, but it’s not much of a surprise. He mostly listens to Muggle bands anyway. He had briefly wondered if Mumford & Sons is already too big to consider playing at such a small venue, even if it wasn’t so clearly a wizarding space.
Malfoy looks casual in that way of his that is so very clearly forced. And what was the topic again? Right, the Quibblers.
“Luna sends them.”
And that is not what Harry was expecting at all. He might have obsessed over it the night before, trying to come up with options both logical and ludicrous, because that’s how he sees Malfoy. The patrons requested them. I like to stay on top of the tone of the different journalistic publications. I’m highly invested in the outlandishly inaccurate stories they write about people I know. I actually believe in Wrackspurts. They have an excellent column on the different uses of hops outside of beer. Or something of the sort.
Not Luna sends them. Never Luna sends them.
“Luna, as in Luna Lovegood?”
Malfoy rolls his eyes, which, it shouldn’t feel like an accomplishment, should it?
“Do you know any other Lunas who’d be into the Quibbler?”
“Why does Luna Lovegood send you Quibblers?”
Harry’s tone probably couldn’t be more appalled, which isn’t ideal. It’s also entirely unintended.
Malfoy clearly takes offence.
“We’re friends,” he says, haughtily. Irritatedly.
Harry tries his hardest to reel in his absolute dumbfoundedness. “You’re friends with Luna Lovegood?”
“She’s nice.”
The way Malfoy says it, as if Harry might try to counteract that fact given the chance, which, as if ever, breaks something within Harry. It is so simple, isn’t it? Luna is nice.
“I know she’s nice.” It comes out a bit wobbly. Embarrassingly soft. It’s fine, whatever.
Malfoy looks at Harry indignantly. “Good.”
“Yeah.”
***
“So when did you become friends with Luna?” Harry asks the next day, because it takes him that long to internalize and deal with everything.
Malfoy huffs tiredly.
“Why are you suddenly pestering me here every night?”
And fine, ok. Harry can live without knowing things sometimes. Or better yet, he can ask Luna some time. It has been a while since he wrote to her, actually. A bit of a rude while, in fact, so he should probably write to her that very night.
Yes, Harry can live without knowing things sometimes, so he puts on a grin and says, “Grew tired of microwave foods.”
Malfoy isn’t impressed.
“After four months?”
“It’s been closer to five months, actually,” because apparently in addition to Malfoy, Harry’s also become obsessed with accurate information. Hermione would be ever so proud. “Wait, you know what a microwave is?”
The unimpressedness of Malfoy knows no bounds, it seems. And it’s such an excellent look on him, too, a bit of a turn on, really. Or a lot of a turn on, which, Harry thinks, let’s save that revelation for later.
“Of course I know what a microwave is. I’m not a recluse.”
Harry thinks it wouldn’t be that out of character for Malfoy not to know what a microwave is. In fact, it feels more out of character that he does. Even Ron struggles with the concept of kitchen appliances, and he married a mixed culture activist. To his father’s never-ending delight.
“I didn’t say you were. I just figured, you know, since it’s muggle and all –“
“With my history, you mean? The pureblood supremacy I was raised to believe in?” and the way Malfoy does not lose his temper or even flinch, as if he’s dealt with this daily for the past century at minimum, makes Harry feel worse than he thinks anything else might have.
“It’s been ten years, Potter, I would’ve thought you of all people wouldn’t hold to prejudice.”
“Sorry.”
How that gets a raise out of Malfoy is entirely beyond Harry’s comprehension.
“You don’t apologize,” he snarls so harshly that Harry drops his utensils. The sound of the heavy fork hitting the dish is unreasonably deafening to his ears.
“Okay.”
***
“I noticed none of the muggles that come here bat an eye on anything they see or hear here,” Harry remarks one day mid-December. “Not even the Quibblers.”
“How perceptive of you,” Malfoy replies, because he’s a sarcastic git. “Consider me awed.”
He’s left his hair untied today, and it shifts distractingly in the air when he moves about. It occasionally falls to his face, and Harry would give a lot to have permission to tuck it behind his ears. Just once.
