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The school grounds are all wrong. Harry sits at the tower window and looks down to where there should be snow. Everything should be frosted, coated in a thick layer of gleaming ice. But it shouldn’t, of course, because it is June. He’d blinked and September became December became June became his last night as a Hogwarts student.
The common room is all wrong, too. It’s empty. Every single Eighth Year student had filed down in raucous twos and threes to Hogsmeade, looking to get well and truly smashed in celebration, and Harry…
Harry is here and it’s quiet.
Yet he isn’t alone.
Across the room, lounging in an armchair by the completely unnecessary fire, is Draco Malfoy.
In a year of Harry’s life where everything should have felt fresh and triumphant and new and glorious—because fucking Christ, they were alive—everything had been too much and too soon and all wrong.
Draco Malfoy is the most wrong. Tonight, today, both terms.
After carrying a hawthorn wand in his pocket all year like some sort of lucky talisman, Harry had finally that very morning returned Malfoy’s stolen wand to him. And what did he receive back?
A soft, solemn, gracious, “Thank you, Potter.”
Wrong.
Where is his bite? The passionate malice? The open and predictable disdain for everything that Harry is now and everything he’d never been. Where is the sneer, the drawling insults, the fucking fire?
Everyone else treats Harry like he’s either made of glass or a god to be worshipped. All year, Malfoy had done neither, and instead gone for a third, and somehow worse, option: indifference.
And Harry, because he is better, because he is healed, because he’d won for fuck’s sake, had to pretend that didn’t bother him. Had to coast through this entire farce of a year without screaming at Malfoy across the Great Hall, across the courtyard, the Quidditch pitch, every single classroom: What’s wrong? With you? With me? Are you okay? I don’t think I am and I know you’re not, because you’re being so odd. So…not you. I hate it. Nothing is normal anymore and I thought it would be normal and would you fucking look at me with something other than polite apathy?!
Maybe Harry is the one who is all wrong.
With a loud huff, Harry removes his glasses, buffs them on his shirtsleeve. He’ll watch from the window here so he can see when Ron, Hermione, and the others stagger back safely. He tells himself it’s a sane thing to do, to have everyone he loves accounted for before he can go to bed.
As he shoves his glasses back on his face, there’s a flash of white in his periphery.
Malfoy is approaching him, determination painting his pale, pointed features.
He stops right in front of Harry. Not even a foot away.
Harry wants to say something cutting. Something sharp to pierce this wooden, unnatural exterior.
Malfoy says nothing.
Harry stands, too.
The air between them crackles with Sectumsempra and Fiendfyre and “I can’t be sure.”
Then Harry’s hands are gripping an expensive white shirt and his lips are pressing hard against lips that are oh so soft. There are hands on him; moving up his chest, winding around his back, sliding through his hair, pulling, yanking.
Draco’s mouth opens beneath his and tongues seek out more to taste, and Harry’s eyes squeeze shut as he imbibes every single emotion Draco has been holding back the entire year, for maybe even the entire time they’ve known one another.
This endless kiss is a flooding torrent and as they sweep away together, move mouths to jaws, to necks, back to lips, Harry pours his own feelings right back.
A challenge, a dare. A rejection, a rebuff.
Harry tastes blood. Possibly his, since a particularly tight squeeze of Draco’s waist results in a teasing nibble that then escalates into breaking skin.
The pleasurable pain of a Quidditch win earned via injury. A curse taken as you win a duel.
This is purposeful violence. They’ve already indulged in the senseless variety. This means so much more than cursory hurts, hurled self-defenses. This is burning confusion for past rejection, anger, humiliation. Gentle has no place here. Because they’ve never known it with one another, never had cause to use it. And Harry does not want to now.
Curiosity and obsession and admiration and hope and regret and misunderstanding and give me your hands, your hair, your lips, your waist, all the places I never reached for, never thought I could have, I didn’t choose you and I didn’t know I could choose anything like this.
This is right.
They kiss and lick and breathe and gasp and it is so fucking wonderful to clutch another person as desperately as they clutch you.
Neither Draco nor Harry can reclaim their stolen youth, but they can take this from each other now. Can give it to each other now.
The kissing slows and deepens, yet the intensity ratchets up. Both devoted to devouring the other. Their hips fuse, and they grind and writhe as one. Just as Harry thinks he’ll pull Draco down on top of him, Draco wrenches himself out of reach. Harry longs for another go at those swollen lips, that bitten jaw.
What now? What now for a hero and a defeated foot soldier? What can Harry do or say to keep this moment from breaking?
But Draco turns away, chest heaving, and practically runs from the room.
Harry already knows. Draco won’t be there in the morning. Or at the Leaving Feast, nor waiting for the carriages. Not on the train.
Goodbye.
Years of wrong.
Harry tries to be an Auror and finds it as ill-fitting as wearing Dudley’s old clothes.
He tries dating women. He tries dating men who are not blond. A particular shade of blond, moon-bright and gleaming and inherently attention-seeking.
Years of looking for the wrong comforts, because he should have been looking for collisions.
Sometimes moments, pieces of right, slip into place. Ron and Hermione break up which feels all sorts of wrong until it feels kind of right. Ron finds his way to Padma Patil, Hermione finds herself in Blaise Zabini’s arms and Harry feels right for them, suddenly.
Feeling right for other people can only take Harry so far, though.
He’s at Blaise and Hermione’s engagement party when he sees him again.
Draco Malfoy.
Across the room, dazzling and laughing and smiling and shining like something brand new. Or perhaps something old that had now been polished and rediscovered its former glow.
The whispers he’d heard, haunting hopes that dogged Harry’s thoughts: “traveling, wants to broaden his horizons” or “accepted a prestigious apprenticeship abroad” and “estranged from his father.”
Harry spends the entire evening glaring from a corner until he’s finally noticed. He sweeps out of the room, heads down an empty corridor. He knows he’ll be followed.
Draco doesn't disappoint.
He strolls towards Harry, clothed in fine robes instead of a school uniform, but the same intensity still burns as he stands before him now.
Harry speaks this time, chin tilted up in angry confusion. “You left.”
“I left.” Draco’s tone is calm, which only flares Harry’s irritation even more.
“Didn’t care about what you were leaving behind?”
“I didn’t know I’d left anything.”
“Just a laugh, was it?”
Draco doesn’t answer. Not verbally, anyway. He shakes his head with a small frown.
Words will be of no use. Not yet. They’ll have to learn that bit.
Harry pulls Draco to him by the front of his robes.
It’s back to the hands and the lips and the tongues. Harry gets first hair grip this time, anchoring his fingers in Malfoy’s corn-silk hair, spinning them both and pressing the other man against the wall.
Right. After so, so long.
Rediscovery, vindication, change and repentance and I knew it I knew it I knew it.
Questions can happen later. Now is for bodies and learning all their angles. Lean muscles and slim hips and skin with a tang of sweat and soap.
Harry kisses Draco and it’s the first spark of magic from a wand, it’s learning to fly, it’s another boy in the robe shop who wanted a friend, too.
Draco kisses Harry and it’s time apart for finding one’s way, for shedding old hatred, for making amends, for self-improvement and reflection.
Now they have arrived here and there’s no need to let go.
Hello.