“Aren’t you worried about breaching the Statute of Secrecy or something?” Harry asks, because obviously his sense of self-preservation frequently malfunctions around Malfoy.
And Malfoy does tense. “We’re not breaking any laws, if that’s where you’re getting at.”
“Then how’d you do it?” Harry asks, because he’s curious and because apologizing didn’t go down all that well last time. Even if he has a hard time retaining information from books, he’s excellent at retaining vibes.
Still, his curiosity isn’t necessarily any better. “Magic,” Malfoy answers shortly. Well, at least he’s not angry, even if he is a bit closed-off.
“Care to elaborate?” Harry tries, though he has the inclination that it’s futile.
“No.”
“Right.”
It turns out dropping the topic is the most effective course of action, because a few minutes of silence later Malfoy offers an answer unprompted.
“It’s a variation of the Muggle-Repelling Charm, with a combination of a few different masking spells in it, among other things,” he says in the faux-casual tone that Harry is starting to find embarrassingly endearing. “It’s cast on the premises.”
“How does it work?”
“When it’s in effect, a muggle can look at something outrageously magical and see it as something that makes sense in their world,” Malfoy starts, quite poshly, and isn’t that just the most bizarrely hot thing in the world?
Who knew that a self-important git reciting magical theory would be such a turn on? And what does that mean for Harry?
Malfoy, who of course has no idea what’s going on in Harry’s mind, goes on: “Or if they hear talk of magical things, they’ll interpret the discussion in a way that works on the foundations of Muggle science. Things like that.”
“But how?” Harry asks, because moderation isn’t a concept he endorses.
“Honestly, Potter, I doubt you could keep up with the theory even if I had the patience to explain it to you,” says Malfoy haughtily, but the corner of his mouth does that little twitchy thing that Harry’s getting so close to figuring out.
It brings Harry’s own mouth into a massive grin. “So it’s a bit tricky?”
Malfoy huffs. “Yes, Potter, it’s a bit tricky.”
“So can you do it?”
Amusement, somehow akin to something predestined, flickers across Malfoy’s face. It’s extremely attractive, and also a bit curious. Then again, apparently, what part of Malfoy isn’t.
“Obviously.”
And, bloody fucking hell.
***
“It’s really clever, actually,” Hermione enthuses a couple of days later over a Floo call that certainly consisted of topics other than Malfoy. Was primarily focused on topics other than Malfoy. Initiated because of a topic other than Malfoy. Unquestionably.
“It takes full advantage of the concept of confirmation bias,” Hermione goes on, “which means that, for example, my parents wouldn’t be affected by the spell, as they already know of the existence of magic. It’s an intriguing combination of theories of Muggle psychology and magic, and I don’t think we see enough of that in the world, generally speaking.”
“Could I do it?” Harry asks quickly before Hermione gets too deep into the inadequacies around the crossroads between the Muggle world and the magical, her beloved. He’s made that mistake too often, and could probably finally read up on the subject himself some time actually, since he’s almost through with his existing library.
“It really is quite complex,” Hermione starts, but hurries on when Harry’s face turns sour, “but I can send you the article if you’d like so you can judge for yourself.”
That doesn’t necessarily appease Harry; he knows he’s not all that great with carefully complex magic, even if he likes to hear Malfoy talk about it. He really hasn’t been reading to retain information.
“Malfoy says he can do it.”
Hermione looks at him oddly. “Well, yeah?”
Harry doesn’t think Malfoy came off as a genius, back in school. Mostly he came off as a dramatic git. And okay, so maybe he was better at Potions than Harry, but they didn’t share any other classes with him, so the well, yeah is a bit uncalled for, in Harry’s opinion. But maybe he took one of those classes Hermione started taking in third year, so perhaps Harry simply wouldn’t know.
“What do you mean, well, yeah?”
“I mean,” and the patience in Hermione’s voice is a bit shattering, “it is his charm, so you’d expect him to be able to cast it, wouldn’t you?”
And if that’s not the most unexpected thing Harry’s heard since Luna sends them.
“Malfoy came up with a complex charm?” he asks, because maybe he heard wrong. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. It was all over Challenges in Charming a few years ago.”
There’s a bit of a suffocating silence, where Harry attempts to think as Hermione looks at him.
“How come you’ve never mentioned that?”
The roll Hermione does with her eyes would be impressive if it weren’t directed at Harry. It’s usually very funny when Ron gets it.
The “Honestly, Harry,” takes Harry back at least fifteen years. “When have you ever wanted to hear me talk about recent advances in magical theory?”
“But this is different!”
“How is it different?”
“It just is!” Harry insists, against his better judgement. “This is huge!”
“Because it’s Malfoy?”
Crap.
His quick “No!” comes out so fast it’s probably a core reaction from sixth year.
“Then why?”
Under the knowing eye of Hermione, Harry has absolutely no answers.
“Let’s just drop it.”
***
Harry lasts about two hours.
“So, why do you work in a pub in Godric’s Hollow, of all places, when you could be out there, inventing spells left and right?” he asks when Malfoy brings him a mushroom stroganoff pie.
“Ah, so you figured it out,” states Malfoy, and though it’s entirely sarcastic, it’s also a bit fluster-inducing, if Harry is completely honest with himself. “Bravo.”
“Hermione told me.”
A smirk.
“Of course.”
Harry waits a couple of moments before becoming too impatient. And also appreciates the chance to stare expectedly at Malfoy’s achingly beautiful face. He has a bit of flour on the edge of his chin, and it’s charmingly out of place.
“So?”
“Lack of ambition, if you ask my father.”
It’s surprisingly casual, and not the faux kind that Harry’s used to recently, but actually honest-to-god casual. As if Malfoy knows perfectly well and does not care the least bit about what his father thinks. It’s quite hot.
Well, duh.
“I’m asking you.”
The raised eyebrow is such a reward. “What makes you think I want to discuss my career choices with you?”
Harry considers for a moment, then grins. “I’m Harry Potter?”
Malfoy snorts. It’s inelegant, undignified, and incredibly gratifying. Glorious, really. And it confirms that the twitch has, indeed, been a threateningly honest smile. A threateningly beautiful one, too. Merlin, Harry’s so screwed.
“You are aware that you’re talking to probably the only person in the world with whom your name works against you?”
Harry’s grin widens. “Yep.”
“It may come as a surprise,” Malfoy starts some time later, and Harry would like to be able to say that he purposefully employed the well-proven technique of using an easy silence against Malfoy to make him talk, but in all honestly he was preoccupied with his absolutely brilliant pie, “but it was a bit difficult for me to find a job back in the 90s. Not many people were willing to hire a Death Eater prodigy, acquitted or otherwise. I guess I was just miserable enough that the pub owner finally took pity on me.”
“When did you start here, then?” Harry asks, because if it was him, he’d prefer for Malfoy to float past the self-deprecating parts.
It turns out to be the correct instinct.
“A bit after Halloween, 1999.”
It’s a bit of a surprise, though Harry’s not sure where he finds the nerve to be surprised. He really has no business pretending to have any idea who Malfoy has been since the infamous broom flight of 1998.
“You’ve been living here for ten years?”
Malfoy cocks an eyebrow, as he’s wont to do. “I didn’t say I moved here.”
Apparently, he’s also a stickler for accuracy. That’s good to know, for… something. Maybe. Probably.
“Did you?”
A long silence.
“Eventually.”
The admission fishes a grin out of Harry. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Obviously, I like it here,” says Malfoy in a deliciously condescending manner. It makes Harry snort.
“No, I meant, why not pursue other career options when the dust settled?”
Which, in turn, makes Malfoy snort. “Like what, the Ministry?”
It’s unclear whether it’s meant as an insult specifically for Harry, or more in the general sense. Either way, Harry doesn’t necessarily mind, because the self-satisfied smile on Malfoy’s lips is really very gorgeous. And because, honestly, same.
“Or something to do with charms? Or potions, you were always good at those,” he counters, because he genuinely thinks so, and doesn’t mind letting it be known anymore.
“I told you,” Malfoy says, unaffected. “I like it here.”
“You work at a pub, because you like it, and then invent spells on the side?”
“I own the pub. And I don’t invent spells, plural. Just the one.”
Something in the way Malfoy is, in that moment, lets Harry know that he’s getting quite tired of the topic. Harry can’t quite put his finger on what it is, because Malfoy seems relaxed, and his tone is not especially cold or closed off or snappy, and he isn’t even threatening to roll his eyes. But there’s something in Malfoy’s overall presence that makes Harry feel like he should probably finish with that line of questioning.
Besides, it is none of his business, even if he is mindbogglingly curious.
“Why’d you invent the one spell, then?” he asks, because he can’t quite help himself.
Apparently, it’s a safe question, at least to an extent, because Malfoy doesn’t take his leave.
“You should listen in on the conversations that issue between muggles and the magical folk,” he says with a smirk. “It’s hilarious.”
Harry laughs, because he can’t quite keep it in. He likes to think it makes Malfoy’s smirk a bit deeper.
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that you invented a spell that sidesteps the Statute of Secrecy because it might be funny?”
“It’s also very useful,” Malfoy notes in that specifically fake air of indifference of his. “Most of the magical establishments outside of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade use it these days.”
The tone practically begs for appraisal, if Harry has any understanding of the man. “I’m sure they do. Hermione explained it a bit, it sounds pretty clever.”
Malfoy has the nerve to look offended. “It’s exceptional,” he says so haughtily that Harry has to laugh again. He’s so fond of the git it’s probably unhealthy. There’s no way human beings are supposed to feel this mushy, even with magic around to fix things.
“Not shy on the pride, are you,” Harry comments with a smirk of his own, as if he’s not in the process of internal disintegration.
“Why should I be?” is what accompanies the responding smirk that Malfoy uses to devastate Harry further. “That’s arguably the single best thing that’s ever come out of my mind.”
Harry doesn’t think that sounds quite right, that spells are just spells after all, and that the Malfoy he’s getting to know must have done many wonderful things in his life. He also has no arguments for his opinion, because honestly, other than Luna seems to think highly enough of him, so how would he know, really? He’s probably just projecting, even if Luna is an excellent judge of character and has the intuition of an actual, future-knowing prophet.
“Would you ever invent more spells?” he asks instead, desperately clinging to whatever casualness he can muster.
His desperation isn’t quite enough to keep him in one piece when Malfoy’s smirk flares with something private. It’s a bit dangerous.
“I might, with the right motivation.”
“Such as?” and Harry knows he sounds too breathy to play it off as anything other than affected.
Malfoy’s response is an unimpressed, indignant brow-raise that ends up keeping Harry on edge until he gets back to the privacy of his apartment.
He spends quite a while that night fantasizing about things he could offer up as motivation. It’s the best wank of his life. He is quite certain it’s not what Malfoy meant.
***
“So why’d you quit the Aurors?”
Malfoy’s wearing a t-shirt, today, which is simultaneously better and worse than the usual dress shirts he wears. Better, because it makes more sense – who the fuck wears a pristine dress shirt to work the tap? – and because it displays more of the arms, and the tattoos. The magical, absolutely bewitching tattoos. There’s an entire phoenix on one of his arms, and are those actual leather boots in actual leather clad legs that are peaking from under the short sleeve on his left bicep? Harry could spend hours discovering and memorising all the intricate little details. Would, too, given the chance.
But it’s also worse, because Harry still wants to be able to hold a conversation with him.
“They were about to give me a raise,” is what he ends up getting out, entirely inadequately.
Malfoy releases his curiosity to the full, dizzying effect. “And you didn’t want one?”
Harry has to look away if he is to say anything. And he desperately wants to; it’s not like Malfoy asks personal questions from Harry every day. He wants to do a good job. He wants Malfoy to keep looking at him like that forever.
“No, it made me realize how long I’d worked there, having been completely miserable for most of it,” he starts, staring at the other end of the bar where the Quibbler’s are shelved. He grounds himself by wondering about their organization system. “I thought if I didn’t leave then, I’d just find myself lamenting on my misery in another ten years.”
“It wasn’t what you’d expected?”
The softness of the question surprises Harry, but by the time he gets his eyes on Malfoy, the expression is that of complete dispassion.
It doesn’t stop Harry’s heart from aching quite wonderfully.
“Oh, no, it was exactly what I’d expected.”
“So why’d you stay for ten years, then?”
Harry frowns at his pint.
“At first, I felt like I had to, you know? And then I just got used to it. The routine of it. Of having a routine in the first place, something predictable.”
Malfoy snorts inelegantly. It has Harry trying to cock his eyebrow, which probably doesn’t work as intended but hopefully relays the message nonetheless.
“You thought working as an Auror as predictable?” is what Malfoy asks, when he recovers.
“After being chased by an irrationally brilliant psychopath for the seven most formative years of my life?”
Malfoy chuckles, actually chuckles, and it’s quite elating.
“Point. What made it miserable, then? Too much paperwork?”
“Paperwork was like, the least miserable part of it,” Harry assures him. “Nothing I did made a difference. The protocols I had to follow were all bullshit, too. I was keeping up the status quo, which I didn’t fancy to begin with, using methods I couldn’t really agree with. And nothing seemed to ever change. When we took down one bad guy, three others would pop up.”
Just thinking back to it makes Harry’s frown deepen. He really should have quit so much sooner – or better yet, never join at all. No, he did have to be an Auror, for a while, he needed to have lived that life, too. But a shorter while would have been enough. “It wasn’t all that motivating, in the end.”
Malfoy bursts out laughing, which throws Harry off guard so entirely that he almost knocks out his dish.
“What’s so funny?” he asks, incapable of not smiling despite his confusion. The laughter, one with almost no hint of sneering at all, is absolutely irresistible. He never wants it to stop.
It makes Malfoy laugh even harder, and honestly, what a reward.
“Everything you just said,” he gets out between his hollers. “Ooh, I’m Harry Potter! I get paid to save people! But I hate it because I have to do it so orderly!”
The impression, in Harry’s opinion, is way off mark. Malfoy must be getting his references from the Quibbler. Or the Prophet.
“I don’t sound like that,” he complains, though he can’t help but laugh a little, too.
It does not stop Malfoy from laughing. In fact, he seems to be gearing up. “Feel bad for me! I’m only preventing people from dying a few at a time! It’s so hard!”
“Are you quite done?”
“Not even close! Listen –“
It goes on for a good while, and it should be highly embarrassing, considering every person in the pub seems to be listening in on Malfoy’s show, half of whom also have enough context clues to understand exactly what’s going on. And yet Harry goes to bed that night feeling warm and happy and accomplished in a way he hasn’t for quite some time.
***
The most brilliant idea of his life comes to Harry on one of the nameless, faceless days between Christmas and New Years. He immediately goes to Malfoy’s, even though it’s hours before his usual dinner time. Although, who cares about the concept of usual time, anyway, when the only commitments you have are to yourself?
“I have a proposition,” he states as he sits down in his spot at the bar. And actually, isn’t that a lovely thing to have?
Malfoy doesn’t even blink an eye, which, isn’t that also quite lovely?
“Should I be worried?”
Harry takes a deep breath and leans against the bar.
“You should invent a spell that stops the masses from gathering at my house every bloody Halloween.”
That does make Malfoy blink, a little. Not in the normal, usual way, but in the slightly disoriented way that people do when they were expecting something very different.
Curious.
Malfoy recovers quite well, though.
“Oh, so nothing too big then. I was so sure you’d ask me to teach you proper manners, or something equally impossible.”
Harry grins. “So you’ll do it?”
“Sarcasm, Potter. Why on earth would I do that?”
“For fame and glory?”
Malfoy scoffs irritatedly, as if Harry was being serious. “I don’t want that.”
“Not even a little bit?” because Harry just has to try and rile up Malfoy, it’s something that was conditioned into him between the ages of 11 and 16. Or something. It’s quite a lot more good-natured, these days, of course. It’s still highly addictive; maybe even more so.
“Not even the tiniest of amounts,” because Malfoy clearly does not allow for misinformation when it comes to his personhood.
Harry feels his pulse quickening, like he’s about to cheat at cards. “Huh. Well, if you can’t do it…”
“I never said I couldn’t.”
It’s exactly as sharp as Harry had hoped. He puts on his most challenging grin and leans forward against the bar.
“Prove it, then.”
The two men stare at each other. Harry, on his part, is getting a bit featherheaded.
“What do I get in exchange?”
“I thought you didn’t want to do it?”
Now Malfoy leans against bar, too, and Harry’s mind goes through a wormhole in space-time, because dear god, he looks so entirely indecent like that. The arms alone would be enough, with the tattoos and the rolled-up sleeves, but the way he presses his fingers against the counter, strong and elegant, and the rings – so yes, Harry is definitely getting a bit hard and it’s quite the inappropriate time. It’s just that he can’t quite escape the wormhole where those fingers are pressed against his skin, maybe at the chin or at the nape of his neck, or the cock that’s quite clearly begging for any sort of relieving touch.
“If I were to agree to help you,” Malfoy asks, in a timeline-shattering drawl, “which I’m not saying I will,” the drawl goes on, more sharply, dear gods, “what would be in it for me?”
“What would you want?” Harry asks in turn, and is extremely pleased, and quite surprised, to find that while his mind is presently lost to the multiverse, his brain-to-mouth connection is still very intactly in their current physical world. He even sounds a bit daring, and not at all breathy or dreamy. “Hypothetically.”
It’s obvious that Malfoy knows what game Harry’s playing, and still can’t not take the bite. He’s looking predatory, like he’s calculating his best point of attack. It feels nostalgic and new at the same time, and it feels good. It feels so good. Harry has to adjust the way he’s sitting on the barstool, to allow for more space down there.
“Fix it,” Malfoy huffs.
And Harry can’t, for the life of Merlin himself, comprehend what that means.
“What?”
Malfoy, apparently, does not seem to know or care that Harry is entirely lost, but instead continues to stare at Harry in that intense, bloody distracting way.
“I want you to fix it.”
Fix what? There’s nothing to fix? What the hell could they possibly be talking about?
Oh, right.
“What, the house?”
“Yes, Potter. The house.”
So knowing what they’re talking about, as it turns out, doesn’t actually help ease the confusion at all.
“But,” Harry gapes stupidly, struggling for any words that might work, “why?”
Malfoy cocks that blasted eyebrow.
“Does it matter?”
Can you please stop looking at me like that, Harry wants to grumble, but thinks better of it.
“Well, no, but I want to know.”
It’s obviously the wrong thing to say, in the sense that Harry’s clearly lost, because Malfoy shuts his mouth in what seems like a very permanent way. In a way that probably won’t ease even if Harry tries that thing that has accidentally worked twice, the one where he’s quiet until Malfoy starts speaking anyway.
Besides, Harry doesn’t feel patient enough for that, or unbothered, and perhaps it really doesn’t matter?
“I don’t know anything about fixing houses.”
Malfoy smirks, and dear god, Harry’s so screwed.
“You claim to be able to read.”
Harry’s supposed to feel victorious, because he’s about to get exactly what he wanted, and he was willing to do quite literally anything aside from major crime. And yet somehow Malfoy’s managed to make it feel as if Harry’s giving something up. As if this isn’t a choice between having a house with privacy or owning an embarrassing ramshackle of a memorial with a tourist problem.
As if this isn’t actually a complete win-win for Harry. “So we’re agreed?”
The smirk softens into something quite genuine, almost sweet. It takes Harry’s breath away; Draco is entrancingly beautiful when he smiles like that. Harry really is so very entirely screwed.
“Yes.”